CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BEQUEST OF 
 
 George Jean Nathan 
 
 Class of 1904 
 
 UNDERGRADUATE LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PS 3543.A63P4 1922 
 
 Peter Whiffle, his life and works. 
 
 3 1924 014 221 646 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014221646 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 His Life and Works 
 
r^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 BOOKS BY 
 CARL VAN FECHTEN 
 
 INTERPRETERB 
 
 IN THE GARRET 
 
 THE MERRY-GO-ROUKD 
 
 THE MUSIC OF SPAIN 
 
 THE TIGER IN THE HOUSE 
 
 MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 
 
 LORDS OF THE HOUSETOPS 
 
 MUSIC AFTER THE GREAT WAR 
 
 PETER WHIFFLE: HIS LIFE AND WORKS 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 His Life and Works 
 
 Carl Van Vechten 
 
 New York Alfred • A • Knopf 
 
 MCMXXII 
 
OOPYRIGHT, 1922, BY 
 
 ALFRED A. KISTOPF, Inc. 
 
 Pvblithed, April, 19lt 
 
 Bet tip tmd prl^tei In the Vail-BaUou Co., Binghamtont N. F. 
 Paper /urni«fted 6v W. P. Efherington A Co., JV6UJ York, N. Y. 
 Bound Iv the PUmpton Press, Norwood, Maes. 
 
 MANUTAOTtrRED IN THE UNITED STATES 01" AMBEICA 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 MY MOTHER, 
 
 ADA AMANDA FITCH VAN VECHTEN 
 
"'Tingling is the test,' said Babbalanja, 'Yoomy, 
 did you tingle, tuhen that song itias composing?' 
 "'All over, Babbalanja.'" 
 
 Herman Melville: Mardi. 
 
 "fTe •work in the dark— we do <what vie can— vie 
 give vihcLt vie have. Our doubt is our passion, and 
 our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of 
 art." Dencombe: The Middle Years. 
 
 "Les existences les plus belles sont peut-etre celles 
 qui ont subi tous les extremes, qui ont traverse toutes 
 les temperatures, rencontri toutes les sensations exces- 
 sives et tous les sentiments contradictoires." 
 
 Remy de Gourmont: Le Chat de MisJre. 
 
 "The man viho satisfies u ceaseless intellectual cur- 
 iosity probably squeezes more out of life in the long 
 run than any one else." 
 
 Edmund Gosse: Books on the Table. 
 
 "O mother of the hills, forgive our tovaers; 
 O mother of the clouds, forgive our dreams." 
 
 Edwin Ellis. 
 
Preface 
 
 So few people were acquainted with Peter 
 Whiffle that the announcement, on that page of the 
 New York Times consecrated to wedding, birth, 
 and obituary notices, of his death in New York 
 on December 15, 19 19, awakened no comment. 
 Those of my friends who knew something of the/ 
 relationship between Peter and myself, probably 
 did not see the slender paragraph at all. At any 
 rate none of them mentioned it, save, of course, 
 Edith Dale, whose interest, in a sense, was as 
 special as my own. Her loss was not so personal, 
 however, nor her grief so deep. It was strange 
 and curious to remember that however infrequently 
 we had met, and the chronicle which follows will 
 give evidence of the comparative infrequency of 
 these meetings, yet some indestructible bond, a firm 
 determining girdle of intimate understanding, over 
 which Time and Space had no power, held us to- 
 gether. I had become to Peter something of a 
 necessity, in that through me he found the proper 
 outlet for his artistic explosions. I was present, 
 indeed, at the bombing of more than one discarded 
 theory. It was under the spell of such apparently 
 trivial and external matters that our friendship 
 
 [I] 
 
Preface 
 developed and, while my own interests often flew 
 in other directions, Peter certainly occupied as im- 
 portant a place in my heart as I did in his, probably, 
 in some respects, more important. Nevertheless, 
 when I received a notification from his lawyer that 
 I had been mentioned in Peter's will, I was con- 
 siderably astonished. My astonishment increased 
 when I was informed of the nature of the bequest. 
 Peter Whiffle had appointed me to serve as his 
 literary executor. 
 
 Now Peter Whiffle was not, in any accepted sense 
 of the epithet, an author. He had never published 
 a book; he had never, indeed, written a book. In 
 the end he had come to hold a somewhat mystic 
 theory in regard to such matters, which he had 
 only explained to me a few moments before he died. 
 I was, however, aware, more aware than any one 
 else could possibly have been, that from time to time 
 he had been accustomed to take notes. I was as 
 familiar, I suppose, as any one could be, with the 
 trend of his later ideas, and with some of the 
 major incidents in his earlier life he had acquainted 
 me, although, here, I must confess, there 'were 
 lacunae in my knowledge. Still, his testamentary 
 request, unless I might choose to accept it in a 
 sense, I am convinced, entirely too flattering to my 
 slender talents, seemed to be inconsistent with the 
 speculative idea which haunted him, at least to- 
 wards the end of his life. This contradiction and 
 an enlarging sense of the mysterious character of 
 
 [2] 
 
Preface 
 
 the assignment were somewhat dispelled by a letter, 
 dated June 17, 1917, which, a few days after 
 the reading of the will, his lawyer placed in my 
 hands and which indicated plainly enough that 
 Peter had decided upon my appointment at least 
 two years and a half before he died. This letter 
 not only confirmed the strange clause in the will 
 but also, to some extent, explained it and, as the 
 letter is an essential part of my narrative, I offer it 
 in evidence at once. 
 
 Dear Carl — so it read: 
 
 I suppose that some day I shall die; people do 
 die. If there has been one set purpose in my life, 
 it has been not to have a purpose. That, you 
 alone, perhaps, understand. You know how I have 
 always hesitated to express myself definitely, you 
 know how I have refrained from writing, and you 
 also know, perhaps, that I can write; indeed, until 
 recently, you thought I was writing, or would write. 
 But I think you realize now what writing has come 
 to mean to me, definition, constant definition, al- 
 though it is as apparent as anything can be that life, 
 nature, art, whatever one writes about, are fluid 
 and mutable things, perpetually undergoing change 
 and, even when they assume some semblance of 
 permanence, always presenting two or more faces. 
 There are those who are not appalled by these 
 conditions, those who confront them with bravery 
 and even with impertinence. You have been cour- 
 ageous. You have published several books which I 
 
 [3] 
 
Preface 
 
 have read with varying shades of pleasure, and you 
 have not hesitated to define, or at any rate discuss, 
 even that intangible, invisible, and noisy art called 
 Music. 
 
 I have begun many things but nothing have I 
 ever completed. It has always seemed unnecessary 
 or impossible, although at times I have tried to 
 carry a piece of work through. On these occasions 
 a restraining angel has held me firmly back. 
 It might be better if what I have written, what I 
 have said, were permitted to pass into oblivion with 
 me, to become a part of scoriae chaos. It may not 
 mean anything in particular; if it means too much, 
 to that extent I have failed. 
 
 Thinking, however, of death, as I sometimes do, 
 I have wondered if, after all, behind the vapoury 
 curtain of my fluctuating purpose, behind the orphic 
 wall of my indecision, there did not lurk some 
 vague shadow of intention. Not on my part, per- 
 haps, but on the part of that being, or that con- 
 dition, which is reported to be interested in such 
 matters. This doubt, I confess, I owe to you. 
 Sometimes, in those extraordinary moments be- 
 tween sleeping and awakening — and once in the 
 dentist's chair, after I had taken gas — the knots 
 seemed to unravel, the problem seemed as naked 
 as Istar at the seventh gate. But these moments 
 are difficult, or impossible, to recapture. To re- 
 capture them I should have been compelled to 
 invent a new style, a style as capricious and vibra- 
 
 [4] 
 
Preface 
 
 tory as the moments themselves. In this, how- 
 ever, as you know, I have failed, while you have 
 succeeded. It is to your success, modest as it may 
 appear to you, that I turn in my dilemma. To come 
 to the point, cannot you explain, make out some 
 kind of case for me, put me on my feet (or in a 
 book), and thereby prove or disprove something? 
 Shameless as I am, it would be inconceivable, absurd, 
 for me to ask you to do this while I am yet living 
 and I have, therefore, put my request into a formal 
 clause in my will. Afteir I am dead, you may 
 search your memory, which I know' to be very good, 
 for such examples of our conversations as will best 
 be fitted to illuminate your subject, which I must 
 insist — you, yourself, will understand this, too, 
 sooner or later — is not me at all. 
 
 When your book is published, I shall be dead 
 and perhaps unconscious. If, however, as I strongly 
 suspect, some current connects the life to be with 
 the life that is, I can enjoy what you have done. 
 At the best, you may give others a slight intimation 
 of the meaning of inspiration or furnish guide- 
 posts, lighthouses, and bell-buoys to the poet who 
 intends to march singing along the highroad or 
 bravely to embark on, the ships at sea ; at the worst, 
 I have furnished you with a subject for another 
 book, and I am well aware that subjects even for 
 bad books are difficult to light upon. 
 
 Salve atque Vale, 
 Peter. 
 
 [5] 
 
Preface 
 
 This letter, I may say, astonished me. I think 
 it would astonish anybody. A profound and en- 
 veloping melancholy succeeded to this feeling of 
 astonishment. At the time, I was engaged in put- 
 ting the finishing touches to The Tiger in the 
 House and I postponed meditation on Peter's 
 affair until that bulky volume could be dispatched 
 to the printer. That happy event fell on March 
 15, 1920, but my anthology, Lords of The House- 
 tops, next claimed my attention, and then the new 
 edition of Interpreters, for which I had agreed to 
 furnish a new paper, and the writing of this new 
 paper amused me very much, carrying my mind 
 not only far away from cats, which had been 
 occupying it for twelvemonth, but also away from 
 Peter's request. At last, Interpreters was ready 
 for the printer, but now the proofs of The Tiger 
 began to come in, and I may say that for the next 
 three months my days were fully occupied in the 
 correction of proofs, for those of Lords of The 
 Housetops and Interpreters were in my garret 
 when the proofs of The Tiger were not. Never 
 have I corrected proofs with so much concentrated 
 attention as that which I devoted to the proofs of 
 The Tiger, and yet there were errors. In re- 
 gard to some of these, I was not the collaborator. 
 On Page 240, for instance, one may read. There 
 are many females in the novels of Emile Zola. 
 My intention was to have the fourth word read, 
 felines, and so it stood in the final proof, but my 
 
 [6] 
 
Preface 
 
 ambition to surmount the initial letter of Zola's 
 Christian name with an acute accent (an ambition 
 I shall forswear on this present page), compelled 
 the printer to reset the line, so that subsequently, 
 when I opened the book at this page, I read 
 with amazement that there are many females in 
 the novels of Emile Zola, a statement that cannot 
 be readily denied, to be sure, but still it is no dis- 
 covery of which to boast. 
 
 It was not until September, 1920, that I had an 
 opportunity to seriously consider Peter's request 
 and when I did begin to consider it, I thought of 
 it at first only as a duty to be accomplished. But 
 when I began searching my memory for details of 
 the conversations between us and had perused cer- 
 tain notes I had made on various occasions, visited 
 his house on Beekman Place to look over his effects 
 and talk with his mother, the feeling of the artist 
 for inevitable material came over me and I knew 
 that whether Peter had written me that letter or 
 not, I should sooner or later have written this book 
 about him. 
 
 There was another struggle over the eventual 
 form, a question concerning which Peter had made 
 no suggestions. It seemed to me, at first, that a 
 sort of haphazard collection of his ideas and pro- 
 nunciamentos, somewhat in the manner of Samuel 
 Butler's Note-Books, would meet the case, but after 
 a little reflection I rejected this idea. Light on the 
 man was needed for a complete understanding of 
 
 [7] 
 
Preface 
 
 his ideas, or lack of them, for they shifted like 
 the waves of the sea. I can never tell why, but 
 it was while I was reading William Dean Howells's 
 Familiar Spanish Studies one day in the New 
 York Public Library that I suddenly decided on a 
 sort of loose biographical form, a free fantasia in 
 the manner of a Liszt Rhapsody. This settled, I 
 literally swam ahead and scarcely! found it necessary 
 to examine many papers (which was fortunate as 
 few exist) or to consult anything but my memory, 
 which lighted up the subject from obscure angles, 
 as a search-light illuminates the spaces of the sea, 
 once I had learned to decipher the meaning of the 
 problem. What it is all about, or whether it is 
 about anything at all, you, the reader, of course, 
 must decide for yourself. To me, the moral, if I 
 may use a conventional word to express an un- 
 conventional idea, is plain, and if I have not suc- 
 ceeded in making it appear so, then I must to some 
 extent blame you, the reader, for what is true of 
 all books, is perhaps truest of this, that you will 
 carry away from it only what you are able to bring 
 to it. 
 
 [8] 
 
Chapter I 
 
 One of my friends, a lady, visited Venice alone 
 in her middle age. It was late at night when the 
 train drew into the station, and it was raining, a 
 drizzly, chilling rain. The porter pushed her, 
 with her bag, into a damp gondola and the dismal 
 voyage to the hotel began. There were a few 
 lights here and there but she had the impression 
 that she was floating down the Chicago River in a 
 wash-tub. Once she had reached her destination, 
 she clambered unsteadily out of the black barge, 
 wobbled through a dark passageway, inhaling great 
 whiffs of masticated garlic, and finally emerged 
 in a dimly lighted lobby. At the desk, a sleepy 
 clerk yawned as she spoke of her reservation. 
 Tired, rather cross, and wholly disappointed, she 
 muttered, I don't like Venice at all. I wish I hadn't 
 come. The clerk was unsympathetically explana- 
 tory, Signora should have visited Venice when she 
 was younger. 
 
 A day or so later, the lady recovered her spirits 
 and even her sense of humour for she told me the 
 story herself and I have always remembered it. 
 The moment it passed her lips, indeed, I began to 
 
 [9] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 reflect that I had been lucky to encounter the 
 Bride of the Adriatic in my youth. Paris, too, 
 especially Paris, for there is a melancholy pleasure 
 to be derived from Venice. It is a suitable environ- 
 ment for grief; there is a certain superior relish to 
 suffering there. Paris, I sometimes think, smiles 
 only on the very young and it is not a city I should 
 care to approach for the first time after I had passed 
 forty. 
 
 I was, as a matter of fact, in my twenties when 
 I first went to Paris — my happiness might have been 
 even greater had I been nineteen — and I was alone. 
 The trip across England — I had landed at Liver- 
 pool — and the horrid channel, I will not describe, 
 although both made sufficient impression on me, but 
 the French houses at Dieppe awakened my first deep 
 emotion and then, and so many times since, the 
 Normandy cider, quaffed in a little cafe, contermi- 
 nous to the railroad, and the journey through France, 
 alive in the sunlight, for it was May, the fields 
 dancing with the green grain spattered with ver- 
 milion poppies and cerulean cornflowers, the white 
 roads, flying like ribbons between the stately pop- 
 lars, leading away over the charming hills past the 
 red-brick villas, completed the siege of my not too 
 easily given heart. There was the stately and 
 romantic interruption of Rouen, which at that 
 period suggested nothing in the world to me but 
 Emma Bovary. Then more fields, more roads, 
 more towns, and at last, towards twilight, Paris. 
 
 [10] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Railroads have a izncf f°r entering cities stealth- 
 ily through backyards and the first glimpses of 
 Paris, achieved from a car-window, were not over- 
 pleasant but the posters on the hoardings, adver- 
 tising beer and automobile tires, particularly that of 
 the Michelin Tire Company, with the picture of the 
 pinguid gentleman, constructed of a series of pneu- 
 matic circles, seemed characteristic enough. Cheret 
 was dead but something of his spirit seemed to glow 
 in these intensely coloured aifiches and I was young. 
 Even the dank Gare Saint Lazare did not dismay 
 me, and I entered into the novel baggage hunt with 
 something of zest, while other busy passengers and 
 the blue porters rushed hither and thither in a 
 complicated but well-ordered maze. Naturally, 
 however, I was the last to leave the station; as the 
 light outside deepened to a rich warm blue, I wan- 
 dered into the street, my porter bearing my trunk, 
 to find there a solitary cocher mounted on the box of 
 his carious fiacre. 
 
 An artist friend, Albert Worcester, had already 
 determined my destination and so I gave commands, 
 Hotel de la Place de I'Odeon, the cocher cracked 
 his whip, probably adding a Hue cocotte! and 
 we were under way. The drive through the streets 
 that evening seemed like a dream and, even later, 
 when the streets of Paris had become more familiar 
 to me than those of any other city, I could occa- 
 sionally recapture the mood of this first vision. For 
 Paris in the May twilight is very soft and exquisite, 
 
 [II] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 the grey buildings swathed in a bland blue light and 
 the air redolent with a strange fragrance, the ingre- 
 dients of which have never been satisfactorily identi- 
 fied in my nasal imagination, although Huysmans, 
 Zola, Symons, and Cunninghame Graham have all 
 attempted to separate and describe them. Presently 
 we crossed the boulevards and I saw for the first 
 time the rows of blooming chestnut trees, the 
 kiosques where newsdealers dispensed their wares, 
 the brilliantly lighted theatres, the sidewalk cafes, 
 sprinkled with' human figures, typical enough, doubt- 
 less, but who all seemed as unreal to me at the time 
 as if they had been Brobdingnags, Centaurs, Griffins, 
 or Mermaids. Other fiacres, private carriages, 
 taxi-autos, carrying French men and French ladies, 
 passed us. I saw Bel Ami, Nana, Liane de Pougy, 
 or Otero in every one of them. As we drove by 
 the Opera, I am certain that Cleo de Merode and 
 Leopold of Belgium descended the steps. Even the 
 buses assumed the appearance of gorgeous char- 
 iots, bearing perfumed Watteauesque ladies on 
 their journey to Cythera. As we drove through 
 the Tuileries Gardens, the mood snapped for an 
 instant as I viewed the statue of Gambetta, which, 
 I thought at the time, and have always thought 
 since, was amazingly like the portrait of a gentle- 
 man hailing a cab. What could more completely 
 symbolize Paris than the statue of a gentleman per- 
 petually hailing a cab and never getting one? 
 We drove on through the Louvre and now the 
 [12] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Seine was under us, lying black in the twilight, re- 
 viving dark memories of crime and murder, on 
 across the Pont du Carrousel, and up the narrow 
 Rue de Seine. The Quartier Latin! I must have 
 cried aloud, for the cocher looked a trifle suspicious, 
 his head turned the fraction of an inch. Later, of 
 course, I said, the left bank, as casually as any one. 
 It was almost dark when we drove into the open 
 Place, flanked by the Odeon, a great Roman temple, 
 with my little hotel tucked into one comer, as un- 
 ostentatiously as possible, being exactly similar to 
 every other structure, save the central one, in the 
 Place. I shall stop tonight, I said to myself, in the 
 hotel where Little Billee lived, for, when one first 
 goes to Paris when one is young, Paris is either 
 the Paris of Murger, du Maurier, or the George 
 Moore of the Confessions, perhaps the Paris of 
 all three. In my bag these three books lay, and I 
 had already begun to live one of them. 
 
 The patron and a servant in a long white apron 
 were waiting, standing in the doorway. The serv- 
 ant hoisted my trunk to his shoulder and bore it 
 away. I paid the cocher's reckoning, not without 
 difiiculty for, although I was not ignorant of the 
 language, I was unaccustomed to the simplicity of 
 French coinage. There were also the mysteries 
 of the pourboire to compute — ten per cent, I had 
 been told; who has not been told this? — and be- 
 sides, as always happens when one is travelling, I 
 had no little money. But at length the negotiations 
 
 [13] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 were terminated, not to the displeasure of the 
 cocher, I feel certain, since he condescended to 
 smile pleasantly. Then, with a crack of his whip, 
 this enormous fellow with his black moustaches, his 
 glazed top-hat, and his long coat, drove away. I 
 cast a long lingering look after him, apparently 
 quite unaware that many another such teratological 
 specimen existed on every hand. Now I followed 
 the patron into a dark hallway and new strata of 
 delight. He gave me a lighted candle and, behind 
 him, I mounted the winding stairway to the first 
 floor, where I was deposited in a chamber with dark 
 red walls, heavy dark red curtains at the windows, 
 which looked out over the Place, a black walnut 
 wash-hand-stand with pitcher and basin, a huge 
 black walnut wardrobe, two or three chairs of the 
 same wood, upholstered with faded brocade, and 
 a most luxurious bed, so high from the floor that 
 one had to climb into it, hung with curtains like 
 those at the window, and surmounted by a feather- 
 bed. There was also another article of furniture, 
 indispensable to any French bedroom. 
 
 I gave Joseph (all men servants in small hotels 
 in Paris are named Joseph, perhaps to warn off 
 prospective Potiphar's wives) his vail, asked for 
 hot water, which he bore up promptly in a small 
 can, washed myself, did a little unpacking, hum- 
 ming the Mattchiche the while, changed my shirt, 
 my collar and my necktie, demanded another bougie, 
 lighted it, and under the humble illumination af- 
 
 [14] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 forded by it and its companion, I began to read 
 again The Confessions of a Young Man. It was 
 not very long before I was interrupted in the midst 
 of an absorbing passage descriptive of the circle at 
 the Nouvelle Athenes by the arrival of Albert 
 Worcester, who had arranged for my reception, 
 and right here I may say that I was lodged In the 
 Hotel de la Place de I'Odeon for fifty francs a 
 month. Albert's arrival, although unannounced, 
 was not unexpected, as he had promised to take me 
 to dinner. 
 
 I was sufficiently emphatic. Paris! I cried. 
 Paris! Good God! 
 
 I see you are not disappointed. But Albert 
 permitted a trace of cynicism to flavour his smile. 
 
 It's too perfect, too wonderful. It is more 
 than I felt or imagined. I'm moving in. 
 
 But you haven't seen it. . . . 
 
 I've seen enough. I don't mean that. I mean 
 I've seen enough to know. But I want to see it 
 all, everything, Saint Sulplce, the Follies-Bergere 
 the Musee de Cluny, the Nouvelle Athenes, the 
 Comedie Frangaise, the Bal BuUIer, the Arc de 
 Triomphe, the Luxembourg Gardens. . . . 
 
 They close at sundown. My expression was 
 the cue for him to continue. They'll be open 
 tomorrow and any other day. They're just around 
 the corner. You can go there when you get up in 
 the morning, if you do get up in the morning. But 
 what do you want to do tonight? 
 
 [15] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Anything! Everything! I cried. 
 
 Well, we'll eat first. 
 
 So we blew out the candles, floated down the dark 
 stairs — I didn't really walk for a week, I am sure — , 
 brushing on our way against a bearded student 
 and a girl, fragrant and warm in the semi-blackness, 
 out into the delicious night, with the fascinating in- 
 describable odour of Paris, which ran the gamut 
 from the fragrance of lilac and rnimosa to the 
 aroma of horse-dung; with the sound of horses' 
 hoofs and rolling wheels beating and revolving on 
 the cobble-stones, we made our way — I swear my 
 feet never touched the ground — through the nar- 
 row, crooked, constantly turning, bewildering 
 streets, until we came out on a broad boulevard 
 before the Cafe d'Harcourt, where I was to eat 
 my first Paris dinner. 
 
 The Cafe d'Harcourt is situated near the Church 
 of the Sorbonne on the Boulevard Saint Michel, 
 which you are more accustomed to see spelled Boul' 
 Mich'. It is a big, brightly lighted cafe, with a 
 broad terrasse, partially enclosed by a hedge of 
 green bushes in boxes. The hands of the clock 
 pointed to the hour of eight when we arrived and 
 the tables all appeared to be occupied. Inside, 
 groups of men were engaged in games of checkers, 
 while the orchestra was performing selections from 
 Louis Ganne's operetta, Les Saltimbanques. On 
 the terrasse, each little table, covered with its white 
 cloth, was lighted by a tiny lamp with a roseate 
 
 [i6] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 shade, over which faces glowed. The bottles and 
 dishes and silver all contributed their share to the 
 warmth of the scene, and heaping bowls of peaches 
 and pears and apples and little wood strawberries, 
 ornamenting the sideboards, gave the place an al- 
 most sumptuous appearance. Later I learned that 
 fruit was expensive in Paris and not to be tasted 
 lightly. Victor Maurel has told me how, dining 
 one night with the composer of The Barber, he 
 was about to help himself to a peach from a silver 
 platter in the centre of the table when the frugal 
 Madame Rossini expostulated, Those are to look 
 at, not to eat! 
 
 While we lingered on the outer sidewalk, a little 
 comedy was enacted, through the denouement of 
 which we secured places. A youth, with wine in 
 his head and love in his eyes, caressed the warm 
 lips of an adorable girl. Save for the glasses of 
 aperitifs from which they had been drinking, their 
 table was bare. They had not yet dined. He 
 clasped her tightly in his arms and kissed her, kissed 
 her for what seemed to be a very long time but 
 no one, except me, appeared to take any notice. 
 
 Look! I whispered to Albert. Look! 
 
 O! that's all right. You'll get used to that, 
 he replied negligently. 
 
 Now the kiss was over and the two began to 
 talk, very excitedly and rapidly, as French people 
 are wont to talk. Then, impulsively, they rose 
 from their chairs. The man threw a coin down on 
 
 [17] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 his napkin. I caught the glint of gold. He gath- 
 ered his arms about the woman, a lovely pale blue 
 creature, with torrid orange hair and a hat abloom 
 with striated petunias. They were in the middle of 
 the street when the waiter appeared, bearing a tray, 
 laden with plates of sliced cucumbers, radishes and 
 butter, and tiny crayfish, and a bottle of white wine. 
 He stared in mute astonishment at the empty table, 
 and then picked up the coin. Finally, he glanced to- 
 wards the street and, observing the retreating pair, 
 called after them: 
 
 Mais vous n'avez pas dine ! 
 
 The man turned and shot his reply over his 
 shoulder. Nous rentrons! 
 
 The crowd on the terrasse shrieked with delight. 
 They applauded. Some even tossed flowers from 
 the tables after the happy couple and we . . .we 
 sat down in the chairs they had relinquished. I am 
 not certain that we did not eat the dinner they had 
 ordered. At any rate we began with the cucumbers 
 and radishes and ecrevisses and a bottle of Graves 
 Superior. 
 
 That night in Paris I saw no Americans, at least 
 no one seemed to be an American, and I heard no 
 English spoken. How this came about I have no 
 idea because it never occurred again. In fact, one 
 meets more Americans in Paris than one does in 
 New York and most of the French that I manage 
 to speak I have picked up on the Island of Man- 
 hattan. During dinner I began to suspect a man 
 
 [i8] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 without a beard, in a far corner, but Albert re- 
 assured me. 
 
 He is surely French, he said, because he is 
 buttering his radishes. 
 
 It would be diiEcult to exaggerate my emotion: 
 the white wine, the bearded French students, the 
 exquisite women, all young and smiling and gay, 
 all organdie and lace and sweet-peas, went to my 
 head. I have spent many happy evenings in the 
 Cafe d'Harcourt since that night. I have been 
 there with Olive Fremstad, when she told me how, 
 diessed as a serpent in bespangled Nile green, she 
 had sung the finale of Salome to Edward VII in 
 London, and one memorable Mardi-Gras night with 
 Jane Noria, when, in a long raincoat which covered 
 me from head to foot, standing on our table from 
 time to time, I shouted, C'est I'heure fatalel and 
 made as if to throw the raincoat aside but Noria, 
 as if dreading the exposure, always dragged me 
 down from the table, crying. No! No! until the 
 carnival crowd, consumed with curiosity, pulled me 
 into a corner, tore the raincoat away, and every- 
 thing else too! There was another night, before 
 the Bal des Quat'z Arts, when the cafe was filled 
 with students and models in costume, and costume 
 for the Quat'z Arts in those days, whatever it may 
 be now, did not require the cutting out of 
 many handkerchiefs. But the first night was the 
 best and every other night a more or less pale re- 
 flection of that, always, indeed, coloured a little by 
 
 [19] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 the memory of it. So that today, when some- 
 times I am asked what cafe I prefer in Paris and I 
 reply, the d'Harcourt, there are those who look at 
 me a little pityingly and some even go so far as to 
 ejaculate, 01 that! but I know why it is my favour- 
 ite. 
 
 Even a leisurely dinner ends at last, and I knew, 
 as we sipped our coffee and green chartreuse and 
 smoked our cigarettes, that this one must be over. 
 After paying our very moderate addition, we 
 strolled slowly away, to hop into an empty fiacre 
 which stood on the corner a block down the boule- 
 vard. I lay back against the seat and gazed at the 
 stars for a moment as the drive began through the 
 warm, fragrant Paris air, the drive back to the right 
 bank, this time across the Pont Neuf, down the Rue 
 de Rivoli, through the Place de la Concorde, where 
 the fountains were playing, and up the Champs- 
 Elysees. The aroma of the chestnuts, the melting 
 grey of the buildings, the legions of carriages and 
 buses, filled with happy, chattering people, the 
 glitter of electricity, all the mystic wonder of this 
 enchanting night will always stay with me. 
 
 We drove to the Theatre Marigny where we 
 saw a revue; at least we were present at a revue; I 
 do not remember to have seen or heard anything on 
 the stage. Between the acts, we walked in the 
 open foyer, at this theatre a sort of garden, and 
 admired the cocottes, great ladies of some distant 
 epoch, they seemed to me, in their toilets from 
 
 [20] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Redfern and Doucet and Cheruit and Callot Soeurs, 
 their hats from the Rue de la Paix and the Place 
 Vendome, their exceedingly elaborate and decora- 
 tively artificial complexions. Later, we sipped cas- 
 sis on the balcony. It was Spring in Paris and I was 
 young ! The chestnut trees were heavy with white 
 blossoms and the air was laden with their perfume. 
 I gazed down the Champs-Elysees, surely the true 
 Elysian Fields, a myriad of lights shining through 
 the dark green, the black, leaved branches. I do 
 not think I spoke many words and I know that 
 Albert did not. He may have been bored, but I 
 think he derived some slight pleasure from my 
 juvenile enthusiasm for, although Paris was old 
 hat to him, he loved this particular old hat. 
 
 We must have stopped somewhere for more 
 drinks on the way home, perhaps at Weber's in the 
 Rue Royale, where there was a gipsy band. I do 
 not remember, but I am sure that it was nearly four 
 in the morning when we drove up before the little 
 hotel in the Place de I'Odeon and when, after we 
 had paid the driver and dismissed him, I discovered 
 to my astonishment that the door was locked. 
 Albert assured me that this was the custom and 
 that I must ring for the concierge. So I pulled 
 the knob, and even outside we could hear the dis- 
 tant reverberations of the bell, but no reply came, 
 and the door remained closed. It was Joseph's 
 job to open the door and Joseph was asleep and 
 refused to awaken. Again and again we pulled 
 
 [21] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 the cord, the bell tinkling in the vast silence, for 
 the street was utterly deserted, but still no one 
 came. At last we desisted, Albert suggesting that 
 I go home with him. We walked a few paces 
 until we came to the iron fence surrounding the 
 Luxembourg Gardens and there,, lying beside it, 
 I espied a ladder, left by some negligent workman. 
 
 But my room is on the first floor. The window 
 is open; it looks over the Place. I can enter with 
 the ladder, I cried. 
 
 Albert, amused, helped me carry it back. Set 
 up, it just reached the window and I swiftly scaled 
 it and clambered into the room, waving my hand 
 back to Albert, who hoisted the ladder to his 
 shoulder as he started up the street trying to 
 whistle, Viens Poupoule ! but laughing to himself 
 all the time, so that the tune cracked. As for me, I 
 lighted one of my candles, undressed, threw the 
 feather-bed off to the floor, and climbed into bed. 
 Then I blew out the candle and soon fell asleep. It 
 was the tenth of May, 1907, that I spent my first 
 night in Paris. 
 
 [22] 
 
Chapter II 
 
 It must have been nearly noon when I awakened 
 and drew back the heavy curtains to let the sunlight 
 into my room, as I have since seen so many French 
 actresses do on the stage. I rang the bell, and 
 when Joseph appeared, I asked for hot water, choc- 
 olate and rolls. Presently, he returned with a little 
 can of tepid water and my breakfast on a tray. 
 While I sponged myself, I listened to the cacophony 
 of the street, the boys calling vegetables, the heavy 
 rumbling of the buses on the rough pavement, the 
 shrieking and tooting of the automobile sirens. 
 Then I sipped my chocolate and munched my crois- 
 sant, feeling very happy. My past had dropped 
 from me like a crustacean's discarded shell. I was 
 in Paris and it still seemed possible to live in Paris 
 as I had been told that one lived there. It was 
 exactly like the books. 
 
 After my breakfast, I dressed slowly, and wan- 
 dered out, past the peristyle of the Odeon, where I 
 afterwards spent so many contented hours search- 
 ing for old plays, on through the now open gate of 
 the Luxembourg Gardens, gaily sprinkled with 
 children and their nounous, students and sweet girls, 
 charming old ladies with lace caps on their heads 
 and lace scarfs round their shoulders, and painters, 
 
 [23] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 working away at their canvases on easels. In the 
 pool in front of the Senate, boys were launching 
 their toy sloops and schooners and, a little further 
 away on the gravel walk, other boys were engaged 
 in the more active sport of diabolo. The gardens 
 were ablaze with flowers but a classic order was 
 maintained for which the stately rows of clipped 
 limes furnished the leading note. The place 
 seemed to have been created for pleasure. Even 
 the dingy statues of the queens smiled at me. I sat 
 on a bench, dreaming, until an old crone approached 
 and asked me for a sou. I thought her a beggar 
 until she returned the change from a fifty centimes 
 piece which I had given her, explaining that one 
 sou was the price of my seat. There were free 
 seats too, I discovered after I had paid. 
 
 The Liixembourg Gardens have always retained 
 their hold over my imagination. I never visit Paris 
 without spending several hours there, sometimes 
 in the bright morning light, sometimes in the late 
 afternoon, when the military band plays dolent 
 tunes, usually by Massenet, sometimes a spectator 
 at one of the guignols and, very often in the 
 autumn, when the leaves are falling, I sit silently 
 on a bench before the Medici fountain, entirely 
 unconscious of the passing of time. The Luxem- 
 bourg Gardens always envelop me in a sentimental 
 mood. Their atmosphere is softly poetic, old-fash- 
 ioned, melancholy. I am near to tears now, merely 
 thinking of them, and I am sure the tears came to 
 
 [24] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 my eyes even on that bright May morning four- 
 teen years ago. 
 
 Did I, attract by the strange name, lunch at 
 the Deux-Magots? It is possible. I know that 
 later I strolled down the Rue de Seine and along 
 the quais, examining eighteenth century books, buy- 
 ing old numbers of I'Assiette au Beurre, and talking 
 with the quaint vendors, most of them old men. 
 Then I wandered up the Rue de Richelieu, studying 
 the examples of fine bindings in the windows of the 
 shops on either hand. About three o'clock, I 
 mounted the imperiale of a bus, not even asking 
 where it was going. I didn't care. I descended 
 before the gate of the Pare Monceau and passed a 
 few happy moments in the presence of the marble 
 lady in a dress of the nineties, who reads Guy de 
 Maupassant in the shadow of his bust, and a few 
 more by the Naumachie, the oval pool, flanked by 
 a semi-circular Corinthian colonnade in a state of 
 picturesque ruin. 
 
 At a quarter before four, I left the pare and, 
 hailing a fiacre, bade the driver take me to Martha 
 Baker's studio in the Avenue Victor Hugo, where 
 I had an appointment. Martha was painting my 
 portrait. She had begun work on the picture in 
 Chicago the year before but when I went to New 
 York, she went to Paris. So it was still unfinished 
 and I had promised to come to her for more sit- 
 tings. Now, in Chicago, Martha noted that I 
 grew restless on the model-stand and she had found 
 
 [25] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 it expedient to ask people in to talk to me, so that 
 my face would not become dead and sullen. There, 
 I usually knew the people she would ask, but it oc- 
 curred to me, as I was driving to her door, that in 
 Paris I knew no one, so that, if she followed her 
 habit, I would see new faces. 
 
 The cocher stopped his horse before an old stone 
 house and I entered. Challenged by the concierge, 
 I asked for Mademoiselle Bahker, and was direc- 
 ted to go through the courtyard into a back 
 passageway, up the stairs, where I would find Mad- 
 emoiselle Bahker, troisieme a gauche. I followed 
 these instructions and knocked at the door. 
 Martha, herself, opened it. 
 
 Oh, Carl, it's you! I'm so glad to see you I 
 Martha had not changed. She and even her 
 studio were much as they had been in Chicago. She 
 is dead now, dead possibly of a broken heart; cer- 
 tainly she was never happy. Her Insouciance, the 
 portrait of Elizabeth Buehrmann, in a green cloth 
 dress trimmed with fur, and a miniature or two hang 
 in the Art Institute in Chicago, but during her life- 
 time she never received the kind of appreciation she 
 really craved. She had an uncanny talent for por- 
 traiture, a talent which in some respects I have never 
 seen equalled by any of her coevals. Artists, as a 
 matter of fact, generally either envied or admired 
 her. Her peculiar form of genius lay in the facil- 
 ity with which she caught her sitters' weaknesses. 
 Possibly this is the reason she did not sell more 
 
 [26] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 pictures, for her models were frequently dissatis- 
 fied. It was exasperating, doubtless, to find one- 
 self caught in paint on canvas against an un- 
 enviable immortality. Her sitters were exposed, 
 so to speak; petty vices shone forth; Martha almost 
 idealized the faults of her subjects. It would be 
 impossible for the model to strut or pose before 
 one of her pictures. It told the truth. Sargent 
 caught the trick, once. I have been informed that 
 a physician diagnosed the malady of an American 
 lady, his patient, after studying Sargent's portrait 
 of her. 
 
 Martha should have painted our presidents, our 
 mayors, our politicians, our authors, our college 
 presidents, and our critics. Posterity might have 
 learned more from such portraits than from vol- 
 umes of psychoanalytic biography. But most of her 
 sitters were silly Chicago ladies, not particularly 
 weak because they were not particularly strong. 
 On the few occasions on which in her capacity as an 
 artist she had faced character, her brushes uner- 
 ringly depicted something beneath the surface. She 
 tore away men's masks and, with a kind of 
 mystic understanding, painted their insides. How 
 it was done, I don't know. Probably she herself 
 didn't know. Many an artist is ignorant of the 
 secret of his own method. If I had ascribed this 
 quality to Martha during her lifetime, which I 
 never did, she might not have taken it as praise. 
 It may not, indeed, have been her ambition, al- 
 
 [27] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 though truth was undoubtedly her ambition. Spec- 
 ulation aside, this was no art for Chicago. I doubt, 
 indeed, if it would have been popular anywhere, for 
 men the world over are alike in this, that they not 
 only prefer to be painted in masks, they even want 
 the artist to flatter the mask a bit. 
 
 The studio, I observed at once, was a little arty, 
 a little more arty than a painter's studio usually is. 
 It was arranged, of that there could be no doubt. 
 There were, to be sure, canvases stacked against 
 the wall in addition to those which were hanging, 
 but they had been stacked with a crafty hand, one 
 indubious of its effect. For the rest, the tables and 
 couches were strewn with brocades and laces, and 
 lilacs and mimosa bloomed in brown and blue and 
 green earthenware bowls on the tables. Later, I 
 knew that marigolds and zinnias would replace 
 these and, later still, violets and gardenias. On 
 an easel stood my unfinished portrait and a palette 
 and a box of paints lay on a stool nearby. 
 
 Martha herself wore a soft, clinging, dark-green 
 woolen dress, almost completely covered by a brown 
 denim painter's blouse. Her hair was her great 
 glory, long, reddish gold Melisande hair which, 
 when uncoiled, hung far below her knees, but today 
 it was knotted loosely on top of her head. Her 
 face, keen and searching, wore an expression that 
 might be described as wistful; discontent lurked 
 somewhere between her eyes and her mouth. Her 
 complexion was sallow and she wore eye-glasses. 
 
 [28] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 There was some one else present, a girl, sitting 
 in a shadowy corner, who rose as I entered. A 
 strong odour of Coeur de Jeannette hovered about 
 her. She was an American. She was immediately 
 introduced as Miss Clara Barnes of Chicago, but I 
 would have known she was an American had she not 
 been so introduced. She wore a shirt-waist and 
 skirt. She had very black hair, parted in the middle, 
 a face that it would have been impossible to remem- 
 ber ten minutes and which now, although I have seen 
 her many times since, I have completely forgotten, 
 and very thick ankles. I gathered presently that 
 she was in Paris to study singing as were so many 
 girls like her. Very soon, I sized her up as the 
 kind of girl who thinks that antimacassars are otto- 
 mans, that tripe is a variety of fish, that Cosi Fan 
 Tutte is an Italian ice cream, that the pope's nose is 
 a nasal appendage which has been blessed by the 
 head of the established church, that The Beast in 
 the Jungle is an animal story, and that when one says 
 Arthur Machen one means Harry Mencken. 
 
 Well, we'd best begin, said Martha. It's late. 
 
 Isn't it too late ? I was rather surprised when you 
 asked me to come in the afternoon. 
 
 Martha smiled but there was a touch of petulance 
 in her reply: I knew you wouldn't get up very 
 early the morning after your first night in Paris, and 
 I knew if I didn't get you here today there would be 
 small chance of getting you here at all. If you come 
 again, of course it will be in the morning. 
 
 [29] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 I climbed to the model-chair, seated myself, 
 grasped the green book that was part of the 
 composition, and automatically assumed that woe- 
 begone expression that is worn by all amateurs 
 who pose for their portraits. 
 
 That won't do at all, said Martha. I asked Clara 
 to come here to amuse you. 
 
 Clara tried. She told me that she was studying 
 Manon and that she had been to the Opera-Comique 
 fifteen times to hear the opera. 
 
 Garden is all wrong in it, all wrong, she continued. 
 In the first place she can't sing. Of course she's 
 pretty, but she's not my idea of Manon at all. I will 
 really sing the part and act it too. 
 
 A month or two later, while we munched sand- 
 wiches and drank beer between the acts of Tristan 
 und Isolde in the foyer of the Prinzregenten The- 
 ater in Munich, Olive Fremstad introduced me to an 
 American girl, who informed me that a new Isolde 
 had been born that day. 
 
 I shall be the great Isolde, she remarked casually, 
 and her name, I gathered, when I asked Madame 
 Fremstad to repeat it, was Minnie Saltzmann- 
 Stevens. 
 
