'Give and forgive,' I said, 'is the true gospel'; and from this time on, with many lapses, due for the most part to selfishness or temper, I tried, in my own life, to realize this striving.
This was my 'conversion' to a better life, and it occurred about my fortieth year as a result partly of complete success in material strivings; but more, I am fain to believe, as a natural incident of growth. I came to see that if I would be with the great ones in the future, I too must lead a life of generosity and kindness. It was and is my most profound conviction that all progress in this life comes from gifted individuals, and if we desire the bettering of things or think of this earthly pilgrimage as a slow journeying upward to perfection, we must do our little best to help all the abler men of our time to selfrealization and achievement.
Like chooses like in this world, and the natural affinity of the noble is a stronger tie than can easily be imagined. Now, for the first time, I began to live the higher life, as I understood it. And soon new lessons from it began to drift in upon me. I found almost immediately, that certain persons, whom I felt to be among the best, now began to seek me out and show me affection. Lord Grimthorpe became a close friend, and charming people in every walk of life began to show me kindness.
'He came to His own, and His own received Him not,' is one of the few sayings in the New Testament which must be construed in a narrow way: in this world, our own, in the large sense of those like us or on our level, always receive us and treat us with loving-kindness beyond our deserts. If 'the way of the transgressor is hard,' the way of the heavenly pilgrim becomes the primrose path to the divine life.
It must not be understood that I became a saint, or that ideal strivings dominated me; far from it, alas! Now and then I was hatefully selfish and once, at least, to a woman detestable: she is still living and I cannot confess my meanness without exposing her, but my treatment of her still brings a hot flush of shame to my cheeks. Even wounded vanity, though it may explain, cannot excuse my paltry, detestable conduct. I was as self-centered as ever, and as confirmed an epicurean: a Hellene always, as Heine would have said, and not a Jew, and still less a Saxon; for the Saxons love to accept promissory notes of ecstatic happiness in eternity, whereas the Hellenes are intent on making the best of this present life, and enjoying themselves here below as much as possible.
My worst fault, I think, has always been my impatience: it often gave the impression of bad temper, or cynicism, or worse, for it was backed by an excellent tongue that translated most feelings into words of some piquancy.
Consequently, this man spoke of me as truculent and the other as callous and the third as domineering, when in reality I wished to be kind, but was unable to suffer fools gladly. This impatience has grown on me with the years, and as soon as I gave up conducting journals, I limited my intercourse to friends who were always men of brains, and so managed to avoid a myriad occasions of giving offense unnecessarily.
This sharp-tongued impatience was allied to a genuine reverence for greatness of mind or character; but again this reverence brought with it an illimitable disdain for the second-rate or merely popular. I was more than amiable to Huxley or Wallace, to Davidson or Dowson, and correspondingly contemptuous of the numerous mediocrities who are the heroes of the popular press. So I got a reputation for extraordinary conceit and abrupt bad manners.
All the early part of this period I was in love and therefore did not run after new experiences in what the French call le pays du tendre. I had an excellent home and troops of friends: I had brought living to a science; I rode every morning in the park, ate and drank in moderation, watched my weight, and by hard exercise kept myself in good condition.
About 1895 I began, little by little, to alter my purpose in life, trying, as far as vanity would let me, to live to the best in me; and when I took control of the Saturday Review in that year, I modified the general method of criticism, as I shall tell; I found it better to praise than to condemn.
Even in this world, loving-kindness is a key to most of the great doors. And though it was in England that I learned this good lesson, strange to say, all the while I worked and thought, England grew smaller to me and more provincial, while America seemed to expand with undreamed of possibilities.
But now and again some law case or some presidential or public announcement shamed me to the soul by flaunting some outworn brainless prejudice.
Little by little I turned to France as the motherland of my spirit, though there were Germans, too, and Italians and Spaniards that quickened and inspired me with enthusiasm similar to my own; cosmopolitan, I called myself from this time on, or perhaps it would suit English and American prejudice better if I invented a new French word and called myself cosmopolisson.
CHAPTER II
In connection with Heine I must begin by relating one event that happened before 1890: I was lunching one day about 1889 with the Princess of Monaco at Claridge's when for some reason or other the talk fell upon Heinrich Heine, the Princess being a grand-niece of the famous poet. I had just been reading some things of his for the hundredth time with huge delight, and curiously enough, a morning or two before in a Vienna paper, I had come across the announcement that the poet's sister was still living and in full possession of all her faculties, though she was nearing ninety.
'Instead of editing a London review,' I exclaimed, 'I would give anything to go to Germany, get to know Heine's sister, and then write the best life possible of the great poet.'
'How could she help you?' asked the Princess.
'It is the first manifestations of a great talent,' I said, 'that discover the secret, and show the heart. His sister would know his first successes and his first disappointments: all his beginnings; she could recall childish memories throwing light on his growth-unimaginable things-indicating how he came so early to maturity. What he tells of his visit to England as a young man is astounding, his condemnation of English pedantry, snobbishness, and cruelty is extraordinary. 'The figure of justice in England,' he said, 'had a naked sword on her knee, but was quite blind!' '
'Why don't you write his life,' asked the Princess, 'if you admire him so intensely?'
'It would cost me five thousand pounds to abandon my work here and go abroad for a year,' I said, 'and I haven't the money to spare.'
'I'll give it you,' she replied.
'In that case, Madame,' I said, 'I'll go and do the work without a moment's delay, for Heine's sister is certain to be able to throw new light on a myriad doubtful things, and assuredly she will be able to solve for us the inexplicable tragedy of his life: how did he come to suffer for years in his mattress-grave in Paris and die at six and fifty? Was it syphilis? Or merely sexual selfindulgence?
We know he was never very strong; but his sister must have heard the truth, and fancy being in a position to tell the true truth about Heine, the greatest German poet after Goethe; the first of the moderns, as I always call him, because he was a rebel at heart and soul-free of that respect for convention that maimed even Goethe.'
The next weeks I spent reading Heine, his Reisebilder, his latest poetry and all the books I could get on his life and art; but I heard nothing from the Princess Alice. At length I thought of writing to her, but I couldn't do that.
'She may have spoken in haste,' I said to myself, 'and I should be forcing her perhaps to give me five thousand pounds which she could ill spare.' I resolved to put the whole incident out of my mind.
Some time later I read in a German paper of the death of Heine's sister: she was ninety-odd. The very next day I was again lunching with the Princess at Claridge's and I told her of the death. 'No one now,' I said, 'will ever be able to tell the true truth about Heine's long illness and death.'
'I thought you were going to do it,' said the Princess.
'I told you, Madame, it would cost five thousand pounds and I couldn't afford it.'
'But I said that I would give you the money willingly,' was her reply; 'why didn't you ask me for it?'
'I was afraid it might embarrass you,' I said. 'However, it is now too late!'
I should have loved to write Heine's life, infinitely rather than the life of Oscar Wilde, because he was a far greater man and had new and true things to say on the vital problems of modern Europe.
