by George Moore
Yes, and many others, she answered. You have required great works from your lovers, and have gotten them. But I do not require that my boon companion shall write nearly as well as any of the men you have honoured. My companion’s literature concerns me much less than his conversation, and if it were not that only a man of letters can understand literature, I would say that I should not care if he had never put a pen to paper. I am interested much more in his critical than in his creative faculty; he must for my purpose be a man keenly critical, and he must be a witty man too, for to be able to distinguish between a badly and a well-written book is not enough — a professor of literature can do that ... occasionally. My man must be able to entertain me with unexpected sallies. I would not hear him speak of the verbal felicities of Keats, or of the truly noble diction of Milton, and I would ring and tell my servant to call a cab were I to catch him mumbling ‘and with new-spangled ore, flames in the forehead of the morning sky.’ If the subject were poetry, my boon companion would be expected by me to flash out unexpected images, saying that Keats reminded him of a great tabby-cat purring in the sun; and I would like to hear him mutter that there was too much rectory lawn in Tennyson; not that I would for a moment hold up the lawn and the cat as felicities of criticism. He would, I hope, be able to flash out something better. It is hard to find a simile when one is seeking for one. He would have to be interested in the other arts, and be able to talk about them intelligently, literature not being sufficient to while an evening away. And in every art he must be able to distinguish between washtubs and vases; he must know instinctively that Manet is all vase, and that Mr — — ‘s portraits are all wash-tub. When the conversation wanders from painting to sculpture, he must not be very concerned to talk about Rodin, and if he should speak of this sculptor, his praise should be measured: There is not the character of any country upon Rodin’s sculpture; it is not French nor Italian; it would be impossible to say whence it came if one did not know. As a decorative artist he is without remarkable talent, and he too often parodies Michael Angelo. Michel Ange à la coule would be a phrase that would not displease me to hear, especially if it were followed by — Only the marvellous portraitist commands our admiration: the bronzes, not the marbles — they are but copies by Italian workmen, untouched by the master who alone, among masters, has never been able to put his hand to the chisel. A knowledge of music is commendable in a boon companion, else he must be unmusical like Yeats. It would be intolerable to hear him speak of Tristan and ask immediately after if Madame Butterfly were not a fine work, too.
With her enchanting smile, Mary admitted that my difficulties were not less than hers, and so I kissed her and returned, with some regret, next day to London and to dear Edward, who has served me as a boon companion ever since he came to live in the Temple. He likes late hours; he is a bachelor, a man of leisure, and has discovered at last what to admire and what to repudiate. But he is not very sure-footed on new ground, and being a heavy man, his stumblings are loud. Moreover, he is obsessed by a certain part of his person which he speaks of as his soul: it demands Mass in the morning, Vespers in the afternoon, and compels him to believe in the efficacy of Sacraments and the Pope’s indulgences; and it forbids him to sit at dinner with me if I do not agree to abstain from flesh meat on Fridays, and from remarks regarding my feelings towards the ladies we meet in the railway-trains and hotels when we go abroad.
When Symons came to live in the Temple I looked forward to finding a boon companion in him. He is intelligent and well versed in literature, French and English; a man of somewhat yellowish temperament, whom a wicked fairy had cast for a parson; but there was a good fairy on the sill at the time, and when the wicked fairy had disappeared up the chimney she came in through the window, and bending over the cradle said: I bestow upon thee extraordinary literary gifts. Her words floated up the chimney and brought the wicked fairy down again as soon as the good fairy had departed. For some time she was puzzled to know what new mischief she should be up to; she could not rob the child of the good fairy’s gift of expression in writing: but in thy talk, she said, thou shalt be as commonplace as Goldsmith, and flew away in a great passion.
Unlike Symons, Yeats is thinner in his writings than in his talk; very little of himself goes into his literature — very little can get into it, owing to the restrictions of his style; and these seemed to me to have crept closer in Rosa Alchemica inspiring me to prophesy one day to Symons that Yeats would end by losing himself in Mallarmé, whom he had never read.
