in the most tragic and most trying moments of life it is well to turn aside from one’s sorrows and refresh one’s mind and strengthen one’s soul by gazing upon the follies of others. those others gaze on ours.
in my spiritual adventures i have met many amazingly freakish people. ten years ago the theosophical society overflowed with them. they were cultured without being educated, credulous but without faith, bookish but without learning, argumentative but without logic. the women, serene and grave, swam about in drawing-rooms, or they would stand in long, attitudinising ecstasies, their skimpy necks emerging from strange gowns, their bodies as shoulderless as hock bottles. the men paddled about in the same rooms, but i found them less amusing than the women.
“you were a horse in your last incarnation,” said a fuzzy-haired giantess to me one evening, two minutes after we had been introduced.
“oh, how disappointing!” i exclaimed. “i had always imagined myself an owl. i often dream i was an owl. i fly about, you know, or sit on branches with my eyes shut.”
“no; a horse!” shouted the giantess, with much asperity. “i’m not arguing with you. i’m merely telling you. and i don’t think you were a very nice horse either.”
“no? did i bite people?”
“yes; you bit and kicked. and you did other disagreeable things besides. now, i was a swan.”
89i evinced a polite but not enthusiastic interest.
“you would make an imposing swan,” i observed.
“yes. i used to glide about on ponds, like this.”
she proceeded to “glide” round and round the corner of the room in which we were sitting. she arched her neck, raised her ponderous legs laboriously and moved about like a pantechnicon. her face assumed a disagreeable expression and i thought of a rather good line in one of my own poems:
and swans sulked largely on the yellow mere.
“and how much of your previous incarnation do you remember?” i asked, when she had finished sulking largely in the yellow drawing-room.
“oh, quite a lot. it comes back to me in flashes. i was very lonely—oh, so lonely.”
she gave me a quick look, and i began to talk of william j. locke, who, a few days previously, had published a new book. resenting my change of subject, she left me and, a few minutes later, as i was eating a watercress sandwich, i heard her saying to a yellow-haired male:
“you were a horse in your last incarnation.”
i met this lady on other occasions, and always she was occupied in telling men that they had been horses and she a swan—an oh-so-lonely swan.
“why,” said i to my hostess one day, “don’t madame x.’s friends look after her? see—she is arching her neck over there in the corner, and i am perfectly certain she has told the man with her that he has been, is, or is going to be a horse.”
for a moment my hostess looked concerned.
“look after her? what do you mean?”
“well, she is obviously insane.”
“on the contrary, she is the most subtle exponent we have of madame blavatsky’s secret doctrine. eccentric, 90perhaps, but as lucid a brain as mr g. r. s. mead’s or as colonel olcott’s. you should get her to describe your aura. she is excellent, too, in plato. she doesn’t understand a word of greek, but she gets at his meaning intuitively. there is something cosmic about her. you know what i mean.”
“oh, quite, quite.” (but what did she mean?)
“cosmic consciousness is a most enthralling subject,” continued my hostess, digging the hockey-stick she always carried with her well into the hearthrug. “walt whitman had it, you know.”
“badly?” i inquired.
she appeared puzzled.
“i don’t quite know what you mean by ‘badly.’ he could identify himself with anything—the wind, a stone, a jelly-fish, an arm-chair, a ... a ... oh, everything! they were he and he was they. he thought cosmically. fourth dimension, you know. edward carpenter and all that.”
i rather admired this way she had of talking—a little like the duke in g. k. chesterton’s magic.
“oh, do go on!” i urged her.
“what i always say is,” she continued, “why stop at a fourth dimension? someone has written a book on the fourth dimension, and some day perhaps i shall write one on the fifth.”
“a book? a real book? do you mean to say you could write a book? how clever! how romantic!”
“well, i have thought about it. one is influenced. one has influences. the consciousness of the ultimate truth of things, the truth that suffuses all things, the cosmic nature of—well, the cosmos. do you see? tennyson’s in memoriam.”
“yes; tennyson’s in memoriam does help, doesn’t it?”
“did i say tennyson’s in memoriam? i really meant 91shelley’s revolt of islam. the fourth dimension is played out. it’s done with. it was true so far as it went, but how far did it go?”
“only a very little way,” i answered.
“yes, but nietzsche goes much farther. have you read nietzsche? no? i haven’t, either. but i have heard orage talk about him. nietzsche says we can all do what we want. we must dare things. we must be blond beasts. mary wollstonecraft and her set, you know. godwin and those people.”
she waved her hockey-stick recklessly in the air and marched inconsequently away. nearly all the theosophists i met were like that—inconsequent, bent on writing books they never did write, talkers of divine flapdoodle, inanely clever, cleverly inane. dear freaks i used to meet in days gone by!—where are you now?—where are you now?
