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The New Machiavelli
By
H. G. Wells
Contents
BOOK
THE FIRST: THE MAKING OF A MAN
CHAPTER
THE FIRST ~~ CONCERNING A BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN..
CHAPTER
THE SECOND ~~ BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER.
CHAPTER
THE THIRD ~~ SCHOLASTIC
CHAPTER
THE FOURTH ~~ ADOLESCENCE
CHAPTER
THE FIRST ~~ MARGARET IN STAFFORDSHIRE.
CHAPTER
THE SECOND ~~ MARGARET IN LONDON..
CHAPTER
THE THIRD ~~ MARGARET IN VENICE
CHAPTER
THE FOURTH ~~ THE HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER.
BOOK
THE THIRD: THE HEART OF POLITICS.
CHAPTER
THE FIRST ~~ THE RIDDLE FOR THE STATESMAN..
CHAPTER
THE SECOND ~~ SEEKING ASSOCIATES.
CHAPTER
THE THIRD ~~ SECESSION
CHAPTER
THE FOURTH ~~ THE BESETTING OF SEX.
CHAPTER
THE FIRST ~~ LOVE AND SUCCESS
CHAPTER
THE SECOND ~~ THE IMPOSSIBLE POSITION..
CHAPTER
THE THIRD ~~ THE BREAKING POINT
BOOK THE FIRST: THE MAKIN=
G OF
A MAN
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~
CONCERNING A BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN
1
Since I came to t= his place I have been very restless, wasting my energies in the futile beginnin= g of ill-conceived books. One does not settle down very readily at two and forty= to a new way of living, and I have found myself with the teeming interests of = the life I have abandoned still buzzing like a swarm of homeless bees in my hea= d. My mind has been full of confused protests and justifications. In any case I should have found difficulties enough in expressing the complex thing I hav= e to tell, but it has added greatly to my trouble that I have a great analogue, = that a certain Niccolo Machiavelli chanced to fall out of politics at very much = the age I have reached, and wrote a book to engage the restlessness of his mind, very much as I have wanted to do. He wrote about the relation of the great constructive spirit in politics to individual character and weaknesses, and= so far his achievement lies like a deep rut in the road of my intention. It has taken me far astray. It is a matter of many weeks now--diversified indeed by some long drives into the mountains behind us and a memorable sail to Genoa across the blue and purple waters that drowned Shelley--since I began a laboured and futile imitation of "The Prince." I sat up late last night with the jumbled accumulation; and at last made a little fire of olive twigs and burnt it all, sheet by sheet--to begin again clear this morning.<= o:p>
But incidentally I
have re-read most of Machiavelli, not excepting those scandalous letters of=
his
to Vettori, and it seems to me, now that I have released myself altogether =
from
his literary precedent, that he still has his use for me. In spite of his v=
ast
prestige I claim kindred with him and set his name upon my title-page, in
partial intimation of the matter of my story. He takes me with sympathy not
only by reason of the dream he pursued and the humanity of his politics, bu=
t by
the mixture of his nature. His vices come in, essential to my issue. He is =
dead
and gone, all his immediate correlations to party and faction have faded to
insignificance, leaving only on the one hand his broad method and conceptio=
ns,
and upon the other his intimate living personality, exposed down to its
salacious corners as the soul of no contemporary can ever be exposed. Of th=
ose
double strands it is I have to write, of the subtle protesting perplexing p=
lay
of instinctive passion and desire against too abstract a dream of
statesmanship. But things that seemed to lie very far apart in Machiavelli's
time have come near to one another; it is no simple story of white passions
struggling against the red that I have to tell.
The state-making
dream is a very old dream indeed in the world's history. It plays too small=
a
part in novels. Plato and Confucius are but the highest of a great host of
minds that have had a kindred aspiration, have dreamt of a world of men bet=
ter
ordered, happier, finer, securer. They imagined cities grown more powerful =
and
peoples made rich and multitudinous by their efforts, they thought in terms=
of
harbours and shining navies, great roads engineered marvellously, jungles
cleared and deserts conquered, the ending of muddle and diseases and dirt a=
nd
misery; the ending of confusions that waste human possibilities; they thoug=
ht
of these things with passion and desire as other men think of the soft lines
and tender beauty of women. Thousands of men there are to-day almost master=
ed
by this white passion of statecraft, and in nearly every one who reads and
thinks you could find, I suspect, some sort of answering response. But in e=
very
one it presents itself extraordinarily entangled and mixed up with other, m=
ore
intimate things.
It was so with
Machiavelli. I picture him at San Casciano as he lived in retirement upon h=
is
property after the fall of the Republic, perhaps with a twinge of the tortu=
re
that punished his conspiracy still lurking in his limbs. Such twinges could=
not
stop his dreaming. Then it was "The Prince" was written. All day =
he
went about his personal affairs, saw homely neighbours, dealt with his fami=
ly,
gave vent to everyday passions. He would sit in the shop of Donato del Corno
gossiping curiously among vicious company, or pace the lonely woods of his
estate, book in hand, full of bitter meditations. In the evening he returne=
d home
and went to his study. At the entrance, he says, he pulled off his peasant
clothes covered with the dust and dirt of that immediate life, washed himse=
lf,
put on his "noble court dress," closed the door on the world of
toiling and getting, private loving, private hating and personal regrets, s=
at
down with a sigh of contentment to those wider dreams.
I like to think of
him so, with brown books before him lit by the light of candles in silver
candlesticks, or heading some new chapter of "The Prince," with a
grey quill in his clean fine hand.
So writing, he
becomes a symbol for me, and the less none because of his animal humour, his
queer indecent side, and because of such lapses into utter meanness as that
which made him sound the note of the begging-letter writer even in his
"Dedication," reminding His Magnificence very urgently, as if it =
were
the gist of his matter, of the continued malignity of fortune in his affair=
s.
These flaws complete him. They are my reason for preferring him as a symbol=
to
Plato, of whose indelicate side we know nothing, and whose correspondence w=
ith
Dionysius of Syracuse has perished; or to Confucius who travelled China in
search of a Prince he might instruct, with lapses and indignities now lost =
in
the mists of ages. They have achieved the apotheosis of individual forgetfu=
lness,
and Plato has the added glory of that acquired beauty, that bust of the Ind=
ian
Bacchus which is now indissolubly mingled with his tradition. They have pas=
sed
into the world of the ideal, and every humbug takes his freedoms with their
names. But Machiavelli, more recent and less popular, is still all human and
earthly, a fallen brother--and at the same time that nobly dressed and nobly
dreaming writer at the desk.
That vision of the
strengthened and perfected state is protagonist in my story. But as I re-re=
ad
"The Prince" and thought out the manner of my now abandoned proje=
ct,
I came to perceive how that stir and whirl of human thought one calls by wa=
y of
embodiment the French Revolution, has altered absolutely the approach to su=
ch a
question. Machiavelli, like Plato and Pythagoras and Confucius two hundred =
odd
decades before him, saw only one method by which a thinking man, himself not
powerful, might do the work of state building, and that was by seizing the
imagination of a Prince. Directly these men turned their thoughts towards r=
ealisation,
their attitudes became--what shall I call it?--secretarial. Machiavelli, it=
is
true, had some little doubts about the particular Prince he wanted, whether=
it
was Caesar Borgia of Giuliano or Lorenzo, but a Prince it had to be. Before=
I
saw clearly the differences of our own time I searched my mind for the mode=
rn
equivalent of a Prince. At various times I redrafted a parallel dedication =
to
the Prince of Wales, to the Emperor William, to Mr. Evesham, to a certain
newspaper proprietor who was once my schoolfellow at City Merchants', to Mr=
. J.
D. Rockefeller--all of them men in their several ways and circumstances and=
possibilities,
princely. Yet in every case my pen bent of its own accord towards irony
because--because, although at first I did not realise it, I myself am just =
as
free to be a prince. The appeal was unfair. The old sort of Prince, the old
little principality has vanished from the world. The commonweal is one man's
absolute estate and responsibility no more. In Machiavelli's time it was in=
deed
to an extreme degree one man's affair. But the days of the Prince who plann=
ed
and directed and was the source and centre of all power are ended. We are i=
n a
condition of affairs infinitely more complex, in which every prince and
statesman is something of a servant and every intelligent human being somet=
hing
of a Prince. No magnificent pensive Lorenzos remain any more in this world =
for
secretarial hopes.
In a sense it is
wonderful how power has vanished, in a sense wonderful how it has increased=
. I
sit here, an unarmed discredited man, at a small writing-table in a little
defenceless dwelling among the vines, and no human being can stop my pen ex=
cept
by the deliberate self-immolation of murdering me, nor destroy its fruits
except by theft and crime. No King, no council, can seize and torture me; no
Church, no nation silence me. Such powers of ruthless and complete suppress=
ion
have vanished. But that is not because power has diminished, but because it=
has
increased and become multitudinous, because it has dispersed itself and
specialised. It is no longer a negative power we have, but positive; we can=
not prevent,
but we can do. This age, far beyond all previous ages, is full of powerful =
men,
men who might, if they had the will for it, achieve stupendous things.
The things that m=
ight
be done to-day! The things indeed that are being done! It is the latter that
give one so vast a sense of the former. When I think of the progress of
physical and mechanical science, of medicine and sanitation during the last
century, when I measure the increase in general education and average
efficiency, the power now available for human service, the merely physical
increment, and compare it with anything that has ever been at man's disposal
before, and when I think of what a little straggling, incidental, undiscipl=
ined
and uncoordinated minority of inventors, experimenters, educators, writers =
and
organisers has achieved this development of human possibilities, achieved i=
t in
spite of the disregard and aimlessness of the huge majority, and the passio=
nate
resistance of the active dull, my imagination grows giddy with dazzling
intimations of the human splendours the justly organised state may yet atta=
in.
I glimpse for a bewildering instant the heights that may be scaled, the
splendid enterprises made possible.
But the appeal go=
es
out now in other forms, in a book that catches at thousands of readers for =
the
eye of a Prince diffused. It is the old appeal indeed for the unification of
human effort, the ending of confusions, but instead of the Machiavellian
deference to a flattered lord, a man cries out of his heart to the unseen
fellowship about him. The last written dedication of all those I burnt last
night, was to no single man, but to the socially constructive passion--in a=
ny
man....
There is, moreove=
r, a
second great difference in kind between my world and Machiavelli's. We are
discovering women. It is as if they had come across a vast interval since h=
is
time, into the very chamber of the statesman.
2
In Machiavelli's
outlook the interest of womanhood was in a region of life almost infinitely
remote from his statecraft. They were the vehicle of children, but only
Imperial Rome and the new world of to-day have ever had an inkling of the s=
ignificance
that might give them in the state. They did their work, he thought, as the
ploughed earth bears its crops. Apart from their function of fertility they
gave a humorous twist to life, stimulated worthy men to toil, and wasted the
hours of Princes. He left the thought of women outside with his other dusty
things when he went into his study to write, dismissed them from his mind. =
But our
modern world is burthened with its sense of the immense, now half articulat=
e,
significance of women. They stand now, as it were, close beside the silver
candlesticks, speaking as Machiavelli writes, until he stays his pen and tu=
rns
to discuss his writing with them.
It is this gradual
discovery of sex as a thing collectively portentous that I have to mingle w=
ith
my statecraft if my picture is to be true which has turned me at length fro=
m a
treatise to the telling of my own story. In my life I have paralleled very
closely the slow realisations that are going on in the world about me. I be=
gan
life ignoring women, they came to me at first perplexing and dishonouring; =
only
very slowly and very late in my life and after misadventure, did I gauge the
power and beauty of the love of man and woman and learnt how it must needs =
frame
a justifiable vision of the ordered world. Love has brought me to disaster,
because my career had been planned regardless of its possibility and value.=
But
Machiavelli, it seems to me, when he went into his study, left not only the
earth of life outside but its unsuspected soul.
3
Like Machiavelli =
at
San Casciano, if I may take this analogy one step further, I too am an exil=
e.
Office and leading are closed to me. The political career that promised so =
much
for me is shattered and ended for ever.
I look out from t=
his
vine-wreathed veranda under the branches of a stone pine; I see wide and far
across a purple valley whose sides are terraced and set with houses of pine=
and
ivory, the Gulf of Liguria gleaming sapphire blue, and cloud-like baseless
mountains hanging in the sky, and I think of lank and coaly steamships heav=
ing
on the grey rollers of the English Channel and darkling streets wet with ra=
in,
I recall as if I were back there the busy exit from Charing Cross, the cross
and the money-changers' offices, the splendid grime of giant London and the=
crowds
going perpetually to and fro, the lights by night and the urgency and
eventfulness of that great rain-swept heart of the modern world.
It is difficult to
think we have left that--for many years if not for ever. In thought I walk =
once
more in Palace Yard and hear the clink and clatter of hansoms and the quick
quiet whirr of motors; I go in vivid recent memories through the stir in the
lobbies, I sit again at eventful dinners in those old dining-rooms like cel=
lars
below the House--dinners that ended with shrill division bells, I think of =
huge
clubs swarming and excited by the bulletins of that electoral battle that w=
as
for me the opening opportunity. I see the stencilled names and numbers go u=
p on
the green baize, constituency after constituency, amidst murmurs or loud sh=
outing....
It is over for me=
now
and vanished. That opportunity will come no more. Very probably you have he=
ard
already some crude inaccurate version of our story and why I did not take
office, and have formed your partial judgement on me. And so it is I sit no=
w at
my stone table, half out of life already, in a warm, large, shadowy leisure,
splashed with sunlight and hung with vine tendrils, with paper before me to
distil such wisdom as I can, as Machiavelli in his exile sought to do, from=
the
things I have learnt and felt during the career that has ended now in my
divorce.
I climbed high and
fast from small beginnings. I had the mind of my party. I do not know where=
I
might not have ended, but for this red blaze that came out of my unguarded
nature and closed my career for ever.
CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~
BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER
1
I dreamt first of
states and cities and political things when I was a little boy in
knickerbockers.
When I think of h=
ow
such things began in my mind, there comes back to me the memory of an enorm=
ous
bleak room with its ceiling going up to heaven and its floor covered
irregularly with patched and defective oilcloth and a dingy mat or so and a
"surround" as they call it, of dark stained wood. Here and there
against the wall are trunks and boxes. There are cupboards on either side of
the fireplace and bookshelves with books above them, and on the wall and ra=
ther
tattered is a large yellow-varnished geological map of the South of England.
Over the mantel is a huge lump of white coral rock and several big fossil
bones, and above that hangs the portrait of a brainy gentleman, sliced in h=
alf
and displaying an interior of intricate detail and much vigour of coloring.=
It
is the floor I think of chiefly; over the oilcloth of which, assumed to be
land, spread towns and villages and forts of wooden bricks; there are steep
square hills (geologically, volumes of Orr's CYCLOPAEDIA OF THE SCIENCES) a=
nd
the cracks and spaces of the floor and the bare brown surround were the wat=
er
channels and open sea of that continent of mine.
I still remember =
with
infinite gratitude the great-uncle to whom I owe my bricks. He must have be=
en
one of those rare adults who have not forgotten the chagrins and dreams of
childhood. He was a prosperous west of England builder; including my father=
he
had three nephews, and for each of them he caused a box of bricks to be mad=
e by
an out-of-work carpenter, not the insufficient supply of the toyshop, you
understand, but a really adequate quantity of bricks made out of oak and sh=
aped
and smoothed, bricks about five inches by two and a half by one, and half-b=
ricks
and quarter-bricks to correspond. There were hundreds of them, many hundred=
s. I
could build six towers as high as myself with them, and there seemed quite
enough for every engineering project I could undertake. I could build whole
towns with streets and houses and churches and citadels; I could bridge eve=
ry
gap in the oilcloth and make causeways over crumpled spaces (which I feigne=
d to
be morasses), and on a keel of whole bricks it was possible to construct sh=
ips
to push over the high seas to the remotest port in the room. And a discipli=
ned population,
that rose at last by sedulous begging on birthdays and all convenient occas=
ions
to well over two hundred, of lead sailors and soldiers, horse, foot and
artillery, inhabited this world.
Justice has never
been done to bricks and soldiers by those who write about toys. The praises=
of
the toy theatre have been a common theme for essayists, the planning of the=
scenes,
the painting and cutting out of the caste, penny plain twopence coloured, t=
he
stink and glory of the performance and the final conflagration. I had such a
theatre once, but I never loved it nor hoped for much from it; my bricks and
soldiers were my perpetual drama. I recall an incessant variety of interest=
s.
There was the mystery and charm of the complicated buildings one could make=
, with
long passages and steps and windows through which one peeped into their
intricacies, and by means of slips of card one could make slanting ways in
them, and send marbles rolling from top to base and thence out into the hol=
d of
a waiting ship. Then there were the fortresses and gun emplacements and cov=
ered
ways in which one's soldiers went. And there was commerce; the shops and
markets and store-rooms full of nasturtium seed, thrift seed, lupin beans a=
nd
suchlike provender from the garden; such stuff one stored in match-boxes and
pill-boxes, or packed in sacks of old glove fingers tied up with thread and
sent off by waggons along the great military road to the beleaguered fortre=
ss
on the Indian frontier beyond the worn places that were dismal swamps. And
there were battles on the way.
That great road is
still clear in my memory. I was given, I forget by what benefactor, certain
particularly fierce red Indians of lead--I have never seen such soldiers
since--and for these my father helped me to make tepees of brown paper, and=
I
settled them in a hitherto desolate country under the frowning nail-studded
cliffs of an ancient trunk. Then I conquered them and garrisoned their land.
(Alas! they died, no doubt through contact with civilisation--one my mother
trod on--and their land became a wilderness again and was ravaged for a tim=
e by
a clockwork crocodile of vast proportions.) And out towards the coal-scuttle
was a region near the impassable thickets of the ragged hearthrug where liv=
ed certain
china Zulus brandishing spears, and a mountain country of rudely piled bric=
ks
concealing the most devious and enchanting caves and several mines of gold =
and
silver paper. Among these rocks a number of survivors from a Noah's Ark mad=
e a
various, dangerous, albeit frequently invalid and crippled fauna, and I was
wont to increase the uncultivated wildness of this region further by trees =
of privet-twigs
from the garden hedge and box from the garden borders. By these territories
went my Imperial Road carrying produce to and fro, bridging gaps in the oil=
cloth,
tunnelling through Encyclopaedic hills--one tunnel was three volumes
long--defended as occasion required by camps of paper tents or brick
blockhouses, and ending at last in a magnificently engineered ascent to a
fortress on the cliffs commanding the Indian reservation.
My games upon the
floor must have spread over several years and developed from small beginnin=
gs,
incorporating now this suggestion and now that. They stretch, I suppose, fr=
om
seven to eleven or twelve. I played them intermittently, and they bulk now =
in
the retrospect far more significantly than they did at the time. I played t=
hem
in bursts, and then forgot them for long periods; through the spring and su=
mmer
I was mostly out of doors, and school and classes caught me early. And in t=
he
retrospect I see them all not only magnified and transfigured, but fore-sho=
rtened
and confused together. A clockwork railway, I seem to remember, came and we=
nt;
one or two clockwork boats, toy sailing ships that, being keeled, would do
nothing but lie on their beam ends on the floor; a detestable lot of
cavalrymen, undersized and gilt all over, given me by a maiden aunt, and ve=
ry
much what one might expect from an aunt, that I used as Nero used his
Christians to ornament my public buildings; and I finally melted some into
fratricidal bullets, and therewith blew the rest to flat splashes of lead b=
y means
of a brass cannon in the garden.
I find this empir=
e of
the floor much more vivid and detailed in my memory now than many of the ow=
ners
of the skirts and legs and boots that went gingerly across its territories.
Occasionally, alas! they stooped to scrub, abolishing in one universal
destruction the slow growth of whole days of civilised development. I still
remember the hatred and disgust of these catastrophes. Like Noah I was given
warnings. Did I disregard them, coarse red hands would descend, plucking
garrisons from fortresses and sailors from ships, jumbling them up in their
wrong boxes, clumsily so that their rifles and swords were broken, sweeping=
the
splendid curves of the Imperial Road into heaps of ruins, casting the jungle
growth of Zululand into the fire.
"Well, Master
Dick," the voice of this cosmic calamity would say, "you ought to
have put them away last night. No! I can't wait until you've sailed them all
away in ships. I got my work to do, and do it I will."
And in no time al=
l my
continents and lands were swirling water and swiping strokes of house-flann=
el.
That was the wors=
t of
my giant visitants, but my mother too, dear lady, was something of a terror=
to
this microcosm. She wore spring-sided boots, a kind of boot now vanished, I
believe, from the world, with dull bodies and shiny toes, and a silk dress =
with
flounces that were very destructive to the more hazardous viaducts of the
Imperial Road. She was always, I seem to remember, fetching me; fetching me=
for
a meal, fetching me for a walk or, detestable absurdity! fetching me for a =
wash
and brush up, and she never seemed to understand anything whatever of the
political Systems across which she came to me. Also she forbade all toys on
Sundays except the bricks for church-building and the soldiers for church
parade, or a Scriptural use of the remains of the Noah's Ark mixed up with a
wooden Swiss dairy farm. But she really did not know whether a thing was a
church or not unless it positively bristled with cannon, and many a Sunday
afternoon have I played Chicago (with the fear of God in my heart) under an
infidel pretence that it was a new sort of ark rather elaborately done.
Chicago, I must
explain, was based upon my father's description of the pig slaughterings in
that city and certain pictures I had seen. You made your beasts--which were=
all
the ark lot really, provisionally conceived as pigs--go up elaborate approa=
ches
to a central pen, from which they went down a cardboard slide four at a tim=
e,
and dropped most satisfyingly down a brick shaft, and pitter-litter over so=
me
steep steps to where a head slaughterman (ne Noah) strung a cotton loop rou=
nd
their legs and sent them by pin hooks along a wire to a second slaughterman=
with
a chipped foot (formerly Mrs. Noah) who, if I remember rightly, converted t=
hem
into Army sausage by means of a portion of the inside of an old alarum cloc=
k.
My mother did not
understand my games, but my father did. He wore bright-coloured socks and
carpet slippers when he was indoors--my mother disliked boots in the house-=
-and
he would sit down on my little chair and survey the microcosm on the floor =
with
admirable understanding and sympathy.
It was he who gav=
e me
most of my toys and, I more than suspect, most of my ideas. "Here's so=
me
corrugated iron," he would say, "suitable for roofs and
fencing," and hand me a lump of that stiff crinkled paper that is used=
for
packing medicine bottles. Or, "Dick, do you see the tiger loose near t=
he
Imperial Road?--won't do for your cattle ranch." And I would find a br=
ight
new lead tiger like a special creation at large in the world, and demanding=
a
hunting expedition and much elaborate effort to get him safely housed in the
city menagerie beside the captured dragon crocodile, tamed now, and his key
lost and the heart and spring gone out of him.
And to the various
irregular reading of my father I owe the inestimable blessing of never havi=
ng a
boy's book in my boyhood except those of Jules Verne. But my father used to=
get
books for himself and me from the Bromstead Institute, Fenimore Cooper and
Mayne Reid and illustrated histories; one of the Russo-Turkish war and one =
of
Napier's expedition to Abyssinia I read from end to end; Stanley and
Livingstone, lives of Wellington, Napoleon and Garibaldi, and back volumes =
of
PUNCH, from which I derived conceptions of foreign and domestic politics it=
has
taken years of adult reflection to correct. And at home permanently we had
Wood's NATURAL HISTORY, a brand-new illustrated Green's HISTORY OF THE ENGL=
ISH
PEOPLE, Irving's COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS, a great number of unbound parts of
some geographical work, a VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD I think it was called, with
pictures of foreign places, and Clarke's NEW TESTAMENT with a map of Palest=
ine,
and a variety of other informing books bought at sales. There was a Sowerby=
's
BOTANY also, with thousands of carefully tinted pictures of British plants,=
and
one or two other important works in the sitting-room. I was allowed to turn
these over and even lie on the floor with them on Sundays and other occasio=
ns
of exceptional cleanliness.
And in the attic I
found one day a very old forgotten map after the fashion of a bird's-eye vi=
ew,
representing the Crimea, that fascinated me and kept me for hours navigating
its waters with a pin.
2
My father was a
lank-limbed man in easy shabby tweed clothes and with his hands in his trou=
ser
pockets. He was a science teacher, taking a number of classes at the Bromst=
ead
Institute in Kent under the old Science and Art Department, and
"visiting" various schools; and our resources were eked out by my
mother's income of nearly a hundred pounds a year, and by his inheritance o=
f a
terrace of three palatial but structurally unsound stucco houses near Broms=
tead
Station.
They were big clu=
msy
residences in the earliest Victorian style, interminably high and with deep
damp basements and downstairs coal-cellars and kitchens that suggested an
architect vindictively devoted to the discomfort of the servant class. If s=
o,
he had overreached himself and defeated his end, for no servant would stay =
in
them unless for exceptional wages or exceptional tolerance of inefficiency =
or
exceptional freedom in repartee. Every storey in the house was from twelve =
to
fifteen feet high (which would have been cool and pleasant in a hot climate=
),
and the stairs went steeply up, to end at last in attics too inaccessible f=
or
occupation. The ceilings had vast plaster cornices of classical design,
fragments of which would sometimes fall unexpectedly, and the wall-papers w=
ere
bold and gigantic in pattern and much variegated by damp and ill-mended ren=
ts.
As my father was
quite unable to let more than one of these houses at a time, and that for t=
he
most part to eccentric and undesirable tenants, he thought it politic to li=
ve
in one of the two others, and devote the rent he received from the let one,
when it was let, to the incessant necessary repairing of all three. He also=
did
some of the repairing himself and, smoking a bull-dog pipe the while, which=
my
mother would not allow him to do in the house, he cultivated vegetables in a
sketchy, unpunctual and not always successful manner in the unoccupied gard=
ens.
The three houses faced north, and the back of the one we occupied was cover=
ed
by a grape-vine that yielded, I remember, small green grapes for pies in the
spring, and imperfectly ripe black grapes in favourable autumns for the
purposes of dessert. The grape-vine played an important part in my life, fo=
r my
father broke his neck while he was pruning it, when I was thirteen.
My father was wha=
t is
called a man of ideas, but they were not always good ideas. My grandfather =
had
been a private schoolmaster and one of the founders of the College of
Preceptors, and my father had assisted him in his school until increasing
competition and diminishing attendance had made it evident that the days of
small private schools kept by unqualified persons were numbered. Thereupon =
my
father had roused himself and had qualified as a science teacher under the
Science and Art Department, which in these days had charge of the scientific
and artistic education of the mass of the English population, and had throw=
n himself
into science teaching and the earning of government grants therefor with gr=
eat
if transitory zeal and success.
I do not remember
anything of my father's earlier and more energetic time. I was the child of=
my
parents' middle years; they married when my father was thirty-five and my
mother past forty, and I saw only the last decadent phase of his educational
career.
The Science and A=
rt
Department has vanished altogether from the world, and people are forgettin=
g it
now with the utmost readiness and generosity. Part of its substance and sta=
ff
and spirit survive, more or less completely digested into the Board of
Education.
The world does mo=
ve
on, even in its government. It is wonderful how many of the clumsy and limi=
ted
governing bodies of my youth and early manhood have given place now to more
scientific and efficient machinery. When I was a boy, Bromstead, which is n=
ow a
borough, was ruled by a strange body called a Local Board--it was the Age of
Boards--and I still remember indistinctly my father rejoicing at the
breakfast-table over the liberation of London from the corrupt and devastat=
ing
control of a Metropolitan Board of Works. Then there were also School Board=
s; I
was already practically in politics before the London School Board was abso=
rbed
by the spreading tentacles of the London County Council.
It gives a measur=
e of
the newness of our modern ideas of the State to remember that the very
beginnings of public education lie within my father's lifetime, and that ma=
ny
most intelligent and patriotic people were shocked beyond measure at the St=
ate
doing anything of the sort. When he was born, totally illiterate people who
could neither read a book nor write more than perhaps a clumsy signature, w=
ere
to be found everywhere in England; and great masses of the population were
getting no instruction at all. Only a few schools flourished upon the patro=
nage
of exceptional parents; all over the country the old endowed grammar schools
were to be found sinking and dwindling; many of them had closed altogether.=
In
the new great centres of population multitudes of children were sweated in =
the
factories, darkly ignorant and wretched and the under-equipped and
under-staffed National and British schools, supported by voluntary
contributions and sectarian rivalries, made an ineffectual fight against th=
is
festering darkness. It was a condition of affairs clamouring for remedies, =
but
there was an immense amount of indifference and prejudice to be overcome be=
fore
any remedies were possible. Perhaps some day some industrious and lucid
historian will disentangle all the muddle of impulses and antagonisms, the =
commercialism,
utilitarianism, obstinate conservatism, humanitarian enthusiasm, out of whi=
ch
our present educational organisation arose. I have long since come to belie=
ve
it necessary that all new social institutions should be born in confusion, =
and
that at first they should present chiefly crude and ridiculous aspects. The
distrust of government in the Victorian days was far too great, and the gen=
eral
intelligence far too low, to permit the State to go about the new business =
it
was taking up in a businesslike way, to train teachers, build and equip sch=
ools,
endow pedagogic research, and provide properly written school-books. These
things it was felt MUST be provided by individual and local effort, and sin=
ce
it was manifest that it was individual and local effort that were in defaul=
t,
it was reluctantly agreed to stimulate them by money payments. The State se=
t up
a machinery of examination both in Science and Art and for the elementary
schools; and payments, known technically as grants, were made in accordance
with the examination results attained, to such schools as Providence might =
see fit
to send into the world. In this way it was felt the Demand would be establi=
shed
that would, according to the beliefs of that time, inevitably ensure the
Supply. An industry of "Grant earning" was created, and this would
give education as a necessary by-product.
In the end this
belief was found to need qualification, but Grant-earning was still in full
activity when I was a small boy. So far as the Science and Art Department a=
nd
my father are concerned, the task of examination was entrusted to eminent
scientific men, for the most part quite unaccustomed to teaching. You see, =
if
they also were teaching similar classes to those they examined, it was fear=
ed
that injustice might be done. Year after year these eminent persons set
questions and employed subordinates to read and mark the increasing thousan=
ds
of answers that ensued, and having no doubt the national ideal of fairness =
well
developed in their minds, they were careful each year to re-read the preced=
ing
papers before composing the current one, in order to see what it was usual =
to
ask. As a result of this, in the course of a few years the recurrence and
permutation of questions became almost calculable, and since the practical
object of the teaching was to teach people not science, but how to write
answers to these questions, the industry of Grant-earning assumed a form ea=
sily
distinguished from any kind of genuine education whatever.
Other remarkable
compromises had also to be made with the spirit of the age. The unfortunate
conflict between Religion and Science prevalent at this time was mitigated,=
if
I remember rightly, by making graduates in arts and priests in the establis=
hed
church Science Teachers EX OFFICIO, and leaving local and private enterpris=
e to
provide schools, diagrams, books, material, according to the conceptions of
efficiency prevalent in the district. Private enterprise made a particularly
good thing of the books. A number of competing firms of publishers sprang i=
nto
existence specialising in Science and Art Department work; they set themsel=
ves
to produce text-books that should supply exactly the quantity and quality of
knowledge necessary for every stage of each of five and twenty subjects into
which desirable science was divided, and copies and models and instructions
that should give precisely the method and gestures esteemed as proficiency =
in
art. Every section of each book was written in the idiom found to be most
satisfactory to the examiners, and test questions extracted from papers set=
in
former years were appended to every chapter. By means of these last the tea=
cher
was able to train his class to the very highest level of grant-earning
efficiency, and very naturally he cast all other methods of exposition asid=
e.
First he posed his pupils with questions and then dictated model replies.
That was my fathe=
r's
method of instruction. I attended his classes as an elementary grant-earner
from the age of ten until his death, and it is so I remember him, sitting on
the edge of a table, smothering a yawn occasionally and giving out the
infallible formulae to the industriously scribbling class sitting in rows of
desks before him. Occasionally he would slide to his feet and go to a
blackboard on an easel and draw on that very slowly and deliberately in
coloured chalks a diagram for the class to copy in coloured pencils, and
sometimes he would display a specimen or arrange an experiment for them to =
see.
The room in the Institute in which he taught was equipped with a certain am=
ount
of apparatus prescribed as necessary for subject this and subject that by t=
he
Science and Art Department, and this my father would supplement with maps a=
nd
diagrams and drawings of his own.
But he never real=
ly
did experiments, except that in the class in systematic botany he sometimes
made us tease common flowers to pieces. He did not do experiments if he cou=
ld
possibly help it, because in the first place they used up time and gas for =
the
Bunsen burner and good material in a ruinous fashion, and in the second they
were, in his rather careless and sketchy hands, apt to endanger the apparat=
us
of the Institute and even the lives of his students. Then thirdly, real exp=
eriments
involved washing up. And moreover they always turned out wrong, and sometim=
es
misled the too observant learner very seriously and opened demoralising
controversies. Quite early in life I acquired an almost ineradicable sense =
of
the unscientific perversity of Nature and the impassable gulf that is fixed
between systematic science and elusive fact. I knew, for example, that in
science, whether it be subject XII., Organic Chemistry, or subject XVII.,
Animal Physiology, when you blow into a glass of lime-water it instantly
becomes cloudy, and if you continue to blow it clears again, whereas in tru=
th
you may blow into the stuff from the lime-water bottle until you are crimso=
n in
the face and painful under the ears, and it never becomes cloudy at all. An=
d I
knew, too, that in science if you put potassium chlorate into a retort and =
heat
it over a Bunsen burner, oxygen is disengaged and may be collected over wat=
er,
whereas in real life if you do anything of the sort the vessel cracks with a
loud report, the potassium chlorate descends sizzling upon the flame, the
experimenter says "Oh! Damn!" with astonishing heartiness and
distinctness, and a lady student in the back seats gets up and leaves the r=
oom.
Science is the
organised conquest of Nature, and I can quite understand that ancient liber=
tine
refusing to co-operate in her own undoing. And I can quite understand, too,=
my
father's preference for what he called an illustrative experiment, which was
simply an arrangement of the apparatus in front of the class with nothing
whatever by way of material, and the Bunsen burner clean and cool, and then=
a
slow luminous description of just what you did put in it when you were so
ill-advised as to carry the affair beyond illustration, and just exactly wh=
at
ought anyhow to happen when you did. He had considerable powers of vivid ex=
pression,
so that in this way he could make us see all he described. The class, freed
from any unpleasant nervous tension, could draw this still life without
flinching, and if any part was too difficult to draw, then my father would
produce a simplified version on the blackboard to be copied instead. And he
would also write on the blackboard any exceptionally difficult but
grant-earning words, such as "empyreumatic" or
"botryoidal."
Some words in
constant use he rarely explained. I remember once sticking up my hand and
asking him in the full flow of description, "Please, sir, what is
flocculent?"
"The precipi=
tate
is."
"Yes, sir, b=
ut
what does it mean?"
"Oh!
flocculent!" said my father, "flocculent! Why--" he extended=
his
hand and arm and twiddled his fingers for a second in the air. "Like t=
hat,"
he said.
I thought the
explanation sufficient, but he paused for a moment after giving it. "A=
s in
a flock bed, you know," he added and resumed his discourse.
3
My father, I am
afraid, carried a natural incompetence in practical affairs to an exception=
ally
high level. He combined practical incompetence, practical enterprise and a
thoroughly sanguine temperament, in a manner that I have never seen paralle=
led
in any human being. He was always trying to do new things in the briskest
manner, under the suggestion of books or papers or his own spontaneous imag=
ination,
and as he had never been trained to do anything whatever in his life proper=
ly,
his futilities were extensive and thorough. At one time he nearly gave up h=
is
classes for intensive culture, so enamoured was he of its possibilities; the
peculiar pungency of the manure he got, in pursuit of a chemical theory of =
his
own, has scarred my olfactory memories for a lifetime. The intensive culture
phase is very clear in my memory; it came near the end of his career and wh=
en I
was between eleven and twelve. I was mobilised to gather caterpillars on
several occasions, and assisted in nocturnal raids upon the slugs by
lantern-light that wrecked my preparation work for school next day. My fath=
er
dug up both lawns, and trenched and manured in spasms of immense vigour
alternating with periods of paralysing distaste for the garden. And for wee=
ks
he talked about eight hundred pounds an acre at every meal.
A garden, even wh=
en
it is not exasperated by intensive methods, is a thing as exacting as a bab=
y,
its moods have to be watched; it does not wait upon the cultivator's
convenience, but has times of its own. Intensive culture greatly increases =
this
disposition to trouble mankind; it makes a garden touchy and hysterical, a
drugged and demoralised and over-irritated garden. My father got at cross
purposes with our two patches at an early stage. Everything grew wrong from=
the
first to last, and if my father's manures intensified nothing else, they
certainly intensified the Primordial Curse. The peas were eaten in the nigh=
t before
they were three inches high, the beans bore nothing but blight, the only
apparent result of a spraying of the potatoes was to develop a PENCHANT in =
the
cat for being ill indoors, the cucumber frames were damaged by the catapult=
ing
of boys going down the lane at the back, and all your cucumbers were
mysteriously embittered. That lane with its occasional passers-by did much =
to
wreck the intensive scheme, because my father always stopped work and went
indoors if any one watched him. His special manure was apt to arouse a trou=
blesome
spirit of inquiry in hardy natures.
In digging his ro=
ws
and shaping his patches he neglected the guiding string and trusted to his =
eye
altogether too much, and the consequent obliquity and the various wind-brea=
ks
and scare-crows he erected, and particularly an irrigation contrivance he b=
egan
and never finished by which everything was to be watered at once by means of
pieces of gutter from the roof and outhouses of Number 2, and a large and
particularly obstinate clump of elder-bushes in the abolished hedge that he=
had
failed to destroy entirely either by axe or by fire, combined to give the
gardens under intensive culture a singularly desolate and disorderly appear=
ance.
He took steps towards the diversion of our house drain under the influence =
of
the Sewage Utilisation Society; but happily he stopped in time. He hardly
completed any of the operations he began; something else became more urgent=
or
simply he tired; a considerable area of the Number 2 territory was never ev=
en
dug up.
In the end the af=
fair
irritated him beyond endurance. Never was a man less horticulturally-minded.
The clamour of these vegetables he had launched into the world for his serv=
ice
and assistance, wore out his patience. He would walk into the garden the
happiest of men after a day or so of disregard, talking to me of history
perhaps or social organisation, or summarising some book he had read. He ta=
lked
to me of anything that interested him, regardless of my limitations. Then h=
e would
begin to note the growth of the weeds. "This won't do," he would =
say
and pull up a handful.
More weeding would
follow and the talk would become fragmentary. His hands would become earthy,
his nails black, weeds would snap off in his careless grip, leaving the roo=
ts
behind. The world would darken. He would look at his fingers with disgusted
astonishment. "CURSE these weeds!" he would say from his heart. H=
is
discourse was at an end.
I have memories, =
too,
of his sudden unexpected charges into the tranquillity of the house, his ha=
nds
and clothes intensively enriched. He would come in like a whirlwind. "=
This
damned stuff all over me and the Agricultural Chemistry Class at six! Bah!
AAAAAAH!"
My mother would n=
ever
learn not to attempt to break him of swearing on such occasions. She would
remain standing a little stiffly in the scullery refusing to assist him to =
the
adjectival towel he sought.
"If you say =
such
things--"
He would dance wi=
th
rage and hurl the soap about. "The towel!" he would cry, flicking
suds from big fingers in every direction; "the towel! I'll let the
blithering class slide if you don't give me the towel! I'll give up everyth=
ing,
I tell you--everything!"...
At last with the
failure of the lettuces came the breaking point. I was in the little arbour
learning Latin irregular verbs when it happened. I can see him still, his
peculiar tenor voice still echoes in my brain, shouting his opinion of
intensive culture for all the world to hear, and slashing away at that
abominable mockery of a crop with a hoe. We had tied them up with bast only=
a
week or so before, and now half were rotten and half had shot up into tall
slender growths. He had the hoe in both hands and slogged. Great wipes he m=
ade,
and at each stroke he said, "Take that!"
The air was thick
with flying fragments of abortive salad. It was a fantastic massacre. It was
the French Revolution of that cold tyranny, the vindictive overthrow of the
pampered vegetable aristocrats. After he had assuaged his passion upon them=
, he
turned for other prey; he kicked holes in two of our noblest marrows, flick=
ed
off the heads of half a row of artichokes, and shied the hoe with a splendid
smash into the cucumber frame. Something of the awe of that moment returns =
to
me as I write of it.
"Well, my
boy," he said, approaching with an expression of beneficent happiness,
"I've done with gardening. Let's go for a walk like reasonable beings.
I've had enough of this"--his face was convulsed for an instant with
bitter resentment--"Pandering to cabbages."
4
That afternoon's =
walk
sticks in my memory for many reasons. One is that we went further than I had
ever been before; far beyond Keston and nearly to Seven-oaks, coming back by
train from Dunton Green, and the other is that my father as he went along
talked about himself, not so much to me as to himself, and about life and w=
hat
he had done with it. He monologued so that at times he produced an effect of
weird world-forgetfulness. I listened puzzled, and at that time not underst=
anding
many things that afterwards became plain to me. It is only in recent years =
that
I have discovered the pathos of that monologue; how friendless my father was
and uncompanioned in his thoughts and feelings, and what a hunger he may ha=
ve
felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped youngster who trotted by his side.=
"I'm no gard=
ener,"
he said, "I'm no anything. Why the devil did I start gardening?
"I suppose m=
an
was created to mind a garden... But the Fall let us out of that! What was I
created for? God! what was I created for?...
"Slaves to
matter! Minding inanimate things! It doesn't suit me, you know. I've got no
hands and no patience. I've mucked about with life. Mucked about with
life." He suddenly addressed himself to me, and for an instant I start=
ed
like an eavesdropper discovered. "Whatever you do, boy, whatever you d=
o, make
a Plan. Make a good Plan and stick to it. Find out what life is about--I ne=
ver
have--and set yourself to do whatever you ought to do. I admit it's a
puzzle....
"Those damned
houses have been the curse of my life. Stucco white elephants! Beastly crac=
ked
stucco with stains of green--black and green. Conferva and soot.... Propert=
y,
they are!... Beware of Things, Dick, beware of Things! Before you know where
you are you are waiting on them and minding them. They'll eat your life up.=
Eat
up your hours and your blood and energy! When those houses came to me, I ou=
ght
to have sold them--or fled the country. I ought to have cleared out. Sarcop=
hagi--eaters
of men! Oh! the hours and days of work, the nights of anxiety those vile ho=
uses
have cost me! The painting! It worked up my arms; it got all over me. I sta=
nk
of it. It made me ill. It isn't living--it's minding....
"Property's =
the
curse of life. Property! Ugh! Look at this country all cut up into silly li=
ttle
parallelograms, look at all those villas we passed just now and those potato
patches and that tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody's minding every bit =
of
it like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about it.
Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten
worried little beast wants to keep us other rotten little beasts off HIS
patch,--God knows why! Look at the weeds in it. Look at the mended fence!...
There's no property worth having, Dick, but money. That's only good to spen=
d. All
these things. Human souls buried under a cartload of blithering rubbish....=
"I'm not a f=
ool,
Dick. I have qualities, imagination, a sort of go. I ought to have made a
better thing of life.
"I'm sure I
could have done things. Only the old people pulled my leg. They started me
wrong. They never started me at all. I only began to find out what life was
like when I was nearly forty.
"If I'd gone=
to
a university; if I'd had any sort of sound training, if I hadn't slipped in=
to
the haphazard places that came easiest....
"Nobody warn=
ed me.
Nobody. It isn't a world we live in, Dick; it's a cascade of accidents; it'=
s a
chaos exasperated by policemen! YOU be warned in time, Dick. You stick to a
plan. Don't wait for any one to show you the way. Nobody will. There isn't a
way till you make one. Get education, get a good education. Fight your way =
to
the top. It's your only chance. I've watched you. You'll do no good at digg=
ing
and property minding. There isn't a neighbour in Bromstead won't be able to
skin you at suchlike games. You and I are the brainy unstable kind, topside=
or nothing.
And if ever those blithering houses come to you--don't have 'em. Give them
away! Dynamite 'em--and off! LIVE, Dick! I'll get rid of them for you if I =
can,
Dick, but remember what I say."...
So it was my fath=
er discoursed,
if not in those particular words, yet exactly in that manner, as he slouched
along the southward road, with resentful eyes becoming less resentful as he
talked, and flinging out clumsy illustrative motions at the outskirts of
Bromstead as we passed along them. That afternoon he hated Bromstead, from =
its
foot-tiring pebbles up. He had no illusions about Bromstead or himself. I h=
ave the
clearest impression of him in his garden-stained tweeds with a deer-stalker=
hat
on the back of his head and presently a pipe sometimes between his teeth and
sometimes in his gesticulating hand, as he became diverted by his talk from=
his
original exasperation....
This particular
afternoon is no doubt mixed up in my memory with many other afternoons; all
sorts of things my father said and did at different times have got themselv=
es
referred to it; it filled me at the time with a great unprecedented sense of
fellowship and it has become the symbol now for all our intercourse togethe=
r.
If I didn't understand the things he said, I did the mood he was in. He gav=
e me
two very broad ideas in that talk and the talks I have mingled with it; he =
gave
them to me very clearly and they have remained fundamental in my mind; one =
a sense
of the extraordinary confusion and waste and planlessness of the human life
that went on all about us; and the other of a great ideal of order and econ=
omy
which he called variously Science and Civilisation, and which, though I do =
not
remember that he ever used that word, I suppose many people nowadays would
identify with Socialism,--as the Fabians expound it.
He was not very
definite about this Science, you must understand, but he seemed always to be
waving his hand towards it,--just as his contemporary Tennyson seems always=
to
be doing--he belonged to his age and mostly his talk was destructive of the
limited beliefs of his time, he led me to infer rather than actually told me
that this Science was coming, a spirit of light and order, to the rescue of=
a
world groaning and travailing in muddle for the want of it....
5
When I think of
Bromstead nowadays I find it inseparably bound up with the disorders of my
father's gardening, and the odd patchings and paintings that disfigured his
houses. It was all of a piece with that.
Let me try and gi=
ve
something of the quality of Bromstead and something of its history. It is t=
he
quality and history of a thousand places round and about London, and round =
and
about the other great centres of population in the world. Indeed it is in a
measure the quality of the whole of this modern world from which we who have
the statesman's passion struggle to evolve, and dream still of evolving ord=
er.
First, then, you =
must
think of Bromstead a hundred and fifty years ago, as a narrow irregular lit=
tle
street of thatched houses strung out on the London and Dover Road, a little
mellow sample unit of a social order that had a kind of completeness, at its
level, of its own. At that time its population numbered a little under two
thousand people, mostly engaged in agricultural work or in trades serving
agriculture. There was a blacksmith, a saddler, a chemist, a doctor, a barb=
er,
a linen-draper (who brewed his own beer); a veterinary surgeon, a hardware
shop, and two capacious inns. Round and about it were a number of pleasant =
gentlemen's
seats, whose owners went frequently to London town in their coaches along t=
he
very tolerable high-road. The church was big enough to hold the whole
population, were people minded to go to church, and indeed a large proporti=
on
did go, and all who married were married in it, and everybody, to begin wit=
h,
was christened at its font and buried at last in its yew-shaded graveyard.
Everybody knew everybody in the place. It was, in fact, a definite place an=
d a
real human community in those days. There was a pleasant old market-house in
the middle of the town with a weekly market, and an annual fair at which mu=
ch
cheerful merry making and homely intoxication occurred; there was a pack of=
hounds
which hunted within five miles of London Bridge, and the local gentry would
occasionally enliven the place with valiant cricket matches for a hundred
guineas a side, to the vast excitement of the entire population. It was very
much the same sort of place that it had been for three or four centuries. A
Bromstead Rip van Winkle from 1550 returning in 1750 would have found most =
of
the old houses still as he had known them, the same trades a little improved
and differentiated one from the other, the same roads rather more carefully
tended, the Inns not very much altered, the ancient familiar market-house. =
The
occasional wheeled traffic would have struck him as the most remarkable
difference, next perhaps to the swaggering painted stone monuments instead =
of
brasses and the protestant severity of the communion-table in the parish ch=
urch,--both
from the material point of view very little things. A Rip van Winkle from 1=
350,
again, would have noticed scarcely greater changes; fewer clergy, more peop=
le,
and particularly more people of the middling sort; the glass in the windows=
of
many of the houses, the stylish chimneys springing up everywhere would have
impressed him, and suchlike details. The place would have had the same
boundaries, the same broad essential features, would have been still itself=
in
the way that a man is still himself after he has "filled out" a
little and grown a longer beard and changed his clothes.
But after 1750
something got hold of the world, something that was destined to alter the s=
cale
of every human affair.
That something was
machinery and a vague energetic disposition to improve material things. In
another part of England ingenious people were beginning to use coal in smel=
ting
iron, and were producing metal in abundance and metal castings in sizes that
had hitherto been unattainable. Without warning or preparation, increment
involving countless possibilities of further increment was coming to the
strength of horses and men. "Power," all unsuspected, was flowing
like a drug into the veins of the social body.
Nobody seems to h=
ave
perceived this coming of power, and nobody had calculated its probable
consequences. Suddenly, almost inadvertently, people found themselves doing
things that would have amazed their ancestors. They began to construct whee=
led
vehicles much more easily and cheaply than they had ever done before, to ma=
ke
up roads and move things about that had formerly been esteemed too heavy for
locomotion, to join woodwork with iron nails instead of wooden pegs, to ach=
ieve
all sorts of mechanical possibilities, to trade more freely and manufacture=
on
a larger scale, to send goods abroad in a wholesale and systematic way, to
bring back commodities from overseas, not simply spices and fine commoditie=
s,
but goods in bulk. The new influence spread to agriculture, iron appliances
replaced wooden, breeding of stock became systematic, paper-making and prin=
ting
increased and cheapened. Roofs of slate and tile appeared amidst and presen=
tly
prevailed over the original Bromstead thatch, the huge space of Common to t=
he
south was extensively enclosed, and what had been an ill-defined horse-trac=
k to
Dover, only passable by adventurous coaches in dry weather, became the Dover
Road, and was presently the route first of one and then of several daily
coaches. The High Street was discovered to be too tortuous for these awaken=
ing energies,
and a new road cut off its worst contortions. Residential villas appeared
occupied by retired tradesmen and widows, who esteemed the place healthy, a=
nd
by others of a strange new unoccupied class of people who had money investe=
d in
joint-stock enterprises. First one and then several boys' boarding-schools
came, drawing their pupils from London,--my grandfather's was one of these.
London, twelve miles to the north-west, was making itself felt more and mor=
e.
But this was only=
the
beginning of the growth period, the first trickle of the coming flood of
mechanical power. Away in the north they were casting iron in bigger and bi=
gger
forms, working their way to the production of steel on a large scale, apply=
ing
power in factories. Bromstead had almost doubted in size again long before =
the
railway came; there was hardly any thatch left in the High Street, but inst=
ead
were houses with handsome brass-knockered front doors and several windows, =
and
shops with shop-fronts all of square glass panes, and the place was lighted
publicly now by oil lamps--previously only one flickering lamp outside each=
of
the coaching inns had broken the nocturnal darkness. And there was talk, it
long remained talk,--of gas. The gasworks came in 1834, and about that date=
my
father's three houses must have been built convenient for the London Road. =
They
mark nearly the beginning of the real suburban quality; they were let at fi=
rst
to City people still engaged in business.
And then hard on =
the
gasworks had come the railway and cheap coal; there was a wild outbreak of
brickfields upon the claylands to the east, and the Great Growth had begun =
in
earnest. The agricultural placidities that had formerly come to the very
borders of the High Street were broken up north, west and south, by new roa=
ds.
This enterprising person and then that began to "run up" houses,
irrespective of every other enterprising person who was doing the same thin=
g. A
Local Board came into existence, and with much hesitation and penny-wise
economy inaugurated drainage works. Rates became a common topic, a fact of
accumulating importance. Several chapels of zinc and iron appeared, and als=
o a
white new church in commercial Gothic upon the common, and another of red b=
rick
in the residential district out beyond the brickfields towards Chessington.=
The population
doubled again and doubled again, and became particularly teeming in the
prolific "working-class" district about the deep-rutted, muddy,
coal-blackened roads between the gasworks, Blodgett's laundries, and the ra=
ilway
goods-yard. Weekly properties, that is to say small houses built by small
property owners and let by the week, sprang up also in the Cage Fields, and
presently extended right up the London Road. A single national school in an
inconvenient situation set itself inadequately to collect subscriptions and
teach the swarming, sniffing, grimy offspring of this dingy new population =
to
read. The villages of Beckington, which used to be three miles to the west,=
and
Blamely four miles to the east of Bromstead, were experiencing similar
distensions and proliferations, and grew out to meet us. All effect of loca=
lity
or community had gone from these places long before I was born; hardly any =
one
knew any one; there was no general meeting place any more, the old fairs we=
re
just common nuisances haunted by gypsies, van showmen, Cheap Jacks and Lond=
on
roughs, the churches were incapable of a quarter of the population. One or =
two
local papers of shameless veniality reported the proceedings of the local B=
ench
and the local Board, compelled tradesmen who were interested in these affai=
rs
to advertise, used the epithet "Bromstedian" as one expressing
peculiar virtues, and so maintained in the general mind a weak tradition of
some local quality that embraced us all. Then the parish graveyard filled up
and became a scandal, and an ambitious area with an air of appetite was wal=
led
in by a Bromstead Cemetery Company, and planted with suitably high-minded a=
nd
sorrowful varieties of conifer. A stonemason took one of the earlier villas
with a front garden at the end of the High Street, and displayed a supply of
urns on pillars and headstones and crosses in stone, marble, and granite, t=
hat
would have sufficed to commemorate in elaborate detail the entire populatio=
n of
Bromstead as one found it in 1750.
The cemetery was =
made
when I was a little boy of five or six; I was in the full tide of building =
and
growth from the first; the second railway with its station at Bromstead Nor=
th
and the drainage followed when I was ten or eleven, and all my childish
memories are of digging and wheeling, of woods invaded by building, roads
gashed open and littered with iron pipes amidst a fearful smell of gas, of =
men
peeped at and seen toiling away deep down in excavations, of hedges broken =
down
and replaced by planks, of wheelbarrows and builders' sheds, of rivulets
overtaken and swallowed up by drain-pipes. Big trees, and especially elms,
cleared of undergrowth and left standing amid such things, acquired a pecul=
iar tattered
dinginess rather in the quality of needy widow women who have seen happier
days.
The Ravensbrook o=
f my
earlier memories was a beautiful stream. It came into my world out of a
mysterious Beyond, out of a garden, splashing brightly down a weir which had
once been the weir of a mill. (Above the weir and inaccessible there were
bulrushes growing in splendid clumps, and beyond that, pampas grass, yellow=
and
crimson spikes of hollyhock, and blue suggestions of wonderland.) From the =
pool
at the foot of this initial cascade it flowed in a leisurely fashion beside=
a footpath,--there
were two pretty thatched cottages on the left, and here were ducks, and the=
re
were willows on the right,--and so came to where great trees grew on high b=
anks
on either hand and bowed closer, and at last met overhead. This part was
difficult to reach because of an old fence, but a little boy might glimpse =
that
long cavern of greenery by wading. Either I have actually seen kingfishers
there, or my father has described them so accurately to me that he inserted
them into my memory. I remember them there anyhow. Most of that overhung pa=
rt I
never penetrated at all, but followed the field path with my mother and met=
the
stream again, where beyond there were flat meadows, Roper's meadows. The
Ravensbrook went meandering across the middle of these, now between steep
banks, and now with wide shallows at the bends where the cattle waded and
drank. Yellow and purple loose-strife and ordinary rushes grew in clumps al=
ong
the bank, and now and then a willow. On rare occasions of rapture one might=
see
a rat cleaning his whiskers at the water's edge. The deep places were rich =
with
tangled weeds, and in them fishes lurked--to me they were big
fishes--water-boatmen and water-beetles traversed the calm surface of these
still deeps; in one pool were yellow lilies and water-soldiers, and in the
shoaly places hovering fleets of small fry basked in the sunshine--to vanis=
h in
a flash at one's shadow. In one place, too, were Rapids, where the stream w=
oke
with a start from a dreamless brooding into foaming panic and babbled and
hastened. Well do I remember that half-mile of rivulet; all other rivers and
cascades have their reference to it for me. And after I was eleven, and bef=
ore
we left Bromstead, all the delight and beauty of it was destroyed.
The volume of its
water decreased abruptly--I suppose the new drainage works that linked us up
with Beckington, and made me first acquainted with the geological quality of
the London clay, had to do with that--until only a weak uncleansing trickle
remained. That at first did not strike me as a misfortune. An adventurous s=
mall
boy might walk dryshod in places hitherto inaccessible. But hard upon that =
came
the pegs, the planks and carts and devastation. Roper's meadows, being no l=
onger
in fear of floods, were now to be slashed out into parallelograms of untidy
road, and built upon with rows of working-class cottages. The roads
came,--horribly; the houses followed. They seemed to rise in the night. Peo=
ple
moved into them as soon as the roofs were on, mostly workmen and their young
wives, and already in a year some of these raw houses stood empty again from
defaulting tenants, with windows broken and wood-work warping and rotting. =
The
Ravensbrook became a dump for old iron, rusty cans, abandoned boots and the=
like,
and was a river only when unusual rains filled it for a day or so with an i=
nky
flood of surface water....
That indeed was my
most striking perception in the growth of Bromstead. The Ravensbrook had be=
en
important to my imaginative life; that way had always been my first choice =
in
all my walks with my mother, and its rapid swamping by the new urban growth
made it indicative of all the other things that had happened just before my
time, or were still, at a less dramatic pace, happening. I realised that bu=
ilding
was the enemy. I began to understand why in every direction out of Bromstead
one walked past scaffold-poles into litter, why fragments of broken brick a=
nd cinder
mingled in every path, and the significance of the universal notice-boards,
either white and new or a year old and torn and battered, promising sites,
proffering houses to be sold or let, abusing and intimidating passers-by for
fancied trespass, and protecting rights of way.
It is difficult to
disentangle now what I understood at this time and what I have since come to
understand, but it seems to me that even in those childish days I was acute=
ly
aware of an invading and growing disorder. The serene rhythms of the old
established agriculture, I see now, were everywhere being replaced by culti=
vation
under notice and snatch crops; hedges ceased to be repaired, and were repla=
ced
by cheap iron railings or chunks of corrugated iron; more and more hoarding=
s sprang
up, and contributed more and more to the nomad tribes of filthy paper scraps
that flew before the wind and overspread the country. The outskirts of
Bromstead were a maze of exploitation roads that led nowhere, that ended in
tarred fences studded with nails (I don't remember barbed wire in those day=
s; I
think the Zeitgeist did not produce that until later), and in trespass boar=
ds
that used vehement language. Broken glass, tin cans, and ashes and paper
abounded. Cheap glass, cheap tin, abundant fuel, and a free untaxed Press h=
ad
rushed upon a world quite unprepared to dispose of these blessings when the=
fulness
of enjoyment was past.
I suppose one mig=
ht
have persuaded oneself that all this was but the replacement of an ancient
tranquillity, or at least an ancient balance, by a new order. Only to my ey=
es,
quickened by my father's intimations, it was manifestly no order at all. It=
was
a multitude of incoordinated fresh starts, each more sweeping and destructi=
ve
than the last, and none of them ever really worked out to a ripe and
satisfactory completion. Each left a legacy of products, houses, humanity, =
or
what not, in its wake. It was a sort of progress that had bolted; it was ch=
ange
out of hand, and going at an unprecedented pace nowhere in particular.
No, the Victorian
epoch was not the dawn of a new era; it was a hasty, trial experiment, a gi=
gantic
experiment of the most slovenly and wasteful kind. I suppose it was necessa=
ry;
I suppose all things are necessary. I suppose that before men will discipli=
ne
themselves to learn and plan, they must first see in a hundred convincing f=
orms
the folly and muddle that come from headlong, aimless and haphazard methods=
. The
nineteenth century was an age of demonstrations, some of them very impressi=
ve
demonstrations, of the powers that have come to mankind, but of permanent
achievement, what will our descendants cherish? It is hard to estimate what
grains of precious metal may not be found in a mud torrent of human product=
ion
on so large a scale, but will any one, a hundred years from now, consent to
live in the houses the Victorians built, travel by their roads or railways,
value the furnishings they made to live among or esteem, except for curious=
or
historical reasons, their prevalent art and the clipped and limited literat=
ure
that satisfied their souls?
That age which bo=
re
me was indeed a world full of restricted and undisciplined people, overtake=
n by
power, by possessions and great new freedoms, and unable to make any civili=
sed
use of them whatever; stricken now by this idea and now by that, tempted fi=
rst
by one possession and then another to ill-considered attempts; it was my fa=
ther's
exploitation of his villa gardens on the wholesale level. The whole of
Bromstead as I remember it, and as I saw it last--it is a year ago now--is a
dull useless boiling-up of human activities, an immense clustering of futil=
ities.
It is as unfinished as ever; the builders' roads still run out and end in
mid-field in their old fashion; the various enterprises jumble in the same
hopeless contradiction, if anything intensified. Pretentious villas jostle
slums, and public-house and tin tabernacle glower at one another across the
cat-haunted lot that intervenes. Roper's meadows are now quite frankly a sl=
um;
back doors and sculleries gape towards the railway, their yards are hung wi=
th
tattered washing unashamed; and there seem to be more boards by the railway
every time I pass, advertising pills and pickles, tonics and condiments, an=
d suchlike
solicitudes of a people with no natural health nor appetite left in them...=
.
Well, we have to =
do
better. Failure is not failure nor waste wasted if it sweeps away illusion =
and
lights the road to a plan.
6
Chaotic indiscipl=
ine,
ill-adjusted effort, spasmodic aims, these give the quality of all my Broms=
tead
memories. The crowning one of them all rises to desolating tragedy. I remem=
ber
now the wan spring sunshine of that Sunday morning, the stiff feeling of be=
st
clothes and aggressive cleanliness and formality, when I and my mother retu=
rned
from church to find my father dead. He had been pruning the grape vine. He =
had never
had a ladder long enough to reach the sill of the third-floor windows--at
house-painting times he had borrowed one from the plumber who mixed his
paint--and he had in his own happy-go-lucky way contrived a combination of =
the
garden fruit ladder with a battered kitchen table that served all sorts of =
odd
purposes in an outhouse. He had stayed up this arrangement by means of the
garden roller, and the roller had at the critical moment--rolled. He was ly=
ing
close by the garden door with his head queerly bent back against a broken a=
nd
twisted rainwater pipe, an expression of pacific contentment on his face, a
bamboo curtain rod with a tableknife tied to end of it, still gripped in his
hand. We had been rapping for some time at the front door unable to make him
hear, and then we came round by the door in the side trellis into the garde=
n and
so discovered him.
"Arthur!&quo=
t; I
remember my mother crying with the strangest break in her voice, "What=
are
you doing there? Arthur! And--SUNDAY!"
I was coming behi=
nd
her, musing remotely, when the quality of her voice roused me. She stood as=
if
she could not go near him. He had always puzzled her so, he and his ways, a=
nd
this seemed only another enigma. Then the truth dawned on her, she shrieked=
as
if afraid of him, ran a dozen steps back towards the trellis door and stopp=
ed
and clasped her ineffectual gloved hands, leaving me staring blankly, too
astonished for feeling, at the carelessly flung limbs.
The same idea cam=
e to
me also. I ran to her. "Mother!" I cried, pale to the depths of my
spirit, "IS HE DEAD?"
I had been thinki=
ng
two minutes before of the cold fruit pie that glorified our Sunday
dinner-table, and how I might perhaps get into the tree at the end of the
garden to read in the afternoon. Now an immense fact had come down like a
curtain and blotted out all my childish world. My father was lying dead bef=
ore
my eyes.... I perceived that my mother was helpless and that things must be
done.
"Mother!&quo=
t; I
said, "we must get Doctor Beaseley,--and carry him indoors."
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ SCHO=
LASTIC
1
My formal educati=
on
began in a small preparatory school in Bromstead. I went there as a day boy.
The charge for my instruction was mainly set off by the periodic visits of =
my
father with a large bag of battered fossils to lecture to us upon geology. I
was one of those fortunate youngsters who take readily to school work, I ha=
d a
good memory, versatile interests and a considerable appetite for commendati=
on,
and when I was barely twelve I got a scholarship at the City Merchants Scho=
ol
and was entrusted with a scholar's railway season ticket to Victoria. After=
my
father's death a large and very animated and solidly built uncle in tweeds =
from
Staffordshire, Uncle Minter, my mother's sister's husband, with a remarkable
accent and remarkable vowel sounds, who had plunged into the Bromstead home
once or twice for the night but who was otherwise unknown to me, came on the
scene, sold off the three gaunt houses with the utmost gusto, invested the
proceeds and my father's life insurance money, and got us into a small vill=
a at
Penge within sight of that immense facade of glass and iron, the Crystal Pa=
lace.
Then he retired in a mood of good-natured contempt to his native habitat ag=
ain.
We stayed at Penge until my mother's death.
School became a l=
arge
part of the world to me, absorbing my time and interest, and I never acquir=
ed
that detailed and intimate knowledge of Penge and the hilly villadom round
about, that I have of the town and outskirts of Bromstead.
It was a district=
of
very much the same character, but it was more completely urbanised and near=
er
to the centre of things; there were the same unfinished roads, the same
occasional disconcerted hedges and trees, the same butcher's horse grazing
under a builder's notice-board, the same incidental lapses into slum. The
Crystal Palace grounds cut off a large part of my walking radius to the west
with impassable fences and forbiddingly expensive turnstiles, but it added =
to
the ordinary spectacle of meteorology a great variety of gratuitous firewor=
ks
which banged and flared away of a night after supper and drew me abroad to =
see them
better. Such walks as I took, to Croydon, Wembledon, West Wickham and
Greenwich, impressed upon me the interminable extent of London's residential
suburbs; mile after mile one went, between houses, villas, rows of cottages,
streets of shops, under railway arches, over railway bridges. I have forgot=
ten
the detailed local characteristics--if there were any--of much of that regi=
on
altogether. I was only there two years, and half my perambulations occurred=
at
dusk or after dark. But with Penge I associate my first realisations of the
wonder and beauty of twilight and night, the effect of dark walls reflecting
lamplight, and the mystery of blue haze-veiled hillsides of houses, the gla=
re
of shops by night, the glowing steam and streaming sparks of railway trains=
and
railway signals lit up in the darkness. My first rambles in the evening occ=
urred
at Penge--I was becoming a big and independent-spirited boy--and I began my
experience of smoking during these twilight prowls with the threepenny pack=
ets
of American cigarettes then just appearing in the world.
My life centred u=
pon
the City Merchants School. Usually I caught the eight-eighteen for Victoria=
, I
had a midday meal and tea; four nights a week I stayed for preparation, and
often I was not back home again until within an hour of my bedtime. I spent=
my
half holidays at school in order to play cricket and football. This, and a
pretty voracious appetite for miscellaneous reading which was fostered by t=
he
Penge Middleton Library, did not leave me much leisure for local topography=
. On
Sundays also I sang in the choir at St. Martin's Church, and my mother did =
not
like me to walk out alone on the Sabbath afternoon, she herself slumbered, =
so
that I wrote or read at home. I must confess I was at home as little as I c=
ould
contrive.
Home, after my
father's death, had become a very quiet and uneventful place indeed. My mot=
her
had either an unimaginative temperament or her mind was greatly occupied wi=
th
private religious solicitudes, and I remember her talking to me but little,=
and
that usually upon topics I was anxious to evade. I had developed my own view
about low-Church theology long before my father's death, and my meditation =
upon
that event had finished my secret estrangement from my mother's faith. My r=
eason
would not permit even a remote chance of his being in hell, he was so
manifestly not evil, and this religion would not permit him a remote chance=
of
being out yet. When I was a little boy my mother had taught me to read and
write and pray and had done many things for me, indeed she persisted in was=
hing
me and even in making my clothes until I rebelled against these things as
indignities. But our minds parted very soon. She never began to understand =
the
mental processes of my play, she never interested herself in my school life=
and
work, she could not understand things I said; and she came, I think, quite
insensibly to regard me with something of the same hopeless perplexity she =
had
felt towards my father.
Him she must have
wedded under considerable delusions. I do not think he deceived her, indeed,
nor do I suspect him of mercenariness in their union; but no doubt he playe=
d up
to her requirements in the half ingenuous way that was and still is the qua=
lity
of most wooing, and presented himself as a very brisk and orthodox young ma=
n. I
wonder why nearly all love-making has to be fraudulent. Afterwards he must =
have
disappointed her cruelly by letting one aspect after another of his careles=
s,
sceptical, experimental temperament appear. Her mind was fixed and definite,
she embodied all that confidence in church and decorum and the assurances of
the pulpit which was characteristic of the large mass of the English
people--for after all, the rather low-Church section WAS the largest single
mass--in early Victorian times. She had dreams, I suspect, of going to chur=
ch
with him side by side; she in a little poke bonnet and a large flounced
crinoline, all mauve and magenta and starched under a little lace-trimmed p=
arasol,
and he in a tall silk hat and peg-top trousers and a roll-collar coat, and
looking rather like the Prince Consort,--white angels almost visibly raining
benedictions on their amiable progress. Perhaps she dreamt gently of
much-belaced babies and an interestingly pious (but not too dissenting or
fanatical) little girl or boy or so, also angel-haunted. And I think, too, =
she
must have seen herself ruling a seemly "home of taste," with a
vivarium in the conservatory that opened out of the drawing-room, or again,
making preserves in the kitchen. My father's science-teaching, his diagrams=
of
disembowelled humanity, his pictures of prehistoric beasts that contradicted
the Flood, his disposition towards soft shirts and loose tweed suits, his
inability to use a clothes brush, his spasmodic reading fits and his bulldog
pipes, must have jarred cruelly with her rather unintelligent anticipations.
His wild moments of violent temper when he would swear and smash things, ab=
surd
almost lovable storms that passed like summer thunder, must have been stark=
ly
dreadful to her. She was constitutionally inadaptable, and certainly made no
attempt to understand or tolerate these outbreaks. She tried them by her
standards, and by her standards they were wrong. Her standards hid him from
her. The blazing things he said rankled in her mind unforgettably.
As I remember them
together they chafed constantly. Her attitude to nearly all his moods and a=
ll
his enterprises was a sceptical disapproval. She treated him as something t=
hat
belonged to me and not to her. "YOUR father," she used to call hi=
m,
as though I had got him for her.
She had married l=
ate
and she had, I think, become mentally self-subsisting before her marriage. =
Even
in those Herne Hill days I used to wonder what was going on in her mind, an=
d I
find that old speculative curiosity return as I write this. She took a
considerable interest in the housework that our generally servantless condi=
tion
put upon her--she used to have a charwoman in two or three times a week--bu=
t she
did not do it with any great skill. She covered most of our furniture with
flouncey ill-fitting covers, and she cooked plainly and without very much
judgment. The Penge house, as it contained nearly all our Bromstead things,=
was
crowded with furniture, and is chiefly associated in my mind with the smell=
of
turpentine, a condiment she used very freely upon the veneered mahogany pie=
ces.
My mother had an equal dread of "blacks" by day and the "nig=
ht
air," so that our brightly clean windows were rarely open.
She took a morning
paper, and she would open it and glance at the headlines, but she did not r=
ead
it until the afternoon and then, I think, she was interested only in the mo=
re
violent crimes, and in railway and mine disasters and in the minutest
domesticities of the Royal Family. Most of the books at home were my father=
's,
and I do not think she opened any of them. She had one or two volumes that
dated from her own youth, and she tried in vain to interest me in them; the=
re
was Miss Strickland's QUEENS OF ENGLAND, a book I remember with particular =
animosity,
and QUEECHY and the WIDE WIDE WORLD. She made these books of hers into a cl=
ass
apart by sewing outer covers upon them of calico and figured muslin. To me =
in
these habiliments they seemed not so much books as confederated old ladies.=
My mother was also
very punctual with her religious duties, and rejoiced to watch me in the ch=
oir.
On winter evenings
she occupied an armchair on the other side of the table at which I sat, hea=
d on
hand reading, and she would be darning stockings or socks or the like. We
achieved an effect of rather stuffy comfortableness that was soporific, and=
in
a passive way I think she found these among her happy times. On such occasi=
ons
she was wont to put her work down on her knees and fall into a sort of
thoughtless musing that would last for long intervals and rouse my curiosit=
y.
For like most young people I could not imagine mental states without defini=
te
forms.
She carried on a
correspondence with a number of cousins and friends, writing letters in a
slanting Italian hand and dealing mainly with births, marriages and deaths,
business starts (in the vaguest terms) and the distresses of bankruptcy.
And yet, you know,
she did have a curious intimate life of her own that I suspected nothing of=
at
the time, that only now becomes credible to me. She kept a diary that is st=
ill
in my possession, a diary of fragmentary entries in a miscellaneous collect=
ion
of pocket books. She put down the texts of the sermons she heard, and queer
stiff little comments on casual visitors,--"Miss G. and much noisy
shrieking talk about games and such frivolities and CROQUAY. A. delighted a=
nd
VERY ATTENTIVE." Such little human entries abound. She had an odd way =
of never
writing a name, only an initial; my father is always "A.," and I =
am
always "D." It is manifest she followed the domestic events in th=
e life
of the Princess of Wales, who is now Queen Mother, with peculiar interest a=
nd
sympathy. "Pray G. all may be well," she writes in one such crisi=
s.
But there are thi=
ngs
about myself that I still find too poignant to tell easily, certain painful=
and
clumsy circumstances of my birth in very great detail, the distresses of my
infantile ailments. Then later I find such things as this: "Heard D.
s----." The "s" is evidently "swear "--"G. bl=
ess
and keep my boy from evil." And again, with the thin handwriting shake=
n by
distress: "D. would not go to church, and hardened his heart and said
wicked infidel things, much disrespect of the clergy. The anthem is tiresom=
e!!!
That men should set up to be wiser than their maker!!!" Then trebly
underlined: "I FEAR HIS FATHER'S TEACHING." Dreadful little tangl=
e of
misapprehensions and false judgments! More comforting for me to read, "=
;D.
very kind and good. He grows more thoughtful every day." I suspect mys=
elf
of forgotten hypocrisies.
At just one point=
my
mother's papers seem to dip deeper. I think the death of my father must have
stirred her for the first time for many years to think for herself. Even she
could not go on living in any peace at all, believing that he had indeed be=
en
flung headlong into hell. Of this gnawing solicitude she never spoke to me,
never, and for her diary also she could find no phrases. But on a loose
half-sheet of notepaper between its pages I find this passage that follows,
written very carefully. I do not know whose lines they are nor how she came
upon them. They run:--
"And if the=
re be
no meeting past the grave; If al=
l is
darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest. Be not
afraid ye waiting hearts that weep, For G=
od
still giveth His beloved sleep, And i=
f an
endless sleep He wills, so best."
That scrap of ver=
se
amazed me when I read it. I could even wonder if my mother really grasped t=
he
import of what she had copied out. It affected me as if a stone-deaf person=
had
suddenly turned and joined in a whispered conversation. It set me thinking =
how
far a mind in its general effect quite hopelessly limited, might range. Aft=
er
that I went through all her diaries, trying to find something more than a c=
onventional
term of tenderness for my father. But I found nothing. And yet somehow ther=
e grew
upon me the realisation that there had been love.... Her love for me, on the
other hand, was abundantly expressed.
I knew nothing of
that secret life of feeling at the time; such expression as it found was all
beyond my schoolboy range. I did not know when I pleased her and I did not =
know
when I distressed her. Chiefly I was aware of my mother as rather dull comp=
any,
as a mind thorny with irrational conclusions and incapable of explication, =
as
one believing quite wilfully and irritatingly in impossible things. So I
suppose it had to be; life was coming to me in new forms and with new
requirements. It was essential to our situation that we should fail to
understand. After this space of years I have come to realisations and attit=
udes
that dissolve my estrangement from her, I can pierce these barriers, I can =
see
her and feel her as a loving and feeling and desiring and muddle-headed per=
son.
There are times when I would have her alive again, if only that I might be =
kind
to her for a little while and give her some return for the narrow intense
affection, the tender desires, she evidently lavished so abundantly on me. =
But
then again I ask how I could make that return? And I realise the futility of
such dreaming. Her demand was rigid, and to meet it I should need to act and
lie.
So she whose blood
fed me, whose body made me, lies in my memory as I saw her last, fixed, sti=
ll,
infinitely intimate, infinitely remote....
My own case with =
my
mother, however, does not awaken the same regret I feel when I think of how=
she
misjudged and irked my father, and turned his weaknesses into thorns for her
own tormenting. I wish I could look back without that little twinge to two
people who were both in their different quality so good. But goodness that =
is
narrow is a pedestrian and ineffectual goodness. Her attitude to my father
seems to me one of the essentially tragic things that have come to me
personally, one of those things that nothing can transfigure, that REMAIN
sorrowful, that I cannot soothe with any explanation, for as I remember him=
he
was indeed the most lovable of weak spasmodic men. But my mother had been
trained in a hard and narrow system that made evil out of many things not i=
n the
least evil, and inculcated neither kindliness nor charity. All their estran=
gement
followed from that.
These cramping cu=
lts
do indeed take an enormous toll of human love and happiness, and not only t=
hat
but what we Machiavellians must needs consider, they make frightful breache=
s in
human solidarity. I suppose I am a deeply religious man, as men of my quali=
ty
go, but I hate more and more, as I grow older, the shadow of intolerance ca=
st
by religious organisations. All my life has been darkened by irrational
intolerance, by arbitrary irrational prohibitions and exclusions. Mahometan=
ism with
its fierce proselytism, has, I suppose, the blackest record of uncharitable=
ness,
but most of the Christian sects are tainted, tainted to a degree beyond any=
of
the anterior paganisms, with this same hateful quality. It is their exclusi=
ve
claim that sends them wrong, the vain ambition that inspires them all to te=
ach
a uniform one-sided God and be the one and only gateway to salvation.
Deprecation of all outside the household of faith, an organised undervaluat=
ion
of heretical goodness and lovableness, follows, necessarily. Every petty
difference is exaggerated to the quality of a saving grace or a damning def=
ect.
Elaborate precautions are taken to shield the believer's mind against broad=
or
amiable suggestions; the faithful are deterred by dark allusions, by sinist=
er
warnings, from books, from theatres, from worldly conversation, from all the
kindly instruments that mingle human sympathy. For only by isolating its fl=
ock
can the organisation survive.
Every month there
came to my mother a little magazine called, if I remember rightly, the HOME
CHURCHMAN, with the combined authority of print and clerical commendation. =
It
was the most evil thing that ever came into the house, a very devil, a thin
little pamphlet with one woodcut illustration on the front page of each num=
ber;
now the uninviting visage of some exponent of the real and only doctrine an=
d attitudes,
now some coral strand in act of welcoming the missionaries of God's mysteri=
ous
preferences, now a new church in the Victorian Gothic. The vile rag it was!=
A
score of vices that shun the policeman have nothing of its subtle wickednes=
s.
It was an outrage upon the natural kindliness of men. The contents were all
admirably adjusted to keep a spirit in prison. Their force of sustained
suggestion was tremendous. There would be dreadful intimations of the swift
retribution that fell upon individuals for Sabbath-breaking, and upon natio=
ns
for weakening towards Ritualism, or treating Roman Catholics as tolerable h=
uman
beings; there would be great rejoicings over the conversion of alleged Jews,
and terrible descriptions of the death-beds of prominent infidels with bold=
ly
invented last words,--the most unscrupulous lying; there would be the
appallingly edifying careers of "early piety" lusciously describe=
d,
or stories of condemned criminals who traced their final ruin unerringly to
early laxities of the kind that leads people to give up subscribing to the =
HOME
CHURCHMAN.
Every month that =
evil
spirit brought about a slump in our mutual love. My mother used to read the
thing and become depressed and anxious for my spiritual welfare, used to be
stirred to unintelligent pestering....
2
A few years ago I=
met
the editor of this same HOME CHURCHMAN. It was at one of the weekly dinners=
of
that Fleet Street dining club, the Blackfriars.
I heard the paper=
's
name with a queer little shock and surveyed the man with interest. No doubt=
he
was only a successor of the purveyor of discords who darkened my boyhood. It
was amazing to find an influence so terrible embodied in a creature so palp=
ably
petty. He was seated some way down a table at right angles to the one at wh=
ich
I sat, a man of mean appearance with a greyish complexion, thin, with a squ=
are
nose, a heavy wiry moustache and a big Adam's apple sticking out between th=
e wings
of his collar. He ate with considerable appetite and unconcealed relish, an=
d as
his jaw was underhung, he chummed and made the moustache wave like reeds in=
the
swell of a steamer. It gave him a conscientious look. After dinner he a lit=
tle
forced himself upon me. At that time, though the shadow of my scandal was
already upon me, I still seemed to be shaping for great successes, and he w=
as
glad to be in conversation with me and anxious to intimate political sympat=
hy
and support. I tried to make him talk of the HOME CHURCHMAN and the kindred
publications he ran, but he was manifestly ashamed of his job so far as I w=
as
concerned.
"One
wants," he said, pitching himself as he supposed in my key, "to p=
ut constructive
ideas into our readers, but they are narrow, you know, very narrow. Very.&q=
uot;
He made his moustache and lips express judicious regret. "One has to
consider them carefully, one has to respect their attitudes. One dare not go
too far with them. One has to feel one's way."
He chummed and the
moustache bristled.
A hireling, beyond
question, catering for a demand. I gathered there was a home in Tufnell Par=
k,
and three boys to be fed and clothed and educated....
I had the curiosi=
ty
to buy a copy of his magazine afterwards, and it seemed much the same sort =
of
thing that had worried my mother in my boyhood. There was the usual Christi=
an
hero, this time with mutton-chop whiskers and a long bare upper lip. The
Jesuits, it seemed, were still hard at it, and Heaven frightfully upset abo=
ut
the Sunday opening of museums and the falling birth-rate, and as touchy and
vindictive as ever. There were two vigorous paragraphs upon the utter
damnableness of the Rev. R. J. Campbell, a contagious damnableness I gather=
ed,
one wasn't safe within a mile of Holborn Viaduct, and a foul-mouthed attack=
on
poor little Wilkins the novelist--who was being baited by the moralists at =
that
time for making one of his big women characters, not being in holy wedlock,
desire a baby and say so....
The broadening of
human thought is a slow and complex process. We do go on, we do get on. But
when one thinks that people are living and dying now, quarrelling and sulki=
ng,
misled and misunderstanding, vaguely fearful, condemning and thwarting one
another in the close darknesses of these narrow cults--Oh, God! one wants a
gale out of Heaven, one wants a great wind from the sea!
3
While I lived at
Penge two little things happened to me, trivial in themselves and yet in th=
eir
quality profoundly significant. They had this in common, that they pierced =
the
texture of the life I was quietly taking for granted and let me see through=
it
into realities--realities I had indeed known about before but never realise=
d.
Each of these experiences left me with a sense of shock, with all the value=
s in
my life perplexingly altered, attempting readjustment. One of these disturb=
ing
and illuminating events was that I was robbed of a new pocket-knife and the
other that I fell in love. It was altogether surprising to me to be robbed.=
You
see, as an only child I had always been fairly well looked after and protec=
ted,
and the result was an amazing confidence in the practical goodness of the
people one met in the world. I knew there were robbers in the world, just a=
s I
knew there were tigers; that I was ever likely to meet robber or tiger face=
to
face seemed equally impossible.
The knife as I
remember it was a particularly jolly one with all sorts of instruments in i=
t,
tweezers and a thing for getting a stone out of the hoof of a horse, and a
corkscrew; it had cost me a carefully accumulated half-crown, and amounted
indeed to a new experience in knives. I had had it for two or three days, a=
nd
then one afternoon I dropped it through a hole in my pocket on a footpath
crossing a field between Penge and Anerley. I heard it fall in the way one =
does
without at the time appreciating what had happened, then, later, before I g=
ot home,
when my hand wandered into my pocket to embrace the still dear new possessi=
on I
found it gone, and instantly that memory of something hitting the ground sp=
rang
up into consciousness. I went back and commenced a search. Almost immediate=
ly I
was accosted by the leader of a little gang of four or five extremely dirty=
and
ragged boys of assorted sizes and slouching carriage who were coming from t=
he
Anerley direction.
"Lost anythi=
nk,
Matey?" said he.
I explained.
"'E's dropped
'is knife," said my interlocutor, and joined in the search.
"What sort of
'andle was it, Matey?" said a small white-faced sniffing boy in a big
bowler hat.
I supplied the
information. His sharp little face scrutinised the ground about us.
"GOT it,&quo=
t;
he said, and pounced.
"Give it
'ere," said the big boy hoarsely, and secured it.
I walked towards =
him
serenely confident that he would hand it over to me, and that all was for t=
he
best in the best of all possible worlds.
"No bloomin'
fear!" he said, regarding me obliquely. "Oo said it was your
knife?"
Remarkable doubts
assailed me. "Of course it's my knife," I said. The other boys
gathered round me.
"This ain't =
your
knife," said the big boy, and spat casually.
"I dropped it
just now."
"Findin's
keepin's, I believe," said the big boy.
"Nonsense,&q=
uot;
I said. "Give me my knife."
"'Ow many bl=
ades
it got?"
"Three."=
;
"And what so=
rt
of 'andle?"
"Bone."=
"Got a corks=
crew
like?"
"Yes."<= o:p>
"Ah! This ai=
n't
your knife no'ow. See?"
He made no offer =
to
show it to me. My breath went.
"Look here!" I said. "I saw that kid pick it up. It IS my knife."<= o:p>
"Rot!" =
said
the big boy, and slowly, deliberately put my knife into his trouser pocket.=
I braced my soul =
for
battle. All civilisation was behind me, but I doubt if it kept the colour i=
n my
face. I buttoned my jacket and clenched my fists and advanced on my
antagonist--he had, I suppose, the advantage of two years of age and three
inches of height. "Hand over that knife," I said.
Then one of the
smallest of the band assailed me with extraordinary vigour and swiftness fr=
om
behind, had an arm round my neck and a knee in my back before I had the
slightest intimation of attack, and so got me down. "I got 'im,
Bill," squeaked this amazing little ruffian. My nose was flattened by a
dirty hand, and as I struck out and hit something like sacking, some one ki=
cked
my elbow. Two or three seemed to be at me at the same time. Then I rolled o=
ver
and sat up to discover them all making off, a ragged flight, footballing my
cap, my City Merchants' cap, amongst them. I leapt to my feet in a passion =
of
indignation and pursued them.
But I did not ove=
rtake
them. We are beings of mixed composition, and I doubt if mine was a
single-minded pursuit. I knew that honour required me to pursue, and I had a
vivid impression of having just been down in the dust with a very wiry and
active and dirty little antagonist of disagreeable odour and incredible and
incalculable unscrupulousness, kneeling on me and gripping my arm and neck.=
I
wanted of course to be even with him, but also I doubted if catching him wo=
uld
necessarily involve that. They kicked my cap into the ditch at the end of t=
he
field, and made off compactly along a cinder lane while I turned aside to r=
ecover
my dishonoured headdress. As I knocked the dust out of that and out of my
jacket, and brushed my knees and readjusted my very crumpled collar, I trie=
d to
focus this startling occurrence in my mind.
I had vague ideas=
of
going to a policeman or of complaining at a police station, but some boyish
instinct against informing prevented that. No doubt I entertained ideas of
vindictive pursuit and murderous reprisals. And I was acutely enraged whene=
ver
I thought of my knife. The thing indeed rankled in my mind for weeks and we=
eks,
and altered all the flavour of my world for me. It was the first time I
glimpsed the simple brute violence that lurks and peeps beneath our
civilisation. A certain kindly complacency of attitude towards the palpably
lower classes was qualified for ever.
4
But the other experience was still more cardinal. It was the first clear intimation of a = new motif in life, the sex motif, that was to rise and increase and accumulate power and enrichment and interweave with and at last dominate all my life.<= o:p>
It was when I was
nearly fifteen this happened. It is inseparably connected in my mind with t=
he
dusk of warm September evenings. I never met the girl I loved by daylight, =
and
I have forgotten her name. It was some insignificant name.
Yet the peculiar
quality of the adventure keeps it shining darkly like some deep coloured ge=
m in
the common setting of my memories. It came as something new and strange,
something that did not join on to anything else in my life or connect with =
any
of my thoughts or beliefs or habits; it was a wonder, a mystery, a discovery
about myself, a discovery about the whole world. Only in after years did se=
xual
feeling lose that isolation and spread itself out to illuminate and pervade=
and
at last possess the whole broad vision of life.
