diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2719-0.txt | 1011 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2719-0.zip | bin | 0 -> 24449 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2719-h.zip | bin | 0 -> 25731 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 2719-h/2719-h.htm | 1189 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/gfane10.txt | 949 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/gfane10.zip | bin | 0 -> 22528 bytes |
9 files changed, 3165 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2719-0.txt b/2719-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..befd51f --- /dev/null +++ b/2719-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1011 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Greville Fane, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Greville Fane + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: February 15, 2015 [eBook #2719] +[This file was first posted on July 3, 2000] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREVILLE FANE*** + + +Transcribed from 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofed by Nina Hall, Mohua Sen, Bridie, Francine +Smith and David. + + + + + + GREVILLE FANE. + + +COMING in to dress for dinner, I found a telegram: “Mrs. Stormer dying; +can you give us half a column for to-morrow evening? Let her off easy, +but not too easy.” I was late; I was in a hurry; I had very little time +to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply: “Will do what I can.” +It was not till I had dressed and was rolling away to dinner that, in the +hansom, I bethought myself of the difficulty of the condition attached. +The difficulty was not of course in letting her off easy but in +qualifying that indulgence. “I simply won’t qualify it,” I said to +myself. I didn’t admire her, but I liked her, and I had known her so +long that I almost felt heartless in sitting down at such an hour to a +feast of indifference. I must have seemed abstracted, for the early +years of my acquaintance with her came back to me. I spoke of her to the +lady I had taken down, but the lady I had taken down had never heard of +Greville Fane. I tried my other neighbour, who pronounced her books “too +vile.” I had never thought them very good, but I should let her off +easier than that. + +I came away early, for the express purpose of driving to ask about her. +The journey took time, for she lived in the north-west district, in the +neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. My apprehension that I should be too +late was justified in a fuller sense than I had attached to it—I had only +feared that the house would be shut up. There were lights in the +windows, and the temperate tinkle of my bell brought a servant +immediately to the door, but poor Mrs. Stormer had passed into a state in +which the resonance of no earthly knocker was to be feared. A lady, in +the hall, hovering behind the servant, came forward when she heard my +voice. I recognised Lady Luard, but she had mistaken me for the doctor. + +“Excuse my appearing at such an hour,” I said; “it was the first possible +moment after I heard.” + +“It’s all over,” Lady Luard replied. “Dearest mamma!” + +She stood there under the lamp with her eyes on me; she was very tall, +very stiff, very cold, and always looked as if these things, and some +others beside, in her dress, her manner and even her name, were an +implication that she was very admirable. I had never been able to follow +the argument, but that is a detail. I expressed briefly and frankly what +I felt, while the little mottled maidservant flattened herself against +the wall of the narrow passage and tried to look detached without looking +indifferent. It was not a moment to make a visit, and I was on the point +of retreating when Lady Luard arrested me with a queer, casual, drawling +“Would you—a—would you, perhaps, be _writing_ something?” I felt for the +instant like an interviewer, which I was not. But I pleaded guilty to +this intention, on which she rejoined: “I’m so very glad—but I think my +brother would like to see you.” I detested her brother, but it wasn’t an +occasion to act this out; so I suffered myself to be inducted, to my +surprise, into a small back room which I immediately recognised as the +scene, during the later years, of Mrs. Stormer’s imperturbable industry. +Her table was there, the battered and blotted accessory to innumerable +literary lapses, with its contracted space for the arms (she wrote only +from the elbow down) and the confusion of scrappy, scribbled sheets which +had already become literary remains. Leolin was also there, smoking a +cigarette before the fire and looking impudent even in his grief, sincere +as it well might have been. + +To meet him, to greet him, I had to make a sharp effort; for the air that +he wore to me as he stood before me was quite that of his mother’s +murderer. She lay silent for ever upstairs—as dead as an unsuccessful +book, and his swaggering erectness was a kind of symbol of his having +killed her. I wondered if he had already, with his sister, been +calculating what they could get for the poor papers on the table; but I +had not long to wait to learn, for in reply to the scanty words of +sympathy I addressed him he puffed out: “It’s miserable, miserable, yes; +but she has left three books complete.” His words had the oddest effect; +they converted the cramped little room into a seat of trade and made the +“book” wonderfully feasible. He would certainly get all that could be +got for the three. Lady Luard explained to me that her husband had been +with them but had had to go down to the House. To her brother she +explained that I was going to write something, and to me again she made +it clear that she hoped I would “do mamma justice.” She added that she +didn’t think this had ever been done. She said to her brother: “Don’t +you think there are some things he ought thoroughly to understand?” and +on his instantly exclaiming “Oh, thoroughly—thoroughly!” she went on, +rather austerely: “I mean about mamma’s birth.” + +“Yes, and her connections,” Leolin added. + +I professed every willingness, and for five minutes I listened, but it +would be too much to say that I understood. I don’t even now, but it is +not important. My vision was of other matters than those they put before +me, and while they desired there should be no mistake about their +ancestors I became more and more lucid about themselves. I got away as +soon as possible, and walked home through the great dusky, empty +London—the best of all conditions for thought. By the time I reached my +door my little article was practically composed—ready to be transferred +on the morrow from the polished plate of fancy. I believe it attracted +some notice, was thought “graceful” and was said to be by some one else. +I had to be pointed without being lively, and it took some tact. But +what I said was much less interesting than what I thought—especially +during the half-hour I spent in my armchair by the fire, smoking the +cigar I always light before going to bed. I went to sleep there, I +believe; but I continued to moralise about Greville Fane. I am reluctant +to lose that retrospect altogether, and this is a dim little memory of +it, a document not to “serve.” The dear woman had written a hundred +stories, but none so curious as her own. + +When first I knew her she had published half-a-dozen fictions, and I +believe I had also perpetrated a novel. She was more than a dozen years +older than I, but she was a person who always acknowledged her +relativity. It was not so very long ago, but in London, amid the big +waves of the present, even a near horizon gets hidden. I met her at some +dinner and took her down, rather flattered at offering my arm to a +celebrity. She didn’t look like one, with her matronly, mild, inanimate +face, but I supposed her greatness would come out in her conversation. I +gave it all the opportunities I could, but I was not disappointed when I +found her only a dull, kind woman. This was why I liked her—she rested +me so from literature. To myself literature was an irritation, a +torment; but Greville Fane slumbered in the intellectual part of it like +a Creole in a hammock. She was not a woman of genius, but her faculty +was so special, so much a gift out of hand, that I have often wondered +why she fell below that distinction. This was doubtless because the +transaction, in her case, had remained incomplete; genius always pays for +the gift, feels the debt, and she was placidly unconscious of obligation. +She could invent stories by the yard, but she couldn’t write a page of +English. She went down to her grave without suspecting that though she +had contributed volumes to the diversion of her contemporaries she had +not contributed a sentence to the language. This had not prevented +bushels of criticism from being heaped upon her head; she was worth a +couple of columns any day to the weekly papers, in which it was shown +that her pictures of life were dreadful but her style really charming. +She asked me to come and see her, and I went. She lived then in +Montpellier Square; which helped me to see how dissociated her +imagination was from her character. + +An industrious widow, devoted to her daily stint, to meeting the butcher +and baker and making a home for her son and daughter, from the moment she +took her pen in her hand she became a creature of passion. She thought +the English novel deplorably wanting in that element, and the task she +had cut out for herself was to supply the deficiency. Passion in high +life was the general formula of this work, for her imagination was at +home only in the most exalted circles. She adored, in truth, the +aristocracy, and they constituted for her the romance of the world or, +what is more to the point, the prime material of fiction. Their beauty +and luxury, their loves and revenges, their temptations and surrenders, +their immoralities and diamonds were as familiar to her as the blots on +her writing-table. She was not a belated producer of the old fashionable +novel, she had a cleverness and a modernness of her own, she had +freshened up the fly-blown tinsel. She turned off plots by the hundred +and—so far as her flying quill could convey her—was perpetually going +abroad. Her types, her illustrations, her tone were nothing if not +cosmopolitan. She recognised nothing less provincial than European +society, and her fine folk knew each other and made love to each other +from Doncaster to Bucharest. She had an idea that she resembled Balzac, +and her favourite historical characters were Lucien de Rubempré and the +Vidame de Pamiers. I must add that when I once asked her who the latter +personage was she was unable to tell me. She was very brave and healthy +and cheerful, very abundant and innocent and wicked. She was clever and +vulgar and snobbish, and never so intensely British as when she was +particularly foreign. + +This combination of qualities had brought her early success, and I +remember having heard with wonder and envy of what she “got,” in those +days, for a novel. The revelation gave me a pang: it was such a proof +that, practising a totally different style, I should never make my +fortune. And yet when, as I knew her better she told me her real tariff +and I saw how rumour had quadrupled it, I liked her enough to be sorry. +After a while I discovered too that if she got less it was not that _I_ +was to get any more. My failure never had what Mrs. Stormer would have +called the banality of being relative—it was always admirably absolute. +She lived at ease however in those days—ease is exactly the word, though +she produced three novels a year. She scorned me when I spoke of +difficulty—it was the only thing that made her angry. If I hinted that a +work of art required a tremendous licking into shape she thought it a +pretension and a _pose_. She never recognised the “torment of form”; the +furthest she went was to introduce into one of her books (in satire her +hand was heavy) a young poet who was always talking about it. I couldn’t +quite understand her irritation on this score, for she had nothing at +stake in the matter. She had a shrewd perception that form, in prose at +least, never recommended any one to the public we were condemned to +address, and therefore she lost nothing (putting her private humiliation +aside) by not having any. She made no pretence of producing works of +art, but had comfortable tea-drinking hours in which she freely confessed +herself a common pastrycook, dealing in such tarts and puddings as would +bring customers to the shop. She put in plenty of sugar and of +cochineal, or whatever it is that gives these articles a rich and +attractive colour. She had a serene superiority to observation and +opportunity which constituted an inexpugnable strength and would enable +her to go on indefinitely. It is only real success that wanes, it is +only solid things that melt. Greville Fane’s ignorance of life was a +resource still more unfailing than the most approved receipt. On her +saying once that the day would come when she should have written herself +out I answered: “Ah, you look into fairyland, and the fairies love you, +and _they_ never change. Fairyland is always there; it always was from +the beginning of time, and it always will be to the end. They’ve given +you the key and you can always open the door. With me it’s different; I +try, in my clumsy way, to be in some direct relation to life.” “Oh, +bother your direct relation to life!” she used to reply, for she was +always annoyed by the phrase—which would not in the least prevent her +from using it when she wished to try for style. With no more prejudices +than an old sausage-mill, she would give forth again with patient +punctuality any poor verbal scrap that had been dropped into her. I +cheered her with saying that the dark day, at the end, would be for the +like of _me_; inasmuch as, going in our small way by experience and +observation, we depended not on a revelation, but on a little tiresome +process. Observation depended on opportunity, and where should we be +when opportunity failed? + +One day she told me that as the novelist’s life was so delightful and +during the good years at least such a comfortable support (she had these +staggering optimisms) she meant to train up her boy to follow it. She +took the ingenious view that it was a profession like another and that +therefore everything was to be gained by beginning young and serving an +apprenticeship. Moreover the education would be less expensive than any +other special course, inasmuch as she could administer it herself. She +didn’t profess to keep a school, but she could at least teach her own +child. It was not that she was so very clever, but (she confessed to me +as if she were afraid I would laugh at her) that _he_ was. I didn’t +laugh at her for that, for I thought the boy sharp—I had seen him at +sundry times. He was well grown and good-looking and unabashed, and both +he and his sister made me wonder about their defunct papa, concerning +whom the little I knew was that he had been a clergyman. I explained +them to myself by suppositions and imputations possibly unjust to the +departed; so little were they—superficially at least—the children of +their mother. There used to be, on an easel in her drawing-room, an +enlarged photograph of her husband, done by some horrible posthumous +“process” and draped, as to its florid frame, with a silken scarf, which +testified to the candour of Greville Fane’s bad taste. It made him look +like an unsuccessful tragedian; but it was not a thing to trust. He may +have been a successful comedian. Of the two children the girl was the +elder, and struck me in all her younger years as singularly colourless. +She was only very long, like an undecipherable letter. It was not till +Mrs. Stormer came back from a protracted residence abroad that Ethel +(which was this young lady’s name) began to produce the effect, which was +afterwards remarkable in her, of a certain kind of high resolution. She +made one apprehend that she meant to do something