 But on the day that; Clara spoke of her future tri- 
 umphs in Manon, I had yet to become accustomed 
 to this confidence with which beginners in the vocal 
 art seem so richly endowed, a confidence which is 
 frequently disturbed by circumstances for, as George 
 Moore has somewhere said, our dreams and our 
 
 [30] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 circumstances are often in conflict. Later, I dis- 
 covered that every unsuccessful singer believes, and 
 asserts, that Geraldine Farrar is instrumental in 
 preventing her from singing at the Metropolitan 
 Opera House. On this day, I say, I was unaware 
 of this peculiarity in vocalists but I was interested 
 in the name she had let slip, a name I had never 
 before heard. 
 
 Who is Garden? I asked. 
 
 You don't know Mary Garden! exclaimed Mar- 
 tha. 
 
 There! shrieked Clara. There! I told you so. 
 No one outside of Paris has ever even heard of the 
 woman. 
 
 Well, they've heard of her here, said Martha, 
 quietly, pinching a little worm of cobalt blue from 
 a tube. She's the favourite singer of the Opera- 
 Comique. She is an American and she sings Louise 
 and Manon and Traviata and Melisande and 
 Aphrodite, especially Aphrodite. 
 
 She's singing Aphrodite tonight, said Miss 
 Barnes. 
 
 And what is she like? I queried. 
 
 Well, Clara began dubiously, she is said to be 
 like Sybil Sanderson but, of course, Sanderson had 
 a voice and, she hurried on, you know even Sander- 
 son never had any success in New York. 
 
 I recalled, only too readily, how Manon with Jean 
 de Reszke, Pol Plangon, and Sybil Sanderson in 
 the cast had failed in the nineties at the Metro- 
 
 [31] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 politan Opera House, and I admitted as much to 
 iClara. 
 
 But would this be true today? I pondered. 
 
 Certainly, advanced Clara. America doesn't 
 want French singers. They never know how to sing. 
 
 But you are studying in Paris. 
 
 The girl began to look discomfited. 
 
 With an Italian teacher, she asseverated. 
 
 It delighted me to be able to add, I think Sander- 
 son studied with Sbriglia and Madame Marchesi. 
 
 Your face is getting very hard, cried Martha in 
 despair. 
 
 I think he is very rude, exclaimed the outraged 
 and contumacious Miss Barnes, with a kind of leer- 
 ing acidity. He doesn't seem to know the difference 
 between tradition and impertinent improvisation. 
 He doesn't see that singing at the Opera or the 
 Opera-Comique with a lot of rotten French singers 
 would ruin anybody who didn't have training enough 
 to stand out against this influence, singing utterly un- 
 musical parts like Melisande, too, parlando roles cal- 
 culated to ruin any voice. Maeterlinck won't even 
 go to hear the opera, it's so rotten. I wonder how 
 much Mr. Van Vechten knows about music anyway ? 
 
 Very little, I remarked mildly. 
 
 01 wailed Martha, you're not entertaining Carl 
 at all and I can't paint when you squabble. Carl's 
 very nice. Why can't you be agreeable, Clara? 
 What is the matter? 
 
 Miss Barnes disdained to reply. She drew her- 
 
 [32] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 self into a sort of sulk, crossing her thick ankles 
 massively. The scent of Cceur de Jeannette seemed 
 to grow heavier. Within bounds, I was amused by 
 her display of emotion but I was also bored. My 
 face must have showed it. Martha worked on 
 for a moment or two and then flung down her 
 brushes. 
 
 It's no good, no good at all, she announced. 
 You have no expression today. I can't get behind 
 your mask. Your face is completely empty. 
 
 And, I may add, as this was the last day that 
 Martha ever painted on this portrait, she never did 
 get behind the mask. To that extent I triumphed, 
 and the picture still exists to confuse people as to 
 my real personality. It is as empty as if it had 
 been painted by Boldini or McEvoy. Fortunately 
 for her future reputation in this regard, Martha 
 had already painted a portrait of me which is suffi- 
 ciently revealing. 
 
 I must have stretched and yawned at this point, 
 for Martha looked cross, when a welcome inter- 
 ruption occurred in the form of a knock at the 
 door. Martha walked across the room. As she 
 opened the door, directly opposite where I was sit- 
 ting, I saw the slender figure of a young man, per- 
 haps twenty-one years old. He was carefully 
 dressed in a light grey suit with a herring-bone pat- 
 tern, and wore a neck-scarf of deep blue. He car- 
 ried a stick and buckskin gloves in one hand and a 
 straw hat in the other. 
 
 [33] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Why, it's Peter ! cried Martha. I wish you had 
 come sooner. 
 
 This is Peter Whiffle, she said, leading him into 
 the room and then, as he extended his hand to mc, 
 You know Clara Barnes. 
 
 He turned away to bow but I had already caught 
 his interesting face, his deep blue eyes that shifted 
 rather uneasily but at the same time remained 
 honest and frank, his clear, simple expression, his 
 high brow, his curly, blue-black hair, carefully 
 parted down the centre of his head. He spoke to me 
 at once. 
 
 Martha has said a good deal, perhaps too much 
 about you. Still I have wanted to meet you. 
 
 You must tell me who you are, I replied. 
 
 I should have told you, only you just arrived, 
 Martha put in. I had no idea that Peter would 
 come in today. He is the American Flaubert or 
 Anatole France or something. He is writing a 
 book. What is your book about, Peter? 
 
 Whiffle smiled, drew out a cigarette-case of 
 Toledo work, extracted a cigarette from it, and 
 said, I haven't the slightest idea. Then, as if he 
 thought this might be construed as rudeness, or false 
 modesty, or a rather viscous attempt at secrecy, he 
 added, I really haven't, not the remotest. I want 
 to talk to you about it ... . That's why I wanted 
 to meet you. Martha says that you know . . . well, 
 that you know. 
 
 [34] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 You really should be painting Mr. Van Vechten 
 now, said Clara Barnes, with a trace of malice. He 
 has the right expression. 
 
 I hope I haven't interrupted your work, said 
 Peter. 
 
 No, I'm through today, Martha rejoined. We're 
 neither of us in the mood. Besides it's absurd to 
 try to paint in this light. 
 
 Painting, Peter went on, is not any easier than 
 writing. Always the search for — for what? he 
 asked suddenly, turning to me. 
 
 For truth, I suppose, I replied. 
 
 I thought you would say that but that's not what 
 I meant, that's not at all what I meant. 
 
 This logogriph rather concluded that subject, 
 for Peter did not explain what it was that he did 
 mean. Neither did he wear a conscious air of 
 obfuscation. He rambled on about many things, 
 spoke of new people, new books, new music, and he 
 also mentioned Mary Garden. 
 
 I have heard of Mary Garden for the first time 
 today, I said, and I am beginning to be interested. 
 
 You haven't seen her? demanded Peter. But 
 she is stupendous, soul, body, imagination, intellect, 
 everything! How few there are. A lyric Melis- 
 ande, a caressing Manon, a throbbingly wicked 
 Chrysis. She is the cult in Paris and the Opera- 
 Comique is the Temple where she is worshipped. I 
 think some day this new religion will be carried to 
 
 [35] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 America. He stopped. Let me see, what am I 
 doing tonight? O! yes, I know. I won't do that. 
 Will you go with me to hear Aphrodite? 
 
 Of course, I will. I have just come to Paris 
 and I want to do and hear and see everything. 
 
 Well, we'll go, he announced, but I noted that 
 his tone was curiously indecisive. We'll go to 
 dinner first. 
 
 You're not going to dinner yet? Martha de- 
 manded rather querulously. 
 
 Not quite yet. Then, turning to Clara, How's 
 the Voice? 
 
 It was my first intimation that Clara had thus 
 symbolized her talent in the third person. People 
 were not expected to refer to her as Clara or Miss 
 Barnes; she was the Voice. 
 
 The Voice is doing very well indeed, Clara, now 
 quite mollified, rejoined. I'm studying Manon, and 
 if you like Mary Garden, wait until you hear me! 
 
 Peter continued to manipulate Clara with the 
 proper address. The conversation bubbled or lan- 
 guished, I forget which; at any rate, a half hour 
 or so later, Peter and I were seated in a taxi-cab, 
 bound for Foyot's where he had decided we would 
 dine; at least I thought he had decided, but soon 
 he seemed doubtful. 
 
 Foyot's, Foyot's, he rolled the name meditatively 
 over on his tongue. I don't 'know. . . . 
 
 We leaned back against the seat and drank In the 
 soft air. I don't think that we talked very much. 
 
 [36] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 The cocher was driving over the bridge of Alex- 
 andre III with its golden horses gleaming in the late 
 afternoon sunlight when Peter bent forward and 
 addressed him, 
 
 Allez au Cafe Anglais. 
 
 Where meant nothing to me, but I was a little 
 surprised at his hesitation. The cocher changed 
 his route, grumbling a bit, for he was out of his 
 course. 
 
 I don't know why I ever suggested Foyot, said 
 Peter, or the Cafe Anglais either. We'll go to the 
 Petit Riche. 
 
 [37] 
 
Chapter III 
 
 If the reader has been led to expect a chapter 
 devoted to an account of Mary Garden in Aphro- 
 dite, he will be disappointed. I did not see Mary 
 Garden that evening, nor for many evenings there- 
 after, and I do not remember, indeed, that Peter 
 Whiffle ever referred to her again. We dined at 
 a quiet little restaurant, Boislaive by name, near 
 the Folies-Bergere. The interior, as bare of dec- 
 oration as are most such interiors in Paris, where 
 the food and wines are given more consideration 
 than the mural paintings, was no larger than that 
 of a small shop. My companion led me straight 
 to a tiny winding staircase in one corner, which we 
 ascended, and presently we found ourselves in a 
 private room, with three tables in it, to be sure, but 
 two of these remained unoccupied. We began our 
 dinner with escargots a la bordelaise, which I was 
 eating for the first time, but I have never been 
 squeamish about novel food. A man with a broad 
 taste in food is inclined to be tolerant in regard to 
 everything. Also, when he begins to understand 
 the cooking of a nation, he is on the way to an un- 
 derstanding of the nation itself. There were many 
 other dishes, but I particularly remember a navarin 
 because Peter spoke of it, pointing out that every 
 
 [38] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 country has one dish in which it is honourable to put 
 whatever is left over in the larder. In China (or 
 out of it, in Chinese restaurants) , this dish is called 
 chop suey; in Ireland, Irish stew; in Spain, oUa or 
 puchero; in France, ragout or navarin; in Italy, 
 minestra ; and in America, hash. We lingered over 
 such matters, getting acquainted, so to speak, 
 passing through the polite stages of early con- 
 versation, slipping beyond the poses that one un- 
 consciously assumes with a new friend. I think 
 I did most of the talking, although Whiffle told me 
 that he had come from Ohio, that he was in Paris 
 on a sort of mission, something to do with liter- 
 ature, I gathered. We ate and drank slowly and 
 it must have been nearly ten when he paid the 
 bill and we drove away, this time to Fouquet's, an 
 open-air restaurant in the Champs-Elysees, where 
 we sat on the broad terrasse and drank many bocks, 
 so many, indeed, that by the time we had decided 
 to settle our account, the saucers in front of us 
 were piled almost to our chins. We should prob- 
 ably have remained there all night, had he not 
 suggested that I go to his rooms with him. That 
 night, my second in Paris, I would have gone any- 
 where with any one. But there was that in Peter 
 Whiffle which had awakened both my interest and 
 my curiosity for I, too, had the ambition to write, 
 and it seemed to me possible that I was in the pres- 
 ence of a writing man, an author. 
 
 We entered another taxl-auto or fiacre, I don't 
 
 [39] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 remember and it doesn't matter, there were so 
 many peregrinations in those days, and we drove to 
 an apartment house in a little street near the Rue 
 Blanche. The house being modern, there was an 
 ascenseur and I experienced for the first time the 
 thrill of one of those little personally conducted 
 lifts, in which you press your own button and take 
 your own chances. Since that night I have had 
 many strange misadventures with these intransi- 
 gent elevators, but on this occasion, miraculously, 
 the machine stopped at the fourth floor, as it had 
 been bidden, and soon we were in the sitting-room 
 of Whiffle's apartment, a room which I still remem- 
 ber, although subsequently I have been in half a 
 dozen of his other rooms in various localities. 
 
 It was very orderly, this room, although not ex- 
 actly arranged, at any rate not arranged like 
 Martha's studio, as if to set object against object 
 and colour against colour. It was a neat little 
 ivory French room, with a white fire-place, picked 
 in gold, surmounted by a gilt clock and Louis XVI 
 candlesticks. There were charming aquatints on 
 the ivory walls and chairs and tables of the Empire 
 period. The tables were laden with neat piles of 
 pamphlets. Beside a type-writer, was ranged a 
 heap of note-books at least a foot high and stacked 
 on the floor in one corner there were other books, 
 formidable-looking volumes of weight and heft, 
 "thick bulky octavos with cut-and-come-again ex- 
 pressions," apparently dictionaries and lexicons. 
 
 [40] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 An orange Persian cat lay asleep in one of the 
 chairs as we entered, but he immediately stretched 
 himself, extending his noble paws, yawning and 
 arching his back, and then came forward to greet 
 us, purring. 
 
 Hello, George! cried Whiffle, as the cat waved 
 his magnificent red tail back and forth and rubbed 
 himself against Peter's leg. 
 
 George? I queried. 
 
 Yes, that's George Moore. He goes every- 
 where with me in a basket, when I travel, and he 
 is just as contented in Toledo as he is in Paris, 
 anywhere there is raw meat to be had. Places 
 mean nothing to him. My best friend. 
 
 I sat in one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. 
 Peter brought out a bottle of cognac and a couple 
 of glasses. He threw open the shutters and the 
 soft late sounds of the city filtered in with the fresh 
 spring air. One could just hear the faint tinkle 
 of an orchestra at some distant bal. 
 
 I like you, Van Vechten, my host began at last, 
 and Pve got to talk to somebody. My work has 
 just begun and there's so much to say about it. 
 Tell me to stop when you get tired. ... In a 
 way, I want to know what you think; in another 
 way, it helps me merely to talk, in the working out 
 of my ideas. But who was there to talk to, I 
 mean before you came? I can see that you may 
 be interested in what I am trying to do, good God ! 
 in what I will do! I've done a lot already. . . . 
 
 [41] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 You have begun your book then ? 
 
 Well, you might say so, but I haven't written a 
 line. I've collected the straw; the bricks will 
 come. I've not been idle. You see those cata- 
 logues? 
 
 I nodded. 
 
 He fumbled them over. Then, without a break, 
 with a strange glow of exhilaration on his pale 
 ethereal face, his eyes flashing, his hands gestic- 
 ulating, his body swaying, marching up and 
 down the room, he recited with a crescendo which 
 mounted to a magnificent fortissimo in the coda: 
 
 Perfumery catalogues: Coty, Houbigant, Atkin- 
 son, Rigaud, Rue de la Paix, Bond Street, Place 
 Vendome, Regent Street, Nirvana, Chypre, Sakoun- 
 tala, Ambre, Apres I'Ondee, Quelques Fleurs, 
 Fougere Royale, Myrbaha, Yavahnah, Gaudika, 
 Delices de Pera, Coeur de Jeannette, Djer Kiss, 
 Jockey-Club, and the Egyptian perfumes. Myrrh 
 and Kyphy. Did you know that Richelieu lived 
 in an atmosphere heavily laden with the most pun- 
 gent perfumes to inflame his sexual imagination? 
 Automobile catalogues: Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, 
 Ford, tires, self-starters, limousines, carburettors, 
 gas. Jewellery catalogues : heaps of 'em, all about 
 diamonds and platinum, chrysoprase and jade, mal- 
 achite and chalcedony, amethysts and garnets, and 
 the emerald, the precious stone which comes the 
 nearest to approximating that human manifestation 
 known as art, because it always has flaws; red jas- 
 
 [42] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 per, sacred to the rosy god, Bacchus, the green 
 plasma, blood-stone, cornelian, cat's-eye, amber, 
 with its medicinal properties, the Indian jewels, 
 spinels, the reddish orange jacinth, and the violet 
 almandine. Did you know that the Emperor 
 Claudius used to clothe himself in smaragds and sar- 
 donyx stones and that Pope Paul II died of a cold 
 caught from the weight and chill of the rings which 
 loaded his aged fingers? Are you aware that the 
 star-topaz is as rare as a Keutschacher Rubentaler 
 of the year 1504? Yonder is a volume which treats 
 of the glyptic lore. In it you may read of the As- 
 syrian cylinders fashioned from red and green ser- 
 pentine, the Egyptian scarabei, carved in steaschist; 
 you rnay learn of the seal-cutters of Nineveh and 
 of the Signet of Sennacherib, now preserved in the 
 British Museum. Do you know that a jewel en- 
 graved with Hercules at the fountain wag deposited 
 in the tomb of the Frankish King Childeric at 
 Tournay? Do you know of Mnesarchus, the 
 Tyrrhene gem-cutter, who practised his art at 
 Samos? Have you seen the Julia of Evodus, 
 engraved in a giant aquamarine, or the Byzantine 
 topaz, carved with the figure of the blind bow-boy, 
 sacrificing the Psyche-butterfly, or the emerald 
 signet of Polycrates, with the lyre cut upon it, or 
 the Etruscan peridot representing a sphinx scratch- 
 ing her ear with her hind paw, or the sapphire, dis- 
 covered in a disused well at Hereford, in which the 
 head of the Madonna has been chiseled, with the 
 
 [43] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 inscription, round the beasil, in Lombard letters, 
 TECTA LEGE LECTA TEGE, or the jacinth engraved 
 with the triple face of Baphomet, with a 
 legend of darkly obscene purport? The breast- 
 plate of the Jewish High Priest had Its oracular 
 gems, which were the Urim and Thummim. Apol- 
 lonius Tyaneus, the sorcerer, for the pur- 
 poses of his enchantments, wore special rings with 
 appropriate stones for each day of the week. 
 Also, in this curious book, and others which you 
 may examine, such as George Ill's Dactyliotheca 
 Smithiana (Venice; 1767), you will find some ac- 
 count of the gems of the Gnostics: an intaglio in 
 a pale convex plasma, carved with the Chnuphis 
 Serpent, raising himself aloft, with the seven vowels, 
 the elements of his name, above; another 
 jewel engraved with the figure of the jackal- 
 headed Anubis, the serpent with the lion's head, the 
 infant Horus, seated on the lotus, the cynocephalus 
 baboon, and the Abraxas-god, lao, created from the 
 four elements; an Egyptian seal of the god, Har- 
 pocrates, seated on the mystic lotus, in adoration 
 of the Yoni; and an esoteric green jasper amulet 
 in the form of a dragon, surrounded by rays. 
 Florists catalogues; strangely wicked cyclamens, 
 meat-eating begonias, beloved of des Esseintes 
 (Henri Matisse grows these peccant plants in his 
 garden and they suggest his work), shaggy chrysan- 
 themums, orchids, green, white, and mauve, the 
 veined salpiglossis-, the mournful, rich-smellling 
 
 [44] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 tube-rose, all the mystic blossoms adored by Robert 
 de la Condamine's primitive, tortured, orgiastic 
 saints In The Double Garden, marigolds and dai- 
 sies, the most complex and the most simple flowers 
 of all, hypocritical fuchsias, and calceolaria, sacred 
 to la bella Cenerentola. Reaper catalogues : you 
 know, the McCormicks and the Middle West. Por- 
 celain catalogues: Rockwood, Royal Doulton, 
 Wedgwood, Delft, the quaint, clean, heavy, charm- 
 ing Brittany ware. Majolica, the wondrous Chinese 
 porcelains, self-colour, sang de bcEuf, apple of roses, 
 peach-blow, Sevres, signed with the fox of Emile 
 Renard, or the eye of Pajou, or the little house of 
 Jean-Jacques Anteaume. Furniture catalogues: 
 Adam and Louis XV, Futurist, Empire, Venetian 
 and Chinese, Polncare and Grand Rapids. Art- 
 dealers' catalogues: Fellclen Rops and Jo David- 
 son, Renoir and Franz Hals, Cranach and Picasso, 
 Manet and Carpacclo. Book-dealers' catalogues: 
 George Borrow, Thomas Love Peacock, Ambrose 
 Blerce, William Beckford, Robert Smith Surtees, 
 Francis William Bain. Do you know the true 
 story of Ambrose Gwinett, related by Oliver Gold- 
 smith: the fellow who, having been hanged and 
 gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he 
 had shared his bed-chamber at a tavern, revived 
 in the night, shipped at sea as a sailor, and later 
 met on a vessel the man for whose murder he had 
 been hung? Gwinett's supposed victim had been 
 attacked during the night with a severe bleeding 
 
 [45] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 of the nose, had risen and left the house for a walk 
 by the sea-wall, and had been shanghaied. Cata- 
 logues of curious varieties of cats: Australian, 
 with long noses and long hind-legs, like kangaroos, 
 Manx cats without any tails and chocolate and fawn 
 Siamese cats with sapphire eyes, the cacodorous 
 Russian blue cats, and male tortoise-shells. Cata- 
 logues of tinshops: tin plates, tin cups, and can- 
 openers. Catalogues of laces: Valenciennes and 
 Cluny and Chantilly and double-knot, Punto in Aria, 
 a Spanish lace of the sixteenth century, lace con- 
 structed of human hair or aloe fibre, Point 
 d'Espagne, made by Jewesses. Catalogues of toys : 
 an engine that spreads smoke in the air, as it runs 
 around a track with a circumference of eight feet, 
 a doll that cries. Uncle ! Uncle I a child's opium set. 
 Catalogues of operas: Marta and Don Pasquale, 
 Der Freischiitz and Mefistofele, Simon Bbcanegra 
 and La Dolores. Cook-Books : Mrs. Pennell's The 
 Feasts of Autolycus, a grandiose treatise on the 
 noblest of the arts, wherein you may read of the 
 amorous adventures of The Triumphant Tomato 
 and the Incomparable Onion, Mr. Finck's Food and 
 Flavour, the gentle Abraham Hayward on The Art 
 of Dining, the biography of Vatel, the super-cook 
 who killed himself because the fish for the king's 
 dinner were missing, Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which 
 Dr. Johnson boasted that he could surpass, and, 
 above all, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physi- 
 ologic du Gout. Catalogues of harness, bks and 
 
 [46] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 saddles. Catalogues of cigarettes: Dimitrinos and 
 Melachrinos, Fatimas and Sweet Caporals. Cata- 
 logues of liqueurs : Danziger Goldwasser and Creme 
 Yvette, Parfait Amour, as tanagrine as the blood 
 in the sacred altar chalice. Catalogues of paints: 
 yellow ochre and gamboge, burnt sienna and Chinese 
 vermilion. Catalogues of hats: derbies and fe- 
 doras, straw and felt hats, top-hats and caps, som- 
 breros, tam-o'shanters, billycocks, shakos and tar- 
 booshes. . . . 
 
 He stopped, breathless with excitement, demand- 
 ing, What do you think of that? 
 
 I don't know what to think. . . . 
 
 I'm sure you don't. That isn't all. There are 
 dictionaries and lexicons, not only German, English, 
 French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, but also 
 Hebrew, Persian, Magyar, Chinese, Zend, Sanscrit, 
 Hindustani, Negro dialects, French argot, Portu- 
 guese, American slang, and Pennsylvania Dutch. 
 
 And what are those curious pamphlets? 
 
 He lifted a few and read off the titles: 
 
 A study of the brain of the late Major J. W. 
 Powell. 
 
 A study of the anatomic relations of the optic 
 nerve to the accessory cavities of the nose. 
 
 On regeneration in the pigmented skin of the 
 frog and on the character of the chromatophores. 
 
 The chondrocranium of an embryo pig. 
 
 Morphology of the parthogenetic development 
 of amphitrite. 
 
 [47] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Note on the influence of castration on the 
 weight of the brain and spinal cord in the albino 
 rat. 
 
 There are, he added solemnly, many strange 
 words in these pamphlets, not readily to be found 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Now Peter pointed to the pile of note-books on 
 the table. 
 
 These are my note-books. I have ranged Paris 
 for my material. For days I have walked in the 
 Passage des Panoramas and the Rue St. Honore, 
 making lists of every object in the windows. In 
 the case of books I have described the bindings. 
 I have stopped before the shops of fruit vendors, 
 antique dealers, undertakers, jewellers, and fashion- 
 ers of artificial flowers. I have spent so much time 
 in the Galeries Lafayette and the Bon Marche 
 that I have probably been mistaken for a shop- 
 lifter. These books are full of results. What do 
 you think of it? 
 
 But what is all this for? 
 
 For my work, of course. For my work. 
 
 I can't imagine, I began almost in a whisper, I 
 was so astonished, what you do, what you are going 
 to do. Are you writing an encyclopedia? 
 
 No, my intention is not to define or describe, but 
 to enumerate. Life is made up of a collection of 
 objects, and the mere citation of them is sufficient 
 to give the reader a sense of form and colour, 
 atmosphere and style. And form, style, manner in 
 
 [48] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 literature are everything; subject is nothing. Noth- 
 ing whatever, he added impressively, after a pause. 
 Do you know what Buffon wrote: Style is the only 
 passport to posterity. It is not range of infor- 
 mation, nor mastery of some little known branch of 
 science, nor yet novelty of matter, that will insure 
 immortality. Recall the great writers, Theophile 
 Gautier, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris Huysmans, 
 Oscar Wilde: they all used this method, cata- 
 logues, catalogues, catalogues ! All great art is 
 a matter of cataloguing life, summing it up in a 
 list of objects. This is so true that the commer- 
 cial catalogues themselves are almost works of art. 
 Their only flaw is that they pause to describe. If 
 it only listed objects, without defining them, a 
 dealer's catalogue would be as precious as a book 
 by Gautier. 
 
 During this discourse, George Moore, the orange 
 cat, had been wandering around, rather restlessly, 
 occasionally gazing at Peter with a semi-quizzical 
 expression and an absurd cock of the ears. At 
 some point or other, however, he had evidently ar- 
 rived at the conclusion that this extra display of 
 emotion on the part of his human companion boded 
 him no evil and, having satisfied himself in this re- 
 gard, he leaped lightly to the mantelshelf, circled 
 his enormous bulk miraculously around three or 
 four times on the limited space at his disposal, and 
 sank into a profound slumber when, probably, with 
 dreams of garrets full of lazy mice, his ears and his 
 
 [49] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 tail, which depended a foot below the shelf, began 
 to twitch. 
 
 Peter continued to talk: d'AurevIUy wrote his 
 books in different coloured inks. It was a wonder- 
 ful idea. Black ink would never do to describe 
 certain scenes, certain objects. I can imagine an 
 entire book written in purple, or green, or blood- 
 red, but the best book would be written in many- 
 colours. Consider, for a moment, the distinction 
 between purple and violet, shades which are cous- 
 ins: the one suggests the most violent passions or 
 something royal or papal, the other a nunnery or a 
 widow, or a being bereft of any capacity for pas- 
 sion. 
 
 Henry James should write his books in white ink 
 on white paper and, by a system of analogy, you 
 can very well see that Rider Haggard should write 
 his books in white ink on black paper. Pale ideas, 
 obviously expressed. Gold! Think what you 
 could do with gold! If silence is golden, surely 
 the periods, the commas, the semicolons, and dashes 
 should be of gold. Blit not only the stops could 
 gleam and shine; whole silent pages might glitter. 
 And blue, bright blue ; what more suggestive colour 
 for the writer than bright blue ? 
 
 Not only should manuscripts be written in multi- 
 coloured inks, but they should be written on multi- 
 coloured papers, and then they should be printed in 
 multi-coloured inks on multi-coloured papers. The 
 
 [50] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 art of book-making, in the sense that the making of 
 a book is part of its authorship, part of its creation, 
 is not even begun. 
 
 The sculptor is not satisfied with moulding his 
 idea in clay; he gives it final form in marble or 
 malachite or jade or bronze. Many an author, 
 however, having completed work on his manuscript, 
 is content to allow his publisher to choose the paper, 
 the ink, the binding, the typography: all, obviously, 
 part of the author's task. It is the publisher's wish, 
 no doubt, to issue the book as cheaply as possible, 
 and to this end he will make as many books after the 
 same model as he practicably can. But every book 
 should have a different appearance from every other 
 book. Every book should have the aspect to which 
 its ideas give birth. The form of the material 
 should dictate the form of the binding. Who but a 
 fool, for example, would print and bind Lavengro 
 and Roderick Hudson in a similar manner? And 
 yet that is just what publishers will do if they are let 
 alone. 
 
 Peter had become so excited that he had 
 awakened George Moore, who now descended from 
 the mantelpiece and sought the seclusion of a couch 
 in the corner where, after a few abortive licks at his 
 left hind-leg, and a pretence of scrubbing his ears, he 
 again settled into sleep. As for me, I listened, en- 
 tranced, and as the night before I had discovered 
 Paris, it seemed to me now that I was discovering 
 
 [51] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 the secrets of the writer's craft and I determined to 
 go forth in the morning with a note-book, jotting 
 down the names of every object I encountered. 
 
 I must have been somewhat bewildered for I re- 
 peated a question I had asked before : 
 
 Have you written anything yet ? 
 
 Not yet. ... I am collecting my materials. It 
 may take me considerably longer to collect what I 
 shall require for a very short book. 
 
 What is the book to be about? 
 
 Van Vechten, Van Vechten, you are not following 
 me! he cried, and he again began to walk up and 
 down the little room. What is the book to be 
 about? Why, it is to be about the names of the 
 things I have collected. It is to be about three 
 hundred pages, he added triumphantly. That is 
 what it is to be about, about three hundred pages, 
 three hundred pages of colour and style and lists, 
 lists of objects, all jumbled artfully. There isn't a 
 moral, or an idea, or a plot, or even a character. 
 There's to be no propaganda or preaching, or 
 violence, or emotion, or even humour. I am not 
 trying to imitate Dickens or Dostoevsky. They did 
 not write books; they wrote newspapers. Art 
 eliminates all such rubbish. Art has nothing to do 
 with ideas. Art is abstract. When art becomes 
 concrete it is no longer art. Thank God, I know 
 what I want to do ! Thank God, I haven't wasted 
 my time admiring hack work! Thank God, I can 
 start in at once constructing a masterpiece! Why 
 
 [52] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 a list of passengers sailing on the Kronprinz Wil- 
 helm is more nearly a work of art than a novel by 
 Thomas Hardy! What is there in that? Any- 
 body can do it. Where is the arrangement, the 
 colour, the form? Hardy merely photographs life I 
 
 But aren't you trying to photograph still life? 
 
 Peter's face was almost purple; I thought he 
 would burst a blood-vessel. 
 
 Don't you understand that perfumes and reap- 
 ing-machines are never to be found together in real 
 life? That is art, making a pattern, dragging un- 
 familiar words and colours and sounds together until 
 they form a pattern, a beautiful pattern. An 
 Aubusson carpet is art, and it is assuredly not a pho- 
 tograph of still life. . . . Art. . . . 
 
 I don't know how much more of this there was 
 but, when Peter finally stopped talking, the sunlight 
 was streaming in through the' window. 
 
 [531 
 
Chapter IV 
 
 It was many days before I saw Peter again. I 
 met other men and women. I visited the Louvre 
 and at first stood humbly in the Salon Carre before 
 the Monna Lisa and in the long corridor of the Ve- 
 nus de Milo; a httle later, I became thuriferous 
 before Sandro Botticelli's frescoes from the Villa 
 Lemmi and Watteau's Pierrot. I made a pil- 
 grimage to the Luxembourg Gallery and read 
 Huysmans's evocation of the picture before Mo- 
 reau's Salome. I sat in the tiny old Roman arena, 
 Lutetia's amphitheatre, constructed in the second 
 or third century, and conjured up visions of 
 lions and Christian virgins. I drank tea at 
 the Pavilion d'Armenonville in the Bois and I 
 bought silk handkerchiefs of many colours at the 
 Galeries Lafayette. I began to carry my small 
 change in a pig-skin purse and I learned to look 
 out for bad money. Every morning I called for 
 mail at the American Express Company in the Rue 
 Scribe. I ate little wild strawberries with Creme 
 d'Isigny. I bought old copies of I'Assiette au 
 Beurre on the quais and new copies of Le Sourire 
 at kiosques. I heard Werther at the Opera-Com- 
 ique and I saw Lina Cavalieri in Thais at the 
 Opera. I made journeys to Versailles, Saint Cloud, 
 
 [54] 
 
His Lije and Works 
 
 and Fontainebleau. I inspected the little hotel in 
 the Rue des Beaux-Arts where Oscar Wilde died 
 and I paid my respects to his tomb in Pere-Lachaise. 
 The fig-leaf was missing from the heroic figure on 
 the monument. It had been stolen, the cemetery- 
 guard informed me, par une jeune miss anglaise, 
 who desired a souvenir. I drank champagne cock- 
 tails, sitting on a stool, at the American bar in the 
 Grand Hotel. I drank whisky and soda, ate salted 
 nuts, and talked with English racing men at Henry's 
 bar, under the delightful brown and yellow mural 
 decorations, exploiting ladies of the 1880 period 
 with bangs, and dresses with bustles, and over-drap- 
 ings, and buttons down the front. I enjoyed long 
 bus rides and I purchased plays in the arcades of 
 the Odeon. I went to the races at Chantilly. I 
 drank cocktails at Louis's bar in the Rue Racine. 
 Louis Doerr, the patron, had worked as a bar-man 
 in Chicago and understood the secrets of American 
 mixed drinks. Doubtless, he could have made a 
 Fireman's Shirt. He divided his time between his 
 little bar and his atelier, where he gave boxing les- 
 sons to the students of the quarter. When he was 
 teaching the manly art, Madame Doerr manipu- 
 lated the shaker. I attended services at Les Han- 
 netons and Maurice's Bar and I strolled through 
 the Musee de Cluny, where I bought postcards of 
 chastity belts and instruments of torture. I read 
 Maupassant in the Pare Monceau. I took in the 
 naughty revues at Parisiana, the Ba-ta-clan, and 
 
 [55] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 the Folies-Bergere. I purchased many English and 
 American novels in the Tauchnitz edition and I 
 discovered a miniature shop in the Rue de Fur- 
 stemberg, where elegant reprints of bawdy eight- 
 eenth century French romances might be procured. 
 I climbed to the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, 
 particularly to observe a chimere which was said to 
 resemble me, and I ascended the Tour Eiffel in an 
 elevator. I consumed hors d'oeuvres at the Bras- 
 serie Universelle. I attended a band concert in the 
 Tuileries Gardens. I dined with Olive Fremstad 
 at the Mercedes and Olive Fremstad dined with 
 me at the Cafe d'Harcourt. I heard Salome at the 
 Chatelet, Richard Strauss conducting, with Emmy 
 Destinn as the protagonist in a modest costume, 
 trimmed with fur, which had been designed, it was 
 announced, by the Emperor of Germany. I dis- 
 covered the Restaurant Cou-Cou, which I have 
 described in The Merry-Go-Round, and I made pil- 
 grimages to the 'Rat Mort, the Nouvelle Athenes, 
 and the Elysee Montmartre, sacred to the memory 
 of George Moore. They appeared to have altered 
 since he confessed as a young man. I stood on a 
 table at the Bal Tabarin and watched the quadrille, 
 the pas de quatre, concluding with the grand ecart, 
 which was once sinister and wicked but which has 
 come, through the portentous solemnity with which 
 tradition has invested it, to have almost a reli- 
 gious significance. I learned to drink Amer Picon, 
 grenadine, and white absinthe. I waited three 
 
 [56] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 hours in the street before Liane de Pougy's hotel 
 in the Rue de la Neva to see that famous beauty 
 emerge to take her drive, and I waited nearly as 
 long at the stage-door of the Opera-Comique for 
 a glimpse of the exquisite Regina Badet. I em- 
 barked on one of the joyous little Seine boats and 
 I went slumming in the Place d'ltalie, La Villette, 
 a suburb associated in the memory with the name 
 of Yvette Guilbert, and Belleville. I saw that very 
 funny farce, Vous n'avez rien a declarer at the 
 Nouveautes. In the Place des Vosges, I admired 
 the old brick houses, among the few that Napoleon 
 and the Baron Haussmann spared in their deracina- 
 tion of Paris. On days when I felt poor, I dined 
 with the cochers at some marchand de vins. On 
 days when I felt rich, I dined with the cocottes at 
 the Cafe de Paris. I examined the collection of 
 impressionist paintings at the house of Monsieur 
 Durand-Ruel, No. 37, Rue de Rome, and the vast 
 accumulation of unfinished sketches for a museum 
 of teratology at the house of Gustave Moreau, No. 
 14, Rue de La Rochefoucauld, room after room 
 of unicorns, Messalinas, muses, magi, Salomes, 
 sphinxes, argonauts, centaurs, mystic flowers, chi- 
 merae, Semeles, hydras, Magdalens griffins, Circes, 
 ticpolongas, and crusaders. I drank tea in the 
 Ceylonese tea-room in the Rue Caumartin, where 
 coffee-hued Orientals with combs in their hair waited 
 on the tables. I gazed longingly into the show- 
 windows of the shops where Toledo cigarette-cases, 
 
 [571 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Bohemian garnets, and Venetian glass goblets were 
 offered for sale. I bought a pair of blue velvet 
 workman's trousers, a beret, and a pair of canvas 
 shoes at Au Pays, 162 Faubourg St. Martin. I 
 often enjoyed my chocolate and omelet at the Cafe 
 de la Regence, where everybody plays chess or 
 checkers and has played chess or checkers for a 
 century or two, and where the actors of the 
 Comedie Frangaise, which is just across the Place, 
 frequently, during a rehearsal, come in their make- 
 up for lunch. I learned the meaning of flic, gigol- 
 ette, maquereau, tapette, and rigolo. I purchased 
 a dirty silk scarf and a pair of Louis XV brass 
 candlesticks, which I still possess, in the Marche du 
 Temple. I tasted babas au rhum, napoleons, and 
 palmiers. I ordered a suit, which I never wore, 
 from a French tailor for 150 francs. I bought 
 some Brittany ware in an old shop back of Notre- 
 Dame. I admired the fifteenth century apocalyptic 
 glass in the Sainte-Chapelle and the thirteenth cen- 
 tury glass in the Cathedral at Chartres. I learned 
 that demi-tasse is an American word, that Sparkling 
 Burgundy is an American drink, and that I did not 
 like French beer. I stayed away from the recep- 
 tions at the American embassy. I was devout in 
 Saint Sulpice, the Russian Church in the Rue Daru, 
 Saint Germain-des-Pres, Saint Eustache, Sacre-Cceur, 
 and Saint Jacques, and I attended a wedding, at the 
 Madeleine, which reminded me that Bel Ami had 
 been married there. I passed pleasant evenipgs 
 
 [58] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 at the Boite a Fursy, on the Rue PIgalle, and Les 
 Noctambules, on the Rue Champollion. I learned 
 to speak easily of Mayol, Eve Lavalliere, Dranem, 
 Ernest la Jeunesse, Colette Willy, Max Dearly, 
 Charles-Henry Hirsch, Lantelme, Andre Gide, and 
 Jeanne Bloch. I saw Clemenceau, Edward VII, 
 and the King of Greece. I nibbled toasted scones 
 at a tea-shop on the Rue de Rivoli. I met the 
 Steins. In short, you will observe that I did every- 
 thing that young Americans do when they go to 
 Paris. 
 
 On a certain afternoon, early in June, I found my- 
 self sitting at, a table in the Cafe de la Paix with En- 
 glewood Jennings and Frederic Richards, two of my 
 new friends. Richards is a famous person today 
 and even then he was somebody. He had a habit of 
 sketching, wherever he might be, on a sheet of paper 
 at a desk at the Hotel Continental or on a program 
 at the theatre. He drew quick and telling likenesses 
 in a few lines of figures or objects that pleased him, 
 absent-mindedly signed them, and then tossed them 
 aside. This habit of his was so well-known that he 
 was almost invariably followed by admirers of his 
 work, who snapped up his sketches as soon as he had 
 disappeared. I saw a good collection of them, 
 drawn on the stationery of hotels from Hamburg to 
 Taormina, and even on meat paper, go at auction in 
 London a year or so ago for £i,ooo. When I knew 
 him, Richards was a blond giant, careless of every- 
 
 [59] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 thing except his appearance. Jennings was an 
 American socialist from Harvard who was ranging 
 Europe to interview Jean Jaures, Giovanni Papini, 
 and Karl Liebknecht. He was exceedingly eccentric 
 in his dress, had steel-grey eyes, the longest, sharpest 
 nose I have ever seen, and wore glasses framed in 
 tortoise-shell. 
 
 It had become my custom to pass two hours of 
 every afternoon on this busy corner, first ordering 
 tea with two brioches, and later a succession of 
 absinthes, which \ drank with sugar and water. In 
 time I learned to do without the sugar, just as even- 
 tually I might have learned, in all probability, to do 
 without the water, had I not been compelled to do 
 without the absinthe.^ I was enjoying my third 
 pernod while my companions were dallying with 
 whisky and soda. We were gossiping, and where 
 in the world can one gossip to better advantage than 
 on this busy corner, where every passerby offers a 
 new opportunity? But, occasionally, the conversa- 
 tion slipped into alien channels. 
 
 How can the artist, Jennings, for instance, was 
 asking, know that he is inspired, when neither the 
 public nor the critics recognize inspiration? The 
 question is equally interesting asked backwards. As 
 a matter of fact, the artist is sometimes conscious 
 that he is doing one thing, while he is acclaimed and 
 appreciated for doing another. Columbus did not 
 
 ^ Since absinthe has come under the ban in Paris, I am informed 
 that the correct form of approach is to ask not for a pernod, but 
 for un distingue. 
 
 [60] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 set out to discover America. Yes, there is often an 
 accidental quality in great art and oftener still there 
 is an accidental appreciation of it. In one sense art 
 is curiously bound up with its own epoch, but 
 appreciation or depreciation of its relation to 
 that epoch may come in another generation. The 
 judgment of posterity may be cruel to contemporary 
 genius. In a few years we may decide that Richard 
 Strauss is only another Liszt and Stravinsky, an- 
 other Rubinstein. 
 
 Inspiration ! Richards shrugged his broad shep- 
 herd's plaid shoulders. Inspiration! Artists, crit- 
 ics, public, clever men, and philistines monotonously 
 employ that word, but it seems to me that art is cre- 
 ated through memory out of experience, combined 
 with a capacity for feeling and expressing experi- 
 ence, and depending on the artist's physical condi- 
 tion at the time when he is at work. 
 
 Are you, I asked, one of those who believes that 
 a novelist must be unfaithful to his wife before he 
 can write a fine novel, that a girl should have an 
 amour with a prize-fighter before she can play 
 Juliet, and that a musician must be a pederast be- 
 fore he can construct a great symphony? 
 Richards laughed. 
 