Symons did not agree in my estimation of Yeats’s talent, and I did not press the point, being only really concerned with Yeats in as far as he provided me with literary conversation. A more serious drawback was Yeats’s lack of interest in the other arts. He admired and hung Blake’s engravings about his room, but it was their literary bent rather than the rhythm of the spacing and the noble line that attracted him, I think. But I suppose one must not seek perfection outside of Paris, and in the Temple I was very glad of his company. He is absorbed by literature even more than Dujardin, that prince of boon companions, for literature has allowed Dujardin many love-stories, and every one has been paid for with a book (his literature is mainly unwritten); all the same, his women, though they have kept him from writing, have never been able to keep him from his friends; for our sakes he has had the courage only to be beguiled by such women as those whom he may treat like little slaves; and when one of these accompanies him to his beautiful summer residence at Fontainebleau, in those immemorial evenings, sad with the songs of many nightingales, she is never allowed to speak except when she is spoken to; and when she goes with him to Bayreuth, she has to walk with companions of her own sex, whilst the boon companion explains the mystery of The Ring, musical and literary. If I were to go to his lodgings on the eve of the performance of The Valkyrie and awaken Dujardin, he would push his wife aside as soon as he heard the object of my visit was to inquire from him why Wotan is angry with Brünnhilde because she gives her shield and buckler to Siegmund, wherewith Siegmund may fight Hunding on the mountain-side, and would rise up in bed and say to me: You do not know, then, that the Valkyrie are the wills of Wotan which fly forth to do his bidding? And if I said that I was not quite sure that I understood him, he would shake himself free from sleep and begin a metaphysical explanation for which he would find justification in the character of the motives. And then, if one were to say to Dujardin: Dujardin, in a certain scene in the second act of Siegfried, Wagner introduces the Question to Fate motive without any apparent warrant from the text to do so; I fear he used the motive because his score required the three grave notes, Dujardin would, for sure, begin to argue that though the libretto contained no explicit allusion to Fate in the text, yet Fate was implicit in it from the beginning of the scene, and, getting out of bed, he would take the volume from the little shelf at his head and read the entire scene before consenting to go to sleep.
And if one were to go to Yeats’s bedside at three o’clock in the morning and beg him to explain a certain difficult passage, let us say, in the Jerusalem, he would raise himself up in bed like Dujardin, and, stroking his pale Buddhistic hands, begin to spin glittering threads of argument and explanation; instead of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, we should hear of the Rosicrucians and Jacob Boehm.
My boon companions are really strangely alike, though presenting diverse appearances. Were I to devote a volume to each, the casual reader would probably mutter as he closed the last, A strangely assorted set, but the more intelligent reader would be entertained by frequent analogies; many to his practised eye would keep cropping up: he would discover that Dujardin, though he has written a book in which he worships the massive materialism of ancient Rome, and derides the soft effusive Jewish schism known as Christianity, would, nevertheless, like to preserve a few Catholic monasteries for the use of his last days. At least a dozen would be necessary, for Dujardin admits that he would be not unlikely flung out of several before he reached the one in which he was fated to die
in long white robe and sandal shoon, an impenitent exegetist, but an ardent Catholic, and perhaps to the last, a doubtful Christian. How often have I heard him mutter in his beard as he crosses the room: It would be a beautiful end ... in smock and sandal shoon! He is attracted by rite, and Yeats is too; but whereas Dujardin would like the magician to boil the pot for him, Yeats would cry:
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble,
following all the best recipes of the Kabala. I have often thought that he takes a secret pleasure in the word, speaking it with that unction which comes into the voices of certain relations of mine when they mention the Bible. And from his constant reference to the Kabala, I judged it to be his familiar reading, though I never saw it in his hand nor upon his table when I went to see him. So one day when he left the room I searched for it among his books, but only copies of Morris’s and Blake’s works came under my hand; and on mentioning the Kabala to him when he returned, he began to speak volubly of the alchemists and Rosicrucians who had left a great mass of mystical writings. The interpretation of these was the business of the adepts, and the fair conclusion appeared to be, that instruction from the Kabala formed part of the ceremony of initiation into the Order of the Golden Door — an Order which, so far as I could gather from his allusions, held weekly meetings somewhere in West Kensington. As soon as I asked him for a copy of the book, the conversation drifted back to the alchemists and Rosicrucians, their oaths and conclaves, and when we returned speciously to modern times I heard for the first time about McPherson — a learned one in the Order; he may have been the Prior of it, and that, I think, was the case, for I remember being told that he had used his authority so unflinchingly that the other members had rebelled against it, and now he had, after expelling the entire Order, gone away with the book in which was written much secret matter. So far the Order had not replied to his repeated libels, but it would be well for McPherson to refrain from publication of their secrets; if he did not, it would be hard to prevent certain among them from.... Up to the present the authority of a certain lady had saved him, but it was by no means sure that she would be able to protect him in the future; she had, indeed, incurred a good deal ... I strained my ears, but Yeats’s voice had floated up the chimney, and all I could hear was the sound of one hand passing over the other.
