Enoch Soames ......................................................................................................................................................1

When a book about the literature of the eighteennineties was given by Mr. Holbrook Jackson to the world, I

looked eagerly in the index for Soames, Enoch. It was as I feared: he was not there. But everybody else was.

Many writers whom I had quite forgotten, or remembered but faintly, lived again for me, they and their work,

in Mr. Holbrook Jackson's pages. The book was as thorough as it was brilliantly written. And thus the

omission found by me was an all the deadlier record of poor Soames's failure to impress himself on his

I dare say I am the only person who noticed the omission. Soames had failed so piteously as all that! Nor is

there a counterpoise in the thought that if he had had some measure of success he might have passed, like

those others, out of my mind, to return only at the historian's beck. It is true that had his gifts, such as they

were, been acknowledged in his lifetime, he would never have made the bargain I saw him makethat

strange bargain whose results have kept him always in the foreground of my memory. But it is from those

Not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. For his sake, poor fellow, I should be inclined to

keep my pen out of the ink. It is ill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames without

making him ridiculous? Or, rather, how am I to hush up the horrid fact that he WAS ridiculous? I shall not be

able to do that. Yet, sooner or later, write about him I must. You will see in due course that I have no option.

IN the summer term of '93 a bolt from the blue flashed down on Oxford. It drove deep; it hurtlingly

embedded itself in the soil. Dons and undergraduates stood around, rather pale, discussing nothing but it.

Whence came it, this meteorite? From Paris. Its name? Will Rothenstein. Its aim? To do a series of

twentyfour portraits in lithograph. These were to be published from the Bodley Head, London. The matter

was urgent. Already the warden of A, and the master of B, and the Regius Professor of C had meekly "sat."

Dignified and doddering old men who had never consented to sit to any one could not withtand this dynamic

little stranger. He did not sue; he invited: he did not invite; he commanded. He was twentyone years old. He

wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He

knew Whistler. He knew Daudet and the Goncourts. He knew every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart.

He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his selection of dons, he was

going to include a few undergraduates. It was a proud day for me when II was included. I liked

Rothenstein not less than I feared him; and there arose between us a friendship that has grown ever warmer,

At the end of term he settled in, or, rather, meteoritically into, London. It was to him I owed my first

knowledge of that foreverenchanting little worldinitself, Chelsea, and my first acquaintance with Walter

Sickert and other August elders who dwelt there. It was Rothenstein that took me to see, in Cambridge Street,

Pimlico, a young man whose drawings were already famous among the fewAubrey Beardsley by name.

With Rothenstein I paid my first visit to the Bodley Head. By him I was inducted into another haunt of

There, on that October eveningthere, in that exuberant vista of gilding and crimson velvet set amidst all

those opposing mirrors and upholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the painted and pagan

ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation broken into so sharply now and again by the

clatter of dominoes shuffled on marble tables, I drew a deep breath and, "This indeed," said I to myself, "is

life!" (Forgive me that theory. Remember the waging of even the South African War was not yet.)

It was the hour before dinner. We drank vermuth. Those who knew Rothenstein were pointing him out to

those who knew him only by name. Men were constantly coming in through the swingdoors and wandering

slowly up and down in search of vacant tables or of tables occupied by friends. One of these rovers interested

me because I was sure he wanted to catch Rothenstein's eye. He had twice passed our table, with a hesitating

look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a

stooping, shambling person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had a thin, vague beard,

or, rather, he had a chin on which a large number of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. He

was an oddlooking person; but in the nineties odd apparitions were more frequent, I think, than they are

now. The young writers of that eraand I was sure this man was a writerstrove earnestly to be distinct in

aspect. This man had striven unsuccessfully. He wore a soft black hat of clerical kind, but of Bohemian

intention, and a gray waterproof cape which, perhaps because it was waterproof, failed to be romantic. I

decided that "dim" was the mot juste for him. I had already essayed to write, and was immensely keen on the

The dim man was now again approaching our table, and this time he made up his mind to pause in front of it.

"Yes, I do," he replied after a moment, with pride rather than effusionpride in a retentive memory. "Edwin

"Enoch Soames," repeated Rothenstein in a tone implying that it was enough to have hit on the surname. "We

met in Paris a few times when you were living there. We met at the Cafe Groche."

"But you were in. You showed me some of your paintings, you know. I hear you're in Chelsea now."

I almost wondered that Mr. Soames did not, after this monosyllable, pass along. He stood patiently there,

rather like a dumb animal, rather like a donkey looking over a gate. A sad figure, his. It occurred to me that

"hungry" was perhaps the mot juste for him; buthungry for what? He looked as if he had little appetite for

anything. I was sorry for him; and Rothenstein, though he had not invited him to Chelsea, did ask him to sit

Seated, he was more selfassertive. He flung back the wings of his cape with a gesture which, had not those

wings been waterproof, might have seemed to hurl defiance at things in general. And he ordered an absinthe.

"Nothing is bad for one," answered Soames. "Dans ce monde il n'y a ni bien ni mal."

"Oh, yes, of course. But, did you explain, for instance, that there was no such thing as bad or good

"Nno," said Soames. "Of course in art there is the good and the evil. But in lifeno." He was rolling a

cigarette. He had weak, white hands, not well washed, and with fingertips much stained with nicotine. "In

life there are illusions of good and evil, but"his voice trailed away to a murmur in which the words "vieux

jeu" and "rococo" were faintly audible. I think he felt he was not doing himself justice, and feared that

Rothenstein was going to point out fallacies. Anyhow, he cleared his throat and said, "Parlons d'autre chose."

