LITERARY FINISH

I had two literary men staying with me a week ago, both of them accomplished writers, and interested in their art, not professionally and technically only, but ardently and enthusiastically.  I here label them respectively Musgrave and Herries.  Musgrave is a veteran writer, a man of fifty, who makes a considerable income by writing, and has succeeded in many departments—­biography, criticism, poetry, essay-writing; he lacks, however, the creative and imaginative gift; his observation is acute, and his humour considerable; but he cannot infer and deduce; he cannot carry a situation further than he can see it.  Herries on the other hand is a much younger man, with an interest in human beings that is emotional rather than spectacular; while Musgrave is interested mainly in the present, Herries lives in the past or the future.  Musgrave sees what people do and how they behave, while Herries is for ever thinking how they must have behaved to produce their present conditions, or how they would be likely to act under different conditions.  Musgrave’s one object is to discover what he calls the truth; Herries thrives and battens upon illusions.  Musgrave is fond of the details of life, loves food and drink, conviviality and social engagements, new people and unfamiliar places—­Herries is quite indifferent to the garniture of life, lives in great personal discomfort, dislikes mixed assemblies and chatter, and has a fastidious dislike of the present, whatever it is, from a sense that possibilities are so much richer than performances.  Musgrave admits that he has been more successful as a writer than he deserves; Herries is likely, I think, to disappoint the hopes of his friends, and will not do justice to his extraordinary gifts, from a certain dreaminess and lack of vitality.  Musgrave loves the act of writing, and is always full to the brim of matter.  Herries dislikes composition, and is yet drawn to it by a sense of fearful responsibility.  Neither have, fortunately, the least artistic jealousy.  Herries regards a man like Musgrave with a sort of incredulous stupefaction, as a stream of inexplicable volume.  Herries has to Musgrave all the interest of a very delicate and beautiful type, whose fastidiousness he can almost envy.  As a rule, literary men will not discuss their art among themselves; they have generally arrived at a sort of method of their own, which may not be ideal, but which is the best practical solution for themselves, and they would rather not be disquieted about it; literary talk, too, tends to partake of the nature of shop, and busy men, as a rule, like to talk the shop of their recreations rather than the shop of their employment.  But Musgrave will discuss anything; and as for Herries, writing is not an occupation, so much as a divine vocation which he regards with a holy awe.

The discussion began at dinner, and I was amused to see how it affected the two men.  Musgrave, by an incredible mental agility, contrived to continue to take a critical interest in the meal and the argument at the same time; Herries thrust away an unfinished plate, refused what was offered to him, pushed his glasses about as if they were chessmen, filled the nearest with water at intervals—­ he is a rigid teetotaller—­and drank out of them alternately with an abstracted air.