Part 16 (1/2)

nobody wanted to read the, or both They utterly spoilt the inald Sh kindness itself in the matter, was inclined to yield to the stor away froe Smith, quite certain that he would support h, perhaps, with a little -posts for ht After all, the ordinary ets very ood thing merely because he is put off by the title or the first few sentences Yet all the time, the essay or short story at which he shi+es is the very thing he would like to read if only it had been properly introduced to him In Mr De La Mare's case, however, there was no fear of being put off by reading the first few sentences

If you had once read these you were quite certain to finish I never reruesoeranium I surveyed, with drowsy satisfaction and cos and jerks of my aunt's head

The perfors strangely told In the end it is not ”my aunt” but ”my uncle” who sees visions, and visions whose subtlety and originality it would be hard to beat I will tantalise my readers with a quotation:

My uncle stopped dead upon the gravel, with his face towards the garden

I seemed to _feel_ the slow revolution of his eyes

”I see a huge city of granite,” he grunted; ”I see lean spires ofupon the blackness of their shadows

White lights stare out of narro-slits; a black cloud breathes smoke in the streets There is no wind, yet a wind sits still upon the city The air ss as it were upon ined by straining eyes The city is a bubble with cla thin and yellow in the lean streets like dust in a loa The sky is dumb with listeners Far down, as the crow sees ears of wheat, I see that _ jets, now hid in thick darkness Every street breeds creatures They swar, and walk like ants in the sun Their faces are fierce and wary, with malevolent lips Each mouths to each, and points and stares On I walk, imperturbable and stark But I know, oh, apings and gesticulations The air quivers with the flight of black winged shapes Each foot-tap of that sure figure upon the granite is ticking his hour away” My uncle turned and took my hand ”And this, Edame in the City, and vied with all in the excellence of his claret The ot hale and whole children, who sits in his pew and is respected That beneath s! You are my Godchild, Edmond Actions are hts be clean, hts make the man You uard Every thought, black or white, lives for ever, and to life there is no end”

”Look here, Uncle,” said I, ”it's serious, you know; you e of air, sir” ”Do you smell sulphur?” said my uncle I tittered and was alar of literature will understand the feelings of a young editor in publishi+ng suchit in 1896 At the present time the refrain that ”All can raise the flower now, for all have got the seed” is a reality In the 'nineties work like ”The Mote” was rare Connoisseurs of style will recognise what I mean when I say that what endeared ”Walter Ramal” to me was that, in spite of the fact that Stevenson at that very ti, there was not a trace of either author's influence in Mr De La Mare's prose The very occasional appearances of Stevensonianisin He at once s When there are two such influences at work, happy is the man who can resist them, and resist them in the proper way, by an alternative of his own, and not by a ry reticence

Mr Walter De La Mare's second article was called ”The Village of Old Age” It was a char piece of what I si The word in me, foolishly, no doubt, produces physical nausea If, however, soard to words called it elfish I should understand what he ood as were these two essays, they were nothing compared to De La Mare's lorious fantasy in which the writer excelled hiards the mechanism of his essay-story, but as to its substance, and, most of all, its style He prefaced it by this quotation from _Paradise Lost_:

As when, to warn proud cities, war appears Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush To battle in the clouds; before each van prick forth the faery knights, and couch their spears, Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms Fro was his short synopsis of the story:

How the Count saw a city in the sky andthereout-- Of the encampment of the host of the reat joy thereat and of how the fight sped

The first sentences were these:

The housekeeper's matronly skirts had sounded upon the staircase The ht, sir,” and were to bed

Nevertheless, the Count still sat imperturbable and silent A silence of frowns, of eloquence on the sih for any ood ti What he was in for in this case was a great aerial battle seen from Wimbledon Common--an adht I can best prove the depth of the impression made upon me by the fact that twenty years afterwards, when on soun, I never failed, when I watched the skies, to think of the little group on Wi the fields of air in the story of fight No doubt what one saw there was not as exquisite a spectacle as that seen by the Count Still, there was always so the vast battle-field of Heaven in order to find a Zeppelin, or, later, an aeroplane squadron Here is the passage describing what the Count and his friends sahen they discerned a city in the sky, and round it the tents of the moonsrey, others saffron and reen, and those on the farther side, of the colour of pale violets, and all pitched in a vast circle whose centre was the moon I handed theof it

”The dew hangs in the air,” said I, ”and unless the world spin on too quick, we shall pass so” ”Ay,” said he in a muse, ”but it seems to me the moon-army keeps infas travel sure as a ho bird; and to be driven back upon their centre would be defeat for the--lunatics Give _me_ but a handful of such cavalry, I would capture the Southern Cross

Magnificent! nificent! I re, froed horsemen dropped from the far sky, whither, I suppose, they had soared to keep h we heard no whisper of sound, by sole-call, positively maintains the Count) the ca broth Tents were struck and withdrawn to the rear Arlared All was orderly confusion

I could go on for es than I am afraid my readers would approve to chronicle the joys of my editorshi+p, and especially the joys of discovery I will only, however, mention two or three more names One is that of the late Mr Bernard Capes I think I a that my story of ”The Moon-stricken,” which was published in the _Cornhill_, was one of his first appearances before the English public Another author wholad to say, I and those who helpedspecial qualities of readability was Mr Hesketh Prichard In this case my wife did what Mr Graves had done in the case of Mr Bullen After I had charged her, as she valued the peace of the faave her, she insisted upon estion, which was becoreater but which, of course, was my proof of success, I accepted the story There was, of course, nothing novel in this experience It is what always happens, and reat fat trout, who is habitually thoroughly well gorged with flies It is the business of the young writer ants toa fly upon his line and to fling it so deftly in front of the said trout's nose that, though the trout has sworn by all the Gods, Nymphs, and Spirits of River and Stream that he won't eat any more that day, he cannot resist the temptation to rise and bite You must take the City of Letters by Storm

It will never yield to a reeable an experience, did not last long _The Spectator_ soon clain the _Cornhill_ in order, first, to find more tiht of editorshi+p which came to me with Mr Hutton's death Mr Hutton's death was quickly followed by Mr Townsend's retirement This made me, not only sole Editor, but sole Proprietor, of the paper

Before I proceed to describe the task I set myself in _The Spectator_ when I obtained a free hand, and to record my journalistic aims and aspirations, I desire to describe Mr Townsend--a enius for journalism has, to my mind, never been surpassed

CHAPTER XVI

MEREDITH TOWNSEND

Taking _The Spectator_ as the pivot of e _in o back and tell of ical sequence In so doing, however, I have striven to remain true to Sir Thomas Browne's instructions and to keep the alabaster tomb in the barber's shop always before my eyes Noever, that I have reached the time when I became Proprietor and Editor of _The Spectator_, I may fitly return to my chiefs and predecessors

Unfortunately I can do this only in the case of Mr Townsend In regard to any character-drawing or description of Mr Hutton my pen must refuse to write Just before he died Mr Huttonwhatever about hih I aht wish to write elsewhere, I have always felt ation of silence Mr Hutton and I were always the best of friends, and I regarded him with admiration as well as affection On soreement

Though I did not go nearly as far as he did in the matter of spiritualisard to things psychological It was this fact, perhaps, which made him say to me, half hu the office to die, as I also knew it, ”Re about me in _The Spectator_, I will haunt you!”