for herself. She was +long-necked and near-sighted and striking, and I thought I had never seen +sweet seventeen in a form so hard and high and dry. She was cold and +affected and ambitious, and she carried an eyeglass with a long handle, +which she put up whenever she wanted not to see. She had come out, as +the phrase is, immensely; and yet I felt as if she were surrounded with a +spiked iron railing. What she meant to do for herself was to marry, and +it was the only thing, I think, that she meant to do for any one else; +yet who would be inspired to clamber over that bristling barrier? What +flower of tenderness or of intimacy would such an adventurer conceive as +his reward? + +This was for Sir Baldwin Luard to say; but he naturally never confided to +me the secret. He was a joyless, jokeless young man, with the air of +having other secrets as well, and a determination to get on politically +that was indicated by his never having been known to commit himself—as +regards any proposition whatever—beyond an exclamatory “Oh!” His wife +and he must have conversed mainly in prim ejaculations, but they +understood sufficiently that they were kindred spirits. I remember being +angry with Greville Fane when she announced these nuptials to me as +magnificent; I remember asking her what splendour there was in the union +of the daughter of a woman of genius with an irredeemable mediocrity. +“Oh! he’s awfully clever,” she said; but she blushed for the maternal +fib. What she meant was that though Sir Baldwin’s estates were not vast +(he had a dreary house in South Kensington and a still drearier “Hall” +somewhere in Essex, which was let), the connection was a “smarter” one +than a child of hers could have aspired to form. In spite of the social +bravery of her novels she took a very humble and dingy view of herself, +so that of all her productions “my daughter Lady Luard” was quite the one +she was proudest of. That personage thought her mother very vulgar and +was distressed and perplexed by the occasional license of her pen, but +had a complicated attitude in regard to this indirect connection with +literature. So far as it was lucrative her ladyship approved of it, and +could compound with the inferiority of the pursuit by doing practical +justice to some of its advantages. I had reason to know (my reason was +simply that poor Mrs. Stormer told me) that she suffered the inky fingers +to press an occasional bank-note into her palm. On the other hand she +deplored the “peculiar style” to which Greville Fane had devoted herself, +and wondered where an author who had the convenience of so lady-like a +daughter could have picked up such views about the best society. “She +might know better, with Leolin and me,” Lady Luard had been known to +remark; but it appeared that some of Greville Fane’s superstitions were +incurable. She didn’t live in Lady Luard’s society, and the best was not +good enough for her—she must make it still better. + +I could see that this necessity grew upon her during the years she spent +abroad, when I had glimpses of her in the shifting sojourns that lay in +the path of my annual ramble. She betook herself from Germany to +Switzerland and from Switzerland to Italy; she favoured cheap places and +set up her desk in the smaller capitals. I took a look at her whenever I +could, and I always asked how Leolin was getting on. She gave me +beautiful accounts of him, and whenever it was possible the boy was +produced for my edification. I had entered from the first into the joke +of his career—I pretended to regard him as a consecrated child. It had +been a joke for Mrs. Stormer at first, but the boy himself had been +shrewd enough to make the matter serious. If his mother accepted the +principle that the intending novelist cannot begin too early to see life, +Leolin was not interested in hanging back from the application of it. He +was eager to qualify himself, and took to cigarettes at ten, on the +highest literary grounds. His poor mother gazed at him with extravagant +envy and, like Desdemona, wished heaven had made _her_ such a man. She +explained to me more than once that in her profession she had found her +sex a dreadful drawback. She loved the story of Madame George Sand’s +early rebellion against this hindrance, and believed that if she had worn +trousers she could have written as well as that lady. Leolin had for the +career at least the qualification of trousers, and as he grew older he +recognised its importance by laying in an immense assortment. He grew up +in gorgeous apparel, which was his way of interpreting his mother’s +system. Whenever I met her I found her still under the impression that +she was carrying this system out and that Leolin’s training was bearing +fruit. She was giving him experience, she was giving him impressions, +she was putting a _gagnepain_ into his hand. It was another name for +spoiling him with the best conscience in the world. The queerest +pictures come back to me of this period of the good lady’s life and of +the extraordinarily virtuous, muddled, bewildering tenor of it. She had +an idea that she was seeing foreign manners as well as her petticoats +would allow; but, in reality she was not seeing anything, least of all +fortunately how much she was laughed at. She drove her whimsical pen at +Dresden and at Florence, and produced in all places and at all times the +same romantic and ridiculous fictions. She carried about her box of +properties and fished out promptly the familiar, tarnished old puppets. +She believed in them when others couldn’t, and as they were like nothing +that was to be seen under the sun it was impossible to prove by +comparison that they were wrong. You can’t compare birds and fishes; you +could only feel that, as Greville Fane’s characters had the fine plumage +of the former species, human beings must be of the latter. + +It would have been droll if it had not been so exemplary to see her +tracing the loves of the duchesses beside the innocent cribs of her +children. The immoral and the maternal lived together in her diligent +days on the most comfortable terms, and she stopped curling the mustaches +of her Guardsmen to pat the heads of her babes. She was haunted by +solemn spinsters who came to tea from continental _pensions_, and by +unsophisticated Americans who told her she was just loved in _their_ +country. “I had rather be just paid there,” she usually replied; for +this tribute of transatlantic opinion was the only thing that galled her. +The Americans went away thinking her coarse; though as the author of so +many beautiful love-stories she was disappointing to most of these +pilgrims, who had not expected to find a shy, stout, ruddy lady in a cap +like a crumbled pyramid. She wrote about the affections and the +impossibility of controlling them, but she talked of the price of +_pension_ and the convenience of an English chemist. She devoted much +thought and many thousands of francs to the education of her daughter, +who spent three years at a very superior school at Dresden, receiving +wonderful instruction in sciences, arts and tongues, and who, taking a +different line from Leolin, was to be brought up wholly as a _femme du +monde_. The girl was musical and philological; she made a specialty of +languages and learned enough about them to be inspired with a great +contempt for her mother’s artless accents. Greville Fane’s French and +Italian were droll; the imitative faculty had been denied her, and she +had an unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes +into small opportunities. She knew it, but she didn’t care; correctness +was the virtue in the world that, like her heroes and heroines, she +valued least. Ethel, who had perceived in her pages some remarkable +lapses, undertook at one time to revise her proofs; but I remember her +telling me a year after the girl had left school that this function had +been very briefly exercised. “She can’t read me,” said Mrs. Stormer; “I +offend her taste. She tells me that at Dresden—at school—I was never +allowed.” The good lady seemed surprised at this, having the best +conscience in the world about her lucubrations. She had never meant to +fly in the face of anything, and considered that she grovelled before the +Rhadamanthus of the English literary tribunal, the celebrated and awful +Young Person. I assured her, as a joke, that she was frightfully +indecent (she hadn’t in fact that reality any more than any other) my +purpose being solely to prevent her from guessing that her daughter had +dropped her not because she was immoral but because she was vulgar. I +used to figure her children closeted together and asking each other while +they exchanged a gaze of dismay: “Why should she _be_ so—and so +_fearfully_ so—when she has the advantage of our society? Shouldn’t _we_ +have taught her better?” Then I imagined their recognising with a blush +and a shrug that she was unteachable, irreformable. Indeed she was, poor +lady; but it is never fair to read by the light of taste things that were +not written by it. Greville Fane had, in the topsy-turvy, a serene good +faith that ought to have been safe from allusion, like a stutter or a +_faux pas_. + +She didn’t make her son ashamed of the profession to which he was +destined, however; she only made him ashamed of the way she herself +exercised it. But he bore his humiliation much better than his sister, +for he was ready to take for granted that he should one day restore the +balance. He was a canny and far-seeing youth, with appetites and +aspirations, and he had not a scruple in his composition. His mother’s +theory of the happy knack he could pick up deprived him of the wholesome +discipline required to prevent young idlers from becoming cads. He had, +abroad, a casual tutor and a snatch or two of a Swiss school, but no +consecutive study, no prospect of a university or a degree. It may be +imagined with what zeal, as the years went on, he entered into the +pleasantry of there being no manual so important to him as the massive +book of life. It was an expensive volume to peruse, but Mrs. Stormer was +willing to lay out a sum in what she would have called her _premiers +frais_. Ethel disapproved—she thought this education far too +unconventional for an English gentleman. Her voice was for Eton and +Oxford, or for any public school (she would have resigned herself) with +the army to follow. But Leolin never was afraid of his sister, and they +visibly disliked, though they sometimes agreed to assist, each other. +They could combine to work the oracle—to keep their mother at her desk. + +When she came back to England, telling me she had got all the continent +could give her, Leolin was a broad-shouldered, red-faced young man, with +an immense wardrobe and an extraordinary assurance of manner. She was +fondly obstinate about her having taken the right course with him, and +proud of all that he knew and had seen. He was now quite ready to begin, +and a little while later she told me he _had_ begun. He had written +something tremendously clever, and it was coming out in the _Cheapside_. +I believe it came out; I had no time to look for it; I never heard +anything about it. I took for granted that if this contribution had +passed through his mother’s hands it had practically become a specimen of +her own genius, and it was interesting to consider Mrs. Stormer’s future +in the light of her having to write her son’s novels as well as her own. +This was not the way she looked at it herself; she took the charming +ground that he would help her to write hers. She used to tell me that he +supplied passages of the greatest value to her own work—all sorts of +technical things, about hunting and yachting and wine—that she couldn’t +be expected to get very straight. It was all so much practice for him +and so much alleviation for her. I was unable to identify these pages, +for I had long since ceased to “keep up” with Greville Fane; but I was +quite able to believe that the wine-question had been put, by Leolin’s +good offices, on a better footing, for the dear lady used to mix her +drinks (she was perpetually serving the most splendid suppers) in the +queerest fashion. I could see that he was willing enough to accept a +commission to look after that department. It occurred to me indeed, when +Mrs. Stormer settled in England again, that by making a shrewd use of +both her children she might be able to rejuvenate her style. Ethel had +come back to gratify her young ambition, and if she couldn’t take her +mother into society she would at least go into it herself. Silently, +stiffly, almost grimly, this young lady held up her head, clenched her +long teeth, squared her lean elbows and made her way up the staircases +she had elected. The only communication she ever made to me, the only +effusion of confidence with which she ever honoured me, was when she +said: “I don’t want to know the people mamma knows; I mean to know +others.” I took due note of the remark, for I was not one of the +“others.” I couldn’t trace therefore the steps of her process; I could +only admire it at a distance and congratulate her mother on the results. +The results were that Ethel went to “big” parties and got people to take +her. Some of them were people she had met abroad, and others were people +whom the people she had met abroad had met. They ministered alike to +Miss Ethel’s convenience, and I wondered how she extracted so many +favours without the expenditure of a smile. Her smile was the dimmest +thing in the world, diluted lemonade, without sugar, and she had arrived +precociously at social wisdom, recognising that if she was neither pretty +enough nor rich enough nor clever enough, she could at least in her +muscular youth be rude enough. Therefore if she was able to tell her +mother what really took place in the mansions of the great, give her +notes to work from, the quill could be driven at home to better purpose +and precisely at a moment when it would have to be more active than ever. +But if she did tell, it would appear that poor Mrs. Stormer didn’t +believe. As regards many points this was not a wonder; at any rate I +heard nothing of Greville Fane’s having developed a new manner. She had +only one manner from start to finish, as Leolin would have said. + +She was tired at last, but she mentioned to me that she couldn’t afford +to pause. She continued to speak of Leolin’s work as the great hope of +their future (she had saved no money) though the young man wore to my +sense an aspect more and more professional if you like, but less and less +literary. At the end of a couple of years there was something monstrous +in the impudence with which he played his part in the comedy. When I +wondered how she could play _her_ part I had to perceive that her good +faith was complete and that what kept it so was simply her extravagant +fondness. She loved the young impostor with a simple, blind, benighted +love, and of all the heroes of romance who had passed before her eyes he +was by far the most brilliant. + +He was at any rate the most real—she could touch him, pay for him, suffer +for him, worship him. He made her think of her princes and dukes, and +when she wished to fix these figures in her mind’s eye she thought of her +boy. She had often told me she was carried away by her own creations, +and she was certainly carried away by Leolin. He vivified, by +potentialities at least, the whole question of youth and passion. She +held, not unjustly, that the sincere novelist should feel the whole flood +of life; she acknowledged with regret that she had not had time to feel +it herself, and it was a joy to her that the deficiency might be supplied +by the sight of the way it was rushing through this magnificent young +man. She exhorted him, I suppose, to let it rush; she wrung her own +flaccid little sponge into the torrent. I knew not what passed between +them in her hours of tuition, but I gathered that she mainly impressed on +him that the great thing was to live, because that gave you material. He +asked nothing better; he collected material, and the formula served as a +universal pretext. You had