The Project Gutenberg eBook of Enoch Soames: A Memory of the Eighteen

Published：2026-07-31 15:20:52 Source: circuit kits for 14 year olds under 20 dollars Author: Products

Produced by Judith Boss.

Enoch Soames

A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties

By

MAX BEERBOHM

When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given byMr. Holbrook Jackson to the world,best finger painting kits for 11 year olds under 100 dollars I looked eagerly in the index forSoames, Enoch. It was as I feared: he was not there. But everybodyelse was. Many writers whom I had quite forgotten, or remembered butfaintly, lived again for me, they and their work, in Mr. HolbrookJackson's pages. The book was as thorough as it was brilliantlywritten. And thus the omission found by me was an all the deadlierrecord of poor Soames's failure to impress himself on his decade.

I dare say I am the only person who noticed the omission. Soames hadfailed so piteously as all that! Nor is there a counterpoise in thethought that if he had had some measure of success he might havepassed, like those others, out of my mind, to return only at thehistorian's beck. It is true that had his gifts, such as they were,been acknowledged in his lifetime, he would never have made the bargainI saw him make—that strange bargain whose results have kept him alwaysin the foreground of my memory. But it is from those very results thatthe full piteousness of him glares out.

Not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. For his sake,poor fellow, I should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. It isill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames withoutmaking him ridiculous? Or, rather, how am I to hush up the horrid factthat he WAS ridiculous? I shall not be able to do that. Yet, sooneror later, write about him I must. You will see in due course that Ihave no option. And I may as well get the thing done now.

In the summer term of '93 a bolt from the blue flashed down on Oxford.It drove deep; it hurtlingly embedded itself in the soil. Dons andundergraduates stood around, rather pale, discussing nothing but it.Whence came it, this meteorite? From Paris. Its name? WillRothenstein. Its aim? To do a series of twenty-four portraits inlithograph. These were to be published from the Bodley Head, London.The matter was urgent. Already the warden of A, and the master of B,and the Regius Professor of C had meekly "sat." Dignified anddoddering old men who had never consented to sit to any one could notwithstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue; he invited: hedid not invite; he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He worespectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was awit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Daudet andthe Goncourts. He knew every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart.He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he hadpolished off his selection of dons, he was going to include a fewundergraduates. It was a proud day for me when I—I was included. Iliked Rothenstein not less than I feared him; and there arose betweenus a friendship that has grown ever warmer, and been more and morevalued by me, with every passing year.

At the end of term he settled in, or, rather, meteoritically into,London. It was to him I owed my first knowledge of thatforever-enchanting little world-in-itself, Chelsea, and my firstacquaintance with Walter Sickert and other August elders who dweltthere. It was Rothenstein that took me to see, in Cambridge Street,Pimlico, a young man whose drawings were already famous among thefew—Aubrey Beardsley by name. With Rothenstein I paid my first visitto the Bodley Head. By him I was inducted into another haunt ofintellect and daring, the domino-room of the Cafe Royal.

There, on that October evening—there, in that exuberant vista ofgilding and crimson velvet set amidst all those opposing mirrors andupholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the paintedand pagan ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversationbroken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoesshuffled on marble tables, I drew a deep breath and, "This indeed,"said I to myself, "is life!" (Forgive me that theory. Remember thewaging of even the South African War was not yet.)

It was the hour before dinner. We drank vermuth. Those who knewRothenstein were pointing him out to those who knew him only by name.Men were constantly coming in through the swing-doors and wanderingslowly up and down in search of vacant tables or of tables occupied byfriends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure hewanted to catch Rothenstein's eye. He had twice passed our table, witha hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition onPuvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shamblingperson, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He hada thin, vague beard, or, rather, he had a chin on which a large numberof hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. He was anodd-looking person; but in the nineties odd apparitions were morefrequent, I think, than they are now. The young writers of thatera—and I was sure this man was a writer—strove earnestly to bedistinct in aspect. This man had striven unsuccessfully. He wore asoft black hat of clerical kind, but of Bohemian intention, and a graywaterproof cape which, perhaps because it was waterproof, failed to beromantic. I decided that "dim" was the mot juste for him. I hadalready essayed to write, and was immensely keen on the mot juste, thatHoly Grail of the period.

The dim man was now again approaching our table, and this time he madeup his mind to pause in front of it.

"You don't remember me," he said in a toneless voice.

Rothenstein brightly focused him.

"Yes, I do," he replied after a moment, with pride rather thaneffusion—pride in a retentive memory. "Edwin Soames."

"Enoch Soames," said Enoch.

"Enoch Soames," repeated Rothenstein in a tone implying that it wasenough to have hit on the surname. "We met in Paris a few times whenyou were living there. We met at the Cafe Groche."

"And I came to your studio once."

"Oh, yes; I was sorry I was out."

"But you were in. You showed me some of your paintings, you know. Ihear you're in Chelsea now."

"Yes."

I almost wondered that Mr. Soames did not, after this monosyllable,pass along. He stood patiently there, rather like a dumb animal,rather like a donkey looking over a gate. A sad figure, his. Itoccurred to me that "hungry" was perhaps the mot juste for him;but—hungry for what? He looked as if he had little appetite foranything. I was sorry for him; and Rothenstein, though he had notinvited him to Chelsea, did ask him to sit down and have something todrink.

Seated, he was more self-assertive. He flung back the wings of hiscape with a gesture which, had not those wings been waterproof, mighthave seemed to hurl defiance at things in general. And he ordered anabsinthe. "Je me tiens toujours fidele," he told Rothenstein, "a lasorciere glauque."

"It is bad for you," said Rothenstein, dryly.

"Nothing is bad for one," answered Soames. "Dans ce monde il n'y a nibien ni mal."

"Nothing good and nothing bad? How do you mean?"

"I explained it all in the preface to 'Negations.'"

"'Negations'?"

"Yes, I gave you a copy of it."

"Oh, yes, of course. But, did you explain, for instance, that therewas no such thing as bad or good grammar?"

"N-no," said Soames. "Of course in art there is the good and the evil.But in life—no." He was rolling a cigarette. He had weak, whitehands, not well washed, and with finger-tips much stained withnicotine. "In life there are illusions of good and evil, but"—hisvoice trailed away to a murmur in which the words "vieux jeu" and"rococo" were faintly audible. I think he felt he was not doinghimself justice, and feared that Rothenstein was going to point outfallacies. Anyhow, he cleared his throat and said, "Parlons d'autrechose."

