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diff --git a/1047-0.txt b/1047-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f8c50f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/1047-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15698 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1047 *** + +THE NEW MACHIAVELLI + +by H. G. Wells + + + +CONTENTS + + + BOOK THE FIRST + + THE MAKING OF A MAN + + I. CONCERNING A BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN + II. BROMSTEAD AND MY FATHER + III. SCHOLASTIC + IV. ADOLESCENCE + + + BOOK THE SECOND + + MARGARET + + I. MARGARET IN STAFFORDSHIRE + II. MARGARET IN LONDON + III. MARGARET IN VENICE + IV. THE HOUSE IN WESTMINSTER + + + BOOK THE THIRD + + THE HEART OF POLITICS + + I. THE RIDDLE FOR THE STATESMAN + II. SEEKING ASSOCIATES + III. SECESSION + IV. THE BESETTING OF SEX + + + BOOK THE FOURTH + + ISABEL + + I. LOVE AND SUCCESS + II. THE IMPOSSIBLE POSITION + III. THE BREAKING POINT + + + + + +BOOK THE FIRST: THE MAKING OF A MAN + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ CONCERNING A BOOK THAT WAS NEVER WRITTEN + + +1 + +Since I came to this place I have been very restless, wasting my +energies in the futile beginning 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 head. 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 have 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. + +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 vast 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, but 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 conceptions, 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 those double strands it is I have to write, of the +subtle protesting perplexing play 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 better 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 and misery; the ending of confusions that waste human +possibilities; they thought 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 mastered 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 every one it presents +itself extraordinarily entangled and mixed up with other, more intimate +things. + +It was so with Machiavelli. I picture him at San Casciano as he lived +in retirement upon his property after the fall of the Republic, perhaps +with a twinge of the torture 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 family, 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 returned +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 himself, put on his “noble court dress,” closed the door on +the world of toiling and getting, private loving, private hating and +personal regrets, sat 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 affairs. 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 with 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 +forgetfulness, and Plato has the added glory of that acquired beauty, +that bust of the Indian Bacchus which is now indissolubly mingled with +his tradition. They have passed 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-read “The Prince” and thought out the manner of +my now abandoned project, I came to perceive how that stir and whirl of +human thought one calls by way of embodiment the French Revolution, has +altered absolutely the approach to such 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 +realisation, 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 modern 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 indeed to an extreme degree one man's +affair. But the days of the Prince who planned and directed and was +the source and centre of all power are ended. We are in a condition of +affairs infinitely more complex, in which every prince and statesman is +something of a servant and every intelligent human being something 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 except 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 suppression 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 cannot +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 might 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, undisciplined and uncoordinated +minority of inventors, experimenters, educators, writers and organisers +has achieved this development of human possibilities, achieved it in +spite of the disregard and aimlessness of the huge majority, and the +passionate resistance of the active dull, my imagination grows giddy +with dazzling intimations of the human splendours the justly organised +state may yet attain. I glimpse for a bewildering instant the heights +that may be scaled, the splendid enterprises made possible. + +But the appeal goes 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 any man.... + +There is, moreover, 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 his 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 significance 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 +articulate, significance of women. They stand now, as it were, close +beside the silver candlesticks, speaking as Machiavelli writes, until he +stays his pen and turns to discuss his writing with them. + +It is this gradual discovery of sex as a thing collectively portentous +that I have to mingle with my statecraft if my picture is to be true +which has turned me at length from 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 began 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 exile. 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 this 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 heaving on the grey rollers of the +English Channel and darkling streets wet with rain, 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 cellars 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 was for me +the opening opportunity. I see the stencilled names and numbers go up on +the green baize, constituency after constituency, amidst murmurs or loud +shouting.... + +It is over for me now and vanished. That opportunity will come no more. +Very probably you have heard 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 now 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 how such things began in my mind, there comes back to me +the memory of an enormous 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 rather 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 half 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) and the cracks and spaces of the floor and the bare brown +surround were the water 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 been 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 made 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 shaped +and smoothed, bricks about five inches by two and a half by one, and +half-bricks and quarter-bricks to correspond. There were hundreds of +them, many hundreds. 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 every gap in the oilcloth and make +causeways over crumpled spaces (which I feigned to be morasses), and on +a keel of whole bricks it was possible to construct ships to push +over the high seas to the remotest port in the room. And a disciplined +population, that rose at last by sedulous begging on birthdays and +all convenient occasions 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, the 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 interests. 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 hold of a waiting ship. Then there were the fortresses and gun +emplacements and covered 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 and 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 fortress 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 time 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 lived +certain china Zulus brandishing spears, and a mountain country of +rudely piled bricks 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 made 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 +oilcloth, 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 beginnings, incorporating now this suggestion and +now that. They stretch, I suppose, from 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 them in bursts, and +then forgot them for long periods; through the spring and summer I was +mostly out of doors, and school and classes caught me early. And in +the retrospect I see them all not only magnified and transfigured, but +fore-shortened and confused together. A clockwork railway, I seem to +remember, came and went; 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 very 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 by means of a brass +cannon in the garden. + +I find this empire of the floor much more vivid and detailed in my +memory now than many of the owners 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 all my continents and lands were swirling water and +swiping strokes of house-flannel. + +That was the worst 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 approaches to a central pen, from which +they went down a cardboard slide four at a time, and dropped most +satisfyingly down a brick shaft, and pitter-litter over some steep steps +to where a head slaughterman (ne Noah) strung a cotton loop round 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 them into Army sausage by means of a portion of the inside of +an old alarum clock. + +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 gave me most of my toys and, I more than suspect, most +of my ideas. “Here's some 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 the Imperial Road?--won't do for your cattle ranch.” And I +would find a bright 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 having 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 ENGLISH 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 Palestine, 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 occasions of +exceptional cleanliness. + +And in the attic I found one day a very old forgotten map after the +fashion of a bird's-eye view, 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 trouser pockets. He was a science teacher, taking +a number of classes at the Bromstead 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 of a terrace of three palatial but +structurally unsound stucco houses near Bromstead Station. + +They were big clumsy 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 so, 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 for occupation. The ceilings had vast +plaster cornices of classical design, fragments of which would sometimes +fall unexpectedly, and the wall-papers were bold and gigantic in pattern +and much variegated by damp and ill-mended rents. + +As my father was quite unable to let more than one of these houses at a +time, and that for the most part to eccentric and undesirable tenants, +he thought it politic to live 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 gardens. +The three houses faced north, and the back of the one we occupied was +covered 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, for my father broke his neck while he was pruning it, +when I was thirteen. + +My father was what 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 thrown +himself into science teaching and the earning of government grants +therefor with great 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 Art Department has vanished altogether from the +world, and people are forgetting it now with the utmost readiness and +generosity. Part of its substance and staff and spirit survive, more or +less completely digested into the Board of Education. + +The world does move on, even in its government. It is wonderful how many +of the clumsy and limited 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 now 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 devastating control of a +Metropolitan Board of Works. Then there were also School Boards; I +was already practically in politics before the London School Board was +absorbed by the spreading tentacles of the London County Council. + +It gives a measure 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 many most intelligent and patriotic people +were shocked beyond measure at the State 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, were 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 patronage +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 this festering darkness. It was a condition +of affairs clamouring for remedies, but there was an immense amount +of indifference and prejudice to be overcome before 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 which our present educational organisation arose. +I have long since come to believe 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 general 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 +schools, endow pedagogic research, and provide properly written +school-books. These things it was felt MUST be provided by individual +and local effort, and since it was manifest that it was individual +and local effort that were in default, it was reluctantly agreed to +stimulate them by money payments. The State set 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 established 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 and 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 feared that injustice +might be done. Year after year these eminent persons set questions +and employed subordinates to read and mark the increasing thousands 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 preceding 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 easily 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 established church Science Teachers EX OFFICIO, +and leaving local and private enterprise 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 into existence +specialising in Science and Art Department work; they set themselves 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 teacher 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 aside. First he posed +his pupils with questions and then dictated model replies. + +That was my father'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 amount of +apparatus prescribed as necessary for subject this and subject that by +the Science and Art Department, and this my father would supplement with +maps and diagrams and drawings of his own. + +But he never really 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 could 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 apparatus of +the Institute and even the lives of his students. Then thirdly, real +experiments involved washing up. And moreover they always turned out +wrong, and sometimes 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 truth you may blow into the +stuff from the lime-water bottle until you are crimson in the face and +painful under the ears, and it never becomes cloudy at all. And 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 water, 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 room. + +Science is the organised conquest of Nature, and I can quite understand +that ancient libertine 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 what ought +anyhow to happen when you did. He had considerable powers of vivid +expression, 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 precipitate is.” + +“Yes, sir, but 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 +that,” he said. + +I thought the explanation sufficient, but he paused for a moment after +giving it. “As 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 exceptionally high level. He combined practical +incompetence, practical enterprise and a thoroughly sanguine +temperament, in a manner that I have never seen paralleled 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 +imagination, and as he had never been trained to do anything whatever +in his life properly, his futilities were extensive and thorough. At one +time he nearly gave up his 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 when 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 father dug up both +lawns, and trenched and manured in spasms of immense vigour alternating +with periods of paralysing distaste for the garden. And for weeks he +talked about eight hundred pounds an acre at every meal. + +A garden, even when it is not exasperated by intensive methods, is a +thing as exacting as a baby, 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 night +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 catapulting 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 troublesome spirit of inquiry in +hardy natures. + +In digging his rows 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-breaks and scare-crows he erected, and +particularly an irrigation contrivance he began 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 +appearance. 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 even dug up. + +In the end the affair irritated him beyond endurance. Never was a man +less horticulturally-minded. The clamour of these vegetables he had +launched into the world for his service 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 talked to me +of anything that interested him, regardless of my limitations. Then he +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 roots behind. The world would darken. +He would look at his fingers with disgusted astonishment. “CURSE these +weeds!” he would say from his heart. His discourse was at an end. + +I have memories, too, of his sudden unexpected charges into the +tranquillity of the house, his hands 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 never 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 with 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 everything, 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 made, 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, flicked 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 what 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 +understanding 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 have felt for the sympathy of the undeveloped +youngster who trotted by his side. + +“I'm no gardener,” he said, “I'm no anything. Why the devil did I start +gardening? + +“I suppose man 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 started like an eavesdropper discovered. “Whatever you do, +boy, whatever you do, make a Plan. Make a good Plan and stick to it. +Find out what life is about--I never 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 cracked stucco with stains of green--black and green. +Conferva and soot.... Property, 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 ought to have +sold them--or fled the country. I ought to have cleared out. +Sarcophagi--eaters of men! Oh! the hours and days of work, the nights +of anxiety those vile houses have cost me! The painting! It worked up +my arms; it got all over me. I stank 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 little 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 spend. +All these things. Human souls buried under a cartload of blithering +rubbish.... + +“I'm not a fool, 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 into the haphazard places that came easiest.... + +“Nobody warned 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 digging 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 father 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 have +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 themselves 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 together. If I didn't understand +the things he said, I did the mood he was in. He gave 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 economy 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 give something of the quality of Bromstead and something +of its history. It is the 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 order. + +First, then, you must think of Bromstead a hundred and fifty years ago, +as a narrow irregular little 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 barber, 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 the 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 proportion did go, and all who married were married in +it, and everybody, to begin with, 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 and 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 much 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 +church,--both from the material point of view very little things. A +Rip van Winkle from 1350, again, would have noticed scarcely greater +changes; fewer clergy, more people, 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 scale 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 smelting 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 have 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 wheeled vehicles much more easily and +cheaply than they had ever done before, to make 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 achieve 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 +commodities, but goods in bulk. The new influence spread to agriculture, +iron appliances replaced wooden, breeding of stock became systematic, +paper-making and printing increased and cheapened. Roofs of slate and +tile appeared amidst and presently prevailed over the original Bromstead +thatch, the huge space of Common to the south was extensively enclosed, +and what had been an ill-defined horse-track 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 awakening +energies, and a new road cut off its worst contortions. Residential +villas appeared occupied by retired tradesmen and widows, who esteemed +the place healthy, and by others of a strange new unoccupied class of +people who had money invested 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 more. + +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 bigger forms, working their way to the +production of steel on a large scale, applying 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 instead 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 first 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 roads. This enterprising person and then +that began to “run up” houses, irrespective of every other enterprising +person who was doing the same thing. 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 also a white new church +in commercial Gothic upon the common, and another of red brick 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 railway 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 locality 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 were just common nuisances haunted by gypsies, van showmen, Cheap +Jacks and London 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 Bench and the local Board, compelled tradesmen +who were interested in these affairs 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 walled in by a Bromstead +Cemetery Company, and planted with suitably high-minded and 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, that would have sufficed to commemorate in elaborate detail the +entire population 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 North 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 peculiar +tattered dinginess rather in the quality of needy widow women who have +seen happier days. + +The Ravensbrook of 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 there were willows on the right,--and so came to where +great trees grew on high banks 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 part 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 along 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 vanish in a flash at one's shadow. +In one place, too, were Rapids, where the stream woke 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 before 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 small 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 +longer 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. People 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 inky flood of +surface water.... + +That indeed was my most striking perception in the growth of Bromstead. +The Ravensbrook had been 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 building 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 and +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 acutely aware of an invading and growing +disorder. The serene rhythms of the old established agriculture, I see +now, were everywhere being replaced by cultivation under notice and +snatch crops; hedges ceased to be repaired, and were replaced by cheap +iron railings or chunks of corrugated iron; more and more hoardings +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 days; I think the Zeitgeist did not +produce that until later), and in trespass boards that used vehement +language. Broken glass, tin cans, and ashes and paper abounded. Cheap +glass, cheap tin, abundant fuel, and a free untaxed Press had rushed +upon a world quite unprepared to dispose of these blessings when the +fulness of enjoyment was past. + +I suppose one might 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 eyes, 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 destructive 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 change 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 gigantic experiment of the most slovenly and +wasteful kind. I suppose it was necessary; I suppose all things are +necessary. I suppose that before men will discipline themselves to learn +and plan, they must first see in a hundred convincing forms the folly +and muddle that come from headlong, aimless and haphazard methods. +The nineteenth century was an age of demonstrations, some of them very +impressive 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 production 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 literature that +satisfied their souls? + +That age which bore me was indeed a world full of restricted and +undisciplined people, overtaken by power, by possessions and great +new freedoms, and unable to make any civilised use of them whatever; +stricken now by this idea and now by that, tempted first by one +possession and then another to ill-considered attempts; it was my +father'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 futilities. 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 slum; back doors and +sculleries gape towards the railway, their yards are hung with tattered +washing unashamed; and there seem to be more boards by the railway every +time I pass, advertising pills and pickles, tonics and condiments, and +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 indiscipline, ill-adjusted effort, spasmodic aims, these give +the quality of all my Bromstead memories. The crowning one of them all +rises to desolating tragedy. I remember now the wan spring sunshine of +that Sunday morning, the stiff feeling of best clothes and aggressive +cleanliness and formality, when I and my mother returned 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 lying close by the garden door with +his head queerly bent back against a broken and 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 garden +and so discovered him. + +“Arthur!” I remember my mother crying with the strangest break in her +voice, “What are you doing there? Arthur! And--SUNDAY!” + +I was coming behind 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, and 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 stopped and clasped her +ineffectual gloved hands, leaving me staring blankly, too astonished for +feeling, at the carelessly flung limbs. + +The same idea came to me also. I ran to her. “Mother!” I cried, pale to +the depths of my spirit, “IS HE DEAD?” + +I had been thinking 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 before my eyes.... I perceived that my mother +was helpless and that things must be done. + +“Mother!” I said, “we must get Doctor Beaseley,--and carry him indoors.” + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ SCHOLASTIC + + +1 + +My formal education 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 had a good memory, +versatile interests and a considerable appetite for commendation, and +when I was barely twelve I got a scholarship at the City Merchants +School 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 villa at Penge +within sight of that immense facade of glass and iron, the Crystal +Palace. Then he retired in a mood of good-natured contempt to his native +habitat again. We stayed at Penge until my mother's death. + +School became a large part of the world to me, absorbing my time and +interest, and I never acquired 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 nearer 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 fireworks 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 forgotten the detailed local characteristics--if there +were any--of much of that region 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 glare 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 +occurred 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 packets of American cigarettes then just appearing +in the world. + +My life centred upon 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 the 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 could contrive. + +Home, after my father's death, had become a very quiet and uneventful +place indeed. My mother had either an unimaginative temperament or her +mind was greatly occupied with 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 +reason 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 washing 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 played up to her requirements in the half +ingenuous way that was and still is the quality of most wooing, and +presented himself as a very brisk and orthodox young man. 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 +careless, 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 church 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 parasol, 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, absurd almost lovable storms that passed +like summer thunder, must have been starkly 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 all his enterprises was a sceptical +disapproval. She treated him as something that belonged to me and not +to her. “YOUR father,” she used to call him, as though I had got him for +her. + +She had married late 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, and I find that old +speculative curiosity return as I write this. She took a considerable +interest in the housework that our generally servantless condition put +upon her--she used to have a charwoman in two or three times a week--but +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 pieces. My mother had an equal +dread of “blacks” by day and the “night 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 read it until the afternoon and then, I +think, she was interested only in the more 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; there 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 class 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 choir. + +On winter evenings she occupied an armchair on the other side of the +table at which I sat, head 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 occasions 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 curiosity. For like most +young people I could not imagine mental states without definite 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 still in my possession, a diary of +fragmentary entries in a miscellaneous collection 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 and 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 the +life of the Princess of Wales, who is now Queen Mother, with peculiar +interest and sympathy. “Pray G. all may be well,” she writes in one such +crisis. + +But there are things 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. bless and keep my boy from evil.” And again, with the thin +handwriting shaken 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 tiresome!!! That men should set up to be wiser than +their maker!!!” Then trebly underlined: “I FEAR HIS FATHER'S TEACHING.” + Dreadful little tangle of misapprehensions and false judgments! More +comforting for me to read, “D. very kind and good. He grows more +thoughtful every day.” I suspect myself 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 been 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 there be no meeting past the grave; + If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest. + Be not afraid ye waiting hearts that weep, + For God still giveth His beloved sleep, + And if an endless sleep He wills, so best.” + +That scrap of verse amazed me when I read it. I could even wonder if my +mother really grasped the 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. After that I went through +all her diaries, trying to find something more than a conventional term +of tenderness for my father. But I found nothing. And yet somehow there +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 company, 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 attitudes 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 person. 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, still, 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 in +the least evil, and inculcated neither kindliness nor charity. All their +estrangement followed from that. + +These cramping cults do indeed take an enormous toll of human love +and happiness, and not only that but what we Machiavellians must needs +consider, they make frightful breaches in human solidarity. I suppose I +am a deeply religious man, as men of my quality go, but I hate more +and more, as I grow older, the shadow of intolerance cast by religious +organisations. All my life has been darkened by irrational intolerance, +by arbitrary irrational prohibitions and exclusions. Mahometanism +with its fierce proselytism, has, I suppose, the blackest record of +uncharitableness, 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 exclusive claim that sends them wrong, the vain +ambition that inspires them all to teach a uniform one-sided God and be +the one and only gateway to salvation. Deprecation of all outside the +household of faith, an organised undervaluation of heretical goodness +and lovableness, follows, necessarily. Every petty difference is +exaggerated to the quality of a saving grace or a damning defect. +Elaborate precautions are taken to shield the believer's mind against +broad or amiable suggestions; the faithful are deterred by dark +allusions, by sinister warnings, from books, from theatres, from +worldly conversation, from all the kindly instruments that mingle human +sympathy. For only by isolating its flock 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 number; now the +uninviting visage of some exponent of the real and only doctrine and +attitudes, now some coral strand in act of welcoming the missionaries of +God's mysterious 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 wickedness. 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 nations for weakening +towards Ritualism, or treating Roman Catholics as tolerable human +beings; there would be great rejoicings over the conversion of alleged +Jews, and terrible descriptions of the death-beds of prominent infidels +with boldly invented last words,--the most unscrupulous lying; there +would be the appallingly edifying careers of “early piety” lusciously +described, 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 palpably petty. He was seated some +way down a table at right angles to the one at which I sat, a man of +mean appearance with a greyish complexion, thin, with a square nose, +a heavy wiry moustache and a big Adam's apple sticking out between the +wings of his collar. He ate with considerable appetite and unconcealed +relish, and 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 little 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 was glad to be in conversation +with me and anxious to intimate political sympathy 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 was concerned. + +“One wants,” he said, pitching himself as he supposed in my key, “to put +constructive ideas into our readers, but they are narrow, you know, very +narrow. Very.” 