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扫描下载二维码Cakes and Ale by W. Somerset Maugham,
from Project Gutenberg Canada
* A Project Gutenberg Canada Ebook *
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Title: Cakes and Ale
Author: Maugham, W. Somerset [William Somerset] ()
Date of first publication: 1930
Edition used as base for this ebook:
New York: Triangle Books, January 1941
[second printing of the Triangle Books edition, apparently
printed from the plates of the 1930 Doubleday edition]
Date first posted: 8 August 2017
Date last updated: 8 August 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1458
This ebook was produced by
Al Haines, Cindy Beyer, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
Publisher's Note:
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its
layout, and have added a table of contents.
Cakes and Ale
by W. Somerset Maugham
CAKES AND ALE
I have noticed that when someone asks for you on the telephone and,
finding you out, leaves a message begging you to call him up the moment
you come in, and it's important, the matter is more often important to
him than to you. When it comes to making you a present or doing you a
favour most people are able to hold their impatience within reasonable
bounds. So when I got back to my lodgings with just enough time to have
a drink, a cigarette, and to read my paper before dressing for dinner,
and was told by Miss Fellows, my landlady, that Mr. Alroy Kear wished me
to ring him up at once, I felt that I could safely ignore his request.
"Is that the writer?" she asked me.
She gave the telephone a friendly glance.
"Shall I get him?"
"No, thank you."
"What shall I say if he rings again?"
"Ask him to leave a message."
"Very good, sir."
She pursed her lips. She took the empty siphon, swept the room with a
look to see that it was tidy, and went out. Miss Fellows was a great
novel reader. I was sure that she had read all Roy's books. Her
disapproval of my casualness suggested that she had read them with
admiration. When I got home again, I found a note in her bold, legible
writing on the sideboard.
Mr. Kear rang up twice. Can you lunch with him to-morrow? If
not what day will suit you?
I raised my eyebrows. I had not seen Roy for three months and then only
for a fe he had been very friendly, he always was,
and when we separated he had expressed his hearty regret that we met so
"London's awful," he said. "One never has time to see any of the people
one wants to. Let's lunch together one day next week, shall we?"
"I'd like to," I replied.
"I'll look at my book when I get home and ring you up."
"All right."
I had not known Roy for twenty years without learning that he always
kept in the upper left-hand pocket of his waistcoat the little book in
which he put
I was therefore not surprised when I
heard from him no further. It was impossible for me now to persuade
myself that this urgent desire of his to dispense hospitality was
disinterested. As I smoked a pipe before going to bed I turned over in
my mind the possible reasons for which Roy might want me to lunch with
him. It might be that an admirer of his had pestered him to introduce me
to her or that an American editor, in London for a few days, had desired
Roy to put
but I could not do my old friend the
injustice of supposing him so barren of devices as not to be able to
cope with such a situation. Besides, he told me to choose my own day, so
it could hardly be that he wished me to meet anyone else.
Than Roy no one could show a more genuine cordiality to a fellow
novelist whose name was on everybody's lips, but no one could more
genially turn a cold shoulder on him when idleness, failure, or someone
else's success had cast a shade on his notoriety. The writer has his ups
and downs, and I was but too conscious that at the moment I was not in
the public eye. It was obvious that I might have found excuses without
affront to refuse Roy's invitation, though he was a determined fellow
and if he was resolved for purposes of his own to see me, I well knew
that nothing short of a downright "go to hell" would check his
but I was beset by curiosity. I had also a considerable
affection for Roy.
I had watched with admiration his rise in the world of letters. His
career might well have served as a model for any young man entering upon
the pursuit of literature. I could think of no one among my
contemporaries who had achieved so considerable a position on so little
talent. This, like the wise man's daily dose of Bemax, might have gone
into a heaped-up tablespoon. He was perfectly aware of it, and it must
have seemed to him sometimes little short of a miracle that he had been
able with it to compose already some thirty books. I cannot but think
that he saw the white light of revelation when first he read that
Charles Dickens in an after-dinner speech had stated that genius was an
infinite capacity for taking pains. He pondered the saying. If that was
all, he must have told himself, he could be a
when the excited reviewer of a lady's paper, writing a notice of one of
his works, used the word (and of late the critics have been doing it
with agreeable frequency) he must have sighed with the satisfaction of
one who after long hours of toil has completed a cross-word puzzle. No
one who for years had observed his indefatigable industry could deny
that at all events he deserved to be a genius.
Roy started with certain advantages. He was the only son of a civil
servant who after being Colonial Secretary for many years in Hong-Kong
ended his career as Governor of Jamaica. When you looked up Alroy Kear
in the serried pages of Who's Who you saw o. s. of Sir Raymond Kear,
K. C. M. G., K.C.V.O. q.v. and of Emily, y.d. of the late Major
General Percy Camperdown, Indian Army. He was educated at Winchester and
at New College, Oxford. He was president of the Union and but for an
unfortunate attack of measles might very well have got his rowing blue.
His academic career was respectable rather than showy, and he left the
university without a debt in the world. Roy was even then of a thrifty
habit, without any inclination to unprofitable expense, and he was a
good son. He knew that it had been a sacrifice to his parents to give
him so costly an education. His father, having retired, lived in an
unpretentious, but not mean, house near Stroud in Gloucestershire, but
at intervals went to London to attend official dinners connected with
the colonies he had administered, and on these occasions was in the
habit of visiting the Athenaeum, of which he was a member. It was through
an old crony at this club that he was able to get his son, when he came
down from Oxford, appointed private secretary to a politician who, after
having made a fool of himself as Secretary of State in two Conservative
administrations, had been rewarded with a peerage. This gave Roy a
chance to become acquainted at an early age with the great world. He
made good use of his opportunities. You will never find in his works any
of the solecisms that disfigure the productions of those who have
studied the upper circles of society only in the pages of the
illustrated papers. He knew exactly how dukes spoke to one another, and
the proper way they should be addressed respectively by a member of
Parliament, an attorney, a book-maker, and a valet. There is something
captivating in the jauntiness with which in his early novels he handles
viceroys, ambassadors, prime ministers, royalties, and great ladies. He
is friendly without being patronizing and familiar without being
impertinent. He does not let you forget their rank, but shares with you
his comfortable feeling that they are of the same flesh as you and I. I
always think it a pity that, fashion having decided that the doings of
the aristocracy are no longer a proper subject for serious fiction, Roy,
always keenly sensitive to the tendency of the age, should in his later
novels have confined himself to the spiritual conflicts of solicitors,
chartered accountants, and produce brokers. He does not move in these
circles with his old assurance.
