Conversations in Ebury Street, Chapter 6

London: William Heineman, 1 January 1924, pages 94-109, 4,960 words

Conversations in Ebury Street is a nonlinear volume of nineteen chapters. Chapters 7-11 are essays in art criticism; chapter 19 is worldbuilding; the rest are essays in literary criticism. The chapters appear separately in the Aesthetics and Worlds pillars of George Moore Interactive.All are included in the ebook of Conversations in Ebury Street in the GMi Shop.

VI

Any crude emotion will do if it be vague, loud, and sprawling; restraint, once the watchword, repels, and the night that Mr. Desmond MacCarthy came to me with a copy of Avowals under his arm, I checked the question: How do you reconcile your appreciations of my writings with your worship of Mr. Hardy? and listened in silence till he came to two brief passages so very Landorian that for a moment I thought they must be altered. But Mr. MacCarthy prayed me to retain them, saying: They will bear witness to your worship of the Master, and being of one mind on this subject, we fell to talking of Pericles and Aspasia, agreeing, of course, that it must be looked upon as the noblest work in the English language. I gave all my attention, but whilst praising Landor I did not fail to notice that his fingers played with a book unrecognisable as a volume of the Imaginary Conversations, and it seeming to me that his thoughts were straying from Landor, I was moved at last to ask for the name of the book under his hand. He answered: A Group of Noble Dames, by Thomas Hardy. My face certainly clouded, but undismayed he said he had brought the volume for me to read and in the conviction that it would convert me. Would I read one story? One would be enough, he assured me, and his solicitude for my literary welfare was so touching that I agreed to read the story which he had been kind enough to mark. And as it appeared to me even stranger in style and composition than the novels, I wrote to ask if he was putting a joke upon me, and received in reply a long, pathetic letter, the contents of which have completely passed out of my mind.

The next thing I heard about Mr. Hardy was from Mr. Freeman, who wrote to tell me that he had talked my doubts over with Mr. De La Mare, and that he and Mr. De La Mare would be pleased to dine with me any day next week that suited my convenience. To explain my obtuseness to me, I said, and wrote mentioning Tuesday; and satisfied that on Tuesday night the great mystery would be solved, I fell to thinking on what I should give them to eat: for the fare must not be spoilt by a wrangle in the drawing-room before dinner, nor in the dining-room whilst we are eating and drinking. A lighter conversation than Mr. Hardy's grammar must be insisted upon, and when my guests arrived I drew their attention to the pictures on the walls, and when we went downstairs to the dining­ room I tried to interest them in the differences between shad and bass, saying how sorry I was not to be able to offer them a shad, or bass, or grey mullet, all these fishes being kept out of the market maliciously by the fishmongers.

A salmon trout followed the soup, and it was then that I began to notice that Mr. De La Mare's attention was not fixed on his plate. He is thinking, I said to myself, of Mr. Hardy. The atmosphere of my dining-room is already Dorset; the name will be spoken in a moment. It was, and to such purpose that my guests ate and drank without tasting; an excellent Barsac was, speaking figuratively, turned to water by Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. We will have coffee in the drawing­ room, I said, and followed them upstairs a little disheartened, feeling that facts are of no avail against established reputations. Wherefore as soon as the coffee cups were taken from the room, I said: I think I'd like to tell you a story, and they agreeing, I began:

Once on a time there was a young man called Lord Uplandltowers. Uplandltowers! repeated one of my guests (I think it was Mr. Freeman), who asked if I had made up my mind that the retention of so strange a name was essential to the story. Lord Uplandtowers, I answered testily, as if the story were my own, was brooding a marriage with Barbara, the daughter of his neighbour, Sir John Grebe, of Chene Manor, and so beset was he with thoughts of her that he confided his design one night to a guest, but the guest could not encourage his lordship's hopes. We shall see, returned Lord Uplandtowers impassively, and it suddenly occurring to him that Sir John was giving a ball that very night, he ordered the horses to be harnessed and drove away, but only to find Barbara in no humour to listen to him, his regret, however, being allayed by the fact that she was in no humour to speak to anybody. She disappeared very soon from the ball, and Lord Uplandtowers said to himself in the carriage as he returned home: Well, if she doesn't like me, she doesn't like anybody else. The next morning, before his lordship had left his bed, Sir John called to ask Lord Uplandtowers what he had done with Barbara. His lordship answered him that he knew nothing of her, whereupon Sir John replied that she must have run away with — Sir John refused to pronounce with whom; Lord Uplandtowers accompanied Sir John to Chene, and it was there that Sir John was persuaded to tell him that he feared his daughter had gone off with Edmond Willowes, a widow-woman's son, whose father or grandfather was the last of the old glass painters in that place. By G — , that's bad — , mighty bad! said Lord Uplandtowers throwing himself back in the chaise in frigid despair. About six weeks afterwards a letter came from the flighty daughter begging forgiveness, which was granted, on the condition, however, that the young man should travel abroad for a year with a tutor, who would instruct him and bring him back, Venice and Rome and Florence having done all they could to redeem the young man from all traces of his lowly descent. Barbara is broken-hearted, for she is not certain that she will love the young man a year hence as well as she does to-day, despite the fact that Mr. Willowes is of such extraordinary beauty that a Florentine sculptor begs of him to sit for him; and, inspired by the beauty of the young Englishman, he carves a statue of almost antique beauty, which Mr. Willowes would have taken back to England if an accident in a fire in a Venetian theatre had not befallen him.

