II ONCE (in those far-off peaceful days when men still had enough grammatical sense to know that the word "pacifist" does not exist, but that the less convenient "pacificist" does) I had been very depressed for a week, and had scarcely spoken to any one, but had just walked about in my rooms and on the Embankment, for I suddenly found myself without any money at all; and it is thus with me that when I am without money I am also without ideas, but when I have the first I do not necessarily have the last. I wondered if I had not done a very silly thing in being independent, and in not doing as my brothers had done, reading "The Times" in an office every morning from ten to twelve, and playing dominoes in the afternoon, and auction bridge in the evening, and having several thousands a year when I was forty, and a Wolseley car to take my wife for a holiday to Windermere, because she [pg 028] looked pale, or because we were bored with each other. I smiled to think of the look on my brothers' faces if I suddenly appeared at their office one morning, and said that it was no good, and that I couldn't write, and was very hungry. I could not make up my mind whether they would laugh at me and turn me out, or whether they would teach me how to play auction and set me to answer letters about what had happened on such and such a day inst., and why the firm of —— thought it unnecessary that it should happen again, while they would sit in the next room, marked "Private," signing cheques and talking to visitors about the weather and the cotton markets. Perhaps I will do that some day, for, from what I have heard, it seems to me the easiest thing in the world to talk about rises and falls and margins without knowing anything about them at all. [pg 028] The same thing happens with regard to books, for one often meets people who seem to have read every modern novel, and can discuss quite prettily whether Mr. Wells is a man or a machine, or whether Mr. Arnold Bennett, ever since he wrote the last lines to [pg 029] "The Old Wives' Tales," has not decided that it is better to be a merchant than a writer, or whether Mr. E. V. Lucas thinks he is the second Charles Lamb, and what other grounds than his splendid edition has he for thinking so, or whether Mr. George Moore does or does not think that indiscretion is the better part of literature, or whether Mr. Chesterton or vegetarianism has had the greatest effect on Mr. Shaw's religion; but then, after all this talk, it turns out that they read "The Times Literary Supplement" every week, and think Epictetus nothing to Mr. Clutton-Brock, or they are steeped in Mr. Clement Shorter's
Prev.
Back
Top