That it was Claude, whom I have been expecting.
I have arranged that you shall have this room
All to yourself and friends. Now I must leave you.
I have to go and speak to Campbell Dodgson
About some prints we’ve recently acquired.
Stephen Phillips. How can I ever thank you? Love to Binyon!
[Colvin goes out.
Enter Mr. George Alexander, Goethe, Marlowe, Gounod.
Alexander (from force of habit). I always told you he was reasonable.
Goethe. Well, I consent. Mein Gott! how colossal
You English are! ’Tis nigh impossible
For poets to refuse you anything,
And German thought beneath some English shade—
Unter den Linden, as we say at home—
Sounds really quite as well on British soil.
Our good friend Marlowe hardly seems so pleased.
Marlowe. Oh, Goethe! cease these frivolous remarks.
Think you that I, who knew Elizabeth,
And tasted all the joys of literature
And played the dawn to Shakespeare’s larger day,
And heralded a mighty line of verse
With half-a-dozen mighty lines my own,
Am feeling well?
Gounod (brightening). Ah! Monsieur Wells,
Auteur d’une histoire fine et romanesque
Traduit par Davray; il a des idées
C’est une chose rare là-bas . . .
Stephen Phillips. He does not speak of Huysmans; ’tis myself.
I thank you, gentlemen, with all my heart;
I thank you, gentlemen, with all my soul;
I thank you, sirs, with all my soul and strength.
So for your leave much thanks. You know my weakness:
I love to be at peace with all the past.
The present and the future I can manage;
The stirrup of posterity may dangle
Against the heaving flanks of Pegasus.
I feel my spurs against the saucy mare
And Alexander turned Bucephalus.