Part 1 (2/2)

”Nothing is bad for one,” answered Soames. ”Dans ce monde il n'y a ni bien ni mal.”

”Nothing good and nothing bad? How do you mean?”

”I explained it all in the preface to 'Negations.'”

”'Negations'?”

”Yes, I gave you a copy of it.”

”Oh, yes, of course. But, did you explain, for instance, that there was no such thing as bad or good grammar?”

”N-no,” said Soames. ”Of course in art there is the good and the evil.

But in life--no.” He was rolling a cigarette. He had weak, white hands, not well washed, and with finger-tips much stained with nicotine. ”In life there are illusions of good and evil, but”--his voice trailed away to a murmur in which the words ”vieux jeu” and ”rococo” were faintly audible. I think he felt he was not doing himself justice, and feared that Rothenstein was going to point out fallacies. Anyhow, he cleared his throat and said, ”Parlons d'autre chose.”

It occurs to you that he was a fool? It didn't to me. I was young, and had not the clarity of judgment that Rothenstein already had.

Soames was quite five or six years older than either of us. Also--he had written a book. It was wonderful to have written a book.

If Rothenstein had not been there, I should have revered Soames. Even as it was, I respected him. And I was very near indeed to reverence when he said he had another book coming out soon. I asked if I might ask what kind of book it was to be.

”My poems,” he answered. Rothenstein asked if this was to be the t.i.tle of the book. The poet meditated on this suggestion, but said he rather thought of giving the book no t.i.tle at all. ”If a book is good in itself--” he murmured, and waved his cigarette.

Rothenstein objected that absence of t.i.tle might be bad for the sale of a book.

”If,” he urged, ”I went into a bookseller's and said simply, 'Have you got?' or, 'Have you a copy of?' how would they know what I wanted?”

”Oh, of course I should have my name on the cover,” Soames answered earnestly. ”And I rather want,” he added, looking hard at Rothenstein, ”to have a drawing of myself as frontispiece.” Rothenstein admitted that this was a capital idea, and mentioned that he was going into the country and would be there for some time. He then looked at his watch, exclaimed at the hour, paid the waiter, and went away with me to dinner. Soames remained at his post of fidelity to the glaucous witch.

”Why were you so determined not to draw him?” I asked.

”Draw him? Him? How can one draw a man who doesn't exist?”

”He is dim,” I admitted. But my mot juste fell flat. Rothenstein repeated that Soames was non-existent.

Still, Soames had written a book. I asked if Rothenstein had read ”Negations.” He said he had looked into it, ”but,” he added crisply, ”I don't profess to know anything about writing.” A reservation very characteristic of the period! Painters would not then allow that any one outside their own order had a right to any opinion about painting.

This law (graven on the tablets brought down by Whistler from the summit of Fuji-yama) imposed certain limitations. If other arts than painting were not utterly unintelligible to all but the men who practiced them, the law tottered--the Monroe Doctrine, as it were, did not hold good. Therefore no painter would offer an opinion of a book without warning you at any rate that his opinion was worthless. No one is a better judge of literature than Rothenstein; but it wouldn't have done to tell him so in those days, and I knew that I must form an unaided judgment of ”Negations.”

Not to buy a book of which I had met the author face to face would have been for me in those days an impossible act of self-denial. When I returned to Oxford for the Christmas term I had duly secured ”Negations.” I used to keep it lying carelessly on the table in my room, and whenever a friend took it up and asked what it was about, I would say: ”Oh, it's rather a remarkable book. It's by a man whom I know.” Just ”what it was about” I never was able to say. Head or tail was just what I hadn't made of that slim, green volume. I found in the preface no clue to the labyrinth of contents, and in that labyrinth nothing to explain the preface.

Lean near to life. Lean very near-- nearer.

Life is web and therein nor warp nor woof is, but web only.

It is for this I am Catholick in church and in thought, yet do let swift Mood weave there what the shuttle of Mood wills.

These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. Then came ”Stark: A Conte,” about a midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula, lacking, I rather thought, in ”snap.” Next, some aphorisms (ent.i.tled ”Aphorismata”

[spelled in Greek]). Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form, and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. It was rather the substance that eluded me. Was there, I wondered, any substance at all? It did not occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was a fool! Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose _I_ was! I inclined to give Soames the benefit of the doubt. I had read ”L'Apres-midi d'un faune” without extracting a glimmer of meaning; yet Mallarme, of course, was a master. How was I to know that Soames wasn't another?

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