I knew him first soon after he resigned his secretaryship to devote
himself exclusively to literature, and he was then a fine, upstanding
young man, six feet high in his stockinged feet and of an athletic
build, with broad shoulders and a confident carriage. He was not
handsome, but in a manly way agreeable to look at, with wide blue frank
eyes and curly hair his nose was rather short and
broad, his chin square. He looked honest, clean, and healthy. He was
something of an athlete. No one who has read in his early books the
descriptions of a run with the hounds, so vivid, and so accurate, can
doubt that he wrote from and until quite lately he
was willing now and then to desert his desk for a day's hunting. He
published his first novel at the period when men of letters, to show
their virility, drank beer and played cricket, and for some years there
was seldom a literary eleven in which his name did not figure. This
particular school, I hardly know why, has lost its bravery, their books
are neglected, and cricketers though they have remained, they find
difficulty in placing their articles. Roy ceased playing cricket a good
many years ago and he has developed a fine taste for claret.
Roy was very modest about his first novel. It was short, neatly written,
and, as is everything he has produced since, in perfect taste. He sent
it with a pleasant letter to all the leading writers of the day, and in
this he told each one how greatly he admired his works, how much he had
learned from his study of them, and how ardently he aspired to follow,
albeit at a humble distance, the trail his correspondent had blazed. He
laid his book at the feet of a great artist as the tribute of a young
man entering upon the profession of letters to one whom he would always
look up to as his master. Deprecatingly, fully conscious of his audacity
in asking so busy a man to waste his time on a neophyte's puny effort,
he begged for criticism and guidance. Few of the replies were
perfunctory. The authors he wrote to, flattered by his praise, answered
at length. The many of them asked him to luncheon.
They could not fail to be charmed by his frankness and warmed by his
enthusiasm. He asked for their advice with a humility that was touching
and promised to act upon it with a sincerity that was impressive. Here,
they felt, was someone worth taking a little trouble over.
His novel had a considerable success. It made him many friends in
literary circles and in a very short while you could not go to a tea
party in Bloomsbury, Campden Hill, or Westminster without finding him
handing round bread and butter or disembarrassing an elderly lady of an
empty cup. He was so young, so bluff, so gay, he laughed so merrily at
other people's jokes that no one could help liking him. He joined dining
clubs where in the basement of a hotel in Victoria Street or Holborn men
of letters, young barristers, and ladies in Liberty silks and strings of
beads ate a three-and-sixpenny dinner and discussed art and literature.
It was soon discovered that he had a pretty gift for after-dinner
speaking. He was so pleasant that his fellow writers, his rivals and
contemporaries, forgave him even the fact that he was a gentleman. He
was generous in his praise of their fledgeling works, and when they sent
him manuscripts to criticize could never find a thing amiss. They
thought him not only a good sort, but a sound judge.
He wrote a second novel. He took great pains with it and he profited by
the advice his elders in the craft had given him. It was only just that
more than one should at his request write a review for a paper with
whose editor Roy had got into touch and only natural that the review
should be flattering. His second novel was successful, but not so
successful as to arouse the umbrageous susceptibilities of his
competitors. In fact it confirmed them in their suspicions that he would
never set the Thames on fire. He was no side, or
anything like that: they were quite content to give a leg up to a man
who would never climb so high as to be an obstacle to themselves. I know
some who smile bitterly now when they reflect on the mistake they made.
But when they say that he is swollen-headed they err. Roy has never lost
the modesty which in his youth was his most engaging trait.
"I know I'm not a great novelist," he will tell you. "When I compare
myself with the giants I simply don't exist. I used to think that one
day I should write a really great novel, but I've long ceased even to
hope for that. All I want people to say is that I do my best. I do work.
I never let anything slipshod get past me. I think I can tell a good
story and I can create characters that ring true. And after all the
proof of the pudding is in the eating: The Eye of the Needle sold
thirty-five thousand in England and eighty thousand in America, and for
the serial rights of my next book I've got the biggest terms I've ever
And what, after all, can it be other than modesty that makes him even
now write to the reviewers of his books, thanking them for their praise,
and ask them to luncheon? Nay, more: when someone has written a stinging
criticism and Roy, especially since his reputation became so great, has
had to put up with some very virulent abuse, he does not, like most of
us, shrug his shoulders, fling a mental insult at the ruffian who does
not like our work, and
he writes a long letter to
his critic, telling him that he is very sorry he thought his book bad,
but his review was so interesting in itself, and if he might venture to
say so, showed so much critical sense and so much feeling for words,
that he felt bound to write to him. No one is more anxious to improve
himself than he and he hopes he is still capable of learning. He does
not want to be a bore, but if the critic has nothing to do on Wednesday
or Friday will he come and lunch at the Savoy and tell him why exactly
he thought his book so bad? No one can order a lunch better than Roy,
and generally by the time the critic has eaten half a dozen oysters and
a cut from a saddle of baby lamb, he has eaten his words too. It is only
poetic justice that when Roy's next novel comes out the critic should
see in the new work a very great advance.
One of the difficulties that a man has to cope with as he goes through
life is what to do about the persons with whom he has once been intimate
and whose interest for him has in due course subsided. If both parties
remain in a modest station the break comes about naturally, and no ill
feeling subsists, but if one of them achieves eminence the position is
awkward. He makes a multitude of new friends, but the old ones are
he has a thousand claims on his time, but they feel that
they have the first right to it. Unless he is at their beck and call
they sigh and with a shrug of the shoulders say:
"Ah, well, I suppose you're like everyone else. I must expect to be
dropped now that you're a success."
That of course is what he would like to do if he had the courage. For
the most part he hasn't. He weakly accepts an invitation to supper on
Sunday evening. The cold roast beef is frozen and comes from Australia
and was over- and the burgundy--ah, why will they
call it burgundy? Have they never been to Beaune and stayed at the H?tel
de la Poste? Of course it is grand to talk of the good old days when you
shared a crust of bread in a garret together, but it is a little
disconcerting when you reflect how near to a garret is the room you are
sitting in. You feel ill at ease when your friend tells you that his
books don't sell and that he can't pla the managers
won't even read his plays, and when he compares them with some of the
stuff that's put on (here he fixes you with an accusing eye) it really
does seem a bit hard. You are embarrassed and you look away. You
exaggerate the failures you have had in order that he may realize that
life has its hardships for you too. You refer to your work in the most
disparaging way you can and are a trifle taken aback to find that your
host's opinion of it is the same as yours. You speak of the fickleness
of the public so that he may comfort himself by thinking that your
popularity cannot last. He is a friendly but severe critic.
"I haven't read your last book," he says, "but I read the one before.
I've forgotten its name."
You tell him.
