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And Even Now by Sir Max Beerbohm
page 42 of 194 (21%)
bottle of Bass's pale ale that stood before him--ultimate allowance of
one who had erst clashed cymbals in Naxos. This small bottle he eyed
often and with enthusiasm, seeming to waver between the rapture of
broaching it now and the grandeur of having it to look forward to. It
made me unhappy to see what trouble he had in managing his knife and
fork. Watts-Dunton told me on another occasion that this infirmity of
the hands had been lifelong--had begun before Eton days. The Swinburne
family had been alarmed by it and had consulted a specialist, who said
that it resulted from `an excess of electric vitality,' and that any
attempt to stop it would be harmful. So they had let it be. I have
known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or
defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
Here, in this fluttering of his tiny hands, was a part of the price
that Swinburne had to pay. No doubt he had grown accustomed to it many
lustres before I met him, and I need not have felt at all unhappy at
what I tried not to see. He, evidently, was quite gay, in his silence-
-and in the world that was for him silent. I had, however, the
maddening suspicion that he would have liked to talk. Why wouldn't
Watts-Dunton roar him an opportunity? I felt I had been right perhaps
in feeling that the lesser man was--no, not jealous of the greater
whom he had guarded so long and with such love, but anxious that he
himself should be as fully impressive to visitors as his fine gifts
warranted. Not, indeed, that he monopolised the talk. He seemed to
regard me as a source of information about all the latest `movements,'
and I had to shout banalities while he munched his mutton--banalities
whose one saving grace for me was that they were inaudible to
Swinburne. Had I met Swinburne's gaze, I should have faltered. Now and
again his shining light-grey eyes roved from the table, darting this
way and that--across the room, up at the ceiling, out of the window;
only never at us. Somehow this aloofness gave no hint of indifference.
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