CHAPTER ONE

THE Transatlantic Review WAS BORN amidst turmoil, and had a tumultuous if sometimes gay career. Foreseeing this, we took for its crest the ship that forms the arms of the City of Paris and, for its motto, the first words of that city’s device: “Fluctuat….” “It is borne up and down on the waves.” Had its career been prolonged we had intended to add the rest of the device: “Nee mergitur”—“and does not sink.” … It was not to be.

Before setting out on that tilt against the windmills, I had to settle the question of my return to England. I remember the exact hour of my coming to that decision—though the exact date does not come back to me. But I had a date with Mr. Joyce at the old Lavenue’s, which used to be one of the best restaurants in Paris. As I stood outside it the clock on the Gare Montparnasse marked five-and-twenty past seven. I can see the spidery black hands on the pallid, opaline face of the dial! I had asked Joyce for seven-thirty; so I bought an English newspaper and sat down to an apéritif outside the restaurant in an evening of golden haze…. So it was perhaps in August, 1923.

The English newspaper was yelling with triumph. All across the front page it yelled the words: “Big Axe’s First Chop!” … The British Government had abolished the post of Historical Adviser to the Foreign Office. It was then that I said:

“Perhaps I had better never go back to England!”

A country whose Foreign Office lacks Historical Advice is no country for poets—or for anybody else! … It was then 19.h.27.30…. The clock had moved on two and a half minutes….

It was not, of course, the first time that such an idea had crossed my mind. On the 12th of November, 1922, when I had just reached Paris, I had read—within a hundred yards of that spot—of the fall of Mr. Lloyd’s George’s Government…. I had only meant to come to Paris for six weeks, but then I thought it safe to go as far as St. Jean Cap Ferrat. And I had said:

“Perhaps I need never return to England.”

It was a curious sensation—of relief! I am no David and any slingstones of mine would rebound like peas from the brazen brow of Dai Bach. I am even no politician. I never talk politics except when I get excited by the ascent to power of somebody like Mr. George or his friend Mr. Hitler. Even at that I soon tire of the subject. Once you have said that Mr. Lloyd George was responsible for all the sorrows that now beset our poor civilisation or that Mr. Hitler is the anti-Christ of culture, you have said all that is to be said, and it is monotonous to repeat even truth. Still less do I ever write about politics, though for purposes of my own I have always followed with deep attention the public affairs of the countries round the Atlantic. So I did not see that my presence in England could in any way help that country.

But, till that November day I had felt as if I were doing what motorists call watching the traffic. As if I had been in an immense public automobile careering above precipices, at the mercy of a mad driver, who had never travelled those roads before. One is unwilling to get out and petrified with terror at the thought of staying there…. In any case, even a rat should not desert a sinking ship….

Mr. Baldwin, the new Prime Minister, appeared to be another nice middle-aged gentleman for a quiet tea-party. Less lugubrious than Mr. Bonar Law—whose face would have wrecked any party—he appeared to be even more inactive. At the same time he was a charming speaker, his pleasant voice and pious, anodyne opinions making of his sentences so many gentle opiates. So it seemed to me that he was what my country most needed—somebody who would do nothing for seven years, and let the English people work out its problem for itself.

England at that date—and still!—presented the aspect of a nation divided into two hostile camps by a line running, say, from the Bristol Channel to the Wash or thereabouts. In the north was an immense industrial city of thirteen million inhabitants. The district between Liverpool and Middlesbrough was one metropolis, tramways running between uninterrupted houses from one to the other, right across England. In the south was another city of thirteen millions—London and her outskirts. The north was being ruined by the lowness of the franc; the banking south would be ruined if the gold standard was not maintained.

Of the latter proposition I had no supporting evidence. It was generally stated that the prosperity of London depended on its remaining the banking centre of the world, and that it could only be the banking centre of the world if it had the gold standard. How that might be I had no means of knowing. But I had evidence enough of the other proposition—that the industrial north was being ruined by the lowness of the currencies of the lesser breeds. Evidence of that hit me everywhere. In the Paris that I had known before the war the names of British products blazed in advertisements from every wall, and from the columns of every newspaper. Now there were none, and if you wanted anything English, you had to seek for a tiny shop in a side street and pay from three to five times as much as you would have to pay for a similar French product. The French product would not be quite so good, but, in face of the difference in the prices, what choice had one? …

I had made, in the Cévennes, a little tour in the car of a friend who was a French automobile manufacturer. He had told me that he could turn out three automobile wheels of the standard of a famous British house for the same price as that for which that house could manufacture one. So M. Chose could employ three times as many men. In addition he eventually supplied the British firm—which had hitherto advertised that it sold only British products—with its automobile wheels, thus putting more British-mechanics out of work and giving employment to more French-men. In addition, the British firm actually re-exported the wheels to France, having made some slight alterations to their attachment, and were able, on the strength of their name, to sell them for more than M. Chose’s own wheels would fetch. This, however, was put a stop to by legal action, so that even that slight profit, due to the once famous British reputation for workmanship, was put an end to….

All this was matter as to which I could hardly judge. I was neither captain of industry nor financial leader. My interests went out to the artist and the agriculturist. For me the manufacturer was more pestilential than the banker, and the banker more pestilential than the manufacturer. Between those hideous upper and nether millstones what chance had the farmer? and the poor poet! What a hope was his? …

A peculiar incident had, even before my leaving England, predisposed me towards expatriation. This was the call of an election agent—a Tory, I think. He asked for my name on his rolls. I said he could have it, because I never refused anybody anything that was mine to give and the Liberal agent had never called on me….

