Things near & far
great books in the evening and far into the night. I remember reading
Dante in Longfellow’s translation, from beginning to end, and though
I could not by any manner of means lift up my heart and mind to the
mountain-peak of the Paradise, I divined the majesty I could not
comprehend. Don Quixote was always with me, and good company and meat
and drink and lights and fire always to me; and so I pass along the
dim London streets revolving all these mighty works, a ghostly man
amidst the hurrying multitude of the living, and go far afield under
dim trees in the West, or sit solitary on a bench near the river in
Kew Gardens, looking towards Syon; all the while in a lonely but not
an unhappy dream.
It came suddenly to me one night. I was lying awake in my bed; and
then it came to me that I would write a Great Romance. A Great
Romance! I know it is funny; but it is sorry too. I didn’t in the
least know what the said Great Romance was to be about; save this,
that Rabelais was to have something to do with it, and that my own
county, beloved Gwent, was to have much more to do with it. That does
not sound very definite; but I believe it is more definite than the
actual vision which appeared to me, for this was rather a warm and
golden and wonderful glow and radiance than any scheme for a book. I
know I lay happy and trembling for a long time and fell asleep happy
and awoke happy in the morning, and went out forthwith to buy pens
and paper. I had both already, but I felt that the occasion was more
than a special one and called for very special purchases. So, at
the stationer’s shop, near the Holland Park end of Clarendon Road, I
got ruled quarto paper, and “Viaduct” pens, and two penholders, and
I am pleased that I am writing all this with a surviving penholder
of those two; a poor old thing chewed to a stump and battered
grievously in its metallic parts. So here was paper, here was pens
and penholders; and of course the rest was easy.
* * * * *
There was only this little difficulty. The golden and glowing vision
of the night, the announcing of the Great Romance, declined to be
more specific. It had no hints to give, it seemed, as to plot; it
still veiled the subject of this wonderful book in the dimmest, most
religious obscurity. The paper and the pens were ready; but how to
begin writing the first line? I had not the faintest notion, so I
proceeded to write Prologues and Epilogues, with commentaries on
the _magnum opus_ which was not even begun. Two of these oddities
survive, the Dedication to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, as the
Patron of men of letters; a dreadful quip founded on the old saying
about “dining with Duke Humphrey,” which meant that you had not had
any dinner. This was worked out with all elaboration and with an
attempt at the great manner of Bacon in his most magistral mood. It
ran in this vein:
Truly, then, do we poor folk (men of letters) owe what
service we are able to pay Your Grace, who in spite of mean
dress and poverty (justly accounted by Mr. Hobbes for
shame and dishonour) is pleased to entertain us at that
board, where so great a multitude of our brotherhood has
feasted before. For your illustrious line hath now for many
generations made it a peculiar glory to supply the needs
of lettered men; and as we sit at meat it seems (methinks)
as if these mighty men of old did sit beside us and taste
with us once more the mingled cup we drink. The ingenious
author of Don Quixote de la Mancha must, I suppose, have
often dined with the Duke of his age, Mr. Peter Corneille
and Mr. Otway, Senhor Camoens, Rare Old Ben, Signori Tasso
and Ariosto not seldom: while young Mr. Chatterton the poet
did not only dine, but break his fast, take his morning
draught, and sup with Your Grace’s great-grandfather, till
at last he died of a mere repletion.
There! Very solemn and portentous fun, indeed; but what is so solemn
as a youngster of twenty-two? Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster
Abbey seem gay and light and airy by comparison. _I_ like it still,
to be sure; but then I am prejudiced, and indeed, there is one
sentence that still affects me; that phrase about “the mighty men
of old” who seem “to sit beside us and taste with us once more the
mingled cup we drink.” For in that sentence I see something of the
spirit which sustained me, the cloudy young man, the dreamy and
obscure and inarticulate young man, of those long-ago days, all
through the fire and the darkness of poverty and loneliness and
weariness and disillusion. Let us still, if you please, ride the
high horse and be as magnificent as we can: I saw myself and, to be
frank, I still see myself, as the youngest novice in a great and
noble monastic house. The novice is by no means a promising member
of the congregation, the Abbot and the Prior and the Master of the
Novices have the gravest doubts as to his vocation: the other novices
are inclined to indulge in remarks of a jocular and contemptuous
kind. But the little, obscure and despised candidate for the triple
cord sits in his low place at the board and looks at the pictures
on the walls: on the faces where torment and exultation shine with
twin fires: on Blessed Bernardus a Baculo, who was beaten to death
by the Danes in the ninth century, on the Venerable Servant of
God, Marcellinus, who was impaled by the Turk, on St. Eugenius de
Compostella, who was shut by the Moors in a horrible dungeon of filth
for forty years and at last his visage shone and gave light to the
tormentors when they came to end him, on Venerable Raymondus Anglus,
who was slowly sliced into little pieces in Cathay, on Blessed
Gregory Perrot, whom the ministers of the Virgin Queen attended to
at Tyburn in 1590: on all these brilliant successes of the convent
does the little novice gaze with admiring wonder. Well he knows
that his picture will never hang on the wall; still, and after all,
he is a member of the congregation to which these, the lucky and
happy, belonged; in a faint sort they are his brothers; they are
_commensales, cohæredes, et sodales_.
