Читать книгу Ploughman of the Moon - Robert William Service - Страница 17

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My seven years with the Scotch Bank divide themselves into periods of about twelve months. In each my companions were different, and as the new scene developed, I turned my back upon the old. In that way I gained a varied experience but estranged myself from my friends. Not that I suppose they cared much. In their eyes I was a queer chap, capricious and unpredictable.

My first period I will call my poetical year, for in it my chief interest was poetry. I always carried a book of poems in my pocket and would read it at every odd moment—even on the toilet-seat. I had a tiny Tennyson and a brownie Browning. I was especially fond of the latter. I called it my "bob's worth of Browning" because it cost that sum. Walking in crowded streets I would read these books, and even crossing in the midst of traffic I would be deep in one of them. Several times I narrowly escaped being run over. Both poets were then alive and I wonder what their emotions would have been had they heard that a young boy had been knocked down by a street-car while reading Ulysses or run over by a bicycle while deep in A Toccata of Galuppi. Incidentally, street-cars were drawn by horses while bicycles were of the bone-shaker variety.

Browning and Tennyson were the big stars in my poetical sky, and even to-day the poems I have mentioned mark the peak of my appreciation. But it was to minor bards I turned for real enjoyment. Now unread and unremembered, Owen Meredith and Coventry Patmore were inspirations to me, and I believed in their immortality. Even more I liked verse-makers. Thackeray and Tom Hood were my favourites, and I took them as models. I preferred verse with lots of rhyming, such as The Raven and the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I was always in love with rhyme. If two lines could be84 made to clink it seemed to me to go a long way to justify them. Perhaps it was because I had such facility in that direction. I could take a paragraph from the paper and turn it into doggerel, while at home I often spoke in stanzas. Rhyming has my ruin been. With less deftness I might have produced real poetry.

As soon as I discovered that rhyming presented no difficulty, I began to exploit my gift. My first effort was called The Song of the Social Failure. It had three verses and a refrain which ran:

The Might Have Been, the Might Have Been,

The haunting, taunting Might Have Been;

We all can hear in our hearts, I ween,

The grim reproach of the Might Have Been.

I wonder if the Editor who printed my morbid and disillusioned poem had any suspicion that his contributor was a beardless boy? But it is often like that. Youth apes age, and in my poetic cradle I found inspiration in the grave.

My next effort was a comic one. It was called: It Must Be Done. The idea came to me one wintry morning, as I poised over my icy bath. It began:

He stands upon the water brink

With pale and anguished brow,

And shudders as he murmurs low:

"It must be done—and now."

There were the usual three verses and the last two lines packed the surprise:

It's over now ... he's only had

His morning bath—no more.

Italics, of course, for the essential punch. I was wise enough to know that three verses were the limit of a reader's tolerance; but I had yet to learn that I must never let rhyme beat me. As I advanced, incomplete rhyming seemed to me sloppy and amateurish. I sent this effort to a paper called Scottish Nights; and two weeks later, on buy85ing a copy, with a penny and a pounding heart, I was amazed to see my verse on the front page. I was still more surprised when I received a letter containing a postal order for half-a-crown. That was a great day, though little did I dream that my wonderful half-crown was the portent of future fortune. The Accountant cashed my order with enthusiasm, while even the Manager seemed tickled with my success. They saw me from a new angle, and I blushed and decided it must be an accident. One didn't make money like that.

Neither one did, I decided a month later, when I sent to the People's Friend a poem of a serious character. It was called Shun Not the Strife—which incidentally was the one thing I did shun. The first verse ran:

Shun not the savage brawl of Life,

O you who would divorce your soul

From self and win love's highest goal!

Shun not but mingle with the strife.

It, too, was published promptly ... on the last page. Probably on account of the nobility of its sentiments the Editor did not insult me by offering me filthy lucre for it. So I learned early in the game that verse may pay, but poetry is its own reward.

I went back to writing light verse, and got several of my pieces into a local paper. They brought favourable comment but no cash. However, it was a bright little rag and I was pleased to see my stuff in it. Although I only affixed my initials to my work, with the vanity of sixteen I began to fancy a few were taking notice. But even the Editor, who never refused my contribution, had no idea who I was, and I was too timid to visit him.

About this time I was attracted by Form. A series of pocketable books were being published under the title of the Canterbury Poets. One was devoted to French patterns, while the second was called A Century of Sonnets. I read both with avidity, and soon I was experimenting with ballades and sonnets. Their very difficulty was a challenge to me. I accomplished several ballades and a sequence of sonnets. I had a peculiar way of working. I would choose easy86 rhymes, write them in a string and pick out the likeliest. With these I would make the rhyming ends of my sonnet or ballade. Once having set up this framework I would write in lines to suit my rhymes. A carpenter job you will say. Maybe, but it worked. I did not know anything about the mechanics of verse. Even to-day I do not know what is an iambic or a trochee. To me scansion was a matter of ear, and if one followed good models one could not go wrong. I aped Keats for sonnets and Austin Dobson for ballades, and turned out fair imitations of each. It was good practice and great fun, but the secret of my success was my joy in jingles.