. . . . . . . .
a freak who ultimately lost all reason and was confined in a private asylum used to sit at the same desk that i did when, many years ago, i was a shipping clerk in manchester. this man, whose name was not, but should have been, bundle, had considerable private means, but some obscure need of his nature drove him to discipline himself by working eight hours a day for three pounds a week. the three pounds was nothing to him, but the eight hours a day meant everything. he was a conscientious worker, but i think i have already indicated that his intelligence was not robust. he had no delusion; he merely possessed a misdirected sense of duty.
one day he left us, and a few months later i met him in market street. he looked prosperous, smart and intensely happy.
“are you busy?” he asked. “no? well, come with me.”
he slipped his arm in mine, led me into mosley street, 92and stopped in front of the large, dismal office of the calico printers’ association.
“that,” said he, “is mine. now, come into albert square.”
when we had arrived there he pointed to the town hall.
“that also is mine. the lord mayor gave it to me with a golden key. here is the golden key.”
producing an ordinary latchkey from his pocket, he carefully held it in the palm of his hand for my inspection.
“it is,” he announced, “studded with diamonds. but you can’t see the diamonds. crafty lord mayor! you don’t catch him napping. he’s hidden them deep in the gold....”
i enjoyed this poor fellow’s company more than i did that of a very old woman to whom i was introduced in a pauper asylum. she was sitting on a low stool and, pointing at her head with her skinny forefinger, “it’s pot! it’s pot!” she said.
but even she provided me with more exhilaration than do the tens (or perhaps hundreds) of thousands of real freaks who, i imagine, inhabit every part of the globe. i allude to the vast throng of people who arise at eight or thereabouts, go to the city every morning, work all day and return home at dusk; who perform this routine every day, and every day of every year; who do it all their lives; who do it without resentment, without anger, without even a momentary impulse to break away from their surroundings. such people amaze and stagger one. to them life is not an adventure; indeed, i don’t know what they consider it. they marry and, in their tepid, uxorious way, love. but love to them is not a mystery, or an adventure, and its consummation is not a sacrament. they do not travel; they do not want to travel. they do not even hate anybody.
all these people are freaks of the wildest description; yet they imagine themselves to be the backbone of the 93empire. perhaps they are. perhaps every nation requires a torpid mass of people to act as a steadying influence.
in the suburbs of manchester these people abound. i know a man still in his twenties who keeps hens for what he calls “a hobby.” among his hens he finds all the excitement his soul needs. the sheds in which they live form the boundaries of his imagination. i should esteem this man if he kicked against his destiny; but he loved it, until the army conscripted him. god save the world from those who keep hens!
i know a man who has been to douglas eighteen times in succession for his fortnight’s holiday in the summer. douglas is his heaven; manchester and douglas are his universe. no place so beautiful as douglas; no place so familiar; no place so satisfying. after all, douglas is always douglas. moreover, douglas is always miraculously “there.” god save the world from men who go to douglas eighteen times!
i know a man who hates his wife and still lives with her. he is respectable, soulless, saving, a punctual and regular churchgoer, a hard bargain-driver. he walks with his eyes on the ground. he has always lived in the same suburb. he will always live in the same suburb. god save the world from men who always live in the same suburb!
i know a man ...
but this is getting very monotonous. besides, why should i particularise any more freaks when all of them, perhaps, are as familiar to you as they are to me?
. . . . . . . .
then there is the literary freak; not the poseur, not the man who wishes to be thought “cultured” and intellectual, but the scholarly man who, during an industrious life, has amassed a vast amount of literary knowledge, but whose appreciation of literature is lukewarm and without zest. very, very rarely is the great writer a scholar. dr johnson 94was a scholar, but, divine and adorable creature though he was, he was not a great writer. none of the great victorians had true scholarship, and very few even of the elizabethans. and to-day? well, one may consider thomas hardy, joseph conrad, h. g. wells, bernard shaw, arnold bennett and g. k. chesterton as great writers; if you do not concede me all these names, you must either deny that we have any great writers at all (which is absurd) or produce me the names of six who are greater than those i have named (and the latter you cannot do). have any of these anything approaching scholarship?
and yet in our universities are scores of men who are regarded as possessing greater literary gifts than those who actually produce literature. these learned, owlish creatures pose pontifically. whenever a new book comes out they read an old one! the present generation, they say, is without genius. but they have always said it. they said it when dickens, thackeray and charlotte brontë were writing. i have no doubt they said it in shakespeare’s time. the present generation teems with genius, but our “scholarly” mandarins know it not. how barren is that knowledge which lies heavy in a man’s mind and does not fertilise there. when one considers the matter, how essentially dull and stupid and brainless is the man devoid of ideas!
one of these bald-pated freaks is well known to me. he moves heavily about in a quadrangle. he delivers lectures. he has written books. he passes judgment. he annotates. he writes an occasional review. funny little freak! great little freak, who knows so much and understands so little.... when england wakes (and i do not believe that even yet, after nearly four years of war, england is really awake) such men will pass through life unregarded and neglected; they will sit at home in a back room, and their relatives and friends will love and 95pity them, as one loves and pities a poor fellow whose temperament has made him a wastrel, or as one pities a man who has to be nursed.
