after christmas i stayed a few days with chérie at her house at cosham and with the ponsonbys at the isle of wight. uncle henry ponsonby said he had taken one book with him in the crimean war, and he had read it through. this was paradise lost. the conversation arose from his quoting the lines:

“the mind is its own place, and in itself

can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven,”

and i happened to know where the quotation came from. i stayed for a few days with the bensons at addington. arthur and fred benson were there, but none of the rest of the family. fred benson had just finished his novel, dodo, and was correcting the proofs of it. i read the proofs. arthur benson had written a great many poems, which he read out to me. they were published later in the year. during the time i had spent at hildesheim i had continued to write verse every now and then, and i used to send my efforts to arthur benson for his criticism. i had also written what must have been a childish play, a modern drama, but i had published nothing except a little verse in a plymouth newspaper. while i was staying at osborne with the ponsonbys and also at addington with the bensons i heard a great deal about a miss ethel smyth. arthur benson had told me about her at eton. she was a friend of his family, and he used often to hear from her. she was a newer friend of my aunts and my cousins, and they talked a great deal about her. i heard about her wonderful singing, her energy, her vitality, her talk, how she had said that mrs. benson was “as good as god and as clever as the devil”; how i must hear her sing “l’anneau d’argent,” and her own mass. it was arranged that i was to make her acquaintance.[139] her mass was to be given at the albert hall, and i was invited by mrs. charles hunter (miss smyth’s sister) to hear it from her box. the box was full of miss smyth’s hunting friends, who gave the music a respectful hearing, and when it was over we went to the bachelors’ club and had supper. i sat next to miss smyth and we made friends at once. the next night i had dinner at dover street, where mrs. hunter was staying, and there i met general smyth, miss smyth’s father, and mr. brewster, an american by birth, a frenchman by education, an italian by residence. his appearance was striking; he had a fair beard and the eyes of a seer; à contre jour, someone said he looked like a rembrandt. his manner was suave, and at first one thought him inscrutable—a person whom one could never know, surrounded as it were by a hedge of roses. when i got to know him better i found the whole secret of brewster was this: he was absolutely himself: he said quite simply and calmly what he thought. nothing leads to such misunderstandings as the truth. bismarck said the best of all diplomatic policies was to tell the truth, as nobody believed you. but even when you are not prepared to disbelieve, and suspect no diplomatic wiles, the truth is sometimes disconcerting when calmly expressed. i recollect my first conversation with mr. brewster. we talked of books, and i was brimful of enthusiasm for swinburne and rossetti. “no,” said brewster, “i don’t care for rossetti; it all seems to me like an elaborate exercise. i prefer paul verlaine.” i knew he was not being paradoxical, but i thought he was lacking in catholicity, narrow in comprehension. why couldn’t one like both? i thought he was being olympian and damping. when i got to know him well, i understood how completely sincere he had been, and how utterly unpretentious; how impossible it was for him to pretend he liked something he did not like, and how true it was that rossetti seemed to him as elaborate as an exercise.

that night we went to a concert at st. james’s hall, and i saw again the familiar green benches where for so many years my mother had seats in row 2. “you remind me,” said a lady i was introduced to that night, “of a lady who used to come and sit here at the pops in the second row, a long time ago.”

i can’t remember where it was i first heard ethel smyth sing,[140] whether it was in dover street or in her own little house, “one oak.” i remember the songs she sang—some brahms, some schubert, among others “pause” and “der doppelg?nger,” “l’anneau d’argent,” and “come o’er the sea,” and i knew at once that i had opened a window on a new and marvellous province. the whole performance was so complete and so poignantly perfect: the accompaniment, the way the words and the music were blended, and the composer’s inmost and most intimate intention and meaning seemed to be revealed and interpreted as if he were singing the song himself for the first time; the rare and exquisite quality and delicacy of her voice, the strange thrill and wail, the distinction and distinct clear utterance, where every word and every note told without effort, and the whirlwind of passion and feeling she evoked in a song such as “come o’er the sea” or brahms’ “botschaft.”

it was settled that i was to learn italian, and for that purpose i went to florence. i stayed in paris a few days on the way at the h?tel st. romain, rue st. roch, and i went to several plays and saw bartet at the théatre fran?ais, in le père prodigue. then i travelled to florence in a crowded second-class carriage. i had expected florence to be a dismal place, full of buildings like dorchester house, grey and cold. it was cold when the tramontana blew, but i had forgotten or rather i had not imagined the italian sun. i arrived late, at one in the morning, and when i got up and saw the sun streaming from a cloudless blue sky on warm, yellow, sun-baked houses with red flat roofs, i was amazed. i stayed the first night i arrived at an hotel, and then moved into a pension at lung’arno della borsa 2 bis, which belonged to signora agnese traverso. i began to learn italian at once, and had lessons from a charming old italian called signor benelli. signor benelli had been a soldier in garibaldi’s army; he was an intense enthusiast both in politics and literature—a dante scholar and an admirer of the moderns: carducci, and gabriele d’annunzio’s early poems, which were not well known then. i never had a better master before or afterwards. he knew english well and revelled in english poetry, especially in shelley and keats. as soon as i got to understand italian we read dante, and i read the whole of the divina commedia aloud with signor benelli, all leopardi, and a great deal of tasso and ariosto. i also made other discoveries for[141] myself in other branches of literature. there was a large lending library at florence, full of books in every european literature. i there discovered by myself the works of anatole france and read tha?s, balthazar, and l’etui de nacre, le crime de sylvestre bonnard, and la r?tisserie de la reine pédauque. i read a great deal of maupassant as well, the complete works of merimée, some balzac, and the plays of dumas fils, and all the sardou i could get hold of. i also had a few russian lessons from a lady, but i did not go on with them as i had not the time. i made the acquaintance of miss violet paget (vernon lee), who lived in a lovely little villa called “the palmerino” on the fiesole side of the town.

