True, his enmity would be devious. Openly, for Jerry really had a good mind, which was clear enough to see, but not brave enough to confess the falsehood of his sentiment, he would be tolerant—his tolerance consisting of a form of benevolent I-see-your-point-but-then-let’s-try-to-look-at-all-sides-of-the-question attitude, which was really more intolerant than any form of open bigotry could have been, because it masked the unyielding and unforgiving hostility of his wounded sentimentality. But hiddenly and deviously, his enmity would be bitter and unpardoning from that time on. It would take the form of sly gossip, rumor, whispering, swift mockery masked behind a play of innocence, a sudden twist upon a word, a quick, apparently guileless, misinterpretation of a meaning, the pontifical face schooled in grave and even respectful attentiveness, the whole ending suddenly with the explosion of mirth, the high, choking scream of laughter, which, as anyone who had been its victim could testify, was more devastating and unanswerable than any logic of cold argument could be.
He was a creature who, first and foremost, above all other things, hated trouble and abhorred pain—as what decent man does not?—except that here, in this great belly of a man, his hatred and abhorrence were so great that he would never face the things he hated. Thus, from an early age, he had learned to wear rose-colored blinders against life, and it was only natural that his own stubborn and unyielding hostility should be turned against anything—any person, any conflict, any situation, any evidence, or any idea—that would tend to take those blinders off.
In spite of this, in so many rich and wonderful ways Gerald Alsop was an extraordinary man. The thing that was most attractive about him was his genuine and warm humanity. In the most true sense of the word, he was a man who loved “the good things of life”—good food, good conversation, good humor, good fellowship, good books, the whole sound and happy aura of good living. His fault was, he loved them so well that he was unwilling to admit or accept the presence of any conflict that might disturb his own enjoyment of them. He was probably wise enough to see, but too sentimental to admit, that his enjoyment of them would have been enriched immeasurably by his recognition of the elements of conflict and denial, even where “the good things of life” were concerned.
Hence, there was no single virtue of his nature—and his nature was with virtue generously endowed—that was not in the end touched with this taint. He had, for example, a genuine and deep appreciation of good writing, a love of literature, an excellent and discriminating taste; but where his judgment warred with sentiment, his judgment came off second best. The result was chaos. He not only could see no merit in the work of the great Russian writers—Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Turgenev, even Chekhov—he had never even made an effort to understand them. In some strange way, his heart was set against them; he was afraid of them. He had long ago conceived the prejudice that a Russian writer stood for unbroken gloom, grim tragedy, what gradually he began to rationalize in a phrase that he called “the morbid and distorted view of life,” in contradistinction to the works of those writers of whom he approved, and who, correspondingly of course, represented “the more wholesome and well-rounded point of view.”
Of this latter kind, Dickens probably stood first and highest in his affections. His knowledge of the works of Charles Dickens was almost encyclop?dic. He had read them all so many times, and with such devotion, that there was scarcely an obscure character in that whole crowded and amazing gallery with which he was not instantly familiar—which he could not instantly tag with the word, quote with the exact and descriptive phrase, with which Dickens himself had tagged him.
But, here again, the nature of Alsop’s fault was evident. Equipped with the intelligence, the knowledge, and the taste to form a true and accurate judgment of the work of a great writer, his sentiment had nevertheless contrived to create a completely false and spurious Dickens, a Dickens world that never was. Dickens himself, in Gerald’s view, was a kind of enormous super-Mr. Pickwick; and the world he had created in his books was a Pickwickian world—a jovial world, a ruddy, humorous, jolly, inn-and-tavern sort of world, full of good food and musty ale, full of sunlight and good cheer, of fellowship and love and friendship, of wonderful humorous characters, and of pleasing, somewhat misty sentiment—a total picture that Gerald had now framed in the descriptive phrase, “the more wholesome and well-rounded view of life.” It was a world very much like that depicted in those jolly Christmas cards one sees so often: shining stage coaches loaded with red-cheeked passengers, bundled in red scarves, dashing up before the gabled entrance of a cheerful inn, mine host with pipe in hand, to greet them, and hollied sprigs above the postern doors.