It occurs to you that he was a fool? It didn't to me. I was young,and had not the clarity of judgment that Rothenstein already had.Soames was quite five or six years older than either of us. Also—hehad written a book. It was wonderful to have written a book.

If Rothenstein had not been there, I should have revered Soames. Evenas it was, I respected him. And I was very near indeed to reverencewhen he said he had another book coming out soon. I asked if I mightask what kind of book it was to be.

"My poems," he answered. Rothenstein asked if this was to be the titleof the book. The poet meditated on this suggestion, but said he ratherthought of giving the book no title at all. "If a book is good initself—" he murmured, and waved his cigarette.

Rothenstein objected that absence of title might be bad for the sale ofa book.

"If," he urged, "I went into a bookseller's and said simply, 'Have yougot?' or, 'Have you a copy of?' how would they know what I wanted?"

"Oh, of course I should have my name on the cover," Soames answeredearnestly. "And I rather want," he added, looking hard at Rothenstein,"to have a drawing of myself as frontispiece." Rothenstein admittedthat this was a capital idea, and mentioned that he was going into thecountry and would be there for some time. He then looked at his watch,exclaimed at the hour, paid the waiter, and went away with me todinner. Soames remained at his post of fidelity to the glaucous witch.

"Why were you so determined not to draw him?" I asked.

"Draw him? Him? How can one draw a man who doesn't exist?"

"He is dim," I admitted. But my mot juste fell flat. Rothensteinrepeated that Soames was non-existent.

Still, Soames had written a book. I asked if Rothenstein had read"Negations." He said he had looked into it, "but," he added crisply,"I don't profess to know anything about writing." A reservation verycharacteristic of the period! Painters would not then allow that anyone outside their own order had a right to any opinion about painting.This law (graven on the tablets brought down by Whistler from thesummit of Fuji-yama) imposed certain limitations. If other arts thanpainting were not utterly unintelligible to all but the men whopracticed them, the law tottered—the Monroe Doctrine, as it were, didnot hold good. Therefore no painter would offer an opinion of a bookwithout warning you at any rate that his opinion was worthless. No oneis a better judge of literature than Rothenstein; but it wouldn't havedone to tell him so in those days, and I knew that I must form anunaided judgment of "Negations."

Not to buy a book of which I had met the author face to face would havebeen for me in those days an impossible act of self-denial. When Ireturned to Oxford for the Christmas term I had duly secured"Negations." I used to keep it lying carelessly on the table in myroom, and whenever a friend took it up and asked what it was about, Iwould say: "Oh, it's rather a remarkable book. It's by a man whom Iknow." Just "what it was about" I never was able to say. Head or tailwas just what I hadn't made of that slim, green volume. I found in thepreface no clue to the labyrinth of contents, and in that labyrinthnothing to explain the preface.

  Lean near to life. Lean very near—
  nearer.

  Life is web and therein nor warp nor
  woof is, but web only.

It is for this I am Catholick in church and in thought, yet do let swift Mood weave there what the shuttle of Mood wills.

These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followedwere less easy to understand. Then came "Stark: A Conte," about amidinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about tomurder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes inwhich the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternatesentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula, lacking, Irather thought, in "snap." Next, some aphorisms (entitled "Aphorismata"[spelled in Greek]). Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety ofform, and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. It wasrather the substance that eluded me. Was there, I wondered, anysubstance at all? It did now occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was afool! Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose Iwas! I inclined togive Soames the benefit of the doubt. I had read "L'Apres-midi d'unfaune" without extracting a glimmer of meaning; yet Mallarme, ofcourse, was a master. How was I to know that Soames wasn't another?There was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed, arresting, butperhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden, perhaps, with meanings as deepas Mallarme's own. I awaited his poems with an open mind.

And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had had asecond meeting with him. This was on an evening in January. Goinginto the aforesaid domino-room, I had passed a table at which sat apale man with an open book before him. He had looked from his book tome, and I looked back over my shoulder with a vague sense that I oughtto have recognized him. I returned to pay my respects. Afterexchanging a few words, I said with a glance to the open book, "I see Iam interrupting you," and was about to pass on, but, "I prefer," Soamesreplied in his toneless voice, "to be interrupted," and I obeyed hisgesture that I should sit down.

I asked him if he often read here.

"Yes; things of this kind I read here," he answered, indicating thetitle of his book—"The Poems of Shelley."

"Anything that you really"—and I was going to say "admire?" But Icautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had doneso, for he said with unwonted emphasis, "Anything second-rate."

I had read little of Shelley, but, "Of course," I murmured, "he's veryuneven."

"I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. Adeadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this placebreaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here." Soames took up the book andglanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames's laugh was a short,single, and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by anymovement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "What a period!" heuttered, laying the book down. And, "What a country!" he added.

I asked rather nervously if he didn't think Keats had more or less heldhis own against the drawbacks of time and place. He admitted thatthere were "passages in Keats," but did not specify them. Of "theolder men," as he called them, he seemed to like only Milton."Milton," he said, "wasn't sentimental." Also, "Milton had a darkinsight." And again, "I can always read Milton in the reading-room."

"The reading-room?"

"Of the British Museum. I go there every day."

"You do? I've only been there once. I'm afraid I found it rather adepressing place. It—it seemed to sap one's vitality."

"It does. That's why I go there. The lower one's vitality, the moresensitive one is to great art. I live near the museum. I have roomsin Dyott Street."

"And you go round to the reading-room to read Milton?"

"Usually Milton." He looked at me. "It was Milton," hecertificatively added, "who converted me to diabolism."

"Diabolism? Oh, yes? Really?" said I, with that vague discomfort andthat intense desire to be polite which one feels when a man speaks ofhis own religion. "You—worship the devil?"

Soames shook his head.

"It's not exactly worship," he qualified, sipping his absinthe. "It'smore a matter of trusting and encouraging."

"I see, yes. I had rather gathered from the preface to 'Negations'that you were a—a Catholic."

"Je l'etais a cette epoque. In fact, I still am. I am a Catholicdiabolist."

But this profession he made in an almost cursory tone. I could seethat what was upmost in his mind was the fact that I had read"Negations." His pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. I felt asone who is about to be examined viva voce on the very subject in whichhe is shakiest. I hastily asked him how soon his poems were to bepublished.

"Next week," he told me.