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 Park, and three boys to be fed and clothed and +educated.... + +I had the curiosity 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 Christian 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 about 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 gathered, 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 sulking, 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 their 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 realised. Each of these +experiences left me with a sense of shock, with all the values in +my life perplexingly altered, attempting readjustment. One of these +disturbing 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 protected, 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 as 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 it, 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, and 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 got +home, when my hand wandered into my pocket to embrace the still dear +new possession I found it gone, and instantly that memory of something +hitting the ground sprang up into consciousness. I went back and +commenced a search. Almost immediately 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 the Anerley direction. + +“Lost anythink, 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,” 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 the 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,” I said. “Give me my knife.” + +“'Ow many blades it got?” + +“Three.” + +“And what sort of 'andle?” + +“Bone.” + +“Got a corkscrew like?” + +“Yes.” + +“Ah! This ain'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.” + +“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 in 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 from 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 kicked my elbow. Two or three seemed to be at +me at the same time. Then I rolled over 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 overtake 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 would necessarily +involve that. They kicked my cap into the ditch at the end of the field, +and made off compactly along a cinder lane while I turned aside to +recover 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 tried 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 whenever I thought of my knife. The thing +indeed rankled in my mind for weeks and weeks, 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. + +It was when I was nearly fifteen this happened. It is inseparably +connected in my mind with the 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 gem 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 sexual 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 phase 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 lower 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 money 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, even 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 towards 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 the body of the glow-worm in the night. I made my +way through the throng, a little 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 passionately 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 really did not matter; the thing was we +had met. I felt as I think a new-hatched moth must feel when suddenly +its urgent headlong searching brings it in tremulous amazement upon its +mate. + +We met, covered from each other, with all the nets of civilisation +keeping us apart. We walked side by side. + +It led to scarcely more than that. I think we met four or five times +altogether, and always with her nearly silent elder sister on the other +side of her. We walked on the last two occasions arm in arm, furtively +caressing each other's hands, we went away 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 there 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 it 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 never told me their surname nor let me approach their +house. They made me leave them at the corner of a road of small houses +near Penge Station. And quite abruptly, 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 pervaded 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 symbol 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 her, 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 novels, and if the heroine could not +possibly be like her, dusky and warm and starlike, 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 night. + +One day during my Cambridge days--it must have been in my first year +before I knew Hatherleigh--I saw in a print-shop window near the Strand +an engraving of a girl that reminded 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 have it +framed and hung in my room open to the criticism of my friends, but I +kept it in the drawer of my writing-table. And I kept that drawer locked +for a year. 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 instinct 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 world required. + + +5 + +These things stabbed 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 substance 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 distant 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 and +roads we traversed in our morning's walk from Victoria are still intact, +the storms 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 Close. 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 put 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 aimless disconnectedness from the +constructive forces in the community. I suppose if 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 towards 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. It 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. + +My memory of school has indeed no hint whatever of that quality of +elucidation it seems reasonable 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 flamed +with election placards, now the Salvation Army and now the unemployed +came trailing 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 splendour 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 apart 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 and for +all its high resolve of stalwart virility a little feeble, like our +blackened 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 these 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 through Latin, +and afterwards Greek had come in as the vehicle of a flood of new and +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 the 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 great +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 substance 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, among other indiscretions, he asserted that it was +impossible to write good English 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 argument conceded every objection +a reasonable person could make to the City Merchants' curriculum. He +admitted that translation had now placed all the wisdom of the past at +a common man's disposal, that scarcely a field of endeavour remained +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 else provided the same strengthening and +orderly discipline for the mind. + +He said that, knowing the Senior Classics he did, himself a Senior +Classic! + +Yet in a dim confused 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 the 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 with them disrespectfully. +But public schools and university colleges sprang into existence +correlated, the scholars went on to the universities and came back 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, this revolutionary innovation of +Renascence public schools had become an immense tradition woven closely +into the fabric of the national life. Intelligent and 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 point. Since +most men of any importance or influence in the country had been through +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 occupied 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 our +class-room, the banging of books, Topham's disordered hair, the sheen of +his alpaca gown, his deep unmusical intonations and the wide striding +of his creaking boots. Glorious! And being plastic human beings we would +consent that it was glorious, 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 beauty that lay in the Gothic +intricacy, the splash and glitter, the jar and recovery, 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 through 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 school +performance. No Gilbert Murray had come as yet to touch these things +to life again. It was 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 spectacle 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 new world no teacher has yet had the power +and courage to grasp and expound. Life 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 horse omnibuses went +lumbering past, bearing countless people we knew not whence, we knew +not whither. Hansoms clattered, foot passengers jostled one, a thousand +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-vendors, 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 and 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 casual 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 swirling world process +in which we found ourselves. I always look back with particular +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, what 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 great cult which pretends that the place +of this or that county in the struggle for 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 boy, +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 pretended that Lords or the Oval were the places +nearest Paradise for me. (I never went to either.) Through a slight +mistake about the county boundary I adopted Surrey for my loyalty, +though as a matter of fact we were by some five hundred yards or so in +Kent. It did quite as well for my purposes. I bowled rather straight 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 easily 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 the 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 swipe 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 schoolmasters 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 detachment 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 with him, but honest, simple +and very eager to be liberal-minded. He was bald, with an almost conical +baldness, with a grizzled pointed beard, small featured and, under the +stresses of a Zeitgeist that demanded liberality, with an expression 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 three 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 which 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 the 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, Gates 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 want 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 wish 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 some 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 began the replacement of the hacked wooden tables, at +which the boys had worked since Tudor days, by sloping desks with safety +inkpots and scientifically adjustable 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 and reverse of a sixpence worn to +complete illegibility. His tall fine figure stood 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, that +what we all knew for Sin was sinful, and on the whole best avoided +altogether, and so went on with deepening notes and even with short +arresting gestures of the 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 made 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 that I was very exceptional in that; most intelligent +boys, I believe, want naturally 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--which 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 passable figure +at games, and I do not think I was abnormally insensitive to the fine +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 rap 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 +the way. It gave him a startling quality of living knowledge. From these +pilgrims we got to a comparative treatment of religions, and from that, +by a sudden plunge, to entirely sceptical and disrespectful confessions +concerning Gates' last outbreak of simple piety in School Assembly. We +became congenial intimates from that hour. + +The discovery of Britten happened to me when we were both in the Lower +Fifth. Previously there 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 conversation 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 +prowling gave way to much more definite joint enterprises. I went +several times to his 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 do 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 explored London docks +and Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane and all sorts of out-of-the-way +places together. + +We confessed shyly to one another a common secret vice, “Phantom +warfare.” When we walked 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 gathering behind hedges, cresting +ridges, occupying copses, rushing open spaces, fighting 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 troops +(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 when 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 means of a large scale map of the +Thames and little paper ironclads in plan cut out of paper. + +A subsequent revival 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 our 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 books 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 +solicitudes talking. I was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, +I know, when he and I walked along the Thames Embankment confessing +shamefully to one another that we had never read Lucretius. We thought +every one who mattered had read Lucretius. + +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 trouble 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, and 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 half +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 great days together. Afterwards we were torn apart; +Britten went to Oxford, and our circumstances never afterwards threw us +continuously together until the days 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 Irish 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-house of William +Morris's at Hammersmith and worked out the principles of Socialism +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 mimicry, dimorphism and so forth, were new in our +times, and we went through them with earnest industry and tried over our +Darwinism in the light of that. Such topics 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 knowledge. + +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 secret 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 our enterprise was to lay the foundations of a +career that has ended in the House 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 quality +and spirit as our own. He was, we were inclined to think, rather a +sentimentalist, rather a poseur, he affected a concise emphatic style, +played chess very well, betrayed a belief in will-power, and earned +Britten's secret hostility, Britten 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 rather 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 meeting 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 used 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 fanciful. What of ARVONIAN? Richard Arvon was our founder, and it +seems almost a duty--” + +“They call them 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 regarded 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 the 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 going to do anything Queer,” said Shoesmith, pointedly not +looking at Britten. + +The question of the title had manifestly gone against us. “Oh! HAVE it +ARVONIAN,” I said. + +“And next, what size shall we have?” said Cossington. + +“Something like MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE--or LONGMANS'; LONGMANS' is better +because it has a whole 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. It's nuggetty. You can't get a swing on your prose.” I +had discussed this thoroughly with Britten. + +“If the fellows are going to write--” began Britten. + +“We ought to keep off fine writing,” said Shoesmith. “It's cheek. I vote +we don'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 ask old Topham to see us through,” said Naylor. + +Britten groaned aloud and every one regarded him. “Greek epigrams on the +fellows' names,” he said. “Small beer in ancient bottles. Let's get a +stuffed broody hen 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 masters 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 going 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 pregnant with judgments. + +“One great thing about a magazine of this sort,” said Cossington, “is +to mention just 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 for them.” + +“Do you want any reports of matches?” Shoesmith broke from his +meditation. + +“Rather. With comments.” + +“Naylor surpassed himself and negotiated the lemon safely home,” said +Shoesmith. + +“Shut it,” said Naylor modestly. + +“Exactly,” said Cossington. “That gives us three features,” touching +them off on his fingers, “Epigram, Literary Section, Sports. Then we +want a section to shove anything into, a joke, a notice of anything +that's going on. So on. Our Note Book.” + +“Oh, Hell!” said Britten, and clashed his boots, to the silent +disapproval of every one. + +“Then we want an editorial.” + +“A WHAT?” 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 Britten. Hitherto we had not considered Cossington mattered +very much in the world. + +He went over us as 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 developed a clear and detailed +vision of a magazine made up of everything that was most 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 +were, synthetically plagiarised every successful magazine and breathed +into this dusty mixture the breath of life. He was elected at his own +suggestion managing director, with the earnest support of Shoesmith and +Naylor, and conducted the 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 pay 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 Head 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 found it difficult to express to each other with any grace +or precision what we felt 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 understanding. 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 mother, 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 effort to write it down +that one realises how marvellously crowded, how marvellously analytical +and synthetic those ears must be. One begins with the little child +to whom the sky is a roof of blue, the world a screen of opaque and +disconnected facts, the home a thing eternal, and “being good” just +simple obedience to unquestioned authority; and one comes at last to +the vast world of one's adult perception, pierced deep by flaring +searchlights of partial understanding, here masked by mists, here +refracted and distorted through half translucent veils, here showing +broad prospects and limitless vistas and here impenetrably dark. + +I recall phases of deep speculation, doubts and even prayers by night, +and strange occasions when by a sort of hypnotic contemplation of +nothingness I sought to pierce the web 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 overlaid and obliterated mood, +the phases by which an utter horror of death was replaced by the growing +realisation of its necessity and dignity. Difficulty of the imagination +with infinite space, infinite time, entangled my mind; and moral +distress for the pain and suffering of bygone ages that made all thought +of reformation 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 manhood 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 substratum of all +things, may be. Feeling OF IT, feeling BY IT, I cannot feel afraid of +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 and 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 life, but my early training was all in +the direction of regarding it as an irrelevant 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 think 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 the less for all the extravagant +decency, the stimulating silences of my upbringing.... + +The plaster Venuses 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 ever 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 thing of all my odd and solitary upbringing seems to me +now that swathing up of all 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 dishonoured by shame, by enigmatical +warnings, by cultivated aversions, an ignorance in which 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 youthful +Pantheon, but instead there was a mysterious and minatory gap. I have +told how at last a new Venus was born in my imagination out of gas lamps +and the twilight, a Venus with a cockney accent and dark eyes shining +out of the dusk, a Venus who was a warm, passion-stirring atmosphere +rather than incarnate in a body. And I have told, too, how I bought a +picture. + +All this was a thing 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 unwholesome 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 atmosphere +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 corners of mine; +the highlights of the picture came chiefly as reflections from his +chequered 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 fuddled, and occasionally quite drunk, and we all smoked +reckless-looking pipes,--there was a transient fashion among us for corn +cobs for which Mark Twain, I think, 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-edges of life. Hatherleigh was a +good Englishman of the premature type with a red face, 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. What 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 Infernal University!” + +We rose to his challenge a little awkwardly and our first talk +was clumsy, there were flushed faces and red ears, and I remember +Hatherleigh broke out into a monologue on decency. “Modesty and +Decency,” said Hatherleigh, “are Oriental 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 for 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 northwest 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 spinster in +his regard for respectability. But his case was too preposterous, and +Esmeer, 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 Roman 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 important 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 and 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, +sentimentalising a bit, like--like Cambridge humorists.... I mean to +know what I'm doing.” + +He paused to drink, and I think I cut in with ideas of my own. But one +is apt to forget one's own share in a talk, I find, more than one does +the clear-cut objectivity of other 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 world, 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 straight 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 eminent 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 been 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 prolonged +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 obsolete 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 for 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 there 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. + +Those undergraduate 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 evening raids over the Downs towards Arundel, +and would come tramping back through the still keen moonlight singing +and shouting. We formed romantic friendships with one another, and +grieved more or less convincingly that there were no splendid 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 tender goddess,” Benton said. A sort of shame +came upon us in the dark in spite 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 chance 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 +pointless 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 returns 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 rooms 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 year 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 years later I got a +lectureship in political science. In those days it was disguised in the +cloak of Political Economy. + + + +2 + + +It was our affectation to be a little detached from the main stream of +undergraduate life. We worked pretty hard, but by virtue of our +beer, our socialism and suchlike heterodoxy, held ourselves 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 despised 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 brothers. + +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 nickname the “Pinky Dinkys,” intending +thereby both contempt and abhorrence in almost equal measure. The Pinky +Dinky summarised all that we particularly did 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 about 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 Dinky extracts a good deal of amusement from life,” said some +one. + +“Damned prig!” said Hatherleigh. + +“The Pinky Dinky 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 shy books at the giggling swine,” said Hatherleigh. + +“The Pinky Dinky says suddenly while he is making the tea, 'We're all +being frightfully funny. It's time for you to say something now.'” + +“The Pinky Dinky shakes his head and says: 'I'm afraid I shall never be +a responsible being.' And he really IS frivolous.” + +“Frivolous but 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 still failed to get at the core of the mystery of the +Pinky Dinky. + +We tried over things about his religion. “The Pinky Dinky goes to King's +Chapel, and sits and 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 about it. Just feels!” + +“But in his heart of hearts, oh! ever so deep, the Pinky Dinky has a +doubt--” + +Some one protested. + +“Not a vulgar doubt,” Esmeer went on, “but a kind of hesitation whether +the Ancient 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 Dinky 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 matter with the Pinky Dinky. It's Mental Cowardice dressed up as a +virtue and taking 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 run with men like him?” + +“All his little 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 +thoughtful silence for a time. + +“I say,” began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science Tripos, “what +is the adult 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 lifted our criticism to the dons and the +organisation of the University. I think we took 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 had 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 scheme 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 machine 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 +convinced it is hopeless to think of reforming the old public schools +and universities to meet the needs of a modern state, they send their +roots too deep and far, the 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 creating hardworking, hard-living, +modern and scientific boys' schools, first for the Royal Navy and then +for the public service generally, and as they grew, opening them to +the public without any absolute obligation to subsequent service. +Simultaneously 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 trusted 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 made 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 get 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 +manoeuvres, 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 clean 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 exactly 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 below 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 scandal 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 overshoes, 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 recently he was a power in Cambridge, he could +make and bar and destroy, and in a way 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 trousers braced up much too high, his feet a +trifle inturned, and going across the great 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 again I recall him drinking port with little muscular +movements in his neck and cheek 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 Park 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 for +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 took no exercise, and also of his knowledge of port wine. +Of other wines he confessed 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 tinged with playfulness. Certainly +he had a scholar's knowledge of the works of Miss 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 difficult +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 then Tusher spread himself too much, he also undertook +to rehearse whole pages out 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 with 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 import 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 development 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, the 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 greatly, +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 show 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 discords it +may present, is as a matter of fact “all right,” is being steered 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 living 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 occasionally extremely irascible +Providence, the talk was all of the Struggle for Existence 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 won upon me. I disliked Herbert Spencer all my life +until I read his autobiography, 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 only 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 things 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 +itself 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 religious 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 should +have been prigs to have concealed our spontaneous interests and ape the +theoretical 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 atomic and microscopic science and the stars and +future time. I had travelled scarcely 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 every 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 wish 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 the 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-hand 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 side that we had no suspicion were +interdependent. We had no conception of the roots 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 +together. Finance again was a sealed book to us; we did not so much +connect it with the 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 opinion 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 for 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 once 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. Paul's +Cathedral, after the passing of a simply worded bill,--a close and not +unnaturally an exciting division carrying the third reading. I remember +quite distinctly evolving that vision. We were then fully fifteen and we +were perfectly serious 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 that every day changed one's general +outlook, but also that a boy fluctuates between phases of quite adult +understanding and phases of tawdrily magnificent puerility. Sometimes +I myself was in those tumbrils that went along Cheapside to the Mansion +House, a Sydney Cartonesque figure, a white defeated Mirabean; 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 Office 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 time 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 ideas 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 distinguished 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 City 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 ideas 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 tradition, +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 before 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 +William 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 cabinet councils and meetings at +country houses. Some of us, pursuing such interests, 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 were +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 monsters 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, intellectual and moral +processes.... + + + +5 + + +Socialism is an intellectual Proteus, 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 Morris, the Chicago +Anarchists, JUSTICE and Social Democratic Federation (as it was then) +presented socialism to our minds. Hatherleigh was the leading exponent +of the new doctrines in Trinity, and the figure upon his wall of a +huge-muscled, 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 capitalist system would flee and vanish like +the mists before the morning, like the dews 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 went 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 arrangements was that they were “all wrong.” + The rich were robbers and knew it, kings and princes were usurpers and +knew it, religious teachers were impostors 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 torn +aside.... + +It was Hatherleigh's poster and his capacity for overstating things, I +think, that first qualified my simple revolutionary enthusiasm. Perhaps +also I had met with Fabian publications, but if I did I forget the +circumstances. And no doubt my innate 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, as 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 the massive effect of that multitudinous +majority of people who toil continually, who are for ever anxious about +ways and means, who are restricted, ill clothed, ill fed and ill +housed, who have limited outlooks and continually suffer misadventures, +hardships and distresses through the want of money. My lot had fallen +upon the fringe of the possessing minority; if I did not know the want +of necessities I knew shabbiness, and the world that let me go on to a +university education intimated very plainly that there was not a thing +beyond the primary 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 upbringing, nor did it link +me in sympathy with any of the profounder realities of poverty. 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, ragged 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 become 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 that it came to me that my bedder, +a garrulous old thing with a dusty black bonnet over one eye and an +ostentatiously clean apron outside the dark mysteries that clothed her, +or the cheeky little ruffians who yelled papers about the streets, were +really material to such questions. + +Directly any of us young socialists of Trinity found ourselves in +immediate contact with servants 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 about +Cambridge, rather stunted and spiritless and very difficult to idealise. +That 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; Esmeer, I remember, who lived somewhere in the Fens, was +very eloquent about the Cornish 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 increments of realisation it was that the profounder verities +of the problem of socialism 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 about and saw Bursley Wakes and much of +the human aspects of organised industrialism 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 fragments, +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 should 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 awakening 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 nor very urgently, that +mean fears enslaved them and mean satisfactions decoyed them, that they +took the very gift of life itself with a spiritless lassitude, 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 Robinson was heralded by such heroic +anticipations, and he was so entirely what we had not anticipated. + +Hatherleigh got him 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 profoundly. Beyond a futile attempt +to screw up Hatherleigh made by some inexpert duffers 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 +left Cambridge in the evening amidst the cheers of twenty men or so. +Socialism was at such a low ebb politically in those days that it didn't +even rouse men to opposition. + +And there sat Chris under that flamboyant and heroic Worker of the +poster, a little wrinkled grey-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 and windowsills and boxes and anywhere except upon chairs +after the manner of young 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, and, 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 tell 'em something of how things are in Lancashire, what +with the new machines and all that,” he speculated at last with red +reflections in his thoughtful eyes. + +We had an inexcusable 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 with an audience before him, he became a +different man. He declared he would explain 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 the 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 became a beauty +of his earnest speech, we were carried away by his indignations. We +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 more 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 badly to cheer. + +Then like a lancet stuck into a bladder came the heckling. Denson, that +indolent, liberal-minded 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 system always HAS stood condemned in the +minds of intelligent men. But where it seems to me you get thin, is just +where everybody has been thin, and that's when you come to the remedy.” + +“Socialism,” 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-blades well down to the seat of his chair; “but I don't. +I don't, you know. It'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,” 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 could be worse than things are now,” said Chris Robinson. “I +have seen little children--” + +“I submit life 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 good 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 dialectician, 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 nursed 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 great discursive talk with him. + +“Eh! you should 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 pick holes up north. They mean business.” + +He talked, and that 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 many 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, anyhow 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, “while men decay and starve.” + +“But suppose,” I said, suddenly dropping into opposition, “the +alternative is to risk a worse disaster--or do something patently +futile.” + +“I don't follow that,” said Chris Robinson. “We don't propose anything +futile, so far as I can see.” + + +6 + + +The prevailing force in my undergraduate days was not Socialism +but Kiplingism. Our set was quite exceptional in its socialistic +professions. And we were all, you must understand, very distinctly +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 vehement 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 national +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 broaden my geographical sense immensely, and he provided +phrases for just that desire 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 let 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 later criticism, this sticks in my mind, +sticks there now as quintessential wisdom: + + + “The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood an' stone; + 'E don't obey no orders unless they is 'is own; + 'E keeps 'is side-arms awful: 'e leaves 'em all about + An' then comes 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 learnt 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 since 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, +mortal and human in the sight of all the world, the pleasant officers we +had imagined 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, too, they were just what our streets and +country-side had made them, no sudden magic 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 realise the +bloody waste of Magersfontein, the shattering retreat from Stormberg, +Colenso--Colenso, that blundering battle, with White, as it seemed, in +Ladysmith near the point 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 went out of fashion altogether! The dirty +retrogressive Boer vanished from our scheme of illusion. + +All through my middle 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 looked 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, the 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, though 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 narrow old Cambridge streets, of the flicker of papers +hastily bought and torn open 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 companions, 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 have +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 as a book justified. The war endorsed its every +word for me, underlined each warning 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 and 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 made 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 busy searchlights over the horizon.... + +One consequence of the patriotic chagrin Meredith produced in me was an +attempt to belittle his merit. “It isn't a good novel, anyhow,” I said. + +The charge I brought 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 more terrible +claim of Mrs. Burman Radnor, the “infernal punctilio,” and Dudley +Sowerby's limitations, were the central substance of that inalertness +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 range of comprehension.... + + + +8 + + +As I seek to recapitulate the interlacing growth of my apprehension of +the world, as I flounder among the half-remembered 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 vote 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 earn 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 halts 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 and the Santa Maria +Maggiore valley to Cannobio, and thence up the lake to Locarno (where, +as I shall tell, we stayed some eventful days) and so up the Val Maggia +and over to Airolo and home. + +As I write of that long tramp of ours, something of its freshness and +enlargement returns to me. 