He had none of the appearance of a romantic lover.
On the other hand he was certainly a very subtle critic and a felicitous essayist.
I resented somewhat his contemptuous attitude towards English writers unless they were safely dead and buried; but this was only to his credit with the intelligentsia, who are ever ready to believe that there can be no good in what is produced in their own country, and with them his influence was great.
On one occasion I told him that one had only to put a commonplace in French for him to mistake it for an epigram and he had thought well enough of the joke to use it as his own in one of his essays.
He reserved such praise as he was willing to accord his contemporaries to those who wrote in a foreign tongue.
The exasperating thing was that no one could deny that he was himself a brilliant writer.
His style was exquisite.
His knowledge was vast.
He could be profound without pomposity, amusing without frivolity, and polished without affectation.
His slightest article was readable.
His essays were little masterpieces.
For my part I did not find him a very agreeable companion.
Perhaps I did not get the best out of him.
Though I knew him a great many years I never heard him say an amusing thing.
He was not talkative and when he made a remark it was oracular.
The prospect of spending an evening alone with him would have filled me with dismay.
It never ceased to puzzle me that this dull and mannered little man should be able to write with so much grace, wit, and gaiety.
It puzzled me even more that a gallant and vivacious creature like Mary Warton should have cherished for him so consuming a passion.
These things are inexplicable and there was evidently something in that odd, crabbed, irascible creature that appealed to women.
His wife adored him.
She was a fat, frowsy, boring person.
She had led Gerrard a dog’s life, but had always refused to give him his freedom.
She swore to kill herself if he left her and since she was unbalanced and hysterical he was never quite certain that she would not carry out her threat.
One day, when I was having tea with Mary, I saw that she was distraught and nervous and when I asked her what was the matter she burst into tears.
She had been lunching with Manson and had found him shattered after a terrific scene with his wife.
“We can’t go on like this,” Mary cried. “It’s ruining his life.
It’s ruining all our lives.”
“Why don’t you take the plunge?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been lovers so long, you know the best and the worst of one another by now; you’re getting old and you can’t count on many more years of life; it seems a pity to waste a love that has endured so long.
What good are you doing to Mrs Manson or to Tom?
Are they happy because you two are making yourselves miserable?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t you chuck everything and just go off together and let come what may?”
Mary shook her head.
“We’ve talked that over endlessly.
We’ve talked it over for a quarter of a century.
It’s impossible.
For years Gerrard couldn’t on account of his daughters.
Mrs Manson may have been a very fond mother, but she was a very bad one, and there was no one to see the girls were properly brought up but Gerrard.
And now that they’re married off he’s set in his habits.
What should we do?
Go to France or Italy?
I couldn’t tear Gerrard away from his surroundings.
He’d be wretched.
He’s too old to make a fresh start.
And besides, though Thomas nags me and makes scenes and we frip and get on one another’s nerves, he loves me.
When it came to the point I simply shouldn’t have the heart to leave him.
He’d be lost without me.”
“It’s a situation without an issue.