It was in that ph=
ase
of an urban youth's development, the phase of the cheap cigarette, that this
thing happened. One evening I came by chance on a number of young people
promenading by the light of a row of shops towards Beckington, and, with all
the glory of a glowing cigarette between my lips, I joined their strolling
number. These twilight parades of young people, youngsters chiefly of the l=
ower
middle-class, are one of the odd social developments of the great suburban
growths--unkindly critics, blind to the inner meanings of things, call them=
, I
believe, Monkeys' Parades--the shop apprentices, the young work girls, the =
boy clerks
and so forth, stirred by mysterious intimations, spend their first-earned m=
oney
upon collars and ties, chiffon hats, smart lace collars, walking-sticks,
sunshades or cigarettes, and come valiantly into the vague transfiguring
mingling of gaslight and evening, to walk up and down, to eye meaningly, ev=
en
to accost and make friends. It is a queer instinctive revolt from the narrow
limited friendless homes in which so many find themselves, a going out towa=
rds
something, romance if you will, beauty, that has suddenly become a need--a =
need
that hitherto has lain dormant and unsuspected. They promenade.
Vulgar!--it is as
vulgar as the spirit that calls the moth abroad in the evening and lights t=
he
body of the glow-worm in the night. I made my way through the throng, a lit=
tle
contemptuously as became a public schoolboy, my hands in my pockets--none of
your cheap canes for me!--and very careful of the lie of my cigarette upon =
my
lips. And two girls passed me, one a little taller than the other, with dim
warm-tinted faces under clouds of dark hair and with dark eyes like pools
reflecting stars.
I half turned, and
the shorter one glanced back at me over her shoulder--I could draw you now =
the
pose of her cheek and neck and shoulder--and instantly I was as passionatel=
y in
love with the girl as I have ever been before or since, as any man ever was
with any woman. I turned about and followed them, I flung away my cigarette
ostentatiously and lifted my school cap and spoke to them.
The girl answered
shyly with her dark eyes on my face. What I said and what she said I cannot
remember, but I have little doubt it was something absolutely vapid. It rea=
lly
did not matter; the thing was we had met. I felt as I think a new-hatched m=
oth
must feel when suddenly its urgent headlong searching brings it in tremulous
amazement upon its mate.
We met, covered f=
rom
each other, with all the nets of civilisation keeping us apart. We walked s=
ide
by side.
It led to scarcely
more than that. I think we met four or five times altogether, and always wi=
th
her nearly silent elder sister on the other side of her. We walked on the l=
ast
two occasions arm in arm, furtively caressing each other's hands, we went a=
way
from the glare of the shops into the quiet roads of villadom, and there we
whispered instead of talking and looked closely into one another's warm and
shaded face. "Dear," I whispered very daringly, and she answered,
"Dear!" We had a vague sense that we wanted more of that quality =
of
intimacy and more. We wanted each other as one wants beautiful music again =
or
to breathe again the scent of flowers.
And that is all t=
here
was between us. The events are nothing, the thing that matters is the way in
which this experience stabbed through the common stuff of life and left it
pierced, with a light, with a huge new interest shining through the rent.
When I think of i=
t I
can recall even now the warm mystery of her face, her lips a little apart, =
lips
that I never kissed, her soft shadowed throat, and I feel again the sensuous
stir of her proximity....
Those two girls n=
ever
told me their surname nor let me approach their house. They made me leave t=
hem
at the corner of a road of small houses near Penge Station. And quite abrup=
tly,
without any intimation, they vanished and came to the meeting place no more,
they vanished as a moth goes out of a window into the night, and left me
possessed of an intolerable want....
The affair pervad=
ed
my existence for many weeks. I could not do my work and I could not rest at
home. Night after night I promenaded up and down that Monkeys' Parade full =
of
an unappeasable desire, with a thwarted sense of something just begun that
ought to have gone on. I went backwards and forwards on the way to the
vanishing place, and at last explored the forbidden road that had swallowed
them up. But I never saw her again, except that later she came to me, my sy=
mbol
of womanhood, in dreams. How my blood was stirred! I lay awake of nights
whispering in the darkness for her. I prayed for her.
Indeed that girl,=
who
probably forgot the last vestiges of me when her first real kiss came to he=
r,
ruled and haunted me, gave a Queen to my imagination and a texture to all my
desires until I became a man.
I generalised her=
at
last. I suddenly discovered that poetry was about her and that she was the =
key
to all that had hitherto seemed nonsense about love. I took to reading nove=
ls,
and if the heroine could not possibly be like her, dusky and warm and starl=
ike,
I put the book aside....
I hesitate and add
here one other confession. I want to tell this thing because it seems to me=
we
are altogether too restrained and secretive about such matters. The cardinal
thing in life sneaks in to us darkly and shamefully like a thief in the nig=
ht.
One day during my
Cambridge days--it must have been in my first year before I knew Hatherleig=
h--I
saw in a print-shop window near the Strand an engraving of a girl that remi=
nded
me sharply of Penge and its dusky encounter. It was just a half length of a
bare-shouldered, bare-breasted Oriental with arms akimbo, smiling faintly. =
I looked
at it, went my way, then turned back and bought it. I felt I must have it. =
The
odd thing is that I was more than a little shamefaced about it. I did not h=
ave
it framed and hung in my room open to the criticism of my friends, but I ke=
pt
it in the drawer of my writing-table. And I kept that drawer locked for a y=
ear.
It speedily merged with and became identified with the dark girl of Penge. =
That
engraving became in a way my mistress. Often when I had sported my oak and =
was
supposed to be reading, I was sitting with it before me.
Obeying some inst=
inct
I kept the thing very secret indeed. For a time nobody suspected what was
locked in my drawer nor what was locked in me. I seemed as sexless as my wo=
rld
required.
5
These things stab=
bed
through my life, intimations of things above and below and before me. They =
had
an air of being no more than incidents, interruptions.
The broad substan=
ce
of my existence at this time was the City Merchants School. Home was a place
where I slept and read, and the mooning explorations of the south-eastern
postal district which occupied the restless evenings and spare days of my
vacations mere interstices, giving glimpses of enigmatical lights and dista=
nt
spaces between the woven threads of a school-boy's career. School life began
for me every morning at Herne Hill, for there I was joined by three or four
other boys and the rest of the way we went together. Most of the streets an=
d roads
we traversed in our morning's walk from Victoria are still intact, the stor=
ms
of rebuilding that have submerged so much of my boyhood's London have passed
and left them, and I have revived the impression of them again and again in
recent years as I have clattered dinnerward in a hansom or hummed along in a
motor cab to some engagement. The main gate still looks out with the same
expression of ancient well-proportioned kindliness upon St. Margaret's Clos=
e.
There are imposing new science laboratories in Chambers Street indeed, but =
the
old playing fields are unaltered except for the big electric trams that go
droning and spitting blue flashes along the western boundary. I know Ratten,
the new Head, very well, but I have not been inside the school to see if it=
has
changed at all since I went up to Cambridge.
I took all they p= ut before us very readily as a boy, for I had a mind of vigorous appetite, but since I have grown mentally to man's estate and developed a more and more comprehensive view of our national process and our national needs, I am more and more struck by the oddity of the educational methods pursued, their aim= less disconnectedness from the constructive forces in the community. I suppose i= f we are to view the public school as anything more than an institution that has just chanced to happen, we must treat it as having a definite function towa= rds the general scheme of the nation, as being in a sense designed to take the = crude young male of the more or less responsible class, to correct his harsh egotisms, broaden his outlook, give him a grasp of the contemporary developments he will presently be called upon to influence and control, and send him on to the university to be made a leading and ruling social man. I= t is easy enough to carp at schoolmasters and set up for an Educational Reformer= , I know, but still it is impossible not to feel how infinitely more effectually--given certain impossibilities perhaps--the job might be done.<= o:p>
My memory of scho=
ol
has indeed no hint whatever of that quality of elucidation it seems reasona=
ble
to demand from it. Here all about me was London, a vast inexplicable being,=
a
vortex of gigantic forces, that filled and overwhelmed me with impressions,
that stirred my imagination to a perpetual vague enquiry; and my school not
only offered no key to it, but had practically no comment to make upon it at
all. We were within three miles of Westminster and Charing Cross, the
government offices of a fifth of mankind were all within an hour's stroll,
great economic changes were going on under our eyes, now the hoardings flam=
ed with
election placards, now the Salvation Army and now the unemployed came trail=
ing
in procession through the winter-grey streets, now the newspaper placards
outside news-shops told of battles in strange places, now of amazing
discoveries, now of sinister crimes, abject squalor and poverty, imperial s=
plendour
and luxury, Buckingham Palace, Rotten Row, Mayfair, the slums of Pimlico,
garbage-littered streets of bawling costermongers, the inky silver of the
barge-laden Thames--such was the background of our days. We went across St.
Margaret's Close and through the school gate into a quiet puerile world apa=
rt
from all these things. We joined in the earnest acquirement of all that was
necessary for Greek epigrams and Latin verse, and for the rest played games=
. We
dipped down into something clear and elegantly proportioned and time-worn a=
nd
for all its high resolve of stalwart virility a little feeble, like our bla=
ckened
and decayed portals by Inigo Jones.
Within, we were
taught as the chief subjects of instruction, Latin and Greek. We were taught
very badly because the men who taught us did not habitually use either of t=
hese
languages, nobody uses them any more now except perhaps for the Latin of a =
few
Levantine monasteries. At the utmost our men read them. We were taught these
languages because long ago Latin had been the language of civilisation; the=
one
way of escape from the narrow and localised life had lain in those days thr=
ough
Latin, and afterwards Greek had come in as the vehicle of a flood of new an=
d amazing
ideas. Once these two languages had been the sole means of initiation to the
detached criticism and partial comprehension of the world. I can imagine the
fierce zeal of our first Heads, Gardener and Roper, teaching Greek like
passionate missionaries, as a progressive Chinaman might teach English to t=
he
boys of Pekin, clumsily, impatiently, with rod and harsh urgency, but
sincerely, patriotically, because they felt that behind it lay revelations,=
the
irresistible stimulus to a new phase of history. That was long ago. A new g=
reat
world, a vaster Imperialism had arisen about the school, had assimilated all
these amazing and incredible ideas, had gone on to new and yet more amazing
developments of its own. But the City Merchants School still made the subst=
ance
of its teaching Latin and Greek, still, with no thought of rotating crops,
sowed in a dream amidst the harvesting.
There is no
fierceness left in the teaching now. Just after I went up to Trinity, Gates,
our Head, wrote a review article in defence of our curriculum. In this, amo=
ng
other indiscretions, he asserted that it was impossible to write good Engli=
sh
without an illuminating knowledge of the classic tongues, and he split an
infinitive and failed to button up a sentence in saying so. His main argume=
nt
conceded every objection a reasonable person could make to the City Merchan=
ts'
curriculum. He admitted that translation had now placed all the wisdom of t=
he
past at a common man's disposal, that scarcely a field of endeavour remaine=
d in
which modern work had not long since passed beyond the ancient achievement.=
He
disclaimed any utility. But there was, he said, a peculiar magic in these
grammatical exercises no other subjects of instruction possessed. Nothing e=
lse
provided the same strengthening and orderly discipline for the mind.
He said that, kno=
wing
the Senior Classics he did, himself a Senior Classic!
Yet in a dim conf=
used
way I think he was making out a case. In schools as we knew them, and with =
the
sort of assistant available, the sort of assistant who has been trained
entirely on the old lines, he could see no other teaching so effectual in
developing attention, restraint, sustained constructive effort and various =
yet
systematic adjustment. And that was as far as his imagination could go.
It is infinitely
easier to begin organised human affairs than end them; the curriculum and t=
he
social organisation of the English public school are the crowning instances=
of
that. They go on because they have begun. Schools are not only immortal
institutions but reproductive ones. Our founder, Jabez Arvon, knew nothing,=
I
am sure, of Gates' pedagogic values and would, I feel certain, have dealt w=
ith
them disrespectfully. But public schools and university colleges sprang into
existence correlated, the scholars went on to the universities and came bac=
k to
teach the schools, to teach as they themselves had been taught, before they=
had
ever made any real use of the teaching; the crowd of boys herded together, a
crowd perpetually renewed and unbrokenly the same, adjusted itself by means=
of
spontaneously developed institutions. In a century, by its very success, th=
is
revolutionary innovation of Renascence public schools had become an immense
tradition woven closely into the fabric of the national life. Intelligent a=
nd
powerful people ceased to talk Latin or read Greek, they had got what was
wanted, but that only left the schoolmaster the freer to elaborate his poin=
t.
Since most men of any importance or influence in the country had been throu=
gh the
mill, it was naturally a little difficult to persuade them that it was not
quite the best and most ennobling mill the wit of man could devise. And,
moreover, they did not want their children made strange to them. There was =
all
the machinery and all the men needed to teach the old subjects, and none to
teach whatever new the critic might propose. Such science instruction as my
father gave seemed indeed the uninviting alternative to the classical grind=
. It
was certainly an altogether inferior instrument at that time.
So it was I occup=
ied
my mind with the exact study of dead languages for seven long years. It was=
the
strangest of detachments. We would sit under the desk of such a master as
Topham like creatures who had fallen into an enchanted pit, and he would do=
his
considerable best to work us up to enthusiasm for, let us say, a Greek play=
. If
we flagged he would lash himself to revive us. He would walk about the
class-room mouthing great lines in a rich roar, and asking us with a flushed
face and shining eyes if it was not "GLORIOUS." The very sight of
Greek letters brings back to me the dingy, faded, ink-splashed quality of o=
ur class-room,
the banging of books, Topham's disordered hair, the sheen of his alpaca gow=
n,
his deep unmusical intonations and the wide striding of his creaking boots.
Glorious! And being plastic human beings we would consent that it was glori=
ous,
and some of us even achieved an answering reverberation and a sympathetic
flush. I at times responded freely. We all accepted from him unquestioningly
that these melodies, these strange sounds, exceeded any possibility of beau=
ty
that lay in the Gothic intricacy, the splash and glitter, the jar and recov=
ery,
the stabbing lights, the heights and broad distances of our English tongue.
That indeed was the chief sin of him. It was not that he was for Greek and =
Latin,
but that he was fiercely against every beauty that was neither classic nor
deferred to classical canons.
And what exactly =
did
we make of it, we seniors who understood it best? We visualised dimly throu=
gh
that dust and the grammatical difficulties, the spectacle of the chorus
chanting grotesquely, helping out protagonist and antagonist, masked and
buskined, with the telling of incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable
incest, of gods faded beyond symbolism, of that Relentless Law we did not
believe in for a moment, that no modern western European can believe in. We
thought of the characters in the unconvincing wigs and costumes of our scho=
ol performance.
No Gilbert Murray had come as yet to touch these things to life again. It w=
as
like the ghost of an antiquarian's toy theatre, a ghost that crumbled and
condensed into a gritty dust of construing as one looked at it.
Marks, shindies,
prayers and punishments, all flavoured with the leathery stuffiness of
time-worn Big Hall....
And then out one
would come through our grey old gate into the evening light and the spectac=
le
of London hurrying like a cataract, London in black and brown and blue and
gleaming silver, roaring like the very loom of Time. We came out into the n=
ew
world no teacher has yet had the power and courage to grasp and expound. Li=
fe
and death sang all about one, joys and fears on such a scale, in such an
intricacy as never Greek nor Roman knew. The interminable procession of hor=
se
omnibuses went lumbering past, bearing countless people we knew not whence,=
we
knew not whither. Hansoms clattered, foot passengers jostled one, a thousan=
d appeals
of shop and boarding caught the eye. The multi-coloured lights of window and
street mingled with the warm glow of the declining day under the softly
flushing London skies; the ever-changing placards, the shouting news-vendor=
s,
told of a kaleidoscopic drama all about the globe. One did not realise what=
had
happened to us, but the voice of Topham was suddenly drowned and lost, he a=
nd
his minute, remote gesticulations....
That submerged and
isolated curriculum did not even join on to living interests where it might
have done so. We were left absolutely to the hints of the newspapers, to ca=
sual
political speeches, to the cartoons of the comic papers or a chance reading=
of
some Socialist pamphlet for any general ideas whatever about the huge swirl=
ing
world process in which we found ourselves. I always look back with particul=
ar exasperation
to the cessation of our modern history at the year 1815. There it pulled up=
abruptly,
as though it had come upon something indelicate....
But, after all, w=
hat
would Topham or Flack have made of the huge adjustments of the nineteenth
century? Flack was the chief cricketer on the staff; he belonged to that gr=
eat
cult which pretends that the place of this or that county in the struggle f=
or
the championship is a matter of supreme importance to boys. He obliged us to
affect a passionate interest in the progress of county matches, to work up
unnatural enthusiasms. What a fuss there would be when some well-trained bo=
y, panting
as if from Marathon, appeared with an evening paper! "I say, you chaps,
Middlesex all out for a hundred and five!"
Under Flack's
pressure I became, I confess, a cricket humbug of the first class. I applied
myself industriously year by year to mastering scores and averages; I prete=
nded
that Lords or the Oval were the places nearest Paradise for me. (I never we=
nt
to either.) Through a slight mistake about the county boundary I adopted Su=
rrey
for my loyalty, though as a matter of fact we were by some five hundred yar=
ds
or so in Kent. It did quite as well for my purposes. I bowled rather straig=
ht
and fast, and spent endless hours acquiring the skill to bowl Flack out. He=
was
a bat in the Corinthian style, rich and voluminous, and succumbed very easi=
ly
to a low shooter or an unexpected Yorker, but usually he was caught early by
long leg. The difficulty was to bowl him before he got caught. He loved to =
lift
a ball to leg. After one had clean bowled him at the practice nets one
deliberately gave him a ball to leg just to make him feel nice again.
Flack went about a
world of marvels dreaming of leg hits. He has been observed, going across t=
he
Park on his way to his highly respectable club in Piccadilly, to break from
profound musings into a strange brief dance that ended with an imaginary sw=
ipe
with his umbrella, a roofer, over the trees towards Buckingham Palace. The =
hit
accomplished, Flack resumed his way.
Inadequately
instructed foreigners would pass him in terror, needlessly alert.
6
These schoolmaste=
rs
move through my memory as always a little distant and more than a little
incomprehensible. Except when they wore flannels, I saw them almost always =
in
old college caps and gowns, a uniform which greatly increased their detachm=
ent
from the world of actual men. Gates, the head, was a lean loose-limbed man,
rather stupid I discovered when I reached the Sixth and came into contact w=
ith
him, but honest, simple and very eager to be liberal-minded. He was bald, w=
ith
an almost conical baldness, with a grizzled pointed beard, small featured a=
nd,
under the stresses of a Zeitgeist that demanded liberality, with an express=
ion
of puzzled but resolute resistance to his own unalterable opinions. He made=
a
tall dignified figure in his gown. In my junior days he spoke to me only th=
ree
or four times, and then he annoyed me by giving me a wrong surname; it was a
sore point because I was an outsider and not one of the old school families,
the Shoesmiths, the Naylors, the Marklows, the Tophams, the Pevises and
suchlike, who came generation after generation. I recall him most vividly
against the background of faded brown book-backs in the old library in whic=
h we
less destructive seniors were trusted to work, with the light from the
stained-glass window falling in coloured patches on his face. It gave him t=
he
appearance of having no colour of his own. He had a habit of scratching the
beard on his cheek as he talked, and he used to come and consult us about
things and invariably do as we said. That, in his phraseology, was
"maintaining the traditions of the school."
He had indeed an
effect not of a man directing a school, but of a man captured and directed =
by a
school. Dead and gone Elizabethans had begotten a monster that could carry =
him
about in its mouth.
Yet being a man, =
as I
say, with his hair a little stirred by a Zeitgeist that made for change, Ga=
tes
did at times display a disposition towards developments. City Merchants had=
no
modern side, and utilitarian spirits were carping in the PALL MALL GAZETTE =
and
elsewhere at the omissions from our curriculum, and particularly at our wan=
t of
German. Moreover, four classes still worked together with much clashing and
uproar in the old Big Hall that had once held in a common tumult the entire
school. Gates used to come and talk to us older fellows about these things.=
"I don't wis=
h to
innovate unduly," he used to say. "But we ought to get in some
German, you know,--for those who like it. The army men will be wanting it s=
ome
of these days."
He referred to the
organisation of regular evening preparation for the lower boys in Big Hall =
as a
"revolutionary change," but he achieved it, and he declared he be=
gan
the replacement of the hacked wooden tables, at which the boys had worked s=
ince
Tudor days, by sloping desks with safety inkpots and scientifically adjusta=
ble
seats, "with grave misgivings." And though he never birched a boy=
in
his life, and was, I am convinced, morally incapable of such a scuffle, he
retained the block and birch in the school through all his term of office, =
and
spoke at the Headmasters' Conference in temperate approval of corporal
chastisement, comparing it, dear soul! to the power of the sword....
I wish I could, in
some measure and without tediousness, convey the effect of his discourses to
General Assembly in Big Hall. But that is like trying to draw the obverse a=
nd
reverse of a sixpence worn to complete illegibility. His tall fine figure s=
tood
high on the days, his thoughtful tenor filled the air as he steered his
hazardous way through sentences that dragged inconclusive tails and dropped
redundant prepositions. And he pleaded ever so urgently, ever so finely, th=
at what
we all knew for Sin was sinful, and on the whole best avoided altogether, a=
nd
so went on with deepening notes and even with short arresting gestures of t=
he
right arm and hand, to stir and exhort us towards goodness, towards that
modern, unsectarian goodness, goodness in general and nothing in particular,
which the Zeitgeist seemed to indicate in those transitional years.
7
The school never
quite got hold of me. Partly I think that was because I was a day-boy and so
freer than most of the boys, partly because of a temperamental disposition =
to
see things in my own way and have my private dreams, partly because I was a=
little
antagonised by the family traditions that ran through the school. I was mad=
e to
feel at first that I was a rank outsider, and I never quite forgot it. I
suffered very little bullying, and I never had a fight--in all my time there
were only three fights--but I followed my own curiosities. I was already a =
very
keen theologian and politician before I was fifteen. I was also intensely
interested in modern warfare. I read the morning papers in the Reading Room
during the midday recess, never missed the illustrated weeklies, and often =
when
I could afford it I bought a PALL MALL GAZETTE on my way home.
I do not think th=
at I
was very exceptional in that; most intelligent boys, I believe, want natura=
lly
to be men, and are keenly interested in men's affairs. There is not the
universal passion for a magnified puerility among them it is customary to
assume. I was indeed a voracious reader of everything but boys' books--whic=
h I
detested--and fiction. I read histories, travel, popular science and
controversy with particular zest, and I loved maps. School work and school
games were quite subordinate affairs for me. I worked well and made a passa=
ble
figure at games, and I do not think I was abnormally insensitive to the fin=
e quality
of our school, to the charm of its mediaeval nucleus, its Gothic cloisters,=
its
scraps of Palladian and its dignified Georgian extensions; the contrast of =
the
old quiet, that in spite of our presence pervaded it everywhere, with the
rushing and impending London all about it, was indeed a continual pleasure =
to
me. But these things were certainly not the living and central interests of=
my
life.
I had to conceal =
my
wider outlook to a certain extent--from the masters even more than from the
boys. Indeed I only let myself go freely with one boy, Britten, my especial
chum, the son of the Agent-General for East Australia. We two discovered in=
a
chance conversation A PROPOS of a map in the library that we were both of us
curious why there were Malays in Madagascar, and how the Mecca pilgrims came
from the East Indies before steamships were available. Neither of us had
suspected that there was any one at all in the school who knew or cared a r=
ap
about the Indian Ocean, except as water on the way to India. But Britten had
come up through the Suez Canal, and his ship had spoken a pilgrim ship on t=
he
way. It gave him a startling quality of living knowledge. From these pilgri=
ms
we got to a comparative treatment of religions, and from that, by a sudden
plunge, to entirely sceptical and disrespectful confessions concerning Gate=
s'
last outbreak of simple piety in School Assembly. We became congenial intim=
ates
from that hour.
The discovery of
Britten happened to me when we were both in the Lower Fifth. Previously the=
re
had been a watertight compartment between the books I read and the thoughts
they begot on the one hand and human intercourse on the other. Now I really
began my higher education, and aired and examined and developed in conversa=
tion
the doubts, the ideas, the interpretations that had been forming in my mind=
. As
we were both day-boys with a good deal of control over our time we organised
walks and expeditions together, and my habit of solitary and rather vague p=
rowling
gave way to much more definite joint enterprises. I went several times to h=
is
house, he was the youngest of several brothers, one of whom was a medical
student and let us assist at the dissection of a cat, and once or twice in
vacation time he came to Penge, and we went with parcels of provisions to d=
o a
thorough day in the grounds and galleries of the Crystal Palace, ending with
the fireworks at close quarters. We went in a river steamboat down to
Greenwich, and fired by that made an excursion to Margate and back; we expl=
ored
London docks and Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane and all sorts of
out-of-the-way places together.
We confessed shyl=
y to
one another a common secret vice, "Phantom warfare." When we walk=
ed
alone, especially in the country, we had both developed the same practice of
fighting an imaginary battle about us as we walked. As we went along we were
generals, and our attacks pushed along on either side, crouching and gather=
ing
behind hedges, cresting ridges, occupying copses, rushing open spaces, figh=
ting
from house to house. The hillsides about Penge were honeycombed in my
imagination with the pits and trenches I had created to check a victorious
invader coming out of Surrey. For him West Kensington was chiefly important=
as
the scene of a desperate and successful last stand of insurrectionary troop=
s (who
had seized the Navy, the Bank and other advantages) against a royalist
army--reinforced by Germans--advancing for reasons best known to themselves=
by
way of Harrow and Ealing. It is a secret and solitary game, as we found whe=
n we
tried to play it together. We made a success of that only once. All the way
down to Margate we schemed defences and assailed and fought them as we came
back against the sunset. Afterwards we recapitulated all that conflict by m=
eans
of a large scale map of the Thames and little paper ironclads in plan cut o=
ut
of paper.
A subsequent revi=
val
of these imaginings was brought about by Britten's luck in getting, through=
a
friend of his father's, admission for us both to the spectacle of volunteer
officers fighting the war game in Caxton Hall. We developed a war game of o=
ur
own at Britten's home with nearly a couple of hundred lead soldiers, some
excellent spring cannons that shot hard and true at six yards, hills of boo=
ks
and a constantly elaborated set of rules. For some months that occupied an
immense proportion of our leisure. Some of our battles lasted several days.=
We
kept the game a profound secret from the other fellows. They would not have
understood.
And we also began=
, it
was certainly before we were sixteen, to write, for the sake of writing. We=
liked
writing. We had discovered Lamb and the best of the middle articles in such
weeklies as the SATURDAY GAZETTE, and we imitated them. Our minds were full=
of
dim uncertain things we wanted to drag out into the light of expression.
Britten had got hold of IN MEMORIAM, and I had disinterred Pope's ESSAY ON =
MAN
and RABBI BEN EZRA, and these things had set our theological and cosmic sol=
icitudes
talking. I was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, I know, when he and I
walked along the Thames Embankment confessing shamefully to one another tha=
t we
had never read Lucretius. We thought every one who mattered had read Lucret=
ius.
When I was nearly
sixteen my mother was taken ill very suddenly, and died of some perplexing
complaint that involved a post-mortem examination; it was, I think, the tro=
uble
that has since those days been recognised as appendicitis. This led to a
considerable change in my circumstances; the house at Penge was given up, a=
nd
my Staffordshire uncle arranged for me to lodge during school terms with a
needy solicitor and his wife in Vicars Street, S. W., about a mile and a ha=
lf from
the school. So it was I came right into London; I had almost two years of
London before I went to Cambridge.
Those were our gr=
eat
days together. Afterwards we were torn apart; Britten went to Oxford, and o=
ur
circumstances never afterwards threw us continuously together until the day=
s of
the BLUE WEEKLY.
As boys, we walked
together, read and discussed the same books, pursued the same enquiries. We=
got
a reputation as inseparables and the nickname of the Rose and the Lily, for
Britten was short and thick-set with dark close curling hair and a ruddy Ir=
ish
type of face; I was lean and fair-haired and some inches taller than he. Our
talk ranged widely and yet had certain very definite limitations. We were
amazingly free with politics and religion, we went to that little meeting-h=
ouse
of William Morris's at Hammersmith and worked out the principles of Sociali=
sm pretty
thoroughly, and we got up the Darwinian theory with the help of Britten's
medical-student brother and the galleries of the Natural History Museum in
Cromwell Road. Those wonderful cases on the ground floor illustrating mimic=
ry,
dimorphism and so forth, were new in our times, and we went through them wi=
th
earnest industry and tried over our Darwinism in the light of that. Such to=
pics
we did exhaustively. But on the other hand I do not remember any discussion
whatever of human sex or sexual relationships. There, in spite of intense
secret curiosities, our lips were sealed by a peculiar shyness. And I do not
believe we ever had occasion either of us to use the word "love."=
It
was not only that we were instinctively shy of the subject, but that we were
mightily ashamed of the extent of our ignorance and uncertainty in these
matters. We evaded them elaborately with an assumption of exhaustive knowle=
dge.
We certainly had =
no
shyness about theology. We marked the emancipation of our spirits from the
frightful teachings that had oppressed our boyhood, by much indulgence in
blasphemous wit. We had a secret literature of irreverent rhymes, and a sec=
ret
art of theological caricature. Britten's father had delighted his family by
reading aloud from Dr. Richard Garnett's TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, and Britten
conveyed the precious volume to me. That and the BAB BALLADS were the
inspiration of some of our earliest lucubrations.
For an imaginative
boy the first experience of writing is like a tiger's first taste of blood,=
and
our literary flowerings led very directly to the revival of the school
magazine, which had been comatose for some years. But there we came upon a
disappointment.
8
In that revival we
associated certain other of the Sixth Form boys, and notably one for whom o=
ur
enterprise was to lay the foundations of a career that has ended in the Hou=
se
of Lords, Arthur Cossington, now Lord Paddockhurst. Cossington was at that =
time
a rather heavy, rather good-looking boy who was chiefly eminent in cricket,=
an
outsider even as we were and preoccupied no doubt, had we been sufficiently
detached to observe him, with private imaginings very much of the same qual=
ity and
spirit as our own. He was, we were inclined to think, rather a sentimentali=
st,
rather a poseur, he affected a concise emphatic style, played chess very we=
ll,
betrayed a belief in will-power, and earned Britten's secret hostility, Bri=
tten
being a sloven, by the invariable neatness of his collars and ties. He came
into our magazine with a vigour that we found extremely surprising and
unwelcome.
Britten and I had
wanted to write. We had indeed figured our project modestly as a manuscript
magazine of satirical, liberal and brilliant literature by which in some ra=
ther
inexplicable way the vague tumult of ideas that teemed within us was to find
form and expression; Cossington, it was manifest from the outset, wanted
neither to write nor writing, but a magazine. I remember the inaugural meet=
ing
in Shoesmith major's study--we had had great trouble in getting it
together--and how effectually Cossington bolted with the proposal.
"I think we
fellows ought to run a magazine," said Cossington. "The school us=
ed
to have one. A school like this ought to have a magazine."
"The last one
died in '84," said Shoesmith from the hearthrug. "Called the
OBSERVER. Rot rather."
"Bad
title," said Cossington.
"There was a
TATLER before that," said Britten, sitting on the writing table at the
window that was closed to deaden the cries of the Lower School at play, and
clashing his boots together.
"We want
something suggestive of City Merchants."
"CITY
MERCHANDIZE," said Britten.
"Too fancifu=
l.
What of ARVONIAN? Richard Arvon was our founder, and it seems almost a
duty--"
"They call t=
hem
all -usians or -onians," said Britten.
"I like CITY
MERCHANDIZE," I said. "We could probably find a quotation to
suggest--oh! mixed good things."
Cossington regard=
ed
me abstractedly.
"Don't want =
to
put the accent on the City, do we?" said Shoesmith, who had a feeling =
for
county families, and Naylor supported him by a murmur of approval.
"We ought to
call it the ARVONIAN," decided Cossington, "and we might very well
have underneath, 'With which is incorporated the OBSERVER.' That picks up t=
he
old traditions, makes an appeal to old boys and all that, and it gives us
something to print under the title."
I still held out =
for
CITY MERCHANDIZE, which had taken my fancy. "Some of the chaps' people
won't like it," said Naylor, "certain not to. And it sounds
Rum."
"Sounds
Weird," said a boy who had not hitherto spoken.
"We aren't g=
oing
to do anything Queer," said Shoesmith, pointedly not looking at Britte=
n.
The question of t=
he
title had manifestly gone against us. "Oh! HAVE it ARVONIAN," I s=
aid.
"And next, w=
hat
size shall we have?" said Cossington.
"Something l=
ike
MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE--or LONGMANS'; LONGMANS' is better because it has a wh=
ole
page, not columns. It makes no end of difference to one's effects."
"What
effects?" asked Shoesmith abruptly.
"Oh! a pause=
or
a white line or anything. You've got to write closer for a double column. I=
t's
nuggetty. You can't get a swing on your prose." I had discussed this
thoroughly with Britten.
"If the fell=
ows
are going to write--" began Britten.
"We ought to
keep off fine writing," said Shoesmith. "It's cheek. I vote we do=
n't
have any."
"We sha'n't =
get
any," said Cossington, and then as an olive branch to me, "unless
Remington does a bit. Or Britten. But it's no good making too much space for
it."
"We ought to=
be
very careful about the writing," said Shoesmith. "We don't want to
give ourselves away."
"I vote we a=
sk
old Topham to see us through," said Naylor.
Britten groaned a=
loud
and every one regarded him. "Greek epigrams on the fellows' names,&quo=
t;
he said. "Small beer in ancient bottles. Let's get a stuffed broody he=
n to
SIT on the magazine."
"We might do
worse than a Greek epigram," said Cossington. "One in each number.
It--it impresses parents and keeps up our classical tradition. And the mast=
ers
CAN help. We don't want to antagonise them. Of course--we've got to
departmentalise. Writing is only one section of the thing. The ARVONIAN has=
to
stand for the school. There's questions of space and questions of expense. =
We
can't turn out a great chunk of printed prose like--like wet cold toast and
call it a magazine."
Britten writhed,
appreciating the image.
"There's to =
be a
section of sports. YOU must do that."
"I'm not goi=
ng
to do any fine writing," said Shoesmith.
"What you've=
got
to do is just to list all the chaps and put a note to their play:--'Naylor
minor must pass more. Football isn't the place for extreme individualism.'
'Ammersham shapes well as half-back.' Things like that."
"I could do =
that
all right," said Shoesmith, brightening and manifestly becoming pregna=
nt
with judgments.
"One great t=
hing
about a magazine of this sort," said Cossington, "is to mention j=
ust
as many names as you can in each number. It keeps the interest alive. Chaps
will turn it over looking for their own little bit. Then it all lights up f=
or
them."
"Do you want=
any
reports of matches?" Shoesmith broke from his meditation.
"Rather. Wit=
h comments."
"Naylor
surpassed himself and negotiated the lemon safely home," said Shoesmit=
h.
"Shut it,&qu=
ot;
said Naylor modestly.
"Exactly,&qu=
ot;
said Cossington. "That gives us three features," touching them of=
f on
his fingers, "Epigram, Literary Section, Sports. Then we want a sectio=
n to
shove anything into, a joke, a notice of anything that's going on. So on. O=
ur
Note Book."
"Oh, Hell!&q=
uot;
said Britten, and clashed his boots, to the silent disapproval of every one=
.
"Then we wan=
t an
editorial."
"A WHAT?&quo=
t;
cried Britten, with a note of real terror in his voice.
"Well, don't=
we?
Unless we have our Note Book to begin on the front page. It gives a scrappy
effect to do that. We want something manly and straightforward and a bit
thoughtful, about Patriotism, say, or ESPRIT DE CORPS, or After-Life."=
I looked at Britt= en. Hitherto we had not considered Cossington mattered very much in the world.<= o:p>
He went over us a=
s a
motor-car goes over a dog. There was a sort of energy about him, a new sort=
of
energy to us; we had never realised that anything of the sort existed in the
world. We were hopelessly at a disadvantage. Almost instantly we had develo=
ped
a clear and detailed vision of a magazine made up of everything that was mo=
st
acceptable in the magazines that flourished in the adult world about us, and
had determined to make it a success. He had by a kind of instinct, as it we=
re,
synthetically plagiarised every successful magazine and breathed into this
dusty mixture the breath of life. He was elected at his own suggestion mana=
ging
director, with the earnest support of Shoesmith and Naylor, and conducted t=
he
magazine so successfully and brilliantly that he even got a whole back page=
of
advertisements from the big sports shop in Holborn, and made the printers p=
ay
at the same rate for a notice of certain books of their own which they said
they had inserted by inadvertency to fill up space. The only literary
contribution in the first number was a column by Topham in faultless
stereotyped English in depreciation of some fancied evil called Utilitarian
Studies and ending with that noble old quotation:--
"To the glory that was Greece =
and
the grandeur that was Rome."
And Flack crowded us out of number =
two
with a bright little paper on the "Humours of Cricket," and the H=
ead
himself was profusely thoughtful all over the editorial under the heading of
"The School Chapel; and How it Seems to an Old Boy."
Britten and I fou=
nd
it difficult to express to each other with any grace or precision what we f=
elt
about that magazine.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~
ADOLESCENCE
1
I find it very
difficult to trace how form was added to form and interpretation followed
interpretation in my ever-spreading, ever-deepening, ever-multiplying and
enriching vision of this world into which I had been born. Every day added =
its
impressions, its hints, its subtle explications to the growing understandin=
g.
Day after day the living interlacing threads of a mind weave together. Every
morning now for three weeks and more (for to-day is Thursday and I started =
on a
Tuesday) I have been trying to convey some idea of the factors and early
influences by which my particular scrap of subjective tapestry was shaped, =
to
show the child playing on the nursery floor, the son perplexed by his mothe=
r,
gazing aghast at his dead father, exploring interminable suburbs, touched by
first intimations of the sexual mystery, coming in with a sort of confused
avidity towards the centres of the life of London. It is only by such an ef=
fort
to write it down that one realises how marvellously crowded, how marvellous=
ly
analytical and synthetic those ears must be. One begins with the little chi=
ld to
whom the sky is a roof of blue, the world a screen of opaque and disconnect=
ed
facts, the home a thing eternal, and "being good" just simple
obedience to unquestioned authority; and one comes at last to the vast worl=
d of
one's adult perception, pierced deep by flaring searchlights of partial
understanding, here masked by mists, here refracted and distorted through h=
alf
translucent veils, here showing broad prospects and limitless vistas and he=
re
impenetrably dark.
I recall phases of
deep speculation, doubts and even prayers by night, and strange occasions w=
hen
by a sort of hypnotic contemplation of nothingness I sought to pierce the w=
eb
of appearances about me. It is hard to measure these things in receding
perspective, and now I cannot trace, so closely has mood succeeded and over=
laid
and obliterated mood, the phases by which an utter horror of death was repl=
aced
by the growing realisation of its necessity and dignity. Difficulty of the
imagination with infinite space, infinite time, entangled my mind; and mora=
l distress
for the pain and suffering of bygone ages that made all thought of reformat=
ion
in the future seem but the grimmest irony upon now irreparable wrongs. Many=
an
intricate perplexity of these broadening years did not so much get settled =
as
cease to matter. Life crowded me away from it.
I have confessed
myself a temerarious theologian, and in that passage from boyhood to manhoo=
d I
ranged widely in my search for some permanently satisfying Truth. That, too,
ceased after a time to be urgently interesting. I came at last into a phase
that endures to this day, of absolute tranquillity, of absolute confidence =
in
whatever that Incomprehensible Comprehensive which must needs be the substr=
atum
of all things, may be. Feeling OF IT, feeling BY IT, I cannot feel afraid o=
f it.
I think I had got quite clearly and finally to that adjustment long before =
my
Cambridge days were done. I am sure that the evil in life is transitory and
finite like an accident or distress in the nursery; that God is my Father a=
nd
that I may trust Him, even though life hurts so that one must needs cry out=
at
it, even though it shows no consequence but failure, no promise but pain...=
.
But while I was
fearless of theology I must confess it was comparatively late before I faced
and dared to probe the secrecies of sex. I was afraid of sex. I had an
instinctive perception that it would be a large and difficult thing in my l=
ife,
but my early training was all in the direction of regarding it as an irrele=
vant
thing, as something disconnected from all the broad significances of life, =
as
hostile and disgraceful in its quality. The world was never so emasculated =
in thought,
I suppose, as it was in the Victorian time....
I was afraid to t=
hink
either of sex or (what I have always found inseparable from a kind of sexual
emotion) beauty. Even as a boy I knew the thing as a haunting and alluring
mystery that I tried to keep away from. Its dim presence obsessed me none t=
he
less for all the extravagant decency, the stimulating silences of my
upbringing....
The plaster Venus=
es
and Apollos that used to adorn the vast aisle and huge grey terraces of the
Crystal Palace were the first intimations of the beauty of the body that ev=
er
came into my life. As I write of it I feel again the shameful attraction of
those gracious forms. I used to look at them not simply, but curiously and
askance. Once at least in my later days at Penge, I spent a shilling in
admission chiefly for the sake of them....
The strangest thi=
ng
of all my odd and solitary upbringing seems to me now that swathing up of a=
ll
the splendours of the flesh, that strange combination of fanatical terrorism
and shyness that fenced me about with prohibitions. It caused me to grow up=
, I
will not say blankly ignorant, but with an ignorance blurred and dishonoure=
d by
shame, by enigmatical warnings, by cultivated aversions, an ignorance in wh=
ich
a fascinated curiosity and desire struggled like a thing in a net. I knew so
little and I felt so much. There was indeed no Aphrodite at all in my youth=
ful Pantheon,
but instead there was a mysterious and minatory gap. I have told how at las=
t a
new Venus was born in my imagination out of gas lamps and the twilight, a V=
enus
with a cockney accent and dark eyes shining out of the dusk, a Venus who wa=
s a
warm, passion-stirring atmosphere rather than incarnate in a body. And I ha=
ve
told, too, how I bought a picture.
All this was a th=
ing
apart from the rest of my life, a locked avoided chamber....
It was not until =
my
last year at Trinity that I really broke down the barriers of this unwholes=
ome
silence and brought my secret broodings to the light of day. Then a little =
set
of us plunged suddenly into what we called at first sociological discussion=
. I
can still recall even the physical feeling of those first tentative talks. I
remember them mostly as occurring in the rooms of Ted Hatherleigh, who kept=
at
the corner by the Trinity great gate, but we also used to talk a good deal =
at a
man's in King's, a man named, if I remember rightly, Redmayne. The atmosphe=
re of
Hatherleigh's rooms was a haze of tobacco smoke against a background brown =
and
deep. He professed himself a socialist with anarchistic leanings--he had
suffered the martyrdom of ducking for it--and a huge French May-day poster
displaying a splendid proletarian in red and black on a barricade against a
flaring orange sky, dominated his decorations. Hatherleigh affected a fine
untidiness, and all the place, even the floor, was littered with books, for=
the
most part open and face downward; deeper darknesses were supplied by a
discarded gown and our caps, all conscientiously battered, Hatherleigh's
flopped like an elephant's ear and inserted quill pens supported the corner=
s of
mine; the highlights of the picture came chiefly as reflections from his ch=
equered
blue mugs full of audit ale. We sat on oak chairs, except the four or five =
who
crowded on a capacious settle, we drank a lot of beer and were often fuddle=
d,
and occasionally quite drunk, and we all smoked reckless-looking pipes,--th=
ere
was a transient fashion among us for corn cobs for which Mark Twain, I thin=
k,
was responsible. Our little excesses with liquor were due far more to
conscience than appetite, indicated chiefly a resolve to break away from
restraints that we suspected were keeping us off the instructive knife-edge=
s of
life. Hatherleigh was a good Englishman of the premature type with a red fa=
ce,
a lot of hair, a deep voice and an explosive plunging manner, and it was he=
who
said one evening--Heaven knows how we got to it--"Look here, you know,
it's all Rot, this Shutting Up about Women. We OUGHT to talk about them. Wh=
at
are we going to do about them? It's got to come. We're all festering inside=
about
it. Let's out with it. There's too much Decency altogether about this Infer=
nal
University!"
We rose to his
challenge a little awkwardly and our first talk was clumsy, there were flus=
hed
faces and red ears, and I remember Hatherleigh broke out into a monologue on
decency. "Modesty and Decency," said Hatherleigh, "are Orien=
tal
vices. The Jews brought them to Europe. They're Semitic, just like our
monasticism here and the seclusion of women and mutilating the dead on a
battlefield. And all that sort of thing."
Hatherleigh's mind
progressed by huge leaps, leaps that were usually wildly inaccurate, and fo=
r a
time we engaged hotly upon the topic of those alleged mutilations and the
Semitic responsibility for decency. Hatherleigh tried hard to saddle the
Semitic race with the less elegant war customs of the Soudan and the northw=
est
frontier of India, and quoted Doughty, at that time a little-known author, =
and
Cunninghame Graham to show that the Arab was worse than a county-town spins=
ter
in his regard for respectability. But his case was too preposterous, and Es=
meer,
with his shrill penetrating voice and his way of pointing with all four long
fingers flat together, carried the point against him. He quoted Cato and Ro=
man
law and the monasteries of Thibet.
"Well,
anyway," said Hatherleigh, escaping from our hands like an intellectual
frog, "Semitic or not, I've got no use for decency."
We argued points =
and
Hatherleigh professed an unusually balanced and tolerating attitude. "I
don't mind a certain refinement and dignity," he admitted generously.
"What I object to is this spreading out of decency until it darkens the
whole sky, until it makes a man's father afraid to speak of the most import=
ant
things, until it makes a man afraid to look a frank book in the face or
think--even think! until it leads to our coming to--to the business at last
with nothing but a few prohibitions, a few hints, a lot of dirty jokes and,=
and
"--he waved a hand and seemed to seek and catch his image in the
air--"oh, a confounded buttered slide of sentiment, to guide us. I tell
you I'm going to think about it and talk about it until I see a little more
daylight than I do at present. I'm twenty-two. Things might happen to me
anywhen. You men can go out into the world if you like, to sin like fools a=
nd
marry like fools, not knowing what you are doing and ashamed to ask. You'll
take the consequences, too, I expect, pretty meekly, sniggering a bit, sent=
imentalising
a bit, like--like Cambridge humorists.... I mean to know what I'm doing.&qu=
ot;
He paused to drin=
k,
and I think I cut in with ideas of my own. But one is apt to forget one's o=
wn
share in a talk, I find, more than one does the clear-cut objectivity of ot=
her
people's, and I do not know how far I contributed to this discussion that
followed. I am, however, pretty certain that it was then that ideal that we
were pleased to call aristocracy and which soon became the common property =
of
our set was developed. It was Esmeer, I know, who laid down and maintained =
the proposition
that so far as minds went there were really only two sorts of man in the wo=
rld,
the aristocrat and the man who subdues his mind to other people's.
"'I couldn't
THINK of it, Sir,'" said Esmeer in his elucidatory tones; "that's
what a servant says. His mind even is broken in to run between fences, and =
he
admits it. WE'VE got to be able to think of anything. And 'such things aren=
't
for the Likes of Us!' That's another servant's saying. Well, everything IS =
for
the Likes of Us. If we see fit, that is."
A small
fresh-coloured man in grey objected.
"Well,"
exploded Hatherleigh, "if that isn't so what the deuce are we up here =
for?
Instead of working in mines? If some things aren't to be thought about ever!
We've got the privilege of all these extra years for getting things straigh=
t in
our heads, and then we won't use 'em. Good God! what do you think a
university's for?"...
Esmeer's idea came
with an effect of real emancipation to several of us. We were not going to =
be
afraid of ideas any longer, we were going to throw down every barrier of
prohibition and take them in and see what came of it. We became for a time =
even
intemperately experimental, and one of us, at the bare suggestion of an emi=
nent
psychic investigator, took hashish and very nearly died of it within a
fortnight of our great elucidation.
The chief matter =
of
our interchanges was of course the discussion of sex. Once the theme had be=
en
opened it became a sore place in our intercourse; none of us seemed able to
keep away from it. Our imaginations got astir with it. We made up for lost =
time
and went round it and through it and over it exhaustively. I recall prolong=
ed discussion
of polygamy on the way to Royston, muddy November tramps to Madingley, when
amidst much profanity from Hatherleigh at the serious treatment of so obsol=
ete
a matter, we weighed the reasons, if any, for the institution of marriage. =
The
fine dim night-time spaces of the Great Court are bound up with the
inconclusive finales of mighty hot-eared wrangles; the narrows of Trinity
Street and Petty Cury and Market Hill have their particular associations fo=
r me
with that spate of confession and free speech, that almost painful goal
delivery of long pent and crappled and sometimes crippled ideas.
And we went on a reading party that Easter to a place called Pulborough in Sussex, where the= re is a fishing inn and a river that goes under a bridge. It was a late Easter= and a blazing one, and we boated and bathed and talked of being Hellenic and the beauty of the body until at moments it seemed to us that we were destined to restore the Golden Age, by the simple abolition of tailors and outfitters.<= o:p>
Those undergradua=
te
talks! how rich and glorious they seemed, how splendidly new the ideas that
grew and multiplied in our seething minds! We made long afternoon and eveni=
ng
raids over the Downs towards Arundel, and would come tramping back through =
the
still keen moonlight singing and shouting. We formed romantic friendships w=
ith
one another, and grieved more or less convincingly that there were no splen=
did
women fit to be our companions in the world. But Hatherleigh, it seemed, had
once known a girl whose hair was gloriously red. "My God!" said
Hatherleigh to convey the quality of her; just simply and with projectile
violence: "My God!"
Benton had heard =
of a
woman who lived with a man refusing to be married to him--we thought that
splendid beyond measure,--I cannot now imagine why. She was "like a te=
nder
goddess," Benton said. A sort of shame came upon us in the dark in spi=
te
of our liberal intentions when Benton committed himself to that. And after =
such
talk we would fall upon great pauses of emotional dreaming, and if by chanc=
e we
passed a girl in a governess cart, or some farmer's daughter walking to the
station, we became alertly silent or obstreperously indifferent to her. For
might she not be just that one exception to the banal decency, the sickly p=
ointless
conventionality, the sham modesty of the times in which we lived?
We felt we stood =
for
a new movement, not realising how perennially this same emancipation return=
s to
those ancient courts beside the Cam. We were the anti-decency party, we
discovered a catch phrase that we flourished about in the Union and made our
watchword, namely, "stark fact." We hung nude pictures in our roo=
ms
much as if they had been flags, to the earnest concern of our bedders, and I
disinterred my long-kept engraving and had it framed in fumed oak, and found
for it a completer and less restrained companion, a companion I never cared=
for
in the slightest degree....
This efflorescence
did not prevent, I think indeed it rather helped, our more formal university
work, for most of us took firsts, and three of us got Fellowships in one ye=
ar
or another. There was Benton who had a Research Fellowship and went to
Tubingen, there was Esmeer and myself who both became Residential Fellows. I
had taken the Mental and Moral Science Tripos (as it was then), and three y=
ears
later I got a lectureship in political science. In those days it was disgui=
sed
in the cloak of Political Economy.
2
It was our affectation to be a litt=
le
detached from the main stream of undergraduate life. We worked pretty hard,=
but
by virtue of our beer, our socialism and suchlike heterodoxy, held ourselve=
s to
be differentiated from the swatting reading man. None of us, except Baxter,=
who
was a rowing blue, a rather abnormal blue with an appetite for ideas, took
games seriously enough to train, and on the other hand we intimated contempt
for the rather mediocre, deliberately humorous, consciously gentlemanly and
consciously wild undergraduate men who made up the mass of Cambridge life.
After the manner of youth we were altogether too hard on our contemporaries=
. We
battered our caps and tore our gowns lest they should seem new, and we desp=
ised
these others extremely for doing exactly the same things; we had an idea of
ourselves and resented beyond measure a similar weakness in these our broth=
ers.
There was a type,=
or
at least there seemed to us to be a type--I'm a little doubtful at times now
whether after all we didn't create it--for which Hatherleigh invented the n=
ickname
the "Pinky Dinkys," intending thereby both contempt and abhorrenc=
e in
almost equal measure. The Pinky Dinky summarised all that we particularly d=
id
not want to be, and also, I now perceive, much of what we were and all that=
we
secretly dreaded becoming.
But it is hard to
convey the Pinky Dinky idea, for all that it meant so much to us. We spent =
one
evening at least during that reading party upon the Pinky Dinky; we sat abo=
ut
our one fire after a walk in the rain--it was our only wet day--smoked our
excessively virile pipes, and elaborated the natural history of the Pinky
Dinky. We improvised a sort of Pinky Dinky litany, and Hatherleigh supplied
deep notes for the responses.
"The Pinky D=
inky
extracts a good deal of amusement from life," said some one.
"Damned
prig!" said Hatherleigh.
"The Pinky D=
inky
arises in the Union and treats the question with a light gay touch. He makes
the weird ones mad. But sometimes he cannot go on because of the amusement =
he
extracts."
"I want to s=
hy
books at the giggling swine," said Hatherleigh.
"The Pinky D=
inky
says suddenly while he is making the tea, 'We're all being frightfully funn=
y.
It's time for you to say something now.'"
"The Pinky D=
inky
shakes his head and says: 'I'm afraid I shall never be a responsible being.'
And he really IS frivolous."
"Frivolous b=
ut
not vulgar," said Esmeer.
"Pinky Dinkys
are chaps who've had their buds nipped," said Hatherleigh. "They'=
re
Plebs and they know it. They haven't the Guts to get hold of things. And so
they worry up all those silly little jokes of theirs to carry it off."=
...
We tried bad ones=
for
a time, viciously flavoured.
Pinky Dinkys are =
due
to over-production of the type that ought to keep outfitters' shops. Pinky
Dinkys would like to keep outfitters' shops with whimsy 'scriptions on the
boxes and make your bill out funny, and not be snobs to customers, no!--not
even if they had titles."
"Every Pinky
Dinky's people are rather good people, and better than most Pinky Dinky's
people. But he does not put on side."
"Pinky Dinkys
become playful at the sight of women."
"'Croquet's =
my
game,' said the Pinky Dinky, and felt a man condescended."
"But what the
devil do they think they're up to, anyhow?" roared old Hatherleigh
suddenly, dropping plump into bottomless despair.
We felt we had st=
ill
failed to get at the core of the mystery of the Pinky Dinky.
We tried over thi=
ngs
about his religion. "The Pinky Dinky goes to King's Chapel, and sits a=
nd
feels in the dusk. Solemn things! Oh HUSH! He wouldn't tell you--"
"He COULDN'T
tell you."
"Religion is=
so
sacred to him he never talks about it, never reads about it, never thinks a=
bout
it. Just feels!"
"But in his
heart of hearts, oh! ever so deep, the Pinky Dinky has a doubt--"
Some one proteste=
d.
"Not a vulgar
doubt," Esmeer went on, "but a kind of hesitation whether the Anc=
ient
of Days is really exactly what one would call good form.... There's a lot of
horrid coarseness got into the world somehow. SOMEBODY put it there.... And
anyhow there's no particular reason why a man should be seen about with Him.
He's jolly Awful of course and all that--"
"The Pinky D=
inky
for all his fun and levity has a clean mind."
"A thoroughly
clean mind. Not like Esmeer's--the Pig!"
"If once he
began to think about sex, how could he be comfortable at croquet?"
"It's their
Damned Modesty," said Hatherleigh suddenly, "that's what's the ma=
tter
with the Pinky Dinky. It's Mental Cowardice dressed up as a virtue and taki=
ng
the poor dears in. Cambridge is soaked with it; it's some confounded local =
bacillus.
Like the thing that gives a flavour to Havana cigars. He comes up here to be
made into a man and a ruler of the people, and he thinks it shows a nice
disposition not to take on the job! How the Devil is a great Empire to be r=
un
with men like him?"
"All his lit=
tle
jokes and things," said Esmeer regarding his feet on the fender,
"it's just a nervous sniggering--because he's afraid.... Oxford's no
better."
"What's he
afraid of?" said I.
"God
knows!" exploded Hatherleigh and stared at the fire.
"LIFE!"
said Esmeer. "And so in a way are we," he added, and made a thoug=
htful
silence for a time.
"I say,"
began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science Tripos, "what is the a=
dult
form of the Pinky Dinky?"
But there we were
checked by our ignorance of the world.
"What is the
adult form of any of us?" asked Benton, voicing the thought that had
arrested our flow.
3
I do not remember that we ever lift=
ed our
criticism to the dons and the organisation of the University. I think we to=
ok
them for granted. When I look back at my youth I am always astonished by the
multitude of things that we took for granted. It seemed to us that Cambridge
was in the order of things, for all the world like having eyebrows or a
vermiform appendix. Now with the larger scepticism of middle age I can
entertain very fundamental doubts about these old universities. Indeed I ha=
d a scheme--
I do not see what
harm I can do now by laying bare the purpose of the political combinations I
was trying to effect.
My educational sc=
heme
was indeed the starting-point of all the big project of conscious public
reconstruction at which I aimed. I wanted to build up a new educational mac=
hine
altogether for the governing class out of a consolidated system of special
public service schools. I meant to get to work upon this whatever office I =
was
given in the new government. I could have begun my plan from the Admiralty =
or
the War Office quite as easily as from the Education Office. I am firmly co=
nvinced
it is hopeless to think of reforming the old public schools and universitie=
s to
meet the needs of a modern state, they send their roots too deep and far, t=
he
cost would exceed any good that could possibly be effected, and so I have
sought a way round this invincible obstacle. I do think it would be quite
practicable to side-track, as the Americans say, the whole system by creati=
ng
hardworking, hard-living, modern and scientific boys' schools, first for the
Royal Navy and then for the public service generally, and as they grew, ope=
ning
them to the public without any absolute obligation to subsequent service. S=
imultaneously
with this it would not be impossible to develop a new college system with
strong faculties in modern philosophy, modern history, European literature =
and
criticism, physical and biological science, education and sociology.
We could in fact
create a new liberal education in this way, and cut the umbilicus of the
classical languages for good and all. I should have set this going, and tru=
sted
it to correct or kill the old public schools and the Oxford and Cambridge
tradition altogether. I had men in my mind to begin the work, and I should =
have
found others. I should have aimed at making a hard-trained, capable,
intellectually active, proud type of man. Everything else would have been m=
ade
subservient to that. I should have kept my grip on the men through their
vacation, and somehow or other I would have contrived a young woman to match
them. I think I could have seen to it effectually enough that they didn't g=
et
at croquet and tennis with the vicarage daughters and discover sex in the
Peeping Tom fashion I did, and that they realised quite early in life that =
it
isn't really virile to reek of tobacco. I should have had military manoeuvr=
es,
training ships, aeroplane work, mountaineering and so forth, in the place of
the solemn trivialities of games, and I should have fed and housed my men c=
lean
and very hard--where there wasn't any audit ale, no credit tradesmen, and
plenty of high pressure douches....
I have revisited
Cambridge and Oxford time after time since I came down, and so far as the
Empire goes, I want to get clear of those two places....
Always I renew my=
old
feelings, a physical oppression, a sense of lowness and dampness almost exa=
ctly
like the feeling of an underground room where paper moulders and leaves the
wall, a feeling of ineradicable contagion in the Gothic buildings, in the
narrow ditch-like rivers, in those roads and roads of stuffy little villas.
Those little villas have destroyed all the good of the old monastic system =
and none
of its evil....
Some of the most
charming people in the world live in them, but their collective effect is b=
elow
the quality of any individual among them. Cambridge is a world of subdued
tones, of excessively subtle humours, of prim conduct and free thinking; it
fears the Parent, but it has no fear of God; it offers amidst surroundings =
that
vary between disguises and antiquarian charm the inflammation of literature=
's
purple draught; one hears there a peculiar thin scandal like no other scand=
al
in the world--a covetous scandal--so that I am always reminded of Ibsen in =
Cambridge.
In Cambridge and the plays of Ibsen alone does it seem appropriate for the
heroine before the great crisis of life to "enter, take off her oversh=
oes,
and put her wet umbrella upon the writing desk."...
We have to make a=
new
Academic mind for modern needs, and the last thing to make it out of, I am
convinced, is the old Academic mind. One might as soon try to fake the old
VICTORY at Portsmouth into a line of battleship again. Besides which the old
Academic mind, like those old bathless, damp Gothic colleges, is much too
delightful in its peculiar and distinctive way to damage by futile patching=
.
My heart warms to=
a
sense of affectionate absurdity as I recall dear old Codger, surely the most
"unleaderly" of men. No more than from the old Schoolmen, his
kindred, could one get from him a School for Princes. Yet apart from his
teaching he was as curious and adorable as a good Netsuke. Until quite rece=
ntly
he was a power in Cambridge, he could make and bar and destroy, and in a wa=
y he
has become the quintessence of Cambridge in my thoughts.
I see him on his =
way
to the morning's lecture, with his plump childish face, his round innocent
eyes, his absurdly non-prehensile fat hand carrying his cap, his grey trous=
ers
braced up much too high, his feet a trifle inturned, and going across the g=
reat
court with a queer tripping pace that seemed cultivated even to my naive
undergraduate eye. Or I see him lecturing. He lectured walking up and down =
between
the desks, talking in a fluting rapid voice, and with the utmost lucidity. =
If
he could not walk up and down he could not lecture. His mind and voice had =
precisely
the fluid quality of some clear subtle liquid; one felt it could flow round
anything and overcome nothing. And its nimble eddies were wonderful! Or aga=
in I
recall him drinking port with little muscular movements in his neck and che=
ek
and chin and his brows knit--very judicial, very concentrated, preparing to=
say
the apt just thing; it was the last thing he would have told a lie about.
When I think of
Codger I am reminded of an inscription I saw on some occasion in Regent's P=
ark
above two eyes scarcely more limpidly innocent than his--"Born in the
Menagerie." Never once since Codger began to display the early promise=
of
scholarship at the age of eight or more, had he been outside the bars. His
utmost travel had been to lecture here and lecture there. His student phase=
had
culminated in papers of quite exceptional brilliance, and he had gone on to
lecture with a cheerful combination of wit and mannerism that had made him a
success from the beginning. He has lectured ever since. He lectures still. =
Year
by year he has become plumper, more rubicund and more and more of an item f=
or the
intelligent visitor to see. Even in my time he was pointed out to people as
part of our innumerable enrichments, and obviously he knew it. He has become
now almost the leading Character in a little donnish world of much too
intensely appreciated Characters.
He boasted he too=
k no
exercise, and also of his knowledge of port wine. Of other wines he confess=
ed
quite frankly he had no "special knowledge." Beyond these things =
he
had little pride except that he claimed to have read every novel by a woman
writer that had ever entered the Union Library. This, however, he held to be
remarkable rather than ennobling, and such boasts as he made of it were tin=
ged
with playfulness. Certainly he had a scholar's knowledge of the works of Mi=
ss
Marie Corelli, Miss Braddon, Miss Elizabeth Glyn and Madame Sarah Grand that
would have astonished and flattered those ladies enormously, and he loved
nothing so much in his hours of relaxation as to propound and answer diffic=
ult questions
upon their books. Tusher of King's was his ineffectual rival in this field,
their bouts were memorable and rarely other than glorious for Codger; but t=
hen
Tusher spread himself too much, he also undertook to rehearse whole pages o=
ut
of Bradshaw, and tell you with all the changes how to get from any station =
to
any station in Great Britain by the nearest and cheapest routes....
Codger lodged wit=
h a
little deaf innocent old lady, Mrs. Araminta Mergle, who was understood to =
be
herself a very redoubtable Character in the Gyp-Bedder class; about her he
related quietly absurd anecdotes. He displayed a marvellous invention in
ascribing to her plausible expressions of opinion entirely identical in imp=
ort
with those of the Oxford and Harvard Pragmatists, against whom he waged a
fierce obscure war....
It was Codger's
function to teach me philosophy, philosophy! the intimate wisdom of things.=
He
dealt in a variety of Hegelian stuff like nothing else in the world, but
marvellously consistent with itself. It was a wonderful web he spun out of =
that
queer big active childish brain that had never lusted nor hated nor grieved=
nor
feared nor passionately loved,--a web of iridescent threads. He had luminous
final theories about Love and Death and Immortality, odd matters they seemed
for him to think about! and all his woven thoughts lay across my perception=
of
the realities of things, as flimsy and irrelevant and clever and beautiful,=
oh!--as
a dew-wet spider's web slung in the morning sunshine across the black mouth=
of
a gun....
4
All through those years of developm=
ent I
perceive now there must have been growing in me, slowly, irregularly,
assimilating to itself all the phrases and forms of patriotism, diverting my
religious impulses, utilising my esthetic tendencies, my dominating idea, t=
he
statesman's idea, that idea of social service which is the protagonist of my
story, that real though complex passion for Making, making widely and great=
ly, cities,
national order, civilisation, whose interplay with all those other factors =
in
life I have set out to present. It was growing in me--as one's bones grow, =
no
man intending it.
I have tried to s=
how
how, quite early in my life, the fact of disorderliness, the conception of
social life as being a multitudinous confusion out of hand, came to me. One
always of course simplifies these things in the telling, but I do not think=
I
ever saw the world at large in any other terms. I never at any stage
entertained the idea which sustained my mother, and which sustains so many
people in the world,--the idea that the universe, whatever superficial disc=
ords
it may present, is as a matter of fact "all right," is being stee=
red
to definite ends by a serene and unquestionable God. My mother thought that=
Order
prevailed, and that disorder was just incidental and foredoomed rebellion; I
feel and have always felt that order rebels against and struggles against
disorder, that order has an up-hill job, in gardens, experiments, suburbs,
everything alike; from the very beginnings of my experience I discovered
hostility to order, a constant escaping from control.
The current of li=
ving
and contemporary ideas in which my mind was presently swimming made all in =
the
same direction; in place of my mother's attentive, meticulous but occasiona=
lly
extremely irascible Providence, the talk was all of the Struggle for Existe=
nce
and the survival not of the Best--that was nonsense, but of the fittest to =
survive.
The attempts to
rehabilitate Faith in the form of the Individualist's LAISSEZ FAIRE never w=
on
upon me. I disliked Herbert Spencer all my life until I read his autobiogra=
phy,
and then I laughed a little and loved him. I remember as early as the City
Merchants' days how Britten and I scoffed at that pompous question-begging =
word
"Evolution," having, so to speak, found it out. Evolution, some
illuminating talker had remarked at the Britten lunch table, had led not on=
ly
to man, but to the liver-fluke and skunk, obviously it might lead anywhere;
order came into things only through the struggling mind of man. That lit th=
ings
wonderfully for us. When I went up to Cambridge I was perfectly clear that =
life
was a various and splendid disorder of forces that the spirit of man sets i=
tself
to tame. I have never since fallen away from that persuasion.
I do not think I =
was
exceptionally precocious in reaching these conclusions and a sort of religi=
ous
finality for myself by eighteen or nineteen. I know men and women vary very
much in these matters, just as children do in learning to talk. Some will
chatter at eighteen months and some will hardly speak until three, and the
thing has very little to do with their subsequent mental quality. So it is =
with
young people; some will begin their religious, their social, their sexual
interests at fourteen, some not until far on in the twenties. Britten and I
belonged to one of the precocious types, and Cossington very probably to
another. It wasn't that there was anything priggish about any of us; we sho=
uld have
been prigs to have concealed our spontaneous interests and ape the theoreti=
cal
boy.
The world of man
centred for my imagination in London, it still centres there; the real and
present world, that is to say, as distinguished from the wonder-lands of at=
omic
and microscopic science and the stars and future time. I had travelled scar=
cely
at all, I had never crossed the Channel, but I had read copiously and I had
formed a very good working idea of this round globe with its mountains and
wildernesses and forests and all the sorts and conditions of human life that
were scattered over its surface. It was all alive, I felt, and changing eve=
ry
day; how it was changing, and the changes men might bring about, fascinated=
my
mind beyond measure.
I used to find a
charm in old maps that showed The World as Known to the Ancients, and I wis=
h I
could now without any suspicion of self-deception write down compactly the
world as it was known to me at nineteen. So far as extension went it was, I
fancy, very like the world I know now at forty-two; I had practically all t=
he
mountains and seas, boundaries and races, products and possibilities that I
have now. But its intension was very different. All the interval has been
increasing and deepening my social knowledge, replacing crude and second-ha=
nd
impressions by felt and realised distinctions.
In 1895--that was=
my
last year with Britten, for I went up to Cambridge in September--my vision =
of
the world had much the same relation to the vision I have to-day that an
ill-drawn daub of a mask has to the direct vision of a human face. Britten =
and
I looked at our world and saw--what did we see? Forms and colours side by s=
ide
that we had no suspicion were interdependent. We had no conception of the r=
oots
of things nor of the reaction of things. It did not seem to us, for example,
that business had anything to do with government, or that money and means
affected the heroic issues of war. There were no wagons in our war game, and
where there were guns, there it was assumed the ammunition was gathered tog=
ether.
Finance again was a sealed book to us; we did not so much connect it with t=
he
broad aspects of human affairs as regard it as a sort of intrusive nuisance=
to
be earnestly ignored by all right-minded men. We had no conception of the
quality of politics, nor how "interests" came into such affairs; =
we
believed men were swayed by purely intellectual convictions and were either
right or wrong, honest or dishonest (in which case they deserved to be shot=
),
good or bad. We knew nothing of mental inertia, and could imagine the opini=
on
of a whole nation changed by one lucid and convincing exposition. We were
capable of the most incongruous transfers from the scroll of history to our=
own
times, we could suppose Brixton ravaged and Hampstead burnt in civil wars f=
or
the succession to the throne, or Cheapside a lane of death and the front of=
the
Mansion House set about with guillotines in the course of an accurately
transposed French Revolution. We rebuilt London by Act of Parliament, and o=
nce
in a mood of hygienic enterprise we transferred its population EN MASSE to =
the
North Downs by an order of the Local Government Board. We thought nothing of
throwing religious organisations out of employment or superseding all the
newspapers by freely distributed bulletins. We could contemplate the
possibility of laws abolishing whole classes; we were equal to such a dream=
as
the peaceful and orderly proclamation of Communism from the steps of St. Pa=
ul's
Cathedral, after the passing of a simply worded bill,--a close and not unna=
turally
an exciting division carrying the third reading. I remember quite distinctly
evolving that vision. We were then fully fifteen and we were perfectly seri=
ous
about it. We were not fools; it was simply that as yet we had gathered no
experience at all of the limits and powers of legislation and conscious
collective intention....
I think this
statement does my boyhood justice, and yet I have my doubts. It is so hard =
now
to say what one understood and what one did not understand. It isn't only t=
hat
every day changed one's general outlook, but also that a boy fluctuates bet=
ween
phases of quite adult understanding and phases of tawdrily magnificent
puerility. Sometimes I myself was in those tumbrils that went along Cheapsi=
de
to the Mansion House, a Sydney Cartonesque figure, a white defeated Mirabea=
n;
sometimes it was I who sat judging and condemning and ruling (sleeping in my
clothes and feeding very simply) the soul and autocrat of the Provisional
Government, which occupied, of all inconvenient places! the General Post Of=
fice
at St. Martin's-le-Grand!...
I cannot trace the
development of my ideas at Cambridge, but I believe the mere physical fact =
of
going two hours' journey away from London gave that place for the first tim=
e an
effect of unity in my imagination. I got outside London. It became tangible
instead of being a frame almost as universal as sea and sky.
At Cambridge my i=
deas
ceased to live in a duologue; in exchange for Britten, with whom, however, I
corresponded lengthily, stylishly and self-consciously for some years, I had
now a set of congenial friends. I got talk with some of the younger dons, I
learnt to speak in the Union, and in my little set we were all pretty busily
sharpening each other's wits and correcting each other's interpretations.
Cambridge made politics personal and actual. At City Merchants' we had had =
no
sense of effective contact; we boasted, it is true, an under secretary and =
a colonial
governor among our old boys, but they were never real to us; such distingui=
shed
sons as returned to visit the old school were allusive and pleasant in the =
best
Pinky Dinky style, and pretended to be in earnest about nothing but our
football and cricket, to mourn the abolition of "water," and find=
a
shuddering personal interest in the ancient swishing block. At Cambridge I =
felt
for the first time that I touched the thing that was going on. Real living
statesmen came down to debate in the Union, the older dons had been their
college intimates, their sons and nephews expounded them to us and made them
real to us. They invited us to entertain ideas; I found myself for the first
time in my life expected to read and think and discuss, my secret vice had =
become
a virtue.
That combination-=
room
world is at last larger and more populous and various than the world of
schoolmasters. The Shoesmiths and Naylors who had been the aristocracy of C=
ity
Merchants' fell into their place in my mind; they became an undistinguished
mass on the more athletic side of Pinky Dinkyism, and their hostility to id=
eas
and to the expression of ideas ceased to limit and trouble me. The brighter=
men
of each generation stay up; these others go down to propagate their traditi=
on, as
the fathers of families, as mediocre professional men, as assistant masters=
in
schools. Cambridge which perfects them is by the nature of things least
oppressed by them,--except when it comes to a vote in Convocation.
We were still in =
those
days under the shadow of the great Victorians. I never saw Gladstone (as I
never set eyes on the old Queen), but he had resigned office only a year be=
fore
I went up to Trinity, and the Combination Rooms were full of personal gossip
about him and Disraeli and the other big figures of the gladiatorial stage =
of
Parlimentary history, talk that leaked copiously into such sets as mine. The
ceiling of our guest chamber at Trinity was glorious with the arms of Sir W=
illiam
Harcourt, whose Death Duties had seemed at first like a socialist dawn. Mr.
Evesham we asked to come to the Union every year, Masters, Chamberlain and =
the
old Duke of Devonshire; they did not come indeed, but their polite refusals
brought us all, as it were, within personal touch of them. One heard of cab=
inet
councils and meetings at country houses. Some of us, pursuing such interest=
s,
went so far as to read political memoirs and the novels of Disraeli and Mrs.
Humphry Ward. From gossip, example and the illustrated newspapers one learnt
something of the way in which parties were split, coalitions formed, how
permanent officials worked and controlled their ministers, how measures wer=
e brought
forward and projects modified.
And while I was
getting the great leading figures on the political stage, who had been
presented to me in my schooldays not so much as men as the pantomimic monst=
ers
of political caricature, while I was getting them reduced in my imagination=
to
the stature of humanity, and their motives to the quality of impulses like =
my
own, I was also acquiring in my Tripos work a constantly developing and
enriching conception of the world of men as a complex of economic, intellec=
tual
and moral processes....
5
Socialism is an intellectual Proteu=
s, but
to the men of my generation it came as the revolt of the workers. Rodbertus=
we
never heard of and the Fabian Society we did not understand; Marx and Morri=
s,
the Chicago Anarchists, JUSTICE and Social Democratic Federation (as it was
then) presented socialism to our minds. Hatherleigh was the leading exponen=
t of
the new doctrines in Trinity, and the figure upon his wall of a huge-muscle=
d,
black-haired toiler swaggering sledgehammer in hand across a revolutionary
barricade, seemed the quintessence of what he had to expound. Landlord and
capitalist had robbed and enslaved the workers, and were driving them quite
automatically to inevitable insurrection. They would arise and the capitali=
st
system would flee and vanish like the mists before the morning, like the de=
ws
before the sunrise, giving place in the most simple and obvious manner to an
era of Right and Justice and Virtue and Well Being, and in short a Perfectly
Splendid Time.
I had already
discussed this sort of socialism under the guidance of Britten, before I we=
nt
up to Cambridge. It was all mixed up with ideas about freedom and natural
virtue and a great scorn for kings, titles, wealth and officials, and it was
symbolised by the red ties we wore. Our simple verdict on existing arrangem=
ents
was that they were "all wrong." The rich were robbers and knew it,
kings and princes were usurpers and knew it, religious teachers were impost=
ors
in league with power, the economic system was an elaborate plot on the part=
of
the few to expropriate the many. We went about feeling scornful of all the
current forms of life, forms that esteemed themselves solid, that were, we
knew, no more than shapes painted on a curtain that was presently to be tor=
n aside....
It was Hatherleig=
h's
poster and his capacity for overstating things, I think, that first qualifi=
ed
my simple revolutionary enthusiasm. Perhaps also I had met with Fabian
publications, but if I did I forget the circumstances. And no doubt my inna=
te
constructiveness with its practical corollary of an analytical treatment of=
the
material supplied, was bound to push me on beyond this melodramatic
interpretation of human affairs.
I compared that
Working Man of the poster with any sort of working man I knew. I perceived =
that
the latter was not going to change, and indeed could not under any stimulus
whatever be expected to change, into the former. It crept into my mind as
slowly and surely as the dawn creeps into a room that the former was not, a=
s I
had at first rather glibly assumed, an "ideal," but a complete
misrepresentation of the quality and possibilities of things.
I do not know now
whether it was during my school-days or at Cambridge that I first began not
merely to see the world as a great contrast of rich and poor, but to feel t=
he
massive effect of that multitudinous majority of people who toil continuall=
y,
who are for ever anxious about ways and means, who are restricted, ill clot=
hed,
ill fed and ill housed, who have limited outlooks and continually suffer
misadventures, hardships and distresses through the want of money. My lot h=
ad
fallen upon the fringe of the possessing minority; if I did not know the wa=
nt of
necessities I knew shabbiness, and the world that let me go on to a univers=
ity
education intimated very plainly that there was not a thing beyond the prim=
ary
needs that my stimulated imagination might demand that it would not be an
effort for me to secure. A certain aggressive radicalism against the ruling=
and
propertied classes followed almost naturally from my circumstances. It did =
not
at first connect itself at all with the perception of a planless disorder in
human affairs that had been forced upon me by the atmosphere of my upbringi=
ng,
nor did it link me in sympathy with any of the profounder realities of pove=
rty.
It was a personal independent thing. The dingier people one saw in the back=
streets
and lower quarters of Bromstead and Penge, the drift of dirty children, rag=
ged
old women, street loafers, grimy workers that made the social background of
London, the stories one heard of privation and sweating, only joined up very
slowly with the general propositions I was making about life. We could beco=
me
splendidly eloquent about the social revolution and the triumph of the
Proletariat after the Class war, and it was only by a sort of inspiration t=
hat
it came to me that my bedder, a garrulous old thing with a dusty black bonn=
et
over one eye and an ostentatiously clean apron outside the dark mysteries t=
hat
clothed her, or the cheeky little ruffians who yelled papers about the stre=
ets,
were really material to such questions.
Directly any of us
young socialists of Trinity found ourselves in immediate contact with serva=
nts
or cadgers or gyps or bedders or plumbers or navvies or cabmen or railway
porters we became unconsciously and unthinkingly aristocrats. Our voices
altered, our gestures altered. We behaved just as all the other men, rich or
poor, swatters or sportsmen or Pinky Dinkys, behaved, and exactly as we were
expected to behave. On the whole it is a population of poor quality round a=
bout
Cambridge, rather stunted and spiritless and very difficult to idealise. Th=
at
theoretical Working Man of ours!--if we felt the clash at all we explained =
it,
I suppose, by assuming that he came from another part of the country; Esmee=
r, I
remember, who lived somewhere in the Fens, was very eloquent about the Corn=
ish
fishermen, and Hatherleigh, who was a Hampshire man, assured us we ought to
know the Scottish miner. My private fancy was for the Lancashire operative
because of his co-operative societies, and because what Lancashire thinks
to-day England thinks to-morrow.... And also I had never been in Lancashire=
.
By little increme=
nts
of realisation it was that the profounder verities of the problem of social=
ism
came to me. It helped me very much that I had to go down to the Potteries
several times to discuss my future with my uncle and guardian; I walked abo=
ut
and saw Bursley Wakes and much of the human aspects of organised industrial=
ism
at close quarters for the first time. The picture of a splendid Working Man
cheated out of his innate glorious possibilities, and presently to arise and
dash this scoundrelly and scandalous system of private ownership to fragmen=
ts, began
to give place to a limitless spectacle of inefficiency, to a conception of
millions of people not organised as they should be, not educated as they sh=
ould
be, not simply prevented from but incapable of nearly every sort of beauty,
mostly kindly and well meaning, mostly incompetent, mostly obstinate, and
easily humbugged and easily diverted. Even the tragic and inspiring idea of
Marx, that the poor were nearing a limit of painful experience, and awakeni=
ng
to a sense of intolerable wrongs, began to develop into the more appalling
conception that the poor were simply in a witless uncomfortable inconclusive
way--"muddling along"; that they wanted nothing very definitely n=
or
very urgently, that mean fears enslaved them and mean satisfactions decoyed
them, that they took the very gift of life itself with a spiritless lassitu=
de,
hoarding it, being rather anxious not to lose it than to use it in any way =
whatever.
The complete
development of that realisation was the work of many years. I had only the
first intimations at Cambridge. But I did have intimations. Most acutely do=
I
remember the doubts that followed the visit of Chris Robinson. Chris Robins=
on
was heralded by such heroic anticipations, and he was so entirely what we h=
ad
not anticipated.
Hatherleigh got h=
im
to come, arranged a sort of meeting for him at Redmayne's rooms in King's, =
and
was very proud and proprietorial. It failed to stir Cambridge at all profou=
ndly.
Beyond a futile attempt to screw up Hatherleigh made by some inexpert duffe=
rs
who used nails instead of screws and gimlets, there was no attempt to rag. =
Next
day Chris Robinson went and spoke at Bennett Hall in Newnham College, and l=
eft
Cambridge in the evening amidst the cheers of twenty men or so. Socialism w=
as
at such a low ebb politically in those days that it didn't even rouse men to
opposition.
And there sat Chr=
is
under that flamboyant and heroic Worker of the poster, a little wrinkled gr=
ey-bearded
apologetic man in ready-made clothes, with watchful innocent brown eyes and=
a
persistent and invincible air of being out of his element. He sat with his
stout boots tucked up under his chair, and clung to a teacup and saucer and=
looked
away from us into the fire, and we all sat about on tables and chair-arms a=
nd
windowsills and boxes and anywhere except upon chairs after the manner of y=
oung
men. The only other chair whose seat was occupied was the one containing his
knitted woollen comforter and his picturesque old beach-photographer's hat.=
We
were all shy and didn't know how to take hold of him now we had got him, an=
d,
which was disconcertingly unanticipated, he was manifestly having the same =
difficulty
with us. We had expected to be gripped.
"I'll not be
knowing what to say to these Chaps," he repeated with a north-country
quality in his speech.
We made reassuring
noises.
The Ambassador of=
the
Workers stirred his tea earnestly through an uncomfortable pause.
"I'd best te=
ll
'em something of how things are in Lancashire, what with the new machines a=
nd
all that," he speculated at last with red reflections in his thoughtful
eyes.
We had an inexcus=
able
dread that perhaps he would make a mess of the meeting.
But when he was no
longer in the unaccustomed meshes of refined conversation, but speaking wit=
h an
audience before him, he became a different man. He declared he would explai=
n to
us just exactly what socialism was, and went on at once to an impassioned
contrast of social conditions. "You young men," he said "come
from homes of luxury; every need you feel is supplied--"
We sat and stood =
and
sprawled about him, occupying every inch of Redmayne's floor space except t=
he
hearthrug-platform, and we listened to him and thought him over. He was the
voice of wrongs that made us indignant and eager. We forgot for a time that=
he
had been shy and seemed not a little incompetent, his provincial accent bec=
ame
a beauty of his earnest speech, we were carried away by his indignations. W=
e looked
with shining eyes at one another and at the various dons who had dropped in=
and
were striving to maintain a front of judicious severity. We felt more and m=
ore
that social injustice must cease, and cease forthwith. We felt we could not
sleep upon it. At the end we clapped and murmured our applause and wanted b=
adly
to cheer.
Then like a lancet
stuck into a bladder came the heckling. Denson, that indolent, liberal-mind=
ed
sceptic, did most of the questioning. He lay contorted in a chair, with his
ugly head very low, his legs crossed and his left boot very high, and he
pointed his remarks with a long thin hand and occasionally adjusted the
unstable glasses that hid his watery eyes. "I don't want to carp,"=
; he
began. "The present system, I admit, stands condemned. Every present s=
ystem
always HAS stood condemned in the minds of intelligent men. But where it se=
ems
to me you get thin, is just where everybody has been thin, and that's when =
you
come to the remedy."
"Socialism,&=
quot;
said Chris Robinson, as if it answered everything, and Hatherleigh said
"Hear! Hear!" very resolutely.
"I suppose I
OUGHT to take that as an answer," said Denson, getting his shoulder-bl=
ades
well down to the seat of his chair; "but I don't. I don't, you know. I=
t's
rather a shame to cross-examine you after this fine address of
yours"--Chris Robinson on the hearthrug made acquiescent and inviting
noises--"but the real question remains how exactly are you going to end
all these wrongs? There are the administrative questions. If you abolish the
private owner, I admit you abolish a very complex and clumsy way of getting
businesses run, land controlled and things in general administered, but you
don't get rid of the need of administration, you know."
"Democracy,&=
quot;
said Chris Robinson.
"Organised
somehow," said Denson. "And it's just the How perplexes me. I can
quite easily imagine a socialist state administered in a sort of scrambling
tumult that would be worse than anything we have got now.
"Nothing cou=
ld
be worse than things are now," said Chris Robinson. "I have seen =
little
children--"
"I submit li=
fe
on an ill-provisioned raft, for example, could easily be worse--or life in a
beleagured town."
Murmurs.
They wrangled for
some time, and it had the effect upon me of coming out from the glow of a g=
ood
matinee performance into the cold daylight of late afternoon. Chris Robinson
did not shine in conflict with Denson; he was an orator and not a dialectic=
ian,
and he missed Denson's points and displayed a disposition to plunge into
untimely pathos and indignation. And Denson hit me curiously hard with one =
of
his shafts. "Suppose," he said, "you found yourself prime
minister--"
I looked at Chris
Robinson, bright-eyed and his hair a little ruffled and his whole being
rhetorical, and measured him against the huge machine of government muddled=
and
mysterious. Oh! but I was perplexed!
And then we took =
him
back to Hatherleigh's rooms and drank beer and smoked about him while he nu=
rsed
his knee with hairy wristed hands that protruded from his flannel shirt, and
drank lemonade under the cartoon of that emancipated Worker, and we had a g=
reat
discursive talk with him.
"Eh! you sho=
uld
see our big meetings up north?" he said.
Denson had ruffled
him and worried him a good deal, and ever and again he came back to that
discussion. "It's all very easy for your learned men to sit and pick
holes," he said, "while the children suffer and die. They don't p=
ick
holes up north. They mean business."
He talked, and th=
at
was the most interesting part of it all, of his going to work in a factory =
when
he was twelve--"when you Chaps were all with your mammies "--and =
how
he had educated himself of nights until he would fall asleep at his reading=
.
"It's made m=
any
of us keen for all our lives," he remarked, "all that clemming for
education. Why! I longed all through one winter to read a bit of Darwin. I =
must
know about this Darwin if I die for it, I said. And I could no' get the
book."
Hatherleigh made =
an
enthusiastic noise and drank beer at him with round eyes over the mug.
"Well, anyho=
w I
wasted no time on Greek and Latin," said Chris Robinson. "And one
learns to go straight at a thing without splitting straws. One gets hold of=
the
Elementals."
(Well, did they? =
That
was the gist of my perplexity.)
"One doesn't
quibble," he said, returning to his rankling memory of Denson, "w=
hile
men decay and starve."
"But
suppose," I said, suddenly dropping into opposition, "the alterna=
tive
is to risk a worse disaster--or do something patently futile."
"I don't fol=
low
that," said Chris Robinson. "We don't propose anything futile, so=
far
as I can see."
6
The prevailing force in my undergra=
duate
days was not Socialism but Kiplingism. Our set was quite exceptional in its
socialistic professions. And we were all, you must understand, very distinc=
tly Imperialists
also, and professed a vivid sense of the "White Man's Burden."
It is a little
difficult now to get back to the feelings of that period; Kipling has since
been so mercilessly and exhaustively mocked, criticised and torn to
shreds;--never was a man so violently exalted and then, himself assisting, =
so
relentlessly called down. But in the middle nineties this spectacled and
moustached little figure with its heavy chin and its general effect of vehe=
ment
gesticulation, its wild shouts of boyish enthusiasm for effective force, its
lyric delight in the sounds and colours, in the very odours of empire, its
wonderful discovery of machinery and cotton waste and the under officer and=
the
engineer, and "shop" as a poetic dialect, became almost a nationa=
l symbol.
He got hold of us wonderfully, he filled us with tinkling and haunting
quotations, he stirred Britten and myself to futile imitations, he coloured=
the
very idiom of our conversation. He rose to his climax with his
"Recessional," while I was still an undergraduate.
What did he give =
me
exactly?
He helped to broa=
den
my geographical sense immensely, and he provided phrases for just that desi=
re
for discipline and devotion and organised effort the Socialism of our time
failed to express, that the current socialist movement still fails, I think=
, to
express. The sort of thing that follows, for example, tore something out of=
my
inmost nature and gave it a shape, and I took it back from him shaped and l=
et
much of the rest of him, the tumult and the bullying, the hysteria and the =
impatience,
the incoherence and inconsistency, go uncriticised for the sake of it:--
"Keep ye the Law--be swift in =
all
obedience--Clear the land of evil, drive the road and bridge the ford, Make=
ye
sure to each his own That he reap where he hath sown; By the peace among Our
peoples let men know we serve the Lord!"
