after what i have written you may find it difficult, if not altogether impossible, to regard me as a guileless youth. yet i ask you so to regard me. for, if i be not guileless, how can one explain the whole-hearted enjoyment i used to derive from my occasional visits to the crab tree club in soho, and the cabaret club in heddon street during the twelve months before the war?
i had been a considerable time in london before it occurred to me that there was any other way of spending the night except in bed. evenings, of course, were spent either at home, the theatre, the café royal, a concert hall, a music hall, or at friends’ flats and studios, and though it is true that sometimes friends induced you to stay, or you induced friends to stay, until dawn, yet these long hours were never deliberately planned beforehand.
but i had the café royal habit, and the café royal, in a sort of way, used to be an ante-chamber to various night clubs. at midnight, or shortly after, when i left the café with my friends, i used to find that, instead of proceeding to their respective homes, they went to one place or another where you made revelry and talked nonsense and, perchance, drank what proved at eight o’clock next morning to have been a little more than was good for you.
“come with us to the crab tree,” said two or three friends on one of these occasions.
274and go i did. it was my very first visit to a night club, and i expected to find i know not what scenes of dissipation and naughtiness. i imagined that i should meet women even more strange than some of the strange women of the café royal, that i should behold dresses so daring that they could no longer be called dresses at all, that the music would be ravishing, the conversation sparkling, the men distinguished, the food delicate beyond words, the wine of a perfect bouquet. instead, after walking up a flight of stairs, i found a large bare room with five men in it, one of them being the bar-tender who, behind rows of bottles of whisky and stout, was polishing glasses. of the other men, three were members who had just arrived, and the fourth was the pianist who, later on, was to play rag-time for the dancers.
i stood for a moment on the threshold of this empty room, feeling rather exasperated that i had come hither.
“it’s all right,” said one of my friends, a little pugnacious scotsman with a nose and chin like wagner’s; “wait a bit. things will soon brighten up.”
so we stepped to the bar and engaged the pianist in conversation. he was something of a scholar and had made a study of rag-time from the historical point of view. he played me two or three examples of rag-time which he declared occurred in bach, and i accepted his word, though i looked at him incredulously.
the note of that night was youth. there was no hectic excitement, no bacchic frenzy: everybody was jolly glad to be alive. somebody has defined happiness as conscious pleasure. if that definition holds good, then i was happy that night, for i remember saying to myself: “i am coming here again.” i loved the feeling of life the place gave me; the exhilaration of it seemed to pierce into my marrow. i did not want to talk to anybody. i merely wanted to sit back and watch everything: the 275furtive smiles of half-shy women who, happy in the arms of those they loved, were afraid to reveal too much of their happiness; the most delicate ankles of a slim girl i knew, but whose name (was it kitty or mimi?) i only half remembered; the kaleidoscope of colour on the platform where the dancers were. the women were like flowers—orchids suddenly endowed with movement.... i compared the scene with the spectacle afforded me by murray’s club a few nights previously, when ivan heald and i were taken there for an hour or two. some ladies at murray’s had had green hair, but only a poet like baudelaire can wear green hair with success. but at murray’s the people were all old. young girls of twenty were old. everybody was old except the aged, and they pranced and frisked to prove their unconquerable youth.... but at this jolly crab tree youth was in the air, in the music, in the laughter.
and, feeling a little intoxicated with happiness, i allowed a gentle melancholy to steal over me, as one sometimes does in certain moods. i thought of paris, for this scene reminded me of paris: i was full of longing for paris, and i remembered how in the spring of 1912 i used to sit in an attic in the quartier latin wondering and wondering. by that curious power that the mind, when a little excited, seems to possess—i mean the power of transferring one from a scene where one is happy to a scene where one would be still happier—i saw myself aimlessly strolling beneath the plane-trees on the banks of the seine. i took out a pencil and wrote:
paris days
these days, the bright days and white days,
these nights of blue between the days,
these streets a-glimmer in the haze:
these are for you, but you come not these ways:
paris is empty in the light days.
276these songs, the glad songs and sad songs,
this amber wine between the songs,
this scented laughter from dim throngs:
these are for you, paris to you belongs:
paris is mournful with her mad songs.
these breezes, the high breezes and dry breezes,
these stillnesses between the breezes,
these purple clouds the sunset seizes:
these are for you, but underneath the trees is
paris a-sighing with her shy breezes.
these days, these breezes and these nights,
these streets, this wine, these songs, these sighs;
paris with all her myriad lights,
paris so careless yet so wise:
all in the black sea would i spew
if i could win an hour of you.
these verses (though you would hardly think so) cost me infinite trouble, and when i had finished them i looked up from my scrawl and saw that the room was half-empty.
