Chapter V: Part 5

The other source of our pleasure in this personal kind of gossip is less innocent; indeed, it is--and ever has been--a great worker of mischief. It proceeds, I believe, from the strain of the Pharisee that is in most of us. When we discuss the weaknesses and misfortunes of others, we are not solely prompted by that spirit of curiosity to which I have referred. Nor is it, as a rule, direct enmity or mere malice that prompts us, for the people we discuss may be almost unknown to us, or, on the other hand, they may be old, well-tried friends. But when we are indulging in this sort of talk, we suddenly feel a sense of our own superiority, we glow with added self-respect. Thus, there are four or five of us chattering, and someone mentions the absent Jones, who is a common acquaintance. ‘Ah! Poor old Jones!’ we exclaim; and are quickly in full cry after the quarry. ‘The trouble with old Jones, ...’ one begins. ‘You know, he ought not to have, ...’ opens the next critic. ‘As I’ve told Jones many a time, ...’ cries a third. So voice after voice swells the chorus of criticism. The superficial show of concern and sympathy is a mere formality and deceives nobody; everyone is eager to contribute his or her scrap of censure; eyes are brightening, tongues are loosened. That slight but distinctly uncomfortable sense of inferiority which we may possibly have felt in the actual presence of Jones is now compensated for by a marked sense of our own superiority and a glow of self-satisfaction.

Unless we are on our guard, we are ready to sacrifice victim after victim for the sake of this delectable but transitory feeling. Every night, in countless drawing-rooms, knives are reddened and altars smoke to propitiate this dark god of self-righteousness. And the victim of this dreadful worship is too often young and open-hearted and beautiful--and a woman.

A ROAD AND SOME MOODS

I have been living lately near a fine highway, which cuts across the blurred edge of a town and makes straight for the open country. By this road a man may quickly escape from the town and start upon almost any journey. The road will take him some part of the way to Edinburgh, or Moscow, or Bagdad, or the mountains of the moon. Or he may use it, as I do, for a saunter in the morning sunshine.

The road rises as it leaves the town, and a little way beyond my windows it climbs to a summit, so that, walking forward, one sees nothing in front but the sharp, slightly curved edge of the road against the sky. Though I have travelled this way so often, each time that I set eyes on the clean cut of the road and the great emptiness beyond, something in me is thrilled, faintly yet perceptibly, like taut wires troubled by a gust of wind. I know well, none better, what lies at the other side of the hill, the easy stretch of highway descending into a pleasant green valley; yet the sight of the little summit still holds for me some vague promise. But every hill in the world is brother to that ‘peak in Darien.’ One day, maybe, I shall stand on the crest of this tiny hill, and find that all beyond is changed. I shall look down, maybe, upon a sea covered with strange ships, or into the thronged streets of a magical city.

The other morning I left the house for the first time for several days, and walked slowly up the road. There was a touch of autumn abroad. In the mellow sunlight the trees were putting on their last splendid livery. The air was still, and had in it a faint odour of burning leaves.

In such a season, golden, spacious, but already whispering of the end, there will often come to a man a certain solemn mood, a vein of not unpleasing melancholy, and for a little while he will see all life moving to a grave measure, an adagio for strings. But the mood that encompassed me that morning was very different, and much less welcome. As I walked forward I seemed to sink into depression:

And fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness--and blind thoughts, I knew not, nor could name.

In a fair state of health and unassailed by bad fortune, I walked in that genial sunshine--as a man will--the victim of self-torment or inexplicable misery, the Old Man of the Sea heavy on my shoulders.

Now when I came to the summit of the road and looked down the other side, my whole mood was changed in a flash. And for no other reason than this: an inn stands there, a little way back from the road, and its walls had been newly done a creamy white, so that they showed dazzlingly against the foliage near by. That is all.

But the moment that my eyes fell upon these gleaming white walls my mood was changed, and I saw another vision of life. At that moment, as when a loved person enters a room, it seemed to me as if the footlights of the world were suddenly turned up, and I could hear the strings and flutes of the great orchestra of life. I saw the road before me dancing away to the hills, and the hills themselves standing in silent jubilation. It was one of those rare moments when the passion, the wonder, the mystery of life smite through a man’s flesh and bone, and set his spirit towering above good and evil fortune, fearless, exultant, eager for the best and worst of human existence. Such moments come to us on a sudden wave of exultation, and then leave us to be carried gently forward by the customary easy flow of thoughts and emotions. What marks their passage in a man’s life, what heroic promptings they bring, what valorous decisions are born of their passing cannot be told, least of all by the man himself. I know that I stayed for a few seconds on the crest of the hill, and then continued my walk. The rare moment had come and gone, sweeping away my former dull mood and leaving me in a pleasant reverie. I walked along, thinking, maybe, of inns and the part they have played in Romance, or of whitened walls and the time when even London was a city of white buildings; or I thought about myself (as you do), and what a fine fellow I should be if I were not a fool. It is no great matter what I thought.

