Delight, page 11
98
After a concert
After a good concert. First, no matter how good it has been, I am glad it is over and that I need no longer keep still and quiet but can move about, talk, laugh, smoke, and perhaps eat and drink. But the music has done something to me. I feel refreshed inside, loosened up and easy, no longer an angry dwarf but a careless smiling giant. The night looks better than it did when I hurried into the concert hall. It too is larger and looser, and holds more promise in its glitter and distances. I like the look of people, perhaps for the first time that day. Strangers seem pleasant acquaintances; acquaintances turn into friends; and friends now seem well-tried, old and dear. This is the hour, I feel, to give and receive confidences, confessions of the soul. Somehow the world outside the hall seems to reflect the noble patterns of sound. Still held aloft on the shoulders of Bach and Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, I can take a longer view, a broader outlook, and can believe that the good life is not yet a lost dream. Ten minutes wait for a taxi − and the mood will be gone; but while it lasted and the green sap seemed to be rising in the Tree of Life − what delight!
99
Buying books
Buying books. I will admit that the delight here is only a shadow of what it once was. I have spent too long behind the scenes in the making of books. But when I was in my middle teens, trying to be a clerk in a wool office, buying books was my joy. I had very little money then, and in order to find the necessary shillings for the Everyman and World’s Classics volumes that were my first choice, I had to discover some way of saving money on my lunches. There was a place in the covered-market where you could buy a bag of stale buns for tuppence. There were also the Health foods, which were cheap in those days. For about threepence you could buy two heavy little slabs of mashed nuts and dates, sometimes with a sandwich-filling of chocolate; and these may not have satisfied my young appetite but they did succeed in temporarily murdering it as with a blunt instrument. With the pennies I saved in this fashion I would buy the Everyman edition of the Longer Poems of Wordsworth or some such dreary monster as the Kalevala. I rushed them home to my attic room, where I had converted several orange boxes, nicely trimmed and stained, into bookcases. The shelves and the books were light enough, but their literary culture weighed tons. My taste in those years − and quite right too − was for what our forefathers called the Sublime, usually in small type on the thinnest India paper. Sitting close to my angry little gas-fire, which could only begin to warm my hands by first roasting my feet, I would spend an hour or so with one of the world’s giants, in all the hungry solemnity of a seventeen-year-old, and would then compose free verse, frequently on the subject of Atlantis. Having once gone half-empty to acquaint myself with the Sublime, now that I am fat and full I consider that I need not bother with it. But now and again, unwrapping a parcel, I notice a quiver of that old delight in acquiring books and filling yet another shelf. And the shilling masterpieces I bought so long ago are still with me. I have no difficulty in recognising them once I have peeped inside their covers, for in each of them is written “J. Boynton Priestley” (for so I described myself, to give myself age and weight and perhaps a touch of the Sublime): telling the world that this book, which had cost two helpings of steak pie and fig pudding, was mine. And perhaps when I am older, these may be the books I shall want, to begin my reading all over again, returning to the Hundred Best Books, getting bogged once more in the Kalevala.
100
View from my study
Possessing a wonderful view. But first - a word about this possession. It has an ugly ring. There is a Keep Off the Grass sound about it. “This is my view, not yours. Push off!” But in this narrow sense I do not own the view. If you take the trouble to come this way, then you can enjoy most of it too. I only possess it in the sense that it is always there for me if I want it. There is a double delight here for me, for achievement has been added to possession. All my life I have hankered after a study that would be high up, have a fine large window and a broad window seat, and would look out upon a glorious view. As some men climb politically or socially, so for years I have been climbing topographically and domestically. Each workroom I acquired was higher than the last. And now I am where I have always wanted to be, and do not expect to do better this side of the grave. So much for achievement. But the view itself is very special. I might have put it together myself, like the scenery of our dreams. There is in this view nearly everything I love in the English scene. Down below on the right are downlands and heath, green slopes and gorse in bloom. Lower and nearer the centre are cultivated fields, then, toward the left, some woods, and beyond, just in the picture, a glimpse of a tiny church, some cottages, and the ruin of a large manor house. Further off, but dominating the scene, is the long chalk cliff that ends in the Needles, which have been to so many travellers the first sign of England. And full in the middle panes of my window is that flashing mirror, that blue diamond or that infinite haze, that window for the mind, which is the sea. I hold this tenure of the delighted eye in the most precarious world since the Ice Age. My security is as brittle as the teeth I am fast losing. But I have arrived at my high window; I have already lolled on the broad seat; I have looked down by the hour upon the gorse, the woods, the cliffs, the sea; and the glory my eyes have seen − praise the Lord! − cannot be robbed of its yesterdays. So, all you haters of our happiness − sucks to you!
