July 3
Argued with R⸺ this morning. He is a type specimen of the clever young man. We both are. Our flowers of speech are often forced hothouse plants, paradoxes and cynicisms fly as thick as driving rain and Shaw is our great exemplar. I could write out an exhaustive analysis of the clever young man, and being one myself can speak from “inspired sources” as the newspapers say.
A common habit is to underline and memorise short, sharp, witty remarks he sees in books and then on future occasions dish them up for his own self-glorification. If the author be famous he begins, “As ⸻ says, etc.” If unknown the quotation is quietly purloined. He is always very self-conscious and at the same time very self-possessed and very conceited. You tell me with tonic candour that I am insufferably conceited. In return, I smile, making a sardonic avowal of my good opinion of myself, my theory being that as conceit is, as a rule, implicit and, as a rule, blushingly denied, you will mistake my impudent confession for bluff and conclude there is really something far more substantial and honest beneath my apparent conceit. If, on the other hand, I am conceited, why I have admitted it—I agree with you—but though there is no virtue in the confession being quite detached and unashamed—still you haven’t caught me by the tail. It is very difficult to circumvent a clever young man. He is as agile as a monkey.
His principal concern of course is to arouse and maintain a reputation for profundity and wit. This is done by the simple mechanical formula of antithesis: if you like winkles he proves that cockles are inveterately better; if you admire Ruskin he tears him to ribbons. If you want to learn to swim—as it is safer, he shows it is more dangerous to know how to swim and so on. I know his whole box of tricks. I myself am now playing the clever young man by writing out this analysis just as if I were not one myself.
You doubt my cleverness? Well, some years ago in R⸺’s presence I called ⸻ “the Rev. Fastidious Brisk”—the nickname be it recalled which Henley gave to Stevenson (without the addition of “Rev.”). At the time I had no intention of appropriating the witticism as I quite imagined R⸺ was acquainted with it. His unexpected explosion of mirth, however, made me uncomfortably uncertain of this, yet for the life of me I couldn’t muster the honesty to assure him that my feather was a borrowed one. A few weeks later he referred to it again as “certainly one of my better ones”—but still I remained dumb and the time for explanations went for once and all. Now see what a pretty pickle I am in: the name “Brisk” or “F.B.” is in constant use by us for this particular person—he goes by no other name, meanwhile I sit and wonder how long it will be before R⸺ finds me out. There are all sorts of ways in which he might find out: he might read about it for himself, someone might tell him or—worst of all—one day when we are dining out somewhere he will announce to the whole company my brilliant appellation as a little after-dinner diversion: I shall at once observe that the person opposite me knows and is about to air his knowledge; then I shall look sternly at him and try to hold him: he will hesitate and I shall land him with a left and right: “I suppose you’ve read Henley’s verses on Stevenson?” I remark easily and in a moment or so later the conversation has moved on.