Peter Whiffle | Project Gutenberg (2024)

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His Life and Works

Preface

So few people were acquainted with Peter Whiffle that the announcement,on that page of the New York Times consecrated to wedding, birth,and obituary notices, of his death in New York on December 15, 1919,awakened no comment. Those of my friends who knew something of therelationship between Peter and myself, probably did not see the slenderparagraph at all. At any rate none of them mentioned it, save, ofcourse, Edith Dale, whose interest, in a sense, was as special as myown. Her loss was not so personal, however, nor her grief so deep.It was strange and curious to remember that however infrequently wehad met, and the chronicle which follows will give evidence of thecomparative infrequency of these meetings, yet some indestructiblebond, a firm determining girdle of intimate understanding, over whichTime and Space had no power, held us together. I had become to Petersomething of a necessity, in that through me he found the properoutlet for his artistic explosions. I was present, indeed, at thebombing of more than one discarded theory. It was under the spell ofsuch apparently trivial and external matters that our friendshipdeveloped and, while my own interests often flew in other directions,Peter certainly occupied as important a place in my heart as I did inhis, probably, in some respects, more important. Nevertheless, when Ireceived a notification from his lawyer that I had been mentioned inPeter's will, I was considerably astonished. My astonishment increasedwhen I was informed of the nature of the bequest. Peter Whiffle hadappointed me to serve as his literary executor.

Now Peter Whiffle was not, in any accepted sense of the epithet, anauthor. He had never published a book; he had never, indeed, written abook. In the end he had come to hold a somewhat mystic theory in regardto such matters, which he had only explained to me a few moments beforehe died. I was, however, aware, more aware than any one else couldpossibly have been, that from time to time he had been accustomed totake notes. I was as familiar, I suppose, as any one could be, withthe trend of his later ideas, and with some of the major incidents inhis earlier life he had acquainted me, although, here, I must confess,there were lacunæ in my knowledge. Still, his testamentary request,unless I might choose to accept it in a sense, I am convinced, entirelytoo flattering to my slender talents, seemed to be inconsistent withthe speculative idea which haunted him, at least towards the end ofhis life. This contradiction and an enlarging sense of the mysteriouscharacter of the assignment were somewhat dispelled by a letter, datedJune 17, 1917, which, a few days after the reading of the will, hislawyer placed in my hands and which indicated plainly enough that Peterhad decided upon my appointment at least two years and a half before hedied. This letter not only confirmed the strange clause in the will butalso, to some extent, explained it and, as the letter is an essentialpart of my narrative, I offer it in evidence at once.

Dear Carl—so it read:

I suppose that some day I shall die; people do die. If there has beenone set purpose in my life, it has been not to have a purpose. That,you alone, perhaps, understand. You know how I have always hesitatedto express myself definitely, you know how I have refrained fromwriting, and you also know, perhaps, that I can write; indeed, untilrecently, you thought I was writing, or would write. But I think yourealize now what writing has come to mean to me, definition, constantdefinition, although it is as apparent as anything can be that life,nature, art, whatever one writes about, are fluid and mutable things,perpetually undergoing change and, even when they assume some semblanceof permanence, always presenting two or more faces. There are thosewho are not appalled by these conditions, those who confront them withbravery and even with impertinence. You have been courageous. You havepublished several books which I have read with varying shades ofpleasure, and you have not hesitated to define, or at any rate discuss,even that intangible, invisible, and noisy art called Music.

I have begun many things but nothing have I ever completed. It hasalways seemed unnecessary or impossible, although at times I have triedto carry a piece of work through. On these occasions a restrainingangel has held me firmly back. It might be better if what I havewritten, what I have said, were permitted to pass into oblivion withme, to become a part of scoriac chaos. It may not mean anything inparticular; if it means too much, to that extent I have failed.

Thinking, however, of death, as I sometimes do, I have wondered if,after all, behind the vapoury curtain of my fluctuating purpose, behindthe orphic wall of my indecision, there did not lurk some vague shadowof intention. Not on my part, perhaps, but on the part of that being,or that condition, which is reported to be interested in such matters.This doubt, I confess, I owe to you. Sometimes, in those extraordinarymoments between sleeping and awakening—and once in the dentist'schair, after I had taken gas—the knots seemed to unravel, the problemseemed as naked as Istar at the seventh gate. But these moments aredifficult, or impossible, to recapture. To recapture them I shouldhave been compelled to invent a new style, a style as capricious andvibratory as the moments themselves. In this, however, as you know, Ihave failed, while you have succeeded. It is to your success, modestas it may appear to you, that I turn in my dilemma. To come to thepoint, cannot you explain, make out some kind of case for me, put meon my feet (or in a book), and thereby prove or disprove something?Shameless as I am, it would be inconceivable, absurd, for me to askyou to do this while I am yet living and I have, therefore, put myrequest into a formal clause in my will. After I am dead, you maysearch your memory, which I know to be very good, for such examples ofour conversations as will best be fitted to illuminate your subject,which I must insist—you, yourself, will understand this, too, sooneror later—is not me at all.

When your book is published, I shall be dead and perhaps unconscious.If, however, as I strongly suspect, some current connects the life tobe with the life that is, I can enjoy what you have done. At the best,you may give others a slight intimation of the meaning of inspirationor furnish guideposts, lighthouses, and bell-buoys to the poet whointends to march singing along the highroad or bravely to embark on theships at sea; at the worst, I have furnished you with a subject foranother book, and I am well aware that subjects even for bad books aredifficult to light upon.

This letter, I may say, astonished me. I think it would astonishanybody. A profound and enveloping melancholy succeeded to this feelingof astonishment. At the time, I was engaged in putting the finishingtouches to The Tiger in the House and I postponed meditation on Peter'saffair until that bulky volume could be dispatched to the printer.That happy event fell on March 15, 1920, but my anthology, Lords ofThe Housetops, next claimed my attention, and then the new edition ofInterpreters, for which I had agreed to furnish a new paper, and thewriting of this new paper amused me very much, carrying my mind notonly far away from cats, which had been occupying it for a twelvemonth,but also away from Peter's request. At last, Interpreters was readyfor the printer, but now the proofs of The Tiger began to come in, andI may say that for the next three months my days were fully occupiedin the correction of proofs, for those of Lords of The Housetops andInterpreters were in my garret when the proofs of The Tiger were not.Never have I corrected proofs with so much concentrated attention asthat which I devoted to the proofs of The Tiger, and yet there wereerrors. In regard to some of these, I was not the collaborator. On Page240, for instance, one may read, There are many females in the novelsof Emile Zola. My intention was to have the fourth word read, felines,and so it stood in the final proof, but my ambition to surmount theinitial letter of Zola's Christian name with an acute accent (anambition I shall forswear on this present page), compelled the printerto reset the line, so that subsequently, when I opened the book at thispage, I read with amazement that there are many females in the novelsof Emile Zola, a statement that cannot be readily denied, to be sure,but still it is no discovery of which to boast.

It was not until September, 1920, that I had an opportunity toseriously consider Peter's request and when I did begin to consider it,I thought of it at first only as a duty to be accomplished. But when Ibegan searching my memory for details of the conversations between usand had perused certain notes I had made on various occasions, visitedhis house on Beekman Place to look over his effects and talk with hismother, the feeling of the artist for inevitable material cameover me and I knew that whether Peter had written me that letter ornot, I should sooner or later have written this book about him.

There was another struggle over the eventual form, a questionconcerning which Peter had made no suggestions. It seemed to me,at first, that a sort of haphazard collection of his ideas andpronunciamentos, somewhat in the manner of Samuel Butler's Note-Books,would meet the case, but after a little reflection I rejected thisidea. Light on the man was needed for a complete understanding ofhis ideas, or lack of them, for they shifted like the waves of thesea. I can never tell why, but it was while I was reading William DeanHowells's Familiar Spanish Studies one day in the New York PublicLibrary that I suddenly decided on a sort of loose biographical form,a free fantasia in the manner of a Liszt Rhapsody. This settled, Iliterally swam ahead and scarcely found it necessary to examine manypapers (which was fortunate as few exist) or to consult anything butmy memory, which lighted up the subject from obscure angles, as asearch-light illuminates the spaces of the sea, once I had learned todecipher the meaning of the problem. What it is all about, or whetherit is about anything at all, you, the reader, of course, must decidefor yourself. To me, the moral, if I may use a conventional word toexpress an unconventional idea, is plain, and if I have not succeededin making it appear so, then I must to some extent blame you, thereader, for what is true of all books, is perhaps truest of this, thatyou will carry away from it only what you are able to bring to it.

Chapter I

One of my friends, a lady, visited Venice alone in her middle age. Itwas late at night when the train drew into the station, and it wasraining, a drizzly, chilling rain. The porter pushed her, with her bag,into a damp gondola and the dismal voyage to the hotel began. Therewere a few lights here and there but she had the impression that shewas floating down the Chicago River in a wash-tub. Once she had reachedher destination, she clambered unsteadily out of the black barge,wobbled through a dark passageway, inhaling great whiffs of masticatedgarlic, and finally emerged in a dimly lighted lobby. At the desk, asleepy clerk yawned as she spoke of her reservation. Tired, rathercross, and wholly disappointed, she muttered, I don't like Venice atall. I wish I hadn't come. The clerk was unsympathetically explanatory,Signora should have visited Venice when she was younger.

A day or so later, the lady recovered her spirits and even her sense ofhumour for she told me the story herself and I have always rememberedit. The moment it passed her lips, indeed, I began to reflect thatI had been lucky to encounter the Bride of the Adriatic in my youth.Paris, too, especially Paris, for there is a melancholy pleasure to bederived from Venice. It is a suitable environment for grief; there is acertain superior relish to suffering there. Paris, I sometimes think,smiles only on the very young and it is not a city I should care toapproach for the first time after I had passed forty.

I was, as a matter of fact, in my twenties when I first wentto Paris—my happiness might have been even greater had I beennineteen—and I was alone. The trip across England—I had landed atLiverpool—and the horrid channel, I will not describe, although bothmade sufficient impression on me, but the French houses at Dieppeawakened my first deep emotion and then, and so many times since, theNormandy cider, quaffed in a little café, conterminous to the railroad,and the journey through France, alive in the sunlight, for it wasMay, the fields dancing with the green grain spattered with vermilionpoppies and cerulean cornflowers, the white roads, flying like ribbonsbetween the stately poplars, leading away over the charming hillspast the red-brick villas, completed the siege of my not too easilygiven heart. There was the stately and romantic interruption of Rouen,which at that period suggested nothing in the world to me but EmmaBovary. Then more fields, more roads, more towns, and at last, towardstwilight, Paris.

Railroads have a fancy for entering cities stealthily through backyardsand the first glimpses of Paris, achieved from a car-window, were notover-pleasant but the posters on the hoardings, advertising beer andautomobile tires, particularly that of the Michelin Tire Company,with the picture of the pinguid gentleman, constructed of a series ofpneumatic circles, seemed characteristic enough. Chéret was dead butsomething of his spirit seemed to glow in these intensely colouredaffiches and I was young. Even the dank Gare Saint Lazare did notdismay me, and I entered into the novel baggage hunt with something ofzest, while other busy passengers and the blue porters rushed hitherand thither in a complicated but well-ordered maze. Naturally, however,I was the last to leave the station; as the light outside deepened to arich warm blue, I wandered into the street, my porter bearing my trunk,to find there a solitary cocher mounted on the box of his cariousfiacre.

An artist friend, Albert Worcester, had already determined mydestination and so I gave commands, Hotel de la Place de l'Odéon, thecocher cracked his whip, probably adding a Hue cocotte! and we wereunder way. The drive through the streets that evening seemed likea dream and, even later, when the streets of Paris had become morefamiliar to me than those of any other city, I could occasionallyrecapture the mood of this first vision. For Paris in the May twilightis very soft and exquisite, the grey buildings swathed in a bland bluelight and the air redolent with a strange fragrance, the ingredientsof which have never been satisfactorily identified in my nasalimagination, although Huysmans, Zola, Symons, and Cunninghame Grahamhave all attempted to separate and describe them. Presently we crossedthe boulevards and I saw for the first time the rows of bloomingchestnut trees, the kiosques where newsdealers dispensed their wares,the brilliantly lighted theatres, the sidewalk cafés, sprinkled withhuman figures, typical enough, doubtless, but who all seemed as unrealto me at the time as if they had been Brobdingnags, Centaurs, Griffins,or Mermaids. Other fiacres, private carriages, taxi-autos, carryingFrench men and French ladies, passed us. I saw Bel Ami, Nana, Liane dePougy, or Otero in every one of them. As we drove by the Opéra, I amcertain that Cléo de Mérode and Leopold of Belgium descended the steps.Even the buses assumed the appearance of gorgeous chariots, bearingperfumed Watteauesque ladies on their journey to Cythera. As we drovethrough the Tuileries Gardens, the mood snapped for an instant as Iviewed the statue of Gambetta, which, I thought at the time, and havealways thought since, was amazingly like the portrait of a gentlemanhailing a cab. What could more completely symbolize Paris than thestatue of a gentleman perpetually hailing a cab and never getting one?

We drove on through the Louvre and now the Seine was under us, lyingblack in the twilight, reviving dark memories of crime and murder,on across the Pont du Carrousel, and up the narrow Rue de Seine. TheQuartier Latin! I must have cried aloud, for the cocher looked atrifle suspicious, his head turned the fraction of an inch. Later,of course, I said, the left bank, as casually as any one. It wasalmost dark when we drove into the open Place, flanked by the Odéon,a great Roman temple, with my little hotel tucked into one corner, asunostentatiously as possible, being exactly similar to every otherstructure, save the central one, in the Place. I shall stop tonight, Isaid to myself, in the hotel where Little Billee lived, for, when onefirst goes to Paris when one is young, Paris is either the Paris ofMurger, du Maurier, or the George Moore of the Confessions, perhaps theParis of all three. In my bag these three books lay, and I had alreadybegun to live one of them.

The patron and a servant in a long white apron were waiting, standingin the doorway. The servant hoisted my trunk to his shoulder and boreit away. I paid the cocher's reckoning, not without difficulty for,although I was not ignorant of the language, I was unaccustomed to thesimplicity of French coinage. There were also the mysteries of thepourboire to compute—ten per cent, I had been told; who has not beentold this?—and besides, as always happens when one is travelling, Ihad no little money. But at length the negotiations were terminated,not to the displeasure of the cocher, I feel certain, since hecondescended to smile pleasantly. Then, with a crack of his whip, thisenormous fellow with his black moustaches, his glazed top-hat, andhis long coat, drove away. I cast a long lingering look after him,apparently quite unaware that many another such teratological specimenexisted on every hand. Now I followed the patron into a dark hallwayand new strata of delight. He gave me a lighted candle and, behindhim, I mounted the winding stairway to the first floor, where I wasdeposited in a chamber with dark red walls, heavy dark red curtainsat the windows, which looked out over the Place, a black walnutwash-hand-stand with pitcher and basin, a huge black walnut wardrobe,two or three chairs of the same wood, upholstered with faded brocade,and a most luxurious bed, so high from the floor that one had to climbinto it, hung with curtains like those at the window, and surmountedby a feather-bed. There was also another article of furniture,indispensable to any French bedroom.

I gave Joseph (all men servants in small hotels in Paris are namedJoseph, perhaps to warn off prospective Potiphar's wives) his vail,asked for hot water, which he bore up promptly in a small can, washedmyself, did a little unpacking, humming the Mattchiche the while,changed my shirt, my collar and my necktie, demanded another bougie,lighted it, and under the humble illumination afforded by it andits companion, I began to read again The Confessions of a Young Man.It was not very long before I was interrupted in the midst of anabsorbing passage descriptive of the circle at the Nouvelle Athènes bythe arrival of Albert Worcester, who had arranged for my reception,and right here I may say that I was lodged in the Hotel de la Placede l'Odéon for fifty francs a month. Albert's arrival, althoughunannounced, was not unexpected, as he had promised to take me todinner.

I was sufficiently emphatic. Paris! I cried. Paris! Good God!

I see you are not disappointed. But Albert permitted a trace ofcynicism to flavour his smile.

It's too perfect, too wonderful. It is more than I felt or imagined.I'm moving in.

But you haven't seen it....

I've seen enough. I don't mean that. I mean I've seen enough toknow. But I want to see it all, everything, Saint Sulpice, theFolies-Bergère, the Musée de Cluny, the Nouvelle Athènes, the ComédieFrançaise, the Bal Bullier, the Arc de Triomphe, the LuxembourgGardens....

They close at sundown. My expression was the cue for him to continue,They'll be open tomorrow and any other day. They're just around thecorner. You can go there when you get up in the morning, if you do getup in the morning. But what do you want to do tonight?

Anything! Everything! I cried.

Well, we'll eat first.

So we blew out the candles, floated down the dark stairs—I didn'treally walk for a week, I am sure—, brushing on our way against abearded student and a girl, fragrant and warm in the semi-blackness,out into the delicious night, with the fascinating indescribable odourof Paris, which ran the gamut from the fragrance of lilac and mimosa tothe aroma of horse-dung; with the sound of horses' hoofs and rollingwheels beating and revolving on the cobble-stones, we made our way—Iswear my feet never touched the ground—through the narrow, crooked,constantly turning, bewildering streets, until we came out on a broadboulevard before the Café d'Harcourt, where I was to eat my first Parisdinner.

The Café d'Harcourt is situated near the Church of the Sorbonne on theBoulevard Saint Michel, which you are more accustomed to see spelledBoul' Mich'. It is a big, brightly lighted café, with a broad terrasse,partially enclosed by a hedge of green bushes in boxes. The hands ofthe clock pointed to the hour of eight when we arrived and the tablesall appeared to be occupied. Inside, groups of men were engaged ingames of checkers, while the orchestra was performing selections fromLouis Ganne's operetta, Les Saltimbanques. On the terrasse, each littletable, covered with its white cloth, was lighted by a tiny lamp witha roseate shade, over which faces glowed. The bottles and dishesand silver all contributed their share to the warmth of the scene,and heaping bowls of peaches and pears and apples and little woodstrawberries, ornamenting the sideboards, gave the place an almostsumptuous appearance. Later I learned that fruit was expensive in Parisand not to be tasted lightly. Victor Maurel has told me how, dining onenight with the composer of The Barber, he was about to help himselfto a peach from a silver platter in the centre of the table when thefrugal Madame Rossini expostulated. Those are to look at, not to eat!

While we lingered on the outer sidewalk, a little comedy was enacted,through the dénouement of which we secured places. A youth, with winein his head and love in his eyes, caressed the warm lips of an adorablegirl. Save for the glasses of apéritifs from which they had beendrinking, their table was bare. They had not yet dined. He clasped hertightly in his arms and kissed her, kissed her for what seemed to be avery long time but no one, except me, appeared to take any notice.

Look! I whispered to Albert. Look!

O! that's all right. You'll get used to that, he replied negligently.

Now the kiss was over and the two began to talk, very excitedly andrapidly, as French people are wont to talk. Then, impulsively, theyrose from their chairs. The man threw a coin down on his napkin. Icaught the glint of gold. He gathered his arms about the woman, alovely pale blue creature, with torrid orange hair and a hat abloomwith striated petunias. They were in the middle of the street when thewaiter appeared, bearing a tray, laden with plates of sliced cucumbers,radishes and butter, and tiny crayfish, and a bottle of white wine.He stared in mute astonishment at the empty table, and then picked upthe coin. Finally, he glanced towards the street and, observing theretreating pair, called after them:

Mais vous n'avez pas diné!

The man turned and shot his reply over his shoulder, Nous rentrons!

The crowd on the terrasse shrieked with delight. They applauded. Someeven tossed flowers from the tables after the happy couple and we ...we sat down in the chairs they had relinquished. I am not certainthat we did not eat the dinner they had ordered. At any rate we beganwith the cucumbers and radishes and écrevisses and a bottle of GravesSupérior.

That night in Paris I saw no Americans, at least no one seemed to be anAmerican, and I heard no English spoken. How this came about I have noidea because it never occurred again. In fact, one meets more Americansin Paris than one does in New York and most of the French that I manageto speak I have picked up on the Island of Manhattan. During dinner Ibegan to suspect a man without a beard, in a far corner, but Albertreassured me.

He is surely French, he said, because he is buttering his radishes.

It would be difficult to exaggerate my emotion: the white wine, thebearded French students, the exquisite women, all young and smilingand gay, all organdie and lace and sweet-peas, went to my head. I havespent many happy evenings in the Café d'Harcourt since that night. Ihave been there with Olive Fremstad, when she told me how, dressed asa serpent in bespangled Nile green, she had sung the finale of Salometo Edward VII in London, and one memorable Mardi-Gras night with JaneNoria, when, in a long raincoat which covered me from head to foot,standing on our table from time to time, I shouted, C'est l'heurefatale! and made as if to throw the raincoat aside but Noria, as ifdreading the exposure, always dragged me down from the table, crying,No! No! until the carnival crowd, consumed with curiosity, pulled meinto a corner, tore the raincoat away, and everything else too! Therewas another night, before the Bal des Quat'z Arts, when the café wasfilled with students and models in costume, and costume for the Quat'zArts in those days, whatever it may be now, did not require the cuttingout of many handkerchiefs. But the first night was the best and everyother night a more or less pale reflection of that, always, indeed,coloured a little by the memory of it. So that today, when sometimes Iam asked what café I prefer in Paris and I reply, the d'Harcourt, thereare those who look at me a little pityingly and some even go so far asto ejacul*te, O! that! but I know why it is my favourite.

Even a leisurely dinner ends at last, and I knew, as we sipped ourcoffee and green chartreuse and smoked our cigarettes, that this onemust be over. After paying our very moderate addition, we strolledslowly away, to hop into an empty fiacre which stood on the corner ablock down the boulevard. I lay back against the seat and gazed at thestars for a moment as the drive began through the warm, fragrant Parisair, the drive back to the right bank, this time across the Pont Neuf,down the Rue de Rivoli, through the Place de la Concorde, where thefountains were playing, and up the Champs-Elysées. The aroma of thechestnuts, the melting grey of the buildings, the legions of carriagesand buses, filled with happy, chattering people, the glitter ofelectricity, all the mystic wonder of this enchanting night will alwaysstay with me.

We drove to the Théâtre Marigny where we saw a revue; at least we werepresent at a revue; I do not remember to have seen or heard anythingon the stage. Between the acts, we walked in the open foyer, at thistheatre a sort of garden, and admired the cocottes, great ladiesof some distant epoch, they seemed to me, in their toilets fromRedfern and Doucet and Chéruit and Callot Sœurs, their hats from theRue de la Paix and the Place Vendôme, their exceedingly elaborateand decoratively artificial complexions. Later, we sipped cassis onthe balcony. It was Spring in Paris and I was young! The chestnuttrees were heavy with white blossoms and the air was laden with theirperfume. I gazed down the Champs-Elysées, surely the true ElysianFields, a myriad of lights shining through the dark green, the black,leaved branches. I do not think I spoke many words and I know thatAlbert did not. He may have been bored, but I think he derived someslight pleasure from my juvenile enthusiasm for, although Paris was oldhat to him, he loved this particular old hat.

We must have stopped somewhere for more drinks on the way home, perhapsat Weber's in the Rue Royale, where there was a gipsy band. I do notremember, but I am sure that it was nearly four in the morning whenwe drove up before the little hotel in the Place de l'Odéon and when,after we had paid the driver and dismissed him, I discovered to myastonishment that the door was locked. Albert assured me that this wasthe custom and that I must ring for the concierge. So I pulled theknob, and even outside we could hear the distant reverberations of thebell, but no reply came, and the door remained closed. It was Joseph'sjob to open the door and Joseph was asleep and refused to awaken. Againand again we pulled the cord, the bell tinkling in the vast silence,for the street was utterly deserted, but still no one came. At lastwe desisted, Albert suggesting that I go home with him. We walked afew paces until we came to the iron fence surrounding the LuxembourgGardens and there, lying beside it, I espied a ladder, left by somenegligent workman.

But my room is on the first floor. The window is open; it looks overthe Place. I can enter with the ladder, I cried.

Albert, amused, helped me carry it back. Set up, it just reached thewindow and I swiftly scaled it and clambered into the room, wavingmy hand back to Albert, who hoisted the ladder to his shoulder as hestarted up the street trying to whistle, Viens Poupoule! but laughingto himself all the time, so that the tune cracked. As for me, I lightedone of my candles, undressed, threw the feather-bed off to the floor,and climbed into bed. Then I blew out the candle and soon fell asleep.It was the tenth of May, 1907, that I spent my first night in Paris.

Chapter II

It must have been nearly noon when I awakened and drew back the heavycurtains to let the sunlight into my room, as I have since seen so manyFrench actresses do on the stage. I rang the bell, and when Josephappeared, I asked for hot water, chocolate and rolls. Presently, hereturned with a little can of tepid water and my breakfast on a tray.While I sponged myself, I listened to the cacophony of the street, theboys calling vegetables, the heavy rumbling of the buses on the roughpavement, the shrieking and tooting of the automobile sirens. Then Isipped my chocolate and munched my croissant, feeling very happy. Mypast had dropped from me like a crustacean's discarded shell. I was inParis and it still seemed possible to live in Paris as I had been toldthat one lived there. It was exactly like the books.

After my breakfast, I dressed slowly, and wandered out, past theperistyle of the Odéon, where I afterwards spent so many contentedhours searching for old plays, on through the now open gate of theLuxembourg Gardens, gaily sprinkled with children and their nounous,students and sweet girls, charming old ladies with lace caps on theirheads and lace scarfs round their shoulders, and painters, workingaway at their canvases on easels. In the pool in front of the Senate,boys were launching their toy sloops and schooners and, a littlefurther away on the gravel walk, other boys were engaged in the moreactive sport of diabolo. The gardens were ablaze with flowers but aclassic order was maintained for which the stately rows of clippedlimes furnished the leading note. The place seemed to have been createdfor pleasure. Even the dingy statues of the queens smiled at me. I saton a bench, dreaming, until an old crone approached and asked me for asou. I thought her a beggar until she returned the change from a fiftycentimes piece which I had given her, explaining that one sou was theprice of my seat. There were free seats too, I discovered after I hadpaid.

The Luxembourg Gardens have always retained their hold over myimagination. I never visit Paris without spending several hours there,sometimes in the bright morning light, sometimes in the late afternoon,when the military band plays dolent tunes, usually by Massenet,sometimes a spectator at one of the guignols and, very often in theautumn, when the leaves are falling, I sit silently on a bench beforethe Medici fountain, entirely unconscious of the passing of time. TheLuxembourg Gardens always envelop me in a sentimental mood. Theiratmosphere is softly poetic, old-fashioned, melancholy. I am near totears now, merely thinking of them, and I am sure the tears came to myeyes even on that bright May morning fourteen years ago.

Did I, attracted by the strange name, lunch at the Deux-Magots? It ispossible. I know that later I strolled down the Rue de Seine and alongthe quais, examining eighteenth century books, buying old numbers ofl'Assiette au Beurre, and talking with the quaint vendors, most ofthem old men. Then I wandered up the Rue de Richelieu, studying theexamples of fine bindings in the windows of the shops on either hand.About three o'clock, I mounted the impériale of a bus, not even askingwhere it was going. I didn't care. I descended before the gate of theParc Monceau and passed a few happy moments in the presence of themarble lady in a dress of the nineties, who reads Guy de Maupassantin the shadow of his bust, and a few more by the Naumachie, the ovalpool, flanked by a semi-circular Corinthian colonnade in a state ofpicturesque ruin.

At a quarter before four, I left the parc and, hailing a fiacre, badethe driver take me to Martha Baker's studio in the Avenue Victor Hugo,where I had an appointment. Martha was painting my portrait. She hadbegun work on the picture in Chicago the year before but when I wentto New York, she went to Paris. So it was still unfinished and I hadpromised to come to her for more sittings. Now, in Chicago, Marthanoted that I grew restless on the model-stand and she had found itexpedient to ask people in to talk to me, so that my face would notbecome dead and sullen. There, I usually knew the people she would ask,but it occurred to me, as I was driving to her door, that in Paris Iknew no one, so that, if she followed her habit, I would see new faces.

The cocher stopped his horse before an old stone house and I entered.Challenged by the concierge, I asked for Mademoiselle Bahker, and wasdirected to go through the courtyard into a back passageway, up thestairs, where I would find Mademoiselle Bahker, troisième à gauche. Ifollowed these instructions and knocked at the door. Martha, herself,opened it.

Oh, Carl, it's you! I'm so glad to see you!

Martha had not changed. She and even her studio were much as theyhad been in Chicago. She is dead now, dead possibly of a brokenheart; certainly she was never happy. Her Insouciance, the portraitof Elizabeth Buehrmann, in a green cloth dress trimmed with fur, anda miniature or two hang in the Art Institute in Chicago, but duringher lifetime she never received the kind of appreciation she reallycraved. She had an uncanny talent for portraiture, a talent whichin some respects I have never seen equalled by any of her coevals.Artists, as a matter of fact, generally either envied or admired her.Her peculiar form of genius lay in the facility with which she caughther sitters' weaknesses. Possibly this is the reason she did not sellmore pictures, for her models were frequently dissatisfied. It wasexasperating, doubtless, to find oneself caught in paint on canvasagainst an unenviable immortality. Her sitters were exposed, so tospeak; petty vices shone forth; Martha almost idealized the faults ofher subjects. It would be impossible for the model to strut or posebefore one of her pictures. It told the truth. Sargent caught the trickonce. I have been informed that a physician diagnosed the malady of anAmerican lady, his patient, after studying Sargent's portrait of her.

Martha should have painted our presidents, our mayors, our politicians,our authors, our college presidents, and our critics. Posteritymight have learned more from such portraits than from volumes ofpsychoanalytic biography. But most of her sitters were silly Chicagoladies, not particularly weak because they were not particularlystrong. On the few occasions on which in her capacity as an artistshe had faced character, her brushes unerringly depicted somethingbeneath the surface. She tore away men's masks and, with a kind ofmystic understanding, painted their insides. How it was done, I don'tknow. Probably she herself didn't know. Many an artist is ignorant ofthe secret of his own method. If I had ascribed this quality to Marthaduring her lifetime, which I never did, she might not have taken it aspraise. It may not, indeed, have been her ambition, although truthwas undoubtedly her ambition. Speculation aside, this was no art forChicago. I doubt, indeed, if it would have been popular anywhere, formen the world over are alike in this, that they not only prefer to bepainted in masks, they even want the artist to flatter the mask a bit.

The studio, I observed at once, was a little arty, a little more artythan a painter's studio usually is. It was arranged, of that therecould be no doubt. There were, to be sure, canvases stacked againstthe wall in addition to those which were hanging, but they had beenstacked with a crafty hand, one indubious of its effect. For the rest,the tables and couches were strewn with brocades and laces, and lilacsand mimosa bloomed in brown and blue and green earthenware bowls onthe tables. Later, I knew that marigolds and zinnias would replacethese and, later still, violets and gardenias. On an easel stood myunfinished portrait and a palette and a box of paints lay on a stoolnearby.

Martha herself wore a soft, clinging, dark-green woolen dress, almostcompletely covered by a brown denim painter's blouse. Her hair was hergreat glory, long, reddish gold Mélisande hair which, when uncoiled,hung far below her knees, but today it was knotted loosely on top ofher head. Her face, keen and searching, wore an expression that mightbe described as wistful; discontent lurked somewhere between her eyesand her mouth. Her complexion was sallow and she wore eye-glasses.

There was some one else present, a girl, sitting in a shadowy corner,who rose as I entered. A strong odour of Cœur de Jeannette hoveredabout her. She was an American. She was immediately introduced as MissClara Barnes of Chicago, but I would have known she was an Americanhad she not been so introduced. She wore a shirt-waist and skirt. Shehad very black hair, parted in the middle, a face that it would havebeen impossible to remember ten minutes and which now, although I haveseen her many times since, I have completely forgotten, and very thickankles. I gathered presently that she was in Paris to study singingas were so many girls like her. Very soon, I sized her up as the kindof girl who thinks that antimacassars are ottomans, that tripe is avariety of fish, that Così Fan Tutte is an Italian ice cream, that thepope's nose is a nasal appendage which has been blessed by the headof the established church, that The Beast in the Jungle is an animalstory, and that when one says Arthur Machen one means Harry Mencken.

Well, we'd best begin, said Martha. It's late.

Isn't it too late? I was rather surprised when you asked me tocome in the afternoon.

Martha smiled but there was a touch of petulance in her reply: I knewyou wouldn't get up very early the morning after your first night inParis, and I knew if I didn't get you here today there would be smallchance of getting you here at all. If you come again, of course it willbe in the morning.

I climbed to the model-chair, seated myself, grasped the green bookthat was part of the composition, and automatically assumed thatwoebegone expression that is worn by all amateurs who pose for theirportraits.

That won't do at all, said Martha. I asked Clara to come here to amuseyou.

Clara tried. She told me that she was studying Manon and that she hadbeen to the Opéra-Comique fifteen times to hear the opera.

Garden is all wrong in it, all wrong, she continued. In the first placeshe can't sing. Of course she's pretty, but she's not my idea of Manonat all. I will really sing the part and act it too.

A month or two later, while we munched sandwiches and drankbeer between the acts of Tristan und Isolde in the foyer of thePrinzregenten Theater in Munich, Olive Fremstad introduced me to anAmerican girl, who informed me that a new Isolde had been born that day.

I shall be the great Isolde, she remarked casually, and her name,I gathered, when I asked Madame Fremstad to repeat it, was MinnieSaltzmann-Stevens.

But on the day that Clara spoke of her future triumphs in Manon, I hadyet to become accustomed to this confidence with which beginners inthe vocal art seem so richly endowed, a confidence which is frequentlydisturbed by circ*mstances for, as George Moore has somewhere said,our dreams and our circ*mstances are often in conflict. Later, Idiscovered that every unsuccessful singer believes, and asserts, thatGeraldine Farrar is instrumental in preventing her from singing at theMetropolitan Opera House. On this day, I say, I was unaware of thispeculiarity in vocalists but I was interested in the name she had letslip, a name I had never before heard.

Who is Garden? I asked.

You don't know Mary Garden! exclaimed Martha.

There! shrieked Clara. There! I told you so. No one outside of Parishas ever even heard of the woman.

Well, they've heard of her here, said Martha, quietly, pinching alittle worm of cobalt blue from a tube. She's the favourite singer ofthe Opéra-Comique. She is an American and she sings Louise and Manonand Traviata and Mélisande and Aphrodite, especially Aphrodite.

She's singing Aphrodite tonight, said Miss Barnes.

And what is she like? I queried.

Well, Clara began dubiously, she is said to be like Sybil Sandersonbut, of course, Sanderson had a voice and, she hurried on, you knoweven Sanderson never had any success in New York.

I recalled, only too readily, how Manon with Jean de Reszke, PolPlançon, and Sybil Sanderson in the cast had failed in the nineties atthe Metropolitan Opera House, and I admitted as much to Clara.

But would this be true today? I pondered.

Certainly, advanced Clara. America doesn't want French singers. Theynever know how to sing.

But you are studying in Paris.

The girl began to look discomfited.

With an Italian teacher, she asseverated.

It delighted me to be able to add, I think Sanderson studied withSbriglia and Madame Marchesi.

