Later still Hogarth appeared on the scenes in London as a consulting psycho-analyst with a small consulting-room in Harley Street. He seemed to be immediately successful, and had written one or two rather queer books, expounding some sort of philosophy of disease that Graecen had not been able to understand. He had read one of the books, hoping perhaps that he might be able to review it for Hogarth, but it was frankly beyond his powers to understand it. And now Hogarth was busy at work at analysis — he referred to it ironically as “half-soleing the souls of the half-baked”—and into his web people like Fearmax and Baird seemed to be wandering in increasing numbers.
Baird was an only son. His father was a member of the landed gentry displaced by fortune and endeavouring to keep up standards in a world which every day found them less comprehensible or necessary. He was a Justice of the Peace in Herefordshire, a capital horseman, a regular contributor to The Field, and the author of several books about birds. Baird’s mother had died when he was three and his father had never married again. In the stone-roofed house with its neat topiary hedge and green lawn running down to the river, his life had been a quiet and a happy one. His well-regulated youth was calculated to offer him an education and an outlook fit for the inheritance his father was to leave behind; a tradition for mildness, good-breeding, and cultivation rather than culture. In those days it seemed that the genteel might inherit the earth, and that Baird might be among them.
At Charterhouse and Oxford he learned all that his father could not teach him, except by precept. He was averagely good at games and achieved some distinction by winning a music prize. At seventeen he became interested in literature and began a novel about public schools, which he was never destined to finish. At the University, like all young men, he passed through the distemper of Communism and emerged from it unscathed. He rode to hounds with unremitting ardour and shot with style. His sympathy for the working classes, while it had not completely foundered, had given way to an acceptance of the order of things. His father was an admirable companion — interested in everything — and the two of them explored places and subjects together in perfect friendship. Their taste in books and paintings differed widely, but the precept of tolerance was so well ingrained in him that he let the old man have his way in most things. He was a dutiful son.
For a time he lived in London, on a small allowance left to him by his mother, and seriously intended to “commence author”. The phrase sums up his choice of models admirably. At Oxford, Pater and Ruskin had followed hard on the heels of Marx and Engels; the nineties offered one a tremendous latitude for mannerism, and it was mannerism that informed his writing rather than manner — for he had none of his own. A member of the Wine and Food Society, he once or twice wrote essays upon the French Rally for A. J. A. Symons, in which he devoted a critical terminology, with fine discretion, to the description of hard-boiled eggs in Worcester sauce — and other matters of equal weight. During this apprenticeship he was considered rather promising; it was an opinion he himself was inclined to share.
While he could not afford to belong to clubs, his tastes led him to meet a number of artists and musicians so that he never seriously lacked for company; and he contrived to be at every cocktail party given between the Seven Dials and Hammersmith. He was, in fact, always there, a modest and handsome figure in a well-cut lounge suit, dissecting art with artists; music with critics, and life with young women of varying ages and tastes. It was during this period of his life that he had run into Campion at a cocktail party given by a publisher. Campion was quite unknown then, but quite as forthright as when they met again on the deck of the Europa. “How I abominate, how I loathe and distrust and fear all this society back-slapping,” he had said to a rather surprised Baird. He was a small, strongly-built little man with a lot of curly yellow hair coarsely pushed inside a beret. He wore sandals and an open-necked shirt. “Listen to them,” he said fiercely. He was eating rapidly as he talked. Baird looked at the party and could not for the life of him see what was so offensive about it; there were several distinguished people present. Mincon the musician was standing at the mantelpiece. He thought perhaps that Campion might be suffering from some obscure class-inferiority, and asked him pleasantly if he would care to meet the French composer, whom he knew quite well. “God, no,” said Campion in horror, “I could not be nice about his work.” This had rather shocked Baird. Mincon had been accepted everywhere as a genius. “Don’t you like it?” he asked. Campion gave him a long sober look. “Music for the credit titles of a Hollywood film,” he said quietly. “And as for these other people.” His contempt was boundless. Baird asked him why, if he disliked this kind of thing so much, he accepted invitations to parties. Campion once more gave him the cold steady look and answered: “Because of the food — can’t you see? I’m starving.” A little later he had left, and Baird had transferred his attentions to someone more pleasant — someone to whom he might confide his burning desire to write the novel of the age.
He met Alice Lidell in the tea-room of the Tate Gallery and fell in love with her at sight. She was tall and beautiful and her fine blonde hair picked up the reflected light from the long mirrors, twinkling as she combed it. Her diffidence and breeding were charming. They were immediately friends. He admired her long shapely fingers and fine northern colouring. She was, he discovered with a thrill, an art student at the Slade School and keen to be a painter herself. Their friendship survived even her description of Whistler as a “bemused sentimentalist” (a phrase he had heard a friend of hers use) and her defence of Picasso as “the only painter alive”. However, he weathered these intellectual storms and took her to lunch with his aunt — a recognized preliminary to any announcement of his engagement. His aunt approved. Alice found her collection of jade enchanting. She was equally successful with his father, who spent hours showing a rather bored Alice how to hold a gun. By this time, of course, she had decided that she would really like to marry him — he was so personable, so intelligent. His origins and antecedents were unexceptionable. Her own parents were in India and offered no objections. They were married after a short engagement, and retired to a Tudor cottage ten miles from his home, where she proposed to paint, and he to write a book on aesthetics.