Seven Men

People still go on comparing Thackeray and Dickens, quite cheerfully.  But the fashion of comparing Maltby and Braxton went out so long ago as 1795.  No, I am wrong.  But anything that happened in the bland old days before the war does seem to be a hundred more years ago than actually it is.  The year I mean is the one in whose spring-time we all went bicycling (O thrill!) in Battersea Park, and ladies wore sleeves that billowed enormously out from their shoulders, and Lord Rosebery was Prime Minister.

In that Park, in that spring-time, in that sea of sleeves, there was almost as much talk about the respective merits of Braxton and Maltby as there was about those of Rudge and Humber.  For the benefit of my younger readers, and perhaps, so feeble is human memory, for the benefit of their elders too, let me state that Rudge and Humber were rival makers of bicycles, that Hilary Maltby was the author of `Ariel in Mayfair,’ and Stephen Braxton of `A Faun on the Cotswolds.’

`Which do you think is really the best—­“Ariel” or “A Faun”?’ Ladies were always asking one that question. `Oh, well, you know, the two are so different.  It’s really very hard to compare them.’  One was always giving that answer.  One was not very brilliant perhaps.

The vogue of the two novels lasted throughout the summer.  As both were `firstlings,’ and Great Britain had therefore nothing else of Braxton’s or Maltby’s to fall back on, the horizon was much scanned for what Maltby, and what Braxton, would give us next.  In the autumn Braxton gave us his secondling.  It was an instantaneous failure.  No more was he compared with Maltby.  In the spring of ’96 came Maltby’s secondling.  Its failure was instantaneous.  Maltby might once more have been compared with Braxton.  But Braxton was now forgotten.  So was Maltby.

This was not kind.  This was not just.  Maltby’s first novel, and Braxton’s, had brought delight into many thousands of homes.  People should have paused to say of Braxton “Perhaps his third novel will be better than his second,” and to say as much for Maltby.  I blame people for having given no sign of wanting a third from either; and I blame them with the more zest because neither `A Faun on the Cotswolds’ nor `Ariel in Mayfair’ was a merely popular book:  each, I maintain, was a good book.  I don’t go so far as to say that the one had `more of natural magic, more of British woodland glamour, more of the sheer joy of life in it than anything since “As You Like It,”’ though Higsby went so far as this in the Daily Chronicle; nor can I allow the claim made for the other by Grigsby in the Globe that `for pungency of satire there has been nothing like it since Swift laid down his pen, and for sheer sweetness and tenderness of feeling—­ex forti dulcedo—­nothing to be mentioned in the same breath with it since the lute fell from the tired hand of Theocritus.’  These were foolish exaggerations.  But one must not condemn a thing because it has been over-praised.  Maltby’s `Ariel’ was a delicate, brilliant work; and Braxton’s `Faun,’ crude though it was in many ways, had yet a genuine power and beauty.  This is not a mere impression remembered from early youth.  It is the reasoned and seasoned judgment of middle age.  Both books have been out of print for many years; but I secured a second-hand copy of each not long ago, and found them well worth reading again.

From the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the outbreak of the war, current literature did not suffer from any lack of fauns.  But when Braxton’s first book appeared fauns had still an air of novelty about them.  We had not yet tired of them and their hoofs and their slanting eyes and their way of coming suddenly out of woods to wean quiet English villages from respectability.  We did tire later.  But Braxton’s faun, even now, seems to me an admirable specimen of his class—­wild and weird, earthy, goat-like, almost convincing.  And I find myself convinced altogether by Braxton’s rustics.  I admit that I do not know much about rustics, except from novels.  But I plead that the little I do know about them by personal observation does not confirm much of what the many novelists have taught me.  I plead also that Braxton may well have been right about the rustics of Gloucestershire because he was (as so many interviewers recorded of him in his brief heyday) the son of a yeoman farmer at Far Oakridge, and his boyhood had been divided between that village and the Grammar School at Stroud.  Not long ago I happened to be staying in the neighbourhood, and came across several villagers who might, I assure you, have stepped straight out of Braxton’s pages.  For that matter, Braxton himself, whom I met often in the spring of ’95, might have stepped straight out of his own pages.

I am guilty of having wished he would step straight back into them.  He was a very surly fellow, very rugged and gruff.  He was the antithesis of pleasant little Maltby.  I used to think that perhaps he would have been less unamiable if success had come to him earlier.  He was thirty years old when his book was published, and had had a very hard time since coming to London at the age of sixteen.  Little Maltby was a year older, and so had waited a year longer; but then, he had waited under a comfortable roof at Twickenham, emerging into the metropolis for no grimmer purpose than to sit and watch the fashionable riders and walkers in Rotten Row, and then going home to write a little, or to play lawn-tennis with the young ladies of Twickenham.  He had been the only child of his parents (neither of whom, alas, survived to take pleasure in their darling’s sudden fame).  He had now migrated from Twickenham and taken rooms in Ryder Street.  Had he ever shared with Braxton the bread of adversity—­but no, I think he would in any case have been pleasant.  And conversely I cannot imagine that Braxton would in any case have been so.