"And are they to be published without a title?"

"No. I found a title at last. But I sha'n't tell you what it is," asthough I had been so impertinent as to inquire. "I am not sure that itwholly satisfies me. But it is the best I can find. It suggestssomething of the quality of the poems—strange growths, natural andwild, yet exquisite," he added, "and many-hued, and full of poisons."

I asked him what he thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort thatwas his laugh, and, "Baudelaire," he said, "was a bourgeois malgrelui." France had had only one poet—Villon; "and two thirds of Villonwere sheer journalism." Verlaine was "an epicier malgre lui."Altogether, rather to my surprise, he rated French literature lowerthan English. There were "passages" in Villiers de l'Isle-Adam. But,"I," he summed up, "owe nothing to France." He nodded at me. "You'llsee," he predicted.

I did not, when the time came, quite see that. I thought the author of"Fungoids" did, unconsciously of course, owe something to the youngParisian decadents or to the young English ones who owed something toTHEM. I still think so. The little book, bought by me in Oxford, liesbefore me as I write. Its pale-gray buckram cover and silver letteringhave not worn well. Nor have its contents. Through these, with amelancholy interest, I have again been looking. They are not much.But at the time of their publication I had a vague suspicion that theyMIGHT be. I suppose it is my capacity for faith, not poor Soames'swork, that is weaker than it once was.

TO A YOUNG WOMAN

THOU ART, WHO HAST NOT BEEN!

Pale tunes irresolute

And traceries of old sounds

  Blown from a rotted flute
  Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust,
  Nor not strange forms and epicene

Lie bleeding in the dust,

Being wounded with wounds.

  For this it is
  That in thy counterpart

  Of age-long mockeries
  THOU HAST NOT BEEN NOR ART!

There seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first andlast lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord.But I did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning inSoames's mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning?As for the craftsmanship, "rouged with rust" seemed to me a finestroke, and "nor not" instead of "and" had a curious felicity. Iwondered who the "young woman" was and what she had made of it all. Isadly suspect that Soames could not have made more of it than she.Yet even now, if one doesn't try to make any sense at all of the poem,and reads it just for the sound, there is a certain grace of cadence.Soames was an artist, in so far as he was anything, poor fellow!

It seemed to me, when first I read "Fungoids," that, oddly enough, thediabolistic side of him was the best. Diabolism seemed to be acheerful, even a wholesome influence in his life.

NOCTURNE

  Round and round the shutter'd Square
  I strolled with the Devil's arm in mine.
  No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there
  And the ring of his laughter and mine.
    We had drunk black wine.

  I scream'd, "I will race you, Master!"
  "What matter," he shriek'd, "to-night
  Which of us runs the faster?
  There is nothing to fear to-night
    In the foul moon's light!"

  Then I look'd him in the eyes
  And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told
  And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.
  It was true, what I'd time and again been told:
    He was old—old.

There was, I felt, quite a swing about that first stanza—a joyous androllicking note of comradeship. The second was slightly hysterical,perhaps. But I liked the third, it was so bracingly unorthodox, evenaccording to the tenets of Soames's peculiar sect in the faith. Notmuch "trusting and encouraging" here! Soames triumphantly exposing thedevil as a liar, and laughing "full shrill," cut a quite hearteningfigure, I thought, then! Now, in the light of what befell, none of hisother poems depresses me so much as "Nocturne."

I looked out for what the metropolitan reviewers would have to say.They seemed to fall into two classes: those who had little to say andthose who had nothing. The second class was the larger, and the wordsof the first were cold; insomuch that

  Strikes a note of modernity. . . . These tripping numbers.—"The
  Preston Telegraph."

was the only lure offered in advertisements by Soames's publisher. Ihad hoped that when next I met the poet I could congratulate him onhaving made a stir, for I fancied he was not so sure of his intrinsicgreatness as he seemed. I was but able to say, rather coarsely, whennext I did see him, that I hoped "Fungoids" was "selling splendidly."He looked at me across his glass of absinthe and asked if I had boughta copy. His publisher had told him that three had been sold. Ilaughed, as at a jest.

"You don't suppose I CARE, do you?" he said, with something like asnarl. I disclaimed the notion. He added that he was not a tradesman.I said mildly that I wasn't, either, and murmured that an artist whogave truly new and great things to the world had always to wait longfor recognition. He said he cared not a sou for recognition. I agreedthat the act of creation was its own reward.

His moroseness might have alienated me if I had regarded myself as anobody. But ah! hadn't both John Lane and Aubrey Beardsley suggestedthat I should write an essay for the great new venture that wasafoot—"The Yellow Book"? And hadn't Henry Harland, as editor,accepted my essay? And wasn't it to be in the very first number? AtOxford I was still in statu pupillari. In London I regarded myself asvery much indeed a graduate now—one whom no Soames could ruffle.Partly to show off, partly in sheer good-will, I told Soames he oughtto contribute to "The Yellow Book." He uttered from the throat a soundof scorn for that publication.

Nevertheless, I did, a day or two later, tentatively ask Harland if heknew anything of the work of a man called Enoch Soames. Harland pausedin the midst of his characteristic stride around the room, threw up hishands toward the ceiling, and groaned aloud: he had often met "thatabsurd creature" in Paris, and this very morning had received somepoems in manuscript from him.

"Has he NO talent?" I asked.

