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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/75677-0.txt b/75677-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0a642c3 --- /dev/null +++ b/75677-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10062 @@ + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75677 *** + + + + TOLD BY AN IDIOT + + + + + BY THE SAME AUTHOR + + + POTTERISM + DANGEROUS AGES + MYSTERY AT GENEVA + + + Published by + BONI AND LIVERIGHT + NEW YORK + + + + + TOLD BY AN IDIOT + + + + + BY + + + ROSE MACAULAY + + + + + BONI AND LIVERIGHT + PUBLISHERS :: :: NEW YORK + + + + + TOLD BY AN IDIOT + + + _Copyright, 1923, by_ + BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC. + + + PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA + + + _Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player + That struts and frets his hour upon the stage + And then is heard no more; it is a tale + Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, + Signifying nothing_.... + + Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5. + + _L’histoire, comme une idiote, mécaniquement se répète._ + + Paul Morand: “_Fermé la nuit_.” + + + + + PART I. VICTORIAN + + PART II. FIN-DE-SIÈCLE. + + PART III. EDWARDIAN. + + PART IV. GEORGIAN. First Period: Circus. + Second Period: Smash. + Third Period: Débris. + + + + + Generationi Patrum. + + + + + PART I + + VICTORIAN + + + + + TOLD BY AN IDIOT + + + A FAMILY AT HOME + + +ONE evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days when our +forefathers, being young, possessed the earth--in brief, in the year +1879--Mrs. Garden came briskly into the drawing-room from Mr. Garden’s +study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six children, “Well, +my dears, I have to tell you something. Poor papa has lost his faith +again.” + +Poor papa had very often lost his faith during the fifty years of +his life. Sometimes he became, from being an Anglican clergyman, a +Unitarian minister, sometimes a Roman Catholic layman (he was, by +nature, habit and heredity, a priest or minister of religion, but +the Roman Catholic church makes trouble about wives and children), +sometimes some strange kind of dissenter, sometimes a plain agnostic, +who believed that there lived more faith in honest doubt than in half +the creeds (and as to this he should know, for on quite half the creeds +he was by now an expert). On his last return to Anglicanism, he had +accepted a country living. + +Victoria, the eldest of the six children, named less for the then +regnant queen than for papa’s temporary victory over unbelief in the +year of her birth, 1856, spoke sharply. She was twenty-three, and very +pretty, and saw no reason why papa should be allowed so many more +faiths and losses of faith in his career than the papas of others. + +“_Really_, mamma ... it is too bad of papa. I knew it was +coming; I said so, didn’t I, Maurice? His sermons have been so funny +lately, and he’s been reading Comte all day in his study instead of +going out visiting, and getting all kinds of horrid pamphlets from +the Rationalist Press Association, and poring over an article in the +_Examiner_ about ‘A Clergyman’s Doubts.’ And I suppose St. Thomas’ +day has brought it to a head.” (Victoria was High Church, so knew all +about saints’ days.) “And now we shall have to leave the vicarage, just +when we’ve made friends with all sorts of nice people, with tennis +courts and ballrooms. Papa _should_ be more careful, and it +_is_ too bad.” + +Maurice, the second child (named for Frederick Denison), who was at +Cambridge, and a firm rationalist, having fought and lost the battle of +belief while a freshman, enquired, cynically but not undutifully, and +with more patience than his sister, “What is he going to be this time?” + +“An Ethicist,” said Mrs. Garden, in her clear, noncommittal voice. “We +are joining the Ethical Society.” + +“Whatever’s that?” Vicky crossly asked. + +“It has no creeds but only conduct” ... (“And I,” Vicky interpolated, +“have no conduct but only creeds”) ... “and a chapel in South Place, +Finsbury Pavement, and a magazine which sometimes has a poem by Robert +Browning. It published that one about a man who strangled a girl he +was fond of with her own hair on a wet evening. I don’t know why he +thought it specially suitable for the Ethical Society magazine.... +They meet for worship on Sundays.” + +“Worship of what, mamma?” + +“Nobility of character, dear. They sing ethical hymns about it.” + +Vicky gave a little scream. + +Mrs. Garden looked at Stanley, her third daughter (named less for +the explorer than for the Dean, whom Mr. Garden had always greatly +admired), and found, as she had expected, Stanley’s solemn blue eyes +burning on hers. Stanley was, in fancy, in the South Place Ethical +Chapel already, singing the ethical hymns.... + + Fall, fall, ye ancient litanies and creeds! + Not prayers nor curses deep + The power can longer keep + That once ye kept by filling human needs. + + Fall, fall, ye mighty temples to the ground! + Not in their sculptured rise + Is the real exercise + Of human nature’s brightest power found. + + ’Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil, + ’Tis in the gifted line, + In each far thought divine, + That brings down heaven to light our common soil. + + ’Tis in the great, the lovely and the true, + ’Tis in the generous thought + Of all that man has wrought + Of all that yet remains for man to do.... + +Stanley had read this and other hymns in a little book her papa had. + +“Then I suppose,” said Rome, the second daughter, who knew of old that +papa must always live near a place of worship dedicated to his creed of +the moment, “then I suppose we are moving to Finsbury Pavement.” Rome +had been named less for the city than for the church, of which papa had +been a member at the time of her birth, twenty years ago; and, after +all, if Florence, why not Rome? Rome looked clever. She had a white, +thin face, and vivid blue-green eyes like the sea beneath rocks; and +she thought it very original of papa to believe so much and so often. +Her own mind was sceptical. + +Vicky’s brow smoothed. Moving to London. There was something in that. +Though of course it mustn’t be Finsbury Pavement; she would see to that. + +Irving, the youngest but one (named less for the actor than to +commemorate the brief period when papa had been an Irvingite, and had +believed in twelve living apostles who must all die and then would +come the Last Day), said, “Golly, what a lark!” Irving was sixteen, +and was all for a move, all for change of residence if not of creed. +He was an opportunist and a realist, and made the best of the vagaries +of circumstance. He was destined to do well in life. He was not, like +Maurice, sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, nor, like Vicky, +caught in the mesh of each passing fashion, nor, like Stanley, an +ardent hunter of the Idea, nor, like Rome, a critic. He was more like +his younger sister (only he had more enterprise and initiative), Una, +a very calm and jolly schoolgirl, named less for her who braved the +dragon than for the One Person in whom papa had believed at the time +of her birth (One Person not in the Trinitarian, but in the Unitarian +sense). + +“Three hundred a year less,” remarked Rome, from the couch whereon she +lay (for her back was often tired), and looked ironically at Vicky, to +see how she liked the thought of that. + +Vicky’s smooth cheek flushed. She had forgotten about money. + +“Oh, _really_.... Oh, I do think papa is too bad. Papa had entered +the room, and stood looking on mean? Can’t he wait till next?” + +Mamma’s faint (was it also ironic, or merely patient?) movement of the +eyebrows meant that it was too late; papa’s faith was already lost. + +“By next winter he may have found it again,” Rome suggested. + +“Well, even if so,” said Vicky, “who’s going to go on giving him +livings every time?... Oh, yes, mamma, I know all the bishops love him, +but there _is_ a limit to the patience of bishops.... Does the +Ethical Society have clergymen or anything?” + +“I believe they have elders. Papa may become an elder.” + +“_That’s_ no use. Elders aren’t paid. Don’t you remember when he +was a Quaker elder, when we were all little? I’m sure it’s not a paid +job. We shall be loathsomely poor again, and have to live without any +fun or pretty things. And I daresay it’s low class, too, like dissent, +as it’s got a chapel. Papa never bothers about that, of course. He’d +follow General Booth into the Army, if he thought he had a call.” + +“I trust that I should, Vicky.” + +Papa had entered the room, and stood looking on them all, with his +beautiful, distinguished, melancholy face (framed in small side +whiskers), and his deep blue eyes like Stanley’s. Vicky’s ill-humour +melted away, because papa was so gentle and so beautiful and so kind. +And, after all, London was London, even with only six hundred a year. + +“Mamma has told you our news, I see,” said papa, in his sweet, mellow +voice. He looked and spoke like a papa out of Charlotte M. Yonge, +though his conduct with regard to the Anglican church was so different. + +“Yes, Aubrey, I’ve told them,” said mamma. + +“I hope you won’t mind, papa,” said Vicky, saucily, “if _I_ go +to church at St. Alban’s, Holborn. _I’m_ a ritualist, not an +Ethicist.” + +“Indeed, Vicky, I should be very sorry if you did not all follow your +own lights, wherever they lead you.” + +Papa’s broad-mindedness amounted to a disease, Vicky sometimes thought. +A queer kind of clergyman he was. What would Father Stanton and Father +Mackonochie of St. Alban’s think of him? Father Mackonochie, who was +habitually flung into gaol because he would face east when told to face +north--as important as all that, he felt it. + +“Well, my darlings,” papa went on in his nice voice, “I must apologise +to you all for this--this disturbance of your lives and mine. I would +have spared it you if I could. But I have been over and over the +ground, and I see no other way compatible with intellectual honesty. +Honesty must come first.... Your mother and I are agreed.” + +Of course; they always were. From Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, +from Catholicism to Quakerism, from Quakerism to Unitarianism, +Positivism, Baptistism (yes, they had once sunk, to Vicky’s shame, as +low as that in the social scale, owing chiefly to the influence of +Charles Spurgeon) and back to Anglicanism again--through everything +mamma, silent, resigned and possibly ironic, had followed papa. And +little Stanley had seen the idea behind all papa’s religions and +tumbled headlong after him, and Maurice had, grimly, decided that it +was safer to abjure all creeds, and Rome had critically looked on, +with her faint, amused smile and her single eyeglass, and Irving and +Una had been led, heedless and incurious, to each of papa’s places of +worship in turn, but had understood none of them. They had not the +religious temperament. Nor had Vicky, who attended her ritualistic +churches from æsthetic fancy and a flair for being in the fashion, for +seeing and hearing some new thing. _She_ didn’t care which way +priests faced, though she did enjoy incense. Vicky was a gay soul, and +preferred dances and lawn tennis and young men to religion. Stanley too +was gay--as merry as a grig, papa called her--but she had a burning +ardour of mind and temper that made the world for her a place of +exciting experiments. She now thought it worthy and honourable to be +poor, for she had been reading William Morris and Ruskin and socialist +literature, as intelligent young women did in those days, and was all +for handicrafts and the one-man job. She was eighteen, and had had her +first term at Somerville College, Oxford, which had just been founded +and had twelve members. + +Irving, always practical, said, “When are we going to move? And where +to?” + +“In February,” said mamma. “Probably we shall live in Bloomsbury. We +have heard of a house there.” + +“Bloomsbury,” said Vicky. “That’s not so bad.” + +Sitting down at the piano, she began softly to play and sing. Papa sat +by the fire, his thin hand on mamma’s, his thoughtful face pale and +uplifted, as if he had made the Great Sacrifice once more, as indeed +he had. Stanley sat on a cushion at his feet, and leant her dark head +against his knee. She was a small, sturdy girl, and she wore a frock of +blue, hand-embroidered cloth, plain and tight over the shoulders and +breast, high-necked, with white ruching at the throat, and below the +waist straighter than was the fashion, because Mr. Morris said that +ripples and flounces wasted material and ruined line. Vicky, sinuous +and green, rippled to the knees like running water. Irving sat on a +Morris-chintz chair, reading “The Moonstone,” Maurice on a Liberty +cretonne sofa, reading a leader in yesterday’s _Observer_. + +“It is, unfortunately, impossible to conceal from ourselves that the +condition of Ireland, never perceptibly improved by the announcement +of the projected remedy for her distress and discontents, has for some +weeks gone steadily from bad to worse. The state of things which exists +there is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from civil +war. The insurrectionary forces arrayed against law and order are not, +indeed, drilled and disciplined bodies; but what they lack in this +respect they make up for in numbers and in recklessness.” + +Such was the sad state of Ireland in December, 1879, as sometimes +before, as sometimes since. Or, anyhow, such was its state according +to the _Observer_, a paper with which Maurice seldom, and Stanley +never, agreed. Stanley put her faith in Mr. Gladstone, and Maurice in +no politicians, though he appreciated Dizzy as a personality. Papa had +always voted Liberal and Gladstone, but thought that the latter lacked +religious tolerance. + +Maurice turned to another leader, which began “In these troubled +times....” And certainly they _were_ troubled, as times very +nearly always, perhaps quite always, are. The _Observer_ told +news of the Basuto war, the Russian danger in Afghanistan, Land +League troubles, danger of war with Spain, trouble in Egypt, trouble +in Bulgaria, trouble in Midlothian (where Mr. Gladstone was speaking +against the government), trouble of all sorts, everywhere. What a +world! Stanley, an assiduous student of it, sometimes almost gave it up +in despair; but never quite, for she always thought of something one +ought to do, or join, or help, which might avert shipwreck. Just now it +was handicrafts, and the restoration of beauty to rich and poor. + + + + + 2 + + MAMMA AND HER CHILDREN + + +Mamma, sitting with papa’s hand in hers, watched them all, with her +quiet grey eyes looking through pince-nez, and her slight smile. Pretty +Vicky, singing “My Queen,” with the lamplight shining on her mass of +chestnut hair parted Rossetti-wise in the middle, her pink cheeks, her +long white neck, her graceful, slim, flowing form, her æsthetic green +dress (for Vicky was bitten with the æsthetic craze). Pretty Vicky. +She loved gaiety and parties and comfort so much, it was a shame to +cut down her dress allowance, as would be necessary. Perhaps Vicky +would get engaged very soon, though, to one of her æsthetic or worldly +young men. Vicky was not one of those sexless, intellectual girls, +like Rome, with her indifference, or Stanley, with her funny talk of +platonic friendships. To Vicky a young man _was_ a young man, and +no platonics about it. Sometimes mamma was afraid that Vicky, for all +her æstheticism, was a little _fast_; she would go out for long +day expeditions alone with the young man of the moment, and laugh when +her mother said, doubtfully, “Vicky, when _I_ was young....” + +“When _you_ were young, mamma, dear,” Vicky would say, caressing +and mocking, “you were an early Victorian. Or even a Williamite. Papa, +prunes, prisms! I’m a late Victorian, and we do what we like.” + +“A _mid_-Victorian, I hope, dear,” mamma would loyally +interpolate, but Vicky would fling back, “Oh, mamma, H.M. has reigned +forty-two years now! You don’t think she’s going to reign for +eighty-four! Late Victorian, that’s what we are. _Fin-de-siècle._ +Probably the world will end very soon, it’s gone on so long, so let’s +have a good time while we can. We’re only young once. I feel, mamma, at +the very end of the road, and as if nothing mattered but to live and +dance and play while we can, because the time’s so short. Clergymen +say it’s a sign of the world coming to an end, all these wars and +disturbances everywhere, and unbelief, and women and trains being so +fast in their habits and young men so effeminate.” + +Thus Vicky, mocking and gay and absurd. Her mother’s keen, near-sighted +grey eyes strayed from her, round the pretty, lamplit room, which +was partly Liberty and Morris, with its chintzes and wall-papers and +cretonnes, and blue china plates over the door (that was the children), +and partly mid-Victorian, with its chiffoniers and papier-maché and red +plush chairs, and Dicksee’s “Harmony” hanging over the piano. On the +table lay the magazines--the _Nineteenth Century_, the _Cornhill_, the +_Saturday Review_, the _Spectator_, and the _Examiner_ with the article +by Samuel Butler on “A Clergyman’s Doubts.” They had made the vicarage +so pretty; it would be hard to leave it for a dingy London house. +It was a pity (though hardly surprising) that the Anglican church +could find no place for Aubrey during the intervals when he could not +say the creed. Aubrey was so modern. Mrs. Garden’s own father, also +a clergyman, believed in the Established Church and the Bible, and +agreed with the writer of the Book of Genesis and Bishop Ussher, its +commentator, that the world had been created in six days in the year +4004 B.C., and that Adam and Eve had been created shortly afterwards, +full of virtue, and had fallen; and so on, through all the Bible +books.... After all, the scriptures _were_ written (and even marginally +annotated) for our learning.... But Mrs. Garden’s papa had begun being +a clergyman when religion had been more settled, before Darwin and +Huxley and Herbert Spencer had revolutionised science. You didn’t +expect an able modern Oxford man like Aubrey to be an Early Victorian +clergyman. + +Maurice on the Liberty sofa snorted suddenly over what he was reading, +and mamma smiled at him. The dear, perverse, violent boy! He was +always disagreeing with everyone. Mamma’s eyes rested gently on her +son’s small, alert head, with its ruffled top locks of light, straight +hair, like a cock canary’s crest, its sharp, long chin and straight +thin lips. Maurice was as mamma’s brothers had been, in the fifties, +only they had worn peg-top trousers and long fair whiskers that stood +out like fans. Maurice wore glasses, and looked pale, as if he had +read too much; not like young Irving, sprawling in an easy chair with +“The Moonstone,” beautiful and dark and pleased. Nor like Stanley, +who, though she read and thought and often talked cleverly like a +book, had high spirits and was full of fun. Little Stanley, with her +round, childish face above the white ruching, her big forehead and +blunt little nose, and deep, ardent, grave blue eyes. What a child +she was for enthusiasms and ideas and headlong plans! And her talk +about platonic friendships and women’s rights and social revolution +and bringing beauty into common life. The New Girl. If Vicky was one +kind of New Girl (which may be doubted), Stanley was another, even +newer.... There shot into mamma’s mind, not for the first time, a +question--had girls always been new? She remembered in her own youth +the older people talking about the New Girl, the New Woman. Were girls +and women really always newer than boys and men, or was it only that +people noticed it more, and said more about it? Elderly people wrote +to the papers about it. “The Girl of the Period,” in the _Saturday +Review_--fast, painted, scanty of dress (where are our fair, demure +English girls gone?) with veils less concealing than provocative ... +what, Mrs. Garden wondered, was a provocative veil? The New Young +Woman. Bold, fast, blue-stockinged, self-indulgent, unchaperoned, +advanced, undomesticated, reading and talking about things of which +their mothers had never, before marriage, heard--in brief, NEW. (To +know all that the mid-Victorians said about modern girls, and, indeed, +about modern youths of both sexes, you have only to read certain +novelists of the nineteen-twenties, who are saying the same things +to-day about what they call the Young Generation.) Had Adam and Eve, +Mrs. Garden wondered, commented thus on their daughters--or, more +likely, on their daughters-in-law? (According to Mrs. Garden’s papa, +these had been the same young women, but in the late seventies one +wasn’t, fortunately, obliged to believe the worst immoralities of +the Old Testament.) “Youth,” it was said at this period, as at other +periods before and since, “youth, in the last quarter of the nineteenth +century, has broken with tradition. It is no longer willing to accept +forms and formulæ only on account of their age.” (At what stage in +history youth ever did this, has never been explained.) “It has set out +on a voyage of enquiry, and, finding some things which are doubtful and +others which are insufficient, is searching for forms of experience +more in harmony with the realities of life and knowledge.” Those are +the actual words of a writer of the nineteen-twenties, but they were +used, in effect, also in the eighteen-seventies, and many other decades. + +And had the young, both young men and young women, always believed that +they alone could save the world, that the last generation, the elderly +people, were no good, were, in fact, responsible for the unfortunate +state in which the world had always up to now been, and that it was +for the young to usher in the New Day? Well, no doubt they were right. +The only hitch seemed to be that the young people always seemed to get +elderly before they had had time to bring in the New Day, and then they +were no good any more, and the next generation had to take on the job, +and still the New Day coyly refused to be ushered in. Except that, of +course, in a sense, each day was a new one. But not, alas, much of an +improvement on the day before. + +“These troubled times....” Had there ever been, would there ever be, +a day when the newspapers said “In these quiet and happy times”? +Stanley, inspired by Mr. William Morris, was sure of it. The millennium +was just round the corner, struggling in the womb of time, only it +needed workers, workers, and again workers, to deliver it safely. +Some lecturer under whom Stanley had sat had put it like that, and she +had repeated it to her mother. Well, of course in these days ... the +New Girl, being so new and so free, could use such metaphors. In the +fifties you couldn’t; unmarried girls couldn’t, anyhow. Stanley had, +indeed, coloured a little when she had said it. Stanley was not only +unmarried, but declared that she never would be married, there was too +much to be done (which was a way some young women were talking just +then). She was going, after Oxford, to work in a settlement, and teach +people weaving, dyeing and beauty, after learning them herself at the +Morris workshops. It was all very nice, but mamma would rather Stanley +had a husband and babies. (Mammas, it may be observed in passing, +differ from other women in being very seldom new.) + +Then mamma’s eyes rested on her chubby, beautiful baby, Una, lolling +on the hearthrug, one light brown pigtail over each shoulder, reading, +with calm and lovely blue eyes, some dreadful rubbish in the _Boy’s +Own Paper_, her cheek bulged out with a lump of toffee. A nice, +good, placid child of fifteen, who never thought, never read anything +but tosh, talked in slang, and took life as it came, cheerful, +unquestioning and serene. Una was the least clever and the best +balanced of the Gardens. She was going, when she was older, to look +rather like the Sistine Madonna. + +How unlike her happy, handsome solidity was to Rome! Rome lay back +on her couch, her face like a clear white cameo against deep blue +cushions, the lamplight shining on her fair, silky curls, cut short in +one of the manners of the day. Rome’s thin lips twisted easily into +pain and laughter; her jade-green eyes mocked and watched. “I’m afraid +of your sister. She looks as if she was going to put us all into a +book,” people would sometimes say of her to the others. But Rome never +wrote about anything or anyone; it was not worth while. + + + 3 + + SISTERS IN THE GARDEN + + +Maurice threw down the second serial part of “Theophrastus Such,” which +had just come out. + +“The woman’s going all to pieces,” he said, in his crisp, quick, +disgusted voice. “Sermonising and tosh.... The fact is,” said Maurice, +“the fact is, the novel, anyhow in this country, has had its day. +Except for the unpretending thrillers. We should give it a rest. The +poets still have things to say and are saying them (though not so well +as they used to; _their_ palmy days are over, too), but not the +novelists”.... + +Vicky, to drown his discourse, began to sing loud and clear-- + +“When I was a _young_ maid, a _young_ maid, a _young_ +maid....” + +“Of course she’s old,” went on Maurice, referring to Mary Ann Evans. +“And she’s been spoilt. She’s not a teacher, she’s a novelist. Or she +was. Now she’s dropped being a novelist and become merely a preacher. +That’s the end of her. I wish to God people would know their job +and stick to it. She was a jolly _good_ novelist.... Sorry, +pater”--Mr. Garden had frowned at the expletive--“but I didn’t think +you’d mind--_now_. I suppose you and I are both agreed, aren’t we, +as to the non-existence of a Deity.” + +“All the same, my dear boy....” + +All the same (this was Rome’s thought), papa had so recently believed +in a Deity, and would, no doubt, so soon again believe in a Deity, that +it seemed bad taste to fill the brief interim with vain oaths. Maurice +had no reverence at all, and no taste. You would think, as Vicky turned +from the piano to say, that, whatever he did or didn’t believe himself, +he might remember that some people were not only Christians but Church, +and High Church at that. But Maurice only grinned at her. She tweaked +his fair crest in passing and arranged her own glossy chestnut coiffure +at the painted looking-glass over the chimney-piece. This Rossetti +shape suited her, she thought, better than the high coils of last year. + +The parlourmaid announced the curate, a good-looking, intelligent, +cheerful young man whom they all liked. He had hardly shaken hands when +Mr. Garden said to him, “I want a talk with you, Carter,” and took him +off to the study, to break it to him about the Ethical Society. + +“Papa might just as well have told him here,” Vicky petulantly said. +“It would only have needed a sentence, and then we could have had a +jolly evening.” + +“Of course papa feels he must go into it thoroughly with Mr. Carter,” +said mamma. “Poor Mr. Carter will be dreadfully hurt by it, I’m afraid. +He has always been so fond of papa, and he has never himself seen any +reason for doubt.” + +“There is no reason for doubt,” muttered Vicky, beneath her breath. +Then, louder, impatience conquering respect, “What does papa think the +Church is for, except to tell us what we can’t know for ourselves about +what to believe?” + +Mamma replied, taking up her embroidery, “Papa doesn’t know what the +Church is for. That is his great difficulty. And, Vicky, it is not for +us, who have studied so much less, to protest....” + +“Well,” said Vicky, “I shall go into the garden. It’s a night for men +and angels. Come on, Stan.” + +Stanley came, and the sisters paced together, wrapped in shawls, down +the gravel path beneath a deep blue sky full of frosty, twinkling stars +and the pale glow which precedes winter moonrise. It was one of those +frosty Christmases which our parents (they say) used to have in their +youths. Hot summers and frosty winters--that is what they say they used +to have: one is not obliged to believe them, but it is a picturesque +thought. + +“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Stannie. I shall get married.” + +“Who to, Vicky?” + +“Ah!” Vicky’s long eyes were mysterious in the starlight. “Perhaps +I’ve not made up my mind yet; perhaps I have. All I do know is that +I’m not going to live round about South Place, Finsbury Pavement, on +£400 a year just because papa must needs go to an ethical chapel. +I--shall--get--married. And well married, too. Why not? I can, you +know, if I want to.” + +“Captain Penrose,” said Stanley. + +“_He’s_ not the only one, my child. There are others. No, I shan’t +tell you a word more now. You wait and see. And when I’m married you +shall come and stay with me and meet lots and lots of men.” + +Lots and lots of men. The kind of men who’d be friends with Vicky and +Captain Penrose (or whoever else Mr. Vicky might prove to be). + +“I shall be busy, you know,” said Stanley, doubtful and conceited. “I +shall have very little spare time if I take up weaving and dyeing.” + +“Don’t take up weaving and dyeing. It’s shockingly cranky anyway, all +this Morris craze of yours.” + +“All the best things are thought cranky at first.” + +“Don’t you believe it. The new princess dress isn’t.... Now mind, I’m +saying this for your good, my dear; men won’t look at you if you go +about with dyed hands and talk about manual labour and the one-man job +and the return of beauty to the home.” + +“Vicky, you’re _vulgar_. And as I don’t mean to marry what does it +matter if they look at me or not?” + +“Oh, tell that to the marines.... I’m getting frozen. Come along in +and we’ll turn the curate’s head, unless papa’s still breaking his +heart.... You’re a little prig, Stan, that’s your trouble, my child.” + +It was quite true. Stanley _was_ a little prig. She not only read +Ruskin and Morris and Karl Marx but quoted them. There came a day, +later on, when she saw through Ruskin, but it is no use pretending that +that day was yet. She was a prig and believed that it was up to such +as she to reform the world. She saw herself (at the moment, for her +vision of herself varied) as the modern woman, clever, emancipated, +high-minded, too intellectually fastidious to take the vulgar view. She +took herself seriously, in spite of the childish giggle at the comedy +of life which broke like gurgling water through her earnestness. + +“The first Nowell the angels did sing,” sang Vicky, in her clear, +fluting voice, and danced in at the drawing-room window. + + + + + 4 + + MAMMA AND ROME + + +Mamma sat by Rome’s side and embroidered, while papa interviewed his +curate in the study. You could see, now these two sat together, +that they were alike, not so much in feature or colour as in some +underlying, elusive essence of personality. But Rome’s mocking, amused, +critical self looked ironically out of her blue-green eyes and mamma’s +dwelt very still and deep within her. + +“Well, mamma.” Rome put down her book, which was by Anatole France. + +“Well, Rome.” + +“You don’t much mind this.” Rome was commenting, not enquiring. + +“Oh, no.” Mamma was placid. “Not,” she added, “that I _want_ to +live in London particularly. Dirty place. No gardens.” + +Rome said, definitely, “I prefer London,” and mamma nodded. Rome was +urbane. Negligent, foppish and cool, she liked to watch life at its +games, be flicked by the edges of its flying skirts. And the game of +life was more varied and entertaining in London than in the country and +equally absurd. So Rome preferred London. It was like having a better +seat at the play. Lack of bodily energy threw her back largely in the +country on to the entertainment of her own rather cynical mind. She was +often bored, sometimes ill-humoured, sharp and morose. The years might +bring her a greater patience, but at twenty she was not patient. The +very sharp clarity of her mind, that chafed against muddled thinking, +stupidity, humbug and sentimentality, made intercourse difficult for +her in the country, where Heaven has ordained that even fewer persons +shall reside who are free from these things than is the case in large +towns. + +“How long,” enquired Rome, negligently, slipping round an old silver +ring on her thin white finger, “do you give the Ethical Church, mamma?” + +Mamma was feather-stitching, rapidly and correctly. The movement of her +head indicated that she declined to prophesy. + +“No point in looking ahead,” she said practically. “One always sees +a change a little while before it comes, in time to be prepared; and +that’s all we need. Papa is never sudden.” + +The whimsical smile that twitched at one corner of Rome’s thin mouth +was unreturned by mamma, whose face was gravely bent over her work. +Mamma was a good wife and never joked with her children about papa’s +vagaries. No one had ever got behind mamma’s guard in the matter +of papa--if it was a guard. Who could see into mamma’s mind, idly +speculated Rome. Mamma had, by forty-five years of age, achieved a kind +of delicate impenetrability. Papa, at fifty, was as limpid as the clear +water of a running stream, where you may watch the fishes swimming to +and fro, round and round. + +Papa came back, alone and looking hurt. At the same moment Vicky came +in at the long window, pink-cheeked, smelling of frost. + +“Where’s Mr. Carter, papa?” + +“Gone away, Vicky. He--he couldn’t stop.” + +“I suppose he was shocked to death. Oh, well....” + +But, of them all, only mamma knew _how_ shocked the orthodox +people of the seventies were about matters of unbelief. The children +had been brought up in the wrong atmosphere really to know it. Mamma +knew that to Mr. Carter papa’s action would seem dreadful, blasphemous, +very nearly wicked. + +“After all,” said Vicky, impatiently, “we’re living in the year 1879. +We’re moderns after all.” + +Dashingly modern Vicky looked in her sinuous art-green dress, with her +massed Rossetti hair and jade earrings. Daringly, brilliantly modern, +and all agog for life. A dashing girl, as they called them in 1879--if +a girl bitten with æstheticism can still dash, and it may be taken +for granted that dashing girls will always dash, whatever bites them. +Catching up slim young Irving from his chair, Vicky twirled him round +the room in a waltz. + + + + + 5 + + BLOOMSBURY AND SOUTH PLACE + + +In February the Gardens moved to Bloomsbury. Different people and more +people came to the house; it was rather like the old days when papa had +been a Unitarian. Mr. Stopford Brooke began coming to see papa again, +and Dr. Martineau, and all his old and new friends who lived in London, +even Father Stanton of St. Alban’s, Holborn, and Mr. Charles Spurgeon. +The circle of papa’s friends had swollen and swollen with the years, +from his undergraduate days onwards. Not only was papa lovable and +popular, but he touched so many circles, fished in so many waters, and +his fellow-fishermen of each particular water usually remained faithful +to him even when he moved on to another pool. Good-humoured, witty +Mr. Spurgeon, for instance, did not break with papa when he deserted +the City Temple for a second go of Anglicanism, though he was sadly +disappointed in him. Nor were papa’s interests bound by religion; he +had friends, distinguished and indistinguished, among politicians, +journalists, poets, professors and social reformers, besides his +relatives and mamma’s. And now, of course, there was a quite fresh +influx from the South Place Ethical Chapel. So, one way and another, +what with papa’s friends and mamma’s and the children’s, a good deal of +life flowed into the Bloomsbury Square house. Papa was, in his quiet +way, happy now that the wrench was over. He was writing, and had for +years been writing, a very long book on comparative religions, and for +this he worked at the British Museum, which was so conveniently near. +And on Sundays he went to South Place and worshipped ethically. + + “Do not crouch to-day and worship,” + +he would sing in his sweet tenor voice, + + “The old past, whose life is fled; + Hush your voice to tender reverence, + Crowned he lies, but cold and dead. + For the present reigns our monarch, + With an added weight of hours; + Honour her, for she is mighty! + Honour her, for she is ours!” + +(The author, Miss Adelaide Procter, had very rightly, it will be noted, +dethroned a male and enthroned a female.) + +So sang papa and mamma on a Sunday morning in April. Then someone +rose and said a few ethical words about the desirability of not being +fettered by religious dogma, and the congregation, who all thought this +desirable too, listened attentively. + +Papa gazed wistfully in front of him at the varnished seats and +painted woodwork and the ethical texts inscribed round the walls. +“Live for Others.” “Live Nobly.” “Duty First.” He had made the great +sacrifice, and once more dethroned the past for honesty’s sake, and +if it entailed a jarring of literary and artistic fastidiousness, who +was he to rebel? God knew, he had been æsthetically happier joining in +the Roman mass (tawdry and vulgar-looking as the churches where this +service is held so often are) or chanting the Anglican liturgy in the +little fourteenth-century church in Hampshire--though, as to that, +some of the Hymns A. & M. were quite as bad as anything in the ethical +hymn-book--but never had he been so utterly honest, so stripped to the +bare bone of all complacency, humbug and self-deception as now. Or so, +anyhow, he believed, but who shall read the human heart? + +Again they sang: + + “Hush the loud cannon’s roar, + The frantic warrior’s call! + Why should the earth be drenched in gore? + Are we not brothers all?” + +For, sad to say, the earth was, in the spring of 1880, drenched (as +usual) in gore. The gore of Afghans and British in Afghanistan, of +Basutos in Basutoland, Chilians and Bolivians in South America, +Liberals and Conservatives in Great Britain, where the elections were +being fiercely contested, besides such permanently flowing gore as that +of Jews in Russia and Christians in Turkey. The Ethical Society hoped +pathetically that all these so unlikely persons would enjoy peace and +brotherhood one day. + +They trooped out into South Place. Grave, intelligent, ethical men and +women clustered and hummed together like bees. They talked about the +elections, which were going well, for nearly all the Ethical members +were Liberals and the Liberals were sweeping the country. + +“Why are Ethical members Liberals?” Rome enquired in the note book +to which she committed as much of her private commentary on life as +ever found its way to paper. “Partly, no doubt, because of the liberal +attitude towards religion, but it must be more than that. _T.C._” +“T.C.” meant “trace connection” and was a very frequent entry. Rome +looked forward to a time when, by means of prolonged investigation, +all the connections she had noted should be traced; that, she held, +would add to her understanding of this strange, amusing life. What, +for instance, was the connection between High Church dogma and ornate +ritual, between belief in class distinctions and in the British Empire, +between dissent and Little Englandism, art and unconventional morals, +the _bourgeoisie_ and respectability, socialism and queer clothes? +All these pairs and many others were marked T.C. and had a little +space under them, in which the connection, when traced, was explained +in concise and lucid language. In another part of the book there were +pages assigned to “Curious uses of words.” Rome felt a great, perhaps +a morbid, interest in investigating life and language. She wrote “Why +are Ethical members Liberals?” when papa and mamma coming in from +chapel told her how delighted South Place was with the elections. +Papa, of course, had always been a Liberal through all his religious +vicissitudes. + +Vicky came in like a graceful whirlwind from Walworth, S.E., where +she had attended church at St. Austin’s, the monastery of Brother à +Beckett, and flung herself into a chair in ecstasy. + +“A service straight from heaven!” she cried. “Too utterly utter! +_Such_ incense--perfumes of Araby! And Brother à Beckett preached +about the authority of the State over the Church. It simply doesn’t +exist. The State is _nowhere_ and not to be taken the slightest +notice of.... And who do you think was there, just in front of us--Mr. +Pater, and the adorable Oscar in a velveteen coat, looking like the +prince of men and talking like the king of wits (yes, mamma, talking, +but in quite an undertone). But too utter! I was devastated. I was with +Charles. I’d made him come with me to try if grace would abound--but +no, not yet; Charles remains without, with the dogs and the ...” + +“Vicky,” mamma interpolated. + +“... and the sorcerers, mamma dear,” Vicky finished, innocently. “What +did you _think_ I was going to say?” + +“You must allow Charles his conscience, Vicky,” said papa. + +Charles was Vicky’s half-affianced suitor, but unfortunately an +agnostic, or rather a Gallio, and Vicky declared that they should not +become regularly engaged until such time as Charles should embrace the +Anglican, or some other equally to be respected, church. Unbelief might +be fashionable, but Vicky didn’t hold with it. Also, and worse, Charles +was not yet in the æsthetic push; he was, instead, in the Foreign +Office, and took no interest in the New Beauty. Velveteen coats he +disliked, and art fabrics, and lilies, except in gardens, and languor +except in offices, and vice except in the places appointed for it. +And all these distastes would, as Vicky complained, make the parties +they would give such a difficulty. Vicky told Charles that, unless he +conquered them, she might feel compelled to become affianced instead to +Mr. Ernest Waller, a young essayist who understood Beauty, though not, +indeed, Anglicanism, as he had been a pupil of Mr. Pater’s in the days +when Mr. Pater had been something of a pagan. But better burn incense +before heathen gods, said Vicky, than burn none at all. + +So, when papa said, “You must allow Charles his conscience,” Vicky +returned, firmly, “Dear papa, _no_. Conscience should be our +servant, not our master. That’s what Brother à Beckett said in his +sermon this morning. Or, anyhow, something like it. Conscience is +given us to be educated and trained up the way it should go. An unruly +conscience is an endless nuisance. He that bridleth not his own +conscience ...” + +Papa, sensible of his own so inconveniently unbridled conscience, +said, mildly, “I think Brother à Beckett was perhaps referring to the +tongue,” and Vicky lightly admitted that her memory might have got +confused. + +“But never mind sermons and the conscience, here’s grandpapa,” she +said, and sure enough, there was grandpapa, who was staying with them +on a visit. Grandpapa was the father of mamma and a Dean, and was a +very handsome man of seventy-five, and he was one of the last ditchers +in the matter of orthodoxy and had yielded no inch to science or the +higher criticism, and believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible +and the divine credentials of the Anglican Establishment, and disliked +popery, ritual, dissent and free thought with equal coldness. Papa he +had never approved of; a weak, vacillating fellow, whose reputation +was little affected by one disgraceful change more or less. It did not +particularly signify that papa had joined the Ethical Church; nothing +about papa particularly signified; a weak, wrong-headed, silly fellow, +who would certainly, for all his scholarship, never be a Dean. It was +far more distressing that Anne (mamma), who ought to have made a +firm stand and saved her husband from his folly, should thus abet him +and follow him about from church to church. And the children had been +deplorably brought up. Grandpapa, who thought it blasphemous not to +believe in Noah and his ark, and even in the date assigned to these by +Bishop Ussher, and had written to the _Times_ protesting against +the use in schools of the arithmetic book of Bishop Colenso on account +of the modernist instruction imparted by this Bishop to the heathen +in this matter of the date of the ark--grandpapa heard these unhappy +children of his daughter’s discussing the very bases of revealed truth; +grandpapa, who held that our first parents lost paradise through +disobedience, pride, inquisitiveness and false modesty, heard Maurice’s +perverse defiance of law and authority, Rome’s calm contempt and +conceited criticism of accepted standards, Stanley’s incessant, eager, +“Why, what for, and why not?” and Vicky’s horror at the breadth and +crudeness of the Prayer Book marriage service. + +Grandpapa, being a Conservative and a Disraelian, was just now not +well pleased. He did not think that the Gladstone Government would be +able to deal adequately or rightly with the inheritance of foreign +responsibilities left them by their predecessors. South Africa, Egypt, +Afghanistan--what would the Liberals, many of them Little Englanders +in fact though not yet in name, do with all this white man’s burden, +as the responsibilities of Empire were so soon, so horribly soon, to +be called? Had grandpapa thought of it, he would certainly have called +them that. His grandson, Maurice, called them, on the other hand, “all +those damned little Tory wars,” a difference in nomenclature which +indicated a real difference in political attitude. + +Grandpapa entered with the _Observer_, which regretted as he did +the way the elections had gone, and with the _Guardian_, which +did not. He sat down and patted Vicky on the shoulder, and said that +Canon Liddon had preached at St. Paul’s, where he had attended morning +service. + +“A capital defence of the faith,” said grandpapa. “Bones to it, and +substance. None of your sentimental slop. You’ve all been running after +ethics, or ritual, or this, that and the other, but I’ve had the pure +Word. Liddon’s too high, but he’s sound. I remember in ’55....” + +One of grandpapa’s familiar stories, told as old people told their +stories, with loving rounding of detail. + +Vicky’s mind reached vainly back towards ’55 and could not get there. +Crinolines and sweeping whiskers, the pre-Raphælites and the Crimea, +Bible orthodoxy and the Tractarians, all the great Victorians. A +dim, entrancing period, when papa and mamma were getting married and +people were too old-fashioned to see life straight as it was. And to +grandpapa ’55 was quite lately, just the other day, and ’80 was like an +engine got loose from its train and dashing madly in advance, heading +precipitately for a crash. + +“I remember,” said grandpapa, “I remember....” + +Papa said, “That was the year King’s College asked Maurice to retire +because of ‘Theological Essays.’” + +What dull things elderly people remembered! + +“Next Sunday,” said Vicky, “I shall take Charles to South Place, papa. +I hear Mr. Pater is preaching there. Too sweet and quaint; he preaches +everywhere. And often the divine Oscar sits under him.” + + + + + 6 + + STANLEY AND ROME + + +Maurice and Stanley were back from Cambridge and Oxford for the Easter +vacation, talking, talking, talking. Stanley, in a crimson stockinette +jersey, tight like an eel’s skin, and a tight little brown skirt caught +in at the knees, her chubby face pink with excitement and health, +talked of Oxford, of the river, of lectures, of Mr. Pater and of +friendship. Friendship was like dancing flames to Stanley in this her +first Oxford year; a radiant, painful apocalypse of joy. + +“Are they so splendid?” Rome speculated of these glorious girls. +“_Is_ anyone so splendid, ever?” + +She sat idly, her hands clasped behind her short silky curls, Mallock’s +“New Republic” open at her side. Stanley sat on the edge of a table +and swung her legs. How romantic Stanley was! What were girls, what, +indeed, were boys either, that such a halo should encircle their +foolish heads? + +There was proceeding at this time a now long-forgotten campaign called +the Woman’s Movement, and on to the gay, youthful fringe of this +Stanley and her friends were catching. Women, long suppressed, were +emerging; women were to be doctors, lawyers, human beings, everything; +women were to have their share of the earth, their share of adventure, +to flourish in all the arts, ride perched in hansom cabs, even on +monstrous bicycles, find the North Pole.... + +“Too energetic for me,” Rome commented. + +“Oh, but you’ll be a great writer, perhaps.” + +“No. Why? There’s nothing I want to write. What’s the use of writing? +Too much of that already.... Oh, well, go on about Oxford, Stan. You +don’t convince me that it’s anything but a very ordinary place full of +quite ordinary people, but I rather like to hear you being absurd.” + +Rome’s faint, delicately thin voice expressed acquiescent but not +scornful irony. Stanley was a bore sometimes, but an intelligent bore. +She went on about Oxford and Mr. Pater and some lectures on art by +William Morris that she had been to. Stanley was drunk with beauty; she +was plunging deep into the æsthetic movement on whose surface Vicky +played. + +“You know, Rome,” she puckered her forehead over it, “more and more +I feel that the _merely_ æsthetic people are on the wrong tack. +Beauty for ourselves can’t be enough; it’s got to be made possible for +everyone.... That’s where Vicky and her friends are off it. A lily in a +blue vase all to yourself isn’t enough. All this”--she looked round at +the Liberty room, the peacock patterns, the willow pattern china, the +oak settle--“all this--it’s not fair we should be able to have it when +everyone can’t. It’s greedy....” + +“Everyone’s greedy.” + +“No,” said Stanley, and her eyes glowed, for she was thinking of her +splendid friends. “_No._ Greediness is in everyone, but it can +be conquered. Socialism is the way.... I wish you could meet Evelyn +Peters. She’s joined the Social Democratic Federation.... I want to ask +her here to stay in June. She’s not just an ordinary person, you know. +She’s splendid. She’s six years older than me, and enormously cleverer, +and she’s read everything and met everyone.... I can’t tell you how I +feel about her.” + +Obvious, thought Rome, how Stanley felt with her shining eyes and +flushed cheeks, and shy, changing voice. In love; that was what Stanley +was. Stanley was for ever in and out of love; she had been the same +all through her school days. So had Vicky, but with Vicky it was men, +and less romantic and earnest. Stanley was always flinging her whole +being prostrate in adoring enthusiasm before someone or something, +funny child. She was looking at Rome now in shy, gleaming hesitation, +wondering if Rome were despising her, laughing at her, but not able +to keep Evelyn Peters to herself. To say “Evelyn Peters is my friend” +was an exquisite æsthetic joy and made their friendship a more real, +achieved thing. + +Rome felt a little uncomfortable behind her bland nonchalance; +Stanley’s emotions were so strong. + + + + + 7 + + GRANDPAPA + + +When Maurice was there Stanley did not talk about her friends; such +talk was not suitable for Maurice, whose own friendships were so +different. Often in these days they talked politics. Maurice was a +radical. + +“Chamberlain’s the man,” he said, “Chamberlain and Dilke. Whiggery’s +played out; dead as mutton. Mild liberalism has had its day. +Yes, pater, your day is over. The seventies have been the heyday +of liberalism. I grant you it’s done well--Education Act, Irish +disestablishment, abolition of tests, and so on. Such obvious reforms, +you see, that every sane person has _had_ to be a Liberal. That’s +watered liberalism down. Now we’ve got to go further, and only the +extremists will stick on; the old gang will desert. Radicalism’s the +only thing for England now.” + +Maurice, pacing the room with his quick little steps, his hands in +his pockets, his chin in the air, would talk thus in his crisp, +rapid, asseverating voice, even to grandpapa, who had, when he had +done the same thing as a schoolboy, ordered him out of the room for +impertinence. Grandpapa and Maurice did not, in fact, each really like +the other--obstinate age and opinionated youth. Because grandpapa +was in the room, Maurice said, “They’ve returned old Bradlaugh for +Northampton all right. Now we shall see some fun,” and grandpapa said, +“Don’t mention that abominable blasphemer in my presence.” + +Papa said, gently, with his cultured tolerance, “A good deal, I fancy, +has been attributed to Bradlaugh of which he has not been guilty.” + +“Are you denying,” enquired grandpapa, “that the fellow is a miserable +blaspheming atheist and a Malthusian?” + +“An atheist,” papa admitted, discreetly passing over the last charge, +“no doubt he is. And very undesirably coarse and violent in his methods +of controversy and propaganda. But I am not sure that the charge of +blasphemy is a fair one, on the evidence we have.” + +“Any man,” said grandpapa, sharply, “who denies his Maker blasphemes.” + +“In that case,” said Maurice, moodily, “I blaspheme,” and left the room. + +Papa apologised for him. + +“You must forgive the boy; he is still crude.” + +Grandpapa shut his firm mouth tightly, and Rome thought, “He is still +cruder.” + +Vicky asked lightly, “What is a Malthusian, grandpapa?” and grandpapa, +who came of a coarse and outspoken generation, snapped, “A follower of +Malthus.” + +“And who was Malthus, grandpapa?” + +Grandpapa, catching his daughter’s eye, and recollecting that it was +the year 1880, not the coarse period of his own youth, hummed and +cleared his throat and said, “A very ungentlemanly fellow, my dear.” + +And that was all about Malthus that young misses of 1880 needed to +know. Or so their elders believed. But in 1880, as now, young misses +often knew more than their parents and grandparents supposed. Rome and +Stanley, better read in history than Vicky, could have enlightened both +her and grandpapa on the theme of Malthus. + + + + + 8 + + DISCUSSING RELIGION + + +It was a good thing that grandpapa’s visit ended next day. Without him +Maurice was better-mannered, less truculent. They could then discuss +Radicalism, Bradlaugh, blasphemy, beauty, Malthus and the elections, +_en famille_, without prejudice. They were, as a family, immense +talkers, inordinate arguers. The only two who did not discuss life at +large were Irving and Una; their conversation was and always would be +of the lives they personally led, and those led by such animals as they +kept. The lives led by others worried them not at all. They recked not +of the Woman’s Movement, but Irving amiably held Maurice’s high bicycle +while Stanley, divested of her tight skirt and clad in a pair of his +knickerbockers, mounted it and pedalled round and round the quiet +square. It was Irving who knew that a lower kind of bicycle was on its +way, had even been seen in embryo. + +“But girls’ll never ride it,” he opined. “That’s jolly certain.” + +“Girls will probably be wearing knickerbockers in a year or two,” +Stanley, always hopeful, asserted. “For exercise and games and things. +Or else a new kind of skirt will come in, short and wide. Our clothes +are absurd.” + +“Women’s clothes always are,” said Irving, content that this should be +so. + +Stanley would rush in, happy and bruised, assume again her absurd, +caught-in-at-the-knees skirt, and argue desperately with Maurice about +Christian socialism. Stanley was a Christian, ardent and practical; +that was the effect Oxford was having on her. She privately wondered +how papa, having known and loved Oxford, could bear the Ethical Church. +But probably the Oxford Anglicanism of papa’s day had not been so +inspiring. + +Vicky told Stanley that socialism, Christian or un-Christian, was very +crude; religion was an affair of art and beauty, not of economics. + +“Religion--oh, I don’t know.” Stanley wondered, frowning. “What +_is_ religion, Rome?” + +Rome, looking up from Samuel Butler, merely said, “How should I know? +You’d better ask papa. He should know; he’s writing a book about it.” + +“No; I didn’t mean comparative religions. I mean _religion_....” + +“A primitive insurance against disaster,” Maurice defined it. He +always looked up and took notice when religion was mentioned; to this +family the word was like “rats” to a dog, owing, perhaps, to their +many clerical ancestors, perhaps to the fact that they were latish +Victorians. + +“But it _courts_ disaster....” Stanley was sure of that. “Look +where it leads people. Into all sorts of hardships and dangers and +sacrifices. Look at Christianity--in the Gospels, I mean.” + +“That’s a perversion. Originally religion was merely a function of the +self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your +crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the +flaws in this life by belief in another.” + +“What about the Ethical Church? They don’t believe in another.” + +“A perversion too. A mere sop thrown to the religious instinct by +people who don’t like to starve it altogether. A morbid absurdity. A +house without foundations. If they simply mean, as they appear to, that +they think they ought to be good, why meet in South Place and sing +about it?” + +“Why,” enquired Rome, who never did so, “meet anywhere and sing about +anything?” + +“Why,” said Maurice, “indeed? A morbid instinct inherent in human +nature. Mine, I am glad to say, is untainted by it; so is yours, Rome. +Vicky has it badly, and Stanley, who gets everything in turns, has it +on and off, but she is young and may get over it.... The queer thing +about Stanley is that she’s trying to run two quite incompatible things +at the same time. Æsthetics and Christian Socialism--you might as well +be a cricketer and a rowing man, or hang Dickens and Whistler together +on your walls. The æsthetes may go slumming, in the absurd way Vicky +does, but they’ve no use for socialism.” + +“I’m _not_ an æsthete,” Stanley cried, finding it out suddenly. +“I’m through with that. I’m going in with the socialists all the way. I +shall join the Socialist Democratic Federation at once.” + +That was Stanley’s headlong manner of entering into movements. She was +a great and impetuous joiner. + +But Rome, playing with her monocle on its dangling ribbon, looked +at all movements with fastidious rejection. _Cui_, her faintly +mocking regard would seem to enquire, _bono_? + + + + + 9 + + DISCUSSING LIFE + + +1880 pursued its way. Mr. Gladstone formed his cabinet of sober peers +and startling commoners, the new parliament met, the Radicals at once +began to shock the Whigs with their unheard-of proposals for so-called +reform, Lord Randolph Churchill and his Fourth Party mounted guard, +brisk and pert, in the offing, Parnell and his thirty-five Irishmen +scowled from another offing, demanding the three F’s, and, for a +special comic turn side-show, Mr. Bradlaugh, the unbeliever, was +hustled in and out of the House, claiming to affirm, being ejected with +violence, returning at a rush, ejected yet again, and so on and so +forth, until gentlemanly unbelievers said, “A disgraceful business. Why +can’t the man behave like other agnostics, without all this fuss?” and +gentlemanly Christians said, “Why can’t the House let him alone?” and +the dignified press said, “It is repugnant to public opinion that one +who openly denies his God should be allowed in a House representative +of a great Christian nation,” for, believe it or not as you choose, +that was the way the press still talked in the year 1880. + +Maurice Garden and his friends at Cambridge greeted Mr. Bradlaugh’s +determined onslaughts with encouraging cheers. Maurice Garden enjoyed +battle, and he rightly thought the cause of liberty of thought served +by this tempestuous affair. + +Freedom: that was at this time the obsession of Maurice Garden and +his compeers. Freedom of thought, freedom of speech (though not, of +course, of action), freedom of small nations (such as Armenia, Ireland, +Poland and the Transvaal Boers), for that was a catchword among our +forefathers of the nineteenth century; freedom even of large ones, +such as India; freedom of women, that strange, thin cry raised so far +only by sparse, sporadic groups, freedom of labour (whatever that may +have meant, and Maurice Garden, a clear-thinking young man, could have +told you precisely and at length what he meant by it), freedom even of +Russians, that last word in improbabilities. + +“Freedom?” queried Rome. “A word that wants defining,” and that was all +she had to say of it. While Maurice and Stanley went, hot heads down, +for the kernel, she was for ever meticulously, aloofly, fingering the +shell, reducing it to absurdity. That seemed, at times, to be all that +Rome cared about, all she had the humanity, the vital energy, to seek. +Stanley, rushing buoyantly through Oxford, seizing upon this new idea +and that, eagerly mapping out her future, ardently burning her present +candle at both ends, intellectually, socially and athletically (so far +as young women were allowed to be athletic in those days, when hockey +and bicycling had not come in and lawn tennis consisted in lobbing a +ball gently over a net with a racket weighing seventeen pounds and +shaped like a crooked spoon)--Stanley seemed to Rome, whom God had +saved from too much love of living, amusingly violent and crude. + +They were oddly different, these four sisters; Vicky so spritely, Rome +so cool, Stanley so eager, Una so placid. + +“Your languid indifference is tip-top form, my dear,” Vicky would say +to Rome. “You’re _fin-de-siècle_--that’s utterly the last word +to-day. But I can’t emulate you.” + +“Don’t you want to _do_ anything, Rome?” Stanley, home for the +long vacation, asked, and Rome’s eyebrows went up. + +“Do anything? _Jamais de ma vie._ What should I do?” + +“Well, anything. Any of the things women do. Teaching. Settlement work. +Doctoring. Writing. Painting. Anything.” + +“What a list! What frightful labours! I do not.” + +“But aren’t you bored?” + +“In moderation. I survive. I even amuse myself.” + +“_I_ think, you know, that women _ought_ to do things, just +as much as men.” + +“And just as little. What’s worth doing, after all?” + +“Things _need_ doing. The world is so shocking.... All this time +women have been suppressed and kept under and not allowed to help in +putting things right, and now they’re just getting free....” + +“There’s one thing about freedom” (a word upon which Rome had of late +been speculating); “each generation of people begins by thinking +they’ve got it for the first time in history, and ends by being sure +the generation younger than themselves have too much of it. It can’t +really always have been increasing at the rate people suppose, or there +would be more of it by now.” + +“It’s only lately begun, for women. What was there for mamma to do, +when _she_ was young? Nothing. Only to marry papa. But now....” + +“What is there for Vicky to do, now _she’s_ young? Nothing. Only +to marry Charles--or another.” + +“Oh, well, Vicky slums. And she could do any of the other things if she +liked.... Anyhow, Rome, you’re not supporting _marriage_ as the +only woman’s job worth doing!” + +“No. Not even marriage. Perhaps, in fact, marriage less than most +things. I only said it is, so far as one can infer, Vicky’s job.... The +only job worth doing in this curious fantasia of a world, as I see it, +is to amuse oneself as well as may be and to get through it with no +more trouble than need be. What else is there?” + +With all the desperate needs of the certainly curious but as certainly +necessitous world crying in her ears, with vistas of adventure and +achievement stretching inimitably before her eyes, Stanley found this +too immense a question. She could only answer it with another. “Why do +you think we were born, then?” and Rome’s matter of fact “Obviously +because papa and mamma got married” sent her sulkily away to play +cricket on the lawn with Irving and Una. Apathy, languor, selfishness, +did very greatly anger her. She was the more troubled in that she +knew Rome to be clever--cleverer than herself. Rome could have done +anything, and elected to do nothing. Rome would probably not even +marry; her caustic tongue and cool indifference kept those who admired +her at arm’s length; she made them feel that any expression of regard +was an error in taste; she shrivelled it up by an amused, enquiring +look through the deadly monocle she placed in one blue-green eye for +the purpose. + + + + + 10 + + VICKY GETS MARRIED + + +Vicky, on the contrary, became, during this summer, definitely +affianced to Charles, whom she decided to marry next spring. She had +not, as yet, made of Charles either an æsthete or a ritualist, but +these things, she hoped, would come after marriage, and anyhow Charles +was intelligent, his career promised well, he had sufficient income, +and, in fine, she loved him. + +“The main thing, after all, Vicky,” papa inevitably said. + +“No, papa; the _main_ thing is that the American merchant +princesses are descending on the land like locusts, and that if I +don’t secure Charles they will, even though he hasn’t a title--yet. +He’s so obviously a distinguished person in embryo. American merchant +princesses have brains.” + +Vicky, having surrendered, put on a new tenderness, even an occasional +gravity. It was as if you could catch glimpses here and there of the +gay wife and mother that was to supersede the flighty girl. Beneath +her chaff and bickerings with her Charles, her love swelled into that +stream so necessary to carry her through the long and arduous business. +She did her shopping for her new life with gusto and taste, tempering +Morris picturesqueness with Chippendale elegance, chasing Queen Anne +with unflagging energy from auction to auction and from one Israelitish +shop to another, tinkling the while with snakish bangles, swinging +golden swine from her ears, as was the barbarous and yet graceful +custom of our ancestresses in that year. + + + + + 11 + + MAURICE STARTS LIFE + + +Maurice left Cambridge, armed with a distinguished first in his +classical tripos. + +“And now what?” enquired papa, indulgently. + +“Wilbur has offered me a job on the _New View_. That will do me, +for a bit.” + +The _New View_ was a weekly paper of the early eighties, started +to defeat Whiggery by the spread of Radicalism. Its gods were Sir +Charles Dilke and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, its objects to introduce a +more democratic taxation, to reform the suffrage, to free Ireland, +to curtail Empire, and so forth. As its will was strong, it suffered +but it did not suffer long, and is, in fact, now forgotten but by the +seekers among the pathetic chronicles of wasted years. All the same, +it was, in its brief day, not unfruitful of good; it was deeply, if +not widely, respected, and many of our more intelligent forbears +wrote for it for a space, particularly that generation which left +the Universities round about the year 1880. It was hoped by some of +them (including Maurice Garden), that it would make a good jumping +off ground for a political career. As it turned out, the first thing +into which Maurice jumped off from it was love. At dinner at the +Wilburs’ he met Amy Wilbur, the young daughter of his editor. She was +small and ivory-coloured, with long dark eyes under slanting brows, a +large, round, shallow dimple in each smooth cheek, a small tilting +red mouth (red even in those days, when lip salve was not used except +in the half world), a smooth, childlike voice and a laugh like silver +bells. Maurice thought her like a geisha out of the new opera, “The +Mikado,” and was enchanted with her lovely gaiety. Such is love and its +blindness that Maurice, who detested both silliness and petty malice +in male or female, did not see that his Amy was silly and malicious. +He saw nothing but her enchanting exterior and on that and his small +salary he got married in haste. None of the Gardens except himself +and papa much cared about Amy and papa liked nearly everyone, and +certainly nearly all pretty girls. As to mamma’s feelings towards her +daughter-in-law, who could divine them? + +Vicky said to Rome: “They are both making a horrific mistake. Maurice +is a prickly person, who won’t suffer fools. In a year he’ll be wanting +to beat her. She hasn’t the wits or the personality to be the least +help to him in his career, either. When he’s a rising politician and +she ought to be holding salons, she won’t be able to. Her salons will +be mere At Homes.” + +“When,” Rome speculated, “does an At Home become a salon? I’ve often +wondered.” + +They decided that it was a salon when several distinguished people came +to it, rather from habit than from accident. Also the conversation must +be reasonably intelligent (or, anyhow, the conversers must believe that +it was so, for that is all that can be hoped of any conversation). And +people must come, or pretend that they came, mainly for the talk and +not so much for any food there might be, or to show their new clothes. + +“Asses they must be,” said Una, who was listening. “I shan’t go to +salons ever.” + +“No one will ask you, my child. Anything _you’ll_ find yourself at +will be a common party, with food and drink and foolish chit-chat.” + +“Like _your_ parties,” Una agreed, amiably content. No teasing +worried Una; she was as placid as a young cow. + + + + + 12 + + EIGHTIES + + +So, with Vicky and Maurice happily wedded (_settled_, as they +wittily called it in those days, though indeed they knew as well as +we do that marriage is likely to be as inconclusive and unsettling an +affair as any other and somewhat more than most), and papa and mamma +happily, if impermanently, ethicised, and the three younger children +still pursuing, or being pursued by, education and Rome perfunctorily, +amusedly and inactively surveying the foolish world, the Garden family +entered on that eager, clever, civilised, earnest decade, the eighteen +eighties. Earnest indeed it was, for people still took politics +seriously, and creeds, and literature, and life. Over the period still +brooded the mighty ones, those who are usually called the Giants +(literary and scientific) of the Victorian era, for the nineteenth +century was an age of giant-makers, of hero-worshippers. + +The eighties were also a great time for women. What was called +_emancipation_ then occurred to them. Young ladies were getting +education and it went to their heads. No creature was ever more solemn, +more earnest, more full of good intentions for the world, than the +university-educated young female of the eighties. We shall not look +upon her like again; she has gone, to make place for her lighter-minded +daughters, surely a lesser generation, without enthusiasm, ardour or +aspiration. + +It was these ardent good intentions, this burning social conscience, +as well as the desire to do the emancipated thing, that drove Stanley, +leaving Oxford in 1882, to take up settlement work in Poplar. So +Poplarised, so orientalised, did she become, that she took to speaking +of her parental home in Bloomsbury as being in the West End. To her +everything west of St. Paul’s became the West End. The West End, its +locality and its limits, is indeed a debatable land. Where you think +it is seems to depend on where you live or work. To those who work +in Fleet Street, as do so many journalists, it