"I was rather disappointed in it. I didn't think it was quite so good as
some of the things you've done. Of course you know which my favourite
And you, having suffered from other hands than his, answer at once with
the name of the first you were twenty then, and it
was crude and ingenuous, and on every page was written your
inexperience.
"You'll never do anything so good as that," he says heartily, and you
feel that your whole career has been a long decadence from that one
happy hit. "I always think you've never quite fulfilled the promise
you showed then."
The gas fire roasts your feet, but your hands are icy. You look at your
wrist watch surreptitiously and wonder whether your old friend would
think it offensive if you took your leave as early as ten. You have told
your car to wait round the corner so that it should not stand outside
the door and by its magnificence affront his poverty, but at the door he
"You'll find a bus at the bottom of the street. I'll just walk down with
Panic seizes you and you confess that you have a car. He finds it very
odd that the chauffeur should wait round the corner. You answer that
this is one of his idiosyncrasies. When you reach it your friend looks
at it with tolerant superiority. You nervously ask him to dinner with
you one day. You promise to write to him and you drive away wondering
whether when he comes he will think you are swanking if you ask him to
Claridge's or mean if you suggest Soho.
Roy Kear suffered from none of these tribulations. It sounds a little
brutal to say that when he had got all he could out of people he dropped
but it would take so long to put the matter more delicately, and
would need so subtle an adjustment of hints, half-tones, and allusions,
playful or tender, that such being at bottom the fact, I think it as
well to leave it at that. Most of us when we do a caddish thing harbour
resentment against the person we have done it to, but Roy's heart,
always in the right place, never permitted him such pettiness. He could
use a man very shabbily without afterward bearing him the slightest
"Poor old Smith," he would say. "H I'm so fond of him. Pity
he's growing so bitter. I wish one could do something for him. No, I
haven t seen him for years. It's no good trying to keep up old
friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of
people, and the only thing is to face it."
But if he ran across Smith at some gathering like the private view of
the Royal Academy no one could be more cordial. He wrung his hand and
told him how delighted he was to see him. His face beamed. He shed good
fellowship as the kindly sun its rays. Smith rejoiced in the glow of
this wonderful vitality and it was damned decent of Roy to say he'd give
his eye-teeth to have written a book half as good as Smith's last. On
the other hand, if Roy thought Smith had not seen him, he looked the
but Smith had seen him, and Smith resented being cut. Smith
was very acid. He said that in the old days Roy had been glad enough to
share a steak with him in a shabby restaurant and spend a month's
holiday in a fisherman's cottage at St. Ives. Smith said that Roy was a
time server. He said he was a snob. He said he was a humbug.
Smith was wrong here. The most shining characteristic of Alroy Kear was
his sincerity. No one can be a humbug for five-and-twenty years.
Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can
it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit.
It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practi it
is a whole-time job. It needs a although Roy
laughed so much I never thought he had a very quick sense of humour, and
I am quite sure that he was incapable of cynicism. Though I have
finished few of his novels, I have begun a good many, and to my mind his
sincerity is stamped on every one of their multitudinous pages. This is
clearly the chief ground of his stable popularity. Roy has always
sincerely believed what everyone else believed at the moment. When he
wrote novels about the aristocracy he sincerely believed that its
members were dissipated and immoral, and yet had a certain nobility and
an innate aptitude for governing the British E when later he wrote
of the middle classes he sincerely believed that they were the backbone
of the country. His villains have always been villainous, his heroes
heroic, and his maidens chaste.
When Roy asked the author of a flattering review to lunch it was because
he was sincerely grateful to him for his good opinion, and when he asked
the author of an unflattering one it was because he was sincerely
concerned to improve himself. When unknown admirers from Texas or
western Australia came to London it was not only to cultivate his public
that he took them to the National Gallery, it was because he was
sincerely anxious to observe their reactions to art. You had only to
hear him lecture to be convinced of his sincerity.
When he stood on the platform, in evening dress admirably worn, or in a
loose, much used but perfectly cut, lounge suit if it better fitted the
occasion, and faced his audience seriously, frankly, but with an
engaging diffidence you could not but realize that he was giving himself
up to his task with complete earnestness. Though now and then he
pretended to be at a loss for a word, it was only to make it more
effective when he uttered it. His voice was full and manly. He told a
story well. He was never dull. He was fond of lecturing upon the younger
writers of England and America, and he explained their merits to his
audience with an enthusiasm that attested his generosity. Perhaps he
told almost too much, for when you had heard his lecture you felt that
you really knew all you wanted to about them and it was quite
unnecessary to read their books. I suppose that is why when Roy had
lectured in some provincial town not a single copy of the books of the
authors he had spoken of was ever asked for, but there was always a run
on his own. His energy was prodigious. Not only did he make successful
tours of the United States, but he lectured up and down Great Britain.
No club was so small, no society for the self-improvement of its members
so insignificant, that Roy disdained to give it an hour of his time. Now
and then he revised his lectures and issued them in neat little books.
Most people who are interested in these things have at least looked
through the works entitled Modern Novelists, Russian Fiction, and
Some Writers; and few can deny that they exhibit a real feeling for
literature and a charming personality.
But this by no means exhausted his activities. He was an active member
of the organizations that have been founded to further the interests of
authors or to alleviate their hard lot when sickness or old age has
brought them to penury. He was always willing to give his help when
matters of copyright were the subject of legislation and he was never
unprepared to take his place in those missions to a foreign country
which are devised to establish amicable relations between writers of
different nationalities. He could be counted on to reply for literature
at a public dinner and he was invariably on the reception committee
formed to give a proper welcome to a literary celebrity from overseas.
