Avowals, Chapter 11

London: Privately Printed, 1 September 1919, pages 202-212, 3,734 words

Avowals is a nonlinear volume of sixteen chapters. Chapters 12 and 15 are essays in 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 GMi Kindle edition of Avowals.

CHAP. XI.

When Pater lived in the Kensington house, it began to be known among his friends that he contributed anonymous articles on current literature to a weekly newspaper, and when we spoke of these articles among ourselves we expatiated in regret, and were at variance regarding his motive in writing these articles, for we did not know that the master could weave a fine silken woof out of such a poor thread as current literature, saying it could hardly be for the money they brought in, till at last Arthur Symons began to put forward the explanation, a partial one, which will not find ready acceptance, that Pater did not wish to miss altogether his connection with the passing hour. Every life, said Symons, however secluded, needs an outlet. I find mine in the ballet, and he finds his in the Guardian.

An explanation this is of Pater's journalism that would have been nearer the truth if it had been expressed less flippantly. Symons should have said: if Pater had been discovered writing for The World, or Truth, his position would be as difficult as mine would be were I to praise the last new dancer at the Alhambra; but the Guardian is a thoughtful Protestant paper, and in his key though he is not a Christian. Quite true Pater liked the Protestant convention, and the belief was never very far from him that it is by the acceptation of the traditional and the formal that we escape from the fretful. A great deal of Pater was in his reverence for tradition, usage, and Symons should have noted the physical likeness that the beautifullest poet and prose writer of our generation bore one to the other. He did not do this, an oversight, nor did he draw attention to the fact that the likeness was not a mere bodily likeness, for both poet and prose writer were Agnostics, great adherents to religious conventions, two different conventions, it is true, but the difference concerns only the theologians, for in these modern days respect for ancient usages and traditions takes the place of faith. It may be doubted if Verlaine would have consented to flout his conventions by any public act or printed word; that Pater would not flout his is beyond dispute, and that is why I cannot but wonder at my lack of perception when one day, re­membering suddenly that he wrote essays for the Guardian, I sent him a book I had just written, with a note asking him to review it. If I were to tell the theme, the subject of this book, it would not be difficult for anyone to apprehend the embarrassment Pater must have felt on glancing through my pages. It is sufficient to say that the subject was not one that could be discussed in the Guardian, even by such a master of words as Pater, and I can imagine him laying the book aside and walking to and fro, along and across the room above the drawing-room, his workroom, till at last, wearied out, he sat down to write an answer, an answer that demanded all his mastery over language; indeed, several draftings had to be written before he succeeded in expressing himself truthfully, yet without giving offence. Would that that letter had not passed from me, for it was an example of his power to compel words, to convey his soul's meaning, yet without departing from that graciousness from which he could not separate himself, it being himself. But to the letter! I shall tell in vain that he said that he was no proper critic of the story I sent him, and that the object of violent acts was not clear to him. He said something very like that, and he may have added that the object of art is to enable us to forget the crude and the violent. But even if I could recall the substance of the letter itself, little would be gained, but the substance of such a letter, if not of all letters, is the common property of mankind. Thoughts cannot be original, for all have been uttered thousands of years ago. We are ourselves only in the pattern we weave, and Pater's beautiful pattern, as explicit in his letters as in his works, cannot be produced by me, which is a pity, for his letters to me would help readers to penetrate the mind that wrote Marius and set Jean Baptiste's sister dreaming of Watteau away in Paris, without thinking that she loved him. It seems to me that I am repeating myself, but on certain points of character we need not be afraid of repetition. However slight the note was his genius was in it and that graciousness which we associate with Raphael — a very Pateresque painter in those pictures in which none had a hand but he. A more perfect artist than Raphael, for Raphael left many bad pictures and work accomplished by subordinates, but Pater was only once guilty, in my opinion, of a passage that was unworthy of him. Mr Gosse may speak of a few waxen passages, saying that Pater's genius ranked very high indeed when his genius was present, but unfortunately — Let him who cares to do so finish this sentence. He will have no difficulty in finding a suitable end among the many insipid articles that have been written about the greatest master of English prose. Ah! had I not lost the letter. To look for it again would be useless, and to seek its contents in my memory would be vain. Were I to seek it, that passage about the Gioconda would not fail to rise from deep seas to tantalise me. So I will forget the Gioconda and pass on to something which is to my credit, that for no single moment nor fraction of a moment did I hold Pater's judgment regarding my book in question. One does not argue about literature with Pater; was it Gautier who said: one does not discuss theology with God? Once more to my story. After folding up his letter and putting it away, torn in half in a fretful moment, I said to myself: the only thing to be done is to write another book, and try to forget this ridiculous mistake of mine. At that time I was engaged on another, one which was nearing completion, and I began to ask myself if Pater could be interested in a narrative about an immoral young man who went to Paris in quest of art. The Confessions were then appearing in an obscure periodical, and I did not even suspect they might come into his hands. A few days afterwards, on seeing Pater's beautiful, precise handwriting on the envelope, I said: good heavens, he is not going to write to me again about that unfortunate —

