by Unknown
‘Without knowing why, for his work was done, he turned to the left, passing his famous cherry-blossom, and climbed between apple-trees to a little house of two rooms, whence many of that noble company had sprung. It is the Chalet, where he worked, and good and brave men will ever bow proudly before it, but good and brave women will bow more proudly still. He went there only because he had gone so often, and this time the door was locked; he did not know why nor care. He came swinging down the path, singing lustily, and calling to his dogs, his dogs of the present and the past; and they yelped with joy, for they knew they were once again to breast the hill with him.
‘He strode up the hill whirling his staff, for which he had no longer any other use. His hearing was again so acute that from far away on the Dorking road he could hear the rumbling of a coach. It had been disputed whether he should be buried in Westminster Abbey or in a quiet churchyard, and there came to him somehow a knowledge (it was the last he ever knew of little things) that people had been at variance as to whether a casket of dust should be laid away in one hole or in another, and he flung back his head with the old glorious action, and laughed a laugh “broad as a thousand beeves at pasture.”
‘Box Hill was no longer deserted. When a great man dies — and this was one of the greatest since Shakespeare — the immortals await him at the top of the nearest hill. He looked up and saw his peers. They were all young, like himself. He waved the staff in greeting. One, a mere stripling, “slight unspeakably,” R. L. S., detached himself from the others, crying gloriously, “Here’s the fellow I have been telling you about!” and ran down the hill to be the first to take his Master’s hand. In the meanwhile an empty coach was rolling on to Dorking.’
CHAPTER XVI
“WAS HE A GENIUS?” — CONAN DOYLE, MELBA, MRS. D’OYLY CARTE — WRITING IN COLLABORATION
“FASCINATING as is the question, What is genius? recently propounded by an able writer, it has perhaps a more human interest when expressed in the personal form, ‘Am I a genius?’ I confess to having occasionally put the problem to myself. Sometimes I murmur it aloud, forgetting that my so-called friend Gilray is in the room, and he promptly answers No. Fortunately Gilray is dining out tonight, so this is an admirable opportunity for communing pleasantly on the matter.
The writer referred to says very truly that if we cannot easily decide what is Genius (henceforth to be called G in this paper), we can at least clear the ground by deciding what it is not. The more I seek to know myself the more certain do I feel that Carlyle was wrong in defining G as an infinite capacity for taking pains. Granting for the moment (in the blessed absence of Gilray) that I am a G, but leaving the natural bent of my G an open question (for I have still to decide whether I bend best as a philosopher, or a man of letters, or by reason of indomitable practical energy), my pre-eminence, I note (sparing myself nothing), has not come through taking infinite pains. Even Gilray would agree to this. More satisfactory to me is the grudging distinction made by Kenny Meadows between G and talent, namely that G is power without effort, and talent power with effort. I am inclined to think that mine is power without effort. It is certainly something without effort. I always like to dash a thing off and be done with it. Of course where you cannot do this it is creditable to you to make the effort; but you ought clearly to understand that this is talent. For my own part I have never desired talent, and there seems to me something pathetic as well as praiseworthy in the way Carlyle sat up through the long nights acquiring power with effort. As an ambitious man he had doubtless no other course open to him, though G, lying on its back, cannot help smiling at talent in its shirt-sleeves.
The writer referred to pertinently remarks of the question before us, ‘Am I a G?’ that if the response is genuine (as I hope mine is), it gives a flash into the character of the person interrogated. ‘If he will but give you the real thought of his heart on this point, you can tell at once to what order of mind he belongs; whether to the contemplative or the imaginative, the purely intellectual, or the plainly practical.’ Did this ingenious statement require proof it would be found in the case of Carlyle and myself; for he adopted the definition, ‘An infinite capacity for taking pains,’ while I lean to power without effort. There is an obvious danger here; as this means that a man is unconsciously biassed by the force of his own personality. Whether we are to attain tonight a true definition of G (which largely depends on how long Gilray stays away at dinner) it seems certain that the great mass of mankind are incapacitated for the search. Carlyle certainly was prejudiced; indeed, the most conclusive proof of this was not so much a definition drawn from his own personality (talent, I fear we must call it bluntly), as his incapacity to see that there are any other possible definitions, and that one of them may contain the truth. I am not prejudiced in that way. Naturally (for we all have our weaknesses), I like to think that G is power without effort, or, rather, that power without effort is G; but I am prepared to admit that I may be wrong. If we are to inquire into this matter at all, let us do it with open minds. If you prefer to think that G is power with effort instead of without effort, then by all means acknowledge Carlyle a G and leave me out.
