Peter Whiffle/Chapter 3
If the reader has been led to expect a chapter devoted to an account of Mary Garden in Aphrodite, he will be disappointed. I did not see Mary Garden that evening, nor for many evenings thereafter, and I do not remember, indeed, that Peter Whiffle ever referred to her again. We dined at a quiet little restaurant, Boislaive by name, near the Folies-Bergère. The interior, as bare of decoration as are most such interiors in Paris, where the food and wines are given more consideration than the mural paintings, was no larger than that of a small shop. My companion led me straight to a tiny winding staircase in one corner, which we ascended, and presently we found ourselves in a private room, with three tables in it, to be sure, but two of these remained unoccupied. We began our dinner with escargots à la bordelaise, which I was eating for the first time, but I have never been squeamish about novel food. A man with a broad taste in food is inclined to be tolerant in regard to everything. Also, when he begins to understand the cooking of a nation, he is on the way to an understanding of the nation itself. There were many other dishes, but I particularly remember a navarin because Peter spoke of it, pointing out that every country has one dish in which it is honourable to put whatever is left over in the larder. In China (or out of it, in Chinese restaurants), this dish is called chop suey; in Ireland, Irish stew; in Spain, olla or puchero; in France, ragout or navarin; in Italy, minestra; and in America, hash. We lingered over such matters, getting acquainted, so to speak, passing through the polite stages of early conversation, slipping beyond the poses that one unconsciously assumes with a new friend. I think I did most of the talking, although Whiffle told me that he had come from Ohio, that he was in Paris on a sort of mission, something to do with literature, I gathered. We ate and drank slowly and it must have been nearly ten when he paid the bill and we drove away, this time to Fouquet's, an open-air restaurant in the Champs-Elysées, where we sat on the broad terrasse and drank many bocks, so many, indeed, that by the time we had decided to settle our account, the saucers in front of us were piled almost to our chins. We should probably have remained there all night, had he not suggested that I go to his rooms with him. That night, my second in Paris, I would have gone anywhere with any one. But there was that in Peter Whiffle which had awakened both my interest and my curiosity for I, too, had the ambition to write, and it seemed to me possible that I was in the presence of a writing man, an author.
We entered another taxi-auto or fiacre, I don't remember and it doesn't matter, there were so many peregrinations in those days, and we drove to an apartment house in a little street near the Rue Blanche. The house being modern, there was an ascenseur and I experienced for the first time the thrill of one of those little personally conducted lifts, in which you press your own button and take your own chances. Since that night I have had many strange misadventures with these intransigent elevators, but on this occasion, miraculously, the machine stopped at the fourth floor, as it had been bidden, and soon we were in the sitting-room of Whiffle's apartment, a room which I still remember, although subsequently I have been in half a dozen of his other rooms in various localities.
It was very orderly, this room, although not exactly arranged, at any rate not arranged like Martha's studio, as if to set object against object and colour against colour. It was a neat little ivory French room, with a white fire-place, picked in gold, surmounted by a gilt clock and Louis XVI candlesticks. There were charming aquatints on the ivory walls and chairs and tables of the Empire period. The tables were laden with neat piles of pamphlets. Beside a type-writer, was ranged a heap of note-books at least a foot high and stacked on the floor in one corner there were other books, formidable-looking volumes of weight and heft, thick bulky octavos with cut-and-come-again expressions, apparently dictionaries and lexicons. An orange Persian cat lay asleep in one of the chairs as we entered, but he immediately stretched himself, extending his noble paws, yawning and arching his back, and then came forward to greet us, purring.
Hello, George! cried Whiffle, as the cat waved his magnificent red tail back and forth and rubbed himself against Peter's leg.
George? I queried.
Yes, that's George Moore. He goes everywhere with me in a basket, when I travel, and he is just as contented in Toledo as he is in Paris, anywhere there is raw meat to be had. Places mean nothing to him. My best friend.
I sat in one of the chairs and lit a cigarette. Peter brought out a bottle of cognac and a couple of glasses. He threw open the shutters and the soft late sounds of the city filtered in with the fresh spring air. One could just hear the faint tinkle of an orchestra at some distant bal.
I like you, Van Vechten, my host began at last, and I've got to talk to somebody. My work has just begun and there's so much to say about it. Tell me to stop when you get tired. . . . In a way, I want to know what you think; in another way, it helps me merely to talk, in the working out of my ideas. But who was there to talk to; I mean before you came? I can see that you may be interested in what I am trying to do, good God! in what I will do! I've done a lot already. . . .
You have begun your book then?
Well, you might say so, but I haven't written a line. I've collected the straw; the bricks will come. I've not been idle. You see those catalogues?
I nodded.
