Читать книгу Roman Fountain - Hugh Walpole - Страница 5

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I KNOW that the afternoon was warm, but the Romans thought it cold, for they were all wearing overcoats. I was the only young man in the whole of Rome on that day not wearing an overcoat. Sometimes you would see quite an old Roman with grizzled cheeks, grizzled moustaches, grizzled coat, his shirt open at the neck. No overcoat. He wasn’t cold!

I was still in a state to be astonished by the flowers. Nowhere out of Italy do you see them banked up into a kind of pyramid of lovely freshness as you do in Italy, and especially in Rome—but of course everyone knows about flowers in Rome. Why be naïvely excited at this late day? Except that I was naïf then, and I was excited, and I wanted to buy and buy and buy. ... Two kinds of things I wanted to buy—flowers and the little bronze copies of the classical statues—the Faun, the Boy with the Water Bottle, the Narcissus, the Venus.

But I had no money, or very, very little. I had to watch every lira. I had my return ticket in my pocketbook so that I knew that I should see England again. But that was about all.

I did buy, however, a pot of lilies of the valley. I had never seen lilies of the valley in a pot before, and I felt as though I had been given an especial prize. I gave the pot, when I left, to the black-haired, brown-faced, big-stomached rascal who cleaned my room in the little hotel near the station. I know he was a rascal, for he stole my silver cigarette case—my cigarette case that some friends of mine had given me at Cambridge on my twenty-first birthday. He was a rascal and also I was afraid of him. I have been afraid of only four people in my life since I have grown up: this Italian rascal, Katherine Mansfield, Rebecca West, and—a friend of mine.

Of Katherine Mansfield I was so desperately afraid that I trembled at the sound of her voice. This happened almost directly after my return to England from this first visit to Rome. In 1910 Mansfield and Murry had a paper called Rhythm, and I contributed. We had meetings in Murry’s room (he and she were known as The Tigers in those days). Besides Mansfield and Murry there were D. H. Lawrence, Gaudier-Breszka, J. D. Beresford, Gilbert Cannan. These were the Highbrows of that day.

I wanted to be a Highbrow but didn’t know how to be one. So I went in agitation to these gatherings, and there was Lawrence, his long thin legs expressing contemptuous energy (but he was charming in those days—soft and gentle and feeling very little of the ‘dark urge’ that obsessed him in later years). And there was Katherine Mansfield with her black bang of hair and eyes like gimlets. It was entirely my own fault that I was frightened. She didn’t want me to be. But whenever she spoke to me I said the most idiotic things, answering questions with such foolishness that there was embarrassment in the room. No one wanted to be unkind. The trouble was that I wanted to be clever, and of course Mansfield saw through me—at once, long before I spoke.

Of Rebecca West I have long ceased to be afraid. She is kind and friendly. There remains, then, only one person in the world now of whom I, fifty-five years of age, am afraid. He frightens me because he makes me suspicious of my own honesty, my own kindliness of heart, my own sincerity. I am honest, kind, sincere, just, like my fellows—that is, at this moment and at that. We are all capable of amazing kindliness, wonderful sincerity. The right moments, the noble feelings, they come and they go.

But my friend makes me, when I meet him, wonder whether I am ever sincere, ever kind—whether there is not a base and mean motive behind all my actions. And so, although I like and admire him, I am afraid of him and meet him as seldom as may be.

I gave the Italian at the hotel the pot of lilies of the valley because I was afraid of him, because I knew that my farewell tip was too small and because I was sure that he had stolen my cigarette case. We hunted for it together, and he patted me on the back because I had lost it.

On this especial day it was warm, and I had luncheon in a little restaurant in a side street not far from that huge and hideous white-and-gold monstrosity, the Victor Emmanuel monument.

It was in this little restaurant that I met Mr. Montmorency, and it was he who showed me the Fountain.

I pushed the door and entered from the sunlight into the dark, and blinked. Then my sight cleared and I saw it was a very simple place, with large water bottles on the tables, sand on the floor and a picture of the King of Italy on the wall. The half-dozen little tables were occupied, and I hesitated before I sat down all alone at the big table that glittered with water bottles and rather unfriendly emptiness.

I heard then an English ‘almost Oxford’ voice behind me say: “There is room here.”

