Poets All

Front matter

NEW NOVELS AT ALL LI BE AR LES. Mrs. Grundy at Home. By C. T. C. James. Crown Svo. 6s. The Incomplete Adventurer. By Tighe Hop kins. Crown Svo. 6s. The Twilight of Love. By Chas. H. Brookfield. Crown Svo. 3s. Gd. By a Himalayan Lake. By An Indian Exile. Crown Svo. 3s. Gd. BY JOHN A. BRIDGES AUTHOR OF "IDYLLS OF A LOST VILLAGE," "A BRUMMAGEM BARON," " WET DAYS," ETC. " Scribimus indocti doctique poemata." — Hor. "Both the wise aud the witless scribble." — Praeii. SJonbon WARD AND DOWNEY 12 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN 1893 [AU rights reserced] Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungat. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE POET AT HOME ... ... ... 1 II. A KINDLY CRITIC ... ... ... ... 9 III. A COUNTRY SQUIRE ... ... ... 20 IV. MAGGIE ELLIS ... ... ... ... 29 V. THE COMING GUESTS ... ... ... 36 VI. THE DESCENT OF THE IMMORTALS... ... 47 VII.

THE NEW 'STUDY' ... ... ... ... 56 VIII. THE PURSUIT OF 'COPY' ... ... ... 67 IX. A CRITICAL DISCUSSION ... ... ... 84 X. THE RECTOR ON POETS AND POETRY . . 96 XI. AN INTERRUPTED COMPETITION ... ... 110 XII. AT THE HOME FARM ... ... ... 127 XIII. THE YOUNG SCHOOL-MASTER ... ... 138 XIV. THE RECTOR'S GLASS-HOUSE ... ... 148 XV. THE DAWN OF AMBITION ... ... ... 162 XVI. DEFERRED WOOINGS ... ... ... 171 XVII. MAGGIE MAKES A DISCOVERY ... ... 182 XVIII. WHAT BECAME OF THE ROSE ... ... VI CONTENTS. CHAP. PAliE XIX. THE CRITIC'S THUMB ... ... ... 201 XX. A SYMPATHIZING PUBLISHER ... ... 213 XXI. A GLIMPSE OF FAME ... ... 226 XXII. THE KING IS DEAD ... ... ... 238 XXIII. THE CRITIC IS MAGNANIMOUS ... 254 XXIV. LONG LIVE THE KING ... ... ... 261 XXV. MAGGIE IS WITNESS TO A LOVE SCENE ... 270 XXVI. A SEASIDE WALK ... ... ... ... 278 XXVII. A LAUREATE SPOILED ... ... ...

Chapter I. The Poet At Home

" POETS All ! What an absurd name ! " exclaims an intending reader, hastily throwing aside the book and choosing instead another with, at first sight, a more sensible and intelligible title — which does not necessarily guarantee a more sensible or intelligible interior. And why not Poets AU, I should like to ask ? Surely if Horace, before the stylus was superseded by the gold pen, and the waxen tablets by foolscap — ill omened word ! — could assert (perhaps with a little of his poetical licence) that every one, learned or ignorant, was writing poetry, the remark must have far more truth in our own time. It may indeed in the present day be shown— with the usual exceptions, to include the above-mentioned intending reader— to be almost literally true. It is of course a well-known fact that almost every one, from Prime Minister to the lowest of those for whom he caters, loves the elusive pursuit of rhymes.

True that rhymes are not always, or often, poetry. But as some of the compositions that have been discovered on the walls of convicts' cells have not been entirely wanting in the divine afflatus, it is hard to see whose claims can be called in question. Poets are of so many sorts. Some few have, im planted in their breasts, a genuine poetical feeling, which they have also the power of expressing. Others have the feeling without the power — sometimes with out even the wish — to give utterance to it. Some, and these by far the largest portion, resemble machines in their capacity for assimilating any raw material which seems likely to yield the necessary staple. Bees wander far afield in search of honey, and some bees are so clever as to extract it from the most unpromising flowers. If these last, however, did not contain honey the cleverest bee would have to return empty to the hive.

