Читать книгу John Cornelius: His Life and Adventures - Hugh Walpole - Страница 17

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It was not from John but from Charlie Christian that I learnt how John ran all over the town that day telling everyone of the marvellous thing that was to happen on the following evening. And the town—or rather the lower portions of it—nobly responded.

The cheaper parts of the house were filled that next evening and everyone was expecting to have an excellent joke.

‘I was desperately serious about it,’ John would say, ‘as in fact I always have been about anything I’ve had to do. I could see no joke in the matter although the red tights were so much too large for my skinny legs and the red saucer-shaped cap with the dirty white feather in it must have looked comic enough.

‘Do you remember the picture of Smike dressed up in Nicholas Nickleby? The very image of myself that night. It was a horribly cold smelly little room that we dressed in, and I prepared ages before it was necessary, sat there shivering in my tights, clearing my throat to make sure of my voice and hearing through the thin boards the ridiculous dialogue of Fair Rosamond. And how I loved it! Cold, shaking with nervousness, hungry (for I had eaten nothing all day), I was yet burning with pride and joy. My first professional appearance—and not, I was sure, my last! The rest of the company, when not occupied, came and cheered me up. How I love actors! How brave and comradely and bold-spirited they are! It has always been said of them that they are self-occupied, one-idea’d, jealous and the rest. Their profession compels them, for they live on a tight-rope. A piece of good luck for a little while and then perhaps months of sickening anxiety. But how good they are to one another in distress, how understanding of the realities of life, the actual! “Where is my bed, my meal? If I fall ill to-day I am a ruined man.... This won’t last. In a few weeks I shall be on the road again....” Love actors? They are the only real unstandardized human beings anywhere in the world to-day. The poets are gone, the painters are gone, the cooks are gone, the prophets and priests and saints are gone....’ (This is the way that Johnny would ramble. Actors were always his passion.)

‘In any case one fat old boy in a large dirty ruff gave me a drink that made my eyes water, and a young woman with a cast in her eye stood and looked at me and laughed until I thought that she would have died—all in the friendliest manner.

‘My moment came. I had no words to speak, but when the King cried, “Where is my Page? Ho, Page, a song for my lady!”, I was to step forward with my lute and sing my song.

‘I stepped forward and paused for a moment at the flickering gas footlights. I paused, also, because of the roar that greeted me. I stood there, blinking, not knowing what to do. There were shouts and screams from all over the house, shouts, as I remember, of “Playwriter! Playwriter!” “Where did you get those clothes?” “How’s the washing? Does your mother know you’re out?” It was not the first time I had been mocked nor would it be the last. I stared up at the red blowzy face of Fair Rosamond who was leaning out of the rickety little window of the bower and looking at me with great anxiety. They were afraid, they told me afterwards, that someone would start to throw things. And so, I expect, it would have been. The King hissed in my ear, “Get off, you brat!” The noise was so deafening that I could with difficulty hear him. But I didn’t get off. Anger, as it was often to do, came to my rescue. Throwing my property lute on to the floor I went to the footlights, held up my hand, and for a wonder they were quiet. I told them that it was cowardly to interrupt players who were doing their best for them and that whether they liked it or not I would sing. So I sang—some of the most beautiful words in the world.

‘ “Weep you no more, sad fountains;

What need you flow so fast?

Look how the snowy mountains

Heaven’s sun doth gently waste!

But my Sun’s heavenly eyes

View not your weeping,

That now lies sleeping

Softly, now softly lies

Sleeping.

Sleep is a reconciling,

A rest that peace begets;

Doth not the sun rise smiling

When fair at even he sets?

Rest you then, rest, sad eyes!

Melt not in weeping,

While she lies sleeping

Softly, now softly lies

Sleeping.” ’

Johnny, who was to sing for so short a time longer, always said that this ‘Weep you no more’ was of all his songs the loveliest and that he sang it like an angel.

He may have done. Men have denied him many things, but none who heard him sing as a boy has ever forgotten its loveliness. His audience, on this night, was altogether conquered. Charlie, who was in the audience and on the edge of a terrific fight with two lads near him, says that the instant change from derision to ecstasy was a remarkable thing—his own nature being by far too well controlled for those extremes. They demanded song after song. John gave them ‘Drink to me only,’ ‘I have a mistress for perfections rare,’ and ‘The lark now leaves his watery nest.’ It was these old songs that especially saved him. He delayed Fair Rosamond for half an hour. They engaged him to sing on the remaining two nights. They even invited him to travel with the company. He had greater, more magnificent ambitions. But he had attained his object. He had enough money now to make his London adventure a certainty.