I turned round blushing, for I felt that I must look so very English for a stranger to be so very sure of my nationality simply by glancing at me. There sat Mr. Montmorency, wiping his mouth very carefully after his soup. He was, I saw at once, on the seedy side. He was stout and short, and the top of his head was bald except for one lock of greasy hair pasted like seaweed on the shining surface. His round fat face had been shaved yesterday perhaps but certainly not today, the cuffs of his shirt were frayed, his soft collar was grey so that you must not say that it was dirty. His fingernails were also grey. He had a soft wet mouth, a pudgy nose, but his eyes were touching, asking for kindliness, but restless with insecurity. All this I did not, perhaps, notice at once, but I sat down quite eagerly beside him because I thought it kind of him to invite me.

I wore in those days very ridiculous pince-nez that perched on the end of my nose and were attached by a little chain to my waistcoat. This attachment was a wheel that, often unexpectedly, would give a whirl, absorbing the chain and dragging the pince-nez from my nose. They flew off now and, with my own shining wondering eyes, I gazed on Mr. Montmorency. My gaze made him uncomfortable; his eyes almost disappeared, and he lifted one pudgy soiled hand and said, “Two is company ...”

(I am recovering all this as I write. I have not thought of Mr. Montmorency for many many years, but now he is with me in this room. I can hear every word. I need to invent nothing at all. He is at my very elbow prompting me, for, now that he is a ghost, it is the truth only that he cares about.)

“Now—what are you going to eat? Let me advise you.”

But I knew what I was going to eat. Spaghetti al Burro. (I had discovered already that any kind of sauce with it, whether meat or tomato, was for me a crime) and Vitello. Oh, Vitello, Vitello, Vitello, how constant, how inevitable are you in Italy! How many millions of little calves there must be pressing about the butcher, offering their innocent throats! But I didn’t know that. Roman veal seemed to me a miracle of succulent cheapness, another wonder in a wonderful land.

Mr. Montmorency appeared disappointed at my simpleness. He said something about fritto misto al mare and scampi. I hadn’t the least idea what these were, but, when he explained, I told him that I didn’t want fish.

“When you are sight-seeing all day,” I said, “you need meat.”

His eloquent eyes sparkled.

“Ah, you are new to Rome?”

“I have never been here before.”

“You are staying long?”

I sighed. “Tomorrow is my last day.”

“How long have you been here?”

“I have only three days in all.”

At once then he took charge of me. I was, I suppose, exactly what he was needing.

“What have you seen?”

“St. Peter’s, the Vatican Museum, the Forum, the Colosseum,” I answered proudly. It seemed a lot in such a very short time. “And whatever happens I must see Keats’ grave.”

“Ah, Keats.” His whole body sighed. “There was a poet. ‘One whose name was writ in water.’ You care for poetry?”

“More than anything else in the world—except music. Oh yes, and painting of course.”

“The Arts. You are yourself an artist?”

“I am a writer—a novelist and a critic.”

He enquired further.

“One novel of mine has been published, another shortly will be. I do all the reviewing on the Standard newspaper.”

It was a splendid record. I didn’t mind in the least that the whole world should know it. That, in all probability, I should find on my return to England that I was a reviewer no longer, because of this little unpermitted holiday, had not as yet occurred to me.

Mr. Montmorency laid his pudgy hand on my arm.

“I too am a writer,” he said softly, and producing from his pocket a very shabby pocketbook he laid before me a little collection of dirty dog-eared cuttings.

Politely I examined them and read that the East Lothian Herald considered in 1903 that Mr. Montmorency’s Lilac and Violet was ‘a volume of mellifluous verse, agreeable to the ear and wholesome in tone,’ and that the Wiltshire Journal held that ‘Mr. Robert Montmorency shows promise in many of these pleasant verses,’ and that the Hull Observer considered that ‘this little volume cannot fail to please.’

“You are a poet?” I said appreciatively.

“I was a poet,” he answered with a deep bitterness, “but one cannot live on poetry—no—unless one truckles to a base public. That too Keats found—yes, and many another.”

Hurriedly he collected the cuttings as though he feared lest I should steal them, and replaced them in his pocket.

“You live in Rome?” I asked him.

“Live! Yes—if you can call it living.”