It occurs to you that he was a fool? It didn't to me. I was young, and had not the clarity of judgment that

Rothenstein already had. Soames was quite five or six years older than either of us. Alsohe had written a

If Rothenstein had not been there, I should have revered Soames. Even as it was, I respected him. And I was

very near indeed to reverence when he said he had another book coming out soon. I asked if I might ask what

"My poems," he answered. Rothenstein asked if this was to be the title of the book. The poet meditated on

this suggestion, but said he rather thought of giving the book no title at all. "If a book is good in itself" he

"If," he urged, "I went into a bookseller's and said simply, 'Have you got?' or, 'Have you a copy of?' how

"Oh, of course I should have my name on the cover," Soames answered earnestly. "And I rather want," he

added, looking hard at Rothenstein, "to have a drawing of myself as frontispiece." Rothenstein admitted that

this was a capital idea, and mentioned that he was going into the country and would be there for some time.

He then looked at his watch, exclaimed at the hour, paid the waiter, and went away with me to dinner.

"He is dim," I admitted. But my mot juste fell flat. Rothenstein repeated that Soames was nonexistent.

Still, Soames had written a book. I asked if Rothenstein had read "Negations." He said he had looked into it,

"but," he added crisply, "I don't profess to know anything about writing." A reservation very characteristic of

the period! Painters would not then allow that any one outside their own order had a right to any opinion

about painting. This law (graven on the tablets brought down by Whistler from the summit of Fujiyama)

imposed certain limitations. If other arts than painting were not utterly unintelligible to all but the men who

practiced them, the law totteredthe Monroe Doctrine, as it were, did not hold good. Therefore no painter

would offer an opinion of a book without warning you at any rate that his opinion was worthless. No one is a

better judge of literature than Rothenstein; but it wouldn't have done to tell him so in those days, and I knew

Not to buy a book of which I had met the author face to face would have been for me in those days an

impossible act of selfdenial. When I returned to Oxford for the Christmas term I had duly secured

"Negations." I used to keep it lying carelessly on the table in my room, and whenever a friend took it up and

asked what it was about, I would say: "Oh, it's rather a remarkable book. It's by a man whom I know." Just

"what it was about" I never was able to say. Head or tail was just what I hadn't made of that slim, green

volume. I found in the preface no clue to the labyrinth of contents, and in that labyrinth nothing to explain the

It is for this I am Catholick in church and in thought, yet do let swift Mood weave there what the shuttle of

These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed were less easy to understand. Then

came "Stark: A Conte," about a midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to murder, a

mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in which the translator had either skipped or cut out

every alternate sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula, lacking, I rather thought, in "snap."

Next, some aphorisms (entitled "Aphorismata" [spelled in Greek]). Throughout, in fact, there was a great

variety of form, and the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. It was rather the substance that

eluded me. Was there, I wondered, any substance at all? It did not occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was a

fool! Up cropped a rival hypothesis: suppose _I_ was! I inclined to give Soames the benefit of the doubt. I

had read "L'Apresmidi d'un faune" without extracting a glimmer of meaning; yet Mallarme, of course, was a

master. How was I to know that Soames wasn't another? There was a sort of music in his prose, not indeed,

arresting, but perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden, perhaps, with meanings as deep as Mallarme's own. I

And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had had a second meeting with him. This was

on an evening in January. Going into the aforesaid dominoroom, I had passed a table at which sat a pale

man with an open book before him. He had looked from his book to me, and I looked back over my shoulder

with a vague sense that I ought to have recognized him. I returned to pay my respects. After exchanging a

few words, I said with a glance to the open book, "I see I am interrupting you," and was about to pass on, but,

"I prefer,' Soames replied in his toneless voice, "to be interrupted," and I obeyed his gesture that I should sit

"Yes; things of this kind I read here," he answered, indicating the title of his book"The Poems of Shelley."

"Anything that you really"and I was going to say "admire?" But I cautiously left my sentence unfinished,

and was glad that I had done so, for he said with unwonted emphasis, "Anything secondrate."

"I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A deadly evenness. That's why I read

him here. The noise of this place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here." Soames took up the book and

glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames's laugh was a short, single, and mirthless sound from the

throat, unaccompanied by any movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "What a period!" he uttered,

I asked rather nervously if he didn't think Keats had more or less held his own against the drawbacks of time

and place. He admitted that there were "passages in Keats," but did not specify them. Of "the older men," as

he called them, he seemed to like only Milton. "Milton," he said, "wasn't sentimental." Also, "Milton had a

"You do? I've only been there once. I'm afraid I found it rather a depressing place. Itit seemed to sap one's

"It does. That's why I go there. The lower one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to great art. I live near the

"Usually Milton." He looked at me. "It was Milton," he certificatively added, "who converted me to

"Diabolism? Oh, yes? Really?" said I, with that vague discomfort and that intense desire to be polite which

"It's not exactly worship," he qualified, sipping his absinthe. "It's more a matter of trusting and encouraging."

"I see, yes. I had rather gathered from the preface to 'Negations' that you were aa Catholic."

But this profession he made in an almost cursory tone. I could see that what was upmost in his mind was the

fact that I had read "Negations." His pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. I felt as one who is about to be

examined viva voce on the very subject in which he is shakiest. I hastily asked him how soon his poems were

"No. I found a title at last. But I sha'n't tell you what it is," as though I had been so impertinent as to inquire.

