A Communication to My Friends, Chapter 6

London: Nonesuch Press, 13 June 1933, pages 46-57, 3,017 words

VI

Three days afterwards I wrote to my brother, who had lodgings in Cecil Street, Strand, offering to pay him a guinea a week for his spare room. "I shall be in all day writing a book and shall not interfere with you," and no man was ever more faithful to a promise made to myself rather than to my brother, for I could not put aside the thought that solitude and privation were as much needed by a man of letters as pen, ink and paper. And it was only because I did not wish to chagrin my brother that I sometimes consented to accompany him to a fashionable restaurant where he dined with prize fighters and young lords whose only interests in life were champagne, comic songs and chorus girls. However much I might try I could not associate myself intimately with this company. I felt that the bluster and bluff of the restaurant turned my thoughts from the pages I had written and from those that I hoped to write on the following day. I wondered how this was, and at last discovered myself to be irreparably aesthetic, which explained my aversion from my Galway cousins and the lords who drank champagne at Romano’s.

Augustus had friends in the country with whom he ordinarily spent Saturday and Sunday, and he once persuaded me to come with him to Sussex, where there were tennis courts and rabbit shooting, and I tried to please, but I was not much success with this family. They preferred Augustus and I did not return to Sussex, nor did I follow him when he asked me to dine with him at Romano's. "You had better come," he said, "you will not write well when you are tired," but Augustus's friends were so different from me that I said, "Well, Augustus, you had better go your way and I will go mine, our ways do not meet," and whilst he went off dressed in his fashionable clothes to Romano's I walked up the street to Simpson's, a great restaurant where one could dine off an excellent shoulder of mutton for half-a-crown. Celery and cheese were offered to the customer as a relish, and when the waiter asked "What will you take to drink, sir?" the customer answered, even when he was myself, a pint of bitter. Ale in the early eighties cost fourpence a pint. The price and the bite in the throat are remembered by me, also that dining at Simpson's meant living above the rate that I had prescribed to myself, and one evening on paying the bill and giving threepence to the waiter I resolved that I would not again indulge myself in a dinner at Simpson's but would dine next evening at Gatti's, opposite Charing Cross, where the best loin chop in London, or the best steak, cooked to perfection, could be had with fried potatoes, a cup of café au lait and a roll and butter, for a shilling, the only extra being a penny for the waiter.

And the dinner finished, between eight and nine it behoved me to decide whether I would spend the rest of the evening in a music hall listening to McDermot singing the popular ditties for which I had lost all stomach, or in theatres given over to the art of farce, or call a hansom and drive to St. James's Hall for classical music. Classical music is the only relaxation for the tired brain, I said to myself. I am naturally inclined to the serious, the trivial bores me. For a moment I thought I should finish my evening listening to Wagner's Valkyrie, but I lacked courage, St. James's Hall seemed far away, the crowd was provocative of analysis. I tried to read the character of the passers-by. The women interested me more than the men, for they were easily read, women come up from the suburbs, Jennies in search of kisses and guineas — an odious phrase from a poet that I once admired. At length a pleasant girl looked at me with eyes not too full of invitation, and daring the porter whose business it was to keep the doorway free from loiterers, she asked me to come for a walk with her. I thanked her to save her from coarse reproof by the porter, crossed Trafalgar Square by myself and was glad to pass through the great iron gates in search of darkness and solitude.

Wherever there was a bench it was occupied by boys and girls, and being an inverted moralist I commented sympathetically on the whispered words that floated above the bashfulness of the girls and the ardour of the boys, both equally exalted by the quiet and the hush of sunset in the western sky. Exaltations, I said, that they will never know again. A year or two of aspiration, almost of poetry, and then a long life of work, toiling behind counters and in factories, in teashops attending on clerks coming for a hasty meal. And what business is it of mine, I asked myself, to pity them? They live the life they were born into and the world has always been like that and always will be, no better and no worse.

