Crome Yellow (7 page)

‘Then I couldn't possibly go on,' Denis replied. ‘I only make noises.'

There was a silence. Mr Barbecue-Smith stood with his back to the hearth, warming himself at the memory of last winter's fires. He could not control his interior satisfaction, but still went on smiling to himself. At last he turned to Denis.

‘You write,' he asked, ‘don't you?'

‘Well, yes – a little, you know.'

‘How many words do you find you can write in an hour?'

‘I don't think I've ever counted.'

‘Oh, you ought to, you ought to. It's most important.'

Denis exercised his memory. ‘When I'm in good form,' he said, ‘I fancy I do a twelve-hundred word review in about
four hours. But sometimes it takes me much longer.'

Mr Barbecue-Smith nodded. ‘Yes, three hundred words an hour at your best.' He walked out into the middle of the room, turned round on his heels, and confronted Denis again. ‘Guess how many words I wrote this evening between five and half-past seven.'

‘I can't imagine.'

‘No, but you must guess. Between five and half-past seven – that's two and a half hours.'

‘Twelve hundred words,' Denis hazarded.

‘No, no, no.' Mr Barbecue-Smith's expanded face shone with gaiety. ‘Try again.'

‘Fifteen hundred.'

‘No.'

‘I give it up,' said Denis. He found he couldn't summon up much interest in Mr Barbecue-Smith's writing.

‘Well, I'll tell you. Three thousand eight hundred.'

Denis opened his eyes. ‘You must get a lot done in a day,' he said.

Mr Barbecue-Smith suddenly became extremely confidential. He pulled up a stool to the side of Denis's arm-chair, sat down in it, and began to talk softly and rapidly.

‘Listen to me,' he said, laying his hand on Denis's sleeve. ‘You want to make your living by writing; you're young, you're inexperienced. Let me give you a little sound advice.'

What was the fellow going to do? Denis wondered: give him an introduction to the editor of
John o' London's Weekly
, or tell him where he could sell a light middle for seven guineas? Mr Barbecue-Smith patted his arm several times and went on.

‘The secret of writing,' he said, breathing it into the young man's ear – ‘the secret of writing is Inspiration.'

Denis looked at him in astonishment.

‘Inspiration . . .' Mr Barbecue-Smith repeated.

‘You mean the native wood-note business?'

Mr Barbecue-Smith nodded.

‘Oh, then I entirely agree with you,' said Denis. ‘But what if one hasn't got Inspiration?'

‘That was precisely the question I was waiting for,' said Mr Barbecue-Smith. ‘You ask me what one should do if one hasn't got Inspiration. I answer: you have Inspiration;
everyone has Inspiration. It's simply a question of getting it to function.'

The clock struck eight. There was no sign of any of the other guests; everybody was always late at Crome. Mr Barbecue-Smith went on.

‘That's my secret,' he said. ‘I give it you freely.' (Denis made a suitably grateful murmur and grimace.) ‘I'll help you to find your Inspiration, because I don't like to see a nice, steady young man like you exhausting his vitality and wasting the best years of his life in a grinding intellectual labour that could be completely obviated by Inspiration. I did it myself, so I know what it's like. Up till the time I was thirty-eight I was a writer like you – a writer without Inspiration. All I wrote I squeezed out of myself by sheer hard work. Why, in those days I was never able to do more than six-fifty words an hour, and what's more, I often didn't sell what I wrote.' He sighed. ‘We artists,' he said parenthetically, ‘we intellectuals aren't much appreciated here in England.' Denis wondered if there was any method, consistent, of course, with politeness, by which he could dissociate himself from Mr Barbecue-Smith's ‘we.' There was none; and besides, it was too late now, for Mr Barbecue-Smith was once more pursuing the tenor of his discourse.

‘At thirty-eight I was a poor, struggling, tired, overworked, unknown journalist. Now, at fifty . . .' He paused modestly and made a little gesture, moving his fat hands outwards, away from one another, and expanding his fingers as though in demonstration. He was exhibiting himself. Denis thought of that advertisement of Nestlé's milk – the two cats on the wall, under the moon, one black and thin, the other white, sleek, and fat. Before Inspiration and after.

