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diff --git a/77802-0.txt b/77802-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..56c8788 --- /dev/null +++ b/77802-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6244 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77802 *** + + + + + No Enemy + + A TALE OF + RECONSTRUCTION + + + _by_ Ford Madox Ford + + _Author of_ + NO MORE PARADES + SOME DO NOT + _etc._ + + + _New York, 1929_ + THE MACAULAY COMPANY + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY + THE MACAULAY COMPANY + + PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. + + + + + _To_ + ESTHER JULIA MADOX FORD + + +_Très, très chère petite Princesse_, + +When you shall come to read English--which I hope will not be too +soon--you shall find here adumbrated what the world seemed like to me +just when you were preparing to enter it ..... a confused old world +which your coming rendered so much clearer and dearer. And as these +pages were written in the expectation of you--and for you!--I have +thought better to leave them exactly as they were, bearing as they +obviously do the traces of sufferings that, thank God, you never knew. +And so, when you come to read them, give a tender thought to him to +whom you have so often written--quitoubliejamé et qui t’aime de tou son +coeur et encore beaucoupluss! + + F. M. F. + +New York, 21st June, 1929 + + + + + What is love of one’s land?.... + I don’t know very well. + It is something that sleeps + For a year, for a day, + For a month--something that keeps + Very hidden and quiet and still + And then takes + The quiet heart like a wave, + The quiet brain like a spell, + The quiet will + Like a tornado--and that shakes + The whole of the soul. + + + + + CONTENTS + + + Part One--Four Landscapes + + CHAPTER PAGE + + I TO INTRODUCE GRINGOIRE 9 + + II GARDENS AND FLATS 19 + + III BLUE OF SWALLOWS’ BACKS 39 + + IV THE KINGDOMS OF THE EARTH 47 + + V INTERMEZZO 88 + + VI JUST COUNTRY 118 + + VII PLAYING THE GAME 129 + + + Part Two--Certain Interiors + + VIII “MAISIE” 147 + + IX THE WATER MILL 176 + + X FROM A BALCONY 194 + + XI “ROSALIE PRUDENT” 222 + + XII THE MOVIES 258 + + ENVOI 293 + + + + + PART ONE + + FOUR LANDSCAPES + + + + + I + + _To Introduce Gringoire_ + + +The writer’s friend Gringoire, originally a poet and Gallophile, went +to the war. Long, gray, lean, unreasonably boastful as a man and +unreasonably modest as a poet, he was probably not too disciplined as +an infantry officer, but he has survived to inhabit in tranquillity +with the most charming of companions a rural habitation so ancient, +frail and unreal that it is impossible to think of it otherwise than as +the Gingerbread Cottage you may have read of in the tale of “Haensel +and Gretel.” + +This book, then, is the story of Gringoire just after ... Armageddon. +For it struck the writer that you hear of the men that went, and you +hear of what they did when they were There. But you never hear how +It left them. You hear how things were destroyed, but seldom of the +painful processes of Reconstruction. + +So that your Compiler, taking pencils, tablets and erasers and +availing himself of the singularly open hospitality of the poet and +his charming meridional partner, came on many successive Saturday +afternoons from the little old Grammar School where he instructs +classes in English Literature and Physical Development, to sit in the +garden at the feet of Gringoire, Gallophile, Veteran, Gardener and, +above all, Economist, if not above all Poet. + +We would sit about on rude benches whilst Mme. Sélysette would bring +us shandygaff brewed after a recipe of Gringoire himself. Then he +would talk and your Compiler make furtive shorthand notes. Above all +Gringoire loved to talk about cooking for he boasted that he was not +only the best but the most economical cook in the world. How that may +be your Compiler hesitates to say. To eat a meal prepared by Gringoire +was certainly an adventure and when you felt adventurous had its +titillations. But only Mme. Sélysette who had accompanied him into +his English wilds from the distant South could have told you whether +Gringoire was as economical in his cuisine as he professed to be. For +he swore that the saviour of society in the end would be the good but +excellently economical cook. + +But Mme. Sélysette, dark, alert and with exquisitely pencilled brows +and as loyal as she was goodhumored, never got beyond saying that in +his culinary furies Gringoire needed at least three persons--whom I +took to be herself, the diminutive maid and the almost more diminutive +stable boy--to clear up after he had boiled an egg. + +How Gringoire proposed to save the world by intensive kitchen gardening +and exquisite but economical cookery may appear hereafter. His years in +the trenches had taught him one thing--to be an eccentric economist, +_in petto_, since he regarded himself as an extinct poet and proposed +to live on his minute army pension. And I think his ambition really was +to teach persons forced to live on minute incomes how to lead graceful, +poetic and pleasant lives and so to save the world. + +Thus it would perhaps have been better could your Compiler have +provided you with a work useful to young couples contemplating +matrimony on ten shillings a week ... or a month ... or a year. That +would have been an enterprise certainly to gladden the heart of +Gringoire. Or it might have been better had it taken the form of a +Cottager Cookery Book or a Cottager’s Guide to Gardening or the Keeping +of Goats instead of the war-reminiscences of a contemplative and +sensitive soul. Yes, to be sure that would have been better. One can +only console one’s self that when it comes to war-reminiscences the +contemplative and sensitive soul has been little represented. So, for +the matter of that, has the poetic but economical chef. + +But the present writer, alas, has not the excellent--but _so_ +meticulous!--mind that will let him sit down and write _many_ +paragraphs such as that following this one. Neither has Gringoire the +patience to dictate to the writer details of his methods. The most +he has done is to let his Boswell into his frame of mind. We once, +together, got as far as this: + +“_Chops, Mutton, to deal with._ + +“_Fritto Misto_: Stock: Mixed Meats _en casserole_. + +“Take two chops. Pare off _all_ the fat till you have two _noisettes +de mouton_. Save each particle of meat and each particle of fat from +the tail ends of the chops, separate, but as zealously as you preserve +every memory of your well-beloved. You will then have four little +divisions: two _noisettes_ for the _Fritto Misto_; two chop bones +for stock; a little pile of fat for rendering down; a little pile of +fragments of meat. Place the bones immediately in a small casserole of +water, with salt, two bay leaves, pepper, one leaf of sage, and rice if +you like. It will help you if you tie the bones together with a piece +of string having a long end so that you may pull them out. Let this +simmer for thirty-six hours.[1] Have ready also six roots of salsify; +one-half pound of French beans; one-half pound of cooked peas; and +one pound of potatoes, cut into slices. (All these vegetables should +be cooked ready. It will improve matters if the peas are _very_ young +and boiled in syrup.) Also two tomatoes sliced in halves, the meat of +two rashers of bacon, and a few mushrooms, and half a dozen sprigs of +parsley. (The bacon fat must be saved for rendering down.) Also two +slices of bread half an inch thick. Have ready also a large pie dish +half filled with water. + +“Now take an earthenware frying pan with a white glazed lining. Put in +sufficient frying fat to fill this to three-quarters of its depth when +boiling. Set this on the fire and bring the fat to the boil. (Boiling +fat will be absolutely still--stiller than any waters at even; as still +as is Madame Sélysette when, in the same room, Gringoire is writing. It +will have ceased to bubble, and, above its surface, will float a filmy +wreath of bluish vapor. You may test it by dropping in a piece of bread +crumb. If this becomes crisp in sixty seconds, your fat will be ready +for what follows.) + +“As soon as the fat boils, drop in your two slices of bread, which +will be large enough later to support the _noisettes_ and which will +be trimmed to improve their appearance. During that minute, place in +a frying basket your two _noisettes_ of mutton and the sliced cold +potatoes. (Gringoire likes his fried potatoes not too crisp. Those who +like them biscuit-wise should fry them in the basket for a quarter +of an hour longer than the mutton.) Take out from the frying fat the +slices of bread, let them drip into the fat, place them handy on a +clean plate ... _D--n it, that’s enough!_” + +The reader will understand that at this point my friend Gringoire +ceased dictating and ceased violently. Thus a Gringoire cookery book +cannot be compiled. For, though Gringoire will cook for hours and hours +if visitors are expected, and though he will talk, equally for hours +and hours, about eating, about digestion, about French, Italian, and +even German cookery as they affect the emotions, he finds it tiresome +to tie down his mind to the recording of processes. + +It is the same with gardening; the keeping of goats, ducks, chickens; +the training of dogs, cats, and horses. He will spend hours in +meditating over his onion bed. + +And then Madame Sélysette will call from the bedroom window of the +Gingerbread Cottage: + +“I do _love_ to see you, Gringoire, pottering about and pretending to +be busy.” For Gringoire will have risen at 6:30 and will have done +something with hoes, spades, trowels, lines, and other paraphernalia. +But he will have thought more. For the rotation of crops on a quarter +of an acre of sandy soil that has to be at once a formal garden and the +main food supply of a couple, of the tiniest income--that is a subject +for endless thought. + +It is a subject also for endless economies, schemes, calculations. The +calculations concern manure--for the accounts of agriculture are the +most complicated of accounts. You may show a loss on the fattening +of an ox, a chicken, a goat, a duck, or a pig--and yet its droppings +may so enrich your land as to give you actually a handsome balance of +profit. Or again a crop may appear superabundant, little palatable, or +unattractive--but, fed to one animal or another, it will beautifully +adorn your board on Christmas day. + +So in the Gingerbread Cottage--and it is, in all but looks, a very bad +cottage, with a roof that leaks, walls that used to drip with damp, +cupboards that, till the advent of Gringoire, smelled of mold and bred +the very largest spiders that can be imagined--Gringoire pursues at +once his economies, his meditations, and his career as a poet. + +But he is only able to be communicative as to his meditations. If +Madame Sélysette asks him how to make _potage_ this or that, he +says: “Oh, throw in any old thing.” Or again! This spring the writer +overheard the following dialogue between him and a small boy who was +weeding whilst he dug. + +“What is the most important thing in gardening, boy?” + +“Manure, sir.” + +“What is the next most important thing?” + +“Tools, sir.” + +“And the next?” + +“Money to buy seeds, sir.” + +“Wrong in every particular,” said Gringoire in a terrible voice. “The +first thing is brains; and the second thing is brains; and the third +thing is brains. Do you understand?” + +The boy said, “Yes, sir.” But one may doubt if he was really much +wiser. And Gringoire continued somewhat as follows: “I have no manure, +no tools, and no money--but you will see in the autumn that I shall +have the most productive garden in the country!” + +From which it will appear that Gringoire has some of the +characteristics of a Southern origin. Today his garden would not at +all points impress a French gardener--but in some it would. For, in +his youth Gringoire sat under the great Professor Gressent, Professor +of the Potager Moderne, at the Sorbonne in Paris. From him he learned +that thought, devotion to the task, and any bit of metal on the end of +a stick shaped like a hoe will take the place of manure, tools, and +money. For Professor Gressent, during one session, used to commence +every lecture by ordering his pupils to inscribe on their tablets the +mystical sentence: “_Trois fois biner vaut deux fois engraisser._” + +And when his Boswell, the writer, asked him the other day how he got +his results, he answered: + +“By trying to establish what that old fool Tolstoi called the Kingdom +of God within me!” + +The writer took him to mean that it is the spirit in which a job is +attacked that alone can sanctify the job--and that, in that way, the +godly grow fat at the expense of the unrighteous. Before the war +Gringoire was an ordinary poet, such as you might see in Soho or in +various foreign underground haunts by the baker’s dozen, eating nasty +meats, drinking nasty wines, usually in nasty company. How the war +changed his heart is here recorded. + +This is therefore a Reconstructionary Tale. + + +[Footnotes] + +[1] This is the result of the Army. I do not believe that Gringoire +ever simmers his bones for thirty-six hours. But in the Army it was +woe to the Colonel whose bones did not simmer for thirty-six hours or +who did not say so when an apoplectic gentleman with a blue hat-band +came around. The Colonel would lose his battalion, his D.S.O., and the +esteem of his fellow men. + + + + + II + + _Gardens and Flats_ + + +“I wonder,” Gringoire[2] began one evening, “if my experience of +landscape during the war has been that of many people....” + +It was an evening in spring. Gringoire had not been very long +established in his cottage--which, because of the nature of the poet +himself and of the poet’s adventurous establishment, the writer +automatically styles in his mind the Gingerbread Cottage. Gringoire, +with a spirit of hospitality that was large and open rather than either +considered or calculating, had invited a party of London friends to +share his Easter with him. During the day he rushed about a great +deal, cooking highly flavored dishes of a ragout type, on paraffin +stoves, washing up, sweeping, gardening, gathering unusual wild herbs +for salads, so that he was busy, and we of the party saw little of him. + +Fortunately it was fine. For at that date the Gingerbread Cottage let +in water like a sieve through the roof, the floor, the rough walls. +Great holes indeed gaped in the plaster of the ceilings. But he had +whitewashed the walls, stuck pots on shelves, improvised a couch out of +his camp bed, and lit fires of sticks in the sitting room. So in the +evenings we sat and listened to his talking. + +For Gringoire was a conversationalist. Like most dynamic, overwhelming, +and energetic poets, he had not the patience to listen to the remarks +of his fellows or to answer. He would be silent most of the day. But +toward evening, as like as not, he would suddenly suspend all his +activities, and with very possibly a hair-sieve or a trowel in his +hand, gesticulating too, he would begin to talk. + +As a house party the Easter experiment was not a success for all of +us. Gringoire had hardened himself in Flanders; the rest had not. But +since, as a byproduct of the experience, Madame Sélysette had consented +to share and adorn his lot, Gringoire had his reward. And the writer +secured these records of his monologues: + +“I wonder,” then, he asked on one of these evenings, “if my experience +of landscape during the war has been that of many people.” And without +waiting he continued much as follows: “For I may say that before +August, 1914, I lived more through my eyes than through any other +sense, and in consequence certain corners of the earth had, singularly, +the power to stir me.” But from the moment when, on the 4th of August, +1914, the Germans crossed the Belgian frontier “near a place called +Gemmenich,” aspects of the earth no longer existed for him. + +The earth existed, of course. Extending to immense distances of +field-gray; dimly colored in singularly shaped masses, as if the colors +on Mercator’s projection had been nearly washed out by a wet brush. +Stretching away, very flat, silenced, in suspense, the earth--_orbis +terrarum veteribus notus_--seemed to await the oncoming legions, gray +too, but with the shimmer of gold standards that should pour out from +that little gap, “near a place called Gemmenich,” and should obscure +and put to shame all the green champaign lands of the world, as the +green grass of meadows is put to shame and obscured by clay, water +pouring through a gap in a dike. That was the earth. + +There were no nooks, no little, sweet corners; there were no assured +homes, countries, provinces, kingdoms, or races. All the earth held its +breath and waited. + +“And it is only today,” my friend went on, “that I see again a little +nook of the earth; it forms the tiniest of hidden valleys, with a +little red stream that buries itself in the red earth beneath the +tall green of the grass and the pink and purple haze of campions, the +occasional gold of buttercups, the cream of meadowsweet. The plants in +the garden wave in stiffness like a battalion on parade--the platoons +of lettuce, the headquarters’ staff, all sweet peas, and the color +company, which is of scarlet runners. The little old cottage is under a +cliff of rock, like a gingerbread house from a Grimm’s fairy tale; the +silver birches and the tall pines confront it; the sunlight lies warmer +than you could imagine in the hollow, and a nightingale is running in +and out of the bean-stalks. Yes, a nightingale of midsummer that has +abandoned the deep woodland and runs through the garden, a princess +turned housekeeper, because it has young to feed. Think of noticing +that!” + +During the four years that the consciousness of the war lasted, he had +noticed only four landscapes and birds only once--to know that he was +noticing them--for themselves. Of course, one has memories of aspects +of the world--but of a world that was only a background for emotions. + +Even, for instance, when one saw poor Albert, by some trick of +mnemonics, from the lettering of the huge word “Estaminet” across the +front of a battered house in the Place where, in the blinding sunlight, +some Australian transport men were watering their mules, and one +recognized it for a place one had visited twenty years before and had +forgotten--even when one saw the remains of the garden where, twenty +years before, we had waited whilst our lunch of omelette, cutlets, +and salad was prepared, or even when one saw the immense placard +with “Caution” erected in the center of the white rubbish and white +rubble of the Place, or the desecrated statue of the Madonna, leaning +in an abandoned attitude from the church tower--even then one was so +preoccupied, so shut in on one’s self, that these things were not +objects that one looked at for themselves. They were merely landmarks. +Divisional Headquarters, one had been told, was behind the N.E. corner +of the Place, the notice-board was to the N.E. of one’s self, therefore +one must pass it to reach Divisional Headquarters. It was Headquarters +one wanted, not the storing of the mind with observed aspects. + +So Gringoire had four landscapes, which represent four moments in four +years when, for very short intervals, the strain of the war lifted +itself from the mind. They were, those intermissions of the spirit, +exactly like gazing through rifts in a mist. Do you know what it is +to be on a Welsh mountain side when a heavy mist comes on? Nothing +remains. You are there by yourself.... And the only preoccupation you +have with the solid, invisible world is the boulders over which you +stumble and the tufts of herbage that you try to recognize as your +path. Then suddenly the mist is riven perpendicularly, and for a moment +you see a pallid, flat plain stretching to infinity beneath your feet +and running palely to a sea horizon on a level with your eyes. There +will be pale churches, pale fields, and on a ghostly channel the +wraiths of scattered islands. Then it will be all gone. + +It was just so with the three or four landscapes that my friend saw +during the war. There was the day in 1915 when Kensington Gardens +suddenly grew visible. There were Guardsmen turning in fours, with some +Guardee form of drill that is not usual to the Infantry. There were +motor transport wagons going cautiously down the Broad Walk--parts of +the familiar train of the war. And then, suddenly, there were great +motionless trees, heavy in their summer foliage, blue-gray, beneath a +very high sky; there was the long, quiet part of the palace; the red +brick, glowing in the sun, the shadows of the windows very precise +and blue. And Gringoire thought that old, stiff marionettes, rather +homely courtiers and royalties, might step out of the tall windows +onto the lawns and, holding tasseled canes to their lips, bow, +pirouette and make legs, till the long chestnut wigs brushed the stiff +rosebushes. Not _very_ gallant; not _very_ royal. No Rois Soleils or +Princesses Lointaines but a Court nevertheless, whispering mercilessly, +intriguing, smiling, betraying, much as in Versailles, only a little +more rustically, in front of the old, homely Dutch orangery. + +Then the curtain closed again; the weight once more settled down. The +trees again became the foreground and there was the feeling that +Gringoire could never get away from--that they would be personally +humiliated, shamed, abashed; as if they would wrathfully bow or avert +their heads if ever field-gray troops passed down the Broad Walk, or +the park keeper at the gates wore a Uhlan uniform! That was in the +early days of the war--August, 1915, I think. The feeling that there +might be an invasion was still, and was strong, in the air. There was +no knowing, still, where the dam might give way and the mud-colored +tide pour toward us. And somehow Gringoire figured it coming from the +W. by S.W. from the direction of Kew and Fulham: high, gray, reaching +from the legions on the ground to the gray airships towering on high--a +solid, perpendicular wave of humiliation like the tidal wave of which +one reads--of humiliation for the trees and the very grass. + +“I wonder,” Gringoire asked again that evening, “if other people +had, like myself, that feeling that what one feared for was the +land--not the people but the menaced earth with its familiar aspect. +And I wonder why one had the feeling. I dare say it was just want +of imagination: one couldn’t perhaps figure the feelings of ruined, +fleeing and martyred populations. And yet, when I had seen enough of +those, the feeling did not alter. I remember that what struck me most +in ruined Pont de Nieppe, by Armentières, was still the feeling of +abashment that seemed to attach to furniture and wall-paper exposed to +the sky--not the sufferings of the civilian population, who seemed to +be jolly enough--or at any rate sufficiently nonchalant--with booths +erected under ruined walls or in still whole cottages, selling fried +fish to the tanneries. No! what struck me as infinitely pathetic was +lace curtains: for there were innumerable lace curtains, that had +shaded vanished windows, fluttering from all the unroofed walls in the +glassless window-frames. They seemed to me to be more forlornly ashamed +than any human beings I have ever seen. Only brute beasts ever approach +that: old and weary horses, in nettle-grown fields; or dogs when they +go away into bushes to die.” + +He went on to say that perhaps prisoners of war had it too. The Germans +certainly seemed to. But he had, naturally, never seen any of our own +people in that condition. They are represented to us as remaining +erect and keeping most of their _esprit de corps_. That may be why, +in August, 1915, it was difficult to think of the sufferings of our +possibly invaded peoples but only of the humiliation of desecrated +herbage and downlands. + +“I don’t know.” And Gringoire meditated as if neither I nor Mme. +Sélysette were in the room. “Perhaps I am lacking in human sympathy +or have no particular cause to love my fellow men. But at any rate, +at that moment, the feeling of dread that those gray-blue, motionless +trees under the high sky might, under heavens more lowering, feel +that final humiliation--that feeling was so strong that I remember it +still as a pain. Nay, in the remembrance, I feel it so strongly that +it is still a pain, like that of an old, deep cicatrized wound. For of +course, it would have connoted that the broad and the small fields, +copses, spinneys, streams, and heaths, stretching away to the quiet +downs and the ultimate sea, would have felt that tread of mailed and +alien heels.” He remembered looking up to the sky in an agony. And +then he became again interested in the Guards at drill beneath the +trees--whose dressing never altered. Why did they turn in fours at +the command “Left turn” when they were in column of route? Why didn’t +they form two deep? They were not doing sentry drill or any form of +ceremonial that the ordinary Infantry practice. The command was not: +“In fours: left turn.” + +So the workaday frame of mind came back--and we carried on. + +On hearing of the death of Lord Kitchener, he had another short moment. +“I don’t know,” he wrote this in a letter, “whether the news had +anything to do with it. I suppose it had. I will tell you. I was being +motored to Dunmow Station, and when the car arrived at that little +shanty, the stationmaster, whom I remember as quite an old man, came +to the car-stop and just said: ‘Lord Kitchener has been drowned.’ He +appeared quite expressionless, and I remember that both my companion +and I laughed. I should say that I even laughed loudly. In those days +and frames of mind, one reached, as it were, down to jokes obtaining +only amongst rather simple people--and the joke underlying the idea of +the drowning at sea of a man so supported by a whole land might have +been quite ingenious in idea--like some joke of the reign of Queen Anne +involving the raising of the sea above the dome of St. Paul’s. + +“But he succeeded in assuring us that Lord Kitchener had been drowned. +‘The Field Marshal Commanding in Chief had been last seen on the +nearly vertical deck, following a member of his staff.’--A good death +for the man who had saved his land--and Europe. + +“For speaking not as an expert speaks but still as a student of the +temper of war and the _moral_ of what in the Army is called ‘the men’ +I have no hesitation in saying--and I don’t apologize for saying +here--that without the figure of Lord Kitchener the British Army would +have remained negligible in numbers and would have taken a very small +part in the war. And I suppose that, without the British Army, the war +could hardly have been maintained to a successful conclusion.” + +At any rate, that was the way in which it appeared to Gringoire with +a mind suddenly jumped into attending to this shocking fact from the +designing of an aiming card for the Ross Rifle. For in those days it +was his province to instruct in the use of that weapon nine hundred +returned British Expeditionary Force, all time-serving men, and in +consequence the toughest customers you could imagine. Indeed, it is +difficult to imagine them. + +They had every guile from a military point of view. They were adepts in +absences, swingings of the lead, drunks, excuses, barrack-breakings, +cheerful lies, and a desperate determination not to exhibit any +glimmerings of intelligence, let alone any proficiency, in the use of +any kind of weapon, let alone the Ross Rifle, which was a gimcrack +concern at the best, with aperture sights and fittings like watch +springs and innumerable ways of being put out of order. And you could +put your nose in half and get yet another month in hospital as easy as +winking by pulling back the bolt in any sort of rapid practice. + +They lived--these desperadoes--in a tumble-down skating rink, and they +exercised amongst the backyards and dust-bins of a great city, and +such was the moral atmosphere of the shadowy and stifling vault in +which this kind of khaki lived that when, at Easter, Gringoire proposed +to bring in a priest to hear the confessions of the Roman Catholics +with more convenience to them, the men sent three R.C. sergeants as a +deputation to him. They said the rink was not a fitting place for a +priest to see. And every one of them promised to walk three miles to +confession and to perform all his Easter duties faithfully sooner than +that a priest should see them as they lived. + +A great cavern of a place that was, laid out in stalls like a cattle +market, where the officers labored intolerably filling up innumerable +forms with an immense sense of pressure and of striving with tough men. +A great sense of pressure. And he would walk up and down in front of +the worst-dressed line that had ever been imagined--a fantastic line, +for not one of the nine hundred professed to be able to stand straight +on his legs--and Gringoire would exclaim gloomily and in alternation: +“Thank God we’ve got a Navy” or: “Lord Kitchener says the war’s going +to last another three years; hang me if you blighters will wangle out +of going back to France.” Whereupon there would be groans down the line +and a near-drunk man would whisper: “Good ol’ Kitchener!” + +It was out of that horseshoe-cavern of gloom in whose shafts of +vaporous and disinfectant-colored lights moved these troublesome +green-brown shapes that he had come for a very brief period of +leave in a world that, again, included lawns, afternoon teas, +standard roses, tall rooms, servants--not batmen, but with caps and +aprons--pianolas--and no one, really, to clean one’s belt; as well as +discussions of that higher, wilder, finer strategy, in which, in one’s +capacity of a more or less professional student of tactics, one was +so decidedly at a loss. Or perhaps it wasn’t immediately from the +cavern that he had come; perhaps it was from the Chelsea Course. But +there, amongst the Guards, the Kitchener “note” rang truer and cleaner +and more insistently. And at any rate, he was certainly going back to +that atmosphere of strain and rush; into the desperate effort to teach +thousands and thousands bayonet fighting, gas tactics, measures against +venereal disease, sentry drill, dugout building, why they were going +to fight, how to manufacture grenades out of jam-tins, the history of +the regiment, and _esprit de corps_--and doing it all in desperate and +bewildered haste, with the aid of sacks, hairpins, can-openers and +Japanese rifles with the wrong sort of bayonets, under the auspices +of an orderly room driven mad by endless reproofs from brigades, +divisions, the War Office, the civilian police, Boards of Agriculture, +county asylums, parents whose sons had enlisted too young, and young +women who had married privates too often married already.... But coming +from it or not, Gringoire was certainly going back to it and, in its +desperate and fleeting atmosphere, the idea of Lord Kitchener was the +one solid thing onto which our poor poet could catch. + +So the stationmaster made it plain that Lord Kitchener was dead. + +It was just one of those situations in which one thinks nothing--a +change in the beat of the clock. Gringoire was sitting in the little +open shed of a waiting-room, the only idea present in his mind being +that his crossed legs were stuck stiffly out in front of him, their +weight upon his left heel and both hands in his breeches pockets. +Nothing whatever! Absolutely nothing! No war: an empty mind; a little +open shed with benches; a hatchway in one plank wall where they served +out tickets; a bit of platform; a high, brick signal-box with clocks +or things ticking; a brick house, no doubt the stationmaster’s.... The +whole world, that was! And noiseless; and immobile. There was no France +on the horizon; no English Channel. There was no awaiting of Zeppelins; +there was no Right or Wrong. + +And so the veil lifted for a second. The flat lands of Essex were +there, stretching out; flat fields; undistinguished beneath a dull sky. +He speculated on the crops; on the labor it took to the acre to put in +those cabbages; on the winds that must sweep across the comparatively +hedgeless spaces. The ground looked like a good clay. Plenty of heart +in it, no doubt they would say in auctioneer’s advertisements. But, on +the whole, an unsmiling, foreign land. Not Kent or Sussex, but “the +Sheeres.” If one settled down here, one wouldn’t know the postman, the +tax collector, the old standers, the way they trimmed the hedge rows, +the habits of the soil, or the course of the months, the brooks, the +birds, the breed of sheep, the gossip, the local history--or the dead. +A friendless, foreign country, the Essex Flats.... + +And the southeastern saying came up into Gringoire’s mind: “You see yon +man: he cooms from Sussex. He sucked in silliness with his mother’s +milk and ’s been silly ever since. But never you trust a man from the +Sheeres!”... It is Kent and Sussex against the world--just as no doubt +it is Essex and Hertford; and Somerset and Devon; the North and East +Riding and Durham and Cumberland and Denbigh and Flint, against the +world--and it’s _never_ safe to put long straw under potatoes when you +dig them in, trusting to the wet to rot it. At that point Gringoire +remembered in 1899 buying some special seed, called, I think, “1900,” +out of compliment to the coming century. He paid a big price; one +hundred twenty shillings the hundredweight, I think. And he dunged +them beautifully with rather long straw and artificial manure. But a +long, long dry season came, and the Kentish land sloped to the south, +and the straw dried, and the artificial manure never soaked down. He +didn’t get a quarter of a ton to the quarter acre. + +On the other hand, under maize, if you can water heavily once or twice, +long straw arranged in trenches, like pipes, is rather a good wheeze. +It holds the water to the roots and maize will do with a topsoil like +fire if the roots are cool. In 1899 Gringoire got some wonderful ears +of sweet corn. And, toasted on the cob and buttered after toasting...! + +He changed heels under the puttees and considered his garden in +Kent. He was going to try growing potatoes from seeds--not from +seed-potatoes, but from the little seeds that form in the green +berries. And he was going to put a light, whitewashed paling behind the +sweet corn, on the north--to reflect the rays of the sun. It should +ripen the cob three weeks earlier!... + +The Essex flats became again, slowly, visible land, planted with +war-food. An airplane was going toward Bishop Stortford; the train +was overdue because a unit was entraining up the line--once again +every fact in the world was just a part, just a side light of the +immense problem. Once again nothing existed just for itself. Trains +were carriers of men and munitions. Stretched-out legs were encased +in puttees, put in military boots; servant girls travelling with +horn-handled black umbrellas and elastic boots were going to see +their boys off at Waterloo; old farmers with white side whiskers were +explaining why they had kept all six sons at home--in defiance of the +gaze of Lord Kitchener that looked at them six times in that wee small +station. And railway fares were going to be increased for civilians! + +I have little doubt that what, at that moment and for that minute +space of time, had set our poet intent on planting potatoes and seed +corn--perfectly certain that he was going straight down into Kent +to plant potatoes in rows and sweet corn in hills--was that his +unconscious mind was certain that the war was done and over with that +death in the North Sea. I do not mean to say that he thought it--or +even that he was conscious that something inside thought it for him. +His surface-mind thought certainly of Essex, of Kent and Sussex; the +subconscious mind seemed to be aware that his puttees were badly put +on, that he had mislaid his warrant in one of several pockets--he had +a vague consciousness of South Wales, blue mountains, like Japanese +clouds. But some deeper center still was probably appalled and benumbed +and was saying: + +“Now the war is finished and lost. Now, ‘_appry la gair finny_’ as the +Tommies say, _je vais planter mes choux comme un maître d’école_.” +There seemed to be nothing left but to plant out a kitchen garden. + + +[Footnotes] + +[2] “Gringoire.” This is not of course, our poet’s name, but a nickname +earned actually at school. There is a story by Alphonse Daudet, in +“Lettres de Mon Moulin,” called the “Chèvre de M. Séguin,” which +relates how in the end the wolf ate Mr. Séguin’s goat. This story, in +the form of a letter, is addressed to a poet, one Gringoire, and is +meant to show that though a poet may struggle all his life against +poverty, in the end the wolf, starvation, will get him. At Gringoire’s +school the Sixth Form were studying French from the “Lettres de Mon +Moulin,” and since even at that date Gringoire wrote poems, his kindly +schoolmates learned the name and so bestowed it upon him--as it has +been bestowed on many out-at-elbowed literati. + + + + + III + + _Blue of Swallows’ Backs_ + + +Well, by the evening of his next monologue, Gringoire had planted +out his kitchen garden; the onions, the lettuces, the carrots, the +kohl-rabi, the spinach were aligned; that battalion was parading in +full strength. Moreover, in a bed from which he had just removed +spinach and onions, there were twenty little potato plants, grown +from little seeds: under a twenty-foot quick-set hedge, beautiful and +close like a wall, the sweet corn was already up to the hips. The long +straws, like pipes, ran in a trench under the corn hills; the deluge of +water, warmed because it comes from a dip on which the sun blazes all +day, washed the deep roots; the nightingale was running in and out of +the beanstalks; the swallows were throwing themselves through the air; +over the low brick the sun was setting on the longest day of the year, +and, D.S.G., the war was over and done. No longer D.H.Q., Bn.H.Q., +M.L.E., T.M.B.