Chapter IV: Section ONE: Synthesis (3)

Lathom’s portrait of Miss Milsom is the wickedest piece of satire you ever saw. She, fortunately, does not see it at all. In fact, she lugged the parson up to have a look at it yesterday. Perry, though a parson, is no fool. He looked grave, said that it was a striking picture, and added that Mr. Lathom had a great gift which should be put to great uses. Lathom grinned, and Miss Milsom began to babble about the Academy and Mrs. Harrison’s portrait, at which Perry looked graver still. I suppose he thinks that idiots should be charitably protected from themselves. Lathom is in wild spirits and is working like something inspired. _O si sic omnes_, meaning me!

Jim reports that he is toiling away like stink and really sticking to it. I hope so. He will be at home when term ends, so you will meet the white-headed boy of the family. I trust you will be able to bear with us all. He is inflicting on us a friend of his who went down from Caius this year—man called Leader—one of those infernally high-spirited youths who bounce all over the shop like Airedale puppies—he rouses all my worst instincts, but is perfectly harmless. He is now in London, at St. Anthony’s College of Medicine, and I suppose one of these days he will muddle though his hospital work and be turned out as a genial G.P.—“Dr. Leader is _such_ a nice, cheerful man; he makes you feel better the minute he comes into the room.” I hate cheerful people. Still, he and Jimmy will amuse one another, and we shall have a chance to get off on our own a bit.

Bless you, Bungie! I am counting the days till we meet.

Your own
JACK

24. _George Harrison to Paul Harrison_

15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
20th December, 1928

MY DEAR BOY,

A line at Christmas-time to send our best love, and to say that all our thoughts are with you. Next Christmas, if all goes well, we shall have you back, and things will seem more like themselves. Here, of course, a sad shadow is cast on our festivities by the illness of the King. There are distressing rumours, but I feel great confidence that he will pull through in the end.

In spite of this feeling of depression and anxiety, we have decided to make a little jaunt over to Paris. Margaret has seemed rather restless lately, and I think this small excitement will do her good. I am such a quiet sort of old fellow, that I fear she finds her life a trifle dull at times. A visit to the “gay city” will set her up again, and it will be beneficial to me, too, to be shaken out of my rut. We shall be staying at the Hotel Victoria-Palace in the Rue ——; it is a pleasant, respectable place, and not dear, as Paris hotels go. We shall do a theatre or two and perhaps go up to Montmartre to see the “night-life” one hears so much about. Young Lathom says he may be running over to Paris for a few days, and, if so, will look us up and show us round the town. It is kind and attentive of him, and we shall appreciate having an up-to-date cicerone, for my own memories of Paris are very antiquated, and I expect everything is very much changed.

I was very glad to hear that your work was progressing so well and that your action in the matter of the man you dismissed was approved of. Leniency in such a case is always a mistake, as I have found from bitter experience.

We are doing better over here than we had really any right to expect under the present depressed conditions. I think we shall secure the contract for the Middleshire High-Power Station. If so, that will mean a big job, which will probably take me away from London in the spring.

I am really wondering whether, before this happens, I ought not to take some steps about replacing Miss Milsom by somebody who would be a more suitable companion for Margaret. Miss Milsom has always seemed to me a very tiresome woman, and lately she has been getting altogether above herself. She consults these psycho-analytical quacks, who encourage her to attach an absurd importance to her whims and feelings, and to talk openly at the dinner-table about things which, in my (doubtless old-fashioned) opinion, ought only to be mentioned to doctors. Besides, she is very lazy and untidy, and, instead of putting her mind to the housework, she litters the place with wool and bits of paper which she calls “art materials,” and she borrows my paints and forgets to return them. There is no harm, of course, in her doing needlework and making calendars, if it does not interfere with her duties, but she has frequently been very impertinent when I have had occasion to speak about the unsatisfactory cooking. Lathom has been painting a picture of her—a very clever thing, certainly, but it seems to have turned her head completely. However, Margaret wishes to be kind to the woman, and says, truly, that she would find it hard to get another post, so perhaps it will be better to put up with her a little longer and see if the situation improves. She is certainly most loyal and devoted to Margaret, and that outweighs a great many drawbacks.

Well, I must not worry you with these small domestic matters. I hope that you will be enjoying a very happy Christmas in your exile, and that our little offerings have arrived quite safely. By the way, your Plum-pudding was not, I can assure you, an example of Miss Milsom’s culinary genius. I attended to that important matter myself—otherwise you might have found many strange things in it—such as glass beads or stencil-brushes! The calendar, however, was all the lady’s own work. She wonders regularly every day whether you will like it, and whether your colleagues will think it was painted for you by your fiancée. She means kindly, poor woman, so, if you have not already expressed your hearty delight, pray do so, and assure her that the masterpiece has an honoured place on your walls.

With much love,
Your affectionate
DAD

25. _Note by Paul Harrison_

I can find only one letter for the next few weeks with any important bearing on the subject of this inquiry. My father and stepmother were in Paris from the 15th of December to the 7th of January. I received a few picture post-cards with accounts of places visited, but they contained nothing of any moment, and I did not preserve them.