‘Inspiration has made the difference,' said Mr Barbecue-Smith solemnly. ‘It came quite suddenly – like a gentle dew from heaven.' He lifted his hand and let it fall back on to his knee to indicate the descent of the dew. ‘It was one evening. I was writing my first book about the Conduct of Life –
Humble Heroisms
. You may have read it; it has been a comfort – at least I hope and think so – a comfort to many thousands. I was in the middle of the second chapter, and I was stuck. Fatigue, overwork – I had only written a hundred words in the last hour, and I could get no further. I sat biting
the end of my pen and looking at the electric light, which hung above my table, a little above and in front of me.' He indicated the position of the lamp with elaborate care. ‘Have you ever looked at a bright light intently for a long time?' he asked, turning to Denis. Denis didn't think he had. ‘You can hypnotize yourself that way,' Mr Barbecue-Smith went on.

The gong sounded in a terrific crescendo from the hall. Still no sign of the others. Denis was horribly hungry.

‘That's what happened to me,' said Mr Barbecue-Smith. ‘I was hypnotized. I lost consciousness like that.' He snapped his fingers. ‘When I came to, I found that it was past mid-night, and I had written four thousand words. Four thousand,' he repeated, opening his mouth very wide on the
ou
of thousand. ‘Inspiration had come to me.'

‘What a very extraordinary thing,' said Denis.

‘I was afraid of it at first. It didn't seem to me natural. I didn't feel, somehow, that it was quite right, quite fair, I might almost say, to produce a literary composition unconsciously. Besides, I was afraid I might have written nonsense.'

‘And had you written nonsense?' Denis asked.

‘Certainly not,' Mr Barbecue-Smith replied, with a trace of annoyance. ‘Certainly not. It was admirable. Just a few spelling mistakes and slips, such as there generally are in automatic writing. But the style, the thought – all the essentials were admirable. After that, Inspiration came to me regularly. I wrote the whole of
Humble Heroisms
like that. It was a great success, and so has everything been that I have written since.' He leaned forward and jabbed at Denis with his finger. ‘That's my secret,' he said, ‘and that's how you could write too, if you tried – without effort, fluently, well.'

‘But how?' asked Denis, trying not to show how deeply he had been insulted by that final ‘well.'

‘By cultivating your Inspiration, by getting into touch with your Subconscious. Have you ever read my little book,
Pipe-Lines to the Infinite
?'

Denis had to confess that that was, precisely, one of the few, perhaps the only one, of Mr Barbecue-Smith's works he had not read.

‘Never mind, never mind,' said Mr Barbecue-Smith. ‘It's just a little book about the connection of the Subconscious with the Infinite. Get into touch with the Subconscious and
you are in touch with the Universe. Inspiration, in fact. You follow me?'

‘Perfectly, perfectly,' said Denis. ‘But don't you find that the Universe sometimes sends you very irrelevant messages?'

‘I don't allow it to,' Mr Barbecue-Smith replied. ‘I canalize it. I bring it down through pipes to work the turbines of my conscious mind.'

‘Like Niagara,' Denis suggested. Some of Mr Barbecue-Smith's remarks sounded strangely like quotations – quotations from his own works, no doubt.

‘Precisely. Like Niagara. And this is how I do it.' He leaned forward, and with a raised forefinger marked his points as he made them, beating time, as it were, to his discourse. ‘Before I go off into my trance, I concentrate on the subject I wish to be inspired about., Let us say I am writing about the humble heroisms; for ten minutes before I go into the trance I think of nothing but orphans supporting their little brothers and sisters, of dull work well and patiently done, and I focus my mind on such great philosophical truths as the purification and uplifting of the soul by suffering, and the alchemical transformation of leaden evil into golden good.' (Denis again hung up his little festoon of quotation marks.) ‘Then I pop off. Two or three hours later I wake up again, and find that inspiration has done its work. Thousands of words, comforting, uplifting words, lie before me. I type them out neatly on my machine and they are ready for the printer.'

‘It all sounds wonderfully simple,' said Denis.

‘It is. All the great and splendid and divine things of life are wonderfully simple.' (Quotation marks again.) ‘When I have to do my aphorisms,' Mr Barbecue-Smith continued, ‘I prelude my trance by turning over the pages of any Dictionary of Quotations or Shakespeare Calendar that comes to hand. That sets the key, so to speak; that ensures that the Universe shall come flowing in, not in a continuous rush, but in aphorismic drops. You see the idea?'