 No, he replied, I am not, but that theory is very 
 popular. How many times I have heard it thun- 
 dered forth ! As a matter of fact, there is a certain 
 amount of truth in it, the germ, indeed, of a great 
 truth, for some emotional experience is essential to 
 
 [6i] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 the artist, but why particularize? Each as he may! 
 
 I know a man, I went on, who doesn't believe that 
 experience has anything to do with art at all. He 
 thinks art is a matter of arrangement and order and 
 form. 
 
 His art then, broke in Jennings, is epistemologi- 
 cal rather than inspirational. 
 
 But what does he arrange? queried Richards. 
 Surely incidents and emotions. 
 
 Not at all. He arranges objects, abstractions: 
 colours and reaping-machines, perfumes and toys. 
 
 Long ago I read a book like that, Jennings went 
 on. It was called Imperial Purple and it purported 
 to* be a history of the Roman Empire or the Roman 
 Emperors. It was a strangely amusing book, 
 rather like a clot of blood on a daisy or a faded 
 pomegranate flower in a glass of buttermilk. 
 
 At this period, I avidly collected labels. Who 
 wrote it? I asked. 
 
 I don't remember, but your description of your 
 friend recalls the book. What is the name of your 
 friend's book? 
 
 He hasn't written a book yet. 
 
 I see. 
 
 He is about to write it. He knows what he 
 wants to do and he is collecting the materials. He 
 is arranging the form. 
 
 What's it about? Jennings appeared to be inter- 
 ested. 
 
 Oh, it's about things. Whiffle told me, I suppose 
 [62] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 he was joking, that' it would be about three hundred 
 pages. 
 
 Richards set down his glass and in his face I 
 recognized the portentous expression of a man 
 about to be delivered of an epigram. It came: I 
 dislike pine-apples, women with steatopygous 
 figures, and men with a gift for paronomasia. 
 
 Jennings ignored this ignoble interruption. 
 George Moore has written somewhere, he said, 
 that if an author talks about what he is going to 
 write, usually he writes it, but when he talks about 
 how he is going to write it, that is the end of the 
 matter. I wonder if this is true? I have never 
 thought much about it before but I think perhaps 
 it is. I think your friend 'will never write his 
 book. 
 
 Richards interrupted again: Look at that ma- 
 quereau. That's the celebrated French actor who 
 went to America after a brilliant career in France 
 in the more lucrative of his two professions, which 
 ended in a woman's suicide. His history was 
 well-known to the leading woman of the company 
 with which he was to play in America, but she had 
 never met him. At the first rehearsal, when they 
 we're introducdd, 'she remarked, Monsieur, la 
 connaissance est deja faite! Turning aside, he 
 boasted to his male companions. La gueuse ! Avant 
 dix jours je I'aurai enfilee! In a week he had made 
 good his threat and in two weeks the poor woman 
 was without a pearl. 
 
 [63] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 He should meet Arabella Munson, said Jen- 
 nings. She is always willing to pay her way. She 
 fell in love with an Italian sculptor, or at any rate 
 selected him as a suitable father for a prospective 
 child. When she became pregnant, the young man 
 actually fell ill with fear at the thought that he 
 might be compelled to support both Arabella and 
 the baby. He took to his bed and sent his mother 
 as an ambassadress for Arabella's mercy. Chok- 
 ing with sobs, the old woman demanded what 
 would be required of her son. My good woman, 
 replied Arabella, dry your tears. I make it a point 
 of honour never to take a penny from the fathers 
 of my children. Not only do I support the chil- 
 dren, often I support their fathers as well ! 
 
 It was sufficiently warm. I lazily sipped my 
 absinthe. The terrasse was crowded and there 
 was constant movement; as soon as a table was 
 relinquished, another group sat down in the empty 
 chairs. Ephra Vogelsang, a pretty American 
 singer, had just arrived with a pale young blond 
 boy, whom I identified as Marcel Moszkowski, the 
 son of the Polish composer. Presently, another 
 table was taken by Vance Thompson and Ernest 
 la Jeunesse, whose fat face was sprinkled with pim- 
 ples and whose fat fingers were encased to the 
 knuckles in heavy oriental rings. I bowed to Ephra 
 and to Vance Thompson. On the sidewalk marched 
 the eternal procession of newsboys, calling La Pa 
 — trie I La Pa — trie! so like a phrase at the 
 
 [64] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 beginning of the second act of Carmen, old gentle- 
 men, nursemaids, painted boys, bankers, Ameri- 
 cans, Germans, Italians, South Americans, Rouma- 
 nians, and Neo-Kaffirs. The carriages, the motors, 
 the buses, formed a perfect maze on the boulevard. 
 In one of the vehicles I caught a glimpse of an- 
 other acquaintance. 
 
 That's Lily Hampton, I noted. She is the 
 only woman who ever made Toscanini smile. 
 You must understand, to appreciate the story, that 
 she is highly respectable, the Mrs. Kendal of the 
 opera stage, and the mother of eight or nine chil- 
 dren. She never was good at languages, speaks 
 them all with a rotten accent and a complete igno- 
 rance of their idioms. On this occasion, she was 
 singing in Italian but she was unable to converse 
 with the director in his native tongue and, conse- 
 quently, he was giving her directions in French. He 
 could not, however, make her understand what he 
 wanted her to do. Again and again he repeated 
 his request. At last she seemed to gather his mean- 
 ing, that she was to turn her back to the footlights. 
 What she asked him, however, ran like this: Est-ce 
 que vous voulez mon derriere, maestro? 
 
 Now there was a diversion, an altercation at the 
 further end of the terrasse, and a fluttering of feath- 
 ered, flowered, and smooth-haired and bald heads 
 turned in that direction. In the midst of this tur- 
 bulence, I heard my name being called and, looking 
 up, beheld Peter Whifile waving from the imperiale 
 
 [65] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 of a bus. I beckoned him to descend and join us 
 and this he contrived to do after the bus had trav- 
 elled several hundred yards on its way towards the 
 Madeleine and I had abandoned the idea of seeing 
 him return. But the interval gave me time to in- 
 form Richards and Jennings that this was the young 
 author of whom I had spoken. Presently he came 
 along, strolling languidly down the walk. He 
 looked a bit tired, but he was very smartly dressed, 
 with a gardenia as a boutonniere, and he seemed to 
 vibrate with a feverish kind of jauntiness. 
 
 I am glad to see you, he cried. I've been meaning 
 to look you up. In fact if I hadn't met you I 
 should have looked you up tonight. I'm burning 
 for adventures. What are you doing? 
 
 I explained that I was doing nothing at all and 
 introduced him to my friends. Jennings had an 
 engagement. He explained that he had to talk at 
 some socialist meeting, called our waiter, paid for 
 his pile of saucers, and took his departure. Rich- 
 ards confessed that he was burning too. 
 
 What shall we do? asked the artist. 
 
 There's plenty to do, announced Peter, con- 
 fidently; almost too much for one night. But let's 
 hurry over to Serapi's, before he closes his shop. 
 
 We asked no questions. We paid our saucers, 
 rose, and strolled along with Peter across the Place 
 in front of the Opera and down the Rue de la 
 Chaussee-d'Antin until we stood before a tiny shop, 
 the window of which was filled with bottles of 
 
 [66] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 perfume and photographs of actresses and other 
 great ladies of various worlds and countries, all in- 
 scribed with flamboyant encomiums, relating to the 
 superior merits of Serapi's wares and testifying to 
 the superlative esteem in which Serapi himself was 
 held. 
 
 Led by Peter, in the highest exuberance of nervous 
 excitement but still, I thought, looking curiously 
 tired, we passed within the portal. We found our- 
 selves in a long narrow room, surrounded on two 
 sides by glass cases, in which, on glass shelves, were 
 arranged the products of the perfumer's art. At 
 the back, there was a cashier's desk without an at- 
 tendant; at the front, the show-window. In the 
 centre of the room, the focus of a group of admiring 
 women, stood a tawny-skinned Oriental — perhaps 
 concretely an Arabian — with straight black hair 
 and soft black eyes. His physique was magnificent 
 and he wore a morning coat. Obviously, this was 
 Serapi himself. 
 
 Peter, who had now arrived at a state in which he 
 could with difficulty contain his highly wrought emo- 
 tion — and it was at this very moment that I began 
 to suspect him of collecting amusements along with 
 his other objects — , in a whisper confirmed my con- 
 jecture. The ladies, delicately fashioned Tanagra 
 statuettes in tulle and taffeta and chiffon artifices 
 from the smartest shops, in hats on which bloomed 
 all the posies of the season and posies which went 
 beyond any which had ever bloomed, were much too 
 
 [67] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 attractive to be duchesses, although right here I must 
 pause to protest that even duchesses sometimes 
 have their good points: the Duchess of Talleyrand 
 has an ankle and the Duchess of Marlborough, a 
 throat. The picture, to be recalled later when 
 Mina Loy gave me her lovely drawing of Eros 
 being spoiled by women, was so pleasant, withal 
 slightly ridiculous, that Richards and I soon caught 
 thd infection of Peter's scarcely masked laughter 
 and our eyes, too, danced. We made some small 
 pretence of examining the jars and bottles of Sche- 
 herazade, Ambre, and Chypre in the cases, but only 
 a small pretence was necessary, as the ladies and 
 their Arab paid not the slightest attention to us. 
 
 At length, following a brief apology, Serapi broke 
 through the ranks and disappeared through a door- 
 way behind the desk at the back of the room. As the 
 curtains lifted, I caught a glimpse of a plain, bus- 
 iness-like woman, too dignified to be a mere clerk, 
 obviously the essential wife of the man of genius. 
 He was gone only a few seconds but during those 
 seconds the chatter ceased abruptly. It was ap- 
 parent thati the ladies had come singly. They were 
 not acquainted with one another. As Serapi re- 
 entered, they chirped again, peeped and twittered 
 their twiddling tune, the words of which were Ah ! 
 and Oh! In one hand, he carried a small crystal 
 phial to which a blower was attached. He ex- 
 plained that the perfume was his latest creation, an 
 hermetic confusion of the dangers and ardours of 
 
 [68] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Eastern life and death, the concentrated essence of 
 the unperfumed flowers of Africa, the odour of 
 their colours, he elaborated, wild desert existence, 
 the mouldering tombs of the kings of Egypt, the 
 decaying laces of a dozen Byzantine odalisques, a 
 fragrant breath or two from the hanging gardens 
 of Babylon, and a faint suggestion of the perspi- 
 ration of Istar. It is my reconstruction, the artist 
 concluded, of the perfume which Ruth employed to 
 attract Boaz ! The recipe is an invention based on 
 a few half-illegible lines which I discovered in the 
 beauty-table book of an ancient queen of Georgia, 
 perhaps that very Thamar whose portrait has been 
 painted in seductive music by the Slav composer, 
 Balakireff. 
 
 The ladies gasped. The fascinating Arab pressed 
 the rubber bulb and blew the cloying vapours into 
 their faces, adjuring them, at the same time, to 
 think of Thebes or Haroun-Al-Raschid or the pre- 
 Adamite sultans. The room was soon redolent with 
 a heavy vicious odour which seemed to reach the 
 brain through the olfactory nerves and to affect the 
 will like ether. 
 
 He is the only man alive today, whispered Peter, 
 not without reverence, who has taken Flaubert's 
 phrase seriously. He passes his nights dreaming 
 of larger flowers and stranger perfumes. I believe 
 that he could invent a new vice ! 
 
 Serapi went the round of the circle with his mystic 
 spray, and the twitterings of the ladies softened to 
 
 [69] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 ecstatic coos, like the little coos of dismay and de- 
 light of female cats who feel the call of pleasure, 
 when suddenly the phial fell from the Arab's un- 
 clasped hand, the hand itself dropped to his side, the 
 brown skin became a vivid green, all tension left his 
 body, and he crumbled into a heap on the floor. The 
 ladies shrieked; there was a delicious, susurrous, 
 rainbow swirl and billow of tulle and taffeta and 
 chiffon; there was a frantic nodding and waving of 
 sweet-peas, red roses, dandelions, and magenta bell- 
 flowers ; and eight pairs of white-gloved arms circled 
 rhythmically in the air. The effect was worthy of 
 the Russian Ballet and, had Fokine been present, 
 it would doubtless have been perpetuated to the sub- 
 sequent enjoyment of audiences at Covent Garden 
 and the Paris Opera. 
 
 Now, an assured and measured step was heard. 
 From a room in the rear, the calm, practical pres- 
 ence entered, bearing a glass of water. The ladies 
 moved a little to one side as she knelt before the 
 recumbent figure and sprinkled the green face. 
 Serapi almost immediately began to manifest signs 
 of recovery; his muscles began to contract and his 
 face regained its natural colour. We made our 
 way into the open air and the warm western sun- 
 light of the late afternoon. Peter was choking 
 with laughter. I was chuckling. Richards was too 
 astonished to express himself. 
 
 Life is sometimes, artistic, Peter was saying. 
 Sometimes, if you give it a chance and look for 
 
 [70] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 them, it makes patterns, beautiful patterns. But 
 Serapi excelled himself today. He has never done 
 anything like this before. I shall never go back 
 there again. It would be an anticlimax. 
 
 We dined somewhere, where I have forgotten. 
 It is practically the only detail of that evening which 
 has escaped my memory. I remember clearly how 
 Richards sat listening in silent amazement to Peter's 
 arguments and decisions on dreams and circum- 
 stances, erected on bewilderingly slender hypotheses. 
 He built up, one after another, the most gorgeous 
 and fantastic temples of theory; five minutes later 
 he demolished them with a sledge-hammer or a 
 feather. It was gay talk, fancy wafted from no- 
 where, unimportant, and vastly entertaining. In- 
 deed, who has ever talked like Peter? 
 
 We seemed to be in his hands. At any rate 
 neither Richards nor I offered any suggestions. 
 We waited to hear him tell us what we were to do. 
 About 9 o'clock, while we were sipping our cognac, 
 he informed us that our next destination would be 
 La Cigale, a music hall on the outer circle of the 
 boulevards in Montmartre, where there was to be 
 seen a revue called, Nue Cocotte, of which I still 
 preserve the poster, drawn by Maes Lai'a, depicting 
 a fat duenna, fully dressed, wearing a red wig and 
 adorned with pearls, and carrying a lorgnette, a 
 more plausible female, nude, but for a hat, veil, 
 feather boa, and a pair of high boots with yellow 
 tops over which protrude an inch or two of blue 
 
 [71] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 sock, and an English comic, in a round hat, a yellow 
 checked suit, bearing binoculars, all three astride a 
 remarkably vivid red hobby horse whose feet are 
 planted in the; attitude lof bucking. The comic 
 grasps the bobbed black tail of the nag in one hand 
 and the long yellow braid of the female in the other. 
 
 The cocottes of the period were wont to wear 
 very large bell-shaped hats. Lily Elsie, who was 
 appearing in The Merry Widow in London, fol- 
 lowed this fashion and, as a natural consequence, 
 these head-decorations were soon dubbed, probably 
 by an American, Merry Widow hats. Each suc- 
 ceeding day, some girl would appear on the boule- 
 vards surmounted by a greater monstrosity than had 
 been seen before. Discussion in regard to the sub- 
 ject, editorial and epistolary, raged at the moment 
 in the Paris journals. 
 
 Once we were seated in our stalls on the night 
 in question, it became evident that the hat of the 
 cocotte in front of Peter completely obscured his 
 view of the stage. He bent forward and politely 
 requested her to remove it. She turned and ex- 
 plained with equal politeness and a most entrancing 
 smile that she could not remove her hat without 
 removing her hair, surely an impossibility. Mon- 
 sieur would understand. Monsieur understood per- 
 fectly but, under the circumstances, would Madame 
 have any objection if Monsieur created a dis- 
 turbance? Madame, her eyes shining with mirth, 
 
 [72] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 replied that she would not have the tiniest objection, 
 that above all else in life she adored fracases. 
 They were of a delight to her. At this juncture in 
 the interchange of compliments the curtain rose dis- 
 closing a row of females in mauve dresses, bearing 
 baskets of pink, roses. Presently the compere 
 appeared. 
 
 Chapeau! cried, Peter, in the most stentorian 
 voice I have ever heard him assume. Chapeau ! 
 
 The spectators turned to look at the valiant 
 American. Several heads nodded sympathy and 
 approval. 
 
 Chapeau! Peter called again, pointing to the 
 adorable little lady in front of him, who was enjoy- 
 ing the attention she had created. Her escort, 
 on the other hand, squirmed a little. 
 
 The cry was now taken up by other unfortunate 
 gentlemen in the stalls, who were placed in like 
 situations but who had not had the courage to begin 
 the battle. The din, indeed, soon gained such a de- 
 gree of dynamic force that not one word of what was 
 being said on the stage, not one note of the music, 
 could be distinguished. Gesticulating figures stood 
 up in every part of the theatre, shrieking and franti- 
 cally waving canes. The compere advanced to the 
 footlights and appeared to be addressing us, much 
 in the manner of an actor attempting to stem a fire 
 stampede in a playhouse, but, of course, he was in- 
 audible. As he stepped back, a sudden lull sue- 
 
 [73] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 ceeded to the tumult. Peter took advantage of this 
 happy quiet to interject: Comme Melisande, je ne 
 suis pas heureux ici ! 
 
 The spectators roared and screamed; the house 
 rocked with their mirth. Even the mimes were 
 amused. Now, escorted by two of his secretaries 
 in elaborate coats decorated with much gold braid, 
 the manager of the theatre appeared, paraded sol- 
 emnly down the aisle to our seats and, with a bow, 
 offered us a box, which we accepted at once and in 
 which we received homage for the remainder of the 
 evening. At last we could see the stage and enjoy 
 the blond Idette Bremonval, the brunette Jane 
 Merville, the comic pranks of Vilbert and Prince, 
 and the Festival of the Deesse Raison. 
 
 The performance concluded, the pretty lady 
 who had not removed her hat, commissioned her re- 
 luctant escort to inquire if we would not step out for 
 a drink with them. The escort was not ungracious 
 but, obviously, he lacked enthusiasm. The lady, 
 just as obviously, had taken a great fancy to Peter. 
 We went to the Rat Mort, where we sat on the 
 terrasse, the lady gazing steadily at her new hero 
 and laughing immoderately at his every sally. Pe- 
 ter, however, quickly showed that he was restless 
 and presently he rose, eager to seek new diversions. 
 We hailed a passing fiacre and jumped in, while the 
 lady waved us pathetic adieux. Her companion 
 seemed distinctly relieved by our departure. Peter 
 was now in the highest animal spirits. All traces of 
 
 [74] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 fatigue had fled from his face. The horse which 
 drew our fiacre was a poor, worn-out brute, like so 
 many others in Paris, and the cocher, unlike so many 
 others in Paris, was kind-hearted and made no effort 
 to hasten his pace. We were crawling down the hill. 
 
 I will race you! cried Peter, leaping out (he told 
 me afterwards that he had once undertaken a similar 
 exploit with a Bavarian railway train) . 
 
 Meet me at the Olympia Bar! he cried, dashing 
 on ahead. 
 
 The cocher grunted, shook his head, mumbled a 
 few unintelligible words to the horse, and we drove 
 on more slowly than before. Peter, indeed, was 
 soon out of sight. 
 
 Ten minutes later, as we entered the cafe under 
 the Olympia Music Hall, we noted with some 
 surprise that the stools in front of the bar, on which 
 the cocottes usually sat with their feet on the rungs, 
 their trains dragging the floor, were empty. The 
 crowd had gathered at the other end of the long hall 
 and the centre of the crowd was Peter. He was 
 holding a reception, a reception of cocottes ! 
 
 Ah! Good evening, Mademoiselle Rolandine de 
 Maupreaux, he was saying as he extended his 
 hand, I am delighted to greet you here tonight. 
 And if this isn't dear little Mademoiselle Celes- 
 tine Sainte-Resistance and her charming friend. 
 Mademoiselle Edmee Donnez-Moi ! And Camille ! 
 Camille la Grande! Quelle chance de vous voir! 
 Et Madame, votre mere, elle va bien? Et 
 
 [75] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Gisele la Belle ! Mais vous avez oublie de m'ecrire ! 
 Do not, I pray you, neglect me again. And the 
 charming Hortense des Halles et de chez Maxim, 
 and the particularly adorable Abelardine de Belle- 
 ville et de la Place d'ltalie. Votre sosur va mi- 
 eux, j'espere. Then, drawing us in, Permettez- 
 moi, mesdemoiselles, de vous presenter mes amis, le 
 Due de Rochester et le Comte de Cedar Rapids. 
 Specialement, mesdemoiselles, permettez-moi de vous 
 recommander le Comte de Cedar Rapids. 
 
 He had never, of course, seen any of them be- 
 fore, but they liked it. 
 
 Richards grumbled. It's bloody silly, but he was 
 laughing harder than I was. 
 
 I heard one of the girls say, Le jeune Americain 
 est f ou ! 
 
 And the antiphony followed, Mais il est char- 
 mant. 
 
 Later, another remarked, Je crois que je vais lui 
 demander de me faire une politesse ! 
 
 Overhearing which, Peter rejoined, Avec plaisir, 
 Mademoiselle. Quel genre? 
 
 It was all gay, irresponsible and meaningless, 
 perhaps, but gay. We sat at tables and drank and 
 smoked and spun more fantasies and quaint conceits 
 until a late hour, and that night I learned that even 
 French cocottes will occasionally waste their time, 
 provided they are sufficiently diverted. Towards 
 four o'clock in the morning, however, I began to 
 note a change in Peter's deportment and demeanour. 
 
 [76] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 There were moments when he sat silent, a little 
 aloof, seemingly the prey of a melancholy regret, 
 too well aware, perhaps, that the atmosphere he 
 had himself created would suck him into its merry 
 hurricane. I caught the lengthening shadows under 
 his eyes and the premonitory hollows in his cheeks. 
 And this time, therefore, it was I who suggested 
 departure. Peter acceded, but with an air of wist- 
 fulness as if even the effort of moving from an un- 
 comfortable situation were painful to him. Rising, 
 we kissed our hands to the band of sirens, who all 
 pressed forward like the flower maidens of Parsifal 
 and with equal success. Three of the pretty ladies 
 accompanied us upstairs to the sidewalk and every 
 one of the three kissed Peter on the mouth, but not 
 one of them offered to kiss Richards or me. 
 
 We engaged another fiacre and drove up the 
 Champs-Elysees. Now, it was Richards and I who 
 had become vibrant. Peter was silent and old and 
 apart. The dawn, the beautiful indigo dawn of 
 Paris was upon us. The cool trees were our only 
 companions in the deserted streets until, near the 
 great grey arch, we began to encounter the wagons 
 laden with vegetables, bound for the Halles, wagons 
 on which carrots, parsnips, turnips, onions, radishes, 
 and heads of lettuce were stacked in orderly and in- 
 tricate patterns. The horses, the reins drooping 
 loosely over their backs, familiar with the route, 
 marched slowly down the wide avenue, while the 
 drivers in their blue smocks, perched high on the 
 
 [77] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 fronts of their carts, slept. We drove past them up 
 the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne into the broadening 
 daylight. On Peter Whiffle's countenance were 
 painted the harsh grey lines of misery and despair. 
 
 [78I 
 
Chapter V 
 
 Notwithstanding that Peter occupied an undue 
 share of my waking thoughts for the next few days, 
 perhaps a week went by before I found it convenient 
 to seek him out again. One afternoon, I shook my- 
 self free from other entertainments and made my 
 way in a taxi-auto to the apartment in the street near 
 the Rue Blanche. The concierge, who was knitting 
 at a little window adjacent to the door, informed me 
 that to the best of her behef Monsieur Whiffle was 
 at home. Venturing to operate the ascenseur alone, 
 I was somewhat proud of my success in reaching the 
 fourth floor without accident. Standing before 
 Peter's door, I could hear the sound of a woman's 
 voice, singing Manon's farewell to her little table : 
 
 Adieu, notre petite table, 
 
 Qui nous reunit si souvent! 
 
 Adieu, notre petite table, 
 Si grande pour nous cependant. 
 
 On tient, c'est inimaginable, 
 Si peu de place en se serrant. 
 
 The voice was a somewhat uncertain soprano with a 
 too persistent larmoyante quality. When it ceased, 
 I pressed the button and the door was opened by 
 
 [79] 
 
Peter. Whiffle 
 
 Peter, in violet and grey striped pyjamas and Jap- 
 anese straw sandals with purple velvet strajis 
 across his toes. 
 
 Van Vechten ! he cried. It's you ! We've been 
 home all day. Clara's been singing. 
 
 So the voice was Clara's. She sat, indeed, on the 
 long piano bench — the piano was an acquisition since 
 my last visit — •, also slightly clad. She was wearing, 
 to be exact, a crepe de chine night-dress. Her feet 
 were bare and her hair was loose but, as the day was 
 cool, she had thrown across her shoulders a black 
 Manila shawl, embroidered with huge flowers of 
 Chinese vermilion and magenta. 
 
 How are you, Mr. Van Vechten? she asked, ex- 
 tending her hand. I'll get some tea. Her manner, 
 I noted, was more ingratiating than it had been the 
 day we met at Martha's. 
 
 Nothing whatever was said about the situation, if 
 there was a situation. For my part, I may say that I 
 was entirely unaccustomed to walking into an apart- 
 ment at five o'clock in the afternoon and discovering 
 the host in pyjamas, conversing intimately with a 
 lightly-clad lady, who, a week earlier, I had every 
 reason to believe, had been only a casual acquaint- 
 ance. The room, too, had been altered. The 
 piano, a Pleyel baby grand, occupied a space near the 
 window and George Moore was sitting on it, finding 
 it an excellent point of vantage from which to scan 
 the happenings in the outside world. Naturally his 
 back was turned and he did not get up, taking his air 
 
 [80] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 of indifference from Peter and Clara or, perhaps, 
 they had taken their air from him. The note-books 
 had disappeared, although a pile of miscellaneous 
 volumes, on top of which I spied Jean Lombard's 
 I'Agonie, still occupied the corner. The table was 
 covered with a cloth and the remains of a lunch, 
 which had evidently consisted of veal kidneys, toast, 
 and coffee. I detected the odour of Coeur de 
 Jeannette and presently I descried a brule-parfum, a 
 tiny jade dragon, valiantly functioning. A pair of 
 long white suede gloves and a black hat with a grey 
 feather decorated the clock and candelabra on the 
 mantelshelf, and a black and white check skirt, a 
 pair of black silk stockings, and low patent-leather 
 lady's shoes in trees were also to be seen, lying over a 
 chair and on the floor. 
 
 Peter, however, attempted no explanations. In- 
 deed, none was required, except perhaps for a cate- 
 chumen. He began to talk immediately, in an easy 
 conversational tone, evidently trying to cover my 
 confusion. His manner reminded me that an intelli- 
 gent Negro, who had written many books and met 
 many people, had once told me that he was always 
 obliged to spend at least ten minutes putting new 
 white acquaintances at their ease, making them feel 
 that it was unnecessary for them to put him at his 
 ease. It is a curious fact that the man in an em- 
 barrassing situation is seldom as embarrassed as the 
 man who breaks in upon it. 
 
 Peter asked many questions about what I had been 
 
 [8i] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 doing, inquired about Richards, whom he avowed 
 he liked — they had not, I afterwards recalled, 
 exchanged more than three words — , and concluded 
 with a sort of rhapsody on Clara's voice, which he 
 pronounced magnificently suited to the new music. 
 
 Presently Clara herself came back into the room, 
 bearing a tray with a pot of tea, toast and petits 
 fours. She placed her burden on the piano bench 
 while she quickly swept the debris from the table. 
 Then she transferred the tea service to the unoccu- 
 pied space and we drew up our chairs. 
 
 Where have you been? asked Clara. Martha 
 says she hasn't seen you. Will you have one lump 
 or two ? 
 
 Two. You know, when one comes to Paris for 
 the first time — 
 
 I took Van Vechten about a bit the other night, 
 Peter broke in. I think I forgot to tell you. 
 We've had so much to talk about. . . . 
 
 Clara interrupted the shadow of an anserine 
 smile to nibble a pink cake. Her legs protruded at 
 an odd angle and I caught myself looking at her 
 thick ankles. 
 
 You're looking at my legs ! she exclaimed. You 
 mustn't do that ! I have very ugly legs. 
 
 But they're very sympathetic! cried Peter. 
 Don't you think they're sympathetic. Van Vechten? 
 
 I assured him that I did and we went on talking, 
 a little constrainedly, I thought, about nothing in 
 particular, until, at length, Peter asked Clara if she 
 
 [82] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 would sing again. Without waiting for a reply, he 
 seated himself before the piano and began the pre- 
 lude to Manon's air in the Cours la Reine scene and 
 Clara, without rising, sang : 
 
 Je marche sur tous les chemins 
 Aussi bien qu'une souveraine; 
 On s'incline, on baise mes mains, 
 Car par la beaute je suis reine! 
 
 Now her voice had lost the larmoyante quality, 
 which evidently was a part of her bag of tricks for 
 more emotional song, but it had acquired a hard bril- 
 liancy which was even more disagreeable to the ear. 
 She had also, I remarked, no great regard for the 
 pitch and little, if any, expressiveness. Neverthe- 
 less, Peter wheeled around, after an accompaniment 
 which was even less sympathetic to me than Clara's 
 legs, to exclaim: 
 
 Superb ! I want her to study Isolde. 
 
 Peter doesn't understand, explained Clara, that 
 you must begin with the lighter parts. If I sang 
 Isolde now I would have no voice in five years. 
 Isolde will come later. I can sing Isolde after I 
 have lost my voice. My first roles will be Manon, 
 Violetta, and Juliette. It's old stuff, perhaps, but it 
 doesn't injure the voice, and the voice is my first con- 
 sideration. Now I wouldn't sing Salome if they 
 offered me 500 francs a night. 
 
 Did you hear about Adelina Patti ? asked Peter. 
 She is a good Catholic. She went to a performance 
 
 [83] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 of Salome at the Chatelet and while Destinn was os- 
 culating the head of Jochanaan she dropped to her 
 knees in her loge and began to pray 1 
 
 I don't blame her, said Clara. It's rotten and 
 immoral, Salome — not the play, I don't mean that, 
 but the music, rotten, immoral music, ruinous to the 
 voice. Patti was probably praying God for another 
 Rossini. Strauss's music will steal ten years from 
 Destinn's career. 
 
 Peter eyed her with adoration. After a few 
 more remarks, I made my departure, both of them 
 urging me to come again at any time. Peter had 
 not said one word about his writing, I reflected, as I 
 walked down the stairs, and he had been very exag- 
 gerated in his praise of Clara's meagre talents. 
 
 And I did not go back. I did not see Peter again 
 that summer; I did not see him again, in fact, for 
 nearly six years. My further adventures, which in- 
 cluded a trip to London, to Munich, where I at- 
 tended the Wagner and Mozart festivals, to Hol- 
 land and Belgium, were sufficiently diverting but, as 
 they have no bearing on Peter's history, I shall not 
 relate them now. They will fall into their proper 
 chapters in my autobiography, which Alfred A. 
 Knopf will publish in two volumes in the fall of 
 1936. 
 
 Although I did not learn the facts I am about to 
 catalogue until a much later date — some of them, 
 indeed, not until after Peter's death — this seems as 
 good a place as any to tell what I know of his early 
 
 [84] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 life. He was bom June 5, 1885, in Toledo, Ohio. 
 He never told his age to any one and I only discov- 
 ered it after his death. If an inquiry were made 
 concerning it, it was his custom to counter with an- 
 other question: How old do you think I am? and 
 then to add one year to the reply, thus insuring 
 credence. So I have heard him give himself ages 
 varying from eighteen to forty-five, but he was only 
 thirty- four when he died in 19 19. 
 
 His father was cashier in a bank, a straight, se- 
 rious, plain sort of man,, of the kind that is a prop to 
 a small town, looked up to and respected, asked 
 whether an election will have an effect on stock val- 
 ues, and whether it is better to illuminate one's 
 house with gas or electricity. His mother was a 
 small woman with a pleasant face and red hair 
 which she parted in the centre. Kindliness she oc- 
 casionally carried almost to the point of silliness. 
 She was somewhat garrulous, too, but she was well- 
 read, not at all ignorant, and at surprising moments 
 gave evidence of possessing a small stock of common 
 sense. I think Peter inherited a good deal of his 
 quality from his mother, who was a Fotheringay of 
 West Chester, Pennsylvania. I met her for the 
 first time soon after her husband's death. She was 
 wearing, in addition to a suitable mourning garment, 
 five chains of Chinese beads and seemed moderately 
 depressed. 
 
 Peter's resemblance to Buridan's donkey (it will 
 be remembered that the poor beast wavered between 
 
 [85] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 the hay and the water until he starved to death) be- 
 gan with his very birth. He could not, indeed, de- 
 cide whether he would be born or not. The family 
 physician, by the aid of science and the knife, decided 
 the matter for him. Soon thereafter he often hes- 
 itated between the milk-bottle and the breast. 
 There was, doubtless, a certain element of restless- 
 ness and curiosity connected with this vacillation, a 
 desire to miss nothing in life. It Is possible that the 
 root of this aggressive instinct might have been de- 
 racinated but Mrs. Whiffle, with a foresense of the 
 decrees of the most modern motherhood, held no 
 brief for suppressed desires. Baby Peter was al- 
 ways permitted to choose, at least nearly always, and 
 so, as he grew older, his mania developed accord- 
 ingly. A decision actually caused him physical pain, 
 often made him definitely ill. He would pause In- 
 terminably before two toys In a shop, or at any rate 
 until his mother bought both of them for him. He 
 could never decide whether to go in or go out, 
 whether to play horse or to cut out pictures. His 
 mother has told me that on one occasion she discov- 
 ered this precocious child (at the age of twelve) In 
 the library of a Toledo bibliophile (she was in the 
 house as a luncheon guest) with the Sonnets of Pie- 
 tro Aretino In one hand and Fanny Hill In the other. 
 He could not make up his mind from which he would 
 derive the most pleasure. In this Instance, his ma- 
 ternal parent Intervened and took both books away 
 from him. 
 
 [86] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Otherwise, aside from various slight illnesses, 
 his childhood was singularly devoid of incident. 
 Because he hummed bits of tune while at play, his 
 mother decided that he must be musical and sent 
 him to an instructor of the piano. The first six 
 months were drudgery for Peter but as soon as he 
 began to read music easily the skies cleared for him. 
 He never became a great flayer but he played easily 
 and well, much better than I imagined after hearing 
 his rather bombastic accompaniments to Clara's 
 singing. Of books he was an omnivorous reader. 
 He read every volume — some of them two or three 
 times — in the family library, which included, of 
 course, the works of Dickens, Thackeray, Wilkie 
 Collins, Charles Reade, and Sir Walter Scott, Emer- 
 son's Essays, Bulwer-Lytton, Owen Meredith's Lu- 
 cile, that long narrative poem called Nothing to 
 Wear, Artemus Ward's Panorama, Washington 
 Irving, Longfellow, Whittier, Thoreau, Lowell, 
 and Hawthorne, and among the moderns, Mark 
 Twain, William Dean Howells, F. Hopkinson 
 Smith, F. Marion Crawford, Richard Harding 
 Davis, George W. Cable, Frank Stockton, H. C. 
 Bunner, and Thomas Nelson Page. Peter once 
 told me that his favourite books when he was four- 
 teen or fifteen years old were Sarah Grand's The 
 Heavenly Twins and H. B. Fuller's The Chevalier 
 of Pensieri-Vani. The latter made a remarkable 
 impression on him, when he first discovered it at the 
 age of fifteen, not that he fully appreciated its ironic 
 
 [87] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 raillery but it seemed to point out the pleasure to 
 be apprehended from pleasant places. He named 
 a cat of the period, a regal yellow short-haired torn, 
 after the Prorege of Arcopia. The house library 
 exhausted, the public library offered further oppor- 
 tunities for browsing and it was there that he made 
 the acquaintance of Gautier, in translation, of 
 course. He also found it possible to procure — 
 though not at the public library — and he devoured 
 with avidity — he has asserted that they had an 
 extraordinary effect in awakening his imagination 
 — Nick Carter, Bertha M. Clay, and Golden Days. 
 For a period of four or five years, in spite of 
 all protests, although he had never heard of the 
 vegetarians, he subsisted entirely on a diet of 
 cookies soaked in hot milk. He had a curious in- 
 herent dislike for spinach and it was characteristic of 
 his father that he ordered the dish to appear 
 on the table every day until the boy tasted a 
 morsel. In after life, Peter could never even look 
 at a dish of spinach. He cared nothing at all for 
 outdoor sports. Games of any kind, card or oscula- 
 tory, he considered nuisances. At a party, while the 
 other children were engaged in the pleasing pastime 
 of post office, he was usually to be found in a corner, 
 reading some book. The companionship of boys 
 and girls of his own age meant very little to him. 
 He liked to talk to older people and found special 
 pleasure in the company of the Reverend Horatio 
 Wallace, a clergyman of the Dutch Reformed 
 
 [88] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Church, who had visited New York. This reverend 
 doctor was violently opposed to art museums, nov- 
 els, and symphony orchestras, but he talked about 
 them and he was the only person Peter knew in 
 Toledo who did. He railed against the sins of 
 New York and the vices of Paris but, also, he de- 
 scribed them. 
 
 In the matter of a university education, his mother 
 took a high hand, precluding all discussion and inde- 
 cision by sending him willy-nilly to Williams. Her 
 brother had been a Williams man and she prayed 
 that Peter might like to be one too. The experi- 
 ment was not unsuccessful. The charm in Peter's 
 nature began to expand at college and he even made 
 a few friends, the names of most of which he could 
 no longer remember, when he spoke to me of his col- 
 lege days some years afterwards. He realized that 
 the reason he had made so few in Toledo was that 
 the people of Toledo were not his kind of people. 
 They lived in a world which did not exist for him. 
 They lived in the world of Toledo while he lived in 
 the world of books. At college, he began to take 
 an interest in personalities; he began to take an in- 
 terest in life itself. He studied French — it was the 
 only course he thoroughly enjoyed^ — and he began 
 to read Gautier in the original. Then, at the in- 
 stigation of a particularly intelligent professor, he 
 passed on to Barbey d'Aurevilly, to Huysmans, to 
 Laforgue, and to Mallarme. 
 
 His holidays were always a torture for the boy. 
 
 [89] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Should he accept one of several invitations to visit 
 his lad friends or should he go home? One Easter 
 vacation, Monkey Rollins had asked him to visit 
 him in Providence while Teddy Quartermouse had 
 bidden him to enjoy himself in New York. Peter 
 pondered. He liked Monkey's sisters but a week 
 in Providence meant, he knew, dancing, bridge, and 
 golf, all of which he hated. Teddy was not as 
 companionable as Monkey and he had no sisters, 
 but in New York both indoor and outdoor sports 
 could be avoided. Peter helplessly examined both 
 sides of the shield until Monkey settled the question 
 by coming after him, helping him pack, and carry- 
 ing him triumphantly to the railway station. 
 
 No sooner, however, had he arrived in Providence 
 than he knew that it would be impossible for him to 
 remain there. He did not find Monkey's mother 
 very agreeable, rather she was too agreeable. The 
 vegetables were cooked in milk — the Rollins family 
 had previously lived in Missouri. This, of course, 
 was not to be borne. Worst of all, there was a par- 
 rot, a great, shrieking, feathered beast, with kopro- 
 lagniac tastes. Nevertheless, he exerted himself at 
 dinner, giving a lengthy and apocryphal description 
 to Mrs. Rollins of his performance of a concerto for 
 kettle-drum with the college band, and doubtless 
 made a distinctly favourable impression on the entire 
 family. Even the parrot volunteered : Hurrah for 
 you, kid, you're some guy! as the procession trooped 
 into the library, which one of the girls referred to 
 
 [90] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 as "the carnegle," for coffee. While Caruso nego- 
 tiated Celeste Aida on the phonograph, Peter, after 
 whispering an appropriate excuse to Monkey, con- 
 trived to slip upstairs. He looked about on the 
 landing in the upper hallway for a telephone but, 
 naturally, it wasn't there. Then he reconnoitred 
 and discovered that by climbing out over the porch 
 and making a ten foot jump he would land very 
 neatly in a bed of crocuses. This he did and, 
 scrambling to his feet, made straight for an apoth- 
 ecary's coloured lights, which he saw in the distance. 
 The sequel is simple. In fifteen minutes, by way of 
 the kitchen, he was back in the library; in thirty min- 
 utes, he had the family in roars of laughter; in forty- 
 five minutes. Papa Rollins began to yawn and 
 guessed it was bed-time; Mama Rollins called in 
 the maid to cover the parrot and arrange the fire. 
 Monkey said he thought he would play a game of 
 something or other with Peter. The girls giggled. 
 In exactly an hour, there was a ring at the door 
 and the maid reappeared in the library, with a 
 yellow envelope addressed to Peter. He hastily 
 tore it open, trying to look portentous. Every- 
 body else did look portentous. Peter handed 
 the telegram to Monkey, who read it aloud: 
 Your mother would like to shake your hand before 
 she takes the ether tomorrow morning. The mes- 
 sage was dated from New York and the signature 
 was that of a famous surgeon. Mrs. Rollins was 
 the first to break a moment of appalling silence: 
 
 [91] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 "There's a train in fifteen minutes. It's the last. 
 Quick, Monkey, the motor! Peter cried, Send my 
 things to the Manhattan, as he jerked on his coat. 
 He caught the train and some hours later he and 
 Teddy Quartermouse might have been observed 
 amusing themselves with highballs and a couple of 
 girls at Rector's. 
 