Your face is getting very hard, cried Martha in despair.

I think he is very rude, exclaimed the outraged and contumaciousMiss Barnes, with a kind of leering acidity. He doesn't seem to knowthe difference between tradition and impertinent improvisation. Hedoesn't see that singing at the Opéra or the Opéra-Comique with a lotof rotten French singers would ruin anybody who didn't have trainingenough to stand out against this influence, singing utterly unmusicalparts like Mélisande, too, parlando rôles calculated to ruin any voice.Maeterlinck won't even go to hear the opera, it's so rotten. I wonderhow much Mr. Van Vechten knows about music anyway?

Very little, I remarked mildly.

O! wailed Martha, you're not entertaining Carl at all and I can't paintwhen you squabble. Carl's very nice. Why can't you be agreeable, Clara?What is the matter?

Miss Barnes disdained to reply. She drew herself into a sort of sulk,crossing her thick ankles massively. The scent of Cœur de Jeannetteseemed to grow heavier. Within bounds, I was amused by her displayof emotion but I was also bored. My face must have showed it. Marthaworked on for a moment or two and then flung down her brushes.

It's no good, no good at all, she announced. You have no expressiontoday. I can't get behind your mask. Your face is completely empty.

And, I may add, as this was the last day that Martha ever painted onthis portrait, she never did get behind the mask. To that extent Itriumphed, and the picture still exists to confuse people as to my realpersonality. It is as empty as if it had been painted by Boldini orMcEvoy. Fortunately for her future reputation in this regard, Marthahad already painted a portrait of me which is sufficiently revealing.

I must have stretched and yawned at this point, for Martha lookedcross, when a welcome interruption occurred in the form of a knockat the door. Martha walked across the room. As she opened the door,directly opposite where I was sitting, I saw the slender figure of ayoung man, perhaps twenty-one years old. He was carefully dressed ina light grey suit with a herring-bone pattern, and wore a neck-scarfof deep blue. He carried a stick and buckskin gloves in one hand and astraw hat in the other.

Why, it's Peter! cried Martha. I wish you had come sooner.

This is Peter Whiffle, she said, leading him into the room and then, ashe extended his hand to me, You know Clara Barnes.

He turned away to bow but I had already caught his interesting face,his deep blue eyes that shifted rather uneasily but at the same timeremained honest and frank, his clear, simple expression, his high brow,his curly, blue-black hair, carefully parted down the centre of hishead. He spoke to me at once.

Martha has said a good deal, perhaps too much about you. Still, I havewanted to meet you.

You must tell me who you are, I replied.

I should have told you, only you just arrived, Martha put in. I had noidea that Peter would come in today. He is the American Flaubert orAnatole France or something. He is writing a book. What is yourbook about, Peter?

Whiffle smiled, drew out a cigarette-case of Toledo work, extracted acigarette from it, and said, I haven't the slightest idea. Then, as ifhe thought this might be construed as rudeness, or false modesty, or arather viscous attempt at secrecy, he added, I really haven't, not theremotest. I want to talk to you about it.... That's why I wanted tomeet you. Martha says that you know ... well, that you know.

You really should be painting Mr. Van Vechten now, said Clara Barnes,with a trace of malice. He has the right expression.

I hope I haven't interrupted your work, said Peter.

No, I'm through today, Martha rejoined. We're neither of us in themood. Besides it's absurd to try to paint in this light.

Painting, Peter went on, is not any easier than writing. Always thesearch for—for what? he asked suddenly, turning to me.

For truth, I suppose, I replied.

I thought you would say that but that's not what I meant, that's not atall what I meant.

This logogriph rather concluded that subject, for Peter did not explainwhat it was that he did mean. Neither did he wear a conscious air ofobfuscation. He rambled on about many things, spoke of new people, newbooks, new music, and he also mentioned Mary Garden.

I have heard of Mary Garden for the first time today, I said, and I ambeginning to be interested.

You haven't seen her? demanded Peter. But she is stupendous, soul,body, imagination, intellect, everything! How few there are. A lyricMélisande, a caressing Manon, a throbbingly wicked Chrysis. She isthe cult in Paris and the Opéra-Comique is the Temple where she isworshipped. I think some day this new religion will be carried toAmerica. He stopped. Let me see, what am I doing tonight? O! yes, Iknow. I won't do that. Will you go with me to hear Aphrodite?

Of course, I will. I have just come to Paris and I want to do and hearand see everything.

Well, we'll go, he announced, but I noted that his tone was curiouslyindecisive. We'll go to dinner first.

You're not going to dinner yet? Martha demanded rather querulously.

Not quite yet. Then, turning to Clara, How's the Voice?

It was my first intimation that Clara had thus symbolized her talent inthe third person. People were not expected to refer to her as Clara orMiss Barnes; she was the Voice.

The Voice is doing very well indeed, Clara, now quite mollified,rejoined. I'm studying Manon, and if you like Mary Garden, wait untilyou hear me!

Peter continued to manipulate Clara with the proper address. Theconversation bubbled or languished, I forget which; at any rate, a halfhour or so later, Peter and I were seated in a taxi-cab, bound forFoyot's where he had decided we would dine; at least I thought he haddecided, but soon he seemed doubtful.

Foyot's, Foyot's, he rolled the name meditatively over on his tongue. Idon't know....

We leaned back against the seat and drank in the soft air. I don'tthink that we talked very much. The cocher was driving over the bridgeof Alexandre III with its golden horses gleaming in the late afternoonsunlight when Peter bent forward and addressed him,

Allez au Café Anglais.

Where meant nothing to me, but I was a little surprised at hishesitation. The cocher changed his route, grumbling a bit, for he wasout of his course.

I don't know why I ever suggested Foyot, said Peter, or the CaféAnglais either. We'll go to the Petit Riche.

Chapter III

If the reader has been led to expect a chapter devoted to an accountof Mary Garden in Aphrodite, he will be disappointed. I did not seeMary Garden that evening, nor for many evenings thereafter, and Ido not remember, indeed, that Peter Whiffle ever referred to heragain. We dined at a quiet little restaurant, Boilaive by name, nearthe Folies-Bergère. The interior, as bare of decoration as are mostsuch interiors in Paris, where the food and wines are given moreconsideration than the mural paintings, was no larger than that of asmall shop. My companion led me straight to a tiny winding staircasein one corner, which we ascended, and presently we found ourselvesin a private room, with three tables in it, to be sure, but two ofthese remained unoccupied. We began our dinner with escargots à labordelaise, which I was eating for the first time, but I have neverbeen squeamish about novel food. A man with a broad taste in foodis inclined to be tolerant in regard to everything. Also, when hebegins to understand the cooking of a nation, he is on the way to anunderstanding of the nation itself. There were many other dishes, butI particularly remember a navarin because Peter spoke of it, pointingout that every country has one dish in which it is honourable to putwhatever is left over in the larder. In China (or out of it, in Chineserestaurants), this dish is called chop suey; in Ireland, Irish stew;in Spain, olla or puchero; in France, ragoût or navarin; in Italy,minestra; and in America, hash. We lingered over such matters, gettingacquainted, so to speak, passing through the polite stages of earlyconversation, slipping beyond the poses that one unconsciously assumeswith a new friend. I think I did most of the talking, although Whiffletold me that he had come from Ohio, that he was in Paris on a sortof mission, something to do with literature, I gathered. We ate anddrank slowly and it must have been nearly ten when he paid the billand we drove away, this time to Fouquet's, an open-air restaurant inthe Champs-Elysées, where we sat on the broad terrasse and drank manybocks, so many, indeed, that by the time we had decided to settle ouraccount, the saucers in front of us were piled almost to our chins. Weshould probably have remained there all night, had he not suggestedthat I go to his rooms with him. That night, my second in Paris, Iwould have gone anywhere with any one. But there was that in PeterWhiffle which had awakened both my interest and my curiosity for I,too, had the ambition to write, and it seemed to me possible that I wasin the presence of a writing man, an author.

We entered another taxi-auto or fiacre, I don't remember and itdoesn't matter, there were so many peregrinations in those days, and wedrove to an apartment house in a little street near the Rue Blanche.The house being modern, there was an ascenseur and I experienced forthe first time the thrill of one of those little personally conductedlifts, in which you press your own button and take your own chances.Since that night I have had many strange misadventures with theseintransigent elevators, but on this occasion, miraculously, the machinestopped at the fourth floor, as it had been bidden, and soon we were inthe sitting-room of Whiffle's apartment, a room which I still remember,although subsequently I have been in half a dozen of his other rooms invarious localities.

It was very orderly, this room, although not exactly arranged, at anyrate not arranged like Martha's studio, as if to set object againstobject and colour against colour. It was a neat little ivory Frenchroom, with a white fire-place, picked in gold, surmounted by a giltclock and Louis XVI candlesticks. There were charming aquatints on theivory walls and chairs and tables of the Empire period. The tables wereladen with neat piles of pamphlets. Beside a type-writer, was rangeda heap of note-books at least a foot high and stacked on the floor inone corner there were other books, formidable-looking volumes of weightand heft, "thick bulky octavos with cut-and-come-again expressions,"apparently dictionaries and lexicons. An orange Persian cat lay asleepin one of the chairs as we entered, but he immediately stretchedhimself, extending his noble paws, yawning and arching his back, andthen came forward to greet us, purring.

Hello, George! cried Whiffle, as the cat waved his magnificent red tailback and forth and rubbed himself against Peter's leg.

George? I queried.

Yes, that's George Moore. He goes everywhere with me in a basket, whenI travel, and he is just as contented in Toledo as he is in Paris,anywhere there is raw meat to be had. Places mean nothing to him. Mybest friend.

I sat in one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. Peter brought out abottle of cognac and a couple of glasses. He threw open the shuttersand the soft late sounds of the city filtered in with the fresh springair. One could just hear the faint tinkle of an orchestra at somedistant bal.

I like you, Van Vechten, my host began at last, and I've got to talk tosomebody. My work has just begun and there's so much to say about it.Tell me to stop when you get tired.... In a way, I want to know whatyou think; in another way, it helps me merely to talk, in the workingout of my ideas. But who was there to talk to, I mean before you came?I can see that you may be interested in what I am trying to do, goodGod! in what I will do! I've done a lot already....

You have begun your book then?

Well, you might say so, but I haven't written a line. I've collectedthe straw; the bricks will come. I've not been idle. You see thosecatalogues?

I nodded.

He fumbled them over. Then, without a break, with a strange glow ofexhilaration on his pale ethereal face, his eyes flashing, his handsgesticulating, his body swaying, marching up and down the room, herecited with a crescendo which mounted to a magnificent fortissimo inthe coda:

Perfumery catalogues: Coty, Houbigant, Atkinson, Rigaud, Rue de laPaix, Bond Street, Place Vendôme, Regent Street, Nirvana, Chypre,Sakountala, Ambre, Après l'Ondée, Quelques Fleurs, Fougère Royale,Myrbaha, Yavahnah, Gaudika, Délices de Péra, Cœur de Jeannette, DjerKiss, Jockey-Club, and the Egyptian perfumes, Myrrh and Kyphy. Didyou know that Richelieu lived in an atmosphere heavily laden with themost pungent perfumes to inflame his sexual imagination? Automobilecatalogues: Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, Ford, tires, self-starters,limousines, carburettors, gas. Jewellery catalogues: heaps of 'em,all about diamonds and platinum, chrysoprase and jade, malachite andchalcedony, amethysts and garnets, and the emerald, the precious stonewhich comes the nearest to approximating that human manifestation knownas art, because it always has flaws; red jasper, sacred to the rosygod, Bacchus, the green plasma, blood-stone, cornelian, cat's-eye,amber, with its medicinal properties, the Indian jewels, spinels, thereddish orange jacinth, and the violet almandine. Did you know thatthe Emperor Claudius used to clothe himself in smaragds and sardonyxstones and that Pope Paul II died of a cold caught from the weightand chill of the rings which loaded his aged fingers? Are you awarethat the star-topaz is as rare as a Keutschacher Rubentaler of theyear 1504? Yonder is a volume which treats of the glyptic lore. In ityou may read of the Assyrian cylinders fashioned from red and greenserpentine, the Egyptian scarabei, carved in steaschist; you may learnof the seal-cutters of Nineveh and of the Signet of Sennacherib, nowpreserved in the British Museum. Do you know that a jewel engravedwith Hercules at the fountain was deposited in the tomb of theFrankish King Childeric at Tournay? Do you know of Mnesarchus, theTyrrhene gem-cutter, who practised his art at Samos? Have you seenthe Julia of Evodus, engraved in a giant aquamarine, or the Byzantinetopaz, carved with the figure of the blind bow-boy, sacrificing thePsyche-butterfly, or the emerald signet of Polycrates, with the lyrecut upon it, or the Etruscan peridot representing a sphinx scratchingher ear with her hind paw, or the sapphire, discovered in a disusedwell at Hereford, in which the head of the Madonna has been chiseled,with the inscription, round the beasil, in Lombard letters, TECTALEGE LECTA TEGE, or the jacinth engraved with the triple face ofBaphomet, with a legend of darkly obscene purport? The breastplateof the Jewish High Priest had its oracular gems, which were the Urimand Thummim. Apollonius Tyaneus, the sorcerer, for the purposes ofhis enchantments, wore special rings with appropriate stones for eachday of the week. Also, in this curious book, and others which you mayexamine, such as George III's Dactyliotheca Smithiana (Venice; 1767),you will find some account of the gems of the Gnostics: an intaglioin a pale convex plasma, carved with the Chnuphis Serpent, raisinghimself aloft, with the seven vowels, the elements of his name, above;another jewel engraved with the figure of the jackal-headed Anubis,the serpent with the lion's head, the infant Horus, seated on thelotus, the cynocephalus baboon, and the Abraxas-god, Iao, created fromthe four elements; an Egyptian seal of the god, Harpocrates, seatedon the mystic lotus, in adoration of the Yoni; and an esoteric greenjasper amulet in the form of a dragon, surrounded by rays. Florists'catalogues: strangely wicked cyclamens, meat-eating begonias, belovedof des Esseintes (Henri Matisse grows these peccant plants in hisgarden and they suggest his work), shaggy chrysanthemums, orchids,green, white, and mauve, the veined salpiglossis, the mournful,rich-smelling tube-rose, all the mystic blossoms adored by Robert dela Condamine's primitive, tortured, orgiastic saints in The DoubleGarden, marigolds and daisies, the most complex and the most simpleflowers of all, hypocritical fuchsias, and calceolaria, sacred to labella Cenerentola. Reaper catalogues: you know, the McCormicks and theMiddle West. Porcelain catalogues: Rookwood, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood,Delft, the quaint, clean, heavy, charming Brittany ware, Majolica,the wondrous Chinese porcelains, self-colour, sang de bœuf, appleof roses, peach-blow, Sèvres, signed with the fox of Emile Renard,or the eye of Pajou, or the little house of Jean-Jacques Anteaume.Furniture catalogues: Adam and Louis XV, Futurist, Empire, Venetianand Chinese, Poincaré and Grand Rapids. Art-dealers' catalogues:Félicien Rops and Jo Davidson, Renoir and Franz Hals, Cranach andPicasso, Manet and Carpaccio. Book-dealers' catalogues: George Borrow,Thomas Love Peaco*ck, Ambrose Bierce, William Beckford, Robert SmithSurtees, Francis William Bain. Do you know the true story of AmbroseGwinett, related by Oliver Goldsmith: the fellow who, having beenhanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had sharedhis bed-chamber at a tavern, revived in the night, shipped at sea asa sailor, and later met on a vessel the man for whose murder he hadbeen hung? Gwinett's supposed victim had been attacked during the nightwith a severe bleeding of the nose, had risen and left the house fora walk by the sea-wall, and had been shanghaied. Catalogues of curiousvarieties of cats: Australian, with long noses and long hind-legs, likekangaroos, Manx cats without any tails and chocolate and fawn Siamesecats with sapphire eyes, the cacodorous Russian blue cats, and maletortoise-shells. Catalogues of tinshops: tin plates, tin cups, andcan-openers. Catalogues of laces: Valenciennes and Cluny and Chantillyand double-knot, Punto in Aria, a Spanish lace of the sixteenthcentury, lace constructed of human hair or aloe fibre, Point d'Espagne,made by Jewesses. Catalogues of toys: an engine that spreads smoke inthe air, as it runs around a track with a circumference of eight feet,a doll that cries, Uncle! Uncle! a child's opium set. Catalogues ofoperas: Marta and Don Pasquale, Der Freischütz and Mefistofele, SimonBocanegra and La Dolores. Cook-Books: Mrs. Pennell's The Feasts ofAutolycus, a grandiose treatise on the noblest of the arts, wherein youmay read of the amorous adventures of The Triumphant Tomato and theIncomparable Onion, Mr. Finck's Food and Flavour, the gentle AbrahamHayward on The Art of Dining, the biography of Vatel, the super-cookwho killed himself because the fish for the king's dinner were missing,Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which Dr. Johnson boasted that he could surpass,and, above all, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du Goût.Catalogues of harness, bits and saddles. Catalogues of cigarettes:Dimitrinos and Melachrinos, Fatimas and Sweet Caporals. Cataloguesof liqueurs: Danziger Goldwasser and Crème Yvette, Parfait Amour, astanagrine as the blood in the sacred altar chalice. Catalogues ofpaints: yellow ochre and gamboge, burnt sienna and Chinese vermilion.Catalogues of hats: derbies and fedoras, straw and felt hats,top-hats and caps, sombreros, tam-o'shanters, billyco*cks, shakos andtarbooshes....

He stopped, breathless with excitement, demanding, What do you think ofthat?

I don't know what to think....

I'm sure you don't. That isn't all. There are dictionaries andlexicons, not only German, English, French, Italian, Russian, andSpanish, but also Hebrew, Persian, Magyar, Chinese, Zend, Sanscrit,Hindustani, Negro dialects, French argot, Portuguese, American slang,and Pennsylvania Dutch.

And what are those curious pamphlets?

He lifted a few and read off the titles:

A study of the brain of the late Major J.W. Powell.

A study of the anatomic relations of the optic nerve to the accessorycavities of the nose.

On regeneration in the pigmented skin of the frog and on the characterof the chromatophores.

The chondrocranium of an embryo pig.

Morphology of the parthogenetic development of amphitrite.

Note on the influence of castration on the weight of the brain andspinal cord in the albino rat.

There are, he added solemnly, many strange words in these pamphlets,not readily to be found elsewhere.

Now Peter pointed to the pile of note-books on the table.

These are my note-books. I have ranged Paris for my material. For daysI have walked in the Passage des Panoramas and the Rue St. Honoré,making lists of every object in the windows. In the case of books Ihave described the bindings. I have stopped before the shops of fruitvendors, antique dealers, undertakers, jewellers, and fashioners ofartificial flowers. I have spent so much time in the Galeries Lafayetteand the Bon Marché that I have probably been mistaken for a shoplifter.These books are full of results. What do you think of it?

But what is all this for?

For my work, of course. For my work.

I can't imagine, I began almost in a whisper, I was so astonished, whatyou do, what you are going to do. Are you writing an encyclopedia?

No, my intention is not to define or describe, but to enumerate.Life is made up of a collection of objects, and the mere citation ofthem is sufficient to give the reader a sense of form and colour,atmosphere and style. And form, style, manner in literatureare everything; subject is nothing. Nothing whatever, he addedimpressively, after a pause. Do you know what Buffon wrote: Styleis the only passport to posterity. It is not range of information,nor mastery of some little known branch of science, nor yet noveltyof matter, that will insure immortality. Recall the great writers,Théophile Gautier, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris Huysmans, OscarWilde: they all used this method, catalogues, catalogues, catalogues!All great art is a matter of cataloguing life, summing it up in a listof objects. This is so true that the commercial catalogues themselvesare almost works of art. Their only flaw is that they pause todescribe. If it only listed objects, without defining them, a dealer'scatalogue would be as precious as a book by Gautier.

During this discourse, George Moore, the orange cat, had been wanderingaround, rather restlessly, occasionally gazing at Peter with asemi-quizzical expression and an absurd co*ck of the ears. At some pointor other, however, he had evidently arrived at the conclusion that thisextra display of emotion on the part of his human companion boded himno evil and, having satisfied himself in this regard, he leaped lightlyto the mantelshelf, circled his enormous bulk miraculously around threeor four times on the limited space at his disposal, and sank into aprofound slumber when, probably, with dreams of garrets full of lazymice, his ears and his tail, which depended a foot below the shelf,began to twitch.

Peter continued to talk: d'Aurevilly wrote his books in differentcoloured inks. It was a wonderful idea. Black ink would never do todescribe certain scenes, certain objects. I can imagine an entire bookwritten in purple, or green, or blood-red, but the best book wouldbe written in many colours. Consider, for a moment, the distinctionbetween purple and violet, shades which are cousins: the one suggeststhe most violent passions or something royal or papal, the other anunnery or a widow, or a being bereft of any capacity for passion.

Henry James should write his books in white ink on white paper and, bya system of analogy, you can very well see that Rider Haggard shouldwrite his books in white ink on black paper. Pale ideas, obviouslyexpressed. Gold! Think what you could do with gold! If silence isgolden, surely the periods, the commas, the semicolons, and dashesshould be of gold. But not only the stops could gleam and shine; wholesilent pages might glitter. And blue, bright blue; what more suggestivecolour for the writer than bright blue?

Not only should manuscripts be written in multi-coloured inks, butthey should be written on multi-coloured papers, and then they shouldbe printed in multi-coloured inks on multi-coloured papers. The artof book-making, in the sense that the making of a book is part of itsauthorship, part of its creation, is not even begun.

The sculptor is not satisfied with moulding his idea in clay; hegives it final form in marble or malachite or jade or bronze. Many anauthor, however, having completed work on his manuscript, is contentto allow his publisher to choose the paper, the ink, the binding,the typography: all, obviously, part of the author's task. It is thepublisher's wish, no doubt, to issue the book as cheaply as possible,and to this end he will make as many books after the same model as hepracticably can. But every book should have a different appearance fromevery other book. Every book should have the aspect to which its ideasgive birth. The form of the material should dictate the form of thebinding. Who but a fool, for example, would print and bind Lavengroand Roderick Hudson in a similar manner? And yet that is just whatpublishers will do if they are let alone.

Peter had become so excited that he had awakened George Moore, who nowdescended from the mantelpiece and sought the seclusion of a couch inthe corner where, after a few abortive licks at his left hind-leg, anda pretence of scrubbing his ears, he again settled into sleep. As forme, I listened, entranced, and as the night before I had discoveredParis, it seemed to me now that I was discovering the secrets of thewriter's craft and I determined to go forth in the morning with anote-book, jotting down the names of every object I encountered.

I must have been somewhat bewildered for I repeated a question I hadasked before:

Have you written anything yet?

Not yet.... I am collecting my materials. It may take me considerablylonger to collect what I shall require for a very short book.

What is the book to be about?

Van Vechten, Van Vechten, you are not following me! he cried, and heagain began to walk up and down the little room. What is the book to beabout? Why, it is to be about the names of the things I have collected.It is to be about three hundred pages, he added triumphantly. That iswhat it is to be about, about three hundred pages, three hundred pagesof colour and style and lists, lists of objects, all jumbled artfully.There isn't a moral, or an idea, or a plot, or even a character.There's to be no propaganda or preaching, or violence, or emotion, oreven humour. I am not trying to imitate Dickens or Dostoevsky. Theydid not write books; they wrote newspapers. Art eliminates all suchrubbish. Art has nothing to do with ideas. Art is abstract. When artbecomes concrete it is no longer art. Thank God, I know what I wantto do! Thank God, I haven't wasted my time admiring hack work! ThankGod, I can start in at once constructing a masterpiece! Why a list ofpassengers sailing on the Kronprinz Wilhelm is more nearly a work ofart than a novel by Thomas Hardy! What is there in that? Anybody cando it. Where is the arrangement, the colour, the form? Hardy merelyphotographs life!

But aren't you trying to photograph still life?

Peter's face was almost purple; I thought he would burst a blood-vessel.

Don't you understand that perfumes and reaping-machines are never to befound together in real life? That is art, making a pattern, draggingunfamiliar words and colours and sounds together until they form apattern, a beautiful pattern. An Aubusson carpet is art, and it isassuredly not a photograph of still life.... Art....

I don't know how much more of this there was but, when Peter finallystopped talking, the sunlight was streaming in through the window.

Chapter IV

It was many days before I saw Peter again. I met other men and women.I visited the Louvre and at first stood humbly in the Salon Carrébefore the Monna Lisa and in the long corridor of the Venus de Milo; alittle later, I became thuriferous before Sandro Botticelli's frescoesfrom the Villa Lemmi and Watteau's Pierrot. I made a pilgrimage tothe Luxembourg Gallery and read Huysmans's evocation of the picturebefore Moreau's Salome. I sat in the tiny old Roman arena, Lutetia'samphitheatre, constructed in the second or third century, and conjuredup visions of lions and Christian virgins. I drank tea at the Paviliond'Armenonville in the Bois and I bought silk handkerchiefs of manycolours at the Galeries Lafayette. I began to carry my small changein a pig-skin purse and I learned to look out for bad money. Everymorning I called for mail at the American Express Company in the RueScribe. I ate little wild strawberries with Crème d'Isigny. I boughtold copies of l'Assiette au Beurre on the quais and new copies of LeSourire at kiosques. I heard Werther at the Opéra-Comique and I sawLina Cavalieri in Thaïs at the Opéra. I made journeys to Versailles,Saint Cloud, and Fontainebleau. I inspected the little hotel in theRue des Beaux-Arts where Oscar Wilde died and I paid my respects to histomb in Père-Lachaise. The fig-leaf was missing from the heroic figureon the monument. It had been stolen, the cemetery-guard informed me,par une jeune miss anglaise, who desired a souvenir. I drank champagneco*cktails, sitting on a stool, at the American bar in the Grand Hotel.I drank whisky and soda, ate salted nuts, and talked with Englishracing men at Henry's bar, under the delightful brown and yellowmural decorations, exploiting ladies of the 1880 period with bangs,and dresses with bustles, and over-drapings, and buttons down thefront. I enjoyed long bus rides and I purchased plays in the arcadesof the Odéon. I went to the races at Chantilly. I drank co*cktails atLouis's bar in the Rue Racine. Louis Doerr, the patron, had workedas a bar-man in Chicago and understood the secrets of American mixeddrinks. Doubtless, he could have made a Fireman's Shirt. He dividedhis time between his little bar and his atelier, where he gave boxinglessons to the students of the quarter. When he was teaching the manlyart, Madame Doerr manipulated the shaker. I attended services at LesHannetons and Maurice's Bar and I strolled through the Musée de Cluny,where I bought postcards of chastity belts and instruments of torture.I read Maupassant in the Parc Monceau. I took in the naughty revues atParisiana, the Ba-ta-clan, and the Folies-Bergère. I purchased manyEnglish and American novels in the Tauchnitz edition and I discovereda miniature shop in the Rue de Furstenberg, where elegant reprints ofbawdy eighteenth century French romances might be procured. I climbedto the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, particularly to observe achimère which was said to resemble me, and I ascended the Tour Eiffelin an elevator. I consumed hors d'œuvres at the Brasserie Universelle.I attended a band concert in the Tuileries Gardens. I dined with OliveFremstad at the Mercedes and Olive Fremstad dined with me at the Caféd'Harcourt. I heard Salome at the Châtelet, Richard Strauss conducting,with Emmy Destinn as the protagonist in a modest costume, trimmed withfur, which had been designed, it was announced, by the Emperor ofGermany. I discovered the Restaurant Cou-Cou, which I have describedin The Merry-Go-Round, and I made pilgrimages to the Rat Mort, theNouvelle Athènes, and the Elysée Montmartre, sacred to the memory ofGeorge Moore. They appeared to have altered since he confessed asa young man. I stood on a table at the Bal Tabarin and watched thequadrille, the pas de quatre, concluding with the grand écart, whichwas once sinister and wicked but which has come, through the portentoussolemnity with which tradition has invested it, to have almost areligious significance. I learned to drink Amer Picon, grenadine, andwhite absinthe. I waited three hours in the street before Liane dePougy's hotel in the Rue de la Néva to see that famous beauty emerge totake her drive, and I waited nearly as long at the stage-door of theOpéra-Comique for a glimpse of the exquisite Regina Badet. I embarkedon one of the joyous little Seine boats and I went slumming in thePlace d'Italie, La Villette, a suburb associated in the memory with thename of Yvette Guilbert, and Belleville. I saw that very funny farce,Vous n'avez rien à declarer at the Nouveautés. In the Place des Vosges,I admired the old brick houses, among the few that Napoleon and theBaron Haussmann spared in their deracination of Paris. On days when Ifelt poor, I dined with the cochers at some marchand de vins. On dayswhen I felt rich, I dined with the cocottes at the Café de Paris. Iexamined the collection of impressionist paintings at the house ofMonsieur Durand-Ruel, No. 37, Rue de Rome, and the vast accumulation ofunfinished sketches for a museum of teratology at the house of GustaveMoreau, No. 14, Rue de La Rochefoucauld, room after room of unicorns,Messalinas, muses, magi, Salomes, sphinxes, argonauts, centaurs, mysticflowers, chimerae, Semeles, hydras, Magdalens, griffins, Circes,ticpolongas, and crusaders. I drank tea in the Ceylonese tea-room inthe Rue Caumartin, where coffee-hued Orientals with combs in their hairwaited on the tables. I gazed longingly into the show-windows of theshops where Toledo cigarette-cases, Bohemian garnets, and Venetianglass goblets were offered for sale. I bought a pair of blue velvetworkman's trousers, a béret, and a pair of canvas shoes at Au Pays, 162Faubourg St. Martin. I often enjoyed my chocolate and omelet at theCafé de la Régence, where everybody plays chess or checkers and hasplayed chess or checkers for a century or two, and where the actorsof the Comédie Française, which is just across the Place, frequently,during a rehearsal, come in their make-up for lunch. I learned themeaning of flic, gigolette, maquereau, tapette, and rigolo. I purchaseda dirty silk scarf and a pair of Louis XV brass candlesticks, whichI still possess, in the Marché du Temple. I tasted babas au rhum,napoléons, and palmiers. I ordered a suit, which I never wore, from aFrench tailor for 150 francs. I bought some Brittany ware in an oldshop back of Notre-Dame. I admired the fifteenth century apocalypticglass in the Sainte-Chapelle and the thirteenth century glass in theCathedral at Chartres. I learned that demi-tasse is an American word,that Sparkling Burgundy is an American drink, and that I did not likeFrench beer. I stayed away from the receptions at the American embassy.I was devout in Saint Sulpice, the Russian Church in the Rue Daru,Saint Germain-des-Prés, Saint Eustache, Sacré-Cœur, and Saint Jacques,and I attended a wedding at the Madeleine, which reminded me that BelAmi had been married there. I passed pleasant evenings at the Boîte àFursy, on the Rue Pigalle, and Les Noctambules, on the Rue Champollion.I learned to speak easily of Mayol, Eve Lavallière, Dranem, Ernest laJeunesse, Colette Willy, Max Dearly, Charles-Henry Hirsch, Lantelme,André Gide, and Jeanne Bloch. I saw Clemenceau, Edward VII, and theKing of Greece. I nibbled toasted scones at a tea-shop on the Ruede Rivoli. I met the Steins. In short, you will observe that I dideverything that young Americans do when they go to Paris.

On a certain afternoon, early in June, I found myself sitting at atable in the Café de la Paix with Englewood Jennings and FredericRichards, two of my new friends. Richards is a famous person today andeven then he was somebody. He had a habit of sketching, wherever hemight be, on a sheet of paper at a desk at the Hotel Continental or ona program at the theatre. He drew quick and telling likenesses in a fewlines of figures or objects that pleased him, absent-mindedly signedthem, and then tossed them aside. This habit of his was so well-knownthat he was almost invariably followed by admirers of his work, whosnapped up his sketches as soon as he had disappeared. I saw a goodcollection of them, drawn on the stationery of hotels from Hamburgto Taormina, and even on meat paper, go at auction in London a yearor so ago for £1,000. When I knew him, Richards was a blond giant,careless of everything except his appearance. Jennings was an Americansocialist from Harvard who was ranging Europe to interview Jean Jaurès,Giovanni Papini, and Karl Liebknecht. He was exceedingly eccentric inhis dress, had steel-grey eyes, the longest, sharpest nose I have everseen, and wore glasses framed in tortoise-shell.

It had become my custom to pass two hours of every afternoon onthis busy corner, first ordering tea with two brioches, and latera succession of absinthes, which I drank with sugar and water. Intime I learned to do without the sugar, just as eventually I mighthave learned, in all probability, to do without the water, had Inot been compelled to do without the absinthe[1]. I was enjoying mythird pernod while my companions were dallying with whisky and soda.We were gossiping, and where in the world can one gossip to betteradvantage than on this busy corner, where every passerby offers a newopportunity? But, occasionally, the conversation slipped into alienchannels.

How can the artist, Jennings, for instance, was asking, know thathe is inspired, when neither the public nor the critics recognizeinspiration? The question is equally interesting asked backwards. Asa matter of fact, the artist is sometimes conscious that he is doingone thing, while he is acclaimed and appreciated for doing another.Columbus did not set out to discover America. Yes, there is oftenan accidental quality in great art and oftener still there is anaccidental appreciation of it. In one sense art is curiously bound upwith its own epoch, but appreciation or depreciation of its relation tothat epoch may come in another generation. The judgment of posteritymay be cruel to contemporary genius. In a few years we may decidethat Richard Strauss is only another Liszt and Stravinsky, anotherRubinstein.

Inspiration! Richards shrugged his broad shepherd's plaid shoulders.Inspiration! Artists, critics, public, clever men, and philistinesmonotonously employ that word, but it seems to me that art is createdthrough memory out of experience, combined with a capacity for feelingand expressing experience, and depending on the artist's physicalcondition at the time when he is at work.

Are you, I asked, one of those who believes that a novelist must beunfaithful to his wife before he can write a fine novel, that a girlshould have an amour with a prize-fighter before she can play Juliet,and that a musician must be a pederast before he can construct a greatsymphony?

Richards laughed.

No, he replied, I am not, but that theory is very popular. How manytimes I have heard it thundered forth! As a matter of fact, there isa certain amount of truth in it, the germ, indeed, of a great truth,for some emotional experience is essential to the artist, but whyparticularize? Each as he may!

I know a man, I went on, who doesn't believe that experience hasanything to do with art at all. He thinks art is a matter ofarrangement and order and form.

His art then, broke in Jennings, is epistemological rather thaninspirational.

But what does he arrange? queried Richards. Surely incidents andemotions.

Not at all. He arranges objects, abstractions: colours andreaping-machines, perfumes and toys.

Long ago I read a book like that, Jennings went on. It was calledImperial Purple and it purported to be a history of the Roman Empireor the Roman Emperors. It was a strangely amusing book, rather like aclot of blood on a daisy or a faded pomegranate flower in a glass ofbuttermilk.

At this period, I avidly collected labels. Who wrote it? I asked.

I don't remember, but your description of your friend recalls the book.What is the name of your friend's book?

He hasn't written a book yet.

I see.

He is about to write it. He knows what he wants to do and he iscollecting the materials. He is arranging the form.

What's it about? Jennings appeared to be interested.

