A Man of Parts (53 page)

Tea came with cakes and muffins, and they discussed the faults of the Fabian and the failure of the Liberal Party to exploit its landslide victory of 1906 to achieve social justice, and the arms race with Germany. She asked him if he thought war was likely, and he said not in the near future, but unless the Great Powers saw sense and made some progress towards world government he predicted that there would be a major war in twenty or thirty years’ time. There was a danger that the arms race would itself provoke war by creating a climate of belligerence, stirred up by the press, and the British government was handling the whole business with characteristic folly. He was well primed on this topic, having just put together three articles written earlier in the year for the
Daily Mail
to make a pamphlet called
War and Common Sense
which was to be published soon. He expounded his theory that admirals and generals always fought the latest war with the methods of the last until forced by failure to revise their tactics and weaponry.

‘The next war will eventually be won by submarines and aircraft, and we should be spending money on developing them, rather than wasting resources on building dreadnoughts whose only function is to blow German battleships out of the water, or be blown out of it themselves. And instead of conscripting a huge army on the same scale as Germany’s, as some people urge, we should form small elite bodies of scientifically trained officers and men armed with the latest weapons.’

‘But all this talk of war and weapons horrifies me,’ she said. ‘As if war is inevitable and the only question is how to kill as many of the enemy as you can without getting killed yourself.’

‘Well of course that must be the aim of all warfare,’ he said. ‘I’ve invented a game with toy soldiers for my two boys based on exactly that principle. If the leaders of the Great Powers would play like us with toy soldiers, instead of real ones, the world would be a much safer place.’

‘There’s not much hope of that,’ she said with a smile.

‘No. And science is developing at such a pace that the possibilities of its application to weaponry are frightening. Suppose we manage to tap the energy that’s contained within the nucleus of an atom? There are radioactive elements, like radium and uranium, which produce an enormous amount of energy as they decay, but at an infinitesimal rate, over millions of years. If we could find a way of accelerating that process we would release an extraordinary amount of energy from a single atom. It could be used for peaceful purposes, and transform the world – much more thoroughly than steam and electricity have done. Or it could be used to make atomic bombs.’

‘Atomic bombs?’ she repeated wonderingly. ‘What would they be like?’

‘Small bombs that could be tossed out of the cockpit of an aeroplane and devastate a whole city. That’s why I believe in the necessity of world government. But I’m afraid that only the catastrophe of a global war will make humanity see that obvious truth.’

At which point Jane appeared again at the study door to say that she presumed Miss West would be staying the night, and would she like to be shown to a bedroom?

Their talk – mainly his talk – continued over dinner, and on the train to London the next morning. Since he had business in town they travelled together and he insisted on paying the difference between her third-class fare and his first-class one. By the end of the journey they were on ‘Rebecca’ and ‘H.G.’ terms. She shook his hand at Liverpool Street station and thanked him with obvious sincerity for inviting her to Easton and for the most intellectually stimulating conversations she had ever had in her life.

‘So you’ve made another conquest, H.G.,’ Jane observed next day, when he repeated Rebecca’s parting words.

‘Well, I think I convinced her that there’s more to me than she had seen before,’ he said. ‘More than she saw in
Marriage
anyway.’

In fact it appeared that as a result of their meeting she saw more in
Marriage
itself, for a few weeks later she sent him the proof of another review of the novel she had written for a magazine called
Everyman
, which was shorter but considerably more complimentary than the first one. He wrote to thank her for it, and mentioned lightly that the gratification it gave him had been punctured by a letter about the novel from Henry James, quoting a few characteristic lines for her amusement: ‘
I have read you, as I always read you, as I read no one else, with a complete abdication of all those “principles of criticism”, canons of form, preconceptions of felicity, references to the idea of method or the sacred laws of composition, which I roam, which I totter, through the pages of others attended in some degree by the fond yet feeble theory of, but which I shake off, as I advance under your spell, with the most cynical inconsistency
.’ The letter continued for another page or two, repeating in long tortuous sentences the message that Henry James was able to read him only by suspending all his critical faculties. He kissed the rod again in his reply, and thanked James for mingling ‘
so much heartening kindliness with the wisest, most penetrating and guiding of criticism and reproof. I am, like so many poor ladies, destined to be worse before I am better; the next book is “scandalously” bad in form, mixed pickles, and I know it. Thereafter I will seek earnestly to make my pen lead a decent life, pull myself together, and think of Form
.’

This ‘next book’, on which he was currently engaged, was called
The Passionate Friends
, and bore a family resemblance to its immediate predecessors. He knew James would hate it, if only because it was in the ‘
accurst autobiographic form
’, a long confessional letter written by the hero to his son for posthumous consumption. Stephen Stratton was another of his somewhat priggish heroes trying to reconcile his idealism with his sexuality in a world which made such a compromise difficult or impossible. But was it the world, or an inherent flaw in human nature – jealousy, in both the personal life and collective, political life? ‘
This is the reality of laws and government; this is the reality of customs and institutions: a convention between jealousies
,’ Stephen wrote. ‘
The deepest question before humanity is just how far this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion
.’ And that was really the theme of the book. There was some adultery in the plot, but he hoped not to alienate the readers he had won over with
Marriage
. The heroine, Lady Mary, unable to satisfy Stephen’s desire without destroying his career by a scandalous
divorce from her vindictive husband, was going to commit suicide in the end to relieve the hero of an intolerable choice. Though Henry James’s novels often ended with a gesture of renunciation by the hero or heroine, he did not expect him to approve so melodramatic a conclusion, and he was quite sure that Rebecca West wouldn’t. But –
tant pis
. He had to write what he had to write, to get it out of his system, and on to the next book. Work, a continuous stream of writing, with occasional breaks for recreation in the form of sex or games, was essential to him if he was not to be overcome by nihilistic despair. As his latest spokesman, Stratton, put it: ‘
I go valiantly for the most part, I believe, but despair is always near to me, as near as a shark may be near a sleeper in a ship … a sense of life as of an abysmal flood, full of cruelty, densely futile, blackly aimless
.’ Only continuous exercise of mind and body could keep that black flood at bay, which was why he always had one book on the stocks and another at the design stage.