"He has an income. He's all right." Harland was the most joyous ofmen and most generous of critics, and he hated to talk of anythingabout which he couldn't be enthusiastic. So I dropped the subject ofSoames. The news that Soames had an income did take the edge offsolicitude. I learned afterward that he was the son of an unsuccessfuland deceased bookseller in Preston, but had inherited an annuity ofthree hundred pounds from a married aunt, and had no survivingrelatives of any kind. Materially, then, he was "all right." But therewas still a spiritual pathos about him, sharpened for me now by thepossibility that even the praises of "The Preston Telegraph" might nothave been forthcoming had he not been the son of a Preston man He had asort of weak doggedness which I could not but admire. Neither he norhis work received the slightest encouragement; but he persisted inbehaving as a personage: always he kept his dingy little flag flying.Wherever congregated the jeunes feroces of the arts, in whatever Sohorestaurant they had just discovered, in whatever music-hall they weremost frequently, there was Soames in the midst of them, or, rather, onthe fringe of them, a dim, but inevitable, figure. He never sought topropitiate his fellow-writers, never bated a jot of his arrogance abouthis own work or of his contempt for theirs. To the painters he wasrespectful, even humble; but for the poets and prosaists of "The YellowBook" and later of "The Savoy" he had never a word but of scorn. Hewasn't resented. It didn't occur to anybody that he or his Catholicdiabolism mattered. When, in the autumn of '96, he brought out (at hisown expense, this time) a third book, his last book, nobody said a wordfor or against it. I meant, but forgot, to buy it. I never saw it,and am ashamed to say I don't even remember what it was called. But Idid, at the time of its publication, say to Rothenstein that I thoughtpoor old Soames was really a rather tragic figure, and that I believedhe would literally die for want of recognition. Rothenstein scoffed.He said I was trying to get credit for a kind heart which I didn'tpossess; and perhaps this was so. But at the private view of the NewEnglish Art Club, a few weeks later, I beheld a pastel portrait of"Enoch Soames, Esq." It was very like him, and very like Rothensteinto have done it. Soames was standing near it, in his soft hat and hiswaterproof cape, all through the afternoon. Anybody who knew him wouldhave recognized the portrait at a glance, but nobody who didn't knowhim would have recognized the portrait from its bystander: it "existed"so much more than he; it was bound to. Also, it had not thatexpression of faint happiness which on that day was discernible, yes,in Soames's countenance. Fame had breathed on him. Twice again in thecourse of the month I went to the New English, and on both occasionsSoames himself was on view there. Looking back, I regard the close ofthat exhibition as having been virtually the close of his career. Hehad felt the breath of Fame against his cheek—so late, for such alittle while; and at its withdrawal he gave in, gave up, gave out. He,who had never looked strong or well, looked ghastly now—a shadow ofthe shade he had once been. He still frequented the domino-room, buthaving lost all wish to excite curiosity, he no longer read booksthere. "You read only at the museum now?" I asked, with attemptedcheerfulness. He said he never went there now. "No absinthe there,"he muttered. It was the sort of thing that in old days he would havesaid for effect; but it carried conviction now. Absinthe, erst but apoint in the "personality" he had striven so hard to build up, wassolace and necessity now. He no longer called it "la sorciereglauque." He had shed away all his French phrases. He had become aplain, unvarnished Preston man.

Failure, if it be a plain, unvarnished, complete failure, and eventhough it be a squalid failure, has always a certain dignity. Iavoided Soames because he made me feel rather vulgar. John Lane hadpublished, by this time, two little books of mine, and they had had apleasant little success of esteem. I was a—slight, butdefinite—"personality." Frank Harris had engaged me to kick up myheels in "The Saturday Review," Alfred Harmsworth was letting me dolikewise in "The Daily Mail." I was just what Soames wasn't. And heshamed my gloss. Had I known that he really and firmly believed in thegreatness of what he as an artist had achieved, I might not haveshunned him. No man who hasn't lost his vanity can be held to havealtogether failed. Soames's dignity was an illusion of mine. One day,in the first week of June, 1897, that illusion went. But on theevening of that day Soames went, too.

I had been out most of the morning and, as it was too late to reachhome in time for luncheon, I sought the Vingtieme. This littleplace—Restaurant du Vingtieme Siecle, to give it its full title—hadbeen discovered in '96 by the poets and prosaists, but had now beenmore or less abandoned in favor of some later find. I don't think itlived long enough to justify its name; but at that time there it stillwas, in Greek Street, a few doors from Soho Square, and almost oppositeto that house where, in the first years of the century, a little girl,and with her a boy named De Quincey, made nightly encampment indarkness and hunger among dust and rats and old legal parchments. TheVingtieme was but a small whitewashed room, leading out into the streetat one end and into a kitchen at the other. The proprietor and cookwas a Frenchman, known to us as Monsieur Vingtieme; the waiters werehis two daughters, Rose and Berthe; and the food, according to faith,was good. The tables were so narrow and were set so close togetherthat there was space for twelve of them, six jutting from each wall.

Only the two nearest to the door, as I went in, were occupied. On oneside sat a tall, flashy, rather Mephistophelian man whom I had seenfrom time to time in the domino-room and elsewhere. On the other sidesat Soames. They made a queer contrast in that sunlit room, Soamessitting haggard in that hat and cape, which nowhere at any season had Iseen him doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whomI more than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, aconjurer, or the head of a private detective agency. I was sure Soamesdidn't want my company; but I asked, as it would have seemed brutal notto, whether I might join him, and took the chair opposite to his. Hewas smoking a cigarette, with an untasted salmi of something on hisplate and a half-empty bottle of Sauterne before him, and he was quitesilent. I said that the preparations for the Jubilee made Londonimpossible. (I rather liked them, really.) I professed a wish to goright away till the whole thing was over. In vain did I attune myselfto his gloom. He seemed not to hear me or even to see me. I felt thathis behavior made me ridiculous in the eyes of the other man. Thegangway between the two rows of tables at the Vingtieme was hardly morethan two feet wide (Rose and Berthe, in their ministrations, had alwaysto edge past each other, quarreling in whispers as they did so), andany one at the table abreast of yours was virtually at yours. Ithought our neighbor was amused at my failure to interest Soames, andso, as I could not explain to him that my insistence was merelycharitable, I became silent. Without turning my head, I had him wellwithin my range of vision. I hoped I looked less vulgar than he incontrast with Soames. I was sure he was not an Englishman, but whatWAS his nationality? Though his jet-black hair was en brosse, I didnot think he was French. To Berthe, who waited on him, he spoke Frenchfluently, but with a hardly native idiom and accent. I gathered thatthis was his first visit to the Vingtieme; but Berthe was offhand inher manner to him: he had not made a good impression. His eyes werehandsome, but, like the Vingtieme's tables, too narrow and set tooclose together. His nose was predatory, and the points of hismustache, waxed up behind his nostrils, gave a fixity to his smile.Decidedly, he was sinister. And my sense of discomfort in his presencewas intensified by the scarlet waistcoat which tightly, and sounseasonably in June, sheathed his ample chest. This waistcoat wasn'twrong merely because of the heat, either. It was somehow all wrong initself. It wouldn't have done on Christmas morning. It would havestruck a jarring note at the first night of "Hernani." I was trying toaccount for its wrongness when Soames suddenly and strangely brokesilence. "A hundred years hence!" he murmured, as in a trance.

"We shall not be here," I briskly, but fatuously, added.