By the time I was sixteen I had contributed over a score of poems to weekly periodicals. I never had a single rejection. This was because I had the good sense not to send them to a paper unless they had a seventy-five per cent chance of acceptance. I gauged this by the poems they had already accepted; in fact I often modelled my own on these. I never read a poem I admired but what I tried to emulate it.

I think this year must have been the happiest I spent in the bank. With my books of poems I walked through the lovely park, lingering in pleasant places, dreaming and reciting. Yet I never attained a very high mark in my poetic appreciations. It took me an effort to enjoy Keats and Shelley, while I had to force myself into the proper mood for Milton and Wordsworth. The peak of my poetic taste I found in Tennyson and Browning.

One day I met my slum-school classmate Jimmy. He was as dynamic as ever. He seemed to gobble life voraciously. He asked me to visit his home. It was a gloomy house in a dreary street, but his personality pervaded it till it was as gay as a pub. He revealed a new enthusiasm. He had just discovered the music-hall. He sang songs from the repertoires of Bessie Bellwood and Marie Lloyd and infected me with his enthusiasm. Then his brother, the artist, joined us. Although some years younger he high-browed us, but little did I think that one day he would receive a knighthood. In the background hovered twins, one of whom became captain of an Atlantic liner and an author of note. It was Jimmy who first mentioned the name of Kipling to me, quoting some of his verse....87

The result of this visit was that I went to the music-hall and found it more harmless than I had hoped. Hearing a girl sing After the Ball, I wrote a parody called: Under the Mould.

After the fight is over,

After the strife is done,

After the bells are pealing

After the triumph won;

What is life's sum of glory

When all the tale is told?—

A shroud and a feast for the blindworm

Under the mould.

The profound pessimism of callow youth! At sixteen how I revelled in the macabre. It was as if I were ending my days instead of beginning them.

Another boy I knew in those days was a sandy-haired youth who smoked cigarettes and dressed dapperly. He had a lazy, humorous regard and a nonchalant manner. Because he was some years older than I and knew some reporters, I held him in awe. Then one day a paper-covered publication appeared on the book-stalls. The title was Wee MacGreegor. Almost overnight it catapulted its author to fame. He became a professional writer and never looked back. Though none of his books had the success of his first, many of them had more merit. A real writer, humorous and original—though in his youth he high-hatted me, I salute his shade.

When I look back I am impressed by the number of lads I knew who have won distinction. And among these bright boys I cut a poor figure. I was regarded as a nonentity, so that in moods of gloom I felt I was destined to fail. Indeed most people patronized me, for I was shy and shabby. But when I smarted under a snub I got out my copy-book in which were pasted my accepted poems. Reading them reassured me; yet for fear of ridicule I showed them to few. And looking over them years later I was surprised by their competence. Technically I could find little fault with them. I shirked no rhyme. My measure was exact. Most of my pieces were on the88 three verse pattern—attack, build-up and pay-off, I called it. That my formula was a good one was proved by acceptance. The proof of a poem is in the printing.

That may be due, perhaps, to the judgment I showed in the selection of papers. Although I only wrote to please myself (and no one can do otherwise) in the end I tried to please my editors, who in turn tried to please the public. Instinctively I knew what they preferred, and perhaps I unconsciously catered to them. But I was so young, and to be published gave me such a thrill. After all, what I wrote was only newspaper verse, neat but negligible. I was conscientious in my craftsmanship, and the careless rapture of my lyrics was the result of patient toil.

However, my passion for poetry was nearing its end. It had a final flicker when I discovered Bret Harte and Eugene Field and added them to my models. But soon after I developed a fed-up feeling that ended in revolt. I began to dislike poetical words and to prefer blunt Saxon speech. Then I grew sick of the subject matter of verse, such as mythology and nature. Why should poetry concern itself with beauty and not with ugliness, which is just as fascinating? Why should it deal with virtue when vice is more interesting? Why did poets write about flowers and love and the stars? Why not about eating and drinking, and lusts and common people? I was a rebel. Poets, I complained, cared more for the way of saying things than for the thing said. I was tired of ideals and abstractions. Flowery language, words musically arranged and coloured like a garden—no, I did not react to that any more. Poetry farewell!

But I stuck to verse. Though I turned from nectar I still liked beer. I could rhyme with the best and make verse with facility. But I practised it less and less, and the time came when I confined my efforts to limericks, of which the least said the better.

So ended my poetical period. It was a happy one and no doubt served me well. Though for years I did not write another line, that early training was not wasted. For when I began again to make verse it came as easy to me as slipping off a log.