Oh, it's about things. Whiffle told me, I suppose he was joking, thatit would be about three hundred pages.

Richards set down his glass and in his face I recognized the portentousexpression of a man about to be delivered of an epigram. It came: Idislike pine-apples, women with steatopygous figures, and men with agift for paronomasia.

Jennings ignored this ignoble interruption. George Moore has writtensomewhere, he said, that if an author talks about what heis going to write, usually he writes it, but when he talks abouthow he is going to write it, that is the end of the matter. Iwonder if this is true? I have never thought much about it before but Ithink perhaps it is. I think your friend will never write his book.

Richards interrupted again: Look at that maquereau. That's thecelebrated French actor who went to America after a brilliant careerin France in the more lucrative of his two professions, which ended ina woman's suicide. His history was well-known to the leading woman ofthe company with which he was to play in America, but she had never methim. At the first rehearsal, when they were introduced, she remarked,Monsieur, la connaissance est déjà faite! Turning aside, he boasted tohis male companions, La gueuse! Avant dix jours je l'aurai enfilée! Ina week he had made good his threat and in two weeks the poor woman waswithout a pearl.

He should meet Arabella Munson, said Jennings. She is always willingto pay her way. She fell in love with an Italian sculptor, or at anyrate selected him as a suitable father for a prospective child. Whenshe became pregnant, the young man actually fell ill with fear atthe thought that he might be compelled to support both Arabella andthe baby. He took to his bed and sent his mother as an ambassadressfor Arabella's mercy. Choking with sobs, the old woman demanded whatwould be required of her son. My good woman, replied Arabella, dryyour tears. I make it a point of honour never to take a penny from thefathers of my children. Not only do I support the children, often Isupport their fathers as well!

It was sufficiently warm. I lazily sipped my absinthe. The terrassewas crowded and there was constant movement; as soon as a table wasrelinquished, another group sat down in the empty chairs. EphraVogelsang, a pretty American singer, had just arrived with a pale youngblond boy, whom I identified as Marcel Moszkowski, the son of thePolish composer. Presently, another table was taken by Vance Thompsonand Ernest la Jeunesse, whose fat face was sprinkled with pimplesand whose fat fingers were encased to the knuckles in heavy orientalrings. I bowed to Ephra and to Vance Thompson. On the sidewalk marchedthe eternal procession of newsboys, calling La Pa—trie! La Pa—trie!so like a phrase at the beginning of the second act of Carmen, oldgentlemen, nursemaids, painted boys, bankers, Americans, Germans,Italians, South Americans, Roumanians, and Neo-Kaffirs. The carriages,the motors, the buses, formed a perfect maze on the boulevard. In oneof the vehicles I caught a glimpse of another acquaintance.

That's Lily Hampton, I noted. She is the only woman who ever madeToscanini smile. You must understand, to appreciate the story, thatshe is highly respectable, the Mrs. Kendal of the opera stage, and themother of eight or nine children. She never was good at languages,speaks them all with a rotten accent and a complete ignorance of theiridioms. On this occasion, she was singing in Italian but she was unableto converse with the director in his native tongue and, consequently,he was giving her directions in French. He could not, however, make herunderstand what he wanted her to do. Again and again he repeated hisrequest. At last she seemed to gather his meaning, that she was to turnher back to the footlights. What she asked him, however, ran like this:Est-ce que vous voulez mon derrière, maestro?

Now there was a diversion, an altercation at the further end of theterrasse, and a fluttering of feathered, flowered, and smooth-hairedand bald heads turned in that direction. In the midst of thisturbulence, I heard my name being called and, looking up, beheld PeterWhiffle waving from the impériale of a bus. I beckoned him to descendand join us and this he contrived to do after the bus had travelledseveral hundred yards on its way towards the Madeleine and I hadabandoned the idea of seeing him return. But the interval gave me timeto inform Richards and Jennings that this was the young author of whomI had spoken. Presently he came along, strolling languidly down thewalk. He looked a bit tired, but he was very smartly dressed, with agardenia as a boutonnière, and he seemed to vibrate with a feverishkind of jauntiness.

I am glad to see you, he cried. I've been meaning to look youup. In fact if I hadn't met you I should have looked you up tonight.I'm burning for adventures. What are you doing?

I explained that I was doing nothing at all and introduced him to myfriends. Jennings had an engagement. He explained that he had to talkat some socialist meeting, called our waiter, paid for his pile ofsaucers, and took his departure. Richards confessed that he was burningtoo.

What shall we do? asked the artist.

There's plenty to do, announced Peter, confidently; almost too much forone night. But let's hurry over to Serapi's, before he closes his shop.

We asked no questions. We paid our saucers, rose, and strolled alongwith Peter across the Place in front of the Opéra and down the Rue dela Chaussée-d'Antin until we stood before a tiny shop, the window ofwhich was filled with bottles of perfume and photographs of actressesand other great ladies of various worlds and countries, all inscribedwith flamboyant encomiums, relating to the superior merits of Serapi'swares and testifying to the superlative esteem in which Serapi himselfwas held.

Led by Peter, in the highest exuberance of nervous excitement butstill, I thought, looking curiously tired, we passed within the portal.We found ourselves in a long narrow room, surrounded on two sides byglass cases, in which, on glass shelves, were arranged the products ofthe perfumer's art. At the back, there was a cashier's desk withoutan attendant; at the front, the show-window. In the centre of theroom, the focus of a group of admiring women, stood a tawny-skinnedOriental—perhaps concretely an Arabian—with straight black hair andsoft black eyes. His physique was magnificent and he wore a morningcoat. Obviously, this was Serapi himself.

Peter, who had now arrived at a state in which he could with difficultycontain his highly wrought emotion—and it was at this very moment thatI began to suspect him of collecting amusem*nts along with his otherobjects—, in a whisper confirmed my conjecture. The ladies, delicatelyfashioned Tanagra statuettes in tulle and taffeta and chiffon artificesfrom the smartest shops, in hats on which bloomed all the posies ofthe season and posies which went beyond any which had ever bloomed,were much too attractive to be duch*esses, although right here I mustpause to protest that even duch*esses sometimes have their good points:the duch*ess of Talleyrand has an ankle and the duch*ess of Marlborough,a throat. The picture, to be recalled later when Mina Loy gave me herlovely drawing of Eros being spoiled by women, was so pleasant, withalslightly ridiculous, that Richards and I soon caught the infectionof Peter's scarcely masked laughter and our eyes, too, danced.We made some small pretence of examining the jars and bottles ofScheherazade, Ambre, and Chypre in the cases, but only a small pretencewas necessary, as the ladies and their Arab paid not the slightestattention to us.

At length, following a brief apology, Serapi broke through the ranksand disappeared through a doorway behind the desk at the back ofthe room. As the curtains lifted, I caught a glimpse of a plain,business-like woman, too dignified to be a mere clerk, obviously theessential wife of the man of genius. He was gone only a few secondsbut during those seconds the chatter ceased abruptly. It was apparentthat the ladies had come singly. They were not acquainted with oneanother. As Serapi reentered, they chirped again, peeped and twitteredtheir twiddling tune, the words of which were Ah! and Oh! In one hand,he carried a small crystal phial to which a blower was attached.He explained that the perfume was his latest creation, an hermeticconfusion of the dangers and ardours of Eastern life and death, theconcentrated essence of the unperfumed flowers of Africa, the odour oftheir colours, he elaborated, wild desert existence, the moulderingtombs of the kings of Egypt, the decaying laces of a dozen Byzantineodalisques, a fragrant breath or two from the hanging gardens ofBabylon, and a faint suggestion of the perspiration of Istar. It ismy reconstruction, the artist concluded, of the perfume which Ruthemployed to attract Boaz! The recipe is an invention based on a fewhalf-illegible lines which I discovered in the beauty-table book of anancient queen of Georgia, perhaps that very Thamar whose portrait hasbeen painted in seductive music by the Slav composer, Balakireff.

The ladies gasped. The fascinating Arab pressed the rubber bulb andblew the cloying vapours into their faces, adjuring them, at the sametime, to think of Thebes or Haroun-Al-Raschid or the pre-Adamitesultans. The room was soon redolent with a heavy vicious odour whichseemed to reach the brain through the olfactory nerves and to affectthe will like ether.

He is the only man alive today, whispered Peter, not without reverence,who has taken Flaubert's phrase seriously. He passes his nightsdreaming of larger flowers and stranger perfumes. I believe that hecould invent a new vice!

Serapi went the round of the circle with his mystic spray, and thetwitterings of the ladies softened to ecstatic coos, like the littlecoos of dismay and delight of female cats who feel the call ofpleasure, when suddenly the phial fell from the Arab's unclasped hand,the hand itself dropped to his side, the brown skin became a vividgreen, all tension left his body, and he crumbled into a heap on thefloor. The ladies shrieked; there was a delicious, susurrous, rainbowswirl and billow of tulle and taffeta and chiffon; there was a franticnodding and waving of sweet-peas, red roses, dandelions, and magentabell-flowers; and eight pairs of white-gloved arms circled rhythmicallyin the air. The effect was worthy of the Russian Ballet and, hadFokine been present, it would doubtless have been perpetuated to thesubsequent enjoyment of audiences at Covent Garden and the Paris Opéra.

Now, an assured and measured step was heard. From a room in the rear,the calm, practical presence entered, bearing a glass of water. Theladies moved a little to one side as she knelt before the recumbentfigure and sprinkled the green face. Serapi almost immediately beganto manifest signs of recovery; his muscles began to contract and hisface regained its natural colour. We made our way into the open airand the warm western sunlight of the late afternoon. Peter was chokingwith laughter. I was chuckling. Richards was too astonished to expresshimself.

Life is sometimes artistic, Peter was saying. Sometimes, if you giveit a chance and look for them, it makes patterns, beautiful patterns.But Serapi excelled himself today. He has never done anything like thisbefore. I shall never go back there again. It would be an anticlimax.

We dined somewhere, where I have forgotten. It is practically the onlydetail of that evening which has escaped my memory. I remember clearlyhow Richards sat listening in silent amazement to Peter's argumentsand decisions on dreams and circ*mstances, erected on bewilderinglyslender hypotheses. He built up, one after another, the most gorgeousand fantastic temples of theory; five minutes later he demolished themwith a sledge-hammer or a feather. It was gay talk, fancy wafted fromnowhere, unimportant, and vastly entertaining. Indeed, who has evertalked like Peter?

We seemed to be in his hands. At any rate neither Richards nor Ioffered any suggestions. We waited to hear him tell us what we were todo. About 9 o'clock, while we were sipping our cognac, he informed usthat our next destination would be La Cigale, a music hall on the outercircle of the boulevards in Montmartre, where there was to be seen arevue called, Nue Cocotte, of which I still preserve the poster, drawnby Maës Laïa, depicting a fat duenna, fully dressed, wearing a red wigand adorned with pearls, and carrying a lorgnette, a more plausiblefemale, nude, but for a hat, veil, feather boa, and a pair of highboots with yellow tops over which protrude an inch or two of bluesock, and an English comic, in a round hat, a yellow checked suit,bearing binoculars, all three astride a remarkably vivid red hobbyhorse whose feet are planted in the attitude of bucking. The comicgrasps the bobbed black tail of the nag in one hand and the long yellowbraid of the female in the other.

The cocottes of the period were wont to wear very large bell-shapedhats. Lily Elsie, who was appearing in The Merry Widow in London,followed this fashion and, as a natural consequence, thesehead-decorations were soon dubbed, probably by an American, Merry Widowhats. Each succeeding day, some girl would appear on the boulevardssurmounted by a greater monstrosity than had been seen before.Discussion in regard to the subject, editorial and epistolary, raged atthe moment in the Paris journals.

Once we were seated in our stalls on the night in question, it becameevident that the hat of the cocotte in front of Peter completelyobscured his view of the stage. He bent forward and politely requestedher to remove it. She turned and explained with equal politeness anda most entrancing smile that she could not remove her hat withoutremoving her hair, surely an impossibility, Monsieur would understand.Monsieur understood perfectly but, under the circ*mstances, wouldMadame have any objection if Monsieur created a disturbance? Madame,her eyes shining with mirth, replied that she would not have thetiniest objection, that above all else in life she adored fracases.They were of a delight to her. At this juncture in the interchangeof compliments the curtain rose disclosing a row of females in mauvedresses, bearing baskets of pink roses. Presently the compère appeared.

Chapeau! cried Peter, in the most stentorian voice I have ever heardhim assume. Chapeau!

The spectators turned to look at the valiant American. Several headsnodded sympathy and approval.

Chapeau! Peter called again, pointing to the adorable little lady infront of him, who was enjoying the attention she had created. Herescort, on the other hand, squirmed a little.

The cry was now taken up by other unfortunate gentlemen in the stalls,who were placed in like situations but who had not had the courage tobegin the battle. The din, indeed, soon gained such a degree of dynamicforce that not one word of what was being said on the stage, not onenote of the music, could be distinguished. Gesticulating figuresstood up in every part of the theatre, shrieking and franticallywaving canes. The compère advanced to the footlights and appeared tobe addressing us, much in the manner of an actor attempting to stema fire stampede in a playhouse, but, of course, he was inaudible. Ashe stepped back, a sudden lull succeeded to the tumult. Peter tookadvantage of this happy quiet to interject: Comme Mélisande, je ne suispas heureux ici!

The spectators roared and screamed; the house rocked with their mirth.Even the mimes were amused. Now, escorted by two of his secretariesin elaborate coats decorated with much gold braid, the manager of thetheatre appeared, paraded solemnly down the aisle to our seats and,with a bow, offered us a box, which we accepted at once and in whichwe received homage for the remainder of the evening. At last we couldsee the stage and enjoy the blond Idette Bremonval, the brunette JaneMerville, the comic pranks of Vilbert and Prince, and the Festival ofthe Déesse Raison.

The performance concluded, the pretty lady who had not removed her hat,commissioned her reluctant escort to inquire if we would not step outfor a drink with them. The escort was not ungracious but, obviously, helacked enthusiasm. The lady, just as obviously, had taken a great fancyto Peter. We went to the Rat Mort, where we sat on the terrasse, thelady gazing steadily at her new hero and laughing immoderately at hisevery sally. Peter, however, quickly showed that he was restless andpresently he rose, eager to seek new diversions. We hailed a passingfiacre and jumped in, while the lady waved us pathetic adieux. Hercompanion seemed distinctly relieved by our departure. Peter was nowin the highest animal spirits. All traces of fatigue had fled fromhis face. The horse which drew our fiacre was a poor, worn-out brute,like so many others in Paris, and the cocher, unlike so many others inParis, was kind-hearted and made no effort to hasten his pace. We werecrawling down the hill.

I will race you! cried Peter, leaping out (he told me afterwards thathe had once undertaken a similar exploit with a Bavarian railway train).

Meet me at the Olympia Bar! he cried, dashing on ahead.

The cocher grunted, shook his head, mumbled a few unintelligible wordsto the horse, and we drove on more slowly than before. Peter, indeed,was soon out of sight.

Ten minutes later, as we entered the café under the Olympia Music Hall,we noted with some surprise that the stools in front of the bar, onwhich the cocottes usually sat with their feet on the rungs, theirtrains dragging the floor, were empty. The crowd had gathered at theother end of the long hall and the centre of the crowd was Peter. Hewas holding a reception, a reception of cocottes!

Ah! Good evening, Mademoiselle Rolandine de Maupreaux, he was saying ashe extended his hand, I am delighted to greet you here tonight. And ifthis isn't dear little Mademoiselle Célestine Sainte-Résistance and hercharming friend, Mademoiselle Edmée Donnez-Moi! And Camille! Camillela Grande! Quelle chance de vous voir! Et Madame, votre mère, elle vabien? Et Gisèle la Belle! Mais vous avez oublié de m'écrire! Do not, Ipray you, neglect me again. And the charming Hortense des Halles et dechez Maxim, and the particularly adorable Abélardine de Belleville etde la Place d'Italie. Votre sœur va mieux, j'espère. Then, drawing usin, Permettez-moi, mesdemoiselles, de vous presenter mes amis, le Ducde Rochester et le Comte de Cedar Rapids. Spécialement, mesdemoiselles,permettez-moi de vous recommander le Comte de Cedar Rapids.

He had never, of course, seen any of them before, but they liked it.

Richards grumbled, It's bloody silly, but he was laughing harder than Iwas.

I heard one of the girls say, Le jeune Américain est fou!

And the antiphony followed, Mais il est charmant.

Later, another remarked, Je crois que je vais lui demander de me faireune politesse!

Overhearing which, Peter rejoined, Avec plaisir, Mademoiselle. Quelgenre?

It was all gay, irresponsible and meaningless, perhaps, but gay.We sat at tables and drank and smoked and spun more fantasies andquaint conceits until a late hour, and that night I learned that evenFrench cocottes will occasionally waste their time, provided they aresufficiently diverted. Towards four o'clock in the morning, however,I began to note a change in Peter's deportment and demeanour. Therewere moments when he sat silent, a little aloof, seemingly the prey ofa melancholy regret, too well aware, perhaps, that the atmosphere hehad himself created would suck him into its merry hurricane. I caughtthe lengthening shadows under his eyes and the premonitory hollows inhis cheeks. And this time, therefore, it was I who suggested departure.Peter acceded, but with an air of wistfulness as if even the effort ofmoving from an uncomfortable situation were painful to him. Rising, wekissed our hands to the band of sirens, who all pressed forward likethe flower maidens of Parsifal and with equal success. Three of thepretty ladies accompanied us upstairs to the sidewalk and every one ofthe three kissed Peter on the mouth, but not one of them offered tokiss Richards or me.

We engaged another fiacre and drove up the Champs-Elysées. Now, it wasRichards and I who had become vibrant. Peter was silent and old andapart. The dawn, the beautiful indigo dawn of Paris was upon us. Thecool trees were our only companions in the deserted streets until,near the great grey arch, we began to encounter the wagons laden withvegetables, bound for the Halles, wagons on which carrots, parsnips,turnips, onions, radishes, and heads of lettuce were stacked in orderlyand intricate patterns. The horses, the reins drooping loosely overtheir backs, familiar with the route, marched slowly down the wideavenue, while the drivers in their blue smocks, perched high on thefronts of their carts, slept. We drove past them up the Avenue duBois-de-Boulogne into the broadening daylight. On Peter Whiffle'scountenance were painted the harsh grey lines of misery and despair.

Chapter V

Notwithstanding that Peter occupied an undue share of my wakingthoughts for the next few days, perhaps a week went by before I foundit convenient to seek him out again. One afternoon, I shook myselffree from other entertainments and made my way in a taxi-auto to theapartment in the street near the Rue Blanche. The concierge, who wasknitting at a little window adjacent to the door, informed me thatto the best of her belief Monsieur Whiffle was at home. Venturing tooperate the ascenseur alone, I was somewhat proud of my success inreaching the fourth floor without accident. Standing before Peter'sdoor, I could hear the sound of a woman's voice, singing Manon'sfarewell to her little table:

The voice was a somewhat uncertain soprano with a too persistentlarmoyante quality. When it ceased, I pressed the button and the doorwas opened by Peter, in violet and grey striped pyjamas and Japanesestraw sandals with purple velvet straps across his toes.

Van Vechten! he cried. It's you! We've been home all day. Clara's beensinging.

So the voice was Clara's. She sat, indeed, on the long piano bench—thepiano was an acquisition since my last visit—, also slightly clad.She was wearing, to be exact, a crêpe de chine night-dress. Her feetwere bare and her hair was loose but, as the day was cool, she hadthrown across her shoulders a black Manila shawl, embroidered with hugeflowers of Chinese vermilion and magenta.

How are you, Mr. Van Vechten? she asked, extending her hand. I'll getsome tea. Her manner, I noted, was more ingratiating than it had beenthe day we met at Martha's.

Nothing whatever was said about the situation, if there was asituation. For my part, I may say that I was entirely unaccustomedto walking into an apartment at five o'clock in the afternoon anddiscovering the host in pyjamas, conversing intimately with alightly-clad lady, who, a week earlier, I had every reason to believe,had been only a casual acquaintance. The room, too, had been altered.The piano, a Pleyel baby grand, occupied a space near the windowand George Moore was sitting on it, finding it an excellent pointof vantage from which to scan the happenings in the outside world.Naturally his back was turned and he did not get up, taking his airof indifference from Peter and Clara or, perhaps, they had taken theirair from him. The note-books had disappeared, although a pile ofmiscellaneous volumes, on top of which I spied Jean Lombard's l'Agonie,still occupied the corner. The table was covered with a cloth and theremains of a lunch, which had evidently consisted of veal kidneys,toast, and coffee. I detected the odour of Cœur de Jeannette andpresently I descried a brûle-parfum, a tiny jade dragon, valiantlyfunctioning. A pair of long white suède gloves and a black hat with agrey feather decorated the clock and candelabra on the mantelshelf, anda black and white check skirt, a pair of black silk stockings, and lowpatent-leather lady's shoes in trees were also to be seen, lying over achair and on the floor.

Peter, however, attempted no explanations. Indeed, none was required,except perhaps for a catechumen. He began to talk immediately, in aneasy conversational tone, evidently trying to cover my confusion. Hismanner reminded me that an intelligent Negro, who had written manybooks and met many people, had once told me that he was always obligedto spend at least ten minutes putting new white acquaintances at theirease, making them feel that it was unnecessary for them to put himat his ease. It is a curious fact that the man in an embarrassingsituation is seldom as embarrassed as the man who breaks in upon it.

Peter asked many questions about what I had been doing, inquiredabout Richards, whom he avowed he liked—they had not, I afterwardsrecalled, exchanged more than three words—, and concluded with a sortof rhapsody on Clara's voice, which he pronounced magnificently suitedto the new music.

Presently Clara herself came back into the room, bearing a tray witha pot of tea, toast and petit* fours. She placed her burden on thepiano bench while she quickly swept the débris from the table. Then shetransferred the tea service to the unoccupied space and we drew up ourchairs.

Where have you been? asked Clara. Martha says she hasn't seen you. Willyou have one lump or two?

Two. You know, when one comes to Paris for the first time—

I took Van Vechten about a bit the other night, Peter broke in. I thinkI forgot to tell you. We've had so much to talk about....

Clara interrupted the shadow of an anserine smile to nibble a pinkcake. Her legs protruded at an odd angle and I caught myself looking ather thick ankles.

You're looking at my legs! she exclaimed. You mustn't do that! I havevery ugly legs.

But they're very sympathetic! cried Peter. Don't you think they'resympathetic, Van Vechten?

I assured him that I did and we went on talking, a littleconstrainedly, I thought, about nothing in particular, until, atlength, Peter asked Clara if she would sing again. Without waiting fora reply, he seated himself before the piano and began the prelude toManon's air in the Cours la Reine scene and Clara, without rising, sang:

Je marche sur tous les chemins
Aussi bien qu'une souveraine;
On s'incline, on baise mes mains,
Car par la beauté je suis reine!

Now her voice had lost the larmoyante quality, which evidently was apart of her bag of tricks for more emotional song, but it had acquireda hard brilliancy which was even more disagreeable to the ear. Shehad also, I remarked, no great regard for the pitch and little, ifany, expressiveness. Nevertheless, Peter wheeled around, after anaccompaniment which was even less sympathetic to me than Clara's legs,to exclaim:

Superb! I want her to study Isolde.

Peter doesn't understand, explained Clara, that you must begin withthe lighter parts. If I sang Isolde now I would have no voice in fiveyears. Isolde will come later. I can sing Isolde after I have lost myvoice. My first rôles will be Manon, Violetta, and Juliette. It's oldstuff, perhaps, but it doesn't injure the voice, and the voice is myfirst consideration. Now I wouldn't sing Salome if they offered me 500francs a night.

Did you hear about Adelina Patti? asked Peter. She is a good Catholic.She went to a performance of Salome at the Châtelet and while Destinnwas osculating the head of Jochanaan she dropped to her knees in herloge and began to pray!

I don't blame her, said Clara. It's rotten and immoral, Salome—not theplay, I don't mean that, but the music, rotten, immoral music, ruinousto the voice. Patti was probably praying God for another Rossini.Strauss's music will steal ten years from Destinn's career.

Peter eyed her with adoration. After a few more remarks, I made mydeparture, both of them urging me to come again at any time. Peter hadnot said one word about his writing, I reflected, as I walked downthe stairs, and he had been very exaggerated in his praise of Clara'smeagre talents.

And I did not go back. I did not see Peter again that summer; I did notsee him again, in fact, for nearly six years. My further adventures,which included a trip to London, to Munich, where I attended theWagner and Mozart festivals, to Holland and Belgium, were sufficientlydiverting but, as they have no bearing on Peter's history, I shallnot relate them now. They will fall into their proper chapters in myautobiography, which Alfred A. Knopf will publish in two volumes in thefall of 1936.

Although I did not learn the facts I am about to catalogue until a muchlater date—some of them, indeed, not until after Peter's death—thisseems as good a place as any to tell what I know of his early life.He was born June 5, 1885, in Toledo, Ohio. He never told his age toany one and I only discovered it after his death. If an inquiry weremade concerning it, it was his custom to counter with another question:How old do you think I am? and then to add one year to the reply, thusinsuring credence. So I have heard him give himself ages varying fromeighteen to forty-five, but he was only thirty-four when he died in1919.

His father was cashier in a bank, a straight, serious, plain sort ofman, of the kind that is a prop to a small town, looked up to andrespected, asked whether an election will have an effect on stockvalues, and whether it is better to illuminate one's house with gasor electricity. His mother was a small woman with a pleasant face andred hair which she parted in the centre. Kindliness she occasionallycarried almost to the point of silliness. She was somewhat garrulous,too, but she was well-read, not at all ignorant, and at surprisingmoments gave evidence of possessing a small stock of common sense. Ithink Peter inherited a good deal of his quality from his mother, whowas a Fotheringay of West Chester, Pennsylvania. I met her for thefirst time soon after her husband's death. She was wearing, in additionto a suitable mourning garment, five chains of Chinese beads and seemedmoderately depressed.

Peter's resemblance to Buridan's donkey (it will be remembered that thepoor beast wavered between the hay and the water until he starved todeath) began with his very birth. He could not, indeed, decide whetherhe would be born or not. The family physician, by the aid of scienceand the knife, decided the matter for him. Soon thereafter he oftenhesitated between the milk-bottle and the breast. There was, doubtless,a certain element of restlessness and curiosity connected with thisvacillation, a desire to miss nothing in life. It is possible that theroot of this aggressive instinct might have been deracinated but Mrs.Whiffle, with a foresense of the decrees of the most modern motherhood,held no brief for suppressed desires. Baby Peter was always permittedto choose, at least nearly always, and so, as he grew older, his maniadeveloped accordingly. A decision actually caused him physical pain,often made him definitely ill. He would pause interminably before twotoys in a shop, or at any rate until his mother bought both of themfor him. He could never decide whether to go in or go out, whether toplay horse or to cut out pictures. His mother has told me that on oneoccasion she discovered this precocious child (at the age of twelve) inthe library of a Toledo bibliophile (she was in the house as a luncheonguest) with the Sonnets of Pietro Aretino in one hand and Fanny Hillin the other. He could not make up his mind from which he would derivethe most pleasure. In this instance, his maternal parent intervened andtook both books away from him.

Otherwise, aside from various slight illnesses, his childhood wassingularly devoid of incident. Because he hummed bits of tune whileat play, his mother decided that he must be musical and sent him toan instructor of the piano. The first six months were drudgery forPeter but as soon as he began to read music easily the skies clearedfor him. He never became a great player but he played easily andwell, much better than I imagined after hearing his rather bombasticaccompaniments to Clara's singing. Of books he was an omnivorousreader. He read every volume—some of them two or three times—inthe family library, which included, of course, the works of Dickens,Thackeray, Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, and Sir Walter Scott,Emerson's Essays, Bulwer-Lytton, Owen Meredith's Lucile, that longnarrative poem called Nothing to Wear, Artemus Ward's Panorama,Washington Irving, Longfellow, Whittier, Thoreau, Lowell, andHawthorne, and among the moderns, Mark Twain, William Dean Howells,F. Hopkinson Smith, F. Marion Crawford, Richard Harding Davis, GeorgeW. Cable, Frank Stockton, H.C. Bunner, and Thomas Nelson Page. Peteronce told me that his favourite books when he was fourteen or fifteenyears old were Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins and H.B. Fuller's TheChevalier of Pensieri-Vani. The latter made a remarkable impressionon him, when he first discovered it at the age of fifteen, not thathe fully appreciated its ironic raillery but it seemed to point outthe pleasure to be apprehended from pleasant places. He named a catof the period, a regal yellow short-haired tom, after the Proregeof Arcopia. The house library exhausted, the public library offeredfurther opportunities for browsing and it was there that he made theacquaintance of Gautier, in translation, of course. He also foundit possible to procure—though not at the public library—and hedevoured with avidity—he has asserted that they had an extraordinaryeffect in awakening his imagination—Nick Carter, Bertha M. Clay,and Golden Days. For a period of four or five years, in spite of allprotests, although he had never heard of the vegetarians, he subsistedentirely on a diet of cookies soaked in hot milk. He had a curiousinherent dislike for spinach and it was characteristic of his fatherthat he ordered the dish to appear on the table every day until theboy tasted a morsel. In after life, Peter could never even look at adish of spinach. He cared nothing at all for outdoor sports. Games ofany kind, card or osculatory, he considered nuisances. At a party,while the other children were engaged in the pleasing pastime of postoffice, he was usually to be found in a corner, reading some book. Thecompanionship of boys and girls of his own age meant very little tohim. He liked to talk to older people and found special pleasure inthe company of the Reverend Horatio Wallace, a clergyman of the DutchReformed Church, who had visited New York. This reverend doctor wasviolently opposed to art museums, novels, and symphony orchestras, buthe talked about them and he was the only person Peter knew in Toledowho did. He railed against the sins of New York and the vices of Parisbut, also, he described them.

In the matter of a university education, his mother took a high hand,precluding all discussion and indecision by sending him willy-nillyto Williams. Her brother had been a Williams man and she prayed thatPeter might like to be one too. The experiment was not unsuccessful.The charm in Peter's nature began to expand at college and he even madea few friends, the names of most of which he could no longer remember,when he spoke to me of his college days some years afterwards. Herealized that the reason he had made so few in Toledo was that thepeople of Toledo were not his kind of people. They lived in a worldwhich did not exist for him. They lived in the world of Toledo while helived in the world of books. At college, he began to take an interestin personalities; he began to take an interest in life itself. Hestudied French—it was the only course he thoroughly enjoyed—and hebegan to read Gautier in the original. Then, at the instigation of aparticularly intelligent professor, he passed on to Barbey d'Aurevilly,to Huysmans, to Laforgue, and to Mallarmé.

His holidays were always a torture for the boy. Should he accept oneof several invitations to visit his lad friends or should he go home?One Easter vacation, Monkey Rollins had asked him to visit him inProvidence while Teddy Quartermouse had bidden him to enjoy himselfin New York. Peter pondered. He liked Monkey's sisters but a week inProvidence meant, he knew, dancing, bridge, and golf, all of which hehated. Teddy was not as companionable as Monkey and he had no sisters,but in New York both indoor and outdoor sports could be avoided. Peterhelplessly examined both sides of the shield until Monkey settledthe question by coming after him, helping him pack, and carrying himtriumphantly to the railway station.

No sooner, however, had he arrived in Providence than he knew that itwould be impossible for him to remain there. He did not find Monkey'smother very agreeable, rather she was too agreeable. The vegetableswere cooked in milk—the Rollins family had previously lived inMissouri. This, of course, was not to be borne. Worst of all, therewas a parrot, a great, shrieking, feathered beast, with koprolagniactastes. Nevertheless, he exerted himself at dinner, giving a lengthyand apocryphal description to Mrs. Rollins of his performance of aconcerto for kettle-drum with the college band, and doubtless made adistinctly favourable impression on the entire family. Even the parrotvolunteered: Hurrah for you, kid, you're some guy! as the processiontrooped into the library, which one of the girls referred to as "thecarnegie," for coffee. While Caruso negotiated Celeste Aida on thephonograph, Peter, after whispering an appropriate excuse to Monkey,contrived to slip upstairs. He looked about on the landing in theupper hallway for a telephone but, naturally, it wasn't there. Thenhe reconnoitred and discovered that by climbing out over the porchand making a ten foot jump he would land very neatly in a bed ofcrocuses. This he did and, scrambling to his feet, made straight foran apothecary's coloured lights, which he saw in the distance. Thesequel is simple. In fifteen minutes, by way of the kitchen, he wasback in the library; in thirty minutes, he had the family in roars oflaughter; in forty-five minutes, Papa Rollins began to yawn and guessedit was bed-time; Mama Rollins called in the maid to cover the parrotand arrange the fire. Monkey said he thought he would play a game ofsomething or other with Peter. The girls giggled. In exactly an hour,there was a ring at the door and the maid reappeared in the library,with a yellow envelope addressed to Peter. He hastily tore it open,trying to look portentous. Everybody else did look portentous. Peterhanded the telegram to Monkey, who read it aloud: Your mother wouldlike to shake your hand before she takes the ether tomorrow morning.The message was dated from New York and the signature was that ofa famous surgeon. Mrs. Rollins was the first to break a moment ofappalling silence: There's a train in fifteen minutes. It's the last.Quick, Monkey, the motor! Peter cried, Send my things to the Manhattan,as he jerked on his coat. He caught the train and some hours later heand Teddy Quartermouse might have been observed amusing themselves withhighballs and a couple of girls at Rector's.

In time, college days passed. Peter confessed to me that the last twoyears were an awful strain but he stuck them out, chiefly because hecould not think of anything else he wanted to do. His real mental agonybegan with his release. He dreaded life and most of all he dreadedwork. His father, although well-to-do, had a sharply defined notionthat a boy who would not work never amounted to anything. His peculiarnature sometimes asserted itself in ludicrous and fantasticallyexaggerated demonstrations of this theory. Once, for example, duringa summer vacation spent in the country, he insisted that Peter skina pig. You have an opportunity to learn now and you never can tellwhen you may have to skin another pig. When the time comes you will beprepared. His father, Peter returned from college discovered, was in nomood to tolerate vacillation or dawdling. But Peter seemed to feel nourge of any kind. I not only did not want to do anything, he explained,there was nothing that I wanted to do. Here his father, with whom theboy had never been particularly sympathetic (motive of the Œdipuscomplex by the flutes in the orchestra), asserted his authority andput him in the bank. Peter loathed the bank. He hated his work, cuttingopen envelopes early in the morning, sorting out bills for collection,and then, on his bicycle, making the collections. In the afternoon, anendless task at the adding machine seemed Dantesque and, at night, thesealing of envelopes was even more tiresome than opening them in themorning. There was, however, one mitigating circ*mstance in connectionwith the last job of the day, the pleasure afforded by the rich odourof the hot sealing-wax. His pay was $9 a week; he has told me thatprobably he was not worth it! Fortunately he lived at home and was notasked to pay board. He bought books with the $9 and "silly things."When I asked him what he meant by silly things, he replied: O! Rookwoodpottery, and alligators, and tulip bulbs: I don't remember, things likethat! One day, he promised his father that he would give up smoking ifthat one would present him with a gold cigarette-case!