And then again, and for all our lat=
er
criticism, this sticks in my mind, sticks there now as quintessential wisdo=
m:
"The 'eathe=
n in
'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone; 'E don't ob=
ey no
orders unless they is 'is own; 'E keeps 'is
side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about An' then co=
mes up
the regiment an' pokes the 'eathen out. =
All
along o' dirtiness, all along o' mess, =
All
along o' doin' things rather-more-or-less, =
All
along of abby-nay, kul, an' hazar-ho, =
Mind
you keep your rifle an' yourself jus' so!"
It is after all a secondary matter =
that
Kipling, not having been born and brought up in Bromstead and Penge, and the
war in South Africa being yet in the womb of time, could quite honestly
entertain the now remarkable delusion that England had her side-arms at that
time kept anything but "awful." He learnt better, and we all lear=
nt
with him in the dark years of exasperating and humiliating struggle that
followed, and I do not see that we fellow learners are justified in turning=
resentfully
upon him for a common ignorance and assumption....
South Africa seems
always painted on the back cloth of my Cambridge memories. How immense those
disasters seemed at the time, disasters our facile English world has long s=
ince
contrived in any edifying or profitable sense to forget! How we thrilled to=
the
shouting newspaper sellers as the first false flush of victory gave place to
the realisation of defeat. Far away there our army showed itself human, mor=
tal
and human in the sight of all the world, the pleasant officers we had imagi=
ned
would change to wonderful heroes at the first crackling of rifles, remained=
the
pleasant, rather incompetent men they had always been, failing to imagine,
failing to plan and co-operate, failing to grip. And the common soldiers, t=
oo,
they were just what our streets and country-side had made them, no sudden m=
agic
came out of the war bugles for them. Neither splendid nor disgraceful were
they,--just ill-trained and fairly plucky and wonderfully good-tempered
men--paying for it. And how it lowered our vitality all that first winter to
hear of Nicholson's Nek, and then presently close upon one another, to real=
ise
the bloody waste of Magersfontein, the shattering retreat from Stormberg, C=
olenso--Colenso,
that blundering battle, with White, as it seemed, in Ladysmith near the poi=
nt
of surrender! and so through the long unfolding catalogue of bleak
disillusionments, of aching, unconcealed anxiety lest worse should follow. =
To
advance upon your enemy singing about his lack of cleanliness and method we=
nt
out of fashion altogether! The dirty retrogressive Boer vanished from our
scheme of illusion.
All through my mi=
ddle
Cambridge period, the guns boomed and the rifles crackled away there on the
veldt, and the horsemen rode and the tale of accidents and blundering went =
on.
Men, mules, horses, stores and money poured into South Africa, and the
convalescent wounded streamed home. I see it in my memory as if I had looke=
d at
it through a window instead of through the pages of the illustrated papers;=
I
recall as if I had been there the wide open spaces, the ragged hillsides, t=
he
open order attacks of helmeted men in khaki, the scarce visible smoke of the
guns, the wrecked trains in great lonely places, the burnt isolated farms, =
and at
last the blockhouses and the fences of barbed wire uncoiling and spreading =
for
endless miles across the desert, netting the elusive enemy until at last, t=
hough
he broke the meshes again and again, we had him in the toils. If one's
attention strayed in the lecture-room it wandered to those battle-fields.
And that imagined
panorama of war unfolds to an accompaniment of yelling newsboys in the narr=
ow
old Cambridge streets, of the flicker of papers hastily bought and torn ope=
n in
the twilight, of the doubtful reception of doubtful victories, and the
insensate rejoicings at last that seemed to some of us more shameful than
defeats....
7
A book that stands out among these
memories, that stimulated me immensely so that I forced it upon my companio=
ns,
half in the spirit of propaganda and half to test it by their comments, was
Meredith's ONE OF OUR CONQUERORS. It is one of the books that have made me.=
In
that I got a supplement and corrective of Kipling. It was the first detached
and adverse criticism of the Englishman I had ever encountered. It must hav=
e been
published already nine or ten years when I read it. The country had paid no
heed to it, had gone on to the expensive lessons of the War because of the =
dull
aversion our people feel for all such intimations, and so I could read it a=
s a
book justified. The war endorsed its every word for me, underlined each war=
ning
indication of the gigantic dangers that gathered against our system across =
the
narrow seas. It discovered Europe to me, as watching and critical.
But while I could
respond to all its criticisms of my country's intellectual indolence, of my
country's want of training and discipline and moral courage, I remember that
the idea that on the continent there were other peoples going ahead of us,
mentally alert while we fumbled, disciplined while we slouched, aggressive =
and
preparing to bring our Imperial pride to a reckoning, was extremely novel a=
nd
distasteful to me. It set me worrying of nights. It put all my projects for
social and political reconstruction upon a new uncomfortable footing. It ma=
de
them no longer merely desirable but urgent. Instead of pride and the love of
making one might own to a baser motive. Under Kipling's sway I had a little
forgotten the continent of Europe, treated it as a mere envious echo to our=
own
world-wide display. I began now to have a disturbing sense as it were of bu=
sy
searchlights over the horizon....
One consequence o=
f the
patriotic chagrin Meredith produced in me was an attempt to belittle his me=
rit.
"It isn't a good novel, anyhow," I said.
The charge I brou=
ght
against it was, I remember, a lack of unity. It professed to be a study of =
the
English situation in the early nineties, but it was all deflected, I said, =
and
all the interest was confused by the story of Victor Radnor's fight with
society to vindicate the woman he had loved and never married. Now in the
retrospect and with a mind full of bitter enlightenment, I can do Meredith
justice, and admit the conflict was not only essential but cardinal in his
picture, that the terrible inflexibility of the rich aunts and the still mo=
re
terrible claim of Mrs. Burman Radnor, the "infernal punctilio," a=
nd
Dudley Sowerby's limitations, were the central substance of that inalertnes=
s the
book set itself to assail. So many things have been brought together in my =
mind
that were once remotely separated. A people that will not valiantly face and
understand and admit love and passion can understand nothing whatever. But =
in
those days what is now just obvious truth to me was altogether outside my r=
ange
of comprehension....
8
As I seek to recapitulate the inter=
lacing
growth of my apprehension of the world, as I flounder among the half-rememb=
ered
developments that found me a crude schoolboy and left me a man, there comes
out, as if it stood for all the rest, my first holiday abroad. That did not
happen until I was twenty-two. I was a fellow of Trinity, and the Peace of =
Vereeniging
had just been signed.
I went with a man
named Willersley, a man some years senior to myself, who had just missed a
fellowship and the higher division of the Civil Service, and who had become=
an
enthusiastic member of the London School Board, upon which the cumulative v=
ote
and the support of the "advanced" people had placed him. He had, =
like
myself, a small independent income that relieved him of any necessity to ea=
rn a
living, and he had a kindred craving for social theorising and some form of
social service. He had sought my acquaintance after reading a paper of mine
(begotten by the visit of Chris Robinson) on the limits of pure democracy. =
It
had marched with some thoughts of his own.
We went by train =
to
Spiez on the Lake of Thun, then up the Gemmi, and thence with one or two ha=
lts
and digressions and a little modest climbing we crossed over by the Antrona
pass (on which we were benighted) into Italy, and by way of Domo D'ossola a=
nd
the Santa Maria Maggiore valley to Cannobio, and thence up the lake to Loca=
rno
(where, as I shall tell, we stayed some eventful days) and so up the Val Ma=
ggia
and over to Airolo and home.
As I write of that
long tramp of ours, something of its freshness and enlargement returns to m=
e. I
feel again the faint pleasant excitement of the boat train, the trampling
procession of people with hand baggage and laden porters along the platform=
of
the Folkestone pier, the scarcely perceptible swaying of the moored boat
beneath our feet. Then, very obvious and simple, the little emotion of stan=
ding
out from the homeland and seeing the long white Kentish cliffs recede. One
walked about the boat doing one's best not to feel absurdly adventurous, and
presently a movement of people directed one's attention to a white lighthou=
se
on a cliff to the east of us, coming up suddenly; and then one turned to sc=
an the
little different French coast villages, and then, sliding by in a pale suns=
hine
came a long wooden pier with oddly dressed children upon it, and the cluste=
ring
town of Boulogne.
One took it all w=
ith
the outward calm that became a young man of nearly three and twenty, but one
was alive to one's finger-tips with pleasing little stimulations. The custom
house examination excited one, the strangeness of a babble in a foreign ton=
gue;
one found the French of City Merchants' and Cambridge a shy and viscous flo=
w,
and then one was standing in the train as it went slowly through the rail-l=
aid
street to Boulogne Ville, and one looked out at the world in French, porter=
s in
blouses, workmen in enormous purple trousers, police officers in peaked caps
instead of helmets and romantically cloaked, big carts, all on two wheels
instead of four, green shuttered casements instead of sash windows, and gre=
at
numbers of neatly dressed women in economical mourning.
"Oh! there's=
a
priest!" one said, and was betrayed into suchlike artless cries.
It was a real oth=
er
world, with different government and different methods, and in the night one
was roused from uneasy slumbers and sat blinking and surly, wrapped up in o=
ne's
couverture and with one's oreiller all awry, to encounter a new social
phenomenon, the German official, so different in manner from the British; a=
nd
when one woke again after that one had come to Bale, and out one tumbled to=
get
coffee in Switzerland....
I have been over =
that
route dozens of times since, but it still revives a certain lingering
youthfulness, a certain sense of cheerful release in me.
I remember that I=
and
Willersley became very sociological as we ran on to Spiez, and made all sor=
ts
of generalisations from the steeply sloping fields on the hillsides, and fr=
om
the people we saw on platforms and from little differences in the way things
were done.
The clean prosper=
ity
of Bale and Switzerland, the big clean stations, filled me with patriotic m=
isgivings,
as I thought of the vast dirtiness of London, the mean dirtiness of
Cambridgeshire. It came to me that perhaps my scheme of international values
was all wrong, that quite stupendous possibilities and challenges for us and
our empire might be developing here--and I recalled Meredith's Skepsey in
France with a new understanding.
Willersley had
dressed himself in a world-worn Norfolk suit of greenish grey tweeds that e=
nded
unfamiliarly at his rather impending, spectacled, intellectual visage. I di=
dn't,
I remember, like the contrast of him with the drilled Swiss and Germans abo=
ut
us. Convict coloured stockings and vast hobnail boots finished him below, a=
nd
all his luggage was a borrowed rucksac that he had tied askew. He did not w=
ant
to shave in the train, but I made him at one of the Swiss stations--I disli=
ke these
Oxford slovenlinesses--and then confound him! he cut himself and bled....
Next morning we w=
ere
breathing a thin exhilarating air that seemed to have washed our very veins=
to
an incredible cleanliness, and eating hard-boiled eggs in a vast clear spac=
e of
rime-edged rocks, snow-mottled, above a blue-gashed glacier. All about us t=
he
monstrous rock surfaces rose towards the shining peaks above, and there wer=
e winding
moraines from which the ice had receded, and then dark clustering fir trees=
far
below.
I had an
extraordinary feeling of having come out of things, of being outside.
"But this is=
the
round world!" I said, with a sense of never having perceived it before;
"this is the round world!"
9
That holiday was full of big
comprehensive effects; the first view of the Rhone valley and the distant
Valaisian Alps, for example, which we saw from the shoulder of the mountain
above the Gemmi, and the early summer dawn breaking over Italy as we moved =
from
our night's crouching and munched bread and chocolate and stretched our sti=
ff
limbs among the tumbled and precipitous rocks that hung over Lake Cingolo, =
and
surveyed the winding tiring rocky track going down and down to Antronapiano=
.
And our thoughts =
were
as comprehensive as our impressions. Willersley's mind abounded in historic=
al
matter; he had an inaccurate abundant habit of topographical reference; he =
made
me see and trace and see again the Roman Empire sweep up these winding vall=
eys,
and the coming of the first great Peace among the warring tribes of men....=
In the retrospect
each of us seems to have been talking about our outlook almost continually.
Each of us, you see, was full of the same question, very near and altogether
predominant to us, the question: "What am I going to do with my
life?" He saw it almost as importantly as I, but from a different angl=
e,
because his choice was largely made and mine still hung in the balance.
"I feel we m=
ight
do so many things," I said, "and everything that calls one, calls=
one
away from something else."
Willersley agreed
without any modest disavowals.
"We have got=
to
think out," he said, "just what we are and what we are up to. We'=
ve
got to do that now. And then--it's one of those questions it is inadvisable=
to
reopen subsequently."
He beamed at me
through his glasses. The sententious use of long words was a playful habit =
with
him, that and a slight deliberate humour, habits occasional Extension Lectu=
ring
was doing very much to intensify.
"You've made
your decision?"
He nodded with a
peculiar forward movement of his head.
"How would y=
ou
put it?"
"Social
Service--education. Whatever else matters or doesn't matter, it seems to me
there is one thing we MUST have and increase, and that is the number of peo=
ple
who can think a little--and have"--he beamed again--"an adequate
sense of causation."
"You're sure
it's worth while."
"For
me--certainly. I don't discuss that any more."
"I don't lim=
it
myself too narrowly," he added. "After all, the work is all one. =
We
who know, we who feel, are building the great modern state, joining wall to
wall and way to way, the new great England rising out of the decaying old..=
. we
are the real statesmen--I like that use of 'statesmen.'..."
"Yes," I
said with many doubts. "Yes, of course...."
Willersley is
middle-aged now, with silver in his hair and a deepening benevolence in his
always amiable face, and he has very fairly kept his word. He has lived for
social service and to do vast masses of useful, undistinguished, fertilising
work. Think of the days of arid administrative plodding and of contention s=
till
more arid and unrewarded, that he must have spent! His little affectations =
of
gesture and manner, imitative affectations for the most part, have increase=
d, and
the humorous beam and the humorous intonations have become a thing he puts =
on
every morning like an old coat. His devotion is mingled with a considerable
whimsicality, and they say he is easily flattered by subordinates and easily
offended into opposition by colleagues; he has made mistakes at times and
followed wrong courses, still there he is, a flat contradiction to all the
ordinary doctrine of motives, a man who has foregone any chances of wealth =
and
profit, foregone any easier paths to distinction, foregone marriage and
parentage, in order to serve the community. He does it without any fee or
reward except his personal self-satisfaction in doing this work, and he doe=
s it
without any hope of future joys and punishments, for he is an implacable
Rationalist. No doubt he idealises himself a little, and dreams of recognit=
ion.
No doubt he gets his pleasure from a sense of power, from the spending and
husbanding of large sums of public money, and from the inevitable proprieto=
rship
he must feel in the fair, fine, well-ordered schools he has done so much to
develop. "But for me," he can say, "there would have been a =
Job
about those diagrams, and that subject or this would have been less ably
taught."...
The fact remains =
that
for him the rewards have been adequate, if not to content at any rate to ke=
ep
him working. Of course he covets the notice of the world he has served, as a
lover covets the notice of his mistress. Of course he thinks somewhere,
somewhen, he will get credit. Only last year I heard some men talking of hi=
m,
and they were noting, with little mean smiles, how he had shown himself
self-conscious while there was talk of some honorary degree-giving or other=
; it
would, I have no doubt, please him greatly if his work were to flower into a
crimson gown in some Academic parterre. Why shouldn't it? But that is
incidental vanity at the worst; he goes on anyhow. Most men don't.
But we had our wa=
lk
twenty years and more ago now. He was oldish even then as a young man, just=
as
he is oldish still in middle age. Long may his industrious elderliness flou=
rish
for the good of the world! He lectured a little in conversation then; he
lectures more now and listens less, toilsomely disentangling what you alrea=
dy
understand, giving you in detail the data you know; these are things like
callosities that come from a man's work.
Our long three we=
eks'
talk comes back to me as a memory of ideas and determinations slowly growin=
g,
all mixed up with a smell of wood smoke and pine woods and huge precipices =
and
remote gleams of snow-fields and the sound of cascading torrents rushing
through deep gorges far below. It is mixed, too, with gossips with waitress=
es
and fellow travellers, with my first essays in colloquial German and Italia=
n,
with disputes about the way to take, and other things that I will tell of in
another section. But the white passion of human service was our dominant th=
eme.
Not simply perhaps nor altogether unselfishly, but quite honestly, and with=
at
least a frequent self-forgetfulness, did we want to do fine and noble thing=
s,
to help in their developing, to lessen misery, to broaden and exalt life. I=
t is
very hard--perhaps it is impossible--to present in a page or two the substa=
nce
and quality of nearly a month's conversation, conversation that is casual a=
nd
discursive in form, that ranges carelessly from triviality to immensity, and
yet is constantly resuming a constructive process, as workmen on a wall loi=
ter
and jest and go and come back, and all the while build.
We got it more and
more definite that the core of our purpose beneath all its varied aspects m=
ust
needs be order and discipline. "Muddle," said I, "is the
enemy." That remains my belief to this day. Clearness and order, light=
and
foresight, these things I know for Good. It was muddle had just given us all
the still freshly painful disasters and humiliations of the war, muddle that
gives us the visibly sprawling disorder of our cities and industrial
country-side, muddle that gives us the waste of life, the limitations,
wretchedness and unemployment of the poor. Muddle! I remember myself quoting
Kipling--
"All along o'
dirtiness, all along o' mess, All along o'
doin' things rather-more-or-less."
"We build the state," we =
said
over and over again. "That is what we are for--servants of the new
reorganisation!"
We planned half in
earnest and half Utopianising, a League of Social Service.
We talked of the
splendid world of men that might grow out of such unpaid and ill-paid work =
as
we were setting our faces to do. We spoke of the intricate difficulties, the
monstrous passive resistances, the hostilities to such a development as we
conceived our work subserved, and we spoke with that underlying confidence =
in
the invincibility of the causes we adopted that is natural to young and
scarcely tried men.
We talked much of=
the
detailed life of politics so far as it was known to us, and there Willersley
was more experienced and far better informed than I; we discussed possible
combinations and possible developments, and the chances of some great
constructive movement coming from the heart-searchings the Boer war had
occasioned. We would sink to gossip--even at the Suetonius level. Willersley
would decline towards illuminating anecdotes that I capped more or less loo=
sely
from my private reading. We were particularly wise, I remember, upon the ma=
nagement
of newspapers, because about that we knew nothing whatever. We perceived th=
at
great things were to be done through newspapers. We talked of swaying opini=
on
and moving great classes to massive action.
Men are egotistic=
al
even in devotion. All our splendid projects were thickset with the first
personal pronoun. We both could write, and all that we said in general terms
was reflected in the particular in our minds; it was ourselves we saw, and =
no
others, writing and speaking that moving word. We had already produced
manuscript and passed the initiations of proof reading; I had been a freque=
nt
speaker in the Union, and Willersley was an active man on the School Board.=
Our
feet were already on the lower rungs that led up and up. He was six and twe=
nty,
and I twenty-two. We intimated our individual careers in terms of bold
expectation. I had prophetic glimpses of walls and hoardings clamorous with
"Vote for Remington," and Willersley no doubt saw himself chairma=
n of
this committee and that, saying a few slightly ironical words after the
declaration of the poll, and then sitting friendly beside me on the governm=
ent
benches. There was nothing impossible in such dreams. Why not the Board of
Education for him? My preference at that time wavered between the Local
Government Board--I had great ideas about town-planning, about revisions of
municipal areas and re-organised internal transit--and the War Office. I sw=
ayed
strongly towards the latter as the journey progressed. My educational bias =
came
later.
The swelling
ambitions that have tramped over Alpine passes! How many of them, like mine,
have come almost within sight of realisation before they failed?
There were times =
when
we posed like young gods (of unassuming exterior), and times when we were f=
ull
of the absurdest little solicitudes about our prospects. There were times w=
hen
one surveyed the whole world of men as if it was a little thing at one's fe=
et,
and by way of contrast I remember once lying in bed--it must have been duri=
ng
this holiday, though I cannot for the life of me fix where--and speculating
whether perhaps some day I might not be a K. C. B., Sir Richard Remington, =
K.
C. B., M. P.
But the big style
prevailed....
We could not tell
from minute to minute whether we were planning for a world of solid reality=
, or
telling ourselves fairy tales about this prospect of life. So much seemed
possible, and everything we could think of so improbable. There were lapses
when it seemed to me I could never be anything but just the entirely
unimportant and undistinguished young man I was for ever and ever. I couldn=
't
even think of myself as five and thirty.
Once I remember
Willersley going over a list of failures, and why they had failed--but young
men in the twenties do not know much about failures.
10
Willersley and I professed ourselves
Socialists, but by this time I knew my Rodbertus as well as my Marx, and th=
ere
was much in our socialism that would have shocked Chris Robinson as much as
anything in life could have shocked him. Socialism as a simple democratic c=
ry
we had done with for ever. We were socialists because Individualism for us
meant muddle, meant a crowd of separated, undisciplined little people all
obstinately and ignorantly doing things jarringly, each one in his own way.=
"Each,"
I said quoting words of my father's that rose apt in my memory, "snarl=
ing
from his own little bit of property, like a dog tied to a cart's tail."=
;
"Essentially=
,"
said Willersley, "essentially we're for conscription, in peace and war
alike. The man who owns property is a public official and has to behave as
such. That's the gist of socialism as I understand it."
"Or be dismi=
ssed
from his post," I said, "and replaced by some better sort of
official. A man's none the less an official because he's irresponsible. Wha=
t he
does with his property affects people just the same. Private! No one is rea=
lly
private but an outlaw...."
Order and devotion
were the very essence of our socialism, and a splendid collective vigour and
happiness its end. We projected an ideal state, an organised state as confi=
dent
and powerful as modern science, as balanced and beautiful as a body, as
beneficent as sunshine, the organised state that should end muddle for ever=
; it
ruled all our ideals and gave form to all our ambitions.
Every man was to =
be
definitely related to that, to have his predominant duty to that. Such was =
the
England renewed we had in mind, and how to serve that end, to subdue
undisciplined worker and undisciplined wealth to it, and make the Scientific
Commonweal, King, was the continuing substance of our intercourse.
11
Every day the wine of the mountains=
was
stronger in our blood, and the flush of our youth deeper. We would go in the
morning sunlight along some narrow Alpine mule-path shouting large suggesti=
ons
for national reorganisation, and weighing considerations as lightly as thou=
gh
the world was wax in our hands. "Great England," we said in effec=
t,
over and over again, "and we will be among the makers! England renewed!
The country has been warned; it has learnt its lesson. The disasters and an=
xieties
of the war have sunk in. England has become serious.... Oh! there are big
things before us to do; big enduring things!"
One evening we wa=
lked
up to the loggia of a little pilgrimage church, I forget its name, that sta=
nds
out on a conical hill at the head of a winding stair above the town of Loca=
rno.
Down below the houses clustered amidst a confusion of heat-bitten greenery.=
I
had been sitting silently on the parapet, looking across to the purple moun=
tain
masses where Switzerland passes into Italy, and the drift of our talk seemed
suddenly to gather to a head.
I broke into spee=
ch,
giving form to the thoughts that had been accumulating. My words have long
since passed out of my memory, the phrases of familiar expression have alte=
red
for me, but the substance remains as clear as ever. I said how we were in o=
ur
measure emperors and kings, men undriven, free to do as we pleased with lif=
e;
we classed among the happy ones, our bread and common necessities were give=
n us
for nothing, we had abilities,--it wasn't modesty but cowardice to behave a=
s if
we hadn't--and Fortune watched us to see what we might do with opportunity =
and
the world.
"There are so
many things to do, you see," began Willersley, in his judicial lecture=
r's
voice.
"So many thi=
ngs
we may do," I interrupted, "with all these years before us.... We=
're
exceptional men. It's our place, our duty, to do things."
"Here
anyhow," I said, answering the faint amusement of his face; "I've=
got
no modesty. Everything conspires to set me up. Why should I run about like =
all
those grubby little beasts down there, seeking nothing but mean little vani=
ties
and indulgencies--and then take credit for modesty? I KNOW I am capable. I =
KNOW
I have imagination. Modesty! I know if I don't attempt the very biggest thi=
ngs
in life I am a damned shirk. The very biggest! Somebody has to attempt them=
. I
feel like a loaded gun that is only a little perplexed because it has to fi=
nd
out just where to aim itself...."
The lake and the
frontier villages, a white puff of steam on the distant railway to Luino, t=
he
busy boats and steamers trailing triangular wakes of foam, the long vista
eastward towards battlemented Bellinzona, the vast mountain distances, now
tinged with sunset light, behind this nearer landscape, and the southward
waters with remote coast towns shining dimly, waters that merged at last in=
a
luminous golden haze, made a broad panoramic spectacle. It was as if one
surveyed the world,--and it was like the games I used to set out upon my
nursery floor. I was exalted by it; I felt larger than men. So kings should=
feel.
That sense of
largeness came to me then, and it has come to me since, again and again, a
splendid intimation or a splendid vanity. Once, I remember, when I looked at
Genoa from the mountain crest behind the town and saw that multitudinous pl=
ace
in all its beauty of width and abundance and clustering human effort, and o=
nce
as I was steaming past the brown low hills of Staten Island towards the
towering vigour and clamorous vitality of New York City, that mood rose to =
its
quintessence. And once it came to me, as I shall tell, on Dover cliffs. And=
a
hundred times when I have thought of England as our country might be, with =
no wretched
poor, no wretched rich, a nation armed and ordered, trained and purposeful
amidst its vales and rivers, that emotion of collective ends and collective
purposes has returned to me. I felt as great as humanity. For a brief momen=
t I
was humanity, looking at the world I had made and had still to make....
12
And mingled with these dreams of po=
wer
and patriotic service there was another series of a different quality and a
different colour, like the antagonistic colour of a shot silk. The white li=
fe
and the red life, contrasted and interchanged, passing swiftly at a turn fr=
om
one to another, and refusing ever to mingle peacefully one with the other. =
I was
asking myself openly and distinctly: what are you going to do for the world?
What are you going to do with yourself? and with an increasing strength and
persistence Nature in spite of my averted attention was asking me in
penetrating undertones: what are you going to do about this other fundament=
al
matter, the beauty of girls and women and your desire for them?
I have told of my
sisterless youth and the narrow circumstances of my upbringing. It made all
women-kind mysterious to me. If it had not been for my Staffordshire cousin=
s I
do not think I should have known any girls at all until I was twenty. Of
Staffordshire I will tell a little later. But I can remember still how thro=
ugh
all those ripening years, the thought of women's beauty, their magic presen=
ce
in the world beside me and the unknown, untried reactions of their intercou=
rse,
grew upon me and grew, as a strange presence grows in a room when one is
occupied by other things. I busied myself and pretended to be wholly occupi=
ed,
and there the woman stood, full half of life neglected, and it seemed to my=
averted
mind sometimes that she was there clad and dignified and divine, and someti=
mes
Aphrodite shining and commanding, and sometimes that Venus who stoops and
allures.
This travel abroad
seemed to have released a multitude of things in my mind; the clear air, the
beauty of the sunshine, the very blue of the glaciers made me feel my body =
and
quickened all those disregarded dreams. I saw the sheathed beauty of women's
forms all about me, in the cheerful waitresses at the inns, in the pedestri=
ans
one encountered in the tracks, in the chance fellow travellers at the hotel
tables. "Confound it!" said I, and talked all the more zealously =
of
that greater England that was calling us.
I remember that we
passed two Germans, an old man and a tall fair girl, father and daughter, w=
ho
were walking down from Saas. She came swinging and shining towards us, easy=
and
strong. I worshipped her as she approached.
"Gut Tag!&qu=
ot;
said Willersley, removing his hat.
"Morgen!&quo=
t;
said the old man, saluting.
I stared stockish=
ly
at the girl, who passed with an indifferent face.
That sticks in my
mind as a picture remains in a room, it has kept there bright and fresh as a
thing seen yesterday, for twenty years....
I flirted
hesitatingly once or twice with comely serving girls, and was a little asha=
med
lest Willersley should detect the keen interest I took in them, and then as=
we
came over the pass from Santa Maria Maggiore to Cannobio, my secret
preoccupation took me by surprise and flooded me and broke down my pretence=
s.
The women in that
valley are very beautiful--women vary from valley to valley in the Alps and=
are
plain and squat here and divinities five miles away--and as we came down we
passed a group of five or six of them resting by the wayside. Their burthens
were beside them, and one like Ceres held a reaping hook in her brown hand.=
She
watched us approaching and smiled faintly, her eyes at mine.
There was some
greeting, and two of them laughed together.
We passed.
"Glorious gi=
rls
they were," said Willersley, and suddenly an immense sense of boredom
enveloped me. I saw myself striding on down that winding road, talking of
politics and parties and bills of parliament and all sorts of dessicated
things. That road seemed to me to wind on for ever down to dust and infinite
dreariness. I knew it for a way of death. Reality was behind us.
Willersley set
himself to draw a sociological moral. "I'm not so sure," he said =
in a
voice of intense discriminations, "after all, that agricultural work i=
sn't
good for women."
"Damn
agricultural work!" I said, and broke out into a vigorous cursing of a=
ll I
held dear. "Fettered things we are!" I cried. "I wonder why =
I stand
it!"
"Stand
what?"
"Why don't I=
go
back and make love to those girls and let the world and you and everything =
go
hang? Deep breasts and rounded limbs--and we poor emasculated devils go
tramping by with the blood of youth in us!..."
"I'm not qui=
te
sure, Remington," said Willersley, looking at me with a deliberately
quaint expression over his glasses, "that picturesque scenery is
altogether good for your morals."
That fever was st=
ill
in my blood when we came to Locarno.
13
Along the hot and dusty lower road
between the Orrido of Traffiume and Cannobio Willersley had developed his f=
irst
blister. And partly because of that and partly because there was a bag at t=
he
station that gave us the refreshment of clean linen and partly because of t=
he
lazy lower air into which we had come, we decided upon three or four days'
sojourn in the Empress Hotel.
We dined that nig=
ht
at a table-d'hote, and I found myself next to an Englishwoman who began a
conversation that was resumed presently in the hotel lounge. She was a woma=
n of
perhaps thirty-three or thirty-four, slenderly built, with a warm reddish s=
kin
and very abundant fair golden hair, the wife of a petulant-looking heavy-fa=
ced
man of perhaps fifty-three, who smoked a cigar and dozed over his coffee an=
d presently
went to bed. "He always goes to bed like that," she confided star=
tlingly.
"He sleeps after all his meals. I never knew such a man to sleep."=
;
Then she returned=
to
our talk, whatever it was.
We had begun at t=
he dinner
table with itineraries and the usual topographical talk, and she had envied=
our
pedestrian travel. "My husband doesn't walk," she said. "His
heart is weak and he cannot manage the hills."
There was somethi=
ng
friendly and adventurous in her manner; she conveyed she liked me, and when
presently Willersley drifted off to write letters our talk sank at once to =
easy
confidential undertones. I felt enterprising, and indeed it is easy to be
daring with people one has never seen before and may never see again. I sai=
d I
loved beautiful scenery and all beautiful things, and the pointing note in =
my
voice made her laugh. She told me I had bold eyes, and so far as I can reme=
mber
I said she made them bold. "Blue they are," she remarked, smiling
archly. "I like blue eyes." Then I think we compared ages, and she
said she was the Woman of Thirty, "George Moore's Woman of Thirty.&quo=
t;
I had not read Ge=
orge
Moore at the time, but I pretended to understand.
That, I think, was
our limit that evening. She went to bed, smiling good-night quite prettily =
down
the big staircase, and I and Willersley went out to smoke in the garden. My
head was full of her, and I found it necessary to talk about her. So I made=
her
a problem in sociology. "Who the deuce are these people?" I said,
"and how do they get a living? They seem to have plenty of money. He
strikes me as being--Willersley, what is a drysalter? I think he's a retired
drysalter."
Willersley theori=
sed
while I thought of the woman and that provocative quality of dash she had d=
isplayed.
The next day at lunch she and I met like old friends. A huge mass of private
thinking during the interval had been added to our effect upon one another.=
We
talked for a time of insignificant things.
"What do you
do," she asked rather quickly, "after lunch? Take a siesta?"=
"Sometimes,&=
quot;
I said, and hung for a moment eye to eye.
We hadn't a doubt=
of
each other, but my heart was beating like a steamer propeller when it lifts=
out
of the water.
"Do you get a
view from your room?" she asked after a pause.
"It's on the
third floor, Number seventeen, near the staircase. My friend's next door.&q=
uot;
She began to talk=
of
books. She was interested in Christian Science, she said, and spoke of a bo=
ok.
I forget altogether what that book was called, though I remember to this day
with the utmost exactness the purplish magenta of its cover. She said she w=
ould
lend it to me and hesitated.
Willersley wanted=
to
go for an expedition across the lake that afternoon, but I refused. He made
some other proposals that I rejected abruptly. "I shall write in my
room," I said.
"Why not wri=
te
down here?"
"I shall wri=
te
in my room," I snarled like a thwarted animal, and he looked at me
curiously. "Very well," he said; "then I'll make some notes =
and
think about that order of ours out under the magnolias."
I hovered about t=
he
lounge for a time buying postcards and feverishly restless, watching the
movements of the other people. Finally I went up to my room and sat down by=
the
windows, staring out. There came a little tap at the unlocked door and in an
instant, like the go of a taut bowstring, I was up and had it open.
"Here is that
book," she said, and we hesitated.
"COME IN!&qu=
ot;
I whispered, trembling from head to foot.
"You're just=
a
boy," she said in a low tone.
I did not feel a =
bit
like a lover, I felt like a burglar with the safe-door nearly opened.
"Come in," I said almost impatiently, for anyone might be in the
passage, and I gripped her wrist and drew her towards me.
"What do you
mean?" she answered with a faint smile on her lips, and awkward and
yielding.
I shut the door
behind her, still holding her with one hand, then turned upon her--she was
laughing nervously--and without a word drew her to me and kissed her. And I
remember that as I kissed her she made a little noise almost like the purri=
ng
miaow with which a cat will greet one and her face, close to mine, became
solemn and tender.
She was suddenly a
different being from the discontented wife who had tapped a moment since on=
my
door, a woman transfigured....
That evening I ca=
me
down to dinner a monster of pride, for behold! I was a man. I felt myself t=
he
most wonderful and unprecedented of adventurers. It was hard to believe that
any one in the world before had done as much. My mistress and I met smiling=
, we
carried things off admirably, and it seemed to me that Willersley was the
dullest old dog in the world. I wanted to give him advice. I wanted to give=
him
derisive pokes. After dinner and coffee in the lounge I was too excited and=
hilarious
to go to bed, I made him come with me down to the cafe under the arches by =
the
pier, and there drank beer and talked extravagant nonsense about everything
under the sun, in order not to talk about the happenings of the afternoon. =
All
the time something shouted within me: "I am a man! I am a man!"..=
.
"What shall =
we
do to-morrow?" said he.
"I'm for
loafing," I said. "Let's row in the morning and spend to-morrow a=
fternoon
just as we did to-day."
"They say the
church behind the town is worth seeing."
"We'll go up
about sunset; that's the best time for it. We can start about five."
We heard music, a=
nd
went further along the arcade to discover a place where girls in operatic S=
wiss
peasant costume were singing and dancing on a creaking, protesting little
stage. I eyed their generous display of pink neck and arm with the seasoned=
eye
of a man who has lived in the world. Life was perfectly simple and easy, I
felt, if one took it the right way.
Next day Willersl=
ey
wanted to go on, but I delayed. Altogether I kept him back four days. Then =
abruptly
my mood changed, and we decided to start early the following morning. I
remember, though a little indistinctly, the feeling of my last talk with th=
at
woman whose surname, odd as it may seem, either I never learnt or I have
forgotten. (Her christian name was Milly.) She was tired and rather
low-spirited, and disposed to be sentimental, and for the first time in our
intercourse I found myself liking her for the sake of her own personality.
There was something kindly and generous appearing behind the veil of naive =
and uncontrolled
sensuality she had worn. There was a curious quality of motherliness in her
attitude to me that something in my nature answered and approved. She didn't
pretend to keep it up that she had yielded to my initiative. "I've don=
e you
no harm," she said a little doubtfully, an odd note for a man's victim!
And, "we've had a good time. You have liked me, haven't you?"
She interested me=
in
her lonely dissatisfied life; she was childless and had no hope of children,
and her husband was the only son of a rich meat salesman, very mean, a migh=
ty
smoker--"he reeks of it," she said, "always"--and
interested in nothing but golf, billiards (which he played very badly), pig=
eon
shooting, convivial Free Masonry and Stock Exchange punting. Mostly they
drifted about the Riviera. Her mother had contrived her marriage when she w=
as
eighteen. They were the first samples I ever encountered of the great multi=
tude
of functionless property owners which encumbers modern civilisation--but at=
the
time I didn't think much of that aspect of them....
I tell all this
business as it happened without comment, because I have no comment to make.=
It
was all strange to me, strange rather than wonderful, and, it may be, some
dream of beauty died for ever in those furtive meetings; it happened to me,=
and
I could scarcely have been more irresponsible in the matter or controlled
events less if I had been suddenly pushed over a cliff into water. I swam, =
of
course--finding myself in it. Things tested me, and I reacted, as I have to=
ld.
The bloom of my innocence, if ever there had been such a thing, was gone. A=
nd
here is the remarkable thing about it; at the time and for some days I was =
over-weeningly
proud; I have never been so proud before or since; I felt I had been promot=
ed to
virility; I was unable to conceal my exultation from Willersley. It was a m=
ood
of shining shameless ungracious self-approval. As he and I went along in the
cool morning sunshine by the rice fields in the throat of the Val Maggia a
silence fell between us.
"You know?&q=
uot;
I said abruptly,--"about that woman?"
Willersley did not
answer for a moment. He looked at me over the corner of his spectacles.
"Things went
pretty far?" he asked.
"Oh! all the
way!" and I had a twinge of fatuous pride in my unpremeditated
achievement.
"She came to
your room?"
I nodded.
"I heard her=
. I
heard her whispering.... The whispering and rustling and so on. I was in my
room yesterday.... Any one might have heard you."
I went on with my
head in the air.
"You might h=
ave
been caught, and that would have meant endless trouble. You might have incu=
rred
all sorts of consequences. What did you know about her?... We have wasted f=
our
days in that hot close place. When we found that League of Social Service we
were talking about," he said with a determined eye upon me, "chas=
tity
will be first among the virtues prescribed."
"I shall for=
m a
rival league," I said a little damped. "I'm hanged if I give up a
single desire in me until I know why."
He lifted his chin
and stared before him through his glasses at nothing. "There are some
things," he said, "that a man who means to work--to do great publ=
ic
services--MUST turn his back upon. I'm not discussing the rights or wrongs =
of
this sort of thing. It happens to be the conditions we work under. It will
probably always be so. If you want to experiment in that way, if you want e=
ven
to discuss it,--out you go from political life. You must know that's so....
You're a strange man, Remington, with a kind of kink in you. You've a sort =
of
force. You might happen to do immense things.... Only--"
He stopped. He had
said all that he had forced himself to say.
"I mean to t=
ake
myself as I am," I said. "I'm going to get experience for humanity
out of all my talents--and bury nothing."
Willersley twisted
his face to its humorous expression. "I doubt if sexual
proclivities," he said drily, "come within the scope of the parab=
le."
I let that go for=
a
little while. Then I broke out. "Sex!" said I, "is a fundame=
ntal
thing in life. We went through all this at Trinity. I'm going to look at it,
experience it, think about it--and get it square with the rest of life. Car=
eer
and Politics must take their chances of that. It's part of the general Engl=
ish
slackness that they won't look this in the face. Gods! what a muffled time
we're coming out of! Sex means breeding, and breeding is a necessary functi=
on
in a nation. The Romans broke up upon that. The Americans fade out amidst t=
heir
successes. Eugenics--"
"THAT wasn't
Eugenics," said Willersley.
"It was a
woman," I said after a little interval, feeling oddly that I had failed
altogether to answer him, and yet had a strong dumb case against him.
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ MARG=
ARET
IN STAFFORDSHIRE
1
I must go back a
little way with my story. In the previous book I have described the kind of
education that happens to a man of my class nowadays, and it has been
convenient to leap a phase in my experience that I must now set out at leng=
th.
I want to tell in this second hook how I came to marry, and to do that I mu=
st
give something of the atmosphere in which I first met my wife and some
intimations of the forces that went to her making. I met her in Staffordshi=
re
while I was staying with that uncle of whom I have already spoken, the uncle
who sold my father's houses and settled my mother in Penge. Margaret was tw=
enty
then and I was twenty-two.
It was just before
the walking tour in Switzerland that opened up so much of the world to me. I
saw her once, for an afternoon, and circumstances so threw her up in relief
that I formed a very vivid memory of her. She was in the sharpest contrast =
with
the industrial world about her; she impressed me as a dainty blue flower mi=
ght
do, come upon suddenly on a clinker heap. She remained in my mind at once a=
perplexing
interrogation and a symbol....
But first I must =
tell
of my Staffordshire cousins and the world that served as a foil for her.
2
I first went to stay with my cousin=
s when
I was an awkward youth of sixteen, wearing deep mourning for my mother. My =
uncle
wanted to talk things over with me, he said, and if he could, to persuade m=
e to
go into business instead of going up to Cambridge.
I remember that v=
isit
on account of all sorts of novel things, but chiefly, I think, because it w=
as
the first time I encountered anything that deserves to be spoken of as weal=
th.
For the first time in my life I had to do with people who seemed to have
endless supplies of money, unlimited good clothes, numerous servants; whose
daily life was made up of things that I had hitherto considered to be treat=
s or
exceptional extravagances. My cousins of eighteen and nineteen took cabs, f=
or instance,
with the utmost freedom, and travelled first-class in the local trains that=
run
up and down the district of the Five Towns with an entire unconsciousness of
the magnificence, as it seemed to me, of such a proceeding.
The family occupi=
ed a
large villa in Newcastle, with big lawns before it and behind, a shrubbery =
with
quite a lot of shrubs, a coach house and stable, and subordinate dwelling-p=
laces
for the gardener and the coachman. Every bedroom contained a gas heater and=
a
canopied brass bedstead, and had a little bathroom attached equipped with t=
he
porcelain baths and fittings my uncle manufactured, bright and sanitary and=
stamped
with his name, and the house was furnished throughout with chairs and table=
s in
bright shining wood, soft and prevalently red Turkish carpets, cosy corners,
curtained archways, gold-framed landscapes, overmantels, a dining-room
sideboard like a palace with a large Tantalus, and electric light fittings =
of a
gay and expensive quality. There was a fine billiard-room on the ground flo=
or
with three comfortable sofas and a rotating bookcase containing an excellen=
t collection
of the English and American humorists from THREE MEN IN A BOAT to the
penultimate Mark Twain. There was also a conservatory opening out of the
dining-room, to which the gardener brought potted flowers in their season..=
..
My aunt was a lit=
tle
woman with a scared look and a cap that would get over one eye, not very li=
ke
my mother, and nearly eight years her junior; she was very much concerned w=
ith
keeping everything nice, and unmercifully bullied by my two cousins, who to=
ok
after their father and followed the imaginations of their own hearts. They =
were
tall, dark, warmly flushed girls handsome rather than pretty. Gertrude, the
eldest and tallest, had eyes that were almost black; Sibyl was of a stouter=
build,
and her eyes, of which she was shamelessly proud, were dark blue. Sibyl's h=
air
waved, and Gertrude's was severely straight. They treated me on my first vi=
sit
with all the contempt of the adolescent girl for a boy a little younger and
infinitely less expert in the business of life than herself. They were very
busy with the writings of notes and certain mysterious goings and comings of
their own, and left me very much to my own devices. Their speech in my pres=
ence
was full of unfathomable allusions. They were the sort of girls who will ta=
lk
over and through an uninitiated stranger with the pleasantest sense of
superiority.
I met them at
breakfast and at lunch and at the half-past six o'clock high tea that formed
the third chief meal of the day. I heard them rattling off the compositions=
of
Chaminade and Moskowski, with great decision and effect, and hovered on the
edge of tennis foursomes where it was manifest to the dullest intelligence =
that
my presence was unnecessary. Then I went off to find some readable book in =
the
place, but apart from miscellaneous popular novels, some veterinary works, =
a number
of comic books, old bound volumes of THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS and a larg=
e,
popular illustrated History of England, there was very little to be found. =
My
aunt talked to me in a casual feeble way, chiefly about my mother's last
illness. The two had seen very little of each other for many years; she mad=
e no
secret of it that the ineligible qualities of my father were the cause of t=
he
estrangement. The only other society in the house during the day was an old=
and
rather decayed Skye terrier in constant conflict with what were no doubt
imaginary fleas. I took myself off for a series of walks, and acquired a co=
nsiderable
knowledge of the scenery and topography of the Potteries.
It puzzled my aunt
that I did not go westward, where it was country-side and often quite prett=
y,
with hedgerows and fields and copses and flowers. But always I went eastwar=
d,
where in a long valley industrialism smokes and sprawls. That was the stuff=
to
which I turned by nature, to the human effort, and the accumulation and jar=
of
men's activities. And in such a country as that valley social and economic =
relations
were simple and manifest. Instead of the limitless confusion of London's
population, in which no man can trace any but the most slender correlation
between rich and poor, in which everyone seems disconnected and adrift from
everyone, you can see here the works, the potbank or the ironworks or what =
not,
and here close at hand the congested, meanly-housed workers, and at a little
distance a small middle-class quarter, and again remoter, the big house of =
the
employer. It was like a very simplified diagram--after the untraceable
confusion of London.
I prowled alone,
curious and interested, through shabby back streets of mean little homes; I
followed canals, sometimes canals of mysteriously heated waters with ghostly
wisps of steam rising against blackened walls or a distant prospect of
dustbin-fed vegetable gardens, I saw the women pouring out from the potbank=
s,
heard the hooters summoning the toilers to work, lost my way upon slag heap=
s as
big as the hills of the south country, dodged trains at manifestly dangerous
level crossings, and surveyed across dark intervening spaces, the flaming
uproar, the gnome-like activities of iron foundries. I heard talk of strikes
and rumours of strikes, and learnt from the columns of some obscure labour =
paper
I bought one day, of the horrors of the lead poisoning that was in those da=
ys
one of the normal risks of certain sorts of pottery workers. Then back I ca=
me,
by the ugly groaning and clanging steam train of that period, to my uncle's
house and lavish abundance of money and more or less furtive flirtations and
the tinkle of Moskowski and Chaminade. It was, I say, diagrammatic. One saw=
the
expropriator and the expropriated--as if Marx had arranged the picture. It =
was
as jumbled and far more dingy and disastrous than any of the confusions of
building and development that had surrounded my youth at Bromstead and Peng=
e,
but it had a novel quality of being explicable. I found great virtue in the=
word
"exploitation."
There stuck in my
mind as if it was symbolical of the whole thing the twisted figure of a man,
whose face had been horribly scalded--I can't describe how, except that one=
eye
was just expressionless white--and he ground at an organ bearing a card whi=
ch
told in weak and bitterly satirical phrasing that he had been scalded by the
hot water from the tuyeres of the blast furnace of Lord Pandram's works. He=
had
been scalded and quite inadequately compensated and dismissed. And Lord Pan=
dram
was worth half a million.
That upturned
sightless white eye of his took possession of my imagination. I don't think
that even then I was swayed by any crude melodramatic conception of injusti=
ce.
I was quite prepared to believe the card wasn't a punctiliously accurate
statement of fact, and that a case could be made out for Lord Pandram. Still
there in the muddy gutter, painfully and dreadfully, was the man, and he was
smashed and scalded and wretched, and he ground his dismal hurdygurdy with a
weary arm, calling upon Heaven and the passer-by for help, for help and som=
e sort
of righting--one could not imagine quite what. There he was as a fact, as a
by-product of the system that heaped my cousins with trinkets and provided =
the
comic novels and the abundant cigars and spacious billiard-room of my uncle=
's
house. I couldn't disconnect him and them.
My uncle on his p=
art
did nothing to conceal the state of war that existed between himself and his
workers, and the mingled contempt and animosity he felt from them.
3
Prosperity had overtaken my uncle. =
So
quite naturally he believed that every man who was not as prosperous as he =
was
had only himself to blame. He was rich and he had left school and gone into=
his
father's business at fifteen, and that seemed to him the proper age at which
everyone's education should terminate. He was very anxious to dissuade me f=
rom going
up to Cambridge, and we argued intermittently through all my visit.
I had remembered =
him
as a big and buoyant man, striding destructively about the nursery floor of=
my
childhood, and saluting my existence by slaps, loud laughter, and questions
about half herrings and half eggs subtly framed to puzzle and confuse my mi=
nd.
I didn't see him for some years until my father's death, and then he seemed
rather smaller, though still a fair size, yellow instead of red and much le=
ss
radiantly aggressive. This altered effect was due not so much to my own cha=
nged
perspectives, I fancy, as to the facts that he was suffering for continuous
cigar smoking, and being taken in hand by his adolescent daughters who had =
just
returned from school.
During my first v= isit there was a perpetual series of--the only word is rows, between them and hi= m. Up to the age of fifteen or thereabouts, he had maintained his ascendancy o= ver them by simple old-fashioned physical chastisement. Then after an interlude= of a year it had dawned upon them that power had mysteriously departed from hi= m. He had tried stopping their pocket money, but they found their mother financially amenable; besides which it was fundamental to my uncle's attitu= de that he should give them money freely. Not to do so would seem like admitti= ng a difficulty in making it. So that after he had stopped their allowances for = the fourth time Sybil and Gertrude were prepared to face beggary without a qual= m. It had been his pride to give them the largest allowance of any girls at the school, not even excepting the granddaughter of Fladden the Borax King, and= his soul recoiled from this discipline as it had never recoiled from the ruder = method of the earlier phase. Both girls had developed to a high pitch in their mut= ual recriminations a gift for damaging retort, and he found it an altogether deadlier thing th= an the power of the raised voice that had always cowed my aunt. Whenever he be= came heated with them, they frowned as if involuntarily, drew in their breath sharply, said: "Daddy, you really must not say--" and corrected h= is pronunciation. Then, at a great advantage, they resumed the discussion....<= o:p>
My uncle's views
about Cambridge, however, were perfectly clear and definite. It was waste of
time and money. It was all damned foolery. Did they make a man a better
business man? Not a bit of it. He gave instances. It spoilt a man for busin=
ess
by giving him "false ideas." Some men said that at college a man
formed useful friendships. What use were friendships to a business man? He
might get to know lords, but, as my uncle pointed out, a lord's requirement=
s in
his line of faience were little greater than a common man's. If college
introduced him to hotel proprietors there might be something in it. Perhaps=
it
helped a man into Parliament, Parliament still being a confused retrogressi=
ve
corner in the world where lawyers and suchlike sheltered themselves from th=
e onslaughts
of common-sense behind a fog of Latin and Greek and twaddle and tosh; but I
wasn't the sort to go into Parliament, unless I meant to be a lawyer. Did I
mean to be a lawyer? It cost no end of money, and was full of uncertainties,
and there were no judges nor great solicitors among my relations. "You=
ng
chaps think they get on by themselves," said my uncle. "It isn't =
so.
Not unless they take their coats off. I took mine off before I was your age=
by
nigh a year."
We were at cross
purposes from the outset, because I did not think men lived to make money; =
and
I was obtuse to the hints he was throwing out at the possibilities of his o=
wn
potbank, not willfully obtuse, but just failing to penetrate his meaning.
Whatever City Merchants had or had not done for me, Flack, Topham and old G=
ates
had certainly barred my mistaking the profitable production and sale of
lavatory basins and bathroom fittings for the highest good. It was only upon
reflection that it dawned upon me that the splendid chance for a young fell=
ow
with my uncle, "me, having no son of my own," was anything but an
illustration for comparison with my own chosen career.
I still remember =
very
distinctly my uncle's talk,--he loved to speak "reet
Staffordshire"--his rather flabby face with the mottled complexion that
told of crude ill-regulated appetites, his clumsy gestures--he kept emphasi=
sing
his points by prodding at me with his finger--the ill-worn, costly, grey tw=
eed
clothes, the watch chain of plain solid gold, and soft felt hat thrust back
from his head. He tackled me first in the garden after lunch, and then trie=
d to
raise me to enthusiasm by taking me to his potbank and showing me its
organisation, from the dusty grinding mills in which whitened men worked and
coughed, through the highly ventilated glazing room in which strangely mask=
ed
girls looked ashamed of themselves,--"They'll risk death, the fools, to
show their faces to a man," said my uncle, quite audibly--to the firing
kilns and the glazing kilns, and so round the whole place to the railway si=
ding
and the gratifying spectacle of three trucks laden with executed orders.
Then we went up a
creaking outside staircase to his little office, and he showed off before me
for a while, with one or two subordinates and the telephone.
"None of your
Gas," he said, "all this. It's Real every bit of it. Hard cash and
hard glaze."
"Yes," I
said, with memories of a carelessly read pamphlet in my mind, and without a=
ny
satirical intention, "I suppose you MUST use lead in your glazes?"=
;
Whereupon I found=
I
had tapped the ruling grievance of my uncle's life. He hated leadless glazes
more than he hated anything, except the benevolent people who had organised=
the
agitation for their use. "Leadless glazes ain't only fit for buns,&quo=
t;
he said. "Let me tell you, my boy--"
He began in a voi=
ce
of bland persuasiveness that presently warmed to anger, to explain the whole
matter. I hadn't the rights of the matter at all. Firstly, there was
practically no such thing as lead poisoning. Secondly, not everyone was lia=
ble
to lead poisoning, and it would be quite easy to pick out the susceptible
types--as soon as they had it--and put them to other work. Thirdly, the evil
effects of lead poisoning were much exaggerated. Fourthly, and this was in =
a particularly
confidential undertone, many of the people liked to get lead poisoning,
especially the women, because it caused abortion. I might not believe it, b=
ut
he knew it for a fact. Fifthly, the work-people simply would not learn the
gravity of the danger, and would eat with unwashed hands, and incur all sor=
ts
of risks, so that as my uncle put it: "the fools deserve what they
get." Sixthly, he and several associated firms had organised a simple =
and
generous insurance scheme against lead-poisoning risks. Seventhly, he never
wearied in rational (as distinguished from excessive, futile and expensive)
precautions against the disease. Eighthly, in the ill-equipped shops of his
minor competitors lead poisoning was a frequent and virulent evil, and peop=
le had
generalised from these exceptional cases. The small shops, he hazarded, loo=
king
out of the cracked and dirty window at distant chimneys, might be
advantageously closed....
"But what's =
the
good of talking?" said my uncle, getting off the table on which he had
been sitting. "Seems to me there'll come a time when a master will get
fined if he don't run round the works blowing his girls noses for them. Tha=
t's
about what it'll come to."
He walked to the
black mantelpiece and stood on the threadbare rug, and urged me not to be
misled by the stories of prejudiced and interested enemies of our national
industries.
"They'll get=
a
strike one of these days, of employers, and then we'll see a bit," he
said. "They'll drive Capital abroad and then they'll whistle to get it
back again."...
He led the way do=
wn
the shaky wooden steps and cheered up to tell me of his way of checking his
coal consumption. He exchanged a ferocious greeting with one or two workpeo=
ple,
and so we came out of the factory gates into the ugly narrow streets, paved
with a peculiarly hard diapered brick of an unpleasing inky-blue colour, and
bordered with the mean and squalid homes of his workers. Doors stood open a=
nd
showed grimy interiors, and dirty ill-clad children played in the kennel.
We passed a
sickly-looking girl with a sallow face, who dragged her limbs and peered at=
us
dimly with painful eyes. She stood back, as partly blinded people will do, =
to
allow us to pass, although there was plenty of room for us.
I glanced back at
her.
"THAT'S
ploombism," said my uncle casually.
"What?"
said I.
"Ploombism. = And the other day I saw a fool of a girl, and what d'you think? She'd got a bas= in that hadn't been fired, a cracked piece of biscuit it was, up on the shelf = over her head, just all over glaze, killing glaze, man, and she was putting up h= er hand if you please, and eating her dinner out of it. Got her dinner in it!<= o:p>
"Eating her
dinner out of it," he repeated in loud and bitter tones, and punched me
hard in the ribs.
"And then th=
ey
comes to THAT--and grumbles. And the fools up in Westminster want you to pu=
t in
fans here and fans there--the Longton fools have.... And then eating their
dinners out of it all the time!"...
At high tea that
night--my uncle was still holding out against evening dinner--Sibyl and
Gertrude made what was evidently a concerted demand for a motor-car.
"You've got =
your
mother's brougham," he said, "that's good enough for you." B=
ut
he seemed shaken by the fact that some Burslem rival was launching out with=
the
new invention. "He spoils his girls," he remarked. "He's a
fool," and became thoughtful.
Afterwards he ask=
ed
me to come to him into his study; it was a room with a writing-desk and ful=
l of
pieces of earthenware and suchlike litter, and we had our great row about
Cambridge.
"Have you
thought things over, Dick?" he said.
"I think I'l=
l go
to Trinity, Uncle," I said firmly. "I want to go to Trinity. It i=
s a
great college."
He was manifestly
chagrined. "You're a fool," he said.
I made no answer.=
"You're a da=
mned
fool," he said. "But I suppose you've got to do it. You could have
come here--That don't matter, though, now... You'll have your time and spend
your money, and be a poor half-starved clergyman, mucking about with the wo=
men
all the day and afraid to have one of your own ever, or you'll be a
schoolmaster or some such fool for the rest of your life. Or some newspaper
chap. That's what you'll get from Cambridge. I'm half a mind not to let you.
Eh? More than half a mind...."
"You've got =
to
do the thing you can," he said, after a pause, "and likely it's w=
hat
you're fitted for."
4
I paid several short visits to
Staffordshire during my Cambridge days, and always these relations of mine
produced the same effect of hardness. My uncle's thoughts had neither
atmosphere nor mystery. He lived in a different universe from the dreams of=
scientific
construction that filled my mind. He could as easily have understood Chinese
poetry. His motives were made up of intense rivalries with other men of his
class and kind, a few vindictive hates springing from real and fancied slig=
hts,
a habit of acquisition that had become a second nature, a keen love both of
efficiency and display in his own affairs. He seemed to me to have no sense=
of
the state, no sense and much less any love of beauty, no charity and no sor=
t of
religious feeling whatever. He had strong bodily appetites, he ate and drank
freely, smoked a great deal, and occasionally was carried off by his passio=
ns
for a "bit of a spree" to Birmingham or Liverpool or Manchester. =
The
indulgences of these occasions were usually followed by a period of reactio=
n,
when he was urgent for the suppression of nudity in the local Art Gallery a=
nd a
harsh and forcible elevation of the superficial morals of the valley. And he
spoke of the ladies who ministered to the delights of his jolly-dog period,
when he spoke of them at all, by the unprintable feminine equivalent. My au=
nt
he treated with a kindly contempt and considerable financial generosity, but
his daughters tore his heart; he was so proud of them, so glad to find them
money to spend, so resolved to own them, so instinctively jealous of every =
man
who came near them.
My uncle has been=
the
clue to a great number of men for me. He was an illuminating extreme. I have
learnt what not to expect from them through him, and to comprehend resentme=
nts
and dangerous sudden antagonisms I should have found incomprehensible in th=
eir
more complex forms, if I had not first seen them in him in their feral stat=
e.
With his soft felt
hat at the back of his head, his rather heavy, rather mottled face, his
rationally thick boots and slouching tweed-clad form, a little round-should=
ered
and very obstinate looking, he strolls through all my speculations sucking =
his
teeth audibly, and occasionally throwing out a shrewd aphorism, the intract=
able
unavoidable ore of the new civilisation.
Essentially he was
simple. Generally speaking, he hated and despised in equal measure whatever
seemed to suggest that he personally was not the most perfect human being
conceivable. He hated all education after fifteen because he had had no
education after fifteen, he hated all people who did not have high tea unti=
l he
himself under duress gave up high tea, he hated every game except football,
which he had played and could judge, he hated all people who spoke foreign
languages because he knew no language but Staffordshire, he hated all
foreigners because he was English, and all foreign ways because they were n=
ot
his ways. Also he hated particularly, and in this order, Londoner's,
Yorkshiremen, Scotch, Welch and Irish, because they were not "reet
Staffordshire," and he hated all other Staffordshire men as insufficie=
ntly
"reet." He wanted to have all his own women inviolate, and to fan=
cy
he had a call upon every other woman in the world. He wanted to have the be=
st
cigars and the best brandy in the world to consume or give away magnificent=
ly,
and every one else to have inferior ones. (His billiard table was an extra =
large
size, specially made and very inconvenient.) And he hated Trade Unions beca=
use
they interfered with his autocratic direction of his works, and his workpeo=
ple
because they were not obedient and untiring mechanisms to do his bidding. He
was, in fact, a very naive, vigorous human being. He was about as much
civilised, about as much tamed to the ideas of collective action and mutual
consideration as a Central African negro.
There are hordes =
of
such men as he throughout all the modern industrial world. You will find the
same type with the slightest modifications in the Pas de Calais or Rhenish
Prussia or New Jersey or North Italy. No doubt you would find it in New Jap=
an.
These men have raised themselves up from the general mass of untrained,
uncultured, poorish people in a hard industrious selfish struggle. To drive
others they have had first to drive themselves. They have never yet had
occasion nor leisure to think of the state or social life as a whole, and as
for dreams or beauty, it was a condition of survival that they should ignore
such cravings. All the distinctive qualities of my uncle can be thought of =
as dictated
by his conditions; his success and harshness, the extravagances that expres=
sed
his pride in making money, the uncongenial luxury that sprang from rivalry,=
and
his self-reliance, his contempt for broad views, his contempt for everything
that he could not understand.
His daughters were
the inevitable children of his life. Queer girls they were! Curiously
"spirited" as people phrase it, and curiously limited. During my
Cambridge days I went down to Staffordshire several times. My uncle, though=
he
still resented my refusal to go into his business, was also in his odd way
proud of me. I was his nephew and poor relation, and yet there I was, a you=
ng
gentleman learning all sorts of unremunerative things in the grandest manne=
r,
"Latin and mook," while the sons of his neighhours, not nephews
merely, but sons, stayed unpolished in their native town. Every time I went
down I found extensive changes and altered relations, and before I had sett=
led
down to them off I went again. I don't think I was one person to them; I wa=
s a
series of visitors. There is a gulf of ages between a gaunt schoolboy of
sixteen in unbecoming mourning and two vividly self-conscious girls of eigh=
teen
and nineteen, but a Cambridge "man" of two and twenty with a first
and good tennis and a growing social experience, is a fair contemporary for=
two
girls of twenty-three and twenty-four.
A motor-car appea=
red,
I think in my second visit, a bottle-green affair that opened behind, had d=
ark
purple cushions, and was controlled mysteriously by a man in shiny black
costume and a flat cap. The high tea had been shifted to seven and rechrist=
ened
dinner, but my uncle would not dress nor consent to have wine; and after one
painful experiment, I gathered, and a scene, he put his foot down and
prohibited any but high-necked dresses.
"Daddy's
perfectly impossible," Sybil told me.
The foot had
descended vehemently! "My own daughters!" he had said, "dres=
sed
up like--"--and had arrested himself and fumbled and decided to say--&=
quot;actresses,
and showin' their fat arms for every fool to stare at!" Nor would he h=
ave
any people invited to dinner. He didn't, he had explained, want strangers
poking about in his house when he came home tired. So such calling as occur=
red
went on during his absence in the afternoon.
One of the peculiarities of the life of these ascendant families of the industrial cla= ss to which wealth has come, is its tremendous insulations. There were no cust= oms of intercourse in the Five Towns. All the isolated prosperities of the dist= rict sprang from economising, hard driven homes, in which there was neither time= nor means for hospitality. Social intercourse centred very largely upon the chu= rch or chapel, and the chapels were better at bringing people together than the= Establishment to which my cousins belonged. Their chief outlet to the wider world lay therefore through the acquaintances they had formed at school, and through = two much less prosperous families of relations who lived at Longton and Hanley.= A number of gossiping friendships with old school mates were "kept up,&q= uot; and my cousins would "spend the afternoon" or even spend the day = with these; such occasions led to other encounters and interlaced with the furti= ve correspondences and snatched meetings that formed the emotional thread of t= heir lives. When the billiard table had been new, my uncle had taken to asking i= n a few approved friends for an occasional game, but mostly the billiard-room w= as for glory and the girls. Both of them played very well. They never, so far = as I know, dined out, and when at last after bitter domestic conflicts they bega= n to go to dances, they went with the quavering connivance of my aunt, and chang= ed into ball frocks at friends' houses on the way. There was a tennis club that formed a convenient afternoon rendezvous, and I recall that in the period o= f my earlier visits the young bloods of the district found much satisfaction in taking girls for drives in dog-carts and suchlike high-wheeled vehicles, a disposition that died in tangled tandems at the apparition of motor-car's.<= o:p>
My aunt and uncle=
had
conceived no plans in life for their daughters at all. In the undifferentia=
ted
industrial community from which they had sprung, girls got married somehow,=
and
it did not occur to them that the concentration of property that had made t=
hem
wealthy, had cut their children off from the general social sea in which th=
eir
own awkward meeting had occurred, without necessarily opening any other wor=
ld
in exchange. My uncle was too much occupied with the works and his business=
affairs
and his private vices to philosophise about his girls; he wanted them just =
to
keep girls, preferably about sixteen, and to be a sort of animated flowers =
and
make home bright and be given things. He was irritated that they would not
remain at this, and still more irritated that they failed to suppress
altogether their natural interest in young men. The tandems would be steere=
d by
weird and devious routes to evade the bare chance of his bloodshot eye. My =
aunt
seemed to have no ideas whatever about what was likely to happen to her
children. She had indeed no ideas about anything; she took her husband and =
the
days as they came.
I can see now the
pathetic difficulty of my cousins' position in life; the absence of any
guidance or instruction or provision for their development. They supplement=
ed
the silences of home by the conversation of schoolfellows and the suggestio=
ns
of popular fiction. They had to make what they could out of life with such
hints as these. The church was far too modest to offer them any advice. It =
was
obtruded upon my mind upon my first visit that they were both carrying on
correspondences and having little furtive passings and seeings and meetings
with the mysterious owners of certain initials, S. and L. K., and, if I
remember rightly, "the R. N." brothers and cousins, I suppose, of=
their
friends. The same thing was going on, with a certain intensification, at my
next visit, excepting only that the initials were different. But when I came
again their methods were maturer or I was no longer a negligible quantity, =
and
the notes and the initials were no longer flaunted quite so openly in my fa=
ce.
My cousins had wo=
rked
it out from the indications of their universe that the end of life is to ha=
ve a
"good time." They used the phrase. That and the drives in dog-car=
ts
were only the first of endless points of resemblance between them and the
commoner sort of American girl. When some years ago I paid my first and only
visit to America I seemed to recover my cousins' atmosphere as soon as I
entered the train at Euston. There were three girls in my compartment suppl=
ied
with huge decorated cases of sweets, and being seen off by a company of
friends, noisily arch and eager about the "steamer letters" they
would get at Liverpool; they were the very soul-sisters of my cousins. The
chief elements of a good time, as my cousins judged it, as these countless
thousands of rich young women judge it, are a petty eventfulness, laughter,=
and
to feel that you are looking well and attracting attention. Shopping is one=
of its
leading joys. You buy things, clothes and trinkets for yourself and presents
for your friends. Presents always seemed to be flying about in that circle;
flowers and boxes of sweets were common currency. My cousins were always
getting and giving, my uncle caressed them with parcels and cheques. They
kissed him and he exuded sovereigns as a stroked APHIS exudes honey. It was
like the new language of the Academy of Lagado to me, and I never learnt ho=
w to
express myself in it, for nature and training make me feel encumbered to
receive presents and embarrassed in giving them. But then, like my father, I
hate and distrust possessions.
Of the quality of
their private imagination I never learnt anything; I suppose it followed the
lines of the fiction they read and was romantic and sentimental. So far as
marriage went, the married state seemed at once very attractive and dreadfu=
lly
serious to them, composed in equal measure of becoming important and becomi=
ng
old. I don't know what they thought about children. I doubt if they thought
about them at all. It was very secret if they did.
As for the poor a=
nd
dingy people all about them, my cousins were always ready to take part in a
Charitable Bazaar. They were unaware of any economic correlation of their o=
wn
prosperity and that circumambient poverty, and they knew of Trade Unions si=
mply
as disagreeable external things that upset my uncle's temper. They knew of
nothing wrong in social life at all except that there were
"Agitators." It surprised them a little, I think, that Agitators =
were
not more drastically put down. But they had a sort of instinctive dread of
social discussion as of something that might breach the happiness of their
ignorance....
5
My cousins did more than illustrate=
Marx
for me; they also undertook a stage of my emotional education. Their method=
in
that as in everything else was extremely simple, but it took my inexperienc=
e by
surprise.
It must have been=
on
my third visit that Sybil took me in hand. Hitherto I seemed to have seen h=
er
only in profile, but now she became almost completely full face, manifestly
regarded me with those violet eyes of hers. She passed me things I needed at
breakfast--it was the first morning of my visit--before I asked for them.
When young men are
looked at by pretty cousins, they become intensely aware of those cousins. =
It
seemed to me that I had always admired Sybil's eyes very greatly, and that
there was something in her temperament congenial to mine. It was odd I had =
not
noted it on my previous visits.
We walked round t=
he
garden somewhen that morning, and talked about Cambridge. She asked quite a=
lot
of questions about my work and my ambitions. She said she had always felt s=
ure
I was clever.
The conversation
languished a little, and we picked some flowers for the house. Then she ask=
ed
if I could run. I conceded her various starts and we raced up and down the
middle garden path. Then, a little breathless, we went into the new twenty-=
five
guinea summer-house at the end of the herbaceous border.
We sat side by si=
de,
pleasantly hidden from the house, and she became anxious about her hair, wh=
ich
was slightly and prettily disarranged, and asked me to help her with the
adjustment of a hairpin. I had never in my life been so near the soft curly
hair and the dainty eyebrow and eyelid and warm soft cheek of a girl, and I=
was
stirred--
It stirs me now to
recall it.
I became a
battleground of impulses and inhibitions.
"Thank
you," said my cousin, and moved a little away from me.
She began to talk
about friendship, and lost her thread and forgot the little electric stress
between us in a rather meandering analysis of her principal girl friends.
But afterwards she
resumed her purpose.
I went to bed that
night with one proposition overshadowing everything else in my mind, namely,
that kissing my cousin Sybil was a difficult, but not impossible, achieveme=
nt.
I do not recall any shadow of a doubt whether on the whole it was worth doi=
ng.
The thing had come into my existence, disturbing and interrupting its flow
exactly as a fever does. Sybil had infected me with herself.
The next day matt= ers came to a crisis in the little upstairs sitting-room which had been assigne= d me as a study during my visit. I was working up there, or rather trying to wor= k in spite of the outrageous capering of some very primitive elements in my brai= n, when she came up to me, under a transparent pretext of looking for a book.<= o:p>
I turned round and
then got up at the sight of her. I quite forget what our conversation was
about, but I know she led me to believe I might kiss her. Then when I attem=
pted
to do so she averted her face.
"How COULD
you?" she said; "I didn't mean that!"
That remained the
state of our relations for two days. I developed a growing irritation with =
and
resentment against cousin Sybil, combined with an intense desire to get that
kiss for which I hungered and thirsted. Cousin Sybil went about in the happy
persuasion that I was madly in love with her, and her game, so far as she w=
as
concerned, was played and won. It wasn't until I had fretted for two days t=
hat I
realised that I was being used for the commonest form of excitement possibl=
e to
a commonplace girl; that dozens perhaps of young men had played the part of
Tantalus at cousin Sybil's lips. I walked about my room at nights, damning =
her
and calling her by terms which on the whole she rather deserved, while Sybil
went to sleep pitying "poor old Dick!"
"Damn it!&qu=
ot;
I said, "I WILL be equal with you."
But I never did
equalise the disadvantage, and perhaps it's as well, for I fancy that sort =
of
revenge cuts both people too much for a rational man to seek it....
"Why are men=
so
silly?" said cousin Sybil next morning, wriggling back with down-bent =
head
to release herself from what should have been a compelling embrace.
"Confound
it!" I said with a flash of clear vision. "You STARTED this game.=
"
"Oh!"
She stood back
against a hedge of roses, a little flushed and excited and interested, and
ready for the delightful defensive if I should renew my attack.
"Beastly hot=
for
scuffling," I said, white with anger. "I don't know whether I'm s=
o keen
on kissing you, Sybil, after all. I just thought you wanted me to."
I could have whip=
ped
her, and my voice stung more than my words.
Our eyes met; a r=
eal
hatred in hers leaping up to meet mine.
"Let's play
tennis," I said, after a moment's pause.
"No," s=
he
answered shortly, "I'm going indoors."
"Very
well."
And that ended the
affair with Sybil.
I was still in the
full glare of this disillusionment when Gertrude awoke from some preoccupat=
ion
to an interest in my existence. She developed a disposition to touch my han=
d by
accident, and let her fingers rest in contact with it for a moment,--she had
pleasant soft hands;--she began to drift into summer houses with me, to let=
her
arm rest trustfully against mine, to ask questions about Cambridge. They we=
re
much the same questions that Sybil had asked. But I controlled myself and
maintained a profile of intelligent and entirely civil indifference to her
blandishments.
What Gertrude mad=
e of
it came out one evening in some talk--I forget about what--with Sybil.
"Oh, Dick!&q=
uot;
said Gertrude a little impatiently, "Dick's Pi."
And I never
disillusioned her by any subsequent levity from this theory of my innate and
virginal piety. 6
It was against this harsh and crude
Staffordshire background that I think I must have seen Margaret for the fir=
st
time. I say I think because it is quite possible that we had passed each ot=
her
in the streets of Cambridge, no doubt with that affectation of mutual disre=
gard
which was once customary between undergraduates and Newnham girls. But if t=
hat
was so I had noted nothing of the slender graciousness that shone out so
pleasingly against the bleaker midland surroundings.
She was a younger
schoolfellow of my cousins', and the step-daughter of Seddon, a prominent
solicitor of Burslem. She was not only not in my cousins' generation but no=
t in
their set, she was one of a small hardworking group who kept immaculate
note-books, and did as much as is humanly possible of that insensate pile of
written work that the Girls' Public School movement has inflicted upon
school-girls. She really learnt French and German admirably and thoroughly,=
she
got as far in mathematics as an unflinching industry can carry any one with=
no
great natural aptitude, and she went up to Bennett Hall, Newnham, after the=
usual
conflict with her family, to work for the History Tripos.
There in her third
year she made herself thoroughly ill through overwork, so ill that she had =
to
give up Newnham altogether and go abroad with her stepmother. She made hers=
elf
ill, as so many girls do in those university colleges, through the badness =
of
her home and school training. She thought study must needs be a hard strain=
ing
of the mind. She worried her work, she gave herself no leisure to see it as=
a
whole, she felt herself not making headway and she cut her games and exerci=
se in
order to increase her hours of toil, and worked into the night. She carried=
a
knack of laborious thoroughness into the blind alleys and inessentials of h=
er
subject. It didn't need the badness of the food for which Bennett Hall is
celebrated and the remarkable dietary of nocturnal cocoa, cakes and soft
biscuits with which the girls have supplemented it, to ensure her collapse.=
Her
mother brought her home, fretting and distressed, and then finding her
hopelessly unhappy at home, took her and her half-brother, a rather ailing
youngster of ten who died three years later, for a journey to Italy.
Italy did much to
assuage Margaret's chagrin. I think all three of them had a very good time
there. At home Mr. Seddon, her step-father, played the part of a well-meani=
ng
blight by reason of the moods that arose from nervous dyspepsia. They went =
to
Florence, equipped with various introductions and much sound advice from
sympathetic Cambridge friends, and having acquired an ease in Italy there, =
went
on to Siena, Orvieto, and at last Rome. They returned, if I remember rightl=
y,
by Pisa, Genoa, Milan and Paris. Six months or more they had had abroad, and
now Margaret was back in Burslem, in health again and consciously a very ci=
vilised
person.
New ideas were
abroad, it was Maytime and a spring of abundant flowers--daffodils were
particularly good that year--and Mrs. Seddon celebrated her return by givin=
g an
afternoon reception at short notice, with the clear intention of letting ev=
ery
one out into the garden if the weather held.
The Seddons had a=
big
old farmhouse modified to modern ideas of comfort on the road out towards
Misterton, with an orchard that had been rather pleasantly subdued from use=
to
ornament. It had rich blossoming cherry and apple trees. Large patches of g=
rass
full of nodding yellow trumpets had been left amidst the not too precisely =
mown
grass, which was as it were grass path with an occasional lapse into lawn or
glade. And Margaret, hatless, with the fair hair above her thin, delicately
pink face very simply done, came to meet our rather too consciously dressed=
party,--we
had come in the motor four strong, with my aunt in grey silk. Margaret wore=
a
soft flowing flowered blue dress of diaphanous material, all unconnected wi=
th
the fashion and tied with pretty ribbons, like a slenderer, unbountiful
Primavera.
It was one of tho=
se
May days that ape the light and heat of summer, and I remember disconnected=
ly
quite a number of brightly lit figures and groups walking about, and a white
gate between orchard and garden and a large lawn with an oak tree and a red
Georgian house with a verandah and open French windows, through which the t=
ea
drinking had come out upon the moss-edged flagstones even as Mrs. Seddon had
planned.
The party was alm=
ost
entirely feminine except for a little curate with a large head, a good voice
and a radiant manner, who was obviously attracted by Margaret, and two or t=
hree
young husbands still sufficiently addicted to their wives to accompany them.
One of them I recall as a quite romantic figure with abundant blond curly h=
air
on which was poised a grey felt hat encircled by a refined black band. He w=
ore,
moreover, a loose rich shot silk tie of red and purple, a long frock coat, =
grey
trousers and brown shoes, and presently he removed his hat and carried it in
one hand. There were two tennis-playing youths besides myself. There was al=
so
one father with three daughters in anxious control, a father of the old sch=
ool
scarcely half broken in, reluctant, rebellious and consciously and
conscientiously "reet Staffordshire." The daughters were all aler=
t to
suppress the possible plungings, the undesirable humorous impulses of this
almost feral guest. They nipped his very gestures in the bud. The rest of t=
he
people were mainly mothers with daughters--daughters of all ages, and a
scattering of aunts, and there was a tendency to clotting, parties kept
together and regarded parties suspiciously. Mr. Seddon was in hiding, I thi=
nk, all
the time, though not formally absent.
Matters centred u=
pon
the tea in the long room of the French windows, where four trim maids went =
to
and fro busily between the house and the clumps of people seated or standing
before it; and tennis and croquet were intermittently visible and audible
beyond a bank of rockwork rich with the spikes and cups and bells of high
spring.
Mrs. Seddon presi=
ded
at the tea urn, and Margaret partly assisted and partly talked to me and my
cousin Sibyl--Gertrude had found a disused and faded initial and was partne=
ring
him at tennis in a state of gentle revival--while their mother exercised a
divided chaperonage from a seat near Mrs. Seddon. The little curate, stirri=
ng a
partially empty cup of tea, mingled with our party, and preluded, I remembe=
r,
every observation he made by a vigorous resumption of stirring.
We talked of
Cambridge, and Margaret kept us to it. The curate was a Selwyn man and had
taken a pass degree in theology, but Margaret had come to Gaylord's lecture=
rs
in Trinity for a term before her breakdown, and understood these difference=
s.
She had the eagerness of an exile to hear the old familiar names of places =
and
personalities. We capped familiar anecdotes and were enthusiastic about Kin=
gs'
Chapel and the Backs, and the curate, addressing himself more particularly =
to
Sibyl, told a long confused story illustrative of his disposition to reckle=
ss devilry
(of a pure-minded kindly sort) about upsetting two canoes quite needlessly =
on
the way to Grantchester.
I can still see
Margaret as I saw her that afternoon, see her fresh fair face, with the lit=
tle
obliquity of the upper lip, and her brow always slightly knitted, and her
manner as of one breathlessly shy but determined. She had rather open blue
eyes, and she spoke in an even musical voice with the gentlest of stresses =
and
the ghost of a lisp. And it was true, she gathered, that Cambridge still
existed. "I went to Grantchester," she said, "last year, and=
had
tea under the apple-blossom. I didn't think then I should have to come
down." (It was that started the curate upon his anecdote.)
"I've seen a=
lot
of pictures, and learnt a lot about them--at the Pitti and the Brera,--the
Brera is wonderful--wonderful places,--but it isn't like real study," =
she
was saying presently.... "We bought bales of photographs," she sa=
id.
I thought the bal=
es a
little out of keeping.
But fair-haired a=
nd
quite simply and yet graciously and fancifully dressed, talking of art and
beautiful things and a beautiful land, and with so much manifest regret for
learning denied, she seemed a different kind of being altogether from my sm=
art,
hard, high-coloured, black-haired and resolutely hatted cousin; she seemed
translucent beside Gertrude. Even the little twist and droop of her slender
body was a grace to me.
I liked her from =
the
moment I saw her, and set myself to interest and please her as well as I kn=
ew
how.
We recalled a cas=
e of
ragging that had rustled the shrubs of Newnham, and then Chris Robinson's
visit--he had given a talk to Bennett Hall also--and our impression of him.=
"He disappoi=
nted
me, too," said Margaret.
I was moved to te=
ll
Margaret something of my own views in the matter of social progress, and she
listened--oh! with a kind of urged attention, and her brow a little more
knitted, very earnestly. The little curate desisted from the appendices and
refuse heaps and general debris of his story, and made himself look very al=
ert
and intelligent.
"We did a lo=
t of
that when I was up in the eighties," he said. "I'm glad Imperiali=
sm
hasn't swamped you fellows altogether."
Gertrude, looking
bright and confident, came to join our talk from the shrubbery; the initial=
, a
little flushed and evidently in a state of refreshed relationship, came with
her, and a cheerful lady in pink and more particularly distinguished by a p=
ink
bonnet joined our little group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and was
not disposed to play a passive part in the talk.
"Socialism!&=
quot;
she cried, catching the word. "It's well Pa isn't here. He has Fits wh=
en
people talk of socialism. Fits!"
The initial laugh=
ed
in a general kind of way.
The curate said t=
here
was socialism AND socialism, and looked at Margaret to gauge whether he had
been too bold in this utterance. But she was all, he perceived, for
broad-mindness, and he stirred himself (and incidentally his tea) to still =
more
liberality of expression. He said the state of the poor was appalling, simp=
ly
appalling; that there were times when he wanted to shatter the whole system,
"only," he said, turning to me appealingly, "What have we go=
t to
put in its place?"
"The thing t=
hat
exists is always the more evident alternative," I said.
The little curate
looked at it for a moment. "Precisely," he said explosively, and
turned stirring and with his head a little on one side, to hear what Margar=
et
was saying.
Margaret was sayi=
ng,
with a swift blush and an effect of daring, that she had no doubt she was a
socialist.
"And wearing=
a
gold chain!" said Gertrude, "And drinking out of eggshell! I like
that!"
I came to Margare=
t's
rescue. "It doesn't follow that because one's a socialist one ought to
dress in sackcloth and ashes."
The initial colou=
red
deeply, and having secured my attention by prodding me slightly with the wr=
ist
of the hand that held his teacup, cleared his throat and suggested that
"one ought to be consistent."
I perceived we we=
re
embarked upon a discussion of the elements. We began an interesting little
wrangle one of those crude discussions of general ideas that are dear to the
heart of youth. I and Margaret supported one another as socialists, Gertrud=
e and
Sybil and the initial maintained an anti-socialist position, the curate
attempted a cross-bench position with an air of intending to come down upon=
us
presently with a casting vote. He reminded us of a number of useful princip=
les
too often overlooked in argument, that in a big question like this there was
much to be said on both sides, that if every one did his or her duty to eve=
ry one
about them there would be no difficulty with social problems at all, that o=
ver
and above all enactments we needed moral changes in people themselves. My
cousin Gertrude was a difficult controversialist to manage, being unconscio=
us
of inconsistency in statement and absolutely impervious to reply. Her
standpoint was essentially materialistic; she didn't see why she shouldn't =
have
a good time because other people didn't; they would have a good time, she w=
as
sure, if she didn't. She said that if we did give up everything we had to o=
ther
people, they wouldn't very likely know what to do with it. She asked if we =
were
so fond of work-people, why we didn't go and live among them, and expressed=
the
inflexible persuasion that if we HAD socialism, everything would be just the
same again in ten years' time. She also threw upon us the imputation of
ingratitude for a beautiful world by saying that so far as she was concerned
she didn't want to upset everything. She was contented with things as they
were, thank you.
The discussion le=
d in
some way that I don't in the least recall now, and possibly by abrupt
transitions, to a croquet foursome in which Margaret involved the curate
without involving herself, and then stood beside me on the edge of the lawn
while the others played. We watched silently for a moment.
"I HATE that
sort of view," she said suddenly in a confidential undertone, with her
delicate pink flush returning.
"It's want of
imagination," I said.
"To think we=
are
just to enjoy ourselves," she went on; "just to go on dressing and
playing and having meals and spending money!" She seemed to be referri=
ng
not simply to my cousins, but to the whole world of industry and property a=
bout
us. "But what is one to do?" she asked. "I do wish I had not=
had
to come down. It's all so pointless here. There seems to be nothing going
forward, no ideas, no dreams. No one here seems to feel quite what I feel, =
the
sort of need there is for MEANING in things. I hate things without
meaning."
"Don't you
do--local work?"
"I suppose I
shall. I suppose I must find something. Do you think--if one were to attempt
some sort of propaganda?"
"Could
you--?" I began a little doubtfully.
"I suppose I
couldn't," she answered, after a thoughtful moment. "I suppose it
would come to nothing. And yet I feel there is so much to be done for the
world, so much one ought to be doing.... I want to do something for the wor=
ld."
I can see her now=
as
she stood there with her brows nearly frowning, her blue eyes looking before
her, her mouth almost petulant. "One feels that there are so many thin=
gs
going on--out of one's reach," she said.
I went back in the
motor-car with my mind full of her, the quality of delicate discontent, the
suggestion of exile. Even a kind of weakness in her was sympathetic. She to=
ld
tremendously against her background. She was, I say, like a protesting blue
flower upon a cinder heap. It is curious, too, how she connects and mingles
with the furious quarrel I had with my uncle that very evening. That came
absurdly. Indirectly Margaret was responsible. My mind was running on ideas=
she
had revived and questions she had set clamouring, and quite inadvertently i=
n my
attempt to find solutions I talked so as to outrage his profoundest feeling=
s....
7
What a preposterous shindy that was=
!
I sat with him in=
the
smoking-room, propounding what I considered to be the most indisputable and
non-contentious propositions conceivable--until, to my infinite amazement, =
he
exploded and called me a "damned young puppy."
It was seismic.
"Tremendously
interesting time," I said, "just in the beginning of making a
civilisation."
"Ah!" he
said, with an averted face, and nodded, leaning forward over his cigar.
I had not the
remotest thought of annoying him.
"Monstrous
muddle of things we have got," I said, "jumbled streets, ugly pop=
ulation,
ugly factories--"
"You'd do a
sight better if you had to do with it," said my uncle, regarding me
askance.
"Not me. But=
a
world that had a collective plan and knew where it meant to be going would =
do a
sight better, anyhow. We're all swimming in a flood of ill-calculated
chances--"
"You'll be
making out I organised that business down there--by chance--next," sai=
d my
uncle, his voice thick with challenge.
I went on as thou=
gh I
was back in Trinity.
"There's a l=
ot
of chance in the making of all great businesses," I said.
My uncle remarked
that that showed how much I knew about businesses. If chance made businesse=
s,
why was it that he always succeeded and grew while those fools Ackroyd and =
Sons
always took second place? He showed a disposition to tell the glorious hist=
ory
of how once Ackroyd's overshadowed him, and how now he could buy up Ackroyd=
's
three times over. But I wanted to get out what was in my mind.
"Oh!" I
said, "as between man and man and business and business, some of course
get the pull by this quality or that--but it's forces quite outside the
individual case that make the big part of any success under modern conditio=
ns.
YOU never invented pottery, nor any process in pottery that matters a rap in
your works; it wasn't YOUR foresight that joined all England up with railwa=
ys
and made it possible to organise production on an altogether different scal=
e.
You really at the utmost can't take credit for much more than being the sor=
t of
man who happened to fit what happened to be the requirements of the time, a=
nd
who happened to be in a position to take advantage of them--"
It was then my un=
cle
cried out and called me a damned young puppy, and became involved in some
unexpected trouble of his own.
I woke up as it w=
ere
from my analysis of the situation to discover him bent over a splendid
spittoon, cursing incoherently, retching a little, and spitting out the end=
of
his cigar which he had bitten off in his last attempt at self-control, and
withal fully prepared as soon as he had cleared for action to give me just =
all
that he considered to be the contents of his mind upon the condition of min=
e.