. . . . . . . .
people of the play: a handful of literary freaks.
scene: a drawing-room in tooting, or acton, or highgate, or ealing, or any funny old place where the middle classes live.
time: 8 p.m. on (generally) thursday.
mrs arnold. now that miss vera potting, m.a., has finished reading her most interesting paper on mr john masefield, the subject is open for discussion. perhaps you, mr mather-johnstone, will give us a few thoughts—yes, a few thoughts. (she smiles wanly and gazes round the room.) a most interesting paper i call it.
rev. mather-johnstone, m.a. miss potting’s most interesting paper is—well, most interesting. i must confess i have read nothing of—er—mr masefield’s. i prefer the older poets—cowper, bowles’ sonnets, and the beautifully named felicia hemans. fe-lic-i-a! to what sweet thoughts does not that name give rise! but it has been a revelation to me to learn that a popular poet (and miss potting has assured us that mr masefield is popular) should so freely indulge in language that, to say the least, is violent, and i am glad to say that such language is not to be found in the improving stanzas of eliza cook.
mr s. wanley. i have read some verses of mr masefield’s in a very—well—advanced paper called, if my memory does not deceive me, the english review. i did not like those verses. i did not approve of 96them. they were bathed in an atmosphere of discontent—modern discontent. now, what have people to be discontented about? nothing; nothing at all, if they live rightly. (he stops, having nothing further to say. for the same reason, he proceeds.) nevertheless, i thank miss potting, m.a., very much for her most interesting paper. there is one question i should like to ask her: is this mr masefield read by the right people?
miss vera potting, m.a. oh no! oh dear, no! most certainly not! still, it is incontestable that he is read.
mr s. wanley. thank you so much. i felt that he could not be read by the right people.
miss graceley (rather nervously). i feel that i can say i know my lord lytton, my edna lyall, my charlotte m. yonge and my tennyson. i have always remained content with them, and after what miss vera potting, m.a., has said about mr masefield in her most interesting paper, i shall remain content with them.
mr s. wanley. hear, hear. i always seem to agree with you, miss graceley.
mrs arnold (archly). what is the saying?—great minds always jump alike?
rev. mather-johnstone (sotto voce). jump?
mr porteous (with most distinguished amiability). i really think that this most interesting paper that miss vera potting, m.a., has read to us should be published. it is so—well, so improving, so elevating, so——
miss vera potting, m.a. (who has already fruitlessly sent the essay to every magazine in the country). oh, mr porteous! how can you? really, i couldn’t think of such a thing.
rev. mather-johnstone, m.a. (who, being not altogether free from jealousy, thinks this is really going a bit too 97far). but perhaps we do not all quite approve of women writers—i mean ladies who write for the wide, rough public.
mrs arnold. true! true!... but then, what about felicia hemans?
rev. mather-johnstone, m.a. mrs hemans was mrs hemans. miss vera potting, m.a., is, and i hope will always remain, miss vera potting, m.a.
mr porteous. oh, don’t say that! what i mean is——
(this sort of thing goes on for an hour when, very secretly and as though she were on some nefarious errand, mrs arnold disappears from the room. she presently reappears with a maid, who carries a tray of coffee and sandwiches. the dreadful mr masefield is then forgotten.]
you think the above sketch is exaggerated? ah! well, perhaps you have never lived in highgate, or in the suburbs of manchester, birmingham, sheffield or leeds. i could set down some appalling conversations that i have heard in suburban “literary” circles. there is a place called eccles, where, one evening——
. . . . . . . .
in london bohemia there are many freakish people, but, for the most part, they are altogether charming and refreshing. quite a number of them have what i am told is, in the police courts, termed “no visible means of subsistence,” but they appear to “carry on” with imperturbable good humour and borrow money cheerfully and as frequently as their circle of acquaintances (which is usually very large) will permit.
frequenters of the café royal in pre-war days will recognise the following types:—
picture to yourself a polish jew, young, yellow-skinned, black-haired; he has luminous eyes, sensuous lips and damp hands, and he dresses well, but in an extravagant 98style. he is a megalomaniac, and he has all the megalomaniac’s consuming anxiety to discover precisely in what way other people react to his personality. one night my bitterest enemy brought him to the table at which i was sitting, introduced us to each other, and walked away.