"I am not sure that it wholly satisfies me. But it is the best I can find. It suggests something of the quality of

the poemsstrange growths, natural and wild, yet exquisite," he added, "and manyhued, and full of

I asked him what he thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort that was his laugh, and, "Baudelaire," he

said, "was a bourgeois malgre lui." France had had only one poetVillon; "and two thirds of Villon were

sheer journalism." Verlaine was "an epicier malgre lui." Altogether, rather to my surprise, he rated French

literature lower than English. There were "passages" in Villiers de l'IsleAdam. But, "I," he summed up,

I did not, when the time came, quite see that. I thought the author of "Fungoids" did, unconsciously of course,

owe something to the young Parisian decadents or to the young English ones who owed something to THEM.

I still think so. The little book, bought by me in Oxford, lies before me as I write. Its palegray buckram

cover and silver lettering have not worn well. Nor have its contents. Through these, with a melancholy

interest, I have again been looking. They are not much. But at the time of their publication I had a vague

suspicion that they MIGHT be. I suppose it is my capacity for faith, not poor Soames's work, that is weaker

There seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first and last lines of this. I tried, with bent brows,

to resolve the discord. But I did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in Soames's mind.

Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the craftsmanship, "rouged with rust' seemed to

me a fine stroke, and "nor not" instead of "and" had a curious felicity. I wondered who the "young woman"

was and what she had made of it all. I sadly suspect that Soames could not have made more of it than she. Yet

even now, if one doesn't try to make any sense at all of the poem, and reads it just for the sound, there is a

certain grace of cadence. Soames was an artist, in so far as he was anything, poor fellow!

It seemed to me, when first I read "Fungoids," that, oddly enough, the diabolistic side of him was the best.

Round and round the shutter'd Square I strolled with the Devil's arm in mine. No sound but the scrape of his

I scream'd, "I will race you, Master!" "What matter," he shriek'd, "tonight Which of us runs the faster?

Then I look'd him in the eyes And I laugh'd full shrill at the lie he told And the gnawing fear he would fain

There was, I felt, quite a swing about that first stanzaa joyous and rollicking note of comradeship. The

second was slightly hysterical, perhaps. But I liked the third, it was so bracingly unorthodox, even according

to the tenets of Soames's peculiar sect in the faith. Not much "trusting and encouraging" here! Soames

triumphantly exposing the devil as a liar, and laughing "full shrill," cut a quite heartening figure, I thought,

then! Now, in the light of what befell, none of his other poems depresses me so much as "Nocturne."

I looked out for what the metropolitan reviewers would have to say. They seemed to fall into two classes:

those who had little to say and those who had nothing. The second class was the larger, and the words of the

Strikes a note of modernity. . . . These tripping numbers."The Preston Telegraph."

was the only lure offered in advertisements by Soames's publisher. I had hoped that when next I met the poet

I could congratulate him on having made a stir, for I fancied he was not so sure of his intrinsic greatness as he

seemed. I was but able to say, rather coarsely, when next I did see him, that I hoped "Fungoids" was "selling

splendidly." He looked at me across his glass of absinthe and asked if I had bought a copy. His publisher had

"You don't suppose I CARE, do you?" he said, with something like a snarl. I disclaimed the notion. He added

that he was not a tradesman. I said mildly that I wasn't, either, and murmured that an artist who gave truly

new and great things to the world had always to wait long for recognition. He said he cared not a sou for

His moroseness might have alienated me if I had regarded myself as a nobody. But ah! hadn't both John Lane

and Aubrey Beardsley suggested that I should write an essay for the great new venture that was afoot"The

Yellow Book"? And hadn't Henry Harland, as editor, accepted my essay? And wasn't it to be in the very first

number? At Oxford I was still in statu pupillari. In London I regarded myself as very much indeed a graduate

nowone whom no Soames could ruffle. Partly to show off, partly in sheer goodwill, I told Soames he

ought to contribute to "The Yellow Book." He uttered from the throat a sound of scorn for that publication.

Nevertheless, I did, a day or two later, tentatively ask Harland if he knew anything of the work of a man

called Enoch Soames. Harland paused in the midst of his characteristic stride around the room, threw up his

hands toward the ceiling, and groaned aloud: he had often met "that absurd creature" in Paris, and this very

"He has an income. He's all right." Harland was the most joyous of men and most generous of critics, and he

hated to talk of anything about which he couldn't be enthusiastic. So I dropped the subject of Soames. The

news that Soames had an income did take the edge off solicitude. I learned afterward that he was the son of

an unsuccessful and deceased bookseller in Preston, but had inherited an annuity of three hundred pounds

from a married aunt, and had no surviving relatives of any kind. Materially, then, he was "all right." But there

was still a spiritual pathos about him, sharpened for me now by the possibility that even the praises of "The

Preston Telegraph" might not have been forthcoming had he not been the son of a Preston man He had a sort

of weak doggedness which I could not but admire. Neither he nor his work received the slightest

encouragement; but he persisted in behaving as a personage: always he kept his dingy little flag flying.

Wherever congregated the jeunes feroces of the arts, in whatever Soho restaurant they had just discovered, in

whatever musichall they were most frequently, there was Soames in the midst of them, or, rather, on the

fringe of them, a dim, but inevitable, figure. He never sought to propitiate his fellowwriters, never bated a

jot of his arrogance about his own work or of his contempt for theirs. To the painters he was respectful, even

humble; but for the poets and prosaists of "The Yellow Book" and later of "The Savoy" he had never a word

but of scorn. He wasn't resented. It didn't occur to anybody that he or his Catholic diabolism mattered. When,

in the autumn of '96, he brought out (at his own expense, this time) a third book, his last book, nobody said a

word for or against it. I meant, but forgot, to buy it. I never saw it, and am ashamed to say I don't even

remember what it was called. But I did, at the time of its publication, say to Rothenstein that I thought poor

old Soames was really a rather tragic figure, and that I believed he would literally die for want of recognition.

