The Call of the Town Part 20

"I have only run up to town for a week or two before leaving for another spell in Sardinia. I am getting restless again, and there flow the waters of Nepenthe. But the question is: How are you?"

"Pleased with my work, at least, I must say, and fascinated by London.

But only to-day I have had a peep at its under side, and I fear that the less one knows of that the better for one's peace."

"'See all, nor be afraid.' Surely you will let Browning advise you if that decadent Adrian Grant is too pessimistic for your healthy British taste," said the visitor, with the hint of a smile.

CHAPTER XIX

THE PEN AND PENCIL CLUB

THE "Magpie" is, or was, a hotel of the good old-fas.h.i.+oned homely type, standing in a street off the Strand, in the Adelphi quarter. One must speak thus indefinitely, since the whole face of the neighbourhood has been transformed within recent years, and many a memory-laden house demolished. At the "Magpie" the era of electric bells, elevators, ostentation, had produced no effect, and within hail of many _caravanserais_, where the pomp and circ.u.mstance of King Money might have been seen in all its extravagance, the "Magpie" retained its flavour of old-time cosiness and plainness.

It was a hotel much frequented by the better cla.s.s of country visitors; the London man of fas.h.i.+on never strayed within its portals. But here, by reason of the retired situation of the place, the accommodation of the rooms, and in some degree (we may suppose) the moderate terms, the headquarters of the Pen and Pencil Club were situated. Less than three hundred yards away, the Strand was a turgid stream of noises; here was a backwater startlingly quiet.

Though certain of the vulgar upstarts, who manage to sneak into every community of proper men, not excepting literary clubland, complained that they could not get eatable food at the "Magpie," the members of the club, as a whole, did eat with some heartiness whenever they a.s.sembled around the board, which was twice a month during autumn and winter. Few of the members turned up in evening dress; the average author does not find it necessary to entirely expose his s.h.i.+rt-front when he sits down to his evening meal. Something of the older Bohemianism hung, like lavender in an ancient chest, about the Pen and Pencil Club; from which it will be understood that it was not exactly the Bohemianism of dirty clothes and stale beer, but rather that brotherliness which enables men of kindred tastes and interests to dispense with the artificial ceremonies of society.

Such was the spirit of the company to which Henry was introduced by his friend at the "Magpie." The buzz of talk in the club-room dazed him a little at first, and very timidly did he submit to be introduced to this celebrity and to that. Most of the members and guests a.s.sembled were standing talking familiarly, awaiting the summons to dinner.

"Let me introduce my friend Mr. Charles, of the _Watchman_, Mr. Angus St. Clair," said Mr. P., thus mentioning the name of a world-famous Scottish novelist, with whom Henry almost funked shaking hands.

Yet Mr. Sinclair was scarcely so impressive to gaze upon as many a City clerk; far less so than any young man behind a draper's counter in Oxford Street. He was below medium height, quite without distinction of features, and wore a faded brown suit. Withal, his publishers could sell fifty thousand copies of any book he cared to write, and the Press of the Anglo-Saxon race resounded with anecdotes about him.

"Ma name's p.r.o.nounced Sinkler, but they pock-puddens will ca' me St.

Clair, so what can a body do, Mr. Chairles?"

Mr. Charles couldn't enlighten him; but his host suggested that the Scotch didn't know how to p.r.o.nounce their own names, and weren't very particular how they treated English ones. The secretary of the club dragged Mr. Sinclair off before he could return fire to introduce him to one craving his hand-shake, and Mr. Puddephatt, who appeared to be known only as Adrian Grant among the members, said to Henry that whenever he saw Sinclair he thought of a boiled egg, because the fellow seemed so small and thin that he felt he could break his skull with a tap of a spoon.

"Ah, Mr. Grinton, how do you do?... My guest, Mr. Charles, of the _Watchman_--a coming man, my dear Grinton, a coming man."

Mr. Edward Grinton shook hands with the coming man, who was never in a more retiring mood.

"I read the _Watchman_," he said, "and like it, but I wish it wouldn't worry about my literary style. The only test of merit in novels, Mr.

Charles, is sales. Ask at any bookseller if his customers care a straw for literary style. They want a story, and I give 'em what they--Ah, Tredgold! Still slogging at that play?" and Mr. Grinton turned abruptly to another member who had two plays running at London theatres, and, in Grinton's phrase, "made pots of money."