It was now that his aunt, his mother’s sister, came into view. Mrs. Hunnable was her name. John had barely heard her name before this, but now that it was settled that John was to go, Daisy Cornelius’ mind, generally steamed into stupor by soap-suds and hot water, stirred itself. She had had a line from Maggie a year or more ago. Where was it? Last February come a year Maggie had written to say that she was married again. Where was the letter? It was searched for and, by a miracle, found. Here was the address—15 Broadman Street, Pimlico.

‘She’s very religious,’ John’s mother told him. ‘Not religious like any ordinary person. It’s a sect that believes there’ll be another Flood that will destroy the earth. They know the date and everything. This new marriage she’s made—well, it ain’t new any longer, I suppose—year and a half—but he’s one of them. “To William Hunnable, First Preacher of the Church Expectant”—that’s what he called himself on the card.’

John could wonderfully re-create his mother for us—her large mild eyes full of love and bewilderment, her soft, rather sleepy voice, her fair untidy hair, locks of it often tickling her forehead, her big stout body now, alas, beginning to be gross, her damp warmth and fluttering hands, the movement as, impatiently, she pushed her hair back....

‘But it must be all right. Maggie has a whole house. She lets rooms to religious lodgers. There must be room for you.’

So John helped his mother to write a letter, and soon a very warm and affectionate reply was received saying how welcome ‘little John’ would be for a visit.

At last it was really settled! Mrs. Garriman and Mrs. Hoskin had plenty to say—behind John’s back of course. Words they were never at a loss for.

The sad thing now was that Joe Lipper encouraged them rather than prevented them! All laziness, and a sort of vanity that made him ready to please any woman. They amused him. He would lie on the bed and laugh at Mrs. Hoskin by the hour.

They gave poor Daisy Cornelius a terrible time about her son. The absurdity of allowing that boy to go to London at his age all by himself! He was already on the way to ruin, singing and making a fool of himself before the whole town—but now! ... and everyone knew that he would steal and lay his hands on anything that wasn’t his—a London gaol was the first place he’d find himself. They didn’t say the really bad things in front of Daisy herself; they said plenty to Joe Lipper, though, and he, lazy as he was, began to fancy that the boy was no good and that he’d be better gone.

John, at this particular crisis in his affairs, had very few friends in the world. There were at any rate two.

Here is the letter that he wrote to Anne Swinnerton, now at school in Truro:

Dear Anne—I’m going to London next week. I shall stay with my aunt, Mrs. Hunnable, as a beginning. Her address is 15 Broadman Street, Pimlico, London.

I shall not be there very long of course because I am going into the theatre—Miss Montgomery will start me I expect. I told you last time about my singing in Fair Rosamond. They say it’s the best singing the town ever heard and they’ll say the same in London. I’ll write from London and tell you how it all is—I expect I’ll see the Queen. I wish you were coming, Anne, but as that cannot be I have written you a poem instead.

Dear Anne

In the train

When houses run and the fields jump

Like a camel with a hump—

In Truro

You’re so

Quiet—

But, when I’m famous

I’ll be the same

To you, Anne.

I don’t like it at home much now because Joe Lipper is a fat fat pig and there isn’t much room any more so I go out with Charlie. He is very strong now and wrestled with a policeman who knows his father and got the policeman who is as fat as Joe Lipper in the stomach so that he was winded and had to lie down. I like Charlie better than anyone in the world except mother and you.

Well good-bye now, Anne. I shall tell you all about London and the success I have. My aunt I’m going to is very religious and believes there will be a Flood again—very soon they say. So look out in Truro. I shall let you know before the Flood comes.

Good-bye Anne. I shall write you another Poem very soon. I have thought of a story about three beetles. One beetle is blind.

Your loving friend,

John Cornelius.

Anne kept all his letters. They are before me now in several packets, each packet bound with pink tape.

And here, in Anne’s neat small sharply defined writing, is her letter to him in answer:

Dear John—I am writing this under Miss Trefusis’ eye when I ought to be doing geography so it may be interrupted at any minute. I wish I were coming to London with you. I could stick pins into all the old dears because I have to stay here and do nothing—only play hockey and learn French.

