A Writer's Notebook (Vintage International) Read online

  He is fond of reading the Bible. “There always seems to me something so exceedingly French about some of the characters.”

  Yesterday evening he made an old joke and I told him I’d heard it a good many times before. Annandale: “It’s quite unnecessary to make new jokes. In fact, I think I rather despise the man who does. He is like the miner who digs up diamonds, but I am the skilful artist who cuts them, polishes them and makes them delightful to the eye of women.”

  Later he said: “I don’t see why people shouldn’t say what they think of themselves merely because it happens to be complimentary. I’m clever, I know it, and why shouldn’t I acknowledge it?”

  While I was at St. Thomas’s Hospital, I lived in furnished rooms at 11 Vincent Square, Westminster. My landlady was a character. I have drawn a slight portrait of her in a novel called Cakes and Ale, but I did no more than suggest her many excellences. She was kind and she was a good cook. She had common sense and a Cockney humour. She got a lot of fun out of her lodgers. The following are notes I made of her conversation.

  Mrs. Foreman went to a concert at the Parish Hall last night with Miss Brown who lets lodgings at number 14. Mr. Harris who keeps the pub round the corner was there: “ ‘Why, that’s Mr. Harris,’ says I, ‘I’m blowed if it ain’t.’ Miss Brown puts up ’er eyeglass and squints down, and says: ‘So it is, it’s Mr. Harris himself.’ ‘He is dressed up, ain’t he?’ says I. ‘Dressed! Dressed to death and kill the fashion, I call it!’ says she. ‘And you can see his clothes ain’t borrowed; they fits him so nice,’ says I. ‘ ’Tain’t everyone ’as a suit of dress-clothes, is it?’ says she.”

  Then to me: “I tell yer, he did look a caution; he had a great big white flower in his button-hole; and wot with his ole white flower, an’ his ole red face, he did look a type and no mistake.”

  “Ah yes, I wanted a little boy, and the Lord, He gave me my wish: but I wish He hadn’t now; I should’ve like to have a little girl, and I should have taught her scrubbin’ and the pianoforte and black-leadin’ grates and I don’t know what all.”

  Telling me of a long word someone had used: “Such an aristocratic word, you know; why, it sounded as if it would break your jaw coming out.”

  “Oh, it’ll all come right in the end when we get four balls of worsted for a penny.”

  “He does look bad: I think he’s going home soon.”

  My fire was out when I came in, and Mrs. Foreman relit it. “Ask the fire to burn up while I’m away, won’t you? And don’t look at it, will you? You’ll see how nicely it’ll burn if you don’t.”

  “I don’t think our boy is very affectionate: he never has been, not even from his childhood. But he knows why I spoil him; he gets up to such hanky-panky-tricks. We do love him. Oh, he is a lump of jam! I feel I could eat him when I’m hungry; some parts of his body are so nice and soft; I could bite them.”

  There are two kinds of friendship. The first is a friendship of animal attraction; you like your friend not for any particular qualities or gifts, but simply because you are drawn to him. “C’est mon ami parce que je l’aime; je l’aime parce que c’est mon ami.” It is unreasoning and unreasonable; and by the irony of things it is probable that you will have this feeling for someone quite unworthy of it. This kind of friendship, though sex has no active part in it, is really akin to love: it arises in the same way, and it is not improbable that it declines in the same way.

  The second kind of friendship is intellectual. You are attracted by the gifts of your new acquaintance. His ideas are unfamiliar; he has seen sides of life of which you are ignorant; his experience is impressive. But every well has a bottom and finally your friend will come to the end of what he has to tell you: this is the moment decisive for the continuation of your friendship. If he has nothing more in him than his experience and his reading have taught him, he can no longer interest or amuse you. The well is empty, and when you let the bucket down, nothing comes up. This explains why one so quickly makes warm friendships with new acquaintances and as quickly breaks them: also the dislike one feels for these persons afterwards, for the disappointment one experiences on discovering that one’s admiration was misplaced turns into contempt and aversion. Sometimes, for one reason or another, however, you continue to frequent these people. The way to profit by their society then is to make them yield you the advantages of new friends; by seeing them only at sufficiently long intervals to allow them to acquire fresh experiences and new thoughts. Gradually the disappointment you experienced at the discovery of their shallowness will wear off, habit brings with it an indulgence for their defects and you may keep up a pleasant friendship with them for many years. But if, having got to the end of your friend’s acquired knowledge, you find that he has something more, character, sensibility and a restless mind, then your friendship will grow stronger, and you will have a relationship as delightful in its way as the other friendship of physical attraction.

  It is conceivable that these two friendships should find their object in one and the same person; that would be the perfect friend. But to ask for that is to ask for the moon. On the other hand, when, as sometimes happens, there is an animal attraction on one side and an intellectual one on the other, only discord can ensue.