No bazaar lacked an autographed copy of at least one of his books. He
never refused to grant an interview. He justly said that no one knew
better than he the hardships of the author's trade and if he could help
a struggling journalist to earn a few guineas by having a pleasant chat
with him he had not the inhumanity to refuse. He generally asked his
interviewer to luncheon and seldom failed to make a good impression on
him. The only stipulation he made was that he should see the article
before it was published. He was never impatient with the persons who
call up the celebrated on the telephone at inconvenient moments to ask
them for the information of newspaper readers whether they believe in
God or what they eat for breakfast. He figured in every symposium and
the public knew what he thought of prohibition, vegetarianism, jazz,
garlic, exercise, marriage, politics, and the place of women in the
His views on marriage were abstract, for he had successfully evaded the
state which so many artists have found difficult to reconcile with the
arduous pursuit of their calling. It was generally known that he had for
some years cherished a hopeless passion for a married woman of rank, and
though he never spoke of her but with chivalrous admiration, it was
understood that she had treated him with harshness. The novels of his
middle period reflected in their unwonted bitterness the strain to which
he had been put. The anguish of spirit he had passed through then
enabled him without offense to elude the advances of ladies of little
reputation, frayed ornaments of a hectic circle, who were willing to
exchange an uncertain present for the security of marriage with a
successful novelist. When he saw in their bright eyes the shadow of the
registry office he told them that the memory of his one great love would
always prevent him from forming any permanent tie. His quixotry might
exasperate, but could not affront them. He sighed a little when he
reflected that he must be for ever denied the joys of domesticity and
the satisfaction of parenthood, but it was a sacrifice that he was
prepared to make not only to his ideal, but also to the possible partner
of his joys. He had noticed that people really do not want to be
bothered with the wives of authors and painters. The artist who insisted
on taking his wife wherever he went only made himself a nuisance and
indeed was in consequence often not asked to places he would have liked
and if he left his wife at home, he was on his return exposed
to recriminations that shattered the repose so essential for him to do
the best that was in him. Alroy Kear was a bachelor and now at fifty was
likely to remain one.
He was an example of what an author can do, and to what heights he can
rise, by industry, common-sense, honesty, and the efficient combination
of means and ends. He was a good fellow and none but a cross-grained
carper could grudge him his success. I felt that to fall asleep with his
image in my mind would insure me a good night. I scribbled a note to
Miss Fellows, knocked the ashes out of my pipe, put out the light in my
sitting room, and went to bed.
When I rang for my letters and the papers next morning a message was
delivered to me, in answer to my note to Miss Fellows, that Mr. Alroy
Kear expected me at one-fifteen at his club in St. James's S so a
little before one I strolled round to my own and had the cocktail, which
I was pretty sure Roy would not offer me. Then I walked down St. James's
Street, looking idly at the shop windows, and since I had still a few
minutes to spare (I did not want to keep my appointment too punctually)
I went into Christie's to see if there was anything I liked the look of.
The auction had already begun and a group of dark, small men were
passing round to one another pieces of Victorian silver, while the
auctioneer, following their gestures with bored eyes, muttered in a
drone: "Ten shillings offered, eleven, eleven and six"... It was a
fine day, early in June, and the air in King Street was bright. It made
the pictures on the walls of Christie's look very dingy. I went out. The
people in the street walked with a kind of nonchalance, as though the
ease of the day had entered into their souls and in the midst of their
affairs they had a sudden and surprised inclination to stop and look at
the picture of life.
Roy's club was sedate. In the ante-chamber were only an ancient porter
and I had a sudden and melancholy feeling that the members
were all attending the funeral of the head waiter. The page, when I had
uttered Roy's name, led me into an empty passage to leave my hat and
stick and then into an empty hall hung with life-sized portraits of
Victorian statesmen. Roy got up from a leather sofa and warmly greeted
"Shall we go straight up?" he said.
I was right in thinking that he would not offer me a cocktail and I
commended my prudence. He led me up a noble flight of heavily carpeted
stairs, and we pass we entered the strangers'
dining room, and we were its only occupants. It was a room of some size,
very clean and white, with an Adam window. We sat down by it and a
demure waiter handed us the bill of fare. Beef, mutton and lamb, cold
salmon, apple tart, rhubarb tart, gooseberry tart. As my eye travelled
down the inevitable list I sighed as I thought of the restaurants round
the corner where there was French cooking, the clatter of life, and
pretty painted women in summer frocks.
"I can recommend the veal-and-ham pie," said Roy.
"All right."
"I'll mix the salad myself," he told the waiter in an off-hand and yet
commanding way, and then, casting his eye once more on the bill of fare,
generously: "And what about some asparagus to follow?"
"That would be very nice."
His manner grew a trifle grander.
"Asparagus for two and tell the chef to choose them himself. Now what
would you like to drink? What do you say to a bottle of hock? We rather
fancy our hock here."
When I had agreed to this he told the waiter to call the wine steward. I
could not but admire the authoritative and yet perfectly polite manner
in which he gave his orders. You felt that thus would a well-bred king
send for one of his field marshals. The wine steward, portly in black,
with the silver chain of his office round his neck, bustled in with the
wine list in his hand. Roy nodded to him with curt familiarity.
"Hulloa, Armstrong, we want some of the Liebfraumilch, the '21."
"Very good, sir."
"How's it holding up? Pretty well? We shan't be able to get any more of
it, you know."
"I'm afraid not, sir."
"Well, it's no good meeting trouble halfway, is it, Armstrong?"
Roy smiled at the steward with breezy cordiality. The steward saw from
his long experience of members that the remark needed an answer.
"No, sir."
Roy laughed and his eye sought mine. Quite a character, Armstrong.
"Well, chill it, A not too much, you know, but just right. I
want my guest to see that we know what's what here." He turned to me.
"Armstrong's been with us for eight and forty years." And when the wine
steward had left us: "I hope you don't mind coming here. It's quiet and
we can have a good talk. It's ages since we did. You're looking very
This drew my attention to Roy's appearance.
"Not half so fit as you," I answered.
"The result of an upright, sober, and godly life," he laughed. "Plenty
of work. Plenty of exercise. How's the golf? We must have a game one of
these days."
I knew that Roy was scratch and that nothing would please him less than
to waste a day with so indifferent a player as myself. But I felt I was
quite safe in accepting so vague an invitation. He looked the picture of
health. His curly hair was getting very gray, but it suited him and made
his frank, sunburned face look younger. His eyes, which looked upon the
world with such a hearty candour, were bright and clear. He was not so
slim as in his youth and I was not surprised that when the waiter
offered us rolls he asked for Rye-Vita. His slight corpulence only added
to his dignity. It gave weight to his observations. Because his
movements were a little more deliberate than they had been you had a
comfortable feeling
he filled his chair with so
much solidity that you had almost the impression that he sat upon a
I do not know whether, as I wished, I have indicated by my report of his
dialogue with the waiter that his conversation was not as a rule
brilliant or witty, but it was easy and he laughed so much that you
sometimes had the illusion that what he said was funny. He was never at
a loss for a remark and he could discourse on the topics of the day with
an ease that prevented his hearers from experiencing any sense of
Many authors from their preoccupation with words have the bad habit of
choosing those they use in conversation too carefully. They form their
sentences with unconscious care and say neither more nor less than they
mean. It makes intercourse with them somewhat formidable to persons in
the upper ranks of society whose vocabulary is limited by their simple
spiritual needs, and their company consequently is sought only with
hesitation. No constraint of this sort was ever felt with Roy. He could
talk with a dancing guardee in terms that were perfectly comprehensible
to him and with a racing countess in the language of her stable boys.
