No one seeing the two rivals together, no one meeting them at Mr. Hookworth’s famous luncheon parties in the Authors’ Club, or at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s not less famous garden parties in Greville Place, would have supposed off-hand that the pair had a single point in common. Dapper little Maltby—blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and crow. Maltby had a perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton was usually silent, but very well worth listening to whenever he did croak. He had distinction, I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt himself to surroundings. He stood out. He awed Mr. Hookworth. Ladies were always asking one another, rather intently, what they thought of him. One could imagine that Mr. Foster-Dugdale, had he come home from the City to attend the garden parties, might have regarded him as one from whom Mrs. Foster-Dugdale should be shielded. But the casual observer of Braxton and Maltby at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere was wrong in supposing that the two were totally unlike. He overlooked one simple and obvious point. This was that he had met them both at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere. Wherever they were invited, there certainly, there punctually, they would be. They were both of them gluttons for the fruits and signs of their success.
Interviewers and photographers had as little reason as had hostesses to complain of two men so earnestly and assiduously ‘on the make’ as Maltby and Braxton. Maltby, for all his sparkle, was earnest; Braxton, for all his arrogance, assiduous.
‘A Faun on the Cotswolds’ had no more eager eulogist than the author of ‘Ariel in Mayfair.’ When any one praised his work, Maltby would lightly disparage it in comparison with Braxton’s—‘Ah, if I could write like THAT!’ Maltby won golden opinions in this way. Braxton, on the other hand, would let slip no opportunity for sneering at Maltby’s work—‘gimcrack,’ as he called it. This was not good for Maltby. Different men, different methods.
‘The Rape of the Lock’ was ‘gimcrack,’ if you care to call it so; but it was a delicate, brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby’s ‘Ariel.’ Absurd to compare Maltby with Pope? I am not so sure. I have read ‘Ariel,’ but have never read ‘The Rape of the Lock.’ Braxton’s opprobrious term for ‘Ariel’ may not, however, have been due to jealousy alone. Braxton had imagination, and his rival did not soar above fancy. But the point is that Maltby’s fancifulness went far and well. In telling how Ariel re-embodied himself from thin air, leased a small house in Chesterfield Street, was presented at a Levee, played the part of good fairy in a matter of true love not running smooth, and worked meanwhile all manner of amusing changes among the aristocracy before he vanished again, Maltby showed a very pretty range of ingenuity. In one respect, his work was a more surprising achievement than Braxton’s. For whereas Braxton had been born and bred among his rustics, Maltby knew his aristocrats only through Thackeray, through the photographs and paragraphs in the newspapers, and through those passionate excursions of his to Rotten Row. Yet I found his aristocrats as convincing as Braxton’s rustics. It is true that I may have been convinced wrongly. That is a point which I could settle only by experience. I shift my ground, claiming for Maltby’s aristocrats just this: that they pleased me very much.
Aristocrats, when they are presented solely through a novelist’s sense of beauty, do not satisfy us. They may be as beautiful as all that, but, for fear of thinking ourselves snobbish, we won’t believe it. We do believe it, however, and revel in it, when the novelist saves his face and ours by a pervading irony in the treatment of what he loves. The irony must, mark you, be pervading and obvious. Disraeli’s great ladies and lords won’t do, for his irony was but latent in his homage, and thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound to scoff. All’s well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony. Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair, enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of veneration for those fools.
Maltby, too, in his measure, enabled us to reel thus. That is mainly why, before the end of April, his publisher was in a position to state that ‘the Seventh Large Impression of “Ariel in Mayfair” is almost exhausted.’ Let it be put to our credit, however, that at the same moment Braxton’s publisher had ‘the honour to inform the public that an Eighth Large Impression of “A Faun on the Cotswolds” is in instant preparation.’
Indeed, it seemed impossible for either author to outvie the other in success and glory. Week in, week out, you saw cancelled either’s every momentary advantage. A neck-and-neck race. As thus:—Maltby appears as a Celebrity At Home in the World (Tuesday). Ha! No, Vanity Fair (Wednesday) has a perfect presentment of Braxton by ‘Spy.’ Neck-and-neck! No, Vanity Fair says ‘the subject of next week’s cartoon will be Mr. Hilary Maltby.’ Maltby wins! No, next week Braxton’s in the World.
Throughout May I kept, as it were, my eyes glued to my field-glasses. On the first Monday in June I saw that which drew from me a hoarse ejaculation.
Let me explain that always on Monday mornings at this time of year, when I opened my daily paper, I looked with respectful interest to see what bevy of the great world had been entertained since Saturday at Keeb Hall. The list was always august and inspiring. Statecraft and Diplomacy were well threaded there with mere Lineage and mere Beauty, with Royalty sometimes, with mere Wealth never, with privileged Genius now and then. A noble composition always. It was said that the Duke of Hertfordshire cared for nothing but his collection of birds’ eggs, and that the collections of guests at Keeb were formed entirely by his young Duchess. It was said that he had climbed trees in every corner of every continent. The Duchess’ hobby was easier. She sat aloft and beckoned desirable specimens up.
The list published on that first Monday in June began ordinarily enough, began with the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and the Portuguese Minister. Then came the Duke and Duchess of Mull, followed by four lesser Peers (two of them Proconsuls, however) with their Peeresses, three Peers without their Peeresses, four Peeresses without their Peers, and a dozen bearers of courtesy-titles with or without their wives or husbands. The rear was brought up by ‘Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. Henry Chaplin, and Mr. Hilary Maltby.’