But mark how little of a man’s life he can explain, no matter how often he opens the doors and searches the dusty lumber rooms of his mind. There was no reason, in or out of nature, for my first mood of depression. And, to me, there would seem as little reason for the sudden change, the momentary exultation, and the pleasant aftermath. At times the sight of a mountain of felicity will not raise a man’s spirits; at other times, if his foot trips over a molehill, he will cry out in ecstasy at the goodness of life. We never talk to less purpose than when we say of a man who is almost a stranger: ‘He ought to be happy, for he has this and that at his command.’ Knowing our man, and being aware of what life is doing with him and what he is doing with life, we might hazard a guess at his state of mind, but even then it is perilous. Mark also how we realise the beauty and blessing of life itself only in rare, inexplicable moments, and then most keenly. It comes to us then like a sudden blare of trumpets in the wind. We are always ready to talk and write about the wonder of human existence, but, unless we are something more than common men, we do not pass the day and lie down at night thrilled by the thought of our participation in this greatest of games. We go our way as best we can, carried forward or swept back by the ebb and flow of circumstance, and are by turn triumphant, masterful, listless, fearful, despairing.

Perhaps to some of us the moments of revelation, the flashes of insight, never come at all; to the best of us they come but rarely. Life has seemed to us, for months or years maybe, an overcrowded, beggarly repast, at which a man must snatch at morsels and crumbs of joy: now, in one flash of time, it will seem a divine banquet, the high festival of immortal creatures. The moment passes, but something has been left behind.

ON A CERTAIN CONTEMPORARY ESSAYIST

IN the early thirties of the last century, readers of _Fraser’s Magazine_ were puzzled, startled or irritated by a certain ‘Clothes-Philosophy,’ which was expounded to them month by month by an almost unknown Scotch fire-eater, a lover of brand-new words and riotous syntax. Such readers were privileged to witness the first great eruption of the Carlyle volcano. Doubtless it took most of them nearly twenty years to bring themselves to say that they had enjoyed the spectacle, and even then they were probably lying; but still, it was a privilege. But lest we should be too humble about our own day, I hasten to point out that we too have our ‘Clothes-Philosophy,’ and that it is cast in a simpler, more pleasing mould than the older one. It is, too, much more of a true ‘Clothes-Philosophy’ and is no elaborate mystification, no clumping Teutonic allegory, born in a study, but the real thing, coming newly every week or month from the tailor’s counter. Although he has his place here as a man of letters and may never have handled a needle or a pair of scissors, Mr. H. Dennis Bradley, I am sure, will not object to being called a tailor. It would be absurd of him to do so, for it is this very trade of tailoring, hitherto somewhat slighted, that he is now ennobling with his pen. But it would be equally absurd if we, on our part, set down Mr. Bradley merely as an astute advertiser who simply wants to make us buy his suits, one who is satisfied with clothing our carcases and is ready to leave mind and soul untended.

If Mr. Dennis Bradley is not at heart a man of letters, then I do not know the breed. From the very beginning, I divined the essential quality in him. I see him, in my mind’s eye, turning from the bundles of spring suitings, from the company of cloth merchants and cutters, into his sanctum to be alone with his art, or rather, his second and greater art, that of writing. There, I see him laboriously yet lovingly beating out phrase after phrase until each little essay is worthy of his great public. Lamb once said of a man that he would have been a tailor only he lacked the spirit. But think of how Lamb would have praised Mr. Bradley, who has the spirit to be not only an excellent tailor but a writer as well; and not, mark you, merely a tailor playing at authorship and trying to keep the needle and thread out of our sight, but an author and tailor at one and the same time, giving us, as it were, the literature and philosophy of shopkeeping and suit-making. This is to be a man of note, an originator, a force in letters. I fancy I can hear the unborn professors rustling their papers on ‘Bradley and His Age’ or ‘The Old Bond Street Circle.’

Being an original, Mr. Dennis Bradley cannot be fitted into any of our little pigeon-holes; he is not easily labelled; but as I have already spoken of his essays, we will keep the term and call him an essayist. His work, however, has had, and still has, so many phases that we shall do well to discriminate a little. There has been, for example, a change in his manner; and it has shown us, on the whole, a steady development, that advance towards the perfection of the instrument which marks the true artist. In his early work there was an irregularity, a wildness, a careless profusion, which promised much but hinted that the artist was not yet fully grown. He tried, if I remember rightly, to push his prose as near to poetry as it would go; and it was only later, when the thought became more weighty, that he turned to the quieter yet more impressive manner, the chiselled form and the pregnant phrase. During this early period, one of his favourite themes was Youth and Age; no new thing, it is true, but one to which he gave new significance by his characteristic treatment. When he exalted Youth and covered Age with ridicule, was he not interpreting the spirit of the times? One can discover, in that alone, the born man of letters. The times, disillusioned, were all for Youth, and he, divining it, stepped forth as our spokesman. Just because he happened to be also a tailor, just because young men happen to spend more on clothes than old men do, is no reason why Mr. Bradley should be robbed of his praise as a writer sensitive to our subtle changes of feeling.

