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Hugh Walpole. John Cornelius: His Life and Adventures
John Cornelius: His Life and Adventures
Table of Contents
FOREWORD. It has been only after much thought and consideration that I have finally decided on the form that this book must take. John Cornelius died on December 8th, 1921. During the years since his death there has appeared an official biography;[1] also, among others, two critical works of especial importance.[2]
PART I. SEA AND LAND
CHAPTER I
AT THE AGE OF FIVE HIS ADVENTURES WERE NUMEROUS; THERE WERE THE DUCKLINGS; ALSO HIS FATHER AND MOTHER
His mother was the daughter of William Baring, proprietor of the White Horse Inn at Caerlyn Sands. Baring, from all I ever heard, must have been a grand, boasting, foolish character, famous locally and known even in distant parts of Glebeshire
CHAPTER II
THE GREAT SHELL-BOX; AND HOW JULIET SPOKE FROM THE BALCONY
From the age of five years to eight John Cornelius must have led a quiet, domestic and very happy existence. During those years only two events of major importance occurred; it is with these that this chapter deals. He may be seen, a small restless enquiring figure, growing in vitality if not in beauty, moving up and down, in and out, talking to anybody, for ever asking questions, afraid of no one (although alert now against circumstance after the death of ‘Old Laces’)
CHAPTER III
DEATH OF HIS FATHER
Reverently he put Ada Montgomery’s address away in the little shell-box that his father had given him two years before for Christmas; he then proceeded on the solemn business of growing older
CHAPTER IV
AS COUNTRY HEROES ALWAYS DO, JOHN LEAVES FOR LONDON, AFTER MEETING MR. LIPPER
For the next eighteen months John and his mother succeeded in existing. When John was nearly eleven years of age, had a good sentimental education but no sort of a practical one, had still Ada Montgomery’s address in his shell-box but was not a step nearer London, enter Mr. Lipper, the God out of the Machine, the spider in the wash-tub
they all shouted with laughter. I was not in the least disturbed and suggested that I should sing. So, turning my back on the empty stalls and facing the funny, rather forlorn little group of actors, I gave them “Oft in the stilly night,” “Gone were but the winter cold” and “Weep you no more, sad fountains.” After these they laughed no longer. I knew what is dearest of all things to the actor’s and singer’s heart, that silence of absorption, of emotional fulfilment. And what followed was quite marvellous. There was a moment, it seemed, in Fair Rosamond, when a minstrel sings beneath her bower. On the following evening, dressed in red tights with a feather in my cap and a property lute in my hand, I should step forward and sing to the bower “Weep you no more, sad fountains.” Little Jimmy Despard, who always played the flute in the four-piece Theatre orchestra, was found (he was easily discovered in “The Hare and Hound” next door) and I rehearsed the song to his accompaniment, and everyone was ravished. I was to be paid. I was, in fact, for one night at least, to be a real professional actor.’
CHAPTER V
ROAD TO HUNNABLE’S; WHAT HUNNABLE’S IS LIKE WHEN YOU GET THERE
John differed from all the other children who have, in so many romances, gone penniless to London in that no one ill-treated, abused, mocked, satirized, starved, robbed, beat or lectured him. Every living soul on this momentous journey behaved to him kindly
CHAPTER VI
DID YOU KNOW THAT ACTRESSES ARE UNTIDY?—JOHN SINGS FOR FAME
At the height of John’s maturity he was given to declare, when anyone asked him, that his favourite writers were Shakespeare, Bacon, Marlowe, Oxford (‘The Elizabethan Syndicate’ John said was the author of the Plays), La Fontaine, Dickens, Cervantes, Hans Andersen, Herman Melville, Keats and Browning. (He always said that Browning was the uncle of all post-War poetry in England and America.) And among his contemporaries White Mallison, Anne Norwood, W. G. Byrne and Owen Roughwood (not to give them their proper names!)
CHAPTER VII
HOUSE OF JADE AND AMETHYST
And thus John’s voice slowly vanished into the wind; its last echo on the words, ‘No Time ... Time is not, but I am here,’ almost persuades me as I write at my table, staring out on to this blue brittle autumn sky, the chrysanthemums like torn shreds of ragged paper, red-amber above the chiselled leaves. Yes, persuades me that he is here, bending from his thin, untidy height, his hair in his eyes so that he must brush it back with his lean hand, his spade-like shoulders bent, and that child-kindliness, dream-oddity...
CHAPTER VIII
HOW JOHN GOT HIS FIRST SIGHT OF SALISBURY DOWNS AND THE TRUE NATURE OF THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD BOTH AT THE SAME TIME
How little John realized at that moment when the old woman uttered the word ‘School’ that his fate was well and truly settled!
PART II. THE BRIGHT-GREEN SHOES
CHAPTER I
MR. REINER’S SHADOW
How fortunate it was that John so little realized the captive that he was now to be, a captive of three years and a little bit!
