My life and loves Vol. 2 Page 13

  Clearly his critical gift in prose was not as sure as in verse, or he was not so interested, for I had made some forty corrections.

  Next day I took the proofs most scrupulously corrected to Hutton and had a delightful talk with him. "Write on anything you like," he said, "only let me know beforehand what subject you've chosen so that we shan't clash. Let me know always by Monday morning, will you? I like your English, simple, yet rhythmic, but it's your knowledge that's extraordinary. You'll make a name for yourself; I wonder you're not known already. These are not days to hide one's light under a bushel," and he laughed genially.

  "On the contrary," I cried, "we put it with large reflectors behind it in front of the tent and pay a barker to praise our illuminating power."

  "A barker!" repeated Hutton. "What's that?" and I explained the racy term to him to his delight.

  "You Americans!" he repeated. "A barker! What a painting word!"

  But I didn't forget that I had still to win his heart, so when a pause came, I remarked quietly, "I wonder, Mr. Hutton, if you could help me to one of my ambitions. I knew Carlyle well, but I also admire Cardinal Newman immensely, though I've never had the joy of meeting him. Would it be too much to ask you for an introduction to him?"

  He promised at once to help me. "Though I don't know him intimately," he added reflectively, "still, I can give you a word to him. But how strange that you should admire Newman!"

  "The greatest of all the Fathers," I cried enthusiastically. "The sweetest of all the Saints!"

  "First rate," exclaimed Hutton. "That might be his epitaph. With that tongue of yours, you don't need any introduction; I'll just cite your words to him, and he'll be glad to see you. 'The greatest of all the Fathers,'" he repeated. "That may indeed be true, but surely St. Francis of Assisi is 'the sweetest of all the Saints?'" I nodded, smiling. Hutton was right, but I felt that I must not outstay my welcome, so I took my leave, knowing I had made a real friend in dear Holt Hutton.

  About this time I wrote an article in the Spectator which won for me the acquaintance and praise, if not the friendship, of T. P. O'Connor, M. P., a very clever and agreeable Irishman who stands high among contemporary journalists. He has met most of the famous men of his time, but has hardly ever written of the indicating figures; the second and third rate pleasing him better. So far as I know, he has never even tried to study or understand any great man in the quirks of character or quiddities of nature that constitute the essence of personality. He has written for the many about their gods- Hall Caine and Gosse, Marie Corelli and Arnold Bennett, Conrad and Gilbert Frankau-and has had his reward in a wide popularity. But in the early eighties he was still young with pleasing manners and the halo about his head of possible achievement.

  Now for Froude and his dinner, which had I known it, was to flavour my experience with a sense of laming, paralysing defeat.

  Before dinner Froude introduced me to Mr. Chenery, the editor of The Times, and at table put me on his left. When the dinner was almost over, he presented me to the score of guests by saying that Carlyle had sent him a letter, asking him to help me in my literary career and praising me in his high way. He (Froude) had read some of my poems and had assured himself that Carlyle's commendation was well deserved; he then read one of my sonnets to let his guests judge. "Mr. Harris," he added, "tells me that he has begun writing for the Spectator, and most of us know that Mr. Hutton is a good, if severe, critic."

  To say I was pleased is nothing: almost every one drank wine with me or wished me luck with that charming English bonhomie which costs so little and is so ingratiating.

  As we rose to go to the drawing-room for coffee, I slipped into the hall to get my latest sonnet from my overcoat. I might be asked to read a poem, and I wanted my best. How easily one is flattered to folly at seven and twenty!

  When I reached the drawing-room door, I found it nearly closed and a tall man's shoulders almost against it. I did not wish to press rudely in, and as I stood there I heard the big man ask his companion what he thought of the poetry.

  "I don't know; why should you ask me?" replied his friend, in a thin voice.

  "Because you are a poet and must know," affirmed the tall man.

  "If you want my opinion," the weak voice broke in, "I can only say that the sonnet we heard was not bad. It showed good knowledge of verse form, very genuine feeling, but no new singing quality, not a new cadence in it."

  "No poet, then?" said the tall man.