There came a morning when he could not make up his mind to get up. Hismother called him several times in vain. He arrived at the bank halfan hour late and was reprimanded. His father spoke about his tardinessat lunch. At this period he was inclined to be sulky. He started offon his bicycle in the afternoon but he did not go to the bank. He rodealong by the river, stopping at a low saloon in the outlying districts,where the workmen of some factory were wont to congregate in theevening, and drank a great many glasses of beer. Cheered somewhatthereby, the thought of facing his father no longer exasperated him.The big scene took place before dinner. Had it not been for the beer,he would have been obliged to act his part on an empty stomach.

Are you no good at all? Thus his father's baritone aria began. Areyou worthless? I'm not going to support you. Suppose you had to payyour own board. I can't keep a son of mine in the bank because he is ason of mine unless he does some work. Certainly not. How long are yougoing to dawdle? What are you going to do? Et cetera, et cetera, witha magnificent cadenza and a high E to top off with. Sustained by thebeer, Peter reported to me that he rather enjoyed the tune. He saidnothing. Dinner was eaten in complete silence and then the paternalparent went to bed, a discouraged and broken man. He seemed senescent,although he was not yet fifty. After dinner, Peter's mother spoke tohim more gently but she also was full of warning and gloomy foreboding:What is it you want to do, my son?... I don't know. I'm not sure that Iwant to do anything.... But you must do something. You wouldn'tbe manly if you didn't do something. It is manly to work. A day willcome when my son will want to marry and then he will need money tosupport his dear wife. Etc. Etc. Peter reported to me that he seemedto have heard this music before. He had not yet read The Way of AllFlesh; I doubt if it were published at this time, but Ernest Pontifexwould have been a sympathetic figure to him. Peter knew the meaning ofthe word cliché, although the sound and the spelling of it were yetstrange to him.

When he got to his room certain words his mother had spoken rang inhis ears. Why, he asked himself, should men support women? Art is theonly attraction in life and women never do good work in art. They areuseless in the world aside from their functions of sex and propagation.Why should they not work so that the males could be free to think anddream? Then it occurred to him that he would be furious if any womansupported his father; that could not be borne, to have his father athome all day while his mother was away at work!

Nevertheless, he went to sleep quite happy, he has assured me, andslept soundly through the night, although he dreamed of a pair ofalligators, one of which was pulling at his head and the other athis feet, while a man with an ax rained blows on his stomach. In themorning his affairs seemed to be in a desperate state. He could notbear the idea of getting up and going to the bank and yet there wasnothing else he wanted to do. Of one thing only he was sure: he did notwant to support himself. He did not, so far as he was able to makeout, want to do anything! He wanted his family to stop bothering him.Was no provision made in this world for such as he?

Certainly, no provision was made for him in Toledo, Ohio. The wordtemperament was still undiscovered there. His negative kind of desirewas alien to American sympathy. Of so much, he was aware. Addingmachines and collections awaited him. He went to the bank where thepaying teller again reprimanded him. So did one of the clerks. So didone of the directors, a friend of his father. He staggered throughanother day, which he helped along a little by returning at noon withall his notes uncollected. Nobody wants to pay today, he explained....But it's your business to make them pay.... There was cold ham, coldslaw, and rice pudding for lunch. His mother had been crying. Hisfather was stern.

During the rice pudding, he made a resolution, which he kept. From thatday on he worked as he had never worked before. Everybody in the bankwas astonished. His father was delighted. His mother said, I told youso. I know my son.... He stopped buying books and silly things and,when he had saved enough money, he took a train to New York withoutbidding the bank officials or his family good-bye. Once there, hisresolution again failed him. He had no desires, or if he had, onecounteracted another. His money was almost gone and he was forced toseek for work but everywhere he went he was refused. He lived at aMills Hotel. He retained a strange fondness for his mother and began towrite her, asking her to address him care of general delivery.

At last he secured a position at a soda fountain in a drug-store. Heworked there about a week. One night the place got on his nerves tosuch an extent that he wanted to break the glasses and squirt fizz atevery customer. To amuse himself, therefore, he contrived to inject agood dose of castor oil or cantharides into every drink he served. Theproprietor of the shop was snoopy, Peter told me, and after watchingme out of the corner of his eye for some time, he gave me a good kick,which landed me in the middle of the street. He tossed six dollars,the remainder of my wages, after me. It may appear strange to you butI have never been happier in my life than I was that night with sixdollars in my possession and the satisfactory knowledge that I wouldnever see that store again.

During the next three weeks, Peter did not find any work. I doubt ifhe tried to find any. He often slept in Madison Square or Bryant Parkwith a couple of newspapers over him and a couple under him. He livedon the most meagre rations, some of which he collected in bread lines.He even begged at the kitchen doors of the large hotels and asked formoney on the street. He has told me, however, that he was neitherdiscouraged nor unhappy. He felt the most curious sense of uplift, asif he were suffering martyrdom, as, indeed, he was. Life seemed to haveleft him out of its accounting, to have made no arrangements for hisnature. He had no desire to work, in fact his repugnance for work washis strongest feeling, and yet, it seemed, he could procure no moneywithout working. He was willing, however, to go without the things hewanted, really to suffer, rather than work. I just did not want to doanything, he has said. It was a fixed idea. It was my greatest joyto talk about the social unrest, the rights of the poor, the wickedcapitalist, and the ideas of Karl Marx with the man in the street, thereal man in the street, the man who never went anywhere else. Duringthis period, he continued to write his mother what she afterwardsdescribed as "bright, clever letters." I have seen a few of them, fullof the most astounding energy and enthusiasm, and a vague philosophy ofquietism. She wrote back, gently chiding him, letters of resignationbut still letters of advice, breathing the hope that he might grow intoa respected citizen of Toledo, Ohio. She did not understand Peter butshe loved him and would have gone to New York to see him, had not arestraining hand burked her. Mr. Whiffle was determined to hold no moretraffic with his son. He refused, indeed, to allow Peter's name to bementioned in his presence. Toledo talked with intensity behind his backbut Mr. Whiffle did not know that. Hard as he tried not to show it, hewas disappointed: it was impossible for him to reconcile his idea of ason with the actuality. Mrs. Whiffle's first mild suggestion that shemight visit Peter was received with a terrible hurricane of resentment.She did not mention the subject again. She would have gone anyway ifPeter had asked her to come but he never did.

Through an Italian, whom he met one day in Bryant Park, Peter nextsecured a position as a member of the claque at the Opera. Everynight, with instructions when to applaud, he received either a seatin the dress circle or a general admission ticket. There was also asmall salary attached to the office. He did not care about the salarybut he enjoyed going to the Opera which he had never before attended.He heard Manon Lescaut, La Damnation de Faust, Tristan, Lohengrin,Tosca, Roméo et Juliette, and Fedora. But his favourite nights were thenights when Olive Fremstad sang. He heard her as Venus in Tannhäuser,as Selika in L'Africaine, as Carmen, and he heard her in that uniqueperformance of Salome on January 22, 1907. One night he became sointerested in watching her that he forgot to applaud the singer who hadpaid the claque. His delinquency was reported by one of his colleaguesand the next evening, when he went to the bar on Seventh Avenue wherethe claque gathered to receive its orders, he was informed that hisservices would no longer be required.

After another three weeks of vagrancy, he found another job, againthrough a park acquaintance. He has told me that it was the only workhe ever enjoyed. He became a "professor" in a house of pretty ladies.His duty was to play the piano. Play us another tune, professor, thecustomers would say, as they ordered beer at a dollar a bottle, andPeter would play a tune. Occasionally one of the customers would askhim to take a drink and he would order a sloe gin fizz, which Alonzo,the sick-looking waiter, a consumptive with a wife and five childrento support, would bring in a sticky glass, which he deposited with hislong dirty fingers on the ledge of the piano. Occasionally some man,waiting for a girl, was left alone with him, and would talk with himabout the suspender business or the base-ball game, subjects whichperhaps might not have interested him elsewhere but which glowed withan enthralling fire in that incongruous environment. The men preferredtunes like Lucia, the current Hippodrome success from Neptune'sDaughter, or songs from The Red Mill, in which Montgomery and Stonewere appearing at the Knickerbocker, or I don't care. This last wasalways demanded when a certain girl, who imitated Eva Tanguay, was inthe room. But the women, when they were alone in the house, just beforedinner in the late afternoon, or on a dull evening, always asked him toplay Hearts and Flowers, Massenet's Elégie, or the garden scene fromFaust, and then they would drink whisky and cry and tell him lies abouttheir innocent girlhood. There was even some literary conversation.One of the girls read Georges Ohnet and another admired the work ofHarris Merton Lyon and talked about it. Peter found it very easy toremain pure.

He received two dollars a night from the house, and, occasionally,tips. Out of this he managed to rent a hall bedroom on WestThirty-ninth Street and to pay for his lunches. The Madame provided himwith his dinner. Breakfast he never ate. He passed his mornings in bedand his afternoons in the park, usually with a book.

A French girl named Blanche, whom he liked particularly, died onenight. She was taken to a funeral chapel the next morning. The othergirls went about the house snivelling and most of them sent flowersto the chapel. Blanche's coffin was well banked with carnations andtube-roses. The Madame sent a magnificent standing floral-piece,a cross of white roses and, on a ribbon, the inscription, May ourdarling rest in peace. Blanche wore a white lace dress and looked verybeautiful and very innocent as she lay dead, Peter thought. Her mothercame from a distant city and there was a priest. The two days precedingBlanche's burial, the girls passed in tears and prayers and sentimentalremarks about how good she was. At night they worked as usual andPeter played the piano. It was very much like the Maison Tellier, hereflected.

With Peter, change was automatic and axiomatic, but he might haveremained in the house a very long time, as he has assured me that hewas perfectly contented, but for one of those accidents that neverhappen in realistic novels but which constantly happen in life. Mrs.Whiffle's brother, the graduate of Williams, erstwhile mentioned, aquaint person, who lived at Rochester, was a rich bachelor. He was alsoa collector, not of anything special, just a collector. He collectedold andirons and doorknobs and knockers. He also collected postmarksand homespun coverlets and obsolete musical instruments. Occasionallyhe even collected books and in this respect his taste was unique. Hecollected first editions of Ouida, J.T. Trowbridge, Horatio Alger, Jr.,G.A. Henty, and Oliver Optic. He had complete sets of first editions ofall these authors and, unlike most book collectors, he read them with agreat deal of pleasure. He especially enjoyed Cudjo's Cave, a novel hehad devoured so many times that he had found it necessary to have thevolume rebound, thus subtracting from its value if it ever comes up atan auction sale.

This uncle had always been prejudiced against Peter's father and, oflate years, this prejudice had swollen into a first-rate aversion.Visits were never exchanged. He considered himself an amateur of partsand Peter's father, a sordid business grub. Mrs. Whiffle, however,whose whole nature was conciliatory, continued to write long letters toher brother. Recently she had turned to him for sympathy and had founda well of it. Mr. Fotheringay was ready to sympathize with anybody whohad fled from old man Whiffle's tyranny. For the first time he beganto take an interest in the boy whom he had never seen. His imaginationfed on his sister's letters until it seemed to him that this boy wasthe only living being he had ever loved. Peter had been working amongthe daughters of joy about two months when Mr. Fotheringay died. Whenhis will, made only a few weeks before his death, was read, it wasdiscovered that he had left his collections to Williams College withthe proviso that they be suitably housed, kept intact, and called theJohn Alden Fotheringay Collection. Williams College, I believe, wasunable to meet the terms of the bequest and, as a result, through acontingent clause, they were sold. Not long ago, I ran across one ofthe books in Alfred F. Goldsmith's shop on Lexington Avenue in NewYork. It was a copy of J.T. Trowbridge's The Satin-Wood Box and it waseasily identified by Mr. Fotheringay's bookplate, which represented anold man counting his gold, with the motto, In hoc signo vinces. Afterthis department of the estate had been provided for in the will, a veryconsiderable sum of money, well invested, remained. This was left toPeter without proviso.

As he never expected letters from any one except his mother, he seldomvisited the post office and this particular communication from Mr.Fotheringay's lawyers, forwarded by Mrs. Whiffle, lay in a generaldelivery box for nearly a week before he called. He answered bytelegraph and the next morning he received a substantial check at hishall bedroom address. The first thing he bought, he has told me, wasa book, an extra-illustrated copy of Mademoiselle de Maupin, fromBrentano's in Union Square. Then he went to a tailor and was measuredfor clothes. Next he visited Brooks Brothers, on Twenty-second Streetand Broadway, and purchased a ready-made suit, a hat, shoes andstockings, shirts, and neckties. He took a bath, shaved, had his haircut, and, dressed in his new finery, embarked for the Knickerbockerin a taxi. He walked into the bar under Maxfield Parrish's King Coleand ordered a Martini co*cktail. Then he ate a dinner, consisting ofterrapin, roast canvas-back, an alligator pear, and a quart or two ofPontet Canet. It was during the course of this dinner that it occurredto him, for the first time in his life, that he would become an author.Four days later he sailed for Paris.

Chapter VI

There is a considerable period in the life of George Borrow for whichhis biographers have been absolutely unable to account. To this daywhere Borrow spent those lost years is either unknown or untold. Thereis a similar period in the life of Peter Whiffle, the period includingthe years 1907-1913. In the summer of the former year I left him atParis in the arms of Clara Barnes, so to speak, and I did not see himagain until February, 1913. Subsequently, when I knew him better, Iinquired about these phantom years but I never elicited a satisfactoryreply. He answered me, to be sure, but his answer consisted of twowords, I lived.

Our next meeting took place in New York, where I was a musical reporteron the New York Times, the assistant to Mr. Richard Aldrich. Onenight, having dropped Fania Marinoff at the theatre where she wasplaying, I walked south-east until I came to the Bowery. I strolleddown that decaying thoroughfare, which has lost much of its ancientglory—even the thugs and the belles of Avenue A have deserted it—toCanal Street, where the Manhattan Bridge invites the East Side toadventure through its splendid portal, but the East Side ignores theinvitation and stays at home. It is the upper West Side that acceptsthe invitation and regiments of motor-cars from Riverside Drive, incontinuous procession, pass over the bridge. For a time I stood andwatched the ugly black scarabs with their acetylene eyes crawl up theapproach and disappear through the great arch and then, walking afew steps, I stopped before the Thalia Theatre, as I have stopped somany times, to admire the noble façade with its flight of steps andits tall columns, for this is one of my dream theatres. Often have Isat in the first row of the dress circle, which is really a circle,leaning over the balustrade, gazing into the pit a few feet below, andimagining the horseshoe as it might appear were it again frequented bythe fashion of the town. This is a theatre, in which, and before which,it has often amused me to fancy myself a man of wealth, when my firstdiversion would be a complete renovation—without any reconstructionor vandalism—of this playhouse, and the production of some play byShakespeare, for to me, no other theatre in New York, unless it bethe Academy of Music, lends itself so readily to a production ofShakespeare as the Thalia. As I write these lines, I recall thatthe old New York theatres are fast disappearing: Wallack's is gone;Daly's is no more; even Weber and Fields's has been demolished. Cannotsomething be done to save the Thalia, which is much older than anyof these? Cannot this proud auditorium be reconsecrated to the bestin the drama? On this night I paused for a moment, musing before theportal, somewhat after this manner—for I have always found thatthings rather than people awaken any latent sentiment andsympathy in my heart—and then again I passed on.

Soon I came to a tiny Chinese shop, although I was still several blocksabove Chinatown. The window was stacked with curious crisp waffles orwafers in the shape of lotus flowers, for the religious and sexualsymbolism of the Chinese extends even to their culinary functions, anda Chinaman, just inside, was dexterously transferring the rice batterto the irons, which were placed over the fire, turned a few moments,and a wafer removed and sprinkled with dry rice powder, as Richelieu,lacking a blotter, sprinkled pounce on his wet signature. But the shopwas not consecrated solely to the manufacture of waffles; there weretea-sets and puppy-cats, all the paraphernalia of a Chinese shop in NewYork—on the shelves and tables. It was the waffles, and the peanutcakes, however, which tempted me to enter.

Once inside, I became aware of the presence of a Chinese woman at theback of the shop, holding in her arms an exquisite Chinese baby, forall Chinese babies, with their flat porcelain faces, their straightblack hair, and their ivory hands, are exquisite. This baby, ingreen-blue trousers fashioned of some soft silk brocade, a pink jacketof the same material, and a head-dress prankt with ribbons into whichornaments of scarlet worsted and blue-bird feathers were twisted, wassmiling silently and gracefully waving her tiny ivory hands towards theface of an outcast of the streets who stood beside her mother. I caughtthe rough workman's suit, the soiled, torn boots, the filthy cap, andthe unkempt hair in my glance, which reverted to the baby. Then, as Iapproached the odd group, and spoke to the mother, the derelict turned.

Carl! he ejacul*ted, for, of course, it was Peter.

I was too much astonished to speak at all, as I stared at this raggedfigure without a collar or a tie, with several days growth of beard onhis usually glabrous cheeks, and dirty finger-nails. I had only witenough left to shake his hand. At this time I knew nothing of his earlylife, nothing of the fortune he had inherited, and the man in frontof me, save for something curiously inconsistent in the expression ofthe face, was a tramp. Certainly the face was puzzling: it positivelyexuded happiness. Perhaps, I thought, it was because he was glad to seeme. I was glad to see him, even in this guise.

Carl, he repeated, dear old Carl! How silly of me not to remember thatyou would be in New York. He caught my glance. Somewhat of a change,eh? No more ruffles and frills. That life, and everything connectedwith it, is finished. Luckily, you've caught me near home. Come withme; there's liquor there.

So we walked out. I had not yet spoken a word. I was choking with anemotion I usually reserve for old theatres, but Peter did not appear tobe aware of it. He chattered on gaily.

Have you been to Paris recently? Where have you been? What have youbeen doing? Are you writing? Isn't New York lovely? Don't you thinkChinese babies are the kind to have, if you are going to become afather at all? Wasn't that an adorable one? He waited for no answers.Look at the lights on the bridge. I live in the shadow of the span. Ithink I live somewhere near the old Five Points that used to turn upin all the old melodramas; you know, The Streets of New York. It's awonderful neighbourhood. Everybody, absolutely everybody, isinteresting. There's nobody you can't talk to, and very few that can'ttalk. They all have something to say. They are all either disappointedand discouraged or hopeful. They all have emotions and they are notafraid to show them. They all talk about the REVOLUTION. It may comethis winter. No, I don't mean the Russian revolution. Nobody expectsa revolution in Russia. Nobody down here is interested in Russia; theRussian Jews especially are not. They have forgotten Russia. I meanthe American REVOLUTION. The Second American REVOLUTION, I supposeit will be called. Labour against Capital. The Workman against theLeisure Class. The Proletariat against the Idler. Did you ever hear ofPiet Vlag? Do you read The Masses? I go to meetings, union meetings,Socialist meetings, I.W.W. meetings, Syndicalist meetings, Anarchistmeetings. I egg them on. It may come this winter, I tell you! Therewill be barricades on Fifth Avenue. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller willbe besieged in their houses with the windows shuttered and the doorsbarred and the butler standing guard with a machine-gun at some gazeboor turret. It will be a real siege, lasting, perhaps, months. How longwill the food hold out? In the end, they'll have to eat the canary andthe Pekinese, and, no, not the cat, I hope. The cat will be clever andescape, go over to the enemy where he can get his meals. But boots,boot soup! Just like the siege of Paris; each robber baron locked up inhis stronghold. Sometimes, the housemaid will desert; sometimes, thecook. The millionaires will be obliged to make their own beds and cooktheir own dogs and, at last, to man their own machine-guns!

The mob will be barricaded, too, behind barriers hastily thrown upin the street, formed of old moving-vans, Rolls-Royces and Steinwaygrands, covered with Gobelin tapestries and Lilihan, Mosul, Sarouk,and Khorassan rugs, the spoils of the denuded houses. With a redhandkerchief bound around my brow, I will wave a red flag and shriek onthe top of such a barricade. My face will be streaked with blood. Wewill all yell and if we don't sing the Ça Ira and the Carmagnole, wewill at least sing Alexander's Ragtime Band and My Wife's Gone to theCountry.

Eventually, Fifth Avenue will fall and the Astors and the Goulds willbe brought before the Tribunal of the People, and if you know anybetter spot for a guillotine than the very square in which we stoodjust now, in that vast open space before the Manhattan Bridge, overwhich they all drive off for Long Island, I wish you'd tell me. Thereare those who would like to see the killing done in Washington orMadison Square, or the Plaza or Columbus Circle, which, of course, hasa sentimental interest for the Italians, but think of the joy it wouldgive the East Side mothers, suckling their babies, and the pushcartvendors, and all the others who never find time to go up town to havethe show right here. Right here it shall be, if I have my way, and justnow I have a good deal of influence.

We had stopped before one of those charming old brick houses withmarble steps and ancient hand-wrought iron railings which still remainon East Broadway to remind us of the day when stately landaus droveup to deposit crinolined ladies before their portals. We ascended thesteps and Peter opened the door with his key. The hallway was darkbut Peter struck matches to light us up the stairs and we only ceasedclimbing when we reached the top landing. He unlocked another doorwhich opened on a spacious chamber, a lovely old room with a chastemarble fire-place in the Dorian mode, and faded wall-paper of rose andgrey, depicting Victorian Greek females, taller than the damsels drawnby Du Maurier and C.D. Gibson, languishing in the shadows of brokencolumns and weeping willow trees. Upon this paper were fastened withpins a number of covers from radical periodicals, native and foreign,some in vivid colours, the cover of The Masses for March, 1912, CharlesA. Winter's Enlightenment versus Violence, the handsome head of aworkman, his right hand bearing a torch, printed in green, severalcartoons by Art Young, usually depicting the rich man as an octopusor hog, and posters announcing meetings of various radical groups.Gigantic letters, cut from sheets of newspaper, formed the legend,I.W.W., over the door.

The room was almost devoid of furniture. There was an iron bed, withtossed bed-clothing, a table on which lay a few books, including, Inoted, one by Karl Marx, another by English Walling, Frank Harris'sThe Bomb, together with a number of copies of Piet Vlag's new journal,The Masses, and Jack Marinoff's Yiddish comic weekly, The Big Stick.There was also a pail on the table, such a pail as that in which aworkman carries his mid-day meal. There were exactly two chairs and awardrobe of polished oak in the best Grand Rapids manner stood in onecorner. All this was sufficiently bewildering but I must confess thatthe appearance of the lovely head of a Persian cat, issuing from underthe bed-covers, made me doubt my reason. I recognized George Moore.Presently I made out another puss, sitting beside a basket full ofkittens in the corner near the wardrobe.

I must introduce you, explained Peter, to the mother of George Moore'sprogeny. This is George Sand.

By this time I was a fit subject for the asylum. Even the Persian catsdid not set me right. Happy or not, the man was evidently poor.

I suppose I would insult you if I offered you a job, I stuttered atlast.

A job! Carl, don't you know that I simply will not work?

Well, and I found this even more difficult than my first proposal, Ihope you won't misunderstand.... I haven't much ... but you must permitme to give you some money.

Money! What for?

Why, for you....

Comprehending at last, Peter threw back his head and began to laugh.

But I don't need money.... I never had so little use for it. Do yourealize what it costs me to live here? About $15 a week. That includesevery item, even fresh beef for my cats, I was about to tell you,if you had given me time—you always interrupt—that I simply don'tknow what to do with my money. Stocks have gone up. The labourers inthe factories at Little Falls are working overtime to make me moreprosperous. Indeed, one of the reasons I was so glad to see you wasthat I thought, perhaps, you could help me to spend some money.

The line about the interruptions, I should explain, was simply afabrication of Peter's. If I have set our conversations down asmonologues on his part, that is just how they occurred. Aside fromPhilip Moeller and Arnold Daly, I have never known any one to talkso much, and my rôle with Peter, as with them, was that of listener.To continue, I should have known enough, even so early in ouracquaintance, not to be astonished by anything he might do, but ifthere had been a mirror in the room, which there was not, I fancy Imight have looked into the most exasperatingly astonished face I hadever seen up to that time. I managed, however, to laugh. Peter laughed,too, and sat down. George Moore leaped to his knee and George Sand tohis shoulder, rubbing her magnificent orange brush across his face.

And how about your book? I asked.

It's coming ... coming fast.

Are you still collecting notes?

Notes?... O! you are remembering what I was doing in Paris. Thatwas only an experiment.... I was on the wrong track.... I threw themall away! I couldn't do anything with that.... I'm done withsuch nonsense.

I couldn't be astonished any more.

What are you doing now?

I've told you. I'm living. O! I'm full of it: I know what artis now; I know what real literature is. It has nothing to do withstyle or form or manner. George Moore, not my cat but the other one,has said that Christianity is not a stranger religion than the cult ofthe inevitable word. The matter is what counts. I think it wasTheodore Dreiser....

Here I did interrupt:

I know him. When I first came to New York in 1906, I wrote a paperabout Richard Strauss's Salome for the Broadway Magazine. He was theeditor.

You know Theodore Dreiser!

There was awe in his tone.

Very slightly. I saw something of him then. Principally, I rememberhis habit, when he was talking, of folding his handkerchief into smallsquares, then unfolding it. He repeated this process indefinitely.

Show me.

I showed him.

Well, I'm glad I met you tonight.... It was Sister Carrie that setme right; at least I think it was Sister Carrie. What a book! What amasterpiece! No style, no form, just subject. The devils floggedSt. Jerome in the fifth century because he was rather a Ciceronian thana Christian in his beautiful writing, but they never will flog TheodoreDreiser! He had an idea, he knew life, and he just wrote what he felt.He wasn't thinking of how to write it; he had something towrite. Have you read Sister Carrie?

I explained that Edna Kenton had given me the book to read when itfirst appeared.

Strange as it may appear to you, for my way is not, perhaps, Dreiser's,that book explains why I am here and why I dress in this manner. Itexplains why I wander about the streets and talk with the people. Itexplains why I am hoping for the REVOLUTION (Peter on this occasioninvariably pronounced this word in capitals). It explains why I am anI.W.W. I would even join the Elks, if necessary. I think Dreiser at onetime must have been an Elk; else how could he describe Hurstwood soperfectly?

It is amusing, however, that you who won't work should become aninternational worker!

I dare say it is, drawled Peter, stroking George Moore's back, as thesuperb cat lay purring on his knee. I dare say it is but I'd go agood deal farther to get what I want; I'd even seek employment in adepartment store or a Chinese laundry. However, it's coming withoutthat, it's coming fast. I found my heroine the other day, a littleJewish girl, who works in a sweat-shop. She has one blue eye and oneblack one. She has a club-foot, a hare-lip, and she is a hunch-back.I nearly cried for joy when I discovered her. I met her on RivingtonStreet walking with a stack of men's overcoats three feet high poisedon her head. She was limping under her burden. I followed her to theshop and made some inquiries. Her name is Rosie Levenstein. I shallleave in the deformities, but I shall change her name.

Isn't she just a trifle unpleasant, a little unsympathetic, for aheroine?

My book, replied Peter, is going to be very unpleasant. It is aboutlife and because you and I enjoy life is little enough reason forus to consider it other than a dirty business. Life for the averageperson, for Rosie, for instance, simply will not do. It's bloodyawful and, if anything, I shall make it worse than it is. Now, if thecomrades succeed in starting the REVOLUTION, I am going through withit, straight through, breaking into drawing-rooms with the others. I'mgoing to pound up a Steinway grand with a hammer. Here Peter, witha suitable gesture, brought his hand down rather heavily on GeorgeMoore's head and that one, indignant, immediately rose and jumped downfrom his lap, subsequently stretched himself on the floor, catchinghis claws in the carpet, and after yawning once or twice, retreatedunder the bed. George Sand now left Peter's shoulder to fill thevacant place on his knee. As I told you, I'm going to wear a redhandkerchief round my brow and my face will be bloody. Then, all Ihave to do is to transfer the whole experience, everything Ihave done and felt, the thrill, the BOOM, to Rosie. Can't you seethe picture in my last chapter of the little, lame, hare-lippedhunch-back, with one blue eye and one black one, marching up FifthAvenue with the comrades, wrapped in the red flag, her face stainedwith blood, humbling the Guggenheimers and the Morgans, disturbingthe sleep of Henry Clay Frick, casting art treasures, bought with theblood of the poor, out to the pavement, breaking windows, shooting,torturing, devastating? Then the triumphant return to the East Side,Rosie on the men's shoulders. Everybody tired and sweaty, satiatedand bloody. Now, all the realism of the interiors, gefillte fish andschnaps. But Rosie will sit down to her dinner in a Bendel eveninggown, raped from one of the Kahn closets. The men come back for her.Another procession down Canal Street. The police charge the mob. Shots.The Vanderbilts and the Astors and the Schwabs in their Rolls-Roycesand their Pierce-Arrows, fitted with machine-guns, charge the mob.Terrible slaughter. Rosie dead, a horrid mess, fully described, lyingon the pavement. Everything lost. Everything worse than it was before.Deportation. Exile. Tenements razed. Old women, their sheitels awry,wrapped in half a dozen petticoats and thick shawls, bearing the sacredcandlesticks, fleeing in all directions. Cries of Weh is mir! Moans.Groans. Desolation. And, at the end, a lone figure standing just whereyou and I were standing a little while ago, philosophizing, pointingthe dread moral, accenting the horror. The lights go out. Darkness. Inthe distance, a band is heard playing The Star Spangled Banner. Finis.

Peter's excitement became so great that he almost shrieked; he wavedhis arms and he half rose out of his chair. George Sand, too, found itexpedient to retreat under the bed. The kittens, tumbling mewing outof their baskets, their little tails, like Christmas trees, straightin the air, followed her, and soon were pushing their paws valiantlyagainst her belly and drinking greedily from her dugs.

It's wonderful, I said when Peter, at last, was silent. Then, as itseemed, rather inconsequentially, Do you know Edith Dale?

Who is Edith Dale?

Well, she's a woman, but a new kind of woman, or else the oldest kind;I'm not sure which. I'm going to take you there. Bill Haywood goesthere. So does Doris Keane. Everybody goes there. Everything is allmixed up. Everybody talks his own kind of talk and Edith, inscrutableEdith, sits back and listens. You can listen too.

Is she writing a book?

No, she never does anything like that. She spends her energy in living,in watching other people live, in watching them make their sillymistakes, in helping them make their silly mistakes. She is a dynamo.She will give you a good deal. At least, these gatherings will giveyou a good deal. I think you might carry a chapter or two of your novelthrough one of Edith Dale's evenings.

Must I change my clothes?

No, you are right just as you are. She will like you the better forthem.

That's good. I couldn't change my clothes. My friends, the comrades,wouldn't understand if they saw me. But you must have a drink. I hadnearly forgotten that I had promised you one.

Peter opened the polished oak wardrobe and extracted therefrom a bottleof Christopher's Finest Old White Scotch Whisky and he began to speakof the advantage of allowing spirits to retain their natural colour,which rarely happens in the case of whisky, although gin is ordinarilyto be distinguished in this manner.

Chapter VII

Edith Dale had returned to New York after three years in Florence.Near the old renaissance city, she had purchased an ancient villa inthe mountains and had occupied herself during her sojourn there intransforming it into a perfect environment for the amusing peoplewith whom she surrounded herself. The villa originally had been builtwithout a loggia; this was added, together with a salone in the generalstyle of the old house. The lovely Italian garden was restored.Cypresses pointed their dark green cones towards the sky and gardeniasbloomed. White peaco*cks and statues were imported. Then, with hersuperlatively excellent taste at her elbow, Edith rushed about Italyin her motor, ravishing prie-Dieu, old pictures, fans, china dogs,tapestries, majolica, and Capo di Monte porcelains, carved and gildedrenaissance boxes, fantastic Venetian glass girandoles, refectorytables, divans, and divers bibelots, until the villa became a perfectexpression of her mood. When every possible accent had been added,she entertained in the evening. Eleanora Duse, a mournful figurein black velvet, stood on the loggia and gazed out over the hillstowards Certosa; Gordon Craig postured in the salone; and GertrudeStein commemorated the occasion in a pamphlet, printed and bound ina Florentine floral wall-paper, which today fetches a good sum in oldbookshops, when it can be found at all. To those present at this festa,it seemed, doubtless, like the inauguration of the reign of anotherLorenzo the Magnificent. There was, indeed, the prospect that Ease andGrace, Beauty, Wit, and Knowledge, would stroll through these statelyand ornate chambers for indefinite months, while hungry artists werebeing fed in the dining-room. But to Edith, this culminating drearyfestivity was the end. She had decorated her villa with its last chinadog, and the greatest actress in the world was standing on her loggia.Under the circ*mstances, further progress in this direction seemedimpossible. She was even somewhat chagrined to recall that it hadtaken her three years to accomplish these things and she resolved tomove more quickly in the future. So, packing enough of her treasuresto furnish an apartment in New York, she shut the villa door withoutlooking behind her, and booked a passage on the next boat sailing fromGenoa.

In New York she found the top floor of an old mansion in WashingtonSquare exactly what she wanted and installed green glass, lovelyfabrics, and old Italian furniture against the ivory-white of thewalls and the hangings. She accomplished the setting in a week; nowshe required the further decoration which the human element wouldafford. Art, for the moment, was her preoccupation and, with hertremendous energy and her rare sagacity and taste, she set about,quite spontaneously, arranging for an exhibition, the first greatexhibition of the post-impressionist and cubist painters in New York.This show has now become almost a legend but it was the reality ofthat winter. It was the first, and possibly the last, exhibition ofpaintings held in New York which everybody attended. Everybody wentand everybody talked about it. Street-car conductors asked for youropinion of the Nude Descending the Staircase, as they asked you foryour nickel. Elevator boys grinned about Matisse's Le Madras Rouge,Picabia's La Danse à la Source, and Brancusi's Mademoiselle Pogany,as they lifted you to the twenty-third floor. Ladies, you met atdinner, found Archipenko's sculpture very amusing, but was it art?Alfred Stieglitz, whose 291 Gallery had nourished similar ideas foryears, spouted like a geyser for three weeks and then, after a properinterval, like Old Faithful, began again. Actresses began to preferOdilon Redon to Raphael Kirchner. To sum up, the show was a bang-up,whale of a success, quite overshadowing the coeval appearance of theIrish Players, chaperoned by Lady Gregory. It was cartooned, it wascaricatured, it was Dr. Frank Craned. Scenes in the current revues atthe theatres were devoted to it; it was even mentioned in a burlesqueat the Columbia. John Wanamaker advertised cubist gowns and ladiesbegan to wear green, blue, and violet wigs, and to paint their facesemerald and purple. The effects of this æsthetic saturnalia aremanifest even today.

Fresh from the quieter insanity of Florence, Edith was intensely amusedby all this. It seemed so extraordinarily droll to find the greatpublic awake to the excitement of art. She surrounded herself with asmany storm centres as possible. The crowds flocked to her place andshe made them comfortable. Pinchbottles and Curtis Cigarettes, pouredby the hundreds from their neat pine boxes into white bowls, trays ofVirginia ham and white Gorgonzola sandwiches, pale Italian boys inaprons, and a Knabe piano were added to the decorations. Arthur Leeand Lee Simonson, Marsden Hartley, Andrew Dasburg, Max Weber, CharlesDemuth, Bobby Jones—just out of college and not yet a designer ofscenery—, Bobby Parker, all the jeunes were confronted with dowagersfrom the upper East Side, old family friends, Hutchins Hapgood, RidgelyTorrence, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and pretty women. Arguments anddiscussions floated in the air, were caught and twisted and hauled andtied, until the white salon itself was no longer static. There wereundercurrents of emotion and sex.

