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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. 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