As I was indulging in these commonplaces and reproaching myself at the same moment for so doing, somebody spoke, and turning I saw the girl who had invited me to come for a walk in St. James's Park. A parlour maid out of place I judged her to be, a girl who would have suited me for a walk as far as Buckingham Palace on any other night but this. But I was pleased at being accosted, though I had to send her away. Every man, I suppose, likes to be accosted if he is certain that he is not observed, and there was no danger of being observed at that hour in St. James's Park. The shadows of the great trees looming up hid every obscenity — I use the word in its grammatical sense — from the passers-by, if any were being committed, and having bidden Margaret good-bye, urging that I had serious matters to consider, I began to wonder whether I was really churlish by nature or merely playing a part, and then, feeling that I must excuse myself to myself for my involuntary virtue, I meditated on the recompense that I should have been obliged to give the girl if I had wasted her time walking as far as Buckingham Palace with me, relieving with pleasant trivial chatter my almost intolerable boredom. Association with harlots is incompatible with an income of two hundred a year, and virtue apart, I could not afford it, and all thought of her passing suddenly out of my mind I watched a flight of ducks coming down from the sky with necks outstretched just as in a Japanese print.

And as they came with rapid wing-beats I thought their intention was to pass over St. James's Park northward to the lakes of Regent's Park, hut whatever it was they changed it, and wheeling almost in a circle they alighted on the lake in front of me with a flutter of wings, to swim towards the reeds of the island, leaving long trails of light behind them. So still was the night that I could hear them chatter good-night to each other before they tucked their heads under their wings for sleep. There was light enough to distinguish the different species, and I noted the common wild duck, which crowds in thousands on Lough Carra, and there were some teal, and then came the widgeon and another and other tribes of duck, a sheldrake or two, but the light was beginning to fail and I could not distinguish the plumage and so contented myself with a comment on the morality of ducks. They are subject to a morality just as we are, not the same morality, but another; which is better and which is worse I am not pious enough to decide; and my thoughts turning from the ducks to myself I moralized: the Providence that rules over this world has ordered a pleasanter life for ducks than for men, to mate and to swim together, two ducks for one drake, and should a third duck approach it is the custom of the drake to drive her away. He does not want more, two are enough for him, whereas men and women are more like barn-door cocks and hens, they weary of each other. And with these words a great sadness came over me. I too would like a mate, but a mate and the writing of books are incompatible, Balzac has said so.

I continued my walk along the lake-shore, up the acclivity that leads to the broad terrace in front of Buckingham Palace, and once more I stopped to look back on the lake, but a long dead day obscured it from me, and I could only see myself starting from the Rue de la Tour des Dames with Paul Alexis for the Gare St. Lazare. Zola had invited us both to Medan to spend the day with him, and I saw myself setting forth with Alexis on a beautiful summer morning under a blue sky. The great house that the novelist had built for himself was some distance from the station. We had to cross fields all in flower, and during our walk I could see flowers and hear myself telling Alexis of my projects for different novels. The good Alexis listened patiently to my recitation, but he could not refrain from a sly gibe when I had finished. "I see that you are devising a little Rougon-Macquart series." The gibe cut quick. Was I doing no more than that? I asked myself, and I don't think I spoke to him again until we reached Médan, where we found Zola in his great studio lying on the sofa with proofs before him. He said he had a quarrel to pick with me for some remarks I had made about him in the Indépendante. "In view of these remarks I cannot write the preface that I promised you and Charpentier for A Mummer's Wife." Alexis intervened and took my part and in my dream I heard his very words, "Why not answer the criticism?" "Oh, no," said Zola, "I cannot answer anybody now, I have passed beyond the years of defence." I felt I had made a fool of myself and I remember Paul Alexis's words which he uttered when Zola had left the room. "Don't press him to write a preface. He'll not write it. His mind is made up. It was very unkind towards Zola and unkind to Charpentier, qui va boire un bouillon." I could not deny the truth of what he said. My cheek must have blanched, my heart certainly misgave me when Zola returned to us and began to read aloud to Alexis what I had written in the Indépendante. The good Alexis took up the position that the passages he had read aloud were but an innocent polemic. "Mon cher Moore, je vous tiendrai sur la sellette plus tard." "Good God," I said to myself, "I thought it was all over but he is going to start again... et en le creusant."

