Accordingly I stuck the MS. in my pocket. With a certain feeling of dread that I might be forced to accept it, I took it out on the following Sunday, at Newlands, and began to read. I shall never forget my delight. I had been pleased at the Bullen find, but here was something quite different. When I laid down Mr. De La Mare's MS. — signed Walter Ramal, an anagram of De La Mare—I am proud to say that I fully realised that a new planet had swum into my ken. I had had the good luck to be the literary astronomer first to notice that the Host of Heaven had another recruit. That is an experience as thrilling as it is rare. The story was entitled "A Mote," and I am delighted to think I had the prescience to pass it on to my readers with the following note, for, as I have said before, I insisted, somewhat to the horror of conventional people, in decorating the contributions of any new writer with an explanation or comment. Here was my guess at De La Mare's story. I do not mean to say that it contains the whole truth, but, at any rate, it was a good shot considering the facts before me. Here it is:
Those who hold the doctrine of transmigration will hardly fail, after they have read this story, to think that the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe is once more abroad.—Ed. Cornhill.
Here I may add that these notes had a curiously irritating effect upon the older and more rigid readers of the magazine. Mr. Reginald Smith, for example, was quite terrified by the passionate way in which old gentlemen at his club attacked him on the way in which the pages of the Cornhill were defiled by the Editor's "horrible little notes." Nobody wanted to read them. They were either futile or patronising, or both. They utterly spoilt the magazine, and so forth and so on. Mr. Reginald Smith, though kindness itself in the matter, was inclined to yield to the storm and to think that I had perhaps made a mistake in breaking away from the established custom. I appealed to Mr. George Smith, quite certain that he would support me and the innovation. He did so; and I continued, though, perhaps, with a little more reticence, to put up directing-posts for my readers. I am sure I was right. After all, the ordinary man gets very much confused by new writers and is very likely to miss a good thing merely because he is put off by the title or the first few sentences. Yet all the time, the essay or short story at which he shies is the very thing he would like to read if only it had been properly introduced to him. In Mr. De La Mare's case, however, there was no fear of being put off by reading the first few sentences. If you had once read these you were quite certain to finish. I never remember a better opening:
I awoke from a dream of a gruesome fight with a giant geranium. I surveyed, with drowsy satisfaction and complacency, the eccentric jogs and jerks of my aunt's head.
The performance is even better than this promise of strange things strangely told. In the end it is not "my aunt" but "my uncle" who sees visions, and visions whose subtlety and originality it would be hard to beat. I will tantalise my readers with a quotation:
My uncle stopped dead upon the gravel, with his face towards the garden.
I seemed to feel the slow revolution of his eyes.
"I see a huge city of granite," he grunted; "I see lean spires of metal and hazardous towers, frowning upon the blackness of their shadows. White lights stare out of narrow window-slits; a black cloud breathes smoke in the streets. There is no wind, yet a wind sits still upon the city. The air smells like copper. Every sound rings as it were upon metal. There is a glow—a glow of outer darkness—a glow imagined by straining eyes. The city is a bubble with clamour and tumult rising thin and yellow in the lean streets like dust in a loam-pit. The city is walled as with a finger-ring. The sky is dumb with listeners. Far down, as the crow sees ears of wheat, I see that mote of a man, in his black clothes, now lit by flaming jets, now hid in thick darkness. Every street breeds creatures. They swarm gabbling, and walk like ants in the sun. Their faces are fierce and wary, with malevolent lips. Each mouths to each, and points and stares. On I walk, imperturbable and stark. But I know, oh, my boy, I know the alphabet of their vile whisperings and gapings and gesticulations. The air quivers with the flight of black winged shapes. Each foot-tap of that sure figure upon the granite is ticking his hour away." My uncle turned and took my hand. "And this, Edmond, this is the man of business who purchased his game in the City, and vied with all in the excellence of his claret. The man who courted your aunt, begot hale and whole children, who sits in his pew and is respected. That beneath my skull should lurk such monstrous things! You are my godchild, Edmond. Actions are mere sediment, and words—froth, froth. Let the thoughts be clean, my boy; the thoughts must be clean; thoughts make the man. You may never at any time be of ill repute, and yet be a blackguard. Every thought, black or white, lives for ever, and to life there is no end."
"Look here, Uncle," said I, "it's serious, you know; you must come to town and see Jenkinson, the brain man. A change of air, sir." "Do you smell sulphur?" said my uncle. I tittered and was alarmed.
Anyone who reads this and knows anything of literature will understand the feelings of a young editor in publishing such matter, especially in publishing it in 1896. At the present time the refrain that "All can raise the flower now, for all have got the seed" is a reality. In the 'nineties work like "The Mote" was rare. Connoisseurs of style will recognise what I mean when I say that what endeared "Walter Ramal" to me was that, in spite of the fact that Stevenson at that very time was at his best, and so was Kipling, there was not a trace of either author's influence in Mr. De La Mare's prose. The very occasional appearances of Stevensonianism were in truth only examples of common origin. He at once made me feel that he was destined for great things. When there are two such influences at work, happy is the man who can resist them, and resist them in the proper way, by an alternative of his own, and not by a mere bald and hungry reticence.
Mr. Walter De La Mare's second article was called "The Village of Old Age." It was a charming piece of what I simply cannot and will not call "elfish" writing. The word in me, foolishly, no doubt, produces physical nausea. If, however, someone with a stronger stomach in regard to words called it elfish I should understand what he meant, and agree. But, good as were these two essays, they were nothing compared to De La Mare's marvellous story, "The Moon's Miracle." That was a piece of glorious fantasy in which the writer excelled himself, not only as regards the mechanism of his essay-story, but as to its substance, and, most of all, its style. He prefaced it by this quotation from Paradise Lost: