Читать книгу Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences онлайн

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To this assembly of earnest, pale men and spectacled women Harris was to lecture, and I looked from them to Harris and from Harris to them with joyful expectations. From the very first sentence he was fiery and provocative, throwing out daring theories, anathematising all forms of respectability, upholding with unparalleled fierceness a wonderful ideal of chivalry and nobility and condemning, en bloc, the whole human race, and particularly that portion of it seated before him. Ladies rustled; men stirred ssss1 uneasily. Then, having delivered himself of a passage of hot eloquence, he paused. A clock ticked. He looked defiantly at us and still paused. A fat lady in the front row, palpably embarrassed by the long silence and, no doubt, feeling that she had reached one of the most dramatic moments of her existence, banged her plump hands together and ejaculated: “Bravo!” A few other ladies of both sexes joined her, but Harris was not to be placated. Thrusting out his chin, he began again. And this time he attacked the Mancunian literary idol, Professor C.H. Herford, a great scholar, but a more than suitable object for Harris’s ridicule. Herford is a man who has not lived fully: a semi-invalid, asthmatic, bloodless and spectacled; a man of books and rather dusty books; in effect, a professor. He had recently reviewed Harris’s book, The Man Shakespeare, in The Manchester Guardian, and had called it “a disgrace to British scholarship.” Why this should have annoyed the author I cannot tell, but Harris is at times a little unreasonable. Indeed, “annoyance” but feebly describes the feeling that spent itself in scalding invective and the most terrible irony. Each sentence he spoke appeared to be the last word in bitterness; but each succeeding sentence leaped above and beyond its predecessor, until at length the speaker had lashed himself into a state of feeling to express which words were useless. He stopped magnificently, and this time the room rang with applause. It is probable that not half-a-dozen people present believed his attack on Professor Herford was justified; indeed, it is probable that not half-a-dozen were qualified to form any opinion of value on the matter. Nevertheless, they applauded him with enthusiasm, and they did so because they had been deeply stirred by eloquence that can only be described as superb and by anger that was lava hot in its sincerity. Briefly, the lecture was an overwhelming success.