Rothenstein scoffed. He said I was trying to get credit for a kind heart which I didn't possess; and perhaps this

was so. But at the private view of the New English Art Club, a few weeks later, I beheld a pastel portrait of

"Enoch Soames, Esq." It was very like him, and very like Rothenstein to have done it. Soames was standing

near it, in his soft hat and his waterproof cape, all through the afternoon. Anybody who knew him would have

recognized the portrait at a glance, but nobody who didn't know him would have recognized the portrait from

its bystander: it "existed" so much more than he; it was bound to. Also, it had not that expression of faint

happiness which on that day was discernible, yes, in Soames's countenance. Fame had breathed on him.

Twice again in the course of the month I went to the New English, and on both occasions Soames himself

was on view there. Looking back, I regard the close of that exhibition as having been virtually the close of his

career. He had felt the breath of Fame against his cheekso late, for such a little while; and at its withdrawal

he gave in, gave up, gave out. He, who had never looked strong or well, looked ghastly nowa shadow of

the shade he had once been. He still frequented the dominoroom, but having lost all wish to excite curiosity,

he no longer read books there. "You read only at the museum now?" I asked, with attempted cheerfulness. He

said he never went there now. "No absinthe there," he muttered. It was the sort of thing that in old days he

would have said for effect; but it carried conviction now. Absinthe, erst but a point in the "personality" he had

striven so hard to build up, was solace and necessity now. He no longer called it "la sorciere glauque." He had

shed away all his French phrases. He had become a plain, unvarnished Preston man.

Failure, if it be a plain, unvarnished, complete failure, and even though it be a squalid failure, has always a

certain dignity. I avoided Soames because he made me feel rather vulgar. John Lane had published, by this

time, two little books of mine, and they had had a pleasant little success of esteem. I was aslight, but

definite "personality." Frank Harris had engaged me to kick up my heels in "The Saturday Review," Alfred

Harmsworth was letting me do likewise in "The Daily Mail." I was just what Soames wasn't. And he shamed

my gloss. Had I known that he really and firmly believed in the greatness of what he as an artist had

achieved, I might not have shunned him. No man who hasn't lost his vanity can be held to have altogether

failed. Soames's dignity was an illusion of mine. One day, in the first week of June, 1897, that illusion went.

I had been out most of the morning and, as it was too late to reach home in time for luncheon, I sought the

Vingtieme. This little placeRestaurant du Vingtieme Siecle, to give it its full titlehad been discovered in

'96 by the poets and prosaists, but had now been more or less abandoned in favor of some later find. I don't

think it lived long enough to justify its name; but at that time there it still was, in Greek Street, a few doors

from Soho Square, and almost opposite to that house where, in the first years of the century, a little girl, and

with her a boy named De Quincey, made nightly encampment in darkness and hunger among dust and rats

and old legal parchments. The Vingtieme was but a small whitewashed room, leading out into the street at

one end and into a kitchen at the other. The proprietor and cook was a Frenchman, known to us as Monsieur

Vingtieme; the waiters were his two daughters, Rose and Berthe; and the food, according to faith, was good.

The tables were so narrow and were set so close together that there was space for twelve of them, six jutting

Only the two nearest to the door, as I went in, were occupied. On one side sat a tall, flashy, rather

Mephistophelian man whom I had seen from time to time in the dominoroom and elsewhere. On the other

side sat Soames. They made a queer contrast in that sunlit room, Soames sitting haggard in that hat and cape,

which nowhere at any season had I seen him doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whom I

more than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, a conjurer, or the head of a private detective

agency. I was sure Soames didn't want my company; but I asked, as it would have seemed brutal not to,

whether I might join him, and took the chair opposite to his. He was smoking a cigarette, with an untasted

salmi of something on his plate and a halfempty bottle of Sauterne before him, and he was quite silent. I

said that the preparations for the Jubilee made London impossible. (I rather liked them, really.) I professed a

wish to go right away till the whole thing was over. In vain did I attune myself to his gloom. He seemed not

to hear me or even to see me. I felt that his behavior made me ridiculous in the eyes of the other man. The

gangway between the two rows of tables at the Vingtieme was hardly more than two feet wide (Rose and

Berthe, in their ministrations, had always to edge past each other, quarreling in whispers as they did so), and

any one at the table abreast of yours was virtually at yours. I thought our neighbor was amused at my failure

to interest Soames, and so, as I could not explain to him that my insistence was merely charitable, I became

silent. Without turning my head, I had him well within my range of vision. I hoped I looked less vulgar than

he in contrast with Soames. I was sure he was not an Englishman, but what WAS his nationality? Though his

jetblack hair was en brosse, I did not think he was French. To Berthe, who waited on him, he spoke French

fluently, but with a hardly native idiom and accent. I gathered that this was his first visit to the Vingtieme; but

Berthe was offhand in her manner to him: he had not made a good impression. His eyes were handsome, but,

like the Vingtieme's tables, too narrow and set too close together. His nose was predatory, and the points of

his mustache, waxed up behind his nostrils, gave a fixity to his smile. Decidedly, he was sinister. And my

sense of discomfort in his presence was intensified by the scarlet waistcoat which tightly, and so

unseasonably in June, sheathed his ample chest. This waistcoat wasn't wrong merely because of the heat,

either. It was somehow all wrong in itself. It wouldn't have done on Christmas morning. It would have struck

a jarring note at the first night of "Hernani." I was trying to account for its wrongness when Soames suddenly

and strangely broke silence. "A hundred years hence!" he murmured, as in a trance.

