As Berry and I Were Saying (13 page)

“‘Can learn to write a good book.’”

“That’s right.
By teaching himself or herself
. No one but you can teach yourself to write well. About that, there is no argument. It is a copper-bottomed fact. If you can write, you can: if you can’t write, you can’t – and you never will be able to. A lot of people who can’t write, do: and a lot of people who can write, don’t. But no one can ever teach a person, who can’t write, to write: and no one, other than himself, can ever teach a person, who can write, to write well. You can’t teach yourself to write: but, if you can write, you can teach yourself to write well.”

“I suppose,” said Berry, “I suppose you know what you mean.”

“I know what he means,” said Daphne. “And he ought to know: for he could write and he taught himself to write well.”

“Who says he writes well?” said Berry. “Compared with
Essays of Elia
, his books are trash.”

“They aren’t,” shrieked Jill.

I laid a hand on hers.

“They are, indeed, my sweet. Lamb knew how to write. His prose is a perfect thing. But if Lamb were the touchstone, no novel would have been published for years and years. Some of us do our best, but we can’t compare with the masters of other days.”

“I seem to remember,” said Daphne, “that once you had some trouble about the name of the Rolls.”

“Years ago,” I said, “
Blood Royal
was to be serialized. I saw the editor, to tie up one or two ends. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to alter the name of the car.’ ‘Why?’ said I. ‘We don’t give advertisements.’ ‘I don’t want to be obstructive,’ I said, ‘but the name must stay. I’ll tell you why. In the first place, the Rolls-Royce needs no advertisement: in the second place, there are two kinds of automobiles – one is a Rolls and the other a motorcar. In
Blood Royal
I’m referring to a Rolls.’ He looked at me, fingering his chin. Then he began to laugh. ‘All right,’ he said; ‘let it stand.’ I don’t think the point was ever raised again – not even in the USA.”

“And they were difficult?” said Berry.

“Very difficult,” said I. “
The Saturday Evening Post
would have taken
Blood Royal
, if I had made Chandos an American citizen. I refused, of course.”

“Amazing,” said Berry.

“The editors love to dictate – I don’t know why. And they have queer ideas. America took
Storm Music
and
Safe Custody
. But they wouldn’t touch
She Fell Among Thieves
.”

“Why on earth?” said Daphne.

“Because the outstanding character was
Vanity Fair
. And they dared not feature a villainess. A villain, yes. But not a villainess. American women wouldn’t have stood for that. That’s what my agent told me, and I’ve no doubt he was right. I need hardly say that
This Publican
hadn’t a chance.”

“God bless my soul,” said Berry.

“And now it’s your turn. What about the low-down on Napoleon Brandy?”

“Ah,” said Berry. “I feel we should have that in.”

I began to laugh.

“If you can’t deal with that, then nobody can.”

“I don’t know about that, but I’ll try. A little monograph upon that celebrated cognac which used to figure so conspicuously in the more
recherché
wine-lists of England, ‘Napoleon Brandy’.” He cleared his throat. “It has been offered to me by various
maîtres d’hôtel
again and again: but when I ask, as I do, its age and its origin, the answers which I have received – and they are very few – are at curious variance. The fact is, of course, that there is no such thing. You can bottle a brandy and call it what you please: you can call it Armada Brandy, and no one can say you nay – because you are not saying that your Armada Brandy was distilled in 1588 and lay in the wood unrefreshed for many years. I can hardly believe that if an Armada Brandy was offered, anybody would be quite such a fool as to think that it belonged in any way to the reign of Good Queen Bess. But the Napoleonic era is more recent, and the name ‘Napoleon’ is French: so a brandy which is labelled ‘Napoleon’ does suggest to some prospective purchasers that it has to do with the fifty-two years during which that singularly unattractive despot troubled the world.

“Now the
jeunesse dorée
, old as well as young, is particularly sensitive on the subject of brandy: for that a man should be a judge of brandy is an article of its faith. I never quite know why, but there it is. It doesn’t feel that, to establish its manhood, it must be an authority on soap or tea or tyres or broad beans. But on brandy, yes. With the unhappy result that again and again it has been fooled to the top of its bent, and has paid an absurd price for a most inferior spirit, which is invariably served to it in a balloon glass – sometimes of grotesque dimensions.

