Siegfried's Journey

1

WALKING IN in the water meadows by the river below Garsington on the quiet gray morning of November 11, 1918, I listened to a sudden peal of bells from the village church and saw little flags being fluttered out from the windows of the thatched houses on the hill. Everyone had expected to hear that the Armistice was signed; but. even now it wasn’t easy to absorb the idea that the war was ov er. The sense of relief couldn’t be expressed by any mental or physical gesture. I just stood still with a blank mind, listening to the bells which announced our deliverance.

Had I been my present philosophic self, I should thankfully have remained in that peaceful place, keeping as far as possible from metropolitan rejoicings. But, being what I then was, it seemed imperative for me to rush up to London, though more for the purpose of observing the celebrations than of sharing in them. My former front-line associates were the only people with whom I felt any inclination to be festive. None were available. So I wired to an Air Force friend of Robbie Ross, He had a flat off Bond Street, and had offered me a room whenever it suited me. I didn’t know him well; but he had shown an ardent enthusiasm for my war writings and could be relied on to agree with my attitude towards the jubilations.

I was prepared for an orgy of patriotic demonstrations, but the reality went far beyond what I had foreseen. There is no need lo describe the extraordinary spectacle of the London streets on Armistice nighf. I lugged my bag through the inebriated throngs which were parading Regeni Street.

No taxis or buses were visible, and by ihe time I trod wearily up the stone stairs to Eddie Marsh’s fiat 1 was in no mood for making new acquaintances. But it happened that John Drinkwater was also staying the night there, and he arrived a few minutes after T did. The sensations and events of the last two days had told even on indefatigable Eddie. Drinkwater, however, had plenty of energy in reserve. Friendly and unfatigued, he had very soon opened an important-looking leather portfolio which contained manuscripts of his latest poems. It. was taken for granted that the editor of Georgian Poefri/ was both willing and anxious to hear them read aloud before retiring to bed, so we solemnly sat; ourselves down, resolved to be wide-awake and appreciat ive.

The purposeful and pract ical-minded poet; was a I a table, reading by the light of a shaded lamp. His diction, like his verse, was urbane and accomplished, but the poems were numerous, and his unhurrying and self-satisfied voice produced restful rather than rousing results. Eddie remained bolt upright in bis chair with monocle firmly fixed, while 1 did my utmost not to lapse into a lolling attitude. Murmurings of polite approval followed each item. About 1.00 CAME ihere came a long is h consignment of somewhat soporific blank verse which 1 was unable 1o follow attentively. This was followed by a graceful lyric ending

At this point Eddie, no doubt, intending to utter some phrase of approbation, failed to suppress the wellearned yawn. The fact was that both of us were so tired that we could hardly keep our eyes open, and it seemed that if the recital lasted much longer we should be imitating the persons mentioned in the poem. However, the hint was taken by’ the imperturbable author. Himself realizing that it was growing late, he liberated us by replacing the manuscripts in his portfolio.

In the morning he conducted me to the Poetry Bookshop, introduced me to its poet-proprietor Harold Monro, and gave me an inscribed copy of his play Abraham Lincoln. He was anxious to be friendly, but somehow the acquaintance never matured. Now I come to think of it, at our subsequent meetings I almost always heard him read his works aloud. This prejudiced me against him, owing to my preference for bards who hide their lights under bushels. Drinkwater never did that, though he was much liked by those who knew him intimately.

2

Two evenings later I resumed my scries of “excursions to the homes of celebrated authors.” John Galsworthy had asked me to contribute a poem to Reveillé, a magazine which — with his usual generosity— he had consented to edit, He was hoping that it would enable the younger generation to obtain a hearing in the post-war world: but it came to an end after three distinguished numbers. Meanwhile it had brought me a cordial invitation to dine at Grove Lodge, his beautiful old house in Hampstead. Thither I went, tuned to concert pitch for yet another memorable occasion. Memorable it was, but mainly through an atmosphere of achieved serenity.