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 standing 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 lighthouse on a +cliff to the east of us, coming up suddenly; and then one turned to scan +the little different French coast villages, and then, sliding by in a +pale sunshine came a long wooden pier with oddly dressed children upon +it, and the clustering town of Boulogne. + +One took it all with 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 tongue; one found the French of +City Merchants' and Cambridge a shy and viscous flow, and then one was +standing in the train as it went slowly through the rail-laid street to +Boulogne Ville, and one looked out at the world in French, porters 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 great 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 other 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 one'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; and 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 sorts of generalisations from the steeply sloping +fields on the hillsides, and from the people we saw on platforms and +from little differences in the way things were done. + +The clean prosperity of Bale and Switzerland, the big clean stations, +filled me with patriotic misgivings, 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 ended unfamiliarly at his rather impending, spectacled, +intellectual visage. I didn't, I remember, like the contrast of him with +the drilled Swiss and Germans about us. Convict coloured stockings +and vast hobnail boots finished him below, and all his luggage was a +borrowed rucksac that he had tied askew. He did not want to shave in +the train, but I made him at one of the Swiss stations--I dislike +these Oxford slovenlinesses--and then confound him! he cut himself and +bled.... + +Next morning we were 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 space of rime-edged rocks, +snow-mottled, above a blue-gashed glacier. All about us the monstrous +rock surfaces rose towards the shining peaks above, and there were +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 stiff 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 historical 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 valleys, 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 angle, because his choice was largely made and +mine still hung in the balance. + +“I feel we might 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 Lecturing was doing very much to intensify. + +“You've made your decision?” + +He nodded with a peculiar forward movement of his head. + +“How would you 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 people 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 limit 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 still more arid and +unrewarded, that he must have spent! His little affectations of gesture +and manner, imitative affectations for the most part, have increased, +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 does 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 recognition. 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 +proprietorship 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 keep 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 him, 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 walk 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 flourish for the good of the world! He +lectured a little in conversation then; he lectures more now and listens +less, toilsomely disentangling what you already understand, giving you +in detail the data you know; these are things like callosities that come +from a man's work. + +Our long three weeks' talk comes back to me as a memory of ideas and +determinations slowly growing, 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 waitresses and fellow travellers, +with my first essays in colloquial German and Italian, 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 theme. +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 things, to help in their developing, to lessen misery, to broaden +and exalt life. It is very hard--perhaps it is impossible--to present +in a page or two the substance and quality of nearly a month's +conversation, conversation that is casual and discursive in form, that +ranges carelessly from triviality to immensity, and yet is constantly +resuming a constructive process, as workmen on a wall loiter 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 must 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 loosely from my +private reading. We were particularly wise, I remember, upon the +management of newspapers, because about that we knew nothing whatever. +We perceived that great things were to be done through newspapers. We +talked of swaying opinion and moving great classes to massive action. + +Men are egotistical 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 frequent 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 +twenty, 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 +chairman 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 government 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 swayed 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 full of the absurdest little solicitudes about +our prospects. There were times when one surveyed the whole world of +men as if it was a little thing at one's feet, and by way of contrast +I remember once lying in bed--it must have been during 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 there 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 cry 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, +“snarling 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 dismissed 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. What he does with his property affects people just the +same. Private! No one is really 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 confident 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 suggestions for national +reorganisation, and weighing considerations as lightly as though the +world was wax in our hands. “Great England,” we said in effect, 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 +anxieties 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 walked up to the loggia of a little pilgrimage church, +I forget its name, that stands out on a conical hill at the head of a +winding stair above the town of Locarno. 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 mountain masses where +Switzerland passes into Italy, and the drift of our talk seemed suddenly +to gather to a head. + +I broke into speech, 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 altered for me, but the substance +remains as clear as ever. I said how we were in our measure emperors +and kings, men undriven, free to do as we pleased with life; we classed +among the happy ones, our bread and common necessities were given us for +nothing, we had abilities,--it wasn't modesty but cowardice to behave +as 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 lecturer's voice. + +“So many things 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 vanities 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 things 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 find out just where to +aim itself....” + +The lake and the frontier villages, a white puff of steam on the distant +railway to Luino, the 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 place in all its beauty of width and +abundance and clustering human effort, and once 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 moment I was humanity, looking at the world I had made and +had still to make.... + + + +12 + + +And mingled with these dreams of power 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 life and the red life, +contrasted and interchanged, passing swiftly at a turn from 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 fundamental 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 cousins 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 through all those ripening years, +the thought of women's beauty, their magic presence in the world beside +me and the unknown, untried reactions of their intercourse, 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 occupied, 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 sometimes 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 pedestrians 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, who were walking down from Saas. She came swinging +and shining towards us, easy and strong. I worshipped her as she +approached. + +“Gut Tag!” said Willersley, removing his hat. + +“Morgen!” said the old man, saluting. + +I stared stockishly 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 ashamed 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 pretences. + +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 girls 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 isn't good for women.” + +“Damn agricultural work!” I said, and broke out into a vigorous cursing +of all 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 quite 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 still 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 first blister. And partly because +of that and partly because there was a bag at the station that gave us +the refreshment of clean linen and partly because of the lazy lower air +into which we had come, we decided upon three or four days' sojourn in +the Empress Hotel. + +We dined that night 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 woman of perhaps thirty-three or thirty-four, +slenderly built, with a warm reddish skin and very abundant fair +golden hair, the wife of a petulant-looking heavy-faced man of perhaps +fifty-three, who smoked a cigar and dozed over his coffee and +presently went to bed. “He always goes to bed like that,” she confided +startlingly. “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 the 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 something 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 said 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 remember 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.” + +I had not read George 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 theorised while I thought of the woman and that provocative +quality of dash she had displayed. 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,” 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.” + +She began to talk of books. She was interested in Christian Science, +she said, and spoke of a book. 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 would 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 write down here?” + +“I shall write 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 the 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!” 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 purring 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 came down to dinner a monster of pride, for behold! I +was a man. I felt myself the 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 +afternoon 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, and went further along the arcade to discover a place +where girls in operatic Swiss 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 Willersley 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 that 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 done 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 mighty smoker--“he reeks of it,” she said, +“always”--and interested in nothing but golf, billiards (which he played +very badly), pigeon shooting, convivial Free Masonry and Stock Exchange +punting. Mostly they drifted about the Riviera. Her mother had contrived +her marriage when she was eighteen. They were the first samples I ever +encountered of the great multitude 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 told. The bloom +of my innocence, if ever there had been such a thing, was gone. And 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 promoted to virility; I was unable to conceal my exultation +from Willersley. It was a mood 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?” 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 have been caught, and that would have meant endless trouble. +You might have incurred all sorts of consequences. What did you know +about her?... We have wasted four 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, “chastity will be first among the virtues +prescribed.” + +“I shall form 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 public 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 even 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 take 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 +parable.” + +I let that go for a little while. Then I broke out. “Sex!” said I, “is +a fundamental 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. Career and Politics must take their chances of +that. It's part of the general English 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 function in a nation. +The Romans broke up upon that. The Americans fade out amidst their +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. + + + + +BOOK THE SECOND: MARGARET + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ MARGARET 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 length. I want to tell in this second +hook how I came to marry, and to do that I must 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 Staffordshire 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 +twenty 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 might 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 cousins 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 me to go into +business instead of going up to Cambridge. + +I remember that visit on account of all sorts of novel things, but +chiefly, I think, because it was the first time I encountered anything +that deserves to be spoken of as wealth. 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 treats or exceptional +extravagances. My cousins of eighteen and nineteen took cabs, for +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 occupied 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-places 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 the porcelain +baths and fittings my uncle manufactured, bright and sanitary and +stamped with his name, and the house was furnished throughout with +chairs and tables 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 floor with three +comfortable sofas and a rotating bookcase containing an excellent +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 little woman with a scared look and a cap that would +get over one eye, not very like my mother, and nearly eight years her +junior; she was very much concerned with keeping everything nice, and +unmercifully bullied by my two cousins, who took 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 hair waved, and Gertrude's was severely straight. They treated +me on my first visit 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 presence was full of unfathomable +allusions. They were the sort of girls who will talk 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 large, 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 made no secret of it that the ineligible +qualities of my father were the cause of the 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 +considerable 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 pretty, with hedgerows and fields and copses +and flowers. But always I went eastward, 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 potbanks, heard the hooters summoning the toilers +to work, lost my way upon slag heaps 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 days one of the normal risks of certain sorts of pottery workers. +Then back I came, 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 Penge, 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 which 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 +Pandram 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 injustice. 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 some +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 part 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 from +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 mind. 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 less radiantly +aggressive. This altered effect was due not so much to my own changed +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 visit there was a perpetual series of--the only word is +rows, between them and him. Up to the age of fifteen or thereabouts, he +had maintained his ascendancy over 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 him. He had tried stopping +their pocket money, but they found their mother financially amenable; +besides which it was fundamental to my uncle's attitude that he should +give them money freely. Not to do so would seem like admitting 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 qualm. 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 mutual +recriminations a gift for damaging retort, and he found it an altogether +deadlier thing than the power of the raised voice that had always +cowed my aunt. Whenever he became heated with them, they frowned as if +involuntarily, drew in their breath sharply, said: “Daddy, you really +must not say--” and corrected his pronunciation. Then, at a great +advantage, they resumed the discussion.... + +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 business 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 requirements 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 retrogressive corner +in the world where lawyers and suchlike sheltered themselves from the +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. “Young 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 own 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 Gates 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 fellow 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 +emphasising his points by prodding at me with his finger--the ill-worn, +costly, grey tweed 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 tried 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 masked 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 siding +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 any 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,” he said. “Let me tell you, my +boy--” + +He began in a voice 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 liable 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, but 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 sorts 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 people +had generalised from these exceptional cases. The small shops, he +hazarded, looking 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. That'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 down 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 workpeople, 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 and 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 basin 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 her hand if you please, and +eating her dinner out of it. Got her dinner in it! + +“Eating her dinner out of it,” he repeated in loud and bitter tones, and +punched me hard in the ribs. + +“And then they comes to THAT--and grumbles. And the fools up in +Westminster want you to put 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.” But 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 asked me to come to him into his study; it was a room with +a writing-desk and full 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'll go to Trinity, Uncle,” I said firmly. “I want to go to +Trinity. It is a great college.” + +He was manifestly chagrined. “You're a fool,” he said. + +I made no answer. + +“You're a damned 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 women 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 what 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 +slights, 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 sort 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 passions for a “bit of a spree” + to Birmingham or Liverpool or Manchester. The indulgences of these +occasions were usually followed by a period of reaction, when he was +urgent for the suppression of nudity in the local Art Gallery and 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 aunt 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 resentments and dangerous sudden antagonisms I +should have found incomprehensible in their more complex forms, if I had +not first seen them in him in their feral state. + +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-shouldered and very obstinate looking, he strolls through +all my speculations sucking his teeth audibly, and occasionally throwing +out a shrewd aphorism, the intractable 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 until 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 not 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 insufficiently “reet.” He wanted +to have all his own women inviolate, and to fancy he had a call upon +every other woman in the world. He wanted to have the best cigars and +the best brandy in the world to consume or give away magnificently, 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 because they interfered with his autocratic direction of his +works, and his workpeople 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 Japan. 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 expressed 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 young gentleman learning all sorts of unremunerative +things in the grandest manner, “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 settled down to them off I went +again. I don't think I was one person to them; I was 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 eighteen +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 appeared, I think in my second visit, a bottle-green +affair that opened behind, had dark 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 rechristened 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, +“dressed up like--“--and had arrested himself and fumbled and decided to +say--“actresses, and showin' their fat arms for every fool to stare +at!” Nor would he have 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 occurred went on during his absence in the +afternoon. + +One of the peculiarities of the life of these ascendant families of +the industrial class to which wealth has come, is its tremendous +insulations. There were no customs of intercourse in the Five Towns. All +the isolated prosperities of the district sprang from economising, hard +driven homes, in which there was neither time nor means for hospitality. +Social intercourse centred very largely upon the church 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,” and my cousins would “spend the afternoon” + or even spend the day with these; such occasions led to other encounters +and interlaced with the furtive correspondences and snatched meetings +that formed the emotional thread of their lives. When the billiard table +had been new, my uncle had taken to asking in a few approved friends for +an occasional game, but mostly the billiard-room was 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 began +to go to dances, they went with the quavering connivance of my aunt, +and changed 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 of 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. + +My aunt and uncle had conceived no plans in life for their daughters at +all. In the undifferentiated 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 them wealthy, had cut their +children off from the general social sea in which their own awkward +meeting had occurred, without necessarily opening any other world 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 steered 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 supplemented the silences of home by the conversation +of schoolfellows and the suggestions 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 face. + +My cousins had worked it out from the indications of their universe that +the end of life is to have a “good time.” They used the phrase. That +and the drives in dog-carts 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 supplied 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 how 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 dreadfully serious to them, composed in equal +measure of becoming important and becoming 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 and 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 own prosperity and that circumambient +poverty, and they knew of Trade Unions simply 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 inexperience by surprise. + +It must have been on my third visit that Sybil took me in hand. Hitherto +I seemed to have seen her 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 the 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 sure I was clever. + +The conversation languished a little, and we picked some flowers for the +house. Then she asked 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 side, pleasantly hidden from the house, and she became +anxious about her hair, which 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, achievement. I do not recall any shadow of a doubt +whether on the whole it was worth doing. 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 matters came to a crisis in the little upstairs +sitting-room which had been assigned me as a study during my visit. +I was working up there, or rather trying to work in spite of the +outrageous capering of some very primitive elements in my brain, when +she came up to me, under a transparent pretext of looking for a book. + +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 attempted 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 was concerned, +was played and won. It wasn't until I had fretted for two days that +I realised that I was being used for the commonest form of excitement +possible 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!” 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 so keen on kissing you, Sybil, after all. I just thought you +wanted me to.” + +I could have whipped her, and my voice stung more than my words. + +Our eyes met; a real hatred in hers leaping up to meet mine. + +“Let's play tennis,” I said, after a moment's pause. + +“No,” she 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 preoccupation to an interest in my existence. She +developed a disposition to touch my hand 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 +were 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 made of it came out one evening in some talk--I forget +about what--with Sybil. + +“Oh, Dick!” 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 first time. I say I think +because it is quite possible that we had passed each other in the +streets of Cambridge, no doubt with that affectation of mutual disregard +which was once customary between undergraduates and Newnham girls. But +if that 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 not 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 herself 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 straining 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 exercise +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 her 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-meaning 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 rightly, 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 +civilised 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 giving an afternoon reception at short notice, +with the clear intention of letting every 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 grass 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 with the fashion and tied with pretty ribbons, like a +slenderer, unbountiful Primavera. + +It was one of those May days that ape the light and heat of summer, and +I remember disconnectedly 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 tea drinking had come out upon +the moss-edged flagstones even as Mrs. Seddon had planned. + +The party was almost 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 three 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 hair on +which was poised a grey felt hat encircled by a refined black band. He +wore, 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 also one father with three daughters in +anxious control, a father of the old school scarcely half broken +in, reluctant, rebellious and consciously and conscientiously “reet +Staffordshire.” The daughters were all alert 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 the 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 think, +all the time, though not formally absent. + +Matters centred upon 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 presided 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 partnering 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, stirring a partially empty cup of +tea, mingled with our party, and preluded, I remember, 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 lecturers in Trinity for a term before her breakdown, +and understood these differences. 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 Kings' Chapel and the +Backs, and the curate, addressing himself more particularly to Sibyl, +told a long confused story illustrative of his disposition to reckless +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 little 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 said. + +I thought the bales a little out of keeping. + +But fair-haired and 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 smart, 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 knew how. + +We recalled a case 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 disappointed me, too,” said Margaret. + +I was moved to tell 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 alert and intelligent. + +“We did a lot of that when I was up in the eighties,” he said. “I'm glad +Imperialism 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 pink bonnet joined our little +group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and was not disposed to play +a passive part in the talk. + +“Socialism!” she cried, catching the word. “It's well Pa isn't here. He +has Fits when people talk of socialism. Fits!” + +The initial laughed in a general kind of way. + +The curate said there 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, simply appalling; that there +were times when he wanted to shatter the whole system, “only,” he said, +turning to me appealingly, “What have we got to put in its place?” + +“The thing that 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 Margaret was saying. + +Margaret was saying, 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 Margaret's rescue. “It doesn't follow that because one's a +socialist one ought to dress in sackcloth and ashes.” + +The initial coloured deeply, and having secured my attention by prodding +me slightly with the wrist of the hand that held his teacup, cleared his +throat and suggested that “one ought to be consistent.” + +I perceived we were 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, Gertrude 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 principles 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 every +one about them there would be no difficulty with social problems at all, +that over and above all enactments we needed moral changes in people +themselves. My cousin Gertrude was a difficult controversialist to +manage, being unconscious 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 was sure, if she didn't. She +said that if we did give up everything we had to other 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 led 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 referring not simply to my cousins, but to the whole world of +industry and property about 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 world.” + +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 things 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 told 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 in my +attempt to find solutions I talked so as to outrage his profoundest +feelings.... + + + +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 +population, 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,” said my uncle, his voice thick with challenge. + +I went on as though I was back in Trinity. + +“There's a lot 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 businesses, 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 history 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 conditions. 