I will here interpolate a little anecdote that has always amused me when I have thought of it. And it may be of use to electioneers…. I was once returning officer in Sussex. An aged, nearly blind labourer came in to vote. He said to me:

“Which be I to vote for, zur, Conservative or Liberal?”

I expressed proper horror and explained that, presiding at the poll, I had to be strictly impartial. He said:

“Well, it be like this, governer. The Conservative gen’lman come to see me and he never gave me nothing. The Liberal gen’lman never came to see me, but what I thinks is: if he had a come he might have given me sutthing. So I shall vote for he!”

This Tory gentleman certainly gave me nothing—except food for thought…. When he had taken down my name he said oilily: “And what profession shall I put, sir?”

I said: “Writer?”

“What?” … and only after a second remembered to add: “Sir!”

“I’m a writer! I write books for a living!”

He was appalled and became almost lachrymose. He said.

“Oh, don’t say that, sir. Say: ‘Gentleman.’”

I explained that I was not a gentleman. I was a poet.

He became almost frantic at that. He said:

“Oh, I can’t say that, sir. It would make my roll look ludicrous. I should be laughed out of my job if you made me say ‘poet’…. Make it ‘gentleman’, sir….”

And, sitting there, outside Lavenue’s, I was reminded of something else. When I was employed in demobilising my battalion after the Armistice, I had to sort men into categories. There were eighteen categories. They regulated the rate of priority of discharge according to the use of the individual to the community. In the first category you had Administrators—Bankers, Manufacturers, Employers of manual labour. After that you had classes labelled: “Productive”—skilled artisans, coal-miners, blacksmiths, whitesmiths, breeders of animals…. When I came, in my inspection of the Army Order making these regulations, on the XVIIIth and last category, which was labelled “Totally unproductive,” I found huddled together, and not even in alphabetical order, those who were to be last discharged. They were utterly useless to the community. They included:

“Travelling showmen, circus performers, all writers not regularly employed on newspapers, tramps, pedlars, all painters not employed as house, factory, industrial, carriage, or sign-painters; all musicians, all unemployable persons …” and, oh, irony! “Gentlemen, independent.”

I pondered over those things whilst I waited for Mr. Joyce…. It was by then 8.10…. Indignation took complete possession of me. That artists should be lowly rated was supportable. But that they should be labelled unproductive, being the creatures of God who produce entirely out of themselves, with no material aids and no hope of help! I could imagine, even with sympathy, the honest Army Officer who composed that document in his Whitehall office…. But that the State should, to its eternal shame, let pass such a compilation—that appeared to me intolerable….

And on top of that that Election Agent! It appeared that for me and my brothers there was no escape. One way or other—either as Artists or Gentlemen—we had to be in the XVIIIth Category…. And more than anything I resented being forced to be a Gentleman. An artist cannot be a Gentleman, for, if he is a Gentleman he is no artist. The best Gentleman is he who, with the pink cheeks of urban health, inhabits a glass showcase. He at least will never commit a solecism. His clothes at least are for ever perfectly pressed. He at least will never express despair, intelligence, fear, animation or passion! And I on an electioneer’s sheet must write myself down—that!

I pondered like that as the hands of the station clock reached 8.15!

And now Mr. Baldwin’s Government had moved. They were no Gentlemen, they had allowed themselves to be badgered by the cheap Press into action. With an axe! The cheap Press with the voices of jackals demanded Economy. For them Mr. Baldwin’s Ministry had, like the Russian mother, thrown to the wolves the Foreign Office Adviser in History. No British diplomat from henceforth was to know what was the Pragmatic Sanction, or what was enacted by the Congress of Rastatt, the Convention of Cintra, the Venezuelan Arbitration award—or the very treaty of Versailles, which by then was historic….

Two ladies passed and bowed to me—Miss Sylvia Beach and Miss Nina Hamnett.

“We shall see you at Joyce’s dinner at nine. Opposite!”

“No: he’s dining with me here at 7.30….” It was then 8.37.

“Joyce never dines with anybody, anywhere but opposite, and never at seven-thirty.”

“He is dining with me to-night to try the Château Pavie, 1914.”

“He never drinks anything but white wine.”

“Anyhow, I am never going back to England.”

“How nice!” and passed on.

So it will appear to the reader that I have nothing to say against my country which any Englishman would resent. For all that I have said amounts to that the English State and the English social hierarchy believe in keeping the imaginative artist in his place—his place being the XVIIIth Category. The admirable Staff wallah who compiled that schedule would merely shake his head in bewilderment at reading my reasons for living outside his shadow. He would say:

“This seems to be rather tosh. Does Mr. F. really think that banks are not more useful to—er—the Community than … er, novels? … Surely not novels! … Or that coals are not more necessary to England than pictures…. Even hand-painted oil ones!” … And he will shake his scarlet hatband in perplexity and add: “The johnny must mean something. But what?”

And the tragedy is that that man is an admirable personality inspired by the very best sense of duty. The very best! If you could get him to see that a training in the Arts was as salutary to mankind as Army physical training, he would spend a month of slow arranging and rearranging his schedules, so that every Tommy would get at least as many hours a week of Æsthetic and Literary training and exercise as he spends on P. T. And that Staff Officer would see to it that that instruction was the best to be got, and that the regimental officers saw to it that there was no shirking.

