Джеймс Хилтон - Morning Journey

Paul, compared with all this, was brash; he had met American millionaires, and even American millionaire brewers, but they had not been in the least like Rowden. To that extent he was secretly baffled, but he gave Rowden the usual treatment of brilliant talk and affable self-display, hopeful though by no means sure that the man was being impressed. One evening wine unleashed his tongue to such vainglory that Rowden smiled and put his hand under the youth’s arm as they walked into the library for coffee and cognac; Paul by that time was in the midst of a survey of all the grandiose theatrical ideas that had ever effervesced in his mind, one of which he had just thought of suddenly at the dining-table and which lifted him to a peak of excitement the more he enlarged upon it—Othello with an all-Negro cast, except for Othello himself, who should be white. Into a rare and breathless silence Rowden then managed to interject: “My dear young man, I admire your enthusiasms and I think it quite possible you are almost as wonderful as you say. But tell me… how are you going to LIVE in this world?”

“LIVE?”

“Yes. Make a living.”

“You mean money? Oh, I manage. I pick up a bit from journalism, and then I have a travelling fellowship—rather a juicy one—it’s supposed to enable me to do ‘creative writing’, whatever that means, but there’s no problem, because if the worst comes to the worst I’ll bundle some of my articles together and call ‘em creative—who the hell can swear they aren’t?”

“You, of course, KNOW that they aren’t.”

“Oh, sure. I’m not really a writer. I’ve got creativeness in me, but it’s not that kind… But don’t worry—I’ll get by. The fellowship’s a racket, but it helps me around—they might renew it for another year. And sometimes I meet rich people who save me hotel bills.”

Rowden was at first antagonized by what he took to be boorishness; but then, beneath it, he caught other notes—frustration, ambition, cool self-criticism, and a sort of celestial you-be-damnedness. On the whole he was beginning to like Paul very much indeed.

Paul added, with a grin: “I’m only kidding. If you think I’d stay here just for that you don’t know me. I’m really grateful to you. But it isn’t all on one side, is it? I’d have been worth my keep in the old days when artists had patrons. Then you could have built a theatre for me and I’d have made you famous.”

“Quite a proposition.”

“I’m still kidding. You must think I have a nerve.”

“I do.” Rowden smiled and continued: “Do you write as you talk?”

“God, no. I wouldn’t sell much if I did. I’m a sort of actor in print. I’ve created a fictional character that I call Myself, so I never write what _I_ think, but what I think this character would think. The novelist does that all the time, but he does it honestly—he LABELS it fiction, but I pretend I really am the slightly ridiculous fellow I’ve invented.”

Rowden eyed him critically, as if wondering how much of all this to suspect or discount. “Isn’t it rather confusing at times?”

“Sure, though of course it’s nothing new—the public always tend to identify an actor with his part.”

“Not the educated public?”

“Yes, to some extent. Or else why would the man who plays Jesus in the Oberammergau Passion Play have to quit smoking and drinking?”

“I didn’t know that he did. Tell me, how did you launch yourself into this rather strange journalistic career?”

“Ah, that’s a story in itself.”

He told it, but he didn’t tell the whole truth about it, which was as follows. He had been in England just after the 1918 Armistice, awaiting the voyage home and demobilization. His war service had comprised a year in an Army office in London. The reason he had not been sent to fight was a pituitary condition which made him put on weight with alarming ease; without proper dieting or treatment, he was at that time in danger of becoming almost comically fat. (Back home as a civilian, a year later, he took medical advice, lost most of the excess poundage, and managed after that to remain merely stoutish.) It happened that during the early days of 1919 Mr. Lloyd George was to leave for the opening of the Peace Conference in Paris, and reporters were badgering him in vain for a scoop. In such circumstances one would have thought it sheerly ridiculous for Paul to seek an interview with the great man for an American small-town paper; and so it was, yet he succeeded. He simply sent a letter on U.S. Army notepaper and enclosed a photograph. “You will see from this “, he wrote, “the sort of fellow I am —I certainly carry a lot of weight around here, but it isn’t the kind that helps. In fact, Mr. Lloyd George, I’m just a Yank without rank who’d be proud indeed to shake hands with you before I go home to Reedsville, Iowa.” Perhaps the P.M. was seduced, or amused, or merely obliging; it is even possible that he practised the same mixture of innocence and guile, for he had never been unmindful of the value of American publicity. At any rate, Private Paul Saffron was invited to call at Number Ten Downing Street at four-thirty one January afternoon. Of course there was no political scoop, they didn’t talk about politics or the war at all, but they did discuss America, England, Wales, tea, coffee, the beauties of nature, and choral singing; moreover Paul, who had a rather pleasing bel canto tenor, was able to demonstrate that a lament of the Seminole Indians was remarkably similar to a hymn tune popular among the slate miners of Blaenau Ffestiniog. Amidst these amenities half an hour passed, and then an hour, whereupon Mrs. Lloyd George joined them and Paul had to sing again. It was all very neighbourly, more like Iowa than London’s West End—which, of course, was exactly the point that Paul made in the two-column piece he wrote. And the whole article, which was picked up by some of the big newspapers after its début in the Reedsville Clarion, proved something else too— that America was much more interested in a number of other things than in war and politics.

After this flash-in-the-pan success, Paul felt he had it in him to earn a living from journalism if he had to, though he hoped he wouldn’t, for his passionate leanings had already centred themselves elsewhere. But an editor named Merryweather had become interested in him and was shrewd enough to realize that while magazines and newspapers were full of stuff emanating from INFORMED sources, the UNINFORMED source, the fall guy who steps in where experts fear to tread, could be equally readable in a small corner of his own. (Later the technique was developed into one of the humaner and more profitable arts by Will Rogers and later still by Ernie Pyle.) It was the pose of having no pose—the trick of telling the public, in reporting a war, how scared one was, or of an international conference, how bored.

“I’m the Little Man,” Paul said, gulping Rowden’s brandy to give himself the right feeling about it. “I’m the world’s hero because I’m not a hero —I’m Constant Reader, Pro Bono Publico, Worried Taxpayer, Average Citizen—I write as if writing’s easy, unprofessional, no particular talent required, just a few pipes of tobacco and a sort of cute way of looking at things… I’m Lowbrow and I’m human—my God, how human I am —when I did a piece about my dog’s birthday I got over five hundred letters and a truckload of dog-food from readers… Did that ever happen to Shakespeare?… And I haven’t got a dog, I don’t smoke a pipe, and I think I’d loathe the fellow I pretend to be if ever I met him. One of these days, when I’ve made a big hit with a play, I’m going to lose all my public in one grand gesture—I shall confess that all the time I’ve been secretly enjoying Beethoven Quartets… Only I’m afraid the editor wouldn’t publish it, he wouldn’t let me destroy my humble little Frankenstein midget, always on the watch for the Funny Side of Things, bless his tiny guts… And finding it, too. My first article on Ireland—you’d never guess how I’ll start it—nothing about the Free State, or Cosgrave, or the shooting— leave that to the regular writers. I’ll do a piece about a girl—I met her just after I came ashore at Kingstown, Dunleary, whatever you call the place. I took a walk in the town and saw this girl driving a horse and buggy and she was sitting with one leg bent under her… the oddest thing… like this…” He got up from the chair and reseated himself with his own leg clumsily imitating the posture. He was aware by then that he had drunk too much.