Willowes had already dragged out of reach of the flames several, women and children probably, and it was in returning for the seventh that a beam crashed across him, burning and tearing his face so frightfully that science could do nothing to remedy the mischief. And feeling that he was an object that none could look upon with pleasure, he wrote to his beloved, telling her of his accident, saying that he must henceforth wear a mask, and though she pitied him much, she could not quell her curiosity to see his mutilated face. But when he had removed his mask at her request, she was unable to look upon him long and sank to the floor. You cannot look at me! he groaned in a hopeless way. I am too terrible an object even for you to bear. His unhappy wife pulled herself together for a desperate strain! He was her Edmond; he had done her no wrong; he had suffered. A momentary devotion to him helped her, and lifting her eyes as bidden she regarded this human remnant, this écorché, a second time. But the sight was too much. She again involuntarily looked aside and shuddered. Do you think you can get used to this? he said. Yes or no! Can you bear such a thing of the charnel-house near you? Judge for yourself, Barbara. Your Adonis, your matchless man, has come to this! The unfortunate man creeps away, and when he dies it occurs to Barbara that perhaps after all she was mistaken in her rejection of Lord Uplandtowers, and he, nothing loth, began his suit again; and she married him, though he could never get her to own that she loved him as she had loved Willowes. But he found her cold and indifferent, and when a letter came from Italy from the sculptor, asking to be paid for his statue of the matchless man, her Adonis, Lord Uplandtowers was a little scared. But he could not refuse the statue, which, when it had been unpacked in a back room of the house, was found to be a full-length figure, in the purest Carrara marble, representing Willowes in all his original beauty, a specimen of manhood almost perfect in line and contour. Phoebus­-Apollo, sure, said the Earl of Uplandtowers, who had never seen Willowes, real or represented till now. But notwithstanding his admiration for the statue, he did not wish it to remain under his roof, and he was relieved to find that it had been removed when he returned after an absence of a few days. His suspicions were not altogether allayed, however, for his wife's face wore: A sort of silent ecstasy, a reserved beatitude. And growing more and more curious, he looked here and looked there for the statue, till thinking of his wife's private room, he went towards it. After knocking he heard the shutting of a door and the click of a key; but when he entered his wife was sitting at work, on what was in those days called knotting. Lord Uplandtowers's eye fell upon the newly-painted door where the recess had formerly been. You have been carpentering in my absence, then, Barbara, he said carelessly. Yes, Uplandtowers, she answered, and he began to question her. Why did you go putting up such a tasteless enclosure as that — spoiling the handsome arch of the alcove? I wanted more closet-room, she said, and I thought that as this was my own apartment — Of course, he returned. Lord Uplandtowers knew now where the statue of young Willowes was, and it was not long before Lord Uplandtowers missed the Countess from his side —

The story told by you, said Mr. De La Mare, and the story told by Mr. Hardy, are two different things. The delightful dialogue, I answered, you have just heard is Mr. Hardy's, and lest I should be doing him an injustice I will read from the book:

One night, or rather in the smallest hours of the morn­ing, he missed the Countess from his side. Not being a man of nervous imaginings he fell asleep again before he had much considered the matter, and the next morning had forgotten the incident. But a few nights later the same circumstance occurred. This time he fully roused himself; but before he had moved to search for her, she entered the chamber in her dressing-gown, carrying a candle, which she extinguished as she approached, deeming him asleep. He could discover from her breathing that she was strangely moved; but not on this occasion either did he reveal that he had seen her. Presently, when she had lain down, affecting to wake, he asked her some trivial question. Yes, Edmond, she replied absently.

