Not George Washington — an Autobiographical Novel Read online

  CHAPTER 1

  THE INVASION OF BOHEMIA

  It is curious to reflect that my marriage (which takes place todayweek) destroys once and for all my life's ambition. I have never wonthrough to the goal I longed for, and now I never shall.

  Ever since I can remember I have yearned to be known as a Bohemian.That was my ambition. I have ceased to struggle now. Married Bohemianslive in Oakley Street, King's Road, Chelsea. We are to rent a house inHalkett Place.

  Three years have passed since the excellent, but unsteady, steamship_Ibex_ brought me from Guernsey to Southampton. It was a sleepy,hot, and sticky wreck that answered to the name of James OrlebarCloyster that morning; but I had my first youth and forty pounds, sothat soap and water, followed by coffee and an omelette, soon restoredme.

  The journey to Waterloo gave me opportunity for tobacco and reflection.

  What chiefly exercised me, I remember, was the problem whether it waspossible to be a Bohemian, and at the same time to be in love. BohemiaI looked on as a region where one became inevitably entangled withwomen of unquestionable charm, but doubtful morality. There were supperparties.... Festive gatherings in the old studio.... Babette....Lucille.... The artists' ball.... Were these things possible for aman with an honest, earnest, whole-hearted affection?

  The problem engaged me tensely till my ticket was collected atVauxhall. Just there the solution came. I would be a Bohemian, but amisogynist. People would say, "Dear old Jimmy Cloyster. How he hateswomen!" It would add to my character a pleasant touch of dignity andreserve which would rather accentuate my otherwise irresponsible way ofliving.

  Little did the good Bohemians of the metropolis know how keen a recruitthe boat train was bringing to them.

  * * * * *

  As a _pied-a-terre_ I selected a cheap and dingy hotel in YorkStreet, and from this base I determined to locate my proper sphere.

  Chelsea was the first place that occurred to me. There was St. John'sWood, of course, but that was such a long way off. Chelsea wascomparatively near to the heart of things, and I had heard that onemight find there artistic people whose hand-to-mouth, Saturnalianexistence was redolent of that exquisite gaiety which so attracted myown casual temperament.

  Sallying out next morning into the brilliant sunshine and the dustyrattle of York Street, I felt a sense of elation at the thought thatthe time for action had come. I was in London. London! The home of thefragrant motor-omnibus and the night-blooming Hooligan. London, thebattlefield of the literary aspirant since Caxton invented the printingpress. It seemed to me, as I walked firmly across Westminster Bridge,that Margie gazed at me with the lovelight in her eyes, and that aspecies of amorous telepathy from Guernsey was girding me for thefight.

  Manresa Road I had once heard mentioned as being the heart of BohemianChelsea. To Manresa Road, accordingly, I went, by way of St. James'sPark, Buckingham Palace Road, and Lower Sloane Street. Thence to SloaneSquare. Here I paused, for I knew that I had reached the last outpostof respectable, inartistic London.

  "How sudden," I soliloquised, "is the change. Here I am in SloaneSquare, regular, business-like, and unimaginative; while, a few hundredyards away, King's Road leads me into the very midst of genius,starvation, and possibly Free Love."

  Sloane Square, indeed, gave me the impression, not so much of a suburbas of the suburban portion of a great London railway terminus. It waspositively pretty. People were shopping with comparative leisure,omnibus horses were being rubbed down and watered on the west side ofthe Square, out of the way of the main stream of traffic. A postman,clearing the letter-box at the office, stopped his work momentarily toread the contents of a postcard. For the moment I understood Caesar'sfeelings on the brink of the Rubicon, and the emotions of Cortes "whenwith eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific." I was on the threshold ofgreat events. Behind me was orthodox London; before me the unknown.

  It was distinctly a Caesarian glance, full of deliberate revolt, that Ibestowed upon the street called Sloane; that clean, orderlythoroughfare which leads to Knightsbridge, and thence either to therespectabilities of Kensington or the plush of Piccadilly.

  Setting my hat at a wild angle, I stepped with a touch of_abandon_ along the King's Road to meet the charming, impoverishedartists whom our country refuses to recognise.

  My first glimpse of the Manresa Road was, I confess, a completedisappointment. Never was Bohemianism more handicapped by its settingthan that of Chelsea, if the Manresa Road was to be taken as acriterion. Along the uninviting uniformity of this street no trace ofunorthodoxy was to be seen. There came no merry, roystering laughterfrom attic windows. No talented figures of idle geniuses fetched pintsof beer from the public-house at the corner. No one dressed in anancient ulster and a battered straw hat and puffing enormous clouds ofblue smoke from a treasured clay pipe gazed philosophically into spacefrom a doorway. In point of fact, save for a most conventionalbutcher-boy, I was alone in the street.

  Then the explanation flashed upon me. I had been seen approaching. Theword had been passed round. A stranger! The clique resents intrusion.It lies hid. These gay fellows see me all the time, and are secretlyamused. But they do not know with whom they have to deal. I have cometo join them, and join them I will. I am not easily beaten. I willoutlast them. The joke shall be eventually against them, at someeccentric supper. I shall chaff them about how they tried to elude me,and failed.