only to look at him to see that, with his +rings and breastpins, his cross-barred jackets, his early _embonpoint_, +his eyes that looked like imitation jewels, his various indications of a +dense, full-blown temperament, his idea of life was singularly vulgar; +but he was not so far wrong as that his response to his mother’s +expectations was not in a high degree practical. If she had imposed a +profession on him from his tenderest years it was exactly a profession +that he followed. The two were not quite the same, inasmuch as _his_ was +simply to live at her expense; but at least she couldn’t say that he +hadn’t taken a line. If she insisted on believing in him he offered +himself to the sacrifice. My impression is that her secret dream was +that he should have a _liaison_ with a countess, and he persuaded her +without difficulty that he had one. I don’t know what countesses are +capable of, but I have a clear notion of what Leolin was. + +He didn’t persuade his sister, who despised him—she wished to work her +mother in her own way, and I asked myself why the girl’s judgment of him +didn’t make me like her better. It was because it didn’t save her after +all from a mute agreement with him to go halves. There were moments when +I couldn’t help looking hard into his atrocious young eyes, challenging +him to confess his fantastic fraud and give it up. Not a little tacit +conversation passed between us in this way, but he had always the best of +it. If I said: “Oh, come now, with _me_ you needn’t keep it up; plead +guilty, and I’ll let you off,” he wore the most ingenuous, the most +candid expression, in the depths of which I could read: “Oh, yes, I know +it exasperates you—that’s just why I do it.” He took the line of earnest +inquiry, talked about Balzac and Flaubert, asked me if I thought Dickens +_did_ exaggerate and Thackeray _ought_ to be called a pessimist. Once he +came to see me, at his mother’s suggestion he declared, on purpose to ask +me how far, in my opinion, in the English novel, one really might venture +to “go.” He was not resigned to the usual pruderies—he suffered under +them already. He struck out the brilliant idea that nobody knew how far +we might go, for nobody had ever tried. Did I think _he_ might safely +try—would it injure his mother if he did? He would rather disgrace +himself by his timidities than injure his mother, but certainly some one +ought to try. Wouldn’t _I_ try—couldn’t I be prevailed upon to look at +it as a duty? Surely the ultimate point ought to be fixed—he was +worried, haunted by the question. He patronised me unblushingly, made me +feel like a foolish amateur, a helpless novice, inquired into my habits +of work and conveyed to me that I was utterly _vieux jeu_ and had not had +the advantage of an early training. I had not been brought up from the +germ, I knew nothing of life—didn’t go at it on _his_ system. He had +dipped into French feuilletons and picked up plenty of phrases, and he +made a much better show in talk than his poor mother, who never had time +to read anything and could only be vivid with her pen. If I didn’t kick +him downstairs it was because he would have alighted on her at the +bottom. + +When she went to live at Primrose Hill I called upon her and found her +weary and wasted. It had waned a good deal, the elation caused the year +before by Ethel’s marriage; the foam on the cup had subsided and there +was a bitterness in the draught. + +She had had to take a cheaper house and she had to work still harder to +pay even for that. Sir Baldwin was obliged to be close; his charges were +fearful, and the dream of her living with her daughter (a vision she had +never mentioned to me) must be renounced. “I would have helped with +things, and I could have lived perfectly in one room,” she said; “I would +have paid for everything, and—after all—I’m some one, ain’t I? But I +don’t fit in, and Ethel tells me there are tiresome people she _must_ +receive. I can help them from here, no doubt, better than from there. +She told me once, you know, what she thinks of my picture of life. +‘Mamma, your picture of life is preposterous!’ No doubt it is, but she’s +vexed with me for letting my prices go down; and I had to write three +novels to pay for all her marriage cost me. I did it very well—I mean +the outfit and the wedding; but that’s why I’m here. At any rate she +doesn’t want a dingy old woman in her house. I should give it an +atmosphere of literary glory, but literary glory is only the eminence of +nobodies. Besides, she doubts my glory—she knows I’m glorious only at +Peckham and Hackney. She doesn’t want her friends to ask if I’ve never +known nice people. She can’t tell them I’ve never been in society. She +tried to teach me better once, but I couldn’t learn. It would seem too +as if Peckham and Hackney had had enough of me; for (don’t tell any one!) +I’ve had to take less for my last than I ever took for anything.” I +asked her how little this had been, not from curiosity, but in order to +upbraid her, more disinterestedly than Lady Luard had done, for such +concessions. She answered “I’m ashamed to tell you,” and then she began +to cry. + +I had never seen her break down, and I was proportionately moved; she +sobbed, like a frightened child, over the extinction of her vogue and the +exhaustion of her vein. Her little workroom seemed indeed a barren place +to grow flowers, and I wondered, in the after years (for she continued to +produce and publish) by what desperate and heroic process she dragged +them out of the soil. I remember asking her on that occasion what had +become of Leolin, and how much longer she intended to allow him to amuse +himself at her cost. She rejoined with spirit, wiping her eyes, that he +was down at Brighton hard at work—he was in the midst of a novel—and that +he _felt_ life so, in all its misery and mystery, that it was cruel to +speak of such experiences as a pleasure. “He goes beneath the surface,” +she said, “and he _forces_ himself to look at things from which he would +rather turn away. Do you call that amusing yourself? You should see his +face sometimes! And he does it for me as much as for himself. He tells +me everything—he comes home to me with his _trouvailles_. We are artists +together, and to the artist all things are pure. I’ve often heard you +say so yourself.” The novel that Leolin was engaged in at Brighton was +never published, but a friend of mine and of Mrs. Stormer’s who was +staying there happened to mention to me later that he had seen the young +apprentice to fiction driving, in a dogcart, a young lady with a very +pink face. When I suggested that she was perhaps a woman of title with +whom he was conscientiously flirting my informant replied: “She is +indeed, but do you know what her title is?” He pronounced it—it was +familiar and descriptive—but I won’t reproduce it here. I don’t know +whether Leolin mentioned it to his mother: she would have needed all the +purity of the artist to forgive him. I hated so to come across him that +in the very last years I went rarely to see her, though I knew that she +had come pretty well to the end of her rope. I didn’t want her to tell +me that she had fairly to give her books away—I didn’t want to see her +cry. She kept it up amazingly, and every few months, at my club, I saw +three new volumes, in green, in crimson, in blue, on the book-table that +groaned with light literature. Once I met her at the Academy soirée, +where you meet people you thought were dead, and she vouchsafed the +information, as if she owed it to me in candour, that Leolin had been +obliged to recognise insuperable difficulties in the question of _form_, +he was so fastidious; so that she had now arrived at a definite +understanding with him (it was such a comfort) that _she_ would do the +form if he would bring home the substance. That was now his position—he +foraged for her in the great world at a salary. “He’s my ‘devil,’ don’t +you see? as if I were a great lawyer: he gets up the case and I argue +it.” She mentioned further that in addition to his salary he was paid by +the piece: he got so much for a striking character, so much for a pretty +name, so much for a plot, so much for an incident, and had so much +promised him if he would invent a new crime. + +“He _has_ invented one,” I said, “and he’s paid every day of his life.” + +“What is it?” she asked, looking hard at the picture of the year; “Baby’s +Tub,” near which we happened to be standing. + +I hesitated a moment. “I myself will write a little story about it, and +then you’ll see.” + +But she never saw; she had never seen anything, and she passed away with +her fine blindness unimpaired. Her son published every scrap of +scribbled paper that could be extracted from her table-drawers, and his +sister quarrelled with him mortally about the proceeds, which showed that +she only wanted a pretext, for they cannot have been great. I don’t know +what Leolin lives upon, unless it be on a queer lady many years older +than himself, whom he lately married. The last time I met him he said to +me with his infuriating smile: “Don’t you think we can go a little +further still—just a little?” _He_ really goes too far. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREVILLE FANE*** + + +******* This file should be named 2719-0.txt or 2719-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/1/2719 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/2719-0.zip b/2719-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..03884c5 --- /dev/null +++ b/2719-0.zip diff --git a/2719-h.zip b/2719-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..aef6458 --- /dev/null +++ b/2719-h.zip diff --git a/2719-h/2719-h.htm b/2719-h/2719-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a758e6d --- /dev/null +++ b/2719-h/2719-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1189 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Greville Fane, by Henry James</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Greville Fane, by Henry James + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Greville Fane + + +Author: Henry James + + + +Release Date: February 15, 2015 [eBook #2719] +[This file was first posted on July 3, 2000] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREVILLE FANE*** +</pre> +<p>Transcribed from 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Proofed by Nina Hall, Mohua +Sen, Bridie, Francine Smith and David.</p> +<h1>GREVILLE FANE.</h1> +<p><span class="smcap">Coming</span> in to dress for dinner, I +found a telegram: “Mrs. Stormer dying; can you give us half +a column for to-morrow evening? Let her off easy, but not +too easy.” I was late; I was in a hurry; I had very +little time to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply: +“Will do what I can.” It was not till I had +dressed and was rolling away to dinner that, in the hansom, I +bethought myself of the difficulty of the condition +attached. The difficulty was not of course in letting her +off easy but in qualifying that indulgence. “I simply +won’t qualify it,” I said to myself. I +didn’t admire her, but I liked her, and I had known her so +long that I almost felt heartless in sitting down at such an hour +to a feast of indifference. I must have seemed abstracted, +for the early years of my acquaintance with her came back to +me. I spoke of her to the lady I had taken down, but the +lady I had taken down had never heard of Greville Fane. I +tried my other neighbour, who pronounced her books “too +vile.” I had never thought them very good, but I +should let her off easier than that.</p> +<p>I came away early, for the express purpose of driving to ask +about her. The journey took time, for she lived in the +north-west district, in the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. +My apprehension that I should be too late was justified in a +fuller sense than I had attached to it—I had only feared +that the house would be shut up. There were lights in the +windows, and the temperate tinkle of my bell brought a servant +immediately to the door, but poor Mrs. Stormer had passed into a +state in which the resonance of no earthly knocker was to be +feared. A lady, in the hall, hovering behind the servant, +came forward when she heard my voice. I recognised Lady +Luard, but she had mistaken me for the doctor.</p> +<p>“Excuse my appearing at such an hour,” I said; +“it was the first possible moment after I heard.”</p> +<p>“It’s all over,” Lady Luard replied. +“Dearest mamma!”</p> +<p>She stood there under the lamp with her eyes on me; she was +very tall, very stiff, very cold, and always looked as if these +things, and some others beside, in her dress, her manner and even +her name, were an implication that she was very admirable. +I had never been able to follow the argument, but that is a +detail. I expressed briefly and frankly what I felt, while +the little mottled maidservant flattened herself against the wall +of the narrow passage and tried to look detached without looking +indifferent. It was not a moment to make a visit, and I was +on the point of retreating when Lady Luard arrested me with a +queer, casual, drawling “Would you—a—would you, +perhaps, be <i>writing</i> something?” I felt for the +instant like an interviewer, which I was not. But I pleaded +guilty to this intention, on which she rejoined: “I’m +so very glad—but I think my brother would like to see +you.” I detested her brother, but it wasn’t an +occasion to act this out; so I suffered myself to be inducted, to +my surprise, into a small back room which I immediately +recognised as the scene, during the later years, of Mrs. +Stormer’s imperturbable industry. Her table was +there, the battered and blotted accessory to innumerable literary +lapses, with its contracted space for the arms (she wrote only +from the elbow down) and the confusion of scrappy, scribbled +sheets which had already become literary remains. Leolin +was also there, smoking a cigarette before the fire and looking +impudent even in his grief, sincere as it well might have +been.</p> +<p>To meet him, to greet him, I had to make a sharp effort; for +the air that he wore to me as he stood before me was quite that +of his mother’s murderer. She lay silent for ever +upstairs—as dead as an unsuccessful book, and his +swaggering erectness was a kind of symbol of his having killed +her. I wondered if he had already, with his sister, been +calculating what they could get for the poor papers on the table; +but I had not long to wait to learn, for in reply to the scanty +words of sympathy I addressed him he puffed out: +“It’s miserable, miserable, yes; but she has left +three books complete.” His words had the oddest +effect; they converted the cramped little room into a seat of +trade and made the “book” wonderfully feasible. +He would certainly get all that could be got for the three. +Lady Luard explained to me that her husband had been with them +but had had to go down to the House. To her brother she +explained that I was going to write something, and to me again +she made it clear that she hoped I would “do mamma +justice.” She added that she didn’t think this +had ever been done. She said to her brother: +“Don’t you think there are some things he ought +thoroughly to understand?” and on his instantly exclaiming +“Oh, thoroughly—thoroughly!” she went on, +rather austerely: “I mean about mamma’s +birth.”</p> +<p>“Yes, and her connections,” Leolin added.</p> +<p>I professed every willingness, and for five minutes I +listened, but it would be too much to say that I +understood. I don’t even now, but it is not +important. My vision was of other matters than those they +put before me, and while they desired there should be no mistake +about their ancestors I became more and more lucid about +themselves. I got away as soon as possible, and walked home +through the great dusky, empty London—the best of all +conditions for thought. By the time I reached my door my +little article was practically composed—ready to be +transferred on the morrow from the polished plate of fancy. +I believe it attracted some notice, was thought +“graceful” and was said to be by some one else. +I had to be pointed without being lively, and it took some +tact. But what I said was much less interesting than what I +thought—especially during the half-hour I spent in my +armchair by the fire, smoking the cigar I always light before +going to bed. I went to sleep there, I believe; but I +continued to moralise about Greville Fane. I am reluctant +to lose that retrospect altogether, and this is a dim little +memory of it, a document not to “serve.” The +dear woman had written a hundred stories, but none so curious as +her own.