  "Not in my opinion!" was the reply.

  The next moment the pair moved away from the door and I entered; with one glance I convinced myself that my stubborn critic was Austin Dobson, who assuredly was a judge of the technique of poetry. But the condemnation did not need weighting with authority; it had reached my very heart because I felt it, knew it to be true. "No new singing quality, not a new cadence in it"; no poet then; a trained imitator. I was hot and cold with self-contempt.

  Suddenly Mr. Froude called me. "I want to introduce you," he said, "to our best publisher, Mr. Charles Longman, and I'm glad to be able to tell you that he has consented to bring out your poems immediately; and I'll write a preface to them."

  Of course I understood that 'good kind Froude,' as Carlyle had called him, was acting out of pure goodness of heart; I knew too that a preface from his pen would shorten my way to fame by at least ten years. But I was too stricken, too cast down to accept such help.

  "It's very, very kind of you, Mr. Froude!" I exclaimed, "And I don't know how to thank you, and Mr. Longman too, but I don't deserve the honour. My verses are not good enough."

  "You must allow us to be the judge of that," said Froude, a little huffed, I could see, by my unexpected refusal.

  "Oh, please not," I cried. "My verses are not good enough; really, I know; please, please give them back to me!" He lifted his eyebrows and handed me the booklet. I thanked him again, but how I left the room I have no idea. I wanted to be alone, away from all those kind, encouraging, false eyes, to be by myself alone. I was ashamed to the soul by my extravagant self-estimate.

  I took a cab home and sat down to read the poems. Some of them were poor and at once I burned them, but after many readings three or four still seemed to me good and I resolved to keep them; but I could not sleep. At last, in a fever, I heard the milkman with his cans and knew it was seven o'clock. I had lost a precious night's sleep. I flung myself out of bed and burnt the last four sonnets, then got into bed again and slept the sleep of the just till past noon. I awoke to the full consciousness that I was not a poet; never again would I even try to write poetry, never. Prose was all I could reach, so I must learn to write prose as well as I could and leave poetry for more gifted singers.

  Renewed hope came with physical exercise. After all, I had done a good deal in my first month or so. I had steady work on the Spectator; Hutton paid me three pounds for each paper, and I took care to write at least one every week and often two. Escott gave me more and more work on the Fortnightly, and after I had told him of Froude's dinner in my honour, he invited me to dine at his home in Brompton and I got to know his wife and pretty daughter.

  Chapman too invited me to his house in Overton Square, and I began to know quite a number of more or less interesting folk.

  CHAPTER IX

  First love; Hutton, Escott, and the evening News

  How does love come first to a man? Romance writers all agree that love comes as a goddess in blinding light, or ravishment of music or charm of scenery, but always crowned, always victorious. Mine is a plain unvarnished tale; love befell me in those first months in London in a most commonplace way, and yet I'll swear with Shakespeare that my love … was as fair As any she belied with false compare.

  I was earning some five or six pounds a week and living quietly in Bloomsbury near the British Museum. I had occasion to call on someone in a boarding-house in the same district who had sent an article to the Fortnightly. I was shown into a parlour on the ground floor by the untidy maid and told that the lady
would be down soon.

  While waiting, a girl was shown in and also asked to wait. She came towards me where I was standing by the window and took my breath. Every detail of her appearance in the strong light is printed in my memory, even the shade of blue of the cloak she was wearing. She was rather tall, some five feet five, and walked singularly well, reminding me of Basque and Spanish girls I had seen, who swam rather than walked-a consequence, I had found out, of taking short even steps from the hips. Her eyes met mine fairly and passed on: long hazel eyes of the best, broad forehead, rather round face, good lips, firm though small chin; a lovely girl, I decided, with a mane of chestnut hair brightened with strands of gold. She was well, though not noticeably dressed, the long blue cloak and her apparent self-possession giving her rather the air of a governess. I resolved to speak to her. "Waiting is weary work," I began with a smile.

  "It depends where and with whom," she replied with a touch of coquetry, but without a trace of English accent.

  "Are you English?" I blurted out impulsively.