Edith was the focus of the group, grasping this faint idea or thatfrail theory, tossing it back a complete or wrecked formula, or shesat quietly with her hands folded, like a Madonna who had lived longenough to learn to listen. Sometimes she was not even at home, for thedrawing-room was generally occupied from ten in the morning untilmidnight. Sometimes—very often, indeed—, she left her guests withouta sign and went to bed. Sometimes—and this happened still oftener—,she remained in the room without being present. Andrew Dasburgcommemorated this aspect in a painting which he called The Absence ofEdith Dale. But always, and Dasburg suggested this in his flame-likeportrait, her electric energy presided. She was the amalgam which heldthe incongruous group together; she was the alembic that turned thedross to gold.

When dulness, beating its tiresome wings, seemed about to hover overthe group, she had a habit of introducing new elements into thediscussion, or new figures into the group itself, and one day itmust have occurred to her that, if people could become so excitedabout art, they might be persuaded to become excited about themselvestoo, and so she transferred her interest to the labouring man, tounions, to strikes, to the I.W.W. I remember the first time I saw hertalking earnestly with a rough member of the garment-maker's union.Two days later, Bill Haywood, himself, came in and the tremendouspresence of the one-eyed giant filled the room, seeming to give it anew consecration. Débutantes knelt on the floor beside him, while hetalked simply, but with an enthralling intensity, about the thingsthat interested him, reinforcing his points by crushing the heelsof his huge boots into the Shirvan rug or digging his great handsinto the mauve tapestry with which the divan was upholstered. Miners,garment-workers, and silk-weavers were the honoured guests in thosedays. The artists still came but the centre of interest had shifted.Almost half of every day, Edith now spent in Paterson, New Jersey,where the strike of the hour was going on, attending union meetings andhelping to carry pickets back and forth in her motor. She continued tobe diverted by the ironies and complexities of life.

Recruits to the circle arrived from Europe—for Edith knew half ofEurope—; solemn celebrities, tramps, upper Fifth Avenue, GramercyPark, Greenwich Village, a few actresses—I took Fania Marinoff thereseveral times—were all mixed up with green glass vases, filledwith fragrant white lilies, salmon snapdragons, and blue larkspurs,pinchbottles, cigarette stubs, Lincoln Steffens, and the paintingsof Marsden Hartley and Arthur B. Davies. Over the whole floated thedominant odours of Coty's chypre and stale beer.

Edith herself was young—about thirty-four—and comely, with a facethat could express anything or nothing more easily than any face I haveever seen. It was a perfect mask. She wore lovely gowns of clingingturquoise blue, spinel, and jacinth silks from Liberty's. When she wentout, she wrapped herself in more soft silks of contrasting shades, anddonned such a hat as Donatello's David wears, graceful with its wavingplumes and an avalanche of drooping veils.

I spent whole days at Edith's and was nearly as much amused as she.To be truthful, I dare say I was more amused, because she tired of itbefore I did. But before these days were over I brought in Peter. I hadtelephoned Edith that we were coming for dinner and, when we arrived,the rooms were nearly empty, for she found it as easy to rid herselfof people as to gather them in. Neith Boyce was there, I remember, herlovely red hair caught in a low knot and her lithe body swathed in adeep blue brocade. There were two young men whose names I never knew,for Edith never introduced anybody and these young men did not interestme sufficiently to compel me to converse with them and they interestedEdith so little that they were never allowed to appear again. Thedinner, as always, was simple: a soup, roast beef and browned potatoes,peas, a salad of broccoli, a loaf of Italian bread, pats of sweetbutter, and cheese and coffee. Bottles of whisky, red and white wine,and beer stood at intervals along the unclothed refectory table. Thecynical Tuscan butler, who had once been in the service of Lady Paget,never interrupted the meals to serve these. You poured out what youwanted when you wanted it. The dinner was dull. The young men tried tomake an impression on Edith, with a succession of witty remarks of thesort which would have made them exceedingly popular in anything likewhat Ward McAllister describes as Society as I Have Found It, but itwas apparent that their hostess was unaware of their very existence.Neith and I exchanged a few inconsequential phrases concerning D.H.Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. Peter, dressed as he had been when I methim in the Chinese shop, and even dirtier, was utterly silent. Longbefore coffee was served, Edith left the table and went into the salonto write letters.

When we followed her later, there were already a few people there,talking in corners, and more were arriving. Now and again, Edithglanced up from her letters to greet one of the newcomers but she didnot rise. Peter wandered about the room, looking at the pictures,occasionally picking up a book, of which there were a great numberlying about on the tables. Donald Evans, correct and rather portentousin his studied dignity, made an early appearance. At this period he wasinvolved in the composition of the Sonnets from the Patagonian. He drewa manuscript from his pocket and laid it on the desk before Edith. Overher shoulder I read the line,

She triumphed in the tragic turnip field.

Hutchins Hapgood, haggard and restless and yet strangely sympathetic,came in and joined uneasily in an eager conversation with a youngwoman with bobbed hair who stood in a corner, fingering an Africanprimitive carving in wood of a naked woman with long pointed breasts.Yorska was there, the exotic Yorska with her long nose, her tragiceyes, her mouth like a crimson slit in a face as white as Pierrot's,a modern Judith looking for a modern Holofernes and never findinghim; Jo Davidson with his jovial black beard, Bacchus or satyr inevening clothes; Edna Kenton, in a pale green floating tunic of herown design; Max Eastman, poet and Socialist, and his wife, Ida Rauh;Helen Westley, a tall angular scrag with something of the aristocracyof the Remsen-Meseroles informing her spine, who had acquired aconsiderable reputation for being "paintable" by never paying theslightest attention to her clothes; Henrietta Rodman, the round-faced,cherubic Max Weber.... I caught all these and, quite suddenly, althoughfor some time, I remembered afterward, I had been aware of the odourof Cœur de Jeannette, Clara Barnes. She was sitting, when I discoveredher, on a sofa before the fire-place, in which the coals were glowing.She was more matronly in figure and was dressed with some attempt atstylization. She was wearing a robe of batik, iridescent in the shadesof the black opal, with a belt of moonstones set in copper, and hugeear-rings fashioned of human hair. On her feet were copper-colouredsandals and I was pleased to note that her dress was long enough tocover her ankles. I leaned over the back of the sofa and addressed her,

Miss Barnes, I believe....

She turned.

Oh, it's you. What a long time it's been since Paris.

I perceived that her new manner was not exclusively a matter of clothes.

Peter is here tonight, I hazarded.

Is he? she parried, without any apparent interest.

What are you doing now?

What I have always been doing, studying for opera. That teacher inParis nearly ruined my voice. I am really, it seems, a contralto,and that fool had me studying Manon. Carmen is to be my great rôle.I have a splendid teacher now and I am working hard. In two or threemore years, I should be ready for my début. I want to get into theMetropolitan.... You, I hear, are with the Times. Perhaps you can helpme....

So she rambled on. I had heard everything she had to say many timesbefore and I have heard it many times since; I found it hard to listen.Looking across the room, I saw Peter gazing at us. So he knew she wasthere, but he only smiled and turned back his attention to the book heheld in his hand. Clara, however, had caught his eye. Her face becamehard and bitter.

He might speak to me, she said and there was a tone of defiance in hervoice. Then, more calmly, I never understood Peter; I don't understandhim now. For three days, a week, perhaps, I thought he loved me. Oneday he disappeared, without any explanation; nothing, not a sign, nota word. I knew that he had left Paris, because he had taken the catwith him. I was not very much in love with him and so it didn't hurt,at least it didn't hurt deeply, but what do you make of a man like that?

He contradicts himself, I put in rather lamely, searching for words.

That's it! He contradicts himself. Why, do you know, I don't believehe cared at all for my singing. After the day I sang for you, he neverasked me to sing again and when I offered to he always put me off.

An old lady in a black satin dress, trimmed with cataracts of jetbeads, addressed me and fortunately drew me out of Clara's orbit.

Mrs. Dale has some remarkable pictures of the new school, she began,but, of course, I don't like them. Now, if you want to see pictures—Ihadn't said that I did—you should go to Henry Frick's. Do you know Mr.Frick?

No, but I know the man who shot him.

The old lady grew almost apoplectic and the jet beads jangled likeÆolian harps in a heavy wind. She managed, however, to gasp out with asound that was remarkably like gurgling, O! indeed! How interesting!Then, peering about nervously, I don't suppose he's here tonight.

I haven't seen him, I said, but he often comes here and, as I see EmmaGoldman yonder, I should think it extremely likely that he will appearlater.

O! indeed! The old lady leitmotived once more, How interesting! Howvery interesting! Would you mind telling me the time?

It's a quarter of ten.

O! As late as that!—She had just arrived. Really, I had no idea itwas so late. John—this to a decrepit old gentleman in shiny eveningclothes—, John, it's a quarter to ten.

What of it? querulously demanded the old gentleman, with a curiousupward turn to his ridiculous side-whiskers. What of it?

The old lady, forgetting her fifty years of training in the mostexclusive drawing-rooms, turned and whispered something in his ear.

Now it was the turn of the old gentleman to feel a touch of apoplexy.

Berkman! he roared, Berkman! Where is the scoundrel? Where is theassassin?

The old lady looked almost shame-faced as she tried to pacify John:He's not here yet, but he may come.

We shall leave at once, announced the old gentleman decisively. Edithis trespassing on our good nature. She is going too far. We shall leaveat once.

He offered the old lady his arm and they made their way rapidly out,rubbing against, in the passageway, a one-eyed man nearly seven feettall. Now Edith had neither observed the coming or the going of thiselderly couple but Bill Haywood had not crossed the threshold beforeshe was shaking his hand and, a moment later, she had drawn him withher through a doorway into a little room at one side of the salon,where she could talk to him more privately.

The most fascinating man alive, volunteered a stranger at my elbow,a little fellow with a few wisps of yellow hair and a face like apug-dog, that Bill Haywood. No show about him, nothing theatrical,not a bit like the usual labour leader. Genuine power, that's what hehas. He never goes in for melodrama, not even at a strike meeting. Theother day in Paterson, a child was hurt while the police were clearingthe street of strikers. One of the policemen, with his billy, struckdown the boy's mother and a man who was helping her to her feet. Atthe meeting the next day, Haywood recited the facts, just the barefacts, without comment or colour and without raising his voice. What'sthe policeman's name? cried a voice in the hall. His name, repliedHaywood, as coldly as possible, is said to be Edward Duffy; his numberis 72. That was all, but Edward Duffy, No 72, had been consigned tothe perpetual hatred of every one of the two thousand men present atthe meeting. He spurns eloquence and soap-box platitudes. He nevergibbers about the brotherhood of man, the socialist commonwealth risingupon the ruins of the capitalist system, death to the exploiters, andall the other clichés of the ordinary labour agitator. Workers wantsimple, homely facts regarding their trades and he gives them thesefacts. He is—

What are all these God damn bourgeois doing here? demanded a high,shrill voice from the next room.

My companion smiled. That is Hippolyte Havel. He always asks thatquestion, even at anarchist meetings, but it isn't a cliché with him;it's part of his charm.

Hippolyte, sweet, blinking, amblyoptic Hippolyte, his hair as snarly asthe Medusa's, strode into the room.

Hush, some one adjured us, Hush! Yorska is going to recite.

After a few seconds, there was silence. All the chairs were filled;many were sitting on the floor or standing against the wall or in thedoorways; ladies in black velvet, wearing diamonds, ladies in batikand Greenwich village sacks, ladies with bobbed hair and mannish-cutgarments, men in evening dress, men in workmen's clothes. No onepresent, I noted, looked quite so untidy as Peter. Yorska, her tragicface emerging from three yards of black tulle and satin, recited, inFrench, Baudelaire's Le Balcon, fingering a red rose at her waist. Asshe uttered the last lines with passionate intensity,

—O serments! O parfums! O baisers infinis!

there was a scattered clapping of hands, a few exclamations of delight.Now the Tuscan butler, as cynical as Herbert Spencer, threw open thedoors to the dining-room, exposing the table laden with sandwiches,salads, cold meats, glasses, and bottles, including kümmel bottles inthe form of Russian bears. A few of the young radicals were the firstto surge to the repast. My companion and I slipped out in time to hearan instructive lecture on the subject of collective bargaining froma young man with a black flowing tie, who grasped a pinchbottle sofervidly that I felt sure it would never leave his hand until he hadusurped the contents. Representation was a word which, in its differentsenses, was often used that evening. The labourers cooed over it,worshipped it, and set it up in a shrine, while the artists spurned itand cast it from them; "mere photography" was the phrase.

Helen Westley, black and limp, stood beside me.

Who, she asked, is that young man you brought here tonight?

Peter Whiffle, I replied.

Peter Whistle? was her interrogative reproduction.

Presently the quiet even voice of Bill Haywood was heard from thedrawing-room, a voice that by its very mildness compelled silence:

Violence, yes, we advocate violence of the most violent sort, violencethat consists in keeping your mouth shut and your hands in yourpockets. Don't fold your arms, I say to the men, but keep your handsin your pockets to keep hired thugs and detectives from putting bombsthere. In doing this and staying on strike you are committing the mostviolent acts in the world, for you are stopping industry and keeping itstopped until the mill owners grant your demands, an eight hour day,two looms to a worker, and higher wages.

See how he talks, pointed out my unidentified companion, rubbing hisflabby fingers the while around the flange of his wine-glass, abouthalf-full of red California wine. No rage, no emotion, a simpleexplanation of the humanities. Let us go in where we can hear himbetter.

But when we joined the throng in the drawing-room, we discovered thatHaywood was not beginning. He had already finished what he had to sayto the group and had returned to his more intimate conversation withEdith. He brought back to my mind Cunninghame Graham's description ofParnell, not popular, in the hail-fellow-well-met and loudly cheeredconception of the word, but yet with an attraction for all women whomhe came across, who were drawn to him by his careless treatment ofthem, and by the wish that nature has implanted in their sex, to be therulers of all men who stand above their kind.

Did it ever occur to you? my companion began again, that there is somestrange relationship between trade unionism and tribal magic? You knowhow the men of one union cannot do the work for the men of anotherunion. What is this restriction but the taboo?

What, indeed? I echoed pleasantly, unable to think of anything moreapposite to say. Besides, my attention was wandering. I had discoveredPeter, who appeared to be engrossed in the charms of a pretty girl ofwhom I knew little except that her name was Mahalah Wiggins.

Now the round-faced, cherubic Max Weber rose to speak.

The art consciousness is the great life consciousness, he began in hissomewhat high-pitched voice. Its product and the appreciation of itsproduct are the very flower of life.... Hutchins Hapgood's companioncontinued to finger lovingly the polished wooden African figure.... Itspresence in man is Godliness on earth. It humanizes mankind. Were itspread broadcast it would do away with dry, cold intellectualism, whichdead and unfired, always seeks refuge in pretending to be more than itis.... Bill Haywood, the giant Arimaspian, was pounding the seat of thebrocaded sofa with his great fist.... Art or art consciousness is thereal proof of genuine human sympathy. It oozes spiritual expression.Were it fostered it would sooner solve the great modern economicproblem than any labour propaganda.... Helen Westley was yawning,with a great open jaw, which she made no effort to conceal.... A lackof this art consciousness—Weber was very earnest, but in no sensetheatrical—, on the part of both capital and labour, is one cause ofthis great modern struggle. Were this art consciousness more general,material possession would be less valued; the covetous spirit wouldsoon die out.... Yorska, a wraith of black satin and black tulle, herpale Pierrot face slit with crimson and punctuated with two blackholes, lined with purple, stood in the doorway motionless, like anotherRachel, with one hand lifted above her head, grasping the curtain,trying to look uncovetous.... Art socializes more than socialismwith its platform and its platitudes.... Bravo! This from HippolyteHavel.... Economists go not deep enough into the modern monetarydisease. They deal only with materialism. They concentrate only on whatis obvious, the physical starvation of the toiling class, but neverdo they see or seem to realize the spiritual starvation or the lackof an art consciousness to both capital and labour. They would arguethat the material relief must come first. I reply, now as always, wemust begin with the spiritual. I do not see, however, how the spiritualor æsthetic can be separated from the material.... Clara Barnes gavean angry shake to her long ear-rings, but Donald Evans had the raptattentive air of a man hearing a great truth for the first time.... Thecommon solution of this great problem is too dry, too matter of fact,too calculated, too technical, too scientifically intellectual andnot enough intellectually imaginative. Art consciousness is not merelya form of etiquette, nor a phase of culture—it is life—the qualityof sensitive breathing, seeing, hearing, developed to a high truespirituality. Man would value man more. The wonder of and the faith inother human beings would kindle a new social and spiritual life.

That's good talk, was Bill Haywood's comment.

What does it all mean? Clara Barnes caught my attention again; it wasobvious that she could catch no one else's.

It means what you are willing or able to put into it, nothing more, Iaffirmed.

Well, said Clara, yawning, I guess I can't put much into it. This isworse than a party I went to last week, given by a baritone of theAborn Opera Company.

At this point, a little school-marm type of person, with a sharp noseand eye-glasses, rose and shrilly began to complain.

I am a mere lay woman. I don't know a thing about modern art. I'vebeen trying to learn something for five years. In the effort, I haveattended all the meetings of this kind that I could in Paris, New York,and London. There's always a lot of talk but nothing is ever clear.Now I'd like to know if there isn't some explanation of modern art, anexplanation that a mere lay woman could understand.

There was a ripple of amused laughter among the young artists and arapid exchange of glances, but not one of them rose. Instead, a rathermassive female, utterly unknown to me, with as many rows of gold braidacross her chest as a French academician, a porter at the CréditLyonnais, or a soldier in the army of the Prince of Monaco, stood onher feet.

What, exactly, would you like to know? she asked in a voice in whichauthority and confidence were equal elements.

I'd like to know everything, but I'd be satisfied with anything. What,for instance, is the meaning of that picture?

She pointed to Andrew Dasburg's The Absence of Edith Dale, a cubisticcontribution to æsthetic production in several planes and the coloursof red, yellow, and blue.

The massive lady began with some hesitation. Her confidence had notdeserted her but she seemed to be searching for precise words.

Well, she said, that picture is the kind of picture that gives pleasureto the kind of people who like that kind of picture. The arrangement ofplanes and colours is very satisfying. Perhaps I could explain it toyou in terms of music. Do you understand the terminology of music?

Not at all, snapped the little woman with the eye-glasses.

The massive lady seemed gratified and continued, In that case, you mayhave difficulty in following me, but if you take the first and secondthemes of a sonata, their statement, the development or working-outsection, the recapitulation, the coda.... It has some relation to thesonata form certainly, but.... The artist is in the room, the artistwho painted the picture. Won't you explain the picture, Mr. Dasburg?

Andrew, very much amused, did not take the trouble to rise.

The picture is there, he said. You can look at it. Then, after a pause,he added, Henry James says, Woe, in the æsthetic line, to any examplethat requires the escort of precept. It is like a guest arriving todine accompanied by constables.

Then, said the little lady, solemnly, I say, Woe to that picture, woeto it, for it certainly requires the escort of precept. Moreover, Idon't think any one here knows anything, not a thing! she cried, hervoice rising to a shrill intensity, not a blessed thing. It's justlike the last chapter of Alice. If I shouted, Why, you're only a packof cards, you'd all fly up in the air, a lot of flat paste-boards withkings, queens, aces, and deuces painted on your faces! I shall neverask another question about modern art. My private impression is thatit's just so much junk.

Very indignant now, she wrapped an ice-wool shawl around her bonyshoulders and made her way out of the room.

There wasn't an instant's pause and her departure caused no comment. Anew speaker began,

The world, it may be stated, for the purposes of classification, isdivided into four groups: the proletariat, the aristocrats, the middleclass, and the artist class. The artist class may be called by anyother name, bohemians, anarchists, revolutionists, what you will.It includes those who think and act freely, without traditions orinhibitions, and not all people who write or paint belong to this classat all. The artist class lives the way it wants to live. Theproletariat and the aristocrats live the way they have to live.The middle class is composed of members of the proletariat trying tolive like the aristocrats....

My mind wandered. I glanced across at Peter. He was still absorbed inMahalah Wiggins and did not appear to be listening to the speaker.Yet, if he were really writing a realistic novel, the talk, the wholeatmosphere of the evening should have interested and enthralled him. Henever looked up and he was whispering very rapidly.

Some people resemble animals; some, perhaps, minerals; assuredly, someresemble flowers. Mahalah Wiggins was like a pansy. Her hair was blackwith purple lights; her eyes were a pale pansy blue; her face bore aningenuous pansy expression that made one wonder why pansies were forthoughts. She wore a purple velvet dress with long tight sleeves endingin points which reached her knuckles, and, around her throat, a chainof crystal beads that hung almost to her waist.

Intercepting the long look I gave the girl, Neith Boyce smiled.

Are you, too, interested in Mahalah? she asked.

I am interested in the effect she is making.

She always makes an effect, Neith rejoined.

Who is she?

An orphan. Her father left her a little money, which she is spendingat the Art Students' League, trying to learn to draw. Her only realtalents are obvious. She knows how to dress herself and she knows howto attract men. Your friend seems to like her.

He does, indeed.

Mahalah comes here often and always spends the evening in a corner withsome man. She seems to prefer married men. Is your friend married?

No.

A fat woman in a grey crêpe dress, embroidered in steel beads, standingin the centre of the room, shifted my attention.

Who is that? I asked.

That is Miss Gladys Waine, replied Neith. She is the wife ofHorace Arlington, the sculptor.

Miss and a wife? What is she then, herself?

Nothing. She does not write, or paint, or compose. She isn't anactress. She is nothing but a wife, but she insists on retainingher individuality and her name. If any one addresses her as Mrs.Arlington, she is furious, and if you telephone her house and ask forMrs. Arlington, although she may answer the telephone herself, she willassure you that Mrs. Arlington is not in, does not, in fact, live thereat all. She adores Horace, too. The curious thing is that Horace'sfirst wife, who divorced him, has never given up his name, of which sheappears to be very proud. She is always called Mrs. Horace Arlingtonand trembles with rage when some tactless person remembers her own name.

My anonymous companion was by my side again with a plate of chocolateice cream which he offered me.

Did you ever try eating chocolate ice cream and smoking a cigarettesimultaneously? he asked. If you haven't, allow me to recommend thecombination. The flavour of both cigarette and ice cream is immenselyimproved.

An old lady with an ear-trumpet, thinking she had been addressed, tookthe plate of ice cream from his outstretched hand, leaned over us andqueried, Eh?

I say, said my incognito companion, that there is nothing like a gooddose of castor oil.

Nothing like it for what? she shrieked.

As a carminative! he yelled.

But I don't suffer from that complaint, she argued.

Allow me to congratulate you, madame, and he bowed to her.

As we were saying, he continued, in a confidential manner, graspingmy arm, one cannot be too careful in writing a drama. Weak, low-bornpeople in trouble are pathetic; the middle classes in the same plightare subjects for melodrama or comedy; but tragedy should deal withkings and queens.

The groups separated, came together, separated, came together,separated, came together: syndicalists, capitalists, revolutionists,anarchists, artists, writers, actresses, "perfumed with botanicalcreams," feminists, and malthusians were all mixed in this strangesalad. I talked with one and then another, smoking constantly anddrinking a great deal of Scotch whisky. Somehow, my strange companion,like the duch*ess in Alice, contrived always to be at my side.Remembering the situation at the Queen's croquet party, I could nothelp feeling grateful that his chin was square and that he was shorterthan I. At one o'clock I had a headache and decided to go home. Ilooked for Edith.

She went to bed hours ago, Neith explained.

Then I made a vain search through the rooms for Peter.

One of the two young men who had dined with us stopped me.

If you are searching for your friend, he said, he went away withMahalah Wiggins.

Chapter VIII

Friendship usually creates onerous obligations. Our friends areinclined to become exigent and demanding. They learn to expectattentions from us and are hurt when we do not live up to theseexpectations. Friends have an unpleasant habit of weighing on ourconsciences, occupying too much of our time, and chiding us because wehave failed them in some unimportant particular. Is it strange thatthere are moments when we hate them? Friendship, indeed, is as perilousa relationship as marriage; it, too, entails responsibility, thatgreat god whose existence burdens our lives. Seemingly we never escapefrom his influence. Each newly contracted friendship brings anothersacrifice to the altar of this very Christian divinity. But there wasno responsibility connected with my friendship for Peter. That is whyI liked him so much. When he went away, he seldom notified me of hisdeparture; he never wrote letters, and, when he returned, I usuallyre-encountered him by accident. In the whole of our long acquaintance,there never was a period in which he expected me to telephone him aftera decent interval. We were both free in our relationship, as free as itis possible for two people, who are fond of each other, to be. Therewas a great charm in this.

A whole month went by, after Edith Dale's party, without my hearingfrom him. Then I sought him out. By this time, I knew him well enoughto be prepared for some transmutation; but I was scarcely prepared forwhat I saw. His room on East Broadway had been painted ivory-white.On the walls hung three or four pictures, one of Marsden Hartley'smountain series, a Chinese juggler in water colour by Charles Demuth,a Picabia, which ostensibly represented the mechanism of a locomotive,with real convex brass piston-rods protruding from the canvas, achocolate grinder by Marcel Duchamp, and an early Picasso, depicting avery sick-looking pale green woman, lying naked in the gutter of a dankgreen street. There were lovely desks and tables, Adam and Louis XIVand François I, a chaise longue, banked with striated taffeta cushions,purple bowls filled with spiked, blue flowers, Bergamo and Oushak rugs,and books bound in gay Florentine wall-papers. The bed was covered witha Hungarian homespun linen spread, embroidered in gay worsteds. The sunpoured through the window over George Moore's ample back and he lookedhappier.

Peter was wearing green trousers, a white silk shirt, a tie of Chineseblue brocade, clasped with a black opal, and a most ornate blackChinese dressing-gown, around the skirt of which a silver dragonchased his tail. He was combed and brushed and there was a faint odourof toilet-water. His nails were manicured and on one of his littlefingers I observed a ring which I had never seen him wear before.Later, when I examined it more closely, it proved to be an amethystintaglio, with Leda and the Swan for its subject. It has been said,perhaps too often, that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow'sear. It is even more true that you cannot make a sow's ear out of asilk purse.

I rose to the room: It's nicer than Edith's.

It's not bad, Peter admitted. I didn't get it fixed up at first. I likeit better now, don't you?

I liked your friend, the other night, he continued.

You mean Edith?

Yes, you must take me there again.

I'm sorry but that is impossible. She has given up her apartment andreturned to Florence. But, I added, I didn't know that you had talkedtogether.

We didn't exchange three words, not even two, he said, but I took herin and she took me in. We like each other, I'm sure, and some day we'llmeet again. Look, he added, sweeping his arm around, see what herglamour has given me, a new life!

But why did you leave so early?

I met a girl....

The next few weeks have left a rather confused impression in my mind,perhaps because Peter himself seemed to be confused. He never spokeof his book. Occasionally we went to the theatre or to a concert. Iremember a concert of Negro music at Carnegie Hall, when there weretwenty-four pianos and thirty banjos in the band and the Negroessang G'wine up, Go Down, Moses, Rise and Shine, Run Mary, Run, andSwing Low, Sweet Chariot, with less of the old plantation spirit thaneither Peter or I could have assumed, but when the band broke intoragtime, the banjos twanged, the pianos banged, the blacks swayedback and forth, the roof was raised, and glory was upon us. Once,coming out of Æolian Hall, after a concert given by Elena Gerhardt,we were confronted by a wagon-load of double basses in their trunks.Two of the monsters, with their fat bellies and their long necks,stood vis-à-vis on the sidewalk and seemed to be conversing, whiletheir brothers on the wagon, a full nine, wore the most ridiculouslydégagé air of dignity. We will not sit down, not here at any rate, theyplainly said, but they did not complain. Peter laughed a good deal atthem and remarked that the aristocrats in the French Revolution musthave gone to the guillotine in much the same manner, only the absurddouble basses in their trunks had no roses to smell. Never have I seeninanimate objects so animate save once, at a rehearsal in the darkenedBelasco Theatre, when the curly gold backs of the ornate chairs,peeping over the rails of the boxes, assumed the exact appearance ofLouis XIV wigs on stately gentlemen. We heard Toscanini conduct theNinth Symphony at the Metropolitan Opera House and we went to see Mrs.Leslie Carter play Paula Tanqueray. Often, in those days, we dinedat the Pavillon d'Orient, an Armenian restaurant on Lexington Avenue.Peter particularly enjoyed a pudding called Tavouk Gheoksu, made ofshredded chicken-breasts, pounded rice flour, powdered sugar, andcinnamon, and Midia Dolma, which are mussels stuffed with raisins andrice and pignolia nuts. Studying the menu one night, it occurred tohim that the names of the dishes would make excellent names for thecharacters of a play. The heroine, of course, he said, would be LahanaSarma and the adventuress, Sgara Keofté; Enguinar is a splendid namefor a hero, and the villain should be called Ajem Pilaf! There was anegro café in the basem*nt of a building on Thirty-eighth street, whichwe frequently visited to see a most amazing mulatto girl, apparentlyboneless, fling herself about while a pitch-black boy with ivory teethpummelled his drum, at intervals tossing his sticks high in the air andcatching them dexterously, and the pianist pounded Will Tyers's Maoriout of the piano. Occasionally we patronized more conventional cafés,one especially, where Peter was interested in a dancer, who painted herface with Armenian bole and said she was a descendant of a Hindu Rajah.

It was during this period that Peter nourished a desire to be tattooedand we sought out masters of the art on the Bowery and at Coney Island.For hours at a time he would examine the albums of designs or watch theartist at work decorating sailors and stevedores. One of these youngmen came nearly every day until his entire body, with the exception ofhis eye-balls, lips, and nails, had become a living Persian carpet, asubtle tracery of arabesques and fantastic beasts, birds and reptiles.The process of application was interesting. First, the pattern must bepricked out on glazed paper, smeared with lamp-black; this was laidon the surface to be tattooed and the outline left by the lamp-blackwas worked over with needles. The artist utilized a piece of wood intowhich were fixed with wires, nine or ten sharp points. The victimsseemed to suffer a good deal of pain, but they suffered in silence. Itwas not, however, fear of pain that caused Peter to hesitate. I thinkhe would have been frescoed from head to foot, could he have oncedecided upon a design. Day after day, he looked over the sketches,professional symbols, military, patriotic, and religious, symbols oflove, metaphorical emblems and emblems fantastic and historical, frogs,tarantulas, serpents, hearts transfixed with arrows, crosses surmountedby spheres, and cannon. He was most tempted, I think, by the design ofan Indian holding aloft the flag of the United States.

Late in March, he suggested a trip to Bermuda.

We must go somewhere, he explained, and why not Bermuda? It's not toofar away.

I had been working hard and welcomed the idea of a vacation. To thequestion of a destination I was comparatively indifferent. It was,however, not too easy to arrange for even a brief leave of absencefrom the Times during the busy Winter months. By pleading incipientnervous prostration, however, I managed to accomplish my purpose.

On the day marked for our departure, I set out, bags in hands, for theoffice of the steamship company on lower Broadway, where Peter hadcommissioned me to stop for the tickets. There, a clerk behind thecounter gave me a note. It was from Peter.

Dear Carl, it ran, I've cancelled our bookings. I can't go. Come in tosee me today and we'll arrange another trip.

An hour later I found Peter in bed in his room on East Broadway. He wasconsuming a raw-beef sandwich but he laid it down to grasp my hand.

I'm sorry, he began, but I don't know how I ever happened to hit on theidea of Bermuda. When I awoke this morning, the thought appalled me; Icouldn't get out of bed.

The counterpane was strewn with pamphlets relating to foreign travel.The telephone rang.

Excuse me, he said, as he clutched the receiver. Then, by way ofexplanation, It's the agent of the Cunard Line. I want to ask about thesouthern route.

He did. He asked about sailings for Italy, Africa, India, and evenLiverpool and then he told the agent that he could not decide what todo but he would let him know later.

Carl, he exclaimed suddenly, let's go to Alaska!

I shook my head.

It may be that we shall meet there by chance some day, but I don'tbelieve you can make up your mind to go there this week.

I'm afraid not, he assented ruefully. I suppose it's hard for you tounderstand.

I understand well enough, I replied, but under the circ*mstances youwill have to travel alone or get some one else to go with you. Whileyou are deciding, my leave of absence will expire.

A few days later he telephoned me.

I'm really going to Bermuda, was his message. I've had bookings onevery boat sailing for Europe the past week and cancelled them all. Myfirst idea was the right one. Bermuda is a change, it's near at hand,and I can get back quickly if I don't like it. Come to Bermuda with me,Carl!

When are you sailing? I asked. I'll come down to see you off.

On the day set, I went to the wharf, and to my great surprise, foundPeter there, just as he had promised he would be, an hour beforesailing time. If he kept an engagement at all, he always kept iton time. He had made preparations, buying new summer clothes, heexplained, and a new innovation trunk. As he never knew how long hewould stay in one place or where he would go from there, he alwayscarried a great deal of apparently unnecessary baggage. This time hehad five trunks with him and several bags, including two for thecats. As we stood on the wharf together, we saw these trunks beinghoisted aboard. Then we walked up the gang-plank and went to seek outhis cabin. He did not like it, of course, and he hunted up the purserand asked to be transferred to another part of the boat. The ship wascrowded and no other cabin was vacant, but the purser, spurred to extraeffort by the tip which Peter handed him, promised to try to get himone of the officers' rooms. A little later this transfer was effectedand, before I left the boat, Peter was installed in his new quarters.As I bade him farewell, I thought he looked a little wistful. I watchedthe boat pull out into the river.

Five hours later, as I was working in the tower of the New York Times,I was called to the telephone.

I said, Hello, and almost dropped the receiver, for I had heard Peter'svoice from the other end of the wire.

I'm back on East Broadway, he groaned. Do come down.

When I arrived, I found him propped up in bed, drinking tea, which heshared with me.

I just couldn't go! It wouldn't have been right to go feeling the way Idid about it. Something dreadful would have happened.

But I saw the boat cast off her moorings.

Peter grinned.

We were steaming down the river. I was very tired and, having thedesire to rest in bed, I began to undress. Suddenly it came over methat I had made a great mistake. I put my clothes on again rapidly,dashed to the deck, and hunted up the purser. You know, he had alreadybefriended me. I told him that I had just opened my mail and mytelegrams and had run across one informing me of the violent illnessof my father—you know how much that would really worry me!—and thatI must go back. He informed me that this was impossible, butanother bill—a very large one this time—made him more sympathetic andmy disembarkation was arranged with the aid of a tug-boat. I even gotmy trunks off, but I had to cry a good deal to do that. I'm very sorryfor you, Mr. Whiffle, the purser said. He will never forget me, I'msure.

The telephone rang. Peter lifted the receiver from the hook and Iheard him say, Please reserve me a deck cabin on the Kronprinz Wilhelmsailing tomorrow. He turned, as he put the receiver back: I'm not crazyabout the North German Lloyd but I've already sailed this week on theFrench Line, the Holland-American, the Cunard, and the White Star. Ihad to change.