</p> +<p>When first I knew her she had published half-a-dozen fictions, +and I believe I had also perpetrated a novel. She was more +than a dozen years older than I, but she was a person who always +acknowledged her relativity. It was not so very long ago, +but in London, amid the big waves of the present, even a near +horizon gets hidden. I met her at some dinner and took her +down, rather flattered at offering my arm to a celebrity. +She didn’t look like one, with her matronly, mild, +inanimate face, but I supposed her greatness would come out in +her conversation. I gave it all the opportunities I could, +but I was not disappointed when I found her only a dull, kind +woman. This was why I liked her—she rested me so from +literature. To myself literature was an irritation, a +torment; but Greville Fane slumbered in the intellectual part of +it like a Creole in a hammock. She was not a woman of +genius, but her faculty was so special, so much a gift out of +hand, that I have often wondered why she fell below that +distinction. This was doubtless because the transaction, in +her case, had remained incomplete; genius always pays for the +gift, feels the debt, and she was placidly unconscious of +obligation. She could invent stories by the yard, but she +couldn’t write a page of English. She went down to +her grave without suspecting that though she had contributed +volumes to the diversion of her contemporaries she had not +contributed a sentence to the language. This had not +prevented bushels of criticism from being heaped upon her head; +she was worth a couple of columns any day to the weekly papers, +in which it was shown that her pictures of life were dreadful but +her style really charming. She asked me to come and see +her, and I went. She lived then in Montpellier Square; +which helped me to see how dissociated her imagination was from +her character.</p> +<p>An industrious widow, devoted to her daily stint, to meeting +the butcher and baker and making a home for her son and daughter, +from the moment she took her pen in her hand she became a +creature of passion. She thought the English novel +deplorably wanting in that element, and the task she had cut out +for herself was to supply the deficiency. Passion in high +life was the general formula of this work, for her imagination +was at home only in the most exalted circles. She adored, +in truth, the aristocracy, and they constituted for her the +romance of the world or, what is more to the point, the prime +material of fiction. Their beauty and luxury, their loves +and revenges, their temptations and surrenders, their +immoralities and diamonds were as familiar to her as the blots on +her writing-table. She was not a belated producer of the +old fashionable novel, she had a cleverness and a modernness of +her own, she had freshened up the fly-blown tinsel. She +turned off plots by the hundred and—so far as her flying +quill could convey her—was perpetually going abroad. +Her types, her illustrations, her tone were nothing if not +cosmopolitan. She recognised nothing less provincial than +European society, and her fine folk knew each other and made love +to each other from Doncaster to Bucharest. She had an idea +that she resembled Balzac, and her favourite historical +characters were Lucien de Rubempré and the Vidame de +Pamiers. I must add that when I once asked her who the +latter personage was she was unable to tell me. She was +very brave and healthy and cheerful, very abundant and innocent +and wicked. She was clever and vulgar and snobbish, and +never so intensely British as when she was particularly +foreign.</p> +<p>This combination of qualities had brought her early success, +and I remember having heard with wonder and envy of what she +“got,” in those days, for a novel. The +revelation gave me a pang: it was such a proof that, practising a +totally different style, I should never make my fortune. +And yet when, as I knew her better she told me her real tariff +and I saw how rumour had quadrupled it, I liked her enough to be +sorry. After a while I discovered too that if she got less +it was not that <i>I</i> was to get any more. My failure +never had what Mrs. Stormer would have called the banality of +being relative—it was always admirably absolute. She +lived at ease however in those days—ease is exactly the +word, though she produced three novels a year. She scorned +me when I spoke of difficulty—it was the only thing that +made her angry. If I hinted that a work of art required a +tremendous licking into shape she thought it a pretension and a +<i>pose</i>. She never recognised the “torment of +form”; the furthest she went was to introduce into one of +her books (in satire her hand was heavy) a young poet who was +always talking about it. I couldn’t quite understand +her irritation on this score, for she had nothing at stake in the +matter. She had a shrewd perception that form, in prose at +least, never recommended any one to the public we were condemned +to address, and therefore she lost nothing (putting her private +humiliation aside) by not having any. She made no pretence +of producing works of art, but had comfortable tea-drinking hours +in which she freely confessed herself a common pastrycook, +dealing in such tarts and puddings as would bring customers to +the shop. She put in plenty of sugar and of cochineal, or +whatever it is that gives these articles a rich and attractive +colour. She had a serene superiority to observation and +opportunity which constituted an inexpugnable strength and would +enable her to go on indefinitely. It is only real success +that wanes, it is only solid things that melt. Greville +Fane’s ignorance of life was a resource still more +unfailing than the most approved receipt. On her saying +once that the day would come when she should have written herself +out I answered: “Ah, you look into fairyland, and the +fairies love you, and <i>they</i> never change. Fairyland +is always there; it always was from the beginning of time, and it +always will be to the end. They’ve given you the key +and you can always open the door. With me it’s +different; I try, in my clumsy way, to be in some direct relation +to life.” “Oh, bother your direct relation to +life!” she used to reply, for she was always annoyed by the +phrase—which would not in the least prevent her from using +it when she wished to try for style. With no more +prejudices than an old sausage-mill, she would give forth again +with patient punctuality any poor verbal scrap that had been +dropped into her. I cheered her with saying that the dark +day, at the end, would be for the like of <i>me</i>; inasmuch as, +going in our small way by experience and observation, we depended +not on a revelation, but on a little tiresome process. +Observation depended on opportunity, and where should we be when +opportunity failed?</p> +<p>One day she told me that as the novelist’s life was so +delightful and during the good years at least such a comfortable +support (she had these staggering optimisms) she meant to train +up her boy to follow it. She took the ingenious view that +it was a profession like another and that therefore everything +was to be gained by beginning young and serving an +apprenticeship. Moreover the education would be less +expensive than any other special course, inasmuch as she could +administer it herself. She didn’t profess to keep a +school, but she could at least teach her own child. It was +not that she was so very clever, but (she confessed to me as if +she were afraid I would laugh at her) that <i>he</i> was. I +didn’t laugh at her for that, for I thought the boy +sharp—I had seen him at sundry times. He was well +grown and good-looking and unabashed, and both he and his sister +made me wonder about their defunct papa, concerning whom the +little I knew was that he had been a clergyman. I explained +them to myself by suppositions and imputations possibly unjust to +the departed; so little were they—superficially at +least—the children of their mother. There used to be, +on an easel in her drawing-room, an enlarged photograph of her +husband, done by some horrible posthumous “process” +and draped, as to its florid frame, with a silken scarf, which +testified to the candour of Greville Fane’s bad +taste. It made him look like an unsuccessful tragedian; but +it was not a thing to trust. He may have been a successful +comedian. Of the two children the girl was the elder, and +struck me in all her younger years as singularly +colourless. She was only very long, like an undecipherable +letter. It was not till Mrs. Stormer came back from a +protracted residence abroad that Ethel (which was this young +lady’s name) began to produce the effect, which was +afterwards remarkable in her, of a certain kind of high +resolution. She made one apprehend that she meant to do +something for herself. She was long-necked and near-sighted +and striking, and I thought I had never seen sweet seventeen in a +form so hard and high and dry. She was cold and affected +and ambitious, and she carried an eyeglass with a long handle, +which she put up whenever she wanted not to see. She had +come out, as the phrase is, immensely; and yet I felt as if she +were surrounded with a spiked iron railing. What she meant +to do for herself was to marry, and it was the only thing, I +think, that she meant to do for any one else; yet who would be +inspired to clamber over that bristling barrier? What +flower of tenderness or of intimacy would such an adventurer +conceive as his reward?</p> +<p>This was for Sir Baldwin Luard to say; but he naturally never +confided to me the secret. He was a joyless, jokeless young +man, with the air of having other secrets as well, and a +determination to get on politically that was indicated by his +never having been known to commit himself—as regards any +proposition whatever—beyond an exclamatory +“Oh!” His wife and he must have conversed +mainly in prim ejaculations, but they understood sufficiently +that they were kindred spirits. I remember being angry with +Greville Fane when she announced these nuptials to me as +magnificent; I remember asking her what splendour there was in +the union of the daughter of a woman of genius with an +irredeemable mediocrity. “Oh! he’s awfully +clever,” she said; but she blushed for the maternal +fib. What she meant was that though Sir Baldwin’s +estates were not vast (he had a dreary house in South Kensington +and a still drearier “Hall” somewhere in Essex, which +was let), the connection was a “smarter” one than a +child of hers could have aspired to form. In spite of the +social bravery of her novels she took a very humble and dingy +view of herself, so that of all her productions “my +daughter Lady Luard” was quite the one she was proudest +of. That personage thought her mother very vulgar and was +distressed and perplexed by the occasional license of her pen, +but had a complicated attitude in regard to this indirect +connection with literature. So far as it was lucrative her +ladyship approved of it, and could compound with the inferiority +of the pursuit by doing practical justice to some of its +advantages. I had reason to know (my reason was simply that +poor Mrs. Stormer told me) that she suffered the inky fingers to +press an occasional bank-note into her palm. On the other +hand she deplored the “peculiar style” to which +Greville Fane had devoted herself, and wondered where an author +who had the convenience of so lady-like a daughter could have +picked up such views about the best society. “She +might know better, with Leolin and me,” Lady Luard had been +known to remark; but it appeared that some of Greville +Fane’s superstitions were incurable. She didn’t +live in Lady Luard’s society, and the best was not good +enough for her—she must make it still better.</p> +<p>I could see that this necessity grew upon her during the years +she spent abroad, when I had glimpses of her in the shifting +sojourns that lay in the path of my annual ramble. She +betook herself from Germany to Switzerland and from Switzerland +to Italy; she favoured cheap places and set up her desk in the +smaller capitals. I took a look at her whenever I could, +and I always asked how Leolin was getting on. She gave me +beautiful accounts of him, and whenever it was possible the boy +was produced for my edification. I had entered from the +first into the joke of his career—I pretended to regard him +as a consecrated child. It had been a joke for Mrs. Stormer +at first, but the boy himself had been shrewd enough to make the +matter serious. If his mother accepted the principle that +the intending novelist cannot begin too early to see life, Leolin +was not interested in hanging back from the application of +it. He was eager to qualify himself, and took to cigarettes +at ten, on the highest literary grounds. His poor mother +gazed at him with extravagant envy and, like Desdemona, wished +heaven had made <i>her</i> such a man. She explained to me +more than once that in her profession she had found her sex a +dreadful drawback. She loved the story of Madame George +Sand’s early rebellion against this hindrance, and believed +that if she had worn trousers she could have written as well as +that lady. Leolin had for the career at least the +qualification of trousers, and as he grew older he recognised its +importance by laying in an immense assortment. He grew up +in gorgeous apparel, which was his way of interpreting his +mother’s system. Whenever I met her I found her still +under the impression that she was carrying this system out and +that Leolin’s training was bearing fruit. She was +giving him experience, she was giving him impressions, she was +putting a <i>gagnepain</i> into his hand. It was another +name for spoiling him with the best conscience in the +world. The queerest pictures come back to me of this period +of the good lady’s life and of the extraordinarily +virtuous, muddled, bewildering tenor of it. She had an idea +that she was seeing foreign manners as well as her petticoats +would allow; but, in reality she was not seeing anything, least +of all fortunately how much she was laughed at. She drove +her whimsical pen at Dresden and at Florence, and produced in all +places and at all times the same romantic and ridiculous +fictions. She carried about her box of properties and +fished out promptly the familiar, tarnished old puppets. +She believed in them when others couldn’t, and as they were +like nothing that was to be seen under the sun it was impossible +to prove by comparison that they were wrong. You +can’t compare birds and fishes; you could only feel that, +as Greville Fane’s characters had the fine plumage of the +former species, human beings must be of the latter.