He was already brooding on the idea he had mentioned to Rebecca West, of a global war fought with atomic bombs, as the basis for a ‘scientific romance’. It would have a prologue describing the development of human civilisation in terms of the increasingly rapid discovery of new forms of energy – fire, wind, steam, electricity, and finally atomic power, which at first would transform human life and then threaten to destroy it with atomic weapons. A war would break out in 1958, England, France and Russia against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. America would be drawn in. Aerial bombing would devastate capital cities, and breach the dykes of the Netherlands, drowning the impotent land armies. Then a truce would be called and a world government emerge. The story might all be told retrospectively in the form of an autobiographical book written in, say, 1970, by a man who had lived through these events.

Miss West wrote promptly to say how much she had relished the quotation from Henry James’s letter. ‘
I laughed aloud at the
long postponement of that final “of”, which tricks you into thinking he has lost control of his syntax – but of course he never would
,’ she said, and he had to re-read James’s letter to remind himself what she was referring to, upon which he too laughed aloud. She also invited him to take tea with herself, her mother and sisters, at their house in Hampstead Garden Suburb, as a small return for his hospitality. To refuse seemed churlish, so he went, and enjoyed himself. Mrs Fairfield and her two elder daughters, Lettie and Winnie, were intelligent, cultured women, but in awe of his fame, and astonished that young Cicily (as they still called her, though the secret of her nom de plume was now known to them) had attracted his favourable attention. ‘
Thank you so much for coming
,’ she wrote afterwards, ‘
Mama and my sisters thought you were brilliant and charming – which you were – and I have gone up enormously in their estimation for having lured you to our humble abode. That you have taken an interest in me has made them believe that I might have it in me to succeed as a writer – and enormously strengthened my own self-belief
.’

Early in the New Year she wrote again, a long letter in which she said that for the past three months she had been unable to forget her visit to Easton and his generosity in talking to her for so many hours. All subsequent conversations with other people had seemed flat and banal, and ever since that day she had been feeding mentally off the ideas and allusions he had thrown off with such casual brilliance. She couldn’t bear the thought that this experience might never be repeated, and she was writing shamelessly to ask him if they might meet again, just to talk as they had at Easton, before he forgot all about her. She felt she was on the threshold of a great adventure, a literary career, but she needed guidance and encouragement, and she had no doubt at all that he could give these things.

He skimmed through this letter quickly, then re-read it more slowly. He was well aware, and had known before Jane put it into words, that he had made a conquest of this young woman at Easton. He had seduced her there intellectually, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to do so physically – perhaps that was what she was inviting between the lines of her letter. There was no doubt that she was desirable, with the precious, fragile bloom of youth on her striking looks, and the promise of a passionate nature discernible in the depths of her dark brown eyes. At another time he would have been tempted to take advantage of the opportunity, but he had just achieved a kind of stability in this aspect of his life which he didn’t want to disturb. He had a mistress of his own age, sophisticated, discreet, independent, who was approved by his wife, and had obliged him to forswear other women. He did not wish to upset that concord. On the other hand he couldn’t bring himself to rebuff the young girl’s appeal to his generosity with a flat refusal, and he would be really sorry never to see her again. If he was very careful, and defined his relationship to her strictly as that of a mentor, no harm need be done, and it would be interesting to watch her develop as a writer. He wrote back, ‘
You’re a very compelling person. I suppose I shall have to do what you ask me to do. Anyhow I mean to help you all I can in your great adventure
,’ and invited her to tea at Church Row when he was next in London.

– Fool! Did you seriously imagine you could have private conversations with this girl without emotional consequences? You must have seemed like God’s gift to her: literary mentor, father figure and lover all in one
.

– The conversations were to be about books, ideas …

– But it was by a bookcase that you first kissed her, wasn’t it? The first time she came to Church Row
.

– I was showing her some of my books about socialism which hadn’t been moved yet down to Easton, the ones I read as a young man, Marx and Engels, William Morris and Henry George. I reached up to take down George’s
Progress and Poverty
, which was a kind of bible to me in those days, and turned to find her standing very close, and not looking at the books but at me, into my eyes, with a look of such melting adoration that …

– You kissed her
.

– It was impossible not to.

– And she said, ‘I love you
.’

– And I said, ‘You’re very sweet, my dear, but you mustn’t say that. I’m a married man, and twice your age.’

– But it didn’t make any difference. She regarded the kiss as a token of love
.

– Yes, as she told me in several subsequent letters.

– And you answered those letters
.

– I did at first.

– You encouraged her?

– No.

– But you didn’t
dis
courage her
.

– I didn’t want to hurt her. I tried to be sympathetic in a fatherly sort of way. I said that I thought she was a very special person, but I couldn’t reciprocate her love because of other commitments.

– Didn’t you say that you found her willingness to love you was ‘a beautiful and courageous thing’?

– I may have said something like that.

– Wasn’t that encouraging her?

– I didn’t mean it to. Anyway, I stopped replying to her letters.

– Only because Jane told you to
.

He handed Jane the letters one day and said with affected casualness, ‘What shall I do about this young woman? She’s becoming a bit of a nuisance.’

Jane read through the letters. He watched her covertly without being able to tell from her expression what she was thinking. When she handed back the letters, she said, ‘How many times did you kiss her?’