Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (88 page)

From
Seven Men,
copyright
1920,
by Max
Beerbohm.
Published by Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc., New York, William
Heinemann
Ltd., London.

Enoch.
Soames

By MAX
BEERBOHM

W
hen
a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was
given by Mr. Holbrook Jackson to the world, I
looked eagerly in the index for
S
oames,
E
noch
. I had feared he would not be there. He was
not there. But everybody else was. Many writers whom I had quite forgotten, or
remembered but faintly, lived again for me, they and their work, in Mr.
Holbrook Jackson's pages. The book was as thorough as it was brilliantly
written. And thus the omission found by me was an all the deadlier, record of
poor Soames' failure to impress himself on his decade.

I
daresay I am the only person who noticed the omission. Soames had failed so
piteously as all that! Nor is there a counterpoise in the thought that if he
had had some measure of success he might have passed, like those others, out of
my mind, to return only at the historian's beck. It is true that had his gifts,
such as they were, been acknowledged in his lifetime, he would never have made
the bargain
_m
I saw him make—that strange bargain whose results have
kept him*' always in the foreground of my memory. But it is from those very
results that the 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 is ill to deride the dead.
And how can I write about Enoch Soames without making him ridiculous? Or
rather, how am I to hush
up
the
horrid
fact
that
he
was
ridiculous?
I
shall
not
be
able
to
do that.
Yet,
sooner
or
later,
write
about
him
I
must.
You
will
see,
in due
course,
that
I
have
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
and
undergraduates
stood
around,
rather
pale,
discussing nothing
but
it.
Whence
came
it,
this
meteorite?
From
Paris.
Its name?
Will
Rothenstein.
Its
aim?
To
do
a
series
of
twenty-four portraits
in
lithograph.
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
and
doddering
old
men,
who
had
never
consented to
sit
to
any
one,
could
not
withstand
this
dynamic
little
stranger. He
did
not
sue:
he
invited;
he
did
not
invite:
he
commanded.
He was
twenty-one
years
old.
He
wore
spectacles
that
flashed
more than
any
other
pair
ever
seen.
He
was
a
wit.
He
was
brimful
of
ideas. He
knew
Whistler.
He
knew
Edmond
de
Goncourt.
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
had
polished
off
his
selection of
dons,
he
was
going
to
include
a
few
undergraduates.
It
was
a proud
day
for
me
when
I—I
was
included.
I
liked
Rothenstein
not less
than
I
feared
him;
and
there
arose
between
us
a
friendship
that has
grown
ever
warmer,
and
been
more
and
more
valued
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
that
forever enchanting
little
world-in-itself,
Chelsea,
and
my
first
acquaintance with
Walter
Sickert
and
other
august
elders
who
dwelt
there.
It
was Rothenstein
that
took
me
to
see,
in
Cambridge
Street,
Pimlico,
a 'young
man
whose
drawings
were
already
famous
among
the
few— Aubrey
Beardsley,
by
name.
With
Rothenstein
I
paid
my
first
visit to
the
Bodley
Head.
By
him
I
was
inducted
into
another
haunt
of intellect
and
daring,
the
domino
room
of
the
Cafe
Royal.