 In time, college days passed. Peter confessed to 
 me that the last twO' years were an awful strain but 
 he stuck them out, chiefly because he could not think 
 of anything else he wanted to do. His real mental 
 agony began on his release. He dreaded life and 
 most of all he dreaded work. His father, although 
 well-to-do, had a sharply defined notion that a boy 
 who would not work never amounted to anything. 
 His peculiar nature sometimes asserted itself in lu- 
 dicrous and fantastically exaggerated demonstra- 
 tions of this theory. Once, for example, during a 
 summer vacation spent in the country, he insisted 
 that Peter skin a pig. You have an opportunity to 
 learn now and you never can tell when you may 
 have to skin another pig. When the time comes 
 you will be prepared. His father, Peter returned 
 from college discovered, was in no mood to tolerate 
 vacillation or dawdling. But Peter seemed to feel 
 no urge of any kind. I not only did not want to 
 do anything, he explained, there was nothing that 
 I wanted to do. Here his father, with whom 
 the boy had never been particularly sympathetic 
 (motive of the CEdipus complex by the flutes in 
 
 [92] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 the orchestra), asserted his authority and put 
 him in the bank. Peter loathed the bank. He 
 hated his work, cutting open envelopes early in 
 the morning, sorting out bills for collection, and 
 then, on his bicycle, making the collections. In the 
 afternoon, an endless task at the adding machine 
 seemed Dantesque and, at night, the sealing of en- 
 velopes was even more tiresome than opening them 
 in the morning. There was, however, one mitiga- 
 ting circumstance in connection with the last job of 
 the day, the pleasure afforded by the rich odour of 
 the hot sealing-wax. His pay was $9 a week; he has 
 told me that probably he was not worth it ! Fortun- 
 ately he lived at home and was not asked to pay 
 board. He bought books with the $9 and "silly 
 things." When I asked him what he meant by silly 
 things, he replied: O! Rockwood pottery, and alli- 
 gators, and tulip bulbs: I don't remember, things 
 like that ! One day, he promised his father that he 
 would give up smoking if that one would present 
 him with a gold cigarette-case! 
 
 There came a morning when he could not make up 
 his mind to get up. His mother called him several 
 times in vain. He arrived at the bank half an hour 
 late and was reprimanded. His father spoke about 
 his tardiness at lunch. At this period he was in- 
 clined to be sulky. He started off on his bicycle in 
 the afternoon but he did not go to the bank. He 
 rode along by the river, stopping at a low saloon in 
 the outlying districts, where the workmen of some 
 
 [93] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 factory were wont to congregate in the evening, 
 and drank a great many glasses of beer. Cheered 
 somewhat thereby, the thought of facing his father 
 no longer exasperated him. The big scene took 
 place before dinner. Had it not been for the beer, 
 he would have been obliged to act his part on an 
 empty stomach. 
 
 Are you no good at all ? Thus his father's bari- 
 tone aria began. Are you worthless? I'm not 
 going to support you. Suppose you had to pay your 
 own board. I can't keep a son of mine in the bank 
 because he is a son of mine unless he does some work. 
 Certainly not. How long are you going to dawdle? 
 What are you going to do? Et cetera, et cetera, 
 with a magnificent cadenza and a high E to top off 
 with. Sustained by the beer, Peter reported to me 
 that he rather enjoyed the tune. He said nothing. 
 Dinner was eaten in complete silence and then the 
 paternal parent went to bed, a discouraged and 
 broken man. He seemed senescent, although he was 
 not yet fifty. After dinner, Peter's mother spoke to 
 him more gently but she also was full of warning and 
 gloomy foreboding : What is it you want to do, my 
 son? ... I don't know. Pm not sure that I want 
 to do anything. . . . But you must do something. 
 You wouldn't be manly if you didn't do something. 
 It is manly to work. A day will come when my son 
 will want to marry and then he will need money to 
 support his dear wife. Etc. Etc. Peter reported 
 
 [94] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 to me that he seemed to have heard this music be- 
 fore. He had not yet read The Way of All Flesh; 
 I doubt if it were published at this time, but Ernest 
 'Pontifex would have been a sympathetic figure to 
 him. Peter knew the meaning of the word cliche, 
 although the sound and the spelling of it were yet 
 strange to him. 
 
 When he got to his room certain words his 
 mother had spoken rang in his ears. Why, he asked 
 himself, should men support women? Art is the 
 only attraction in life and women never do good 
 work in art. They are useless in the world aside 
 from their functions of sex and propagation. Why 
 should they not work so that the males could be free 
 to think and dream? Then it occurred to him that 
 he would be furious if any woman supported his 
 father; that could not be borne, to have his father 
 at home all day while his mother was away at work I 
 
 Nevertheless, he went to sleep quite happy, he 
 has assured me, and slept soundly through the night, 
 although he dreamed of a pair of alligators, one of 
 which was pulling at his head and the other at his 
 feet, while a man with an ax rained blows on his 
 stomach. In the morning his affairs seemed to be 
 in a desperate state. He could not bear the idea 
 of getting up and going to the bank and yet there 
 was nothing else he wanted to do. Of one thing 
 only he was sure : he did not want to support him- 
 self. He did not, so far as he was able to make 
 
 [95] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 out, want to do anything! He wanted his family 
 to stop bothering him. Was no provision made 
 in this world for such as he? 
 
 Certainly, no provision was made for him in To- 
 ledo, Ohio. The word temperament was still un- 
 discovered there. His negative kind of desire was 
 alien to American sympathy. Of so much, he was 
 aware. Adding machines and collections awaited 
 him. He went to the bank where the paying teller 
 again reprimanded him. So did one of the clerks. 
 So did one of the directors, a friend of his father. 
 He staggered through another day, which he helped 
 along a little by returning at noon with all his notes 
 uncollected. Nobody wants to pay to-day, he ex- 
 plained. . . . But it's your business to make them 
 pay. . . . There was cold ham, cold slaw, and rice 
 pudding for lunch. His mother had been crying. 
 His father was stern. 
 
 During the rice pudding, he made a resolution, 
 which he kept. From that day on he worked as he 
 had never worked before. Everybody in the bank 
 was astonished. His father was delighted. His 
 mother said, I told you so. I know my son. . . . 
 He stopped buying books and silly things and, when 
 he had saved enough money, he took a train to New 
 York without bidding the bank officials or his family 
 good-bye. Once there, his resolution again failed 
 him. He had no desires, or if he had, one counter- 
 acted another. His money was almost gone and he 
 was forced to seek for work but everywhere he went 
 
 [96] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 he was refused. He lived at a Mills Hotel. He 
 retained a strange fondness for his mother and be- 
 gan to write her, asking her to address him care of 
 general delivery. 
 
 At last he secured a position at a soda fountain in 
 a drug-store. He worked there about a week. 
 One night the place got on his nerves to such an 
 extent that he wanted to break the glasses and squirt 
 fizz at every customer. To amuse himself, there- 
 fore, he contrived to inject a good dose of castor 
 oil or cantharides into every drink he served. The 
 proprietor of the shop was snoopy, Peter told me, 
 and after watching me out of the corner of his eye 
 for some time, he gave me a good kick, which landed 
 me lin the middle of the street. He tossed six 
 dollars, the remainder of my wages, after me. It 
 may appear strange to you but I have never been 
 happier in my life than I was that night with six 
 dollars in my possession and the sat'sfactory knoTV^l- 
 edge that I would never see that store again. 
 
 During the next three weeks, Peter did not find 
 any work. I doubt if he tried to find any. He 
 often slept in Madison Square or Bryant Par'k with 
 a couple of newspapers over him and a couple under 
 him. He lived on the most meagre rations, some 
 of which he collected in bread lines. He even 
 begged at the kitchen doors of the large hotels and 
 asked for money on the street. He has told me, 
 however, that he was neither discouraged nor un- 
 happy. He felt the most curious sense of uplift, 
 
 [97] 
 
P^eteK Whiffle 
 
 as if he were suffering martyrdom, as, indeed, he 
 was. Life seemed to have left him out of irs ac- 
 counting, to have made no arrangements for his 
 nature. He had no desire to work, in fact his re- 
 pugnance for work was his strongest feeling, and 
 yet, it seemed, he could procure no money without 
 working. He was willing, however, to go with- 
 out the things he wanted, really to suffer, rather 
 than work. I just did not want to do anything, he 
 has said. It was a fixed idea. It was my greatest 
 joy to talk about the social unrest, the rights of the 
 poor, the wicked capitalist, and the ideas of Karl 
 Marx with the man in the street, the real man in the 
 street, the man who never went anywhere else. Dur- 
 ing this period, he continued to write his mother 
 what she afterwards described as "bright, clever 
 letters." I have seen a few of them, full of the most 
 astounding energy and enthusiasm, and a vague phil- 
 osophy of quietism. She wrote back, gently chiding 
 him, letters of resignation but still letters of advice, 
 breathing the hope that he might grow into a re- 
 spected citizen of Toledo, Ohio. She did not under- 
 stand Peter but she loved him and would have gone 
 to New York to see him, had not a restraining hand 
 burked her. Mr. Whiffle was determined to hold 
 no more traffic with his son. He refused, indeed, 
 to allow Peter's name to be mentioned in his pres- 
 ence. Toledo talked with intensity behind his back 
 but Mr. Whiffle did not know that. Hard as he 
 tried not to show it, he was disappointed: it was 
 
 [98] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 impossible for him to reconcile his idea of a son with 
 the actuality. Mrs. Whiffle's first mild suggestion 
 that she might visit Peter was received with a ter- 
 rible hurricane of resentment. She did not mention 
 the subject again. She would have gone anyway if 
 Peter had asked her to come but he never did. 
 
 Through an Italian, whom he met one day in 
 Bryant Park, Peter next secured a position as a 
 member of the claque at the Opera. Every night, 
 with instructions when to applaud, he received either 
 a seat in the dress circle or a general admission 
 ticket. There was also a small salary attached 
 to the office. He did not care about the salary 
 but he enjoyed going to the Opera which he had 
 never before attended. He heard Manon Lescaut, 
 La Damnation de Faust, Tristan, Lohengrin, Tosca, 
 Romeo et Juliette, and Fedora. But his favourite 
 nights were the nights when Olive Fremstad sang. 
 He heard her as Venus in Tannhauser, as Selika in 
 I'Africaine, as Carmen, and he heard her in that 
 unique performance of Salome on January 22, 1907. 
 One night he became so interested in watching her 
 that he forgot to applaud the singer who had paid 
 the claque. His delinquency was reported by one 
 of his colleagues and the next evening, when he went 
 to the bar on Seventh Avenue where the claque 
 gathered to receive its orders, he was informed that 
 his services would no longer be required. 
 
 After another three weeks of vagrancy, he found 
 another job, again through a park acquaintance. 
 
 [99] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 He has told me that it was the only work he ever 
 enjoyed. He became a "professor" in a house of 
 pretty ladies. His duty was to play the piano. 
 Play us another tune, professor, the customers 
 would say, as they ordered beer at a dollar a bottle, 
 and Peter would play a tune. Occasionally one of 
 the customers would ask him to take a drink and he 
 would order a sloe gin fizz, which Alonzo, the sick- 
 looking waiter, a consumptive with a wife and five 
 children to support, would bring in a sticky glass, 
 which he deposited with his long dirty fingers on the 
 ledge of the piano. Occasionally some man, wait- 
 ing for a girl, was left alone with him, and would, 
 talk with him about the suspender business or the 
 base-ball game, subjects which perhaps might not 
 have interested him elsewhere but which glowed with 
 an enthralling fire in that incongruous environment. 
 The men preferred tunes like Lucia, the current Hip- 
 podrome success from Neptune's Daughter, or songs 
 from The Red Mill, in which Montgomery and 
 Stone were appearing at the Knickerbocker, or I 
 don't care. This last was always demanded when a 
 certain girl, who imitated Eva Tanguay, was in the 
 room. But the women, when they were alone in the 
 house, just before dinner in the late afternoon, or on 
 a dull evening, always asked him to play Hearts and 
 Flowers, Massenet's Elegie, or the garden scene 
 from Faust, and then they would drink whisky and 
 cry and tell him lies about their innocent girlhood. 
 There was even some literary conversation. One 
 
 [100] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 of the girls read Georges Ohnet and another ad- 
 mired the work of Harris Merton Lyon and talked 
 about it. Peter found it very easy to remain pure. 
 
 He received two dollars a night from the house, 
 and, occasionally, tips. Out of this he managed to 
 rent a hall bedroom on West Thirty-ninth Street 
 and to pay for his lunches. The Madame provided 
 him with his dinner. Breakfast he never ate. He 
 passed his mornings in bed and his afternoons in 
 the park, usually with a book. 
 
 A French girl named Blanche, whom he liked 
 particularly, died one night. She was taken to a 
 funeral chapel the next morning. The other girls 
 went about the house snivelling and most of them 
 sent flowers to the chapel. Blanche's coffin was 
 well banked with carnations and tube-roses. The 
 Madame sent a magnificent standing floral-piece, a 
 cross of white roses and, on a ribbon, the inscription, 
 May our darling rest in peace. Blanche wore a 
 white lace dress and looked very beautiful and very 
 innocent as she lay dead, Peter thought. Her 
 mother came from a distant city and there was a 
 priest. The two days preceding Blanche's burial, 
 the girls passed in tears and prayers and sentimental 
 remarks about how good she was. At night they 
 worked as usual and Peter played the piano. It 
 was very much like the Maison Tellier, he reflected. 
 
 With Peter, change was automatic and axiomatic, 
 but he might have remained in the house a very long 
 time, as he has assured me that he was perfectly con- 
 [lOl] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 tented, but for one of those accidents that never hap- 
 pen in realistic novels but which constantly happen 
 in life. Mrs. Whiffle's brother, the graduate of 
 Williams, erstwhile mentioned, a quaint person, who 
 lived at Rochester, was a rich bachelor. He was 
 also a collector, not of anything special, just a collec- 
 tor. He collected old andirons and doorknobs and 
 knockers. He also collected postmarks and home- 
 spun coverlets and obsolete musical instruments. 
 Occasionally he even collected books and in this re- 
 spect his taste was unique. He collected first 
 editions of Oulda, J. T. Trowbridge, Horatio 
 Alger, Jr., G. A. Henty, and Oliver Optic. He 
 had complete sets of first editions of all these au- 
 thors and, unlike most book collectors, he read them 
 with a great deal of pleasure. He especially enjoyed 
 Cudgo's Cave, a novel he had devoured so many 
 times that he had found it necessary to have the 
 volume rebound, thus subtracting from its value if 
 it ever comes up at an auction sale. 
 
 This uncle had always been prejudiced against 
 Peter's father and, of late years, this prejudice had 
 swollen into a first-rate aversion. Visits were never 
 exchanged. He considered himself an amateur of 
 parts and Peter's father, a sordid business grub. 
 Mrs. Whiffle, however, whose whole nature was con- 
 ciliatory, continued to write long letters to her 
 brother. Recently she had turned to him for sym- 
 pathy and had found a well of it. Mr. Fotheringay 
 was ready to sympathize with anybody who had fled 
 [102] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 from old man Whiffle's tyranny. For the first time 
 he began to take an interest in the boy whom he 
 had never seen. His imagination fed on his sister's 
 letters until it seemed to him that this .boy was the 
 only living being he had ever loved. Peter had been 
 working among the daughters of joy about two 
 months whe^ Mr. Fotheringay died. When his 
 will, made only a few weeks before his death, was 
 read, it was discovered that he had left his col- 
 lections to Williams College with the proviso that 
 they be suitably housed, kept intact, and called the 
 John Alden Fotheringay Collection. Williams Col- 
 lege, I believe, was unable to meet the terms of the 
 bequest and, as a result, through a contingent clause, 
 they were sold. Not long ago, I ran across one of 
 the books in Alfred F. Goldsmith's shop on Lexing- 
 ton Avenue in New York. It was a copy of J. T. 
 Trowbridge's The Satin-Wood Box and it was 
 easily identified by Mr. Fotheringay's bookplate, 
 which represented an old man counting his gold, 
 with the motto. In hoc signo vinces. After this de- 
 partment of the estate had been provided for in the 
 will, a very considerable sum of money, well in- 
 vested, remained. This was left to Peter without 
 proviso. 
 
 As he never expected letters from any one except 
 his mother, he seldom visited the post office and this 
 particular communication from Mr. Fotheringay's 
 lawyers, forwarded by Mrs. Whiffle, lay in a general 
 delivery box for nearly a week before he called. 
 
 [103] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 He answered by telegraph and the next morning he 
 received a substantial check at his hall bedroom ad- 
 dress. The first thing he bought, he has told 
 me, was a book, an extra-illustrated copy of 
 Mademoiselle de Maupin, from Brentano's in 
 Union Square. Then he went to a tailor and was 
 measured for clothes. Next he visited Brooks 
 Brothers, on Twenty-second Street and Broadway, 
 and purchased a ready-made suit, a hat, shoes and 
 stockings, shirts, and neckties. He took a bath, 
 shaved; had his hair cut, and, dressed in his new 
 finery, embarked for the Knickerbocker in a taxi. 
 He walked into the bar under Maxfield Parrish's 
 King Cole and ordered a Martini cocktail. Then 
 he ate a dinner, consisting of terrapin, roast canvas- 
 back, an alligator pear, and a quart or two of Pontet 
 Canet. It was during the course of this dinner that 
 it occurred to him, for the first time in his life, that 
 he would become an author. Four days later he 
 sailed for Paris. 
 
 [104] 
 
Chapter VI 
 
 There is a considerable period in the life of 
 George Borrow for which his biographers have been 
 absolutely unable to account. To this day where 
 Borrow spent those lost years is either unknown or 
 untold. There is a similar period in the life of 
 Peter Whiffle, the period including the years 1907- 
 19 13. In the summer of the former year I left 
 him at Paris In the arms of Clara Barnes, so to 
 speak, and I did not see him again until February, 
 19 13. Subsequently, when I knew him better, I 
 inquired about these phantom years but I never 
 elicited a satisfactory reply. He answered me, to 
 be sure, but his answer consisted of two words, I 
 lived. 
 
 Our next meeting took place in New York, where 
 I was a musical reporter on the New York Times, 
 the assistant to Mr. Richard Aldrich. One night, 
 having dropped Fania Marinoff at the theatre where 
 she was playing, I walked south-east until I 
 came to the Bowery. I strolled down that decaying 
 thoroughfare, which has lost much of its ancient 
 glory — even the thugs and the belles of Avenue A 
 have deserted it — to Canal Street, where the Man- 
 hattan Bridge invites the East Side to adventure 
 through its splendid portal, but the East Side ig- 
 
 [105] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 nores the invitation and stays at home. It is the 
 upper West Side that accepts the invitation and regi- 
 ments of motor-cars from Riverside Drive, in con- 
 tinuous procession, pass over the bridge. For a 
 time I stood and watched the ugly black scarabs 
 with their acetylene eyes crawl up the approach 
 and disappear through the great arch and 
 then, walking a few steps, I stopped before the 
 Thalia Theatre, as I have stopped so many times, to 
 admire the noble fagade with its flight of steps and 
 its tall columns, for this is one of my dream theatres. 
 Often have I sat in the first row of the dress circle, 
 which is really a circle, leaning over the balustrade, 
 gazing into the pit a few feet below, and imagining 
 the horseshoe as it might appear were it again fre- 
 quented by the fashion of the town. This is a 
 theatre, in which, and before which, it has often 
 amused me to fancy myself a man of wealth, when 
 my first diversion would be a complete renovation — 
 without any reconstruction or vandalism — of this 
 playhouse, and the production of some play by 
 Shakespeare, for to me, no other theatre in New 
 York, unless it be the Academy of Music, lends itself 
 so readily to a production of Shakespeare as the 
 Thalia. As I write these lines, I recall that the old 
 New York theatres are fast disappearing: Wallack's 
 is gone; Daly's is no more; even Weber and Fields's 
 has been demolished. Cannot something be done 
 to save the Thalia, which is much older than any of 
 these? Cannot this proud auditorium be reconse- 
 
 [io6] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 crated to the best in the drama? On this night I 
 paused for a moment, musing before the portal, 
 somewhat after this manner — for I have always 
 found that things rather than people awaken any 
 latent sentiment and sympathy in my heart — and 
 then again I passed on. 
 
 Soon I came to a tiny Chinese shop, although I 
 was still several blocks above Chinatown. The 
 window was stacked with curious crisp waffles or 
 wafers in the shape of lotus flowers, for the religious 
 and sexual symbolism of the Chinese extends even 
 to their culinary functions, and a Chinaman, just in- 
 side, was dexterously transferring the rice batter 
 to the irons, which were placed over the fire, turned 
 a few moments, and a wafer removed and sprinkled 
 with dry rice powder, as Richelieu, lacking a blotter, 
 sprinkled pounce on his wet signature. But the 
 shop was not consecrated solely to the manufacture 
 of waffles; there were tea-sets and puppy-cats, all 
 the paraphernalia of a Chinese shop in New York 
 — on the shelves and tables. It was the waffles, and 
 the peanut cakes, however, which tempted me to 
 enter. 
 
 Once inside, I became aware of the presence of a 
 Chinese woman at the back of the shop, holding in 
 her arms an exquisite Chinese baby, for all Chinese 
 babies, with their flat porcelain faces, their straight 
 black hair, and their ivory hands, are exquisite. 
 This baby, in green-blue trousers fashioned of some 
 soft silk brocade, a pink jacket of the same material, 
 
 [107] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 and a head-dress prankt with ribbons into which or- 
 naments of scarlet worsted and blue-bird feathers 
 were twisted, was smiling silently and gracefully 
 waving her tiny ivory hands towards the face of an 
 outcast of the streets who stood beside her mother. 
 I caught the rough workman's suit, the soiled, torn 
 boots, the filthy cap, and the unkempt hair in my 
 glance, which reverted to the baby. Then, as I ap- 
 proached the odd group, and spoke to the mother, 
 the derelict turned. 
 
 Carl ! he ejaculated, for, of course, it was Peter. 
 
 I was too much astonished to speak at all, as I 
 stared at this ragged figure without a collar or a 
 tie, with several days growth of beard on his usually 
 glabrous cheeks, and dirty finger-nails. I had only 
 wit enough left to shake his hand. At this time I 
 knew nothing of his early life, nothing of the for- 
 tune he" had inherited, and the man in front of me, 
 save for something curiously inconsistent In the ex- 
 pression of the face, was a tramp. Certainly the 
 face was puzzling: it positively exuded happiness. 
 Perhaps, I thought, it was because he was glad to see 
 me. I was glad to see him, even in this guise. 
 
 Carl, he repeated, dear old Carl ! How silly of 
 me not to remember that you would be in 
 New York. He caught my glance. Somewhat of 
 a change, eh? No more ruffles and frills. That 
 life, and everything connected with it, is finished. 
 Luckily, you've caught me near home. Come with 
 me; there's liquor there. 
 
 [io8] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 So we walked out. I had not yet spoken a word. 
 I was choking with an emotion I usually reserve for 
 old theatres, but Peter did not appear to be aware 
 of it. He chattered on gaily. 
 
 Have you been to Paris recently? Where have 
 you been? What have you been doing? Are you 
 writing? Isn't New York lovely? Don't you 
 think Chinese babies are the kind to have, if you are 
 going to become a father at all? Wasn't that an 
 adorable one? He waited for no answers. Look 
 at the lights on the bridge. I live in the shadow of 
 the span. I think I live somewhere near the old 
 Five Points that used to turn up in all the old melo- 
 dramas ; you know, The Streets of New York. It's 
 a wonderful neighbourhood. Everybody, absolutely 
 everybody, is interesting. There's nobody you 
 can't talk to, and very few that can't talk. They all 
 have something to say. They are all either dis- 
 appointed and discouraged or hopeful. They all 
 have emotions and they are not afraid to show them. 
 They all talk about the REVOLUTION. It may 
 come this winter. No, I don't mean the Russian 
 revolution. Nobody expects a revolution in Russia. 
 Nobody down here is interested in Russia ; the Rus- 
 sian Jews especially are not. They have forgotten 
 Russia. I mean the American REVOLUTION. 
 The Second American REVOLUTION, I suppose 
 it will be called. Labour against Capital. The 
 Workman against the Leisure Class. The Prole- 
 tariat against the Idler. Did you ever hear of Piet 
 
 [109] 
 
Peter fFhiffle 
 
 Vlag? Do you read The Masses? I go to meet- 
 ings, union meetings, Socialist meetings, I. W. W. 
 meetings. Syndicalist meetings. Anarchist meetings. 
 I egg them on. It may come this winter, I tell you 1 
 There will be barricades on Fifth Avenue. Vander- 
 bilt and Rockefeller will be besieged in their houses 
 with the windows shuttered and the doors barred 
 and the butler standing guard with a machine-gun at 
 some gazebo or turret. It will be a real siege, last- 
 ing, perhaps, months. How long will the food hold 
 out? In the end, they'll have to eat the canary and 
 the Pekinese, and, no, not the cat, I hope. The cat 
 will be clever and escape, go over to the enemy where 
 he can get his meals. But boots, boot soup I Just 
 like the siege of Paris; each robber baron locked up 
 in his stronghold. Sometimes, the housemaid will 
 desert; sometimes, the cook. The millionaires will 
 be obliged to make their own beds and cook their 
 own dogs and, at last, to man their own machine- 
 guns! 
 
 The mob will be barricaded, too, behind barriers 
 hastily thrown up in the street, formed of old 
 moving-vans, Rolls-Royces and Steinway grands, 
 covered with Gobelin tapestries and Lilihan, Mosul, 
 Sarouk, and Khorassan rugs, the spoils of the de- 
 nuded houses. With a red handkerchief bound 
 around my brow, I will wave a red flag and shriek 
 on the top of such a barricade. My face will be 
 streaked with blood. We will all yell and if we 
 don't sing the ^a Ira and the Carmagnole, we will 
 
 [no] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 at least sing Alexander's Ragtime Band and My 
 Wife's Gone to the Country. 
 
 Eventually, Fifth Avenue will fall and the Astors 
 and the Goulds will be brought before the Tribunal 
 of the People, and if you know any better spot for a 
 guillotine than the very square in which we stood 
 just now, in that vast open space before the Man- 
 hattan Bridge, over which they all drive off for 
 Long Island, I wish you'd tell me. There are those 
 who would like to see the killing done in Washing- 
 ton or Madison Square, or the Plaza or Columbus 
 Circle, which, of course, has a sentimental interest 
 for the Italians, but think of the joy it would give 
 the East Side mothers, suckling their babies, and 
 the pushcart vendors, and all the others who never 
 find time to go up town to have the show right here. 
 Right here it shall be, if I have my way, and just 
 now I have a good deal of influence. 
 
 We had stopped before one of those charming old 
 brick houses with marble steps and ancient hand- 
 wrought iron railings which still remain on East 
 Broadway to remind us of the day when stately 
 landaus drove up to deposit crinolined ladies before 
 their portals. We ascended the steps and Peter 
 opened the door with his key. The hallway was 
 dark but Peter struck matches to light us up the 
 stairs and we only ceased climbing when we 
 reached the top landing. He unlocked another door 
 which opened on a spacious chamber, a lovely old 
 room with a chaste marble fire-place in the Dorian 
 [III] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 mode, and faded wall-paper of rose and grey, de- 
 picting Victoriajn Greek females, taller than the 
 damsels drawn by Du Maurier and C. D. Gibson, 
 languishing in the shadows of broken columns and 
 weeping willow trees. Upon this paper were fas- 
 tened with pins a number of covers from radical 
 periodicals, native and foreign, some in vivid col- 
 ours, the cover of The Masses for March, 19 12, 
 Charles A. Winter's Enlightenment versus Violence, 
 the handsome head of a workman, his right hand 
 bearing a torch, printed in green, several cartoons 
 by Art Young, usually depicting the rich man as an 
 octopus or hog, and posters announcing meet- 
 ings of various radical groups. Gigantic letters, 
 cut from sheets of newspaper, formed the legend, 
 I. W. W., over the door. 
 
 The room was almost devoid of furniture. There 
 was an iron bed, with tossed bed-clothing, a table 
 on which lay a few books, including, I noted, one 
 by Karl Marx, another by English Walling, Frank 
 Harris's The Bomb, together with a number of 
 copies of Piet Vlag's new journal. The Masses, 
 and Jack Marinoff's Yiddish comic weekly. The Big 
 Stick. There was also a pail on the table, such a 
 pail as that in which a workman carries his mid-day 
 meal. There were exactly two chairs and a ward- 
 robe of polished oak in the best Grand Rapids man- 
 ner stood in one corner. All this was sufficiently 
 bewildering but I must confess that the appearance 
 of the lovely head of a Persian cat, issuing from 
 [112] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 under the bed-covers, made me doubt my reason. I 
 recognized George Moore. Presently I made out 
 another puss, sitting beside a basket full of kittens 
 in the corner near the wardrobe. 
 
 I must introduce you, explained Peter, to the 
 mother of George Moore's progeny. This is 
 George Sand. 
 
 By this time I was a fit subject for the asylum. 
 Even the Persian cats did not set me right. Happy 
 or not, the man was evidently poor. 
 
 I suppose I would insult you if I offered you a job, 
 I stuttered at last. 
 
 A job ! Carl, don't you know that I simply will 
 not work? 
 
 Well, and I found this even more difficult than my 
 first proposal, I hope you won't misunderstand. . . . 
 I haven't much. . . but you must permit me to give 
 you some money. 
 
 Money! What for? 
 
 Why, for you. . . . 
 
 Comprehending at last, Peter threw back his head 
 and began to laugh. 
 
 But I don't need money. . . I never had so little 
 use for it. Do you realize what it costs me to live 
 here? About $15 a week. That includes every 
 item, even fresh beef for my cats. I was about to 
 tell you, if you had given me time — you always in- 
 terrupt — that I simply don't know what to do with 
 my money. Stocks have gone up. The labourers 
 in the factories at Little Falls are working overtime 
 
 [113] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 to make me more prosperous. Indeed, one of the 
 reasons I was so glad to see you was that I thought, 
 perhaps, you could help me to spend some money. 
 
 The line about the Interruptions, I should explain, 
 was simply a fabrication of Peter's. If I have set 
 our conversations down as monologues on his part, 
 that is just how they occurred. Aside from Philip 
 Moeller and Arnold Daly, I have never known any 
 one to talk so much, and my role with Peter, as with 
 them, was that of listener. To continue, I should 
 have known enough, even so early in our acquain- 
 tance, not to be astonished by anything he might do, 
 but If there had been a mirror in the room, which 
 there was not, I fancy I might have looked into the 
 most exasperatingly astonished face I had ever seen 
 up to that time. I managed, however, to laugh. 
 Peter laughed, too, and sat down. George Moore 
 leaped to his knee and George Sand to his shoulder, 
 rubbing her magnificent orange brush across his 
 face. 
 
 And how about your bookj? I asked. 
 
 It's coming . . . coming fast. 
 
 Are you still collecting notes? 
 
 Notes? . . . O! you are remembering what I 
 was doing in Paris. That was only an experiment. 
 ... I was on the wrong track. ... I threw them 
 all away! I couldn't do anything with that. . . . 
 I'm done with such nonsense. 
 
 I couldn't be astonished any more. 
 
 What are you doing now ? 
 
 [114] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 I've told you. I'm living. O ! I'm full of it : I 
 know what art is now; I know what real literature 
 is. It has nothing to do with style or form or man- 
 ner. George Moore, not my cat but the other one, 
 has said that Christianity is not a stranger re- 
 ligion than the cult of the inevitable word. The 
 matter is what counts. I think it was Theodore 
 Dreiser. . . . 
 
 Here I did interrupt : 
 
 I know him. When I first came to New York 
 in 1906, I wrote a paper about Richard Strauss's 
 Salome for the Broadway Magazine. He was the 
 editor. 
 
 You know Theodore Dreiser! 
 
 There was awe in his tone. 
 
 Very slightly. I saw something of him then. 
 Principally, I remember his habit, when he was talk- 
 ing, of folding his handkerchief into small squares, 
 then unfolding it. He repeated this process in- 
 definitely. 
 
 Show me. 
 
 I showed him. 
 
 Well, I'm glad I met you tonight. ... It was Sis- 
 ter Carrie that set me right; at least I think it was 
 Sister Carrie. What a book! What a masterpiece! 
 No style, no form, just subject- The devils flogged 
 St. Jerome in the fifth century because he was rather 
 a Ciceronian than a Christian in his beautiful writ- 
 ing, but they never will flog Theodore Dreiser ! He 
 had an idea, he knew life, and he just wrote what 
 
 [115] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 he felt. He wasn't thinking of how to write it ; he 
 had something to write. Have you read Sister Car- 
 rie? 
 
 I explained that Edna Kenton had given me the 
 book to read when it first appeared. 
 
 Strange as it may appear to you, for my way is 
 not, perhaps, Dreiser's, that book explains why I am 
 here and why I dress in this manner. It explains 
 why I wander about the streets and talk with the 
 people. It explains why I am hoping for the REV- 
 OLUTION (Peter on this occasion invariably pro- 
 nounced this word in capitals). It explains why I 
 am an I. W. W. I would even join the Elks, if 
 necessary. I think Dreiser at one time must have 
 been an Elk; else how could he describe Hurstwood 
 so perfectly? 
 
 It is amusing, however, that you who won't work 
 should become an international worker! 
 
 I dare say it is, drawled Peter, stroking George 
 Moore's back, as the superb cat lay purring on his 
 knee. I dare say it is but I'd go a good deal farther 
 to get what I want ; I'd even seek employment in a 
 department store or a Chinese laundry. However, 
 it's coming without that, it's coming fast. I found 
 my heroine the other day, a little Jewish girl, who 
 works in a sweat-shop. She has one blue eye and 
 one black one. She has a club-foot, a hare-lip, and 
 she is a hunch-back. I nearly cried for joy when I 
 discovered her. I met her on Rivington Street 
 walking with a stack of men's overcoats three feet 
 
 [116] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 high poised on her head. She was limping under 
 her burden. I followed her to the shop and made 
 some inquiries. Her name is Rosie Levenstein. I 
 shall leave in the deformities, but I shall change her 
 name. 
 
 Isn't she just a trifle unpleasant, a little unsym- 
 pathetic, for a heroine? 
 
 My book, replied Peter, is going to be very un- 
 pleasant. It is about life and because you and I en- 
 joy life is little enough reason for us to consider it 
 other than a dirty business. Life for the average 
 person, for Rosie, for instance, simply will not do. 
 It's bloody awful and, if anything, I shall make it 
 worse than it is. Now, if the comrades succeed in 
 starting the REVOLUTION, I am going through 
 with it, straight through, breaking into drawing- 
 rooms with the others. I'm going to pound up a 
 Steinway grand with a hammer. Here Peter, with 
 a suitable gesture, brought his hand down rather 
 heavily on George Moore's head and that one, in- 
 dignant, immediately rose and jumped down from 
 his lap, subsequently stretched himself on the floor, 
 catching his claws in the carpet, and after yawning 
 once or twice, retreated under the, bed. George 
 Sand now left, Peter's shoulder to fill the vacant 
 place on his knee. As I told you, I'm going to wear 
 a red handkerchief round my brow and my face will 
 be bloody. Then, all I have to do is to transfer the 
 whole experience, everything / have done and felt, 
 the thrill, the BOOM, to Rosie. Can't you see the 
 
 [117] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 picture in ray last chapter of the little, lame, hare- 
 lipped hunch-back, with one blue eye and one black 
 one, marching up Fifth Avenue with the comrades, 
 wrapped in the red flag, her face stained with blood, 
 humbling the Guggenheimers and the Morgans, dis- 
 turbing the sleep of Henry Clay Frick, casting art 
 treasures, bought with the blood of the poor, out to 
 the pavement, breaking windows, shooting, tortur- 
 ing, devastating? Then the triumphant return to 
 the East Side, Rosie on the men's shoulders. 
 Everybody tired and sweaty, satiated and bloody. 
 Now, all the realism of the interiors, gefillte fish 
 and schnaps. But Rosie will sit down to her dinner 
 in a Bendel evening gown, raped from one of the 
 Kahn closets. The men come back for her. An- 
 other procession down Canal Street. The police 
 charge the mob. Shots. The Vanderbilts and the 
 Astors and the Schwabs in their Rolls-Royces and 
 their Pierce-Arrows, fitted with machine-guns, 
 charge the mob. Terrible slaughter. Rosie dead, 
 a horrid mess, fully described, lying on the pave- 
 ment. Everything lost. Everything worse than it 
 was before. Deportation. Exile. Tenements razed. 
 Old women, their sheitels awry, wrapped in half a 
 dozen petticoats and thick shawls, bearing the sa- 
 cred candlesticks, fleeing in all directions. Cries of 
 Wehismir! Moans. Groans. Desolation. And, 
 at the end, a lone figure standing just where you and 
 I were standing a little while ago, philosophizing, 
 
 [ii8] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 pointing the dread moral, accenting the horror. 
 The lights go out. Darkness. In the distance, a 
 band is heard playing The Star Spangled Banner. 
 Finis. 
 
 Peter's excitement became so great that he almost 
 shrieked; he waved his arms and he half rose out of 
 his chair. George Sand, too, found it expedient to 
 retreat under the bed. The kittens, tumbling mew- 
 ing out of their baskets, their little tails, like Christ- 
 mas trees, straight in the air, followed her, and soon 
 were pushing their paws valiantly against her belly 
 and drinking greedily from her dugs. 
 
 It's wonderful, I said when Peter, at last, was si- 
 lent. Then, as it seemed, rather inconsequentially, 
 Do you know Edith Dale ? 
 
 Who is Edith Dale? 
 
 Well, she's a woman, but a new kind of woman, 
 or else the oldest kind; I'm not sure which. I'm 
 going to take you there. Bill Haywood goes there. 
 So does Doris Keane. Everybody goes there. 
 Everything is all mixed up. Everybody talks his 
 own kind of talk and Edith, inscrutable Edith, sits 
 back and listens. You can listen too. 
 
 Is she writing a book? 
 
 No, she never does anything like that. She 
 spends her energy in living, in watching other peo- 
 ple live, in watching them make their silly mistakes, 
 in helping them make their silly mistakes. She is a 
 dynamo. She will give you a good deal. At least, 
 
 [119] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 these gatherings will give you a good deal. I think 
 you might carry a chapter or two of your novel 
 through one of Edith Dale's evenings. 
 
 Must I change my clothes ? 
 
 No, you are right just as you are. She will like 
 you the better for them. 
 
 That's good. I couldn't change my clothes. 
 My friends, the comrades, wouldn't understand if 
 they saw me. But you must have a drink. I had 
 nearly forgotten that I had promised you one. 
 
 Peter opened the polished oak wardrobe and ex- 
 tracted therefrom a bottle of Christopher's Finest 
 Old White Scotch Whisky and he began to speak 
 of the advantage of allowing spirits to retain their 
 natural colour, which rarely happens in the case of 
 whisky, although gin is ordinarily to be distinguished 
 in this manner. 
 
 [120] 
 
Chapter VII 
 
 Edith Dale had returned to New York after 
 three years in Florence. Near the old renaissance 
 city, she had purchased an ancient villa in the moun- 
 tains and had occupied herself during her sojourn 
 there in transforming it into a perfect environment 
 for the amusing people with whom she surrounded 
 herself. The villa originally had been built with- 
 out a loggia ; this was added, together with a salone 
 in the general style of the old house. The lovely 
 Italian garden was restored. Cypresses pointed 
 their dark green cones towards the sky and gar- 
 denias bloomed. White peacocks and statues were 
 imported. Then, with her superlatively excellent 
 taste at her elbow, Edith rushed about Italy in her 
 motor, ravishing prie-Dieu, old pictures, fans, china 
 dogs, tapestries, majolica, and Capo di Monte por- 
 celains, carved and gilded renaissance boxes, fantas- 
 tic Venetian glass girandoles, refectory tables, di- 
 vans, and divers bibelots, until the villa became a 
 perfect expression of her mood. When every pos- 
 sible accent had been added, she entertained in the 
 evening. Eleanora Duse, a mournful figure in black 
 velvet, stood on the loggia and gazed out over the 
 hills towards Certosa; Gordon Craig postured in 
 the salone; and Gertrude Stein commemorated the 
 [121] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 occasion in a pamphlet, printed and bound in a Flor- 
 entine floral wall-paper, which today fetches a good 
 sum in old bookshops, when it can be found at all. 
 To those present at this festa, it seemed, doubtless, 
 like the inauguration of the reign of another Lo- 
 renzo the MagniflcentL There was, iiideed, the 
 prospect that Ease and Grace, Beauty, Wit, and 
 Knowledge, would stroll through these stately and 
 ornate chambers for indefinite months, while hungry 
 artists were being fed in the dining-room. But to 
 Edith, this culminating dreary festivity was the end. 
 She had decorated her villa with its last china dog, 
 and the greatest actress in the world was standing 
 on her loggia. Under the circumstances, further 
 progress in this direction seemed impossible. She 
 was even somewhat chagrined to recall that it had 
 taken her three years to accomplish these things 
 and she resolved to move more quickly in the future. 
 So, packing enough of her treasures to furnish an 
 apartment in New York, she shut the villa door 
 without looking behind her, and booked a passage 
 on the next boat sailing from Genoa. 
 
 In New York she found the top floor of an old 
 mansion in Washington Square exactly what she 
 wanted and installed green glass, lovely fabrics, and 
 old Italian furniture against the ivory-white of the 
 walls and the hangings. She accomplished the set- 
 ting in a week; now she required the further decora- 
 tion which the human element would afford. Art, 
 for the moment, was her preoccupation and, with 
 
 [122] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 her tremendous energy and her rare sagacity and 
 taste, she set about, quite spontaneously, arranging 
 for an exhibition, the first great exhibition of the 
 post-impressionist and cubist painters in New York. 
 This show has now become almost a legend but it 
 was the reality of that winter. It was the first, and 
 possibly the last, exhibition of paintings held in New 
 York which everybody attended. Everybody went 
 and everybody talked about it. Street-car conduc- 
 tors asked for your opinion of the Nude Descending 
 the Staircase, as they asked you for your nickel. 
 Elevator boys grinned about Matisse's Le Madras 
 Rouge, Picabia's La Danse a la Source, and Bran- 
 cusi's Mademoiselle Pogany, as they lifted you to 
 the twenty-third floor. Ladies, you met at dinner, 
 found Archipanko's sculpture very amusing, but was 
 it art? Alfred Stieglitz, whose 291 Gallery had 
 nourished similar ideas for years, spouted like a 
 geyser for three weeks and then, after a proper in- 
 terval, like Old Faithful, began again. Actresses 
 began to prefer Odilon Redon to Raphael Kirch- 
 ner. To sum up, the show was a bang-up, whale 
 of a success, quite overshadowing the coeval appear- 
 ance of the Irish Players, chaperoned by Lady Greg- 
 ory. It was cartooned, it was caricatured, it was 
 Dr. Frank Craned. Scenes in the current revues 
 at the theatres were devoted to it; it was even men- 
 tioned in a burlesque at the Columbia. John 
 Wanamaker advertised cubist gowns and ladies be- 
 gan to wear green, blue, and violet wigs, and to 
 
 [123] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 paint their faces emerald and purple. The effects 
 of this aesthetic saturnalia are manifest even today. 
 