"We shall not be here. No," he droned, "but the museum will still be just where it is. And the readingroom

just where it is. And people will be able to go and read there." He inhaled sharply, and a spasm as of actual

I wondered what train of thought poor Soames had been following. He did not enlighten me when he said,

"FAILURE?" I said heartily. "Failure?" I repeated vaguely. "Neglectyes, perhaps; but that's quite another

matter. Of course you haven't beenappreciated. But what, then? Any artist whowho gives" What I

wanted to say was, "Any artist who gives truly new and great things to the world has always to wait long for

recognition"; but the flattery would not out: in the face of his miserya misery so genuine and so

And then he said them for me. I flushed. "That's what you were going to say, isn't it?" he asked.

"It's what you said to me three years ago, when 'Fungoids' was published." I flushed the more. I need not have

flushed at all. "It's the only important thing I ever heard you say," he continued. "And I've never forgotten it.

It's a true thing. It's a horrible truth. Butd'you remember what I answered? I said, 'I don't care a sou for

recognition.' And you believed me. You've gone on believing I'm above that sort of thing. You're shallow.

What should YOU know of the feelings of a man like me? You imagine that a great artist's faith in himself

and in the verdict of posterity is enough to keep him happy. You've never guessed at the bitterness and

loneliness, the"his voice broke; but presently he resumed, speaking with a force that I had never known in

him. "Posterity! What use is it to ME? A dead man doesn't know that people are visiting his grave, visiting

his birthplace, putting up tablets to him, unveiling statues of him. A dead man can't read the books that are

written about him. A hundred years hence! Think of it! If I could come back to life THENjust for a few

hoursand go to the readingroom and READ! Or, better still, if I could be projected now, at this moment,

into that future, into that readingroom, just for this one afternoon! I'd sell myself body and soul to the devil

for that! Think of the pages and pages in the catalogue: 'Soames, Enoch' endlesslyendless editions,

commentaries, prolegomena, biographies" But here he was interrupted by a sudden loud crack of the chair

at the next table. Our neighbor had half risen from his place. He was leaning toward us, apologetically

"Excusepermit me," he said softly. "I have been unable not to hear. Might I take a liberty? In this little

I could but signify our acquiescence. Berthe had appeared at the kitchen door, thinking the stranger wanted

his bill. He waved her away with his cigar, and in another moment had seated himself beside me,

"Though not an Englishman," he explained, "I know my London well, Mr. Soames. Your name and

fameMr. Beerbohm's, toovery known to me. Your point is, who am _I_?" He glanced quickly over his

I couldn't help it; I laughed. I tried not to, I knew there was nothing to laugh at, my rudeness shamed me;

butI laughed with increasing volume. The devil's quiet dignity, the surprise and disgust of his raised

eyebrows, did but the more dissolve me. I rocked to and fro; I lay back aching; I behaved deplorably.

"I am a gentleman, and," he said with intense emphasis, "I thought I was in the company of GENTLEMEN."

"Curious, nicht wahr?" I heard him say to Soames. "There is a type of person to whom the very mention of

my name isoh, so awfullyfunny! In your theaters the dullest comedien needs only to say 'The devil!' and

right away they give him 'the loud laugh what speaks the vacant mind.' Is it not so?"

I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He accepted them, but coldly, and readdressed himself

"I am a man of business," he said, "and always I would put things through 'right now,' as they say in the

States. You are a poet. Les affairesyou detest them. So be it. But with me you will deal, eh? What you

Soames had not moved except to light a fresh cigarette. He sat crouched forward, with his elbows squared on

the table, and his head just above the level of his hands, staring up at the devil.

"It will be the more pleasant, our little deal," the devil went on, "because you areI mistake not?a

"You wish," he resumed, "to visit nowthis afternoon aseveris the readingroom of the British

Museum, yes? But of a hundred years hence, yes? Parfaitement. Timean illusion. Past and futurethey

are as ever present as the present, or at any rate only what you call 'just round the corner.' I switch you on to

any date. I project youpouf! You wish to be in the readingroom just as it will be on the afternoon of June

3, 1997? You wish to find yourself standing in that room, just past the swingdoors, this very minute, yes?

The devil looked at his watch. "Ten past two," he said. "Closingtime in summer same then as nowseven

o'clock. That will give you almost five hours. At seven o'clockpouf!you find yourself again here, sitting

at this table. I am dining tonight dans le mondedans le higlif. That concludes my present visit to your

The devil had made as though to stretch forth his hand across the table, but he paused in his gesture.

"A hundred years hence, as now," he smiled, "no smoking allowed in the readingroom. You would better

Soames removed the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into his glass of Sauterne.

"Soames!" again I cried. "Can't you"but the devil had now stretched forth his hand across the table. He

brought it slowly down on the tablecloth. Soames's chair was empty. His cigarette floated sodden in his

For a few moments the devil let his hand rest where it lay, gazing at me out of the corners of his eyes,

A shudder shook me. With an effort I controlled myself and rose from my chair. "Very clever," I said

condescendingly. "But'The Time Machine' is a delightful book, don't you think? So entirely original!"