It was part of Pater's style not to insist, to refrain from what is familiarly known as rubbing it in; a copy of the magazine in which I was writing my Confessions had come into his hands, and his style — le style c'est l'homme — compelled him to tell me how much he admired my appreciations of the modern French poets; to compensate me, I said, for his first letter, which has rankled in his mind longer than in mine. Ah, if that letter had not been lost too a good deal of Pater's would illuminate this page. The third letter, the letter he wrote to me when he received his copy of The Confessions of a Young Man, was sought in febrile excitement for many hours. At last my secretary came into the room, rousing me from the lethargy of despair into which I had fallen. Is this the letter you were looking for? I found it at the bottom of the bookcase.

Brasenose College,

March 9th.

Mv dear, audacious Moore, —

Many thanks for the Confessions; which I have read with great interest and admiration for your originality — your delightful criticisms — your Aristophanic joy, or at least enjoyment, in life — your unfailing liveliness. Of course, there are many things in the book I don't agree with. But then, in the case of so satiric a book, I suppose one is hardly expected to agree or disagree. What I cannot doubt of is the literary faculty displayed. Thou com'st in such a questionable shape! I feel inclined to say, on finishing your book; shape morally, I mean; not in reference to style.

You speak of my own work very pleasantly; but my enjoyment has been independent of that. And still I wonder how much you may be losing, both for yourself and for your writings, by what, in spite of its gaiety and good­ nature and genuine sense of the beauty of many things, I must still call a cynical, and therefore exclusive way of looking at the world. You call it only realistic. Still!

With sincere wishes for the future success of your most entertaining pen.

Very sincerely yours,

WALTER PATER.

It had fallen amid the dust through a crack, I suppose, and for three or four days, for a week, perchance, during my walks, and whilst sitting by the fire, thoughts of Pater's letter overflowed my mind, keeping me awake at night, and no sleep was gotten till the morning dusk began to divide the curtains, for nothing else seemed worth thinking about; and it seemed to me as if I had become possessed of a happiness that could not die. A happy week it was that I spent certainly with that letter always uppermost in my mind; no blighting thought going by till Henry James's contention of insincerity, and the proof he had advanced in support of it was remembered — Pater's wish to hunt with the Pagan hounds and run with the Christian hare, to raccommoder la chèvre et le chou, was remembered, with a sudden gust of resentment. And it was in an intemperate moment that I said to myself: we should be always on our guard against these sudden sallies of feeling. Pater's letter is proof that Henry James's contention was not altogether a false one, and I took the letter up and read: and still I wonder how much you may be losing, both for yourself and for your readers.