the spring in florence is a wonderful pageant. at first you do not see where there can be any room for it. the trees seem all evergreen—cypresses and silvery olives. the landscape seems complete as it is. then suddenly the brown hills are alive with wild, fluttering, red jagged-edged tulips. large bunches of anemones, violets, and lilies of the valley are sold in the streets, and soon roses. then the young corn shoots up, and all the hills become green and the cornfields are fringed with wild dog-roses, and soon the tall red and white lilies come out, and then the wistaria, and the judas trees—a dense mass of blossom against the solid, speckless blue sky.

in may i met hubert cornish at naples and spent a few days with him, and we went for a night to sorrento, and in june i went to venice by myself and stayed there for one long and deliciously hot week. i saw the pictures, drifted about on the lagoon, and bathed at the lido in the adriatic, the only sea that is really hot enough.

at the end of june i was back again in england. i was to go to oxford or cambridge, but to do either of these things it is necessary to pass an examination in which sums had to be done. at first i was going to oxford, but it was thought that i would never be able to pass smalls, so it was decided i should go to cambridge, but in order to pass the examination before matriculating i had to go to a crammer’s to brush up my latin and greek and try to learn arithmetic.

at the end of july i went to eton and stayed with the cornishes. mr. cornish had just been made vice-provost, and was moving into the cloisters from holland house. it was a hot, beautiful august and we spent most of our days on the[142] river. one day there was a regatta going on at datchet. as we passed it we made triolets on the events of the regatta. “my shirt is undone, here comes the regatta,” one of them began. the incident that struck us most was the passage of miss tarver in a boat. she appeared to be in distress, and was weeping. this incident was at once put to verse in this triolet:

“oh! there’s lily tarver

in oceans of tears,

like streams of hot lava,

oh! there’s lily tarver!

the regatta’s loud brava

still rings in her ears.

oh! there’s lily tarver

in oceans of tears!”

at arthur benson’s one night i met mr. gosse, who was kind to me, and from that moment became a lifelong friend.

i had written an essay on collins, and arthur benson had sent it for me to macmillan’s magazine. the editor did not print it, but he wrote me a letter about it, urging me to go on writing. while i had been at florence i had written a complete novel, which i had sent to the publishers. the publishers’ reader reported that it was worth printing, and offered to publish it on the half-profits system. i had the sense to put it in the fire. everyone, said vernon lee to me once, should write a novel once, if only so as never to want to do it again.

in august i went to mr. tatham, who lived near abingdon, to prepare for my examination. at his house several boys were struggling with the same task and preparing to go to oxford. mr. tatham did not teach me arithmetic—nobody could do that—but he taught me some greek and latin. we read the plutus of aristophanes, and some catullus, and he led me into new fields in english literature. i enjoyed myself at his house quite immensely. sometimes at dinner mr. tatham would laugh till tears poured down his cheeks, and once he laughed so much that he was almost ill and had to go upstairs to his room to recover.

we used to make up triolets at meals, and at all times of the day, and while i was at abingdon i had two little books of them printed called northcourt nonsense.[143] one of them was written while dressing for dinner and after having been stung by a fly, and addressed to mr. tatham and sent to him by the maid. it ran thus:

“may i wear a silk tie

to-night at the table?

i’ve been stung by a fly,

may i wear a silk tie?

i will bind it as high

and as low as i’m able,

may i wear a silk tie

to-night at the table?”

to which mr. tatham at once sent this answer:

“the tie that you wear

may be wholly of silk,

or of stuff or mohair,

the tie that you wear;

if the pain you can’t bear,

better bathe it with milk,

the tie that you wear

may be wholly of silk.”

one of the boys who was preparing for oxford was called ralli, and he had great facility as a planchette writer. he could not write by himself, but as soon as anyone else put their hands on planchette at the same time as he did, it would write like mad. the things it wrote seemed to be nearly always what he had read and forgotten, sometimes an article from the figaro, sometimes a passage from a french novel. sometimes it wrote verse. ralli was a fluent poet, but wrote better verse without the aid of planchette than with. sometimes the planchette board answered his questions, but with a flippant inconsequence.

in october i went to cambridge and passed into trinity, leaving the little go to be tackled later. i had rooms in trinity street. hubert cornish was at king’s. i was to go in for the modern language tripos, which meant languages about as modern as le roman de la rose and chaucer. i went to a coach for mathematics, but this was sheer waste of time, as not one word of what i was taught ever entered my brain, nor did i improve one jot.

i belonged to two debating societies—the magpie and stump, and the decemviri—and used to speak at both of them quite often; and to a society where one read out papers, called[144] the chit-chat. i also belonged to the a.d.c., and played the part of the butler in parents and guardians, and that of the footman in the duchess of bayswater.

in the summer term, during the may week, hubert cornish, r. austen leigh, and myself edited an ephemeral newspaper called the cambridge a b c, which had four numbers and which contained an admirable parody of kipling by carr-bosanquet.

here are some lines from it:

“by matyushin and wilczek-land he is come to the northern pole,

whose tap-roots bite on the oolite and pal?ozoic coal:

he set his hand and his haunch to the tree, he plucked it up by the root,

and the lines of longitude upward sprang like the broken chords of a lute;

and over against the hills of glass he came to the spate of stars,

and the pole it sank, but he swam to bank and warmed himself on mars;

till he came to the reeling beaches between the night and the day,

where the tall king crabs like hansom cabs and the black bull lobsters lay.”

aubrey beardsley was just becoming known as an artist, and we wrote to him and asked him to design a cover, never thinking he would consent to do so. he did, for the modest sum of ten guineas, and many people thought it was a clever parody of his draughtsmanship.

at trinity, carr-bosanquet was the shining light of the decemviri debating society. at eton he had edited the parachute, which was far the best schoolboy periodical that had appeared there for years, and had written, in collaboration with two other boys, a book called seven summers, about eton, which was afterwards withdrawn from circulation because for some reason or other the authorities objected to it. next to a day of my life at eton it is the best book about eton life that has ever been written, and the only book of its kind. it certainly ought to be republished. the curious thing is that the objections to it, which to the lay mind are not perceptible (for a more harmless book was never written), were only made after it had been published for some time.