Lord Uplandtowers became convinced that she was in the habit of leaving the chamber in this queer way more frequently than he had observed, and he determined to watch. The next midnight he feigned deep sleep, and shortly after perceived her stealthily rise and let herself out of the room in the dark. He slipped on some clothing and followed. At the farther end of the corridor, where the clash of flint and steel would be out of the hearing of one in the bed-chamber, she struck a light. He stepped aside into an empty room till she had lit a taper and had passed on to her boudoir. In a minute or two he followed. Arrived at the door of the boudoir, he beheld the door of the private recess open, and Barbara within it, standing with her arms clasped tightly round the neck of her Edmond, and her mouth on his. The shawl which she had thrown round her nightclothes had slipped from her shoulders, and her long white robe and pale face lent her the blanched appearance of a second statue embracing the first. Between her kisses, she apostrophised it in a low murmur of infantine tenderness:

My only love — how could I be so cruel to you, my perfect one — so good and true — I am ever faithful to you, despite my seeming infidelity! I always think of you­ — dream of you — during the long hours of the day, and in the night-watches! O Edmond, I am always yours! Such words as these, intermingled with sobs, and streaming tears, and dishevelled hair, testified to an intensity of feeling in his wife which Lord Uplandtowers had not dreamed of her possessing.

Ha, ha! says he to himself. This is where we evaporate — this is where my hopes of a successor in the title dissolve — ha, ha! This must be seen to, verily!

Lord Uplandtowers was a subtle man when once he set himself to strategy; though in the present instance he never thought of the simple stratagem of constant tenderness. Nor did he enter the room and surprise his wife as a blunderer would have done, but went back to his chamber as silently as he had left it. When the Countess returned thither, shaken by spent sobs and sighs, he appeared to be soundly sleeping as usual. The next day he began his countermoves by making inquiries as to the whereabouts of the tutor who had travelled with his wife's first husband; this gentleman, he found, was now master of a grammar-school at no great distance from Knollingwood. At the first convenient moment Lord Uplandtowers went thither and obtained an interview with the said gentleman. The schoolmaster was much gratified by a visit from such an influential neighbour, and was ready to communicate anything that his lordship desired to know.

After some general conversation on the school and its progress, the visitor observed that he believed the schoolmaster had once travelled a good deal with the unfortunate Mr. Willowes, and had been with him on the occasion of his accident. He, Lord Uplandtowers, was interested in knowing what had really happened at that time, and had often thought of inquiring. And then the Earl not only heard by word of mouth as much as he wished to know, but, their chat becoming more intimate, the schoolmaster drew upon paper a sketch of the disfigured head, explaining with bated breath various details in the representation.

It was very strange and terrible! said Lord Upland­towers, taking the sketch in his hand. Neither nose nor ears!

A poor man in the town nearest to Knollingwood Hall, who combined the art of sign-painting with ingenious mechanical occupation, was sent for by Lord Uplandtowers to come to the Hall on a day in that week when the Countess had gone on a short visit to her parents. His employer made the man understand that the business in which his assistance was demanded was to be considered private, and money ensured the observation of this request. The lock of the cupboard was picked, and the ingenious mechanic and painter, assisted by the schoolmaster's sketch, which Lord Uplandtowers had put in his pocket, set to work upon the god-like countenance of the statue under my lord's direction. What the fire had maimed in the original the chisel maimed in the copy. It was a fiendish disfigurement, ruthlessly carried out, and was rendered still more shocking by being tinted to the hues of life, as life had been after the wreck.

Six hours after, when the workman was gone, Lord Uplandtowers looked upon the result, and smiled grimly, and said:

A statue should represent a man as he appeared in life, and that's as he appeared, Ha! ha! But 'tis done to good purpose, and not idly.

He locked the door of the closet with a skeleton key, and went his way to fetch the Countess home.

That night she slept, but he kept awake. According to the tale, she murmured soft words in her dream; and he knew that the tender converse of her imaginings was held with one whom he had supplanted but in name. At the end of her dream the Countess of Uplandtowers awoke and arose, and then the enactment of former nights was repeated. Her husband remained still and listened. Two strokes sounded from the clock in the pediment without, when, leaving the chamber-door ajar, she passed along the corridor to the other end, where, as usual, she obtained a light. So deep was the silence that he could even from his bed hear her softly blowing the tinder to a glow after striking the steel. She moved on into the boudoir, and he heard, or fancied he heard, the turning of the key in the closet-door. The next moment there came from that direction a loud and prolonged shriek, which resounded to the farthest corners of the house. It was repeated, and there was the noise of a heavy fall.