“And now let us have the facts – which not one tenth of them know.

“Distil a good brandy, and let it stay in its cask for fifty or sixty years. Don’t refresh the cask – that is to say, add no brandy to it. At the end of that time, have the brandy bottled, and you will have a fine brandy, which you can safely say is fifty or sixty years old. In a hundred years from then, what your great-grand-sons have left will still be exactly fifty or sixty years old – and just as good as it was. But it won’t be older and it won’t be any better, for brandy does not mature, except in the wood.

“I have possessed a brandy which was ninety years old. It was, in fact, bottled for me, after lying for ninety years in the self-same cask and never having been refreshed. But that was a god-send. I can feel it now just touching the back of my throat – and the wonder is that my throat didn’t turn to gold. A good brandy will always just touch the back of your throat: if it doesn’t, it’s not a good brandy.
La jeunesse dorée
will boast of a brandy which is ‘as smooth as silk’. Such brandy is not good brandy: a hundred to one, it has been adulterated. But the
jeunesse dorée
knows – and sets the pace: with the result that, shortly before the last war, all sorts demanded that their brandy should be ‘smooth’. And many quite good vineyards were putting gum arabic into their casks – in order to produce a ‘smooth’ brandy, because, of course, the customer was always right.

“I said of Napoleon Brandy that there is no such thing. Nor there is. But there was once. There was a Napoleon Brandy, and though I never drank it, I believe it was very good. And this was how it happened.

“Somewhere about 1865, the proprietor of a Parisian restaurant was in the Cognac country, probably of design. One day he lunched at an inn, and, after luncheon, he was given a glass of brandy which he found remarkably good. So he asked where it came from… To cut a long story short, he purchased the cask, which was, I think, sixty years old and had never been refreshed. Up to Paris, it went, and there he bottled it. And then he had to think of a name, for he meant it to lead his list. And, very wisely, he chose ‘Napoleon’. It was a high-sounding name, and the fact that the brandy was distilled in the year in which Trafalgar was fought probably escaped his notice. But the name was justified. And the brandy became famous, and his custom greatly increased. But that is ancient history. So far as I know, except in his restaurant, that brandy was never sold, so that, after perhaps ten years, there was none of it left.

“Now the name was a selling name, which was, of course, why he chose it. And that, of course, is why it is used today. But his brandy
was
distilled when Napoleon was yet alive. Not that that means very much, for it might have been bottled in the year of Napoleon’s death, when it would have been sixteen years old and not worth drinking. But the suggestion conveyed by the name had something behind it. And the brandy was sixty years old, and the soil in which its vines flourished was sympathetic soil. And so it deserved the fame which it certainly won. ‘What’s in a name?’ asks Shakespeare. Of brandy, that’s very true. The name means nothing at all. You can call it ‘Waterloo’ or ‘Wapping’ or ‘Wimbledon’. The only things that matter are whether its soil was good soil and how long it lay in the wood. And the wine-lists don’t tell you that. So if you really must know, you must judge for yourself.”

“Even I understood that,” said Daphne.

“Ah,” said her husband, “if every page attained that giddy height of excellence, these idle reflections would be translated – as, I understand, are some lesser known works of fiction – into four hundred thousand different languages, including Swahili and Billingsgate. And now your brother will kindly let the side down.”

“Rot,” said Jill. “Lots of people will skip that brandy bit.”

“Lots of people,” said Berry, “don’t read
Paradise Lost
. Take us back to the gutter, Boy.”

“I was once at Maidstone,” I said. “I think it was the Summer Assize. I was in court and was waiting for my case to be reached. They were taking pleas of guilty – they usually do that first. Suddenly a prisoner who was out of the ruck was put up. He was a gentleman. That he felt his position acutely was very clear, for he looked most deeply ashamed and kept his eyes on the floor. I was terribly sorry for him. He was a nice-looking man: perhaps I should say that he had been, for, though he was young, he looked old. That he drank was obvious. His suit was shabby and stained, but once on a time it had come out of Savile Row. But it was the man’s demeanour that got me under the ribs. And then a quiet voice rang out, ‘My lord, I appear for the prisoner and I plead guilty. I propose to address your lordship at the proper time.’ The prisoner looked something surprised. For a moment he regarded the counsel whose words he had heard. Then his eyes went back to the floor.