carr-bosanquet used often to contribute poems of a light kind about topical events to the eton chronicle, and at cambridge he wrote as wittily as he talked and spoke. he had rather a dry, kind sense of humour, saltlike sense, and an attic[145] wit, which pervaded his talk, his speeches, his finished and scholarly verse. we thought he was certain to be a bright star in english literature, a successor to praed and calverley, and perhaps to charles lamb; but his career was distinguished in another line—arch?ology—and he allowed himself no rival pursuit. had he opted for literature, and the province of the witty essay and the light rhyme, he certainly could have achieved great things, as he had already done far more than show promise. his performance as far as it went was already mature, finished, and of a high order. there was at trinity and at king’s at this time, as i suppose there is at all times, a small but highly intellectual world, of which the apex was the mysterious society of the apostles, who discussed philosophy in secret. i skirted the fringe of this world, and knew some of its members: bertrand russell, the mathematician; robert trevelyan, the poet; and others. one day, one of these intellectuals explained to me that i ought not to go to chapel, as it was setting a bad example. christianity was exploded, a thing of the past; nobody believed in it really among the young and the advanced, but for the sake of the old-fashioned and the unregenerate i was bidden to set an example of sincerity and courage, and soon the world would follow suit. i remember thinking that although i was much younger in years than these intellectuals, and far inferior in knowledge, brains, and wits, no match for them in argument or in achievement, i was none the less older than they were in a particular kind of experience—the experience that has nothing to do either with the mind, or with knowledge, and that is independent of age, but takes place in the heart, and in which a child may be sometimes more rich than a grown-up person. i do not mean anything sentimental. i am speaking of the experience that comes from having been suddenly constrained to turn round and look at life from a different point of view. so when i heard the intellectuals reason in the manner i have described, i felt for the moment an old person listening to young people. i felt young people must always have talked like that. it was not that i had then any definite religious creed. i seldom went to chapel, but that was out of laziness. i seldom went to church in london, and never of my own accord.

while i was at heidelberg the religious tenets which i had kept absolutely intact since childhood, without question and[146] without the shadow of doubt or difficulty, suddenly one day, without outside influence or inward crisis, just dropped away from me. i shed them as easily as a child loses a first tooth. in the winter of 1893, when i came back from berlin, someone asked me why i didn’t go to church. i said it was because i didn’t believe in a christian faith, and that if i were ever to again i would be a catholic. that seemed to me the only logical and indeed the inevitable consequence of such a belief. in spite of this, dogmatic disbelief was to me always an intolerable thing, and when i heard the intellectuals talk in the manner i have described, i used to feel that people like dr. johnson had known better than they, but that in his day it was probable that the young and he himself talked like that; it was one of the privileges of youth. i did not say this, however. i kept my thoughts to myself. i remember my spoken answer being that i did not care if my landlady thought an upright poker placed in front of the fire made it burn or not. if she liked to believe that, it was her affair. i didn’t mind if she worshipped the poker.

at king’s my great friends were hubert cornish, ramsay, who was afterwards lower master at eton, and r? a?, the son of a distinguished soldier. a. was the most original of all the undergraduates i knew. he was a real scholar, with the most eclectic and rather austere taste in literature, and a passion for organ music. he was shy and fastidious beyond words. he could not endure being shaved at cambridge, and used to go up to london twice a week for that purpose. he took no part in any of the clubs or societies. at the same time he was a devoted friend and a fiery patriot. he was so difficult to please about his own work that when he went up for his tripos and had to do a set of latin hexameters, he showed up a series of unfinished lines, “pathetic half-lines,” a suggested end of hexameter, a possible beginning, the hint of a c?sura, a few epithets, and here and there an almost perfect line, with a footnote to say “these verses are not meant to scan.” he was a bibliophile, but collected faded second editions and never competed. he had a passionate admiration for thomas hardy’s works, and a great deference for the opinion of his friends. one day when he was discussing literature with hubert cornish, hubert said he liked a book which a. disliked. when a. heard this he said gently: “of course if you like it, hubert, i like it too.”

[147]