So likewise would the poets who are dependent upon others for their raw material. There must be poetry one would think in those from whom the poetical-honey-gatherers accumulate their THE POET AT HOME. 3 vast stores. In these days of eager competition I notice that few people, however stolid their appear ance, escape rifling. Who shall say that there does not exist a poet (let us hope of the comic order) who from the plump bagman — none such shall be per mitted to defile these aristocratic pages — seated at table with flushed face and napkin tucked under double chin, could extract not indeed a sonnet, which would be hardly fitting, but a ballad ? Therefore, as every one appears to yield more or less poetry towards feeding the machines which are always at work, what further proof is needed that we are "Poets all"? . i I may be a partial judge, since it is an immense advantage to a novelist — though I am not aware that the fact has been noticed — that all his dramatis pcrsonœ should be poets.

Poets are, of course, known to be ardent wooers of the Muse ; but they also love to bask generally — or to describe themselves as basking ; I hope for their sakes that the half of it is true — in the smiles of beauty. Having decided that we are " Poets all," there is sure to be plenty of love-making, which, I am told, makes popular reading. It is no doubt a rather disappointing fact that so many poets are chiefly given to falling in love with themselves. In days when the counterfeit presentments of successful men of letters are to be seen in every photo grapher's window cheek by jowl with the ladies of the music-hall and the professional beauties ; when the lineaments of painters, famous and the reverse, are pictured by shoals in the magazines ; when even their wives — if sufficiently good-looking — are hung in rows on the line in the Royal Academy ; when their studios and haunts are familiar to all of us as household words, no apology is necessary for introducing my readers to a workshop fitted with machinery adapted to the manufacture of poetry.

About eleven o'clock at night two men were seated in a room in the top storey of a tall building in Pall Mall, which was let out in chambers. The apartment was aesthetically furnished, but was everywhere so littered with papers that the fashion of the almost invisible upholstery had little to do with determining its character. The chairs were hidden by heaps of books of the genus encyclopædia; on the untidy round table was a vast inkstand, and an enormous box that had once contained cigarettes ; while from underneath peeped a waste-paper basket, also empty. It was the middle of January, and a fire — of as much brightness as is usually extracted from London coal — was burning on the hearth. One of the two men, ¥ THE POET AT HOME. 5 however, would have derived but little warmth from even a more genial blaze, since his companion — if he could be considered such — was seated with his back to the table directly between him and the fire, of which every flicker was thus arrested in transitu.

A long leg of almost impossible thinness, thrown out on either side, formed a fire-guard, which had at all events the effect of preventing the other tenant of the apartment from endangering his person or becoming oppressively warm. The man who monopolized the fire was long and thin, as also was his hair, which strayed in greyish curls over the collar of his black velvet coat. He wore a very long thin light-brown moustache, the several hairs of which a German specialist would have numbered in less than a lifetime. This the long fingers of the hand not required for his cigarette were perpetually caressing with an affection of which it appeared to be altogether undeserving. His some what dissipated and anything but jovial appearance — one feels grateful to the great majority of dissipated people for doing their best to look jovial — was more probably caused by the habit he had contracted of sitting up late, smoking endless cigarettes and drinking cold coffee, than by indulgences generally found more captivating.

A cup of the latter beverage was even now wasting its fragrance on the mantel piece in front of him. His countenance — if any one could have seen it — wore an expression which would have suggested complacent and imperturbable self satisfaction, had it not been slightly overshadowed by boredom. Now and again, when he threw a remark — as it were a bone to a dog — together with a puff of smoke over his shoulder to the man who was perforce sitting behind him, he presented a clear cut profile which, if it gave but little promise of strength, was yet not without evidence of culture. He had an aquiline nose and dreamy blue eyes, which last had been trained — eyes and poodles can be trained to anything — to wear a " far-away " look. He had made it his business in life to look intel lectual, and this business he followed with the more success in that he was probably himself unaware how much was affectation, and how little reality.