Denis nodded. Mr Barbecue-Smith put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a notebook. ‘I did a few in the train today,' he said, turning over the pages. ‘Just dropped off into a trance in a corner of my carriage. I find the train very
conducive to good work. Here they are.' He cleared his throat and read:

‘The Mountain Road may be steep, but the air is pure up there, and it is from the Summit that one gets the view.'

‘The Things that Really Matter happen in the Heart.'

It was curious, Denis reflected, the way the Infinite sometimes repeated itself.

‘Seeing is Believing. Yes, but Believing is also Seeing. If I believe in God, I see God, even in the things that seem to be evil.'

Mr Barbecue-Smith looked up from his notebook. ‘That last one,' he said, ‘is particularly subtle and beautiful, don't you think? Without Inspiration I could never have hit on that.' He re-read the apophthegm with a slower and more solemn utterance. ‘Straight from the Infinite,' he commented reflectively, then addressed himself to the next aphorism.

‘The flame of a candle gives Light, but it also Burns.'

Puzzled wrinkles appeared on Mr Barbecue-Smith's forehead. ‘I don't exactly know what that means,' he said. ‘It's very gnomic. One could apply it, of course, to the Higher Education – illuminating, but provoking the Lower Classes to discontent and revolution. Yes, I suppose that's what it is. But it's gnomic, it's gnomic.' He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. The gong sounded again, clamorously, it seemed imploringly: dinner was growing cold. It roused Mr Barbecue-Smith from meditation. He turned to Denis.

‘You understand me now when I advise you to cultivate your Inspiration. Let your Subconscious work for you; turn on the Niagara of the Infinite.'

There was the sound of feet on the stairs. Mr Barbecue-Smith got up, laid his hand for an instant on Denis's shoulder, and said:

‘No more now. Another time. And remember, I rely absolutely on your discretion in this matter. There are intimate, sacred things that one doesn't wish to be generally known.'

‘Of course,' said Denis. ‘I quite understand.'

AT CROME ALL
the beds were ancient hereditary pieces of furniture. Huge beds, like four-masted ships, with furled sails of shining coloured stuff. Beds carved and inlaid, beds painted and gilded. Beds of walnut and oak, of rare exotic woods. Beds of every date and fashion from the time of Sir Ferdinando, who built the house, to the time of his namesake in the late eighteenth century, the last of the family, but all of them grandiose, magnificent.

The finest of all was now Anne's bed. Sir Julius, son to Sir Ferdinand, had had it made in Venice against his wife's first lying-in. Early
seicento
Venice had expended all its extravagant art in the making of it. The body of the bed was like a great square sarcophagus. Clustering roses were carved in high relief on its wooden panels, and luscious
putti
wallowed among the roses. On the black groundwork of the panels the carved reliefs were gilded and burnished. The golden roses twined in spirals up the four pillar-like posts, and cherubs, seated at the top of each column, supported a wooden canopy fretted with the same carved flowers.

Anne was reading in bed. Two candles stood on the little table beside her. In their rich light her face, her bare arm and shoulder took on warm hues and a sort of peach-like quality of surface. Here and there in the canopy above her carved golden petals shone brightly among profound shadows, and the soft light, falling on the sculptured panel of the bed, broke restlessly among the intricate roses, lingered in a broad caress on the blown cheeks, the dimpled bellies, the tight, absurd little posteriors of the sprawling
putti
.

There was a discreet tap at the door. She looked up. ‘Come in, come in.' A face, round and childish within its sleek bell of golden hair, peered round the opening door. More childish-looking still, a suit of mauve pyjamas made its entrance.

It was Mary. ‘I thought I'd just look in for a moment to say good-night,' she said, and sat down on the edge of the bed.

Anne closed her book. ‘That was very sweet of you.'

‘What are you reading?' She looked at the book. ‘Rather second-rate, isn't it?' The tone in which Mary pronounced the word ‘second-rate' implied an almost infinite denigration. She was accustomed in London to associate only with first-rate people who liked first-rate things, and she knew that there were very, very few first-rate things in the world, and that those were mostly French.