this all happened in the period of the ’nineties. when people write about the ’nineties now, which they often do, they seem to me to weave a baseless legend and to create a fantastic world of their own creation. the ’nineties were, from the point of view of art and literature, much like any other period. if you want to know what literary conversation was like in the ’nineties you can hear it any day at the reform club. if you compare the articles on literature or art that appeared in the speaker of 1892-3 with the articles in the new statesman of 1921, you will find little difference between the two. the difference between the yellow book and periodicals of the same kind (the owl, for instance), which were started years later, was chiefly in the colour of the cover. the fact is there are only a certain number of available writers in london, and whenever a new periodical is started, all the available writers are asked to contribute; so in the yellow book you had practically the available writers of the time contributing—henry james, edmund gosse, george moore, crackenthorpe, william watson, john davidson, john oliver hobbes, vernon lee, le gallienne, arthur benson, arthur symons, and max beerbohm. i think there is seldom any startling difference between the literature of one decade and another. when i was at cambridge, england was said by the newspapers to be a nest of singing birds; again the same thing was said when the georgian poets began to publish their work; but the same thing might be said of any epoch. throughout the whole of english history there never has been a period, as yet, when england was not a nest of singing birds, and when a great quantity of verse, good, bad, and indifferent, was not being poured out. but it was said in the ’nineties that poetry was a paying business; second-hand booksellers were speculating in the first editions of the new poets, just as they do now; and to get the complete works of one poet, who had published little, one had to pay a hundred pounds. a society called the rhymers’ club published two books called respectively the book of the rhymers’ club, and the second book of the rhymers’ club, both of which were anthologies by living authors, and somewhat the same in intention as the books of georgian poetry. both these books are now rare and sought after by collectors. it is interesting to look at them now, and to look back in general on the poets of that day, and to see what has survived and what[148] has been forgotten. these two anthologies by no means represented the whole of the poetic output and production of the day. they were not comprehensive anthologies of all the living poets, but the manifesto of one small poetical club. taking a general bird’s-eye view of literature and the literary world of that day, this is what you would have noted. tennyson was just dead. swinburne was still writing, and published some of the finer poems of his later manner in a volume called astrophel, in 1894. stevenson was alive, and had just published the ebb tide. meredith had but lately come into his own, and was hailed by old and young. tess of the d’urbervilles had enlarged the public of thomas hardy. robert bridges was issuing fastidious pamphlets of verse printed by mr. beeching at oxford. christina rossetti was alive. mr. kipling published what are perhaps his greatest achievements in the short story in life’s handicap in 1891, and his many inventions came out in 1892. his barrack room ballads were published in 1892. his loud popularity among the public was endorsed by critics such as henry james, edmund gosse, and andrew lang. andrew lang was still writing “books like genesis and sometimes for the daily news,” besides a monthly causerie in longman’s magazine, and a weekly causerie in the illustrated london news. mrs. humphry ward’s david grieve was published in 1892 and acclaimed by the whole press. edmund gosse was collecting and preparing a volume of the verse of his maturity (published in 1894), and once a year produced a volume of delicate and perspicuous prose. henley was writing patriotic verse and barbed prose in the national observer, which was full of spirited, scholarly and brilliant writing. charles whibley was making a name. max beerbohm was making his début. william watson was discovered as a real new poet, and his “wordsworth’s grave,” and his “lachrym? musarum” won praise from the older critics, and attracted, for verse, great attention. he was named as a possible laureate. john davidson was said to have inspiration and fire, and to have written a fine ballad; norman gale’s country lyrics were praised; arthur benson represented the extreme right of english poetry, and arthur symons the extreme left. wilde had published a play in french, and his lady windermere’s fan was hailed as the best comedy produced on the english stage since congreve. pinero had startled london with his second mrs. tanqueray[149] and the discovery of mrs. patrick campbell. in the speaker quiller-couch wrote a weekly causerie, and george moore put some of his best work in weekly articles on art, and mr. walkley some of his wittiest writing in weekly articles on the stage. henry james was struggling with the stage, and john oliver hobbes was making a name as a coiner of epigrams. harry cust was editing the pall mall gazette and concocting delightful leaders out of the classics, with fantastic titles. e. f. benson had published dodo. turning from the general to the particular, and to the book of the rhymers’ club, published in 1892, the names of the contributors were: ernest dowson, edwin ellis, c. a. greene, lionel johnson, richard le gallienne, victor plarr, ernest radford, ernest rhys, t. w. rolleston, arthur symons, john todhunter, and w. b. yeats. in the second series the same names occur with an additional one—arthur cecil hillier.

a reaction against supposed foreign influences was started and preached, and richard le gallienne called his book of verse english lyrics to accentuate this; but it is difficult to find any trace of this foreign influence in the verse of that day, except in some of the poems of arthur symons. when people write of the ’nineties now, they say that the verse of that period is all about pierrots, powder, and patchouli. the reason is perhaps that the most startling feature in the creative art of the period was the genius of aubrey beardsley, whose perfect draughtsmanship seemed to be guided by a malignant demon. i have looked through the books of the rhymers’ club carefully, and i cannot find a single allusion to a pierrot, or even to a powder-puff. here are the titles of some of the subjects: “carmelite nuns of perpetual adoration”; “love and death”; “the pathfinder”; “the broken tryst”; “a ring’s secret”; “a burden of easter vigil”; “father gilligan”; “in falmouth harbour”; “mothers of men”; “sunset in the city”; “lost”; “to a breton beggar”; “song in the labour movement”; “saint anthony”; “lady macbeth”; “midsummer day”; “the old shepherd”; “the night jar”; “the song of the old mother”; “the first spring day”; “an ode to spring.” these subjects seem to me singularly like those that have inspired poets of all epochs; it is difficult to detect anything peculiar to the ’nineties in a title such as “the first spring day,” or “a ring’s secret.”

[150]

the first rhymers’ book contains yeats’ exquisite poem on the lake of innisfree, and some dignified verse by lionel johnson; the second series contains a well-known poem by ernest dowson: “i have been faithful to thee, cynara, in my fashion.” but i think i am right in saying that it was neither yeats nor lionel johnson nor dowson’s work in these anthologies that attracted the greatest attention, but a lyric of le gallienne’s called “what of the darkness?” which i remember one critic said wiped out tennyson’s lyrics. tennyson’s lyrics, however, went on obstinately existing, no doubt so as to give another generation the pleasure of thinking that they had wiped them out. while these singing birds were twittering, i remember one day at cambridge buying a new book of verse by a man called francis thompson. here, i thought, is another of the hundreds of new poets, but directly i caught sight of the “hound of heaven,” i thought to myself “here is something different.” i remember showing hubert cornish a poem called “daisy,” and saying to him, “isn’t this very good?” it begins:

“where the thistle lifts a purple crown

six foot out of the turf,

and the harebell shakes on the windy hill,

o the breath of the distant surf.”

“yes,” said hubert, “but the trouble is that everyone writes so well nowadays that it is hardly worth while for any new poet to write well. all can raise the flower because all have got the seed.”

the undergraduates had no great enthusiasm for any of these new writers. i mean the intellectuals among the undergraduates. but the booksellers were always urging us to buy them on the plea that they would go up. some of them did, and those who speculated in francis thompson and yeats did well. the curious thing is that the prose writers and the poets were supposed to be great sticklers for form, to be absorbed by the theory of art for art’s sake, and to be aiming at impeccable craftsmanship. looking back on the work of those poets now, their technique, compared to that of more modern poets, seems almost ludicrously feeble, but they seem to have had just what they were supposed to be without: a burning ideal to serve literature; to have been consumed with the desire to bring about a renaissance in[151] english literature and an english renaissance. there was one poet’s name which was sometimes mentioned then, and which had come down to the ’nineties from other and older generations. the name has gone on being mentioned since, and will one day, i think, reach the safe harbour of lasting fame, and this was michael field. michael field was a pseudonym which covered the remarkable personalities of two ladies, an aunt and a niece, who were friends of robert browning and of all the literary lights of their day, and who wrote a series of most remarkable dramas in verse and some extremely beautiful lyrics.

