‘For other people too,’ I said; and the compliment was sincere. I might be uncertain whether or no I liked Tilney. But I genuinely liked his performance as a talker. Sometimes, perhaps, that performance was a little too professional. But, after all, an artist must be a professional.
‘It’s what comes of being mostly Irish,’ Tilney went on. ‘Talking’s the national vice. Like opium-smoking with the Chinese!’ (Hawtrey re-entered silently to sweep up the crumbs and fold the table-cloth.) ‘If you only knew the number of masterpieces I’ve allowed to evaporate at dinner tables, over the cigars and the whisky!’ (Two things of which, I knew, the Pillar of Society virtuously disapproved.) ‘A whole library. I might have been—what? Well, I suppose I might have been a frightful old bore,’ he answered himself with a forced self-mockery. ‘ “The Complete Works of Edmund Tilney, in Thirty-Eight Volumes, post octavo.” I dare say the world ought to be grateful to me for sparing it that. All the same, I get a bit depressed when I look over the back numbers of the Thursday Review and read those measly little weekly articles of mine. Parturiunt montes . . .’
‘But they’re good articles,’ I protested. If I had been more truthful, I would have said that they were sometimes good—when he took the trouble to make them good. Sometimes, on the contrary . . .
‘Merci, cher maître!’ he answered ironically. ‘But hardly more perennial than brass, you must admit. Monuments of wood pulp. It’s depressing being a failure. Particularly if it’s your fault, if you might have been something else.’
I mumbled something. But what was there to say? Except as a professional talker, Tilney had been a failure. He had great talents and he was a literary journalist who sometimes wrote a good article. He had reason to feel depressed.
‘And the absurd, ironical thing,’ he continued, ‘is that the one really good piece of work I ever did is another man’s autobiography. I could never prove my authorship even if I wanted to. Old Chawdron was very careful to destroy all the evidences of the crime. The business arrangements were all verbal. No documents of any kind. And the manuscript, my manuscript—he bought it off me. It’s burnt.’
I laughed. ‘He took no risks with you.’ Thank heaven! The dragon was preparing to leave the room for good.
‘None whatever,’ said Tilney. ‘He was going to be quite sure of wearing his laurel wreath. There was to be no other claimant. And at the time, of course, I didn’t care two pins. I took the high line about reputation. Good art—and Chawdron’s Autobiography was good art, a really first-rate novel—good art is its own reward.’ (Hawtrey’s comment on this was almost to slam the door as she departed.) ‘You know the style of thing? And in this case it was more than its own reward. There was money in it. Five hundred down and all the royalties. And I was horribly short of money at the moment. If I hadn’t been, I’d never have written the book. Perhaps that’s been one of my disadvantages—a small independent income and not very extravagant tastes. I happened to be in love with a very expensive young woman at the time when Chawdron made his offer.
You can’t go dancing and drinking champagne on five hundred a year. Chawdron’s cheque was timely. And there I was, committed to writing his memoirs for him. A bore, of course. But luckily the young woman jilted me soon afterwards; so I had time to waste. And Chawdron was a ruthless taskmaster. And besides, I really enjoyed it once I got started. It really was its own reward. But now—now that the book’s written and the money’s spent and I’m soon going to be fifty, instead of forty as it was then—now, I must say, I’d rather like to have at least one good book to my credit. I’d like to be known as the author of that admirable novel, The Autobiography of Benjamin Chawdron, but, alas, I shan’t be.’ He sighed. ‘It’s Benjamin Chawdron, not Edmund Tilney, who’ll have his little niche in the literary histories.
Not that I care much for literary history. But I do rather care, I must confess, for the present anticipations of the niche. The drawing-room reputation, the mentions in the newspapers, the deference of the young, the sympathetic curiosity of the women. All the by-products of successful authorship. But there, I sold them to Chawdron. For a good price. I can’t complain. Still, I do complain. Have you got any pipe tobacco? I’ve run out of mine.’