Well, why shouldn=
't I
talk my mind to him? He'd never had an outside view of himself for years, a=
nd I
resolved to stand up to him. We went at it hammer and tongs! It became clear
that he supposed me to be a Socialist, a zealous, embittered hater of all
ownership--and also an educated man of the vilest, most pretentiously super=
ior
description. His principal grievance was that I thought I knew everything; =
to
that he recurred again and again....
We had been
maintaining an armed truce with each other since my resolve to go up to
Cambridge, and now we had out all that had accumulated between us. There had
been stupendous accumulations....
The particular th=
ings
we said and did in that bawling encounter matter nothing at all in this sto=
ry.
I can't now estimate how near we came to fisticuffs. It ended with my sayin=
g,
after a pungent reminder of benefits conferred and remembered, that I didn't
want to stay another hour in his house. I went upstairs, in a state of puer=
ile
fury, to pack and go off to the Railway Hotel, while he, with ironical
civility, telephoned for a cab.
"Good
riddance!" shouted my uncle, seeing me off into the night.
On the face of it=
our
row was preposterous, but the underlying reality of our quarrel was the
essential antagonism, it seemed to me, in all human affairs, the antagonism
between ideas and the established method, that is to say, between ideas and=
the
rule of thumb. The world I hate is the rule-of-thumb world, the thing I and=
my
kind of people exist for primarily is to battle with that, to annoy it,
disarrange it, reconstruct it. We question everything, disturb anything that
cannot give a clear justification to our questioning, because we believe in=
herently
that our sense of disorder implies the possibility of a better order. Of co=
urse
we are detestable. My uncle was of that other vaster mass who accept everyt=
hing
for the thing it seems to be, hate enquiry and analysis as a tramp hates
washing, dread and resist change, oppose experiment, despise science. The w=
orld
is our battleground; and all history, all literature that matters, all scie=
nce,
deals with this conflict of the thing that is and the speculative
"if" that will destroy it.
But that is why I=
did
not see Margaret Seddon again for five years.
CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ MAR=
GARET
IN LONDON
1
I was twenty-seven when I met Marga=
ret
again, and the intervening five years had been years of vigorous activity f=
or
me, if not of very remarkable growth. When I saw her again, I could count
myself a grown man. I think, indeed, I counted myself more completely grown
than I was. At any rate, by all ordinary standards, I had "got on"
very well, and my ideas, if they had not changed very greatly, had become m=
uch
more definite and my ambitions clearer and bolder.
I had long since
abandoned my fellowship and come to London. I had published two books that =
had
been talked about, written several articles, and established a regular
relationship with the WEEKLY REVIEW and the EVENING GAZETTE. I was a member=
of
the Eighty Club and learning to adapt the style of the Cambridge Union to
larger uses. The London world had opened out to me very readily. I had
developed a pleasant variety of social connections. I had made the acquaint=
ance
of Mr. Evesham, who had been attracted by my NEW RULER, and who talked abou=
t it
and me, and so did a very great deal to make a way for me into the company =
of
prominent and amusing people. I dined out quite frequently. The glitter and
interest of good London dinner parties became a common experience. I liked =
the
sort of conversation one got at them extremely, the little glow of duologues
burning up into more general discussions, the closing-in of the men after t=
he
going of the women, the sage, substantial masculine gossiping, the later
resumption of effective talk with some pleasant woman, graciously at her be=
st.
I had a wide range of houses; Cambridge had linked me to one or two correla=
ted
sets of artistic and literary people, and my books and Mr. Evesham and open=
ed to
me the big vague world of "society." I wasn't aggressive nor part=
icularly
snobbish nor troublesome, sometimes I talked well, and if I had nothing
interesting to say I said as little as possible, and I had a youthful gravi=
ty
of manner that was liked by hostesses. And the other side of my nature that
first flared through the cover of restraints at Locarno, that too had had
opportunity to develop along the line London renders practicable. I had had=
my
experiences and secrets and adventures among that fringe of ill-mated or
erratic or discredited women the London world possesses. The thing had long=
ago
ceased to be a matter of magic or mystery, and had become a question of
appetites and excitement, and among other things the excitement of not being
found out.
I write rather
doubtfully of my growing during this period. Indeed I find it hard to judge
whether I can say that I grew at all in any real sense of the word, between
three and twenty and twenty-seven. It seems to me now to have been rather a
phase of realisation and clarification. All the broad lines of my thought w=
ere
laid down, I am sure, by the date of my Locarno adventure, but in those five
years I discussed things over and over again with myself and others, filled=
out
with concrete fact forms I had at first apprehended sketchily and
conversationally, measured my powers against my ideals and the forces in the
world about me. It was evident that many men no better than myself and with=
no greater
advantages than mine had raised themselves to influential and even decisive
positions in the worlds of politics and thought. I was gathering the confid=
ence
and knowledge necessary to attack the world in the large manner; I found I
could write, and that people would let me write if I chose, as one having
authority and not as the scribes. Socially and politically and intellectual=
ly I
knew myself for an honest man, and that quite without any deliberation on my
part this showed and made things easy for me. People trusted my good faith =
from
the beginning--for all that I came from nowhere and had no better position =
than
any adventurer.
But the growth
process was arrested, I was nothing bigger at twenty-seven than at twenty-t=
wo,
however much saner and stronger, and any one looking closely into my mind
during that period might well have imagined growth finished altogether. It =
is
particularly evident to me now that I came no nearer to any understanding of
women during that time. That Locarno affair was infinitely more to me than I
had supposed. It ended something--nipped something in the bud perhaps--took=
me
at a stride from a vague, fine, ignorant, closed world of emotion to intrig=
ue and
a perfectly definite and limited sensuality. It ended my youth, and for a t=
ime
it prevented my manhood. I had never yet even peeped at the sweetest,
profoundest thing in the world, the heart and meaning of a girl, or dreamt =
with
any quality of reality of a wife or any such thing as a friend among womanh=
ood.
My vague anticipation of such things in life had vanished altogether. I tur=
ned
away from their possibility. It seemed to me I knew what had to be known ab=
out
womankind. I wanted to work hard, to get on to a position in which I could
develop and forward my constructive projects. Women, I thought, had nothing=
to
do with that. It seemed clear I could not marry for some years; I was
attractive to certain types of women, I had vanity enough to give me an
agreeable confidence in love-making, and I went about seeking a convenient =
mistress
quite deliberately, some one who should serve my purpose and say in the end,
like that kindly first mistress of mine, "I've done you no harm,"=
and
so release me. It seemed the only wise way of disposing of urgencies that m=
ight
otherwise entangle and wreck the career I was intent upon.
I don't apologise
for, or defend my mental and moral phases. So it was I appraised life and
prepared to take it, and so it is a thousand ambitious men see it to-day...=
.
For the rest these
five years were a period of definition. My political conceptions were perfe=
ctly
plain and honest. I had one constant desire ruling my thoughts. I meant to
leave England and the empire better ordered than I found it, to organise and
discipline, to build up a constructive and controlling State out of my worl=
d's
confusions. We had, I saw, to suffuse education with public intention, to
develop a new better-living generation with a collectivist habit of thought=
, to
link now chaotic activities in every human affair, and particularly to catc=
h that
escaped, world-making, world-ruining, dangerous thing, industrial and finan=
cial
enterprise, and bring it back to the service of the general good. I had then
the precise image that still serves me as a symbol for all I wish to bring
about, the image of an engineer building a lock in a swelling torrent--with
water pressure as his only source of power. My thoughts and acts were
habitually turned to that enterprise; it gave shape and direction to all my
life. The problem that most engaged my mind during those years was the
practical and personal problem of just where to apply myself to serve this
almost innate purpose. How was I, a child of this confusion, struggling upw=
ard
through the confusion, to take hold of things? Somewhere between politics a=
nd literature
my grip must needs be found, but where? Always I seem to have been looking =
for
that in those opening years, and disregarding everything else to discover i=
t.
2
The Baileys, under whose auspices I=
met
Margaret again, were in the sharpest contrast with the narrow industrialism=
of
the Staffordshire world. They were indeed at the other extreme of the scale,
two active self-centred people, excessively devoted to the public service. =
It
was natural I should gravitate to them, for they seemed to stand for the ma=
turer,
more disciplined, better informed expression of all I was then urgent to
attempt to do. The bulk of their friends were politicians or public officia=
ls,
they described themselves as publicists--a vague yet sufficiently significa=
nt
term. They lived and worked in a hard little house in Chambers Street,
Westminster, and made a centre for quite an astonishing amount of political=
and
social activity.
Willersley took me
there one evening. The place was almost pretentiously matter-of-fact and
unassuming. The narrow passage-hall, papered with some ancient yellowish pa=
per,
grained to imitate wood, was choked with hats and cloaks and an occasional
feminine wrap. Motioned rather than announced by a tall Scotch servant woma=
n,
the only domestic I ever remember seeing there, we made our way up a narrow
staircase past the open door of a small study packed with blue-books, to di=
scover
Altiora Bailey receiving before the fireplace in her drawing-room. She was =
a tall
commanding figure, splendid but a little untidy in black silk and red beads,
with dark eyes that had no depths, with a clear hard voice that had an almo=
st
visible prominence, aquiline features and straight black hair that was apt =
to
get astray, that was now astray like the head feathers of an eagle in a gal=
e.
She stood with her hands behind her back, and talked in a high tenor of a
projected Town Planning Bill with Blupp, who was practically in those days =
the
secretary of the local Government Board. A very short broad man with thick =
ears
and fat white hands writhing intertwined behind him, stood with his back to=
us,
eager to bark interruptions into Altiora's discourse. A slender girl in pal=
e blue,
manifestly a young political wife, stood with one foot on the fender listen=
ing
with an expression of entirely puzzled propitiation. A tall sandy-bearded
bishop with the expression of a man in a trance completed this central grou=
p.
The room was one =
of
those long apartments once divided by folding doors, and reaching from back=
to
front, that are common upon the first floors of London houses. Its walls we=
re
hung with two or three indifferent water colours, there was scarcely any fu=
rniture
but a sofa or so and a chair, and the floor, severely carpeted with matting,
was crowded with a curious medley of people, men predominating. Several wer=
e in
evening dress, but most had the morning garb of the politician; the women w=
ere either
severely rational or radiantly magnificent. Willersley pointed out to me the
wife of the Secretary of State for War, and I recognised the Duchess of Cly=
nes,
who at that time cultivated intellectuality. I looked round, identifying a =
face
here or there, and stepping back trod on some one's toe, and turned to find=
it
belonged to the Right Hon. G. B. Mottisham, dear to the PUNCH caricaturists=
. He
received my apology with that intentional charm that is one of his most
delightful traits, and resumed his discussion. Beside him was Esmeer of
Trinity, whom I had not seen since my Cambridge days....
Willersley found =
an
ex-member of the School Board for whom he had affinities, and left me to
exchange experiences and comments upon the company with Esmeer. Esmeer was
still a don; but he was nibbling, he said, at certain negotiations with the
TIMES that might bring him down to London. He wanted to come to London.
"We peep at things from Cambridge," he said.
"This sort of
thing," I said, "makes London necessary. It's the oddest gatherin=
g."
"Every one c=
omes
here," said Esmeer. "Mostly we hate them like poison--jealousy--a=
nd
little irritations--Altiora can be a horror at times--but we HAVE to
come."
"Things are
being done?"
"Oh!--no dou=
bt
of it. It's one of the parts of the British machinery--that doesn't show....
But nobody else could do it.
"Two
people," said Esmeer, "who've planned to be a power--in an origin=
al way.
And by Jove! they've done it!"
I did not for some
time pick out Oscar Bailey, and then Esmeer showed him to me in elaborately
confidential talk in a corner with a distinguished-looking stranger wearing=
a
ribbon. Oscar had none of the fine appearance of his wife; he was a short
sturdy figure with a rounded protruding abdomen and a curious broad, flatte=
ned,
clean-shaven face that seemed nearly all forehead. He was of Anglo-Hungarian
extraction, and I have always fancied something Mongolian in his type. He
peered up with reddish swollen-looking eyes over gilt-edged glasses that we=
re divided
horizontally into portions of different refractive power, and he talking in=
an
ingratiating undertone, with busy thin lips, an eager lisp and nervous
movements of the hand.
People say that
thirty years before at Oxford he was almost exactly the same eager, clever
little man he was when I first met him. He had come up to Balliol bristling
with extraordinary degrees and prizes captured in provincial and Irish and
Scotch universities--and had made a name for himself as the most formidable
dealer in exact fact the rhetoricians of the Union had ever had to encounte=
r.
From Oxford he had gone on to a position in the Higher Division of the Civil
Service, I think in the War Office, and had speedily made a place for himse=
lf
as a political journalist. He was a particularly neat controversialist, and
very full of political and sociological ideas. He had a quite astounding me=
mory
for facts and a mastery of detailed analysis, and the time afforded scope f=
or
these gifts. The later eighties were full of politico-social discussion, an=
d he
became a prominent name upon the contents list of the NINETEENTH CENTURY, t=
he
FORTNIGHTLY and CONTEMPORARY chiefly as a half sympathetic but frequently v=
ery
damaging critic of the socialism of that period. He won the immense respect=
of
every one specially interested in social and political questions, he soon
achieved the limited distinction that is awarded such capacity, and at that=
I
think he would have remained for the rest of his life if he had not encount=
ered
Altiora.
But Altiora Macvi=
tie
was an altogether exceptional woman, an extraordinary mixture of qualities,=
the
one woman in the world who could make something more out of Bailey than tha=
t.
She had much of the vigour and handsomeness of a slender impudent young man,
and an unscrupulousness altogether feminine. She was one of those women who=
are
waiting in--what is the word?--muliebrity. She had courage and initiative a=
nd a
philosophical way of handling questions, and she could be bored by regular =
work
like a man. She was entirely unfitted for her sex's sphere. She was neither
uncertain, coy nor hard to please, and altogether too stimulating and
aggressive for any gentleman's hours of ease. Her cookery would have been a=
bout
as sketchy as her handwriting, which was generally quite illegible, and she
would have made, I feel sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't imagine=
she
was an inelegant or unbeautiful woman, and she is inconceivable to me in hi=
gh
collars or any sort of masculine garment. But her soul was bony, and at the
base of her was a vanity gaunt and greedy! When she wasn't in a state of pe=
rsonal
untidiness that was partly a protest against the waste of hours exacted by =
the
toilet and partly a natural disinclination, she had a gypsy splendour of bl=
ack
and red and silver all her own. And somewhen in the early nineties she met =
and
married Bailey.
I know very little
about her early years. She was the only daughter of Sir Deighton Macvitie, =
who
applied the iodoform process to cotton, and only his subsequent unfortunate
attempts to become a Cotton King prevented her being a very rich woman. As =
it
was she had a tolerable independence. She came into prominence as one of the
more able of the little shoal of young women who were led into
politico-philanthropic activities by the influence of the earlier novels of
Mrs. Humphry Ward--the Marcella crop. She went "slumming" with
distinguished vigour, which was quite usual in those days--and returned from
her experiences as an amateur flower girl with clear and original views abo=
ut
the problem--which is and always had been unusual. She had not married, I s=
uppose
because her standards were high, and men are cowards and with an instinctive
appetite for muliebrity. She had kept house for her father by speaking
occasionally to the housekeeper, butler and cook her mother had left her, a=
nd
gathering the most interesting dinner parties she could, and had married off
four orphan nieces in a harsh and successful manner. After her father's sma=
sh
and death she came out as a writer upon social questions and a scathing cri=
tic
of the Charity Organisation Society, and she was three and thirty and a lit=
tle
at loose ends when she met Oscar Bailey, so to speak, in the CONTEMPORARY
REVIEW. The lurking woman in her nature was fascinated by the ease and
precision with which the little man rolled over all sorts of important and =
authoritative
people, she was the first to discover a sort of imaginative bigness in his
still growing mind, the forehead perhaps carried him off physically, and she
took occasion to meet and subjugate him, and, so soon as he had sufficiently
recovered from his abject humility and a certain panic at her attentions, m=
arry
him.
This had opened a=
new
phase in the lives of Bailey and herself. The two supplemented each other t=
o an
extraordinary extent. Their subsequent career was, I think, almost entirely=
her
invention. She was aggressive, imaginative, and had a great capacity for id=
eas,
while he was almost destitute of initiative, and could do nothing with ideas
except remember and discuss them. She was, if not exact, at least indolent,
with a strong disposition to save energy by sketching--even her handwriting=
showed
that--while he was inexhaustibly industrious with a relentless invariable
calligraphy that grew larger and clearer as the years passed by. She had a
considerable power of charming; she could be just as nice to people--and
incidentally just as nasty--as she wanted to be. He was always just the sam=
e, a
little confidential and SOTTO VOCE, artlessly rude and egoistic in an
undignified way. She had considerable social experience, good social
connections, and considerable social ambition, while he had none of these
things. She saw in a flash her opportunity to redeem his defects, use his
powers, and do large, novel, rather startling things. She ran him. Her
marriage, which shocked her friends and relations beyond measure--for a time
they would only speak of Bailey as "that gnome"--was a stroke of
genius, and forthwith they proceeded to make themselves the most formidable=
and
distinguished couple conceivable. P. B. P., she boasted, was engraved inside
their wedding rings, Pro Bono Publico, and she meant it to be no idle threa=
t.
She had discovered very early that the last thing influential people will d=
o is
to work. Everything in their lives tends to make them dependent upon a supp=
ly
of confidently administered detail. Their business is with the window and n=
ot
the stock behind, and in the end they are dependent upon the stock behind f=
or
what goes into the window. She linked with that the fact that Bailey had a =
mind
as orderly as a museum, and an invincible power over detail. She saw that if
two people took the necessary pains to know the facts of government and
administration with precision, to gather together knowledge that was disper=
sed
and confused, to be able to say precisely what had to be done and what avoi=
ded
in this eventuality or that, they would necessarily become a centre of
reference for all sorts of legislative proposals and political expedients, =
and
she went unhesitatingly upon that.
Bailey, under her
vigorous direction, threw up his post in the Civil Service and abandoned
sporadic controversies, and they devoted themselves to the elaboration and
realisation of this centre of public information she had conceived as their
role. They set out to study the methods and organisation and realities of
government in the most elaborate manner. They did the work as no one had ev=
er
hitherto dreamt of doing it. They planned the research on a thoroughly
satisfying scale, and arranged their lives almost entirely for it. They took
that house in Chambers Street and furnished it with severe economy, they
discovered that Scotch domestic who is destined to be the guardian and tyra=
nt
of their declining years, and they set to work. Their first book, "The=
Permanent
Official," fills three plump volumes, and took them and their two
secretaries upwards of four years to do. It is an amazingly good book, an
enduring achievement. In a hundred directions the history and the
administrative treatment of the public service was clarified for all time..=
..
They worked regul=
arly
every morning from nine to twelve, they lunched lightly but severely, in the
afternoon they "took exercise" or Bailey attended meetings of the
London School Board, on which he served, he said, for the purposes of study=
--he
also became a railway director for the same end. In the late afternoon Alti=
ora
was at home to various callers, and in the evening came dinner or a recepti=
on
or both.
Her dinners and
gatherings were a very important feature in their scheme. She got together =
all
sorts of interesting people in or about the public service, she mixed the
obscurely efficient with the ill-instructed famous and the rudderless rich,=
got
together in one room more of the factors in our strange jumble of a public =
life
than had ever met easily before. She fed them with a shameless austerity th=
at
kept the conversation brilliant, on a soup, a plain fish, and mutton or boi=
led fowl
and milk pudding, with nothing to drink but whisky and soda, and hot and co=
ld
water, and milk and lemonade. Everybody was soon very glad indeed to come to
that. She boasted how little her housekeeping cost her, and sought constant=
ly
for fresh economies that would enable her, she said, to sustain an addition=
al
private secretary. Secretaries were the Baileys' one extravagance, they lov=
ed
to think of searches going on in the British Museum, and letters being clea=
red
up and precis made overhead, while they sat in the little study and worked
together, Bailey with a clockwork industry, and Altiora in splendid flashes
between intervals of cigarettes and meditation. "All efficient public
careers," said Altiora, "consist in the proper direction of
secretaries."
"If everythi=
ng
goes well I shall have another secretary next year," Altiora told me.
"I wish I could refuse people dinner napkins. Imagine what it means in
washing! I dare most things.... But as it is, they stand a lot of hardship
here."
"There's
something of the miser in both these people," said Esmeer, and the thi=
ng
was perfectly true. For, after all, the miser is nothing more than a man who
either through want of imagination or want of suggestion misapplies to a ba=
se
use a natural power of concentration upon one end. The concentration itself=
is
neither good nor evil, but a power that can be used in either way. And the =
Baileys
gathered and reinvested usuriously not money, but knowledge of the utmost v=
alue
in human affairs. They produced an effect of having found
themselves--completely. One envied them at times extraordinarily. I was
attracted, I was dazzled--and at the same time there was something about
Bailey's big wrinkled forehead, his lisping broad mouth, the gestures of his
hands and an uncivil preoccupation I could not endure....
3
Their effect upon me was from the o=
utset
very considerable.
Both of them foun=
d occasion
on that first visit of mine to talk to me about my published writings and
particularly about my then just published book THE NEW RULER, which had
interested them very much. It fell in indeed so closely with their own way =
of
thinking that I doubt if they ever understood how independently I had arriv=
ed
at my conclusions. It was their weakness to claim excessively. That irritat=
ion,
however, came later. We discovered each other immensely; for a time it prod=
uced
a tremendous sense of kindred and co-operation.
Altiora, I rememb=
er,
maintained that there existed a great army of such constructive-minded peop=
le
as ourselves--as yet undiscovered by one another.
"It's like
boring a tunnel through a mountain," said Oscar, "and presently
hearing the tapping of the workers from the other end."
"If you didn=
't
know of them beforehand," I said, "it might be a rather badly joi=
ned
tunnel."
"Exactly,&qu=
ot;
said Altiora with a high note, "and that's why we all want to find out
each other...."
They didn't talk =
like
that on our first encounter, but they urged me to lunch with them next day,=
and
then it was we went into things. A woman Factory Inspector and the Educatio=
nal
Minister for New Banksland and his wife were also there, but I don't rememb=
er
they made any contribution to the conversation. The Baileys saw to that. Th=
ey
kept on at me in an urgent litigious way.
"We have read
your book," each began--as though it had been a joint function. "=
And
we consider--"
"Yes," I
protested, "I think--"
That was a secondary matter.
"They did not
consider," said Altiora, raising her voice and going right over me,
"that I had allowed sufficiently for the inevitable development of an
official administrative class in the modern state."
"Nor of its
importance," echoed Oscar.
That, they explai=
ned
in a sort of chorus, was the cardinal idea of their lives, what they were up
to, what they stood for. "We want to suggest to you," they said--=
and
I found this was a stock opening of theirs--"that from the mere
necessities of convenience elected bodies MUST avail themselves more and mo=
re
of the services of expert officials. We have that very much in mind. The mo=
re
complicated and technical affairs become, the less confidence will the elec=
ted
official have in himself. We want to suggest that these expert officials mu=
st
necessarily develop into a new class and a very powerful class in the
community. We want to organise that. It may be THE power of the future. They
will necessarily have to have very much of a common training. We consider
ourselves as amateur unpaid precursors of such a class."...
The vision they
displayed for my consideration as the aim of public-spirited endeavour, see=
med
like a harder, narrower, more specialised version of the idea of a trained =
and
disciplined state that Willersley and I had worked out in the Alps. They wa=
nted
things more organised, more correlated with government and a collective
purpose, just as we did, but they saw it not in terms of a growing collecti=
ve understanding,
but in terms of functionaries, legislative change, and methods of
administration....
It wasn't clear at
first how we differed. The Baileys were very anxious to win me to co-operat=
ion,
and I was quite prepared at first to identify their distinctive expressions
with phrases of my own, and so we came very readily into an alliance that w=
as
to last some years, and break at last very painfully. Altiora manifestly li=
ked
me, I was soon discussing with her the perplexity I found in placing myself
efficiently in the world, the problem of how to take hold of things that
occupied my thoughts, and she was sketching out careers for my consideratio=
n,
very much as an architect on his first visit sketches houses, considers req=
uirements,
and puts before you this example and that of the more or less similar thing
already done....
4
It is easy to see how much in common
there was between the Baileys and me, and how natural it was that I should
become a constant visitor at their house and an ally of theirs in many
enterprises. It is not nearly so easy to define the profound antagonism of
spirit that also held between us. There was a difference in texture, a
difference in quality. How can I express it? The shapes of our thoughts were
the same, but the substance quite different. It was as if they had made in
china or cast iron what I had made in transparent living matter. (The
comparison is manifestly from my point of view.) Certain things never seeme=
d to
show through their ideas that were visible, refracted perhaps and distorted=
, but
visible always through mine.
I thought for a t=
ime
the essential difference lay in our relation to beauty. With me beauty is q=
uite
primary in life; I like truth, order and goodness, wholly because they are
beautiful or lead straight to beautiful consequences. The Baileys either ha=
dn't
got that or they didn't see it. They seemed at times to prefer things harsh=
and
ugly. That puzzled me extremely. The esthetic quality of many of their prop=
osals,
the "manners" of their work, so to speak, were at times as dreadf=
ul
as--well, War Office barrack architecture. A caricature by its exaggerated
statements will sometimes serve to point a truth by antagonising falsity and
falsity. I remember talking to a prominent museum official in need of more
public funds for the work he had in hand. I mentioned the possibility of
enlisting Bailey's influence.
"Oh, we don't
want Philistines like that infernal Bottle-Imp running us," he said
hastily, and would hear of no concerted action for the end he had in view.
"I'd rather not have the extension.
"You see,&qu=
ot;
he went on to explain, "Bailey's wanting in the essentials."
"What
essentials?" said I.
"Oh! he'd be
like a nasty oily efficient little machine for some merely subordinate
necessity among all my delicate stuff. He'd do all we wanted no doubt in the
way of money and powers--and he'd do it wrong and mess the place for ever.
Hands all black, you know. He's just a means. Just a very aggressive and
unmanageable means. This isn't a plumber's job...."
I stuck to my
argument.
"I don't LIKE
him," said the official conclusively, and it seemed to me at the time =
he
was just blind prejudice speaking....
I came nearer the
truth of the matter as I came to realise that our philosophies differed
profoundly. That isn't a very curable difference,--once people have grown u=
p.
Theirs was a philosophy devoid of FINESSE. Temperamentally the Baileys were
specialised, concentrated, accurate, while I am urged either by some Inner
force or some entirely assimilated influence in my training, always to round
off and shadow my outlines. I hate them hard. I would sacrifice detail to
modelling always, and the Baileys, it seemed to me, loved a world as flat a=
nd metallic
as Sidney Cooper's cows. If they had the universe in hand I know they would
take down all the trees and put up stamped tin green shades and sunlight
accumulators. Altiora thought trees hopelessly irregular and sea cliffs a g=
reat
mistake.... I got things clearer as time went on. Though it was an Hegelian
mess of which I had partaken at Codger's table by way of a philosophical
training, my sympathies have always been Pragmatist. I belong almost by nat=
ure
to that school of Pragmatism that, following the medieval Nominalists, bases
itself upon a denial of the reality of classes, and of the validity of gene=
ral laws.
The Baileys classified everything. They were, in the scholastic sense--whic=
h so
oddly contradicts the modern use of the word "Realists." They
believed classes were REAL and independent of their individuals. This is the
common habit of all so-called educated people who have no metaphysical apti=
tude
and no metaphysical training. It leads them to a progressive misunderstandi=
ng
of the world. It was a favourite trick of Altiora's to speak of everybody a=
s a
"type"; she saw men as samples moving; her dining-room became a
chamber of representatives. It gave a tremendously scientific air to many of
their generalisations, using "scientific" in its nineteenth-centu=
ry
uncritical Herbert Spencer sense, an air that only began to disappear when =
you
thought them over again in terms of actuality and the people one knew....
At the Baileys' o=
ne
always seemed to be getting one's hands on the very strings that guided the
world. You heard legislation projected to affect this "type" and
that; statistics marched by you with sin and shame and injustice and misery
reduced to quite manageable percentages, you found men who were to frame or
amend bills in grave and intimate exchange with Bailey's omniscience, you h=
eard
Altiora canvassing approaching resignations and possible appointments that
might make or mar a revolution in administrative methods, and doing it with=
a
vigorous directness that manifestly swayed the decision; and you felt you w=
ere in
a sort of signal box with levers all about you, and the world outside there,
albeit a little dark and mysterious beyond the window, running on its lines=
in
ready obedience to these unhesitating lights, true and steady to trim termi=
ni.
And then with all
this administrative fizzle, this pseudo-scientific administrative chatter,
dying away in your head, out you went into the limitless grimy chaos of Lon=
don
streets and squares, roads and avenues lined with teeming houses, each larg=
er
than the Chambers Street house and at least equally alive, you saw the chao=
tic
clamour of hoardings, the jumble of traffic, the coming and going of myster=
ious
myriads, you heard the rumble of traffic like the noise of a torrent; a vag=
ue incessant
murmur of cries and voices, wanton crimes and accidents bawled at you from =
the
placards; imperative unaccountable fashions swaggered triumphant in dazzling
windows of the shops; and you found yourself swaying back to the opposite
conviction that the huge formless spirit of the world it was that held the
strings and danced the puppets on the Bailey stage....
Under the lamps y=
ou
were jostled by people like my Staffordshire uncle out for a spree, you saw=
shy
youths conversing with prostitutes, you passed young lovers pairing with an
entire disregard of the social suitability of the "types" they mi=
ght
blend or create, you saw men leaning drunken against lamp-posts whom you kn=
ew
for the "type" that will charge with fixed bayonets into the face=
of
death, and you found yourself unable to imagine little Bailey achieving eit=
her
drunkenness or the careless defiance of annihilation. You realised that qui=
te a
lot of types were underrepresented in Chambers Street, that feral and obscu=
re and
altogether monstrous forces must be at work, as yet altogether unassimilate=
d by
those neat administrative reorganisations.
5
Altiora, I remember, preluded Marga=
ret's
reappearance by announcing her as a "new type."
I was accustomed =
to
go early to the Baileys' dinners in those days, for a preliminary gossip wi=
th
Altiora in front of her drawing-room fire. One got her alone, and that early
arrival was a little sign of appreciation she valued. She had every woman's
need of followers and servants.
"I'm going to
send you down to-night," she said, "with a very interesting type
indeed--one of the new generation of serious gals. Middle-class origin--and
quite well off. Rich in fact. Her step-father was a solicitor and something=
of
an ENTREPRENEUR towards the end, I fancy--in the Black Country. There was a
little brother died, and she's lost her mother quite recently. Quite on her
own, so to speak. She's never been out into society very much, and doesn't =
seem
really very anxious to go.... Not exactly an intellectual person, you know,=
but
quiet, and great force of character. Came up to London on her own and came =
to
us--someone had told her we were the sort of people to advise her--to ask w=
hat
to do. I'm sure she'll interest you."
"What CAN pe=
ople
of that sort do?" I asked. "Is she capable of investigation?"=
;
Altiora compressed
her lips and shook her head. She always did shake her head when you asked t=
hat
of anyone.
"Of course w=
hat
she ought to do," said Altiora, with her silk dress pulled back from h=
er
knee before the fire, and with a lift of her voice towards a chuckle at her
daring way of putting things, "is to marry a member of Parliament and =
see
he does his work.... Perhaps she will. It's a very exceptional gal who can =
do
anything by herself--quite exceptional. The more serious they are--without
being exceptional--the more we want them to marry."
Her exposition was
truncated by the entry of the type in question.
"Well!"
cried Altiora turning, and with a high note of welcome, "HERE you
are!"
Margaret had gain=
ed
in dignity and prettiness by the lapse of five years, and she was now very
beautifully and richly and simply dressed. Her fair hair had been done in s=
ome
way that made it seem softer and more abundant than it was in my memory, an=
d a
gleam of purple velvet-set diamonds showed amidst its mist of little golden=
and
brown lines. Her dress was of white and violet, the last trace of mourning =
for
her mother, and confessed the gracious droop of her tall and slender body. =
She
did not suggest Staffordshire at all, and I was puzzled for a moment to thi=
nk
where I had met her. Her sweetly shaped mouth with the slight obliquity of =
the
lip and the little kink in her brow were extraordinarily familiar to me. But
she had either been prepared by Altiora or she remembered my name. "We
met," she said, "while my step-father was alive--at Misterton. You
came to see us"; and instantly I recalled the sunshine between the app=
le
blossom and a slender pale blue girlish shape among the daffodils, like
something that had sprung from a bulb itself. I recalled at once that I had
found her very interesting, though I did not clearly remember how it was she
had interested me.
Other guests
arrived--it was one of Altiora's boldly blended mixtures of people with ide=
as
and people with influence or money who might perhaps be expected to resonat=
e to
them. Bailey came down late with an air of hurry, and was introduced to
Margaret and said absolutely nothing to her--there being no information eit=
her
to receive or impart and nothing to do--but stood snatching his left cheek
until I rescued him and her, and left him free to congratulate the new Lady
Snape on her husband's K. C. B.
I took Margaret d=
own.
We achieved no feats of mutual expression, except that it was abundantly cl=
ear
we were both very pleased and interested to meet again, and that we had both
kept memories of each other. We made that Misterton tea-party and the
subsequent marriages of my cousins and the world of Burslem generally, matt=
er
for quite an agreeable conversation until at last Altiora, following her
invariable custom, called me by name imperatively out of our duologue.
"Mr. Remington," she said, "we want your opinion--" in =
her
entirely characteristic effort to get all the threads of conversation into =
her
own hands for the climax that always wound up her dinners. How the other wo=
men
used to hate those concluding raids of hers! I forget most of the other peo=
ple
at that dinner, nor can I recall what the crowning rally was about. It didn=
't
in any way join on to my impression of Margaret.
In the drawing-ro=
om
of the matting floor I rejoined her, with Altiora's manifest connivance, an=
d in
the interval I had been thinking of our former meeting.
"Do you find=
London,"
I asked, "give you more opportunity for doing things and learning thin=
gs
than Burslem?"
She showed at once
she appreciated my allusion to her former confidences. "I was very
discontented then," she said and paused. "I've really only been in
London for a few months. It's so different. In Burslem, life seems all busi=
ness
and getting--without any reason. One went on and it didn't seem to mean
anything. At least anything that mattered.... London seems to be so full of
meanings--all mixed up together."
She knitted her b=
rows
over her words and smiled appealingly at the end as if for consideration for
her inadequate expression, appealingly and almost humorously.
I looked
understandingly at her. "We have all," I agreed, "to come to=
London."
"One sees so=
much
distress," she added, as if she felt she had completely omitted someth=
ing,
and needed a codicil.
"What are you
doing in London?"
"I'm thinkin=
g of
studying. Some social question. I thought perhaps I might go and study soci=
al
conditions as Mrs. Bailey did, go perhaps as a work-girl or see the reality=
of
living in, but Mrs. Bailey thought perhaps it wasn't quite my work."
"Are you
studying?"
"I'm going t=
o a
good many lectures, and perhaps I shall take up a regular course at the
Westminster School of Politics and Sociology. But Mrs. Bailey doesn't seem =
to
believe very much in that either."
Her faintly whims=
ical
smile returned. "I seem rather indefinite," she apologised, "=
;but
one does not want to get entangled in things one can't do. One--one has so =
many
advantages, one's life seems to be such a trust and such a
responsibility--"
She stopped.
"A man gets
driven into work," I said.
"It must be
splendid to be Mrs. Bailey," she replied with a glance of envious
admiration across the room.
"SHE has no =
doubts,
anyhow," I remarked.
"She HAD,&qu=
ot;
said Margaret with the pride of one who has received great confidences.
6
"You've met before?" said
Altiora, a day or so later.
I explained when.=
"You find her
interesting?"
I saw in a flash =
that
Altiora meant to marry me to Margaret.
Her intention bec=
ame
much clearer as the year developed. Altiora was systematic even in matters =
that
evade system. I was to marry Margaret, and freed from the need of making an
income I was to come into politics--as an exponent of Baileyism. She put it
down with the other excellent and advantageous things that should occupy her
summer holiday. It was her pride and glory to put things down and plan them=
out
in detail beforehand, and I'm not quite sure that she did not even mark off=
the
day upon which the engagement was to be declared. If she did, I disappointed
her. We didn't come to an engagement, in spite of the broadest hints and the
glaring obviousness of everything, that summer.
Every summer the
Baileys went out of London to some house they hired or borrowed, leaving th=
eir
secretaries toiling behind, and they went on working hard in the mornings a=
nd
evenings and taking exercise in the open air in the afternoon. They cycled
assiduously and went for long walks at a trot, and raided and studied (and
incidentally explained themselves to) any social "types" that liv=
ed
in the neighbourhood. One invaded type, resentful under research, described
them with a dreadful aptness as Donna Quixote and Sancho Panza--and himself=
as
a harmless windmill, hurting no one and signifying nothing. She did rather =
tilt
at things. This particular summer they were at a pleasant farmhouse in level
country near Pangbourne, belonging to the Hon. Wilfrid Winchester, and they
asked me to come down to rooms in the neighbourhood--Altiora took them for a
month for me in August--and board with them upon extremely reasonable terms;
and when I got there I found Margaret sitting in a hammock at Altiora's fee=
t.
Lots of people, I gathered, were coming and going in the neighbourhood, the
Ponts were in a villa on the river, and the Rickhams' houseboat was to moor=
for
some days; but these irruptions did not impede a great deal of duologue bet=
ween
Margaret and myself.
Altiora was effic=
ient
rather than artistic in her match-making. She sent us off for long walks
together--Margaret was a fairly good walker--she exhumed some defective cro=
quet
things and incited us to croquet, not understanding that detestable game is=
the
worst stimulant for lovers in the world. And Margaret and I were always get=
ting
left about, and finding ourselves for odd half-hours in the kitchen-garden =
with
nothing to do except talk, or we were told with a wave of the hand to run a=
way and
amuse each other.
Altiora even trie=
d a
picnic in canoes, knowing from fiction rather than imagination or experience
the conclusive nature of such excursions. But there she fumbled at the last
moment, and elected at the river's brink to share a canoe with me. Bailey
showed so much zeal and so little skill--his hat fell off and he became
miraculously nothing but paddle-clutching hands and a vast wrinkled brow--t=
hat
at last he had to be paddled ignominiously by Margaret, while Altiora, afte=
r a
phase of rigid discretion, as nearly as possible drowned herself--and me no
doubt into the bargain--with a sudden lateral gesture of the arm to emphasi=
se the
high note with which she dismissed the efficiency of the Charity Organisati=
on
Society. We shipped about an inch of water and sat in it for the rest of the
time, an inconvenience she disregarded heroically. We had difficulties in
landing Oscar from his frail craft upon the ait of our feasting,--he didn't
balance sideways and was much alarmed, and afterwards, as Margaret had a pa=
in
in her back, I took him in my canoe, let him hide his shame with an ineffec=
tual
but not positively harmful paddle, and towed the other by means of the join=
ed
painters. Still it was the fault of the inadequate information supplied in =
the
books and not of Altiora that that was not the date of my betrothal.
I find it not a
little difficult to state what kept me back from proposing marriage to Marg=
aret
that summer, and what urged me forward at last to marry her. It is so much
easier to remember one's resolutions than to remember the moods and suggest=
ions
that produced them.
Marrying and gett=
ing
married was, I think, a pretty simple affair to Altiora; it was something t=
hat
happened to the adolescent and unmarried when you threw them together under=
the
circumstances of health, warmth and leisure. It happened with the kindly and
approving smiles of the more experienced elders who had organised these
proximities. The young people married, settled down, children ensued, and
father and mother turned their minds, now decently and properly disillusion=
ed,
to other things. That to Altiora was the normal sexual life, and she believ=
ed
it to be the quality of the great bulk of the life about her.
One of the great
barriers to human understanding is the wide temperamental difference one fi=
nds
in the values of things relating to sex. It is the issue upon which people =
most
need training in charity and imaginative sympathy. Here are no universal
standards at all, and indeed for no single man nor woman does there seem to=
be
any fixed standard, so much do the accidents of circumstances and one's
physical phases affect one's interpretations. There is nothing in the whole
range of sexual fact that may not seem supremely beautiful or humanly jolly=
or magnificently
wicked or disgusting or trivial or utterly insignificant, according to the =
eye
that sees or the mood that colours. Here is something that may fill the ski=
es
and every waking hour or be almost completely banished from a life. It may =
be
everything on Monday and less than nothing on Saturday. And we make our laws
and rules as though in these matters all men and women were commensurable o=
ne
with another, with an equal steadfast passion and an equal constant duty...=
.
I don't know what
dreams Altiora may have had in her schoolroom days, I always suspected her =
of
suppressed and forgotten phases, but certainly her general effect now was o=
f an
entirely passionless worldliness in these matters. Indeed so far as I could=
get
at her, she regarded sexual passion as being hardly more legitimate in a
civilised person than--let us say--homicidal mania. She must have
forgotten--and Bailey too. I suspect she forgot before she married him. I d=
on't
suppose either of them had the slightest intimation of the dimensions sexual
love can take in the thoughts of the great majority of people with whom they
come in contact. They loved in their way--an intellectual way it was and a =
fond
way--but it had no relation to beauty and physical sensation--except that t=
here
seemed a decree of exile against these things. They got their glow in high
moments of altruistic ambition--and in moments of vivid worldly success. Th=
ey
sat at opposite ends of their dinner table with so and so "captured,&q=
uot;
and so and so, flushed with a mutual approval. They saw people in love
forgetful and distraught about them, and just put it down to forgetfulness =
and
distraction. At any rate Altiora manifestly viewed my situation and Margare=
t's
with an abnormal and entirely misleading simplicity. There was the girl, ri=
ch,
with an acceptable claim to be beautiful, shiningly virtuous, quite capable=
of
political interests, and there was I, talented, ambitious and full of polit=
ical
and social passion, in need of just the money, devotion and regularisation
Margaret could provide. We were both unmarried--white sheets of uninscribed
paper. Was there ever a simpler situation? What more could we possibly want=
?
She was even a li=
ttle
offended at the inconclusiveness that did not settle things at Pangbourne. I
seemed to her, I suspect, to reflect upon her judgment and good intentions.=
7
I didn't see things with Altiora's
simplicity.
I admired Margaret
very much, I was fully aware of all that she and I might give each other;
indeed so far as Altiora went we were quite in agreement. But what seemed s=
olid
ground to Altiora and the ultimate footing of her emasculated world, was to=
me
just the superficial covering of a gulf--oh! abysses of vague and dim, and =
yet
stupendously significant things.
I couldn't dismiss
the interests and the passion of sex as Altiora did. Work, I agreed, was
important; career and success; but deep unanalysable instincts told me this
preoccupation was a thing quite as important; dangerous, interfering,
destructive indeed, but none the less a dominating interest in life. I have
told how flittingly and uninvited it came like a moth from the outer twilig=
ht
into my life, how it grew in me with my manhood, how it found its way to sp=
eech
and grew daring, and led me at last to experience. After that adventure at
Locarno sex and the interests and desires of sex never left me for long at
peace. I went on with my work and my career, and all the time it was like--=
like
someone talking ever and again in a room while one tries to write.
There were times = when I could have wished the world a world all of men, so greatly did this unassimilated series of motives and curiosities hamper me; and times when I could have wished the world all of women. I seemed always to be seeking something in women, in girls, and I was never clear what it was I was seeki= ng. But never--even at my coarsest--was I moved by physical desire alone. Was I seeking help and fellowship? Was I seeking some intimacy with beauty? It wa= s a thing too formless to state, that I seemed always desiring to attain and ne= ver attaining. Waves of gross sensuousness arose out of this preoccupation, carried me to a crisis of gratification or disappointment that was clearly not the needed thing; they passed and left my mind free again for a time to get on with the permanent pursuits of my life. And then presently this solicitude would hav= e me again, an irrelevance as it seemed, and yet a constantly recurring demand.<= o:p>
I don't want
particularly to dwell upon things that are disagreeable for others to read,=
but
I cannot leave them out of my story and get the right proportions of the fo=
rces
I am balancing. I was no abnormal man, and that world of order we desire to
make must be built of such stuff as I was and am and can beget. You cannot =
have
a world of Baileys; it would end in one orderly generation. Humanity is
begotten in Desire, lives by Desire.
"Love which=
is
lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb; Love =
which
is lust, is the Call from the Gloom."
I echo Henley.
I suppose the lif=
e of
celibacy which the active, well-fed, well-exercised and imaginatively stirr=
ed
young man of the educated classes is supposed to lead from the age of ninet=
een
or twenty, when Nature certainly meant him to marry, to thirty or more, whe=
n civilisation
permits him to do so, is the most impossible thing in the world. We deal he=
re
with facts that are kept secret and obscure, but I doubt for my own part if
more than one man out of five in our class satisfies that ideal demand. The
rest are even as I was, and Hatherleigh and Esmeer and all the men I knew. I
draw no lessons and offer no panacea; I have to tell the quality of life, a=
nd
this is how it is. This is how it will remain until men and women have the
courage to face the facts of life.
I was no systemat=
ic
libertine, you must understand; things happened to me and desire drove me. =
Any
young man would have served for that Locarno adventure, and after that what=
had
been a mystic and wonderful thing passed rapidly into a gross, manifestly
misdirected and complicating one. I can count a meagre tale of five illicit
loves in the days of my youth, to include that first experience, and of the=
m all
only two were sustained relationships. Besides these five "affairs,&qu=
ot;
on one or two occasions I dipped so low as the inky dismal sensuality of the
streets, and made one of those pairs of correlated figures, the woman in he=
r squalid
finery sailing homeward, the man modestly aloof and behind, that every nigh=
t in
the London year flit by the score of thousands across the sight of the
observant....
How ugly it is to
recall; ugly and shameful now without qualification! Yet at the time there =
was
surely something not altogether ugly in it--something that has vanished, so=
me
fine thing mortally ailing.
One such occasion=
I
recall as if it were a vision deep down in a pit, as if it had happened in
another state of existence to someone else. And yet it is the sort of thing
that has happened, once or twice at least, to half the men in London who ha=
ve
been in a position to make it possible. Let me try and give you its peculiar
effect. Man or woman, you ought to know of it.
Figure to yoursel=
f a
dingy room, somewhere in that network of streets that lies about Tottenham
Court Road, a dingy bedroom lit by a solitary candle and carpeted with scra=
ps
and patches, with curtains of cretonne closing the window, and a tawdry
ornament of paper in the grate. I sit on a bed beside a weary-eyed,
fair-haired, sturdy young woman, half undressed, who is telling me in broken
German something that my knowledge of German is at first inadequate to
understand....
I thought she was
boasting about her family, and then slowly the meaning came to me. She was a
Lett from near Libau in Courland, and she was telling me--just as one tells
something too strange for comment or emotion--how her father had been shot =
and
her sister outraged and murdered before her eyes.
It was as if one =
had
dipped into something primordial and stupendous beneath the smooth and triv=
ial
surfaces of life. There was I, you know, the promising young don from
Cambridge, who wrote quite brilliantly about politics and might presently g=
et
into Parliament, with my collar and tie in my hand, and a certain sense of
shameful adventure fading out of my mind.
"Ach Gott!&q=
uot;
she sighed by way of comment, and mused deeply for a moment before she turn=
ed
her face to me, as to something forgotten and remembered, and assumed the
half-hearted meretricious smile.
"Bin ich eine
hubsche?" she asked like one who repeats a lesson.
I was moved to cr=
ave
her pardon and come away.
"Bin ich eine
hubsche?" she asked a little anxiously, laying a detaining hand upon m=
e,
and evidently not understanding a word of what I was striving to say.
8
I find it extraordinarily difficult=
to
recall the phases by which I passed from my first admiration of Margaret's
earnestness and unconscious daintiness to an intimate acquaintance. The ear=
lier
encounters stand out clear and hard, but then the impressions become crowded
and mingle not only with each other but with all the subsequent development=
s of
relationship, the enormous evolutions of interpretation and comprehension
between husband and wife. Dipping into my memories is like dipping into a
ragbag, one brings out this memory or that, with no intimation of how they =
came
in time or what led to them and joined them together. And they are all mixe=
d up
with subsequent associations, with sympathies and discords, habits of inter=
course,
surprises and disappointments and discovered misunderstandings. I know only
that always my feelings for Margaret were complicated feelings, woven of ma=
ny and
various strands.
It is one of the
curious neglected aspects of life how at the same time and in relation to t=
he
same reality we can have in our minds streams of thought at quite different
levels. We can be at the same time idealising a person and seeing and
criticising that person quite coldly and clearly, and we slip unconsciously
from level to level and produce all sorts of inconsistent acts. In a sense I
had no illusions about Margaret; in a sense my conception of Margaret was
entirely poetic illusion. I don't think I was ever blind to certain defects=
of
hers, and quite as certainly they didn't seem to matter in the slightest
degree. Her mind had a curious want of vigour, "flatness" is the =
only
word; she never seemed to escape from her phrase; her way of thinking, her =
way
of doing was indecisive; she remained in her attitude, it did not flow out =
to
easy, confirmatory action.
I saw this quite
clearly, and when we walked and talked together I seemed always trying for
animation in her and never finding it. I would state my ideas. "I
know," she would say, "I know."
I talked about my=
self
and she listened wonderfully, but she made no answering revelations. I talk=
ed
politics, and she remarked with her blue eyes wide and earnest: "Every
WORD you say seems so just."
I admired her
appearance tremendously but--I can only express it by saying I didn't want =
to
touch her. Her fair hair was always delectably done. It flowed beautifully =
over
her pretty small ears, and she would tie its fair coilings with fillets of
black or blue velvet that carried pretty buckles of silver and paste. The
light, the faint down on her brow and cheek was delightful. And it was clea=
r to
me that I made her happy.
My sense of her
deficiencies didn't stand in the way of my falling at last very deeply in l=
ove
with her. Her very shortcomings seemed to offer me something....
She stood in my m=
ind
for goodness--and for things from which it seemed to me my hold was slippin=
g.
She seemed to pro=
mise
a way of escape from the deepening opposition in me between physical passio=
ns
and the constructive career, the career of wide aims and human service, upon
which I had embarked. All the time that I was seeing her as a beautiful,
fragile, rather ineffective girl, I was also seeing her just as consciously=
as
a shining slender figure, a radiant reconciliation, coming into my darkling
disorders of lust and impulse. I could understand clearly that she was
incapable of the most necessary subtleties of political thought, and yet I
could contemplate praying to her and putting all the intricate troubles of =
my
life at her feet.
Before the
reappearance of Margaret in my world at all an unwonted disgust with the
consequences and quality of my passions had arisen in my mind. Among other
things that moment with the Lettish girl haunted me persistently. I would s=
ee
myself again and again sitting amidst those sluttish surroundings, collar a=
nd
tie in hand, while her heavy German words grouped themselves to a slowly
apprehended meaning. I would feel again with a fresh stab of remorse, that =
this
was not a flash of adventure, this was not seeing life in any permissible
sense, but a dip into tragedy, dishonour, hideous degradation, and the piti=
less
cruelty of a world as yet uncontrolled by any ordered will.
"Good God!&q= uot; I put it to myself, "that I should finish the work those Cossacks had begun! I who want order and justice before everything! There's no way out of it, no decent excuse! If I didn't think, I ought to have thought!"...<= o:p>
"How did I g=
et
to it?"... I would ransack the phases of my development from the first=
shy
unveiling of a hidden wonder to the last extremity as a man will go through
muddled account books to find some disorganising error....
I was also involv=
ed
at that time--I find it hard to place these things in the exact order of th=
eir
dates because they were so disconnected with the regular progress of my work
and life--in an intrigue, a clumsy, sensuous, pretentious, artificially
stimulated intrigue, with a Mrs. Larrimer, a woman living separated from her
husband. I will not go into particulars of that episode, nor how we quarrel=
led
and chafed one another. She was at once unfaithful and jealous and full of
whims about our meetings; she was careless of our secret, and vulgarised ou=
r relationship
by intolerable interpretations; except for some glowing moments of
gratification, except for the recurrent and essentially vicious desire that
drew us back to each other again, we both fretted at a vexatious and
unexpectedly binding intimacy. The interim was full of the quality of work
delayed, of time and energy wasted, of insecure precautions against scandal=
and
exposure. Disappointment is almost inherent in illicit love. I had, and per=
haps
it was part of her recurrent irritation also, a feeling as though one had
followed something fine and beautiful into a net--into bird lime! These fur=
tive
scuffles, this sneaking into shabby houses of assignation, was what we had =
made
out of the suggestion of pagan beauty; this was the reality of our vision of
nymphs and satyrs dancing for the joy of life amidst incessant sunshine. We=
had
laid hands upon the wonder and glory of bodily love and wasted them....
It was the sense =
of
waste, of finely beautiful possibilities getting entangled and marred for e=
ver
that oppressed me. I had missed, I had lost. I did not turn from these thin=
gs
after the fashion of the Baileys, as one turns from something low and
embarrassing. I felt that these great organic forces were still to be wroug=
ht
into a harmony with my constructive passion. I felt too that I was not doing
it. I had not understood the forces in this struggle nor its nature, and as=
I
learnt I failed. I had been started wrong, I had gone on wrong, in a world =
that
was muddled and confused, full of false counsel and erratic shames and twis=
ted
temptations. I learnt to see it so by failures that were perhaps destroying=
any
chance of profit in my lessons. Moods of clear keen industry alternated with
moods of relapse and indulgence and moods of dubiety and remorse. I was not
going on as the Baileys thought I was going on. There were times when the
blindness of the Baileys irritated me intensely. Beneath the ostensible suc=
cess
of those years, between twenty-three and twenty-eight, this rottenness, kno=
wn
to scarcely any one but myself, grew and spread. My sense of the probabilit=
y of
a collapse intensified. I knew indeed now, even as Willersley had prophesied
five years before, that I was entangling myself in something that might smo=
ther
all my uses in the world. Down there among those incommunicable difficultie=
s, I
was puzzled and blundering. I was losing my hold upon things; the chaotic a=
nd
adventurous element in life was spreading upward and getting the better of =
me,
over-mastering me and all my will to rule and make.... And the strength, the
drugging urgency of the passion!
Margaret shone at
times in my imagination like a radiant angel in a world of mire and disorde=
r,
in a world of cravings, hot and dull red like scars inflamed....
I suppose it was
because I had so great a need of such help as her whiteness proffered, that=
I
could ascribe impossible perfections to her, a power of intellect, a moral
power and patience to which she, poor fellow mortal, had indeed no claim. If
only a few of us WERE angels and freed from the tangle of effort, how easy =
life
might be! I wanted her so badly, so very badly, to be what I needed. I want=
ed a
woman to save me. I forced myself to see her as I wished to see her. Her
tepidities became infinite delicacies, her mental vagueness an atmospheric
realism. The harsh precisions of the Baileys and Altiora's blunt directness
threw up her fineness into relief and made a grace of every weakness.
Mixed up with the
memory of times when I talked with Margaret as one talks politely to those =
who
are hopelessly inferior in mental quality, explaining with a false lucidity,
welcoming and encouraging the feeblest response, when possible moulding and
directing, are times when I did indeed, as the old phrase goes, worship the
ground she trod on. I was equally honest and unconscious of inconsistency at
each extreme. But in neither phase could I find it easy to make love to
Margaret. For in the first I did not want to, though I talked abundantly to=
her
of marriage and so forth, and was a little puzzled at myself for not going =
on
to some personal application, and in the second she seemed inaccessible, I =
felt
I must make confessions and put things before her that would be the grossest
outrage upon the noble purity I attributed to her.
9
I went to Margaret at last to ask h=
er to
marry me, wrought up to the mood of one who stakes his life on a cast.
Separated from her, and with the resonance of an evening of angry
recriminations with Mrs. Larrimer echoing in my mind, I discovered myself t=
o be
quite passionately in love with Margaret. Last shreds of doubt vanished. It=
has
always been a feature of our relationship that Margaret absent means more t=
o me
than Margaret present; her memory distils from its dross and purifies in me.
All my criticisms and qualifications of her vanished into some dark corner =
of
my mind. She was the lady of my salvation; I must win my way to her or peri=
sh.
I went to her at
last, for all that I knew she loved me, in passionate self-abasement, white=
and
a-tremble. She was staying with the Rockleys at Woking, for Shena Rockley h=
ad
been at Bennett Hall with her and they had resumed a close intimacy; and I =
went
down to her on an impulse, unheralded. I was kept waiting for some minutes,=
I
remember, in a little room upon which a conservatory opened, a conservatory
full of pots of large mauve-edged, white cyclamens in flower. And there was=
a
big lacquer cabinet, a Chinese thing, I suppose, of black and gold against =
the
red-toned wall. To this day the thought of Margaret is inseparably bound up
with the sight of a cyclamen's back-turned petals.
She came in, look=
ing
pale and drooping rather more than usual. I suddenly realised that Altiora's
hint of a disappointment leading to positive illness was something more tha=
n a
vindictive comment. She closed the door and came across to me and took and
dropped my hand and stood still. "What is it you want with me?" s=
he
asked.
The speech I had =
been
turning over and over in my mind on the way vanished at the sight of her.
"I want to t=
alk
to you," I answered lamely.
For some seconds
neither of us said a word.
"I want to t=
ell
you things about my life," I began.
She answered with=
a
scarcely audible "yes."
"I almost as=
ked
you to marry me at Pangbourne," I plunged. "I didn't. I didn't
because--because you had too much to give me."
"Too much!&q=
uot;
she echoed, "to give you!" She had lifted her eyes to my face and=
the
colour was coming into her cheeks.
"Don't
misunderstand me," I said hastily. "I want to tell you things, th=
ings
you don't know. Don't answer me. I want to tell you."
She stood before =
the
fireplace with her ultimate answer shining through the quiet of her face.
"Go on," she said, very softly. It was so pitilessly manifest she=
was
resolved to idealise the situation whatever I might say. I began walking up=
and
down the room between those cyclamens and the cabinet. There were little go=
ld
fishermen on the cabinet fishing from little islands that each had a pagoda=
and
a tree, and there were also men in boats or something, I couldn't determine=
what,
and some obscure sub-office in my mind concerned itself with that quite
intently. Yet I seem to have been striving with all my being to get words f=
or
the truth of things. "You see," I emerged, "you make everyth=
ing
possible to me. You can give me help and sympathy, support, understanding. =
You
know my political ambitions. You know all that I might do in the world. I d=
o so
intensely want to do constructive things, big things perhaps, in this wild
jumble.... Only you don't know a bit what I am. I want to tell you what I a=
m.
I'm complex.... I'm streaked."
I glanced at her,=
and
she was regarding me with an expression of blissful disregard for any meani=
ng I
was seeking to convey.
"You see,&qu=
ot;
I said, "I'm a bad man."
She sounded a not=
e of
valiant incredulity.
Everything seemed=
to
be slipping away from me. I pushed on to the ugly facts that remained over =
from
the wreck of my interpretation. "What has held me back," I said,
"is the thought that you could not possibly understand certain things =
in
my life. Men are not pure as women are. I have had love affairs. I mean I h=
ave
had affairs. Passion--desire. You see, I have had a mistress, I have been
entangled--"
She seemed about =
to
speak, but I interrupted. "I'm not telling you," I said, "wh=
at I
meant to tell you. I want you to know clearly that there is another side to=
my
life, a dirty side. Deliberately I say, dirty. It didn't seem so at
first--"
I stopped blankly.
"Dirty," I thought, was the most idiotic choice of words to have
made.
I had never in any
tolerable sense of the word been dirty.
"I drifted i=
nto
this--as men do," I said after a little pause and stopped again.
She was looking a=
t me
with her wide blue eyes.
"Did you
imagine," she began, "that I thought you--that I expected--"=
"But how can=
you
know?"
"I know. I do
know."
"But--"=
I
began.
"I know,&quo=
t;
she persisted, dropping her eyelids. "Of course I know," and noth=
ing
could have convinced me more completely that she did not know.
"All men--&q=
uot;
she generalised. "A woman does not understand these temptations."=
I was astonished
beyond measure at her way of taking my confession. ...
"Of
course," she said, hesitating a little over a transparent difficulty,
"it is all over and past."
"It's all ov=
er
and past," I answered.
There was a little
pause.
"I don't wan=
t to
know," she said. "None of that seems to matter now in the slighte=
st
degree."
She looked up and
smiled as though we had exchanged some acceptable commonplaces. "Poor
dear!" she said, dismissing everything, and put out her arms, and it
seemed to me that I could hear the Lettish girl in the background--doomed
safety valve of purity in this intolerable world--telling something in
indistinguishable German--I know not what nor why....
I took Margaret i=
n my
arms and kissed her. Her eyes were wet with tears. She clung to me and was
near, I felt, to sobbing.
"I have loved
you," she whispered presently, "Oh! ever since we met in Misterto=
n--six
years and more ago."
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ MARG=
ARET
IN VENICE
1
There comes into my mind a confused
memory of conversations with Margaret; we must have had dozens altogether, =
and
they mix in now for the most part inextricably not only with one another, b=
ut
with later talks and with things we discussed at Pangbourne. We had the
immensest anticipations of the years and opportunities that lay before us. I
was now very deeply in love with her indeed. I felt not that I had cleaned =
up
my life but that she had. We called each other "confederate" I re=
member,
and made during our brief engagement a series of visits to the various
legislative bodies in London, the County Council, the House of Commons, whe=
re
we dined with Villiers, and the St. Pancras Vestry, where we heard Shaw
speaking. I was full of plans and so was she of the way in which we were to
live and work. We were to pay back in public service whatever excess of wea=
lth
beyond his merits old Seddon's economic advantage had won for him from the
toiling people in the potteries. The end of the Boer War was so recent that
that blessed word "efficiency" echoed still in people's minds and
thoughts. Lord Roseberry in a memorable oration had put it into the heads of
the big outer public, but the Baileys with a certain show of justice claime=
d to
have set it going in the channels that took it to him--if as a matter of fa=
ct
it was taken to him. But then it was their habit to make claims of that sor=
t.
They certainly did their share to keep "efficient" going. Altiora=
's highest
praise was "thoroughly efficient." We were to be a "thorough=
ly efficient"
political couple of the "new type." She explained us to herself a=
nd
Oscar, she explained us to ourselves, she explained us to the people who ca=
me
to her dinners and afternoons until the world was highly charged with
explanation and expectation, and the proposal that I should be the Liberal
candidate for the Kinghamstead Division seemed the most natural development=
in
the world.
I was full of the
ideal of hard restrained living and relentless activity, and throughout a
beautiful November at Venice, where chiefly we spent our honeymoon, we turn=
ed
over and over again and discussed in every aspect our conception of a life
tremendously focussed upon the ideal of social service.
Most clearly there
stands out a picture of ourselves talking in a gondola on our way to Torcel=
la.
Far away behind us the smoke of Murano forms a black stain upon an immense
shining prospect of smooth water, water as unruffled and luminous as the sky
above, a mirror on which rows of posts and distant black high-stemmed,
swan-necked boats with their minutely clear swinging gondoliers, float
aerially. Remote and low before us rises the little tower of our destinatio=
n.
Our men swing together and their oars swirl leisurely through the water, hu=
mp
back in the rowlocks, splash sharply and go swishing back again. Margaret l=
ies back
on cushions, with her face shaded by a holland parasol, and I sit up beside
her.
"You see,&qu=
ot;
I say, and in spite of Margaret's note of perfect acquiescence I feel myself
reasoning against an indefinable antagonism, "it is so easy to fall in=
to a
slack way with life. There may seem to be something priggish in a meticulous
discipline, but otherwise it is so easy to slip into indolent habits--and t=
o be
distracted from one's purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve i=
ts
constructive needs, to work out and carry out plans. For a man who has to m=
ake
a living the enemy is immediate necessity; for people like ourselves it's--=
it's
the constant small opportunity of agreeable things."
"Frittering
away," she says, "time and strength."
"That is wha=
t I
feel. It's so pleasant to pretend one is simply modest, it looks so foolish=
at
times to take one's self too seriously. We've GOT to take ourselves serious=
ly."
She endorses my w=
ords
with her eyes.
"I feel I ca=
n do
great things with life."
"I KNOW you
can."
"But that's =
only
to be done by concentrating one's life upon one main end. We have to plan o=
ur
days, to make everything subserve our scheme."
"I feel,&quo=
t;
she answers softly, "we ought to give--every hour."
Her face becomes
dreamy. "I WANT to give every hour," she adds.
2
That holiday in Venice is set in my
memory like a little artificial lake in uneven confused country, as somethi=
ng
very bright and skylike, and discontinuous with all about it. The faded qua=
lity
of the very sunshine of that season, the mellow discoloured palaces and pla=
ces,
the huge, time-ripened paintings of departed splendours, the whispering, ne=
arly
noiseless passage of hearse-black gondolas, for the horrible steam launch h=
ad
not yet ruined Venice, the stilled magnificences of the depopulated lagoons,
the universal autumn, made me feel altogether in recess from the teeming
uproars of reality. There was not a dozen people all told, no Americans and
scarcely any English, to dine in the big cavern of a dining-room, with its
vistas of separate tables, its distempered walls and its swathed chandelier=
s.
We went about seeing beautiful things, accepting beauty on every hand, and =
taking
it for granted that all was well with ourselves and the world. It was ten d=
ays or
a fortnight before I became fretful and anxious for action; a long tranquil=
lity
for such a temperament as mine.
Our pleasures were
curiously impersonal, a succession of shared aesthetic appreciation threads=
all
that time. Our honeymoon was no exultant coming together, no mutual shout of
"YOU!" We were almost shy with one another, and felt the relief of
even a picture to help us out. It was entirely in my conception of things t=
hat
I should be very watchful not to shock or distress Margaret or press the
sensuous note. Our love-making had much of the tepid smoothness of the lago=
ons.
We talked in delicate innuendo of what should be glorious freedoms. Margaret
had missed Verona and Venice in her previous Italian journey--fear of the
mosquito had driven her mother across Italy to the westward route--and now =
she
could fill up her gaps and see the Titians and Paul Veroneses she already k=
new
in colourless photographs, the Carpaccios, (the St. George series delighted=
her
beyond measure,) the Basaitis and that great statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni =
that
Ruskin praised.
But since I am no=
t a
man to look at pictures and architectural effects day after day, I did watch
Margaret very closely and store a thousand memories of her. I can see her n=
ow,
her long body drooping a little forward, her sweet face upraised to some
discovered familiar masterpiece and shining with a delicate enthusiasm. I c=
an
hear again the soft cadences of her voice murmuring commonplace comments, f=
or
she had no gift of expressing the shapeless satisfaction these things gave =
her.
Margaret, I
perceived, was a cultivated person, the first cultivated person with whom I=
had
ever come into close contact. She was cultivated and moral, and I, I now
realise, was never either of these things. She was passive, and I am active.
She did not simply and naturally look for beauty but she had been incited to
look for it at school, and took perhaps a keener interest in books and lect=
ures
and all the organisation of beautiful things than she did in beauty itself;=
she
found much of her delight in being guided to it. Now a thing ceases to be
beautiful to me when some finger points me out its merits. Beauty is the sa=
lt
of life, but I take my beauty as a wild beast gets its salt, as a constitue=
nt
of the meal....
And besides, there
was that between us that should have seemed more beautiful than any picture=
....
So we went about
Venice tracking down pictures and spiral staircases and such-like things, a=
nd
my brains were busy all the time with such things as a comparison of Venice=
and
its nearest modern equivalent, New York, with the elaboration of schemes of
action when we returned to London, with the development of a theory of
Margaret.
Our marriage had =
done
this much at least, that it had fused and destroyed those two independent w=
ays
of thinking about her that had gone on in my mind hitherto. Suddenly she had
become very near to me, and a very big thing, a sort of comprehensive
generalisation behind a thousand questions, like the sky or England. The
judgments and understandings that had worked when she was, so to speak, mil=
es
away from my life, had now to be altogether revised. Trifling things began =
to
matter enormously, that she had a weak and easily fatigued back, for exampl=
e, or
that when she knitted her brows and stammered a little in talking, it didn't
really mean that an exquisite significance struggled for utterance.
We visited pictur=
es
in the mornings chiefly. In the afternoon, unless we were making a day-long
excursion in a gondola, Margaret would rest for an hour while I prowled abo=
ut
in search of English newspapers, and then we would go to tea in the Piazza =
San
Marco and watch the drift of people feeding the pigeons and going into the =
little
doors beneath the sunlit arches and domes of Saint Mark's. Then perhaps we
would stroll on the Piazzetta, or go out into the sunset in a gondola. Marg=
aret
became very interested in the shops that abound under the colonnades and
decided at last to make an extensive purchase of table glass. "These
things," she said, "are quite beautiful, and far cheaper than
anything but the most ordinary looking English ware." I was interested=
in
her idea, and a good deal charmed by the delightful qualities of tinted sha=
pe,
slender handle and twisted stem. I suggested we should get not simply tumbl=
ers and
wineglasses but bedroom waterbottles, fruit- and sweet-dishes, water-jugs, =
and
in the end we made quite a business-like afternoon of it.
I was beginning n=
ow
to long quite definitely for events. Energy was accumulating in me, and
worrying me for an outlet. I found the TIMES and the DAILY TELEGRAPH and the
other papers I managed to get hold of, more and more stimulating. I nearly
wrote to the former paper one day in answer to a letter by Lord Grimthorpe-=
-I
forget now upon what point. I chafed secretly against this life of tranquil
appreciations more and more. I found my attitudes of restrained and delicate
affection for Margaret increasingly difficult to sustain. I surprised myself
and her by little gusts of irritability, gusts like the catspaws before a g=
ale.
I was alarmed at these symptoms.
One night when
Margaret had gone up to her room, I put on a light overcoat, went out into =
the
night and prowled for a long time through the narrow streets, smoking and
thinking. I returned and went and sat on the edge of her bed to talk to her=
.
"Look here,
Margaret," I said; "this is all very well, but I'm restless."=
;
"Restless!&q=
uot;
she said with a faint surprise in her voice.
"Yes. I thin=
k I
want exercise. I've got a sort of feeling--I've never had it before--as tho=
ugh
I was getting fat."
"My dear!&qu=
ot;
she cried.
"I want to do things;--ride horses, climb mountains, take the devil out of myself."<= o:p>
She watched me
thoughtfully.
"Couldn't we=
DO
something?" she said.
Do what?
"I don't kno=
w.
Couldn't we perhaps go away from here soon--and walk in the mountains--on o=
ur
way home."
I thought.
"There seems to be no exercise at all in this place."
"Isn't there
some walk?"
"I wonder,&q=
uot;
I answered. "We might walk to Chioggia perhaps, along the Lido." =
And
we tried that, but the long stretch of beach fatigued Margaret's back, and =
gave
her blisters, and we never got beyond Malamocco....
A day or so after=
we
went out to those pleasant black-robed, bearded Armenians in their monaster=
y at
Saint Lazzaro, and returned towards sundown. We fell into silence. "PIU
LENTO," said Margaret to the gondolier, and released my accumulated
resolution.
"Let us go b=
ack
to London," I said abruptly.
Margaret looked a=
t me
with surprised blue eyes.
"This is
beautiful beyond measure, you know," I said, sticking to my point,
"but I have work to do."
She was silent for
some seconds. "I had forgotten," she said.
"So had I,&q=
uot;
I sympathised, and took her hand. "Suddenly I have remembered."
She remained quite
still. "There is so much to be done," I said, almost apologetical=
ly.
She looked long a=
way
from me across the lagoon and at last sighed, like one who has drunk deeply,
and turned to me.
"I suppose o=
ne
ought not to be so happy," she said. "Everything has been so
beautiful and so simple and splendid. And clean. It has been just With You-=
-the
time of my life. It's a pity such things must end. But the world is calling
you, dear.... I ought not to have forgotten it. I thought you were resting-=
-and
thinking. But if you are rested.--Would you like us to start to-morrow?&quo=
t;
She looked at onc=
e so
fragile and so devoted that on the spur of the moment I relented, and we st=
ayed
in Venice four more days.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ THE
HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER
1
Margaret had already taken a little=
house
in Radnor Square, Westminster, before our marriage, a house that seemed
particularly adaptable to our needs as public-spirited efficients; it had b=
een
very pleasantly painted and papered under Margaret's instructions, white pa=
int
and clean open purples and green predominating, and now we set to work at o=
nce
upon the interesting business of arranging and--with our Venetian glass as =
a beginning--furnishing
it. We had been fairly fortunate with our wedding presents, and for the most
part it was open to us to choose just exactly what we would have and just
precisely where we would put it.
Margaret had a se=
nse
of form and colour altogether superior to mine, and so quite apart from the
fact that it was her money equipped us, I stood aside from all these matters
and obeyed her summons to a consultation only to endorse her judgment very
readily. Until everything was settled I went every day to my old rooms in
Vincent Square and worked at a series of papers that were originally intend=
ed
for the FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, the papers that afterwards became my fourth boo=
k,
"New Aspects of Liberalism."
I still remember =
as
delightful most of the circumstances of getting into 79, Radnor Square. The
thin flavour of indecision about Margaret disappeared altogether in a shop;=
she
had the precisest ideas of what she wanted, and the devices of the salesman=
did
not sway her. It was very pleasant to find her taking things out of my hands
with a certain masterfulness, and showing the distinctest determination to =
make
a house in which I should be able to work in that great project of "do=
ing something
for the world."
"And I do wa=
nt
to make things pretty about us," she said. "You don't think it wr=
ong
to have things pretty?"
"I want them
so."
"Altiora has
things hard."
"Altiora,&qu=
ot;
I answered, "takes a pride in standing ugly and uncomfortable things. =
But
I don't see that they help her. Anyhow they won't help me."
So Margaret went =
to
the best shops and got everything very simple and very good. She bought some
pictures very well indeed; there was a little Sussex landscape, full of wind
and sunshine, by Nicholson, for my study, that hit my taste far better than=
if
I had gone out to get some such expression for myself.
"We will buy=
a
picture just now and then," she said, "sometimes--when we see
one."
I would come back
through the January mire or fog from Vincent Square to the door of 79, and
reach it at last with a quite childish appreciation of the fact that its so=
lid
Georgian proportions and its fine brass furnishings belonged to MY home; I
would use my latchkey and discover Margaret in the warm-lit, spacious hall =
with
a partially opened packing-case, fatigued but happy, or go up to have tea w=
ith
her out of the right tea things, "come at last," or be told to no=
tice
what was fresh there. It wasn't simply that I had never had a house before,=
but
I had really never been, except in the most transitory way, in any house th=
at
was nearly so delightful as mine promised to be. Everything was fresh and
bright, and softly and harmoniously toned. Downstairs we had a green
dining-room with gleaming silver, dark oak, and English colour-prints; above
was a large drawing-room that could be made still larger by throwing open
folding doors, and it was all carefully done in greys and blues, for the mo=
st
part with real Sheraton supplemented by Sheraton so skilfully imitated by an
expert Margaret had discovered as to be indistinguishable except to a minute
scrutiny. And for me, above this and next to my bedroom, there was a roomy
study, with specially thick stair-carpet outside and thick carpets in the
bedroom overhead and a big old desk for me to sit at and work between fire =
and
window, and another desk specially made for me by that expert if I chose to=
stand
and write, and open bookshelves and bookcases and every sort of convenient
fitting. There were electric heaters beside the open fire, and everything w=
as
put for me to make tea at any time--electric kettle, infuser, biscuits and
fresh butter, so that I could get up and work at any hour of the day or nig=
ht.
I could do no work in this apartment for a long time, I was so interested in
the perfection of its arrangements. And when I brought in my books and pape=
rs
from Vincent Square, Margaret seized upon all the really shabby volumes and=
had
them re-bound in a fine official-looking leather.
I can remember
sitting down at that desk and looking round me and feeling with a queer eff=
ect
of surprise that after all even a place in the Cabinet, though infinitely r=
emote,
was nevertheless in the same large world with these fine and quietly expens=
ive
things.
On the same floor
Margaret had a "den," a very neat and pretty den with good
colour-prints of Botticellis and Carpaccios, and there was a third apartment
for sectarial purposes should the necessity for them arise, with a
severe-looking desk equipped with patent files. And Margaret would come
flitting into the room to me, or appear noiselessly standing, a tall gracef=
ully
drooping form, in the wide open doorway. "Is everything right, dear?&q=
uot;
she would ask.
"Come in,&qu=
ot;
I would say, "I'm sorting out papers."
She would come to=
the
hearthrug.
"I mustn't
disturb you," she would remark.
"I'm not busy
yet."
"Things are
getting into order. Then we must make out a time-table as the Baileys do, a=
nd
BEGIN!"
Altiora came in to
see us once or twice, and a number of serious young wives known to Altiora
called and were shown over the house, and discussed its arrangements with
Margaret. They were all tremendously keen on efficient arrangements.
"A little
pretty," said Altiora, with the faintest disapproval, "still--&qu=
ot;
It was clear she
thought we should grow out of that. From the day of our return we found oth=
er
people's houses open to us and eager for us. We went out of London for
week-ends and dined out, and began discussing our projects for reciprocating
these hospitalities. As a single man unattached, I had had a wide and
miscellaneous social range, but now I found myself falling into place in a =
set.
For a time I acquiesced in this. I went very little to my clubs, the Climax=
and
the National Liberal, and participated in no bachelor dinners at all. For a
time, too, I dropped out of the garrulous literary and journalistic circles=
I had
frequented. I put up for the Reform, not so much for the use of the club as=
a
sign of serious and substantial political standing. I didn't go up to
Cambridge, I remember, for nearly a year, so occupied was I with my new
adjustments.
The people we fou=
nd
ourselves among at this time were people, to put it roughly, of the
Parliamentary candidate class, or people already actually placed in the
political world. They ranged between very considerable wealth and such a ha=
rd,
bare independence as old Willersley and the sister who kept house for him
possessed. There were quite a number of young couples like ourselves, a lit=
tle
younger and more artless, or a little older and more established. Among the
younger men I had a sort of distinction because of my Cambridge reputation =
and
my writing, and because, unlike them, I was an adventurer and had won and m=
arried
my way into their circles instead of being naturally there. They couldn't q=
uite
reckon upon what I should do; they felt I had reserves of experience and
incalculable traditions. Close to us were the Cramptons, Willie Crampton, w=
ho
has since been Postmaster-General, rich and very important in Rockshire, and
his younger brother Edward, who has specialised in history and become one of
those unimaginative men of letters who are the glory of latter-day England.=
Then
there was Lewis, further towards Kensington, where his cousins the Solomons=
and
the Hartsteins lived, a brilliant representative of his race, able, industr=
ious
and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little in revolt against the racial
tradition of feminine servitude and inclined to the suffragette point of vi=
ew,
and Bunting Harblow, an old blue, and with an erratic disposition well under
the control of the able little cousin he had married. I had known all these
men, but now (with Altiora floating angelically in benediction) they opened
their hearts to me and took me into their order. They were all like myself,
prospective Liberal candidates, with a feeling that the period of wandering=
in
the wilderness of opposition was drawing near its close. They were all trem=
endously
keen upon social and political service, and all greatly under the sway of t=
he
ideal of a simple, strenuous life, a life finding its satisfactions in
political achievements and distinctions. The young wives were as keen about=
it
as the young husbands, Margaret most of all, and I--whatever elements in me
didn't march with the attitudes and habits of this set were very much in the
background during that time.
We would give lit=
tle
dinners and have evening gatherings at which everything was very simple and
very good, with a slight but perceptible austerity, and there was more good
fruit and flowers and less perhaps in the way of savouries, patties and ent=
rees
than was customary. Sherry we banished, and Marsala and liqueurs, and there=
was
always good home-made lemonade available. No men waited, but very expert
parlourmaids. Our meat was usually Welsh mutton--I don't know why, unless t=
hat
mountains have ever been the last refuge of the severer virtues. And we tal=
ked politics
and books and ideas and Bernard Shaw (who was a department by himself and
supposed in those days to be ethically sound at bottom), and mingled with t=
he
intellectuals--I myself was, as it were, a promoted intellectual.
The Cramptons had=
a
tendency to read good things aloud on their less frequented receptions, but=
I
have never been able to participate submissively in this hyper-digestion of
written matter, and generally managed to provoke a disruptive debate. We we=
re
all very earnest to make the most of ourselves and to be and do, and I wond=
er
still at times, with an unassuaged perplexity, how it is that in that phase=
of
utmost earnestness I have always seemed to myself to be most remote from re=
ality.
2
I look back now across the detaching
intervention of sixteen crowded years, critically and I fancy almost
impartially, to those beginnings of my married life. I try to recall someth=
ing
near to their proper order the developing phases of relationship. I am stru=
ck
most of all by the immense unpremeditated, generous-spirited insincerities =
upon
which Margaret and I were building.
It seems to me th=
at
here I have to tell perhaps the commonest experience of all among married
educated people, the deliberate, shy, complex effort to fill the yawning ga=
ps
in temperament as they appear, the sustained, failing attempt to bridge
abysses, level barriers, evade violent pressures. I have come these latter
years of my life to believe that it is possible for a man and woman to be
absolutely real with one another, to stand naked souled to each other,
unashamed and unafraid, because of the natural all-glorifying love between
them. It is possible to love and be loved untroubling, as a bird flies thro=
ugh
the air. But it is a rare and intricate chance that brings two people within
sight of that essential union, and for the majority marriage must adjust it=
self
on other terms. Most coupled people never really look at one another. They =
look
a little away to preconceived ideas. And each from the first days of
love-making HIDES from the other, is afraid of disappointing, afraid of
offending, afraid of discoveries in either sense. They build not solidly up=
on
the rock of truth, but upon arches and pillars and queer provisional suppor=
ts
that are needed to make a common foundation, and below in the imprisoned da=
rknesses,
below the fine fabric they sustain together begins for each of them a caver=
nous
hidden life. Down there things may be prowling that scarce ever peep out to
consciousness except in the grey half-light of sleepless nights, passions t=
hat
flash out for an instant in an angry glance and are seen no more, starved v=
ictims
and beautiful dreams bricked up to die. For the most of us there is no jail
delivery of those inner depths, and the life above goes on to its honourable
end.
I have told how I
loved Margaret and how I came to marry her. Perhaps already unintentionally=
I
have indicated the quality of the injustice our marriage did us both. There=
was
no kindred between us and no understanding. We were drawn to one another by=
the
unlikeness of our quality, by the things we misunderstood in each other. I =
know
a score of couples who have married in that fashion.
Modern conditions=
and
modern ideas, and in particular the intenser and subtler perceptions of mod=
ern
life, press more and more heavily upon a marriage tie whose fashion comes f=
rom
an earlier and less discriminating time. When the wife was her husband's
subordinate, meeting him simply and uncritically for simple ends, when marr=
iage
was a purely domestic relationship, leaving thought and the vivid things of
life almost entirely to the unencumbered man, mental and temperamental inco=
mpatibilities
mattered comparatively little. But now the wife, and particularly the loving
childless wife, unpremeditatedly makes a relentless demand for a complete
association, and the husband exacts unthought of delicacies of understanding
and co-operation. These are stupendous demands. People not only think more
fully and elaborately about life than they ever did before, but marriage
obliges us to make that ever more accidented progress a three-legged race of
carelessly assorted couples....
Our very mental
texture was different. I was rough-minded, to use the phrase of William Jam=
es,
primary and intuitive and illogical; she was tender-minded, logical, refined
and secondary. She was loyal to pledge and persons, sentimental and faithfu=
l; I
am loyal to ideas and instincts, emotional and scheming. My imagination mov=
es
in broad gestures; her's was delicate with a real dread of extravagance. My=
quality
is sensuous and ruled by warm impulses; hers was discriminating and essenti=
ally
inhibitory. I like the facts of the case and to mention everything; I like
naked bodies and the jolly smells of things. She abounded in reservations, =
in
circumlocutions and evasions, in keenly appreciated secondary points. Perha=
ps
the reader knows that Tintoretto in the National Gallery, the Origin of the
Milky Way. It is an admirable test of temperamental quality. In spite of my
early training I have come to regard that picture as altogether delightful;=
to
Margaret it has always been "needlessly offensive." In that you h=
ave
our fundamental breach. She had a habit, by no means rare, of damning what =
she
did not like or find sympathetic in me on the score that it was not my
"true self," and she did not so much accept the universe as select
from it and do her best to ignore the rest. And also I had far more initiat=
ive
than had she. This is no catalogue of rights and wrongs, or superiorities a=
nd
inferiorities; it is a catalogue of differences between two people linked i=
n a
relationship that constantly becomes more intolerant of differences.
This is how we st=
ood
to each other, and none of it was clear to either of us at the outset. To b=
egin
with, I found myself reserving myself from her, then slowly apprehending a
jarring between our minds and what seemed to me at first a queer little hab=
it
of misunderstanding in her....
It did not hinder=
my
being very fond of her....
Where our system =
of
reservation became at once most usual and most astounding was in our person=
al
relations. It is not too much to say that in that regard we never for a mom=
ent
achieved sincerity with one another during the first six years of our life
together. It goes even deeper than that, for in my effort to realise the id=
eal
of my marriage I ceased even to attempt to be sincere with myself. I would =
not
admit my own perceptions and interpretations. I tried to fit myself to her
thinner and finer determinations. There are people who will say with a note=
of
approval that I was learning to conquer myself. I record that much without =
any
note of approval....
For some years I
never deceived Margaret about any concrete fact nor, except for the silence
about my earlier life that she had almost forced upon me, did I hide any
concrete fact that seemed to affect her, but from the outset I was guilty of
immense spiritual concealments, my very marriage was based, I see now, on a
spiritual subterfuge; I hid moods from her, pretended feelings....
3
The interest and excitement of sett=
ing-up
a house, of walking about it from room to room and from floor to floor, or
sitting at one's own dinner table and watching one's wife control conversat=
ion
with a pretty, timid resolution, of taking a place among the secure and free
people of our world, passed almost insensibly into the interest and excitem=
ent of
my Parliamentary candidature for the Kinghamstead Division, that shapeless
chunk of agricultural midland between the Great Western and the North Weste=
rn
railways. I was going to "take hold" at last, the Kinghamstead Di=
vision
was my appointed handle. I was to find my place in the rather indistinctly
sketched constructions that were implicit in the minds of all our circle. T=
he
precise place I had to fill and the precise functions I had to discharge we=
re
not as yet very clear, but all that, we felt sure, would become plain as th=
ings
developed.
A few brief month=
s of
vague activities of "nursing" gave place to the excitements of the
contest that followed the return of Mr. Camphell-Bannerman to power in 1905=
. So
far as the Kinghamstead Division was concerned it was a depressed and tepid
battle. I went about the constituency making three speeches that were soon
threadbare, and an odd little collection of people worked for me; two
solicitors, a cheap photographer, a democratic parson, a number of dissenti=
ng
ministers, the Mayor of Kinghamstead, a Mrs. Bulger, the widow of an old
Chartist who had grown rich through electric traction patents, Sir Roderick
Newton, a Jew who had bought Calersham Castle, and old Sir Graham Rivers, t=
hat sturdy
old soldier, were among my chief supporters. We had headquarters in each to=
wn
and village, mostly there were empty shops we leased temporarily, and there=
at
least a sort of fuss and a coming and going were maintained. The rest of the
population stared in a state of suspended judgment as we went about the
business. The country was supposed to be in a state of intellectual conflict
and deliberate decision, in history it will no doubt figure as a momentous
conflict. Yet except for an occasional flare of bill-sticking or a bill in =
a window
or a placard-plastered motor-car or an argumentative group of people outsid=
e a
public-house or a sluggish movement towards the schoolroom or village hall,
there was scarcely a sign that a great empire was revising its destinies. N=
ow
and then one saw a canvasser on a doorstep. For the most part people went a=
bout
their business with an entirely irresponsible confidence in the stability of
the universe. At times one felt a little absurd with one's flutter of colou=
rs
and one's air of saving the country.
My opponent was a
quite undistinguished Major-General who relied upon his advocacy of Protect=
ion,
and was particularly anxious we should avoid "personalities" and
fight the constituency in a gentlemanly spirit. He was always writing me no=
tes,
apologising for excesses on the part of his supporters, or pointing out the
undesirability of some course taken by mine.
My speeches had b=
een
planned upon broad lines, but they lost touch with these as the polling
approached. To begin with I made a real attempt to put what was in my mind
before the people I was to supply with a political voice. I spoke of the
greatness of our empire and its destinies, of the splendid projects and
possibilities of life and order that lay before the world, of all that a
resolute and constructive effort might do at the present time. "We are
building a state," I said, "secure and splendid, we are in the da=
wn
of the great age of mankind." Sometimes that would get a solitary
"'Ear! 'ear!" Then having created, as I imagined, a fine atmosphe=
re,
I turned upon the history of the last Conservative administration and broug=
ht
it into contrast with the wide occasions of the age; discussed its failure =
to
control the grasping financiers in South Africa, its failure to release pub=
lic
education from sectarian squabbles, its misconduct of the Boer War, its was=
te
of the world's resources....
