by Alec Waugh
In the spring of 1920 he fell in love with a young woman who had once worked in Chapman & Hall. She was slim, very pale, with bright red hair. W. L. Courtney had once when walking through the counting house, held his hands suspended in benediction above her head, murmuring, ‘I warmed both hands before the fire of life.’ Her association with the firm was brief and marked by absences.
Holms was in an ecstatic trance. ‘She has the most wonderful hair,’ he droned. ‘Even more wonderful than mine’—he had little sense of humour—then he would quote in his sing-song voice:
Why liked me thy yellow hair to see
More than the boundaries of mine honesty?
Why liked me thy youth and thy fairness
And of thy tongue the infinite gentleness?
It was a tempestuous romance. They had very little money and when they were turned out of their flat Holms was in difficulties.
He sought my assistance. I could not follow the story in exact detail, his account was so peppered with quotations, but I gathered that the final provocation had been a revolver discharged at midnight. At length, at long length, the purpose of the visit became plain. I had a small bungalow in Sussex and Holms considered the easiest solution for his problem would be for me to come up to London and stay in my father’s house while he and his lady moved out to Ditchling. In the quiet of the country he would start upon his novel. London, that was the cancer eating at his heart. Oh, to escape from London.
I had no doubts about Holms’s genius. I held it to be my duty to do anything within my power to smooth the path of genius, but the bungalow was a small frame construction that I had bought as a unit and had had fitted by a local builder. Its walls were very thin. ‘That revolver,’ I objected.
‘But that’s all over long ago,’ he said.
‘You said it was last Friday.’
He shrugged, despairingly, at my obtuseness. ‘Time, time, old man, eternity within an hour.’ And he was off on a quotation-punctuated discourse on the infinite divisibility of time; different parts of your life moved at very different paces, you travelled in so many different trains along parallel tracks, some were non-stop expresses, some dawdled, stopping at every halt—one’s friendship with men, for instance, but love, how could you measure love in minutes, who could compute in seconds the agonies, the anxieties of a day-long separation. Yesterday was a century ago. This little moment mercifully given.
It wandered on, a trailing anapaestic anacoluthon. There was no doubt that he was a genius. But common sense counselled me to retain my bungalow.
Holms died in October 1934. I cannot remember when I saw him last. I lost touch with many friends when I began to travel, and Holms was not the man to send Christmas cards or change-of-address notes.
In Memoirs of a Polyglot, William Gerhardi described his first meeting with Holms, whom Kingsmill had sent down to him as a herald in the South of France, ‘a gaunt redbearded young man who had never published a book but accepted the description of him as a genius without a wink or smile’. Gerhardi, who was enchanted and impressed by his conversation, and was at that time writing for T.P.’s Weekly, suggested that he should introduce Holms to the editor. Holms looked at him with pity. ‘T.P.’s,’ he murmured with infinite sadness, ‘T.P.’s’.
Holms left behind with Gerhardi a battered copy of The Calendar of Modern Letters which contained his one short story, but Gerhardi never finished the reading of it as a telegram demanded its return. Holms needed it as a proof that he was a writer in order to obtain a carte d’identité.
This must have been around 1927. In the long two-column obituary essay that he contributed to the Daily Express, Gerhardi said that Holms spent his last five years in affluence. Brian Lunn, describing this period in his autobiography Switchback, wrote, ‘He had settled down in a house near the Parc Montsouris with an American woman slightly younger than himself, dark haired and of a pleasant figure. She had plenty of money but he had a sufficient personal income and a nature which easily accepted affluent surroundings without imposing a sense of obligation upon the person who provided them; and besides he was very fond of her.’ The lady was Peggy Guggenheim.
Usually the unproductive man grows bitter, but Holms, I think, never did. He believed in himself. He argued that when a man had a great deal in him, it took a long time to boil. ‘Though he displayed’ (I quote Gerhardi), ‘an unnatural assertiveness that was like the exaggerated masculinity of a weak man, the protest of an inveterate passivity.’ In his obituary article Gerhardi quoted Lord Beaverbrook’s phrase ‘the genius of the untried’. “In every age, Goethe says,” so Gerhardi continued, “there are men who while achieving nothing give an impression of greater genius than the acknowledged masters of the day.”’