Although there are some persons, not unpretending in criticism, who would have us believe that they prefer the earlier, wilder note, happily they are few, and most of us, I imagine, pass with pleasure to the later, more chastened form. Here we can remark his versatility, his admirable method of appealing to one type of mind after another. Now, he will give us a bright little philosophical treatise, and, sweeping away the accumulation of trivialities, he will dig in a brisk sentence or two to the roots of life, as in his essay on ‘The Three Essentials.’ Now, he will frankly appeal to the hard-headed man of affairs, and will annihilate half-a-dozen economic heresies in one paragraph. Sometimes it is the social rather than the purely economic problem that engages him. But his large sweep does not make for easy classification, and I, for one, cannot attempt to discriminate between such things, say, as ‘A Prophet on Profits,’ ‘Comparisons,’ and ‘Economy and Rubbish.’ Now and again, it is true, he seems to lay himself open to the charge of sacrificing everything to the topical appeal; but, after all, these are critical times, when men are looking for light; and, at the worst, the manner, unique in our letters, will remain to beguile us. Moreover, there also will remain the personal note, for like all your true essayists he does not hesitate to reveal his personality, to make the reader his confidant.

But when all is said and done, the most remarkable thing about Mr. Bradley, the thing that makes him unique, is his double rôle. One would have thought that his author-self would have come to despise and ignore his tailor-self. But no--their allegiance holds, and is, indeed, stronger than ever. In the early days, there was not always a perfect understanding between the two. The author would come forward and have his say, without leaving any opening for the tailor, who had perforce to push his way to the front and shout the louder. In short, the transition from pure literature to commerce was not always well done: one was often uncomfortably aware of a hiatus. But now--to be apt in metaphor--such creases have been ironed out and the whole thing fits together and is apparently seamless. We begin in the outside world, with all its heart-breaking problems, its gloom and strife; we are driven hither and thither, menaced with ruin; and yet when we come to the end, always we find ourselves in the same solemn temple, our one place of refuge, serene as demi-gods among the spring and autumn suitings. We never know at first what terrible problem we shall be asked to face, but always we have but to follow this new Ariel of ours to be led out of the world into the sanctuary in Old Bond Street. There are times, indeed, when the author, the victim of temperament, is so plunged into gloom that it is the tailor alone who saves the situation, who arrives just when we seem altogether lost, so that his inevitable final refrain of ‘Lounge Suits, Dinner Suits, Dress Suits, and Overcoats’ comes to our ears like a benediction.

Surely it is pleasant to reflect that one so unique in our letters is able, week by week and month after month, to appeal to such a large public, to dower his work with such lordly space and noble type, to have his own illustrator, even though this last is somewhat out of key, being a trifle too flippant and sybaritic for such solemn letterpress. I will wager that this ‘Clothes-Philosophy’ of ours has made more friends, not least among editors and others, than ever did the one our grandfathers knew. Which is a fine feather for Mr. Bradley’s cap--if ever he should take to wearing one.

ON LIFE AND LUCKY-BAGS

Reader, does your mind ever run back to the time when you were in receipt of a regular allowance, when you could be described almost as a ‘person of independent means’? The other day I mused in this vein, and fell to thinking of the day before yesterday, when I was a chubby, pudding-fed lad, and the aforesaid allowance amounted to four shillings and fourpence at the end of a year, but was delivered into my hands at the rate of one penny per week. Saturday morning was the appointed time, I believe. Of course, I often received other and larger sums; aunts and uncles were usually good for half-a-crown, or even more, and grandfathers in those days seemed to be literally made of silver coin. But the Saturday penny differed from these occasional presents in that it was my very own; there were no hints of money-boxes and savings-banks and ‘rainy-days’; the penny was placed in my hand, and could be used immediately as a sacrifice on the glittering altar of Juvenile Folly. This was very much to my taste, for, like most healthy children, I scorned those doubtful deities, Thrift and Prudence; even now I can hardly bring myself to accord them the worship which is, from what I hear, their due.

A number of my playmates received their weekly pennies at the same time--almost at the same moment, I imagine--and it was our invariable custom to retire in a body to a little shop near by. It was a tiny fancy-goods and sweet shop, whose owner must have subsisted almost entirely on the patronage of such small fry as ourselves. To us, as we clustered round the window, it was a veritable land of Heart’s Delight, for a penny was a potent talisman in those days, and we had the choice of a bewildering array of entirely useless articles. (What do children receive on Saturday mornings these times, I wonder; a ten shilling note or a War Bond?). So, clutching our pennies in warm, moist little hands, we would spend a delicious half-hour gazing through the shop window, a round-eyed, shrill-voiced crowd of speculators, until, after much discussion, our minds made up, we would clatter--one by one--into the shop and come out triumphantly hugging our purchases. The rest was a swift descent into prosaic life. The great moment had come and gone.

Now, sympathetic reader, I will discover to you the depths of my folly. For you must know that some poetic rogue, some Autolycus of the fancy-goods trade, had invented and placed upon the market the thing called the lucky-bag. It was my bane, and the cause of my weekly undoing. Never was there such a snare for an imaginative child! It was a large, sealed paper-packet, bulging auspiciously; it contained articles of great variety, and some, so ran the legend on the cover, were of ‘immense value.’ Here was wealth, touched with chance and mystery and magic; here was El Dorado within sight. When I add that the price of this marvel was exactly one penny, there is nothing more to be said.

