Eddy went round to the rooms in Old Compton Street which he shared with Arnold Denison. Arnold had chosen Soho for residence partly because he liked it, partly to improve his knowledge of languages, and partly to study the taste of the neighbourhood in literature, as it was there that he intended, when he had more leisure, to start a bookshop. Eddy, too, liked it. (This is a superfluous observation, because anybody would.) In fact, he liked his life in general just now. He liked reviewing for the Daily Post and writing for himself (himself via the editors of various magazines who met with his productions on their circular route and pushed them on again). He liked getting review copies of books to keep; his taste was catholic and omnivorous, and boggled at nothing. With joy he perused everything, even novels which had won prizes in novel competitions, popular discursive works called “About the Place,” and books of verse (to do them justice, not even popular) called “Pipings,” and such. He wrote appreciative reviews of all of them, because he appreciated them all. It may fairly be said that he saw each as its producer saw it, which may or may not be what a reviewer should try to do, but is anyhow grateful and comforting to the reviewed. Arnold, who did not do this, in vain protested that he would lose his job soon. “No literary editor will stand such indiscriminate fulsomeness for long.... It’s a dispensation of providence that you didn’t come and read for us, as I once mistakenly wished. You would, so far as your advice carried any weight, have dragged us down into the gutter. Have you no sense of values or of decency? Can you really like these florid effusions of base minds?” He was reading through Eddy’s last review, which was of a book of verse by a lady gifted with emotional tendencies and an admiration for landscape. Arnold shook his head and laughed as he put the review down.
“The queer thing about it is that it’s not a bad review, in spite of everything you say in appreciation of the lunatic who wrote the book. That’s what I can’t understand; how you can be so intelligent and yet so idiotic. You’ve given the book exactly, in a few phrases—no one could possibly mistake its nature—and then you make several quite true, not to say brilliant remarks about it—and then you go on and say how good it is.... Well, I shall be interested to see how long they keep you on.”
“They like me,” Eddy assured him, complacently. “They think I write well. The authors like me, too. Many a heartfelt letter of thanks do I get from those whom there are few to praise and fewer still to love. As you may have noticed, they strew the breakfast table. Is it comme il faut for me to answer? I do—I mean, I did, both times—because it seemed politer, but it was perhaps a mistake, because the correspondence between me and one of them has not ceased yet, and possibly never will, since neither of us likes to end it. How involving life is!”
Meanwhile he went to the Club House by the Lea most evenings. That, too, he liked. He had a gift which Datcherd had detected in him, the gift of getting on well with all sorts of people, irrespective of their incomes, breeding, social status, intelligence, or respectability. He did not, like Arnold, rule out the unintelligent, the respectable, the commonplace; nor, like Datcherd, the orthodoxly religious; nor, as Jane did, without knowing it, the vulgar; nor, like many delightful and companionable and well-bred people, the uneducated, those whom we, comprehensively and rightly, call the poor—rightly, because, though poverty may seem the merest superficial and insignificant attribute of the completed product, it is also the original, fundamental cause of all the severing differences. Molly Bellairs thought Eddy would have made a splendid clergyman, a better one than his father, who was unlimitedly kind, but ill at ease, and talked above poor people’s heads. Eddy, with less grip of theological problems, had a surer hold of points of view, and apprehended the least witty of jokes, the least pathetic of quarrels, the least picturesque of emotions. Hence he was popular.
He found that the sort of lectures Datcherd’s clubs were used to expect were largely on subjects like the Minimum Wage, Capitalism versus Industrialism, Organised Labour, the Eight Hours Day, Poor Law Reform, the Endowment of Mothers, Co-partnership, and such; all very interesting and profitable if well treated. So Eddy wrote to Bob Traherne, the second curate at St. Gregory’s, to ask him to give one. Traherne replied that he would, if Eddy liked, give a course of six. He proceeded to do so, and as he was a good, concise, and pungent speaker, drew large audiences and was immensely popular. At the end of his lecture he sold penny tracts by Church Socialists; really sold them, in large numbers. After his third lecture, which was on the Minimum Wage, he said he would be glad to receive the names of any persons who would like to join the Church Socialist League, the most effective society he knew of for furthering these objects. He received seven forthwith, and six more after the next.
Protests reached Eddy from a disturbed secretary, a pale, red-haired young man, loyal to Datcherd’s spirit.
“It’s not what Mr. Datcherd would like, Mr. Oliver.”
Eddy said, “Why on earth shouldn’t he? He likes the men to be Socialists, doesn’t he?”
“Not that sort, he doesn’t. At least, he wouldn’t. He likes them to think for themselves, not to be tied up with the Church.”
“Well, they are thinking for themselves. He wouldn’t like them to be tied up to his beliefs either, surely. I feel sure it’s all right, Pollard. Anyhow, I can’t stop them joining the League if they want to, can I?”