 Fresh from the quieter insanity of Florence, 
 Edith was intensely amused by all this. It seemed 
 so extraordinarily droll to find the great public 
 awake to the excitement of art. She surrounded 
 herself with as many storm centres as possible. 
 The crowds flocked to her place and she made them 
 comfortable. Pinchbottles and Curtis Cigarettes, 
 poured by the hundreds from their neat pine boxes 
 into white bowls, trays of Virginia ham and white 
 Gorgonzola sandwiches, pale Italian boys in aprons, 
 and a Knabe piano were added to the decorations. 
 Arthur Lee and Lee Simonson, Marsden Hartley, 
 Andrew Dasburg, Max Weber, Charles Demuth, 
 Bobby Jones — just out of college and not yet a de- 
 signer of scenery — , Bobby Parker, all the jeunes 
 were confronted with dowagers from the upper 
 East Side, old family friends, Hutchins Hapgood, 
 Ridgely Torrence, Edwin Arlington Robinson, and 
 pretty women. Arguments and discussions floated 
 in the air, were caught and twisted and hauled and 
 tied, until the white salon itself was no longer static. 
 There were undercurrents of emotion and sex. 
 
 Edith was the focus of the group, grasping this 
 faint idea or that frail theory, tossing it back a com- 
 plete or wrecked formula, or she sat quietly with her 
 hands folded, like a Madonna who had lived long 
 enough to learn to listen. Sometimes she was not 
 even at home, for the drawing-room was generally 
 
 [124] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 occupied from ten in the morning until midnight. 
 Sometimes — very often, indeed — , she left her guests 
 without a sign and went to bed. Sometimes — and 
 this happened still oftener — , she remained in the 
 room without being present. Andrew Dasburg 
 commemorated this aspect in a painting which he 
 called The Absence of Edith Dale. But always, 
 and Dasburg suggested this in his flame-like por- 
 trait, her electric energy presided. She was the 
 amalgam which held the incongruous group to- 
 gether ; she was the alembic that turned the dross to 
 gold. 
 
 When dulness, beating its tiresome wings, seemed 
 about to hover over the group, she had a habit of 
 introducing new elements into the discussion, or new 
 figures into the group itself, and one day it must 
 have occurred to her that, if people could become so 
 excited about art, they might be persuaded to be- 
 come excited about themselves too, and so she trans- 
 ferred her interest to the labouring man, to unions, 
 to strikes, to the I. W. W. I remember the first 
 time I saw her talking earnestly with a rough mem- 
 ber of the garment-maker's union. Two days later, 
 Bill Haywood, himself, came in and the tremendous 
 presence of the one-eyed giant filled the room, seem- 
 ing to give it a, new consecration. Debutantes 
 knelt on the floor beside him, while he talked simply, 
 but with an enthralling intensity, about the things 
 that interested him, reinforcing his points by crush- 
 ing the heels of his huge boots Into the Shirvan rug 
 
 [125] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 or digging his great hands into the mauve tapestry 
 with which the divan was upholstered. Miners, 
 garment-workers, and, silk-weavers were the hon- 
 oured guests in those days. The artists still came 
 but the centre of interest had shifted. Almost half 
 of every day, Edith now spent in Paterson, New 
 Jersey, where the strike of the hour was going on, 
 attending union meetings and helping to carry 
 pickets back and forth in her motor. She continued 
 to be diverted by the ironies and complexities of 
 life. 
 
 Recruits to the circle arrived from Europe — for 
 Edith knew half of Europe — ; solemn celebrities, 
 tramps, upper Fifth Avenue, Gramercy Park, Green- 
 wich Village, a few actresses — I took Fania Marin- 
 off there several times — ^were all mixed up with 
 green glass vases, filled with fragrant white lilies, 
 salmon snapdragons, and blue larkspurs, pinchbot- 
 tles, cigarette stubs, Lincoln Steffens, and the paint- 
 ings of Marsden Hartley and Arthur B. Davies. 
 Over the whole floated the dominant odours of 
 Coty's chypre and stale beer. 
 
 Edith herself was young — about thirty-four — 
 and comely, with a face that could express anything 
 or nothing more easily than any face I have ever 
 seen. It was a perfect mask. She wore lovely 
 gowns of clinging turquoise blue, spinel, and jacinth 
 silks from Liberty's. When she went out, she 
 wrapped herself in more soft silks of contrasting 
 shades, and donned such a hat as Donatello's David 
 [126] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 wears, graceful with its waving plumes and an ava- 
 lanche of drooping veils. 
 
 I spent whole days at Edith's and was nearly as 
 much amused as she. To be truthful, I dare say I 
 was more amused, because she tired of it before I 
 did. But before these days were over I brought in 
 Peter. I had telephoned Edith that we were 
 coming for dinner and, when we arrived, the 
 rooms were nearly empty, for she found it as easy 
 to rid herself of people as to gather them in. 
 Neith Boyce was there, I remember, her lovely red 
 hair caught in a low knot and her lithe body swathed 
 in a deep blue brocade. There were two young 
 men whose names I never knew, for Edith never in- 
 troduced anybody and these young men did not inter- 
 est me sufficiently to compel me to converse with 
 them and they interested Edith so little that they 
 were never allowed to appear again. The dinner, 
 as always, was simple : a soup, roast beef and 
 browned potatoes, peas, a salad of broccoli, a 
 loaf of Italian bread, pats of sweet butter, and 
 cheese and coffee. Bottles of whisky, red and 
 white wine, and beer stood at intervals along the 
 unclothed refectory table. The cynical Tuscan 
 butler, who had once been in the service of Lady 
 Paget, never interrupted the meals to serve these. 
 You poured out what you wanted when you wanted 
 it. The dinner was dull. The young men tried 
 to make an impression on Edith, with a succession 
 of witty remarks of the sort which would have 
 
 [127] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 made them exceedingly popular in anything like 
 what Ward McAllister describes as Society as I 
 Have Found It, but it was apparent that their host- 
 ess was unaware of their very existence. Neith and 
 I exchanged a few inconsequential phrases con- 
 cerning D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers. Peter, 
 dressed as he had been when I met him in the Chi- 
 nese shop, and even dirtier, was utterly silent. 
 Long before coffee was served, Edith left the table 
 and went into the salon to write letters. 
 
 When we followed her later, there were already 
 a few people there, talking in corners, and more 
 were arriving. Now and again, Edith glanced up 
 from her letters to greet one of the newcomers but 
 she did not rise. Peter wandered about the room, 
 looking at the pictures, occasionally picking up a 
 book, of which there were a great number lying 
 about on the tables. Donald Evans, correct and 
 rather portentous in his studied dignity, made an 
 early appearance. At this period he was involved 
 in the composition of the Sonnets from the Patago- 
 nian. He drew a manuscript from his pocket and 
 laid it on the desk before Edith. Over her 
 shoulder I read the line. 
 
 She triumphed in the tragic turnip field. 
 
 Hutchins Hapgood, haggard and restless and yet 
 strangely sympathetic, came in and joined uneasily 
 in an eager conversation with a young woman with 
 bobbed hair who stood in a corner, fingering an Afri- 
 can primitive carving In wood of a nak^d woman 
 
 [128] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 with long pointed breasts. Yorska was there, the 
 exotic Yorska with her long nose, her tragic eyes, 
 her mouth like a crimson slit in a face as white as 
 Pierrot's, a modern Judith looking for a modern 
 Holof ernes and never finding him; Jo Davidson 
 with his jovial black beard, Bacchus or satyr in 
 evening clothes ; Edna Kenton, in a pale green float- 
 ing tunic of her own design; Max Eastman, poet 
 and Socialist, and his wife, Ida Rauh; Helen West- 
 ley, a tall angular scrag with something of the aris- 
 tocracy of the Remsen-Meseroles informing her 
 spine, who had acquired a considerable reputation 
 for being "paintable" by never paying the slightest 
 attention to her clothes; Henrietta Rodman, the 
 round-faced, cherubic Max Weber. ... I caught 
 all these and, quite suddenly, although for some 
 time, I remembered afterward, I had been aware 
 of the odour of Coeur de Jeannette, Clara Barnes. 
 She was sitting, when I discovered her, on a sofa 
 before the fire-place, in which the coals were 
 glowing. She was more matronly in figure and was 
 dressed with some attempt at stylization. She was 
 wearing a robe of batik, iridescent in the shades of 
 the black opal, with a belt of moonstones set in 
 copper, and huge ear-rings fashioned of human 
 hair. On her feet were copper-coloured sandals 
 and I was pleased to note that her dress was long 
 enough to cover her ankles. I leaned over the back 
 of the sofa and addressed her, 
 Miss Barnes, I believe . . . 
 
 [129] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 She turned. 
 
 Oh, it's you. What a long time it's been since 
 Paris. 
 
 I perceived that her new manner was not exclu- 
 sively a matter of clothes. 
 
 Peter is here tonight, I hazarded. 
 
 Is he ? she parried, without any apparent interest. 
 
 What are you doing now? 
 
 What I have always been doing, studying for 
 opera. That teacher in Paris nearly ruined my 
 voice. I am really, it seems, a contralto, and that 
 fool had me studying Manon. Carmen is to be my 
 great role. I have a splendid teacher now and I 
 am working hard. In two or three more years, I 
 should be ready for my debut. I want to get into 
 the Metropolitan. . . . You, I hear, are with the 
 Times. Perhaps you can help me. . . . 
 
 So she rambled on. I had heard everything she 
 had to say many times before and I have heard it 
 many times since; I found it hard to listen. 
 Looking across the room, I saw Peter gazing at 
 us. So he knew she was there, but he only smiled 
 and turned back his attention to the book he held in 
 his hand. Clara, however, had caught his eye. 
 Her face became hard and bitter. 
 
 He might speak to me, she said and there was a 
 tone of defiance in her voice. Then, more calmly, I 
 never understood Peter; I don't understand him 
 now. For three days, a week, perhaps, I thought 
 he loved me. One day he disappeared, without any 
 
 [130] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 explanation; nothing, not a sign, not a word. I 
 knew that he had left Paris, because he had taken 
 the cat with him. I was not very much in love with 
 him and so it didn't hurt, at least it didn't hurt 
 deeply, but what do you make of a man like that? 
 
 He contradicts himself, I put in rather lamely, 
 searching for words. 
 
 That's it! He contradicts himself. Why, do 
 you know, I don't believe he cared at all for my sing- 
 ing. After the day I sang for you, he never asked 
 me to sing again and when I offered to he always put 
 me off. 
 
 An old lady in a black satin dress, trimmed with 
 cataracts of jet beads, addressed me and fortunately 
 drew me out of Clara's orbit. 
 
 Mrs. Dale has some remarkable pictures of the 
 new school, she began, but, of course, I don't like 
 them. Now, if you want to see pictures — I hadn't 
 said that I did — ^you should go to Henry Frick's. 
 Do you know Mr. Frick? 
 
 No, but I know the man who shot him. 
 
 The old lady grew almost apoplectic and the jet 
 beads jangled like .^olian harps in a heavy wind. 
 She managed, however, to gasp out with a sound 
 that was remarkably like gurgling, O ! indeed ! 
 How interesting! Then, peering about nervously, I 
 don't suppose he's here tonight. 
 
 I haven't seen him, I said, but he often comes 
 here and, as I see Emma Goldman yonder, I should 
 think it extremely likely that he will appear later. 
 
 [131] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 1 indeed ! The old lady leitmotived once more, 
 How interesting! How very interesting! Would 
 you mind telling me the time ? 
 
 It's a quarter of ten. 
 
 O ! As late as that ! — She had just arrived. 
 Really, I had no idea it was so late. John — this to 
 a decrepit old gentleman in shiny evening clothes — , 
 John, it's a quarter to ten. 
 
 What of it? querulously demanded the old gen- 
 tleman, with a curious upward turn to his ridicu- 
 lous side-whiskers. What of it? 
 
 The old lady, forgetting her fifty years of train- 
 ing in the most exclusive drawing-rooms, turned and 
 whispered something in his ear. 
 
 Now it was the turn of the old gentleman to feel 
 a touch of apoplexy. 
 
 Berkman! he roared, Berkman! Where is the 
 scoundrel? Where is the assassin? 
 
 The old lady looked almost shame-faced as she 
 tried to pacify John : He's not here yet, but he may 
 come. 
 
 We shall leave at once, announced the old gentle- 
 man decisively. Edith is trespassing on our good 
 nature. She is going too far. We shall leave at 
 once. 
 
 He offered the old lady his arm and they made 
 their way rapidly out, rubbing against, in the pas- 
 sageway, a one-eyed man nearly seven feet tall. 
 Now Edith had neither observed the coming or the 
 going of this elderly couple but Bill Haywood had 
 
 [132] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 not crossed the threshold before she was shaking 
 his hand and, a moment later, she had drawn him 
 with her through a doorway into a little room at 
 one side of the salon, where she could talk to him 
 more privately. 
 
 The most fascinating man alive, volunteered a 
 stranger at my elbow, a little fellow with a few 
 wisps of yellow hair and a face like a pug-dog, that 
 Bill Haywood. No show about him, nothing theat- 
 rical, not a bit like the usual labour leader. Genu- 
 ine power, that's what he has. He never goes in 
 for melodrama, not even at a strike meeting. The 
 other day in Paterson, a child was hurt while the 
 police were clearing the street of strikers. One of 
 the policemen, with his billy, struck down the boy's 
 mother and a man who was helping her to her feet. 
 At the meeting the next day, Haywood recited the 
 facts, just the bare facts, without comment or colour 
 and without raising his voice. What's the police- 
 man's name? cried a voice in the hall. His name, 
 replied Haywood, as coldly as possible, is said to be 
 Edward Duffy; his number is 72. That was all, 
 but Edward Duffy, No 72, had been consigned to 
 the perpetual hatred of every one of the two thou- 
 sand men present at the meeting. He spurns elo- 
 quence and soap-box platitudes. He never gibbers 
 about the brotherhood of man, the socialist com- 
 monwealth rising upon the ruins of the capitalist 
 system, death to the exploiters, and all the other 
 cliches of the ordinary labour agitator. Workers 
 
 [133] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 want simple, homely facts regarding their trades 
 and he gives them these facts. He is — 
 
 What are all these God damn bourgeois doing 
 here? demanded a high, shrill voice from the next 
 room. 
 
 My companion smiled. That is Hippolyte 
 Havel. He always asks that question, even at an- 
 archist meetings, but it isn't a cliche with him; it's 
 part of his charm. 
 
 Hippolyte, sweet, blinking, amblyoptic Hippo- 
 lyte, his hair as snarly as the Medusa's, strode into 
 the room. 
 
 Hush, some one adjured us. Hush ! Yorska is go- 
 ing to recite. 
 
 After a few seconds, there was silence. All the 
 chairs were filled; many were sitting on the floor or 
 standing against the wall or in the doorways ; ladies 
 in black velvet, wearing diamonds, ladies in batik 
 and Greenwich village sacks, ladies with bobbed 
 hair and mannish-cut garments, men in evening 
 dress, men in workmen's clothes. No one present, 
 I noted, looked quite so untidy as Peter. Yorska, 
 her tragic face emerging from three yards of black 
 tulle and satin, recited, in French, Baudelaire's Le 
 Balcon, fingering a red rose at her waist. As she 
 uttered the last lines with passionate intensity, 
 
 — O serments ! O parf ums ! O baisers infinis ! 
 
 there was a scattered clapping of hands, a few ex- 
 clamations of delight. Now the Tuscan butler, as 
 
 [134] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 cynical as Herbert Spencer, threw open the doors to 
 the dining-room, exposing the table laden with 
 sandwiches, salads, cold meats, glasses, and bottles. 
 Including kiimmel bottles in the form of Russian 
 bears. A few of the young radicals were the first to 
 surge to the repast. My companion and I slipped 
 out in time to hear an instructive lecture on the 
 subject of collective bargaining from a young man 
 with a black flowing tie, who grasped a pinchbottle 
 so fervidly that I felt sure it would never leave his 
 hand until he had usurped the contents. Represent- 
 ation was a word which, in its different senses, was 
 often used that evening. The labourers cooed over 
 it, worshipped it, and set it up in a shrine, while the 
 artists spurned it and cast it from them; "mere pho- 
 tography" was the phrase. 
 
 Helen Westley, black and limp, stood beside me. 
 
 Who, she asked, is that young man you brought 
 here tonight? 
 
 Peter Whiffle, I replied. 
 
 Peter Whistle? was her interrogative reproduc- 
 tion. 
 
 Presently the quiet even voice of Bill Haywood 
 was heard from the drawing-room, a voice that by 
 its very mildness compelled silence: 
 
 Violence, yes, we advocate violence of the most 
 violent sort, violence that consists in keeping your 
 mouth shut and your hands in your pockets. 
 Don't fold your arms, I say to the men, but keep 
 your hands in your pockets to keep hired thugs and 
 
 [135] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 detectives from putting bombs there. In doing th;. 
 and staying on strike you are committing the most 
 violent acts in the world, for you are stopping in- 
 dustry and keeping it stopped until the mill owners 
 grant your demands, an eight hour day, two looms 
 to a worker, and higher wages. 
 
 See how he talks, pointed out my unidentified 
 companion, rubbing his flabby fingers the while 
 around the flange of his wine-glass, about half-full 
 of red California wine. No rage, no emotion, a 
 simple explanation of the humanities. Let us go 
 in where we can hear him better. 
 
 But when we joined the throng in the drawing- 
 room, we discovered that Haywood was not begin- 
 ning. He had already finished what he had to say 
 to the group and had returned to his more in- 
 timate conversation with Edith. He brought back 
 to my mind Cunninghame Graham's description of 
 Parnell, not popular, in the hail-fellow-well-met 
 and loudly cheered conception of the word, but yet 
 with an attraction for all women whom he came 
 across, who were drawn to him by his careless treat- 
 ment of them, and by the wish that nature has im- 
 planted in their sex, to be the rulers of all men who 
 stand above their kind. 
 
 Did it ever occur to you? my companion began 
 again, that there is some strange relationship be- 
 tween trade unionism and tribal magic? You know 
 how the men of one union cannot do the work for 
 
 [136] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 the men of another union. What is this restriction 
 but the taboo? 
 
 What, indeed? I echoed pleasantly, unable to 
 think of anything more apposite to say. Besides, 
 my attention was wandering. I had discovered 
 Peter, who appeared to be engrossed in the charms 
 of a pretty girl of whom I knew little except that 
 her name was Mahalah Wiggins. 
 
 Now the round-faced, cherubic Max Weber rose 
 to speak. 
 
 The art consciousness is the great life conscious- 
 ness, he began in his somewhat high-pitched voice. 
 Its product and the appreciation of its product are 
 the very flower of life. . . . Hutchins Hapgood's 
 companion continued to finger lovingly the polished 
 wooden African figure. ... Its presence in man 
 is Godliness on earth. It humanizes mankind. 
 Were it spread broadcast it would do away with 
 dry, cold intellectualism, which dead and unfired, 
 always seeks refuge in pretending to be more than it 
 is. . . . Bill Haywood, the giant Arimaspian, was 
 pounding the seat of the brocaded sofa with his 
 great fist. . . . Art or art consciousness is the 
 real proof of genuine human sympathy. It oozes 
 spiritual expression. Were it fostered it would 
 sooner solve the great modern economic problem 
 than any labour propaganda. . . . Helen Westley 
 was yawning, with a great open jaw, which she made 
 no effort to conceal. ... A lack of this art con- 
 
 [137] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 sciousness — Weber was very earnest, but in no sense 
 theatrical — , on the part of both capital and labour, 
 is one cause of this great modern struggle. Were 
 this art consciousness more general, material pos- 
 session would be less valued; the covetous spirit 
 would soon die out. . . . Yorska, a wraith of 
 black satin and black tulle, her pale Pierrot face slit 
 with crimson and punctuated with two black holes, 
 lined with purple, stood in the doorway motionless, 
 like another Rachel, with one hand lifted above her 
 head, grasping the curtain, trying to look uncovet- 
 ous. . . . Art socializes more than socialism with 
 its platform and its platitudes. . . . Bravo ! This 
 from iHippolyte Havel. . . . iEconomists go not 
 deep enough into the modern monetary disease. 
 They deal only with materialism. They concen- 
 trate only on what is obvious, the physical starva- 
 tion of the toiling class, but never do they see or 
 seem to realize the spiritual starvation or the lack 
 of an art consciousness to both capital and labour. 
 They would argue that the material relief must 
 come first. I reply, now as always, we must begin 
 with the spiritual. I do not see, however, how the 
 spiritual or aesthetic can be separated from the 
 material. . . . Clara Barnes gave an angry shake 
 to her long ear-rings, but Donald Evans had the 
 rapt attentive air of a man hearing a great truth for 
 the first time. . . . The common solution of this 
 great problem is too dry, too matter of fact, too cal- 
 culated, too technical, too scientifically intellectual 
 
 [138] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 and not enough intellectually imaginative. Art con- 
 sciousness is not merely a form of etiquette, nor a 
 phase of culture — it is life — the quality of sensitive 
 breathing, seeing, hearing, developed to a high true 
 spirituality. Man would value man more. The 
 wonder of and the faith in other human beings 
 would kindle a new social and spiritual life. 
 
 That's good talk, was Bill Haywood's com- 
 ment. 
 
 What does it all mean? Clara Barnes caught 
 my attention again; it was obvious that she could 
 catch no one else's. 
 
 It means what you are willing or able to put into 
 it, nothing more, I affirmed. 
 
 Well, said Clara, yawning, I guess I can't put 
 much into it. This is worse than a party I went to 
 last week, given by a baritone of the Aborn Opera 
 Company. 
 
 At this point, a little school-marm type of person, 
 with a sharp nose and eye-glasses, rose and shrilly 
 began to complain. 
 
 I am a mere lay woman. I don't know a thing 
 about modern art. I've been trying to learn some- 
 thing for five years. In the effort, I have attended 
 all the meetings of this kind that I could in Paris, 
 New York, and London. There's always a lot of 
 talk but nothing is ever clear. Now I'd like 
 to know if there isn't some explanation of modern 
 art, an explanation that a mere lay woman could 
 aanderstand. 
 
 [139] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 There was a ripple of amused laughter among 
 the young artists and a rapid exchange of glances, 
 but not one of them rose. Instead, a rather 
 massive female, utterly unknown to me, with as 
 many rows of gold braid across her chest as a 
 French academician, a porter at the Credit Lyonnais, 
 or a soldier in the army of the Prince of Monaco, 
 stood on her feet. 
 
 What, exactly, would you like to know ? she asked 
 in a voice in which authority and confidence were 
 equal elements. 
 
 I'd like to know everything, but I'd be satisfied 
 with anything. What, for instance, is the meaning 
 of that picture? 
 
 She pointed to Andrew Dasburg's The Absence 
 of Edith Dale, a cubistic contribution to aesthetic 
 production In several planes and the colours of red, 
 yellow, and blue. 
 
 The massive lady began with some hesitation. 
 Her confidence had not deserted her but she seemed 
 to be searching for precise words. 
 
 Well, she said, that picture is the kind of picture 
 that gives pleasure to the kind of people who like 
 that kind of picture. The arrangement of planes 
 and colours is very satisfying. Perhaps I could ex- 
 plain it to you In terms of music. Do you under- 
 stand the terminology of music? 
 
 Not at all, snapped the little woman with the eye- 
 glasses. 
 
 The massive lady seemed gratified and continued, 
 [140] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 In that case, you may have difficulty in following 
 me, but if you take the first and second themes of a 
 sonata, their statement, the development or work- 
 ing-out section, the recapitulation, the coda. . . . 
 It has some relation to the sonata form certainly, 
 but. . . . The artist is in the room, the artist who 
 painted the picture. Won't you explain the picture, 
 Mr. Dasburg? 
 
 Andrew, very much amused, did not take the 
 trouble to rise. 
 
 The picture is there, he said. You can look at 
 it. Then, after a pause, he added, Henry James 
 says. Woe, in the aesthetic line, to any example that 
 requires the escort of precept. It is like a guest 
 arriving to dine accompanied by constables. 
 
 Then, said the little lady, solemnly, I say, Woe 
 to 'that picture, woe to it, for it certainly requires 
 the escort of precept. Moreover, I don't think any 
 one here knows anything, not a thing! she 
 cried, her voice rising to a shrill intensity, not a 
 blessed thing. It's just like the last chapter of 
 Alice. If I shouted. Why, you're only a pack of 
 cards, you'd all fly up in the air, a lot of flat paste- 
 boards with kings, queens, aces, and deuces painted 
 on your faces! I shall never ask another question 
 about modern art. My private impression is that 
 it's just so much junk. 
 
 Very indignant now, she wrapped an ice-wool 
 shawl around her bony shoulders and made her way 
 out of the room. 
 
 [141] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 There wasn't an instant's pause and her depar- 
 ture caused no comment. A new speaker began, 
 
 The world, it may be stated, for the purposes of 
 classification, is divided into four groups : the prole- 
 tariat, the aristocrats, the middle class, and the art- 
 ist class. The artjst class may be called by any 
 other name, bohemians, anarchists, revolutionists, 
 what you will. It includes those who think and act 
 freely, without traditions or inhibitions, and not all 
 people who write or paint belong to this class at all. 
 The artist class lives the way it wants to live. The 
 proletariat and the aristocrats live the way they 
 have to live. The middle class is composed of 
 members of the proletariat trying to live like the 
 aristocrats. . . . 
 
 My mind wandered. I glanced across at Peter. 
 He was still absorbed in Mahalah Wiggins and did 
 not appear to be listening to the speaker. Yet, if 
 he were really writing a realistic novel, the talk, the 
 whole atmosphere of the evening should have in- 
 terested and enthralled him. He never looked up 
 and he was whispering very rapidly. 
 
 Some people resemble animals; some, perhaps, 
 minerals; assuredly, some resemble flowers. Ma- 
 halah Wiggins was like a pansy. Her hair was 
 black with purple lights ; her eyes were a pale pansy 
 blue; her face bore an ingenuous pansy expression 
 that made one wonder why pansics were for 
 thoughts. She wore a purple velvet dress with long 
 tight sleeves ending in points which reached her 
 [142] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 knuckles, and, around her throat, a chain of crystal 
 beads that hung almost to her waist. 
 
 Intercepting the long look I gave the girl, Neith 
 Boyce smiled. 
 
 Are you, too, interested in Mahalah? she asked. 
 
 I am interested in the effect she is making. 
 
 She always makes an effect, Neith rejoined. 
 
 Who is she? 
 
 An orphan. Her father left her a little money, 
 which she is spending at the Art Students' League, 
 trying to learn to draw. Her only real talents are 
 obvious. She knows how to dress herself and she 
 knows how to attract men. Your friend seems to 
 like her. 
 
 He does, indeed. 
 
 Mahalah comes here often and always spends the 
 evening in a corner with some man. She seems to 
 prefer married men. Is your friend married? 
 
 No. 
 
 A fat woman in a grey crepe dress, embroidered 
 in steel beads, standing in the centre of the room, 
 shifted my attention. 
 
 Who is that? I asked. 
 
 That is Miss Gladys Waine, replied Neith. She 
 is the wife of Horace Arlington, the sculptor. 
 
 Miss and a wife? What is she then, herself? 
 
 Nothing. She does not write, or paint, or com- 
 pose. She isn't an actress. She is nothing but a 
 wife, but she insists on retaining her individuality 
 and her name. If any one addresses her as Mrs. 
 
 [143] 
 
Peter^ Whiffle 
 
 Arlington, she is furious, and if you telephone her 
 house and ask for Mrs. Arlington, although she 
 may answer the telephone herself, she will assure 
 you that Mrs. Arlington is not in, does not, in fact, 
 live there at all. She adores Horace, too. The 
 curious thing is that Horace's first wife, who di- 
 vorced him, has never given up his namp, of which 
 she appears to be very proud. She is always called 
 Mrs. Horace Arlington and trembles with rage 
 when some tactless person remembers her own 
 name. 
 
 My anonymous companion was by my side again 
 with a plate of chocolate ice cream which he offered 
 me. 
 
 Did you ever try eating chocolate ice cream and 
 smoking a cigarette simultaneously? he asked. If 
 you haven't, allow me to recommend the combina- 
 tion. The flavour of both cigarette and ice cream 
 is immensely improved. 
 
 An old lady with an ear-trumpet, thinking she had 
 been addressed, took the plate of ice cream from his 
 outstretched hand, leaned over us and queried, Eh? 
 
 I say, said my incognito companion, that there is 
 nothing like a good dose of castor oil. 
 
 Nothing like it for what? she shrieked. 
 
 As a carminative I he yelled. 
 
 But I don't suffer from that complaint, she argued. 
 
 Allow me to congratulate you, madame, and he 
 bowed to her. 
 
 As we were saying, he continued, in a confidential 
 
 [144] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 manner, grasping my arm, one cannot be too careful 
 in writing a drama. Weak, low-born people in 
 trouble are pathetic; the middle classes in the same 
 plight are subjects for melodrama or comedy; but 
 tragedy should deal with kings and queens. 
 
 The groups separated, came together, separated, 
 came together, separated, came together: syndical- 
 ists, capitalists, revolutionists, anarchists, art- 
 ists, writers, actresses, "perfumed with botanical 
 creams," feminists, and malthusians were all mixed 
 in this strange salad. I talked with one and then 
 another, smoking constantly and drinking a great 
 deal of Scotch whisky. Somehow, my strange 
 companion, like the Duchess in Alice, contrived 
 always to be at my side. Remembering the situa- 
 tion at the Queen's croquet party, I could not help 
 feeling grateful that his chin was square and that he 
 was shorter than I. At one o'clock I had a head- 
 ache and decided to go home. I looked for Edith. 
 
 She went to bed hours ago, Neith explained. 
 
 Then I made a vain search through the rooms for 
 Peter. 
 
 One of the two young men who had dined with us 
 stopped me. 
 
 If you are searching for your friend, he said, 
 he went away with Mahalah Wiggins. 
 
 [145] 
 
Chapter VIII 
 
 Friendship usually creates onerous obligations. 
 Our friends are inclined to become exigent and de- 
 manding. They learn to expect attentions from us 
 and are hurt when we do not live up to these ex- 
 pectations. Friends have an unpleasant habit of 
 weighing on our consciences, occupying too much of 
 our time, and chiding us because we have failed 
 them in some unimportant particular. Is it strange 
 that there are moments when we hate them? 
 Friendship, indeed, is as perilous a relationship as 
 marriage; it, too, entails responsibility, that great 
 god whose existence burdens our lives. Seemingly 
 we never escape from his influence. Each newly 
 contracted friendship brings another sacrifice to 
 the altar of this very Christian divinity. But there 
 was no responsiibility connected with my friendship 
 for Peter. That is why I liked him so much. When 
 he went away, he seldom notified me of his depar- 
 ture ; he never wrote letters, and, when he returned, 
 I usually re-encountered him by accident. In the 
 whole of our long acquaintance, there never was a 
 period in which he expected me to telephone him 
 after a decent interval. We were both free in our 
 relationship, as free as it is possible for two people, 
 who are fond of each other, to be. There was a 
 great charm in this. 
 
 [146] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 A whole month went by, after Edith Dale's party, 
 without my hearing from him. Then I sought him 
 out. By this time, I knew him well enough to be 
 prepared for some transmutation; but I was scarcely 
 prepared for what I saw. His room on East Broad- 
 way had been painted ivory-white. On the walls 
 hung three or four pictures, one of Marsden Hart- 
 ley's mountain series, a Chinese juggler in water 
 colour by Charles Demuth, a Picabia, which os- 
 tensibly represented the mechanism of a locomotive, 
 with real convex brass piston-rods protruding from 
 the canvas, a chocolate grinder by Marcel Du- 
 champ, and an early Picasso, depicting a very sick- 
 looking pale green woman, lying naked in the gutter 
 of a dank green street. There were lovely desks and 
 tables, Adam and Louis XIV and Frangois I, a 
 chaise longue, banked with striated taffeta cushions, 
 purple bowls filled with spiked, blue flowers. Gore- 
 van and Oushak rugs, and books bound in gay Flor- 
 entine wall-papers. The bed was covered with a 
 Hungarian homespun linen spread, embroidered In 
 gay worsteds. The sun poured through the win- 
 dow over George Moore's ample back and he looked 
 happier. 
 
 Peter was wearing green trousers, a white silk 
 shirt, a tie of Chinese blue brocade, clasped with a 
 black opal, and a most ornate black Chinese dress- 
 ing-gown, around the skirt of which a silver dragon 
 chased his tail. He was combed and brushed and 
 there was a faint odour of toilet-water. His nails 
 
 [147] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 were manicured and on one of his little fingers I ob- 
 served a ring which I had never seen him wear be- 
 fore. Later, when I examined it more closely, it 
 proved to be an amethyst intaglio, with Leda and 
 the Swan for its subject. It has been said, perhaps 
 too often, that you cannot make a silk purse out of 
 a sow's ear. It is even more true that you cannot 
 make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. 
 
 I rose to the room: It's nicer than Edith's. 
 
 It's not bad, Peter admitted. I didn't get it fixed 
 up at first. I like it better now, don't you? 
 
 I liked your friend, the other night, he continued, 
 
 You mean Edith? 
 
 Yes, you must take me there again. 
 
 I'm sorry but that is impossible. She has given 
 up her apartment and returned to Florence. But, 
 I added, I didn't know that you had talked together. 
 
 We didn't exchange three words, not even 
 two, he said, but I took her in and she took me in. 
 We like each other, I'm sure, and some day we'll 
 meet again. Look, he added, sweeping his arm 
 around, see what her glamour has given me, a new 
 life! 
 
 But why did you leave so early? 
 
 I met a girl. . . . 
 
 The next few weeks have left a rather confused 
 impression in my mind, perhaps because Peter him- 
 self seemed to be confused. He never spoke of his 
 book. Occasionally we went to the theatre or to 
 a concert. I remember a concert of Negro music 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 at Carnegie Hall, when there were twenty-four 
 pianos and thirty banjos in the band and the Negroes 
 sang G'winc up, Go Down, Moses, Rise and Shine, 
 Run Mary, Run, and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, 
 with less of the old plantation spirit than either Pe- 
 ter or I could have assumed, but when the band broke 
 into ragtime, the banjos twanged, the pianos banged, 
 the blacks swayed back and forth, the roof was 
 raised, and glory was upon us. Once, coming out 
 of iEolian Hall, after a concert given by Elena 
 Gerhardt, we were confronted by a wagon-load of 
 double basses in their trunks. Two of the monsters, 
 with their fat bellies and their long necks, stood 
 vis-a-vis on the sidewalk and seemed to be convers- 
 ing, while their brothers on the wagon, a full nine, 
 wore the most ridiculously degage air of dignity. 
 We will not sit down, not here at any rate, they 
 plainly said, but they did not complain. Peter 
 laughed a good deal at them and remarked that the 
 aristocrats in the French Revolution must have gone 
 to the guillotine in much the same manner, only the 
 absurd double basses in their trunks had no roses to 
 smell. Never have I seen inanimate objects so ani- 
 mate save once, at a rehearsal in the darkened Bel- 
 asco Theatre, when the curly gold backs of the or- 
 nate chairs, peeping over the rails of the boxes, as- 
 sumed the exact appearance of Louis XIV wigs on 
 stately gentlemen. We heard Toscanini conduct 
 the Ninth Symphony at the Metropolitan Opera 
 House and we went to see Mrs. Leslie Carter play 
 
 [149] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Paula Tanqueray. Often, In those days, we dined 
 at the Pavilion d' Orient, an American restaurant 
 on Lexington Avenue. Peter particularly enjoyed 
 a pudding called Tavouk Gheoksu, made of shred- 
 ded chicken-breasts, pounded rice flour, powdered 
 sugar, and cinnamon, and MIdIa Dolma, which are 
 mussels stuffed with raisins and rice and pignolia 
 nuts. Studying the menu one night, it occurred to 
 him that the names of the dishes would make ex- 
 cellent names for the characters of a play. The 
 heroine, of course, he said, would be Lahana Sarma 
 and the adventuress, Sgara Keofte; Enguinar is a 
 splendid name for a hero, and the villain should be 
 called Ajem Pilaf ! There was a negro cafe in the 
 basement of a building on Thirty-eighth street, which 
 we frequently visited to see a most amazing mulatto 
 girl, apparently boneless, fling herself about while a 
 pitch-black boy with ivory teeth pummelled his drum, 
 at intervals tossing his sticks high In the air and 
 catching them dexterously, and the pianist pounded 
 Will Tyers's Maori out of the piano. Occasionally 
 we patronized more conventional cafes, one espe- 
 cially, where Peter was Interested in a dancer, who 
 painted her face with Armenian bole and said she 
 was a descendant of a Hindu Rajah. 
 
 It was during this period that Peter nourished a 
 desire to be tattooed and we sought out masters of 
 the art on the Bowery and at Coney Island. For 
 hours at a time he would examine the albums of 
 designs or watch the artist at work decorating sailors 
 
 [150] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 and stevedores. One of these young men came 
 nearly every day until his entire body, with the ex- 
 ception of his eye-balls, lips, and nails, had become a 
 living Persian carpet, a subtle tracery of arabesques 
 and fantastic beasts, birds and reptiles. The process 
 of application was interesting. First, the pattern 
 must be pricked out on glazed paper, smeared with 
 lamp-black; this was laid on the surface to be 
 tattooed and the outline left by the lamp-black was 
 worked over with needles. The artist utilized a 
 piece of wood into which were fixed with wires, nine 
 or ten sharp points. The victims seemed to suffer a 
 good deal of pain, but they suffered in silence. It 
 was not, however, fear of pain that caused Peter to 
 hesitate. I think he would have been frescoed from 
 head to foot, could he have once decided upon a de- 
 sign. Day after day, he looked over the sketches, 
 professional symbols, military, patriotic, and re- 
 ligious, symbols of love, metaphorical emblems and 
 emblems fantastic and historical, frogs, tarantulas, 
 serpents, hearts transfixed with arrows, crosses sur- 
 mounted by spheres, and cannon. He was most 
 tempted, I think, by the design of an Indian holding 
 aloft the flag of the United States. 
 
 Late in March, he suggested a trip to Bermuda. 
 
 We must go somewhere, he explained, and why 
 not Bermuda? It's not too far away. 
 
 I had been working hard and welcomed the idea 
 of a vacation. To the question of a destination I 
 was comparatively indifferent. It was, however, 
 
 [151] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 not too easy to arrange for even a brief leave of ab- 
 sence from the Times during the busy Winter 
 months. By pleading incipient nervous prostration, 
 however, I managed to accomplish my purpose. 
 
 On the day marked for our departure, I set out, 
 bags in hands, for the office of the steamship com- 
 pany on lower Broadway, where Peter had com- 
 missioned me to stop for the tickets. There, a clerk 
 behind the counter gave me a note. It was from 
 Peter. 
 
 Dear Carl, it ran, I've cancelled our bookings. 
 I can't go. Come in to see me today and we'll ar- 
 range another trip. 
 
 An hour later I found Peter in bed in his room on 
 East Broadway. He was consuming a raw-beef 
 sandwich but he laid it down to grasp my hand. 
 
 I'm sorry, he began, but I don't know how I ever 
 happened to hit on the idea of Bermuda. When I 
 awoke this morning, the thought appalled me; I 
 couldn't get out of bed. 
 
 The counterpane was strewn with pamphlets 
 relating to foreign travel. The telephone rang. 
 
 Excuse me, he said, as he clutched the receiver. 
 Then, by way of explanation, It's the agent of the 
 Cunard Line. I want to ask about the southern 
 route. 
 
 He did. He asked about sailings for Italy, 
 Africa, India, and even Liverpool and then he told 
 the agent that he could not decide what to do but 
 he would let him know later. 
 
 [15^] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Carl, he exclaimed suddenly, let's go to Alaska 1 
 
 I shook my head. 
 
 It may be that we shall meet there by chance some 
 day, but I don't believe you can make up your mind 
 to go there this week. 
 
 I'm afraid not, he assented ruefully. I suppose 
 it's hard for you to understand. 
 
 I understand well enough, I replied, but under the 
 circumstances you will have to travel alone or get 
 some one else to go with you. While you are de- 
 ciding, my leave of absence will expire. 
 
 A few days later he telephoned me. 
 
 I'm really going to Bermuda, was his message. 
 I've had bookings on every boat sailing for 
 Europe the past week and cancelled them all. My 
 first idea was the right one. Bermuda is a change, 
 it's near at hand, and I can get back quickly if I don't 
 like it. Come to Bermuda with me, Carl! 
 
 When are you sailing? I asked. I'll come down 
 to see you off. 
 
 On the day set, I went to the wharf, and to my 
 great surprise, found Peter there, just as he had 
 promised he would be, an hour before sailing time. 
 If he kept an engagement at all, he always kept it 
 on time. He had made preparations, buying new 
 summer clothes, he explained, and a new innovation 
 trunk. As he never knew how long he would stay 
 in one place or where he would go from there, he 
 always carried a great deal of apparently unneces- 
 sary baggage. This time he had five trunks with him 
 
 [153] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 and several bags, Including two for the cats. As 
 we stood on the wharf together, we saw these trunks 
 being hoisted aboard. Then we walked up the 
 gang-plank and went to seek out his cabin. He did 
 not like it, of course, and he hunted up the purser 
 and asked to be transferred to another part of the 
 boat. The ship was crowded and no other cabin 
 was vacant, but the purser, spurred to extra effort by 
 the tip which Peter handed him, promised to try to 
 get him one of the officers' rooms. A little later this 
 transfer was effected and, before I left the boat, 
 Peter was installed in his new quarters. As I bade 
 him farewell, I thought he looked a little wistful. 
 I watched the boat pull out into the river. 
 
 Five hours later, as I was working in the tower 
 of the New York Times, I was called to the tele- 
 phone. 
 
 I said, Hello, and almost dropped the receiver, 
 for I had heard Peter's voice from the other end of 
 the wire. 
 
 I'm back on East Broadway, he groaned. Do 
 come down. 
 
 When I arrived, I found him propped up in bed, 
 drinking tea, which he shared with me. 
 
 I just couldn't go! It wouldn't have been right 
 to go feeling the way I did about it. Something 
 dreadful would have happened. 
 
 But I saw the boat cast off her moorings. 
 
 Peter grinned. 
 
 We were steaming down the river. I was very 
 
 [154]' 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 tired and, having the desire to rest in bed, I began to 
 undress. Suddenly it came over me that I had made 
 a great mistake. I put my clothes on again rapidly, 
 dashed to the deck, and hunted up the purser. You 
 know, he had already befriended me. I told him 
 that I had just opened my mail and my telegrams 
 and had run across one informing me of the violent 
 illness of my father — you know how much that 
 would really worry me ! — and that I must go back. 
 He informed rne that this was impossible, but an- 
 other bill — a very large one this time — made him 
 more sympathetic and my disembarkation was ar- 
 ranged with the aid of a tug-boat. I even got my 
 trunks ofF, but I had to cry a good deal to do that. 
 I'm very sorry for you, Mr. Whiffle, the purser 
 said. He will never forget me, I'm sure. 
 