The impostor who can first impose on himself will frequently have but little trouble with the rest of the world. The position he had taken up was suggestive of the tone of his remarks, which, however, the man behind him did not appear to object to. Mr. Prothero Corthee was quite the newest, and therefore the best poet to himself and to a few admirers who expected to be paid in kind, and THE POET AT HOME. of whom the most enthusiastic was now seated behind him. He had an affectation of not caring for anything that was said, even in praise of himself — and it may be confidently asserted that to all else his ears were hermetically sealed. Indeed, the way in which he had now turned his back on his guest (for Mr. Prothero Corthee was seated in his own chambers) was a very clever piece of affectation indeed.

In fact, the new poet was distinctly clever, and this quality was never more, conspicuous — hunts a non lucendo — than when he was accepting the incense of his admirers. But it may be doubted whether cleverness is, in the long run, of any more advantage to a jDoet than to a statesman; and to the latter it is certain, sooner or later, to prove fatal. That the new poet was accustomed to be anything but polite, and sometimes downright rude to his chief admirer, was perhaps the nearest approach he had ever made to genius. The days are past when poets were born. They are now made, and some of them very much made indeed. The class of goods turned out by the general run of modern poets — I am not speaking of the ex ceptions — requires a good deal of advertising. It cannot be too often repeated that your medicine is worth a guinea a box.

But to suppose that a poet can be advertised openly at so much a line, and in the same column perhaps as the wares of the immortal and life-giving B , would be to be very ignorant indeed. The Muse, if slightly vulgarized, is yet a little above, if far less profitable, than chocolate or soap. Her praises must be whispered delicately, yet with the impassioned fervour of which nothing is so capable as humbug. There are occasions when the answer of the invoked Echo is inaudible. Mr. McCawmee Jones, the other occupant of the room, was a critic, and therefore one of those who make the poets who are no longer born. The con temptuous treatment that he was receiving made him feel confident — though he should have known better — that the praises he had been for some months lavishing on his latest idol were the genuine outcome of a critical and impartial mind.

Chapter II

A KINDLY CRITIC. Mr. McCawmee Jones presented a different exterior to that of his host. His figure, as he sat on his chair like a sack, was that of a typical John Bull run to seed. Instead of a cigarette he was puffing vehemently at an enormous cigar that he had brought with him, while on the table in front of him was a tall glass of brandy-and-seltzer — extorted with some trouble from the Poet. There was no appearance about him of refinement or ultra-sensitiveness. On the contrary, his exterior gave promise of the mental qualities to which a rhinoceros may be presumed to aspire. He had a good-natured but rather stupid face, and thick lips contracted into an almost per petual smile. His enormous bald head was fringed with brown hair, which he wore very short indeed. He was not only a critic by profession, but a writer on every subject under the sun — and elsewhere.

On pictures, knur and spell, architecture, football, sliding seats, and indeed on everything, his dictum was — by those whom he honoured with his approval — considered law. But it was as a critic of poetry that he chiefly shone. Indeed he was allowed to be facile princeps among poetical critics, and if this meant that he criticized most writers of verses, he was no doubt entitled to the description. There were ill-natured people — and truth is ill-natured or nothing — who said that previous to his full-fledged appearance as a critic, and when addressed by his few friends as plain " Jones," he had known but little of anvthing. That he chad no ear for verse or music did not necessarily incapacitate him for criticizing either in a day when it is a point of honour with so many to engage in contests for which they are physically and morally unfitted, and, the rounder they have been fashioned by nature, to place themselves the more determinedly in the squarer hole.