But the tragedy is that you could never get him to see what every peasant here in Provence knows—that to the properly circumstanced man frescoed rooms are infinitely more salutary than artificial heating—or than anything that is the product of steam-driven machinery…. So they fresco their rooms with those admirably primitive, local paintings that have had so great an influence on modern art and make no provision whatever for heating. And, on occasion, it can be cold here.

I think I have said enough to make it plain that I regard the British Army as a human machine with so great an admiration that I can hardly write of it without hyperbole. With an admiration almost equally great I regard the British Constitution, the British legal machine and administration of justice. The one and the other are inspired by a deep tradition of humanity that as long as there are wars and laws and rulers mankind would be foolish indeed to let die. England may or may not, in saving France on the 4th August, 1914, have saved civilisation by her arms. But there is no doubt that she could now, in the department of life that I have mentioned, save civilisation by her example.

And even in my resentment of her treatment of the artist I bear no personal feeling. It is to me a matter of pure indifference how I am treated by English people. What I should bitterly resent at the hands of a Frenchman leaves me, on the other side of the Channel, completely indifferent. It remains hypocrisy to search for the person of the Sacred Emperor in a low tea-house and to expect urbanity from the barely adolescent is to give evidence of ignorance of the nature of man.

No, what enrages me is the thought that the same grossness might be shown to great artists. Imagine, say, Matisse in England and understanding the social nuances by which, supposing him to be painting a portrait in an English house, he should realise that he ranks a little after the governess and a little above the butler—or that his “état civil” is in the company of tramps and the unemployable! … To have, when abroad, to blush for one’s country, is the most painful of all experiences.

But for the rest, it was that day at 8.49 my humble prayer that the reigning house might for ever protect the laws of Great Britain; that her arms might be for ever victorious; that her commerce might for ever prosper; that Kent might always hold the county championship; England retain the Ashes, the British Empire the Davis Cup, and particularly I prayed that a British heavyweight might be found to stand on his legs for six rounds out of any ten-round contest, anywhere. Oh … and might Mr. Lucas’s favourite paper find now and then some really side-splitting ones. Then England will, for ever, know happy sunsets….

I do not mean to say that I have been under any temptation to change my temporal nationality. Only from that day I have gone on feeling more and more convinced that my only country is that invisible one that is known as the kingdom of letters. So that, since that day I live in France, where the Arts are held in great honour, and as often as I can I go to the United States, where the greatest curiosity as to the Arts is displayed, I go there, that is to say, when I can afford it and stay until my money is spent. Then I come back to the shores of the Mediterranean, where one can live on a few herbs, and for the greater part of the year, in a soft climate, pass the day and night entirely out of doors! …

The transatlantic review arose almost accidentally, though I have said that when I had been passing through Paris on my way to the Riviera an idea had passed through my mind. It was a vague sense rather than an idea…. It seemed to me that it would be a good thing if someone would start a centre for the more modern and youthful of the art movements, with which, in 1923, the city, like an immense seething cauldron, bubbled and overflowed. I hadn’t thought that the task was meant for me. But a dozen times I was stopped on the boulevards and told that what was needed was another English Review. Then one day, crossing the Boulevard St. Michel, up near the Luxembourg Gardens, I met my brother. I had not seen him for a great number of years. The last time had been in 1916, when I had passed his rather bulky form, in uniform, in New Oxford Street. He had been wounded and I failed to recognise him, khaki making everyone look alike. My companion on that day said that I exclaimed—it was during the period when my memory was still very weak:

“Good God! that was my brother Oliver. I have cut my brother Oliver…. One should not cut one’s brother…. Certainly one should not cut one’s brother! It isn’t done.”

I do not remember to have uttered those words, but I can still hear the ringing laughter that saluted whatever I did say. I ran back along the street after him, but he had gone down the Tube lift before I caught him up.

Now I met him on a road refuge half-way across the boulevard. He said that he wanted me to edit a review owned by friends of his in Paris!

My brother Oliver Hueffer was a gifted and in many ways extraordinary fellow. From my earliest days I was taught—by my father, my mother and himself—to regard him as the sparkling jewel of the family, whilst I was its ugly duckling. My father used to call me “the patient but extremely stupid Ass!”; to discipline my haughty and proud stomach my mother made me surrender to him my rabbits, my tops, my catapults, my stuffed squirrel. My father, respecting the rights of primogeniture, used to give me as pocket money a weekly sixpence and to my brother fourpence halfpenny. My mother, however, used to insist on my equalising the sums, so I never had more than fivepence farthing to spend. That sum was really insufficient to keep me at school in the position that I might have expected…. When we grew to young manhood I could excel him in one thing: I could grow a moustache, which he never could. This used to cause him great heartburnings. And, of course, I could always knock him down, for, owing to his having at the age of six dislocated his hip, he was always slow-moving. But as I seldom wanted to knock him down this was small consolation to me.

From an early age I saw little of him except in his more coruscating moments. When I was about nineteen I was standing on the pavement outside St. George’s, Hanover Square, watching the guests go in to a wedding of some member of the Grosvenor family. My brother got out of a carriage of the Duke of Westminster and handed out one of the bridesmaids…. He was then sixteen and in a military uniform.