He fumbled them over. Then, without a break, with a strange glow of exhilaration on his pale ethereal face, his eyes flashing, his hands gesticulating, his body swaying, marching up and down the room, he recited with a crescendo which mounted to a magnificent fortissimo in the coda:
Perfumery catalogues: Coty, Houbigant, Atkinson, Rigaud, Rue de la Paix, Bond Street, Place Vendôme, Regent Street, Nirvana, Chypre, Sakountala, Ambre, Après l'Ondée, Quelques Fleurs, Fougère Royale, Myrbaha, Yavahnah, Gaudika, Délices de Péra, Cœur de Jeannette, Djer Kiss, Jockey-Club, and the Egyptian perfumes, Myrrh and Kyphy. Did you know that Richelieu lived in an atmosphere heavily laden with the most pungent perfumes to inflame his sexual imagination? Automobile catalogues: Mercedes, Rolls-Royce, Ford, tires, self-starters, limousines, carburettors, gas. Jewellery catalogues: heaps of 'em, all about diamonds and platinum, chrysoprase and jade, malachite and chalcedony, amethysts and garnets, and the emerald, the precious stone which comes the nearest to approximating that human manifestation known as art, because it always has flaws; red jasper, sacred to the rosy god, Bacchus, the green plasma, blood-stone, cornelian, cat's-eye, amber, with its medicinal properties, the Indian jewels, spinels, the reddish orange jacinth, and the violet almandine. Did you know that the Emperor Claudius used to clothe himself in smaragds and sardonyx stones and that Pope Paul II died of a cold caught from the weight and chill of the rings which loaded his aged fingers? Are you aware that the star-topaz is as rare as a Keutschacher Rubentaler of the year 1504? Yonder is a volume which treats of the glyptic lore. In it you may read of the Assyrian cylinders fashioned from red and green serpentine, the Egyptian scarabei, carved in steaschist; you may learn of the seal-cutters of Nineveh and of the Signet of Sennacherib, now preserved in the British Museum. Do you know that a jewel engraved with Hercules at the fountain was deposited in the tomb of the Frankish King Childeric at Tournay? Do you know of Mnhesarchus, the Tyrrhene gem-cutter, who practised his art at Samos? Have you seen the Julia of Evodus, engraved in a giant aquamarine, or the Byzantine topaz, carved with the figure of the blind bow-boy, sacrificing the Psyche-butterfly, or the emerald signet of Polycrates, with the lyre cut upon it, or the Etruscan peridot representing a sphinx scratching her ear with her hind paw, or the sapphire, discovered in a disused well at Hereford, in which the head of the Madonna has been chiseled, with the inscription, round the beasil, in Lombard letters, tecta lege lecta tege, or the jacinth engraved with the triple face of Baphomet, with a legend of darkly obscene purport? The breast-plate of the Jewish High Priest had its oracular gems, which were the Urim and Thummim. Apollonius Tyaneus, the sorcerer, for the purposes of his enchantments, wore special rings with appropriate stones for each day of the week. Also, in this curious book, and others which you may examine, such as George III's Dactyliotheca Smithiana (Venice; 1767), you will find some account of the gems of the Gnostics: an intaglio in a pale convex plasma, carved with the Chnuphis Serpent, raising himself aloft, with the seven vowels, the elements of his name, above; another jewel engraved with the figure of the jackal-headed Anubis, the serpent with the lion's head, the infant Horus, seated on the lotus, the cynocephalus baboon, and the Abraxas-god, Iao, created from the four elements; an Egyptian seal of the god, Harpocrates, seated on the mystic lotus, in adoration of the Yoni; and an esoteric green jasper amulet in the form of a dragon, surrounded by rays. Florists' catalogues: strangely wicked cyclamens, meat-eating begonias, beloved of des Esseintes (Henri Matisse grows these peccant plants in his garden and they suggest his work), shaggy chrysanthemums, orchids, green, white, and mauve, the veined salpiglossis, the mournful, rich-smelling tube-rose, all the mystic blossoms adored by Robert de la Condamine's primitive, tortured, orgiastic saints in The Double Garden, marigolds and daisies, the most complex and the most simple flowers of all, hypocritical fuchsias, and calceolaria, sacred to la bella Cenerentola. Reaper catalogues: you know, the McCormicks and the Middle West. Porcelain catalogues: Rookwood, Royal Doulton, Wedgwood, Delft, the quaint, clean, heavy, charming Brittany ware, Majolica, the wondrous Chinese porcelains, self-colour, sang de bœuf, apple of roses, peach-blow, Sèvres, signed with the fox of Emile Renard, or the eye of Pajou, or the little house of Jean-Jacques Anteaume. Furniture catalogues: Adam and Louis XV, Futurist, Empire, Venetian and Chinese, Poincaré and Grand Rapids. Art-dealers' catalogues: Félicien Rops and Jo Davidson, Renoir and Franz Hals, Cranach and Picasso, Manet and Carpaccio. Book-dealers' catalogues: George Borrow, Thomas Love Peacock, Ambrose Bierce, William Beckford, Robert Smith Surtees, Francis William Bain. Do you know the true story of Ambrose Gwinett, related by Oliver Goldsmith: the fellow who, having