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 railways and made it possible to organise +production on an altogether different scale. You really at the utmost +can't take credit for much more than being the sort of man who happened +to fit what happened to be the requirements of the time, and who +happened to be in a position to take advantage of them--” + +It was then my uncle cried out and called me a damned young puppy, and +became involved in some unexpected trouble of his own. + +I woke up as it were 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 mine. + +Well, why shouldn't I talk my mind to him? He'd never had an outside +view of himself for years, and 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 superior 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 things we said and did in that bawling encounter matter +nothing at all in this story. I can't now estimate how near we came +to fisticuffs. It ended with my saying, 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 puerile 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 +inherently that our sense of disorder implies the possibility of a +better order. Of course we are detestable. My uncle was of that other +vaster mass who accept everything 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 world is our battleground; and +all history, all literature that matters, all science, 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 ~~ MARGARET IN LONDON + + + +1 + + +I was twenty-seven when I met Margaret again, and the intervening +five years had been years of vigorous activity for 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 much 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 acquaintance of Mr. +Evesham, who had been attracted by my NEW RULER, and who talked about +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 the going of the women, the sage, +substantial masculine gossiping, the later resumption of effective talk +with some pleasant woman, graciously at her best. I had a wide range +of houses; Cambridge had linked me to one or two correlated sets of +artistic and literary people, and my books and Mr. Evesham and opened +to me the big vague world of “society.” I wasn't aggressive nor +particularly 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 gravity 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 were 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 confidence 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 intellectually 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-two, 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 intrigue +and a perfectly definite and limited sensuality. It ended my youth, and +for a time 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 womanhood. My vague anticipation of such things in +life had vanished altogether. I turned away from their possibility. It +seemed to me I knew what had to be known about 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 might 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 perfectly 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 world'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 catch +that escaped, world-making, world-ruining, dangerous thing, industrial +and financial 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 upward through +the confusion, to take hold of things? Somewhere between politics and +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 it. + + + +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 +maturer, more disciplined, better informed expression of all I was then +urgent to attempt to do. The bulk of their friends were politicians or +public officials, they described themselves as publicists--a vague yet +sufficiently significant 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 paper, grained to imitate wood, was choked with +hats and cloaks and an occasional feminine wrap. Motioned rather than +announced by a tall Scotch servant woman, 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 discover 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 almost 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 gale. 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 pale +blue, manifestly a young political wife, stood with one foot on the +fender listening with an expression of entirely puzzled propitiation. +A tall sandy-bearded bishop with the expression of a man in a trance +completed this central group. + +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 were hung with two or three indifferent +water colours, there was scarcely any furniture 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 were in evening +dress, but most had the morning garb of the politician; the women were +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 Clynes, 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 +gathering.” + +“Every one comes here,” said Esmeer. “Mostly we hate them like +poison--jealousy--and little irritations--Altiora can be a horror at +times--but we HAVE to come.” + +“Things are being done?” + +“Oh!--no doubt 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 original +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, flattened, 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 were +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 encounter. 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 himself as a political +journalist. He was a particularly neat controversialist, and very full +of political and sociological ideas. He had a quite astounding memory +for facts and a mastery of detailed analysis, and the time afforded +scope for these gifts. The later eighties were full of politico-social +discussion, and he became a prominent name upon the contents list of the +NINETEENTH CENTURY, the FORTNIGHTLY and CONTEMPORARY chiefly as a half +sympathetic but frequently very 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 encountered Altiora. + +But Altiora Macvitie 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 that. 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 and 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 about 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 high 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 +personal 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 black 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 about the +problem--which is and always had been unusual. She had not married, I +suppose 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, and 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 smash and death she came out as a writer +upon social questions and a scathing critic of the Charity Organisation +Society, and she was three and thirty and a little 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, marry him. + +This had opened a new phase in the lives of Bailey and herself. The two +supplemented each other to an extraordinary extent. Their subsequent +career was, I think, almost entirely her invention. She was aggressive, +imaginative, and had a great capacity for ideas, 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 same, 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 threat. She had +discovered very early that the last thing influential people will do is +to work. Everything in their lives tends to make them dependent upon a +supply of confidently administered detail. Their business is with the +window and not the stock behind, and in the end they are dependent upon +the stock behind for 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 dispersed and confused, to be able to +say precisely what had to be done and what avoided 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 ever 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 tyrant 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 regularly 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 Altiora was at home to various +callers, and in the evening came dinner or a reception 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 that kept the +conversation brilliant, on a soup, a plain fish, and mutton or boiled +fowl and milk pudding, with nothing to drink but whisky and soda, and +hot and cold 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 constantly for fresh economies that would enable her, +she said, to sustain an additional private secretary. Secretaries were +the Baileys' one extravagance, they loved to think of searches going +on in the British Museum, and letters being cleared 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 everything 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 thing 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 base 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 value 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 outset very considerable. + +Both of them found 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 arrived at my conclusions. +It was their weakness to claim excessively. That irritation, however, +came later. We discovered each other immensely; for a time it produced a +tremendous sense of kindred and co-operation. + +Altiora, I remember, maintained that there existed a great army of such +constructive-minded people 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 joined tunnel.” + +“Exactly,” 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 Educational Minister for New Banksland and his +wife were also there, but I don't remember they made any contribution +to the conversation. The Baileys saw to that. They 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 explained 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 more of the services of expert officials. We have +that very much in mind. The more complicated and technical affairs +become, the less confidence will the elected official have in himself. +We want to suggest that these expert officials must 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, seemed 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 wanted 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 collective +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-operation, 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 was to last some years, and break at +last very painfully. Altiora manifestly liked 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 consideration, very +much as an architect on his first visit sketches houses, considers +requirements, 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 seemed to show +through their ideas that were visible, refracted perhaps and distorted, +but visible always through mine. + +I thought for a time the essential difference lay in our relation to +beauty. With me beauty is quite primary in life; I like truth, order +and goodness, wholly because they are beautiful or lead straight to +beautiful consequences. The Baileys either hadn'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 +proposals, the “manners” of their work, so to speak, were at times as +dreadful 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,” 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 up. 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 and +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 great 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 nature 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 general +laws. The Baileys classified everything. They were, in the scholastic +sense--which 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 aptitude and no metaphysical training. It leads them to a +progressive misunderstanding of the world. It was a favourite trick +of Altiora's to speak of everybody as 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-century 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' one 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 heard 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 were +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 termini. + +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 London streets and squares, roads and avenues +lined with teeming houses, each larger than the Chambers Street house +and at least equally alive, you saw the chaotic clamour of hoardings, +the jumble of traffic, the coming and going of mysterious myriads, +you heard the rumble of traffic like the noise of a torrent; a vague +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 you 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 might blend or create, you saw men +leaning drunken against lamp-posts whom you knew for the “type” that +will charge with fixed bayonets into the face of death, and you found +yourself unable to imagine little Bailey achieving either drunkenness or +the careless defiance of annihilation. You realised that quite a lot of +types were underrepresented in Chambers Street, that feral and obscure +and altogether monstrous forces must be at work, as yet altogether +unassimilated by those neat administrative reorganisations. + + + +5 + + +Altiora, I remember, preluded Margaret'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 with 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 what to do. I'm sure she'll interest you.” + +“What CAN people 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 that of anyone. + +“Of course what she ought to do,” said Altiora, with her silk dress +pulled back from her 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 gained 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 some way that made it seem softer and +more abundant than it was in my memory, and 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 think 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 apple 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 ideas and people with influence or money who might perhaps +be expected to resonate 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 either 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 down. We achieved no feats of mutual expression, except +that it was abundantly clear 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, matter 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 women used to hate those +concluding raids of hers! I forget most of the other people 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-room of the matting floor I rejoined her, with Altiora's +manifest connivance, and 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 things 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 business 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 brows 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 something, and needed a codicil. + +“What are you doing in London?” + +“I'm thinking of studying. Some social question. I thought perhaps I +might go and study social 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 to 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 whimsical 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,” 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 became 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 their secretaries toiling behind, and they went +on working hard in the mornings and 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 lived 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 feet. 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 between Margaret and +myself. + +Altiora was efficient 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 croquet 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 getting 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 away +and amuse each other. + +Altiora even tried 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--that at last he had to +be paddled ignominiously by Margaret, while Altiora, after 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 emphasise +the high note with which she dismissed the efficiency of the Charity +Organisation 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 pain in her back, I took him in my canoe, +let him hide his shame with an ineffectual but not positively harmful +paddle, and towed the other by means of the joined 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 Margaret 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 suggestions that produced them. + +Marrying and getting married was, I think, a pretty simple affair to +Altiora; it was something that 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 disillusioned, to other +things. That to Altiora was the normal sexual life, and she believed 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 finds 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 skies 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 one 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 of 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 don'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 there 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. They sat at opposite ends of their dinner table with so +and so “captured,” 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 Margaret's with an abnormal and entirely +misleading simplicity. There was the girl, rich, with an acceptable +claim to be beautiful, shiningly virtuous, quite capable of political +interests, and there was I, talented, ambitious and full of +political 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 little 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 solid 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 twilight into my life, how it grew in me +with my manhood, how it found its way to speech 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 seeking. 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 was a thing too +formless to state, that I seemed always desiring to attain and never +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 have me again, an irrelevance as it +seemed, and yet a constantly recurring demand. + +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 forces 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 life of celibacy which the active, well-fed, +well-exercised and imaginatively stirred young man of the educated +classes is supposed to lead from the age of nineteen or twenty, +when Nature certainly meant him to marry, to thirty or more, when +civilisation permits him to do so, is the most impossible thing in the +world. We deal here 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, and 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 systematic 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 them all only two were +sustained relationships. Besides these five “affairs,” 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 her +squalid finery sailing homeward, the man modestly aloof and behind, that +every night 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, some 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 have 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 yourself 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 scraps 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 trivial surfaces of life. There was I, you know, +the promising young don from Cambridge, who wrote quite brilliantly +about politics and might presently get into Parliament, with my collar +and tie in my hand, and a certain sense of shameful adventure fading out +of my mind. + +“Ach Gott!” she sighed by way of comment, and mused deeply for a +moment before she turned 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 crave her pardon and come away. + +“Bin ich eine hubsche?” she asked a little anxiously, laying a detaining +hand upon me, 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 earlier +encounters stand out clear and hard, but then the impressions become +crowded and mingle not only with each other but with all the subsequent +developments 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 mixed up with subsequent associations, +with sympathies and discords, habits of intercourse, surprises and +disappointments and discovered misunderstandings. I know only that +always my feelings for Margaret were complicated feelings, woven of many +and various strands. + +It is one of the curious neglected aspects of life how at the same time +and in relation to the 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 myself and she listened wonderfully, but she made no +answering revelations. I talked 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 clear 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 love with her. Her very shortcomings seemed to offer +me something.... + +She stood in my mind for goodness--and for things from which it seemed +to me my hold was slipping. + +She seemed to promise a way of escape from the deepening opposition in +me between physical passions 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 see myself again and again sitting amidst those +sluttish surroundings, collar and 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 pitiless cruelty +of a world as yet uncontrolled by any ordered will. + +“Good God!” 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!”... + +“How did I get 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 involved at that time--I find it hard to place these things +in the exact order of their 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 quarrelled 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 our +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 perhaps 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 furtive +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 ever that oppressed me. I had missed, I had +lost. I did not turn from these things 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 wrought 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 +twisted 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 success of those years, between +twenty-three and twenty-eight, this rottenness, known to scarcely +any one but myself, grew and spread. My sense of the probability 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 smother all my uses in the world. Down there among those +incommunicable difficulties, I was puzzled and blundering. I was losing +my hold upon things; the chaotic and 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 disorder, 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 wanted 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 her 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 to 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 to 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 perish. + +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 had 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, looking pale and drooping rather more than usual. I +suddenly realised that Altiora's hint of a disappointment leading to +positive illness was something more than 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?” she 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 talk to you,” I answered lamely. + +For some seconds neither of us said a word. + +“I want to tell you things about my life,” I began. + +She answered with a scarcely audible “yes.” + +“I almost asked 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!” 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, +things 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 gold 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 for the truth of things. “You see,” I emerged, “you make +everything 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 do 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 am. I'm complex.... I'm streaked.” + +I glanced at her, and she was regarding me with an expression of +blissful disregard for any meaning I was seeking to convey. + +“You see,” I said, “I'm a bad man.” + +She sounded a note 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 have 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, “what 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 into this--as men do,” I said after a little pause and +stopped again. + +She was looking at 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,” she persisted, dropping her eyelids. “Of course I know,” and +nothing could have convinced me more completely that she did not know. + +“All men--” 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 over and past,” I answered. + +There was a little pause. + +“I don't want to know,” she said. “None of that seems to matter now in +the slightest 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 in 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 +Misterton--six years and more ago.” + + + +CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ MARGARET 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, but 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 +remember, and made during our brief engagement a series of visits to the +various legislative bodies in London, the County Council, the House of +Commons, where 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 wealth 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 claimed to have set it going +in the channels that took it to him--if as a matter of fact it was taken +to him. But then it was their habit to make claims of that sort. They +certainly did their share to keep “efficient” going. Altiora's +highest praise was “thoroughly efficient.” We were to be a “thoroughly +efficient” political couple of the “new type.” She explained us to +herself and Oscar, she explained us to ourselves, she explained us to +the people who came 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 turned 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 Torcella. 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 destination. Our men swing +together and their oars swirl leisurely through the water, hump back in +the rowlocks, splash sharply and go swishing back again. Margaret lies +back on cushions, with her face shaded by a holland parasol, and I sit +up beside her. + +“You see,” 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 into 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 to be distracted from one's +purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve its constructive +needs, to work out and carry out plans. For a man who has to make 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 what 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 seriously.” + +She endorses my words with her eyes. + +“I feel I can 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 our days, to make everything subserve our scheme.” + +“I feel,” 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 something very bright and skylike, and +discontinuous with all about it. The faded quality of the very sunshine +of that season, the mellow discoloured palaces and places, the huge, +time-ripened paintings of departed splendours, the whispering, nearly +noiseless passage of hearse-black gondolas, for the horrible steam +launch had 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 chandeliers. 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 days +or a fortnight before I became fretful and anxious for action; a long +tranquillity 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 that 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 lagoons. +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 knew 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 not 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 now, her long body drooping a little +forward, her sweet face upraised to some discovered familiar masterpiece +and shining with a delicate enthusiasm. I can hear again the soft +cadences of her voice murmuring commonplace comments, for 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 lectures 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 salt of life, +but I take my beauty as a wild beast gets its salt, as a constituent 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, and 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 ways 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, miles 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 example, +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 pictures 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 about 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. Margaret 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 shape, slender handle +and twisted stem. I suggested we should get not simply tumblers +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 now 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 gale. +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!” she said with a faint surprise in her voice. + +“Yes. I think I want exercise. I've got a sort of feeling--I've never +had it before--as though I was getting fat.” + +“My dear!” she cried. + +“I want to do things;--ride horses, climb mountains, take the devil out +of myself.” + +She watched me thoughtfully. + +“Couldn't we DO something?” she said. + +Do what? + +“I don't know. Couldn't we perhaps go away from here soon--and walk in +the mountains--on our way home.” + +I thought. “There seems to be no exercise at all in this place.” + +“Isn't there some walk?” + +“I wonder,” 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 monastery 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 back to London,” I said abruptly. + +Margaret looked at 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,” I sympathised, and took her hand. “Suddenly I have +remembered.” + +She remained quite still. “There is so much to be done,” I said, almost +apologetically. + +She looked long away from me across the lagoon and at last sighed, like +one who has drunk deeply, and turned to me. + +“I suppose one 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?” + +She looked at once so fragile and so devoted that on the spur of the +moment I relented, and we stayed 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 been very pleasantly painted +and papered under Margaret's instructions, white paint and clean open +purples and green predominating, and now we set to work at once 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 sense 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 intended for the FORTNIGHTLY +REVIEW, the papers that afterwards became my fourth book, “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 “doing +something for the world.” + +“And I do want to make things pretty about us,” she said. “You don't +think it wrong to have things pretty?” + +“I want them so.” + +“Altiora has things hard.” + +“Altiora,” 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 solid 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 with her out +of the right tea things, “come at last,” or be told to notice 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 +that 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 most 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 was 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 night. 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 papers 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 effect of surprise that after all even a place +in the Cabinet, though infinitely remote, was nevertheless in the same +large world with these fine and quietly expensive 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 gracefully drooping form, in the wide open doorway. “Is +everything right, dear?” she would ask. + +“Come in,” 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, and 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--” + +It was clear she thought we should grow out of that. From the day of our +return we found other 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 found 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 hard, 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 little 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 +married my way into their circles instead of being naturally there. They +couldn't quite reckon upon what I should do; they felt I had reserves of +experience and incalculable traditions. Close to us were the Cramptons, +Willie Crampton, who 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, +industrious and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little in revolt +against the racial tradition of feminine servitude and inclined to the +suffragette point of view, 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 +tremendously keen upon social and political service, and all greatly +under the sway of the 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 little 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 entrees 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 that mountains +have ever been the last refuge of the severer virtues. And we talked +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 the 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 were all very earnest to make +the most of ourselves and to be and do, and I wonder 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 +reality. + + + +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 something near to their proper order +the developing phases of relationship. I am struck most of all by the +immense unpremeditated, generous-spirited insincerities upon which +Margaret and I were building. + +It seems to me that here I have to tell perhaps the commonest experience +of all among married educated people, the deliberate, shy, complex +effort to fill the yawning gaps 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 through 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 itself +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 upon the rock of truth, but upon arches and pillars and +queer provisional supports that are needed to make a common foundation, +and below in the imprisoned darknesses, below the fine fabric they +sustain together begins for each of them a cavernous 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 that flash +out for an instant in an angry glance and are seen no more, starved +victims 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 modern life, press more and more heavily upon a +marriage tie whose fashion comes from an earlier and less discriminating +time. When the wife was her husband's subordinate, meeting him simply +and uncritically for simple ends, when marriage was a purely domestic +relationship, leaving thought and the vivid things of life +almost entirely to the unencumbered man, mental and temperamental +incompatibilities 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 James, primary and intuitive and illogical; she was +tender-minded, logical, refined and secondary. She was loyal to +pledge and persons, sentimental and faithful; I am loyal to ideas +and instincts, emotional and scheming. My imagination moves 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 essentially 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. Perhaps 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 have 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 initiative than +had she. This is no catalogue of rights and wrongs, or superiorities +and inferiorities; it is a catalogue of differences between two people +linked in a relationship that constantly becomes more intolerant of +differences. + +This is how we stood to each other, and none of it was clear to either +of us at the outset. To begin 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 habit 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 personal relations. It is not too much to say that +in that regard we never for a moment 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 ideal 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 setting-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 conversation 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 excitement +of my Parliamentary candidature for the Kinghamstead Division, that +shapeless chunk of agricultural midland between the Great Western and +the North Western railways. I was going to “take hold” at last, the +Kinghamstead Division 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. The precise place I had to fill and the precise +functions I had to discharge were not as yet very clear, but all that, +we felt sure, would become plain as things developed. + +A few brief months 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 dissenting 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, that +sturdy old soldier, were among my chief supporters. We had headquarters +in each town 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 outside 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. Now and then one saw a canvasser on +a doorstep. For the most part people went about 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 colours and one's +air of saving the country. + +My opponent was a quite undistinguished Major-General who relied upon +his advocacy of Protection, and was particularly anxious we should avoid +“personalities” and fight the constituency in a gentlemanly spirit. He +was always writing me notes, apologising for excesses on the part of his +supporters, or pointing out the undesirability of some course taken by +mine. + +My speeches had been 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 dawn of the great age of mankind.” + Sometimes that would get a solitary “'Ear! 'ear!” Then having created, +as I imagined, a fine atmosphere, I turned upon the history of the last +Conservative administration and brought 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 public education from +sectarian squabbles, its misconduct of the Boer War, its waste 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 history of humanity, had no +appeal for them. They were mostly everyday, toiling people, 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 +politics 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 clap their hands and drum with their feet. The +great constructive process in history 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 two 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 +intent only on keeping his leadership, in spite of the vigorous attempts +of Mr. Joseph 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 criminal 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 one who +mentions the high gods. And I had my reward in brighter meetings and +readier 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, “then it +is one begins.” + +But I would lie awake 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 return. All our social and +political effort, all of it, is like trying to make a crowd of people +fall into formation. The broader lines appear, but then come a rush +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 locomotion in it; for the Kinghamstead +Division is extensive, abounding in ill-graded and badly metalled +cross-roads and vicious little hills, and singularly unpleasing 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 the 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 more 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 of +each gathering. Jokes of an incredible silliness and shallowness drifted +about us. 