The Crime (1920)
On a bleak wet stormy afternoon at the outset of last year's Spring, I
was in a cottage, all alone, and knowing that I must be all alone till
evening. It was a remote cottage, in a remote county, and had been
`let furnished' by its owner. My spirits are easily affected by
weather, and I hate solitude. And I dislike to be master of things
that are not mine. `Be careful not to break us,' say the glass and
china. `You'd better not spill ink on me,' growls the carpet. `None of
your dog's-earing, thumb-marking, back-breaking tricks here!' snarl
the books.
The books in this cottage looked particularly disagreeable--horrid
little upstarts of this and that scarlet or cerulean `series' of
`standard' authors. Having gloomily surveyed them, I turned my back on
them, and watched the rain streaming down the latticed window, whose
panes seemed likely to be shattered at any moment by the wind. I have
known men who constantly visit the Central Criminal Court, visit also
the scenes where famous crimes were committed, form their own theories
of those crimes, collect souvenirs of those crimes, and call
themselves Criminologists. As for me, my interest in crime is, alas,
merely morbid. I did not know, as those others would doubtless have
known, that the situation in which I found myself was precisely of the
kind most conducive to the darkest deeds. I did but bemoan it, and
think of Lear in the hovel on the heath. The wind howled in the
chimney, and the rain had begun to sputter right down it, so that the
fire was beginning to hiss in a very sinister manner. Suppose the fire
went out! It looked as if it meant to. I snatched the pair of bellows
that hung beside it. I plied them vigorously. `Now mind!--not too
vigorously. We aren't yours!' they wheezed. I handled them more
gently. But I did not release them till they had secured me a steady
blaze.
I sat down before that blaze. Despair had been warded off. Gloom,
however, remained; and gloom grew. I felt that I should prefer any
one's thoughts to mine. I rose, I returned to the books. A dozen or so
of those which were on the lowest of the three shelves were full-
sized, were octavo, looked as though they had been bought to be read.
I would exercise my undoubted right to read one of them. Which of
them? I gradually decided on a novel by a well-known writer whose
works, though I had several times had the honour of meeting her, were
known to me only by repute.
I knew nothing of them that was not good. The lady's `output' had not
been at all huge, and it was agreed that her `level' was high. I had
always gathered that the chief characteristic of her work was its
great `vitality.' The book in my hand was a third edition of her
latest novel, and at the end of it were numerous press-notices, at
which I glanced for confirmation. `Immense vitality,' yes, said one
critic. `Full,' said another, `of an intense vitality.' `A book that
will live,' said a third. How on earth did he know that? I was,
however, very willing to believe in the vitality of this writer for
all present purposes. Vitality was a thing in which she herself, her
talk, her glance, her gestures, abounded. She and they had been, I
remembered, rather too much for me. The first time I met her, she said
something that I lightly and mildly disputed. On no future occasion
did I stem any opinion of hers. Not that she had been rude. Far from
it. She had but in a sisterly, brotherly way, and yet in a way that
was filially eager too, asked me to explain my point. I did my best.
She was all attention. But I was conscious that my best, under her
eye, was not good. She was quick to help me: she said for me just what
I had tried to say, and proceeded to show me just why it was wrong. I
smiled the gallant smile of a man who regards women as all the more
adorable because logic is not their strong point, bless them! She
asked--not aggressively, but strenuously, as one who dearly loves a
joke--what I was smiling at. Altogether, a chastening encounter; and
my memory of it was tinged with a feeble resentment. How she had
scored! No man likes to be worsted in argument by a woman. And I fancy
that to be vanquished by a feminine writer is the kind of defeat least
of all agreeable to a man who writes. A `sex war,' we are often told
is to be one of the features of the world's future--women demanding
the right to do men's work, and men refusing, resisting, counter-
attacking. It seems likely enough. One can believe anything of the
world's future. Yet one conceives that not all men, if this particular
evil come to pass, will stand packed shoulder to shoulder against all
women. One does not feel that the dockers will be very bitter against
such women as want to be miners, or the plumbers frown much upon the
would-be steeple-jills. I myself have never had my sense of fitness
jarred, nor a spark of animosity roused in me, by a woman practising
any of the fine arts--except the art of writing. That she should write
a few little poems or pense'es, or some impressions of a trip in a
dahabieh as far as (say) Biskra, or even a short story or two, seems
to me not wholly amiss, even though she do such things for
publication. But that she should be an habitual, professional author,
with a passion for her art, and a fountain-pen and an agent, and sums
down in advance of royalties on sales in Canada and Australia, and a
profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane
outlook, is somehow incongruous with my notions--my mistaken notions,
if you will--of what she ought to be.