seems that anything +west of the Strand is the West End. “West End cocaine orgy,” you see +on newspaper placards and find that the orgy occurred in Piccadilly +or Soho. Mayfair and its environments are also spoken of by these +scribblers of the East as the West End. But to those who live in +Mayfair, the West End begins at about Edgware Road and Mayfair seems +about the middle, and to the denizens of Edgware Road the West End +is Bayswater, Kensington or Shepherds Bush. The dwellers in these +outlying lands of the sunset do really acknowledge that they are the +West End; and to them Mayfair and Piccadilly are not even the middle, +but the east. A strange, irrational phrase, which bears so fluctuating +and dubious a meaning. But then nearly all phrases are strange and +irrational, like most of those who use them. + +Anyhow, and be that as it may, Stanley went and worked in Poplar to +ameliorate the lot of the extremely poor, who lived there then as now. +She took up with Fabians, and admired greatly Mr. Bernard Shaw, while +cleaving still to William Morris. She was concerned about Sweated +Women, and served on Women’s Labour Committees. Her good working +intelligence caused people to give her charges and responsibilities +beyond her years. She was now a sturdy, capable, square-set, +brown-faced young woman, attractive, with her thrust-out under-lip and +chin, and her beautiful blue eyes under heavy black brows. She spoke +well on platforms in a deep, girlish voice, was as strong as a pony +and could work from morning till night without flagging. There was +something candid and lovable about Stanley. A doctor and a clergyman +asked her in wedlock, but she did not much care about them and was too +busy and interested to think about marriage. + +She had, among other strong and ardent beliefs, belief in God. She had +religion, inherited perhaps from her papa, but taking in her a more +concentrated and less diffused form. To her the Christian church was +a militant church, the sword of God come to do battle for the poor +and oppressed. To her a church was an enchanted house, glorious as a +child’s dream, the mass as amazing as a fairy story and as true as +sunrise. She did not much mind at which churches she attended this +miracle, but on the whole preferred those of the Anglican establishment +to the Roman variety, finding these latter rather more lacking in +beauty than churches need be. Stanley was an optimist. She looked on +the shocking, wicked and ill-constructed universe, and felt that there +must certainly be something behind this odd business. There must, +she reasoned, be divine spirit and fire somewhere, to account for +such flashes of good as were so frequently evident in it. Something +gallant, unquenchable, imperishably ardent and brave, must burn at its +shoddy heart. + +Vicky complained that Stanley thought of God (“in whom, of course,” +said Vicky, “we all believe”), as a socialist agitator, and Stanley +perhaps did. Certainly God, she believed, was fighting sweated +industries. + +“With signally small success,” Maurice said, for the commission on +these industries had just concluded. + +“God very seldom succeeds,” Stanley agreed. “He has very nearly +everything against Him, of course.” + +She seldom mentioned God, being, for the most part, as shyly +inarticulate as a schoolgirl on this theme so vital to her. But +of unemployment, labour troubles, and sweated industries, she and +Maurice would talk by the hour. She wrote articles for his paper on +the conditions of working women in Poplar. She attended street labour +meetings in the east, while Maurice did the same in Trafalgar Square +and Hyde Park. + +In 1882, the year that Stanley left Oxford, Una left school. It was +no use sending her to college, for she had not learning, nor the +inclination to acquire it. She had done with lessons. + +“You don’t want just to slack about for ever, I suppose?” Stanley put +it to her, sternly. + +“For ever....” Una looked at her with wide, sleepy blue eyes, trying +and failing to think of eternity. Una lived in to-day, not in yesterday +or to-morrow. She was rather like a puppy. + +“I don’t much care,” she said at length. “I mean, I’ve never thought +about it. I’m never bored, anyhow. There’s theatres, and badminton and +dancing, and all the shops, and taking the dogs in the parks.... Of +course I’d like better to live in the country again. But London’s all +right. _I’m_ all right. I’m not booky like you, you see.” + +Stanley said it had nothing to do with being booky; there were things +that wanted doing. Doubtless there were. But she failed to rouse Una to +any thought of doing them. Una stayed at home, and went to parties, and +theatres, and played games, and occasionally rode, and walked the dogs +in the parks, and stayed with friends in the country, and enjoyed life. + +“I suppose she’ll just marry,” Stanley disappointedly said, for in +the eighteen eighties marriage was not well thought of, though freely +practised, by young feminine highbrows. + +As to Irving, another cheery hedonist, he was enjoying himself very +much at Cambridge and reading for a pass. + + + + + 13 + + PARENTS + + +The eighteen eighties were freely strewn with, among other things, +Vicky’s children. The halcyon period for children had not yet set +in; did not, in fact, set in until well on in the twentieth century. +In the eighteen eighties and nineties children were still thwarted, +still disciplined, still suppressed, though with an abatement of +mid-Victorian savagery. The idea had not yet started that they were +interesting little creatures who should be permitted, even encouraged, +to lift their voices in public and interrupt the conversation of +their elders. On the whole, the bringing up of children (at best a +poor business) was perhaps less badly done during the last fifteen +years of the nineteenth century than before or since. It may safely +be said that it is always pretty badly done, since most parents and +all children are very stupid and uncivilised, and anyhow to “bring up” +(queer phrase!) the unfortunate raw material that human nature is, to +bring it up to any semblance of virtue or intelligence (the parents, +probably, having but small acquaintance with either), is a gargantuan +task, almost beyond human powers. Some children do, indeed, grow up +as well as can, in the circumstances, be expected, but this is, as a +rule, in spite of, rather than on account of, the misguided efforts of +their parents. And most children do not grow up well at all, but quite +otherwise, which is why the world is as we see it. + +Vicky was, as parents go, not a bad one. She loved her children, +but did not unduly spoil them or turn their heads with injudicious +attentions. Year by year her nursery filled with nice, pretty little Du +Maurier boys, fine, promising little Du Maurier girls, in sailor suits, +jerseys, tam-o’-shanters, and little frocks sashed about the knees, and +year by year Vicky was to be found again in what newspaper reporters, +in their mystic jargon, call, for reasons understood by none but +themselves, “a certain condition.” “The woman,” they will write, “said +she was in a certain condition.” As if everyone, all the time, was not +in a certain condition. Whether these journalists think the statement +“she was going to have a baby” indecent, or coarse, will probably never +transpire, for they are a strange, instinct-driven, non-analytical +race, who can seldom give reasons for their terminology. Who shall see +into their hearts? Perhaps they really do think that the human race +should not be mentioned until it is visible to the human eye. + +Anyhow Vicky, of a franker breed than these, said year by year, with +resignation, “_Again_, my dears, I replenish the earth,” and added +sometimes, in petulant enquiry, “How long, O Lord, how long?” + +But Amy, the wife of Maurice, had, like newspaper men, her pruderies. +Of her coming infants she preferred to speak gently, in fretful +undertones. When she told Maurice about the first, she did not, like +Vicky, sing out, on his return from the office, “What _do_ you +think? There’s a baby on the way!” but, drawing her inspiration +from fiction, she hid her face against his coat and murmured, “Oh, +_Maurice_! Guess.” + +Maurice said, “Guess what? How do you mean, guess, darling?” to which +she replied, “Well, I do think you’re slow to-night.... Oh, Maurice....” + +And then Maurice, instead of saying, like the young husbands in the +fiction she was used to, “Darling, you _can’t_ mean.... What +angels women are!” said instead, “Oh, I say, do you mean we’ve got a +baby coming? Good business.” + +A baby. What a coarse, downright word for the little creature. Later, +of course, one got used to it, but just at first, at the very, very +outset, the dimmest dawn of its tiny being, it was scarcely a baby. And +what about her being an angel? Obviously Maurice did not know the rules +of this game. + +When the baby, and the subsequent baby (there were only two +altogether), arrived, Amy spoiled them. She was a depraved mother. Also +she was unjust. She was, of course, the type of mother whose strong +sex instinct leads her to prefer boys to girls, and she took no pains +to hide this. Maurice said, stubbornly, “The girl shall have as good a +chance as the boy, and as good an education. We’ll make no difference,” +but Amy said, “Chance! Fiddlesticks! What chances does a girl want, +except to marry well? What does a girl want with education? I’m not +going to have her turned into a blue-stocking. Girls can’t have real +brains, anyhow. They can’t _do_ anything--only sit about and look +superior.” + +This referred to Rome, and these were the remarks that fell like +nagging drops of water on Maurice’s sensitive, irritable nerves and +mind, slowly teasing love out of existence, and beating into him (less +slowly) that he had married a fool. + + +Maurice found outlet from domestic irritation in political excitement. +There was, for instance, the Home Rule Bill. It seemed to Maurice, +as to many others, immeasurably important that this bill should go +through. Its failure to do so, his own failure to be elected in the +elections of 1886, and the victory of the Unionists, plunged him into +a sharper and more militant radicalism. At the age of twenty-nine he +was an ardent, scornful, clear-brained idealist and cynic, successful +on platforms and brilliant with pens. He was becoming a stand-by of +the Radical press, a thorn in the Tory flesh. His wife, by this time, +after four years of marriage, definitely disliked him, because he had +bad, sharp manners, was often disagreeable to her, often drank a little +too much, and obviously despised the things she said. She consoled +herself with going to parties, spoiling her babies, and flirting with +other people. He consoled himself with politics, writing, talking and +drinking. An ill-assorted couple. Maurice hoped that his children +would be more what he desired. So far, of course, they were fonder of +Amy. Even the boy was fonder of Amy, though sons often have a natural +leaning towards their fathers, and frequently grow up with no more +than a careless affection for their mothers for, contrary to a common +belief, the great affection felt by Œdipus for his mother is most +unusual, and, indeed, Œdipus would probably have felt nothing of the +sort had he known of the relationship. It is noticeable that sons +usually select as a bride a woman as unlike their mothers and sisters +as possible. It makes a change. + +So Maurice had reason to hope that his son, anyhow, would prefer him +as time went on, and therefore be inclined to share his point of view +about life. As to the girl, she might grow up a fool or she might not; +impossible to tell, at three years old. Most girls did. + +In 1887 the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria occurred. Maurice wrote +a deplorably unsuitable article for the occasion, called “Gaudeamus,” +and taking for its theme the subject races of Ireland and India and +the less fortunate and less moneyed classes in Great Britain, which +brought him into a good deal of disrepute, and made Amy more than ever +disgusted with him. + +“Hardly the moment,” papa commented. “One sympathises with his +impatience, but the dear old lady’s jubilee is hardly the moment to rub +in the flaws of her empire.” + + + + + 14 + + PAPA AND THE FAITH + + +Papa was now a Roman Catholic again. After three or four years of +Ethicism, the absence of a God had begun to tell on him. It had slowly +sapped what had always been the very foundation of his life--his +belief in absolute standards of righteousness. For, if there were no +God, on what indeed did these standards rest? It was all very well to +sing in South Place of “the great, the lovely and the true,” but what +things _were_ great, lovely and true, and how could one be sure +of them, if they derived their sanction from nothing but man’s own +self-interested and fluctuating judgments? Deeply troubled by these +thoughts, which were, of course, by no means new to him, papa was +driven at last out of his beautiful and noble half-way house to the +bleak cross roads. + +Either he must become a moral nihilist, or he must believe again in a +God. Since to become a moral nihilist was to papa unthinkable, so alien +was it from all his habits, his traditions and his thought, so alien, +indeed, from all the thought of his period, the only alternative was +to believe in a God. And papa, swung by reaction, determined that this +time (was it by way of atonement, or safeguard?) he would do the thing +thoroughly. He would enter once more into that great ark of refuge from +perplexing thoughts, the Roman branch of the Catholic Church. There (so +long as he should remain there) he would be safe. He would rest therein +like a folded sheep, and wander no more. So, humbly, in the year 1886, +he did allegiance again to this great and consoling Church (which, as +he said, he had never left, for you cannot leave it, though you may be +unfaithful), and worshipped inconspicuously and devoutly in a small and +austere Dominican chapel. + +His only grief was that mamma at this point struck. She made the +great refusal. She loved papa no less faithfully than ever, but his +continuous faiths had worn her out. She said, quietly, “I am not going +to be a Roman Catholic again, Aubrey.” + +He bowed his head to her decision. It was perhaps, he admitted, too +much to expect that she should. “But not _Roman_ Catholic, dearest +...” was his only protest. “Surely not _Roman_, now.” + +“I beg your pardon, Aubrey. Catholic. Anyhow, I am too old to join new +churches, or even the old ones again.” + +“You will stay an Ethicist, then,” he said, tentatively. + +“No. I have never cared very much for that. I don’t think I shall +attend any place of worship in future.” + +He looked at her, startled, and placed his hand on hers, impeding the +rapidity of her embroidery needle. + +“Anne--my dear love. You haven’t lost faith in everything, as I have +been in danger of doing during the last year? The South Place chapel +hasn’t done that to you, dear one?” + +Mamma let her work lie still on her lap, while papa’s hand rested on +hers. She seemed to consider, looking inwards and backwards, down and +down the years. + +“No, Aubrey,” she said presently. “The South Place chapel hasn’t done +that to me. It wasn’t important enough....” + +Her faint smile at him was enigmatic. + +“I don’t,” she added, “quite know what I do believe. But I have long +ago come to the conclusion that it matters very little. You, you see, +have seemed equally happy for a time, equally unhappy after a time, in +all the creeds or no-creeds. And equally good, my dear. I suppose I may +say that I believe in none of them, or believe in all. In any case, it +matters very little. I have come with you always into the churches and +out of them, but now I think you will find peace in the Rom--in the +Catholic Church, without me, and I fear that so much ritual, after so +much lack of it, would only fuss me. I shall stay at home. There is +a good deal to do there always, and I am afraid I am better at doing +practical things than at thinking difficult things out. You won’t mind, +Aubrey?” + +“My darling, no. You must follow your own conscience. Mine has been a +sad will-o’-the-wisp to us both--but, God helping me, it has lighted me +now into my last home.... Yet who knows, who knows?...” + +Mamma gently patted his hand and went on with her embroidery, bending +over it her patient, near-sighted, spectacled eyes. She was mildly, +unenthusiastically relieved to be done with the Ethical Church. She had +never really liked those hymns.... Dear Aubrey, he would be happier +again now. He could take to himself confidently once more those eternal +moral values which had threatened him during the past six months with +their utter wreckage and collapse. Once more he would be able to give +reasons for his faith in virtue, for his belief that lying, theft, +selfishness and adultery were wrong. Once more the world’s foundations +stood, and papa would not lie wakeful in the night and sigh to watch +them shake. + +But the solitary, unworthy little thought nagged at mamma’s mind, “Amy +will sneer. Amy will make foolish, common fun of him....” + +Dismissing Amy as a silly and vulgar little creature, mamma folded her +embroidery and went to speak to the cook. + + + + + 15 + + KEEPING HOUSE + + +Speaking to the cook. What a delightful kind of conversation this must +be. For, if you are a proper housewife, you do not just say to the +cook, “Kindly provide meals, as usual, for the household to-day. That +is, in fact, what you are paid to do. So do it, and let me hear no +more about it.” Instead, you go to the larder and see what is in it. +You find a piece of meat, and try to guess what it is. You say, “We +will have that neck of mutton, or loin of beef” (or whatever you think +it is) “roasted, boiled, or fricasseed, for lunch. Then, of what is +left of it, you will make some nice cutlets for dinner. Now how about +sweets?” Then you and the cook will settle down happily for a long +gossip about sweets--a delightful topic. The cook says, “I had thought +of a nice jam roll.” You say that you, for your part, had thought of +something else, and so it goes on, like a drawing-room game, until you +or the cook win, by sheer strength of will. Cooks usually have most of +this, so they nearly always win. They can think of more reasons than +you can why the thing suggested is impossible. They know there is not +enough jam, or cream, or mushrooms, or bread-crumbs--not enough to make +it _nice_, as it should be made. Rather would they suggest a nice +apple charlotte.... + +“Very well, cook; have it your own way. You have won, as usual. But +it has been a good game and I have Kept House.” That is what the good +housewife (presumably) reflects, as she leaves the kitchen. + +Perhaps there is more to it than this; perhaps bills are also +discussed, and butchers and groceries, and the price of comestibles. +No one who has not done it knows precisely what is done, or how. It is +the cook’s hour and the housewife’s, and no fifth ear overhears. Mrs. +Garden in the year 1886 had done it every day for thirty-one years. +Whether as an Anglican, a Unitarian, a Roman Catholic, an Agnostic, +a Quaker, an Irvingite, a Seventh-day Adventist, a Baptist, or an +Ethicist, still she had daily Kept House. Magic phrase! What happens to +houses unkept, Rome had idly asked. Mamma had shaken a dubious head. No +house that she had ever heard of had been unkept. + + + + + 16 + + UNA + + +Una, staying in Essex with friends, contracted an engagement with a +neighbouring young yeoman farmer, whom she used to meet out riding. The +friends protested, dismayed at such a mésalliance having been arranged +for under, so to speak, their auspices. But Una, now twenty-three, +grandly beautiful, alternately lazy and amazingly energetic, looking +like Diana or a splendid young Ceres, with no desires, it seemed, but +for the healthy pleasures of the moment, held firmly to her decision. +She loved her Ted, and loved, too, the life he led. She would wed him +without delay. She went home and told her family so. + +Papa said, “If you are sure of your love and his, that is all that +matters, little Una--” (with the faint note of deprecation, even of +remorse, with which he was wont to say her name, in these days when he +believed once again in the Athanasian creed; for, though he might have +bestowed this name in the most Trinitarian orthodoxy, the fact was that +he had not; it had been a badge of incomplete belief). + +Mamma said, “Well, child, you were bound to marry someone in the +country. I always knew that. And you won’t mind that he and his people +eat and talk a little differently from you, so I think you’ll be +happy. Bless you.” + +To Rome mamma said, “There’s one thing about Una; she always knows what +she wants and goes straight for it. I wish she could have married a +gentleman, but this young fellow is a good mate for her, I believe. She +won’t care about the differences. There’s no humbug about Una. She’s +the modern girl all through. Splendid, direct, capable children they +are.” + +That was in the year 1887, and mamma did not know that in the nineteen +twenties there would still be girls like Una, and people would still +be calling them the modern girl, and saying how direct, admirable and +wonderful, or how independent, reckless and headstrong, they were, and, +in either case, how unlike the girls of thirty and forty years ago. +For, in popular estimation, girls must be changing all the time--new +every morning; there must be a new fashion in girls, as in hats, every +year. But those who have lived on this earth as much as sixty years +know (though they never say, for they like, amiably, to keep in with +the young by joining in popular cries, and are too elderly to go to +the trouble of speaking the truth), that girls, like other persons, +have always been much the same, and always will be. Not the same as one +another, for the greyhound is not more different from the spaniel than +is one girl from the next; but the same types of girls and of boys, of +women and of men, have for ever existed, and will never cease to exist, +and there is nothing new under the sun. Yet in the eighteen eighties +and nineties our ancestors were talking blandly of the New Woman, just +as to-day people babble of the Modern Girl. + +Rome said, “Yes, Una’ll be all right. She knows the way to live” ... +and was caught by her own phrase into the question, what _is_ the +way to live, then? Mine, Una’s, Vicky’s, Stanley’s, Maurice’s, papa’s? +Perhaps there is no way to live. Perhaps the thing is just to live, +without a way. And that is, actually, what Una will do. + +Una’s Ted came to stay in Bloomsbury with the Gardens. He was large and +silent and beautiful, and ate hugely, and looked awful, said Vicky, +in his Sunday clothes, which were the ones he wore all the time in +London. Also, his boots creaked. But you could see, through it all, how +he would be striding about his native fields in gaiters and breeches +and old tweeds, sucking a pipe and looking like a young earth-god. You +could see, therefore, why Una loved him; you could see it even while he +breathed hard at meals in his tight collar, and sucked his knife. He +was physically glorious; a young Antæus strayed by mistake to town. He +and Una were a splendid pair. + +Una cared not at all what impression he made on her family. She was +not sensitive. The touch of his hands made her quiver luxuriously, and +when he took her in his arms and turned her face up to his and bruised +her mouth with kisses, the world’s walls shivered and dissolved round +her and she was poured out like water. He was beautiful and splendid +and her man, and knew all about the things she cared for, and she loved +him with a full, happy passion that responded frankly and generously +to his. They chaffed and bickered and played and caressed, and talked +about horses and dogs and love, and went to the Zoo. + +Amy giggled behind the young man’s back, and said, “_Did_ you see +him stuffing his mouth with bun and trying to wash it down with tea out +of his saucer?” + +“Why not?” said Rome. “And he did wash it down; he didn’t only try.” + +“_Well!_” Amy let out a breath and nodded twice. “Rather Una than +me; that’s all.” + + + + + 17 + + STANLEY + + +These years, ’87, ’88, ’89, were stirring years for Maurice and Stanley. +In them were founded the Independent Labour Party and the Christian +Social Union and the _Star_ newspaper. And there was the great +dock strike and “bloody Sunday,” on which Maurice disgraced Amy and +himself by joining in an unseemly fracas with the police, in which he +incurred a sprained wrist and a night in prison. In point of fact, as +Amy said, he was rather drunk at the time. + +Stanley enjoyed the labour movement. She was not, like Maurice, merely +up against things; she eagerly swam with the tide and the tide which +carried her during this particular phase of her life was revolutionary +labour. She was joyously in the van of the movement. The dock strike +stirred her more than the Pigott forgeries, more than the poisoning of +Mr. Maybrick by Mrs. Maybrick, more than the death of Robert Browning. + +Stirring times indeed. But in ’89 something happened which stirred +Stanley more profoundly than the times. She fell in love and married. +It was bound to occur to such an ardent claimer of life. The man was a +writer of light essays and short stories and clever unproduced plays. +He was thirty, and he had an odd, short white face and narrow laughing +eyes beneath a clever forehead, and little money, but a sense of irony +and of form and of the stage. He was in the most modern literary set in +London and his name was Denman Croft. At first Stanley thought him very +affected and she was right, for the most modern literary set _was_ +affected just then; but in a month or so she loved him with an acute, +painful ecstasy that made her dizzy and blinded her to all the world +besides. Her work lost interest; she was alive only in those hours +when they were together; her love absorbed her body and soul. Why, he +protested, did she not live in the more reasonable parts of London and +meet people worth meeting? All sorts of exciting, amusing things were +happening in the world of letters and art just now and she ought to be +in it. Stanley began to feel that perhaps she ought. After all, one +could be progressive and fight for labour reform and trade unions as +well in the west as in the east. Then, while she was thus reflecting, +it became apparent to her that Denman Croft was going immediately to +propose marriage to her. She had for some weeks known that he loved +her, but was scarcely ready for this crisis when it came. Passionate +ecstasy possessed them both; they sank into it blind and breathless and +let its waves break over them. + +Life, life, life. Stanley, who had always lived to the uttermost, felt +that she had never lived before. Spirit, brain and body interacted and +co-operated in the riot of their passion. + +They married almost at once and took a house in Margaretta Street, +Chelsea. + +Stanley always reflected her time and it was, people said, a time of +transition. For that matter, times always are, and one year is always +rather different from the last. In this year, the threshold of the +nineties, all things were, it was said, being made new. New forms of +art and literature were being experimented with, new ideas aired. New +verse was being written, new drama, essays, fiction and journalism. +Stanley was so much interested in it all (being, as she now was, in +close touch with the latest phase in these matters) that her social +and political earnestness flagged, for you cannot have all kinds of +earnestness at once. Instead of going in the evenings to committee +meetings and mass labour meetings, she now went to plays and literary +parties. Instead of writing articles on women’s work, she began to +write poetry and short sketches. All this, together with the social +life she now led and the excitement of love, of Denman, and of her new +home, was so stimulating and absorbing that she had little attention to +spare for anything else. Stanley was like that--enthusiastic, headlong, +a deep plunger, a whole-hogger. + +“They do have the most fantastic beings to dinner,” Vicky said to her +Charles. “Velvet coats and immense ties.... It reminds me of ten years +ago, when I was being æsthetic. But these people are much smarter +talkers. Denman says they are really doing something good, too. He’s +an attractive creature, though I think his new play is absurd and he’s +desperately affected. The way that child adores him! Stanley does go +so head over ears into everything. None of the rest of us could love +like that. It frightens one for her.... But anyhow I’m glad she’s off +that stupid trade union and sweated labour fuss. Maurice does more +than enough of that for the family and I was afraid Stan was going to +turn into a female fanatic, like some of those short-haired friends of +hers. That’s not what we women ought to be, is it, my Imogen?” + +Vicky caught up her Imogen, an infant of one summer, in her arms, and +kissed her. But Imogen, neither then nor at any later time, had any +clear idea about what women ought or ought not to be. Anything they +liked, she probably thought. If, indeed, there were, specifically, any +such creatures as women.... For Imogen was born to have a doubting +mind on this as on other subjects. She might almost have been called +mentally defective in some directions, of so little was she ever to be +sure. + +“Stanley,” pronounced Vicky, “has more Zeitgeist” (for that unpleasant +word had of late come in) “than anyone I ever met.” + + + + + PART II + + FIN-DE-SIÈCLE + + + + + 1 + + ROME + + +THE threshold of the nineties. Decades have a delusive edge to them. +They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other +ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different +name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels +on them, as if they were flowers in a border. The nineties, we say, +were gay, tired, _fin-de-siècle_, witty, dilettante, decadent, +yellow, and Max Beerbohm was their prophet; or they were noisy, +imperial, patriotic, militant, crude, and Kipling was their prophet. +And, indeed, you may find attributes to differentiate any period from +any other. What people said and wrote of the nineties at the time was +that they were modern, which of course at the time they were; that +they were hustling ... (“In these days of hurry and rapid motion, +when there is so little time to rest and reflect,” as people say in +sermons and elsewhere, as if the greater rapidity of motion did not +give one more time to rest and reflect, since one the sooner arrives +at one’s destination); that they were noisy; that literary output was +enormous; that (alternatively) the new writers were very good, or that +the good writers had gone from among us. One knows the kind of thing; +all discourses on contemporary periods have been full of it, from the +earliest times even unto these last. + +Rome was thirty-one. She was of middle height, a slight, pale, +delicate young woman, with ironic blue-green eyes and mocking lips a +little compressed at the corners, and a pointed kind of face, and fair, +silky hair which she wore no longer short but swept gracefully up and +back from her small head, defining its shape and showing the fine line +from nape to crown. She was a woman of the world, a known diner-out, +a good talker, something of a wit, so that her presence was sought by +hostesses as that of an amusing bachelor is sought. She had elegance, +distinction, brain, a light and cool touch on the topics of her world, +a calm, mocking, sceptical detachment, a fastidious taste in letters +and in persons. She knew her way about, as the phrase goes, and could +be relied on to be socially adequate, in spite of a dangerous distaste +for fools, and in spite of the “dancing and destructive eye” (to use a +phrase long afterwards applied to one whose mentality perhaps a little +resembled hers) which she turned on all aspects of the life around +her. People called her intensely modern--whatever that might mean. In +1890 it presumably meant that you would have been surprised to find +her type in 1880. But as a matter of fact, you would not, had you been +endowed with a little perspicacity, have been in the least surprised; +you would have found it, had you looked, all down the ages (though +always as a rare growth). In 1790, 1690, 1590, and back through every +decade of every century, there have been Rome Gardens, fastidious, +_mondaine_, urbane, lettered, critical, amused, sceptical, and +what was called in 1890 _fin-de-siècle_. It is not a type which, +so to speak, makes the world go round; it does not assist movements nor +join in crusades; it coolly distrusts enthusiasm and eschews the heat +and ardour of the day. It is to be found among both sexes equally, and +is the stuff of which the urbane bachelor and spinster, rather than the +spouse and parent, are made. For mating and producing (as a career, not +as an occasional encounter) are apt to destroy the type, by forcing +it to too continuous and ardent intercourse with life; that graceful +and dilettante aloofness can scarcely survive such prolonged heat. To +be cool, sceptical and passionate at one and the same time--it has +been done, but it remains difficult. To love ardently such absurdities +as infants, and yet to retain unmarred the sense of the absurdity of +all life--this too has been done, but the best parents do not do it. +Something has to go, as a sacrifice to the juggernaut life, which +rebels against being regarded as merely absurd (and rightly, for, in +truth, it is not merely absurd, and this is one of the things which +should always be remembered about it). + +The literary persons of the early nineties wanted Rome to join them in +their pursuits. + +Why so, Rome questioned. Money? Very certainly I have not enough, but +I should not have appreciably more if I wrote and published essays +or even books. Notoriety? It might well be of the wrong kind; and +anyhow does it add to one’s pleasure? Miss Rome Garden, the author of +those clever critical essays.... Or perhaps of those dull critical +essays.... Either way, what did one gain? Why write? Why this craze for +transmitting ideas by means of marks on paper? Why not, if one must +transmit ideas, use the tongue, that unruly member given us for the +purpose? Better still, why not retain the ideas for one’s own private +edification, untransmitted? Writing. There was this about writing--or +rather about publishing--it showed that someone had thought it worth +while to pay for having one’s ideas printed. For printers were paid, +and binders, even if not oneself. So it conferred a kind of cachet. +Most literary persons sorely needed such a cachet, for you would never +guess from meeting them that anyone would pay them for their ideas. On +the other hand, publishing one’s folly gave it away; one was then known +for a fool, whereas previously people might have only suspected it.... +In brief and in fine, writing was not worth while. Wise men and women +would derive such pleasure as they could from the writings of others, +without putting themselves to the trouble of providing reading matter +in their turn. Reading matter was not like dinners, concerning which +there must be give and take. + +Thus the do-nothing Miss Rome Garden to the eager literary young men +and women about her, who all thought that literature was having a new +birth and that they were its brilliant midwives, as, indeed, it is not +unusual to think. And possibly it was the case. Literature has so many +new births; it is a hardy annual. The younger literary people of 1890 +had a titillating feeling of standing a-tiptoe to welcome a new day. +“A great creative period is at hand,” they said. The old and famous +still brooded over the land like giant trees. Such a brooding, indeed, +has scarcely since been known, for in these later days we allow no +trees to become giants. But in their shadow the rebellious young shoots +sprang up, sharp and green and alive. The mid-Victorians were passing; +the Edwardians were in the schoolroom or the nursery, the Georgians +in the cradle or not yet anywhere; here was a clear decade in which +the late Victorian stars might dance. It was a period of experiment; +new forms were being tried, new ideas would have been aired were any +ideas ever new; new franknesses, so called, were permitted, or anyhow +practised--the mild beginnings of the returning tide which was to break +against the reticence of fifty years. + +“I don’t,” said Mrs. Garden to Rome, “care about all these sex novels +people have taken to writing now.” + +But Rome rejected the phrase. + +“Sex novels, mamma? What are they? Novels have always been about sex, +or rather sexes. There’s nothing new in that; it’s the oldest story in +the world. People must have a sex in this life; it’s inevitable. Novels +must be about people; that’s inevitable too. So novels must be partly +about sex, and they’re nearly always about two sexes, and usually +largely about the relations of the two sexes to one another. They +always have been....” + +All the same, mamma did _not_ care about these sex novels that +people had taken to writing now. _Problem_ novels, she called +them, for reasons of her own. Rome thought sex no problem; the least +problematic affair, perhaps, in this world. Of course there were +problems connected with it, as with everything else, but in itself sex +was no problem. Rather the contrary. “The Moonstone,” now--_that_ +was a problem novel. + +“I don’t like indecency,” said mamma, in her delicate, clipped voice. +“These modern writers will say anything. It’s ill-bred.” + +Mamma could not be expected to know that these literary libertines of +1890 would be regarded as quaint Victorian prudes in 1920. + +“As to that book Mr. Jayne gave you, I call it merely silly,” mamma +murmured, with raised brows, and so settled “Dorian Gray.” + +“Silly it is,” Rome agreed. “But here and there, though too seldom, it +has a wit.” + +But mamma was not listening. Her mamma-like mind was straying after Mr. +Jayne.... + + + + + 2 + + MR. JAYNE + + +Mr. Jayne and Rome. Both brilliant, both elegant, both urbane, both so +gracefully of the world worldly, yet both scholars too. Mr. Jayne wrote +memoirs and enchanting historical and political essays. An amusing, yet +erudite Oxford man, who had formerly been at the British Embassy at St. +Petersburg. Hostesses desired him for their more sophisticated parties, +because he had a wit, and knew Russia, which was at once more unusual +and more fashionable then than now. It was at one of Vicky’s dinner +parties that he and Rome had first met. If Vicky thought, how suitable, +it was only what anyone in the world must think about these two. +Afterwards they met continually and became friends. Rome thought him +conceited, clever, entertaining, attractive and disarming and the most +companionable man of her wide acquaintance. By June, 1890, they were in +love; a state of mind unusual in both. They did not mention it, but in +July he mentioned to her, what he mentioned to few people, that he had +a Russian wife living with her parents, a revolutionary professor and +his wife, in the country outside Moscow. + +They were spending Sunday on the Thames, rowing up from Bourne End +to Marlow. They spoke of this matter of Mr. Jayne’s wife after their +lunch, which they ate on the bank, in the shade of willows. + +“How delightful,” said Rome, taking a Gentleman’s Relish sandwich. + +Delightful to have a wife in Russia; to have a reason, and such a +reason, for visiting that interesting land. Delightful for Mr. Jayne +to have waiting for him, among steppes and woods, a handsome Russian +female and two fair Slav infants ... or perhaps they were English, +these little Jaynes, with beautiful mouths and long, thrust-out +chins.... Delightful, anyhow. The Russian country in the summer, all +corn and oil and moujiks. Moscow in the autumn, all churches and +revolutionaries and plots and secret police. And in the winter ... but +one cannot think about Russia in the winter at all; it does not bear +contemplation, and one does not visit it.... What a romance! Mr. Jayne +was indeed fortunate. + +So Miss Garden conveyed. + +“I am not there very much,” said Mr. Jayne. “Only on and off. Olga +prefers to live there, with her parents and our two children. She +has many friends there, all very busy plotting. They are of the +intelligentsia. Life is very interesting to her.” + +“I can imagine that it must be.” + +So cool and well-bred were Miss Garden and Mr. Jayne, that you never +would have divined that the latter, eating sandwiches, was crying +within his soul, “My dearest Rome. I dislike my wife. We make each +other sick with ennui when we meet. We married in a moment’s mania. It +is you I want. Don’t you know it? Won’t you let me tell you?” or that +the former, sipping cider, was saying silently, “You have told me this +at last because you know that we have fallen in love. Why not months +ago? And what now?” + +Nothing of this they showed, but lounged in the green shade, and +drank and ate, Miss Garden clear-cut and cool, in a striped cotton +boating-dress, with a conically-shaped straw hat tipped over her eyes, +Mr. Jayne in flannels, long and slim, his palish face shaved smooth +in the new fashion, so that you saw the lines of his clever mouth +and long, thrust-out chin. Mr. Jayne’s eyes were deep-set and grey, +and he wore pince-nez, and he was at this time thirty-six years old. +At what age, Rome wondered, had he married Mrs. Jayne of the Russian +intelligentsia? + +However, they did not enter into this, but began to discuss the plays +of Mr. Bernard Shaw, a well-known socialist writer, and Mr. Rudyard +Kipling, a young man in India who was making some stir. + +“We can still be friends,” thought Rome, on their way home. “Nothing +need be changed between us. This Olga of his is his wife; I am his +friend. It would be very bourgeois to be less his friend because he has +a wife. That is a view of life I dislike; we are civilised people, Mr. +Jayne and I.” + + + + + 3 + + CIVILISED PEOPLE + + +And civilised they were, for the rest of the summer of 1890. In +November Rome asked Mr. Jayne, who was having tea with her alone, +whether he was visiting Russia shortly. He replied in the negative, for +he was, he said, too busy working on his new book to get abroad. + +“And further,” he added, in the same composed tone, “I prefer to remain +in the same country with you. I can’t, you see, do without you at hand. +You know how often I consult you, and talk things over with you.... +And further still,” continued Mr. Jayne, quietly, “I love you.” + +So saying, he rose and stood over her, bending down with his hands on +her shoulders and his pale face close to hers. + +“My dearest,” he said. “Let us stop pretending. _Shall_ we stop +pretending? Does our pretence do us or anyone else any good? I love you +more than any words I’ve got can say. You know it, you know it ... dear +heart....” + +He drew her up from her chair and looked into her face, and that was +the defeat of their civilisation, for at their mutual touch it broke in +disorder and fled. He kissed her mouth and face and hands, and passion +rose about them like a sea in which they drowned. + +Five minutes later they talked it out, sitting with a space between +them, for “While you hold me I can’t think,” Rome said. She passed her +hand over her face, which felt hot and stung from the hard pressing +of his mouth, and tried to assemble her thoughts, shaken by the first +passion of her thirty-one agreeable and intelligent years. + +“I’m not,” she said, “going to take you away from your wife. Not in any +way. What we have must make no difference to what _she_ has....” + +It will be seen, therefore, that their conversation was as old as the +world, and scarcely worth recording. It pursued the normal lines. That +is to say, Mr. Jayne replied, “She has nothing of me that matters,” +rather inaccurately classing under the head of what did not matter, his +children, his name, and the right to his bed and board. As is the habit +in these situations, Mr. Jayne meant that what mattered, and what Mrs. +Jayne had not got, was his love, his passion, his spirit and his soul. +These, he indicated, were Rome’s alone, as Rome’s were his. + +What to do about it was the question. One must, said Rome, holding +herself in, continue to be civilised. And what, enquired Mr. Jayne, is +civilisation--this arbitrary civilisation of society’s making, that +binds the spirit’s freedom in chains? It was all founded on social +expediency, on primitive laws to protect inheritance, to safeguard +property.... Had Rome read Professor Westermarck’s great work on the +history of human marriage? Rome had. What of it? The point was, there +was Mrs. Jayne in Russia, and Mr. and Mrs. Jayne’s two children. These +were Mr. Jayne’s obligations, and nothing he and she did must come +between him and them. That laid firmly down, she and Mr. Jayne could +do what they liked; that was how Rome saw it. One must keep one’s +contracts, and behave as persons of honour and breeding should behave. + +“As I see it,” said Rome, “the fact that we love each other needn’t +prevent our being friends. We are not babies....” + +“Friends,” said Mr. Jayne, in agreement, doubt, scepticism, contempt, +hope, or bitter derision, as the case might be. + +And more they said, until they were interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. +Garden’s papa, the Dean, who had called in his brougham to see mamma, +but, mamma being out at Vicky’s, he sat down between these two white, +disturbed, hot-eyed and shaken persons and began to talk of Mr. Parnell +and his disgrace. + +Grandpapa opined that Mr. Parnell had no more place in public life. + +Mr. Jayne replied that anyhow it appeared that he would be hounded out +of it. + +“Cant,” he said. “Truckling to nonconformist cant and humbug and +Catholic bigotry. A man’s private affairs have nothing to do with his +public life. It’s contemptible, the way the Nationalists have caved in +to that old humbug, Gladstone.” + +Grandpapa had always thought Gladstone a humbug (though not so old if +it came to that; he himself was eighty-five and going strong), but with +the rest of Mr. Jayne’s thesis he was in disagreement. Our political +leaders must not be men of notoriously loose lives. The sanctity of the +home must, at all costs, be upheld. + +“O’Shea’s home,” said Mr. Jayne, “never had much of that. Neither +O’Shea nor Mrs. O’Shea was great on it.” + +“For that matter,” Rome joined in, crisp and bland, as if civilisation +had not met its débâcle in the drawing-room but a half hour since, +“for that matter, what homes _have_ sanctity? Why do people think +that sanctity is particularly to be found in homes, of all places? And +can a bachelor’s or spinster’s home have it, or do the people in the +home need to be married? What is it, this curious _sanctity_, +that bishops write to the papers about, and that is, they say, being +attacked all the time, and is so easily destroyed? In what homes is it +to be found? I have often wondered.” + +“Whom God hath joined together,” replied grandpapa, readily. “That is +the answer to your question, my dear child, is it not?” + +“O God,” muttered Mr. Jayne, but probably rather as an ejaculation than +as a sceptical comment on the authority behind matrimony. + +Whichever it was, grandpapa did not care about the phrase, and looked +at him sharply. He believed Mr. Jayne to be an unbeliever, and did not +greatly care for the tone of his writings. However, they conversed +intelligently for a while about the future of the Irish party before +Mr. Jayne rose to go. + +“Come into the hall,” his eyes said. But Rome did not go into the hall. + +He was gone. Rome sat still in the shadow of the window. His steps +echoed down the square. + +“Do you see much of that young fellow, my dear?” grandpapa asked, in +his old rumbling voice. + +“Oh, yes,” said Rome, feeling exalted and light in the head, and as if +she had drunk alcohol. “Oh, yes, grandpapa. We are great friends.” + +“Do your parents like him, my child?” + +“Oh, yes, grandpapa. Very much. Oh, I think everyone likes him. He is a +great success, you know.” + +She was talking foolishly and at random, straying about the room, +taking up books, wishing grandpapa would go. + +Grandpapa grunted. Rather queer goings on, he thought, for Rome to be +entertaining young men by herself when her papa and mamma were out. +What were unmarried young women coming to? If mamma had gone on like +that thirty years ago.... But this, of course, was 1890--desperately +modern. Grandpapa, though he not infrequently wrote to the +_Times_, the _Spectator_ and the _Guardian_, to say how +modern the current year was (for, of course, current years always were +and are), did not always remember it. The untrammelled (it seemed to +him untrammelled) freedom of intercourse enjoyed by modern young men +and women (especially young women) continually shocked him. Grandpapa +had enjoyed much free and untrammelled intercourse in his own distant +youth, during the Regency, but fifty years of Victorianism had since +intervened, and he believed that intercourse should not now be free. He +could not understand his granddaughter, Stanley, who was continually +abusing what she called the conventional prudery of the age; what +further liberties, in heaven’s name, did young women want? To do her +justice, Rome did not join in this cry for further emancipation; Rome +accepted the conventions, with an acquiescent, ironic smile. There they +were: why make oneself hot with kicking over the traces? One accepted +the social follies and codes.... + +(“On the contrary,” Maurice would say, “I refuse them.” + +“It will make no difference to them either way,” said Rome.) + +Rome, a good _raconteuse_ and mimic, proceeded to entertain +grandpapa with an account of a dinner party at which she had been +taken in by that curious and noisy member of Parliament, Mr. Augustus +Conybeare, whom grandpapa disliked exceedingly. + +Then mamma and papa came home, and Rome went upstairs to dress for +another dinner party. Thus do social life and the storm-tossed journey +of the human soul run on concurrently, and neither makes way for the +other. + + + + + 4 + + ON THE PINCIO + + +Through that winter civilisation fought its losing battle with more +primitive forces over the souls and bodies of Miss Garden and Mr. +Jayne. + +“There is only one way in which we can meet and be together,” said +Rome, “and that is as friends. There is no other relation possible in +the circumstances. I will be party to no scandal, my best. If we can’t +meet one another with self-control, then we mustn’t meet at all. What +is the use of tilting at the laws of society? There they are, and thus +it is....” + +“You make a fetish of society,” said Mr. Jayne, with gloom. “For a +woman of your brains, it is queer.” + +“Perhaps,” said Rome. + +Then, it becoming apparent that she and Mr. Jayne were not at present +going to meet one another with self-control, Rome went for the winter +to the city of that name, with her papa, whose spiritual home it, of +course, now was. Mrs. Garden did not go, because she desired to be in +at the birth of Stanley’s baby. + +But civilisation had not reckoned sufficiently with the forces of +emotion. These led Mr. Jayne, but a few weeks after Miss Garden had +departed, to follow her to Italy, and, in fact, to Rome. + +So, one bright February morning, he called at the Gardens’ hotel +pension in the Via Babuino, and found Rome and her papa about to +set forth for a walk on the Pincio. Miss Garden, looking pale, fair +and elegant in a long, fur-edged, high-shouldered cape coat and a +tall, pointed, blue velvet hat beneath which her hair gleamed gold, +received him as urbanely, as coolly, as detachedly as ever; she seemed +to have got her emotions well under control in the month since they +had parted. Mr. Jayne responded to her tone, and all the morning, as +they strolled about with Mr. Garden, they were bland and cool and +amusing; well-bred English visitors, turning interested and satirical +eyes on the fashionable crowds about them, stopping now and then to +exchange amenities with fellow-strollers, for Mr. Jayne knew Roman +society well, and Mr. Garden had come armed with introductions from +his co-religionists, though, indeed, he was little disposed for much +society, wishing to spend such time as he did not devote to seeing +Rome in studious research at the Vatican library. His daughter was a +little afraid that the Eternal City might seriously disturb his faith, +and that papa might fall under the undeniably fascinating influence +of paganism, which makes so far finer and nobler a show in Rome than +mediæval Christianity. And, indeed, with St. Peter’s papa was not +pleased; he scarcely liked to say so, even to himself, but it did seem +to him to be of a garish hugeness that smacked almost of vulgarity, +and pained his fastidious taste. On the other hand, there were many +old churches of a more pleasing style, and in these his soul found +rest when disturbed by the massive splendours of classical Rome. No; +papa would not become a pagan; he knew too much of pagan corruptions +and cruelties for that. Corruptions and cruelties he admitted, of +course, in the history of Christianity also; corruption and cruelty +are, indeed, properties of the unfortunate and paradoxical human race; +but papa was persuaded that only defective Christians (after all, +Christians always are and have been defective) were corrupt and cruel, +whereas the most completely pagan of pagans had been so, and paganism +is, indeed, rather an incentive than a discouragement to vice. In +fact, papa was, by this time, thoroughly biassed in this matter, and +so was probably safe. Or, anyhow, so his daughter hoped. For it would, +there was no denying it, be exceedingly awkward were papa to become +a pagan, quite apart from the preliminary anguish with which his soul +would be torn were he to be shaken from his present faith. Were there +pagan places of worship in London? Probably papa would have to build a +private chapel, and in it erect images of his new gods.... For pagans +had never been happy without much worship; they had been the most +religious of believers. Except, of course, the lax and broad-church +pagans, and probably papa, if he got paganism at all, would get it +strong. + +So Rome was quite pleased that papa should be walking on the Pincio +with her, getting a good view of the dome of St. Peter’s, which is +the finest and most impressive part of that cathedral, rather than +wandering about the Forum and peering into the new excavations, +murmuring scraps of Latin as he peered. + +In the warm, sunlit air, with the band playing Verdi and the gay crowds +promenading, and the enchanted city spread all a-glitter beneath them, +Rome was caught into a deep and intoxicated joy. The bitter, restless +struggling of the last months gave way to peace; the happy peace that +looks not ahead, but rejoices in the moment. The tall and gay companion +strolling at her side, so fluent in several languages, so apt to catch +a half-worded meaning, to smile at an unuttered jest, so informed, so +polished, so of the world worldly ... take Mr. Jayne as merely that, +and she had her friend and companion back again, which was deeply +restful and vastly stimulating. And beneath that was her lover, whom +she loved; beneath his urbane exterior his passion throbbed and leaped, +and his deep need of her cried, and in her the answering need cried +back. + + + + + 5 + + IN THE CAMPAGNA + + +Together they walked in the Campagna, in the bright soft wash of the +February sun. Mr. Jayne had been in Rome a week, and they had gone +out to Tivoli together, without papa, who was reading in the Vatican +library. They lunched at the restaurant by the waterfalls, then +explored Hadrian’s Villa with the plan in Murray, and quarrelled about +which were the different rooms. Failing to agree on this problem, they +sat down in the Triclinium and looked at the view and discussed the +more urgent problem of their lives. + +“You must,” said Mr. Jayne, “come to me. It is the only right and +reasonable way out. We’ll live in no half-way house, with secrecy +and concealment. We should both hate that. But Olga will not divorce +me; it’s no use thinking of that. In her view, and that of all her +countrywomen, husbands are never faithful. The infidelity of a husband +is no reason to a Russian woman for divorce. Unless she herself wants +to marry another man, and that is likely enough, in Olga’s case, to +happen. We are nothing to each other, she and I. Such love as we +had--and it was never love--is dead long ago. We don’t even like each +other.” + +“Curious,” mused Rome, “not to foresee these developments at the +outset, before taking the serious step of marriage. Marriage is an +action too freely practised and too seldom adequately considered.” + +“That is so,” Mr. Jayne agreed. “But, and however that may be, what +is done is done. What we now have to consider, however inadequately, +is the future. It is very plain that you and I must be together. +Yes, yes, yes. Nothing else is plain, but that is. The one light in +chaos.... My dearest love, you can’t be denying that. It is the only +conceivable thing--the only thinkable way out.” + +“Way out,” said Rome. “I think, rather, a way in.... Which way do we +take--out or in?” Musingly she looked over the Campagna to blue hills, +and Mr. Jayne, his eyes on her white profile, on the gleam of gold hair +beneath her dark fur cap, and on her slender hands that clasped her +knees, leant closer to her and replied, with neither hesitation nor +doubt, “In.” + +“Indeed,” said Miss Garden, “these questions can’t be decided in this +rough and ready, impetuous manner. The mind must have its share in +deciding these important matters, not merely the emotions and desires. +Or else what is the good of education, or of having learnt to think +clearly at all?” + +“Very little,” said Mr. Jayne. “However, in this case the more clearly +one thinks the more plain the way to take becomes. It is confused and +muddled thinking that would lead us to conform to convention and give +one another up, merely because of a social code.” + +“The social code,” said Miss Garden, “though as a rule I prefer to +observe it, is in this case neither here nor there. I have ruled that +out; cleared the field, so to speak, for the essentials. Now, what +_are_ the essentials? Your wife, whom you have undertaken to live +with ...” + +“By mutual agreement, we have given that up long since,” said Mr. +Jayne, not for the first time. + +“... and your children, whom you have brought into the world and are +responsible for.” + +“They are their mother’s. She lets me see nothing of them. She is +determined to bring them up as Russian patriots.” + +“Still, they are half yours, and it is a question whether you should +not claim your share. In fact, I think it is certain that you should. +If you broke off completely from your wife and lived with me, your +right in them would be gone.... Then, of course, there is the ethical +point as to your contract, the vows you made to your wife on marriage, +which positively exclude similar relations with anyone else while she +remains your wife.” + +“I ought never to have made them. I was a fool. The wrong is in the +vows, not in their breach.” + +“Granted that they were wrong, that does not settle the further point +of whether, having been made, with every circumstance of deliberation, +they should not be kept.” + +“O God,” said Mr. Jayne. “You talk, my dearest, like a pedant, a prig, +or a book of logic. Don’t you _care_, Rome?” + +“You know,” said Miss Garden, “that I do.... No, don’t touch me. I +must think it out. I _am_ a pedant and a prig, if you like, and +I _must_ think it out, not only feel. But now I will think of +the other side. Oh, yes, I know there is another side. We love one +another, and we can neither of us be happy, or fully ourselves, without +being together. Without one another we shall be incomplete, unhappy +and perhaps (not certainly) morally and mentally stunted and warped. +Indeed, I see that as clearly as you can. Further, our being together +may, as you say, not hurt your wife; she may not care in the least. As +to that, I simply don’t know. How could I? She may even let you still +have a share in your children. Russian points of view are so different +from ours. But one should be certain of that before taking any steps. +Then there are still points on the other side, that we have to think +of. Any children we might have would be illegitimate. That would be +hard on them.” + +“In point of fact,” said Mr. Jayne, “it is largely illusory, that +hardship. And in this case they (if they should ever exist) needn’t +even know. You would take my name. Who is to go on remembering that I +have a Russian wife? Very few people in England even know it. We should +soon live down any talk there might be.” + +“And then,” went on Rome, ticking off another point on her fingers, +“there are my papa and mamma, whom we should hurt very badly. In their +eyes what we are discussing isn’t a thing to be discussed at all; it is +a deadly sin, and there’s an end of it. They are very fond of me, and +they would be terribly unhappy. That too is a point to be considered.” + +“Perhaps. But not to be given much weight to. It’s damnable to have +to hurt the people we love--but, after all, we can’t let our parents +rule our lives. We’re living in the eighteen nineties; we’re not +mid-Victorians. And we have to make up our own minds what to do with +our lives. We can’t be tied up by anyone else’s views, either those +of our relations or of society in general. We have to make our own +judgments and choices, all along. And parents shouldn’t be hurt by +their children’s choices, even if they do think them wrong; they +should live and let live. All this judging for other people, and being +hurt, is poisonous. It’s a relic of the patriarchal system--or the +matriarchal.” + +Miss Garden smiled. + +“Possibly. I should say, rather, that it was incidental to parental +affection, and always will be. Anyhow, there it is.... They don’t, of +course, even believe that divorce is right, let alone adultery.” Her +cool, thoughtful enunciation of the last word gave it its uttermost +value. Miss Garden never slurred or shirked either words or facts. + +“But that,” she added, “doesn’t, of course, dispose of our lives. +That’s only one point out of many. The question is, what is, now and +ultimately, the right and best thing for me and you to do. You’ve +decided. Well, I haven’t--yet. Give me a week, Francis. I promise I +won’t take more.” + +“You are so beautiful,” said Mr. Jayne, changing the subject and +speaking inaccurately, and lifted her hands to his face. “You are so +beautiful. There is no one like you. You are like the golden sickle +moon riding over the world. You hold my life in your two hands. Be kind +to it, Rome. _I love you, I love you, I love you._ If we deny our +love we shall be blaspheming. Love like ours transcends all barriers, +and well you know it. Take your week, if you must, only decide rightly +at the end of it, my heart’s glory. The fine thing we shall make of +life together, you and I, the fine, precious, lovely thing. It’s been +so poor and common--full of bickerings and jars and commonness and +discontents.... + +_O Rome!_...” + + + + + 6 + + RUSSIAN TRAGEDY + + +The Russian woman, with her two beautiful children and her stout, +dazed, unhappy mamma, waited in the hall of the flat of Mr. Jayne. +They were weary, having travelled across Russia and from Russia to +London, to find Mr. Jayne, and then, having learnt that he was in Rome, +straight from London thither, spending two nights in the train and +arriving this morning, more alive than dead (for who, this side of the +grave, is not?) but very tired. The two children were so tired that +they whimpered disagreeably, and their mother often wiped their noses +with her travel-grimed handkerchief, but not so often as they required +it. + +Olga Petrushka was a beautiful woman, square-headed, with a fair +northern skin and large deep blue eyes, black-lashed, and massive +plaits of flaxen hair. Her eyes looked wild and haunted, for Russians +have such dreadful experiences, and her cheeks were hollowed; she +looked like a woman who has seen death and worse too close, as indeed +she had. She was shabbily dressed in an old fur dolman over a scarlet +dress and a fur cap. The two children were bundled up in bearskin +coats, like little animals. Her little dancing bears, she would call +them in lighter moments. Ever and anon she would fling them sweet cakes +out of her reticule, and they would gobble them greedily. + +But Nina Naryshkin, their grandmother, sat and rocked to and fro, to +and fro, and said nothing but, “Aie, aie, aie.” + +The hall porter turned on the little family a beaming and kindly eye. +They were, in all probability, thieves, and not, as the Russian lady +asserted, the family of Signor Jayne, so he would not admit them into +Signor Jayne’s rooms, but he liked to see their gambols. + +Every now and then the younger lady would say, in Russian, “Cheer +up, then, little children. Your father will soon be here and he will +give you more sweet cakes. Aha, how your dirty little mouths water to +hear it! Boris, you rascal, don’t pull your sister’s pigtail. What +children! They drive me to despair.” + +And then Mr. Jayne arrived. He came in at the open hall door, with a +tall, fair English lady, and he was saying to her, “If you don’t mind +coming in for a moment, I will get you the book.” + +The hall porter stepped forward with a bow, and indicated in the +background Mrs. Jayne, her mamma, and the little Jaynes. + +What a moment for Mr. Jayne! What a moment for Mrs. Jayne, her mamma +and the little Jaynes! What a moment for Miss Garden! What a moment for +the hall porter, who loved both domestic reunions and quarrels, and was +as yet uncertain which this would be (it might even be both), but above +all loved moments, and that it would certainly be. + +And so it proved. Where Russians are, there, one may say, moments are, +for these live in moments. + +Olga Petrushka stepped forward with a loud cry and outstretched arms, +and exclaimed in Russian, “Ah, Franya Stefanovitch!” (one of the names +she had for him, for Russians give one another hundreds of names each, +and this accounts in part for the curious, confused state in which this +nation is often to be found)--“I have found you at last.” + +Mr. Jayne, always composed, retained his calm. He shook hands with his +wife and mother-in-law and addressed them in French. + +“How are you, my dear Olga? Why did you not tell me you wanted to see +me? I would have come to Moscow. It is a long way to have come, with +your mother and the children too. How are you, my little villains?” + +“Ah, my God,” said Mrs. Jayne, also now in French, which she +spoke with rapidity and violence. “How could I stay another day in +Russia? The misery I have been through? Poor little papa--Nicolai +Nicolaivitch--they have arrested him for revolutionary propaganda and +sent him to Siberia, with my brother Feodor. They had evidence also +against mamma and myself and would have arrested us, and only barely we +escaped in time, with the little bears. The poor cherubs--kiss them, +Franya. They have been crying for their little father and the love and +good food and warm house he will give them. For now they and we have no +one but you. ‘Go to England, Olga,’ papa said as they took him. ‘It is +the one safe country. The English are good to Russian exiles, and your +husband will take care of you and mamma and the little ones....’ But +you are with a lady, Franya. Introduce us.” + +“I beg your pardon. Miss Garden, my wife, and Madame Naryshkin, her +mother. Miss Garden and her father are great friends of mine.... If you +will go into my rooms and wait for me a moment, Olga, I will see Miss +Garden to her pension and return.” + +“No,” said Miss Garden, in her fluent and exquisite French. “No, I +beg of you. I will go home alone; indeed, it is no way. Good-evening, +Madame Jayne and Madame Naryshkin.” + +Mr. Jayne went out into the street with her. His unhappy eyes met hers. + +“To-morrow morning,” he muttered, “I shall call.... This alters +nothing.... I will come to-morrow morning and we will talk.” + +“Yes,” said Miss Garden. “We must talk.” + +Mr. Jayne went back into the hall and escorted his family upstairs to +his rooms. + +“Aie, aie, aie,” shuddered Olga Petrushka, flinging off her fur coat +and cap and leaping round the room in her red dress, like a Russian +in a novel. “Let’s get warm. Come, little bears”--she spoke German +now--“to your papa’s arms. Kiss him, Katya; hug him, Boris. Tell him +we have come across Europe to be with him, now that all else is gone. +Forgive and forget, eh, Franya Maryavitch? You and I must keep one +another warm.... Aie, aie, aie, my poor papa,” she wailed in Russian. +“I keep seeing his face as they took him, and my poor Feodor’s. As +to mamma, she is dazed; she will never get over it. We must keep her +always with us, poor little mamma.... Tea at once, Franya. I am going +to be sick,” she added in Magyar, and was. + +Mr. Jayne laid his wife on his bed and took off her shoes and bathed +her forehead, while she moaned in Polish. Then he made tea for her and +the children and his mother-in-law, who sat heavily in a chair and +drank five cups, and looked at him with drowsy, inimical eyes, saying +never a word. He felt like a dead man, in a world full of ghosts. Who +were these, who had this claim upon him? Their clinging hands were +pulling him down, out of life into a tomb. The February evening shadows +lay coldly on his heart. These poor distraught women, these little +children--he must take infinite care of them, and let them lack for +nothing, but he must not let them come close into his life; they would +throttle it. His life, his true life, was with Rome. Rome, the gallant, +fastidious dandy, with her delicate poise, her pride, her cool wit and +grace. Not with this violent, unhappy, inconsequent Slav, chattering in +several tongues upon his bed. + +To-morrow he would go and talk to Rome ... explain to Rome.... + + + + + 7 + + ENGLISH TRAGEDY + + +Miss Garden received Mr. Jayne. Neither had slept much, for Mr. Jayne +had given his bed to his family and lain himself on a horsehair couch, +and Miss Garden had been troubled by her thoughts. Their faces were +pale and shadowed and heavy-eyed. + +Miss Garden said, “This is the end, of course. I shan’t need a week +now. Fate has intervened very opportunely.” + +“No,” said Mr. Jayne, with passion. “No. Nothing is changed. For God’s +sake, don’t think that our situation is changed. It is not. She wants +protection and security and a home, and I will provide all those for +her and her mother and the children. Me she does not want. They shall +have everything they want. But I shall not live with them.” + +“You still think that you and I can live together?” Miss Garden was +sceptical of his optimism. “I don’t think your wife would tolerate +that. No, Frank, it’s no use. They belong to you. They need you. I +can’t come between you. It would be heartless and selfish. Imagine the +situation for a moment ... it is impossible.” + +They both imagined it. Mr. Jayne shuddered, like a man very cold. + +“You don’t want to be involved in such a--such a melodrama,” he said, +bitterly. + +“Put it at that if you like. I take it we are neither of us fond of +melodrama. But, apart from that, I said all along, and meant it, that +if your wife wants you I can’t take you. She has first claim.” + +“I shall not live with Olga Petrushka and her mother.” + +“That’s your own affair, of course. You are very likely right, since +you don’t get on well together. But you must see that you and I +can’t....” + +Miss Garden stopped, for her voice began to shake. How she loved him! +She pressed her hands together in her lap till the rings bruised her +fingers. + +Mr. Jayne gazed at her gloomily, observing her lightly poised body, +slim and elegant in a dark blue taffeta dress which stood out behind +below the waist in a kind of shelf, and made her shape rather like that +of a swan. He saw her slight, anguished hands that hurt each other, and +the pale tremor of her face. + +“She’s been through hell, and she wants you,” said Miss Garden, trying +to keep control. + +“I tell you I can’t live with her, nor she with me. Do you want to turn +my life into a tragi-comic opera?” + +“Most life is a tragi-comic opera,” said Rome, trying to smile. +“Perhaps all.” + +“But you’re resolved anyhow to keep yours clear of my tragi-comedies,” +he flung at her. + +Then he apologised. + +“I don’t mean that; I don’t know what I’m saying.... Oh, I won’t press +you now to decide. We’ll wait, Rome. You’ll see, in a month or so, how +things have arranged themselves--how easy it will all be. Olga will +have recovered her balance by then; she changes from hour to hour, like +all Russians. In a few weeks she will be tired of me and want to be in +Paris, or back in Russia. She doesn’t really want me; it’s only that +she is unstrung by trouble. Upset; that’s what she is. All I ask you to +do is to wait.” + +“No, Frank. It can never be, unless she goes sometime to live with +someone else--some other man. Otherwise she would be likely, even if +she left you for a time, to want you again at intervals. I can’t make a +third.... You see, whatever happens now, your family must always be a +real fact to me, not an abstraction. I’ve seen them.... Katya is just +like you--your chin and eyes.... The children love you very much; I saw +that.... And she loves you, too....” + +“She does not. That’s not love--not as I know love.” + +“As to that, we all know love in different ways, I suppose.... Truly, +Francis, I have quite decided. I can’t live with you.... No, no, +don’t....” + +He was holding her in his arms and kissing her face, her lips, her +eyes, muttering entreaties. + +“If you loved me you’d do it.” + +“I do love you, and I shan’t do it.” + +“I’m asking nothing dishonourable of you. You don’t think it wrong on +general principles; yesterday you were willing to consider it. You’re +just refusing life for a quixotic whim ... refusing, denying life.... +Rome, you can’t do it. Don’t you know, now you’re in my arms, that you +can’t, that it would be to deny the best in us?” + +“What’s the best, what’s the worst? I don’t know, nor do you. I’m not +an ethicist. All I know is that your wife, while she wants you, or +thinks she wants you, has first claim. It’s a question of fairness and +decent feeling.... Or bring it down, if you like, to a question of +taste. Perhaps that is the only basis there really is for decisions of +this sort for people like us.” + +“Taste. That’s a fine cry to mess up two lives by. I’d almost rather +you were religious and talked of the will of God. One could respect +that, at least.” + +“I can’t do that, as I happen not to be sure whether God exists. And +it would make nothing simpler really, since one would then have to +discover what one believed the will of God to be. Don’t do religious +people the injustice of believing that anything is simpler or easier +for them; it’s more difficult, since life is more exacting.... But it +comes to the same thing; all these processes of thought lead to the +same result if applied by the same mind. It depends on the individual +outlook. And this is mine.... Oh, don’t make it so damnably difficult +for us both, my dearest....” + +Miss Garden, who never swore and never wept, here collapsed into tears, +all her urbane breeding broken at last. He consoled her so tenderly, so +pitifully, so mournfully, that she wept the more for love of him. + +“Go now,” she said at last. “We mustn’t meet again till we can both do +it quietly, without such pain. Papa and I are going back to London next +week. Write to me sometime and let me know how you do and where you +are. My dearest Frank....” + + + + + 8 + + FOUNDERED + + +Rome was alone. She sat in a hard Italian chair, quite still, and felt +cold and numb, and as if she had died. Drowned she felt, under deep +cold seas of passion and of pain. Wrecked and foundered and drowned, +at the bottom of grey seas. Something cried, small and weak and hurt +within her, and it was the voice of love, or (as Mr. Jayne would have +it) of life; life which she had denied and slain. Never had she greatly +loved before; never would she greatly love again; and the great love +she now had she was slaying. That was what the hurt voice cried in +her as she sat alone in the great, bare, chilly room, the sad little +scaldino on the floor at her feet. + +She was dry-eyed now that she was alone, and had no more to face Mr. +Jayne’s love and pain. Her own she could bear. Harder and harder and +cooler and more cynical she would grow, as she walked the world alone, +leaving love behind. Was that the choice? Did one either do the decent, +difficult thing, and wither to bitterness in doing it, or take the +easy road, the road of joy and fulfilment, and be thereby enriched and +fulfilled? And what was fulfilment, and what enrichment? What, ah, +what, was this strange tale that life is; what its meaning, what its +purpose, what its end? + +Rome did not know. She knew one thing only. Frustration, renunciation, +death--whether you called your criterion the will of God, or social +ethics, or a quixotic whim, or your own private standards of decency +and taste, it led you to these; led you to the same sad place, where +you lay drowned, dead beneath bitter seas. + +Mid-day chimed over the city. Miss Garden rose, and put on her outdoor +things, and went forth to meet her papa for lunch. Life moves on, +through whatever deserts, and one must compose oneself to meet it, +never betraying one’s soul. + + + + + 9 + + VICKY ON THE WORLD + + +“It’s good to have you back again, my Rome,” Vicky said. “I miss you +at my parties. There are lots of new people I want you to meet. An +adorable Oxford youth, whom you’ll find after your own heart. Already +he writes essays like a polished gentleman of the world, and he a +round-faced cherub barely out of school. A coming man, my dear, mark +my words. Such brilliance, such style, such absurd urbanity! Denman +introduced him. I prefer him enormously to Denman’s other cronies--that +affected Mr. Le Gallienne for instance, and that conceited young +Beardsley. Not but that young Beardsley, too, has a wit. I’ll say that +for Denman--he keeps a witty table.... Well, have you brought papa back +still a good Roman? Father Stanton says, by the way, we’re to call the +Pope’s church in this country the Italian Mission. It’s quite time papa +had a change of creed, anyhow; I begin to fear for his health since he +read ‘Robert Elsmere’ and wasn’t driven by it to honest doubt.” + +“Neither,” said Rome, “was he driven by the Forum to the pagan gods. +One begins to think that papa is settling down.” + +“Oh, I trust not. Dear papa, he’s not old yet.... What a country you +have come back to, though, my dear. Strikes everywhere--dockers, +railwaymen, miners, even tailors.... Maurice is perfectly happy, +encouraging them all. But, darling Maurice, I’m _seriously_ afraid +he may cut Amy’s throat one day. Serve her right, the little cat. If +I were Maurice I’d beat her. Perhaps he will one day, when he’s not +quite sober. I wish she’d run off with one of the vulgar men she flirts +with, and leave him in peace. _He’ll_ never run off, because he +won’t leave the children to her. Poor old boy, he’s so desperately up +against things the whole time. Mamma’s miserable about him. I know, +though she never says a word. However, she’s consoled by all her nice +grandchildren. Even grandpapa, you know, admits that the deplorable +modern generation is doing its duty as regards multiplication. Why +_do_ old Bible clergymen like grandpapa think it so important to +produce more life? One would think, one really _would_ think, +that there was plenty of that already. But no. Be fruitful, they say: +multiply: replenish the earth. It says so in Genesis, and clergymen of +grandpapa’s generation can’t get away from Genesis. Poor grandpapa. +He’s writing to the _Guardian_, as usual, about the Modern Woman. +She’s dreadfully on his mind. Latchkeys. He doesn’t think women +ought to have them. Why not? He doesn’t explain. Men may open their +front doors with keys, but women must, he thinks, always ring up the +unfortunate maids. He can think of no reasons why; he is past reasons, +but not past convictions. What, he asked in Stanley’s drawing-room the +other day, is to take the place, for women, of the old sanctities and +safeties?” “The new safeties, I imagine, sir,” Denman replied. “Grandpa +grunted and frowned; he thinks women on bicycles really indecent, poor +old dear. As a matter of fact, Denman does, too--at least ungraceful, +which to him is the same thing. But Rome, my dear, you simply must +get one. We’re all doing it now. It’s glorious; the nearest approach +to wings permitted to men and women here below. Intoxicating! Stanley +lives on hers, now her son has safely arrived. And it’s transforming +clothes. Short jackets and cloth caps are coming in. Bustles are +no more. And, my dear--_bloomers_ are seen in the land! Yes, +actually. Stanley cycles in them; she looks delightful, whatever +Denman says. No, I don’t. Charles doesn’t approve. Conspicuous, he +thinks. And, of course, so it is. Well, men will be men. They’ll never +be civilised where women are concerned, most of them. But the poor +silly old world really does march a little. We’re all getting most +thrillingly _fin-de-siècle_. I wonder if all times have been as +deliriously modern, while they lasted, as our times.” + +“Probably,” said Rome. “It’s one of the more certain, though more +ephemeral, qualities that times have. I wonder at what age grandpapa +began deploring it. Not during the Regency or under William the Fourth, +I imagine. I suppose _his_ grandpapa was deploring it then.” + +“Oh, and there’s another shocking female modernism become quite common +this winter, my dear. _Cigarettes!_ I haven’t perpetrated that +myself yet, as Charles thinks that unfeminine too, and I’m sure the +children would steal them and be sick. Besides, I don’t think it really +becoming to an elegant female. But Stanley does. That literary set of +hers is a funny mixture of forwardness and reaction. Forward women +and reactionary men, I think. Grandpapa hasn’t tumbled to Stanley’s +cigarettes yet. My hat, when he does! Well, it’s a funny world. I +suppose my daughters will grow up smoking like their brothers, without +thinking twice about it.... The darlings, they’re all so troublesome +just now. That kindergarten can’t or won’t teach Imogen to speak +properly. If she gabbles like this at three, what will she do at +thirty? And Hughie drawls and contradicts....” + +Their talk then ran along family lines. + + + + + 10 + + STANLEY AND DENMAN + + +Stanley pedalled swiftly, a sturdy, attractive figure in serge +knickerbockers (“bloomers” they were called while that graceful and +sensible fashion of our ancestresses endured), along a smooth, sandy +road between pine woods. The April sunlight flickered on the pale brown +needle-strewn road; the light wind sang in the pines and blew dark +curls of hair from under Stanley’s sailor-hat brim. Her bicycle basket +was full of primroses. Her round, brown cheeks glowed pink; her lips +were parted in a low, tuneless song (tuneless because Stanley could +never get a tune right). It expressed her happiness, relieved the +pressure of her joy at being alive. Such a day! Such a bicycle! Such +sweet and merry air! + +She stopped, got off her bicycle, leant it against a gate, and lay +down flat on her back in the wood, staring up into the green gloom. +London, Denman, her baby, were far off. She was alone with beauty. She +was passionately realising the moment, its fleeting exquisiteness, its +still, fragile beauty. So exquisite it was, so frail and so transitory, +that she could have wept, even as she clasped it close. To savour the +loveliness of moments, to bathe in them as in a wine-gold, sun-warmed +sea, and then to pass on to the next--that was life. + +Then, presently, the moment lost its keenness, and she was no longer +alone with beauty. Her husband and her baby broke the charmed circle, +looking in. How she loved them! But they took from her something; +her loneliness, that queer, eerie separateness, that only bachelors +and spinsters know. They need not, to know it, be unattached, virgin +bachelors and spinsters; love does not spoil separateness, but +households do. + +Stanley rose to her feet, brushed the pine-needles from her neat +clothes and untidy hair, put on her sailor-hat and got on her bicycle +again. Before her there was a long slope down. To take it, brakeless, +feet up on the rest, was like flying. Stanley was no longer a mystic, a +wife or a mother; she was a hoydenish little girl out for a holiday. + +She reached Weybridge station and entrained for London in one of +the halting, smoke-palled, crawling trains of the period. In it she +read Ibsen’s “Doll’s House,” for she and Denman were going to see it +next week at the Independent Theatre. What a play! What moralising! +What purpose! What deplorable solemnity! There seemed, to the set of +light-hearted and cynical æsthetes among whom Stanley moved, nothing +to do about “A Doll’s House” but to laugh at it. These strange, solemn +Scandinavians! Yet numbers of cultured readers in England took it +seriously, as cultured English readers love to take foreign plays. They +found it impressive and fine, almost a gospel. Further, the bourgeois, +the Philistines, the people who are inaccurately said to spend more +time than the elect _in the street_ (why is this believed of +them?), mocked at it, so that there must be something in it, for, as +has been well said (or if it has not, it should have been), majorities +are always wrong. + +“The fact is,” said Stanley to herself, “the fact is, cultivated people +like tracts. Especially cultivated women like tracts about their own +emancipation. And, of course, in a way, they’re right.... But plays +with purposes....” + +It will be observed that Stanley, whom nature had made to welcome +purposes wherever found, had well assimilated the spirit of her +literary group, which preferred art to be for the sake of art only. She +had, as Vicky said of her, so much Zeitgeist. What seemed to her and +her friends the good drama of the moment was light social comedy, full +of gay, sparkling nonsense and epigrams for the sake of epigrams. Or +the more profound and mordant wit of Mr. George Bernard Shaw, who had +lately begun to write plays. Mr. Shaw had, indeed, purpose, but his wit +carried it off. + +Waterloo. Even the trains of 1891 got there at last. Stanley went to +look for her bicycle. Finding it and wheeling it off, she felt herself +to be one of the happiest persons in the station. She had everything. A +bicycle, a husband, a baby, a house, freedom, love, literary and social +opportunity, charming friends. Life was indeed felicitous to such as +she. + +“Progress of Royal Labour Commission,” the newspaper placards shouted. +“More L.C.C. scandals. Free brass bands for the poor!” + +Stanley frowned. It was a damnable world, after all. A vulgar, +grudging, grabbing world. The voice of the press was as the shrill +voice of Amy, the wife of Maurice. “Free brass bands for the poor!” +That was how Amy would say it, with her silly, gibing laugh. Even, a +little, how Irving would say it. But Irving, though he despised the +democratic ways of the London County Council, and free brass bands +for the poor, was not silly or spiteful. He was merely a delightful, +philistine young gentleman on the Stock Exchange. + +Stanley bicycled (amid perils less great, less numerous in the year +1891 than now) to Margaretta Street, Chelsea. There was the house, +small, dingy, white, with a green door and a tiny square of front +garden. Stanley found her latchkey, flung open the green door with a +kind of impetuous, happy eagerness, and came face to face with her +husband in the little hall. + +“Hullo,” he said, and quizzically surveyed her, up and down, from her +blown hair and flushed cheeks to her neat, roomy knickerbockers and +stout brogues. “Hullo.” + +“Hullo, Den. I’ve had the _rippingest_ ride. How’s baby? And +yourself?” + +“Both flourish, I believe.... You know we’ve people to dinner to-night? +You’ve not left yourself a great deal of time, have you?... You don’t +look your best, my dear girl, if I may say so.” + +“No, I expect not; I’m blown to bits. What’s it matter? Come on, Den, +we must both hurry.” + +She ran upstairs, turned hot water into the bath, tiptoed into the +nursery where her son slept, and back to her room. Denman was in his +dressing-room, beyond the open door. + +“I’ve had a lovely ride, Den. Weybridge way.” + +“Glad you enjoyed it. But lovely’s the wrong word. Anything less lovely +than a woman in those unspeakable garments I never saw. I detest them. +Women ought to wear graceful, trailing things always.... I can’t think +why you _do_ it. Your sense of beauty must be sadly defective.” + +“Beauty--oh, well, it’s convenience that matters most, surely. For that +matter, very few modern clothes, male or female, are beautiful. But I +don’t think these are ugly. One can’t trail all the time; it’s a dirty +trick on foot and dangerous on a bicycle.” + +“It’s better to be elegant, dirty and dangerous than frumpish, clean +and safe. That’s an epigram. The fact is, women ought never to indulge +in activities, either of body or mind; it’s not their rôle. They can’t +do it gracefully.” + +“What do you want them to do then, poor things? Just sit about?” + +“Precisely that. You’ve expressed it accurately, if not very +beautifully. An elegant inertia is what is required of women ... what +on earth has that girl done with my black socks?... Any activity +necessary to the human race can be performed by such men as are +prepared to sacrifice themselves. All this feminine pedalling about and +playing ridiculous games and speaking on platforms and writing books +and serving on committees--Lord save us.” + +“They’d get awfully fat, your sitting-about females; they wouldn’t be +graceful long. Hurry up, Den, or you’ll be late, not I.” + +“We shall both be late. It matters very little. If any of our +guests have the bad taste to be punctual it will serve them right. +Crackanthorpe won’t be punctual, anyhow, he never is.... Make yourself +lovely to-night, Stan; I want to forget those awful bloomers. They make +you look like a horrible joke in _Punch_ about the New Woman.” + +“Well, I’d rather look like the New Woman than like the ‘Woman (not +new)’ in the same pictures--sanctimonious idiots.... Really, Den, +you’re silly about women....” + +“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Denman, smothered in his shirt. + +Stanley went to the bathroom with a touch of ill-humour, which she sang +away, like a kettle, in clouds of steam. + +Denman, hearing the tuneless song, winced in amused distaste. As a +matter of fact, he would have liked a bath himself. + + + + + 11 + + A YOUNG MASHER + + +How agreeable, how elegant and how fastidious were the young mashers +of the early nineties! We shall not look upon their like again. Du +Maurier has immortalised them, beautiful creatures with slim waists +and swallow-tailed evening coats and clear-cut patrician features, +chatting to magnificent women with curled mouths, straight brows and +noble, sweeping figures. The women of those days, if we are to believe +Du Maurier, were nobly built as goddesses, classical-featured, generous +of stature and of bosom, but roped in straitly between ribs and hips, +so as to produce waists that nature never planned. Because of this +compression, they would often suffer greatly, and sometimes fall ill +with anæmia, or cancer, or both, and die in great anguish. But, while +they yet lived and breathed, they were noble and elegant objects, and +their gentlemen friends matched them for grace. + +Irving Arthur Penrhyn Garden, aged twenty-eight, earning a comfortable +and honest livelihood on the Stock Exchange, was a masher. He lived in +bachelor chambers in Bruton Street, and was a popular diner-out and +dance-goer, for, though he had not brilliance or fame, he had dark +and slim good looks, cheerfulness, _savoir faire_, and was that +creature so sought of hostesses, an agreeable young bachelor. His +tastes were healthy, his wits sound, his political and religious views +gentlemanly, and his prospects satisfactory. Present correctness and +future prosperity were stamped on Irving Garden; so unlike that queer +fish, his brother Maurice, the Radical journalist, who was stamped +with present incorrectness and future failure. Irving would, no doubt, +make a good marriage sometime. Meanwhile he was enjoying life. He had +no part with the highbrows, the cranks, the fops, the æsthetes or any +other extreme persons; he took no interest in foreign literature, +Home Rule for Ireland, the Woman’s Movement, the Independent Theatre, +labour agitations, the new art, George Meredith, or Russian exiles, +finding them (respectively) uninteresting, impracticable, unattractive, +depressing, paid-by-anarchist-gold, queer, unintelligible and a damned +nuisance. He considered his brother Maurice to be playing the wrong +game; Stanley’s friends he thought an affected, conceited crew, both +the men and the women being unsexed, and for ever writing things one +didn’t want to read. Rome fell too easily into superfluous irony, +so that people never knew when she was pulling their legs, and if +she didn’t marry soon, now that she was over thirty, people would +begin thinking her an old maid. Una was all right, but shouldn’t have +married down. And, though Irving was an affectionate youth and loved +his parents, he did think it a little comic of the pater to change his +religion _quite_ so often; it made people smile. There should be +limits to the number of religions allowed to each man in his life. +Anyhow, what was wrong with the C. of E.? On the whole, Vicky was the +member of his family of whom Irving most approved. Vicky seemed to him +what a woman should be. She looked pretty, dressed and danced well, +was amusing, lived in the right part of London, and gave very decent, +lively little dinners, at which people weren’t always trying to be +clever. Or anyhow _he_ wasn’t asked to the ones at which they +tried to be clever. + +And with all this, Irving was no fool. He was doing very well at his +job, had a good sound head, quite well stocked with ideas, and knew his +way about. + +Such was Irving Arthur Penrhyn Garden, walking cheerfully, gracefully +and competently through the year of grace 1891. + + + + + 12 + + RUSSIAN INTERLUDE + + +That summer Russian refugees were greatly the mode. They would flee +to Great Britain in shoals from the fearful atrocities of their +government. Those who came were mostly of the intellectual classes (the +less intellectual being too stupid to move), who had been plotting, +or writing, or speaking, or otherwise expressing their distaste for +their country’s constitution, and thus incurring the displeasure of the +authorities. Some of them had been sent to Siberia and had escaped; +others had served their time there and returned; others again had not +yet visited that land, but feared that they might. Once in London, they +found kind English intellectuals eager to take an interest in them, +and plenty of their own countrymen with whom to meet and continue to +plot. It was quite the fashion, in the nineties, to have a few exiled +Russians at your parties. They introduced a new way of taking tea, very +nasty, with lemon and no milk. Vicky’s youngest daughter, Imogen, as +an infant, was once given a sip of this tea from the cup of a hairy +Russian professor, and was sent up to the nursery for spewing it out. +Imogen developed thus an early and unjust distaste for Russians which +did not leave her through life. + +In the May of 1891, some new Russian refugees suddenly broke +on London--the unexpected and hitherto little mentioned wife, +mother-in-law and children of Mr. Jayne, the brilliant writer of essays +and memoirs. It had been vaguely rumoured before, that Mr. Jayne had +some kind of Russian wife, but no one had expected her to make an +appearance; it had been supposed that Mr. Jayne, being a man of some +_savoir faire_, would have seen to that. However, here she was, a +large and handsome Russian woman with two large and handsome children, +a stout, tragic, yet conversational mamma, an inconsequent manner of +speech, like that of Russians in novels, and a wide acquaintance with +other Russian refugees, with whom she plotted on Sunday afternoons and +all through Thursday nights. She settled, with her mother and children, +in Mr. Jayne’s flat. Mr. Jayne left the flat to them and took rooms of +his own some way off; he probably thought he would be in the way if he +lived in the flat, where Mrs. Jayne entertained her fellow countrymen +a good deal. Mrs. Jayne accused him bitterly of neglecting her in her +loneliness and grief. He replied that experience had proved that they +were not happy together, and that, therefore, he would provide for the +support of her, her mother and his two children, but would not share a +dwelling with them, which would be both foolish and immoral. He added +that, as she knew, he wished she and her mother would sometime see +their way to living abroad, where they would be much happier. Mrs. +Jayne replied that they intended to live in London until the Day of +Deliverance, by which she meant the day when they could with safety +return to Russia. She then went into hysterics and said that doubtless +he wished her dead. + +Mr. Jayne said, “These scenes make life impossible. You drive me to +leave London. I shall live in Italy for the present. My bank will pay +you an allowance, and I will visit you from time to time.” + +“Why do you hate me so, Franya Stefanovitch?” she cried. + +“I don’t hate you. But you know as well as I do what a poor business we +make of living together. It is one of the worst and most unintelligent +forms of immorality for two people who irritate each other to expose +themselves to misery and anger by living together. Therefore, with no +malice, we will live apart.” + +“There’s another woman. You wish to live with a mistress. I know it.” + +“If you think so, get a divorce.” + +“Never. I will never divorce you. You are my husband, and the father of +my poor little bears. Who ever heard of a faithful husband? We say in +Russia that they are like the golden bear--a fabulous creature. No, I +must put up with your infidelities. But if you leave me for too long I +shall come and find you, and stick a knife into you and your mistress. +I am not patient, Franya.” + +“I never supposed that you were, Olga. And I may tell you, though I do +not expect you to believe me, that I have no mistress, and never have +had.” + +She laughed at him. + +“Ha! ha! Are you the golden bear, then, found at last? Go away with +you, you and your lies. You make me sick.... I wish that you were dead.” + +The last part of this conversation took place at the hall door, and, as +Mr. Jayne went out, a young Russian came in. He was Sergius Dmitri, a +cousin of Mrs. Jayne’s, a student, who had also fled from Russia during +the recent troubles. He was a passionate admirer of his cousin, and +wished very much that she would get rid of this cold, unloving English +husband of hers, and come to live with him. He heard her last words to +Mr. Jayne. + +“Sergius,” she said, seeing him, “I want you to do me a service. Follow +my husband this afternoon and see where he goes and whom he sees. I +suspect him of having a mistress, and I wish to be certain. If he +has, he will go straight to her now.... I’ll be revenged on him, the +villain. After him, Sergius.” + +The young Russian saw Mr. Jayne disappearing round the corner and +hurried after him. + +Mr. Jayne went to call on the Gardens. He took Rome out with him, and +they sat on a bench in the garden in Bloomsbury Square. + +“You must come away with me,” he said. “We will live in Italy. She +hates me. So does her mother. I can’t live in the same town with them, +let alone the same house. I have told her so. I am going to live in +Italy, and work there at my books. Am I to go alone, or will you come?” + +Rome saw across the square the windows of the house of her papa and +mamma. She considered them; she considered also life, in many of its +aspects. She considered international marriages, and unhappy family +life. Love she considered, and hate, the enduringness and the moral and +spiritual consequences of each. She thought of her own happiness, of +Mr. Jayne’s, of Mrs. Jayne’s, of that of their two children. Of social +ethics she thought, and of personal joy, and of human laws, which of +them stand merely on expediency, which on some ultimate virtue. She +thought also of vows, of contracts, and of honour. Having considered +these things, and considering also her very great love for Mr. Jayne +and his for her, she turned to him and opened her lips to reply. + +But the words, whatever they were which she would have uttered--and +neither Mr. Jayne nor anyone else was ever to know--were checked before +her tongue formed them. For someone jumped out of the trees behind the +bench on which they sat, and jabbed a long knife into Mr. Jayne’s back, +between the shoulders, and rushed away. + +Other people near ran up. Mr. Jayne had fallen choking forward. They +did not dare to remove the knife, but carried him out into the square +and into the Gardens’ house, where he lay on his side on a couch, +unconscious, choking and bleeding at the lungs. The doctor was in +attendance in ten minutes, but could do little, and in twenty Mr. Jayne +was dead. + +The assassin had, meanwhile, been captured. He proved to be a Russian, +one Sergius Dmitri, described as a student, living in London. The only +account of his action he gave was that he had known Mr. Jayne in Russia +and disliked him, and that Mr. Jayne had not done his duty by his wife, +who was Sergius Dmitri’s cousin. So Sergius Dmitri had, in a moment of +impulse, knifed Mr. Jayne. No, he could not say that he regretted his +action. + +His record showed him to be of the anarchist persuasion, and a thrower +of several bombs in his native land, some of which had reached their +mark. Human life was not, it was apparent, sacred to him. Mrs. Jayne, +prostrated with grief, cursed him for murdering her husband, the father +of her children, who had devotedly loved her and whom she had devotedly +loved. He had never neglected her; that was a fancy of her cousin’s, +who had been a prey to jealousy. + +Sergius Dmitri was hanged. Mrs. Jayne continued for a time to live +in her husband’s flat, supported by his money, but, soon tiring of +widowhood, married a fellow-countryman and went, with her mother and +children, to live in Paris. + +Miss Garden, who had been so close a witness of the horrid event, and +who was known besides as an intimate friend of Mr. Jayne’s, never +afterwards referred to the affair, even to her relatives. Miss Garden +was no giver of confidences; no one ever learnt how she had felt about +the business or about Mr. Jayne. There were not wanting, of course, +those who said that these two had loved too well, had, in fact, been +involved in an affair. But, in view of Miss Garden’s reputation for +cool inviolability, and of her calm manner after the tragedy, such +rumours obtained little credence. Miss Garden did, indeed, leave London +shortly after the inquest, and spent the rest of the summer in the +country, but she returned in the autumn as apparently bland, cool and +composed as always. + + + + + 13 + + NINETY-TWO + + +Eighteen ninety-two. Mr. Garden was troubled by the death, in January, +of Cardinal Manning, and by the disputes conducted in the press between +Professor Huxley, Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll concerning the +Book of Genesis and the existence of God, which had, in the eyes of all +these eminent persons, some strange connection one with another. Mrs. +Garden’s father, the Dean, was, on the contrary, troubled by neither of +these events, since he did not care for the Cardinal, knew that the +Professor had not, theologically, a leg to stand on, and the Duke, at +most, one. Grandpapa was more stirred, in the early part of 1892, by +the untimely death of the Duke of Clarence, by the alarming increase of +female bicyclists, and by the prevalent nuisance of that popular song, +“Ta-ra-ra-ra-boomdeay.” + +Vicky was stirred by Paderewski, by the influenza epidemic, which all +her children got, and by the new high-shouldered sleeve; Maurice by the +doings of the L.C.C. Progressives, the imminence of the parliamentary +elections, the just claims but ignorant utterances of the Labour +Party, woman’s suffrage, the birth of the _Morning Leader_, and +Mr. Charles Booth’s “Life and Labour in London”; Stanley by woman’s +suffrage, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” the comedies of Mr. Oscar Wilde +and Mr. J. M. Barrie, “The Light That Failed,” and Mr. H. G. Wells; +Irving by golf, Mr. Arthur Roberts, Miss Marie Lloyd and “Sherlock +Holmes”; and Una by the arrival of a new baby and the purchase of a new +hunter. + +Rome was not very greatly stirred by any of these things. Into her +old detached amusement at the queer pageant of life had come a faint +weariness, as if nothing were very much worth while. If she thought +anything worth serious comment, she did not reveal it. Life was to +her at this time more than ever a tale told by an idiot, signifying +nothing. She went on her way as usual, reading, seeing pictures, +hearing music, meeting people, talking, smoking, bicycling, leading the +life led by intelligent dilettanti in the small, cultivated nucleus +of a great city. There was nothing to show that she endured the world +with difficulty; that in the early mornings she would wake and lie +helpless, without armour, waiting the onslaught of the new day, and in +the evenings would slip from her armour with a shivering sigh, to drown +engulfed by darkness and the hopeless passion of the night. “Some day,” +she would say to herself, “I shall not mind so much. The edge will get +blunt. Some day ... some day....” + +But the black night mocked her, and she could not see that day on the +furthermost dip of the horizon; she could only see Mr. Jayne’s dear, +pale face turned to her with wistful hoping in his grey eyes behind +their glasses, and he was saying, “Am I to go alone, or will you come?” +and then, even as, having considered life, she opened her lips to +reply, there was Mr. Jayne lurching forward, choked with blood, his +question answered, for he was to go alone. + +“My dear,” whispered Rome, in tears, to the unanswering, endless +night. “My dear. Come back to me, and I will give you anything and +everything.... But you will never come back, and I can give you nothing +any more.” + +And thus she could not see, however far off, that day when she should +not mind so much, that day when the edge should get blunt. + +Maurice, in 1892, was against very nearly everything. He was against +the Conservative party, for the usual reasons. He was against the +Liberal party, because Mr. Gladstone opposed woman’s suffrage and +the Labour party and the Eight Hour Day. He was against the Woman’s +Suffrage Bill because it was a class Bill. He was against Mr. Keir +Hardie and the new Labour party because they talked what he considered +sentimental tosh, damaging their own cause, and because Amy, his wife, +echoed it parrot-like. He was against the Social Democratic Federation +for the same reasons, and because it did not prevent its members +from making bombs. He was against the socialist meetings in Hyde Park +and Trafalgar Square which he had been used to approve, because they +too talked tosh. More and more, as Maurice advanced from the heat +of youth into the clear-sighted unsentimentality of middle life (he +was now thirty-five), he disliked tosh, and more and more most of +the world seemed to him to be for ever talking it. The people, the +parliamentarians, the press, the government classes, the imperialists, +the democrats, the middle classes, rivalled one another in the flow of +cant and nonsense they emitted. O God, for clear heads and hard facts, +unmuddled by humbug and romanticism! Almost, Maurice was impelled to +vote for Lord Salisbury, whose cool, cynical hardness was a relief; +but, after all, deeper than his hatred of sentimentalism, lay his +hatred of injustice and economic cruelty and class privilege. He was a +democrat impatient with democracy, a journalist despising journalism, +the product of an expensive education at war with educational +inequality, a politician loathing politics, a husband chafing at his +wife, a child of his age in rebellion against it, an agnostic irritated +by the thoughtful, loquacious agnosticism of his day. + +“There seems,” as his mother said of him, “to be no hole into which +Maurice fits. Whereas Stanley fits into them all. They are both too +extreme, dear children. It is neither necessary, surely, to be fighting +everything all one’s time, nor to chase after every wind that blows.... +I sometimes think that the best balanced and the most _solid_ of +you all is Una.” + +“Oh, yes, dear mamma,” Vicky replied. “Una is fast-rooted in the soil. +Country people are always the best balanced. The only new things Una +takes up are bicycles and golf; the only old things she drops are her +_g_’s. Una is eternal and sublime; there’s nothing of the new +woman about her, and nothing of the reactionary, either. There never +was anyone less self-conscious, or less conscious of her period. All +the rest of us think we’re moderns, but Una knows not times; she merely +swings along, her dogs at her heels, her children at her skirts, her +golf-clubs over her shoulder, and always another baby on the way. And +the beauty of the child! She’d make a sensation in London--though she’s +not the type of the moment, not elegant or artificial, too much the +unsophisticated child of nature. Oh, yes, Una is on the grand scale.” + +“Well, your grandfather thinks even Una is too modern. It’s the golf +and bicycling and the _g_’s, I suppose. I suppose the fact is that +it’s difficult, in these days, to avoid being new. You children and +your friends all are. In fact, the whole world seems to be.” + +“The world is always new, mamma darling, and always old. It’s no newer +than it was in 1880, or 1870--in fact, not so new, by some years. The +only year in which it was really new was, according to grandpapa and +the annotators of the Book of Genesis, B.C. 4004.” + +“Yes, I daresay it was sadly new then, and no doubt grandpapa would +have found it so. But somehow one hears the _word_ a good deal +just now, used by young people as well as old. What with new women, +and new art, and new literature, and new humour, and the new hedonism +that Denman and Stanley talk about, and that seems to mean making your +drawing-room like an old curiosity shop and burning incense in it and +lighting it with darkened crimson lamps and lying on divans with black +and gold cushions and smoking scented cigarettes and reading improper +plays aloud.... Only Rome says that isn’t new in the least, but +thousands of years old.” + +“Oh, Rome! Rome thinks nothing new. She was born blasé. She hasn’t got +grandpapa’s or Stanley’s fresh mind. She always expects the unexpected. +Oscar Wilde says that to do that shows a thoroughly modern mind. If +Rome had been Eve, she’d have looked at the new world through a monocle +(she’d have worn that, even if nothing else) and seen that it was +stale, and said with a yawn, All this is very _vieux jeu_.” + +“And very possibly,” said mamma, “it was.” + + + + + 14 + + FIN-DE-SIÈCLE + + +Ninety-three passed. In it grandpapa died, others said of influenza +following on old age, but he himself would have it that it was of a +shock he received one day when driving, convalescent, in Hyde Park; +for his horses, very respectable and old-fashioned animals, shied at a +lady bicyclist, and grandpapa’s heart jolted, and when he got home he +took to his bed and never rose again. So much, he whispered, hoarsely +and somewhat sardonically, to his daughter, for the New Woman and her +pranks. But what did it signify, he added. If he was not to get well +of this attack, he was ready to go. He trusted (though a worm) in his +Maker, and was not unprepared. So grandpapa, dignified to the last, +departed from this life, one of the last of the Regency bucks and the +Tory clerics, perhaps the last of all to condemn on theological grounds +the arithmetic book of Bishop Colenso. + +Fantastic observers might have imagined that, with the departure of +this firm old Victorian, who had so disapproved of novelty, life span +still more giddily on its rapid way. Certainly the years 1893 and 1894 +do, for some reason, appear to have struck both those who gloried +in novelty, and those whom it shocked, as more than usually new. +The audacious experimentalism which is always with us was even more +self-conscious then than is customary. Such are time’s revenges that +the so daring social, literary and intellectual cleavages made by our +forefathers in those years are now regarded as quaintly old-fashioned +compromises with freedom, even as our own audacities will doubtless be +regarded thirty years hence. But the people of the nineties, even as +the people of the eighties, seventies, sixties, and so back, and even +as the people of the twentieth century, thought they were emancipating +themselves from tradition, saw themselves as bold buccaneers sailing +uncharted seas, and found it great fun. The illusion of advance is +sustaining, to all right-minded persons, and should by all means be +cultivated. It gives self-confidence and poise. It even seems to please +elderly persons to mark or fancy changes of habit, which they have no +wish to emulate, among their juniors, and it certainly pleases their +juniors to be thus remarked upon, for they, too, believe that they +are something new--the new young, as they have always delighted to +call themselves--so all are pleased and no harm is done. The eighteen +nineties were no different in this respect, from the nineteen twenties. + +But 1894 does actually seem to have been a more amusing year than most +that we have now. What with the New Humour, and the New Earnestness, +and the New Writers, and the New Remorse, and the New Woman, and +the New Drama, and the New Journalism, and the New Child, and the +New Parent, and the New Conversation, and the telephone, and the +gramophone, and the new enormous sleeves, there was a great deal of +novelty about. + +It is a curious time to look back upon to-day. Curious to read the +newspapers, reviews and comic papers of the time; to find, for +instance, in the _Observer_ a leading article on the last novel +of Mrs. Humphry Ward, as if it were a European event, and one the +next Sunday on “What is the modern girl coming to, for she opens her +front door with a key?” To come, too, on reviews of Mr. Hall Caine’s +“Manxman,” such as that by Mr. Edmund Gosse in the _St. James’ +Gazette_--“A contribution to literature, and the most fastidious +critic would give in exchange for it a wilderness of that deciduous +trash which our publishers call fiction. It is not possible to +part from it without a warm tribute of approval.” But how possible +it has now become! Indeed, in our times it has been known that a +certain author, having in an unguarded hour committed to print an +appreciation of this famous writer, and then having learnt his mistake, +has changed his name and started life again, unable otherwise to +support his disgrace. _Autres temps, autres mœurs._ Certainly +the nineties were a long time ago. Strange, too, to read some of the +contemporary press comments on that innocent, well-produced, extremely +well-illustrated, and on the whole capable periodical, the _Yellow +Book_--“the outcry,” as Mr. Arthur Symons put it later, when the +publication of the _Savoy_ was greeted with much the same noise, +“the outcry for no reason in the world but the human necessity for +making a noise.” You would think that the worst that could be said of +the _Yellow Book_ was that it was not eclectic, that it opened +its hospitable doors to the worse writers as well as to the better, +and that its intellectually lowest contributions were too widely +sundered from its highest; and the best that could be said for it +(and how much this is!) is that Aubrey Beardsley drew for it, Henry +James and Max Beerbohm wrote prose for it, and W. B. Yeats poetry, and +that it had, on the whole, some of the more capable writers of the +day as contributors. But, in point of fact, the best that was said of +it was that it was brilliant, daring, courageous, new and intensely +modern, and the worst that it was bizarre, revolting, affected, new and +decadent. It appears to a later generation to have been none of these +things; that is, it was brilliant in patches only, and commonplace +in patches; it was not daring except in that it is greatly daring to +publish any periodical ever; it was not more intensely modern than +everything always is, and most of its contributors were middle-aged; +its weak and trite contributions (though indeed it did at times sink +pretty low) were too few to allow of the word revolting being properly +applied to the whole magazine, even by him whom Mr. Gosse called, in +another context, the most fastidious critic; and as for decadent, this +it may, indeed, have been, as no one has ever discovered what, if +anything, this word, as generally used at this time, meant. Exhibiting +those qualities which mark the decline of a great period, it should +mean: whereas many of those who survive from the nineties maintain +that, on the other hand, they marked the beginning of a good period. +Or it may mean merely less good than its predecessors, and this the +_Yellow Book_ was assuredly not, but quite the contrary. It was, +in fact, not unlike various capable, well-produced periodicals of our +own day. Many of its surviving contributors contribute now to these +newer journals. But how seldom does one now hear them or their writings +or the periodicals to which they contribute called ultra-modern, +daring, shocking, decadent or bizarre? Rather, in fact, the contrary. +Thus, it will be observed, do the moderns of one day become the safe +establishments of the next. In ten years the public will be saying +of our present moderns, “They are safe. They are _vieux jeu_. +They resemble cathedrals.” What a death’s head at the feast of life +is this fearful fate which is suspended before even the newest of us, +and which, if we survive long enough, we shall by no means avoid. +Happy, possibly, were those moderns of the nineties who died with +their modernity still enveloping them, so that no one shall ever call +them cathedrals. Gloriously decadent, though no longer new, they shall +for ever remain, and no man shall call Aubrey Beardsley respectable, +established or dull, for he belonged to the Beardsley period, and, +though he may be outmoded, he shall never be outrun. + + + + + 15 + + AT THE CROFTS’ + + +The Denman Crofts thought it was delightfully new of them to have to +one of their Sunday evenings a good-looking young pickpocket and a +handsome woman whose profession it was to ply for hire on the streets. +The pickpocket had been captured with his hand in Stanley’s pocket, +and brought home to supper as an alternative to being delivered to +the constabulary, for three reasons: first, he was good-looking, and +masculine beauty was in fashion that year; secondly, he was a sinner, +and sins were talked of with approbation just then by the most modern +literary set, particularly strange sins of divers colours, and as no +one knew which sins were strange or coloured and which were plain, it +might be that picking pockets was as strange and as coloured as any. +Thirdly, to have a pickpocket at a Sunday evening party was New, and +the other guests would be pleased and envious. The lady was there for +reasons very similar, and both were a great success. Everyone treated +them with friendliness and tact, so that they soon ceased to be shy, +though remaining to the end a trifle puzzled and suspicious, and not +very fluent in conversation. Possibly, their host suggested to Rome, +they were suffering from an embarrassing attack of the New Remorse. + +“Strange sinners certainly seem a little _difficile_,” agreed +Rome, who had been making exhausting efforts with the pickpocket, “and +loose livers sometimes appear to be rather tight talkers. Your protégés +cannot be said precisely to birrell.” + +“Anyhow, dear Denman,” added a graceful young gentleman at her side, +“picking pockets is a banal vice. I should scarcely call it a vice at +all; it is nearly as innocent as picking cowslips on a May morning. +I wish I could have procured you a lady who knelt in front of me in +church yesterday afternoon while I was waiting to make my confession. +She was improving the time by extracting the contents of the reticule +left in the seat next her by the penitent who had gone up to her duties +before her. A piquant idea, for she would get absolution almost in the +moment of sinning.” + +“Well,” said Denman, “we did the best we could at short notice. I would +have preferred to have obtained a bomb-fiend. The latest vice, you +know, is secreting bombs in Hyde Park. We shall all be doing it soon. +It is reported to be even more stimulating than secreting opium. There +is no need, unless desired, ever to find the bombs again, still less +to use them; that is an extension of the vice, only practised by those +who wish to qualify as extremists, or bomb-fiends. The ordinary victims +of the bomb habit merely secrete; they make a cache, and store away +bombs as squirrels’ nuts. A pretty habit, but ceasing by now even to be +strange. It is deplorable how the best vices become vulgarised. Rome, +will you join me in a bomb-secreting orgy to-morrow at dusk?” + +“By all means, Denman. It would restore my spirits. I have been sadly +depressed lately by reading in one week Sarah Grand, ‘A Yellow Aster,’ +‘Marcella,’ ‘The Manxman,’ and Mr. Zangwill and Mrs. Lynn Linton in +the _New Review_ on ‘What Women Should Know.’ There is no more +spirit in me. Though I was a little revived by the ‘Green Carnation.’ +An entrancing work, about all of us. But really entertaining.” + +“Why such a desperate orgy of literature? I thought you were of a more +fastidious habit--not like Stanley, who insists on reading everything, +even ‘Discords’ and the Dreyfus case. I can seldom read any novels. I +find their reviews enough, if not too much. I read of ‘The Manxman’ +that it would be read and re-read by many thousands with human tears +and human laughter, and that settled ‘The Manxman.’ Where do reviewers +get their inimitably delicious phrases from? And if one asked them +with the tears and laughter of what animal other than the human animal +could human beings read, or even re-read, a book, how would they reply? +Perhaps in the same way that old Meredith did the other day when Dick +Le Gallienne asked him to give the public a few words to explain his +peculiar style. ‘Posterity will still be explaining me, long after I am +dead. Why, then, should I forestal their labours?’” + +“I wonder,” Rome mused, “if posterity will really be so diligent and +so intelligent as their ancestors seem to think. People always say +they write for posterity when they are not appreciated at the moment. +They seem to imagine posterity as a smug and spectacled best scholar, +spending its time delving among the chronicles of wasted years in +the reading-room of the British Museum, and hailing with rapture the +literary efforts of their ancestors.” + +“Whereas I,” said Denman, “see posterity as a leaping savage, enjoying +nameless orgies among the ruins of our civilisation, but not enjoying +literature. Possibly, even, there will be no posterity. The débâcle of +our civilisation--and it’s obviously too good to last--may mean the +débâcle of the world itself. I hope so. _A bas le_ posterity, I +say. Who wants it? I scorn to write for it, or to plant horrible little +baby trees for it, or to suck up to it in any way whatsoever. Crude and +uncultured savage. _Vive l’aujourd’hui!_” + +“And I,” said Rome, “see posterity as a being precisely like ourselves. +It will read every morning in its newspapers, just as we do, that our +relations with France are strained, that so many people have been +murdered, born, divorced, married, that such and such a war is in +progress, that such and such a law has been passed, or speech made, +or book published, and it will know, just as we do, that none of it +matters in the least.... I’ve no grudge against posterity. Let it have +its little day.” + +“It will,” said the graceful young man, with gloom. “I can’t share +Denman’s faith in the approaching annihilation of humanity. Humanity +in general is much too bourgeois and uninteresting to do anything but +increase greatly and keep the earth replenished. It is impossible to +imagine that the gods love it. _We_ shall perish; we, the fine +exotic flower of an effete civilisation--(by the way, how exquisitely +lovely and innocently wicked Lady Pember looks to-night; she, not the +cow-like young woman talking to Mrs. Croft ought to be the strange +scarlet--or is it mauve--sinner)--but we are a small minority. The +majority, which hasn’t even the art of gracefully fading out, will +heavily continue. It is thus that I picture posterity--a ponderous +suburban bourgeois in mutton-chop whiskers or tight stays, sniffing +at our poetry, our wit and our _Yellow Book_, and saying, ‘How +decadent they were in the nineties!’ By the way, what does decadent +mean? I always understood that man fell once and for all, long ago, +and could not therefore be falling still. I prefer deciduous. How +deliciously it slides round the tongue, like an over-ripe peach. I +wonder it is not more used in verse. To me it suggests a creamy green +absinthe, or a long, close kiss on moist, coral-pink lips. Disgusting. +I detest moist lips, and absinthe makes me feel sick, though I try and +pretend it doesn’t.” + +Stanley, charming and smiling, with her pleasant round, brown face, +lively deep blue eye, and enormous box sleeve, darted across the room +to them. + +“Den, we _must_ remove our strange sinners now. I’m worn out +with them. They’ll neither of them say more than yes, no, and eh, and +they’ve both drunk too much already, and keeping one eye on Mr. Sykes +lest he get too near people’s pockets and the other on the lady lest +she get hold of more whiskey, is too heavy a responsibility. You must +take them away. And then Lady Pember wants to talk to you, darling.” + +Denman gave her a queer, quick look out of his narrow, smiling eyes, as +he turned away. + +“And Rome, love, I want to bring Aubrey Beardsley to you. He is being +assaulted by Miss Carruthers, who has been reading ‘Marcella,’ ‘Our +Manifold Nature,’ by Sarah Grand, and the newspapers, and wants to +know what he thinks of the Emancipation of Women, the Double Standard +of Morality, and the approaching death of Mr. Froude. Poor Aubrey has +never thought of any of them; he takes no interest in emancipations, +and his taste in women is most reactionary--anyone could tell that, +from the ladies he draws; he thinks any other kind most unwholesome; he +never reads protestant historians; and he has never thought about even +a single standard of morality. Double standard, indeed! As if there +weren’t as many standards as there are people.” + +“Not nearly, Mrs. Croft, fortunately. I’m sure Aubrey himself can’t +contribute one; nor can I. But it is stupid of Aubrey not to read poor +Mr. Froude. He is such a noble and happy liar. He really does practise +lying for lying’s sake--not like Macaulay, mere utilitarian lying, for +principle’s sake, though he does some of that too. Froude is an artist. +He will be missed, even though he is a protestant. He hates accuracy +with as much passion as the good popes hated thought, as Oscar Wilde +says somewhere à propos of something else. (Oscar’s grammar is so +often loose.) How right both Mr. Froude and the good popes are! Look +at Denman being firm with the sinners; how delightfully he does it; he +would make a good prison warder.” + +“The sinners,” said Miss Garden, regarding them through her monocle, +“certainly are rather strange. I am afraid they have both drunk to +excess. There, now he has piloted them safely to the door; that is +a relief. Yes, Stanley, do fetch me Mr. Beardsley. Will he shock me +to-night? I was told that the other evening he shocked his table at +the Café Royal to death by his talk. John Lane had to remove him. It +is possible to go too far even for the Café Royal, and he did it. I +suppose that is why he is looking so elated to-night, like Alexander +seeking fresh worlds to conquer. ‘He shocked the Café Royal.’ What +an epitaph! On the other hand, I hear that he was shocked himself +the other day. Mr. Henley did it, in bluff mood, at a party at the +Pennells’. How do you do, Mr. Beardsley?” + + + + + 16 + + DIVORCE AT THE CROFTS’ + + +It did not last, the Crofts’ marriage. In the spring of ’95, Stanley +wearied of her husband’s infidelities, and could not bear them any +more. As to Denman, he felt often, though he loved her, that he had +married a young woman who had her tiresome aspects; she was a feminist, +a prig, she tried to write, and badly at that, she was still over-much +concerned with public affairs, with committees, with the emancipation +(save the mark!) of women. And she was for ever fussing over the +children, who should be treated as amusing toys. He loved her, but +she tried him often. She was strident, obstinate, stupidly in earnest +about things that seemed to him to demand a light indifference; then, +cumbrously, she would try to adopt his tone, and fail. Marriage. Well, +it presented great difficulties. He sighed sometimes for the freedom +of his bachelor days. Meanwhile, life had its moments, exquisite, +fleeting, frail. And at these Stanley, who was not really stupid, +guessed quite accurately, and was stabbed by each afresh until her very +life-blood seemed to drain away, leaving her, so she felt, a helpless +ghost of a woman, without assurance, heart or power to go on, but only +her stabbed love and a proud, burning rage. And, in the spring of ’95, +she broached this matter of divorce. + +He asked her forgiveness. + +“I can’t help it, Stanley. I suppose it’s the way I’m made.... The +queer thing is, I’ve loved you all the time. You can’t understand that. +Women are so--so monogamous.” + +“That old cliché, Den! It isn’t clever enough for you. Some men +are monogamous. Some men couldn’t love several women at the same +time. And some women can.... I’m dead sick of it, anyhow. All this +beastly philandering. It’s merely trivial. It _means_ nothing. +It’s turning life and love into a parlour game. Do you take nothing +seriously, Denman--not your relations with people, or with love, or +with life--not even your fatherhood?” + +“Oh, don’t preach at me. I’m a waster, if you like, and let’s leave it +at that.... I’m damnably sorry for everything, of course.... But you’re +not altogether and always easy to live with, you know. All this stuff +about women, for instance ... you know how I hate it....” + +“You know how I hate _your_ stuff about women, if we are to drag +in that now.... Oh, Den, don’t let’s be childish. What does all that +matter now? We’re up against a much bigger thing than a difference of +opinion about the suffrage.” + +“You can’t forgive me, of course. And I suppose you’re justified.” + +“Oh, I suppose I could forgive you. I could forgive you anything, +perhaps. I have before, after all. But I think I had better not, for +all our sakes. You’d rather be free, wouldn’t you? Oh, you needn’t +answer. I know you’d rather be free. I don’t suspect you of wanting to +live permanently with Alice Pember, or with anyone else; you just want +to be free and irresponsible, and make love to whom you like. Well, you +shall. I shan’t keep you. You’re not meant for a husband and father, +and you’ve tired yourself long enough trying to be one. You can drop it +now.” + +“I suppose you’re right, from your point of view. You’d better divorce +me.... I’m terribly sorry, Stan. We were so tremendously happy once.” + +“Don’t.” Stanley caught her breath and sharply bit her lip. “You’ve no +right to talk of that. That’s all past. We’ve not been happy for a long +time now.... And you know you despise me and think me a fool.... Oh, +what’s the use of talking?...” + +Three days later Stanley, with her son and daughter, aged four and +two, left her husband’s house and took up her temporary abode with her +parents, while her divorce suit slowly prepared itself. + +“Divorce is damnable,” Stanley said to Rome. “Why should people be +penalised by having to go through this ghastly business, with all +its loathsome publicity, merely because they wish to annul a private +contract which only concerns themselves? Why shouldn’t they be able to +go to a lawyer together and say, ‘Annul this contract,’ as with any +other contract? Instead of which, if it’s even suspected that they +_both_ want it annulled, they’re not allowed to do it at all; and +if it’s the wife who wants it, they have to fake up this ridiculous +cruelty-or-desertion business. And, above all, why should we be +gibbetted in the newspapers for doing a purely private piece of legal +business? Why, in the name of decency and common-sense, should a thing +become public news merely because it occurs in a law-court? And is our +whole English constitution and system so rotten because we are rotten, +or aren’t our laws a long way behind public opinion?... Sometimes I +think I can’t go through with it, it’s all so beastly, but that we’ll +just live apart without a divorce. But I know that wouldn’t do. There’s +got to be something desperately final between Denman and me, or we +might be coming together again, when he’s tired of Alice Pember. I +love him so much, beneath everything, that if he wanted to I probably +should. And I know it would be no use. We should make nothing of it +now. It would be bad for both of us, and worse for Billy and Molly. And +it would all happen again. No, it’s got to be a clean cut, even if the +imbecile state only allows us to have it on these disgusting terms.... +Sometimes, Rome, I think the whole world and its laws and systems and +conventions is just a lunatic asylum.” + +“I’ve always known that, my dear. What else should it be?” + +“_Rome, how does one bear it?