Lord Uplandtowers sprang out of bed. He hastened along the dark corridor to the door of the boudoir, which stood ajar, and, by the light of the candle within, saw his poor young Countess lying in a heap in her nightdress on the floor of the closet. When he reached her side he found that she had fainted, much to the relief of his fears that matters were worse. He quickly shut up and locked in the hated image which had done the mischief, and lifted his wife in his arms, where in a few instants she opened her eyes. Pressing her face to his without saying a word, he carried her back to her room, endeavouring as he went to disperse her terrors by a laugh in her ear, oddly compounded of causticity, predilection, and brutality.

Ho — ho — ho! says he. Frightened, dear one, hey? What a baby 'tis! Only a joke, sure, Barbara — a splendid joke! But a baby should not go to closets at midnight to look for the ghost of the dear departed! If it do, it must expect to be terrified at his aspect — ho — ho — ho!

When she was in her bed-chamber, and had quite come to herself, though her nerves were still much shaken, he spoke to her more sternly: Now, my lady, answer me: do you love him — eh?

No — no! she faltered, shuddering, with her expanded eyes fixed on her husband. He is too terrible — no, no!

You are sure?

Quite sure! replied the poor broken-spirited Countess.

But her natural elasticity asserted itself. Next morning he again inquired of her: Do you love him now? She quailed under his gaze, but did not reply.

That means that you do still, by G — ! he continued.

It means that I will not tell an untruth, and do not wish to incense my lord, she answered, with dignity.

Then suppose we go and have another look at him? As he spoke, he suddenly took her by the wrist, and turned as if to lead her towards the ghastly closet.

No — no! Oh —  no! she cried, and her desperate wriggle out of his hand revealed that the fright of the night had left more impression upon her delicate soul than superficially appeared.

Another dose or two, and she will be cured, he said to himself. It was now so generally known that the Earl and Countess were not in accord, that he took no great trouble to disguise his deeds in relation to this matter. During the day he ordered four men with ropes and rollers to attend him in the boudoir. When they arrived, the closet was open, and the upper part of the statue tied up in canvas. He had it taken to the sleeping-chamber. What followed is more or less matter of conjecture.

I suppose you would like to hear the conjectures, Mr. De La Mare? I think we might skip them, he answered. Instead of reading the entire text, I said, I will remind you of what happened, though I should like you to have heard it in Mr. Hardy's own words, for the story will lose in mine. When husband and wife retired to their chamber for the night, Lady Uplandtowers saw at the foot of the bed a tall wardrobe which she did not recognise as part of the furniture of the room, but she asked no questions. Lord Uplandtowers, however, was in no humour to be baffled by her silence, and he told her that a playful little thought had come into his mind. Her ladyship, not wishing to seem morose, asked what this could be, and learnt that his whim had been to erect a little shrine; and on these words he offered to show her what it contained. And without waiting for her answer he thrust out his leg, pressing a spring with his toe which caused the doors of the wardrobe to open slowly. And what do you think, Mr. De La Mare, and what do you think, Mr. Freeman, the wardrobe contained? Why, nothing less and nothing more than the ghastly figure! I think, said Mr. De La Mare, that you are misquoting Mr. Hardy. Lord Uplandtowers did not press a spring with his toe; he pulled a cord. Which is, of course, I interjected, much more like AEschylus than if he had pressed a spring with his toe! I noticed, too, said Mr. De La Mare, that you accentuated the phrase: he slipped on some clothing. I stumbled over the phrase, I answered, because I thought he had fallen over the clothing, but apparently he had only pulled on his trousers and buttoned himself into a loose coat. I think, said Mr. De La Mare, that you lay too much stress upon trifles.

As the conversation seemed to be getting strained, Mr. Freeman began to speak of Prometheus Unbound, and, forgetful of Mr. Hardy, the poets diverged into praise of Shelley, myself quoting sparingly from the great antiphonal outburst in the fourth act, for I had already spoken a great deal, and it was pleasant for me to listen to two poets reciting the passages that had become fixed in their memories.

From the Indian deep

The flying-fish leap

And mix with the sea-birds half asleep.

