Things near & far
the scum of the eighteenth-century earth. One cannot understand the
period as a whole without knowing Casanova.
So I translated and translated day after day; but in a few months’
time the black hole in which I worked began very violently to
disagree with me. I got ill, and it was clear that some change must
be made. The Brothers, as always, were courteous and considerate: why
not do the work at home? I assented very willingly, worked at the
task for five hours every day, and every Saturday took my parcel of
copy to the shop and got my thirty shillings, the week’s wages.
And here I must make a boast, which is not wholly a boast: the second
part of this sentence I shall explain no farther. I finished the
translation of the Memoirs, but the book was not immediately issued.
On the completion of my job the Brothers needed me no more. I imagine
that they wanted a real, expert, technical cataloguer, not a literary
man of sorts; and my having worked for them for some months at my
own home and not in the shop made it easy for them to get rid of me
quietly; rather, to let me fade away, without the least suspicion of
firmness, much less of harshness. And they were always very glad to
see me when I chose to look them up, either on business or merely as
a friendly caller. I remember, for example, that when I had finished
the translation of “Le Moyen de Parvenir” and was “subscribing” the
book with “the trade,” I called at the shop and was received with
a genial and kindly courtesy that I have not forgotten, though it
is a long time since 1890; but then I do not forget. And lest it
should be suspected by some persons that under a veil of benignity
I am “getting at” the Brothers all the time, I hasten to say that
this is not so; to say this in the strongest manner possible. True,
thirty shillings a week was not good pay for decent French-English
translating, even in 1889; but it was the wages that I had asked
myself, having been thoroughly convinced by my experiences of the
six preceding years that I was such a dismal and incapable ass that
if I just managed to escape the Governorship of the Island of Farre
Joyaunce--otherwise the ditch or the workhouse--it was as much as I
could expect. So I asked my thirty shillings a week and hoped in my
heart that it was not too much; and I am not blaming the Brothers in
the least because they did not press more upon me. And, however that
may be, they were always courteous and kindly in all communications
that passed between us; and for that they shall be in my grateful
memory so long as I live. I have said already, I think, how once
during the last year of my employment on the “Evening News,” finding
myself in old haunts of long ago, Wellington Street, Bow Street,
York Street, anguish possessed me as I remembered how I had once
starved and had known something like happiness while I toiled over
the ancient occult books in the Catherine Street garret; anguish
possessed me as I recollected the happy time in misery. And, as
I said to a friend soon afterwards: “In those days I was getting
considerably less money in a whole year than I am now getting in a
month; and yet....”
Again, I say, if our clergy would but mind their business. If instead
of enquiring into the exact cut of bodices, instead of passing
anxious hours as to the pernicious corruptions of the Fox-Trot and
the Bunny Hug, instead of working with all their hearts and souls to
make sure that no one can possibly get a glass of bitter beer after
ten o’clock, instead of unmasking the inferno of the race-course, the
utter levity of much of our railway literature; if, instead of all
this accursed drivel, cant and imbecility, they would but say Mass
and preach the Gospel, and otherwise quite abide in peace! Let them
go to the Book, and there they will find that the most horrible sin
denounced in it is neither gambling, drinking nor wantoning, but the
sin of shaming a man, of bitterly insulting him, of making him mean
in his own eyes, of making him despise his own self as something
unutterably fouled and scorned and bewrayed. What is the text?
Something like: but he that sayeth to his brother, “Thou fool,” shall
be in danger of hell fire.
I am drawing a contrast between 1889 and 1921, and hence I say that
the Brothers always treated me with the common decency due from one
human being to another, though they were rich and I was poor, though
they were men of business and I an idiot in all matters of business,
though they were masters and I was man.
And now as to the famous boast. As I said, I ceased to be in the
employment of these good men. I went into the country, up on the
Children Hills. We neither saw nor heard anything of each other. But
all the while those legacies of which I have spoken came dropping
slow, and in 1893, when I had made up my mind to return to London,
I think I must have had in bank something between three and four
thousand pounds. I was assailed by an unworthy pang of prudence, by
one of the foolish notions that the world’s people take for wisdom.
It struck me that this living on capital, taking the pieces of eight
by fistfuls out of the chest, would never do; that the money ought to
be invested, preferably in some business in which I could contribute
work as well as money. I looked about me, I advertised, I saw some
people in the City and found nothing promising from my point of view,
though I found here and there such curiosities as London, I believe,
only affords. For example, in a very dim sort of cock-loft in an
old house in the heart of the City, I hit upon a firm of general
agents who had answered my advertisement. There were two of them:
one, a young, rosy, out-in-the-open sort of man, the other elderly,
frock-coated, with a kind of dissenting beard on his chin. He talked
of the version of Horace’s odes that he was shortly bringing out at
his own expense, and discussed with me the true pronunciation of the
Latin language with much intelligence. The junior partner’s talk was
of trawling, and indeed he said that the firm was a sort of trawling
concern--in City waters.