_” + +Stanley, whose way it was to express her joys and griefs--she was not +self-contained, like Rome--was pacing up and down the room, her hands +clenched behind her, her cheeks flushed with feverish, waking nights, +her eyes heavy under sullen brows. + +“I hardly know,” Rome answered her, gently. “I hardly know. But, +somehow, one goes on, and one learns to be amused again.... I am hoping +that when one is elderly one will mind less. You _will_ mind +less, Stanley, in a few years. Life’s so strong, it carries one on all +the time to new things. Particularly, I think, you, because you are so +alive. You’ll come through even this desperate business.” + +Stanley said, “Life’s broken to bits. I was so happy once.... Broken +to jagged bits,” and left the room to cry. For, contrary to a common +belief, those who feel most usually cry most too. Stanley was afraid +that she was contracting a tearful habit such as she might never +outgrow, but she did not much care. She did not much care for anything +in these days. + +She missed Denman. Missing him was like the continual sharp ache of +a gathered tooth. She missed his charm, his brilliance, his love, +his careless, casual ways, his intense life, his soft, husky voice, +the smile on his queer white face and narrow eyes. She missed his +gay, youthful talk, the parties and plays they had been used to go to +together, his constant presence in the house. She would wake in the +nights, thinking he lay beside her, and that his arm would be thrown, +in a half waking caress, across her; but he was not there. She would +wake in the mornings, thinking to see his rumpled brown head sunk in +the pillow beside hers; but there was no head and no pillow but her +own. When her son and daughter entered her room in the morning and +climbed upon her bed, after the irritating manner of infants, and woke +her by pulling at her two dark plaits, she would open drowsy eyes that +looked for her husband’s short, delightful face smiling above her; but +there were only the two young children, with their restless antics +and imbecile prattlings. Fatuous beings! One day she would enjoy them +again, antics, fatuity and all, even as she had enjoyed them before, +but in these days her love for them lay frozen and almost lifeless, +with all other love but that one love that tore at her heart with +fierce, clawing fingers. It seemed that this love and this anguish +consumed her wholly, leaving nothing over. She had never been first a +mother; she had been first an individual, a human creature sensitively +reacting to all the contacts of the engrossing world, and secondly she +had been a wife, a woman who loved a man. A mother, perhaps, third. +And now the secondary function, in its death agony, had taken entire +possession, and she was no longer either an individual creature or a +mother, but only a lover who had lost all. + +To tear him out of her heart--that was her constant object. And if the +heart (since we are, by foolish custom, so impelled to call the seat of +the affections) had been alone involved, she might have done so. But +who should tear the beloved from the roots he had in her whole daily +life for five years, from his place in her mind, her brain, her body, +her whole being? She knew him for a philanderer, a trivial taster in +love and life; selfish, spoilt, vain, with idiotic opinions about one +half of the human race. It was, indeed, her knowledge of all this in +him that informed her brain that their separation must be final and +complete. But, with it all, she could not tear him from her heart, her +soul, her body, her entire and constant life. He was herself, and she +herself was being torn in two. + +Life was a continual anguish. She saw that she must leave her parents’ +home and live alone. She was bringing misery into Bloomsbury Square. +And daily, night and morning, her parents kissed her, and their kisses +were to her, who craved so bitterly those kisses that she might no +longer have, a continual reminder and torment. She was trying to shut +off that side of life, but they did not understand, and kissed her. +Rome, who understood too well, did not kiss her. She knew that she must +be alone with her children, that she was no fit housemate for a loving +family or friends. So, presently, she went into rooms, and this was a +more bearable loneliness. + +But it left more time on her hands; more time in which to brood on +life, on love, on illusion, on women and on men. How had she failed +in this job of marriage, of constructing an enduring life with a +man she had loved, who had loved her? How had they both failed? How +frequent was this failure! It seemed that love was not enough. Such +deep misunderstandings prevail, between any two human beings. Sex +bridges many of them, but not all. Stanley began, at this time, to +generalise dangerously and inaccurately (since all such generalisations +are inaccurate) about women and about men. She saw women as eager, +restless, nervous children, chattering, discussing, joking, turning +the world upside down together while they smoked or brushed their +hair, and all to so little purpose. Meanwhile there were men; the sex; +sphinx-like, placid, inscrutable, practical, doing the next thing, +gently smiling at the fuss women made about ideas. Men knew that they +did not matter, these excitements and fusses of women, any more than +the toys children play with matter. They dismissed them with that +serene smile of theirs, and busied themselves with the elemental, +enduring things: sex, fatherhood, work. They knew what mattered; they +went for the essentials. They didn’t waste their time frothing about +with words and ideas. Men were somehow admirable, in their strong +stability. Their nervous systems were so magnificent. They could kill +animals without feeling sick, break the necks of fishes, put worms +on hooks, shoot rabbits and birds, jab bayonets into bodies. Women +would never amount to much in this world, because they nearly all have +a nervous disease; they are strung on wires; they are like children +frightened of the dark and excited by the day. It seems fundamental, +this difference between the nerves of most women and most men. You see +it among little girls and boys; most little boys, but how few little +girls, can squash insects and kill rabbits without a qualm. It is this +difference which gives even a stupid man often a greater mastery over +life than a clever woman. He is not frightened by life. Women, for +the most part, are. Life may be a joke to them, but it is often also +a nightmare. To the average man it is neither. Men are marvellously +restful. Eternal symbols of parenthood and the stability of life, to +which women come back, as to strong towers of refuge, after their +excursions and alarms. + +This was the kind of nonsense which Stanley wove to herself during +these unbalanced days of her life. Nonsense, because all generalities +about human beings are nonsense. But many people, including Stanley, +find interest in making them up, and it is a harmless game. + + + + + 17 + + PANTA REI + + +It seemed to Stanley, through this spring and summer of 1895, that a +phase was over, not only in her own life, which was apt so faithfully +to mirror the fleeting times, but in the world at large. That literary, +artistic and social movement so vaguely described as “decadent” by +those who could scarcely define that or any other word, nor would +greatly care to if they could, seemed to be on the wane. The trial and +conviction of Mr. Oscar Wilde did it no good, and the many who had been +unjust towards the movement before became unjuster still, adopting an +“I told you so” air, which mattered as little as any other air adopted +by those of like mentality, but which had, nevertheless, its effect on +strengthening the forces of so-called healthy philistines in the land. +As a contemporary poet sang: + + “If these be artists, then may Philistines + Arise, plain sturdy Britons as of yore, + And sweep them off, and purge away the signs + That England e’er such noxious offspring bore.” + +Even the anti-Philistines, the so-called decadents themselves, were +disconcerted and shaken by this public débâcle of one of the most +prominent of their number. “Those who write, draw and talk in this +clever new manner that we have never liked,” said the Philistines, +firmly assured, “are obviously as unpleasant as, even more unpleasant +than, we have believed.” “They might as well say,” said the practisers +of the elegant, clever new manner, “that because Ladas, owned by +a Liberal leader, won the Derby last year, all Liberals are as +intelligent about horses, even more intelligent about horses than they +have believed. They might as well say....” But it is of no use to tell +people of this mentality what they might as well say. They will as +likely as not proceed to say it, and it is very certain that they will +not therefrom see the absurdity of that which they have already said. +There is, in fact, no way of dealing with these persons; they are the +world’s masters, laying the ponderous weight of their foolish and heavy +minds upon all subtleties, delicacies and discriminations to flatten +them, talking very loudly, firmly and fatuously the while through their +hats, and through their mouthpiece, the press. There is no dealing +with them; it is they who make England, and indeed the world, what it +is. “This nation believes ...” “The people of this country have always +held ...” says the press, grandly, as if indeed _that_ made it +any more likely to be true, instead of far less. “This asylum has +always believed that the best form of government is a party system,” +the newspapers published in asylums no doubt continually remark. “The +inhabitants of this asylum have always said....” + +And so much for public opinion. + +Anyhow, from whatever cause, there began at this time, to put it +briefly, a slump in decadence. Max Nordau wrote this year, with his +customary exaggeration, his essay on “_Fin-de-siècle_.” + +“An epoch of history is unmistakably in its decline, and another is +approaching its birth. There is a sound of rending in every tradition, +and it is as though the morrow could not link itself with to-day. +Things as they are totter and plunge, and they are suffered to reel and +fall because man is weary, and there is no faith that it is worth an +effort to uphold them. Views that have hitherto governed minds are dead +or driven hence like disenthroned kings. Meanwhile interregnum, in all +its terror, prevails.... Such is the spectacle presented by the doings +of men in the reddened light of the Dusk of the Nations.” + +Max Nordau was a man of imagination, and had an excessive way of +putting things, and seems to have been hypnotised by the arbitrary +divisions into which man has chopped time; but, whatever he may have +meant, it is quite true that no period is precisely like another, +and that life is, as has been well said, a flux. In brief, _panta +rei_, and no less in the middle nineties than at other times. + + + + + 18 + + RELIGION + + +Of the many impulsions that drive human beings to one form or +another of religion, the strongest, perhaps, is pain. The other +impulsions--conscience, the mystic sense, personal influence, +conviction, experimentalism, loneliness, boredom, remorse, and so +forth--all work powerfully on their respective subjects. But pain, +mental anguish so great that human nature is driven by it from cover to +cover, seeking refuge and finding none, is the most powerful and the +most frequent agent for the churches. “There is no help for me in this +world,” tortured human creatures cry, and are often driven by that cry +to questioning whether there may not, perhaps, be help in some other. +Anyhow, they think, it is worth the experiment, and the experiment +proves an anodyne and a gate of escape from what could scarcely, +otherwise, be borne. + +Such was Stanley Croft’s method of approach to a closer contact with +religion than any she had had before, though, before her marriage, +she had had a mystical belief in God, which had, during the last +five years, all but died out in an atmosphere not well suited to it. +Now it returned to her again, touched with just enough remorse for +past neglect as might serve for a temperate shadow of that hectic +and enjoyable repentance which drove, then and later, so many of +her literary contemporaries into the fold of the Catholic Church. +In reality, perhaps, though it seemed that pain was her immediate +impeller, it was ultimately, as usual, the spirit of her age which +seized her and drove her to prayer. + +She would turn into dark and silent churches, seeking desperately the +relief from herself that life denied her, and fall on her knees and +there stay, numb and helpless, her forehead dropped on her arms, till +the sweet, often incense-laden atmosphere (for that was the kind of +church she preferred) enveloped her like a warm and healing garment, +and she whispered into the dim silence, “God! God! If you are there, +speak to me and help me! God! God! God!” + +From that cry, for long the only prayer she could utter, other prayers +at last grew. The silence melted round her and became a living thing; +the red sanctuary lamp was as the light of God flaming in a dim world, +a light shining in darkness, and the darkness encompassed it not. The +undefeated life of God, burning like a brave star in a stormy night, +by which broken, all but foundered ships might steer. It was so that +Stanley saw it, and slowly it did actually guide her to a kind of +painful peace. + +“I wish the poor child would join the true Church,” Mr. Garden said to +Mrs. Garden, for he was still, though now a little dubiously, a member +of that church. “I think it would help her.” + +Mamma looked sceptical. + +“I think not, Aubrey. She doesn’t want to be bothered with joining +churches just now, and she certainly has no energy to give to it. +Besides, she likes English Catholicism. It has, you must admit, rather +more liberty of thought than your branch.” (Mamma knew, having tried +both more than once.) “Besides,” she added, quickly, to change the +subject from liberty of thought, which always in these days made papa +look sad--in fact, she had mentioned it in a moment of carelessness +which she immediately regretted--“besides, there is the divorce.” + +Papa sighed and looked sadder than ever. + +“Yes. This horrid, this distressing business. I wish she may give it up +before it is too late. Even High Anglicanism does not allow divorce.” + +“On that point,” said mamma, “and, I fancy, on a good many others, +Stanley does not agree with High Anglicanism. Fortunately that does not +prevent her from finding comfort in its forms of worship. I am only +thankful that she can. It is hard for those in trouble who have no +faith in another world.” Possibly her mind had turned to Rome, whose +faith in worlds, either this we live in or any other, was negligible. + +But papa’s mind was turned inward, upon his own torn soul. Mamma +watched him with experienced anxiety. She knew the signs, and feared +that the Mother of the Churches would not for long hold papa in her +firm arms. Dear Aubrey; he was so restless. And he had lately been +reading a lot of odd, mystic books.... + + + + + 19 + + CELTIC TWILIGHT + + +It was very certain that Stanley would not join the Roman Church. +She had too mystic an imagination to enter any body so definite and +sharp of doctrine. She was more at one at this time with the Celtic +poets, with their opening of strange gates onto dim magic lands. The +loveliness, like the wavering, lovely rhythms of the sea, of W. B. +Yeats, took her, as it took her whole generation, by storm; the tired +twilight sadness of Fiona Macleod was balm to her. + + “_O years with tears, and tears through weary years, + How weary I, who in your arms have lain; + Now I am tired: the sound of slipping spears + Moves soft, and tears fall in a bloody rain, + And the chill footless years go over me, who am slain._ + + _I hear, as in a wood dim with old light, the rain + Slow falling; old, old weary human tears, + And in the deepening dusk my comfort is my pain, + Sole comfort left of all my hopes and fears, + Pain that alone survives, gaunt hound of the shadowy years._” + +And + + “_Between the grey pastures and the dark wood + A valley of white poppies is lit by the low moon, + It is the grave of dreams, a holy rood._ + + _It is quiet there: no wind doth ever fall. + Long, long ago a wind sang once a heart-sweet rune. + Now the white poppies grow, silent and tall._ + + _A white bird floats there like a drifting leaf: + It feeds upon faint sweet hopes and perishing dreams, + And the still breath of unremembering grief._ + + _And as a silent leaf the white bird passes, + Winnowing the dusk by dim, forgetful streams. + I am alone now among the silent grasses._” + +In such soft and melancholy enchantment as this Stanley’s desolation +found, for a time, comfort. + +(Vicky’s Imogen, aged seven, found this book at her grandparents’ house +one day, opened it, read, breathing noisily for excitement, and tucked +it furtively away in the pouch of her sailor frock, where she often +kept rabbits, or eggs for hatching. She bore it home undiscovered, and +spent the evening lying on her stomach and elbows beneath the nursery +table reading it, with moving lips and fingers in her ears, deaf to +the clamour and summons of her brethren, until at last she was haled +to bed, hot-cheeked and wet-eyed, silent upon a peak in Darien. She +had found a new enchantment; it was better than Mowgli, even. But, +since she was not really a dishonest little girl, when next she went +to Bloomsbury Square she slipped the book unobtrusively back into the +shelf from which she had stolen it, and took “The Manxman” instead, +thinking, with the fatuity of her years, to find that it concerned a +tailless cat; but with regard to this book she was disappointed, and +unable to agree with Mr. Gosse.) + + + + + 20 + + THE STAR IN THE EAST + + +Strange books and pamphlets littered papa’s study table. He met +and dined with Mr. George Russell (the Irish poet, not the English +Churchman). He admired and liked Mr. Russell so much that for his sake +he attended the lectures of Madame Blavatsky, and perused the works of +Colonel Olcott, W. Q. Judge and Mrs. Besant. A feeling of expansion +took him, as if the bands of rigid orthodoxy, which had restrained him +for the last nine years, were being forced asunder.... It was, with +papa, the eternally recurrent springtime of his soul’s re-birth; he +was in travail with a new set of ideas, and their pressure rent him +cruelly. Then one day, “I have seen his star in the east,” cried papa, +and became a Theosophist. + +He wanted to lead Stanley also to Buddha (mamma said firmly that she +herself was too old), but Stanley would have none of it. To change +your religion you need a certain vitality, an energy of mind and will, +an alertness towards fresh ideas, and Stanley at this time had little +of these things. She clung to a desperate and passionate faith, as a +drowning man to a raft; gradually she even came to take pleasure in +services, and would find at the early mass at St. Alban’s, Holborn, an +exalted, mystic, half sensuous joy. But she was in no mood to choose +and investigate a new creed. Besides, Theosophy.... + +However, papa enjoyed it. Papa was now sixty-five years of age, but +his feeling for religions had not waned. Mamma, who had been a little +afraid that papa might next be a Jew (for he had been writing a +monograph on the Hebrew prophets, whom he greatly admired, and also +seeing a good deal of Mr. Zangwill), was on the whole relieved. For a +long time papa had not been happy in the Roman Catholic Church, finding +many of the papal bulls difficult of digestion, and the doctrines +of hell-fire and transubstantiation (as interpreted by most of the +priesthood) painfully materialistic; neither was he happy about the +attitude of the Church towards M. Loisy and other modernists. + +So, when he saw the star in the east, he set out for it with a sigh of +relief. + + + + + 21 + + IRVING + + +While papa followed the star, and Stanley doggedly and bitterly sued +her husband for restitution of conjugal rights, and Rome urbanely +surveyed the world through a monocle and drove elegantly in hansoms, +often with an enormous wolfhound or a couple of poms, and Maurice fired +squibs of angry eloquence at everything that came into his line of +vision, their brother Irving made a fortune by speculating in South +African gold mine shares. Irving, as has been said earlier, was a lucky +young man, whom God had fashioned for prosperity. Having made his +fortune, he married a handsome, agreeable and healthy young woman, one +Lady Marjorie Banister, the daughter of an obscure north-country earl, +and settled down to make more. + +It was an epoch of fortune-making. Mr. Cecil Rhodes loomed in the +south, an encouraging and stimulating figure to those who had +enterprise and a little capital. The new rich were filling Mayfair, +making it hum with prosperity. Irving too hummed with prosperity, and +took a house in Cumberland Place. He found life an excellent affair, +though he had his grievances, one of which was that motor cars were not +allowed on English roads without a man walking with a flag before them. +“We are a backward nation,” Irving grumbled, after visits to Paris, +as so many have grumbled before and since. But, on the whole, Irving +approved of modern life. He thought Maurice, who did not, a bear with a +sore head. + +Maurice was now the editor of an intelligent but acid weekly paper, +which carried on a running fight with the government, the opposition, +all foreign governments, the British public, most current literature, +nearly all current ideas, and the bulk of the press, particularly +Henley’s _New Review_, which boomed against him monthly. Having +a combatant spirit, he found life not unenjoyable, now that he had +become so used and so indifferent to his wife as to have acquired +armour against the bitter chafing she had caused him of yore, and to +find some domestic pleasure in annoying her. He considered it a low +and imbecile world, but to that too one gets used, and a weekly paper +is, as many have found, a gratifying vent for scorn. Saturday after +Saturday, through 1895, the _Gadfly_ railed at the unsatisfactory +attitude of our Colonial Secretary towards South Africa, the existence +of Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company, the tepid and +laissez-faire temperament of Lord Rosebery, the shocking weather, the +absurd inhibitions against motor cars, the vulgarity of the cheaper +press, the futility of the controversies on education, the slowness of +progress in developing Röntgen Rays and flying machines, the immense +wealth made by the undeserving in cycle companies and gold mines, +the smugness of Liberals, the inanity of Tories, the ignorance of +the Labour Party, the blatancy of current forms of patriotism, the +arrogance of the victory-swollen Japanese, the bad manners of France, +the aggressiveness of Germany, the feebleness of current literature, +and so on and so forth. + +“That’s right, old smiler, keep it up. That’s the stuff to give them,” +Irving amiably encouraged him, as he and his wife ate at the dinner +table of his brother. “_They_ don’t mind, and it makes you happy. +But what’s bitten you to set you against company promoters? I didn’t +care for your column about them last week. They’ve done you no harm, +have they? The fact is, I was going to ask you if you’d care to come +in to a small affair I’m helping to float. Bicycle bolts are a back +number, and that’s a fact. In November next year the red flag comes +off, and motor cars begin in earnest all over the roads. Amberley and I +are specialising in tyres. We’ve got Lord Mortlake in too. It’s a sure +thing. We shall be coining thousands in a couple of years. You’d better +come in early. Am I right?” + +Amy’s mirth chimed like sweet bells. + +“Motor cars! Oh, I do like that! Why not flying machines at once?” + +Irving regarded her with tolerant scorn. + +“Why not, indeed? You may well ask. But for the moment motor cars will +do us. I daresay it will be fliers in ten years or so. And moving +photographs too. I’m not, you see, a pessimist, like poor dear Maurice. +I believe in Progress. And in Capital. And in the Future of the Race. +And in getting rich quick. Maurice, am I right?” + +“Probably,” said Maurice. “You’re certainly not bad at getting rich +quick; I’ll say that for you. But I am. So, on the whole....” + +“Motor car tyres!” Amy still jeered, being of those who obtain one idea +at a time and grapple it to their souls with hoops of steel. “Motor car +tyres! They won’t wear out many tyres trundling away behind those old +chaps with the flags.” + +Maurice finished his sentence otherwise than he had intended. + +“On the whole I’m inclined to take shares in this company of yours. +Send me along the details as soon as you can.” + +Amy’s utterances often had this subversive effect on his own. He threw +her a malevolent glance, and poured himself out some more claret. + +Amy put up her pretty, dark eyebrows. She pursed her mouth. She nodded. + +“That’s right. Throw our money away. Don’t bother a bit about me or the +children.” + +“Now, Amy, don’t nag him. I’m answerable for this little show, and +I can tell you I’m right. Remember I told him to put his shirt on +Persimmon. Well, he didn’t. You know the results. I don’t want to brag, +but--well, there it is. Maurice, I think better of your wits than I +have for the last ten years.” + +Maurice, sipping his claret, still kept his sardonic gaze on his wife, +who rose and took Irving’s wife to another room. Often Amy wished that +she had chanced to marry Irving instead of Maurice, though he was too +young for her. Oftener Maurice wished that he had married no one, for +marriage was oppressive. + + + + + 22 + + RULE BRITANNIA + + +’95 swept on, and speeded up to a riotous finish, with the British +South African troops, under the imprudent Dr. Jameson, galloping over +the Transvaal Border to protect the British of the Rand. Loud applause +from the British Isles. In the legal language of the Bow Street trial +that followed, “certain persons, in the month of December, 1895, in +South Africa, within Her Majesty’s dominions, and without licence of +Her Majesty, did unlawfully prepare a military expedition to proceed +against the dominions of a certain friendly State, to wit the South +African Republic, contrary to the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment +Act.” In the more poetic language of the Laureate,-- + + “Wrong, is it wrong? Well, maybe, + But I’m going, boys, all the same: + Do they think me a burgher’s baby, + To be scared by a prating name?” + +In the episcopal language of the Bishop of Mashonaland, “Whether the +English people liked the exploits of Dr. Jameson or not, the Empire had +been built up by such men. They had a Colonial Secretary with his eyes +open, who could see further than most people thought. Africa must take +a foremost place in the Empire, and the Church should go hand in hand +with its development.” + +And, in the journalistic language of the _Daily Mail_ (born early +in ’96, and, like other new-born infants, both noisy and pink), “It +is well known in official circles that England and the Transvaal must +eventually come into collision.” + +Vicky’s children, in a fever of martial jingoism, temporarily abandoned +the Sherlock Holmes crime-tracking exploits which were engaging their +attention those Christmas holidays, for the Jameson Raid, riding +bestridden chairs furiously round the schoolroom, chanting, + + “Then over the Transvaal border, + And a gallop for life or death--” + +until two chairs broke into pieces and Imogen, thrown, cut her head on +the fender, and the game was forbidden by authority. + +The adventure of the raid tickled up British imperialism, which, like +the imperialism in Vicky’s schoolroom, began to ride merrily for a +fall. ’96 dawned on a country growing drunk with pride of race and +possessions; working up, in fact, for the Diamond Jubilee. Dr. Jameson +and his confederates were received with the cheers of the populace and +the adoration of the _Daily Mail_, and sentenced to short terms of +imprisonment. + +Soon after the birth of the _Daily Mail_ came the _Savoy_, +the last stand of eclectic æstheticism. Stanley Croft had, for a +while, an odd feeling of standing hesitant between two forces, one of +which was loosening its grasp on her, the other taking hold. The newer +force conquered, and she was carried, step by step, from æstheticism +to imperialism, from belief in art and intellect to belief in the +dominance of the British race over the world. She read Henley and +Kipling. She found pride in, + + “Out of the night that covers me, + Black as the pit from pole to pole, + I thank whatever gods may be + For my unconquerable soul....” + +Her religion ceased to be a mystic twilight passion. A renascence of +sturdy courage took her back into the common ways, where, her divorce +now accomplished, she pursued her old aims. She took up life, and +became alert to the world again, responsive, like a ship in full sail, +to every wind that blew. And the wind that blew on her was a wind of +reaction from her recent past, and it drove her out on the seas of +ambitious imperialism, so that love of country became in her, as in so +many, a kind of swaggering tribal pride. The romance of Greater Britain +took her by storm. Not the infant Imogen, stirred to tears by the +swinging by of red-coated troops to a band, seethed with a more exalted +jingoism. Glory, adventure, pride of race, and the clash of arms--what +stimulating dreams were these, and how primeval their claim upon the +soul! While Stanley’s friends shrugged cynical shoulders over Dr. Jim’s +exploit and the attitude towards it of the great British public, while +her papa gravely misdoubted such militant aggression, while Maurice +sneered and tilted at it in a weekly column, while Rome contemplated +the spectacle with the detached, intelligent amusement of the blasé +but interested theatre-goer, while Irving, cynically approving, said, +“That’s good,” thinking of the Rand gold, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes observed +that his friend the doctor had upset the apple-cart--while all these +made the comments natural to their tastes, temperaments and points +of view, Stanley, like a martial little girl, flew high the flag +of “Britain for ever! Up the Rand!” and her spirit marched as to a +military band. + +Vicky also, in her more careless and casual way, was a supporter of +Empire. “Whatever Charles and Maurice and all those informed people +may say, my dear, this Dr. Jim is a gallant creature, dashing off to +the rescue of his fellow countrymen and countrywomen like that. For, +even if they weren’t in actual danger, they _were_ inconvenienced, +those poor tiresome Uitlanders. And how dreadful to be governed by +Boers! What people! Canting, Old Testament humbugs! One dislikes them +so excessively, even from here, that one can imagine the feelings +of those who live among them. Even Maurice isn’t so perverse as to +maintain that Boers are tolerable. Oh, I’m all for Dr. Jim. I insist +on taking in that cheery pink new daily that pets him as if he were a +Newfoundland dog that has saved a boat-load of drowning people. Such a +bright, pleased tone it has. ‘The British Public know a good man when +they see one,’ it says. So much more amiable and pleasant an attitude +towards us than Maurice’s ‘The public be damned. All it knows about +anything that matters would go into a walnut shell and then rattle.’ +Maurice gets so terribly contemptuous and conceited. I tremble to +think what he will be like at sixty, should nature keep him alive, +if he finds the world so silly when he is but thirty-eight. Perhaps, +however, he will have mellowed.” + + + + + 23 + + MAURICE, ROME, STANLEY AND THE QUEEN + + +’96 ran out. Irving’s tyre company began to make money, and Maurice +grew richer. He sent Amy to the Riviera for the winter, and Rome kept +his house for him. He was sweeter-tempered than usual. Rome was, in +his eyes, a _flâneuse_ and a dilettante of life, but her clear, +cynical mind was agreeable to him. Her intelligent mockery was, after +Amy’s primitive jeering, as caviare after rotten eggs. God! If only +Amy need never come back. But she would inevitably come back. And the +children loved her. Children are like that; no discrimination. They +loved Maurice too, but more mildly. And, very temperately, they liked +their Aunt Rome, whom they often suspected of making fun of them, and, +even oftener, of being completely bored. In point of fact, Rome was +apt to be bored by persons under sixteen or so. She allowed childhood +to be a necessary stage in the growth of human beings, but she found +it a tiresome one, and saw no reason why children should consort with +adults. Stanley, on the other hand, being by now partially restored +to her general goodwill towards humanity, threw herself ardently into +the society and interests of her own children and those of others. She +taught them imperialism, and about the English flag, and told them +adventure stories, and played with them the games suitable to their +years. She told them about the Diamond Jubilee, the great event of +’97, and how our good, wise and aged queen would, by next June, have +reigned for sixty years. Victoria was in fashion just then. She was +well thought of, both morally and intellectually. “To the ripe sagacity +of the politician,” said the loyal press, “she adds the wide knowledge +acquired by sixty years of statesmanship. Many a strained international +situation has been saved by her personal tact.” That was the way the +late nineteenth century press spoke of Victoria, the English being a +loyal people, with a strong sense of royalty. So the Diamond Jubilee +would be a great day for the Queen. Since the last Jubilee, in ’87, +the Empire, or anyhow the sense of Empire, had grown and developed. +Imperialism was now a very heady wine, to those who liked that tipple. +To others, such as Maurice Garden, it was more of an emetic. + + + + + 24 + + NANSEN IN THE ALBERT HALL + + +Dr. Nansen came to London early in ’97. Whatever else you thought +of anything or anyone, you had to admire Dr. Nansen. He addressed +thousands of people in the Albert Hall. Vicky took her children to hear +him. Already they had read “Farthest North.” Imogen, at eight years +old, had read it, absorbed, breathless, intent, tongue clenched between +teeth. The man who had sailed through ice, and all but got to the Pole. +He was better than soldiers. As good, almost, as sailors. What a man! +And there he stood, a giant dwarfed to smallness on the platform of the +vast hall, a Scandinavian god, blonde and grave and calm, waiting to +begin his lecture, but unable to because the crowd roared and clapped +and stamped their feet and would not stop. + +At that huge explosion of welcome, Imogen’s skin pringled and pricked +all over, as if soldiers were swinging by to music, or a fire engine +to the sound of bells, or as if the sun was setting in a glory of gold +and green, or as if she was reading “The Revenge,” or “The Charge of +the Light Brigade,” or “I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree.” +Imogen wept. She did not know that she wept, until the applause was at +last over and Nansen began to speak. Then her brother Hugh poked her +in the back and said, “What’s up? Wipe your nose and don’t snivel,” +and she was ashamed, and though she retorted, “Wipe your own. Snivel +yourself,” it was no satisfaction, because Hughie was not snivelling. +Boys didn’t, she had learnt, except when there was something to snivel +about. They did not understand the female weakness which wept at fire +engines, poetry and clapping, and was sick at squashed insects. Imogen +wanted (even still half hoped) to be a boy, so she tried to hide her +weaknesses. + +Nansen began to speak. + +“They’re all quiet now. A pin might drop,” said Imogen to herself, +having lately learnt that phrase, but not getting it quite right. + +But disappointment took her. Strain as she would, she could not hear +what the god said. She could not make it into words, except now and +then. It boomed along, sonorous, fluent English, above her plane of +listening. A sentence here and there she got, entrancing and teasing, +then away the voice soared, booming in another dimension.... Imogen had +never learnt to listen; now for the first time she knew remorse for +sermon-times spent in day-dreams, lessons at school during which her +mind had drifted away on seas of fancy like a rudderless boat, to be +sharply recalled by “Imogen Carrington, what have I just said?” Seldom, +indeed, did Imogen Carrington know. She would blush and stammer and get +an inattention mark. No one in the second form had so many inattention +marks as she had. Perhaps if she had fewer she could have understood +Nansen now. + +“Hughie, can you hear?” + +“Most of the time. Don’t interrupt.” + +Yes, Hughie could hear. Hughie was two years older; Hughie was ten, and +into his square, solid, intelligent head the sounds emitted by Nansen +were penetrating as words. Hughie could listen, when he had a mind +to. Hughie was more clever than Imogen. Phyllis and Nancy could hear +too, of course; they were older. Not Tony; but then Tony, who was only +seven, wouldn’t be trying. He didn’t really care. + +“Mother, _I can’t hear_.” + +“Don’t talk, darling. I’ll tell you afterwards....” + +But what was the good of that? + +Imogen’s strained attention flagged. If she couldn’t hear, she +couldn’t. She sighed and gave up. She stared, fascinated, at the +splendid figure on the platform, and imagined him on the _Fram_, +sailing along through chunks of floating ice, and on each chunk a great +white bear. Floes, they were, not chunks.... She and the boys meant, +when they should be grown up, to fit out a _Fram_ for themselves +and find the Pole. Hughie had some idea of the South Pole. The sort +of unusual, intelligent idea Hughie did get. But to Imogen the North +was the Pole that called. Away they sailed, away and away.... Tony +was attacked, as he fished from a floe, by a huge mother bear, with +three cubs. Imogen got there just in time; she slew the bear with her +long knife, at imminent personal risk; it toppled backwards into the +ice-cold water and died. The green sea reddened hideously. But the +three little cubs Imogen kept. She took them back to the _Fram_, +and there was one for each of them, and they were called Mowgli, Marcus +and Mercia, and Marcus was hers (the children had been taken to “The +Sign of the Cross” last summer. There was a play indeed!), and the cubs +slept in their bunks with them, and ate from their plates at meals.... + +Another storm of clapping. It was over. + +“Did you like it, Jennie? How much did you follow?” + +“I liked it very much. I followed it a lot.... Mother, do you think, +when I’m big, I shall ever _speak_ to him? I mean, when Hughie and +Tony and I have got our ship and have been to the Pole?” + +“Oh, yes, darling. I should think when that happens, certainly. Only +Dr. Nansen may be dead by that time, I’m afraid.” + +“Is he old, mother? Is he very old? Will he die before we grow up? Will +he, mother?” + +“Children, be careful crossing the road.... What’s the matter, Imogen?” + +“Will he die, mother, before we’re grown up?” + +“Who? Dr. Nansen? Oh, no, I hope not, why should he? Tony, don’t +dawdle. We’ll go home by the Park. Keep together, children, there’s +such a crowd.... Imogen, _don’t_ play with strange dogs--I keep +telling you.” + +“Mother, he’s such a weeny one ... all white, with a black nose and a +red tongue.... Mother, when _can_ I have a puppy?” + + + + + 25 + + JUBILEE + + +Jubilee Day. Sweltering heat, after a grey beginning; baked streets. +Irving, out of his wealth and generosity, had bought a block of seats +in the Mall for the procession, and there the family sat. Papa, mamma, +Vicky and Charles and their daughter Imogen (their other children were +away at school), Rome, Stanley, Irving and his wife, and Una and Ted +up from the country, with two stout and handsome children. The ladies +wore beflowered, rakish, fly-away hats, and dresses with high collars +and hunched sleeves and small waists. They look absurd now, in old +pictures of the period, but they did not look absurd to one another at +the time; they looked natural, and _comme-il-faut_, and smart. The +boys wore their Eton suits and the girls light frocks. Imogen had a +blue smock, gathered across the yoke, so that when she ran her fingers +across the smocking it made a little soft, crisp noise. She sat next +her little cousins from the country. But she was shy of them and turned +her face away, and would say nothing to them after she had asked, “How +is Rover? How is Lassie? Are the puppies born yet?” Fits of shyness +seized upon Imogen like toothache, even now that she had been ever so +long at school, and she would hang her head, and mutter monosyllabic +answers, and wish she were Prince Prigio, with his cap of darkness, +and when, in church, it came to the psalm about “Deliver me from the +hands of strange children,” she would pray it ardently, feeling how +right David (if that psalm were one of his) had been. She was not shy +of her cousins when she stayed at the farm with them, for the farm was +like paradise, full of calves, puppies, pigs and joy, and Katie, Dick, +Martin and Dolly were its hierophants, and, though they weren’t much +good at being pirates or Red Indians, it was, no doubt, because they +were always employed to better purpose. But in the Mall, seated in a +tidy row waiting for the procession, it was different. Imogen wished +that two of her brothers and sisters could have been there, instead +of Katie and Dick. She held a fold of her mother’s soft foulard dress +tightly between her hot fingers. She whispered, + +“Mother. Suppose someone felt sick and couldn’t get out?” + +“_Jean_--you don’t feel sick, do you, child?” Vicky was alarmed, +knowing the weakness of her daughter’s stomach. + +“Oh, no, _I_ don’t feel sick. But if someone did? What +_would_ they do, mother? Suppose the lady just above _you_ +felt sick, mother? Suppose she _was_ sick? What would you do, +mother?” + +“Don’t be silly, Imogen. If you talk like that you’ll feel sick +yourself. Talk to Katie. Don’t you see you’re interrupting grandmamma +and me?” + +But Imogen’s grandmamma smiled across at her small pink, freckled face. + +“Are you enjoying yourself, Jennie?” + +“Yes, grandmamma ... is the Queen older than you, grandmamma?” + +“Yes. The Queen is seventy-eight. I am sixty-three. When I was only +three years old, the Queen was crowned.” + +“Did you see her crowned?” + +“No. I was too young.” + +“Is it a very big crown? Will she have it on?... +_Mother_”--Imogen had a terrible thought and whispered +it--“suppose _the Queen_ was sick in her carriage, just opposite +here? What _would_ happen, mother? Would the procession wait or go +on?” + +“Now, Jennie, that will do. You’re being tiresome and silly. Talk to +Katie and Dick. I’m talking to grandmamma; I told you before.” + +(For that was the way in which children were kept under in the last +century. Things have changed.) + +Gold and purple and crimson. Silver and scarlet and gold. Fluttering +pennons on tall Venetian masts. The Mall was a street in fairyland, or +the New Jerusalem. And thronged with those who would never see either +more nearly, being neither fantastic nor good. Never would most of +those enter through the strait gate and see the gates of pearl and the +city of golden streets. But was not this as good? Silver and violet and +crimson and gold; gay streamers flying on the wind. Beautiful as an +army with banners, the Mall was.... + +“Let’s count the flags,” said Imogen to Katie and Dick. + +“I remember the coronation,” said Mr. Garden, half to Irving, half to +anyone sitting about who might be interested, after the way of elderly +persons. “I was a very small boy, but my father took me to see the +procession. I remember he put me up on his shoulder while it passed.... +There wasn’t quite such a crowd then as to-day, I think.” + +“People have increased,” said Rome. “Particularly in London. There are +now too many, that is certain.” + +“The crowd,” said Mr. Garden, his memory straying over that day sixty +years ago, “was _prettier_ then. I am nearly sure it was prettier. +Costumes were better.” + +“They could hardly,” said Rome, “have been worse.” + +“I remember my mother, in a violet pelisse, that I think she had got +new for the occasion, and a crinoline.... Crinolines hadn’t grown +large in ’37--they were very graceful, I think.... And a pretty poke +bonnet. And my father in a cravat, with close whiskers (whiskers +hadn’t grown large, either), and a tall grey hat.... And myself done +up tight in blue nankeen with brass buttons, and your aunt Selina with +white frilled garments showing below her frock. Little girls weren’t +so pretty,” he added, looking across at Imogen’s straight blue smock. +“Well, well, sixty years ago. A great deal has happened since then. A +great reign and a great time.” + +“They’re pretty nearly due now,” said Irving, consulting his watch. +“Sure to be late, though.” + +“Who’ll come first, mother?” Imogen asked. + +“Captain Ames, on a horse. And behind him Life Guards and dragoons and +that kind of person.... So I said to her, mamma, that really unless she +could undertake to.... Oh, listen, they really _are_ coming now. +Listen to the cheering, Jennie.” + +The noise of loyalty beat and broke like a sea from west to east. The +sound shivered down Imogen’s spine like music, and, as usual in such +moments, her eyes pringled with hot tears, which she squeezed away. +Then came the blaring of the trumpets and the rolling of the drums, +and, singing high above them like a kettle on the boil, the faint, thin +skirling of the pipes. + +Imogen’s hot hand clutched Vicky’s dress. + +“Now, Jean, don’t get too excited, darling. Try and be quiet and +sensible, like Katie and Dick.” + +“Mother, I _am_ too excited, already. _Look_, mother--is that +Captain Ames on a horse?” + +Captain Ames on a horse (and what a horse!) it was. And behind him +Life Guards, dragoons, lancers, and that kind of person, in noble +profusion. Very gallant and proud and lovely, prancing, curvetting, gay +as bright flowers in a wind.... O God, what military men! + +A little white-moustached general rode by, and great cheers crashed. +“That’s Lord Roberts, Imogen.” Imogen, who knew her Kipling, had a lump +in her throat for Bobs of Kandahar. + +“And that’s Lord Charles Beresford--with the cocked hat, do you see?” + +Then came the great guns, running on their carriages. + +And then the cheering broke to a mighty storm, as it always does when +sailors go by. + +The sailors too had guns. Blue-jackets and smart, neat officers, +Britannia’s pets, Britannia’s pride.... + +Imogen, who had always meant to be a sailor, and who even now blindly +hoped that somehow, before she reached the age for Osborne, a way would +be made for her (either she would become a boy, or dress up as a boy, +or the rule excluding girls from the senior service would be relaxed), +gasped and screwed her hands tightly together against her palpitating +breast. Here were sailors. Straight from the tossing blue sea; straight +from pacing the quarter-deck, spyglass in hand, spying for enemy craft, +climbing the rigging, setting her hard-a-port, manning the guns, +raking the enemy amidships, holding up slavers, receiving surrendered +swords.... Here, in brief, were sailors; and the junior service faded +from the stage. Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. The moment +was almost too excessive for a budding sailor, with wet eyes and lips +pressed tight together to keep the face steady. Fortunately it passed, +and was succeeded by the First Prussian Dragoon Guards, great men with +golden helmets, who could be admired without passion, and by strange +brown men with turbans and big beards. + +“Indians,” Vicky said, and Indians too one knew from Kipling. And, “Sir +Partab Singh,” added the informing voice. + +“Is he the chief of the Indians, mother?” + +“Some kind of chief, yes.” + +Other brown men followed the Indians--little coppery, fuzzy Maoris; and +with them rode splendid white men from New Zealand, and slouch-hatted +Rhodesian Horse. + +“From South Africa.... You remember Dr. Jim and his raid and Cecil +Rhodes ... the Christmas holidays before last....” + +“When the chair broke and I cut my head.” Yes, Imogen remembered, +though she had been only seven then. Over the Transvaal border, then a +gallop for life or death.... The chair was still broken.... Everyone +seemed to remember Dr. Jim and his raid and Cecil Rhodes, for the +slouch-hatted riders were cheered and cheered. Hurrah for South Africa! +“Political trouble, much less war, cannot now be apprehended,” the +_Times_ had said that morning, in a pæan of Jubilee satisfaction +with sixty years of progress abroad and at home. + +The best was over, for now began carriages--landaus and pairs. Foreign +envoys. The Papal Nuncio sharing a landau with a gentleman from China, +who cooled himself with a painted fan. Landau after landau bearing +royal gentlemen, royal ladies. What a pity for them to be borne tamely +in landaus instead of a-horseback! + +A colonial escort; an Indian escort; Lord Wolseley. + +And then the procession’s meaning and climax. “The Queen, Jennie.” + +Eight cream horses soberly drawing an open carriage, surrounded by +postillions and red-coated running footmen; and in the carriage the +little stout old lady, black-dressed, with black and white bonnet, and +with her the beautiful Princess in heliotrope, dressed in the then +current fashion, which royal ladies have adhered to ever since, never +allowing themselves to be unsettled by the modes of the new century. + +The Queen, God save her. The noise was monstrous, louder than any real +noise could be. + +“Dear old soul,” cried Vicky’s clear voice as she lustily clapped white +kid hands. + +Papa’s blue eyes looked kindly down on the old lady whose coronation he +remembered. + +“A record to be proud of,” said papa. + +“Oh, yes, she’s seen some life this sixty years, the old lady,” +admitted Irving. + +“I expect she is feeling the heat a bit,” said Una. “Well, I hope she’s +happy.” + +Behind them people were saying loyal Victorian things to one another +about the dear old Queen. + +“She’s got the hearts of the Empire all right,” they were saying, +“whether they’re under white skins or brown,” and, “God bless our dear +Queen,” and, “How well she looks to-day,” and, “She’s an Empress, but +she’s a woman first. That’s why we all love her so,” and so on and so +forth. + +And, “There goes the Prince,” they said, applauding now the burly +middle-aged gentleman riding his horse by his mother’s carriage. + +“He must be gettin’ pretty impatient, poor man,” said Amy. “Nearly +sixty himself, and mamma still going strong. I expect he thinks this +ought to be his silver Jubilee, not mamma’s diamond one.” + +Mr. Garden looked pained. He often looked and was pained at the wife of +Maurice. + +Imogen’s heart swelled for the Empress-Queen and the crash of loyalty, +but not to bursting-point; for here was only a little old lady in a +carriage (though drawn by eight cream horses like a fairy godmother’s), +and it is the swagger of gallantry that stirs. Sailors, soldiers, +explorers, martyrs, firemen, circus-riders, Blondin on his rope, Christ +on his cross, Joan of Arc on her white steed or her red pile--these are +they that shake the soul to tears. Not old ladies, however mighty, who +have sat on a throne for sixty years. + +“The Prince, Jennie. The Prince of Wales.” + +“_Oh, mother, where?_” + +The Prince of Wales. Gallant figure of legend. Young, noble, princely, +with caracolling charger and a triple white plume in a silver helm. The +bravest and the most chivalrous of the knights. Where was the Prince of +Wales--“_Oh, mother, where?_” + +“There--don’t you see him? The big man in uniform with a grey beard, +riding by the Queen’s carriage.” + +The big man.... Oh, no, that must be a mistake. + +“_That’s_ not the Prince of Wales, mother. Not _that_ one....” + +“Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?” + +A thousand reasons why it shouldn’t be. A hundred thousand reasons.... +But in vain their legions beat against the hard little fact it +_was_. Imogen’s soaring heart sank like a stone in water. Fearful +doubts whispered. Had all the Princes of Wales been like that--fat +elderly men with grey beards? The Black Prince.... Oh, no, not the +Black Prince.... + +“The Black Prince wasn’t like that, mother, was he?” + +“It must be nearly the end now. Here’s the music.... What, Jean? +What’s bothering you now?” + +“The Black Prince....” + +“Forget him, my precious. Don’t let any prince weigh on your little +mind. Here comes the music. Do you hear the pipes, children?” + +So the great procession passed eastward, to rejoice Trafalgar Square, +the Strand, Fleet Street and the lands across the river. + +“It’ll be a job getting out of this. Hold on to me, Imogen. Did you +enjoy it, darling?” + +“Yes.” Imogen nodded, with the sun in her screwed-up eyes. “I wish we +could run very fast down the streets to where they haven’t passed yet, +and see them all again. Do you think we could, mother?” + +“I’m sure we couldn’t.... You’re not over-tired, mamma dear?” + +“Oh, no. I feel very well.... But that child has turned green.” + +Vicky looked down, startled, at her daughter. + +“_Imogen._ Aren’t you well?” + +“Mother, I think I may be going to be sick.” + +“Well, sit down till it’s over.... Bless the child. It’s the heat and +the excitement. She gets taken like that sometimes, by way of reaction +after her treats--most tiresome.” + +“Poor little mite.” + +“How are you feeling now, Jennie?” + +Imogen said nothing. Yellow as cream cheese, she sat in her seat and +asked God not to disgrace her by letting her be sick in public, in the +grand stand, on Jubilee Day, with all London looking on. + +But, “I’m not sure, mother, that I do very much believe in prayers,” +she said to Vicky that evening. + + + + + 26 + + RECESSIONAL + + +Triumphant patriotism is all very well; Proud imperialism is all very +well. But these things should be carried on with a swagger, like a +panache, with a hint of the gay and the absurd, marching, as it were, +to the wild, conceited noise of skirling pipes. People of all nations, +but more particularly the English, are apt to forget this, and bear +their patriotism heavily, unctuously, speak solemnly of the white man’s +burden, and introduce religion into the gay and worldly affair. + +Rudyard Kipling did this, on July 17th of Jubilee year, when he +published in the _Times_ “Recessional,” beginning,-- + + “God of our fathers, known of old, + Lord of our far-flung battle line, + Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold + Dominion over palm and pine-- + Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, + Lest we forget, lest we forget.” + +Stanley read it at breakfast, and shuddered. It was such a poem as the +Jews might have made, in the days of Israel’s glory--terribly godly and +solemn. It was addressed to Jehovah, the Jewish Lord of Hosts. Those +Jews! How their influence lasts! Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold.... +Awful is a bad word, and hand should never, whosesoever hand it is, +have a capital “h” (but that might have been the printer’s fault, as +anyone who knows printers must, in fairness, admit), and dominion over +palm and pine is much too delightful and romantic a thing to be spoilt +by being thus held. And, further down, it was worse. + + “If, drunk with sight of power, we loose + Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe, + Such boasting as the Gentiles use, + Or lesser breeds without the Law....” + +Are we then Jews, and not Gentiles? And what Law? And lesser +breeds--that was worst of all. + +The whole poem seemed to Stanley so heavily ruinous of a jolly thing, +so terribly expressive of the solemn pomposity into which national +pride is ever ready to stumble, that it tarnished for her something +young and buoyant and absurd into which she had flung herself of late. +As Miss Edith Cavell remarked twenty years later, patriotism is not +enough. It needs to be as the cherishing love a man has for the soil +of his home; or as the bitter, desperate striving unto death of the +oppressed race, the damned desperation of the rebel; or as the gay and +gallant flying of gaudy banners. Successful, smug, solemn, conquering +patriotism is not nearly enough--or perhaps it is a good deal too much. +Anyhow, it is all wrong. + +“What a man!” Stanley muttered, meaning Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who +did, if anyone, know all about the adventure of empire-building, its +swagger, glitter and romance, and must needs turn himself into a +preacher. + +Stanley’s niece, Imogen, happened to have “Recessional” read aloud to +her form at school, by one whom she greatly loved (for it must be +owned that this unbalanced child only too readily adored those who +taught her), and shyly she wriggled her mind away from the sense of the +sounding lines. She liked, + + “Far-called, our navies melt away; + On dune and headland sinks the fire; + Lo, all our pomp of yesterday + Is one with Nineveh and Tyre....” + +and, + + “The tumult and the shouting dies, + The captains and the kings depart....” + +and, + + “All valiant dust that builds on dust....” + +but disliked the rest. If Miss Treherne liked it, it must, she knew, be +somehow good; further, it was by Kipling, who had made Mowgli, and, + + “It’s north you may run to the rime-ringed sun, + Or south to the blind Horn’s hate; + Or east all the way into Mississippi Bay, + Or west to the Golden Gate....” + +But all the same, Imogen had no use for it. In the foolish jargon of +school, it was “pi.” + +But newspapers said at the time, and history books have said since, +that this poem sounded a fine and needed note; and, in fact, it was +a good deal liked. Mr. Garden liked it. Mr. Garden was afraid that +Britain was getting a little above itself with Empire. As, indeed, it +doubtless was, said Stanley, and why not? Empires, like life, only +endure for a brief period, and we may as well enjoy them while we may. +They are wasted on those who do not enjoy them. Time bears us off, as +lightly as the wind lifts up the smoke and carries it away.... The +grave’s a fine and private place, but in it there are no empires, only +the valiant dust that builds on dust, and has come to dust at the last. +So let us by all means be above ourselves while we may and if we can, +in the brief space that is ours before we must be below ourselves for +ever. + +Mr. Garden replied that there may be many brief spaces to come, for +all of us, and we should be training ourselves for these.... For +papa was still a Theosophist, and believed in infinitely numerous +reincarnations. He did not desire them, for he had had troubles enough, +for one; but he knew that they would occur. He looked with apprehension +down a vista of lives. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, to the +last syllable of recorded time--or anyhow, until papa should be made +perfect--and that, papa humbly felt, was a very long time ahead. + + + + + 27 + + BOND STREET + + +London glittered sweetly, washed by the May sun. The streets were bland +and gay, like a lady of fashion taking the air. Miss Garden walked +abroad, bland and gay too, slim and erect in neat coat and skirt (skirt +touching the pavement as she walked--disgusting, but skirts did), +lace jabot at the high stock collar, and large beribboned hat, tipped +a little forward so that the sunshine caught the fair hair sweeping +upward from the nape. She led a huge Borzoi on a leash, and as she +walked she surveyed London, its people, its streets, its shops. In +a gold net purse bag she carried notes and clinking sovereigns. She +had gambled to good purpose last night at bridge, the new card game. +She was a great gambler. Bridge, whist, baccarat, poker, roulette and +Monte Carlo--at all these she won and lost, with the same equable +sangfroid. Her parents did not like it, though Rome’s income, left her +by her grandfather, was her own. They did not, in many ways, approve +of their clever Rome, so unlike themselves. But on such disapprovals, +so Rome assured them, family life is based. Mutual disapproval, mutual +toleration; that is family, as, indeed, so much other, life. + +Anyhow, Rome gambled. The older she grew the more greatly and +intelligently she gambled. She had her systems, ingeniously worked +out, for Monte Carlo. She had been there this Easter, together with +her friend and ally, Guy Donkin, a cheerful barrister three years her +junior, who had been used to ask her to marry him, but had now settled +down to a sporting friendship and confided to her his fleeting affairs +of the heart. Here again Mr. and Mrs. Garden disapproved. Going to +Monte Carlo to meet a man; staying at the same hotel with him; seen +everywhere with him; even in the late, the very late thirties, was this +right or wise? It set people talking.... + +“As to that,” Rome carelessly dismissed it, “be sure people will +always talk. You may be sure, too, mamma, that Guy and I do nothing +not _comme-il-faut_. We are both too worldly-wise for that. We +may _épater_ the bourgeois possibly, but we shan’t _épater_ +our own world. We know its foolish rules, and we both find it more +comfortable to keep them.” + +Entirely of the world Miss Garden looked, this May morning, strolling +down Bond Street, a little cynical, a little blasé, very well-dressed, +intensely civilised, exquisitely poised, delicately, cleanly fair. She +would soon be thirty-nine, and looked just that, neither more nor less. + +A window full of jade caught her roving eye. She went in; she bought a +clear jade elephant, and a dull jade lump that swung on a fine platinum +chain. She also got a tortoise-shell cigarette case. + +She stopped next at a window full of little dogs. Big-headed Sealeyham +puppies; Poltalloch terriers. These she looked at critically. She meant +to have a Poltalloch, but to order one from their home in the West +Highlands when next she stayed there. Adorable puppies. The Borzoi +sniffed at them through plate glass, and grunted. + +Irish lace. Jabots of _pointe de Venise_, and deep collars of +Honiton and _pointe de Flandres_, and handkerchiefs edged with +Chantilly. Miss Garden entered the shop; came out with a jabot for +herself, handkerchiefs for Vicky’s birthday. Then ivory opera glasses, +and an amber cigarette holder caught her fancy. Soon her free hand was +slung with neat paper packages. That was a bore; she wished she had had +them all sent. + +She strolled on, turned into Stewart’s, ordered a box of chocolates for +Stanley’s children, and met Mr. Guy Donkin for lunch. They were going +to a picture show together. + +“I am not,” said Miss Garden, “fit for a respectable picture gallery, +as you see.” She indicated the packages and the Borzoi. “But +nevertheless we will go. Jeremy shall wait in the street while we +criticise the art of our friends. I was overtaken this morning by the +lust of possession. I often get it on fine mornings after fortunate +nights. I find that the gambler’s life works out, on the whole, pretty +evenly--what one makes at the dice one loses in the shops. And what +one loses at play one saves off the shops. One walk abroad, looking at +everything and buying nothing, will save one some hundreds of pounds. +It is the easiest way of gaining, though not the most amusing.... I see +you have a lunch edition. How go the wars?” + +The most noticeable wars at the moment were those between America and +Spain, and between Great Britain and the Soudanese. + +“Dewey’s occupied Manila. The Fuzzies have lost three more zarebas. +It must be warm for fighting out there to-day.... Here’s an article +by some Dean on the vulgarity of modern extravagances. Meant for +you, Rome, with all your packages.... _Are_ we specially +extravagant just now? I suppose there’s a lot of money going about, +one way and another. Business is so good. And all these gold mines +and companies.... The Dean is worrying about the growing habit of +entertaining in restaurants instead of in the home. Why not? And about +women taking to cosmetics again, after a century of abstinence. Again, +why not? I agree with Max about that. The clergy do worry so, poor +dears; if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Oh, and on Tuesday we’re +all to wear a white rose, for the Old Man’s funeral day.” + +“How touching! It will please papa. He’s really distressed about the +Old Man; he thinks politics on the grand scale are over, and that the +giants are dead. Politics and politicians are certainly intensely dull +in these days; but then, except for an occasional gleam, they probably +always were. Partly because people insist on taking them so solemnly, +instead of as a farce.... There’s my ex-brother-in-law, lunching with a +quite new and lovely young woman. He always smiles at me, blandly and +without shame. I can’t forgive him for spoiling Stanley’s life, but +I can’t help rather liking him still. He always sends us tickets for +his first nights, and they’re very amusing. A shameless reactionary, +but so witty. Maurice and Irving cut him, which I think crude. Men are +so intolerant. I cut no one, except when I’m afraid of being bored by +them. Thank you, yes: Turkish.” + +They strolled off through the pleasant city to look at pictures, +which they could both criticise with as much intelligence as was +necessary, and Miss Garden with rather more. Then Mr. Donkin returned +to the Bar, and Miss Garden drove home in a hansom with the Borzoi and +the gleanings from Bond Street. At five she was going to an At Home +somewhere; later she was dining out and going to the opera. Life was +full; life was amusing; life hung a brilliant curtain over the abyss. +From the abyss Miss Garden turned her eyes; in it lay love and death, +locked bitterly together for evermore. + + + + + 28 + + LAST LAP + + +1898 swaggered by under a hot summer sun. The century swaggered +deathwards, gay with gold and fatness, unsteady, dark and confused. +“The Belle of New York” at the theatres, the Simple Life on the +land, free-wheel bicycles on the road, motor cars, coming first in +single spies, then in battalions, the victory of Omdurman, Kitchener +occupying Khartoum and the French Fashoda, unpleasant international +incidents (for international incidents are always unpleasant), +millionaires rising like stars, fortunes made and spent, business +booming, companies floated and burst, names of drinks, provender and +medicines flaming from the skies, Swinburne publishing “Rosamund, +Queen of the Lombards,” Mr. Yeats “The Wind Among the Reeds,” Mr. +Kipling “Stalky & Co.” and “The Day’s Work,” Mr. Conrad “Tales of +Unrest,” Mr. Stephen Phillips “Paolo and Francesca,” Mr. Thomas Hardy +“Wessex Poems,” Mr. H. G. Wells “The War of the Worlds,” Miss Mary +Cholmondeley “Red Pottage,” Mrs. Humphry Ward “Helbeck of Bannisdale,” +Mr. Maurice Hewlett “The Forest Lovers,” Mr. Kenneth Grahame “Dream +Days,” Mr. Hall Caine “The Christian,” George Meredith greeted by +literary England on his seventieth birthday, bad novels pouring into +the libraries with terrifying increase of speed, wireless telegraphy +used at sea, flying machines experimented with, Liberals sickening with +Imperialism or Little Englandism, Conservatives with jingoism run mad, +the _Speaker_ changing hands, the Encyclopædia Britannica sold +by the _Times_, anti-ritualist agitations, armament limitation +conferences convened by Russia and attended by the Powers, all of +whom were busy as bees at home increasing their armies and navies and +hatching military plots. + +And then the South African Uitlanders sent complaints and petitions +from the Rand, and despatches began to pass between Her Majesty’s +government and President Kruger’s. Despatches are most unfortunate and +unwise means of communication; they always make trouble. + +There was bound to be war, people began saying. Mr. Chamberlain and +Mr. Rhodes intended it, and would not be happy till they got it. +Probably President Kruger and his Burghers also intended it. Certainly +the Uitlanders hoped for it. The British public were not averse. They +hated the Boers, and wanted excitement and more Empire. It was a +hopeless business. War was bound to come, and came, in October, 1899. + +Mr. Garden said, “A bad business. Gladstone would never have let it +come to this. One doesn’t trust Chamberlain. A bad, dishonest business.” + +Mrs. Garden said, “Those poor lads going out just before the winter....” + +Vicky said, “Charles says it won’t be long. We shall have them asking +for terms in a month.” + +Maurice said, “That damned jingo, Chamberlain,” and filled his fountain +pen with more vitriol. + +Amy said, “Those canting, snuffling old farmers. _They_ won’t keep +us long.” + +Rome said, “Unfortunate. But it’s a way in which centuries often end.” + +Stanley said, “Right or wrong, we’ve got to win now.” + +Irving said, “I shall take the opportunity to run out and see to my +mining interests. Up the Rand,” and he enlisted in the C. I. V. and +went. + +Una said, “War! How silly. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. Why not +leave the poor farmers alone?” For she sympathised with farmers, and +was all for leaving people alone. + +The children of all of them shouted for the soldiers and the flag, and +sang “Soldiers of the Queen.” + + “And when we say we’ve always won, + And when they ask us how it’s done....” + +A very bright song. That was the right, amusing spirit of patriotism, +not the “Recessional,” and not prayers sent forth for the people’s use +by Bishops. + +Vicky’s children got up early one morning in the Christmas holidays +without leave, and saw a detachment of the C. I. V. go off from +Victoria. There was a raw, yellow fog, and the khaki figures loomed +oddly through it. The press of the swaying, shouting crowd was +terrifying, exhilarating. Imogen, linked up between Phyllis and Hugh, +was crushed, swung, caught off her feet. Persons of eleven had no +business in that crowd. Phyllis and Nancy had not wanted her and Tony +to come, but they had firmly done so. Imogen could scarcely see the +soldiers, only the broad backs her face was pressed against. Herd +enthusiasm caught and held them all, and they shouted and sang with the +rest, hoarsely, choking in the fog. + +“They’ll all be killed,” sobbed a woman close to them. “We’ll never see +their brave faces again....” + +At that Imogen’s eyes brimmed over, but she could not put up her hands +to wipe them, for her arms were tight wedged. She could only snuffle +and blink. Splendid heroes! They would be killed by the Boers, sure +enough, every one of them.... Horrible Boers with great Bibles and +sjamboks and guns. Hateful, hateful Boers. If only one were allowed +to go and fight them, as Uncle Irving was going. Thank Heaven, it was +rather age than sex that kept one from doing that; the boys couldn’t +go any more than Imogen could. If the boys had been old enough and had +gone, Imogen would somehow, she felt sure, have gone too. To be left +out was too awful. + +But these were grown men. Splendid men. Lucky men, for they would soon +be roving the veldt with guns and bayonets under the African sun; they +would lurk in ambush behind kopjes and arise and slay their brother +Boer, the canting, bearded foe, with great slaughter. Even if they did +never come back, how could man die better? + +The crowd swayed and shoved, lifting the children from their feet. +Imogen’s chest was crushed against the back in front of her; she fought +for breath. There was an acrid, musty smell; the raw air was close with +breathing. + +A crowd is queer. A number of individuals gather together for one +purpose, and you get not a number of individuals, but a crowd. It is +like a new, strange animal, sub-human. It may do anything. Go crazy +with panic, or rage, or excitement, or delight. Now it was enthusiasm +that gripped and swayed it, and caused it to shout and sing. Songs +rippled over it, starting somewhere, caught from mouth to mouth. + + “Cook’s son, duke’s son, son of a belted earl.... + Fifty thousand horse and foot going to Table Bay....” + +And then again the constant chorus--“God bless you, Tommy Atkins, +here’s your country’s love to you!” + + +It was over at last. The heroes had gone. The crowd broke and pushed +out from the station gates, flooding the choked yellow streets. + +“There’s our bus,” said Phyllis, a good organiser. “Come on. Stick +together.” + +They besieged and rushed the bus as troops rush a fort. Being vigorous +and athletic children, they stormed it successfully. + +“We shall catch it from mother,” said Phyllis, now they had leisure to +look ahead. “But it’s been worth it.” + + + + + 29 + + OF CENTURIES + + +That sad, disappointing, disillusioning, silly war crawled through +that bitter winter of defeat, until by sheer force of numbers, the +undefeatable Boers were a little checked in the spring of 1900. + +Life is disappointing. Imogen, along with many others, thought and +hoped that 1900 would be a new century. It was not a new century. There +was quite a case for its being so. When you turned twelve, you began +your thirteenth year. When you had counted up to 100 you had completed +that hundred and were good for the next. It all depended on whether you +numbered the completion of a year from the first day when you began +saying 1900, or not till its last day, when you stopped saying it. The +Astronomer Royal adjudicated that it was on its last day, and that they +had, in fact, said 1900 prematurely, saying it before the last second +of December the 31st. He may have been right. He probably was right. +But the disappointment of the young, to whom a year is very long, its +end hidden in mists, like mountain tops which you perhaps shall never +reach--the disappointment of the young at the opening of the year 1900 +was very great. + +“At all events,” said Imogen, “we can write 1900. We can say, ‘It’s +1900.’” But what one could not say was, “I remember, last century, +going to the sea-side for the holidays....” “Last century bicycles and +steam engines came in ...” or, “We, of the twentieth century....” That +would have to wait. + +The funny thing was that you could not, however hard you thought, lay +your finger on the moment when the new century would be born. Imogen +used to try, lying in bed before she went to sleep. One second you +said, “We of the nineteenth century”; the next second you said, “We of +the twentieth century.” But there must be a moment in between, when it +was neither; surely there must. A queer little isolated point in time, +with no magnitude, but only position.... The same point must be between +one day and the next, one hour and the next ... all points in time were +such points ... but you could never find them ... always you either +looked forward or looked back ... you said, “now--now--now,” trying to +catch now, but you never could ... and such vain communings with time +lead one drowsily into sleep. + + + + + 30 + + PRO-BOER + + +In Stanley the Boer War slew the jingo spirit, turned back on itself +the cresting wave of imperialism. Not because it was an ill-fought, +stupidly managed, for long unsuccessful war, but because it was war, +and war was, when seen functioning, senseless and horrible. It was +nearly as bad when Great Britain at last began to defeat the too clever +farmers. It was almost worst in the summer of 1900, when the news of +the relief of Mafeking caused so much more tempestuous a hysteria +than the other reliefs had caused, and when Lord Roberts occupied +Johannesburg and proclaimed the annexation of the Orange Free State, +and when Pretoria was taken, and yet the war went on and on and on. + +“Is this the way,” asked Liberals, “to secure in the end any kind of +working reconciliation between ourselves and the conquered enemy? If +Great Britain wishes to be burdened for ever with a sullen, hostile, +exasperated people, embittered with the memory of burnt farms, useless +slaughter and destruction, she is taking the right course.” And so +forth. Liberals always talk like that. Those who disagreed merely +retorted, “Pro-Boer,” which took less time. The Latin word “pro” has +been found always very useful and insulting. + +Stanley became a pro-Boer. She disliked all she knew of Boers very +much, but that had nothing to do with it. A pro-Boer, like a pro-German +much later, was one who was in favour of making terms with the enemy on +the victories already gained. The Conciliation Committee were pro-Boer. +The Liberal newspapers were pro-Boer, except the _Chronicle_, +which threw Mr. Massingham overboard to be pro-Boer by himself. Maurice +Garden was, of course, pro-Boer. He loathed Boers, the heavy-witted, +brutal Bible-men, with their unctuous Cromwellian cant. But fiercely +and contemptuously he was pro-Boer. Rome, too, was pro-Boer; had been +from the first. + +“A most unpleasant people,” she had said. “What a mistake not to leave +them to themselves! If the Uitlanders disliked them as much as I +should, they wouldn’t go on living there and sending complaints to us; +they would come away. All this imperialism is so very unbalanced.” + +“Worse than unbalanced, Rome,” her papa sadly said. “One hesitates to +speak harshly, but it must be called un-Christian. The Churches have +gone terribly astray over it. The unhappy Churches....” + +Unhappy because terribly astray on so many topics, papa meant. Even +now he was mourning the death of his friend Dr. Mivart, who had been +deprived of the sacraments of his church because he had, in the +_Nineteenth Century_ and the _Fortnightly Review_, written +articles, however reverent, on “The Continuity of Catholicism,” and +in them seemed to give to the infallible authority of the Church a +lower place than to human reason. Alas for the Catholic Church, which +so treated its best sons! Never, papa knew, could he join that great +Church again. Religion too had suffered a heavy blow in the death, in +January, of Dr. Martineau. And Ruskin also went that month.... Like +leaves the great Victorians were falling. Papa, brooding over a great +epoch so soon to close, could not but be a pro-Boer and hope that this +horrid war, which jarred and confused its last years, would soon end. + +As for Maurice, his newspaper office was raided and smashed on Mafeking +night, and he himself carried out and ducked in Trafalgar Square basin. +No one hurt him. No one wanted, on this happy, good-humoured night, +to hurt this small, frail, scornful, slightly intoxicated, obviously +courageous editor, who brightly insulted them to their faces as they +tied him up. + +Vicky’s children were not pro-Boer. No one could have called them that. +They were all for a good whacking victory. Imogen, it must be owned, +did once, in a moment of seeing the point of view of the foe (Imogen +usually saw all the points of view there were to see; her eye was not +single, which made life a very dizzy business for her), write a poem +beginning: + + “Across the great Vaal River we northward trekked and came, + Set up our own dominion, and men acknowledged the same; + And close behind us followed the Alien whom we scorn, + With his eager clutching fingers and his lust for gold new-born. + + “‘There is wealth,’ he cried; + ‘I will dig,’ he cried; + Between him and us may the Lord decide! + Through the Lord’s good might, 5 1-2 + By the sword’s good right, + Let us up and smite our enemies and put our foes to flight!” + +Imogen was not ill-pleased with that poem, which had ten verses, and +which she wrote for a school composition. It seemed to her a fine +expression of sturdy Boer patriotism, however misguided. + +“I can see their point of view,” she said to herself, righteously, and +pleased with the phrase. “Most people” (which meant, it need scarcely +be said, most of the other girls at school), “can’t see it, but I can. +They’re beastly, and I’m glad they’re beaten, but I see their point of +view.” She said so to some other little girls in the Third Remove. But +the other little girls, who didn’t see the Boers’ point of view, said, +“Oh! Are you a pro-Boer? I say, Imogen Carrington’s a pro-Boer.” “Your +uncle was ducked in Trafalgar Square, wasn’t he?” said someone else, +curiously but not unkindly, and in the diffident voice suitable to +family scandals, “for being a pro-Boer. Do you think the same as him?” + +Imogen, blushing, disclaimed this. + +“Daddy and mother think Uncle Maurice awfully wrong, and so do I. He’s +a _real_ pro-Boer.” + +“Well, what are you? Are you only shamming pro-Boer?” + +“I’m not a pro-Boer at all. I’m pro-us. I only said I could see their +point of view....” + +“Oh, you do talk tosh. Point of view. No one but grown-up people uses +words like that. Imogen’s getting awfully cocky now Miss Cradock always +says her compositions are good. Come and play tig.” + +And, since little girls at school are very seldom unkind, they included +Imogen in the game and bore no malice. + +Irving was no pro-Boer. He wrote home, in the autumn of 1900, “We’re +getting on, but we’re not near finished with brother Boer yet. Maurice +is talking through his hat, as usual. Any fool out here knows that +if we’re to suck any advantage out of this war (and there’s no small +advantage to be sucked, I can tell you), we’ve got to _win_ it. +Those radical gas-bags at home don’t know the first thing about it.” + +It is an eternal and familiar dispute, and which side one takes in it +really seems to depend more on temperament than on the amount one knows +about it. + + + + + 31 + + END OF VICTORIANISM + + +The nineteenth century did actually end at last. Probably everyone over +twelve and under seventy sat up to see it out, to see the twentieth in, +to catch that elusive, dramatic moment and savour it. + +The twentieth century. Imogen, when she woke on New Year’s Day, could +scarcely believe it. It was perhaps, she thought, a drunken dream. For +the Carringtons, like all right-thinking persons, always kept Hogmanny +in punch. But the twentieth century it was, and a clear frosty morning. +Imogen shouted to Nancy, lying in intoxicated slumbers in the other +bed, “Happy new century,” lest Nancy should say it first, then looked +at the new century out of the window. What a jolly century it looked; +what a jolly century it was going to be! A hundred happy years. At +the end of it she would be 112. A snowy-haired but still active old +lady, living in a white house on a South Sea Island, bathing every +morning (but not too early) and then getting back into bed and eating +her breakfast of mangoes, bread-fruit, delicious home-grown coffee and +honey. Then a little roller skating on the shining parquet floor of +the hall; a lovely hall, hung with the trophies of her bow--reindeer, +sand-bok, polar bear, grizzly, lion, tiger, cheetah, wombat and wolf. +No birds. Shooting birds was no fun. Imogen knew, for she had shot +her first and only sparrow last week, with her new catapult. The boys +had been delighted, but she had nearly cried. It had been beastly. +Hereafter she meant only to use the catapult on cows, brothers and +sisters, and still life. That old lady of the year 2,000 should have +only one bird to her score. + +The question was, what to do till getting-up time. Wake Nancy--but this +was next to impossible. Nancy was a remarkably fast sleeper. One might +go and try to wake the boys, and get them to come out catapulting in +the garden, or roller skating in the square. Or one might snuggle down +in bed again and read “Treasure Island.” Or not read, but lie and think +about the new century; perhaps make a poem about it. Imogen extracted +from the pocket of her frock, that hung on a chair, a stubby pencil, a +note-book and a stick of barley-sugar. With these she curled up among +the bedclothes. Happily she sucked and pondered. Holidays; breakfast +time not for ages; Christmas presents with the gloss still on (among +them a pair of roller skates and _Brassey’s Naval Annual_ and a +new bow and arrows), and a brand new century to explore. Sing joy, sing +joy. + +“Roland lay in his bunk,” murmured Imogen, “and heard the prow of the +ship grinding through ice-floes as she pursued her way. Eight bells +sounded. With a hijous shock he remembered the events of last night. +He put his hand to his head; it was caked with dried blood where the +pirates had struck him with the crowbar. A faint moan of anguish was +wrung from his white lips....” + +Roland was Imogen, and his adventures had meandered on in serial +form in her mind for several months. She had always, ever since she +remembered, impersonated some boy or youth as she went about. “Lithe +as a panther,” she would murmur within herself, as she climbed a tree, +“Wilfrid swarmed up the bare trunk. He scanned the horizon. In the +distance he saw a puff of smoke, and heard, far away, faint shrieks. +‘Indians,’ he said, ‘at their howwid work. The question for me is, can +I warn the settlers in time? If the Redskins catch me, I shall wish I +had never been born. No; I will escape now and save myself.’” + +It was characteristic of Wilfrid, or Roland, or Dennis, or whatever +he was at the moment called, that he usually did a cowardly thing at +first, then repented and acted like a hero, suffering thereby both the +condemnation of his friends for his cowardice and the tortures of +his foes for his courage. He was a rather morbid youth, who enjoyed +repentance and heroic amendment, no simple, stalwart soul. Usually he +was in the navy. + +Thus, in idle, barley-sugared dreamings, this representative of the +young generation began the new century. + +“What,” mused her grandfather, watching from his bed the winter morning +grow, “will the new age be?” + +“Much like the old ages, I shouldn’t wonder,” Mrs. Garden murmured, +drowsily. “People and things stay much the same ... much the same....” + +“The eternal wheel,” papa speculated, still adhering to his latest +faith, but with a note of question. “The eternal, turning wheel. I +wonder....” + +But what mamma wondered, catching the familiar note of doubt in his +voice, was where the eternal turning wheel would next land papa. + +“What a world we’ll make it, won’t we, my son and daughter,” Stanley +hopefully exclaimed to her children as they rioted about her room. +“What a century we’ll have! It belongs to the people of your age, you +know. You’ve got to see it’s a good one.... Now take yourselves off and +let me get up. Run and turn on the cold tap for me, and put the warm at +a trickle.” + +Stanley whistled as she dressed. + +“Yet another century,” her sister Rome commented, with languid +amusement, as her early tea was brought to her. “How many we have, to +be sure! I wonder if, perhaps, it is not even too many?” + +“_Maurice_,” shrilly called Maurice’s wife, entering his room at +nine o’clock. “Well, I declare!” + +Maurice lay heavily sleeping, and whiskey exhaled from his breath. He +had come home at three o’clock this morning. + +“A nice way to begin the new year,” said Amy; she did not say “new +century,” because she was of those who could not see but that the +century had been new in 1900. She shook her husband’s shoulder, looking +down with distaste at his thin, sharp-featured sleeping face, its usual +pallor heavily flushed. + +“A nice example to the children. And you always writing rubbish about +social reform.... You make me sick.” + +“Go away,” said Maurice, half opening hot eyes. “Le’me alone. My head’s +bad....” + +“So I should imagine,” said Amy. “I’m sick and tired of you, Maurice.” + +“Go away then. Right away. We’d both be happier. Why don’t you?” + +“Oh, I daresay I’m old-fashioned,” said Amy. “I was brought up to +think a wife’s place was with her husband. Of course, I’m probably +_wrong_. I’m always surprised _you_ don’t leave _me_, feeling as +you do.” + +Maurice, waking a little more, surveyed her with morose, heavy, aching +eyes, and moistened his dry lips. + +“You’re not surprised. You know it’s because of the children. It’s my +job to see they grow up decently, with decent ideas and a chance.” + +At that Amy’s mirth overcame her. + +“Decent ideas! You’re a nice educator of children, aren’t you! +_Look_ at yourself lying there....” + +She pointed to the looking-glass opposite his bed. + +“Get out, please,” said Maurice, coldly. “I’ve got to write my leader.” + +Meanwhile the most august representative of the Victorian age wavered +wearily between her own century and this strange new one, peering +blindly down the coming road as into a grave. It did not belong to +her, the new century. She had had her day. A few days of the new young +era, and she would slip into the night, giving place to the rough young +forces knocking at the door. + +The great Victorian century was dead. + + + + + PART III + + EDWARDIAN + + + + + 1 + + DISCURSIVE + + +THE Edwardians were, as we now think, a brief generation to themselves, +set between Victorianism and neo-Georgianism (it is a pity that we +should have no better name for the present reign, for “Georgian” +belongs by right to a period quite other; royalty having ever been +sadly unimaginative in its choice of Christian names). Set between +the nineteenth century and the full swing of the twentieth, those +brief ten years we call Edwardian seem now like a short spring day. +They were a gay and yet an earnest time. A time of social reform on +the one hand and social brilliance on the other. The heyday at once +of intellectual Fabianism and of extravagant dissipation. The hour of +the repertory theatres, the Irish Players, Bernard Shaw and Granville +Barker at the Court, Miss Horniman in the provinces, absurd musical +comedies that bloomed like gay flowers of a day and died. The onrush +of motor cars and the decline of bicycles and the horse; extravagant +country-house parties at which royalty consented to be entertained, +with royal bonhomie and royal exactions of etiquette.... “Mr. Blank, +have we not seen that suit rather often before?” “Lady Dash, surely we +remember this wall-paper....” “Lord Somebody, this is a very abominable +dinner....” What standards to live up to! There was nothing dowdy about +our King Edward. He set the stakes high, and all who could afford it +played. Pageants and processions passed in regal splendour. Money nobly +flowed. + +Ideals changed. The sanctity and domesticity of the _Heim_ was no +more a royal fetish. “Respectability,” that good old word, degraded and +ill-used for so long, sank into discredit, sank lower in the social +scale. No more were unfortunate ladies who had had marital troubles +coldly banned from court, for a larger charity (except as to suits, +dinners and wall-papers) obtained. Victorian sternness, Victorian +prudery and intolerance, still prevailed among some of the older +aristocracy, among most of the smaller squirearchy, the professional +classes and the petty bourgeoisie; but among most of the wealthy, most +of the titled, most of the gay and extravagant classes, a wider liberty +grew. + +In the intervals of social pleasures, Edward the Peacemaker was busy +about the Balance of Power in Europe. He did not care about his cousin +Wilhelm. He made an Entente with France, and came to an understanding +with Russia, so that when the Trouble should come--and experienced +royalty knows that from time to time, the Trouble is bound to come--we +should not meet it singly. The weak point about ententes is that when +the Trouble comes to one’s fellow-members, they do not meet it singly +either. Considering this, and considering also the annoyance and alarm +they inspire in those not in them, and taking them all round, ententes +seem on the whole a pity. But at the time English people were pleased +with this one, and Edward was hopefully called the Peacemaker, just as +Victoria had been called Good, and Elizabeth Virgin, and Mary Bloody. +We love to name our royalties, and we much prefer to name them kindly. +Mary must have been, and doubtless was, very bloody indeed before her +people bestowed on her that opprobrious title. Other sovereigns--most +other sovereigns--have been pretty bloody too, but none of them bloody +enough to be so called. + +A queer time! Perhaps a transition time; for that matter, this is +one of the things times always are. The world of fashion led by an +elderly royal gentleman bred at the Victorian court of his mother, and +retaining queer Victorian traditions that younger gentlemen and ladies +did not observe. King Edward, for instance, observed Sunday with some +strictness. He thought it right; he felt it should be done. The British +Sunday was an institution, and King Edward was all for institutions. A +generation was growing up, had already grown up, who did not understand +about Sunday in that sense. But you may observe about elderly Victorian +persons that, however loosely they may sit to Sunday, they usually have +a sense of it. They play or work on it consciously, with a feeling +that they are breaking a foolish rule, possibly offending an imaginary +public opinion. They seldom quite realise that the rule and the opinion +they are thinking of are nearly obsolete. They seldom regard Sunday +(with reference to the occupations practised on it), precisely as if +it were a weekday. Institutions die hard. They linger long after their +informing spirit has died. + +Anyhow, King Edward VII was a Victorian gentleman long before he was an +Edwardian. So he observed Sunday and the lesser proprieties, without +self-consciousness. He was like his mother, with a difference. Both had +a sense of royal dignity and of the Proper Thing. His subjects, too, +had a sense of the Proper Thing: people always have. But the Proper +Thing, revered as ever, gradually changed its face, or rather turned a +somersault and alighted on its head. + +Well, the Edwardians, like the Elizabethans, the Jacobeans, the +Carolines, the Georgians, the Victorians, and the neo-Georgians, were +a mixed lot. This attempt to class them, to stigmatise them with +adjectives, is unscientific, sentimental, and wildly incorrect. But, +because it is rather more interesting than to admit frankly that they +were merely a set of individuals, it will always be done. + + + + + 2 + + VIVE LE ROI + + +_La reine est morte. Vive le roi._ King Edward was proclaimed by +heralds, by trumpeters, and with the rolling of drums; and God save +the King. Then they buried the late queen with royal pomp, and kings, +emperors, archdukes and crown princes rode with her to the tomb. + +King Edward opened Parliament in state. A great king he was for +pageantry and for state. He read the Accession Declaration. It was a +tactlessly worded declaration in some ways, for it was drawn up in +days when Roman Catholicism was not well thought of by the Head of the +Church and Defender of the Faith. King Edward did not like it. “His +Majesty,” wrote the outraged Catholic peers, “would willingly have been +relieved from the necessity of branding with contumelious epithets the +religious tenets of any of his subjects.” There were protests not only +from Roman Catholics, but from Protestants and agnostics, who all, in +the main, thought it rude. But some there were who, though they knew +it was rude, knew also that it was right to be rude to Roman Catholics. +“They are the king’s subjects as much as others, and belong to a +distinguished old church,” the protesters declared. “The thing is an +antediluvian piece of ill-breeding.” + +“Bloody Mary. The Inquisition. No Popery,” was the crude reply. “And +are not Roman Catholics always rude to our religion? Why, then, should +we not be rude to theirs?” + +“Roman Catholics,” replied the more polite and sophisticated, “cannot +help being a little rude--if you call it so--to other faiths. They +are not to blame. It is an article of their faith that theirs is the +only true and good church. There is no such article in other faiths. +We are not obliged by our religion to believe them wrong, as they +are, unfortunately, obliged to believe us wrong. Obviously, then, we +should practise the courtesy forbidden to them. It is more generous +and dignified. Also, they are as good as we are. All religions are +doubtless in the main inaccurate, and one does not differ appreciably +from another. And His Majesty ought to preserve a strict impartiality +concerning the many and various faiths of his people. The Declaration +is ignorant, unstatesmanlike and obscurantist, and smacks of vulgar +seventeenth century protestantism. It is a worse scandal than the +Thirty-nine Articles.” + +But “No Popery” was still the cry of the noisy few, and the scandal +remained. Reluctantly protesting his firm intention to give no +countenance to the religion of some millions of his subjects, and +solemnly in the presence of God professing, testifying and declaring +that he did make this declaration in the plaine and ordinary sense of +the words as they were commonly understood by English Protestants, +without any evasion, equivocation or mental reservation whatsoever, +without any dispensation from the Pope, either already granted or to +be sought later, the king opened his khaki-elected Parliament, which +proved as ineffective as parliaments always do. It is of no importance +which side is in office in Parliament; any study of the subject must +convince the earnest student that all parties are about equally +stupid. By some fluke, useful Acts may from time to time get passed by +any government that happens to be in power. More often, foolish and +injurious Acts get passed. Personality and intelligence in ministers +do certainly make some difference; but party, it seems, makes none. +The stupid, the inert, the dishonest and the ill-intentioned flourish +like bay-trees impartially on both sides of the avenue. Only the very +_naïf_ can believe that party matters, in the long run. This first +Parliament of the twentieth century proved, perhaps, even more than +usually inept, as parliaments elected during war excitements are apt to +be. It could deal neither with education, defences, labour, finance nor +poisoned beer. + + + + + 3 + + PAPA’S NEW FAITH + + +The war scrambled on; a tedious, ineffective guerilla business. The +Concentration Camp trouble began, and over its rights and wrongs +England was split. + +Mr. Garden hated the thought of these camps, where Boer women and +children, driven from their homes, dwelt in discomfort (so said Miss +Emily Hobhouse and others), and fell ill and died. They might be, +as their defenders maintained, kindly meant, but it was all very +disagreeable. In fact, the whole war preyed on papa’s mind and nerves. +More and more it seemed to him a hideous defiance of any possible +Christian order of society, a thing wholly outside the sphere of God’s +scheme for the world. But, then, of course, nearly everything was that, +and always had been. So utterly outside that sphere were most of the +world’s happenings that it sometimes seemed to papa as if they could +scarcely _be_ happenings, as if they must be evil illusions of +our own, outside the great Reality. The more papa brooded over this +Reality, the more he became persuaded that it must be absolute and +all pervasive, that nothing else really existed. “We make evil by our +thought,” said papa. “God knows no evil.... God does not know about the +war. Nor about the Concentration Camps....” + +It will be seen that papa was ripe for the acceptance of a new +creed which had recently come across the Atlantic and was becoming +fashionable in this country. Christian Science fastened on papa like a +mosquito, and bit him hard. It comforted him very much to think that +God did not know about the war. He told his grandchildren about this +ignorance on the part of the Deity. + +Imogen pondered it. She had a metaphysical and enquiring mind, and was +always interested in God. + +“What _does_ God think all those soldiers are doing out in Africa, +grandpapa?” she asked, after a considering pause. “Or doesn’t he know +they’re soldiers?” + +“He knows they are unhappy people following an evil illusion, my +child,” her grandpapa told her. “You see, there is no war really--not +on God’s plane. There couldn’t be.” + +Imogen pondered it again, corrugating her forehead. She dearly liked to +understand things. + +“Will God know about the peace, when it comes?” + +“He will know his children have stopped imagining the evil of war. And +he will be very glad.” + +“Doesn’t he know about the soldiers who are killed? What does he think +they’ve died of?” + +“He knows they are slain by their evil imaginings and those of their +enemies. You see, God knows his children _believe_ themselves to +be at war, and that as long as they go on believing it they will hurt +each other and themselves.” + +It seemed to Imogen that, in that case, God knew all that was really +necessary about the war. + +“Are you the only person, besides God, who doesn’t believe in the war, +grandpapa?” she presently enquired. + +“No, my child. There are others.... Perhaps one day, when you are +older, you will understand more about it, and try and think all evil +and all pain out of existence.” + +“P’raps.” Imogen was dubious. She did not quite get the idea. “Of +course I’d _like_ it, grandpapa, because then I shouldn’t get hurt +any more.” She rubbed the back of her head, onto which she had fallen +that afternoon while roller skating round the square. Her grandfather +had told her that God didn’t know she had fallen and hurt herself, and, +in fact, that she was not really hurt at all. God didn’t know a great +deal about roller skates, Imogen concluded, if he didn’t know that +people who used them very frequently did fall. But perhaps he didn’t +know there were any roller skates; perhaps roller skates were another +evil illusion of ours, like the war. Not a bad illusion; one we had +better keep, bruises and all. But perhaps, thought Imogen, who liked +to think things out thoroughly, it was really that God didn’t know that +the contact of the human head with another hard substance caused pain. +After all, people who have never tried _don’t_ know that. Babies +don’t.... + +Imogen began to be afraid she was blaspheming. She put the problem +later to her mother, but Vicky was less interested than her youngest +daughter in metaphysical problems, and merely said, “Oh, Jennie +darling, you needn’t puzzle your head about what grandpapa tells you. +Things that suit learned old gentlemen like him don’t always do for +little girls like you. Anyhow, don’t ever you get thinking that it +won’t hurt you when you tumble on your head, because it always will. +_You’ll_ never get rid of that illusion, you may be sure. What +_you’ve_ got to learn is not to be so careless, and not to spend +all your time climbing and racketing about. So long as you’ll do that +you’ll get tumbles, and they’ll hurt, and don’t you forget it.” + +Imogen sighed a little. Her mother was so practical. You asked her for +doctrine and she gave you advice. Being married, and particularly being +a mother, often makes women like that. They know that doctrine is no +use, and cherish the illusion that advice is. + +“Papa is very happy in this new no-evil religion he has,” mamma said to +Rome. “It suits him very well. Better than theosophy did, I think.” + +Papa’s new religion might, from her placid, casual, considering tone, +have been a new suit of clothes. + +Papa’s daughter-in-law, Amy, screamed with mirth over it. Christian +Science seemed to her an excellent joke. + +“Oh, you’re not really hurt,” she would say if her daughter Iris came +in from hockey with a black eye. “It’s all an illusion! What do you +want embrocation for? I’ll tell your grandpapa of you....” + +“Christian Science,” Maurice said to her at last, gloomily +contemptuous, “is not much more absurd than other religions. Suppose +you were to take another for your hourly jokes to-day, just for the +sake of a change. It makes no difference which; you don’t begin to +understand any of them, and you can, no doubt, get a good laugh out of +them all, if you try.” + +Amy said, “There you go, as usual! I suppose you’ll be saying +_you’re_ a Christian Science crank next. Anyway, I don’t know what +you want to speak to me in that way for, just because I like a little +fun.” + +“I don’t want to speak to you in any way,” replied Maurice. + + + + + 4 + + ON EDUCATION + + +Stanley, turning forty this year, was sturdier than of old, softer +and broader of face, blunt-nosed, chubby, maternal, her deep blue +eyes more ardent and intent. Now that her children, who were ten and +eight, both went to day schools, she had taken up her old jobs, and +was working for Women’s Trade Unions, going every day to an office, +sitting on committees, speaking on platforms. Phases come and phases +go, and particularly with Stanley, who inherited much from her +papa. Stanley was in these days a stop-the-war, pacificist Little +Englander, anti-militarist, anti-Chamberlain, anti-Concentration Camp. +She would shortly be a Fabian, but had not quite got there yet. She +was, of course, a suffragist, but suffragists in 1901 were still a +very forlorn outpost; they were considered crankish and unpractical +dreamers. She also spoke and wrote on Prison Reform, Democratic +Education, Divorce Reform, Clean Milk and Health Food. She was an +admirer of Mr. Eustace Miles’ views on food, Mr. G. B. Shaw’s drama +and social ethics, Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s romantic Christianity, and +no one’s political opinions. She believed in the future of the world, +which was to be splendidly managed by the children now growing up, who +were to be splendidly educated for that purpose. + +“But how improbable,” Rome mildly expostulated, “that they should +manage it any better or any worse than everyone else has. Your maternal +pride carries you away, my dear. Parents can never be clear-sighted; +often have I observed it. Blessed, as the Bible says somewhere, are +the barren and they that have not brought forth, for they are the only +people with any chance of looking at the world with clear and detached +eyes. And even they haven’t much.... But why do you think the present +young will do so unusually well with the future?” + +“Of course,” Stanley replied, “they won’t do it of themselves. Only so +far as they are educated up to it.” + +“Well, I can’t see that educational methods are improving noticeably. +Obviously democratic education is not at present to be encouraged by +our governing classes. Look at the Cockerton case....” + +“It will come,” said Stanley. “This new Bill won’t go far, but it will +do something. Meanwhile, those parents who have thought it out at all +are doing rather better by their children than parents used to do. At +least we can tell them the truth.” + +“So far as you see it yourselves. Is that, in most cases, saying much?” + +“No, very little. But--to take a trivial thing--we can at least, for +instance, tell them the truth about such things as the birth of life. +That’s something. Billy and Molly already know as much as they need +about that.” + +“Well, they don’t actually need very much yet, do they? I’m sure it +won’t hurt them to know anything of that sort, but I don’t see exactly +how it’s going to help them to manage the world any better. Because, +when the time comes for doing that, they’d know about the birth of life +in any case. Boys always seem to pick it up at school, whatever else +they don’t learn. However, I admit that I think you bring up Billy and +Molly very well.” + +“It’s facing facts,” said Stanley, “that I want to teach them. The art +of not being afraid of life. They’ve got to do their share in cleaning +up the world, and before they can do that they’ve got to face it +squarely. One wants to do away with muffling things up, whatever they +are. That’s why I tell them everything they ask, so far as I know it, +and a lot they don’t. The knowledge doesn’t matter either way, but the +atmosphere of daylight does. I want them to feel there are no facts +that can’t be talked about.” + +“But, my dear, what a social training! Because, you know, there +_are_. Anyhow in drawing-rooms, and places where they chat.” + +“They’ll learn all that soon enough,” Stanley placidly said. “The world +is as vulgar as it is mainly because of its prudery. I’m giving my +children weapons against that.” + +She had given them also a weapon against their cousins, the children +of Vicky, who had not been told Facts. Anyhow Imogen hadn’t. Her +sisters were older, and boys, as Rome had said, do seem to pick things +up at school. But Imogen at thirteen was still in the ignorance thought +by Vicky suitable to her years. So, when she exasperated her cousin +Billy by her superior proficiency in climbing, running, gymnastics, and +all active games--a proficiency natural to her three years’ seniority +but growing tiresome during a whole afternoon spent in trials of +skill--Billy could at least retort, “I know something you don’t. I know +how babies come.” + +“Don’t care how they come,” Imogen returned, astride on a higher bough +of the aspen tree than her cousin could attain to. “They’re no use +anyhow, the little fools. Who wants babies?” + +Billy, having meditated on this unanswerable question, amended his +vaunt. “Well, I know how puppies come, too. So there.” + +Imogen was stumped. You can’t say that puppies are no use. She could +think of no retort but the ancient one of sex insult. + +“Boys are always bothering about stupid things like how babies come. As +if it mattered. _I’d_ rather know the displacement and horse-power +and knots of all the battleships and first-class cruisers.” + +“You don’t.” + +“I do.” + +“Bet you a bull’s-eye you don’t.” + +“Done. A pink one. Ask any you like.” + +“Well, what’s the _Terrible_?” + +“14,200 tons; 25,000 horse-power; 22.4 knots. That’s an easy one.” + +“The _Powerful_.” + +“Same, of course. No, she only makes 22.1 knots. Stupid to ask twins.” + +Billy considered. He did not like to own it, but he could not remember +at the moment any other ships of His Majesty’s fleet. + +“Well, what’s the biggest, anyhow?” + +“The _Dominion_ and the _King Edward VII_. 16,350 tons; +18,000 horse-power; 18.5 knots.” + +“I don’t know that any of that’s true.” + +“You can look in ‘Brassey’ and find out, then.” + +“I don’t care. Anyone can mug up ‘Brassey.’ Anyhow girls can’t go into +the navy.” + +Imogen jogged up and down on the light swinging branch, whistling +through her teeth, pretending not to hear. + +“And anyhow,” added the taunter below, “_you’d_ be no use on a +ship, ’cause you’d be sick.” + +“I wouldn’t.” + +“You would.” + +“I wouldn’t.” + +“You would.” + +“You’re sick yourself if you smoke a woodbine.” + +“So are you. _You’re_ sick if you squash a fly. Girls are. They +can’t dissect a rabbit. I can.” + +The sex war was in full swing. + +“Boys crib at their lessons. Boys don’t wash their necks.” + +“Nor do girls. You’re dirty now. Girls don’t play footer at school.” + +“Hockey’s as good. Boys are greedy pigs; they spend their pennies on +tuck.” + +“Who bought eight bull’s-eyes this afternoon and sucked six?” + +“Oh, well.” Imogen collapsed into sudden good temper. “Don’t let’s +rot. Why did the gooseberry fool?” + +To change the subject further, she swung herself backwards and hung +from the branch by her knees, her short mop of curls swinging upside +down, the blood singing in her head. Billy, a nice but not very clever +little boy, said, “Because the raspberry syrup,” and truce was signed. +Who, as Imogen had asked, cared how babies came? + + + + + 5 + + PING-PONG + + +Everywhere people ping-ponged. One would have thought there was no war +on. Instead of doing their bits, as we did in a more recent and more +serious war, they all ping-ponged, and, when not ping-ponging, asked, +“Why did the razor-bill raise her bill? Why did the coal scuttle? What +did Anthony Hope?” and answered, “Because the woodpecker would peck +her. Because the table had cedar legs. To see the salad dressing,” and +anything else of that kind they could think of. Some people, mostly +elderly people, could only answer vaguely to everything, “Because the +razor-bill razor-bill,” and change the subject, thinking how stupid +riddles in these days were. Some people excelled at riddles, others +at ping-pong, others again at pit, which meant shouting “oats, oats, +oats,” or something similar, until they were hoarse. No one would have +thought there was a war on. + +Indeed, there scarcely was a war on, now. Not a war to matter. Only +rounding up, and blockhouses, and cordons, and guerilla fighting. +Irving Garden had had enteric, and was invalided home. He meant to +return to South Africa directly peace should be signed, to investigate +a good thing he had heard of in the Rand. His nephews and nieces, +with whom he was always popular, worshipped at his shrine. He had +wonderfully funny stories of the war to tell them. But he preferred +to ask them such questions as, “What made Charing Cross?” and to +supply them with such answers as, “Teaching London Bridge. Am I +right?” Such questions, such answers, they found so funny as to be +almost painful. Imogen and Tony would giggle until tears came into +their eyes. Certainly Uncle Irving was amusing. And clever. He drove +himself and other people about in a grey car that travelled like the +wind and was cursed like the devil by pedestrians and horse-drivers on +the roads. His brother Maurice cursed him, but good-temperedly, for +he liked Irving, and, further, he despised the unenterprising Public +for fools. That was why no section of the community gave Maurice and +his paper their entire confidence. He attacked what he and those who +agreed with him held for evils, but would round, with a contemptuous +gesture, on those whose grievances he voiced. He ridiculed the present +inefficiency, and ridiculed also the ideals of those who cried for +improvement. He threw himself into the struggle for educational +reform, and sneered at all reforms proposed as inadequate, pedestrian +or absurd. He condemned employers as greedy, and Trade Unions as +retrograde. He jeered at the inefficiency of the conduct of what +remained of the war, at the stupid brutality of concentration camps, +at the sentimentality of the Pro-Boer party (as they were still +called), at the militarism of the Tory militants, the imperialism of +the Liberals, and the sentimental radical humanitarianism of Mr. +Lloyd George and his party. He addressed Stop-the-War meetings until +they were broken up with violence by earnest representatives of the +Continue-the-War party, and suffered much physical damage in the +ensuing conflicts; yet the Stop-the-War party did not really trust +him. They suspected him of desiring, though without hope, to stop not +only the war but all human activities, and indeed the very universe +itself; and this is to go further than is generally approved. The +Continue-the-War party has risen and fallen with every war; but the +Continue-the-World party has a kind of solid permanency, and something +of the universal in its ideals. Not to be of it is to be out of +sympathy with the great majority of one’s fellows. At any time and in +any country, but perhaps particularly in England in the early years +of the twentieth century, when there was a good deal of enthusiasm +for continuance and progress. The early Edwardians were not, as we +are to-day, dispirited and discouraged with the course of the world, +though they were vexed about the Boer War and the consequent economic +depression of the country. They did not, for the most part, feel that +life was a bad business and the future outlook too dark and menacing +to be worth encouraging. On the contrary, they believed in Life with a +capital L. The young were bitten by the dry reforming zeal of Mr. and +Mrs. Sidney Webb, or the gay faith in life of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, or +the bounding scientific hopefulness of Mr. H. G. Wells, or the sharp +social and ethical criticism of Mr. George Bernard Shaw. + +Stanley Croft, young for ever in mind, was bitten by all these and +much more. Imperialism left slain behind, she embraced with ardour the +fantastic ideal of the cleaning up of England. After the war; then +indeed they would proceed furiously with the building of Jerusalem in +England’s green and pleasant land. + +And meanwhile the war went on, and times were bad, and everywhere +people ping-ponged. A lack of seriousness was complained of. It always +is complained of in this country, which is not, indeed, a very serious +one, but always contains some serious persons to complain of the +others. “The ping-pong spirit,” the graver press called the national +lightness; and clergymen took up the phrase and preached about it. + +The public, they said, were like street gamins, loafing about on the +watch for any new distraction. + + + + + 6 + + GAMIN + + +Imogen and Tony slipped out into the street. It was the first Sunday of +the summer holidays, and the first day of August. The sun beat hotly +on the asphalt, making it soft, so that one could dent it with one’s +heels. The children sauntered down Sloane Street, loitering at the +closed shop windows, clinking their shillings in their pockets. They +enjoyed the streets with the zest of street Arabs. They were a happy +and untidy pair; the girl in a short butcher blue cotton frock, grubby +with a week’s wear, and a hole in the knee of one black-stockinged +leg, a soiled white linen cricket hat slouched over her short mop of +brown curls, her small pink face freckled and tanned; the boy, a year +younger, grimy, dark-eyed and beautiful, like his Uncle Irving in face, +clad in a grey flannel knickerbocker suit. Neither had dressed for the +street in the way that they should have; they had slipped out, unseen, +in their garden clothes and garden grime, to make the most of the last +day before they went away for the holidays. + +They knew what they meant to do. They were going to have their +money’s worth, and far more than their money’s worth, of underground +travelling. Round and round and round; and all for a penny fare.... +This was a favourite occupation of theirs, a secret, morbid vice. They +indulged in it at least twice every holidays. The whole family had been +used to do it, but all but these two had now outgrown it. Phyllis, now +at Girton, had outgrown it long ago. “The twopenny tube for me,” she +said. “It’s cleaner.” “But it doesn’t go _round_,” said Imogen. +“Who wants to go round, you little donkey? It takes you where you want +to go to; that’s the object of a train.” It was obvious that Phyllis +had grown up. She would not even track people in the street now. It +must happen, soon or late, to all of us. Even Hughie, fifteen and at +Rugby, found this underground game rather weak. + +But Imogen and Tony still sneaked out, a little shamefaced and +secretive, to practise their vice. + +Sloane Square. Two penny fares. Down the stairs, into the delicious, +romantic, cool valley. The train thundered in, Inner Circle its style. +A half empty compartment; there was small run on the underground this +lovely August Sunday. Into it dashed the children; they had a corner +seat each, next the open door. They bumped up and down on the seats, +opposite each other. The train speeded off, rushing like a mighty wind. +South Kensington Station. More people coming in, getting out. Off +again. Gloucester Road, High Street, Notting Hill Gate, Queen’s Road +... the penny fare was well over. Still they travelled, and jogged up +and down on the straw seats, and chanted softly, monotonously, so that +they could scarcely be heard above the roaring of the train. + + “Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep, + Where the winds are all asleep; + Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, + Where the salt weed sways in the stream, + Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round, + Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground; + Where the sea-snakes coil and twine, + Dry their mail and bask in the brine; + Where great whales come sailing by, + Sail and sail with unshut eye, + Round the world for ever and aye, + ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE....” + +Then again, “Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep....” + +At Paddington they saw the conductor eyeing them, and changed their +compartment. This should be done from time to time. + +And so on, past King’s Cross and Farringdon Street, towards the wild +romantic stations of the east: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, and so round +the bend, sweeping west like the sun. Blackfriars, Temple, Charing +Cross, Westminster, St. James’ Park, Victoria, SLOANE SQUARE. +Oh, joy! Sing for the circle completed, the new circle begun. + + “Where great whales come sailing by, + Sail and sail with unshut eye, + Round the world for ever and aye, + ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE....” + +Imogen changed her chant, and dreamily crooned: + + “The world is round, so travellers tell, + And straight though reach the track; + Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well, + The way will guide one back. + But ere the circle homeward hies, + Far, far must it remove; + White in the moon the long road lies + That leads me from my love.” + +Round the merry world again. Put a girdle round the earth in forty +minutes. Round and round and round. What a pennyworth! You can’t buy +much on an English Sunday, but, if you can buy eternal travel, Sunday +is justified. + +But two Inner Circles and a bit are really enough. If you had three +whole ones you might begin to feel bored, or even sick. Sloane +Square again; the second circle completed. South Kensington. The two +globetrotters emerged from their circling, handed in their penny +tickets, reached the upper air, hot and elated. + +_Now_ what? For a moment they loitered at the station exit, +debating in expert minds the next move. Money was short: no luxurious +joys could be considered. + +Imogen suddenly gripped Tony by the arm. + +“Hist, Watson. You see that man in front?” + +Watson, well-trained, nodded. + +“We’re going to track him. I have a very shrewd suspicion that he is +connected with the Sloane Square murder mystery. Now mind, we must keep +ten paces behind him wherever he goes; not less, or he’ll notice. Like +the woman in Church Street did. He’s off; come on.... Do you observe +anything peculiar about him, Watson?” + +“He’s a jolly lean old bird. I expect he’s hungry.” + +“My good Watson, look at his clothes. They’re a jolly sight better than +ours. He’s a millionaire, as it happens. If you want to know a few +facts about him, I’ll tell you. He moved his washstand this morning +from the left side of his bed to the right; he forgot to wind up his +watch last night; he went to church before breakfast; he had kidneys +when he came in; and he’s now on his way to meet a confederate at +lunch.” + +“Piffle. You can’t prove any of it.” + +“I certainly can, my good Watson....” + +“Golly, he’s calling a hansom. Shall we hang on behind?” + +Watson’s beautiful brown eyes beamed with hope; Holmes’ small +green-grey ones held for a moment an answering gleam. But only for a +moment. Holmes knew by now, having learnt from much sad experience, +what adventures could be profitably undertaken and what couldn’t. + +“No use. We’d be pulled off at once....” + +Morosely they watched their victim escape. + +Then, “Look, Watson. The fat lady in purple. She must have been to +church.... Oh, quite simple, Watson, I assure you ... she has a +prayerbook.... Come on. It won’t matter how late we get back, because +they’re having a lunch party and we’re feeding in the schoolroom. We’ll +sleuth her to hell.” + +In this manner Sunday morning passed very pleasantly and profitably for +Vicky’s two youngest children. + + + + + 7 + + AUTUMN, 1901 + + +1901 drew to its close. An odd, restless, gay, unhappy year, sad with +war and poverty, bitter with quarrels about inefficiency, concentration +camps, Ahmednagar (the home of the Boers in India, and a name much +thrown about by the pro-Boers in their “ignorant and perverse outcry”), +education, religion, finance, politics, prisons, motor cars, and +stopping the war; gay with new drama (Mr. Bernard Shaw was being +produced, and many musical comedies), new art (at the New English Art +Club), new jokes, new books (Mr. Conrad had published “Lord Jim,” Mr. +Henry James “The Sacred Fount,” Mr. Hardy “Poems New and Old,” Mr. +Wells “Love and Mr. Lewisham,” Mr. Yeats “The Shadowy Waters,” Mrs. +Chesterton “The Wild Knight,” Mr. Kipling “Kim,” Mr. Belloc “The Path +to Rome,” Lady Russell “The Benefactress,” Mr. Laurence Housman “A +Modern Antæus,” Mr. Anthony Hope “Tristram of Blent,” Mrs. Humphry Ward +“Eleanor,” Mr. Arnold Bennett “The Grand Babylon Hotel,” Mr. Charles +Marriott “The Column,” Mr. George Moore “Sister Teresa,” Mr. Max +Beerbohm “And Yet Again”), new clothes and new games. + +Popular we were not. That prevalent disease, Anglophobia, raged +impartially in every country except, possibly, Japan. Even as far as +the remote Bermudas, continental slanders against us roared. We are +a maligned race; there is no doubt of it. All races are, in their +degree, maligned, but none so greatly as we--unless it should be the +Children of Israel. It is sad to think it, but there must be something +about us that is not attractive to foreigners. They have always +grieved at our triumphs and rejoiced at our sorrows. By the end of 1901 +our friendlessness was such (in November Lord Salisbury said at the +Guildhall, “It is a matter for congratulation that we have found such +a friendly feeling and such a correct attitude on the part of all the +great powers”), that we thought we had better enter into an alliance +with the Japanese, who were still pleased with us for admiring them +about their war with China. + +In the autumn of this year, Stanley published her small book, +“Conditions of Women’s Work,” and Mr. Garden, after years of labour, +his mighty work, “Comparative Religions.” + +Mrs. Garden had influenza and pneumonia in December, and Mr. Garden, in +an anguish of anxiety, called in three doctors and admitted that his +faith had failed. God’s disapproving ignorance of mamma’s pneumonia +made intolerable a burden of anxiety which would have been heavy even +with Divine sympathy; and if, by some awful chance, mamma were to pass +on, papa’s grief, guilty and unrecognised, would have been too bitter +to be borne. Christian Science had had but a brief day, but it was +over. In a fit of reaction, papa became an Evangelical, and took to +profound meditation on the suffering, human and divine, which he had +for so long ignored. He now found the love of God in suffering, not in +its absence. + +Always honourable, he recanted the instructions on the limitations of +divine knowledge which he had given to his grandchildren. + +“You perhaps remember, Jennie my child, what I said to you last year +about God’s not knowing of the war. Well, I have come to the conclusion +that I was mistaken. I believe now that God knows all about his +children’s griefs and pains. He knows more about them than we do. +Possibly--who knows--suffering is a necessary part of the scheme of +redemption....” + +Imogen looked and felt intelligent. When anyone spoke of theology to +her, it was as if the blood of all her clerical ancestors mounted to +the call. She was nearly fourteen now, and had recently become an +agnostic, owing to having perused Renan and John Stuart Mill. She was +at the stage in life when she read, with impartial ardour, such writers +as these, as well as E. Nesbit’s “Wouldbegoods,” Max Pemberton’s “Iron +Pirate,” and other juvenile works (particularly school stories), +Rudyard Kipling, Marryat, the Brontës, and any poetry she could lay +hands on, but especially that of W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Algernon +Swinburne, William Morris, Lewis Carroll and Walter Ramal. + +She said to her grandfather, casually, but a little wistfully too, +“I’m not sure, grandpapa, that I believe in God at all. The arguments +against him seem very strong, don’t they?” + +Mr. Garden looked a little startled. Possibly he thought that Imogen +was beginning too young. + +“Ah, Jennie, my child--‘If my doubt’s strong, my faith’s still +stronger....’ That’s what Browning said about it, you know.” + +Imogen nodded. + +“I know. I’ve read that. I s’pose his faith was. Mine isn’t. My +_doubt’s_ stronger, grandpapa.” + +“Well, my child....” Mr. Garden, gathering together his resources, gave +this strayed lamb (that was how, in his new terminology he thought of +her) a little evangelical homily on the love of God. Unfortunately +Imogen had, then and through life, an intemperate distaste for +evangelical language; it made her feel shy and hot; and, though she +loved her grandfather, she was further alienated from faith. She wrote +a poem that evening about the dark, terrifying and Godless world, which +she found very good. She would have liked to show it to the others, +that they too might find it good, but the tradition of her family and +her school was that this wasn’t done. One wrote anything one liked, if +one suffered from that itch, but to show it about was swank. “Making a +donkey of yourself.” The Carringtons, shy, vain and reserved, did not +care to do that. + +“Some day,” thought Imogen, “I’ll write _books_. Then people can +read them without my showing them. I’ll write a book full of poems.” +The new poet. Even--might one dare to imagine it--the new _great_ +poet, Imogen Carrington. Or should one be anonymous? Anon. That was a +good old poet’s name. + +“Few people knew,” said Imogen, within herself, “that this slender +book of verse, ‘Questionings,’ bound in green, with gold edges, which +had made such a stir in lit’ry London, was by a wiry, brown-faced, +blue-eyed young lieutenant-commander, composed while he navigated +his first-class gunboat, the _Thrush_ (805 tons, 1,200 h.p., +13 knots, 6 four-inch guns, 2 quick-firers, 2 machine), among the +Pacific Islands, taking soundings. The whole service knew Denis Carton +as a brilliant young officer, but only two or three--or perhaps a +dozen--knew he was a poet too and had written that green book with gold +edges that lay on every drawing-room table and was stacked by hundreds +in every good bookshop.” (I cannot account for the confused workings of +this poor child’s mind; I can only record the fact that she still, and +for many years to come, thought of herself, with hope growing faint and +ever fainter, as a brown-skinned, blue-eyed young naval man.) + +As to her religious difficulties, they were, after the first flush of +unbelief, driven into the background of her mind by school, hockey, the +Christmas holidays, and missing word competitions, and did not obtrude +themselves aggressively again until the time came when her mother +decided that she should be confirmed. She then said to her brother +Hugh, now in the Fifth at Rugby, what did one do about confirmation +if one believed Nothing? Hugh did not think it mattered particularly +what one believed. One was confirmed; it did no harm; it was done; it +saved argument. Himself, he believed very little of All That, but he +had suffered confirmation, saying nothing. No good making fusses, and +worrying mother. Jennie had much better go through with it, like other +people. + +“Well ... of course, _I_ don’t care ... if it’s not cheating....” + +“Course it isn’t. Cheating who? _They_ don’t care what we believe, +they’re not such sops. They only want us to do the ordinary things, +like other people, and save bother. And, of course”--Hugh was a very +fair-minded boy and no bigot--“there may be something in it, after all. +Lots of people, quite brainy, sensible chaps, think there is. Anyhow, +it can’t hurt.” So Imogen was confirmed. + +“Perhaps I shall be full of the Holy Ghost,” she thought. “Perhaps +there really _is_ a Holy Ghost. Perhaps my life will be made +all new, with tongues of fire upon my head and me telling in strange +languages the wonderful works of God.... Perhaps.... But more prob’ly +not....” + + + + + 8 + + 1902 + + +1902 was a great year, for in it the British Empire ceased its tedious +fighting with the Boer Republics, and made a meal of them. So the +Empire was the richer by so many miles of Africa, with the gold mines, +black persons, and sulky Dutchmen appertaining thereto, and the poorer +by so many thousand soldiers’ lives, so many million pounds, and a good +deal of self-confidence and prestige. Anyhow, however you worked out +the gain and loss, here was peace, and people shouted and danced for +joy and made bonfires in college courts. Thank God, _that_ was +over. + +A wave of genial friendliness flowed from the warm silly hearts of +Britons towards the conquered foe. Four surly enemy generals were +brought to London; asked if they would like to see the Naval Review; +declined with grave thanks; were escorted through London amid a +cheering populace--“Our friends the enemy,” cried the silly crowd, +and “Brave soldiers all!” and surrounded them with hearty British +demonstration and appeals for “a message for England.” There was no +message for England; no smiles; no words. The warm, silly Britons were +a little hurt. The psychology of conquered nations was a riddle to +them, it seemed.... “God, what an exhibition!” said Maurice Garden in +his paper the next day. + +Meanwhile King Edward VII had, after some unavoidable procrastination, +been crowned, Mr. Horatio Bottomley had won a thousand pounds from +the editor of the _Critic_, in that this editor had impugned his +financial probity, and the Man with the Beflowered Buttonhole (as +they called him in the French press) whose Besotted Pride had caused +to flow for three years so much Gold and Tears and Blood had received +the Freedom of London for his services to his country. This year, also, +Mr. Rudyard Kipling delighted athletes by his allusions to flannelled +fools and muddied oafs, that ineffectual body the National Service +League was formed, Germany and Great Britain began to eye each other’s +land and sea forces with an increase of hostile emulation which was +bound to end in sorrow, and there was much trouble over bad trade and +wages, unemployment, taxation and the Education Bill. Passive Resisters +rose violently to the foray over this last, their Puritan blood hot +within them, and would not pay rates for schools managed by the Church +of England in which their nonconformist children were given Church +teaching. It made a pretty squabble, and a good cry for Liberals, +and why it was not settled by representatives of every sect which so +desired being allowed access to the schools alternately is not now +clear. The parliamentary mind moves in a mysterious way; it seldom +adopts the simple solutions of problems which commend themselves to the +more ingenuous laity. Anything to make contention and trouble, it seems +to feel. + +In such disputations 1902 wore itself away. And starving ex-soldiers +played accordions or sold matches by the pavements, their breasts +decorated with larger nosegays of war-medals than any one man-at-arms +could conceivably have won by his own prowess in the field, for then, +as after a more recent war, you could buy these medals cheap in +second-hand shops. “Fought for my country” ran their sad, proud legends +about themselves, “and am now starving. Have a wife and sixteen small +children....” The families of ex-soldiers were terrific, then as now. A +wretched business altogether. + + + + + 9 + + EXIT MAMMA + + +Edwardianism was in full swing. People began to recover from the war. +They became rich again, and very gay, and the arts flourished. Irving +Garden, his fortune made in Rand mines, could really afford almost +anything he liked. He bought and drove two motor cars, a grey one and a +navy blue, and presented to Rome, on her forty-fourth birthday, a very +graceful little scarlet three seater, in which she drove everywhere. +Sometimes she drove her parents out, but the traffic made her papa +nervous. Mamma was of calmer stuff, and sat placid and unmoved while +her daughter ran skilfully like a flame between the monsters of the +highway. She did not think that Rome had accidents; she believed in +Rome. + +Unfortunately mamma developed cancer in the spring of 1903, and died, +after the usual sufferings and operations, in the autumn. + +“It doesn’t much matter,” she said to Rome, hearing that her death was +certain and soon. “A little more or a little less.... After all, I am +sixty-nine. My only real worry about it is papa. We both hoped that I +might be the survivor. I could have managed better.” + +Mamma’s faint sigh flickered. Dear papa. Poor papa. Indeed, thought +Rome, he will not manage at all.... + +No charge was laid on Rome to look after poor papa. Mamma did not do +such things; dying, she left the living free. That ultimate belief in +the inalienable freedom of the human being looked unconquered out of +her tired, still eyes. Mamma had never believed in coercion, even the +coercion of love. Modern writers say that Victorian parents did believe +in parental tyranny. There is seldom any need to believe modern, or any +other, writers. What they seem sometimes to forget is that Victorian +parents were like any other parents in being individuals first, and the +sovereign who happened to reign over them did not reduce all Victorians +to a norm, some good, some bad, as the Poet Laureate of the day had +put it, but all stamped with the image of the Queen. You would think, +to hear some persons talk, that Victoria had called into existence +little images of herself all over England, instead of being merely one +very singular and characteristic old lady, who might just as well have +occurred to-day. In short, the Victorians were not like Queen Victoria, +any more than the Edwardians were like King Edward, or the Georgians +are like King George, for all creatures are merely themselves. + +Mamma, being merely herself, left her family free of all behests, and +drew to her end with an admirable stoic gentleness. Dying was to her no +great matter or disturbance. + + Time bears us off, as lightly as the wind + Lifts up the smoke and carries it away, + And all we know is that a longer life + Gives but more time to think of our decay. + + We live till Beauty fails and Passion dies, + And sleep’s our one desire in every breath, + And in that strong desire, our old love, Life, + Gives place to that new love whose name is Death. + +Mamma would sometimes murmur these lines by Mr. W. H. Davies, a poet +(formerly Victorian, now Edwardian, later to become Georgian), of whom +she was very fond, because he noticed all the charming things in the +countryside that she always observed herself, such as wet grass, and +rainbows, and cuckoos, and birds’ eggs, and coughing sheep (who had +always stirred her to pity). + +“My beloved,” papa would say, quietly, restraining his anguish that he +might not distress her, “my best beloved, I shall join you before long, +where there is no more parting....” (Thank God, thank God, he was at +this time a believer in that reunion, and could say it from his heart. +Supposing he had still been a Theosophist, believing that mamma would +merely go on to another spoke of the Eternal Wheel, and that he would +never, try as he might, catch her up.... Or even a Roman Catholic, +believing that mamma and he would both have to suffer a long expiation, +presumably not together, in purgatory. Thank God, evangelicals believed +in an immediate heaven for the redeemed, and surely papa and mamma +would be found numbered among the redeemed....) + +Mamma’s hand would gently stroke his. + +“Yes, dear. Of course you will join me soon.” + +Who should see, who had ever seen, into mamma’s mind that lay so deep +and still beneath veils? + +“Yes, Aubrey. Of course, of course. Quite soon, dear.” + +They spoke often of that further life; but of papa’s life between now +and then they did not dare to speak much. + +Mamma loved papa, her lover and friend of half a century, and she loved +all her children, and all her grandchildren too, the dear, happy boys +and girls. But at the last--or rather just before the last, for the end +was dark silence--it was only her eldest son, Maurice, on whose name +she cried in anguish. + +“Maurice--Maurice--my boy, my boy! O God, have pity on my boy!” + +Maurice was there, sitting at her side, holding her wet, shaking hand +in his. + +“Mother, mother. It’s all right, dear mother. I’m here, close to you.” + +But still she moaned, “Have pity--have pity on my boy.... Maurice, my +darling.... Have pity....” as if her own pain, cutting her in two, were +his, not hers. + +They had not known--not one of them had wholly known--of those storms +that had beaten her through the long years because of Maurice, her +eldest boy. + +His tears burned in his hot eyes; the easy tears of the constant +drinker. + +They put her under an anaesthetic; the pain was too great; and she died +at dawn. + + + + + 10 + + SPIRITUALISM + + +Papa could not bear it. It was all very well to talk of joining mamma +before long, but papa was not more than seventy-three years of age, +and how should he live without mamma for perhaps ten, fifteen, even +twenty years? That unfailing comfort, sympathy and love that had been +hers; that patient, silent understanding, that strength and pity for +his weakness, that wifely regard for his scholar’s mind, that dear +companionship that had never failed--having had these for close on +fifty years, how should he live without them? He could not live without +them. Somehow, he must find them again--reach across the grave to where +mamma’s love awaited him in the land of the redeemed.... The redeemed. +Already this evangelistic phraseology did not wholly suit his needs. He +wanted mamma nearer than that.... + +In 1904 there was, as usual, much talk of spiritualism, of establishing +connection with the dead. The Psychical Research Society had been +flourishing for many years, but papa had never, until now, taken much +interest in it. There had been periods in his career when he had +believed, with his Church, that God did not smile on such researches, +or wish the Veil drawn from the unseen world, and that the researchers, +if they too inquisitively drew it, got into shocking company, got, +in fact, into touch with those evil spirits who were always waiting +ready to pose as the deceased relatives and friends of enquirers. +Other periods there had been when papa had believed that the thing +was all pathetic buncombe (that was how papa spelt it), since there +was unfortunately, nothing to get into touch with. But now he was +sure that he had, in both these beliefs, erred. God could not frown +on his bereaved children’s efforts to communicate with the beloved +who had made life for them. And beyond the Veil waited not the great +nothingness, but God and the dear dead. God and mamma. He must and +would get into touch with mamma. + +Papa attended séances, with what are called Results. Mamma came and +talked with him, through the voice of a table or of a medium; she +said all kinds of things that only she could have said; she even told +him where a lost thimble of hers was, and sure enough, there it was, +dropped behind the sofa cushions. And once materialisation occurred, +and mamma, like a luminous wraith, floated about the room. It made papa +very happy. He asked her how she did, and what it was like where she +now was, and she told him that she did, on the whole, very well, but, +as to what it was like, that he would never understand, did she tell +him for a year. + +“They can’t tell us. It’s too difficult, too different,” the lady who +managed the séances explained to papa afterwards. Papa did not greatly +care for this lady, and he always winced a little at the thought that +mamma had become “They.” But he only said, “Yes, I suppose it is.” + +The séances exhausted him a good deal, but it was worth while. + +“So long as it makes him happier,” said Rome. “Poor _darling_.” + + + + + 11 + + THE HAPPY LIBERALS + + +1905 was a year of great happiness, intelligence and virtue for the +Liberal party in the state. It was to be their last happy, intelligent +or virtuous year for many a long day; indeed, they have not as +yet known another, for such a gracious state is only possible to +oppositions, and the next time that the Liberals were the Opposition +it was too late, for by then oppositions were, like other persons, too +tired, war-spoilt, disillusioned and dispirited to practise anything +but an unidealistic and unhopeful nagging. But in 1905, with the Tories +executing, to the satisfaction of their opponents, the ungracious +task of performance, which is, one may roughly say, never a success, +the Liberals were very jolly, united, optimistic, and full of energy +and plans. What would they not do when they should come, in their +turn, into power? What Tory iniquities were there not, for them now +to oppose, for them in the rosy future to reverse? What Aunt Sallies +did not the governing party erect for them to shy at? Chinese labour, +that yellow slavery which was degrading (were that possible) South +Africa; the Licensing Act, the Education Act, the Little Loaf, which +could be made so pitiable a morsel on posters--against all these they +tilted. As to what they would do, once in power, it included the +setting of trade again upon its legs, the enriching of the country, +the reform of the suffrage, the relief of unemployment, the issue of +an Education Bill which should distress no one. Ardent progressives +hoped much from this party; they even hoped, without grounds, for the +removal of sex disabilities in the laws relating to the suffrage, +which unlikely matter was part of the programme drawn up in 1905 by +the National Liberal Federation. Life was very glorious to any party, +in those Edwardian days, before it got in. Liberals in opposition were +democratic idealists, in office makeshift opportunists, backing out and +climbing down. + +Stanley Croft, in 1905, was ardent in Liberal hope. She hoped for +everything, even for a vote. This sex disability in the matter of votes +oppressed her very seriously. She saw no sense or reason in it, and +resented the way the question, whenever it was raised in Parliament, +was treated as a joke, like mothers-in-law, or drunkenness, or twins. +Were women really a funny topic? Or rather, were they funnier than men? +And if so, why? In vain her female sense of humour sought to probe +this subject, but no female sense of humour, however acute, has ever +done so. Women may and often do regard all humanity as a joke, good or +bad, but they can seldom see that they themselves are more of a joke +than men, or that the fact of their wanting rights as citizens is more +amusing than men wanting similar rights. They can no more see it than +they can see that they are touching, or that it is more shocking that +women should be killed than that men should, which men see so plainly. +Women, in fact, cannot see why they should not be treated like other +persons. Stanley could not see it. To her the denial of representation +in the governing body of her country on grounds of sex was not so much +an injustice as a piece of inexplicable lunacy, as if all persons +measuring, say, below five foot eight, had been denied votes. She saw +no more to it than that, in spite of all the anti-suffrage speakers +whom she heard say very much more. She became embittered on this +subject, with a touch of the feminist bitterness that marked many of +the early strugglers for votes. She admitted that men were, taking them +in the main, considerably the wiser, the more capable and the more +intelligent sex; that is to say that, though most people were ignorant +fools, there were even more numerous and more ignorant fools among +women than among men; but there it was, and there was no reason why +the female fools should have less say than the male fools as to which +of the other fools represented their interests in Parliament, and what +measures were passed affecting their foolish lives. No; on the face of +it, it was lunatic and irrational, and no excuse was possible, and that +was that. + +It certainly was, Rome agreed, but then, in a lunatic and irrational +world, was any one extra piece of lunacy worth a fuss? Was, in fact, +anything worth a fuss? In the answer to these questions, the sisters +fundamentally differed, for Stanley believed very many things to be +worth a fuss, and made it accordingly. She was busy now making fusses +from most mornings to most evenings, sitting on committees for the +improvement of the world, even of the Congo, and so forth. She was what +is called a useful and public-spirited woman. Rome, on the other hand, +grew with the years more and more the dilettante idler. At forty-six +she found very few things worth bothering about. She strolled, drove +or motored round the town, erect, slim and debonair, increasingly +distinguished as grey streaked her fair hair and time chiselled +delicate lines in her fine, clear skin. Rome cared neither for the +happy Liberals nor for the unhappy Tories; she regarded both parties as +equally undistinguished. + +Fabianism became increasingly the fashion for young intellectuals. Girl +and boy undergraduates flung themselves with ardour into this movement, +sitting at the feet of Mr. Bernard Shaw and the Sidney Webbs. Stanley +was a keen Fabian, and even attended summer schools. They were not +attractive, but yet she hoped that somehow good would be the final goal +of ill. She was sorry that none of her nephews and nieces joined her in +this movement, though several had attained the natural age for it. + + + + + 12 + + THE HAPPY YOUNG + + +Maurice’s Roger, who had not intellect and meant to be a novelist, was +a gay youth now at Cambridge. His sister Iris had even less intellect +and meant to be a wife. Nature had not fitted her for learning, and +when she left school she merely came out (as the phrase goes). Parties: +these were what Iris liked. Society, not societies. Stanley, aunt-like, +thought it a great pity that Maurice’s offspring were thus, and blamed +Maurice for leaving them too much to Amy. As to Vicky’s children, +Phyllis, who had done quite adequately at Girton, now lived at home +and helped her mother with entertaining and drawing-room meetings, +and was in politics on the whole a Tory; Nancy, at twenty-one, was