At first we were all victims. But, alas!--nothing of ‘immense value’ was forth-coming. The packets contained nothing of more importance than some trivial little wooden article, and a few contemptible pink sweets--a vile pennyworth! The bulging, which gave one the idea that the bag was crammed with bulky toys, was caused, I regret to say, by a sheet of stiff brown paper artfully disposed beneath the outer covering. So my companions, worldly wise in their generation, laughed to scorn the wiles of the lucky-bag merchant, and betook themselves to other and more solid purchases--a top, a ball, or a pennyworth of bulls-eyes or toffee. Here they receive a pennyworth for a penny and were satisfied.

It was otherwise with me. I wanted the land of Heart’s Delight for a penny, and though I have never got it, there were moments when, holding the newly-bought, unopened bag in my hand, I had glimpses of joys beyond mere pennyworths of this and that. Week after week, month after month, the lure of the magic packet held me in thrall. There were times when I would resolve to break my bonds, and traffic no more with the cheater, the mocker of sweet innocence, but it was all to no purpose; as soon as I approached the fateful shop and caught sight of the bulging packets my resolutions went like smoke, and once again my penny would be swept into the till, and once more I would stand, with heart beating high, looking into the mysterious bag.

And always the same hollow mockery; always the stiff brown paper bringing my dreams to earth. My collection of little wooden egg-cups and tables grew apace; often I nearly made myself sick by trying to find some consolation in the abominable pink sweets. My elders laughed at me, and I was the scorn of my youthful playmates. Yet I think those pennies were well expended, for I moved, unknowingly, in great company--among the happy simpletons on the one hand and the fantastic dreamers on the other. Don Quixote, Parson Adams, Pickwick, and the rest at one elbow; Lully, Paracelsus, and all the other seekers of Philosophers’ Stones, Elixirs of Life, and Lands of Gold jostling me on the other side.

So I was in my innocence, and even now when I am ‘if a man speak truly, little better than one of the wicked,’ I have not changed so much. Though the pennies do not come so easily as of old, the dreams have not yet faded, the magical lights have not yet been quite extinguished; the solid pennyworths still fail to satisfy me, who have been on the very frontiers of El Dorado. So, though the disappointments still come thick and fast, I have my moments, perhaps you, too----?

But I fear my name will never head a subscription list or cause a commotion in Lombard Street. I sometimes think I shall never even be asked to open a bazaar.

GRIGSBY--A RECORD AND AN APPRECIATION

(_Being an attempt to capture an admired manner._)

It was, I think, Mr. S. P. B. Mais who told us that we live ‘in an age of amazing geniuses.’ The observation is so profoundly true, and one owes so much to this critic’s sane and luminous appreciations of contemporary writers, that one cannot help feeling surprised that he nowhere makes any mention of Grigsby. Certainly, in these fruitful times, a man cannot criticise all his fellow-authors; there are other omissions, notably D. S. Ballowby, Geoffrey Domsteen, Hilda Perkstone (who wrote _Wherefore?_), and Anna Lummit; nevertheless, a lover of contemporary letters can hardly forgive the critic’s strange neglect of Grigsby. Therefore, although making no pretence of being specially fitted for the task, I feel that my long admiration for the poet and my several years’ acquaintance with the man himself, render it a duty on my part to try and give a sketch, however slight, of his career, personality, aims and achievements.

Harold Hopkins Grigsby, poet and littérateur, was born sometime in the late seventies of the last century in the pleasant old town of Channingford. Like many other famous men of letters, he came from a family that showed no particular devotion to literature or the other arts; his father, a not very prosperous corn-merchant, spent his leisure hours breeding fox-terriers, while his mother was chiefly occupied with domestic duties. Grigsby himself, troubled maybe by painful memories, has said little of these early days, so little that I am unable to state where it was he received his education, but tuition of some sort he undoubtedly had. When we next see him, he is nearing the threshold of manhood, and is far removed from Channingford, being at Wolverhampton, apprenticed to an oil and colour merchant. There, in the oil and colour shop, he was indeed a caged soul; even yet he cannot speak of those Wolverhampton days without a trace of bitterness: ‘The oil did not make my path more smooth; the colour did not make my world less drab,’ he has said to me more than once. Then it was that his fancy began to take wing; he turned to literature. Friendless, away from home, misunderstood by those about him, he turned to the poets for consolation. ‘I owe more than man can repay,’ he has frankly confessed to me, ‘to Snipper’s fourpenny “Flowers of Poesie” series!’ He became an ardent student of the poet’s craft, and it was not long before he himself began to write. Several little things of his found their way into the Poets’ Corner of the local journal, and shortly after his twenty-second birthday, there appeared the first volume from his pen, _Blossoms of Sorrow_ (West Midland Almanac and Railway Guide Publishing Co.). It was not a success, being rather an immature production and quite unlike the poet’s later work; indeed, for years, he was ashamed of the volume, and refused to speak of it even to his intimate friends. Yet those of us who are fortunate enough to possess a copy (it is very scarce now, and must fetch a good price), can turn to _Blossoms of Sorrow_ and find, here and there, the definite promise of what has since been so magnificently achieved, can discover among so much immature writing more than a few hints of what was to come, the occasional note of the real Grigsby. Lines like these:

‘The withered flowers of an outworn passion
Trodden under the feet of the dawn....’