</p> +<p>It would have been droll if it had not been so exemplary to +see her tracing the loves of the duchesses beside the innocent +cribs of her children. The immoral and the maternal lived +together in her diligent days on the most comfortable terms, and +she stopped curling the mustaches of her Guardsmen to pat the +heads of her babes. She was haunted by solemn spinsters who +came to tea from continental <i>pensions</i>, and by +unsophisticated Americans who told her she was just loved in +<i>their</i> country. “I had rather be just paid +there,” she usually replied; for this tribute of +transatlantic opinion was the only thing that galled her. +The Americans went away thinking her coarse; though as the author +of so many beautiful love-stories she was disappointing to most +of these pilgrims, who had not expected to find a shy, stout, +ruddy lady in a cap like a crumbled pyramid. She wrote +about the affections and the impossibility of controlling them, +but she talked of the price of <i>pension</i> and the convenience +of an English chemist. She devoted much thought and many +thousands of francs to the education of her daughter, who spent +three years at a very superior school at Dresden, receiving +wonderful instruction in sciences, arts and tongues, and who, +taking a different line from Leolin, was to be brought up wholly +as a <i>femme du monde</i>. The girl was musical and +philological; she made a specialty of languages and learned +enough about them to be inspired with a great contempt for her +mother’s artless accents. Greville Fane’s +French and Italian were droll; the imitative faculty had been +denied her, and she had an unequalled gift, especially pen in +hand, of squeezing big mistakes into small opportunities. +She knew it, but she didn’t care; correctness was the +virtue in the world that, like her heroes and heroines, she +valued least. Ethel, who had perceived in her pages some +remarkable lapses, undertook at one time to revise her proofs; +but I remember her telling me a year after the girl had left +school that this function had been very briefly exercised. +“She can’t read me,” said Mrs. Stormer; +“I offend her taste. She tells me that at +Dresden—at school—I was never allowed.” +The good lady seemed surprised at this, having the best +conscience in the world about her lucubrations. She had +never meant to fly in the face of anything, and considered that +she grovelled before the Rhadamanthus of the English literary +tribunal, the celebrated and awful Young Person. I assured +her, as a joke, that she was frightfully indecent (she +hadn’t in fact that reality any more than any other) my +purpose being solely to prevent her from guessing that her +daughter had dropped her not because she was immoral but because +she was vulgar. I used to figure her children closeted +together and asking each other while they exchanged a gaze of +dismay: “Why should she <i>be</i> so—and so +<i>fearfully</i> so—when she has the advantage of our +society? Shouldn’t <i>we</i> have taught her +better?” Then I imagined their recognising with a +blush and a shrug that she was unteachable, irreformable. +Indeed she was, poor lady; but it is never fair to read by the +light of taste things that were not written by it. Greville +Fane had, in the topsy-turvy, a serene good faith that ought to +have been safe from allusion, like a stutter or a <i>faux +pas</i>.</p> +<p>She didn’t make her son ashamed of the profession to +which he was destined, however; she only made him ashamed of the +way she herself exercised it. But he bore his humiliation +much better than his sister, for he was ready to take for granted +that he should one day restore the balance. He was a canny +and far-seeing youth, with appetites and aspirations, and he had +not a scruple in his composition. His mother’s theory +of the happy knack he could pick up deprived him of the wholesome +discipline required to prevent young idlers from becoming +cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a snatch or two of +a Swiss school, but no consecutive study, no prospect of a +university or a degree. It may be imagined with what zeal, +as the years went on, he entered into the pleasantry of there +being no manual so important to him as the massive book of +life. It was an expensive volume to peruse, but Mrs. +Stormer was willing to lay out a sum in what she would have +called her <i>premiers frais</i>. Ethel +disapproved—she thought this education far too +unconventional for an English gentleman. Her voice was for +Eton and Oxford, or for any public school (she would have +resigned herself) with the army to follow. But Leolin never +was afraid of his sister, and they visibly disliked, though they +sometimes agreed to assist, each other. They could combine +to work the oracle—to keep their mother at her desk.</p> +<p>When she came back to England, telling me she had got all the +continent could give her, Leolin was a broad-shouldered, +red-faced young man, with an immense wardrobe and an +extraordinary assurance of manner. She was fondly obstinate +about her having taken the right course with him, and proud of +all that he knew and had seen. He was now quite ready to +begin, and a little while later she told me he <i>had</i> +begun. He had written something tremendously clever, and it +was coming out in the <i>Cheapside</i>. I believe it came +out; I had no time to look for it; I never heard anything about +it. I took for granted that if this contribution had passed +through his mother’s hands it had practically become a +specimen of her own genius, and it was interesting to consider +Mrs. Stormer’s future in the light of her having to write +her son’s novels as well as her own. This was not the +way she looked at it herself; she took the charming ground that +he would help her to write hers. She used to tell me that +he supplied passages of the greatest value to her own +work—all sorts of technical things, about hunting and +yachting and wine—that she couldn’t be expected to +get very straight. It was all so much practice for him and +so much alleviation for her. I was unable to identify these +pages, for I had long since ceased to “keep up” with +Greville Fane; but I was quite able to believe that the +wine-question had been put, by Leolin’s good offices, on a +better footing, for the dear lady used to mix her drinks (she was +perpetually serving the most splendid suppers) in the queerest +fashion. I could see that he was willing enough to accept a +commission to look after that department. It occurred to me +indeed, when Mrs. Stormer settled in England again, that by +making a shrewd use of both her children she might be able to +rejuvenate her style. Ethel had come back to gratify her +young ambition, and if she couldn’t take her mother into +society she would at least go into it herself. Silently, +stiffly, almost grimly, this young lady held up her head, +clenched her long teeth, squared her lean elbows and made her way +up the staircases she had elected. The only communication +she ever made to me, the only effusion of confidence with which +she ever honoured me, was when she said: “I don’t +want to know the people mamma knows; I mean to know +others.” I took due note of the remark, for I was not +one of the “others.” I couldn’t trace +therefore the steps of her process; I could only admire it at a +distance and congratulate her mother on the results. The +results were that Ethel went to “big” parties and got +people to take her. Some of them were people she had met +abroad, and others were people whom the people she had met abroad +had met. They ministered alike to Miss Ethel’s +convenience, and I wondered how she extracted so many favours +without the expenditure of a smile. Her smile was the +dimmest thing in the world, diluted lemonade, without sugar, and +she had arrived precociously at social wisdom, recognising that +if she was neither pretty enough nor rich enough nor clever +enough, she could at least in her muscular youth be rude +enough. Therefore if she was able to tell her mother what +really took place in the mansions of the great, give her notes to +work from, the quill could be driven at home to better purpose +and precisely at a moment when it would have to be more active +than ever. But if she did tell, it would appear that poor +Mrs. Stormer didn’t believe. As regards many points +this was not a wonder; at any rate I heard nothing of Greville +Fane’s having developed a new manner. She had only +one manner from start to finish, as Leolin would have said.</p> +<p>She was tired at last, but she mentioned to me that she +couldn’t afford to pause. She continued to speak of +Leolin’s work as the great hope of their future (she had +saved no money) though the young man wore to my sense an aspect +more and more professional if you like, but less and less +literary. At the end of a couple of years there was +something monstrous in the impudence with which he played his +part in the comedy. When I wondered how she could play +<i>her</i> part I had to perceive that her good faith was +complete and that what kept it so was simply her extravagant +fondness. She loved the young impostor with a simple, +blind, benighted love, and of all the heroes of romance who had +passed before her eyes he was by far the most brilliant.</p> +<p>He was at any rate the most real—she could touch him, +pay for him, suffer for him, worship him. He made her think +of her princes and dukes, and when she wished to fix these +figures in her mind’s eye she thought of her boy. She +had often told me she was carried away by her own creations, and +she was certainly carried away by Leolin. He vivified, by +potentialities at least, the whole question of youth and +passion. She held, not unjustly, that the sincere novelist +should feel the whole flood of life; she acknowledged with regret +that she had not had time to feel it herself, and it was a joy to +her that the deficiency might be supplied by the sight of the way +it was rushing through this magnificent young man. She +exhorted him, I suppose, to let it rush; she wrung her own +flaccid little sponge into the torrent. I knew not what +passed between them in her hours of tuition, but I gathered that +she mainly impressed on him that the great thing was to live, +because that gave you material. He asked nothing better; he +collected material, and the formula served as a universal +pretext. You had only to look at him to see that, with his +rings and breastpins, his cross-barred jackets, his early +<i>embonpoint</i>, his eyes that looked like imitation jewels, +his various indications of a dense, full-blown temperament, his +idea of life was singularly vulgar; but he was not so far wrong +as that his response to his mother’s expectations was not +in a high degree practical. If she had imposed a profession +on him from his tenderest years it was exactly a profession that +he followed. The two were not quite the same, inasmuch as +<i>his</i> was simply to live at her expense; but at least she +couldn’t say that he hadn’t taken a line. If +she insisted on believing in him he offered himself to the +sacrifice. My impression is that her secret dream was that +he should have a <i>liaison</i> with a countess, and he persuaded +her without difficulty that he had one. I don’t know +what countesses are capable of, but I have a clear notion of what +Leolin was.</p> +<p>He didn’t persuade his sister, who despised +him—she wished to work her mother in her own way, and I +asked myself why the girl’s judgment of him didn’t +make me like her better. It was because it didn’t +save her after all from a mute agreement with him to go +halves. There were moments when I couldn’t help +looking hard into his atrocious young eyes, challenging him to +confess his fantastic fraud and give it up. Not a little +tacit conversation passed between us in this way, but he had +always the best of it. If I said: “Oh, come now, with +<i>me</i> you needn’t keep it up; plead guilty, and +I’ll let you off,” he wore the most ingenuous, the +most candid expression, in the depths of which I could read: +“Oh, yes, I know it exasperates you—that’s just +why I do it.” He took the line of earnest inquiry, +talked about Balzac and Flaubert, asked me if I thought Dickens +<i>did</i> exaggerate and Thackeray <i>ought</i> to be called a +pessimist. Once he came to see me, at his mother’s +suggestion he declared, on purpose to ask me how far, in my +opinion, in the English novel, one really might venture to +“go.” He was not resigned to the usual +pruderies—he suffered under them already. He struck +out the brilliant idea that nobody knew how far we might go, for +nobody had ever tried. Did I think <i>he</i> might safely +try—would it injure his mother if he did? He would +rather disgrace himself by his timidities than injure his mother, +but certainly some one ought to try. Wouldn’t +<i>I</i> try—couldn’t I be prevailed upon to look at +it as a duty? Surely the ultimate point ought to be +fixed—he was worried, haunted by the question. He +patronised me unblushingly, made me feel like a foolish amateur, +a helpless novice, inquired into my habits of work and conveyed +to me that I was utterly <i>vieux jeu</i> and had not had the +advantage of an early training. I had not been brought up +from the germ, I knew nothing of life—didn’t go at it +on <i>his</i> system. He had dipped into French feuilletons +and picked up plenty of phrases, and he made a much better show +in talk than his poor mother, who never had time to read anything +and could only be vivid with her pen. If I didn’t +kick him downstairs it was because he would have alighted on her +at the bottom.</p> +<p>When she went to live at Primrose Hill I called upon her and +found her weary and wasted. It had waned a good deal, the +elation caused the year before by Ethel’s marriage; the +foam on the cup had subsided and there was a bitterness in the +draught.</p> +<p>She had had to take a cheaper house and she had to work still +harder to pay even for that. Sir Baldwin was obliged to be +close; his charges were fearful, and the dream of her living with +her daughter (a vision she had never mentioned to me) must be +renounced. “I would have helped with things, and I +could have lived perfectly in one room,” she said; “I +would have paid for everything, and—after +all—I’m some one, ain’t I? But I +don’t fit in, and Ethel tells me there are tiresome people +she <i>must</i> receive. I can help them from here, no +doubt, better than from there. She told me once, you know, +what she thinks of my picture of life. ‘Mamma, your +picture of life is preposterous!’ No doubt it is, but +she’s vexed with me for letting my prices go down; and I +had to write three novels to pay for all her marriage cost +me. I did it very well—I mean the outfit and the +wedding; but that’s why I’m here. At any rate +she doesn’t want a dingy old woman in her house. I +should give it an atmosphere of literary glory, but literary +glory is only the eminence of nobodies. Besides, she doubts +my glory—she knows I’m glorious only at Peckham and +Hackney. She doesn’t want her friends to ask if +I’ve never known nice people. She can’t tell +them I’ve never been in society. She tried to teach +me better once, but I couldn’t learn. It would seem +too as if Peckham and Hackney had had enough of me; for +(don’t tell any one!) I’ve had to take less for my +last than I ever took for anything.” I asked her how +little this had been, not from curiosity, but in order to upbraid +her, more disinterestedly than Lady Luard had done, for such +concessions. She answered “I’m ashamed to tell +you,” and then she began to cry.