XXII
London
December 17, 1917
I'm waiting for Eric, and, while waiting, propose to tell you the story of my past few days. I think when you've come to the end of my account you'll agree that I've been mixing my drinks considerably with regard to the personalities whose acquaintance I have made.
On Friday evening I was invited to dinner by Lieutenant C., the American Navy man with whom I crossed in November. I met—whom do you think?—George Grossmith, Leslie Henson, Julia James, Madge Saunders, and Lord C————.
I may say that Lord C————is not a member of the Gaiety Company, though I seem to have included him. The occasion was really the weekly dinner given by the American Officers' Club; the Gaiety Company was there to entertain. I think it is typical of England's attitude towards the American Army that people from such different walks of life should have been present to do the U.S.A. honour. Lord C————is a splendid type of old-fashioned courtier, with a great, kindly, bloodhound face. He had ensigns and officers of whatsoever rank brought to him, and spoke to them with the fine manly equality of the true-bred aristocrat. It was amusing to see the breezy American boys quite unembarrassed, most of them unaware of Lord C————'s political eminence, exchanging views in the friendliest of fashions, while the old gentleman, keeping seated, leaning forward on his stick with one hand resting attentively on a young fellow's arm, expressed his warm appreciation of America's eagerness.
Grossmith was in the uniform our boys wear—that of a lieutenant in the R.N.V.R. Leslie Henson is now a mechanic in the motor-transport by day and a Gaiety star in the evenings. He says that it costs him much money to cure the ache which the Army gives to his back—but he continues to do his “bit” by day and to amuse Tommies home on leave in the evenings.
Next day, Saturday, I went down to Bath to meet Raemaekers, the Dutch cartoonist. Mr. Lane was our host. Raemaekers is a great man. On the journey I tried to picture him. I saw him as a pale-faced man, with lank black hair and a touch of the Jew about him. I rather expected to find him worn and slightly more than middle-aged, with nervous hands and hollow eyes. I reminded myself that of the world's artists, he was the only one who had risen to the sheerness of the occasion. He expresses the conscience of the aloof cosmopolitan as regards Germany's war-methods. England, incurably good-humoured, has only Bairnsfather's comic portrayals of Old Bill to place beside this indignant Dutchman's moral hatred of Hun cruelty. From the station I went to the Bath Club; there I met not at all what I had imagined. He looks like a Frans Hals burgher, comfortable, with a high complexion, a small pointed beard, chestnut hair, and searching grey eyes. His charity of appearance belies him, for his eyes and mouth have a terrific purpose. His hands are the hands of a fighting man which crush. You would pass him in the street as unremarkable unless he looked at you—his eyes are daggers which stop you dead.
There were four of us at lunch—he sat at my right and we talked like a river in flood. He's just back from America, thrilled by the Americans' unimpassioned, lawful thoroughness. He had found something akin to his own temperament in the nation's genius—the same capacity to brush aside facetiousness in a crisis, and to attain a Hebrew prophet's faculty for hatred. One doesn't want to laugh when women lie dead in the ash-pits of Belgium. I have been with him many hours and have scarcely seen him smile, and yet his face is kindly. As you know, the Kaiser had set a price upon his head. His death would mean more to the Hun than the destruction of many British Divisions. He has pilloried the Kaiser's beastliness for all time. When future ages want to know what the Kaiser said to Christ, they will find it all in the thousand Raemaekers' sketches. Traps have been laid for his capture from time to time. Submarines have been dispatched with orders to take him alive. He knows what awaits him if such plans should meet with success—a lingering, tortured death; consequently he travels armed, and has promised his wife to blow his brains out the moment he is captured. We talked of many things—of the Hague and H. among other things. He knew the P.'., and drew a sketch of Mr. P. on the tablecloth with his pencil. I tried to purchase the tablecloth that I might send it to America, but the club secretary was before me.
In the afternoon I went to the railway-station and spoke with a porter who was pushing a barrow—Henry Chappell, who wrote “The Day”—the first war-poet of 1914. As luck would have it, it was Saturday, the day upon which John Lane had brought out his volume of poems; it was rather pathetic to find him carrying on with his humble task on the proudest afternoon of his life. I told him how I had seen his poem pasted up in prominent places all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He smiled in a patient fashion, and said that he had heard about it. I understand that he made one hundred pounds out of this poem and gave it all to the Red Cross. A gentleman, if you want to find one! I asked him if he didn't look forward to promotion now. He shook his head gravely—he liked portering. At parting I shook his hand, but, when I had dropped it, he touched his cap—and touched my heart in the doing of it.