Under my grandfather’s reign, after my father’s death, Oliver went through a great series of coruscating avatars. My grandfather had to have geniuses for his grandchildren. Of an evening he would go through our names in turn, beginning with the young Rossettis:

“Olive’s a genius, Arthur’s a genius, Helen’s certainly a genius.” Then he would begin with my mother’s children: “Juliet’s a perfect genius; Fordie is too perhaps. But as for Oliver, I can’t make out whether he’s a genius or mad…. I think he’s both!”

That was high praise. That all his grandchildren should be mere geniuses was a commonplace to him. But that the gods should vouchsafe to him a mad genius—that was almost beyond his most private hopes! …

So, with his aid, my brother, with the swiftness of the succession of the seasons at St. Agrève, ran through the careers of Man About Town, Army Officer, Actor, Stockbroker, Painter, Author and, under the auspices of the father of one of his fiancées, that of valise manufacturer!

My grandfather, with his square white beard and his long white hair cut square, exactly resembled the King of Hearts in a pack of cards. Towards the end of his life he used to paint till far into the night—with his left hand, because his right was paralysed. He would lay down his palette, take off his béret and go up to bed. He would put on his nightcap and carefully lay in the flat brass candlestick his gold watch, chain and seals, and his gold-rimmed spectacles….

One morning a week the early hours would be pierced by his imprecations. He would send for my brother, who would look more than usually cherubic. He would fling his nightcap across the room and shout:

“God damn and blast you, Oliver, what have you done with my watch and chain and spectacles?”

Oliver would say, with an air of ingenuousness:

“Well, you see, Granpa, I had to have a couple of quid for debts of honour, and I knew you would not want me not to have them whilst I did not want to wake you. So I took them down to Attenborough’s. But here are the pawn tickets.”

I think my grandfather was, in secret, rather proud of these exploits. At any rate he never locked his bedroom door….

On coming into his money from our oncle d’Amérique Oliver set up as a wholesale tobacco merchant under the auspices of one of our Virginian cousins. This was appropriate, because our uncle’s money had been gained by tobacco-planting in the South. But he soon gave that up and took seriously to the profession of letters. Under the pseudonym of Jane Wardle he published several books which were very successful—one of them, the Lord of Latimer Street, being enormously so. The Press soon got on to the secret, and compared his books to my own, always preferring his lightness of touch to my “Teutonic” stolidity. He, however, drifted gradually into journalism, and only occasionally wrote books. Sometimes he would deliberately take one of my own subjects—to show that he was more brilliant than I. And, in England, he would always be more successful. I wonder no English publisher has thought of resuscitating his work. It had great qualities of fancy.

He went eventually to New York, as correspondent for one of the great English dailies. There he tried to found a paper on the lines of what in England is called the Yellow Press. I was told the other day by a New York journalist who had known him at the time that he actually did succeed—in 1910 or so—in publishing some numbers of a paper that in every way resembled the Daily News of New York. New York, however, was not ready for such brilliances; the paper died, and my brother went through some hard times….

A little after the outbreak of the late war, the War Office rang me up and a voice said:

“There’s a fellow here who says he’s your brother.”

I said that if he said he was my brother he probably was.

The voice continued rather outragedly:

“But he says he’s a Mexican General….”

I said that if he said he was a Mexican General he probably was.

With a still greater intonation the voice continued:

“But he says he commanded 3,000 men, 4,500 women, and 6,000 children.”

I said that my brother’s enumeration of his troops was absolutely correct. The women cut the throats of the wounded, the children went through their pockets when they were dead. I added that they might grant him a commission with perfect confidence. He served through the war with credit and was twice wounded. I never shall forget the sense of rest that my mother showed when she received the news that for the second time he was in hospital in London. I have never seen greater contentment. She folded up the telegram from the War Office, placed it in the fly-leaf of her novel—it was Wuthering Heights—folded herself deep into her arm-chair and shawl, put on her spectacles, said:

“You know, Fordie, I think you’re perfectly wrong when you say that Heathcliffe is overdrawn,” and so settled down to read for five hours without speaking. It had been many, many hours since she had laid down that work—at page 36.

Two years ago I was sitting on the terrace here, reading the English paper. I noticed that a piece had been cut out. Below the excision I read: “—imer Street, etc.” Then I knew my brother was dead. I was at the time just finishing a book and at such times I am always depressed and nervous. A finished book is something alive and, in its measure, permanent. But until you have written the last word it is no more than a heap of soiled paper. I fear preposterous things—that one of the aeroplanes that are for ever soaring overhead here might drop a spanner on my head…. Anything…. So a member of my household had cut out from the paper the necrological announcement, hoping to hold back the news till I should have finished the book. But I knew that there had been the words: “He was the author of a number of works which achieved great popularity, amongst the best known being: A Book of Witches; A Tramp in New York; The Lord of Latimer Street, etc.” And these were the exact words …

I will add a curious fact. My brother’s character and temperament must much have resembled my own. He had inherited from my mother and my grandfather a little more of their romantic tendency to take geese for swans—though Heaven knows I too have enough of that. And I got from my father enough of a passion for justness in expression and judgment to rob me of the chance of his undoubted brilliance. So that, in conversation, I am really rather inarticulate, whereas when it came to what is called back-chat he was the most amazing performer that I have ever heard, not excluding Mr. H. G. Wells. But what was singular, was that whenever we were together alone and silent, when one of us broke the silence it was to say exactly what the other had been about to bring out. I have tested this time and again, and it certainly came true seven out of ten times as to the substance of the remark, and five out of ten times as to the actual words. The same sort of, I suppose telepathic, rapport existed between my mother and myself, but not nearly in so marked a degree.

