Hadrian the Seventh

To Mother

In obedience to the decree of Urban P.M. VIII, I declare that I have no intention of attributing any other than a purely human authority to the miracles, revelations, favours, & particular cases, recorded in this book; & the same as regards the titles of saints & blessed applied to servants of God not yet canonized: except in those cases which have been confirmed by the Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman See, of which I declare myself to be an obedient son; & therefore I submit myself & all which I have written to her judgment.

Prooimion

In mind he was tired, worn out, by years of hope deferred, of loneliness, of unrewarded toil. In body he was almost prostrate by the pain of an arm on the tenth day of vaccination. Bodily pain stung him like a personal affront. “Someone will have to be made miserable for this,” he once said during the throes of a toothache. He was no stranger to mental fatigue: but, when to that was added corporeal anguish, he came near collapse. His capacity for work was constricted: the mere sight of his writing materials filled him with disgust. But, because he had a horror of being discovered in a state of inaction, after breakfast he sat down as usual and tried to write. Dazed in a torrent of ideas, he painfully halted for words: stumbling in a maze of words, he frequently lost the thread of his argument: now and then, in sheer exhaustion, his pen remained immobile. He sat in a small low armchair which was covered with shabby brocade, dull-red and green. An old drawing-board, of the large size denominated Antiquarian, rested on his knees. The lower edge frayed the brocade on the arms of the chair. His little yellow cat Flavio lay asleep on the tilted board, nestling in the bend of his left elbow. That was the only living creature to whom he ever spoke with affection as well as with politeness. His left hand steadied his MS., the sheets of which were clipped together at the top by a metal clip. At the upper edge of the board a couple of Publishers’ Dummies reposed, having the outward similitude of six-shilling novels: but he had filled their pages with his archaic handwriting. The first contained thoughts—not great thoughts, nor thoughts selected on any particular principle, but phrases and opinions such as Sophokles’ denunciation,

Ὠ μιαρον ἠθοϛ και γυναικοϛ ὑστερον,

or Gabriele d’Annunzio’s sentence

“Old legitimate monarchies are everywhere declining, and Demos stands ready to swallow them down its miry throat.”

The second was his private dictionary which, (as an artificer in verbal expression,) he had compiled, taking Greek words from Liddell-and-Scott and Latin words from Andrews, enlarging his English vocabulary with such simple but pregnant formations as the adjective “hybrist” from ὑβριστηϛ, or the noun “gingilism” from gingilismus.

He was looking askance at his MS. In two hours, he had written no more than fourteen lines; and these were deformed by erasures of words and sentences, by substitutions and additions. He struck an upward line from left to right across the sheet: laid down his pen: lifted board, cat, books, and MS., from his knees; and laid them by. He could not work.

He poked the little fire burning in the corner of a fire-clayed grate. He was shivering: for, though March was going out like nine lions, he was very lightly clad in a blue linen suit such as is worn over all by engineers. He had an impish predilection for that garb since a cantankerous red-nosed prelate, anxious to sneer at unhaloed poverty, inanely had said that he looked like a Neapolitan. He brushed the accumulation of cigarette-ash from the front of his jacket and seized a pair of spring-dumbbells: but at once returned them, warned by the pain of his left armpit. He took up the newspaper which he had brought with him after breakfast, and read again the news from Rome and the news of Russia. The former, he could see, was merely the kind of subterfuge which farthing journalists are wont to use when they are excluded from a view of facts. It said much, and signified nothing. “Our Special Correspondent” was being hoodwinked; and knew it: but did not like to confess it; and so indulged his imagination. Something was occurring in Rome: something mysterious was occurring in Rome. That could be deduced from the dispatch: but nothing more. The news of Russia was a tale of unparalleled ghastliness. It emanated from Berlin: no direct communication with Russia having taken place for a fortnight.

“How exquisitely horrible it is,” he said to Flavio; “and I believe it’s perfectly true. The Tzar—well, that was to be expected. But the Tsaritza—though, if ever a woman bore her fate in her face, she did, poor creature. Those dreadful haunted eyes of hers! That hard old young soft face! The innocent babies! How abominably cynically cruel! Yet there have been omens and portents of just such a tragedy as this any time these last few years. They must have known it was coming. Or is this another example of the onlookers seeing most of the game?” He fetched a book of newspaper cuttings, and turned the pages. “Here you are, Flavio,” he said to the sleeping cat; “and here—and here. If these are not forewarnings—well!”