Or

‘...You and I
Are weary of life and enamoured of death,
The end of the travail of blood, the labour of breath,’

are not without their significance now, when we know to what fulness of meaning and felicity of phrase such things are leading us.

About this time came the darkest hour of Grigsby’s early struggles. The volume, as I have said, was a failure; meanwhile, the poet’s father had died, owing money; and there had been a quarrel with the oil and colour merchant. Grigsby had now neither employment nor friends to whom he could turn. But the good fortune that has attended some few of our poets (notably Wordsworth) waited upon Grigsby when he had almost given up hope. He learned to his surprise that an aunt, whom he had not seen for years, had died leaving him a considerable sum of money, for the most part safely invested in Imperial Mineral Waters Pref. He was now free to devote all his time to the pursuit of letters, and it was not long before he did what most young geniuses do sooner or later, he went up to London. I have not space to chronicle his early years there, though a full record would make a very fascinating chapter in the literary life of the time; let it suffice to say that he moved as far as was possible in the literary and artistic world, formed many valuable friendships, yet never let a day pass without taking up his pen. Like many other brilliant young literary men, he soon came under the influence of R. U. Bortwith, the editor of the _Pale Review_ and the literary oracle of his day. It was in the _Pale Review_ that Grigsby’s first narrative poem, ‘Palomides,’ appeared, along with occasional lyrics. He also edited _The Apothecary in English Literature_ in the well-known series published by Messrs. Downe & Cashe, wrote a monograph on Henry Kirke White, and contributed some excellent criticisms and reviews to various periodicals. All this time, though he was becoming known to a small but influential group of critics and editors, no second volume of verse had come from his pen.

His friendship with Bortwith, however, soon brought him into touch with several other young poets, Robert Blorridge, Geoffrey Domsteen, Anna Lummit, and others, and it was not long before the famous ‘No Verb’ group was formed, a group of which, I have reason to know, he was the leading member. Whatever may be said to the contrary, there is no doubt that it was Grigsby, and Grigsby alone, who kept the ‘No Verbs’ together. By this time, everyone knows the aims and achievements of this enthusiastic little band of writers; how they triumphed in spite of a storm of hostile criticism is now ancient history; and we are only concerned with the movement so far as it affected Grigsby. To him most of the credit is due, for the original idea was his: I have had the story from his own lips. They were talking late one night at Domsteen’s, some four or five young poets, and the subject was, as usual, their art. It was agreed upon by all present that the old forms of verse were outworn, and that if the fresh beauty of English poetry was to be restored, there would have to be a change of form. It was then that Grigsby, in a flash, saw a solution to the problem--the Verb!--English verse must be shorn of its verbs to recover its beauty and arise rejuvenated. The idea was quickly outlined, and all his hearers took it up with enthusiasm. There and then, it was decided to eliminate the verb, and the group dispersed to begin experiments with the new form. Who can forget the battle that followed--the indignant letters, the replies, the hisses of derision and disapproval from pedantic critics, the answering battle-cry of ‘Down with the Verb!’? But we are not concerned now with the movement itself, but with what was its finest fruit--Grigsby’s second volume, _Nullity_, the book that made his reputation. It was only to be expected that a volume by a writer so original, and, moreover, written in the ‘No Verb’ manner, would be ignored or derided by conservative critics; nevertheless, it met with a warm welcome in some influential quarters. A review that appeared in THE BELLMAN’S JOURNAL was particularly enthusiastic, and did credit to its author, who, by a singular coincidence, chanced to be no less than Grigsby’s cousin. All good judges would not hesitate now to agree with the concluding remarks of the review: ‘By his sincerity, courage, extraordinary wealth of imagery and happiness of phrase, force of passion and depth of thought, Mr. Grigsby in _Nullity_ has shown himself not only a writer to be reckoned with, but one who has gained for himself, in one bound, a foremost place among contemporary poets.’ No sooner does one recall the volume than countless wonderful lines leap to the memory, passages of such sombre beauty as:

‘Faint press of worn etiolated feet
Upon the dun mephitic street,
Under a bulging reasty sky....’

or such well-remembered things as:

‘Spring!--the breezy spinster, sour-apple green,
Acidulous virgin, lengthy and lean,
And all our red-flannelled days at an end....’

or the familiar lines from ‘Decayed Trades,’ with all its quaint symbolism:

‘Weary of butchers with hands as heavy as lead,
And fruiterers, fulsome as their old wares;
Weary of bakers, sweaty with paste, and seemingly dead
To all higher things, to all nobler cares.’

Though opinions may differ as to the value of the ‘No Verb’ manner, none can deny the beauty of the verse in _Nullity_. Indeed, the only just complaint that can be urged against Grigsby in this volume concerns itself with the note of pessimism that undoubtedly finds its way into the majority of the poems. But this, I have reason to know, was not the result of a foolish pose; Grigsby has always been too sincere an artist for that; but he himself was journeying through the ‘valley of the shadow’ at the time when the book was written, and the verses are the genuine expression of his moods and thoughts. There is no trace of pessimism or bitterness in his later work.