They said of him with enthusiasm and relief that he was not a bit like
an author. No compliment pleased him better. The wise always use a
number of ready-made phrases (at the moment I write "nobody's business"
is the most common), popular adjectives (like "divine" or "shy-making"),
verbs that you only know the meaning of if you live in the right set
(like "dunch"), which give ease and a homely sparkle to small talk and
avoid the necessity of thought. The Americans, who are the most
efficient people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height
of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed
phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation
without giving a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so
leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big
business and fornication. Roy's repertory was extensive and his scent
for the word of it peppered his speech, but aptly,
and he used it each time with a sort of bright eagerness, as though his
fertile brain had just minted it.
Now he talked of this and that, of our common friends and the latest
books, of the opera. He was very breezy. He was always cordial, but
to-day his cordiality took my breath away. He lamented that we saw one
another so seldom and told me with the frankness that was one of his
pleasantest characteristics how much he liked me and what a high opinion
he had of me. I felt I must not fail to meet this friendliness halfway.
He asked me about the book I was writing, I asked him about the book he
was writing. We told one another that neither of us had had the success
he deserved. We ate the veal-and-ham pie and Roy told me how he mixed a
salad. We drank the hock and smacked appreciative lips.
And I wondered when he was coming to the point.
I could not bring myself to believe that at the height of the London
season Alroy Kear would waste an hour on a fellow writer who was not a
reviewer and had no influence in any quarter whatever in order to talk
of Matisse, the Russian Ballet and Marcel Proust. Besides, at the back
of his gaiety I vaguely felt a slight apprehension. Had I not known that
he was in a prosperous state I should have suspected that he was going
to borrow a hundred pounds from me. It began to look as though luncheon
would end without his finding the opportunity to say what he had in
mind. I knew he was cautious. Perhaps he thought that this meeting, the
first after so long a separation, had better be employed in establishing
friendly relations, and was prepared to look upon the pleasant,
substantial meal merely as ground bait.
"Shall we go and have our coffee in the next room?" he said.
"If you like."
"I think it's more comfortable."
I followed him into another room, much more spacious, with great leather
armc there were papers and magazines on the tables.
Two old gentlemen in a corner were talking in undertones. They gave us a
hostile glance, but this did not deter Roy from offering them a cordial
"Hullo, General," he cried, nodding breezily.
I stood for a moment at the window, looking at the gaiety of the day,
and wished I knew more of the historical associations of St. James's
Street. I was ashamed that I did not even know the name of the club
across the way and was afraid to ask Roy lest he should despise me for
not knowing what every decent person knew. He called me back by asking
me whether I would have a brandy with my coffee, and when I refused,
insisted. The club's brandy was famous. We sat side by side on a sofa by
the elegant fireplace and lit cigars.
"The last time Edward Driffield ever came to London he lunched with me
here," said Roy casually. "I made the old man try our brandy and he was
delighted with it. I was staying with his widow over last week-end."
"Were you?"
"She sent you all sorts of messages."
"That's very kind of her. I shouldn't have thought she remembered me."
"Oh, yes, she does. You lunched there about six years ago, didn't you?
She says the old man was so glad to see you."
"I didn't think she was."
"Oh, you're quite wrong. Of course she had to be very careful. The old
man was pestered with people who wanted to see him and she had to
husband his strength. She was always afraid he'd do too much. It's a
wonderful thing if you come to think of it that she should have kept him
alive and in possession of all his faculties to the age of eighty-four.
I've been seeing a good deal of her since he died. She's awfully lonely.
After all, she devoted herself to looking after him for twenty-five
years. Othello's occupation, you know. I really feel sorry for her."
"She's still comparatively young. I dare say she'll marry again."
"Oh, no, she couldn't do that. That would be dreadful."
There was a slight pause while we sipped our brandy.
"You must be one of the few persons still alive who knew Driffield when
he was unknown. You saw quite a lot of him at one time, didn't you?"
"A certain amount. I was almost a small boy and he was a middle-aged
man. We weren't boon companions, you know."
"Perhaps not, but you must know a great deal about him that other people
"I suppose I do."
"Have you ever thought of writing your recollections of him?"
"Good heavens, no!"
"Don't you think you ought to? He was one of the greatest novelists of
our day. The last of the Victorians. He was an enormous figure. His
novels have as good a chance of surviving as any that have been written
in the last hundred years."
"I wonder. I've always thought them rather boring."
Roy looked at me with eyes twinkling with laughter.
"How like you that is! Anyhow you must admit that you're in the
minority. I don't mind telling you that I've read his novels not once or
twice, but half a dozen times, and every time I read them I think
they're finer. Did you read the articles that were written about him at
his death?"
"Some of them."
"The consensus of opinion was absolutely amazing. I read every one."
"If they all said the same thing, wasn't that rather unnecessary?"
Roy shrugged his massive shoulders good-humouredly, but did not answer
my question.
"I thought the Times Lit. Sup. was splendid. It would have done the
old man good to read it. I hear that the quarterlies are going to have
articles in their next numbers."
"I still think his novels rather boring."
Roy smiled indulgently.
"Doesn't it make you slightly uneasy to think that you disagree with
everyone whose opinion matters?"
"Not particularly. I've been writing for thirty-five years now, and you
can't think how many geniuses I've seen acclaimed, enjoy their hour or
two of glory, and vanish into obscurity. I wonder what's happened to
them. Are they dead, are they shut up in madhouses, are they hidden away
in offices? I wonder if they furtively lend their books to the doctor
and the maiden lady in some obscure village. I wonder if they are still
great men in some Italian pension."
"Oh, yes, they're the flash in the pans. I've known them."
"You've even lectured about them."
"One has to. One wants to give them a leg up if one can and one knows
they won't amount to anything. Hang it all, one can afford to be
generous. But after all, Driffield wasn't anything like that. The
collected edition of his works is in thirty-seven volumes and the last
set that came up at Sotheby's sold for seventy-eight pounds. That speaks
for itself. His sales have increased steadily every year and last year
was the best he ever had. You can take my word for that. Mrs. Driffield
showed me his accounts last time I was down there. Driffield has come to
stay all right."
"Who can tell?"
"Well, you think you can," replied Roy acidly.
I was not put out. I knew I was irritating him and it gave me a pleasant
sensation.
"I think the instinctive judgments I formed when I was a boy were right.
They told me Carlyle was a great writer and I was ashamed that I found
the French Revolution and Sartor Resartus unreadable. Can anyone
read them now? I thought the opinions of others must be better than mine
and I persuaded myself that I thought George Meredith magnificent. In my
heart I found him affected, verbose, and insincere. A good many people
think so too now. Because they told me that to admire Walter Pater was
to prove myself a cultured young man, I admired Walter Pater, but
heavens how Marius bored me!"