Even when I had got to know him, Galsworthy produced an impression of being a reticent revealer of himself, for he was essentially modest and unegotistical. At our first meeting his reserved but shiningly sympathetic manner made me partly owing to politeness so talkative that I felt more like an impulsively informative nephew than a contributor to the next number of Reveille. As he sat at the dark polished dinner table, his strikingly handsome face and unassuming dignity seemed somehow avuncular, suggesting that, when wc had finished our discussion of Turgenev and Thomas Hardy and I was sipping a second glass of the '87 port, he would inquire, with a subdued smile, whether a slight increase in my college allowance would meet with my approval. By the end of the evening I almost felt that I ought to call him “Unde Jack.” Mrs. Galsworthy, too, seemed well qualified to become “Aunt Ada,” for she was full of charm and lively intelligence. After dinner I was induced to try their lovely piano, on which I discreetly performed a Bach saraband. I departed feeling thal the creator of the unforgettable Forsyte family was exactly what I should have wished him to be.

During ihe ensuing week I was in such a vortex of accepted invitations and met such a hotchpotch of old friends and fresh acquaintances that it makes me positively dizzy lo contemplate that scene of mentally indigestible experience. What I accomplished in those seven days would now be enough to satisfy my normal social needs for a twelvemonth. But by many people that brief bout of long-vanished activities would not be considered exceptional. Nor can my mellowed maturity deny that—since the combination of youth and circumstance was making things lively for me — a rabble of disordered occurrences was inevitable. What bothers me about that kaleidoscopic young man is the remembered inconsistency of his responses to various individuals. What was I like with Walter dc la Mare? I wonder. For it was to him that I made an expedition at the end of (he aforesaid week of festivities. But what he was like with me is an obviously preferable subject for retrospection.

To be composing but a prelusive page or two about de la Mare brings remembrance of the crowding enchantments of his word-magic. I must indeed begin by recording that I took a suburban train to the Crystal Palace on a raw foggy November evening, and then went along to Anerley in a clanking tram. But even that humdrum journey associates itself with a couplet of his: —

After that I see myself ringing the front-door bell of a dimly discerned house in a quiet side street. It was necessary that Mr. de la Mare should live somewhere in the Postal Directory. Thornsett Road happened to be the label attached to his terrestrial habitation. Yet my mind was unwilling to be convinced that he permanently existed anywhere away from the timeless province of his imaginations. Anerley was only the (somewhat inaccessible) device he had adopted for making himself accessible to ordinary mortals.

And, at first sight, it seemed that he was even doing what ho could to disguise himself from identification as ihe de la Mare of his books. In my ardency of admiration I had expected to receive an immediate impression of poetic genius, to discover in his face some implication of ghostly communings. There was, however, nothing mysterious about the humorous and hospitable Mr. de la Mare whom I found in the midst of his family. He was as homely and natural as Hardy, and as neighborly in his attitude to the details of everyday existence. One had to be alone with him before he began to make known things miraculous, setting ones dull wits moving to the music of his mind. On that evening two other pools were thero John Freeman, who also lived at Anerley, and Milfrid Gibson, whom I had already met and liked and who wore the uniform of an Army Service Corps privaie.

It was while they were appraising Henry James’s shorter stories, however, that I caughl a momentary glimpse of the de la Mare whose word-wizardry had long since put its spell on mo. Speaking of The Tarn of. the Screw, he recalled a particular episode in thal macabre masterpiece, referring to the terrific effecl created by that scene where ihe governess narrator, watching from a window, sees the boy out in the bright moonlight staring up at the apparition of the infamous Peter Quint on the tower above. De la Mare’s face was half in shadow, and it was then that I saw the haunting and haunted presence of genius in his eyes, and overheard in his voice the allurement of supernatural solicitings.

His all-human everyday self could reveal and combine intellectual curiosity, fanciful ingenuity, sweet reasonableness, and strong common sense. He could capture the enchantments of childhood and interpret the oddities of the old. But within him was the poetic daemon whose promptings are incalculable and whose elements are “lost in the uttermost of eternity.” He has stated somewhere that “any writing about poetry, however well-intended it may be, cannot but resemble beating the air. It can do little but attempt to give reasons for a delight that needs none.” The delight of knowing the poet de la Mare needs no translating into logic. But I must testify to one gift wherein he outshines any other person I have been lucky enough to meet. He has wisely warned us to “look thy last on all things lovely every hour.” To this I can add that I have never been in his company without a sense of heightened and deepened perception. After talking to him, one goes away seeing the world, for a while, with rechristened eyes.