It was shortly after the appearance of _Nullity_, if my memory serves me, that I met the poet for the first time. I had dropped into the habit of looking in at Ivorstein’s studio, and it was on one of my visits there that I found a group of artists and men of letters listening intently to a tall, slim young man in their midst. He was declaiming, if I remember rightly, against Miss Sylvia Sylcox, the popular poetess, whose _Noughts and Kisses_ was then going through edition after edition. The speaker was no other than Grigsby; and when afterwards I had the fortune to make my way homewards in his company, I counted myself a lucky man. Nor was I wrong, for after years of--what he has been good enough to call--friendship, my admiration for the artist is only equalled by my respect for the man. A brilliant conversationalist, witty yet always kindly, with a fund of just comment upon authors living and dead always to hand, I know no man of letters who makes such a genial, wise companion. But this is by the way. A little later, the great happiness of his life came to him, his marriage, which in itself did not a little to widen his outlook and touch his work to even finer issues. The lady of his choice, who has proved herself an invaluable helpmate and a very charming hostess, was Miss Cecilia Snorks, daughter of the late Canon Snorks, and herself the writer of two well-known books, _Humble Hearts in Many Mansions_ and _The Heptameron Retold for Children_. But we must pass lightly over the next few years, during which time, however, Grigsby’s pen was not idle. He published two slim volumes, _Palomides and Other Poems_ and _Buckingham: A Tragedy_, which did not attract so much attention as _Nullity_, but yet commanded respect and doubtless added to their author’s reputation. Also, as before, he was engaged in periodical work, for the most part critical essays and reviews, many of which he afterwards collected and published in _A Poet--And Some Others_ (Downe and Cashe). Then, after a prolonged retreat in South Lancashire, he produced the work his friends had long been expecting, the work that many of us believe has given him--or will give him--a high place in English literature. I refer, of course, to _The Golden Garnering_, a volume of lyrics of no great size, but yet packed with poetry of the highest order. Here, at last, we have the true Grigsby, self-confident, matured, in full command of his powers. All that had gone before, his childhood at Channingford, the early struggles at Wolverhampton, the days and nights with his brilliant set in London, the ripeness of later, quieter years, all lead to _The Golden Garnering_; and not in vain, for it is one of the few enduring contributions of this age to letters. In these lyrics of Grigsby’s, one discovers all the best qualities of our older English verse, along with a great deal that is new, being native to the poet. Over and above the beautiful lyrical flow, the sharply etched phrase, the abundant fine imagery, familiar to all lovers of our verse, there is a touch of restless modernity, an increasing burden of thought, that mark the true poet of our own time. Dropping the ‘No Verb’ manner and returning with increased power to the older forms, Grigsby, in this volume, presents us with an extraordinary variety of measures, alike only in their marvellous fitness for each subject and mood. At times, he will move us with exquisite cadences, perfectly wedded to the matter, as in--

‘Sleep, gentle sleep, I know not whence it comes,
Sleep from the dusk of some immortal dream,
Clouds to the eyes and hazes o’er the mind....’

At other times, we are roused and delighted by one startling yet just image, as in--

‘Day, a white pack, chases the black fox, Night,
And faster than horse and hound, the fled-away shades....’

Again, the poet will express himself with force and passion, yet seem to be singing a carelessly beautiful song, as, for example, in the oft-quoted ‘Hymn to the Clubmen’--

‘Men of wrath, your tongues are burning
With the angry words unspoken;
And all love and beauty spurning,
Nature has for you no token....’

Or in the less lyrical but still more forceful and characteristic lines beginning:

‘The dust of noonday shall be cursed
To him: and he shall slake his thirst
In many a public place....’

And, here and there, we see the poet using the full compass of his instrument, as in the now famous ‘To the Ox,’ and particularly the familiar fourth stanza, beginning:

‘Thou know’st naught of our bitterness, grave beast;
No angry Pharisees can frown thee down;
For thee, the hills have spread their dewy feast
Of agelong green, outlasting road and town....’

But one could go on quoting until the volume was exhausted. There is, however, something still to be said before leaving _The Golden Garnering_. There is no doubt that Grigsby shows himself in this book as one in the true tradition of our great English poets; he takes his place in that magnificent procession which includes Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley and all the other masters of the craft; and his verse has so clearly the same qualities as that of his great predecessors that perhaps it is not surprising that some critics, of more ill-will than knowledge or judgment, have gone so far as to accuse Grigsby of plagiarism. The accusation is, of course, so unjust, nay, so utterly absurd, that it merely recoils on the heads of those who have been foolish enough to make it. But as some of the passages quoted above have been actually cited as instances of the so-called plagiarism, readers who have not already dismissed these charges have here an opportunity of discovering what importance need be attached to them. Those of us who know the poet have no fear of the result. And here, this slight sketch of Grigsby’s life and work must end. He has much yet to offer a public that is looking to him more and more for vision and hope; there is, to my knowledge, at least one volume still in manuscript that will surprise even the most ardent lovers of _The Golden Garnering_. We may be sure that what follows from his pen will not fall below the very high standard he has set himself. And pondering over the poet’s career, still happily unfinished, though none of us can hope to claim such genius, we may at least try to emulate the other virtues that, in this rare instance among men of letters, go along with it, the patience and perseverance, the unselfish, even temper, and, not least, that devotion to a high ideal which is not so uncommon among men of our race as our enemies would have us believe.