--but just D.S.G.! To God alone be the glory in the +quiet garden evening. + +“I will tell you a curious thing,” said Gringoire in June, “but in +gardens amongst woods, beside streams, there are so many curious things +to tell of that I don’t know where to begin! I am like a child with +the largest coin it has ever possessed outside a hundred entrancing +shops. I began talking the other day with the idea of describing four +landscapes--the great guns from Portsmouth now remind me, though I have +written of only two, of yet a fifth.” + +We--Gringoire and the writer--had been for a slow walk, round three +sides of a patch of heath. A man, leaning over a white gate, with a +thin, red face, a blue suit and some very bright regimental tie, just +said: “The telegram’s up in the post office. It’s official!” And, +speaking of it that evening in the warmth of the garden beside the +hammock of Mme. Sélysette, Gringoire said: + +“I assure you, on my honor, that the whole landscape, the commonplace, +friendly landscape of elms, rather backward wheat, heather, gorse, and +park-wall suddenly changed. It was as if the focus of the camera had +suddenly clicked, readjusted itself--as if it grew--though before one +hadn’t known it for anything but all that was possible of tranquillity, +breadth, security, and peace--grew quieter, calmer, broader, more +utterly secure and inviolable. English country! + +“I don’t know: there’s nothing to it, really. A spray of dog-roses; +a whitethroat dropping over the hedge; some gorse; the long, rolling +land; the high skies and clouds above the downs.... Well, it is +one stage more toward a forever of security, of that being forever +inviolable that one prays may be its portion. A great stage forward.” + +For coming home and sitting behind irregular, all but too old lattice, +giving onto a deep wall of verdure, we had heard suddenly the heavy +guns through the voices of birds.... And Gringoire said later that, +at the sound of those distant guns through the overwhelming orchestra +of birds, he had seen distinctly, against the warm brick of the +house-wall, a tin hat.... But many tin hats dim in the blue-gray light, +and a lot of Scotch Jocks, their kilts covered with khaki aprons, and +an immense long train with innumerable shapes dropping out of it, +their cries muted by the twilight: the crunch of feet on the gravel, +before the tin sheds of the station. That had been Railhead behind the +Somme. And then suddenly you were conscious of the innumerable voices +of birds singing the sun down. And then through them the uninterrupted +heavy discourse of the great guns at a distance came over the little +hills and darkling trees of that downland country. It continued.... +Incessant, engrossed, almost as it were tranquil, almost like the +bubbling of water in a pot, boiling up, dying down, going on and on, +not penetrating but enveloping the cries of Tommy to Tommy or of +footsteps to footsteps--and, rising through it, as if lances of sound +were protruding upward through something soft and vaporous, the voices +of thrushes. A great many thrushes: and the down getting whiter; and +the “Fall In There’s” and the men moving off ... + +So that he said he half wished the Portsmouth guns would +stop--five-point nines; ninety-eight pounders; fifteen-inch +guns--whatever they are. One doesn’t want to hear them again, or again +to feel them--dully on the air. Not at any rate in peace time. + +The nightingale amongst the bean-stalks; the thrushes in the shaw +on the opposite hillsides; the swallows throwing themselves through +the air! He did not remember any nightingale during the war; but he +remembered those thrushes of Rébimont-Méricourt on a date in July +’16. And he remembered some swallows--an immense sea of the blue +of swallows’ backs. And he said that the Portsmouth guns of the +28/6/’19 sounding through the birds’ voices from the hill opposite the +Gingerbread Cottage brought it all back. Poets are like that and have +these visions. + +It sounds, of course, queer--but it was like that. Up on a hillside +that was covered mostly with thistles there was an Artillery +Observation Post which consisted of a Lombardy poplar--though one did +not see how the gunners got up it. At any rate, there was a pile of dud +Hun shells on the roadside bank at the foot of the tree and beneath +the O.P. was a pretty rotten dugout with a corrugated iron roof. The +Battalion Trench Mortar officer lived there. Below him he had a view of +a battery of French 75’s, of the chalky line of trenches; Martinpuich +looked down on him, which wasn’t overly comfortable, and the Ancre +wound away--to No Man’s Land. From time to time a field-gun wheel going +along the road would catch its spokes in the corrugated iron of his +roof--lift a corner and drop it again. I don’t know why the Trench +Mortar officer lived in that dugout, but a gunwheel lifted his roof +and dropped it again whilst Gringoire was dozing in it. He thought the +bottom of hell had dropped out. It was his worst shock of the war. +I shouldn’t wonder if it were not the worst shock any one ever had +between the 4/8/’14 and the 28/6/’19. He mentioned it, he said, because +it probably accounted for his immediately subsequent exultation; it +was, I suppose, so good to be just alive after that. + +At any rate, after the Trench Mortar officer had come in--Gringoire +had been waiting to give him a message--downhill through the thistles, +dusty in the hot sunlight, Gringoire went with immense, joyful +strides. He said that he was extraordinarily fit in those days! And +an innumerable company of swallows flew round him, waist high, just +brushing the thistledown. “They were so near,” Gringoire said, “that +they brushed my hands, and they extended so far that I could see +nothing else. It is one of the five things of the war that I really +see, for it was like walking, buoyantly, in the pellucid sunlight, +waist-high through a sea of unsurpassed and unsurpassable azure. I felt +as if I were a Greek god. It was like a miracle. + +“Now, I see swallows from below, their rust-stained breasts against +high, blotted, gray clouds--and I wonder if they are thinking of the +near rising mayfly. I remember thinking on the other occasion that +there were a good many dead amongst the thistles and that I must be +putting up a huge number of flies. But that, again, was the thought of +my subconscious mind. On the surface I just felt myself to be a Greek +god, immortal, young forever, forever buoyant, amongst the eddies of a +dark blue and eternal sea.” + +The feeling lasted until he got to the mule-lines of somebody’s First +Line Transport, where he borrowed a terrible old brute of a horse, to +take him to Divisional H.Q. + +It would be interesting to know what that class of feeling comes +from--possibly from some sort of atavistic throwback to days when the +gods were nearer. You get them now and again in action--but not so +often as you get the reverse type of feeling when you are engaged in +agriculture. That is perhaps why farmers are so often passionately +disagreeable and apparently unreasonable men. For there is nothing that +so much resembles contact with, wrestling with, a personal devil as +to awaken one morning and to find that a whole crop of seedlings has +vanished before myriads of slugs. That happens. If you don’t believe +it, read White’s “Selborne.” It is loss, ruin perhaps. It is like a +death: a profound and unforeseen disaster. And your mind personifies +the slug as intelligent, malignant, a being with a will for evil +directed against you in person. I think that, whilst it lasts, it is +the worst feeling in the world. + +Drought is nearly as bad. + + + + + IV + + _The Kingdoms of the Earth_ + + +It was after Gringoire had speculated on slugs, without, you will +observe, suggesting a remedy, that he continued: + +“I have given you, so far, three of the landscapes that remain real +to me--for the detraining in the dawn at Rébimont-Méricourt is not +one of those that are just always in my mind. I have to remember back +to--to be reminded of it. It was the sounds of Peace Guns pierced by +the multitudinous voices of thrushes that brought back to me that +first-heard, unintermittent thudding and throb of the engines of war +through which, like spears, thrust the voices of innumerable birds. +But, just, I suppose, because one’s mind was preoccupied with the job +of seeing that one’s valise was all right, that the men had all their +kit and equipment at least potentially there--and no doubt with the job +of seeing to it that one’s composure appeared absolute--one recorded +less of visible objects, so that fewer visible objects return, and they +return less vividly.” + +He remembered--and he knew that he remembered, accurately and +exactly--every detail of Kensington Gardens on that day of August, +1915; of the Essex Railway Station he said that he could tell you what +advertisements were on the walls and how many people awaited the train +as well as every word of the conversation he had had whilst driving to +the station. And he remembered with an extreme clearness, as in the +little paintings of Van Eyck on the Chasse de Ste. Ursule at Brûges, +the swallows and the thistles of the ridge going down in the clear July +weather behind Bécourt Wood in 1916. He had a job then, it is true--but +not one calling for any immediate or complicated action. Besides, at +that moment he had felt himself to be immune from danger and proof +against death. So that those three landscapes became part of his +immediate self. + +“They will probably remain part of myself to the end of my life: my +grandchildren will probably be tired of them and, when I am quite aged, +so probably will guests and casual strangers.” But--did you ever take a +walking tour, or just a long walk and, in bed at the end of the day, +perhaps in order to put yourself to sleep, did you ever try to remember +every inch of the roads you had covered? Gringoire claimed that in that +way he could remember a great many of the roads both of England and +France of his boyhood when one walked or cycled a good deal for walking +or cycling’s sake. Corners of roads, bridges, highways climbing over +the forehead of downs--the road out of Bridport, down into Winchester, +from Minehead to Lynton; from Calais over the flats to Arras, from +Arras to Beauvais; from Blois to Tours; from Amiens to Albert in +1892.... By shutting his eyes, or by looking at something blank, like a +sheet of paper, or by not really looking at anything at all, he could, +he said, evoke a panorama of any of those roads, or say from the North +Foreland to Land’s End. Perhaps he couldn’t really, but he could have +a pretty good try and get a lot right. “Well, in that way, I can evoke +most of the roads ’round Albert, or Locre and the base of the Salient, +or Bailleul, or Steenewerck, or Armentières; and plenty of other places +of the Lines of Communication like Hazebrouck and Abbéville and St. +Omer. But I daresay I should get some of it incorrect.” + +For instance, as to the detraining at Railhead in that dawn: he +had distinctly the feeling that there was a woody, dark bank and a +plantation of trees in which the thrushes sang, right up against the +flat of the line. There wasn’t really. He found later, on coming out of +Corbie and there entraining to rejoin his battalion, that there were +only high elms against flat, champaign country with a muddy stream. +However, there was a high farm-building just behind the elms, so, no +doubt, the effect on the inattentive eye was that. And the thrushes had +certainly sung. + +But he could evoke the rest of the road to the front line fairly well. +On the right of the station, in the elms, was a brown Y.M.C.A. hut, +where the officers got very greasy bread and rather black fried eggs +and coffee. There were innumerable, old, dog’s-eared magazines on +the mess tables in amongst the breakfast utensils. Twenty or thirty +numbers of the “English Review,” like the dominoes, of a date when +our writer used to own that periodical. It seemed an odd thing to +see; an odd, queer thing to have owned. Near--too near--the hut were +the men’s latrines; a little further, the officers’. On the left, +then, as the Draft passed, was the station. A very fat old gendarme +was standing, well back on his heels, his legs wide apart; about him +were four market women, with bundles, and baskets containing fowls. +They were grouped around the gendarme like pullets around chanticleer, +as he watched the sunrise. A lot of Royal Field Artillery horses and +riders came over the dust into the station yard; a company of Jocks was +waiting outside the office of the Railway Transport Officer. The ground +was soft dust, so that the reinforcement might have been marching in +sandals. + +They continued their march parallel with the railway line, along +a soft road, beside the little stream, between osier-bushes and +elms--for about fifty yards. There were some stray mules belonging to +a Kitchener’s battalion, Wiltshires or Cheshires--Nineteenth Division +anyhow. There didn’t appear to be any drivers. There was a good deal of +shouting; the Draft about-turned. The guide was taking them wrong. But +who ever knew a guide take any one right anywhere? It was rather like a +dream--not at all a bad dream--but, anyhow, a numbness. + +Or no: really it was more like being in the hands of doctors, on the +way to an operation. Probably the anaesthetic would be all right; it +wouldn’t hurt. At any rate, we had no volition; one’s feet moved; +one’s haversack was a bit heavy--not very. One went on, one didn’t know +where. + +In the same way you may remember the anteroom of your dentist. There +is a big table in the center of the room; on the table some writing +materials--and old periodicals, like the “English Reviews” amongst the +solid Y.M.C.A. cups and plates.... But, on the one hand there is, solid +and real, say, Mandeville Place: taxis drive about in it; the faces of +the houses are of black-gray Portland cement, imitating granite. The +street, then, is real: and the operating room will soon feel as real, +even while one is waiting in the outer room. But the anteroom itself is +a dream-landscape. + +So it was with the Rébimont-Méricourt road. + +When you come out of the station yard, on the right there is a high, +white-walled, tile-roofed estaminet-farm. Australian First Line +Transport men were watering their mules there, lounging on the steps +with their tunics off. The road began to mount; on the left, on top +of a high bank was an orchard. It reminded our poet of the nutwalk, +on a high bank, belonging to a certain farm in Kent--at the bottom of +Aldington Knoll, where the marsh begins. Mounting the slope, on the +right, he came to a closed, empty, butcher’s shop. A superior butcher’s +shop with grilles, green paint, gone of course dusty, marble slabs, and +a gilded copper sign. + +The road opened out suddenly. It was a dusty expanse between houses: +in England it would have been a village green. There were house walls, +windows, archways in the dusty white plaster, giving onto farmyards +or stables. Two men were harnessing a black mare into a hooded, +two-wheeled, dusty cart. Four black Percheron stallions were standing +in a string in front of a long cottage. “They reminded me,” Gringoire +said, “of four black stallions I had seen, years before, outside the +blacksmith’s at Beaumont-le-Roger. In those days it had seemed to be +odd that stallions could be left unattended in a village-street. But in +1916, I was used to that idea; what intrigued me, then, was that any +civilian should have four stallions at his disposal. For they certainly +were not French cavalry, or divisional or other transport.” + +The civilians seemed extraordinarily--not unreal--but, as it were, +super-real! North French peasants, slow, ungainly, with heavy legs +and feet. They were just the peasants one had always seen; hard, like +granite--not comparatively soft and comparatively gray, like our own +old peasants, who, when they look hard have the aspect not of wrinkled +stone but of old, crannied, oak-tree boles. It was Sussex downland, +that country--but like the people, harder, unsmiling. + +To the left of the Place--if you can call a flat space of dust +a Place--there was a narrow street, high, mud walls; archways, +semi-circular topped, gray wooden doors. On one of these was nailed a +large white placard: headquarters of the 4th Army Veterinary Corps. +(I hope this is no longer a staff secret.) The reinforcement had to +drop some men of the Draft they had brought out--men for the poor 38th +Division that was to be wiped out in Mametz Wood--at some other sort +of headquarters at the end of the street; that was why some of us +penetrated it. Yes: it was very narrow and high-walled--more Wiltshire +than Sussex! There must have been vegetation on the top of some of the +mud-walls. Opposite the Farriers’ H.Q. there was a little, thatched, +sweet-shop sort of a place, and irises were growing on the thatch. I +daresay they would not be there in peace time: you would say it was +more Irish than French. + +In the sweet-shop they sold dates, clay pipes, picture postcards with +English regimental badges, picture postcards with views of Albert +and the toppling Madonna; silk-worked postcards of bright reds, +whites, and bright blues, and postcards showing smiling ladies dusted +with spangles. The women behind the low counter were very unreal: a +motionless old witch with black eyes, a brown face, and dead white, +parted hair; she stood, and only her eyes moved, and she appeared, +not malignant, but grotesquely like a brown wooden image with moving +eyes; an untidy dark girl, without even looking at us or at a perplexed +Tommy who was pricing postcards, stood, her face sideways and repeated: +“Ten ... a penny: ten ... a penny”--patiently, and as if from a great +distance. She said: “Ten” very fast, then paused and added “a penny” +slowly and as if with boredom. The Tommy grasped ten postcards and held +out a penny, but she continued to say: “Ten ... a penny, ten ... a +penny,” without either movement or expression. + +“So I could continue,” our poet went on, “to recall this itinerary, +for many pages and for many hours: past the farm on the right, with +the great dung heap, past the pond overshadowed by crab-apples; past +another crossroads on the right, where, at a tent, facing a great, +dull-brick aggregation of ruins, rafters, and fallen chimneys, which +was once a sugar factory--the timekeeper’s office and the iron gates +were still intact--we delivered up the remaining other Ranks of the +Draft and went on, up the bare downland road, officers only, between +the bearded wheat on the left and the immense field of thin oats to +the right--upward to the Officers’ Distributing Center; tents just put +up that day, on a bare, downland field, very white and with the long +down-grass still untramped in their interiors.... + +“Yes, I could keep it up for many of your pages and for many hours,” +Gringoire said, “but I am not so much concerned to describe these +landscapes, or to prove the quality of my memory, as to establish the +psychological facts about the other four landscapes.” He had just gone +back into memory, without any particular effort--without indeed any +effort at all, and the roads were there, like a string unwinding from +a ball. His eyes must have been at work but not his registering brain. +The mind was working otherwise. + +“I have purposely omitted to mention,” he said later, “that, all the +way, on all the roads, proceeding generally with caution because of +the worn _pavés_, but sometimes getting a swift run for a couple +of hundred or so of yards, sometimes one at a time, sometimes +four together, at times in as thick a stream as motor traffic in +Piccadilly--the ambulances passed us, on the left.” + +That was a detail of the mind rather than of the eyes. Gringoire knew +in 1919 that they were there, because he remembered that several of the +officers had to count them for a time. But they appeared to be rather +symbols than concrete objects. They stood for BLIGHTIES--going home! +They were part of what made the skin of the forehead over the eyes feel +always a little drawn, part of the preoccupation that, always, turned +one’s thoughts inward. I don’t suppose it was fear--or perhaps that is +how fear really manifests itself. + +Here, then, is another landscape. It was up at the Officers’ +Distributing Center. Or perhaps it wasn’t officially called that, +though that was what it was. It may have been an Officers’ Rest +Camp--which it certainly was not. At any rate, there it was on an +open, sloping downland field--seven new tents pitched, two more being +pitched: cook-houses, wash-houses, latrines, batmen’s quarters, and +the rest of it, down to the incinerator, were all, also, in process of +being erected. The Senior Officer in charge of our party interviewed +the Camp Commandant and the officers sprawled about on the bare +hillside with the downland winds running over the grasses just as they +do in Sussex on a cloudless day. + +“I have always thought,” Gringoire said, “ever since I was a small boy +and used to ride on the downs behind Folkestone that the sun has a +peculiar quality in the sky over downlands, as if chalk dust in the air +whitened the rays. But that is probably nonsense.” Anyhow, the field +sloped downwards; there was a white cart--or plow--track; then up went +a great shoulder of the downs in a field all purple sections. I suppose +cultivation for the time ended in the huge field of thin oats between +the camp and the destroyed sugar factory. There was a very old man in a +short blue blouse, with immensely long bow-legs--doing something with a +scythe. It didn’t appear to be mowing. + +The down rising over against them appeared--so unable is the eye +to measure these swelling distances--quite a small affair. But, +halfway up it, seeming to tight-rope along a white thread, with an +extreme slowness in passing from point to point, went transport +wagons, incredibly tiny. So it was an immense, august, shoulder. A +near-mountain! + +Gringoire said he could not just remember where the sun was: he ought +to be able to work it out by the place and time. But I daresay it +doesn’t really matter. At any rate, over the shoulder of the down--not +in the least like a moon or an astral body but illuminated by the +sun--silver and French gray, very slowly, a great body began to rise. +One hadn’t much--one hadn’t indeed any--sense of proportion. It seemed +immense--and alive as mushrooms are alive. Then, induced as the eye +was to look into the pellucid sky, there became visible a number--some +one counted fourteen--of tiny, shining globes. They appeared to be +globes, because there was a fresh wind blowing straight from them and +they turned end on. So, but slowly and incessantly heaving, did the +immense one close at hand; a spider’s network of cordage went with its +movements. Tiny and incredibly pretty, like films of gold dust floating +in blue water and like peach blossom leaves--yes, incredibly pretty in +the sunlight--airplanes were there. Because the--just as pretty--little +mushrooms that existed suddenly in the sky, beside the sunlit +dragonflies and peach blossoms, were pearly white, one officer said: + +“Hun planes!” + +The German shrapnel made black bursts. The officers were lounging in +a group of six or seven. Another said: “_Their_ sausages too ... Out +there! Fourteen!” + +The slow ascent of our own sausage took the mind into the sky. A +broad-faced, slow, brown, very sympathetic young officer--he had a rich +voice, a slight stutter, and one eye that frequently winked--said: + +“He showed Him the Kingdoms of the Earth.” Then: “From a high place, +you know, old dear,” he explained, rather apologetically to Gringoire. +“His career,” Gringoire said, “was constantly interlaced with mine; +in the stream that carried us along, we bobbed together--at Cardiff, +in Rouen twice on June afternoons, and even after the Armistice, +once in Coventry Street, and once in York. Yet, though we were quite +intimate, he calling me ‘Old Dear,’ or ‘Old Preserved Equanimity,’ +as my last Colonel nicknamed me, and though I called him ‘Old Dear,’ +and later, as the fashion became, ‘Old Bean,’ I never knew his name. +He would be there, in Orderly Room, in an officers’ club armchair, +at mess, dropping usually some single, rather apposite, slightly +literary remark--with just the trace of a stutter and always in an +extraordinarily sympathetic voice--a deep, modest, affecting being.... +I wish I knew who he was--but I suppose I never shall. + +“He sh-showed Him the Kingdoms of th-the Earth,” this officer said--and +his voice just seemed homelike. + +Some one else said, “Let’s go up that mountain,” in the true Welsh +tone and accent, and several: “Yes, yes, let’s.... Surely we’d see +everything.... Surely to goodness, let’s not miss it....” + +And they figured to themselves a glorious run down, and a glorious +run up, the shoulder and then a great, flat gray view--of everything, +and of all who mattered--of the Kingdoms of the Earth. But the usual +voice--Conscience, Caution, Fear of Broad Views, maybe said: “We’d +have to get leave.... The Camp Commandant, you know.... Eh, what, you +fellows?...” + +The Camp Commandant, a small, extraordinarily excited Highlander, +voiceless with gas and gesticulating because of shell-shock--threw +papers about, threw off his Glengarry cap, shrieked, wheezed, croaked. +“I knew him quite well,” Gringoire said, “and, since he once hauled me +out of bed at four o’clock of a freezing morning because some sort of +Scots Brigadier wanted some one to play ‘Annie Laurie’ and the ‘Banks +of Loch Lomond’ to forty drunken Scots officers in another hut, I +permit myself to talk of him as he was, capless, exacerbated, grasping +a telephone and throwing things about.” + +He didn’t know whether he could or could not give them leave to go up +the brae; he didn’t care if they went and drowned themselves. Couldn’t +they see he’d only been there forty meen-its and there were two hundred +contradictory memoranda awaiting him? And oh to hell, and oh to hell.... + +They loafed once more; they fell back into that eternal “waiting +to report” that takes up 112/113ths of one’s time during war. They +contemplated and made remarks about the veering of the sausage. + +It was then that Gringoire related a psychological anecdote that gives +the note of this book. “I suppose it was my friend’s sympathetic and +suggestive voice that did it ... for I suddenly began to see bits of +a landscape that has pursued me ever since--until now here I sit in +it. Not quite a landscape; a nook, rather; the full extent of the view +about one hundred seventy yards by two hundred seventy--the closed up +end of a valley; closed up by trees--willows, silver birches, oaks, +and Scotch pines; deep, among banks; with a little stream, just a +trickle, level with the grass of the bottom. You understand the idea--a +sanctuary.” + +There were, in those days, you will remember, no more sanctuaries. All +nooks of the world were threatened by the tide of blue-gray mud. We +were out there to hold it back on the Somme. But could we? + +So that was a little nook, sanctuary; where you said “Feignits” to +destiny--with a gingerbread cottage out of Grimm. You were a Haensel, +holding some Gretel’s hand, tiptoeing, whispering, craning forward the +neck.... A castle in Spain in fact, only that it was in a southern +country--the English country. + +“I ask to be believed in what I am now saying,” Gringoire uttered the +words slowly. “It is just the truth. If I wanted to tell fairy tales, +I’d do better than this. Fairy tales to be all about the Earth shaking, +and the wire, and the crumps, and the beef-tins.... You know. And that +would be true too. Anyway this is....” + +He said that he didn’t pretend that he was gay at that moment: calm, no +doubt; contemplative certainly--and certainly gently ironic. So many +officers were fussy about things--air pillows, hooch, mislaid movement +cards, how to post picture-cards, where their battalions were, and +so on. The place no doubt brought it out. It left a good deal to be +desired. So that, if he could smile gently, he didn’t pretend to have +been without apprehensions. They hung vaguely at the back of the skull; +they oppressed, a little, the breathing. + +And yet--ever since he had been a tiny child--he had, he said, been so +much a creature of dreads that this was, in a sense, much less than +dreads to which he had been well accustomed. The dreads of original +sin, of poverty, of bankruptcy, of incredible shyness, of insults, +misunderstandings, of disease, of death, of succumbing to blackmailers, +forgers, brain-troubles, punishments, undeserved ingratitudes, +betrayals.--There was nothing, Gringoire said, that he hadn’t dreaded +in a sufficiently long life “which had been, mostly, a matter of one +dread knocking out another.” So that, on the whole, the dread of what +lay over the hill was less than most and limited itself, pretty well, +to how one’s self would behave--except of course that one was damned +afraid of being taken prisoner. Oh, damned afraid.... + +Still it was on the whole such a relief to be out of contact with +one’s civilian friends at home--for, as far as the Army was concerned, +Gringoire said he never had one single moment’s cause for bitterness, +but just contentment and making allowances--it was on the whole such +a relief that he was more contented than perturbed. Nevertheless, the +strain was a long strain, even if it was impersonal, since it was a +strain concerning itself with the English Country and not at all with +one’s regiment or one’s self. One’s regiment would go out, if things +went wrong. It would go out, disappear, as sands disappear under +great waves. One’s self too, probably, or it wouldn’t matter anyhow +... But the contaminated fields, the ashamed elms--that was the long +strain. And suddenly, at that point it came--the castle in the air; the +simulacrum; the vision of the inviolable corner of the earth. + +I don’t mean to say that it came with great exactness at that time--but +it came, no doubt as a progression from the train of thought in Dunmow +Station. There, you may remember, Gringoire thought that he would +have a garden in a southeastern county--and his thoughts had connoted +that it would be a garden on a hillside that sloped to the south and +that looked over a not very distant sea--a great view, showing on +the horizon, during clear days, the coast of France; a view, as it +were, from which one could see the Kingdoms of the Earth. “For there +have,” said Gringoire, “always been only two Kingdoms of the Earth +that mattered for me--our own land for its country and France for her +people, her arts, her point of view.” Yes, undoubtedly it was to be a +garden with a great view, and it should contain potatoes grown from +seeds and sweet corn--also several rows of beans for which, whether +for the flowers or the aligned stalks, Gringoire always had a great +affection. + +In Dunmow station it had been merely an intellectual idea: as who +should say, “After the war, we will take a cottage in the country and +grow things and have a great view. At any rate, we will have a rest.” +But, on the downside behind the Somme, it came differently. It came +like one of these visions that one’s eyes, when tired, will see just +before one falls asleep. There was a rhomboid of deeper, brighter +green, of a green that was really alive, beyond the gray-green of the +field they were in. It existed in front of the purple of scabrous +flowers on the great shoulder that masked the battlefield. It wavered, +precisely as you will see the colored image cast on a sheet by a +magic lantern, then slowly, it hardened and brightened, took shape +as a recumbent oval, like eighteenth century vignettes. Gringoire +said that it became perfectly definite--“The little view that I shall +see at this moment if I raise my eyes. And it didn’t connote any +locality: it didn’t, I mean, suggest itself as being in the vicinity +of the Trossachs, of Tintern, of Matlock, of Dungeness.... It was just +country--but perfectly definite, rather an untrimmed and a rather +hidden spot without a hard road going to it ... and with the feeling +that many birds were lurking in bushes and watching me, as birds watch. +You see the idea--sanctuary!” + +“I don’t mean to say,” he went on, “that I wanted to get out of +the battle of the Somme. I certainly didn’t, either consciously, +subconsciously, or with any plane of my mind. I will lay claim to so +much militarism. But my subconscious mind was trying to assure itself +that ‘appry la gair finny’ there would be a sanctuary where I would +cross my second and my index fingers in the face of destiny and cry +‘Feignits’ as we used to do as children at Prisoner’s Base. I daresay +that has been the main desire of my life. I daresay it has been the +main desire of the lives of all men since recorded time began. +Unrecorded time too, no doubt. It was no doubt the basic desire that +has given to the world in succeeding ages, the Kingdom of God, the +Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of Thule, the Cassiterides, the Garden +of the Hesperides, the land of Cockaigne where hot mutton pies ran +about in the street asking to be eaten--the peace of God which passes +all understanding.” + +And you see it was mostly for the sake of the little threatened nooks +of the earth that Gringoire found himself on that hillside. For, then, +as on the 4/8/’14, when the Huns crossed the Belgian frontier, “near +a place called Gemmenich,” it was mainly the idea that a field-gray +tide of mud was seeking to overwhelm the small, verdure-masked homes, +the long, white, thatched farms of the world that forced Gringoire +into political action. “All my life,” as he put it, “I have been +fighting German scholarships, German modes of learning, of instruction, +of collectivism.” But, before that date he hadn’t much imagined--or +imagined at all--that he would ever indulge in political polemics. He +had always had a dreamy contempt for politics: one is an artist, one +is a poet, one is a builder of castles in the air, one is a gentleman, +a farrier, a grocer, a miller--what you will--but a politician! “_Ah, +mais non._ That one should prostitute one’s pen!...” + +But the field-gray tide threatened--not only the Kingdoms of the +Earth that mattered, but the little, sacred homes of artists, poets, +gentry, farriers, grocers, millers--menaced then the subjects of one’s +pen, the objects of meditation of one’s heart. So one wrote endless, +interminable propaganda; until the brain reeled and the fingers +stiffened. + +Then the Germans killed Henri Gaudier and Teddy Jewell. Or perhaps it +was only that Teddy Jewell went. Certainly he was killed sooner or +later. “Such nice, good boys both--though I didn’t know either of them +well.” So there had not seemed anything else to do. And indeed there +was not anything else to do.... + +Up there, on the hillside, that ran down to the battered sugar factory, +he had the feeling that, if they could have had leave and have looked +over the rim of that brown-purple slope, they would have seen the Huns, +a white, tumultuous line, like advancing surf or like gnashing teeth. +That was, of course, a feeling, not an intellectual idea. He knew that +the German lines didn’t look like that--though, indeed, at times they +did, when our gunners really got onto them in a chalky country. Then +it was rather like surf--the smoke of shells and chalk dust going up +together in the sunlight.... Still ... + +And anyhow that was a moment of complete idleness--a moment of the +completest idleness that those officers had known for many, many +months. They were just there, with nothing to do. Nothing: nothing +whatever. If they had been allowed to look over the hill-brow, that +would have been something, but, with the Camp Commandant’s refusal of +leave, complete idleness settled down. In ten minutes, in an hour, +perhaps; certainly before the passage of four or five hours, they would +get the order to report that would take them beyond that hill past the +battered sugar factory.... + +Possibly that little vision of English country, coming then, was really +a prayer, as if the depths of one’s mind were murmuring: “Blessed Mary, +ask your kind Son that we may have the peace of God that passes all +understanding, one day, for a little while in a little nook, all green, +with silver birches, and a trickle of a stream through a meadow, and +the chimneys of a gingerbread cottage out of Grimm just peeping over +the fruit trees.” I suppose that is the burden of most prayers before +battle. And of course that would mean that the Allies had won out and +that the band would have played in the last war parade, with the white +goat and its silver plaque between the horns, and sunlight, and even +the Adjutant smiling--and all the Welsh dead appeased, and all the +country nooks of the world assured sanctuaries, and every Englishman’s +house an inviolable castle, and every Frenchman free to potter off to +his café in the cool of the evening. No doubt it was a prayer of the +unconscious, tired mind. + +“But even that isn’t my fourth landscape,” our poet-host went on, +“since my fourth landscape took in very nearly the whole, if not quite +the whole, of one of the Kingdoms of the Earth--and that the smallest +that I ever hope to see.” It dissociates itself sharply from the others +in that the observing of it happened to be Gringoire’s job of the +moment. He had been sent up to Mont Vedaigne to mark down and be ready +to point out to a number of senior officers all that immense prospect. + +And the tip of Mt. Vedaigne formed, oddly enough, one of those little, +commonplace, rustic, idyllic spots that, months before, had formed +itself for his eyes behind the Somme. There, in a small enclosed +space, shut in by trees that just grew up to the edge of the steep +escarpments of the hill, was, precisely, a little, gingerbread cottage +out of Grimm. In front of it was a small, flat garden--not an acre in +extent; in the garden grew potatoes already yellowed; beanstalks were +aligned, already yellowed too; and there may have been three or four +rods of tobacco plants and as many of haricots, yellowing too, for +the fringes of autumn were upon the land. On the southern side of the +garden were some plum trees in a hedge. If you looked over the hedge +you saw Bailleul, Armentières, away to queer, conical, gray mountains +that were the slag-heaps near Béthune, and away, farther, toward the +Somme itself. + +On the northern side of the garden was a tall, dark plantation of +birches and firs so that the gingerbread cottage--of white plaster, +with little green shutters and a bright red roof of those S-shaped +tiles that lock one into another, with a gutter painted bright green, +like the shutters, and dependent from the gutter, right along the face +of the cottage, bunches of haricot plants, hung up so that the white +beans should dry in the rattling pods--the little cottage, then, had +the air of being beneath a high, dark bank. + +But it was only trees, so that, if you went between their trunks you +saw another great view. A flat, almost incredibly immense, silver-gray +plain ran right to the foot of the waving descent, below. There was +an oval--poor Poperinghe--with an immense column of snow-white smoke, +descending upon it from a great height, and then little plumes of smoke +here and there--and then, away, away, pollarded flats, windmills, +church towers--and a gray, menacing, incredibly distant skyline, +illuminated under drifts of smoke.... One imagined that one was seeing +into Germany! + +I suppose Gringoire didn’t really see so far. + +On the east and the west, the views were cut into by “mountains”--the +peaks of that little range of hills that formed practically all that +remained of a Kingdom of the Earth--of the Low Countries! There was +the Mont Noir with its windmill atop; the Mont Rouge with its windmill +atop; the Scharpenberg, with its windmill, Mount Kemmel with its ruined +tower, from high above which, in the pellucid autumn air, the sighting +shells continuously let down their clouds like torsos of flawless, +white marble. + +Gringoire had emotions up there! And he had a long time to wait. You +may not know it--but, if a senior officer tells you to await him at a +given point at 10:00 A.M., you arrive at 9:45 whilst he saunters in at +11:00 A.M., 12:30 P.M., 2:00 P.M., or 4:30 P.M., according to his rank. + +On this occasion, Gringoire was Acting Intelligence Officer, and, +having to familiarize himself with a landscape in which his division +had only just arrived, he came on the ground at 8:45 A.M., having +left Locre at 7:00 A.M., riding round by way of Dranoutre to receive +his final instructions from Headquarters. He did not think that at +Divisional Headquarters his zeal was appreciated. A sleepy, but +eminently indignant, General Staff Officer I or II, something elderly, +in pajamas, made various insulting remarks about early rising. These, +his eyesight improving as sleep departed, he modified somewhat, because +he could not tell who the devil Gringoire was. (I may say that, two +nights before, our poet had been court-martialed for being in unlawful +possession of a Field Officer’s Figure.) But the Major would not modify +his statement that he had only been in bed half an hour. He stuck to +it. I daresay, poor man, that he was telling the truth. He was wearing +khaki-silk pajamas with purple cords. Gringoire, on the other hand, +stuck with equal firmness to the fact that he was deputizing for a +brother officer who was sick--so sick that he had mislaid his orders. +Orderly Room had sent them to him with a slip attached: “_Passed to +you, please. For attention, immediate action and compliance._” They had +had a copy of _that_ slip in the Battalion Orderly Room--but no copy of +the memo itself. + +Apparently they hadn’t at Divisional Headquarters either. It appears +that the G.S.O. I or II who had issued the memo was sick too--had gone +sick the night before and our elderly friend was deputizing for him. +Of course, eventually, Gringoire got some sort of instructions from a +drowsy, patronizing lance-corporal of the type that one usually finds +around Divisional Headquarters, sleeping omnisciently under a table +covered with typewriting machines in a Connaught hut. _He_ knew that +some one answering to the description of my friend was to meet some one +on the top of Mont Vedaigne at 11:00 A.M. for the purpose of explaining +the positions. It was some General, the lance-corporal couldn’t +remember the name--it was a name like Atkinson or Perry or McAlpine--an +ordinary sort of name, the lance-corporal said contemptuously. He +didn’t know what sort of General he was. The General Staff Officer +Number Two ought to have taken him ’round, but he had gone sick; so +also had Gringoire’s friend, who was a friend of G.S.O. II. So there he +was. + +(“And,” said Gringoire when he recounted this incident, “it occurs to +me at this moment this was intended as a friendly attention on the part +of somebody. Either my friend--who was highly connected in an Army +sense--or, failing him, I--was to wangle a soft job out of the General. +But all I thought about was how to get to the top of Mont Vedaigne, set +my map, get my field telescope into position ... Well, I am telling you +what I thought about....”) + +He was indeed so concentrated in mind on the top of Mont Vedaigne and +the map and the compass and the telescope that he hadn’t the faintest +remembrance of the road thither from Dranoutre.[3] He said he could +give you every object, estaminet, cottage, and Corps H.Q. from Locre to +Dranoutre by the chaussée; or from Locre to Mont Rouge by second class +road and field paths, Mont Rouge to Mont Noir, and Mont Vedaigne and +so on. But of the road to Mont Vedaigne from Divisional Headquarters +nothing remained--except that it was rather suburban, broad, white, and +at that date, in good repair. + +So he came to the top of the hill, passed the cottage without looking +at it, between the potatoes and the tobacco and the tobacco and the +haricots, looked over the southern edge, and saw a great stretch of +country, looked over the northern edge, and saw a great, silver-gray +plain, looked away to the east, and saw hills like camels’ humps +cutting still horizons; and the same on the west. + +He was, you understand, in a desperate hurry. For each point of the +compass, he “set” his map, finding a convenient, flat piece of ground +on which to lay it. And he saw, without seeing, and memorized without +associations--just names attaching to dark patches in a great plain. +Over a particularly large fir tree was Armentières; over an oak, lower +down the slope and to the right were the slag heaps and Béthune; +further to the right still Bailleul; the flash of gilt above a steeple +meant the ten block letters _Poperinghe_; an immensely distant +series of dull purple cubes against a long silver gleam was, in +printed capitals DUNKIRK.... You see, his mind was just working in the +watertight compartments of his immediate professional job. He wanted to +make--and he did make by 11:00 A.M.--four cards, like the range cards +one makes for musketry: a central point where one stood, and arrows, +running out like rays from that center, toward Ypres, in capitals +or Wytschaete in block letters. He wanted the general to be able to +stand on each point, look down on the card, follow the direction of +the arrow, and identify the place. I don’t know whether any other +Intelligence Officer ever thought of that. Anyhow, he got it done by +11:00 A.M. + +It was pleasant, the feeling when he had made his last fair copy. He +went to each of the points of the compass, to make sure that he had +registered positions truly. Returning from the west to the east, he +noticed an immense plane, appearing in the firmament above Bailleul. +She was escorted by eight or nine relatively little monoplanes--Bristol +scouts, I should say. But, at that date, the poor bloody Infantry were +not brought much in contact with the air force. So that, apart from +their spectacular, picturesque, or dangerous aspects, they hardly came +within the scope of Gringoire’s professional attentions. “Airmen,” he +said, “were brilliant beings, who treated us with contempt and carried +off the affections of our young women. Otherwise they lived in the +air whilst we plodded amongst mud and barbed wire. Professionally, +they rivaled the Cavalry; obtained information for the Artillery--but, +as for cooperating with us, we were below their notice.” So that the +great, beautiful machine--which was, I believe, the first Handley Page +to reach France in safety--passed overhead without Gringoire’s thinking +of more than that it was beautiful. + +But his time for consideration of the beautiful had not yet come. It +being then eleven and his work as a man from Cook’s being accomplished, +he had time to think of breakfast. + +He had noticed that a cottage existed behind the potatoes, the +haricots, and the tobacco. His conscious mind had dismissed it, since +it had obviously no topographical value as an object of interest for +a General, name unknown. His subconscious mind--that of an Infantry +Officer--had also dismissed it--as just a cottage; too frail to be of +much use for cover, even against rifle fire. For you are to understand +that whilst his surface mind was entirely and devotedly given to +his immediate job, his secondary mind had certainly taken note of +the values of Mont Vedaigne, the garden, the hedges, the copsewood, +the timber, and the slopes; considering them as cover, as sites for +trenches and noticing the fields of fire, the dead ground, the trees +that would be dangerous in falling about if the place were shelled, the +underwood that might be useful, supposing the Artillery had failed to +knock it to bits or set fire to it--it was very dry still--before the +Enemy Infantry tried to rush the position. All these little thoughts +had flitted, like shadows, to be registered somewhere.--For our +poet learned that, when, ten minutes later, he went over the ground +again, for the definite purpose of considering it with conscious, +infantry-eye, he had already noted and stored somewhere in the gray +matter of his brain most of the details of dead ground, field of fire +and sites for trenches, too ... and a good deal of the detail as to +timber, underwood, and the like. + +That, however, was only after he had had some breakfast. For a little +old Belgian woman with a pepper and salt face and a husband who wore a +black cap with a shining leather eye shade, came out of the green door +of the cottage, just as the lady does in a weatherhouse. To Gringoire’s +request in Flemish for coffee, “_Hebt gii Kafe to verkoopen?