 The telephone rang. Peter lifted the receiver 
 from the hook and I heard him say, Please reserve 
 me a deck cabin on the Kronprinz Wilhelm sailing 
 tomorrow. He turned, as he put the receiver back : 
 I'm not crazy about the North German Lloyd but 
 I've already sailed this week on the French Line, 
 the Holland-American, the Cunard, and the White 
 Star. I had to change. 
 
 By telephone the next day, I learned that Peter 
 had not sailed on the Kronprinz Wilhelm. 
 
 Do you know, he said, I've hit on a solution. I 
 could not decide where to go — every place has its 
 faults — but it has occurred to me that I am not com- 
 pelled to go anywhere ; I can stay on right here ! 
 
 [155] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 There is still a pendant to this part of my tale. 
 In May, Peter informed me that he had rented a 
 house on Long Island, a small cottage near Great 
 Neck, with a big fire-place and furniture that would 
 do. He took mc out with him the first night. He 
 had engaged a man and his wife, Negroes, to care 
 for the place and cook. We enjoyed a very good 
 dinner and he seemed to have settled down for the 
 summer but in the morning, at breakfast, I, and the 
 Negroes, learned that he was dissatisfied. 
 
 I don't like the place much, he explained, at least, 
 I don't think I do. At least, I'm not going to stay 
 here. 
 
 He paid the servants two weeks wages and dis- 
 missed them. Then he telephoned an expressman 
 to call for his trunks, none of which had been 
 opened. Carrying the bags, two of which contained 
 cats, we caught the 9 o'clock train back to town. 
 
 Before this last fluctuation, some time in April, 
 I think it was, Peter's father really did die. Peter 
 did not go to Toledo for the funeral but, after it 
 was over, Mrs. Whiffle came to New York and I met 
 her one day at tea. There was no change in Peter; 
 certainly not a band of black on his arm. 
 
 He did seem to have one fixed idea that spring, 
 an idea that centred on marriage. 
 
 I'm not particularly in love with any one, he ad- 
 mitted, and so it is rather difficult to choose, but I 
 want children and my children must have a mother. 
 There is Mahalah Wiggins . . . and there is the 
 
 [156] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Rajah's grand-daughter. Well, I don't know that 
 they will marry me, but I must decide what I am 
 going to do before I give them a chance to decide 
 what they are going to do! 
 
 A week or so later: I've been considering this 
 question of marriage. It's a serious step. I can't 
 rush into a thing like that. Mahalah doesn't like 
 cats. You know, I couldn't give up my cats. I 
 can't marry a woman who doesn't like cats. Luckily 
 I haven't asked her. 
 
 A few days later : I will marry Mahalah, I think. 
 She understands me; she doesn't seem to mind the 
 crazy things I do. She is beginning to like the 
 cats. She is healthy and she might produce fine chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Another interval and then : She has accepted me. 
 Isn't it wonderful for her to love me at my age for 
 my money alone 1 
 
 The preparations for the wedding were porten- 
 tous, although it was to be celebrated as quietly as 
 possible. There were clothes to buy and an apart- 
 ment to be furnished. He left the decision of the 
 day and place to Mahalah — fortunately that was her 
 affair — ^but there was endless discussion about the 
 honeymoon. He considered in turn nearly every 
 spot on the globe, including Patagonia and Abys- 
 sinia. As the day in May set for the ceremony ap- 
 proached, Maine was mentioned rather more fre- 
 quently than any other locality, but I had no real 
 conviction that they would ultimately go there. I 
 
 [157] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 was to be the sole attendant at the wedding. That 
 much seemed to be settled. 
 
 The great day dawned and brought with it a 
 windy rain. I knew that Peter detested windy days ; 
 one of his superstitions associated them with dis- 
 aster. He did not telephone me in the morning and 
 his silence seemed ominous. Nevertheless, I put on 
 a morning coat and a silk hat and presented myself 
 at his rooms an hour before the minute set for the 
 ceremony, which was to be celebrated in a little 
 church in the neighbourhood. On another day, I 
 would not have been surprised to find a note from 
 Peter instead of himself but when, on reaching the 
 top landing, I discovered the door open, and an old 
 charwoman, packing up books and bowls inside, 
 handed me a note with the superfluous information 
 that Mr. Whiffle had gone away, my knees shook to 
 such an extent that I wondered if I had suddenly be- 
 come afflicted with tabes. 
 
 I managed to ask. Where? 
 
 I dunno, sir. He took his trunks. 
 
 I opened the letter. 
 
 Dear Carl, it ran, I just couldn't do it. It 
 wouldn't be right to do it, if I feel that way, would 
 it? And I do, indeed, I do! I told you I was not 
 in love and it's hard to make up your mind if you 
 don't feel strongly enough, and I never feel strongly 
 enough about anything until afterwards. You know 
 that. Now, that's soon enough about Bermuda or 
 a house in the country, but it's too late in marriage. 
 
 [158] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 So I've just called it off. I've written her a note 
 which doesn't exactly explain anything but some day 
 she'll be glad, I hope, and so all you have to do is to 
 make her feel that it's all right. Somehow, I be- 
 lieve she will understand. Anyway, I don't think 
 she will be surprised. I'm going to Africa and, if 
 I ever have an address again, I'll send it to you. 
 
 Peter. 
 
 [159] 
 
Chapter IX 
 
 In September, 19 13, I found myself on the Paris- 
 Milan Express on my way to Venice to meet Edith 
 Dale. I have travelled across Switzerland many 
 times and I hope to do so again (the view from the 
 car-windows is magnificent), but I shall never visit 
 that country. God keep me from lingering in the 
 mountains or by the shores of the sea. Such im- 
 mensities of nature strangle talent and even dwarf 
 genius. No great creative work has ever been com- 
 posed by the sea or in the shadow of a mountain. 
 In the presence of the perpetual mysteries of nature, 
 man feels his smallness. There are those who may 
 say that the sky-scrapers of the city evoke a similar 
 feeling, but man's relation to these is not the same ; 
 he knows that man built these monster structures 
 and that man will tear them down again. Moun- 
 tains and the sea are eternal. Does this explain 
 why so much that passes for art in America comes 
 from Indiana and Illinois, the flat, unimposing, 
 monotonous Middle West? 
 
 All journeys, I suppose, have their memorable in- 
 cidents and episodes, however unimportant. My 
 sole memory of this particular hegira is trifling. 
 While I was dining, the train gave a lurch or a 
 swerve, hurling me with my plate in my lap to the 
 farthest corner of the car. The soup which the 
 
 [160] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 plate contained was in my lap, too, and elsewhere. 
 Fortunately, the soup was not too hot. The accident 
 recalled how once in a French drawing-room I had 
 spilled a cup of calid coffee on my leg, scorching it 
 painfully. The hostess was concerned about her 
 carpet. I do hope, she was saying, that you haven't 
 spilled your coffee on my carpet. I had not, but 
 my leg was burned so badly and I felt so outraged 
 by her lack of sympathy, that I took occasion later 
 to make good the omission. Another night, another 
 year, and certainly another place, a celebrated lady, 
 next to whom I was sitting at supper, whisperingly 
 adjured me to upset my coffee into her lap. She 
 was wearing a new and elaborate frock and, as- 
 tonished by her unreasonable request, I was dilatory 
 in obeying. She whispered again, this time more 
 sharply, Do as I tell you! At last I obeyed her, 
 but the attempt at carelessness must have seemed 
 very clumsy. I am a poor actor. Apologize, was 
 her next command. Meekly, I followed instructions. 
 Now she spoke aloud. It doesn't matter at all, she 
 said. It's only an old rag. The other gentlemen 
 present condoled with her, but she smilingly put 
 them off, Don't make the boy feel bad. It wasn't 
 his fault. Next day, while I lunched with her, a 
 great many boxes arrived from Bendel's and Hick- 
 son's. Every man who had attended the supper 
 had bought her a new dress, as she had been sure 
 they would ! 
 
 Towards nightfall, we approached the Italian bor- 
 
 [i6i] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 der and after we had passed into Italy, the compart- 
 ment, which had been crowded all day, was empty 
 but for me and another man. As he was a Rouma- 
 nian, who spoke neither French nor English, we did 
 not converse. About 8 o'clock, we lay down on our 
 respective seats and tried to sleep. It was nearly 
 midnight when we arrived at Milan and I was glad 
 to descend from the train, after the long journey, to 
 take a few hours repose at a hotel near the station. 
 Early in the morning, which was bright and sunny, 
 I departed for Venice. 
 
 In the evening of that day, I was sitting at a table 
 in the garden of Bonvecchiati's with Edith, who had 
 motored down from Florence. Since the night I 
 had taken Peter to her house in Washington Square, 
 I had seen her only for fleeting moments, but she 
 bridged the months immediately. Peter had been 
 correct in his assumption that she would remember 
 him. In fact, one of the first questions she asked 
 was: 
 
 Where is that boy you brought to my house the 
 other night? 
 
 It was "the other night" to Edith; months and 
 even years meant nothing to her. 
 
 Peter Whiffle? 
 
 Yes, a nice boy. I liked him. Where is he? 
 Let's take him back to Florence with us. 
 
 I don't know where he is. 
 
 Then I told her the story of how Peter did not 
 get married. 
 
 [162] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 I knew he was amusing. Let's get in touch with 
 his vibrations and find him. 
 
 Edith, indeed, had invented her own kind of wire- 
 less long before Marconi came along with his. Dis- 
 tances, as a matter of fact, circumscribed her even 
 less than time. 
 
 Just then, she saw Constant Lounsberry, or some 
 one else, at a table in the corner of the garden where 
 we were dining and she strolled over to talk with 
 her. Sipping my coffee and smoking my cigarette, 
 I recognized a familiar voice and turned to see Peter, 
 with his mother, about to claim an adjacent table 
 from which the occupants were rising. He looked 
 two years younger than he had four months before 
 and his rather pretty mother helped to confirm the 
 illusion. Of course, I joined them at once and soon 
 we were discussing the Italian futurists, the compar- 
 ative merits of spaghetti and risotto, Lydia Borelli, 
 the moving pictures, and the Marchesa Casati, who 
 had given a magnificent festa the evening previous, 
 when, clad in a leopard's pelt, she had stood on the 
 steps of her palace, and greeted her guests as they 
 approached by gondola on the Canale Grande. Pe- 
 ter, I noted, was wearing his amethyst intaglio of 
 Leda and the Swan on the little finger of his left 
 hand. After a time, during which, for a brief few 
 moments, the conversation drifted towards Toledo 
 and the small affairs of Mrs. Whiffle, he told me his 
 story. 
 
 I came near dying in Africa, Carl, surrounded by 
 
 [163] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 niggers and fleas I It was horrible. Hot as a New 
 York roof-garden and nearly as uncomfortable. 
 There I lay, rotting with a nameless fever, no one 
 with me but an incompetent Dutch doctor, who was 
 more ignorant of the nature of my complaint than I 
 was myself, and a half-naked aboriginal, who wanted 
 to call in the witch-doctor and who, when burked in 
 this direction, attempted a few amateur charms, 
 which at least had the merit of awakening my inter- 
 est. There I lay in a rude thatched hut with a roof 
 of caked cow-dung; I couldn't eat, drink, or speak. 
 I thought it was the end. Funny, but the only sound 
 that reached my ears, after a few days, was the chat- 
 tering of monkeys, and later they told me there were 
 no monkeys about at all. 
 
 Over my head on the wall, hung a dirty thonged 
 whip. Whether its purpose was to beat women or 
 oxen, I don't know, but, you will remember, per- 
 haps, that sometimes, when I awaken from sleep in 
 the middle of the night, I have a strange habit of 
 holding one arm straight up in the air, at right 
 angles with my body. Well, while I was ill, there 
 it was, most of the time, straight up! One night, 
 when my strength was fast ebbing away, I reached 
 higher and grasped the whip. Then I grew drowsy; 
 everything seemed to turn blood-red, even the palm- 
 leaves that waved across the opening made by the 
 doorway of the hut, and it was very hot, unspeakably 
 roasting. Now, through this same doorway, 
 walked a woman in a rusty black robe and, although 
 
 I164] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 I knew it must be Death, the figure confused itself 
 in my mind with Kathleen-ni-Houlihan and (will 
 you believe it?) Sara AUgood! Fancy the appear- 
 ance of Death in the middle of Africa suggesting to 
 me the character of an Irish play and the actress I 
 had seen in it ! There followed a slight pause, dur- 
 ing which Death stood perfectly still. Then two 
 more figures entered the tiny hut. One was the 
 Devil, Ahriman, Abaddon, what you will; I 
 recognized him at once, he was so likable and, be- 
 sides, he was lame. The other, I gathered after a 
 little conversation, was an emissary from heaven. 
 Eblis seated himself on one side of my cot, rest- 
 ing his crutches against the wall, and Gabriel's am- 
 bassador stood on the other side. Now these two 
 droll fellows began to describe the climates and 
 amusements of heaven and hell to me, each speak- 
 ing in his turn, and continually interrupting them- 
 selves to beg me to decide speedily where I wanted 
 to go. They stated frankly that they had not any 
 too much time, as they had several other visits to 
 make before dinner in various parts of the world. 
 The Angel polished his feathers with a small hat- 
 brush and the Devil seemed to be taking good care 
 of his nails, in default of the opportunity to visit a 
 manicure. Death stood immovable, inexorable. 
 Imagine, even in her presence, I had to make up my 
 mind where I wanted to go. It was a terrible ex- 
 perience, I can tell you ! It was as if she were saying, 
 Hurry now, hurry now! Nine minutes more. 
 
 [165] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Only, of course, she did not utter a single word. 
 The Angel and the Devil were too silly. Had they 
 been silent, it would have been so much easier for 
 me to decide. My mind would just be wavering in 
 a certain direction, when one of the supernatural 
 visitors would put me completely out with a warning 
 about his rival's domain and a word of enthusiasm 
 for his own. Never have I suffered such agony. 
 I could not decide whether to go to Paradise or 
 Pandemonium. My perplexity grew as they ar- 
 gued. Meantime, it was obvious that I was 
 keeping Death from other bedsides. I could see 
 that she was becoming nervous and irritable, 
 shifting first on one foot, then on the other. 
 It was evidently very irksome to her that she 
 had taken a vow of silence. In life, it is so 
 easy; there is always something else to do. But, in 
 death, Carl, there is a single alternative; at least, it 
 seemed so to me for an unconscionable space of 
 time. Suddenly, however, two ideas occurred to 
 me : I remembered that I had read somewhere that 
 demon and deity were originally derived from the 
 same root: in that case, one place would be as bad 
 or as good as the other; and I remembered my solu- 
 tion of the Bermuda problem : I could stay where I 
 was. / was not compelled to go anywhere. 
 Stretching up my hands, I pulled hard on the whip, 
 which must have broken loose from the nail, because 
 when I came out of my coma, the thongs were 
 gripped tightly in my hand, lying on the blanket. 
 
 [i66] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Peter concluded his story and, suddenly, with 
 that delightful inconsequence, which contributed so 
 definite a charm to his manner, he pointed to a 
 woman in the crowd. 
 
 She resembles an ostrich and she is dressed like a 
 peacock, he said. 
 
 Peter, I wish you wouldn't jest about death and 
 holy things, interjected Mrs. Whiffle, on whose lit- 
 eral mind the tale had evidently clawed as an eagle 
 claws the brain of a cat. 
 
 But, mother, Peter tried to mollify her, I am not 
 jesting. I am telling you something that happened. 
 
 Something that you thought had happened, Mrs. 
 Whiffle corrected, but we should only think good 
 thoughts. We should keep the dark ones out of 
 our minds, especially when they interfere and con- 
 flict with the powerful words of Almighty God, our 
 Creator. 
 
 I'm sorry, mother, I won't tell it again, he said, 
 simply. Then, after a nibble or two at a lobster, 
 he turned to me, Mother is going to America to- 
 morrow. I shall be alone. Have you been to the 
 Austrian Tyrol? There's Russia, of course, and 
 Spain, and those islands where Synge used to go. 
 Where are they? And Bucharest. Carlo, will you 
 go with me tomorrow to Buenos Ayres or Helsing- 
 fors? 
 
 You are not to be told where you are going, I re- 
 plied, but you are going with me. 
 
 Experience has taught me that people with prin- 
 
 [167] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 ciples are invariably unreasonable. Peter had no 
 principles and therefore he was reasonable. So 
 the next day, he really did drive back with us to 
 Florence, through the pleasant olive groves and 
 vineyards. A Jeroboam of chianti enlivened the 
 journey, and Edith adored the story of Peter's en- 
 counter with Death, the Devil, and the Angel. 
 
 The Villa Allegra is set on the hills of Arcetri, 
 high above the long cypress^^bordered avenue called 
 the Stradone del Poggio Imperiale. The villa is so 
 artfully concealed amongst the cunningly-grouped, 
 gnarled olive trees, eucalypti, myrtles, plane-trees, 
 laurels, pepper-trees, and rows of cypresses, that, 
 until you are in the very courtyard, you are unaware 
 of its propinquity, although, by some curious para- 
 dox, the view from the loggia commands the sur- 
 rounding country. The lovely curve of the fagade 
 has been attributed to the hand of Raphael, and 
 Brunelleschi is said to have designed the cortile, for 
 the physician of the Medici once inhabited this coun- 
 try house, but the completely successful loggia and 
 the great salone were added by Chester Dale. 
 
 Peter had never been in Florence before; no more 
 had I; so the romantic charm of this lovely old 
 house in the mountains served to occupy us for sev- 
 eral days. We inspected the sunken Roman bath 
 and were thrilled by the rope-ladder, which, when 
 lowered through a trap-door, connected a chamber 
 on the second storey with a room on the first. We 
 were satisfied to sit in the evening under the red 
 
 [i68] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 brocaded walls, illuminated by wax tapers set in gi- 
 randoles of green and rose faience, to stroll in the 
 gardens, to gaze off towards the distant hills from 
 the loggia. Edith entertained us with long ac- 
 counts of the visits of the spectre, the dame blanche 
 who haunted the house. It was, if the servants who 
 swore they had seen her were to be believed, the 
 spirit of an elderly maiden lady who had died there. 
 In Hfe, it seems, she had been of a jealous disposi- 
 tion and had tried to make the villa uncomfortable 
 for other guests. She was not successful in this 
 effort until she died, and not altogether successful 
 even then, for there were those who refused to be 
 terrified by the persistent presence of this spinster 
 eidolon, which manifested itself in various ways. 
 Others, however, resembled Madame de Stael, 
 who did not believe in ghosts but was afraid of 
 them. 
 
 In the mornings, Peter and I breakfasted to- 
 gether in the garden, whither was borne us by the 
 cynical butler a tray with individual coffee percola- 
 tors, a plate of fresh rolls, and a bowl of honey. 
 The peacocks strutted the terrace and the breeze 
 blew the branches of the fragrant gardenias across 
 our noses. In the distance, the bells of Florence 
 softly tolled. In the afternoon, the distant hills be- 
 came purple and, in the evening, the atmosphere was 
 tinged with green. The peasants sang in the road 
 below and the nightingales sang in the olive copse. 
 Roman lamps flickered on the tables and Strega, the 
 
 [169] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 golden witch-liquid, stood in our tiny crumpled 
 Venetian tumblers, their distorted little bellies 
 flecked with specks of gold. There were occasional 
 callers but no other resident guests than our- 
 selves at the villa and Edith, as was her custom, 
 left us a good deal alone. On the day of our ar- 
 rival, indeed, she disappeared after luncheon and 
 only returned two days later, when she explained 
 that she had gone to visit a friend at Pisa. We 
 usually met her at dinner when she came out to the 
 garden-table, floating in white crepe de chine, with 
 a turban of turquoise blue or some vivid brilliant 
 green, but during the day she was seldom visible. 
 She ate her breakfast alone on the balcony above 
 our bedroom, then read for an hour or two. What 
 she did after, one never knew, save as she told of it. 
 Meanwhile, Peter and I wandered about, inspect- 
 ing the shops on the Ponte Vecchio, tramping 
 through the old palaces and galleries. Several 
 times Peter paused; he hesitated for the longest 
 time, I think, before the David of Donatello, that 
 exquisite soft bronze of the Biblical lad, nude but 
 for his wreathed helmet, standing in his adolescent 
 slender beauty with one foot on the head of the de- 
 capitated giant. He carries a sword and over his 
 face flutters a quizzical expression. Indeed, what 
 Walter Pater said of the face of Monna Lisa might 
 equally well apply to the face of David. So re- 
 marked Peter, explaining that the quality of both 
 the David and Leonardo's darling was the same, 
 
 [170] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 both possessed a compelling charm, and it was the 
 charm of David which had slain the ugly giant, just 
 as charm always kills ugliness. And he swore that 
 this was the most beautiful object that the hand of 
 man had yet created, an art expression which 
 reached its emotional and intellectual zenith, and 
 then he spoke of the advantage that sculpture en- 
 joyed over painting. 
 
 One tires of a painting. It is always the same. 
 There is never anything new in it. But with a 
 statue, every different light gives it a novel value, 
 and it can be turned around. When you tire of one 
 aspect, you try another. That is why statues be- 
 long in houses and pictures belong in museums. 
 You can visit the museum when you wish to look at 
 a picture, but it is impossible to live with a picture, 
 because it is always the same. You can kill any pic- 
 ture, even a picture by Velazquez, by hanging it on 
 your own wall, for in a few days it becomes a com- 
 monplace to you, a habit, and at last one day you do 
 not look at it any more, you scarcely are aware that 
 it is there at all, and you are surprised when your 
 friends speak of it, speak of it admiringly. Yes, you 
 say, unconvinced, it is beautiful. But you do not be- 
 lieve it. On the other hand, a statue is new every 
 day. Every passing cloud in the sky, every shifting 
 of the location of a lamp, gives a new value to a 
 statue, and when you tire of seeing it In the house, 
 you can transfer it to the garden where it begins 
 another avatar. 
 
 [171] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Leaving David behind us, we walked down the 
 long, marble, fourteenth century stairway of the Pa- 
 lazzo del Podesta, into the magnificent court embel- 
 lished with the armorial bearings of the old chief 
 magistrates, out to the Via del Proconsolo, on 
 through the winding streets to the Palazzo RIc- 
 cardi, where Peter again paused before the frescoes 
 of Benozzo Gozzoli. The Gifts of the Magi is the 
 general title but Gozzoli, according to a pleasant 
 custom of his epoch, has painted the Medici on a 
 hunting expedition, the great Lorenzo on a white 
 charger, with a spotted leopard at its heels, falcons 
 on the wrists of his brilliant attendants, a long train 
 of lovely boys, in purple and mulberry and blue and 
 green and gold, the colours as fresh, perhaps, as the 
 day they were painted. The most beautiful room in 
 the world, Peter exclaimed, this little oratory about 
 the size of a cubicle at Oxford, painted by candle- 
 light, for until recently, there was no window in 
 the room, and I believed him. I am not sure but, 
 belike, I believe him still. Then Peter loved the 
 walk in that gallery which connects the Pitti Palace 
 with the Uffizi, a long narrow gallery which runs 
 over the shops of the Ponte Vecchio (was ever an- 
 other bridge so richly endowed with artistic and 
 commercial interest?), where hang the old portraits 
 of the families who have reigned in Florence, and 
 some others. Quaint old canvases, they are, by 
 artists long forgotten and of people no longer re- 
 membered, but more interesting to Peter and me 
 [172] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 than the famous Botticellls and Bellinis and Gior- 
 giones which crowded the walls of the galleries. 
 As we stood before them, Peter imagined tales of 
 adventure and romance to suit the subjects, pinning 
 his narratives to the expression of a face, the style 
 of a sleeve, the embroidery of a doublet, or to some 
 accompanying puppet or pet, some ill-featured 
 hunch-back dwarf. 
 
 Thus the days passed and Peter became dreamy 
 and wistful and the charm of his spirit, I believe, 
 was never before so poignant, for his chameleon 
 soul had taken on the hue of the renaissance and its 
 accompanying spirituality, the spirituality of the art- 
 ist, the happy working artist contriving works of 
 genius. He could have perfectly donned the cos- 
 tume of the cinquecento, for the revolutionary Pe- 
 ter of New York, the gay, faun-like Peter of Paris, 
 had disappeared, and a Peter of reveries and 
 dreams had usurped their place. 
 
 Never have I been so happy, he said to me on one 
 of these days, as I am now. This is true beauty, the 
 beauty of spirit, art which has nothing to do with 
 life, which, indeed, makes you forget the existence of 
 life. Of course, however, this is of no help to the 
 contemporary artist. Confronted, on every hand, 
 with perfection, he must lay down his chisel or his 
 brush or his pen. Great art can never flourish 
 here again. That is why Browning's poetry about 
 Florence is so bad; why Ouida, perhaps a lesser ar- 
 tist, succeeded where Browning failed. This is the 
 
 [173] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 ideal spot in wiiich to idle, to dream, even to think, 
 but no work is possible here and that, perhaps, is why 
 I love Florence so much. I feel that I could remain 
 here always and, if I did I should do nothing, noth- 
 ing, that is, but drink my coffee and eat my rolls and 
 honey in the morning, gaze across to the hills and 
 dream, stroll over the wondrous Ponte Santa 
 Trinita, which connects us so gracefully with the Via 
 Tornabuoni, wonder how Ghirlandaio achieved the 
 naive charm of the frescoes in the choir of Santa 
 Maria Novella, nothing else but these things. And, 
 of course, I should always avoid the Piazza Vittorio 
 Emanuele. 
 
 But he had scarcely uttered the name before he 
 determined that he must drink some beer and so we 
 strolled across the Piazza, on which he had just 
 placed a malison, into the Giubbe Rosse, full of 
 Americans writing letters, and Swedes and Ger- 
 mans, reading their native papers. We sat down 
 at a table just outside the door and asked one of the 
 red-coats, whose scarlet jackets give this place its 
 cant name, to bring us two steins of Munchener. 
 Then came an anachronism, one of those anachro- 
 nisms so unusual in Florence which, more than any 
 other city, is all of a piece. A stage-coach, such a 
 coach as one sees in old England, drawn by four 
 horses, drove gaily through the square. The inte- 
 rior seemed empty but on the top sat several English 
 girls In sprigged muslins, a few pale youths, and a 
 
 [174] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 hatless man with very long hair, who was clad in 
 olive-green velvet. 
 
 Who Is it? I asked a man at a neighboring table. 
 
 And the reply came, That is Gordon Craig and 
 his school. 
 
 A few days later, Peter encountered Papini, that 
 strange and very ugly youth, who mingled his 
 dreams and his politics, mixing mysticism and propa- 
 ganda until one became uncertain whether he was 
 seer or socialist, and Marinetti. He read Mafarka 
 le Futuriste and Marinetti talked to him about war 
 and vaudeville, noise and overthrow, excitement and 
 destruction. Bomb the palaces and build factories 
 where they stood! So Marinetti enjoined his fol- 
 lowers. Whatever is today is art; whatever was 
 yesterday Is nothing, worse than nothing, refuse, 
 manure. Peter was especially amused by Marl- 
 netti's war cry, Meprlsez la femme ! his banishment 
 of the nude and adultery from art, which was to be- 
 come entirely male. So, indeed, was life, for Mar- 
 inetti exhorted his male disciples to bear their own 
 children! All these ideas, Peter repeated to me in 
 a dreamy, veiled voice, noting at the same time that 
 one of Marinettl's arms was longer than the other. 
 It did not seem quite the proper environment to 
 carry on In this respect, but the words of the Italian 
 futurist had indubitably made an Impression. I 
 could see that it was quite likely that Peter would 
 become a Marinettlst when he went back to New 
 York. 
 
 [175] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 At dinner, one night, it became apparent that 
 Peter once more was considering his life work. One 
 of the guests, a contessa with a florid face and an 
 ample bosom, began to fulminate: 
 
 Art is magic. Art is a formula. Once master a 
 formula and you can succeed in expressing yourself. 
 Barrie has a formula. Shaw has a formula. Even 
 George Cohan has a formula. Black magic, ne- 
 gromancy, that's what it is : the eye of a newt, the 
 beak of a raven, herbs gathered at certain hours, 
 the heart of a black cat, boiled in a pot together, 
 call up the bright devils to do your bidding. 
 
 Art is a protest, corrected Mina Loy. Each art- 
 ist is protesting against something: Hardy, against 
 life itself; Shaw, against shams; Flaubert, against 
 slipshod workmanship; George Moore, against 
 prudery; Cunnlnghame Graham, against civili- 
 zation; Arthur Machen, against reality; Theodore 
 Dreiser, against style. . . . 
 
 Never did I feel less sure of the meaning of art 
 than I do here, surrounded by it, began Peter, al- 
 though I have never been more conscious of it, more 
 susceptible to real beauty, more lulled by its magic. 
 Yet I do not understand its meaning. It does not 
 help me to work out my own problems. The trails 
 cross. For instance, here is Edith leading her own 
 life; here are we all leading our own lives, as re- 
 mote as possible from Donatello and Gozzoli. 
 Here is Gordon Craig, dressed like Bunthorne, driv- 
 ing a stage-coach and sending out arcane but thun- 
 
 [176] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 dering manifestos against a theatre in which his 
 mother and Eleanora Duse are such conspicuous 
 examples; here is Papini working and dreaming; 
 here is Marinetti shooting off fire-crackers; here are 
 the Braggiottis, teaching young Americans the ele- 
 ments of music in that modern music-room with bas- 
 relief portraits of the great composers, Beethoven, 
 Bach, Verdi, Mozart, Wagner, Rossini . . . and 
 Sebastian B. Schlesinger, moulded in the frieze. 
 Here is Loeser, always building new houses and 
 never completing them; here is Arthur Acton, with a 
 chauffeur who sings tenor arias in the drawing-room 
 after dinner; here is Leo Stein, collecting Renoirs 
 and Cezannes for his villa at Settignano. What 
 does it all mean, unless it means that everything 
 should be scrambled together? I think a great 
 book might be written if everything the hero 
 thought and felt and observed could be put into it. 
 You know how, in the old novel, only what is ob- 
 yiously essential to the plot or the development of 
 character is selected. But a man, crossing a street 
 to commit a murder, does not continuously think of 
 the murder. The cry of Buns ! hot cross buns ! the 
 smell of onions or dead fish, the sight of a pretty 
 woman, impress his senses and remind him of still 
 other things. These ideas, impressions, objects, 
 should all be set down. Nothing should be omitted, 
 nothing! One might write a whole book of two 
 hundred thousand words about the events of an 
 hour. And what a book! What a book! 
 
 ri77] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 This was before the day of Dorothy Richardson, 
 James Joyce, and Marcel Proust. The contessa 
 snorted. Mina Loy, at the other end of the table, 
 looked interested in Peter for the first tirtie, I 
 thought. The white Persian cat, one of Edith's cats, 
 with his superb porcelain-blue eyes, sauntered into 
 the room, his tail raised proudly. Edith spoke: 
 
 The great artists put themselves into their work; 
 the cat never does. Men like Stieglitz and de 
 Meyer put themselves into their cameras, that is 
 why their photographs are wonderful, but the cat 
 never puts himself into a camera. The great con- 
 querors put themselves into their actions; the cat 
 never does. Lovers put themselves into the selves 
 of their loved ones, seeking identity; the cat never 
 does. Mystics try to lose themselves in union with 
 their gods; the cat never does. Musicians put 
 themselves into their instruments; the cat never 
 does. Indian men, working in the ground, put 
 themselves In the earth, in order to get themselves 
 back in the forms of wheat or maize to nourish 
 their bodies; the cat never does. Navajo women, 
 when they weave blankets, go so completely into the 
 blanket while they are working on It, that they al- 
 ways leave a path In the weaving that comes out 
 at the last corner for their souls to get out of the 
 blanket; otherwise they would be Imprisoned in it. 
 The cat never does things like this! 
 
 So every one really centres his self somewhere 
 
 [178] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 outside of himself; every one gets out of his body. 
 The cat never does. Every one has a false centre. 
 Only the cat — the feline — has a true centredness 
 inside himself. Dogs and other animals centre 
 themselves in people and are therefore open to in- 
 fluence. The cat stays at home inside his body and 
 can never be influenced. 
 
 Every one has always worked magic through 
 these false centres — doing things to himself — seek- 
 ing outlets, seeking expression, seeking power, all of 
 which are only temporarily satisfactory like a move- 
 ment of the bowels, which is all it amounts to on 
 the psychic plane. The cat is magic, is himself, is 
 power. The cat knows how to live, staying as he 
 does inside his own body, for that is the only place 
 where he can live! That is the only place where 
 he can experience being here and now. 
 
 Of course, all the false-centred people have a 
 kind of magic power, for any centredness is power, 
 but it doesn't last and it doesn't satisfy them. Art 
 has been the greatest deceiver of all — the better the 
 art, the greater the deception. It isn't necessary 
 to objectify or express experience. What IS neces- 
 sary IS to he. The cat knows this. May be, that is 
 why the cat has been an object of worship; may be, 
 the ancients felt intuitively that the cat had the truth 
 in him. 
 
 Do you see where these reflections lead? The 
 whole world is wildly pursuing a mirage; only the 
 cat is at home, so to speak. 
 
 [179] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Actors understand this. They only get a sense 
 of reality when they throw themselves into a part. 
 ... a false centre. 
 
 The cat understands pure being, which is all we 
 need to know and which it takes us a lifetime to 
 learn. It is both subject and object. It is its own 
 outlet and its own material. It is. All the rest of 
 us are divided bits of self, some here, some there. 
 The cat has a complete subjective unity. Being its 
 own centre, it radiates electricity in all directions. 
 It is magnetic and impervious. I have known people 
 to keep a cat so that they could stroke the electricity 
 out of it. Why didn't they know how to be electric 
 as the cat IS? The cat is the fine specimen of the I 
 am. Who of us is so fully the I am that I am? 
 
 Look around the world! Everybody putting 
 Kims elf out in some form or another! Why? It 
 doesn't do any good. At the end you exhaust the 
 possibilities of the outside world — geographically 
 and spiritually. You can use up the external. You 
 can come to the end of objectifying and objectives, 
 and then what? In the end, only what we started 
 with — the Self in the body, the Self at home, where 
 it was all the time while bits of it were wandering 
 outside. 
 
 Peter applauded with sundry bravos and benisons 
 and divers amens, but was moved to ask. Does 
 the cat know this? Has the cat got a conscious 
 being? Does he appreciate his advantage? 
 
 [i8o] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 But no one answered these questions, least of all 
 the haughty white Persian. 
 
 Apparently unreasonably (this biography was as 
 far from my mind as anything well could be), fol- 
 lowing a habit which I never could explain to myself 
 until I became a professional writer and the reason 
 became clear, before going to bed, I made notes on 
 this and several subsequent evenings and it is upon 
 these notes that I am drawing now, to refresh my 
 memory. A few nights later, when Edith and Pe- 
 ter and I were sitting alone on the loggia, Peter 
 talked to us about the critics. 
 
 The trouble with the critics, he was saying, is that 
 they are not contradictory enough. They stick to a 
 theory for better or worse, as unwise men stick to 
 an unwise marriage. Once they have exploited a 
 postulate about art or about an artist, they make 
 all his work conform to this postulate, if they ad- 
 mire it. On the other hand, if the work of an art- 
 ist displeases them, they use the postulate as a ham- 
 mer. I think it is Oscar Wilde who has written. 
 Only mediocre minds are consistent. There is some- 
 thing very profound in this aphorism. 
 
 Consider Frank Harris's Shakespeare theory, for 
 example. It is good enough as an idea, as a casual 
 inspiration it is almost a masterpiece. It would 
 make a fine essay; if it had been used as a passing 
 reference in a book, it probably would have been 
 quoted for years. Harris, however, has spun it 
 out into two thick volumes and made it fit into crev- 
 
 [i8i] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 ices and crannies where it cannot very well feel at 
 home. Certainly, it is true that any artist creates 
 his characters out of his own virtues and weaknesses; 
 all of a novelists' characters, to a certain extent, re- 
 flect phases of himself. The mistake Harris has 
 made lies in identifying Shakespeare only with his 
 weak, unsuccessful, sentimental, disappointed, un- 
 happy characters, such as Hamlet, Macbeth, Or- 
 sino, Antonio, and Romeo. Shakespeare probably 
 was just as much Sir Toby Belch and Falstaff. 
 Curiously, this theory of identification fits the 
 critic himself, the intellectual creator, more snugly 
 than it does the romancer, the emotional crea- 
 tor. Remy de Gourmont has pointed this out. 
 He says. Criticism is perhaps the most suggestive 
 of literary forms; it is a perpetual confession; be- 
 lieving to analyze the works of others, the critic 
 unveils and exposes himself to the public. So from 
 these books we may learn more about Frank Harris 
 than we do about Shakespeare. ^ This, of course, 
 has its value. 
 
 But that is why Shakespeare Is greater than his 
 critics, that is greater than the critics who cling to 
 one theory. Shakespeare speaks only through his 
 characters and he can say, or make some one say. 
 
 Frailty, thy name is woman, 
 
 but on the next page another character may deny 
 
 1 In a later book, his biography of Oscar Wilde, Frank Harris 
 tells us more about himself than he does about Wilde. C. V. V. 
 
 [182] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 this sentiment, for this is not Shakespeare's opinion, 
 it is that of an incensed lover. So Richard III re- 
 marks : 
 
 Conscience is but a word the cowards use, 
 Devised at first to keep the strong in awe. 
 
 But Hamlet replies : 
 
 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all. 
 
 Both are true, both good philosophy, and so from 
 the playwright, the great poet, the novelist, you get 
 a rounded view of life which a critic usually denies 
 you. 
 
 Occasionally a critic does contradict himself and 
 really becomes human and delightful and we take 
 him to our hearts, but the next day all the doctors 
 and professors and pundits are excoriating him, as- 
 suring us that he is not consistent, that he is a loose 
 writer, etc. Good critics, I should like to believe, 
 are always loose writers; they perpetually contra- 
 dict themselves; their work is invariably palinodal. 
 How, otherwise, can they strive for vision, and how 
 can they inspire vision in the reader without striv- 
 ing for vision themselves? Good critics should 
 grope and, if they must define, they should con- 
 stantly contradict their own definitions. In this 
 way, in time, a certain understanding might be 
 reached. For instance, how delightful of Anatole 
 France to describe criticism as a soul's adventures 
 among masterpieces, and then to devote his critical 
 
 [183] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 pen to minor poets and unimportant eighteenth cen- 
 tury figures. 
 
 But, asked Edith, does not the reader in his own 
 mind contradict the consistent critic? Does not this 
 answer your purpose ? 
 
 By no means. What you say is quite true. A 
 dogmatic writer rouses a spirit of contradiction in 
 the reader, but this is often a spirit of ire, of deep 
 resentment. That is in itself, assuredly, something, 
 but it is not the whole purpose of criticism to arouse 
 anger, whatever the prima donna who reads the 
 papers the morning after her debut at the Opera 
 may think. Criticism should open channels of 
 thought and not close them; it should stimulate the 
 soul and not revolt it. And criticism can only be 
 wholesome and sane and spiritually stimulating 
 when it is contradictory. I do not mean to say that 
 a critic should never dogmatize — I suppose at this 
 moment I myself appear to be dogmatizing! He 
 may be as dogmatic as he pleases for a page or 
 two pages, but it is unsafe to base an entire book 
 on a single idea and it is still more unsafe to 
 reflect this idea in one's next book. It is better 
 to turn the leaf and begin afresh on a new page. 
 Artists are never consistent. Ibsen apparently 
 wrote A Doll's House to prove that the truth should 
 always be told to one's nearest and dearest and, 
 apparently, he wrote The Wild Duck to prove 
 that it should not. Ibsen, you see, was a poet and 
 he knew that both his theses were true. In his at- 
 
 [184] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 tempt to explain the revolutionary doctrines which 
 he found inherent in Wagner's Ring, Bernard Shaw 
 ran across many snags. He swam through the 
 Rheingold, rode triumphantly through Die Wal- 
 kiire, even clambered gaily through Siegfried, by 
 making the hero a protestant, but when he reached 
 Gotterdammerung, his hobby-horse bucked and 
 threw him. Shaw was forced to admit that Gott- 
 erdammerung was pure opera, and he attempted 
 to evade the difficulty by explaining that Wagner 
 wrote the book for this work before he wrote the 
 other three, quite forgetting that, if Wagner's in- 
 tention had been the creation of a revolutionary 
 cycle, it would have been entirely possible for him 
 to rewrite the last drama to fit the thesis. The fact 
 is that the work is inconsistent from any point of 
 view except the point of view of art. Any critic 
 who is an artist will be equally inconsistent. 
 
 Truth ! Truth ! Peter cried in scorn. Forsooth, 
 what is truth? Voltaire was right: error also has its 
 merits. 
 
 And yet ... I began. 
 
 And yet! he interrupted, still more scornfully. 
 No, there is no such thing as truth. Truth is impos- 
 sible. Truth is incredible. The most impossible 
 and incredible physical, spiritual, or mental form or 
 idea or conception in the cosmos is the cult of truth. 
 Truth implies permanence and nothing is permanent. 
 Truth implies omniscience and no one is omniscient. 
 Truth implies community of feeling and no two hu- 
 
 [185] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 man beings feel alike about anything, except perhaps 
 for a few shifting seconds. Truth, well if there is 
 such a thing as truth, we may at least say that it is 
 beyond human power to recognize it. 
 
 But it is not impossible to approach Truth, to 
 play around her, to almost catch her, to vision her, 
 so to speak. No, that is not impossible. Nathe- 
 less, the artist, the writer, the critic w*ho most 
 nearly approaches Truth is he who contradicts him- 
 self the oftenest and the loudest. One of the very 
 best books James Huneker has written is a work 
 purporting to come from the pen of a certain Old 
 Fogy, in which that one opposes all of James's 
 avowed opinions. It is probable, indeed, that we 
 can get the clearest view of Huneker's ideas from 
 this book. 
 
 Then truth is not an essential of art? I asked. 
 
 It has, of course, nothing whatever to do with 
 art. No more has form. Life has so much form 
 that art, which should never imitate life, should be 
 utterly lacking in form. Criticism appears to be a 
 case apart. Criticism is an attempt, at its worst at 
 least, to define art and definition implies truth and 
 error. But what the critics do not realize in their 
 abortive efforts to capture her. Is that Truth is elu- 
 sive. She slips away if you try to pin her down. 
 You must, as Matthew Arnold has said much better 
 than I can, approach her from all sides. Even then 
 she will elude you, for the reason I have elucidated, 
 because she does not exist! 
 
