A Writer's Notebook (73 page)

The writer must be playful and serious at the same time.

In the foam at the wake of the ship the phosphorescence, little gleams of light, was like the sardonic winking of the eyes of the dead that lie at the bottom of the sea.

Sunset. The sun was setting strangely behind an archway of heavy clouds, and below the arch the sky, pale green and gold, shone like the entrance way into magic, mystic realms. It reminded you of Watteau's
Embarquement pour Cythère
. It offered the imagination hope and unknown joy. Then the sun sank below the horizon and the arch crumbled away; and now the clouds, dark against the lurid afterglow, were like the ruins of a great city, ruins of palaces and temples and vast buildings. The hope and confidence of a few minutes were shattered like the pillars of Gaza and despair settled on the heart.

The Shilling Shocker. Their authors have little honour among men and yet they are benefactors of their kind. They
are conscious of the small esteem in which the world holds them and they refer to their works deprecatingly, with a shrug and a smile. They hasten to disarm your scorn by assuring you that they are not dupes. They are timid of praise. They are afraid to believe that you are serious. And yet they are deserving of praise. There are times when your mind is not attuned to good literature; there are times when your brain is weary, but restless; times when the classics bore you, when you are harassed or unhappy; there are railway journeys; there is sickness: then what can be more comfortable than a good shocker? You plunge into murders, robbery, treacheries and blackmail, imprisonments and hairbreadth escapes, opium dens, thieves' kitchens, artists' studios, sumptuous hotels; you foregather with forgers, crooks, gunmen, detectives, adventuresses, stool pigeons, convicts, persecuted heroines and falsely accused heroes. Standards of excellence are not the same here as in other forms of art. Improbability is no bar to your enjoyment, economy of invention is a defect, graces of style are out of place, humour is damning. It is fatal if a smile should ever force its way to your unwilling lips: you must read with a high, with an intense and with a pitiless seriousness. You turn the pages with a nervous hand. The hours race by. You have defeated time. And then you have the ingratitude to throw aside the book with a sneer and look down upon its author. It is graceless.

Since he was a philosopher by profession I asked him to explain something that I had never been able to understand. I asked him whether the statement that two and two make four means anything. I couldn't see that four was anything but a convenient synonym for two and two. If you look out
violent
in Roget you will see that there are something like fifty synonyms for it; they have different associations and some by the number of their syllables, the collocation of their letters or the difference of their sound may be more suitable for use in a particular
sentence than others, but they all
mean
the same thing. Roughly, of course, for no synonym is quite precise; and four may be a synonym not only for two and two, but for three and one and for one and one and one and one. My philosopher said he thought the statement that two and two make four had a definite meaning, but he didn't seem able to tell me exactly what it was; and when I asked him whether mathematics was ultimately anything more than an immensely elaborate Roget's
Thesaurus
he changed the conversation.

St. Laurent de Maroni. The director is a short stout man with large shining eyes, in a clean white uniform, with the cross of the Legion of Honour on his tunic. He has exuberant gestures and speaks with a strong accent of the Midi. He is a jolly, vulgar, ignorant man; but kindly and tolerant. He got his job by political influence. His salary is sixty thousand francs a year, but there are probably large perks. He likes the job because he can live cheaply and save money. He looks forward to retiring in ten years and building himself a house on the Riviera.

His wife is plump and rather pretty, but run to seed; her mother has a
bureau de tabac
at Cette; she and her husband were
amis d'enfance
. She wears almost always the same dress of blue foulard with white spots. It brings out the colour of her blue eyes. She is ingenuous, inclined to be flirtatious, but proud of, and in love with, her fat husband.

The commandant of the camp is a tall man, a Parisian, fair rather than dark, earnest, shy and very well-mannered. He is deeply interested in penology and reads a great deal. He has
the notion that much can be done by appealing to the better nature of the convicts. He looks for amendment in them.

An old
surveillant
at St. Jean. Short thick white hair and a heavy white moustache. A lined sun-burned face. He is against capital punishment, for he thinks no one has the right to take another's life. He tells a story of how a doctor had arranged with a man who was to be guillotined to blink three times if he could after his head was cut off, and says that he saw him blink twice.

When a man is sentenced to death the sentence has to be confirmed by the minister in Paris. No execution takes place on Sunday. If two or more are to be guillotined at the same time the least guilty is executed first so that he should not suffer the added horror of seeing his mates die. The convict does not know that he will be executed till the warder comes in with the words: Have courage, etc. When there are executions the other convicts are depressed and nervous, and they go about their work sullen and silent.

When the head has fallen the executioner takes it up by the ears and shows it to the bystanders, saying:
Au nom du peuple français justice est faite
. At the side of the guillotine is a large wicker basket covered with some black material and into this the body is put. The knife falls with lightning speed and the blood spurts over the executioner. He is given a set of new clothes after each execution.