CHAPTER II
THE TOWER AND THE WASH-HOUSE
John arrived in London and found it hot and dusty. He went straight away to Lady Max’s house, very tired (for he had not slept), very hungry (for he had not eaten)
CHAPTER III
OVER THE HOUSE THE LAST SEAGULL CRIES
I find in my Cornelius note-book this entry:
October 3, 1912
CHAPTER IV
THE ADVENTURES OF THE ARK THAT WASN’T NEEDED AND THE MAN WITH THE GREEN INK
A few months after Mrs. Cornelius’ funeral Charlie came to John and told him that he had a chance of a job in London, to work at a shop as apprentice, the owner a friend of a cousin of his father. He would also have the opportunity of studying at the Polytechnic. He would have, with what his father allowed him and one thing and another, some two pounds a week—plenty for anybody. He had had this offer but he would not leave John, neither now nor ever ... ‘not if you don’t want me to.’
CHAPTER V
HOW THE HERO MOVED INTO SOHO, HOW CHARLIE ENJOYED SAUSAGES AND MASHED, WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO SEE YOUR BOOK IN THE WINDOW, AND WHETHER OR NO ANNE WAS WISE
I have constantly noticed that English readers do not take very kindly to novels that have for their theme the adventures and misadventures of men of letters. It is to be regretted only in this—that novelists have, for the most part, very little first-hand experience of life except as men of letters, and even though in their early years they have been navvies, tramps, seamen, dress-designers or penniless members of the Peerage, after their first successful volume they become authors and are segregated thenceforth from many enlivening hazards and extravagances
CHAPTER VI
MARRIAGE
I first met Mercia Otterstone somewhere in November 1908. I have looked in my diary but cannot discover the place of our first meeting nor the exact date
CHAPTER VII
HE TAKES A STEP DOWN INTO FOG
I was compelled in October 1909 to pay a visit to America. While I was there, in spite of many occupations and an almost continuous talk (as it seemed, over and over again, to the same person) in a bright dry light and a trapeze-like invigorating air, I thought a great deal about Cornelius
CHAPTER VIII
ANNE—‘THE BRIGHT-GREEN SHOES’—WILD PARTY—VISION OF MAN THROUGH CHIMNEY-POTS
This is the story of John Cornelius’ life, not mine. And yet, at this point, I feel it necessary to say that somewhere early in 1911 I fell in love with Anne Swinnerton. I knew that it was hopeless; for a long time I didn’t speak to her of it. Whether she knew it I can’t tell, but I suppose that she did. A woman is always aware if a man’s in love with her. At first it was exceedingly difficult for me. It was a kind of obsession, and these years, 1911-1914, were the most difficult of my life. Anne and John Cornelius, although neither was conscious of it, pulled me through to safety. They were very difficult years for Anne and Johnny also
PART III. FLYING GULLS
CHAPTER I
FOR THIS REALITY IS NO REALITY
Early in August 1914 I was sent to Russia as roving correspondent for one of the London newspapers. I afterwards entered the Ninth Russian Army as stretcher-bearer, and it was not until the spring of 1916 that I returned to England. I did not, therefore, see anything of Cornelius during the first two years of the War
CHAPTER II
THE CHÂTEAU AT BAUPON
This chapter is by far the most difficult and most dangerous in this book. I have watched with fear its approach from the very beginning
CHAPTER III
CHARLIE
In the late spring of 1917 I returned to England on leave from Russia, and Cornelius was given some kind of job as a temporary supernumerary in the Foreign Office
CHAPTER IV
CARSTANG—FAME—MERCIA AND ANNE
On the morning of Armistice Day, November 11th, 1918, I was writing very quietly in my flat in St. James’s when the sirens blew and everyone came pouring out of their doors into the street. I looked from my window down into Duke Street and saw how the russia leather and pigskin tobacco-pouches, and portraits of eighteenth-century ladies, and the Tang purple lions that I was so friendly with, and the rows of silver, porcelain and gold clocks, and the palms in pots outside No. 2 Ryder Street, and the whispers from the men in green-baize aprons who lift the heavy furniture in Christie’s, and the urbane kindly ghost of George Alexander, and the little Manet still-life of two roses in Lefevre’s window, and the two girl chambermaids from the gentlemen’s apartments at No. 8—all these plus the ghosts of Mr. Gibbon, young Thackeray, Mr. Boswell, Mr. Ackerman, Mr. Rowlandson and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, yes, they one and all mingled under the grey-blue, snow-dappled sky, in and out and through the smoke-white, pearl-shadowed walls, the milk-green surfaces of St. James’s Park, all, with snuff-box, tobacco-pouch, diamond-buckled, powdered, pigtailed, top-hatted exuberance, danced to what they hoped would be, now and for ever, a free and disencumbered London
CHAPTER V
HOME SWEET HOME AGAIN
On the first anniversary of the publication of the fairy-tales—November 29th, 1919—Peter Westcott and I gave a little party to celebrate the event. There was nothing especial to record about this, except that Johnny himself wasn’t present. At the very last moment I received this note:
CHAPTER VI
ANNE
In the spring of 1921 Cornelius published another novel, The Three Beggar-Men, and in the autumn of the same year another volume of fairy-stories, The Flight of the Wild Swans
CHAPTER VII
... WITH THAT I AWOKE
On the morning of December 5th of this year 1921 I received the longest and most personal letter that I have ever had from Cornelius