  When you are young friendship is very important, and every new friend you make is an exciting adventure. I do not remember who the persons were who occasioned these confused reflections, but since extreme youth is apt to make general rules from single instances, I surmise that I had found my feeling for someone to whom I was drawn unreciprocated, and that somebody else, whose mind had interested me, proved less intelligent than I had thought.

  I do not know that in the ordinary affairs of life philosophy is of much more use than to enable us to make a virtue of necessity. By showing us the advantages of a step which we are forced to take, but would not of our own free will, it consoles us a little for its unpleasantness. It helps us to do with equanimity what we would rather not do.

  In love one should exercise economy of intercourse. None of us can love for ever. Love will be stronger and last longer if there are impediments to its gratification. If a lover is prevented from enjoying his love by absence, difficulty of access, or by the caprice or coldness of his beloved, he can find a little consolation in the thought that when his wishes are fulfilled his delight will be intense. But love being what it is, should there be no such hindrances, he will pay no attention to the considerations of prudence; and his punishment will be satiety. The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.

  It is doubtless true that we owe many of our virtues to Christianity, but it is equally true that we owe to it some of our vices. The love of self is the mainspring of every man’s action, it is the essence of his character; and it is fair to suppose that it is necessary for his preservation. But Christianity has made a vice of it. It has decided that man should have neither love, nor care, nor thought for himself, but only for his soul, and by demanding of him that he should behave otherwise than as his nature prompts, has forced him into hypocrisy. It has aroused a sense of guilt in him when he follows his natural instincts, and a feeling of resentment when others, even though not at his expense, follow theirs. If selfishness were not regarded as a vice no one would be more inconvenienced by it than he is by the Law of Gravity; no one would expect his fellow-men to act otherwise than according to their own interests; and it would seem reasonable to him that they should behave as selfishly as in point of fact they do.

  It is a good maxim to ask of no one more than he can give without inconvenience to himself.

  The belief in God is not a matter of common sense, or logic, or argument, but of feeling. It is as impossible to prove the existence of God as to disprove it. I do not believe in God. I see no need of such an idea. It is incredible to me that there should be an after-life. I find the notion of future punishment outrageous and of future reward extravagant. I am convinced that when I die, I shall cease entirely to live; I shall return to the e
arth I came from. Yet I can imagine that at some future date I may believe in God; but it will be as now, when I don’t believe in Him, not a matter of reasoning or of observation, but only of feeling.

  If you once grant the existence of God, I do not see why you should hesitate to believe in the Resurrection, and if you once grant the supernatural I do not see why you should put limits to it. The miracles of Catholicism are as well authenticated as those of the New Testament.

  The evidence adduced to prove the truth of one religion is of very much the same sort as that adduced to prove the truth of another. I wonder that it does not make the Christian uneasy to reflect that if he had been born in Morocco he would have been a Mahometan, if in Ceylon a Buddhist; and in that case Christianity would have seemed to him as absurd and obviously untrue as those religions seem to the Christian.

  The Professor of Gynæcology. He began his course of lectures as follows: Gentlemen, woman is an animal that micturates once a day, defecates once a week, menstruates once a month, parturates once a year and copulates whenever she has the opportunity.

  I thought it a prettily-balanced sentence.

  1896

  I don’t suppose anyone’s life is ruled by his philosophy; his philosophy is an expression of his desires, instincts and weaknesses. The other night, talking to B., I got him to tell me the system of ideas he had devised to give sense to his life.

  The highest object in life, he said, is to bring out one’s own personality and that one does by following one’s instincts, by letting oneself be carried on the waves of human things and by submitting oneself to all the accidents of fate and fortune. Then finally one is purified by these accidents as by fire and thus made fit for a future life. The power of loving that he has in him persuades him that there is a God and an immortality. He believes that Love, taken on its sensual as well as on its spiritual side, purifies. There is no happiness in this world, nothing but moments of contentment, and the lack of happiness and the immense desire of it afford another proof of immortality. He denies the need of self-sacrifice, asserting that the beginning, middle and end of all endeavour is the development of oneself; but he is not unwilling to allow that self-sacrifice may at times conduce to this.

  I asked him to explain the promiscuity of his amours. It vexed him a little, but he answered that his sexual instincts were very strong, and that he was really only in love with an ideal. He found traits and characteristics to love in many different persons, and by the number of these built up his ideal just as a sculptor, taking a feature here, a feature there, a fine form, a fine line, might finally create a figure of perfect beauty.

  But it is obvious that in the development of oneself and the following of one’s instincts, one is certain to come in contact with other people. So I asked B. what he would say to a man whose instinct it was to rob or murder. He answered that society found the instinct harmful and therefore punished the man for it.

  “But then,” I said, “what if he follows his instinct, so as not to infringe any of the laws of society, but yet so as to do harm to others? Thus he may fall in love with a married woman, persuade her to leave her home, husband and family, and come to live with him; and then getting tired of her or falling in love with someone else, leave her.”

  To this his reply was: “Well, then I should say that he may follow his instincts only so far as to do no harm to other people.”