“Evidence was shortly given. The man had obtained money by false pretences – not very much, some fifty or sixty pounds. But he asked, as a prisoner may, for certain other cases to be taken into account. There were four or five, I think, all very much the same. What was a good deal worse, he had been convicted before.

“Now I knew the fellow who was appearing for him. I’ll call him Slade. I didn’t know him well and he was older than I. But he had quite a pretty practice. He didn’t belong to the circuit, so he had come down ‘special’, as it was called. My memory’s dim about that, but I think if you went to a circuit to which you did not belong, you had to have fifty guineas marked on your brief and you had to have a junior who was a member of the circuit in question. Anyway, there Slade was. And when the police had finished, he rose to address the Judge.

“I never heard a plea of guilty so beautifully done. It was just right. But the story Slade told was tragic. The man was an old Etonian, and his record was very good. In his way he was brilliant. He had contributed to
Punch
. But he had squandered a fortune before he was thirty years old. So he came to drink and drugs – and so to crime.

“I can’t remember the actual speech Slade made, but I know it was very moving, although it was very quiet. But I never shall forget his opening words. ‘My lord, I have been instructed to appear for the prisoner by an old friend who desires to remain anonymous.’

“Of course, the Judge sent the man down – he could do no less. But my impression is that he spared him penal servitude. But whatever the sentence was, the Judge made it plain that it would have been a heavier sentence, but for Slade’s plea.

“I was dining out a week later, and Slade was among the guests. As soon as I got a chance, I spoke of the case and I told him frankly that to my mind his plea had been a model of excellence. ‘You did it perfectly.’ He seemed very pleased. Then, ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘let’s have a word together, when the women have gone.’ When the men were left at table, I took a chair by his side. And then he told me this tale. I’ll try to recapture his words.

“‘On the evening before I went to Maidstone, I was working late. I was alone in Chambers; the clerks had gone. I heard a knock at the door, so I went to see what it was. A woman was standing there, an obvious lady. She was young and very well dressed, and she was in great distress. “Are you Mr Slade?” she said. And then, “I’ve been given your name.” “Slade’s my name,” I said,” but what do you want?” “I want your help,” she said. “Please let me come in.” She looked all in, so I took her into my room and made her sit down.

“‘She had only just learned, by chance, that her former husband, whom she had had to divorce, was to come up at Maidstone for sentence on the following day. And she begged me, with tears, to go down and do what I could. “I can’t let him go down,” she kept crying. “I must do something to help. He must never know, of course: he must never dream that it’s me. But you must go down and do what you can to help him.”

“‘Well, I was terribly busy, but she was up against time. If we’d had twenty-four hours, I could have helped her to get hold of somebody else. But it was too late for that. And so I said I’d go down – I hadn’t the heart to refuse a woman in such distress. Apparently, money was no object, so the fact that I’d have to go special presented no difficulty. “But,” I said, “you can’t instruct me like this. You must go through a solicitor – that’s a rule of the Bar.” “But there isn’t time,” she cried. “Besides, I don’t know one, except the ones I had: and I’d rather not go to them.” So I rang up George — and drove her straight to his house. I explained the matter to him and he said he’d act. There and then he gave me a back-sheet, and another one for young —: I wish I’d thought of you, but I didn’t know you’d be there. We got her to tell us something – give me some straw, I mean, with which I could make some bricks. Then I left her with George and his wife and went back to get my robes and leave a note for my clerk. And I left for Maidstone next day, by the early train.’

“That was the end of Slade’s tale and this is the end of mine. I’ve read many better short stories, and so have you: but, for what it is worth, it’s true. I’ve told it out of order, but I saw the second act first.”

“It’s terribly tragic,” said Daphne. “Had the wife married again?”

“I can’t remember,” I said. “I don’t think so. Slade said she was most attractive: and I should say that he’d been an attractive man.”