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 irksome the repetition of that jest became. The vast +drifting indifference in between 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 experience. I was perplexed by the +riddle of just how far I was, in any sense of the word, taking hold at +all, how far I wasn't myself flowing into an accepted groove. + +Margaret was troubled 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 bright 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 business to be so sure of me. I had +moments of vivid resentment at being thus marched towards Parliament. + +I seemed now always 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 blue eye with +which she regarded the audience, which existed so far as she was +concerned 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 hostess, 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 parallel 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 celebrated +book. She wanted, I know, to hold the glass in her hand while I was +speaking. + +But here I was firm. “No,” I said, very decisively, “simply I won't +stand that. It'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 you 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, and this reassuring pose of a +high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient pursuit of a fixed end +when as a matter of fact I had a very doubtful end and an aim 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 first impressions of +her were of a rather ugly and ungainly, extraordinarily interesting +schoolgirl with a beautiful quick flush under her warm brown skin, 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 was. + +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 that part, how impossible it is to tell now of +those early days! Since I wrote that 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 olive 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 +destroyed 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 clear 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 sharp note of her voice. She +cried out something, I don't know what, some greeting. + +“What a pretty 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.” was in the car with us and explained her to us. “One +of the best workers you 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 grave 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 for 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 that he was in the habit of sparring with the +girl, but on this occasion she wasn'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, shy. 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, which 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-behaved....!” + +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 excellent 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 Margaret 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 tranquillity, 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 kind 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 snub 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 knows we're a mixed lot,” said Isabel. + +“Poor old chaps 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 the 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 always comes home at last,” said the doctor. “Let him hear the +worst.” + +“I'd like to hear,” I said. “Electioneering shatters convictions and +enfeebles the mind.” + +“Not mine,” said Isabel stoutly. “I mean--Well, anyhow I take it Mr. +Remington stands for constructing a civilised state out of this muddle.” + +“THIS muddle,” protested the doctor with an appeal of the eye to the +beautiful 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 and blacks get worse and worse, Sissie?” + +“They do,” agreed Miss Gamer. + +“Mr. Remington stands for construction, order, education, discipline.” + +“And you?” said the doctor. + +“I'm a good Remington-ite.” + +“Discipline!” said the doctor. + +“Oh!” said 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 something 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 under the law,” I said, with an unexpected approving murmur +from Margaret, and took up the defence. “The old Liberal definition of +liberty was a trifle uncritical. Privilege and legal restrictions are +not the only enemies of liberty. An uneducated, underbred, and underfed +propertyless man is a man who 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 me up and we fell into a discussion of the +changing qualities of Liberalism. It was 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, and “It all seems +so plain to me.” The doctor showed himself clever but 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 Bishop 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 upon the intellectual temperament of the +Lurky gasworkers. + +On the third occasion 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 reassuring 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 encounter. + +And after that memory 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 took every chance I could +to talk to her--I had never met anything like her before in the world, +and she interested me immensely--and before the polling day she and I +had become, in the frankest simplicity, fast friends.... + +That, I think, sets 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, coloured, and refracting memories that come +between. One forgets not only the tint and quality of thoughts and +impressions through that intervening haze, one forgets 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 such 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 intelligent 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 believe 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 beautiful, 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 sphere +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 than 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 this 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 free directness of some graceful young +animal. She took many of the easy freedoms 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 hoarse and dingy crescendo. The excitement +was not of the sort that makes one forget one is tired out. The waiting +for the end of the count has left a long blank mark on my memory, and +then everyone was shaking my hand and repeating: “Nine hundred and +seventy-six.” + +My success had been 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 hullaboo began outside, and a lot of fresh people came into +the room. + +Isabel, flushed but 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,” said I, “I must go and be constructive.” + +“Now you must 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 you to speak,” said Margaret, with something unsaid in her +face. + +“You must come 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 handed Margaret out through the window and stood looking +over the Market-place, which 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 corner 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 the 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 hearing that memorable war-cry. + +“Three cheers for Mrs. Remington!” + +“Mrs. Remington asks me to thank you,” I said, amidst further uproar and +reiterated cries 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,” I went on, “in building up a great and splendid +civilisation.” + +I paused, and there 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. +New ideas are abroad--” + +“Chinese labour,” yelled a voice, and across the square swept a wildfire +of booting 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 something about general fairness--the other side,” prompted +Parvill, flattered but 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--triumphant but very tired, to our +house in Radnor Square. In the train we read the first intimations that +the victory of our party was likely to be a sweeping one. + +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 maps 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 Irish. 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 results 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, whenever there +was record of a Liberal gain. I don't remember what happened when there +was a Liberal loss; I don't think that any were announced while I was +there. + +How packed and noisy the place was, and what a reek of tobacco and +whisky fumes we made! Everybody 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, Lewis, 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 just what we shall do with it all,” I heard one sceptic +speculating.... + +After these orgies I would get home very tired and excited, and find it +difficult to get to sleep. 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 built 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 majority. 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 nothing as yet but opportunity, and a very crowded opportunity +it was at that. Everyone 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 absence of any +general plan of legislation to hold us all together. I found the talk +about Parliamentary procedure and etiquette particularly trying. We +dined with the elder Cramptons one evening, and old Sir Edward was +lengthily sage about what 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.” + +“Very much depends on manner. The House hates a lecturer. There's a sort +of airy earnestness--” + +He waved his cigar to eke out his words. + +“Little peculiarities of costume count for a great deal. I could name +one man who spent 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 unpopular 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 messengers, all of us carrying new silk hats +and wearing magisterial coats. It is one of 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 have been a +funeral. Familiar faces that one had grown to know under soft felt hats, +under bowlers, under liberal-minded wide brims, and above artistic ties +and tweed jackets, suddenly met one, staring with the stern gaze of +self-consciousness, from under silk hats of incredible glossiness. There +was a disposition to wear the hat much too forward, I thought, for a +good Parliamentary style. + +There was much play 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. The 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 them, sensible top bats brim +upward, and one scandalous incontinent that had rolled 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 +skull.... + +At last, in a leisurely muddled manner we got to the Address; and +I found myself packed in a dense elbowing crowd to the right of the +Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderless +after the massacre, tilted its brim to its nose 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 between 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 Cambridge, but +grey-haired now, and still it seemed with the same knitted muffler +he had 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 outline with a weak approval. “A MEMBER!” + I felt the little cluster of people that were scattered about the lobby +must be saying. + +“Good God!” I said in hot reaction, “what am I doing here?” + +It was one of those 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 recall the rebound of my mind. Whatever +happened in this Parliament, I at least would 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 for the moment I could not remain in the House. + +I went out by myself 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 Lords. I walked, I remember, westward, and +presently came to the Grosvenar Embankment and followed it, watching the +glittering black rush of the river and the dark, 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 and 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 crossed 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 that 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 nowhere, 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 legislator. Black figures drift by me, heavy vans +clatter, a newspaper rough tears by on 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 within 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 swirl of the tide upon the water, and how a string of +barges presently came swinging and bumping round as high-water turned +to ebb. That sudden change of position and my brief perplexity at it, +sticks like a paper pin through the substance of my thoughts. It was +then I was moved to prayer. I prayed that night that life 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 +acquiescence 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 you 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 perceive 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 man'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 powers to +convey even the main forms and forces in that development. It is like +looking through moving media of changing hue and variable refraction +at something vitally unstable. Broad theories and generalisations are +mingled with personal 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 most diverse elements, beyond +treatment multitudinous.... For a week or so I desisted altogether, +and walked over the mountains and returned to sit through 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 whole +complicating them further in the effort to simplify them to manageable +and stateable elements. + +Let me, nevertheless, attempt a rough preliminary analysis of this +confused process. A main strand 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 with 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 about in +motor-cars, visiting in great people's houses, dining amidst brilliant +companies, going to the theatre, meeting in the lobby. Margaret wore +hundreds of beautiful dresses. We must have had an air of succeeding +meritoriously during that time. + +We did very continually and faithfully serve our joint career. I thought +about it a great 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 handsome 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 deflected, our outward unanimity visibly strained and marred +by the insurgence of these so long-hidden developments. + +That career had its own hidden side, of course; but when I write +of these unseen factors I do not mean that but something altogether +broader. I do not mean the everyday pettinesses which gave the cynical +observer scope and told of a narrower, baser aspect of the fair but +limited ambitions of my ostensible self. This “sub-careerist” element +noted little things that affected the career, 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. + +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 obituary 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 contemporary. Behind it, yet +struggling to disorganise and alter it, altogether, was a far more +essential reality, a self less personal, less individualised, and +broader in its references. Its aims were never simply to get on; it +had an altogether different system of demands and satisfactions. It +was critical, curious, more 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 see 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 more +as a mere experimental feeder and agent for that greater personality +behind. And 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 some accident that seems altogether irrelevant to +the general tenor of one's life. 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 my 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 now as altogether typical of the quality of his +influence. + +I had come upon him 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 talk was good and fresh and +provocative. And something that had long been straining 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 lying in wait +conversationally; they had no sense of the self-exposures, the gallant +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 easier 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 would 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 that vacuum, and then we would cast about in our minds for +some other topic of equal 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 Esmeer. Willie Crampton was with us, but not his +wife, who was having her third baby on principle; his brother Edward was +present, and the Lewises, and of course the Bunting Harblows. There was +also some other lady. I remember her as pale blue, 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 opinion about the partition of Poland. +Edward was at work then upon the seventh volume of his monumental Life +of Kosciusko, and a little impatient with views perhaps not altogether +false but betraying a lamentable ignorance of accessible literature. At +any rate, his correction of Esmeer was magisterial. After that 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 +Carmixter 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 profited 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 three 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 exclusion or inclusion of fish and chicken were most +conducive to high efficiency, when Britten, who had refused lemonade +and claret and demanded Burgundy, broke out, and was discovered to be +demanding in his throat just what we Young Liberals thought we were up +to? + +“I want,” 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.” + +“HOW?” + +“Beneficient Legislation,” said Lewis. + +“Beneficient in what direction?” insisted Britten. “I want to know where +you think you are going.” + +“Amelioration of Social Conditions,” said Lewis. + +“That's only a phrase!” + +“You wouldn't have me sketch bills at dinner?” + +“I'd like you 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 disconcerted. 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 maintained 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 respect +this convention. It was understood we were all working hard, and keeping +ourselves fit, tremendously fit, under Altiora's inspiration, Pro Bono +Publico. Bunting Harblow had his under-secretaryship, and Lewis was on +the verge of the Cabinet, 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 was 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 time. + +“We don't respect the Country as we used to do,” I said. “We haven't +the same 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 and 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 several attempts to check his outbreak of +interrogation; I remember the Cramptons asked 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 discussion 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 vacuity 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 with that faint stress of apprehension +in her eyes, one must have aims.” And, “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 out. And afterwards when we went +upstairs I had an indefinable persuasion that the 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 Britten along the Chelsea back streets towards Battersea +Bridge--he lodged on the south 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 worked 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 takes 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 +guests 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 power. A kind of neuralgia +in the head, by way of government. I don't understand where YOU come in. +Those others--they've no lusts. Their ideal is anaemia. You and 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 killed by a horse in a field in a very horrible +manner. These things had wounded and 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 much 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 disappointed him. I discovered at his touch how they +irritated him. He reproached me boldly. He made me feel ashamed of my +easy acquiescences as I walked in my sleek tall 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 for the Parlour. The real progress, +Remington, is a graver thing and a painfuller thing and a slower thing +altogether. Look! THAT”--and he pointed to where under a boarding in the +light of a gas lamp a dingy prostitute stood lurking--“was in Babylon +and Nineveh. Your little lot make believe there won't be anything 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 Crampton 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 wants 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 think 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 face! the wonder and the depth of life,--lust, +and the night-sky,--pain.” + +“But the good intention,” I pleaded, “the Good Will!” + +“Sentimentality,” 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 good 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,” 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 saint only a worm that has lifted its head for a moment from +the dust. We are damned, we are meant to be damned, coral animalculae +building upward, upward in a sea of damnation. But of all the damned +things that ever were damned, your damned shirking, temperate, +sham-efficient, self-satisfied, respectable, make-believe, +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 far 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 talking about Liberals.” + +“Liberty!” + +“Liberty! What do YOOR little lot know of liberty?” + +“What does any little lot know of liberty?” + +“It waits outside, too big for our understanding. Like the night and the +stars. And lust, Remington! lust and bitterness! Don't I know them? with +all the sweetness and 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 being 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, “than be a Crampton or a Lewis....” + +“Make-believe. 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 surveyed 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 would have mounted a statesman's private room.... + + + +3 + + +I was never at any stage a loyal party man. I doubt if party will +ever again be the force it was during the eighteenth 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 and +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” 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 fair play destroys such things. They follow +freemasonry down--freemasonry of which one is chiefly reminded nowadays +in England by propitiatory symbols outside shady public-houses.... + +There is, of course, a type of man which clings very obstinately to +party ties. These are the men with strong reproductive imaginations +and no imaginative initiative, such men as Cladingbowl, for example, or +Dayton. They are the scholars-at-large in life. 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 read histories +and memoirs, they see the great grey pile of Westminster not so much +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,” and “On this Spot William +Ewart Gladstone made his First Budget Speech.” Failing this, he demands, +if only as signs of modesty and respect on the part 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 along the +worn-down, well-marked grooves of the great recorded days. So infinitely +more important to him is the documented, respected thing than the +elusive present. + +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 paper 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 shirking, 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 public +appointments, of golf, of holiday resorts, of the last judicial +witticisms and forensic “crushers.” The New Year and Birthday honours +lists are always very sagely and exhaustively considered, and anecdotes +are popular and keenly judged. They do not talk of the things that are +really active in their minds, but in the formal and habitual manner they +suppose to be proper to intelligent 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 bathing 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 think, 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 cannot 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 seems trivial +and remote in comparison with the possibilities that offer themselves to +my imagination within the great grey Government buildings close at hand. + +It gives me a qualm 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 ousted more and more by taxicabs as the +second Parliament of King Edward the Seventh 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 great +fleets about the world. The crowded, darkly shining river goes flooding +through 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 islands in the tropics, to frozen wildernesses +gashed for gold, to vast temple-studded 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 Agents of the +Empire jostle one another, pass the big embassies in the West End +with their flags and scutcheons, follow the broad avenue that leads to +Buckingham Palace, witness the coming and going of troops and officials +and guests along it from every land on earth.... Interwoven in the +texture of it all, mocking, 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. The 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 against 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 and to a fairly full House, for people were already +a little curious about me because of my writings. Several of the +Conservative leaders were present and stayed, and Mr. Evesham, +I remember, came ostentatiously to hear me, with that engaging +friendliness of his, and gave me at the first chance an approving “Hear, +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 too 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 brought it off, and the +absurd gratitude I felt for that encouraging cheer. + +Addressing the House of Commons is like no other public speaking in the +world. Its semi-colloquial 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 round 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 under no other circumstances have I +had to speak with quite the same sideways twist 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 speaking 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, such as one +has with a public meeting well under one's eye. And to lose one's sense +of an auditor is for a man of my temperament to lose one's sense of the +immediate, and to become prolix and vague with qualifications. + + + +5 + + +My discontents with the Liberal party 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 +Doultonware. It is an extraordinary big club done in a bold, wholesale, +shiny, marbled style, richly furnished with numerous paintings, steel +engravings, busts, and full-length statues of the late Mr. Gladstone; +and its spacious dining-rooms, its long, hazy, crowded smoking-room with +innumerable little tables and groups of men in armchairs, its +magazine room and library upstairs, have just that undistinguished and +unconcentrated diversity which is for me the Liberal note. The pensive +member sits and hears perplexing dialects and even fragments of foreign +speech, and among the clustering masses of less insistent whites his +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 tobacco 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 +dealing 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. Most 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 journalists 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 was to find out what on earth +they were for!... + +As I sat and thought, the streaked and mottled pillars and wall, the +various views, aspects, and portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, the +partitions of polished mahogany, the 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 universal +littleness of imagination enlarged, unlimited, no longer a sample but a +community, spreading, stretching out to infinity--all in little groups +and duologues and 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 modern 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 locusts that men sweep up by the sackload and drown +by the million in ditches.... + +Grotesquely against 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 humanity, like grass upon the field, like +pebbles upon unbounded beaches. Was there ever to be in human life +more than that endless struggling individualism? Was there indeed some +giantry, some immense valiant synthesis, still to come--or present 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 upon the ocean floor. All the +history of mankind, all the history of life, has been and will be +the story of something struggling out of the indiscriminated abyss, +struggling to exist and prevail over and comprehend individual lives--an +effort of insidious attraction, an idea of invincible appeal. That +something greater 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 and ivory and music and wonderful +words, spoken more and more clearly of a mystery 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 that +shines and is withdrawn, withdrawn so completely that one doubts if it +has ever been.... + + + +6 + + +I would mark with a curious interest the stray country member of +the club up in town for a night or so. My mind would 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 neighbours. 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 waiters. 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 stiff dignity of +self-indulgence, and wonder, wonder.... + +An infernal clairvoyance would come to me. I would have visions of him +in relation to his 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, protesting 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 eyes down the crowded room and see others of him and +others. What did he think he was up to? Did he for a moment realise that +his presence under that ceramic glory 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 read 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!” + +I wonder what reply I should have got. + +So far as any average 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 pretended 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 Socialist members to Chris Robinson; +mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in soft felt 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 Address, 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 what seemed at that time a big +national movement. Socialist societies, we gathered, were springing up +all over the country, and every one was inquiring about Socialism and +discussing Socialism. It had taken the Universities with particular +force, and any youngster with the slightest intellectual pretension was +either actively for or brilliantly against. For a time our Young Liberal +group was ostentatiously sympathetic.... + +When I think of the 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. How 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 was 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 intimacy 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 easy 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 reception as we +could contrive. + +Our receptions were 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 never came, and stood and sat +about silently, mildly amused but not a bit surprised that we did not +discover their distinctive Open-Sesames. There was a sprinkling of +manifest seers and prophetesses in shapeless garments, far too many, I +thought, 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, Bunting 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 novelties 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 reason in a large +circle on the floor of my study, and engaged, so far as I could judge, +in the game of Hunt the Meaning, the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the +Slipper. It must have been that same evening I came upon an unbleached +young gentleman 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 misled 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 stuff, too +neatly dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon +which he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver. So +that his hands 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 periodical 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 there engage in +discussions of Determinism--it always seemed to be Determinism--which +became heartier and noisier, but never acrimonious even in the small +hours. It seemed impossible to settle about this Determinism of +theirs--ever. And there were worldly Socialists also. I particularly +recall a large, active, buoyant, lady-killing individual with an +eyeglass borne upon a broad black ribbon, who swam about us one evening. +He might have been a slightly frayed actor, in his 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 thinkers into one room. Dorvil came, and Horatio +Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared for ten minutes and talked charmingly +to Margaret and then vanished again; there was Wilkins the novelist and +Toomer and Dr. Tumpany. Chris Robinson stood about 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 conviction as +they possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes +almost boldly. But the gathering as a whole refused either to mingle or +dispute, and 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 backs 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 various organs of the various sections +of the party next week. + +I talked, I remember, with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still +larger professional frock-coat, 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 Liberal party. I +was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed less vividly 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 alone with Margaret amid the debris of +the gathering. + +I sat before the fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white and +weary, came and leant upon the mantel. + +“Oh, Lord!” 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 clues. + +“When you think of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of the +Socialist ideas, and 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 nothing to it. They're just people who have +pegged out claims upon a big intellectual 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 something, 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 marched 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 think there is a man among them who makes me feel he is +trustworthy,” said Margaret; “unless it is Featherstonehaugh.” + +I sat taking in this proposition. + +“They'll never help us, I feel,” said Margaret. + +“Us?” + +“The Liberals.” + +“Oh, damn the Liberals!” I said. “They'll never even help themselves.” + +“I don't think 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 think, 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 party 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 while men think, in +studies where they write self-forgetfully, in laboratories under 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 transactions of the ostensible self, the being of habits, +interests, usage. Temper, vanity, 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 may have an immense +hinterland, but that does not absolve him from a frontage. That is the +essential error of the specialist philosopher, the specialist teacher, +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 teacher 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 outlook; 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 formulae 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 vigour is necessarily +constructive-minded nowadays, and that no man is disinterestedly 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 immortal 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 progress 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 behaviour. +Every party stands essentially for the interests and mental usages of +some definite class or group of classes in the exciting community, and +every party has its scientific-minded and constructive leading section, +with well-defined hinterlands 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 aggression 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 Government majority. These two main parties are more or +less heterogeneous in composition. 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 +legislation, 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 constructive 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, too, are +adventurous-spirited and eager for mechanical progress and technical +efficiency. They are prepared to spend public money upon research, +upon ports and harbours and public communications, upon sanitation and +hygienic organisation. A certain 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 money 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-exercised population +in uniform. Of course there are reactionary landowners and old-fashioned +country clergy, full of localised self-importance, jealous even of the +cottager who can read, but they have neither the power nor the ability +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 ownership and collective control of land, for example, or +state mining and manufactures, 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 definitely a class party is the Labour Party, whose immediate +interest is to raise wages, 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 ideas. 