Indeed, so admirable was his manner that I retired unreluctantly from competition. Raney's messenger, the self-styled "James Morris," had called on me in June; the evangelists of Universal Brotherhood arrived in July, and for more sweltering weeks than I like to count, mine was the privilege of giving them tea and speeches on the Terrace, escorting them in unsuitable clothes to Goodwood and more speeches and misinforming them on subjects of historical interest in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's—a course which afforded them opportunity of correcting me in further speeches, to the sluggish perplexity of the vergers.
In August, the hoarse, limp mass of us repaired to Euston and House of Steynes. Old Lady Loring was, perhaps fortunately, with Amy at Baden-Baden, though four days can be interminably long even in a bachelor party. Our host, however, put his heart into the work; with a grim thoroughness we visited Holyrood and Arthur's Seat, the Highlands and Islands and dismissed our guests fraternally with the clang of Clyde hammers resounding in their ears and an obstinate conviction that they had enjoyed themselves.
"And now," said Loring to my uncle as we walked out of the Waverley Station, "now for an All-British holiday. You can stay another week, sir? No women till my mother comes back—I thought that would appeal to you. You, George? Then the only thing to do is to find a telegraph office and invite everybody we can think of."
Two days later, by persuasion on our part and perjury on theirs, we had snatched a dozen men from the same number of protesting hostesses. Tom Dainton was on his honeymoon—surely the least romantic of its kind for anyone who knew Tom or could imagine an ox-eyed wife yet more silent than himself!—but Sam came up to say good-bye before sailing for India with his regiment, and we had the luck to catch Mayhew on leave from Budapest. Summertown escaped the vigilance of his Colonel for half the time, and Arden telegraphed at some expense: "One resents these short notices but if one can be assured that the Waterloo brandy is not yet finished one may perhaps sacrifice oneself for one's friends but one cannot allow ones' acceptance to be taken as establishing a precedent."
The party was a rare antidote for anyone suffering from too much House of Commons and general propaganda. We bathed and lay about in long chairs and bathed again and enjoyed the delicious, lazy conversation wherein the speakers fall half asleep between the drawling sentences, and nobody makes epigrams or debating points, and nothing matters. Valentine Arden, exquisite, precious and inscrutable as ever, would unbend from time to time and speak as though he no longer feared a charge of enthusiasm. His books were attracting considerable attention with their sparkle and passionless satire, and his talk left the impression on my mind that for all his youth the satire was not wholly cheap effect.
He analysed contemporary literature with the eyes of a man whose profession is to study technique, emphasizing the essentially derivative character of modern writing with its sex psychology borrowed from France, its Pottery School and Dartmoor School imitating Hardy, its intensive vision applied by the admirers of James. His final judgement was depressing, for there was nothing new except Wells and Conrad and little that was good. We were too much obsessed by our environment to produce or care for great books. Nothing was worth achieving or describing, unless it were an invitation to dine with royalty or a treatise on sexual pathology.
The childlike preoccupation of grown men and women in the infinite littleness of social life was an irresistible mark for the satire of a man whose deliberate and effective pose was to exaggerate the fastidious artificiality of his generation. Valentine Arden had a courageous and altogether scornful soul. I have seen him enter the Ritz, thin and white as an Aubrey Beardsley pierrot, in a black coat lined with heliotrope silk. I have watched strong-minded young women humbling themselves before him because they knew his indifference to their charms, and I have marked the haughtiest of nervous hostesses exerting themselves to secure his comfort. In his early days no man of my time was so successful in getting taken at his own valuation. Later when his position was assured, half London was civil in the expectation of appearing in his next book; the other half in hopes of being left out.
Mayhew's riotous fancy was little subdued by twelve months in a foreign capital devoted to special correspondence by day and the study of Austro-Hungary's myriad tongues by night. He was hardly less omniscient than in the old Fleet Street days when he dined with me at the Eclectic and prefaced preposterous stories with "The Prime Minister said to me in the Lobby only this afternoon, 'My dear Mayhew, I don't want this to go any further, but ...'" I remember the late absorption of Bosnia and Herzegovina left him tolerably sagacious.
"I don't think people in this country realize what a near thing it was," he said, with a grave shake of the head. "It's a diplomatic triumph for the old Emperor, but he'd better not try to repeat it. Russia's got a long memory. At present she's recovering slowly from the Japanese War and wasn't equal to taking on Austria and Germany at the same time. Devil of it is, you never know where the thing'll stop. Russia brings in France, France may bring us in.... It's a great pity someone can't hold the Balkans under the sea for five minutes."