Lathom joined them on or about the 28th of December, and spent the Jour de l’An in their company. I believe that Mrs. Harrison wrote several letters to Miss Milsom from Paris, but these I have been unable to secure; in fact, I am informed that they have been destroyed. I visited Miss Milsom (see my statement No. 49), and questioned her as tactfully as possible on the subject, but could only get from her a rambling diatribe, full of the same demented prejudice she has always displayed against my father, and, in the absence of any direct evidence (such as the original letters would have afforded), I feel bound to ignore her remarks. Indeed, it is obvious that nothing which Miss Milsom says _later_ than April, 1929, is of any evidential value whatsoever, and that _all_ her statements, without exception, must be received with extreme caution, except in so far as they tend to prove the influence exerted, consciously or unconsciously, by her upon my stepmother.

Mr. Munting, who spent the Christmas season with his family and in the company of his fiancée, not returning to town till the 15th of January, has handed to me the only letter which he received from his friend during this period.

26. _Harwood Lathom to John Munting_

POLPERRO
4th Jan., ’29

DEAR MUNTING,

How are you? And how did the season of over-feeding and Christian heartiness leave your soul? Did honourable love survive the domesticities? If so, I swear that you and your intelligent young woman are either gods or beasts. Gods, probably—with that dreadful temperateness of the knowledge of good and evil, seeing two sides to every question. You will analyse your bridal raptures, if you have any, and find the whole subject very interesting. You will have, Heaven help you! a sense of humour about the business, and your friends will say how beautiful it is to see such a fine sense of partnership between a man and woman. A copulation of politic tape-worms! But where is the use of being offensive to a man who will allow for my point of view? I hate being allowed for, as if I were an incalculable quantity in an astronomical equation.

Having (thank God!) no family, except my aunt at Colchester, I escaped good King Wenceslas and departed for Paris, where everything is jejune enough, and the weather just as snow-bound and bitter as in our own happy island, but where at least the stranger is not sucked into the _vie familiale_. I found the Harrisons dismally vegetating in a highly respectable Anglophile hotel, and toted them round the usual stale shows, getting my pleasure from their naïve enjoyment. Or, at any rate, from _her_ enjoyment; the old boy was as peevish as ever, and brought the blush of shame to my cosmopolitan cheek by walking out of a cabaret in the middle, trailing his wife and friend after him in the approved barn-door style. Being too wrathful for speech, I said nothing, and had the pleasure of sitting out a family row in the taxi afterwards. _La belle Marguerite_ was actually quite as shocked as he was, poor child, but thrilled to an unregenerate ecstasy nevertheless. She has the makings of a decent pagan soul if one could teach her. However, I needed to do no teaching. His vulgar disgust (with which, if he had had the elementary tact to leave her alone, she would have agreed) drove her into an excited opposition, and she argued the point with an obstinacy and wholeheartedness which it was a pleasure to listen to. I wouldn’t be appealed to—I didn’t want a row, and besides, she will learn nothing except by arguing it out for herself. In fact, I apologised and said, in effect, that an artist became rather blind to the proprieties, legs, as the bus-conductor said, being no treat to him. In fact, I controlled myself marvellously, and—went away and walked about in a fury all night!

After that we did picture-galleries, and I had to listen to Harrison’s lectures on art. Never have I heard—not even in Chelsea—so much jargon applied over so grisly a substructure of ignorance and bad taste. The man ought to be crucified in the middle of all his own abominable daubs. You would have enjoyed it, I suppose, or made copy of it.

We saw the New Year in with dancing and the usual imbecile festivities. Mrs. H. thanked me with tears of excitement in her eyes—it was pathetic—like giving sweets to a kid. Even H. was a little moved from his usual grimth. I procured him a partner—no! I didn’t hire her, I knew her—a decent little soul who used to live with Mathieu Vigor and is now, I believe, Kropotzki’s _petite amie_—and she trundled him round in the most amiable way. He emerged from the fray quite sparkling (for him!), and solemnly led Madame out for the next dance! That didn’t go so well, because he found fault with her steps, so I pushed him back on to Fleurette, who could dance with a kangaroo, I think, clever little devil.

I crossed on the 2nd, and came down here for warmth and sunshine (what a hope!). The place has been ruined, of course, by “artistic” tourists, and is lousy with Ye Olde Potterye Shoppes. The brave fishermen dangle around in clean blue jerseys and polish up the boats in the harbour, while they long for the film-season to start again.

I shall be back in Bayswater some time next week. I hope your sense of humour is feeling robust, for I am in a foul mood and nothing pleases me.

Yours ever,
LATHOM

27. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER

[The opening sheets of this letter are lost, but the date is evidently some time in January.]

* * * * *

. . . proofs coming along at express speed, I am enjoying a magnificent illusion of importance and busy-ness. The novel will be out before the _Life_, which is being held up considerably by copyright bothers over the plates. All the better, as it is a mistake to bung two books out right on top of one another.

