That evening was a nightmare for Simmons. Opposite his house was a little suburban park, and thither he took himself. For a long while he sat on a bench cursing. Twice he started for the trolley, and again returned. It was a damp autumn night; little by little the chill pierced his light coat and he sneezed. Up and down the little park he tramped, biting a dead cigar. Once he went as far as the drugstore and bought a box of crackers.

- At last it seemed years-the church chimes struck ten and he saw the lights go out in his house. He forced himself to make twenty-five more trips around the gravel walk and then he could wait no longer. Shivering with weariness and cold, he went home.

He let himself in with his latch key and tiptoed upstairs. He leaned over the bed and Ethel stirred sleepily.

"What time is it, dear?" she murmured. "You're early, aren't you?"

"One o'clock," he lied bravely-and just then the dining-room clock struck half-past ten and supported him.

"Did you

have a good time?"

"Bully-perfectly bully," he said. "There's nothing like a night with the boys now and then."

I

THE HILARITY OF HILAIRE

REMEMBER some friends of mine telling

me how they went down to Horsham, in

Sussex, to see Hilaire Belloc. They found him in the cellar, seated astraddle of a gigantic wine-cask just arrived from France, about to proceed upon the delicate (and congenial) task of bottling the wine. He greeted them like jovial Silenus, and with competitive shouts of laughter the fun went forward. The wine was strained, bottled, sealed, labelled, and binned, the master of the vintage initiating his young visitors into the rite with bubbling and infectious gaiety-improvising verses, shouting with merriment, full of an energy and vivacity almost inconceivable to Saxon phlegm. My friends have always remembered it as one of the most diverting afternoons of their lives; and after the bottling was done and all hands thoroughly tired, he took them a swinging tramp across the Sussex Downs, talking hard all the way.

I

That is the Belloc we all know and love: vigorous, Gallic, bursting with energy, hospitality, and

wit: the enfant terrible of English letters for the past fifteen years. Mr. Joyce Kilmer's edition of Belloc's verses is very welcome.* His introduction is charming: the tribute of an understanding lover. Perhaps he labours a little in proving that Belloc is essentially a poet rather than a master of prose; perhaps too some of his judgments of Pater, Hardy, Scott, and others of whom one has heard, are precipitate and smack a little of the lecture circuit: but there is much to be grateful for in his affectionate and thoughtful tribute. Perhaps we do not enough realize how outstanding and how engaging a figure Mr. Belloc is.

Hilaire Belloc is of soldierly, artistic, and lettered blood. Four of his great-uncles were generals under Napoleon. The father of his grandmother fought under Soult at Corunna. A brother of his grandmother was wounded at Waterloo.

His grandmother, Louise Marie Swanton, who died in 1890, lived both in France and England, and was famous as the translator into French of Moore's "Life of Byron," "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and works by Dickens and Mrs. Gaskell, She married Hilaire Belloc, an artist, whose pictures are in the Louvre and many French mu

*Verses by Hilaire Belloc; with an introduction by Joyce Kilmer. New York: Laurence J. Gomme, 1916.

seums; his tomb may be seen in Père la Chaise. Their son was Louis Swanton Belloc, a lawyer, who married an English wife.

The only son of this couple was the present Hilaire Belloc, born at Lacelle St. Cloud, July 27, 1870-the "Terrible Year" it was calleduntil 1914.

Louis Belloc died in 1872, and as a very small child Hilaire went to live in Sussex, the gracious shire which both he and Rudyard Kipling have so often and so thrillingly commemorated. Slindon, near Arundel, became his home, the rolling hills, clean little rivers, and picturesque villages of the South Downs moulded his boyish thoughts.

In 1883 he went to the famous Catholic school at Edgbaston. Mr. Thomas Seccombe, in a recent article on Belloc (from which I dip a number of biographical facts), quotes a description of him at this period:

"I remember very well Belloc coming to the Oratory School- some time in '83, I suppose. He was a small, squat person, of the shaggy kind, with a clever face and sharp, bright eyes. Being amongst English boys, his instinctive combativeness made him assume a decidedly French pose, and this no doubt brought on him many a gibe, which, we may be equally sure, he was well able to return. I was amongst the older boys,

and saw little of him. But I recollect finding him one day studying a high wall (of the old Oratory Church, since pulled down). It turned out that he was calculating its exact height by some cryptic mathematical process which he proceeded to explain. I concealed my awe, and did not tell him that I understood nothing of his terms, his explanations, or deductions; it would have been unsuitable for a big fellow to be taught by a 'brat.' In those days the boys used to act Latin plays of Terence, which enjoyed a certain celebrity, and from his first year Belloc was remarkable. His rendering of the impudent servant maid was the inauguration of a series of triumphs during his whole school career."

In '89 Hilaire left school, and served for a year in the French field artillery, in a regiment stationed at Toul. Here he revived the Gallic heritage which was naturally his, learned to talk continually in French, and to drink wine. You will remember that in "The Path to Rome" he starts from Toul; but I cannot quote the passage; someone (who the devil is it?) has borrowed my copy. It is the perpetual fate of that book— everyone should have six copies.

After the rough and saline company of French gunners it is a comical contrast to find him winning a scholarship at Balliol College, Oxford