And Even Now. Sir Max Beerbohm
done anything much amiss. I imagined her grievance a trivial one. But this did not make the case less engrossing. Again and again I would take the fan-stump from my pocket, examining it on the palm of my hand, or between finger and thumb, hoping to read the mystery it had been mixed up in, so that I might reveal that mystery to the world. To the world, yes; nothing less than that. I was determined to make a story of what I had seen—a conte in the manner of great Guy de Maupassant. Now and again, in the course of the past year or so, it had occurred to me that I might be a writer. But I had not felt the impulse to sit down and write something. I did feel that impulse now. It would indeed have been an irresistible impulse if I had known just what to write.
I felt I might know at any moment, and had but to give my mind to it. Maupassant was an impeccable artist, but I think the secret of the hold he had on the young men of my day was not so much that we discerned his cunning as that we delighted in the simplicity which his cunning achieved. I had read a great number of his short stories, but none that had made me feel as though I, if I were a writer, mightn’t have written it myself. Maupassant had an European reputation. It was pleasing, it was soothing and gratifying, to feel that one could at any time win an equal fame if one chose to set pen to paper. And now, suddenly, the spring had been touched in me, the time was come. I was grateful for the fluke by which I had witnessed on the terrace that evocative scene. I looked forward to reading the MS. of ‘The Fan’—to-morrow, at latest. I was not wildly ambitious. I was not inordinately vain. I knew I couldn’t ever, with the best will in the world, write like Mr. George Meredith. Those wondrous works of his, seething with wit, with poetry and philosophy and what not, never had beguiled me with the sense that I might do something similar. I had full consciousness of not being a philosopher, of not being a poet, and of not being a wit. Well, Maupassant was none of these things. He was just an observer, like me. Of course he was a good deal older than I, and had observed a good deal more. But it seemed to me that he was not my superior in knowledge of life. I knew all about life through him.
Dimly, the initial paragraph of my tale floated in my mind. I—not exactly I myself, but rather that impersonal je familiar to me through Maupassant—was to be sitting at that table, with a bock before me, just as I had sat. Four or five short sentences would give the whole scene. One of these I had quite definitely composed. You have already heard it. ‘Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’
These words, which pleased me much, were to do double duty. They were to recur. They were to be, by a fine stroke, the very last words of my tale, their tranquillity striking a sharp ironic contrast with the stress of what had just been narrated. I had, you see, advanced further in the form of my tale than in the substance. But even the form was as yet vague. What, exactly, was to happen after Mlle. Ange’lique and M. Joumand (as I provisionally called him) had rushed back past me into the casino? It was clear that I must hear the whole inner history from the lips of one or the other of them. Which? Should M. Joumand stagger out on to the terrace, sit down heavily at the table next to mine, bury his head in his hands, and presently, in broken words, blurt out to me all that might be of interest? … ‘ “And I tell you I gave up everything for her—everything.” He stared at me with his old hopeless eyes. “She is more than the fiend I have described to you. Yet I swear to you, monsieur, that if I had anything left to give, it should be hers.”
‘Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’
Or should the lady herself be my informant? For a while, I rather leaned to this alternative. It was more exciting, it seemed to make the writer more signally a man of the world. On the other hand, it was less simple to manage. Wronged persons might be ever so communicative, but I surmised that persons in the wrong were reticent. Mlle. Ange’lique, therefore, would have to be modified by me in appearance and behaviour, toned down, touched up; and poor M. Joumand must look like a man of whom one could believe anything. … ‘She ceased speaking. She gazed down at the fragments of her fan, and then, as though finding in them an image of her own life, whispered, “To think what I once was, monsieur!—what, but for him, I might be, even now!” She buried her face in her hands, then stared out into the night. Suddenly she uttered a short, harsh laugh.
‘Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.’
I decided that I must choose the first of these two ways. It was the less chivalrous as well as the less lurid way, but clearly it was the more artistic as well as the easier. The ‘chose vue,’ the ‘tranche de la vie’—this was the thing to aim at. Honesty was the best policy. I must be nothing if not merciless. Maupassant was nothing if not merciless. He would not have spared Mlle. Ange’lique. Besides, why should I libel M. Joumand? Poor—no, not poor M. Joumand! I warned myself against pitying him. One touch of ‘sentimentality,’ and I should be lost. M. Joumand was ridiculous. I must keep him so. But—what was his position in life? Was he a lawyer perhaps?—or the proprietor of a shop in the Rue de Rivoli? I toyed with the possibility that he kept a fan shop—that the business had once been a prosperous one, but had gone down, down, because of his infatuation for this woman to whom he was always giving fans—which she always smashed. … ‘ “Ah monsieur, cruel and ungrateful to me though she is, I swear to you that if I had anything left to give, it should be hers; but,” he stared at me with his old hopeless eyes, “the fan she broke to-night was the last—the last, monsieur—of my stock.” Down below,’—but I pulled myself together, and asked pardon of my Muse.
It may be that I had offended her by my fooling. Or it may be that she had a sisterly desire to shield Mlle. Ange’lique from my mordant art. Or it may be that she was bent on saving M. de Maupassant from a dangerous rivalry. Anyway, she withheld from me the inspiration I had so confidently solicited. I could not think what had led up to that scene on the terrace. I tried hard and soberly. I turned the ‘chose vue’ over and over in my mind, day by day, and the fan-stump over and over in my hand. But the ‘chose a’ figurer’—what, oh what, was that? Nightly I revisited the cafe’, and sat there with an open mind—a mind wide-open to catch the idea that should drop into it like a ripe golden plum. The plum did not ripen. The mind remained wide-open for a week or more, but nothing except that phrase about the sea rustled to and fro in it.
A full quarter of a century has gone by. M. Joumand’s death, so far too fat was he all those years ago, may be presumed. A temper so violent as Mlle. Angélique’s must surely have brought its owner to the grave, long since. But here, all unchanged, the stump of her fan is; and once more I turn it over and over in my hand, not learning its secret—no, nor even trying to, now. The chord this relic strikes in me is not one of curiosity as to that old quarrel, but (if you will forgive me) one of tenderness for my first effort to write, and for my first hopes of excellence.
‘HOW SHALL I WORD IT?’ 1910.
It would seem that I am one of those travellers for whom the railway bookstall does not cater. Whenever I start on a journey, I find that my choice lies between well-printed books which I have no wish to read, and well-written books which I could not read without permanent injury to my eyesight. The keeper of the bookstall, seeing me gaze vaguely along his shelves, suggests that I should take ‘Fen Country Fanny’ or else ‘The Track of Blood’ and have done with it. Not wishing to hurt his feelings, I refuse these works on the plea that I have read them. Whereon he, divining despite me that I am a superior person, says ‘Here is a nice little handy edition of More’s “Utopia” ’ or ‘Carlyle’s “French Revolution” ’ and again I make some excuse. What pleasure could I get from trying to cope with a masterpiece printed in diminutive grey-ish type on a semi-transparent little grey-ish page? I relieve the bookstall of nothing but a newspaper or two.
The other day, however, my eye and fancy were caught by a book entitled ‘How Shall I Word It?’ and sub-entitled ‘A Complete Letter Writer for Men and Women.’ I had never read one of these manuals, but had often heard that there was a great and constant ‘demand’ for them. So I demanded this one. It is no great fun in itself. The writer is no fool. He has evidently a natural talent for writing