john lane, the publisher, used to come down to cambridge sometimes, and i made his acquaintance and, through him and mr. gosse, that of many of the writers i have mentioned: john davidson, le gallienne, and others. there was a society at this time in london called the cemented bricks, to which some of the littérateurs and poets belonged, which met at anderton’s hotel in fleet street, and i was made a member, and on one occasion made a speech, and was down to read a paper, but i had to go abroad and this never came off. but what i chiefly remember about it is one occasion when le gallienne read a paper in which he passionately attacked the theory of art for art’s sake, and insisted on the relative unimportance of art compared with nature, saying that a branch of almond blossom against the sky was worth all the pictures in the world. his paper was answered a month later by a young man who said this was the most philistine sentiment he had ever heard expressed. this was while i was at cambridge.

i did little work at cambridge, and from the cambridge curriculum i learnt nothing. i attended lectures on mathematics which might just as well have been, for the good they did me, in hebrew. i spent hours with a coach who wearily explained to me things which i didn’t and couldn’t understand. i went to some lectures on french literature, but all i remember of them is that the lecturer demonstrated at some length that the french written by many well-known authors was often ungrammatical and sometimes full of mistakes. the lecturer cited to support his case pages of georges ohnet. one hardly needed a lecturer to point out that georges ohnet was not a classical writer. the lecturer’s aim was not to show the badness of certain authors, but to prove that the french of modern current literature was an independent living[152] organism that was growing and developing heedless of classical models, grammatical rules, and academic authority. i think he would have done better had he pointed out how certain other authors were writing prose and verse of so great an excellence that in the course of time their works might become classics. boileau was one of the books to be read for the tripos, and i had already read a great deal of boileau and learnt his verse by heart as a child. i copied out the following lines in 1888:

“hélas! qu’est devenu ce temps, cet heureux temps,

où les rois s’honoraient du nom de fainéants;

s’endormaient sur le tr?ne, et, me servant sans honte,

laissaient leur sceptre aux mains ou d’un maire ou d’un comte?

aucun soin n’approchait de leur paisible cour:

on reposait la nuit, on dormait tout le jour.

seulement au printemps, quand flore dans les plaines

faisaient taire des vents les bruyantes haleines,

quatre b?ufs attelés, d’un pas tranquille et lent,

promenaient dans paris le monarque indolent.”

when i told dr. verrall that we were reading boileau he was delighted. he said: “how i wish i was reading boileau; instead of which, when i have time to read, i read the latest kipling story.” he said he spent his life in vain regret for the books he wanted to read, but which he knew he never would read. he could not help reading the modern books, but he often deplored the sad necessity. i stuck up for the modern books; i said i would far rather read kipling than boileau. i supposed in boileau’s time people said: “here i am, wasting my time reading boileau, which i must read so as to follow the conversation at dinner, when i might be reading le roman de la rose.”

dr. verrall was an amusing story-teller, and i remember his telling a story of two old ladies who, while they were listening to the overture of lohengrin, looked at each other with a puzzled, timid expression, until one of them asked the other: “is it the gas?” dr. verrall told me he thought rossetti’s poem, the “blessed damozel,” was rubbish. on the other hand, he admired his ballad, “sister helen.”

he said: “why did you melt your waxen man, sister helen?” was a magnificent opening to a poem.

in spite of having learnt nothing in an academic sense at cambridge, i am glad i went there, and i think i learnt a good[153] deal in other ways. i look back on it and i see the tall trees just coming out in the backs, behind king’s college; a picnic in canoes on the cam; bookshops, especially a dark, long bookshop in trinity street where a plaintive voice told one that norman gale would be sure to go up; little dinner-parties in my rooms in trinity street, the food arriving on a tray from the college kitchen where the cook made créme br?lée better than anyone else in the world; one night fireworks on the window-sill and the thin curtains ablaze; rehearsals for the a.d.c., and mr. clarkson making one up; long, idle mornings in trinity and king’s; literary discussions in rooms at trinity; debates of the decemviri in carr-bosanquet’s room on the ground floor of the great court; summer afternoons in king’s college gardens, and the light streaming through the gorgeous glass of the west window in king’s chapel, where, listening to the pealing anthem, i certainly never dreamed of taxing the royal saint with vain expense; gossip at the pitt club in the mornings, crowds of youths with well-brushed hair and straw hats telling stories in front of the fireplace; the sunday-evening receptions in oscar browning’s rooms full of arundel prints and crowds of long-haired bohemians; the present provost of eton mimicking the dons; and the endless laughter of those who could say:

“we were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise,

and the door stood open to our feast.”

i left cambridge after my first summer term as i could not pass the little go, nor could i ever have done so, had i stayed at cambridge for years. my life during the next five years was a prolonged and arduous struggle to pass the examination into the diplomatic service. when i left cambridge i went to versailles, and stayed there a month to work at french. then after a few days at contrexéville, with my father, i went back to hildesheim and stopped at bayreuth on the way.

that year parsifal and tannh?user were given, and for the first time at bayreuth, lohengrin. mottl conducted; vandyk sang the part of lohengrin. when i arrived at the station, after a long night’s journey, i was offered a place for the performance of parsifal that afternoon. i took it, but i was so tired after the journey that i fell asleep during the first act, and[154] slept so soundly, that at the end of the act, i had to be shaken before i woke up. in the third act, it will be remembered that lohengrin, when he reveals his parentage, his occupation, and his name, at elsa’s ill-timed request, mentions that his father’s name was parsifal. a german lady who was sitting near me, when she heard this, gave a gasp of relief and recognition, as if all were now plain, and sighed: “ach der parsifal!”

