Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

THE BERMONDSEY BOOK
After ending upon a variety of top-notes the chorus filed regretfully
away, uncovering thus a perspective of marble halls like a stevedore's
paradise. The comic man entered, his nose painted hilariously scarlet,
a dreadfully funny little bowler hat perched on the back of his
head. . . . But his eyes—woe's me for the sorrow of his eyes. He
made animadversions upon his mother-in-law, and would have no truck
with bloaters. He broke occasionally into an unintended falsetto, weary
as the petulant calling of the plover, until we hid our faces and wept.
The silk-hatted leading gentleman, pathetic backwash from d'Orsai,
Brummell, d'Aurevilly, had an altercation with the comic gentleman,
who attempted a somersault to make an effective exit, but found it
just beyond his powers and ambled off miserably.
Hereupon, the swell, the masher, Fitzhenry was his name, told us
what a boy he was all the way from Piccadilly to the Roo de la Pay,
and how duchesses swooned when he came near them. His coat sagged
like purses at the shoulders, there was a hole above the heel of his
left shoe. But as day deepened into the long late glories of sunset
(fumbling with orange slides) and sunset waned and the moon came
queenly into the hushed silences (excruciating blue light concentrating
on tombstone teeth), we learned that there was no disentwining his
heart from the roses on Topsy's breast, (appearance of leading lady,
suitably rose-tinctured, and languishing duet making the soul sick).
When the great earth-quaking sunrise came clanging up beyond Cathay
—the introduction of a pagoda and two pig-tale-coiffured girls had
transported us thither—the mature charms of the leading lady were
revealed. No make-up could abate the antiquity of her eyes nor the
involuntary twitchings of her lips. And when she danced an incompetent
little dance with Fitzhenry, we looked sadly away as from an
intimacy of the toilet.
So this pageant of execrable art was unrolled upon this superb and
dolorous evening. And I remember how casually I turned from the
stage, crowded with its gibbering mannikins and looked over the stalls
and the smoky pit, to the further corner of the theatre; and how
suddenly my eyes were arrested and my soul stood still j how the
discord ebbed from my ears 5 how my eyes were bathed with cool light j
how the walls around me crumbled in a wind from faery: how I was
brought before Beauty face to face.
I cannot explain whether it was illusion or vision j but as I knew
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