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 service is steadily and quite naturally and quite +illogically opposed by it. It is only 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 multitudinousness has always been the Liberal characteristic. +Liberalism never has been nor ever 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 party +of criticism, the “Anti” party. It is a system of hostilities and +objections that somehow achieves at times an elusive common soul. It is +a gathering together 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 Nonconformist 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 state 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 advantages, but it is also the party that is on +the whole most set against Collective control because it represents +no established responsibility. It is constructive 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 upon it by the +organisation of its adversaries. It lapses in and out of alliance with +Labour as it sways between hostility to wealth and hostility to public +expenditure.... + +Every modern European 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 party 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 church, +nationalist secessions, the personalities of party leaders, may break +up, complicate, and 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 back as if I came back to a refrain;--the ideas go +on--as though we are all no more than little cells and corpuscles in +some great brain beyond our understanding.... + +So it was I sat and 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 scheme of Socialism, invading and +inspiring all parties, was necessarily claimed only 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 real +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 watch, and it was half-past two. + +I yawned, stretched, got up and went to bed. + + + +9 + + +My ideas about statecraft have passed through three main phases to the +final convictions that remain. There was the first immediacy of my dream +of ports and harbours and cities, railways, roads, 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 the +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 on +Cramptonism and the heavy-spirited triviality of such Liberalism as the +Children's Charter, 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 +indefinitely growing unpublished personality behind him--my hinterland, +I have called it--so in human affairs generally the permanent reality +is also a hinterland, which 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. Now it was just through the +fact that our group about the Baileys didn't understand this, that with +a sort of frantic energy they were trying to develop that sham expert +officialdom of theirs to plan, regulate, and direct the affairs of +humanity, 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 neglecting human life altogether in social organisation. + +In the development of intellectual modesty lies the growth of +statesmanship. It has been the chronic 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 that 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 perplexing 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 not hesitated to conceal fact, suppress +thought, crush disturbing initiatives and 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 dominating importance of this critical, less +personal, mental hinterland in the individual 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 +shallow 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 ended in the middle thirties by desiring only +to serve and increase a general process of thought, a process fearless, +critical, real-spirited, that would in its own time give cities, +harbours, air, happiness, everything at a scale and quality and in +a light altogether beyond the match-striking imaginations of a +contemporary 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 that 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 fine 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 fresh 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 life 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 human thought, the vivider utilisation of experience +and the invigoration of research--and whatever one does in human affairs +has or lacks value as it helps or hinders that. + +With that I had got my problem clear, and the solution, so far as I +was concerned, lay in finding out the point in the ostensible life of +politics at which I could most subserve 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 +ultimate realities were jerry-built conclusions, hasty purposes, aimless +habits of thought, and imbecile bars and prohibitions in the thoughts +and souls of men. How are we through politics to get at that confusion? + +We want to invigorate and reinvigorate education. We want to create a +sustained counter effort to the perpetual tendency of all educational +organisations towards classicalism, secondary issues, and the evasion of +life. + +We want to stimulate the expression of life through art and literature, +and its exploration through research. + +We want to make the best and finest thought accessible to every one, +and more particularly to create and sustain an enormous free criticism, +without which art, literature, 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 life 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 had to ask myself how my position +as Liberal member for Kinghamstead squared with and conduced to this +essential work. + + + +CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ SEEKING ASSOCIATES + + + +1 + + +I have told of my gradual abandonment of the pretensions and habits of +party Liberalism. In a sense I was moving towards aristocracy. Regarding +the development of the social and individual mental hinterland as the +essential thing in human progress, I passed on very naturally to the +practical assumption that we wanted what I may call “hinterlanders.” Of +course I do not mean by aristocracy the changing 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, into 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 and more +clearly when I look through my various writings of the years between +1903 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 develop an education far beyond anything +that is now provided, if it cannot collectively invent devices and solve +problems on a much richer, broader scale than it does 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 +constructive 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 freedoms 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 respond to imaginative appeals, +cannot be won to the idea of collective self-development, then the whole +of humanity cannot be won to that. From that one passes to what +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-day, to produce that self-conscious, highly +selective, open-minded, devoted aristocratic culture, which seems to me +to be the necessary next phase in the 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 quality of the professed Socialists, I turned my +mind more and more to a scrutiny of the 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 altogether 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 movement 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 speedily +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 returning to the persuasion that after all in some +development of the idea of Imperial patriotism might be found that wide, +rough, politically acceptable expression 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. Mixed in with the +noisiness and humbug of the movement there appeared a real regard for +social efficiency, a real spirit of animation and enterprise. There +suddenly appeared in my world--I saw them first, I think, in 1908--a +new sort of little boy, a most agreeable development of the slouching, +cunning, cigarette-smoking, 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 Boy 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 hadn't been able +to produce, and had indeed never attempted to produce, anything of this +kind. + + + +3 + + +In those days there existed a dining 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 railway man, +Lord Gane, fresh from the settlement of Framboya, and Rumbold, who later +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 for 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 minutes' exposition +of some specially prepared question, and after him we would deliver +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 before 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 end, and his +stupendous flow of words materially prolonged our closing discussions +and made our continuance impossible. + +I learned very much 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. They +seemed obsessed by the idea that streams of trade could be diverted +violently so as 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 curious 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 more 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 +upper classes. The Liberals are abjectly afraid of the universities. +I found myself 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 much 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 that 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 glasses 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 while he threw warmth into the +ancient platitudes of Liberalism, and Minns leaning forward, 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 round 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 heart 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 theirs is soft, and mine's hard. Mine will wear theirs out. You +and I and Bailey are all after the same thing, and why aren't we working +together?” + +“Are you a Confederate?” I asked suddenly. + +“That's a secret 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 Conservatives. 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 simple question of principle, but with elusive and +fluctuating estimates of the trend of diverse forces and of the nature +of my own powers. All through that period I was asking over and over +again: how far are these Confederates mere dreamers? 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 ascendency of their +class? How far can Conservatism be induced to plan and construct before +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 colour 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 beyond 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, or 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 WEEKLY 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 reaction +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 schoolfellow 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 little 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 Exceptional 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 evening; its back black with the +scrawled notes I made of the discussion for my reply. I found it the +other day among some letters from Margaret and a copy of the 1909 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 +beside the mark. He was the party Liberal, and these were the party +incantations. + +After my preliminary attack on vague democracy I went on to show that +all human life was virtually aristocratic; people must either recognise +aristocracy in general or else follow leaders, which is aristocracy in +particular, and so I came to my point that the reality of human progress +lay necessarily through the establishment 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 patronise scholarship +winners, as though a scholarship was toffee given as a reward for +virtue. It wasn't any reward at all; it was an invitation to capacity. +We had no more right to drag in virtue, or any merit but quality, than +we had to involve it in a search for the tallest man. We didn't want a +mere process for the selection of good as distinguished from gifted and +able boys--“No, you DON'T,” from Dayton--we wanted all the brilliant +stuff in the world concentrated upon 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 work. “Good +teaching,” I said, “is better than good conduct. We are becoming idiotic +about character.” + +Dayton was too moved to speak. He slewed round upon me an eye of +agonised aversion. + +I expatiated on the 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 increments of knowledge that matter, are supplied so +far as the English-speaking community 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 as 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 rest are lost in the crowd, fail through the defects of +their qualities, become commonplace workmen and second-rate professional +men, marry commonplace wives, are as much waste as the driftage of +superfluous pollen in a pine forest is waste.” + +“Decent honest lives!” said Dayton to his bread-crumbs, with his chin in +his necktie. “WASTE!” + +“And the people 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 problem of the state--to discover, +develop, and use the exceptional gifts of men. And I see that best +done--I drift more and more away from the common stuff of legislative +and administrative activity--by a quite revolutionary development 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 going. You know none of these things have ever +been kept going hitherto; they've come 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 most reasonably be expected. I looked up +to find Crupp's dark little eye intent upon me. + +There I left it to them. + +We had an astonishingly good discussion; Neal burst once, but we emerged +from his flood after a time, and Dayton had his interlude. The rest was +all close, keen examination of my problem. + +I see Crupp now with his arm bent before him on the table in a way we +had, as though it was jointed throughout its length like a lobster's +antenna, his plump, short-fingered hand 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 working 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 good 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 artistic and its artists to be taken seriously,” I +remember his saying. “The 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, severer, aristocratic culture. + +“It would have 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 rushed it. Well, Cossington had too many papers nowadays +to interfere with us, and we perhaps had learnt some defensive devices. + +“But this thing 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, “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 go to the bad, or will they rise from the ashes, aristocrats +indeed--if the Liberals come in overwhelmingly?” said Britten. + +“It's we who might decide that,” said Crupp, insidiously. + +“I agree,” 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 once fine and imperfect. We threw out suggestions that +showed themselves at once far inadequate, and we tried to qualify them +by minor self-contradictions. Britten, 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 groupings; it's a matter of +prevailing ideas. The problem is how to make bold, clear ideas prevail. +The question for Remington and us is just what groups of people will +most help this culture forward.” + +“Yes, but how are the Lords going to behave?” said Crupp. “You yourself +were asking 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 thinks that,” said some one. + +“The labour people want abolition,” said some one. “Let 'em,” said +Thorns. + +He became audible, sketching a possibility of action. + +“Suppose all of us were able to work together. It's just one of those +indeterminate, confused, eventful times ahead when a steady jet of ideas +might produce enormous results.” + +“Leave me out 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 have been about that point that Dayton fled our +presence, after some clumsy sentence 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 SPOILT 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 abhors 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. Whatever accidents happen, our civilisation needs, and almost +consciously needs, a culture of fine creative minds, and all the +necessary tolerances, opennesses, 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 ensure the quality of +the quarter deck.” + +“Hear, hear!” said Shoesmith, suddenly--his first remark for a long +time. “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 cheating 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 say something vague and difficult that +he didn't get said at all on that occasion. “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 night on my doorstep in a tremendous glow--but in that +sort of glow one doesn't act 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 things 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 distant from our discussions, that came apt to every topic, was +the true significance 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 assent 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 opened 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 nose. + +The international situation exercised us greatly. Our meetings were +pervaded by the feeling that 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 unstable equilibrium, that +sooner or later something must happen there--something very serious to +our Empire. Dayton frankly detested these topics. He was full of +that old Middle Victorian persuasion that whatever is inconvenient or +disagreeable 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 declare 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 Imperialists 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 first 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 +consequences. It seemed the only thing capable of bracing English minds +to education, sustained constructive effort and research; but on the +other hand it produced 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 eight + And we won't wait,” + +but no clamour at all about our national waste of inventive talent, our +mean standard of intellectual 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 qualified, hesitating, and +resentful subordinates, because our criticism is worthless and, so +habitually as to be now almost unconsciously, dishonest. Germany is +beating England in every matter upon which competition is possible, +because she attended sedulously to her collective mind for sixty +pregnant years, because in spite 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 went on to an image that had +flashed into my mind. “The British Empire,” I said, “is like some of +those early vertebrated monsters, the Brontosaurus 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. We're still but only half awake to our error. You can't change +that suddenly.” + +“Turn it round and make it go backwards,” interjected Thorns. + +“It's trying to do that,” I said, “in places.” + +And afterwards Crupp declared I had begotten a nightmare which haunted +him of nights; he was trying 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 think, since those days out of the urgency of that +apprehension. I still think a European war, and conceivably a very +humiliating war for England, may occur at no very 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 cricket 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 proletariat, 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 destruction 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 happened in history. We are there +like a man who has fallen off a ladder on to the neck of an elephant, +and doesn't know what to do or how to get down. Until something happens +he remains. Our functions in India are absurd. We English do not own +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 what India +signifies, and I have prayed them to tell me what they thought we were +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 apocryphal 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 months not a rupee nor a virgin would be left +in Lower Bengal. That is always given 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 over +the peninsula, without plans, without intentions--a vast preventive. +The sum total 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 what 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 spirit 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 about “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 sceptre 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 public schools to have a very wholesome +respect for strength, and as soon as a power 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 will abandon +the reality, such as it is, and preserve the semblance of power. The +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 believer in the imminent dissolution of our Empire; I am less and +less inclined to see 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,--and I try to recall the +order of my impressions during that watching, dubious time, before I +went over to the Conservative Party. I was trying--chaotic task--to +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 ancient trees; of big facades of sunlit +buildings dominating the country side; of large fine rooms full of +handsome, easy-mannered people. As a sort of representative picture to +set off against those other pictures of Liberals and of Socialists I +have given, I recall one of those huge assemblies the Duchess of Clynes +inaugurated 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 samples of nearly every section +of our social and intellectual life, with a marked predominance upon the +political and social side. + +I remember sitting 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 counted 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 agreed, for the most part bigger than the average of +people in London, and a handsome lot, even when they were not subtly +individualised. “They look so well nurtured,” I said, “well cared for. +I like their quiet, well-trained movements, their pleasant consideration +for each other.” + +“Kindly, good tempered, and at bottom utterly selfish,” she said, “like +big, rather carefully trained, rather pampered children. What else can +you expect from them?” + +“They are good tempered, anyhow,” I witnessed, “and that's an +achievement. I don't think I could ever be content under a bad-tempered, +sentimentalism, strenuous Government. That's why I couldn't stand the +Roosevelt REGIME in America. One'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 them. 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 know. 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 nice 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 that's it,” I said. “Not quite enough--not quite hard enough,” + I added. + +She laughed and looked at me. “You'd like to make us,” she said. + +“What?” + +“Hard.” + +“I don't think you'll go on if you don't get hard.” + +“We shan't be so pleasant if we do.” + +“Well, there my puzzled wits come in again. I don't see why an +aristocracy shouldn't be rather hard trained, and yet kindly. I'm not +convinced that the resources of education are exhausted. I want to +better this, because it already looks so good.” + +“How are we to do it?” asked Mrs. Redmondson. + +“Oh, there you have me! I've been spending my time lately in trying to +answer that! It makes 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 aristocracy, +'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 stage. 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 speech. They were on the whole handsome people, charitable +minded, happy, and easy. They led spacious lives, and there was +something free and fearless about their bearing that I liked extremely. +The women particularly were wide-reading, fine-thinking. Mrs. Redmondson +talked as fully and widely and boldly as a man, and with those flashes +of intuition, those startling, sudden delicacies of perception few men +display. I liked, too, the relations that held between women 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 of human beings, but +much harder to produce a sample. Was old Lady Forthundred, for instance, +fairly a sample? I remember her as a smiling, magnificent presence, a +towering accumulation of figure and 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 wraps 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 rather +commonplace dressmaker pretending to be aristocratic. I was, I am +afraid, posing a little as the intelligent but respectful inquirer from +below investigating the great world, and she was certainly posing as my +informant. She affected a cynical coarseness. She developed a theory on +the governance of England, beautifully 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 halfpenny 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 +about nobility.” + +She turned and smiled down on me. “We English,” she said, “are a +practical people. We assimilate 'um.” + +“Then, I suppose, they don't give trouble?” + +“Then they don't give trouble.” + +“They learn to shoot?” + +“And all that,” said Lady Forthundred. “Yes. And things go on. Sometimes +better 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.... + +Now, was she a sample? It happened she talked. What was there in the +brains of the multitude 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, amazing 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 +majority 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 troubled to foresee. He brought political art to +the last triumph of naturalness. Always for me he has been the typical +aristocrat, so typical and above the mere forms 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 strong feeling indeed. He seemed to me to +stand alone without an equal, the greatest man in British political +life. Some men one sees through and understands, some one cannot see +into or round because they are of opaque clay, but about Evesham I had a +sense of things hidden as it were by depth and mists, because he was 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 sense of being understood. Other men +have to be treated in a special manner; approached through their own +mental dialect, flattered by a minute regard for what they have said and +done. Evesham was as widely and charitably receptive 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 knowing. + +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 the 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 hydrogen, 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 him 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 the work of +elementary education? + +In playing for points 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. Did he really care? Did anything matter +to him? And if it really mattered nothing, 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 greater, 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 other contemporary +politician had his quality. In no man have I perceived so +sympathetically 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 greatness 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 this 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 that, 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 study +of others among the leading Tories and Imperialists the doubt increased, +until with some at last it was possible to question whether they had any +imaginative conception of constructive statecraft at all; whether they +didn't opaquely accept the world for what it was, and set themselves +single-mindedly to make a place for themselves and cut a figure in it. + +There were some very fine personalities among them: there were the great +peers who had administered Egypt, India, South Africa, Framboya--Cromer, +Kitchener, Curzon, Milner, Gane, for example. So far as that easier +task of holding sword and scales had gone, 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 their +experience of heterogeneous controls made them overrate the need for +obedience in a homogeneous country. They didn't understand raw men, +ill-trained men, uncertain 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 ineffectual changes in the policy of his papers, and a haunting +pursuit by parallel columns 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 seem 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 day I will raise the country.” + +“Why not?” I said, after a pause, and leant across him for the little +silver spirit-lamp, to light my cigarette.... + +Then the Tories had for another section the ancient creations, and again +there were the financial peers, men accustomed to reserve, and their big +lawyers, accustomed to--well, 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 their activities, +more ignorant of science than their chauffeurs, and of the quality +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 strike 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 holiday +whenever beaters were in request.... + +I find now in my mind as a sort of counterpoise to Evesham the figure +of old Lord Wardingham, asleep in the largest armchair in the library +of Stamford Court after lunch. One foot 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 important men +whose insteps are painful. Among other things he had flouted the idea +that women would ever understand statecraft or be more than a nuisance +in politics, denied flatly that Hindoos were capable of anything +whatever except excesses 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. “They mean mischief.” Having delivered +his soul upon these points, and silenced 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. Now he +reposed. He was breathing heavily with his mouth a little open and his +head on one side. One whisker was turned back against the comfortable +padding. His 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 what 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 Liberals. 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 before +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, but 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 only 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,” said 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 these people imagine something might be said for him.” + +“That's just it,” said Margaret. + +“Charity,” I suggested. + +“I don't like that sort of toleration.” + +I was oddly annoyed. “Like eating with publicans and sinners,” I said. +“No!...” + +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 Margaret 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 +Tories 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 side 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 perversest 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 side. 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 every one,” I said. “We Liberals have done more mischief +through well-intentioned benevolence than all the selfishness in the +world could have done. We built up the liquor interest.” + +“WE!” cried 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!” cried Margaret, stung; and I could see she thought I was talking +mere wickedness. + +“That's it,” I said. + +“But would you 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 you 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 some cases lead to a neglect of children. +If drunkenness is an offence, punish it, 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-house 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 +public-house. If we Liberals go on as we are going, we shall presently +want to stop the sale 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 drift of all that kind of thing is narrow, +unimaginative, mischievous, stupid....” + +I stopped short and 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 stems of ilex trees, was a great blaze of yellow +flowers.... + +“But prevention,” I heard Margaret behind me, “is the essence of our +work.” + +I turned. “There's no prevention but education. There's no antiseptics +in life but 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 whole 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 +neglected dog--in an otherwise well-managed home.” + +My thoughts had run away with me. + +“I can't understand you,” said Margaret, in the profoundest distress. “I +can't understand how it is you are coming to see things like this.” + + + +10 + + +The moods of a thinking man in politics 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 moral 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 difficult 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, hostile, and stupid observation +you tread your part in the platitudinous, quarrelsome, ill-presented +march of affairs.... + +The most impossible of all autobiographies is an intellectual +autobiography. I have thrown together 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 things 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 though it were simple, to leap +haphazard at the first course of action that presents 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 that poker and +take thought and get a better implement.... + +One of the results 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 myself, that I had no power to phrase +things for her in a form she could use. Hitherto I had stage-managed our +“serious” conversations. Now I was too much 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 sensuous, 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 incurable 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 during 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 would go over to +the Conservatives, and use my every gift and power on the side of such +forces on that side as made for educational reorganisation, scientific +research, literature, criticism, and intellectual development. That was +in 1909. I judged the Tories were driving straight at a conflict with +the country, and I thought 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 idea 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 our 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 wore a dress of golden satin, very +rich-looking and splendid. About her slender neck 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 remember +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,” I said, “I think I shall break with the party.” + +She made no answer. 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 me 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,” 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,” she said, with something like a sob in her voice, “it were +possible that you shouldn't do this.” She stopped abruptly, and I did +not look at her, 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. +“Everything has gone so differently.” + +I had a sudden memory of her, shining triumphant after the Kinghampstead +election, and for the first time I realised just how perplexing and +disappointing my subsequent career must have been to her. + +“I'm not doing this without consideration,” I said. + +“I know,” she said, in a voice of despair, “I've seen it coming. But--I +still don't understand it. I don't understand how you can go over.” + +“My ideas have changed and developed,” I said. + +I walked across to her bearskin hearthrug, and stood by the mantel. + +“To think that 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 think they are the forces of reaction,” I said. “I think I can +find work 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 think 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 silence 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 renascence 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 alternative. I believe I can do more in relation to +that effort than in any other connexion in the world of politics at the +present time. That's my case, Margaret.” + +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. “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 resign 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,” I said, “so keen against the Lords.” + +On that we halted. + +“But what are you going to do?” she asked. + +“I shall make 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 political suicide.” + +“Not altogether.” + +“I can't imagine 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 lost for a time in painful thought. + +“For me,” she said at last, “our political work has been a religion--it +has been more than a religion.” + +I heard in silence. 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-lipped 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 make it,” I said. + +“I don't see how you can say that,” she replied quietly. + +There was another pause between us. + +“Oh!” she said and clenched her hand upon the table. “That it should +have come to this!” + +She was extraordinarily dignified and extraordinarily absurd. She was +hurt and thwarted beyond measure. She had no place in her ideas, I +thought, for me. I could see how it appeared 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 temperaments +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 shattering 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 having 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 between my bedroom and my study. As I did so I heard +the soft rustle of her movement and 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!” 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 +confessed. 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 changes of the heart are very subtle changes. I am quite +unaware how or when my early romantic love for her purity and beauty +and high-principled devotion evaporated 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 liked 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, dined 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 again. + +In all this matter, and, indeed, in all my relations with Margaret, I +perceive now I behaved badly and foolishly. My manifest blunder is that +I, who was several years older than she, much subtler and in many ways +wiser, never in any measure sought to guide and control her. After our +marriage I treated her always as an equal, and let 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 justify that. It +wasn't fair to expect her to sympathise, anticipate, and understand. +I ought to have taken care of her, roped her to me when it came to +crossing the 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 always 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 sought 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, because even on my wedding morning there had been, deep down in +my soul, voiceless though present, something weakly protesting, a faint +perception of wrong-doing, 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 purely 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 object 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 broad, patriotic services and +an influence upon our collective judgments that no other 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 +sufficiently strong and wealthy to become a malcontent element in your +state. You have taxed and controlled the brewer and the publican until +the outraged Liquor Interest 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 traditions 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 upstairs 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 GUARDIAN 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 young Hebrew of the graver type, and a +couple of dissenting ministers in high collars 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 the 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 raked 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 opinion as exists indeed at the present +time. The whole process of politics which bulks so solidly in history +seemed for that clairvoyant instant but a froth of petty 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 again. 