_” she +answered nothing, disappearing backwards behind the green door, which +shut as if automatically. She was there again, however, in less than a +minute, with a plate of ham, a bowl of coffee, and four bits of their +gingerbread! + +The significance of this did not occur to our subsequent inhabitant +of a gingerbread dwelling. He only noticed that it did not go so very +well--nor yet so very badly--with the ham. He ate both, anyhow, in a +hurry. It was a keen air up there. He secured some more ham and another +cup of coffee and, with that in his hand, proceeded to the clearing in +the east from which the best view of the Salient was obtainable. + +It was then that the Infantry Officer’s hitherto subconscious, +professional mind rose to the surface and became the conscious one. +In the four hours that he had waited in that frame of mind, he had +noticed, of course, an infinite number of details--a great number of +airplanes coming from the direction of Dunkirk; huge columns of smoke +rising from far back in German-held Belgium, behind Brûges. A great +number of signs of war in that clear, gray, sunlit space, in which +every pollard willow appeared to be visible and like a candle flame +burning in a windless air! Gringoire was looking through a telescope, +of course. But I will trouble the reader only with two apparitions of +those that he collected: they were apparently unconnected, since they +took place, the one at Poperinghe, the other in front of Wytschaete. +But very likely they had a grim connection. + +Whilst he was topographically employed, our Infantry Officer had +noticed Poperinghe as a blue-gray smudge, in shape like an oval lozenge +seen in perspective. From it rose several church towers--bulbous, +Low-Country edifices. Now, whilst he was resting his eyes from the +telescope, he saw, suddenly unfolding in the air above the towers, +two great white swans. They extended laterally, dazzling, very slow. +Then a trunk descended from each of them. After a time they resembled, +exactly, immense torsos of Hercules, headless and armless statues, +as solid-looking as brilliant white marble, new from the quarry. The +Tommies called them Statue Shells. + +And then he noticed that there were statue shells over the observation +post on Kemmel Hill. With his telescope, also, he began to see that +shells were bursting on Poperinghe. I don’t know why, but he took them +to be gas shells, bracketing. + +He rested his eyes again and looked at the gap between Mont Noir and +Mont Kemmel. It was a symmetrical bit of landscape seen over what is +called technically a saddle between two hills. Over the very center +of the lowest part of the dip, Gringoire said, there appeared to be +a whitish gray tooth stump, decayed, with one end-fragment rather +high.[4] Extending, like a long string, above this, on rising ground, +there was a brown rope--five miles, perhaps beyond the decayed tooth. +Little white balls existed on the brown line, the landscape was pale +yellow--as it might be the gold of corn fields. The red roofs of a +village that he knew to be Wytschaete were brilliant and quiet in +the sun--but, on the brown line beneath that ridge the little white +balls went on coming into existence--one every half second. One to the +right at the extreme end of the line; one on the extreme left; one in +the middle; one between the extreme left and the center. Beautiful +work. Have you ever seen a village cobbler nailing a sole? It goes +so quickly that you hardly see the hammer. But a small brass nail is +there--and another and another--a line of brass nails on the smooth +leather. Well, they went like that, along the brown line--the little +white balls! Beautiful! Beautiful work. “My mind,” Gringoire said, +“was filled with joy and my soul exulted in the clear, still, autumn +sunshine, looking over that tiny Kingdom of the Earth. + +“I said to myself: ‘Hurray! The guns are giving them hell. Some one’s +ducking over there.’” Because, of course, the brown line was the Hun +trenches on the Wytschaete ridge, and the little white balls were our +shells, falling with an exact precision. They must have knocked the +trenches pretty considerably already for the disturbed earth to show at +all at that distance. + +At that moment--it was just gone three--a man in khaki made Gringoire +jump by appearing at his elbow. He said that the General who had +ordered Gringoire to report there at 1:00 P.M. was detained. Would he +have some lunch and report again at the same spot at five? + +And, after that, it was just emotions. The landscape became landscape, +with great shafts of light and shadows of clouds; the little white +cottage with the green shutters, a little nook that should be +inviolable; the haricots interesting as things that one might plant +in a Kentish garden that sloped to the sea. The range of hills was no +longer a strategical point or a tactical position. It was all that +remained of one of the Kingdoms of the Earth; one could hardly look at +the gray plains with the pollard willows marching like aligned candle +flames toward the horizon--one avoided looking at it, because it was +Lost Territory, held down, oppressed, as if it were ashamed. Poperinghe +grew to appear pitiful, a little town where wretched civilians were +being butchered by gas shells for the love of God. So the poet’s +mind worked, at leisure, on personal matters, as neither the mind of +Intelligence, or Infantry, Officer need work. + +“My mind,” the poet reports, “was indeed so much at leisure in that +long two hours that I even wrote in my Field Pocket Book a preface to a +volume whose proofs had that morning reached me. In that I recorded my +emotions of the moment and there, in a printed volume, they stand. It +does not alter their value as a record of emotions that I subsequently +learned that the statue shells over Poperinghe were not gas shells but +had been discharged so as to give the German Heavies the range, or +that, upon reflection, it appears to me that the Germans were hardly +shelling the town so profusely just for the love of God. They must +either have heard that we had a considerable body of troops in the +town, or else they were trying to stop, by that retaliation, our own +artillery’s heavy shelling of their Wytschaete-Messines positions.” + +But at any rate, there the emotions came, crowding and irrepressible. +So that, just before, in the dusk, at seven o’clock, Gringoire saw the +bright red flash of a brass hat’s band in among dark fir trees, he +noticed, with a sudden lift in the side, a light silver streak, behind +the map of Dunkirk. It was the sea. + +“And suddenly,” he said, “there came upon me an intense longing to be +beyond that sea.” It was a longing not for any humanity--but just for +the green country, the mists, the secure nook at the end of a little +valley, the small cottage whose chimneys just showed over the fruit +trees--for the feelings and the circumstances of a sanctuary in which +one could cross one’s second over one’s index finger and in the face of +destiny cry: “Feignits.” + +It was, however, necessary to stand to attention, and through the +falling twilight to point out hardly visible towns to a nearly +invisible Senior Officer. And immediately the mind went back to its +original position: Dunkirk and Ypres became circles named in large +capitals; Wytschaete and Kemmel were again in block lettering. One +said: “The sea is just visible in that direction,” and it was just a +geographical fact. + + +[Footnotes] + +[3] I am aware that D.H.Q. was not really at Dranoutre, which was a +nice little place, built round a church square, rendered nasty by the +Germans. But I call it Dranoutre out of reflex action caused by fear of +the Censor--who once, at the end of 1918, struck out of one of my poems +an allusion to the fact that I visited Cardiff early in 1915. + +[4] This would be the remains of the Cathedral and the Cloth Hall at +Ypres. + + + + + V + + _Intermezzo_ + + +The day after peace was declared seemed to your compiler an excellent +moment on which to remonstrate with our poet as to one of his +characteristic locutions. The day was fine, cloudless, soft and still; +some gardening operation of Gringoire’s had consummately succeeded. I +forget what it was. I fancy some long-studied contrivance of his had +checkmated the slugs in his strawberry beds. At any rate we sat in the +long grass by the hedge under the damson trees at the bottom of the +garden over a great blue china bowl of strawberries which Gringoire +characteristically insisted on moistening with red wine and sugar. He +said that taken that way they were less gross than with cream and I am +bound to say that Mme. Sélysette shared his views with which I could +never agree. + +In any case, it was with singular mildness that, lying on his side in +the long grass, Gringoire answered my remonstrances. + +“Why, no,” he said, “I do not see why any one should object to the +use of the term ‘Hun’ as applied to such members of the late Enemy +nations as were not in arms against us. I do not care much about the +matter and, if the word offends you, I will try, when I think about it, +not to use it. But the fact is that I certainly never thought about +it much at any time. It is a convenient phrase to use about what was +evil in the people we were fighting against. I should not now--and +I never did--call Brahms anything but a German composer nor should +I ever think of calling Holbein a Hun painter or the Brothers Grimm +of the fairy-tales, Boches. So that the word is a convenient one for +differentiations. In effect for me the German musicians, painters, +poets, working men, postmen and soldiers in the trenches or at their +Headquarters were never Huns. I assert that categorically and I think +it was true of the majority of my comrades--except that the majority of +my comrades had never heard of Bach or Beethoven or Heine. But it was +true that the majority of my comrades with whom I discussed the subject +at all seriously, though they may have used the word you dislike, +never--when talking seriously--used it as a term of hatred. Humanity +will inevitably use a monosyllable in place of two sounds if it can +get the chance and so will I. + +“But I don’t think many people in the trenches actually, and except at +odd moments, ever felt active hatred against the men in the opposite +lines or even those who militarily directed their operations. When +they are not called on to be trustworthy or imaginative or to show +human sympathy, men in the bulk are beasts fairly decent and fairly +reasonable. We hated and objurgatively called ‘Huns,’ to the furthest +extent of its Hunnish hideousness, not the poor bloody footsloggers +who were immediately before us. No, the word applied itself to the +professors, the prosaists, the publicists, the politicians who had sent +those poor blighters to prevent our going home. For if you think of it, +it was a topsy-turvy arrangement. They wanted to send us home and we +wanted desperately to go; yet they pushed towards our home and we away +from ours.... + +“I am not much set to talk to you about the trenches or even about +fighting. The point that I want to put into the spotlight of your mind +is mostly the fact that if we do not economize in food there will be +another war. Unlike you, my dear Compi, in that I regard the past with +much greater equanimity. You remember that, when we were both writing +propaganda I used to shock you by the mildness of mine. It will be long +before I forget your emotions when I wrote an article suggesting that, +instead of atrocity-mongering we were sufficiently advanced along the +road of civilization to write--at least of the German troops--as ‘the +gallant enemy.’ + +“Today our positions have changed and you are shocked because I style +certain of those who belong to the late Enemy nation by an epithet that +you wish to forget having employed. The point is that I stand where I +did whereas you have reacted against what now appear to have been your +extravagances. My propaganda, as you remember, was almost entirely +a matter of economics and of culture. I simply pointed out that the +war was in effect a hunger war: Prussia being mostly composed of +immense sand wastes--the Lüneburger Heide; of impenetrable forest--the +Teutoberger Wald; and of the vast stretch of swamps where Hindenburg +massacred the Russians on their own border. That being the condition of +Prussia, the country would not produce enough food for the population +which was also a population of the most prolific breeders in the +world. I also pointed out--and I think I was almost the only person to +do so--that the Enemy Empire instead of being the flourishing concern +that she had bluffed the world into considering her was actually on the +point of bankruptcy and losing trade after trade to foreign nations. +That again was merely a matter of food. Germany had flourished on low +wages and subsidies to manufacturers; but as food-prices rose the world +over the wages of the German laborer had to go up so that, even with +subsidies, the German manufacturer could no longer compete with us, +the Italians, the French or even the South Americans. That Germany +invaded Belgium may or may not have been the _triste nécessité_ that +her statesmen alleged it to be, but that the war, regarded as a food +war was in very truth a sad necessity for her you may be perfectly +convinced. Prussia was starving, her population was increasing by leaps +and bounds, emigration had been forbidden by the government.... + +“Well, I do not propose to hate a starving population that seeks for +bread, but I do propose to dislike and go on disliking the professors +and publicists who preached that the only way to obtain bread was by +invading Belgium and I do not think that the epithet you object to is +any too strong. And indeed, if you use it merely to designate what was +hateful in the late Enemy nation and if you employ the word ‘German’ +for everything that was and is ‘_gemütlich_’ for those who since +yesterday have been our friends, you will be doing them a service by +emphasizing what they have of the lovable in their compositions. Still +... I do not much care about that. + +“I do not believe that there will ever be another war if you put it +only on the baser ground that the great financiers who alone can make +or stop wars got hideously frightened by the last one. And in addition +to that you can consider the educative effect of the Armageddon that +finished yesterday. It will take a good many decades before any human +soul will again regard war as a means of enrichment and a good many +centuries before any Great Power will again imagine that to have an +aspect of bestriding the world in jackboots and with the saber rattling +is of advantage to itself. It is a better world on the 29th of June, +1919, than it was on August the 3rd, 1914. Bluff has got its deathblow. + +“Yes, the world is better and sweeter. We simple people are freed of +an enormous incubus; we can sit still for a space and think, which +we never could before in the history of the world. But of this I am +certain--that what danger there is to the world and us is a food +danger. I do not believe there will ever be another war: I believe our +sufferings, great as they were, achieved that and were a small price to +pay for that benefit. So, if you want to you may bless even the Huns as +having been the occasion of our learning that lesson. But if there were +ever another war it would be a war purely and simply for food. + +“The food-producing soil of the earth is already occupied; the +population of our small planet increases by leaps and bounds. I know +enough about agriculture--and scientific agriculture at that--to +know that the pretensions of scientists to increase the production +of food by improved culture is weary nonsense when set against the +consideration of the increase in the numbers of mankind. The most +honest scientist that I know refused to reveal a method of increasing +the yield of wheat sixfold on a given plot of ground because he +satisfied himself that to do so in one year rendered that plot of +ground absolutely barren for ten years and the milder improvements of +agricultural processes that are evolved each year do not suffice to +provide enough food for the extra mouths that each year are produced by +Prussia alone. + +“So that the position might seem pretty gloomy, but I remain an +optimist, at least in the matter of war for if, as I think will prove +the fact, there will be no war till the world is driven to it by +starvation, then the coming of war may be so long delayed that, all +races of the world being at last at much the same pitch of education, +it will be obvious to them all that war is no way to increase the +production of food. I heard, not a Hun, but a Swedish professor say the +other day that it was terribly irksome and irritating to his countrymen +to consider that, whilst they were overpopulated and cramped up on +an infertile soil, down in the fertile south there was the nearly +empty and extraordinarily fertile land known as France. And how, he +asked, could France with her selfish inhabitants who regulated their +birth-rate--or who at any rate selfishly refused to beget children to +the limit of their capacity--how could France expect to enjoy immunity +from invasion by the healthy, voracious and formidable Northern races +who openheartedly and with splendid generosity begot children, to use +his own phrase, by the bushel? + +“I did not, as you might imagine, because of my obvious Gallophilism +try to bite off that blond beast’s head because what he said was, as to +its premises, true enough. France _is_ sparsely populated and wealthy, +Sweden _is_ overcrowded and infertile. But the remedy for that is not +to be found in invasion: the solution is there, waiting. France which +is the only country civilized enough not to overpopulate herself is at +present the only country in the world that welcomes immigration and +facilitates to the extreme the naturalization of immigrants. + +“The Swede went on grumbling that it was very hard that his compatriots +must expatriate themselves in order to enjoy those _Südfrüchte_--fruits +of the South. He said that his fellow countrymen loved their graynesses +and contracted terrible melancholias beneath Southern suns.... So that +the only thing was raiding! + +“I did not continue the discussion for I did not wish at the moment +to hate a Swede. But that in essence shows the root of the matter. +Wars will cease when nations and Northern Professors are sufficiently +civilized to let nations be relatively nomadic and permit races to flow +freely from inclement, overpopulated and infertile regions into those +that are sparsely populated and fertile and not hyper-philoprogenitive. + +“You may put it that hatred and overpopulation go hand in hand, their +destination being war, and you would not be far wrong. For it is not +the hatreds begotten after wars are declared that matter; those die +natural if slow deaths as soon as the not very protracted activities +of warfare are over and done with, so that it is only the hatreds that +precede wars that need much concern us.” + +He went on to say that pre-war hatreds, apart from those inculcated +by hungers of one sort or another, arose largely from differences of +manners. We used to hate the French because they ate frogs and were +elegant; they hated us because we said “goddam” and ruled the seas. But +manners tend to approximate the world over with the extension of means +of intercourse. They jazz in Cambodia as in Coney Island today and +tomorrow they will speak American in the county of Clackmannan even as +in Monte Carlo. + +That Gringoire applauded. It was, he said, all to the good to have +a dance that all could dance. Before the war the vigorous poor went +to dogfights, cockfights, badgerfights: now they jazzed. It was a +progress towards sweetness and light, part of what we had paid for +with our sufferings.... + +It was at this point that your Compiler became a little impatient. +He had come to get war-reminiscences from a practising poet--but +these colloquies resolved themselves into a continual struggle of +wills, Gringoire persisting in dilating on the future as seen by the +practising agriculturist and gastronome. And indeed, scenting that your +Compiler was essaying to head him off from the topic on which his mind +was fixed, he now went off upon a tirade about intensive horticulture +and French cooking that lasted until dusk was well falling on his +garden. And Madame Sélysette, raising her delicate eyebrows, intimated +sufficiently plainly that, if we did not want a storm he had better not +be interrupted. + +The main points of his harangue were to the effect that humanity would +be saved--if it was to be saved--by good cooking, intensive horti-, +as opposed to agriculture. And of course by abstract thinking and the +arts. And the avoidance of waste. Above all by the avoidance of waste. + +To the pretensions of the scientific agriculturist he opposed the +claims of hand-culture, to those of the popular restaurant upholder +those of the meticulous chef. Hand culture whether of beasts, grain or +vegetables gave a better product, the careful and intelligent cook gave +you more appetizing food. The more appetizing your food the better you +digested it and the less you needed to support you. He said--but that +was on the question of waste--that in a French residence of the size +of the Gingerbread Cottage you would not find enough waste to fatten a +chicken with; in his own establishment, do all that he could, aided by +Mme. Sélysette, they had waste enough to half fatten a pig.... + +In short the world was to be saved by observing the precepts of the +recipe for mutton chops with which your Compiler opened this little +work. But all this seemed so apart from anything that his readers could +be supposed to want from a book devoted to the war-reminiscences of a +poet that your Compiler had long ceased to use his pencil and notebook +before Gringoire had finished his sunset harangue, so that, having no +notes of the arguments we may well, as to that matter, here inscribe +the words: “_cetera desunt._” + +But, having eased his mind, Gringoire became good-natured, and, +becoming good-natured he was awake to the outer world. So he observed +that Mme. Sélysette and your servant had for a long time made neither +objections to nor comments on the stuff of his harangues. His voice had +gone on sounding alone save for the churnings of an early night-jar +that sat upon the gatepost giving onto the rushy meadow. And suddenly +he stopped and laughed maliciously. + +“Poor old Compi,” he said, “how extraordinarily this isn’t what you +come for. But the stuff of war-reminiscences concerns itself almost as +much with what war has made of a man as with the pictures that he saw. +Still you are not the sort of person to see that and, in a minute I +will reward your patience with a landscape that, though it has nothing +to do with our main theme, may make a nice _bonne bouche_ for your +little book. + +“But I do want to get in--just for the sake of pointing it out to the +world--that the late hostilities, whilst they profoundly modified the +manners of the world did, in their very nature, hold up to the world +a moral that will be of infinite value as soon as the world is in any +condition at all to notice it. That is to say it did teach us what a +hell--what a hell!--of a lot we can do without. + +“Take my dear Sélysette there, with her upbringing amongst the suns +and luxuries of the _haute bourgeoisie_ of the South. Do you suppose +that if, before the 3rd of August, 1914 you had proposed to her to +unite her destinies to the least pecunious of poets and take up her +residence in a rat-ridden cottage beneath the usually lugubrious but at +all times capricious skies of this septentrional land--do you suppose +that, if you had then made that proposal she would not have crushed you +to the earth with the mere weight of her scorn? Or take me. Would you, +knowing me as you did in earlier but, I assure you, not half such happy +days--would you have imagined me spending what till then, but not till +now, were certainly my happiest hours in a bare hillside in a tent with +absolutely no furnishings but an officer’s camp-bed? I had been used +to a good deal of luxury, but there for the first time I found peace +though the German artillery was actually at that moment shelling that +spot and I was for the first time under fire. + +“That is one of the things that I remember most vividly, not because +it was the first time I was under fire but because I felt that for +the first time I had cut absolutely and finally loose from all the +bedevilments of life at home--from the malices as from the luxuries. +Afterwards, unused as I was to the artillery mind or its methods, I +wondered a little that they should be so persistently shelling _us_ and +that they should find us with such accuracy. + +“I was sitting on the side of my camp-bed talking to an extremely +intoxicated and disheveled elderly officer who was nevertheless a +man of no ordinary talent. That is to say that his harangues about +everything under the sun were interspersed with a great number of +classical quotations of singular aptness and he had also made several +inventions that eventually proved very useful during the war and +that saved him from a courtmartial for drunkenness. I was--as was +so frequently my case--in charge of him and, although he was in no +position to get away, I did not care to go into a dugout as did all my +brother officers who had hitherto been in the tent with us. And indeed +the fact was that that fellow’s boozy conversation interested me.... + +“The German shells came in groups of three, doing obviously what we +infantry were taught to call bracketing. That is to say that the first +three shells whined wearily overhead and caused a considerable rumpus +in our mule lines that were perhaps a hundred yards behind us, and +immediately afterwards a rocket or something like it let itself down +from the heavens. A few minutes later three more shells fell short of +us by perhaps another hundred yards down the hill. There was an obvious +German plane overhead and it was in the late evening, nearly dark in +the tent and quite dusk in the calm light outside. + +“My elderly friend wagged his head sagely. He explained that the +Germans were trying to find with their shells something that that plane +thought it had seen--probably the great park of German captured guns +that were just above us. They would fire three sets of three shells +each. Then our heavy artillery would open on them as a gentle hint to +them to be quiet and not disturb the serenity of the Sabbath evening. +They might take the hint or they might not. If they did not a regular +duel between the heavies would begin, and the earth would shake for +miles ’round. + +“But, in any case, he said--and his air of wisdom convinced me as if +Solomon were returned to earth and judging artillery--that we should be +left in peace very shortly. And at that moment the next batch of three +shells arrived right on us. That is to say that one landed right in the +middle of the captured German guns, one in the fortunately soft ground +of a spring about thirty yards from our tent and one in the middle of +the canteen tent that was just next to ours; so that immediately after +the immense concussions innumerable crepitations sounded from the +canvas above us, the clay, gravel and mud falling from where it had +been precipitated into the skies. And a tin of sardines, coming through +the tent-flap, landed as if miraculously in my lap.... + +“But that old fellow went on nodding his head as if he had been a +Chinese bronze and exclaiming: ‘Don’t get up! Don’t get up! That will +be the last of it!’ + +“And, sure enough it was. Immediately afterwards Bloody Mary and two +of her lady friends let off, enormous and august, breaking the quiet +night. And I suppose the Germans were not in the mood for any extended +artillery duel. They had probably satisfied themselves that the German +guns parked above us were duds of sorts. The plane must have observed +them earlier in the evening and had signaled their presence with +rockets.... + +“But the point that I want to make is that no matter how simple your +surroundings or limited your income you can find happiness as long as +you are also surrounded by a set of men with incomes similarly exiguous +who are contented with their surroundings. The German shells were an +added discomfort which I don’t adduce as part of my argument--as if it +should be raining or indulging in any other eccentricity of weather +that one cannot control. + +“Anyhow, I have been happier in a tent or a hut or even in a dugout +than ever I was in a night-club before the war or in the sort of a +hotel they call a Grand Palace, and I would rather inhabit a Connaught +hut furnished exclusively with biscuit or beef boxes and sluice myself +with cold water in the open on a freezing morning than dwell among +Park Lane millionaires and take my ease in a hummums. And, if I can do +that, all humanity can. I am no exception, and it is in that way that +salvation lies and the extinction of wars. + +“Indeed, I can assure you that one of the most troubled moments of +the war happened when, as I will later tell you, I was sent for to +Paris by the French Government and by them lodged in circumstances +of extreme luxury in a Palace on the Avenue de l’Opéra. For apart +from the botherments of being asked to do propaganda that I did not +want to do and the obvious hostility of the French officers with whom +I mixed and momentary shortness of cash I had, as again I will tell +you later, the extreme botherment of being introduced suddenly into +the sequelæ of a very violent divorce case. A British cavalry officer +had used a week’s leave in going to Switzerland and carrying off his +little daughter who had been taken there by his wife on her elopement +with a ‘fiddler-fellow.’ And, as I sat in the vestibule of the Hotel +Splendide et de l’Orient the little girl, whom I like to think of as +Maisie--that Maisie of Henry James’ book--came and without a word of +any introduction, settled herself in my lap and went to sleep. She was +bothered because she could not find the tram to Heaven. Because they +said her mother had gone to Heaven. + +“You would say that such things do not happen in war. But they _do_.... +And the distracted cavalry officer having left me in charge of his +sleeping daughter went on some business that he had at the Embassy. But +before he went he pointed to the swinging doors of the hotel giving +into the streets and told me that at any moment he expected his wife +to rush in and use a revolver.... And I was due at the French Foreign +Office for an interview upon which my future in the service and the +world might turn. + +“Eventually my publisher came in and I dropped the sleeping Maisie into +his lap. He was to have accompanied me to the Ministry but I thought he +would be more useful to me there, so I left him.... But I assure you I +was much more frightened of the idea of Maisie’s mother whom I pictured +as a sort of infuriated Carmen than ever I was of any German shells. +It was she, with her revolver, who typified for me real hatred--the +woman robbed of her child. Whereas, as for the only man that I actually +and consciously shot at and who actually and consciously shot at me, I +never felt the ghost of an emotion of hatred. I was aware of imbecilely +grinning when he missed me--as if it were any other sport--and of +saying to myself: ‘That’s the sort of dud _you_ are,’ when I--and +repeatedly--missed him. And I believe I felt regret when some one else +killed him. At any rate I am glad that I cannot remember his face.... + +“But Maisie’s mother would have been a different affair. _She_ would +have been filled with hatred--as I don’t believe that other fellow +was--and I should have been paralyzed.... Why, even at this moment I +can almost feel her revolver bullet entering my stomach. And I should +have deserved it. One should not connive at the carrying off of a +woman’s child however righteous the case of the husband. It is perhaps +a worse crime than crossing the Belgian frontier, ‘near a place called +Gemmenich.’ + +“To die thus would be to die in a bad cause. And I daresay that why +I don’t believe that any great hatred existed between the actual +combatants in the late war--and why I don’t, when I think about it, +stigmatize the fellows who lately stood armed over against us as +‘Huns’--is simply that we thought we had a good cause and that we knew +that they also thought that they had a good cause. They thought that we +endangered their homes as much as we thought that they endangered ours. + +“So that I simply do not believe in atrocities. The worst fellow that +I ever came across on our own side--an enormous Scot whose principal +conversation was taken up with the topic of the prisoners he had +murdered--I have seen become lachrymosely sentimental over a German +prisoner who was in a lamentable state of funk at having to undergo a +medical examination. That Scot almost blubbered over that Hun in his +efforts to assure him that the doctor would not operate on him against +his will.... + +“No, I don’t believe in atrocities. Or at the most I half believe +in one. It is asserted--the Huns asserted it themselves but I found +it difficult to believe--that they filmed the _Lusitania_ whilst +she was sinking. That I find atrocious. It is bad enough with +premeditation--and the presence of a film operator would seem to prove +premeditation--it is bad enough, then, with premeditation to sink a +ship loaded with sleeping women and children. But if we concede that +those responsible believed--as they may have done--that the _Lusitania_ +carried munitions of war even that may be nearly condoned. But that +you should take a cinema machine to represent, for the gloating of +others, the ruin and disappearance of a tall ship--that seems to me +the most horrible of crimes. _Spurlos_ is in itself a suspect word, +a part of the vocabulary of ruthlessness that lost the Huns--not the +fighting men--the war. But the real lives of men are enshrined in +their products. To kill a poet is a small thing; to destroy his work +is an irremediable offense.... And the most beautiful of all the +handiwork of men is the tall ship. It is horrible to see houses go down +in ruin under artillery fire; it is horrible to see fields mutilated +and rendered unfertile or merely humiliated by the heels of alien +conquerors. But to see a ship, its heart broken, its bows appealing +to the heavens, slowly and mutely disappear. That is horrible. The +sea shudders a little where it was. Only a little. But still the sea +shudders. + +“Obviously in wars you must sink ships. And I suppose you may make +records of the sinking of ships if it be done pitifully. But, in a +spirit of gloating, to represent for the purpose of affrighting others +or making yet others gloat in turn--to make cold-bloodedly the record +of the disappearance of the proudest ship in the world, that seems to +me the most horrible of ... _Schrecklichkeiten_.... But perhaps they +never did it. Perhaps they only said that they did. That would be a +queer way to make yourself popular! + +“But there was a landscape that I wanted to tell you about. + +“A little in front of Kemmel Hill we had some trenches--horrible +trenches because of the nature of the ground. You could not dig +down three feet because you came to water so the parapets were +merely sandbags and the parados nothing at all. They must have been +responsible for the loss of more lives than any other position of +the whole war. In addition, when it rained, all the flood-water of +the uplands poured down into them. Why I have seen them filled with +cigarette packets washed down from our always luckless canteen--after +the great storm in September ’16. + +“Well, it was just before then that we had been set to occupy those +lines. If they had been retired a hundred and fifty yards they +would have been on the slope of the hill and dry and safe. But the +staff--or some bellicose individual on the staff--in spite of every +representation preferred to lose a third of my battalion, let alone +thirds of all the other battalions that occupied them, rather than +to lose the little bit of prestige that it would have meant, by a +retirement. Of a hundred and fifty yards! Think of that! + +“Anyhow, there we came down in the early hours of a September +moonlight--into a world of beautiful, bluish and misty calm. There +were those calms in the line when the vengeful activities of seven or +so million men had exhausted themselves and their imaginations had +just gone to sleep. You would have long periods of quiet. They would +be broken by sudden bursts of machine gun fire and flares of Verey +lights when some bemused sentry had taken it into his head that half +a dozen corpses in No Man’s Land were stealing upon him. One’s nerves +did that in quiet, moonlit moments. You would look at a corpse, or some +sacking, or some sandbags until you could swear they were creeping upon +you. Then in a crisis, ‘bang’ would go your hipe, and off would go the +machine guns, and up would flare the Verey lights. The guns too might +come in and some poor devil or another lose his life. But as a rule +silence would settle down again for another long period.... I wrote a +poem about that, in French. But I never heard of any one having read +it.” + +It was at that moment that your Compiler burst in with the words: + +“Oh, it begins with: ‘I should like to imagine a moonlight in which +there will be no machine guns.’ I heard my friend Mrs. Carmody recite +it only yesterday. Recite, not read it!” + +Gringoire grunted slightly. + +“The point was that it was most beautiful moonlight, before a blue, +silent mountain with mists dim all up its flanks. And the other point +was that we, as you may remember, were a flying division. We were used +for reinforcing threatened points or for resting overtired troops. +And, facing us, the Germans had similar divisions that they called +‘_Sturmtruppen_.’ The curious thing was that either their Intelligence +was so good or ours was so good that whenever we were moved up or +down the line we found the same regiments in front of us so that when +we were on the Somme we fought the Second Brandenburgers, and when +we moved up to the Salient there we found the Second Brandenburgers +in front of us and after we had been in front of Armentières for a +little, there sure enough were the famous Second Brandenburgers. The +Cockchafers, they were nicknamed. After that they began to desert to us +a good deal and they were replaced by the Würtembergers whom we used to +consider better fellows, I don’t know why, for we never, in the nature +of the case, consorted much with either. + +“On the occasion of that moonlight night the Brandenburgers had got in +before us and displayed a natural curiosity to know who we were when +we got in. The German--or rather the Hun--method of trying to unmask +the identity of opponents was to sing national anthems. I use the word +‘Hun’ here because only a Delbrueck or a Bethmann-Hollweg--a professor +or a politician--would have thought of anything so ingeniously +imbecile. For naturally we did not fall in with that little idea.... +The idea, by the bye, was that if we were Scots and they sang ‘Scots +Wha Hae’ or Irish and they sang ‘The Wearin’ of the Green,’ or for us +‘Hen Wlad Wy Nadhau’ we should, in a burst of patriotic emotion either +cheer or join in the chorus. We didn’t. I remember that once when, +no doubt suspecting who we were, they had tried singing “Ap Jenkin,” +which is our quickstep, our men replied by singing the imperial Chorus +from the ‘Mikado’ as if to show that we were Japanese. That irritated +them so much that they pounded our trench for an hour and a half with +everything they could think of. + +“On this occasion they tried everything from ‘Rule Britannia’ to +‘Australia, Australia,’ and elicited no reply. And then they suddenly +touched off an immense gramophone that sang, through the still +moonlight ... the ‘Hymn of Hate.’ And in English! + +“It was curious and eerie to hear that passionless machine let off +those dire words devoted solely to ourselves, for they never evolved +anything like it for the French or the Belgians or the Italians or +Annamites or Cochin Chinese or Brazilians. Now it screamed and brayed: + + “Hate of the head and hate of the hand, + Hate of the breed and hate of the land + ENGLAND + Hate of the standing and hate of the lying, + Hate of the living and hate of the dying + ENGLAND ... ENGLAND” + +(“And as a detail I may add that they had to get an English +renegade--for there was one!--to make that translation.) + +“I am bound to say that it made one shiver a little. There were the +moonlight, and the mists, and the lights of poor Wytschaete far away +on the ridge. And those words creeping towards us. It is perhaps more +disagreeable to think of being prayed to death than of being shelled. +One shivered. + +“And when it fell silent one wondered if anything in the war or in the +world could surpass it for drama. But one was wrong. You don’t know the +Welsh. They are the incomparable singers of four-part music in the open +air. + +“I remember, years ago, being on the side of a Welsh mountain on a +Saturday evening at sunset and far below a Welsh miners’ beanfeast was +going along a thread of a road in char-à-bancs. And as each filled car +passed there came up the sounds of four-part songs, incredibly sweet +and incredibly mournful in the falling darkness. They are a conquered +people, the Welsh, and their music is the music of a conquered people. + +“But on that occasion the Germans had delivered themselves into their +hands in the endless struggle between Saxon and Celt. For suddenly a +single voice in ‘B’ Company began to sing with extraordinary clearness: + + ‘Maxwelton braes are bonnie + When earlie fa’s the dew....’ + +“And extraordinarily, before the singer had come to ‘there that Annie +Laurie,’ the whole of ‘B’ Company was crooning out the other parts of +the song. Beneath the moon. And then the whole Battalion, along a front +of a mile. Crooning, you know, rather softly, not shouting.... + + “And for Bonnie Annie Laurie ...” + +“It was a good answer. + +“They were forbidden of course to sing Welsh songs, or it might have +been ‘Land of My Fathers’ or the ‘Men of Harlech.’ As it was, it was +better. + +“But there was not much hatred about that. And you will observe that +even the Huns had had to get a machine to do their hating.” + + + + + VI + + _Just Country_ + + +It is one of the burdens of advancing age--as it is one of the +penalties of having been unreasonably prolific--that one is always +haunted by a vague dread of repeating one’s self. One’s mind, +presumably, progresses, one touches and retouches one’s ideas; hammers +at the wording; seeks after a final clarity of expression. It is all +one that one may have already printed the matter of the theme; the mind +continues to work at the phraseology until one, finally, isn’t certain +that one has or hasn’t sought the crystallization of the press. So it +happens that I cannot be certain whether I have or haven’t printed +already what I am about to write. It can’t, however, in the nature of +things, have been more than a shortish article; so that if I have to +apologize to any readers, the apology can’t be for any great fault. + +I fancy that what I then tried to put on paper was suggested by a +letter that our poet wrote, having another moment of leisure, at +about the time of his long wait for the General on Mont Vedaigne. I +wrote an article, and certainly it was suggested by a passage in one +of Gringoire’s letters to a friend, at some one’s request, for the +journal called the N--. And that journal called the N-- refused to +print the article because it was too militarist. I don’t myself see +where the militarism can have come into the expression of what was pure +speculation of a psychological kind--but censors, whether military or +anti-military, are queer people, and I presume that their main job, +as it presents itself to their minds, is the suppression of ideas.... +The more I think about it now, the more the thought hardens and takes +shape; some one--connected with the propaganda-ministry--_did_ ask me +to write an article for the N-- and the N-- did refuse to print it. I +daresay the journal had quarreled with the department in between whiles. + +Anyhow, the psychological speculation wasn’t very profound, or, as +far as I can see, very likely to render conscription a permanent +institution in these islands. Stated in its baldest terms, it merely +amounted to saying that when you are very busy with a job, you do not +much notice what is going on around you. You don’t, of course. + +And, in the end, that is the basic idea that underlies these records +of four landscapes. Gringoire was simply trying to state--or rather +to illustrate--the fact that, during the whole of the period from the +4/8/’14 till the date when the German plenipotentiaries appended, in +the Salle des Glaces, their signatures to the peace treaty, he only +four times achieved a sufficient aloofness of mind to notice the +landscape that surrounded him. + +“I don’t mean to say,” our poet summed the matter up, “that I didn’t +have ‘leaves,’ but, for one cause and another, my leaves weren’t ever +pensive or leisurely. One was snatched into the civilian frame of +mind--but into a civilian frame of mind that was always preoccupied +with ‘The War’--that was, indeed, in odd ways, far more preoccupied +with the war than were one’s self and one’s friends. Thus I remember +that, on the occasion of my first return from France, being in a +Tommy’s tunic, before I had arrived at the barrier of Viltona, I was +stopped by an Assistant Provost Marshal and told that if I didn’t +immediately procure leather gloves, another sort of hat, a collar, +a tie, and get rid of my divisional mark, I should be put under +arrest and returned to my battalion. In the booking office, I found +a telephone--which cost thruppence, instead of tuppence--and when I +remonstrated with a lady who three times gave me a wrong number, I was +told to remember that there was a war going on. When, there being no +one in my own house, I tried to go by omnibus to my club for lunch, I +being in mufti and a little lame, a lady conductor put her hand on my +chest, exclaimed: ‘There’s a war on,’ and very neatly threw me back +into the road. + +“When I got to my club, a civilian of an eminently moral appearance +was lunching at my table. He addressed me condescendingly--as no doubt +one would address a Tommy if one were a civilian at a club. I had the +feeling that he was about to offer me a glass of beer--therefore I +hurriedly began to talk of peace. I wanted, you see, to consider peace +and to avoid at once the offer of a free drink and the remembrance of +my comrades who were still in danger of their lives. I admit that my +words were inconsiderate, for I simply said: + +“‘Won’t there be a high old fortnight’s drunk after that day!’ + +“My table companion drew himself up, pursed dry lips, and as it were +hissed: + +“‘I think we have taken very good steps to prevent that.’ + +“He wouldn’t, you see, let me forget my poor comrades who were still in +the trenches. I do not remember what I said then; but only his attitude +as with his napkin very white and crumpled in his hand, he removed +to another table. Straight from that club I went to the house of an +Eminent Reformer who told me that he would rather we lost the war than +that the Cavalry should have a hand in winning it.[5] He couldn’t know +that it wasn’t so very long since I had seen the empty saddles of the +Deccan Horse, as, all intermingled with the men of some battalion of +Gordons, they returned from an adventure in No Man’s Land, during the +1916 Battle of the Somme. So I went and had tea with a lady who gave +me three milk biscuits from a silver tray and said: ‘This _must_ be a +change from your hardships over there!’ + +“They _wouldn’t_, you see, let me forget the poor dear fellows who +were still in the trenches. So I passed the night in a Y.M.C.A. hut, +discussing Mametz Wood of the 14/7/’16 with an officer of the 38th +Division.” + +That, of course, was rather a special day, Gringoire said--though +it was nothing out of the common. Given his age, former career, and +surroundings, he couldn’t be expected to come in for any huge amount +of the salutary dissipation or the healing hospitality which did so +much to _remonter_ the _moral_ of the troops. Moving mostly amongst +the Intelligentsia, he came a good deal in contact with Conscientious +Objectors who abused him to his face for militarism or with literary +civilians of military age who, after calling at his house, returned +to their own and wrote him anonymous but easily recognizable letters, +the purport of which was that he had never heard a shot fired and +that the only gas he had ever smelled had been emitted by himself. +To balance them, he received a number of letters from the German +population of London, threatening to murder him on account of his +propagandist writings, whilst one of the most frequent preoccupations +of his military career arose from the anonymous letters addressed to +the War Office, to his various Colonels, and to the officers and other +ranks of his regiment by a professional man whom he had once employed +and who, after he lost that particular job, found that his conscience +as a patriot demanded that he should continuously but unsuccessfully +denounce our poet as a German spy. + +That is all in the day’s journey. _Homo homini lupus._ But it is not to +be wondered at that in his periods of leisure Gringoire was not in a +position to pay what he would have called a hell of a lot of attention +to landscapes--or, in the alternative, that the essential call, of the +land, of the war, was not the humanity that England contained--but just +the country. + +Possibly the idea of country--just country--postulates the idea of +human companionship--but that is not the same thing as humanity. + +“When I was a boy,” as Gringoire put it, “every hedge and every turn +of a white, long road, concealed a possible Princesse Lointaine.” In +those days one walked on and on--from the North Foreland to the Land’s +End; from Kensington to Winchelsea, from Minehead, by Porlock and +Brendon, to Water’s Meet. Or one cycled from Calais to Beauvais, by way +of Arras; from Paris to Tours and along the Loire, somehow ending at +Houlgate and Caen. Or one went in a slow fiacre from Amiens to Albert, +ostensibly to see the new brick and mosaic cathedral, with the Madonna +atop. But, no doubt, whether one went to Mevagissy or Mentone; Port +Scathow, Pontardulais, Château Gaillard, or Curt-yr-Ala, one was really +chasing the Only Possible She. + +“Nowadays one sits in a green field--any green field--and longs for +nothing more than just a little bit of loyalty. One longs, that is +to say, that one may at last find the _hominem bonæ voluntatis_ that +one has chased all one’s life. Possibly one desires that, resting +one’s eyes in the green of the grass as--do you remember, old Dai +Bach?--according to the maxims of Color-Sergeant Davis of Caerphilly, +we used to rest our eyes from the targets by looking into the trampled +green blades, one longs to discover some formula that shall make us +ourselves forever loyal to some ideal or other.... + +“Or perhaps it is just rest that one wants. Anyhow, one wants the +country that is just country--not heaths, moors, crags, forests, +passes, named rivers, or famous views. No--just fields, just dead +ground, or fields of clover that have never heard and will never hear +the crepitation of machine guns; hedgerows unwired and not too trim, +with a spray or so of bramble just moving in a wind from which one is +sheltered. That, until the other day, one so seldom saw in France--or +in England either, for that matter.” + +“I remember,” Gringoire said in one of his anecdotes, “being in a +wood--behind Tenby, I think, or near Manorbier or Pembroke, in 1915. +It was very warm, and that part of Wales is a sleepy country. I had +bicycled ahead of troops afoot to inspect some sort of position that, +the day before, with my over-meticulousness, I had already spent hours +in surveying, when I might have been listening to Pierrots. At any +rate, I had three-quarters of an hour of entire leisure. + +“The sun beat down; I was just inside the edge of a wood. A little +marsh--a reëntrant--ran right in under the trees. There was a mill +where the insignificant valley opened out; a little dam where the +road mounted an opposite slope. And then, though I had sketched, in +a military sense, every clump of rushes, every contour, every bridge, +every railway cutting and bit of embankment, many times--suddenly this +place of greenery assumed--that too!--the aspect of being just country. + +“A little Welsh sheep poked its horns through the hedge and looked +at me; a wren crept through a tangle of old thorns at my elbow, a +nuthatch pursued a curious and intricate course amongst the netted, +coarse fibers of ivy on a wild cherry-trunk. I lay still in the dappled +sunlight and thought nothing, except that it was good to stretch out +one’s limbs, recumbent. Because the level, green ground in front of +me was so grown with rushes, I began to try to remember what were the +provisions of the Field Drain Act of the middle of last century. Surely +the farmer could obtain from the State, on easy terms, a loan with +which to defray the expense of soil-pipes and labor for the draining +of that land. And I began to think about the queer, stodgy, Victorian +mind; and about Albert the Good, and the Crystal Palace, which in those +days was known as the Temple of Peace; and I remembered John Brown and +John Morley and John Bright and John Stuart Mill and Mr. Ruskin and +the rest of them, and mahogany chairs with horsehair seats and Argand +lamps and the smoke and steam that used to fill the underground at +Gower Street station. And in those days I had a 13-hand New Forest pony +and a very old governess car and went to market on a Tuesday.... + +“And then, quite suddenly, I felt that, for thousands and thousands of +miles, on the green fields and in the woodlands, stretching away under +the high skies, in the August sunlight, millions, millions, millions of +my fellow men were moving--like tumultuous mites in a cheese, training +and training, as we there were training--all across a broad world to +where the sun was setting and to where the sun was rising--training +to live a little, short space of time in an immense long ribbon of +territory, where, for a mile or so the earth was scarred, macerated, +beaten to a pulp, and burnt by the sun till it was all dust.... The +thought grew, became an immense feeling, became an obsession. Then +Major Ward, on a bay with a white forehead, appeared on the little +bridge that carried the waters of the marsh beneath the road. The +others were coming!” + + +[Footnotes] + +[5] Our friend is here venting a little of the bile that, as will be +seen, at times obscures his outlook on life and makes him, elsewhere, +appear ungenerous to the civilian population that so loyally did its +bit. The train of thought of his friend the Eminent Reformer would seem +to be as follows: (a) this is a war for liberty; (b) the Cavalry are +officered mainly by the hereditary aristocracy; (c) if the hereditary +aristocracy wins out in the war, liberty will suffer; (d) it would be +preferable to lose the war. This seems logical. Our poet, however, +refuses to see matters in this light. He says that he has never since +spoken to that Eminent Reformer, who was once the closest of his +friends--and that he never will again. This is lamentable. But is there +not a tag beginning “_Irritabile genus_”...? + + + + + VII + + _Playing the Game_ + + +As will appear in my last chapter Gringoire insists that I shall +include in this volume a specimen of his prose written under fire. As +that was written in French your compiler flatly refused to insert it in +the body of his book so that, since Gringoire flatly refused to let the +book appear at all unless it _was_ included, it will be found elsewhere +than in the body and what follows is his translation. I confess to +regretting its inclusion for although I myself and a great number of my +friends including even Mrs. Carmody who is the wife of the headmaster +at the ancient grammar-school, a foundation of Edward VI’s in the XVI +century at which I have the honor to teach English Literature--although +I and my friends consider him a very great poet, if not the greatest +poet in the world at the moment, poet’s prose is well known to be too +florid for the real connoisseur of prose. And what follows is actually +his own translation and Gringoire himself has asserted many times both +in private and in public that he is entirely unable to translate his +own prose. It does however present a picture of the poet under fire--a +matter as to which he here refuses to say anything elsewhere under +the plea that to talk about actual fighting disturbs his subsequent +sleep with nightmares and also that he intends to treat of fighting +subsequently himself when both the public bitterness and his own +emotions shall have diminished. This decision I regret. For who in ten +years’ time will be found to take an interest in the late struggle +whereas enshrined here in the amber of my own prose the record of his +emotions might well interest people who have such memories still vivid +within them. I may say that I myself, a journalist of considerable +pre-war practice, never went to the front though I served during the +whole war in the depot of Gringoire’s regiment. + +Here then is Gringoire’s prose, the original French of which he says +was written at Pont de Nieppe during September 1916 after his visit to +the French Ministry which he will describe in my next chapter. + + A CRICKET MATCH + + BEING A LETTER WRITTEN FROM THE LINES OF SUPPORT + IN FLANDERS TO CAPTAIN UN TEL IN PARIS. + +_Mon cher monsieur, camarade et confrère_ (Gringoire’s addressee was +also a poet soldier): + +Behind Bécourt Wood, on a July evening, whilst the shells of the +Germans were passing overhead, we were playing cricket. The heavy +shells went over, seeming to cry in their passage the word “We; +e; eary”; then, changing their minds farther on they exclaimed +peremptorily: “Whack!” But when one plays cricket one forgets the +Hun orchestra; one does not even hear the shells that pass overhead. +We were running about; we were cursing the butterfingered fool who +dropped a catch; we even argued about points of play, because the +rules of such cricket as one plays with a tennis-ball, two axe-helves +for bats and bully-beef-cases for wicket--those rules are apt to be +elastically interpreted. But no match England v. Australia at Lords’ +itself was ever so full of incident nor so moving as our game behind +Bécourt Wood. The turf was of clay, baked porcelain-hard by the almost +tropical sun; for grass there was only an expanse of immense thistles; +boundaries and spectators at once were provided by the transport mules +in their lines. But we cheered, we gesticulated, we rushed about, we +disputed, we roared ... we--British infantry officers who are said to +be phlegmatic, cold and taciturn. + +I present the considerations that follow in the form of a letter to +you, my dear Un Tel, though I would rather have written a balanced, +careful and long-thought-out essay. But I cannot chisel at my prose +today. “Ker wooley woo,” as our Tommies say, “say la gair!” I have +passed twenty-five years of my life in trying to find new cadences; in +chasing assonances out of my prose, with an enraged meticulousness that +might have been that of Uncle Flaubert himself. But today I only write +letters--long, diffuse, and in banal phrases. The other demands too +much time, too much peace of mind.... Ah, and too much luck! + +Well, then, we were playing cricket when I saw passing close to us a +French officer of my acquaintance--an officer of one of those admirable +batteries of seventy-fives whose voices were so comforting to hear by +day and so let us sleep at night. For when they spoke in their level +and interrupted roll, hour on hour, at a few furlongs behind our +backs--when _they_ spoke, no Hun barked. And they were at that time +aligned wheel to wheel from Albert to Verdun. The man was a gray-blue +Colossus, his eyes brown and somber, his mustache heavy and dark. +He stayed there, planted on his legs and his heavy stick, like some +instrument of war, three-legged, silent and of steel. And when I left +the game and went to talk to him he said to me in English: + +“I find that a little shocking. _Very_ shocking!” + +And he continued to look at the players who went on gesticulating and +running about amongst the giant thistles and the dangerous legs of the +mules. I exclaimed vehemently: + +“_Au nom du bon Dieu, pourquoi?_” + +He did not take his eyes from the players and reflected for a long time +before answering. And I, getting impatient, went on talking vehemently +and even indulged in gesticulations. I said in French: + +“_Nous sortons des tranchées_.... We are only just out of the +trenches.” This game made you fit, _remettait le moral_, made you +forget the war.... What do I know of what I said? He kept on reflecting +and I talking French. At last he said: + +“I find”--he was still talking English--“that this war should be a +religion. On coming out of the trenches one should sit ... and reflect. +Perhaps one should even pray a little....” + +And I ... I went on arguing with him for a long time without his +answering anything but: + +“I find it, all the same.” + +And suddenly I burst out laughing. The situation seemed suddenly +allegorical. And if you think of it, my dear friend, you will see how +it was that I laughed. It was because it was he, the descendant of +Cyrano de Bergerac, who spoke English in the monosyllables of a stage +Lord Kitchener whilst I, the representative of so many officers and +gentlemen who for many centuries have never found anything more to +say than “O ... ah!”--I who ought to have been wearing an eyeglass +and blond whiskers was engaged in waving my arms and shouting a +French that was rendered almost incoherent by emotion. And all +my comrades--officers as well as other ranks--went on shouting, +gesticulating, running about, cursing and laughing like children of +Tarascon in the French South. + + * * * * * + +And in truth the change is astonishing and a little moving. We have +always had the idea--even the French have had the idea--that the French +people, and above all the French soldiers and French officers, were +gay, debonnair, loquacious, pawky--“Swordsmen and tricksters without +remorse or scruples,” as Cyrano sings. + +Well, the other day I went on service from Steenewerck to Paris--a +journey which lasted seventeen hours. And during the whole of those +seventeen hours although there were always French officers in my +railway carriage or standing in the corridors of the train, the journey +was the most silent of my whole life. No one talked. But no one! There +were colonels, commandants, captains, marine officers, gunner officers. +And I cannot believe that my presence was responsible for this +taciturnity. It is true that in every suitable spot in the train were +inscribed the words: “Be silent; be on your guard”--and the fact that +enemy ears might be listening to you. But it was impossible that _all_ +those gentlemen attributed such ears to me. I was wearing the uniform +of my sovereign. And they none of them addressed the others. + +No, certainly the voyage lacked incident. I will tell you the +incidents there were: from Hazebrouck to Calais five French officers +did not exchange two words; from Calais to Abbéville thirty who did not +speak. I spoke to an artillery captain, grumbling at the slow progress +of the train. He answered in English: + +“Many troops moving!” + +Then silence. + +At Amiens there entered a civilian. It was on a Saturday towards eight +o’clock in the morning and the train had the air of not wishing to +reach Paris until after three. As I had business in Paris and should +have to leave early on the Monday I asked this gentleman if I should +find the banks shut, and the ministries and shops. He answered that he +did not know. He was not a Parisian. He was going to Jersey to take +possession of the body of a young girl who, having been drowned at +Dieppe, had floated as far as that island.... As if there had not been +enough deaths. + +He began crying very unobtrusively. + +But he, too, had spoken to me in English! + +And then ... silence. The officers regarded the civilian with eyes that +said nothing at all.... I assure you that it was not gay. + +At Creil there got in two ladies. They were pretty and very +well-dressed. _They_ talked enough, those two.... Red Cross, charitable +activities, colonels, families. But the officers never looked at them. +Not one raised his eyes although the girls were young, very pretty and +well-dressed! + +But, when _we_ had been going up to the Front from Rouen to Albert--and +we were not going on leave like all these silent officers--we sang, we +joked with young women whom we saw on the railway platforms; we kicked +footballs along the corridors of the train; we climbed on the roofs of +the carriages. You would have thought we were going to the Derby. + +I naturally exaggerate these differences a little. This is not an +article but a letter. But I am nevertheless telling you what my eyes +have seen and my ears heard. And how is it to be explained? + +It is not enough to say--as has been said so often--that if in England, +the Germans had been established between York and Manchester, if they +had seized the factories, pillaged the downs, and indulged in whatever +the Hun Practices may be, we also should be gloomy, sad, taciturn. I +am not talking of the civilian population of my country; I am speaking +of us people out here whose life is not gay, who are expatriated, +far from our homes and who suffer, I assure you, from a very real +nostalgia. For, _là-bas_ ... on the Somme or in Flanders one feels +one’s self very forgotten, very deserted, and very, very isolated +with an isolation like the isolation that is felt by ... Oh, well, +it is as if we were suspended--we, seven million men--on a carpet in +the infinitudes of space. The roads which stretch out before us cease +suddenly at a few furlongs from our faces--in No Man’s Land. And it +is very saddening to contemplate roads which suddenly end. And then +the roads and paths that we have taken to get here--and which lie +between ourselves and our _pays_--the nooks where we were born--are +roads which we may not travel.... And I assure you that, just like any +other men, we love our wives, our houses, our children, our parents, +our ingle-nooks, our fields, our cattle and our dung-heaps. The French +soldier has at least that to his advantage, that he fights at home. +That is something for him, as individual. When he steps out of the +trenches he is at least in the land that bore him.... But we ... + +I suppose that it is in order to forget, not only the Hun shells +but also those other things that are dear to us, the chimney corner +beside which we have so often sat chatting, the fields upon which we +have labored, the herds and the woods--it is in search of the herb +oblivion, that we play cricket behind Bécourt wood and go over the top +kicking footballs across No Man’s Land--footballs which pass over the +corpses of the fallen, towards the Huns.... And crying “Stick it, the +Welsh!”--is that weakness? Is it the source from which we draw--such as +they are--what we have of tenacity and courage? I do not know. + +Like myself, my dear confrère, you have known the difficulty of +exactly defining the shades of differences that distinguish differing +peoples. We commence by theorizing and we theorize much too soon, or +else we take the opposite view to theories that have been accepted for +centuries. We have had in England the nineteenth century caricaturists +of the French during the Napoleonic wars which showed us the Frenchman +as he was in the British popular imagination. He was a meager, famished +barber who lived exclusively on frogs. And on your side you had your +John Bull, as big as an ox, his belly as big as the belly of an ox, and +devouring whole oxen. And you had the figure of the milord with his +millions, his spleen which drove him to be suicidal. They were stupid, +those caricatures, but it is impossible to allege that they were not +sincere. The English who fought in France in 1815 sought for what they +saw--but they found it. And the same with the French. + +The same perhaps with myself. I have always considered the French a +grave people, and when I came from an excited England, covered from +the Isle of Anglesey to the North Foreland with patriotic and colorful +placards and then found, from the Belgian frontier to Paris, a France +quite without colored placards and gray, silent and preoccupied, it +was natural that I should look for grave people and find them. But for +me there was nothing new in finding France preoccupied, because for me +France always was the France of fields, villages, woods and peasants. +And the France of the peasants is a very laborious and pensive place +where men labor incessantly between wood and pond or beneath the olive +trees of the Midi. + +For me, on the other hand the population of Great Britain has always +been a town people. Well, it is the inhabitants of great cities who, +work as they may, have need from time to time to go, as our saying +is, on a spree--each according to his nature. And that is perhaps the +reason of the differences that have so struck me, between the French +Army and ourselves. The British Forces are made up preponderatingly +of townsmen, the French army is an army preponderatingly peasant--for +even the famous Parigots are mostly country born and bred. And the +peasantry of all countries, but particularly the French peasant, is +inured to confronting the harshness and the inevitable necessities +of Nature. They meet them without ceasing for weeks, for months, for +years--for their lifetimes. They can never escape from hardships and +the contemplation of the evils of life, the bitter winds, the worms +that devour the buds of whole harvests; their thoughts can never be +diverted by taking a day’s leave, in making puns or by that humor which +is acrid and rather sad and which is yet the sovereign quality of the +British Tommy. For to inscribe on an immense gray shell that is about +to be fired at the Hun lines--to inscribe on that in huge whitewash +letters “Love to Little Willie” may seem stupid and shocking to folk +who were never _là-bas_. But human psychology is very complicated and +it is certain that the reading of such inscriptions on the great shells +by the stacks of which we pass along the highroads of France much +lightens our hearts when we advance from Albert to La Boisselle. + +Why? It is difficult to say. It is perhaps because, the shells being +terrible and threatening, here is a shell that has been rendered +ridiculous, a cause for joy--or even merely human. For we are all +anthropomorphic--and that one sole shell can suffer itself to become +the vehicle for humor, that is sufficient to give to superstitious +minds the idea that shells may be a little less superhuman than +they seem. They are the messengers of gods athirst for blood, who +proclaim their gigantic weariness but nevertheless destroy in a minute +dungheaps, whole fields or all the houses of a village. But they have +become a little humanized. + +And it is the same for our game of cricket which we played behind +Bécourt Wood amongst the giant thistles, hidden in thick dust and +concealing in turn the bodies of so many of our dead. But I assure +you, my dear comrade, that landscape--of Bécourt, Fricourt, Mametz, +Martinpuich and the rest--was not gay. It was July and the sun let down +its rays upon those broad valleys, upon the dust and the smoke that +mounted to the heavens and upon the black and naked woods. And it did +not smile, that territory. No; Nature herself there seemed terrible and +threatening--in that domain where Destiny who is blind and implacable, +must manifest herself to several million human souls.... And then +we played cricket there--and, all of a sudden that threatening and +superhuman landscape became ... just a cricket field. + +For an Intellectual a field will be always just a field whether there +descend upon it shells, thunderbolts--or merely tennis balls. But for +us a countryside where we have played cricket becomes less affrighting +and we shall there pass our days more contentedly in spite of the bones +that there lie hidden amongst the thistles. It is stupid; it is even, +if you will, sacrilege. But that is how we are made--we others who are +not the intelligentsia and who issue forth from the great cities to go +upon bloody wars. I, I have felt like that, down there, behind Bécourt +Wood of a July evening during the Somme push in 1916. + +And I remain always yours affectionately + + G. + +And I beg you to observe that all the persons who spoke to me between +Steenewerck and Paris used English. That is already something. + + And _I_ beg you to observe that when Gringoire is moving his prose + up to its most emotional pitch he employs a ‘Hun’ expression. For + the phrase ‘the herb oblivion’ is merely the literal translation of + the almost hackneyed German expression: “_Das Kraut Vergessenheit_.” + + --_Note by the Compiler._ + + + + + PART TWO + + CERTAIN INTERIORS + + + + + The old houses of Flanders, + They watch by the high cathedrals; + They overtop the high town halls; + They have eyes, mournful, tolerant and sardonic for the ways of men + In the high, white, tiled gables. + + The rain and the night have settled down on Flanders; + It is all wet darkness, you can see nothing. + + Then those old eyes, mournful, tolerant and sardonic, + Look at great sudden red lights, + Look upon the shades of the cathedrals, + And the golden rods of the illuminated rain. + + And those old eyes, + Very old eyes that have watched the ways of men for generations, + Close for ever. + The high, white shoulders of the gables + Slouch together for a consultation, + Slant drunkenly over in the lea of the flaming cathedrals. + + They are no more the old houses of Flanders. + + + + + VIII + + _“Maisie”_ + + +[It has occurred to the writer--or let us rather say, “the compiler,” +that, as concerns this section of this work, it would be safe to let +Gringoire speak for himself. The paraphernalia of inverted commas +interspersed with indirect speech is apt to be wearisome to a reader. +It is difficult--nay, it might even prove dangerous--to the compiler. +For who shall say what powerful enemies the present writer might not +make by omitting inverted commas and appearing to speak for himself? So +it seems more just to let the rather testy poet speak for himself. + +For undoubtedly, when speaking of certain matters, Gringoire was--nay, +he is!--apt to become testy. Let us excuse him by saying that he bore a +good deal of strain during the late war--as was apt to be the position +of any public, or quasi-public man, caught between the attentions of +the cheap press and what he considered to be his duty to the State. + +Of course, this section is a rendering. It does not pretend to +record words exactly as Gringoire spoke. It is, rather, a résumé +of conversations of an evening when the writer--or rather the +compiler--was privileged to be housed by Gringoire. It was, by then, +late summer or early autumn. + +The Gingerbread Cottage by that date resembled less one of the ruins of +the Flanders front that Gringoire so feelingly describes. For to tell +the truth, that was what it had very nearly resembled at the time of +our Easter visit. When Gringoire had entered it in the early spring, +there had been certainly the wave-marks of inundations and half-inches +of mud on the brick floors. He had come down with his valise contents, +his camp-bed, a knife and fork, a paraffin stove, and a gallon of oil, +determined, as he puts it, to dig himself in in the face of destiny. At +Easter we had seen him a little too early in the process for people who +had not for the last four or five years lived with furniture made of +bully-beef cases or whatever they are called. + +But by mid-September, when the greater portion of the following section +was compiled, either Gringoire’s views as to the æsthetic value of +bully-beef chairs and tables had changed as he got further from the +atmosphere of camps, or Mme. Sélysette had softened the asperities of +his nature in the matter of preference of dugouts to drawing rooms--or +else, truly, he was acting up to his ideals. That one hesitates to +believe: for who can believe that any human soul can act up to his +professed ideals--or that the ideals which he professes have any +relation to his motives? + +Still, Gringoire was a poet. And the writer remembers remonstrating +with him as to the amount of work he was putting into the Gingerbread +Cottage and the garden. Said the writer: Gringoire should remember that +all this whitewashing, papering, glazing the windows, digging out of +foundations, and fertilizing an abandoned and ill-treated garden would, +in the end, profit only the landlord--who was a very bad landlord, even +as bad landlords go. For, as would be the case with poets, Gringoire +had no lease of any kind.... + +But Gringoire only looked at the writer with that vague and unseeing +glance that is one of the properties of some poets. And he answered: +though of course it was not an answer: He was not a small hatter, a +market-gardener, a farmer, a tradesman, or any sort of profit-and-loss +person. He was intent simply on making his sanctuary smile a little +in the sunlight and on comforting an old building that had been very +shabbily used by evil sorts of men.... + +At any rate, they had scrambled together some old and rather attractive +“bits,” a grandfather’s chair or so, carpets for the sitting room, +colored rush mats for the floor of the sleeping apartments. They had +painted and polished with beeswax and turpentine, and there would, as +like as not, be some flowers on the dining table which was of rough +oak--and coffee after a full dinner. + +The primitive “note” remained, of course, about the establishment, and +it was hardly the place to which you would have asked for a week-end +a delicate city madam; a Guards’ Major; or a young actress about to +become famous. But on bright days the garden smiles in the sun, and +the Gingerbread Cottage has a colored and--as Gringoire would say--a +_soigné_ aspect. Yes, certainly it appeared to be cared for, poor +battered old thing, as old people sometimes appear to be cared for in +almshouses. + +So Gringoire affronts the winter. And, if during that season the wolf +does not get him; or if his patience does not give out--as is the case +with poets; or if the bad landlord does not eject him in order to reap +the profits of his improvements--for he has no lease!--he will continue +his patchings, his experiments with unusual manures, and his attempts +to ameliorate the breed of potatoes. And that is all the writer will +say about him. + +For the rest, he speaks for himself, much as he spoke of an evening, +with his mild but occasionally bitter and furious eyes; with his +usually tranquil, but occasionally furiously gesticulating hands. For, +the writer, or rather the compiler, having compared notes with Mme. +Sélysette, who has heard Gringoire’s stories very, very often, the +compiler is satisfied that it is a fair rendering of the poet-warrior’s +conversation. It will be found to be disfigured, even in this, as it +were, censored version, by unfortunate attacks on many persons and +institutions that are usually considered exempt from--or at any rate +dangerous to--assault. But what it contains is not half as violent as +what Gringoire wished the compiler to set down as his opinions. The +compiler, however, has friends who can be grieved; a pocket that can +be affected by the law of libel; a position with reviewers that is his +stock in trade. So Gringoire, who could not write prose but wished +to air his opinions, and the compiler, who wished to air the poet’s +opinions but did not wish to lose friends, money, or position in the +process, agreed upon the autobiographical passages that follow.] + + * * * * * + +Gringoire speaks: + +At some period of the war, I found myself in a certain interior. It was +August--hushed by the presence at the doors of functionaries, elderly, +gray, like bishops, wearing evening dress. And one had the sense that, +standing at ease, on the steps of great portals, opening onto immense +staircases, that one had ascended in stony twilights, past bistre-blue +frescoes. Suisses, in cocked hats with great white gloves and silver +swords, symbolized the military ideals of Ministries, just as, in the +Vatican, obsolete artillerymen, hussars, pikemen, symbolize a vanished +temporal power. For, what would the Suisses do if the Enemy or a +Revolution should chance to pay a call on them? + +I presume they would extend enormous, cotton-gloved fingers for +visiting cards, which they would hand to commissionaires in glass +boxes; the cards would be sent by pages, upstairs to the episcopal +butlers, who, after meditating for forty minutes, would warily +convey them, over the soft State carpets, past the decorous but rich, +State-purchased pictures suspended over the blue-gray, State-woven +tapestries, to the high door of polished mahogany. There the +bishop-butlers would pause, with the air of priests listening outside +shrines, with a hand on the engraved, polished, mounted, ormolu +door-handles.... + +But what, during those sixty-four minutes would be the proceedings of +the lieutenant of Uhlans, with his twenty men behind him; or the leader +of the sans-culottes, communards, syndicalists...? The lances might +be dripping with blood; bread, dripping too, might be decorating the +points of pikes, or paraffin from the oil cans. Probably they would +not wait until the blood or the oil dried on the sarcophagus-tiles of +the Ministerial Salle des Pas Perdus or until the great hotel slowly +and resignedly disappeared in flames with that curious air of weary +acquiescence that buildings have when, having borne for many years with +human follies, wisdoms, or labors, they fall to the ground before human +madness. Probably they would not wait--the Uhlans, the sans-culottes, +or the Pétroleuses. They are an impatient people. + +But, of course, the reader will say, in the great courtyard before +the Ministry, are many, many gendarmes, standing about with their +hands behind their backs and slightly protuberant bellies. (Otherwise +they would be _là bas!_) But they have good eyes. They would know a +Lieutenant of Uhlans by his uniform, and they know how to use their +revolvers. And amongst the gendarmes lounge several civilian men of +queer, specialized miens. Their pockets bulge just slightly, in odd +ways, and brushing their legs are the _chiens de bergers Alsaciens_ +(it used to be _Allemands_) the large, elegant dogs with brown fur, +like ladies’ sable coats and the intelligent pointed ears.... It is +the business of these apparently civilian agents to know the leaders +of sans-culottes, syndicalists, communards, and _Actions_ this or +that. The pretty, friendly, high-stepping dogs with their sable coats +would be at the sans-culottes’ throats at the merest chirrup of their +masters’ lips, and from the so very slightly bulging pockets light +handcuffs would whip out. The revolvers also would go off.... + +And, still more, the reader will say, in the little, painted, upright +boxes stand little men with red trousers and blue coats and tricolored +worsted galloons, and long, dull-looking rifles, and very, very +long Rosalies.... They are probably just the very newest recruits +with sad, boyish faces. But they know enough to say the French for +“Halt, who are you?” in Breton accents, and to let off the old, long +guns, and to stick Rosalie, with a grunt, through the entrails of a +Uhlan lieutenant, and to call out the Guard.... And, too, there is a +half-battalion of the 101st Regiment, whose accent reeks of garlic, +olive oil, and the meridional sun, passing along the boulevard before +the tricolor that droops over the porte-cochère.... + +So--like the very heart of an onion, under many, many wrappings, +in sanctuary, how very, very far from the mud of the onion-trench, +bearded, in a dark coat, with a bright spot of a button; with sharp, +apprehending nods coming as quickly as winks and silences as quickly +as either; behind the polished mahogany door with the gilt handle and +the ormolu finger-plates; at a Buhl table, with a glass vase full of +Malmaison carnations, a bronze reproduction of the Winged Victory, and +two great pictures of Norman peasants, the one by Bastien Lepage and +the other by Jean François Millet--sits the Minister whose mere wink to +some one, whose whisper to some one else, whose instruction to another, +whose order--and so on--has brought one from green fields littered +with bully beef-tins, wire, mud-trodden cartridge cases, rat runs--and +the rest of it! He will thank you for past services; tactfully suggest +that it might reinforce some department of the _moral_ of some +department or other of humanity if M. le Capitaine would suspend his +military ardors in order to write so and so and so and so in such and +such an organ or to say this and that in a certain quarter. And one +can also produce not truly a great effect but some, by talking in a +certain way, in the mess of one’s regiment even. Certainly in Quartiers +Généraux ... + +He will listen deferentially whilst you voice certain objections: to +write so and so one must have leave--leave in both the English and +the French sense of “permission.” And leaves are difficult things to +obtain. Besides, one does not want leave. For certain reasons!... One +is like that. _L’on est poète_: cranky, unreasonable. An all-powerful +Minister cannot get into the soul of a crank. Not his Seneschals, or +the Suisses, or the Gendarmes, or the Agents, or the Sentinels can +help him to that. _Quand on est poète_ one requires--one requires a +little reëntrant, with water--a little stream, indicated by a wavy +line in blue pencil; copses, indicated by dotted-in round o’s with +tails to them; rushes, indicated by hieroglyphs like the section of a +hairbrush; a gingerbread cottage, for which the symbol is a hatched in +square.--One requires those. And also one requires a temporary respite +from the attentions of one’s friends and of destiny. For that, as far +as I know, military topography has no symbol--unless it be a white +handkerchief on the end of Rosalie. + +His Excellency remains polite--deferential even. Still, it could no +doubt be arranged, he will remark. It is important to get certain +things said.... And who could say it better than ... + +For myself--on the occasion which I am adumbrating, I was thinking +of ferrets. So that, by a concentration of ideas, at a given point +I once said to such a Minister: Of course there is the First Line +Transport.... And, in my mind’s eye, against the gilt frame of the +immense Bastien Lepage--or it may have been on this occasion a Marie +Bashkirtseff--arose the image of a Connaught Hut, with the rain beating +on the roof and the autumn wind reaching the flames of candles stuck +in bottles and bearing in the odor of stable hartshorn from the long +horse standings. And the Welsh Rabbit made of cheese, onions, Flemish +beer, and herrings straight from Bailleul--though God knows when they +came from the autumnal sea. And hooch. And several obese, tranquil, +entirely capable officers with feet for the moment in carpet slippers. +And the table utensils borrowed from the Y.M.C.A. pushed aside on a +corner of the trestle table; and a cheap pad of letter paper, a copying +ink pencil, and the mind of the poet functioning in the flicker of +the guttering candles at the dictates of the Minister seated beneath +the Jean François Millet picture at the Buhl table with the Malmaison +carnations in a smoked glass vase and the miniature reproduction of +the Winged Victory in bronze with a delicate, artificially produced +patina. And the lower part of the poet is wedged into a bully-beef +case that has had one side taken out and that has been wire-nailed +into an egg-box to form an armchair. And, in the dim gloom, at one +elbow stands a dripping Divisional runner with a buff memo from +ordnance to say that Mills Bombs for the ---- Battalion are on the +Scherpenberg and must be taken down to Kemmel Château by four ack +emma; and at the other elbow stands a Divisional Orderly with a +copy of orders on which in red ink is marked the information that +Division will move down the line by the road by Dranoutre--Neuve +Eglise--Westoutre-Plugstreet--Pont-de-Nieppe--Armentières. In full +sight of the Hun trenches, by God!