  "Half-American, half-English," she answered, smiling. Her smile lit up her face enchantingly; it was like coming from a shuttered room into sunshine.

  "My case too," I cried, "only instead of English, you'd have to say half-Welsh."

  "Strange," she replied, laughing outright, "in my case, to be exact, you'd have to say half-Irish."

  "Let us both keep to our American halves," I said, "then there will be nothing strange in my presenting myself. I am Frank Harris and trying here in London to be a writer."

  "And my name is Laura Clapton." A few more questions and in five minutes I found that she was living with her father and mother in Gower Street; her father was a stockbroker and I could call any afternoon. I had time to promise I'd come next day and tell besides how I was working on the Fortnightly Review and the Spectator, thanks chiefly to my knowledge of various countries and languages.

  "I know some foreign languages, too," said Miss Laura.

  I was simply delighted to find her accent as good in German, French, Italian and Spanish as it was in English, and her command of the languages extraordinary: "Two years spent with my mother in each country," was her explanation.

  Next day I called and was introduced to a little, round-faced, roly-poly of a mother. Very ugly, I thought, with pug nose and small gray-blue eyes, but in spite of face and figure, the little fat woman had an air of dignity, or, it would be truer to say, of imperiousness tinged with temper. When I met Queen Victoria later I was irresistibly reminded of Mrs. Clapton.

  When Mr. Clapton came in the same evening, I saw where the daughter had got her good looks. Clapton was a handsome Irishman of perhaps five feet eleven, showing his fifty years in stoutness and greying hair. All his features were excellent, the hazel eyes splendid, and the man's personality genial and attractive. I easily understood how coming to Memphis, Tennessee, at five and twenty, the senator's daughter he met fell promptly in love with him. But he had been unfaithful and the proud southern girl wouldn't forgive him, and had taught her only daughter too to take her side, though in public the family held together. The whole situation was clear that first evening and I took an immediate liking to the good-looking, happy-go-lucky father, who probably out of custom kept up appearances with his unattractive wife for old affection's sake, and the pride he took in his daughter's looks and cleverness. For the daughter was undoubtedly clever and her looks grew on me: moving about in the room, taking off her hat and seating herself, the rhythmic grace of her beautiful figure made itself felt. I think from the beginning the mother disliked me as much as the father liked me. I found that Miss Laura loved the stage, had trained herself, indeed, to be an actress, and was only kept from going on the stage by the mother's insensate vanity and pride of birth. Naturally, I got them theatre tickets and soon became intimate.

  A month or so later the father wanted to spend Christmas at Brighton; nothing could have suited me better. I knew Brighton well, so early in the week we went down and stayed at the Albion Hotel. In the mornings we all used to go out walking, but the fat mother soon returned to the hotel with her husband, leaving Laura and myself to our own devices. Two incidents I remember of those first days: I had put some rhetoric into an article in the Spectator on Hendrik Conscience, the Belgian writer, and I read it to Laura one afternoon. "You read wonderfully," she said, "and that prose is lovely.

  You're going to be a great writer!"

  I shook my head. "A good speaker, perhaps," I said, for already I thought of going into the House of Commons.

  I didn't believe that I had genius, but I felt sure I could make myself an excellent speaker, and naturally I confided my ambitions to her. She had risen, and as I rose and thrust the paper into my pocket, I repeated passionately the last words of the article. Her eyes were on a level with mine and I suppose the passion in my voice moved her, for her eyes gave themselves to me: the next moment my arms were around her and my lips on hers.

  She kissed me naturally, without shyness or reserve. I could not help thinking at once, "She has often given her lips; she's too good-looking to have been left unpursued." The thought gave me boldness. "How beautiful you are," I said putting my arm round her waist.

  She smiled but drew back a little. "You flatterer!"

  "No, no," I pursued; "not a taint of flattery; I'm so much in earnest that I'm absolutely truthful. Your figure is most beautiful: I love and admire small breasts, just as I admire and love large hips," and I put my hands again on her figure.

  "I love your word," she responded, "that you are 'so much in earnest that you are quite truthful,' deep love and truth always go together, don't they?"