No one seeing the two rivals together, no one meeting them at Mr. Hookworth’s famous luncheon parties in the Authors’ Club, or at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s not less famous garden parties in Greville Place, would have supposed off-hand that the pair had a single point in common.  Dapper little Maltby—­blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square blue jaw and his square sallow forehead.  Canary and crow.  Maltby had a perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk.  Braxton was usually silent, but very well worth listening to whenever he did croak.  He had distinction, I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt himself to surroundings.  He stood out.  He awed Mr. Hookworth.  Ladies were always asking one another, rather intently, what they thought of him.  One could imagine that Mr. Foster-Dugdale, had he come home from the City to attend the garden parties, might have regarded him as one from whom Mrs. Foster-Dugdale should be shielded.  But the casual observer of Braxton and Maltby at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere was wrong in supposing that the two were totally unlike.  He overlooked one simple and obvious point.  This was that he had met them both at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere.  Wherever they were invited, there certainly, there punctually, they would be.  They were both of them gluttons for the fruits and signs of their success.

Interviewers and photographers had as little reason as had hostesses to complain of two men so earnestly and assiduously `on the make’ as Maltby and Braxton.  Maltby, for all his sparkle, was earnest; Braxton, for all his arrogance, assiduous.

`A Faun on the Cotswolds’ had no more eager eulogist than the author of `Ariel in Mayfair.’  When any one praised his work, Maltby would lightly disparage it in comparison with Braxton’s—­`Ah, if I could write like that!’ Maltby won golden opinions in this way.  Braxton, on the other hand, would let slip no opportunity for sneering at Maltby’s work—­`gimcrack,’ as he called it.  This was not good for Maltby.  Different men, different methods.

`The Rape of the Lock’ was `gimcrack,’ if you care to call it so; but it was a delicate, brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby’s `Ariel.’  Absurd to compare Maltby with Pope?  I am not so sure.  I have read `Ariel,’ but have never read `The Rape of the Lock.’  Braxton’s opprobrious term for `Ariel’ may not, however, have been due to jealousy alone.  Braxton had imagination, and his rival did not soar above fancy.  But the point is that Maltby’s fancifulness went far and well.  In telling how Ariel re-embodied himself from thin air, leased a small house in Chesterfield Street, was presented at a Levee, played the part of good fairy in a matter of true love not running smooth, and worked meanwhile all manner of amusing changes among the aristocracy before he vanished again, Maltby showed a very pretty range of ingenuity.  In one respect, his work was a more surprising achievement than Braxton’s.  For whereas Braxton had been born and bred among his rustics, Maltby knew his aristocrats only through Thackeray, through the photographs and paragraphs in the newspapers, and through those passionate excursions of his to Rotten Row.  Yet I found his aristocrats as convincing as Braxton’s rustics.  It is true that I may have been convinced wrongly.  That is a point which I could settle only by experience.  I shift my ground, claiming for Maltby’s aristocrats just this:  that they pleased me very much.

Aristocrats, when they are presented solely through a novelist’s sense of beauty, do not satisfy us.  They may be as beautiful as all that, but, for fear of thinking ourselves snobbish, we won’t believe it.  We do believe it, however, and revel in it, when the novelist saves his face and ours by a pervading irony in the treatment of what he loves.  The irony must, mark you, be pervading and obvious.  Disraeli’s great ladies and lords won’t do, for his irony was but latent in his homage, and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound to scoff.  All’s well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony.  Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of veneration for those fools.

Maltby, too, in his measure, enabled us to reel thus.  That is mainly why, before the end of April, his publisher was in a position to state that `the Seventh Large Impression of “Ariel in Mayfair” is almost exhausted.’  Let it be put to our credit, however, that at the same moment Braxton’s publisher had `the honour to inform the public that an Eighth Large Impression of “A Faun on the Cotswolds” is in instant preparation.’

Indeed, it seemed impossible for either author to outvie the other in success and glory.  Week in, week out, you saw cancelled either’s every momentary advantage.  A neck-and-neck race.  As thus:—­Maltby appears as a Celebrity At Home in the World (Tuesday).  Ha!  No, Vanity Fair (Wednesday) has a perfect presentment of Braxton by `Spy.’  Neck-and-neck!  No, Vanity Fair says `the subject of next week’s cartoon will be Mr. Hilary Maltby.’  Maltby wins!  No, next week Braxton’s in the World.