--beginning with one’s own battalion, +of which A. Company will march from such and such a spot at 5:30 to be +followed by D, C, and B boys at half-hour intervals. And to be shelled +to Hell! + +And the transport officer, whose business it is to manage these +matters, is away for thirty-six hours to arrange for a Divisional +Horse Show in the field behind the Convent! And your poet is A. O. I. +C. (Acting Officer in Charge of) Transport, and Billeting officer for +the Battalion and O. I. C. (Officer in Charge of) Divisional Canteen +and God knows what all. And Officer in Charge of _moral_ of a certain +section of humanity to whom it would be a good thing if certain things +would be said in polished prose! And when the poet springing up +exclaims to the night: + +“To H---- with the b----y Mills Bombs and the bumph and the b----rs and +all the whole execrable show,” the Battalion Orderly, a fair, cheeky +boy who knows one, exclaims: + +“Ker wooly woo, sir, say la Gair!” + +And indeed, the interiors of _la guerre_ were much like that. But how +is His Excellency the Minister of this or that department to know what +is passing in your mind? He will just write on a note pad, look up, +exclaim, “Que dîtes-vous? First Line?... But is it tranquil, that?”[6] + +I don’t know what I answered. I believe I must have screamed with +laughter--because I really wanted some ferrets very badly, and because, +in the vestibule of an immense hotel I had left my publisher in +charge of a little girl with dark curls tied with pale blue ribbons, +singularly self-possessed manners, and rather prominent underclothing +that appeared to be an inverted bouquet of lace. That is to say I had +left my publisher--who is deaf--with the little girl. And I was in +charge of the little girl, who, just before my having to hurry to the +Ministry, had devoured thirteen oysters, half a cantaloupe melon with a +quarter of a pound of sugar, and a _Coupe Jacques_. So I was, really, +wondering what Maisie would be like when I returned to the Hotel de +l’Opéra. It sounds mad--but it is just the true truth. + +I know that, at that stage, I did not please His Excellency. He frowned +twice. Once when I laughed because he asked if a Connaught hut at the +base of the Salient was a tranquil place in which to write poems. He +also frowned when--as I have, I know, elsewhere related, but I do not +know where--he having asked me, “_En quoi il me pouvait être utile?_” I +answered, “_Si Votre Excellence me pourrait trouver des furets!_” + +You see, I had been carefully instructed by friends with one eye to my +commercial future. The Minister was sure to ask in what way he could +be of service to me. I was to reply--to hint ever so delicately--that +if I had a ribbon to stick on my coat, writing poems, even in a +Connaught hut, would be easy. But I couldn’t do it. Even if I had not +been concerned with ferrets that I couldn’t get and with Maisie, who +had been far too easy to come by, I couldn’t have done it. I had been +instructed that the ribbon awaited me; I had only to stretch out a hand +to become an Officer of Something or Other. I don’t know whether I ever +have. I suppose not. + +Anyhow, His Excellency frowned when I asked for ferrets. He might have +been more sympathetic if I had asked him to take off my hands a little +girl of eight, with the American manners appropriate to the age of +thirteen, who, half an hour before had eaten thirteen oysters, half +a melon, and a quarter of a pound of sugar that had come from Geneva +in her _malles_, and a _Coupe Jacques_; who had been kidnapped by the +lake in a carriage and pair, the night before, or perhaps two nights +before; and whose father, the kidnapper, had left her in my charge just +after breakfast and had then disappeared. There was also a very French +maid--in hysterics. And I didn’t even know their names. + +Yes; H. E. might have been more sympathetic if I had mentioned the +child alone in the vestibule--or possibly with the publisher. But at +the mention of the ferrets, he became positively glacial: “_Quoi_,” he +asked. “What is a ferret?” + +I said that _ferrets sont des petits animaux qui mangent les rats_. But +his face remained like a dead wall. I _know_ he thought I was drunk. +I was so certain of it, then, that I stammered, and the interview +dissolved in the embarrassed emotions passing from him to me and from +me to him. He touched a button and said he would telephone to the +Jardin des Plantes. But I don’t suppose he did. + +You see: it was almost a drop too much in my cup--to be plunged +straight into “What Maisie Knew,” which is a book by Henry James. It +was too much bewilderment.... Supposing the--as I understood--too +brilliant and vociferous mother who was understood to like a “violinist +fellow”, should be bursting, with wide gestures, through the aperture +frailly closed by glass hotel-doors that whirled bewilderingly whilst I +was at the Ministry.... And it might, I understood, well be like that. + +How the incident ended, however, I cannot say, since, upon my return to +the hotel, the child and her companion had disappeared. That is to say, +they had left in the hotel bus for the _Gare du Nord_. So I hope they +got safely to England. I never heard: and, since I have forgotten even +the names, I suppose I never shall. + +It was, no doubt, the sort of thing that was happening all over the +world just as usual, but it was queer--and intensely worrying--to +be brought so violently and so much against one’s poor will into an +atmosphere of international passions, excursions, lawsuits for the +possession of children, and the like. And anyhow, the worry of it +probably spoilt my career; which was no doubt a good thing. Anyhow, +I hope that Maisie, in the custody of kind old aunts, somewhere in +Sussex, is prattling to a benevolent but bewildered butler about Mamma, +who went to heaven by the cog-wheel railway, via Montreux. Or I suppose +it would be better for her if she had forgotten Mamma. + +Yes: I suppose it was all going on. And I rather fancy I found the +going-on-ness of it all a little appalling. Paris, indeed, was so much +more just Paris out of the season, than London, in those days, appeared +to be London, either during or out of the season. It was in a way +touching; it was also, in a way, disheartening. I remember--and I say +“I remember” advisedly, since such an immense number of things blotted +themselves out and only crop up in suddenly vivid pictures like that of +Maisie whom I had completely forgotten until the day before yesterday, +and who now again exists extraordinarily brightly in the hotel +vestibule saying: “_Ils me disent que Maman est partie pour le ciel._ +It is very droll. But what tram do I take _pour le ciel?_” I remember, +then, being on a balcony with an immense stone balustrade, in the black +night with a number of French officers who were all polite--but cold. +It was, certainly, during the _entr’acte_ of Délibes’ _Lakme_. I fancy +the theater was the Comédie Française, but I don’t know, because I +had been taken there by a staff officer, and in those days in France +one was moved about so without volition of one’s own that one didn’t, +necessarily, much notice where one went or how one got there. Where it +was a duty to notice, one noticed--railway stations in their sequence, +streams, contours. But it was rather a toss-up whether anything more +than little bits, like etchings or vignettes, got through to one’s +private psychology. I take this to have been the case with most men in +our army. We were, as soldiers, both naïf and engrossed. + +With the French, it was different. They appeared to be so much older, +in their work as in their leisures. They seemed to go to war, as they +went to _Lakme_, so much more as connoisseurs. So, on that balcony, +I had the feeling of a very definite frigidity. I could have talked +rather floridly about _les gloires de la France_, the ultimate aims of +the war. I doubt if the French officers could. They had exhausted the +topic during forty menaced years. + +So they talked, as it happens, mostly of the fine work that had +been done by their territorials--old men, fathers of families, and +grandfathers who were patching away at the trenches, making roads +under fire, laboriously laboring amidst great dangers and beyond their +strength that the years had sapped. + +The balcony of the theater was a cube of blackness; down below there +appeared to be an old, small, square market-place. Paris, of course, +was in darkness, out of deference to Zeppelins and airplanes, so +that it was all a heavy, velvety black beneath a pallid sky. Houses, +squares, rose up on three sides; the immense black bulk of the theater +seemed to press on one’s back as one is pressed upon, on narrow paths, +by the walls of precipices in the night. One had a sense that the +inside of this building was flooded with translucent rays, in which, +over the light parquet of long floors, in the _salons de réception_, +men moved quietly, with slightly outstretched hands emphasizing points +in their discourse to the women on their arms. Theaters function with a +sense of style in Paris. But the old, tall houses round the market gave +the idea that they were solidly black throughout; only in the old empty +rooms, over the creaking floors, mice would rustle in the pallid gleams +from the old windows. + +I do not mean to say that the houses were really like that inside: +for houses are queer things, and queerer still when they grow old, +with malices, obstinacies, benevolences of their own. And, as is the +case with men, their physiognomies are misleading. So, though one had +the sense that below there was a market-place with carts and tilted +hoods awaiting the day and that the houses were old and empty, it may +have been all untrue to fact, though it is likely enough in Paris +where there are so many old, moldering, and damp-streaked façades and +courtyards. + +I wonder if most people have as strongly as I the feeling that houses +have, not so much immortal souls, as tempers, queernesses, and the +power to be malicious or benevolent. I daresay most people have that +sense up to a point, for it is common enough to walk with a friend, +more particularly at dawn, where there are few human beings about to +detract from the spell, past, say, a terrace of houses not all alike. +A blind will be up; another and another, half drawn down; four or +five others, all green, will be at various heights behind the closed +window-glasses. And your friend will say: + +“That house appears to be winking; that other is gnashing green +teeth!” So that your friend will be attributing faces at least to the +houses. No doubt he will also connote individualities. + +The effect of the coming of the war, for me, was to enhance the feeling +until it became almost an obsession. Just as trees and fields appeared +to dread the contamination of alien presences, so with buildings. Only +with buildings--and more particularly with houses--the feeling was very +much enhanced. They seemed to dread not only contaminations, but pains, +violations, physical shames, and dissolution in fire. + +I do not mean that this feeling was new to me or came with the +coming of the war. On the contrary, it was a feeling familiar enough +in France. Long before the war it was difficult to go to Northern +France--and it was impossible to visit Paris--without seeing, or having +the attention drawn to, buildings that have been struck by shells, that +have solid cannon balls embedded in their walls, to façades riddled by +musketry or charred by one incendiarism or another. In Paris, there +were mostly relics of 1870–71; elsewhere the solid cannon balls, as +like as not, were once our own. But somehow that seemed normal: those +were the danger zones of a race. If members of a civilized people, like +the French, choose to occupy marches--zones set against barbarians, +like ourselves and the Huns--the buildings they set up in those regions +must suffer. They must suffer as children do who are taken into perils +aboard ship; or like dogs whose masters adventure with them into fields +of fire. + +It was, therefore, in the southern and central regions of France +that, before the war, I had most strangely the feeling--that feeling +of affrighted buildings. It came to me one day in a broad French +landscape, somewhere, I imagine, just south of Lyons. Perhaps it was +in Orange--or possibly in Tarascon. At any rate, it was just after the +close of the Agadir “incident”. + +I don’t know that I had taken the Agadir incident very seriously. In +fact, I hadn’t taken it seriously at all. The Prime Minister of today +had made at the Guildhall a speech that one regarded as one regarded +any other flamboyant speech--and that was the end of it. I never +imagined that we should do our duty to civilization if it came to the +point. I never imagined, indeed, that France herself would stand up. + +We came, at that date, of a generation that lived in the shadow of the +ghosts of Bismarck, Moltke, and William I--in the shadow of memories +of the siege of Paris. Prussia appeared no doubt detestable--but she +was so omnipotent that we hardly cared to think about her even for the +purpose of detesting her. Will you remember, oh Gringoire _fils_ that +shall be? + +Probably Gringoire _fils_ will not remember: that is why I find it +necessary to recapitulate at this point. Prussia, then, was there, +like something ominous but irremovable. One might say that the world, +like some stout old garment, was a good world--but it had upon it a +grease-stain that neither petrol nor spirits would eradicate; just +as you might say that your postal service or train system were good, +ignoring the fact that officials were brutal in manner; or that your +God was a good God, although He insisted on being fed with babies +roasted alive. Something like that. + +On the day after Agadir, then, I had come through Lorraine--the two +Lorraines, of which one was bubbling like a pot with men all in gray, +the other pullulating like an over-ripe cheese with men all in blue, +with baggy, scarlet breeches. One had been lost in an immense, pushing, +silent crowd at the _Gare de l’Ouest_--an immense, silent, rather +grim crowd in blue, with worsted adornments, long rifles slung over +the backs, untidy haversacks. At the bureaux of the station were +innumerable women. They gesticulated, waved to unseen units in that +tired crowd; they cried out; they wept for joy. + +But that produced no particular effect. The French are an +impressionable and a noisy people. So the women called out. The silent +soldiery were no doubt tired after the autumn manoeuvres. That was +perhaps why they were so grim. + +But somewhere, just after that, in some view near a Southern or Central +town--as I have said, it may have been Lyons or Orange; no town that +particularly mattered, near the Loire, perhaps, or the Rhone--amidst +rolling country where the harvest was already in and there were +stubble fields and new straw thatching--suddenly, out of all those +hundreds of thousands of soldiery, I remembered one. He was a little +recruit--“joining up” as we learned to say later. He was shoved into +a first-class carriage somewhere near Meaux because the train was so +full, and there, in a corner seat, with the blue-gray landscape going +past, he sat, as if lifeless, the tears dropping down his cheeks. His +rifle, haversack, packages, tin cans, slings, and things of which, +then, one didn’t recognize the importance, had been thrown in after +him by a guard, and, in among them, he sat desolate. + +In the carriage there had been besides myself two old French people--an +old gentleman with a white Napoleon, and an old, feeble lady, in +a rather queer black bonnet. I have an idea that they were French +Protestants. There were also other people: but they formed only a +chorus. + +For the old man, in kindly, but very thin tones, began to talk to the +little recruit, the old lady echoing each of his speeches: + +“The beds for a poor little recruit are hard?”--“The beds are +hard!”--“The haricot soup is thin?”--“Ah, yes, a very watery +potage.”--“Ah! Ah! Yes,” said the listeners.--“The marchings are +long; the drills difficult; the rifles heavy.”--“Yes: heavy are the +rifles!”--“Ah! Ah! Yes ...”--“And the little recruit is away from +home for three long years!”--“Yes, three years!”--“Ah! Ah! Ah! Three +so very long years!”--“The little recruit comes from the Midi--the +South!”--“The Midi! The South!”--“Ah! Ah! The South with sun and +cypress hedges and the _champs d’oliviers_ and the Mistral.”--“From +Orange! From quite near Orange ... Ah! Ah! Orange ...” And there he +was, going to Lille.... In the northwest: over against the frontier.... + +Being then “quite near Orange” a few days later--yes, it was +Orange!--and looking out from the heights of the Roman Theater over the +little town and the flat, commonplace country, I remembered suddenly +the little recruit. I think that is how the mind really works, linking +life together, for, later I shall tell you how, on the balcony of the +Comédie Française, I remembered suddenly Private ----, an old, nearly +toothless Tommy of a Kitchener’s battalion of the Lincolnshires in the +baths which had been established in the old mill at Albert--and also +Lt. Morgan of my own regiment, an officer who had spent a very hard +life in Canada, and who was killed walking up a communication trench on +his first day in the line. + +So, at Orange, before the war, I remembered suddenly the little recruit +in his blue, with his worsted adornments, sitting like a statue of +utter grief whilst the green-gray country, of northwest France, swept +past behind him. The country over which his image suddenly superimposed +itself was browner; in flat fields, the queer twigs of the vineyards +appeared untidy. I fancy the Alps were in the distance. But there were +stacks and roofs. And, it was, for me, just country. That is to say, +I attached to that countryside no particular legends, traditions, or +fables of story. It might be Provence--or it might not. But when I saw, +as it were, through the image of the recruit, the stacks, the roofs, +of the little farm buildings or of the little town, it seemed to me +that they were all crouching down, motionless, but ready to tremble, as +partridges crouch amid the stubble when beaten away over the ridge. + +I don’t want unduly to labor the point--but I am not yet certain that +I have made it. You see, that queer and sinister feeling came to me +just because of that carriageful of French people. It was not so much +because the little recruit had wept. I daresay that, as a conscript, +he was bad material. But it was because the old gentleman and all the +others in the carriage had known the hard beds, the thin soups, the +heavy rifles, and the drag of the pack-straps on the shoulders ... and +the long absences from the little homes that seemed now to cower among +the stubble fields. For there was no house in all that landscape whose +women hadn’t known the suspense of absences; there was no stack whose +builder hadn’t at one time gone, or come back. And there was not one, +of all those objects, that did not dread--that, for forty long years +had not dreaded--the hard footsteps, the shames, the violations, or the +incendiary fires of conquerors who should come from “beyond Lille on +the frontier”. + +And it was at that moment that, suddenly, it became a conscious +proposition in my mind--definite and formulated--that, first and before +everything else, we must have in the world assured nooks and houses +that never cowered and trembled--houses of which one could never by any +possibility think that they would cower and tremble. + +That, of course, is militarism. I am sorry that it has crept in. + + +[Footnotes] + +[6] For the benefit of those curious in these matters, I ask our +compiler to print in the Envoi some prose in my own original French. +It will serve for a curiosity. It appeared in a Swiss Review during +the war and was part of somewhat considerable, and generally agitated, +labors. Some poems which I wrote in almost exactly the circumstances +given above, for recitation to French troops, have been lost either +by our own or the French ministry of propaganda. An article about +Alsace-Lorraine was “lost in the post”; another, repeating it, was +suppressed by our own Ministry of Information as being too favorable to +the claims of one of our Allies. It is, of course, difficult to be a +poet in times of war. + + + + + IX + + _The Water Mill_ + + +Said Gringoire on another day: + +During one of the innumerable periods of long waiting that seemed +inseparable from our advances whether on the Somme or elsewhere, it +occurred to me that that would be a good opportunity to see what books +really would bear reading--would, that is to say, stand up against the +facts of a life that was engrossing and perilous. I wrote, therefore, +on the spur of the moment, a postcard, to a bookseller, since I had no +friends on whose generosity I cared to trespass. I asked him to send +me: Turgeniev’s “Fathers and Children”, Flaubert’s “Trois Contes”, +Mallarmé’s “Après-Midi d’un Faune”, Anatole France’s “Histoire +Comique”, or “Thaïs”, “Youth”, by Joseph Conrad, “What Maisie Knew”, +by Henry James, and “Nature in Downland”, by W. H. Hudson. I received +them all except the last, which was out of print, and I found that I +could read them all with great engrossment except the book, whichever +it was, by Anatole France. That one was so frail and tenuous in its +appeal that it failed to hold my attention at all, and I have forgotten +its name.--I hasten to add that I regarded M. France at that date as a +Pro-German, so my impatience may not have been altogether because of +its literary qualities. + +It was whilst I was reading “What Maisie Knew” that I got leave to go +with another officer and have a bath in Albert. So I took the volume +under my arm. It wasn’t really a coincidence--that I should be reading +that book. I suppose it wasn’t really a coincidence that I should meet +Maisie in the flesh. + +For, if one was to meet Maisie anywhere, it would be precisely in the +white vestibule of a Paris hotel--and, if any one was to be confided +in by one or other of her distracted parents, the episode being +international, and the parent in possession British, the person to be +confided in _would_ be one in the uniform of His Britannic Majesty, +and of substantial appearance. “What Maisie Knew,” again, happened to +be the first book by the late Mr. James that I ever read--and, if it +hadn’t happened to be the first, it would still have remained--and it +does still remain for me--the book by that very great writer that most +“matters”. For your benefit, if you “don’t know your James,” I may as +well say that this is the story of a child moving amongst elemental +passions that are veiled. But, of course, elemental passions can never +be veiled enough not to get through to the consciousness, if not to +the intelligence of the child in the house. So, in an atmosphere of +intrigues, divorces, prides, jealousies, litigations, conducted as +these things are conducted in this country, by what it is convenient +to call “the best people”, Maisie always “knows”. She knows all about +concealed relationships, as she knows all about intrigues, processes, +and the points of view of old family servants. It is, of course, a +horrible book, but it is very triumphantly true.... + +The Tommies’ bathing place at Albert was in an old mill under the +shadow of a tall factory chimney at which the Huns were perpetually +firing shells. As far as I know, they never hit it--but they made +a nice desolation in the immediately adjacent houses. The mill, +at the fork of a road, had been turned into a series of sheds and +compartments, in which there were shower baths and baths with hot and +cold water in very wet cubicles where you had duckboards underfoot. +There were Neissen or other boilers somewhere under the ramshackle +building, so that steam always filtered through and hung over the old +tiles of the roof. The other ranks of various battalions had their +bathing parades there at stated hours, so that officers could only get +a bath in between whiles or after hours. + +It was a hot day, very dusty, with the clouds from the white rubble, +which was all that there was of the center of the town, and after we +had wandered, I and another officer, round about the rubbish heaps, and +past long-closed shops that offered us, on metal placards, bicycles, +chocolates, and furniture polish, by makers well-known in France, we +decided to wait in the bath itself till the battalion in possession, +which was the last of the day, should have finished its ablutions. In +a tiny, shuttered shop we had bought, for A Company’s mess, a small +melon, five lemons, and half a bushel of windfall apples. The shop +was just to the east of the Cathedral, and we went over the empty +Presbytery. One of the floors was a great litter of books--Latin +texts mostly. One I noticed was a 17th century edition of Livy--1652, +I think. Another was a copy of Voragine’s recension of the “Golden +Legend”--but whether or no it was a valuable edition, I don’t know. We +left the books on the floor--out of indifference, so as not to commit +sacrilege and because we had already to carry a small, netted melon, +six lemons, and half a bushel of apples between us. Under my arm, +moreover, I had “What Maisie Knew” in the expensive, collected edition, +and we had also towels and soap. So there, in the long, dark, but not +cool room, just as they had been tumbled out of the shelves, probably +by the Germans, the books lay with rays of sunlight from the closed +_persiennes_ falling across broken backs, exposed leaves, half-turned +title-pages.... + +Whilst we were passing under the immense Madonna and Child that hung +over the Cathedral steps, a Hun plane dropped a couple of bombs right +into the body of the church. They made pretty loud pops, and overhead +our own Archies were popping away too. But what was really interesting +to hear was the sifting tinkle of broken stained-glass of the windows +that went on rustling, tinkling, sifting, and rustling down into the +rubble in the body of the church until we were out of earshot. + +I don’t mean to say that we hurried away. There was nowhere to hurry +to. But the German heavy battery that had the town under its especial +care was beginning to send in its evening group of shells. As far as I +can remember, at that time they let off six 5–2’s at about 10:15 A.M.; +six at 1:15 P.M., and six more just after 6:00 P.M. with an apparently +unimaginative regularity, and usually at the same localities--the +morning six falling about the desolated Place in front of the church, +the lunchtime contribution in the houses along the main street. Our +Second Battalion had thirty-two casualties in one room from one shell +of the midday group. The evening six usually fell in the fields on the +Ancre side of the town. + +So we desired to get under a roof--not that a roof is any particular +protection against high-explosive shells, but simply to get something +between one’s self and the sky. For at times, of an evening, when one +was tired, a pellucid sky would be a disagreeable thing. You didn’t +know what sort of iron shard would not be coming between the light bars +of blue and the bars of light dove color. Your flesh, too, felt very +soft to set itself up against iron shards. And, at the moment, we were +tired with the walk over the thistles of the downland and the thin air +and the heat and the chalk dust. And one wanted a read in one’s book! + +The by-streets were amazingly quiet; closed houses, shuttered +shops, mostly unhurt; not a soul was in the blazing sunlight; not a +cloud was in the sky; only, in the dust of the road three cats were +motionlessly intent on love. We knocked on a closed door of the old +mill. I found myself, having passed several darkish, steaming rooms +in which the white nudity of many men showed against the blue-gray +of flannel shirts, and the drab colors of steam-damped khaki in the +shadow--I found myself in an armchair, in a very tall, quiet room. +I had a sense that there was a tall, slim bookcase, a great table +covered with dirty copies of English funny periodicals, and empty, +cardboard fag-packets.... But I was sitting, really, in Kensington +Gardens in the broad, open turfed way that slopes from the Round Point +to the Serpentine. And there was a murmuring couple, by a tree trunk, +upon green penny chairs. (I don’t know that I wasn’t one-half of the +couple.) And Maisie was playing with Mrs. Wicks, three trees off, and +Beale Farange, a little too florid, flaming and bearded, to be really +one of the best people, was bearing down upon them--or was it us?--in +the shadow of the well-behaved foliage under the polite skies. + +I was vaguely conscious of voices. My companion was talking to some one +else--about some battalion of some regiment; about some division, not +ours; about the nature of the trenches in front of _Bazentin-le-Petit_. +But, at any rate, for the moment, the fictitious-real had got so +much the upper hand of the real-real that I was as engrossed as any +schoolboy reading Ivanhoe in the twilight. It is a good tribute to pay +the master. He was dying then. + +But I was vaguely unhappy too--unhappy about it all. I don’t mean that +I was unhappy with the ire of the moralist--for I never set up to be a +moralist. Only I felt the queer uneasiness that, in those days, one was +beginning to feel when one came in contact with civilians. + +One began to hear hollow voices, sounding portentous through closed +shutters. + +“Fall in there! A Company on the right. Towels on the left arm. +Number off!”--voices coming from the roadway. And one looked up from +one’s book, thinking the time had come for one’s bath. There existed +again the tall room, with grayish wallpaper; the atmosphere of +steam; the tall window; the tall bookcase, whose panes, behind thin, +curved mahogany divisions showed a faded, stretched curtain of torn +green silk. The table was less littered than it had been. It had a +dusty, red baize cover, much stained with ink. I suppose this was the +miller’s office. I don’t know what had become of my companion. He was a +restless, energetic boy, always on the jump. Whilst I had been in the +broad avenue in Kensington, he had probably pressed until they had got +him a bath-cubicle cleaned and ready. At any rate, a very old Tommy of +the Lincolns, toothless, whitehaired, with tunic undone and tarnished +buttons, told me I must still wait whilst my bath was preparing. + +He said I was mistaken in thinking that he was a noncombatant +permanently in charge of the baths. He was just a Tommy of the +Lincolns; he had come straight out of the trenches in front of +_Bazentin-le-Petit_ the night before. Five days before that they had +relieved us in the same trenches. Now another division had gone in. +He had been put in charge of the baths that morning, so he hadn’t had +time to clean his buttons, or even his rifle. He supposed he might get +_strafed_ for that. Yes; it was trying, the life of the trenches for a +man of his age. He was sixty-two--sixty-four--over sixty, at any rate. + +I told him to stand easy, and he sat down on the other side of the +large table and reached for an old pipe. Then he folded his wrinkled +hands before him on the cloth, looked at me hopefully, and exclaimed: +“I suppose you know the firm of Bolsover & Jupp of Golden Square. The +great solicitors.” + +I did not know them; but when I said I did not, he appeared so +distressed: “What? Not the great solicitors? To the Mansion House, the +Common Council, the Tilbury and Southend Railway!”--so distressed that +I had to pretend at last that I did. + +“Well!” he said. “I was clerk in their office for twenty-four years!” + +Twenty----four----years! He seemed to think that the statement entitled +him to feel an enormous pride. No doubt it did. + +He must have had a streak of the adventurous in his composition--but +no one could have seemed less adventurous or more static. As he sat +there, his hands, whitened by dabbling all that day in bath water, and +folded before him on the dirty red baize, he looked as if he had sat +there all his life and as if he would never move. He was so faded that +you would not have given him credit even for the amount of sharpness +necessary to a solicitor’s clerk; you would have said that he was an +aged shepherd on a bench outside the workhouse door. I think he was the +most memorable figure of the war, for me. + +Of course, one’s mind is capricious in these things--but this was +his biography, of which I have forgotten nothing--though I have, of +course, forgotten most of his exact words. For twenty-four years clerk +to Messrs. Bolsover & Jupp, this man who now was mostly preoccupied +with the fact that he would be “_strafed_” for not “cleanin’ ’is +’ipe ... I mean rifle, sir!” had gone at the age of forty-eight--to +Canada, to make his fortune, nothing less! He had left two sons, +both married, in London. He and his “missus” worked in a factory--a +“notions” factory, which was then engaged in adding to the beauty of +the world by manufacturing colored and embossed tin-lids; later it made +fancy brass buttons and can-openers. “_Et comme il était très fort, +hardi, courageux et avisé_”--he soon obtained, not like St. Julian the +Hospitalier, the command of a battalion--but a wage sufficient to let +him save money. They saved money, he and his missus, and after eight +years, they built themselves a frame house--“a proper, warm ’aouse for +them frosty winters and we had one of those ’ere proper iron stoves. +Proper!” + +On the first morning of the new house--I presume his missus had lit +the proper stove--he was jest a-puttin’ on his collar, when he heard a +crackling. He thought it was the frost in the apple trees, cracking the +boughs. But, in forty minutes the house was gone. + +He had meant to insure that afternoon. So he and his missus--he never +described her, but I think she must have been a gallant soul--aged +fifty-six a-piece, went back to boarding-house life and work in the +“notion” factory. Next autumn, coming back from work one evening, he +noticed in a neighbor’s lot, a fine apple tree. Proper, with apples on +it, these ’ere large coddlins! He offered the neighbor two dollars for +the apples on the tree and peddled them round the town. + +In five years, at that trade, he had made enough to think of +“retiring”. Then he see in the pipers that Hengland needed men. So he +ses to his missus: “We’ve got money enough to do as we please. Let’s go +and see what we can do to ’elp the ol’ gal....” As if Victoria had been +still on the throne. They came to London, and he went to see the ol’ +firm. His sons said to him: No, they were married men with families. +“So I says to the missus: ‘I ain’t got no family, I ain’t.’” And he +bought her an ’aouse at ’Endon and an annuity, through the ol’ firm. +That had taken till February, 1916. He was apologetic over the delay, +but he had wanted to see the ol’ woman settled comfortable. + +February, 1916--it was then July. Thirteen weeks training, you see, and +he had been two months in France, “mostly on this ’ere ol’ Somme.” He +was sixty-one years and four months of age. And he said he felt tired. + +There was about his narration nothing of the “narquois” humor of the +cockney; but, colorlessly, as tired farm-laborers talk, he went on +talking--as if it was just the Will of God. I met some of his officers +a couple of weeks later and asked about him, but his story grew rather +hazy. They found a Company Sergeant-Major who said he had thought the +old man was a bit too old for his job in the trenches. I daresay the +old man had found rough gentlenesses and kindly helping hands from +his mate and the noncommissioned officers of his battalion. He would +have, of course. So the C.S.M. had detailed him for caretaker at the +baths. The old man had enlisted as being thirty years and six months +of age--just half his years. The C.S.M. remembered that; but he didn’t +know what had become of the man. He rather thought he had been killed +on the 24/7/’16 by a shell pitched in the battle, but perhaps he hadn’t. + +It was mostly his tired voice and his colorless narration that had +impressed me with him. I didn’t think much about--I did not even +realize--the rather stupendous Odyssey of a life he must have had until +I stood on that balcony of the Paris theater, in the night, with the +French officers. You see, it was anyhow such a tremendous Odyssey for +every one there that a little more or less at the moment did not jump +to the eye as mattering. But, underneath, in the subconscious mind, it +mattered. + +I daresay--nay, I am sure--that it was that quality that mattered to +me more than anything else of the whole cause for thought that the war +gave one. For me--apart from Lord Kitchener and Sir Edward Grey--there +were few great figures of those years. Sir Edward Grey went out of +course once war was declared: then Kitchener went. There remained this +Tommy of the Lincolns and I think Lt. Morgan of my own battalion was +then still alive. Henri Gaudier was certainly dead--and he, in my +mind, was united to the Lincolnshire Private and Morgan. They had, all +three, a certain serenity. + +I wish I could remember Morgan’s initials. He had a brother, “I. H.”--a +nice boy. I hope he is still alive. + +But the Morgan who is dead sounded, as it were, exactly the same note +as the Lincolnshire man--the note of tired but continuous laboring +after a very hard life. You know the sort of effect a violin has when +its strings are muted. It was like that. + +I think Morgan must have had his last leave at the same time as +myself when I went out the second time; but I don’t think we went +out together. At any rate, we took together a very long railway +journey--but I don’t remember why or where--probably because I spent it +listening to the story of his life. I remember his tired movements as +he took his knapsack down from the rack whilst the train was running +into some terminus. And I remember it seemed to me to be a shame--on +the part of destiny--that he should be going out at all. I met him next +night in Coventry Street--and he did not seem to be getting much out of +Coventry Street after dark. We stood talking for a minute, and then he +disappeared among the prostitutes and the flash Jews. I expect we each +said: “Good luck, old man,” for I believe he liked me, and I must have +liked him very much. + +He was killed, as I have said, by a _minenwerfer_ as he was going up a +communication-trench on his first night. He was buried so that, in the +morning when they found him, only his feet and legs were showing. He +was probably not buried alive, because the officer who found him said +that he was smiling. I like to think of that. + +Because these were the men who needed--who _must_ have had if indeed +there be a just God or even merely a deity who gives compensations--a +period of sanctuary after their very hard labors. It doesn’t matter +about you and me.... + +But poor old Morgan ... I don’t know what age he was. I daresay he +was no more than thirty-two, little and brown and persistent--his +face was thin, aquiline, and as if hardened and sand-blasted by the +perpetual confrontation of winds full of hail. For he too had gone out +to Canada--but as a boy, apparently without much capital, to work for +wheat-farmers. + +I suppose most people know something about working for Canadian +farmers--the long solitudes, the distance of the towns, the protracted +buggy rides over immense plains. Well, I seem to have an extraordinary +sense of it--just from the way Morgan talked on that long train +journey. I don’t know that I remember incidents. Perhaps I could. I +remember that, knowing little about horses at the beginning, he was +asked by the boss if he would take a helluva vicious team to the +nearest township to fetch something, a plow, I think. And he had done +it. + +But the main of the story was just the long strain--long hours merging +into long years, with the muscles always a little overstrained. Not +much, but a little. Because, though gallant, persistent, and showing +it as the Welsh do, he was small for wrestling with tree trunks and +immense plains. I remember his saying that when he had dug holes for +the posts of wire fencing, he poured water in so that the posts should +freeze solid in their places. + +Well, he too must have been “_hardi, courageux, et avisé_”--leading +a long, uncolored life of sober chastity, without many visits to the +townships even, let alone the towns. For, as he sat in the carriage, he +said that he owned property--timber lots and other lots, bought out of +the savings of a laborer. + +And he spoke of going back there, _après la guerre finie_--with the +serene resignation of a man with no other imaginable destiny before +him. It was to be more toil and more toil and more toil. He did not, +apparently, ask for--certainly he did not imagine--any other future. So +that resignation is not the right word. Serenity is.... + + + + + X + + _From a Balcony_ + + +One of the French officers, on the balcony of the theater, during the +_entr’acte_ of _Lakme_, was describing, with that depressed neatness of +quiet diction that is at the disposal of every educated Frenchman, the +sleep of a French territorial on an uncompleted traverse. The others +had, as it were--and as if by preconcertion--capped stories in lauding +and pitying the _territoriaux_. These troops, it may be as well to +point out, were something like the Labor Battalions that subsequently +we raised. I fancy we had nothing of the sort at that date and indeed, +between Hélie and Corbie I had lately seen the Guards’ Brigade doing +fatigue that, in French-France would have been performed by old fathers +and grandfathers. That, of course, is nothing to the discredit of that +great brigade. As soon as battalions, brigades, or divisions came out +of the trenches for a “rest”, they were given the cheerful jobs of +repairing rear-line trenches, digging drains, cleaning out latrines, +and the like. When we came out from the Somme for a “month’s rest”, +first A Company, then B, C, and D were given an all-night fatigue--of +mending the Albert-Amiens road! And in August! Then we were moved up +into the salient. + +At any rate, slowly, coldly, and without the shadow of a shade of +cordiality, in the blackness of the Paris night, the French officers +piled it up. We were not popular in France at that date, and I don’t +know that, except as individuals, we deserved popularity. That does +not matter. The fact remained that they were “out” to make one feel +that from under every little cowering roof in France, from Orange +as from the frontier by Mentone to the other frontier by Longwy, +old, stiff men, with horny hands and faded eyes had marched over the +endless roads with the poplars to their too-heavy labors amidst the +bursting shells.... From under _every_ cowering roof of every township, +town, hamlet, and parish; from every _arrondissement_; from every +_subprefecture_; from every _departement_. Coldly, like inquisitors, +in the darkness, they let me have that information. It was not really +necessary. I knew it already. But I was too tired, harassed, dispirited +to tell them so. I, too, was old for that job. _Atque ego_.... + +For I couldn’t get away from the conviction that they were talking +at me with a purpose--that they were, in indirect terms, telling me +that it was a scandal that the Brigade of Guards should be employed in +clearing out latrines, work which, in French-France, was performed by +the fathers and the grandfathers--the guards being tired out and worn +down by such employment when they were such splendid fighting material +and should have been really rested. I daresay our own war office would +have answered that that was part of our discipline and that “fatigues” +when men were “resting” were good for their livers and kept them “fit”. +There is such a school of thought. Anyhow, I am not writing a military +treatise and do not ask that any attention should be paid to my views. +I am only chronicling the psychology of an Infantry officer as he was +affected by certain circumstances. + +And I _couldn’t_ get away from the conviction that the French officers +were talking “officially”. In those days there had just been published +in Paris a book of “official” propaganda by myself. It would not have +been a different book if it had been unofficial or if there had been +no war. It simply advanced the theory that in the world of letters and +ideas, for personal industry and pride in work as work, it is only +France that matters among the nations. I had said that when I was +twenty; I resaid it then being over double that age; I resay it today; +and I will resay it as my eyes close in death. No one in my country +has ever paid any attention to one’s saying it, and no one ever will. +Why should they? Letters and ideas have so little place in our body +politic and the doctrine of pride in work as work; of engrossment and +of serenity; of aloofness from the world and of introspection with no +other purpose--is here anathema both with the Right which hates the +doctrine of Art for Art’s sake and with the Left, which hates that of +Labor for the sake of Labor. Yet I see no other lesson in life. That is +why I have collected these notes upon sheepfolds--this long lay sermon. + +So this particular piece of official propaganda was, just then, being +accorded an extraordinary amount of notoriety in France. The skill +of our own propaganda people and the patriotism of distinguished +Frenchmen accounted for that. It was reviewed at enormous length +and with enormous headlines by Academicians, by assailants of the +French Academy, and by the Mayors of Rouen, Lyons, and Toulouse. It +was “communicated” to the Institute of France; publicly laid upon the +shelves of the city library of Yvetot. And it was no doubt on that +account that the French officers presented official views to me so +carefully and so excruciatingly. They imagined that I had weight in +the Councils of the Empire, as would have been the case in their own +country. + +While they talked the black houses round the market had infinite depths +of violet against the white stars. But all the same I was looking at +the view from the top of the great brick Roman Theater at Orange--over +the flats with the ragged, stunted vines, the stubble, and the thatched +roofs. Yes, I knew that beside Orange the little houses cowered beside +the furrows and that on the other frontier great, gaunt piles were +subsiding under scrolls and tongues of flame, going down to a last rest +as the very tired men of a platoon will fall out beside the road. And +the great buildings never get up again. + +For I never feel that houses have souls. So that, when, out there, you +saw a house go down as fire, it seemed to do it luxuriously almost. +It was finished with men and their ways. It had no doubt borne for +long with their cruelties, stupidities, imbecilities; with its windows +for mournful eyes it had seen the generations flit past and fade. It +had known cold that made its timbers crack and the great heat of the +sun warping them. But beneath the flames, slowly, it would sink to +the earth from which it had come. Yes, luxuriously, as men stretch +themselves down for a long rest.... + +The French officer was still talking about the old territorial who +had fallen asleep. It seems that the old man had gone on working, +after his mates had been taken off for a spell, on the inner face of +the traverse--which is a sort of pillar of earth with a gangway round +it, left in a trench to minimize the lateral spread of shell fire. He +had gone on working--out of pure zeal, the officer said. The officer +addressed me with hard bitterness. I suppose he thought I was some +sort of noncombatant. The staff-captain told me afterward that this +officer, being aide-de-camp to one of the most famous French generals +of division of the day had, the night before, attended his chief to a +dinner--given, I think, by the British A.P.M.