Publisher's Synopsis
THE suburb of Saffron Park lay on the sunset side of London, as red and ragged as acloud of sunset. It was built of a bright brick throughout; its sky-line was fantastic, and evenits ground plan was wild. It had been the outburst of a speculative builder, faintly tingedwith art, who called its architecture sometimes Elizabethan and sometimes Queen Anne, apparently under the impression that the two sovereigns were identical. It was describedwith some justice as an artistic colony, though it never in any definable way produced anyart. But although its pretensions to be an intellectual centre were a little vague, itspretensions to be a pleasant place were quite indisputable. The stranger who looked for thefirst time at the quaint red houses could only think how very oddly shaped the people mustbe who could fit in to them. Nor when he met the people was he disappointed in thisrespect. The place was not only pleasant, but perfect, if once he could regard it not as adeception but rather as a dream. Even if the people were not "artists," the whole wasnevertheless artistic. That young man with the long, auburn hair and the impudent face-that young man was not really a poet; but surely he was a poem. That old gentleman withthe wild, white beard and the wild, white hat-that venerable humbug was not really aphilosopher; but at least he was the cause of philosophy in others. That scientific gentlemanwith the bald, egg-like head and the bare, bird-like neck had no real right to the airs ofscience that he assumed. He had not discovered anything new in biology; but whatbiological creature could he have discovered more singular than himself? Thus, and thusonly, the whole place had properly to be regarded; it had to be considered not so much as aworkshop for artists, but as a frail but finished work of art. A man who stepped into itssocial atmosphere felt as if he had stepped into a written comedy.More especially this attractive unreality fell upon it about nightfall, when the extravagantroofs were dark against the afterglow and the whole insane village seemed as separate as adrifting cloud. This again was more strongly true of the many nights of local festivity, whenthe little gardens were often illuminated, and the big Chinese lanterns glowed in thedwarfish trees like some fierce and monstrous fruit. And this was strongest of all on oneparticular evening, still vaguely remembered in the locality, of which the auburn-hairedpoet was the hero. It was not by any means the only evening of which he was the hero. Onmany nights those passing by his little back garden might hear his high, didactic voicelaying down the law to men and particularly to women. The attitude of women in suchcases was indeed one of the paradoxes of the place