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 will 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, and 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, vaguely +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. Anything 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 stands 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 state +of aggressive and energetic dissociation, in the nascent state, as a +chemist would say. I was free now, and greedy for fresh combination. I +had a tremendous sense 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 seemed quite wonderfully able to do whatever I wanted to +do. Shoesmith responded to my first advances. We decided to create a +weekly paper as our nucleus, and Crupp 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, which should constitute a more +or less definite editorial council about me, and meet 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 all +sorts of guests, and our deliberations were never of a character to +control me effectively in my editorial decisions. My only influential +councillor at first was old Britten, who became my sub-editor. It was +curious how we two had picked 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 nearly 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 touch with just as many good +minds as possible. + +As we felt our feet, I developed slowly and carefully a broadly +conceived and consistent political attitude. As I will explain later, +we were feminist from the outset, though that caused Shoesmith and Gane +great searching of heart; we developed Esmeer's House of Lords reform +scheme into a general cult of the aristocratic virtues, 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 explanation 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 and +absolutely innocent of any criticism of method; it is scarcely a +caricature to call their 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 +technicality--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 deduction with the completest belief +in the validity of the intellectual instrument they are using. They are +Realists--Cocksurists--in matter of fact; sentimentalists in behaviour. +The Baileys having got to this glorious stage in mental development--it +is glorious because it has no doubts--were always talking about training +“Experts” to apply the same simple process to all the affairs +of mankind. Well, Realism isn't the last word of human wisdom. +Modest-minded people, doubtful people, subtle people, and the like--the +kind of people William James writes of as “tough-minded,” go on beyond +this methodical 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 profoundly in the affairs of mankind, that the collective +mind of this intricate complex 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, she 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 not +only in the BLUE WEEKLY columns but scattered about the monthlies; many +people must be familiar with her style. It was an intention we did +much to realise before our private downfall, that we would use the BLUE +WEEKLY to maintain a stream of suggestion against crude thinking, and +at last scarcely a week passed but some popular distinction, some +large imposing generalisation, was touched to flaccidity by her pen or +mine.... + +I was at great pains 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 detected +the shrill partisan note in our criticism, the attempt to puff a poor +thing because 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 good enough for that to matter a good deal.... + +Our distinctive little blue and white poster kept up its neat persistent +appeal to the public 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 corner 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 seen +piers of the great bridge below the Tower. The dome of St. Paul's just +floated into 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 drift of smoke +reflected unseen fires. By day that spectacle was sometimes a marvel 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 paper 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 and 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 rotating 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-car, +some string of barges go from me slowly out of sight. The people were +black animalculae by day, clustering, collecting, dispersing, by night, +they were phantom face-specks coming, vanishing, stirring obscurely +between light and shade. + +I recall many hours 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 selection, 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 began in her dialect, and, as I came +more and more to use my own, diverged. + +I had thought when 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 our fatal entanglement, tried to show the +queer, crippled, embarrassed and limited 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 +encounters 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 of a little window +through which one has been surveying a crowd. She didn't become +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 with Isabel which chanced to follow it, I seemed to have +solved the problem of women 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 the 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 as, 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 beside +the tall candles, half in the light, half in the mystery of the +shadows, besetting, 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 aesthetic bye-play, a sentimental +background; she is a moral and intellectual necessity 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 free? 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 they, 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 +deeper. We had to plough down at last to the passionate elements of +sexual relationship and examine and decide upon them. + +The signs multiplied. 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 proportion 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 manifest 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 +than 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 parliament 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 devotion. There were aspects of that +unquenchable agitation that were absolutely heroic 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 educated 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 as 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 ourselves drifting with an immense +multitude towards Parliament Square and parallel with a silent, +close-packed column of girls and women, for the most part white-faced +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 forces 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-tempered and sympathetic. When +at last we got within sight of the House the square was a seething seat +of excited people, and the array of police on horse and on foot might +have been assembled for a revolutionary outbreak. There were dense +masses 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 began 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. Stephen'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 undergraduates; lank, hungry-looking creatures, who stirred one's +imagination; one very dainty little woman in deep mourning, I recall, +grave and steadfast, with eyes fixed on distant things. Some of those +women looked defiant, some timidly aggressive, 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 +impressive--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, colleges, 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 part 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 deeper, or our inadequate children's insufficient children +will starve amidst harvests of earless futility. That conservatism which +works in every class to preserve in its essentials the habitual daily +life is all against a profounder treatment 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 bolts 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 morning +cup of tea.... + +The discussion of the relations of men and women disturbs every one. It +reacts upon the private life of every one who attempts it. And at +any particular time only a small minority 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 +banished their dreams and made their compromise. Wonderful and beautiful +possibilities 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, against all our etiquette, he got up and went +out. + +For some years after my marriage, I too was for leaving them alone. I +developed a dread and dislike for romance, for emotional music, for the +human figure in art--turning my heart to landscape. I wanted to sneer +at lovers and their ecstasies, and was uncomfortable until I found +the effective sneer. In matters of private morals these were my most +uncharitable years. I didn't want to think of these things any more for +ever. I hated the people whose talk or practice showed they were not +of my opinion. I wanted to believe that their views were immoral and +objectionable and contemptible, because I had decided to treat them as +at that level. I was, 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 stream 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 who have married for passionless purposes, +people whose very deficiency in feeling has left them free to follow +ambition, people beautyblind, who don't understand what it is to fall in +love, what it is to desire children or have them, what 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 necessity +averse from this most fundamental aspect of existence.... + + + +5 + + +It wasn't, however, my deepening sympathy with and understanding of the +position of women in general, or the change in 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 field of practical +politics. Those influences, no doubt, have converged to the same end, +and given me a powerful emotional push upon my road, but it was a +broader and colder view of things that first determined me in my attempt +to graft the 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 paramount 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 that 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 Rate, and the +Rapid Multiplication of the Unfit were staples of the monthly magazines. +But beyond an intermittent scolding of prosperous childless people +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 haphazard system +of pairing, qualified more and more by worldly discretions, no longer +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 to +bear children ignobly to men whom need and ignorance and the treacherous +pressure 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 capacious 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 convinced that the independent family unit +of to-day, in which the man is master of the 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 down, does not +supply anything like the best conceivable conditions. We want to +modernise 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 the 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 are 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 +scarcely increased at all since 1830, and in most Western European +countries the same is probably true of the ablest and most energetic +elements in the community. The 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 bored to death in the hopeless effort +to sustain an incessant honeymoon, here homes in which a solitary child +grows unsocially, here small two or three-child homes 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 over +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 great fleets, waging wars, while this aimless +decadence remains the quality of the biological outlook?... + +It is difficult now 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 rather fail utterly than participate in all the +surrenders of mind and body that are 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 substance in the life of the community. +In a world in which everything changes, in which fresh methods, fresh +adjustments and fresh ideas perpetually renew the circumstances of life, +it is preposterous that we should not even examine into these matters, +should rest content to be ruled by the uncriticised traditions 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 product of individual passions but +a service rendered to the State. Women must become less and less +subordinated to individual men, since this works out in a more or less +complete limitation, waste, and sterilisation of their essentially +social 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 generations 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 unlimited 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” while 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 these 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 and browbeating of women to cease. I want to +see women come in, free and fearless, 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 and 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 was or flying in 1800. Of course, it may +work out to modify men's ideas of marriage profoundly. To me that is +a secondary consideration. I do not believe that particular assertion +myself, because I am convinced that a practical monogamy 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 line that will prevent a highly organised civilisation from ending +in biological decay. The public Endowment of Motherhood is the only +possible way which will 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. +The 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 dearly enough, but not at the price +of constructive realities. These questions were no doubt monstrously +dangerous in the political world; there wasn't a politician alive who +didn't look scared at the mention of “The Family,” but if raising 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 going on in my mind concurrently with my speculations +about a change of party, like 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 this panic fear of legislative +proposals affecting the family basis was excessive, that things were +much riper for development in this direction than old-experienced people +out of touch with the younger generation imagined, that to phrase +the thing in a parliamentary fashion, “something might be done 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 very 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 series 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 Public 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 event, 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 release 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 plays 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 relation 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 + + + +CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ LOVE AND SUCCESS + + + +1 + + +I come to the most evasive and difficult part of my story, which is to +tell how Isabel and I have made a common wreck of our joint lives. + +It is not the telling 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 disconnected and +conclusive as a meteoric stone falling out of heaven upon two friends +and crushing them both. But I do not think that is true to our situation +or ourselves. 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 two men at a hundred yards may shoot at +each other with pistols for a considerable 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 eyes 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 this, 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 other sentence that our +blunders and misdeeds embodied, after the fashion of the prophet Hosea, +profound moral truths. Indeed, I feel so little confidence in 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 intensity. + +I will confess that 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 that, 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 stand. + +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 exposition of belief and of the grounds of +morality, which is the outcome of the mercenary 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 destruction +and little effective help. They find themselves confronted by the +habits and prejudices of manifestly commonplace people, and by that +extraordinary patched-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 live 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 change, 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 spare. +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 believe, 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 that is why I am +telling this side of my story with so much explicitness. + + + +2 + + +Ever since the Kinghamstead election 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 up 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 vigorously at tennis, while Margaret lay and rested her +back in the afternoon, or guide 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 unabashed, 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 +novels, 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 the 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 possibility 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 +indulgently--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 think 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 upon 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 gay 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 this 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 quantities +of cake, and discussed the tactics of the Suffragettes. I had made some +comments 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 drift 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 garden 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 narrow +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 myself a little stiffly to the substance of her +intervention. For some time I couldn't look at her again. + +From that time forth 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 imagination into harness in those matters at my +marriage, and I was living now in a world 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 meet 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 that is +the way to live. Perhaps there is no other method than this effectual +annihilation 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 convinced anyhow that such a qualified intimacy +as ours, such a drifting into the sense of possession, such untrammeled +conversation with an invisible, implacable limit set just where the +intimacy glows, it is no kind of tolerable compromise. 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 +liberal-minded ones are playing with fire. If people are not to love, +then they must be kept 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 relationship 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 letters didn't convey what one wanted to say, and +I went up to Oxford pretty definitely to see her--though I combined it +with one or two other engagements--somewhere in February. Insensibly she +had become important enough for me to make journeys 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 rules. Now there was always some one or other +near us that it seemed impossible to exorcise. + +We went for a walk 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 whose 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 was impressing +the Fortescue girls with the want of mental concentration possible in a +rising politician. We went down Carfex, I remember, to Folly Bridge, +and 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?” I asked. + +“I'm coming to London,” she said. + +“To write?” + +She was silent for 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?” + + + +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 to recall even the main outline of anything so elusive +as a meditation. I know that the idea of working with her gripped me, +fascinated me. That my value in her life 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 face upon this +complex business, there is gold and clay and sunlight and savagery 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 me. 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 have had that in my mind.... + +If she had been only a beautiful girl in love with me, I think I could +have managed the situation. Once or twice since my marriage and before +Isabel became of any significance 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 passion would not +have taken me. But between myself and Isabel things were incurably +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 nearly 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 listen so easily +and fully. She gave me, with an extraordinary completeness, that rare, +precious effect of always saying something fresh, and yet saying it so +that it filled into and folded about all the little recesses and corners +of my mind 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 and Yorkshire, writing to me continually of all she +now meant to do, and stirring 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 became clear she wanted to write, not +novels, but journalism, and then she set every one talking by taking +a flat near Victoria and installing as her sole protector an elderly +German governess she had engaged through a scholastic agency. She began +writing, not in that copious flood the undisciplined young woman of +gifts is apt to produce, but in exactly the manner of an able young man, +experimenting 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 soft 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 hair. + +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, going through my +intentions with a keen investigatory scalpel. Her talk always puts 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 +forgotten 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 little 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 between 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 was 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 spent 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 person with the frank manner and +the Amazonian mind, and, she declared, received her 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 of +helping him to find his soul. I had some twinges of jealousy about that. +I didn't see the necessity of him. He invaded her time, and I thought +that might interfere 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 surprising +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 quality 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 will perhaps.” + +I was silent. + +“Some one will,” she said, almost viciously. “And then we'll have to +stop these walks and talks of ours, dear Master.... I'll be sorry to +give them up.” + +“It's part of the requirements of the situation,” I said, “that he +should be--oh, 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 state of pupillage.” + +“I don't think I can,” said Isabel. “But it's only just recently I've +begun to doubt about it.” + +I remember these things being said, but just how much we saw and +understood, and just how far we were really keeping opaque to each other +then, I cannot remember. But it must 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 declaration. We just +assumed the new footing.... + +It was a day early in that year--I think in January, because there was +thin, crisp snow on the grass, 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 love +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 wife 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 people 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 between us. I suppose there I should figure as a +wicked seducer, while an unprotected 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 mine like the +response of an induction wire; her way of thinking was like watching +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, splendid, 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 red 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 utmost 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 myself +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 didn'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 have 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 really believe in it at all. They may render +it lip-service, but that is quite another thing. There are scarcely any +tolerable novels to justify its prohibitions; its prohibitions do, in +fact, remain unjustified amongst these ugly suppressions. You may, if +you choose, silence the admission of this in literature and current +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 really civilised and intelligently planned community would let any +one be unprepared. They find themselves hedged about with customs +that have no organic hold upon them, and mere discretions all generous +spirits are disposed to despise. + +Consider the infinite 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 upon 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 shame +and grossness by the power of love, and on the other hand, the possible +jealousy 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 passion, 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 love affair, a sort +of heroic hysteria, when death and ruin are agreeable additions 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 was 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 still 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 just 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 out! At any cost we have to stop--even at the cost of parting.” + +“Just because we may be found out!” + +“Just because 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 with 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 with sketchy, hasty instructions to edit the +paper, and started headlong and with luggage, from which, among other +things, my shaving things were omitted, upon a tour round the world. + +Preposterous flight 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 queer 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 phrasing 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 excuse 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 everything else in the world was +phantom-like until that want was satisfied. Perhaps you 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 dared, 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, which 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 could 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 eagle of pride that screamed within me. +It was Tuesday morning, and though not a soul in London knew of it yet +except Isabel, I had been back in England a week. I came in upon Britten +and stood in the doorway. + +“GOD!” he said at the sight of me. + +“I'm back,” I said. + +He looked at my excited face with those red-brown eyes of his. Silently +I defied him to speak his mind. + +“Where did you 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 ought 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 telephoned +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 home a day. + +I remember her return 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 landing 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 sweet 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 kiss with a queer feeling at my heart, too +undifferentiated to be even a definite sense 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 suddenly that she had resolved to end our estrangement. She +put herself so that my arm came caressingly about her. + +“These are jolly 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 know 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.” + +“Restlessness,” 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 looking at the equipage with +expressionless eyes. I saw her hand upon the edge of the 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,” she said, and was still more thoughtful. + +“Lately,” 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 perhaps 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,” she said abruptly, holding her two hands out to me, “I want +to begin over again!” + +I took her hands, perplexed beyond measure. “My dear!” I said. + +“I want to begin over again.” + +I bowed my head to hide my face, and found her hand in mine and kissed +it. + +“Ah!” she 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 darkly shining eyes seemed like a physical presence between +us.... + +“Tell me,” I said presently, to break the intolerable tension, “tell me +plainly what you mean by this.” + +I sat a little away 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 have read it over, thought it over. I didn't +understand--what you were teaching.” + +There was a little pause. + +“It all seems 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 doubted 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, public 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 to go on talking. And I was +now so accustomed to Isabel's vivid interruptions, qualifications, +restatements, and confirmations.... + +Margaret and I dined 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 excuse 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 our talk. I walked in with it, +and put it down on the table and turned to go. + +“Husband!” 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 and 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 +preoccupation to the door. + +I did not look at her, but I could feel her standing, watching me. If I +had looked up, she would, 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 out to stab another human being. + + + +7 + + +The whole world had changed for Isabel and me; and we tried to pretend +that nothing had changed except a small matter 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 story, 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 conduct 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 statesman 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 +about the established rights or wrongs of the situation. We hadn't an +atom of respect for them, innate or acquired. The guardians of public +morals will say we were 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 presented herself to me like something dramatically +recalled, fine, generous, infinitely capable of feeling. I was amazed +how much I had forgotten her. In my contempt 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 remember 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 darkness, the daylight +brought an obstinate confidence in our resolution again. We would, we +declared, “pull the thing off.” Margaret must not know. Margaret should +not know. If Margaret did not know, then no harm whatever would be done. +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 the injury to Margaret of her +unreciprocated advances. I tried to maintain to myself that this hidden +love made no difference to the now irreparable breach 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 abounding 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 poor 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 relationship. It is like lighting a +candle for the sake of lighting it, over and over again, and each time +blowing it out. That, no doubt, must be very amusing to children playing +with the matches, but not to people who love warm light, and want it 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. But 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 another reduced that meeting to +absurdity.... + +Presently the idea 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. With 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 such +things. + +There is a necessary 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 trouble between us, little shadows +spreading by imperceptible degrees across that vivid and luminous cell. + + + +8 + + +The Handitch election flung me suddenly 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 obtruded 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 washed 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 time, 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 contest. The Liberal dissensions +and the belated but by no means contemptible Socialist candidate were +providential interpositions. I think, however, the conduct of Gane, +Crupp, and Tarvrille in coming down to fight for me, did count +tremendously 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. + +“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--?” + +“I'm all right 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 for a speech. I spoke +for an hour and ten minutes with a more and more crumpled copy of the +SENTINEL in my hand, and I made the fullest and completest exposition +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 gave me quite unprecedented space under the impression +that I had only to be given 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, and 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. Long +before polling day Plutus was converted. + +“It's catching 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 with the declaration of the poll that my battle was won. +No one expected more than a snatch victory, and I was in by over fifteen +hundred. At one bound Cossington'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 been ever the pioneers +in sanely bold constructive projects. + +I came up to London 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 through the BLUE +WEEKLY, and was shaping an increasingly influential body of opinion; 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 bolder 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, understandings 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 assured 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 years ahead seemed +falling into order, shining with the credible promise of immense +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 pervaded 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 sympathy 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 and 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 Margaret's show,” she said abruptly. “If I see her smiling there +like a queen 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. But I don't want to see the end of it all the same....” + +“Good-bye!” said I, clasping her hand as some supporter appeared in the +passage.... + +I came back to London 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 closely for a moment. + +“My dear,” I whispered, “it's nothing--without you--nothing!” + +We didn't speak for 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 than 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 became still. “Oh, well,” she said, and wiped her eyes and +sat down on the little sofa by the fire; and I sat down beside her. + +“I didn't know all there was in love,” she said, staring at the coals, +“when we went love-making.” + +I put my arm behind 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.” + +“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 about 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 once if I just gave myself to you it would be enough. It was +nothing--it was just 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 stopped. “Dear, I don't want to bother +you. I just want you to know I love you....” + +She caught my head in her hands and kissed it, then stood up abruptly. + +I looked up at her, a little perplexed. + +“Dear heart,” said I, “isn't this enough? You're my councillor, my +colleague, 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 what I can't have. That's all.” + +“We get a lot.” + +“We want a lot. You and I are greedy people for the things we like, +Master. It's very evident we've got nearly all we can ever have of one +another--and I'm not satisfied.” + +“What more is there? + +“For you--very 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 ever want children?” she said abruptly. + +“I suppose I do.” + +“You don't!” + +“I haven't thought of them.” + +“A man doesn't, perhaps. But I have.... I want them--like hunger. +YOUR children, and home with you. Really, continually you! That's the +trouble.... I can't have 'em, Master, and I can't have you.” + +She was crying, and 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 to my +thought of you. And it's nonsense--utter nonsense!” She stopped. She was +crying and choking. “And the child, you know--the child!” + +I was troubled beyond measure, but Handitch and its intimations were +clear and strong. + +“We can't have that,” I said. + +“No,” she said, “we can't have that.” + +“We've got our 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 thing 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 +altogether.... Children get into a woman's brain--when she mustn't have +them, especially when she must never hope for them. Think of the child +we might have now!