  The hours passed. Still no Bohemians. I began to grow hungry. I sprangon to a passing 'bus. It took me to Victoria. I lunched at theShakespeare Hotel, smoked a pipe, and went out into the sunlight again.It had occurred to me that night was perhaps the best time for trappingmy shy quarry. Possibly the revels did not begin in Manresa Road tilldarkness had fallen. I spent the afternoon and evening in the Park,dined at Lyons' Popular Cafe (it must be remembered that I was not yeta Bohemian, and consequently owed no deference to the traditions of theorder); and returned at nine o'clock to the Manresa Road. Once more Idrew blank. A barrel-organ played cake-walk airs in the middle of theroad, but it played to an invisible audience. No bearded men dancedcan-cans around it, shouting merry jests to one another. Solitudereigned.

  I wait. The duel continues. What grim determination, what perseverancecan these Bohemians put into a mad jest! I find myself thinking howmuch better it would be were they to apply to their Art the sameearnestness and fixity of purpose which they squander on a practicaljoke.

  Evening fell. Blinds began to be drawn down. Lamps were lit behindthem, one by one. Despair was gnawing at my heart, but still I waited.

  Then, just as I was about to retire defeated, I was arrested by theappearance of a house numbered 93A.

  At the first-floor window sat a man. He was writing. I could see hisprofile, his long untidy hair. I understood in a moment. This was noordinary writer. He was one of those Bohemians whose wit had beenexercised upon me so successfully. He was a literary man, and though heenjoyed the sport as much as any of the others he was under theabsolute necessity of writing his copy up to time. Unobserved by hisgay comrades, he had slipped away to his work. They were still watchingme; but he, probably owing to a contract with some journal, was obligedto give up his share in their merriment and toil with his pen.

  His pen fascinated me. I leaned against the railings of the houseopposite, enthralled. Ever and anon he seemed to be consulting one orother of the books of reference piled up on each side of him. Doubtlesshe was preparing a scholarly column for a daily paper. Presently aprinter's devil would arrive, clamouring for his "copy." I knew exactlythe sort of thing that happened. I had read about it in novels.

  How unerring is instinct, if properly cultivated. Hardly had the clocksstruck twelve when the emissaries--there were two of them, which showedthe importance of their errand--walked briskly to No. 93A, and knockedat the door.

  The writer heard the knock. He rose hurriedly, and began to collect hispapers. Meanwhile, the knocking had been answered from within by theshooting of bolts, noises that were followed by the apparition of afemale head.

  A few brief questions and the emissaries entered. A pause.

  The litterateur is warning the menials that their charge is sacred;that the sheets he has produced are impossible to replace. High words.Abrupt re-opening of the front door. Struggling humanity projected onto the pavement. Three persons--my scribe in the middle, an emissary oneither side--stagger strangely past me. The scribe enters the purplenight only under the stony compulsion of the emissaries.

  What does this mean?

  I have it. The emissaries have become over-anxious. They dare not facethe responsibility of conveying the priceless copy to Fleet Street.They have completely lost their nerve. They insist upon the authoraccompanying them to see with his own eyes that all is well. They donot wish Posterity to hand their names down to eternal infamy as "themen who lost Blank's manuscript."

  So, greatly against his will, he is dragged off.

  My vigil is rewarded. No. 93A harbours a Bohemian. Let it be inhabitedalso by me.

  I stepped across, and rang the bell.

  The answer was a piercing scream.

  "Ah, ha!" I said to myself complacently, "there are more Bohemians thanone, then, in this house."

  The female head again appeared.

  "Not another? Oh, sir, say there ain't another wanted," said the headin a passionate Cockney accent.

  "That is precisely what there is," I replied. "I want----"

  "What for?"

  "For something moderate."

  "Well, that's a comfort in a wiy. Which of 'em is it you want? Thefirst-floor back?"

  "I have no doubt the first-floor back would do quite well."

  My words had a curious effect. She scrutinised me suspiciously.

  "Ho!" she said, with a
sniff; "you don't seem to care much which it isyou get."

  "I don't," I said, "not particularly."

  "Look 'ere," she exclaimed, "you jest 'op it. See? I don't want none ofyour 'arf-larks here, and, what's more, I won't 'ave 'em. I don'tbelieve you're a copper at all."

  "I'm not. Far from it."

  "Then what d'yer mean coming 'ere saying you want my first-floor back?"

  "But I do. Or any other room, if that is occupied."

  "'Ow! _Room_? Why didn't yer siy so? You'll pawdon me, sir, ifI've said anything 'asty-like. I thought--but my mistake."

  "Not at all. Can you let me have a room? I notice that the gentlemanwhom I have just seen----"

  She cut me short. I was about to explain that I was a Bohemian, too.

  "'E's gorn for a stroll, sir. I expec' him back every moment. 'E'sforgot 'is latchkey. Thet's why I'm sitting up for 'im. Mrs. Driver myname is, sir. That's my name, and well known in the neighbour'ood."

  Mrs. Driver spoke earnestly, but breathlessly.

  "I do not contemplate asking you, Mrs. Driver, to give me theapartments already engaged by the literary gentleman----"

  "Yes, sir," she interpolated, "that's wot 'e wos, I mean is. A literarygent."

  "But have you not another room vacant?"

  "The second-floor back, sir. Very comfortable, nice room, sir. Shady inthe morning, and gets the setting sun."

  Had the meteorological conditions been adverse to the point ofmalignancy, I should have closed with her terms. Simple agreements wereratified then and there by the light of a candle in the passage, and Ileft the house, promising to "come in" in the course of the followingafternoon.