At the present moment Mr. McCawmee Jones was a firm ally of Mr. Corthee, though any hint of this from an outsider would have given dire offence to the latter. Mr. Jones, though he did not look clever, and may not have been a very capable critic, was no fool. He had succeeded in thoroughly mastering an art for which life has often been found too short. A good deal is gained, at the commence ment of a career, by deciding once for all on your role. Mr. Jones had early perceived the immense advantage possessed by a tradesman who sells absolutely indispensable wares. People are so con stituted mentally and physically as to be unable to exist without two things. These two are bread and flattery. Mr. Jones had never felt any inclina tion to follow the calling of a baker (whose enormous and unfair profits were then in the dim and distant future), or even of a miller, and it was therefore almost of necessity that he had taken up his present calling.

Whatever he might have been as a baker, as flatterer he had few equals, and with the profits of his very necessary article of commerce he had rested content, without striving to emulate the gigantic emporiums of the universal provider. Mr. Jones had started in life without education, and was not educated now in the general acceptation of the word. But there is " a rule of thumb" in this as in other matters, and he had necessarily picked up a good deal. He was without prejudices, artistic or otherwise. Those whom he flattered believed in him — and he flattered a good many. By his persevering worship of others he had got him self to be regarded as quite a little deity. A vast number of people who wished to climb had voted him into the box to distribute passes for Parnassus. Of course there were many who thought him a quack, and would not stoop to accept his patronage.

Of these independent men a considerable number — from having no sacred critic— perished, or languished unknown. Should one be successful in emerging unaided from the ruck, the critic would lose no time in taking possession of him and including himself among his admirers. From the obscurity in which Mr. Jones's early history was involved it was impossible to proclaim with certainty that his youth had been nourished on oil. But to be able to dispense so much was surely presumptive evidence of having swallowed a good deal. It could not be truly said that he flattered everybody ; he did not indeed know everybody. Those whom he did not know he either ignored altogether or damned with that faintest of praise which is the modern critic's substitute for the savage assaults of the old school. Literary personages are never tired of reminding us that, except on rare occasions, old or even new writers need fear nothing worse — as if there could be anything worse — than to be ignored or treated with a little mild scorn, and it must be acknowledged that modern critics show an amount of tolerance which amply proves the majority to be amiable and unwilling to wound.

Some may be of opinion that criticism has lost in stfength what it may have gained in good-nature. The man who hesitates to crush an obnoxious insect will almost certainly be kind-hearted, but he will scarcely be of the stuff of which Bismarcks are made. The touching advice to cast one's bread upon the waters was perhaps never literally followed, and in these days is generally neglected in its metaphorical sense. Still it has never been utterly disregarded, and in this matter-of-fact age there are people who, while declining to entrust good, sound, wholesome bread to the current, have discovered that butter has a very fair chance of returning. Though no amount of care can secure ventures of this nature from risk, the experienced outfitter is less reckless than might be imagined, and is not accustomed to make use of the best possible materials.

Indeed, an inferior article makes quite as good a show, and " butterine " is a good deal cheaper than a com modity " warranted pure." Perhaps the casters of the former too often overlook the improbability of a better quality being returned to them. There are places — eddies or backwaters — where this apparently wasteful business is so much in vogue that the waters appear quite unpleasantly greasy. One is reminded how, when a boy, it was one's delight to sail a toy boat on a pond. On its arrival at the opposite side there was always a playmate ready to start it on the return journey. It is charitable to suppose that the habit of in discriminately praising every one in whose company you may find yourself, sprang originally from a mistaken, if kindly, wish not to hurt or offend. But it is to be feared that it now proceeds from a morbid desire of being praised in return.

There is, indeed, no amount of humiliation that a toper will not put up with rather than go without the dram which has become a necessity. But counterfeit praise cannot hope to evoke a genuine return. At the end of the exchange both parties are exactly where they were. It is possible for a novice, even without being very conceited, to mistake the " butterine " for something quite different, and to imagine that laudari a laudato is necessarily a certificate of worth. But he will speedily be undeceived if from sincerity or inexperience he neglects to make a quick return of the praise with which he had been plastered. Perhaps after all there was nothing so very wonderful in the fact that Mr. Jones had been able to acquire and retain a position of considerable eminence. Perseverance more often succeeds than genius, and the critic was persevering or nothing.

