“Been sitting to Botticelli, Dinny?”
“No—to a pawnbroker. If you ever want one I recommend Frewens of South Molton Street.”
“YOU, at a pawnbroker’s?”
“Yes, darling. I’ve got more money of my own on me than I ever had in my life.”
“What do you want it for?”
Dinny bent and stroked the dog.
“Since I knew you I’ve grasped the real importance of money.”
“And what’s that?”
“Not to be divided from you by the absence of it. The great open spaces are what we want now. Take Foch off the lead, Wilfrid; he’ll follow, I’m sure.”
CHAPTER 19
In a centre of literature such as London, where books come out by the half-dozen almost every day, the advent of a slender volume of poems is commonly of little moment. But circumstances combined to make the appearance of The Leopard, and other Poems a ‘literary event.’ It was Wilfrid’s first production for four years. He was a lonely figure, marked out by the rarity of literary talent among the old aristocracy, by the bitter, lively quality of his earlier poems, by his Eastern sojourn and isolation from literary circles, and finally by the report that he had embraced Islam. Someone, on the appearance of his third volume four years ago, had dubbed him ‘a sucking Byron’; the phrase had caught the ear. Finally, he had a young publisher who understood the art of what he called ‘putting it over.’ During the few weeks since he received Wilfrid’s manuscript, he had been engaged in lunching, dining, and telling people to look out for ‘The Leopard,’ the most sensation-making poem since ‘The Hound of Heaven.’ To the query “Why?” he replied in nods and becks and wreathed smiles. Was it true that young Desert had become a Mussulman? Oh! Yes. Was he in London? Oh! yes, but, of course, the shyest and rarest bird in the literary flock.
He who was Compson Grice Ltd. had from the first perceived that in ‘The Leopard’ he had ‘a winner’—people would not enjoy it, but they would talk about it. He had only to start the snowball rolling down the slope, and when moved by real conviction no one could do this better than he. Three days before the book came out he met Telfourd Yule by a sort of accidental prescience.
“Hallo, Yule, back from Araby?”
“As you see.”
“I say, I’ve got a most amazing book of poems coming out on Monday. The Leopard, by Wilfrid Desert. Like a copy? The first poem’s a corker.”
“Oh!”
“Takes the wind clean out of that poem in Alfred Lyall’s Verses written in India, about the man who died sooner than change his faith. Remember?”
“I do.”
“What’s the truth about Desert taking to Islam?”
“Ask him.”
“That poem’s so personal in feeling—it might be about himself.”
“Indeed?”
And Compson Grice thought, suddenly: ‘If it were! What a stunt!’
“Do you know him, Yule?”
“No.”
“You must read the thing; I couldn’t put it down.”
“Ah!”
“But would a man publish such a thing about his own experience?”
“Can’t say.”
And, still more suddenly, Compson Grice thought: ‘If it were, I could sell a hundred thousand!’
He returned to his office, thinking: ‘Yule was deuced close. I believe I was right, and he knows it. He’s only just back; everything’s known in the bazaars, they say. Now, let’s see, where am I?’
Published at five shillings, on a large sale there would, after royalty paid, be a clear profit of sixpence a copy. A hundred thousand copies would be two thousand five hundred pounds, and about the same in royalties to Desert! By George! But, of course, loyalty to client first! And there came to him one of those inspirations which so often come to loyal people who see money ahead of them.
‘I must draw his attention to the risk of people saying that it’s his own case. I’d better do it the day after publication. In the meantime I’ll put a second big edition in hand.’
On the day before publication, a prominent critic, Mark Hanna, who ran a weekly bell in the Carillon, informed him that he had gone all out for the poem. A younger man, well known for a certain buccaneering spirit, said no word, but wrote a criticism. Both critiques appeared on the day of publication. Compson Grice cut them out and took them with him to the ‘Jessamine’ restaurant, where he had bidden Wilfrid to lunch.
They met at the entrance and passed to a little table at the far end. The room was crowded with people who knew everybody in the literary, dramatic and artistic world. And Compson Grice waited, with the experience of one who had entertained many authors, until a bottle of Mouton Rothschild 1870 had been drunk to its dregs. Then, producing from his pocket the two reviews, he placed that of Mark Hanna before his guest, with the words: “Have you seen this? It’s rather good.”
Wilfrid read it.
The reviewer had indeed gone ‘all out.’ It was almost all confined to The Leopard, which it praised as the most intimate revelation of the human soul in verse since Shelley.
“Bunk! Shelley doesn’t reveal except in his lyrics.”
“Ah! well,” said Compson Grice, “they have to work in Shelley.”
The review acclaimed the poem as “tearing away the last shreds of the hypocritical veil which throughout our literature has shrouded the muse in relation to religion.” It concluded with these words: “This poem, indeed, in its unflinching record of a soul tortured by cruel dilemma, is the most amazing piece of imaginative psychology which has come our way in the twentieth century.”
Watching his guest lay down the cutting, Compson Grice said softly:
“Pretty good! It’s the personal fervour of the thing that gets them.”
Wilfrid gave his queer shiver.
“Got a cigar-cutter?”
Compson Grice pushed one forward with the other review.
“I think you ought to read this in the Daily Phase.”
The review was headed: ‘Defiance: Bolshevism and the Empire.’
Wilfrid took it up.
“Geoffrey Coltham?” he said. “Who’s he?”
The review began with some fairly accurate personal details of the poet’s antecedents, early work and life, ending with the mention of his conversion to Islam. Then, after some favourable remarks about the other poems, it fastened on The Leopard, sprang, as it were, at the creature’s throat, and shook it as a bulldog might. Then, quoting these lines:
it went on with calculated brutality:
‘The thin disguise assumed by the narrative covers a personal disruptive bitterness which one is tempted to connect with the wounded and overweening pride of one who has failed himself and the British world. Whether Mr. Desert intended in this poem to reveal his own experience and feelings in connection with his conversion to Islam—a faith, by the way, of which, judging from the poor and bitter lines quoted above, he is totally unworthy—we cannot of course say, but we advise him to come into the open and let us know. Since we have in our midst a poet who, with all his undoubted thrust, drives at our entrails, and cuts deep into our religion and our prestige, we have the right to know whether or not he—like his hero—is a renegade.’
“That, I think,” said Compson Grice, quietly, “is libellous.”
Wilfrid looked up at him, so that he said afterwards: “I never knew Desert had such eyes.”
“I AM a renegade. I took conversion at the pistol’s point, and you can let everybody know it.”