I could see that he already considered me his private personal property. I didn’t mind that in the least. I was, I was sure, well able to keep my independence, and I felt for him a warm patronizing superiority. I was filled with an eager benevolence towards the whole world. I loved every dog and wished that every dog should love me—a motto from Jean Paul Richter that I had already placed on the first page of my first novel.

Some of my superiority, I must confess, immediately after this deserted me; for I was sadly embarrassed by my spaghetti. Alone I managed not too badly, but now I wished to show that eating spaghetti was a very old game to me, and so in my eagerness and attempted assurance I made a sad mess of it.

Mr. Montmorency showed me what I ought to do, but my pince-nez behaved just then like the very devil. I was the more uncomfortable too because I had an odd feeling that Mr. Montmorency wanted himself to eat my spaghetti. He stared at it with a real and hungry longing.

I had ordered a bottle of red Chianti and to my surprise saw that this was already half finished. Then I saw that Mr. Montmorency had been helping himself with friendly liberality. I had by now, hunger having conquered shyness, all but finished my plate of spaghetti. There was still some more in the dish, and the waiter moved forward to fill my plate again. But I waved my hand with the overfed lazy patronage of a Tiberius. ‘Enough is as good as a feast.’

“If you don’t want it——” said Mr. Montmorency.

His eyes glistened—with greed, with affection, with gratitude? And in any case he had been drinking my Chianti.

“Another bottle,” I said resplendently, for I had learnt by now that Chianti is very cheap in Italy.

“My friend”—Mr. Montmorency’s voice quivered—“this is one of the first happy moments I have had for weeks.”

I was a little drunk myself, and I beamed beneficently. I was drunk really with happiness rather than with Chianti. To be sitting in this kindly, genial Rome in a restaurant with sand on the floor, and with all these great monuments of Time on every side of me. And there was another reason for happiness of which I will speak in a moment. I know that I am touching danger here. It is wrong to be happy and to be happy for such very insufficient reasons. I will be platitudinous. I will say that one man is happy and another is not for reasons far apart from virtue or vice, worldly success or failure, possessions or lack of them—even from considerations of good health or bad.

Happiness comes, I know, from some spring within a man—from some curious adjustment to life. The happiest people I have known in this world have been the Saints—and, after these, the men and women who get immediate and conscious enjoyment from little things. I know that great physical pain, long continued, can override this happiness, for five years ago I experienced that, and I believe that the loss of some loved person can change the body and colour of life so completely that it is not a question of happiness or unhappiness any more, but a business of discipline and control.

My own happiness has come so clearly from three things—my consciousness of enjoyment at the time I experience it, and enjoyment especially of the Arts; my work; and my friends—that I am naturally inclined to suppose that others too get their happiness from these sources. But often they do not. One man I know is happy only when he is playing bridge, but as he plays bridge morning, noon and night he is always happy. A woman I know has no friends, but she loves clothes and, as she is rich, she can change her dresses four times a day—and does. She is a very happy woman.

I am sure that it is this question of adjustment to conditions that brings happiness, but in my own case it is to this day—and will be until I die—a matter of surprise, constant and unfailing, that I have the fun I do, see and hear the lovely things I do, enjoy the friendships I do. It is as though I expect to wake up at any moment and find this all a dream, to wake up and discover that I am back in the dormitory at R——, with the sudden sleep-awakened terror of immediate pain, pain spiritual, pain mental, pain physical. So do not envy me my happiness. Somewhere, once, it was otherwise. ...

My desire that everyone else should be happy makes me often sentimental. But I do not think that I see this cruel and remorseless world falsely. With my personal belief that this world is a place for soul-training, I do not see how this life could be other than the extraordinary mixture of terror and splendour that it is. After all in actual experience it is, I suppose, a matter of choice. ‘You pay your money ...’

One of my greatest friends, a man whom I admire and love, is exactly the opposite from me in this. He is, by reason of his temperament, bound to choose ‘thumbs down’ rather than ‘thumbs up.’ He has had everything that man can desire—fantastic success, a delightful wife, charming children. But things are never as they might be. Something always spoils the picture.

I would be intensely irritating to him (sometimes I am) were it not that my optimism seems to him so childish, so foolish, that he has developed an almost paternal feeling for me, although in years he is much my junior.

“Poor old Hugh! He has never grown up and never will.”

I don’t resent this at all. I like it. If I met myself somewhere I should feel, in all probability, like that about myself!