"You are pleased to sneer," said the devil, who had also risen, "but it is one thing to write about an impossible

machine; it is a quite other thing to be a supernatural power." All the same, I had scored.

Berthe had come forth at the sound of our rising. I explained to her that Mr. Soames had been called away,

and that both he and I would be dining here. It was not until I was out in the open air that I began to feel

giddy. I have but the haziest recollection of what I did, where I wandered, in the glaring sunshine of that

endless afternoon. I remember the sound of carpenters' hammers all along Piccadilly and the bare chaotic

look of the halferected "stands." Was it in the Green Park or in Kensington Gardens or WHERE was it that I

sat on a chair beneath a tree, trying to read an evening paper? There was a phrase in the leading article that

went on repeating itself in my fagged mind: "Little is hidden from this August Lady full of the garnered

wisdom of sixty years of Sovereignty." I remember wildly conceiving a letter (to reach Windsor by an

express messenger told to await answer): "Madam: Well knowing that your Majesty is full of the garnered

wisdom of sixty years of Sovereignty, I venture to ask your advice in the following delicate matter. Mr.

Enoch Soames, whose poems you may or may not know" Was there NO way of helping him, saving him?

A bargain was a bargain, and I was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling out of a reasonable

obligation. I wouldn't have lifted a little finger to save Faust. But poor Soames! Doomed to pay without

respite an eternal price for nothing but a fruitless search and a bitter disillusioning.

Odd and uncanny it seemed to me that he, Soames, in the flesh, in the waterproof cape, was at this moment

living in the last decade of the next century, poring over books not yet written, and seeing and seen by men

not yet born. Uncannier and odder still that tonight and evermore he would be in hell. Assuredly, truth was

Endless that afternoon was. Almost I wished I had gone with Soames, not, indeed, to stay in the

readingroom, but to sally forth for a brisk sightseeing walk around a new London. I wandered restlessly

out of the park I had sat in. Vainly I tried to imagine myself an ardent tourist from the eighteenth century.

Intolerable was the strain of the slowpassing and empty minutes. Long before seven o'clock I was back at

I sat there just where I had sat for luncheon. Air came in listlessly through the open door behind me. Now and

again Rose or Berthe appeared for a moment. I had told them I would not order any dinner till Mr. Soames

came. A hurdygurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noise of a quarrel between some Frenchmen

farther up the street. Whenever the tune was changed I heard the quarrel still raging. I had bought another

evening paper on my way. I unfolded it. My eyes gazed ever away from it to the clock over the kitchen door.

Five minutes now to the hour! I remembered that clocks in restaurants are kept five minutes fast. I

concentrated my eyes on the paper. I vowed I would not look away from it again. I held it upright, at its full

width, close to my face, so that I had no view of anything but it. Rather a tremulous sheet? Only because of

My arms gradually became stiff; they ached; but I could not drop themnow. I had a suspicion, I had a

certainty. Well, what, then? What else had I come for? Yet I held tight that barrier of newspaper. Only the

sound of Berthe's brisk footstep from the kitchen enabled me, forced me, to drop it, and to utter:

"He's onlytired." I asked her to get some wineBurgundyand whatever food might be ready. Soames

sat crouched forward against the table exactly as when last I had seen him. It was as though he had never

movedhe who had moved so unimaginably far. Once or twice in the afternoon it had for an instant

occurred to me that perhaps his journey was not to be fruitless, that perhaps we had all been wrong in our

estimate of the works of Enoch Soames. That we had been horribly right was horribly clear from the look of

him. But, "Don't be discouraged," I falteringly said. "Perhaps it's only that youdidn't leave enough time.

"And nownow for the more immediate future! Where are you going to hide? How would it be if you

caught the Paris express from Charing Cross? Almost an hour to spare. Don't go on to Paris. Stop at Calais.

"It's like my luck," he said, "to spend my last hours on earth with an ass." But I was not offended. "And a

treacherous ass," he strangely added, tossing across to me a crumpled bit of paper which he had been holding

in his hand. I glanced at the writing on itsome sort of gibberish, apparently. I laid it impatiently aside.

"Come, Soames, pull yourself together! This isn't a mere matter of life or death. It's a question of eternal

torment, mind you! You don't mean to say you're going to wait limply here till the devil comes to fetch you."

"Come! This is 'trusting and encouraging' with a vengeance! This is diabolism run mad!" I filled his glass

"He's a vulgarian, he's a swell mobsman, he's the sort of man who hangs about the corridors of trains going

to the Riviera and steals ladies' jewelcases. Imagine eternal torment presided over by HIM!"

Again and again I filled his glass, and always, mechanically, he emptied it; but the wine kindled no spark of

enterprise in him. He did not eat, and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any dash for

freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture certain. But better anything than this passive,

meek, miserable waiting. I told Soames that for the honor of the human race he ought to make some show of

resistance. He asked what the human race had ever done for him. "Besides," he said, "can't you understand

that I'm in his power? You saw him touch me, didn't you? There's an end of it. I've no will. I'm sealed."

I made a gesture of despair. He went on repeating the word "sealed." I began to realize that the wine had

clouded his brain. No wonder! Foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. I urged him to eat, at

any rate, some bread. It was maddening to think that he, who had so much to tell, might tell nothing. "How

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Soames, and I make all possible allowances; but what earthly right have you to

"I don't know," he said. "I had some reason, I know. I'll try to remember. He sat plunged in thought.

"That's right. Try to remember everything. Eat a little more bread. What did the readingroom look like?"