The insincerity that Henry James complained of was the complaint of the sinner against the almost virtuous man, for James never came to terms with anything but perhaps terraces and cigarettes and was not relished even by his admirers till he became a little rank; his mind decayed slowly; we were still far from The Wings of the Dove, but even in The Two Magics there was flavour that reminded me of a discussion overheard by me in a third­ class carriage:

I can't think, said the first footman, what on earth the gentry can see in their birds till they begins to hum. More can't I, the second footman answered, adding, after a long pause: all the same, I must say I likes my fish a bit off.

James was withal a shrewd critic of literature, and it is to his credit to have detected an insincere accent which I refused to listen to. But alas, Pater's letter is a warrant for James's criticism; he admonishes me to show myself in only carefully prepared aspects; and on looking into the letter again I saw that I had misread Pater's letter. The word readers did not occur in it, and I muttered aloud, as is my wont when engaged with thoughts of singular interest to me: how perfectly Pater writes. Here is an instance: and still I wonder how much you may be losing, both for yourself and your writings. He does not speak of readers; he is very subtle and cannot be caught out by such as James. Ah, had he been present to answer him! I muttered, and it seemed to me that my admiration of Pater rose higher and became, as it were, a fresh exaltation. Yet the thought that the letter was an admonition to put on a mask could not be kept out of my mind, and instead of bringing us closer together the letter divided us. I wished for a more complete friendship, for a constant interchange of ideas, and could not doubt that Pater wished to help me. Yet our friendship did not advance, we seemed to be drifting apart, and puzzled to account for this estrangement, I complained to Symons of Pater's reserve. He did not feel Pater to be reserved, he said. But was it that Pater was not reserved with Symons, or was it that Symons did not aspire to the same intimacy as I did? Symons said that Pater did not like being accosted while out walking, for he went out to meditate on what he had written that morning and to consider what he would write next morning. I did not ask myself whether Symons was right or wrong, but accepted what he said as the truth, for it was easy to believe that Pater looked upon interruptions in his walks as inconvenient breaks in his meditations. So I resolved never to accost him again, never to take his arm and walk a little way with him, as had been my custom. It was not long after this resolve that I met him in Knightsbridge, and remembering that I had been told that I must not accost him in his walks, I crossed over the road, and as I did so our eyes met. Pater's glance was sidelong, suspicious, reproachful, a glance which I sought to interpret as one of gratitude, but was not quite sure. The not quite sure lay far back in my mind, for Symons's warning that I must not interrupt Pater in his walks was accepted without question. How it fell out that Symons's admonition was listened to and acted upon without misgiving, in a matter so important as my almost affectionate relations with Pater, cannot be explained except by the admission that there is incurable frivolity in me. But this admission is not sufficient, for it has just come to me that about the time I am speaking of I was beginning to weary of Pater — of his shyness. I sought him out no longer, and though Pater did not show that he resented my conduct when we came together at dinner and luncheon in the houses of common friends he must have felt that something had befallen us.

I was no longer interested in Pater, in fact began to laugh at him behind his back, so altogether lost did he seem, so like an albatross on deck, to borrow a simile from Baudelaire, as he sat at the dining-board of a young Russian Jew, prepense to place him, between two ladies whose bosoms overflowed their bodices, large full­ blown roses, exchanging peaceable and amiable remarks, doing his best to keep them both entertained. It became a matter of wonderment to me why Pater should accept invitations to this house or to another house in which I used to meet him — that of an elderly peeress who liked men of letters much as she liked her crewel work, and the iron she hammered in a back room upstairs. Pater used to attend her parties silent, polite, formal, never seemingly annoyed with himself for accepting her invitations as I often was, for the thought was always in my mind of the hours I wasted in these entertainments, hours that I might have spent more profitably on other things. Pater's conduct seemed to be even more in­excusable than mine, for he did not write about society. He was at this time a mystery to us all, even to Symons. Neither Symons nor another guessed the reason why Pater accepted invitations from almost everybody who invited him. Not one of us suspected that he reasoned with himself in this fashion: I have come to live in London, and to avoid society while living in London would be neither decorous nor seemly. It would be worse, it would be an admission — Pater came to London as an experiment. He wanted to live, to join up, to walk in step, without, however, giving himself away, and I think all his friends experienced a certain sense of relief when they heard that he had returned to Oxford.

