When he had reached that point in the discussion, Clive would become silent and sullen. “If I only had the energy to write!” he would complain bitterly.
He had been brooding over a novel for four years, and had not yet written a word of it.... They had long talks about that unwritten novel which was to corrupt the younger generation.
2
At Community House, Felix was having difficulties with his class. Not that they were lacking in enthusiasm; on the contrary, their enthusiasm carried him in directions where he had no intention of going. At the outset, he had conceived English composition to be a simple matter. Perhaps it might have been for children; but these young people of eighteen were already convinced of its difficulties, and haggled over semicolons. They wanted to know the “rules” by the observance of which one became a good writer!
Felix presently gave up prose as too hard to teach, and started in upon verse, with greater success. Yet when it came to explaining why love and rove are technically correct rhymes, and young and son no rhymes at all, he was nonplussed. Very soon the class had hit upon a mode which was neither verse nor prose—a kind of free verse. It was quite other than Felix had any wish to encourage anybody to write. He doubted if the writing of free verse would ever enable them to appreciate the Ode to a Nightingale. But he was helpless in the situation, and could only let them go ahead.
His conception of verse was precisely that it was not free; he had thought that the pains and pleasures of rhyme and metre would give them a creative understanding of English poetry. This free verse of theirs seemed to him utterly unrelated to the tradition into which he sought to give them an insight. It was very free verse indeed—it mixed its metaphors recklessly, it soared into realms of vague emotion. And when its meaning was at all clear, it carried the burden of a hopeless reproach against circumstance, and a plaintive yearning for it knew not what. Felix fiercely disliked this plaintive hopelessness, and preached scornfully at his class. They seemed to be impressed; but they continued as before.
“I can’t believe you really feel like that,” he said to a merry-faced young Jewess who had just read aloud a poem full of world-sorrow.
She looked offended. “But I do!” she cried. “If you only knew!” and she put her hand expressively to her bosom.
“My God!” he said. “What a broken-hearted crowd!”
There was a quick burst of laughter, and then a girl spoke up. “But Mr. Fay, do you not think we feel?”