I am feeling a great deal more sympathetic with Lathom just now. The earnest Harrison has transferred his attentions, for the moment, to me, because, as a literary man, I can, of course, tell him exactly how best to prepare his fungus-book for the press. He comes teetering in at my busiest moments to discuss points of grammar. I tell him my opinion and he contradicts it at great length, pointing out subtleties in his phrasing which I have not grasped. At length I either tell him that his own original idea expresses his personality best, or fall back on _The King’s English_ if the error is really too monstrous to let pass. This works all right for a time, and he carries the book off with much gratitude—returning later, however, with the demurrer to Mr. Fowler carefully written down on paper. I once made the foolish suggestion that he should write to Fowler and thrash it out with him direct; this was fatal, as I had to listen to (_a_) the letter; (_b_) the reply; (_c_) the rejoinder—so I now fall back as a rule on the phrase about expressing personality. There was also a dreadful day when a water-colour picture of fungi came out too green by three-colour process. Lathom and I suffered dreadfully over this abominable toadstool, and were at length forced to go out and drown the recollection in Guinness.

All the same, I try my best to be helpful, because I am the only person who can enter into Harrison’s interests, and he has really written a very entertaining little piece of work, full of odd bits of out-of-the-way knowledge, scraps of country lore and queer old-fashioned recipes and things. He must have made extraordinary good use of his holidays, and there’s not a plant or animal in the country fit for food that he doesn’t know the last word about. He has made a wonderful collection of botanical diaries, which ought to be of considerable scientific value, and he brings a really scholarly mind to his rather unscholarly subject. His water-colours, though too prim considered as pictures, make really rather attractive book-illustrations, and his drawings of plants and fungi are beautifully accurate in line and colour—far better than the stuff you find in the usual text-books. And, indeed, the vagaries of the three-colour process are enough to make Job irritable. I told him that he should take as his motto for the book the famous misprint in the Bible, “Printers have persecuted me without a cause”—which pleased him.

Profiting by my position as literary guide and mentor, I have (with colossal tact) persuaded him to let the famous portrait be shown. We got round to it by way of cookery, oddly enough. I said that cookery was really a very important creative art, which was not properly understood in this country, being chiefly left in the hands of women, who were not (pardon me, Bungie) as a rule very creative.

That led on to a general discussion of Art, and the yearning that every creative artist feels to obtain a public response to his art. And so, by devious ways, to Lathom and his picture. I said that, while I entirely understood Mrs. Harrison’s quite natural feeling that to exhibit her portrait would be, to a great extent, exhibiting herself, to Lathom it was, of course, quite a different matter. It was his work, his handling of line and colour, for which he wanted public recognition. But I admitted that a woman could not be expected to appreciate this point of view.

As I had foreseen, Harrison took this as an indirect criticism of his wife, and promptly reacted against it. She was not, he said, like the ordinary woman. She had a remarkable gift for artistic appreciation. He felt sure that if he put it to her in the right light, she would see that it was not a personal question at all. Indeed, she had made no objection herself—it was he who had been afraid of exposing her to unwelcome notoriety. But it should be made quite clear that the painting was the important matter, and that the subject had no personal bearings of any kind.

It was very odd, Bungie, to see him reassuring himself in this vicarious way. And it was still odder that I had a feeling all the time as if I was doing something unfair. His attitude about the thing was preposterous, of course, but I have a queer feeling about Mrs. Harrison. She isn’t so stupid that she can’t see Lathom’s point of view. It would matter less if she were. It is that she is clever enough to see it and adopt it when it is pointed out, and to make it into a weapon of some kind for something or other. Not knowing that it is a weapon, either; practising a sort of ju jitsu, that overcomes by giving way—good God! what a filthy bit of obvious journalese metaphor!

Anyhow, Mr. Harrison worked off my little lecture on the creative artist with great effect under my very nose the same evening, as though it was all his own work. Mrs. H. started off with her usual lack of tact by saying: “I thought you said,” and “I don’t want to discuss it,” but, catching my eye, resigned herself to listen graciously and give consent. So the Hanging Committee is, after all, to have the happiness of gazing upon the portraits of Mrs. Harrison and Miss Milsom—blest pair of sirens—and I hope they will be duly appreciative. Lathom is pleased—and so he damn well ought to be! I hope it will calm him down, for what with the portraits and the fungus-book and one thing and another, he and I are both getting into a state of nerves.

_I want peace and quiet._ Damn all these people! Thank Heaven I’ve got the proofs to see to, because I’m in no fit state to write anything. My ideas are all upside down. I can’t focus anything. I suppose it’s just the usual “between-books” feeling. I am going to take a few weeks’ lucid interval and read astronomy or physics or something. Personally, I’m dead sick of the blasted creative instinct!

Yours all-of-a-dither, but still devotedly,
JACK

28. _The Same to the Same_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
1st February, 1929

BUNGIE, MY DARLING,

What, in God’s name, are you going to do with me if I get jealous and suspicious? Or I with you, if it happens that way? I ask this in damn sober earnest, old girl. I’ve got the thing right under my eyes here, and I know perfectly well that no agreement and no promise made before marriage will stand up for a single moment if either of us gets that ugly bug into the blood.

You remember—months ago—I passed on a cheerful little matrimonial dialogue that took place by the umbrella-stand. To-night we had the pleasure of hearing the thing carried on to the next stage.