`Has a profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane
outlook' said one of the critics quoted at the end of the book that I
had chosen. The wind and the rain in the chimney had not abated, but
the fire was bearing up bravely. So would I. I would read cheerfully
and without prejudice. I poked the fire and, pushing my chair slightly
back, lest the heat should warp the book's covers, began Chapter I. A
woman sat writing in a summer-house at the end of a small garden that
overlooked a great valley in Surrey. The description of her was
calculated to make her very admirable--a thorough woman, not strictly
beautiful, but likely to be thought beautiful by those who knew her
well; not dressed as though she gave much heed to her clothes, but
dressed in a fashion that exactly harmonised with her special type.
Her pen `travelled' rapidly across the foolscap, and while it did so
she was described in more and more detail. But at length she came to a
`knotty point' in what she was writing. She paused, she pushed back
the hair from her temples, she looked forth at the valley; and now the
landscape was described, but not at all exhaustively, it, for the
writer soon overcame her difficulty, and her pen travelled faster than
ever, till suddenly there was a cry of `Mammy!' and in rushed a seven-
year-old child, in conjunction with whom she was more than ever
admirable; after which the narrative skipped back across eight years,
and the woman became a girl, giving as yet no token of future eminence
in literature but--I had an impulse which I obeyed almost before I
was, conscious of it.
Nobody could have been more surprised than I was at what I had done--
done so neatly, so quietly and gently. The book stood closed, upright,
with its back to me, just as on a book-shelf, behind the bars of the
grate. There it was. And it gave forth, as the flames crept up the
blue cloth sides of it, a pleasant though acrid smell. My astonishment
had passed, giving place to an exquisite satisfaction. How pottering
and fumbling a thing was even the best kind of written criticism! I
understood the contempt felt by the man of action for the man of
words. But what pleased me most was that at last, actually, I, at my
age, I of all people, had committed a crime--was guilty of a crime. I
had power to revoke it. I might write to my bookseller for an unburnt
copy, and place it on the shelf where this one had stood--this
gloriously glowing one. I would do nothing of the sort. What I had
done I had done. I would wear forever on my conscience the white rose
of theft and the red rose of arson. If hereafter the owner of this
cottage happened to miss that volume--let him! If he were fool enough
to write to me about it, would I share my grand secret with him? No.
Gently, with his poker, I prodded that volume further among the coals.
The all-but-consumed binding shot forth little tongues of bright
colour--flamelets of sapphire, amethyst, emerald. Charming! Could even
the author herself not admire them? Perhaps. Poor woman!--I had scored
now, scored so perfectly that I felt myself to be almost a brute while
I poked off the loosened black outer pages and led the fire on to
pages that were but pale brown.
These were quickly devoured. But it seemed to me that whenever I left
the fire to forage for itself it made little headway. I pushed the
book over on its side. The flames closed on it, but presently, licking
their lips, fell back, as though they had had enough. I took the tongs
and put the book upright again, and raked it fore and aft. It seemed
almost as thick as ever. With poker and tongs I carved it into two,
three sections--the inner pages flashing white as when they were sent
to the binders. Strange! Aforetime, a book was burnt now and again in
the market-place by the common hangman. Was he, I wondered, paid by
the hour? I had always supposed the thing quite easy for him--a bright
little, brisk little conflagration, and so home. Perhaps other books
were less resistant than this one? I began to feel that the critics
were more right than they knew. Here was a book that had indeed an
intense vitality, and an immense vitality. It was a book that would
live--do what one might. I vowed it should not. I subdivided it,
spread it, redistributed it. Ever and anon my eye would be caught by
some sentence or fragment of a sentence in the midst of a charred page
before the flames crept over it. `lways loathed you, bu', I remember;
and `ning. Tolstoi was right.' Who had always loathed whom? And what,
what, had Tolstoi been right about? I had an absurd but genuine desire
to know. Too late! Confound the woman!--she was scoring again. I
furiously drove her pages into the yawning crimson jaws of the coals.
Those jaws had lately been golden. Soon, to my horror, they seemed to
be growing grey. They seemed to be closing--on nothing. Flakes of
black paper, full-sized layers of paper brown and white, began to hide
them from me altogether. I sprinkled a boxful of wax matches. I
resumed the bellows. I lunged with the poker. I held a newspaper over
the whole grate. I did all that inspiration could suggest, or skill
accomplish. Vainly. The fire went out--darkly, dismally, gradually,
quite out.
How she had scored again! But she did not know it. I felt no
bitterness against her as I lay back in my chair, inert, listening to
the storm that was still raging. I blamed only myself. I had done
wrong. The small room became very cold. Whose fault was that but my
own? I had done wrong hastily, but had done it and been glad of it. I
had not remembered the words a wise king wrote long ago, that the lamp
of the wicked shall be put out, and that the way of trangressors is
hard.
-THE END-
Max Beerbohm's essay: The Crime (1920)
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