--in the course of which +the heroic doings of a great many British Regiments were extolled. And +then, in a pause, an English lady had said to the French general: “And +the French haven’t done so badly.”... I was being made to suffer for +this. + +And I did suffer a good deal--more I think than I ever suffered. +The officer went on and on about his old territorial. He was there, +asleep, in the light of a single candle stuck in the clay. He was as +it were spread-eagled against the earth. His legs apart he had raised +his hammer to strike his chisel; both his arms were over his head, +stretched out. And he was just asleep. It was touching; it was terrible +in its simplicity, the officer said. He said the territorial came from +Passy--as it might be Putney. + +It was just at this point that I remembered Morgan and the old man of +the bath-mill. I daresay you will think it merely a literary trick, +when I say that I saw them. + +But I _saw_ them: against an immense black mass fringed by flaming +houses. I saw those two, tired faces; the two serene, honest, and +simple souls, who had the Kingdom of God within them. And it seemed to +me that they had died in vain. + +It was for me the most terrible moment of the war. + +I daresay that for many people it was the most horrible period of +the war. For, by then it had become apparent that the Somme advance +was a fiasco--a useless butchery. We knew we should never advance. I +daresay the French knew it better than we. Certainly the voices of +these officers drove it home: they spoke as if they were talking to a +condemned criminal. And I think it was not right of them. + +We, at any rate, were the old voluntary army. We had come, aged or +young, from the ends of the earth. I don’t know whether it is worse +to be old or young in a great war--it was bad enough to be old! And I +don’t know whether it was better or worse to have come from the ends +of the earth--or from Passy. Or to have passed all one’s life beneath +a roof that shuddered with fear.... If you had done that, you were +more used to the idea, and to the discipline of the idea, of war. You +discussed the moves, here and there, more _en connoisseur_. + +But I doubt if one of those men on the balcony felt the war as I +did. We, after all, brought so many more emotions to it. You had +only to contrast Paris, gray, sober, much as usual, with the roads +under leisurely repair, and the old horses and the old _cochers_ and +_voitures_ dawdling in the shadow of the plane-trees--with London, +plastered with endless appeals in blue and scarlet and yellow--London, +hurrying, exclaiming, clamoring.... The old territorial had lived +all his life under the shadow--and it came. The old private of the +Lincolnshires had never thought of such an end. But it came! And Europe +flamed.... + +And the worst of it all was that one was beginning to doubt. Until +then one had been carried by the fine wave of enthusiasm. It seemed to +embrace the whole country. And we in all the holes, valleys, over all +the downlands of the Somme, where the sun shone with its chalky rays as +it does by L----, had had a great singleness of purpose and had been +confident that we had the support of a great singleness of purpose +extending across a world. But doubt had begun to creep in.... + +I wished, then, that I had not read “What Maisie Knew” in the bath +at Albert. I wished that the daily papers would not reach us. The +atmosphere shown so overwhelmingly in the book was beginning to be too +close to the atmosphere reflected in the papers. And we were, truly, +very lonely out there; truly we were some millions of men, suspended on +a raft, in limitless space. + +And we were beginning to feel a curious dislike of the civilians whom +up till then we had so trusted--a curious dislike that was never to +die. I don’t know what was going on at home: political intrigues no +doubt; strikes possibly. But there seemed to prevail a tenuous, misty +struggle of schemes--just the atmosphere of “Maisie.” I don’t think +that many of those who were one’s comrades _in illo die_ did not at +times feel a certain hopelessness. It was as if at times we said: What +are those people after? Aren’t they--aren’t they surely?--“out” to make +huge profits from our poor Tommies; to cut down the rations of our +poor Tommies; and to gain notoriety by forcing on a timorous central +government their own schemes for the training of poor Tommies--schemes +that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of our poor +fine Tommies? And, when their own attractions were enhanced by the +bringing off of this or that scheme, intrigue, or cabal, they would +vote to themselves ribbons, orders, power, divorces, and the right to +gallons of petrol. And so they would sit in the chairs of the lost and +the forgotten amidst a world where the ideals which sent all those +millions to destruction were lost too ... and forgotten. You will +say that this is bitter. It is. It was bitter to have seen the 38th +Division murdered in Mametz Wood--and to guess what underlay that!... + +And then the French officer said what I knew he would say: what I had +known that, with all his cold lack of rhetoric, he was working up to. +He said that the old, sleeping territorial looked like Our Lord on +Calvary. I could have screamed. Upon my soul I could have screamed. +And, if I hadn’t thought it just possible that his dislike attached to +me personally, I daresay I should have talked to him as I talked to the +other French officer as the reader may see in _Une Partie de Cricket_. +But the faint hope that it was just myself that he despised and not +poor Morgan and the others--all the poor others along that long front +of ours--that faint hope that he was attacking only me and not the Army +of the Somme just made me hold my peace until we went back into the +theater. And in the theater I suddenly remembered--as clearly as I had +remembered the others--Henri Gaudier. He, too, seemed to stand before +me and to smile at me a little, as if he found me comic.... + +I do not know why it is that now, when I think of Gaudier, the cadence +that I hear in my mind should be one of sadness. For there was never +any one further from sadness than Henri Gaudier, whether in his being +or in his fate. He had youth; he had grace of person and of physique; +he had a sense of the comic. He had friendships, associates in his +work, loves, the hardships that help youth. He had genius, and he died +a hero. + +He comes back to me best as he was at a function of which I remember +most, except for Gaudier, disagreeable sensations--embarrassments. It +was an “affair”--one of two--financed by a disagreeably obese Neutral +whom I much disliked. That would be in late July, 1914. The Neutral +was much concerned to get out of a country and a city which appeared +to be in danger. Some one else--several some ones--were intensely +anxious, each of them, to get money out of the very fat, very monied, +disagreeably intelligent being. And I was ordered, by _Les Jeunes_, +to be there. It was a parade, in fact. I suppose that even then I +was regarded as a, I hope benevolent, grandfather, by a number of +members of an advanced school.[7] Anyhow, that comes back to me as a +disagreeable occasion of evil passions, evil people, of bad, flashy +cooking in an underground haunt of pre-war smartness. + +I daresay it was not really as bad as all that--but when I am forced to +receive the hospitality of persons whom I dislike, the food seems to +go bad, and there is a bad taste in the mouth, symbol of a disturbed +liver. So the band played in that cave and the head ached and there +were nasty foreign waiters and bad, very expensive, champagne. + +There were also speeches--and one could not help knowing that the +speeches were directed at the Neutral’s breeches pockets. The Neutral +leaned heavily sideways at table, devouring the bad food at once +with gluttony and nonchalance. It talked about its motor car, which +apparently was at Liverpool or Southampton--somewhere where there were +liners, quays, cordage, cranes; all ready to abandon a city which would +be doomed should Armageddon become Armageddon. The speeches went on.... + +Then Gaudier rose. It was suddenly like a silence that intervened +during a distressing and ceaseless noise. I don’t know that I had +ever noticed him before except as one amongst a crowd of dirtyish, +bearded, slouch-hatted individuals, like conspirators; but, there, +he seemed as if he stood amidst sunlight; as if indeed he floated in +a ray of sunlight, like the dove in Early Italian pictures. In a life +during which I have known thousands of people; thousands and thousands +of people; during which I have grown sick and tired of “people” so +that I prefer the society of cabbages, goats, and the flowers of the +marrow plant; I have never otherwise known what it was to witness an +appearance which symbolized so completely--aloofness. It was like the +appearance of Apollo at a creditors’ meeting. It was supernatural. + +It was just that. One didn’t rub one’s eyes: one was too astounded. +Only, something within one wondered what the devil he was doing there. +If he hadn’t seemed so extraordinarily efficient, one would have +thought he had strayed, from another age, from another world, from +some Hesperides. One keeps wanting to say that he was Greek, but he +wasn’t. He wasn’t of a type that strayed: and indeed I seem to feel +his poor bones moving in the August dust of Neuville St. Vaast when +I--though even only nearly!--apply to him a name that he would have +hated. At any rate, it was amazing to see him there; since he seemed so +entirely inspired by inward visions that one wondered what he could +be after--certainly not the bad dinner, the attentions of the foreign +waiters, a try at the Neutral’s money-bag strings. No, he spoke as if +his eyes were fixed on a point within himself; and yet, with such humor +and such good-humor--as if he found the whole thing so comic! + +One is glad of the comic in his career; it would otherwise have been +too much an incident of the Elgin marble type. But even the heroism of +his first, abortive “joining up” was heroico-comic. As I heard him tell +the story, or at least as I remember it, it was like this: + +He had gone to France in the early days of the war--and one accepted +his having gone as one accepted the closing of a door--of a tomb, if +you like. Then, suddenly, he was once more there. It produced a queer +effect; it was a little bewildering in a bewildering world. But it +became comic. He had gone to Boulogne and presented himself to the +Recruiting Officer--an N. C. O., or captain, of the old school, white +moustachios, _cheveux en brosse_. Gaudier stated that he had left +France without having performed his military duties, but, since _la +patrie_ was in danger, he had returned like any other good little +_piou-piou_. But the sergeant, martinet-wise, as became a veteran of +1870, struck the table with his fist and exclaimed: + +“_Non, mon ami_, it is not _la patrie_, but you who are in danger. You +are a deserter; you will be shot.” So Gaudier was conducted to a motor, +in which, under the military escort of two files of men, a sergeant, +a corporal, and a lieutenant, he was whirled off to Calais. In Calais +Town he was placed in an empty room. Outside the door were stationed +two men with large guns, and Gaudier was told that, if he opened the +door, the guns would go off. That was his phrase. He did not open the +door. He spent several hours reflecting that though they manage these +things better in France, they don’t manage them so damn well. At the +end of that time he pushed aside the window blind and looked out. The +room was on the ground floor; there were no bars. Gaudier opened the +window; stepped into the street, just like that--and walked back to +Boulogne. + +He returned to London. + +He was drawn back again to France by the opening of the bombardment of +Rheims Cathedral. This time he had a safe conduct from the Embassy. I +do not know the date of his second joining up or the number of his +regiment. At any rate, he took part in an attack on a Prussian outpost +on Michaelmas Eve, so he had not much delayed, and his regiment was +rendered illustrious, though it cannot have given him a deuce of a +lot of training. He did not need it. He was as hard as nails and as +intelligent as the devil. He was used to forging and grinding his own +chisels. He was inured to the hardships of poverty in great cities; he +was accustomed to hammer and chisel at his marble for hours and hours +of day after day. He was a “fit” townsman--and it was “fit” townsmen +who conducted the fighting of 1914 when the war was won: it was _les +parigots_. + + * * * * * + +Of his biography I have always had only the haziest of notions. I know +that he was the son of a Meridional craftsman, a carpenter and joiner, +who was a good workman and no man could have a better. His father was +called Joseph Gaudier--so why he called himself B’jesker, I do not +know. I prefer really to be hazy; because Gaudier will always remain +for me something supernatural. He was for me a “message” at a difficult +time of life. His death and the death at the same time of another +boy--but quite a commonplace, nice boy--made a rather doubtful way +quite plain to me. + +All my life I have been very much influenced by a Chinese proverb--to +the effect that it would be hypocrisy to seek for the person of the +Sacred Emperor in a low teahouse. It is a bad proverb, because it is so +wise and so enervating. It has “ruined my career”. + +When, for instance, I founded a certain Review, losing, for me, immense +sums of money on it, or when the contributors unanimously proclaimed +that I had not paid them for their contributions--which was not true +because they certainly had among them a quantity of my money in their +pockets--or when a suffrage bill failed to pass in the Commons; or +when some one’s really good book has not been well reviewed; or when +I have been robbed, slandered, or abortively blackmailed--in all the +vicissitudes of life, misquoted on it, I have always first shrugged +my shoulders and murmured that it would be hypocrisy to seek for the +person of the Sacred Emperor in a low tea-shop. It meant that it +would be hypocrisy to expect a taste for the finer letters in a large +public’s discernment in critics; honesty in æsthetes or literati; +public spirit in lawgivers; accuracy in pundits; gratitude in those +one has saved from beggary, and so on. + +So, when I first noticed Henri Gaudier--which was in an underground +restaurant, the worst type of thieves’ kitchen--these words rose to my +lips. I did not, you understand, believe that he would exist and be so +wise, so old, so gentle, so humorous, such a genius. I did not really +believe that he had shaved, washed, assumed garments that fitted his +great personal beauty. + +For he had great personal beauty. If you looked at him casually, +you imagined that you were looking at one of those dock-rats of the +Marseilles quays, who will carry your baggage for you, pimp for you; +garotte you and throw your body overboard--but who will do it all +with an air, an ease, an exquisiteness of manners! They have, you +see, the traditions and inherited knowledge of such ancient nations +in Marseilles--of Etruscans, Phoenicians, Colonial Greeks, Late +Romans, Troubadours, Late French--and that of those who first sang the +Marseillaise! And many of them, whilst they are young, have the amazing +beauty that Gaudier had. Later, absinthe spoils it--but for the time, +they are like Arlésiennes. + +All those wisdoms, then, looked out of the eyes of Gaudier--and God +only knows to what he threw back--to Etruscans or Phoenicians, no +doubt, certainly not to the Greeks who colonized Marseilles, or the +Late Romans who succeeded to them. He seemed, then, to have those +wisdoms behind his eyes somewhere. And he had, certainly, an astounding +erudition. + +I don’t know where he picked it up--but his conversation was +overwhelming--and his little history of sculpture by itself will give +you more flashes of inspiration than you will ever, otherwise, gather +from the whole of your life. His sculpture itself affected me just as +he did. + +In odd places--the sitting rooms of untidy and eccentric poets with no +particular merits, in appalling exhibitions, in nasty night clubs, in +dirty restaurants one would be stopped for a moment in the course of a +sentence by the glimpse of a brutal chunk of rock that seemed to have +lately fallen unwanted from a slate quarry, or, in the alternative, by +a little piece of marble that seemed to have the tightened softness of +the haunches of a fawn--of some young creature of the underwoods, an +ancient, shyly-peopled, thicket. + +The brutalities would be the work of Mr. Epstein--the other, Gaudier. +For Gaudier’s work had just his own, personal, impossible quality. And +one did not pay much attention to it simply because one did not believe +in it. It was too good to be true. Remembering the extraordinary rush +that the season of 1914 was, it appears a miserable tragedy, but it is +not astonishing, that one’s subliminal mind should whisper to me, every +time we caught that glimpse of a line: “It is hypocrisy to search for +the person of the Sacred Emperor in a low tea-house.” It was of course +the devil who whispered that. So I never got the sensation I might +have got from that line. Because one did not believe in that line. One +thought: “It is just the angle at which one’s chair in the restaurant +presents to one an accidental surface of one of these young men’s +backs.” + +And then a day came when there was no doubt about it. Gaudier was a +Lance Corporal in the 4th Section, 7th Company, 129th Regt. of Infantry +of the Line.[8] Gaudier was given his three stripes for “gallantry in +face of the enemy”. One read in a letter: + +“I am at rest for three weeks in a village, that is, I am undergoing +a course of study to be promoted officer when necessary during an +offensive.” + +Or in another letter: + +“I imagine a dull dawn, two lines of trenches, and in between explosion +on explosion with clouds of black and yellow smoke, a ceaseless noise +from the rifles, a few legs and heads flying, and me standing up +among all this like to Mephisto--commanding: ‘_Feu par salves à 250 +mètres--joue--feu!_’ + +“Today is magnificent, a fresh wind, clear sun, and larks singing +cheerfully....” + +That was it! + +But just because it was so commonplace; so sordid, so within the scope +of all our experiences, powers of observation, and recording, it all +seemed impossible to believe that in _that_ particular low tea-house +there were really Youth, Beauty, Erudition, Fortune, Genius--to believe +in the existence of a Gaudier! The devil still whispered to me: “That +would be hypocrisy!” For if you would not believe that genius could +show itself during the season of 1914, how _could_ you believe that, of +itself, inscrutable, noiseless, it would go out of our discreditable +world where the literati and the æsthetes were sweating, harder than +they ever, ever did after _le mot juste_ or the Line of Beauty, to +find excuses that should keep them from the trenches--that, so quietly, +the greatest genius of them all would go into that world of misery. + +And then I read: + +“_Mort pour la patrie._ + +“After ten months of fighting and two promotions for gallantry, on the +field, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, in a charge at Neuville St. Vaast. June +5, 1915.” + +Alas, when it was too late, I had learned that, to this low tea-shop +that the world is, from time to time the Sacred Emperor may pay visits. +So I began to want to kill certain people. I still do--for the sake of +Gaudier and those few who are like him. + +For the effect of reading that announcement was to make me remember +with extraordinary vividness a whole crowd of the outlines of pieces of +marble, of drawings, of tense and delicate lines at which, in the low +tea-house of the year before’s season, I had only nonchalantly glanced. +The Sacred Emperor, then, had been there. He seemed, at last, to be an +extraordinarily real figure--as real as one of the other sculptor’s +brutal chunks of granite. Only, because of the crowd one hadn’t seen +him--the crowd of blackmailers,[9] sneak-thieves, suborners, pimps, +reviewers, and the commonplace and the indifferent--the Huns of London. +Well, it became--and it still more remains! one’s duty to try to kill +them. There are probably several Sacred Emperors still at large--though +the best of them will have been killed, as Gaudier was. + + * * * * * + +It was whilst I was inside the theater that I registered, as the saying +is, a mental vow that I would pay no attention any more to public +affairs. To do so would drive one mad. I decided that I must put my +head down under the cloth for the rest of the war. And I think I did +so. Except for the occasional duty of writing propaganda--which from +that time onwards I did in French--I paid no more attention to the +politics of my country or the world. I just did the collar-work of +the Infantry Officer until the 11/11/’17. After that, my views being +too favorable to France, the Ministry of Information and the censor +suppressed or lost in the post my rather excited writings on the Terms +of Peace.... That would be about three years ago today. It seems a long +while.... + +The inside of the theater was brilliant, formal, a little shabby if you +looked closely. Of the performance of _Lakme_--an opera that I love +very much, since the music is soft, moving, and generous--I remember +very little. So it must have been a good rendering with no performer +in particular “sticking out”. The British naval officers were rather +funny. And I think it is no left-handed compliment to the composer, +Délibes--though it may be to the librettist--to say that my thoughts +were elsewhere. The music was just sensuous pleasure; the aspect of +the house, spreading round in great lines of polychromatic humanity, +more regular than is the case with most theaters in London--more suave +and more classical--soothed one after what was certainly an emotional +crisis; an escaped danger. For it would have mortified me for the +rest of my life if I had burst out under the goadings of the French +officers. But, by the Grace of God and the skin of my teeth, I had +retained, quite certainly, my aspect of insular phlegm. + +Still it had been exhausting--and I was enervated. And then, quite +suddenly, it came to me to wonder what was going on outside the +theater--what was going on under the black roof of the night, with +the infinitely numerous population of leaves, blades, branches, reeds +beside streams, great trees in the woodlands--and with the silent, +watchful population of the thickets where the shadows are so extremely +deep. I found myself wondering what time of year it was. And I said: +the first weeks of September. For that morning I had recollected that, +two years before on that day, the Germans had turned back from in front +of Paris. Forty-six years before they had won the battle of Sedan. + +It was, then, during the first weeks of September. But what +happened--in September? One forgot. One had repaired trenches; one had +commanded fatigues digging drains round Bn.H.Q., to the left of Mount +Kemmel. One had dug so efficiently that, during the first thunderstorm +the repaired trenches below were neck-deep in water. All that had +passed in “the Country”. + +But what happened in September? There were no doubt apples on the +trees, and, certainly, it was the time of year when many cobwebs, frail +nets across the tall grasses on commons or single, brilliant filaments, +streamed out and glistened on still, bright days. + +There would be plums, too; but what about damsons? Wasn’t it early for +them? And how about garden peas? Were they over? And field peas? And +would there be an autumn feel in the air? + +It was twenty-one days to Michaelmas--and Michaelmas certainly brought +the autumn feeling, with touches of vine in the shadow of yellowing +plants and the leaves of sunflowers drooping straight down, like +unfurled colors on windless days. But in copses, shaves, and spinneys +were the leaves on forest trees yet turning? Were roads yet hard and +frosty in the morning? And were horses yet sluggish and apt to stumble +on roads as they do at the turn of the year and the fall of the +leaf?... Time to give ’em a ball. + +The baffled mind seemed to stumble at all these questions. One was in +the theater and having been forbidden by the will to think that what +surrounded the great walls with their human lining was a vast black +map fringed by conflagrations, the poor mind hung faltering. + +It fell suddenly back on contemplating the green nook that--on the down +behind Albert--it had reserved for itself. Yes, the mind actually did +that. And, across the gilding of the proscenium, across Lakme’s singing +the great song of yearning, there hung a slight shimmer of green that +intensified itself and took shape like a recumbent oval.... And there +began to become visible the yellowing, grayish rows of broad beans; a +rather ragged hedge and a little stream beyond, level with the grass +and fringed with the glistening stems of clumps of rushes that had been +cut for thatching stacks. Because it was indeed September. + + +[Footnotes] + +[7] For the benefit of the uninstructed reader, I may say that new +Schools of Art, like new commercial enterprises, need both backers with +purses and backers of a certain solid personal appearance or weight +in the world. And it is sometimes disagreeable, though it is always a +duty, to be such an individual. + +[8] The knowledgeable reader will observe that here Gringoire has +consulted the monograph on Gaudier by Mr. Pound--the best piece of +craftsmanship that Mr. Pound has put together; or at least the best +this writer has read of that author’s. + +[9] Gringoire is too fond of this word--which he uses in a special +sense to indicate persons--mostly reviewers--who do not appreciate +the work of himself and his school. In his conversation he introduced +at this point a long denunciation of the ---- Literary Supplement, +principally because, whilst purporting to be a literary paper, it +devotes, according to him, 112/113ths of its space to books about +facts, at the expense of works of the imagination. So he calls that +respectable journal a blackmailing organ. Since, however, this is a +topic that can hardly interest the non-literary, and since the literary +are hardly likely to read these pages, the compiler has taken the +liberty of not reporting these sallies. It may be true that Pontius +Pilate is more criminal than the crucified thieves--but it is _never_ +politic to say so. + + + + + XI + + _“Rosalie Prudent”_ + + +One evening the compiler addressed Gringoire, who was making notes in a +seed catalogue, somewhat as follows: + +“Do you remember, oh Gringoire, what it is to awake of a September +morning at dawn? Being _horticulteur_, your first thought will be for +the weather: being _poète_, your first thought will be for your new +volume. And the two first thoughts will overlay the one the other, +according as chance wills. But the still mist is so reassuring as to +the weather that you can put that aside and think only of your volume. +The goodly fruits of the earth in the late summer season, the plums, +the apples, the quinces; the maize, the marrows, the melons, have +yet another day, for sure, of bright, warm sun, of gorgeous, mellow +downward shavers of sun. They, surely, shall stand motionless in the +warmth. + +“But the poems ... oh my poor Gringoire of the dawn: the great, +half-finished epic! Ah that! that seemed so glowing too when last night +in the golden light of the two candles, in your poor little, rickety +salon that yet has a style of its own ... you read them to Madame +Sélysette ... the poor verses that you read so famously to little +Madame!... In the dawn, ah, the wolf of the night that says: ‘Hou ... +hou’ from the mountains has not gone home! Almost you hear his sniffing +round the little green door that, because yours is a land of idylls +and the innocent, you have left open. One day the wolf with the great, +cocked hairy ears, with the long white teeth like razors for their +sharpness shall come in. You will hear upon the uncarpeted stairway the +pad of the feet; the little thin door will push open, and raised at the +foot of your small white bed, you will see the great beast; the huge +head; the bloodshot eyes.... And Madame, in the other little white bed +across the small white room will moan a little in her sleep.... + +“All the poor verses: the little lines! How shall they be the barbed +wire fence that shall keep the wolf from the door of the cottage? +Why, he could push the poor, tindery old walls down with his snout! +The poor verses! They halt ... or no, they do not halt. We are too +good a craftsman for that! But assuredly they do not run. And the +publisher! What shall he say? And Madame with such a need of a new +gown: it should have been of velvet, puffed in the arms, and slashed +to show an undercoat of crushed rose silk. And to tell the truth--your +_pantalons?_ How they shine in the seat, like a mirror! And the public! +Ah, the grim public that has no taste but for dominoes in the cafés of +an evening! How shall they care for the savor of lavender and rosemary +in your smaller verses? What, to them, are Melpomene and Mélisande and +Maleine and Musidore of your epic! And the cursed ‘machinery’ of the +enormous poem! What has become of your great device that was to take +the story forward from line 1100 to line 1424? Forgotten! O Apollo! O +Euterpe! Forgotten--gone--your brain is failing. Your diet of oatmeal +and junket is not enough to water your gray matter with rich red blood. +It is all over ... and the great wolf says ‘Hou!... hou!’ upon the +mountains, though the mists are rising. And Madame, you can see, is +smiling in her sleep! Ah! When you are suspended by your cravat from +the old thorn tree, she will marry the rich son of the apothecary.... + +“And then ... suddenly you remember! Maleine became a rose tree, and +the slipper of glass was hidden in a bath.... Yes: it was like that. +The device has come back to you. Hurray! Hurray! And the verses shall +glow and sparkle. And damn the public and damn and damn the publisher, +and Madame is a sweet, plump angel. + +“And you spring from your bed, oh Gringoire, but with the footfall of a +panther for fear the creaking of the very old oak floor boards should +awaken your own Sélysette. And quick and quick to your dressing room, +which is on state occasions the spare bedroom. Then you wash in the +brick-floored kitchen. And how crisp and reviving is the cold water on +the skin--just as it used to be when you came out of the tent or the +dugout or the hut, down before Péronne in the old days. And there is no +war. + +“No war to awaken the birds that are still sleeping in the massed +shadows of trees all unmoving in the deep mists. A noble, long, +quiet, warm day of September is before you. A day of _moissons_ and +_vendanges_, ripening securely, still; with line added to line in +the morning; and nothing to do in that rich little garden of yours; +and line added to line of the epic all the afternoon. And a stroll +in the level, sinking rays of the sun with Madame Sélysette, like a +mysterious _jeune fille_ once more, to sing to you, in the carefreedom +of her heart, the song of the raggle-taggle gipsies, oh.... + + ‘Oh what care I for my goose-feather-bed + The sheets turned down so bravely oh! + Tonight I’ll sleep on a cold open heath + Along with the raggle-taggle gipsies, oh!’ + +as she was used to sing it in the days when she left the roof of her +father, the so very rich goldsmith of Toulouse, to take up with you, oh +my so very poor poet. _Vogue la galère!_ I hear you say. For are there +not fine cabbages in the garden; and the haricots and the tomatoes +all a-ripening! And does not Madame make an incomparable _potage +bonne femme_ with these things and a few little bones! A fig for the +wolf! And if she cannot have her gown of velvet--when do her dark +eyes sparkle more vivaciously than when in her black hair she wears a +coronal of the scarlet berries of bryony? And if the _pantalons_ shine +in the seat, let them shine till they wear through! And then there will +be a piece of sacking to insert, whose remainder shall stuff up the +holes of the so very old roof. And Melpomene and Mélisande and Musidore +shall dance to the tune of green sleeves round the rose tree that was +Maleine! Aye, they shall dance in the sun till the crystal slipper +falls out of the bath of dew. And already Phœbus Apollo has chased into +the farthest recesses of the Alpilles the craven old wolf.... + +“And, fastening your collar, you rush into the room where Madame is +asleep, and you shout out: + +“‘I have it! We will put Sweet Williams, and behind them Canterbury +Bells, and behind them Hollyhocks, in the bed along the path. And +tulips before the door!’ + +“It is true that the Hollyhocks will then be to the south of +the Canterbury Bells, and they again to the south of the Sweet +Williams--the tall plants standing in the light of the short ones, +which is against the maxims of safe gardeners. But we must chance +something, as we chance life when we are so very poor and so very +simple and have to adventure down the years with no stores of gold, +under a very old roof with half the tiles off. And besides: maybe next +summer will be a very dry summer, and then the shade of the Hollyhock +on the Canterbury Bells, and of the Canterbury Bells on the Sweet +Williams will be a positive benefit.... + +“And, truly, in all the gardening year--which is all pleasure except +for such lets and hindrances as God decrees to you in order that +you may remember that you are human--there is no pleasure to equal +the pleasures of a mid-September day. For there is promise in the +chrysanthemums; the asters, petunias, and geraniums are still bright; +marrows, pumpkins, gourds, maize, plums, apples, pears, damsons are +drinking in the sun and turning all the colors from rich green to +orange and tomato-scarlet. There are still flowers on the roses and on +the sweet-pea hedge. And, if those foliages are thinning, through their +silver and yellow haze you can see the bright mosaic of next summer’s +beds! Ah, brave mid-September!” + + * * * * * + +To this Gringoire answered--a little grimly: + +In a mid-September twilight, the rain poured down on Pont-de-Nieppe. +Depressed Highlanders lounged along the street in front of the row +of villas that ran from the church to the rear of the town--taking +our own lines as the front. One’s horse and one’s orderly’s horse +slipped disagreeably on the wet granite setts of the pavé, and one +seemed to have gone backwards and forwards, in a deluge over greasy +roads for hours and hours--for a whole lifetime. One seemed never +to have done anything else. It was a billeting job that we had been +sent upon. And, when we had billeted everything we could think of, +there still remained some disreputable other ranks connected with the +divisional canteen, for whom we had not found holes, corners, and a +shop. And the division we were relieving had apparently vanished and +so had the Town Marshal, whilst the _Maire_ was so obliging that he +placed the whole, empty town at our disposal. It would have helped +us more if he had been less obliging and had dictatorially provided +us with one shop into which to stick the canteen and its confounded +sutlers. And it poured, and we continued to wander about the empty +streets. And it poured--and, in the most unexpected places, the +disreputable Acting Lance Corporal in charge of Divisional Canteen +would bob up, touch his cap like a London cab-runner and exclaim, +always in three breaths: “Xcusemesir; may-I-speak-to-you-sir; +have-you-found-a-billet-for-the-Divisional-Canteen-sir?” He was a +most annoying person, a London music hall “turn” in peace time. He +occupied his leisure moments behind the Canteen Counter in writing +“sketches” for London Halls, like the Hoxton Empire, at fifty pounds a +time. Sometimes he would appear alone or would emerge alone from the +chalk-rubbish and festoons of wallpaper of an empty shop. Sometimes he +would have behind him a disreputable French country cart loaded with +sardine tins, sticks of shaving soap, cigarette packets, cratesful of +wet dates, writing tablets--God knows what. And the horse--or it may +have been a mule--seemed to be a hundred years old. And rain dripped +from its ears. And rain poured on the disagreeable objects in the tilt +cart and on the three impossible Tommies who went with it. And they +would have backgrounds of black, wet houses, without roofs, but with +lace window curtains dripping in all the empty window spaces; and wet, +smashed chairs and commodes and wardrobes hung drunkenly over holes +in the floors of houses that had no front walls. And it poured. And +twilight deepened. + +Then a battalion came in along the Bailleul road; a poor, smashed +battalion, with men limping and men under whose tin hats there gleamed +white bandages, very conspicuous in the rain and the mud and the dark, +wet khaki. And a battalion looks grim indeed when it has been hammered +by artillery, on a Macadam road without chance of retaliation--owing +to a blunder of a staff officer. They had, I think, 160 men killed in +one company--pretty well the whole strength as battalions were in those +days. I don’t like to think of it, much. + +And yet, such is poor human nature, that both I and my companion +said, “Thank God!”--as we had never said, “Thank God” in our lives +before. At least I know that I said “Thank God” as I had never in my +life said it before--and as I never shall again. For it wasn’t our +battalion that had been smashed by direct shell-fire on the Macadam +road--Loire--Dranoutre--Neuve Eglise--Plugstreet--Nieppe. Imagine +such a route--in full view of the Hun trenches! Why, riding that +way the day before, to prospect next day’s billets, I and another +officer had had three shells directed to us alone by the German +artillery--between Dranoutre and Neuve Eglise! So imagine what it +would be for a battalion. And we had seen orders which said that _our_ +people were to leave Loire at such and such an hour and to march by +Companies--presumably in column of route!--in the Dranoutre-Neuve +Eglise-Plugstreet road! And the Divisional Transport Officer had told +us early in the afternoon that, as we had _known_ would be the case, +our battalion had been hammered to pieces. A whole Company had been +wiped out on that road--marching in column of route.