“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 little 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 hypnotise 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 hypnotised. I lost consciousness like that.” He snapped his fingers. “When I came to, I found that it was past midnight, 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, Pipelines 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 canalise 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