… In 1923, then, my brother stood beside me on a refuge half-way across the Boulevard St. Michel and told me that some Paris friends of his wanted me to edit a review for them. The startling nature of that coincidence with the actual train of my thoughts at the moment made me accept the idea even whilst we stood in the middle of the street. He mentioned names which were dazzling in the Paris of that day and sums the disposal of which would have made the durability of any journal absolutely certain. So we parted with the matter more than half settled, he going to the eastern pavement, I to the west.

Ten minutes after, I emerged from the rue de la Grande Chaumière on to the Boulevard Montparnasse. Ezra, with his balancing step, approached me as if he had been awaiting my approach.—He can’t have been.—He said:

“I’ve got a wonderful contribution for your new review,” and he led me to M. Fernand Léger, who, wearing an old-fashioned cricketer’s cap like that of Maître Montagnier of Tarascon, was sitting on a bench ten yards away. M, Léger produced an immense manuscript, left it in my hands and walked away…. Without a word. I think he regarded me with aversion, as being both English and a publisher.

Ezra led me to the Dôme—a resort I much disliked—and provided me with a sub-editor and a private secretary. The sub-editor was a White Russian, exiled Colonel, an aristocrat to his finger-tips, knowing not a word of English and more nervous than you would imagine that anyone could be. He saw Communistic conspiracies everywhere and, within five minutes, was convinced that I was a Soviet agent. He was a beautiful specimen of his type, but he was starving.

The private secretary was also a beautiful specimen of his type. He was an English Conscientious Objector, an apparently mild, bespectacled student. He too was starving…. Everyone in the Dôme was starving…. I would have preferred not to have a Conscientious Objector for my private secretary or a White Russian aristocrat for a sub-editor. Indeed, I was not quite certain that I needed at the moment the services of either functionary.

The Russian produced a contract with a printer and several manuscripts by friends—White Russians who recounted their martyrdoms under the Soviet: the Conscientious Objector gave me the MS. of a work of his on German lyric poetry and another on neo-German metaphysics. Ezra beckoned to a slim, apparently diffident young man and to a large-boned undiffident young man. They told Ezra that they had not brought the MSS. he had told them to bring. They had thought I should not like them. I did not catch their names because the avalanche began.

Ezra had gone away with the two young men, in order, he said, that I might have leisure to talk things over with my two collaborators. But there was no chance of talking. I have always disliked the Dôme, mainly because of the facial ugliness of its frequenters. … That only means that the best goods are not always done up in the most attractive parcels. Taken singly I would rather have the society of the ugliest man at the Dôme or the most indigent of the habitués of the Rotonde than with the handsomest and best got up of the drinking at the smarter cafés of the Grands Boulevard. Individually the Dome’s crowd are apt to prove at least keen followers of one art or another. Now and then they will develop into geniuses. But keen followers of the arts and geniuses who have not yet succeeded, have not an usually—or indeed unreasonably—a quality of ferocious resentment that shows itself in their faces. The ferocious resentment of neglect when one is conscious of great gifts or even of only great industry has my entire sympathy, even when that resentment is expressed against myself as capitalist, or for this or that. That has happened to me often enough. But to be pressed close in on by several hundred beings, all, whether geniuses or industrious or merely detrimental and needy—all crushed together, in a fetid atmosphere and an unceasing din—that is apt to disturb my equanimity.

Ezra, however, had insisted on my playing chess with him every afternoon during my stay—my two stays—in Paris, with the result that, bulky and blond, and to all appearances opulent, I must have been extremely well known in those parages. And that occasion was like a riot in the Tower of Babel. The beings that bore down on me, all feeling in their pockets, were of the most unimaginable colours, races and tongues. There were at least two Japanese, two negroes—one of whom had a real literary talent—a Mexican vaquero in costume, Finns, Swedes, French, Rumanians. They produced manuscripts in rolls, in wads, on skewers. They produced photographs of pictures, pictures themselves, music in sheets. Americans expressed admiration for my work; gloomy Englishmen said that they did not suppose I was the sort of person to like their stuff. I was, as a matter of fact, extremely anxious to read the manuscripts. I am always anxious to, and the more battered and unpresentable the manuscript the more hope it excites in me. But I was not to read many of them.

I shared the small sum I had in my pocket between the conscientious objector and the White Russian, and ran away. With that small sum the Colonel bought perfumes and roses for the Princess, his wife. The conscientious objector embarked on a career of martial adventure. I had told him to collect the manuscripts and bring them round to me next morning. Alas!

When I got home, there were manuscripts—nearly a wash-basketful—already there. And awaiting me were a very vocal lady from Chicago and an elegant, but bewildered husband. It was then ten o’clock at night. They stayed till two o’clock in the morning, the husband completely silent, the lady—who was very tall and frightening—threatening me with all sorts of supernatural ills if I did not make my new magazine a vehicle—of course, for virtue, but also for some form of dogma connected, I think, with psychiatry. She offered to subscribe for herself and her husband, then and there.

So there I was with all the machinery of a magazine—sub-editor, secretary, contributions, printers, subscribers….

It had been just before dinner-time that I had met my brother. I had conversed with him in absolute isolation. You could not have greater isolation than a refuge in the centre of the traffic of the Boulevard St. Michel. Yet here was an organisation.

