“I notice,” said I, “that you continue writing for The New Age in spite of their violent attacks on you.”
“Yes,” he answered laconically, and he looked dizzily over my left shoulder.
Then and there I decided that I would not speak again until he had spoken. I had not sought the interview any more than he had. Presently:
“I have been working very hard lately,” I heard. I turned quickly to him; he had spoken into space. I showed a polite interest and he thawed a little. He told me something of the number of words and hours he wrote a day, of the work he had planned for the next two years, of the regularity of his methods, of his disbelief in the value of “inspiration.” I seemed to have heard it all before about Anthony Trollope. He was not exactly loquacious, but he communicated a great deal in spite of a rather unpleasant impediment in his speech....
Soon our interview was over, for we heard the orchestra tuning up, and we left each other with just a word of farewell and without a sigh of regret.
His conversational powers never, I believe, reach the point of eloquence. I remember G. H. Mair giving me an amusing description of a breakfast he gave to Arnold Bennett and Stanley Houghton in his lodgings in Manchester. Bennett and Houghton had not previously met, and the latter was young and inexperienced enough to nurse the expectation that the personality of the famous writer would be as impressive as his work, and impressive in the same way. It is true that very extraordinary circumstances would be necessary to make breakfast in Manchester free from dullness, but Houghton no doubt thought that his meeting with Bennett was an [70] ]extraordinary circumstance. In the event, however, he was disillusioned.
They went in to breakfast, and Bennett sat moody and silent, crumbling a piece of bread. It chanced that on being admitted to the house Bennett had caught sight of a cabman carrying a particularly large trunk downstairs, and he began to question Mair closely about the incident, Mair explaining that a fellow-lodger was removing that morning and taking all his luggage with him.
“Yes, yes,” said Bennett, a little impatiently, “but why should he have such a large trunk? It was enormous. I don’t think I have ever seen so large a trunk before. It was at least twice the usual size.”
He took a mouthful of bacon and spent a minute in mastication. Having swallowed:
“Absurdly large,” he said challengingly. “I can’t think why anyone should wish to own it. Besides, it’s not right to ask any man to carry such an enormous weight. That’s how strangulated hernia is caused. Yes, strangulated hernia.”