A War Romance

by F. W. Harvey

  For Romance is wherever men fight the immemorial battle of their fathers and of their sons. It is there whatever be the result of the battle. It feeds not on achievement, but on hope.

  The new Romance (if you will have it so) does not war against flesh and blood, ‘but against principalities and powers, and against spiritual wickedness in high’ (and low) ‘places’. Subdue earth and the stars; that battle will still rage on! It is the old war, though the Accuser has called new battalions into action. It is the old war. When it will end, God alone knows. How, we doubt not, and must not doubt, if we are men. That faith only is our birthright …

  In the early part of the year 1913, between Christmas and twelfth night, ere holly and the milky-berried mistletoe had ceased to reign over firelight and good cheer, in any old-fashioned house, there sat one evening in a small ring around the fire, Mrs. Harvey and her two sons talking and munching apples in candle-light.

  Something more than twelve moths have passed since the events and decisions related in the previous chapter. Eric is now an undergraduate, and ‘down’ on his first vacation. His brother has with some pains qualified as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature – a sounding title! It amuses him.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ says he, turning over the orange envelope of a telegram, ‘as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature, I shall travel in a panting train to an ugly manufacturing town in the Midlands: because like Caliban, “I must eat my dinner”’.

  ‘Dinner is always here, for you, dear,’ put in his mother gently.

  ‘It poisons me since I have not paid for it.’

  ‘Dearest!’

  ‘Darling, I don’t mean to be unkind, but it is true. It was true even of the poor old cock we had for supper tonight. (Alas poor Yorick. I knew him well. A fellow of infinite jest!) He was so tall and bright with his red comb and his coloured tail. He was lovely and pleasant in his life, but in his death he was divided. And he dug his spurs into Dolly when she caught him:–

  (Singing) ‘And red blood flowed all round all round

  O the red blood flowed all round.’

  But I digress. Man cannot pick up corn like cocks do. He cannot eat grass like red and white cows …

  My heart is with those shaggy colts

  Who lounge in meadows gold and green:– How’s that for the beginning of a lyric? Shell I continue? – No, poetry is now a subject taboo!’

  ‘Why? You are in such good form to-night,’ said Eric falsely, out of fellowship.

  ‘Good form? Tomorrow, as I said before, I shall be a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature; and I shall go by train for the purpose of examining deeds relating to land which I shall never see:– pearled with dew and daisies, and gleaming here and there with such pools as flash past that railway carriage. I shall hear with interest at Assizes how that Titania Lewin Bottom did after attempting to drown one William Lewin Bottom with intent in so doing feloniously wilfully and of malice aforethought him to kill and murder, herself on the blank day of blank unlawfully throw and cast into certain water within the borough, called the canal with intent thereby feloniously wilfully and of her malice aforethought to kill and murder whom? Why, herself again! And she all skin and grief as Trigg hath it.’

  ‘The poor creatures!’ cried Mrs. Harvey laughing and at the same time looking within a measurable distance of tears.

  ‘Perhaps you will go there to defend the said Who-was-it Bottom – poor woman,’ suggested Eric.

  ‘It is in my bones that I shall prosecute,’ replied his brother, ‘but we will hope for the best:– and coming to think of it,’ he added, ‘the latter would perhaps be her best chance of escape. I am sorry (in a different tone) to have to entertain my two best friends with humour of this forced trivial kind, but what will you, dears? It is better to jest (however poorly) than to weep, which is what I feel like doing whenever I remember the last six months.’

  ‘Poor darling – you’ll succeed yet!’ cried his mother.

  ‘Everyone has had to go through this at their beginnings,’ comforted Eric. ‘Courage old man! You can’t expect to make a living by writing straight off.’

  ‘I was a fool to try, no doubt,’ began Willie.

  ‘Not to try, but certainly to despair,’ was the answer.