One evening in the middle of April I had an experience which seems worth describing for those who are interested in methods of poetic production. It was a sultry spring night. I was feeling dull-minded and depressed, for no explainable reason. After sitting lethargically in the ground-floor room for about three hours after dinner I came to the conclusion that there was nothing for it but to take my useless brain to bed. On my way from the armchair to the door I stood by the writing table. A few words had floated into my head as though from nowhere. In those days I was always on the lookout for a lyric, — I wish I could say the same for my present self, — so I picked up a pencil and wrote the words on a sheet of noic paper. Without sitting down. I added a second line. It was as if I were remembering rather than thinking.

In this mindless, recollecting manner I wrote down my poem in a few minutes. When it was finished I read it through, with no sense of elation, merely wondering how I had come to be writing a poem when feeling so stupid. I then went heavily upstairs and fell asleep without thinking about it again. But next morning I felt so pleased with the lines that I seni them to Masefield, asking him to let me know whet her they were any good. He replied with the generous comment that it was the only adequate peace celebration he had seen. The poem was “Everyone Sang, which has since become a stock anthology piece. No one has ever said a word against it, and it is now almost as well known as Yeats’s “Innisfree.”

What I have been unable to understand is that there was no apparent mental process during its composition. Many of my shorter poems have been written with a sense of emotional release and then perfected by revision often after being pul away for a long time. Others have been produced by mental concentration and word-seeking which lasted two or three hours. But there was usually a feeling of having said what I wanted to wit h directness and finality. “Everyone Sang” was composed without emotion and needed no alteration afterwards. Its rather free form was spontaneous and unlike any other poem I have written. I wasn’t aware of any technical contriving. Yet it was essentially an expression of release, and signified a thankfulness for liberation from the war years which came to the surface with the advent of spring. Alany people, by the way, have interpreted the poem as referring to soldiers singing while on the march, so I take this opportunity of stating that no such idea was in my mind.

Thus 1 saluted the post-war future and my own part in it. Not many weeks before, I had written an effective recitation poem which ended “Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.” This, I hoped, was to be my last word on the subject, for I assumed that war “as an instrument of national policy” was completely discredited. The singing that would “never be done” was the Social Revolution which I believed to be at hand. In what form that Revolution would arrive I cannot now remember foreseeing — possibly because its form was invisible to me. No doubt I anticipated that there would be some comparatively harmless rioting, but on the whole I merely thought of it as the sunlight of Liberty spreading across the landscape. Most of my arguments in favor of it were denunciations of the Rich supported by extremely imperfect acquaintance with the Poor.

It astonishes me now that I could have felt so strongly about it, or have been so oblivious to the obdurate unprogressiveness of semi-civilized mankind. The old might shake their heads and talk about Freedom broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent; but the new world was going to be made by the Young, and I was one of them. I felt, comfortably optimistic about my own career and the outlook for human affairs in general.

3

THE year 1910. which had been welcomed by credulous souls as an antechamber to the millennium, labored under a pervasive disadvantage. Too much was expected of it. It was a year of rootless rebeginnings and steadily developing disillusionments. Few people realized this at the time, and I was not one of them. Up to the end of June, I was actively occupied, confident through success, and insolently healthy with youth and summer weather. But a surprise was in store for me, and although it was only a physical one, it svmplomized the undoing of my blind belief in the beneficence of 1919. One cloudless morning early in July, while getting into the train, I made some sudden stooping movement, which brought on an acute pain in my left leg. Unable to believe that such agony could last many minutes, I waited for it to diminish. What right had 1919 to do such a thing to me? The treacherous demon sciatica, responded by accentuating its paroxysmal pain.

But I was due at a large luncheon party in Chelsea, and thither I went, hoping that cultured conversation would cause autosuggestive alleviation to my leg. Sitting next to the wife of a distinguished Law Lord,

I plaintively confided my ordeal to her. This resulted in my being conveyed to her urbane family physician, who advised me to wear warm clothes and abstain from red wine, which seemed a somewhat academic treatment of the case. Couldn’t he possibly do something to stop the pain, I asked. Whereupon he provided a prescription with which T obtained some pills about half the size of a ping-pong ball. With these potencies in my pocket I hobbled away to Osbert Sitwell’s house in Swan Walk. He was out for the afternoon; but his housekeeper, a woman of limitless good nature, after an interlude during which I sat on the stairs with my eyes shut, soon put me between the sheets; and having swallowed one of ray celluloid boxes, I subsided into oblivion.