It is possible now-a-days to obtain in a few minutes from encyclopædias and books of reference more information than would be gained in a life spent in the acquirement of any special knowledge. There might still be a few prejudiced people who, on a question, for instance, of deep sea fisheries, would prefer to utilize the experience of a practical sailor. But then prejudiced people are happily so few. To Mr. McCawmee Jones magazines — even quarterlies — opened the doors obdurately closed to so many. When he had to write an article or a review he did not go back to his experience, for he had no experience to which he could return. He did not even go out of doors. Instead he went to a book-shelf. That he made very few mistakes was partly luck, and partly cleverness and the habit of keeping his ears open — enormous ears which would have de lighted Darwin.

To say that he was now quite ignorant would have been to libel him as more incapable than an Irish labourer. At least he was wise in one respect, and had declined to follow the example of successful politicians and others who are fond of ostentatiously kicking down the ladder by which they rose. He still stuck to his flattery — all the more meritoriously on the present occasion, as he was shut out from the fire. Fortunately for the few, the great majority are ignorant that people are generally taken at their own valuation, though perhaps some of those who early grasped the value of this great principle may have made too much use of their advantage. Life is, indeed, like a bazaar, where no one dreams of altering the tickets on goods that the owners have priced too low. Mr. Jones was speaking in his smooth, oily voice.

He had a habit of enunciating his words in a leisurely manner, with a view, no doubt, to the producing of as soothing an effect as possible. The Poet's interest seemed to centre in the smoke-wreaths which his eyes followed intently till they disappeared in the dark corners of the room. " By the bye " — with a sudden turn to the con venation, which had been strictly confined to the supposed beauties of Mr. Corthee's last poem — "there was something said about my going down with you to Beddington next week. If you have made up your mind I should rather like the outing, unless, of course, you had rather go without me. I hear it is a jolly old place, and your cousin, the Squire, is a real good sort, and I should like to meet him again." It was almost impossible to refrain from answer ing. When in Mr. Jones's company Mr. Corthee frequently kept absolute silence ; and indeed the former was quite capable of carrying on a conversation unaided.

" I thought of going down there next week," he said surlily. There was a suspicion in his manner of " I am not sure I shall go now." "I understand," Mr. Jones continued, "that your cousin, Miss Ellis, is a jolly girl" — a murmur passed the barrier of the Poet's teeth ; was it possibly "damned impudence?" — "I wonder if a fellow would have any chance there ? " The deprecating tone rather suggested some other fellow, but Mr. Corthee seemed highly indignant. He rose languidly, and stood with his back to the fire. " My cousin would be sure to fall in love with you," he said, in his most bitterly sarcastic tones. Mr. Jones winced a little, but — true to his prin ciples — " Not if you are there," he murmured softly. The Poet carelessly accepted the homage. " Thank you," he said superciliously, " I am not in for that sort of thing."

" I know," returned Mr. Jones. " Wedded to Muse — and all that. Glad you leave us poor devils a chance of something." c Was it possible that there was a slight tinge of sarcasm in his tone? If so, it may be safely declared that it passed unnoticed by the Poet, who was passing his long fingers caressingly through his thin hair, and who would never have dreamed of the possibility of any one ridiculing him. Mr. Jones rose, put on his overcoat, took his hat, and made for the door ; with his hand on the handle he paused. " Then shall we go ? " he inquired. " Oh, yes, we'll go," said the Poet peevishly, looking at the door as if to add, " and I wish you'd go now." " Start on Tuesday, then ? " Mr. Jones waited a moment or two, but, as no answer was vouchsafed, he opened the door and walked out. " What an ass that fellow is getting," he said, as he descended the stairs.