101
Reading about the Pink ’Un set
Reading about the Pink ’Un set. This delight illustrates the difference between literature and life. I dislike racing. Nearly all the sporting gents I have met have irritated or bored me. I detest late suppers, the musical comedy world, and long funny stories. One meal at Romano’s in its prime, I imagine, would have been more than enough for me. One night with Pitcher, Shifter, Swears and the rest, would have been too much for me. Yet for years I have delighted in reading about this boozy set and all their raffish pals and lovely little ladies. Without regret I have thrown away hours and hours, which might well have been devoted to literature or the problems of the modern world, running up to Newmarket or down to Brighton with Mr. Binstead and his friends, popping into the Gaiety or the Palace with them, calling for a magnum of “Boy” and four dozen oysters, looking in at the Pelican to hear another yarn or two about Bessie Bellwood or Fatty Coleman. These sagas of Fleet Street, the old Strand, Leicester Square and Epsom have taught me nothing except a short cut or two to the bankruptcy court, the hospital and the grave. They have wit and humour but it is the kind of wit and humour that shines much brighter after six double whiskies. The characters are over-rated. The anecdotes are too long. Their style, except for Binstead at his best, is horrible, with more than a hint of the auctioneer and estate agent in it. And to me there is nothing topical about them, for I was a small child when these chaps were roaring round the town. Yet I still find this gossip and nonsense strangely fascinating, as if this little lost sporting-and-dramatic world of the ’eighties and ’nineties had once been my world. I can even discover a flicker of pathos in these chronicles. Is there somewhere among them a dim figure, a very minor character without a name, who once shared a cab with Pitcher or mince pie and brandy with Swears at the Pelican, who was myself in a previous incarnation, and who, after a fatal stroke in a chophouse or the Empire bar, was flung at once by the Wheel into existence again, this time among the Baptists in the West Riding?
102
Orchestras creeping in to piano
I do not care where it happens, whether it is at the Coketown Hippodrome or the Royal Albert Hall, or who brings it off, whether it is Billy Binks, the Comedy Entertainer, or Strugg, the World’s Greatest Pianist, but I never fail to get into a dingle-dangle of delight, with icy-legged spiders racing up and down my spine, when suddenly and softly the orchestra creeps in to accompany the piano. You have not heard the orchestra for some time, only the piano. You have almost forgotten about orchestras. And suddenly − and oh so softly at first − there it is, with the strings whispering below the familiar silver hammering of the piano, then the wood wind bubbling and chuckling, then the brass assertive and triumphant, then the drums and cymbals booming and clashing to a grand finality. Socrates was wiser than I am; Alexander and Caesar made bigger names for themselves; and Shakespeare could write much better than I can. But not one of them ever heard the orchestra come creeping in to support the piano and never knew my dingle-dangle of delight.