We sat down soon afterwards to breakfast and after breakfast we walked in the garden talking of indifferent things, and it was not until we returned to the studio that he said, "je ne me plains pas, mon cher. Les enfants dévorent le parent toujours." Another phrase that Zola used was about a change of opinion. "En moi une opinion est comme un gros meuble qui se déplace difficilement." "Mon cher maître, je n'ai pas discuté les grandes lignes de la composition. La composition est toujours impeccable, comme celle de Wagner." Dropping the Indépendante upon his knee, settling his glasses upon his nose and looking at me with a fixed stare, Zola said, in the detached manner which always drew me to him affectionately, "I regret you did not go further and attack French literature de fond en comble, you would have raised a polemic. You did not go far enough, or you went too far." "Too far?" I said. "Yes," he replied, "what you say about Goncourt will prevent you from ever returning to the grénier in Auteuil." I hope, said I to myself, that this trial is ended now and that we shall talk upon some subject on which we are more or less agreed. Madame Zola's presence will prevent a wrangle, and perhaps it was on her account that Zola led the conversation into English literature and asked me to name the great writers that we appreciated. Before I had time to answer, Zola said, "We know Shakespeare in translation and we know  Milton too in translation, but who is the third? Name your trinity." "That is easily done," I said. "Three great writers wrote in English. Two you have mentioned. The third is Walter Savage Landor."

Neither Zola nor Alexis had heard the name and they were anxious to get an account of his work, and I felt a little disappointment fall upon them when I said, "His work consists almost entirely of dialogues with the dead. The Greek dialogues have been reproached as being more Roman than Greek, but I do not agree with that. In these dialogues he wrote with the whole English language and with knowledge of Greek and Latin. He was a bi-linguist, writing in Latin and in English, and I am afraid if I tell you that he criticized minutely some of Cicero's Latin, giving his reasons, that you will look upon Landor as a pedant, but there was no pedant in him." "Tell us about some piece that he wrote that obtains your entire approval, which you would quote if you were asked to select a piece for French translation." "I can mention one," I answered, "and I do not think you would find anything more noble, pregnant with a more universal humanity that lives on from Greek times to the present day than this dialogue, only two pages and a half long, and yet we feel in reading it that he has told the history of the whole world. The dialogue is carried on between Achilles and Helen — he has come to meet Helen on Mount Ida. The flexibility of the English language and the power of it are here expressed, if not more fully than in Milton, I would say more enchantingly. We are lifted beyond ourselves listening to these two great figures that stand on the very ridge of the world and talk of simple things and great things with the same ease. Achilles knows the names of the flowers and the herbs at his feet and he brings them into the conversation with an art that I can only say is incomparable." "Have his dialogues," Zola asked, "anything comparable with the dialogues of Plato?" "They are as beautiful as the dialogues of Plato, and like all things beautiful they are eternal. Time cannot efface them or Plato. Yet Landor detested Plato and criticized him in some of his dialogues unjustly. Landor was a great pagan, but whilst a pagan he would retain un petit coin bleu, your very phrase, dear master, a reproach that you addressed to Renan." "And would you place him higher than Renan." "Yes, I admire Renan, but there was a good deal of the woman, or if not of the woman, of the ecclesiastic in Renan. But Landor was the eternal masculine, eternal, for in a thousand years he will be the same as to-day, as long as the English language exists, and by that time he will be in all languages."

I translated the celebrated epigram: "Je n'ai jamais lutté avec personne, personne valait la peine. J'aimais la nature, et après la nature, l'art. J'ai chauffé les mains devant le feu de la vie, et maintenant je suis prêt à partir." "C'est très beau," Zola murmured reflectively, "and it must be incomparable in English when it resists a spontaneous translation, deprived of rhyme and of metre."

Availing herself of a sudden pause, Madame Zola, who was getting tired of the conversation, said, "I am afraid you have missed the train at Médan. You will have to walk to — " and she named a station three miles away at which, if we walked quickly, we would catch a train. "We have stopped too long and worn out your patience," I said, apologizing to Madame Zola, who declared that she had never spent a pleasanter evening. The night was fine, and as we walked through endless meadows Alexis said, "I regret that you permitted your pen to run into criticism of Zola's style, thereby forfeiting the preface that he promised to you and Charpentier. "Cela fait tort à Zola, mais c'est Charpentier qui va boire un bouillon." That damned bouillon, said I to myself. "A man cannot do more than regret and express his sorrow. J'ai courbé l'échine et vous m'avez fouetté. Ne parlons plus de cet article malheureux," and kind and good Alexis, to soothe me, asked me to speak about Landor. “I improvised for a few moments as well as your language would allow me." "And for a moment I could see," Alexis said, "dimly of course, but I could see the two colossal figures that loom up high as the stars in history." "Alexis, I have awakened the poet in you. You would hear me say a few words more about Landor. He is a beautiful austerity, always beautiful and nearly always austere, even in his comedies. The landscape before us represents him — the dark earth and the light sky and the austere poplars reaching up to the first stars. Appreciate the austerity and the beauty and you will know more of Landor than I can tell you."