"A sort of uniform?" He nodded. "With a number on it perhapsa number on a large disk of metal strapped

round the left arm? D. K. F. 78,910that sort of thing?" It was even so. "And all of them, men and women

alike, looking very well cared for? Very Utopian, and smelling rather strongly of carbolic, and all of them

quite hairless?" I was right every time. Soames was only not sure whether the men and women were hairless

"They stared at ME, I can tell you. I attracted a great deal of attention." At last he had done that! "I think I

rather scared them. They moved away whenever I came near. They followed me about, at a distance,

wherever I went. The men at the round desk in the middle seemed to have a sort of panic whenever I went to

Well, he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course,to the S volumes,and had stood long before

SNSOF, unable to take this volume out of the shelf because his heart was beating so. At first, he said, he

wasn't disappointed; he only thought there was some new arrangement. He went to the middle desk and asked

where the catalogue of twentiethcentury books was kept. He gathered that there was still only one catalogue.

Again he looked up his name, stared at the three little pasted slips he had known so well. Then he went and

"And then," he droned, "I looked up the 'Dictionary of National Biography,' and some encyclopedias. I went

back to the middle desk and asked what was the best modern book on late nineteenthcentury literature. They

told me Mr. T. K. Nupton's book was considered the best. I looked it up in the catalogue and filled in a form

for it. It was brought to me. My name wasn't in the index, butyes!" he said with a sudden change of tone,

I, too, had forgotten that cryptic screed. I found it fallen on the floor, and handed it to him.

"I found myself glancing through Nupton's book," he resumed. "Not very easy reading. Some sort of phonetic

"The proper names seemed all to be spelt in the old way. But for that I mightn't have noticed my own name."

"I thought I should find you waiting here tonight, so I took the trouble to copy out the passage. Read it."

I snatched the paper. Soames's handwriting was characteristically dim. It and the noisome spelling and my

The document lies before me at this moment. Strange that the words I here copy out for you were copied out

From page 234 of "Inglish Littracher 18901900" bi T. K. Nupton, publishd bi th Stait, 1992.

Fr egzarmpl, a riter ov th time, naimed Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive in th twentith senchri, rote a stauri

in wich e pautraid an immajnari karrakter kauld "Enoch Soames"a thurdrait poit hoo beleevz imself a

grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud

sattire, but not without vallu az showing hou seriusli the yung men ov th aiteenninetiz took themselvz. Nou

that th littreri profeshn haz bin auganized az a departmnt of publik servis, our riters hav found their levvl an

hav lernt ter doo their duti without thort ov th morro. "Th laibrer iz werthi ov hiz hire" an that iz aul. Thank

I found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which I commend to my reader) I was able to master

them little by little. The clearer they became, the greater was my bewilderment, my distress and horror. The

whole thing was a nightmare. Afar, the great grisly background of what was in store for the poor dear art of

letters; here, at the table, fixing on me a gaze that made me hot all over, the poor fellow whomwhom

evidentlybut no: whatever downgrade my character might take in coming years, I should never be such a

Again I examined the screed. "Immajnari." But here Soames was, no more imaginary, alas! than I. And

"labud"what on earth was that? (To this day I have never made out that word.) "It's all verybaffling," I

"Well, then, it's this wretched Nupton who must have mademust be going to makesome idiotic mistake.

Look here Soames, you know me better than to suppose that I After all, the name Max Beerbohm is not at

all an uncommon one, and there must be several Enoch Soameses running around, or, rather, Enoch Soames

is a name that might occur to any one writing a story. And I don't write stories; I'm an essayist, an observer, a

"I see the whole thing," said Soames, quietly. And he added, with a touch of his old manner, but with more

I accepted that suggestion very promptly. I returned straight to the more immediate future. I spent most of the

long evening in renewed appeals to Soames to come away and seek refuge somewhere. I remember saying at

last that if indeed I was destined to write about him, the supposed "stauri" had better have at least a happy

"But," I urged more hopefully than I felt, "an ending that can be avoided ISN'T inevitable."

"You aren't an artist," he rasped. "And you're so hopelessly not an artist that, so far from being able to

imagine a thing and make it seem true, you're going to make even a true thing seem as if you'd made it up.

I protested that the miserable bungler was not I, was not going to be I, but T. K. Nupton; and we had a rather

heated argument, in the thick of which it suddenly seemed to me that Soames saw he was in the wrong: he

had quite physically cowered. But I wondered whyand now I guessed with a cold throb just whyhe

I managed to turn in my chair and to say, not without a semblance of lightness, "Aha, come in!" Dread was

indeed rather blunted in me by his looking so absurdly like a villain in a melodrama. The sheen of his tilted

hat and of his shirtfront, the repeated twists he was giving to his mustache, and most of all the magnificence

He was at our table in a stride. "I am sorry," he sneered witheringly, "to break up your pleasant party, but"

"You don't; you complete it," I assured him. "Mr. Soames and I want to have a little talk with you. Won't you

sit? Mr. Soames got nothing, frankly nothing, by his journey this afternoon. We don't wish to say that the

whole thing was a swindle, a common swindle. On the contrary, we believe you meant well. But of course the

The devil gave no verbal answer. He merely looked at Soames and pointed with rigid forefinger to the door.

Soames was wretchedly rising from his chair when, with a desperate, quick gesture, I swept together two

dinnerknives that were on the table, and laid their blades across each other. The devil stepped sharp back

"Soames," he said as to an underling, but without turning his face, "put those knives straight!"