Just as we can decide what is not G, though we are unable to say what is, we can say who are not Gs without fixing easily upon who are. Thus I know that Gilray is not a G. The mere suggestion that he is would raise a smile on the face of all. Does this, however, help us? What is it in Gilray that makes us so sure of him? Is he lacking in certain qualities or powers which, whether they make G or not, are to be found in, say, me. I am afraid so. When he attempts to argue on the subject of G, he gets out of his depth; also he falls asleep as soon as he goes to bed; and he is invariably bright and cheerful. With me it is very different. I am never in my element until I reach deep water. The unfathomable sea of thought in which Gilray would drown seems to buoy me up. While he, not caring whether he is a G or not so long as he gets a good night’s rest, falls asleep, I lie awake busy with the problems of my personality. As a result he gets through more work in the daytime than I do, for I require to rest on the sofa during the afternoon. By that time my brain is tired out. Lastly, I am by no means the invariably cheerful person he is. He is always the same, ever the characteristic of a mediocrity, while my moods are as changeable as hoary ocean. There are times when I am the best of company, when my wit sparkles and cuts. At other times I walk in the shadows. Then let no Gilray speak to me (I wish he would remember this), for I am in a world of my own. Suppose I am ruminating with the mighty dead. The slightest thing seems to send me out of the one mood into the other, such as being contradicted. In Carlyle this dark mood showed itself in irritability, but I am never irritable even with Gilray.
Admirable though the paper which suggests these reflections is, it is perhaps unnecessarily despondent, there being one way in which we may arrive at a definition of G that has escaped the writer. He is correctly of opinion that G is not a word of different meanings, but rather ‘some peculiar mental quality in common between the soldier and the poet.’ The difficulty is to find what that quality is; but I think I can manage it. We must start with the assumption (I consider it no more) that I am a G, and then go over the various definitions, striking out as false those which do not apply. In this way we at once get rid of the Carlylean definition. It having been granted by you that I may be a G, it is even more certain that I have no definite capacity for taking pains. Already, therefore, we have made an advance. The common creed with the rabble, as our writer points out, is that G is synonymous with success. I have, however, been far less successful than Gilray, so that this creed obviously leaks. Indeed every one of my acquaintance who pretends to G has been unsuccessful. Of course one may be unsuccessful without being a G. Still this excludes another common view. Also we may safely disregard the business man’s theory that G is ‘a large general capacity specially turned into a particular direction.’ I have taken care not to turn my capacity into any special groove; indeed, I have tried several directions for it
at different times and given them all up; which seems to favour the belief that G rebels against restraint. Nor is G ‘a noble enthusiasm constraining the person possessed by it to action of an heroic kind’; for though I am momentarily enthusiastic, no action comes of it, the reverse being the case with such as Gilray. In this way we shut out all the definitions but two: namely, power without effort, to which I must plead guilty, and ‘a creative working in strict accordance with nature and the fitness of things.’ I am not sure what this means, but I feel I have it; it was probably also in men of such opposite types as Napoleon and Wordsworth. Yes; there can be no G where there is no creative power. Gilray’s observation upon this is that I have created nothing. Nevertheless I consider that if —
However, I hear his garrulous footstep on the stair, so I must dissemble.”
THE Gilray of this blackguardly effusion is once more my great friend Gilmour of the frontispiece, who may, it is crushing to me to reflect, have limned his noble sketch of Anon that very evening. On re-examining the sketch one notes nevertheless that he has omitted the G as well as the Hat.
In this article Anon makes so much use of his friend that in a sense they are collaborators, though Anon doubtless pocketed both the guineas. To this extent he often collaborated. Nevertheless real collaboration and how it is done still puzzles me, though I essayed it twice with two of my best friends, Marriott Watson and Conan Doyle. In both cases it was on a play, one being ‘Richard Savage’ and the other a comic opera called ‘Jane Annie.’ For the last score of years, and probably much longer, I could have sworn that ‘Savage’ was my first long play, but the other day a MS. of one I had completely forgotten wandered into an auction sale under the title of ‘Bohemia.’ It had been written in my university days, and I could not believe in its genuineness till they showed me the title-page. They wanted me to read it all, but oh no. The title-page contained one amusing item; a scene is laid, obviously in all sincerity, in ‘A glade in Brighton,’ which shows that he knew at that time as much about Brighton as he knew about Bohemia. This work was never presented, however, while ‘Savage’ was produced for a matinée at the expense of the authors. My recollection is that I wrote bits in Scotland and Marriott wrote bits in London, and that we then rewrote each other’s bits. It was a dark and gloomy affair and my only stage adventure into the historical; but it was graced by a prologue in verse from Henley, and we were so anxious not to be diffuse, after the manner of beginners, that we polished off the love scene in about twenty lines. This was the only occasion on which I ever took an ‘author’s call,’ and we were derided by a ribald Press as ‘the long and the short of it,’ because of my collaborator’s unfortunately great height. I dreamt on the night of production that Conan Doyle was producing a play across the street on the same afternoon, and that I stood at the door of my theatre waiting vainly for a public to come in while he stood waiting similarly at his. At last I darted across and dragged him in to see ‘Savage,’ its only spectator.