  "Always," I replied. Her quick ears heard someone coming and she turned away, but the touches had thrilled me, and I could not forbear clasping her waist from behind. She wound herself out of my arms with infinite litheness and with pouting lips and frowning brows reproved my daring, but the finger on her mouth was a warning and her eyes were smiling: she was not really angry at all. The next minute her mother came in.

  The situation of the father and mother filled me with pity for the girl; I felt in my bones that the father in especial must have called on her sometimes to help pay the weekly bills. She had been trained in worldly wisdom, yet had kept her spiritual enthusiasms. Her difficulties, which I surmised, endeared her to me.

  On Christmas Eve we happened to be alone again in the sitting-room. After the first kiss I naturally kissed her whenever I had the chance, and under my kissing and caressing her lips grew hot. But she drew back almost at once.

  "How strangely you kiss," she said, her eyes thoughtful.

  I loved her for her frankness and read it rightly, I think: she was still virgin, but on the point of yielding. I resolved to be worthy of her.

  "Laura, dear," I said, "I want to speak to you soul to soul. I love you and want you: give me six months or at most a year more and I shall have won a position in London and money. I've done a good deal in four months; I'll win completely in a year. Give me the year, will you, and I'll ask you to marry me!"

  "I love you," she replied, "and trust you. I'll wait, you can be sure," and we kissed again as a sort of consecration-indeed as lovers kiss, whose spirits flow together at meeting of the lips.

  The rest of those Christmas holidays can be told rapidly. I felt that Laura did not put much confidence in my assurances of splendid and rapid success. She had heard similar hopes expressed far too often by her father and had found them evaporate. I first heard the American word from her for such forecasts of hope, "hot air." How was she to know the difference between the gambler and the workman, whose self-confidence was rooted in many and widely different experiences?

  I resolved to get back to London as soon as possible, and up to the last day, with the optimism of first love, I hoped to meet Laura there almost every day.

  On the second of January I paid the hotel bill and was astonished by it; it took nearly all my nest-egg: Clapton had drunk champagne in
his bedroom.

  But what did it matter? I had had the time of my life and a smile from Laura's lips; a glance of approval from her eyes meant more to me than a fortune.

  Just before lunch the father asked me to go out with him for a stroll. As soon as we were alone, he began by thanking me for the holiday. "I'd never have let you foot the bill," he began, "but I've had a long run of bad luck in this open stock exchange I founded in London. My partner, I find, has bolted in my absence and taken all the funds, but I only need just a small sum for expenses, a thousand '11 do-"

  I would not let him conclude; I wanted to spare him the humiliation of asking.

  I broke in at once, "I'd let you have it with a heart and a half if I had got it, but the truth is the holiday has brought me, too, to rock-bottom. I must go back and get to work, and I can't even get such a sum quickly. I say to you, as I've said to Laura, give me a year and I'll win."

  His look was enough; the splendid long hazel eyes were as hard as buttons.

  "Never mind," he said, "it doesn't matter." In ten minutes we were back in the hotel and I don't think I got ten words more from him that day. Evidently the father, too, thought me no prize.

  When we reached London I drove them first to Gower Street, but their rooms were not ready for them. The father saw the landlady and came down to us in the hall and told us, with feigned indignation, that the hostess had not acted on his wire, but in a couple of hours their old rooms would be ready. "Mr.

  Harris will perhaps take care of you till then," he added. "I have to see-"

  The vagueness of the arrangements confirmed my suspicions of Clapton's irresponsibility and increased my sympathy with the queenly girl. Of course, I was only too glad to be of service. I drove the ladies first to my rooms to get rid of my luggage. Though I had not wired, my rooms were all ready, swept and garnished; and the mother and daughter came in and had tea and afterwards I took them to Kettners, a good Bohemian restaurant, for dinner. I left them at eleven o'clock in their rooms and got a long kiss from Laura in the passage; I felt well repaid. As soon as I was alone and rehearsed the happenings of the day, as was my custom, I saw I had no time to lose. "If you want the girl," I said to myself, "you'll have to win a position quickly." Clearly I felt that now both the father and the mother would be linked against me.