He sat down again, and studied certain paragraphs attentively.

He turned back to “The Gathering of the Storm,” and read the ominous paragraph again. “Warning enough, in all conscience,” he said: “first, the Public Prosecutor assassinated at Odessa, then the Chief of Secret Police of Petersburg, then the Procurator of the Holy Synod; and now a hekatombe, sovereign, royalty, aristocracy, government, bureaucracy, all annihilated, and Anarchy in excelsis. France will take fire at any minute now, that’s absolutely certain. Oh, how horrible! But we’re all Christians, Flavio; and this is only one of the many funny ways in which we love one another.”

He rose and went to the window. The yellow cat deliberately stretched himself, yawned, and followed; and proceeded to carry out a wonderful scheme of feints and ambuscades in regard to a ping-pong ball which was kept for his proper diversion. The man looked on almost lovingly. Flavio at length captured the ball, took it between his forepaws, and posed with all the majesty of a lion of Trafalgar Square. Anon he uttered a little low gurgle of endearment, fixing the great eloquent mystery of amber and black velvet eyes, tardy, grave, upon his human friend. No notice was vouchsafed. Flavio got up; and gently rubbed his head against the nearest hand.

“My boy!” the man murmured; and he lifted the little cat on to his shoulder. He went downstairs. He could not work; and he was going to take an easy; and he wanted a novel, he said to his landlady. He feared that he had read all the books in the house. Yes, and those in the drawing-room too. After a quarter of an hour, application to a neighbour produced three miserable derelicts, a nameless sixpenny shudder, a Braddon, and an Edna Lyall. Not to seem ungracious, he took them upstairs; and pitched them into a corner, to be returned upon occasion. That salient trait of his character, the desire not to be ungracious, the readiness to be unselfish and self-sacrificing, had done him incalculable injury. This world is infested by innumerable packs of half-licked cubs and quarter-cultivated mediocrities who seem to have nothing better to do than to buzz about harassing and interfering with their betters. Out of courtesy, out of kindness, he was used to give way; but all the same he tenaciously knew and clung to his original purpose. He knew that delay was his enemy: yet he invariably would stand aside and let himself be delayed. And now towards the end of his youth, he was poor, lonely, a misanthropic altruist.

He returned to his armchair, breathing a long sigh of irritation and exhaustion: broke up three cigarette dottels for a (tobacco famine was afflicting him), rolled them in a fresh paper, and applied a match. Flavio, with an indulgent protestant mew, bounded from his knee to a bedroom chair; and coiled himself up to sleep.