</p> +<p>I had never seen her break down, and I was proportionately +moved; she sobbed, like a frightened child, over the extinction +of her vogue and the exhaustion of her vein. Her little +workroom seemed indeed a barren place to grow flowers, and I +wondered, in the after years (for she continued to produce and +publish) by what desperate and heroic process she dragged them +out of the soil. I remember asking her on that occasion +what had become of Leolin, and how much longer she intended to +allow him to amuse himself at her cost. She rejoined with +spirit, wiping her eyes, that he was down at Brighton hard at +work—he was in the midst of a novel—and that he +<i>felt</i> life so, in all its misery and mystery, that it was +cruel to speak of such experiences as a pleasure. “He +goes beneath the surface,” she said, “and he +<i>forces</i> himself to look at things from which he would +rather turn away. Do you call that amusing yourself? +You should see his face sometimes! And he does it for me as +much as for himself. He tells me everything—he comes +home to me with his <i>trouvailles</i>. We are artists +together, and to the artist all things are pure. I’ve +often heard you say so yourself.” The novel that +Leolin was engaged in at Brighton was never published, but a +friend of mine and of Mrs. Stormer’s who was staying there +happened to mention to me later that he had seen the young +apprentice to fiction driving, in a dogcart, a young lady with a +very pink face. When I suggested that she was perhaps a +woman of title with whom he was conscientiously flirting my +informant replied: “She is indeed, but do you know what her +title is?” He pronounced it—it was familiar and +descriptive—but I won’t reproduce it here. I +don’t know whether Leolin mentioned it to his mother: she +would have needed all the purity of the artist to forgive +him. I hated so to come across him that in the very last +years I went rarely to see her, though I knew that she had come +pretty well to the end of her rope. I didn’t want her +to tell me that she had fairly to give her books away—I +didn’t want to see her cry. She kept it up amazingly, +and every few months, at my club, I saw three new volumes, in +green, in crimson, in blue, on the book-table that groaned with +light literature. Once I met her at the Academy +soirée, where you meet people you thought were dead, and +she vouchsafed the information, as if she owed it to me in +candour, that Leolin had been obliged to recognise insuperable +difficulties in the question of <i>form</i>, he was so +fastidious; so that she had now arrived at a definite +understanding with him (it was such a comfort) that <i>she</i> +would do the form if he would bring home the substance. +That was now his position—he foraged for her in the great +world at a salary. “He’s my +‘devil,’ don’t you see? as if I were a great +lawyer: he gets up the case and I argue it.” She +mentioned further that in addition to his salary he was paid by +the piece: he got so much for a striking character, so much for a +pretty name, so much for a plot, so much for an incident, and had +so much promised him if he would invent a new crime.</p> +<p>“He <i>has</i> invented one,” I said, “and +he’s paid every day of his life.”</p> +<p>“What is it?” she asked, looking hard at the +picture of the year; “Baby’s Tub,” near which +we happened to be standing.</p> +<p>I hesitated a moment. “I myself will write a +little story about it, and then you’ll see.”</p> +<p>But she never saw; she had never seen anything, and she passed +away with her fine blindness unimpaired. Her son published +every scrap of scribbled paper that could be extracted from her +table-drawers, and his sister quarrelled with him mortally about +the proceeds, which showed that she only wanted a pretext, for +they cannot have been great. I don’t know what Leolin +lives upon, unless it be on a queer lady many years older than +himself, whom he lately married. The last time I met him he +said to me with his infuriating smile: “Don’t you +think we can go a little further still—just a +little?” <i>He</i> really goes too far.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GREVILLE FANE***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2719-h.htm or 2719-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/1/2719 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no + restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it + under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this + eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +</pre></body> +</html> diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7f9cef1 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #2719 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2719) diff --git a/old/gfane10.txt b/old/gfane10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f89baa6 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gfane10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,949 @@ +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Greville Fane, by Henry James** +#34 in our series by Henry James + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + +*It must legally be the first thing seen when opening the book.* +In fact, our legal advisors said we can't even change margins. + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Title: Greville Fane + +Author: Henry James + +July, 2001 [Etext #2719] + + +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Greville Fane, by Henry James** +******This file should be named gfane10.txt or gfane10.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, gfane11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, gfane10a.txt + + +This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition. Proofing was by Nina +Hall, Mohua Sen, Bridie, Francine Smith and David. + + +Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from multiple editions, +all of which are in the Public Domain in the United States, unless a +copyright notice is included. Therefore, we usually do NOT keep any +of these books in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-six text +files per month, or 432 more Etexts in 1999 for a total of 2000+ +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach over 200 billion Etexts given away this year. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000 = 1 Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only ~5% of the present number of computer users. + +At our revised rates of production, we will reach only one-third +of that goal by the end of 2001, or about 3,333 Etexts unless we +manage to get some real funding; currently our funding is mostly +from Michael Hart's salary at Carnegie-Mellon University, and an +assortment of sporadic gifts; this salary is only good for a few +more years, so we are looking for something to replace it, as we +don't want Project Gutenberg to be so dependent on one person. + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/CMU": and are +tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (CMU = Carnegie- +Mellon University). + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails. . .try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> +hart@pobox.com forwards to hart@prairienet.org and archive.org +if your mail bounces from archive.org, I will still see it, if +it bounces from prairienet.org, better resend later on. . . . + +We would prefer to send you this information by email. + +****** + +To access Project Gutenberg etexts, use any Web browser +to view http://promo.net/pg. This site lists Etexts by +author and by title, and includes information about how +to get involved with Project Gutenberg. You could also +download our past Newsletters, or subscribe here. This +is one of our major sites, please email hart@pobox.com, +for a more complete list of our various sites. + +To go directly to the etext collections, use FTP or any +Web browser to visit a Project Gutenberg mirror (mirror +sites are available on 7 continents; mirrors are listed +at http://promo.net/pg). + +Mac users, do NOT point and click, typing works better. + +Example FTP session: + +ftp metalab.unc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd pub/docs/books/gutenberg +cd etext90 through etext99 or etext00 through etext01, etc. +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET GUTINDEX.?? [to get a year's listing of books, e.g., GUTINDEX.99] +GET GUTINDEX.ALL [to get a listing of ALL books] + +*** + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** + +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at +Carnegie-Mellon University (the "Project"). Among other +things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association/Carnegie-Mellon + University" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Carnegie-Mellon University". + +We are planning on making some changes in our donation structure +in 2000, so you might want to email me, hart@pobox.com beforehand. + + + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was scanned by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, +from the 1893 Macmillan and Co. edition. Proofing was by Nina +Hall, Mohua Sen, Bridie, Francine Smith and David. + + + + + +Greville Fane + +by Henry James + + + + +Coming in to dress for dinner, I found a telegram: "Mrs. Stormer +dying; can you give us half a column for to-morrow evening? Let her +off easy, but not too easy." I was late; I was in a hurry; I had +very little time to think, but at a venture I dispatched a reply: +"Will do what I can." It was not till I had dressed and was rolling +away to dinner that, in the hansom, I bethought myself of the +difficulty of the condition attached. The difficulty was not of +course in letting her off easy but in qualifying that indulgence. "I +simply won't qualify it," I said to myself. I didn't admire her, but +I liked her, and I had known her so long that I almost felt heartless +in sitting down at such an hour to a feast of indifference. I must +have seemed abstracted, for the early years of my acquaintance with +her came back to me. I spoke of her to the lady I had taken down, +hut the lady I had taken down had never heard of Greville Fane. I +tried my other neighbour, who pronounced her books "too vile." I had +never thought them very good, but I should let her off easier than +that. + +I came away early, for the express purpose of driving to ask about +her. The journey took time, for she lived in the north-west +district, in the neighbourhood of Primrose Hill. My apprehension +that I should be too late was justified in a fuller sense than I had +attached to it--I had only feared that the house would be shut up. +There were lights in the windows, and the temperate tinkle of my bell +brought a servant immediately to the door, but poor Mrs. Stormer had +passed into a state in which the resonance of no earthly knocker was +to be feared. A lady, in the hall, hovering behind the servant, came +forward when she heard my voice. I recognised Lady Luard, but she +had mistaken me for the doctor. + +"Excuse my appearing at such an hour," I said; "it was the first +possible moment after I heard." + +"It's all over," Lady Luard replied. "Dearest mamma!" + +She stood there under the lamp with her eyes on me; she was very +tall, very stiff, very cold, and always looked as if these things, +and some others beside, in her dress, her manner and even her name, +were an implication that she was very admirable. I had never been +able to follow the argument, but that is a detail. I expressed +briefly and frankly what I felt, while the little mottled maidservant +flattened herself against the wall of the narrow passage and tried to +look detached without looking indifferent. It was not a moment to +make a visit, and I was on the point of retreating when Lady Luard +arrested me with a queer, casual, drawling "Would you--a--would you, +perhaps, be WRITING something?" I felt for the instant like an +interviewer, which I was not. But I pleaded guilty to this +intention, on which she rejoined: "I'm so very glad--but I think my +brother would like to see you." I detested her brother, but it +wasn't an occasion to act this out; so I suffered myself to be +inducted, to my surprise, into a small back room which I immediately +recognised as the scene, during the later years, of Mrs. Stormer's +imperturbable industry. Her table was there, the battered and +blotted accessory to innumerable literary lapses, with its contracted +space for the arms (she wrote only from the elbow down) and the +confusion of scrappy, scribbled sheets which had already become +literary remains. Leolin was also there, smoking a cigarette before +the fire and looking impudent even in his grief, sincere as it well +might have been. + +To meet him, to greet him, I had to make a sharp effort; for the air +that he wore to me as he stood before me was quite that of his +mother's murderer. She lay silent for ever upstairs--as dead as an +unsuccessful book, and his swaggering erectness was a kind of symbol +of his having killed her. I wondered if he had already, with his +sister, been calculating what they could get for the poor papers on +the table; but I had not long to wait to learn, for in reply to the +scanty words of sympathy I addressed him he puffed out: "It's +miserable, miserable, yes; but she has left three books complete." +His words had the oddest effect; they converted the cramped little +room into a seat of trade and made the "book" wonderfully feasible. +He would certainly get all that could be got for the three. Lady +Luard explained to me that her husband had been with them but had had +to go down to the House. To her brother she explained that I was +going to write something, and to me again she made it clear that she +hoped I would "do mamma justice." She added that she didn't think +this had ever been done. She said to her brother: "Don't you think +there are some things he ought thoroughly to understand?" and on his +instantly exclaiming "Oh, thoroughly--thoroughly!" she went on, +rather austerely: "I mean about mamma's birth." + +"Yes, and her connections," Leolin added. + +I professed every willingness, and for five minutes I listened, but +it would be too much to say that I understood. I don't even now, but +it is not important. My vision was of other matters than those they +put before me, and while they desired there should be no mistake +about their ancestors I became more and more lucid about themselves. +I got away as soon as possible, and walked home through the great +dusky, empty London--the best of all conditions for thought. By the +time I reached my door my little article was practically composed-- +ready to be transferred on the morrow from the polished plate of +fancy. I believe it attracted some notice, was thought "graceful" +and was said to be by some one else. I had to be pointed without +being lively, and it took some tact. But what I said was much less +interesting than what I thought--especially during the half-hour I +spent in my armchair by the fire, smoking the cigar I always light +before going to bed. I went to sleep there, I believe; but I +continued to moralise about Greville Fane. I am reluctant to lose +that retrospect altogether, and this is a dim little memory of it, a +document not to "serve." The dear woman had written a hundred +stories, but none so curious as her own. + +When first I knew her she had published half-a-dozen fictions, and I +believe I had also perpetrated a novel. She was more than a dozen +years older than I, but she was a person who always acknowledged her +relativity. It was not so very long ago, but in London, amid the big +waves of the present, even a near horizon gets hidden. I met her at +some dinner and took her down, rather flattered at offering my arm to +a celebrity. She didn't look like one, with her matronly, mild, +inanimate face, but I supposed her greatness would come out in her +conversation. I gave it all the opportunities I could, but I was not +disappointed when I found her only a dull, kind woman. This was why +I liked her--she rested me so from literature. To myself literature +was an irritation, a torment; but Greville Fane slumbered in the +intellectual part of it like a Creole in a hammock. She was not a +woman of genius, but her faculty was so special, so much a gift out +of hand, that I have often wondered why she fell below that +distinction. This was doubtless because the transaction, in her +case, had remained incomplete; genius always pays for the gift, feels +the debt, and she was placidly unconscious of obligation. She could +invent stories by the yard, but she couldn't write a page of English. +She went down to her grave without suspecting that though she had +contributed volumes to the diversion of her contemporaries she had +not contributed a sentence to the language. This had not prevented +bushels of criticism from being heaped upon her head; she was worth a +couple of columns any day to the weekly papers, in which it was shown +that her pictures of life were dreadful but her style really +charming. She asked me to come and see her, and I went. She lived +then in Montpellier Square; which helped me to see how dissociated +her imagination was from her character. + +An industrious widow, devoted to her daily stint, to meeting the +butcher and baker and making a home for her son and daughter, from +the moment she took her pen in her hand she became a creature of +passion. She thought the English novel deplorably