It soon became
manifest that my opening and my general spaciousness of method bored my
audiences a good deal. The richer and wider my phrases the thinner sounded =
my
voice in these non-resonating gatherings. Even the platform supporters grew
restive unconsciously, and stirred and coughed. They did not recognise
themselves as mankind. Building an empire, preparing a fresh stage in the h=
istory
of humanity, had no appeal for them. They were mostly everyday, toiling peo=
ple,
full of small personal solicitudes, and they came to my meetings, I think, =
very
largely as a relaxation. This stuff was not relaxing. They did not think po=
litics
was a great constructive process, they thought it was a kind of dog-fight. =
They
wanted fun, they wanted spice, they wanted hits, they wanted also a chance =
to
say "'Ear', 'ear!" in an intelligent and honourable manner and cl=
ap
their hands and drum with their feet. The great constructive process in his=
tory
gives so little scope for clapping and drumming and saying "'Ear,
'ear!" One might as well think of hounding on the solar system.
So after one or t=
wo
attempts to lift my audiences to the level of the issues involved, I began =
to
adapt myself to them. I cut down my review of our imperial outlook and
destinies more and more, and developed a series of hits and anecdotes and--=
what
shall I call them?--"crudifications" of the issue. My helper's
congratulated me on the rapid improvement of my platform style. I ceased to
speak of the late Prime Minister with the respect I bore him, and began to =
fall
in with the popular caricature of him as an artful rabbit-witted person int=
ent
only on keeping his leadership, in spite of the vigorous attempts of Mr. Jo=
seph
Chamberlain to oust him therefrom. I ceased to qualify my statement that
Protection would make food dearer for the agricultural labourer. I began to
speak of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton as an influence at once insane and diabolical=
, as
a man inspired by a passionate desire to substitute manacled but still crim=
inal
Chinese for honest British labourers throughout the world. And when it came=
to
the mention of our own kindly leader, of Mr. John Burns or any one else of =
any
prominence at all on our side I fell more and more into the intonation of o=
ne
who mentions the high gods. And I had my reward in brighter meetings and re=
adier
and readier applause.
One goes on from
phase to phase in these things.
"After
all," I told myself, "if one wants to get to Westminster one must=
follow
the road that leads there," but I found the road nevertheless rather
unexpectedly distasteful. "When one gets there," I said, "th=
en
it is one begins."
But I would lie a=
wake
at nights with that sore throat and headache and fatigue which come from
speaking in ill-ventilated rooms, and wondering how far it was possible to
educate a whole people to great political ideals. Why should political work
always rot down to personalities and personal appeals in this way? Life is,=
I
suppose, to begin with and end with a matter of personalities, from
personalities all our broader interests arise and to personalities they ret=
urn.
All our social and political effort, all of it, is like trying to make a cr=
owd
of people fall into formation. The broader lines appear, but then come a ru=
sh and
excitement and irrelevancy, and forthwith the incipient order has vanished =
and
the marshals must begin the work over again!
My memory of all =
that
time is essentially confusion. There was a frightful lot of tiresome locomo=
tion
in it; for the Kinghamstead Division is extensive, abounding in ill-graded =
and
badly metalled cross-roads and vicious little hills, and singularly unpleas=
ing
to the eye in a muddy winter. It is sufficiently near to London to have
undergone the same process of ill-regulated expansion that made Bromstead t=
he
place it is. Several of its overgrown villages have developed strings of
factories and sidings along the railway lines, and there is an abundance of
petty villas. There seemed to be no place at which one could take hold of m=
ore
than this or that element of the population. Now we met in a meeting-house,=
now
in a Masonic Hall or Drill Hall; I also did a certain amount of open-air
speaking in the dinner hour outside gas-works and groups of factories. Some
special sort of people was, as it were, secreted in response to each special
appeal. One said things carefully adjusted to the distinctive limitations o=
f each
gathering. Jokes of an incredible silliness and shallowness drifted about u=
s.
Our advisers made us declare that if we were elected we would live in the
district, and one hasty agent had bills printed, "If Mr. Remington is
elected he will live here." The enemy obtained a number of these bills=
and
stuck them on outhouses, pigstyes, dog-kennels; you cannot imagine how irks=
ome
the repetition of that jest became. The vast drifting indifference in betwe=
en
my meetings impressed me more and more. I realised the vagueness of my own
plans as I had never done before I brought them to the test of this experie=
nce.
I was perplexed by the riddle of just how far I was, in any sense of the wo=
rd,
taking hold at all, how far I wasn't myself flowing into an accepted groove=
.
Margaret was trou=
bled
by no such doubts. She was clear I had to go into Parliament on the side of
Liberalism and the light, as against the late Government and darkness.
Essential to the memory of my first contest, is the memory of her clear bri=
ght
face, very resolute and grave, helping me consciously, steadfastly, with all
her strength. Her quiet confidence, while I was so dissatisfied, worked
curiously towards the alienation of my sympathies. I felt she had no busine=
ss
to be so sure of me. I had moments of vivid resentment at being thus marched
towards Parliament.
I seemed now alwa=
ys
to be discovering alien forces of character in her. Her way of taking life
diverged from me more and more. She sounded amazing, independent notes. She
bought some particularly costly furs for the campaign that roused enthusiasm
whenever she appeared. She also made me a birthday present in November of a
heavily fur-trimmed coat and this she would make me remove as I went on to =
the
platform, and hold over her arm until I was ready to resume it. It was
fearfully heavy for her and she liked it to be heavy for her. That act of
servitude was in essence a towering self-assertion. I would glance sideways
while some chairman floundered through his introduction and see the clear b=
lue
eye with which she regarded the audience, which existed so far as she was c=
oncerned
merely to return me to Parliament. It was a friendly eye, provided they were
not silly or troublesome. But it kindled a little at the hint of a hostile
question. After we had come so far and taken so much trouble!
She constituted
herself the dragoman of our political travels. In hotels she was serenely
resolute for the quietest and the best, she rejected all their proposals for
meals and substituted a severely nourishing dietary of her own, and even in
private houses she astonished me by her tranquil insistence upon special
comforts and sustenance. I can see her face now as it would confront a host=
ess,
a little intent, but sweetly resolute and assured.
Since our marriage
she had read a number of political memoirs, and she had been particularly
impressed by the career of Mrs. Gladstone. I don't think it occurred to her=
to
compare and contrast my quality with that of Mrs. Gladstone's husband. I
suspect her of a deliberate intention of achieving parallel results by para=
llel
methods. I was to be Gladstonised. Gladstone it appeared used to lubricate =
his
speeches with a mixture--if my memory serves me right--of egg beaten up in
sherry, and Margaret was very anxious I should take a leaf from that celebr=
ated
book. She wanted, I know, to hold the glass in her hand while I was speakin=
g.
But here I was fi=
rm.
"No," I said, very decisively, "simply I won't stand that. I=
t's
a matter of conscience. I shouldn't feel--democratic. I'll take my chance of
the common water in the carafe on the chairman's table."
"I DO wish y=
ou
wouldn't," she said, distressed.
It was absurd to =
feel
irritated; it was so admirable of her, a little childish, infinitely womanly
and devoted and fine--and I see now how pathetic. But I could not afford to
succumb to her. I wanted to follow my own leading, to see things clearly, a=
nd
this reassuring pose of a high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient pur=
suit
of a fixed end when as a matter of fact I had a very doubtful end and an ai=
m as
yet by no means fixed, was all too seductive for dalliance....
4
And into all these things with the =
manner
of a trifling and casual incident comes the figure of Isabel Rivers. My fir=
st
impressions of her were of a rather ugly and ungainly, extraordinarily
interesting schoolgirl with a beautiful quick flush under her warm brown sk=
in,
who said and did amusing and surprising things. When first I saw her she was
riding a very old bicycle downhill with her feet on the fork of the frame--=
it
seemed to me to the public danger, but afterwards I came to understand the =
quality
of her nerve better--and on the third occasion she was for her own private
satisfaction climbing a tree. On the intervening occasion we had what seems=
now
to have been a long sustained conversation about the political situation and
the books and papers I had written.
I wonder if it wa=
s.
What a delightful
mixture of child and grave woman she was at that time, and how little I
reckoned on the part she would play in my life! And since she has played th=
at
part, how impossible it is to tell now of those early days! Since I wrote t=
hat
opening paragraph to this section my idle pen has been, as it were, playing=
by
itself and sketching faces on the blotting pad--one impish wizened visage is
oddly like little Bailey--and I have been thinking cheek on fist amidst a
limitless wealth of memories. She sits below me on the low wall under the o=
live
trees with our little child in her arms. She is now the central fact in my =
life.
It still seems a little incredible that that should be so. She has destroye=
d me
as a politician, brought me to this belated rebeginning of life. When I sit
down and try to make her a girl again, I feel like the Arabian fisherman who
tried to put the genius back into the pot from which it had spread gigantic
across the skies....
I have a very cle=
ar
vision of her rush downhill past our labouring ascendant car--my colours
fluttered from handle-bar and shoulder-knot--and her waving hand and the sh=
arp
note of her voice. She cried out something, I don't know what, some greetin=
g.
"What a pret=
ty
girl!" said Margaret.
Parvill, the cheap
photographer, that industrious organiser for whom by way of repayment I got
those magic letters, that knighthood of the underlings, "J. P." w=
as
in the car with us and explained her to us. "One of the best workers y=
ou have,"
he said....
And then after a
toilsome troubled morning we came, rather cross from the strain of sustained
amiability, to Sir Graham Rivers' house. It seemed all softness and quiet--I
recall dead white panelling and oval mirrors horizontally set and a marble
fireplace between white marble-blind Homer and marble-blind Virgil, very gr=
ave
and fine--and how Isabel came in to lunch in a shapeless thing like a blue
smock that made her bright quick-changing face seem yellow under her cloud =
of
black hair. Her step-sister was there, Miss Gamer, to whom the house was to
descend, a well-dressed lady of thirty, amiably disavowing responsibility f=
or
Isabel in every phrase and gesture. And there was a very pleasant doctor, an
Oxford man, who seemed on excellent terms with every one. It was manifest t=
hat
he was in the habit of sparring with the girl, but on this occasion she was=
n't
sparring and refused to be teased into a display in spite of the taunts of
either him or her father. She was, they discovered with rising eyebrows, sh=
y.
It seemed an opportunity too rare for them to miss. They proclaimed her
enthusiasm for me in a way that brought a flush to her cheek and a look into
her eye between appeal and defiance. They declared she had read my books, w=
hich
I thought at the time was exaggeration, their dry political quality was so =
distinctly
not what one was accustomed to regard as schoolgirl reading. Miss Gamer
protested to protect her, "When once in a blue moon Isabel is well-beh=
aved....!"
Except for these
attacks I do not remember much of the conversation at table; it was, I know,
discursive and concerned with the sort of topographical and social and
electioneering fact natural to such a visit. Old Rivers struck me as a
delightful person, modestly unconscious of his doubly-earned V. C. and the
plucky defence of Kardin-Bergat that won his baronetcy. He was that excelle=
nt
type, the soldier radical, and we began that day a friendship that was only
ended by his death in the hunting-field three years later. He interested Ma=
rgaret
into a disregard of my plate and the fact that I had secured the illegal
indulgence of Moselle. After lunch we went for coffee into another low room,
this time brown panelled and looking through French windows on a red-walled=
garden,
graceful even in its winter desolation. And there the conversation suddenly
picked up and became good. It had fallen to a pause, and the doctor, with an
air of definitely throwing off a mask and wrecking an established tranquill=
ity,
remarked: "Very probably you Liberals will come in, though I'm not sure
you'll come in so mightily as you think, but what you do when you do come in
passes my comprehension."
"There's good
work sometimes," said Sir Graham, "in undoing."
"You can't
govern a great empire by amending and repealing the Acts of your
predecessors," said the doctor.
There came that k=
ind
of pause that happens when a subject is broached too big and difficult for =
the
gathering. Margaret's blue eyes regarded the speaker with quiet disapproval=
for
a moment, and then came to me in the not too confident hope that I would sn=
ub
him out of existence with some prompt rhetorical stroke. A voice spoke out =
of
the big armchair.
"We'll do
things," said Isabel.
The doctor's eye =
lit
with the joy of the fisherman who strikes his fish at last. "What will=
you
do?" he asked her.
"Every one k=
nows
we're a mixed lot," said Isabel.
"Poor old ch=
aps
like me!" interjected the general.
"But that's =
not
a programme," said the doctor.
"But Mr.
Remington has published a programme," said Isabel.
The doctor cocked
half an eye at me.
"In some
review," the girl went on. "After all, we're not going to elect t=
he
whole Liberal party in the Kinghamstead Division. I'm a Remington-ite!"=
;
"But the
programme," said the doctor, "the programme--"
"In front of=
Mr.
Remington!"
"Scandal alw=
ays
comes home at last," said the doctor. "Let him hear the worst.&qu=
ot;
"I'd like to
hear," I said. "Electioneering shatters convictions and enfeebles=
the
mind."
"Not mine,&q=
uot;
said Isabel stoutly. "I mean--Well, anyhow I take it Mr. Remington sta=
nds
for constructing a civilised state out of this muddle."
"THIS
muddle," protested the doctor with an appeal of the eye to the beautif=
ul
long room and the ordered garden outside the bright clean windows.
"Well, THAT
muddle, if you like! There's a slum within a mile of us already. The dust a=
nd
blacks get worse and worse, Sissie?"
"They do,&qu=
ot;
agreed Miss Gamer.
"Mr. Remingt=
on
stands for construction, order, education, discipline."
"And you?&qu=
ot;
said the doctor.
"I'm a good
Remington-ite."
"Discipline!=
"
said the doctor.
"Oh!" s=
aid
Isabel. "At times one has to be--Napoleonic. They want to libel me, Mr.
Remington. A political worker can't always be in time for meals, can she? At
times one has to make--splendid cuts."
Miss Gamer said s=
omething
indistinctly.
"Order,
education, discipline," said Sir Graham. "Excellent things! But I=
've
a sort of memory--in my young days--we talked about something called
liberty."
"Liberty und=
er
the law," I said, with an unexpected approving murmur from Margaret, a=
nd
took up the defence. "The old Liberal definition of liberty was a trif=
le
uncritical. Privilege and legal restrictions are not the only enemies of
liberty. An uneducated, underbred, and underfed propertyless man is a man w=
ho
has lost the possibility of liberty. There's no liberty worth a rap for him=
. A
man who is swimming hopelessly for life wants nothing but the liberty to get
out of the water; he'll give every other liberty for it--until he gets
out."
Sir Graham took m=
e up
and we fell into a discussion of the changing qualities of Liberalism. It w=
as a
good give-and-take talk, extraordinarily refreshing after the nonsense and
crowding secondary issues of the electioneering outside. We all contributed
more or less except Miss Gamer; Margaret followed with knitted brows and
occasional interjections. "People won't SEE that," for example, a=
nd
"It all seems so plain to me." The doctor showed himself clever b=
ut
unsubstantial and inconsistent. Isabel sat back with her black mop of hair
buried deep in the chair looking quickly from face to face. Her colour came=
and
went with her vivid intellectual excitement; occasionally she would dart a
word, usually a very apt word, like a lizard's tongue into the discussion. I
remember chiefly that a chance illustration betrayed that she had read Bish=
op
Burnet....
After that it was=
not
surprising that Isabel should ask for a lift in our car as far as the Lurky
Committee Room, and that she should offer me quite sound advice EN ROUTE up=
on
the intellectual temperament of the Lurky gasworkers.
On the third occa=
sion
that I saw Isabel she was, as I have said, climbing a tree--and a very
creditable tree--for her own private satisfaction. It was a lapse from the =
high
seriousness of politics, and I perceived she felt that I might regard it as
such and attach too much importance to it. I had some difficulty in reassur=
ing
her. And it's odd to note now--it has never occurred to me before--that from
that day to this I do not think I have ever reminded Isabel of that encount=
er.
And after that me=
mory
she seems to be flickering about always in the election, an inextinguishable
flame; now she flew by on her bicycle, now she dashed into committee rooms,=
now
she appeared on doorsteps in animated conversation with dubious voters; I t=
ook
every chance I could to talk to her--I had never met anything like her befo=
re
in the world, and she interested me immensely--and before the polling day s=
he
and I had become, in the frankest simplicity, fast friends....
That, I think, se=
ts
out very fairly the facts of our early relationship. But it is hard to get =
it
true, either in form or texture, because of the bright, translucent, colour=
ed,
and refracting memories that come between. One forgets not only the tint and
quality of thoughts and impressions through that intervening haze, one forg=
ets
them altogether. I don't remember now that I ever thought in those days of
passionate love or the possibility of such love between us. I may have done=
so again
and again. But I doubt it very strongly. I don't think I ever thought of su=
ch
aspects. I had no more sense of any danger between us, seeing the years and
things that separated us, than I could have had if she had been an intellig=
ent
bright-eyed bird. Isabel came into my life as a new sort of thing; she didn=
't
join on at all to my previous experiences of womanhood. They were not, as I
have laboured to explain, either very wide or very penetrating experiences,=
on
the whole, "strangled dinginess" expresses them, but I do not bel=
ieve
they were narrower or shallower than those of many other men of my class. I=
thought
of women as pretty things and beautiful things, pretty rather than beautifu=
l,
attractive and at times disconcertingly attractive, often bright and witty,
but, because of the vast reservations that hid them from me, wanting, subtly
and inevitably wanting, in understanding. My idealisation of Margaret had
evaporated insensibly after our marriage. The shrine I had made for her in =
my
private thoughts stood at last undisguisedly empty. But Isabel did not for =
a moment
admit of either idealisation or interested contempt. She opened a new spher=
e of
womanhood to me. With her steady amber-brown eyes, her unaffected interest =
in
impersonal things, her upstanding waistless blue body, her energy, decision=
and
courage, she seemed rather some new and infinitely finer form of boyhood th=
an a
feminine creature, as I had come to measure femininity. She was my perfect
friend. Could I have foreseen, had my world been more wisely planned, to th=
is
day we might have been such friends.
She seemed at that
time unconscious of sex, though she has told me since how full she was of
protesting curiosities and restrained emotions. She spoke, as indeed she has
always spoken, simply, clearly, and vividly; schoolgirl slang mingled with
words that marked ample voracious reading, and she moved quickly with the f=
ree
directness of some graceful young animal. She took many of the easy freedom=
s a
man or a sister might have done with me. She would touch my arm, lay a hand=
on
my shoulder as I sat, adjust the lapel of a breast-pocket as she talked to =
me.
She says now she loved me always from the beginning. I doubt if there was a=
suspicion
of that in her mind those days. I used to find her regarding me with the
clearest, steadiest gaze in the world, exactly like the gaze of some nice
healthy innocent animal in a forest, interested, inquiring, speculative, but
singularly untroubled....
5
Polling day came after a last hoars=
e and
dingy crescendo. The excitement was not of the sort that makes one forget o=
ne
is tired out. The waiting for the end of the count has left a long blank ma=
rk
on my memory, and then everyone was shaking my hand and repeating: "Ni=
ne
hundred and seventy-six."
My success had be=
en a
foregone conclusion since the afternoon, but we all behaved as though we had
not been anticipating this result for hours, as though any other figures but
nine hundred and seventy-six would have meant something entirely different.
"Nine hundred and seventy-six!" said Margaret. "They didn't
expect three hundred."
"Nine hundred
and seventy-six," said a little short man with a paper. "It means=
a
big turnover. Two dozen short of a thousand, you know."
A tremendous hull=
aboo
began outside, and a lot of fresh people came into the room.
Isabel, flushed b=
ut
not out of breath, Heaven knows where she had sprung from at that time of
night! was running her hand down my sleeve almost caressingly, with the
innocent bold affection of a girl. "Got you in!" she said. "=
It's
been no end of a lark."
"And now,&qu=
ot;
said I, "I must go and be constructive."
"Now you mus=
t go
and be constructive," she said.
"You've got =
to
live here," she added.
"By Jove!
yes," I said. "We'll have to house hunt."
"I shall read
all your speeches."
She hesitated.
"I wish I was
you," she said, and said it as though it was not exactly the thing she=
was
meaning to say.
"They want y=
ou
to speak," said Margaret, with something unsaid in her face.
"You must co=
me
out with me," I answered, putting my arm through hers, and felt someone
urging me to the French windows that gave on the balcony.
"If you
think--" she said, yielding gladly
"Oh,
RATHER!" said I.
The Mayor of
Kinghamstead, a managing little man with no great belief in my oratorical
powers, was sticking his face up to mine.
"It's all
over," he said, "and you've won. Say all the nice things you can =
and
say them plainly."
I turned and hand=
ed
Margaret out through the window and stood looking over the Market-place, wh=
ich
was more than half filled with swaying people. The crowd set up a roar of
approval at the sight of us, tempered by a little booing. Down in one corne=
r of
the square a fight was going on for a flag, a fight that even the prospect =
of a
speech could not instantly check. "Speech!" cried voices,
"Speech!" and then a brief "boo-oo-oo" that was drowned=
in
a cascade of shouts and cheers. The conflict round the flag culminated in t=
he
smashing of a pane of glass in the chemist's window and instantly sank to
peace.
"Gentlemen
voters of the Kinghamstead Division," I began.
"Votes for
Women!" yelled a voice, amidst laughter--the first time I remember hea=
ring
that memorable war-cry.
"Three cheers
for Mrs. Remington!"
"Mrs. Reming=
ton
asks me to thank you," I said, amidst further uproar and reiterated cr=
ies
of "Speech!"
Then silence came
with a startling swiftness.
Isabel was still =
in
my mind, I suppose. "I shall go to Westminster," I began. I sought
for some compelling phrase and could not find one. "To do my share,&qu=
ot;
I went on, "in building up a great and splendid civilisation."
I paused, and the=
re
was a weak gust of cheering, and then a renewal of booing.
"This
election," I said, "has been the end and the beginning of much. N=
ew
ideas are abroad--"
"Chinese
labour," yelled a voice, and across the square swept a wildfire of boo=
ting
and bawling.
It is one of the =
few
occasions when I quite lost my hold on a speech. I glanced sideways and saw=
the
Mayor of Kinghamstead speaking behind his hand to Parvill. By a happy chance
Parvill caught my eye.
"What do they
want?" I asked.
"Eh?"
"What do they
want?"
"Say somethi=
ng
about general fairness--the other side," prompted Parvill, flattered b=
ut a
little surprised by my appeal. I pulled myself hastily into a more popular
strain with a gross eulogy of my opponent's good taste.
"Chinese
labour!" cried the voice again.
"You've given
that notice to quit," I answered.
The Market-place
roared delight, but whether that delight expressed hostility to Chinamen or
hostility to their practical enslavement no student of the General Election=
of
1906 has ever been able to determine. Certainly one of the most effective
posters on our side displayed a hideous yellow face, just that and nothing
more. There was not even a legend to it. How it impressed the electorate we=
did
not know, but that it impressed the electorate profoundly there can be no
disputing.
6
Kinghamstead was one of the earliest constituencies fought, and we came back--it must have been Saturday--triump= hant but very tired, to our house in Radnor Square. In the train we read the fir= st intimations that the victory of our party was likely to be a sweeping one.<= o:p>
Then came a period
when one was going about receiving and giving congratulations and watching =
the
other men arrive, very like a boy who has returned to school with the first
batch after the holidays. The London world reeked with the General Election=
; it
had invaded the nurseries. All the children of one's friends had got big ma=
ps
of England cut up into squares to represent constituencies and were busy
sticking gummed blue labels over the conquered red of Unionism that had
hitherto submerged the country. And there were also orange labels, if I
remember rightly, to represent the new Labour party, and green for the Iris=
h. I
engaged myself to speak at one or two London meetings, and lunched at the
Reform, which was fairly tepid, and dined and spent one or two tumultuous
evenings at the National Liberal Club, which was in active eruption. The
National Liberal became feverishly congested towards midnight as the result=
s of
the counting came dropping in. A big green-baize screen had been fixed up at
one end of the large smoking-room with the names of the constituencies that
were voting that day, and directly the figures came to hand, up they went,
amidst cheers that at last lost their energy through sheer repetition, when=
ever
there was record of a Liberal gain. I don't remember what happened when the=
re was
a Liberal loss; I don't think that any were announced while I was there.
How packed and no=
isy
the place was, and what a reek of tobacco and whisky fumes we made! Everybo=
dy
was excited and talking, making waves of harsh confused sound that beat upon
one's ears, and every now and then hoarse voices would shout for someone to
speak. Our little set was much in evidence. Both the Cramptons were in, Lew=
is,
Bunting Harblow. We gave brief addresses attuned to this excitement and the
late hour, amidst much enthusiasm.
"Now we can =
DO
things!" I said amidst a rapture of applause. Men I did not know from =
Adam
held up glasses and nodded to me in solemn fuddled approval as I came down =
past
them into the crowd again.
Men were betting
whether the Unionists would lose more or less than two hundred seats.
"I wonder ju=
st
what we shall do with it all," I heard one sceptic speculating....
After these orgie=
s I
would get home very tired and excited, and find it difficult to get to slee=
p. I
would lie and speculate about what it was we WERE going to do. One hadn't
anticipated quite such a tremendous accession to power for one's party.
Liberalism was swirling in like a flood....
I found the next =
few
weeks very unsatisfactory and distressing. I don't clearly remember what it=
was
I had expected; I suppose the fuss and strain of the General Election had b=
uilt
up a feeling that my return would in some way put power into my hands, and =
instead
I found myself a mere undistinguished unit in a vast but rather vague major=
ity.
There were moments when I felt very distinctly that a majority could be too=
big
a crowd altogether. I had all my work still before me, I had achieved nothi=
ng
as yet but opportunity, and a very crowded opportunity it was at that. Ever=
yone
about me was chatting Parliament and appointments; one breathed distracting=
and
irritating speculations as to what would be done and who would be asked to =
do
it. I was chiefly impressed by what was unlikely to be done and by the abse=
nce
of any general plan of legislation to hold us all together. I found the tal=
k about
Parliamentary procedure and etiquette particularly trying. We dined with the
elder Cramptons one evening, and old Sir Edward was lengthily sage about wh=
at
the House liked, what it didn't like, what made a good impression and what a
bad one. "A man shouldn't speak more than twice in his first session, =
and
not at first on too contentious a topic," said Sir Edward. "No.&q=
uot;
"Very much
depends on manner. The House hates a lecturer. There's a sort of airy
earnestness--"
He waved his ciga=
r to
eke out his words.
"Little
peculiarities of costume count for a great deal. I could name one man who s=
pent
three years living down a pair of spatterdashers. On the other hand--a thing
like that--if it catches the eye of the PUNCH man, for example, may be your
making."
He went off into a
lengthy speculation of why the House had come to like an originally unpopul=
ar
Irishman named Biggar....
The opening of
Parliament gave me some peculiar moods. I began to feel more and more like a
branded sheep. We were sworn in in batches, dozens and scores of fresh men,
trying not to look too fresh under the inspection of policemen and messenge=
rs,
all of us carrying new silk hats and wearing magisterial coats. It is one o=
f my
vivid memories from this period, the sudden outbreak of silk hats in the
smoking-room of the National Liberal Club. At first I thought there must ha=
ve
been a funeral. Familiar faces that one had grown to know under soft felt h=
ats,
under bowlers, under liberal-minded wide brims, and above artistic ties and
tweed jackets, suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of self-consci=
ousness,
from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There was a disposition to w=
ear
the hat much too forward, I thought, for a good Parliamentary style.
There was much pl=
ay
with the hats all through; a tremendous competition to get in first and put
hats on coveted seats. A memory hangs about me of the House in the early
afternoon, an inhumane desolation inhabited almost entirely by silk hats. T=
he
current use of cards to secure seats came later. There were yards and yards=
of
empty green benches with hats and hats and hats distributed along them,
resolute-looking top hats, lax top hats with a kind of shadowy grin under t=
hem,
sensible top bats brim upward, and one scandalous incontinent that had roll=
ed
from the front Opposition bench right to the middle of the floor. A headless
hat is surely the most soulless thing in the world, far worse even than a s=
kull....
At last, in a
leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and I found myself packed i=
n a
dense elbowing crowd to the right of the Speaker's chair; while the attenua=
ted
Opposition, nearly leaderless after the massacre, tilted its brim to its no=
se
and sprawled at its ease amidst its empty benches.
There was a
tremendous hullaboo about something, and I craned to see over the shoulder =
of
the man in front. "Order, order, order!"
"What's it
about?" I asked.
The man in front =
of
me was clearly no better informed, and then I gathered from a slightly
contemptuous Scotchman beside me that it was Chris Robinson had walked betw=
een
the honourable member in possession of the house and the Speaker. I caught a
glimpse of him blushingly whispering about his misadventure to a colleague.=
He
was just that same little figure I had once assisted to entertain at Cambri=
dge,
but grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same knitted muffler he h=
ad
discarded for a reckless half-hour while he talked to us in Hatherleigh's
rooms.
It dawned upon me
that I wasn't particularly wanted in the House, and that I should get all I
needed of the opening speeches next day from the TIMES.
I made my way out=
and
was presently walking rather aimlessly through the outer lobby.
I caught myself
regarding the shadow that spread itself out before me, multiplied itself in
blue tints of various intensity, shuffled itself like a pack of cards under=
the
many lights, the square shoulders, the silk hat, already worn with a
parliamentary tilt backward; I found I was surveying this statesmanlike out=
line
with a weak approval. "A MEMBER!" I felt the little cluster of pe=
ople
that were scattered about the lobby must be saying.
"Good God!&q=
uot;
I said in hot reaction, "what am I doing here?"
It was one of tho=
se
moments infinitely trivial in themselves, that yet are cardinal in a man's
life. It came to me with extreme vividness that it wasn't so much that I had
got hold of something as that something had got hold of me. I distinctly re=
call
the rebound of my mind. Whatever happened in this Parliament, I at least wo=
uld
attempt something. "By God!" I said, "I won't be overwhelmed=
. I
am here to do something, and do something I will!"
But I felt that f=
or
the moment I could not remain in the House.
I went out by mys=
elf
with my thoughts into the night. It was a chilling night, and rare spots of
rain were falling. I glanced over my shoulder at the lit windows of the Lor=
ds.
I walked, I remember, westward, and presently came to the Grosvenar Embankm=
ent
and followed it, watching the glittering black rush of the river and the da=
rk,
dimly lit barges round which the water swirled. Across the river was the
hunched sky-line of Doulton's potteries, and a kiln flared redly. Dimly
luminous trams were gliding amidst a dotted line of lamps, and two little
trains crawled into Waterloo station. Mysterious black figures came by me a=
nd
were suddenly changed to the commonplace at the touch of the nearer lamps. =
It was
a big confused world, I felt, for a man to lay his hands upon.
I remember I cros=
sed
Vauxhall Bridge and stood for a time watching the huge black shapes in the
darkness under the gas-works. A shoal of coal barges lay indistinctly on the
darkly shining mud and water below, and a colossal crane was perpetually
hauling up coal into mysterious blacknesses above, and dropping the empty
clutch back to the barges. Just one or two minute black featureless figures=
of
men toiled amidst these monster shapes. They did not seem to be controlling
them but only moving about among them. These gas-works have a big chimney t=
hat
belches a lurid flame into the night, a livid shivering bluish flame, shot =
with
strange crimson streaks....
On the other side=
of
Lambeth Bridge broad stairs go down to the lapping water of the river; the
lower steps are luminous under the lamps and one treads unwarned into thick
soft Thames mud. They seem to be purely architectural steps, they lead nowh=
ere,
they have an air of absolute indifference to mortal ends.
Those shapes and =
large
inhuman places--for all of mankind that one sees at night about Lambeth is
minute and pitiful beside the industrial monsters that snort and toil
there--mix up inextricably with my memories of my first days as a legislato=
r.
Black figures drift by me, heavy vans clatter, a newspaper rough tears by o=
n a
motor bicycle, and presently, on the Albert Embankment, every seat has its =
one
or two outcasts huddled together and slumbering.
"These things
come, these things go," a whispering voice urged upon me, "as once
those vast unmeaning Saurians whose bones encumber museums came and went
rejoicing noisily in fruitless lives."...
Fruitless lives!-=
-was
that the truth of it all?...
Later I stood wit=
hin
sight of the Houses of Parliament in front of the colonnades of St Thomas's
Hospital. I leant on the parapet close by a lamp-stand of twisted dolphins-=
-and
I prayed!
I remember the sw=
irl
of the tide upon the water, and how a string of barges presently came swing=
ing
and bumping round as high-water turned to ebb. That sudden change of positi=
on
and my brief perplexity at it, sticks like a paper pin through the substanc=
e of
my thoughts. It was then I was moved to prayer. I prayed that night that li=
fe
might not be in vain, that in particular I might not live in vain. I prayed=
for
strength and faith, that the monstrous blundering forces in life might not
overwhelm me, might not beat me back to futility and a meaningless acquiesc=
ence
in existent things. I knew myself for the weakling I was, I knew that
nevertheless it was set for me to make such order as I could out of these
disorders, and my task cowed me, gave me at the thought of it a sense of
yielding feebleness.
"Break me, O
God," I prayed at last, "disgrace me, torment me, destroy me as y=
ou
will, but save me from self-complacency and little interests and little
successes and the life that passes like the shadow of a dream."
BOOK THE THIRD: THE HEART=
OF
POLITICS
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ THE
RIDDLE FOR THE STATESMAN
1
I have been planning and replanning,
writing and rewriting, this next portion of my book for many days. I percei=
ve I
must leave it raw edged and ill joined. I have learnt something of the
impossibility of History. For all I have had to tell is the story of one ma=
n's
convictions and aims and how they reacted upon his life; and I find it too
subtle and involved and intricate for the doing. I find it taxes all my pow=
ers
to convey even the main forms and forces in that development. It is like lo=
oking
through moving media of changing hue and variable refraction at something
vitally unstable. Broad theories and generalisations are mingled with perso=
nal
influences, with prevalent prejudices; and not only coloured but altered by
phases of hopefulness and moods of depression. The web is made up of the mo=
st
diverse elements, beyond treatment multitudinous.... For a week or so I
desisted altogether, and walked over the mountains and returned to sit thro=
ugh
the warm soft mornings among the shaded rocks above this little perched-up
house of ours, discussing my difficulties with Isabel and I think on the wh=
ole complicating
them further in the effort to simplify them to manageable and stateable
elements.
Let me, neverthel=
ess,
attempt a rough preliminary analysis of this confused process. A main stran=
d is
quite easily traceable. This main strand is the story of my obvious life, my
life as it must have looked to most of my acquaintances. It presents you wi=
th a
young couple, bright, hopeful, and energetic, starting out under Altiora's
auspices to make a career. You figure us well dressed and active, running a=
bout
in motor-cars, visiting in great people's houses, dining amidst brilliant c=
ompanies,
going to the theatre, meeting in the lobby. Margaret wore hundreds of beaut=
iful
dresses. We must have had an air of succeeding meritoriously during that ti=
me.
We did very
continually and faithfully serve our joint career. I thought about it a gre=
at
deal, and did and refrained from doing ten thousand things for the sake of =
it.
I kept up a solicitude for it, as it were by inertia, long after things had
happened and changes occurred in me that rendered its completion impossible.
Under certain very artless pretences, we wanted steadfastly to make a hands=
ome
position in the world, achieve respect, SUCCEED. Enormous unseen changes had
been in progress for years in my mind and the realities of my life, before =
our
general circle could have had any inkling of their existence, or suspected =
the
appearances of our life. Then suddenly our proceedings began to be deflecte=
d,
our outward unanimity visibly strained and marred by the insurgence of thes=
e so
long-hidden developments.
That career had i= ts own hidden side, of course; but when I write of these unseen factors I do n= ot mean that but something altogether broader. I do not mean the everyday pettinesses which gave the cynical observer scope and told of a narrower, b= aser aspect of the fair but limited ambitions of my ostensible self. This "sub-careerist" element noted little things that affected the car= eer, made me suspicious of the rivalry of so-and-so, propitiatory to so-and-so, whom, as a matter of fact, I didn't respect or feel in the least sympathetic towards; guarded with that man, who for all his charm and interest wasn't helpful, and a little touchy at the appearance of neglect from that. No, I = mean something greater and not something smaller when I write of a hidden life.<= o:p>
In the ostensible
self who glowed under the approbation of Altiora Bailey, and was envied and
discussed, praised and depreciated, in the House and in smoking-room gossip,
you really have as much of a man as usually figures in a novel or an obitua=
ry
notice. But I am tremendously impressed now in the retrospect by the
realisation of how little that frontage represented me, and just how little
such frontages do represent the complexities of the intelligent contemporar=
y.
Behind it, yet struggling to disorganise and alter it, altogether, was a far
more essential reality, a self less personal, less individualised, and broa=
der
in its references. Its aims were never simply to get on; it had an altogeth=
er
different system of demands and satisfactions. It was critical, curious, mo=
re
than a little unfeeling--and relentlessly illuminating.
It is just the
existence and development of this more generalised self-behind-the-frontage
that is making modern life so much more subtle and intricate to render, and=
so
much more hopeful in its relations to the perplexities of the universe. I s=
ee
this mental and spiritual hinterland vary enormously in the people about me,
from a type which seems to keep, as people say, all its goods in the window=
, to
others who, like myself, come to regard the ostensible existence more and m=
ore as
a mere experimental feeder and agent for that greater personality behind. A=
nd
this back-self has its history of phases, its crises and happy accidents and
irrevocable conclusions, more or less distinct from the adventures and
achievements of the ostensible self. It meets persons and phrases, it
assimilates the spirit of a book, it is startled into new realisations by s=
ome
accident that seems altogether irrelevant to the general tenor of one's lif=
e.
Its increasing independence of the ostensible career makes it the organ of
corrective criticism; it accumulates disturbing energy. Then it breaks our
overt promises and repudiates our pledges, coming down at last like an
overbearing mentor upon the small engagements of the pupil.
In the life of the
individual it takes the role that the growth of philosophy, science, and
creative literature may play in the development of mankind.
2
It is curious to recall how Britten
helped shatter that obvious, lucidly explicable presentation of myself upon
which I had embarked with Margaret. He returned to revive a memory of
adolescent dreams and a habit of adolescent frankness; he reached through m=
y shallow
frontage as no one else seemed capable of doing, and dragged that back-self
into relation with it.
I remember very
distinctly a dinner and a subsequent walk with him which presents itself no=
w as
altogether typical of the quality of his influence.
I had come upon h=
im
one day while lunching with Somers and Sutton at the Playwrights' Club, and=
had
asked him to dinner on the spur of the moment. He was oddly the same
curly-headed, red-faced ventriloquist, and oddly different, rather seedy as
well as untidy, and at first a little inclined to make comparisons with my
sleek successfulness. But that disposition presently evaporated, and his ta=
lk
was good and fresh and provocative. And something that had long been strain=
ing
at its checks in my mind flapped over, and he and I found ourselves of one
accord.
Altiora wasn't at
this dinner. When she came matters were apt to become confusedly strenuous.
There was always a slight and ineffectual struggle at the end on the part of
Margaret to anticipate Altiora's overpowering tendency to a rally and the
establishment of some entirely unjustifiable conclusion by a COUP-DE-MAIN.
When, however, Altiora was absent, the quieter influence of the Cramptons
prevailed; temperance and information for its own sake prevailed excessively
over dinner and the play of thought.... Good Lord! what bores the Cramptons
were! I wonder I endured them as I did. They had all of them the trick of l=
ying
in wait conversationally; they had no sense of the self-exposures, the gall=
ant experiments
in statement that are necessary for good conversation. They would watch one
talking with an expression exactly like peeping through bushes. Then they
would, as it were, dash out, dissent succinctly, contradict some secondary
fact, and back to cover. They gave one twilight nerves. Their wives were ea=
sier
but still difficult at a stretch; they talked a good deal about children and
servants, but with an air caught from Altiora of making observations upon
sociological types. Lewis gossiped about the House in an entirely finite
manner. He never raised a discussion; nobody ever raised a discussion. He w=
ould
ask what we thought of Evesham's question that afternoon, and Edward would =
say
it was good, and Mrs. Willie, who had been behind the grille, would think it
was very good, and then Willie, parting the branches, would say rather
conclusively that he didn't think it was very much good, and I would deny
hearing the question in order to evade a profitless statement of views in t=
hat
vacuum, and then we would cast about in our minds for some other topic of e=
qual
interest....
On this occasion
Altiora was absent, and to qualify our Young Liberal bleakness we had Mrs.
Millingham, with her white hair and her fresh mind and complexion, and Esme=
er.
Willie Crampton was with us, but not his wife, who was having her third bab=
y on
principle; his brother Edward was present, and the Lewises, and of course t=
he
Bunting Harblows. There was also some other lady. I remember her as pale bl=
ue,
but for the life of me I cannot remember her name.
Quite early there=
was
a little breeze between Edward Crampton and Esmeer, who had ventured an opi=
nion
about the partition of Poland. Edward was at work then upon the seventh vol=
ume
of his monumental Life of Kosciusko, and a little impatient with views perh=
aps
not altogether false but betraying a lamentable ignorance of accessible
literature. At any rate, his correction of Esmeer was magisterial. After th=
at
there was a distinct and not altogether delightful pause, and then some one=
, it
may have been the pale-blue lady, asked Mrs. Lewis whether her aunt Lady Ca=
rmixter
had returned from her rest-and-sun-cure in Italy. That led to a rather
anxiously sustained talk about regimen, and Willie told us how he had profi=
ted
by the no-breakfast system. It had increased his power of work enormously. =
He
could get through ten hours a day now without inconvenience.
"What do you
do?" said Esmeer abruptly.
"Oh! no end =
of
work. There's all the estate and looking after things."
"But
publicly?"
"I asked thr=
ee
questions yesterday. And for one of them I had to consult nine books!"=
We were drifting,=
I
could see, towards Doctor Haig's system of dietary, and whether the exclusi=
on
or inclusion of fish and chicken were most conducive to high efficiency, wh=
en
Britten, who had refused lemonade and claret and demanded Burgundy, broke o=
ut,
and was discovered to be demanding in his throat just what we Young Liberals
thought we were up to?
"I want,&quo=
t;
said Britten, repeating his challenge a little louder, "to hear just
exactly what you think you are doing in Parliament?"
Lewis laughed
nervously, and thought we were "Seeking the Good of the Community.&quo=
t;
"HOW?"<= o:p>
"Beneficient
Legislation," said Lewis.
"Beneficient=
in
what direction?" insisted Britten. "I want to know where you thin=
k you
are going."
"Amelioratio=
n of
Social Conditions," said Lewis.
"That's only=
a
phrase!"
"You wouldn't
have me sketch bills at dinner?"
"I'd like yo=
u to
indicate directions," said Britten, and waited.
"Upward and
On," said Lewis with conscious neatness, and turned to ask Mrs. Bunting
Harblow about her little boy's French.
For a time talk
frothed over Britten's head, but the natural mischief in Mrs. Millingham had
been stirred, and she was presently echoing his demand in lisping,
quasi-confidential undertones. "What ARE we Liberals doing?" Then
Esmeer fell in with the revolutionaries.
To begin with, I =
was
a little shocked by this clamour for fundamentals--and a little disconcerte=
d. I
had the experience that I suppose comes to every one at times of discovering
oneself together with two different sets of people with whom one has mainta=
ined
two different sets of attitudes. It had always been, I perceived, an
instinctive suppression in our circle that we shouldn't be more than vague
about our political ideals. It had almost become part of my morality to res=
pect
this convention. It was understood we were all working hard, and keeping ou=
rselves
fit, tremendously fit, under Altiora's inspiration, Pro Bono Publico. Bunti=
ng
Harblow had his under-secretaryship, and Lewis was on the verge of the Cabi=
net,
and these things we considered to be in the nature of confirmations.... It
added to the discomfort of the situation that these plunging enquiries were
being made in the presence of our wives.
The rebel section=
of
our party forced the talk.
Edward Crampton w=
as
presently declaring--I forget in what relation: "The country is with
us."
My long-controlled
hatred of the Cramptons' stereotyped phrases about the Country and the House
got the better of me. I showed my cloven hoof to my friends for the first t=
ime.
"We don't
respect the Country as we used to do," I said. "We haven't the sa=
me
belief we used to have in the will of the people. It's no good, Crampton,
trying to keep that up. We Liberals know as a matter of fact--nowadays every
one knows--that the monster that brought us into power has, among other
deficiencies, no head. We've got to give it one--if possible with brains an=
d a
will. That lies in the future. For the present if the country is with us, it
means merely that we happen to have hold of its tether."
Lewis was shocked=
. A
"mandate" from the Country was sacred to his system of pretences.=
Britten wasn't
subdued by his first rebuff; presently he was at us again. There were sever=
al
attempts to check his outbreak of interrogation; I remember the Cramptons a=
sked
questions about the welfare of various cousins of Lewis who were unknown to=
the
rest of us, and Margaret tried to engage Britten in a sympathetic discussio=
n of
the Arts and Crafts exhibition. But Britten and Esmeer were persistent, Mrs=
. Millingham
was mischievous, and in the end our rising hopes of Young Liberalism took to
their thickets for good, while we talked all over them of the prevalent vac=
uity
of political intentions. Margaret was perplexed by me. It is only now I
perceive just how perplexing I must have been. "Of course, she said wi=
th
that faint stress of apprehension in her eyes, one must have aims." An=
d,
"it isn't always easy to put everything into phrases." "Don'=
t be
long," said Mrs. Edward Crampton to her husband as the wives trooped o=
ut.
And afterwards when we went upstairs I had an indefinable persuasion that t=
he
ladies had been criticising Britten's share in our talk in an altogether
unfavourable spirit. Mrs. Edward evidently thought him aggressive and
impertinent, and Margaret with a quiet firmness that brooked no resistance,
took him at once into a corner and showed him Italian photographs by Coburn=
. We
dispersed early.
I walked with Bri=
tten
along the Chelsea back streets towards Battersea Bridge--he lodged on the s=
outh
side.
"Mrs.
Millingham's a dear," he began.
"She's a
dear."
"I liked her
demand for a hansom because a four-wheeler was too safe."
"She was wor=
ked
up," I said. "She's a woman of faultless character, but her
instincts, as Altiora would say, are anarchistic--when she gives them a
chance."
"So she take=
s it
out in hansom cabs."
"Hansom
cabs."
"She's
wise," said Britten....
"I hope,
Remington," he went on after a pause, "I didn't rag your other gu=
ests
too much. I've a sort of feeling at moments--Remington, those chaps are so
infernally not--not bloody. It's part of a man's duty sometimes at least to=
eat
red beef and get drunk. How is he to understand government if he doesn't? It
scares me to think of your lot--by a sort of misapprehension--being in powe=
r. A
kind of neuralgia in the head, by way of government. I don't understand whe=
re
YOU come in. Those others--they've no lusts. Their ideal is anaemia. You an=
d I,
we had at least a lust to take hold of life and make something of it. They-=
-they
want to take hold of life and make nothing of it. They want to cut out all =
the
stimulants. Just as though life was anything else but a reaction to
stimulation!"...
He began to talk =
of
his own life. He had had ill-fortune through most of it. He was poor and
unsuccessful, and a girl he had been very fond of had been attacked and kil=
led
by a horse in a field in a very horrible manner. These things had wounded a=
nd
tortured him, but they hadn't broken him. They had, it seemed to me, made a
kind of crippled and ugly demigod of him. He was, I began to perceive, so m=
uch
better than I had any right to expect. At first I had been rather struck by=
his
unkempt look, and it made my reaction all the stronger. There was about him=
something,
a kind of raw and bleeding faith in the deep things of life, that stirred me
profoundly as he showed it. My set of people had irritated him and disappoi=
nted
him. I discovered at his touch how they irritated him. He reproached me bol=
dly.
He made me feel ashamed of my easy acquiescences as I walked in my sleek ta=
ll
neatness beside his rather old coat, his rather battered hat, his sturdier
shorter shape, and listened to his denunciations of our self-satisfied New
Liberalism and Progressivism.
"It has the =
same
relation to progress--the reality of progress--that the things they paint on
door panels in the suburbs have to art and beauty. There's a sort of
filiation.... Your Altiora's just the political equivalent of the ladies who
sell traced cloth for embroidery; she's a dealer in Refined Social Reform f=
or
the Parlour. The real progress, Remington, is a graver thing and a painfull=
er
thing and a slower thing altogether. Look! THAT"--and he pointed to wh=
ere
under a boarding in the light of a gas lamp a dingy prostitute stood lurkin=
g--"was
in Babylon and Nineveh. Your little lot make believe there won't be anythin=
g of
the sort after this Parliament! They're going to vanish at a few top notes =
from
Altiora Bailey! Remington!--it's foolery. It's prigs at play. It's
make-believe, make-believe! Your people there haven't got hold of things,
aren't beginning to get hold of things, don't know anything of life at all,
shirk life, avoid life, get in little bright clean rooms and talk big over =
your
bumpers of lemonade while the Night goes by outside--untouched. Those Cramp=
ton
fools slink by all this,"--he waved at the woman again--"pretend =
it
doesn't exist, or is going to be banished root and branch by an Act to keep
children in the wet outside public-houses. Do you think they really care,
Remington? I don't. It's make-believe. What they want to do, what Lewis wan=
ts
to do, what Mrs. Bunting Harblow wants her husband to do, is to sit and feel
very grave and necessary and respected on the Government benches. They thin=
k of
putting their feet out like statesmen, and tilting shiny hats with becoming
brims down over their successful noses. Presentation portrait to a club at
fifty. That's their Reality. That's their scope. They don't, it's manifest,
WANT to think beyond that. The things there ARE, Remington, they'll never f=
ace!
the wonder and the depth of life,--lust, and the night-sky,--pain."
"But the good
intention," I pleaded, "the Good Will!"
"Sentimental=
ity,"
said Britten. "No Good Will is anything but dishonesty unless it frets=
and
burns and hurts and destroys a man. That lot of yours have nothing but a go=
od
will to think they have good will. Do you think they lie awake of nights
searching their hearts as we do? Lewis? Crampton? Or those neat, admiring,
satisfied little wives? See how they shrank from the probe!"
"We all,&quo=
t; I
said, "shrink from the probe."
"God help
us!" said Britten....
"We are but
vermin at the best, Remington," he broke out, "and the greatest s=
aint
only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment from the dust. We are dam=
ned,
we are meant to be damned, coral animalculae building upward, upward in a s=
ea
of damnation. But of all the damned things that ever were damned, your damn=
ed
shirking, temperate, sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-beli=
eve,
Fabian-spirited Young Liberal is the utterly damnedest." He paused for=
a
moment, and resumed in an entirely different note: "Which is why I was=
so
surprised, Remington, to find YOU in this set!"
"You're just=
the
old plunger you used to be, Britten," I said. "You're going too f=
ar
with all your might for the sake of the damns. Like a donkey that drags its
cart up a bank to get thistles. There's depths in Liberalism--"
"We were tal=
king
about Liberals."
"Liberty!&qu=
ot;
"Liberty! Wh=
at
do YOOR little lot know of liberty?"
"What does a=
ny
little lot know of liberty?"
"It waits
outside, too big for our understanding. Like the night and the stars. And l=
ust,
Remington! lust and bitterness! Don't I know them? with all the sweetness a=
nd
hope of life bitten and trampled, the dear eyes and the brain that loved and
understood--and my poor mumble of a life going on! I'm within sight of bein=
g a
drunkard, Remington! I'm a failure by most standards! Life has cut me to the
bone. But I'm not afraid of it any more. I've paid something of the price, =
I've
seen something of the meaning."
He flew off at a
tangent. "I'd rather die in Delirium Tremens," he cried, "th=
an
be a Crampton or a Lewis...."
"Make-believ=
e.
Make-believe." The phrase and Britten's squat gestures haunted me as I
walked homeward alone. I went to my room and stood before my desk and surve=
yed
papers and files and Margaret's admirable equipment of me.
I perceived in the
lurid light of Britten's suggestions that so it was Mr. George Alexander wo=
uld
have mounted a statesman's private room....
3
I was never at any stage a loyal pa=
rty
man. I doubt if party will ever again be the force it was during the eighte=
enth
and nineteenth centuries. Men are becoming increasingly constructive and
selective, less patient under tradition and the bondage of initial
circumstances. As education becomes more universal and liberating, men will
sort themselves more and more by their intellectual temperaments and less a=
nd less
by their accidental associations. The past will rule them less; the future
more. It is not simply party but school and college and county and country =
that
lose their glamour. One does not hear nearly as much as our forefathers did=
of
the "old Harrovian," "old Arvonian," "old Etonian&=
quot;
claim to this or that unfair advantage or unearnt sympathy. Even the Scotch=
and
the Devonians weaken a little in their clannishness. A widening sense of fa=
ir
play destroys such things. They follow freemasonry down--freemasonry of whi=
ch
one is chiefly reminded nowadays in England by propitiatory symbols outside=
shady
public-houses....
There is, of cour=
se,
a type of man which clings very obstinately to party ties. These are the men
with strong reproductive imaginations and no imaginative initiative, such m=
en
as Cladingbowl, for example, or Dayton. They are the scholars-at-large in l=
ife.
For them the fact that the party system has been essential in the history of
England for two hundred years gives it an overwhelming glamour. They have r=
ead
histories and memoirs, they see the great grey pile of Westminster not so m=
uch for
what it is as for what it was, rich with dramatic memories, populous with
glorious ghosts, phrasing itself inevitably in anecdotes and quotations. It
seems almost scandalous that new things should continue to happen, swamping
with strange qualities the savour of these old associations.
That Mr. Ramsay
Macdonald should walk through Westminster Hall, thrust himself, it may be,
through the very piece of space that once held Charles the Martyr pleading =
for
his life, seems horrible profanation to Dayton, a last posthumous outrage; =
and
he would, I think, like to have the front benches left empty now for ever, =
or
at most adorned with laureated ivory tablets: "Here Dizzy sat," a=
nd
"On this Spot William Ewart Gladstone made his First Budget Speech.&qu=
ot;
Failing this, he demands, if only as signs of modesty and respect on the pa=
rt
of the survivors, meticulous imitation. "Mr. G.," he murmurs,
"would not have done that," and laments a vanished subtlety even
while Mr. Evesham is speaking. He is always gloomily disposed to lapse into
wonderings about what things are coming to, wonderings that have no grain of
curiosity. His conception of perfect conduct is industrious persistence alo=
ng
the worn-down, well-marked grooves of the great recorded days. So infinitel=
y more
important to him is the documented, respected thing than the elusive presen=
t.
Cladingbowl and
Dayton do not shine in the House, though Cladingbowl is a sound man on a
committee, and Dayton keeps the OLD COUNTRY GAZETTE, the most gentlemanly p=
aper
in London. They prevail, however, in their clubs at lunch time. There, with=
the
pleasant consciousness of a morning's work free from either zeal or shirkin=
g,
they mingle with permanent officials, prominent lawyers, even a few of the
soberer type of business men, and relax their minds in the discussion of the
morning paper, of the architecture of the West End, and of the latest publi=
c appointments,
of golf, of holiday resorts, of the last judicial witticisms and forensic
"crushers." The New Year and Birthday honours lists are always ve=
ry
sagely and exhaustively considered, and anecdotes are popular and keenly
judged. They do not talk of the things that are really active in their mind=
s,
but in the formal and habitual manner they suppose to be proper to intellig=
ent
but still honourable men. Socialism, individual money matters, and religion=
are
forbidden topics, and sex and women only in so far as they appear in the law
courts. It is to me the strangest of conventions, this assumption of unreal
loyalties and traditional respects, this repudiation and concealment of
passionate interests. It is like wearing gloves in summer fields, or bathin=
g in
a gown, or falling in love with the heroine of a novel, or writing under a =
pseudonym,
or becoming a masked Tuareg....
It is not, I thin=
k,
that men of my species are insensitive to the great past that is embodied in
Westminster and its traditions; we are not so much wanting in the historical
sense as alive to the greatness of our present opportunities and the still
vaster future that is possible to us. London is the most interesting,
beautiful, and wonderful city in the world to me, delicate in her incidental
and multitudinous littleness, and stupendous in her pregnant totality; I ca=
nnot
bring myself to use her as a museum or an old bookshop. When I think of
Whitehall that little affair on the scaffold outside the Banqueting Hall se=
ems
trivial and remote in comparison with the possibilities that offer themselv=
es
to my imagination within the great grey Government buildings close at hand.=
It gives me a qua=
lm
of nostalgia even to name those places now. I think of St. Stephen's tower
streaming upwards into the misty London night and the great wet quadrangle =
of
New Palace Yard, from which the hansom cabs of my first experiences were ou=
sted
more and more by taxicabs as the second Parliament of King Edward the Seven=
th
aged; I think of the Admiralty and War office with their tall Marconi masts
sending out invisible threads of direction to the armies in the camps, to g=
reat
fleets about the world. The crowded, darkly shining river goes flooding thr=
ough
my memory once again, on to those narrow seas that part us from our rival
nations; I see quadrangles and corridors of spacious grey-toned offices in
which undistinguished little men and little files of papers link us to isla=
nds
in the tropics, to frozen wildernesses gashed for gold, to vast temple-stud=
ded
plains, to forest worlds and mountain worlds, to ports and fortresses and
lighthouses and watch-towers and grazing lands and corn lands all about the
globe. Once more I traverse Victoria Street, grimy and dark, where the Agen=
ts
of the Empire jostle one another, pass the big embassies in the West End wi=
th
their flags and scutcheons, follow the broad avenue that leads to Buckingham
Palace, witness the coming and going of troops and officials and guests alo=
ng
it from every land on earth.... Interwoven in the texture of it all, mockin=
g,
perplexing, stimulating beyond measure, is the gleaming consciousness, the
challenging knowledge: "You and your kind might still, if you could but
grasp it here, mould all the destiny of Man!"
4
My first three years in Parliament =
were
years of active discontent. The little group of younger Liberals to which I
belonged was very ignorant of the traditions and qualities of our older
leaders, and quite out of touch with the mass of the party. For a time
Parliament was enormously taken up with moribund issues and old quarrels. T=
he
early Educational legislation was sectarian and unenterprising, and the
Licensing Bill went little further than the attempted rectification of a
Conservative mistake. I was altogether for the nationalisation of the
public-houses, and of this end the Bill gave no intimations. It was just
beer-baiting. I was recalcitrant almost from the beginning, and spoke again=
st
the Government so early as the second reading of the first Education Bill, =
the
one the Lords rejected in 1906. I went a little beyond my intention in the =
heat
of speaking,--it is a way with inexperienced man. I called the Bill timid,
narrow, a mere sop to the jealousies of sects and little-minded people. I
contrasted its aim and methods with the manifest needs of the time.
I am not a
particularly good speaker; after the manner of a writer I worry to find my
meaning too much; but this was one of my successes. I spoke after dinner an=
d to
a fairly full House, for people were already a little curious about me beca=
use
of my writings. Several of the Conservative leaders were present and stayed,
and Mr. Evesham, I remember, came ostentatiously to hear me, with that enga=
ging
friendliness of his, and gave me at the first chance an approving "Hea=
r, Hear!"
I can still recall quite distinctly my two futile attempts to catch the
Speaker's eye before I was able to begin, the nervous quiver of my rather t=
oo prepared
opening, the effect of hearing my own voice and my subconscious wonder as to
what I could possibly be talking about, the realisation that I was getting =
on
fairly well, the immense satisfaction afterwards of having on the whole bro=
ught
it off, and the absurd gratitude I felt for that encouraging cheer.
Addressing the Ho=
use
of Commons is like no other public speaking in the world. Its semi-colloqui=
al
methods give it an air of being easy, but its shifting audience, the comings
and goings and hesitations of members behind the chair--not mere audience
units, but men who matter--the desolating emptiness that spreads itself rou=
nd
the man who fails to interest, the little compact, disciplined crowd in the
strangers' gallery, the light, elusive, flickering movements high up behind=
the
grill, the wigged, attentive, weary Speaker, the table and the mace and the
chapel-like Gothic background with its sombre shadows, conspire together,
produce a confused, uncertain feeling in me, as though I was walking upon a=
pavement
full of trap-doors and patches of uncovered morass. A misplaced, well-meant
"Hear, Hear!" is apt to be extraordinarily disconcerting, and und=
er
no other circumstances have I had to speak with quite the same sideways twi=
st
that the arrangement of the House imposes. One does not recognise one's own
voice threading out into the stirring brown. Unless I was excited or speaki=
ng
to the mind of some particular person in the house, I was apt to lose my
feeling of an auditor. I had no sense of whither my sentences were going, s=
uch
as one has with a public meeting well under one's eye. And to lose one's se=
nse of
an auditor is for a man of my temperament to lose one's sense of the immedi=
ate,
and to become prolix and vague with qualifications.
5
My discontents with the Liberal par=
ty and
my mental exploration of the quality of party generally is curiously mixed =
up
with certain impressions of things and people in the National Liberal Club.=
The
National Liberal Club is Liberalism made visible in the flesh--and Doultonw=
are.
It is an extraordinary big club done in a bold, wholesale, shiny, marbled
style, richly furnished with numerous paintings, steel engravings, busts, a=
nd
full-length statues of the late Mr. Gladstone; and its spacious dining-room=
s,
its long, hazy, crowded smoking-room with innumerable little tables and gro=
ups
of men in armchairs, its magazine room and library upstairs, have just that
undistinguished and unconcentrated diversity which is for me the Liberal no=
te.
The pensive member sits and hears perplexing dialects and even fragments of
foreign speech, and among the clustering masses of less insistent whites hi=
s roving
eye catches profiles and complexions that send his mind afield to Calcutta =
or
Rangoon or the West Indies or Sierra Leone or the Cape....
I was not
infrequently that pensive member. I used to go to the Club to doubt about
Liberalism.
About two o'clock=
in
the day the great smoking-room is crowded with countless little groups. They
sit about small round tables, or in circles of chairs, and the haze of toba=
cco
seems to prolong the great narrow place, with its pillars and bays, to
infinity. Some of the groups are big, as many as a dozen men talk in loud
tones; some are duologues, and there is always a sprinkling of lonely,
dissociated men. At first one gets an impression of men going from group to
group and as it were linking them, but as one watches closely one finds that
these men just visit three or four groups at the outside, and know nothing =
of
the others. One begins to perceive more and more distinctly that one is dea=
ling
with a sort of human mosaic; that each patch in that great place is of a
different quality and colour from the next and never to be mixed with it. M=
ost
clubs have a common link, a lowest common denominator in the Club Bore, who
spares no one, but even the National Liberal bores are specialised and
sectional. As one looks round one sees here a clump of men from the North
Country or the Potteries, here an island of South London politicians, here a
couple of young Jews ascendant from Whitechapel, here a circle of journalis=
ts
and writers, here a group of Irish politicians, here two East Indians, here=
a
priest or so, here a clump of old-fashioned Protestants, here a little knot=
of
eminent Rationalists indulging in a blasphemous story SOTTO VOCE. Next them=
are
a group of anglicised Germans and highly specialised chess-players, and then
two of the oddest-looking persons--bulging with documents and intent upon
extraordinary business transactions over long cigars....
I would listen to=
a
stormy sea of babblement, and try to extract some constructive intimations.
Every now and then I got a whiff of politics. It was clear they were against
the Lords--against plutocrats--against Cossington's newspapers--against the
brewers.... It was tremendously clear what they were against. The trouble w=
as
to find out what on earth they were for!...
As I sat and thou=
ght,
the streaked and mottled pillars and wall, the various views, aspects, and
portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, the partitions of polished mahogany, t=
he
yellow-vested waiters, would dissolve and vanish, and I would have a vision=
of
this sample of miscellaneous men of limited, diverse interests and a univer=
sal littleness
of imagination enlarged, unlimited, no longer a sample but a community,
spreading, stretching out to infinity--all in little groups and duologues a=
nd
circles, all with their special and narrow concerns, all with their backs to
most of the others.
What but a common
antagonism would ever keep these multitudes together? I understood why mode=
rn
electioneering is more than half of it denunciation. Let us condemn, if
possible, let us obstruct and deprive, but not let us do. There is no real
appeal to the commonplace mind in "Let us do." That calls for the
creative imagination, and few have been accustomed to respond to that call.=
The
other merely needs jealousy and bate, of which there are great and easily
accessible reservoirs in every human heart....
I remember that
vision of endless, narrow, jealous individuality very vividly. A seething
limitlessness it became at last, like a waste place covered by crawling loc=
usts
that men sweep up by the sackload and drown by the million in ditches....
Grotesquely again=
st
it came the lean features, the sidelong shy movements of Edward Crampton,
seated in a circle of talkers close at hand. I had a whiff of his strained,
unmusical voice, and behold! he was saying something about the "Will of
the People...."
The immense and
wonderful disconnectednesses of human life! I forgot the smoke and jabber of
the club altogether; I became a lonely spirit flung aloft by some queer
accident, a stone upon a ledge in some high and rocky wilderness, and below=
as
far as the eye could reach stretched the swarming infinitesimals of humanit=
y,
like grass upon the field, like pebbles upon unbounded beaches. Was there e=
ver
to be in human life more than that endless struggling individualism? Was th=
ere
indeed some giantry, some immense valiant synthesis, still to come--or pres=
ent
it might be and still unseen by me, or was this the beginning and withal the
last phase of mankind?...
I glimpsed for a
while the stupendous impudence of our ambitions, the tremendous enterprise =
to
which the modern statesman is implicitly addressed. I was as it were one of=
a
little swarm of would-be reef builders looking back at the teeming slime up=
on
the ocean floor. All the history of mankind, all the history of life, has b=
een
and will be the story of something struggling out of the indiscriminated ab=
yss,
struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend individual lives--an ef=
fort
of insidious attraction, an idea of invincible appeal. That something great=
er
than ourselves, which does not so much exist as seek existence, palpitating
between being and not-being, how marvellous it is! It has worn the form and
visage of ten thousand different gods, sought a shape for itself in stone a=
nd
ivory and music and wonderful words, spoken more and more clearly of a myst=
ery
of love, a mystery of unity, dabbling meanwhile in blood and cruelty beyond=
the
common impulses of men. It is something that comes and goes, like a light t=
hat shines
and is withdrawn, withdrawn so completely that one doubts if it has ever
been....
6
I would mark with a curious interes=
t the
stray country member of the club up in town for a night or so. My mind woul=
d be
busy with speculations about him, about his home, his family, his reading, =
his horizons,
his innumerable fellows who didn't belong and never came up. I would fill in
the outline of him with memories of my uncle and his Staffordshire neighbou=
rs.
He was perhaps Alderman This or Councillor That down there, a great man in =
his
ward, J. P. within seven miles of the boundary of the borough, and a God in=
his
home. Here he was nobody, and very shy, and either a little too arrogant or=
a
little too meek towards our very democratic mannered but still livened wait=
ers.
Was he perhaps the backbone of England? He over-ate himself lest he should =
appear
mean, went through our Special Dinner conscientiously, drank, unless he was=
teetotal,
of unfamiliar wines, and did his best, in spite of the rules, to tip.
Afterwards, in a state of flushed repletion, he would have old brandy, black
coffee, and a banded cigar, or in the name of temperance omit the brandy and
have rather more coffee, in the smoking-room. I would sit and watch that st=
iff
dignity of self-indulgence, and wonder, wonder....
An infernal
clairvoyance would come to me. I would have visions of him in relation to h=
is
wife, checking always, sometimes bullying, sometimes being ostentatiously
"kind"; I would see him glance furtively at his domestic servants
upon his staircase, or stiffen his upper lip against the reluctant, protest=
ing
business employee. We imaginative people are base enough, heaven knows, but=
it
is only in rare moods of bitter penetration that we pierce down to the baser
lusts, the viler shames, the everlasting lying and muddle-headed
self-justification of the dull.
I would turn my e= yes down the crowded room and see others of him and others. What did he think h= e was up to? Did he for a moment realise that his presence under that ceramic glo= ry of a ceiling with me meant, if it had any rational meaning at all, that we = were jointly doing something with the nation and the empire and mankind?... How = on earth could any one get hold of him, make any noble use of him? He didn't r= ead beyond his newspaper. He never thought, but only followed imaginings in his= heart. He never discussed. At the first hint of discussion his temper gave way. He was, I knew, a deep, thinly-covered tank of resentments and quite irrational moral rages. Yet withal I would have to resist an impulse to go over to him= and nudge him and say to him, "Look here! What indeed do you think we are doing with the nation and the empire and mankind? You know--MANKIND!"<= o:p>
I wonder what rep=
ly I
should have got.
So far as any ave=
rage
could be struck and so far as any backbone could be located, it seemed to me
that this silent, shy, replete, sub-angry, middle-class sentimentalist was =
in
his endless species and varieties and dialects the backbone of our party. So
far as I could be considered as representing anything in the House, I prete=
nded
to sit for the elements of HIM....
7
For a time I turned towards the
Socialists. They at least had an air of coherent intentions. At that time
Socialism had come into politics again after a period of depression and
obscurity, with a tremendous ECLAT. There was visibly a following of Social=
ist
members to Chris Robinson; mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in soft f=
elt
hats and short coats and square-toed boots who replied to casual advances a
little surprisingly in rich North Country dialects. Members became aware of=
a "seagreen
incorruptible," as Colonel Marlow put it to me, speaking on the Addres=
s, a
slender twisted figure supporting itself on a stick and speaking with a fire
that was altogether revolutionary. This was Philip Snowden, the member for
Blackburn. They had come in nearly forty strong altogether, and with an air=
of
presently meaning to come in much stronger. They were only one aspect of wh=
at
seemed at that time a big national movement. Socialist societies, we gather=
ed,
were springing up all over the country, and every one was inquiring about
Socialism and discussing Socialism. It had taken the Universities with part=
icular
force, and any youngster with the slightest intellectual pretension was eit=
her
actively for or brilliantly against. For a time our Young Liberal group was
ostentatiously sympathetic....
When I think of t=
he
Socialists there comes a vivid memory of certain evening gatherings at our
house....
These gatherings =
had
been organised by Margaret as the outcome of a discussion at the Baileys'.
Altiora had been very emphatic and uncharitable upon the futility of the
Socialist movement. It seemed that even the leaders fought shy of
dinner-parties.
"They never =
meet
each other," said Altiora, "much less people on the other side. H=
ow
can they begin to understand politics until they do that?"
"Most of them
have totally unpresentable wives," said Altiora, "totally!" =
and
quoted instances, "and they WILL bring them. Or they won't come! Some =
of
the poor creatures have scarcely learnt their table manners. They just make
holes in the talk...."
I thought there w=
as a
great deal of truth beneath Altiora's outburst. The presentation of the
Socialist case seemed very greatly crippled by the want of a common intimac=
y in
its leaders; the want of intimacy didn't at first appear to be more than an
accident, and our talk led to Margaret's attempt to get acquaintance and ea=
sy
intercourse afoot among them and between them and the Young Liberals of our
group. She gave a series of weekly dinners, planned, I think, a little too
accurately upon Altiora's model, and after each we had as catholic a recept=
ion
as we could contrive.
Our receptions we=
re
indeed, I should think, about as catholic as receptions could be. Margaret
found herself with a weekly houseful of insoluble problems in intercourse. =
One
did one's best, but one got a nightmare feeling as the evening wore on.
It was one of the=
few
unanimities of these parties that every one should be a little odd in
appearance, funny about the hair or the tie or the shoes or more generally,=
and
that bursts of violent aggression should alternate with an attitude entirely
defensive. A number of our guests had an air of waiting for a clue that nev=
er
came, and stood and sat about silently, mildly amused but not a bit surpris=
ed
that we did not discover their distinctive Open-Sesames. There was a sprink=
ling
of manifest seers and prophetesses in shapeless garments, far too many, I t=
hought,
for really easy social intercourse, and any conversation at any moment was
liable to become oracular. One was in a state of tension from first to last;
the most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding resentment, and replies
came out at the most unexpected angles. We Young Liberals went about puzzled
but polite to the gathering we had evoked. The Young Liberals' tradition is=
on
the whole wonderfully discreet, superfluous steam is let out far away from =
home
in the Balkans or Africa, and the neat, stiff figures of the Cramptons, Bun=
ting
Harblow, and Lewis, either in extremely well-cut morning coats indicative of
the House, or in what is sometimes written of as "faultless evening
dress," stood about on those evenings, they and their very quietly and
simply and expensively dressed little wives, like a datum line amidst lakes=
and
mountains.
I didn't at first=
see
the connection between systematic social reorganisation and arbitrary novel=
ties
in dietary and costume, just as I didn't realise why the most comprehensive
constructive projects should appear to be supported solely by odd and
exceptional personalities. On one of these evenings a little group of rather
jolly-looking pretty young people seated themselves for no particular reaso=
n in
a large circle on the floor of my study, and engaged, so far as I could jud=
ge, in
the game of Hunt the Meaning, the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the Slipp=
er.
It must have been that same evening I came upon an unbleached young gentlem=
an
before the oval mirror on the landing engaged in removing the remains of an
anchovy sandwich from his protruded tongue--visible ends of cress having mi=
sled
him into the belief that he was dealing with doctrinally permissible food. =
It
was not unusual to be given hand-bills and printed matter by our guests, but
there I had the advantage over Lewis, who was too tactful to refuse the stu=
ff,
too neatly dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon whi=
ch
he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver. So that his h=
ands
got fuller and fuller. A relentless, compact little woman in what Margaret
declared to be an extremely expensive black dress has also printed herself =
on
my memory; she had set her heart upon my contributing to a weekly periodica=
l in
the lentil interest with which she was associated, and I spent much time and
care in evading her.
Mingling with the
more hygienic types were a number of Anti-Puritan Socialists, bulging with =
bias
against temperance, and breaking out against austere methods of living all =
over
their faces. Their manner was packed with heartiness. They were apt to choke
the approaches to the little buffet Margaret had set up downstairs, and the=
re
engage in discussions of Determinism--it always seemed to be Determinism--w=
hich
became heartier and noisier, but never acrimonious even in the small hours.=
It
seemed impossible to settle about this Determinism of theirs--ever. And the=
re
were worldly Socialists also. I particularly recall a large, active, buoyan=
t,
lady-killing individual with an eyeglass borne upon a broad black ribbon, w=
ho
swam about us one evening. He might have been a slightly frayed actor, in h=
is
large frock-coat, his white waistcoat, and the sort of black and white check
trousers that twinkle. He had a high-pitched voice with aristocratic
intonations, and he seemed to be in a perpetual state of interrogation.
"What are we all he-a for?" he would ask only too audibly. "=
What
are we doing he-a? What's the connection?"
What WAS the
connection?
We made a special
effort with our last assembly in June, 1907. We tried to get something like=
a
representative collection of the parliamentary leaders of Socialism, the
various exponents of Socialist thought and a number of Young Liberal thinke=
rs
into one room. Dorvil came, and Horatio Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared f=
or
ten minutes and talked charmingly to Margaret and then vanished again; there
was Wilkins the novelist and Toomer and Dr. Tumpany. Chris Robinson stood a=
bout
for a time in a new comforter, and Magdeberg and Will Pipes and five or six
Labour members. And on our side we had our particular little group, Bunting
Harblow, Crampton, Lewis, all looking as broad-minded and open to convictio=
n as
they possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes al=
most
boldly. But the gathering as a whole refused either to mingle or dispute, a=
nd
as an experiment in intercourse the evening was a failure. Unexpected
dissociations appeared between Socialists one had supposed friendly. I could
not have imagined it was possible for half so many people to turn their bac=
ks
on everybody else in such small rooms as ours. But the unsaid things those
backs expressed broke out, I remarked, with refreshed virulence in the vari=
ous
organs of the various sections of the party next week.
I talked, I remem=
ber,
with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still larger professional frock-co=
at,
and with a great shock of very fair hair, who was candidate for some North
Country constituency. We discussed the political outlook, and, like so many
Socialists at that time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Libe=
ral
party. I was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed less vivi=
dly
in many others of these Socialist leaders, and which gave me at last a clue=
to
the whole business. He behaved exactly like a man in possession of valuable
patent rights, who wants to be dealt with. He had an air of having a corner=
in
ideas. Then it flashed into my head that the whole Socialist movement was an
attempted corner in ideas....
8
Late that night I found myself alon=
e with
Margaret amid the debris of the gathering.
I sat before the
fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white and weary, came and lea=
nt
upon the mantel.
"Oh, Lord!&q=
uot;
said Margaret.
I agreed. Then I
resumed my meditation.
"Ideas,"=
; I
said, "count for more than I thought in the world."
Margaret regarded=
me
with that neutral expression behind which she was accustomed to wait for cl=
ues.
"When you th=
ink
of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of the Socialist ideas, a=
nd
see the men who are running them," I explained.... "A big system =
of
ideas like Socialism grows up out of the obvious common sense of our present
conditions. It's as impersonal as science. All these men--They've given not=
hing
to it. They're just people who have pegged out claims upon a big intellectu=
al
No-Man's-Land--and don't feel quite sure of the law. There's a sort of
quarrelsome uneasiness.... If we professed Socialism do you think they'd
welcome us? Not a man of them! They'd feel it was burglary...."
"Yes," =
said
Margaret, looking into the fire. "That is just what I felt about them =
all
the evening.... Particularly Dr. Tumpany."
"We mustn't
confuse Socialism with the Socialists," I said; "that's the moral=
of
it. I suppose if God were to find He had made a mistake in dates or somethi=
ng,
and went back and annihilated everybody from Owen onwards who was in any way
known as a Socialist leader or teacher, Socialism would be exactly where it=
is
and what it is to-day--a growing realisation of constructive needs in every
man's mind, and a little corner in party politics. So, I suppose, it will
always be.... But they WERE a damned lot, Margaret!"
I looked up at the
little noise she made. "TWICE!" she said, smiling indulgently,
"to-day!" (Even the smile was Altiora's.)
I returned to my
thoughts. They WERE a damned human lot. It was an excellent word in that
connection....
But the ideas mar=
ched
on, the ideas marched on, just as though men's brains were no more than
stepping-stones, just as though some great brain in which we are all little
cells and corpuscles was thinking them!...
"I don't thi=
nk
there is a man among them who makes me feel he is trustworthy," said
Margaret; "unless it is Featherstonehaugh."
I sat taking in t=
his
proposition.
"They'll nev=
er
help us, I feel," said Margaret.
"Us?"
"The
Liberals."
"Oh, damn the
Liberals!" I said. "They'll never even help themselves."
"I don't thi=
nk I
could possibly get on with any of those people," said Margaret, after a
pause.
She remained for a
time looking down at me and, I could feel, perplexed by me, but I wanted to=
go
on with my thinking, and so I did not look up, and presently she stooped to=
my
forehead and kissed me and went rustling softly to her room.
I remained in my
study for a long time with my thoughts crystallising out....
It was then, I th=
ink,
that I first apprehended clearly how that opposition to which I have already
alluded of the immediate life and the mental hinterland of a man, can be
applied to public and social affairs. The ideas go on--and no person or par=
ty
succeeds in embodying them. The reality of human progress never comes to the
surface, it is a power in the deeps, an undertow. It goes on in silence whi=
le
men think, in studies where they write self-forgetfully, in laboratories un=
der
the urgency of an impersonal curiosity, in the rare illumination of honest =
talk,
in moments of emotional insight, in thoughtful reading, but not in everyday
affairs. Everyday affairs and whatever is made an everyday affair, are tran=
sactions
of the ostensible self, the being of habits, interests, usage. Temper, vani=
ty,
hasty reaction to imitation, personal feeling, are their substance. No man =
can
abolish his immediate self and specialise in the depths; if he attempt that=
, he
simply turns himself into something a little less than the common man. He m=
ay
have an immense hinterland, but that does not absolve him from a frontage. =
That
is the essential error of the specialist philosopher, the specialist teache=
r, the
specialist publicist. They repudiate frontage; claim to be pure hinterland.
That is what bothered me about Codger, about those various schoolmasters who
had prepared me for life, about the Baileys and their dream of an official
ruling class. A human being who is a philosopher in the first place, a teac=
her
in the first place, or a statesman in the first place, is thereby and
inevitably, though he bring God-like gifts to the pretence--a quack. These =
are
attempts to live deep-side shallow, inside out. They produce merely a new
pettiness. To understand Socialism, again, is to gain a new breadth of outl=
ook;
to join a Socialist organisation is to join a narrow cult which is not even=
tolerably
serviceable in presenting or spreading the ideas for which it stands....
I perceived I had=
got
something quite fundamental here. It had taken me some years to realise the
true relation of the great constructive ideas that swayed me not only to
political parties, but to myself. I had been disposed to identify the formu=
lae
of some one party with social construction, and to regard the other as
necessarily anti-constructive, just as I had been inclined to follow the
Baileys in the self-righteousness of supposing myself to be wholly
constructive. But I saw now that every man of intellectual freedom and vigo=
ur
is necessarily constructive-minded nowadays, and that no man is disinterest=
edly
so. Each one of us repeats in himself the conflict of the race between the =
splendour
of its possibilities and its immediate associations. We may be shaping immo=
rtal
things, but we must sleep and answer the dinner gong, and have our salt of
flattery and self-approval. In politics a man counts not for what he is in
moments of imaginative expansion, but for his common workaday, selfish self;
and political parties are held together not by a community of ultimate aims,
but by the stabler bond of an accustomed life. Everybody almost is for prog=
ress
in general, and nearly everybody is opposed to any change, except in so far=
as
gross increments are change, in his particular method of living and behavio=
ur. Every
party stands essentially for the interests and mental usages of some defini=
te
class or group of classes in the exciting community, and every party has its
scientific-minded and constructive leading section, with well-defined hinte=
rlands
formulating its social functions in a public-spirited form, and its
superficial-minded following confessing its meannesses and vanities and
prejudices. No class will abolish itself, materially alter its way of life,=
or
drastically reconstruct itself, albeit no class is indisposed to co-operate=
in
the unlimited socialisation of any other class. In that capacity for aggres=
sion
upon other classes lies the essential driving force of modern affairs. The =
instincts,
the persons, the parties, and vanities sway and struggle. The ideas and
understandings march on and achieve themselves for all--in spite of every
one....
The methods and
traditions of British politics maintain the form of two great parties, with
rider groups seeking to gain specific ends in the event of a small Governme=
nt
majority. These two main parties are more or less heterogeneous in composit=
ion.
Each, however, has certain necessary characteristics. The Conservative Party
has always stood quite definitely for the established propertied interests.=
The
land-owner, the big lawyer, the Established Church, and latterly the huge
private monopoly of the liquor trade which has been created by temperance l=
egislation,
are the essential Conservatives. Interwoven now with the native wealthy are=
the
families of the great international usurers, and a vast miscellaneous mass =
of
financial enterprise. Outside the range of resistance implied by these
interests, the Conservative Party has always shown itself just as construct=
ive
and collectivist as any other party. The great landowners have been as
well-disposed towards the endowment of higher education, and as willing to
co-operate with the Church in protective and mildly educational legislation=
for
children and the working class, as any political section. The financiers, t=
oo,
are adventurous-spirited and eager for mechanical progress and technical ef=
ficiency.
They are prepared to spend public money upon research, upon ports and harbo=
urs
and public communications, upon sanitation and hygienic organisation. A cer=
tain
rude benevolence of public intention is equally characteristic of the liquor
trade. Provided his comfort leads to no excesses of temperance, the liquor
trade is quite eager to see the common man prosperous, happy, and with mone=
y to
spend in a bar. All sections of the party are aggressively patriotic and
favourably inclined to the idea of an upstanding, well-fed, and well-exerci=
sed
population in uniform. Of course there are reactionary landowners and
old-fashioned country clergy, full of localised self-importance, jealous ev=
en
of the cottager who can read, but they have neither the power nor the abili=
ty to
retard the constructive forces in the party as a whole. On the other hand, =
when
matters point to any definitely confiscatory proposal, to the public owners=
hip
and collective control of land, for example, or state mining and manufactur=
es,
or the nationalisation of the so-called public-house or extended municipal
enterprise, or even to an increase of the taxation of property, then the
Conservative Party presents a nearly adamantine bar. It does not stand for,=
it
IS, the existing arrangement in these affairs.
Even more definit=
ely
a class party is the Labour Party, whose immediate interest is to raise wag=
es,
shorten hours of labor, increase employment, and make better terms for the
working-man tenant and working-man purchaser. Its leaders are no doubt
constructive minded, but the mass of the following is naturally suspicious =
of
education and discipline, hostile to the higher education, and--except for =
an
obvious antagonism to employers and property owners--almost destitute of id=
eas.
What else can it be? It stands for the expropriated multitude, whose whole =
situation
and difficulty arise from its individual lack of initiative and organising
power. It favours the nationalisation of land and capital with no sense of =
the
difficulties involved in the process; but, on the other hand, the equally
reasonable socialisation of individuals which is implied by military servic=
e is
steadily and quite naturally and quite illogically opposed by it. It is onl=
y in
recent years that Labour has emerged as a separate party from the huge
hospitable caravanserai of Liberalism, and there is still a very marked
tendency to step back again into that multitudinous assemblage.
For multitudinous=
ness
has always been the Liberal characteristic. Liberalism never has been nor e=
ver
can be anything but a diversified crowd. Liberalism has to voice everything
that is left out by these other parties. It is the party against the
predominating interests. It is at once the party of the failing and of the
untried; it is the party of decadence and hope. From its nature it must be a
vague and planless association in comparison with its antagonist, neither so
constructive on the one hand, nor on the other so competent to hinder the
inevitable constructions of the civilised state. Essentially it is the part=
y of
criticism, the "Anti" party. It is a system of hostilities and ob=
jections
that somehow achieves at times an elusive common soul. It is a gathering to=
gether
of all the smaller interests which find themselves at a disadvantage against
the big established classes, the leasehold tenant as against the landowner,=
the
retail tradesman as against the merchant and the moneylender, the Nonconfor=
mist
as against the Churchman, the small employer as against the demoralising
hospitable publican, the man without introductions and broad connections
against the man who has these things. It is the party of the many small men=
against
the fewer prevailing men. It has no more essential reason for loving the
Collectivist state than the Conservatives; the small dealer is doomed to
absorption in that just as much as the large owner; but it resorts to the s=
tate
against its antagonists as in the middle ages common men pitted themselves
against the barons by siding with the king. The Liberal Party is the party
against "class privilege" because it represents no class advantag=
es,
but it is also the party that is on the whole most set against Collective
control because it represents no established responsibility. It is construc=
tive
only so far as its antagonism to the great owner is more powerful than its
jealousy of the state. It organises only because organisation is forced upo=
n it
by the organisation of its adversaries. It lapses in and out of alliance wi=
th Labour
as it sways between hostility to wealth and hostility to public expenditure=
....
Every modern Euro=
pean
state will have in some form or other these three parties: the resistent,
militant, authoritative, dull, and unsympathetic party of establishment and
success, the rich party; the confused, sentimental, spasmodic, numerous par=
ty
of the small, struggling, various, undisciplined men, the poor man's party;=
and
a third party sometimes detaching itself from the second and sometimes
reuniting with it, the party of the altogether expropriated masses, the
proletarians, Labour. Change Conservative and Liberal to Republican and
Democrat, for example, and you have the conditions in the United States. The
Crown or a dethroned dynasty, the Established Church or a dispossessed chur=
ch, nationalist
secessions, the personalities of party leaders, may break up, complicate, a=
nd
confuse the self-expression of these three necessary divisions in the modern
social drama, the analyst will make them out none the less for that....
And then I came b=
ack
as if I came back to a refrain;--the ideas go on--as though we are all no m=
ore
than little cells and corpuscles in some great brain beyond our
understanding....
So it was I sat a=
nd
thought my problem out.... I still remember my satisfaction at seeing things
plainly at last. It was like clouds dispersing to show the sky. Constructive
ideas, of course, couldn't hold a party together alone, "interests and
habits, not ideas," I had that now, and so the great constructive sche=
me
of Socialism, invading and inspiring all parties, was necessarily claimed o=
nly
by this collection of odds and ends, this residuum of disconnected and
exceptional people. This was true not only of the Socialist idea, but of the
scientific idea, the idea of veracity--of human confidence in humanity--of =
all
that mattered in human life outside the life of individuals.... The only re=
al party
that would ever profess Socialism was the Labour Party, and that in the
entirely one-sided form of an irresponsible and non-constructive attack on
property. Socialism in that mutilated form, the teeth and claws without the
eyes and brain, I wanted as little as I wanted anything in the world.
Perfectly clear it
was, perfectly clear, and why hadn't I seen it before?... I looked at my wa=
tch,
and it was half-past two.
I yawned, stretch=
ed,
got up and went to bed.
9
My ideas about statecraft have pass=
ed
through three main phases to the final convictions that remain. There was t=
he
first immediacy of my dream of ports and harbours and cities, railways, roa=
ds,
and administered territories--the vision I had seen in the haze from that
little church above Locarno. Slowly that had passed into a more elaborate
legislative constructiveness, which had led to my uneasy association with t=
he Baileys
and the professedly constructive Young Liberals. To get that ordered life I=
had
realised the need of organisation, knowledge, expertness, a wide movement of
co-ordinated methods. On the individual side I thought that a life of urgent
industry, temperance, and close attention was indicated by my perception of
these ends. I married Margaret and set to work. But something in my mind
refused from the outset to accept these determinations as final. There was
always a doubt lurking below, always a faint resentment, a protesting
criticism, a feeling of vitally important omissions.