Rising from the low stool in the chimney-corner, he led me to a long box, and among the manuscript I discovered several packs of cards. As it could not be that Yeats was a clandestine bridge-player, I inquired the use the cards were put to, and learnt that they were specially designed for the casting of horoscopes. He spoke of his uncle, a celebrated occultist, whose predictions were always fulfilled, and related some of his own successes. All the same, he had been born under Aquarius, and the calculations of the movements of the stars in that constellation were so elaborate that he had abandoned the task for the moment, and was now seeking the influences of the Pleiades. He showed me some triangles drawn on plain sheets of cardboard, into which I was to look, while thinking of some primary colour — red, or blue, or green. His instructions were followed by me — why not? — but nothing came of the experiment; and then he selected a manuscript from the box, which he told me was the new rules of the Order of the Golden Door, written by himself. There was no need to tell me that, for I recognise always his undulating cadences. These rules had become necessary; an Order could not exist without rule, and heresy must be kept within bounds, though for his part he was prepared to grant every one such freedom of will as would not endanger the existence of the Order. The reading of the manuscript interested me, and I remember that one of its finest passages related to the use of vestments, Yeats maintaining with undeniable logic that the ancient priest put on his priestly robe as a means whereby he might raise himself out of the ordinary into an intenser life, but the Catholic priest puts on an embroidered habit because it is customary. A subtle intelligence which delighted me in times gone by, and I like now to think of the admiration with which I used to listen to Yeats talking in the chimney-corner, myself regretting the many eloquent phrases which floated beyond recall up the chimney, yet unable to banish from my mind the twenty-five men and women collected in the second pair back in West Kensington, engaged in the casting of horoscopes and experimenting in hypnotism.
As has been said before, analogies can be discovered in all my boon companions. Could it be otherwise, since they were all collected for my instruction and distraction? Yeats will sit up smoking and talking of literature just like Dujardin, Edward the same; and Yeats and Edward are both addicted to magic: it matters little that each cultivates a different magic, the essential is that they like magic. And looking towards the armchairs in which they had been sitting, I said: Yeats likes parlour magic, Edward cathedral magic. A queer pair, united for a moment in a common cause — the production of two plays: The Heather Field and The Countess Cathleen. The Heather Field I know, but The Countess Cathleen I have not read, and wondering what it might be like, I went to the bookcase and took down the volume.
II
THREE WEEKS AFTER Edward knocked at my door.
Are you busy? I don’t want to disturb you, but I thought I’d like to ask you —
You have come to tell me that the company has been engaged. No! My dear friend, this is trifling, I cut in sharply, asking if the date had been fixed for the first rehearsal; it seemed necessary to shake him into some kind of activity, and it amused me to see him flurried.
From his narrative it appeared that Miss Vernon, a friend of Yeats, who they had engaged as general manager, had received letters from a number of actors, and he mentioned the name of one who thought he might like to play the part of Carden Tyrrell.
Il faut que je m’en mêle, I said one morning, jumping out of bed, for if I don’t there’ll be no performance. So I wired to Edward, and in the course of the afternoon he knocked.