wanting in that +element, and the task she had cut out for herself was to supply the +deficiency. Passion in high life was the general formula of this +work, for her imagination was at home only in the most exalted +circles. She adored, in truth, the aristocracy, and they constituted +for her the romance of the world or, what is more to the point, the +prime material of fiction. Their beauty and luxury, their loves and +revenges, their temptations and surrenders, their immoralities and +diamonds were as familiar to her as the blots on her writing-table. +She was not a belated producer of the old fashionable novel, she had +a cleverness and a modernness of her own, she had freshened up the +fly-blown tinsel. She turned off plots by the hundred and--so far as +her flying quill could convey her--was perpetually going abroad. Her +types, her illustrations, her tone were nothing if not cosmopolitan. +She recognised nothing less provincial than European society, and her +fine folk knew each other and made love to each other from Doncaster +to Bucharest. She had an idea that she resembled Balzac, and her +favourite historical characters were Lucien de Rubempre and the +Vidame de Pamiers. I must add that when I once asked her who the +latter personage was she was unable to tell me. She was very brave +and healthy and cheerful, very abundant and innocent and wicked. She +was clever and vulgar and snobbish, and never so intensely British as +when she was particularly foreign. + +This combination of qualities had brought her early success, and I +remember having heard with wonder and envy of what she "got," in +those days, for a novel. The revelation gave me a pang: it was such +a proof that, practising a totally different style, I should never +make my fortune. And yet when, as I knew her better she told me her +real tariff and I saw how rumour had quadrupled it, I liked her +enough to be sorry. After a while I discovered too that if she got +less it was not that _I_ was to get any more. My failure never had +what Mrs. Stormer would have called the banality of being relative-- +it was always admirably absolute. She lived at ease however in those +days--ease is exactly the word, though she produced three novels a +year. She scorned me when I spoke of difficulty--it was the only +thing that made her angry. If I hinted that a work of art required a +tremendous licking into shape she thought it a pretension and a pose. +She never recognised the "torment of form"; the furthest she went was +to introduce into one of her books (in satire her hand was heavy) a +young poet who was always talking about it. I couldn't quite +understand her irritation on this score, for she had nothing at stake +in the matter. She had a shrewd perception that form, in prose at +least, never recommended any one to the public we were condemned to +address, and therefore she lost nothing (putting her private +humiliation aside) by not having any. She made no pretence of +producing works of art, but had comfortable tea-drinking hours in +which she freely confessed herself a common pastrycook, dealing in +such tarts and puddings as would bring customers to the shop. She +put in plenty of sugar and of cochineal, or whatever it is that gives +these articles a rich and attractive colour. She had a serene +superiority to observation and opportunity which constituted an +inexpugnable strength and would enable her to go on indefinitely. It +is only real success that wanes, it is only solid things that melt. +Greville Fane's ignorance of life was a resource still more unfailing +than the most approved receipt. On her saying once that the day +would come when she should have written herself out I answered: "Ah, +you look into fairyland, and the fairies love you, and THEY never +change. Fairyland is always there; it always was from the beginning +of time, and it always will be to the end. They've given you the key +and you can always open the door. With me it's different; I try, in +my clumsy way, to be in some direct relation to life." "Oh, bother +your direct relation to life!" she used to reply, for she was always +annoyed by the phrase--which would not in the least prevent her from +using it when she wished to try for style. With no more prejudices +than an old sausage-mill, she would give forth again with patient +punctuality any poor verbal scrap that had been dropped into her. I +cheered her with saying that the dark day, at the end, would be for +the like of ME; inasmuch as, going in our small way by experience and +observation, we depended not on a revelation, but on a little +tiresome process. Observation depended on opportunity, and where +should we be when opportunity failed? + +One day she told me that as the novelist's life was so delightful and +during the good years at least such a comfortable support (she had +these staggering optimisms) she meant to train up her boy to follow +it. She took the ingenious view that it was a profession like +another and that therefore everything was to be gained by beginning +young and serving an apprenticeship. Moreover the education would be +less expensive than any other special course, inasmuch as she could +administer it herself. She didn't profess to keep a school, but she +could at least teach her own child. It was not that she was so very +clever, but (she confessed to me as if she were afraid I would laugh +at her) that HE was. I didn't laugh at her for that, for I thought +the boy sharp--I had seen him at sundry times. He was well grown and +good-looking and unabashed, and both he and his sister made me wonder +about their defunct papa, concerning whom the little I knew was that +he had been a clergyman. I explained them to myself by suppositions +and imputations possibly unjust to the departed; so little were they- +-superficially at least--the children of their mother. There used to +be, on an easel in her drawing-room, an enlarged photograph of her +husband, done by some horrible posthumous "process" and draped, as to +its florid frame, with a silken scarf, which testified to the candour +of Greville Fane's bad taste. It made him look like an unsuccessful +tragedian; but it was not a thing to trust. He may have been a +successful comedian. Of the two children the girl was the elder, and +struck me in all her younger years as singularly colourless. She was +only very long, like an undecipherable letter. It was not till Mrs. +Stormer came back from a protracted residence abroad that Ethel +(which was this young lady's name) began to produce the effect, which +was afterwards remarkable in her, of a certain kind of high +resolution. She made one apprehend that she meant to do something +for herself. She was long-necked and near-sighted and striking, and +I thought I had never seen sweet seventeen in a form so hard and high +and dry. She was cold and affected and ambitious, and she carried an +eyeglass with a long handle, which she put up whenever she wanted not +to see. She had come out, as the phrase is, immensely; and yet I +felt as if she were surrounded with a spiked iron railing. What she +meant to do for herself was to marry, and it was the only thing, I +think, that she meant to do for any one else; yet who would be +inspired to clamber over that bristling barrier? What flower of +tenderness or of intimacy would such an adventurer conceive as his +reward? + +This was for Sir Baldwin Luard to say; but he naturally never +confided to me the secret. He was a joyless, jokeless young man, +with the air of having other secrets as well, and a determination to +get on politically that was indicated by his never having been known +to commit himself--as regards any proposition whatever--beyond an +exclamatory "Oh!" His wife and he must have conversed mainly in prim +ejaculations, but they understood sufficiently that they were kindred +spirits. I remember being angry with Greville Fane when she +announced these nuptials to me as magnificent; I remember asking her +what splendour there was in the union of the daughter of a woman of +genius with an irredeemable mediocrity. "Oh! he's awfully clever," +she said; but she blushed for the maternal fib. What she meant was +that though Sir Baldwin's estates were not vast (he had a dreary +house in South Kensington and a still drearier "Hall" somewhere in +Essex, which was let), the connection was a "smarter" one than a +child of hers could have aspired to form. In spite of the social +bravery of her novels she took a very humble and dingy view of +herself, so that of all her productions "my daughter Lady Luard" was +quite the one she was proudest of. That personage thought her mother +very vulgar and was distressed and perplexed by the occasional +license of her pen, but had a complicated attitude in regard to this +indirect connection with literature. So far as it was lucrative her +ladyship approved of it, and could compound with the inferiority of +the pursuit by doing practical justice to some of its advantages. I +had reason to know (my reason was simply that poor Mrs. Stormer told +me) that she suffered the inky fingers to press an occasional bank- +note into her palm. On the other hand she deplored the "peculiar +style" to which Greville Fane had devoted herself, and wondered where +an author who had the convenience of so lady-like a daughter could +have picked up such views about the best society. "She might know +better, with Leolin and me," Lady Luard had been known to remark; but +it appeared that some of Greville Fane's superstitions were +incurable. She didn't live in Lady Luard's society, and the best was +not good enough for her--she must make it still better. + +I could see that this necessity grew upon her during the years she +spent abroad, when I had glimpses of her in the shifting sojourns +that lay in the path of my annual ramble. She betook herself from +Germany to Switzerland and from Switzerland to Italy; she favoured +cheap places and set up her desk in the smaller capitals. I took a +look at her whenever I could, and I always asked how Leolin was +getting on. She gave me beautiful accounts of him, and whenever it +was possible the boy was produced for my edification. I had entered +from the first into the joke of his career--I pretended to regard him +as a consecrated child. It had been a joke for Mrs. Stormer at +first, but the boy himself had been shrewd enough to make the matter +serious. If his mother accepted the principle that the intending +novelist cannot begin too early to see life, Leolin was not +interested in hanging back from the application of it. He was eager +to qualify himself, and took to cigarettes at ten, on the highest +literary grounds. His poor mother gazed at him with extravagant envy +and, like Desdemona, wished heaven had made HER such a man. She +explained to me more than once that in her profession she had found +her sex a dreadful drawback. She loved the story of Madame George +Sand's early rebellion against this hindrance, and believed that if +she had worn trousers she could have written as well as that lady. +Leolin had for the career at least the qualification of trousers, and +as he grew older he recognised its importance by laying in an immense +assortment. He grew up in gorgeous apparel, which was his way of +interpreting his mother's system. Whenever I met her I found her +still under the impression that she was carrying this system out and +that Leolin's training was bearing fruit. She was giving him +experience, she was giving him impressions, she was putting a +gagnepain into his hand. It was another name for spoiling him with +the best conscience in the world. The queerest pictures come back to +me of this period of the good lady's life and of the extraordinarily +virtuous, muddled, bewildering tenor of it. She had an idea that she +was seeing foreign manners as well as her petticoats would allow; +but, in reality she was not seeing anything, least of all fortunately +how much she was laughed at. She drove her whimsical pen at Dresden +and at Florence, and produced in all places and at all times the same +romantic and ridiculous fictions. She carried about her box of +properties and fished out promptly the familiar, tarnished old +puppets. She believed in them when others couldn't, and as they were +like nothing that was to be seen under the sun it was impossible to +prove by comparison that they were wrong. You can't compare birds +and fishes; you could only feel that, as Greville Fane's characters +had the fine plumage of the former species, human beings must be of +the latter. + +It would have been droll if it had not been so exemplary to see her +tracing the loves of the duchesses beside the innocent cribs of her +children. The immoral and the maternal lived together in her +diligent days on the most comfortable terms, and she stopped curling +the mustaches of her Guardsmen to pat the heads of her babes. She +was haunted by solemn spinsters who came to tea from continental +pensions, and by unsophisticated Americans who told her she was just +loved in THEIR country. "I had rather be just paid there," she +usually replied; for this tribute of transatlantic opinion was the +only thing that galled her. The Americans went away thinking her +coarse; though as the author of so many beautiful love-stories she +was disappointing to most of these pilgrims, who had not expected to +find a shy, stout, ruddy lady in a cap like a crumbled pyramid. She +wrote about the affections and the impossibility of controlling them, +but she talked of the price of pension and the convenience of an +English chemist. She devoted much thought and many thousands of +francs to the education of her daughter, who spent three years at a +very superior school at Dresden, receiving wonderful instruction in +sciences, arts and tongues, and who, taking a different line from +Leolin, was to be brought up wholly as a femme du monde. The girl +was musical and philological; she made a specialty of languages and +learned enough about them to be inspired with a great contempt for +her mother's artless accents. Greville Fane's French and Italian +were droll; the imitative faculty had been denied her, and she had an +unequalled gift, especially pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes +into small opportunities. She knew it, but she didn't care; +correctness was the virtue in the world that, like her heroes and +heroines, she valued least. Ethel, who had perceived in her pages +some remarkable lapses, undertook at one time to revise her proofs; +but I remember her telling me a year after the girl had left school +that this function had been very briefly exercised. "She can't read +me," said Mrs. Stormer; "I offend her taste. She tells me that at +Dresden--at school--I was never allowed." The good lady seemed +surprised at this, having the best conscience in the world about her +lucubrations. She had never meant to fly in the face of anything, +and considered that she grovelled before the Rhadamanthus of the +English literary tribunal, the celebrated and awful Young Person. I +assured her, as a joke, that she was frightfully indecent (she hadn't +in fact that reality any more than any other) my purpose being solely +to prevent her from guessing that her daughter had dropped her not +because she was immoral but because she was vulgar. I used to figure +her children closeted together and asking each other while they +exchanged a gaze of dismay: "Why should she BE so--and so FEARFULLY +so--when she has the advantage of our society? Shouldn't WE have +taught her better?" Then I imagined their recognising with a blush +and a shrug that she was unteachable, irreformable. Indeed she was, +poor lady; but it is never fair to read by the light of taste things +that were not written by it. Greville Fane had, in the topsy-turvy, +a serene good faith that ought to have been safe from allusion, like +a stutter or a faux pas. + +She didn't make her son ashamed of the profession to which he was +destined, however; she only made him ashamed of the way she herself +exercised it. But he bore his humiliation much better than his +sister, for he was ready to take for granted that he should one