The speaker was Mr. Samuel Fetzer. He was not only an old friend of Mrs. Jack’s, but apparently he was also a familiar of many of the people there, because when they saw who it was they smiled at one another and murmured: “Oh, it’s Sam,” as if that explained everything.
In the world to which he belonged Mr. Samuel Fetzer was known as “the book-lover” par excellence. His very appearance suggested it. One needed only to look at him to know that he was an epicure, a taster of fine letters, a collector and connoisseur of rare editions. One could see with half an eye that he was the kind of fellow you might expect to find on a rainy afternoon in a musty old bookshop, peering and poking and prowling round the stacks with a soft, cherubic glow on his ruddy features, and occasionally fingering with a loving hand some tattered old volume. He made one think somehow of a charming thatched cottage in the English countryside—of a pipe, a shaggy dog, a comfortable chair, a warm nook by the blazing fire, and an old book and a crusty bottle—a bottle of old port! In fact, the exultant way in which he now pronounced the syllables of “Beddoes!” suggested a bottle of old port. He fairly smacked his lips over the word, as if he had just poured himself a glass of the oldest and rarest vintage and taken his first appraising sip.
His whole appearance confirmed this impression of him. His pleasant, sensitive, glowing face, which wore a constant air of cherubic elation, and his high bald forehead were healthily browned and weathered as if he spent much time tramping in the open air. And, in contrast to the other guests, who were all in formal evening dress, he had on tan, thick-soled English walking shoes, woollen socks, grey flannel trousers, a trifle baggy but fashionably Oxonian, a tweed coat of brownish texture, a soft white shirt, and a red tie. One would have said, at sight of him, that he must have just come in from a long walk across the moors, and that now, pleasantly tired, he was looking forward with easeful contemplation to an evening spent with his dog, beside his fire, with a bottle of old port, and Beddoes. One would never have guessed the truth—that he was an eminent theatrical director whose life since childhood had been spent in the city, along Broadway and among the most highly polished groups of urban society.
He was talking now to Miss Mandell. She had wandered over to him after leaving Mrs. Jack, and had asked him the provocative question which had touched off his extraordinary demonstration of enthusiasm. Miss Mandell was herself somewhat of an adept in the arts—a delver into some of the rarer obscurities. She was forever asking people what they thought of William Beckford’s Vathek, the plays of Cyril Tourneur, the sermons of Lancelot Andrewes, or—as now—the works of Beddoes.
What she had said, to be exact, was: “Did you ever read anything by a man named Beddoes?”
Miss Mandell had the habit of putting her questions that way, and she would even use the same form of oblique reference when she spoke of the more famous objects of her aesthetic interest. Thus she would inquire what one knew about “a man named Proust”, or “a woman named Virginia Woolf”. The phrase, accompanied as it always was by a dark and smouldering look, carried an air of “There’s more to this than meets the eye”. It made Miss Mandell appear to be a person of profound and subtle knowingness, and one whose deep and devious searchings had gone so far beyond the platitudes that might be found in the Encyclopadia Britannica and other standard works that there was really no way left for her to learn anything new except, possibly, through a quiet talk with Mr. T. S. Eliot—or, since he wasn’t handy, through an occasional tentative yet not very optimistic question addressed to someone of superior intelligence like oneself. And after one had answered Miss Mandell and had poured forth whatever erudition one commanded on the subject of her interest, her usual comment would be a simple and non-committal “Um”. This always produced a very telling effect. For as Miss Mandell murmured “Um” and wandered off, the victim was left flattened out, feeling that he had emptied himself dry and still had been found childishly superficial and pathetically wanting.