been hanged and gibbeted for murdering a traveller with whom he had shared his bed-chamber at a tavern, revived in the night, shipped at sea as a sailor, and later met on a vessel the man for whose murder he had been hung? Gwinett's supposed victim had been attacked during the night with a severe bleeding of the nose, had risen and left the house for a walk by the sea-wall, and had been shanghaied. Catalogues of curious varieties of cats: Australian, with long noses and long hind-legs, like kangaroos, Manx cats without any tails and chocolate and fawn Siamese cats with sapphire eyes, the cacodorous Russian blue cats, and male tortoise-shells. Catalogues of tinshops: tin plates, tin cups, and canopeners. Catalogues of laces: Valenciennes and Cluny and Chantilly and double-knot, Punto in Aria, a Spanish lace of the sixteenth century, lace constructed of human hair or aloe fibre, Point d'Espagne, made by Jewesses. Catalogues of toys: an engine that spreads smoke in the air, as it runs around a track with a circumference of eight feet, a doll that cries, Uncle! Uncle! a child's opium set. Catalogues of operas: Marta and Don Pasquale, Der Freischütz and Mefistofele, Simon Bocanegra and La Dolores. Cook-Books: Mrs. Pennell's The Feasts of Autolycus, a grandiose treatise on the noblest of the arts, wherein you may read of the amorous adventures of The Triumphant Tomato and the Incomparable Onion, Mr. Finck's Food and Flavour, the gentle Abraham Hayward of The Art of Dining, the biography of Vatel, the super-cook who killed himself because the fish for the king's dinner were missing, Mrs. Glasse's Cookery, which Dr. Johnson boasted that he could surpass, and, above all, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiologie du Goût. Catalogues of harness, bits and saddles. Catalogues of cigarettes: Dimitrinos and Melachrinos, Fatimas and Sweet Caporals. Catalogues of liqueurs: Danziger Goldwasser and Crème Yvette, Parfait Amour, as tanagrine as the blood in the sacred altar chalice. Catalogues of paints: yellow ochre and gamboge, burnt sienna and Chinese vermilion. Catalogues of hats: derbies and fedoras, straw and felt hats, top-hats and caps, sombreros, tam-o'shanters, billycocks, shakos and tarbooshes. . . .
He stopped, breathless with excitement, demanding, What do you think of that?
I don't know what to think. . . .
I'm sure you don't. That isn't all. There are dictionaries and lexicons, not only German, English, French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish, but also Hebrew, Persian, Magyar, Chinese, Zend, Sanscrit, Hindustani, Negro dialects, French argot, Portuguese, American slang, and Pennsylvania Dutch.
And what are those curious pamphlets?
He lifted a few and read off the titles:
A study of the brain of the late Major J. W. Powell.
A study of the anatomic relations of the optic nerve to the accessory cavities of the nose.
On regeneration in the pigmented skin of the frog and on the character of the chromatophores.
The chondrocranium of an embryo pig.
Morphology of the parthogenetic development of amphitrite.
Note on the influence of castration on the weight of the brain and spinal cord in the albino rat.
There are, he added solemnly, many strange words in these pamphlets, not readily to be found elsewhere.
Now Peter pointed to the pile of note-books on the table.
These are my note-books. I have ranged Paris for my material. For days I have walked in the Passage des Panoramas and the Rue St. Honoré, making lists of every object in the windows. In the case of books I have described the bindings. I have stopped before the shops of fruit vendors, antique dealers, undertakers, jewellers, and fashioners of artificial flowers. I have spent so much time in the Galeries Lafayette and the Bon Marché that I have probably been mistaken for a shoplifter. These books are full of results. What do you think of it?
But what is all this for?
For my work, of course. For my work.
I can't imagine, I began almost in a whisper, I was so astonished, what you do, what you are going to do. Are you writing an encyclopedia?
No, my intention is not to define or describe, but to enumerate. Life is made up of a collection of objects, and the mere citation of them is sufficient to give the reader a sense of form and colour, atmosphere and style. And form, style, manner in literature are everything; subject is nothing. Nothing whatever, he added impressively, after a pause. Do you know what Buffon wrote: Style is the only passport to posterity. It is not range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science, nor yet novelty of matter, that will insure immortality. Recall the great writers. Théophile Gautier, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris Huysmans, Oscar Wilde: they all used this method, catalogues, catalogues, catalogues! All great art is a matter of cataloguing life, summing it up in a list of objects. This is so true that the commercial catalogues themselves are almost works of art. Their only flaw is that they pause to describe. If it only listed objects, without defining them, a dealer's catalogue would be as precious as a book by Gautier.