By telephone the next day, I learned that Peter had not sailedon the Kronprinz Wilhelm.

Do you know, he said, I've hit on a solution. I could not decide whereto go—every place has its faults—but it has occurred to me that I amnot compelled to go anywhere; I can stay on right here!

There is still a pendant to this part of my tale. In May, Peterinformed me that he had rented a house on Long Island, a small cottagenear Great Neck, with a big fire-place and furniture that would do.He took me out with him the first night. He had engaged a man andhis wife, Negroes, to care for the place and cook. We enjoyed a verygood dinner and he seemed to have settled down for the summer but inthe morning, at breakfast, I, and the Negroes, learned that he wasdissatisfied.

I don't like the place much, he explained, at least, I don't think Ido. At least, I'm not going to stay here.

He paid the servants two weeks wages and dismissed them. Then hetelephoned an expressman to call for his trunks, none of which had beenopened. Carrying the bags, two of which contained cats, we caught the 9o'clock train back to town.

Before this last fluctuation, some time in April, I think it was,Peter's father really did die. Peter did not go to Toledo for thefuneral but, after it was over, Mrs. Whiffle came to New York and I mether one day at tea. There was no change in Peter; certainly not a bandof black on his arm.

He did seem to have one fixed idea that spring, an idea that centred onmarriage.

I'm not particularly in love with any one, he admitted, and so it israther difficult to choose, but I want children and my children musthave a mother. There is Mahalah Wiggins ... and there is the Rajah'sgrand-daughter. Well, I don't know that they will marry me, but I mustdecide what I am going to do before I give them a chance to decide whatthey are going to do!

A week or so later: I've been considering this question of marriage.It's a serious step. I can't rush into a thing like that. Mahalahdoesn't like cats. You know, I couldn't give up my cats. I can't marrya woman who doesn't like cats. Luckily I haven't asked her.

A few days later: I will marry Mahalah, I think. She understands me;she doesn't seem to mind the crazy things I do. She is beginning tolike the cats. She is healthy and she might produce fine children.

Another interval and then: She has accepted me. Isn't it wonderful forher to love me at my age for my money alone!

The preparations for the wedding were portentous, although it was tobe celebrated as quietly as possible. There were clothes to buy and anapartment to be furnished. He left the decision of the day and placeto Mahalah—fortunately that was her affair—but there was endlessdiscussion about the honeymoon. He considered in turn nearly every spoton the globe, including Patagonia and Abyssinia. As the day in May setfor the ceremony approached, Maine was mentioned rather more frequentlythan any other locality, but I had no real conviction that they wouldultimately go there. I was to be the sole attendant at the wedding.That much seemed to be settled.

The great day dawned and brought with it a windy rain. I knew thatPeter detested windy days; one of his superstitions associated themwith disaster. He did not telephone me in the morning and his silenceseemed ominous. Nevertheless, I put on a morning coat and a silk hatand presented myself at his rooms an hour before the minute set forthe ceremony, which was to be celebrated in a little church in theneighbourhood. On another day, I would not have been surprised to finda note from Peter instead of himself but when, on reaching the toplanding, I discovered the door open, and an old charwoman, packingup books and bowls inside, handed me a note with the superfluousinformation that Mr. Whiffle had gone away, my knees shook to such anextent that I wondered if I had suddenly become afflicted with tabes.

I managed to ask, Where?

I dunno, sir. He took his trunks.

I opened the letter.

Dear Carl, it ran, I just couldn't do it. It wouldn't be right to doit, if I feel that way, would it? And I do, indeed, I do! I told you Iwas not in love and it's hard to make up your mind if you don't feelstrongly enough, and I never feel strongly enough about anything untilafterwards. You know that. Now, that's soon enough about Bermuda ora house in the country, but it's too late in marriage. So I've justcalled it off. I've written her a note which doesn't exactly explainanything but some day she'll be glad, I hope, and so all youhave to do is to make her feel that it's all right. Somehow, I believeshe will understand. Anyway, I don't think she will be surprised. I'mgoing to Africa and, if I ever have an address again, I'll send it toyou.

Peter.

Chapter IX

In September, 1913, I found myself on the Paris-Milan Express on myway to Venice to meet Edith Dale. I have travelled across Switzerlandmany times and I hope to do so again (the view from the car-windowsis magnificent), but I shall never visit that country. God keep mefrom lingering in the mountains or by the shores of the sea. Suchimmensities of nature strangle talent and even dwarf genius. No greatcreative work has ever been composed by the sea or in the shadow of amountain. In the presence of the perpetual mysteries of nature, manfeels his smallness. There are those who may say that the sky-scrapersof the city evoke a similar feeling, but man's relation to these is notthe same; he knows that man built these monster structures and that manwill tear them down again. Mountains and the sea are eternal. Does thisexplain why so much that passes for art in America comes from Indianaand Illinois, the flat, unimposing, monotonous Middle West?

All journeys, I suppose, have their memorable incidents and episodes,however unimportant. My sole memory of this particular hegira istrifling. While I was dining, the train gave a lurch or a swerve,hurling me with my plate in my lap to the farthest corner of the car.The soup which the plate contained was in my lap, too, and elsewhere.Fortunately, the soup was not too hot. The accident recalled howonce in a French drawing-room I had spilled a cup of calid coffeeon my leg, scorching it painfully. The hostess was concerned abouther carpet. I do hope, she was saying, that you haven't spilled yourcoffee on my carpet. I had not, but my leg was burned so badly and Ifelt so outraged by her lack of sympathy, that I took occasion laterto make good the omission. Another night, another year, and certainlyanother place, a celebrated lady, next to whom I was sitting at supper,whisperingly adjured me to upset my coffee into her lap. She waswearing a new and elaborate frock and, astonished by her unreasonablerequest, I was dilatory in obeying. She whispered again, this timemore sharply, Do as I tell you! At last I obeyed her, but the attemptat carelessness must have seemed very clumsy. I am a poor actor.Apologize, was her next command. Meekly, I followed instructions. Nowshe spoke aloud. It doesn't matter at all, she said. It's only an oldrag. The other gentlemen present condoled with her, but she smilinglyput them off, Don't make the boy feel bad. It wasn't his fault. Nextday, while I lunched with her, a great many boxes arrived from Bendel'sand Hickson's. Every man who had attended the supper had bought her anew dress, as she had been sure they would!

Towards nightfall, we approached the Italian border and after we hadpassed into Italy, the compartment, which had been crowded all day,was empty but for me and another man. As he was a Roumanian, who spokeneither French nor English, we did not converse. About 8 o'clock, welay down on our respective seats and tried to sleep. It was nearlymidnight when we arrived at Milan and I was glad to descend from thetrain, after the long journey, to take a few hours repose at a hotelnear the station. Early in the morning, which was bright and sunny, Ideparted for Venice.

In the evening of that day, I was sitting at a table in the gardenof Bonvecchiati's with Edith, who had motored down from Florence.Since the night I had taken Peter to her house in Washington Square,I had seen her only for fleeting moments, but she bridged the monthsimmediately. Peter had been correct in his assumption that she wouldremember him. In fact, one of the first questions she asked was:

Where is that boy you brought to my house the other night?

It was "the other night" to Edith; months and even years meant nothingto her.

Peter Whiffle?

Yes, a nice boy. I liked him. Where is he? Let's take him back toFlorence with us.

I don't know where he is.

Then I told her the story of how Peter did not get married.

I knew he was amusing. Let's get in touch with his vibrations and findhim.

Edith, indeed, had invented her own kind of wireless long beforeMarconi came along with his. Distances, as a matter of fact,circ*mscribed her even less than time.

Just then, she saw Constant Lounsberry, or some one else, at a table inthe corner of the garden where we were dining and she strolled over totalk with her. Sipping my coffee and smoking my cigarette, I recognizeda familiar voice and turned to see Peter, with his mother, about toclaim an adjacent table from which the occupants were rising. He lookedtwo years younger than he had four months before and his rather prettymother helped to confirm the illusion. Of course, I joined them at onceand soon we were discussing the Italian futurists, the comparativemerits of spaghetti and risotto, Lydia Borelli, the moving pictures,and the Marchesa Casati, who had given a magnificent festa the eveningprevious, when, clad in a leopard's pelt, she had stood on the stepsof her palace, and greeted her guests as they approached by gondola onthe Canale Grande. Peter, I noted, was wearing his amethyst intaglio ofLeda and the Swan on the little finger of his left hand. After a time,during which, for a brief few moments, the conversation drifted towardsToledo and the small affairs of Mrs. Whiffle, he told me his story.

I came near dying in Africa, Carl, surrounded by nigg*rs andfleas! It was horrible. Hot as a New York roof-garden and nearly asuncomfortable. There I lay, rotting with a nameless fever, no onewith me but an incompetent Dutch doctor, who was more ignorant of thenature of my complaint than I was myself, and a half-naked aboriginal,who wanted to call in the witch-doctor and who, when burked in thisdirection, attempted a few amateur charms, which at least had the meritof awakening my interest. There I lay in a rude thatched hut with aroof of caked cow-dung; I couldn't eat, drink, or speak. I thought itwas the end. Funny, but the only sound that reached my ears, after afew days, was the chattering of monkeys, and later they told me therewere no monkeys about at all.

Over my head on the wall, hung a dirty thonged whip. Whether itspurpose was to beat women or oxen, I don't know, but, you willremember, perhaps, that sometimes, when I awaken from sleep in themiddle of the night, I have a strange habit of holding one armstraight up in the air, at right angles with my body. Well, while Iwas ill, there it was, most of the time, straight up! One night, whenmy strength was fast ebbing away, I reached higher and grasped thewhip. Then I grew drowsy; everything seemed to turn blood-red, eventhe palm-leaves that waved across the opening made by the doorway ofthe hut, and it was very hot, unspeakably roasting. Now, through thissame doorway, walked a woman in a rusty black robe and, although Iknew it must be Death, the figure confused itself in my mind withKathleen-ni-Houlihan and (will you believe it?) Sara Allgood! Fancythe appearance of Death in the middle of Africa suggesting to me thecharacter of an Irish play and the actress I had seen in it! Therefollowed a slight pause, during which Death stood perfectly still. Thentwo more figures entered the tiny hut. One was the Devil, Ahriman,Abaddon, what you will; I recognized him at once, he was so likableand, besides, he was lame. The other, I gathered after a littleconversation, was an emissary from heaven. Eblis seated himself on oneside of my cot, resting his crutches against the wall, and Gabriel'sambassador stood on the other side. Now these two droll fellows beganto describe the climates and amusem*nts of heaven and hell to me, eachspeaking in his turn, and continually interrupting themselves to beg meto decide speedily where I wanted to go. They stated frankly that theyhad not any too much time, as they had several other visits to makebefore dinner in various parts of the world. The Angel polished hisfeathers with a small hat-brush and the Devil seemed to be taking goodcare of his nails, in default of the opportunity to visit a manicure.Death stood immovable, inexorable. Imagine, even in her presence, I hadto make up my mind where I wanted to go. It was a terrible experience,I can tell you! It was as if she were saying, Hurry now, hurry now!Nine minutes more. Only, of course, she did not utter a single word.The Angel and the Devil were too silly. Had they been silent, it wouldhave been so much easier for me to decide. My mind would just bewavering in a certain direction, when one of the supernatural visitorswould put me completely out with a warning about his rival's domainand a word of enthusiasm for his own. Never have I suffered suchagony. I could not decide whether to go to Paradise or Pandemonium. Myperplexity grew as they argued. Meantime, it was obvious that I waskeeping Death from other bedsides. I could see that she was becomingnervous and irritable, shifting first on one foot, then on the other.It was evidently very irksome to her that she had taken a vow ofsilence. In life, it is so easy; there is always something else to do.But, in death, Carl, there is a single alternative; at least, it seemedso to me for an unconscionable space of time. Suddenly, however, twoideas occurred to me: I remembered that I had read somewhere that demonand deity were originally derived from the same root: in that case,one place would be as bad or as good as the other; and I remembered mysolution of the Bermuda problem: I could stay where I was. I was notcompelled to go anywhere. Stretching up my hands, I pulled hard onthe whip, which must have broken loose from the nail, because when Icame out of my coma, the thongs were gripped tightly in my hand, lyingon the blanket.

Peter concluded his story and, suddenly, with that delightfulinconsequence, which contributed so definite a charm to his manner, hepointed to a woman in the crowd.

She resembles an ostrich and she is dressed like a peaco*ck, he said.

Peter, I wish you wouldn't jest about death and holy things,interjected Mrs. Whiffle, on whose literal mind the tale had evidentlyclawed as an eagle claws the brain of a cat.

But, mother, Peter tried to mollify her, I am not jesting. I am tellingyou something that happened.

Something that you thought had happened, Mrs. Whiffle corrected,but we should only think good thoughts. We should keep the dark onesout of our minds, especially when they interfere and conflict with thepowerful words of Almighty God, our Creator.

I'm sorry, mother, I won't tell it again, he said, simply. Then,after a nibble or two at a lobster, he turned to me, Mother is goingto America tomorrow. I shall be alone. Have you been to the AustrianTyrol? There's Russia, of course, and Spain, and those islands whereSynge used to go. Where are they? And Bucharest. Carlo, will you gowith me tomorrow to Buenos Ayres or Helsingfors?

You are not to be told where you are going, I replied, but you aregoing with me.

Experience has taught me that people with principles are invariablyunreasonable. Peter had no principles and therefore he was reasonable.So the next day, he really did drive back with us to Florence, throughthe pleasant olive groves and vineyards. A jeroboam of chiantienlivened the journey, and Edith adored the story of Peter's encounterwith Death, the Devil, and the Angel.

The Villa Allegra is set on the hills of Arcetri, high above the longcypress-bordered avenue called the Stradone del Poggio Imperiale. Thevilla is so artfully concealed amongst the cunningly-grouped, gnarledolive trees, eucalypti, myrtles, plane-trees, laurels, pepper-trees,and rows of cypresses, that, until you are in the very courtyard, youare unaware of its propinquity, although, by some curious paradox,the view from the loggia commands the surrounding country. The lovelycurve of the façade has been attributed to the hand of Raphael, andBrunelleschi is said to have designed the cortile, for the physicianof the Medici once inhabited this country house, but the completelysuccessful loggia and the great salone were added by Chester Dale.

Peter had never been in Florence before; no more had I; so the romanticcharm of this lovely old house in the mountains served to occupyus for several days. We inspected the sunken Roman bath and werethrilled by the rope-ladder, which, when lowered through a trap-door,connected a chamber on the second storey with a room on the first. Wewere satisfied to sit in the evening under the red brocaded walls,illuminated by wax tapers set in girandoles of green and rose faience,to stroll in the gardens, to gaze off towards the distant hills fromthe loggia. Edith entertained us with long accounts of the visits ofthe spectre, the dame blanche who haunted the house. It was, if theservants who swore they had seen her were to be believed, the spiritof an elderly maiden lady who had died there. In life, it seems, shehad been of a jealous disposition and had tried to make the villauncomfortable for other guests. She was not successful in this effortuntil she died, and not altogether successful even then, for there werethose who refused to be terrified by the persistent presence of thisspinster eidolon, which manifested itself in various ways. Others,however, resembled Madame de Staël, who did not believe in ghosts butwas afraid of them.

In the mornings, Peter and I breakfasted together in the garden,whither was borne us by the cynical butler a tray with individualcoffee percolators, a plate of fresh rolls, and a bowl of honey. Thepeaco*cks strutted the terrace and the breeze blew the branches of thefragrant gardenias across our noses. In the distance, the bells ofFlorence softly tolled. In the afternoon, the distant hills becamepurple and, in the evening, the atmosphere was tinged with green.The peasants sang in the road below and the nightingales sang in theolive copse. Roman lamps flickered on the tables and Strega, thegolden witch-liquid, stood in our tiny crumpled Venetian tumblers,their distorted little bellies flecked with specks of gold. There wereoccasional callers but no other resident guests than ourselves at thevilla and Edith, as was her custom, left us a good deal alone. On theday of our arrival, indeed, she disappeared after luncheon and onlyreturned two days later, when she explained that she had gone to visita friend at Pisa. We usually met her at dinner when she came out tothe garden-table, floating in white crêpe de chine, with a turban ofturquoise blue or some vivid brilliant green, but during the day shewas seldom visible. She ate her breakfast alone on the balcony aboveour bedroom, then read for an hour or two. What she did after, onenever knew, save as she told of it.

Meanwhile, Peter and I wandered about, inspecting the shops on thePonte Vecchio, tramping through the old palaces and galleries. Severaltimes Peter paused; he hesitated for the longest time, I think, beforethe David of Donatello, that exquisite soft bronze of the Biblical lad,nude but for his wreathed helmet, standing in his adolescent slenderbeauty with one foot on the head of the decapitated giant. He carries asword and over his face flutters a quizzical expression. Indeed, whatWalter Pater said of the face of Monna Lisa might equally well apply tothe face of David. So remarked Peter, explaining that the quality ofboth the David and Leonardo's darling was the same, both possessed acompelling charm, and it was the charm of David which had slain theugly giant, just as charm always kills ugliness. And he swore that thiswas the most beautiful object that the hand of man had yet created, anart expression which reached its emotional and intellectual zenith, andthen he spoke of the advantage that sculpture enjoyed over painting.

One tires of a painting. It is always the same. There is never anythingnew in it. But with a statue, every different light gives it a novelvalue, and it can be turned around. When you tire of one aspect,you try another. That is why statues belong in houses and picturesbelong in museums. You can visit the museum when you wish to lookat a picture, but it is impossible to live with a picture, becauseit is always the same. You can kill any picture, even a picture byVelázquez, by hanging it on your own wall, for in a few days it becomesa commonplace to you, a habit, and at last one day you do not look atit any more, you scarcely are aware that it is there at all, and youare surprised when your friends speak of it, speak of it admiringly.Yes, you say, unconvinced, it is beautiful. But you do not believe it.On the other hand, a statue is new every day. Every passing cloud inthe sky, every shifting of the location of a lamp, gives a new value toa statue, and when you tire of seeing it in the house, you can transferit to the garden where it begins another avatar.

Leaving David behind us, we walked down the long, marble, fourteenthcentury stairway of the Palazzo del Podestà, into the magnificent courtembellished with the armorial bearings of the old chief magistrates,out to the Via del Procónsolo, on through the winding streets tothe Palazzo Riccardi, where Peter again paused before the frescoesof Benozzo Gozzoli. The Gifts of the Magi is the general title butGozzoli, according to a pleasant custom of his epoch, has painted theMedici on a hunting expedition, the great Lorenzo on a white charger,with a spotted leopard at its heels, falcons on the wrists of hisbrilliant attendants, a long train of lovely boys, in purple andmulberry and blue and green and gold, the colours as fresh, perhaps,as the day they were painted. The most beautiful room in the world,Peter exclaimed, this little oratory about the size of a cubicle atOxford, painted by candle-light, for until recently, there was nowindow in the room, and I believed him. I am not sure but, belike, Ibelieve him still. Then Peter loved the walk in that gallery whichconnects the Pitti Palace with the Uffizi, a long narrow gallery whichruns over the shops of the Ponte Vecchio (was ever another bridge sorichly endowed with artistic and commercial interest?), where hang theold portraits of the families who have reigned in Florence, and someothers. Quaint old canvases, they are, by artists long forgotten and ofpeople no longer remembered, but more interesting to Peter and me thanthe famous Botticellis and Bellinis and Giorgiones which crowded thewalls of the galleries. As we stood before them, Peter imagined talesof adventure and romance to suit the subjects, pinning his narrativesto the expression of a face, the style of a sleeve, the embroidery ofa doublet, or to some accompanying puppet or pet, some ill-featuredhunch-back dwarf.

Thus the days passed and Peter became dreamy and wistful and thecharm of his spirit, I believe, was never before so poignant, forhis chameleon soul had taken on the hue of the renaissance and itsaccompanying spirituality, the spirituality of the artist, the happyworking artist contriving works of genius. He could have perfectlydonned the costume of the cinquecento, for the revolutionary Peter ofNew York, the gay, faun-like Peter of Paris, had disappeared, and aPeter of reveries and dreams had usurped their place.

Never have I been so happy, he said to me on one of these days, as I amnow. This is true beauty, the beauty of spirit, art which has nothingto do with life, which, indeed, makes you forget the existence of life.Of course, however, this is of no help to the contemporary artist.Confronted, on every hand, with perfection, he must lay down his chiselor his brush or his pen. Great art can never flourish here again. Thatis why Browning's poetry about Florence is so bad; why Ouida, perhapsa lesser artist, succeeded where Browning failed. This is the idealspot in which to idle, to dream, even to think, but no work is possiblehere and that, perhaps, is why I love Florence so much. I feel that Icould remain here always and, if I did I should do nothing, nothing,that is, but drink my coffee and eat my rolls and honey in the morning,gaze across to the hills and dream, stroll over the wondrous PonteSanta Trinità, which connects us so gracefully with the Via Tornabuoni,wonder how Ghirlandaio achieved the naïve charm of the frescoes in thechoir of Santa Maria Novella, nothing else but these things. And, ofcourse, I should always avoid the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.

But he had scarcely uttered the name before he determined that he mustdrink some beer and so we strolled across the Piazza, on which he hadjust placed a malison, into the Giubbe Rosse, full of Americans writingletters, and Swedes and Germans, reading their native papers. We satdown at a table just outside the door and asked one of the red-coats,whose scarlet jackets give this place its cant name, to bring ustwo steins of Münchener. Then came an anachronism, one of thoseanachronisms so unusual in Florence which, more than any other city, isall of a piece. A stage-coach, such a coach as one sees in old England,drawn by four horses, drove gaily through the square. The interiorseemed empty but on the top sat several English girls in spriggedmuslins, a few pale youths, and a hatless man with very long hair, whowas clad in olive-green velvet.

Who is it? I asked a man at a neighbouring table.

And the reply came, That is Gordon Craig and his school.

A few days later, Peter encountered Papini, that strange and very uglyyouth, who mingled his dreams and his politics, mixing mysticism andpropaganda until one became uncertain whether he was seer or socialist,and Marinetti. He read Mafarka le Futuriste and Marinetti talked tohim about war and vaudeville, noise and overthrow, excitement anddestruction. Bomb the palaces and build factories where they stood! SoMarinetti enjoined his followers. Whatever is today is art; whateverwas yesterday is nothing, worse than nothing, refuse, manure. Peterwas especially amused by Marinetti's war cry, Méprisez la femme! hisbanishment of the nude and adultery from art, which was to becomeentirely male. So, indeed, was life, for Marinetti exhorted his maledisciples to bear their own children! All these ideas, Peter repeatedto me in a dreamy, veiled voice, noting at the same time that one ofMarinetti's arms was longer than the other. It did not seem quite theproper environment to carry on in this respect, but the words of theItalian futurist had indubitably made an impression. I could see thatit was quite likely that Peter would become a Marinettist when he wentback to New York.

At dinner, one night, it became apparent that Peter once more wasconsidering his life work. One of the guests, a contessa with a floridface and an ample bosom, began to fulminate:

Art is magic. Art is a formula. Once master a formula and you cansucceed in expressing yourself. Barrie has a formula. Shaw has aformula. Even George Cohan has a formula. Black magic, negromancy,that's what it is: the eye of a newt, the beak of a raven, herbsgathered at certain hours, the heart of a black cat, boiled in a pottogether, call up the bright devils to do your bidding.

Art is a protest, corrected Mina Loy. Each artist is protestingagainst something: Hardy, against life itself; Shaw, against shams;Flaubert, against slipshod workmanship; George Moore, against prudery;Cunninghame Graham, against civilization; Arthur Machen, againstreality; Theodore Dreiser, against style....

Never did I feel less sure of the meaning of art than I do here,surrounded by it, began Peter, although I have never been moreconscious of it, more susceptible to real beauty, more lulled by itsmagic. Yet I do not understand its meaning. It does not help me towork out my own problems. The trails cross. For instance, here isEdith leading her own life; here are we all leading our own lives, asremote as possible from Donatello and Gozzoli. Here is Gordon Craig,dressed like Bunthorne, driving a stage-coach and sending out arcanebut thundering manifestos against a theatre in which his mother andEleanora Duse are such conspicuous examples; here is Papini working anddreaming; here is Marinetti shooting off fire-crackers; here are theBraggiottis, teaching young Americans the elements of music in thatmodern music-room with bas-relief portraits of the great composers,Beethoven, Bach, Verdi, Mozart, Wagner, Rossini ... and Sebastian B.Schlesinger, moulded in the frieze. Here is Loeser, always buildingnew houses and never completing them; here is Arthur Acton, with achauffeur who sings tenor arias in the drawing-room after dinner;here is Leo Stein, collecting Renoirs and Cézannes for his villa atSettignano. What does it all mean, unless it means that everythingshould be scrambled together? I think a great book might be written ifeverything the hero thought and felt and observed could be put into it.You know how, in the old novel, only what is obviously essential to theplot or the development of character is selected. But a man, crossing astreet to commit a murder, does not continuously think of the murder.The cry of Buns! hot cross buns! the smell of onions or dead fish, thesight of a pretty woman, impress his senses and remind him of stillother things. These ideas, impressions, objects, should all be setdown. Nothing should be omitted, nothing! One might write a whole bookof two hundred thousand words about the events of an hour. And what abook! What a book!

This was before the day of Dorothy Richardson, James Joyce, and MarcelProust. The contessa snorted. Mina Loy, at the other end of the table,looked interested in Peter for the first time, I thought. The whitePersian cat, one of Edith's cats, with his superb porcelain-blue eyes,sauntered into the room, his tail raised proudly. Edith spoke:

The great artists put themselves into their work; the cat never does.Men like Stieglitz and de Meyer put themselves into their cameras,that is why their photographs are wonderful, but the cat never putshimself into a camera. The great conquerors put themselves into theiractions; the cat never does. Lovers put themselves into the selves oftheir loved ones, seeking identity; the cat never does. Mystics try tolose themselves in union with their gods; the cat never does. Musiciansput themselves into their instruments; the cat never does. Indianmen, working in the ground, put themselves in the earth, in order toget themselves back in the forms of wheat or maize to nourish theirbodies; the cat never does. Navajo women, when they weave blankets, goso completely into the blanket while they are working on it, that theyalways leave a path in the weaving that comes out at the last cornerfor their souls to get out of the blanket; otherwise they would beimprisoned in it. The cat never does things like this!

So every one really centres his self somewhere outside of himself;every one gets out of his body. The cat never does. Every onehas a false centre. Only the cat—the feline—has a true centrednessinside himself. Dogs and other animals centre themselves in people andare therefore open to influence. The cat stays at home inside his bodyand can never be influenced.

Every one has always worked magic through these false centres—doingthings to himself—seeking outlets, seeking expression, seeking power,all of which are only temporarily satisfactory like a movement ofthe bowels, which is all it amounts to on the psychic plane. The catis magic, is himself, is power. The cat knows howto live, staying as he does inside his own body, for that is the onlyplace where he can live! That is the only place where he canexperience being here and now.

Of course, all the false-centred people have a kind of magic power, forany centredness is power, but it doesn't last and it doesn't satisfythem. Art has been the greatest deceiver of all—the better the art,the greater the deception. It isn't necessary to objectify or expressexperience. What IS necessary IS to be. The cat knows this. Maybe, that is why the cat has been an object of worship; may be, theancients felt intuitively that the cat had the truth in him.

Do you see where these reflections lead? The whole world is wildlypursuing a mirage; only the cat is at home, so to speak.

Actors understand this. They only get a sense of reality when theythrow themselves into a part ... a false centre.

The cat understands pure being, which is all we need to knowand which it takes us a lifetime to learn. It is both subject andobject. It is its own outlet and its own material. It is. Allthe rest of us are divided bits of self, some here, some there. Thecat has a complete subjective unity. Being its own centre, it radiateselectricity in all directions. It is magnetic and impervious. I haveknown people to keep a cat so that they could stroke the electricityout of it. Why didn't they know how to be electric as the cat IS? Thecat is the fine specimen of the I am. Who of us is so fully the I amthat I am?

Look around the world! Everybody putting himself outin some form or another! Why? It doesn't do any good. At the end youexhaust the possibilities of the outside world—geographically andspiritually. You can use up the external. You can come to the end ofobjectifying and objectives, and then what? In the end, only what westarted with—the Self in the body, the Self at home, where it was allthe time while bits of it were wandering outside.

Peter applauded with sundry bravos and benisons and divers amens,but was moved to ask, Does the cat know this? Has the cat got aconscious being? Does he appreciate his advantage?

But no one answered these questions, least of all the haughty whitePersian.

Apparently unreasonably (this biography was as far from my mind asanything well could be), following a habit which I never could explainto myself until I became a professional writer and the reason becameclear, before going to bed, I made notes on this and several subsequentevenings and it is upon these notes that I am drawing now, to refreshmy memory. A few nights later, when Edith and Peter and I were sittingalone on the loggia, Peter talked to us about the critics.

The trouble with the critics, he was saying, is that they are notcontradictory enough. They stick to a theory for better or worse, asunwise men stick to an unwise marriage. Once they have exploited apostulate about art or about an artist, they make all his work conformto this postulate, if they admire it. On the other hand, if the work ofan artist displeases them, they use the postulate as a hammer. I thinkit is Oscar Wilde who has written, Only mediocre minds are consistent.There is something very profound in this aphorism.

Consider Frank Harris's Shakespeare theory, for example. It is goodenough as an idea, as a casual inspiration it is almost a masterpiece.It would make a fine essay; if it had been used as a passing referencein a book, it probably would have been quoted for years. Harris,however, has spun it out into two thick volumes and made it fitinto crevices and crannies where it cannot very well feel at home.Certainly, it is true that any artist creates his characters out ofhis own virtues and weaknesses; all of a novelists' characters, toa certain extent, reflect phases of himself. The mistake Harris hasmade lies in identifying Shakespeare only with his weak, unsuccessful,sentimental, disappointed, unhappy characters, such as Hamlet, Macbeth,Orsino, Antonio, and Romeo. Shakespeare probably was just as much SirToby Belch and Falstaff. Curiously, this theory of identification fitsthe critic himself, the intellectual creator, more snugly than it doesthe romancer, the emotional creator. Remy de Gourmont has pointed thisout. He says, Criticism is perhaps the most suggestive of literaryforms; it is a perpetual confession; believing to analyze the worksof others, the critic unveils and exposes himself to the public. Sofrom these books we may learn more about Frank Harris than we do aboutShakespeare.[2] This, of course, has its value.

But that is why Shakespeare is greater than his critics, that isgreater than the critics who cling to one theory. Shakespeare speaksonly through his characters and he can say, or make some one say,

Frailty, thy name is woman,

but on the next page another character may deny this sentiment, forthis is not Shakespeare's opinion, it is that of an incensed lover. SoRichard III remarks:

Conscience is but a word the cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.

But Hamlet replies:

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.

Both are true, both good philosophy, and so from the playwright, thegreat poet, the novelist, you get a rounded view of life which a criticusually denies you.

Occasionally a critic does contradict himself and really becomes humanand delightful and we take him to our hearts, but the next day allthe doctors and professors and pundits are excoriating him, assuringus that he is not consistent, that he is a loose writer, etc. Goodcritics, I should like to believe, are always loose writers; theyperpetually contradict themselves; their work is invariably palinodal.How, otherwise, can they strive for vision, and how can they inspirevision in the reader without striving for vision themselves? Goodcritics should grope and, if they must define, they should constantlycontradict their own definitions. In this way, in time, a certainunderstanding might be reached. For instance, how delightful of AnatoleFrance to describe criticism as a soul's adventures among masterpieces,and then to devote his critical pen to minor poets and unimportanteighteenth century figures.

But, asked Edith, does not the reader in his own mind contradict theconsistent critic? Does not this answer your purpose?

By no means. What you say is quite true. A dogmatic writer rouses aspirit of contradiction in the reader, but this is often a spirit ofire, of deep resentment. That is in itself, assuredly, something, butit is not the whole purpose of criticism to arouse anger, whateverthe prima donna who reads the papers the morning after her début atthe Opera may think. Criticism should open channels of thought andnot close them; it should stimulate the soul and not revolt it. Andcriticism can only be wholesome and sane and spiritually stimulatingwhen it is contradictory. I do not mean to say that a critic shouldnever dogmatize—I suppose at this moment I myself appear to bedogmatizing! He may be as dogmatic as he pleases for a page or twopages, but it is unsafe to base an entire book on a single idea andit is still more unsafe to reflect this idea in one's next book. Itis better to turn the leaf and begin afresh on a new page. Artistsare never consistent. Ibsen apparently wrote A Doll's House to provethat the truth should always be told to one's nearest and dearest and,apparently, he wrote The Wild Duck to prove that it should not. Ibsen,you see, was a poet and he knew that both his theses were true. In hisattempt to explain the revolutionary doctrines which he found inherentin Wagner's Ring, Bernard Shaw ran across many snags. He swam throughthe Rheingold, rode triumphantly through Die Walküre, even clamberedgaily through Siegfried, by making the hero a protestant, but when hereached Götterdämmerung, his hobby-horse bucked and threw him. Shaw wasforced to admit that Götterdämmerung was pure opera, and he attemptedto evade the difficulty by explaining that Wagner wrote the book forthis work before he wrote the other three, quite forgetting that, ifWagner's intention had been the creation of a revolutionary cycle, itwould have been entirely possible for him to rewrite the last dramato fit the thesis. The fact is that the work is inconsistent from anypoint of view except the point of view of art. Any critic who is anartist will be equally inconsistent.

Truth! Truth! Peter cried in scorn. Forsooth, what is truth? Voltairewas right: error also has its merits.

And yet ... I began.

And yet! he interrupted, still more scornfully. No, there is no suchthing as truth. Truth is impossible. Truth is incredible. The mostimpossible and incredible physical, spiritual, or mental form oridea or conception in the cosmos is the cult of truth. Truth impliespermanence and nothing is permanent. Truth implies omniscience and noone is omniscient. Truth implies community of feeling and no two humanbeings feel alike about anything, except perhaps for a few shiftingseconds. Truth, well if there is such a thing as truth, we may at leastsay that it is beyond human power to recognize it.

But it is not impossible to approach Truth, to play around her,to almost catch her, to vision her, so to speak. No, that is notimpossible. Natheless, the artist, the writer, the critic who mostnearly approaches Truth is he who contradicts himself the oftenestand the loudest. One of the very best books James Huneker has writtenis a work purporting to come from the pen of a certain Old Fogy, inwhich that one opposes all of James's avowed opinions. It is probable,indeed, that we can get the clearest view of Huneker's ideas from thisbook.

Then truth is not an essential of art? I asked.

It has, of course, nothing whatever to do with art. No more has form.Life has so much form that art, which should never imitate life, shouldbe utterly lacking in form. Criticism appears to be a case apart.Criticism is an attempt, at its worst at least, to define art anddefinition implies truth and error. But what the critics do not realizein their abortive efforts to capture her, is that Truth is elusive. Sheslips away if you try to pin her down. You must, as Matthew Arnold hassaid much better than I can, approach her from all sides. Even then shewill elude you, for the reason I have elucidated, because she does notexist!