With an inhibitive gesture to my friend, "Mr. Soames," I said emphatically to the devil, "is a Catholic

diabolist"; but my poor friend did the devil's bidding, not mine; and now, with his master's eyes again fixed

on him, he arose, he shuffled past me. I tried to speak. It was he that spoke. "Try," was the prayer he threw

back at me as the devil pushed him roughly out through the door"TRY to make them know that I did

In another instant I, too, was through that door. I stood staring all ways, up the street, across it, down it. There

Dazed, I stood there. Dazed, I turned back at length into the little room, and I suppose I paid Berthe or Rose

for my dinner and luncheon and for Soames's; I hope so, for I never went to the Vingtieme again. Ever since

that night I have avoided Greek Street altogether. And for years I did not set foot even in Soho Square,

because on that same night it was there that I paced and loitered, long and long, with some such dull sense of

hope as a man has in not straying far from the place where he has lost something. "Round and round the

shutter'd Square"that line came back to me on my lonely beat, and with it the whole stanza, ringing in my

brain and bearing in on me how tragically different from the happy scene imagined by him was the poet's

actual experience of that prince in whom of all princes we should put not our trust!

But strange how the mind of an essayist, be it never so stricken, roves and ranges! I remember pausing before

a wide doorstep and wondering if perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and

faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford Street, the "stonyhearted stepmother"

of them both, and came back bearing that "glass of port wine and spices" but for which he might, so he

thought, actually have died. Was this the very doorstep that the old De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I

pondered Ann's fate, the cause of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy friend; and presently I

And for myself, too, I began to be troubled. What had I better do? Would there be a hue and

cry"Mysterious Disappearance of an Author," and all that? He had last been seen lunching and dining in

my company. Hadn't I better get a hansom and drive straight to Scotland Yard? They would think I was a

lunatic. After all, I reassured myself, London was a very large place, and one very dim figure might easily

drop out of it unobserved, now especially, in the blinding glare of the near Jubilee. Better say nothing at all, I

AND I was right. Soames's disappearance made no stir at all. He was utterly forgotten before any one, so far

as I am aware, noticed that he was no longer hanging around. Now and again some poet or prosaist may have

said to another, "What has become of that man Soames?" but I never heard any such question asked. As for

his landlady in Dyott Street, no doubt he had paid her weekly, and what possessions he may have had in his

rooms were enough to save her from fretting. The solicitor through whom he was paid his annuity may be

presumed to have made inquiries, but no echo of these resounded. There was something rather ghastly to me

in the general unconsciousness that Soames had existed, and more than once I caught myself wondering

whether Nupton, that babe unborn, were going to be right in thinking him a figment of my brain.

In that extract from Nupton's repulsive book there is one point which perhaps puzzles you. How is it that the

author, though I have here mentioned him by name and have quoted the exact words he is going to write, is

not going to grasp the obvious corollary that I have invented nothing? The answer can be only this: Nupton

will not have read the later passages of this memoir. Such lack of thoroughness is a serious fault in any one

who undertakes to do scholar's work. And I hope these words will meet the eye of some contemporary rival

I like to think that some time between 1992 and 1997 somebody will have looked up this memoir, and will

have forced on the world his inevitable and startling conclusions. And I have reason for believing that this

will be so. You realize that the readingroom into which Soames was projected by the devil was in all

respects precisely as it will be on the afternoon of June 3, 1997. You realize, therefore, that on that afternoon,

when it comes round, there the selfsame crowd will be, and there Soames will be, punctually, he and they

doing precisely what they did before. Recall now Soames's account of the sensation he made. You may say

that the mere difference of his costume was enough to make him sensational in that uniformed crowd. You

wouldn't say so if you had ever seen him, and I assure you that in no period would Soames be anything but

dim. The fact that people are going to stare at him and follow him around and seem afraid of him, can be

explained only on the hypothesis that they will somehow have been prepared for his ghostly visitation. They

will have been awfully waiting to see whether he really would come. And when he does come the effect will

An authentic, guaranteed, proved ghost, but; only a ghost, alas! Only that. In his first visit Soames was a

creature of flesh and blood, whereas the creatures among whom he was projected were but ghosts, I take

itsolid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts, in a building that was itself an illusion.

Next time that building and those creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but the semblance. I

wish I could think him destined to revisit the world actually, physically, consciously. I wish he had this one

brief escape, this one small treat, to look forward to. I never forget him for long. He is where he is and

forever. The more rigid moralists among you may say he has only himself to blame. For my part, I think he

has been very hardly used. It is well that vanity should be chastened; and Enoch Soames's vanity was, I

admit, above the average, and called for special treatment. But there was no need for vindictiveness. You say

he contracted to pay the price he is paying. Yes; but I maintain that he was induced to do so by fraud. Well

informed in all things, the devil must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to futurity.

The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of it, the more detestable the devil seems to me.

Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that day at the Vingtieme. Only once,

however, have I seen him at close quarters. This was a couple of years ago, in Paris. I was walking one

afternoon along the rue d'Antin, and I saw him advancing from the opposite direction, overdressed as ever,

and swinging an ebony cane and altogether behaving as though the whole pavement belonged to him. At

thought of Enoch Soames and the myriads of other sufferers eternally in this brute's dominion, a great cold

wrath filled me, and I drew myself up to my full height. Butwell, one is so used to nodding and smiling in

the street to anybody whom one knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself; to prevent it

requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. I was miserably aware, as I passed the devil, that I

nodded and smiled to him. And my shame was the deeper and hotter because he, if you please, stared straight

To be cut, deliberately cut, by HIM! I was, I still am, furious at having had that happen to me.