Towards the end of the year, when Philip was bringing to a close his three months as clerk in the out-patients’ department, he received a letter from Lawson, who was in Paris.
Dear Philip,
Cronshaw is in London and would be glad to see you. He is living at 43 Hyde Street, Soho. I don’t know where it is, but I daresay you will be able to find out. Be a brick and look after him a bit. He is very down on his luck. He will tell you what he is doing. Things are going on here very much as usual. Nothing seems to have changed since you were here. Clutton is back, but he has become quite impossible. He has quarrelled with everybody. As far as I can make out he hasn’t got a cent, he lives in a little studio right away beyond the Jardin des Plantes, but he won’t let anybody see his work. He doesn’t show anywhere, so one doesn’t know what he is doing. He may be a genius, but on the other hand he may be off his head. By the way, I ran against Flanagan the other day. He was showing Mrs. Flanagan round the Quarter. He has chucked art and is now in popper’s business. He seems to be rolling. Mrs. Flanagan is very pretty and I’m trying to work a portrait. How much would you ask if you were me? I don’t want to frighten them, and then on the other hand I don’t want to be such an ass as to ask L150 if they’re quite willing to give L300.
Yours ever, Frederick Lawson.
Philip wrote to Cronshaw and received in reply the following letter. It was written on a half-sheet of common note-paper, and the flimsy envelope was dirtier than was justified by its passage through the post.
Dear Carey,
Of course I remember you very well. I have an idea that I had some part in rescuing you from the Slough of Despond in which myself am hopelessly immersed. I shall be glad to see you. I am a stranger in a strange city and I am buffeted by the philistines. It will be pleasant to talk of Paris. I do not ask you to come and see me, since my lodging is not of a magnificence fit for the reception of an eminent member of Monsieur Purgon’s profession, but you will find me eating modestly any evening between seven and eight at a restaurant yclept Au Bon Plaisir in Dean Street.
Your sincere J. Cronshaw.
Philip went the day he received this letter. The restaurant, consisting of one small room, was of the poorest class, and Cronshaw seemed to be its only customer. He was sitting in the corner, well away from draughts, wearing the same shabby great-coat which Philip had never seen him without, with his old bowler on his head.
‘I eat here because I can be alone,’ he said. ‘They are not doing well; the only people who come are a few trollops and one or two waiters out of a job; they are giving up business, and the food is execrable. But the ruin of their fortunes is my advantage.’
Cronshaw had before him a glass of absinthe. It was nearly three years since they had met, and Philip was shocked by the change in his appearance. He had been rather corpulent, but now he had a dried-up, yellow look: the skin of his neck was loose and winkled; his clothes hung about him as though they had been bought for someone else; and his collar, three or four sizes too large, added to the slatternliness of his appearance. His hands trembled continually. Philip remembered the handwriting which scrawled over the page with shapeless, haphazard letters. Cronshaw was evidently very ill.
‘I eat little these days,’ he said. ‘I’m very sick in the morning. I’m just having some soup for my dinner, and then I shall have a bit of cheese.’
Philip’s glance unconsciously went to the absinthe, and Cronshaw, seeing it, gave him the quizzical look with which he reproved the admonitions of common sense.
‘You have diagnosed my case, and you think it’s very wrong of me to drink absinthe.’
‘You’ve evidently got cirrhosis of the liver,’ said Philip.
‘Evidently.’
He looked at Philip in the way which had formerly had the power of making him feel incredibly narrow. It seemed to point out that what he was thinking was distressingly obvious; and when you have agreed with the obvious what more is there to say? Philip changed the topic.
‘When are you going back to Paris?’
‘I’m not going back to Paris. I’m going to die.’
The very naturalness with which he said this startled Philip. He thought of half a dozen things to say, but they seemed futile. He knew that Cronshaw was a dying man.
‘Are you going to settle in London then?’ he asked lamely.
‘What is London to me? I am a fish out of water. I walk through the crowded streets, men jostle me, and I seem to walk in a dead city. I felt that I couldn’t die in Paris. I wanted to die among my own people. I don’t know what hidden instinct drew me back at the last.’
Philip knew of the woman Cronshaw had lived with and the two draggle-tailed children, but Cronshaw had never mentioned them to him, and he did not like to speak of them. He wondered what had happened to them.
‘I don’t know why you talk of dying,’ he said.
‘I had pneumonia a couple of winters ago, and they told me then it was a miracle that I came through. It appears I’m extremely liable to it, and another bout will kill me.’
‘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 savour 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.’