It was as if I had been in one of those immense deserts inhabited by savages who have unknown methods of communication over untold distances. Before I had met my brother I had had no idea of anything so tangible as a Review; certainly not of a Review for which I should have the responsibility. I had just worked myself up to the idea of myself writing. You cannot write and conduct a Review, at least, you cannot write well.

Ezra, however, had had the idea—that someone else ought to take on the job. It was an idea that might have jumped to the eye of anyone in the Paris of those days. Paris gyrated, seethed, clamoured, roared with the Arts. Painters, novelists, poets, composers, sculptors, batik-designers, decorators, even advanced photographers, so crowded the boulevards that you could not see the tree-trunks. They came from Tokio, they came from Petrograd; they poured in from Berlin, from Constantinople, from Rio de Janeiro; they flew in locust hordes from Spokane, from Seattle, from Santa Fé, from all the states and Oklahoma. If you had held up and dropped a sheet of paper on any one of the boulevards and had said: “I want a contribution,” a thousand hands would have torn you to pieces before it had hit the ground…. At least seven must have come even from London….

All this clamorous life seemed to call for its organ…. I had discussed that often enough with Ezra…. It was not merely Paris that was alive to the Arts: it was the whole world. If thousands came from Spokane, it was because there a leaven was working. So with Tokio, Petrograd, Budapest, and Portland, Maine. It was the real reaction from the war; the artist making his claim for glory as against the glory of the warrior. Mars was to be disgruntled.

So communication should be established between that Sun, Paris, and the furtherest satellites, and between them and Paris. St. Louis, Mo., must be told what Picasso was doing and Picasso and Mr. Joyce must be enlightened as to the activities of Greenwich Village. And Lenin, reading of these deeds in his palace in Petrograd, would be moved to give the Arts a higher place in his body public. It was a fine idea.

It seemed, however, to be nothing for me. And it was nothing for Ezra, who, at that moment, had become both sculptor and musician. Thus all his thoughts were needed for those arts. He had living above his studio in the rue N. D. des Champs a gentleman whom he suspected of being an ex-enemy, a person obnoxious in himself. He had, therefore, persuaded Mr. George Antheil, who, besides being a great composer, must be the heaviest living piano-player—he had persuaded Mr. Antheil to practise his latest symphony for piano and orchestra in Mr. Pound’s studio. This lasted all day for several weeks. When Mr. Antheil was fatigued, his orchestra played unceasingly Mr. Antheil’s own arrangement of the Wacht am Rhein. In the meanwhile, turning sculptor, Mr. Pound fiercely struck blocks of granite with sledge-hammers.

The rest of his day—his evenings, that is to say—would thus be given up in the court of the local justice of the peace, rebutting the complaints of the gentleman who lived overhead. He had some difficulty, but eventually succeeded in convincing that magistrate that he and Mr. Antheil were two pure young Americans engaged in earning their livings to the greater glory of France, whereas the gentleman upstairs was no more nor less than the worst type produced by a lately enemy nation. So that fellow had to leave Paris.

It was not to be imagined that, with all this on his hands, Mr. Pound could be expected to give time to the conducting of a Review, and there the matter had rested. Or I supposed it to have rested. But I knew that Mr. Pound was passionate to have that Review, and that he was industriously searching for a cat to get those chestnuts out of the fire. He wanted a mild, gentle young man who should provide all the money and do all the work. He, in the meantime, was to extend his length in the office arm-chairs and see that that Review printed nothing but the contributions of his friends for the time being….

So there I sat, at after four in the morning, in a little garden pavilion on the site of the temple of Diana, with the white blackbirds just beginning to warble in the trees. I knew that I was for it. For, even if my brother’s scheme fell through, the public opinion that Ezra had carefully prepared on the boulevards would see to it. Not even white blackbirds—those fabulous and luck-bringing birds of France—not even the merles blancs, not even Diana herself would preserve me from their fury, if I did not provide harbourage for their composition. I should be torn to pieces as was Actæon by the hounds of that Goddess….

Next day we proceeded—my brother, I, the White Russian and Mr. Pound and others, to see fair play—to an office in the Quartier de l’Etoile. There was no doubt that that office represented High Finance. High Financiers passed in and out all the time we were kept waiting in the ante-room. I had even a glimpse of the enormously wealthy man who was said to—and I believe did—own the Review it was proposed to entrust to me. He was the principal winning owner of the French turf that year. I didn’t much like his looks—I mean as owner of a Review—and I gather that he didn’t much like mine or those of the helpers who accompanied me. That is not surprising. The cleft between the Left Bank and that quarter is more impassable than any Mappin Terrace, separating wild beasts from avid sightseers.

We were all shown into the office of a gentleman well known in Paris. He was the head of a firm of solicitors, though I believe he was not actually a solicitor himself. But he employed English lawyers in that office. That is, I believe, a perfectly proper proceeding and the gentleman himself seemed a very-ordinary city man. He certainly knew very little about running reviews, and agreed to every condition that I made with such readiness that I made them as stiff as I could…. The company to be formed to take over the existing, but unsuccessful Review—it was temporarily edited by my brother—was to relieve me absolutely of all business and financial responsibilities. It was to pay my staff, provide a business office at that building, on the first of every month to let me have a cheque sufficient to pay all contributions at a flat rate per page. It was to guarantee to continue for at least three years and to pay me, not a salary, but in shares of the company. In the case of any disagreement between myself and the directors, I was to have the right to purchase a sufficiency of the shares to give me absolute control of the company. Most important of all, I was to have absolute control of what went into the Review, not only in the editorial, but also the advertising pages. The directors were to undertake not even to make suggestions, except at my request. The only channel between them and me was to be my brother, who was appointed business manager. I was to have my own office, which was never to be approached by any of the directors except at my invitation…. I go into these details because we seemed to evolve a model agreement for magazine editorship—from the point of view of the editor.