"Oh, well, I don't suppose anyone reads Pater now, and of course
Meredith has gone all to pot and Carlyle was a pretentious windbag."
"You don't know how secure of immortality they all looked thirty years
"And have you never made mistakes?"
"One or two. I didn't think half as much of Newman as I do now, and I
thought a great deal more of the tinkling quatrains of Fitzgerald. I
could not read Goethe's Wilhelm Meister; now I think it his
masterpiece."
"And what did you think much of then that you think much of still?"
"Well, Tristram Shandy and Amelia and Vanity Fair. Madame
Bovary, La Chartreuse de Parme, and Anna Karenina. And Wordsworth
and Keats and Verlaine."
"If you don't mind my saying so, I don't think that's particularly
original."
"I don't mind your saying so at all. I don't think it is. But you asked
me why I believed in my own judgment, and I was trying to explain to you
that, whatever I said out of timidity and in deference to the cultured
opinion of the day, I didn't really admire certain authors who were then
thought admirable and the event seems to show that I was right. And what
I honestly and instinctively liked then has stood the test of time with
me and with critical opinion in general."
Roy was silent for a moment. He looked in the bottom of his cup, but
whether to see if there were any more coffee in it or to find something
to say, I did not know. I gave the clock on the chimney-piece a glance.
In a minute it would be fitting for me to take my leave. Perhaps I had
been wrong and Roy had invited me only that we might idly chat of
Shakespeare and the musical glasses. I chid myself for the uncharitable
thoughts I had had of him. I looked at him with concern. If that was his
only object it must be that he was feeling tired or discouraged. If he
was disinterested it could only be that for the moment at least the
world was too much for him. But he caught my look at the clock and
"I don't see how you can deny that there must be something in a man
who's able to carry on for sixty years, writing book after book, and
who's able to hold an ever-increasing public. After all, at Ferne Court
there are shelves filled with the translations of Driffield's books into
every language of civilized people. Of course I'm willing to admit that
a lot he wrote seems a bit old-fashioned nowadays. He flourished in a
bad period and he was inclined to be long-winded. Most of his plots are
but there's one quality you must allow him: beauty."
"Yes?" I said.
"When all's said and done, that's the only thing that counts and
Driffield never wrote a page that wasn't instinct with beauty."
"Yes?" I said.
"I wish you'd been there when we went down to present him with his
portrait on his eightieth birthday. It really was a memorable occasion."
"I read about it in the papers."
"It wasn't only writers, you know, it was a thoroughly representative
gathering--science, politics, business, art, I think you'd
have to go a long way to find gathered together such a collection of
distinguished people as got out from that train at Blackstable. It was
awfully moving when the P.M. presented the old man with the Order of
Merit. He made a charming speech. I don't mind telling you there were
tears in a good many eyes that day."
"Did Driffield cry?"
"No, he was singularly calm. He was like he always was, rather shy, you
know, and quiet, very well-mannered, grateful, of course, but a little
dry. Mrs. Driffield didn't want him to get overtired and when we went
into lunch he stayed in his study, and she sent him something in on a
tray. I slipped away while the others were having their coffee. He was
smoking his pipe and looking at the portrait. I asked him what he
thought of it. He wouldn't tell me, he just smiled a little. He asked me
if I thought he could take his teeth out and I said, No, the deputation
would be coming in presently to say good-bye to him. Then I asked him if
he didn't think it was a wonderful moment. 'Rum,' he said, 'very rum.'
The fact is, I suppose, he was shattered. He was a messy eater in his
later days and a messy smoker--he scattered the tobacco all over himself
whe Mrs. Driffield didn't like people to see him
when he was like that, but of course she didn' I tidied him up
a bit and then they all came in and shook hands with him, and we went
back to town."
"Well, I really must be going. It's been awfully nice seeing you."
"I'm just going along to the private view at the Leicester Galleries. I
know the people there. I'll take you in if you like."
"It's very kind of you, but they sent me a card. No, I don't think I'll
We walked down the stairs and I got my hat. When we came out into the
street and I turned to ward Piccadilly, Roy said:
"I'll just walk up to the top with you." He got into step with me. "You
knew his first wife, didn't you?"
"Driffield's."
"Oh!" I had forgotten him. "Yes."
"I suppose she was awful."
"I don't recollect that."
"She must have been dreadfully common. She was a barmaid, wasn't she?"
"I wonder why the devil he married her. I've always been given to
understand that she was extremely unfaithful to him."
"Extremely."
"Do you remember at all what she was like?"
"Yes, very distinctly," I smiled. "She was sweet."
Roy gave a short laugh.
"That's not the general impression."
I did not answer. We had reached Piccadilly, and stopping I held out my
hand to Roy. He shook it, but I fancied without his usual heartiness. I
had the impression that he was disappointed with our meeting. I could
not imagine why. Whatever he had wanted of me I had not been able to do,
for the reason that he had given me no inkling of what it was, and as I
strolled under the arcade of the Ritz Hotel and along the park railings
till I came opposite Half Moon Street I wondered if my manner had been
more than ordinarily forbidding. It was quite evident that Roy had felt
the moment inopportune to ask me to grant him a favour.
I walked up Half Moon Street. After the gay tumult of Piccadilly it had
a pleasant silence. It was sedate and respectable. Most of the houses
let apartments, but this was not advertised by the
some had a brightly polished brass plate, like a doctor's, to announce
the fact and others the word Apartments neatly painted on the
fanlight. One or two with an added discretion merely gave the name of
the proprietor, so that if you were ignorant you might have thought it a
tailor's or a money lender's. There was none of the congested traffic of
Jermyn Street, where also they let rooms, but here and there a smart
car, unattended, stood outside a door and occasionally at another a taxi
deposited a middle-aged lady. You had the feeling that the people who
lodged here were not gay and a trifle disreputable as in Jermyn Street,
racing men who rose in the morning with headaches and asked for a hair
of the dog that bit them, but respectable women from the country who
came up for six weeks for the London season and elderly gentlemen who
belonged to exclusive clubs. You felt that they came year after year to
the same house and perhaps had known the proprietor when he was still in
private service. My own Miss Fellows had been cook in some very good
places, but you would never have guessed it had you seen her walking
along to do her shopping in Shepherd's Market. She was not stout,
red-faced, and blousy as one
she was spare and
very upright, neatly but fashionably dressed, a woman of middle age,
with her lips were rouged and she wore an eyeglass.
She was businesslike, quiet, coolly cynical, and very expensive.