I arrived at last=
at
the clear realisation that my political associates, and I in my association
with them, were oddly narrow, priggish, and unreal, that the Socialists with
whom we were attempting co-operation were preposterously irrelevant to their
own theories, that my political life didn't in some way comprehend more than
itself, that rather perplexingly I was missing the thing I was seeking.
Britten's footnotes to Altiora's self-assertions, her fits of energetic
planning, her quarrels and rallies and vanities, his illuminating attacks o=
n Cramptonism
and the heavy-spirited triviality of such Liberalism as the Children's Char=
ter,
served to point my way to my present conclusions. I had been trying to deal=
all
along with human progress as something immediate in life, something to be
immediately attacked by political parties and groups pointing primarily to =
that
end. I now began to see that just as in my own being there was the rather
shallow, rather vulgar, self-seeking careerist, who wore an admirable silk =
hat
and bustled self-consciously through the lobby, and a much greater and inde=
finitely
growing unpublished personality behind him--my hinterland, I have called it=
--so
in human affairs generally the permanent reality is also a hinterland, whic=
h is
never really immediate, which draws continually upon human experience and
influences human action more and more, but which is itself never the actual
player upon the stage. It is the unseen dramatist who never takes a call. N=
ow
it was just through the fact that our group about the Baileys didn't unders=
tand
this, that with a sort of frantic energy they were trying to develop that s=
ham
expert officialdom of theirs to plan, regulate, and direct the affairs of h=
umanity,
that the perplexing note of silliness and shallowness that I had always felt
and felt now most acutely under Britten's gibes, came in. They were neglect=
ing
human life altogether in social organisation.
In the developmen=
t of
intellectual modesty lies the growth of statesmanship. It has been the chro=
nic
mistake of statecraft and all organising spirits to attempt immediately to
scheme and arrange and achieve. Priests, schools of thought, political
schemers, leaders of men, have always slipped into the error of assuming th=
at
they can think out the whole--or at any rate completely think out definite
parts--of the purpose and future of man, clearly and finally; they have set=
themselves
to legislate and construct on that assumption, and, experiencing the perple=
xing
obduracy and evasions of reality, they have taken to dogma, persecution,
training, pruning, secretive education; and all the stupidities of
self-sufficient energy. In the passion of their good intentions they have n=
ot
hesitated to conceal fact, suppress thought, crush disturbing initiatives a=
nd
apparently detrimental desires. And so it is blunderingly and wastefully,
destroying with the making, that any extension of social organisation is at
present achieved.
Directly, however,
this idea of an emancipation from immediacy is grasped, directly the domina=
ting
importance of this critical, less personal, mental hinterland in the indivi=
dual
and of the collective mind in the race is understood, the whole problem of =
the
statesman and his attitude towards politics gain a new significance, and
becomes accessible to a new series of solutions. He wants no longer to
"fix up," as people say, human affairs, but to devote his forces =
to
the development of that needed intellectual life without which all his shal=
low
attempts at fixing up are futile. He ceases to build on the sands, and sets
himself to gather foundations.
You see, I began =
in
my teens by wanting to plan and build cities and harbours for mankind; I en=
ded
in the middle thirties by desiring only to serve and increase a general pro=
cess
of thought, a process fearless, critical, real-spirited, that would in its =
own
time give cities, harbours, air, happiness, everything at a scale and quali=
ty
and in a light altogether beyond the match-striking imaginations of a conte=
mporary
mind. I wanted freedom of speech and suggestion, vigour of thought, and the
cultivation of that impulse of veracity that lurks more or less discouraged=
in
every man. With that I felt there must go an emotion. I hit upon a phrase t=
hat
became at last something of a refrain in my speech and writings, to convey =
the
spirit that I felt was at the very heart of real human progress--love and f=
ine
thinking.
(I suppose that
nowadays no newspaper in England gets through a week without the repetition=
of
that phrase.)
My convictions
crystallised more and more definitely upon this. The more of love and fine
thinking the better for men, I said; the less, the worse. And upon this fre=
sh
basis I set myself to examine what I as a politician might do. I perceived I
was at last finding an adequate expression for all that was in me, for those
forces that had rebelled at the crude presentations of Bromstead, at the
secrecies and suppressions of my youth, at the dull unrealities of City
Merchants, at the conventions and timidities of the Pinky Dinkys, at the
philosophical recluse of Trinity and the phrases and tradition-worship of my
political associates. None of these things were half alive, and I wanted li=
fe
to be intensely alive and awake. I wanted thought like an edge of steel and=
desire
like a flame. The real work before mankind now, I realised once and for all=
, is
the enlargement of human expression, the release and intensification of hum=
an
thought, the vivider utilisation of experience and the invigoration of
research--and whatever one does in human affairs has or lacks value as it h=
elps
or hinders that.
With that I had g=
ot
my problem clear, and the solution, so far as I was concerned, lay in findi=
ng
out the point in the ostensible life of politics at which I could most subs=
erve
these ends. I was still against the muddles of Bromstead, but I had hunted =
them
down now to their essential form. The jerry-built slums, the roads that went
nowhere, the tarred fences, litigious notice-boards and barbed wire fencing,
the litter and the heaps of dump, were only the outward appearances whose u=
ltimate
realities were jerry-built conclusions, hasty purposes, aimless habits of
thought, and imbecile bars and prohibitions in the thoughts and souls of me=
n.
How are we through politics to get at that confusion?
We want to invigo=
rate
and reinvigorate education. We want to create a sustained counter effort to=
the
perpetual tendency of all educational organisations towards classicalism, s=
econdary
issues, and the evasion of life.
We want to stimul=
ate
the expression of life through art and literature, and its exploration thro=
ugh
research.
We want to make t=
he
best and finest thought accessible to every one, and more particularly to
create and sustain an enormous free criticism, without which art, literatur=
e,
and research alike degenerate into tradition or imposture.
Then all the other
problems which are now so insoluble, destitution, disease, the difficulty of
maintaining international peace, the scarcely faced possibility of making l=
ife
generally and continually beautiful, become--EASY....
It was clear to me
that the most vital activities in which I could engage would be those which
most directly affected the Church, public habits of thought, education,
organised research, literature, and the channels of general discussion. I h=
ad
to ask myself how my position as Liberal member for Kinghamstead squared wi=
th
and conduced to this essential work.
CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ SEE=
KING
ASSOCIATES
1
I have told of my gradual abandonme=
nt of
the pretensions and habits of party Liberalism. In a sense I was moving tow=
ards
aristocracy. Regarding the development of the social and individual mental
hinterland as the essential thing in human progress, I passed on very natur=
ally
to the practical assumption that we wanted what I may call
"hinterlanders." Of course I do not mean by aristocracy the chang=
ing
unorganised medley of rich people and privileged people who dominate the
civilised world of to-day, but as opposed to this, a possibility of
co-ordinating the will of the finer individuals, by habit and literature, i=
nto
a broad common aim. We must have an aristocracy--not of privilege, but of
understanding and purpose--or mankind will fail. I find this dawning more a=
nd
more clearly when I look through my various writings of the years between 1=
903
and 1910. I was already emerging to plain statements in 1908.
I reasoned after =
this
fashion. The line of human improvement and the expansion of human life lies=
in
the direction of education and finer initiatives. If humanity cannot develo=
p an
education far beyond anything that is now provided, if it cannot collective=
ly
invent devices and solve problems on a much richer, broader scale than it d=
oes
at the present time, it cannot hope to achieve any very much finer order or=
any
more general happiness than it now enjoys. We must believe, therefore, that=
it
CAN develop such a training and education, or we must abandon secular const=
ructive
hope. And here my peculiar difficulty as against crude democracy comes in. =
If
humanity at large is capable of that high education and those creative free=
doms
our hope demands, much more must its better and more vigorous types be so
capable. And if those who have power and leisure now, and freedom to respon=
d to
imaginative appeals, cannot be won to the idea of collective self-developme=
nt,
then the whole of humanity cannot be won to that. From that one passes to w=
hat has
become my general conception in politics, the conception of the constructive
imagination working upon the vast complex of powerful people, clever people,
enterprising people, influential people, amidst whom power is diffused to-d=
ay,
to produce that self-conscious, highly selective, open-minded, devoted
aristocratic culture, which seems to me to be the necessary next phase in t=
he
development of human affairs. I see human progress, not as the spontaneous
product of crowds of raw minds swayed by elementary needs, but as a natural=
but
elaborate result of intricate human interdependencies, of human energy and
curiosity liberated and acting at leisure, of human passions and motives,
modified and redirected by literature and art....
But now the reader
will understand how it came about that, disappointed by the essential
littleness of Liberalism, and disillusioned about the representative qualit=
y of
the professed Socialists, I turned my mind more and more to a scrutiny of t=
he
big people, the wealthy and influential people, against whom Liberalism pits
its forces. I was asking myself definitely whether, after all, it was not my
particular job to work through them and not against them. Was I not altoget=
her
out of my element as an Anti-? Weren't there big bold qualities about these=
people
that common men lack, and the possibility of far more splendid dreams? Were
they really the obstacles, might they not be rather the vehicles of the
possible new braveries of life?
2
The faults of the Imperialist movem=
ent
were obvious enough. The conception of the Boer War had been clumsy and
puerile, the costly errors of that struggle appalling, and the subsequent
campaign of Mr. Chamberlain for Tariff Reform seemed calculated to combine =
the
financial adventurers of the Empire in one vast conspiracy against the
consumer. The cant of Imperialism was easy to learn and use; it was speedil=
y adopted
by all sorts of base enterprises and turned to all sorts of base ends. But a
big child is permitted big mischief, and my mind was now continually return=
ing
to the persuasion that after all in some development of the idea of Imperial
patriotism might be found that wide, rough, politically acceptable expressi=
on
of a constructive dream capable of sustaining a great educational and
philosophical movement such as no formula of Liberalism supplied. The fact =
that
it readily took vulgar forms only witnessed to its strong popular appeal. M=
ixed
in with the noisiness and humbug of the movement there appeared a real rega=
rd
for social efficiency, a real spirit of animation and enterprise. There sud=
denly
appeared in my world--I saw them first, I think, in 1908--a new sort of lit=
tle
boy, a most agreeable development of the slouching, cunning, cigarette-smok=
ing,
town-bred youngster, a small boy in a khaki hat, and with bare knees and
athletic bearing, earnestly engaged in wholesome and invigorating games up =
to
and occasionally a little beyond his strength--the Boy Scout. I liked the B=
oy
Scout, and I find it difficult to express how much it mattered to me, with =
my
growing bias in favour of deliberate national training, that Liberalism had=
n't
been able to produce, and had indeed never attempted to produce, anything of
this kind.
3
In those days there existed a dinin=
g club
called--there was some lost allusion to the exorcism of party feeling in its
title--the Pentagram Circle. It included Bailey and Dayton and myself, Sir
Herbert Thorns, Lord Charles Kindling, Minns the poet, Gerbault the big rai=
lway
man, Lord Gane, fresh from the settlement of Framboya, and Rumbold, who lat=
er became
Home Secretary and left us. We were men of all parties and very various
experiences, and our object was to discuss the welfare of the Empire in a
disinterested spirit. We dined monthly at the Mermaid in Westminster, and f=
or a
couple of years we kept up an average attendance of ten out of fourteen. The
dinner-time was given up to desultory conversation, and it is odd how warm =
and
good the social atmosphere of that little gathering became as time went on;
then over the dessert, so soon as the waiters had swept away the crumbs and
ceased to fret us, one of us would open with perhaps fifteen or twenty minu=
tes'
exposition of some specially prepared question, and after him we would deli=
ver ourselves
in turn, each for three or four minutes. When every one present had spoken =
once
talk became general again, and it was rare we emerged upon Hendon Street be=
fore
midnight. Sometimes, as my house was conveniently near, a knot of men would
come home with me and go on talking and smoking in my dining-room until two=
or
three. We had Fred Neal, that wild Irish journalist, among us towards the e=
nd,
and his stupendous flow of words materially prolonged our closing discussio=
ns and
made our continuance impossible.
I learned very mu=
ch
and very many things at those dinners, but more particularly did I become
familiarised with the habits of mind of such men as Neal, Crupp, Gane, and =
the
one or two other New Imperialists who belonged to us. They were nearly all =
like
Bailey Oxford men, though mostly of a younger generation, and they were all
mysteriously and inexplicably advocates of Tariff Reform, as if it were the
principal instead of at best a secondary aspect of constructive policy. The=
y seemed
obsessed by the idea that streams of trade could be diverted violently so a=
s to
link the parts of the Empire by common interests, and they were persuaded, I
still think mistakenly, that Tariff Reform would have an immense popular
appeal. They were also very keen on military organisation, and with a curio=
us
little martinet twist in their minds that boded ill for that side of public
liberty. So much against them. But they were disposed to spend money much m=
ore
generously on education and research of all sorts than our formless host of
Liberals seemed likely to do; and they were altogether more accessible than=
the
Young Liberals to bold, constructive ideas affecting the universities and u=
pper
classes. The Liberals are abjectly afraid of the universities. I found myse=
lf
constantly falling into line with these men in our discussions, and more and
more hostile to Dayton's sentimentalising evasions of definite schemes and
Minns' trust in such things as the "Spirit of our People" and the
"General Trend of Progress." It wasn't that I thought them very m=
uch
righter than their opponents; I believe all definite party "sides"=
; at
any time are bound to be about equally right and equally lop-sided; but tha=
t I
thought I could get more out of them and what was more important to me, more
out of myself if I co-operated with them. By 1908 I had already arrived at a
point where I could be definitely considering a transfer of my political
allegiance.
These abstract
questions are inseparably interwoven with my memory of a shining long white
table, and our hock bottles and burgundy bottles, and bottles of Perrier and
St. Galmier and the disturbed central trophy of dessert, and scattered glas=
ses
and nut-shells and cigarette-ends and menu-cards used for memoranda. I see =
old
Dayton sitting back and cocking his eye to the ceiling in a way he had whil=
e he
threw warmth into the ancient platitudes of Liberalism, and Minns leaning f=
orward,
and a little like a cockatoo with a taste for confidences, telling us in a =
hushed
voice of his faith in the Destiny of Mankind. Thorns lounges, rolling his r=
ound
face and round eyes from speaker to speaker and sounding the visible depths=
of
misery whenever Neal begins. Gerbault and Gane were given to conversation in
undertones, and Bailey pursued mysterious purposes in lisping whispers. It =
was
Crupp attracted me most. He had, as people say, his eye on me from the
beginning. He used to speak at me, and drifted into a custom of coming home
with me very regularly for an after-talk.
He opened his hea=
rt
to me.
"Neither of
us," he said, "are dukes, and neither of us are horny-handed sons=
of
toil. We want to get hold of the handles, and to do that, one must go where=
the
power is, and give it just as constructive a twist as we can. That's MY
Toryism."
"Is it
Kindling's--or Gerbault's?"
"No. But the=
irs
is soft, and mine's hard. Mine will wear theirs out. You and I and Bailey a=
re
all after the same thing, and why aren't we working together?"
"Are you a
Confederate?" I asked suddenly.
"That's a se=
cret
nobody tells," he said.
"What are the
Confederates after?"
"Making
aristocracy work, I suppose. Just as, I gather, you want to do."...
The Confederates =
were
being heard of at that time. They were at once attractive and repellent to =
me,
an odd secret society whose membership nobody knew, pledged, it was said, to
impose Tariff Reform and an ample constructive policy upon the Conservative=
s.
In the press, at any rate, they had an air of deliberately organised power.=
I
have no doubt the rumour of them greatly influenced my ideas....
In the end I made
some very rapid decisions, but for nearly two years I was hesitating.
Hesitations were inevitable in such a matter. I was not dealing with any si=
mple
question of principle, but with elusive and fluctuating estimates of the tr=
end
of diverse forces and of the nature of my own powers. All through that peri=
od I
was asking over and over again: how far are these Confederates mere dreamer=
s?
How far--and this was more vital--are they rendering lip-service to social
organisations? Is it true they desire war because it confirms the ascendenc=
y of
their class? How far can Conservatism be induced to plan and construct befo=
re it
resists the thrust towards change. Is it really in bulk anything more than a
mass of prejudice and conceit, cynical indulgence, and a hard suspicion of =
and
hostility to the expropriated classes in the community?
That is a research
which yields no statistics, an enquiry like asking what is the ruling colou=
r of
a chameleon. The shadowy answer varied with my health, varied with my mood =
and
the conduct of the people I was watching. How fine can people be? How
generous?--not incidentally, but all round? How far can you educate sons be=
yond
the outlook of their fathers, and how far lift a rich, proud, self-indulgent
class above the protests of its business agents and solicitors and its own
habits and vanity? Is chivalry in a class possible?--was it ever, indeed, o=
r will
it ever indeed be possible? Is the progress that seems attainable in certain
directions worth the retrogression that may be its price?
4
It was to the Pentagram Circle that=
I
first broached the new conceptions that were developing in my mind. I count=
the
evening of my paper the beginning of the movement that created the BLUE WEE=
KLY
and our wing of the present New Tory party. I do that without any excessive
egotism, because my essay was no solitary man's production; it was my react=
ion to
forces that had come to me very large through my fellow-members; its quick
reception by them showed that I was, so to speak, merely the first of the
chestnuts to pop. The atmospheric quality of the evening stands out very
vividly in my memory. The night, I remember, was warmly foggy when after
midnight we went to finish our talk at my house.
We had recently
changed the rules of the club to admit visitors, and so it happened that I =
had
brought Britten, and Crupp introduced Arnold Shoesmith, my former schoolfel=
low
at City Merchants, and now the wealthy successor of his father and elder
brother. I remember his heavy, inexpressively handsome face lighting to his
rare smile at the sight of me, and how little I dreamt of the tragic
entanglement that was destined to involve us both. Gane was present, and
Esmeer, a newly-added member, but I think Bailey was absent. Either he was
absent, or he said something so entirely characteristic and undistinguished
that it has left no impression on my mind.
I had broken a li=
ttle
from the traditions of the club even in my title, which was deliberately a
challenge to the liberal idea: it was, "The World Exists for Exception=
al
People." It is not the title I should choose now--for since that time I
have got my phrase of "mental hinterlander" into journalistic use=
. I
should say now, "The World Exists for Mental Hinterland."
The notes I made =
of
that opening have long since vanished with a thousand other papers, but some
odd chance has preserved and brought with me to Italy the menu for the even=
ing;
its back black with the scrawled notes I made of the discussion for my repl=
y. I
found it the other day among some letters from Margaret and a copy of the 1=
909
Report of the Poor Law Commission, also rich with pencilled marginalia.
My opening was a = criticism of the democratic idea and method, upon lines such as I have already sufficiently indicated in the preceding sections. I remember how old Dayton fretted in his chair, and tushed and pished at that, even as I gave it, and afterwards we were treated to one of his platitudinous harangues, he sitting back in his chair with that small obstinate eye of his fixed on the ceiling, and a sort of cadaverous glow upon his face, repeating--quite regardless of= all my reasoning and all that had been said by others in the debate--the sacred empty phrases that were his soul's refuge from reality. "You may think= it very clever," he said with a nod of his head to mark his sense of his point, "not to Trust in the People. I do." And so on. Nothing in = his life or work had ever shown that he did trust in the people, but that was b= eside the mark. He was the party Liberal, and these were the party incantations.<= o:p>
After my prelimin=
ary
attack on vague democracy I went on to show that all human life was virtual=
ly
aristocratic; people must either recognise aristocracy in general or else
follow leaders, which is aristocracy in particular, and so I came to my poi=
nt
that the reality of human progress lay necessarily through the establishmen=
t of
freedoms for the human best and a collective receptivity and understanding.
There was a disgusted grunt from Dayton, "Superman rubbish--Nietzsche.
Shaw! Ugh!" I sailed on over him to my next propositions. The prime
essential in a progressive civilisation was the establishment of a more
effective selective process for the privilege of higher education, and the =
very
highest educational opportunity for the educable. We were too apt to patron=
ise
scholarship winners, as though a scholarship was toffee given as a reward f=
or virtue.
It wasn't any reward at all; it was an invitation to capacity. We had no mo=
re
right to drag in virtue, or any merit but quality, than we had to involve i=
t in
a search for the tallest man. We didn't want a mere process for the selecti=
on
of good as distinguished from gifted and able boys--"No, you DON'T,&qu=
ot;
from Dayton--we wanted all the brilliant stuff in the world concentrated up=
on
the development of the world. Just to exasperate Dayton further I put in a =
plea
for gifts as against character in educational, artistic, and legislative wo=
rk.
"Good teaching," I said, "is better than good conduct. We are
becoming idiotic about character."
Dayton was too mo=
ved
to speak. He slewed round upon me an eye of agonised aversion.
I expatiated on t=
he
small proportion of the available ability that is really serving humanity
to-day. "I suppose to-day all the thought, all the art, all the increm=
ents
of knowledge that matter, are supplied so far as the English-speaking commu=
nity
is concerned by--how many?--by three or four thousand individuals. ('Less,'
said Thorns.) To be more precise, by the mental hinterlands of three or four
thousand individuals. We who know some of the band entertain no illusions a=
s to
their innate rarity. We know that they are just the few out of many, the few
who got in our world of chance and confusion, the timely stimulus, the apt
suggestion at the fortunate moment, the needed training, the leisure. The r=
est
are lost in the crowd, fail through the defects of their qualities, become
commonplace workmen and second-rate professional men, marry commonplace wiv=
es,
are as much waste as the driftage of superfluous pollen in a pine forest is
waste."
"Decent hone=
st
lives!" said Dayton to his bread-crumbs, with his chin in his necktie.
"WASTE!"
"And the peo=
ple
who do get what we call opportunity get it usually in extremely limited and
cramping forms. No man lives a life of intellectual productivity alone; he
needs not only material and opportunity, but helpers, resonators. Round and
about what I might call the REAL men, you want the sympathetic cooperators,=
who
help by understanding. It isn't that our--SALT of three or four thousand is=
needlessly
rare; it is sustained by far too small and undifferentiated a public. Most =
of
the good men we know are not really doing the very best work of their gifts;
nearly all are a little adapted, most are shockingly adapted to some
second-best use. Now, I take it, this is the very centre and origin of the
muddle, futility, and unhappiness that distresses us; it's the cardinal pro=
blem
of the state--to discover, develop, and use the exceptional gifts of men. A=
nd I
see that best done--I drift more and more away from the common stuff of
legislative and administrative activity--by a quite revolutionary developme=
nt
of the educational machinery, but by a still more unprecedented attempt to =
keep
science going, to keep literature going, and to keep what is the necessary =
spur
of all science and literature, an intelligent and appreciative criticism go=
ing.
You know none of these things have ever been kept going hitherto; they've c=
ome
unexpectedly and inexplicably."
"Hear,
hear!" from Dayton, cough, nodding of the head, and an expression of
mystical profundity.
"They've lit=
up
a civilisation and vanished, to give place to darkness again. Now the modern
state doesn't mean to go back to darkness again--and so it's got to keep its
light burning." I went on to attack the present organisation of our
schools and universities, which seemed elaborately designed to turn the
well-behaved, uncritical, and uncreative men of each generation into the
authoritative leaders of the next, and I suggested remedies upon lines that=
I
have already indicated in the earlier chapters of this story....
So far I had the
substance of the club with me, but I opened new ground and set Crupp agog by
confessing my doubt from which party or combination of groups these
developments of science and literature and educational organisation could m=
ost
reasonably be expected. I looked up to find Crupp's dark little eye intent =
upon
me.
There I left it t=
o them.
We had an
astonishingly good discussion; Neal burst once, but we emerged from his flo=
od
after a time, and Dayton had his interlude. The rest was all close, keen
examination of my problem.
I see Crupp now w=
ith
his arm bent before him on the table in a way we had, as though it was join=
ted
throughout its length like a lobster's antenna, his plump, short-fingered h=
and
crushing up a walnut shell into smaller and smaller fragments.
"Remington," he said, "has given us the data for a movement,=
a
really possible movement. It's not only possible, but necessary--urgently
necessary, I think, if the Empire is to go on."
"We're worki=
ng
altogether too much at the social basement in education and training,"
said Gane. "Remington is right about our neglect of the higher
levels."
Britten made a go=
od
contribution with an analysis of what he called the spirit of a country and
what made it. "The modern community needs its serious men to be artist=
ic
and its artists to be taken seriously," I remember his saying. "T=
he
day has gone by for either dull responsibility or merely witty art."
I remember very
vividly how Shoesmith harped on an idea I had thrown out of using some sort=
of
review or weekly to express and elaborate these conceptions of a new, sever=
er,
aristocratic culture.
"It would ha=
ve
to be done amazingly well," said Britten, and my mind went back to my
school days and that ancient enterprise of ours, and how Cossington had rus=
hed
it. Well, Cossington had too many papers nowadays to interfere with us, and=
we
perhaps had learnt some defensive devices.
"But this th=
ing
has to be linked to some political party," said Crupp, with his eye on=
me.
"You can't get away from that. The Liberals," he added, "have
never done anything for research or literature."
"They had a
Royal Commission on the Dramatic Censorship," said Thorns, with a note=
of
minute fairness. "It shows what they were made of," he added.
"It's what I=
've
told Remington again and again," said Crupp, "we've got to pick up
the tradition of aristocracy, reorganise it, and make it work. But he's
certainly suggested a method."
"There won't=
be
much aristocracy to pick up," said Dayton, darkly to the ceiling, &quo=
t;if
the House of Lords throws out the Budget."
"All the more
reason for picking it up," said Neal. "For we can't do without
it."
"Will they g=
o to
the bad, or will they rise from the ashes, aristocrats indeed--if the Liber=
als
come in overwhelmingly?" said Britten.
"It's we who
might decide that," said Crupp, insidiously.
"I agree,&qu=
ot;
said Gane.
"No one can
tell," said Thorns. "I doubt if they will get beaten."
It was an odd,
fragmentary discussion that night. We were all with ideas in our minds at o=
nce
fine and imperfect. We threw out suggestions that showed themselves at once=
far
inadequate, and we tried to qualify them by minor self-contradictions. Brit=
ten,
I think, got more said than any one. "You all seem to think you want to
organise people, particular groups and classes of individuals," he
insisted. "It isn't that. That's the standing error of politicians. You
want to organise a culture. Civilisation isn't a matter of concrete groupin=
gs;
it's a matter of prevailing ideas. The problem is how to make bold, clear i=
deas
prevail. The question for Remington and us is just what groups of people wi=
ll most
help this culture forward."
"Yes, but how
are the Lords going to behave?" said Crupp. "You yourself were as=
king
that a little while ago."
"If they win=
or
if they lose," Gane maintained, "there will be a movement to
reorganise aristocracy--Reform of the House of Lords, they'll call the
political form of it."
"Bailey thin=
ks
that," said some one.
"The labour
people want abolition," said some one. "Let 'em," said Thorn=
s.
He became audible,
sketching a possibility of action.
"Suppose all=
of
us were able to work together. It's just one of those indeterminate, confus=
ed,
eventful times ahead when a steady jet of ideas might produce enormous
results."
"Leave me ou=
t of
it," said Dayton, "IF you please."
"We
should," said Thorns under his breath.
I took up Crupp's
initiative, I remember, and expanded it.
"I believe we
could do--extensive things," I insisted.
"Revivals and
revisions of Toryism have been tried so often," said Thorns, "from
the Young England movement onward."
"Not one but=
has
produced its enduring effects," I said. "It's the peculiarity of
English conservatism that it's persistently progressive and
rejuvenescent."
I think it must h=
ave
been about that point that Dayton fled our presence, after some clumsy sent=
ence
that I decided upon reflection was intended to remind me of my duty to my
party.
Then I remember
Thorns firing doubts at me obliquely across the table. "You can't run a
country through its spoilt children," he said. "What you call
aristocrats are really spoilt children. They've had too much of everything,
except bracing experience."
"Children can
always be educated," said Crupp.
"I said SPOI=
LT
children," said Thorns.
"Look here,
Thorns!" said I. "If this Budget row leads to a storm, and these =
big
people get their power clipped, what's going to happen? Have you thought of
that? When they go out lock, stock, and barrel, who comes in?"
"Nature abho=
rs a
Vacuum," said Crupp, supporting me.
"Bailey's
trained officials," suggested Gane.
"Quacks with=
a
certificate of approval from Altiora," said Thorns. "I admit the
horrors of the alternative. There'd be a massacre in three years."
"One may go =
on
trying possibilities for ever," I said. "One thing emerges. Whate=
ver
accidents happen, our civilisation needs, and almost consciously needs, a
culture of fine creative minds, and all the necessary tolerances, opennesse=
s,
considerations, that march with that. For my own part, I think that is the =
Most
Vital Thing. Build your ship of state as you will; get your men as you will=
; I
concentrate on what is clearly the affair of my sort of man,--I want to ens=
ure
the quality of the quarter deck."
"Hear,
hear!" said Shoesmith, suddenly--his first remark for a long time. &qu=
ot;A
first-rate figure," said Shoesmith, gripping it.
"Our danger =
is
in missing that," I went on. "Muddle isn't ended by transferring
power from the muddle-headed few to the muddle-headed many, and then cheati=
ng
the many out of it again in the interests of a bureaucracy of sham experts.=
But
that seems the limit of the liberal imagination. There is no real progress =
in a
country, except a rise in the level of its free intellectual activity. All
other progress is secondary and dependant. If you take on Bailey's dreams of
efficient machinery and a sort of fanatical discipline with no free-moving
brains behind it, confused ugliness becomes rigid ugliness,--that's all. No
doubt things are moving from looseness to discipline, and from irresponsible
controls to organised controls--and also and rather contrariwise everything=
is
becoming as people say, democratised; but all the more need in that, for an=
ark
in which the living element may be saved."
"Hear,
hear!" said Shoesmith, faint but pursuing.
It must have been=
in
my house afterwards that Shoesmith became noticeable. He seemed trying to s=
ay
something vague and difficult that he didn't get said at all on that occasi=
on.
"We could do immense things with a weekly," he repeated, echoing
Neal, I think. And there he left off and became a mute expressiveness, and =
it
was only afterwards, when I was in bed, that I saw we had our capitalist in=
our
hands....
We parted that ni=
ght
on my doorstep in a tremendous glow--but in that sort of glow one doesn't a=
ct
upon without much reconsideration, and it was some months before I made my
decision to follow up the indications of that opening talk.
5
I find my thoughts lingering about =
the
Pentagram Circle. In my developments it played a large part, not so much by
starting new trains of thought as by confirming the practicability of thing=
s I
had already hesitatingly entertained. Discussion with these other men so
prominently involved in current affairs endorsed views that otherwise would
have seemed only a little less remote from actuality than the guardians of =
Plato
or the labour laws of More. Among other questions that were never very dist=
ant
from our discussions, that came apt to every topic, was the true significan=
ce
of democracy, Tariff Reform as a method of international hostility, and the
imminence of war. On the first issue I can still recall little Bailey, glib=
and
winking, explaining that democracy was really just a dodge for getting asse=
nt
to the ordinances of the expert official by means of the polling booth.
"If they don't like things," said he, "they can vote for the
opposition candidate and see what happens then--and that, you see, is why we
don't want proportional representation to let in the wild men." I open=
ed
my eyes--the lids had dropped for a moment under the caress of those smooth=
sounds--to
see if Bailey's artful forefinger wasn't at the side of his predominant nos=
e.
The international
situation exercised us greatly. Our meetings were pervaded by the feeling t=
hat
all things moved towards a day of reckoning with Germany, and I was largely
instrumental in keeping up the suggestion that India was in a state of unst=
able
equilibrium, that sooner or later something must happen there--something ve=
ry
serious to our Empire. Dayton frankly detested these topics. He was full of=
that
old Middle Victorian persuasion that whatever is inconvenient or disagreeab=
le
to the English mind could be annihilated by not thinking about it. He used =
to
sit low in his chair and look mulish. "Militarism," he would decl=
are
in a tone of the utmost moral fervour, "is a curse. It's an unmitigated
curse." Then he would cough shortly and twitch his head back and frown,
and seem astonished beyond measure that after this conclusive statement we
could still go on talking of war.
All our Imperiali=
sts
were obsessed by the thought of international conflict, and their influence
revived for a time those uneasinesses that had been aroused in me for the f=
irst
time by my continental journey with Willersley and by Meredith's "One =
of
Our Conquerors." That quite justifiable dread of a punishment for all =
the
slackness, mental dishonesty, presumption, mercenary respectability and
sentimentalised commercialism of the Victorian period, at the hands of the
better organised, more vigorous, and now far more highly civilised peoples =
of
Central Europe, seemed to me to have both a good and bad series of conseque=
nces.
It seemed the only thing capable of bracing English minds to education,
sustained constructive effort and research; but on the other hand it produc=
ed
the quality of a panic, hasty preparation, impatience of thought, a wasteful
and sometimes quite futile immediacy. In 1909, for example, there was a vast
clamour for eight additional Dreadnoughts--
"We want ei=
ght And we
won't wait,"
but no clamour at=
all
about our national waste of inventive talent, our mean standard of intellec=
tual
attainment, our disingenuous criticism, and the consequent failure to
distinguish men of the quality needed to carry on the modern type of war.
Almost universally we have the wrong men in our places of responsibility and
the right men in no place at all, almost universally we have poorly qualifi=
ed,
hesitating, and resentful subordinates, because our criticism is worthless =
and,
so habitually as to be now almost unconsciously, dishonest. Germany is beat=
ing
England in every matter upon which competition is possible, because she att=
ended
sedulously to her collective mind for sixty pregnant years, because in spit=
e of
tremendous defects she is still far more anxious for quality in achievement
than we are. I remember saying that in my paper. From that, I remember, I w=
ent
on to an image that had flashed into my mind. "The British Empire,&quo=
t; I
said, "is like some of those early vertebrated monsters, the Brontosau=
rus
and the Atlantosaurus and such-like; it sacrifices intellect to character; =
its
backbone, that is to say,--especially in the visceral region--is bigger than
its cranium. It's no accident that things are so. We've worked for backbone=
. We
brag about backbone, and if the joints are anchylosed so much the better. W=
e're
still but only half awake to our error. You can't change that suddenly.&quo=
t;
"Turn it rou=
nd
and make it go backwards," interjected Thorns.
"It's trying=
to
do that," I said, "in places."
And afterwards Cr=
upp
declared I had begotten a nightmare which haunted him of nights; he was try=
ing
desperately and belatedly to blow a brain as one blows soap-bubbles on such=
a
mezoroic saurian as I had conjured up, while the clumsy monster's fate, all
teeth and brains, crept nearer and nearer....
I've grown, I thi=
nk,
since those days out of the urgency of that apprehension. I still think a E=
uropean
war, and conceivably a very humiliating war for England, may occur at no ve=
ry
distant date, but I do not think there is any such heroic quality in our
governing class as will make that war catastrophic. The prevailing spirit in
English life--it is one of the essential secrets of our imperial endurance-=
-is one
of underbred aggression in prosperity and diplomatic compromise in moments =
of
danger; we bully haughtily where we can and assimilate where we must. It is=
not
for nothing that our upper and middle-class youth is educated by teachers of
the highest character, scholars and gentlemen, men who can pretend quite
honestly that Darwinism hasn't upset the historical fall of man, that crick=
et
is moral training, and that Socialism is an outrage upon the teachings of
Christ. A sort of dignified dexterity of evasion is the national reward.
Germany, with a larger population, a vigorous and irreconcilable proletaria=
t, a
bolder intellectual training, a harsher spirit, can scarcely fail to drive =
us at
last to a realisation of intolerable strain. So we may never fight at all. =
The
war of preparations that has been going on for thirty years may end like a
sham-fight at last in an umpire's decision. We shall proudly but very firmly
take the second place. For my own part, since I love England as much as I
detest her present lethargy of soul, I pray for a chastening war--I wouldn't
mind her flag in the dirt if only her spirit would come out of it. So I was
able to shake off that earlier fear of some final and irrevocable destructi=
on
truncating all my schemes. At the most, a European war would be a dramatic
episode in the reconstruction I had in view.
In India, too, I =
no
longer foresee, as once I was inclined to see, disaster. The English rule in
India is surely one of the most extraordinary accidents that has ever happe=
ned
in history. We are there like a man who has fallen off a ladder on to the n=
eck
of an elephant, and doesn't know what to do or how to get down. Until somet=
hing
happens he remains. Our functions in India are absurd. We English do not ow=
n that
country, do not even rule it. We make nothing happen; at the most we prevent
things happening. We suppress our own literature there. Most English people
cannot even go to this land they possess; the authorities would prevent it.=
If
Messrs. Perowne or Cook organised a cheap tour of Manchester operatives, it
would be stopped. No one dare bring the average English voter face to face =
with
the reality of India, or let the Indian native have a glimpse of the English
voter. In my time I have talked to English statesmen, Indian officials and
ex-officials, viceroys, soldiers, every one who might be supposed to know w=
hat
India signifies, and I have prayed them to tell me what they thought we wer=
e up
to there. I am not writing without my book in these matters. And beyond a
phrase or so about "even-handed justice"--and look at our sedition
trials!--they told me nothing. Time after time I have heard of that apocryp=
hal
native ruler in the north-west, who, when asked what would happen if we left
India, replied that in a week his men would be in the saddle, and in six mo=
nths
not a rupee nor a virgin would be left in Lower Bengal. That is always give=
n as
our conclusive justification. But is it our business to preserve the rupees=
and
virgins of Lower Bengal in a sort of magic inconclusiveness? Better plunder
than paralysis, better fire and sword than futility. Our flag is spread ove=
r the
peninsula, without plans, without intentions--a vast preventive. The sum to=
tal
of our policy is to arrest any discussion, any conferences that would enable
the Indians to work out a tolerable scheme of the future for themselves. But
that does not arrest the resentment of men held back from life. Consider wh=
at
it must be for the educated Indian sitting at the feast of contemporary
possibilities with his mouth gagged and his hands bound behind him! The spi=
rit
of insurrection breaks out in spite of espionage and seizures. Our conflict=
for
inaction develops stupendous absurdities. The other day the British Empire =
was
taking off and examining printed cotton stomach wraps for seditious emblems=
and
inscriptions....
In some manner we
shall have to come out of India. We have had our chance, and we have
demonstrated nothing but the appalling dulness of our national imagination.=
We
are not good enough to do anything with India. Codger and Flack, and Gates =
and
Dayton, Cladingbowl in the club, and the HOME CHURCHMAN in the home, cant a=
bout
"character," worship of strenuous force and contempt of truth; for
the sake of such men and things as these, we must abandon in fact, if not in
appearance, that empty domination. Had we great schools and a powerful
teaching, could we boast great men, had we the spirit of truth and creation=
in
our lives, then indeed it might be different. But a race that bears a scept=
re
must carry gifts to justify it.
It does not follow
that we shall be driven catastrophically from India. That was my earlier
mistake. We are not proud enough in our bones to be ruined by India as Spain
was by her empire. We may be able to abandon India with an air of still
remaining there. It is our new method. We train our future rulers in the pu=
blic
schools to have a very wholesome respect for strength, and as soon as a pow=
er
arises in India in spite of us, be it a man or a culture, or a native state=
, we
shall be willing to deal with it. We may or may not have a war, but our
governing class will be quick to learn when we are beaten. Then they will
repeat our South African diplomacy, and arrange for some settlement that wi=
ll
abandon the reality, such as it is, and preserve the semblance of power. Th=
e conqueror
DE FACTO will become the new "loyal Briton," and the democracy at
home will be invited to celebrate our recession--triumphantly. I am no beli=
ever
in the imminent dissolution of our Empire; I am less and less inclined to s=
ee
in either India or Germany the probability of an abrupt truncation of those
slow intellectual and moral constructions which are the essentials of
statecraft.
6
I sit writing in this little loggia=
to
the sound of dripping water--this morning we had rain, and the roof of our
little casa is still not dry, there are pools in the rocks under the sweet
chestnuts, and the torrent that crosses the salita is full and boastful,--a=
nd I
try to recall the order of my impressions during that watching, dubious tim=
e,
before I went over to the Conservative Party. I was trying--chaotic task--t=
o gauge
the possibilities inherent in the quality of the British aristocracy. There
comes a broad spectacular effect of wide parks, diversified by woods and
bracken valleys, and dappled with deer; of great smooth lawns shaded by anc=
ient
trees; of big facades of sunlit buildings dominating the country side; of l=
arge
fine rooms full of handsome, easy-mannered people. As a sort of representat=
ive
picture to set off against those other pictures of Liberals and of Socialis=
ts I
have given, I recall one of those huge assemblies the Duchess of Clynes ina=
ugurated
at Stamford House. The place itself is one of the vastest private houses in=
London,
a huge clustering mass of white and gold saloons with polished floors and
wonderful pictures, and staircases and galleries on a Gargantuan scale. And
there she sought to gather all that was most representative of English
activities, and did, in fact, in those brilliant nocturnal crowds, get samp=
les
of nearly every section of our social and intellectual life, with a marked
predominance upon the political and social side.
I remember sittin=
g in
one of the recesses at the end of the big saloon with Mrs. Redmondson, one =
of
those sharp-minded, beautiful rich women one meets so often in London, who =
seem
to have done nothing and to be capable of everything, and we watched the
crowd--uniforms and splendours were streaming in from a State ball--and
exchanged information. I told her about the politicians and intellectuals, =
and
she told me about the aristocrats, and we sharpened our wit on them and cou=
nted
the percentage of beautiful people among the latter, and wondered if the
general effect of tallness was or was not an illusion.
They were, we agr=
eed,
for the most part bigger than the average of people in London, and a handso=
me
lot, even when they were not subtly individualised. "They look so well
nurtured," I said, "well cared for. I like their quiet, well-trai=
ned
movements, their pleasant consideration for each other."
"Kindly, good
tempered, and at bottom utterly selfish," she said, "like big, ra=
ther
carefully trained, rather pampered children. What else can you expect from
them?"
"They are go=
od
tempered, anyhow," I witnessed, "and that's an achievement. I don=
't
think I could ever be content under a bad-tempered, sentimentalism, strenuo=
us
Government. That's why I couldn't stand the Roosevelt REGIME in America. On=
e's
chief surprise when one comes across these big people for the first time is
their admirable easiness and a real personal modesty. I confess I admire th=
em.
Oh! I like them. I wouldn't at all mind, I believe, giving over the country=
to
this aristocracy--given SOMETHING--"
"Which they
haven't got."
"Which they
haven't got--or they'd be the finest sort of people in the world."
"That
something?" she inquired.
"I don't kno=
w.
I've been puzzling my wits to know. They've done all sorts of things--"=
;
"That's Lord
Wrassleton," she interrupted, "whose leg was broken--you remember=
?--at
Spion Kop."
"It's healed
very well. I like the gold lace and the white glove resting, with quite a n=
ice
awkwardness, on the sword. When I was a little boy I wanted to wear clothes
like that. And the stars! He's got the V. C. Most of these people here have=
at
any rate shown pluck, you know--brought something off."
"Not quite
enough," she suggested.
"I think tha=
t's
it," I said. "Not quite enough--not quite hard enough," I ad=
ded.
She laughed and
looked at me. "You'd like to make us," she said.
"What?"=
"Hard."=
"I don't thi=
nk
you'll go on if you don't get hard."
"We shan't b=
e so
pleasant if we do."
"Well, there=
my
puzzled wits come in again. I don't see why an aristocracy shouldn't be rat=
her
hard trained, and yet kindly. I'm not convinced that the resources of educa=
tion
are exhausted. I want to better this, because it already looks so good.&quo=
t;
"How are we =
to
do it?" asked Mrs. Redmondson.
"Oh, there y=
ou
have me! I've been spending my time lately in trying to answer that! It mak=
es
me quarrel with"--I held up my fingers and ticked the items off--"=
;the
public schools, the private tutors, the army exams, the Universities, the
Church, the general attitude of the country towards science and
literature--"
"We all
do," said Mrs. Redmondson. "We can't begin again at the beginning=
,"
she added.
"Couldn't
one," I nodded at the assembly in general, start a movement?
"There's the
Confederates," she said, with a faint smile that masked a gleam of
curiosity.... "You want," she said, "to say to the aristocra=
cy, 'Be
aristocrats. NOBLESSE OBLIGE.' Do you remember what happened to the monarch=
who
was told to 'Be a King'?"
"Well,"=
I
said, "I want an aristocracy."
"This,"=
she
said, smiling, "is the pick of them. The backwoodsmen are off the stag=
e.
These are the brilliant ones--the smart and the blues.... They cost a lot of
money, you know."
So far Mrs.
Redmondson, but the picture remained full of things not stated in our speec=
h.
They were on the whole handsome people, charitable minded, happy, and easy.
They led spacious lives, and there was something free and fearless about th=
eir
bearing that I liked extremely. The women particularly were wide-reading,
fine-thinking. Mrs. Redmondson talked as fully and widely and boldly as a m=
an,
and with those flashes of intuition, those startling, sudden delicacies of
perception few men display. I liked, too, the relations that held between w=
omen
and men, their general tolerance, their antagonism to the harsh jealousies =
that
are the essence of the middle-class order....
After all, if one=
's
aim resolved itself into the development of a type and culture of men, why
shouldn't one begin at this end?
It is very easy
indeed to generalise about a class or human beings, but much harder to prod=
uce
a sample. Was old Lady Forthundred, for instance, fairly a sample? I rememb=
er
her as a smiling, magnificent presence, a towering accumulation of figure a=
nd
wonderful shimmering blue silk and black lace and black hair, and small fine
features and chins and chins and chins, disposed in a big cane chair with w=
raps
and cushions upon the great terrace of Champneys. Her eye was blue and hard,
and her accent and intonation were exactly what you would expect from a rat=
her commonplace
dressmaker pretending to be aristocratic. I was, I am afraid, posing a litt=
le
as the intelligent but respectful inquirer from below investigating the gre=
at
world, and she was certainly posing as my informant. She affected a cynical
coarseness. She developed a theory on the governance of England, beautifull=
y frank
and simple. "Give 'um all a peerage when they get twenty thousand a
year," she maintained. "That's my remedy."
In my new role of
theoretical aristocrat I felt a little abashed.
"Twenty
thousand," she repeated with conviction.
It occurred to me=
that
I was in the presence of the aristocratic theory currently working as
distinguished from my as yet unformulated intentions.
"You'll get a
lot of loafers and scamps among 'um," said Lady Forthundred. "You=
get
loafers and scamps everywhere, but you'll get a lot of men who'll work hard=
to
keep things together, and that's what we're all after, isn't ut?
"It's not an
ideal arrangement."
"Tell me
anything better," said Lady Forthundred.
On the whole, and
because she refused emphatically to believe in education, Lady Forthundred
scored.
We had been
discussing Cossington's recent peerage, for Cossington, my old schoolfellow=
at
City Merchants', and my victor in the affair of the magazine, had clambered=
to
an amazing wealth up a piled heap of energetically pushed penny and halfpen=
ny
magazines, and a group of daily newspapers. I had expected to find the great
lady hostile to the new-comer, but she accepted him, she gloried in him.
"We're a
peerage," she said, "but none of us have ever had any nonsense ab=
out
nobility."
She turned and sm=
iled
down on me. "We English," she said, "are a practical people.=
We
assimilate 'um."
"Then, I
suppose, they don't give trouble?"
"Then they d=
on't
give trouble."
"They learn =
to
shoot?"
"And all
that," said Lady Forthundred. "Yes. And things go on. Sometimes b=
etter
than others, but they go on--somehow. It depends very much on the sort of
butler who pokes 'um about."
I suggested that =
it
might be possible to get a secure twenty thousand a year by at least
detrimental methods--socially speaking.
"We must take the bad and the good of 'um," said Lady Forthundred, courageously....<= o:p>
Now, was she a
sample? It happened she talked. What was there in the brains of the multitu=
de
of her first, second, third, fourth, and fifth cousins, who didn't talk, who
shone tall, and bearing themselves finely, against a background of deft,
attentive maids and valets, on every spacious social scene? How did things =
look
to them?
7
Side by side with Lady Forthundred,=
it is
curious to put Evesham with his tall, bent body, his little-featured almost
elvish face, his unequal mild brown eyes, his gentle manner, his sweet, ama=
zing
oratory. He led all these people wonderfully. He was always curious and
interested about life, wary beneath a pleasing frankness--and I tormented my
brain to get to the bottom of him. For a long time he was the most powerful=
man
in England under the throne; he had the Lords in his hand, and a great majo=
rity
in the Commons, and the discontents and intrigues that are the concomitants=
of
an overwhelming party advantage broke against him as waves break against a
cliff. He foresaw so far in these matters that it seemed he scarcely troubl=
ed
to foresee. He brought political art to the last triumph of naturalness. Al=
ways
for me he has been the typical aristocrat, so typical and above the mere fo=
rms
of aristocracy, that he remained a commoner to the end of his days.
I had met him at =
the
beginning of my career; he read some early papers of mine, and asked to see=
me,
and I conceived a flattered liking for him that strengthened to a very stro=
ng
feeling indeed. He seemed to me to stand alone without an equal, the greate=
st
man in British political life. Some men one sees through and understands, s=
ome
one cannot see into or round because they are of opaque clay, but about Eve=
sham
I had a sense of things hidden as it were by depth and mists, because he wa=
s so
big and atmospheric a personality. No other contemporary has had that effect
upon me. I've sat beside him at dinners, stayed in houses with him--he was =
in
the big house party at Champneys--talked to him, sounded him, watching him =
as I
sat beside him. I could talk to him with extraordinary freedom and a rare s=
ense
of being understood. Other men have to be treated in a special manner;
approached through their own mental dialect, flattered by a minute regard f=
or
what they have said and done. Evesham was as widely and charitably receptiv=
e as
any man I have ever met. The common politicians beside him seemed like rows=
of
stuffy little rooms looking out upon the sea.
And what was he up
to? What did HE think we were doing with Mankind? That I thought worth know=
ing.
I remember his
talking on one occasion at the Hartsteins', at a dinner so tremendously
floriferous and equipped that we were almost forced into duologues, about t=
he
possible common constructive purpose in politics.
"I feel so
much," he said, "that the best people in every party converge. We
don't differ at Westminster as they do in the country towns. There's a sort=
of
extending common policy that goes on under every government, because on the
whole it's the right thing to do, and people know it. Things that used to be
matters of opinion become matters of science--and cease to be party
questions."
He instanced
education.
"Apart,"
said I, "from the religious question."
"Apart from =
the
religious question."
He dropped that
aspect with an easy grace, and went on with his general theme that political
conflict was the outcome of uncertainty. "Directly you get a thing
established, so that people can say, 'Now this is Right,' with the same
conviction that people can say water is a combination of oxygen and hydroge=
n,
there's no more to be said. The thing has to be done...."
And to put against
this effect of Evesham, broad and humanely tolerant, posing as the minister=
of
a steadily developing constructive conviction, there are other memories.
Have I not seen h=
im
in the House, persistent, persuasive, indefatigable, and by all my standards
wickedly perverse, leaning over the table with those insistent movements of=
his
hand upon it, or swaying forward with a grip upon his coat lapel, fighting =
with
a diabolical skill to preserve what are in effect religious tests, tests he
must have known would outrage and humiliate and injure the consciences of a
quarter--and that perhaps the best quarter--of the youngsters who come to t=
he
work of elementary education?
In playing for po=
ints
in the game of party advantage Evesham displayed at times a quite wicked
unscrupulousness in the use of his subtle mind. I would sit on the Liberal
benches and watch him, and listen to his urbane voice, fascinated by him. D=
id
he really care? Did anything matter to him? And if it really mattered nothi=
ng,
why did he trouble to serve the narrowness and passion of his side? Or did =
he
see far beyond my scope, so that this petty iniquity was justified by great=
er,
remoter ends of which I had no intimation?
They accused him =
of
nepotism. His friends and family were certainly well cared for. In private =
life
he was full of an affectionate intimacy; he pleased by being charmed and
pleased. One might think at times there was no more of him than a clever man
happily circumstanced, and finding an interest and occupation in politics. =
And
then came a glimpse of thought, of imagination, like the sight of a soaring
eagle through a staircase skylight. Oh, beyond question he was great! No ot=
her
contemporary politician had his quality. In no man have I perceived so symp=
athetically
the great contrast between warm, personal things and the white dream of
statecraft. Except that he had it seemed no hot passions, but only interests
and fine affections and indolences, he paralleled the conflict of my life. =
He
saw and thought widely and deeply; but at times it seemed to me his greatne=
ss
stood over and behind the reality of his life, like some splendid servant,
thinking his own thoughts, who waits behind a lesser master's chair....
8
Of course, when Evesham talked of t=
his
ideal of the organised state becoming so finely true to practicability and =
so
clearly stated as to have the compelling conviction of physical science, he
spoke quite after my heart. Had he really embodied the attempt to realise t=
hat,
I could have done no more than follow him blindly. But neither he nor I
embodied that, and there lies the gist of my story. And when it came to a s=
tudy
of others among the leading Tories and Imperialists the doubt increased, un=
til
with some at last it was possible to question whether they had any imaginat=
ive
conception of constructive statecraft at all; whether they didn't opaquely
accept the world for what it was, and set themselves single-mindedly to mak=
e a
place for themselves and cut a figure in it.
There were some v=
ery
fine personalities among them: there were the great peers who had administe=
red
Egypt, India, South Africa, Framboya--Cromer, Kitchener, Curzon, Milner, Ga=
ne,
for example. So far as that easier task of holding sword and scales had gon=
e,
they had shown the finest qualities, but they had returned to the perplexing
and exacting problem of the home country, a little glorious, a little too
simply bold. They wanted to arm and they wanted to educate, but the habit of
immediate necessity made them far more eager to arm than to educate, and th=
eir experience
of heterogeneous controls made them overrate the need for obedience in a
homogeneous country. They didn't understand raw men, ill-trained men, uncer=
tain
minds, and intelligent women; and these are the things that matter in
England.... There were also the great business adventurers, from Cranber to
Cossington (who was now Lord Paddockhurst). My mind remained unsettled, and
went up and down the scale between a belief in their far-sighted purpose and
the perception of crude vanities, coarse ambitions, vulgar competitiveness,=
and
a mere habitual persistence in the pursuit of gain. For a time I saw a good
deal of Cossington--I wish I had kept a diary of his talk and gestures, to =
mark
how he could vary from day to day between a POSEUR, a smart tradesman, and a
very bold and wide-thinking political schemer. He had a vanity of sweeping
actions, motor car pounces, Napoleonic rushes, that led to violent ineffect=
ual
changes in the policy of his papers, and a haunting pursuit by parallel col=
umns
in the liberal press that never abashed him in the slightest degree. By an
accident I plumbed the folly in him--but I feel I never plumbed his wisdom.=
I
remember him one day after a lunch at the Barhams' saying suddenly, out of
profound meditation over the end of a cigar, one of those sentences that se=
em
to light the whole interior being of a man. "Some day," he said
softly, rather to himself than to me, and A PROPOS of nothing--"some d=
ay I
will raise the country."
"Why not?&qu=
ot;
I said, after a pause, and leant across him for the little silver spirit-la=
mp,
to light my cigarette....
Then the Tories h=
ad
for another section the ancient creations, and again there were the financi=
al
peers, men accustomed to reserve, and their big lawyers, accustomed to--wel=
l,
qualified statement. And below the giant personalities of the party were the
young bloods, young, adventurous men of the type of Lord Tarvrille, who had
seen service in South Africa, who had travelled and hunted; explorers, keen
motorists, interested in aviation, active in army organisation. Good,
brown-faced stuff they were, but impervious to ideas outside the range of t=
heir
activities, more ignorant of science than their chauffeurs, and of the qual=
ity of
English people than welt-politicians; contemptuous of school and university=
by
reason of the Gateses and Flacks and Codgers who had come their way, witty,
light-hearted, patriotic at the Kipling level, with a certain aptitude for
bullying. They varied in insensible gradations between the noble sportsmen =
on
the one hand, and men like Gane and the Tories of our Pentagram club on the
other. You perceive how a man might exercise his mind in the attempt to str=
ike
an average of public serviceability in this miscellany! And mixed up with
these, mixed up sometimes in the same man, was the pure reactionary, whose
predominant idea was that the village schools should confine themselves to
teaching the catechism, hat-touching and courtesying, and be given a holida=
y whenever
beaters were in request....
I find now in my =
mind
as a sort of counterpoise to Evesham the figure of old Lord Wardingham, asl=
eep
in the largest armchair in the library of Stamford Court after lunch. One f=
oot
rested on one of those things--I think they are called gout stools. He had =
been
playing golf all the morning and wearied a weak instep; at lunch he had sat=
at
my table and talked in the overbearing manner permitted to irascible import=
ant
men whose insteps are painful. Among other things he had flouted the idea t=
hat
women would ever understand statecraft or be more than a nuisance in politi=
cs,
denied flatly that Hindoos were capable of anything whatever except excesse=
s in
population, regretted he could not censor picture galleries and circulating
libraries, and declared that dissenters were people who pretended to take
theology seriously with the express purpose of upsetting the entirely
satisfactory compromise of the Established Church. "No sensible people,
with anything to gain or lose, argue about religion," he said. "T=
hey
mean mischief." Having delivered his soul upon these points, and silen=
ced
the little conversation to the left of him from which they had arisen, he
became, after an appreciative encounter with a sanguinary woodcock, more
amiable, responded to some respectful initiatives of Crupp's, and related a
number of classical anecdotes of those blighting snubs, vindictive retorts =
and
scandalous miscarriages of justice that are so dear to the forensic mind. N=
ow
he reposed. He was breathing heavily with his mouth a little open and his h=
ead
on one side. One whisker was turned back against the comfortable padding. H=
is
plump strong hands gripped the arms of his chair, and his frown was a little
assuaged. How tremendously fed up he looked! Honours, wealth, influence,
respect, he had them all. How scornful and hard it had made his unguarded
expression!
I note without
comment that it didn't even occur to me then to wake him up and ask him wha=
t HE
was up to with mankind.
9
One countervailing influence to my =
drift
to Toryism in those days was Margaret's quite religious faith in the Libera=
ls.
I realised that slowly and with a mild astonishment. It set me, indeed, even
then questioning my own change of opinion. We came at last incidentally, as=
our
way was, to an exchange of views. It was as nearly a quarrel as we had befo=
re I
came over to the Conservative side. It was at Champneys, and I think during=
the
same visit that witnessed my exploration of Lady Forthundred. It arose
indirectly, I think, out of some comments of mine upon our fellow-guests, b=
ut
it is one of those memories of which the scene and quality remain more vivid
than the things said, a memory without any very definite beginning or end. =
It
was afternoon, in the pause between tea and the dressing bell, and we were =
in
Margaret's big silver-adorned, chintz-bright room, looking out on the trim
Italian garden.... Yes, the beginning of it has escaped me altogether, but I
remember it as an odd exceptional little wrangle.
At first we seem =
to
have split upon the moral quality of the aristocracy, and I had an odd sense
that in some way too feminine for me to understand our hostess had aggrieved
her. She said, I know, that Champneys distressed her; made her "eager =
for
work and reality again."
"But aren't
these people real?"
"They're so
superficial, so extravagant!"
I said I was not
shocked by their unreality. They seemed the least affected people I had ever
met. "And are they really so extravagant?" I asked, and put it to=
her
that her dresses cost quite as much as any other woman's in the house.
"It's not on=
ly
their dresses," Margaret parried. "It's the scale and spirit of
things."
I questioned that.
"They're cynical," said Margaret, staring before her out of the
window.
I challenged her,=
and
she quoted the Brabants, about whom there had been an ancient scandal. She'd
heard of it from Altiora, and it was also Altiora who'd given her a horror =
of
Lord Carnaby, who was also with us. "You know his reputation," sa=
id
Margaret. "That Normandy girl. Every one knows about it. I shiver when=
I
look at him. He seems--oh! like something not of OUR civilisation. He WILL =
come
and say little things to me."
"Offensive
things?"
"No,
politenesses and things. Of course his manners are--quite right. That only
makes it worse, I think. It shows he might have helped--all that happened. =
I do
all I can to make him see I don't like him. But none of the others make the
slightest objection to him."
"Perhaps the=
se
people imagine something might be said for him."
"That's just
it," said Margaret.
"Charity,&qu=
ot;
I suggested.
"I don't like
that sort of toleration."
I was oddly annoy=
ed.
"Like eating with publicans and sinners," I said. "No!...&qu=
ot;
But scandals, and=
the
contempt for rigid standards their condonation displayed, weren't more than=
the
sharp edge of the trouble. "It's their whole position, their selfish
predominance, their class conspiracy against the mass of people," said
Margaret. "When I sit at dinner in that splendid room, with its glitter
and white reflections and candlelight, and its flowers and its wonderful
service and its candelabra of solid gold, I seem to feel the slums and the
mines and the over-crowded cottages stuffed away under the table."
I reminded Margar=
et
that she was not altogether innocent of unearned increment.
"But aren't =
we
doing our best to give it back?" she said.
I was moved to
question her. "Do you really think," I asked, "that the Tori=
es
and peers and rich people are to blame for social injustice as we have it
to-day? Do you really see politics as a struggle of light on the Liberal si=
de
against darkness on the Tory?"
"They MUST
know," said Margaret.
I found myself
questioning that. I see now that to Margaret it must have seemed the perver=
sest
carping against manifest things, but at the time I was concentrated simply =
upon
the elucidation of her view and my own; I wanted to get at her conception in
the sharpest, hardest lines that were possible. It was perfectly clear that=
she
saw Toryism as the diabolical element in affairs. The thing showed in its
hopeless untruth all the clearer for the fine, clean emotion with which she
gave it out to me. My sleeping peer in the library at Stamford Court and
Evesham talking luminously behind the Hartstein flowers embodied the devil,=
and
my replete citizen sucking at his cigar in the National Liberal Club, Willie
Crampton discussing the care and management of the stomach over a specially
hygienic lemonade, and Dr. Tumpany in his aggressive frock-coat pegging out=
a
sort of copyright in Socialism, were the centre and wings of the angelic si=
de.
It was nonsense. But how was I to put the truth to her?
"I don't see
things at all as you do," I said. "I don't see things in the same
way."
"Think of the
poor," said Margaret, going off at a tangent.
"Think of ev=
ery
one," I said. "We Liberals have done more mischief through
well-intentioned benevolence than all the selfishness in the world could ha=
ve
done. We built up the liquor interest."
"WE!" c=
ried
Margaret. "How can you say that? It's against us."
"Naturally. =
But
we made it a monopoly in our clumsy efforts to prevent people drinking what
they liked, because it interfered with industrial regularity--"
"Oh!" c=
ried
Margaret, stung; and I could see she thought I was talking mere wickedness.=
"That's
it," I said.
"But would y=
ou
have people drink whatever they pleased?"
"Certainly. =
What
right have I to dictate to other men and women?"
"But think of
the children!"
"Ah! there y=
ou
have the folly of modern Liberalism, its half-cunning, half-silly way of
getting at everything in a roundabout fashion. If neglecting children is an
offence, and it IS an offence, then deal with it as such, but don't go
badgering and restricting people who sell something that may possibly in so=
me
cases lead to a neglect of children. If drunkenness is an offence, punish i=
t,
but don't punish a man for selling honest drink that perhaps after all won't
make any one drunk at all. Don't intensify the viciousness of the public-ho=
use
by assuming the place isn't fit for women and children. That's either spite=
or
folly. Make the public-house FIT for women and children. Make it a real pub=
lic-house.
If we Liberals go on as we are going, we shall presently want to stop the s=
ale
of ink and paper because those things tempt men to forgery. We do already
threaten the privacy of the post because of betting tout's letters. The dri=
ft
of all that kind of thing is narrow, unimaginative, mischievous, stupid....=
"
I stopped short a=
nd
walked to the window and surveyed a pretty fountain, facsimile of one in
Verona, amidst trim-cut borderings of yew. Beyond, and seen between the ste=
ms
of ilex trees, was a great blaze of yellow flowers....
"But
prevention," I heard Margaret behind me, "is the essence of our w=
ork."
I turned.
"There's no prevention but education. There's no antiseptics in life b=
ut
love and fine thinking. Make people fine, make fine people. Don't be afraid.
These Tory leaders are better people individually than the average; why cast
them for the villains of the piece? The real villain in the piece--in the w=
hole
human drama--is the muddle-headedness, and it matters very little if it's
virtuous-minded or wicked. I want to get at muddle-headedness. If I could do
that I could let all that you call wickedness in the world run about and do
what it jolly well pleased. It would matter about as much as a slightly neg=
lected
dog--in an otherwise well-managed home."
My thoughts had r=
un
away with me.
"I can't und=
erstand
you," said Margaret, in the profoundest distress. "I can't unders=
tand
how it is you are coming to see things like this."
10
The moods of a thinking man in poli=
tics
are curiously evasive and difficult to describe. Neither the public nor the
historian will permit the statesman moods. He has from the first to assume =
he
has an Aim, a definite Aim, and to pretend to an absolute consistency with
that. Those subtle questionings about the very fundamentals of life which
plague us all so relentlessly nowadays are supposed to be silenced. He lifts
his chin and pursues his Aim explicitly in the sight of all men. Those who =
have
no real political experience can scarcely imagine the immense mental and mo=
ral
strain there is between one's everyday acts and utterances on the one hand =
and
the "thinking-out" process on the other. It is perplexingly diffi=
cult
to keep in your mind, fixed and firm, a scheme essentially complex, to keep
balancing a swaying possibility while at the same time under jealous, hosti=
le,
and stupid observation you tread your part in the platitudinous, quarrelsom=
e,
ill-presented march of affairs....
The most impossib=
le
of all autobiographies is an intellectual autobiography. I have thrown toge=
ther
in the crudest way the elements of the problem I struggled with, but I can =
give
no record of the subtle details; I can tell nothing of the long vacillations
between Protean values, the talks and re-talks, the meditations, the bleak
lucidities of sleepless nights....
And yet these thi=
ngs
I have struggled with must be thought out, and, to begin with, they must be
thought out in this muddled, experimenting way. To go into a study to think
about statecraft is to turn your back on the realities you are constantly
needing to feel and test and sound if your thinking is to remain vital; to
choose an aim and pursue it in despite of all subsequent questionings is to
bury the talent of your mind. It is no use dealing with the intricate as th=
ough
it were simple, to leap haphazard at the first course of action that presen=
ts
itself; the whole world of politicians is far too like a man who snatches a
poker to a failing watch. It is easy to say he wants to "get something
done," but the only sane thing to do for the moment is to put aside th=
at
poker and take thought and get a better implement....
One of the result=
s of
these fundamental preoccupations of mine was a curious irritability towards
Margaret that I found difficult to conceal. It was one of the incidental
cruelties of our position that this should happen. I was in such doubt myse=
lf,
that I had no power to phrase things for her in a form she could use. Hithe=
rto
I had stage-managed our "serious" conversations. Now I was too mu=
ch
in earnest and too uncertain to go on doing this. I avoided talk with her. =
Her
serene, sustained confidence in vague formulae and sentimental aspirations
exasperated me; her want of sympathetic apprehension made my few efforts to
indicate my changing attitudes distressing and futile. It wasn't that I was
always thinking right, and that she was always saying wrong. It was that I =
was struggling
to get hold of a difficult thing that was, at any rate, half true, I could =
not
gauge how true, and that Margaret's habitual phrasing ignored these elusive
elements of truth, and without premeditation fitted into the weaknesses of =
my
new intimations, as though they had nothing but weaknesses. It was, for
example, obvious that these big people, who were the backbone of Imperialism
and Conservatism, were temperamentally lax, much more indolent, much more s=
ensuous,
than our deliberately virtuous Young Liberals. I didn't want to be reminded=
of that,
just when I was in full effort to realise the finer elements in their
composition. Margaret classed them and disposed of them. It was our incurab=
le
differences in habits and gestures of thought coming between us again.
The desert of
misunderstanding widened. I was forced back upon myself and my own secret
councils. For a time I went my way alone; an unmixed evil for both of us.
Except for that Pentagram evening, a series of talks with Isabel Rivers, who
was now becoming more and more important in my intellectual life, and the
arguments I maintained with Crupp, I never really opened my mind at all dur=
ing
that period of indecisions, slow abandonments, and slow acquisitions.
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~
SECESSION
1
At last, out of a vast accumulation=
of
impressions, decision distilled quite suddenly. I succumbed to Evesham and =
that
dream of the right thing triumphant through expression. I determined I woul=
d go
over to the Conservatives, and use my every gift and power on the side of s=
uch forces
on that side as made for educational reorganisation, scientific research,
literature, criticism, and intellectual development. That was in 1909. I ju=
dged
the Tories were driving straight at a conflict with the country, and I thou=
ght
them bound to incur an electoral defeat. I under-estimated their strength in
the counties. There would follow, I calculated, a period of profound
reconstruction in method and policy alike. I was entirely at one with Crupp=
in
perceiving in this an immense opportunity for the things we desired. An
aristocracy quickened by conflict and on the defensive, and full of the ide=
a of
justification by reconstruction, might prove altogether more apt for thought
and high professions than Mrs. Redmondson's spoilt children. Behind the now=
inevitable
struggle for a reform of the House of Lords, there would be great heart
searchings and educational endeavour. On that we reckoned....
At last we talked=
it
out to the practical pitch, and Crupp and Shoesmith, and I and Gane, made o=
ur
definite agreement together....
I emerged from
enormous silences upon Margaret one evening.
She was just back
from the display of some new musicians at the Hartsteins. I remember she wo=
re a
dress of golden satin, very rich-looking and splendid. About her slender ne=
ck
there was a rope of gold-set amber beads. Her hair caught up and echoed and
returned these golden notes. I, too, was in evening dress, but where I had =
been
escapes me,--some forgotten dinner, I suppose. I went into her room. I reme=
mber
I didn't speak for some moments. I went across to the window and pulled the
blind aside, and looked out upon the railed garden of the square, with its
shrubs and shadowed turf gleaming pallidly and irregularly in the light of =
the
big electric standard in the corner.
"Margaret,&q=
uot;
I said, "I think I shall break with the party."
She made no answe=
r. I
turned presently, a movement of enquiry.
"I was afraid
you meant to do that," she said.
"I'm out of
touch," I explained. "Altogether."
"Oh! I
know."
"It places m=
e in
a difficult position," I said.
Margaret stood at=
her
dressing-table, looking steadfastly at herself in the glass, and with her
fingers playing with a litter of stoppered bottles of tinted glass. "I=
was
afraid it was coming to this," she said.
"In a way,&q=
uot;
I said, "we've been allies. I owe my seat to you. I couldn't have gone
into Parliament...."
"I don't want
considerations like that to affect us," she interrupted.
There was a pause.
She sat down in a chair by her dressing-table, lifted an ivory hand-glass, =
and
put it down again.
"I wish,&quo=
t;
she said, with something like a sob in her voice, "it were possible th=
at
you shouldn't do this." She stopped abruptly, and I did not look at he=
r,
because I could feel the effort she was making to control herself.
"I
thought," she began again, "when you came into Parliament--"=
There came another
silence. "It's all gone so differently," she said. "Everythi=
ng
has gone so differently."
I had a sudden me=
mory
of her, shining triumphant after the Kinghampstead election, and for the fi=
rst
time I realised just how perplexing and disappointing my subsequent career =
must
have been to her.
"I'm not doi=
ng
this without consideration," I said.
"I know,&quo=
t;
she said, in a voice of despair, "I've seen it coming. But--I still do=
n't
understand it. I don't understand how you can go over."
"My ideas ha=
ve
changed and developed," I said.
I walked across to
her bearskin hearthrug, and stood by the mantel.
"To think th=
at
you," she said; "you who might have been leader--" She could=
not
finish it. "All the forces of reaction," she threw out.
"I don't thi=
nk
they are the forces of reaction," I said. "I think I can find wor=
k to
do--better work on that side."
"Against
us!" she said. "As if progress wasn't hard enough! As if it didn't
call upon every able man!"
"I don't thi=
nk
Liberalism has a monopoly of progress."
She did not answer
that. She sat quite still looking in front of her. "WHY have you gone
over?" she asked abruptly as though I had said nothing.
There came a sile=
nce
that I was impelled to end. I began a stiff dissertation from the hearthrug.
"I am going over, because I think I may join in an intellectual renasc=
ence
on the Conservative side. I think that in the coming struggle there will be=
a
partial and altogether confused and demoralising victory for democracy, that
will stir the classes which now dominate the Conservative party into an
energetic revival. They will set out to win back, and win back. Even if my =
estimate
of contemporary forces is wrong and they win, they will still be forced to
reconstruct their outlook. A war abroad will supply the chastening if home
politics fail. The effort at renascence is bound to come by either alternat=
ive.
I believe I can do more in relation to that effort than in any other connex=
ion
in the world of politics at the present time. That's my case, Margaret.&quo=
t;
She certainly did=
not
grasp what I said. "And so you will throw aside all the beginnings, all
the beliefs and pledges--" Again her sentence remained incomplete. &qu=
ot;I
doubt if even, once you have gone over, they will welcome you."
"That hardly
matters."
I made an effort =
to
resume my speech.
"I came into
Parliament, Margaret," I said, "a little prematurely. Still--I
suppose it was only by coming into Parliament that I could see things as I =
do
now in terms of personality and imaginative range...." I stopped. Her
stiff, unhappy, unlistening silence broke up my disquisition.
"After
all," I remarked, "most of this has been implicit in my writings.=
"
She made no sign =
of
admission.
"What are you
going to do?" she asked.
"Keep my seat
for a time and make the reasons of my breach clear. Then either I must resi=
gn
or--probably this new Budget will lead to a General Election. It's evidently
meant to strain the Lords and provoke a quarrel."
"You might, I
think, have stayed to fight for the Budget."
"I'm not,&qu=
ot;
I said, "so keen against the Lords."
On that we halted=
.
"But what are
you going to do?" she asked.
"I shall mak=
e my
quarrel over some points in the Budget. I can't quite tell you yet where my
chance will come. Then I shall either resign my seat--or if things drift to
dissolution I shall stand again."
"It's politi=
cal
suicide."
"Not
altogether."
"I can't ima=
gine
you out of Parliament again. It's just like--like undoing all we have done.
What will you do?"
"Write. Make=
a
new, more definite place for myself. You know, of course, there's already a
sort of group about Crupp and Gane."
Margaret seemed l=
ost
for a time in painful thought.
"For me,&quo=
t;
she said at last, "our political work has been a religion--it has been
more than a religion."
I heard in silenc=
e. I
had no form of protest available against the implications of that.
"And then I =
find
you turning against all we aimed to do--talking of going over, almost
lightly--to those others."...
She was white-lip=
ped
as she spoke. In the most curious way she had captured the moral values of =
the
situation. I found myself protesting ineffectually against her fixed
conviction. "It's because I think my duty lies in this change that I m=
ake
it," I said.
"I don't see=
how
you can say that," she replied quietly.
There was another
pause between us.
"Oh!" s=
he
said and clenched her hand upon the table. "That it should have come to
this!"
She was extraordi=
narily
dignified and extraordinarily absurd. She was hurt and thwarted beyond meas=
ure.
She had no place in her ideas, I thought, for me. I could see how it appear=
ed
to her, but I could not make her see anything of the intricate process that=
had
brought me to this divergence. The opposition of our intellectual temperame=
nts was
like a gag in my mouth. What was there for me to say? A flash of intuition =
told
me that behind her white dignity was a passionate disappointment, a shatter=
ing
of dreams that needed before everything else the relief of weeping.
"I've told
you," I said awkwardly, "as soon as I could."
There was another
long silence. "So that is how we stand," I said with an air of ha=
ving
things defined. I walked slowly to the door.
She had risen and
stood now staring in front of her.
"Good-night,=
"
I said, making no movement towards our habitual kiss.
"Good-night,=
"
she answered in a tragic note....
I closed the door
softly. I remained for a moment or so on the big landing, hesitating betwee=
n my
bedroom and my study. As I did so I heard the soft rustle of her movement a=
nd
the click of the key in her bedroom door. Then everything was still....
She hid her tears
from me. Something gripped my heart at the thought.
"Damnation!&=
quot;
I said wincing. "Why the devil can't people at least THINK in the same
manner?"
2
And that insufficient colloquy was =
the
beginning of a prolonged estrangement between us. It was characteristic of =
our
relations that we never reopened the discussion. The thing had been in the =
air for
some time; we had recognised it now; the widening breach between us was con=
fessed.
My own feelings were curiously divided. It is remarkable that my very real
affection for Margaret only became evident to me with this quarrel. The cha=
nges
of the heart are very subtle changes. I am quite unaware how or when my ear=
ly
romantic love for her purity and beauty and high-principled devotion evapor=
ated
from my life; but I do know that quite early in my parliamentary days there=
had
come a vague, unconfessed resentment at the tie that seemed to hold me in
servitude to her standards of private living and public act. I felt I was
caught, and none the less so because it had been my own act to rivet on my
shackles. So long as I still held myself bound to her that resentment grew.
Now, since I had broken my bonds and taken my line it withered again, and I=
could
think of Margaret with a returning kindliness.
But I still felt
embarrassment with her. I felt myself dependent upon her for house room and
food and social support, as it were under false pretences. I would have lik=
ed
to have separated our financial affairs altogether. But I knew that to raise
the issue would have seemed a last brutal indelicacy. So I tried almost
furtively to keep my personal expenditure within the scope of the private
income I made by writing, and we went out together in her motor brougham, d=
ined
and made appearances, met politely at breakfast--parted at night with a kiss
upon her cheek. The locking of her door upon me, which at that time I quite=
understood,
which I understand now, became for a time in my mind, through some obscure
process of the soul, an offence. I never crossed the landing to her room ag=
ain.
In all this matte=
r,
and, indeed, in all my relations with Margaret, I perceive now I behaved ba=
dly
and foolishly. My manifest blunder is that I, who was several years older t=
han
she, much subtler and in many ways wiser, never in any measure sought to gu=
ide
and control her. After our marriage I treated her always as an equal, and l=
et
her go her way; held her responsible for all the weak and ineffective and
unfortunate things she said and did to me. She wasn't clever enough to just=
ify
that. It wasn't fair to expect her to sympathise, anticipate, and understan=
d. I
ought to have taken care of her, roped her to me when it came to crossing t=
he
difficult places. If I had loved her more, and wiselier and more tenderly, =
if
there had not been the consciousness of my financial dependence on her alwa=
ys
stiffening my pride, I think she would have moved with me from the outset, =
and
left the Liberals with me. But she did not get any inkling of the ends I so=
ught
in my change of sides. It must have seemed to her inexplicable perversity. =
She
had, I knew--for surely I knew it then--an immense capacity for loyalty and
devotion. There she was with these treasures untouched, neglected and
perplexed. A woman who loves wants to give. It is the duty and business of =
the
man she has married for love to help her to help and give. But I was stupid=
. My
eyes had never been opened. I was stiff with her and difficult to her, beca=
use
even on my wedding morning there had been, deep down in my soul, voiceless
though present, something weakly protesting, a faint perception of wrong-do=
ing,
the infinitesimally small, slow-multiplying germs of shame.
3
I made my breach with the party on =
the
Budget.
In many ways I was
disposed to regard the 1909 Budget as a fine piece of statecraft. Its
production was certainly a very unexpected display of vigour on the Liberal
side. But, on the whole, this movement towards collectivist organisation on=
the
part of the Liberals rather strengthened than weakened my resolve to cross =
the
floor of the house. It made it more necessary, I thought, to leaven the pur=
ely
obstructive and reactionary elements that were at once manifest in the
opposition. I assailed the land taxation proposals in one main speech, and a
series of minor speeches in committee. The line of attack I chose was that =
the land
was a great public service that needed to be controlled on broad and
far-sighted lines. I had no objection to its nationalisation, but I did obj=
ect
most strenuously to the idea of leaving it in private hands, and attempting=
to
produce beneficial social results through the pressure of taxation upon the
land-owning class. That might break it up in an utterly disastrous way. The
drift of the government proposals was all in the direction of sweating the
landowner to get immediate values from his property, and such a course of
action was bound to give us an irritated and vindictive land-owning class, =
the
class upon which we had hitherto relied--not unjustifiably--for certain bro=
ad,
patriotic services and an influence upon our collective judgments that no o=
ther
class seemed prepared to exercise. Abolish landlordism if you will, I said,=
buy
it out, but do not drive it to a defensive fight, and leave it still suffic=
iently
strong and wealthy to become a malcontent element in your state. You have t=
axed
and controlled the brewer and the publican until the outraged Liquor Intere=
st has
become a national danger. You now propose to do the same thing on a larger
scale. You turn a class which has many fine and truly aristocratic traditio=
ns
towards revolt, and there is nothing in these or any other of your proposals
that shows any sense of the need for leadership to replace these traditional
leaders you are ousting. This was the substance of my case, and I hammered =
at
it not only in the House, but in the press....
The Kinghampstead
division remained for some time insensitive to my defection.
Then it woke up
suddenly, and began, in the columns of the KINGSHAMPSTEAD GUARDIAN, an
indignant, confused outcry. I was treated to an open letter, signed
"Junius Secundus," and I replied in provocative terms. There were=
two
thinly attended public meetings at different ends of the constituency, and =
then
I had a correspondence with my old friend Parvill, the photographer, which
ended in my seeing a deputation.
My impression is =
that
it consisted of about eighteen or twenty people. They had had to come upsta=
irs
to me and they were manifestly full of indignation and a little short of
breath. There was Parvill himself, J.P., dressed wholly in black--I think to
mark his sense of the occasion--and curiously suggestive in his respect for=
my
character and his concern for the honourableness of the KINGHAMPSTEAD GUARD=
IAN
editor, of Mark Antony at the funeral of Cesar. There was Mrs. Bulger, also=
in mourning;
she had never abandoned the widow's streamers since the death of her husband
ten years ago, and her loyalty to Liberalism of the severest type was part =
as
it were of her weeds. There was a nephew of Sir Roderick Newton, a bright y=
oung
Hebrew of the graver type, and a couple of dissenting ministers in high col=
lars
and hats that stopped halfway between the bowler of this world and the
shovel-hat of heaven. There was also a young solicitor from Lurky done in t=
he
horsey style, and there was a very little nervous man with a high brow and a
face contracting below as though the jawbones and teeth had been taken out =
and the
features compressed. The rest of the deputation, which included two other
public-spirited ladies and several ministers of religion, might have been r=
aked
out of any omnibus going Strandward during the May meetings. They thrust
Parvill forward as spokesman, and manifested a strong disposition to say
"Hear, hear!" to his more strenuous protests provided my eye wasn=
't
upon them at the time.
I regarded this
appalling deputation as Parvill's apologetic but quite definite utterances =
drew
to an end. I had a moment of vision. Behind them I saw the wonderful array =
of
skeleton forces that stand for public opinion, that are as much public opin=
ion
as exists indeed at the present time. The whole process of politics which b=
ulks
so solidly in history seemed for that clairvoyant instant but a froth of pe=
tty
motives above abysms of indifference....
Some one had
finished. I perceived I had to speak.
"Very
well," I said, "I won't keep you long in replying. I'll resign if=
there
isn't a dissolution before next February, and if there is I shan't stand ag=
ain.
You don't want the bother and expense of a bye-election (approving murmurs)=
if
it can be avoided. But I may tell you plainly now that I don't think it wil=
l be
necessary for me to resign, and the sooner you find my successor the better=
for
the party. The Lords are in a corner; they've got to fight now or never, an=
d I
think they will throw out the Budget. Then they will go on fighting. It is a
fight that will last for years. They have a sort of social discipline, and =
you
haven't. You Liberals will find yourselves with a country behind you, vague=
ly indignant
perhaps, but totally unprepared with any ideas whatever in the matter, face=
to
face with the problem of bringing the British constitution up-to-date. Anyt=
hing
may happen, provided only that it is sufficiently absurd. If the King backs=
the
Lords--and I don't see why he shouldn't--you have no Republican movement
whatever to fall back upon. You lost it during the Era of Good Taste. The
country, I say, is destitute of ideas, and you have no ideas to give it. I
don't see what you will do.... For my own part, I mean to spend a year or so
between a window and my writing-desk."
I paused. "I
think, gentlemen," began Parvill, "that we hear all this with very
great regret...."
4
My estrangement from Margaret stand=
s in
my memory now as something that played itself out within the four walls of =
our
house in Radnor Square, which was, indeed, confined to those limits. I went=
to
and fro between my house and the House of Commons, and the dining-rooms and
clubs and offices in which we were preparing our new developments, in a sta=
te of
aggressive and energetic dissociation, in the nascent state, as a chemist w=
ould
say. I was free now, and greedy for fresh combination. I had a tremendous s=
ense
of released energies. I had got back to the sort of thing I could do, and to
the work that had been shaping itself for so long in my imagination. Our
purpose now was plain, bold, and extraordinarily congenial. We meant no less
than to organise a new movement in English thought and life, to resuscitate=
a
Public Opinion and prepare the ground for a revised and renovated ruling
culture.
For a time I seem=
ed
quite wonderfully able to do whatever I wanted to do. Shoesmith responded t=
o my
first advances. We decided to create a weekly paper as our nucleus, and Cru=
pp
and I set to work forthwith to collect a group of writers and speakers,
including Esmeer, Britten, Lord Gane, Neal, and one or two younger men, whi=
ch
should constitute a more or less definite editorial council about me, and m=
eet
at a weekly lunch on Tuesday to sustain our general co-operations. We marked
our claim upon Toryism even in the colour of our wrapper, and spoke of
ourselves collectively as the Blue Weeklies. But our lunches were open to a=
ll sorts
of guests, and our deliberations were never of a character to control me
effectively in my editorial decisions. My only influential councillor at fi=
rst
was old Britten, who became my sub-editor. It was curious how we two had pi=
cked
up our ancient intimacy again and resumed the easy give and take of our
speculative dreaming schoolboy days.
For a time my life
centred altogether upon this journalistic work. Britten was an experienced
journalist, and I had most of the necessary instincts for the business. We
meant to make the paper right and good down to the smallest detail, and we =
set
ourselves at this with extraordinary zeal. It wasn't our intention to show =
our
political motives too markedly at first, and through all the dust storm and=
tumult
and stress of the political struggle of 1910, we made a little intellectual
oasis of good art criticism and good writing. It was the firm belief of nea=
rly
all of us that the Lords were destined to be beaten badly in 1910, and our =
game
was the longer game of reconstruction that would begin when the shouting and
tumult of that immediate conflict were over. Meanwhile we had to get into t=
ouch
with just as many good minds as possible.
As we felt our fe=
et,
I developed slowly and carefully a broadly conceived and consistent politic=
al
attitude. As I will explain later, we were feminist from the outset, though
that caused Shoesmith and Gane great searching of heart; we developed Esmee=
r's
House of Lords reform scheme into a general cult of the aristocratic virtue=
s,
and we did much to humanise and liberalise the narrow excellencies of that
Break-up of the Poor Law agitation, which had been organised originally by
Beatrice and Sidney Webb. In addition, without any very definite explanatio=
n to
any one but Esmeer and Isabel Rivers, and as if it was quite a small matter=
, I
set myself to secure a uniform philosophical quality in our columns.
That, indeed, was=
the
peculiar virtue and characteristic of the BLUE WEEKLY. I was now very
definitely convinced that much of the confusion and futility of contemporary
thought was due to the general need of metaphysical training.... The great =
mass
of people--and not simply common people, but people active and influential =
in
intellectual things--are still quite untrained in the methods of thought an=
d absolutely
innocent of any criticism of method; it is scarcely a caricature to call th=
eir
thinking a crazy patchwork, discontinuous and chaotic. They arrive at
conclusions by a kind of accident, and do not suspect any other way may be
found to their attainment. A stage above this general condition stands that
minority of people who have at some time or other discovered general terms =
and
a certain use for generalisations. They are--to fall back on the ancient te=
chnicality--Realists
of a crude sort. When I say Realist of course I mean Realist as opposed to
Nominalist, and not Realist in the almost diametrically different sense of
opposition to Idealist. Such are the Baileys; such, to take their great
prototype, was Herbert Spencer (who couldn't read Kant); such are whole
regiments of prominent and entirely self-satisfied contemporaries. They go
through queer little processes of definition and generalisation and deducti=
on
with the completest belief in the validity of the intellectual instrument t=
hey
are using. They are Realists--Cocksurists--in matter of fact; sentimentalis=
ts
in behaviour. The Baileys having got to this glorious stage in mental
development--it is glorious because it has no doubts--were always talking a=
bout
training "Experts" to apply the same simple process to all the
affairs of mankind. Well, Realism isn't the last word of human wisdom. Mode=
st-minded
people, doubtful people, subtle people, and the like--the kind of people
William James writes of as "tough-minded," go on beyond this meth=
odical
happiness, and are forever after critical of premises and terms. They are
truer--and less confident. They have reached scepticism and the artistic
method. They have emerged into the new Nominalism.
