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

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“But why Congreve, Brighouse?” I asked. “Surely you mean H.J. Byron?”

ssss1But no! He said he meant Congreve.

“I do not,” I said, considerably perturbed, “I do not like to think, Brighouse, that you have stained your virgin mind with Congreve.”

“I’ve looked at him,” said he icily. “He wrote comedies. Milestones is a comedy.”

Now, I was used to Brighouse for, from the age of eleven to thirteen I had been at the same school with him, and I remembered how enormously sensitive and how self-contained and how stubborn he was. I also remembered that Rabelaisianism, or Congrevism, or, indeed, any ism that denoted the real philosophic vulgarity of the human mind, or any jolly indecent wit, was repellent to him.

“There are, I suppose, expurgated editions of Congreve, Brighouse. I imagine you as a collector of expurgated editions.”

But he buried his nose in his pint of beer and refused further converse.

Now, such are the influences that one man may have upon another, it came about that the more successful Houghton became, the harder worked Brighouse. Said Brighouse to himself, I imagine: “If Stanley can do all this, why not I?” So he worked desperately, sloggingly, overwhelmingly. Yet, in spite of all his hard work, he kept a most watchful and jealous eye on his contemporaries, and I remember meeting him at one of Miss Horniman’s orgies at the Gaiety Theatre when a new play of Galsworthy’s was given. It was a beautiful play (Galsworthy has not written many beautiful plays), but I regret to say I do not remember its name. At the end of the first act Brighouse was disgustingly “superior,” and at the end of the second he was contemptuous. So I sought a quarrel with him. There are, I think, few emotions so devastating, and so difficult to control, as the anger that surges upon one when one hears a beautiful work of art, noble, subtle and full of humanity, treated ssss1 with contempt by a man whose vanity has blinded the eyes of his soul. But I do not remember making any attempt to control my anger at Brighouse; rather did I nurse and nourish it, and, when the proper time came, I poured it upon him with generosity. Harold—or “Brig,” as we used to call him—is too much a man of the world not to know how to deal with an excitable man in a temper, and I remember coming away from our quarrel feeling rather foolish and having a disturbing admiration for Brighouse’s dignity. After this little episode, we were always very polite to each other, and, later on, when we met in London, our meeting was not without some cordiality.