at +the Slade, learning, so everyone but her teachers believed, to draw +and paint; Hugh was at Cambridge, a lad of good intelligence which he +devoted to the study of engineering; Tony was still at school; and +Imogen was to leave it this summer. Imogen was not for college; she +would, it was generally believed by her teachers and relatives, not +make much of that. Imogen was quite content; she was, as always, busy +writing stories and sunk deep in her own imaginings, which were still +of a very puerile sort. Imogen read a great deal, but was not really +intelligent; it was as if she had not yet grown up. She knew and cared +little about politics or progress. Bernard Shaw was to her merely the +most enchanting of playwrights. She was happy, drugged with poetry (her +own and that of others), and adventurous dreams. She was a lanky slip +of an undeveloped girl, light-footed, active as a cat, but more awkward +with her hands than any creature before her; at once a romantic dreamer +and a tomboyish child, loving school, her friends, active games, +bathing, climbing, reading and writing, animals, W. B. Yeats, Conrad, +Kipling, Henry Seton Merriman, Shelley, William Morris, Stevenson, “A +Shropshire Lad,” meringues, battleships, marzipan, Irene Vanbrugh, +Granville Barker and practically all drama; hating strangers, society, +drawing-room meetings, needlework, love stories, people who talked +about clothes, sentimentalists, and her Aunt Amy. She was at this +time as sexless as any girl or boy may be. She was still, in all her +imaginings, her continuous, unwritten stories about herself, a young +man. + +As to Stanley’s children, Irving’s and Una’s, they were still at +school. Stanley watched her son and daughter with hope and joy; they +were such delightful, exciting creatures, and one day they would take +their place in the world and help to upset it and build it up again. +_They_, at least, should certainly join the Fabians when they were +old enough. Billy and Molly should not be slack, uninterested or Tory. +They should join in the game of life as eagerly as now they joined in +treasure hunts, that curious rage of this year which caused young and +old to fall to digging up the earth, seeking for discs. + + + + + 13 + + THE YEAR + + +The year and the government petered towards their end. In the east the +Japanese were beating the Russians, hands down. In the Dogger Bank, the +Russians fired on a fishing-fleet from Hull, and there was trouble. +In European politics, the Anglo-French _entente_ throve, and +Anglo-German rivalry swelled the navies. In Scotland, the Wee Frees +split from the U.P.’s, and fought successfully for the lion’s share +of the loot. In Wales, Evan Roberts’ odd religious revival swept the +country, throwing strong men and women into hysteria and bad men and +women into virtue, reforming the sinners and seriously annoying the +publicans. In the Congo, rubber was grown and collected amid scenes +of distressing cruelty, and reports of the horrid business were +published in this country by Mr. Roger Casement and Mr. E. D. Morel. +In India, Lord Curzon quarrelled with Lord Kitchener. In Thibet, the +British expedition got to Lhassa. In Tangier, the Kaiser Wilhelm of +Germany made a speech. In Ireland, Mr. Wyndham resigned. In London, +the government apathetically stayed in office, the Tariff Reform +campaign raged, treasure discs were dug for, bridge was much played, +the Vedrenne-Barker company acted at the Court Theatre, many books +were published and pictures painted, and money brightly changed hands. +And in the provinces, by-election after by-election was lost to the +government, until at last, in November, Mr. Balfour resigned. + + + + + 14 + + ROCKETS + + +They stood in the new open space at Aldwych, watching the election +results proclaimed by magic lanterns on great screens and flung to +the sky in coloured rockets. They had made up a family election +party--Maurice, Vicky, Charles, Rome, Stanley and Irving, and many +of their young. Stanley had brought Billy and Molly, that they might +rejoice in the great Liberal victory and always remember it. She had +bought them each, at their request, a little clacker, with which to +signal the triumph of right to the world. For to-night was to be a +triumph indeed; liberalism was to sweep the country. Though even +Stanley did not guess to what extent, or how far the inevitable +pendulum had swung. + +Imogen was entranced by the dark, clear night, the coloured lights, +the crowd, the excitement, and little thrills ran up and down her as +names and figures and rockets were greeted with cheers and hoots. She +cared nothing for the results; to her the thing was a sporting event on +which she had no money. Aunt Stanley, she knew, had her shirt on the +Liberals. So had Uncle Maurice. But Aunt Rome had nothing either way. +Imogen’s own parents were Conservatives. So, on the whole, was Phyllis, +and Phyllis’s young man. So was Uncle Irving, who was for Tariff +Reform. Probably, on the whole, Liberals were the more right, thought +Imogen. But probably no party was particularly right. How excited they +all got, anyhow, right or wrong! + +The Liberals were forging ahead. There was another Manchester division +going up on the screen. Three Manchester seats had already been lost to +the Tories. “Bet you an even twopence it’s a Lib.” Tony was saying. + +“Right you are. Oh, it’s Balfour’s....” + +“Well, he’s lost it. Hand over.” + +The crowd roared with laughter, distress and joy. Balfour out.... What +next? + +“Very badly managed,” Irving was complaining all the time, to no one in +particular. “Shockingly mismanaged. The most comic election I ever saw. +There’ll be no Front Bench left.” + +“And a jolly good thing.” That was Stanley, getting more and more +triumphant. “There goes Brodrick....” + +Imogen felt dazed and happy, and as if she were in a fairy palace, all +blue and red lights. Her upstrained face was stiff and cold, her mouth +open with joy, so that the cold air flowed in. She wasn’t betting any +more, for neither she nor Tony would bet on the Tories now. The Tories +were a dead horse. One was sorry for them, but one couldn’t bet on +them. Did the poor men who lost their seats mind much? Perhaps some of +them were pleased. After all, they had none of them sought or desired +office.... Statesmen always said that of themselves; they only wanted +to get in because they thought they were the ones who would do most +good; always they said that. Divine guidance, they said, had laid this +heavy burden on them, though it was a most frightful bore, and though +the thing they wanted to do was to live in the country and keep pigs. + +“If I was in office,” thought Imogen, “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say, +I sought and wanted office, and I’m jolly glad I’ve got it, though I +expect I’ll be rotten at it. I simply love being in power, and thank +you awfully for putting me in, and I hope I’ll stop in for ages.” + +How shocked everyone would be. That wasn’t the way public men ever +talked. Would women, if ever they got into Parliament, like Aunt +Stanley wanted them to? Perhaps they would at first, not being used to +proper public manners, but they would soon learn that it wasn’t nice to +talk like that and would begin on the I-never-wanted-it stunt. + +More rockets; more blue flares. Lovely. Like a great garden of coloured +flowers. _Night is a garden gay with flowers...._ Hours. Showers. +Dowers. Bowers. Cowers.... + +_Their flaring blinds the sleepy hours...._ No. _The small dim +hours are lit, are starred._ Better. The rhymes alternately in the +middle and end of the lines, all through. That made it chime, like +bells beneath the sea.... + +“Lord, what a bungle!” Irving grunted. “It’s all up now. Nothing can +save it now. We may as well go home and get warm. What?” + +His fine, dark, clear-cut face was beautiful in the coloured flares, +as he stared up, a cigar in the corner of his mouth. How interesting +people were, thought Imogen, the way they all wanted different things, +and in different ways. There was Uncle Maurice now, smiling over his +briar, as pleased as anything.... And Billy and Molly, silly little +goats, twirling away with their clackers and shouting with Liberal +joy because Aunt Stanley told them to.... Anyhow it couldn’t really +_matter_ who got in. Not matter, like the night, and the lights, +and poetry, and the lovely thrill of it all. Results didn’t matter, +only the thing itself. + +“Brrr!” said Vicky, hunching herself together and hugging her muff. +“It’s too cold to watch the wrong side winning any more. Charles, I’m +going home to bed. Come along, all of you, or you’ll catch your deaths.” + +“Oh, mother, mayn’t I stay as long as father does?” + +“If you like. Very silly of you, Jennie, you’re blue and shivering +already. Stanley, aren’t you going to take those noisy and misguided +children of yours home? It’s nearly midnight.” + +“I suppose I must. But what a night for them to remember always.” + +What a night, thought Imogen, huddling up in her coat with a happy +shiver, to remember always. Indeed yes. Ecstasy and gaudy blossoms of +the night. _The gaudy blossoms of the night.... Sharp swords of +light...._ Bloss, moss, doss, toss ... toss ought to do.... + +“There goes Lyttelton. So much for those beastly Chinamen,” cried +Maurice. + + + + + 15 + + ON PARTIES + + +So much for the beastly Chinamen, and so much for the beastly little +loaf and the tax on the People’s Food, so much for class legislation +and sectarian education bills. So much, in fact, for Toryism, for the +happy Liberals were in, and would be in, growing ever less and less +happy, for close on ten years. + +“_Now_ we’ll show the world,” said Stanley. + +Maurice cynically grinned at her. + +“If you mean you think you’re going to get a vote, my dear, you’re off +it. This cabinet hasn’t the faintest intention of accommodating you. +Not the very faintest. And if ever they did put up a bill, they’d never +get it through the Lords. You may send all the deputations you like, +but you won’t move them. Woman’s suffrage is merely the House joke.” + +“We’ll see,” said Stanley, who was of a hopeful colour. + +“All you can say of Liberals,” said Maurice, who was not, “is that +they’re possibly (not certainly) one better than Conservatives. +However, I’m not crabbing them. They’ve got their chance, and let’s +hope they take it. First they’ve got to undo all the follies the last +government perpetrated. Every government ought to begin with that, +always. Then they’ve got to concentrate on Home Rule. As you say, we +shall see.” + +“Anyhow,” said Stanley, “we’ve got our chance.... And there’s the +_Tribune_. Penny liberalism at last.” + +“I give it a year,” said Maurice. “If it takes longer dying, Thomasson +is an even more stubborn lunatic than I think him. They’ve started +all right; quite a good first number, only how any Liberal paper can +publish a polite message from that damned Tsar beats one. I believe my +paper is really the only one that insults the Russian government as it +ought to be insulted. All the others either make up to the Tsar for his +armies or butter him up because of the Hague Conference and his silly +prattle about a world peace. It makes one sick. Liberals are as bad as +the rest.” + +It was edifying, during the election days, to learn from various +authorities the reasons for the Liberal victory. The _Times_ said +it was the effect, long delayed, of the suffrage reform bills; the +working classes, at last articulate, had determined to dictate their +own policy; no triumph for liberalism, no humiliation for conservatism, +but an experiment on the part of Labour. The _Morning Post_ said +the victory was due to the misrepresentation of Chinese labour by +Liberals, false promises, and the inevitable swing of the pendulum. +The _Daily Mail_ said it was the swing of the pendulum, Chinese +labour, the over continuance in office of the last government, the +Education Act, taxation, unfair food-tax cries, and a liking for +antiquated methods of commerce. The _Daily News_ said it was +a rebellion against reaction, protection and the Little Loaf. The +_Tribune_ said it was a rebellion also against poverty, the +direction of companies by Ministers, and the undoing of the great +Victorian reforms; it was, in fact, the protest of Right against +Force, of the common good against class interest, of the ideal element +in political life against merely mechanical efficiency. (“Mechanical +efficiency!” Maurice jeered. “Much there was of that in the last +government. As to the ideal element, the Liberal ideal is a large loaf +and low taxes. Quite a sound one, but nothing to be smug about.”) +However, the whole press was smug, as always, and so were nearly all +statesmen in public speeches; their cynicism they kept for private +life. Mr. Asquith, for instance, said that this uprising of the +people was due to moral reprobation of the double dealing of the late +government; plain dealing was what they wanted. And Mr. Lloyd George, +in his best vein, spoke of a fearful reckoning. A tornado, he called +it, of righteous indignation with the trifling that had been going +on in high places for years with all that was sacred to the national +heart. The oppression of Nonconformists at home, the staining of the +British flag abroad with slavery, the rivetting of the chains of the +drink traffic on the people of this country--against all these had the +people risen in wrath. It was a warning to ministers not to trifle with +conscience, or to menace liberty in a free land. The people meant to +save themselves; the dykes had been opened, and reaction in all its +forms would be swept away by the deluge. + +Mr. Balfour, less excited and more philosophic, observed, at his own +defeat at Manchester, that, after all, the Tories had been in office +ten years, and would doubtless before long be in office again, and +that these oscillations of fortune would and did always occur. He +was probably nearer the truth about the elections than most of those +who pronounced upon them. It is a safe assertion that no government +is popular for long; get rid of it and let’s try another, for anyhow +another can’t be sillier, is the voter’s very natural and proper +feeling. The sophisticated voter knows that it will almost certainly be +as silly, but, after all, it seems only fair to let each side have its +innings. + +Anyhow, and whatever the reasons that brought liberalism into power, +there it was. It was expressed by a House which was at present, and +before its enthusiasms were whittled away in action, composed largely +of political and social theorists, men new to politics and brimming +with plans. Mr. H. W. Massingham said it was the ablest Parliament he +had ever known, but not the most distinguished. + + + + + 16 + + DREADNOUGHT + + +Imogen saved up her pocket money for the cheap excursion fare to +Portsmouth, and slipped off there alone, on a raw February morning, by +the special early train, to see the King launch the _Dreadnought_. +The _Dreadnought_ was a tremendous naval event. She displaced +19,900 tons, beating the _Dominion_ and the _King Edward VII_ +by 1,200 tons, and she would make 21 knots to their 16.5, and had +turbine engines, and carried ten 12-inch guns, and her outline was +smooth and lovely and unbroken by casemates, for she was built for +speed. Imogen had to go. She slipped off without a word at home, for +she had a cough and objections would have been raised. She stood wedged +for hours in a crowd on the docks in cold rain that pitted the heaving +green harbour seas, and coughed. She did not command a view of the +actual launching, but would see the splendid creature as she left the +slip and took the water. Before that there was a service; the service +appointed to be used at the launching of the ships of His Majesty’s +Navy. “They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business +in great waters; These men see the works of the Lord: and his wonders +in the deep. For at his word the stormy wind ariseth: which lifteth up +the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to +the deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to +and fro and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wit’s end....” + +After this, Hymn 592 (A & M) was irritating and silly, but hymns cannot +be helped, bishops will have them. + +Then the King smashed the bottle of wine on her and, christened, she +took the water. She left the slip and came into the view of the crowd, +and a great shout went up. “She’s moving!” + +Imogen, thrilled, gazed at the lovely, the amazing creature, the giant +of the navy. What a battleship! With professional interest Imogen +examined her points through her father’s field glasses. No openings in +the bulkheads--it was that which gave her her smooth, fleet look. She +was made for a running fight. She was glorious. + +Imogen travelled home wet through, shivering, her cough tearing at her +chest, and went to bed for a month with bronchitis. So much for the +navy, said Vicky crossly. But the amazing grey ship was a comfort to +Imogen through her fevered waking dreams. + + + + + 17 + + AT THE FARM + + +Imogen, bow and arrows in hand, crawled through the wood, beneath +overhanging boughs of oaks and elders and beeches and the deep green +arms of pines, that shut the little copse from the August sun into a +fragrant gloom. Every now and then she stopped, listened, and laid her +ear to the mossy ground. + +“Three miles off and making a bee line south,” she observed, frowning. +“My God.” + +“Michael crawled on,” she continued, “crawling, keeping his head low, +so as not to afford a target for any stray arrows. Who knew what +sinister shadows lurked in the forest, to right and to left?... Hist! +What was that sound? Something cracked in the tangle of scrub near +him.... A Cherokee on a lone trail, possibly.... A Cherokee: the most +deadly of the Red Tribes.... Cold sweat stood out on Michael’s brow. +Could he reach the camp in time? Again he laid his ear to the ground +and listened. They were only two miles now, and still that swift, +terrible, travelling.... The sun beat upon his head and neck; he felt +dizzy and sick. Suppose he fainted before he reached his goal.... That +damned cracking in the bushes again.... Good God!... out of the thicket +sprang a huge Redskin, uttering the horrid war-whoop of the Cherokee, +which, once heard, is never forgotten. Michael leaped to his feet, +pulled his bow-string to his ear, let fly....” + +Imogen too let fly. + +“Missed him,” she muttered, and swarmed nimbly up the gnarled trunk of +an oak until she reached the lower boughs, from whence she looked down +into a fierce red face, eagle-nosed, feather-crowned. + +“Oh, Big Buffalo,” she softly called. “Will you parley?” + +Big Buffalo grunted, and they parleyed. If Michael would betray +the whereabouts of his friends, Big Buffalo would grant him his +life. If not, no such easy death as the arrow awaited him, “for we +Cherokees well understand the art of killing....” Michael, sick with +fear, betrayed his friends, and Big Buffalo left him, primed with +information. (In common with other heroes of fiction, Michael never +thought of giving incorrect or misleading information.) + +“Michael lay in the forest, his head upon his arms. What had he done? +There was no undoing it now. Why didn’t I choose the stake? Oh, damn, +why didn’t I....” + +It was too warm, sweet and drowsy for prolonged remorse. Michael forgot +his shame. The breeze in the pine trees sang like low harps.... The +shadowy copse was soaked in piney sweetness, golden and dim. Michael, +with his bow, his Redskins, and his broken honour, faded out in the +loveliness of the hour. + +Ecstasy descended on the wood; enchantment held it, saturating it with +golden magic. Ants and little wood-beetles scuttled over Imogen’s +outstretched hands and bare, rough head. Rabbits bobbed and darted +close to her. She was part of the woods, caught breathless into that +fairy circle like a stolen, enchanted child. + +“I am full of the Holy Ghost,” said Imogen. “This is the Holy +Ghost....” And loveliness shook her, as a wind shakes a leaf. These +strange, dizzy moments lurked hidden in the world like fairies in +a wood, and at any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the +emotion, however often repeated, was each time as keen. They would +spring forth and grip her, turning the dædal earth to magic, at any +lovely hour, in wood or lane or street, or among the wavering candles +and the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and through with beauty +sweet as honey and sharp as a sword, and it was as if her heart must +break in her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or +pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her actually did +break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up words. That was how poems +came. After the anguished joy, the breaking loose of the words, then +the careful stringing of them together on a chain, the fastidious, +conscious arranging. Then the setting them down, and reading them over, +and the happy, dizzy (however erroneous) belief that they were good.... +That was how poems came, and that was life at its sharpest, its highest +intensity. Afterwards, one sent them to papers, and it was pleasant and +gratifying if other people saw them and liked them too. But all that +was a side-issue. Vanity is pleasant, gratified ambition is pleasant, +earning money is very pleasant, but these are not life at its highest +power. You might at once burn every poem you wrote, but you would still +have known life. + +The song the pines hummed became words, half formed, drifting, +sweet.... Imogen listened, agape, like an imbecile. It was a lovely, +jolly, woody thing that was being sung to her ... she murmured it +over.... + +A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered eternity to +fragments. Imogen yawned, got up, brushed pine needles out of her hair +and clothes, took up her bow, and strolled out of fairyland. It was +tea-time at the farm. + +As she sauntered through the little wood, she shot arrows at the +trees and stopped to retrieve them. Then she found a long, sharp +stick, pointed, like a spear, and became a knight in a Norman forest. +She encountered another knight, a hated foe. There was a fight _à +outrance_. They fenced, parried, lunged.... + + “Swerve to the right, son Roger, he said, + When you catch his eye through the helmet’s slit; + Swerve to the right, then out at his head, + And the Lord God give you joy of it....” + +A swinging thrust.... + +“Got him, pardie!” + +“Hullo.” + +Imogen faced about, and there, on the cart track between the wood and +the home farm, stood her Uncle Ted, large and red in breeches and +gaiters, his pipe between his teeth. + +“Oh, hullo, Uncle Ted.” + +Imogen had turned red. She had been seen making an ass of herself alone +in the wood. Behaving like a maniac. Damn. + +“Anything the matter? Got the staggers, have you?” asked Uncle Ted, as +if she were a cow. + +“No, I’m all right. Looking for arrows and things, that’s all.” + +“Oh, I see.... Comin’ up to tea?” + +They walked across the home field together. Imogen was sulky and +ashamed. She was emptied of enchantment and the Holy Ghost, and was +nothing but an abrupt, slangy, laconic girl, going sullenly in to tea, +feeling an ass. Uncle Ted was thinking farmer’s thoughts, of crops and +the like, not of Imogen. + +But afterwards he said to Una, “Not quite all there, eh, that girl +of Vicky’s? Flings herself about in the wood when she’s alone, like +someone not right, and talks to herself, too. Nineteen, is she? It’d be +right enough if she was twelve. But at eighteen or nineteen....” + +“Oh, Imogen’s all right. She’s childish for her age, that’s all.” + +Una took everyone for granted. + +“Childish, yes. That’s what I say. They ought to have her seen to. +Gabbles, too. I can’t make out half she’s saying.... Katie may do her +good, I daresay. Katie’s got sense.... It’s against a girl, going on +like that. No sensible young fellow would like it. They ought to have +her seen to. What?” + +“Oh, she’s all right,” said Una again. “There she is in the field +playing rounders with the others quite sensibly, you see.” + +“I daresay. She may be all right at games, but she oughtn’t to be let +loose alone in woods. She’ll get herself talked about....” + +Katie too thought Imogen mad. But quite nicely mad. Harmless. Like +a kid. Katie was a few months younger, but she felt that Imogen was +a kid. She said and did such mad things. And she lacked the most +elementary knowledge; she didn’t know the first thing, for instance, +about clothes, what they were made of, and how they should be made. She +was like an imbecile about them; didn’t care, either. She would stare, +pleased and admiring, at Katie, who had beauty, as if Katie were a +lovely picture, but she never said the right things about her clothes. +You’d think, almost, she didn’t know one material from another. + +When they had done playing rounders, and when Imogen and Tony, who was +staying at the farm too, had done damming the brook at the bottom of +the field, and when Tony had gone off rook shooting with his cousin +Dick, Imogen sat by the brook, her bare muddy legs in a pool scaring +minnows, and brooded over life. Rotten it was, being grown up. Simply +rotten. Because you weren’t really grown up. You hadn’t changed at +all. You knew some more, and you cared for a lot of fresh books, but +you liked doing all the things you had liked doing before you grew +up. Climbing, and playing Red Indians, and playing with soldiers, and +walking on stilts. But when you put your hair up, you had to hide all +sorts of things away, like a guilty secret. You could play real games, +like tennis and cricket and hockey and rounders, and even football, +and you could perhaps do the other things with someone else, but +not alone. If people found you alone up a tree, or climbing a roof, +or listening with your ear to the ground, or astride on a wall, or +pretending with a sword, they put up their eyebrows and thought you +an ass. Your mother told people you were a tomboy. A tomboy. Imbecile +word. As if girls didn’t like doing nice things as much as boys. Who +started the idea they didn’t, or shouldn’t?... Oh, it was rotten, being +grown up. Grown-up people had a hideous time. They became so queer, +talking so much, wanting to go to parties, and even meetings, and all +kinds of rotten shows. Mother held meetings in the drawing-room, for +good objects. So did Aunt Stanley. Different objects, but equally +good, no doubt. People came to the meetings and jabbered away, and +sometimes you were made to be there, “to learn to take an interest.” +Votes, cruelty to animals or children, sweated labour, bazaars, white +slaves, the Conservative party, the Liberal party.... What did any of +them matter? Phyllis was good at them. But now Phyllis was going to be +married. And Nancy was at the Slade, and wouldn’t attend the meetings; +she was too busy drawing and going to dances and parties. The modern +girl, mother said; independent, selfish, dashing about with young men +and no chaperons. The Edwardian young woman, so different from the +Victorian young woman.... Only Aunt Rome said she was not different, +but just the same.... Anyhow, Nancy wouldn’t take her turn at the +meetings. So Imogen, younger and more docile, was being trained up. But +she would never be any good. She hated them. Why shouldn’t the boys +take their turn? No one made them. It wasn’t fair. + +Imogen kicked viciously at the minnows. Rotten, being a girl.... +Perhaps she would run away to sea ... round the world ... the South Sea +Islands.... + +It was getting chilly. Imogen drew her legs out of the brook and dried +them on her handkerchief. Filthy they were, with mud. She put on her +stockings and old tennis shoes, and wondered what next. Tony was still +rooking. One might go and catch the colt in the meadow and ride him.... + +Katie appeared over the hunched shoulder of the field. + +“Imogen, do you want to come and milk? It’s time.... Oh, I say, you +_are_ in a mess. You ass, what’ve you been up to?” + +“Only damming the brook, and wading. Yes, I want to milk, rather.” + +“Hurry up then.” + +Katie was as beautiful as a June morning. As beautiful as Una. Pale as +milk, with eyes like violets and dark, clustering curls. And clever. +She could do nearly everything. Imogen, six months older, was as nought +beside her. But Katie liked her, and was very kind to her. Katie had +just left Roedean; she had been captain of the school hockey team, and +was going now to play for Essex. A splendid girl. Imogen believed that +Katie had none of the dark and cold forebodings, the hot excitements, +the black nightmares, the sharp, sweet ecstasies, the mean and base +feelings, that assailed herself, any more than Katie would be found +making an ass of herself playing in a wood. Katie, like her mother, +was balanced. This tendency to believe that others are balanced, and +are not rent by the sad and glad storms which one’s own soul knows, is +common to many. One supposes it to be because human beings put such a +calm face on things, so the heart alone knows its own turbulence. + +Imogen grinned at Katie, and went with her to the milking. + + + + + 18 + + HIGHER THOUGHT + + +Papa had aged very much in the last two years since mamma had died. +He had had wonderful experiences; he had constantly spoken with, +even seen, mamma; it had made him very happy. But he was aware that +the séances greatly strained and fatigued him. He slept badly; his +nerves seemed continually on edge. Further, he could not by any means +overcome the distaste he felt for the medium who made it her special +business to open the door between him and mamma. A common little +person, he could not help, even in his charity, thinking her. And +Flossie, the spirit on the Other Side, who spoke for mamma (except on +those rare occasions when mamma spoke for herself) was, to judge from +her manner, voice and choice of language, even commoner. And silly. +Papa scarcely liked to admit to himself _how_ silly Flossie seemed +to him to be. Mamma must dislike Flossie a good deal, he sometimes +thought, but then recollected that, where mamma had gone to dwell, +dislike was no more felt, only compassion. He would have liked to ask +mamma, on the rare occasions when she spoke for herself, what she +thought of Flossie, and of Miss Smythe, the medium on this side. But he +did not like to, for Flossie would certainly, and Miss Smythe possibly, +through her trance, hear his question and mamma’s reply. How he longed +for a little private talk, of the kind that mamma and he used to have +of old! But he was not ungrateful. He was in touch with mamma; he knew +her to be extant as a personality, and accessible to him, and that was +surely enough. As to the fatigue, that was a small price to pay. + +Then, one tragic day, in the autumn of 1906, came one of those great +exposures which dog the steps of psychical men and women. Some of the +sharp, inquisitive persons who make it their business to nose out +frauds and write to _Truth_ about them, turned their attention +to Miss Smythe and her séances. In a few weeks--these things are very +easy, and do not take long--Miss Smythe was pilloried in the press +as a complete and accomplished fraud. She had, it was made clear +except to the most obstinate believers, never been in a trance, never +called spirits, from the vasty deep, never opened any spiritual doors. +The mechanism of the materialisation was once more discovered and +exposed.... (“What a stale old story,” said Rome. “As if we didn’t know +all about it long ago. These heavy-footed creatures, trampling over +children’s fairylands. Why can’t they let things be?”) ... and even +Flossie, that bright, silly, chatty spirit, was discredited. Flossie +was a quack, and had known about the thimble behind the sofa and the +other things in some cheap, sly way, or else just guessed. + +Alas for papa! The gates of paradise clanged in his face; he might +believe by faith that paradise was there, and mamma in it, but the +door between him and it was shut. Great and bitter sorrow shook him, +and shame, for that he had so made cheap his love and mamma’s for the +benefit of common frauds. He sank into inert grief, from which he was +roused, in March 1907, by the call of Higher Thought. The name, in +the first instance, appealed to him. Thought should be higher; it was +usually lower, and very certainly much too low. + +“Higher than what, papa dear?” Rome enquired. “These comparatives, in +the air, are so unfinished. Higher education, higher criticism, the +larger hope, the younger generation.... Higher, I mean than what other +thought?” + +Than the thought customary on similar subjects, papa supposed. + +“These geometrical metaphors,” Rome murmured. “Well, papa, I am sure it +must be very interesting.” + +It was very interesting. Papa was introduced to a little temple near +High Street, Kensington, which, when you stepped on the entrance +mat, broke into “God is Love” in electric light over the altar. Here +he worshipped and thought highly, in company with a small but ardent +band of other high thinkers, who were led in prayer by a Guru of +immense power--the power of thought which was not merely higher but +highest--over mind and matter. So great was the power of this Guru that +he not only could cure diseased bodies and souls, but could correct +physical malformations, merely by absent treatment. A lame young man +was brought to him, one of whose legs was shorter than its fellow. +Certainly, said the Guru, this defect would yield to absent treatment. +Further, the treatment would in this case be doubly effective, as +he happened to be about to make a journey to Thibet, to visit the +Lama, the very centre of fervent prayer, absent treatment, and higher +thought. The nearer the Guru got to Thibet, the more powerful would +become, he said, the action of his treatment on the leg of the young +man. And, sure enough, so it proved. The shorter leg began, as the +Guru receded towards Asia, to grow. It grew, and it grew, and it grew. +There came a joyful day when the two legs were of identical length. The +power of absent treatment was triumphantly justified. But it proved to +be a power even greater than the young man and his family had desired +or deserved. For the short leg did not stop when it had caught up +its companion; on the contrary, it seemed to be growing with greater +velocity than before. And indeed, it was; for the Guru, now far beyond +reach of communication by letter or telegram, was journeying ever +deeper and deeper into the great heart of prayer, Holy Thibet, and as +he penetrated it his prayer intensified and multiplied in power, like +the impetus of a ball rolling down hill. The short leg surpassed its +brother, shot on, and on, and on.... + +It was still shooting on when papa was told of the curious phenomenon. + +“Strange,” said papa. “Strange, indeed.” + +But it was not these portents, however strange, that papa valued in +his new faith. It was the freedom, the prayerfulness, the rarefied +spiritual atmosphere; in brief, the height. After Miss Smythe, after +the darkened room and the rapping table and the lower thinking of poor +Flossie, it was like a mountain top, where the soul was purged of +commonness. + +Mamma, papa sometimes thought, would have approved of Higher Thought; +might even, had she been spared, have become a Higher Thinker herself. +(It should be remembered, in this connection, that papa, since the +exposure of poor Flossie, was no longer in touch with mamma.) + + + + + 19 + + LIBERALS IN ACTION + + +It is a pity to crab all governments and everything they do. For +occasionally it occurs that some government or other (its political +colour is an even chance) passes some measure or other which is not so +bad as the majority of measures. The Liberal government elected in 1906 +composed tolerable bills more than once. It even succeeded, though more +rarely, in getting them, in some slightly warped form, tolerated by +the Upper House. The Trades Disputes Bill, for instance, got through. +Either the Lords were caught napping, or they felt they had to let +something through, just to show that things _could_ get through, +as at hoop-la the owner of the booth has, here and there, among +hundreds of objects too large to be ringed by the hoop, one of trifling +value which can fairly be ringed and won, just to show that the thing +can be done. Anyhow, the Trades Disputes Bill did get through, before +the game began of chucking all bills mechanically back, or amending +them out of all meaning so that the Commons disowned them and threw +them away. + +Mr. Birrell had no luck with his Education Bill. It was a good, +rational bill, as education bills (a sad theme) go, and no party liked +it much, and the Upper House saw that it would not do at all, and sent +it back plastered all over with amendments that gave it a new and silly +face, like a lady over-much made up. So the Commons would have none of +it, and that was the end, for the moment, of attempts to improve the +management of our elementary schools. + +The Lords were now getting into their form, and threw out the Plural +Voting Bill with no nonsense about amendments, and no trouble at all. +After all, what were they there for, if not to throw out? What, indeed, +asked the Lower House, many members of whom had for long wondered. As +to any kind of Woman’s Suffrage Bill, the Commons, as firmly as the +Lords, would have none of it. It was when this was made clear that +the Women’s Social and Political Union, that new, vigorous and vulgar +body, began to bestir itself, and to send bodies of women to waylay +members on their way to the House; in fact, the militant suffragist +nuisance began. There were processions, demonstrations, riots, arrests +and imprisonments. Stanley threw herself into these things at first +with dogged fervour; she did not like them, but held them advantageous +to the Cause. Her niece, Vicky’s Nancy, a very wild young woman, +who enjoyed fighting and making a disturbance on any pretext, threw +herself also into the Cause, fought policemen with vigour, and was +dragged off to prison with joy. Imogen wouldn’t participate in these +public-spirited orgies; she was too shy. And she couldn’t see that it +was any use, either. She had a hampering and rather pedantic sense of +logic, that prevented her from flinging herself into movements with +sentimental ardour; she preferred to know exactly how the methods +adopted were supposed to work, and to see clearly cause and effect, +and no one ever made it precisely clear to her how making rows in the +streets was going to get a suffrage bill passed. It seemed, in fact, +to be working the other way, and alienating some of the few hitherto +sympathetic. Her Aunt Stanley told her, “It’s to show the public and +the government how much we care. They’re crude weapons, but the only +ones we have. Constitutional methods have failed, so far.” + +“But, Aunt Stanley, how do you know these are weapons at all?” Imogen +argued. + +“We can but try them,” Stanley answered, herself a little doubtful on +the point. + +“Anyhow,” she added, “anyhow, no woman who cares about citizenship can +be happy sitting still and doing nothing while we’re denied it. You do +care about the suffrage, don’t you, Imogen?” + +“Oh, rather, Aunt Stanley, of course I do. I think it’s awful cheek +not giving it us. There’s no _sense_ in it, is there; no meaning. +Anti-suffragists do talk a lot of rot.... Only don’t you think +suffragists do too, sometimes? I mean, Aunt Stanley, people do so, +when they talk, get off the _point_, don’t they. It would be +a lot easier to be keen if people didn’t talk so much. They talk +_round_, not along. Really, there’s hardly anything to say about +anything; I mean, you could say it all, all that mattered, in a few +sentences. But people go on talking about things for hours, saying +the same things twice, and a lot of other things that don’t really +apply, and everything in hundreds of words when quite a few would do. I +noticed it in the House the other day when we were there. Two-thirds of +what they all said was just flapping about. And they say, ‘I have said +before, Mr. Speaker, and I say again....’ But _why_ do they say +it again? It isn’t awfully good even the first time. I do wonder why +people are like that, don’t you?” + +“Soft heads and long tongues, my dear, that’s why. Can’t be helped. +One’s got to bear it and go ahead.... I wish Molly was five years +older; she’ll be so tremendously keen....” + +Imogen said nothing to that. She knew Molly, her small elfish cousin +of fourteen, pretty well. Molly, with her short white face and merry, +narrow eyes, and quick wits and easy selfishness and charm, was, +though Imogen couldn’t know that, her father over again, without his +abilities. Imogen was afraid that Molly, when she left school and grew +up, was not going to take that place among the world’s workers that +Aunt Stanley hoped. + +As to Billy, a cheerful, stocky Rugby boy of sixteen, he had no views +on the suffrage. He didn’t care. Politics bored him. + +Poor Aunt Stanley. Aunt Stanley was a great dear; treated one always +as a friend, not as a niece; explained things, and discussed, and +said what she meant. She was easy to talk to. Easier than Vicky, whom +one loved, but couldn’t discuss things with; one couldn’t formulate +and express one’s ideas and project them into that spate of charming, +inconsequent talk, that swept on gaily over anything one said. Imogen +tried to please Aunt Stanley by seeming really keen about suffrage, but +it was difficult, because the things she actually was keen on were so +many and absorbing that they didn’t leave much time over. Imogen felt +that she was no good at these large, unselfish causes that Aunt Stanley +had at heart; she hadn’t soul enough, or brain enough, or imagination +enough, or something. And she did hate meetings. If one had to sit +indoors in the afternoon, were there not the galleries and theatres, +her point of view was. Perhaps, she thought, Nancy, who enjoyed it, +could do the votes-for-women business for the family. + +Meanwhile, Mr. W. H. Dickinson’s Suffrage Bill failed to come to +anything, and it became obvious that the Liberal government, in this +matter, was to be no use at all. + +It was quite a question whether it was going to be much use in any +other matter. Poor Law Reform it had postponed; likewise Old Age +Pensions. Licensing Reform was dropped; so was Mr. McKenna’s new +Education Bill, the Land Valuation Bill, and Irish Home Rule. It looked +as if the Liberal programme was running away like wax in the heat and +trouble of the day. How few party programmes, for that matter, ever do +become accomplished achievements! They are frail plants, and cannot +easily come to fruit in the rough air of office. What with one thing, +what with another, they wilt away in flower and die. + +To make up for the stagnation of home politics, there was, in 1906 and +1907, plenty of international activity. The nations of Europe were +ostensibly drawing together, a happy family. British journalists +were entertained in Berlin, German journalists in London, amid some +mutual execration and dislike. A _rapprochement_ took place +between ourselves and Russia, for it was quite the fashion in Europe +to fraternise with Russia, her armies were so huge, even if not, +apparently, very good at what armies should be good at. There were +those in this country who held that it was not quite nice to fraternise +with Russia, disapproving of her governmental system, and of the +Tsar’s very natural suppression of the Duma that had for a few days +and by an oversight so strangely existed and actually dared to demand +constitutional reform. There were those in Great Britain who said that +we should not be at all friendly with a government so little liberal +in mentality. But, after all, you must take nations as you find them, +and their domestic affairs are quite their own concern, and one should +not be provincial in one’s judgments, but should make friends even with +the mammon of unrighteousness for the sake of the peace of Europe, +which was a good deal talked of just then by the Powers, though it is +doubtful whether any of them really believed in it. It is certain that +the nations by no means neglected the steady increase and building +up of armaments by land and sea. They hurried away from the Hague +Conference to lay down new battleships at a reckless pace; even Mr. W. +T. Stead said, “Let us strengthen our navy, for on its fighting power +the peace of Europe depends.” Strengthen our navy we did; but as to the +peace of Europe, that lovely, insubstantial wraith, she was perhaps +frightened by all those armoured ships, all those noisy guns, all those +fluent statesmen talking, for she never put on much flesh and bones. + + + + + 20 + + 1907 + + +Outside politics, 1907 was a gay year enough. There was a severe +outbreak of pageantitis, which many people enjoyed very much, and +others found vastly disagreeable. Drama was noticeably good; the +Vedrenne-Barker company moved from the Court to the Savoy, and the +intelligent play-goer moved after it. Miss Horniman’s Repertory Theatre +toured the provinces; and the Abbey Theatre players took English +audiences by storm. Acting was good, literature and the arts were much +encouraged, dancing and social entertainments were more than ever the +fashion. Society, it was said, was getting rowdier. For that matter, +society has always been getting rowdier, since the dawn of time. How +rowdy it will end, in what nameless orgies it will be found at the Last +Day, is a solemn thought indeed. + +As to the young they were thought of and written of much as ever, much +as now. The New Young were discovered afresh, and the Edwardian variety +was much like the Victorian and the Georgian. They were wild, people +said; they went their own way; they were hard, reckless, independent, +enquiring, impatient of control, and yet rather noble. + +“Youth in the new century has broken with tradition,” people said. “It +is no longer willing to accept forms and formulæ only on account of +their age. It has set out on a voyage of enquiry, and, finding some +things which are doubtful, others which are insufficient, is searching +for forms of experience more in harmony with the realities of life and +of knowledge....” + +Youth was, in fact, at it again. + +“Girls are so wild in these days,” Vicky cheerfully complained. “Nancy +and Imogen both go on in a way we’d _never_ have dared to do. +Nancy dances all night (of course chaperons are a back number now), +and comes home alone, or with some wild, arty young men and women, +or, worse still, with one wild, arty young man, at five o’clock in +the morning, and lets herself in with a bang and a rush, and often +lets the arty young people in too. No, Nancy, I say to her, you don’t +let your friends into my house before breakfast, and that’s that. Not +several of them at once, nor one by herself or himself. If they don’t +want to go home to their own beds, they must just go and carouse in any +hotel that will receive them, for in my house they shall _not_ +carouse. _Nor_ sit on the dining-room sofa and smoke, and carry +on conversations in tones that I suppose you all think are hushed. +It shall not be done, I said, so that is settled. But is it settled? +Not a bit of it. Nancy merely changes the subject, and Charles and I +are woken by the hushed voices again next morning. Edwardian manners, +people tell me; well, I’m Victorian, and I don’t care if it _is_ +1907.” + +“You were doing much the same in 1880, my dear,” Rome interpolated. + +“Oh, well, I’ve forgotten ... were we?... Well, anyhow, you can’t say +I was behaving like Imogen. She doesn’t care for dancing much, and +she’s such a baby still that cocktails make her tipsy and cigarettes +sick; she prefers raspberry syrup and chocolate cigars, which is really +more indecent at her age. At her age _I_ was thinking of proper +young-ladyish things, like young men, and getting engaged; but Imogen +seems never to have heard of either--I mean, not of young men in +their proper uses. She plays childish games, and dashes about on her +bicycle, and makes ridiculous lists of all the ships in the navy and +how much they weigh and how many horses they’re equal to, and slips +off to Portsmouth all by herself to see them launched, without a word +to anyone, and of course makes herself ill. I said to her one day, I +suppose you’ll go and marry into the navy some day, Jennie; nothing +else will satisfy you. But she opened her eyes and said, _Marry_ +the navy? Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I should be too jealous of him. +You see, I want to be in the navy myself, and I know I should hate his +being in it when I couldn’t. It would only rub it in. I want to do nice +things myself, not to marry people who do them. I believe, mother, I’m +perhaps too selfish to marry; it’s _my_ life I want to enjoy, not +anyone else’s. Besides, there might be babies, and they would get so +in the way, little sillies. They wouldn’t get in your way, I told her +(only of course it isn’t true, because they always do, the wretches), +if only you’d behave like other grown girls, and not be forever +climbing about and playing silly games. You’re such a baby yourself, +that’s what’s the matter. What on earth the child’s book will be like +that she’s so busy with I can’t imagine. _She_ knows nothing about +life, bless her. There’s Phyllis married, and running her home so +capably, and Nancy at least carrying on like a girl, not like a child +in the nursery--but Imogen! I lose my patience with her sometimes.” + +And even as her mother spoke, Imogen was in Hamley’s in Regent Street, +looking at toy pistols and blushing. She was blushing because she had +just been deceitful, and was afraid that the lady attending on her +guessed. “For what aged child is it?” this helpful lady had asked. +“Would caps or blank cartridges be what he’d want? I mean, if he’s +_very_ young....” + +“Oh, no,” Imogen mumbled, “he’s not awfully young. Blank cartridges, he +likes....” + +She bent her abashed face over the weapons, fingering them. A sordid +fib; was she seen through? She chose her pistol quickly, paid for it, +and hurried out of the shop. When she got well away, she extracted the +weapon from its cardboard box and tucked it, with a guilty look round, +into the side pocket of her skirt. + +She strode along with a new reckless gallantry. + +“Patrick slipped among the crowd; that queer, cosmopolitan, rather +sinister crowd that is to be found around the Marseilles docks. Was he +followed? His hand strayed to his hip pocket. His keen, veiled eyes +took in the passers-by without seeming to look. If he could get through +the next hour without mishap, he would be aboard and a-sail. But could +he? Prob’ly not....” + +While Imogen thus walked in foreign ports or trackless forests, a +happy, dreaming spinster, a reckless adventurer armed to the teeth, +many of her contemporaries and elders walked in suffragist processions, +adventurers too, and no less absorbed than she. Stanley, disgusted now +by the increasingly reasonless methods of the militants, had definitely +turned her back on them and joined the constitutionals. These arranged +orderly and lady-like processions, headed at times by Lady Carlisle. + +“There can be no doubt,” wrote the more dignified press, after one +such procession, “that many of these lady suffragettes are absolutely +in earnest, and honestly believe that the cause for which they are +contending is a just and sane one. But the fact remains that they +are in the minority; that the sex, _qua_ sex, is still content, +and proud to be content, to accept the symbol of petticoat....” +(“How indecent,” cried Vicky, “to gossip about our underwear in a +leader by a man!”) ... “the symbol of petticoat as the badge of +disenfranchisement.” Women, the article continued, are of low mental +calibre, and will never understand politics, and if they did it would +interfere with their only duty, the propagation of the race. + +“I love journalists,” said Rome, reading this to her papa at their +Sunday breakfast. “They always write as if women did that job +single-handed. They are so modest about man’s share in it, which is +really quite as important as ours. They even kindly call us the fount +of life. Dear, generous, self-effacing creatures....” + +But papa was shaking his head, gravely. + +“You make a joke of it, my dear. But this low mental equipment on the +part of the writers on our leading papers is really a tragedy. The +guiders of public opinion.... The blind leading the blind ... how can +we avoid the ditch?” + +“Indeed, we don’t avoid the ditch. We are all in it, up to the neck. +But if one is to be sad on account of the low mental equipment of +writers or others, there will be very little joy left. For my part, I +find a considerable part of my joy in it; it assists in providing the +cheering spectacle of human absurdity.” + +“Pass me the paper, my dear. I want to read about.... I want to see it.” + +Rome smiled behind the screen of paper which papa put up between him +and her. Well she knew what papa wanted to read in it. He was looking +for news of Mr. R. J. Campbell and his New Theology, searching for +tidings of Pantheism and the Divine Immanence. And, sure enough, he +found them. There was a Saying of the Week. Among the eminent persons +who had said other things, such as Dr. Clifford, who had remarked, +a little meiosistically, “It is not necessary to burn a man who is +seeking the truth,” and the Lord Chief Justice, who had observed, more +topically, “One of the greatest errors that motorists can make is to +believe that upon their blowing their horns everybody should clear out +of the way,” and Prince Fushimi from Japan, who had said, “I do not +wish to object to ‘The Mikado,’ as I am sure its writers did not intend +to hurt the feelings of a great nation, but I shall, of course, be +glad if it is not performed,” and two doctors, one of whom had said, +“Kissing consists in depositing some saliva on the lips or cheeks of +another person,” and the other, “Those who do not like milk will get +cancer”--among all these utterers of truth came Mr. R. J. Campbell, +remarking brightly, not for the first time nor for the last, “The New +Theology is the gospel of the humanity of God and of the divinity of +man.” + +“True,” said papa, within himself. “Very true. Very proper and +intelligent indeed.” + +He sighed gently behind the newspaper. He had had, of late, his doubts +as to Higher Thought; as to whether it was very intelligent, very +proper, or very true. It was strange in so many ways; high, doubtless, +but perhaps for earth too high. And there were strange tales going +about concerning the Gurus who led in prayer and in thought. And the +leg of that unfortunate young man ... how could people believe such +nonsense? The element of folly in all human creeds was becoming, in +the case of the Higher Thought, painfully evident to papa. + +This New Theology now--this young man Campbell--he seemed, somehow, +nearer to solid earth than did the Higher Thinkers. He might talk of +the Divinity of Man, but he did not, as papa, having read his book on +the subject, knew, mean anything silly by it, only what all the mystics +have meant--the divine spark in the human heart. As to the humanity +of God--well, he probably meant no harm by that either. He was but an +anthropomorphist, like the rest of us. + +The theologians had been hard upon that book of his. It was not, of +course, the book of a scholar; all it said had been said much better +by Loisy and other Catholic modernists, whom Mr. Campbell palely +reflected. But it gave a good peptonised version, suitable for the +unscholarly mind. And its reviewers had been unkind. They had nearly +all attacked it. Dr. Robertson Nicoll in the _British Weekly_ had +snubbed it at considerable length. The _Church Times_ had said, +“The book is one long offence against good taste,” and the _Methodist +Recorder_, “Frankly, we do not think this book worth reading, and +to price it at six shillings is enough to make us join in the Book +War.” Theological reviewers were not always fair, as papa, since he had +published his own mighty and erudite work on Comparative Religions, had +known. For himself, he had liked Mr. Campbell’s book, even though it +was rather bright than scholarly, more an appeal to the man in the City +Temple than to the student or the theologian. Papa, besides being a +student and a theologian, had of late been also on Sundays a man in the +City Temple. He had said nothing of it yet to anyone; he was trying it. +He liked it; there was nothing in it to bewilder or offend. The Divine +Immanence; call it Pantheism who chose, it was a beautiful idea. It was +in no degree incompatible with the Divine Transcendence; why should it +be, since there was also the Divine Ubiquity? + +Brooding on these matters, papa finished breakfast somewhat silently, +and lit his pipe. + +“A beautiful day,” said Rome, smoking her cigarette at the open window. +“I shall be out for lunch and tea, papa. I am joining a party of +pleasure; we are going to explore, in our cars, to Newlands Corner, +where we shall have trials of skill and of speed. You won’t come with +me, I suppose?” + +“No, thank you, dear, I think not. I’m too old for trials of skill and +speed; too old, even, for exploring.” + +Precisely, thought Rome, glancing at him with her indulgent smile, what +papa was not and never would be. He would very surely go exploring this +morning, searching the riches of the spiritual kingdoms. Much more +exciting than Newlands Corner.... To papa at seventy-seven, as to Mr. +R. J. Campbell at whatever age he might be, theology could still seem +new. Rome wondered whether it was an advantage or a misfortune that +to her, at forty-eight, all theologies, as most other of the world’s +businesses, seemed so very old. The only things that seemed new to her +in 1907 were taximeter cabs. + +“Well, good-bye, dear, and good luck,” Rome wished her papa. + +Of 1907 there is not very much more to record. Two or three items of +news may perhaps be mentioned. Maurice’s son Roger, aged twenty-four, +now attached, at his own urgent desire, to the literary side of +his father’s paper--(“He can’t do much harm there, I suppose,” +Maurice said, “though he’ll not do any good either; he hasn’t the +brains.”)--published a novel. It was a long novel, and it was about +a youth not unlike what Roger conceived himself to be, only his home +was different, for his father was a church-warden and bare the bag in +church, and bullied and beat and prayed over his children; fathers in +fiction must be like this, not heretical and intelligent journalists. +The book conducted the youth from the nursery through his private and +public schools (house matches, school politics, vice, expulsions, +and so on), through Cambridge (the Union, the river, tobacconists’ +assistants, tripos), to journalistic, social and literary London, where +it left him, at twenty-four, having just published his first novel, +which was a great success. + +“God, what tripe,” Maurice commented, but to himself, as he turned the +pages. “Exactly what the boy _would_ write, I fear. No better, +no worse. Well, poor lad, he’s pleased with it enough. And it will +probably be handsomely reviewed. It’s the stuff to give the public all +right.” His thoughts strayed to a familiar, rather bitter point. If he +had been given (by Amy: how fantastic a thought!) a son with brains; a +son with a hard, clear head or an original imagination; a son who, if +he wrote at all, wouldn’t produce the stuff to give the public, a son +who, like himself, would see the public damned first.... + +Roger was, as his father had predicted, handsomely reviewed, for the +Edwardians rather liked the biography-of-a-young-man type of novel, and +loved details of school life. Roger had his feet well on the ladder of +successful fiction-writing. Roger would be all right. Meanwhile, his +head swelled even larger than before. His father perceived that the +innocent youth really believed his reviewers, and conceived himself to +be a writer and a clever young man. + +The other items I record of the year 1907 I quote from the diary of +Imogen for the 16th of March. + +“_Indomitable_ launched, Glasgow. Largest and quickest cruiser in +the world. 17,250 tons. 41,000 h.p. 25 knots. _Invincible_ and +_Inflexible_, same type, building. Finished book, began to type +it. Got guinea prize from _Saturday Westminster_ for poem.” + + + + + 21 + + WHITHER? + + +And so to the last years of Edwardianism. In them that gay, eager, +cultivated period listed gently to the political left. The Socialist +Budget, as it was called by its opponents, “the end of all things” as +Lord Rosebery a little optimistically called it, agitated the country. +Old Age Pensions were at last established, to the disgust of Tories, +who had, however, when members of Parliament, to be careful how they +expressed their disgust, for fear of their needy constituents. “Whither +are we drifting?” enquired the Conservative press, in anger and fear. +“Here is Socialism unabashed: the thin end of the wedge which shall at +last undermine the integrity and liberty of our Constitution.” Here +were sixty millions a year, not insurance but a free dole, squandered +on supporting old persons who might just as well be supported in +workhouses. What would that come to in Dreadnoughts? Anyhow, we had +got to lay down six or seven Dreadnoughts a year for the present, if +we were to be to Germany in the ratio of two keels to one, which was +assuredly essential. “They are ringing their bells; they will soon +be wringing their hands,” said the Tory leaders. The Radical element +in the government strengthened; Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman died, +and in Mr. Asquith’s ministry Mr. Lloyd George was Chancellor of +the Exchequer. But it remained, on the whole, a Liberal-Imperialist +government, and left most of the radicalism to Labour, whose +parliamentary strength was increasing and unifying. Wherever we were +drifting, it was not towards extreme radicalism. + +As to Ireland, a bill was passed to reduce her docks, thistles and +noxious weeds: no other bill. + +Parliamentary affairs and party politics were no more exciting and no +more tedious (for that is impossible) than usual. Of more interest +were the first flying machines that really flew, the drawings of Mr. +Augustus John exhibited at the New English Art Club and condemned by +all critics (except the few who liked the kind of thing), as essays +in a savage and childish archaism, and deliberate insults to our +intelligence; (whither indeed was art drifting, when such drawings +could be praised?); and the establishment of the White City at +Shepherds Bush, with the Franco-British Exhibition (sadly dull) and +flip-flaps, switchbacks, wiggle-woggles and scenic railways (most +exciting, and an insidious snare for pocket money; you could get rid +there in one evening of the careful hoardings of weeks; also, if you +were as weak in the stomach as Imogen, you felt repentant after a few +goes). Thither President Fallières, on a visit to King Edward, was +taken, to enjoy the Franco-British Exhibition and cement the _entente +cordiale_, which, however, needed it less then than now, for the +Edwardians were on the whole most enthusiastic about this international +understanding. “There is no longer a Channel,” they said, publicly and +politely; but in their hearts, for they were no more foolish than we, +they still gave thanks for this useful, if unpleasing, strip of sea. + +To forge faster the other link in the Triple Entente, that only +possible guarantee for a world peace, King Edward visited the Tsar of +all the Russias, at Reval. So there we were, grasping these two great +military powers by the hand, ready to face any emergency. We had got +ahead of Germany in this matter of Russia. For all the European Powers, +discreetly averting their eyes from the chronic blood stains on the +bear’s savage claws, were courting her for her legions. To have the +bear at their beck and call--that was what everyone wanted, against the +emergencies which might arise. And never was a time when emergencies +seemed more imminent, more dangerous, more frequent; such a state of +simmering unrest was Europe’s in the days of Edward the Peacemaker. Of +the Kaiser Wilhelm and his Uncle Bertie it has been said that their +relations “lapsed into comparative calm only when they were apart from +one another.” Their subjects hated and feared each other; the press in +each country stirred up terror of invasion by the other; “the German +invasion,” “the English invasion”--these phrases were bandied about in +two jealous, frightened empires. The German spy scare, the British spy +scare, these fevers were worked up in the jingo press of two countries. +“You English are mad, mad, mad,” said Wilhelm. “I strive without +ceasing to improve relations and you retort that I am your arch-enemy. +You make it very hard for me.” + +For that matter, nations always make it hard for one another; it is +their function. We did make it hard for Germany, and Germany made it +hard for us, and France made it hard for everyone. + +Anyhow, here was the Triple Entente, full-armed, to meet the Triple +Alliance, and some one or other would see to it that they did meet +before long. + +The chief European emergency which arose at the moment was an attack of +megalomania on the part of Servia, in 1909. The Serbs had the madness +to dream of a greater Servia, which should unite the scattered peoples +of their race--“a dream,” said the English press, “as hopeless as that +of Poland _rediviva_. Greater Servia either will be realised under +the sceptre of the Hapsburgs, or will not be realised at all.” The +awkwardness of the situation, so far as we were concerned, was that +Russia was, as usual, backing her mad little militant friend, and had +to be dissuaded with great tact from upsetting the apple cart. However, +a joint note to Servia from the Powers quieted her for the time being, +and the lid was shut down temporarily on the seething European kettle +of fish. + +Other intriguing matters of this year were the building, in British +dockyards, of three huge battleships for Brazil, which disgusted +others than young Imogen Carrington; the Olympic Games in July; the +publication of various not unamusing books; and the deaths of two old +men, Algernon Swinburne and George Meredith. Our two greatest Grand +Old Men had departed from us, and no more would pilgrims alight at the +Pines, Putney, or go exploring to Box Hill. The office of our literary +G. O. M. was filled now only by Mr. Thomas Hardy, for Mr. Henry James +was still an American. Sometimes one speculates, aghast, what would +happen should we ever be left with no candidates for that honourable +post--that is to say, with no celebrated literary man or woman (for +there might, though improbably, be a G. O. W. some day) over seventy +years, no Master for the younger writers to greet on the festival of +his birth. It would be an undignified state of affairs indeed; and one +need not anticipate it at present, for behind Mr. Hardy there looms +more than one candidate of respectable claims. + +The closing years of this reign were brightened further by Commander +Peary and Dr. Cook, who both maintained that they had discovered the +North Pole. It was ultimately decided that only the Commander had +done so, as the doctor had had the misfortune to mislay his papers +in Greenland; but his was a sporting venture, and deserving of all +applause, and he had a good run for his money. + +And so an end to Edwardianism. The new Georgianism dawned on a nervous, +gay, absorbed nation, experimenting in new but cautious legislation, +alive, on the whole, to new literature and new art, alive wholly to +whatever enjoyment it could find, and thoroughly tied up in continental +politics, so that when that mine was fired we should go up with it +sky-high. + + + + + PART IV + + GEORGIAN + + FIRST PERIOD: CIRCUS + + + + + 1 + + THE HAPPY GEORGIANS + + +THE first Georgian years, the years between 1910 and 1914, are now +commonly thought of as gay, as very happy, hectic, whirling, butterfly +years, punctuated indeed by the too exciting doings of dock and +transport strikers, Ulstermen, suffragists, the _Titanic_, and Mr. +Lloyd George, but, all the same, gay years. Like other generalisations +about periods, this is a delusion. Those years only seem especially gay +to us because, since July, 1914, the years have not been gay at all. +Really they were quite ordinary years. In fact, it is folly to speak of +these insensate seasonal periods as happy or the reverse. It is only +animate creatures which can be that, and it is unlikely that all, or +the majority, of animate creatures should be visited by circumstances +making for pleasurable emotion or the reverse at the same time as one +another, except in the case of some great public event. Some early +Georgians were gay, some sad, some bored, some tepid and indifferent, +as at any other time. + +Nevertheless, it so happened that the persons in this so-called +narrative were all quite sufficiently happy during this period. They +were all having, in their several ways, a fairly good time. + + + + + 2 + + PAPA + + +Mr. Garden’s way was, it need scarcely be said, a spiritual way. He +was now over eighty, and his was the garnered fruit of a long life of +spiritual adventure. He had believed so much, he had believed so often, +he had fought with doubt so ardently and with such repeated success, he +had explored every avenue of faith with such adventurous zeal, that he +had at last reached a table-land from whence he could survey all creeds +with loving, impartial pleasure. Even Mr. Campbell’s New Theology had +not enmeshed him for long; he passed through it and out of it, and it +took its place among the ranks of Creeds I Have Believed. + +And now, in some strange, transcendent manner, he believed them all. +Nothing is true but thinking makes it so; papa thought all these +faiths, and for him they were all true. What, after all, is truth? +An unanswerable riddle, to which papa replied, “The truth for each +soul is that faith by which it holds.” So truth, for papa, was +many-splendoured, many-faced. God must exist, he knew, or he could +not have believed in Him so often and so much. The sunset of life was +to papa very lovely, as he journeyed westward into it, murmuring, “I +believe.... I believe....” Catholicism (Roman and Anglo), Evangelicism, +Ethicism, Unitarianism, Latitudinarian Anglicism, Seventh-Day +Adventism, Christian Science, Irvingitism, even poor Flossie and her +chat, he did very happily and earnestly believe. He believed in a +mighty sacramental Church that was the voice of God and the store-house +of grace; he believed that he was saved through private intercourse +and contract with his Lord; he believed in the Church established in +this country, and that it should be infinitely adaptable to the new +knowledge and demands of men; he believed that the world was (very +likely) to be ended in a short time by the second coming of Christ; he +believed that God was love, and evil a monstrous illusion; he believed +that God permitted the veil between this world and the next to be rent +by the meanest and most trivial of His creatures, if they had the +knack. Indeed, papa might be said to have learnt the art of believing +anything. + +Irving said it was pleasant to find that papa was once again an +Irvingite. Indeed, the creeds after which he had named his children now +all flourished in papa’s soul. No longer did he shake his head when +he remembered in what spiritual moods he had named Una, and Rome, or +sigh after that lost exultation of the soul commemorated in Vicky. Had +another child been given to him now he would have named it Verity, in +acknowledgment of the fact that nearly everything was true. + +What wonder, then, that papa was a happy Georgian? + + + + + 3 + + VICKY + + +Vicky, dashing full-sail through her fifties, was a happy Georgian +too. She was handsome in her maturity, and merry. People she loved, +and parties, and gossip, and bridge, and her husband and children, and +the infants of her daughter Phyllis, and food and drink and clothes, +and Ascot, and going abroad, and new novels from Mudie’s, and theatres +and concerts and meetings and causes, and talk, talk, talk. Life, she +held, is good as you get on in it; a broad, sunny, amusing stream, +having its tiresome worries, no doubt, but, in the main, certainly a +comedy. Vicky as an early Georgian was a generously fashioned matron, +broader and fuller than of old, with her fair skin little damaged by +time, and not much grey in her chestnut hair, which she wore piled in a +mass of waves and curls, in the manner of the early Georgian matrons. A +delightful woman, with an unfailing zest for life. You couldn’t exactly +discuss things with her, but she could and did discuss them with you. +She would tell you what she thought about the world and its ways in +a flow of racy comment, skimming from one topic to another with an +agile irrelevance that grew with the years. A merry, skimming matron; +certainly a happy Georgian. + + + + + 4 + + MAURICE + + +Maurice had not, since he married Amy, been a happy Victorian or +Edwardian, and he did not become an exactly happy Georgian, but he +was happier than before. In his fifties he was no nearer accepting +the world as he found it than he had ever been. It still appeared to +him to be a hell of a place. He was, in his fifties, a lean, small, +bitter man, his light hair greying on the temples and receding from the +forehead, his sensitive mouth and long jaw sardonically, cynically set. +He was popular in London, for all his bitter tongue and pen; he and his +paper were by now an institution, known for their brilliance, clarity, +hard, unsentimental intolerance, and honesty. You might disagree with +Maurice Garden; you might even think that he had an evil temper and a +habit of mild intoxication; but you had to respect two things about +him, his intelligence and his sincerity. Tosh and slush he would not +stand, whether it might be about the Empire, about the poor suffragists +in prison who would not eat, about White Slaves (whom his paper +called, briefly and precisely, prostitutes, holding that the colour +of their skins was an irrelevant point to raise when considering the +amelioration of their lot), about the poor tax-robbed upper classes, or +the poor labour-ground lower. He would print no correspondence couched +in sentimental terms; if people desired to write about the sufferings, +say, of birds deprived of their feathers for hats, they had to put it +in a few concise words, and to say precisely what steps they wished to +see taken about it. No superfluous wailings or tears were permitted, +on any topic, to the writers in the _Gadfly_. The editor had +a good deal of trouble with the literary side of his paper, which +inclined, in his opinion, to roll logs, to be slavishly in the fashion +in the matter of admiring the right people, to accept weak articles +and rubbishy poems from people with budding or full-blown reputations, +and, generally, to be like most literary papers. His son Roger he did +not for long permit to adorn the literary staff; to do so would have +been, in view of the calibre of Roger’s intelligence, gross nepotism. +Roger had to get another literary job on a less fastidious paper; +meanwhile, to his father’s disgust, he continued to produce novels, +and even began on verse, so that he appeared in current anthologies of +contemporary poetry. Also, he got married. So did his sister Iris. That +settled, and his children well off his hands, Maurice felt that his +only and dubious link with family life was snapped, and that he was +free to go his own way. He left his wife, offering to provide her with +any material she preferred for a divorce, from a mistress to a black +eye. Amy accepted the offer, and these two victims of a singularly +unfortunate entanglement found rest from one another at last. It was, +Amy complained, too late for her to marry again; of course Maurice, +selfish pig, had waited till it was too late for her but not for him. +But Maurice had no inclination to remarry; he had had more than enough +of that business. The only woman he had ever seriously loved had +married ten years ago, ending deliberately an unhappy, passionate and +fruitless relationship. Maurice’s thoughts were not now woman-ward; he +lived for his job, and for interest in the bitter comedy of affairs +that the world played before him. His silly, common, nagging wife, his +silly, ordinary, disappointing children, no more oppressed him; they +could, for him, now go their own silly ways. He was free. + + + + + 5 + + ROME + + +Rome was a happy Georgian. For her the comedy of the world was too +amusing to be bitter. She, in her splendid, idle fifties, was known +in London as a lady of wits, of charm, of humour; a gentlewoman of +parts, the worldly, idle, do-nothing, care-nothing sister of the busy +and useful Mrs. Croft, contributing nothing, to the world beyond an +attractive presence, good dinner-table talk, a graceful zest for +gambling, an intelligent, cynical running commentary on life, and a +tolerant, observing smile. Life was a good show to her; it arranged +itself well, and she was clever at picking out the best scenes. When, +for instance, she had an inclination to visit the House of Commons, +she would discover first on which afternoon the Labour members, or the +Irish, were going to have a good row, or Mr. Lloyd George was going +to talk like an excited street preacher, or Sir Edward Carson like an +Orangeman, or any other star performer do his special turn, and she +would select that afternoon and have her reward. Our legislators were +to her just that--circus turns, some good, some poor, but none of them +with any serious relation to life as lived (if, indeed, any relation +with that absurd business could be called serious, which was doubtful). + +So the cheerful spectacle of a world of fools brightened Rome’s +afternoon years. Before long, the folly was to become too desperate, +too disastrous, too wrecking a business to be a comic show even to the +most amused eyes; the circus was, all too soon, to go smash, and the +folly of the clowns who had helped to smash it became a bitterness, and +the idiot’s tale held too much of sound and fury to be borne. But these +first Georgian years were, to Rome, twinkling with bland absurdity. She +cheered up Maurice in the matter of that prose and verse by means of +which his son made of himself a foolish show, reminding him that we all +make of ourselves foolish shows in one way or another, and the printed +word was one of the less harmful ways of doing this. It was no worse, +she maintained, to be a Georgian novelist and poet than any other kind +of Georgian fool, and one kind or another we all are. After all, he +might be instead a swindling company-promoter.... + +“No,” said Maurice. “He hasn’t the wits. And, you know, I don’t share +your philosophy. I still believe, in the teeth of enormous odds, +that it is possible to make something of this life--that one kind of +achievement is more admirable--or less idiotic, if you like--than +another. I still think bad, shallow, shoddy work like Roger’s damnable, +however unimportant it may be. It’s a mark on the wrong side, the side +of stupidity. You don’t believe in sides, but I do. And I’m glad I do, +so don’t try to infect me with your poisonous indifference. I am a man +of faith, I tell you; I have a soul. You are merely a cynic, the basest +of God’s creatures. You disbelieve in everything. I disbelieve in +nearly everything, but not quite. So I shall be saved and you will not. +Have a cocktail, Gallio.” + + + + + 6 + + STANLEY + + +Stanley’s son was at Oxford, reading for a pass, for it was no manner +of use, they said, his reading for anything more. He was a nice boy, +but not yet clever. “Not yet,” Stanley had said of him all through +his schooldays, meaning that Billy was late in developing. “Not yet,” +she still said, meaning that he was so late that he would not have +developed properly until his last year at Oxford, or possibly after +that. Not that Billy was stupid; he was quite intelligent about a +number of things, but not, on the whole, about the things in books, +which made it awkward about examinations. Nor was he intelligent +about politics; in fact, politics bored him a good deal. However, he +was destined for a political career. Stanley’s cousin, Sir Giles +Humphries, a Liberal member of Parliament, had promised Stanley to take +Billy as a junior secretary when he left Oxford, if he should show any +capacity for learning the job. Billy’s Liberal political career would +thus be well begun. Meanwhile, Billy was an affectionate, companionable +boy, who hid his boredom and his ignorance from his mother as well +as might be, and very nicely refrained from making mock of militant +suffragists in her presence, for, though Stanley had ceased to be a +militant, many of her friends were, in these years, in and out of +prison. + +Molly wouldn’t go to college. No one, indeed, but her mother suggested +that she should. She was obviously not suited, by either inclination or +capacities, for the extension of her education. Stanley would have been +glad to have Molly at home with her when she left school, for Molly +had the heartbreaking charm of her father, even down to his narrow, +laughing eyes and odd, short face. Stanley adored Molly. Molly was +tepid and casual about votes, and had no head for books, and not the +most rudimentary grasp on public affairs, and she was worse at meetings +and causes than any girl in the world. She didn’t even pretend, like +Billy. She would laugh in Stanley’s face, with her incomparable +impudence, when Stanley was talking, and say, “Mumsie darling, stop +committing. Oh, Mumsie, not before your chee-ild,” and flutter a +butterfly kiss on Stanley’s cheek to change the subject. And she wanted +to go on the stage. She wanted to go, and went, to a dramatic school, +to learn to act. Well, better that than nothing, Stanley sighed. If she +_does_ learn to act, it will be all right. If she doesn’t, she’s +learning something. If it doesn’t make her affected and stupid, like +actresses, I don’t mind. And surely nothing can make Molly less than +entrancing. But, whatever comes of it, Molly has a right to choose +her own life; it’s no business of mine what the children decide to +do. In her conscious reaction from the one-time parental tyranny over +daughters, Stanley forgot that there might also be tyranny over sons, +and that Billy too had a right to choose his own life. It is creditable +to Billy that she could forget it. Billy was the best of sons. + +Meanwhile Stanley was fighting (constitutionally) for votes, women’s +trade unions, the welfare of factory girls, continuation schools, +penal reform, clean milk, and the decrease of prostitution. It may be +imagined that all these things together kept her pretty busy; unlike +Rome, she had no time to visit Parliament on its best days; she only +went there when one of the topics in which she was interested was going +to be raised. She got thus, Rome told her, all the dry bread and none +of the jam. However, Stanley preferred the dry bread days, though they +were invariably stupid and disappointing. + +Though only a very little of all she had at heart got done, Stanley was +happy. She laboured under the delusion that the constitution and social +condition of her country were, on the whole, faintly on the upward +plane. That was because she was unfairly biassed towards the Liberal +party in the state, and too apt to approve of the measures they passed. +She approved of Old Age Pensions; she even approved, on the whole, of +Mr. Lloyd George’s Insurance Act; and she approved of the People’s +Budget very much. + + + + + 7 + + IRVING + + +Irving was nearly always cheerful, except when he was cross. Irving was +like that. He had been a cheerful Victorian and a cheerful Edwardian, +and was now, in his late forties, a cheerful Georgian. He had a +beautiful and charming wife, creditable children, a house in Devonshire +and a house in London, and a great deal of money (though the super-tax +robbed him of much of it), two motor cars, good fishing, shooting and +stag-hunting, and an excellent digestion. He had his troubles. The +People’s Budget troubled him a good deal, and the Land Taxes, and all +the unfair socialist legislation to which he was subject. He sometimes +threatened to go and live abroad, to escape it. But he did not go and +live abroad. He was, for all his troubles, a happy Englishman. + + + + + 8 + + UNA + + +Una, too, was cheerful. She was unaffected by reigns and periods. She +was a very unconscious Georgian. Not like Stanley, who said, “We are +now Georgians. Georgian England must be much better than any England +before it,” nor like Roger, who would murmur, “We Georgians face facts” +... nor like Vicky, who cried, “I will _not_ be called a Georgian; +not while that little Welsh horror rules over us.” Una hardly knew +she was a Georgian, and, indeed, she was not, in any but a strictly +technical sense. Her mind was unstirred by what used, long ago, to +be called the Zeitgeist. She was happy; she enjoyed good health; her +daughters were like polished corners and her sons like young plants; +her husband’s acres flourished and his corn and wine and oil increased +(as a matter of fact his wine, always a trifle too much, had of late +years decreased; Ted was a soberer man than of old); Katie, their +handsome eldest, had married well; and Una found in the countryside +the profound, unconscious content that animals find. Riding, walking, +gardening, driving about the level Essex lands, she, attuned to the +soil on which she lived, was happy and serene. + + + + + 9 + + IMOGEN + + +The younger generation of Georgians were happy enough. They were +married, engaged, painting, writing, dancing, at the bar, at the +universities, at school. They were behaving in the several manners +suitable to their temperaments and years. Their lives were full of +interests, artistic, literary, athletic and social. Vicky’s Nancy +was learning to paint futuristically; she had now a little studio in +Chelsea, where she could be as Bohemian as she liked, and have her +friends all night without disturbing anyone. Night-clubs, too, had of +late come in, and were a great convenience. Phyllis was bringing up +her children. Hugh, eating dinners in the Temple, read of torts and +morts, but dreamed of machinery, and drew diagrams in court of pistons +and valves, and jotted down algebraic formulæ when he should have been +jotting down legal notes. Hugh was really a mechanician, and his heart +was not in law, though he liked it well enough. His brother Tony had +gone from Cambridge to the Foreign Office and, when not writing drafts, +was a merry youth about town. + +Imogen was happy. She felt her life to be pleasure-soaked; a lovely, +an elegant orgy of joy. And pleasure, orgies of dissipation even, did +not absorb her, but were ministrants to the clear, springing life of +the imagination. Imagination brimmed the cup of her spirit like golden +wine. She felt happy and good, like a child in an orchard, ripe apples +and pears tumbling in soft grass about her, the silver boat of the +moon riding in a green sky. For her birds sang, sweet bells chimed +and clashed, the stars made a queer, thin, tinkling song on still +and moonless nights. The people hurrying about the city streets and +squares were kind and merry and good, like brownies; the city itself +was a great gay booth, decked and lit. Dawn came on a golden tide of +peace; noon drove a flaming chariot behind the horses of the sun; +evening spread soft wings, tender and blue and green; night was sweet +as a dream of apple-blossoms by running water. When she wrote, whether +by day or by night, her brain felt clear and lit, as by a still, +bright taper burning steadily. Her thoughts, her words, rose up in her +swiftly, like silver fishes in a springing rock pool; round and round +they swam, and she caught them and landed them before they got away. +While she wrote, nothing mattered but to seize and land what she saw +thus springing up, to reach down her net and catch it while she might. +Verse she wrote, and prose, with growing fastidiousness as to form and +words. When she had first begun publishing what she wrote, she had +been too young; she had fumbled after style like a blind puppy; she +had been, like nearly all very young writers, superfluous of phrase, +redundant. She read with fastidious disgust in her first book of +stories such meaningless phrases as, “He lifted the child bodily over +the rail and dropped it into the sea.” Bodily; as if the victim might, +on the other hand, have been only caught up in the spirit, like St. +Paul. What did I mean, she asked, across the years, of that bungling +child, knowing that she had indeed meant nothing. But now style, the +stark, bare structure of language, was to her a fetish. It was good to +be getting on in life--twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six--so that +one’s head was clearer, if not yet very clear. The very young, thought +Imogen, are muddled; they love cant and shun truth; they adopt and use +imitative phrases; they are sentimental and easy idealists behind their +masks of cheerful, slangy hardness. Undergraduates, male and female, +and their non-collegiate contemporaries, are the most obscurantist +of reactionaries; facts annoy them and they pretend they do not see +them, preferring to walk muffled through life, until life forcibly, +year by year, tears the bandages from their eyes. The later Georgian, +the post-war very young, were to be even more sentimental, muffled +and imitative than their predecessors, because of the demoralising +war, which was to give them false standards in the schoolroom. But the +pre-war adolescents were sentimental enough. + +The sharp, clear and bitter truth--that was the thing to aim at, +thought Imogen, in her twenty-fifth year, knowing she was still far, +but not knowing how far, from that. That courageous realism which +should see things as they were, she desired, knowing herself to be +still a false seer, blinded and dazzled by her personal circumstances, +warped and circumscribed in her vision by the circle of her life. +Perhaps she was too comfortable, too happy.... Or perhaps, like most +people, too emotionally alive, strung too sharply to every vibration, +for the clear, detached intellectuality she craved. + +I feel things too much, she thought, smiling, to be thinking what so +many people thought, what too many even said, of themselves. + +I don’t feel things much. I am not easily moved by life.... Why did +people so seldom say that, and so much more seldom think it? No doubt +because everyone feels things terrifically, is quite horribly moved by +this most moving business, life. No one believes him or herself to be +insensitive, for no one is insensitive, life not being an affair it is +possible to be insensitive to. + +In a deeper layer of consciousness, where herself watched herself, +Imogen thought that, though she might believe herself to be sensitive +to life, she at any rate knew why she believed it, knew why everyone +believed it of himself, and that redeemed her from the commonplace +boast, and gave her over the people who say, “I _feel_ too much, +that’s where it is,” the advantage that the conscious must always have +over the unconscious, the advantage, if it be one, that is perhaps the +main difference between sophisticated and primitive forms of life. + +Meanwhile Imogen, like her cousin Roger, wrote and published verse +and prose. After all, it didn’t matter what one wrote. People wrote +and wrote, and nearly every kind of thing got written by someone or +other, well or ill, usually ill, and never so well as to touch more +than the very outside edge of the beauty and adventure which was life. +Written words opened the door, that was all. Beyond the door lay the +adventure, bright and still and eerily clear, like a dream. Strange +seas, purple with racing currents in the open, but under the eaves of +coral islands green and clear like jade; white beaches of those same +islands, hot in the sunshine under the spreading leaves of bread-fruit +trees; yams and cocoanuts and pineapples dropping with nutty noises +on to emerald-green grass; a little boat moored at the edge of the +lapping, creamy waves; witty monkeys and brilliant parrots chattering +in the jungle; a little fire at night outside the tent, and a gun ready +to one’s hand. Great fishes and small fishes swimming deeply in the +jade rock pools, sailing and sailing with unshut eye; the little boat +sailing too, pushing off into the wide seas dotted with islands, white +wings pricking sky-ward like fawns’ ears. Or deep orchards adrift with +blossom, rosy-white; jolly colts in paddocks, dragging with soft lips +and hard gums at their mothers’ milk; the winds of April hurtling the +cloud shadows across the grass. Long lanes running between deep hedges +in the evening, and the rustle of the sea not far, and the velvet dusk +waiting for the moonrise, and queer, startled noises in the hedges, and +quiet munching noises in the fields, and the cold mocking stars looking +down. And painted carts of gypsies, and roadside fires, and wood-smoke +and ripe apples. And hills silver and black with olives and cypresses, +and steep roads spiralling up them to little walled towns, and hoarse, +chanted songs lilting among vineyards, and the jingling of the bells +of oxen. And the streets and squares of rainbow-coloured towns, noisy +cafés and lemon trees in tubs, beautiful men noble with the feathers +of cocks, beautiful women in coloured head-kerchiefs, incense drifting +out of churches into piazzas, coffee roasting in deep streets. To swim, +to sail, to run naked on hot sands, to lie eating and eating in deep +scented woods, and then to sleep; to wake and slip into clear brown +pools in sunshine, to spin words as a spider his silvery web; to wear a +scarlet silk jacket like a monkey’s and little white trousers, and, for +best, a little scarlet crinoline over them, sticking out, very wide and +short and jaunty, and a scarlet sunshade lined with white, and on one’s +shoulder a tiny flame-red cockatoo, and at one’s heels two little black +slaves, shining and black as ebony, with ivory teeth a-glisten and +banjos tucked beneath their arms. To clap one’s hands, twice, thrice, +and presto! an elegant meal--mushrooms, cider and _pêche melba_, +and mangoes and pineapple to end it, and then, when it was ended, a +three-coloured ice. What joy! Dear God, what a world! What adventure, +what loveliness, what dreams! Beauty without end, amen. + +Then why write of what should, instead, be lived? Wasn’t the marvellous +heritage, the brilliant joke, the ghostly dream, of life enough? +Nevertheless, one did write, and was, inexplicably, praised for it. +Black marks on paper, scribbled and niggled and scrawled--and here and +there the splendour and the joke and the dream broke through them, like +sunshine flashing through prison bars, like music breaking through the +written notes. + +While she gave to the fashioning of the written word all the +fastidious, meticulous austerity of devotion that she knew, Imogen in +her personal life was not austere or fastidious or devoted at all. +She idled; she lounged about; she was slovenly; she bought and sucked +toffee; she read omnivorously, including much trash; she was a prey to +shoddy, facile emotions and moods, none of which had power to impel her +to any action, because a deep, innate scepticism underlay them all; +she was a sentimental cynic. She loved too lightly and too slightly; +she was idle, greedy, foolish, childish, impatient and vain, sliding +out of difficulties like a tramp who fears a job of work. She did not +care for great causes; public affairs were to her only an intriguing +and entertaining show. She was a selfish girl, a shallow girl, a shoddy +girl, enmeshed in egotism, happy in her own circus, caring little +whether or no others had bread. Happy in her circus, and yet often +wretched too, for life is like that--exquisite and agonising. She +wanted to go to the Pacific Islands and bathe from coral reefs; wanted +money and fame; wanted to be delivered for ever from meetings and +tea-parties, foolish talkers and bores; wanted to save a life, watched +by cheering crowds; wanted a motor bicycle; wanted to be a Christian; +wanted to be a young man. But not now a naval man; she had seen through +the monotony and routine of that life. She wanted in these days to +be a journalist, a newspaper correspondent, sent abroad on exciting +jobs, to report wars, and eruptions of Vesuvius, and earthquakes, and +Cretan excavations, and revolutions in South America, and international +conferences. + + + + + 10 + + ON PUBLISHING BOOKS + + +From time to time Imogen, in common with many others, brought out +books, large and small. They would arrive in a parcel of six, and +lie on the breakfast table, looking silly, in clownish wrappers with +irrelevant pictures on them. Imogen would examine them with mild +distaste. How common they looked, to be sure, now that they were +bound! As common as most books, as the books by others. Dull, too. +What if all the reviews said so? One couldn’t help caring what reviews +said, however hard one tried not to. It was petty and trivial to be +cast up and cast down by the opinions of one’s fellows, no wiser than +oneself, expressed in print, but so it was. Why? Chiefly because they +_were_ expressed in print, to be read by all. One’s disgrace, +if it were a disgrace, was so public. People who didn’t know that +reviewers were just ordinary people, with no more authority or judgment +than they had themselves, believed them. If people read in a review, +“It cannot be said that Miss Carrington has been successful in her new +book of stories,” they thought that it really could not, not knowing +that almost anything can, as a matter of fact, be said, and often is. +And if a reviewer said (as was more usual, for reviewers are, taking +them all in all, a kindly race), “This is a good book,” people who +didn’t know any better really thought that it was so. Then the author +was pleased. Particularly as the book wasn’t really good in the least. + +“I can’t say I am much concerned about my reviews, one way or another,” +Roger had once said to Imogen. But he _was_ concerned, all the +same. Did he, did all the people who said they didn’t mind things, +know that they really did? Or were they indeed deluded? People were +surely often deluded; they said such odd things. “It’s not that I mind +a bit for myself, it’s the principle of the thing,” they would say. +Or, “I don’t care a damn what anyone says of me,” or, “It isn’t that +_I’d_ mind taking the risk, but one has to think of other people.” +And the people who said, “I know you won’t mind my saying ...” when +they knew you would, or, “I don’t want to spread gossip, but ...” when +that was just what they did want, or, “You mustn’t think I’m vexed with +you, dear,” when they left you nothing else to think. + +Did these lie? Or were they deceived? Imogen, pondering these +apparently so confused minds in her own, which was more approximately +accurate (for she would deceive others, but could not easily deceive +herself), could not decide. + + + + + 11 + + ON SUNDAY WALKS + + +On Sundays the early Georgians used to go from London in trains, +getting out somewhere in Surrey, Sussex, Bucks or Herts, to walk in +muddy lanes or over blown downs, or through dim green-grey beechwoods +or fragrant forests of pine. It is pleasanter to walk alone, or with +one companion, or even two, but sometimes unfortunately one walks (and +so did the early Georgians) in large groups, or parties of pleasure. +Imogen found that she occasionally did this, for it was among the minor +bad habits of her set. It did not greatly matter, and these strange +processions could not really spoil the country, even though they did +very greatly talk. How they talked! Books, politics, personal gossip, +good jokes and bad, acrostics, stories, discussions--with these the +paths and fields they traversed echoed. But Imogen, like a lower +animal, felt stupid and happy and alone, and rooted about the ditches +for violets and the hedges for nests, and smelt at the moss in the +woods, and broke off branches to carry home. To herself she would hum a +little tune, some phrase of music over and over again, and sometimes +words would be born in her and sing together like stars of the morning. +But for the most part she only rooted about like a cheerful puppy, +alive with sensuous joy. Her companions she loved and admired, but +could not emulate, for they were wise about things she knew not of. +Even about the fauna and flora of the countryside they really knew more +than she, who could only take in them an ignorant and animal pleasure. +She had long since guessed herself to be an imbecile, and, with the +imbecile’s cunning, tried to hide it from others. What if suddenly +everyone were to find out, discover that she was an imbecile, with a +quite vacant, unhinged mind? If these informed, educated, sophisticated +people should discover that, they would dismiss her from their ken; +she would no more be their friend. She would be cast out, left to root +about alone in the ditches, like a shameless, naked, heathen savage. + +As she thought about this, someone would come and walk by her side and +talk, and she would pull herself together and pretend to be passably +intelligent, albeit she was really drunk with the soft spring wind and +the earthy smell of the wood. + + + + + 12 + + ON MARRIAGE + + +Imogen loved lightly and slightly, her heart not being much in +that business. Life was full of stimulating contacts. She admired +readily, and liked, was interested, charmed and entertained. Men and +women passed to and fro on her stage, delightful, witty, graceful, +brilliant, even good, and found favour in her eyes. Poets, politicians +and priests, journalists and jesters, artists and writers, scholars +and social reformers, lovely matrons, witty maids, and cheerful +military men, toilers, spinners, and lilies of the field--a pleasant, +various crowd, they walked and worked and talked. So many people were +alluring, so many tedious, so many tiresome. One could, unless one was +careless, evade the tedious and the tiresome. But supposing that one +had been very careless, and had married one of them? What a shocking +entanglement life might then become! How monstrously jarring and +fatiguing would be the home! + +“Whether one marries or remains celibate,” Imogen reflected, in her +pedantic, deliberating way, “that is immaterial. Both have advantages. +But to marry one of the right people, if at all, is of the greatest +consequence for a happy life. People do not always think intelligently +enough on this important subject. Too often, they appear to act on +impulse, or from some inadequate motive. And the results are as we +see.” For she was seeing at the moment several ill-mated couples of her +acquaintance, some of whom made the best of it, others the worst. Many +sought and found affinities elsewhere, for affinities they must (or so +they believed) have. Others, renouncing affinity as a baseless dream, +wisely accepted less of life than that, and lived in disillusioned +amenity with their spouses. + +An amazing number of marriages came, on the other hand, off, and +these were a pleasant sight to see. To come home every evening to the +companion you preferred and who preferred you--that would be all right. +(Only there might be babies, and that would be all wrong, because they +would want bathing or something just when you were busy with something +else.) Or to come home to no one; or (better still) not to come home at +all. So many habits of life were enjoyable, but not that of perpetual +unsuitable companionship. + +Thus Imogen reflected and philosophised on this great topic of marriage +and of love, which did not, however, really interest her so much as +most other topics, for she regarded it as a little primitive, a little +elementary, lacking in the more entertaining complexities of thought. +Metaphysics, poetry, psychology and geography made to her a stronger +intellectual appeal; the non-emotional functionings of the dwellers on +this planet she found more amusing, and the face of the planet itself +more beautiful. + +Nevertheless, to be a little in love is fun, and makes enchantment +of the days. A little in love, a little taste of that hot, blinding +cup--but only enough to stimulate, not to blind. One is so often a +little in love.... + + + + + 13 + + BILLY + + +Billy left Oxford with his pass. His Liberal cousin accepted him, +having it on the authority of Stanley, whom he greatly regarded, that +Billy had the makings of a good secretary. Billy denied this, and +said he would prefer to be a veterinary surgeon, or else to farm in +a colony. But his mother had decided that he was to be political. +Political. He thought he saw himself.... And anyhow, where was the +sense of politics? A jolly old mess the politicians made of things, and +always had.... Somehow politics didn’t seem a real thing, like vetting +or farming. There was so much poppycock mixed up with it.... + +But there it was. His mother must have her way. He supposed it would +be a shame to disappoint her. Molly wouldn’t look at politics, and one +of them must. So in October he was to begin looking at them. One thing +was, Giles Humphries wouldn’t keep him long; he’d soon see through +him.... + +“Doesn’t make much odds, anyhow,” he reflected gloomily. “One damn +silly job or another. Mother’ll never let me do what I want. ’Tisn’t +good enough for her. I wish people wouldn’t _want_ things for one; +wish they’d let one alone. Being let alone ... that’s the thing.” + +Rome said to Stanley, “You’ll never make a politician of that boy. Why +try?” + +“He’s too young to say that about yet, Rome. I _should_ like to +see him doing some work for his country....” + +“They don’t do that, my dear. You’ve been misinformed. I thought you +went to the House sometimes.... Really, Stan, I can’t imagine why +you should try and turn Billy, who’d be some use in the world as an +animals’ doctor, or a tiller of the soil, or, I daresay, as a number of +other things, into anything so futile and so useless and so singularly +unsuited both to his talents and to his honest nature as a politician. +I suppose you’ll make him stand for Parliament eventually. Well, he’ll +quite likely get in. People will elect anyone. But he’d only be bored +and stupid and wretched there. He’s got no gift of the gab, for one +thing. You let the child do what he wants.” + +“I’m not forcing him. He knows he is free.” + +“He knows nothing of the sort. He knows you’ve set your heart on this, +and he doesn’t want to vex you. Really, you mothers ...” + +So Billy, in the autumn of 1913, became the inefficient secretary +of his kind, inefficient Liberal cousin, who was, however, no more +inefficient than his fellow members of Parliament. + + + + + 14 + + EXIT PAPA + + +Those were inefficient years; silly years, full of sound and fury, +signifying nothing. They were not much sillier than usual, but there +was rather more sound and fury than had been customary of late. It was +made by militant suffragists, who smashed public property and burned +private houses with an ever more ardent abandon; by Welsh churchmen who +marched through London declaring that on no account would they have +their church either disestablished or disendowed; by dock and transport +strikers, who had a great outbreak of indomitability and determination +in 1911, and another in 1912; by Mr. Lloyd George’s Insurance Act, +which caused much gnashing of teeth, foaming of mouths and flashing of +eyes; by Liberals and Conservatives, who, for some reason, suddenly +for a time abandoned that sporting good humour which has always made +English political life what it is, a thing some like and others scorn, +and took on to dislike each other, even leaving dinner parties to which +members of the opposition party had been carelessly invited; and by the +men of Ulster, who, being convinced in their consciences that Home Rule +would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster, covenanted +to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament +in Ireland, and, to this end, got a quite good conspiracy going +themselves. There was also, it need hardly be said, plenty of sound and +fury on the continent, particularly in the Balkans. + +They make, these years, a noisy, silly, rowdy, but on the whole cheery +chapter of the idiot’s tale. Howbeit, they were less noisy and less +silly, and far more cheery, than the chapter which was to follow. + +Just before this chapter began, papa died. Afterwards they said, it +is a mercy papa is dead; that he died before the smash that would so +have shattered him. Papa, gentle and sensitive and eighty-four, could +scarcely have endured the great war. Down what fresh avenues of faith +it would have sent his still adventurous soul exploring, seeking +strength and refuge from the nightmare, would never be known. He died +in May, 1914. He died as he had lived, a great and wide believer, +still murmuring, “I believe ... I believe ... I believe ...”--a +credulous, faithful, comprehensive, happy Georgian. He had moments when +agnosticism or scepticism was the dominant creed in his soul, but they +were only moments; soon the tide of his many faiths would surge over +him again, and in all these he died. + +“Dear papa,” said Vicky, weeping. “To think that he is with mamma at +last! And to think that now he _knows_ what is true.... Oh, dear, +how will he ever get on without all those speculations and new beliefs? +One knows, of course, that he is happy, darling papa ... but will he +find it at all the _same_?” + +Rome said, “Why? Taking your hypothesis, that there is another life, +why should it be supposed to be a revelation of the truth about the +universe, or about God? Why should not papa go on speculating and +guessing at truth, trying new faiths? You people who believe in what +you call heaven seem to have no justification for making it out such an +informed place.” + +“Oh, my dear; aren’t we told that all shadows shall flee away, and that +we shall _know_? I’m sure we are, somewhere, only you won’t read +the Bible ever.” + +“On the contrary, I read the Bible a good deal. I find it enormously +interesting. But the one thing we can be quite sure about all those +who wrote it is that they had no information at all as to what would +occur to them after their deaths. That is among the very large quantity +of information that no one alive has ever yet had. So, if you think +of papa in heaven, why not think of him in the state in which he +would certainly be happiest and most himself--still exploring for +truth? Why should death bring a sudden knowledge of all the secrets +of the universe? You believers make so many and such large and such +unwarrantable assumptions.” + +“My dear, we must make assumptions, or how get through life at all?” + +“Very true. How indeed? One must make a million unwarrantable +assumptions, such as that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that the +attraction of the earth for our feet will for a time persist, and that +if we do certain things to our bodies they will cease to function, +and that if we get into a train it will probably carry us along, and +so forth. One must assume these things just enough to take action on +them, or, as you say, we couldn’t get through life at all. But those +are hypothetical, pragmatical assumptions, for the purposes of action; +there is no call actually to believe them, intellectually. And still +less call to increase their number, and carry assumptions into spheres +where it doesn’t help us to action at all. For my part, I assume +practically a great deal, intellectually nothing.” + +Vicky was going through her engagement book, seeing what she would have +to cancel because of papa’s death, and all she answered was, absently, +“Dear papa!” + + + + + SECOND PERIOD: SMASH + + + + + 1 + + SOUND AND FURY + + +THE so bitter, so recent, so familiar, so agonising tale of the four +years and a quarter between August, 1914, and November, 1918, has been +told and re-told too often, and will not be told in detail here. It is +enough, if not too much, to say that there was a great and dreadful +war in Europe, and that nightmare and chaos and the abomination +of desolation held sway for four horrid years. All there was of +civilisation--whatever we mean by that unsatisfactory, undefined, +relative word--suffered irretrievable damage. All there was of greed, +of cruelty, of barbarism, of folly, incompetence, meanness, valour, +heroism, selfishness, littleness, self-sacrifice and hate, rose to +the call in each belligerent country and showed itself for what it +was. Men and women acted blindly, according to their kind; they used +the torments of others as stepping stones to prosperity or fame; they +endured torments themselves, with complaining, with courage, or with +both; they did work they held to be useful, and got out of it what +credit and profit they could; or work they knew was folly, and still +got out of it what they could. They went to the war, they stayed at +home, they scrambled for jobs among the chaos, they got rich, they got +poor, they died, were maimed, medalled, frostbitten, tortured, bored, +imprisoned, embittered, enthusiastic, cheerful, hopeless, patient, +or matter-of-fact, according to circumstances and temperament. Many +people said a great deal, others very little. Some parents boasted, “I +have given my all,” others said, “Well, I suppose they’ve got to go +into the damned thing,” some men said, “I must go into it; it’s right,” +some, “I shall go into it: it’s an adventure,” some “I must go into it +like other people, though it’s all wrong,” some, “It may be all right +for others, but I shan’t go into it,” some, “I shan’t go until I’m +forced,” some, “I shan’t go even then.” There were, in fact, all manner +of different attitudes and ways of procedure with regard to the war. +To some it was a necessary or unnecessary hell, to some a painful and +tedious affair enough, but with interests and alleviations and a good +goal in sight; to some an adventure; to some (at home) a satisfactory +sphere for work they enjoyed, to some a holy war, to others a devil’s +dance in which they would take no part, or which they wearily did what +they could to alleviate, or in which they joined with cynical and +conscious resolve not to be left out of whatever profits might accrue. + +But to the majority in each country it was merely a catastrophe, like +an earthquake, to be gone through blindly, until better might be. + + + + + 2 + + THE FAMILY AT WAR + + +Of the Garden family, Vicky was horrified but enthusiastically +pro-war. Her two sons got commissions early, and she helped the war +by organising bazaars and by doing whatever it was that one did (in +the early stages, for in the later more of violence had to be done) to +Belgian refugees. Maurice and his paper were violently pacificist, and +became a by-word. Rome saw the war and what had led up to it as the +very crown and sum of human folly, and helped, very capably and neatly, +to pack up and send off food and clothes to British prisoners. Stanley +was caught in the tide of war fervour. She worked in a canteen, and +served on committees for all kinds of good objects, and behaved with +great competence and energy, her heart wrung day and night with fear +for Billy. In 1917 she caught peace fever, joined the peace party and +the Women’s International League, signed petitions and manifestos in +support of Lord Lansdowne, and spoke on platforms about it, which Billy +thought tiresome of her. + +Irving lent a car to an ambulance, and his services to the Ministry of +Munitions, and became a special constable. Una sent cakes to her sons +and farm-hands at the front, and employed landgirls on the farm. She +took the war as all in the day’s work; there had been wars before in +history, and there would be wars again. It was awfully sad, all the +poor boys being taken like that; but it sent up the price of corn and +milk, and that pleased Ted, for all his anxiety for his sons. + +The younger generation acted and reacted much as might be expected +of them. Vicky’s Hugh, who joined the gunners, was interested in the +business and came tolerably well through it, only sustaining a lame +leg. Tony, the younger, was killed in 1916. Maurice’s Roger, whose +class was B2, served in France for a year, and wrote a good deal of +trench poetry. He was then invalided out, and entered the Ministry +of Information, where he continued, in the intervals of compiling +propaganda intended to interest the natives of Iceland in the cause of +the Allies, to publish trench poetry, full of smells, shells, corpses, +mud and blood. + +“I simply can’t read the poetry you write in these days, Roger,” his +mother, Amy, complained. “It’s become too terribly beastly and nasty +and corpsey. I can’t think what you want to write it for, I’m sure.” + +“Unfortunately, mother,” Roger explained, kindly, “war _is_ rather +beastly and nasty, you know. And a bit corpsey, too.” + +“My dear boy, I know that; I’m not an idiot. Don’t, for goodness’ sake, +talk to me in that superior way, it reminds me of your father. All I +say is, why _write_ about the corpses? There’ve always been plenty +of them, people who’ve died in their beds of diseases. You never used +to write about _them_.” + +“I suppose one’s object is to destroy the false glamour of war. There’s +no glamour about disease.” + +“Glamour, indeed! There you go again with that terrible nonsense. +I don’t meet any of these people you talk about who think there’s +glamour in war. I’m sure _I_ never saw any glamour in it, with all +you boys in the trenches and all of us at home slaving ourselves to +death and starving on a slice of bread and margarine a day. Glamour, +indeed! I’ll tell you what it is, a set of you young men have invented +that glamour theory, just so as to have an excuse for what you call +destroying it, with your nasty talk. Like you’ve invented those awful +Old Men you go on about, who like the war. I’m sick of your Old Men and +your corpses.” + +“I’m sick of them myself,” said Roger, gloomily, and changed the +subject, for you could not argue with Amy. But he went on writing war +poetry, and gained a good deal of reputation as one of our soldier +poets. On the whole he was more successful as a poet than as a +propagandist to Iceland, which cool island remained a little detached +about the war. + +Stanley’s Billy hailed the outbreak of hostilities with some pleasure, +and was among the first civilians to enlist. Here, he felt, was a job +more in his line than being secretary to his Liberal cousin, which he +had found more and more tedious as time passed. He fought in France, in +Flanders, in Gallipoli, and in Mesopotamia, was wounded three times, +and recovered each time to fight again. He was a cheerful, ordinary, +unemotional young soldier, a good deal bored, after a bit, with the +war. On one of his leaves, in 1916, he married a young lady from the +Vaudeville Theatre, whom Stanley could not care about. + +“I know mother wanted me to marry a highbrow girl,” he confided to +Molly. “Some girl who’s been to college or something. But I haven’t +much to say to that sort ever, nor they to me. Now Dot....” + +But even Molly had her misgivings about Dot. She was not sure that Dot +would prove quite monogamous enough. And, as it turned out, Dot did not +prove monogamous at all, but rather the contrary. + +Molly herself had become an ambulance driver in France. She frankly +enjoyed the war. She became engaged to officers, successively and +simultaneously. She acted at canteen entertainments and gained a +charming reputation as a comedienne. At the end of the war she received +the O. B. E. for her distinguished services. + +Her mother knew about some of the engagements, and thought them too +many, but did not know that Molly had for a time been more than +engaged. She never would know that, for Molly kept her own counsel. +Molly knew that to Stanley, with her idealistic view of life and her +profound belief in the enduring seriousness of personal relations, it +would have seemed incredibly trivial, light and loose to be a lover and +pass on, to commit oneself so deeply and yet not count it deep at all, +but emerge free and untrammelled for the next adventure. It had seemed +incredible to Stanley in her husband; it would seem more incredible in +her daughter. + +“Mother’s so different,” thought Molly. “She’d never understand.... +Aunt Rome’s different too, but she’d understand about me; she always +understands things, even if she despises them. She _would_ despise +this, but she wouldn’t be surprised.... Mother would be hurt to death. +She must never, never guess.” + +As to Vicky’s daughters, Phyllis was useful in some competent, +part-time, married way that may be imagined. Nancy turned violently +anti-war and became engaged to a Hungarian artist, who was subsequently +removed from his studio in Chelsea and interned. Imogen was everything +by turns and nothing long. The war very greatly discomposed her. It +seemed to her a very shocking outrage both that there should be a +war, and that, since there was a war, she should be found, owing to a +mere fluke of sex, among the non-combatants. The affair was a horrid +nightmare, which she had to stand and watch. People of her age simply +_weren’t_ non-combatants; that was how she felt about it. Strong, +active people in the twenties; it seemed a disgrace to her, who had +never before so completely realised that she was not, in point of +fact, a young man. War was ghastly and beastly; but if it was there, +people like her ought to be in it. However, since this was obviously +impossible, she sulkily and simultaneously joined a pacifist league +and became a V. A. D., in the hope of getting sent out to France. She +was an infinitely incapable V. A. D., did everything with remarkable +incompetence, and fainted or was sick when her senses and nerves were +more displeased than usual by what they encountered, which was often. +She was soon told that she had no gifts for nursing and had better +stick to cleaning the wards. This she did, with relief, for some time, +until her friends said, why not get a job in a government office, which +was much more lucrative and amusing. Sick of hospitals, she did so. She +was under no delusions as to the usefulness of any work she was likely +to do in an office; but still, one had to do something. She could not +write; her jarred, unhappy nerves sought and found a certain degree of +oblivion in the routine, the camaraderie, the demoralising absurdity, +of office work, which was like being at school again. Also, it was +paid, and, as she could not write, she must earn money somehow. + +So, indolent, greedy, unbalanced, trivial and demoralised, Imogen, +like many others, drifted through the great war. Two deaths occurred +to her--the death of her brother and companion Tony, which blackened +life and made the war seem to her more than ever a hell of futile +devilry; and the death of Neville, a young naval officer, to whom she +had become engaged in 1915, and who was killed in 1916. It was a queer +affair, born of the emotionalism and sensation-seeking that beset many +people at that time. She had not known him long; she did not know him +well. She was aware that it was ignominious of her to encourage him, +merely on the general love she bore to the navy, a little flattered +excitement, and a desire, new-born, to experience the sensation of +engagement. They had few thoughts in common, but they could joke +together, and talk of ships, and of how they loved one another, and +about him was the glamour of the navy, and she felt, when he kissed +her, that stimulation of the emotions and senses that passes for love. +When they talked about things in general, and not about their love, +she heard within her that cold voice that never lied, saying, “You +cannot live with this nice young naval man. You will tire each other.” +Worse, they sometimes shocked one another. Could it be--disastrous +thought--that she had outgrown the navy? + +“You’re a rum kid, darling,” he said to her. “You and I disagree about +nearly everything, it seems to me. We shall have a lively married +life.... But I don’t care....” + +But he did care a little, all the same. Imogen sometimes suspected +that, like herself, he had begun to think they had made a mistake. But +then he would take her in his arms, and when they embraced neither of +them felt that they had made a mistake. + +However, one is not embracing all the time, and Imogen slowly came +to the point, between one leave and another, of deciding to end the +affair. The navy and she had grown away from each other; there was no +doubt about that. + +But before they could discuss this point, Neville was killed at Jutland. + +Imogen wept for him, and believed for a time that she loved him +profoundly and missed him horribly. But the small cold voice within her +that never lied whispered, “You are only sorry that he is dead for his +sake, because he loved being alive and ought to be alive. You sometimes +miss his kisses and his love, but you are glad that you are free.” + +She spent an unhappy week-end with his parents in the country. They +did not very greatly care for her--cared only for Neville’s sake. +Neville’s father was a rector, very simple and village, his mother a +rector’s wife, very parochial and busy. With them Imogen felt leggy and +abrupt, and the wrong kind of a girl. She couldn’t be articulate with +them, or show them how bitterly she felt Neville’s death before he had +properly lived. They were unhappy but not bitter; they said, “It was +God’s will,” and she could not tell them that, in her view, they spoke +inaccurately and blasphemed. Yet their hearts were (to use the foolish +phrase) broken, and hers by no means. She caught Neville’s mother +looking at her speculatively from behind her glasses, and wondered if +she were wondering how much this gauche young woman had loved her boy. +She wanted to beg her pardon and dash for the next train. They could +not want her with them; to have her was a duty they thought they owed +to Neville. “I’ve no right here,” she cried to herself. “They loved +him. I was only in love with his love for me. Their lives are spoilt, +mine isn’t.” + +She did not visit them again. That was over. Neville took his place in +her memory not as a personal loss but as a gay, heartbreaking figure, a +tragic symbol of murdered, outraged youth. + +But when Tony was killed, the world’s foundations shook. He was her +darling brother, her beloved companion in adventure, scrapes and +enterprises from their childhood up. She could by no means recover from +the cruel death of Tony, which shattered the life of his home. + +But daily work in an office, so cheerful, so fruitless, so absurd, was +an anodyne. Offices were full of people who did not mind the war, who, +some of them, rather enjoyed the war. There are no places more cynical +than the offices of governments. Not parliaments in session, not +statesmen in council, not cardinals in conclave, not even journalists +emitting their folly in the dead of the night. Encased in an armour of +this easy cynicism against the savage darts of the most horrid war, +Imogen and many others drifted through its last years to the war’s +cynical culmination, the horrid but welcome peace. + + + + + THIRD PERIOD: DÉBRIS + + + + + 1 + + PEACE + + +A HORRID peace it was and is. It is the fashion to say so, and, unlike +most fashionable sayings, it is true. But at first the fact that it +_was_ peace, that people were not killing each other (in such +large numbers and for such small reasons) any more, was enough and made +everyone happy. A poor peace enough; but the fact remains that the +worst peace is heaven compared with the best war. It was like the first +return of chocolate éclairs. “They’re rather funny ones,” people said, +“not quite like the old kind; but still, they _are_ éclairs.” +So peace. It was indeed a rather funny one, not quite like the old +kind; but still, it was peace. And what, if you come to that, was the +old kind, that any other should be compared unfavourably with it? The +trouble is, perhaps, rather that this new variety _is_ like it. + +The Peace Treaty has been called all kinds of names--patchwork, +violent, militarist, manufactured, makeshift, frail, silly, uneconomic, +unstatesmanlike; and all the names except the last may be true. +(Unstatesmanlike the treaty was certainly not; very few treaties drawn +up by statesmen unfortunately are that; and, in passing, this word +unstatesmanlike seems often to be curiously and thoughtlessly used, in +a sense directly contrary to that which it should bear.) Well, even +if nearly all these opprobrious names were true, it seems a pity to +be always discontented. Wiser were those who encouraged the infant, +patted it on the back, and greeted the unseen with a cheer. Like beer, +like shoeleather, it seemed costly and poor. But who are we, that we +can afford to be particular? We should make the best of whatever peace +is given us, even if it is not the brand we should have preferred. +“We’ve got,” said the resigned citizen, “to put up with these poor, +nasty-looking things, that last no time at all. Beer it’s not, and +shoeleather it’s not, and peace it won’t be, properly speaking. A kind +of substitute they all are, like margarine. But what I say is, we’re +lucky to get them.” So we were. + +Idealists, such as Stanley Croft, though they did not admire the Treaty +of Versailles, saw it as the material out of which the living temple +of peace might yet be built, on that great cornerstone, the League of +Nations. The League of Nations was to the peace-wishers as his creed is +to the Christian; it bound them to believe in a number of difficult, +happy, unlikely and highly incompatible things, such as lasting peace, +the freedom of small nations, arbitration between large ones, and so +forth. They joined the League of Nations Union, full of hope and faith. +Stanley did so, at its inception, and became, in fact, a speaker on +platforms in the cause. + + + + + 2 + + THE LAST HOPE + + +Stanley, in her late fifties, looked and spoke well on platforms; she +looked both nice and important. Her blue eyes, under their thick, level +brows, were as starry as ever, her voice as deep and full and good, +her mind young and alert. A clever, high-minded, balanced, vigorous, +educated matron of close on sixty; that was what Stanley was. She was +the kind of matron to whom younger women gave their confidence. Her son +and daughter did not give her their whole confidence, but that was not +her fault. + +Billy was demobilised. A seamed scar cut across his cheek, and his eyes +were queer and sulky and brooding. He disliked by now his wife, Dot. +She reciprocated the feeling, and very soon left him for another, so +he divorced her. Stanley could not help being glad, Dot had been such +a mistake. She was not the kind of wife to help her husband in his +parliamentary career. She was the more the kind who succeeds him in it, +but even that Stanley could not know in 1919, and she regarded Dot as, +from every point of view, a wash-out. + +“Look here, mother,” Billy said to her, with nervous, sulky decision. +“I can’t go back to that secretary job. Nor any other job of that +kind. Sitting jobs and writing jobs bore me stiff. I’ve done too much +sitting, in those beastly trenches. And politics anyhow seem to me +plain rot. I want to train for a vet. I’m awfully sorry if you’re +sick about it, but there it is. Why don’t you make Molly take on a +secretary-to-a-Liberal job? She couldn’t be worse than I was, anyhow.” + +“A vet, Billy! Darling boy, why a vet? Why not a human doctor, if you +must be something of that sort?” + +“Want to be a vet,” said Billy, and was. + +As to Molly, she became secretary to no Liberal, for she married, +in 1919, a flight commander, and his politics, if any, were +Coalition-Unionist. + +So much for Stanley’s hopes for political careers for her children. She +sighed, and accepted the inevitable, and put her hope more than ever +in the League of Nations. If that could not save the world, nothing +could.... + +Certainly nothing could, said Rome. Nothing ever had yet. At least, +what did people mean, precisely, by save? Words, words, words. They +signified, as commonly and lightly used, so very little. + + + + + 3 + + THE CHARABANC + + +The post-war period swung and jolted along, like a crazy, broken-down +charabanc full of persons of varying degrees of mental weakness, all +out on an asylum treat. Every now and then the charabanc stopped +for a picnic, or conference, at some nice continental or English +watering-place, and these were very cosy, chatty, happy, expensive +little times, enjoyed by all, and really not doing very much more +harm to Europe than any other form of treat would have done, since +they had, as a rule (the amusing reconstruction of the map of Europe +once effected), practically no effects of any kind, beyond, of +course, strengthening the already perfect harmony prevalent among the +victorious allied nations. + +Reparations was the great topic at these chats; but it was and is such +a very difficult topic that no one there (no one there being very +clever), made much of it, and it has not really been decided about even +now. + +International politics were, in fact, in the years following the +great war, even more greatly confused than is usual. Only one great +international principle remained, as ever, admirably lucid--that +principle so simply explained by M. Anatole France’s Penguin peasant +to the Porpoise philosopher. + +“Vous n’aimez pas les Marsouins?” + +“Nous les haïssons.” + +“Pour quelle raison les haïssez-vous?” + +“Vous le demandez? Les Marsouins ne sont-ils pas les voisins des +Pingouins?” + +“Sans doute.” + +“Eh bien, c’est pour cela que les Pingouins haïssent les Marsouins.” + +“Est-ce une raison?” + +“Certainement. Qui dit voisins dit ennemis.... Vous ne savez donc pas +ce que c’est que le patriotisme?” + +There was no confusion here. + +Home politics, in each country, seemed to lack even this dominant +_motif_, and confusion reigned unrelieved. In Great Britain a +Coalition government was in power. The usual view about this government +is that it was worse and more incompetent than other governments; but +it seems bold to go as far as this. “The nation wants a return to a +frank party government,” non-coalition Liberals and Conservatives began +saying, and said without intermission until they got it, in 1922. They +sometimes explained why they preferred a frank party government, but +none of their reasons seemed very good reasons; the real reason was +that they, very properly and naturally, wished their own party to be in +power. The Die-Hards and the Wee Frees came to be regarded as valiant, +incorruptible little bands, daring to stand alone; Co-Liberals and +Co-Unionists were understood, somehow, to have compromised with Satan +for reward. There is a good deal of unkindness in political life. + + + + + 4 + + SETTLING DOWN + + +Meanwhile, the people settled down, were demobilised from the army, +and from the various valuable services which they had been rendering +to their country, and began to fall back into the old grooves, began +to recover, at least partially, from the war. But the war had left its +heritage of poverty, of wealth, of disease, of misery, of discontent, +of feverish unrest. + +“Now to write again,” said Imogen, and did so, but found it difficult, +for the nervous strain of the years past, and the silliness of the +avocations she had pursued through them, had paralysed initiative, and +given her, in common with many others, an inclination to sally forth +after breakfast and catch a train or a bus, seeking such employment as +might be created for her, instead of creating her own. The helpless +industry of the slave had become hers, and to regain that of the +independent and self-propelled worker was a slow business. + +Further, she was absorbed, shaken and disturbed by a confusing and +mystifying love into which she had fallen, blind and unaware, even +before peace had descended. She very greatly loved someone whom she +could not, what with one thing, what with another, hope to marry. All +values were to her subverted; she fumbled blindly at a world grown +strange, a world as to whose meaning and whose laws she groped in the +dark, and emotion drowned her like a flood. + +There revived in force about this time the curious old legend about the +young. The post-war young, they were now called, and once more people +began to believe and to say that one young person closely resembles +other young persons, and many more things about them. + +“The war,” they said, “has caused a hiatus, and thought has broken with +tradition. Thus youth is no longer willing to accept forms and formulæ +only on account of their age. It has set out on a voyage of enquiry, +and, finding some things which are doubtful and others which are +insufficient, is searching for forms of expression more in harmony with +the realities of life and knowledge.” + +Many novels were written about the New Young, half in reprobation, +half in applause; famous literary men praised them in speeches; they +were much spoken of in newspapers. All the things were said of them +that have been said of the young at all times, only now their newness, +their special quality, was attributed to the European war, in which +they were too young to have actively participated, but which had, +it was believed, exercised upon them some mystic and transmuting +influence. Once more the legend flourished that the number of years +lived constitutes some kind of temperamental bond, so that people of +the same age are many minds with but a single thought, bearing one +to another a close resemblance. The young were commented on as if +they were some new and just discovered species of animal life, with +special qualities and habits which repaid investigation. “Will these +qualities wear off?” precise-minded and puzzled enquirers asked. “When +the present young are thirty and middle-aged, will they still possess +them? Do the qualities depend upon their age, or upon the period of the +world’s history in which they happen to be that age?” But no precise +or satisfactory reply was ever given. It never is. Enquirers into the +exact meaning of popular theories and phrases are of all persons +the least and the worst answered. You may, for instance, enquire of +a popular preacher, or anyone else, who denounces his countrymen as +“pagan” (as speakers, and even Bishops, at religious gatherings have +been known to do), what exactly he means by this word, and you will +find that he means irreligious, and is apparently oblivious of the +fact that pagans were and are, in their village simplicity, the most +religious persons who have ever flourished, having more gods to the +square mile than the Christian or any other Church has ever possessed +or desired, and paying these gods more devout and more earnest devotion +than you will meet even among Anglo-Catholics in congress. To be pagan +may not be very intelligent; it is rustic and superstitious, but it is +at least religious. Yet you will hear the word “pagan” flung loosely +about for “irreligious,” or sometimes as meaning joyous, material and +comfort-loving, whereas the simple pagans walked the earth full of +what is called holy awe and that mystic faith in unseen powers which +is the antithesis of materialism, and gloomy with apprehension of the +visitations of their horrid and vindictive gods; and, though no doubt, +like all men, they loved comfort, they only obtained, just as we do, as +much of that as they could afford. And, whatever Bishops mean by pagan, +as applied to modern Englishmen, it is almost certain that they do not +mean all this. + +Never, perhaps, was thinking, writing and talking looser, vaguer and +more sentimental than in the years following the European war. It was +as if that disaster had torn great holes in the human intelligence, +which it could ill afford. There was much writing both of verse and of +prose, much public and private speaking much looking for employment +and not finding it, much chat about the building of new houses, much +foolish legislation, much murder and suicide, much amazement on the +part of the press. Newspapers are always easily amazed, but since +the war weakened even their intelligence there could not be so much +as a little extra departure from railway stations on a Bank Holiday +(surely most natural, if one thinks it out) without the ingenuous press +placarding London with “Amazing scenes.” The press was even amazed if a +married couple sought divorce, or if it thundered, or was at all warm. +“Scenes” they would say, “Scenes”; and the eager reader, searching +their columns for these, could find none worthy of the name. One +pictures newspaper reporters going about, struck dumb with amazement at +every smallest incident in this amazing life we lead, hurrying back to +their offices and communicating their emotion to editors, news editors +and leader writers, so that the whole staff gapes, round-eyed, at the +astonishing world on which they have to comment. An ingenuous race; but +they make the mistake of forgetting that many of their readers are so +very experienced that they are seldom surprised at anything. + +During these years, the sex disability as regards the suffrage being +now removed, women stood freely for Parliament, but the electorate, +being mostly of the male sex, showed that the only women they desired +to have in Parliament were the wives of former members who had ceased +to function as such, through death, peerage, or personal habits. Many +women, including Stanley Croft, who of course stood herself, found this +very disheartening. It seemed that the only chance for a woman who +desired a political career was to marry a member and then put him out +of action. Such women as were political in their own persons, who were +educated and informed on one or more public topics, had small chance. +“We don’t want to be ruled by the ladies,” the electorate firmly +maintained. “It’s not their job. Their place is ...” etc. + +The world had not changed much since the reign of Queen Victoria. + +And so, with the French firmly and happily settled in the Ruhr, their +hearts full of furious fancies, declaring that it would not be French +to stamp on a beaten foe, but that their just debts they would have, +with Germany rapidly breaking to pieces, drifting towards the rocks +of anarchy or monarchy, and working day and night at the industry of +printing million-mark notes, with Russia damned, as usual, beyond any +conceivable recovery, with Italy suffering from a violent attack of +Fascismo, with Austria counted quite out, with a set of horrid, noisy +and self-conscious little war-born states in the heart of Europe, all +neighbours and all feeling and acting as such, with Turkey making of +herself as much of an all-round nuisance as usual, with Great Britain +anxiously, perspiringly endeavouring both to arrest the progressive +wreckage of Europe and to keep on terms with her late allies, and with +Ireland enjoying at last the peace and blessings of Home Rule, Europe +entered on her fifth year since the armistice. + + + + + 5 + + A NOTE ON MAURICE + + +In this year Maurice’s paper perished, having long ceased to pay its +way, and, in fact, like so many papers, suffering loss on each copy +that was bought. This is as natural a state of affairs for papers +as living on over-drafts is for private persons, but neither state, +unfortunately, can last for ever. The money behind the _Gadfly_ +at last gave out, and the _Gadfly_ ceased to be. Maurice, at the +age of sixty-five, was deprived of his job and his salary, and became +a free-lance, but no less fiery and stubborn, journalist. There were +more things to oppose, in his view, than ever before, and he opposed +them at large, in the hospitable pages of many a friendly periodical. +His opposition had no effect on the affairs of the world, but, in +combination with an adequate supply of alcoholic nourishment and +his blessed emancipation from married life, it caused him to remain +self-respecting and fit, kept senility at bay, and assisted him to bear +up against the repeated shocks of Roger’s published works. + + + + + 6 + + A NOTE ON IMOGEN + + +The P. & O. liner hooted its way down Southampton Water. The land, the +Solent, the open sea, were veiled in February mist. Imogen, leaning on +the rail and straining her eyes shore-ward, could only see it dimly, +darkly, looming like a ghost through fog. That was England, and life in +England; a mist-bound world wherein one blindly groped. A mist-bound +and yet radiant world, holding all one valued, all that gave life +meaning, all that one was leaving behind. + +For Imogen was going, for a year, to the Pacific Islands. Hugh too was +going there, to make maps and plans for the government. Imogen was +going with him, exploring, wandering about at leisure from island +to island. The perfect life, she had once believed this to be. And +still the thought of coral islands, of palm and yam and bread-fruit +trees, with the fruits thereof dropping ripely on emerald grass, with +monkeys and gay parakeets screaming in the branches, and great turtles +flopping in blue seas, with beachcombers drinking palm-toddy on white +beaches, the crystal-clear lagoon in which to swim, and, beyond, the +blue island-dotted open sea--even now these things tugged at Imogen’s +heart-strings and made her feel again at moments the adventurous little +girl she had once been, dreaming vagabond dreams. + +But more often this bright, still world beyond the mists seemed like +the paradise of a hymn, a far, unnatural, brilliant, alien place, which +would make one sick for home. + +Yet she had chosen to go, and no remonstrances, repentances and +waverings had quite undone that choice. In that far, bright, clear, +alien place, beyond the drifting mists, perhaps thought too was lucid +and unconfused, not the desperate, mist-bound, storm-driven, helpless +business it was in London. In London all values and all meanings +were fluid, were as windy clouds, drifting and dissolving into +strange shapes. Life bore too intense, too passionate an emotional +significance; personal relationships were too tangled; clear thought +was drowned in desire. One could not see life whole, only a flame, a +burning star, at its heart. + +Through years and years this could not go on; the entanglement of +circumstance, the enmeshing of soul and will, was too close for any +unravelling; it could only be cut. Under the knife that cut it--and yet +was it cut at all, or only hacked all in vain?