Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maugham [231]
“Oh, what nonsense! You’re not so bad as all that. You’ve only got to take precautions. Why don’t you give up drinking?”
“Because I don’t choose. It doesn’t matter what a man does if he’s ready to take the consequences. Well, I’m ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it’s the only thing I’ve got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savor every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay.”
Philip looked at him for a while steadily.
“Aren’t you afraid?”
For a moment Cronshaw did not answer. He seemed to consider his reply.
“Sometimes, when I’m alone.” He looked at Philip. “You think that’s a condemnation? You’re wrong. I’m not afraid of my fear. It’s folly, the Christian argument that you should live always in view of your death. The only way to live is to forget that you’re going to die. Death is unimportant. The fear of it should never influence a single action of the wise man. I know that I shall die struggling for breath, and I know that I shall be horribly afraid. I know that I shall not be able to keep myself from regretting bitterly the life that has brought me to such a pass; but I disown that regret. I now, weak, old, diseased, poor, dying, hold still my soul in my hands, and I regret nothing.”
“D’you remember that Persian carpet you gave me?” asked Philip.
Cronshaw smiled his old, slow smile of past days.
“I told you that it would give you an answer to your question when you asked me what was the meaning of life. Well, have you discovered the answer?”
“No,” smiled Philip. “Won’t you tell it me?”
“No, no, I can’t do that. The answer is meaningless unless you discover it for yourself.”
LXXXIII
Cronshaw was publishing his poems. His friends had been urging him to do this for years, but his laziness made it impossible for him to take the necessary steps. He had always answered their exhortations by telling them that the love of poetry was dead in England. You brought out a book which had cost you years of thought and labor; it was given two or three contemptuous lines among a batch of similar volumes, twenty or thirty copies were sold, and the rest of the edition was pulped. He had long since worn out the desire for fame. That was an illusion like all else. But one of his friends had taken the matter into his own hands. This was a man of letters, named Leonard Upjohn, whom Philip had met once or twice with Cronshaw in the cafés of the Quarter. He had a considerable reputation in England as a critic and was the accredited exponent in this country of modern French literature. He had lived a good deal in France among the men who made the Mercure de France the liveliest review of the day, and by the simple process of expressing in English their point of view he had acquired in England a reputation for originality. Philip had read some of his articles. He had formed a style for himself by a close imitation of Sir Thomas Browne; he used elaborate sentences, carefully balanced, and obsolete, resplendent words; it gave his writing an appearance of individuality. Leonard Upjohn had induced Cronshaw to give him all his poems and found that there were enough to make a volume of reasonable size. He promised to use his influence with publishers. Cronshaw was in want of money. Since his illness he had found it more difficult than ever to work steadily; he made barely enough to keep himself in liquor; and when Upjohn wrote to him that this publisher and the other, though admiring the poems, thought it not worthwhile to publish them, Cronshaw began to grow interested. He wrote impressing upon Upjohn his great need and