There is nothing of the celebrity about Thomas Hardy, O.M. He himself tells the story that a very young lady friend of his thought that O.M. stood for Old Man; and was very angry with King Edward. The order was created to give Watts, the painter, a distinction that he could not very well refuse. He had declined everything else. The last time I saw Thomas Hardy was at a private view of the Royal Academy. He was talking to the Baldrys. The papers the next morning gave the usual list of celebrities who had been present: all the famous chorus ladies, all the film stars, all the American millionaires. Nobody had noticed Thomas Hardy.
He lives behind a high wall in an unpretentious house that he built for himself long ago on the downs beyond Dorchester. We called upon him there, just before the war. His wife was away and it happened to be the servant's afternoon out. His secretary opened the door to us. His wife died a little later and she is now the second Mrs. Hardy. It was a warm afternoon, and we walked in the garden. At first, he appears to be a gentleman of no importance; but after a while, behind his quietness and simplicity, you catch glimpses of the real man. He shows himself in his poetry to be one of the deepest thinkers of the age. The unassuming little gentleman looking at you with pale gentle eyes does not suggest it. There was a whispering towards tea-time between Hardy and the lady. Hardy was worried. It seemed Mrs. Hardy, careful soul, not anticipating visitors, had before leaving locked up all the spare tea-things. We had some fun searching round. My wife and daughter were with me, making five of us. We got together a scratch lot; and sat down to table.
An interesting club, established in London about thirty years ago, was the Omar Khayyam club. I was never a member, but frequently a guest. In the winter, we dined at Anderton's Hotel in Fleet Street, and in the summer, wandered about to country inns. William Sharpe, the poet, was a member. So, also, was Fiona McLeod, the poetess, who wrote the “Immortal Hour.” About her, there came to be a mystery. Some people must have gone about pulling other people's legs. George Meredith, in a letter to Alice Meynell, dated from Box Hill, writes: “Miss Fiona McLeod was here last week, a handsome person, who would not give me her eyes.” All I know is that Sharpe himself made no secret of the fact that he and Fiona McLeod were one and the same person. It was after an Omar Khayyam dinner, at Caversham near Reading, that, walking in the garden, I mentioned to him my admiration of the lady, and my wish to obtain some of her work. He laughed. “To confess the truth,” he said, “I am Fiona McLeod. I thought you knew.” He told me that, when it came to writing, he really felt himself to be two separate personalities; and it seemed the better course to keep them apart.
I am writing these memoirs in a little room where, years ago, Edward Fitzgerald sat writing “The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.” The window looks out across the village street; and some of those who passed by then still come and go. Mrs. Scarlett, our landlady, who keeps the village shop, remembers him as a gentleman somewhat “thin on the top,” with side whiskers and a high-domed forehead. He wore generally a stove-pipe hat at the back of his head (at rather a rakish angle, so I gather), an Inverness cape with a velvet collar, and a black stock round his neck. In voice and manner, Mr. Zangwill reminds her of him. He used to frighten the good fisher folk, at first, by his habit of taking midnight walks along the shore, talking to himself as he went by. A favourite working place of his was the ruined church upon the cliffs. It was still a landmark up to a few years ago, standing out bravely against the sky. But now its stones lie scattered on the beach or have been carried out to sea, and not a trace remains. There, with his back against a crumbling buttress, he would sit and write of mornings, till Mrs. Scarlett, to whom in those days steep pathways were of small account, would fetch him home to lunch. No one knew of his retreat: until one day some yachting friends dropped in at Mrs. Scarlett's shop to replenish their larder, and so discovered him.
Mrs. Scarlett's shop was, of course, the hub of the village. The gossips would gather there and talk. But Fitzgerald had a way of getting rid of them. Putting on his hat—at the back of his head, according to that rakish custom of his—he would bustle out and join them.
“Ah! Mrs. Scarlett,” he would say, “you are talking about something interesting, I feel sure of it. Now tell me all about it.”
The ladies would look from one to another, and assure him it was nothing of importance.
“No, no. You must not keep it from me,” Fitzgerald would persist. “Do let me hear it.”
It would occur to the ladies, one after another, that tasks were awaiting them at home. Excusing themselves, they would drift away. After a time, it came to be sufficient for Mrs. Scarlett to indicate by signs that Fitzgerald was in the little front room, working. He used to write, sitting by the window, in the easy chair (it isn't really very easy), with his writing-pad on his knee. The ladies would make their purchases in whispers and depart.
To-Day was killed by a libel action brought against me by a company promoter, a Mr. Samson Fox, whose activities my City Editor had somewhat severely criticised. I have the satisfaction of boasting that it was the longest case, and one of the most expensive ever heard in the court of Queen's Bench. It resolved itself into an argument as to whether domestic gas could be made out of water. At the end of thirty days, the unanimous conclusion arrived at was, that it remained to be seen; and the Judge, in a kindly speech, concluded that the best way of ending the trouble would be for us each to pay our own costs. Mine came to nine thousand pounds; and Mr. Samson Fox's to eleven. We shook hands in the corridor. He informed me that he was going back to Leeds to strangle his solicitors; and hoped I would do the same by mine. But it seemed to me too late.
A big catastrophe has, at first, a numbing effect. Realisation comes later. It was summer time, and my family were in the country. I dined by myself at a restaurant in Soho, and afterwards went to the theatre; but I recall a dull, aching sensation in the neighbourhood of my stomach, and an obstinate dryness of the throat.
Of course it meant my selling out, both from The Idler and To-Day. Barr's friends took over The Idler, and Bottomley bought most of my holding in To-Day. But it had, from the beginning, been a one-man paper, and after I went out, it gradually died.
I had always dreamed of being an editor. My mother gave me a desk on my sixth birthday, and I started a newspaper in partnership with a little old maiden aunt of mine. She wore three corkscrew curls on each side of her head. She used to take them off, before bending down over the table to write.
My mother liked our first number. “I am sure he was meant to be a preacher,” she said to my father.
“It comes to the same thing,” said my father. “The newspaper is going to be the new pulpit.”
I still think it might be.
Chapter IX
THE AUTHOR ABROAD
It was comparatively early in my life that I found myself a foreigner. A fellow clerk and I saved up all one winter, and at Easter we took a trip to Antwerp. We went by steamer from London Bridge: return fare, including meals, twenty-six shillings; and at Antwerp, following the second mate's directions, we found an hotel in a street off the Place Verte where they boarded and lodged us for five francs a day: café complete at eight, déjeuner at twelve, and dìner at six-thirty, with half a bottle of wine.