--the little 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 +hands that tear at my heart! Oh, my heart and my lord!” She was holding +my arm 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 your child on my knee and you beside me-never, and I am a woman +and your lover!...” + + + +2 + + +But the profound impossibility of our 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 weights 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 other; 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 children born in scandal would be handicapped at every +turn. We wanted to share a home, 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 first 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 out 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 manifest 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 most 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 Blodgett had been preaching against social corruption +with extraordinary force, and had roused the Church of England people +to a kind of competition in denunciation. 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” 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 the 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 about 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 when I recall that Edward Crampton, meeting +me full on the steps of the Climax Club, 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. Similar +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. The centre of diffusion was the Bailey household. The +Baileys had never forgiven 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, for I had not only +abandoned them, but I was succeeding beyond even their power of +misrepresentation. Always I had been a wasp in their spider's web, +difficult to claim as a tool, uncritical, antagonistic. I admired their +work and devotion enormously, but I had never concealed my contempt for +a certain childish vanity they displayed, and for the frequent puerility +of their political intrigues. I suppose contempt 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 sitting on her fender +curb after dinner, and pledging little parties of five or six women at a +time with infinite gusto not to let the matter go further. Our cell was +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 support 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 those 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 influential. Altiora, like so many +people who rely on gesture and vocal insistence in conversation, writes +a poor and slovenly prose and handles an argument badly; 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, with 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 couldn't for the life of me discover her sources. I had, +indeed, a desperate intention of challenging her, and then I bethought +me of a youngster named Curmain, who had been my supplemental typist and +secretary for a time, and whom I had sent on to her before the days of +our breach. “Of course!” said I, “Curmain!” He was a tall, drooping, +sidelong youth with sandy hair, a little forward head, and a long +thin neck. He stole stamps, and, I suspected, 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 everything 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 without unnecessary discussion to Altiora. He was quick and cheap +anyhow, and I thought her general austerity ought to redeem him if +anything could; the Chambers Street 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 evening 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 purpose 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 Altiora 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; she +also--I realised at that interview couldn't bear our loving. It seemed +to her the sickliest thing,--a thing quite unendurable. While such +things were, the virtue had gone 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 and 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 cushions of +her sofa with a long hat-pin and pretending she was overwhelmed with +grief 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 +stories,” 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, and 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 come 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 Quackett, who had just +left England for the Cape, was the real scandalmonger. That struck me +as mean, even for Bailey. I've still the odd vivid impression of his +fluting 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 evening 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.” + +“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.” + +“And we can't!” + +“I've got to tell Margaret,” I said. + +“Margaret!” + +“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 some good times, Master;” she said, with a sigh in her voice. + +And then for a long time we stared at one another in silence. + +“We haven't much time left,” she said. + +“Shall we bolt?” I said. + +“And leave all 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.” + +“A lot.” + +“Master,” she said, “it isn't all sex and stuff between us?” + +“No!” + +“I can't give up the work. Our work's my life.” + +We came upon another long pause. + +“No one will believe we've ceased to be lovers--if we simply do,” she +said. + +“We shouldn't.” + +“We've got to do something more parting than that.” + +I nodded, and again we paused. She was coming to something. + +“I could marry 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 +told 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?” + +“He thinks this 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 realities of this proposition. + +“I don't want you to marry Shoesmith,” I said at last. + +“Don't you like him?” + +“Not as your husband.” + +“He's a very clever and sturdy person--and very generous and devoted to +me.” + +“And me?” + +“You can't expect that. He thinks you are wonderful--and, naturally, +that you ought not to have started this.” + +“I've a curious 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 really 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 Margaret's sake. THIS... closes +the scandal, closes everything.” + +“It closes all our life together,” I cried. + +She was silent. + +“It never ought 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,” 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 ever 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; you 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 loving you--it's just because of +its goodness that I want not to end in wreckage now, not to end in +the smashing up of all the big things I understand in you and love in +you.... + +“What is there 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 first 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 feeling 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?” 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.” + +“Then I looked in at the Brabants' for some midnight tea before I came +on here. They'd got some writers--and Grant was there.” + +“You HAVE been 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 body. 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 should 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 making up my mind to do the thing. + +“I want to tell 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 at me steadily for a moment and sat down slowly in +my armchair. + +“What is it?” she said. + +I went on awkwardly. “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!” + +I nodded. + +“What do they say?” she asked. + +It was difficult, I found, to speak. + +“They say she'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 looked 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,” I said, “I'm afraid you'll have to believe it.” + + + +5 + + +Margaret sat very still. When I looked 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 meant you to dream.” + +“And that is why--we've been apart?” + +I thought. “I suppose it is.” + +“Why have you told me now?” + +“Those rumours. I didn't want any one else to tell you.” + +“Or else it wouldn't have mattered?” + +“No.” + +She turned her eyes from me to the fire. Then for a moment she looked +about the room she had made for me, and then quite silently, with a +childish quivering of her lips, with 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 asked: “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 answer. + +“When the thing began--I knew it was stupid but I thought it was a +thing that wouldn't change, wouldn't be anything but itself, wouldn't +unfold--consequences.... People have got hold of these vague rumours.... +Directly it reached any one else but--but 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 this life of ours together; I couldn't have done it +without you. We've made a position, created a work--” + +She shook her head. “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 have 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 right,” I said, clinging to my explanation. “We're doing +nothing shabby. He knows. He will. It's all as right--as things can +be now. We're not cheating any one, 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 never 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, “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 little things!” + +She drew down my head to her as a mother might draw down the head of +a son. She caressed me, weeping 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 dreaming 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 is 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 half 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, had become so intimate, that we talked of +parting even as we parted with a sense 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 lighthouses 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 presently, and +engaged in mysterious manoeuvers. Shrieking gulls and chattering +jackdaws 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 thought that afternoon on every aspect of our relations. +It seems to me now we talked 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, seemed to lift us out +of ourselves until we were something representative and general. She was +womanhood become articulate, talking to her lover. + +“I ought,” I said, “never to have loved you.” + +“It wasn't a thing planned,” she said. + +“I ought never 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. + +“I will never repent,” she said. “Never!” as though she clung to her +life in saying it. + +I remember we talked 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 that follow such a readjustment. +We went on to the whole perplexing riddle of marriage. We criticised +the current code, how muddled and conventionalised it had become, how +modified by subterfuges and concealments and new necessities, and the +increasing freedom of women. “It's all like Bromstead when the building +came,” 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 practise a tainted goodness.” + +These questions need discussion--a magnificent frankness of +discussion--if any standards are again 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” plainly put,--the “why not” + largest and plainest, the law deduced from its purpose. “You and I, +Isabel,” I said, “have always been a little 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 wasn't covered +with slime. That's where the real mischief comes in. Passion can always +contrive to clothe itself in beauty, strips itself splendid. That +carried us. But for all its mean associations there is this duty.... + +“Don't we come 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 will credit. And yet if it were possible to +tell the very heart of our story.... + +“Does Margaret really want to go on with you?” she asked--“shield +you--knowing of... 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 something 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 the +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 than you! Why don't you? IS he a better man than +you? He's usage, he's honour, he'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 side 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 crushed and beaten by an +indiscriminating machine which destroys happiness in the service of +jealousy. “The mass of people don't feel these things in quite 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 gone past all that and wandered hand in +hand....” + +I remember that for 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 looked 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!” said 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 though 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 probabilities of the next general election, the steady drift of +public opinion in the north and west away from Liberalism towards us. +It was very manifest that in spite of Wardenham and the EXPURGATOR, we +should come into the new Government strongly. The party had no one else, +all the young men were formally or informally with 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 lead. 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 lake 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!” said Isabel, and laughed. + +“Well, of some such thing,” I said, and remained for awhile silent, +thinking of Locarno. + +I recalled once more 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 gigantic 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 the 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 anyhow we had +our lesson. Before her I was in a nineteenth-century darkness, dealing +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 expression 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 should 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 were 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 little 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 and +great ambitions with you. There have been times lately when politics has +seemed the pettiest game played with mean tools for mean ends--and none +the less so that the happiness of three hundred million people might be +touched by our follies. 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 blazing 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 how 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 feel 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 space at all, who never met, who couldn't part, and +here we lie on Olympus. And those 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.” + +“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 creatures! 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 mean 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 his hand.” + +“Is it as good 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 rather mixed with love-making. After all, love-making is joy +rather than magic. Don'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 along the Embankment to Westminster just +like a real man, for all that he's smaller 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.” + +“Isn't she up 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 adventures 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 Calais by the night boat. I couldn't, I felt, return +to London. We walked over the crest and down to the little station of +Martin Mill side by side, talking at first 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 though 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.” + +“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 goes out of the station. Are we wanting in imagination, +Isabel?” + +“I don't know. We've always assumed it was the other way about.” + +“Even when the 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 other's brains.” + +“It isn't real,” I said; “nothing is real. The world's no more than a +fantastic dream. Why are we parting, Isabel?” + +“I don't know. It seems now supremely silly. I suppose we have to. Can't +we meet?--don't you think we shall meet even in dreams?” + +“We'll meet a thousand times in dreams,” I said. + +“I wish we could 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 stayed six months in America,” I said, “we might have walked +long walks and talked long talks for all our lives.” + +“Not in a world 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 steadfastly. + +“Come here,” she whispered. “Never mind the porters. What can they know? +Just one time more--I must.” + +She rested her hand against the door of the carriage and bent down upon +me, and put her cold, moist 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 lives, 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 indeed I had not parted from her two days +before I became a monomaniac to whom nothing could matter but Isabel. +Every truth had to be squared to that obsession, every 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 delaying his marriage until after the end of the +session--partly my own amazing folly 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 more 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 visited +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, and it did not +save me in the least from a lonely emptiness such as I had never felt +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 hushed 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 bare. + +It was an occasion made absurd and strange by the odd accident that the +house caught fire upstairs while we were dining below. It was a men's +dinner--“A dinner of all sorts,” said Tarvrille, when he invited me; +“everything from Evesham 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 found 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 +artist, 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 Esmeer, 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 asserted 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 must 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 individual over his shoulder. “Just see, +will you,” he said, and caught up the 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 scheme 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 never 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 murdered, 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 that 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 overhead, m'lord.” + +“The maids are 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 things 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 +wonder about unrecorded history. In India, for example.” + +But nobody touched that. + +“Thompson,” said Tarvrille to the imperturbable butler, and indicating +the table generally, “champagne. Champagne. Keep it going.” + +“M'lord,” and Thompson marshalled his assistants. + +Some man I didn't know began to remember things about Mandalay. “It's +queer,” he said, “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, twisted the wrist of a boy until it +broke, and was afterwards overcome by wild remorse. + +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 soldiers 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 think I could give the deep rich browns and warm +greys beyond the brightly lit table, 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 this was coloured +emotionally for me by my aching sense of loss and sacrifice, and by +the chance trend of our talk to the breaches and unrealities of the +civilised scheme. We seemed a little transitory circle of light in a +universe of darkness and violence; an effect to which the diminishing +smell of burning rubber, the 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 those 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 suppose 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 this point and then that. “My new suit!” cried some +one. “Perrrrrr-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--“Port 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 talk 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 went on for some time. I was attacked across the table by +a man named Burshort about my Endowment of Motherhood schemes, but +in the gaps of that debate I could still hear Weston Massinghay +at intervals repeat in a rather thickened voice: “THEY didn't get +dysentery.” + +I think Evesham went 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 and bowls and baths. +Everybody was now disposed to be hilarious and noisy, to say 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 isn't the Tory party any more,” said Burshort. “Remington has made +it the Obstetric Party.” + +“That's good!” said Weston Massinghay, with all his teeth gleaming; “I +shall use that against you in the House!” + +“I shall denounce you for abusing private confidences if you do,” said +Tarvrille. + +“Remington wants us to give up launching Dreadnoughts and launch babies +instead,” Burshort urged. “For the price of one Dreadnought--” + +The little shrivelled 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 and 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 remark, I forget what, but he overbore me. + +Real things we want 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 lords. What's Toryism?--hate of disturbance. It's +all hate--hate from top to bottom. Hate of a mess. Remington owned it +the other day, said he hated a mu'll. There 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 before any one could speak he had resumed. + +“Then this about fine thinking. Like going into a bear pit armed with a +tagle--talgent--talgent galv'nometer. Like going to fight a mad dog with +Shasepear and the Bible. Fine 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 round me. It was an extraordinary revelation to me. +Every one was unusually careless 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 and 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 left +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 attuned. 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 Tarvrille, with that quick +eye and sympathy of his, came to the rescue. Then for a time 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 hall, 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 flare and gutter, and some scraps +of broken china still lay on the puddled floor. + +As we surveyed this, Lady Tarvrille appeared, back from some party, +a slender, white-cloaked, satin-footed figure with amazed blue eyes +beneath her golden hair. I remember 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, and 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 made 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 atom of the faith I held. +They were just as immediately intent upon personal ends, just as limited +by habits of thought, as the men in any other group or party. 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 mood 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 though 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 them but a little +way apart, and now I saw they were separated by all the distance +between earth and heaven. I saw now in myself and every one around me, +a concentration 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 across 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 reality of +life for a theoriser's dream. + +All through that wandering agony of mine that night a dozen threads of +thought interwove; now 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 she 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 those 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 truth whatever that could help +me now, no ounce of sustaining value. I wanted Isabel 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 and 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 has 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 emphatic 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 defect 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 saturated with the sombre +joys of conflict and the pleasant thought of condign punishment for +all recalcitrant souls. That was the way of it, I perceived. That had +survival value, as the biologists say. He was fool enough in politics to +be a consistent 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 really 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 without fear and speak without +discretion will not come to our own for the next two thousand years? + +It was the last was 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 separation, great personal +rewards; we had promised ourselves success visible and shining 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 germinating 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 that. My scandal would cling to me +now for all my life, a thing affecting relationships, embarrassing and +hampering my spirit. I should follow the common 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 or +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 self. 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 remember how I fell talking to +God--I think I talked out loud. “Why do I care for 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 nothingness, 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 analogies 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 had 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 think 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 suddenly 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 forsakes every one,” I said, flying out as a tired mind will, +with an obvious repartee.... + +I passed at a bound 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 and 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 decisive +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 cheats me. Nothing can be made good to me again.... Why shouldn't I +save what I can? 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 between 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 time of crisis, the intense aversion I felt +for Margaret. No sense of her goodness, 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 nothing of that. There was +a triumphant kindliness about her that I found intolerable. 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 had 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 interest in whatever it was--it didn't matter +what.... No, I couldn't face her. + +So I did not reach my study until two o'clock. + +There, I remember, stood the new and very beautiful old silver +candlesticks that she had set there 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, she was with the +Balfes--she was to have been married from the Balfes--and I sent 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 feeling 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-written 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 ever 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 felt that here +was something that I could die to shelter, something that meant more +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 there we talked. + +“I had to write to you,” I said. + +“I had to come.” + +“When are you 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 white 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 things! Damn all this patching of the irrevocable! I want to take +care of you, Isabel! and have you with me.” + +“I can't stand 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 +without you.” + +She stopped weeping, she made a great effort to control herself, and +looked at me steadfastly for 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 only 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 women 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,” I said, “I know.” + +“I want to live 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 which. 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 to 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 of the BLUE WEEKLY in order to get as +much as possible of its affairs in working order before I left London +with Isabel. I just missed Shoesmith in the lower office. Upstairs I +found Britten amidst a pile of outside articles, methodically reading +the title of each and sometimes the first half-dozen lines, and either +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 see things prepared,” I answered. + +“Yes,” he said, and ripped open the envelope of a fresh aspirant. + +I was silent while he read. + +“You're going away with Isabel Rivers,” he said abruptly. + +“Well!” I said, amazed. + +“I know,” he said, and lost his breath. “Not my business. Only--” + +It was queer to find 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 know 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.” + +“Soon?” + +“Right away.” + +“There's your wife.” + +“I know.” + +“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.” + +“Common decency.” + +I nodded. + +“All this movement of ours. That's what I care for most.... It's come to +be a big thing, Remington.” + +“That will go on.” + +“We have a use for you--no one else quite fills it. No one.... I'm not +sure it will go on.” + +“Do you think I haven't thought of all these things?” + +He shrugged his shoulders, and rejected two papers unread. + +“I knew,” he remarked, “when you came back from America. You were alight +with it.” Then he let his bitterness gleam for a moment. “But I thought +you would stick to your bargain.” + +“It's not so much choice as you think,” I said. + +“There's always 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 and thought. + +“Some things one's GOT to do,” he threw out. + +“Some things one can't do.” + +“These infernal institutions--” + +“Some one must 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,” 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 say 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 remember? when we talked about Mecca together.” + +I nodded. + +“Yes. And you'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, you'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 to 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,” I said, with smarting eyes. “Damn it! with all my heart! It +came of trying 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 things! Other people have to part. You ought to. +You say--what do you say? It's loss 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.” + +“Oh, damn!” 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 right 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 though 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 know 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 and 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 +balancing 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 the door waiting for us.” + +“Torture?” + +I thought. “Yes.” + +“For her?” + +“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.” + +“I don't believe you are right,” I said. “I believe we can save +something--” + +Britten shook his head. “Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you,” he +said. + +His indignation rose. “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 marriage 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 stared 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 certain 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 corner 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 this tottering +old-woman ridden Empire should dare to waste a man on such a score! 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 through 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 with virtue and women, and all I was told +and how I was prepared. I was born into 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 than 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 surrender 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, Britten, 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 chair, 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 now 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 began again. “If you didn't know you were in the wrong +you wouldn't be so damned 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 with 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 years. You're throwing +yourself away and accusing your country of rejecting you.” + +He swung round upon 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 things we might achieve! If you'd only stay now--even now! Oh! +you'd suffer a little 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 living 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-fire. 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 thing men like Snuffles +and Keyhole imagine--that excites them! When I think of the things +these creatures think! Ugh! But YOU know better? You know that physical +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 HURT 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 like 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 delights or achievements in the world.... I made +her what she is--as I never made Margaret. 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 abruptly 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 sigh. + + + +5 + + +I have a letter Margaret wrote me within 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 inconsecutive 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,” she says, “I want to hear from you, but I do not want +to see you. There'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 think it is even more the loss of our +political work and dreams that I am feeling than 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 strange to think after all these years that I should be asking +myself, do I love you? have I loved you? In a sense I think I HATE +you. I feel you have taken my life, dragged it in your wake for a time, +thrown it aside. I am resentful. Unfairly resentful, for why should I +exact that you should watch and understand my life, 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 being is his own to do what he likes with. You were not +only pledged to my tiresome, ineffectual companionship, but to great +purposes. They ARE great purposes.... + +“If only I could 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 jealousy 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 after 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 better not get ill. If you do, and I hear of it--I shall come +after you with a troupe 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 think, be given. + +“There are all sorts of things I can't express about this and want to. +There's this difference 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. You are at once +makers and rebels, you and Isabel too. You're bad people--criminal +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 destruction, but it seems to me sometimes that it is nothing +but an instinct for lawlessness 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 should 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 illuminated clock overhead, the +bustle of porters and passengers with luggage, the shouting of newsboys +and boys with flowers and sweets, and the groups of friends seeing +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 tickets, 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 bustle 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 station. + +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 shining 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,” 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 word. It seemed to me that for a time +we had exhausted our emotions. We had escaped, we had cut our knot, +we had accepted the last penalty of that headlong return of mine from +Chicago a year and a half ago. That was all settled. That harvest of +feelings we had reaped. I thought now only of London, of London as the +symbol 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 with 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 stems 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 life, had been +forced from it, my fingers left their hold. That was over. I should +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 place, so cut off that I meet now the +merest stray tourist, the commonest tweed-clad stranger with a mixture +of shyness and hunger.... And suddenly all the schemes I was leaving +appeared fine and adventurous and hopeful as they had never done 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 doubted 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 necessary 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? Ought 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,--Shoesmith 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 before +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 remnant whom now I must lose. I thought +of people I had been merry with, people I had worked with and played +with, the companions of talkative walks, the hostesses 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 gale 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 what 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 +keeping me, for letting things go so far.... I wanted the whole world +to know how fine 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 stuff 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 cloud of thoughts to discover the narrow compartment, +with its feeble lamp overhead, 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 could not understand her attitude, and then I perceived +she was sitting bent together 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 this, 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 stared 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!” I whispered. + +She made no sign. + +“Isabel!” 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The New Machiavelli, by Herbert George Wells + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1047 *** |