The rooms I occupied were on the ground floor. The parlour was papered
with an old marbled paper and on the walls were water colours of
romantic scenes, cavaliers bidding good-bye to their ladies and knights
of old banquet there were large ferns in pots, and
the armchairs were covered with faded leather. There was about the room
an amusing air of the eighteen eighties, and when I looked out of the
window I expected to see a private hansom rather than a Chrysler. The
curtains were of a heavy red rep.
I had a good deal to do that afternoon, but my conversation with Roy and
the impression of the day before yesterday, the sense of a past that
still dwelt in the minds of men not yet old, that my room, I could not
tell why, had given me even more strongly than usual as I entered it,
inveigled my thoughts to saunter down the road of memory. It was as
though all the people who had at one time and another inhabited my
lodging pressed upon me with their old-fashioned ways and odd clothes,
men with muttonchop whiskers in frock coats and women in bustles and
flounced skirts. The rumble of London, which I did not know if I
imagined or heard (my house was at the top of Half Moon Street), and the
beauty of the sunny June day (le vierge, le vivace et le bel
aujourd'hui), gave my reverie a poignancy which was not quite painful.
The past I looked at seemed to have lost its reality and I saw it as
though it were a scene in a play and I a spectator in the back row of a
dark gallery. But it was all very clear as far as it went. It was not
misty like life as one leads it when the ceaseless throng of impressions
seems to rob them of outline, but sharp and definite like a landscape
painted in oils by a painstaking artist of the middle-Victorian era.
I fancy that life is more amusing now than it was forty years ago and I
have a notion that people are more amiable. They may have been worthier
then, possessed of more solid virtue as, I am told, they were possessed
of more s I do not know. I know they were more
they ate too much, many of them drank too much, they took
too little exercise. Their livers were out of order and their digestions
often impaired. They were irritable. I do not speak of London of which I
knew nothing till I was grown up, nor of grand people who hunted and
shot, but of the countryside and of the modest persons, gentlemen of
small means, clergymen, retired officers, and such like who made up the
local society. The dullness of their lives was almost incredible. There
at a few houses was an ill-kept tennis court, but it
was only the v there was a dance once a year in the
Assembly R carriage folk went for a dr the
others went for a "constitutional!" You may say that they did not miss
amusements they had never thought of, and that they created excitement
for themselves from the small entertainment (tea when you were asked to
bring your music and you sang the songs of Maude Valérie White and
Tosti) which at infrequent intervals they the days
they were bored. People who were condemned to spend
their lives within a mile of one another quarrelled bitterly, and seeing
each other every day in the town cut one another for twenty years. They
were vain, pig-headed, and odd. It was a life that perhaps formed queer
people were not so like one another as now and they acquired
a small celebrity by their idiosyncrasies, but they were not easy to get
on with. It may be that we are flippant and careless, but we accept one
another witho our manners, rough and ready, are
we are more prepared to give and take and we are not so crabbed.
I lived with an uncle and aunt on the outskirts of a little Kentish town
by the sea. It was called Blackstable and my uncle was the vicar. My
aunt was a German. She came of a very noble but impoverished family, and
the only portion she brought her husband was a marquetry writing desk,
made for an ancestor in the Seventeenth Century, and a set of tumblers.
Of these only a few remained when I entered upon the scene and they were
used as ornaments in the drawing room. I liked the grand coat-of-arms
with which they were heavily engraved. There were I don't know how many
quarterings, which my aunt used demurely to explain to me, and the
supporters were fine and the crest emerging from a crown incredibly
romantic. She was a simple old lady, of a meek and Christian
disposition, but she had not, though married for more than thirty years
to a modest parson with very little income beyond his stipend, forgotten
that she was hochwohlgeboren. When a rich banker from London, with a
name that in these days is famous in financial circles, took a
neighbouring house for the summer holidays, though my uncle called on
him (chiefly, I surmise, to get a subscription to the Additional Curates
Society), she refused to do so because he was in trade. No one thought
her a snob. It was accepted as perfectly reasonable. The banker had a
little boy of my own age, and, I forget how, I became acquainted with
him. I still remember the discussion that ensued when I asked if I might
bring permission was reluctantly given me, but I
was not allowed to go in return to his house. My aunt said I'd be
wanting to go to the coal merchant's next, and my uncle said:
"Evil communications corrupt good manners."
The banker used to come to church every Sunday morning, and he always
put half a sovereign in the plate, but if he thought his generosity made
a good impression he was much mistaken. All Blackstable knew, but only
thought him purse-proud.
Blackstable consisted of a long winding street that led to the sea, with
little two-story houses, many of them residential but with a good many
and from this ran a certain number of short streets, recently
built, that ended on one side in the country and on the other in the
marshes. Round about the harbour was a congeries of narrow winding
alleys. Colliers brought coal from Newcastle to Blackstable and the
harbour was animated. When I was old enough to be allowed out by myself
I used to spend hours wandering about there looking at the rough grimy
men in their jerseys and watching the coal being unloaded.
It was at Blackstable that I first met Edward Driffield. I was fifteen
and had just come back from school for the summer holidays. The morning
after I got home I took a towel and bathing drawers and went down to the
beach. The sky was unclouded and the air hot and bright, but the North
Sea gave it a pleasant tang so that it was a delight just to live and
breathe. In winter the natives of Blackstable walked down the empty
street with a hurried gait, screwing themselves up in order to expose as
little surface as possible to the bitterness of the east wind, but now
they stood about in groups in the space between the Duke
of Kent and the Bear and Key. You heard a hum of their East Anglian
speech, drawling a little with an accent that may be ugly, but in which
from old association I still find a leisurely charm. They were
fresh-complexioned, with blue eyes and high cheek bones, and their hair
was light. They had a clean, honest, and ingenuous look. I do not think
they were very intelligent, but they were guileless. They looked
healthy, and though not tall for the most part were strong and active.
There was little wheeled traffic in Blackstable in those days and the
groups that stood about the road chatting seldom had to move for
anything but the doctor's dogcart or the baker's trap.
Passing the bank, I called in to say how-do-you-do to the manager, who
was my uncle's churchwarden, and when I came out met my uncle's curate.