Harrison had the brilliant idea of inviting Lathom and me to dinner to taste his special way of frying chicken. Well, there we all were—Miss Milsom frightfully kittenish in a garment she had embroidered herself with Persian arabesques. (“I don’t know _what_ they mean, you know, Mr. Munting. Probably something frightfully improper! I copied them off a rug.”) Harrison who allows nobody to penetrate into “his” kitchen when he’s working out a masterpiece, was frying away amid a powerful odour of garlic. No Mrs. Harrison! We furiously make conversation—enter H.—gives a black look round, and disappears again. I count the things on the mantelpiece—two brass candlesticks, brass door-knocker representing the Lincoln imp—two imitation brass mulling-cones—ill-balanced pottery nude—quaint clock and pair of Liberty nondescripts. Front door goes. Kitchen door in the distance heard to burst open. “Well, where have _you_ been?” Awful realisation creeps over us all that the sitting-room door has been left open. I say hurriedly: “Have you read the new Michael Arlen, Miss Milsom?” We are all aware that a prolonged cross-examination is proceeding. Lathom fidgets. Voice rises to appalling distinctness: “Don’t talk nonsense! How _long_ were you at the hairdresser’s?—Well, what _were_ you doing?—Yes, but _what_ kept you?—Yes, of course, you met somebody. You seem to be meeting a lot of people lately!—I don’t care who it ‘only’ was—one of the men from the office, I suppose—Carrie Mortimer? nonsense!—I shall _not_ be quiet—I shall talk as loudly as I like—Did you or did you not remember——?” Here I grow desperate and turn on the gramophone. In comes Harrison, putting a good face on it. “Here’s the wife, late as usual!” We sit down to dinner in embarrassed silence. I murmur eulogies on the chicken. “Over-cooked,” says Harrison, shovelling it all aside and savagely picking at the vegetables. After this, everybody is afraid to eat it, for fear of not seeming to know good food from bad. “It seems delicious to me, Mr. Harrison,” says Miss Milsom, profiting nothing from long experience. “Oh,” says Harrison, sourly, “you women don’t care what you eat. It’s overdone, isn’t it, Lathom?” Lathom, quite helpless with rage, says in a strangulated voice, that he thinks it’s just right. “Well, you’re not eating it,” says Harrison, gloomily triumphant. By this time everybody’s appetite is taken thoroughly away. There is nothing on earth the matter with the chicken, but we all sit staring at it as though it was a Harpagus-feast of boiled baby.

Well, I’ll spare you the rest of the nightmare. The point is that _this_ time, Mrs. Harrison didn’t come in bubblingly eager to say where she had been and what she had been doing—and that _next_ time the alibi will hold water—and then Harrison will start saying that you can’t trust women, and will very likely be perfectly justified.

Bungie—I _see_ how these things happen, but how does one insure against them? What security have we that we—you and I, with all our talk of freedom and frankness—shall not come to this?

Love makes no difference. Harrison would cheerfully die for his wife—but I can’t imagine anything more offensive than dying for a person after you’ve been rude to them. It’s taking a mean advantage. And what’s the good of it all to him, if he loves her so much that everything she says gets on his nerves? I like Harrison—I think he’s worth a hundred of her—and yet, every time there’s a row, she ingeniously manages somehow to make him appear to be in the wrong. She is completely selfish, but she takes the centre of the stage so convincingly that the whole scene is engineered to give her the limelight for her attitudes.

This house is becoming a nightmare; I shall have to chuck it, but I must stay on till Easter, because the rent is paid up to the quarter and I can’t afford to lead a double life and Lathom can’t manage more than his own share. Hell!

_I to Hercules_ comes out next month. I hope old Merritt won’t be let down over it. He continues to be enthusiastic. Senile decay, I should think. Well, we’ll hope for the best. If my Press is as good as yours I shan’t complain, my child.

Your envious
JACK

29. _Note by Paul Harrison_

It is unfortunate that throughout this important and critical period, from the end of November to the end of February, we should have no help from the Milsom correspondence. It seems that Miss Milsom and Mrs. Farebrother had a renewed quarrel during the Christmas period, on the subject of the youth Ronnie Farebrother, mentioned in former letters, and that as a result they remained for some time not on speaking or writing terms. Mr. Munting’s letters also contain no references to my father’s domestic affairs during the month of February—no doubt because he was preoccupied with his own private concerns.

During the last week of January, the wretched young Farebrother shot himself. This gratifying fulfilment of her prophecies of disaster seems to have driven Miss Milsom into a highly hysterical state of mind, which probably precipitated the mental collapse that followed. Her correspondence with her sister (which was then resumed) is therefore quite useless for evidential purposes. We can, therefore, only guess at the development of the situation between my stepmother and Lathom during February—the month in which my father’s duties took him away from home for fourteen days, in connection with the electrical installation in Middleshire. In view of the extraordinary incident which finally broke up the two households, it is, however, not difficult to form a correct opinion.