I then gave Mr. P—— an outline of my proposed editorial policy. It seemed to astonish him mildly, but not in the least to antagonise him. He had never heard of Picasso, Matisse, Brancusi, Mr. Joyce, Miss Stein, nor Mr. Pound. Not even of Conrad or Thomas Hardy. But he said:

“That’s all right. You go ahead. It’s in your hands. You get going as soon as you please. We have every confidence in you.”

He detained me for a minute when the others left. He said that his friend Mr. Q——, one of the hottest men in Paris or New York, had told him and the race-horse owner an amazing story. Mr. Q—— had never read a book in his life. But one day in Egypt he had been on the dahabeah of Mr. R——, the hottest man on Wall Street…. I knew Mr. R—— by reputation of course. Mr. R—— had had to go ashore for an evening. He had left Mr. Q—— with a box of his own particular cigars and one of my novels. Mr. Q—— had never read a novel before or since. But he said that that was the happiest evening of his whole life. He couldn’t get over it. He could not believe that a mere book could do that to you. He often thought of it. The happiest evening of his whole life…. Perfectly blissful!

The book had been my most popular novel. The only permanently popular novel I ever wrote. So it was no great shakes. But there it was. Mr. P—— and the race-horse owner had been pondering over what to do with their unprofitable magazine—which they had taken over as against advertising debts. And Mr. Q—— had told them his rapturous story on the evening of the day when my brother had suggested that the editorship should be given to me. And these simple beings had taken that to be evidence of almost divine inspiration.

“Mr. Q——,” Mr. P—— said, “is one of the hardest business heads in two continents, and what he says goes…. We feel we can have every confidence in your judgment.”

On the sidewalk I found the White Russian lamenting to Ezra, and Ezra with his hat crushed down over his eyes cutting with his malacca the heads off imaginary poppies.

What was the matter with Ezra I did not discover till later. His beard bristled and he bubbled over with little sibilants of his incomprehensible dialect. Besides, the Russian was filling the air with his laments. He had discovered that every man in that office was a Communist!

He knew it by the looks in the corners of their eyes, by hidden signs that he had interrupted. He must warn General —— whose life would not be safe. He must resign his own appointment.

Ezra dashed into the office, still waving his cane, as if he had been Bertran de Born about to horsewhip Henry II of England. I took the Russian to the Café de la Paix and patiently explained to him that those people were financiers, bankers, commerçants. They were the last people in the world to be Communists!

He said I was no doubt an excellent person for one not born to the Russian purple. But I was too innocent. I did not understand. He was convinced that one of those people had been an Israelite. The Israelites were one gigantic Freemasonry. They had subsidised the Russian as they had subsidised the French Revolution. He must at once warn General —— of this new conspiracy. He must resign his position as my sub-editor. It was just his luck. The Princess, his wife, had not tasted caviare or poulet truffé for several days. That was the work of malignant fate that beset the path of all loyal Russians. No sooner did he get an employment, however lowly, than his employer turned out to be a Communist. His honour forbade him to remain in such a position. It would always be so.

I told him to go to a colony of White Russians, who, he said, had set up a press in the Gobelins quarter. He could also, if he liked, bring me a White Prince, to whom I might offer the nominal post of gérant. The gérant of a periodical in France is a fictitious manager, a man of straw who appears to any summons that may be brought against the paper, and, if necessary, is fined huge sums, which, possessing nothing, he cannot pay. If he goes to prison he gets an arranged indemnity. For these services he receives from five to twenty francs a day.

The Colonel had been the youngest Colonel in the Russian Army, and as a Russian officer he was considered to be of exceptional intelligence. He said:

“That will be a splendid arrangement. I shall show all the proofs to General ——. In that way we can be sure that you print nothing of a communist tendency.”

I went to a reception at Mr. Pound’s studio that afternoon, and there met Mr. John Quinn—who pretended to mistake me for Mr. George Moore. Mr. Joyce was also there and a photographer from the New York Times. So we were all photographed together. Then there came in, bearded, thin, and as nervous as ever, Mr. William Bird IV. With him was the large-framed young man I had seen at the Dôme. I had played lawn tennis one early morning against him and Ezra, with M. Latapie, the painter, for partner. M. Latapie’s studio was next door to mine, and the tennis court was on the further side of the wall. Latapie and I used to get straight out of bed towards seven in the morning, get over the wall, play a set or two, have a shower in the clubhouse, and then go back to breakfast. If anyone else turned up we would play against them. As those who turned up at so matutinal an hour had usually been up all night, we beat them as a rule. I don’t remember how it had been with Ezra and that young man, nor had I caught his name.