A PARAGON OF HOSTS

Mr. Max Beerbohm, in his delightful essay on _Hosts and Guests_, declared that ‘In life or literature there has been no better host than Old Wardle.’ It is an affirmation that does him credit, and I, for one, would not readily tilt against this or any other judgment of his. Nevertheless, I have just discovered a man who, considered simply as a host, seems to me greater than even Old Wardle himself. Life has a knack of over-reaching letters, and so it chances that my candidate is no mere character of fiction, dispensing the vast but insubstantial hospitality born of a novelist’s flow of fancy and ink, but one who was a real--a very real--person in his day. And I account him the greatest of hosts because he dedicated his life to the business, or rather to the noble service, of hospitality: he seems to have had no other passion in life, no other motive for living, apart from this desire to entertain his friends as friends should be entertained; he aimed at perfection and achieved it, and so remains the host unblemished, immaculate, a luminous ideal. Once out of the brutish state, man is a hospitable creature; his records are crowded with instances of unsparing bounty, of prodigal feasts and fortunes squandered upon entertainment: the table groans through the ages. But neither legend nor history shows us the fellow of him whom I praise. Even in the most magnificent figures of hospitality there is some flaw; emperor or oligarch, merchant-prince or baron, not one but shows some motive outside pure benevolence, some speck of pride, some touch of self-seeking. He alone is unspotted, hospitality incarnate, the perfect host, whose story I have lately read in an old volume that is a gallery of strange forgotten figures. There, it is true, he appears only as a man of whims, an eccentric, an oddity in a collection of oddities; but it takes time for a man to come into his own. But though nearly two hundred years have gone over his grave, Mr. Mathew of Thomastown, for such was his designation, shall take his true place yet as the pattern of hosts and the idol of all who go out as guests.

Mathew, whose Christian name has not come down to us, was an Irish gentleman who inherited a large estate at Thomastown, in the county of Tipperary, a patrimony that was worth some eight thousand a year. This was a good income even in England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Ireland, where things were cheaper, it was almost princely. No sooner had Mathew taken over his estate than he determined to build a large mansion, after a design of his own, for the special purpose of entertaining, and to surround it with grounds, laid out in the newly adopted mode of English gardening and comprising some 1500 acres of his best land. This meant an enormous outlay, and so, in order to avoid incurring any debt on the estate, he did what few other Irish gentlemen of his or any other day have done--he deliberately cut down his own expenditure. For seven years (how these significant numbers crop up!) he retired to the Continent and lived on six hundred a year, while the remainder of his income was used to carry out his great scheme, or, if you like, to nurture his most glorious hobby-horse. Already, you see, he plainly shows himself no ordinary man. His great plan, his long view, his voluntary exile--these things mark him off from the common run of men. He was a man with a purpose, with a vision that kept his feet travelling along one straight road. Most men of this type, men with a purpose, have looked to vastly different ends; their purpose has been to gain as much power, to obtain as much of other people’s money, as possible; on the other hand, the end that he proposed was the spending of money on other people. Irish gentlemen of his day were, of course, hospitable and generous to the point of eccentricity, but then they differed from him in having no vision to which they shaped their destiny. They were capable of spending all, and more than all, their incomes on entertaining, but they were certainly not capable of doing what Mathew did, of living for seven years on less than a twelfth part of their incomes for the sake of future hospitality. It is clear that Mathew had qualities that are rarely combined in one person; he could not only dream, plan, and try to shape his destiny, he could also afford to wait; and people who have ideas and can afford to wait are very seldom found either in his day or since, particularly in the county of Tipperary. He was a great man, and we cannot know too much about him.

At the end of his seven years’ exile he returned to Dublin and spent some time there, probably to meet as many good fellows as he could before settling in the country and beginning his noble career as host. He must have had a good many adventures at home and abroad, but only one has come down to us, and that happened during his stay in Dublin. The story is worth telling because it shows him in another light. At that time, towards the end of Queen Anne’s reign, party feeling was at its height; Whigs and Tories had just been bitterly divided about the Peace, and the question of who was to be Anne’s successor was widening the rift between parties. As usual, Dublin was a storm-centre; blows were following words more closely than ever, and gentlemen were calling each other out every day. News of this delectable state of affairs in Dublin reached the ears of two fighting men in London, Major Pack and Captain Creed, who thought it a good opportunity to try their skill in fence among the Irish, and so set out for Dublin in search of adventures. Determined to go to the fountain-head of honour, they made inquiry in the Dublin coffee-houses for the best swordsmen, and learned that a gentleman lately arrived from France was accounted one of the best in Europe. This was no other than our friend Mathew. Major Pack, who was clearly no Bobadil, resolved to take the first opportunity of picking a quarrel. Seeing Mathew carried along the street in his chair one day, the fire-eating major, after the manner of his kind, deliberately jostled the fore-chairman. Mathew, however, being a quiet fellow for all his swordsmanship, gave the major the benefit of the doubt and took no notice of the incident. But, unfortunately for himself, Pack boasted of the affair in a public coffee-house, giving it out that Mathew had not the spirit to ask for an explanation. A friend of Mathew’s, Macnamara by name and one of the best fencers in Ireland, happened to be present, and he promptly took up the quarrel, told the major that his friend Mathew would certainly have chastised him had he observed the affront, and promised, on his absent friend’s behalf, a speedy meeting if that was what the major was wanting. The upshot of it was that within a few hours’ time, in a private room in a tavern, four Christian gentlemen were busily engaged in trying to let each other’s blood out. Four--because the seconds, Macnamara and Captain Creed, could not allow themselves to be mere spectators, and so fell to work with their principals. The fight, which should cut some figure in the annals of the duel, was long and bloody. But though the two English officers fought with great obstinacy, they were clearly out-matched, and finally were so exhausted from the wounds they had received that they were compelled to admit defeat.