Be careful in London and don’t think you can do everything everyone else can. It was nice of you, John, to write a poem for me and say you will be the same to me when you’re famous but how do you know you ever will be? You must have looked funny in red tights didn’t you? Dear John I’m only teasing—(I’ve just said ‘Yes, Miss Trefusis, I’m reading about Morocco’). Give that awful old woman Hoskin a pinch from me before you go.

Write to me from London as soon as you get there, and tell me all about the Flood!

Your loving, loving,

Anne.

Everything being settled there remained Charlie.

Charlie’s fidelity both to things and to people was fanatical and, if he had been an orphan at this time, he would have gone, I am sure, to London with John. Meanwhile he settled his problem, as he was always to settle his problems, silently within himself. In some way or another he would do his duty towards his father and mother; at the same time he would look after John. There was something almost mystical here, although to talk about mysticism in connection with a strong exclusively matter-of-fact small boy may seem an affectation, but the fact was that Charlie always knew far more about what John was doing and thinking than did anyone else in this world. Later on, Charlie told me many things, dropping, as it were, his caution because he knew that at last there was no reason to preserve it. One of the interesting things was that his account of this talk that he had with John before he went to London is exactly, allowing for differences in temperament, in agreement with John’s account—both of them given to me so many years later. To both men it was one of the epochal things of their lives—and yet so little was said. John, now that he was going away for the first time in his life, quite suddenly realized that Charlie wouldn’t be at his side any more.

Then, as was his way, he threw himself into a panic. The two boys sat on the low rocks at the end of Mackerel Beach and watched the warm sun bathe the little pools that swayed so lazily with the tide—little pools coloured now saffron and silver, the seaweed blood-red against the pale-bone-under-water stones. Over the wide sea itself it must have been hazy, for Charlie once when we were crossing fields in a honey-coloured mist said to me, ‘It was this way over the sea the day before John first went to London.’

I know how it can be on those Glebeshire March days when the weather is kind. The sun can be Sahara-warm and the air glows almost with apricot scent. The sea faintly heaves in the sunny mist and the gulls’ cry is spectral. Above the spring fields beyond the cliffs larks rise, primroses are pale in the hedges, cottages and farms seem to burn in smoke and flame through the mist.

On such a day John and Charlie sat close side by side on the rock watching the little swaying pools.

John talked a great deal, Charlie said scarcely a word. John was full of himself, of all that he would do, of how remarkable he was, of what the world would think of him. And then (as Charlie remembered but John didn’t) he put his arm around Charlie’s thick neck and told him that he liked him better than anyone in the world except his mother and Anne Swinnerton and that when he’d made his name Charlie should come to London and John should introduce him.

There Charlie interrupted.

‘I’m not waiting for you to make no name,’ he said. ‘I’ll manage pretty, all by myself. No man ain’t going to have to run me.’

John remembered this part of it and that he suddenly realized what life would be without Charlie and how London might be cold, the world unable to see that he was remarkable. A kind of vision of some of the things that were to happen to him. As so often, he was humble in the middle of his conceit.

‘We’ll swear friendship,’ he said, ‘for ever and ever.’ They plucked strands of seaweed from the bottom of a pool, held a strand between them and tore it in half.

‘I John Cornelius swear I’ll be the true friend of Charles Christian so long as I live, so help me God.’

‘I Charles Christian swear I’ll be the true friend of John Cornelius so long as I live, so help me God.’

They stood on the rock, arms around one another’s necks, looking out to sea while white streaks like serpent’s trails struck the water and the sea began to rise, the little pools lapping over the rock-edge.

John, as usual, was a little unsteady on his long legs, so Charlie held him firmly, held him as though defending him against the whole world. And so he was.

There was more sentiment on that last evening in the Cornelius’ home. There occurred also what must have been an unpleasant little scene. Anyone who is something of an oddity and no fool will often laugh at his own oddness. This was the way of Oliver Goldsmith. Sometimes an oddity will be amazed at the things he says and does, but will sit back from them as it were, will amuse others but refuse himself to join in the fun. This last was the way of White Mallison, who from his aesthetic rooms in Bunbury Street with their Manets and Renoirs would emphasize in beautiful prose to his readers how very odd he was; he would do this coldly, with a kind of chill amorality.