Throughout May I kept, as it were, my eyes glued to my field-glasses.  On the first Monday in June I saw that which drew from me a hoarse ejaculation.

Let me explain that always on Monday mornings at this time of year, when I opened my daily paper, I looked with respectful interest to see what bevy of the great world had been entertained since Saturday at Keeb Hall.  The list was always august and inspiring.  Statecraft and Diplomacy were well threaded there with mere Lineage and mere Beauty, with Royalty sometimes, with mere Wealth never, with privileged Genius now and then.  A noble composition always.  It was said that the Duke of Hertfordshire cared for nothing but his collection of birds’ eggs, and that the collections of guests at Keeb were formed entirely by his young Duchess.  It was said that he had climbed trees in every corner of every continent.  The Duchess’ hobby was easier.  She sat aloft and beckoned desirable specimens up.

The list published on that first Monday in June began ordinarily enough, began with the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and the Portuguese Minister.  Then came the Duke and Duchess of Mull, followed by four lesser Peers (two of them Proconsuls, however) with their Peeresses, three Peers without their Peeresses, four Peeresses without their Peers, and a dozen bearers of courtesy-titles with or without their wives or husbands.  The rear was brought up by `Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. Henry Chaplin, and Mr. Hilary Maltby.’

Youth tends to look at the darker side of things.  I confess that my first thought was for Braxton.

I forgave and forgot his faults of manner.  Youth is generous.  It does not criticise a strong man stricken.

And anon, so habituated was I to the parity of those two strivers, I conceived that there might be some mistake.  Daily newspapers are printed in a hurry.  Might not `Henry Chaplin’ be a typographical error for `Stephen Braxton’?  I went out and bought another newspaper.  But Mr. Chaplin’s name was in that too.

`Patience!’ I said to myself. `Braxton crouches only to spring.  He will be at Keeb Hall on Saturday next.’

My mind was free now to dwell with pleasure on Maltby’s great achievement.  I thought of writing to congratulate him, but feared this might be in bad taste.  I did, however, write asking him to lunch with me.  He did not answer my letter.  I was, therefore, all the more sorry, next Monday, at not finding `and Mr. Stephen Braxton’ in Keeb’s week-end catalogue.

A few days later I met Mr. Hookworth.  He mentioned that Stephen Braxton had left town. `He has taken,’ said Hookworth, `a delightful bungalow on the east coast.  He has gone there to work.’  He added that he had a great liking for Braxton—­`a man utterly UNSPOILT.’  I inferred that he, too, had written to Maltby and received no answer.

That butterfly did not, however, appear to be hovering from flower to flower in the parterres of rank and fashion.  In the daily lists of guests at dinners, receptions, dances, balls, the name of Maltby figured never.  Maltby had not caught on.

Presently I heard that he, too, had left town.  I gathered that he had gone quite early in June—­quite soon after Keeb.  Nobody seemed to know where he was.  My own theory was that he had taken a delightful bungalow on the west coast, to balance Braxton.  Anyhow, the parity of the two strivers was now somewhat re-established.

In point of fact, the disparity had been less than I supposed.  While Maltby was at Keeb, there Braxton was also—­in a sense….  It was a strange story.  I did not hear it at the time.  Nobody did.  I heard it seventeen years later.  I heard it in Lucca.

Little Lucca I found so enchanting that, though I had only a day or two to spare, I stayed there a whole month.  I formed the habit of walking, every morning, round that high-pitched path which girdles Lucca, that wide and tree-shaded path from which one looks down over the city wall at the fertile plains beneath Lucca.  There were never many people there; but the few who did come came daily, so that I grew to like seeing them and took a mild personal interest in them.

One of them was an old lady in a wheeled chair.  She was not less than seventy years old, and might or might not have once been beautiful.  Her chair was slowly propelled by an Italian woman.  She herself was obviously Italian.  Not so, however, the little gentleman who walked assiduously beside her.  Him I guessed to be English.  He was a very stout little gentleman, with gleaming spectacles and a full blond beard, and he seemed to radiate cheerfulness.  I thought at first that he might be the old lady’s resident physician; but no, there was something subtly un-professional about him:  I became sure that his constancy was gratuitous, and his radiance real.  And one day, I know not how, there dawned on me a suspicion that he was—­who?—­some one I had known—­some writer—­what’s-his-name—­something with an M—­Maltby—­ Hilary Maltby of the long-ago!