Both Isabel and I
believe firmly that these differences of intellectual method matter profoun=
dly
in the affairs of mankind, that the collective mind of this intricate compl=
ex
modern state can only function properly upon neo-Nominalist lines. This has
always been her side of our mental co-operation rather than mine. Her mind =
has
the light movement that goes so often with natural mental power; she has a
wonderful art in illustration, and, as the reader probably knows already, s=
he
writes of metaphysical matters with a rare charm and vividness. So far there
has been no collection of her papers published, but they are to be found no=
t only
in the BLUE WEEKLY columns but scattered about the monthlies; many people m=
ust
be familiar with her style. It was an intention we did much to realise befo=
re
our private downfall, that we would use the BLUE WEEKLY to maintain a strea=
m of
suggestion against crude thinking, and at last scarcely a week passed but s=
ome
popular distinction, some large imposing generalisation, was touched to
flaccidity by her pen or mine....
I was at great pa=
ins
to give my philosophical, political, and social matter the best literary and
critical backing we could get in London. I hunted sedulously for good
descriptive writing and good criticism; I was indefatigable in my readiness=
to
hear and consider, if not to accept advice; I watched every corner of the
paper, and had a dozen men alert to get me special matter of the sort that
draws in the unattached reader. The chief danger on the literary side of a
weekly is that it should fall into the hands of some particular school, and
this I watched for closely. It seems impossible to get vividness of
apprehension and breadth of view together in the same critic. So it falls to
the wise editor to secure the first and impose the second. Directly I detec=
ted the
shrill partisan note in our criticism, the attempt to puff a poor thing bec=
ause
it was "in the right direction," or damn a vigorous piece of work
because it wasn't, I tackled the man and had it out with him. Our pay was g=
ood
enough for that to matter a good deal....
Our distinctive
little blue and white poster kept up its neat persistent appeal to the publ=
ic
eye, and before 1911 was out, the BLUE WEEKLY was printing twenty pages of
publishers' advertisements, and went into all the clubs in London and
three-quarters of the country houses where week-end parties gather together.
Its sale by newsagents and bookstalls grew steadily. One got more and more =
the
reassuring sense of being discussed, and influencing discussion.
5
Our office was at the very top of a=
big
building near the end of Adelphi Terrace; the main window beside my desk, a=
big
undivided window of plate glass, looked out upon Cleopatra's Needle, the co=
rner
of the Hotel Cecil, the fine arches of Waterloo Bridge, and the long sweep =
of
south bank with its shot towers and chimneys, past Bankside to the dimly se=
en piers
of the great bridge below the Tower. The dome of St. Paul's just floated in=
to
view on the left against the hotel facade. By night and day, in every light=
and
atmosphere, it was a beautiful and various view, alive as a throbbing heart=
; a
perpetual flow of traffic ploughed and splashed the streaming silver of the
river, and by night the shapes of things became velvet black and grey, and =
the
water a shining mirror of steel, wearing coruscating gems of light. In the
foreground the Embankment trams sailed glowing by, across the water
advertisements flashed and flickered, trains went and came and a rolling dr=
ift
of smoke reflected unseen fires. By day that spectacle was sometimes a marv=
el
of shining wet and wind-cleared atmosphere, sometimes a mystery of drifting=
fog,
sometimes a miracle of crowded details, minutely fine.
As I think of that view, so variously spacious in effect, I am back there, and this sunlit pap= er might be lamp-lit and lying on my old desk. I see it all again, feel it all again. In the foreground is a green shaded lamp and crumpled galley slips a= nd paged proofs and letters, two or three papers in manuscript, and so forth. = In the shadows are chairs and another table bearing papers and books, a rotati= ng bookcase dimly seen, a long window seat black in the darkness, and then the cool unbroken spectacle of the window. How often I would watch some tram-ca= r, some string of barges go from me slowly out of sight. The people were black anim= alculae by day, clustering, collecting, dispersing, by night, they were phantom face-specks coming, vanishing, stirring obscurely between light and shade.<= o:p>
I recall many hou=
rs
at my desk in that room before the crisis came, hours full of the peculiar =
happiness
of effective strenuous work. Once some piece of writing went on, holding me
intent and forgetful of time until I looked up from the warm circle of my
electric lamp to see the eastward sky above the pale silhouette of the Tower
Bridge, flushed and banded brightly with the dawn.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ THE
BESETTING OF SEX
1
Art is selection and so is most
autobiography. But I am concerned with a more tangled business than selecti=
on,
I want to show a contemporary man in relation to the state and social usage,
and the social organism in relation to that man. To tell my story at all I =
have
to simplify. I have given now the broad lines of my political development, =
and
how I passed from my initial liberal-socialism to the conception of a
constructive aristocracy. I have tried to set that out in the form of a man=
discovering
himself. Incidentally that self-development led to a profound breach with my
wife. One has read stories before of husband and wife speaking severally two
different languages and coming to an understanding. But Margaret and I bega=
n in
her dialect, and, as I came more and more to use my own, diverged.
I had thought whe=
n I
married that the matter of womankind had ended for me. I have tried to tell=
all
that sex and women had been to me up to my married life with Margaret and o=
ur
fatal entanglement, tried to show the queer, crippled, embarrassed and limi=
ted
way in which these interests break upon the life of a young man under
contemporary conditions. I do not think my lot was a very exceptional one. I
missed the chance of sisters and girl playmates, but that is not an uncommon
misadventure in an age of small families; I never came to know any woman at=
all
intimately until I was married to Margaret. My earlier love affairs were en=
counters
of sex, under conditions of furtiveness and adventure that made them things=
in
themselves, restricted and unilluminating. From a boyish disposition to be
mystical and worshipping towards women I had passed into a disregardful
attitude, as though women were things inferior or irrelevant, disturbers in
great affairs. For a time Margaret had blotted out all other women; she was=
so
different and so near; she was like a person who stands suddenly in front o=
f a
little window through which one has been surveying a crowd. She didn't beco=
me womankind
for me so much as eliminate womankind from my world.... And then came this
secret separation....
Until this
estrangement and the rapid and uncontrollable development of my relations w=
ith
Isabel which chanced to follow it, I seemed to have solved the problem of w=
omen
by marriage and disregard. I thought these things were over. I went about my
career with Margaret beside me, her brow slightly knit, her manner faintly
strenuous, helping, helping; and if we had not altogether abolished sex we =
had
at least so circumscribed and isolated it that it would not have affected t=
he
general tenor of our lives in the slightest degree if we had.
And then, clothing
itself more and more in the form of Isabel and her problems, this old, this
fundamental obsession of my life returned. The thing stole upon my mind so =
that
I was unaware of its invasion and how it was changing our long intimacy. I =
have
already compared the lot of the modern publicist to Machiavelli writing in =
his
study; in his day women and sex were as disregarded in these high affairs a=
s,
let us say, the chemistry of air or the will of the beasts in the fields; in
ours the case has altogether changed, and woman has come now to stand besid=
e the
tall candles, half in the light, half in the mystery of the shadows, besett=
ing,
interrupting, demanding unrelentingly an altogether unprecedented attention=
. I
feel that in these matters my life has been almost typical of my time. Woman
insists upon her presence. She is no longer a mere physical need, an aesthe=
tic
bye-play, a sentimental background; she is a moral and intellectual necessi=
ty
in a man's life. She comes to the politician and demands, Is she a child or=
a
citizen? Is she a thing or a soul? She comes to the individual man, as she =
came
to me and asks, Is she a cherished weakling or an equal mate, an unavoidable
helper? Is she to be tried and trusted or guarded and controlled, bond or f=
ree?
For if she is a mate, one must at once trust more and exact more, exacting
toil, courage, and the hardest, most necessary thing of all, the clearest, =
most
shameless, explicitness of understanding....
2
In all my earlier imaginings of
statecraft I had tacitly assumed either that the relations of the sexes were
all right or that anyhow they didn't concern the state. It was a matter the=
y,
whoever "they" were, had to settle among themselves. That sort of
disregard was possible then. But even before 1906 there were endless
intimations that the dams holding back great reservoirs of discussion were =
crumbling.
We political schemers were ploughing wider than any one had ploughed before=
in
the field of social reconstruction. We had also, we realised, to plough dee=
per.
We had to plough down at last to the passionate elements of sexual relation=
ship
and examine and decide upon them.
The signs multipl=
ied.
In a year or so half the police of the metropolis were scarce sufficient to
protect the House from one clamorous aspect of the new problem. The members
went about Westminster with an odd, new sense of being beset. A good propor=
tion
of us kept up the pretence that the Vote for Women was an isolated fad, and=
the
agitation an epidemic madness that would presently pass. But it was manifes=
t to
any one who sought more than comfort in the matter that the streams of women
and sympathisers and money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider things t=
han
an idle fancy for the franchise. The existing laws and conventions of
relationship between Man and Woman were just as unsatisfactory a disorder as
anything else in our tumbled confusion of a world, and that also was coming=
to
bear upon statecraft.
My first parliame=
nt
was the parliament of the Suffragettes. I don't propose to tell here of that
amazing campaign, with its absurdities and follies, its courage and devotio=
n.
There were aspects of that unquenchable agitation that were absolutely hero=
ic
and aspects that were absolutely pitiful. It was unreasonable, unwise, and,
except for its one central insistence, astonishingly incoherent. It was
amazingly effective. The very incoherence of the demand witnessed, I think,=
to
the forces that lay behind it. It wasn't a simple argument based on a simple
assumption; it was the first crude expression of a great mass and mingling =
of
convergent feelings, of a widespread, confused persuasion among modern educ=
ated
women that the conditions of their relations with men were oppressive, ugly,
dishonouring, and had to be altered. They had not merely adopted the Vote a=
s a
symbol of equality; it was fairly manifest to me that, given it, they meant=
to
use it, and to use it perhaps even vindictively and blindly, as a weapon
against many things they had every reason to hate....
I remember, with
exceptional vividness, that great night early in the session of 1909, when-=
-I
think it was--fifty or sixty women went to prison. I had been dining at the
Barham's, and Lord Barham and I came down from the direction of St. James's
Park into a crowd and a confusion outside the Caxton Hall. We found ourselv=
es
drifting with an immense multitude towards Parliament Square and parallel w=
ith
a silent, close-packed column of girls and women, for the most part white-f=
aced
and intent. I still remember the effect of their faces upon me. It was quite
different from the general effect of staring about and divided attention one
gets in a political procession of men. There was an expression of heroic
tension.
There had been a
pretty deliberate appeal on the part of the women's organisers to the
Unemployed, who had been demonstrating throughout that winter, to join forc=
es
with the movement, and the result was shown in the quality of the crowd upon
the pavement. It was an ugly, dangerous-looking crowd, but as yet good-temp=
ered
and sympathetic. When at last we got within sight of the House the square w=
as a
seething seat of excited people, and the array of police on horse and on fo=
ot
might have been assembled for a revolutionary outbreak. There were dense ma=
sses
of people up Whitehall, and right on to Westminster Bridge. The scuffle that
ended in the arrests was the poorest explosion to follow such stupendous
preparations....
3
Later on in that year the women beg=
an a
new attack. Day and night, and all through the long nights of the Budget
sittings, at all the piers of the gates of New Palace Yard and at St. Steph=
en's
Porch, stood women pickets, and watched us silently and reproachfully as we
went to and fro. They were women of all sorts, though, of course, the
independent worker-class predominated. There were grey-headed old ladies
standing there, sturdily charming in the rain; battered-looking, ambiguous
women, with something of the desperate bitterness of battered women showing=
in their
eyes; north-country factory girls; cheaply-dressed suburban women; trim,
comfortable mothers of families; valiant-eyed girl graduates and undergradu=
ates;
lank, hungry-looking creatures, who stirred one's imagination; one very dai=
nty
little woman in deep mourning, I recall, grave and steadfast, with eyes fix=
ed
on distant things. Some of those women looked defiant, some timidly aggress=
ive,
some full of the stir of adventure, some drooping with cold and fatigue. The
supply never ceased. I had a mortal fear that somehow the supply might halt=
or
cease. I found that continual siege of the legislature extraordinarily impr=
essive--infinitely
more impressive than the feeble-forcible "ragging" of the more
militant section. I thought of the appeal that must be going through the
country, summoning the women from countless scattered homes, rooms, college=
s,
to Westminster.
I remember too the
petty little difficulty I felt whether I should ignore these pickets
altogether, or lift a hat as I hurried past with averted eyes, or look them=
in
the face as I did so. Towards the end the House evoked an etiquette of
salutation.
4
There was a tendency, even on the p=
art of
its sympathisers, to treat the whole suffrage agitation as if it were a
disconnected issue, irrelevant to all other broad developments of social and
political life. We struggled, all of us, to ignore the indicating finger it
thrust out before us. "Your schemes, for all their bigness," it
insisted to our reluctant, averted minds, "still don't go down to the
essential things...."
We have to go dee=
per,
or our inadequate children's insufficient children will starve amidst harve=
sts
of earless futility. That conservatism which works in every class to preser=
ve
in its essentials the habitual daily life is all against a profounder treat=
ment
of political issues. The politician, almost as absurdly as the philosopher,
tends constantly, in spite of magnificent preludes, vast intimations, to
specialise himself out of the reality he has so stupendously summoned--he b=
olts
back to littleness. The world has to be moulded anew, he continues to admit,
but without, he adds, any risk of upsetting his week-end visits, his mornin=
g cup
of tea....
The discussion of=
the
relations of men and women disturbs every one. It reacts upon the private l=
ife
of every one who attempts it. And at any particular time only a small minor=
ity
have a personal interest in changing the established state of affairs. Habit
and interest are in a constantly recruited majority against conscious change
and adjustment in these matters. Drift rules us. The great mass of people, =
and
an overwhelming proportion of influential people, are people who have banis=
hed
their dreams and made their compromise. Wonderful and beautiful possibiliti=
es
are no longer to be thought about. They have given up any aspirations for
intense love, their splendid offspring, for keen delights, have accepted a
cultivated kindliness and an uncritical sense of righteousness as their
compensation. It's a settled affair with them, a settled, dangerous affair.
Most of them fear, and many hate, the slightest reminder of those abandoned
dreams. As Dayton once said to the Pentagram Circle, when we were discussing
the problem of a universal marriage and divorce law throughout the Empire,
"I am for leaving all these things alone." And then, with a groan=
in
his voice, "Leave them alone! Leave them all alone!"
That was his whole
speech for the evening, in a note of suppressed passion, and presently, aga=
inst
all our etiquette, he got up and went out.
For some years af=
ter
my marriage, I too was for leaving them alone. I developed a dread and disl=
ike
for romance, for emotional music, for the human figure in art--turning my h=
eart
to landscape. I wanted to sneer at lovers and their ecstasies, and was
uncomfortable until I found the effective sneer. In matters of private mora=
ls
these were my most uncharitable years. I didn't want to think of these thin=
gs
any more for ever. I hated the people whose talk or practice showed they we=
re
not of my opinion. I wanted to believe that their views were immoral and ob=
jectionable
and contemptible, because I had decided to treat them as at that level. I w=
as,
in fact, falling into the attitude of the normal decent man.
And yet one cannot
help thinking! The sensible moralised man finds it hard to escape the strea=
m of
suggestion that there are still dreams beyond these commonplace
acquiescences,--the appeal of beauty suddenly shining upon one, the mothlike
stirrings of serene summer nights, the sweetness of distant music....
It is one of the
paradoxical factors in our public life at the present time, which penalises
abandonment to love so abundantly and so heavily, that power, influence and
control fall largely to unencumbered people and sterile people and people w=
ho
have married for passionless purposes, people whose very deficiency in feel=
ing
has left them free to follow ambition, people beautyblind, who don't unders=
tand
what it is to fall in love, what it is to desire children or have them, wha=
t it
is to feel in their blood and bodies the supreme claim of good births and
selective births above all other affairs in life, people almost of necessit=
y averse
from this most fundamental aspect of existence....
5
It wasn't, however, my deepening sy=
mpathy
with and understanding of the position of women in general, or the change i=
n my
ideas about all these intimate things my fast friendship with Isabel was
bringing about, that led me to the heretical views I have in the last five
years dragged from the region of academic and timid discussion into the fie=
ld
of practical politics. Those influences, no doubt, have converged to the sa=
me
end, and given me a powerful emotional push upon my road, but it was a broa=
der
and colder view of things that first determined me in my attempt to graft t=
he
Endowment of Motherhood in some form or other upon British Imperialism. Now
that I am exiled from the political world, it is possible to estimate just =
how
effectually that grafting has been done.
I have explained =
how
the ideas of a trained aristocracy and a universal education grew to paramo=
unt
importance in my political scheme. It is but a short step from this to the
question of the quantity and quality of births in the community, and from t=
hat
again to these forbidden and fear-beset topics of marriage, divorce, and the
family organisation. A sporadic discussion of these aspects had been going =
on
for years, a Eugenic society existed, and articles on the Falling Birth Rat=
e,
and the Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit were staples of the monthly
magazines. But beyond an intermittent scolding of prosperous childless peop=
le in
general--one never addressed them in particular--nothing was done towards
arresting those adverse processes. Almost against my natural inclination, I
found myself forced to go into these things. I came to the conclusion that
under modern conditions the isolated private family, based on the existing
marriage contract, was failing in its work. It wasn't producing enough
children, and children good enough and well trained enough for the demands =
of
the developing civilised state. Our civilisation was growing outwardly, and
decaying in its intimate substance, and unless it was presently to collapse,
some very extensive and courageous reorganisation was needed. The old hapha=
zard
system of pairing, qualified more and more by worldly discretions, no longe=
r secures
a young population numerous enough or good enough for the growing needs and
possibilities of our Empire. Statecraft sits weaving splendid garments, no
doubt, but with a puny, ugly, insufficient baby in the cradle.
No one so far has
dared to take up this problem as a present question for statecraft, but it
comes unheralded, unadvocated, and sits at every legislative board. Every
improvement is provisional except the improvement of the race, and it became
more and more doubtful to me if we were improving the race at all! Splendid=
and
beautiful and courageous people must come together and have children, women
with their fine senses and glorious devotion must be freed from the net that
compels them to be celibate, compels them to be childless and useless, or t=
o bear
children ignobly to men whom need and ignorance and the treacherous pressur=
e of
circumstances have forced upon them. We all know that, and so few dare even=
to
whisper it for fear that they should seem, in seeking to save the family, to
threaten its existence. It is as if a party of pigmies in a not too capacio=
us
room had been joined by a carnivorous giant--and decided to go on living
happily by cutting him dead....
The problem the
developing civilised state has to solve is how it can get the best possible
increase under the best possible conditions. I became more and more convinc=
ed
that the independent family unit of to-day, in which the man is master of t=
he
wife and owner of the children, in which all are dependent upon him,
subordinated to his enterprises and liable to follow his fortunes up or dow=
n,
does not supply anything like the best conceivable conditions. We want to m=
odernise
the family footing altogether. An enormous premium both in pleasure and
competitive efficiency is put upon voluntary childlessness, and enormous
inducements are held out to women to subordinate instinctive and selective
preferences to social and material considerations.
The practical
reaction of modern conditions upon the old tradition of the family is this:
that beneath the pretence that nothing is changing, secretly and with all t=
he
unwholesomeness of secrecy everything is changed. Offspring fall away, the
birth rate falls and falls most among just the most efficient and active and
best adapted classes in the community. The species is recruited from among =
its
failures and from among less civilised aliens. Contemporary civilisations a=
re
in effect burning the best of their possible babies in the furnaces that run
the machinery. In the United States the native Anglo-American strain has sc=
arcely
increased at all since 1830, and in most Western European countries the sam=
e is
probably true of the ablest and most energetic elements in the community. T=
he
women of these classes still remain legally and practically dependent and
protected, with the only natural excuse for their dependence gone....
The modern world =
becomes
an immense spectacle of unsatisfactory groupings; here childless couples bo=
red
to death in the hopeless effort to sustain an incessant honeymoon, here hom=
es
in which a solitary child grows unsocially, here small two or three-child h=
omes
that do no more than continue the culture of the parents at a great social
cost, here numbers of unhappy educated but childless married women, here
careless, decivilised fecund homes, here orphanages and asylums for the
heedlessly begotten. It is just the disorderly proliferation of Bromstead o=
ver again,
in lives instead of in houses.
What is the good,
what is the common sense, of rectifying boundaries, pushing research and
discovery, building cities, improving all the facilities of life, making gr=
eat
fleets, waging wars, while this aimless decadence remains the quality of the
biological outlook?...
It is difficult n=
ow
to trace how I changed from my early aversion until I faced this mass of
problems. But so far back as 1910 I had it clear in my mind that I would ra=
ther
fail utterly than participate in all the surrenders of mind and body that a=
re
implied in Dayton's snarl of "Leave it alone; leave it all alone!"
Marriage and the begetting and care of children, is the very ground substan=
ce
in the life of the community. In a world in which everything changes, in wh=
ich
fresh methods, fresh adjustments and fresh ideas perpetually renew the
circumstances of life, it is preposterous that we should not even examine i=
nto
these matters, should rest content to be ruled by the uncriticised traditio=
ns
of a barbaric age.
Now, it seems to =
me
that the solution of this problem is also the solution of the woman's
individual problem. The two go together, are right and left of one question.
The only conceivable way out from our IMPASSE lies in the recognition of
parentage, that is to say of adequate mothering, as no longer a chance prod=
uct
of individual passions but a service rendered to the State. Women must beco=
me
less and less subordinated to individual men, since this works out in a mor=
e or
less complete limitation, waste, and sterilisation of their essentially soc=
ial
function; they must become more and more subordinated as individually
independent citizens to the collective purpose. Or, to express the thing by=
a
familiar phrase, the highly organised, scientific state we desire must, if =
it
is to exist at all, base itself not upon the irresponsible man-ruled family,
but upon the matriarchal family, the citizen-ship and freedom of women and =
the
public endowment of motherhood.
After two generat=
ions
of confused and experimental revolt it grows clear to modern women that a
conscious, deliberate motherhood and mothering is their special function in=
the
State, and that a personal subordination to an individual man with an unlim=
ited
power of control over this intimate and supreme duty is a degradation. No
contemporary woman of education put to the test is willing to recognise any
claim a man can make upon her but the claim of her freely-given devotion to
him. She wants the reality of her choice and she means "family" w=
hile
a man too often means only possession. This alters the spirit of the family=
relationships
fundamentally. Their form remains just what it was when woman was esteemed a
pretty, desirable, and incidentally a child-producing, chattel. Against the=
se
time-honoured ideas the new spirit of womanhood struggles in shame,
astonishment, bitterness, and tears....
I confess myself
altogether feminist. I have no doubts in the matter. I want this coddling a=
nd
browbeating of women to cease. I want to see women come in, free and fearle=
ss,
to a full participation in the collective purpose of mankind. Women, I am
convinced, are as fine as men; they can be as wise as men; they are capable=
of
far greater devotion than men. I want to see them citizens, with a marriage=
law
framed primarily for them and for their protection and the good of the race,
and not for men's satisfactions. I want to see them bearing and rearing good
children in the State as a generously rewarded public duty and service,
choosing their husbands freely and discerningly, and in no way enslaved by =
or
subordinated to the men they have chosen. The social consciousness of women
seems to me an unworked, an almost untouched mine of wealth for the
constructive purpose of the world. I want to change the respective values of
the family group altogether, and make the home indeed the women's kingdom a=
nd
the mother the owner and responsible guardian of her children.
It is no use
pretending that this is not novel and revolutionary; it is. The Endowment of
Motherhood implies a new method of social organization, a rearrangement of =
the
social unit, untried in human experience--as untried as electric traction w=
as
or flying in 1800. Of course, it may work out to modify men's ideas of marr=
iage
profoundly. To me that is a secondary consideration. I do not believe that
particular assertion myself, because I am convinced that a practical monoga=
my
is a psychological necessity to the mass of civilised people. But even if I=
did
believe it I should still keep to my present line, because it is the only l=
ine
that will prevent a highly organised civilisation from ending in biological
decay. The public Endowment of Motherhood is the only possible way which wi=
ll
ensure the permanently developing civilised state at which all constructive
minds are aiming. A point is reached in the life-history of a civilisation =
when
either this reconstruction must be effected or the quality and MORALE of the
population prove insufficient for the needs of the developing organisation.=
It is
not so much moral decadence that will destroy us as moral inadaptability. T=
he
old code fails under the new needs. The only alternative to this profound
reconstruction is a decay in human quality and social collapse. Either this
unprecedented rearrangement must be achieved by our civilisation, or it must
presently come upon a phase of disorder and crumble and perish, as Rome
perished, as France declines, as the strain of the Pilgrim Fathers dwindles=
out
of America. Whatever hope there may be in the attempt therefore, there is no
alternative to the attempt.
6
I wanted political success now dear=
ly
enough, but not at the price of constructive realities. These questions wer=
e no
doubt monstrously dangerous in the political world; there wasn't a politici=
an alive
who didn't look scared at the mention of "The Family," but if rai=
sing
these issues were essential to the social reconstructions on which my life =
was
set, that did not matter. It only implied that I should take them up with
deliberate caution. There was no release because of risk or difficulty.
The question of
whether I should commit myself to some open project in this direction was g=
oing
on in my mind concurrently with my speculations about a change of party, li=
ke
bass and treble in a complex piece of music. The two drew to a conclusion
together. I would not only go over to Imperialism, but I would attempt to
biologise Imperialism.
I thought at first
that I was undertaking a monstrous uphill task. But as I came to look into =
the
possibilities of the matter, a strong persuasion grew up in my mind that th=
is
panic fear of legislative proposals affecting the family basis was excessiv=
e,
that things were much riper for development in this direction than
old-experienced people out of touch with the younger generation imagined, t=
hat
to phrase the thing in a parliamentary fashion, "something might be do=
ne
in the constituencies" with the Endowment of Motherhood forthwith,
provided only that it was made perfectly clear that anything a sane person
could possibly intend by "morality" was left untouched by these
proposals.
I went to work ve=
ry
carefully. I got Roper of the DAILY TELEPHONE and Burkett of the DIAL to try
over a silly-season discussion of State Help for Mothers, and I put a serie=
s of
articles on eugenics, upon the fall in the birth-rate, and similar topics in
the BLUE WEEKLY, leading up to a tentative and generalised advocacy of the
public endowment of the nation's children. I was more and more struck by the
acceptance won by a sober and restrained presentation of this suggestion.
And then, in the
fourth year of the BLUE WEEKLY'S career, came the Handitch election, and I =
was
forced by the clamour of my antagonist, and very willingly forced, to put my
convictions to the test. I returned triumphantly to Westminster with the Pu=
blic
Endowment of Motherhood as part of my open profession and with the full
approval of the party press. Applauding benches of Imperialists cheered me =
on
my way to the table between the whips.
That second time I
took the oath I was not one of a crowd of new members, but salient, an even=
t, a
symbol of profound changes and new purposes in the national life.
Here it is my
political book comes to an end, and in a sense my book ends altogether. For=
the
rest is but to tell how I was swept out of this great world of political
possibilities. I close this Third Book as I opened it, with an admission of
difficulties and complexities, but now with a pile of manuscript before me I
have to confess them unsurmounted and still entangled.
Yet my aim was a
final simplicity. I have sought to show my growing realisation that the
essential quality of all political and social effort is the development of a
great race mind behind the interplay of individual lives. That is the
collective human reality, the basis of morality, the purpose of devotion. To
that our lives must be given, from that will come the perpetual fresh relea=
se
and further ennoblement of individual lives....
I have wanted to =
make
that idea of a collective mind play in this book the part United Italy play=
s in
Machiavelli's PRINCE. I have called it the hinterland of reality, shown it
accumulating a dominating truth and rightness which must force men's now
sporadic motives more and more into a disciplined and understanding relatio=
n to
a plan. And I have tried to indicate how I sought to serve this great
clarification of our confusions....
Now I come back to
personality and the story of my self-betrayal, and how it is I have had to
leave all that far-reaching scheme of mine, a mere project and beginning for
other men to take or leave as it pleases them.
BOOK THE FOURTH: ISABEL=
span>
CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ LOVE=
AND
SUCCESS
1
I come to the most evasive and diff=
icult
part of my story, which is to tell how Isabel and I have made a common wrec=
k of
our joint lives.
It is not the tel=
ling
of one simple disastrous accident. There was a vein in our natures that led=
to
this collapse, gradually and at this point and that it crept to the surface.
One may indeed see our destruction--for indeed politically we could not be =
more
extinct if we had been shot dead--in the form of a catastrophe as disconnec=
ted
and conclusive as a meteoric stone falling out of heaven upon two friends a=
nd
crushing them both. But I do not think that is true to our situation or our=
selves.
We were not taken by surprise. The thing was in us and not from without, it=
was
akin to our way of thinking and our habitual attitudes; it had, for all its
impulsive effect, a certain necessity. We might have escaped no doubt, as t=
wo
men at a hundred yards may shoot at each other with pistols for a considera=
ble
time and escape. But it isn't particularly reasonable to talk of the
contrariety of fate if they both get hit.
Isabel and I were
dangerous to each other for several years of friendship, and not quite
unwittingly so.
In writing this,
moreover, there is a very great difficulty in steering my way between two
equally undesirable tones in the telling. In the first place I do not want =
to
seem to confess my sins with a penitence I am very doubtful if I feel. Now =
that
I have got Isabel we can no doubt count the cost of it and feel unquenchable
regrets, but I am not sure whether, if we could be put back now into such
circumstances as we were in a year ago, or two years ago, whether with my e=
yes
fully open I should not do over again very much as I did. And on the other =
hand
I do not want to justify the things we have done. We are two bad people--if=
there
is to be any classification of good and bad at all, we have acted badly, and
quite apart from any other considerations we've largely wasted our own very
great possibilities. But it is part of a queer humour that underlies all th=
is,
that I find myself slipping again and again into a sentimental treatment of=
our
case that is as unpremeditated as it is insincere. When I am a little tired
after a morning's writing I find the faint suggestion getting into every ot=
her
sentence that our blunders and misdeeds embodied, after the fashion of the
prophet Hosea, profound moral truths. Indeed, I feel so little confidence i=
n my
ability to keep this altogether out of my book that I warn the reader here =
that
in spite of anything he may read elsewhere in the story, intimating however
shyly an esoteric and exalted virtue in our proceedings, the plain truth of
this business is that Isabel and I wanted each other with a want entirely
formless, inconsiderate, and overwhelming. And though I could tell you
countless delightful and beautiful things about Isabel, were this a book in=
her
praise, I cannot either analyse that want or account for its extreme intens=
ity.
I will confess th=
at
deep in my mind there is a belief in a sort of wild rightness about any love
that is fraught with beauty, but that eludes me and vanishes again, and is =
not,
I feel, to be put with the real veracities and righteousnesses and virtues =
in
the paddocks and menageries of human reason....
We have already a
child, and Margaret was childless, and I find myself prone to insist upon t=
hat,
as if it was a justification. But, indeed, when we became lovers there was =
small
thought of Eugenics between us. Ours was a mutual and not a philoprogenitive
passion. Old Nature behind us may have had such purposes with us, but it is=
not
for us to annex her intentions by a moralising afterthought. There isn't, in
fact, any decent justification for us whatever--at that the story must stan=
d.
But if there is no
justification there is at least a very effective excuse in the mental
confusedness of our time. The evasion of that passionately thorough exposit=
ion
of belief and of the grounds of morality, which is the outcome of the merce=
nary
religious compromises of the late Vatican period, the stupid suppression of
anything but the most timid discussion of sexual morality in our literature=
and
drama, the pervading cultivated and protected muddle-headedness, leaves
mentally vigorous people with relatively enormous possibilities of destruct=
ion and
little effective help. They find themselves confronted by the habits and
prejudices of manifestly commonplace people, and by that extraordinary patc=
hed-up
Christianity, the cult of a "Bromsteadised" deity, diffused,
scattered, and aimless, which hides from examination and any possibility of
faith behind the plea of good taste. A god about whom there is delicacy is =
far
worse than no god at all. We are FORCED to be laws unto ourselves and to li=
ve
experimentally. It is inevitable that a considerable fraction of just that
bolder, more initiatory section of the intellectual community, the section =
that
can least be spared from the collective life in a period of trial and chang=
e,
will drift into such emotional crises and such disaster as overtook us. Most
perhaps will escape, but many will go down, many more than the world can sp=
are.
It is the unwritten law of all our public life, and the same holds true of =
America,
that an honest open scandal ends a career. England in the last quarter of a
century has wasted half a dozen statesmen on this score; she would, I belie=
ve,
reject Nelson now if he sought to serve her. Is it wonderful that to us
fretting here in exile this should seem the cruellest as well as the most
foolish elimination of a necessary social element? It destroys no vice; for
vice hides by nature. It not only rewards dullness as if it were positive
virtue, but sets an enormous premium upon hypocrisy. That is my case, and t=
hat
is why I am telling this side of my story with so much explicitness.
2
Ever since the Kinghamstead electio=
n I
had maintained what seemed a desultory friendship with Isabel. At first it =
was
rather Isabel kept it up than I. Whenever Margaret and I went down to that
villa, with its three or four acres of garden and shrubbery about it, which
fulfilled our election promise to live at Kinghamstead, Isabel would turn u=
p in
a state of frank cheerfulness, rejoicing at us, and talk all she was reading
and thinking to me, and stay for all the rest of the day. In her shameless
liking for me she was as natural as a savage. She would exercise me vigorou=
sly
at tennis, while Margaret lay and rested her back in the afternoon, or guid=
e me
for some long ramble that dodged the suburban and congested patches of the
constituency with amazing skill. She took possession of me in that unabashe=
d,
straight-minded way a girl will sometimes adopt with a man, chose my path or
criticised my game with a motherly solicitude for my welfare that was absurd
and delightful. And we talked. We discussed and criticised the stories of n=
ovels,
scraps of history, pictures, social questions, socialism, the policy of the
Government. She was young and most unevenly informed, but she was amazingly
sharp and quick and good. Never before in my life had I known a girl of her
age, or a woman of her quality. I had never dreamt there was such talk in t=
he
world. Kinghamstead became a lightless place when she went to Oxford. Heaven
knows how much that may not have precipitated my abandonment of the seat!
She went to Ridout
College, Oxford, and that certainly weighed with me when presently after my
breach with the Liberals various little undergraduate societies began to ask
for lectures and discussions. I favoured Oxford. I declared openly I did so
because of her. At that time I think we neither of us suspected the possibi=
lity
of passion that lay like a coiled snake in the path before us. It seemed to=
us
that we had the quaintest, most delightful friendship in the world; she was=
my
pupil, and I was her guide, philosopher, and friend. People smiled indulgen=
tly--even
Margaret smiled indulgently--at our attraction for one another.
Such friendships =
are
not uncommon nowadays--among easy-going, liberal-minded people. For the most
part, there's no sort of harm, as people say, in them. The two persons
concerned are never supposed to think of the passionate love that hovers so
close to the friendship, or if they do, then they banish the thought. I thi=
nk
we kept the thought as permanently in exile as any one could do. If it did =
in
odd moments come into our heads we pretended elaborately it wasn't there.
Only we were both
very easily jealous of each other's attention, and tremendously insistent u=
pon
each other's preference.
I remember once
during the Oxford days an intimation that should have set me thinking, and I
suppose discreetly disentangling myself. It was one Sunday afternoon, and it
must have been about May, for the trees and shrubs of Ridout College were g=
ay
with blossom, and fresh with the new sharp greens of spring. I had walked
talking with Isabel and a couple of other girls through the wide gardens of=
the
place, seen and criticised the new brick pond, nodded to the daughter of th=
is
friend and that in the hammocks under the trees, and picked a way among the
scattered tea-parties on the lawn to our own circle on the grass under a
Siberian crab near the great bay window. There I sat and ate great quantiti=
es of
cake, and discussed the tactics of the Suffragettes. I had made some commen=
ts
upon the spirit of the movement in an address to the men in Pembroke, and it
had got abroad, and a group of girls and women dons were now having it out =
with
me.
I forget the drif=
t of
the conversation, or what it was made Isabel interrupt me. She did interrupt
me. She had been lying prone on the ground at my right hand, chin on fists,
listening thoughtfully, and I was sitting beside old Lady Evershead on a ga=
rden
seat. I turned to Isabel's voice, and saw her face uplifted, and her dear
cheeks and nose and forehead all splashed and barred with sunlight and the
shadows of the twigs of the trees behind me. And something--an infinite
tenderness, stabbed me. It was a keen physical feeling, like nothing I had =
ever
felt before. It had a quality of tears in it. For the first time in my narr=
ow and
concentrated life another human being had really thrust into my being and
gripped my very heart.
Our eyes met
perplexed for an extraordinary moment. Then I turned back and addressed mys=
elf
a little stiffly to the substance of her intervention. For some time I coul=
dn't
look at her again.
From that time fo=
rth
I knew I loved Isabel beyond measure.
Yet it is curious
that it never occurred to me for a year or so that this was likely to be a
matter of passion between us. I have told how definitely I put my imaginati=
on
into harness in those matters at my marriage, and I was living now in a wor=
ld
of big interests, where there is neither much time nor inclination for
deliberate love-making. I suppose there is a large class of men who never m=
eet
a girl or a woman without thinking of sex, who meet a friend's daughter and
decide: "Mustn't get friendly with her--wouldn't DO," and set
invisible bars between themselves and all the wives in the world. Perhaps t=
hat
is the way to live. Perhaps there is no other method than this effectual an=
nihilation
of half--and the most sympathetic and attractive half--of the human beings =
in
the world, so far as any frank intercourse is concerned. I am quite convinc=
ed
anyhow that such a qualified intimacy as ours, such a drifting into the sen=
se
of possession, such untrammeled conversation with an invisible, implacable
limit set just where the intimacy glows, it is no kind of tolerable comprom=
ise.
If men and women are to go so far together, they must be free to go as far =
as
they may want to go, without the vindictive destruction that has come upon =
us. On
the basis of the accepted codes the jealous people are right, and the liber=
al-minded
ones are playing with fire. If people are not to love, then they must be ke=
pt
apart. If they are not to be kept apart, then we must prepare for an
unprecedented toleration of lovers.
Isabel was as
unforeseeing as I to begin with, but sex marches into the life of an
intelligent girl with demands and challenges far more urgent than the mere =
call
of curiosity and satiable desire that comes to a young man. No woman yet has
dared to tell the story of that unfolding. She attracted men, and she
encouraged them, and watched them, and tested them, and dismissed them, and
concealed the substance of her thoughts about them in the way that seems
instinctive in a natural-minded girl. There was even an engagement--amidst =
the
protests and disapproval of the college authorities. I never saw the man,
though she gave me a long history of the affair, to which I listened with a
forced and insincere sympathy. She struck me oddly as taking the relationsh=
ip
for a thing in itself, and regardless of its consequences. After a time she
became silent about him, and then threw him over; and by that time, I think=
, for
all that she was so much my junior, she knew more about herself and me than=
I
was to know for several years to come.
We didn't see each
other for some months after my resignation, but we kept up a frequent
correspondence. She said twice over that she wanted to talk to me, that let=
ters
didn't convey what one wanted to say, and I went up to Oxford pretty defini=
tely
to see her--though I combined it with one or two other engagements--somewhe=
re
in February. Insensibly she had become important enough for me to make jour=
neys
for her.
But we didn't see
very much of one another on that occasion. There was something in the air
between us that made a faint embarrassment; the mere fact, perhaps, that she
had asked me to come up.
A year before she
would have dashed off with me quite unscrupulously to talk alone, carried me
off to her room for an hour with a minute of chaperonage to satisfy the rul=
es.
Now there was always some one or other near us that it seemed impossible to
exorcise.
We went for a wal=
k on
the Sunday afternoon with old Fortescue, K. C., who'd come up to see his two
daughters, both great friends of Isabel's, and some mute inglorious don who=
se
name I forget, but who was in a state of marked admiration for her. The six=
of
us played a game of conversational entanglements throughout, and mostly I w=
as
impressing the Fortescue girls with the want of mental concentration possib=
le
in a rising politician. We went down Carfex, I remember, to Folly Bridge, a=
nd
inspected the Barges, and then back by way of Merton to the Botanic Gardens=
and
Magdalen Bridge. And in the Botanic Gardens she got almost her only chance =
with
me.
"Last months=
at
Oxford," she said.
"And then?&q=
uot;
I asked.
"I'm coming =
to
London," she said.
"To write?&q=
uot;
She was silent fo=
r a
moment. Then she said abruptly, with that quick flush of hers and a sudden
boldness in her eyes: "I'm going to work with you. Why shouldn't I?&qu=
ot;
3
Here, again, I suppose I had a fair
warning of the drift of things. I seem to remember myself in the train to
Paddington, sitting with a handful of papers--galley proofs for the BLUE
WEEKLY, I suppose--on my lap, and thinking about her and that last sentence=
of
hers, and all that it might mean to me.
It is very hard t=
o recall
even the main outline of anything so elusive as a meditation. I know that t=
he
idea of working with her gripped me, fascinated me. That my value in her li=
fe
seemed growing filled me with pride and a kind of gratitude. I was already =
in
no doubt that her value in my life was tremendous. It made it none the less,
that in those days I was obsessed by the idea that she was transitory, and
bound to go out of my life again. It is no good trying to set too fine a fa=
ce
upon this complex business, there is gold and clay and sunlight and savager=
y in
every love story, and a multitude of elvish elements peeped out beneath the
fine rich curtain of affection that masked our future. I've never properly
weighed how immensely my vanity was gratified by her clear preference for m=
e.
Nor can I for a moment determine how much deliberate intention I hide from
myself in this affair.
Certainly I think
some part of me must have been saying in the train: "Leave go of her. =
Get
away from her. End this now." I can't have been so stupid as not to ha=
ve
had that in my mind....
If she had been o=
nly
a beautiful girl in love with me, I think I could have managed the situatio=
n.
Once or twice since my marriage and before Isabel became of any significanc=
e in
my life, there had been incidents with other people, flashes of temptation-=
-no
telling is possible of the thing resisted. I think that mere beauty and pas=
sion
would not have taken me. But between myself and Isabel things were incurabl=
y complicated
by the intellectual sympathy we had, the jolly march of our minds together.
That has always mattered enormously. I should have wanted her company nearl=
y as
badly if she had been some crippled old lady; we would have hunted shoulder=
to
shoulder, as two men. Only two men would never have had the patience and
readiness for one another we two had. I had never for years met any one with
whom I could be so carelessly sure of understanding or to whom I could list=
en
so easily and fully. She gave me, with an extraordinary completeness, that
rare, precious effect of always saying something fresh, and yet saying it s=
o that
it filled into and folded about all the little recesses and corners of my m=
ind
with an infinite, soft familiarity. It is impossible to explain that. It is
like trying to explain why her voice, her voice heard speaking to any
one--heard speaking in another room--pleased my ears.
She was the only
Oxford woman who took a first that year. She spent the summer in Scotland a=
nd
Yorkshire, writing to me continually of all she now meant to do, and stirri=
ng
my imagination. She came to London for the autumn session. For a time she
stayed with old Lady Colbeck, but she fell out with her hostess when it bec=
ame
clear she wanted to write, not novels, but journalism, and then she set eve=
ry
one talking by taking a flat near Victoria and installing as her sole prote=
ctor
an elderly German governess she had engaged through a scholastic agency. She
began writing, not in that copious flood the undisciplined young woman of g=
ifts
is apt to produce, but in exactly the manner of an able young man, experime=
nting
with forms, developing the phrasing of opinions, taking a definite line. She
was, of course, tremendously discussed. She was disapproved of, but she was
invited out to dinner. She got rather a reputation for the management of
elderly distinguished men. It was an odd experience to follow Margaret's so=
ft
rustle of silk into some big drawing-room and discover my snub-nosed girl in
the blue sack transformed into a shining creature in the soft splendour of
pearls and ivory-white and lace, and with a silver band about her dusky hai=
r.
For a time we did=
not
meet very frequently, though always she professed an unblushing preference =
for
my company, and talked my views and sought me out. Then her usefulness upon=
the
BLUE WEEKLY began to link us closelier. She would come up to the office, and
sit by the window, and talk over the proofs of the next week's articles, go=
ing
through my intentions with a keen investigatory scalpel. Her talk always pu=
ts
me in mind of a steel blade. Her writing became rapidly very good; she had a
wit and a turn of the phrase that was all her own. We seemed to have forgot=
ten
the little shadow of embarrassment that had fallen over our last meeting at
Oxford. Everything seemed natural and easy between us in those days; a litt=
le
unconventional, but that made it all the brighter.
We developed
something like a custom of walks, about once a week or so, and letters and
notes became frequent. I won't pretend things were not keenly personal betw=
een
us, but they had an air of being innocently mental. She used to call me
"Master" in our talks, a monstrous and engaging flattery, and I w=
as
inordinately proud to have her as my pupil. Who wouldn't have been? And we =
went
on at that distance for a long time--until within a year of the Handitch
election.
After Lady Colbeck
threw her up as altogether too "intellectual" for comfortable
control, Isabel was taken up by the Balfes in a less formal and compromising
manner, and week-ended with them and their cousin Leonora Sparling, and spe=
nt
large portions of her summer with them in Herefordshire. There was a lover =
or
so in that time, men who came a little timidly at this brilliant young pers=
on
with the frank manner and the Amazonian mind, and, she declared, received h=
er
kindly refusals with manifest relief. And Arnold Shoesmith struck up a sort=
of
friendship that oddly imitated mine. She took a liking to him because he was
clumsy and shy and inexpressive; she embarked upon the dangerous interest o=
f helping
him to find his soul. I had some twinges of jealousy about that. I didn't s=
ee
the necessity of him. He invaded her time, and I thought that might interfe=
re
with her work. If their friendship stole some hours from Isabel's writing, =
it
did not for a long while interfere with our walks or our talks, or the close
intimacy we had together.
4
Then suddenly Isabel and I found
ourselves passionately in love.
The change came so
entirely without warning or intention that I find it impossible now to tell=
the
order of its phases. What disturbed pebble started the avalanche I cannot
trace. Perhaps it was simply that the barriers between us and this masked
aspect of life had been wearing down unperceived.
And there came a
change in Isabel. It was like some change in the cycle of nature, like the
onset of spring--a sharp brightness, an uneasiness. She became restless with
her work; little encounters with men began to happen, encounters not quite =
in
the quality of the earlier proposals; and then came an odd incident of which
she told me, but somehow, I felt, didn't tell me completely. She told me all
she was able to tell me. She had been at a dance at the Ropers', and a man,
rather well known in London, had kissed her. The thing amazed her beyond
measure. It was the sort of thing immediately possible between any man and =
any
woman, that one never expects to happen until it happens. It had the surpri=
sing
effect of a judge generally known to be bald suddenly whipping off his wig =
in
court. No absolutely unexpected revelation could have quite the same qualit=
y of
shock. She went through the whole thing to me with a remarkable detachment,
told me how she had felt--and the odd things it seemed to open to her.
"I WANT to be
kissed, and all that sort of thing," she avowed. "I suppose every
woman does."
She added after a
pause: "And I don't want any one to do it."
This struck me as
queerly expressive of the woman's attitude to these things. "Some one
presently will--solve that," I said.
"Some one wi=
ll
perhaps."
I was silent.
"Some one
will," she said, almost viciously. "And then we'll have to stop t=
hese
walks and talks of ours, dear Master.... I'll be sorry to give them up.&quo=
t;
"It's part of
the requirements of the situation," I said, "that he should be--o=
h,
very interesting! He'll start, no doubt, all sorts of new topics, and open =
no
end of attractive vistas.... You can't, you know, always go about in a stat=
e of
pupillage."
"I don't thi=
nk I
can," said Isabel. "But it's only just recently I've begun to dou=
bt
about it."
I remember these
things being said, but just how much we saw and understood, and just how fa=
r we
were really keeping opaque to each other then, I cannot remember. But it mu=
st
have been quite soon after this that we spent nearly a whole day together at
Kew Gardens, with the curtains up and the barriers down, and the thing that=
had
happened plain before our eyes. I don't remember we ever made any declarati=
on.
We just assumed the new footing....
It was a day earl=
y in
that year--I think in January, because there was thin, crisp snow on the gr=
ass,
and we noted that only two other people had been to the Pagoda that day. I'=
ve a
curious impression of greenish colour, hot, moist air and huge palm fronds
about very much of our talk, as though we were nearly all the time in the
Tropical House. But I also remember very vividly looking at certain orange =
and
red spray-like flowers from Patagonia, which could not have been there. It =
is a
curious thing that I do not remember we made any profession of passionate l=
ove for
one another; we talked as though the fact of our intense love for each other
had always been patent between us. There was so long and frank an intimacy
between us that we talked far more like brother and sister or husband and w=
ife
than two people engaged in the war of the sexes. We wanted to know what we =
were
going to do, and whatever we did we meant to do in the most perfect concert=
. We
both felt an extraordinary accession of friendship and tenderness then, and,
what again is curious, very little passion. But there was also, in spite of=
the
perplexities we faced, an immense satisfaction about that day. It was as if=
we
had taken off something that had hindered our view of each other, like peop=
le
who unvizored to talk more easily at a masked ball.
I've had since to
view our relations from the standpoint of the ordinary observer. I find that
vision in the most preposterous contrast with all that really went on betwe=
en
us. I suppose there I should figure as a wicked seducer, while an unprotect=
ed
girl succumbed to my fascinations. As a matter of fact, it didn't occur to =
us
that there was any personal inequality between us. I knew her for my equal
mentally; in so many things she was beyond comparison cleverer than I; her
courage outwent mine. The quick leap of her mind evoked a flash of joy in m=
ine
like the response of an induction wire; her way of thinking was like watchi=
ng sunlight
reflected from little waves upon the side of a boat, it was so bright, so
mobile, so variously and easily true to its law. In the back of our minds we
both had a very definite belief that making love is full of joyous, splendi=
d,
tender, and exciting possibilities, and we had to discuss why we shouldn't =
be
to the last degree lovers.
Now, what I should
like to print here, if it were possible, in all the screaming emphasis of r=
ed
ink, is this: that the circumstances of my upbringing and the circumstances=
of
Isabel's upbringing had left not a shadow of belief or feeling that the utm=
ost
passionate love between us was in itself intrinsically WRONG. I've told with
the fullest particularity just all that I was taught or found out for mysel=
f in
these matters, and Isabel's reading and thinking, and the fierce silences of
her governesses and the breathless warnings of teachers, and all the social=
and
religious influences that had been brought to bear upon her, had worked out=
to
the same void of conviction. The code had failed with us altogether. We did=
n't
for a moment consider anything but the expediency of what we both, for all =
our
quiet faces and steady eyes, wanted most passionately to do.
Well, here you ha=
ve
the state of mind of whole brigades of people, and particularly of young
people, nowadays. The current morality hasn't gripped them; they don't real=
ly
believe in it at all. They may render it lip-service, but that is quite ano=
ther
thing. There are scarcely any tolerable novels to justify its prohibitions;=
its
prohibitions do, in fact, remain unjustified amongst these ugly suppression=
s.
You may, if you choose, silence the admission of this in literature and cur=
rent
discussion; you will not prevent it working out in lives. People come up to=
the
great moments of passion crudely unaware, astoundingly unprepared as no rea=
lly
civilised and intelligently planned community would let any one be unprepar=
ed.
They find themselves hedged about with customs that have no organic hold up=
on
them, and mere discretions all generous spirits are disposed to despise.
Consider the infi=
nite
absurdities of it! Multitudes of us are trying to run this complex modern
community on a basis of "Hush" without explaining to our children=
or
discussing with them anything about love and marriage at all. Doubt and
knowledge creep about in enforced darknesses and silences. We are living up=
on
an ancient tradition which everybody doubts and nobody has ever analysed. We
affect a tremendous and cultivated shyness and delicacy about imperatives of
the most arbitrary appearance. What ensues? What did ensue with us, for
example? On the one hand was a great desire, robbed of any appearance of sh=
ame and
grossness by the power of love, and on the other hand, the possible jealous=
y of
so and so, the disapproval of so and so, material risks and dangers. It is =
only
in the retrospect that we have been able to grasp something of the effectual
case against us. The social prohibition lit by the intense glow of our pass=
ion,
presented itself as preposterous, irrational, arbitrary, and ugly, a monster
fit only for mockery. We might be ruined! Well, there is a phase in every l=
ove
affair, a sort of heroic hysteria, when death and ruin are agreeable additi=
ons
to the prospect. It gives the business a gravity, a solemnity. Timid people=
may
hesitate and draw back with a vague instinctive terror of the immensity of =
the
oppositions they challenge, but neither Isabel nor I are timid people.
We weighed what w=
as
against us. We decided just exactly as scores of thousands of people have
decided in this very matter, that if it were possible to keep this thing to
ourselves, there was nothing against it. And so we took our first step. With
the hunger of love in us, it was easy to conclude we might be lovers, and s=
till
keep everything to ourselves. That cleared our minds of the one persistent
obstacle that mattered to us--the haunting presence of Margaret.
And then we found=
, as
all those scores of thousands of people scattered about us have found, that=
we
could not keep it to ourselves. Love will out. All the rest of this story is
the chronicle of that. Love with sustained secrecy cannot be love. It is ju=
st
exactly the point people do not understand.
5
But before things came to that pass=
, some
months and many phases and a sudden journey to America intervened.
"This thing
spells disaster," I said. "You are too big and I am too big to
attempt this secrecy. Think of the intolerable possibility of being found o=
ut!
At any cost we have to stop--even at the cost of parting."
"Just becaus=
e we
may be found out!"
"Just becaus=
e we
may be found out."
"Master, I
shouldn't in the least mind being found out with you. I'm afraid--I'd be
proud."
"Wait till it
happens."
There followed a
struggle of immense insincerity between us. It is hard to tell who urged and
who resisted.
She came to me one
night to the editorial room of the BLUE WEEKLY, and argued and kissed me wi=
th
wet salt lips, and wept in my arms; she told me that now passionate longing=
for
me and my intimate life possessed her, so that she could not work, could not
think, could not endure other people for the love of me....
I fled absurdly. =
That
is the secret of the futile journey to America that puzzled all my friends.=
I ran away from
Isabel. I took hold of the situation with all my strength, put in Britten w=
ith
sketchy, hasty instructions to edit the paper, and started headlong and with
luggage, from which, among other things, my shaving things were omitted, up=
on a
tour round the world.
Preposterous flig=
ht
that was! I remember as a thing almost farcical my explanations to Margaret,
and how frantically anxious I was to prevent the remote possibility of her
coming with me, and how I crossed in the TUSCAN, a bad, wet boat, and mixed
seasickness with ungovernable sorrow. I wept--tears. It was inexpressibly q=
ueer
and ridiculous--and, good God! how I hated my fellow-passengers!
New York inflamed=
and
excited me for a time, and when things slackened, I whirled westward to
Chicago--eating and drinking, I remember, in the train from shoals of little
dishes, with a sort of desperate voracity. I did the queerest things to
distract myself--no novelist would dare to invent my mental and emotional
muddle. Chicago also held me at first, amazing lapse from civilisation that=
the
place is! and then abruptly, with hosts expecting me, and everything settled
for some days in Denver, I found myself at the end of my renunciations, and
turned and came back headlong to London.
Let me confess it
wasn't any sense of perfect and incurable trust and confidence that brought=
me
back, or any idea that now I had strength to refrain. It was a sudden
realisation that after all the separation might succeed; some careless phra=
sing
in one of her jealously read letters set that idea going in my mind--the
haunting perception that I might return to London and find it empty of the
Isabel who had pervaded it. Honour, discretion, the careers of both of us,
became nothing at the thought. I couldn't conceive my life resuming there
without Isabel. I couldn't, in short, stand it.
I don't even excu=
se
my return. It is inexcusable. I ought to have kept upon my way westward--and
held out. I couldn't. I wanted Isabel, and I wanted her so badly now that e=
verything
else in the world was phantom-like until that want was satisfied. Perhaps y=
ou
have never wanted anything like that. I went straight to her.
But here I come to
untellable things. There is no describing the reality of love. The shapes of
things are nothing, the actual happenings are nothing, except that somehow
there falls a light upon them and a wonder. Of how we met, and the thrill of
the adventure, the curious bright sense of defiance, the joy of having dare=
d, I
can't tell--I can but hint of just one aspect, of what an amazing LARK--it's
the only word--it seemed to us. The beauty which was the essence of it, whi=
ch
justifies it so far as it will bear justification, eludes statement.
What can a record=
of
contrived meetings, of sundering difficulties evaded and overcome, signify
here? Or what can it convey to say that one looked deep into two dear,
steadfast eyes, or felt a heart throb and beat, or gripped soft hair softly=
in
a trembling hand? Robbed of encompassing love, these things are of no more =
value
than the taste of good wine or the sight of good pictures, or the hearing of
music,--just sensuality and no more. No one can tell love--we can only tell=
the
gross facts of love and its consequences. Given love--given mutuality, and =
one has
effected a supreme synthesis and come to a new level of life--but only those
who know can know. This business has brought me more bitterness and sorrow =
than
I had ever expected to bear, but even now I will not say that I regret that
wilful home-coming altogether. We loved--to the uttermost. Neither of us co=
uld
have loved any one else as we did and do love one another. It was ours, that
beauty; it existed only between us when we were close together, for no one =
in
the world ever to know save ourselves.
My return to the =
office
sticks out in my memory with an extreme vividness, because of the wild eagl=
e of
pride that screamed within me. It was Tuesday morning, and though not a sou=
l in
London knew of it yet except Isabel, I had been back in England a week. I c=
ame
in upon Britten and stood in the doorway.
"GOD!" =
he
said at the sight of me.
"I'm back,&q=
uot;
I said.
He looked at my
excited face with those red-brown eyes of his. Silently I defied him to spe=
ak
his mind.
"Where did y=
ou
turn back?" he said at last.
6
I had to tell what were, so far as =
I can
remember my first positive lies to Margaret in explaining that return. I had
written to her from Chicago and again from New York, saying that I felt I o=
ught
to be on the spot in England for the new session, and that I was coming
back--presently. I concealed the name of my boat from her, and made a
calculated prevarication when I announced my presence in London. I telephon=
ed before
I went back for my rooms to be prepared. She was, I knew, with the Bunting
Harblows in Durham, and when she came back to Radnor Square I had been at h=
ome
a day.
I remember her re=
turn
so well.
My going away and=
the
vivid secret of the present had wiped out from my mind much of our long
estrangement. Something, too, had changed in her. I had had some hint of it=
in
her letters, but now I saw it plainly. I came out of my study upon the land=
ing
when I heard the turmoil of her arrival below, and she came upstairs with a
quickened gladness. It was a cold March, and she was dressed in unfamiliar =
dark
furs that suited her extremely and reinforced the delicate flush of her swe=
et
face. She held out both her hands to me, and drew me to her unhesitatingly =
and
kissed me.
"So glad you=
are
back, dear," she said. "Oh! so very glad you are back."
I returned her ki=
ss with
a queer feeling at my heart, too undifferentiated to be even a definite sen=
se
of guilt or meanness. I think it was chiefly amazement--at the universe--at
myself.
"I never knew
what it was to be away from you," she said.
I perceived sudde=
nly
that she had resolved to end our estrangement. She put herself so that my a=
rm
came caressingly about her.
"These are j=
olly
furs," I said.
"I got them =
for
you."
The parlourmaid
appeared below dealing with the maid and the luggage cab.
"Tell me all
about America," said Margaret. "I feel as though you'd been away =
six
year's."
We went arm in arm
into our little sitting-room, and I took off the fur's for her and sat down
upon the chintz-covered sofa by the fire. She had ordered tea, and came and=
sat
by me. I don't know what I had expected, but of all things I had certainly =
not
expected this sudden abolition of our distances.
"I want to k=
now
all about America," she repeated, with her eyes scrutinising me. "=
;Why
did you come back?"
I repeated the
substance of my letters rather lamely, and she sat listening.
"But why did=
you
turn back--without going to Denver?"
"I wanted to
come back. I was restless."
"Restlessnes=
s,"
she said, and thought. "You were restless in Venice. You said it was
restlessness took you to America."
Again she studied=
me.
She turned a little awkwardly to her tea things, and poured needless water =
from
the silver kettle into the teapot. Then she sat still for some moments look=
ing
at the equipage with expressionless eyes. I saw her hand upon the edge of t=
he
table tremble slightly. I watched her closely. A vague uneasiness possessed=
me.
What might she not know or guess?
She spoke at last
with an effort. "I wish you were in Parliament again," she said.
"Life doesn't give you events enough."
"If I was in
Parliament again, I should be on the Conservative side."
"I know,&quo=
t;
she said, and was still more thoughtful.
"Lately,&quo=
t;
she began, and paused. "Lately I've been reading--you."
I didn't help her=
out
with what she had to say. I waited.
"I didn't
understand what you were after. I had misjudged. I didn't know. I think per=
haps
I was rather stupid." Her eyes were suddenly shining with tears. "=
;You
didn't give me much chance to understand."
She turned upon me
suddenly with a voice full of tears.
"Husband,&qu=
ot;
she said abruptly, holding her two hands out to me, "I want to begin o=
ver
again!"
I took her hands,
perplexed beyond measure. "My dear!" I said.
"I want to b=
egin
over again."
I bowed my head to
hide my face, and found her hand in mine and kissed it.
"Ah!" s=
he
said, and slowly withdrew her hand. She leant forward with her arm on the
sofa-back, and looked very intently into my face. I felt the most damnable
scoundrel in the world as I returned her gaze. The thought of Isabel's dark=
ly
shining eyes seemed like a physical presence between us....
"Tell me,&qu=
ot;
I said presently, to break the intolerable tension, "tell me plainly w=
hat
you mean by this."
I sat a little aw=
ay
from her, and then took my teacup in hand, with an odd effect of defending
myself. "Have you been reading that old book of mine?" I asked.
"That and the
paper. I took a complete set from the beginning down to Durham with me. I h=
ave
read it over, thought it over. I didn't understand--what you were
teaching."
There was a little
pause.
"It all seem=
s so
plain to me now," she said, "and so true."
I was profoundly
disconcerted. I put down my teacup, stood up in the middle of the hearthrug,
and began talking. "I'm tremendously glad, Margaret, that you've come =
to
see I'm not altogether perverse," I began. I launched out into a rather
trite and windy exposition of my views, and she sat close to me on the sofa,
looking up into my face, hanging on my words, a deliberate and invincible
convert.
"Yes," =
she
said, "yes."...
I had never doubt=
ed
my new conceptions before; now I doubted them profoundly. But I went on
talking. It's the grim irony in the lives of all politicians, writers, publ=
ic
teachers, that once the audience is at their feet, a new loyalty has gripped
them. It isn't their business to admit doubt and imperfections. They have t=
o go
on talking. And I was now so accustomed to Isabel's vivid interruptions,
qualifications, restatements, and confirmations....
Margaret and I di=
ned
together at home. She made me open out my political projects to her. "I
have been foolish," she said. "I want to help."
And by some excus=
e I
have forgotten she made me come to her room. I think it was some book I had=
to
take her, some American book I had brought back with me, and mentioned in o=
ur
talk. I walked in with it, and put it down on the table and turned to go.
"Husband!&qu=
ot;
she cried, and held out her slender arms to me. I was compelled to go to her
and kiss her, and she twined them softly about my neck and drew me to her a=
nd
kissed me. I disentangled them very gently, and took each wrist and kissed =
it,
and the backs of her hands.
"Good-night,=
"
I said. There came a little pause. "Good-night, Margaret," I
repeated, and walked very deliberately and with a kind of sham preoccupatio=
n to
the door.
I did not look at
her, but I could feel her standing, watching me. If I had looked up, she wo=
uld,
I knew, have held out her arms to me....
At the very outset
that secret, which was to touch no one but Isabel and myself, had reached o=
ut
to stab another human being.
7
The whole world had changed for Isa=
bel
and me; and we tried to pretend that nothing had changed except a small mat=
ter
between us. We believed quite honestly at that time that it was possible to
keep this thing that had happened from any reaction at all, save perhaps
through some magically enhanced vigour in our work, upon the world about us!
Seen in retrospect, one can realise the absurdity of this belief; within a =
week
I realised it; but that does not alter the fact that we did believe as much,
and that people who are deeply in love and unable to marry will continue to
believe so to the very end of time. They will continue to believe out of
existence every consideration that separates them until they have come
together. Then they will count the cost, as we two had to do.
I am telling a st=
ory,
and not propounding theories in this book; and chiefly I am telling of the
ideas and influences and emotions that have happened to me--me as a sort of
sounding board for my world. The moralist is at liberty to go over my condu=
ct
with his measure and say, "At this point or at that you went wrong, and
you ought to have done"--so-and-so. The point of interest to the state=
sman
is that it didn't for a moment occur to us to do so-and-so when the time for
doing it came. It amazes me now to think how little either of us troubled a=
bout
the established rights or wrongs of the situation. We hadn't an atom of res=
pect
for them, innate or acquired. The guardians of public morals will say we we=
re
very bad people; I submit in defence that they are very bad
guardians--provocative guardians.... And when at last there came a claim
against us that had an effective validity for us, we were in the full tide =
of
passionate intimacy.
I had a night of
nearly sleepless perplexity after Margaret's return. She had suddenly prese=
nted
herself to me like something dramatically recalled, fine, generous, infinit=
ely
capable of feeling. I was amazed how much I had forgotten her. In my contem=
pt
for vulgarised and conventionalised honour I had forgotten that for me there
was such a reality as honour. And here it was, warm and near to me, living,=
breathing,
unsuspecting. Margaret's pride was my honour, that I had had no right even =
to
imperil.
I do not now reme=
mber
if I thought at that time of going to Isabel and putting this new aspect of=
the
case before her. Perhaps I did. Perhaps I may have considered even then the
possibility of ending what had so freshly and passionately begun. If I did,=
it
vanished next day at the sight of her. Whatever regrets came in the darknes=
s,
the daylight brought an obstinate confidence in our resolution again. We wo=
uld,
we declared, "pull the thing off." Margaret must not know. Margar=
et
should not know. If Margaret did not know, then no harm whatever would be d=
one.
We tried to sustain that....
For a brief time =
we
had been like two people in a magic cell, magically cut off from the world =
and
full of a light of its own, and then we began to realise that we were not in
the least cut off, that the world was all about us and pressing in upon us,
limiting us, threatening us, resuming possession of us. I tried to ignore t=
he
injury to Margaret of her unreciprocated advances. I tried to maintain to
myself that this hidden love made no difference to the now irreparable brea=
ch
between husband and wife. But I never spoke of it to Isabel or let her see =
that
aspect of our case. How could I? The time for that had gone....
Then in new shapes
and relations came trouble. Distressful elements crept in by reason of our
unavoidable furtiveness; we ignored them, hid them from each other, and
attempted to hide them from ourselves. Successful love is a thing of abound=
ing
pride, and we had to be secret. It was delightful at first to be secret, a
whispering, warm conspiracy; then presently it became irksome and a little
shameful. Her essential frankness of soul was all against the masks and
falsehoods that many women would have enjoyed. Together in our secrecy we
relaxed, then in the presence of other people again it was tiresome to have=
to
watch for the careless, too easy phrase, to snatch back one's hand from the=
limitless
betrayal of a light, familiar touch.
Love becomes a po=
or
thing, at best a poor beautiful thing, if it develops no continuing and
habitual intimacy. We were always meeting, and most gloriously loving and
beginning--and then we had to snatch at remorseless ticking watches, hurry =
to
catch trains, and go back to this or that. That is all very well for the
intrigues of idle people perhaps, but not for an intense personal relations=
hip.
It is like lighting a candle for the sake of lighting it, over and over aga=
in,
and each time blowing it out. That, no doubt, must be very amusing to child=
ren
playing with the matches, but not to people who love warm light, and want i=
t in
order to do fine and honourable things together. We had achieved--I give the
ugly phrase that expresses the increasing discolouration in my mind--"=
illicit
intercourse." To end at that, we now perceived, wasn't in our style. B=
ut
where were we to end?...
Perhaps we might =
at
this stage have given it up. I think if we could have seen ahead and around=
us
we might have done so. But the glow of our cell blinded us.... I wonder what
might have happened if at that time we had given it up.... We propounded it=
, we
met again in secret to discuss it, and our overpowering passion for one ano=
ther
reduced that meeting to absurdity....
Presently the ide=
a of
children crept between us. It came in from all our conceptions of life and
public service; it was, we found, in the quality of our minds that physical=
love
without children is a little weak, timorous, more than a little shameful. W=
ith
imaginative people there very speedily comes a time when that realisation is
inevitable. We hadn't thought of that before--it isn't natural to think of =
that
before. We hadn't known. There is no literature in English dealing with suc=
h things.
There is a necess=
ary
sequence of phases in love. These came in their order, and with them,
unanticipated tarnishings on the first bright perfection of our relations. =
For
a time these developing phases were no more than a secret and private troub=
le
between us, little shadows spreading by imperceptible degrees across that v=
ivid
and luminous cell.
8
The Handitch election flung me sudd=
enly
into prominence.
It is still only =
two
years since that struggle, and I will not trouble the reader with a detailed
history of events that must be quite sufficiently present in his mind for my
purpose already. Huge stacks of journalism have dealt with Handitch and its
significance. For the reader very probably, as for most people outside a
comparatively small circle, it meant my emergence from obscurity. We obtrud=
ed
no editor's name in the BLUE WEEKLY; I had never as yet been on the London
hoardings. Before Handitch I was a journalist and writer of no great public
standing; after Handitch, I was definitely a person, in the little group of=
persons
who stood for the Young Imperialist movement. Handitch was, to a very large
extent, my affair. I realised then, as a man comes to do, how much one can
still grow after seven and twenty. In the second election I was a man taking
hold of things; at Kinghamstead I had been simply a young candidate, a party
unit, led about the constituency, told to do this and that, and finally was=
hed
in by the great Anti-Imperialist flood, like a starfish rolling up a beach.=
My feminist views=
had
earnt the mistrust of the party, and I do not think I should have got the
chance of Handitch or indeed any chance at all of Parliament for a long tim=
e,
if it had not been that the seat with its long record of Liberal victories =
and
its Liberal majority of 3642 at the last election, offered a hopeless conte=
st.
The Liberal dissensions and the belated but by no means contemptible Social=
ist
candidate were providential interpositions. I think, however, the conduct of
Gane, Crupp, and Tarvrille in coming down to fight for me, did count tremen=
dously
in my favour. "We aren't going to win, perhaps," said Crupp,
"but we are going to talk." And until the very eve of victory, we=
treated
Handitch not so much as a battlefield as a hoarding. And so it was the
Endowment of Motherhood as a practical form of Eugenics got into English
politics.
Plutus, our agent,
was scared out of his wits when the thing began.
"They're ascribing all sorts of queer ideas to you about the Family," he said.<= o:p>
"I think the
Family exists for the good of the children," I said; "is that
queer?"
"Not when you explain it--but they won't let you explain it. And about marriage--?"<= o:p>
"I'm all rig=
ht
about marriage--trust me."
"Of course, =
if YOU
had children," said Plutus, rather inconsiderately....
They opened fire =
upon
me in a little electioneering rag call the HANDITCH SENTINEL, with a string=
of
garbled quotations and misrepresentations that gave me an admirable text fo=
r a
speech. I spoke for an hour and ten minutes with a more and more crumpled c=
opy
of the SENTINEL in my hand, and I made the fullest and completest expositio=
n of
the idea of endowing motherhood that I think had ever been made up to that =
time
in England. Its effect on the press was extraordinary. The Liberal papers g=
ave
me quite unprecedented space under the impression that I had only to be giv=
en
rope to hang myself; the Conservatives cut me down or tried to justify me; =
the
whole country was talking. I had had a pamphlet in type upon the subject, a=
nd I
revised this carefully and put it on the book-stalls within three days. It =
sold
enormously and brought me bushels of letters. We issued over three thousand=
in
Handitch alone. At meeting after meeting I was heckled upon nothing else. L=
ong before
polling day Plutus was converted.
"It's catchi=
ng
on like old age pensions," he said. "We've dished the Liberals! To
think that such a project should come from our side!"
But it was only w=
ith
the declaration of the poll that my battle was won. No one expected more th=
an a
snatch victory, and I was in by over fifteen hundred. At one bound Cossingt=
on's
papers passed from apologetics varied by repudiation to triumphant praise.
"A renascent England, breeding men," said the leader in his chief=
daily
on the morning after the polling, and claimed that the Conservatives had be=
en
ever the pioneers in sanely bold constructive projects.
I came up to Lond=
on
with a weary but rejoicing Margaret by the night train.
CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ THE
IMPOSSIBLE POSITION
1
To any one who did not know of that
glowing secret between Isabel and myself, I might well have appeared at that
time the most successful and enviable of men. I had recovered rapidly from =
an
uncongenial start in political life; I had become a considerable force thro=
ugh
the BLUE WEEKLY, and was shaping an increasingly influential body of opinio=
n; I
had re-entered Parliament with quite dramatic distinction, and in spite of a
certain faltering on the part of the orthodox Conservatives towards the bol=
der
elements in our propaganda, I had loyal and unenvious associates who were
making me a power in the party. People were coming to our group, understand=
ings
were developing. It was clear we should play a prominent part in the next
general election, and that, given a Conservative victory, I should be assur=
ed
of office. The world opened out to me brightly and invitingly. Great schemes
took shape in my mind, always more concrete, always more practicable; the y=
ears
ahead seemed falling into order, shining with the credible promise of immen=
se achievement.
And at the heart =
of
it all, unseen and unsuspected, was the secret of my relations with
Isabel--like a seed that germinates and thrusts, thrusts relentlessly.
From the onset of=
the
Handitch contest onward, my meetings with her had been more and more pervad=
ed
by the discussion of our situation. It had innumerable aspects. It was very
present to us that we wanted to be together as much as possible--we were
beginning to long very much for actual living together in the same house, so
that one could come as it were carelessly--unawares--upon the other, busy
perhaps about some trivial thing. We wanted to feel each other in the daily
atmosphere. Preceding our imperatively sterile passion, you must remember,
outside it, altogether greater than it so far as our individual lives were =
concerned,
there had grown and still grew an enormous affection and intellectual sympa=
thy
between us. We brought all our impressions and all our ideas to each other,=
to
see them in each other's light. It is hard to convey that quality of
intellectual unison to any one who has not experienced it. I thought more a=
nd
more in terms of conversation with Isabel; her possible comments upon things
would flash into my mind, oh!--with the very sound of her voice.
I remember, too, =
the
odd effect of seeing her in the distance going about Handitch, like any
stranger canvasser; the queer emotion of her approach along the street, the
greeting as she passed. The morning of the polling she vanished from the
constituency. I saw her for an instant in the passage behind our Committee
rooms.
"Going?"
said I.
She nodded.
"Stay it out=
. I
want you to see the fun. I remember--the other time."
She didn't answer=
for
a moment or so, and stood with face averted.
"It's Margar=
et's
show," she said abruptly. "If I see her smiling there like a quee=
n by
your side--! She did--last time. I remember." She caught at a sob and
dashed her hand across her face impatiently. "Jealous fool, mean and
petty, jealous fool!... Good luck, old man, to you! You're going to win. Bu=
t I
don't want to see the end of it all the same...."
"Good-bye!&q=
uot;
said I, clasping her hand as some supporter appeared in the passage....
I came back to Lo=
ndon
victorious, and a little flushed and coarse with victory; and so soon as I
could break away I went to Isabel's flat and found her white and worn, with=
the
stain of secret weeping about her eyes. I came into the room to her and shut
the door.
"You said I'd
win," I said, and held out my arms.
She hugged me clo=
sely
for a moment.
"My dear,&qu=
ot;
I whispered, "it's nothing--without you--nothing!"
We didn't speak f=
or
some seconds. Then she slipped from my hold. "Look!" she said,
smiling like winter sunshine. "I've had in all the morning papers--the
pile of them, and you--resounding."
"It's more t=
han
I dared hope."
"Or I."=
She stood for a
moment still smiling bravely, and then she was sobbing in my arms. "The
bigger you are--the more you show," she said--"the more we are
parted. I know, I know--"
I held her close =
to
me, making no answer.
Presently she bec=
ame
still. "Oh, well," she said, and wiped her eyes and sat down on t=
he
little sofa by the fire; and I sat down beside her.
"I didn't kn=
ow
all there was in love," she said, staring at the coals, "when we =
went
love-making."
I put my arm behi=
nd
her and took a handful of her dear soft hair in my hand and kissed it.
"You've done= a great thing this time," she said. "Handitch will make you."<= o:p>
"It opens big
chances," I said. "But why are you weeping, dear one?"
"Envy,"=
she
said, "and love."
"You're not
lonely?"
"I've plenty=
to
do--and lots of people."
"Well?"=
"I want
you."
"You've got
me."
She put her arm a=
bout
me and kissed me. "I want you," she said, "just as if I had
nothing of you. You don't understand--how a woman wants a man. I thought on=
ce
if I just gave myself to you it would be enough. It was nothing--it was jus=
t a
step across the threshold. My dear, every moment you are away I ache for
you--ache! I want to be about when it isn't love-making or talk. I want to =
be
doing things for you, and watching you when you're not thinking of me. All
those safe, careless, intimate things. And something else--" She stopp=
ed.
"Dear, I don't want to bother you. I just want you to know I love
you...."
She caught my hea=
d in
her hands and kissed it, then stood up abruptly.
I looked up at he=
r, a
little perplexed.
"Dear
heart," said I, "isn't this enough? You're my councillor, my coll=
eague,
my right hand, the secret soul of my life--"
"And I want =
to
darn your socks," she said, smiling back at me.
"You're
insatiable."
She smiled
"No," she said. "I'm not insatiable, Master. But I'm a woman=
in
love. And I'm finding out what I want, and what is necessary to me--and wha=
t I
can't have. That's all."
"We get a
lot."
"We want a l=
ot.
You and I are greedy people for the things we like, Master. It's very evide=
nt
we've got nearly all we can ever have of one another--and I'm not
satisfied."
"What more is
there?
"For you--ve=
ry
little. I wonder. For me--every thing. Yes--everything. You didn't mean it,
Master; you didn't know any more than I did when I began, but love between a
man and a woman is sometimes very one-sided. Fearfully one-sided! That's
all...."
"Don't YOU e=
ver
want children?" she said abruptly.
"I suppose I
do."
"You don't!&=
quot;
"I haven't
thought of them."
"A man doesn=
't,
perhaps. But I have.... I want them--like hunger. YOUR children, and home w=
ith
you. Really, continually you! That's the trouble.... I can't have 'em, Mast=
er,
and I can't have you."
She was crying, a=
nd through
her tears she laughed.
"I'm going to
make a scene," she said, "and get this over. I'm so discontented =
and
miserable; I've got to tell you. It would come between us if I didn't. I'm =
in
love with you, with everything--with all my brains. I'll pull through all
right. I'll be good, Master, never you fear. But to-day I'm crying out with=
all
my being. This election--You're going up; you're going on. In these
papers--you're a great big fact. It's suddenly come home to me. At the back=
of
my mind I've always had the idea I was going to have you somehow presently =
for
myself--I mean to have you to go long tramps with, to keep house for, to get
meals for, to watch for of an evening. It's a sort of habitual background t=
o my
thought of you. And it's nonsense--utter nonsense!" She stopped. She w=
as crying
and choking. "And the child, you know--the child!"
I was troubled be=
yond
measure, but Handitch and its intimations were clear and strong.
"We can't ha=
ve
that," I said.
"No," s=
he
said, "we can't have that."
"We've got o=
ur
own things to do."
"YOUR
things," she said.
"Aren't they
yours too?"
"Because of
you," she said.
"Aren't they
your very own things?"
"Women don't
have that sort of very own thing. Indeed, it's true! And think! You've been
down there preaching the goodness of children, telling them the only good t=
hing
in a state is happy, hopeful children, working to free mothers and
children--"
"And we give=
our
own children to do it?" I said.
"Yes," =
she
said. "And sometimes I think it's too much to give--too much altogethe=
r....
Children get into a woman's brain--when she mustn't have them, especially w=
hen
she must never hope for them. Think of the child we might have now!--the li=
ttle
creature with soft, tender skin, and little hands and little feet! At times=
it
haunts me. It comes and says, Why wasn't I given life? I can hear it in the
night.... The world is full of such little ghosts, dear lover--little things
that asked for life and were refused. They clamour to me. It's like a little
fist beating at my heart. Love children, beautiful children. Little cold ha=
nds
that tear at my heart! Oh, my heart and my lord!" She was holding my a=
rm
with both her hands and weeping against it, and now she drew herself to my
shoulder and wept and sobbed in my embrace. "I shall never sit with yo=
ur
child on my knee and you beside me-never, and I am a woman and your
lover!..."
2
But the profound impossibility of o=
ur
relation was now becoming more and more apparent to us. We found ourselves
seeking justification, clinging passionately to a situation that was coldly,
pitilessly, impossible and fated. We wanted quite intensely to live together
and have a child, but also we wanted very many other things that were
incompatible with these desires. It was extraordinarily difficult to weigh =
our
political and intellectual ambitions against those intimate wishes. The wei=
ghts
kept altering according as one found oneself grasping this valued thing or =
that.
It wasn't as if we could throw everything aside for our love, and have that=
as
we wanted it. Love such as we bore one another isn't altogether, or even
chiefly, a thing in itself--it is for the most part a value set upon things.
Our love was interwoven with all our other interests; to go out of the world
and live in isolation seemed to us like killing the best parts of each othe=
r;
we loved the sight of each other engaged finely and characteristically, we =
knew
each other best as activities. We had no delusions about material facts; we
didn't want each other alive or dead, we wanted each other fully alive. We
wanted to do big things together, and for us to take each other openly and =
desperately
would leave us nothing in the world to do. We wanted children indeed
passionately, but children with every helpful chance in the world, and chil=
dren
born in scandal would be handicapped at every turn. We wanted to share a ho=
me,
and not a solitude.
And when we were =
at
this stage of realisation, began the intimations that we were found out, and
that scandal was afoot against us....
I heard of it fir=
st
from Esmeer, who deliberately mentioned it, with that steady grey eye of his
watching me, as an instance of the preposterous falsehoods people will
circulate. It came to Isabel almost simultaneously through a married college
friend, who made it her business to demand either confirmation or denial. It
filled us both with consternation. In the surprise of the moment Isabel
admitted her secret, and her friend went off "reserving her freedom of
action."
Discovery broke o=
ut
in every direction. Friends with grave faces and an atmosphere of infinite =
tact
invaded us both. Other friends ceased to invade either of us. It was manife=
st
we had become--we knew not how--a private scandal, a subject for duologues,=
an
amazement, a perplexity, a vivid interest. In a few brief weeks it seemed
London passed from absolute unsuspiciousness to a chattering exaggeration of
its knowledge of our relations.
It was just the m=
ost
inappropriate time for that disclosure. The long smouldering antagonism to =
my
endowment of motherhood ideas had flared up into an active campaign in the
EXPURGATOR, and it would be altogether disastrous to us if I should be
convicted of any personal irregularity. It was just because of the manifest=
and
challenging respectability of my position that I had been able to carry the
thing as far as I had done. Now suddenly my fortunes had sprung a leak, and
scandal was pouring in.... It chanced, too, that a wave of moral intolerance
was sweeping through London, one of those waves in which the bitterness of =
the consciously
just finds an ally in the panic of the undiscovered. A certain Father Blodg=
ett
had been preaching against social corruption with extraordinary force, and =
had
roused the Church of England people to a kind of competition in denunciatio=
n.
The old methods of the Anti-Socialist campaign had been renewed, and had
offered far too wide a scope and too tempting an opportunity for private
animosity, to be restricted to the private affairs of the Socialists. I had
intimations of an extensive circulation of "private and confidential&q=
uot;
letters....
I think there can=
be
nothing else in life quite like the unnerving realisation that rumour and
scandal are afoot about one. Abruptly one's confidence in the solidity of t=
he
universe disappears. One walks silenced through a world that one feels to be
full of inaudible accusations. One cannot challenge the assault, get it out
into the open, separate truth and falsehood. It slinks from you, turns aside
its face. Old acquaintances suddenly evaded me, made extraordinary excuses;=
men
who had presumed on the verge of my world and pestered me with an intrusive
enterprise, now took the bold step of flat repudiation. I became doubtful a=
bout
the return of a nod, retracted all those tentacles of easy civility that I =
had
hitherto spread to the world. I still grow warm with amazed indignation whe=
n I
recall that Edward Crampton, meeting me full on the steps of the Climax Clu=
b,
cut me dead. "By God!" I cried, and came near catching him by the
throat and wringing out of him what of all good deeds and bad, could hearten
him, a younger man than I and empty beyond comparison, to dare to play the
judge to me. And then I had an open slight from Mrs. Millingham, whom I had
counted on as one counts upon the sunrise. I had not expected things of that
sort; they were disconcerting beyond measure; it was as if the world were
giving way beneath my feet, as though something failed in the essential
confidence of life, as though a hand of wet ice had touched my heart. Simil=
ar things
were happening to Isabel. Yet we went on working, visiting, meeting, trying=
to
ignore this gathering of implacable forces against us.
For a time I was
perplexed beyond measure to account for this campaign. Then I got a clue. T=
he
centre of diffusion was the Bailey household. The Baileys had never forgive=
n me
my abandonment of the young Liberal group they had done so much to inspire =
and
organise; their dinner-table had long been a scene of hostile depreciation =
of
the BLUE WEEKLY and all its allies; week after week Altiora proclaimed that=
I
was "doing nothing," and found other causes for our bye-election
triumphs; I counted Chambers Street a dangerous place for me. Yet,
nevertheless, I was astonished to find them using a private scandal against=
me.
They did. I think Handitch had filled up the measure of their bitterness, f=
or I
had not only abandoned them, but I was succeeding beyond even their power o=
f misrepresentation.
Always I had been a wasp in their spider's web, difficult to claim as a too=
l,
uncritical, antagonistic. I admired their work and devotion enormously, but=
I
had never concealed my contempt for a certain childish vanity they displaye=
d,
and for the frequent puerility of their political intrigues. I suppose cont=
empt
galls more than injuries, and anyhow they had me now. They had me. Bailey, I
found, was warning fathers of girls against me as a "reckless
libertine," and Altiora, flushed, roguish, and dishevelled, was sittin=
g on
her fender curb after dinner, and pledging little parties of five or six wo=
men
at a time with infinite gusto not to let the matter go further. Our cell wa=
s open
to the world, and a bleak, distressful daylight streaming in.
I had a gleam of a
more intimate motive in Altiora from the reports that came to me. Isabel had
been doing a series of five or six articles in the POLITICAL REVIEW in supp=
ort
of our campaign, the POLITICAL REVIEW which had hitherto been loyally
Baileyite. Quite her best writing up to the present, at any rate, is in tho=
se
papers, and no doubt Altiora had had not only to read her in those invaded
columns, but listen to her praises in the mouths of the tactless influentia=
l.
Altiora, like so many people who rely on gesture and vocal insistence in
conversation, writes a poor and slovenly prose and handles an argument badl=
y;
Isabel has her University training behind her and wrote from the first with=
the
stark power of a clear-headed man. "Now we know," said Altiora, w=
ith
just a gleam of malice showing through her brightness, "now we know who
helps with the writing!"
She revealed
astonishing knowledge.
For a time I coul=
dn't
for the life of me discover her sources. I had, indeed, a desperate intenti=
on
of challenging her, and then I bethought me of a youngster named Curmain, w=
ho
had been my supplemental typist and secretary for a time, and whom I had se=
nt
on to her before the days of our breach. "Of course!" said I,
"Curmain!" He was a tall, drooping, sidelong youth with sandy hai=
r, a
little forward head, and a long thin neck. He stole stamps, and, I suspecte=
d,
rifled my private letter drawer, and I found him one day on a turn of the
stairs looking guilty and ruffled with a pretty Irish housemaid of Margaret=
's
manifestly in a state of hot indignation. I saw nothing, but I felt everyth=
ing
in the air between them. I hate this pestering of servants, but at the same=
time
I didn't want Curmain wiped out of existence, so I had packed him off witho=
ut
unnecessary discussion to Altiora. He was quick and cheap anyhow, and I tho=
ught
her general austerity ought to redeem him if anything could; the Chambers S=
treet
housemaid wasn't for any man's kissing and showed it, and the stamps and
private letters were looked after with an efficiency altogether surpassing
mine. And Altiora, I've no doubt left now whatever, pumped this young
undesirable about me, and scenting a story, had him to dinner alone one eve=
ning
to get to the bottom of the matter. She got quite to the bottom of it,--it =
must
have been a queer duologue. She read Isabel's careless, intimate letters to=
me,
so to speak, by this proxy, and she wasn't ashamed to use this information =
in
the service of the bitterness that had sprung up in her since our political
breach. It was essentially a personal bitterness; it helped no public purpo=
se
of theirs to get rid of me. My downfall in any public sense was sheer waste=
,--the
loss of a man. She knew she was behaving badly, and so, when it came to
remonstrance, she behaved worse. She'd got names and dates and places; the
efficiency of her information was irresistible. And she set to work at it
marvellously. Never before, in all her pursuit of efficient ideals, had Alt=
iora
achieved such levels of efficiency. I wrote a protest that was perhaps
ill-advised and angry, I went to her and tried to stop her. She wouldn't
listen, she wouldn't think, she denied and lied, she behaved like a naughty
child of six years old which has made up its mind to be hurtful. It wasn't
only, I think, that she couldn't bear our political and social influence; s=
he also--I
realised at that interview couldn't bear our loving. It seemed to her the s=
ickliest
thing,--a thing quite unendurable. While such things were, the virtue had g=
one
out of her world.