30. _John Munting to Elizabeth Drake_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
17.2.29

DARLING BUNGIE,

You have seen the reviews, of course! Bless my heart and soul, what has happened to the people? Of course, it was all started by that tom-fool at the Guildhall (I don’t know why Cabinet Ministers should be the only people who can sell one’s books for one nowadays)—but oh, my lights and liver! Oh, goroo! goroo! The silly mutton-headed G.P. is walking into the blooming shops by thousands and _buying_ the thing! _Paying_ for the thing. Shoving down their hard-earned seven-and-sixpences for it! Lord help us—what have I done that I should be a best-seller? Is thy servant a tripe-hound that he should do this thing? First edition sold out. Presses rolling out new printings day and night—Merritt nearly off his head and saying, “I told you so.” Blushing author besieged in his charming Bayswater flat (! ! ! !)—Remarkable portrait of blushing author by that brilliant young artist Mr. Harwood Lathom (done in a fit of boredom one afternoon when the model hadn’t turned up) being scrambled for by four Press agencies, two literary hostesses and an American lion-tamer! Everything gas and gaiters! Worm-like appeals, from publishers who turned _Hercules_ down, for the next contract but seven, and the _Wail_ and the _Blues_ and the _Depress_ and all the Sunday Bloods yapping over the ’phone for my all-important, inspired and inspiring views on “What does the Unconscious means to me?”—“Is Monogamy Doomed?”—“Can Women tell the Truth?”—“Should Wives Produce Books or Babies?”—“What is wrong with the Modern Aunt?”—and “Glands or God—Which?”

Bungie, old thing, it all seems absolutely ghastly and preposterous, but the blasted book is BOOMING—and—shall we get married, Bungie? Will you take the risk on the strength of one fluky Boomer (which may perfectly well be a Boomerang and prevent me from ever writing anything worth doing for the rest of my life), and a set of contracts which I may go mad with inability to fulfil? Because, if you will—say so, my courageous infant, and we will tell your Uncle Edward to put up the banns, and prance off hand in hand our own primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.

Pull yourself together, Jack Munting!

Bungie, I’ve never told you how jealous I was because your books sold and mine didn’t. If I tell you so now, don’t remember it against me. Parson Perry says confession is a good thing. Perhaps he’s right. I confess it now—and now forget it, there’s a good girl. Perhaps even now it only means that my wretched book is howlingly bad. I always comforted myself with thinking that I _must_ write better than you to be so unsaleable—but I’m filthily pleased and cock-a-hoop all the same.

_Pull yourself together_, Jack Munting! You are becoming hysterical. Your glands are functioning madly in the wrong places, and your Unconscious has come unstuck!

Anyhow, I’m going to have quite enough to depress me to-morrow. That crashing nuisance, Leader, has suddenly discovered that he knows the fellow who’s written the book of the season, and is coming along to “Look me up, old boy, and celebrate!”

_There was a young student of Caius_
_Who passed his exams with a squaius,_
_Ere dissecting at St. Bartholomews_
_Inward St. Partholomews, such as St. Heartholomews_
_To discover the cure of disaius._

Oh, well, I suppose one of the penalties of success is the way it brings you in touch with your friends. I had an invitation to dine from the Sheridans last week. “Such a long time since we met, isn’t it?” I will see to it that it shall be longer still.

Well, let me know about the matrimonial outlook, won’t you? I have a great many important engagements, of course, but I daresay I might be able to fit this little matter in somewhere!

Yours _pomposo e majestuoso_,
JACK

PS. You need not trouble to make it a quiet one. I can easily afford a top-hat—in fact, several.

31. _The Same to the Same_

15A, WHITTINGTON TERRACE
20.2.29

DARLING BUNGIE,

Glory, alleluia! Then we will be married at Easter. Curse Uncle Edward’s scruples! I could make you just as good a husband in Lent—but, as you say, it’s a shame to upset the old boy. Now that the remote prospect has really come so (comparatively) near, I feel all wobbly and inadequate. It’s like bracing your muscles to pick up a heavy bag and finding there’s nothing in it. One thought it was years off—and here it is—and there it is, and that’s that.

Well!

Well, we are going to be married at Easter.

Well—it will be a good excuse for refusing silly invitations. No time. Frightfully sorry. Going to be married at Easter, you know. A lot to do. Ring. Best man. Bridesmaids’ presents and all that. Excuse me, old man, I’ve got to see my tailor. Cheer-frightfully-ho, don’t you know.

I couldn’t get rid of Leader that way, though. He was horribly hearty and stayed a very long time, and insisted on Lathom’s and my going down to the College to see over the labs, and “meet a few of the men,” who all hated me at sight, by the way, when they _did_ see me. I thought the sooner we got it over the better, so we went this afternoon. Lathom is in one of his vagrom moods—doing no work, and catching at any excuse to waste time. I tried to get out of it, but no! I “absolutely must come, old man.” I take it the idea was to impress Leader’s friends with the idea that men of intellect are proud to know him. It had not occurred to me that best-selling had such idiotic accompaniments.