I didn’t catch it then, in the studio. I was engaged in avoiding Mr. Quinn, whom I disliked because he had pretended to mistake me for George Moore. I was also engaged in trying not to be near Mr. Joyce. For Mr. Joyce’s work I had the greatest admiration, and for his person the greatest esteem. I also liked his private society very much. He made thin little jokes, told rather simple stories and talked about his work very enlighteningly. But to be anywhere near Mr. Joyce, at any sort of reception or public event, was embarrassing. I should be at once seized on by the hostess, two stiff chairs would be placed side by side and, surrounded by a ring of Mr. Joyce’s faithful, we should be expected to talk. To Mr. Joyce this was by no means embarrassing. He was used to it. But to me, as a young man from the country, it was very trying. Mr. Joyce would maintain an easy but absolute silence, the faithful hanging on his lips. I would try to find topics of conversation, to which the author of Ulysses would reply with a sharp “yes” or a “no.” … At last I found a formula. I used to beseech Mr. Joyce to drink red, not white wine.

I was really very much in earnest and not quite without official warrant. I have always held a brief against white wine. Its whiteness is caused by the absence of tartaric acid, that renders red wine assimilable. I never drink white wine except when politeness demands it and then, if I take only a small glass, I find myself troubled with depression of a gouty nature. And it happened that, on Joyce’s own recommendation, I had gone to a great oculist in Nice. The oculist had operated on Joyce. He told me that there was nothing the matter with my eyes, recommended me when I smoked cigarettes to do so at the end of the longest cigarette-holder possible. The smoke, if it gets into your eyes, will damage them—like any other smoke. Otherwise smoking does no harm at all.

He added: “And never drink white wine. It is ruinous to the eyesight….” And then: “If Mr. Joyce had never drunk white wine his eyes would not be as bad as they are. I beg you, if you have any influence at all with Mr. Joyce, to beseech him never to drink white wine. Let him drink three, five, seven, ten times as much red wine. It will not harm him. But white is poison.” I fancy that oculist was guilty of professional indiscretion. But his concern for his patient was so genuine that it may well be pardoned to him.

I could not, even for his sake, warn Mr. Joyce against drinking white wine on every occasion that I met him. But I thought the topic would be an admirable one for public ceremonials. I was a little guileful too. I imagined that if some of the faithful heard me they might repeat my plea and, being nearer as it were to the throne, might be listened to. I had, of course, misestimated the nature of Faith…. The faithful would rather see their divinity die than that he should be ministered to by a stranger from without the gates. That was seen when Pope Leo, being very sick, called in secret a Saracen leech, who came under safeguard to Rome from Tarascon. The Cardinals poisoned the Pope.

So when on the boulevards I would meet one or other of them and told them that Joyce was dining with me at 7.30 in order to taste my Château Mouton Rothschild, 1885, they could cry with one accord:

“Mr. Joyce never dines with anybody. He never dines before 9.30. He never drinks anything but white wine….”

On the occasion of the Pounds’ reception—it was in honour of Mr. Quinn—the faithful were not present and I found myself at last beside Mr. Joyce. I took the occasion to tell him that I would like to print in my Review some pages of the book he was writing. I was going to devote a section of my magazine to Work in Progress of persons like himself and Picasso, so as to make it a real chronicle of the world’s artistic activities. He said it was a pity that I had not been in time to ask that of Proust. He had been told that a single sentence of Proust would fill a whole magazine. Not that he had read any Proust to speak of. His eyes would not let him read any work of other people. He could just see to correct his own proofs.

I said that I myself had read no Proust. I may add that I have since. A French critic having said that I was one of Proust’s closest imitators I was in a position to say—though of course I did not say it!—that I had never read a word of Proust. And having then worked myself in my mind into the strategic strong point that I desired to occupy, I at once bought a copy of Du Côté de Chez Swann. I read it and A la Recherche du Temps Perdu in one week-end at Guermantes, and I found in Proust’s work all the supernatural hypnosis that his most devoted followers obtain from it. But I do not think I have imitated him since….

When he heard me say that I had read no Proust, he confirmed for me a story of his meeting Proust that I had heard from the lips of the lady in whose house it had happened. Let her be called, in honour of another novelist, Mrs. Leo Hunter…. The lady had asked Joyce to a reception to meet Proust. Joyce, knowing nothing of Proust’s habits and no hour having been named, attended at about eleven. Proust, in those days, rose at four in the morning. But in honour of Mr. Joyce he had got up that night at two, and arrived about two-thirty. Mr. Joyce was then tired.

Two stiff chairs were obtained and placed, facing the one the other, in the aperture of a folding doorway between two rooms. The faithful of Mr. Joyce disposed themselves in a half-circle in one room; those of M. Proust completed the circle in the other. Mr. Joyce and M. Proust sat upright, facing each other, and vertically parallel. They were incited to converse. They did.

Said M. Proust:

“Comme j’ai dit, Monsievir, dans ‘Du Côté de Chez Swann’ que sans doute vous avez lu….”

Mr. Joyce gave a tiny vertical jump on his chair seat and said:

“Non, monsieur….”

Then Mr. Joyce took up the conversation. He said:

“As Mr. Blum says in my Ulysses, which, Monsieur, you have doubtless read….”

M. Proust gave a slightly higher vertical jump on his chair seat. He said:

“Mais non, monsieur.”

Service fell again to M. Proust. He apologised for the lateness of his arrival. He said it was due to a malady of the liver. He detailed clearly and with minuteness the symptoms of his illness.

“… Tiens, monsieur,” Joyce interrupted. “I have almost exactly the same symptoms. Only in my case the analysis….”

So, till eight next morning, in perfect amity and enthusiasm, surrounded by the awed faithful, they discussed their maladies.