Holms’s death was in keeping with his life. It was the question of a minor operation on his wrist. He consented to chloroform though he dreaded it. He went under with remarkable ease, but he never recovered consciousness. ‘He had disdained to come back,’ Gerhardi said.
Milton Hayes was the complete opposite of Holms in every way. He was a North Country man; he was nearly forty; he was brisk, assured, purposeful, with his eye on the main chance. He was the first person I had heard analyse success. I had thought of success as a capricious goddess whom you could not court, who gave and withheld her favours according to her changing moods. But Milton Hayes had his theories cut and dried.
‘I wrote “The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God” in five hours,’ he said, ‘but I had it all planned out. It isn’t poetry and it does not pretend to be, but it does what it sets out to do. It appeals to the imagination from the start: those colours, green and yellow, create an atmosphere. Then India, everyone has his own idea of India. Don’t tell the public too much. Strike chords. It’s no good describing a house; the reader will fix the scene in some spot he knows himself. All you’ve got to say is “India” and a man sees something. Then play on his susceptibilities.
‘“His name was Mad Carew.” You’ve got the whole man there. The public will fill in the picture for you. And then the mystery. Leave enough unsaid to make paterfamilias pat himself on the back, “I’ve spotted it, he can’t fool me. I’m up to that dodge. I know where he went.” No need to explain. Then that final ending where you began. It carries people back. You’ve got a compact whole. “A broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew.” They’ll weave a whole story round that woman’s life. Every man’s a novelist at heart. We all tell ourselves stories. That’s what you’ve got to play on.’
There was nothing particularly original in these theories, but I was hearing them for the first time. He spoke as an actor rather than as a writer. He worked not at a reader in a study but at an audience in a theatre.
‘People don’t go to shows by themselves,’ he would say. ‘A thing that sounds silly to a man when he’s by himself sounds very different when he’s beside a pretty girl. Create a mood where a boy wants to squeeze the hand of the girl he’s sitting next and the old married couple simper and think they’ve not had such a bad time together, after all.’
He talked about Edward Sheldon’s play Romance which ran for two years during the war with Doris Keane in the lead. ‘The critics thought nothing of it,’ he said. ‘But then they went there by themselves. They should have gone with a girl. Romance has everything, it’s steeped in amber, the hidden sigh, the one passion, the woman who never marries. But it’s not a show to go to by yourself.’
After the war Milton Hayes put his theories into practice. He was a great success on the halls with his Monologues of Monty. When he eventually retired to the South of France, it was with a large bank balance.
During the early years after the war, Gerard Hopkins and I lunched together regularly at each other’s clubs. Though he worked for the Oxford University Press all his life, Hopkins is now primarily known as a translator, in particular of François Mauriac. I have had the good fortune to have been a close friend of C. K. Scott-Moncrieff, and to be a very close friend o
f Vyvyan Holland, two supremely good translators. The same criticism has been made of both—what a pity they did no creative work.
It is a short-sighted criticism. To recreate a masterpiece in another language, so that it remains, though told in idiomatic English, a French, Russian or a German novel, needs high creative capacity coupled with a high degree of scholarship. To translate Proust and Mauriac and Morand in such a way that an English reader can get the sense, the particular individuality of the writer, is performing a great service to literature.
That particular criticism was not made of Gerard Hopkins, because he did during the ‘twenties write several novels. They were not sensational in subject or in treatment; a problem was set and it was resolved. There was no straining for effect. They were novels of undertones and understatement. Those who knew the author were inclined to say, ‘It’s what you would expect of Gerard Hopkins. He’s a man who can’t let himself go.’ Later when Hopkins began to make a reputation as a translator those same people said, ‘He’s found his niche, at last. He would never have been a novelist. He’s too held-in.’