“i am told you are a journalist,” my new acquaintance began. “i myself write poems. i have a theory about poetry, and my theory is this: all poetry should be subjective.”
“why?”
“never mind why. i am telling you about my theory. all poetry should be subjective; as a matter of fact, all the best poetry is. to myself i am the most interesting phenomenon in the world. to yourself, you are. is it not so?”
“yes; you have guessed right first time.”
“well, i have in this dispatch case eight hundred and seventy-three poems about myself, telling the world almost all there is to know about the most interesting phenomenon it contains.”
he took from his case a great pile of ms. and turned the leaves over in his hands.
“here,” said he, “is a blank-verse poem entitled how i felt at 8.45 a.m. on june 8, 1909, having partaken of breakfast. would you like to read it?”
i assured him i should, though i fully expected it would contain unmistakable signs of mental disturbance. but it did not. it was quite respectably written verse, much better than at least half of wordsworth’s; it was logical, it had ideas, it showed some introspective power, and it revealed a mind above the ordinary.
i told him all this.
“then you don’t think i’m a genius? some people do.”
“you see, i’m not a very good judge of men—particularly 99men of genius. you may be a genius; on the other hand, you may not.”
“but what exactly do you think of me?”
“i have already told you.”
“yes, but not with sufficient particularity. now, put away from you all feeling of nervousness and try to imagine that i have just left you and that a friend of yours has come in and taken my place. you are alone together. you would, of course, immediately tell him that you had met me. you would say: ‘he is a very strange man, eccentric....’ and so on. you would describe my appearance, my personality, my verses. you, being a writer, would analyse me to shreds. now, that is what i want you to do now. i want you to say all the bad things with the good. and i shall listen, greedily.”
“but, really!” i protested. “really, i can’t do what you ask.”
disappointed and vexed, he sat biting his underlip.
“all right,” he said at length, “we’ll strike a bargain. after you have analysed me i, in return, will analyse you.”
“you have quite the most unhealthy mind with which i have ever come in contact.”
“you really believe that?” he asked, delighted. “do go on.”
“oh, but i’m sorry i began. this kind of thing is dangerous.”
“yes, i know. but i like danger—mental danger especially.”
“but drink would be better for you. even drugs. you are asking me to help to throw you off your mental balance.”
“i know. i know. but you won’t refuse?”
“to show you that i will i am leaving you now in this café. i am going. good-night.”
but he met me many times after that, and always 100pursued me with ardour. in the end he gained his desire and, having done so, had no further use for me.
i call him the man who collects opinions of himself. he is still in london. and he is not yet insane.
then there was the lady—since, alas! dead—who used always to appear in public in a kind of purple shroud, her face and fingers chalked. she rather stupidly called herself cheerio death, and was one of the jolliest girls i have ever met. she longed and ached for notoriety and for new sensations: she feasted on them and they nourished and fattened her. only very brave or reckless men dared be seen with her in public, for, though her behaviour was scrupulously correct, her appearance created either veiled ridicule or consternation wherever she went. yet she never lacked companions.
“hullo, gerald!” she used to say to me; “sit down near me. you are so nice and chubby. i like to have you near me. how am i looking?”
“more beautiful than ever.”
“oh, you are sweet. isn’t he sweet, frank?” she would say to one of her companions. “order him some champagne. i’m thirsty.”
and, really, cheerio death was very beautiful in a ghastly and terrible way. by degrees, all the reputable restaurants were closed to her, and in the late autumn of 1913 she disappeared, to die of consumption in soho. poor girl! perhaps in paris, where they love the outré and the shocking, she would have secured the full, hectic success that in london was denied her.
. . . . . . . .
are freaks always conscious of their freakishness? i do not think they are. not even the man who wilfully cultivates his oddities until they have become swollen excrescences hanging bulbous-like on his personality is aware how vastly different, how unreasonably different he is from his fellows. he is more than reconciled to 101himself; he loves himself; he is what other people would be if only they could. vanity continually lulls and soothes and rots him. the nature that craves to be noticed will go to almost any lengths to secure that notice.
it has always appeared curious to me that the ambition to become famous should very generally be regarded as a worthy passion in a man of genius. it is but natural that a man of genius should desire his work to reach as many people as possible, but whether or not he should be known as the author of that work seems to me a matter of no importance whatever. but to the man himself it is all-important. he has an instinctive feeling that if, in the public eye, he is separated from his work, savour will go from what he has created. he and his work must be closely identified.
this desire to be widely known, to be talked about everywhere, is in the man of genius accepted as natural, but it is this very desire that, in many cases, makes a freak of the ordinary man. obscurity to him is death.