  ‘It’s all right for you to preach –’

  ‘I’m not. I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, old man. I know you didn’t. Only listen – You can’t understand. However hard your grind and your doubts, you are on your way. Every step takes you nearer the goal. But I – Fate or Nature or something has scratched me for the event.’

  ‘Don’t talk in that way, my dear. It is –’

  ‘Mate, I suppose. Well, let it be mate,’ he answered his mother. ‘Anyway what the devil is Nature playing at? If I can’t write, why must I keep on? For six months I have been sending things to papers –’

  ‘Six months,’ broke in Eric, ‘but what is six months?’

  ‘It was the work of five years, filed and revised, tested in sunlight and moonlight. What is it Whitman says? Anyway it was work, real work, such as any sweating navvy knows, any lumberman. The editors regretted it, etcetera. Then, thought I, still believing in myself – as (against evidence) I still do (he added defiantly); then I thought “perhaps it is because I do not know London, and how to “do it.” – I will get an agent. So I sent my stuff to “the Camford Literary Agency,” who took the money, and later replied, “We herewith return your MSS. which we regret, etc. etc.” The list of typed refusals took up about two pages. Then what the devil, I repeat, is Nature playing at? I gave up. At times I ceased to believe in myself. And if I, then who?’

  ‘But we have not,’ said his mother in a challenging tone.

  ‘I decided that I would at least live honestly. I would pay my way. I would be a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Judicature. And, behold, thanks to my good parents I was that already! So I am.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘But it is time to go to bed. I must catch that train tomorrow,’ he ended, – and arose.

  ‘Goodnight, dearest,’ said his mother, as he kissed her. ‘There is another poet – a king and a sinner as are we all – whose words are in my heart tonight.’ He paused on his way out. ‘It is only a bit of the poem that I remember, but all that he wished his friend, I wish to my dear son – that God will (these are the words) ‘grant thee thy heart’s desire” (thy heart’s desire, my son) “and fulfill all thy mind” …

  ‘It is a good wish, and a kind wish, dear,’ said he. ‘Good-night, mother!’

  ‘Good-night, old man!’

  After he had gone, Mrs. Harvey said, ‘I’m anxious about Willie, dear.’

  ‘Why, Mother?’

  ‘He is not like you,’ began his mother.

  ‘He has a lot more brains, and a lot more pluck, in some ways.’

  ‘In some ways, true; but they are not the right ways; not the happy ways. I know him. I bred him. I am his mother. As a little boy it was the same, and it always will be. He could never wait’ … The light of candles flickering, and firelight painted their grave faces.

  ‘He has got courage, Mother.’

  ‘Yes, but there are two kinds of courage. There is the courage of daring – a gay, valiant thing, and lovely to look at. He has got that. He had it as a baby when he would gulp the nastiest medicine with a smile. But there is courage of another kind – a grimmer, less dramatic sort that lies in endurance. Willie can’t endure.’ A log spurted purple flame and died black.

  ‘If you could see him go through a ninety minute football match,’ began Eric.

  ‘That is physical. It is the strong body he inherits. What I mean is that the soul, which is his own, has no – what shall I say? – Hope. I can’t explain. But I know. His daring and his gaiety is a sort of brave glitter on despair.

  ‘Poor boy! I believe you are right. Willie is pagan at bottom. He does not feed on God as we all must, but on dreams that give no suck. He talks
about God’s world, but it is hard to know what he means by it, for he seldom speaks of God Himself, and still seldomer of Christ – our only Comforter.’

  ‘God knows many men who do not know Him,’ replied the mother.

  ‘Yes, dear, and He will tend him and lead him to Himself, for He loves every one of His children.’

  ‘I know that, dear. I am only anxious for Willie because he is my little son, too. And he is going to be very unhappy while he is finding out.’

  ‘He is so seldom unhappy. I never had better company than his.’

  ‘And that is not a good thing,’ said this wise woman. ‘It is better sometimes to be unhappy,’ she added.

  ‘How?’

  ‘It is the only natural road to joy. There is a pride in being persistently gay. It is as though a man said he could make life better than God – but no one can. And the thing we call unhappiness is part of life. I mean that it is to be endured, not ignored.’