‘Jane Annie’ was a dreadful failure. I had undertaken to do it ‘off my own bat’ for the D’Oyly Carte’s, and went into hiding to escape it, was discovered and brought back and allowed to introduce a collaborator, who was Doyle. (I sat with him on the seashore at Aldeburgh when he decided to kill Sherlock Holmes.) He wrote some good songs, I thought, for ‘Jane Annie,’ but mine were worthless and I had no musical sense. Also he was so good-natured that if we lost him at rehearsals he was sure to be found in a shrouded box writing a new song for some obscure member of the company. They had only to plead with him, ‘I have nothing to say, Mr. Doyle, except half a dozen lines in the first act,’ when he would reply, ‘Oh, my poor chap, too bad,’ and retire into a box, from which he emerged almost instantly with a song. As for me, a boy got into the play merely to gather boots from bedroom doors, but he became the one person I was interested in, and so was soon the leading character, to the indignation of the stars. On the first night at the end a youthful friend came into our box, and Doyle expressed my feelings in saying to him reprovingly, ‘Why did you not cheer?’ but I also sympathized with our visitor when he answered plaintively, ‘I didn’t like to, when no one else was doing it.’
I say that I have no ear for music, and indeed it is so true that I have only once been to the opera. It was one of the great operas, magnificently done, with Melba in it, and almost thirty years have elapsed since then, but I still shudder at its tedium. Madame Melba was very nearly, like myself, a native of Kirriemuir. She was born soon after her parents had left there for Melbourne. A few years ago, though we had never met, I thought this an excuse, on finding that we were both inmates of a London nursing home, to send a message to her that I would like very much to go downstairs to see her if she would promise not to sing to me; and she replied that she would love it if I promised not to read any of my works to her. On that understanding we had a happy time.
The D’Oyly Cartes were delightful people to work with. Years afterwards I was wandering on a Highland moor with the late Lord Esher, and in the intimacy that shrewd air creates, one of us (I am not sure now which one) said to the other, ‘If you will tell me who is the most remarkable woman you have known I shall tell you who is mine.’ Then we both said Mrs. D’Oyly Carte.
I remember now being in one other collaboration. It has been sometimes referred to in the Press, but incorrectly. While I was writing my play of ‘Little Mary’ I said to a small boy of six or seven who was sitting up in bed eating chocolates, ‘If you eat so many chocolates you will be sick tomorrow,’ to which he replied promptly, ‘I shall be sick tonight.’ This got into the play, and recognizing his child, he claimed his rights, with the result that I had to draw up the enclosed deed of collaboration.
CHAPTER XVII
“SANDFORD AND MERTON” — MEREDITH AGAIN — THE ‘SCOTS OBSERVER’ — W. E. HENLEY AND CHARLES WHIBLEY — OSCAR WILDE AND JOHN SILVER’S CRUTCH
(a) Mr. Barlow’s Sense of Propriety.
HAVING partaken of his matutinal meal on Bank Holiday, Mr. Barlow, with his goloshes strapped to his umbrella, summoned his pupils, Sandford and Merton, similarly strapped, and taking them by the hand conducted them to the beach where, shaking his head to the invitation of the waves, he courteously but firmly refused to look further at the ocean.
HARRY. It would, I frankly admit, be idle on my part and on that of my fellow pupil to pretend that we are wholly cognizant of the doubtless valid causes which induce you thus publicly to cast such a slight upon the sea. Mr. Barlow bowed his head dejectedly and, slightly bending his left leg, seemed to be on the point of speaking when he caught sight of a barefooted man enveloped in a towel. With a shudder he resumed his original attitude.
TOMMY. This is to us indescribably disturbing, and perhaps not the less so because we are painfully aware that our grief must be due to not wholly excusable ignorance. I cannot doubt that should your sombre thoughts remind you of a tale which, as we have not yet heard it, you will now proceed to narrate, our bosoms will immediately palpitate with some worthy emotion. HARRY. I shall content myself momentarily with pointing out that the place, the hour and the concourse of promenaders are alike adapted for the inculcation of a moral lesson.
MR. BARLOW. My ambition has ever been to train your young minds by means of noble sentiments fitly expressed, and therefore I do not hesitate to inform you that I cannot look upon the sea without a sense of shame. TOMMY. Allow me, sir, a moment to commune. Your passion for social purity — but I see that Harry wishes to speak. HARRY. Nay, Tommy, I cannot interrupt you. TOMMY. Excuse me, my dear friend, you were about to say — ?
HARRY. What you, Tommy, would have said better. May I hazard the assertion, sir, that since you joined the Society for Blushing at Human Figures on Hoardings, even the sight of the sea is to your pure mind impure? MR. BARLOW. It is even so. TOMMY. Without implying for a moment, esteemed sir, that I can detect impurity as quickly as you do, I may say that since you addressed us on this subject I have discovered it in placards which h
itherto I had passed by as inoffensive. MR. BARLOW. The wickedness of this world is only known when we think of it much and look for it everywhere. HARRY. In the hour which by your advice we devote to relaxation, Tommy and I have for the past week been examining the hoardings with, I venture to say, admirable result. TOMMY. Many of the pictorial advertisements when regarded without reflection are innocent enough, but when studied with the eye of knowledge are exceedingly improper. HARRY. Yet to our humiliation be it said we still enjoy, in the lightness of our hearts, gazing at the sea and even cautiously entering it.