I must ask the reader’s indulgence for these medical reminiscences. Sciatica is not an enthralling subject; but it was the autocrat of my existence for the next few months. During those months various interest mg experiences came my way, but the predominant circumstance was that I could never stoop to pick anything up without suffering a severe spasm.

While in bed for ten days at Swan Walk, however, T was tended with the utmost solicitude. Some years later I saw the Sitwells referred to, in some journal, as “the stormy petrels of modern literature.” Perhaps t hey were. But towards my sciatica-smitten self both Osberl and Sacheverel! behaved like angelic and agitated turtledoves. Almost always in a hurry, one or other seemed continually to be dashing up the steep stairs to look in and ask, “How are you?” Everything that could possibly divert my thoughts from sciatica was brought into my little room. Their housekeeper (the only first-class cook I have ever known who was also an amiable character) plied me with her finest confections. And a highly intelligent doctor called daily to assure me that I should soon be up and about again if I avoided getting hot and exposing my leg to drafts.

There were limes when I felt like remaining reeumbent as long as possible, for the siller I kept the less I suffered. Dozing through the warm afternoons,

1 enjoyed listening to the sounds of the house and wondering what the Sitwells were up to now. There would he a burst of animated conversation, an affectionate farewell, and then the front door would bang as one of them went out on some social or artistic enterprise. Sometimes I would pretend to bo asleep when Osbert looked in a blond Hanoverian apparition in a frock coat and top hat of immaculate gray. Was he on his way to the Peace Celebrations, I wondered. Or was he only off to confer with printer or publisher about the latest number of Art and Letters, ihe lively modernist magazine which he was editing?

Not for the firsl time, I was aware that being in bed in someone else’s house gives one a great pull over the problems of life and permits the mind to move with unimpeded smoothness. I have always believed m allowing things to take their course without my interference, and being in bed is the nearest one ran get to invisibility. Some day, perhaps, the scientists will invent a device for achieving it. This for persons of my temperament — would afford a providential antidote to the present mechanized progress towards never being in the same place for five minutes. Quietude is essential to human happiness. This fact needs to be comprehensively rediscovered.

4

WHILE staying with the Sitwells I found ihat. among their stimulating and delightful qualities, restfulness was conspicuously absent. I used to complain to Osbert that he never stuck to one subject for more than half a minute. His sallies of wit (not always benevolent when directed at his literary coevals) were a shorthand display which oflen made me wish that he would be long-winded and prosy instead of twitching me from one thing to another.

It was a case where an admixture of our mental ingredients would have improved us both. His intelligence was quick and capricious, while mine functioned in the manner exhibited by these memoirs. He was, in fact, Ihe antithesis of a cavalry captain who had sagely observed to me that the war had taught the French Army what riding boots ought to be, and who would probably have remarked of Osbert that “the trouble with these brainy birds is that they think too much "! In reply to which, Osbert would have quoted one of his own poems wherein he made a sportsman express surprise that the Son of Ood went into the desert for forty days without shooting anything.

Remembering I hose early days of my association with the Sitwells, I see myself being rapidly and bcwilderingly introduced to the newest fashions in art and literature. The process was a wholesome antidote to my intolerance of the unusual and my instinctive preference for ihe traditional, Osbert’s house was full of pictures which looked peculiar to my inexperienced eyes. In some instances I am inclined to suggest that they were more startling and experimental than well drawn. Wax flowers and other evidences of the vogue for early Victorianism mingled with totemistir objects which exemplified a new aesthetic tendency to find beauty in the barbaric. This assortment confused my mind and made me suspect dilettantism in my surroundings.

I may well have wondered whal the fox hunters would make of it; and it so happened that the test was applied to one of them. My old friend Norman Loder, to whom I had written explaining my inability to go and stay with him at Peterborough, called on me one morning, He entered my bedroom carrying a leather hatbox, and his demeanor implied that the few minutes lie had spent in Osbert’s drawing room had gi veil him t he surprise of his life. “ Whatever are you doing here?” he inquired, eying a Cubist painting near the door as though expecting it to bite him. When in his world I had always behaved as a submissive disciple, and he evidently felt that the sooner he got me away from this one the better. I retaliated by asking what he was doing with that hatbox. He informed me that it contained a perfectly good hunting hat which ho had no use lor. “I’ ve just been all the way to Moss’s in Govent Harden, and they had the impudence to offer me eighteen-pence for it!" he remarked, looking offended w hen I laughed.