The armchair was placed directly in front of the fireplace, the ordinary garret-coloured iron fireplace and mantel of a suburban lodging-house attic. To the grey wall above the mantel a large sheet of brown packing-paper was tacked. On this background were pinned photographs of the Hermes of Herculaneum, the terra-cotta Sebastian of South Kensington, Donatello’s liparose David and the vivid David of Verrocchio, the wax model of Cellini’s Perseys, an unknown Rugger XV prized for a single example of the rare feline-human type, and the O.U.D.S. Sebastian of Twelfth Night of 1900. Tucked into the edges of these were Italian picture postcards presenting Andrea del Sarto’s young St. John, Alessandro Filipepi’s Primavera, a page from an old Salon catalogue showing Friant’s Wrestlers, another from an old Harper’s Magazine showing Boucher’s Runners, a cheap and lovely chromo of an olive-skinned black-haired cornflower-crowned Pancratius in white on a gold ground, the visiting-cards of five literary agents, and a postcard tersely inscribed Verro precipitevolissimevolmente. The mantelshelf contained stone bottles of ink, pipes, a miniature in a closed morocco case, a cast of Cardinal Andrea della Valle’s seal from Oxford, two pairs of silver spectacles in shagreen cases, four tiny ingots of pure copper, a sponge gum bottle, and an open book with painted covers showing Eros at the knees of Psyche and a mysterious group of divers in the clear of the moon. The door was at a yard to the left of the fireplace, at a right-angle. Uncared-for clothes, black serge and blue linen, hung upon it. A small wooden washstand stood between the door and the armchair, convenient to the writer’s hand. A strawboard covered the hole in its top; and supported ink-bottles, pens, penknife, scissors, a lamp, a biscuit-tin of cigarette-dottels, sixteen exquisite Greek intaglj. On the lower shelf stood a row of books-of-reference. Between the washstand and the fire was the chair whereon Flavio slumbered, (if one may use so indelicate a word of so delicate a cat). About four feet of wall extended on the right of the fireplace. Pinned there were a pencil design for a Diamastigosis, a black and white panel of young Sophokles as Choregos after Salamis done on the back of an Admiralty chart, a water colour of Tarquinio Santacroce and Alexander VI, a pair of foils and fencing masks, and a curious Greco-Italian seal showing St. George as a wing-footed Perseys wearing what looked like the Garter Mantle and labelled φυλαξ ἀρχηϛ. Substitutes for shelves stood against the lower part of the wall. A rush-basket, closed and full of letters, set up on end, supported files of the American Saturday Review, the Author, the Outlook, the Salpinx, Reynards’s, and the Pall Mall Gazette, and a feather broom for dusting books and papers or for correcting Flavio when obstreperous. Another rush-basket, placed lengthwise on a bedroom chair, held a row of books, MS. notebooks, duodecimo classics of Plantin, Estienne, Maittaire, with English and American editions of the writer’s own works. The third wall was pierced by two small windows, wide open to the full always. A chest of drawers protruded endways into the room. Its top was used as a standing desk. The drawers opened towards the fourth wall. Sheaves of letters in metal clips hung at the end. Between it and the armchair, more shelves were contrived of rush-baskets placed beneath and upon a small wooden table. Books-of-reference, lexicons, and a box of blank paper, congregated here convenient to the writer’s hand. The little table drawer contained notepaper, envelopes, sealing-wax, and stamps. The whole was arranged so that, when once ensconced in the armchair before the fire with his writing-board on his knees, the digladiator could reach all his weapons by a simple extension of his arms. The attic was eleven feet square, low-pitched, and with half the ceiling slanting to the fourth foot from the floor on the fourth wall. Here was a camp-bed, a small mirror, and a towel-rail, three pairs of two- six- and ten-pound dumbbells, a pair of boots on trees, a bottle of eucalyptus and a spray-producer.

His eyes, as they wandered round the room, met these things. He took a towel, and went downstairs to the bathroom to wash his hands. On returning he enticed Flavio with a bit of string. The cat was unwilling to play: gazed at him with innocent imperscrutable round eyes: elaborately yawned and requested permission to retire. The odour of the kitchen-dinner was perceptible. The door was opened; and shut.

He put the butt of his cigarette in an earthenware jar on his left for future use. The maid appeared with his lunch, a basinful of bread and milk. Following some subconscious train of thought, he stretched himself, took the little mirror from the wall and went to the window.

“It’s one of your bad days, my friend,” he commented, regarding his own image. “You look all your age, and twelve years more. Draw down those feathered brows, man. Never mind the upright furrow which makes you look stern. Draw them down; and open your eyes; and look alert. Do something to counteract the tender thin line of that mouth. You mustn’t let yourself relax like this. It brings out your wrinkles, and shows the sparseness of your hair. If you had an inch more thigh, and say a couple of inches more shin, you might look people down a little more: but with that meek subservient aspect—how Luckock used to chaff about it!—no wonder everyone takes advantage of you. What’s the good of having your fastidious mind clearly written on that fastidious mouth if you don’t insist on behaving fastidiously. Cultivate the art of looking as though you were about to say No. You always can say Yes after No. But, if you begin with Yes, as you always do, you prevent yourself from ever saying No. That’s why everyone can swindle you. You’re far too anxious to give way. Buck up a bit, you ugly little thing! Ugly as you are, you’re neither vulgar nor commonplace. Straighten your back, and open your eyes wide, and pull yourself together.”

He put the mirror in its place; and again cast a glance round the room, seeking something to read, something, anything, that was not too recent in his mind. He picked up at random one of the rejected novels. It was called Donovan. He remembered having seen (in an ex-tea-pedlar’s magazine) a print of the writer thereof. He also remembered that he had found her self-conscious pose and labial conformation intensely antipathetic. His sense of beauty was a great deal more than acute. Let his predilection (which was for reticent expert virtue in the male and for innate delicate modesty in the female) once be satisfied, and the door to his favour lay open.