at leipzig i ran short of money, and nobody would cash me a cheque, as i could not satisfy either the hotel or the bank or the british consul (baron tauchnitz) that i was who i claimed to be. i telegraphed to the timmes for money, and they sent it to the bank for me by telegram, but even then the bank refused to give it to me, as they were doubtful of my identity. finally i got the timmes to telegraph it to the hotel. the consul was annoyed, and said that englishmen always appeared to think they could go where they liked and do what they liked. i told him this was the case, and i had always supposed it to be the duty of a british consul to help them to do so. i stayed at hildesheim till mr. scoones’ establishment for candidates for the diplomatic service examination opened at garrick chambers in london in september. the examination for the diplomatic service was competitive. candidates had to qualify in each of twelve subjects, which included three modern languages, latin, modern history, geography, arithmetic, précis-writing, english essay-writing, and shorthand. the standard in french and german was high, and the most difficult task was the translation of a passage from a times leading article into french and german as it was dictated. life at scoones’ meant going to lectures from ten till one, and again in the afternoon, and being crammed at home by various teachers. mr. scoones was a fine organiser and an acute judge of character. he was half french, and his personality was electric and fascinating; he was light in hand, amusing, and full of point. he used to have luncheon every day at the garrick club, which was next door to garrick chambers, and he lectured himself on french. he was assisted by the rev. dawson clarke, who in vain tried to teach me arithmetic, and did manage to teach me enough geography, after five years, to qualify, and mr. j. allen, who gave us brilliant lectures on modern history. there was also a charming french lecturer, m. esclangon, who corrected our french essays.[155] the first time i wrote him an essay he wrote on it: “le fran?ais est non seulement pur mais élégant.”

i lived alone in a room at the top of 37 charles street, and worked in the winter months extremely hard. special coaches used to come to me, and special teachers of arithmetic. one of them had a new system of teaching arithmetic, which was supposed to make it simple, but in my case the system broke down.

mr. scoones told my father after i had been there a little time that i was sure to pass eventually.

on sunday evenings i used often to have supper with edmund gosse at his house in delamere terrace, and there i met some of the lights of the literary world: george moore, rider haggard, henry harland, and max beerbohm. sometimes there would be serious discussions on literature between george moore, edmund gosse, and arthur symons. i remember once, when swinburne was being discussed, arthur symons saying that there was a period in everyone’s life when one thought swinburne’s poetry not only the best, but the only poetry worth reading. it seemed then to annihilate all other verse. edmund gosse then said that he would not be at all surprised, if some day swinburne’s verse were to appear almost unintelligible to future generations. he thought it possible that swinburne might survive merely as a literary curiosity, like cowley. he also said that swinburne in his later manner was like a wheel that spun round and round without any intellectual cog.

george moore in those days was severe on guy de maupassant, and said his stories were merely carved cherry-stones. edmund gosse contested this point hotly. still more amusing than the literary discussions were those occasions when edmund gosse would tell us reminiscences of his youth, when he worked as a boy at the british museum, and of the early days of his friendship with swinburne.

there was an examination for the diplomatic service that autumn, and i was given a nomination for it, but i was ill and couldn’t compete.

i went back to hildesheim for christmas. christmas is the captain jewel of german domestic life, and no one who has not spent a christmas with a german family can really know germany, just as no one who has not lived through the easter festival with a russian family can really know russia. it is[156] only in germany that the christmas tree grows in its full glory. the christmas tree at hildesheim was laden with little tangerine oranges and sprinkled over with long threads of silver snow. when it was lighted, the carol: “stille nacht, heilige nacht,” was sung round it. the presents were arranged, or rather displayed, on a table under the tree: new presents, and a present of many years’ standing, the puppenstube, which took on a new life every christmas by being redecorated, and having the small kitchen utensils in its dolls’ kitchen refurbished. the presents were not wrapped up in parcels, but they were exposed to the full view of those who were about to receive them, and so arranged that they appeared at their very best, as though santa claus and a fairy godmother had arranged them themselves. my present was a beautiful embossed dicky.

on new year’s eve, the christmas tree was relit, and as the bells rang for new year, we clinked glasses of punch and said: “prosit neujahr.” if you want to know what is the spirit of a german christmas you will find its quintessence distilled in the poem of heine about “die heil’gen drei kon’ge aus morgenland,” which ends:

“der stern blieb stehn über joseph’s haus,

da sind sie hineingegangen;

das ochslein brüllte, das kindlein schrie,

die heil’gen drei k?nige sangen.”

while i was going through this complicated and protracted training, the date of the examination was, of course, only a matter of conjecture, but when an ambassador died there was always an atmosphere of excitement at garrick chambers, and on scoones’ face one could clearly read that something momentous had occurred. as a rule the examinations happened about once a year. having missed my first chance, which was fortunate, as i was woefully unprepared, i had to wait a long time for my second chance, and i spent the time between london, which meant garrick chambers, germany, which meant hildesheim, and italy, which meant madame traverso’s pension at lung’arno della borsa 2 bis, at florence.

one night, at edmund gosse’s, in the winter of 1895, harland was there, and the conversation turned on anatole france. i quoted him some passages from le livre de mon ami, which he had not read. the name of anatole france had not yet[157] been mentioned in the literary press of london, and harland said to me: “why don’t you write me an article about him and i will print it in the yellow book?” the yellow book by that time had lost any elements of surprise or newness it had ever had and had developed into an ordinary review to which the stock writers of london reviews contributed. i said i would try, and i wrote an article on anatole france, which was accepted by harland and came out in the april number. this was the first criticism of anatole france which appeared in england. in the same number there was a story by anatole france himself, and a long poem by william watson. when the proof of my article came, i took it to edmund gosse, and read it aloud to him in his office at the board of trade in whitehall. he was pleased with it, and his meed of generous and discriminating praise and encouragement was extremely welcome and exhilarating. he said there was a unique opportunity for anyone who should make it his aim and business to write gracefully and delicately about beautiful and distinguished things, and that i could not do better than try to continue as i had begun. no one could have been kinder nor more encouraging. the university is not a stimulating place for aspiring writers. the dons have seen it all before so many times, and heard it all so often; the undergraduates are so terribly in earnest and uncompromisingly severe about the efforts of their fellow-undergraduates; so cocksure and certain in their judgments, so that at cambridge i hid my literary aspirations, and when i left it i had partially renounced all such ambitions, thinking that i had been deluding myself, but at the same time cherishing a hidden hope that i might some day begin again. edmund gosse’s praise kindled the smouldering ashes and prevented them from being extinguished, although i was too busy learning arithmetic, geography, and long lists of obscure terms in french and german to think much about such things.