Leader was in his element, of course, showing off his half-baked knowledge, and exhibiting fragments of anatomy in bottles. I can see Leader one of these days as the principal witness at an inquest, frightfully slapdash and cocksure, professing that he can tell the time of the murder to within five minutes by taking half a glance at the corpse, and swearing somebody’s life away with cheerful confidence in his own infallibility. He was highly impressive in the dissecting-room, but at his best, I think, displaying his knowledge of poisons (which, by the way, they seem to keep handy on the open shelves for any passing visitor to help himself to). He was very great on synthetic drugs—all made on the premises out of God knows what, and imitating nature so abominably—abominably well, that is—that chemical analysis can’t tell them apart. Indeed, indeed, sirs (and apart from the wearisomeness of Leader), but this troubles me. Synthetic perfumes from coal-tar are bad enough, and synthetic dyes, and I can put up with synthetic camphor and synthetic poisons, but when it comes to synthetic gland-extracts like adrenalin and thyroxin, I begin to get worried. Synthetic vitamins next, I suppose, and synthetic beef and cabbages—and after that, synthetic babies. So far, however, they don’t seem to have been able to make synthetic life—the nearest they have got is stimulating frog-spawn into life with needles. But what of the years to come? If, as the bio-chemists say, life is only a very complicated chemical process, will the difference between life and death be first expressible in a formula and then prisonable in a bottle?

This is a jolly kind of letter to write to you, old girl, on this auspicious occasion, but this everlasting question of life and the making of life seems to haunt me—and it is, after all, not so remote from the problem of marriage. We can pass it on and re-continue it, but what is it? They say now that the universe is finite, and that there is only so much matter in it and no more. But does life obey the same rule, or can it emerge indefinitely from the lifeless? Where was it, when the world was only a dusty chaos of whirling gas and cinders? What started it? What gave it the thrust, the bias, to roll so ceaselessly and so eccentrically. To look forward is easy—the final inertia, when the last atom of energy has been shaken out of the disintegrating atom—when the clocks stand still and time’s arrow has neither point nor shaft—but the beginning!

One thing is certain. If I begin to think like this, I shall never write another best-seller. Heaven preserve us from random speculation! Our own immediate affairs are as important as the loves of the electrons in this universe of infinitesimal immensities, and as far as we are concerned. . . .

[The remainder of this letter, being of a very intimate nature, is not available.]

32. _The Same to the Same_

SMITH’S HOTEL, BLOOMSBURY
25.2.29

DEAREST,

Just a hasty line to say that I have had to leave Whittington Terrace on account of a very unfortunate incident, which I will tell you about later on. I am here for a few days till I can get my belongings moved out and warehoused somewhere _pro tem_.

It is all extremely tiresome. However, it only means that we shall have to do our house-hunting a little earlier than we expected. I think I had better run up to Kirkcudbright and have a yap with you about it, if I can get away from publishers and agents.

All my love,
JACK

33. _Agatha Milsom to Elizabeth Drake_

15, WHITTINGTON TERRACE, BAYSWATER
25.2.29

DEAR MADAM,

You will probably be very angry at what I am going to say, but I feel it is my duty to warn you against Mr. John Munting. Girls do not always know how men go on behind their backs, and it is only right they should be told by those who have had _unfortunate experience_ of these men’s real character.

You may think that Mr. Munting is honourable, but he has been turned out of this house on account of indecent behaviour, and your eyes ought to be opened to his goings-on. You may believe me because I have the best right to speak of what _I know_. I have no doubt he will tell you that this is all false and try to pull the wool over your eyes, but I have _proof_ of what I say, and if you should want further evidence you can write to Mr. Harrison at this address, and he will tell you that every word is true.

I am sending you this warning for your good, because you ought not to marry a man like that; he is not fit to marry a decent woman. You are young, and you do not know what the consequences may be of marrying a man of depraved habits. This is one incident I can tell you about of my own knowledge, but _there are others_, or why does he so often come in late at night?

Do not tell him I have written to you, as it is not a pleasant thing to have to do, and naturally I do not care to write or talk about it in detail. But ask him why he was ordered out of the house, and do not believe the excuses he makes, because everybody here knows the truth and could tell it if necessary.

Now for your own sake pay attention to what I say and have no more to do with that disgusting man. I know I shall get no thanks for doing my duty, but in this world one must not expect gratitude. I have already been deprived of my livelihood and made to suffer mental and financial persecution on this man’s account. However, I bear no malice, and remain

Your sincere well-wisher,
AGATHA MILSOM

34. _Elizabeth Drake to John Munting_

[Endorsed on the above.]

DEAR JACK,

What on earth is all this about? Is the woman mad?

Yours, in all confidence and love,
E

35. _Telegram from John Munting to Elizabeth Drake, dated_ 26.2.29

A little mad and quite mistaken. Do not worry. Am starting North to-night.

JACK

36. _George Harrison to Paul Harrison_

27.2.29

MY DEAR PAUL,

I have to inform you of a most disagreeable incident which has caused a disturbance in our family life, and in consequences of which I have had to turn that man Munting out of the house. It occurred while I was unfortunately obliged to be absent over the Middleshire Electrical Installation, and, but for the accidental intervention of Miss Milsom, Margaret might have been exposed to an annoyance and risk that I shudder to think of.

I was summoned home by an urgent and rather incoherent letter from Miss Milsom, accusing Munting of an indecent assault upon herself. You will naturally understand that I found this rather difficult to believe, since the man (to do him justice) had shown no signs of being actually demented. By the same post I received a letter from Margaret written in great mental distress, and begging me to take no notice of Miss Milsom, on the ground that she was suffering from delusions. Obviously, whatever was the truth of the matter, it was necessary that I should intervene, and I hastened home at once (at a most inconvenient moment of my work, but, fortunately, the greater part of the contract was settled, and Freeman is quite competent to carry on).

