George Moore in those days was severe on Guy de Maupassant, and said his stories were merely carved cherry-stones. Edmund Gosse contested this point hotly. Still more amusing than the literary discussions were those occasions when Edmund Gosse would tell us reminiscences of his youth, when he worked as a boy at the British Museum, and of the early days of his friendship with Swinburne.
There was an examination for the Diplomatic Service that autumn, and I was given a nomination for it, but I was ill and couldn’t compete.
I went back to Hildesheim for Christmas. Christmas is the captain jewel of German domestic life, and no one who has not spent a Christmas with a German family can really know Germany, just as no one who has not lived through the Easter festival with a Russian family can really know Russia. It is only in Germany that the Christmas tree grows in its full glory. The Christmas tree at Hildesheim was laden with little tangerine oranges and sprinkled over with long threads of silver snow. When it was lighted, the carol: “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht,” was sung round it. The presents were arranged, or rather displayed, on a table under the tree: new presents, and a present of many years’ standing, the Puppenstube, which took on a new life every Christmas by being redecorated, and having the small kitchen utensils in its dolls’ kitchen refurbished. The presents were not wrapped up in parcels, but they were exposed to the full view of those who were about to receive them, and so arranged that they appeared at their very best, as though Santa Claus and a fairy godmother had arranged them themselves. My present was a beautiful embossed dicky.
On New Year’s Eve, the Christmas tree was relit, and as the bells rang for New Year, we clinked glasses of punch and said: “Prosit Neujahr.” If you want to know what is the spirit of a German Christmas you will find its quintessence distilled in the poem of Heine about “Die heil’gen drei Kon’ge aus Morgenland,” which ends:
“Der Stern blieb stehn über Joseph’s Haus,
Da sind sie hineingegangen;
Das Ochslein brüllte, das Kindlein schrie,
Die heil’gen drei Könige sangen.”
While I was going through this complicated and protracted training, the date of the examination was, of course, only a matter of conjecture, but when an Ambassador died there was always an atmosphere of excitement at Garrick Chambers, and on Scoones’ face one could clearly read that something momentous had occurred. As a rule the examinations happened about once a year. Having missed my first chance, which was fortunate, as I was woefully unprepared, I had to wait a long time for my second chance, and I spent the time between London, which meant Garrick Chambers, Germany, which meant Hildesheim, and Italy, which meant Madame Traverso’s pension at Lung’Arno della Borsa 2 bis, at Florence.
One night, at Edmund Gosse’s, in the winter of 1895, Harland was there, and the conversation turned on Anatole France. I quoted him some passages from Le Livre de Mon Ami, which he had not read. The name of Anatole France had not yet been mentioned in the literary press of London, and Harland said to me: “Why don’t you write me an article about him and I will print it in the Yellow Book?” The Yellow Book by that time had lost any elements of surprise or newness it had ever had and had developed into an ordinary review to which the stock writers of London reviews contributed. I said I would try, and I wrote an article on Anatole France, which was accepted by Harland and came out in the April number. This was the first criticism of Anatole France which appeared in England. In the same number there was a story by Anatole France himself, and a long poem by William Watson. When the proof of my article came, I took it to Edmund Gosse, and read it aloud to him in his office at the Board of Trade in Whitehall. He was pleased with it, and his meed of generous and discriminating praise and encouragement was extremely welcome and exhilarating. He said there was a unique opportunity for anyone who should make it his aim and business to write gracefully and delicately about beautiful and distinguished things, and that I could not do better than try to continue as I had begun. No one could have been kinder nor more encouraging. The University is not a stimulating place for aspiring writers. The dons have seen it all before so many times, and heard it all so often; the undergraduates are so terribly in earnest and uncompromisingly severe about the efforts of their fellow-undergraduates; so cocksure and certain in their judgments, so that at Cambridge I hid my literary aspirations, and when I left it I had partially renounced all such ambitions, thinking that I had been deluding myself, but at the same time cherishing a hidden hope that I might some day begin again. Edmund Gosse’s praise kindled the smouldering ashes and prevented them from being extinguished, although I was too busy learning arithmetic, geography, and long lists of obscure terms in French and German to think much about such things.