But John Cornelius was of the former kind: in fact he was like Goldsmith in many things. He shared in all the jokes about himself, but with that he longed to be impressive, to win applause, and, more than applause, affection and love. But he was always a child in his inability to decide between the things he could do and the things he couldn’t.

There were occasions, however, when he was serious, when he forgot altogether whether he were an oddity or no. His heat of indignation, when it was stirred, had a white light of intensity, at its centre. On such occasions he lost altogether his childishness and naïveté; he was mature and strong and unflinching.

He was packing his few possessions, his mother helping, while Joe Lipper lay stretched on the bed watching.

The door opened and Mrs. Hoskin came in.

Myself: ‘Even now, after all these years, when you speak of her your voice shakes.’

John: ‘Yes, because I’ve never been able to get rid of her, her black bonnet, the black bugles shaking on her shabby jacket, her hooked nose and thin upper lip, her little beard, her dim red-lidded eyes that seemed to have a film over them (although in fact she saw sharply enough), and her voice, strident, just off the note. There was my story about the Musical-Box and the Nutmeg-Grater—do you remember? And the Nutmeg-Grater waits till the Musical-Box is asleep and then she tries to steal the little tune and all that she does is to ruin it so that the world will never hear that music again. Mrs. Hoskin pokes her head in at the door and croaks: ‘What about havin’ a drop at my place, Daisy?’ Then she sees me. She hadn’t known that I was going so soon, perhaps.... She was angry at my going although she hated me. She liked to have me there that she might torture my mother about me, might watch for mistakes that I made or report quarrels that I was in.... She was a little woman, squat, bow-legged, and her head made a perpetual trembling. She stood there, looking at me.

‘ “So the son and heir’s goin’ all by hisself to London?”

‘Joe Lipper laughed. “Get out of here, you old bitch,” he said.

‘She wasn’t afraid of him in the least. Her relationship seemed, at that moment, to be entirely with me. She came further forward into the room. She looked at me as though she were delivering maledictions.

‘ “Good luck,” she said. “All the best.”

‘I turned round on her so fiercely that they all looked at me with surprise. I was tall for my age, you know, and so thin that I looked taller.

‘ “No, you don’t,” I said. “You don’t wish me luck. But I don’t care what you wish me. You can’t do me any harm. But you leave my mother alone. You leave her alone, do you hear?”

‘It was like a battle there between the two of us—as though we were alone on a windy heath with no one near us—physical, tearing one another’s hair out.

‘She looked at me with those faded red eyes, her black bonnet nodding, and said: “You’ll come to no good, you won’t. You’re a thief and a braggart; that’s what you are—and a liar. Lord, what a liar! Your poor dear mother, she’s the sufferin’ one, she is....” And so on, and so on.

‘But then she did something. The shell-box that my father had given me (I kept my most precious things in it, Ada Montgomery’s address for instance) was on the little table waiting to be packed. Mrs. Hoskin put her hand out and took it. I don’t know what she meant to do with it—nothing perhaps—but that was too much for me. I snatched it from her, caught her by the shoulders, and then there followed, as I remember it, the most ludicrous struggle. I was only eleven years of age and she was a strong old woman, but I pushed her, and her bonnet fell off, and she tried to scratch my face, and my mother screamed, and Joe Lipper laughed until his big stomach ached, and the woman fell over a chair, and I pushed her, with all the strength I had, out of the door.... It was as though I were, in actual fact, fighting the Powers of Darkness.

‘Later on my mother and I sat, our arms around one another’s necks, as though we were alone in the world. Joe Lipper didn’t exist for either of us. I told her again and again that I was going to London to make a fortune for us both and that we should have a grand house and she should want for nothing. And I implored her not to drink, not to let anybody tempt her, and she, hugging me and crying, swore that she would never touch a drop, that she would never touch a drop....

‘I told her that I would write to her all the time, and that she must answer my letters however difficult it might be, and she swore that she would.

‘Then we heard Joe Lipper snoring and looked at him lying there with his mouth open, and I, under a sudden impulse, begged her to come up to London with me. I said that Joe was no good and would only live on her earnings and that I could make enough for us both. I, God forgive me, such a child, so sure of myself. It’s good that we can’t see what’s coming to us. It was good that we could neither of us see into the future that night.

‘Mother shook her head. She wouldn’t be happy in London. Joe wasn’t such a bad sort when you knew him....

‘And, as we sat there, I forgot even my mother in my wondering amazed anticipation of all my future glories!’