one night that winter i went with my father and my sisters to the first night of the notorious mrs. ebbsmith at the garrick theatre. sir john hare and mrs. patrick campbell both played magnificently, and mrs. campbell enjoyed a triumph. she held the audience at the beginning of the play by her grace, and by her quiet magnetic intensity, and then swept everyone off their feet by her outbursts of vituperation. mr. shaw,[158] writing in the saturday review about it, said that one of the defects of the play, the unreality of the chief female character, had “the lucky effect of setting mrs. patrick campbell free to do as she pleases in it, the result being an irresistible projection of that lady’s personal genius, a projection which sweeps the play aside and imperiously becomes the play itself. mrs. patrick campbell, in fact, pulls her author through by playing him clean off the stage. she creates all sorts of illusions, and gives one all sorts of searching sensations. it is impossible not to feel that those haunting eyes are brooding on a momentous past, and the parting lips anticipating a thrilling imminent future, whilst some enigmatic present must no less surely be working underneath all that subtle play of limb and stealthy intensity of tone.” after the third act the audience applauded deliriously, and the next day the critics declared unanimously that mrs. campbell had the ball at her feet. they all prophesied that this was the beginning of undreamed-of triumphs. they little dreamed how recklessly she would kick the ball.

at easter i went to florence once more and stayed there far into june. i think it was that year i spent a little time at perugia. one day i drove to assisi. the country was in the full glory of spring. we passed groaning carts drawn by slow, white oxen; poppies flared in the green corn; little lizards sunned themselves on the walls; one felt one was no longer in italy, but in an older country, in latium; in some little kingdom in which remus might have been king, or that kindly monarch, numa pompilius, with egeria, his gracious consort. i saw the italy that i had dreamt of ever since as a child i had read with mrs. christie in the lays of ancient rome of “where sweet clanis wanders through corn and vines and flowers,” of milk-white steer grazing along clitumnus, and the struggling sheep plunging in umbro. and when at last assisi appeared, with its shining snow-white basilica crowning the hill like a diadem, one seemed to be driving up to a celestial city.

on the 18th of may, life was made exciting by an earthquake. it happened about nine o’clock in the evening. we had just finished dinner at the pension. i had walked to my bedroom to fetch something, when there came a noise like a gas explosion or a bomb exploding, and i was thrown on to my bed. the pictures fell from the walls, and the ground seemed to be slipping away from one. outside on the landing—we[159] lived on the second floor of the palazzo alberti, up two flights of stairs—i heard the servants crying: “sono i ladri” (“the thieves are upon us”), and there was a scamper down the stairs, as the maid and the cook rushed down to bolt the front door and keep out the thieves. then various objects of value were saved, or at least a mysterious process of salvage was begun. a box containing family deeds was carried from one room to another, and some american children were carried downstairs in a blanket. the shock, i think, lasted only seven seconds, but had been, while it lasted, intense. then there was a good deal of bustle and discussion, and everybody suggested something different that ought to be done; and madame traverso carried on a conversation with the landlady of the house, who lived on the first floor. relations between the two households had hitherto been strained, and a state of veiled hostilities had existed between them. the earthquake changed all this and brought about a reconciliation. from her window madame traverso called to the landlady and assured her that we were: “nelle mani di dio” (“we are in the hands of god”). “si,” answered the landlady: “siamo nelle mani di dio” (“yes, we are in the hands of god”). signora traverso said we could not sleep in the house that night. it was not to be thought of, and we joined the population in the streets. no sooner had people begun to say it was all over, and that we could quietly go home, than another faint tremor was felt. people encamped in carriages; others walked about the streets. the terror inspired by an earthquake is unlike any other, because you feel there is no possible escape from it. at eleven o’clock in the evening there was another faint shock. we got to bed late; some of the inmates of the pension slept in a cab. the next day one could inspect the damage done. the village of grassina near the certosa had been destroyed. i had just been to the certosa, and one of the monks there, an irishman, when we asked him what the green liqueur was made of, that he sold, said: “shamrocks and melted emeralds.” grassina was a village where on good friday i had seen the procession of gesù morto by torchlight, in the april twilight, with its centurions in calico and armour, its tapers, its nasal brasses and piercing lamentation, and crowd of nut-sellers; a ceremony as old as the soil, and said to be a new incarnation of the funeral of pan.

[160]

the palazzo strozzi was rent from top to bottom with a huge crack. pillars in piazza dell’anunziata had fallen down; and at san miniato, the school of the poggio imperiale had been seriously damaged. had the shock lasted a few seconds longer the destruction in florence would have been extremely serious, and many irreplaceable treasures would have been destroyed.

the afternoon after the earthquake i bicycled out to see vernon lee, and she said that the butcher boy in her village declared that in the afternoon before the earthquake he had seen the devil leap from a cleft in the ground in a cloud of sulphurous fumes and fires. in the night there was another slight shock towards one in the morning. i was asleep and i was woken suddenly, and experienced the strange sensation of feeling the floor slightly oscillating, but it only lasted a second or two, and that was the last of the earthquake.

i made that year the acquaintance of professor nencioni, a poet and a critic, and a profound student of english literature and english verse. he was saturated with english literature, and his poems show the influence and impress of the english poets of the nineteenth century. he used to give lectures on english poetry in italian; he was a stimulating, eloquent lecturer, and his knowledge of english was amazing. i went to his lectures and made his acquaintance, and we had long talks about literature. he asked me if i had written anything, and i told him i had some typed poems, but that i had given up trying to write verse. he asked me to show them him. the next time i went to his lecture i took my typed mss. and left it with him. the next sunday after the lecture he came up to me with the mss. in his hand and said: “lei è poeta,” and he said: “never mind what anyone may tell you, i tell you it is a fact.” i was greatly exhilarated by nencioni’s encouragement, but i thought that being a foreigner he was perhaps too indulgent, and i would have felt uncomfortable had a cambridge undergraduate overheard his conversation. it had nevertheless an effect, and i thought that i would some day try to write verse again.

towards the end of the summer, i went back to germany. edward marsh joined me at hildesheim and stayed at the timmes’. e. was the most painstaking and industrious pupil professor timme ever had, and he enjoyed the german life to the full, but it was his misfortune rather than his fault[161] that he offended the easily ruffled susceptibilities of the timme family.

