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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. 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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 |