  ‘You are a wise old woman, dearest.’

  ‘And now,’ (smiling) said Mrs. Harvey, ‘I remember a very quaint little trick of Willie’s when he was a baby – before you were born. That too was characteristic. He had a habit of shutting his eyes, and simply blotting out the world when he did not like it. It was very funny. “The poor mite is tired,” people said, when he did it in the middle of their attentions to him. And, “I think he is,” I used to answer – but that was not what they meant. I knew that he had no desire to go to sleep. I knew he was just bored.’

  Eric laughed.

  ‘And so he shut his eyes. And he is the same now. He can’t endure, I mean. He just refuses to be bored’ …

  ‘Surely that is a virtue – isn’t it?’

  ‘Only (gravely) if you are strong enough to accept – all. How few there are who can do that!’

  ‘It is hard, indeed,’ said Eric.

  CHAPTER II

  ‘When I am living in the Midlands

  That are sodden and unkind –’

  The letters which Willie wrote from his new abode offered little contradiction to those anticipated judgments. They showed no trace of boredom, but a good many of central unhappiness.

  Eccleton was (he wrote) just another of those black and accursed towns glorified by Arnold Bennet. Its extreme ugliness was excelled only by its absurd sense of civic importance. It was (like his employer) self made, and vain of the fact, though the work in neither case seemed worth doing. The occupation of his first landlady was apparently that of a married woman living apart from her husband. His second landlady was a kindly soul aged fifty whose passion was for cats and hot whiskey.

  Coal was cheap owing to the proximity of mines, and was very necessary in that atmosphere of dampness and gloom – ‘not more’ (said he) ‘for the dispelling of the first than the cheerful painting of the second. What a joy is fire! I am tempted to write an essay upon it. Or a poem. Or both. Nobody would ever read them, but I should have paid my debt to the fierce and friendly thing when I had cast the manuscripts into its golden devouring mouth.

  It is (he writes) more often wet than not wet here, but one never hears the music of rain. Where is that sweet lisp in grass and garden; where the hoofs of those faery horses that gallop on thatch; and splendid and gusty drumming upon windows facing wide windy spaces; the little giggle and cough of water falling into eave-butts? What passes here for rain is no more than fog and smuts dissolved in filthy dew.’

  To live here after Minsterworth, he wrote, is like stepping out of a poem by Chaucer into a novel by Zola.

  ‘As to the people all Eccleton is divided into three parties (vide Caesar’s Commentaries) who are now in the throes of an election petition. The parties are termed Conservatives, Radicals, and Socialists. The first is, as Mr. Mantelini would say, “a demmed moist unpleasant body,” the second equally unpleasant but less moist; the third no more pleasant or less demmed, but noisier than the other two put together.

  The petition is by the Radicals, but the Conservatives make counter charges of bribery. (It is as though one five year old corpse should charge another with corruption!) I am collecting evidence for the Conservative party. We are, it seems, guilty of slipping sovereigns into whiskey till it is “strong enough.” They prefer to insert notes into bibles. It is all a matter of principle and belief. the third party, having no money, for the most part contents itself with taking what the others have to give, and then voting the opposite way. Observe that all this arises out of an annual squabble called the municipal elections, and is nothing to do with parliament! The work is rather fun’, he concludes. What he finds nauseous is having to prosecute poor men for money-lenders.

  He tells how on one occasion having gone into a mean street with a County Court summons for money due to such an one of his principal’s clients, he came upon a dazed anaemic-looking woman in the midst of five small filthily dirty children, and tried to explain that her husband must pay ‘by Saturday’ a certain sum of money or else have judgment given against him; and that this would be followed by the selling up of their dirty home – execution seemed too fine a word. Now this case could hardly have been twisted even by a Communist to serve as an example of social injustice. The by no means admirable usurer was by every convenient or unconventional meaning of the word a better man than the weak and dishonest sot who had come willingly (with his family) into the web. But the squalor of the place; the dazed and dumb stupidity of the woman surrounded with her crying filthy children, filled him suddenly with rage against the universe. ‘Oh, hell! never mind all that now,’ he shouted. ‘Tell your husband, when he comes home, that I have paid the nine pounds for him. You understand –’ The woman certainly did not. She looked at him in the same dumb, bestial silence. ‘You understand!’ he shouted, ‘you arn’t to worry any more! You’ll hear no more about it.’