Was it Mr. De La Mare who uttered the lines? My poor memory! my poor memory! as a former conversationalist would say. I can discourse, cried I, on the flight of the eagle, of the wild dove, of the hawk, of the swallow, of the king-fisher, even of the flying-fish from the Indian deep, but not of the barndoor fowl. My readers have read L'Éducation Sentimentale, and remember Flaubert's artifices to escape from the difficulty of dialogue: En rencontrant Pellerin sur le boulevard Armani lui dit: Bonjour, alors ils parlent de choses indifférentes. And we too, Mr. Freeman, Mr. De La Marc, and myself, spoke on the night in question of different things: of the spiritual death of all the great pictures in the National Gallery upon a paper with a wriggly pattern, suited to a billiard room, sometimes purple and sometimes grey, and of the strange appearance of Lord Ribblesdale in more hunting breeches and crop than ever existed since the time of Nimrod, a grey thing very like oilcloth, placed between two flamboyant Turners, mischievously placed, we thought. And then we talked of the future that awaited the National Gallery when all the Sargent portraits bequeathed to it arrive in vans, stopping in front of the perturbed director on the steps, now thinking how the housing of nine Palestinian refugees and the majority of our generals can be managed. From one van half a dozen generals will emerge in top boots, from another a dozen, and, alas! a third van arrives with a dozen and a half. Twelve threes are thirty-six, twice thirty-six are seventy-two —  seventy-two top boots, and how many medals! A new wing will have to be built for the splendid exhibition of all these icy effigies; and we imagined the abashed director retiring to his office to consider the increased prices of building materials, saying to himself: Perhaps fifty thousand pounds will be required to build a new wing, but the tax-payer will not feel the money drifting from his pockets, so great is his admiration for photography and for pictures that remind him of his favourite art. But conversation on painting is not easily carried on among poets, and when Mr. De La Mare began to speak his admiration of Hardy's description of a certain heath, I went to the bookcase and returned with the book, say­ing: I shall be surprised if it contains anything differing in kind from Fanny's grave, for a man's writings differ in quality, but not in kind. The description of the heath is at the beginning of the book, said De La Mare, and thanking him for coming to my assistance, I began to read:

The most thorough-going ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to wander on Egdon; he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these. Colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests and mists. Then Egdon was avowed to reciprocity: for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms: and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognised original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in mid­night dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like them. It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man'a nature — neither ghastly, hateful nor ugly: neither commonplace, unmeaning nor tame: but like man, slighted and enduring: and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.

I read this admired passage with alarm, saying to myself: They have read and kept a memory of Alastor and The Leech-gatherer, and they cannot have forgotten Landor, or Pater, or Mr. Kipling; any page of Kim provides a sample of English that will enable them to appraise Mr. Hardy's prose. And not wishing to embarrass my guests, I did not wait for their surrender, but began to speak at once, protesting that I would retract all I had said and burn all I was moved to write if they could point to one ardent sentence in the page they had themselves chosen for my edification. The description of the heath, I said, is not so absurd as the description of Fanny's grave, but it is as blind: Wild regions of obscurity! We must not be afraid of the word weak, for it is the word that calls Mr. Hardy into the dock, and the village schoolmaster should be able to write more correctly than: Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests and mists. Bad grammar flourishes in weak minds, and were the weed more usually removed, the sentence would not read any better; indeed, I prefer it as it stands, accepting more usually if not as an apology, at least as in keeping with the rest of Mr. Hardy's mind. Alas, we cannot overcome our natural deficiencies, but we may discover them, and Mr. Hardy should have discovered, in the course of a long life, that as his sense of grammar did not allow him to rise to purple passages, it were well to eschew these altogether. Listen, ye admirers of Mr. Hardy:

Then it (the heath) became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognised original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like them. But what purpose, asked Mr. De La Marc, will be served by this critical examination of Mr. Hardy's English? We are three men of letters, I answered, and it is our business to inquire why the public should have selected for their special adoration ill-constructed melodramas, feebly written in bad grammar, and why this mistake should have happened in the country of Shakespeare. It is true that an artist is never judged impartially by his contemporaries. Shelley believed Byron to be one of England's great poets; Goethe agreed with him; yet to-day everybody is a better judge of Byron's poetry than were Shelley and Goethe, without, however, any very conspicuous advance having been made in criticism; indeed, it would seem that criticism is retrograde, and that of late the newspapers are, shall we say, almost too feverishly interested in immortality.