This Grinton no longer holds the bookstalls in the palm of his hand. His star has set; but at that time his stories sold enormously, and earned him a large income. They were common trash, concerned chiefly with mysterious murders, and each had a startling picture on the cover, which the publisher alleged was the chief cause of their success. He had curly hair. That was the only thing about him Henry noticed.

In turn he was next introduced to Henry Davies, the editor of the _Morning Sun_, the great Radical daily--a man who stuttered strangely, and had difficulty in saying that he was p--p--pleased to m--m--meet Mr.

Ch--Ch--Charles; Mr. Frederick Fleming, the well-known dramatic critic of the _Daily Journal_; and other celebrities whom he had long wors.h.i.+pped from afar. The most ordinary mortals all; not one of them had the mystic touch of Adrian Grant, who seemed to Henry the most distinguished man among the company.

"Dinner is served, gentlemen," the waiter called, in rousing tones, and instantly the babble ceased, and members and guests filed out to the dining-room.

Henry was seated next to his host, and had on his right Mr. Bone, the eminent publisher, who happened to be the guest of Grinton, the novelist. The lion lay down with the lamb in the Pen and Pencil Club.

It was the custom of the fraternity after dining to carry on a discussion on some literary topic, and to "talk shop" to their heart's content. The chairman, Mr. Diamond Jones, a highly successful literary critic, whose profound ignorance of literature's deeper depths was the standing joke of his fellow-clubmen, mentioned that they did talk shop there, but contended that "literary shop" was worth talking, as everybody was interested in it; other "shop" was only "shop," and therefore contemptible. Your literary worker has a fine disdain for every branch of life but his own.

The speaking was scarcely enthralling. It happened to turn on the subject of humour in literature, and a celebrated humorist opened the discussion with some observations which suggested (unfairly) that he knew very little of what he was talking about. Apparently he had never heard that Shakespeare was a humorist, or that Carlyle was not devoid of the quality, or that Thackeray had some of it, not to mention d.i.c.kens.

Even Meredith and Hardy escaped the notice of all the speakers, who talked about most things but the topic that had been introduced. Henry concluded that the gifts of writing and oratory are seldom wedded in the one. The best speaker was a novelist, whose books were as free from humour as Ireland is from snakes. He thought that humour wasn't a high quality. Good for him that he had none, as the great reading public likes a man who is either as serious as an owl or as giddy as a Merry Andrew. Sinclair was reputedly a humorist, but it was difficult to get him to open his mouth on the subject, and when he did the company was in doubt whether to laugh or applaud.

"Humour," he said, in his drawling Scotch accent, "is, according to Russell Lowell, the great antiseptic of leeterature. For my pairt, 'werna ma heart licht I wad dee.'" And he sat down.

Really these great guns of literature thundered no better than a twopenny cannon. Henry had heard as good at a church debating society in Wheelton. At least, the disparity was scarce appreciable, and yet the men he had listened to were, each of them, capable of great things pen in hand; most of them would have been a loadstar of interest in any large provincial city. They were best beheld at a distance and behind the glamour of their books, he thought.

But he had reason to modify his opinion in the light of the club-room gossip which followed the dinner and discussion. He was soon tingling with delight at hearing men whose names were widely known discussing the affairs of the literary world. He felt that he stood at the very fount of those streams of gossip which flow far and wide through the channels of the Press. He knew that many a paragraph he had clipped from a London journal and printed in his column in the _Laysford Leader_ had originated in the after-dinner chatter of his club, or some such coterie. "I am informed that Mr. Blank's next novel will deal with," or "My readers may be interested to know that Mr. So-and-So, the celebrated author of this or that, is about to," or again, "Mr. Such-and-Such is contemplating a holiday in Timbuctoo with a view to local colour for his next romance, which has been arranged to appear in"--he could now see that these pleasant pars, with their delightful "behind-the-scenes"

flavour, grew out of meetings like this.

After leaving the "Magpie," Adrian Grant walked with Henry as far as Long Acre, where the latter could get a 'bus Bloomsburyward.

"An interesting gathering," said the novelist; "how did it impress you?"

"Chiefly that distinguished authors are very like human beings, on the whole."

"I'm glad of that. Now you're learning. But you'll find much true camaraderie among them, if you allow for the little eccentricities of the artistic temperament, which you are sure to notice the more you know of them. I overheard a very third-rate novelist to-night telling a guest that his own books were divided into three periods; the middle one being a bridge that linked the two expressions of his mind together. Heavens!

I don't suppose there's a score of people in the country who are the least concerned in his work. But he's a good fellow for all his vanity.

We're all of us vain, more or less."

"I was also struck by the number of well-known people--men, I mean, whose names are discussed throughout the whole country," Henry observed.

"It was difficult to realise the distinguished nature of the company.

You couldn't see the wood for trees, if the simile will hold water."

"Quite so. Should you become as famous as Maister Sinkler, you'll still find that in any club you enter there will be someone better known than yourself. That's the best of London. It brings you to your level. Where life is prolific--look at China--it is least valued. Where geniuses, or men of talent, most abound, why, it's like Gilbert's era, 'when dukes were four a penny.' At best, you're only a bit of vegetable in London's broth-pot. But it's good that it should be so. In the country you are inclined to esteem yourself too highly, and of all human follies that's the worst."

Mr. P.'s speech sounded like a literary setting of Flo's opinion: "You're a somebody here; in London you'd be one of the crowd."

They walked without speaking through the musty-smelling region of Covent Garden, and had reached Long Acre before Henry broke the silence suddenly by remarking, as if after much considering of the point:

"You said that one would find some true camaraderie among the literary set. That scarcely tallies with your rather pessimistic views of human nature in general."

"Well, after all, it's difficult to be consistent--and speak your mind.

My views of human nature remain unchanged, and though, as you have said, authors are very like folk, they do have a touch of brotherliness which you will find in no other profession; certainly not in the musical, of which I know something. There may appear to be a good deal of back-biting and jealousy among literary men; but they are always ready to encourage the new man, to applaud the conscientious worker. Remember that most authors of genius have first been proclaimed by their fellows of the pen. In the nature of things it must be so. The asinine public has to be told who are the writers worth reading. Mind you, the duffer will get never a leg up, and before any one gets a lift he has to show himself worthy of it. But I suppose the same might be said of the business world as well."

"Do you think I'm going the right way for a leg up, then?--if I may bore you with my own petty affairs."

"Not yet; but you'll soon be shaping that way. This I realise: journalism will give any moderately clever fellow a living, but even a genius will scarcely win a reputation that way. Billy Ricketts writes a book, and even if it's a bad one, Billy is for a week or two more noticed in the papers than the editor of the _Times_ will be in five years. The journalist who gives his best to his paper is a pathetic figure--from the British or Henry Charles point of view, I mean, as I'm looking at the situation with your ideas to direct me, your view of success. He is probably our nearest approach to the Greek sculptors I seem to remember quoting to you once. Anonymity is essential to the true artist, I hold; and strangely, it is the newspaper man--none less artistic--who conforms to this law in England, perhaps unwillingly."

"Of course, we'll never agree on that point," said Henry, "as I'm all for personality."

"So; that's what I know, and hence my line of reasoning. Play up your personality for all it's worth, and be happy. It's not my way; but no matter. And to do so, journalism is at best only a training school. What you must do is a book. Once you make a moderate success with a book, your precious personality has become a marketable thing in modern Philistia."

"You mean a novel, I suppose?"

"I mean a book. You're not a poet, or the song within would have rilled out long ago. _Ergo_, it's not a book of poetry. You have a literary touch, and might do well in the essay; but essays are 'off' just now, says the a.s.s-in-Chief of the great B. P. You haven't gone round the world on your hands and knees, or walked from Charing Cross to St.

Paul's on your head--either of which achievements would have given you copy for a sensational book hot with personality, and made you the most sought-after lecturer of the day. So there remains only the novel, and the B. P. shouts for more novel, like the whimpering infant it is. Give it novel, my lad. You, as well as anybody. That the novel has become a contemptible convention of the publis.h.i.+ng trade is not its fault. Always remember we have Meredith and Hardy and Stevenson writing novels, and you will think well of that vehicle of expression."

"But I have no great impulse to write fiction. I'd rather write about the men who write it," Henry said.