At sight of him on the morrow this suspicion hardened almost to certainty.  I wished I could meet him alone and ask him if I were not right, and what he had been doing all these years, and why he had left England.  He was always with the old lady.  It was only on my last day in Lucca that my chance came.

I had just lunched, and was seated on a comfortable bench outside my hotel, with a cup of coffee on the table before me, gazing across the faded old sunny piazza and wondering what to do with my last afternoon.  It was then that I espied yonder the back of the putative Maltby.  I hastened forth to him.  He was buying some pink roses, a great bunch of them, from a market-woman under an umbrella.  He looked very blank, he flushed greatly, when I ventured to accost him.  He admitted that his name was Hilary Maltby.  I told him my own name, and by degrees he remembered me.  He apologised for his confusion.  He explained that he had not talked English, had not talked to an Englishman, `for—­oh, hundreds of years.’  He said that he had, in the course of his long residence in Lucca, seen two or three people whom he had known in England, but that none of them had recognised him.  He accepted (but as though he were embarking on the oddest adventure in the world) my invitation that he should come and sit down and take coffee with me.  He laughed with pleasure and surprise at finding that he could still speak his native tongue quite fluently and idiomatically. `I know absolutely nothing,’ he said, `about England nowadays—­except from stray references to it in the Corriere della Sera; nor did he show the faintest desire that I should enlighten him. `England,’ he mused, `—­how it all comes back to me!’

`But not you to it?’

`Ah, no indeed,’ he said gravely, looking at the roses which he had laid carefully on the marble table. `I am the happiest of men.’

He sipped his coffee, and stared out across the piazza, out beyond it into the past.

`I am the happiest of men,’ he repeated.  I plied him with the spur of silence.

`And I owe it all to having once yielded to a bad impulse.  Absurd, the threads our destinies hang on!’

Again I plied him with that spur.  As it seemed not to prick him, I repeated the words he had last spoken. `For instance?’ I added.

`Take,’ he said, `a certain evening in the spring of ’95.  If, on that evening, the Duchess of Hertfordshire had had a bad cold; or if she had decided that it wouldn’t be rather interesting to go on to that party—­that Annual Soiree, I think it was—­of the Inkwomen’s Club; or again—­to go a step further back—­if she hadn’t ever written that one little poem, and if it hadn’t been printed in “The Gentlewoman,” and if the Inkwomen’s committee hadn’t instantly and unanimously elected her an Honorary Vice-President because of that one little poem; or if—well, if a million-and-one utterly irrelevant things hadn’t happened, don’t-you-know, I shouldn’t be here….  I might be there,’ he smiled, with a vague gesture indicating England.

`Suppose,’ he went on, `I hadn’t been invited to that Annual Soiree; or suppose that other fellow,—­

`Braxton?’ I suggested.  I had remembered Braxton at the moment of recognising Maltby.

`Suppose he hadn’t been asked….  But of course we both were.  It happened that I was the first to be presented to the Duchess….  It was a great moment.  I hoped I should keep my head.  She wore a tiara.  I had often seen women in tiaras, at the Opera.  But I had never talked to a woman in a tiara.  Tiaras were symbols to me.  Eyes are just a human feature.  I fixed mine on the Duchess’s.  I kept my head by not looking at hers.  I behaved as one human being to another.  She seemed very intelligent.  We got on very well.  Presently she asked whether I should think her very bold if she said how perfectly divine she thought my book.  I said something about doing my best, and asked with animation whether she had read “A Faun on the Cotswolds.”  She had.  She said it was too wonderful, she said it was too great.  If she hadn’t been a Duchess, I might have thought her slightly hysterical.  Her innate good-sense quickly reasserted itself.  She used her great power.  With a wave of her magic wand she turned into a fact the glittering possibility that had haunted me.  She asked me down to Keeb.

`She seemed very pleased that I would come.  Was I, by any chance, free on Saturday week?  She hoped there would be some amusing people to meet me.  Could I come by the 3.30?  It was only an hour-and-a-quarter from Victoria.  On Saturday there were always compartments reserved for people coming to Keeb by the 3.30.  She hoped I would bring my bicycle with me.  She hoped I wouldn’t find it very dull.  She hoped I wouldn’t forget to come.  She said how lovely it must be to spend one’s life among clever people.  She supposed I knew everybody here to-night.  She asked me to tell her who everybody was.  She asked who was the tall, dark man, over there.  I told her it was Stephen Braxton.  She said they had promised to introduce her to him.  She added that he looked rather wonderful.  “Oh, he is, very,” I assured her.  She turned to me with a sudden appeal:  “Do you think, if I took my courage in both hands and asked him, he’d care to come to Keeb?”