103
Cooking picnics
Like most men and unlike nearly all women, those atavistic creatures, I detest picnics. One reason is that I am usually very hungry out in the open and I dislike the kind of food provided by picnics. Thus, there are few things to eat better than a properly dressed salad in a fine big salad bowl, but there are few things less appetising than an undressed salad out of a paper bag or cardboard box. Then, except for thick slices of ham between thin slices of bread, I have a growing distaste for the whole sandwich family, especially paste, egg or cheese sandwiches. Again, anything with jam in it or on it is a curse on a summer’s day. Finally, there is a peculiarly hard, green, sour little apple that must be grown specially for picnic boxes. Nevertheless, I have delighted in my time − and am not yet past it − in one kind of picnic, namely, the cooking picnic. This is for great souls. The instrumental basis of it is the frying-pan. Sausages will do, though steak of course is better. Fried potatoes are essential, and persons whose stomachs shrink from a greasy chip rather underdone should stay at home and nibble health foods. Coffee, which stands up to wood smoke better than tea, is the beverage. The cooking picnic is, I will admit, a smoky job, at least in this damp climate of ours. I have superintended cooking picnics − and I am a natural superintendent on all these occasions − with inflamed and streaming eyes and every sinus wrecked, spluttering and coughing and choking, damning and blasting, glaring at would-be helpful children until they ran away and howled. I have stoked and fried and stewed and dished out portions until there was nothing left for me but a few bits of greasy muck and half a cup of coffee grounds. And even my pipe has tasted all wrong in the inferno of wood smoke. Yet I would not have missed a moment of it for a five-pound lunch in a private room on somebody else’s expense sheet. Somewhere among the damp obstinate sticks, the dwindling sausages, the vanishing fat, the potatoes that would not brown and the water that would not boil, the billowing smoke on the hillside, the monstrous appetites of the company, there has been delight like a crumb of gold.
104
Beginning to cast a play
Beginning to cast a play. No, this is not quite accurate. Strictly speaking, the delightful time is just before getting down to the actual business of casting. It is when three or four of you, all concerned in the play’s production, cosily foregather to exchange airy talk about the possible cast. You all have your feet well off the ground. To protect the happy speculative mood, the door is bolted against brute facts. Other managements, the films, and all agents are forgotten. Here is the wonderful play, and here, eager to perform it, are innumerable brilliant players, all the golden lads and girls of the capital. How about So-and-so for the young man? Perfect! And Such-and-such for his father? Marvellous! How about Bracegirdle and Woffington, Garrick and Kean? Just what I was going to suggest! What a play, what a cast, what a production! And you have only to keep this happy delirium going for an hour or two, to persuade yourselves that you have been working and have earned a drink, lunch, dinner, supper. And tomorrow, you tell each other as you go out, you will get down to it and start ringing up a few people, not one of whom will be free to appear in your play. Perhaps it would be better if this tomorrow were put off for ever. Little that happens afterwards can be as good as this hour or so of life in a fairy tale.
105
Waking to smell bacon, etc.
Waking just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. And how rarely it happens! If there should be coffee and bacon and eggs (not all your eggs, of course) to smell, then it is long odds against our waking − or at least against my waking − just in time to smell them. If we should happen to waken bang on breakfast, then it is probably fifty to one against there being bacon and eggs and coffee all hot and suitably odorous. We live in a world of fantastic events and staggering coincidences. The papers are full of them. After listening to an hour of our talk these days, Sinbad the Sailor would roll out in disgust, calling us a pack of liars. Few of us ask to be immersed day after day in all this far-fetchedness. Most of us could do with a smaller, plainer but more companionable world. We plan, we toil, we suffer − in the hope of what? A camel-load of idols’ eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The Empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs. And, again I cry, how rarely it happens! But when it does happen − then what a moment, what a morning, what delight!
106
Sketches of C. J. Holmes
I never met C. J. Holmes. He was not a great artist, perhaps not even a considerable one. Yet few painters of this or any other age have given me more lasting delight than Holmes. The reason is that he did successfully what I have always wanted to do, have tried to do, and have grotesquely failed to do. For what he did was to slap down on paper any bit of landscape that took his eye. The medium, did not matter − he would use pencil, ink, chalk, pastel, watercolour, and if necessary mix them all up − but what he saw and enjoyed, mostly on holiday, I imagine, he recorded with speed and precision, catching a moment and holding it for ever. Anything would do, Lake District mountains, Oxfordshire streams and willows, haystacks or factories (I have examples of all these and of other things too), but clearly he had to feel happy and excited about what he saw and then get the thing down on paper as soon as possible. And I would not exchange these sketches for whole academies of laborious studio work. I have been surrounded for years by specimens of this happy holiday art of his, and I never look at them properly (for often we look without truly seeing) without a lift of the spirit. “This is what I saw that morning and this is what I felt about it,” he shouts from the wall; and I give him an answering nod and grin. When he left London with a bag full of pencils, inks, chalks, pastels, watercolours and paper, to mooch about and have some fun, he was already on his way towards lighting up the existence of somebody he never knew. If I could do the job myself, then down would come the Holmeses and up would go the Priestleys; but I can’t − and I know because I have tried. But, thanks to his sharp eye and quick clever hand, he has made me share his experience, rented me for a few guineas many a morning’s happiness. Is this art? I no longer know nor care (I took a postgraduate course on Æsthetics), but it is delight and good enough for me.