The first part of that second comment states a fact, the second is a superficial criticism, based upon appearance. Hopkins had a foreign-office air. The Oxford University Press had an official status. Its representatives must be presentable. Hopkins was tall, impressive, tidily dressed, urbane. He looked a scholar. But though he was always the kind of man on whose behaviour even a Bohemian hostess of the 1920s could rely, he was very far from being conventional. Two incidents from Mainz will illustrate that point. Milton Hayes produced a camp revue which contained a number of risqué jokes and one suggestive scene, to which a padre objected. The nonconformist conscience of a section, a very small section, of the camp was roused. In a prisoner-of-war camp where everyone is under-occupied, storms can be quickly brewed in teacups. Opinions became violent. There was a general need for drama and a meeting was arranged in the theatre, at which each side could argue its own case.
It was important that the case for freedom should be handled with tact and skill, otherwise a censorship might have been imposed and the standard of entertainment would have slumped; it may be added that the scene to which objection was taken was very mild and could have been shown even then without offence at the Coliseum. Gerard Hopkins was chosen as the spokesman. It was felt that if he with his calm decorous manner had seen no occasion for complaint there could be none. His arguments prevailed.
But that, it may be argued, is not evidence of unconventionality. The incident does no more than indicate that Hopkins had a presence and a manner, a capacity for debate and a readiness to use it in defence of liberty of speech. All of which might be expected of a scholar and a man of letters. That is perhaps true, but the other incident does show a considerable degree of moral courage.
There was a canteen in the billiard room where you could buy wine and cigarettes. Wine cost a pound a bottle. It was a sour casual hock and we grumbled at having to pay so much for it, but we had so little on which to spend our money that before food parcels arrived, when we were very hungry, some officers devoted nine-tenths of their pay to the purchasing of bread from sentries. The standard black-market price was two pounds a loaf, but it went higher. Milton Hayes once paid three pounds fifteen shillings. When parcels arrived and we were no longer hungry, most of us welcomed an opportunity to split a bottle in congenial company once a week.
A senior officer discovered, however, that the wine for which we paid a pound could be bought in the town for six shillings; representations were made to the authorities that the profit was excessive. The authorities blandly replied that that happened to be their price. The senior officer was indignant and summoned a conclave of his peers. It was agreed that the Germans must be brought to heel and a boycott of the canteen was announced. It was believed that the profits on the canteen were the private perquisite of the officer in charge. Had we been in a French camp, this would have been a natural assumption. But the Germans have a regard for correct behaviour. I imagine that the profits on the bar went to some welfare fund and the individual officer could not have cared less whether British officers drank wine or not. He had fulfilled his duty by making wine available to British officers at a price that lay within their means. But the boycott was installed and an officers’ picket was posted to see that it was not broken.
Many of us were indignant; the posting of the picket was the final outrage; we might be in a preparatory school. But though many of us grumbled, none of us made any protest, none except Gerard Hopkins, and he was one of the ones who had grumbled least.
On a hot July afternoon he walked alone to the canteen. No one was playing billiards and the room was empty except for a somnolent German sentry at the bar and a bored British subaltern on picket duty. Hopkins ordered a bottle and sat down to drink it. Hopkins was a captain; the startled subaltern respectfully reminded him of the boycott. Hopkins courteously assured him that he was well aware of it and offered the subaltern a glass of wine. The picket was nonplussed and embarrassed. He would have to report the matter to a senior officer, but at half past two on a hot afternoon, senior officers were likely to be taking a siesta; they would not appreciate being disturbed. He hoped Hopkins would finish his bottle quickly and get out; but it takes a long time for one person to drink a whole bottle of wine and Hopkins was in no hurry to finish it. He had a book to read and he wished to make his gesture.
The afternoon wore on, siestas ended and the billiard table was again in use. The picket officer was relieved and sought out a senior officer. Presently a colonel came across. He sat down at Hopkins’s table and Hopkins offered him a glass. The colonel began his remonstrance, at a disadvantage. Hopkins was the kind of person whom even an irate colonel had to treat with deference; he wore the Military Cross, and the colonel suspected that Hopkins had a nimbler wit than his. He made some derogatory remarks about ‘letting down the side’ and went away. Hopkins resumed his reading.