“is it so late then?” i asked a man sitting next to me. i saw it was aleister crowley, and he looked at me rather balefully.
“no: so early. six o’clock, to be precise.”
and he turned his back on me and gazed at a wall on which no pictures hung.
so i picked up my straw hat and tried to find my scots friend. he was sitting behind the piano, talking very earnestly to a man i did not know.
“oh, nicol bain,” said i, “i am so hungry.”
the streets were strewn with sunshine, and bain took off his hat and looked long and long at the blue sky.
“how damned fine to be alive!” he exclaimed.
“how long have you been alive?” i asked.
“only since i came to london.”
“i was alive for three years in manchester, but during all those years i sat at a desk pretending to be a clerk, 277i was dead, quite dead. so, you see, we really are young. you are about five, and i am nearly seven.”
he steered me into a restaurant which appeared to cater specially for night-birds, and bain ate bacon and eggs, whilst i feasted on a dish of strawberries, brown bread and coffee.
“i would,” said i, “much prefer to have bacon and eggs, but strawberries seem to be more in the picture, don’t you think? i am sure i am behaving very nobly to fit into the picture at the expense of my yearning inside.... and now, where can we get a bath?”
. . . . . . . .
after that first visit i went frequently to the crab tree club. there i met many poets and journalists and artists, and there, one night, a poet—a great strapping fellow, all bone and sinew and muscle—loudly challenged me to fight him. he is a man of some genius, well known both here and in america. the exact cause of his quarrel with me i have forgotten, but it appeared that, unwittingly, i had done him some real injury—or he thought i had. he spoke heatedly to me and i replied still more heatedly. suddenly, he rose, faced me menacingly, and shouted:
“all right, then. come and fight it out. come and fight it out downstairs.”
he looked at me with loathing.
i must have paled, i think, for i know that his terrific anger was like an onslaught. but i realised that i must accept his challenge. i hated the thought of what was before me, and hoped it would soon be over.
“very good. we’ll go downstairs.”
i felt a hand tighten approvingly on my arm and, looking round, saw ivan heald. he came with me.
“slog him, gerald,” he said earnestly.
but i felt most unheroic, and i know that as i made my way to the door i was trembling a little.
278the whole room was interested now, and i realised that we were going to have spectators. and then the unexpected happened. the club secretary and a few committee men rushed between us, dragging my sudden enemy away. i was glad to be separated, for i was afraid of him.... is it possible that he was afraid of me?
. . . . . . . .
augustus john used to come sometimes, and i remember chatting with p. g. konody about byzantine architecture, about which i think i know something. but one did not go to the crab tree for serious conversation. it was the diversion of excitement we all sought....
i think that for some weeks in the spring of 1914 i felt like a character in a rather second-rate novel. literally, i was intoxicated with life. and so full of vitality did i feel that i scarcely found time for sleep. i remember walking with my wife from soho to battersea park in the early hours of a june or july morning after being up all night. several friends accompanied us, and though we ought to have felt extremely jaded, we were as fresh as paint at our seven o’clock breakfast of cherries and coffee and honey. i tried to feel like george meredith as i ate, for i had read somewhere that he frequently breakfasted on honey and coffee and fruit.... the imitative instincts that we little artists have! how strange it is! we can never be ourselves for long. we are always imagining ourselves to be someone else more distinguished, or more interesting. we are always insatiably curious about the feelings and thoughts of others. pale imitators we are. and when we snatch at our personalities, how feeble they seem ... how feeble they are.
. . . . . . . .
one frightfully busy week an invitation came to us from madame strindberg to sup with her at the sign of the golden calf, popularly known as the cabaret. we 279did not particularly want to go, but i had been deeply interested in august strindberg ever since i had read max nordau’s degeneration (that, i think, is not the title, but you know the book i mean) and i had wished to learn more about this strange vitriolic personality, and since strindberg himself was dead, madame strindberg seemed to be the best person to whom to go for information.
the cabaret was in a large cellar at the end of heddon street, and the narrow way was blocked up with taxis as our own cab sped round the corner from regent street. the place was nearly full, and a frenchman with a little waxed moustache was singing two eyes of grey, with his eyes glued to the ceiling in a stupidly sentimental manner, and i recollect that our first impulse was to turn and flee. one hears such songs, i am told, in bolton and oldham, and, i dare say, in the london suburbs, but that madame strindberg should come all the way from sweden and bring a man all the way from france to sing the latest inanity was incredible. but my eye caught some fantastically carved figures that leered and leaned from the great, thick posts supporting the roof. these painted creatures were attractive and promising and futuristic, and:
“at all events, we’ll drink a bottle of champagne before we go,” said i, as a waiter drew us to a table and announced that supper was about to be served. “for champagne always helps,” i added.
and, really, for an hour or two i required a little artificial stimulus in order to survive the dullness of the musical programme.
