I had scarcely been in London a year when my friend and I decided to collaborate in a bibliographical dictionary of rare and expensive books in all European languages. Such a scheme sounds farcical, but we were perfectly serious over it; and the proof of our seriousness is that we worked at it every morning before breakfast. I may mention also that we lunched daily at the British Museum, much to the detriment of our official duties. For months we must have been quite mad—obsessed. We got about as far as the New English Dictionary travelled in the first twenty years of its life, that is to say, two-thirds through A; and then suddenly, irrationally, without warning, we dropped it. The mere conception of this dictionary was so splendid that there was a grandeur even in dropping it.
Soon after this, the managing clerk of the office, a university man, autocratic, but kindly and sagacious, bought a country practice and left us. He called me into his room to say good-bye.
“You’d no business to be here,” he said sharply. “You ought to be doing something else. If I find you here when I visit town next, I shall look on you as a d—d fool. Don’t forget what I say.”
I did not. On the contrary, his curt speech made a profound impression on me. He was thirty, and a man of the world; I was scarcely twenty-three. My self-esteem, always vigorous, was flattered into all sorts of new developments. I gradually perceived that, quite without intending it, I had acquired a reputation. As what? Well, as a learned youth not lacking in brilliance. And this reputation had, I am convinced, sprung solely from the habit of buying books printed mainly in languages which neither myself nor my acquaintances could read. I owned hundreds of books, but I seldom read any of them, except the bibliographical manuals; I had no leisure to read. I scanned. I can only remember, in this period, that I really studied one book—Plato’s Republic—which I read because I thought I was doing the correct thing. Beyond this, and a working knowledge of French, and an entirely sterile apparatus of bibliographical technique, I had mastered nothing. Three qualities I did possess, and on these three qualities I have traded ever since, i First, an omnivorous and tenacious memory (now, alas, effete!)—the kind of memory that remembers how much London spends per day in cab fares just as easily as the order of Shakespeare’s plays or the stock anecdotes of Shelley and Byron. Second, a naturally sound taste in literature. And third, the invaluable, despicable, disingenuous journalistic faculty of seeming to know much more than one does know. None knew better than I that, in any exact, scholarly sense, I knew nothing of literature. Nevertheless, I should have been singularly blind not to see that I knew far more about literature than nine-tenths of the people around me. These people pronounced me an authority, and I speedily accepted myself as an authority: were not my shelves a silent demonstration? By insensible degrees I began to assume the pose of an authority. I have carried that pose into newspaper offices and the very arcana of literary culture, and never yet met with a disaster. Yet in the whole of my life I have not devoted one day to the systematic study of literature. In truth, it is absurdly easy to impress even persons who in the customary meaning of the term have the right to call themselves well educated. I remember feeling very shy one night in a drawing-room rather new to me. My host had just returned from Venice, and was describing the palace where Browning lived; but he could not remember the name of it.
“Rezzonico,” I said at once, and I chanced to intercept the look of astonishment that passed between host and hostess.
I frequented that drawing-room a great deal afterwards, and was always expected to speak ex cathedra on English literature.
London the entity was at least as good as my dreams of it, but the general mass of the persons composing it, considered individually, were a sad disappointment. “What duffers!” I said to myself again and again. “What duffers!” I had come prepared to sit provincially at the feet of these Londoners! I was humble enough when I arrived, but they soon cured me of that—they were so ready to be impressed! What struck me was the extraordinary rarity of the men who really could “do their job.” And when I found them, they were invariably provincials like me who had come up with the same illusions and suffered the same enlightenment. All who were successfully performing that feat known as “getting on” were provincials. I enrolled myself in their ranks. I said that I would get on. The “d—d fool” phrase of the Chancery clerk rang in my ears like a bugle to march.
And for about a year I didn’t move a step. I read more than I have ever read before or since. But I did nothing. I made no effort, nor did I subject myself to any mental discipline. I simply gorged on English and French literature for the amusement I could extract from such gluttony, and found physical exercise in becoming the champion of an excessively suburban lawn-tennis club. I wasted a year in contemplating the magnificence of my future doings. Happily I never spoke these dreams aloud! They were only the private solace of my idleness. Now it was that I at last decided upon the vocation of letters; not scholarship, not the dilettantism of belles-lettres, but sheer constructive journalism and possibly fiction. London, however, is chiefly populated by grey-haired men who for twenty years have been about to become journalists and authors. And but for a fortunate incident—the thumb of my Fate has always been turned up—I might ere this have fallen back into that tragic rear-guard of Irresolutes.
Through the good offices of my appreciative friends who had forgotten the name of the Palazzo Rezzonico, I was enabled to take up my quarters in the abode of some artists at Chelsea. I began to revolve, dazzled, in a circle of painters and musicians who, without the least affectation, spelt Art with the majuscule; indeed, it never occurred to them that people existed who would spell it otherwise. I was compelled to set to work on the reconstruction of nearly all my ideals. I had lived in a world where beauty was not mentioned, seldom thought of. I believe I had scarcely heard the adjective “beautiful” applied to anything whatever, save confections like Gounod’s “There is a green hill far away.” Modern oak sideboards were called handsome, and Christmas cards were called pretty; and that was about all. But now I found myself among souls that talked of beauty openly and unashamed. On the day that I arrived at the house in Chelsea, the drawing-room had just been papered, and the pattern of the frieze resembled nothing in my experience. I looked at it.
“Don’t you think our frieze is charming?” the artist said, his eyes glistening.
It was the man’s obvious sincerity that astounded me. O muse of mahogany and green rep! Here was a creature who took a serious interest in the pattern of his wallpapers! I expressed my enthusiasm for the frieze.
“Yes,” he replied, with simple solemnity, “it is very beautiful.”
This worship of beauty was continuous. The very teaspoons were banned or blessed on their curves, and as for my rare editions, they wilted under tests to which they were wholly unaccustomed. I possessed a rarissime illustrated copy of Manon Lescaut, of which I was very proud, and I showed it with pride to the artist. He remarked that it was one of the ugliest books he had ever seen.
“But,” I cried, “you’ve no idea how scarce it is! It’s worth—”
He laughed.
I perceived that I must begin life again, and I began it again, sustained in my first efforts by the all-pervading atmosphere of ardour. My new intimates were not only keenly appreciative of beauty, they were bent on creating it. They dreamed of great artworks, lovely compositions, impassioned song. Music and painting they were familiar with, and from me they were serenely sure of literature. The glorious accent with which they clothed that word—literature! Aware beforehand of my authority, my enthusiasm, they accepted me with quick, warm sympathy as a fellow-idealist. Then they desired to know what I was engaged upon, what my aims were, and other facts exceedingly difficult to furnish.
It happened that the most popular of all popular weeklies had recently given a prize of a thousand pounds for a sensational serial. When the serial had run its course, the editor offered another prize of twenty guineas for the best humorous condensation of it in two thousand words. I thought I might try for that, but I feared that my friends would not consider it “art.” ‘I was mistaken. They pointed out that caricature was a perfectly legitimate form of art, often leading to much original beauty, and they urged me to enter the lists. They read the novel in order the better to enjoy the caricature of it, and when, after six evenings’ labour, my work