Why do we read the old critics? For ideas? Seldom. Style? Moreoften. Anecdote? Always, when there is any. Spirit? We delight init. Facts? Never. No, you will never find facts—at least about sucha metaphysical concept as art—correctly stated in books, becausethere is no way of stating them correctly. And the evasion of factsis an exact science which has yet to become popular with the critics,although it is always popular with readers, as the continued successof Berlioz's Mémoires goes to show. We read the old critics to findout about the critics, not about the subjects on which they arewriting. Consequently, it is only the critics who have been interestingpersonalities who are read through many generations.

As an addendum, I might state that interest in art is fatal. Anenthusiastic essay will kill anything. Spontaneity and freshness donot withstand praise. Art must be devoid of self-consciousness. Acertain famous actress once told me that she never liked to have peopleparticularize in their enthusiasm about one of her performances. When,she said, they tell me that such and such a gesture, such and such atone of voice, is the important moment in one of my interpretations,I can never repeat it without remembering their praise, and,involuntarily, something of the original freshness has departed.

I remember another occasion on which Peter talked about the subjectthat most interested him.

It is the pleasant custom of present day publishers of books, hewas saying, to prelude the real publication of a volume by what istechnically known as a dummy. The dummy, the sample from which ordersare taken, to all outward inspection, appears to be precisely like thefinished book. The covers, the labels, the painted top, and the uncutedges give one every reason to hope for a meaty interior. Once opened,however, the book offers the browser a succession of blank pages.Sheet after sheet of clean white paper slips through his fingers,unless, by some chance, he has opened the volume at the beginning, forthe title-page and table of contents are printed (the dedication ismissing), and so are the first thirteen pages of the text.

Such dummies are irresistible to me. Coming warm, hot even, fromthe binder, they palpitate with a suggestion which no perusal oftheir contents can disturb. How much better than the finished book!I exclaim, and there are days when I feel that I will never write abook; I will write only dummies. I would write a title-page, a tableof contents, and thirteen pages of some ghost essay, breaking off inthe middle of a curious phrase, leaving the reader sweetly bewilderedin this maze of tender thought. And, to give this dummy over-value,to heighten its charm and its mystery, I would add an index to theblank pages, wherein one could learn that on empty page 76 hovered thespirits of Heliogabalus and Gertrude Atherton. It would further informone that Joe Jackson, George Augustus Sala, and fireless cookers werediscussed on page 129. Fancy the reader's delight in learning thathe might cull passages dealing with the breeding of white mice onunbegotten pages 67, 134, 185 et seq., 210, 347!

I have it in mind to call my first dummy, Shelling Peas for Shillings.The binding will be of magenta boards with a pistachio-green label,printed in magenta ink. The top will be stained pistachio-green and theedges will be unopened. On the title-page, I shall set an appropriatemotto and a plausible table of contents might include:

The Incredible History of Ambrose Gwinett
Inkstains and Stoppage
Purcell, Polko, and Things Beginning with a P
Folk-Dancing at Coney Island
Carnegie Hall as a Cure for Insomnia
Many Blue Objects and One Black One
Ouida's Italy
Erasmus Darwin's Biographer
Etc.

You see how the subjects present images and ideas which will makeit possible for the reader, in his mind's eye, to write the papershimself. Shelling Peas for Shillings, Peter rolled the name over. It'sa good title. I shouldn't wonder if sometime that dummy would be muchsought after by collectors.

Chapter X

My story rolls on. As I gaze back through the years, gathering thethreads of this history together, trying to weave them into form, I amamazed to recall how very few times, comparatively speaking, Peter andI met. Yet, I suppose, I was his best friend during these years, at anyrate his most sympathetic friend. If there were no other proof, hiswill would offer excellent evidence in this respect. But we saw eachother seldom, for a few hours, a few days, at best for a few weeks,followed by a period of vacuum. I had my own interests and, doubtless,he had his. It was characteristic that he never wrote letters tome, with the exception of the one or two brief notes I have alreadyinserted in the text. His personality, however, was so vivid, theimpression he made on me was so deep, that he always seemed to be withme, even when the ocean separated us. As I write these lines, I couldfancy that he stands beside me, a sombrely joyous spectre. I couldbelieve that he bends over my shoulder or, at any rate, that presentlyI will hear a knock at the door and he will enter, as he entered MarthaBaker's studio on that afternoon in May so long ago.

The magic Florentine days marched to a close. I say marched, but themusical form was more exactly that of a gavotte, a pavane, or a statelyPolish dance, imagined by Frederic Chopin. It was too perfect to last,this life which appeared to assume the shape of conscious art. Oneafternoon, Peter and I motored to the old Villa Bombicci, the designof which legend has attributed to the hand of Michael Angelo. Now ithad become a farmhouse, and pigs and chickens, a co*ck and a few hens,stray dogs and cats, wandered about in the carious cortile. We had cometo bathe in the swimming-pool, a marble rectangle, guarded by a singlecolumn of what had once been the peristyle. A single column, a corneredwall, and a cluster of ivy: that was the picture. We could bathe nude,for the wall concealed the pool from the farmhouse.

Peter was the first to undress and, as he stood on the parapet of thepool by the broken column, his body glowing rose-ivory in the softlight of the setting sun, his head a mass of short black curls, heseemed a part of the scene, a strange visitor from the old faun-likeepoch, and I could imagine a faint playing of pipes beyond the wall,and a row of Tanagra nymphs fleeing, terrified, in basso-rilievo.Sometime, somewhere, in the interval since the days when we had pursuedthe exterior decorators on the Bowery and at Coney Island, he haddiscovered an artist, for now his chest was tattooed with a fantasticbird of rose and blue, a bird of paradise, a sirgang, or, perhaps, aphœnix or a Zhar-Ptit*a, the beak pointing towards his throat, thefeathers of the tail showering towards that portion of the body whichis the centre of umbilicular contemplation among the Buddhists. Hestraightened his lithe body, lifted his arms, and dived into the pool,where he swam about like a dolphin. It was Peter's nature, as I musthave made evident by now, to take the keenest joy in everything hedid. Almost immediately, I followed and we puffed and blew, spatteringthe crystal drops about in the air, so that it seemed as if showers ofstones fell sharply, stinging our faces, as we lay on our backs in thewarm water. Eventually, clambering up to the parapet, we sat silent formany moments and I remember that a fleecy cloud passed over the face ofthe sinking sun. It was very still, save for the soft lowing of cattlein the distant mountains, the cackling of the hens in the courtyard,and the sweet tolling of faraway bells.

Peter broke the silence.

I am not going back to the villa, he said.

Peter! I exclaimed. But....

I didn't know until just now. I love the villa. I love Florence. Ilove Edith and I love you. I have never been so happy, but it couldn'tlast. Just now when we were spattering water I had a premonition....He laughed. There was once a singer—I do not recall her name, butit was neither Patti nor Jenny Lind—who retired while she was stillin the best of voice, and those who heard her in her last opera willalways remember what a great singer she was. So I am going away whileI am happy, so that I can always remember that I have been perfectlyhappy—once.

But you always are....

There, you see, you think so! There are months and years when I amalone, when nobody sees me. Then I am struggling. I make a great dealof sport about work and, indeed, I won't work at anything thatdoesn't interest me, but you know, you must know by now, howmuch I want to write. It is coming so slowly. It is getting late ...late. I must go away to think. I'm too happy here and I am losing time.He was very earnest now. I must write my book.

But you are coming back to the villa. Your clothes are there, and youwill want to say good-bye to Edith.

No, that is just what I want to avoid and that is what you can do forme. I can't say good-bye to Edith. She would persuade me to stay. Itwould be so easy! You, especially, could persuade me to stay, but Iknow you won't, now that you understand how I feel. I shall catch thenight express for Milan. Please, try to explain to Edith ... and youcan pack my bags and send them after me.

But where are you going?

I don't know, and even if I did know and told you, you might be certainthat I would change my mind and go somewhere else. Dispatch my bags tothe American Express Company in Paris and I will send for them.

When shall we meet again?

Peter stood up, his nude body outlined against the crumbling, pink,vine-covered wall. Then he turned and stooped to draw on his clothing.

Chi lo sa? It will be sometime. You are going back to New York?

Yes, very soon. Perhaps next week.

Well, if we don't meet somewhere else, I will go there to see you, thatmuch I promise. Then, almost awkwardly, he added, I want you to have myring. He drew off the amethyst intaglio of Leda and the Swan and handedit to me.

We dressed in silence. The motor stood waiting in the road beside thedecrepit farmhouse, noble even in its decay. Peter asked the chauffeurto drive him to the station, before he should take me back to the VillaAllegra, and at the station we parted.

Dinner that night seemed tasteless. Edith was furious; I have seldomseen her so angry. It was exactly what she would have done herself,had she been so inclined, but she was not at all pleased to have Peterusurp her privileges. She hardly waited for the salad, leaving me tomunch my cheese and drink my coffee alone. Following dinner, I sat,a solitary figure on the loggia, smoking a cigarette and sipping myStrega. Giuseppe, the boy who brought it to me, seemed as dispiritedas the rest of us. After trying in vain to interest myself in half adozen books, I went to bed and rolled about restlessly during the longhot night. I was up very early and went to the garden as usual, but nowlonely and miserable, to have my breakfast. The butler, more cynicalthan ever, brought the tray. A gardenia and a note were added touches.They were Edith's farewells. She had departed for a motor trip throughthe Abruzzi. She might return in three weeks. I was welcome to stay atthe villa and wait or.... And so that summer ended.

A month later, Edith was back in New York and again I saw a gooddeal of her. She asked for news of Peter but I had none to give her.Other friends of mine who had heard about him from Edith, expressed adesire to meet him but, so far as I was concerned, I did not even knowwhether or not he was alive. In December, however, passing throughStuyvesant Square with its gaunt bare trees, the old red-brick Quakerschool-houses, and the stately but ugly Saint George's, on my way toSecond Avenue, where I intended to visit a shop where Hungarian musicmight be procured, I found him, sitting alone on a bench.

I am too happy to see you again, he greeted me, but only you. Edithmust not be told that I am in New York, for at last I am working and Ican afford no interruptions. Edith has a way of breaking up the rhythmof one's life and my life is very rhythmic just now. Do you remember,one night at the villa, there was some conversation about formulæ andblack magic?

You mean the contessa....

She was speaking figuratively, perhaps, but I have taken her literally.He paused for a moment; then he continued, It is possible that you willalso remember my telling you in Florence that I believed Donatello'sDavid to be the most beautiful work of art in the world.

I remember; I still think you were right.

I haven't altered my opinion. It is the most beautiful statue Ihave ever seen, just as Debussy's l'Après-midi d'un Faune is the mostbeautiful music I have ever heard, just as The Hill of Dreams is—haveyou read it?

At that time, I had not, and I admitted it. I was even ignorant of thename of the author.

Now Peter, as he sat on the bench beside me, began to speak of ArthurMachen: The most wonderful man writing English today and nobody knowshim! His material is handled with the most consummate art; arrangement,reserve, repose, the perfect word, are never lacking from his workand yet, at the age of fifty, he is an obscure reporter on a Londonnewspaper. There are, of course, reasons for this neglect. It is abyword of the day that one only takes from a work of art what onebrings to it, and how few readers can bring to Machen the requisitequalities; how few readers have gnosis!

Machen evokes beauty out of horror, mystery, and terror. He suggeststhe extremes of the terrible, the vicious, the most evil, by neverdescribing them. His very reserve conveys the infinity of abomination.You know how Algernon Blackwood documents his work and stops to explainhis magic orgies, so that by the time you have finished reading oneof his weird stories, you completely discount it. On the other hand,although Machen writes in the simplest English concerning the mostunbelievable impieties, he never lifts the crimson curtain to permityou to see the sacrifice on the Manichean altar. He leaves that to theimagination. But his expression soars so high, there is such ecstasyin his prose, that we are not meanly thrilled or revolted by hisnegromancy; rather, we are uplifted and exalted by his suggestion ofimpurity and corruption, which leads us to ponder over the mysteriousconnection between man's religious and sensual natures. Think, fora moment, of the life of Paul Verlaine, dragged out with punks andpimps in the dirtiest holes of Paris, and compare it with the puresimplicity of his religious poetry. Think of the Song of Songs whichis Solomon's and the ancient pagan erotic rites in the holy temples.Remember the Eros of the brothels and the Eros of the sacred mysteries.Recall the Rosicrucian significance of the phallus, and its crypticperpetuation in the cross and the church steeple. In the middle ages,do not forget, the Madonna was both the Virgin Mother of Christ andthe patron of thieves, strumpets, and murderers. Far surpassing allother conceivable worldly pleasures is the boon promised by thegratification of the sensual appetite; faith promises a bliss that willendure for ever. In either case the mind is conscious of the enormousimportance of the object to be obtained. Machen achieves the soaringecstasy of Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn or Shelley's To a Skylark,and yet he seldom writes of cool, clean, beautiful things. Was ever amore malignantly depraved story written than The White People (whichit might be profitable to compare with Henry James's The Turn of theScrew), the story of a child who stumbles upon the performance of thehorrid, supernatural rites of a forgotten race and the consequencesof the discovery? Yet, Machen's genius burns so deep, his power isso wondrous, that the angels of Benozzo Gozzoli himself do not shinewith more refulgent splendour than the outlines of this erotic tale,a tale which it would have been easy to vulgarize, which Blackwood,nay Poe himself, would have vulgarized, which Laforgue would have madegrotesque or fantastic, which Baudelaire would have made poetic butobscene. But Machen's grace, his rare, ecstatic grace, is perpetual andunswerving. He creates his rhythmic circles without a break, the skiesopen to the reader, and the Lord, Jesus Christ, appears on a cloud,or Buddha sits placidly on his lotus. Even his name is mystic, for,according to the Arbatel of Magic, Machen is the name of the fourthheaven.

Machen does not often write of white magic; he is a negromancer; thebaneful, the baleful, the horrendous are his subjects. With Baudelaire,he might pray, Evil be thou my good! Consider the theme of The GreatGod Pan, a psychic experiment, operation, if you will, on a pure younggirl, and its consequences. Again a theme which another writer, anyother writer, would have cheapened, filled in with sordid detail,described to the last black mass. But Machen knows better. He knows somuch, indeed, that he is able to say nothing. He keeps the thaumaturgicsecrets as the alchemists were bidden to do. Instead of raising theveil, he drops it. Instead of revealing, he conceals. The reader mayimagine as much as he likes, or as much as he can, for nothingis said, but he rises from a reading of one of these books with asense of exaltation, an awareness that he has tasted the waters of theFountain of Beauty. There is, indeed, sometimes, in relation to thiswriter, a feeling[3] that he is truly inspired, that he is writingautomatically of the eternal mysteries, that the hand which holds thepen is that of a blind genius, and yet....

More straightforward good English prose, limpid narrative, I amnot yet acquainted with. What a teller of stories! This gift,tentatively displayed in The Chronicle of Clemendy, which purportsto be a translation from an old manuscript—Machen has really beenthe translator of the Heptamaron, Béroalde de Verville's Moyende Parvenir, and the Memoirs of Casanova—, flowered in The ThreeImposters, nouvelles in the manner of the old Arabian authors.This work is not so well-known as The Dynamiter, which it somewhatresembles, but it deserves to be. Through it threads the theme, thatof nearly all his tales, of the disintegration of a soul through anencounter with the mysteries which we are forbidden to know, theSabbatic revels, the two-horned goat, alchemy, devil-worship, and theeternal and indescribable symbols. The problem is always the same, thatof facing the great God Pan and the danger that lurks for the man whodares the facing.

And one wonders, Peter continued, his eyes dilating with an expressionwhich may have been either intense curiosity or horror, one wonderswhat price Machen himself has paid to learn his secret of how to keepthe secrets! He must have encountered this horror himself and yet helives to ask the riddle in flowing prose! What has it cost him to learnthe answer? Popularity? Perhaps, for he is an obscure reporter on aLondon newspaper and he drinks beer! That is all any Englishman I haveasked can tell me about him. Nobody reads his books; nobody has readthem ... except the few who see and feel, and John Masefield is one ofthese. This master of English prose, this hierophant, who knows allthe secrets and keeps them, this delver in forgotten lore, thiswise poet who uplifts and inspires us, is an humble journalist and hedrinks beer!

Peter paused and looked at me, possibly for corroboration, but whatcould I say? I had never, until then, touched upon Machen, althoughI remembered that Mina Loy had included him in her catalogue ofprotestants in the symposium at the Villa Allegra. Later, when I soughthis books, I found them more difficult to arrive at than those of anyof his contemporaries and today, thanks to the fame he has achievedthrough his invention of the mystic story of The Bowmen, the tale ofthe Angels at Mons, a story which was credited as true, for returningsoldiers swore that they had really seen these angels who had ledthem into battle, thus arousing the inventive pride of the author,who published a preface to prove that the incident had never occurredexcept in his own brain, his early books command fantastic prices.Eight or nine pounds is asked for The Chronicle of Clemendy and fortyor fifty pounds for his translation of Casanova. But on that day I saidlittle about the matter, because I had nothing to say.

Now we were walking and presently stopped before Peter's door, ahouse on the south side of Stuyvesant Square, conveniently near,Peter observed, in sardonic reference to Marinetti's millennium, theLying-in-Hospital. He unlocked the door and we entered. The hall waspainted black and was entirely devoid of furniture. A lamp, dependingon an iron chain from the ceiling, shed but a feeble glow, for itwas enclosed in a globe of prelatial purple glass. We passed on toa chamber in which purple velvet curtains were caught back by heavysilver ropes, exposing at symmetrical intervals, the black walls, onwhich there were several pictures: Martin Schongauer's copperplateengraving of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, in which the most obsceneand foulest of fiends tear and pull and bite the patient and kindlyold man; Lucas Cranach's woodcut of the same subject, more fantasticbut less terrifying; two or three of Goya's Caprichos; Félicien Rops'sLe Vice Suprême, in which a skeleton in evening dress, holding hishead in the curve of his elbow, chapeau claque in hand, opens widean upright coffin to permit the emergence of a female skeleton in afashionable robe; black ravens flit across the sky; Aubrey Beardsley'sMessalina; Pieter Bruegel's allegorical copperplate of Lust, crammedwith loathsome details; and William Blake's picture of Plague, in whicha gigantic hideous form, pale-green, with the slime of stagnant pools,reeking with vegetable decays and gangrene, the face livid with themotley tints of pallor and putrescence, strides onward with extendedarms, like a sower sowing his seeds, only the germs of his rancidharvest are not cast from his hands but drip from his fusty fingers.The carpet was black and in the very centre of the room was a hugesilver table, fantastically carved, the top upheld by four basiliskcaryatides. On this table stood a huge egg, round which was coileda serpent, the whole fashioned from malachite, and a small corneliancasket, engraved in cuneiform characters. There were no windows in theroom, and apparently no doors, for even the opening through which wehad entered had disappeared, but the chamber was pleasantly lightedwith a lambent glow, the origin of which it was impossible to discover,for no lamps were visible. In one corner, I noted a cabinet of ebonyon the top of which perched an enormous black, short-haired cat, withyellow eyes, which, at first, indeed, until the animal made a slightmovement, I took to be an objet d'art. Then Peter called, Lou Matagot,and with one magnificent bound, the creature landed on the silver tableand arched his glossy back. Then he sharpened his claws and stretchedhis joints by the aid of the casket scratched with the cuneiformsymbols.

Lou Matagot, Peter explained, signifies the Cat of Dreams, the Cat ofthe Sorcerers, in the Provençal dialect.

There were a few chairs, strangely modern, Ballet Russe chairs,upholstered in magenta and green and orange brocades in which werewoven circles and crescents and stars of gold and silver, but Peterand I seated ourselves at one end of the room on a high purple couch,a sort of throne, piled with silver and black cushions, on which wasworked in green threads an emblem, which Peter explained was thecharacter of Mersilde, a fiend who has the power to transport youwherever you wish to go. Now, he pulled a silver rope which hung fromthe ceiling, the lights flashed off and on again, and I observed thatwe were no longer alone. A little black page boy in a rose doublet,with baggy silver trousers, and a turban of scarlet silk, surmountedby heron's plumes, sparkling with carbuncles, stood before us. He hadapparently popped out of the floor like the harlequin in an Englishpantomime. At a sign from Peter, he pressed a button in the wall, alittle cupboard opened, and he extracted a bottle of amber crystal,half-full of a clear green liquid, and two amber crystal glasses withiridescent flanges.

I am striving to discover the secrets, said Peter, as we sipped theliqueur, the taste of which was both pungent and bitter.

Not in this room! I gasped. Unless you mean the secrets of Paul Poiretand Léon Bakst.

No, he laughed, as the cat leaped to his shoulder and began to purrloudly, not in this room. This is my reception-room where I receivenobody. You are the first person, with the exception of Hadji, to enterthis house since I have remodelled it but, he continued reflectively,I have a fancy that the bright fiends of hell, the beautiful yellowand blue devils, will like this room, when I call them forth to do mybidding.

Again he warned me, Not one word to Edith, do you understand? Not oneword. I must be alone. I have told you and only you. I must work inpeace and that I cannot do if I am interrupted. This room is my relief.It amuses me to sit here, but it is not my laboratory. Come, it is timeto show you. Besides, I have my reasons....

We did not rise. The lights were again mysteriously extinguished andI felt that the couch on which we sat was moving. The sensation waspleasant, like taking a ride on a magic carpet or a taktrevan. In afew seconds, when light appeared again, instead of a wall behind us wesat with a wall before us. Facing about, I perceived that we were inanother chamber, a chamber that would have pleased Doctor Faust, for itwas obviously the laboratory of an alchemist. Nevertheless, I noted atonce a certain theatrical air in the arrangement.

This, I said, seems more suitable for the performances of Herrmann theGreat or Houdini than the experiments of Paracelsus.

Peter grinned. It was clear that he was taking a childish delight inthe entertainment.

It is fun to do this with you. I've had no one but the black boy andthe cat. There are moments when I think I would like to bring Edithhere, but she would spoil it by getting tired of it, or else she wouldlike it too much and want to come every day and bring others with herto see the show. Well, look around.

I followed his advice. It was the conventional alchemist's retreat.There were stuffed owls and mummies and astrolabes. Herbs and boneswere suspended from the ceiling. Skulls grinned from the tops ofcabinets. There were rows and rows of ancient books, many of thembound in sheepskin or vellum, in a case against one wall. A few largervolumes, with brass or iron clasps, reposed on a table. Lou Matagot,who had been carried into the room with us, presently stretched hisgreat, black, glossy length over the top of one of these. There werecauldrons, retorts, crucibles, rows of bottles, a fire, with bellows,and a clepsydra, or water-clock, which seemed to be running. There wasan Arcula Mystica, or demoniac telephone, resembling a liqueur-stand.Peter explained that possessors of this instrument might communicatewith each other, over whatever distance. There were cabinets, on theshelves of which lay amulets and talismans and periapts, carved fromobsidian or fashioned of blue or green faience, the surfaces of whichwere elaborately scratched with hermetic characters, and symplegmatawith their curious confusion of the different parts of differentbeasts. There were aspergills, and ivory pyxes, stolen, perhaps, fromsome holy place, and now consecrated to evil uses. There were stuffedserpents and divining rods of hazel. There were scrolls of parchment,tied with vermilion cord. In fact, there was everything in this room,that David Belasco would provide for a similar scene on the stage.

Here, said Peter, I study the Book of the Dead, hierograms,rhabdomancy, oneiromancy, hippomancy, margaritomancy, parthenomancy,gyromancy, spodanomancy, ichthyomancy, kephalonomancy, lampodomancy,sycomancy, angelology, pneumatology, goety, eschatology, cartomancy,aleuromancy, alphitomancy, anthropomancy, axinomancy, which isperformed by applying an agate to a red-hot ax, arithmomancy, ordivination by numbers, alectoromantia, in which I lay out the lettersof the alphabet and grains of wheat in spaces drawn in a circle andpermit a co*ck to select grains corresponding to letters, belomancy,divination by arrows, ceroscopy, cleidomancy, astragalomancy,amniomancy, cleromancy, divination performed by throwing dice andobserving the marks which turn up, cledonism, coscinomancy, capnomancy,divination by smoke, captoptromancy, chiromancy, dactyliomancy,performed with a ring, extispicium, or divination by entrails,gastromancy, geomancy, divination by earth, hydromancy, divinationby water, and pyromancy and æromancy, divination by fire and air,onomancy, divination by the letters of a name, onychomancy, which isconcerned with finger-nails, ornithomancy, which deals with birds, andchilomancy, which deals with keys, lithomancy, eychnomancy, ooscopy,keraunoscopia, bibliomancy, myomancy, pan-psychism, metempsychosis,the Martinists, the Kabbalists, the Diabolists, the Palladists, theRosicrucians, the Luciferians, the Umbilicamini, all the nocuous,demonological, and pneumatic learning, including transcendentalsensualism. At present, I am experimenting with white mice. I diptheir feet in red ink and permit them to make scrawls on a certaincurious chart.

I have dabbled in drugs, for you know that the old Greek priests, themodern seers, and the mediæval pythonesses, all have resorted to drugsto assist them to see visions. The narcotic or anæsthetic fumes, risingfrom the tripods, lulled the old Greek hierophants and soothsayers intoa sympathetic frame of mind. First, I experimented with Napellus, for Ihad read that Napellus caused one's mental processes to be transferredfrom the brain to the pit of the stomach. There exists an exactdescription of the effects of this drug on an adept, one Baptista VanHelmont, which I will read you.

Peter, here, went to the shelves, and after a little hesitation, pulledout an old brown volume. He turned over the pages for a few seconds andthen began to read: Once, when I had prepared the root (of Napellus) ina rough manner, I tasted it with the tongue: although I had swallowednothing, and had spit out a good deal of the juice, yet I felt as ifmy skull was being compressed by a string. Several household matterssuggested themselves and I went about the house and attended to them.At last, I experienced what I had never felt before. It seemed to methat I neither thought nor understood, and as if I had none of theusual ideas in my head; but I felt, with astonishment, clearly anddistinctly, that all these functions were taking place at the pitof the stomach: I felt this clearly and perfectly, and observed withthe greatest attention that, although I felt movement and sensationspreading themselves over the whole body, yet that the whole powerof thought was really and unmistakably situated in the pit of thestomach, always excepting a sensation that the soul was in the brainas a governing force. The sensation was beyond the power of words todescribe. I perceived that I thought with greater clearness: there wasa pleasure in such an intellectual distinctness. It was not a fugitivesensation; it did not take place while I slept, dreamed, or was ill,but during perfect consciousness. I perceived clearly that the head wasperfectly dormant as regarded fancy: and I felt not a little astonishedat the change of position.

Well, continued Peter, closing the book and regarding me with greatintensity, you will admit that would be a sensation worth experiencing.So I tried it ... with horrible results. Will you believe it when Itell you that I became wretchedly ill in that very centre which VanHelmont locates as the seat of thought? I suffered from the mostexcruciating pains, which were not entirely relieved by an emetic.Indeed, I passed a week or so in bed.

My next experiment, he went on, was made with hashish, Cannabis Indica,which I prepared and took according to the directions of another adept,who had found that the drug produced a kind of demoniac and incessantlaughter, hearty, Gargantuan laughter, and the foreshortening of timeand space. He could span the distance between London and Paris in a fewseconds. Furniture and statues assumed a comic attitude; they seemedto move about and become familiar with him. He was literally aware ofwhat the Rosny have called the "semi-humanité des choses." I took thedrug, as I have said, exactly as he directed, but the effect on mewas entirely dissimilar. Immediately, I was plunged into immoderatemelancholy. The sight of any object immeasurably depressed me. I alsonoted that my legs and arms had apparently stretched to an abnormallength. I sobbed with despair when I discovered that I could scarcelysee to the other end of my laboratory, it seemed so far away. Mountingthe stairs to my bed-chamber was equivalent in my mind to climbing theHimalayas. Although Hadji afterward assured me that I had been underthe influence of the drug for only fourteen hours, it was more likefourteen years to me, which I had passed without sleep. At the end ofthe experiment, my nerves revolted under the strain and again I wasforced to take to my bed, this time for four days.

My third experiment was made with Peyote beans, whose properties areextolled by the American Indians. After eating these beans, the redmen, who use them in the mysteries of their worship, suffer, I havebeen informed, from an excruciating nausea, the duration of which isprolonged. After the nausea has passed its course, a series of visionsis vouchsafed the experimenter, these visions extending in a series, onvarious planes, to the mystic number of seven. Under the spell of thesevisions, the adepts vaticinate future events. I have wondered sometimesif it were not possible that the ancient Egyptians were familiar withthe properties of these beans, that William Blake was under theirinfluence when he drew his mystic plates.

Be that as it may, I swallowed one bean, which I had been informedwould be sufficient to give me the desired effect, and withoutinterval, I was carried at once on to the plane of the visions, whichconcentrated themselves into one gigantic phantasm. Have you ever seenJacques Callot's copperplate engraving of The Temptation of SaintAnthony? The hideous collection of teratological monsters, half-insect,half-microbe, of gigantic size, exposed in that picture, swarmed aboutme, menacing me with their horrid beaks, their talons and claws, theirevil antennæ. Further cohorts of malignant monstrosities withoutbones lounged about the room and sprawled against my body, rubbingtheir flabby, slimy, oozing folds against my legs. After a few morestercoraceous manœuvres, some of which I should hesitate to describe,even to you, the monsters began to breathe forth liquid fire, and thepain resulting from the touch of these tongues of flame finally awokeme. I was violently ill, and my illness developed in the seven stagestraditionally allotted to the visions. First, extreme nausea, whichlasted for two days, second, a raging fever, third, a procession ofgreen eruptions on my legs, fourth, terrific pains in the region ofmy abdomen, fifth, dizziness, sixth, inability to command any of mymuscles, and seventh, a prolonged period of sleep, which lasted forforty-eight hours. Nevertheless, I came nearer to success in thisexperiment than in any other.

My fourth experiment was made with cocaine, which I procured from alittle Italian boy, about eleven years old, who was acting in a Bowerybarroom as agent for his father. Laying the white crystals on the bladeof an ivory paper-cutter, I sniffed as I had observed the snow-birdsthemselves sniff. Immediately, my mind became clear to an extentthat it had never been clear before. My intellect became as sharp asa knife, as keen as the slash of a whip, as vibrant as an E string.I seemed to have a power of understanding which I had never beforeapproached, not only of understanding but also of hearing, forI caught the conversation of men talking in an ordinary tone of voiceout in the Square. Also, I became abnormally active, nervous, andintense. I rushed from the room, without reason or purpose, with akind of energy which seemed deathless, so strong was its power. When,however, I endeavoured to make notes, for my mind seethed with ideas,I was unable to do so. I scratched some characters on paper, to besure, but I found them wholly undecipherable the next day. They werenot in English or in any language known to me. Finally, I ran out ofthe house and, encountering, on Second Avenue, a fancy woman of theJewish persuasion, I accompanied her to her cubicle, and permitted herto be the subsidiary hierophant in the mystic rites I then performed.That, concluded Peter, with a somewhat sorry smile, was the last of myexperiments with drugs.

This story and, indeed, this whole phase, amused me enormously.An ambition which had persuaded its possessor that in order tobecome the American Arthur Machen, he must first become an adept indemonology seemed to me to be the culmination of Peter's fantasticlife, which, indeed, it was. But I said little. As usual, I let himtalk and I listened. There seemed, however, to be a period here andI took occasion to look over the books, asking him first if he hadany objection to my copying off some of the titles, as I felt that itmight be possible that some day I should want to make some research inthis esoteric realm. He bade me do what I liked and, advancing towardsthe book-shelves with the small note-book which I carried with me atthat period in order to set down fleeting thoughts as they came, Itransferred some of the titles therein.

I stopped at last, not from lack of patience on my part, but fromobserving the impatience of Peter, who obviously had a good deal moreto say. On my turning, indeed, he began at once.

I have made, he said, some tentative minor experiments but my finalexperiments are yet to be attempted. Nevertheless, I have found aspring-board from which to leap into my romance. Let me read you afew pages of Arthur Waite's somewhat ironic summary of Dr. Bataille'sLe Diable au XIX^e Siècle. Naturally I shall treat the subject moreseriously, but what atmosphere, what a gorgeous milieu in which toplunge the reader when he shall open my book!

Peter now took from the shelves a small black volume, lettered in red,and turned over the leaves. First, he said, I shall read you some ofthe Doctor's experiences in Pondicherry, and he began:

Through the greenery of a garden, the gloom of a well, and theentanglement of certain stairways, they entered a great dismantledtemple, devoted to the service of Brahma, under the unimpressivediminutive of Lucif. The infernal sanctuary had a statue of Baphomet,identical with that in Ceylon, and the ill-ventilated place reekedwith a horrible putrescence. Its noisome condition was mainly owingto the presence of various fakirs, who, though still alive, were inadvanced stages of putrefaction. Most people are supposed to go easilyand pleasantly to the devil, but these elected to do so by way of acharnel-house asceticism, and an elaborate system of self-torture.Some were suspended from the ceiling by a rope tied to their arms,some embedded in plaster, some stiffened in a circle, some permanentlydistorted into the shape of the letter S; some were head downwards,some in a cruciform position. A native Grand Master explained that theyhad postured for years in this manner, and one of them for a quarter ofa century.

Fr ⡐⡀John Campbell proceeded to harangue the assembly in Ourdou-zaban,but the doctor comprehended completely, and reports the substanceof his speech, which was violently anti-Catholic in its nature, andespecially directed against missionaries. This finished, they proceededto the evocation of Baal-Zeboub, at first by the Conjuration of theFour, but no fiend appeared. The operation was repeated ineffectuallya second time, and John Campbell determined upon the Grand Rite, whichbegan by each person spinning on his own axis, and in this mannercircumambulating the temple, in procession. Whenever they passed anembedded fakir, they obtained an incantation from his lips, but stillBaal-Zeboub failed. Thereupon, the native Grand Master suggested thatthe evocation should be performed by the holiest of all fakirs, who wasproduced from a cupboard more fetid than the temple itself, and provedto be in the following condition:—(a) face eaten by rats; (b) onebleeding eye hanging down by his mouth; (c) legs covered with gangrene,ulcers, and rottenness; (d) expression peaceful and happy.

Entreated to call on Baal-Zeboub, each time he opened his mouth his eyefell into it; however, he continued the invocation, but no Baal-Zeboubmanifested. A tripod of burning coals was next obtained, and a woman,summoned for this purpose, plunged her arm into the flames, inhalingwith great delight the odour of her roasting flesh. Result, nil.Then a white goat was produced, placed upon the altar of Baphomet, setalight, hideously tortured, cut open, and its entrails torn out by thenative Grand Master, who spread them on the steps, uttering abominableblasphemies against Adonaï. This having also failed, great stoneswere raised from the floor, a nameless stench ascended, and a largeconsignment of living fakirs, eaten to the bone by worms and fallingto pieces in every direction, were dragged out from among a number ofskeletons, while serpents, giant spiders, and toads swarmed from allparts. The Grand Master seized one of the fakirs and cut his throatupon the altar, chanting the satanic liturgy amidst imprecations,curses, a chaos of voices, and the last agonies of the goat. The bloodspirted forth upon the assistants, and the Grand Master sprinkled theBaphomet. A final howl of invocation resulted in complete failure,whereupon it was decided that Baal-Zeboub had business elsewhere. Thedoctor departed from the ceremony and kept his bed for eight-and-fortyhours.