On arriving, I immediately interrogated Miss Milsom closely. Her story was that, on the night of the 22nd, at about 12.30, she had felt a sudden craving for sardines (the woman is certainly unbalanced), and had gone downstairs to ransack the larder. She came up again in the dark—knowing the house well she did not trouble to turn on the light—and was just entering her bedroom, which, if you remember, is next to ours, when to her alarm she heard somebody breathing quite close to her. She gave some sort of exclamation and tried to get her hand on the landing switch but encountered the hand of a man. Thinking it was a burglar, she started to scream, but the man gripped at her arm and said in a whisper, “It’s all right, Miss Milsom.” She clutched at his arm, and felt what she at once recognised as the sleeve of Munting’s quilted dressing-gown, which he frequently wears when doing his writing. She at once asked him what he was doing on her landing, and he mumbled something about fetching some article or other from his overcoat on the hall-stand and missing his way in the dark. She expostulated, and he pulled her away from the lighting-switch, saying, “Don’t make a disturbance—you’ll alarm Mrs. Harrison. It’s quite all right.” She told him she did not believe him, and according to her account, he then made advances to her, which she repelled with indignation. He replied, “Oh, very well!” and started off upstairs. She went back and turned the light on in time to see the tail of the dressing-gown disappearing upstairs. Thoroughly frightened, she rushed into my wife’s bedroom and had an attack of hysterics. Margaret endeavoured to soothe her, and they spent the rest of the night together. The next night, Miss Milsom summoned up courage to remain in her own room, bolting the door. Margaret did the same, and they suffered no further disturbance.

I then questioned Margaret. She was, naturally, very much upset, but thought that Miss Milsom was completely mistaken, and making a mountain out of a mole-hill. She is too innocent to see—what I, of course, saw very plainly—that this shameless attack was directed against herself and not against Miss Milsom. I did not suggest this to her (not wishing to alarm her), and promised to hear Munting’s version of the affair before taking any further steps.

I then interviewed Munting. He took the thing in the worst possible way—with a cool effrontery which roused me to the highest pitch of indignation—treated the whole matter as a triviality, and positively laughed in my face. “The woman is demented,” he said, “I assure you my tastes do not lie in _that_ direction.” “I never supposed they did,” I answered, and made quite clear to him what my suspicions were. He laughed again, and said I was mistaken. I said I knew very well that I was _not_ mistaken, and asked him what other explanation he could offer of being found outside my wife’s door in the middle of the night. “You have heard the explanation,” said he, airily. “And a very convincing one it is,” said I; “at least, you don’t deny that you were there, I suppose?” He said, “Would you believe me if I did deny it?” I said that his manner had convinced me that the story was true, and that nothing he said would persuade me to the contrary. “Then it’s not an atom of use my denying it, is it?” said he coolly. “Not an atom,” I said. “Will you leave the house straight away or wait to be kicked out?” “If you put it that way,” said he, “I think it would cause less excitement in the neighbourhood if I went of my own accord.” I gave him half an hour to be out of the house, and he said that would suit him very well, and had the impudence to request the use of our telephone to order a taxi. I told him I would not have him in our part of the house on any pretence whatever. “Oh,” said he, “then perhaps you would be good enough to order the taxi yourself.” I did so, in order to give him no excuse for hanging about the place, and he took himself off. On the way downstairs he said, in a more subdued tone, “Look here, Harrison. Won’t you believe that this is all a mistake?” I told him to get out of the house before I sent for the police, and he went without another word.

All this has upset us very much. I am only thankful that no further harm has come of it. Margaret says he had never previously offered her any rudeness, and I believe her; but, looking back on the matter, I can remember occasions when I have not altogether cared for the tone of his conversation. He is too experienced a man in this kind of thing, however, to have shown his hand while I was there. I am only sorry that our friendship with young Lathom, whom we all like so much, should have led to this unpleasantness.

Lathom is extremely distressed, as you may imagine. I thought it well to warn him to show more discretion in future with regard to his choice of friends. He was too genuinely horrified and unhappy to wish to talk about the matter; still, I think he was grateful for the advice. Unhappily, this means that we shall lose him as well, since his means do not permit of his keeping on the upper maisonnette by himself. I suggested that he might stay till the end of the quarter, but he said that he was engaged to visit some friends next month, and would be leaving anyway at the end of the week.

This incident has made it very clear to me that Miss Milsom must be got rid of. She is in a state of violent hysteria, and is obviously subject to delusions about herself, and in no way a fit companion for Margaret. I have given her a month’s salary in lieu of notice, and sent her home. Out of all this hateful episode this one good thing has come: that I have now a valid reason for insisting on this woman’s departure.

Other news has been rather over-shadowed by these anxieties, and must wait till my next letter. I hope all is well with you.