He stopped and shook hands with me. He was walking with a stranger. He
did not introduce me to him. He was a smallish man with a beard and he
was dressed rather loudly in a bright brown knickerbocker suit, the
breeches very tight, with navy blue stockings, black boots, and a
billycock hat. Knickerbockers were uncommon then, at least in
Blackstable, and being young and fresh from school I immediately set the
fellow down as a cad. But while I chatted with the curate he looked at
me in a friendly way, with a smile in his pale blue eyes. I felt that
for two pins he would have joined in the conversation and I assumed a
haughty demeanour. I was not going to run the risk of being spoken to by
a chap who wore knickerbockers like a gamekeeper and I resented the
familiarity of his good-humoured expression. I was myself faultlessly
dressed in white flannel trousers, a blue blazer with the arms of my
school on the breast pocket, and a black-and-white straw hat with a very
wide brim. The curate said that he must be getting on (fortunately, for
I never knew how to break away from a meeting in the street and would
endure agonies of shyness while I looked in vain for an opportunity),
but said that he would be coming up to the vicarage that afternoon and
would I tell my uncle. The stranger nodded and smiled as we parted, but
I gave him a stony stare. I supposed he was a summer visitor and in
Blackstable we did not mix with the summer visitors. We thought London
people vulgar. We said it was horrid to have all that rag-tag and
bobtail down from town every year, but of course it was all right for
the tradespeople. Even they, however, gave a faint sigh of relief when
September came to an end and Blackstable sank back into its usual peace.
When I went home to dinner, my hair insufficiently dried and clinging
lankily to my head, I remarked that I had met the curate and he was
coming up that afternoon.
"Old Mrs. Shepherd died last night," said my uncle in explanation.
The curate's name was G he was a tall thin ungainly man with
untidy black hair and a small sallow dark face. I suppose he was quite
young, but to me he seemed middle-aged. He talked very quickly and
gesticulated a great deal. This made people think him rather queer and
my uncle would not have kept him but that he was very energetic, and my
uncle, being extremely lazy, was glad to have someone to take so much
work off his shoulders. After he had finished the business that had
brought him to the vicarage Mr. Galloway came in to say how-do-you-do to
my aunt and she asked him to stay to tea.
"Who was that you were with this morning?" I asked him as he sat down.
"Oh, that was Edward Driffield. I didn't introduce him. I wasn't sure if
your uncle would wish you to know him."
"I think it would be most undesirable," said my uncle.
"Why, who is he? He's not a Blackstable man, is he?"
"He was born in the parish," said my uncle. "His father was old Miss
Wolfe's bailiff at Ferne Court. But they were chapel people."
"He married a Blackstable girl," said Mr. Galloway.
"In church, I believe," said my aunt. "Is it true that she was a barmaid
at the Railway Arms?"
"She looks as if she might have been something like that," said Mr.
Galloway, with a smile.
"Are they going to stay long?"
"Yes, I think so. They've taken one of those houses in that street where
the Congregational chapel is," said the curate.
At that time in Blackstable, though the new streets doubtless had names,
nobody knew or used them.
"Is he coming to church?" asked my uncle.
"I haven't actually talked to him about it yet," answered Mr. Galloway.
"He's quite an educated man, you know."
"I can hardly believe that," said my uncle.
"He was at Haversham School, I understand, and he got any number of
scholarships and prizes. He got a scholarship at Wadham, but he ran away
to sea instead."
"I'd heard he was rather a harum-scarum," said my uncle.
"He doesn't look much like a sailor," I remarked.
"Oh, he gave up the sea many years ago. He's been all sorts of things
since then."
"Jack of all trades and master of none," said my uncle.
"Now, I understand, he's a writer."
"That won't last long," said my uncle.
I had never k I was interested.
"What does he write?" I asked. "Books?"
"I believe so," said the curate, "and articles. He had a novel published
last spring. He's promised to lend it me."
"I wouldn't waste my time on rubbish in your place," said my uncle, who
never read anything but the Times and the Guardian.
"What's it called?" I asked.
"He told me the title, but I forget it."
"Anyhow, it's quite unnecessary that you should know," said my uncle. "I
should very much object to your reading trashy novels. During your
holidays the best thing you can do is to keep out in the open air. And
you have a holiday task, I presume?"
I had. It was Ivanhoe. I had read it when I was ten, and the notion of
reading it again and writing an essay on it bored me to distraction.
When I consider the greatness that Edward Driffield afterward achieved I
cannot but smile as I remember the fashion in which he was discussed at
my uncle's table. When he died a little while ago and an agitation arose
among his admirers to have him buried in Westminster Abbey the present
incumbent at Blackstable, my uncle's successor twice removed, wrote to
the Daily Mail pointing out that Driffield was born in the parish and
not only had passed long years, especially the last twenty-five of his
life, in the neighbourhood, but had laid there the scene of some of his
it was only becoming then that his bones should rest
in the churchyard where under the Kentish elms his father and mother
dwelt in peace. There was relief in Blackstable when, the Dean of
Westminster having somewhat curtly refused the Abbey, Mrs. Driffield
sent a dignified letter to the press in which she expressed her
confidence that she was carrying out the dearest wishes of her dead
husband in having him buried among the simple people he knew and loved
so well. Unless the notabilities of Blackstable have very much changed
since my day I do not believe they very much liked that phrase about
"simple people," but, as I afterward learnt, they had never been able to
"abide" the second Mrs. Driffield.
To my surprise, two or three days after I lunched with Alroy Kear I
received a letter from Edward Driffield's widow. It ran as follows:
DEAR FRIEND,
I hear that you had a long talk with Roy last week about Edward
Driffield and I am so glad to know that you spoke of him so
nicely. He often talked to me of you. He had the greatest
admiration for your talent and he was so very pleased to see you
when you came to lunch with us. I wonder if you have in your
possession any letters that he wrote to you and if so whether
you would let me have copies of them. I should be very pleased
if I could persuade you to come down for two or three days and
stay with me. I live very quietly now and have no one here, so
please choose your own time. I shall be delighted to see you
again and have a talk of old times. I have a particular service
I want you to do me and I am sure that for the sake of my dear
dead husband you will not refuse.
Yours ever sincerely,
AMY DRIFFIELD.
I had seen Mrs. Driffield only once and she but
do not like being addressed as "dear friend"; that alone would have been
enough to make me de and I was exasperated by its
general character which, however ingenious an excuse I invented, made
the reason I did not go quite obvious, namely, that I did not want to. I
had no letters of Driffield's. I suppose years ago he had written to me
several times, brief notes, but he was then an obscure scribbler and
even if I ever kept letters it would never have occurred to me to keep
his. How was I to know that he was going to be acclaimed as the greatest
novelist of our day? I hesitated only because Mrs. Driffield said she
wanted me to do something for her. It would certainly be a nuisance, but
it would be churlish not to do it if I could, and after all her husband
was a very distinguished man.
The letter came by the first post and after breakfast I rang up Roy. As
soon as I mentioned my name I was put through to him by his secretary.
If I were writing a detective story I should immediately have suspected
that my call was awaited, and Roy's virile voice calling hullo would
have confi