Peter looked up from the book in his hand with an expression of ironicexultation which was very quaint.

What do you think of that? he asked.

Very pretty, I ventured.

Very strong for the beginning of my romance! he cried. You see, Ishall commence with this failure and work up gradually to the finalbrilliant success. Let me introduce you to another passage from Waite'ssummary of Dr. Bataille's masterpiece: He turned a few more leaves andpresently was reading again:

A select company of initiates proceeded in hired carriages through thedesolation of Dappah, under the convoy of the initiated coachmen, forthe operation of a great satanic solemnity. At an easy distance fromthe city is the Sheol of the native Indians, and hard by the latterplace there is a mountain 500 feet high and 2000 long on the summitof which seven temples are erected, communicating one with another bysubterranean passages in the rock. The total absence of pagodas makesit evident that these temples are devoted to the worship of Satan; theyform a gigantic triangle superposed on the vast plateau, at the baseof which the party descended from their conveyances, and were met bya native with an accommodating knowledge of French. Upon exchangingthe Sign of Lucifer, he conducted them to a hole in the rock, whichgave upon a narrow passage guarded by a line of Sikhs with drawnswords, prepared to massacre anybody, and leading to the vestibule ofthe first temple, which was filled with a miscellaneous concourse ofAdepts. In the first temple, which was provided with the inevitablestatue of Baphomet, but was withal bare and meagrely illuminated, thedoctor was destined to pass through his promised ordeal for which hewas stripped to the skin, and placed in the centre of the assembly,and at a given signal one thousand odd venomous cobra de capellos wereproduced from holes in the wall and encouraged to fold him in theirembraces, while the music of flute-playing fakirs alone intervened toprevent his instant death. He passed through this trying encounter witha valour which amazed himself, persisted in prolonging the ceremony,and otherwise proved himself a man of such extraordinary metal thathe earned universal respect. From the Sanctuary of the Serpents, thecompany then proceeded into the second temple or the Sanctuary of thePhœnix.

The second temple was brilliantly illuminated and ablaze with millionsof precious stones wrested by the wicked English from innumerableconquered Rajahs; it had garlands of diamonds, festoons of rubies, vastimages of solid silver, and a gigantic Phœnix in red gold more solidthan the silver. There was an altar beneath the Phœnix, and a male andfemale ape were composed on the altar steps, while the Grand Masterproceeded to the celebration of a black mass, which was followed byan amazing marriage of the two engaging animals, and the sacrifice ofa lamb brought alive into the temple, bleating piteously, with nailsdriven through its feet.

The third temple was consecrated to the Mother of fallen women, who,in memory of the adventure of the apple, has a place in the calendarof Lucifer; the proceedings consisted of a dialogue between the GrandMaster and the Vestal.

The fourth temple was a Rosicrucian Sanctuary, having an opensepulchre, from which blue flames continually emanated; there was aplatform in the midst of the temple designed for the accommodation ofmore Indian Vestals, one of whom it was proposed should evaporate intothin air, after which a fakir would be transformed before the companyinto a living mummy and be interred for a space of three years. Thefakir introduced his performance by suspension in mid-air.

The fifth temple was consecrated to the Pelican.

The sixth temple was that of the Future and was devoted to divinations,the oracles being given by a Vestal in a hypnotic condition, seatedover a burning brazier.

The assembly now thoughtfully repaired to the seventh temple, which,being sacred to Fire, was equipped with a vast central furnacesurmounted by a chimney and containing a gigantic statue of Baphomet;in spite of the intolerable heat pervading the entire chamber,this idol contrived to preserve its outlines and to glow withoutpulverizing. A ceremony of an impressive nature occurred in thisapartment; a wild cat, which strayed in through the open window, wasregarded as the appearance of a soul in transmigration, and in spite ofits piteous protests, was passed through the fire to Baal.

And now the crowning function, the Magnum Opus of the mystery, musttake place in the Sheol of Dappah; a long procession filed from themountain temples to the charnel-house of the open plain; the night wasdark, the moon had vanished in dismay, black clouds scudded acrossthe heavens, a feverish rain fell slowly at intervals, and the groundwas dimly lighted by the phosphorescence of the general putrefaction.The Adepts stumbled over dead bodies, disturbing rats and vultures,and proceeded to the formation of the magic chain, sitting in a vastcircle, every Adept embracing his particular corpse.

Well? asked Peter, closing the book. Well?

Kolossal! I shouted, in German.

Isn't it, and there's ever so much more, wonderful stories,incantations and evocations in the works of Arthur Waite, MoncureDaniel Conway, Alfred Maury, J. Collin de Plancy, François Lenormant,Alphonse Gallais, the Abbé de Montfaucon de Villars, J.G. Bourgeat, andWilliam Godwin. Have you ever heard of The Black Pullet or The Queen ofThe Hairy Flies?

This time, Carl; he spoke with great intensity and earnestness, I am onthe right track. I am convinced that to give a work of this charactera proper background one must know a great deal more than one tells.That, in fact, is the secret of all fine literature, the secret ofall great art, that it conceals and suggests. The edges, of course,are rounded: it is not a rough and obvious concealment. You cannotbegin not to tell until you know more than you are willing to impart.These books have given me a good deal, but I must go farther—as I amconvinced that Machen has gone farther. I am going through with it ...all through with it, searching out the secrets of life and death, a fewof which I have discovered already, but I have yet to make the greattest. And when I know what I shall find out, I shall begin to write ...but I shall tell nothing.

Peter was flaming with enthusiasm again. It wasn't necessary for me tospeak. He required an audience, not an interlocutor.

Why not now? he demanded suddenly. Why not now and here, with you?

What do you mean? I queried.

Why not make the great experiment now? I am prepared and the moon andthe planets are favourable. Are you willing to go through withit? I must warn you that you will never be the same again. You may evenlose your life.

What will happen? I asked.

The earth will rock. A storm will probably follow, thunder andlightning, balls of fire, thunderbolts, showers of feathers, and thenwe shall dissolve into ... into a putrid mass, the agamous mass fromwhich we originated, neither male nor female, with only a glowing eye,a great eye, radiating intelligence out of its midst. Then Astarothhimself (I shall call Astaroth, because his inferiors in the descendinghierarchy, Sargatanas and Nebiros, dwell in America) will appear, inone of his forms, perhaps refulgent and beautiful, perhaps ugly andtortured and hideously deformed, perhaps black or yellow or blue, butassuredly not white or green. He may be entirely covered with hair orentirely covered with eyes, or he may be eyeless. Mayhap, he will belean and proud and sad, and he will probably limp, for you know he islame. His feet will be cloven, he will wear a goat's beard, and you maydistinguish him further by the co*ck's feather and the ox's tail. Or,perhaps, he may arrive in the shape of some monster: the fierce flyinghydra called the Ouranabad, the Rakshe who eats dragons and snakes, theSoham, with the body of a scarlet griffin and the head of a four-eyedhorse, the Syl, a basilisk with a human face.... But, however he mayappear, in his presence you shall learn the last secrets of all theworlds.

And then what will happen?

Then I shall speak the magic formula and we will resume our propershapes but from that moment on we shall hover—literally, notpathologically—between life and death. We shall know everything. ...and eventually we shall pay the price....

Like Faust?

Like Faust ... that is, if we are not clever enough to outwit thedemon. Those who practise devilments usually find some means tocircumvent the devil.

I appeared to ponder.

I am willing to go through with it, I said at last.

Good! I knew you would be. Let's get to work at once!

He lifted the most ponderous volume in the laboratory from the floor tothe top of an old walnut refectory table. The book was bound in mustyyellow vellum, clasped with iron, and the foxed leaves were fashionedfrom parchment made from the skin of virgin camels. As he opened it,I saw that the pages were inscribed with cabalistic characters andsymbols, illuminated in colours, none of which I could decipher. LouMatagot jumped on to the table and sat on the leaves at the top of thebook, forming a paper weight. He sat with his back to Peter and hislong, black tail played nervously up and down the centre of the volume.

Peter now drew a circle with a radius of twelve or thirteen feetaround us, inscribing within its circumference certain charactersand pentacles. Then he plunged a dagger through what I recognized tobe a sacred wafer, which he told me had been stolen from a churchat midnight, at the same time, muttering what, from the tone of hisvoice, I took to be blasphemous imprecations, although the languagehe used was unfamiliar to me. Next he arranged a copper chafing-dishover a blue flame and began to stir the ingredients, esoteric powdersand crystals of bright colours. Now he lovingly lifted a crystalviol, filled with a purple liquid, and poured the contents into aporcelain bowl. Instantly, there was a faint detonation and a thickcloud of violet vapour mounted spirally to the ceiling. All the time,occasionally referring to the grimoire on the table, and employingcertain unmentionable symbolic objects in the manner prescribed, hemuttered incantations in the unknown tongue. The room swam with odoursand mists, violet clouds and opopanax fogs. So far, the invocation waspretty and amusing but it resembled the arcane rites of Paul Iribe morethan those of Hermes Trismegistus.

Now Peter pulled three black hairs from the cat's tail, which LouMatagot delivered with a yowl of rage, springing at the same time fromthe table to the top of the cabinet, whence he regarded us through themists and vapours, with his evil yellow eyes. The hairs went into thechafing-dish and a new aroma filled the room. The claws of an owl,the flower of the moly, and the powder of vipers followed and thenPeter opened a long flat box which nearly covered one end of the hugetable, and a nest of serpents, with bellies of rich turquoise blue andbacks of tawny yellow, marked with black zigzags, reared their wickedheads. He called them by name and they responded by waving their headsrhythmically. I began to grow alarmed and dizzy. Vade retro, Satanas!was on tip of my tongue. For a few seconds, I think, I must havefainted. When I revived, I still heard the chanting of the incantationand the sound of tinkling bells. The serpents' heads still waved inrhythm and their bodies, yellow and turquoise blue, were elongated inthe air until they appeared to be balancing on the tips of their tails.The eyes of Lou Matagot glared maliciously through the thick vapoursand the cat howled with rage or terror.

Now! cried Peter, for the first time in English. Now!

My nails dug holes in the palms of my perspiring hands. Peter renewedhis nocuous muttering and casting the wafer, transfixed by the dagger,into the porcelain bowl containing the violet fluid, he poured thewhole mixture into the copper chafing-dish.

There was a terrific explosion.

Chapter XI

I left the hospital before Peter. My injuries, indeed, were of soslight a nature that I was confined only a few days, while his were soserious that the physicians despaired of his life, and he was forcedto keep to his bed for several months. Following my early discharge, Imade daily visits of inquiry to the hospital but it was not until June,1914, that I was assured that he would recover. With this good news,came a certain sense of relief, and I made plans for another voyage toEurope. The incidents of that voyage—I was in Paris at the beginningof the war—are of sufficient interest so that I may recount them inanother place, but they bear no relationship to the present narrative.

Subsequent to his recovery, I have learned since from the physicianwho attended him during his protracted illness, Peter returned toToledo with his mother. It is probable that he made further literaryexperiments. It has even occurred to me that the pivot of his being,the explanation for his whole course of action may have escaped me.Although, from the hour of our first meeting, my interest in and myaffection for Peter were deep, assuredly I never imagined that I shouldbe writing down the history of his life. For the greater part of theterm of our friendship, indeed, I was a writer only in a very modestsense. I was not on the lookout for the kind of "copy" his affairsand ideas offered, for at this period I was a reporter of music andthe drama. Even later, when I began to set down my thoughts in whatis euphemistically called a more permanent form, the notion of usingPeter as a subject never presented itself to me, and if he had askedme to do so during his lifetime, urging me to put aside a pile ofunfinished work in his behalf, the request would have astounded me.I made, therefore, no special effort to ferret out his secrets. Whenit was convenient for both of us we met and, largely by accident, Iwas a silent witness of three of his literary experiments. How manyothers he may have made, I do not know. It is possible that at sometime or other he may have been inspired by the religious school, theTolstoy theory of art, or he may have followed the sensuous lead ofGozzoli and Debussy, artists whose work intrigued him enormously, orin another æsthetic avatar, he may have believed that true art isdegrading or coldly classic. There is even the possibility, by no meansremote, that he may have fallen under the influence of the small-townand psychoanalytic schools. Except in a general way, however, in aconversation which I shall record at the end of this chapter, henever mentioned further experiments. It is possible that others mayhave evidence bearing on this point. Martha Baker might make a goodwitness, but she died in 1911. Mrs. Whiffle knew nothing of anyimportance whatever about her son. Since his death I have interrogatedher in vain. She was, indeed, very much astonished at the little I toldher and she will read this book, I think, with real amazement. Thereport of Clara Barnes, too, was negligible. Edith Dale has suppliedme with a few facts which I have inserted where they chronologicallybelong. Most of my other friends, Phillip Moeller, Alfred Knopf,Edna Kenton, Pitts Sanborn, Avery Hopwood, Freddo Sides, JosephHergesheimer, even my wife, Fania Marinoff, never met Peter. LouisSherwin walked up Fifth Avenue with us one day, but Peter was unusuallysilent and after he had left us at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street,Louis was not sufficiently curious to ask any questions concerninghim. I doubt if Louis could even recall the incident today. I haveinserted advertisem*nts in the Paris, New York, and Toledo newspapers,begging any one with pertinent facts or letters in his possession tocommunicate with me, but as yet I have received no replies. I havenever seen a photograph of my friend and his mother informs me that shedoubts if he ever sat for one.

The record, therefore, of Peter's literary life, at the conclusion ofthis chapter, will be as complete as I can make it. I have tried to setdown the truth as I saw it, leaving out nothing that I remember, evenat the danger of becoming unnecessarily garrulous and rambling. I havewritten down all I know because, after all, I may have misunderstood ormisinterpreted, and some one else, with the facts before him, may bebetter able to reconstruct the picture of this strange life.

Our next meeting occurred in January, 1919, and his first remark was,Thank God, you're not shot up! From that time, until the day of hisdeath, nearly a year later, Peter never mentioned the war to me again,although I saw him frequently enough, nor did he speak of his writing,save once, on an occasion which shall be reported in its proper place.

When we came together for the first time, after the long interval—hehad just returned to New York from Florida—I was surprised at andeven shocked by the purely physical change, which, to be sure, hada psychical significance, for his face had grown more spiritual. Hehad always been slender, but now he was thin, almost emaciated. Todescribe his appearance a little later, I might use the word haggard.His coat, which once fitted his figure snugly, rather hung from hisshoulders. There were white patches in the blue-black of his hair,deep circles under his eyes, and hollows in his cheeks. But hiseyes, themselves, seemed to shine with a new light, seemed to seesomething which I could not even imagine. He had rid himself of manyexcrescences and externalities, the purely adscititious qualities,charming though they might be, which masked his personality. He had,indeed, discovered himself, although I never knew how clearly untilour last conversation. Peter, without appearing to be particularlyaware of it, had become a mystic. His emancipation had come throughsuffering. He was quieter, less restless, less excitable, stillenthusiastic, but with more balance, more—I do not wish to bemisunderstood—irony. He had found life very satisfying and very hard,very sweet, with something of a bitter after-taste. He seemed almostholy to me, reminding me at times of those ascetic monks who crawl twothousand miles on their bellies to worship at some shrine, or of thoseHindu fakirs who lie in one tortured position for years, their bodiesslowly consuming, while their souls gain fire. That he was ill, veryill, I surmised at once, although, like everything else I have notedhere, this was an impression. He made no admissions, never spoke ofhis malady; indeed, for Peter, he talked astonishingly little abouthimself. He was pathetic and at the same time an object for admiration.

Afterwards, I learned from his mother that he suffered from anincurable disease, the disease that killed him late in 1919. Buthe never spoke of this to me and he never complained, unless hisoccasional confession that he was tired might be construed as acomplaint.

We had fine times together, of a new kind. The tables, in a sense, wereturned. I had become the writer, however humble, and his ambition hadnot been realized. His sympathy with my work, with what I was tryingto do, which he saw almost immediately, saw, indeed, in the beginning,more clearly than I saw it myself, was complete. He was never weary oftalking about it, at any rate he never showed me that he was weary,and naturally this drew us very closely together, for an author isfondest of those men who talk the most about his work. But this is notthe place to publish his opinions of me, although some of them were socurious and far-seeing—they were not all flattering by any means—thatI shall undoubtedly recur to them in my autobiography. Fortunately forme, his sympathy grew as my work progressed, and it seemed amazing tome later, looking over the book after a period of years, that he hadfound anything pleasant to report of Music After the Great War. He had,indeed, seen something in it, and when I recalled what he had said itwas impossible to feel that he had overstated the case in the interestsof friendship. He had seen the germ, the root of what was to come; hehad seen a suggestion of a style, undeveloped ideas, which he feltwould later be developed, as indeed, to a limited extent, they were.His plea, to put it concisely, had been for a more personal expression.He was always asking me, after this or that remark or anecdote inconversation, why I did not write it, just as I had said it or told it,and it was a great pleasure for him to perceive in The Merry-Go-Roundand In the Garret (of which he read the proofs just before his death)some signs of growth in this direction.

You are becoming freer, he would say. You are loosening your tongue;your heart is beating faster. In time you may liberate thosesubconscious ideas which are entangled in your very being. It isonly your conscious self that prevents you from becoming a reallyinteresting writer. Let that once be as free as the air and theother will be free too. You must walk boldly and proudly andwithout fear. You must search the heart; the mind is negligible inliterature as in all other forms of art. Try to write just as you feeland you will discover that your feeling is greater than your knowledgeof it. The words that appear on the paper will at first seem strangeto you, almost like hermetic symbols, and it is possible that in thecourse of time you will be able to say so much that you yourself willnot understand what you are writing. Do not be afraid of that. Let thecurrent flow freely when you feel that it is the true current that isflowing.

That is the lesson, he continued, that the creative or critical artistcan learn from the interpreter, the lesson of the uses of personality.The great interpreters, Rachel, Ristori, Mrs. Siddons, Duse, Bernhardt,Réjane, Ysaye, Paderewski, and Mary Garden are all big, vibrantpersonalities, that the deeper thing, call it God, call it IT, flowsthrough and permeates. You may not believe this now, but I knowit is true, and you will know it yourself some day. And if you cannotrelease your personality, what you write, though it be engraved inletters an inch deep on stones weighing many tons, will lie like snowin the street to be melted away by the first rain.

We talked of other writers. Peter drew my attention, for instance, tothe work of Cunninghame Graham, that strange Scotch mystic who turnedhis back on civilization to write of the pampas, the arid plains ofAfrica, India, and Spain, only to find irony everywhere in everywork of man. But, observed Peter, he could not hate civilization sointensely had he not lived in it. It is all very well to kick over theladder after you have climbed it and set foot on the balcony. Likeall lovers of the simple life, he is very complex. And we discussedJames Branch Cabell, who, Peter told me, was originally a "romantic."He wrote of knights and ladyes and palfreys with sympatheticpicturesqueness. Of late, however, continued Peter, he, too, seems tohave turned over in bed. Romanticism still appears in his work but itis undermined by a biting and disturbing irony. He asks: Are any ofthe manifestations of modern civilization worthy of admiration? andlike Graham, he seems to answer, No. It is possible that the publicdisregard for his earlier and simpler manner may have produced thismetamorphosis. Many a man has become bitter with less reason. Thenhe spoke of the attributed influence of Maurice Hewlett and AnatoleFrance on the work of Cabell. Bernard Shaw, said Peter, once lostall patience with those critics who insisted that he was a son ofIbsen and Nietzsche and asserted that it was their ignorance thatprevented them from realizing the debt he owed to Samuel Butler. Cabellmight, with justice, voice a similar complaint, for if he ever had aliterary father it was Arthur Machen. In that author's The Chronicleof Clemendy, issued in 1888, may be discovered the same confusion ofirony and romance that is to be traced in the work of Cabell. Moreover,like The Soul of Melicent, the book purports to be a translation froman old chronicle. I might further speak of the relationship betweenHieroglyphics and Beyond Life, The Hill of Dreams and The Cream of theJest, although in each case the treatment and the style are entirelydissimilar. Machen even preceded Cabell in his use of unfavourablereviews (Vide the advertising pages of Beyond Life) in his preface tothe 1916 edition of The Great God Pan. Perhaps, added Peter, Cabellhas also read Herman Melville's Mardi to some advantage. But he is noplagiarist; I am speaking from the point of view of literary genealogy.Peter, at my instigation, read a novel or two of Joseph Hergesheimer's.Linda Condon, he reported, is as evanescent as the spirit of God. Onlythose who have encountered Lady Beauty among the juniper trees in theearly dawn will feel this book, and only those who feel willunderstand. For Hergesheimer has worked a miracle; he has broughtmarble to life, created a vibrant chastity. He has described ice inwords of flame!

One night, quite accidentally, we saw the name of Clara Barnes on aposter in front of the Metropolitan Opera House. She was singing therôle of the Priestess in Aida. We purchased two general admissiontickets and slipped in to hear her. The Priestess, those who have heardAida will remember, officiates in the temple scene of the first actbut, like the impersonator of the Bird in Siegfried, she is invisible.Clara's voice sounded tired and worn, as indeed, it should sound afterthose long years of study.

We must go back to see her, Peter urged.

We found a changed and broken Clara. She was dressing alone, but on thethird floor, and the odour of Cœur de Jeannette persisted. She burstinto tears when she saw us.

I can't do it, she moaned. Why did you ever come? I can't do it. I canonly sing with my music in front of me. I shall never be able to singa part which appears and there are so few rôles in opera, whichpermit you to sing back of the scenery! I can't remember. Now she waswailing. As fast as I learn one part I forget another.

As we walked away on Fortieth Street, Peter began to relate an incidenthe had once read in Plutarch; There was a certain magpie, belongingto a barber at Rome, which could imitate any word he heard. One day,a company of passing soldiers blew their trumpets before the shopand for the next forty-eight hours the magpie was not only mute butalso pensive and melancholy. It was generally believed that the soundof the trumpets had stunned the bird and deprived it of both voiceand hearing. It appeared, however, that this was not the case for,says Plutarch, the bird had all the time been occupied in profoundmeditation, studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets, and whenat last master of the trick, he astonished his friends by a perfectimitation of the flourish on those instruments it had heard, observingwith the greatest exactness all the repetitions, stops, and changes.This lesson, however, had apparently been learned at the cost of thewhole of its intelligence, for it made it forget everything it hadlearned before.

We visited many out-of-the-way places together, Peter and I, theNegro dance-halls near 135th Street, and the Italian and the YiddishTheatres. Peter once remarked that he enjoyed plays more in a foreignlanguage with which he was unfamiliar. What he could imagine ofplot and dialogue far transcended the actuality. We often dined ata comfortable Italian restaurant on Spring Street, on the walls ofwhich birds fluttered through frescoed arbours, trailing with fruitsand flowers, and where the spaghetti was too good to be eatenwithout prayer. In an uptown café, we had a strange adventure with aFrenchwoman, La Tigresse, which I have related elsewhere.[4] Peterrefused, in these last months, to go to concerts, especially inCarnegie Hall, the atmosphere of which, he said, made it impossibleto listen to music. The bare walls, the bright lights, the sweatingconductors, and the silly, gaping crowd oppressed his spirit. He enviedLudwig of Bavaria who could listen to music in a darkened hall inwhich he was the only auditor. Conditions were more favourable in themoving picture theatres. The bands, perhaps, did not play so well butthe auditoriums were more subtly lighted, so that the figures of theaudience did not intrude.

Peter was more of a recluse than ever. It had been impossible topersuade him to meet anybody since the Edith Dale days (Edith herselfwas now living in New Mexico and, owing to a slight misunderstanding,I had not seen or heard from her in five years). He was even sensitiveand morbid on the subject. He made me promise, as a matter of fact,after the Louis Sherwin episode, that in case we encountered any ofmy friends in a restaurant or at a theatre, I would not introducehim. There was, I assured myself, a good reason for this. In theselast days, Peter faded out in a crowd. He lost a good deal of hispersonality even in the presence of a third person. I begged him to gowith me to Florine Stettheimer's studio to see her pictures, which Iwas sure would please him, but he refused. He liked to stroll aroundwith me in odd places and he read and played the piano a good deal,but he seemed to have few other interests. He was absolutely ignorantof such matters as politics and government. He never voted and I haveheard him refer to the president, and not in jest, as Abraham Wilson.Sports did not amuse him either, but occasionally we went together tosee the wrestlers at Madison Square Garden, especially when StanislausZbyszko was announced to appear.

He never went to Europe again although, shortly before he died,he talked of a voyage to Spain. He visited his mother at Toledoseveral times and he had planned a trip to Florida, the climate ofwhich he found particularly soothing to his malady, in January,1920. Occasionally he just disappeared, returning again, somewhatmysteriously, without any explanation, without, indeed, any admissionthat he had been away. I knew him too well to ask questions and,to say truth, there was something very sweet about these littlemystifications. Privacy was so dear a privilege to him that even withhis nearest friends, of which, assuredly, I was one, perhaps thenearest in this last year, it was essential to his happiness that heshould maintain a certain restraint, a certain reserve, I had almostsaid, a certain mystery, but, curiously, there was nothing theatricalabout Peter, even in his most theatrical performances. Just as bythe fineness of his taste, Rembrandt softened the hideousness of alurid subject in his Anatomy Lesson, so the exquisite charm of Peter'spersonality overcame any possible repugnance to anything he mightchoose to do.

During this last year in New York, he lived in an old house on BeekmanPlace, that splendid row, just two blocks long, of mellow brown-stonedwellings, with flights of steps, which back upon the East River atFiftieth Street. We often sat on the balcony, looking over towards thespan of the Queensboro Bridge, Blackwell's Island, with its turretedand battlemented castles so like the Mysteries of Udolpho, watchingthe gulls sweep over the surface of the water, the smoke wreathe fromthe factory chimneys, and the craft on the river, with cargoes "ofTyne coal, road-rails, pig-lead, fire-wood, iron-ware, and cheap tintrays," of the city, but seemingly away from it, with our backs to it,literally, indeed, while life ebbed by. And, at my side, too, I saw itslowly ebbing.

The interior, one of those fine old New York interiors, with highceilings, bordered with plaster guilloches, white carved marblefire-places, sliding doors, and huge crystal chandeliers, whosependants jingled when some one walked on the floor above, it hadbeen his happy fancy to decorate in the early Victorian manner.The furniture, to be sure, was mostly Chippendale, Sheraton, andHeppelwhite, but there were also heavy carved walnut chairs,upholstered in lovely figured glazed chintzes. The mirrors were framedin four inches of purple and red engraved glass. The highboys werelittered with ornaments, Staffordshire china dogs and shepherdesses,splendid feather and shell flowers, and ormolu clocks stood under glassbells on the mantel-shelves. He had found a couple of rather worn,but still handsome, Aubusson carpets, with garlands of huge roses ofa pale blush colour. One of these was in the drawing-room, the otherin the library. An old sampler screen framed the fire-place in thelatter room. The books were curious. Peter was now interested in bywaysof literature. I remember such volumes as Thomas Mann's Der Tod inVenedig, Paterne Berrichon's Life of Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry's UbuRoi, with music by Claude Terrasse, Jean Lorrain's La Maison Philibert,Richard Garnett's The Twilight of the Gods, the Comte de Lautréamont'sLes Chants de Maldoror, Leolinus Siluriensis's The Anatomy of Tobacco,Binet-Valmer's Lucien, Haldane MacFall's The Wooings of JezebelPettyfer, James Morier's Hajji Baba of Ispahan, Robert Hugh Benson'sThe Necromancers, André Gide's L'Immoraliste, and various volumes byGuillaume Apollinaire. The walls of the drawing-room were hung witha French eighteenth century, rose cotton print, the design of whichshowed, on one side, Cupid rowing lustily, while listless old Time satin the bow of the boat, with the motto: l'Amour fait passer le Temps;and, on the other side, Time propelling the boat, while a saddenedCupid, his face buried in his hands, was the downcast passenger,with the motto: Le Temps fait passer l'Amour. In the centre, besidea charming Greek temple, a nymph toyed with a spaniel, and the mottoread: l'Amitié ne craint pas le Temps! There were, therefore, nopictures on these walls, but, elsewhere, where the walls were white,or where they were hung with rich crimson Roman damask, as in thelibrary, there were a few steel engravings and mezzotints and an earlynineteenth century lithograph or two. Over his night-table, at the sideof his bed, he had pinned a photograph of a detail of Benozzo Gozzoli'sfrescoes in the Palazzo Riccardi, the detail of the three youths, andthere was also a large framed photograph of Cranach's naïve Venusin this room. The piano stood in the drawing-room, near one of thewindows, looking over the river. It was always open and the rack waslittered with modern music: John Ireland's London Pieces, Béla Bartok'sThree Burlesques, Gerald Tyrwhitt's Three Little Funeral Marches, musicby Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, and Zoltan Kodaly. Iremember one day he asked me to look at Theodor Streiche's Sprüche andGedichte, with words by Richard Dehmel, the second of which he averredwas the shortest song ever composed, consisting of but four bars.

It was a lovely house to lie about in, to talk in, to dream in. Itwas restful and quaint, offering a pleasing contrast to the eccentricmodernity of the other homes I visited at this period. There was noelectricity. The chandeliers burned gas but the favourite illuminationwas afforded by lamps with round glass globes of various colours,through which the soft light filtered.

On an afternoon in December, 1919, we were lounging in thedrawing-room. Peter had curled himself into a sort of knot on a broadsofa with three carved walnut curves at the back. He had spread aknitted coverlet over his feet, for it was a little chilly, in spiteof the fact that a wood fire was smouldering in the grate. On thetable before him there was a highball glass, half-full of the properingredients, and sprawling beside him on the sofa, a magnificent bluePersian cat, which he called Chalcedony. George Moore and George Sandhad long since perished of old age and Lou Matagot had been a victimof the laboratory explosion. There was a certain melancholy implicitin their absence. Nothing reminds us so irresistibly of the passingof time as the short age allotted on this earth to our dear cats. Thepinchbottle and several bottles of soda, a bowl of cracked ice anda bowl of Fatima cigarettes, which both of us had grown to prefer,reposed conveniently on the table between us. I remember the increasingsilence as the twilight fell and, how, at last, Peter began to talk.

I wanted to do so much, he began, and for a long time, during thesepast four years, it seemed to me that I had done so little. Iremembered Zola's phrase: Mon œuvre, alors, c'était l'Arche, l'Archeimmense! Hélas! ce que l'on rêve, et puis, après, ce que l'on exécute!At the beginning of the war, I was so very miserable, so unhappy, soalone. It seemed to me that I had been a complete failure, thatI had accomplished nothing....

I must have raised a protesting hand, for he interjected, No, don'tinterrupt me. I am not complaining or asking for sympathy. I amexplaining how I felt, not how I feel. I never spoke of it, of course,while I felt that way. I am only talking about it now because I havegone beyond, because, in a sense, at least, I understand. I am happiernow, happier, perhaps, than I have ever been before, for in the pastfour years I have left behind my restlessness and achieved somethinglike peace. I no longer feel that I have failed. Of course, I havefailed, but that was because I was attempting to do something that Ihad no right to attempt. My cats should have taught me that. It isnecessary to do only what one must, what one is forced by nature to do.Samuel Butler has said, and how truly, Nothing is worth doing or welldone which is not done fairly easily, and some little deficiency ofeffort is more pardonable than any perceptible excess, for virtue hasever erred rather on the side of self-indulgence than of asceticism....And so, in the end, and after all I am still young, I have learned thatI cannot write. Is a little experience too much to pay for learning toknow oneself? I think not, and that is why, now, I feel more like asuccess than a failure, because, finally, I do know myself, and becauseI have left no bad work. I can say with Macaulay: There are no lees inmy wine. It is all the cream of the bottle....

I have tried to do too much and that is why, perhaps, I have donenothing. I wanted to write a new Comédie Humaine. Instead, I havelived it. And now, I have come to the conclusion that that was allthere was for me to do, just to live, as fully as possible. Sympathyand enthusiasm are something, after all. I must have communicated atleast a shadow of these to the ideas and objects and people on whom Ihave bestowed them. Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes—now, don't laugh atwhat I am going to say, because it is true when you understand it—arejust so much more precious because I have loved them. They will givemore people pleasure because I have given them my affection. This issomething; indeed, next to the creation of the frescoes, perhaps it iseverything.

There are two ways of becoming a writer: one, the cheaper, is todiscover a formula: that is black magic; the other is to have the urge:that is white magic. I have never been able to discover a new formula;I have worked with the formulæ of other artists, only to see thecryptogram blot and blur under my hands. My manipulation of the mysticfigures and the cabalistic secrets has never raised the right demons....

What is there anyway? All expression lifts us further away fromsimplicity and causes unhappiness.... Material, scientific expression:flying-machines, moving pictures, and telegraphy are simply disturbing.They add nothing valuable to human life. Any novelist who invokes theaid of science dies a swift death. Zola's novels are stuffed withtheories of heredity but ideas about heredity change every day. Thecurrent craze is for psychoanalytic novels, which are not half sopsychoanalytic as the books of Jane Austen, as posterity will find outfor itself.... Art in this epoch is too self-conscious. Everybody isstriving to do something new, instead of writing or painting orcomposing what is natural.... Even the disturbing irony and pessimismof Anatole France and Thomas Hardy add nothing to life. We shall behappier if we go back to the beginning....

The great secret is the cat's secret, to do what one has todo. Let IT do it, let IT, whatever IT is, flow through you. Thewriter should say, with Sancho Panza, De mis viñas vengo, no sé nada.Labanne, in Le Chat Maigre, cries: Art declines in the degree thatthought develops. In Greece, in the time of Aristotle, there were onlysculptors. Artists are inferior beings. They resemble pregnant women;they give birth without knowing why. And again, to quote my belovedSamuel Butler, No one understands how anything is done unless he cando it himself; and even then he probably does not know how he has doneit. I might add that very often he does not know what he has done.Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy to ridicule his personal enemies. Dickensbegan Pickwick to give the artist, Seymour, an opportunity to drawco*ckney sportsmen and he concluded it in high moral fervour, with theambition to wipe out bribery and corruption at elections, unscrupulousattorneys, and Fleet Prison. To Cervantes, Don Quixote was a burlesqueof the high-flown romantic literature of his period. To the world, itis one of the great romances of all time....

You see, I am beginning to understand why I haven't written, why Icannot write.... That is why I am unhappy no longer, why I am morepeaceful, why I do not suffer. But, and now a strange, quavering notesounded in his voice, if I had found a new formula, who knows what Imight have done?

He turned his face away from me towards the back of the sofa. The catwas purring heavily, almost like the croupy breathing of a child. Itwas quite dark outside, and there was no light in the room save for theflicker that came from the dying embers. There was a long silence.In trying afterwards to reckon its length, I judged it must have beenfully half an hour before I spoke. It was a noise that broke the charmof the stillness. The dead end of the log split over the andirons andfell into the grate.

Peter, I began.

He did not move.

Peter.... I rose and bent over him. The clock struck six. The catstirred uneasily, rose, stretched his enormous length; then gave afaint but alarmingly portentous mew and leaped from the couch.

Peter!

He did not answer me.

April 29, 1921
New York.

THE END

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 73546 ***