He made his bottle last four hours; everyone who came into the room stared at him, but he ignored them. By the late afternoon the rumour had got round the camp that the boycott was either over or being broken. Several captives came across to ascertain the facts. The picket assured them that the boycott was still in force. It did not look as though it was, they told him. One or two groups gathering courage from Hopkins’s example ordered wine themselves. By the time Hopkins had finished his bottle, the boycott had been broken.
That now was a courageous act. Hopkins was under military discipline and ran the risk of putting himself in serious trouble, moreover he was very far from having public opinion on his side. Many members of the camp were in favour of ‘teaching the Boche a lesson’ and quite a number of them were teetotallers. Hopkins made his protest in the interests of a minority. He was far from being a conventionally-minded respecter of authority. It was not on that account that his novels had little popular appeal. He was a man who did not recognize at first the true direction in which his talents pointed.
Hugh Kingsmill’s story was a very different one. On our return to England after the Armistice, I persuaded him to offer his novel The Will to Love to Chapman & Hall. My father was pleased with it and published it, but it was scantily reviewed and sold under a thousand copies.
A novel without a hero, in which Frank Harris, very thinly disguised, was the central character, it came out at the wrong time. Few people in April 1919 were interested in Harris. Discredited socially and financially by 1914, he had spent the war obscurely in the United States indulging in anti-British propaganda. He had yet to earn a dubious prominence as the biographer of Oscar Wilde and as a scabrous, mendacious autobiographist.
Kingsmill’s novel described how Harris seduced the daughter of a schoolmaster and blackmailed her father for two thousand pounds. It was told lightly and ironically, but the character of the girl was drawn with warmth and sympathy. Had the book been published in 1927, in the days of the Bright Young People, when domestic sucepti-bilities had been ha
rdened and sharpened by Aldous Huxley and Michael Arlen, and when Harris as the author of My Life and Loves was ‘in the news’, it might have caught the popular fancy. But the public was not ready for it in 1919.
Kingsmill was disappointed but not discouraged. He had a sunny, resilient nature.
During the next few years he led an itinerant existence. Though he was married with, at that time, one child, he had no settled home. But his father owned a number of hotels, the Flandre in Bruges, the Albany in Hastings, the Hotel des Alpes in Mürren, in Scotland the Bridge of Allan, so that Kingsmill had access to a suite of rooms in half a dozen places.
I never met his first wife. She was pretty, attractive, vivacious but did not, I have been told, encourage his literary ambitions and was jealous of interests that she could not share.
On his return from captivity he took Holms down for a visit at the hotel where she was staying. Holms had some ideas on Pascal which he wanted to express. When he found that Mrs Kingsmill thought Pascal had been a doctor, he turned his back on her and addressed his conversation to her husband. He drank too much, drifted into gloom and delivered a long brooding soliloquy on suicide and Schopenhauer. Next day Mrs Kingsmill suggested that it would be more convenient if Hugh saw his ‘literary friends’ in London. He would have been wise, I think, to have broken the ice gently with Hopkins or myself but when I expressed a hope that one day soon I should be meeting her, he shook his head. ‘Keep things in their frame, old man, keep things in their frame.’
The framework which he adopted—a wife in the country and his friends in London—may not have been the best formula for a successful marriage, and that first marriage did not survive the ‘twenties, but it suited his friends admirably. He would arrive in London every three weeks, in a holiday mood, released from discipline, happy to be among us, anxious to exchange gossip and to hear our news. His exuberance was a keen and salutary stimulus; he stirred us out of a rut. If you are professionally employed in literature in a metropolis, it is very easy to be absorbed by the latest best-seller and by current gossip. It was refreshing to find Kingsmill excited over a new interpretation of The Brothers Karamazov and perplexed about the exact function of a minor character in Eugénie Grandet. There was no voice during those years that I was more glad to hear unexpectedly over the telephone.