I've the vividest
memory of that call of mine. She'd just come in and taken off her hat, and =
she
was grey and dishevelled and tired, and in a business-like dress of black a=
nd
crimson that didn't suit her and was muddy about the skirts; she'd a cold in
her head and sniffed penetratingly, she avoided my eye as she talked and
interrupted everything I had to say; she kept stabbing fiercely at the cush=
ions
of her sofa with a long hat-pin and pretending she was overwhelmed with gri=
ef
at the DEBACLE she was deliberately organising.
"Then
part," she cried, "part. If you don't want a smashing up,--part! =
You
two have got to be parted. You've got never to see each other ever, never to
speak." There was a zest in her voice. "We're not circulating sto=
ries,"
she denied. "No! And Curmain never told us anything--Curmain is an
EXCELLENT young man; oh! a quite excellent young man. You misjudged him
altogether."...
I was equally
unsuccessful with Bailey. I caught the little wretch in the League Club, an=
d he
wriggled and lied. He wouldn't say where he had got his facts, he wouldn't
admit he had told any one. When I gave him the names of two men who had com=
e to
me astonished and incredulous, he attempted absurdly to make me think they =
had
told HIM. He did his horrible little best to suggest that honest old Quacke=
tt,
who had just left England for the Cape, was the real scandalmonger. That st=
ruck
me as mean, even for Bailey. I've still the odd vivid impression of his flu=
ting
voice, excusing the inexcusable, his big, shifty face evading me, his
perspiration-beaded forehead, the shrugging shoulders, and the would-be
exculpatory gestures--Houndsditch gestures--of his enormous ugly hands.
"I can assure
you, my dear fellow," he said; "I can assure you we've done
everything to shield you--everything."...
3
Isabel came after dinner one evenin=
g and
talked in the office. She made a white-robed, dusky figure against the deep
blues of my big window. I sat at my desk and tore a quill pen to pieces as I
talked.
"The Baileys
don't intend to let this drop," I said. "They mean that every one=
in
London is to know about it."
"I know.&quo=
t;
"Well!"=
I
said.
"Dear
heart," said Isabel, facing it, "it's no good waiting for things =
to
overtake us; we're at the parting of the ways."
"What are we=
to
do?"
"They won't =
let
us go on."
"Damn
them!"
"They are
ORGANISING scandal."
"It's no good
waiting for things to overtake us," I echoed; "they have overtaken
us." I turned on her. "What do you want to do?"
"Everything,=
"
she said. "Keep you and have our work. Aren't we Mates?"
"We can't.&q=
uot;
"And we
can't!"
"I've got to
tell Margaret," I said.
"Margaret!&q=
uot;
"I can't bear
the idea of any one else getting in front with it. I've been wincing about
Margaret secretly--"
"I know. You=
'll
have to tell her--and make your peace with her."
She leant back
against the bookcases under the window.
"We've had s=
ome
good times, Master;" she said, with a sigh in her voice.
And then for a lo=
ng
time we stared at one another in silence.
"We haven't =
much
time left," she said.
"Shall we
bolt?" I said.
"And leave a=
ll
this?" she asked, with her eyes going round the room. "And
that?" And her head indicated Westminster. "No!"
I said no more of
bolting.
"We've got to
screw ourselves up to surrender," she said.
"Something.&=
quot;
"A lot."=
;
"Master,&quo=
t;
she said, "it isn't all sex and stuff between us?"
"No!"
"I can't giv=
e up
the work. Our work's my life."
We came upon anot=
her
long pause.
"No one will
believe we've ceased to be lovers--if we simply do," she said.
"We
shouldn't."
"We've got t=
o do
something more parting than that."
I nodded, and aga=
in
we paused. She was coming to something.
"I could mar=
ry
Shoesmith," she said abruptly.
"But--"=
I
objected.
"He knows. It
wasn't fair. I told him."
"Oh, that
explains," I said. "There's been a kind of sulkiness--But--you to=
ld
him?"
She nodded.
"He's rather badly hurt," she said. "He's been a good friend=
to
me. He's curiously loyal. But something, something he said one day--forced =
me
to let him know.... That's been the beastliness of all this secrecy. That's=
the
beastliness of all secrecy. You have to spring surprises on people. But he
keeps on. He's steadfast. He'd already suspected. He wants me very badly to
marry him...."
"But you don=
't
want to marry him?"
"I'm forced =
to
think of it."
"But does he
want to marry you at that? Take you as a present from the world at
large?--against your will and desire?... I don't understand him."
"He cares for
me."
"How?"<= o:p>
"He thinks t=
his
is a fearful mess for me. He wants to pull it straight."
We sat for a time=
in
silence, with imaginations that obstinately refused to take up the realitie=
s of
this proposition.
"I don't want
you to marry Shoesmith," I said at last.
"Don't you l=
ike
him?"
"Not as your
husband."
"He's a very
clever and sturdy person--and very generous and devoted to me."
"And me?&quo=
t;
"You can't
expect that. He thinks you are wonderful--and, naturally, that you ought no=
t to
have started this."
"I've a curi=
ous
dislike to any one thinking that but myself. I'm quite ready to think it
myself."
"He'd let us=
be
friends--and meet."
"Let us be
friends!" I cried, after a long pause. "You and me!"
"He wants me=
to
be engaged soon. Then, he says, he can go round fighting these rumours,
defending us both--and force a quarrel on the Baileys."
"I don't
understand him," I said, and added, "I don't understand you."=
;
I was staring at =
her
face. It seemed white and set in the dimness.
"Do you real=
ly
mean this, Isabel?" I asked.
"What else is
there to do, my dear?--what else is there to do at all? I've been thinking =
day
and night. You can't go away with me. You can't smash yourself suddenly in =
the
sight of all men. I'd rather die than that should happen. Look what you are
becoming in the country! Look at all you've built up!--me helping. I wouldn=
't
let you do it if you could. I wouldn't let you--if it were only for Margare=
t's
sake. THIS... closes the scandal, closes everything."
"It closes a=
ll
our life together," I cried.
She was silent.
"It never ou=
ght
to have begun," I said.
She winced. Then
abruptly she was on her knees before me, with her hands upon my shoulder and
her eyes meeting mine.
"My dear,&qu=
ot;
she said very earnestly, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think I'm
retreating from the things we've done! Our love is the best thing I could e=
ver
have had from life. Nothing can ever equal it; nothing could ever equal the
beauty and delight you and I have had together. Never! You have loved me; y=
ou do
love me...."
No one could ever
know how to love you as I have loved you; no one could ever love me as you =
have
loved me, my king. And it's just because it's been so splendid, dear; it's =
just
because I'd die rather than have a tithe of all this wiped out of my life
again--for it's made me, it's all I am--dear, it's years since I began lovi=
ng
you--it's just because of its goodness that I want not to end in wreckage n=
ow,
not to end in the smashing up of all the big things I understand in you and
love in you....
"What is the=
re
for us if we keep on and go away?" she went on. "All the big
interests in our lives will vanish--everything. We shall become specialised
people--people overshadowed by a situation. We shall be an elopement, a
romance--all our breadth and meaning gone! People will always think of it f=
irst
when they think of us; all our work and aims will be warped by it and
subordinated to it. Is it good enough, dear? Just to specialise.... I think=
of
you. We've got a case, a passionate case, the best of cases, but do we want=
to
spend all our lives defending it and justifying it? And there's that other
life. I know now you care for Margaret--you care more than you think you do.
You have said fine things of her. I've watched you about her. Little things=
have
dropped from you. She's given her life for you; she's nothing without you. =
You
feel that to your marrow all the time you are thinking about these things. =
Oh,
I'm not jealous, dear. I love you for loving her. I love you in relation to
her. But there it is, an added weight against us, another thing worth
saving."
Presently, I
remember, she sat back on her heels and looked up into my face. "We've
done wrong--and parting's paying. It's time to pay. We needn't have paid, if
we'd kept to the track.... You and I, Master, we've got to be men."
"Yes," I
said; "we've got to be men."
4
I was driven to tell Margaret about=
our
situation by my intolerable dread that otherwise the thing might come to her
through some stupid and clumsy informant. She might even meet Altiora, and =
have
it from her.
I can still recall
the feeling of sitting at my desk that night in that large study of mine in
Radnor Square, waiting for Margaret to come home. It was oddly like the fee=
ling
of a dentist's reception-room; only it was for me to do the dentistry with
clumsy, cruel hands. I had left the door open so that she would come in to =
me.
I heard her silken
rustle on the stairs at last, and then she was in the doorway. "May I =
come
in?" she said.
"Do," I
said, and turned round to her.
"Working?&qu=
ot;
she said.
"Hard,"=
I
answered. "Where have YOU been?"
"At the
Vallerys'. Mr. Evesham was talking about you. They were all talking. I don't
think everybody knew who I was. Just Mrs. Mumble I'd been to them. Lord
Wardenham doesn't like you."
"He
doesn't."
"But they all
feel you're rather big, anyhow. Then I went on to Park Lane to hear a new
pianist and some other music at Eva's."
"Yes."<= o:p>
"Then I look=
ed
in at the Brabants' for some midnight tea before I came on here. They'd got
some writers--and Grant was there."
"You HAVE be=
en
flying round...."
There was a little
pause between us.
I looked at her
pretty, unsuspecting face, and at the slender grace of her golden-robed bod=
y.
What gulfs there were between us! "You've been amused," I said.
"It's been
amusing. You've been at the House?"
"The Medical
Education Bill kept me."...
After all, why sh=
ould
I tell her? She'd got to a way of living that fulfilled her requirements.
Perhaps she'd never hear. But all that day and the day before I'd been maki=
ng
up my mind to do the thing.
"I want to t=
ell
you something," I said. "I wish you'd sit down for a moment or
so."...
Once I had begun,=
it
seemed to me I had to go through with it.
Something in the
quality of my voice gave her an intimation of unusual gravity. She looked a=
t me
steadily for a moment and sat down slowly in my armchair.
"What is
it?" she said.
I went on awkward=
ly.
"I've got to tell you--something extraordinarily distressing," I
said.
She was manifestly
altogether unaware.
"There seems=
to
be a good deal of scandal abroad--I've only recently heard of it--about
myself--and Isabel."
"Isabel!&quo=
t;
I nodded.
"What do they
say?" she asked.
It was difficult,=
I
found, to speak.
"They say sh=
e's
my mistress."
"Oh! How
abominable!"
She spoke with the
most natural indignation. Our eyes met.
"We've been
great friends," I said.
"Yes. And to
make THAT of it. My poor dear! But how can they?" She paused and looke=
d at
me. "It's so incredible. How can any one believe it? I couldn't."=
She stopped, with=
her
distressed eyes regarding me. Her expression changed to dread. There was a
tense stillness for a second, perhaps.
I turned my face
towards the desk, and took up and dropped a handful of paper fasteners.
"Margaret,&q=
uot;
I said, "I'm afraid you'll have to believe it."
5
Margaret sat very still. When I loo=
ked at
her again, her face was very white, and her distressed eyes scrutinised me.=
Her
lips quivered as she spoke. "You really mean--THAT?" she said.
I nodded.
"I never
dreamt."
"I never mea=
nt you
to dream."
"And that is
why--we've been apart?"
I thought. "I
suppose it is."
"Why have you
told me now?"
"Those rumou=
rs.
I didn't want any one else to tell you."
"Or else it
wouldn't have mattered?"
"No."
She turned her ey=
es
from me to the fire. Then for a moment she looked about the room she had ma=
de
for me, and then quite silently, with a childish quivering of her lips, wit=
h a
sort of dismayed distress upon her face, she was weeping. She sat weeping in
her dress of cloth of gold, with her bare slender arms dropped limp over the
arms of her chair, and her eyes averted from me, making no effort to stay or
staunch her tears. "I am sorry, Margaret," I said. "I was in
love.... I did not understand...."
Presently she ask=
ed:
"What are you going to do?"
"You see,
Margaret, now it's come to be your affair--I want to know what you--what you
want."
"You want to
leave me?"
"If you want=
me
to, I must."
"Leave
Parliament--leave all the things you are doing,--all this fine movement of
yours?"
"No." I=
spoke
sullenly. "I don't want to leave anything. I want to stay on. I've told
you, because I think we--Isabel and I, I mean--have got to drive through a
storm of scandal anyhow. I don't know how far things may go, how much people
may feel, and I can't, I can't have you unconscious, unarmed, open to any
revelation--"
She made no answe=
r.
"When the th=
ing
began--I knew it was stupid but I thought it was a thing that wouldn't chan=
ge,
wouldn't be anything but itself, wouldn't unfold--consequences.... People h=
ave
got hold of these vague rumours.... Directly it reached any one else but--b=
ut
us two--I saw it had to come to you."
I stopped. I had =
that
distressful feeling I have always had with Margaret, of not being altogether
sure she heard, of being doubtful if she understood. I perceived that once
again I had struck at her and shattered a thousand unsubstantial pinnacles.=
And
I couldn't get at her, to help her, or touch her mind! I stood up, and at my
movement she moved. She produced a dainty little handkerchief, and made an
effort to wipe her face with it, and held it to her eyes. "Oh, my
Husband!" she sobbed.
"What do you
mean to do?" she said, with her voice muffled by her handkerchief.
"We're going=
to
end it," I said.
Something gripped=
me
tormentingly as I said that. I drew a chair beside her and sat down. "=
You
and I, Margaret, have been partners," I began. "We've built up th=
is
life of ours together; I couldn't have done it without you. We've made a
position, created a work--"
She shook her hea=
d.
"You," she said.
"You helping=
. I
don't want to shatter it--if you don't want it shattered. I can't leave my
work. I can't leave you. I want you to have--all that you have ever had. I'=
ve
never meant to rob you. I've made an immense and tragic blunder. You don't =
know
how things took us, how different they seemed! My character and accident ha=
ve
conspired--We'll pay--in ourselves, not in our public service."
I halted again.
Margaret remained very still.
"I want you =
to
understand that the thing is at an end. It is definitely at an end. We--we
talked--yesterday. We mean to end it altogether." I clenched my hands.
"She's--she's going to marry Arnold Shoesmith."
I wasn't looking =
now
at Margaret any more, but I heard the rustle of her movement as she turned =
on
me.
"It's all ri=
ght,"
I said, clinging to my explanation. "We're doing nothing shabby. He kn=
ows.
He will. It's all as right--as things can be now. We're not cheating any on=
e,
Margaret. We're doing things straight--now. Of course, you know.... We
shall--we shall have to make sacrifices. Give things up pretty completely. =
Very
completely.... We shall have not to see each other for a time, you know.
Perhaps not a long time. Two or three years. Or write--or just any of that =
sort
of thing ever--"
Some subconscious
barrier gave way in me. I found myself crying uncontrollably--as I have nev=
er
cried since I was a little child. I was amazed and horrified at myself. And
wonderfully, Margaret was on her knees beside me, with her arms about me,
mingling her weeping with mine. "Oh, my Husband!" she cried, &quo=
t;my
poor Husband! Does it hurt you so? I would do anything! Oh, the fool I am!
Dear, I love you. I love you over and away and above all these jealous litt=
le
things!"
She drew down my =
head
to her as a mother might draw down the head of a son. She caressed me, weep=
ing
bitterly with me. "Oh! my dear," she sobbed, "my dear! I've
never seen you cry! I've never seen you cry. Ever! I didn't know you could.=
Oh!
my dear! Can't you have her, my dear, if you want her? I can't bear it! Let=
me
help you, dear. Oh! my Husband! My Man! I can't bear to have you cry!"=
For
a time she held me in silence.
"I've thought
this might happen, I dreamt it might happen. You two, I mean. It was dreami=
ng
put it into my head. When I've seen you together, so glad with each other..=
..
Oh! Husband mine, believe me! believe me! I'm stupid, I'm cold, I'm only
beginning to realise how stupid and cold, but all I want in all the world i=
s to
give my life to you."...
6
"We can't part in a room,"=
; said
Isabel.
"We'll have =
one
last talk together," I said, and planned that we should meet for a hal=
f a
day between Dover and Walmer and talk ourselves out. I still recall that day
very well, recall even the curious exaltation of grief that made our mental
atmosphere distinctive and memorable. We had seen so much of one another, h=
ad
become so intimate, that we talked of parting even as we parted with a sens=
e of
incredible remoteness. We went together up over the cliffs, and to a place
where they fall towards the sea, past the white, quaint-lanterned lighthous=
es
of the South Foreland. There, in a kind of niche below the crest, we sat
talking. It was a spacious day, serenely blue and warm, and on the wrinkled
water remotely below a black tender and six hooded submarines came presentl=
y,
and engaged in mysterious manoeuvers. Shrieking gulls and chattering jackda=
ws
circled over us and below us, and dived and swooped; and a skerry of weedy,
fallen chalk appeared, and gradually disappeared again, as the tide fell and
rose.
We talked and tho=
ught
that afternoon on every aspect of our relations. It seems to me now we talk=
ed
so wide and far that scarcely an issue in the life between man and woman can
arise that we did not at least touch upon. Lying there at Isabel's feet, I =
have
become for myself a symbol of all this world-wide problem between duty and
conscious, passionate love the world has still to solve. Because it isn't
solved; there's a wrong in it either way.. .. The sky, the wide horizon, se=
emed
to lift us out of ourselves until we were something representative and gene=
ral.
She was womanhood become articulate, talking to her lover.
"I ought,&qu=
ot;
I said, "never to have loved you."
"It wasn't a
thing planned," she said.
"I ought nev=
er
to have let our talk slip to that, never to have turned back from
America."
"I'm glad we=
did
it," she said. "Don't think I repent."
I looked at her.<= o:p>
"I will never
repent," she said. "Never!" as though she clung to her life =
in
saying it.
I remember we tal=
ked
for a long time of divorce. It seemed to us then, and it seems to us still,
that it ought to have been possible for Margaret to divorce me, and for me =
to
marry without the scandalous and ugly publicity, the taint and ostracism th=
at
follow such a readjustment. We went on to the whole perplexing riddle of ma=
rriage.
We criticised the current code, how muddled and conventionalised it had bec=
ome,
how modified by subterfuges and concealments and new necessities, and the i=
ncreasing
freedom of women. "It's all like Bromstead when the building came,&quo=
t; I
said; for I had often talked to her of that early impression of purpose
dissolving again into chaotic forces. "There is no clear right in the
world any more. The world is Byzantine. The justest man to-day must practis=
e a
tainted goodness."
These questions n=
eed
discussion--a magnificent frankness of discussion--if any standards are aga=
in
to establish an effective hold upon educated people. Discretions, as I have
said already, will never hold any one worth holding--longer than they held =
us.
Against every "shalt not" there must be a "why not" pla=
inly
put,--the "why not" largest and plainest, the law deduced from its
purpose. "You and I, Isabel," I said, "have always been a li=
ttle
disregardful of duty, partly at least because the idea of duty comes to us =
so
ill-clad. Oh! I know there's an extravagant insubordinate strain in us, but
that wasn't all. I wish humbugs would leave duty alone. I wish all duty was=
n't
covered with slime. That's where the real mischief comes in. Passion can al=
ways
contrive to clothe itself in beauty, strips itself splendid. That carried u=
s.
But for all its mean associations there is this duty....
"Don't we co=
me
rather late to it?"
"Not so late
that it won't be atrociously hard to do."
"It's queer =
to
think of now," said Isabel. "Who could believe we did all we have
done honestly? Well, in a manner honestly. Who could believe we thought this
might be hidden? Who could trace it all step by step from the time when we
found that a certain boldness in our talk was pleasing? We talked of love..=
..
Master, there's not much for us to do in the way of Apologia that any one w=
ill
credit. And yet if it were possible to tell the very heart of our story....=
"Does Margar=
et
really want to go on with you?" she asked--"shield you--knowing o=
f...
THIS?"
"I'm certain=
. I
don't understand--just as I don't understand Shoesmith, but she does. These
people walk on solid ground which is just thin air to us. They've got somet=
hing
we haven't got. Assurances? I wonder."...
Then it was, or
later, we talked of Shoesmith, and what her life might be with him.
"He's
good," she said; "he's kindly. He's everything but magic. He's th=
e very
image of the decent, sober, honourable life. You can't say a thing against =
him
or I--except that something--something in his imagination, something in the
tone of his voice--fails for me. Why don't I love him?--he's a better man t=
han
you! Why don't you? IS he a better man than you? He's usage, he's honour, h=
e's
the right thing, he's the breed and the tradition,--a gentleman. You're your
erring, incalculable self. I suppose we women will trust this sort and love
your sort to the very end of time...."
We lay side by si=
de
and nibbled at grass stalks as we talked. It seemed enormously unreasonable=
to
us that two people who had come to the pitch of easy and confident affection
and happiness that held between us should be obliged to part and shun one
another, or murder half the substance of their lives. We felt ourselves cru=
shed
and beaten by an indiscriminating machine which destroys happiness in the
service of jealousy. "The mass of people don't feel these things in qu=
ite
the same manner as we feel them," she said. "Is it because they're
different in grain, or educated out of some primitive instinct?"
"It's because
we've explored love a little, and they know no more than the gateway,"=
I
said. "Lust and then jealousy; their simple conception--and we have go=
ne
past all that and wandered hand in hand...."
I remember that f=
or a
time we watched two of that larger sort of gull, whose wings are
brownish-white, circle and hover against the blue. And then we lay and look=
ed
at a band of water mirror clear far out to sea, and wondered why the breeze
that rippled all the rest should leave it so serene.
"And in this
State of ours," I resumed.
"Eh!" s=
aid
Isabel, rolling over into a sitting posture and looking out at the horizon.
"Let's talk no more of things we can never see. Talk to me of the work=
you
are doing and all we shall do--after we have parted. We've said too little =
of
that. We've had our red life, and it's over. Thank Heaven!--though we stole=
it!
Talk about your work, dear, and the things we'll go on doing--just as thoug=
h we
were still together. We'll still be together in a sense--through all these
things we have in common."
And so we talked =
of
politics and our outlook. We were interested to the pitch of
self-forgetfulness. We weighed persons and forces, discussed the probabilit=
ies
of the next general election, the steady drift of public opinion in the nor=
th
and west away from Liberalism towards us. It was very manifest that in spit=
e of
Wardenham and the EXPURGATOR, we should come into the new Government strong=
ly.
The party had no one else, all the young men were formally or informally wi=
th
us; Esmeer would have office, Lord Tarvrille, I... and very probably there
would be something for Shoesmith. "And for my own part," I said,
"I count on backing on the Liberal side. For the last two years we've =
been
forcing competition in constructive legislation between the parties. The
Liberals have not been long in following up our Endowment of Motherhood lea=
d.
They'll have to give votes and lip service anyhow. Half the readers of the =
BLUE
WEEKLY, they say, are Liberals....
"I remember
talking about things of this sort with old Willersley," I said, "=
ever
so many years ago. It was some place near Locarno, and we looked down the l=
ake
that shone weltering--just as now we look over the sea. And then we dreamt =
in
an indistinct featureless way of all that you and I are doing now."
"I!" sa=
id
Isabel, and laughed.
"Well, of so=
me
such thing," I said, and remained for awhile silent, thinking of Locar=
no.
I recalled once m=
ore
the largeness, the release from small personal things that I had felt in my
youth; statecraft became real and wonderful again with the memory, the giga=
ntic
handling of gigantic problems. I began to talk out my thoughts, sitting up
beside her, as I could never talk of them to any one but Isabel; began to
recover again the purpose that lay under all my political ambitions and
adjustments and anticipations. I saw the State, splendid and wide as I had =
seen
it in that first travel of mine, but now it was no mere distant prospect of=
spires
and pinnacles, but populous with fine-trained, bold-thinking, bold-doing
people. It was as if I had forgotten for a long time and now remembered with
amazement.
At first, I told =
her,
I had been altogether at a loss how I could do anything to battle against t=
he
aimless muddle of our world; I had wanted a clue--until she had come into my
life questioning, suggesting, unconsciously illuminating. "But I have =
done
nothing," she protested. I declared she had done everything in growing=
to
education under my eyes, in reflecting again upon all the processes that had
made myself, so that instead of abstractions and blue-books and bills and
devices, I had realised the world of mankind as a crowd needing before all
things fine women and men. We'd spoilt ourselves in learning that, but anyh=
ow
we had our lesson. Before her I was in a nineteenth-century darkness, deali=
ng with
the nation as if it were a crowd of selfish men, forgetful of women and
children and that shy wild thing in the hearts of men, love, which must be
drawn upon as it has never been drawn upon before, if the State is to live.=
I
saw now how it is possible to bring the loose factors of a great realm
together, to create a mind of literature and thought in it, and the express=
ion
of a purpose to make it self-conscious and fine. I had it all clear before =
me,
so that at a score of points I could presently begin. The BLUE WEEKLY was a
centre of force. Already we had given Imperialism a criticism, and leavened
half the press from our columns. Our movement consolidated and spread. We
should presently come into power. Everything moved towards our hands. We sh=
ould
be able to get at the schools, the services, the universities, the church;
enormously increase the endowment of research, and organise what was sorely
wanted, a criticism of research; contrive a closer contact between the press
and creative intellectual life; foster literature, clarify, strengthen the =
public
consciousness, develop social organisation and a sense of the State. Men we=
re
coming to us every day, brilliant young peers like Lord Dentonhill, writers
like Carnot and Cresswell. It filled me with pride to win such men. "We
stand for so much more than we seem to stand for," I said. I opened my
heart to her, so freely that I hesitate to open my heart even to the reader,
telling of projects and ambitions I cherished, of my consciousness of great
powers and widening opportunities....
Isabel watched me=
as
I talked.
She too, I think,=
had
forgotten these things for a while. For it is curious and I think a very
significant thing that since we had become lovers, we had talked very littl=
e of
the broader things that had once so strongly gripped our imaginations.
"It's
good," I said, "to talk like this to you, to get back to youth an=
d great
ambitions with you. There have been times lately when politics has seemed t=
he
pettiest game played with mean tools for mean ends--and none the less so th=
at
the happiness of three hundred million people might be touched by our folli=
es.
I talk to no one else like this.... And now I think of parting, I think but=
of
how much more I might have talked to you."...
Things drew to an=
end
at last, but after we had spoken of a thousand things.
"We've talked
away our last half day," I said, staring over my shoulder at the blazi=
ng
sunset sky behind us. "Dear, it's been the last day of our lives for
us.... It doesn't seem like the last day of our lives. Or any day."
"I wonder ho=
w it
will feel?" said Isabel.
"It will be =
very
strange at first--not to be able to tell you things."
"I've a
superstition that after--after we've parted--if ever I go into my room and
talk, you'll hear. You'll be--somewhere."
"I shall be =
in
the world--yes."
"I don't fee=
l as
though these days ahead were real. Here we are, here we remain."
"Yes, I feel
that. As though you and I were two immortals, who didn't live in time and s=
pace
at all, who never met, who couldn't part, and here we lie on Olympus. And t=
hose
two poor creatures who did meet, poor little Richard Remington and Isabel
Rivers, who met and loved too much and had to part, they part and go their
ways, and we lie here and watch them, you and I. She'll cry, poor dear.&quo=
t;
"She'll cry.
She's crying now!"
"Poor little
beasts! I think he'll cry too. He winces. He could--for tuppence. I didn't =
know
he had lachrymal glands at all until a little while ago. I suppose all love=
is
hysterical--and a little foolish. Poor mites! Silly little pitiful creature=
s!
How we have blundered! Think how we must look to God! Well, we'll pity them,
and then we'll inspire him to stiffen up again--and do as we've determined =
he
shall do. We'll see it through,--we who lie here on the cliff. They'll be m=
ean
at times, and horrid at times; we know them! Do you see her, a poor little =
fine
lady in a great house,--she sometimes goes to her room and writes."
"She writes =
for
his BLUE WEEKLY still."
"Yes.
Sometimes--I hope. And he's there in the office with a bit of her copy in h=
is hand."
"Is it as go=
od
as if she still talked it over with him before she wrote it? Is it?"
"Better, I
think. Let's play it's better--anyhow. It may be that talking over was rath=
er
mixed with love-making. After all, love-making is joy rather than magic. Do=
n't
let's pretend about that even.... Let's go on watching him. (I don't see why
her writing shouldn't be better. Indeed I don't.) See! There he goes down a=
long
the Embankment to Westminster just like a real man, for all that he's small=
er
than a grain of dust. What is running round inside that speck of a head of =
his?
Look at him going past the Policemen, specks too--selected large ones from =
the
country. I think he's going to dinner with the Speaker--some old thing like
that. Is his face harder or commoner or stronger?--I can't quite see.... And
now he's up and speaking in the House. Hope he'll hold on to the thread. He=
'll have
to plan his speeches to the very end of his days--and learn the headings.&q=
uot;
"Isn't she u=
p in
the women's gallery to hear him?"
"No. Unless =
it's
by accident."
"She's
there," she said.
"Well, by
accident it happens. Not too many accidents, Isabel. Never any more adventu=
res
for us, dear, now. No!... They play the game, you know. They've begun late,=
but
now they've got to. You see it's not so very hard for them since you and I,=
my
dear, are here always, always faithfully here on this warm cliff of love
accomplished, watching and helping them under high heaven. It isn't so VERY
hard. Rather good in some ways. Some people HAVE to be broken a little. Can=
you
see Altiora down there, by any chance?"
"She's too
little to be seen," she said.
"Can you see=
the
sins they once committed?"
"I can only =
see
you here beside me, dear--for ever. For all my life, dear, till I die. Was
that--the sin?"...
I took her to the
station, and after she had gone I was to drive to Dover, and cross to Calai=
s by
the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return to London. We walked over the cr=
est
and down to the little station of Martin Mill side by side, talking at firs=
t in
broken fragments, for the most part of unimportant things.
"None of
this," she said abruptly, "seems in the slightest degree real to =
me.
I've got no sense of things ending."
"We're
parting," I said.
"We're
parting--as people part in a play. It's distressing. But I don't feel as th=
ough
you and I were really never to see each other again for years. Do you?"=
;
I thought.
"No," I said.
"After we've
parted I shall look to talk it over with you."
"So shall
I."
"That's
absurd."
"Absurd.&quo=
t;
"I feel as if
you'd always be there, just about where you are now. Invisible perhaps, but
there. We've spent so much of our lives joggling elbows."...
"Yes. Yes. I
don't in the least realise it. I suppose I shall begin to when the train go=
es
out of the station. Are we wanting in imagination, Isabel?"
"I don't kno=
w.
We've always assumed it was the other way about."
"Even when t=
he
train goes out of the station--! I've seen you into so many trains."
"I shall go =
on
thinking of things to say to you--things to put in your letters. For years =
to
come. How can I ever stop thinking in that way now? We've got into each oth=
er's
brains."
"It isn't
real," I said; "nothing is real. The world's no more than a fanta=
stic
dream. Why are we parting, Isabel?"
"I don't kno=
w.
It seems now supremely silly. I suppose we have to. Can't we meet?--don't y=
ou
think we shall meet even in dreams?"
"We'll meet a
thousand times in dreams," I said.
"I wish we c=
ould
dream at the same time," said Isabel.... "Dream walks. I can't
believe, dear, I shall never have a walk with you again."
"If I'd stay=
ed
six months in America," I said, "we might have walked long walks =
and
talked long talks for all our lives."
"Not in a wo=
rld
of Baileys," said Isabel. "And anyhow--"
She stopped short=
. I
looked interrogation.
"We've
loved," she said.
I took her ticket,
saw to her luggage, and stood by the door of the compartment.
"Good-bye," I said a little stiffly, conscious of the people upon=
the
platform. She bent above me, white and dusky, looking at me very steadfastl=
y.
"Come
here," she whispered. "Never mind the porters. What can they know=
? Just
one time more--I must."
She rested her ha=
nd
against the door of the carriage and bent down upon me, and put her cold, m=
oist
lips to mine.
CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ THE
BREAKING POINT
1
And then we broke down. We broke our
faith with both Margaret and Shoesmith, flung career and duty out of our li=
ves,
and went away together.
It is only now,
almost a year after these events, that I can begin to see what happened to =
me.
At the time it seemed to me I was a rational, responsible creature, but ind=
eed
I had not parted from her two days before I became a monomaniac to whom not=
hing
could matter but Isabel. Every truth had to be squared to that obsession, e=
very
duty. It astounds me to think how I forgot Margaret, forgot my work, forgot
everything but that we two were parted. I still believe that with better
chances we might have escaped the consequences of the emotional storm that =
presently
seized us both. But we had no foresight of that, and no preparation for it,=
and
our circumstances betrayed us. It was partly Shoesmith's unwisdom in delayi=
ng
his marriage until after the end of the session--partly my own amazing foll=
y in
returning within four days to Westminster. But we were all of us intent upon
the defeat of scandal and the complete restoration of appearances. It seemed
necessary that Shoesmith's marriage should not seem to be hurried, still mo=
re
necessary that I should not vanish inexplicably. I had to be visible with
Margaret in London just as much as possible; we went to restaurants, we vis=
ited
the theatre; we could even contemplate the possibility of my presence at the
wedding. For that, however, we had schemed a weekend visit to Wales, and a
fictitious sprained ankle at the last moment which would justify my absence=
....
I cannot convey to
you the intolerable wretchedness and rebellion of my separation from Isabel=
. It
seemed that in the past two years all my thoughts had spun commisures to
Isabel's brain and I could think of nothing that did not lead me surely to =
the
need of the one intimate I had found in the world. I came back to the House=
and
the office and my home, I filled all my days with appointments and duty, an=
d it
did not save me in the least from a lonely emptiness such as I had never fe=
lt before
in all my life. I had little sleep. In the daytime I did a hundred things, I
even spoke in the House on two occasions, and by my own low standards spoke
well, and it seemed to me that I was going about in my own brain like a hus=
hed
survivor in a house whose owner lies dead upstairs.
I came to a crisis
after that wild dinner of Tarvrille's. Something in that stripped my soul b=
are.
It was an occasion
made absurd and strange by the odd accident that the house caught fire upst=
airs
while we were dining below. It was a men's dinner--"A dinner of all
sorts," said Tarvrille, when he invited me; "everything from Eves=
ham
and Gane to Wilkins the author, and Heaven knows what will happen!" I
remember that afterwards Tarvrille was accused of having planned the fire to
make his dinner a marvel and a memory. It was indeed a wonderful occasion, =
and
I suppose if I had not been altogether drenched in misery, I should have fo=
und
the same wild amusement in it that glowed in all the others. There were one=
or
two university dons, Lord George Fester, the racing man, Panmure, the artis=
t,
two or three big City men, Weston Massinghay and another prominent Liberal
whose name I can't remember, the three men Tarvrille had promised and Esmee=
r,
Lord Wrassleton, Waulsort, the member for Monckton, Neal and several others=
. We
began a little coldly, with duologues, but the conversation was already
becoming general--so far as such a long table permitted--when the fire asse=
rted
itself.
It asserted itself
first as a penetrating and emphatic smell of burning rubber,--it was caused=
by
the fusing of an electric wire. The reek forced its way into the discussion=
of
the Pekin massacres that had sprung up between Evesham, Waulsort, and the
others at the end of the table. "Something burning," said the man
next to me.
"Something m=
ust
be burning," said Panmure.
Tarvrille hated
undignified interruptions. He had a particularly imperturbable butler with a
cadaverous sad face and an eye of rigid disapproval. He spoke to this indiv=
idual
over his shoulder. "Just see, will you," he said, and caught up t=
he
pause in the talk to his left.
Wilkins was asking
questions, and I, too, was curious. The story of the siege of the Legations=
in
China in the year 1900 and all that followed upon that, is just one of those
disturbing interludes in history that refuse to join on to that general sch=
eme
of protestation by which civilisation is maintained. It is a break in the
general flow of experience as disconcerting to statecraft as the robbery of=
my knife
and the scuffle that followed it had been to me when I was a boy at Penge. =
It
is like a tear in a curtain revealing quite unexpected backgrounds. I had n=
ever
given the business a thought for years; now this talk brought back a string=
of
pictures to my mind; how the reliefs arrived and the plundering began, how
section after section of the International Army was drawn into murder and
pillage, how the infection spread upward until the wives of Ministers were =
busy
looting, and the very sentinels stripped and crawled like snakes into the
Palace they were set to guard. It did not stop at robbery, men were murdere=
d,
women, being plundered, were outraged, children were butchered, strong men =
had
found themselves with arms in a lawless, defenceless city, and this had
followed. Now it was all recalled.
"Respectable
ladies addicted to district visiting at home were as bad as any one," =
said
Panmure. "Glazebrook told me of one--flushed like a woman at a bargain
sale, he said--and when he pointed out to her that the silk she'd got was
bloodstained, she just said, 'Oh, bother!' and threw it aside and went
back...."
We became aware t=
hat
Tarvrille's butler had returned. We tried not to seem to listen.
"Beg pardon,
m'lord," he said. "The house IS on fire, m'lord."
"Upstairs,
m'lord."
"Just overhe=
ad,
m'lord."
"The maids a=
re
throwing water, m'lord, and I've telephoned FIRE."
"No, m'lord,=
no
immediate danger."
"It's all
right," said Tarvrille to the table generally. "Go on! It's not a
general conflagration, and the fire brigade won't be five minutes. Don't see
that it's our affair. The stuff's insured. They say old Lady Paskershortly =
was
dreadful. Like a harpy. The Dowager Empress had shown her some little thing=
s of
hers. Pet things--hidden away. Susan went straight for them--used to take an
umbrella for the silks. Born shoplifter."
It was evident he
didn't want his dinner spoilt, and we played up loyally.
"This is
recorded history," said Wilkins,--"practically. It makes one wond=
er
about unrecorded history. In India, for example."
But nobody touched
that.
"Thompson,&q=
uot;
said Tarvrille to the imperturbable butler, and indicating the table genera=
lly,
"champagne. Champagne. Keep it going."
"M'lord,&quo=
t;
and Thompson marshalled his assistants.
Some man I didn't
know began to remember things about Mandalay. "It's queer," he sa=
id,
"how people break out at times;" and told his story of an army
doctor, brave, public-spirited, and, as it happened, deeply religious, who =
was
caught one evening by the excitement of plundering--and stole and hid, twis=
ted
the wrist of a boy until it broke, and was afterwards overcome by wild remo=
rse.
I watched Evesham
listening intently. "Strange," he said, "very strange. We are
such stuff as thieves are made of. And in China, too, they murdered people-=
-for
the sake of murdering. Apart, so to speak, from mercenary considerations. I=
'm
afraid there's no doubt of it in certain cases. No doubt at all. Young sold=
iers
fresh from German high schools and English homes!"
"Did OUR
people?" asked some patriot.
"Not so much.
But I'm afraid there were cases.... Some of the Indian troops were pretty
bad."
Gane picked up the
tale with confirmations.
It is all printed=
in
the vividest way as a picture upon my memory, so that were I a painter I th=
ink
I could give the deep rich browns and warm greys beyond the brightly lit ta=
ble,
the various distinguished faces, strongly illuminated, interested and keen,
above the black and white of evening dress, the alert menservants with their
heavier, clean-shaved faces indistinctly seen in the dimness behind. Then t=
his
was coloured emotionally for me by my aching sense of loss and sacrifice, a=
nd
by the chance trend of our talk to the breaches and unrealities of the civi=
lised
scheme. We seemed a little transitory circle of light in a universe of dark=
ness
and violence; an effect to which the diminishing smell of burning rubber, t=
he
trampling of feet overhead, the swish of water, added enormously.
Everybody--unless, perhaps, it was Evesham--drank rather carelessly because=
of
the suppressed excitement of our situation, and talked the louder and more
freely.
"But what a
flimsy thing our civilisation is!" said Evesham; "a mere thin net=
of
habits and associations!"
"I suppose t=
hose
men came back," said Wilkins.
"Lady
Paskershortly did!" chuckled Evesham.
"How do they=
fit
it in with the rest of their lives?" Wilkins speculated. "I suppo=
se
there's Pekin-stained police officers, Pekin-stained J. P.'s--trying petty
pilferers in the severest manner."...
Then for a time
things became preposterous. There was a sudden cascade of water by the
fireplace, and then absurdly the ceiling began to rain upon us, first at th=
is
point and then that. "My new suit!" cried some one. "Perrrrr=
r-up
pe-rr"--a new vertical line of blackened water would establish itself =
and
form a spreading pool upon the gleaming cloth. The men nearest would arrange
catchment areas of plates and flower bowls. "Draw up!" said
Tarvrille, "draw up. That's the bad end of the table!" He turned =
to
the imperturbable butler. "Take round bath towels," he said; and
presently the men behind us were offering--with inflexible dignity--"P=
ort
wine, Sir. Bath towel, Sir!" Waulsort, with streaks of blackened water=
on
his forehead, was suddenly reminded of a wet year when he had followed the
French army manoeuvres. An animated dispute sprang up between him and Neal
about the relative efficiency of the new French and German field guns.
Wrassleton joined in and a little drunken shrivelled Oxford don of some sort
with a black-splashed shirt front who presently silenced them all by the
immensity and particularity of his knowledge of field artillery. Then the t=
alk
drifted to Sedan and the effect of dead horses upon drinking-water, which
brought Wrassleton and Weston Massinghay into a dispute of great vigour and
emphasis. "The trouble in South Africa," said Weston Massinghay,
"wasn't that we didn't boil our water. It was that we didn't boil our =
men.
The Boers drank the same stuff we did. THEY didn't get dysentery."
That argument wen=
t on
for some time. I was attacked across the table by a man named Burshort abou=
t my
Endowment of Motherhood schemes, but in the gaps of that debate I could sti=
ll
hear Weston Massinghay at intervals repeat in a rather thickened voice:
"THEY didn't get dysentery."
I think Evesham w=
ent
early. The rest of us clustered more and more closely towards the drier end=
of
the room, the table was pushed along, and the area beneath the extinguished
conflagration abandoned to a tinkling, splashing company of pots and pans a=
nd
bowls and baths. Everybody was now disposed to be hilarious and noisy, to s=
ay
startling and aggressive things; we must have sounded a queer clamour to a =
listener
in the next room. The devil inspired them to begin baiting me. "Ours i=
sn't
the Tory party any more," said Burshort. "Remington has made it t=
he
Obstetric Party."
"That's
good!" said Weston Massinghay, with all his teeth gleaming; "I sh=
all
use that against you in the House!"
"I shall
denounce you for abusing private confidences if you do," said Tarvrill=
e.
"Remington w=
ants
us to give up launching Dreadnoughts and launch babies instead," Bursh=
ort
urged. "For the price of one Dreadnought--"
The little shrive=
lled
don who had been omniscient about guns joined in the baiting, and displayed
himself a venomous creature. Something in his eyes told me he knew Isabel a=
nd
hated me for it. "Love and fine thinking," he began, a little
thickly, and knocking over a wine-glass with a too easy gesture. "Love=
and
fine thinking. Two things don't go together. No philosophy worth a damn ever
came out of excesses of love. Salt Lake City--Piggott--Ag--Agapemone again-=
-no
works to matter."
Everybody laughed=
.
"Got to rec'=
nise
these facts," said my assailant. "Love and fine think'n pretty
phrase--attractive. Suitable for p'litical dec'rations. Postcard, Christmas,
gilt lets, in a wreath of white flow's. Not oth'wise valu'ble."
I made some remar=
k, I
forget what, but he overbore me.
Real things we wa=
nt
are Hate--Hate and COARSE think'n. I b'long to the school of Mrs. F's
Aunt--"
"What?"
said some one, intent.
"In 'Little
Dorrit,'" explained Tarvrille; "go on!"
"Hate a
fool," said my assailant.
Tarvrille glanced=
at
me. I smiled to conceal the loss of my temper.
"Hate,"
said the little man, emphasising his point with a clumsy fist. "Hate's=
the
driving force. What's m'rality?--hate of rotten goings on. What's
patriotism?--hate of int'loping foreigners. What's Radicalism?--hate of lor=
ds.
What's Toryism?--hate of disturbance. It's all hate--hate from top to botto=
m.
Hate of a mess. Remington owned it the other day, said he hated a mu'll. Th=
ere
you are! If you couldn't get hate into an election, damn it (hic) people
wou'n't poll. Poll for love!--no' me!"
He paused, but be=
fore
any one could speak he had resumed.
"Then this a=
bout
fine thinking. Like going into a bear pit armed with a tagle--talgent--talg=
ent
galv'nometer. Like going to fight a mad dog with Shasepear and the Bible. F=
ine
thinking--what we want is the thickes' thinking we can get. Thinking that
stands up alone. Taf Reform means work for all, thassort of thing."
The gentleman from
Cambridge paused. "YOU a flag!" he said. "I'd as soon go to
ba'ell und' wet tissue paper!"
My best answer on=
the
spur of the moment was:
"The Japanese
did." Which was absurd.
I went on to some
other reply, I forget exactly what, and the talk of the whole table drew ro=
und
me. It was an extraordinary revelation to me. Every one was unusually carel=
ess
and outspoken, and it was amazing how manifestly they echoed the feeling of
this old Tory spokesman. They were quite friendly to me, they regarded me a=
nd
the BLUE WEEKLY as valuable party assets for Toryism, but it was clear they
attached no more importance to what were my realities than they did to the
remarkable therapeutic claims of Mrs. Eddy. They were flushed and amused,
perhaps they went a little too far in their resolves to draw me, but they l=
eft the
impression on my mind of men irrevocably set upon narrow and cynical views =
of
political life. For them the political struggle was a game, whose counters =
were
human hate and human credulity; their real aim was just every one's aim, the
preservation of the class and way of living to which their lives were attun=
ed.
They did not know how tired I was, how exhausted mentally and morally, nor =
how
cruel their convergent attack on me chanced to be. But my temper gave way, I
became tart and fierce, perhaps my replies were a trifle absurd, and Tarvri=
lle,
with that quick eye and sympathy of his, came to the rescue. Then for a tim=
e I
sat silent and drank port wine while the others talked. The disorder of the
room, the still dripping ceiling, the noise, the displaced ties and crumpled
shirts of my companions, jarred on my tormented nerves....
It was long past
midnight when we dispersed. I remember Tarvrille coming with me into the ha=
ll,
and then suggesting we should go upstairs to see the damage. A manservant
carried up two flickering candles for us. One end of the room was gutted,
curtains, hangings, several chairs and tables were completely burnt, the
panelling was scorched and warped, three smashed windows made the candles f=
lare
and gutter, and some scraps of broken china still lay on the puddled floor.=
As we surveyed th=
is,
Lady Tarvrille appeared, back from some party, a slender, white-cloaked,
satin-footed figure with amazed blue eyes beneath her golden hair. I rememb=
er
how stupidly we laughed at her surprise.
2
I parted from Panmure at the corner=
of
Aldington Street, and went my way alone. But I did not go home, I turned
westward and walked for a long way, and then struck northward aimlessly. I =
was
too miserable to go to my house.
I wandered about =
that
night like a man who has discovered his Gods are dead. I can look back now
detached yet sympathetic upon that wild confusion of moods and impulses, an=
d by
it I think I can understand, oh! half the wrongdoing and blundering in the
world.
I do not feel now=
the
logical force of the process that must have convinced me then that I had ma=
de
my sacrifice and spent my strength in vain. At no time had I been under any
illusion that the Tory party had higher ideals than any other party, yet it
came to me like a thing newly discovered that the men I had to work with had
for the most part no such dreams, no sense of any collective purpose, no at=
om
of the faith I held. They were just as immediately intent upon personal end=
s,
just as limited by habits of thought, as the men in any other group or part=
y.
Perhaps I had slipped unawares for a time into the delusions of a party
man--but I do not think so.
No, it was the mo=
od
of profound despondency that had followed upon the abrupt cessation of my
familiar intercourse with Isabel, that gave this fact that had always been
present in my mind its quality of devastating revelation. It seemed as thou=
gh I
had never seen before nor suspected the stupendous gap between the chaotic
aims, the routine, the conventional acquiescences, the vulgarisations of the
personal life, and that clearly conscious development and service of a
collective thought and purpose at which my efforts aimed. I had thought the=
m but
a little way apart, and now I saw they were separated by all the distance b=
etween
earth and heaven. I saw now in myself and every one around me, a concentrat=
ion
upon interests close at hand, an inability to detach oneself from the
provocations, tendernesses, instinctive hates, dumb lusts and shy timidities
that touched one at every point; and, save for rare exalted moments, a
regardlessness of broader aims and remoter possibilities that made the white
passion of statecraft seem as unearthly and irrelevant to human life as the
story an astronomer will tell, half proven but altogether incredible, of
habitable planets and answering intelligences, suns' distances uncounted ac=
ross
the deep. It seemed to me I had aspired too high and thought too far, had
mocked my own littleness by presumption, had given the uttermost dear reali=
ty
of life for a theoriser's dream.
All through that
wandering agony of mine that night a dozen threads of thought interwove; no=
w I
was a soul speaking in protest to God against a task too cold and high for =
it,
and now I was an angry man, scorned and pointed upon, who had let life cheat
him of the ultimate pride of his soul. Now I was the fool of ambition, who
opened his box of gold to find blank emptiness, and now I was a spinner of
flimsy thoughts, whose web tore to rags at a touch. I realised for the first
time how much I had come to depend upon the mind and faith of Isabel, how s=
he
had confirmed me and sustained me, how little strength I had to go on with =
our purposes
now that she had vanished from my life. She had been the incarnation of tho=
se
great abstractions, the saving reality, the voice that answered back. There=
was
no support that night in the things that had been. We were alone together on
the cliff for ever more!--that was very pretty in its way, but it had no tr=
uth
whatever that could help me now, no ounce of sustaining value. I wanted Isa=
bel
that night, no sentiment or memory of her, but Isabel alive,--to talk to me=
, to
touch me, to hold me together. I wanted unendurably the dusky gentleness of=
her
presence, the consolation of her voice.
We were alone
together on the cliff! I startled a passing cabman into interest by laughing
aloud at that magnificent and characteristic sentimentality. What a lie it =
was,
and how satisfying it had been! That was just where we shouldn't remain. We=
of
all people had no distinction from that humanity whose lot is to forget. We
should go out to other interests, new experiences, new demands. That tall a=
nd
intricate fabric of ambitious understandings we had built up together in our
intimacy would be the first to go; and last perhaps to endure with us would=
be a
few gross memories of sights and sounds, and trivial incidental excitements=
....
I had a curious
feeling that night that I had lost touch with life for a long time, and had=
now
been reminded of its quality. That infernal little don's parody of my ruling
phrase, "Hate and coarse thinking," stuck in my thoughts like a
poisoned dart, a centre of inflammation. Just as a man who is debilitated h=
as
no longer the vitality to resist an infection, so my mind, slackened by the
crisis of my separation from Isabel, could find no resistance to his emphat=
ic
suggestion. It seemed to me that what he had said was overpoweringly true, =
not
only of contemporary life, but of all possible human life. Love is the rare=
thing,
the treasured thing; you lock it away jealously and watch, and well you may;
hate and aggression and force keep the streets and rule the world. And fine
thinking is, in the rough issues of life, weak thinking, is a balancing
indecisive process, discovers with disloyal impartiality a justice and a de=
fect
on each disputing side. "Good honest men," as Dayton calls them, =
rule
the world, with a way of thinking out decisions like shooting cartloads of =
bricks,
and with a steadfast pleasure in hostility. Dayton liked to call his
antagonists "blaggards and scoundrels"--it justified his
opposition--the Lords were "scoundrels," all people richer than he
were "scoundrels," all Socialists, all troublesome poor people; he
liked to think of jails and justice being done. His public spirit was satur=
ated
with the sombre joys of conflict and the pleasant thought of condign punish=
ment
for all recalcitrant souls. That was the way of it, I perceived. That had s=
urvival
value, as the biologists say. He was fool enough in politics to be a consis=
tent
and happy politician....
Hate and coarse
thinking; how the infernal truth of the phrase beat me down that night! I
couldn't remember that I had known this all along, and that it did not real=
ly
matter in the slightest degree. I had worked it all out long ago in other
terms, when I had seen how all parties stood for interests inevitably, and =
how
the purpose in life achieves itself, if it achieves itself at all, as a bye
product of the war of individuals and classes. Hadn't I always known that
science and philosophy elaborate themselves in spite of all the passion and=
narrowness
of men, in spite of the vanities and weakness of their servants, in spite of
all the heated disorder of contemporary things? Wasn't it my own phrase to
speak of "that greater mind in men, in which we are but moments and
transitorily lit cells?" Hadn't I known that the spirit of man still
speaks like a thing that struggles out of mud and slime, and that the mere =
effort
to speak means choking and disaster? Hadn't I known that we who think witho=
ut
fear and speak without discretion will not come to our own for the next two
thousand years?
It was the last w=
as
most forgotten of all that faith mislaid. Before mankind, in my vision that
night, stretched new centuries of confusion, vast stupid wars, hastily
conceived laws, foolish temporary triumphs of order, lapses, set-backs,
despairs, catastrophes, new beginnings, a multitudinous wilderness of time,=
a
nigh plotless drama of wrong-headed energies. In order to assuage my parting
from Isabel we had set ourselves to imagine great rewards for our separatio=
n,
great personal rewards; we had promised ourselves success visible and shini=
ng
in our lives. To console ourselves in our separation we had made out of the
BLUE WEEKLY and our young Tory movement preposterously enormous things-as
though those poor fertilising touches at the soil were indeed the germinati=
ng
seeds of the millennium, as though a million lives such as ours had not to
contribute before the beginning of the beginning. That poor pretence had
failed. That magnificent proposition shrivelled to nothing in the black
loneliness of that night.
I saw that there =
were
to be no such compensations. So far as my real services to mankind were
concerned I had to live an unrecognised and unrewarded life. If I made
successes it would be by the way. Our separation would alter nothing of tha=
t.
My scandal would cling to me now for all my life, a thing affecting
relationships, embarrassing and hampering my spirit. I should follow the co=
mmon
lot of those who live by the imagination, and follow it now in infinite
loneliness of soul; the one good comforter, the one effectual familiar, was
lost to me for ever; I should do good and evil together, no one caring to
understand; I should produce much weary work, much bad-spirited work, much
absolute evil; the good in me would be too often ill-expressed and missed o=
r misinterpreted.
In the end I might leave one gleaming flake or so amidst the slag heaps for=
a
moment of postmortem sympathy. I was afraid beyond measure of my derelict s=
elf.
Because I believed with all my soul in love and fine thinking that did not =
mean
that I should necessarily either love steadfastly or think finely. I rememb=
er
how I fell talking to God--I think I talked out loud. "Why do I care f=
or
these things?" I cried, "when I can do so little! Why am I apart =
from
the jolly thoughtless fighting life of men? These dreams fade to nothingnes=
s,
and leave me bare!"
I scolded. "=
Why
don't you speak to a man, show yourself? I thought I had a gleam of you in
Isabel,--and then you take her away. Do you really think I can carry on this
game alone, doing your work in darkness and silence, living in muddled
conflict, half living, half dying?"
Grotesque analogi=
es
arose in my mind. I discovered a strange parallelism between my now tattered
phrase of "Love and fine thinking" and the "Love and the
Word" of Christian thought. Was it possible the Christian propaganda h=
ad
at the outset meant just that system of attitudes I had been feeling my way
towards from the very beginning of my life? Had I spent a lifetime making my
way back to Christ? It mocks humanity to think how Christ has been overlaid=
. I
went along now, recalling long-neglected phrases and sentences; I had a new
vision of that great central figure preaching love with hate and coarse
thinking even in the disciples about Him, rising to a tidal wave at last in
that clamour for Barabbas, and the public satisfaction in His fate....
It's curious to t=
hink
that hopeless love and a noisy disordered dinner should lead a man to these
speculations, but they did. "He DID mean that!" I said, and sudde=
nly
thought of what a bludgeon they'd made of His Christianity. Athwart that
perplexing, patient enigma sitting inaudibly among publicans and sinners,
danced and gibbered a long procession of the champions of orthodoxy. "=
He
wasn't human," I said, and remembered that last despairing cry, "=
My
God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?"
"Oh, HE fors=
akes
every one," I said, flying out as a tired mind will, with an obvious
repartee....
I passed at a bou=
nd
from such monstrous theology to a towering rage against the Baileys. In an
instant and with no sense of absurdity I wanted--in the intervals of love a=
nd
fine thinking--to fling about that strenuously virtuous couple; I wanted to
kick Keyhole of the PEEPSHOW into the gutter and make a common massacre of =
all
the prosperous rascaldom that makes a trade and rule of virtue. I can still
feel that transition. In a moment I had reached that phase of weakly decisi=
ve anger
which is for people of my temperament the concomitant of exhaustion.
"I will have
her," I cried. "By Heaven! I WILL have her! Life mocks me and che=
ats
me. Nothing can be made good to me again.... Why shouldn't I save what I ca=
n? I
can't save myself without her...."
I remember myself=
--as
a sort of anti-climax to that--rather tediously asking my way home. I was
somewhere in the neighbourhood of Holland Park....
It was then betwe=
en
one and two. I felt that I could go home now without any risk of meeting
Margaret. It had been the thought of returning to Margaret that had sent me
wandering that night. It is one of the ugliest facts I recall about that ti=
me
of crisis, the intense aversion I felt for Margaret. No sense of her goodne=
ss,
her injury and nobility, and the enormous generosity of her forgiveness,
sufficed to mitigate that. I hope now that in this book I am able to give
something of her silvery splendour, but all through this crisis I felt noth=
ing
of that. There was a triumphant kindliness about her that I found intolerab=
le.
She meant to be so kind to me, to offer unstinted consolation, to meet my
needs, to supply just all she imagined Isabel had given me.
When I left
Tarvrille's, I felt I could anticipate exactly how she would meet my
homecoming. She would be perplexed by my crumpled shirt front, on which I h=
ad
spilt some drops of wine; she would overlook that by an effort, explain it
sentimentally, resolve it should make no difference to her. She would want =
to
know who had been present, what we had talked about, show the alertest inte=
rest
in whatever it was--it didn't matter what.... No, I couldn't face her.
So I did not reac=
h my
study until two o'clock.
There, I remember,
stood the new and very beautiful old silver candlesticks that she had set t=
here
two days since to please me--the foolish kindliness of it! But in her search
for expression, Margaret heaped presents upon me. She had fitted these
candlesticks with electric lights, and I must, I suppose, have lit them to
write my note to Isabel. "Give me a word--the world aches without
you," was all I scrawled, though I fully meant that she should come to=
me.
I knew, though I ought not to have known, that now she had left her flat, s=
he
was with the Balfes--she was to have been married from the Balfes--and I se=
nt
my letter there. And I went out into the silent square and posted the note =
forthwith,
because I knew quite clearly that if I left it until morning I should never
post it at all.
3
I had a curious revulsion of feelin=
g that
morning of our meeting. (Of all places for such a clandestine encounter she=
had
chosen the bridge opposite Buckingham Palace.) Overnight I had been full of
self pity, and eager for the comfort of Isabel's presence. But the ill-writ=
ten
scrawl in which she had replied had been full of the suggestion of her own =
weakness
and misery. And when I saw her, my own selfish sorrows were altogether swept
away by a wave of pitiful tenderness. Something had happened to her that I =
did
not understand. She was manifestly ill. She came towards me wearily, she who
had always borne herself so bravely; her shoulders seemed bent, and her eyes
were tired, and her face white and drawn. All my life has been a narrow
self-centred life; no brothers, no sisters or children or weak things had e=
ver
yet made any intimate appeal to me, and suddenly--I verily believe for the
first time in my life!--I felt a great passion of protective ownership; I f=
elt
that here was something that I could die to shelter, something that meant m=
ore than
joy or pride or splendid ambitions or splendid creation to me, a new kind of
hold upon me, a new power in the world. Some sealed fountain was opened in =
my
breast. I knew that I could love Isabel broken, Isabel beaten, Isabel ugly =
and
in pain, more than I could love any sweet or delightful or glorious thing in
life. I didn't care any more for anything in the world but Isabel, and that=
I
should protect her. I trembled as I came near her, and could scarcely speak=
to
her for the emotion that filled me....
"I had your
letter," I said.
"I had
yours."
"Where can we
talk?"
I remember my lame
sentences. "We'll have a boat. That's best here."
I took her to the
little boat-house, and there we hired a boat, and I rowed in silence under =
the
bridge and into the shade of a tree. The square grey stone masses of the
Foreign Office loomed through the twigs, I remember, and a little space of
grass separated us from the pathway and the scrutiny of passers-by. And the=
re
we talked.
"I had to wr=
ite
to you," I said.
"I had to
come."
"When are yo=
u to
be married?"
"Thursday
week."
"Well?"=
I
said. "But--can we?"
She leant forward=
and
scrutinised my face with eyes wide open. "What do you mean?" she =
said
at last in a whisper.
"Can we stand
it? After all?"
I looked at her w=
hite
face. "Can you?" I said.
She whispered.
"Your career?"
Then suddenly her
face was contorted,--she wept silently, exactly as a child tormented beyond
endurance might suddenly weep....
"Oh! I don't
care," I cried, "now. I don't care. Damn the whole system of thin=
gs!
Damn all this patching of the irrevocable! I want to take care of you, Isab=
el!
and have you with me."
"I can't sta=
nd
it," she blubbered.
"You needn't
stand it. I thought it was best for you.... I thought indeed it was best for
you. I thought even you wanted it like that."
"Couldn't I =
live
alone--as I meant to do?"
"No," I
said, "you couldn't. You're not strong enough. I've thought of that; I=
've
got to shelter you."
"And I want
you," I went on. "I'm not strong enough--I can't stand life witho=
ut
you."
She stopped weepi=
ng,
she made a great effort to control herself, and looked at me steadfastly fo=
r a
moment. "I was going to kill myself," she whispered. "I was
going to kill myself quietly--somehow. I meant to wait a bit and have an
accident. I thought--you didn't understand. You were a man, and couldn't
understand...."
"People can'=
t do
as we thought we could do," I said. "We've gone too far together.=
"
"Yes," =
she
said, and I stared into her eyes.
"The horror =
of
it," she whispered. "The horror of being handed over. It's just o=
nly
begun to dawn upon me, seeing him now as I do. He tries to be kind to me...=
. I
didn't know. I felt adventurous before.... It makes me feel like all the wo=
men
in the world who have ever been owned and subdued.... It's not that he isn't
the best of men, it's because I'm a part of you.... I can't go through with=
it.
If I go through with it, I shall be left--robbed of pride--outraged--a woman
beaten...."
"I know,&quo=
t; I
said, "I know."
"I want to l=
ive
alone.... I don't care for anything now but just escape. If you can help
me...."
"I must take=
you
away. There's nothing for us but to go away together."
"But your
work," she said; "your career! Margaret! Our promises!"
"We've made a
mess of things, Isabel--or things have made a mess of us. I don't know whic=
h.
Our flags are in the mud, anyhow. It's too late to save those other things!
They have to go. You can't make terms with defeat. I thought it was Margaret
needed me most. But it's you. And I need you. I didn't think of that either=
. I
haven't a doubt left in the world now. We've got to leave everything rather
than leave each other. I'm sure of it. Now we have gone so far. We've got t=
o go
right down to earth and begin again.... Dear, I WANT disgrace with
you...."
So I whispered to=
her
as she sat crumpled together on the faded cushions of the boat, this white =
and
weary young woman who had been so valiant and careless a girl. "I don't
care," I said. "I don't care for anything, if I can save you out =
of
the wreckage we have made together."
4
The next day I went to the office o=
f the
BLUE WEEKLY in order to get as much as possible of its affairs in working o=
rder
before I left London with Isabel. I just missed Shoesmith in the lower offi=
ce.
Upstairs I found Britten amidst a pile of outside articles, methodically
reading the title of each and sometimes the first half-dozen lines, and eit=
her dropping
them in a growing heap on the floor for a clerk to return, or putting them
aside for consideration. I interrupted him, squatted on the window-sill of =
the
open window, and sketched out my ideas for the session.
"You're
far-sighted," he remarked at something of mine which reached out ahead=
.
"I like to s=
ee
things prepared," I answered.
"Yes," =
he
said, and ripped open the envelope of a fresh aspirant.
I was silent whil=
e he
read.
"You're going
away with Isabel Rivers," he said abruptly.
"Well!"=
I
said, amazed.
"I know,&quo=
t;
he said, and lost his breath. "Not my business. Only--"
It was queer to f=
ind
Britten afraid to say a thing.
"It's not
playing the game," he said.
"What do you
know?"
"Everything =
that
matters."
"Some
games," I said, "are too hard to play."
There came a pause
between us.
"I didn't kn=
ow
you were watching all this," I said.
"Yes," =
he
answered, after a pause, "I've watched."
"Sorry--sorry
you don't approve."
"It means
smashing such an infernal lot of things, Remington."
I did not answer.=
"You're going
away then?"
"Yes."<= o:p>
"Soon?"=
"Right
away."
"There's your
wife."
"I know.&quo=
t;
"Shoesmith--=
whom
you're pledged to in a manner. You've just picked him out and made him
conspicuous. Every one will know. Oh! of course--it's nothing to you.
Honour--"
"I know.&quo=
t;
"Common
decency."
I nodded.
"All this
movement of ours. That's what I care for most.... It's come to be a big thi=
ng,
Remington."
"That will go
on."
"We have a u=
se
for you--no one else quite fills it. No one.... I'm not sure it will go
on."
"Do you thin=
k I
haven't thought of all these things?"
He shrugged his
shoulders, and rejected two papers unread.
"I knew,&quo=
t;
he remarked, "when you came back from America. You were alight with
it." Then he let his bitterness gleam for a moment. "But I though=
t you
would stick to your bargain."
"It's not so
much choice as you think," I said.
"There's alw=
ays
a choice."
"No," I
said.
He scrutinised my
face.
"I can't live
without her--I can't work. She's all mixed up with this--and everything. And
besides, there's things you can't understand. There's feelings you've never
felt.... You don't understand how much we've been to one another."
Britten frowned a=
nd
thought.
"Some things
one's GOT to do," he threw out.
"Some things=
one
can't do."
"These infer=
nal
institutions--"
"Some one mu=
st
begin," I said.
He shook his head.
"Not YOU," he said. "No!"
He stretched out =
his
hands on the desk before him, and spoke again.
"Remington,&=
quot;
he said, "I've thought of this business day and night too. It matters =
to
me. It matters immensely to me. In a way--it's a thing one doesn't often sa=
y to
a man--I've loved you. I'm the sort of man who leads a narrow life.... But
you've been something fine and good for me, since that time, do you remembe=
r?
when we talked about Mecca together."
I nodded.
"Yes. And yo=
u'll
always be something fine and good for me anyhow. I know things about
you,--qualities--no mere act can destroy them.. .. Well, I can tell you, yo=
u're
doing wrong. You're going on now like a man who is hypnotised and can't turn
round. You're piling wrong on wrong. It was wrong for you two people ever t=
o be
lovers."
He paused.
"It gripped =
us
hard," I said.
"Yes!--but in
your position! And hers! It was vile!"
"You've not =
been
tempted."
"How do you
know? Anyhow--having done that, you ought to have stood the consequences and
thought of other people. You could have ended it at the first pause for
reflection. You didn't. You blundered again. You kept on. You owed a certain
secrecy to all of us! You didn't keep it. You were careless. You made things
worse. This engagement and this publicity!--Damn it, Remington!"
"I know,&quo=
t; I
said, with smarting eyes. "Damn it! with all my heart! It came of tryi=
ng
to patch.... You CAN'T patch."
"And now, as=
I
care for anything under heaven, Remington, you two ought to stand these last
consequences--and part. You ought to part. Other people have to stand thing=
s!
Other people have to part. You ought to. You say--what do you say? It's los=
s of
so much life to lose each other. So is losing a hand or a leg. But it's what
you've incurred. Amputate. Take your punishment--After all, you chose it.&q=
uot;
"Oh, damn!&q=
uot;
I said, standing up and going to the window.
"Damn by all
means. I never knew a topic so full of justifiable damns. But you two did
choose it. You ought to stick to your undertaking."
I turned upon him
with a snarl in my voice. "My dear Britten!" I cried. "Don't=
I
KNOW I'm doing wrong? Aren't I in a net? Suppose I don't go! Is there any r=
ight
in that? Do you think we're going to be much to ourselves or any one after =
this
parting? I've been thinking all last night of this business, trying it over=
and
over again from the beginning. How was it we went wrong? Since I came back =
from
America--I grant you THAT--but SINCE, there's never been a step that wasn't
forced, that hadn't as much right in it or more, as wrong. You talk as thou=
gh I
was a thing of steel that could bend this way or that and never change. You
talk as though Isabel was a cat one could give to any kind of owner.... We =
two
are things that change and grow and alter all the time. We're--so interwoven
that being parted now will leave us just misshapen cripples.... You don't k=
now
the motives, you don't know the rush and feel of things, you don't know how=
it
was with us, and how it is with us. You don't know the hunger for the mere
sight of one another; you don't know anything."
Britten looked at=
his
finger-nails closely. His red face puckered to a wry frown. "Haven't we
all at times wanted the world put back?" he grunted, and looked hard a=
nd
close at one particular nail.
There was a long
pause.
"I want
her," I said, "and I'm going to have her. I'm too tired for balan=
cing
the right or wrong of it any more. You can't separate them. I saw her
yesterday.... She's--ill.... I'd take her now, if death were just outside t=
he
door waiting for us."
"Torture?&qu=
ot;
I thought.
"Yes."
"For her?&qu=
ot;
"There isn't=
,"
I said.
"If there
was?"
I made no answer.=
"It's blind
Want. And there's nothing ever been put into you to stand against it. What =
are
you going to do with the rest of your lives?"
"No end of
things."
"Nothing.&qu=
ot;
"I don't bel= ieve you are right," I said. "I believe we can save something--"<= o:p>
Britten shook his
head. "Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you," he said.
His indignation r=
ose.
"In the middle of life!" he said. "No man has a right to take
his hand from the plough!"
He leant forward =
on
his desk and opened an argumentative palm. "You know, Remington,"=
he
said, "and I know, that if this could be fended off for six months--if=
you
could be clapped in prison, or got out of the way somehow,--until this marr=
iage
was all over and settled down for a year, say--you know then you two could
meet, curious, happy, as friends. Saved! You KNOW it."
I turned and star=
ed
at him. "You're wrong, Britten," I said. "And does it matter=
if
we could?"
I found that in
talking to him I could frame the apologetics I had not been able to find for
myself alone.
"I am certai=
n of
one thing, Britten. It is our duty not to hush up this scandal."
He raised his
eyebrows. I perceived now the element of absurdity in me, but at the time I=
was
as serious as a man who is burning.
"It's our
duty," I went on, "to smash now openly in the sight of every one.
Yes! I've got that as clean and plain--as prison whitewash. I am convinced =
that
we have got to be public to the uttermost now--I mean it--until every corne=
r of
our world knows this story, knows it fully, adds it to the Parnell story and
the Ashton Dean story and the Carmel story and the Witterslea story, and all
the other stories that have picked man after man out of English public life,
the men with active imaginations, the men of strong initiative. To think th=
is
tottering old-woman ridden Empire should dare to waste a man on such a scor=
e!
You say I ought to be penitent--"
Britten shook his
head and smiled very faintly.
"I'm boiling
with indignation," I said. "I lay in bed last night and went thro=
ugh
it all. What in God's name was to be expected of us but what has happened? I
went through my life bit by bit last night, I recalled all I've had to do w=
ith
virtue and women, and all I was told and how I was prepared. I was born int=
o cowardice
and debasement. We all are. Our generation's grimy with hypocrisy. I came to
the most beautiful things in life--like peeping Tom of Coventry. I was never
given a light, never given a touch of natural manhood by all this dingy,
furtive, canting, humbugging English world. Thank God! I'll soon be out of =
it! The
shame of it! The very savages in Australia initiate their children better t=
han
the English do to-day. Neither of us was ever given a view of what they call
morality that didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as the meanest
discretion, an abject submission to unreasonable prohibitions! meek surrend=
er
of mind and body to the dictation of pedants and old women and fools. We
weren't taught--we were mumbled at! And when we found that the thing they
called unclean, unclean, was Pagan beauty--God! it was a glory to sin, Brit=
ten,
it was a pride and splendour like bathing in the sunlight after dust and
grime!"
"Yes," =
said
Britten. "That's all very well--"
I interrupted him.
"I know there's a case--I'm beginning to think it a valid case against=
us;
but we never met it! There's a steely pride in self restraint, a nobility of
chastity, but only for those who see and think and act--untrammeled and
unafraid. The other thing, the current thing, why! it's worth as much as the
chastity of a monkey kept in a cage by itself!" I put my foot in a cha=
ir,
and urged my case upon him. "This is a dirty world, Britten, simply
because it is a muddled world, and the thing you call morality is dirtier n=
ow
than the thing you call immorality. Why don't the moralists pick their stuff
out of the slime if they care for it, and wipe it?--damn them! I am burning=
now
to say: 'Yes, we did this and this,' to all the world. All the world!... I =
will!"
Britten rubbed the
palm of his hand on the corner of his desk. "That's all very well,
Remington," he said. "You mean to go."
He stopped and be=
gan
again. "If you didn't know you were in the wrong you wouldn't be so da=
mned
rhetorical. You're in the wrong. It's as plain to you as it is to me. You're
leaving a big work, you're leaving a wife who trusted you, to go and live w=
ith
your jolly mistress.... You won't see you're a statesman that matters, that=
no
single man, maybe, might come to such influence as you in the next ten year=
s.
You're throwing yourself away and accusing your country of rejecting you.&q=
uot;
He swung round up=
on
his swivel at me. "Remington," he said, "have you forgotten =
the
immense things our movement means?"
I thought.
"Perhaps I am rhetorical," I said.
"But the thi=
ngs
we might achieve! If you'd only stay now--even now! Oh! you'd suffer a litt=
le
socially, but what of that? You'd be able to go on--perhaps all the better =
for
hostility of the kind you'd get. You know, Remington--you KNOW."
I thought and went
back to his earlier point. "If I am rhetorical, at any rate it's a liv=
ing
feeling behind it. Yes, I remember all the implications of our aims--very
splendid, very remote. But just now it's rather like offering to give a
freezing man the sunlit Himalayas from end to end in return for his camp-fi=
re.
When you talk of me and my jolly mistress, it isn't fair. That misrepresents
everything. I'm not going out of this--for delights. That's the sort of thi=
ng
men like Snuffles and Keyhole imagine--that excites them! When I think of t=
he
things these creatures think! Ugh! But YOU know better? You know that physi=
cal passion
that burns like a fire--ends clean. I'm going for love, Britten--if I sinned
for passion. I'm going, Britten, because when I saw her the other day she H=
URT
me. She hurt me damnably, Britten.... I've been a cold man--I've led a
rhetorical life--you hit me with that word!--I put things in a windy way, I
know, but what has got hold of me at last is her pain. She's ill. Don't you
understand? She's a sick thing--a weak thing. She's no more a goddess than =
I'm
a god.... I'm not in love with her now; I'm RAW with love for her. I feel l=
ike
a man that's been flayed. I have been flayed.... You don't begin to imagine=
the
sort of helpless solicitude.... She's not going to do things easily; she's =
ill.
Her courage fails.... It's hard to put things when one isn't rhetorical, but
it's this, Britten--there are distresses that matter more than all the deli=
ghts
or achievements in the world.... I made her what she is--as I never made Ma=
rgaret.
I've made her--I've broken her.... I'm going with my own woman. The rest of=
my
life and England, and so forth, must square itself to that...."
For a long time, =
as
it seemed, we remained silent and motionless. We'd said all we had to say. =
My
eyes caught a printed slip upon the desk before him, and I came back abrupt=
ly
to the paper.
I picked up this
galley proof. It was one of Winter's essays. "This man goes on doing
first-rate stuff," I said. "I hope you will keep him going."=
He did not answer=
for
a moment or so. "I'll keep him going," he said at last with a sig=
h.
5
I have a letter Margaret wrote me w=
ithin
a week of our flight. I cannot resist transcribing some of it here, because=
it
lights things as no word of mine can do. It is a string of nearly inconsecu=
tive
thoughts written in pencil in a fine, tall, sprawling hand. Its very
inconsecutiveness is essential. Many words are underlined. It was in answer=
to
one from me; but what I wrote has passed utterly from my mind....
"Certainly,&=
quot;
she says, "I want to hear from you, but I do not want to see you. Ther=
e's
a sort of abstract YOU that I want to go on with. Something I've made out of
you.... I want to know things about you--but I don't want to see or feel or
imagine. When some day I have got rid of my intolerable sense of
proprietorship, it may be different. Then perhaps we may meet again. I thin=
k it
is even more the loss of our political work and dreams that I am feeling th=
an
the loss of your presence. Aching loss. I thought so much of the things we =
were
DOING for the world--had given myself so unreservedly. You've left me with
nothing to DO. I am suddenly at loose ends....
"We women are
trained to be so dependent on a man. I've got no life of my own at all. It
seems now to me that I wore my clothes even for you and your schemes....
"After I have
told myself a hundred times why this has happened, I ask again, 'Why did he
give things up? Why did he give things up?'...
"It is just =
as
though you were wilfully dead....
"Then I ask
again and again whether this thing need have happened at all, whether if I =
had
had a warning, if I had understood better, I might not have adapted myself =
to
your restless mind and made this catastrophe impossible....
"Oh, my dear!
why hadn't you the pluck to hurt me at the beginning, and tell me what you
thought of me and life? You didn't give me a chance; not a chance. I suppose
you couldn't. All these things you and I stood away from. You let my first
repugnances repel you....
"It is stran=
ge
to think after all these years that I should be asking myself, do I love yo=
u?
have I loved you? In a sense I think I HATE you. I feel you have taken my l=
ife,
dragged it in your wake for a time, thrown it aside. I am resentful. Unfair=
ly
resentful, for why should I exact that you should watch and understand my l=
ife,
when clearly I have understood so little of yours. But I am savage--savage =
at
the wrecking of all you were to do.
"Oh, why--why
did you give things up?
"No human be=
ing
is his own to do what he likes with. You were not only pledged to my tireso=
me,
ineffectual companionship, but to great purposes. They ARE great purposes..=
..
"If only I c=
ould
take up your work as you leave it, with the strength you had--then indeed I
feel I could let you go--you and your young mistress.... All that matters so
little to me....
"Yet I think=
I
must indeed love you yourself in my slower way. At times I am mad with jeal=
ousy
at the thought of all I hadn't the wit to give you.... I've always hidden my
tears from you--and what was in my heart. It's my nature to hide--and you, =
you
want things brought to you to see. You are so curious as to be almost cruel.
You don't understand reserves. You have no mercy with restraints and
reservations. You are not really a CIVILISED man at all. You hate
pretences--and not only pretences but decent coverings....
"It's only a=
fter
one has lost love and the chance of loving that slow people like myself find
what they might have done. Why wasn't I bold and reckless and abandoned? It=
's
as reasonable to ask that, I suppose, as to ask why my hair is fair....
"I go on with
these perhapses over and over again here when I find myself alone....
"My dear, my
dear, you can't think of the desolation of things--I shall never go back to
that house we furnished together, that was to have been the laboratory (do =
you
remember calling it a laboratory?) in which you were to forge so much of the
new order....
"But, dear, =
if I
can help you--even now--in any way--help both of you, I mean.... It tears me
when I think of you poor and discredited. You will let me help you if I can=
--it
will be the last wrong not to let me do that....
"You had bet=
ter
not get ill. If you do, and I hear of it--I shall come after you with a tro=
upe
of doctor's and nurses. If I am a failure as a wife, no one has ever said I=
was
anything but a success as a district visitor...."
There are other
sheets, but I cannot tell whether they were written before or after the ones
from which I have quoted. And most of them have little things too intimate =
to
set down. But this oddly penetrating analysis of our differences must, I th=
ink,
be given.
"There are a=
ll
sorts of things I can't express about this and want to. There's this differ=
ence
that has always been between us, that you like nakedness and wildness, and =
I,
clothing and restraint. It goes through everything. You are always TALKING =
of
order and system, and the splendid dream of the order that might replace the
muddled system you hate, but by a sort of instinct you seem to want to break
the law. I've watched you so closely. Now I want to obey laws, to make
sacrifices, to follow rules. I don't want to make, but I do want to keep. Y=
ou
are at once makers and rebels, you and Isabel too. You're bad people--crimi=
nal people,
I feel, and yet full of something the world must have. You're so much better
than me, and so much viler. It may be there is no making without destructio=
n,
but it seems to me sometimes that it is nothing but an instinct for lawless=
ness
that drives you. You remind me--do you remember?--of that time we went from
Naples to Vesuvius, and walked over the hot new lava there. Do you remember=
how
tired I was? I know it disappointed you that I was tired. One walked there =
in
spite of the heat because there was a crust; like custom, like law. But
directly a crust forms on things, you are restless to break down to the fire
again. You talk of beauty, both of you, as something terrible, mysterious, =
imperative.
YOUR beauty is something altogether different from anything I know or feel.=
It
has pain in it. Yet you always speak as though it was something I ought to =
feel
and am dishonest not to feel. MY beauty is a quiet thing. You have always
laughed at my feeling for old-fashioned chintz and blue china and Sheraton.=
But
I like all these familiar USED things. My beauty is STILL beauty, and yours=
, is
excitement. I know nothing of the fascination of the fire, or why one shoul=
d go
deliberately out of all the decent fine things of life to run dangers and be
singed and tormented and destroyed. I don't understand...."
6
I remember very freshly the mood of=
our
departure from London, the platform of Charing Cross with the big illuminat=
ed
clock overhead, the bustle of porters and passengers with luggage, the shou=
ting
of newsboys and boys with flowers and sweets, and the groups of friends see=
ing travellers
off by the boat train. Isabel sat very quiet and still in the compartment, =
and
I stood upon the platform with the door open, with a curious reluctance to =
take
the last step that should sever me from London's ground. I showed our ticke=
ts,
and bought a handful of red roses for her. At last came the guards crying:
"Take your seats," and I got in and closed the door on me. We had,
thank Heaven! a compartment to ourselves. I let down the window and stared =
out.
There was a bustl=
e of
final adieux on the platform, a cry of "Stand away, please, stand
away!" and the train was gliding slowly and smoothly out of the statio=
n.
I looked out upon=
the
river as the train rumbled with slowly gathering pace across the bridge, and
the bobbing black heads of the pedestrians in the footway, and the curve of=
the
river and the glowing great hotels, and the lights and reflections and
blacknesses of that old, familiar spectacle. Then with a common thought, we
turned our eyes westward to where the pinnacles of Westminster and the shin=
ing
clock tower rose hard and clear against the still, luminous sky.
"They'll be =
in
Committee on the Reformatory Bill to-night," I said, a little stupidly=
.
"And so,&quo=
t; I
added, "good-bye to London!"
We said no more, =
but
watched the south-side streets below--bright gleams of lights and movement,=
and
the dark, dim, monstrous shapes of houses and factories. We ran through
Waterloo Station, London Bridge, New Cross, St. John's. We said never a wor=
d.
It seemed to me that for a time we had exhausted our emotions. We had escap=
ed,
we had cut our knot, we had accepted the last penalty of that headlong retu=
rn
of mine from Chicago a year and a half ago. That was all settled. That harv=
est
of feelings we had reaped. I thought now only of London, of London as the s=
ymbol
of all we were leaving and all we had lost in the world. I felt nothing now=
but
an enormous and overwhelming regret....
The train swayed =
and
rattled on its way. We ran through old Bromstead, where once I had played w=
ith
cities and armies on the nursery floor. The sprawling suburbs with their
scattered lights gave way to dim tree-set country under a cloud-veiled,
intermittently shining moon. We passed Cardcaster Place. Perhaps old
Wardingham, that pillar of the old Conservatives, was there, fretting over =
his
unsuccessful struggle with our young Toryism. Little he recked of this new =
turn
of the wheel and how it would confirm his contempt of all our novelties.
Perhaps some faint intimation drew him to the window to see behind the stem=
s of
the young fir trees that bordered his domain, the little string of lighted =
carriage
windows gliding southward....
Suddenly I began =
to
realise just what it was we were doing.
And now, indeed, I
knew what London had been to me, London where I had been born and educated,=
the
slovenly mother of my mind and all my ambitions, London and the empire! It
seemed to me we must be going out to a world that was utterly empty. All our
significance fell from us--and before us was no meaning any more. We were
leaving London; my hand, which had gripped so hungrily upon its complex lif=
e,
had been forced from it, my fingers left their hold. That was over. I shoul=
d never
have a voice in public affairs again. The inexorable unwritten law which
forbids overt scandal sentenced me. We were going out to a new life, a life
that appeared in that moment to be a mere shrivelled remnant of me, a mere
residuum of sheltering and feeding and seeing amidst alien scenery and the
sound of unfamiliar tongues. We were going to live cheaply in a foreign pla=
ce,
so cut off that I meet now the merest stray tourist, the commonest tweed-cl=
ad
stranger with a mixture of shyness and hunger.... And suddenly all the sche=
mes
I was leaving appeared fine and adventurous and hopeful as they had never d=
one
before. How great was this purpose I had relinquished, this bold and subtle=
remaking
of the English will! I had doubted so many things, and now suddenly I doubt=
ed
my unimportance, doubted my right to this suicidal abandonment. Was I not a
trusted messenger, greatly trusted and favoured, who had turned aside by the
way? Had I not, after all, stood for far more than I had thought; was I not
filching from that dear great city of my birth and life, some vitally neces=
sary
thing, a key, a link, a reconciling clue in her political development, that=
now
she might seek vaguely for in vain? What is one life against the State? Oug=
ht I
not to have sacrificed Isabel and all my passion and sorrow for Isabel, and=
held
to my thing--stuck to my thing?
I heard as though=
he
had spoken it in the carriage Britten's "It WAS a good game." No =
end
of a game. And for the first time I imagined the faces and voices of Crupp =
and
Esmeer and Gane when they learnt of this secret flight, this flight of which
they were quite unwarned. And Shoesmith might be there in the house,--Shoes=
mith
who was to have been married in four days--the thing might hit him full in
front of any kind of people. Cruel eyes might watch him. Why the devil hadn=
't I
written letters to warn them all? I could have posted them five minutes bef=
ore the
train started. I had never thought to that moment of the immense mess they
would be in; how the whole edifice would clatter about their ears. I had a
sudden desire to stop the train and go back for a day, for two days, to set
that negligence right. My brain for a moment brightened, became animated and
prolific of ideas. I thought of a brilliant line we might have taken on that
confounded Reformatory Bill....
That sort of thing
was over....
What indeed wasn't
over? I passed to a vaguer, more multitudinous perception of disaster, the
friends I had lost already since Altiora began her campaign, the ampler rem=
nant
whom now I must lose. I thought of people I had been merry with, people I h=
ad
worked with and played with, the companions of talkative walks, the hostess=
es
of houses that had once glowed with welcome for us both. I perceived we must
lose them all. I saw life like a tree in late autumn that had once been rich
and splendid with friends--and now the last brave dears would be hanging on=
doubtfully
against the frosty chill of facts, twisting and tortured in the universal g=
ale
of indignation, trying to evade the cold blast of the truth. I had betrayed=
my
party, my intimate friend, my wife, the wife whose devotion had made me wha=
t I
was. For awhile the figure of Margaret, remote, wounded, shamed, dominated =
my
mind, and the thought of my immense ingratitude. Damn them! they'd take it =
out
of her too. I had a feeling that I wanted to go straight back and grip some=
one
by the throat, some one talking ill of Margaret. They'd blame her for not k=
eeping
me, for letting things go so far.... I wanted the whole world to know how f=
ine
she was. I saw in imagination the busy, excited dinner tables at work upon =
us
all, rather pleasantly excited, brightly indignant, merciless.
Well, it's the st=
uff
we are!...
Then suddenly,
stabbing me to the heart, came a vision of Margaret's tears and the sound of
her voice saying, "Husband mine! Oh! husband mine! To see you
cry!"...
I came out of a c=
loud
of thoughts to discover the narrow compartment, with its feeble lamp overhe=
ad,
and our rugs and hand-baggage swaying on the rack, and Isabel, very still in
front of me, gripping my wilting red roses tightly in her bare and ringless
hand.
For a moment I co=
uld
not understand her attitude, and then I perceived she was sitting bent toge=
ther
with her head averted from the light to hide the tears that were streaming =
down
her face. She had not got her handkerchief out for fear that I should see t=
his,
but I saw her tears, dark drops of tears, upon her sleeve....
I suppose she had
been watching my expression, divining my thoughts.
For a time I star=
ed
at her and was motionless, in a sort of still and weary amazement. Why had =
we
done this injury to one another? WHY? Then something stirred within me.
"ISABEL!&quo=
t; I
whispered.
She made no sign.=
"Isabel!&quo=
t; I
repeated, and then crossed over to her and crept closely to her, put my arm
about her, and drew her wet cheek to mine.