  There was no charity in the act, as he himself admitted, (though in the state of his pocket there was certainly sacrifices; for nine pounds was a lot to pay) but anything to get out of this atmosphere, away from people like this! That was the thought in his mind, – sheer disgust at the root of it.

  He was murderously angry (and so was his employer) when their client, the money lender, got to hear of the affair because the dolt who had benefited went boasting his fortune and flinging it in the face of his late creditor, though never a word of thanks had marked his acceptance of the gift.

  What (asks Willie) can you do with people like this? They have no breeding in them; no courtesy, no manners. Compared to that old shepherd at Newnham, to Bill Trigg, to Tater Baggit even, they are just mongrel curs. Oh, God, I wish – I wish I were dead, or back in Gloucestershire.

  Shortly after this outburst Willie’s letters became more cheerful – but told a good deal less. Why?

  It is the privilege of the novelist (as of the modern biographer) to know the thoughts of his characters, and to reveal, if he chose, what they themselves think too hateful to tell to the world. But for the present we need range no further than over that little pile of private reflections written down in the diary he revived during this unhappy period, for no other reason, we suppose, than that which causes any diary of reflections to be kept by lonely people throughout the world.

  There is a certain strain of morbidity in these writings which suggests that he was not only spiritually but physically ill. Suicide is a recurring motif in a theme of seldom-silenced despair.

  In reading we must remember that he was young. That the world was not built a play-ground, and has been turned by man into something far different, is in youth a fact somehow incomprehensible. Elders are very hard on young people. The young man does not know even – himself. The old man knows no one else. It is a miserable thing to be out of heaven, with all the earth against one.

  Remember also that he had wiser man than he (or you gentle reader) before him in this immortal debate of ‘To be or not to be’. That greatest Dean of St. Paul’s, John Donne, and long before him Epectitus had cast their votes upon the unorthodox – they who
knew life well, the great Christian and the great pagan.

  The subject is introduced by jotting from the latter. ‘If things begin to pall on you, retire; but if you stay do not complain.’ It was a precept Willie had always obeyed by instinct. He had never complained. He never would. But that he felt very much like retiring the next entry shows:– ‘Must I forfeit the right to address a C of E parson in heaven (or wherever they go)? Certainly they will deny me a place in holy ground for burial. Holy ground! (Dear, dear mother Earth!) They will call me a coward – they who never risked life for anything in heaven or earth! A fool perhaps … We try in vain to unravel the threads of life. But they are greater fools to whom life has no tangled threads. Is a man a coward because he refuses to fondle a toad? What else is life such as this? Is it not braver to face the lion? The suicide is not frightened. He is disgusted. Death he dares. Only life he will not tolerate.’

  Then a reflection – ‘I would have spared Mother this. Well, perhaps we shall meet again somewhere – and she will understand.’

  then a memory – ‘How lovely are birds – that little mouse-like thing that runs along branches for insects, how often I have watched him upon the oak at home. Robin like an old English squire: that speckled singer, the thrush. Sparrows the most impudent of all. And those black pirates the crows. This morning (in town!) a bird whistled so queerly, and then he called out some droll suggestion and laughed What! What! and fled away to the woods. The robin takes himself more seriously. His little tender message of beauty is given again and again in careful crystalline phrase. As the tiny mumruffin – Ah, dear memory – (the paragraph here breaks off).

  And now perhaps the time has come to avail ourselves of our novelist’s prerogative, revealing what actually and in secret happened of all this.