Meanwhile his arrival had de-Sit wellized me and I was soon talking to him in his own idiom. But when he asked, in subdued and almost conspiratorial (ones, “Who are these Sitwells?” I could only assure him that, though not quite his sort, t hey were awfully nice and had both been officers in the Grenadier Guards, which mystified him still more. Any dilemma that existed, however, was more mine than his. Norman never actively disapproved oi anyone. He was too good-natured for that. He either accepted people or decided, without comment, that they were no good to him. He had found it difficult to swallow my Socialism, and had lect ured me a bit about being so pro-German. Now that the Swan Walk pictures had been too much for his elementary taste in art, he regarded the Sit well menage as further proof of my being led astray by the high-brows.

My own dilemma consisted in the divided personality which his presence created. We had been friends for nearly fifteen years, and he had dominated the sporting part of my existence. To the Sitwells, though they would probably have thought him a good joke, he was the pattern ot that Philistinism against which they rebelled. And here was I, feebly attempting to be on both sides at once. For at that time I was simple-minded enough to want — and expect all my friends to like one another. Why shouldn’t they, if I liked them individually? In the end I found it safer to keep most of them in separate compartments. Anyhow, Norman, who—for all his kindness didn’t understand what acute sciatica felt like, had decided that I only needed fresh air and exercise to put me right. Having made me promise to come and stay with him as soon as possible, he picked up his hatbox and went treading cautiously down the stairs.

Osbert, on the other hand, was less Spartan in his attitude towards my convalescence. He recommended a course of treatment ai Bath. So he and I and Sacheverell went there for a week, and I was sweepingly introduced to the eighteenth century. I had always thought of Bath as a dull place where old ladies lived in retirement, but the Sit wells soon pul a stop to that. They were insatiable sight-seers, and I learned a lot about the Palladian style of architecture while limping around with them.

For me — though not for them—there was a rival attraction in the Bath Cricket Week. Amiable and forbearing, they conceded me at least one afternoon on the County Ground, where I watched the Worcestershire batsmen in difficulties on a sticky wicket, against the eminent slow bowler, J. (W hite. The amateurs of the Somerset team were staying in our hotel. Observing them after dinner, I felt — as in my boyhood — that even in private life no tirslclass cricketer could be an altogether uninteresting person. To the Sitwells,.). C. White lighting his pipe and settling down to a quiet game of bridge was merely a modest, jolly West Count ry farmer. For me, his presence implied that Olympian quality which rightly appertained to one of the best spin bowlers in England.

Soon after leaving Bath I went to stay with the Coders. My leg was now improving, though liable to stabbing pains if used indiscreetly. I did my best to be mv ordinary self, so it was taken for granted that there was very little the matter, and on the morning after my arrival I meekly accepted Norman’s announcement that we were all going for a ride. He had got a nice-looking little horse on trial from a dealer and wanted to see how the animal went with me. If he was too lively I could change to the one he was riding. There seemed to be some suspicion that the horse was too low-priced and good-looking not to have something wrong about him. Though placid enough when led up to the mounting block, I noticed that he had a small, sulky, and unbenevolent eye. With sciatic caution I got on to him, inwardly wishing that he were a Bath chair pulled by a donkey.

We jogged along quietly until we entered Mr. Fitzwilliam’s enormous deer park and Norman instructed me to canter him on a bit. This I proceeded to do, with the immediate result that he did everything possible to show what was wrong with him. Had I been a cowboy from the Wild West the tussle between us would have proved worth witnessing. No doubt the cowboy would have got the best of it. I didn’t. With his head between his knees, the fiendish quadruped swerved and twisted like an eel, kicking nearly as high as my head. Enable to grip with my sciatic leg, I was very soon shot over his ears, and he galloped away with the reins flapping and Norman in circumspective pursuit. Thankful my troubles were over, I remained full length on the ground, waiting for my sciatic twinges to abate. As Norman subsequently remarked — when the episode could be treated as funny — “Old Sig lay there on his back like a crusader.” I may as well add that old Sig spent the rest of that day in bed, and for the remainder of his visit took every precaution against being treated as a person in robust health.