on one occasion he made what turned out to be an unfortunate remark about the river innerste, which is hildesheim’s river. he said it was dirty; upon which professor timme, much nettled, said: “das will ich nicht sagen. sie ist viel reiner als mancher fluss, der von einer grosstadt kommt, und vielleicht ganz rein aussieht.” [i won’t say that; it is much cleaner than many a river that comes from a big town and perhaps looks quite clean.]

there was a delightful german pupil living in the house called erich wippern, a brother of hans wippern, who had been there before. we arranged to give a kneipe for him and the other boys in one of the villages. the matter had been publicly discussed and seemed to be settled, but at the last minute, professor timme objected to it, and we had a long and painful interview on the subject. he said the kneipe was not to be, and when i reminded him that he had already given his consent, he lost his temper. we decided after this distressing scene to go away, and we left for heidelberg, our ultimate objective in any case, the next day.

e. and i had invented a game which i think i enjoyed more than any game i have ever played at, with the exception of a good game of spankaboo. it was called: “the game.” you played it like this: one player gave the other player two lines or more of poetry, or a sentence of prose, in any language. the other player was allowed two guesses at the authorship of the quotation, and, if he said it immediately after the second guess, breathlessly so to speak, a third guess; but there must not be a second’s pause between the second and the third. they had to be “double leads.” the third had to come, if at all, helter-skelter after the second guess. if you guessed right you got a mark, and if you guessed wrong you got a nought; the noughts and crosses were entered into a small book, which went on getting fuller and fuller. they were added up at the bottom of every page; but as the game is eternal, we shall never know who won it, until the last day, and then perhaps there won’t be time. we both played it well on the whole, although we both had strange lapses. i never could guess a line out of lycidas and e. never could guess a line out of adona?s. i attributed one[162] day one of the finest lines of milton to the poet montgomery, and e. made an equally absurd mistake, which happened to have a profound effect on my future, or rather on my future literary aspirations. we were playing the game in the biergarten at hildesheim. the band was playing the overture from tannh?user. schoolboys were walking round the garden, arm in arm, and when they met an acquaintance took off their hats all together, in time, and by the right, or by the left, as the case might be, held them at an arm’s length and put them back stiffly. at many little tables, groups and families were sitting enjoying the music, drinking beer and eating butterbrote. i said to e.: “who is this by in the game?” which was the recognised formula for saying you had begun to play, because the game began suddenly in the midst of conversation and circumstance quite remote from it: no matter how inappropriate or inopportune. the lines i quoted were these:

“sank in great calm, as dreaming unison

of darkness and midsummer sound must die

before the daily duty of the sun.”

“oh,” said e., without any hesitation, “it’s magnificent—shakespeare.”

“no,” i said, “it is not by shakespeare; it is the end of a sonnet by maurice baring, written at hildesheim in 1892.”

now i had shown the poem in which these lines occurred with others to some undergraduates at cambridge, possibly to e. himself, and had been told the stuff was deplorable, which no doubt it was, but this had so damped my spirits that i had resolved never to try and write verse again. then came nencioni’s praise (who had marked these very lines in blue pencil), and i partially reconsidered my decision. now came this incident, which opened a shut door for me. it was not that i didn’t know that in this game one was capable of any aberrations. it was not that i took myself seriously, but the mere fact of e. making such a mistake convinced me that mistakes in my favour were possible. nencioni might be right after all. in any case, there was no reason why i should not try; and two days later i produced a sonnet, which e. entirely approved of, and which i afterwards published.

it was a great game; it included not only verse and prose, but sayings of great and small men, and even of personal[163] acquaintances. we were both at our best in guessing things from books we had never read. i had an unerring ear for zola’s prose, which i had then read little of, and e., whose reading was far wider and deeper than mine, was very hard to baffle except, as i have already said, by quoting shelley’s adona?s, which he ended by learning by heart.

at heidelberg i introduced e. to professor ihne. professor ihne, confronted, in the shape of e., with an undergraduate, or rather with a graduate, who had just taken his degree, and had won academical distinctions, was in his most johnsonian mood, and contradicted him even when he agreed with him. he asked e. what degree he had taken at cambridge, and when e. said: “pal?ography,” ihne, with a smile, said: “oh, that’s all nonsense.” the professor turned the conversation on to his favourite topic: the superfluity of the norman element in the english language; the sad occurrence of the word pullulate in a times article was mentioned, and e. made a spirited defence of the phrase: “assemble and meet together,” which he said was a question of rhythm. “pooh!” said ihne, “it’s only association makes you think that.” the word “to get,” he said, was used to denote too many things. poor e. was interpellated, as if he, and he alone, had been responsible for the shortcomings of the english language. he used, said ihne, the word education when he meant instruction. “one is instructed at school,” he said. he asked e. for the derivation of the word caterpillar. e. had no suggestion to offer. ihne said he derived it from kater and to pill, but he had also given καθερπ?ζω a thought. then the talk veered round to literature. “schiller,” said ihne, “is a greater dramatic poet than shakespeare. shakespeare’s tragedies are too painful; king lear and othello are unbearable.” e. said, unwisely, that schiller’s women were so uninteresting. ihne said that that was a thing e. could know nothing about, as he was not a married man. for his part, and he had been a married man, schiller’s characters, and especially thekla, were the most beautiful women characters that had ever been drawn. e. tried to defend shakespeare, and pointed out the qualities of shakespeare’s women. he mentioned portia. “no,” said ihne; “portia is not a good character, because she oversteps her duties as counsel and tries to play the part of a judge.” “i consider lord byron,” said ihne,[164] “the finest english poet of the century.” e. said byron had a great sense of rhythm. “if he had merely a great sense of rhythm,” said ihne, “he wouldn’t have been a great poet.” e., to propitiate him, said something laudatory about goethe’s faust. ihne at once said that schiller was a greater poet than goethe, because faust was a collection of detached scenes, and schiller’s plays were complete wholes.

we saw professor ihne several times, and what i have described is typical of all our conversations.

after staying at heidelberg for about a week i went back to london, and the routine of garrick chambers began once more.