"We shall not be here. No," he droned, "but the museum will still bejust where it is. And the reading-room just where it is. And peoplewill be able to go and read there." He inhaled sharply, and a spasm asof actual pain contorted his features.

I wondered what train of thought poor Soames had been following. Hedid not enlighten me when he said, after a long pause, "You think Ihaven't minded."

"Minded what, Soames?"

"Neglect. Failure."

"FAILURE?" I said heartily. "Failure?" I repeated vaguely."Neglect—yes, perhaps; but that's quite another matter. Of course youhaven't been—appreciated. But what, then? Any artist who—whogives—" What I wanted to say was, "Any artist who gives truly new andgreat things to the world has always to wait long for recognition"; butthe flattery would not out: in the face of his misery—a misery sogenuine and so unmasked—my lips would not say the words.

And then he said them for me. I flushed. "That's what you were goingto say, isn't it?" he asked.

"How did you know?"

"It's what you said to me three years ago, when 'Fungoids' waspublished." I flushed the more. I need not have flushed at all."It's the only important thing I ever heard you say," he continued."And I've never forgotten it. It's a true thing. It's a horribletruth. But—d'you remember what I answered? I said, 'I don't care asou for recognition.' And you believed me. You've gone on believingI'm above that sort of thing. You're shallow. What should YOU know ofthe feelings of a man like me? You imagine that a great artist's faithin himself and in the verdict of posterity is enough to keep him happy.You've never guessed at the bitterness and loneliness, the"—his voicebroke; but presently he resumed, speaking with a force that I had neverknown in him. "Posterity! What use is it to ME? A dead man doesn'tknow that people are visiting his grave, visiting his birthplace,putting up tablets to him, unveiling statues of him. A dead man can'tread the books that are written about him. A hundred years hence!Think of it! If I could come back to life THEN—just for a fewhours—and go to the reading-room and READ! Or, better still, if Icould be projected now, at this moment, into that future, into thatreading-room, just for this one afternoon! I'd sell myself body andsoul to the devil for that! Think of the pages and pages in thecatalogue: 'Soames, Enoch' endlessly—endless editions, commentaries,prolegomena, biographies"— But here he was interrupted by a suddenloud crack of the chair at the next table. Our neighbor had half risenfrom his place. He was leaning toward us, apologetically intrusive.

"Excuse—permit me," he said softly. "I have been unable not to hear.Might I take a liberty? In this little restaurant-sans-facon—might I,as the phrase is, cut in?"

I could but signify our acquiescence. Berthe had appeared at thekitchen door, thinking the stranger wanted his bill. He waved her awaywith his cigar, and in another moment had seated himself beside me,commanding a full view of Soames.

"Though not an Englishman," he explained, "I know my London well, Mr.
Soames. Your name and fame—Mr. Beerbohm's, too—very known to me.
Your point is, who am I?" He glanced quickly over his shoulder, and
in a lowered voice said, "I am the devil."

I couldn't help it; I laughed. I tried not to, I knew there wasnothing to laugh at, my rudeness shamed me; but—I laughed withincreasing volume. The devil's quiet dignity, the surprise and disgustof his raised eyebrows, did but the more dissolve me. I rocked to andfro; I lay back aching; I behaved deplorably.

"I am a gentleman, and," he said with intense emphasis, "I thought Iwas in the company of GENTLEMEN."

"Don't!" I gasped faintly. "Oh, don't!"

"Curious, nicht wahr?" I heard him say to Soames. "There is a type ofperson to whom the very mention of my name is—oh, so awfully—funny!In your theaters the dullest comedien needs only to say 'The devil!'and right away they give him 'the loud laugh what speaks the vacantmind.' Is it not so?"

I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He accepted them,but coldly, and re-addressed himself to Soames.

"I am a man of business," he said, "and always I would put thingsthrough 'right now,' as they say in the States. You are a poet. Lesaffaires—you detest them. So be it. But with me you will deal, eh?What you have said just now gives me furiously to hope."

Soames had not moved except to light a fresh cigarette. He satcrouched forward, with his elbows squared on the table, and his headjust above the level of his hands, staring up at the devil.

"Go on," he nodded. I had no remnant of laughter in me now.

"It will be the more pleasant, our little deal," the devil went on,"because you are—I mistake not?—a diabolist."

"A Catholic diabolist," said Soames.

The devil accepted the reservation genially.

"You wish," he resumed, "to visit now—this afternoon as-ever-is—thereading-room of the British Museum, yes? But of a hundred years hence,yes? Parfaitement. Time—an illusion. Past and future—they are asever present as the present, or at any rate only what you call 'justround the corner.' I switch you on to any date. I project you—pouf!You wish to be in the reading-room just as it will be on the afternoonof June 3, 1997? You wish to find yourself standing in that room, justpast the swing-doors, this very minute, yes? And to stay there tillclosing-time? Am I right?"

Soames nodded.

The devil looked at his watch. "Ten past two," he said. "Closing-timein summer same then as now—seven o'clock. That will give you almostfive hours. At seven o'clock—pouf!—you find yourself again here,sitting at this table. I am dining to-night dans le monde—dans lehiglif. That concludes my present visit to your great city. I comeand fetch you here, Mr. Soames, on my way home."

"Home?" I echoed.

"Be it never so humble!" said the devil, lightly.

"All right," said Soames.

"Soames!" I entreated. But my friend moved not a muscle.

The devil had made as though to stretch forth his hand across thetable, but he paused in his gesture.

"A hundred years hence, as now," he smiled, "no smoking allowed in thereading-room. You would better therefore—"

Soames removed the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into hisglass of Sauterne.

"Soames!" again I cried. "Can't you"—but the devil had now stretchedforth his hand across the table. He brought it slowly down on thetable-cloth. Soames's chair was empty. His cigarette floated soddenin his wine-glass. There was no other trace of him.

For a few moments the devil let his hand rest where it lay, gazing atme out of the corners of his eyes, vulgarly triumphant.

A shudder shook me. With an effort I controlled myself and rose frommy chair. "Very clever," I said condescendingly. "But—'The TimeMachine' is a delightful book, don't you think? So entirely original!"

"You are pleased to sneer," said the devil, who had also risen, "but itis one thing to write about an impossible machine; it is a quite otherthing to be a supernatural power." All the same, I had scored.

