You can hear all their voices and Dowson was something of a French scholar and quite obviously under the spell of Verlaine as well as Tennyson and Swinburne, and very much in Arthur Symons’ circle.
He is fantastically wrong about Ernest Dowson.’
‘How are you keeping?’ said Alec, having risen from his chair.
‘Guy Leet was never a good theatre critic, and he was a worse novel critic. He knows nothing about poetry, he has no right to touch the subject. Can’t someone stop him?’
‘What else,’ said Alec, ‘does he say in his memoir?’
‘A lot of superficiality about how he attacked a novel of Henry James’s and then met James outside the Athenaeum one day and James was talking about his conscience as an artist and Guy’s conscience as a critic, and that whatever was actually committed to print —’
‘Let the fire see the people, Granpa,’ said Olive, for Percy was standing back-to-fire straddling and monopolizing it. Alec Warner had closed and put away his notebook.
The poet did not move.
‘That’s because Henry James is fashionable today, that’s why he writes about Henry James. Whereas he jeers at poor Ernest— If you’re pouring that brandy for me, Olive, it’s too much. Half of that — Ernest Dowson, a supreme lyricist.’ He took the glass, which he held with a shaky claw-like hand, and while taking his first sip seemed of a sudden to forget Ernest Dowson.
He said to Alec, ‘I didn’t see you at Lisa’s funeral.’
‘Sit down, Granpa,’ said Olive. She worked him into a chair. ‘I missed it,’ said Alec, watching Percy’s lean profile with concentration. ‘I was in Folkestone at the time.
‘It was a fearful and thrilling experience,’ said Percy.
‘In what way?’ said Alec.
The old poet smiled. He cackled from the depth of his throat, and the memory of Lisa’s cremation seemed to be refracted from his mind’s eye to the avid eyes in his head. As he talked, the eyes of Alec feasted on him, in turn.
Percy stayed on with his granddaughter after Alec Warner had left. She prepared a supper of mushrooms and bacon which they ate off trays perched on their knees. She watched him while he ate. He gnawed with his few teeth at the toasted bread, but got through all of it, even the difficult crusts.
He looked up as he managed the last small rim of crust and saw her watching him. When he had finished all, he remarked, ‘Final perseverance.’
‘What you say, Granpa?’
‘Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the external victory in small things as in great.’
‘I say, Granpa, did you ever read any books by Charmian Piper?’
‘Oh rather, we all knew her books. She was a fine-looking woman. You should have heard her read poetry from a platform in the days of Poetry. Harold Munro always said —’
‘Her son, Eric, has told me there’s talk of her novels being reprinted. There’s a revival of interest in her novels. There’s been an article written, Eric says. But he says the novels all consist of people saying “touche” to each other, and it’s all an affectation, the revival of interest, just because his mother is so old and still alive and was famous once.’
‘She’s still famous. Always has been. Your trouble is, you know nothing, Olive. Everyone knows Charmian Piper.’
‘Oh no they don’t. No one’s heard of her except a few old people, but there’s going to be a revival. I say there’s been an article —’
‘You know nothing about literature.’
‘Touche,’ she snapped, for Percy himself was always pretending that nobody had forgotten his poetry, really. Then she gave him three pounds to make up for her cruelty, which in fact he had not noticed; he simply did not acknowledge the idea of revival in either case, since he did not recognize the interim death. However, he took the three pounds from Olive, of whose side-line activities he was unaware, for, besides having small private means from her mother’s side, she also had occasional jobs as an actress on the B.B.C.
He carried the money by bus and underground to Leicester Square where the post office was open all night, and wrote out, on several telegraph forms, in large slow capitals, a wire to Guy Leet, The Old Stable, Stedrost, Surrey: ‘You are fantastically wrong in your reference to Ernest Dowson that exceedingly poignant poet who only just steered clear of sentimentality and self-pity stop Ernest Dowson was the spiritual and aesthetic child of Swinburne Tennyson and especially Verlaine by whose verse he was veritably haunted Dow-sons verse requires to be read aloud which is more than most verse by later hands can stand up to stop I cried for madder music and for stronger wine new line but when the feast is finished and the lamps expire new line then falls thy shadow Cynara the night is thine new line and I am desolate and sick of an old passion etcetera stop read it aloud man your cheap alliterative jibe carries no weight you are fantastically wrong — Percy Mannering.’
He handed in the sheaf of forms at the counter. The clerk looked closely at Percy, whereupon Percy made visible the three pound notes.
‘Are you sure,’ said the clerk then, ‘you want to send all this?’
‘I am,’ bawled Percy Mannering. He handed over two of the notes, took his change and went out into the bright-lit night.
EIGHT
Dame Lettie Colston had been happier without a resident maid, but the telephone incidents had now forced on her the necessity of having someone in the house to answer the dreadful calls. The mystery of it was, that the man never gave that terrible message to the girl. On the other hand, in the two weeks since her arrival, there had been a series of calls which proved to be someone getting the wrong number. When they had occurred three times in one day Dame Lettie began to bewilder the girl with questions.
‘Who was it, Gwen, was it a man?’
