You think the above sketch is exaggerated? Ah! well, perhaps you have never lived in Highgate, or in the suburbs of Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield or Leeds. I could set down some appalling conversations that I have heard in suburban “literary” circles. There is a place called Eccles, where, one evening——
. . . . . . . .
In London Bohemia there are many freakish people, but, for the most part, they are altogether charming and refreshing. Quite a number of them have what I am told is, in the Police Courts, termed “no visible means of subsistence,” but they appear to “carry on” with imperturbable good humour and borrow money cheerfully and as frequently as their circle of acquaintances (which is usually very large) will permit.
Frequenters of the Café Royal in pre-war days will recognise the following types:—
Picture to yourself a Polish Jew, young, yellow-skinned, black-haired; he has luminous eyes, sensuous lips and damp hands, and he dresses well, but in an extravagant [98] ]style. He is a megalomaniac, and he has all the megalomaniac’s consuming anxiety to discover precisely in what way other people react to his personality. One night my bitterest enemy brought him to the table at which I was sitting, introduced us to each other, and walked away.
“I am told you are a journalist,” my new acquaintance began. “I myself write poems. I have a theory about poetry, and my theory is this: All poetry should be subjective.”
“Why?”
“Never mind why. I am telling you about my theory. All poetry should be subjective; as a matter of fact, all the best poetry is. To myself I am the most interesting phenomenon in the world. To yourself, you are. Is it not so?”
“Yes; you have guessed right first time.”
“Well, I have in this dispatch case eight hundred and seventy-three poems about myself, telling the world almost all there is to know about the most interesting phenomenon it contains.”