But nothing came of it, and at last I bethought me of the Brothers.
Brother Charles was as genial as ever. He saw my point. He said: “We
are going to issue Casanova at last; why not put a thousand pounds
into that for a start?” I agreed, and the matter was settled. And
then, very nervously, with a good deal of hesitation, with a certain
difficulty in the choice of words, Brother Charles said:
“Of course, Mr. Machen, we quite recognise the ... er ...
circumstances in which you made your most admirable translation
of the book. It was ... er ... in a manner ... er ... task-work;
yes, _task-work_. Well ... the case is now, to a certain degree ...
altered; you have an interest in the prosperity of the venture, and,
in short, we rather wondered whether you would like to ... to ...
_revise_ your manuscript.”
“Mr. Charles,” I replied, “I did the job as well as I could; and I
don’t think I can make it any better.”
_Chapter VII_
Beroalde de Verville proved to be what the elder members of the
theatrical profession used to call “a pill.” Only the other day I
was reading a French account of this author. The critic said in the
course of his remarks that many people who had gone to the “Moyen
de Parvenir” in search of unpleasantness had turned back from the
quest, deterred by the difficulty of the language. And I don’t
know that it is more difficult for a modern Frenchman than for an
Englishman. It is written in a sort of Babylonish dialect which is
not exactly French though it looks like it; as Meredith looks like
English to the casual glance. And then, it is not only difficult,
but obscure; not only are the sentences queerly constructed, but the
subject-matter is of a highly dubious and cloudy character: when you
have found out what Beroalde is saying, you begin to wonder what he
is saying it about. And, then, there are bits of old dialect peppered
about this excessively odd volume. I remember coming upon two words:
“iquent hesne.” I sat down in front of them, and looked at them
from every angle. I don’t know how I found out at last that “iquent
hesne” was a sort of seventeenth-century French “Zummerzet” for
“cette chêne”--“thicky oāk.” Again the “Moyen” is thick with puns,
of the kind that used to be called in the golden days of Burlesque
“outrageous”: and the time I wasted in trying to turn these silly
French tricks into sillier English contortions! On the whole, I would
say that “Le Moyen de Parvenir” in literature is as a cathedral
constructed entirely of gargoyles would be in architecture. Rabelais
is full of gargoyles, “apes and owls and antics,” as he calls them,
on the outside of the jar. But within, as he rightly claims, there
are precious medicines, aromatic balms of singular power and virtue.
And so far as I can judge, Beroalde is all oddity and nothing else.
He cost me a year’s hard labour; the version was issued and is now
valued by collectors; and that is all that need be said.
And now--in 1890--I began to try a little journalism of the more or
less literary kind. I began, I think, by writing “Turnovers” for the
“Globe,” and miscellaneous articles for the “St. James’s Gazette,”
and at length stories for the latter paper, which was then edited by
Mr.--now Sir--Sydney Lowe. The “Globe” is extinct, the “St. James’s
Gazette” is merged and submerged in the “Evening Standard”; there
are no papers of such metal now in existence. The difference between
them and the evening papers of the day is a very simple one: the
former were meant to please the educated, the latter are designed to
entertain the uneducated, and the uneducated may be equated, very
largely indeed, with women. It is an odd paradox: there is no doubt,
I suppose, that the instruction--or, if you like, education--of women
has made immense strides in the last thirty years; and yet it is true
that when a newspaper editor says to himself: “We have an immense
number of women readers and we must see that they get what they
like,” the result is drivel. This sort of thing:
Madame has just discovered a new craze. Jewelled clay
pipes and shag tobacco delicately sprinkled with gold-dust
are now quite _démodés_ when once we cross the borders of
Balham; but my lady prides herself on her collection of
hookahs, the water-pipes of the gorgeous East.
It is quite the thing, I hear, amongst really smart women
to give “Hookah Teas.” Everybody wears Oriental costume,
and sits on cushions piled on the floor, and delicately
draws in the aroma of the rarest Turkish Tobacco, scented
by its passage through rosewater or lavender-water. At Lady
Clarinda Belsize’s Hookah Tea last Wednesday, two native
musicians played the tom-tom and the _guzla_ behind a
curtain, or _purdah_, as I am told it is called. Of course
_yashmaks_ were worn by all the guests.
There; it is not worth parodying. And there is another sort of
terrible tosh which deals with the doings of “The Summer Girl” and
“The Winter Girl” and “The Marathon Girl”: all of it a very feeble
imitation of the cheapest American journalism. In the ’nineties
this kind of thing existed, but it was confined to the columns of
one or two ladies’ papers. In those days, I would not say that the
editors of evening papers brought out their journals exclusively for
the benefit of the members of the best clubs of St. James’s and
Pall Mall; but I certainly should say that they had the clubs in
their mind’s eye; that they presumed a certain standard of education
and culture in their readers. All that ended when the evening
“Westminster Gazette” came to an end.
But indeed there would be little harm done if a column or two