Your affectionate
DAD

37. _Statement of John Munting_

It was a mistake from the very beginning for Lathom and myself to set up housekeeping together. It happened purely by chance—one of those silly, unnecessary chances that set one spinning out cheap platitudes about fatality and the great issues that hang upon an accidental meeting. It used to be considered highly unphilosophical to indulge in speculations about coincidence, still more to base any work of art upon it—but that was in the days when we believed in causality. Now, thanks to the Quantum theory and the second law of thermo-dynamics, we know better. We know that the element of randomness is what makes the Universe go round, and that the writers of sensation novels are wiser in their generation than the children of sweetness and light.

All the same, there still remains an appearance of causation here and there, and I persist in attributing some of the blame to the imbecilities of the public-school system. If Lathom had not worn an old Wincastrian tie, I should never have spoken to him in the little restaurant Au Bon Bourgeois in Greek Street. Or, at the most, I should have asked him to pass the French mustard. As it was, my natural aversion to my fellow-creatures being broken down by Burgundy, I was fool enough to say: “Hullo! you come from the old school, I see. Did I know you?”—and was instantly swamped and carried away in the flood of Lathom’s expansiveness.

Lathom is an incorrigible extrovert. His thyroids and liver function with riotous vigour. He beams out enthusiastically upon the world and is refracted out from everything and everybody he meets in a rainbow of colour. That is his fatal charm. In the ordinary way I am ill-adapted for prismatic function. That evening was an unfortunate exception. I couldn’t keep it up afterwards; that was the trouble.

When Lathom mentioned his name I recognised it at once. He is six years younger than I am, and was an obnoxious brat in the Upper Third when I was preparing for Oxford in the Sixth, but he had penetrated to my Olympian seclusion in virtue of his reputation.

Lathom, of course—Burrage’s celebrated fag, who scrounged toasting-forks. He was always in trouble with the other prefects for his apparent inability to distinguish other people’s property from Burrage’s. If anything was wanted, he took it; if anything had to be done, he did it, regardless of other people’s convenience, or, indeed, of his own. He was attached to Burrage, who naturally stood up for him. In fact, I think we were all jealous of Burrage for having a fag so ruthlessly competent. Burrage patronised the kid in his large, appreciative way, and Lathom basked in the rays of Burrage’s approval. I don’t blame Burrage altogether, but he certainly spoilt Lathom. He protected him from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps Burrage had advanced ideas about the non-existence of causation and imparted them to Lathom. But Burrage was rather an ass, and his reactions were probably more human and immediate.

Lathom was saved from disaster, partly by Burrage and partly by Halliday. Halliday was a great man and captain of the First Eleven. He took things easily and when he said that the kid was just potty we all accepted the explanation. That was on the day of the picnic, when Lathom turned up at feeding-time without his overcoat, and said he had thrown it away because it got in his way. The weather turned to soaking rain and Lathom got pneumonia and nearly died. We were all rather frightened and distressed, and when Lathom turned up next term we made allowances for him. I reminded Lathom that we had called him “Potty,” and he laughed and said we were perfectly right.

I remembered, too, that in those days Lathom had earned a reputation for himself by making caricatures of the masters. This fascinating gift had earned him still more toleration. I was not surprised to hear that he had become an artist. He said he was looking for a studio, and had seen just the thing in Bayswater, only he couldn’t afford to take it.

I asked, why Bayswater, of all places? Why not Chelsea or Bloomsbury? But Lathom said no, the rents were too high, and besides, Chelsea and Bloomsbury were hopelessly arty and insincere. They lived at second-hand and had no beliefs. To see life lived in the raw, one ought really to go to Harringay or Totting, but they were really not central enough. Bayswater was near enough to be convenient and far enough out to be healthy suburban.

“The suburbs are the only places left,” said Lathom, “where men and women will die and persecute for their beliefs. Artists believe in nothing—not even in art. They live in little cliques and draw the fashionable outlines in the fashionable colours. They can’t love—they can only fornicate and talk. I’ve had some. And the aristocracy has lost the one belief that made it tolerable—its belief in itself. It’s fool enough to pretend to believe in the people, and what is the good of an aristocracy playing at being democratic? And the people . . .” He made a violent gesture. “Cheap scientific text-books—cheap atheism—cheap sociology—cheap clothes—your blasted educationists have left them no beliefs at all. They marry, and then the woman comes howling to the magistrate for a separation order on any pretext, so as to get money for nothing and go to cheap dance-halls. And the man goes yelping away for a dole to shuffle all his responsibilities on to the State. But the blessed people of the suburbs—they do believe in something. They believe in Respectability. They’ll lie, die, commit murder to keep up appearances. Look at Crippen. Look at Bywaters. Look at the man who hid his dead wife in a bath and ate his meals on the lid for fear somebody should suspect a scandal. My God! Those people are living, living with all their blood and their bones. That’s reality—in the suburbs—life, guts—something to chew at, there!”

At the time I was rather struck by this.

It ended, of course, in my consenting to share the maisonnette with Lathom. An hour earlier, the very word would have put me off, but under the spell of Lathom’s enthusiasm, and stupefied with food and public-school spirit, I began to think there was really something raw, red and life-like about living in a maisonnette with an Old Wincastrian. And perhaps Lathom was right after all. The trouble is that raw, red life is possibly better seen at second-hand. A good still-life of a piece of rump-steak has none of the oozing clamminess of the real thing.