During this discourse, George Moore, the orange cat, had been wandering around, rather restlessly, occasionally gazing at Peter with a semi-quizzical expression and an absurd cock of the ears. At some point or other, however, he had evidently arrived at the conclusion that this extra display of emotion on the part of his human companion boded him no evil and, having satisfied himself in this regard, he leaped lightly to the mantelshelf, circled his enormous bulk miraculously around three or four times on the limited space at his disposal, and sank into a profound slumber when, probably, with dreams of garrets full of lazy mice, his ears and his tail, which depended a foot below the shelf, began to twitch.
Peter continued to talk: d'Aurevilly wrote his books in different coloured inks. It was a wonderful idea. Black ink would never do to describe certain scenes, certain objects. I can imagine an entire book written in purple, or green, or blood-red, but the best book would be written in many colours. Consider, for a moment, the distinction between purple and violet, shades which are cousins: the one suggests the most violent passions or something royal or papal, the other a nunrery or a widow, or a being bereft of any capacity for passion.
Henry James should write his books in white ink on white paper and, by a system of analogy, you can very well see that Rider Haggard should write his books in white ink on black paper. Pale ideas, obviously expressed. Gold! Think what you could do with gold! If silence is golden, surely the periods, the commas, the semicolons, and dashes should be of gold. But not only the stops could gleam and shine; whole silent pages might glitter. And blue, bright blue; what more suggestive colour for the writer than bright blue?
Not only should manuscripts be written in multi-coloured inks, but they should be written on multi-coloured papers, and then they should be printed in multi-coloured inks on multi-coloured papers. The art of book-making, in the sense that the making of a book is part of its authorship, part of its creation, is not even begun.
The sculptor is not satisfied with moulding his idea in clay; he gives it final form in marble or malachite or jade or bronze. Many an author, however, having completed work on his manuscript, is content to allow his publisher to choose the paper, the ink, the binding, the typography: all, obviously, part of the author's task. It is the publisher's wish, no doubt, to issue the book as cheaply as possible, and to this end he will make as many books after the same model as he practicably can. But every book should have a different appearance from every other book. Every book should have the aspect to which its ideas give birth. The form of the material should dictate the form of the binding. Who but a fool, for example, would print and bind Lavengro and Roderick Hudson in a similar manner? And yet that is just what publishers will do if they are let alone.
Peter had become so excited that he had awakened George Moore, who now descended from the mantelpiece and sought the seclusion of a couch in the corner where, after a few abortive licks at his left hind-leg, and a pretence of scrubbing his ears, he again settled into sleep. As for me, I listened, entranced, and as the night before I had discovered Paris, it seemed to me now that I was discovering the secrets of the writer's craft and I determined to go forth in the morning with a note-book, jotting down the names of every object I encountered.
I must have been somewhat bewildered for I repeated a question I had asked before:
Have you written anything yet?
Not yet. . . . I am collecting my materials. It may take me considerably longer to collect what I shall require for a very short book.
What is the book to be about?
Van Vechten, Van Vechten, you are not following me! he cried, and he again began to walk up and down the little room. What is the book to be about? Why, it is to be about the names of the things I have collected. It is to be about three hundred pages, he added triumphantly. That is what it is to be about, about three hundred pages, three hundred pages of colour and style and lists, lists of objects, all jumbled artfully. There isn't a moral, or an idea, or a plot, or even a character. There's to be no propaganda or preaching, or violence, or emotion, or even humour. I am not trying to imitate Dickens or Dostoevsky. They did not write books; they wrote newspapers. Art eliminates all such rubbish. Art has nothing to do with ideas. Art is abstract. When art becomes concrete it is no longer art. Thank God, I know what I want to do! Thank God, I haven't wasted my time admiring hack work! Thank God, I can start in at once constructing a masterpiece! Why a list of passengers sailing on the Kronprinz Wilhelm is more nearly a work of art than a novel by Thomas Hardy! What is there in that? Anybody can do it. Where is the arrangement, the colour, the form? Hardy merely photographs life!
But aren't you trying to photograph still life?
Peter's face was almost purple; I thought he would burst a blood-vessel.
Don't you understand that perfumes and reaping-machines are never to be found together in real life? That is art, making a pattern, dragging unfamiliar words and colours and sounds together until they form a pattern, a beautiful pattern. An Aubusson carpet is art, and it is assuredly not a photograph of still life. . . . Art. . . .
I don't know how much more of this there was but, when Peter finally stopped talking, the sunlight was streaming in through the window.