Very fine, indeed; but in the meantime I am scratching with
a somewhat hopeless pen under Clarendon Road gaslight, taking
difficulties for solution to lonely places such as Perivale, to the
unfrequented parts of Hampton Court; or else, by contrast, to the
long black High Street of Brentford, with its creeks and backwaters
of the river, where grass and flowers grow on the decks of derelict
barges. I find no oracles to help me in any of these promising
quarters; there are some very sad nights in the little room over
the dry bread, tea and tobacco and the helpless pen. Finally, in a
kind of despair, I begin something of which the first scene is to be
laid in Gwent, which, later, is to have a voyage in it--there is a
great voyage in Rabelais to the Oracle of the Holy Bottle. I read the
first chapter. It is quite hopeless; and yet I do not give up hope; I
resolve to try again.
* * * * *
But all this time, while the Great Romance refused to move, my
worldly affairs were moving fast, and decidedly in the way of
destruction. I suppose, having finished the Catalogue, I had done
all that the publisher wanted of me. At all events, the stream of
employment, never auriferous to any great extent, dwindled and dried
up. I had a little, a very little money in hand, I could not possibly
call on those poor people at home for help; my landlady in Clarendon
Road had a hard struggle of it, I fancy, and I would not cadge on
her kindness, even though my board and lodging were far from being
luxurious. It seemed to me that at the end of the week I must just
walk out of 23 Clarendon Road and go on walking towards the West
till I couldn’t walk any longer. I admit that the plan was vague,
as vague as the plot of the Great Romance, but I could think of no
other. And in the meantime--I had three or four days before me--I
would write the Epilogue for my book: which was not yet begun.
I set about this task with the utmost relish and enjoyment. For once,
I knew what to write about; that was my own position; not in a plain
and literal manner, but after the fashion of a decorated fantasy.
It would never do to say: “Here am I, a stupid lad who is not worth
twopence to anybody, who thinks he can write and can hardly get half
a dozen words to stagger on the paper; here am I going out to die in
a ditch or to live in a ward of the workhouse”: that would never have
served. I agree with Mr. Sampson Brass in holding that the truth is
often highly unpleasant and inconvenient. Hence the Epilogue to the
unwritten book, which survives in the written book, “The Chronicle
of Clemendy,” a work which is neither great nor a romance, but which
answers the description admirably in all other respects. And as the
Dedication was made to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, so the Epilogue
is concerned with the same nobleman. So here we are:
A few days ago His Grace did take me aside into his
cabinet, and looking kindly upon me (though some call him
a stern and awful noble) said: “Why, Master Leolinus, you
look but sickly, poor gentleman, poor gentleman, I protest
you’re but a shadow, do not your Abbreviatures bring you
in a goodly revenue?” (Note the elegant reference to my
mysterious shorthand.) “Not so, Your Grace,” answered I,
“to the present time I have abbreviated all in vain, and
were it not for the hospitality of your table, I know not
how I should win through.” “How goes it then with your
Silurian Histories?” (The Great Romance.) ... “With them,
may it please Your Grace, it fares excellently well, and
this morning I have made an end of writing the First
Journey, containing many agreeable histories and choice
discourses.” “I believe indeed it will be a rare book, fit
to read to the monks of Tintern while they dine. But yet I
will have you lay it aside a little, since I have a good
piece of preferment for you, an office (or I mistake you)
altogether to your taste. What say you, Master Scholar, to
the Lordship of an Island and no less an Island than Farre
Joyaunce in the Western Seas? How stand you thitherwards?
Will you take ship presently?” At hearing this, I was, as
you may guess, half bewildered with sudden joy, that is apt
to bring tears into the eyes of them that have toiled in
many a weary struggle with adversity: I could but kneel and
kiss His Grace’s hand, and say “My Lord.”
Of course, the allusions to “First Journeys” and “Silurian Histories”
were put in months later, when I had at length found out what my book
was about; at the time, October, 1885, I had not written one word of
it. So the Epilogue went on its mellifluous way, and thus ended:
But here is my Paumier, with his parchments, to advise with
me concerning a grant of Water Baylage to the Abbey of St.
Michael, and also concerning the ceremonies observed in the
island at Christmastide. He tells me that the voyage will
surely be a rough and tempestuous one, but with the captain
of the _Salutation_ there need be no fear. And so farewell,
till the anchor be dropped in the Sure Haven of Farre
Joyaunce.
And indeed, as I was writing the last page of the Epilogue, a letter
came for me. I had written to Mr. Quaritch, stating my experience
in cataloguing, and asking for employment. Mr. Quaritch wrote very
civilly stating that he did not want any cataloguers, but people
who knew how to sell books. And I wrote on to my final flourish,
with all the more relish. “Ceremonies observed in the island at