day +restore the balance. He was a canny and far-seeing youth, with +appetites and aspirations, and he had not a scruple in his +composition. His mother's theory of the happy knack he could pick up +deprived him of the wholesome discipline required to prevent young +idlers from becoming cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a +snatch or two of a Swiss school, but no consecutive study, no +prospect of a university or a degree. It may be imagined with what +zeal, as the years went on, he entered into the pleasantry of there +being no manual so important to him as the massive book of life. It +was an expensive volume to peruse, but Mrs. Stormer was willing to +lay out a sum in what she would have called her premiers frais. +Ethel disapproved--she thought this education far too unconventional +for an English gentleman. Her voice was for Eton and Oxford, or for +any public school (she would have resigned herself) with the army to +follow. But Leolin never was afraid of his sister, and they visibly +disliked, though they sometimes agreed to assist, each other. They +could combine to work the oracle--to keep their mother at her desk. + +When she came back to England, telling me she had got all the +continent could give her, Leolin was a broad-shouldered, red-faced +young man, with an immense wardrobe and an extraordinary assurance of +manner. She was fondly obstinate about her having taken the right +course with him, and proud of all that he knew and had seen. He was +now quite ready to begin, and a little while later she told me he HAD +begun. He had written something tremendously clever, and it was +coming out in the Cheapside. I believe it came out; I had no time to +look for it; I never heard anything about it. I took for granted +that if this contribution had passed through his mother's hands it +had practically become a specimen of her own genius, and it was +interesting to consider Mrs. Stormer's future in the light of her +having to write her son's novels as well as her own. This was not +the way she looked at it herself; she took the charming ground that +he would help her to write hers. She used to tell me that he +supplied passages of the greatest value to her own work--all sorts of +technical things, about hunting and yachting and wine--that she +couldn't be expected to get very straight. It was all so much +practice for him and so much alleviation for her. I was unable to +identify these pages, for I had long since ceased to "keep up" with +Greville Fane; but I was quite able to believe that the wine-question +had been put, by Leolin's good offices, on a better footing, for the +dear lady used to mix her drinks (she was perpetually serving the +most splendid suppers) in the queerest fashion. I could see that he +was willing enough to accept a commission to look after that +department. It occurred to me indeed, when Mrs. Stormer settled in +England again, that by making a shrewd use of both her children she +might be able to rejuvenate her style. Ethel had come back to +gratify her young ambition, and if she couldn't take her mother into +society she would at least go into it herself. Silently, stiffly, +almost grimly, this young lady held up her head, clenched her long +teeth, squared her lean elbows and made her way up the staircases she +had elected. The only communication she ever made to me, the only +effusion of confidence with which she ever honoured me, was when she +said: "I don't want to know the people mamma knows; I mean to know +others." I took due note of the remark, for I was not one of the +"others." I couldn't trace therefore the steps of her process; I +could only admire it at a distance and congratulate her mother on the +results. The results were that Ethel went to "big" parties and got +people to take her. Some of them were people she had met abroad, and +others were people whom the people she had met abroad had met. They +ministered alike to Miss Ethel's convenience, and I wondered how she +extracted so many favours without the expenditure of a smile. Her +smile was the dimmest thing in the world, diluted lemonade, without +sugar, and she had arrived precociously at social wisdom, recognising +that if she was neither pretty enough nor rich enough nor clever +enough, she could at least in her muscular youth be rude enough. +Therefore if she was able to tell her mother what really took place +in the mansions of the great, give her notes to work from, the quill +could be driven at home to better purpose and precisely at a moment +when it would have to be more active than ever. But if she did tell, +it would appear that poor Mrs. Stormer didn't believe. As regards +many points this was not a wonder; at any rate I heard nothing of +Greville Fane's having developed a new manner. She had only one +manner from start to finish, as Leolin would have said. + +She was tired at last, but she mentioned to me that she couldn't +afford to pause. She continued to speak of Leolin's work as the +great hope of their future (she had saved no money) though the young +man wore to my sense an aspect more and more professional if you +like, but less and less literary. At the end of a couple of years +there was something monstrous in the impudence with which he played +his part in the comedy. When I wondered how she could play HER part +I had to perceive that her good faith was complete and that what kept +it so was simply her extravagant fondness. She loved the young +impostor with a simple, blind, benighted love, and of all the heroes +of romance who had passed before her eyes he was by far the most +brilliant. + +He was at any rate the most real--she could touch him, pay for him, +suffer for him, worship him. He made her think of her princes and +dukes, and when she wished to fix these figures in her mind's eye she +thought of her boy. She had often told me she was carried away by +her own creations, and she was certainly carried away by Leolin. He +vivified, by potentialities at least, the whole question of youth and +passion. She held, not unjustly, that the sincere novelist should +feel the whole flood of life; she acknowledged with regret that she +had not had time to feel it herself, and it was a joy to her that the +deficiency might be supplied by the sight of the way it was rushing +through this magnificent young man. She exhorted him, I suppose, to +let it rush; she wrung her own flaccid little sponge into the +torrent. I knew not what passed between them in her hours of +tuition, but I gathered that she mainly impressed on him that the +great thing was to live, because that gave you material. He asked +nothing better; he collected material, and the formula served as a +universal pretext. You had only to look at him to see that, with his +rings and breastpins, his cross-barred jackets, his early embonpoint, +his eyes that looked like imitation jewels, his various indications +of a dense, full-blown temperament, his idea of life was singularly +vulgar; but he was not so far wrong as that his response to his +mother's expectations was not in a high degree practical. If she had +imposed a profession on him from his tenderest years it was exactly a +profession that he followed. The two were not quite the same, +inasmuch as HIS was simply to live at her expense; but at least she +couldn't say that he hadn't taken a line. If she insisted on +believing in him he offered himself to the sacrifice. My impression +is that her secret dream was that he should have a liaison with a +countess, and he persuaded her without difficulty that he had one. I +don't know what countesses are capable of, but I have a clear notion +of what Leolin was. + +He didn't persuade his sister, who despised him--she wished to work +her mother in her own way, and I asked myself why the girl's judgment +of him didn't make me like her better. It was because it didn't save +her after all from a mute agreement with him to go halves. There +were moments when I couldn't help looking hard into his atrocious +young eyes, challenging him to confess his fantastic fraud and give +it up. Not a little tacit conversation passed between us in this +way, but he had always the best of it. If I said: "Oh, come now, +with ME you needn't keep it up; plead guilty, and I'll let you off," +he wore the most ingenuous, the most candid expression, in the depths +of which I could read: "Oh, yes, I know it exasperates you--that's +just why I do it." He took the line of earnest inquiry, talked about +Balzac and Flaubert, asked me if I thought Dickens DID exaggerate and +Thackeray OUGHT to be called a pessimist. Once he came to see me, at +his mother's suggestion he declared, on purpose to ask me how far, in +my opinion, in the English novel, one really might venture to "go." +He was not resigned to the usual pruderies--he suffered under them +already. He struck out the brilliant idea that nobody knew how far +we might go, for nobody had ever tried. Did I think HE might safely +try--would it injure his mother if he did? He would rather disgrace +himself by his timidities than injure his mother, but certainly some +one ought to try. Wouldn't _I_ try--couldn't I be prevailed upon to +look at it as a duty? Surely the ultimate point ought to be fixed-- +he was worried, haunted by the question. He patronised me +unblushingly, made me feel like a foolish amateur, a helpless novice, +inquired into my habits of work and conveyed to me that I was utterly +vieux jeu and had not had the advantage of an early training. I had +not been brought up from the germ, I knew nothing of life--didn't go +at it on HIS system. He had dipped into French feuilletons and +picked up plenty of phrases, and he made a much better show in talk +than his poor mother, who never had time to read anything and could +only be vivid with her pen. If I didn't kick him downstairs it was +because he would have alighted on her at the bottom. + +When she went to live at Primrose Hill I called upon her and found +her weary and wasted. It had waned a good deal, the elation caused +the year before by Ethel's marriage; the foam on the cup had subsided +and there was a bitterness in the draught. + +She had had to take a cheaper house and she had to work still harder +to pay even for that. Sir Baldwin was obliged to be close; his +charges were fearful, and the dream of her living with her daughter +(a vision she had never mentioned to me) must be renounced. "I would +have helped with things, and I could have lived perfectly in one +room," she said; "I would have paid for everything, and--after all-- +I'm some one, ain't I? But I don't fit in, and Ethel tells me there +are tiresome people she MUST receive. I can help them from here, no +doubt, better than from there. She told me once, you know, what she +thinks of my picture of life. 'Mamma, your picture of life is +preposterous!' No doubt it is, but she's vexed with me for letting +my prices go down; and I had to write three novels to pay for all her +marriage cost me. I did it very well--I mean the outfit and the +wedding; but that's why I'm here. At any rate she doesn't want a +dingy old woman in her house. I should give it an atmosphere of +literary glory, but literary glory is only the eminence of nobodies. +Besides, she doubts my glory--she knows I'm glorious only at Peckham +and Hackney. She doesn't want her friends to ask if I've never known +nice people. She can't tell them I've never been in society. She +tried to teach me better once, but I couldn't learn. It would seem +too as if Peckham and Hackney had had enough of me; for (don't tell +any one!) I've had to take less for my last than I ever took for +anything." I asked her how little this had been, not from curiosity, +but in order to upbraid her, more disinterestedly than Lady Luard had +done, for such concessions. She answered "I'm ashamed to tell you," +and then she began to cry. + +I had never seen her break down, and I was proportionately moved; she +sobbed, like a frightened child, over the extinction of her vogue and +the exhaustion of her vein. Her little workroom seemed indeed a +barren place to grow flowers, and I wondered, in the after years (for +she continued to produce and publish) by what desperate and heroic +process she dragged them out of the soil. I remember asking her on +that occasion what had become of Leolin, and how much longer she +intended to allow him to amuse himself at her cost. She rejoined +with spirit, wiping her eyes, that he was down at Brighton hard at +work--he was in the midst of a novel--and that he FELT life so, in +all its misery and mystery, that it was cruel to speak of such +experiences as a pleasure. "He goes beneath the surface," she said, +"and he FORCES himself to look at things from which he would rather +turn away. Do you call that amusing yourself? You should see his +face sometimes! And he does it for me as much as for himself. He +tells me everything--he comes home to me with his trouvailles. We +are artists together, and to the artist all things are pure. I've +often heard you say so yourself." The novel that Leolin was engaged +in at Brighton was never published, but a friend of mine and of Mrs. +Stormer's who was staying there happened to mention to me later that +he had seen the young apprentice to fiction driving, in a dogcart, a +young lady with a very pink face. When I suggested that she was +perhaps a woman of title with whom he was conscientiously flirting my +informant replied: "She is indeed, but do you know what her title +is?" He pronounced it--it was familiar and descriptive--but I won't +reproduce it here. I don't know whether Leolin mentioned it to his +mother: she would have needed all the purity of the artist to +forgive him. I hated so to come across him that in the very last +years I went rarely to see her, though I knew that she had come +pretty well to the end of her rope. I didn't want her to tell me +that she had fairly to give her books away--I didn't want to see her +cry. She kept it up amazingly, and every few months, at my club, I +saw three new volumes, in green, in crimson, in blue, on the book- +table that groaned with light literature. Once I met her at the +Academy soiree, where you meet people you thought were dead, and she +vouchsafed the information, as if she owed it to me in candour, that +Leolin had been obliged to recognise insuperable difficulties in the +question of FORM, he was so fastidious; so that she had now arrived +at a definite understanding with him (it was such a comfort) that SHE +would do the form if he would bring home the substance. That was now +his position--he foraged for her in the great world at a salary. +"He's my 'devil,' don't you see? as if I were a great lawyer: he +gets up the case and I argue it." She mentioned further that in +addition to his salary he was paid by the piece: he got so much for +a striking character, so much for a pretty name, so much for a plot, +so much for an incident, and had so much promised him if he would +invent a new crime. + +"He HAS invented one," I said, "and he's paid every day of his life." + +"What is it?" she asked, looking hard at the picture of the year; +"Baby's Tub," near which we happened to be standing. + +I hesitated a moment. "I myself will write a little story about it, +and then you'll see." + +But she never saw; she had never seen anything, and she passed away +with her fine blindness unimpaired. Her son published every scrap of +scribbled paper that could be extracted from her table-drawers, and +his sister quarrelled with him mortally about the proceeds, which +showed that she only wanted a pretext, for they cannot have been +great. I don't know what Leolin lives upon, unless it be on a queer +lady many years older than himself, whom he lately married. The last +time I met him he said to me with his infuriating smile: "Don't you +think we can go a little further still--just a little?" HE really +goes too far. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Greville Fane, by Henry James + diff --git a/old/gfane10.zip b/old/gfane10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..295b061 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/gfane10.zip |