" I almost wonder I can put up with him. He is about the worst I have had. There isn't a redeeming feature about him. His poems are humbug, and he is a humbug, and I am the worst humbug of all. But how the deuce can I help myself?" " Bah ! " snorted the Poet, when he found himself alone, " that fellow is taking too much on himself. What a conceited ass he is getting to be. Ha ! ha ! " and he laughed a discordant laugh — " a lady killer indeed ! I've a good mind to have a try myself, just to take the conceit out of him. Going down there with that snob ! But one must have somebody to keep off the yokels. Hang the country, larks and things. Oh ! yes, I dare say. Snow too, by Jove. Gets into your shoes, I expect. Would get a pair of boots if I had time. I won't go. Yes, I will. Hardly fair to the girl to leave her for that fellow to roll his gooseberry eyes at. She must be smart though to catch me." So spake the Poet as he retired to rest, forgetting that a haughty spirit goes before a fall.

Chapter III

A COUNTRY SQUIRE. Beddington, the residence of Robert Ellis, Esq., shortly to be favoured by a visit from the two literary magnates to whose symposium the reader has been introduced, was a rather fine old place in Daneshire, about seven miles from the county town of Carbury. It had but little pretension to archi tectural beauty, and had a rather dwarfed appearance from being surrounded by enormous trees, which had calmly outlived many generations of fret ting and now forgotten humanity. The windows in the front of the house were small, and some of them had been bricked up in the days of the window-tax, and never re-opened on its repeal. The old-fashioned front door looked mean and small to modern ideas, and the flight of stone steps, guarded by a plain iron handrail, and placed at right angles to the front of the house, had at a little distance the appearance of a vast horse-block.

In the centre of the roof was a cupola, under which was an old bell, which an ancestor of the present squire, who had been a noted collector of coins, had had cast from the gold and silver duplicates which he was unwilling to present to rival museums. The bell had an exquisite tone, though the present squire may have been partial in preferring it to the peals of the neighbouring churches. But he was one of those men who are to be envied in that they always consider their possessions the best in the world, and find it easy to convince themselves that what they cannot have is undesirable. In old times the bell may have had some duties above the common, but it had now to be content with the functions of a mere dinner-bell. You would not have guessed this from its tone, which was rich and full as ever.

Inanimate things often set an example (in their phlegmatic way) of content under a change of circumstances, which would be well if we oftener followed. Beddington was at present rather under a cloud ; the evil days that had come upon agriculture having so reduced what had once been a fine income that the owner was forced to abstain from any outlay that did not promise to be remunerative. This got in fact to mean that he abstained as far as possible from any outlay at all. Mr. Ellis had been brought up at Eton and Oxford, but had long ago lost any taste for literature with which he may have been inoculated at either seat — so-called — of learning. The old house had been stored by a literary descend ant of the numismatist, with books of which the greater part were rubbish, though amongst them were many of the old standard works which modern writers find so useful and suggestive, and an edition more or less valuable of almost eveiy poet from Chaucer who had made any name at all — including a good many who had been unable to keep their names when they had made them.

This collection it had been the accepted tradition for each succeed ing squire to augment with the works of any poet who flourished in his reign. For some reason — perhaps for no more inscrutable one than that an ancestor of the present squire preferred cock-fighting to literature — there had been a pause after Byron, and the hiatus was now such a wide one that the then acknowledged duty of completing the collection had been deferred. The deferred task got daily — as such tasks do — more and more arduous, till gradu ally all hope or intention of completing it had passed by. A man who has decided to neglect an uncon genial duty soon gets to find excuses for the neglect, and thence to convince those whom it may concern that it was not a duty after all. Mr. Ellis, while knowing little of the contents of his library, had got into the habit of accounting for the abrupt cessation of the collection — which, since it was his property, could be nothing less than perfect — by saying that there were no more poets to collect.