[10] “A” Company, +he had said, our own company! + +Half the time during the afternoon, the other officer and +myself--soaked to the skin and pestered by the farcical Lance-Corporal +in Charge of Canteens--who, poor devil, was only doing his duty--had +said, from horse to horse: “I wonder if Johnny A-- has gone west! I +wonder if Fred B-- has copped it!...” It is horrible, that! + +And then, in the rain, under the castle wall, we heard from a very +bleeding man of the other Battalion that our own people, after all +those of the W-- Regiment had been murdered, had been diverted from the +Dranoutre-Neuve Eglise road to the Locre-Bailleul-Armentières highway, +which was, in those days, as safe as a church. + +So we two, watching the men of the other Battalion march resentfully +by, could say “Thank God” to ourselves. + +Relief, naturally, manifested itself in the two of us, according to our +separate temperaments. My friend--he was an Irish Nationalist, almost +a Sinn Feiner--said: + +“G ..., old dear. You’re Division. I’m only Battalion. The canteen is +your job. I think I’ll get to my digs.” He added, a bit bashfully, that +in his digs there was a French girl who was going to give him lessons +in her difficult tongue. I said, “All right. ’Op it.” [I remembered +saying ‘’Op it!’ in an intense weariness.] But, as I turned my tired +old horse once more down the road to find a billet for that accursed +corporal of Divisional Canteen, I was, I remember, thinking innumerable +things, all at once. + +Firstly: my shirtcuffs were very frayed, and the rain had made them +more diabolically wet and cold than you can imagine. Then I was +actually bothering about the wretched staff officer who had murdered +all those men. I was worried about him. You see, it would be such +a trifling thing to do--as easy as forgetting--as every human soul +has done in its day--to post a letter. He would have an ordnance map +and a pencil. The map would show the contours, but probably it would +not show the German trenches or the German artillery emplacements. +He would rule a pencil line from Locre to Armentières, he would see +that the Dranoutre-Neuve Eglise road was nearly level, running +indeed along the flat at the edge of Flanders. On the other hand the +Locre-Bailleul-Armentières road went up steeply from the Belgian +frontier to Bailleul--a road in the dusty sunlight, the rough +unshaded country, between tobacco and grain fields. And it was 1500 +yards longer. So, in the kindness of his heart, he had saved the +men the extra distance, the shadelessness, and the dust of a road +over the foothills bordering Flanders. He had forgotten the Hun +artillery--_just_ as you or I might forget to post a letter! + +And, as I rode past the workmen’s villas, for the hundredth time, I +was imagining that poor Acting Assistant Brigade Major, with his pink +cheeks and his red hat, being strafed to hell by our frightful General +of Division. He might almost cry!... But I daresay it wasn’t at all +like that, really. + +Anyhow, I was being dreadfully sorry for him. At the same time, I was +trying--if I may use a professional novelist’s word--to psychologize +the German gunner. He wouldn’t believe his luck. He _couldn’t_ +believe his luck. He would believe it was some accursed scheme of the +diabolically cunning English to discover his position. There, through +his telescope, he would see a solid cube of wet-brown, moving slowly +along a perfectly visible road. He would see it with his naked eye--a +cubical caterpillar as large as a whole range of farm buildings. It +would be incredible to him. No doubt he would ring up his immediate +superior, and they would confer over the telephone. He would tremble +for his battery. The English were no doubt drawing some sort of +canvas wind-screen, camouflaged to look like a company, along that +Macadam road. They would be trying to draw his fire so as to discover +his position. Then they would blow his battery to hell with new, +unimaginable High Explosive Shells, or mines, or anything. So he would +fire--and see 160 men killed. “Drum fire,” I think the Germans called +it. The complete Company would be wiped out--a mark such as a German +gunner would hardly dare to pray for in his dreams. And nothing would +happen to him. Nothing. He would wait. But nothing! + +Then he would thank the Creator.... + +I don’t know really what happened to me then. I have said that that +deluge of a twilight seemed to last a thousand years. I was wrong: it +seemed to last two thousand years. I remember meeting the Divisional +Transport Officer out in an immense expanse of mud near an incredibly +dirty farmhouse--in a sea of brown liquid that was supposed to +be the Station Road. And I know that the field stank. It smelled +unimaginably--though I don’t know why a field should smell. I can still +smell it. + +The Transport Officer said that that was the field allotted to him by +Division. He said to hell with the lake of mud. _He_ was going to put +the Transport on the Bailleul-Steenewerck road. He gave the number on +the map, “R. 14,” I think it was. I said I should take the field for +the Divisional Canteen. There were, scattered--possibly floating--about +it some Connaught huts that resembled Noah’s Arks adrift in a sewage +farm. The Transport Officer said all right. I fancy he was not +interested in the Divisional Canteen. + +As we rode slowly, again past the workers’ villas, the Lance-Corporal +in Charge of Divisional Canteen again waylaid me, springing up +apparently out of the mud. He said: “Xcusemesir, may I speak to you, +sir ... I’ve fahnd a ’ouse be’ind the Ch’ch for the D’vish’n’l C’nteen.” + +I think I went mad at that point, and the Transport Officer rode slowly +away. I don’t remember what I said to the Lance-Corporal. I hope I +never shall. + +The trouble was that, in that town, there was a danger zone. For the +last four days, the Germans had been shelling the church. From 6:00 +P.M. until midnight, in their methodical manner, every quarter of an +hour they had dropped a 5–9 shell into the sacred edifice. The danger +zone was therefore perfectly circumscribed and perfectly definite. +But, unfortunately for me, though I had been warned that there _was_ +an official danger zone, no one that I met knew where it was. The +town marshal had gone; the Divisional Police who were already working +typewriters in his office were our Divisional Police, not those of the +Division that had gone too. They knew nothing about the dangerous area. +And some Australian humorist had removed all the cautionary boards that +should have surrounded the church and had grouped them round a large +iron public convenience which was the chief architectural adornment of +the main street. There they looked alarming but improbable. + +It was therefore not to be thought of that the L. C. and his men should +remain in a house just under the shadow of the church--for it was plain +that, however big or however circumscribed the official danger zone +might be, what the Huns were shelling was the church. We had been +in the church in the course of the afternoon. It was a commonplace +building, as far as I can remember, Byzantine of an eighteenth century +type. But it was, in a way, rendered gracious by the enormous heaps of +plaster and stone-dust that piled against the walls in drifts, so that +it was as if sand dunes had invaded the roofless edifice. And, in the +course of the dusk, shells had landed in all that rubble, constantly, +no doubt regularly, whilst we were pursued by the L. C. round the +church square, in the rain that had begun to fall just as the Huns +began to shell.... + +I daresay the reader will by now be tired of the Lance-Corporal in +Charge of Canteens. I know _I_ was. And I am uncertain what became of +him. I daresay I could remember if I made an effort--but it hardly +seems worth while. I know that four days later he was safely writing +a music-hall sketch, in a tent, under a counter made of soap boxes, +in a field just beyond the turning where the Plugstreet road leaves +the chaussée from Bailleul to Nieppe; and I know that next night I got +out of my flea-bag at about 2:00 A.M. and wearily walked for miles +and miles in search of him and his sardine tins. The Huns had started +regularly bombarding the town at that inconsiderate hour, and I know +too that, when I did find him, by chance, wandering about with his +disreputable cart and his four disreputable men, he said that a shell +had gone clean through the upper story of the shop that they had +commandeered. So I suppose that that night he had slept in the town. I +can’t remember. + +I can remember interviewing the _Maire_ a second time and that, because +he was busy with some French staff officers, I had to wait some +minutes--in a dentist’s waiting-room, with aspidistras, black walnut +furniture, and innumerable copies of the illustrated paper called +_Excelsior_ on the lace table-cover. For the _Maire_ was a dentist. +He was also a brave man. I can remember, too, being in a shop just +under the church where a young, stout Belgian Jewess was standing +waist deep in remnants and rags of black satin. She was nonchalantly +packing this away in sacks whilst I tried to make sense out of her +middle-aged, frightened father. I think I was telling him that seven +francs a day was too much to expect the Division to pay for the rent +of a rag and bone shop. Something hit the roof at that moment and an +avalanche of bones, old iron, and satin petticoats poured down the +stairs from the upper floors. The father disappeared, exclaiming “Oi! +Oi!” and elevating his hands above his bared head. But the daughter, +with a large face, chalk-white with powder, heavy blue-black hair, +and an opulent inscrutability--she had on her large white fingers a +great collection of fat-looking wedding rings--went on nonchalantly +examining black satin petticoats, rejecting some, folding others +slowly, and packing them away in sacks. She seemed to regard the thing +that had passed through the upper story with enigmatic indifference, +as if shells and iron hail were just part of the silly vanity of the +male sex. Her business was to pack up for transport on a barrow to +Armentières all the black satin that she and her father had collected +and that had once belonged to the inhabitants of the empty town. + +That attitude seemed to be common enough in the women of those parts. I +remember looking, five minutes later, through the bull’s-eye glass of a +cottage window so low that you would say every shell must pass over it. +The interior was candle-lit and quite tranquil. + +At trestle tables, gesticulating although they had their elbows on +the boards, sat eight Tommies of the battalion whose entry we had +witnessed. Five had bandages, and three had not. Between their elbows +they had tinplatesful of fish and chips. And there were two women, +standing. One, middle-aged and stout, had her hands on her hips, and +her elbows back. Her blouse was well open at the neck, as if it had +been hot work cooking the fish and chips. She stood against a trestle +table and seemed to be giving back-chat to all the eight Tommies at +once. The other was a young girl--of the Flemish Madonna type. Her +yellow hair was tightly braided round her head; she leaned back against +the mildew-stained wall, and on her bare, crossed arms she had a tabby +kitten. It was biting her finger, and she stood entirely quiet, as if +on her hands she had all the safety and all the time in the world. + +I daresay it was safe enough for the moment. But, some days later, I +noticed that there was no cottage there. There was not even a lace +curtain. + +I walked along--for I had got rid of my tired horse--a long way, under +the dripping trees that were black above the wall of the château, and +out onto the Bailleul road, a long way beyond the Plugstreet turning, +I persuaded myself that I was going to ask the Divisional Transport +Officer to house my friends of the Canteen in tents in his field. + +I found him in the W---- lines. They were eating Welsh rabbit and +herrings in a Connaught hut. They were not pleased to see me. There was +an old Quartermaster from Stratford-on-Avon--a butcher by profession, +think of that!--who sat with his hands crossed over a large stomach and +spectacles well down on his nose. Also he wore carpet slippers. He told +me in a most businesslike way that they had only herrings enough for +three. I was welcome to any amount of Welsh rabbit--but there were only +herrings enough for three. And they were three already. + +Then I realized that what I was really concerned about was to see my +own Battalion come in. It was symptomatic. My friend the Sinn Feiner +had been perfectly content, as soon as he had seen the W----’s come in +and knew that our own people had been diverted, to go and take lessons +in the language of the country from the French young lady whom he had +unearthed. But, as for me, I wanted to _see_ the Battalion. I had no +particular reason to love the C.O. or the Sergeant Major. But I wanted +to be absolutely _sure_ that they were safe. + +And, just as I got back to the crossroads near the church, the +Battalion came in. There was the C.O. riding, the Sergeant Major +walking ahead of him. And then “A” Company. I called out to Captain +Gardiner, after I had saluted the Colonel: “A Company all right?” And +the young man answered: “Cheerie Oh, old bird, as right as rain.” The +last dregs of light were fading under the elms; the Huns were putting +in some extraordinarily heavy stuff just behind them. And suddenly I +remembered that I had not billeted myself. God knows whom we hadn’t +billeted, the Sinn Feiner and I between us. Certainly three sets of +battalion headquarters, transport, officers’ messes, sanitary squads, +and the men of a whole brigade. But I had nowhere to lay my head. And +my frayed shirt-cuffs were streaming with rain and it had grown pitch +dark.... + +You say I am a poet. Certainly I am a poet! + +And these eyes of mine that, when I have any leisure, see always not +only the things that surround me, but many other things--these eyes of +mine were busy. Certainly they saw what, in the darkness, was visible +of the wet and stricken town. Against the sky the roof lines or the +silhouettes of charred beams; the red glow of the candles in the +fried-fish cottage; the red glow that slowly danced inside the church +as if a black mass were going forward. I suppose the last shell had set +fire to some woodwork. Then another came and put it out, so that it was +darker. + +But these eyes of mine that, with their attention, were looking at a +bright landscape, had also registered in their memory a white, as if +triangular patch, in a dark window of a house just behind the church, +nearly opposite, but a little this side of the _Mairie_, a house that +we had passed again and again. The eyes had noted that white luminosity +and now made for it, though the thinking mind was differently intent. +This sort of definition is a little difficult to make. Try to +follow me. The department of my eyes that led me--the Intelligence +Department--saw the roofs and the black streets; the department which +was influenced by my desires--for a meal, for warmth, for a bed, and +above all for dry shirt-cuffs--was leading my steps toward the house +that had the pale luminosity in the dark window. And, what I suppose +you would call my mind’s eye was occupied by a bright landscape. That +is to say, I was definitely thinking about an August landscape. + +You will say that it was the landscape I have mentioned so often--the +landscape with the stream and the trees and the gingerbread cottage. +But it wasn’t. That came later. I suppose that at that time I wasn’t +tired enough to see it. Besides, I never saw that as if in bright +sunshine or in the weather of any accentuated season--but always as +just English country in just English weather, green earth in a diffused +light under a July sky.... No, I was thinking of a billeting scheme. +For, in the long ago--thousands and thousands of years ago--we used to +do billeting schemes, round Manorbier and Penhally. And I think the one +I was then thinking of with--as the prose writers say--laughter mixed +with rain, took place at Penhally. It appeared an idealized Penhally, +mostly hollyhocks and thatch, so wilful is the mind, though I remember +every house of Penhally! Well: a great many of us went in the August +weather to work a billeting scheme there. And an officer representing +Division drove up in a Rolls-Royce and pretended to “confer” with +us. He had a red hat-band and a golden lion and the beautifullest +moustaches and the beautifullest white whip-cord breeches and _such_ +spurs! And such ladies in the Rolls-Royce, awaited him! + +And he gave us the loveliest hints in a clear voice, with the far-away +expression of one who knows his job but lectures in it too often. +Certainly he knew his job--and he was a fine fellow! + +We were to get hold of the civil power at once, or at least as soon as +we had conferred with the divisional billeting officer. The first thing +to do was to find out about the water supply. Then we were to group +our companies round the pump if we could. If there were only one, we +were to call a conference of Company Quartermaster Sergeants and give +out the time when each Company was to draw water. That would then go +into Battalion Orders. He said, with a little smile, that we were to +remember to put Battalion Headquarters into the best billet--because +C.O.’s liked that--and Company messes must be lodged in public houses +or places where there was liquor. So that the men shouldn’t get at the +alcohol! Transport should, as a rule, be as far from fire as could be +arranged, to avoid stampeding of horses; similarly with the Doctor’s +cart and the Battalion cookers. And, as a rule, the Company detailed +for the Advance Guard next day should have the advanced billets if +there were no likelihood of a night attack. But they should not be +exposed to disturbance in the night, if possible, because they would +have a hard time next day. Similarly the Advanced Guard of that day +should be halted first and be in the rear, so as to get a good night’s +rest. He told us to remember those splendid words which used to be the +shibboleth of every British officer--to the effect that the comfort and +convenience of the men should be considered before every exigency save +the necessities of actual warfare. + +Yes: he was a fine young fellow--one of the Old Contemptibles, as he +modestly, clearly, and rather absentmindedly, enunciated all that +sound, commonsensible, old-fashioned lore of the Army. And I remember +every word of it. For instance, men of separate units or even of +separate Companies of the same Battalion should not be billeted on +opposite sides of the same street; the street should be divided in +half, and one-half allotted to each Company or unit. (I remember +pointing that out to my Sinn Fein friend in one of the miserable, +battered streets of workmen’s hovels in Pont-de-Nieppe that afternoon.) + +But, though I had listened with all my ears to the Staff Officer at +Penhally, my eyes, even then had been playing the trick of showing me +Pont-de-Nieppe--just as at Nieppe in France they insisted on showing me +Penhally in Wales. For, whilst I listened to him, I was seeing the time +when I should represent Division and be, in the sunlight, young, with +a beautiful moustache and a red hat-band and white whip-cord breeches, +very full. And with _such_ spurs! + +So there I was, representing Division. + +It hadn’t been very like what I had pictured--and I had not had to +bother about water supply.[11] I had enough water in the wretched, +frayed wristbands of my shirt, as it seemed, to water a whole Battalion +and the mules of the Transport! But, otherwise, the traditions of the +Old Army had prevailed. Rudimentarily, no doubt, but still, they had +prevailed. I had reminded the Battalion Billeting Officers to see +that Battalion Headquarters had convenient buildings, that officers +had charge of any civilian liquor depots; that Company cooker-cars +had emplacements convenient for their men, and that latrines were not +located near water supplies. Also, we had got into touch with the +civil power.... Only, there were no ladies in my Rolls-Royce--and my +Rolls-Royce was two very wet-kneed legs! And as for my shirt-cuffs ... + +I suppose they were most in my mind. For it is the most horrible of +human afflictions to have wet shirtcuffs! So that, when I found my +orderly, not where I had told him to be--in comparative safety in front +of the workmen’s villas but in the shadow of the door of the shop where +the Jewess had packed up the black satin petticoats, waiting devotedly, +though the shells that missed the church went close overhead--he said: + +“She’s took all them petticoats on a barrer in sacks to +Armentières,”[12] I answered: + +“You can fall out. Tell my batman that I’ve gone somewhere to get my +d--d shirt-cuffs dried.” + +Nevertheless, he followed me. It was, you see, the pride of _métier_. +Alas, that there should be no English for those words. He was my +orderly for the day--just any orderly from headquarters. But I was his +charge. If I had ordered him to fall out, no doubt he would have gone, +against his personal will but in obedience to orders, to some sort of +comfort that his pals would have prepared for him. I, however, had +said, “You _can_ fall out.” It was permissive and left the falling out +optional. But he saw before him an obviously eccentric and probably +benevolent officer--and it was his job to be able to tell my batman +where I lodged myself. Also, it was contrary to King’s Regulations for +officers to go anywhere alone where there is any danger at all from +shell or other fire. So, though he must have been uncommonly wet and +hungry and tired, he followed me to the door of the house in whose dark +windows I had seen the luminous patch--the forehead of Rosalie Prudent +as she sat sewing, her head bent forward, in the twilight. + +I don’t know how it is: but from the moment when I first saw that +highlight--and it had been certainly three hours before--I had been +perfectly sure that that was what it was--the forehead of a quiet woman +bending her head forward to have more light from the high window whilst +she sewed in the dusk. In a way it was not what one expected: the town +had been evacuated of its civilian population the Sunday before, when +the Huns--as it seemed, for the love of God--started shelling the +church just as it had emptied after benediction. And they had shelled +from six o’clock till midnight; and every night since then, from six +o’clock till midnight they had shelled the church. And they were +shelling it now--eighty yards away. It was a desolate, and it seemed +a stupid business. But no doubt they had their purpose, though it was +difficult to see what it was. + +That was how Rosalie Prudent put it, as she sat sewing my wristbands +by the stove, in the wash-house. I sat nearer the stove, naked to +the waist, the red glow and the warmth that came from the red-hot +iron of the circular furnace being, I can tell you, very agreeable to +my shivering skin. Opposite me sat the orderly drinking a bottle of +Burgundy--which he had richly deserved. The steam went up from his wet +clothes and was tinged red by the light of the coke.... + +In the extremely clean _salle-à-manger_, with a high faïence stove of +blue and white tiles, a colza lamp with a white globe, a buffet in +the Nouvel Art style, of yellow Austrian oak with brass insertions; +at a yellow oak table covered with a green velvet table-cover fringed +with lace, sat my friend the Sinn Feiner learning the French that is +spoken in Plugstreet from the niece, Beatrice Prudent. She was teaching +him French by selling him handkerchiefs edged with lace in whose +corners she had embroidered multicolored initials. In two very clean, +lavender-papered bedrooms, upstairs, with white bedsteads, strips +of carpet beside them on the waxed floors, with valises opened and +showing works of devotion, altar vases, empty biscuit tins containing +unconsecrated wafers of the sacrament, trench boots, gas helmets, tin +hats--sat two padres composing their sermons for the next day. The +Roman Catholic--for I heard him preach on it next day--was meditating +on the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I don’t know what the +Presbyterian was writing about. + +But there the house was, large, quiet but for the shells, kept +spotless by the labors of Rosalie and her niece Beatrice, and, as yet +untouched--just as it had been evacuated by the factory manager and +his family, who had fled on the Sunday after benediction. In one of +the roomy, very tall parlors there was, over the fireplace, a gigantic +figure of the Saviour, standing in robes of blue, white, and scarlet +plaster of paris, holding on his left arm a great sheaf of white lilies +and resting one hand on the head of a very thin plaster sheep of, I +should think, a Rhineland breed. That was perhaps why the owner of the +house had not trusted to its miraculous intervention in favor of his +dwelling. He might have--for I heard the other day that the house +remained intact until the 11/11/’18. + +Rosalie profited--for, when the French inhabitants fled, the British +authorities allowed Belgian refugees to take their places on condition +that they billeted the troops. So perhaps it had been to protect her +that the immense Bon Dieu waited! She deserved it. + +She came from Plugstreet, of which town she had been one of the richest +bourgeoises, her husband being the miller. She had had a large, roomy +house, a great yard with stables and carts; she had had a wealthy, +goodish, but possibly too jovial husband, two affectionate, dutiful, +and industrious sons, and two obedient daughters. On Sundays she +had gone to mass wearing a black satin gown, and, on her breast, a +gold-framed cameo as large as a saucer. It represented a very classical +Paris, seated, I don’t know why, apparently between the horns of a lyre +and stretching out one hand--which no doubt contained the apple--toward +three grouped Goddesses in rather respectable Flemish _déshabille_. +Mme. Prudent retained this work of art, but her wardrobe was reduced to +two blue cotton dresses. + +I gathered all this, whilst I dozed by the black iron stove, from her +conversation with the orderly. She spoke Flemish, and he, Wiltshire, +but they understood each other. Of course, they used signs and facial +expressions. The flames through the interstices of the stove poured +upward to the dim rafters of the wash-house roof, and, by its light, +Mme. Rosalie sewed as if she had no other pride and no other purpose +in the world. For she told of the fate of her men and her womenfolk +abstractedly and passionlessly; pride only showed itself when she +talked of the state of the house in which she had found a refuge. +From time to time she would say that if Mm. the Proprietors returned, +they would find the floors waxed; the stair-rods shining, the windows +polished; woodruff and sweet herbs amongst the bed linen in the +presses, and not a speck of dust on the plaster-robes of the great Bon +Dieu in the _salon de réception_. That was her pride.... + +As for the rest ... On the 18th of August, 1914, her man had been +killed in the Belgian Reserve somewhere near Liège; on the 20th of the +same month her eldest son had been killed in the Belgian regiment of +the Guides. He had expected to have an excellent career in the office +of an _avocat_--in Brûges, I think. On the 8th of November, 1914, her +remaining son had been killed in the 76th French Regiment of Infantry +of the Line. He had been chief clerk to an architect of Paris. Her +daughters had been, one apprentice and the other chief saleswoman of a +celebrated _couturière_ of Liège. She had heard of them once since the +Germans had entered the city. A Belgian priest had written to her from +the Isle of Wight in December, 1914, to say that some nuns had taken in +Aimée and Félicité. Those were the names of her two daughters.... + +And at the moment she started up. She remembered that she had forgotten +the potatoes for Monsieur--Monsieur being myself. So out she went into +the black garden and returned with a tin platter of potatoes. + +On it were ten tubers of which she weighed each in her hand inscribing +what they came to on a slate--so that she might account to Messieurs +the owners, on their return, for the potatoes that she had dug from +the garden. Then she called her niece from the dining room to wash and +slice the potatoes. She was going to give me an omelette with bacon and +fried potatoes for my supper. She sat down again and went on, sewing +and talking to the orderly. + +She began talking of the interior of her house in Plugstreet; she +described minutely all the furniture in all the apartments. In each +of the bedrooms there was a night commode in mahogany and a statue of +the Virgin, also one of the Blessed Saints, and a _prie-dieu_, also +in mahogany.... And now there was nothing. Every fortnight she was +permitted by the British military police to visit her house--and she +stayed there, in Nieppe, so that every fortnight she might revisit her +house--which now, she said, contained nothing. The shells were shaking +it to pieces. The tiles were all gone; the rain was soaking into the +upper floors. The furniture was all gone--the great presses with her +linen, the wardrobes--_en acajou_--which had contained her black satin +dress and her husband’s Sunday clothes.... + +But she continued to catalogue to the orderly the contents of her +residence. I don’t know why it should interest him, but it did; for he +nodded sagely when she talked of the _bahûts en bois de chêne_, and the +immortels in vases on the piano.... + +Suddenly she turned her head to me and said to me, where I sat writing +with my tablet on my knee: + +“And I ask you, _M. l’officier_, for what purpose is it that one brings +men children into the world if this is to be the end? They cause great +pain in their entry, greater than at the entry of little girl children. +It is difficult to keep them alive so that they reach men’s estate. And +then it is difficult to keep them in the paths of virtue. And then they +are gone.” + + +[Footnotes] + +[10] This would mean that the Company presented, as a target to the +German artillery, a solid and slow-moving cube of human flesh 240 ft. x +8 ft. x 6 ft. _No_ gunner could miss it. + +[11] It is odd to think that Nieppe at that date was still supplied +with electric power by underground cables that the Huns had not yet +discovered, from Lille. + +[12] His name was Private Partridge of, I think, the 6th Wilts.--a fine +fellow, but not to be confused with Private Phillips of the 9th Welsh, +who was my wonderfully good batman: (Note by Gringoire). + + + + + XII + + _The Movies_[13] + + +I was a little bewildered when Mme. Prudent so addressed me. For, to +tell the truth, I had not been listening to her very attentively. She +seemed to accept the war--this war, states of war, any operations +that washed and disintegrated the interiors of the world--she seemed +to accept them so tacitly as being part of the child’s madness of the +male that, in the warmth I had just dozed, not thinking much of her +immense losses and not knowing at all that she would have anything very +striking to say about the war. Besides, it was unusual to be beside a +stove, under a roof. + +And, when she had come in with the potatoes, out of the darkness, I +had suddenly seen again that vision in green--of the sanctuary! And +I remembered, extraordinarily, how once, years and years and years +before, I had gone digging potatoes at night. I suppose some visitor +had come to my cottage late. And I had put my hand into the ground to +take out a potato, and I found the earth quite warm. The air cools +off quicker than the sod, you see, after a hot day. It had astonished +me then--and, in that house, the remembrance came again, vivid and +astonishing, for it had produced exactly the effect of one’s having +thrust one’s hand into the breast of a woman.... + +Well, I had been thinking of that and looking at that green landscape. +And then, suddenly, I had pulled myself together. For it had occurred +to me that I was not doing my duty. I had it in my head that I had got +that soft, wet undangerous job of billeting, at the request of the +bearded gentleman in the frock coat, who had sat under the picture by +Bastien Lepage--or was it by Marie Bashkirtseff?--in front of the great +table with the carnations and the miniature _Niké_. I daresay it was +not the fact: or it may have been. There is no knowing. In France you +were taken up, like a brown paper parcel, and deposited here or there +at the behest of two obscure lines of smudged typewriting in some one’s +Orders. And you did not know why; you had no will. + +So I felt that I ought to be writing. It would not be fair to have a +soft job for the purpose of wooing the Muse and then not to woo her. So +I had pulled out from my wet tunic which hung over the chair back, my +disreputable and sodden tablet of writing paper, which I had purchased +two days before from that miserable Canteen Lance-Corporal and had +begun, with a wet stump of pencil, to write the article called “_Une +Partie de Cricket_” which, if only because it is a souvenir, I hope +will be printed as an appendix to these remembrances. I know I wrote +the first ten sentences, because I remember them and also because, the +other day, I turned out the repulsive flap of my camp bed, and there, +along with a damp sock and some mildewed straps, was the mouldering +tablet with three scrawled pages.... + +But I couldn’t keep on writing. I was obsessed with the idea of a +country, _patrie_, republic, body politic, call it what you will--that +the recollection of that minister had called up in me. Yes: I had a +vision of a country. + +In the center was the Ministry--like the heart of an onion--and all +the others that I had seen in the last week went round about it. Mind +you, I have nothing to say against that Minister. I may have appeared +to speak of him sardonically: that is a habit I have. But he, or +something like him, was indispensable to the higher strategy of his +nation:[14] and this man knew his job. What he wanted was perfectly +the right thing: and if he did not know that the First Line Transport +of a Battalion in the trenches was not exactly the happiest place in +which to write lofty prose--well, it is certainly hypocrisy to seek, +in the heart of the Sacred Emperor, for a knowledge of low tea-shops. +He did not, obviously, like me but I have not the slightest doubt +that I appeared drunk to him. Only a drunkard, really, would seek for +ferrets in the palace of the Sacred Emperor. Yet I had my excuse. First +of everything in the world--of everything in the whole world!--comes +your battalion. And the ferrets of my battalion had all died suddenly; +and the last thing they had said to me had been: Don’t forget to get +us some ferrets. If you had seen the rats of Locre you would have +understood. + +But the Minister had not seen the rats of Locre so he had not +understood.... + +No: he was a good man, in the right place. And very properly he sat +amongst the gracious products of a State art--the pictures, the +tapestries, the ormolu, the august building, the frescoes, the great +staircases. And attendants who looked like bishops must be there +to answer his bell; and Suisses with their great cocked hats and +immense white gloves and their sabres with silver scabbards. There +must be symbols of the Temporal Power of the State, which is august, +ancient, and fit to be upheld. And, in disturbed times, there must +be Civil Police in the courtyard, for strange visitors will come. +And sentries there must be in the tricolored sentry-boxes beside the +_porte-cochère_; sentries to call out the guard. And famous battalions +must pass the door, along the boulevard, now and again. + +And, round the Palace of the Sacred Emperor, there must be the Great +City, and round the Great City must be La Grande Nation--stretching +away and away, for miles and miles and miles.... + +It presented itself to me as twenty-seven hours of railway +journey--past Etaples where I had spent, years before, long days in +_châlets_ amongst the pine wood; past Calais where my grandfather +was born; to Hazebrouck where, during the war, we had found the +worst billiard table in the world and where, whilst we waited for a +connection, a German plane was dropping bombs on the goods line and +Cochin-Chinese in furred silk hoods were working as plate-layers. And +so to Steenewerck, where the great farm carts and tilburies and berlins +were mixed up with artillery horses, with timber wagons, with immense +guns. + +And so the land stretched out to Nieppe and the wash-house and Rosalie +Prudent sewing in the light of the circular cast-iron stove that had +become red hot. And on the stove there were bubbling the pots which +contained supper for me and coffee for my friend the Sinn Feiner. And +whilst Rosalie sewed, ever and again, the pots lifted themselves an +inch off the dully red-hot disk and then sat down again. Shells, you +see, were falling in the church. + +So the land stretched out--yes, like a gramophone disk!--till it came +to the wash-house that was intact amidst all the smashed houses with +their forlorn lace window curtains. And all that edge of the disk was +smashed houses inhabited by steadfast souls who sat sewing whilst the +pots jumped on the hobs. They were the caretakers of _Messieurs les +Propriétaires_ who had fled. There was a whole population of them: +I came myself across a whole population of these quiet people, who +considered only their duties to absent proprietors amongst the _rain_ +of shells. I remember when I went to have lunch with the officers of +our 2nd Battalion--all dead, the officers that I had lunch with!--in +Albert, there sat and read the _Libre Parole_, such a very old +caretaker. He had gray side-whiskers, a white apron, a yellow and black +striped waistcoat, a square black alpaca cap or _bêret_--for all the +world like an old domestic of a Paris nobleman’s hotel. He sat there, +his legs crossed, his head thrown back, reading the paper, through +silver-rimmed spectacles at the end of his nose. On the table beside +him were a bullfinch in a gilt cage constructed like a pagoda and his +black leather spectacle case. He had nothing to communicate about the +war, except, I am glad to say, that the officers of the battalion were +careful of the furniture, but he was so busy that he could not keep +the floors as cleanly waxed as he desired. He asked me if I could not +speak to Colonel Partridge about it. The Germans were putting in their +usual lunch-time shells into that street; he was sitting reading in a +glass-roofed passage between the kitchen and the _salle à manger_.... + +Yes: a host of such people came into my mind as I sat beside the stove. +I am not going to talk about the war any more. By the grace of God, +I will never talk about the war again whilst I live. As you say: the +people who did not take part hate to be reminded of that part; and the +people who did take part have had enough of it. Yes; you are right. +I made the mistake of my life, professionally, _quand je m’en allais +en guerre_. It got me disliked by the critics, and it is bad to be +disliked by the critics--for a poet.[15] So you see, I too have my +prudences. + +And indeed I have my prudences--though they are not the prudences of +other people. I do not desire money, glory, the praise of my kind +whom I distrust, nor yet to dominate humanity, which is a beast that +I dislike. I do not desire friends; I do not desire broad lands. So, +thinking about things in the wash-house of Mme. Rosalie, I said: “I +must dig myself in.” I said, indeed, twice: “I must dig myself in....” + +I must have a dugout, as proof as possible against the shells launched +against me by blind and august destiny; round about it there must be +the strong barbed wire of solitude and, within the entanglements, +space for a kitchen garden. Do you remember, Mr. Compiler, the redoubt +our regiment made once--Montgomery’s Folly? There was the redoubt, a +circular piece of engineering. Round about it there was a level space +of fifty yards, to give a field of fire, surrounded by the apron of +wire. And, in that level space, you remember, we made the Regimental +Gardens.... Well, in the wash-house, I said to myself that, _appry la +gair finny_, I must make for myself, in space and time, an affair like +that, or as like it as possible. If I could afford a cottage, I would +have a cottage: if not, any sort of shelter made of old tins filled +with clay with a bit of corrugated iron for a roof, a door of sacking, +a groundsheet for carpet. As for furniture, aren’t there bully-beef +cases still?... _You_ remember! + +Lord! the interiors we have constructed out of such materials and the +fun we had. And how they vanished like a drift of leaves when we were +drafted away. And how solid they seemed and work we did in them whilst +they lasted, those interiors! So, I said to myself, in Mme. Rosalie’s +wash-house, I shall get along somehow. And then, said I to myself: +There is the question of food. + +Well, there is gardening! As you know, I am not _le dernier venu_ when +it comes to gardening. I will back myself to get twice as much off any +given piece of ground as any ordinary man--if you will give me some +seeds and a bit of old iron and a stick capable of being tied together +into some semblance of a hoe.... + +So the war finished for me, looking at Mme. Rosalie as she sat entirely +engrossed in her work whilst the shells made the pots jump alive off +the red-hot iron plate.... The war was finished, since my line was +taken for _appry la gair finny_. That we should win I had no doubt, +for, though the horrible scalawags who wangle themselves into notoriety +had too much to say in the world, our heart was in it, and the heart of +the other side was not. I knew enough to know that. If God were good to +one, for one’s self personally, it would finish there. I did not even +want to stay to see the finish: I was so certain that we should win. +But I had been worrying a little about myself. I couldn’t, you see, +see anything but the workhouse for me, if I lived through. And, at my +age, the workhouse is not a pleasant thought. I am just too old, and +just too young for the workhouse. + +But the spectacle of Madame Rosalie, fetching in the potatoes, saved +me.... I will tell you an odd thing. I have spoken of the recumbent +oval of green light that now and again had appeared to me, to turn +into a picture of a green valley. I will confess that, hitherto, I had +feared it. It had come into my head that it might be a symptom of a +seizure, an epileptic fit perhaps, or of some obscure but disastrous +nervous disease. _Ker vooly voo? Say la gair._ That region of the world +had its trials for the nerves of people of my age. One might well be on +the edge of something. + +But looking at Mme. Rosalie--so extremely centered in the work in hand, +so oblivious to the very real danger, so brave and so tranquil, I said +to myself: + +“What the devil! If she can stick it, I too can!” + +For what had she to look forward to? She had said that, on the last +occasion when the British authorities had permitted her to visit her +house at Plugstreet they had not allowed her to enter it. The front +wall of the upper part had fallen inward and for her sole possession +she could see that on the wall of Félicité’s bedroom that was exposed +to the sky, there hung a gilt-framed Souvenir of her daughter’s First +Communion. Nothing else! Nothing! That was her sole possession in the +world except for two gowns of blue Manchester goods and the cameo that +represented the judgment of Paris.... + +And suddenly I was convinced that the apparition of that recumbent +green oval was, not a visitation, but a sign. If from that time onward +I just carried on, if I persevered--as I was truly minded to persevere, +in my duties as a poor bloody footslogger--the Almighty would give +to me at least sufficient space in the quiet earth that was just +country--to dig myself in. Well, God has been good to me, as you see. + +And, mind you, I consider and consider proudly, that I am doing, most +of all, my duty to the State. I have always considered myself a member +of the governing classes, with the privileges and the duties. And I +abate nothing of that opinion. It seems to me to be my duty to govern, +if not by directing, then at least by guiding, through the superiority +of my insight. I am not fitted for the intrigues of what is called +Public Life. No doubt that is no worse today than it was in the time +of Alcibiades or the late Mr. Gladstone. But it is very bad; very vile. + +You say: how do I presume to speculate on public matters who cut +myself deliberately off from the consideration of public matters on +the 8/9/’16? My friend, I have considered the public matters of the +8/9/1816; of the 4/9/1870; 1770; 1470; of the 8/9/’16 of B.C. 1070. And +there is no difference. If it is not an hypocrisy, it remains still a +very wearisome matter to search for the person of the Sacred Emperor in +a low teahouse. Well, I have done my share of searching and am too old +for any more. + +I have said that there is no difference between the public matters +of today and those of the day of Alcibiades. But there is one very +great difference: there is the difference that today--and it was +never the case before--all the ground of the world that is capable of +growing wheat is occupied by wheat and the population of the world is +increasing by leaps and bounds. I will tell you: Some years before the +war I was in a little town on the coast of France not far from Dunkirk. +And my hotel was full of affrighted women; of nuns whose convents had +been burned over their heads; and of ruined, wounded, and despairing +men from the Low Countries. St. Quentin had been sacked; other towns +were afire. A year before you could read in the papers the despatches +of intrepid war correspondents in the South of France. They wrote from +hotels--just as they did a year or so ago--how towns were flaming, +streets running with wine, how the 5–9 shells soared and the naval +howitzers raised their muzzles and coughed. You know the sort of thing! + +Well! Those were the fingers on the wall. They were merely food-riots +but they predicted Armageddon for those that can read--and still they +predict an Armageddon beside which that in which we all took part was +one of Gilbert White’s rush candles against the searchlights of a +battleship. Those were food riots, caused by the determination of town +dwellers to enforce prices on peasants. The last war was a food riot: +the next war will be a food riot beyond the imagination of the sons of +men. + +Nothing can prevent it or much delay it unless there should come a +change in the hearts of humanity. And I do not perceive much change +in the hearts of man--and all the wheat-land of the world is occupied +by wheat and the population of the world is increasing by leaps +and bounds. _Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin!_ You say that there are +revolutions on foot. There always have been. But they have always been +_révolutions de palais_ and _révolutions de palais_ they will always +remain. What does it matter to me or to any sane man whether it is +the Duke of Omnium or Mr. Evans of Llanfair-Rhaiado, or Mr. Hicks of +Poplar who sits in the seats once occupied by Sir Robert Walpole or +Mr. Jonkinsen or Colbert or Caius Julius Cæsar? None of those departed +statesmen had to face the problem of a globe whose wheat-land was all +occupied and whose population was increasing by leaps and bounds. In +consequence they were not so greedy for money, or for the jazz bands of +excitement that may make them forget tomorrow. For that is what it all +comes to. + +So I go out of public life of that type. + +But don’t believe that I, Gringoire, Hippolyte, de l’Institut de +France, go out of public life! No, I go into it. For I go to prove +that a decent life, clean, contemplative, intent, skilful, and with +its little luxuries, may yet be lived by the Gringoires of the +world--_hominibus bonæ voluntatis_. For, though I am a poet, it is thus +that I interpret the message of the angel. For it is thus that I see +the world--as a world of a few Gringoires and of infinite millions +that are the stuff to fill graveyards. I can’t see it any other way. + +And I said to myself in the wash-house of Madame Rosalie whilst +some fragments of iron and rubble pattered down on the tiles of the +pent-roof from the nearby church that, for the rest of my life I would +be what I will call self-supporting--at any rate after the war was +finished--and I will govern! + +For I will be dependent on the profits of no man’s labor, and I will +produce more food than I eat and more thought than I take from the +world. So, to the measure of the light vouchsafed, shall some fragment +of the world be dependent on me. It is the only way to govern. + +All this wangling for power in newspapers, meetings, market-places, +and drawing-rooms is a weariness--and when you have it, what is it? A +handful of dried leaves that crumble under the touch. If you have a +platoon you can make it smart; if you have a garden, you may make it +fine, luxuriant, producing marrows as large as barrels. Or if you write +a poem, you must make it beautiful. Everything else is vanity. + +I ... I who speak to you ... can house myself, clothe myself, +discipline, entertain, and think for myself--and I can feed more than +myself. As the old saying went: I can build a house, plant a tree, +write a book, and beget a son. No man who cannot do all these things is +fit to govern. He cannot govern--for I and the men who are with me, of +good will, shall withhold his food, his clothing, his thoughts for his +mind. + +You may say, Mr. Compiler, that you who write falsehoods for the +newspapers, who organize in offices the carrying of things on wheels, +who dig in the bowels of the earth, and hammer on iron plates--or who +take the profits of those who do these things--that you will govern, or +inherit, the earth and the civilization of the earth. You cannot. If +you withhold the labor of your hands or your minds--the world goes on. +If I should--you would starve in body and soul--and in jazz noises! + +In the end, I think, the world will be driven to become a great +beehive: there will be the workers who think of nothing but their work. +They will think nothing of the profits. And there will be the drones +who provide the jazz noises and the wheels--and who will be killed off +from time to time. + +That is what I have gathered from the ruined houses in Flanders and +from the aloof quality of the faces that came back to me whilst I +sat dozing and Rosalie Prudent sewed. The faces were those of the +Lincolnshire Private, of Lieutenant Morgan, of Henri Gaudier, and of +the caretaker in the house at Albert--and of the Quartermaster of the +Wiltshires.[16] But, so that you may not think that I limit myself to +one class of society, I will add the faces of Lord Kitchener, of Sir +Edward Grey, and of the French Minister, whose name I have forgotten. I +did not need to see in imagination the faces of the orderly or of Mme. +Rosalie, for they were with me. + +You will object that I single out for salvation in Gomorrah only those +of whom I have talked. Certainly, it is only those that I single +out--those of that type, for those, for me, are the _homines bonæ +voluntatis_ who must be preserved if the State is to continue. They +have rather abstracted expressions since they think only of their +work; they have aspects of fatigue, since the salvation of a world +is a large order, and they bear on their backs the burden of the +whole world; but they look at you directly, and in their glance is no +expression of pride, ambition, profit, or renown. They have expressions +of responsibility, for they are the governing classes. Others will have +that title in the newspapers--but they govern only those who make the +noises of jazz-bands. The food supply and the supply of poetry is in +the hands of the Gringoires. + +Buzzing noises make the world pleasant; it would be a grim and +silent world without them. I should not like it, nor would the +other Gringoires like it. It was in Coventry Street that I last met +Lieutenant Morgan-Gringoire. But, from time to time the buzzers must +be killed off. Destiny is remorseless: either those who buzz must die +in occasional crowds or those who live to give food and poetry must go +starve and the others with them. Destiny is remorseless. + +But destiny is also just. The drones of the hive have a good time--and +give a good time. Moreover they make splendid soldiers of the type of +the Cockney or the Parigot. That, perhaps, is how destiny means them to +get killed off. So they will have their good times; and they will also +have glory, the glory of finding the person of the Sacred Emperor in +some such low teahouse as was the Bois de Mametz on the 14/7/’16 when +the 38th Division was murdered. + +And maybe that is the best glory of all. God forbid that I should say +it is not. And I like to think that, along with the good time that they +had and the glory of standing in the presence of the Sacred Emperor, +they found also--sanctuary. For I like very much to remember the smile +that was on the face of Lt. Morgan when they dug him out from under the +dirt of the communication-trench. + +Do you remember the old Catholic idea that a man may find salvation +between the saddle and the ground? Well, we know little of +death--nothing of death. So I hope it is not a heresy to think that, +as the eyelids of those who fell closed on their glory, they had long, +long visions, like that green vision that came to me from time to +time. For time is a very relative thing; and may they not well have +had long, long illusions, seeming to last for years and years?--to the +effect that they had found, each his imagined sanctuary, where there +was the gingerbread cottage that, hand in hand, on tiptoe with some +Gretel, they explored, crossing their fingers and crying “_Feignits_” +in the face of destiny--and where the Hou-Hou-oo of the wolf upon +the Montagne Noire shall sound so very distantly as to be only the +comforting reminder of the Grimm we knew as children. + +----Something like that. + +That is all I have to say about the war, here and now. But you have +poked your sardonic fun at me from time to time, Mr. Compiler, and +though bargaining is no part of my nature, a determination to have my +own way was born in me as pawkiness was in you. And now, I say this: + +“You have poked your fun at me as writer and as cook, and decorated +with only those attributions of yours--as if each of those little, +half-concealed smiles were a rag and tatter on my shining-seated +_pantalons_, you propose to exhibit me to your public. Well, you shan’t +except on my own terms. The first is that, as you have spoken of me as +writer you should enshrine--like a shining fly in amber--in the gum +of your lucubrations a specimen of my own writing as it came to me, +precisely, in Nieppe. And the second is that, since you began this +compilation with what purports to be an account of my entertainment of +the guests who honor this lowly roof of ours, you shall, as truthfully +entertain your readers--as truthfully as you can, for God gives to +some of us vision and to some the gift of recounting things askew for +the entertainment of those wider of mouth than of intelligence--you +shall then entertain your readers with an account of the dishes which +since early morning I have been preparing for the evening degustation +of yourself, of my dear Sélysette and your friend Mrs. Carmody. For I +observe that, though you poke fun at my hospitality you are not averse +from begging your dimity madams to share what you have called, I think, +our rough oaken board.” + +Mrs. Carmody was no more than the wife of the Headmaster of the King +Edward VI Grammar School where your Compiler gives lessons in the +English language and drill, in the neighboring town. She had expressed +an urgent curiosity to witness the domestic felicities and the +supposedly eccentric habits of my friends. For it is not to be imagined +that a figure so marked as that of our poet could conceal itself in an +isolated dingle of a Home County without setting a considerable part +of that county agog with curiosity--any more than it is to be imagined +that an usher in a diminutive but immensely ancient public school +could forever stave off from contact with his most intimate friends +the young and agreeable but still imperious wife of his Head. + +But to the alarmed, but only half-expressed remonstrances of your +Compiler--for what, he wondered would Gringoire insist on inserting +into his pages; and wouldn’t his patiently prosecuted work when, if +ever, it saw the light, wouldn’t it have the aspect of a mere rag-bag? +To these alarmed, if only half-expressed remonstrances, Gringoire, +arising to his lean, gray height, announced his immutable programme for +the day. It was by then towards four of a very hot, but fast cooling, +July afternoon. The sunflowers drooped on their stalks, flycatchers +made their curious, interrupted flights into the shining air and back +to the old roof. The cows from the meadow had crowded to the other side +of the quickset hedge, and, rubbing themselves unceasingly to get rid +of flies from their backs made a curious sound like the tearing of thin +paper interspersed with the deep, tranquil sighings of their breaths. +It was in short an English July afternoon--a time when, if ever, men +should sit and ruminate in quiet. + +But there was such a clamor! You would have said that the itch of all +the authors and all the regimental sergeants major had entered into +our friend. Quick, the boy, dozing behind the house, must put in the +mare and go to the station and see if the Bombay duck had come for +the curry. Quick, the maid must bring tea half an hour before that +diminutive creature was accustomed to bring it. Or, no.... She must put +back tea an hour and Madame Sélysette must with her own incomparable +fingers blow three quarts of shandygaff and not forget the lime-juice. +And Madame Sélysette must find the article he had written at Nieppe, +and must put out paper and pens and cut two quills just as he liked +them and come down and entertain Compi--your humble servant the +compiler--and see that no wasps had got under the cabbage-leaves that +covered the syllabubs in the spring and see that the boy did not take +the traces up two holes too short and ... + +Madame Sélysette put her charming and provocative bust out of the +little square window space above and to the left of the porch. + +“You propose to write, my friend?” she asked. “But you swore this +morning that you would send me to Coventry for a week if I did not goad +you into picking the greengages....” + +Gringoire made a sound like “Grrh”, as if the Wolf of the Mountains had +humorously snarled. He said: + +“You have no soul!” She made at him a little grimace and disappeared. +But I could hear their endearments as they met on the sounding little +wooden stairs and felt all the summer regrets of the nearly old +bachelor. + +There was however no rest that afternoon. It was well to have the great +blue three-quart jug of shandygaff on the seat in the porch; it was +agreeable to have Madame Sélysette to one’s self whilst she dotted a +few of the ‘i’s’ and crossed the ‘t’s’ as to the entangled career and +theories of her great man--and there is no better drink of an English +July afternoon than shandygaff that has a little edge of lime-juice +given to it and that since dawn has had all its ingredients cooled +in an ice-cold spring. And there is no pleasanter topic in the mouth +of a gay and tranquil young woman assured of the adoration of her +mate than her expressions of her humorous adoration for Himself and +his crotchets. You reply that the adoration of a lively young woman +expressed to yourself would be more agreeable, but that is not the +case. For lively young women do not express adoration to the faces of +their males; but, failing and replacing that, it is pleasant to sit +in a porch and hearken to adoration of a roaring genius overhead. For +it causes you to have daydreams of a time when you in revenge may sit +in an upper room, with a lively young woman expressing to a third the +adoration that she feels for yourself.... + +But continuously our Gringoire’s voice rumbled from inside his upper +room. Then coming to the window he would shout: + +“Sélysette Sé ... ly ... _sette_.... What is the colloquial English for +...” Some phrase that I did not catch. Or: + +“Sé ... ly ... sette.... _Est-ce que_ ...” And again something that +I did not catch for my French is none of the strongest. But I should +gather that it had something to do with his pots that were on the +stove in the disreputable shanty that he called his cookhouse. For +Madame would enter that erection like Eurydice disappearing into Orcus. +Immediately would come the thunder of Gringoire descending the stairs +as if he had fallen. He too would enter the cookhouse and there would +be the sound of impassioned and farcical altercations. Then Gringoire +would approach the porch with a face that resembled a beet root with +the heat. He would drink a pint of shandygaff at a swallow, exclaim: + +“The stuff’s bilge.... No, I don’t mean the shandygaff. There is no one +like Sélysette for compounding cold drinks. I trained her. I mean my +prose. My prose is bilge....” And he would thunder up the stairs whilst +Madame tranquilly resumed her place. + +Once she asked some questions about Mrs. Carmody and when I said that +lady had the greatest possible admiration for Gringoire and even had +some of his verses by heart she expressed amused relief. “For,” said +she, “there are going to be great storms and dinner won’t be ready till +ten.” + +It wasn’t. + +For, you understand, in the sometimes tranquil, sometimes tempestuous +but always complex nature of my friend, the pride of authorship had +for the moment come uppermost and he was determined to get _his_ prose +into his compiler’s volume. But of late he had only written in French +as he has told you. So he would come to the window and shout to me +the question whether he would be allowed to insert his French prose. +Without waiting for me to answer his question he would shout: “No, of +course you won’t!” and disappear. Then he would shout: + +“But I can’t translate my own damned stuff. In heaven’s name what’s the +English for ... The beastly colloquial English....” + +Towards seven, just when I was thinking that I must go and tidy myself +for the approach of Mrs. Carmody, he appeared before me, dishevelled +and with a mess of written papers dangling from his hands. + +“Here, you,” he exclaimed, “get your reporter’s notebook and come with +me!” + +And, at the bottom of the garden, under the hedge beneath the damson +trees he made me lie down in the grass which was there long and began +to dictate to me. He couldn’t, as he said, translate his own French +prose because his own French was near his heart and his English much +less. You might say that his passions were for English countrysides +and for French prose and here the two met to his confusion. Perhaps it +is impossible to interpret French prose in the long grass beneath an +English quickset hedge. + +In any case Gringoire was distracted as he dictated and I was +distracted, using a shorthand that I almost never employ to take +down his words that he whispered or shouted or intermingled with +ejaculations that I was not intended to record.... And I was the more +distracted because at the top of the garden I could see Mrs. Carmody +and Madame Sélysette carrying implements and provisions for the dinner +from the house door to the little platform beneath the enormous oak +that overshadowed the spring. Those gay young things laughed over their +burdens--for Mrs. Carmody, out of her School House, was at least as gay +as Madame Sélysette. And every time that they laughed Gringoire, lying +in the long grass, groaned and writhed with the whole of his immense +length. I have relegated his French, for which he gave me the copy from +some Swiss magazine, to an appendix. I can only hope that his French is +better than his English version of it. But as to that I am no judge. I +only wish that he had not insisted on my presenting an untidy book to +the world, for in common, I believe, with most readers, I much dislike +appendices. For when on a bookstall I see a book and, examining it, +find appendices at the end, I think either that that is a learned work +for which I am seldom in the mood, having studies enough of my own to +pursue, or that the author is an untidy-minded fellow who has not given +himself the pains to digest and put into his own phraseology matter +that will almost certainly be tedious to read. + +But in this case I have no alternative. The rages of Gringoire are +things that I have no mind to face. Print his lucubrations I must or +there would be the devil to pay. I am not certain that there won’t be +at least a minor fiend to propitiate as it is--I mean when Gringoire +comes to look for his prose and finds it at the end of the volume. + +There certainly was a tremendous row when he discovered that he had +kept the ladies waiting. He howled with rage, sprang to his feet, +rushed into his cookhouse.... + +And the first view that Mrs. Carmody had of a poet for whom, as you +shall discover, she had a real veneration, was rushing along the face +of the house towards the dinner-table beneath the oak. He was hatless, +coatless, his shirt-collar was widely unbuttoned and he was bearing a +huge tray covered with little saucersful of the piquant messes that he +calls _hors d’œuvres_. + +We dined. + +I am, alas, no Brillat Savarin and Gringoire as cook is to say the +least inarticulate. When he is not that he is profane. We had his +_hors d’œuvres_. Then we had his curried lobster. What shall I say +about his curry? + +Do you know the sensation of suddenly leaving the level and swooping +downwards on the little railways you get at Exhibitions or in +fairgrounds? It is like that. You take your first forkful of one of +Gringoire’s inventions with misgivings mingled with anticipations. Then +you are reassured. You say: + +“This is at least supportable. I shall survive this.” + +You take a sip of his white wine. After that it flies. + +But you can’t _believe_ in Gringoire as cook.... I sometimes wonder +if even he believes in himself. I mean, I asked him the other day for +the recipe for his curry, just as, at the beginning of this book, as I +have reported, I tried to extract from him his directions for household +management. The results were even more inarticulate. He said: + +“Oh, you take any old thing--tinned lobster, bully beef, cold +mutton.... And of course you fry ... But curry powder is good for +any dish.... Because of the garlic in it.... And which curry are you +talking about? There are hundreds. The only thing that unites them is +that the curry must be cooked. Don’t you understand? The curry--the +powder--itself must be cooked. For hours and hours. Do you see? No, +you don’t see. How can I remember what I put into the curry for your +friend? Any old thing....” + +I know he hadn’t put in any old thing, though it is probably true that +the chief ingredient of his dish is his fine frenzy. But I remember the +energy he had put into securing the fresh lobsters for that particular +effort--and the special brand of French preserved oysters that he +had had to have for his beefsteak, kidney and oyster pudding which +on that menu followed the curry. The boy had been sent on a bicycle +in one direction, Madame Sélysette and I in the dogcart to Ulpeston, +he himself had borrowed a lift in the baker’s cart and gone to +Storrinton.... No, surely, not any old thing--though he surely believed +what he said.... + +At any rate towards eleven we were contented and he, appeased, sat back +in his chair and talked about poultry foods to Mrs. Carmody, that being +the first time that he had paid her any attention. + +The great boughs of the oak in which there now hung three Chinese +lanthorns--Madame Sélysette loves Chinese lanthorns--the great boughs +of the oak towered quietly up towards the planets, great white moths +appearing and disappearing again into the blackness around the glow +of the lanthorns. The Dog-star hung low on the horizon before us and +the owls called at ten-yard intervals as they flew along the little +stream in the meadow. When they were silent the night-jar churned +intermittently. When we too were silent the little tinkle of the stream +from the spring made itself heard. + +I think that Mrs. Carmody did not much want to talk about poultry +though her white Leghorns had taken many prizes at County or even more +important shows. I think she let the conversation drag purposely. For +suddenly, when we had all been pensive for a minute or two, her voice +said from the shadows: + +“‘I should like to imagine a night...!’” + +Gringoire exclaimed sharply: + +“What? What’s that? Don’t!” + +But Mrs. Carmody said defiantly: + +“I will. Just to pay you.... To show you....” And she began again: + + “‘I should like to imagine + A moonlight in which there would be no machine guns! + For it is possible + To come out of a trench or a hut or a tent or a church all in ruins; + To see the black perspective of long avenues + All silent; + The white strips of sky + At the sides, cut by the poplar trunks; + The white strips of sky + Above, diminishing-- + The silence and blackness of the avenue + Enclosed by immensities of space + Spreading away + Over No Man’s Land.... + + For a minute ... + For ten.... + There will be no star-shells + But the light of the untroubled stars; + There will be no Verey light, + But the light of the quiet moon + Like a swan. + And silence!...’” + +The moon was at that moment just tipping over the ridge of trees before +us. Mrs. Carmody hesitated. + +“‘Then ... a long way ...’” + +The voice of Madame Sélysette said slowly: + +“‘Then far away to the right ...’” + +Mrs. Carmody said: “Thank you!” and continued: + + “‘Then far away to the right thro’ the moonbeams + _Wukka Wukka_ will go the machine guns, + And, far away to the left + _Wukka Wukka_ + And sharply + _Wuk_ ... _Wuk_ ... and then silence + For a space in the clear of the moon.’” + +The impassive face of Gringoire that the moonlight just showed worked +suddenly, the mouth just moving--oh, rather like a rabbit munching. He +said: + +“I wrote that in Nieppe in September ’sixteen....” He added: + +“And it’s pleasant ... you two remembering....” + +He reached out his right hand and took Mrs. Carmody’s left, and his +left and took Madame Sélysette’s right. + +“‘Rest,’” he said with his heavy tired voice, “‘after toil, port after +stormy seas ...’” He paused and added after a moment: “‘Do greatly +please!’” + + +[Footnotes] + +[13] Gringoire particularly asks me to style this chapter as above +because the Eminent Reformer, mentioned in Part I, Chapter VI, once +said that the Writing on the Wall at Belshazzar’s Feast was the first +recorded instance of a Kinematographic production. It seems stupid: but +our friend insists. He also asks me to say that Mme. Prudent’s name was +really _Dutoit_. + +[14] It should be remembered that the military description of “tactics” +is the direction of troops when in contact with the enemy. “Strategy” +includes the direction of all movements that take place outside the +immediate firing line. The conversion of neutral nations into allies +or the cementing of bonds between allies by literary manifestations is +specifically and according to the textbooks a branch of strategy, so +that Gringoire is using the correct military word. + +[15] As far as the compiler has been able to discover, the poet’s +only ground for this diatribe is a review that his last volume of +poems received from the ---- Literary Supplement. In this the reviewer +devotes one line to saying that the volume of poems is the best that +was published during the war and the rest to personal abuse of our +friend--and that is all. Our friend says that this is not cricket. It +probably is not; but one should never say so. + +[16] _Note by Gringoire._ I do not know why I am haunted by the +remembrance of this man. He was killed by the direct hit of a shell. +When I last saw him, he was reading a paper with the spectacles at +the end of his nose like the caretaker at Albert. His tunic--with ten +ribbons!--was open over his fat stomach, and he wore carpet slippers. +He was as brave as a lion and as simple as a sheep: no soul then alive +knew his job better. He was a butcher of Stratford-on-Avon. If he have +left a young son, may the shade of the Divine William guide that young +son’s footsteps gently and humorously through the ways of life! + + + + + ENVOI + + UNE PARTIE DE CRICKET + + BEING A LETTER WRITTEN FROM THE LINES OF SUPPORT + TO CAPITAINE UN TEL AT PARIS. + + +Mon cher Monsieur, Camarade et Confrère, + +C’était derrière le bois de Bécourt, un soir de juillet, et nous étions +en train de jouer au cricket tandis que les obus allemands passaient +au-dessus de nos têtes. Les obus allemands arrivaient, semblant vouloir +crier le mot anglais _weary_,--qui veut dire fatigué,--puis changeant +d’avis, ils disaient--et péremptoirement--_whack_. Mais en jouant au +cricket, on oublie l’orchestre boche: on n’entend plus les obus qui +passent. Nous courions; nous adressions des objurgations au malheureux +qui n’attrapait pas la balle; nous discutions même, parce que les +règles du jeu de cricket--qu’on joue avec une balle de tennis, deux +marteaux et deux caisses de _bully-beef_--sont un peu élastiques. La +pelouse est d’argile, dure et cuite par le soleil presque tropical; en +fait d’herbe nous n’avons que des chardons, pour spectateurs et pour +barrières à la fois, les mulets de transport, alignés. Mais jamais +le cricket international qu’on joue sur le terrain des Lords, dans +le bois de Saint-Jean, n’a été si accidenté ni si émouvant que notre +partie de cricket derrière le bois de Bécourt, ce soir de juillet. Nous +avons crié, gesticulé, discuté, hurlé ... nous, les officiers anglais, +mornes, taciturnes! + +Je vous présente ces considérations en forme de lettre, mon cher ... +j’aurais voulu plutôt écrire un essai, soigné, balancé, bien pensant. +Mais il m’est impossible de ciseler de la prose ces jours-ci. “Que +voulez-vous,”--comme disent nos Tommies,--“c’est la guerre!” J’ai passé +vingt-cinq ans à chercher des cadences, à chasser des assonances, avec +une rage acharnée, comme celle du bon père Flaubert. Mais aujourd’hui +je n’écris que des lettres,--longues, diffuses, banales. L’autre +affaire demande trop de temps, de loisir,--de chance! + +Donc, nous étions en train de jouer au cricket, quand je vis passer +tout près de nous un officier français de ma connaissance,--officier +d’une de ces batteries de 75, admirables, et que, la nuit surtout, +nous avons trouvées tellement réconfortantes, à cause de leur voix +qui roulait sans cesse, à peu de mètres derrière notre dos. C’était +un colosse gris-bleu, aux yeux bruns et sombres, à la moustache brune +et lourde. Il restait là, campé sur ses jambes et sur sa canne, comme +quelque instrument de guerre à trois jambes, silencieux et d’acier. Et +quand je m’approchai de lui, il me dit: + +--_I find that a little shocking. Very shocking!_ (Je trouve ça un peu +shocking. Même très shocking.) + +Il regardait les joueurs de cricket qui continuaient à crier, à +gesticuler et à courir entre les chardons gigantesques et les jambes +des mulets dangereux. Je m’écriai: + +--Au nom du bon Dieu, pourquoi? + +Il ne cessait pas de regarder les joueurs, et réfléchit longtemps avant +de répondre. Et ce fut moi qui, m’impatientant, commençai à parler, et +même à gesticuler. Je disais que nous étions nouvellement sortis des +tranchées; que le jeu donnait la santé, remettait le moral, faisait +oublier la guerre ... que sais-je? Il réfléchissait toujours, et moi je +parlais toujours. Puis enfin, il dit: + +--_I find that this war should be a religion. On coming out the +trenches one should sit--and reflect. Perhaps one should pray_ ... +(Je trouve que cette guerre devrait être conduite en religion. En +sortant des tranchées l’on devrait s’asseoir--et réfléchir. Peut-être +devrait-on prier.) + +Et puis ... je parlai encore longuement sans qu’il répondît autre chose +que: + +--_I find that, all the same._ + +Alors j’éclatai de rire. Car la situation me semblait tout d’un coup +allégorique. Et si vous y pensez, mon cher, vous verrez pourquoi je +riais. C’est parce que c’était lui, le représentant de Cyrano de +Bergerac, qui parlait l’anglais et employait les monosyllabes d’un +lord Kitchener de théâtre; tandis que moi, le représentant de tant de +milords et officiers qui pendant tant de siècles n’ont rien trouvé +de plus à dire que les deux syllabes “O ... ah”,--moi, qui aurais dû +porter monocle et favoris jaunes, j’étais occupé à hurler et à mimer +des phrases d’un français assez incohérent, comme un vrai Tartarin. Et +tous les autres--officiers et O. R.--de mon régiment continuaient à +sauter, à crier et à rire comme des enfants méridionaux. + + * * * * * + +Et, en vérité, le changement est étonnant et quelque peu émouvant. +Nous avons toujours eu l’idée--tout le monde, même le Français a eu +l’idée--que le peuple français, et surtout les officiers et soldats +français étaient gais, débonnaires, loquaces, goguenards,--“bretteurs +et hâbleurs sans vergogne.” Eh bien, j’ai voyagé en permission de +Steenewerck à Paris,--voyage qui dura dix-sept heures. Et, pendant +ces dix-sept heures, quoiqu’il y eût toujours des officiers français +assis dans les voitures, ou debout dans les couloirs du train, le +voyage a été le plus silencieux que j’aie fait de ma vie. Personne ne +parlait. Mais personne! Il y avait des colonels, des commandants, des +capitaines. Et je ne puis croire que ce fût tout à fait de ma faute. +Il est vrai que, partout dans le train, on lisait: “Taisez-vous; +méfiez-vous”,--et le reste. Mais c’eût été impossible que _tous_ ces +messieurs gris-bleus m’eussent attribué les oreilles ennemies dont +parle l’affiche. Je portais l’uniforme khaki. + +Non, certainement, le voyage n’a pas été accidenté. Je vais vous en +raconter les incidents: de Hazebrouck à Calais cinq officiers français, +qui n’échangèrent pas deux mots; de Calais à Abbeville, trente +officiers. Je m’adressai à un capitaine d’artillerie, en grognant que +le train marchait très lentement. Il me répondit en anglais: + +--_Many troops moving!_ + +Et puis, silence! + +A Amiens entre un monsieur en civil. C’était un samedi vers huit +heures du matin, et le train avait l’air de ne vouloir arriver à Paris +qu’après trois heures de l’après-midi. Comme j’avais des affaires à +Paris et que je devais partir le lundi avant six heures, je demandai à +ce monsieur si je trouverais les banques fermées, et les ministères, et +les magasins. Il me répondit qu’il n’en savait rien, qu’il n’était pas +chez lui à Paris. Il allait à Jersey pour prendre possession du corps +d’une jeune fille qui, ayant été noyée à Dieppe, avait flotté jusqu’à +Jersey. _Et lui aussi me répondit en anglais._ + +Il commençait à pleurer tout doucement. + +Et puis ... silence; les officiers regardaient ce monsieur avec des +yeux qui ne disaient rien. Mais ce n’était pas gai! + +A Creil montent deux dames, jolies et bien mises. Elles ont assez +parlé, ces deux-là. Croix-Rouge, œuvres de charité, colonels, familles! +Mais les officiers ne les regardaient jamais. Pas un ne levait les +yeux, quoiqu’elles fussent jeunes, jolies, bien mises.... + +Tandis que, pendant le trajet de Rouen à Albert, nous autres--qui +n’allions pas en permission!--nous avons chanté, parlé aux demoiselles +qu’on voyait sur les perrons; joué au football le long du train; grimpé +sur le toit des voitures. + +J’exagère un peu, naturellement, ces différences. Ce n’est pas un +article que je suis en train d’écrire, c’est une lettre. Mais je +reconte quand même ce que mes yeux ont vu et mes oreilles entendu.... +Et comment l’expliquer? Parce que ce n’est pas assez de dire--comme on +me l’a dit assez souvent--que si, en Angleterre, les Allemands étaient +établis entre York et Manchester, s’ils avaient saisi les industries, +pillé les villes,--et fait ce que font les Boches!--nous aussi, nous +serions tristes, mornes, silencieux. Je ne parle pas de la population +civile de mon pays; je parle de gens dont la vie n’est pas gaie, +qui sont expatriés, loin de leur patrie, et qui souffrent, je vous +l’assure, d’une nostalgie très sincère. Car là-bas, sur la Somme ou +en Belgique, l’on se sent bien oublié, bien abandonné, et très, très +isolé, d’un isolement semblable à l’isolement de ... Eh bien! c’est +comme si l’on était suspendu--nous, quelques millions d’hommes!--sur +un tapis, dans les infinitudes de l’espace. Les routes qui s’étendent +devant nous cessent tout d’un coup, à quelques mètres, dans le _No +Man’s Land_. Et c’est bien triste à contempler, des grand’routes qui +cessent tout d’un coup. Et puis les sentiers par lesquels on est +venu--et qui s’étendent entre soi et son pays--sont des chemins que +l’on ne doit pas traverser.... Et, tout comme un autre, l’on aime +sa femme, sa maison, ses enfants, ses parents, son coin du feu, ses +champs, ses fumiers, ses bœufs et ses bois.... Le soldat français a +cela, au moins, qu’il se bat chez soi! Et c’est quelque chose pour lui, +comme individu. + +Je suppose que c’est pour oublier, non seulement les obus allemands, +mais aussi celles qui nous sont si chères, le coin du feu où nous +avons si souvent devisé, les champs, les fumiers, les bœufs et les +bois,--c’est pour trouver “l’herbe qui s’appelle l’oubli”, que nous +jouons au cricket près de Bécourt, et sortons des tranchées en donnant +des coups de pied à un football qui saute à travers les corps des +hommes tombés, vers les Allemands. Est-ce faiblesse? Est-ce la source +dont nous tirons ce que nous avons de fermeté, de hardiesse, de +courage? Je n’en sais rien. + +Aussi bien que moi, mon cher, vous avez connu la difficulté de +définir exactement et en termes justes les différences, les nuances +des différences, qu’il y a entre des nations. Nous commençons par +développer une théorie--et nous théorisons beaucoup trop tôt; ou bien +nous prenons le contre-pied d’une théorie admise depuis des siècles. +Nous avons eu en Angleterre les caricatures du dix-neuvième siècle, +des guerres de Napoléon I^{er}, qui nous montraient le Français selon +l’imagination populaire anglaise. C’était un coiffeur, mince et affamé, +qui ne mangeait que des grenouilles. Et vous autres, vous aviez votre +John Bull, gros comme un bœuf, le ventre grand comme le ventre d’un +bœuf, et qui dévorait des bœufs entiers. Ou vous aviez le milord qui +se suicidait par pur spleen. Elles étaient stupides, ces caricatures, +mais il m’est impossible de croire qu’elles ne fussent pas sincères. +Les Anglais qui s’étaient battus en France en 1815 avaient cherché ce +qu’ils voyaient--mais ils l’avaient vu. De même pour les Français. + +De même, peut-être, pour moi. J’étais venu d’une Angleterre +émotionnée, couverte, de l’île d’Anglesey jusqu’à North Foreland, +d’affiches patriotiques et coloriées, et puis, de la frontière belge +jusqu’à Paris, j’ai vu une France sans affiches, grise, silencieuse, +préoccupée. Mais pour moi il n’y avait rien de neuf à trouver la France +préoccupée--parce que, pour moi, la France a toujours été la France des +champs, des villages, des bois et des paysans. Et la France des paysans +est une France bien laborieuse, qui travaille sans cesse entre bois et +étangs ou sous les oliviers du Midi. + +Et pour moi la population anglaise a toujours été un peuple des villes. +Or, ce sont les habitants des grandes-villes qui, tout en travaillant +aussi bien que vous voudrez, ont besoin de faire de temps en temps +la noce--chacun selon sa nature. Et c’est peut-être là la raison--la +_causa causans_--des différences entre l’armée française et nous +autres. L’armée anglaise est une armée ouvrière, l’armée française +est une armée plutôt paysanne. Des paysans, et surtout des paysans +français, ont l’habitude de mesurer les sévérités, les nécessités +implacables de la nature. Ils les confrontent sans cesse, pendant +des semaines, des mois, des années. Ils ne peuvent y échapper,--ils +ne peuvent pas s’évader de la contemplation des maux de la vie, des +vents et des vers qui détruisent les récoltes, en prenant des jours +de permission, en faisant des calembours, ou par cet “humour” âcre +et plutôt triste qui est, peut-être, la qualité souveraine du Tommy +anglais. Car inscrire sur un obus qu’on va lancer contre les Boches +les mots “_Love to little Willie_” peut paraître stupide, shocking +à des gens qui n’ont jamais été là-bas. Mais la psychologie humaine +est très compliquée, et il est certain que la lecture d’inscriptions +de ce genre sur les grands obus à côté desquels on passe le long des +chaussées a beaucoup fait pour nous encourager quand nous avons avancé +d’Albert vers La Boisselle. Pourquoi? C’est difficile à dire. C’est +peut-être parce que, les obus étant terribles et funestes, voici un +obus qui est devenu ridicule, joyeux, ou même humain. Car nous sommes +tous anthropomorphistes--et qu’un seul obus puisse se commettre à être +le véhicule d’un jeu d’esprit, cela suffit pour donner à des coeurs +superstitieux l’idée que tous les obus peuvent être un peu moins +surhumains qu’ils n’en ont l’air. Car on a peur des obus. Ce sont les +messagers des dieux qui ont soif, qui se manifestent en sifflant, qui +disent qu’ils sont fatigués, mais qui détruisent, en deux minutes, des +villages, des fumiers, des champs entiers. De même pour la partie de +cricket que nous avons jouée parmi des chardons couverts de poussière +et qui cachaient les ossements des soldats tombés. C’était peut-être +sacrilège, peut-être stupide. + +Mais je vous assure, mon cher, que ce paysage de Bécourt, Fricourt, +Mametz n’était pas joyeux. C’était en juillet, et le soleil laissait +tomber ses rayons sur les vallées larges, sur la poussière qui montait +au ciel, sur les pentes, sur les bois noirs. Mais cette terre ne +riait pas! Elle s’étendait loin, loin; et sous l’horizon bleu-gris +se trouvaient les terrains auxquels personne ne voulait penser. Non, +la nature, là, semblait terrible et funeste--territoire où le Destin +aveugle et implacable devait se manifester à des millions d’êtres. Et +puis nous y avons joué au cricket--et tout de suite ce paysage funeste +et surhumain est devenu ... est devenu un champ de cricket! + +Pour un intellectuel, un terrain restera un terrain, qu’on y voie +en l’air des bombes, des obus ou une balle de tennis. Mais pour +nous autres, un terrain où nous avons joué au cricket devient moins +terrible, et nous y passerons nos jours avec plus de contentement, +malgré les ossements des tombés qui se cachent sous la poussière des +chardons énormes. C’est stupide, c’est sacrilège, si vous voulez. Mais +nous sommes ainsi faits, nous autres qui sortons des grandes villes +pour faire la guerre. Moi, je suis comme cela, j’ai senti comme cela, +là-bas, derrière le bois de Bécourt, par un soir de juillet 1916. + + Et je reste toujours votre affectionné, + G. + +P.S. Et je vous prie de remarquer que toutes les personnes que j’ai +rencontrées entre Steenewerck et Paris parlaient l’anglais. C’est déjà +quelque chose. + + + THE END + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77802 *** |