 [i86] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 Why do we read the old critics? For ideas? Sel. 
 dom. Style? More often. Anecdotq? Always, 
 when there is any. Spirit? We delight in it. 
 Facts? Never. No, you will never find facts — at 
 least about such a metaphysical concept as art — cor- 
 rectly stated in books, because there is no way of 
 stating them correctly. And the evasion of facts is 
 an exact science which has yet to become popular 
 with the critics, although it is always popular with 
 readers, as the continued success of Berlioz's Me- 
 moires goes to show. We read the old critics to 
 find out about the critics, not about the subjects on 
 which they are writing. Consequently, it is only the 
 critics who have been interesting personalities who 
 are read through many generations. 
 
 As an addendum, I might state that interest in art 
 is fatal. An enthusiastic essay will kill anything. 
 Spontaneity and freshness do not withstand praise. 
 Art must be devoid of self-consciousness. A cer- 
 tain famous actress once told me that she never 
 liked to have people particularize in their enthusi- 
 asm about one of her performances. When, she 
 said, they tell me that such and such a gesture, such 
 and such a tone of voice, is the important moment in 
 one of my interpretations, I can never repeat it 
 without remembering their praise, and, involuntar- 
 ily, something of the original freshness has de- 
 parted. 
 
 I remember another occasion on which Peter 
 talked about the subject that most interested him. 
 
 [187] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 It is the pleasant custom of present day publish- 
 ers of books, he was saying, to prelude the real pub- 
 lication of a volume by what is technically known as 
 a dummy. The dummy, the sample from which or- 
 ders are taken, to all outward inspection, appears to 
 be precisely hke the finished book. The covers, the 
 labels, the painted top, and the uncut edges give one 
 every reason to hope for a meaty interior. Once 
 opened, however, the book offers the browser a suc- 
 cession of blank pages. 'Sheet after sheet of clean 
 white paper slips through his fingers, unless, by some 
 chance, he has opened the volume at the beginning, 
 for the title-page and table of contents are printed 
 (the dedication is missing) , and so are the first thir- 
 teen pages of the text. 
 
 Such dummies are irresistible to me. Coming 
 warm, hot even, from the binder, they palpitate 
 with a suggestion which no perusal of their contents 
 can disturb. How much better than the finished 
 book ! I exclaim, and there are days when I feel that 
 I will never write a book; I will write only dummies. 
 I would write a title-page, a table of contents, and 
 thirteen pages of some ghost essay, breaking off in 
 the middle of a curious phrase, leaving the reader 
 sweetly bewildered in this maze of tender thought. 
 And, to give this dummy over-value, to heighten its 
 charm and its mystery, I would add an index to the 
 blank pages, wherein one could learn that on empty 
 page 76 hovered the spirits of Heliogabalus and 
 Gertrude Atherton. It would further inform one 
 
 [188] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 that Joe Jackson, George Augustus Sala, and fireless 
 cookers were discussed on page 129. Fancy the 
 reader's delight in learning that he might cull pas- 
 sages dealing with the breeding of white mice on un- 
 begotten pages 67, 134, 185 et seq., 210, 347! 
 
 I have it in mind to call my first dummy, Shelling 
 Peas for Shillings. The binding will be of magenta 
 boards with a pistachio-green label, printed in ma- 
 genta ink. The top will be stained pistachio-green 
 and the edges will be unopened. On the title-page, 
 I shall set an appropriate motto and a plausible table 
 of contents might include : 
 
 The Incredible History of Ambrose Gwinett 
 
 Inkstains and Stoppage 
 
 Purcell, Polko, and Things Beginning with a P 
 
 Folk-Dancing at Coney Island 
 
 Carnegie Hall as a Cure for Insomnia 
 
 Many Blue Objects and One Black One 
 
 Ouida's Italy 
 
 Erasmus Darwin's Biographer 
 
 Etc. 
 
 You see how the subjects present images and ideas 
 which will make it possible for the reader, in his 
 mind's eye, to write the papers himself. Shelling 
 Peas for Shillings, Peter rolled the name over. It's 
 a good title. I shouldn't wonder if sometime that 
 dummy would be much sought after by collectors. 
 
 [189] 
 
Chapter X 
 
 My story rolls on. As I gaze back through the 
 years, gathering the threads of this history together, 
 trying to weave them into form, I am amazed to 
 recall how very few times, comparatively speaking, 
 Peter and I met. Yet, I suppose, I was his best 
 friend during these years, at any rate his most sym- 
 pathetic friend. If there were no other proof, his 
 will would offer excellent evidence in this respect. 
 But we saw each other seldom, for a few hours, a 
 few days, at best for a few weeks, followed by a pe- 
 riod of vacuum. I had my own interests and, doubt- 
 less, he had his. It was characteristic that he never 
 wrote letters to me, with the exception of the one or 
 two brief notes I have already inserted in the text. 
 His personality, however, was so vivid, the Impres- 
 sion he made on me was so deep, that he always 
 seemed to be with me, even when the ocean sep- 
 arated us. As I write these lines, I could fancy that 
 he stands beside me, a sombrely joyous spectre. I 
 could believe that he bends over my shoulder or, at 
 any rate, that presently I will hear a knock at the 
 door and he will enter, as he entered Martha Bak- 
 er's studio on that afternoon in May so long ago. 
 
 The magic Florentine days marched to a close. 
 I say marched, but the musical form was more ex- 
 actly that of a gavotte, a pavane, or a stately Polish 
 [190] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 dance, imagined by Frederic Chopin. It was too 
 perfect to last, this life which appeared to assume 
 the shape of conscious art. One afternoon, Peter 
 and I motored to the old Villa Bombicci, the design 
 of which legend has attributed to the hand of Mi- 
 chael Angelo. Now it had become a farmhouse, 
 and pigs and chickens, a cock and a few hens, stray 
 dogs and cats, wandered about in the carious cortile. 
 We had come to bathe in the swimming-pool, a mar- 
 ble rectangle, guarded by a single column of what 
 had once been the peristyle. A single column, a 
 cornered wall, and a cluster of ivy : that was the pic- 
 ture. We could bathe nude, for the wall concealed 
 the pool from the farmhouse. 
 
 Peter was the first to undress and, as he stood on 
 the parapet of the pool by the broken column, his 
 body glowing rose-ivory in the soft light of the set- 
 ting sun, his head a mass of short black curls, he 
 seemed a part of the scene, a strange visitor from 
 the old faun-like epoch, and I could imagine a faint 
 playing of pipes beyond the wall, and a row of Tan- 
 agra nymphs fleeing, terrified, in basso-rilievo. 
 Sometime, somewhere, in the interval since the days 
 when we had pursued the exterior decorators on 
 the Bowery and at Coney Island, he had discovered 
 an artist, for now his chest was tattooed with a 
 fantastic bird of rose and blue, a bird of paradise, 
 a sirgang, or, perhaps, a phoenix or a Zhar-Ptitsa, 
 the beak pointing towards his throat, the feathers 
 of the tail showering towards that portion of the 
 
 [191] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 body which is the centre of umbilicular contempla- 
 tion among the Buddhists. He straightened his 
 lithe body, lifted his arms, and dived into the pool, 
 where he swam about like a dolphin. It was Pe- 
 ter's nature, as I must have made evident by now, 
 to take the keenest joy in everything he did. 
 Almost immediately, I followed and we puffed 
 and blew, spattering the crystal drops about in 
 the air, so that it seemed as if showers of 
 stones fell sharply, stinging our faces, as we lay on 
 our backs in the warm water. Eventually, clamber- 
 ing up to the parapet, we sat silent for many mo- 
 ments and I remember that a fleecy cloud passed 
 over the face of the sinking sun. It was very still, 
 save for the soft lowing of cattle in the distant 
 mountains, the cackling of the hens in the courtyard, 
 and the sweet tolling of faraway bells. 
 
 Peter broke the silence. 
 
 I am not going back to the villa, he said. 
 
 Peter! 1 exclaimed. But. . . . 
 
 I didn't know until just now. I love the villa. I 
 love Florence. I love Edith and I love you. I 
 have never been so happy, but it couldn't last. Just 
 now when we were spattering water I had a pre- 
 monition. . . . He laughed. There was once a 
 singer — I do not recall her name, but it was neither 
 Patti nor Jenny Lind — ^who retired while she was 
 still in the best of voice, and those who heard her in 
 her last opera will always remember what a great 
 singer she was. So I am going away while I am 
 
 [192] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 happy, so that I can always remember that I have 
 been perfectly happy — once. 
 
 But you always are. . . . 
 
 There, you see, you think so ! There are months 
 and years when I am alone, when nobody sees me. 
 Then I am struggling. I make a great deal of 
 sport about work and, indeed, I won't work at any- 
 thing that doesn't interest me, but you know, you 
 must know by now, how much I want to write. It 
 is coming so slowly. It is getting late . . . late. 
 I must go away to think. I'm too happy here and 
 I am losing time. He was very earnest now. I 
 must write my book. 
 
 But you are coming back to the villa. Your 
 clothes are there, and you will want to say good-bye 
 to Edith. 
 
 No, that is just what I want to avoid and that is 
 what you can do for me. I can't say good-bye to 
 Edith. She would persuade me to stay. It would 
 be so easy! You, especially, could persuade me to 
 stay, but I know you won't, now that you under- 
 stand how I feel. I shall catch the night express 
 for Milan. Please, try to explain to Edith . . . 
 and you can pack my bags and send them after me. 
 
 But where are you going? 
 
 I don't know, and even if I did know and told 
 you, you might be certain that I would -change my 
 mind and go somewhere else. Dispatch my bags to 
 the American Express Company in Paris and I will 
 send for them. 
 
 [193] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 When shall we meet again? 
 
 Peter stood up, his nude body outlined against 
 the crumbling, pink, vine-covered wall. Then he 
 turned and stooped to draw on his clothing. 
 
 Chi lo sa ? It will be sometime. You are going 
 back to New York? 
 
 Yes, very soon. Perhaps next week. 
 
 Well, if we don't meet somewhere else, I will go 
 there to see you, that much I promise. Then, al- 
 most awkwardly, he added, I want you to have my 
 ring. He drew off the amethyst intaglio of Leda 
 and the Swan and handed it to me. 
 
 We dressed in silence. The motor stood waiting 
 iH the road beside the decrepit farmhouse, noble 
 even in its decay. Peter asked the chauffeur to 
 drive him to the station, before he should take me 
 back to the ViHa AUegra, and at the station we 
 parted. 
 
 Dinner that night seemed tasteless. Edith was 
 furious; I have seldom seen her so angry. It was 
 exactly what she would have done herself, had she 
 been so inclined, but she was not at all pleased to 
 have Peter usurp her privileges. She hardly waited 
 for the salad, leaving me to munch my cheese and 
 drink my coffee alone. Following dinner, I sat, a 
 solitary figure on the loggia, smoking a cigarette 
 and sipping my Strega. Giuseppe, the boy who 
 brought it to me, seemed as dispirited as the rest of 
 us. After trying in vain to interest myself in half 
 a dozen books, I went to bed and rolled about rest- 
 
 [194] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 lessly during the long hot night. I was up very 
 early and went to the garden as usual, but now lonely 
 and miserable, to have my breakfast. The butler, 
 more cynical than ever, brought the tray. A gar- 
 denia and a note were added touches. They were 
 Edith's farewells. She had departed for a motor 
 trip through the Abruzzl. She might return In 
 three weeks. I was welcome to stay at the villa 
 and wait or. . . . And so that summer ended. 
 
 A month later, Edith was back In New York and 
 again I saw a good deal of her. She asked for news 
 of Peter but I had none to give her. Other friends 
 of mine who had heard about him from Edith, ex- 
 pressed a desire to meet him but, so far as I was con- 
 cerned, I did not even know whether or not he was 
 alive. In December, however, passing through 
 Stuyvesant Square with its gaunt bare trees, the old 
 red-brick Quaker school-houses, and the stately but 
 ugly Saint George's, on my way to Second Avenue, 
 where I intended to visit a shop where Hungarian 
 music might be procured, I found him, sitting 
 alone on a bench. 
 
 I am too happy to see you again, he greeted me, 
 but only you. Edith must not be told that I am in 
 New York, for at last I am working and I can afford 
 no interruptions. Edith has a way of breaking up 
 the rhythm of one's life and my life is very 
 rhythmic just now. Do you remember, one night at 
 the villa, there was some conversation about for- 
 mulae and black magic? 
 
 [195] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 You mean the contessa. . . . 
 
 She was speaking figuratively, perhaps, but I have 
 taken her literally. He paused for a moment ; then 
 he continued, It is possible that you will also re- 
 member my telling you in Florence that I believed 
 Donatello's David to be the most beautiful work 
 of art in the world. 
 
 I remember; I still think you were right. 
 
 I haven't altered my opinion. It is the most 
 beautiful statue I have ever seen, just as Debussy's 
 I'Apres-midi d'un Faune is the most beautiful music 
 I have ever heard, just as The Hill of Dreams is — 
 have you read it? 
 
 At that time, I had not, and I admitted it. I 
 was even ignorant of the name of the author. 
 
 Now Peter, as he sat on the bench beside me, be- 
 gan to speak of Arthur Machen : The most wonder- 
 ful man writing English today and nobody knows 
 him ! His material is handled with the most con- 
 summate art ; arrangement, reserve, repose, the per- 
 fect word, are never lacking from his work and yet, 
 at the age of fifty, he is an obscure reporter on a 
 London newspaper. There are, of course, reasons 
 for this neglect. It is a byword of the day that one 
 only takes from a work of art what one brings to it, 
 and how few readers can bring to Machen the requi- 
 site qualities; how few readers have gnosis! 
 
 Machen evokes beauty out of horror, mystery, 
 and terror. He suggests the extremes of the ter- 
 rible, the vicious, the most evil, by never describing 
 
 [196] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 them. His very reserve conveys the infinity of abom- 
 ination. You know how Algernon Blackwood docu- 
 ments his work and stops to explain his magic orgies, 
 so that by the time you have finished reading one of 
 his weird stories, you completely discount it. On 
 the other hand, although Machen writes in the sim- 
 plest English concerning the most unbelievable im- 
 pieties, he never lifts the crimson curtain to permit 
 you to see the sacrifice on the Manichean altar. 
 He leaves that to the imagination. But his ex- 
 pression soars so high, there is such ecstasy in his 
 prose, that we are not meanly thrilled or revol- 
 ted by his negromancy; rather, we are uplifted and 
 exalted by his suggestion of impurity and corrup- 
 tion, which leads us to ponder over the mysterious 
 connection between man's religious and sensual 
 natures. Think, for a moment, of the life of Paul 
 Verlaine, dragged out with punks and pimps in the 
 dirtiest holes of Paris, and compare it with the 
 pure simplicity of his religious poetry. Think of 
 the Song of Songs which is Solomon's and the ancient 
 pagan erotic rites in the holy temples. Remember 
 the Eros of the brothels and the Eros of the sacred 
 mysteries. Recall the Rosicrucian significance of 
 the phallus, and its cryptic perpetuation in the cross 
 and the church steeple. In the middle ages, do 
 not forget, the Madonna was both the Virgin 
 Mother of Christ and the patron of thieves, strum- 
 pets, and murderers. Far surpassing all other 
 conceivable worldly pleasures is the boon promised 
 
 [197] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 by the gratification of the sensual appetite; faith 
 promises a bliss that will endure for ever. In either 
 case the mind is conscious of the enormous impor- 
 tance of the object to be obtained. Machen 
 achieves the soaring ecstacy of Keats's Ode on a 
 Grecian Urn or Shelley's To a Skylark, and yet he 
 seldom writes of cool, clean, beautiful things. Was 
 ever a more malignantly depraved story written 
 than The White People (which it might be profit- 
 able to compare with Henry James's The Turn of 
 Screw) , the story of a child who stumbles upon the 
 performance of the horrid, supernatural rites of a 
 forgotten race and the consequences of the discov- 
 ery? Yet, Machen's genius burns so deep, his power 
 is so wondrous, that the angels of Benozzo Gozzoli 
 himself do not shine with more refulgent splendour 
 than the outlines of this erotic tale, a tale which it 
 would have been easy to vulgarize, which Black- 
 wood, nay Poe himself, would have vulgarized, 
 which Laforgue would have made grotesque or 
 fantastic, which Baudelaire would have made poetic 
 but obscene. But Machen's grace, his rare, ecstatic 
 grace, is perpetual and unswerving. iHe creates 
 his rhythmic circles without a break, the skies open 
 to the reader, and the Lord, Jesus Christ, appears 
 on a cloud, or Buddha sits placidly on his lotus. 
 Even his name is mystic, for, according to the Arba- 
 tel of Magic, Machen Is the name of the fourth 
 heaven. 
 
 Machen does not often write of white magic; he is 
 
 [198] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 a negromancer ; the baneful, the baleful, the horren- 
 dous are his subjects. With Baudelaire, he might 
 pray. Evil be thou my good ! Consider the theme of 
 The Great God Pan, a psychic experiment, operation, 
 if you will, on a pure young girl, and its consequences. 
 Again a theme which another writer, any other 
 writer, would have cheapened, filled in with sordid 
 detail, described to the last black, mass. But Ma- 
 chen knows better. He knows so much, indeed, 
 that he is able to say nothing. He keeps the thau- 
 maturgic secrets as the alchemists were bidden to do. 
 Instead of raising the veil, he drops it. Instead of 
 revealing, he conceals. The reader may imagine as 
 much as he likes, or as much as he can, for nothing 
 is said, but he rises from a reading of one of these 
 books with a sense of exaltation, an awareness that 
 he has tasted the waters of the Fountain of Beauty. 
 There is, indeed, sometimes, in relation to this 
 writer, a feeling^ that he is truly inspired, that he 
 is writing automatically of the eternal mysteries, 
 that the hand which holds the pen is that of a blind 
 genius, and yet. . . . 
 
 More straightforward good English prose, lim- 
 pid narrative, I am not yet acquainted with. What a 
 teller of stories ! This gift, tentatively displayed in 
 The Chronicle of Clemendy, which purports to be a 
 translation from an old manuscript — Machen has 
 really been the translator of the Heptamaron, 
 
 lA feeling in which he encourages belief in his preface to a 
 new edition of "The Great God Pan"; 1916. 
 
 [199] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Beroalde de Verville's Moyen de Parvenir, and the 
 Memoirs of Casanova — , flowered in The Three Im- 
 posters, nouvelles in the manner of the old Arabian 
 authors. This work is not so well-known as The 
 Dynamiter, which it somewhat resembles, but it de- 
 serves to be. Through it threads the theme, that of 
 nearly all his tales, of the disintegration of a soul 
 through an encounter with the mysteries which we 
 are forbidden to know, the Sabbatic revels, the two- 
 horned goat, alchemy, devil-worship, and the eter- 
 nal and indescribable symbols. The problem is al- 
 ways the same, that of facing the great God Pan and 
 the danger that lurks for the man who dares the 
 facing. 
 
 And one wonders, Peter continued, his eyes di- 
 lating with an expression which may have been either 
 intense curiosity or horror, one wonders what price 
 Machen himself has paid to learn his secret of how 
 to keep the secrets! He must have encountered 
 this horror himself and yet he lives to ask the rid- 
 dle in flowing prose ! What has it cost him to learn 
 the answer? Popularity)? Perhaps, for he is an 
 obscure reporter on a London newspaper and he 
 drinks beer! That is all any Englishman I have 
 asked can tell me about him. Nobody reads his 
 books; nobody has read them . . . except the few 
 who see and feel, and John Masefield is one of these. 
 This master of English prose, this hierophant, who 
 knows all the secrets and keeps them, this delver in 
 forgotten lore, this wise poet who uplifts and in- 
 
 [200] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 spires us, is an humble journalist and he drinks beer 1 
 Peter paused and looked at me, possibly for cor- 
 roboration, but what could I say? I had never, 
 until then, touched upon Machen, although I re- 
 membered that Mina Loy had included him in her 
 catalogue of protestants in the symposium at the 
 Villa AUegra. Later, when I sought his books, I 
 found them more difficult to arrive at than those of 
 any of his contemporaries and today, thanks to the 
 fame he has achieved through his invention of 
 the mystic story of The Bowmen, the tale of the 
 Angels at Mons, a story which was credited as true, 
 for returning soldiers swore that they had really 
 seen these angels who had led them into battle, thus 
 arousing the inventive pride of the author, who 
 published a preface to prove that the incident had 
 never occurred except in his own brain, his early 
 books! command fantastic prices. Eight or nine 
 pounds is asked for The Chronicle of Clemendy and 
 forty or fifty pounds for his translation of Casan- 
 ova. But on that day I said little about the mat- 
 ter, because I had nothing to say. 
 
 Now we were walking and presently stopped be- 
 fore Peter's door, a house on the south side of Stuy- 
 vesant Square, conveniently near, Peter observed, 
 in sardonic reference to Marinetti's millennium, the 
 Lying-in-Hospital. He unlocked the door and we 
 entered. The hall was painted black and was en- 
 tirely devoid of furniture. A lamp, depending on 
 an iron chain from the ceiling, shed but a feeble 
 
 [201] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 glow, for It was enclosed in a globe of prelatlal 
 purple glass. We passed on to a chamber in which 
 purple velvet curtains were caught back by heavy 
 silver ropes, exposing at symmetrical intervals, the 
 black walls, on which there were several pictures : 
 Martin Schongauer's copperplate engraving of The 
 Temptation of Saint Anthony, in which the most 
 obscene and foulest of fiends tear and pull and bite 
 the patient and kindly old man; Lucas Cranach's 
 woodcut of the same subject, more fantastic but less 
 terrifying; two or three of Goya's Caprichos; 
 Felicien Rops's Le Vice Supreme, in which a skele- 
 ton in evening dress, holding his head in the curve 
 of his elbow, chapeau claque in hand, opens wide an 
 upright cofEn to permit the emergence of a female 
 skeleton in a fashionable robe; black ravens flit 
 across the sky; Atibrey Beardsley's Messalina; Pie- 
 ter Bruegel'iS allegorical copperplate of Lust, 
 crammed with loathsome details; and William 
 Blake's picture of Plague, in which a gigantic hid- 
 eous form, pale-green, with the slime of stagnant 
 pools, reeking with vegetable decays and gangrene, 
 the face livid with the motley tints of pallor and 
 putrescence, strides^onward with extended arms, 
 like a sower sowing his seeds, only the germs of his 
 rancid harvest are not cast from his hands but drip 
 from his fusty fingers. The carpet was black and 
 in the very centre of the room was a huge silver 
 table, fantastically carved, the top upheld by four 
 basilisk caryatides. On this table stood a huge egg, 
 
 [202] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 round which was coiled a serpent, the whole fash- 
 ioned from malachite, and a small cornelian casket, 
 engraved in cuneiform characters. There were no 
 windows in the room, and apparently no doors, for 
 even the opening through which we had entered had 
 disappeared, but the chamber was pleasantly lighted 
 with a lambent glow, the origin of which it was im- 
 possible to discover, for no lamps were visible. In 
 one corner, I noted a cabinet of ebony on the top of 
 which perched an enormous black, short-haired cat, 
 with yellow eyes, which, at first, indeed, until the 
 animal made a slight movement, I took to be an 
 objet d'art. Then Peter called, Lou Matagot, 
 and with one magnificent bound, the creature landed 
 on the silver table and arched his glossy back. 
 Then he sharpened his claws and stretched his joints 
 by the aid of the casket scratched with the cuneiform 
 symbols. 
 
 Lou Matagot, Peter explained, signifies the Cat 
 of Dreams, the Cat of the Sorcerers, in the Proven- 
 cal dialect. 
 
 There were a few chairs, strangely modern. Bal- 
 let Russe chairs, upholstered in magenta and green 
 and orange brocades in which were woven circles 
 and crescents and stars of gold and silver, but Pe- 
 ter and I seated ourselves at one end of the room 
 on a high purple couch, a sort of throne, piled with 
 silver and black cushions, on which was worked in 
 green threads an emblem, which Peter explained was 
 the character of Mersilde, a fiend who has the power 
 
 [203] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 to transport you wherever you wish to go. Now, 
 he pulled a silver rope which hung from the ceiling, 
 the lights flashed off and on again, and I observed 
 that we were no longer alone. A little black page 
 boy in a rose doublet, with baggy silver trousers, 
 and a turban of scarlet silk, surmounted by heron's 
 plumes, sparkling with carbuncles, stood before us. 
 He had apparently popped out of the floor like the 
 harlequin in an English pantomime. At a sign from 
 Peter, he pressed a button in the wall, a little cup- 
 board opened, and he extracted a bottle of amber 
 crystal, half-full of a clear green liquid, and two 
 amber crystal glasses with iridescent flanges. 
 
 I am striving to discover the secrets, said Peter, 
 as we sipped the liqueur, the taste of which was both 
 pungent and bitter. 
 
 Not in this room ! I gasped. Unless you mean 
 the secrets of Paul Poiret and Leon Bakst. 
 
 No, he laughed, as the cat leaped to his shoulder 
 and began to purr loudly, not in this room. This 
 is my reception-room where I receive nobody. You 
 are the first person, with the exception of Hadji, 
 to enter this house since I have remodelled it but, 
 he continued reflectively, I have a fancy that the 
 bright fiends of hell, the beautiful yellow and blue 
 devils, will like this room, when I call them forth 
 to do my bidding. 
 
 Again he warned me, Not one word to Edith, do 
 you understand ? Not one word. I must be alone. 
 I have told you and only you. I must work in 
 [204] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 peace and that I cannot do if I am interrupted. 
 This room is my relief. It amuses me to sit here, 
 but it is not my laboratory. Come, it is time to 
 show you. Besides, I have my reasons. . . . 
 
 We did not rise. The lights were again myste- 
 riously extinguished and I felt that the couch on 
 which we sat was moving. The sensation was pleas- 
 ant, like taking a ride on a magic carpet or a tak- 
 trevan. In a few seconds, when light appeared 
 again, instead of a wall behind us we sat with a wall 
 before us. Facing about, I perceived that we were 
 in another chamber, a chamber that would have 
 pleased Doctor Faust, for it was obviously the lab- 
 oratory of an alchemist. Nevertheless, I noted 
 at once a certain theatrical air in the arrangement. 
 
 This, I said, seems more suitable for the perfor- 
 mances of Herrmann the Great or Houdini than the 
 experiments of Paracelsus. 
 
 Peter grinned. It was clear that he was taking 
 a childish delight in the entertainment. 
 
 It is fun to do this with you. I've had no one 
 but the black boy and the cat. There are moments 
 when I think I would like to bring Edith here, but 
 she would spoil it by getting tired of it, or else she 
 would like it too much and want to come every day 
 and bring others with her to see the show. Well, 
 look around. 
 
 I followed his advice. It was the conventional 
 alchemist's retreat. There were stuffed owls and 
 mummies and astrolabes. Herbs and bones were 
 
 [205] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 suspended from the ceiling. Skulls grinned from 
 the tops of cabinets. There were rows and rows 
 of ancient books, many of them bound in sheepskin 
 or vellum, in a case against one wall. A' few larger 
 volumes, with brass or iron clasps, reposed on a 
 table. Lou Matagot, who had been carried into 
 the room with us, presently stretched his great, 
 black, glossy length over the top of one of these. 
 There were cauldrons, retorts, crucibles, rows of 
 bottles, a fire, with bellows, and a clepsydra, or 
 water-clock, which seemed to be running. There 
 was an Arcula Mystica, or demoniac telephone, re- 
 sembling a liqueur-stand. Peter explained that 
 possessors of this instrument might communicate 
 with each other, over whatever distance. There 
 were cabinets, on the shelves of which lay amulets 
 and talismans and periapts, carved from obsidian 
 or fashioned of blue or green faience, the surfaces 
 of which were elaborately scratched with hermetic 
 characters, and symplegmata with their curious 
 confusion of the different parts of different beasts. 
 There were aspergills, and ivory pyxes, stolen, per- 
 haps, from some holy place, and now consecrated 
 to evil uses. There were stuffed serpents and di- 
 vining rods of hazel. There were scrolls of parch- 
 ment, tied with vermilion cord. In fact, there was 
 everything in this room, that David Belasco would 
 provide for a similar scene on the stage. 
 
 Here, said Peter, I study the Book of the Dead, 
 hierograms, rhabdomancy, oneiromancy, hippo- 
 
 [206] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 mancy, margaritomancy, parthenomancy, gyro- 
 mancy, spodanomancy, ichthyomancy, kephalono- 
 mancy, lampodomancy, sycomancy, angelology, 
 pneumatology, goety, eschatology, cartomancy, 
 aleuromancy, alphitomancy, anthropomancy, axi- 
 noraancy, which is performed by applying an agate 
 to a red-hot ax, arithmomancy, or divination by 
 numbers, alectoromantia, in which I lay out the let- 
 ters of the alphabet and grains of wheat in spaces 
 drawn in a circle and permit a cock to select grains 
 corresponding to letters, belomancy, divination by 
 arrows, ceroscopy, cleidomancy, astragalomancy, 
 amniomancy, cleromancy, divination performed by 
 throwing dice and observing the marks which turn 
 up, cledonism, coscinomancy, capnomancy, divina- 
 tion by smoke, captoptromancy, chiromancy, dac- 
 tyliomancy, performed with a ring, extispicium, or 
 divination by entrails, gastromancy, geomancy, di- 
 vination by earth, hydromancy, divination by water, 
 and pyromancy and aeromancy, divination by fire 
 and air, onomancy, divination by the letters of a 
 name, onychomancy, which is concerned with finger- 
 nails, ornithomancy, which deals with birds, and 
 chilomancy, which deals with keys, lithomancy, 
 eychnomancy, ooscopy, keraunoscopia, bibliomancy, 
 myomancy, pan-psychism, metempsychosis, the 
 Martinists, the Kabbalists,the Diabolists, the Palla- 
 dists, the Rosicruclans, the Luciferians, the Um- 
 bilicamini, all the nocuous, demonological, and 
 pneumatic learning, including transcendental sen- 
 
 [207] 
 
P^ter Whiffle 
 
 sualism. At present, I am experimenting with white 
 mice. I dip their feet in red ink and permit them 
 to make scrawls on a certain curious chart. 
 
 I have dabbled in drugs, for you know that the 
 old Greek priests, the modern seers, and the 
 mediaeval pythonesses, all have resorted to drugs 
 to assist them to see visions. The narcotic or 
 anaesthetic fumes, rising from the tripods, lulled the 
 old Greek hierophants and soothsayers into a sym- 
 pathetic frame of mind. First, I experimented 
 with Napellus, for I had read that Napellus caused 
 one's mental processes to be transferred from the 
 brain to the pit of the stomach. There exists an 
 exact description of the effects of this drug on an 
 adept, one Baptista Van Helmont, which I will read 
 you. 
 
 Peter, here, went to the shelves, and after a little 
 hesitation, pulled out an old brown volume. He 
 turned over the pages for a few seqpnds and then 
 began to read: Once, when I had prepared the 
 root (of Napellus) in a rough manner, I tasted it 
 with the tongue: although I had swallowed nothing,, 
 and had spit out a good deal of the juice, yet I felt 
 as if my skull was being compressed by a string. 
 Several household matters suggested themselves and 
 I went about the house and attended to them. At 
 last, I experienced what I had never felt before. It 
 seemed to me that I neither thought nor understood, 
 and as if I had none of the usual ideas in my head; 
 but I felt, with astonishment, clearly and distinctly, 
 
 [208] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 that all these functions were taking place at the pit 
 of the stomach: I felt this clearly and perfectly, 
 and observed with the greatest attention that, al- 
 though I felt movement and sensation spreading 
 themselves over the whole body, yet that the whole 
 power of thought was really and unmistakably sit- 
 uated in the pit of the stomach, always excepting 
 a sensation that the soul was in the brain as a 
 governing force. The sensation was beyond the 
 power of words to describe. I perceived that I 
 thought with greater clearness : there was a pleasure 
 in such an intellectual distinctness. It was not a 
 fugitive sensation ; it did not take place while I slept, 
 dreamed, or was ill, but during perfect conscious- 
 ness. I perceived clearly that the head was perfectly 
 dormant as regarded fancy: and I felt not a little 
 astonished at the change of position. 
 
 Well, continued Peter, closing the book and re- 
 garding me with great intensity, you will admit that 
 would be a sensation worth experiencing. So I 
 tried it . . . with horrible results. Will you be- 
 lieve it when I tell you that I became wretchedly ill 
 in that very centre which Van Helmont locates as 
 the seat of thought? I suffered from the most ex- 
 cruciating pains, which were not entirely relieved by 
 an emetic. Indeed, I passed a week or so in bed. 
 
 My next experiment, he went on, was made with 
 hashish. Cannabis Indica, which I prepared and 
 took according to the directions of another adept, 
 who had found that the drug produced a kind of 
 
 [209] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 demoniac and incessant laughter, hearty, Gargan- 
 tuan laughter, and the foreshortening of time and 
 space. He could span the distance between London 
 and Paris in a few seconds. Furniture and statues 
 assumed a comic attitude; they seemed to move 
 about and become familiar with him. He was liter- 
 ally aware of what the Rosny have called the "semi- 
 humanite des choses." I took the drug, as I 
 have said, exactly as he directed, but the effect 
 on me was entirely dissimilar. Immediately, I 
 was plunged into immoderate melancholy. The 
 sight of any object immeasurably depressed me. I 
 also noted that my legs and arms had apparently 
 stretched to an abnormal length. I sobbed with 
 despair when I discovered that I could scarcely see 
 to the other end of my laboratory, it seemed so far 
 away. Mounting the stairs to my bed-chamber was 
 equivalent in my mind to climbing the Himalayas. 
 Although Hadji afterward assured me that I had 
 been under the influence of the drug for only 
 fourteen hours, it was more like fourteen years to 
 me, which I had passed without sleep. At the end 
 of the experiment, my nerves revolted under the 
 strain and again I was forced to take to my bed, this 
 time for four days. 
 
 My third experiment was made with Peyote 
 beans, whose properties are extolled by the Ameri- 
 can Indians. After eating these beans, the red 
 men, who use thern in the mysteries of their wor- 
 ship, suffer, I have been informed, from an excruciat- 
 
 [210] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 ing nausea, the duration of which is prolonged. 
 After the nausea has passed its course, a series of 
 visions is vouchsafed the experimenter, these visions 
 extending in a series, on various planes, to the mystic 
 number of seven. Under the spell of these visions, 
 the adepts vaticinate future events. I have won- 
 dered sometimes if it were not possible that the 
 ancient Egyptians were familiar with the proper- 
 ties of these beans, that William Blake was under 
 their influence when he drew his mystic plates. 
 
 Be that as it may, I swallowed one bean, which 
 I had been informed would be sufficient to give me 
 the desired effect, and without interval, I was 
 carried at once on to the plane of the visions, which 
 concentrated themselves into one gigantic phantasm. 
 Have you ever seen Jacques Callot's copperplate 
 engraving of The Temptation of Saint Anthony? 
 The hideous collection of teratological monsters, 
 half-insect, half-microbe, of gigantic size, exposed 
 In that picture, swarmed about me, menacing me 
 with their horrid beaks, their talons and claws, their 
 evil antennas. Further cohorts of malignant mon- 
 strosities without bones lounged about the room and 
 sprawled against my body, rubbing their flabby, 
 slimy, oozing folds against my legs. After a few 
 more stercoraceous manoeuvres, some of which I 
 should hesitate to describe, even to you, the mon- 
 sters began to breathe forth liquid fire, and the pain 
 resulting from the touch of these tongues of flame 
 finally awoke me. I was violently 111, and my 111- 
 [211] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 ness developed in the seven stages traditionally al- 
 lotted to the visions. First, extreme nausea, which 
 lasted for two days, second, a raging fever, third, 
 a procession of green eruptions on my legs, fourth, 
 terrific pains in the region of my abdomen, fifth, 
 dizziness, sixth, inability to command any of my 
 muscles, and seventh, a prolonged period of sleep, 
 which lasted for forty-eight hours. Nevertheless, 
 I came nearer to success in this experiment than in 
 any other. 
 
 My fourth experiment was made with cocaine, 
 which I procured from a little Italian boy, about 
 eleven years old, who was acting in a Bowery bar- 
 room as agent for his father. Laying the white 
 crystals on the blade of an ivory paper-cutter, I 
 sniffed as I had observed the snow-birds themselves 
 sniff. Immediately, my mind became clear to an ex- 
 tent that it had never been clear before. My in- 
 tellect became as sharp as a knife, as keen as the 
 slash of a whip, as vibrant as an E string. I seemed 
 to have a power of understanding which I had never 
 before approached, not only of understanding but 
 also of hearing, for I caught the conversation of 
 men talking in an ordinary tone of voice out in the 
 Square. Also, I became abnormally active, nerv- 
 ous, and intense. I rushed from the room, with- 
 out reason or purpose, with a kind of energy which 
 seemed deathless, so strong was its power. When, 
 however, I endeavoured to make notes, for my mind 
 seethed with ideas, I was unable to do so. I 
 [^12] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 scratched some characters on paper, to be sure, 
 but I found them wholly undecipherable the next 
 day. They were not in English or in any language 
 known to me. Finally, I ran out of the house and, 
 encountering, on Second Avenue, a fancy woman of 
 the Jewish persuasion, I accompanied her to her 
 cubicle, and permitted her to be the subsidiary 
 hierophant in the mystic rites I then performed. 
 That, concluded Peter, with a somewhat 
 sorry smile, was the last of my experiments with 
 drugs. 
 
 This story and, indeed, this whole phase, amused 
 me enormously. An ambition which had persuaded 
 its possessor that in order to become the American 
 Arthur Machen, he must first become an adept in 
 demonology seemed to me to be the culmination of 
 Peter's fantastic life, which. Indeed, it was. But 
 I said little. As usual, I let him talk and I listened. 
 There seemed, however, to be a period here and I 
 took occasion to look over the books, asking him 
 first if he had any objection to my copying off some 
 of the titles, as I felt that It might be possible that 
 some day I should want to make some research in 
 this esoteric realm. He bade me do what I liked 
 an(|, advancing towards the book-shelves with the 
 small note-book which I carried with me at that 
 period in order to set down fleeting thoughts as they 
 came, I transferred some of the titles therein. 
 
 I stopped at last, not from lack of patience on 
 my part, but from observing the impatience of Peter, 
 
 [213] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 who obviously had a good deal more to say. On 
 my turning, indeed, he began at once. 
 
 I have made, he said, some tentative minor ex- 
 periments but my final experiments are yet to be 
 attempted. Nevertheless, I have found a spring- 
 board from which to leap into my romance. Let 
 me read you a few pages of Arthur Waite's some- 
 what ironic summary of Dr. Bataille's Le Diable au 
 XIX ° Siecle. Naturally I shall treat the subject 
 more seriously, but what atmosphere, what a gor- 
 geous milieu in which to plunge the reader when he 
 shall open my book ! 
 
 Peter now took from the shelves a small black 
 volume, lettered in red, and turned over the leaves. 
 First, he said, I shall read you some of the Doctor's 
 experiences in Pondicherry, and he began: 
 
 Through the greenery of a garden, the gloom 
 of a well, and the entanglement of certain stairways, 
 they entered a great dismantled temple, devoted to 
 the service of Brahma, under the unimpressive di- 
 minutive of Lucif. The infernal sanctuary had a 
 statue of Baphomet, identical with that in Ceylon, 
 and the ill-ventilated place reeked with a horrible 
 putrescence. Its noisome condition was mainly 
 owing to the presence of various fakirs, who, though 
 still alive, were in advanced stages of putrefaction. 
 Most people are supposed to go easily and pleasantly 
 to the devil, but these elected to do so by way of 
 a charnel-house asceticism, and an elaborate system 
 of self-torture. Some were suspended from the 
 [214] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 ceiling by a rope tied to their arms, some embedded 
 in plaster, some stiffened in a circle, some perma- 
 nently distorted Into the shape of the letter S ; some 
 were head downwards, some in a cruciform position. 
 A native Grand Master explained that they had 
 postured for years in this manner, and one of them 
 for a quarter of a century. 
 
 Fr.'. John Campbell proceeded to harangue the 
 assembly in Ourdou-zaban, but the doctor com- 
 prehended completely, and reports the substance of 
 his speech, whkh was violently anti-Catholic in Its 
 nature, and especially directed against missionaries. 
 This finished, they proceeded to the evocation of 
 Baal-Zeboub, at first by the Conjuration of the Four, 
 but no fiend appeared. The operation was re- 
 peated ineffectually a second time, and John Camp- 
 bell determined upon the Grand Rite, which began 
 by each person spinning on his own axis, and in 
 this manner circumambulating the temple, in pro- 
 cession. Whenever they passed an embedded fakir, 
 they obtained an incantation from his lips, but still 
 Baal-Zeboub failed. Thereupon, the native Grand 
 Master suggested that the evocation should be per- 
 formed by the holiest of all fakirs, who was pro- 
 duced from a cupboard more fetid than the temple 
 itself, and proved to be in the following condition : — 
 (a) face eaten by rats; (b) one bleeding eye hang- 
 ing down by his mouth; (c) legs covered with 
 gangrene, ulcers, and rottenness; (d) expression 
 peaceful and happy. 
 
 [215] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Entreated to call on Baal-Zeboub, each time he 
 opened his mouth his eye fell into it; however, he 
 continued the invocation, but no Baal-Zeboub mani- 
 fested. A tripod of burning coals was next ob- 
 tained, and a woman, summoned for this purpose, 
 plunged her arm into the flames, inhaling with great 
 delight the odour of her roasting flesh. Result, nil. 
 Then a white goat was produced, placed upon the 
 altar of Baphomet, set alight, hideously tortured, 
 cut open, and its entrails torn out by the native 
 Grand Master, who spread them on the steps, utter- 
 ing abominable blasphemies against Adonai. This 
 having also failed, great stones were raised from 
 the floor, a nameless stench ascended, and a large 
 consignment of living fakirs, eaten to the bone by 
 worms and falling to pieces in every direction, were 
 dragged out from among a number of skeletons, 
 while serpents, giant spiders, and toads swarmed 
 from all parts. The Grand Master seized one of 
 the fakirs and cut his throat upon the altar, chant- 
 ing the Satanic liturgy amidst imprecations, curses, 
 a chaos of voices, and the last agonies of the goat. 
 The blood spirted forth upon the assistants, and the 
 Grand Master sprinkled the Baphomet. A final 
 howl of invocation resulted in complete failure, 
 whereupon it was decided that Baal-Zeboub had 
 business elsewhere. The doctor departed from 
 the ceremony and kept his bed for eight-and-forty 
 hours. 
 