Here Mathew’s biographer, after describing the combat, tells us of a singular circumstance, which is best related in his own words. ‘Upon this occasion,’ he writes, ‘Mathew gave a remarkable proof of the perfect composure of his mind during the action. Creed had fallen first, on which Pack exclaimed: “Ah, poor Creed, are you gone?” “Yes,” replied Mathew, with the utmost calmness, “and you shall instantly _pack_ after him,” at the same time making a home thrust quite through his body, which threw him to the ground. This was the more remarkable as he was never known in his life, either before or after, to have aimed at a pun.’ Bravo, Mathew! Had you never been the greatest of hosts, had you never attained such skill with the sword, yet we could have made shift to send you down to posterity as ‘Single-Pun Mathew.’ I am not sure, however, that our chronicler is right when he gives us this as an example of Mathew’s perfect composure of mind. Surely this solitary pun, this lonely but splendid star, was due to the temporary absence of that perfect composure of his mind; a momentary feeling of elation crashed through his lifelong habit of avoiding puns, and out the thing flashed. On this incident alone one could build up a very pretty defence of those Shakespearian puns which appear to be the bane of so many worthy persons’ admiration for the poet. But Major Pack and Captain Creed are still bleeding on the tavern floor--we must return to them. The surgeons, finding it impossible to have them moved, had beds brought into the room, where the two officers lay for many weeks. At first their lives were despaired of, but being stout fellows, they contrived to astonish everybody by recovering. It is pleasant to relate that their most constant visitors were Mathew and his friend Macnamara, that all four were soon on the best of terms, and that Pack and Creed were completely cured of their fire-eating propensities. We can safely leave them to rejoin their regiments, and turn to Mathew in his greatest _rôle_, Mathew as host.

He had stayed long enough in Dublin to gather about him a circle of excellent friends, and so he determined to retire to his estate at Thomastown and begin his great work. All his plans had been put into execution, and everything was ready. And now you shall discover what manner of host he was. But first let me ask you to consider, in strict private, your own trials as a guest; think of the visits you have made that you began in high hopes and cut short in utter weariness; remember the tribulations that only the guest, modest, sanguine, wistful, long-suffering, can know, those thorns thick-set about the rose of hospitality; enumerate the things that have made you invent appointments to get away and tell lies innumerable to avoid returning; consider what might have made your stay in Jones’ house a pleasant memory and your good friend Brown a better host; and when you have done all this, you will be more apt to appraise Mathew at his true worth.

His house had accommodation for forty guests and their servants, and each guest had every convenience to hand in his own suite of rooms. If he wished, a guest could take his meals in his own apartment, ordering what he wanted from the kitchen and, if he felt inclined, inviting other guests to dine with him. If he wanted society, he could go to the common dining-room, where a ‘daily ordinary’--as they called it then--was kept. Here there was none of the customary ceremony; the host took his place anywhere; all ideas of rank and precedence were laid aside; they were all good fellows together. This dining-room must have been like nothing that we have known in a private house; it comes nearer to a restaurant, but a restaurant somewhere in the Happy Isles, a restaurant of men’s dreams, where the company is select and small, the fare choice, the waiters quick and obliging and innocent of tip-hunting, and, not least, one where there is nothing to pay. This was the day of the coffee-house, and Mathew had one of his largest rooms fitted up to resemble one of these places, upon which contemporary civilisation seemed to be dependent. It had all the features of the City coffee-house, such as Will’s, the haunt of Dryden, or Button’s, beloved of Addison; there were barmaids and waiters, ready to supply refreshments at all hours of the day; and chess-boards, backgammon tables, newspapers, pamphlets, and what not. But more wonderful still, the mansion contained not only a coffee-house, but a tavern! Oh, noble Mathew! One could, of course, take a glass in one’s own room or the coffee-house, or split a bottle in the dining-room--there was no restriction; still, for the sake of the jolly Pantagruelian fellows among his guests, Mathew set up a tavern. There, attended by a ‘waiter in a blue apron’ (then the fashion in taverns), they could give their orders without restraint, and fuddle and roar it after supper without fear of disturbing the more sedate members of the house-party.