“whoever the people are who run this place,” i said to a pale, elderly man who sat opposite to me, “they are extraordinarily stupid. they get frank harris to lecture one evening and give us inane music the next. one doesn’t come to a night club to be flapdoodled.”
“flap——?” he queried.
280“flapdoodled. yes. i mean these people who sing and recite like a penny reading. they do these things in higher wycombe and bluzzerby-on-stream. they should not be done here.”
the pale man did not understand. he coughed behind a very white hand and delicately selected a nut.
. . . . . . . .
and then madame strindberg approached our table. she had been pointed out to me half-an-hour previously and i had noted a pale little woman who appeared to examine her guests rather nervously. she looked cold and careworn. she was very silent, and her black clothing and white face struck a sombre note in all the moving light and colour of the large, warm room.
she came to the table and introduced herself to us, sitting down and placing a nervous little hand in mine. i soon discovered she had no conversation, for, try how she might, she could not say anything that mattered in the least. she chattered a little, made a few exclamations, and then sat silent. to me she seemed full of negations, denials. personality she had, i daresay, but it did not arouse my interest in the least, and after i had paid her a few insincere compliments concerning the club, i also sat silent. after a while, she was taken away to another table by some friends.
on subsequent occasions i saw her, but i do not remember that i had further communication with her except when i was made an honorary member of the club, when i wrote to her a short note of thanks. she was no key to strindberg: at all events, no key i could use.
. . . . . . . .
later on that night, the room roused itself from its semi-lethargy, and golden confetti and balls of coloured paper were thrown about by ladies and gentlemen who, not knowing each other, desired an acquaintanceship. the balls of paper unrolled themselves into long ribbons 281which, catching on to projections from the supporting pillars, hung in long loops and festoons which, thickening, soon began to resemble a gigantic spider’s web. silly musical toys were given us, and men and women—but especially women—made silly noises on them and giggled, or else shrieked uproariously.... except for the supper, which was excellent, the evening was not a success, and i do not suppose i should have gone there again if i had not been in search of frank harris, or if jack kahane had not insisted upon my accompanying him.
. . . . . . . .
i made a fairly extensive examination of london night clubs during the ensuing few months. one, near blackfriars, admitted me to full membership on the payment of the sum of one shilling, and i used to go there—why, i know not—and throw darts at a board and drink beer. if i did not throw darts, i found i was deemed eccentric. so i threw darts.
murray’s was beyond my means, and i found the people there untalented and plethoric. they ate too much. and another club devoted to “the” profession was full of trifling women and jaunty men. actresses are dear children, but at night they become tiresome. and actors always want me to praise them. they always pretended to be quite familiar with my name, and invariably invited me to “have one.” quite nice people, though, i assure you.
. . . . . . . .
a night club is never for the old. grey-haired people should always be at home after midnight. and there should be no card-playing. dancing one would have of course, and music of the finest. and wine, and many pretty women, and a certain quietness, and invisible waiters, and a perfume of roses.... as i write, i ask myself: “why should i not establish a night-club different from all the others?” it would be so easy to be 282different; it would be so difficult for me not to be different.... one wants space, of course: i hate being crushed against very full-bosomed ladies.... oh, and above all, i would have a big room set apart for the hour that comes after dawn. empty bottles, spilt wine, stale tobacco-smoke, cigarette ends, all kinds of untidiness: how horrible these are in the sun of a may or june morning! yes, we would all go at dawn into another room, a room coloured green, with narcissi, and jonquils and hyacinths on the tables: a room with open windows: a room with fruit spread invitingly: a room where one could still be gay and in which one need not feel sordid and spiritually jaded and spiritually unclean.... if you have the right mental outlook, you will never feel spiritually unclean after a night of riot, but all our london night clubs in pre-war days seemed to conspire together to make enjoyment unhealthy, gaiety a matter for after-regret, and exaltation a little disgraceful.... if someone will lend me a lot of money (or give it me—why shouldn’t he?) i will found a night club that will knock all the others into a cocked hat....