 Peter looked up from the book in his hand with 
 
 [2l6] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 an expression of ironic exultation which was very 
 quaint. 
 
 What do you think of that? he asked. 
 
 Very pretty, I ventured. 
 
 Very strong for the beginning of my romance ! he 
 cried. You see, I shall commence with this failure 
 and work up gradually to the final brilliant success. 
 Let me introduce you to another passage from 
 Waite's summary of Dr. Bataille's masterpiece : He 
 turned a few more leaves and presently was read- 
 ing again: 
 
 A select company of initiates proceeded in hired 
 carriages through the desolation of Dappah, under 
 the convoy of the initiated coachmen, for the op- 
 eration of a great satanic solemnity. At an easy 
 distance from the city is the Sheol of the native 
 Indians, and hard by the latter place there is a moun- 
 tain 500 feet high and 2000 long on the sunmiit of 
 which seven temples are erected, communicating one 
 with another by subterranean passages in the rock. 
 The total absence of pagodas makes it evident that 
 these temples are devoted to the worship of Satan; 
 they form a gigantic triangle superposed on the 
 vast plateau, at the base of which the party 
 descended from their conveyances, and were met 
 by a native with an accommodating knowledge 
 of French. Upon exchanging the Sign of Lucifer, 
 he conducted them to a hole in the rock, which 
 gave upon a narrow passage guarded by a line of 
 
 [217] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 Sikhs with drawn swords, prepared to massacre 
 anybody, and leading to the vestibule of the first 
 temple, which was filled with a miscellaneous con- 
 course of Adepts. In the first temple, which was 
 provided with the inevitable statue of Baphomet, 
 but was withal bare and meagrely illuminated, the 
 doctor was destined to pass through his promised 
 ordeal for which he was stripped to the skin, and 
 placed in the centre of the assembly, and at a given 
 signal one thousand odd venomous cobra de capellos 
 were produced from holes in the wall and encour- 
 aged to fold him in their embraces, while the music 
 of flute-playing fakirs alone intervened to prevent 
 his instant death. He passed through this trying en- 
 counter with a valour which amazed himself, per- 
 sisted in prolonging the ceremony, and otherwise 
 proved himself a man of such extraordinary metal 
 that he earned universal respect. From the Sanc- 
 tuary of the Serpents, the company then proceeded 
 into the second temple or the Sanctuary of the 
 Phoenix. 
 
 The second temple was brilliantly illuminated and 
 ablaze with millions of precious stones wrested by 
 the wicked English from innumerable conquered 
 Rajahs; it had garlands of diamonds, festoons of 
 rubies, vast images of solid silver, and a gigantic 
 Phoenix in red gold more solid than the silver. 
 There was an altar beneath the Phoenix, and a male 
 and female ape were composed on the altar steps, 
 while the Grand Master proceeded to the celebra- 
 
His Life and IVorks 
 
 tlon of a black mass, which was followed by an 
 amazing marriage of the two engaging animals, and 
 the sacrifice of a lamb brought alive into the temple, 
 bleating piteously, with nails driven through its feet. 
 
 The third temple was consecrated to the Mother 
 of fallen women, who, in memory of the adventure 
 of the apple, has a place in the calendar of Lucifer; 
 the proceedings consisted of a dialogue between 
 the Grand Master and the Vestal. 
 
 The fourth temple was a Rosicrucian Sanctuary, 
 having an open sepulchre, from which blue flames 
 continually emanated; there was a platform in the 
 midst of the temple designed for the accommodation 
 of more Indian Vestals, one of whom it was pro- 
 posed should evaporate into thin air, after which a 
 fakir would be transformed before the company 
 into a living mummy and be interred for a space of 
 three years. The fakir introduced his performance 
 by suspension in mid-air. 
 
 The fifth temple was consecrated to the Pelican. 
 
 The sixth temple was that of the Future and was 
 devoted to divinations, the oracles being given by a 
 Vestal in a hypnotic condition, seated over a burn- 
 ing brazier. 
 
 The assembly now thoughtfully repaired to the 
 seventh temple, which, being sacred to Fire, was 
 equipped with a vast central furnace surmounted 
 by a chimney and containing a gigantic statue of 
 Baphomet; in spite of the intolerable heat pervad- 
 ing the entire chamber, this idol contrived to pre- 
 [219] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 serve Its outlines and to glow without pulverizing. 
 A ceremony of an Impressive nature occurred in this 
 apartment; a wild cat, which strayed in through the 
 open window, was regarded as the appearance of a 
 soul in transmigration, and in spite of its piteous 
 protests, was passed through the fire to Baal. 
 
 And now the crowning function, the Magnum 
 Opus of the mystery, must take place in the Sheol 
 of Dappah; a long procession filed from the moun- 
 tain temples to the charnel-house of the open plain; 
 the night was dark, the moon had vanished in dis- 
 may, black clouds scudded across the heavens, a 
 feverish rain fell slowly at intervals, and the ground 
 was dimly lighted by the phosphorescence of the gen- 
 eral putrefaction. The Adepts stumbled over dead 
 bodies, disturbing rats and vultures, and proceeded 
 to the formation of the magic chain, sitting in a vast 
 circle, every Adept embracing his particular corpse. 
 
 Well? asked Peter, closing the book. Well? 
 
 Kolossal! I shouted, in German. 
 
 Isn't it, and there's ever so much more, wonderful 
 stories, incantations and evocations in the works of 
 Arthur Waite, Moncure Daniel Conway, Alfred 
 Maury, J. Collin de Plancy, Frangois Lenormant, 
 Alphonse Gallais, the Abbe de Montfaucon de 
 Villars, J. G. Bourgeat, and William Godwin. 
 Have you ever heard of The Black Pullet or The 
 Queen of The Hairy Flies? 
 
 This time, Carl ; he spoke with great intensity and 
 earnestness, I am on the right track. I am con- 
 [220] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 vinced that to give a work of this character a proper 
 background one must know a great deal more than 
 one _tells. That, in fact, is the secret of all fine 
 literature, the secret of all great art, that it con- 
 ceals and suggests. The edges, of course, are 
 rounded : it is not a rough and obvious concealment. 
 You cannot begin not to tell until you know more 
 than you are willing to impart. These books have 
 given me a good deal, but I must go farther — as 
 I am convinced that Machen has gone farther. I 
 am going through with it . . . all through with it, 
 searching out the secrets of life and death, a few 
 of which I have discovered already, but I have yet 
 to make the great test. And when I know what 
 I shall find out, I shall begin to write . . . but I 
 shall tell nothing. 
 
 Peter was flaming with enthusiasm again. It 
 wasn't necessary for me to speak. He required an 
 audience, not an interlocutor. 
 
 Why not now? he demanded suddenly. Why not 
 now and here, with you? 
 
 What do you mean? I queried. 
 
 Why not make the great experiment now? I 
 am prepared and the moon and the planets are fa- 
 vourable. Are you willing to go through with it? 
 I must warn you that you will never be the same 
 again. You may even lose your life. 
 
 What will happen? I asked. 
 
 The earth will rock. A storm will probably fol- 
 low, thunder and lightning, balls of fire, thunder- 
 [221] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 bolts, showers of feathers, and then we shall dis- 
 solve into . . . into a putrid mass, the agamous 
 mass from which we originated, neither male nor 
 female, with only a glowing eye, a great eye, radiat- 
 ing intelligence out of its midst. Then Astaroth 
 himself (I shall call Astaroth, because his inferiors 
 in the descending hierarchy, Sargatanas and Nebiros, 
 dwell in America) will appear, in one of his forms, 
 perhaps refulgent and beautiful, perhaps ugly and 
 tortured and hideously deformed, perhaps black or 
 yellow or blue, but assuredly not white or green. 
 He may be entirely covered with hair or entirely 
 covered with eyes, or he may be eyeless. Mayhap, 
 he will be lean and proud and sad, and he will prob- 
 ably limp, for you know he is lame. His feet will 
 be cloven, he will wear a goat's beard, and you may 
 distinguish him further by the cock's feather and 
 the ox's tail. Or, perhaps, he may arrive in the 
 shape of some monster : the fierce flying hydra called 
 theJDuranabad, the Rakshe who eats dragons and 
 snakes, the Soham, with the body of a scarlet 
 griflin and the head of a four-eyed horse, the Syl, 
 a basilisk with a human face. . . . But, however 
 he may appear, in his presence you shall learn the 
 last secrets of all the worlds. 
 
 And then what will happen? 
 
 Then I shall speak the magic formula and we will 
 
 resume our proper shapes but from that moment on 
 
 we shall hover — literally, not pathologically — ^bc- 
 
 tween life and death. We shall know everything. 
 
 [222] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 . . . and eventually we shall pay the price. . . . 
 
 Like Faust? 
 
 Like Faust . . . that is, if we are not clever 
 enough to outwit the demon. Those who practise 
 devilments usually find some means to circumvent 
 the devil. 
 
 I appeared to ponder. 
 
 I am willing to go through with it, I said at last. 
 
 Good ! I knew you would be. Let's get to work 
 at once ! 
 
 He lifted the most ponderous volume in the lab- 
 oratory from the floor to the top of an old walnut 
 refectory table. The book was bound in musty 
 yellow vellum, clasped with iron, and the foxed leaves 
 were fashioned from parchment made from the 
 skin of virgin camels. As he opened it, I saw 
 that the pages were inscribed with cabalistic 
 characters and symbols, illuminated in colours, none 
 of which I could decipher. Lou Matagot jumped 
 on to the table and sat on the leaves at the top of 
 the book, forming a paper weight. He sat with his 
 back to Peter and his long, black tail played nerv- 
 ously up and down the centre of the volume. 
 
 Peter now drew a circle with a radius of twelve 
 or thirteen feet around us, inscribing within its cir- 
 cumference certain characters and pentacles. Then 
 he plunged a dagger through what I recognized to 
 be a sacred wafer, which he told me had been stolen 
 from a church at midnight, at the same time, mut- 
 tering what, from the tone of his voice, I took to be 
 
 [223] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 blasphemous imprecations, although the language 
 he used was unfamiliar to me. Next he ar- 
 ranged a copper chafing-dish over a blue flame and 
 began to stir the ingredients, esoteric powders and 
 crystals of bright colours. Now he lovingly lift- 
 ed a crystal viol, filled with a purple liquid, and 
 poured the contents into a porcelain bowl. In- 
 stantly, there was a faint detonation and a thick 
 cloud of violet vapour mounted spirally to the ceil- 
 ing. All the time, occasionally referring to the 
 grimoire on the table, and employing certain un- 
 mentionable symbolic objects in the manner pre- 
 scribed, he muttered incantations in the unknown 
 tongue. The room swam with odours and mists, 
 violet clouds and opopanax fogs. So far, the in- 
 vocation was pretty and amusing but it resembled 
 the arcane rites of Paul Iribe more than those of 
 Hermes Trismegistus. 
 
 Now Peter pulled three black hairs from the cat's 
 tail, which Lou Matagot delivered with a yowl of 
 rage, springing at the same time from the table to 
 the top of the cabinet, whence he regarded us 
 through the mists and vapours, with his evil yellow 
 eyes. The; hairs went into, the chafing-dish and 
 a new aroma filled the room. The claws of an owl, 
 the flower of the moly, and the powder of vipers 
 followed and then Peter opened a long flat box 
 which nearly covered one end of the huge table, 
 and a nest of serpents, with bellies of rich turquoise 
 blue and backs of tawny yellow, marked with black 
 
 [224] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 zigzags, reared their wicked heads. He called 
 them by name and they responded by waving their 
 heads rhythmically. I began to grow alarmed and 
 dizzy. Vade retro, Satanas! was on tip of my 
 tongue. For a few seconds, I think, I must have 
 fainted. When I revived, I still heard the chanting 
 of the incantation and the sound of tinkling bells. 
 The serpents' heads still waved in rhythm and their 
 bodies, yellow and turquoise blue, were elongated in 
 the air until they appeared to be balancing on the 
 tips of their tails. The eyes of Lou Matagot 
 glared maliciously through the thick vapours and 
 the cat howled with rage or terror. 
 
 Now! cried Peter, for the first time in English. 
 Now! 
 
 My nails dug holes in the palms of my perspiring 
 hands. Peter renewed his nocuous muttering and 
 casting the wafer, transfixed by the dagger, into the 
 porcelain bowl containing the violet fluid, he poured 
 the whole mixture into the copper chafing-dish. 
 
 There was a terrific explosion. 
 
 [225] 
 
Chapter XI 
 
 I left the hospital before Peter. My injuries, 
 Indeed, were of so slight a nature that I was con- 
 fined only a few days, while his were so serious that 
 the physicians despaired of his life, and he was 
 forced to keep to his bed for several months. 
 Following my early discharge, I made daily visits 
 of inquiry to the hospital but It was not until June, 
 1 9 14, that I was assured that he would recover. 
 With this good news, came a certain sense of relief, 
 and I made plans for another voyage to Europe. 
 The Incidents of that voyage — I was In Paris at the 
 beginning of the war — are of sufficient Interest so 
 that I may recount them in another place, but they 
 bear no relationship to the present narrative. 
 
 Subsequent to his recovery, I have learned since 
 from the physician who attended him during his 
 protracted Illness, Peter returned to Toledo with 
 his mother. It Is probable that he made further 
 literary experiments. It has even occurred to me 
 that the pivot of his being, the explanation for his 
 whole course of action may have escaped me. Al- 
 though, from the hour of our first meeting, my in- 
 terest In and my affection for Peter were deep, as- 
 suredly I never imagined that I should be writing 
 down the history of his life. For the greater part 
 
 [226] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 of the term of our friendship, indeed, I was a writer 
 only in a very modest sense. I was not on the look- 
 out for the kind of "copy" his affairs and ideas of- 
 fered, for at this period I was a reporter of music 
 and the drama. Even later, when I began to set 
 down my thoughts in what is euphemistically called 
 a more permanent form, the notion of using Peter 
 as a subject never presented itself to me, and if he 
 had asked me to do so during his lifetime, urging 
 me to put aside a pile of unfinished work in his be- 
 half, the request would have astounded me. I 
 made, therefore, no special effort to ferret out his 
 secrets. When it was convenient for both of 
 us we met and, largely by accident, I was a silent 
 witness of three of his literary experiments. How 
 many others he may have made, I do not know. It 
 is possible that at some time or other he may have 
 been inspired by the religious school, the Tolstoy 
 theory of art, or he may have followed the sensuous 
 lead of Gozzoli and Debussy, artists whose work in- 
 trigued him enormously, or in another ssthetic 
 avatar, he may have believed that true art is de- 
 grading or coldly classic. There is even the possi- 
 bility, by no means remote, that he may have fallen 
 under the influence of the small-town and psycho- 
 analytic schools. Except in a general way, how- 
 ever, in a conversation which I shall record at the 
 end of this chapter, he never mentioned further ex- 
 periments. It is possible that others may have evi- 
 dence bearing on this point. Martha Baker might 
 [227] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 make a good witness, but she died in 191 1. Mrs. 
 Whiffle knew nothing of any importance whatever 
 about her son. Since his death I have interrogated 
 her in vain. She was, indeed, very much astonished 
 at the little I told her and she will read this book, I 
 think, with real amazement. The report of Clara 
 Barnes, too, was negligible. Edith Dale has sup- 
 plied me with a few facts which I have inserted 
 where they chronologically belong. Most of my 
 other friends, Phillip Moeller, Alfred Knopf, Edna 
 Kenton, Pitts Sanborn, Avery Hopwood, Freddo 
 iSides, Joseph Hergesheimer, even my wife, Fania 
 Marinoff, never met Peter. Louis Sherwin walked 
 up Fifth AVenue with us one day, but Peter was un- 
 usually silent and after he had left us at the corner 
 of Fifty-seventh Street, Louis was not sufficiently 
 curious to ask any questions concerning him. I 
 doubt if Louis could even recall the incident today. 
 I have inserted advertisements in the Paris, New 
 York, and Toledo newspapers, begging any one 
 with pertinent facts or letters in his possession to 
 communicate with me, but as yet I have received 
 no replies. I have never seen a photograph of my 
 friend and his mother informs me that she doubts if 
 he ever sat for one. 
 
 The record, therefore, of Peter's literary life, at 
 the conclusion of this chapter, will be as complete 
 as I can make it. I have tried to set down the truth 
 as I saw it, leaving out nothing that I remember, 
 even at the danger of becoming unnecessarily gar- 
 
 [228] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 rulous and rambling. I have written down all I 
 know because, after all, I may have misunderstood 
 or misinterpreted, and some one else, with the facts 
 before him, may be better able to reconstruct the 
 picture of this strange life. 
 
 Our next meeting occurred in January, 19 19, and 
 his first remark was, Thank God, you're not shot 
 up ! From that time, until the day of his death, 
 nearly a year later, Peter never mentioned the war 
 to me again, although I saw him frequently enough, 
 nor did he speak of his writing, save once, on an 
 occasion which shall be reported in Its proper place. 
 
 When we came together for the first time, after 
 the long interval — .he had just returned to New 
 York from Florida — I was surprised at and even 
 shocked by the purely physical change, which, to be 
 sure, had a psychical significance, for his face had 
 grown more spiritual. He had always been slender, 
 but now he was thin, almost emaciated. To describe 
 his appearance a little later, I might use the 
 word haggard. His coat, which once fitted his fig- 
 ure snugly, rather hung from his shoulders. There 
 were white patches in the blue-black of his hair, deep 
 circles under his eyes, and hollows in his cheeks. 
 But his eyes, themselves, seemed to shine with a new 
 light, seemed to see something which I could not 
 even imagine. He had rid himself of many excres- 
 cences and externalities, the purely adscititlous qual- 
 ities, charming though they might be, which masked 
 his personality. He had, indeed, discovered him- 
 [229] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 self, although I never knew how clearly until our 
 last conversation. Peter, without appearing to be 
 particularly aware of it, had become a mystic. His 
 emancipation had come through suffering. He was 
 quieter, less restless, less excitable, still enthusiastic, 
 but with more balance, more — ^I do not wish to be 
 misunderstood — irony. He had found life very 
 satisfying and very hard, very sweet, with some- 
 thing of a bitter after-taste. He seemed almost 
 holy to me, reminding me at times of those ascetic 
 monks who crawl two thousand miles on their bellies 
 to worship at some shrine, or of those Hindu fakirs 
 who lie in one tortured position for years, their 
 bodies slowly consuming, while their souls gain fire. 
 That he was ill, very ill, I surmised at once, al- 
 though, like everything else I have noted here, this 
 was an impression. He made no admissions, never 
 spoke of his malady; indeed, for Peter, he talked 
 astonishingly little about himself. He was pathetic 
 and at the same time an object for admiration. 
 
 Afterwards, I learned from his mother that he 
 suffered from an incurable disease, the disease 
 that killed him late in 1919. But he never spoke of 
 this to me and he never complained, unless his oc- 
 casional confession that he was tired might be con- 
 strued as a complaint. 
 
 We had fine times together, of a new kind. The 
 tables, in a sense, were turned. I had become the 
 writer, however humble, and his ambition had not 
 
 [230] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 been realized. His sympathy with my work, with 
 what I was trying to do, which he saw almost im- 
 mediately, saw, indeed, in the beginning, more 
 clearly than I saw it myself, was complete. He was 
 never weary of talking about it, at any rate he never 
 showed me that he was weary, and naturally this 
 drew us very closely together, for an author is fond- 
 est of those men who talk the most about his work. 
 But this is not the place to publish his opinions of 
 me, although some of them were so curious and far- 
 seeing — they were not all flattering by any means — 
 that I shall undoubtedly recur to them in my auto- 
 biography. Fortunately for me, his sympathy grew 
 as my work progressed, and it seemed amazing ta 
 me later, looking over the book after a period of 
 years, that he had found anything pleasant to re- 
 port of Music After the Great War. He had, in- 
 deed, seen something in it, and when I recalled what 
 he had said it was impossible to feel that he had 
 overstated the case in the interests of friendship. 
 He had seen the germ, the root of what was to 
 come; he had seen a suggestion of a style, unde- 
 veloped ideas, which he felt would later be de- 
 veloped, as indeed, to a limited extent, they were. 
 His plea, to put it concisely, had been for a more 
 personal expression. He was always asking me, 
 after this or that remark or anecdote in conver- 
 sation, why I did not write it, just as I had said it 
 or told it, and it was a great pleasure for him to per- 
 
 [231J 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 ceivc in The Merry-Go-Round and In the Garret 
 (of which he read the proofs just before his death) 
 some signs of growth In this direction. 
 
 You are becoming freer, he would say. You 
 are loosening your tongue; your heart is beating 
 faster. In time you may liberate those subconscious 
 ideas which are entangled in your very being. It 
 is only your conscious self that prevents you from 
 becoming a really interesting writer. Let that once 
 be as free as the air and the other will be free too. 
 You must walk boldly and proudly and without 
 fear. You must search the heart; the mind is neg- 
 ligible in literature ,as in all other forms of art. Try 
 to write just as you feel and you will discover that 
 your feeling is greater than your knowledge of it. 
 The words that appear on the paper will at first 
 seem strange to you, almost like hermetic symbols, 
 and it is possible that in the course of time you will 
 be able to say so much that you yourself will not un- 
 derstand what you are writing. Do not be afraid 
 of that. Let the current flow freely when you feel 
 that it is the true current that is flowing. 
 
 That is the lesson, he continued, that the creative 
 or critical artist can learn from the interpreter, the 
 lesson of the uses of personality. The great in- 
 terpreters, Rachel, Ristori,, Mrs. Siddons, Duse, 
 ■Bernhardt, Rejane, Ysaye, Paderewski, and Mary 
 Garden are all big, vibrant personalities, that the 
 deeper thing, call it God, call it IT, flows through 
 and permeates. You may not believe this now, but I 
 
 [232] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 know it Is true, and you will know it yourself some 
 day. And if you cannot release your personality, 
 what you write, though it be engraved in letters 
 an inch deep on stones weighing many tons, will 
 lie like snow in the street to be melted away by the 
 first rain. 
 
 We talked of other writers. Peter drew my at- 
 tention, for instance, to the work of Cunninghame 
 Graham, that strange Scotch mystic who turned his 
 back on civilization to write of the pampas, the arid 
 plains of Africa, India, and Spain, only to find irony 
 everywhere in every work of man. But, observed 
 Peter, he could not hate civilization so intensely had 
 he not lived in it. It is all very well to kick over 
 the ladder after you have climbed it and set foot on 
 the balcony. Like all lovers of the simple life, he 
 is very complex. And we discussed James Branch 
 Cabell, who, Peter told me, was originally a "ro- 
 mantic." He wrote of knights and ladyes and pal- 
 freys with sympathetic picturesqueness. Of late, 
 however, continued Peter, he, too, seems to have 
 turned over in bed. Romanticism still appears in 
 his work but it is undermined by a biting and dis- 
 turbing irony. He asks: Are any of the manifesta- 
 tions of modern civilization worthy of admiration? 
 and like Graham, he seems to answer. No. It is 
 possible that the public disregard for his earlier and 
 simpler manner may have produced this metamor- 
 phosis. Many a man has become bitter with less 
 reason. Then he spoke of the attributed influence 
 
 [233] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 of Maurice Hewlett and Anatole France on the work 
 of Cabell. Bernard Shaw, said Peter, once lost all 
 patience with those critics who insisted that he was a 
 son of Ibsen and Nietzsche and asserted that it was 
 their ignorance that prevented them from realizing 
 the debt he owed to Samuel Butler. Cabell might, 
 with justice, voice a similar complaint, for if he ever 
 had a literary father it was Arthur Machen. In that 
 author's The Chronicle of Clemendy, issued in 1888, 
 may be discovered the same confusion of irony and 
 romance that is to be traced in the work of Cabell. 
 Moreover, like The Soul of Melicent, the book pur- 
 ports to be a translaJtion from an old chronicle. I 
 might further speak of the relationship between 
 Hieroglyphics and Beyond Life, The Hill of 
 Dreams and The Cream of the Jest, although 
 in each case the treatment and the style arc 
 entirely dissimilar. Machen even preceded Ca- 
 bell in his use of unfavourable reviews (Vide the 
 advertising pages of Beyond Life) in his preface 
 to the 19 1 6 edition of The Great God Pan. Per- 
 haps, added Peter, Cabell has also read Herman 
 Melville's Mardi to some advantage. But he is 
 no plagiarist; I am speaking from the point of 
 view of literary genealogy. Peter, at my instiga- 
 tion, read a novel or two of Joseph Hergesheimer's. 
 Linda Condon, he reported, is as evanescent as the 
 spirit of God. Only those who have encountered 
 Lady Beauty among the juniper trees in the early 
 dawn will feel this book, and only those who feel 
 
 [234] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 will understand. For Hergesheimer has worked a 
 miracle; he has brought marble to life, created a 
 vibrant chastity. He has described ice in words of 
 flame! 
 
 One night, quite accidentally, we saw the name of 
 Clara Barnes on a poster in front of the Metro- 
 politan Opera House. She was singing the role of 
 the Priestess in Aida. We purchased two general 
 admission tickets and slipped in to hear her. The 
 Priestess, those who have heard Aida will remem- 
 ber, officiates in the temple scene of the first act but, 
 like the impersonator of the Bird in Siegfried, she 
 is invisible. Clara's voice sounded tired and worn, 
 as indeed, it should sound after those long years of 
 study. 
 
 We must go back to see her, Peter urged. 
 
 We found a changed and broken Clara. She was 
 dressing alone, but on the third floor, and the odour 
 of CcEur de Jeannette persisted. She burst into 
 tears when she saw us. 
 
 I can't do it, she moaned. Why did you ever 
 come? I can't do it. I can only sing with my mu- 
 sic in front of me. I shall never be able to sing a 
 part which appears and there are so few roles in 
 opera, which permit you to sing back of the scenery! 
 I can't remember. Now she was wailing. As 
 fast as I learn one part I forget another. 
 
 As we walked away on Fortieth Street, Peter 
 began to relate an incident he had once read in 
 Plutarch : There was a certain magpie, belonging to 
 
 [235] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 a barber at Rome, which could imitate any word he 
 heard. One day, a company of passing soldiers 
 blew their trumpets before the shop and for the 
 next forty-eight hours the magpie was not only 
 mute but also pensive and melancholy. It was gen- 
 erally believed that the sound of the trumpets had 
 stunned the bird and deprived it of both voice and 
 hearing. It appeared, however, that this was not 
 the case for, says Plutarch, the bird had all the 
 time been occupied in profound meditation, studying 
 how to imitate the sound of the trumpets, and when 
 at last master of the trick, he astonished his friends 
 by a perfect imitation of the flourish on those in- 
 struments it had heard, observing with the greatest 
 exactness all the repetitions, stops, and changes. 
 This lesson, however, had apparently been learned 
 at the cost of the whole of its intelligence, for 
 it made it forget everything it had learned be- 
 fore. 
 
 We visited many out-of-the-way places to- 
 gether, Peter and I, the Negro dance-halls near 
 135th Street, and the Italian and the Yiddish 
 Theatres. Peter once remarked that he enjoyed 
 plays more in a foreign language with which he was 
 unfamiliar. What he could imagine of plot and 
 dialogue far transcended the actuality. We often 
 dined at a comfortable Italian restaurant on Spring 
 Street, on the walls of which birds fluttered through 
 frescoed arbours, trailing with fruits and flowers, 
 and where the spaghetti was too good to be eaten 
 
 [236] 
 
His Life and Works 
 without prayer. In an uptown cafe, we had a 
 strange adventure with a Frenchwoman, La Ti- 
 gresse, which I have related elsewhere.^ Peter re- 
 fused, in these last months, to go to concerts, es- 
 pecially in Carnegie Hall, the atmosphere of which, 
 he said, made it impossible to listen to music. The 
 bare walls, the bright lights, the sweating con- 
 ductors, and the silly, gaping crowd oppressed his 
 spirit. He envied Ludwig of Bavaria who could 
 listen to music in a darkened hall in which he was 
 the only auditor. Conditions were more favour- 
 able in the moving picture theatres. The bands, 
 perhaps, did not play so well but the auditoriums 
 were more subtly lighted, so that the figures of the 
 audience did not intrude. 
 
 Peter was more of a recluse than ever. It had 
 been impossible to persuade him to meet anybody 
 since the Edith Dale days (Edith herself was now 
 living in New Mexico and, owing to a slight mis- 
 understanding, I had not seen or heard from her 
 in five years). He was even sensitive and morbid 
 on the subject. He made me promise, as a matter 
 of fact, after the Louis Sherwin episode, that in 
 case we encountered any of my friends in a res- 
 taurant or at a theatre, I would not introduce him. 
 There was, I assured myself, a good reason for this. 
 In these last days, Peter faded out in a crowd. He 
 lost a good deal of his personality even in the pres- 
 ence of a third person. I begged him to go with 
 
 1 In the Garret. 
 
 [237J 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 me to Florine Stettheimer's studio to see her pic- 
 tures, which I was sure would please him, but he re- 
 fused. He liked to stroll around with me in odd 
 places and he read and played the piano a good 
 deal, but he seemed to have few other interests. 
 He was absolutely ignorant of such matters as 
 politics and government. He never voted and I 
 have heard him refer to the president, and not in 
 jest, as Abraham Wilson. Sports did not amuse 
 him either, but occasionally we went together to see 
 the wrestlers at Madison Square Garden, especially 
 when Stanislaus Zbyszko was announced to appear. 
 He never went to Europe again although, shortly 
 before he died, he talked of a voyage to Spain. He 
 visited his mother at Toledo several times and he 
 had planned a trip to Florida, the climate of which 
 he found particularly soothing to his malady, in 
 January, 1920. Occasionally he just disappeared, 
 returning again, somewhat mysteriously, without 
 any explanation, without, indeed, any admission that 
 he had been away. I knew him too well to ask ques- 
 tions and, to say truth, there was something very 
 sweet about these little mystifications. Privacy 
 was so dear a privilege to him that even with his 
 nearest friends, of which, assuredly, I was one, per- 
 haps the nearest in this last year, it was essential 
 to his happiness that he should maintain a certain 
 restraint, a certain reserve, I had almost said, a cer- 
 tain mystery, but, curiously, there was nothing theat- 
 rical about Peter, even in his most theatrical per- 
 
 [238] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 f ormances. Just as by the fineness of his taste, Rem- 
 brandt softened the hideousness of a lurid subject 
 in his Anatomy Lesson, so the exquisite charm of 
 Peter's personality overcame any possible repug- 
 nance to anything he might choose to do. 
 
 During this last year in New York, he lived in an 
 old house on Beekman Place, that splendid row, just 
 two blocks long, of mellow brown-stone dwellings, 
 with flights of steps, which back upon the East 
 River at Fiftieth Street. W'e often sat on the 
 balcony, looking over towards the span of the 
 Queensboro Bridge, Blackwell's Island, with its 
 turreted and battlemonted castles so like the Mys- 
 teries of Udolpho, watching the gulls sweep over 
 the surface of the water, the smoke wreathe from 
 the factory chimneys, and the craft on the river, 
 with cargoes "of Tyne coal, road-rails, pig-lead, 
 fire-wood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays," of the 
 city, but seemingly away from it, with our backs to 
 it, literally, indeed, while life ebbed by. And, at 
 my side, too, I saw it slowly ebbing. 
 
 The interior, one of those fine old New York 
 interiors, with high ceilings, bordered with plaster 
 guilloches, white carved marble fire-places, sliding 
 doors, and huge crystal chandeliers, whose pendants 
 jingled when some one walked on the floor above, 
 it had been his happy fancy to decorate in the early 
 Victorian manner. The furniture, to be sure, was 
 mostly Chippendale, Sheraton, and Heppelwhite, 
 but there were also heavy carved walnut chairs, 
 
 [239] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 upholstered in lovely figured glazed chintzes. The 
 mirrors were framed in four inches of purple and 
 red engraved glass. The highboys were littered 
 with ornaments, Staffordshire china dogs and shep- 
 herdesses, splendid feather and shell flowers, and 
 ormolu clocks stood under glass bells on the mantel- 
 shelves. He had found a couple of rather worn, 
 but still handsome, Aubusson carpets, with garlands 
 of huge roses of a pale blush colour. One of these 
 was in the drawing-room, the other in the library. 
 An old sampler screen framed the fire-place in the 
 latter room. The books were curious. Peter was 
 now interested in byways of literature. I remem- 
 ber such volumes as Thomas Mann's Der Tod in 
 Venedig, Paterne Berrichon's Life of Arthur Rim- 
 baud, Alfred Jarry's Ufcu Roi, with music by Claude 
 Terrasse, Jean Terrain's La Maison Philibert, 
 Richard Garnett's The Twilight of the Gods, the 
 Comte de Lautreamont's Les Chants de Maldoror, 
 Leolinus Siluriensis's The Anatomy of Tobacco, 
 Binet-Valmer's Lucien, Haldane MacFall's The 
 Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer, James Morier's 
 Hajji Baba of Ispahan, Robert Hugh Benson's 
 The Necromancers, Andre Gide's L'Immoraliste, 
 and various volumes by Guillaume ApoUonaire. 
 The walls of the drawing-room were hung with a 
 French eighteenth century, rose cotton print, the de- 
 sign of which showed, on one side, Cupid rowing 
 lustily, while listless old Time sat in the bow of the 
 boat, with the motto: I'Amour fait passer le Temps; 
 
 [240] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 and, on the other side, Time propelling the boat, 
 while a saddened Cupid, his face buried in his 
 hands, was the downcast passenger, with the 
 motto : Le Temps fait passer I'Amour. In 
 the centre, beside a oharming Greek Temple, a 
 nymph toyed with a spaniel, and the motto 
 read: I'Amitie ne, craint pas le Temps! 
 There were, therefore, no pictures on these walls, 
 but, elsewhere, wheire the walls were white, or 
 where they were hung with rich crimson Roman 
 brocade, as in the library, there were a few steel 
 engravings and mezzotints and an early nineteenth 
 century lithograph or two. Over his night-table, 
 at the side of his bed, he had pinned a photograph 
 of a detail of Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes in the 
 Palazzo Riccardi, the detail of the three youths, 
 and there was also a large framed photograph of 
 Cranach's naive Venus in this room. The piano 
 stood in the drawing-room, near one of the win- 
 dows, looking over the river. It was always open 
 and the rack was littered with modern music : John 
 Ireland's London Pieces, Bela Bartok's Three Bur- 
 lesques, Gerald Tyrwhitt's Three Little Funeral 
 Marches, music by Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, 
 Georges Auric, and Zoltan Kodaly. I remember 
 one day he asked me to look at Theodor Streiche's 
 Spriiche and Gedichte, with words by Richard 
 Dehmel, the second of which he averred was the 
 shortest song ever composed, consisting of but four 
 bars. 
 
 [241] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 It was a lovely house to lie about in, to talk in, to 
 dream in. It was restful and quaint, offering a 
 pleasing contrast to the eccentric modernity of the 
 other homes I visited at this period. There was no 
 electricity. The chandeliers burned gas but the 
 favourite illumination was afforded by lamps with 
 round glass globes of various colours, through 
 which the soft light filtered. 
 
 On an afternoon in December, 1919, we were 
 lounging in the drawing-room. Peter had curled 
 himself into a sort of knot on a broad sofa with 
 three carved walnut curves at the back. He had 
 spread a knitted coverlet over his feet, for it was 
 a little chilly, in spite of the fact that a wood fire 
 was smouldering in the grate. On the table before 
 him there was a highball glass, half-full of the 
 proper ingredients, and sprawling beside him on the 
 sofa, a magnificent blue Persian cat, which he called 
 Chalcedony. George Moore and George Sand 
 had long since perished of old age and Lou Matagot 
 had been a victim of the laboratory explosion. 
 There was a certain melancholy implicit , in their 
 absence. Nothing reminds us so irresistibly of the 
 passing of time as the short age allotted on this 
 earth to our dear cats. The pinchbottle and sev- 
 eral bottles of soda, a bowl of cracked ice and a 
 bowl of Fatima cigarettes, which both of us had 
 grown to prefer, reposed conveniently on the table 
 between us. I remember the increasing silence as 
 
 [242] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 the twilight fell and, how, at last, Peter began to 
 talk. 
 
 I wanted to do so much, he began, and for a long 
 time, during these past four years, it seemed to me 
 that I had done so little. I remembered Zola's 
 phra-se: Mon oeuvre, alors, c'etait I'Arche, I'Arche 
 immense ! Helas ! ce que Ton reve, et puis, apres, ce 
 que Ton execute ! At the beginning of the war, I was 
 so very miserable, so unhappy, so alone. It seemed 
 to me that I had been a complete failure, that I 
 had accomplished nothing. . . . 
 
 I must have raised a protesting hand, for he in- 
 terjected. No, don't Interrupt me. I am not com- 
 plaining or asking for sympathy. I am explaining 
 how I felt, not how I feel. I never spoke of it, of 
 course, while I felt that way. I am only talking 
 about it now because I have gone beyond, because, 
 in a sense, at least, I understand. I am happier 
 now, happier, perhaps, than I have ever been be- 
 fore, for In the past four years I have left behind 
 my restlessness and achieved something like peace. 
 I no longer feel that I have failed. Of course, I 
 have failed, but that was because I was attempting 
 to do something that I had no right to attempt. 
 My cats should have taught me that. It Is neces- 
 sary to do only what one must, what one is forced 
 by nature to do. Samuel Butler has said, and how 
 truly, Nothing Is worth doing or well done which 
 is not done fairly easiily, and some little deficiency of 
 
 [243] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 effort is more pardonable than any perceptible ex- 
 cess, for virtue has ever erred rather on the side of 
 self-indulgence than of asceticism. . . . And so, in 
 the end, and after all I am still young, I have learned 
 that I cannot write. Is a little experience too much 
 to pay for learning to know oneself? I think not, 
 and that is why, now, I feel more like a success than 
 a failure, because, finally, I do know myself, and be- 
 cause I have left no bad work. I can say with 
 Macaulay: There are no lees in my wine. It is all 
 the cream of the bottle. . . . 
 
 I have tried to do too much and that is why, 
 perhaps, I have done nothing. I wanted to write a 
 new Comedie Humaine. Instead, I have lived it. 
 And now, I have come to the conclusion that that 
 was all there was for me to do, just to live, as fully 
 as possible. Sympathy and enthusiasm are some- 
 thing, after all. I must have communicated at 
 least a shadow of these to the Ideas and objects and 
 people on whom I have bestowed them. Benozzo 
 Gozzoli's frescoes — now, don't laugh at what I am 
 going to say, because it is true when you understand 
 it — arc just so much more precious because I have 
 loved them. They will give more people pleasure 
 because I have given them my affection. This is 
 something; indeed, next to the creation of the fres- 
 coes, perhaps it is everything. 
 
 There are two ways of becoming a writer: one, 
 the cheaper, is to discover a formula : that is black 
 magic ; the other is to have the urge : that is white 
 
 [244] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 magic. I have never been able to discover a new 
 formula ; I have worked with the formula of other 
 artists, only to see the cryptogram blot and blur 
 under my hands. My manipulation of the mystic 
 figures and the cabalistic secrets has never raised the 
 right demons. . . . 
 
 What is there anyway? All expression lifts us 
 further away from simplicity and causes unhap- 
 piness. . . . Material, scientific expression: flying- 
 machines, moving pictures, and telegraphy are simply 
 disturbing. They add nothing valuable to human 
 life. Any novelist who invokes the aid of science 
 dies a swift death. Zola's novels are stufFed with 
 theories of heredity but ideas about heredity change 
 every day. The current craze is for psychoanalytic 
 novels, which are not half so psychoanalytic as the 
 books of Jane Austen, as posterity will find out for 
 itself. . . . Art in this epoch is too self-conscious. 
 Everybody is striving to do something new, instead 
 of writing or painting or composing what is natu- 
 ral. . . . Even the disturbing irony and pessimism 
 of Anatole France and Thomas Hardy add nothing 
 to life. We shall be happier if we go back to the be- 
 ginning. . . . 
 
 The great secret is the cat's secret, to do what 
 one has to do. Let IT do it, let IT, whatever IT 
 is, flow through you. The writer should say, with 
 Sancho Panza, De mis vinas vengo, no se nada. 
 Labanne, in Le Chat Maigre, cries : Art declines in 
 the degree that thought develops. In Greece, in 
 
 [245] 
 
Peter Whiffle 
 
 the time of Aristotle, there were only sculptors. 
 Artists are inferior beings. They resemble preg- 
 nant women; they give birth without knowing why. 
 And again, to quote my beloved Samuel Butler, No 
 one understands how anything is done unless he can 
 do it himself; and even then he probably does not 
 know how he has done it. I might add that very 
 often he does not know what he has done. Sterne 
 wrote Tristram Shandy to ridicule his personal en- 
 emies. Dickens began Pickwick to give the artist, 
 Seymour, an opportunity to draw Cockney sports- 
 men and he concluded it in high moral fervour, with 
 the ambition to wipe out bribery and corruption at 
 elections, unscrupulous attorneys, and Fleet Prison. 
 To Cervantes, Don Quixote was a burlesque of the 
 high-flown romantic literature of his period. To 
 the world, it is one of the great romances of all 
 time. . . . 
 
 You see, I am beginning to understand why I 
 haven't written, why I cannot write. . . . That is 
 why I am unhappy no longer, why I am more peace- 
 ful, why I do not suffer. But, and now a strange, 
 quavering note sounded in his voice, if I had found 
 a new formula, who knows what I might have done ? 
 
 He turned his face away from me towards the 
 back of the sofa. The cat was purring heavily, al- 
 most like the croupy breathing of a child. It was 
 quite dark outside, and there was no light in the 
 room save for the flicker that came from the dying 
 
 [246] 
 
His Life and Works 
 
 embers. There was a long silence. In trying 
 afterwards to reckon its length, I judged it must 
 have been fully half an hour before I spoke. It 
 was a noise that broke the charm of the stillness. 
 The dead end of the log spht over the andirons 
 and fell into the grate. 
 
 Peter, I began. 
 
 He did not move. 
 
 Peter. ... I rose and bent over him. The 
 clock struck six. The cat stirred uneasily, rose, 
 stretched his enormous length ; then gave a faint but 
 alarmingly portentous mew and leaped from the 
 couch. 
 
 Peter ! 
 
 He did not answer me. 
 
 April 2g, igzi 
 New York. 
 
 THE END 
 
 [247]