  In which case obviously the theory falls to the ground. These, it is plain, are the ideas of a weak man, who has not the strength to combat his desires, but yields like a feather to every wind that blows. And indeed B. has no will, no self-restraint, no courage against any of the accidents of fortune. If he cannot smoke he is wretched; if his food or his wine is bad he is upset; a wet day shatters him. If he doesn’t feel well, he is silent, cast-down and melancholy. The slightest cross, even a difference of opinion will make him angry and sullen. He is a selfish creature, indifferent to other people’s feelings, and the only thing that makes him behave with a semblance of decency is his conventional view of the conduct proper to an English gentleman. He would not cross the road to help a friend, but he would never fail to rise to his feet when a woman entered the room.

  People are never so ready to believe you as when you say things in dispraise of yourself; and you are never so much annoyed as when they take you at your word.

  You worry me as if I was a proverb you were trying to turn into an epigram.

  Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

  In the nineties, however, we all tried to.

  “Do you know French?”

  “Oh, well, you know, I can read a French novel when it’s indecent.”

  Cockney.

  “You are a ’andsome woman.” “Yes, abaht the feet.”

  “You’ve said that before.” “Well, I say it be’ind now.”

  “A ’andsome young man with a Roman shiped eye an’ a cast in ’is nose.”

  “How about our Sunday boots now?”

  “You’re very clever! ’Ow many did yer mother ’ave like you?”

  “Yus, I’ve ’ad fifteen children, an’ only two ’usbinds ter do it on.”

  “Ah, wot a blessin’ it ’ud be for your family if the Lord see fit ter tike yer.”

  “I’ve ’ad two ’usbinds in my time, an’ I ’ope to ’ave another before I die.”

  “I do love yer, Florrie.” “Pore feller, wot you must suffer!”

  A woman may be as wicked as she likes, but if she isn’t pretty it won’t do her much good.

  “Oh, I should hate to be old. All one’s pleasures go.”

  “But others come.”

  “What?”

  “Well, for instance, the contemplation of youth. If I were your age I think it not improbable that I should think you a rather conceited and bumptious man: as it is I consider you a charming and amusing boy.”

  I can’t for the life of me remember who said this to me. Perhaps my Aunt Julia. Anyhow I’m glad I thought it worth making a note of.

  There is a pleasant irony in the gilded youth who goes to the devil all night and to eight o’clock Mass next morning.

  At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.

  The intellect is such a pliable and various weapon that man, provided with it, is practically bereft of all others; but it is a weapon of no great efficacy against instinct.

  The history of human morals is very well brought to light in the course of literature: the writer, with whatever subject he deals, displays the code of morals of his own age. That is the great fault of historical novels; the characters portrayed, while they do acts which are historical, comport themselves according to the moral standard of the writer’s time. The inconsequence is obvious.

  People often feed the hungry so that nothing may disturb their own enjoyment of a good meal.

  In moments of great excitement the common restraints of civilisation lose their force, and men return to the old law of a tooth for a tooth.

  It is a false idea of virtue which thinks it demands the sacrifice of inclination and consists only in this sacrifice. An action is not virtuous merely because it is unpleasant to do.

  The life of most men is merely a ceaseless toil to prepare food and home for their offspring; and these enter the world to perform exactly the same offices as their progenitors.

  The more intelligent a man is the more capable is he of suffering.

  If women exhibit less emotion at pain it does not prove that they bear it better, but rather that they feel it less.

  That love is chiefly the instinct for the propagation of the species shows itself in the fact that most men will fall in love with any woman in their way, and not being able to get the first woman on whom they have set their heart, soon turn to a second.

  It is but seldom that a man loves once and for all; it may only show that his sexual instincts are not very strong.

  As soon as the instinct of propagatio
n has been satisfied, the madness which blinded the lover disappears and leaves him with a wife to whom he is indifferent.

  I do not know what is meant by abstract beauty. The beautiful is that which excites the æsthetic sense in the artist. What is beautiful to an artist today will be beautiful to all and sundry in ten years. Not so many years ago everyone would have said that nothing was more hideous than factory chimneys with black smoke belching from them; but certain artists discovered in them a decorative quality and painted them; they were laughed at at first, but little by little people saw beauty in their pictures and then looking at what they had painted saw beauty there too. It does not now require great perspicacity to receive as great a thrill of delight from a factory with its chimneys as from a green field with its flowers.

  People wonder at the romantic lives of poets and artists, but they should rather wonder at their gift of expression. The occurrences which pass unnoticed in the life of the average man in the existence of a writer of talent are profoundly interesting. It is the man they happen to that makes their significance.

  Men have an extraordinarily erroneous opinion of their position in nature; and the error is ineradicable.

  If the good were only a little less heavy-footed!

  The philosopher is like a mountaineer who has with difficulty climbed a mountain for the sake of the sunrise, and arriving at the top finds only fog; whereupon he wanders down again. He must be an honest man if he doesn’t tell you that the spectacle was stupendous.