Berthe had come forth at the sound of our rising. I explained to herthat Mr. Soames had been called away, and that both he and I would bedining here. It was not until I was out in the open air that I beganto feel giddy. I have but the haziest recollection of what I did,where I wandered, in the glaring sunshine of that endless afternoon. Iremember the sound of carpenters' hammers all along Piccadilly and thebare chaotic look of the half-erected "stands." Was it in the GreenPark or in Kensington Gardens or WHERE was it that I sat on a chairbeneath a tree, trying to read an evening paper? There was a phrase inthe leading article that went on repeating itself in my fagged mind:"Little is hidden from this August Lady full of the garnered wisdom ofsixty years of Sovereignty." I remember wildly conceiving a letter (toreach Windsor by an express messenger told to await answer): "Madam:Well knowing that your Majesty is full of the garnered wisdom of sixtyyears of Sovereignty, I venture to ask your advice in the followingdelicate matter. Mr. Enoch Soames, whose poems you may or may notknow—" Was there NO way of helping him, saving him? A bargain was abargain, and I was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling outof a reasonable obligation. I wouldn't have lifted a little finger tosave Faust. But poor Soames! Doomed to pay without respite an eternalprice for nothing but a fruitless search and a bitter disillusioning.

Odd and uncanny it seemed to me that he, Soames, in the flesh, in thewaterproof cape, was at this moment living in the last decade of thenext century, poring over books not yet written, and seeing and seen bymen not yet born. Uncannier and odder still that to-night and evermorehe would be in hell. Assuredly, truth was stranger than fiction.

Endless that afternoon was. Almost I wished I had gone with Soames,not, indeed, to stay in the reading-room, but to sally forth for abrisk sight-seeing walk around a new London. I wandered restlessly outof the park I had sat in. Vainly I tried to imagine myself an ardenttourist from the eighteenth century. Intolerable was the strain of theslow-passing and empty minutes. Long before seven o'clock I was backat the Vingtieme.

I sat there just where I had sat for luncheon. Air came in listlesslythrough the open door behind me. Now and again Rose or Berthe appearedfor a moment. I had told them I would not order any dinner till Mr.Soames came. A hurdy-gurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noiseof a quarrel between some Frenchmen farther up the street. Wheneverthe tune was changed I heard the quarrel still raging. I had boughtanother evening paper on my way. I unfolded it. My eyes gazed everaway from it to the clock over the kitchen door.

Five minutes now to the hour! I remembered that clocks in restaurantsare kept five minutes fast. I concentrated my eyes on the paper. Ivowed I would not look away from it again. I held it upright, at itsfull width, close to my face, so that I had no view of anything but it.Rather a tremulous sheet? Only because of the draft, I told myself.

My arms gradually became stiff; they ached; but I could not dropthem—now. I had a suspicion, I had a certainty. Well, what, then?What else had I come for? Yet I held tight that barrier of newspaper.Only the sound of Berthe's brisk footstep from the kitchen enabled me,forced me, to drop it, and to utter:

"What shall we have to eat, Soames?"

"Il est souffrant, ce pauvre Monsieur Soames?" asked Berthe.

"He's only—tired." I asked her to get some wine—Burgundy—andwhatever food might be ready. Soames sat crouched forward against thetable exactly as when last I had seen him. It was as though he hadnever moved—he who had moved so unimaginably far. Once or twice inthe afternoon it had for an instant occurred to me that perhaps hisjourney was not to be fruitless, that perhaps we had all been wrong inour estimate of the works of Enoch Soames. That we had been horriblyright was horribly clear from the look of him. But, "Don't bediscouraged," I falteringly said. "Perhaps it's only that you—didn'tleave enough time. Two, three centuries hence, perhaps—"

"Yes," his voice came; "I've thought of that."

"And now—now for the more immediate future! Where are you going to
hide? How would it be if you caught the Paris express from Charing
Cross? Almost an hour to spare. Don't go on to Paris. Stop at
Calais. Live in Calais. He'd never think of looking for you in
Calais."

"It's like my luck," he said, "to spend my last hours on earth with anass." But I was not offended. "And a treacherous ass," he strangelyadded, tossing across to me a crumpled bit of paper which he had beenholding in his hand. I glanced at the writing on it—some sort ofgibberish, apparently. I laid it impatiently aside.

"Come, Soames, pull yourself together! This isn't a mere matter oflife or death. It's a question of eternal torment, mind you! Youdon't mean to say you're going to wait limply here till the devil comesto fetch you."

"I can't do anything else. I've no choice."

"Come! This is 'trusting and encouraging' with a vengeance! This isdiabolism run mad!" I filled his glass with wine. "Surely, now thatyou've SEEN the brute—"

"It's no good abusing him."

"You must admit there's nothing Miltonic about him, Soames."

"I don't say he's not rather different from what I expected."

"He's a vulgarian, he's a swell mobs-man, he's the sort of man whohangs about the corridors of trains going to the Riviera and stealsladies' jewel-cases. Imagine eternal torment presided over by HIM!"

"You don't suppose I look forward to it, do you?"

"Then why not slip quietly out of the way?"

Again and again I filled his glass, and always, mechanically, heemptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He didnot eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believethat any dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift,the capture certain. But better anything than this passive, meek,miserable waiting. I told Soames that for the honor of the human racehe ought to make some show of resistance. He asked what the human racehad ever done for him. "Besides," he said, "can't you understand thatI'm in his power? You saw him touch me, didn't you? There's an end ofit. I've no will. I'm sealed."

I made a gesture of despair. He went on repeating the word "sealed."I began to realize that the wine had clouded his brain. No wonder!Foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. I urged himto eat, at any rate, some bread. It was maddening to think that he,who had so much to tell, might tell nothing. "How was it all," Iasked, "yonder? Come, tell me your adventures!"

"They'd make first-rate 'copy,' wouldn't they?"

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Soames, and I make all possible allowances;but what earthly right have you to insinuate that I should make 'copy,'as you call it, out of you?"

The poor fellow pressed his hands to his forehead.

"I don't know," he said. "I had some reason, I know. I'll try toremember. He sat plunged in thought.

"That's right. Try to remember everything. Eat a little more bread.
What did the reading-room look like?"

"Much as usual," he at length muttered.

"Many people there?"

"Usual sort of number."

"What did they look like?"

Soames tried to visualize them.

"They all," he presently remembered, "looked very like one another."

My mind took a fearsome leap.

"All dressed in sanitary woolen?"

"Yes, I think so. Grayish-yellowish stuff."