Has this woman called a rehearsal?
She has written to a man — I have forgotten his name — he played in one of Ibsen’s plays, and hopes to —
And hopes to get an answer from him next week. If the rehearsals don’t begin at once there’ll be no performance. Run away and engage the company.
He went away red and flurried, and I didn’t hear of him again until the end of the week. Late one afternoon when he called, meeting me on my doorstep. A moment later and you would have missed me, I said, and the evening being too fine to turn indoors, he agreed that we should go for a walk in St James’s Park.
As I write I can see ourselves walking side by side, Edward’s bluff and dogmatic shoulders contrasting with my own very agnostic sloping shoulders; and the houses rising up against the evening sky, delicate in line and colour. I can see a blue spire striking into the heart of the sunset, and the casual winds moving among the branches and long silken grass. The pen pauses ... or I am moved to wonder why I should remember that evening in St James’s Park when so many other evenings are forgotten? Maybe that I was conscious of Edward’s emotion; all the while, though outwardly calm as any parish priest, he was troubled inly; and the fact that he expressed his trouble in the simplest language perhaps helped me to understand how deeply troubled he was.
We have had three or four rehearsals, he confided to me, but my play is not coming out. An alarming piece of news, for I had sworn to him that The Heather Field was a good play. But Yeats’s play is coming out beautifully.
A still more alarming piece of news, for I did not want to see Yeats supreme in these theatricals; and without betraying my concern, I told him that Yeats’s play was poetry, and only to be repeated, whereas The Heather Field would have to be carefully rehearsed, and by an experienced stage-manager.
Now, who is your stage-manager? What does he say? And is he competent?
As Edward at that time had never seen a stage-manager at work he could form no opinion of the man’s ability, nor did he seem to have a clear idea whether the actors and actresses were competent and suited
to their parts. I can’t tell from a rehearsal, he said. Yeats and I went together to the agent’s office —
I know, and you chose the company from the description in the agent’s book. Miss X, tall, fair, good presence — I think she’ll do for your leading lady, sir. How much? Four pounds a week. I can’t afford so much. Three? I think I could get her to accept three pounds ten. Very well. Now for your leading man. Tall, dark, aristocratic bearing. Five. I can’t give so much. You might get him to take four.
That’s just what he is getting, said Edward.
There must have been an outburst; rude words were uttered by me, no doubt; one is unjust, and then one remembers and is sorry. Edward had never cast a play before; he had never engaged a company, nor had he ever seen a rehearsal; therefore my expectations that he would succeed in so delicate an enterprise were ridiculous.
If you would come to see a rehearsal, he ventured timidly. This very natural request can only have provoked another outburst; one learns oneself, and in the course of my rage, not quite spontaneous, I must have reminded him that I had specially stipulated that I was not to be asked to cast or rehearse plays.
If you would only just come to see one rehearsal.
Anything else, but not that, I answered sullenly, and walked on in silence, giving no heed to Edward’s assurance that the mere fact of my going to see a rehearsal would not transgress our agreement. There were my proofs; it would be folly to lay them aside, and striving against myself, for at the back of my mind I knew I would yield, I swore again that I would not go. But if I didn’t? The thought of these two wandering over to Dublin with their ridiculous company was a worry. The Heather Field would be lost; Edward would be disappointed; his play was his single pleasure; besides, it was annoying to hear that The Countess Cathleen was coming out better than The Heather Field. So it was perhaps jealousy of Yeats that caused the sudden declension of my will; and when the question, Where are you rehearsing? slipped from me, and the question warned me that for three weeks at least I should be at their beck and call, for having made an alteration. Once I had altered something I should not leave The Heather Field, nor perhaps The Countess Cathleen, if Yeats allowed me to rehearse it, until it was quite clear to me that the expedition to Dublin would not turn out so absurd as General Humbert’s.... Where are you rehearsing? At the Bijou Theatre in Notting Hill. It is impossible to rehearse anywhere except in the Strand. We’ll rehearse where you like; and he continued to press me to say why I was so averse from seeing the plays. You’re coming to Dublin, George?