There is a drama in what I am writing, that of a man who perhaps sought to open his heart to others, who wished to take the world into his confidence perhaps, but who, if he did, found himself unable even for a single unaffected friendship. But, as has been said, none was aware of the drama that was unfolding itself. All we knew was that Pater had returned to Oxford, and we supposed that he felt Oxford to be a more suitable background for his taste and genius than London. Symons's insight may have been deeper than mine; now I am speaking for myself alone, I suspected nothing. It was a little disturbing that Pater should have come to London and returned to Oxford, but I suspected nothing. Why should I? I had lived in France, left France, come to live in London, and might return and finish my days in France! But one day something happened to open my eyes, and Pater's soul became plainer. The editor of The Daily Chronicle stopped me in the Strand, saying that he had a review of my book of Modern Painting in type, written, he said, by the greatest writer in the world. Whom you think the greatest writer in the world, I said. No, whom you think the greatest writer in the world, he answered. But I do not know who I think the greatest writer in the world; tell me. No, he replied; one of these days you will see the name in the paper, and you will agree with me that the writer of the article is the greatest writer in the world.

Sir Henry Norman was then the literary editor' of the Chronicle, and I often went to his house to beg him to tell me who was the greatest writer in the world, but it was impossible to persuade him, and every morning, after a restless night, I jumped out of bed to look for the article. Four mornings passed; a week went by; another week. One morning of the third week I overslept myself, and awaking suddenly, I said: the Chronicle. Out of bed I was in a jiffy; and a unique moment in my life it was when I caught sight of the heading, Modern Painting. Now, I said, I shall know who is the greatest writer in the world.... Walter Pater! The next thing to do was to read the article, and before beginning it I said: my pleasure would have been greater if I had read it before looking to see who wrote it. However, that cannot be helped now. The article was good; it delighted me, like everything that Pater wrote, but I could not help feeling that it did not compare favourably with the short articles that he contributed to the Guardian. A beautiful article it was, for it could not be else, since Pater wrote it, the same grace, the same simplicity, the same power of saying exactly what he was minded to say. I ought to be grateful, and I felt a little ashamed of myself for not admiring the article more than I did, and began to think that the source of it lay in his desire to acknowledge that I had written, as he put it, very pleasantly about himself in The Confessions of a Young Man. But was that why he praised me? Scratch me, and I'll scratch you. No, Pater's mind did not move in such mediocre honesty. But there must be a reason. Others had praised Pater more abundantly, yet he did not write about the books of everyone who had praised him, and the articles he wrote for the Guardian were unsigned, but this one was a signed article. Another reason, and a pleasant one if one considers it, rose up in my mind. Pater knew that I was disappointed at not receiving as much of his personal friendship as I had wished for, and wrote this article as a way of recompense for what he felt was my due. I probed my fancy, I dabbled in psychology. But no better reason than this last one could I find for Pater's article — a wish to please me, a wish to please me. It must have been something personal, I said. He did not review the book merely because it took his fancy, and awakening from my memory, I added: a letter must be written at once, thanking him. It was written, but no answer came back, and I said: the account is closed. Pater and I have passed from each other, but I did not guess at the time that we were about to be separated forever.

A few months later Pater died suddenly, and I said: now I shall never know why he wrote the article about Modern Painting. Years went by, and it was not until the other day, when looking through The Renaissance I came upon the celebrated passage that I was guilty of condemning as unworthy — guilty of condemning, for what have I written that gives me the right to judge Pater? A greater sinner now am I than Gosse, and as a punishment for my sin I said: I'll read this passage carefully, comma by comma, semicolon by semicolon, full stop by full stop. And this thing I did, and rose from it understanding Pater as I had never understood him before. Behind the mask, I said, that he did not lift, that he could not lift, was a shy, sentimental man, all powerful in written word, impotent in life.