"A sort of uniform?" He nodded. "With a number on it perhaps—anumber on a large disk of metal strapped round the left arm? D. K. F.78,910—that sort of thing?" It was even so. "And all of them, menand women alike, looking very well cared for? Very Utopian, andsmelling rather strongly of carbolic, and all of them quite hairless?"I was right every time. Soames was only not sure whether the men andwomen were hairless or shorn. "I hadn't time to look at them veryclosely," he explained.

"No, of course not. But—"

"They stared at ME, I can tell you. I attracted a great deal ofattention." At last he had done that! "I think I rather scared them.They moved away whenever I came near. They followed me about, at adistance, wherever I went. The men at the round desk in the middleseemed to have a sort of panic whenever I went to make inquiries."

"What did you do when you arrived?"

Well, he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course,—to the Svolumes,—and had stood long before SN-SOF, unable to take this volumeout of the shelf because his heart was beating so. At first, he said,he wasn't disappointed; he only thought there was some new arrangement.He went to the middle desk and asked where the catalogue oftwentieth-century books was kept. He gathered that there was stillonly one catalogue. Again he looked up his name, stared at the threelittle pasted slips he had known so well. Then he went and sat downfor a long time.

"And then," he droned, "I looked up the 'Dictionary of NationalBiography,' and some encyclopedias. I went back to the middle desk andasked what was the best modern book on late nineteenth-centuryliterature. They told me Mr. T. K. Nupton's book was considered thebest. I looked it up in the catalogue and filled in a form for it. Itwas brought to me. My name wasn't in the index, but—yes!" he saidwith a sudden change of tone, "that's what I'd forgotten. Where's thatbit of paper? Give it me back."

I, too, had forgotten that cryptic screed. I found it fallen on thefloor, and handed it to him.

He smoothed it out, nodding and smiling at me disagreeably.

"I found myself glancing through Nupton's book," he resumed. "Not veryeasy reading. Some sort of phonetic spelling. All the modern books Isaw were phonetic."

"Then I don't want to hear any more, Soames, please."

"The proper names seemed all to be spelt in the old way. But for that
I mightn't have noticed my own name."

"Your own name? Really? Soames, I'm VERY glad."

"And yours."

"No!"

"I thought I should find you waiting here to-night, so I took thetrouble to copy out the passage. Read it."

I snatched the paper. Soames's handwriting was characteristically dim.It and the noisome spelling and my excitement made me all the slower tograsp what T. K. Nupton was driving at.

The document lies before me at this moment. Strange that the words Ihere copy out for you were copied out for me by poor Soames justeighty-two years hence!

From page 234 of "Inglish Littracher 1890-1900" bi T. K. Nupton,publishd bi th Stait, 1992.

Fr egzarmpl, a riter ov th time, naimed Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stilalive in th twentith senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid animmajnari karrakter kauld "Enoch Soames"—a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevzimself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter nowot posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire, but notwithout vallu az showing hou seriusli the yung men ov th aiteen-ninetiztook themselvz. Nou that th littreri profeshn haz bin auganized az adepartmnt of publik servis, our riters hav found their levvl an havlernt ter doo their duti without thort ov th morro. "Th laibrer izwerthi ov hiz hire" an that iz aul. Thank hevvn we hav no EnochSoameses amung us to-dai!

I found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which I commend tomy reader) I was able to master them little by little. The clearerthey became, the greater was my bewilderment, my distress and horror.The whole thing was a nightmare. Afar, the great grisly background ofwhat was in store for the poor dear art of letters; here, at the table,fixing on me a gaze that made me hot all over, the poor fellowwhom—whom evidently—but no: whatever down-grade my character mighttake in coming years, I should never be such a brute as to—

Again I examined the screed. "Immajnari." But here Soames was, nomore imaginary, alas! than I. And "labud"—what on earth was that?(To this day I have never made out that word.) "It's allvery—baffling," I at length stammered.

Soames said nothing, but cruelly did not cease to look at me.

"Are you sure," I temporized, "quite sure you copied the thing outcorrectly?"

"Quite."

"Well, then, it's this wretched Nupton who must have made—must begoing to make—some idiotic mistake. Look here Soames, you know mebetter than to suppose that I— After all, the name Max Beerbohm isnot at all an uncommon one, and there must be several Enoch Soamesesrunning around, or, rather, Enoch Soames is a name that might occur toany one writing a story. And I don't write stories; I'm an essayist,an observer, a recorder. I admit that it's an extraordinarycoincidence. But you must see—"

"I see the whole thing," said Soames, quietly. And he added, with atouch of his old manner, but with more dignity than I had ever known inhim, "Parlons d'autre chose."

I accepted that suggestion very promptly. I returned straight to themore immediate future. I spent most of the long evening in renewedappeals to Soames to come away and seek refuge somewhere. I remembersaying at last that if indeed I was destined to write about him, thesupposed "stauri" had better have at least a happy ending. Soamesrepeated those last three words in a tone of intense scorn.

"In life and in art," he said, "all that matters is an INEVITABLEending."

"But," I urged more hopefully than I felt, "an ending that can beavoided ISN'T inevitable."

"You aren't an artist," he rasped. "And you're so hopelessly not anartist that, so far from being able to imagine a thing and make it seemtrue, you're going to make even a true thing seem as if you'd made itup. You're a miserable bungler. And it's like my luck."

I protested that the miserable bungler was not I, was not going to beI, but T. K. Nupton; and we had a rather heated argument, in the thickof which it suddenly seemed to me that Soames saw he was in the wrong:he had quite physically cowered. But I wondered why—and now I guessedwith a cold throb just why—he stared so past me. The bringer of that"inevitable ending" filled the doorway.

I managed to turn in my chair and to say, not without a semblance oflightness, "Aha, come in!" Dread was indeed rather blunted in me byhis looking so absurdly like a villain in a melodrama. The sheen ofhis tilted hat and of his shirt-front, the repeated twists he wasgiving to his mustache, and most of all the magnificence of his sneer,gave token that he was there only to be foiled.

He was at our table in a stride. "I am sorry," he sneered witheringly,"to break up your pleasant party, but—"

"You don't; you complete it," I assured him. "Mr. Soames and I want tohave a little talk with you. Won't you sit? Mr. Soames got nothing,frankly nothing, by his journey this afternoon. We don't wish to saythat the whole thing was a swindle, a common swindle. On the contrary,we believe you meant well. But of course the bargain, such as it was,is off."

