After a morning of very mixed emotions and more than one annoyance … at last sat down to lunch and a little peace and quiet with R⸺. We began by quoting verse at one another in open competition. Of course neither of us listened to the other’s verses. We merely enjoyed the pleasure of recollecting and repeating our own. I began with Tom Moore’s “Row gently here, my Gondolier.” R⸺ guessed the author rightly at once and fidgeted until he burst out with, “The Breaths of kissing night and day”—to me an easy one. I gave, “The Moon more indolently sleeps tonight” (Baudelaire), and in reply he did a great stroke by reciting some of the old French of François Villon which entirely flummoxed me.
I don’t believe we really love each other, but we cling to each other out of ennui and discover in each other a certain cold intellectual sympathy.
At the pay desk (Lyons’ is our rendezvous) we joked with the cashier—a cheerful, fat little girl, who said to R⸺ (indicating me)—
“He’s a funny boy, isn’t he?”
“Dangerous,” chirped R⸺, and we laughed. In the street we met an aged, decrepit news vendor—very dirty and ragged—but his voice was unexpectedly fruity.
“British Success,” he called, and we stopped for the sake of the voice.
“I’m not interested,” I said—as an appetiser.
“What! Not. … Just one sir: I haven’t sold a single copy yet, and I’ve a wife and four children.”
“That’s nothing to me—I’ve three wives and forty children,” I remarked.
“What!” in affected surprise, turning to R⸺, “he’s Brigham Young from Salt Lake City. Yes I know it—I’ve been there myself and been dry ever since. Give us a drink, sir—just one.”
In consideration of his voice we gave him 2d. and passed on. …
After giving a light to a Belgian soldier whose cigarette had gone out, farther along we entered a queer old music shop where they sell flageolets, serpents, clavichords, and harps. We had previously made an appointment with the man to have Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony played to us, so as to recall one or two of the melodies which we can’t recall and it drives us crazy. “What is that one in the second movement which goes like this?” and R⸺ whistled a fragment. “I don’t know,” I said, “but let’s go in here and ask.” In the shop, a youth was kind enough to say that if we cared to call next day, Madame A⸺, the harp player would be home and would be ready to play us the symphony.
So this morning, before Madame’s appearance, this kind and obliging youth put a gramophone record of it on, to which we listened like two intelligent parrots with heads sideways. Presently, the fat lady harpist appeared and asked us just what we wanted to find out—a rather awkward question for us, as we did not want to “find out” anything excepting how the tunes went.
I therefore explained that as neither of us had sisters or wives, and we both wanted, etc … so would she … ? In response, she smiled pleasantly and played us the second movement on a shop piano. Meanwhile, Henry the boy, hid himself behind the instruments at the rear of the shop and as we signed to her she would say—
“What’s that, Henry?”
And Henry would duly answer from his obscurity, “Wood wind,” or “Solo oboe,” or whatever it was, and the lad really spoke with authority. In this way, I began to find out something about the work. Before I left, I presented her with a copy of the score, which she did not possess and because she would not accept any sort of remuneration.
“Won’t you put your name on it?” she inquired.
I pointed gaily to