I gave him my pouch. ‘If I had the energy,’ he went on, as he refilled his pipe, ‘or if I were desperately hard up, which, thank heaven and at the same time alas! I’m not at the moment, I could make another book out of Chawdron. Another and a better one. Better,’ he began explaining, and then interrupted himself to suck at the flame of the match he had lighted, ‘because . . . so much more . . . malicious.’ He threw the match away. ‘You can’t write a good book without being malicious. In the Autobiography I made a hero of Chawdron. I was paid to; besides, it was Chawdron himself who provided me with my documents. In this other book he’d be the villain.
Or in other words, he’d be himself as others saw him, not as he saw himself. Which is, incidentally, the only valid difference between the virtuous and the wicked that I’ve ever been able to detect. When you yourself indulge in any of the deadly sins, you’re always justified—they’re never deadly. But when anyone else indulges, you’re very properly indignant. Old Rousseau had the courage to say that he was the most virtuous man in the world. The rest of us only silently believe it. But to return to Chawdron. What I’d like to do now is to write his biography, not his autobiography. And the biography of a rather different aspect of the man. Not about the man of action, the captain of industry, the Napoleon of finance and so forth. But about the domestic, the private, the sentimental Chawdron.’
‘The Times had its word about that,’ said I; and picking up the paper once more, I read: ‘ “Under a disconcertingly brusque and even harsh manner Mr Chawdron concealed the kindliest of natures. A stranger meeting him for the first time was often repelled by a certain superficial roughness. It was only to his intimates that he revealed”—guess what!—“the heart of gold beneath.” ’
‘Heart of gold!’ Tilney took his pipe out of his mouth to laugh.
‘And he also, I see, had “a deep religious sense”.’ I laid the paper down.
‘Deep? It was bottomless.’
‘Extraordinary,’ I reflected aloud, ‘the way they all have hearts of gold and religious senses. Every single one, from the rough old man of science to the tough old businessman and the gruff old statesman.’
‘Hearts of gold!’ Tilney repeated. ‘But gold’s much too hard. Hearts of putty, hearts of vaseline, hearts of hog-wash. That’s more like it. Hearts of hog-wash. The tougher and bluffer and gruffer they are outside, the softer they are within. It’s a law of nature. I’ve never come across an exception. Chawdron was the rule incarnate. Which is precisely what I want to show in this other, potential book of mine—the ruthless Napoleon of finance paying for his ruthlessness and his Napoleonism by dissolving internally into hog-wash. For that’s what happened to him: he dissolved into hog-wash. Like the Strange Case of Mr Valdemar in Edgar Allan Poe.
I saw it with my own eyes. It’s a terrifying spectacle. And the more terrifying when you realize that, but for the grace of God, there goes yourself—and still more so when you begin to doubt of the grace of God, when you see that there in fact you do go. Yes, you and I, my boy. For it isn’t only the tough old businessmen who have the hearts of hog-wash. It’s also, as you yourself remarked just now, the gruff old scientists, the rough old scholars, the bluff old admirals and bishops, and all the other pillars of Christian society. It’s everybody, in a word, who has made himself too hard in the head or the carapace; everybody who aspires to be non-human—whether angel or machine it doesn’t matter. Super-humanity is as bad as sub-humanity, is the same thing finally. Which shows how careful one should be if one’s an intellectual. Even the mildest sort of intellectual. Like me, for example.
I’m not one of your genuine ascetic scholars. God forbid! But I’m decidedly high-brow, and I’m literary; I’m even what the newspapers call a “thinker”. I suffer from a passion for ideas. Always have, from boyhood onwards. With what results? That I’ve never been attracted by any woman who wasn’t a bitch.’
I laughed. But Tilney held up his hand in a gesture of protest. ‘It’s a serious matter,’ he said. ‘It’s disastrous, even. Nothing but bitches. Imagine!’
‘I’m