107
Memoranda self
Discovering one’s younger and worthier self. After thirty years I have just been dipping into a volume that looks like a ledger but is labelled Memoranda. (Nowadays I would never dare to call my notes “memoranda”.) It has even an Index – Criticism − common mistake in; Imagination − whether re-creative? Music − æsthetic of: that sort of thing. Blake, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Jonson, Nietzsche, Plato, Rousseau, Shakespeare, Sophocles are among those examined and discussed. These are not lecture notes, although I had just arrived in Cambridge when I began this volume, but my own original observations. And some of them seem to me very sound too, even though they are portentous, each note weighing at least fifty-six pounds. What a chap I was in those days! There I was, living mostly on bread and cheese and boiled eggs, wearing an army tunic that had been dyed, none too successfully, a sad blue, puffing away at my Cut Cavendish, burying my nose in this ledger every night to make my point about “Industrialism and the Platonic Idea of the State” or “Shakespeare’s method of conceiving character”! Suppose that youngster marched in now, to transfix me with his hungry and challenging look! What would he think? Fat old fraud? On the evidence of these “memoranda”, his faults are plain to me. He is too pompous. He is a bit of a prig. He cannot tell the difference between critical commonplaces and genuinely original thought. But not only do I like him, I delight in him - “Memoranda” and all.
108
Van Hoven
Among vanished delights must be numbered the variety act of van Hoven. If he were still performing, I would go to see him tomorrow. Indeed, his act would be infinitely more valuable now, simply as catharsis, than it was in his own easy-going time; and if he were alive today he would be worth a twenty-thousand-pound annual subsidy from the Central Office of Information. Van Hoven was an American who entered vaudeville as a straight conjurer and then, having achieved a few droll disasters in his performance, soon decided to create a comic conjuring act, which he played for years in the music halls here. He disdained funny make-up and appeared in ordinary evening clothes, a pleasant-looking, rather nervous fellow, surrounded by apparatus. He was generally assisted by three urchins, who, to support him in some trick as labyrinthine and regressive as a Kafka novel, a trick never to be completed in this world, held quantities of eggs and blocks of ice, over which they stared at him balefully. He had no obvious comic business, made no jokes. He was simply trying to entertain you with a few conjuring tricks, but was defeated, with mounting ignominy, by the untiring malice of things. Even when he first arrived, pink and smiling, you sensed that all was not well, that already he was hoping against hope. Very soon he was fighting against total despair. Trick after trick went wrong. The urchins had to be moved around, and blocks of ice exchanged for eggs. Mechanical illusions that had worked perfectly in the shop or at rehearsal now refused all co-operation with him. Not a trick came off. The neat figure who first entered was soon a glistening ruin. His smiles were the last flutter of flags on a sinking battleship. His voice became a hoarse despairing whisper, the croaking of a doomed man. He tore off the sopping rags that were once a dress collar and tie. The eggs fell like ripe plums; the blocks of ice began to melt; the stage was a shambles. The urchins, summoned so lightheartedly, were now like the Fates. Trying to think of something that might possibly work, he looked at us with glazing eyes. The cruel lights rayed down on him there, fixed in a nightmare. The orchestra, playing the rapid incidental music of all triumphant conjurers, contrived a final irony. And I used to laugh so uproariously that it hurt and I would lose sight of the stage in a sudden red haze. But even then I must have felt that this was something more than a wonderfully energetic piece of clowning. And I was wrong to say that the desperate van Hoven would be better than ever now. He might cut too deep, and we might all burst into tears. All he asked for was to entertain us with a few conjuring tricks, and look what happened. All most of us ask for now is a quiet life, and what do we get? Van Hoven has left us but now we are all in his world. Any newspaper will show us the tricks going wrong, the ice melting, the eggs falling.…