The devil gave no verbal answer. He merely looked at Soames andpointed with rigid forefinger to the door. Soames was wretchedlyrising from his chair when, with a desperate, quick gesture, I swepttogether two dinner-knives that were on the table, and laid theirblades across each other. The devil stepped sharp back against thetable behind him, averting his face and shuddering.

"You are not superstitious!" he hissed.

"Not at all," I smiled.

"Soames," he said as to an underling, but without turning his face,"put those knives straight!"

With an inhibitive gesture to my friend, "Mr. Soames," I saidemphatically to the devil, "is a Catholic diabolist"; but my poorfriend did the devil's bidding, not mine; and now, with his master'seyes again fixed on him, he arose, he shuffled past me. I tried tospeak. It was he that spoke. "Try," was the prayer he threw back atme as the devil pushed him roughly out through the door—"TRY to makethem know that I did exist!"

In another instant I, too, was through that door. I stood staring allways, up the street, across it, down it. There was moonlight andlamplight, but there was not Soames nor that other.

Dazed, I stood there. Dazed, I turned back at length into the littleroom, and I suppose I paid Berthe or Rose for my dinner and luncheonand for Soames's; I hope so, for I never went to the Vingtieme again.Ever since that night I have avoided Greek Street altogether. And foryears I did not set foot even in Soho Square, because on that samenight it was there that I paced and loitered, long and long, with somesuch dull sense of hope as a man has in not straying far from the placewhere he has lost something. "Round and round the shutter'dSquare"—that line came back to me on my lonely beat, and with it thewhole stanza, ringing in my brain and bearing in on me how tragicallydifferent from the happy scene imagined by him was the poet's actualexperience of that prince in whom of all princes we should put not ourtrust!

But strange how the mind of an essayist, be it never so stricken, rovesand ranges! I remember pausing before a wide door-step and wonderingif perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay illand faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her toOxford Street, the "stony-hearted stepmother" of them both, and cameback bearing that "glass of port wine and spices" but for which hemight, so he thought, actually have died. Was this the very door-stepthat the old De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I pondered Ann'sfate, the cause of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy friend;and presently I blamed myself for letting the past override thepresent. Poor vanished Soames!

And for myself, too, I began to be troubled. What had I better do?Would there be a hue and cry—"Mysterious Disappearance of an Author,"and all that? He had last been seen lunching and dining in my company.Hadn't I better get a hansom and drive straight to Scotland Yard? Theywould think I was a lunatic. After all, I reassured myself, London wasa very large place, and one very dim figure might easily drop out of itunobserved, now especially, in the blinding glare of the near Jubilee.Better say nothing at all, I thought.

AND I was right. Soames's disappearance made no stir at all. He wasutterly forgotten before any one, so far as I am aware, noticed that hewas no longer hanging around. Now and again some poet or prosaist mayhave said to another, "What has become of that man Soames?" but I neverheard any such question asked. As for his landlady in Dyott Street, nodoubt he had paid her weekly, and what possessions he may have had inhis rooms were enough to save her from fretting. The solicitor throughwhom he was paid his annuity may be presumed to have made inquiries,but no echo of these resounded. There was something rather ghastly tome in the general unconsciousness that Soames had existed, and morethan once I caught myself wondering whether Nupton, that babe unborn,were going to be right in thinking him a figment of my brain.

In that extract from Nupton's repulsive book there is one point whichperhaps puzzles you. How is it that the author, though I have herementioned him by name and have quoted the exact words he is going towrite, is not going to grasp the obvious corollary that I have inventednothing? The answer can be only this: Nupton will not have read thelater passages of this memoir. Such lack of thoroughness is a seriousfault in any one who undertakes to do scholar's work. And I hope thesewords will meet the eye of some contemporary rival to Nupton and be theundoing of Nupton.

I like to think that some time between 1992 and 1997 somebody will havelooked up this memoir, and will have forced on the world his inevitableand startling conclusions. And I have reason for believing that thiswill be so. You realize that the reading-room into which Soames wasprojected by the devil was in all respects precisely as it will be onthe afternoon of June 3, 1997. You realize, therefore, that on thatafternoon, when it comes round, there the selfsame crowd will be, andthere Soames will be, punctually, he and they doing precisely what theydid before. Recall now Soames's account of the sensation he made. Youmay say that the mere difference of his costume was enough to make himsensational in that uniformed crowd. You wouldn't say so if you hadever seen him, and I assure you that in no period would Soames beanything but dim. The fact that people are going to stare at him andfollow him around and seem afraid of him, can be explained only on thehypothesis that they will somehow have been prepared for his ghostlyvisitation. They will have been awfully waiting to see whether hereally would come. And when he does come the effect will of coursebe—awful.

An authentic, guaranteed, proved ghost, but; only a ghost, alas! Onlythat. In his first visit Soames was a creature of flesh and blood,whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, Itake it—solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts,in a building that was itself an illusion. Next time that building andthose creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be butthe semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit the worldactually, physically, consciously. I wish he had this one briefescape, this one small treat, to look forward to. I never forget himfor long. He is where he is and forever. The more rigid moralistsamong you may say he has only himself to blame. For my part, I thinkhe has been very hardly used. It is well that vanity should bechastened; and Enoch Soames's vanity was, I admit, above the average,and called for special treatment. But there was no need forvindictiveness. You say he contracted to pay the price he is paying.Yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. Wellinformed in all things, the devil must have known that my friend wouldgain nothing by his visit to futurity. The whole thing was a veryshabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the devilseems to me.

Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since thatday at the Vingtieme. Only once, however, have I seen him at closequarters. This was a couple of years ago, in Paris. I was walking oneafternoon along the rue d'Antin, and I saw him advancing from theopposite direction, overdressed as ever, and swinging an ebony cane andaltogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. Atthought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally inthis brute's dominion, a great cold wrath filled me, and I drew myselfup to my full height. But—well, one is so used to nodding and smilingin the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almostindependent of oneself; to prevent it requires a very sharp effort andgreat presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the devil,that I nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper andhotter because he, if you please, stared straight at me with the utmosthaughtiness.

To be cut, deliberately cut, by HIM! I was, I still am, furious athaving had that happen to me.

[Transcriber's Note: I have closed contractions in the text; e.g.,"does n't" has become "doesn't" etc.]

Related articles