--Imogen’s soul seemed +to bleed to death, to bleed and swoon quite away. + +What had she done, and why? All reasons seemed to reel from sight as +they churned for open sea between those mist-blind shores. Parakeets? +Bread-fruit? Lagoons and coral reefs? O God, she cared for none of +them. She had been mad, mad, mad. + + “_To leave me for so long ... you can’t mean to do it._...” + +Above the turning, churning screws the hurt voice spoke, how truly, and +stabbed her through once more. Can’t mean to do it ... can’t do it ... +can’t.... Oh, how very true indeed. And yet she must do it and would. +It was no use; it would solve nothing, settle nothing; merely for a +year she would be sick for home among the alien yams. + +But, at the thought of the yams, and the bread-fruit, and the grass and +parakeets more green than any imagining, and of the very blue lagoons, +a little comfort stole into her heavy heart. A merry beachcomber on +a white beach--that was the thing to be, even if nothing could be a +really happy arrangement but to be two merry beachcombers together. At +the thought of the two merry beachcombers who might have been so very +happy, the tears brimmed and blinded Imogen’s eyes. + +What a mess, what a mess, what a bitter, bemusing muddle, life was! One +renounced its best gifts, those things in it which seemed finest, most +ennobling, most enriching, holding most of beauty and of good; these +things one renounced, and filled the dreadful gap with turtles, with a +little palm-toddy, with a few foolish parakeets. + +What an irony! + +Through the blinding mist, above the rushing sound of foaming waters, +the voice cried to her ... _Imogen, Imogen ... come back_. + +Imogen wept. + +Alas for the happy vagabond, fallen into such sad state. + + + + + 7 + + FINAL + + +Rome saw Stanley off to Geneva. Stanley had obtained employment in the +Labour department of the League of Nations. She was pleased, and keen, +and full of hope. The League would save the world yet.... + +“It’s going to be the most interesting work of my life, so far,” +said Stanley, leaning out of the train. “To find one’s best job at +sixty-two--that’s rather nice, I think. Life’s so full of _hope_, +Rome. Oh, I do feel happy about it.” + +“Good,” said Rome, and, “Good-bye, my dear,” for the train began to +move. + +“Good-bye, Romie.... Take care of yourself; you’re looking tired +lately.” + +“I’m very old, you see,” Rome said, after the retreating train, and a +passer-by, turning to glance at the slight, erect, grey-haired lady, +thought that she did not look very old at all. + +But she was very old, for she would soon be sixty-four, and, further, +she was very tired, for she had cancer coming on, inherited from mamma. +She had not mentioned it to anyone yet, beyond the doctor, who had told +her that, unless she had operations, she would die within a year. +Operations nothing, Rome had said; such a bore, and only to prolong +the agony; if she had to die, she would die as quickly as might be. +She further decided that, before the pain should become acute or the +illness overwhelming, she would save trouble to herself and others by +an apparently careless overdose of veronal. Meanwhile, she had a few +months to live. + +The thought that it would only, probably, be a few months, set her +considering, as she drove herself home in her car, her practised hands +steady on the wheel, life, its scope, its meaning, and its end. Life +was well enough, she thought; well enough, and a gay enough business +for those who had the means to make it so and the temperament to find +it so. Life was no great matter, nor, certainly, was death; but it was +well enough. We come and we go; we are born, we live, and we die; this +poor ball, thought Rome, serves us for all that; and, on the whole, +we make too much complaint of it, expect, one way and another, too +much of it. It is, after all, but a turning ball, which has burst, for +some reason unknown to science, into a curious, interesting and rather +unwholesome form of animal and vegetable life. Indeed, thought Rome, I +think it is a rather remarkable ball. But of course it can be but of +the slightest importance, from the point of view of the philosopher +who considers the very great extent and variety of the universe and +the extremely long stretching of the ages. Its inhabitants tend to +over-rate its importance in the scheme of things. Human beings surely +tend to over-rate their own importance. Funny, hustling, strutting, +vain, eager little creatures that we are, so clever and so excited +about the business of living, so absorbed and intent about it all, so +proud of our achievements, so tragically deploring our disasters, +so prone to talk about the wreckage of civilisations, as if it +mattered much, as if civilisations had not been wrecked and wrecked +all down human history, and it all came to the same thing in the end. +Nevertheless, thought Rome, we are really rather wonderful little +spurts of life. The brief pageant, the tiny, squalid story of human +life upon this earth, has been lit, among the squalour and the greed, +by amazing flashes of intelligence, of valour, of beauty, of sacrifice, +of love. A silly story if you will, but a somewhat remarkable one. +Told by an idiot, and not a very nice idiot at that, but an idiot +with gleams of genius and of fineness. The valiant dust that builds +on dust--how valiant, after all, it is. No achievement can matter, +and all things done are vanity, and the fight for success and the +world’s applause is contemptible and absurd, like a game children play, +building their sand castles which shall so soon one and all collapse; +but the queer, enduring spirit of enterprise which animates the dust we +are is not contemptible nor absurd. + +Rome mused, running leisurely across Hyde Park, of herself, her +parents, and her sisters and brothers, of how variously they had all +taken life. Her papa had made of it a great spiritual adventure. Her +mamma--what had mamma made of life? She had, anyhow, accepted papa +and his spiritual adventure, and accepted all her children and their +lives. And yet, always and always, mamma had remained delicately apart, +detached, too gentle to be called cynical, too practical to be called +a philosopher, too shrewd to be deceived by life. Dear mamma. Rome +very often missed her still. As to Vicky, she had skimmed gracefully +over life’s surface like a swallow, dipping her pretty wings in the +shallows and splashing them about, or like a bee, sipping and tasting +each flower. She had plunged frequently, ardently and yet lightly into +life. Maurice had not plunged into life; he had fought it, opposed +it, treated it as an enemy in a battle; he had made no terms with it. +Stanley had, on the other hand, embraced it like a lover, or like a +succession of lovers, to each of which she gave the best of her heart +and soul and mind before she passed on to the next. Stanley believed in +life, that it was or could be splendid and divine. Irving and Una both +accepted it calmly, cheerfully, without speculation, as a good enough +thing, Irving with more of enterprise and more of progressive desire, +Una placidly, statically, eating the meal set before her and wishing +nothing more, nothing less. Both these accepted. + +And Rome herself had rejected. Without opposition and without heat, she +had refused to be made an active participant in the business, but had +watched it from her seat in the stalls as a curious and entertaining +show. That was, and must always, in any circumstances, have been her +way. Had she married, or had she gone away, long ago, with Mr. Jayne, +would she then have been forced into some closer, some more intimate +spiritual relationship with the show? Possibly. Or possibly not. Life +is infinitely compelling, but the spirit remains infinitely itself. + +Anyhow, it mattered not at all. Life, whatever it had, whatever it +might have meant to her, was in its last brief lap. + + “_And all our yesterdays have lighted fools + The way to dusty death._...” + +Her little drift of dust was so soon to return and subside whence it +came, dust to dust. + +She thought that she would miss the queer, absurd show, which would +go on with its antics without her, down who knew what æons? Perhaps +not very many after all; perhaps all life was before long dustily to +subside, leaving the ball, like a great revolving tomb, to spin its way +through space. Or perhaps the ball itself would dash suddenly from its +routine spinning, would fly, would rush like a moth for a lamp, to some +great bright sun and there burst into flame, till its last drift of +ashes should be consumed and no more seen. + +A drift of dust, a drift of storming dust. It settles, and the little +stir it has made is over and forgotten. The winds will storm on among +the bright and barren stars. + +Rome smiled, as she neatly swung out at the Grosvenor Gate. + + + THE END + + + + + =TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES= + +Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced +quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and +otherwise left unbalanced. + +Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a +predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they +were not changed. + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75677 *** diff --git a/75677-h/75677-h.htm b/75677-h/75677-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..99879b0 --- /dev/null +++ b/75677-h/75677-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,10762 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Told by an Idiot | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +/* General headers */ + +h1 { + text-align: center; 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+ text-align: center; + page-break-inside: avoid; + max-width: 100%; +} + +/* Poetry */ +/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */ +.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;} +.poetry-container {text-align: center;} +.poetry {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;} +.poetry .stanza {margin: 1em auto;} +.poetry .verse {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;} + +/* Transcriber's notes */ +.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; + color: black; + font-size:small; + padding:0.5em; + margin-bottom:5em; + font-family:sans-serif, serif; +} + +/* Poetry indents */ +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1em;} +.poetry .indent8 {text-indent: 1em;} +.poetry .indent20 {text-indent: 7em;} + + + </style> +</head> +<body> +<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75677 ***</div> + + +<figure class="figcenter" id="cover" style="width: 1486px;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="1486" height="2560" alt="The story of a family from Victorian times to the aftermath of the Great War."><br> +</figure> + + +<p class="nindc"><span class="large">TOLD BY AN IDIOT</span></p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p class="nindc">BY THE SAME AUTHOR</p> +</div> + + +<div class="flex-center"> +<ul><li>POTTERISM</li> +<li>DANGEROUS AGES</li> +<li>MYSTERY AT GENEVA</li> +</ul> +</div> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2"> +Published by<br> +BONI <span class="allsmcap">AND</span> LIVERIGHT<br> +<span class="allsmcap">NEW YORK</span></p> + + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h1>TOLD BY AN IDIOT</h1> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"><span class="allsmcap">BY</span></p> + + +<p class="nindc space-below2"><span class="large">ROSE MACAULAY</span></p> + + +<figure class="figcenter" id="logo" style="width: 305px;"> + <img src="images/logo.jpg" width="305" height="286" alt="decorative"> +</figure> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2">BONI <span class="allsmcap">AND</span> LIVERIGHT<br> +<span class="allsmcap">PUBLISHERS</span> :: :: <span class="allsmcap">NEW YORK</span> +</p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2">TOLD BY AN IDIOT</p> + + +<hr class="r5"> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2"><i>Copyright, 1923, by</i><br> +<span class="allsmcap">BONI AND LIVERIGHT, INC.</span></p> + + +<hr class="r5"> + + +<p class="nindc"><span class="allsmcap"> +PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</span></p> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>That struts and frets his hour upon the stage</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And then is heard no more; it is a tale</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Signifying nothing</i>....</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent20">Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>L’histoire, comme une idiote, mécaniquement se répète.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent20">Paul Morand: “<i>Fermé la nuit</i>.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + + +<div class="chapter"> + +<table class="autotable"> +<tbody><tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#PART_I">PART I.</a> VICTORIAN</td> +<td class="tdr"> </td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#PART_II">PART II.</a> FIN-DE-SIÈCLE.</td> +<td class="tdr"> </td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdl"><a href="#PART_III">PART III.</a> EDWARDIAN.</td> +<td class="tdr"> </td> +</tr><tr> +<td class="tdl_top"><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV.</a> GEORGIAN.</td> +<td class="tdl">First Period: Circus.<br> +Second Period: Smash.<br> +Third Period: Débris.</td> +</tr> +</tbody> +</table> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="Generationi_Patrum">Generationi Patrum.</h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I">PART I<br> +VICTORIAN</h2> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="TOLD_BY_AN_IDIOT">TOLD BY AN IDIOT</h2> +</div> + + +<p class="nindc"><span class="allsmcap">A FAMILY AT HOME</span></p> + + +<p class="nind"> +<span class="dropcap">O</span>NE evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days when our +forefathers, being young, possessed the earth—in brief, in the year +1879—Mrs. Garden came briskly into the drawing-room from Mr. Garden’s +study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six children, “Well, +my dears, I have to tell you something. Poor papa has lost his faith +again.”</p> + +<p>Poor papa had very often lost his faith during the fifty years of +his life. Sometimes he became, from being an Anglican clergyman, a +Unitarian minister, sometimes a Roman Catholic layman (he was, by +nature, habit and heredity, a priest or minister of religion, but +the Roman Catholic church makes trouble about wives and children), +sometimes some strange kind of dissenter, sometimes a plain agnostic, +who believed that there lived more faith in honest doubt than in half +the creeds (and as to this he should know, for on quite half the creeds +he was by now an expert). On his last return to Anglicanism, he had +accepted a country living.</p> + +<p>Victoria, the eldest of the six children, named less for the then +regnant queen than for papa’s temporary victory over unbelief in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span> +year of her birth, 1856, spoke sharply. She was twenty-three, and very +pretty, and saw no reason why papa should be allowed so many more +faiths and losses of faith in his career than the papas of others.</p> + +<p>“<i>Really</i>, mamma ... it is too bad of papa. I knew it was +coming; I said so, didn’t I, Maurice? His sermons have been so funny +lately, and he’s been reading Comte all day in his study instead of +going out visiting, and getting all kinds of horrid pamphlets from +the Rationalist Press Association, and poring over an article in the +<i>Examiner</i> about ‘A Clergyman’s Doubts.’ And I suppose St. Thomas’ +day has brought it to a head.” (Victoria was High Church, so knew all +about saints’ days.) “And now we shall have to leave the vicarage, just +when we’ve made friends with all sorts of nice people, with tennis +courts and ballrooms. Papa <i>should</i> be more careful, and it +<i>is</i> too bad.”</p> + +<p>Maurice, the second child (named for Frederick Denison), who was at +Cambridge, and a firm rationalist, having fought and lost the battle of +belief while a freshman, enquired, cynically but not undutifully, and +with more patience than his sister, “What is he going to be this time?”</p> + +<p>“An Ethicist,” said Mrs. Garden, in her clear, noncommittal voice. “We +are joining the Ethical Society.”</p> + +<p>“Whatever’s that?” Vicky crossly asked.</p> + +<p>“It has no creeds but only conduct” ... (“And I,” Vicky interpolated, +“have no conduct but only creeds”) ... “and a chapel in South Place, +Finsbury Pavement, and a magazine which sometimes has a poem by Robert +Browning. It published that one about a man who strangled a girl he +was fond of with her own hair on a wet evening. I don’t know why he +thought it specially suitable for the Ethical Society magazine.... +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span> +They meet for worship on Sundays.”</p> + +<p>“Worship of what, mamma?”</p> + +<p>“Nobility of character, dear. They sing ethical hymns about it.”</p> + +<p>Vicky gave a little scream.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Garden looked at Stanley, her third daughter (named less for +the explorer than for the Dean, whom Mr. Garden had always greatly +admired), and found, as she had expected, Stanley’s solemn blue eyes +burning on hers. Stanley was, in fancy, in the South Place Ethical +Chapel already, singing the ethical hymns....</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Fall, fall, ye ancient litanies and creeds!</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Not prayers nor curses deep</div> + <div class="verse indent8">The power can longer keep</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That once ye kept by filling human needs.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Fall, fall, ye mighty temples to the ground!</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Not in their sculptured rise</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Is the real exercise</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of human nature’s brightest power found.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">’Tis in the gifted line,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">In each far thought divine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That brings down heaven to light our common soil.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">’Tis in the great, the lovely and the true,</div> + <div class="verse indent8">’Tis in the generous thought</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Of all that man has wrought</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Of all that yet remains for man to do....</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Stanley had read this and other hymns in a little book her papa had.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p> + +<p>“Then I suppose,” said Rome, the second daughter, who knew of old that +papa must always live near a place of worship dedicated to his creed of +the moment, “then I suppose we are moving to Finsbury Pavement.” Rome +had been named less for the city than for the church, of which papa had +been a member at the time of her birth, twenty years ago; and, after +all, if Florence, why not Rome? Rome looked clever. She had a white, +thin face, and vivid blue-green eyes like the sea beneath rocks; and +she thought it very original of papa to believe so much and so often. +Her own mind was sceptical.</p> + +<p>Vicky’s brow smoothed. Moving to London. There was something in that. +Though of course it mustn’t be Finsbury Pavement; she would see to that.</p> + +<p>Irving, the youngest but one (named less for the actor than to +commemorate the brief period when papa had been an Irvingite, and had +believed in twelve living apostles who must all die and then would +come the Last Day), said, “Golly, what a lark!” Irving was sixteen, +and was all for a move, all for change of residence if not of creed. +He was an opportunist and a realist, and made the best of the vagaries +of circumstance. He was destined to do well in life. He was not, like +Maurice, sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, nor, like Vicky, +caught in the mesh of each passing fashion, nor, like Stanley, an +ardent hunter of the Idea, nor, like Rome, a critic. He was more like +his younger sister (only he had more enterprise and initiative), Una, +a very calm and jolly schoolgirl, named less for her who braved the +dragon than for the One Person in whom papa had believed at the time +of her birth (One Person not in the Trinitarian, but in the Unitarian +sense).</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span></p> + +<p>“Three hundred a year less,” remarked Rome, from the couch whereon she +lay (for her back was often tired), and looked ironically at Vicky, to +see how she liked the thought of that.</p> + +<p>Vicky’s smooth cheek flushed. She had forgotten about money.</p> + +<p>“Oh, <i>really</i>.... Oh, I do think papa is too bad. Papa had entered +the room, and stood looking on mean? Can’t he wait till next?”</p> + +<p>Mamma’s faint (was it also ironic, or merely patient?) movement of the +eyebrows meant that it was too late; papa’s faith was already lost.</p> + +<p>“By next winter he may have found it again,” Rome suggested.</p> + +<p>“Well, even if so,” said Vicky, “who’s going to go on giving him +livings every time?... Oh, yes, mamma, I know all the bishops love him, +but there <i>is</i> a limit to the patience of bishops.... Does the +Ethical Society have clergymen or anything?”</p> + +<p>“I believe they have elders. Papa may become an elder.”</p> + +<p>“<i>That’s</i> no use. Elders aren’t paid. Don’t you remember when he +was a Quaker elder, when we were all little? I’m sure it’s not a paid +job. We shall be loathsomely poor again, and have to live without any +fun or pretty things. And I daresay it’s low class, too, like dissent, +as it’s got a chapel. Papa never bothers about that, of course. He’d +follow General Booth into the Army, if he thought he had a call.”</p> + +<p>“I trust that I should, Vicky.”</p> + +<p>Papa had entered the room, and stood looking on them all, with his +beautiful, distinguished, melancholy face (framed in small side +whiskers), and his deep blue eyes like Stanley’s. Vicky’s ill-humour +melted away, because papa was so gentle and so beautiful and so kind. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span> +And, after all, London was London, even with only six hundred a year.</p> + +<p>“Mamma has told you our news, I see,” said papa, in his sweet, mellow +voice. He looked and spoke like a papa out of Charlotte M. Yonge, +though his conduct with regard to the Anglican church was so different.</p> + +<p>“Yes, Aubrey, I’ve told them,” said mamma.</p> + +<p>“I hope you won’t mind, papa,” said Vicky, saucily, “if <i>I</i> go +to church at St. Alban’s, Holborn. <i>I’m</i> a ritualist, not an +Ethicist.”</p> + +<p>“Indeed, Vicky, I should be very sorry if you did not all follow your +own lights, wherever they lead you.”</p> + +<p>Papa’s broad-mindedness amounted to a disease, Vicky sometimes thought. +A queer kind of clergyman he was. What would Father Stanton and Father +Mackonochie of St. Alban’s think of him? Father Mackonochie, who was +habitually flung into gaol because he would face east when told to face +north—as important as all that, he felt it.</p> + +<p>“Well, my darlings,” papa went on in his nice voice, “I must apologise +to you all for this—this disturbance of your lives and mine. I would +have spared it you if I could. But I have been over and over the +ground, and I see no other way compatible with intellectual honesty. +Honesty must come first.... Your mother and I are agreed.”</p> + +<p>Of course; they always were. From Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, +from Catholicism to Quakerism, from Quakerism to Unitarianism, +Positivism, Baptistism (yes, they had once sunk, to Vicky’s shame, as +low as that in the social scale, owing chiefly to the influence of +Charles Spurgeon) and back to Anglicanism again—through everything +mamma, silent, resigned and possibly ironic, had followed papa. And +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span> +little Stanley had seen the idea behind all papa’s religions and +tumbled headlong after him, and Maurice had, grimly, decided that it +was safer to abjure all creeds, and Rome had critically looked on, +with her faint, amused smile and her single eyeglass, and Irving and +Una had been led, heedless and incurious, to each of papa’s places of +worship in turn, but had understood none of them. They had not the +religious temperament. Nor had Vicky, who attended her ritualistic +churches from æsthetic fancy and a flair for being in the fashion, for +seeing and hearing some new thing. <i>She</i> didn’t care which way +priests faced, though she did enjoy incense. Vicky was a gay soul, and +preferred dances and lawn tennis and young men to religion. Stanley too +was gay—as merry as a grig, papa called her—but she had a burning +ardour of mind and temper that made the world for her a place of +exciting experiments. She now thought it worthy and honourable to be +poor, for she had been reading William Morris and Ruskin and socialist +literature, as intelligent young women did in those days, and was all +for handicrafts and the one-man job. She was eighteen, and had had her +first term at Somerville College, Oxford, which had just been founded +and had twelve members.</p> + +<p>Irving, always practical, said, “When are we going to move? And where +to?”</p> + +<p>“In February,” said mamma. “Probably we shall live in Bloomsbury. We +have heard of a house there.”</p> + +<p>“Bloomsbury,” said Vicky. “That’s not so bad.”</p> + +<p>Sitting down at the piano, she began softly to play and sing. Papa sat +by the fire, his thin hand on mamma’s, his thoughtful face pale and +uplifted, as if he had made the Great Sacrifice once more, as indeed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span> +he had. Stanley sat on a cushion at his feet, and leant her dark head +against his knee. She was a small, sturdy girl, and she wore a frock of +blue, hand-embroidered cloth, plain and tight over the shoulders and +breast, high-necked, with white ruching at the throat, and below the +waist straighter than was the fashion, because Mr. Morris said that +ripples and flounces wasted material and ruined line. Vicky, sinuous +and green, rippled to the knees like running water. Irving sat on a +Morris-chintz chair, reading “The Moonstone,” Maurice on a Liberty +cretonne sofa, reading a leader in yesterday’s <i>Observer</i>.</p> + +<p>“It is, unfortunately, impossible to conceal from ourselves that the +condition of Ireland, never perceptibly improved by the announcement +of the projected remedy for her distress and discontents, has for some +weeks gone steadily from bad to worse. The state of things which exists +there is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from civil +war. The insurrectionary forces arrayed against law and order are not, +indeed, drilled and disciplined bodies; but what they lack in this +respect they make up for in numbers and in recklessness.”</p> + +<p>Such was the sad state of Ireland in December, 1879, as sometimes +before, as sometimes since. Or, anyhow, such was its state according +to the <i>Observer</i>, a paper with which Maurice seldom, and Stanley +never, agreed. Stanley put her faith in Mr. Gladstone, and Maurice in +no politicians, though he appreciated Dizzy as a personality. Papa had +always voted Liberal and Gladstone, but thought that the latter lacked +religious tolerance.</p> + +<p>Maurice turned to another leader, which began “In these troubled +times....” And certainly they <i>were</i> troubled, as times very +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span> +nearly always, perhaps quite always, are. The <i>Observer</i> told +news of the Basuto war, the Russian danger in Afghanistan, Land +League troubles, danger of war with Spain, trouble in Egypt, trouble +in Bulgaria, trouble in Midlothian (where Mr. Gladstone was speaking +against the government), trouble of all sorts, everywhere. What a +world! Stanley, an assiduous student of it, sometimes almost gave it up +in despair; but never quite, for she always thought of something one +ought to do, or join, or help, which might avert shipwreck. Just now it +was handicrafts, and the restoration of beauty to rich and poor.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">2<br> +MAMMA AND HER CHILDREN</p> + + +<p>Mamma, sitting with papa’s hand in hers, watched them all, with her +quiet grey eyes looking through pince-nez, and her slight smile. Pretty +Vicky, singing “My Queen,” with the lamplight shining on her mass of +chestnut hair parted Rossetti-wise in the middle, her pink cheeks, her +long white neck, her graceful, slim, flowing form, her æsthetic green +dress (for Vicky was bitten with the æsthetic craze). Pretty Vicky. +She loved gaiety and parties and comfort so much, it was a shame to +cut down her dress allowance, as would be necessary. Perhaps Vicky +would get engaged very soon, though, to one of her æsthetic or worldly +young men. Vicky was not one of those sexless, intellectual girls, +like Rome, with her indifference, or Stanley, with her funny talk of +platonic friendships. To Vicky a young man <i>was</i> a young man, and +no platonics about it. Sometimes mamma was afraid that Vicky, for all +her æstheticism, was a little <i>fast</i>; she would go out for long +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span> +day expeditions alone with the young man of the moment, and laugh when +her mother said, doubtfully, “Vicky, when <i>I</i> was young....”</p> + +<p>“When <i>you</i> were young, mamma, dear,” Vicky would say, caressing +and mocking, “you were an early Victorian. Or even a Williamite. Papa, +prunes, prisms! I’m a late Victorian, and we do what we like.”</p> + +<p>“A <i>mid</i>-Victorian, I hope, dear,” mamma would loyally +interpolate, but Vicky would fling back, “Oh, mamma, H.M. has reigned +forty-two years now! You don’t think she’s going to reign for +eighty-four! Late Victorian, that’s what we are. <i>Fin-de-siècle.</i> +Probably the world will end very soon, it’s gone on so long, so let’s +have a good time while we can. We’re only young once. I feel, mamma, at +the very end of the road, and as if nothing mattered but to live and +dance and play while we can, because the time’s so short. Clergymen +say it’s a sign of the world coming to an end, all these wars and +disturbances everywhere, and unbelief, and women and trains being so +fast in their habits and young men so effeminate.”</p> + +<p>Thus Vicky, mocking and gay and absurd. Her mother’s keen, near-sighted +grey eyes strayed from her, round the pretty, lamplit room, which +was partly Liberty and Morris, with its chintzes and wall-papers and +cretonnes, and blue china plates over the door (that was the children), +and partly mid-Victorian, with its chiffoniers and papier-maché and +red plush chairs, and Dicksee’s “Harmony” hanging over the piano. +On the table lay the magazines—the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, the +<i>Cornhill</i>, the <i>Saturday Review</i>, the <i>Spectator</i>, +and the <i>Examiner</i> with the article by Samuel Butler on “A +Clergyman’s Doubts.” They had made the vicarage so pretty; it would +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span> +be hard to leave it for a dingy London house. It was a pity (though +hardly surprising) that the Anglican church could find no place for +Aubrey during the intervals when he could not say the creed. Aubrey +was so modern. Mrs. Garden’s own father, also a clergyman, believed +in the Established Church and the Bible, and agreed with the writer +of the Book of Genesis and Bishop Ussher, its commentator, that the +world had been created in six days in the year 4004 B.C., and that +Adam and Eve had been created shortly afterwards, full of virtue, and +had fallen; and so on, through all the Bible books.... After all, the +scriptures <i>were</i> written (and even marginally annotated) for our +learning.... But Mrs. Garden’s papa had begun being a clergyman when +religion had been more settled, before Darwin and Huxley and Herbert +Spencer had revolutionised science. You didn’t expect an able modern +Oxford man like Aubrey to be an Early Victorian clergyman.</p> + +<p>Maurice on the Liberty sofa snorted suddenly over what he was reading, +and mamma smiled at him. The dear, perverse, violent boy! He was +always disagreeing with everyone. Mamma’s eyes rested gently on her +son’s small, alert head, with its ruffled top locks of light, straight +hair, like a cock canary’s crest, its sharp, long chin and straight +thin lips. Maurice was as mamma’s brothers had been, in the fifties, +only they had worn peg-top trousers and long fair whiskers that stood +out like fans. Maurice wore glasses, and looked pale, as if he had +read too much; not like young Irving, sprawling in an easy chair with +“The Moonstone,” beautiful and dark and pleased. Nor like Stanley, +who, though she read and thought and often talked cleverly like a +book, had high spirits and was full of fun. Little Stanley, with her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span> +round, childish face above the white ruching, her big forehead and +blunt little nose, and deep, ardent, grave blue eyes. What a child +she was for enthusiasms and ideas and headlong plans! And her talk +about platonic friendships and women’s rights and social revolution +and bringing beauty into common life. The New Girl. If Vicky was one +kind of New Girl (which may be doubted), Stanley was another, even +newer.... There shot into mamma’s mind, not for the first time, a +question—had girls always been new? She remembered in her own youth +the older people talking about the New Girl, the New Woman. Were girls +and women really always newer than boys and men, or was it only that +people noticed it more, and said more about it? Elderly people wrote +to the papers about it. “The Girl of the Period,” in the <i>Saturday +Review</i>—fast, painted, scanty of dress (where are our fair, demure +English girls gone?) with veils less concealing than provocative ... +what, Mrs. Garden wondered, was a provocative veil? The New Young +Woman. Bold, fast, blue-stockinged, self-indulgent, unchaperoned, +advanced, undomesticated, reading and talking about things of which +their mothers had never, before marriage, heard—in brief, NEW. (To +know all that the mid-Victorians said about modern girls, and, indeed, +about modern youths of both sexes, you have only to read certain +novelists of the nineteen-twenties, who are saying the same things +to-day about what they call the Young Generation.) Had Adam and Eve, +Mrs. Garden wondered, commented thus on their daughters—or, more +likely, on their daughters-in-law? (According to Mrs. Garden’s papa, +these had been the same young women, but in the late seventies one +wasn’t, fortunately, obliged to believe the worst immoralities of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span> +the Old Testament.) “Youth,” it was said at this period, as at other +periods before and since, “youth, in the last quarter of the nineteenth +century, has broken with tradition. It is no longer willing to accept +forms and formulæ only on account of their age.” (At what stage in +history youth ever did this, has never been explained.) “It has set out +on a voyage of enquiry, and, finding some things which are doubtful and +others which are insufficient, is searching for forms of experience +more in harmony with the realities of life and knowledge.” Those are +the actual words of a writer of the nineteen-twenties, but they were +used, in effect, also in the eighteen-seventies, and many other decades.</p> + +<p>And had the young, both young men and young women, always believed that +they alone could save the world, that the last generation, the elderly +people, were no good, were, in fact, responsible for the unfortunate +state in which the world had always up to now been, and that it was +for the young to usher in the New Day? Well, no doubt they were right. +The only hitch seemed to be that the young people always seemed to get +elderly before they had had time to bring in the New Day, and then they +were no good any more, and the next generation had to take on the job, +and still the New Day coyly refused to be ushered in. Except that, of +course, in a sense, each day was a new one. But not, alas, much of an +improvement on the day before.</p> + +<p>“These troubled times....” Had there ever been, would there ever be, +a day when the newspapers said “In these quiet and happy times”? +Stanley, inspired by Mr. William Morris, was sure of it. The millennium +was just round the corner, struggling in the womb of time, only it +needed workers, workers, and again workers, to deliver it safely. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span> +Some lecturer under whom Stanley had sat had put it like that, and she +had repeated it to her mother. Well, of course in these days ... the +New Girl, being so new and so free, could use such metaphors. In the +fifties you couldn’t; unmarried girls couldn’t, anyhow. Stanley had, +indeed, coloured a little when she had said it. Stanley was not only +unmarried, but declared that she never would be married, there was too +much to be done (which was a way some young women were talking just +then). She was going, after Oxford, to work in a settlement, and teach +people weaving, dyeing and beauty, after learning them herself at the +Morris workshops. It was all very nice, but mamma would rather Stanley +had a husband and babies. (Mammas, it may be observed in passing, +differ from other women in being very seldom new.)</p> + +<p>Then mamma’s eyes rested on her chubby, beautiful baby, Una, lolling +on the hearthrug, one light brown pigtail over each shoulder, reading, +with calm and lovely blue eyes, some dreadful rubbish in the <i>Boy’s +Own Paper</i>, her cheek bulged out with a lump of toffee. A nice, +good, placid child of fifteen, who never thought, never read anything +but tosh, talked in slang, and took life as it came, cheerful, +unquestioning and serene. Una was the least clever and the best +balanced of the Gardens. She was going, when she was older, to look +rather like the Sistine Madonna.</p> + +<p>How unlike her happy, handsome solidity was to Rome! Rome lay back +on her couch, her face like a clear white cameo against deep blue +cushions, the lamplight shining on her fair, silky curls, cut short in +one of the manners of the day. Rome’s thin lips twisted easily into +pain and laughter; her jade-green eyes mocked and watched. “I’m afraid +of your sister. She looks as if she was going to put us all into a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span> +book,” people would sometimes say of her to the others. But Rome never +wrote about anything or anyone; it was not worth while.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">3<br> +SISTERS IN THE GARDEN</p> + + +<p>Maurice threw down the second serial part of “Theophrastus Such,” which +had just come out.</p> + +<p>“The woman’s going all to pieces,” he said, in his crisp, quick, +disgusted voice. “Sermonising and tosh.... The fact is,” said Maurice, +“the fact is, the novel, anyhow in this country, has had its day. +Except for the unpretending thrillers. We should give it a rest. The +poets still have things to say and are saying them (though not so well +as they used to; <i>their</i> palmy days are over, too), but not the +novelists”....</p> + +<p>Vicky, to drown his discourse, began to sing loud and clear—</p> + +<p>“When I was a <i>young</i> maid, a <i>young</i> maid, a <i>young</i> +maid....”</p> + +<p>“Of course she’s old,” went on Maurice, referring to Mary Ann Evans. +“And she’s been spoilt. She’s not a teacher, she’s a novelist. Or she +was. Now she’s dropped being a novelist and become merely a preacher. +That’s the end of her. I wish to God people would know their job +and stick to it. She was a jolly <i>good</i> novelist.... Sorry, +pater”—Mr. Garden had frowned at the expletive—“but I didn’t think +you’d mind—<i>now</i>. I suppose you and I are both agreed, aren’t we, +as to the non-existence of a Deity.”</p> + +<p>“All the same, my dear boy....”</p> + +<p>All the same (this was Rome’s thought), papa had so recently believed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span> +in a Deity, and would, no doubt, so soon again believe in a Deity, that +it seemed bad taste to fill the brief interim with vain oaths. Maurice +had no reverence at all, and no taste. You would think, as Vicky turned +from the piano to say, that, whatever he did or didn’t believe himself, +he might remember that some people were not only Christians but Church, +and High Church at that. But Maurice only grinned at her. She tweaked +his fair crest in passing and arranged her own glossy chestnut coiffure +at the painted looking-glass over the chimney-piece. This Rossetti +shape suited her, she thought, better than the high coils of last year.</p> + +<p>The parlourmaid announced the curate, a good-looking, intelligent, +cheerful young man whom they all liked. He had hardly shaken hands when +Mr. Garden said to him, “I want a talk with you, Carter,” and took him +off to the study, to break it to him about the Ethical Society.</p> + +<p>“Papa might just as well have told him here,” Vicky petulantly said. +“It would only have needed a sentence, and then we could have had a +jolly evening.”</p> + +<p>“Of course papa feels he must go into it thoroughly with Mr. Carter,” +said mamma. “Poor Mr. Carter will be dreadfully hurt by it, I’m afraid. +He has always been so fond of papa, and he has never himself seen any +reason for doubt.”</p> + +<p>“There is no reason for doubt,” muttered Vicky, beneath her breath. +Then, louder, impatience conquering respect, “What does papa think the +Church is for, except to tell us what we can’t know for ourselves about +what to believe?”</p> + +<p>Mamma replied, taking up her embroidery, “Papa doesn’t know what the +Church is for. That is his great difficulty. And, Vicky, it is not for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span> +us, who have studied so much less, to protest....”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Vicky, “I shall go into the garden. It’s a night for men +and angels. Come on, Stan.”</p> + +<p>Stanley came, and the sisters paced together, wrapped in shawls, down +the gravel path beneath a deep blue sky full of frosty, twinkling stars +and the pale glow which precedes winter moonrise. It was one of those +frosty Christmases which our parents (they say) used to have in their +youths. Hot summers and frosty winters—that is what they say they used +to have: one is not obliged to believe them, but it is a picturesque +thought.</p> + +<p>“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Stannie. I shall get married.”</p> + +<p>“Who to, Vicky?”</p> + +<p>“Ah!” Vicky’s long eyes were mysterious in the starlight. “Perhaps +I’ve not made up my mind yet; perhaps I have. All I do know is that +I’m not going to live round about South Place, Finsbury Pavement, on +£400 a year just because papa must needs go to an ethical chapel. +I—shall—get—married. And well married, too. Why not? I can, you +know, if I want to.”</p> + +<p>“Captain Penrose,” said Stanley.</p> + +<p>“<i>He’s</i> not the only one, my child. There are others. No, I shan’t +tell you a word more now. You wait and see. And when I’m married you +shall come and stay with me and meet lots and lots of men.”</p> + +<p>Lots and lots of men. The kind of men who’d be friends with Vicky and +Captain Penrose (or whoever else Mr. Vicky might prove to be).</p> + +<p>“I shall be busy, you know,” said Stanley, doubtful and conceited. “I +shall have very little spare time if I take up weaving and dyeing.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p> + +<p>“Don’t take up weaving and dyeing. It’s shockingly cranky anyway, all +this Morris craze of yours.”</p> + +<p>“All the best things are thought cranky at first.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you believe it. The new princess dress isn’t.... Now mind, I’m +saying this for your good, my dear; men won’t look at you if you go +about with dyed hands and talk about manual labour and the one-man job +and the return of beauty to the home.”</p> + +<p>“Vicky, you’re <i>vulgar</i>. And as I don’t mean to marry what does it +matter if they look at me or not?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, tell that to the marines.... I’m getting frozen. Come along in +and we’ll turn the curate’s head, unless papa’s still breaking his +heart.... You’re a little prig, Stan, that’s your trouble, my child.”</p> + +<p>It was quite true. Stanley <i>was</i> a little prig. She not only read +Ruskin and Morris and Karl Marx but quoted them. There came a day, +later on, when she saw through Ruskin, but it is no use pretending that +that day was yet. She was a prig and believed that it was up to such +as she to reform the world. She saw herself (at the moment, for her +vision of herself varied) as the modern woman, clever, emancipated, +high-minded, too intellectually fastidious to take the vulgar view. She +took herself seriously, in spite of the childish giggle at the comedy +of life which broke like gurgling water through her earnestness.</p> + +<p>“The first Nowell the angels did sing,” sang Vicky, in her clear, +fluting voice, and danced in at the drawing-room window.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">4<br> +MAMMA AND ROME</p> + + +<p>Mamma sat by Rome’s side and embroidered, while papa interviewed his +curate in the study. You could see, now these two sat together, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span> +that they were alike, not so much in feature or colour as in some +underlying, elusive essence of personality. But Rome’s mocking, amused, +critical self looked ironically out of her blue-green eyes and mamma’s +dwelt very still and deep within her.</p> + +<p>“Well, mamma.” Rome put down her book, which was by Anatole France.</p> + +<p>“Well, Rome.”</p> + +<p>“You don’t much mind this.” Rome was commenting, not enquiring.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no.” Mamma was placid. “Not,” she added, “that I <i>want</i> to +live in London particularly. Dirty place. No gardens.”</p> + +<p>Rome said, definitely, “I prefer London,” and mamma nodded. Rome was +urbane. Negligent, foppish and cool, she liked to watch life at its +games, be flicked by the edges of its flying skirts. And the game of +life was more varied and entertaining in London than in the country and +equally absurd. So Rome preferred London. It was like having a better +seat at the play. Lack of bodily energy threw her back largely in the +country on to the entertainment of her own rather cynical mind. She was +often bored, sometimes ill-humoured, sharp and morose. The years might +bring her a greater patience, but at twenty she was not patient. The +very sharp clarity of her mind, that chafed against muddled thinking, +stupidity, humbug and sentimentality, made intercourse difficult for +her in the country, where Heaven has ordained that even fewer persons +shall reside who are free from these things than is the case in large +towns.</p> + +<p>“How long,” enquired Rome, negligently, slipping round an old silver +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span> +ring on her thin white finger, “do you give the Ethical Church, mamma?”</p> + +<p>Mamma was feather-stitching, rapidly and correctly. The movement of her +head indicated that she declined to prophesy.</p> + +<p>“No point in looking ahead,” she said practically. “One always sees +a change a little while before it comes, in time to be prepared; and +that’s all we need. Papa is never sudden.”</p> + +<p>The whimsical smile that twitched at one corner of Rome’s thin mouth +was unreturned by mamma, whose face was gravely bent over her work. +Mamma was a good wife and never joked with her children about papa’s +vagaries. No one had ever got behind mamma’s guard in the matter +of papa—if it was a guard. Who could see into mamma’s mind, idly +speculated Rome. Mamma had, by forty-five years of age, achieved a kind +of delicate impenetrability. Papa, at fifty, was as limpid as the clear +water of a running stream, where you may watch the fishes swimming to +and fro, round and round.</p> + +<p>Papa came back, alone and looking hurt. At the same moment Vicky came +in at the long window, pink-cheeked, smelling of frost.</p> + +<p>“Where’s Mr. Carter, papa?”</p> + +<p>“Gone away, Vicky. He—he couldn’t stop.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose he was shocked to death. Oh, well....”</p> + +<p>But, of them all, only mamma knew <i>how</i> shocked the orthodox +people of the seventies were about matters of unbelief. The children +had been brought up in the wrong atmosphere really to know it. Mamma +knew that to Mr. Carter papa’s action would seem dreadful, blasphemous, +very nearly wicked.</p> + +<p>“After all,” said Vicky, impatiently, “we’re living in the year 1879. +We’re moderns after all.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p> + +<p>Dashingly modern Vicky looked in her sinuous art-green dress, with her +massed Rossetti hair and jade earrings. Daringly, brilliantly modern, +and all agog for life. A dashing girl, as they called them in 1879—if +a girl bitten with æstheticism can still dash, and it may be taken +for granted that dashing girls will always dash, whatever bites them. +Catching up slim young Irving from his chair, Vicky twirled him round +the room in a waltz.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">5<br> +BLOOMSBURY AND SOUTH PLACE</p> + + +<p>In February the Gardens moved to Bloomsbury. Different people and more +people came to the house; it was rather like the old days when papa had +been a Unitarian. Mr. Stopford Brooke began coming to see papa again, +and Dr. Martineau, and all his old and new friends who lived in London, +even Father Stanton of St. Alban’s, Holborn, and Mr. Charles Spurgeon. +The circle of papa’s friends had swollen and swollen with the years, +from his undergraduate days onwards. Not only was papa lovable and +popular, but he touched so many circles, fished in so many waters, and +his fellow-fishermen of each particular water usually remained faithful +to him even when he moved on to another pool. Good-humoured, witty +Mr. Spurgeon, for instance, did not break with papa when he deserted +the City Temple for a second go of Anglicanism, though he was sadly +disappointed in him. Nor were papa’s interests bound by religion; he +had friends, distinguished and indistinguished, among politicians, +journalists, poets, professors and social reformers, besides his +relatives and mamma’s. And now, of course, there was a quite fresh +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span> +influx from the South Place Ethical Chapel. So, one way and another, +what with papa’s friends and mamma’s and the children’s, a good deal of +life flowed into the Bloomsbury Square house. Papa was, in his quiet +way, happy now that the wrench was over. He was writing, and had for +years been writing, a very long book on comparative religions, and for +this he worked at the British Museum, which was so conveniently near. +And on Sundays he went to South Place and worshipped ethically.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Do not crouch to-day and worship,”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">he would sing in his sweet tenor voice,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“The old past, whose life is fled;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Hush your voice to tender reverence,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Crowned he lies, but cold and dead.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For the present reigns our monarch,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With an added weight of hours;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Honour her, for she is mighty!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Honour her, for she is ours!”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>(The author, Miss Adelaide Procter, had very rightly, it will be noted, +dethroned a male and enthroned a female.)</p> + +<p>So sang papa and mamma on a Sunday morning in April. Then someone +rose and said a few ethical words about the desirability of not being +fettered by religious dogma, and the congregation, who all thought this +desirable too, listened attentively.</p> + +<p>Papa gazed wistfully in front of him at the varnished seats and +painted woodwork and the ethical texts inscribed round the walls. +“Live for Others.” “Live Nobly.” “Duty First.” He had made the great +sacrifice, and once more dethroned the past for honesty’s sake, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span> +if it entailed a jarring of literary and artistic fastidiousness, who +was he to rebel? God knew, he had been æsthetically happier joining in +the Roman mass (tawdry and vulgar-looking as the churches where this +service is held so often are) or chanting the Anglican liturgy in the +little fourteenth-century church in Hampshire—though, as to that, +some of the Hymns A. & M. were quite as bad as anything in the ethical +hymn-book—but never had he been so utterly honest, so stripped to the +bare bone of all complacency, humbug and self-deception as now. Or so, +anyhow, he believed, but who shall read the human heart?</p> + +<p>Again they sang:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Hush the loud cannon’s roar,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The frantic warrior’s call!</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Why should the earth be drenched in gore?</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Are we not brothers all?”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>For, sad to say, the earth was, in the spring of 1880, drenched (as +usual) in gore. The gore of Afghans and British in Afghanistan, of +Basutos in Basutoland, Chilians and Bolivians in South America, +Liberals and Conservatives in Great Britain, where the elections were +being fiercely contested, besides such permanently flowing gore as that +of Jews in Russia and Christians in Turkey. The Ethical Society hoped +pathetically that all these so unlikely persons would enjoy peace and +brotherhood one day.</p> + +<p>They trooped out into South Place. Grave, intelligent, ethical men and +women clustered and hummed together like bees. They talked about the +elections, which were going well, for nearly all the Ethical members +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span> +were Liberals and the Liberals were sweeping the country.</p> + +<p>“Why are Ethical members Liberals?” Rome enquired in the note book +to which she committed as much of her private commentary on life as +ever found its way to paper. “Partly, no doubt, because of the liberal +attitude towards religion, but it must be more than that. <i>T.C.</i>” +“T.C.” meant “trace connection” and was a very frequent entry. Rome +looked forward to a time when, by means of prolonged investigation, +all the connections she had noted should be traced; that, she held, +would add to her understanding of this strange, amusing life. What, +for instance, was the connection between High Church dogma and ornate +ritual, between belief in class distinctions and in the British Empire, +between dissent and Little Englandism, art and unconventional morals, +the <i>bourgeoisie</i> and respectability, socialism and queer clothes? +All these pairs and many others were marked T.C. and had a little +space under them, in which the connection, when traced, was explained +in concise and lucid language. In another part of the book there were +pages assigned to “Curious uses of words.” Rome felt a great, perhaps +a morbid, interest in investigating life and language. She wrote “Why +are Ethical members Liberals?” when papa and mamma coming in from +chapel told her how delighted South Place was with the elections. +Papa, of course, had always been a Liberal through all his religious +vicissitudes.</p> + +<p>Vicky came in like a graceful whirlwind from Walworth, S.E., where +she had attended church at St. Austin’s, the monastery of Brother à +Beckett, and flung herself into a chair in ecstasy.</p> + +<p>“A service straight from heaven!” she cried. “Too utterly utter! +<i>Such</i> incense—perfumes of Araby! And Brother à Beckett preached +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span> +about the authority of the State over the Church. It simply doesn’t +exist. The State is <i>nowhere</i> and not to be taken the slightest +notice of.... And who do you think was there, just in front of us—Mr. +Pater, and the adorable Oscar in a velveteen coat, looking like the +prince of men and talking like the king of wits (yes, mamma, talking, +but in quite an undertone). But too utter! I was devastated. I was with +Charles. I’d made him come with me to try if grace would abound—but +no, not yet; Charles remains without, with the dogs and the ...”</p> + +<p>“Vicky,” mamma interpolated.</p> + +<p>“... and the sorcerers, mamma dear,” Vicky finished, innocently. “What +did you <i>think</i> I was going to say?”</p> + +<p>“You must allow Charles his conscience, Vicky,” said papa.</p> + +<p>Charles was Vicky’s half-affianced suitor, but unfortunately an +agnostic, or rather a Gallio, and Vicky declared that they should not +become regularly engaged until such time as Charles should embrace the +Anglican, or some other equally to be respected, church. Unbelief might +be fashionable, but Vicky didn’t hold with it. Also, and worse, Charles +was not yet in the æsthetic push; he was, instead, in the Foreign +Office, and took no interest in the New Beauty. Velveteen coats he +disliked, and art fabrics, and lilies, except in gardens, and languor +except in offices, and vice except in the places appointed for it. +And all these distastes would, as Vicky complained, make the parties +they would give such a difficulty. Vicky told Charles that, unless he +conquered them, she might feel compelled to become affianced instead to +Mr. Ernest Waller, a young essayist who understood Beauty, though not, +indeed, Anglicanism, as he had been a pupil of Mr. Pater’s in the days +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span> +when Mr. Pater had been something of a pagan. But better burn incense +before heathen gods, said Vicky, than burn none at all.</p> + +<p>So, when papa said, “You must allow Charles his conscience,” Vicky +returned, firmly, “Dear papa, <i>no</i>. Conscience should be our +servant, not our master. That’s what Brother à Beckett said in his +sermon this morning. Or, anyhow, something like it. Conscience is +given us to be educated and trained up the way it should go. An unruly +conscience is an endless nuisance. He that bridleth not his own +conscience ...”</p> + +<p>Papa, sensible of his own so inconveniently unbridled conscience, +said, mildly, “I think Brother à Beckett was perhaps referring to the +tongue,” and Vicky lightly admitted that her memory might have got +confused.</p> + +<p>“But never mind sermons and the conscience, here’s grandpapa,” she +said, and sure enough, there was grandpapa, who was staying with them +on a visit. Grandpapa was the father of mamma and a Dean, and was a +very handsome man of seventy-five, and he was one of the last ditchers +in the matter of orthodoxy and had yielded no inch to science or the +higher criticism, and believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible +and the divine credentials of the Anglican Establishment, and disliked +popery, ritual, dissent and free thought with equal coldness. Papa he +had never approved of; a weak, vacillating fellow, whose reputation +was little affected by one disgraceful change more or less. It did not +particularly signify that papa had joined the Ethical Church; nothing +about papa particularly signified; a weak, wrong-headed, silly fellow, +who would certainly, for all his scholarship, never be a Dean. It was +far more distressing that Anne (mamma), who ought to have made a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span> +firm stand and saved her husband from his folly, should thus abet him +and follow him about from church to church. And the children had been +deplorably brought up. Grandpapa, who thought it blasphemous not to +believe in Noah and his ark, and even in the date assigned to these by +Bishop Ussher, and had written to the <i>Times</i> protesting against +the use in schools of the arithmetic book of Bishop Colenso on account +of the modernist instruction imparted by this Bishop to the heathen +in this matter of the date of the ark—grandpapa heard these unhappy +children of his daughter’s discussing the very bases of revealed truth; +grandpapa, who held that our first parents lost paradise through +disobedience, pride, inquisitiveness and false modesty, heard Maurice’s +perverse defiance of law and authority, Rome’s calm contempt and +conceited criticism of accepted standards, Stanley’s incessant, eager, +“Why, what for, and why not?” and Vicky’s horror at the breadth and +crudeness of the Prayer Book marriage service.</p> + +<p>Grandpapa, being a Conservative and a Disraelian, was just now not +well pleased. He did not think that the Gladstone Government would be +able to deal adequately or rightly with the inheritance of foreign +responsibilities left them by their predecessors. South Africa, Egypt, +Afghanistan—what would the Liberals, many of them Little Englanders +in fact though not yet in name, do with all this white man’s burden, +as the responsibilities of Empire were so soon, so horribly soon, to +be called? Had grandpapa thought of it, he would certainly have called +them that. His grandson, Maurice, called them, on the other hand, “all +those damned little Tory wars,” a difference in nomenclature which +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span> +indicated a real difference in political attitude.</p> + +<p>Grandpapa entered with the <i>Observer</i>, which regretted as he did +the way the elections had gone, and with the <i>Guardian</i>, which +did not. He sat down and patted Vicky on the shoulder, and said that +Canon Liddon had preached at St. Paul’s, where he had attended morning +service.</p> + +<p>“A capital defence of the faith,” said grandpapa. “Bones to it, and +substance. None of your sentimental slop. You’ve all been running after +ethics, or ritual, or this, that and the other, but I’ve had the pure +Word. Liddon’s too high, but he’s sound. I remember in ’55....”</p> + +<p>One of grandpapa’s familiar stories, told as old people told their +stories, with loving rounding of detail.</p> + +<p>Vicky’s mind reached vainly back towards ’55 and could not get there. +Crinolines and sweeping whiskers, the pre-Raphælites and the Crimea, +Bible orthodoxy and the Tractarians, all the great Victorians. A +dim, entrancing period, when papa and mamma were getting married and +people were too old-fashioned to see life straight as it was. And to +grandpapa ’55 was quite lately, just the other day, and ’80 was like an +engine got loose from its train and dashing madly in advance, heading +precipitately for a crash.</p> + +<p>“I remember,” said grandpapa, “I remember....”</p> + +<p>Papa said, “That was the year King’s College asked Maurice to retire +because of ‘Theological Essays.’”</p> + +<p>What dull things elderly people remembered!</p> + +<p>“Next Sunday,” said Vicky, “I shall take Charles to South Place, papa. +I hear Mr. Pater is preaching there. Too sweet and quaint; he preaches +everywhere. And often the divine Oscar sits under him.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">6<br> +STANLEY AND ROME</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span></p> + + +<p>Maurice and Stanley were back from Cambridge and Oxford for the Easter +vacation, talking, talking, talking. Stanley, in a crimson stockinette +jersey, tight like an eel’s skin, and a tight little brown skirt caught +in at the knees, her chubby face pink with excitement and health, +talked of Oxford, of the river, of lectures, of Mr. Pater and of +friendship. Friendship was like dancing flames to Stanley in this her +first Oxford year; a radiant, painful apocalypse of joy.</p> + +<p>“Are they so splendid?” Rome speculated of these glorious girls. +“<i>Is</i> anyone so splendid, ever?”</p> + +<p>She sat idly, her hands clasped behind her short silky curls, Mallock’s +“New Republic” open at her side. Stanley sat on the edge of a table +and swung her legs. How romantic Stanley was! What were girls, what, +indeed, were boys either, that such a halo should encircle their +foolish heads?</p> + +<p>There was proceeding at this time a now long-forgotten campaign called +the Woman’s Movement, and on to the gay, youthful fringe of this +Stanley and her friends were catching. Women, long suppressed, were +emerging; women were to be doctors, lawyers, human beings, everything; +women were to have their share of the earth, their share of adventure, +to flourish in all the arts, ride perched in hansom cabs, even on +monstrous bicycles, find the North Pole....</p> + +<p>“Too energetic for me,” Rome commented.</p> + +<p>“Oh, but you’ll be a great writer, perhaps.”</p> + +<p>“No. Why? There’s nothing I want to write. What’s the use of writing? +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span> +Too much of that already.... Oh, well, go on about Oxford, Stan. You +don’t convince me that it’s anything but a very ordinary place full of +quite ordinary people, but I rather like to hear you being absurd.”</p> + +<p>Rome’s faint, delicately thin voice expressed acquiescent but not +scornful irony. Stanley was a bore sometimes, but an intelligent bore. +She went on about Oxford and Mr. Pater and some lectures on art by +William Morris that she had been to. Stanley was drunk with beauty; she +was plunging deep into the æsthetic movement on whose surface Vicky +played.</p> + +<p>“You know, Rome,” she puckered her forehead over it, “more and more +I feel that the <i>merely</i> æsthetic people are on the wrong tack. +Beauty for ourselves can’t be enough; it’s got to be made possible for +everyone.... That’s where Vicky and her friends are off it. A lily in a +blue vase all to yourself isn’t enough. All this”—she looked round at +the Liberty room, the peacock patterns, the willow pattern china, the +oak settle—“all this—it’s not fair we should be able to have it when +everyone can’t. It’s greedy....”</p> + +<p>“Everyone’s greedy.”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Stanley, and her eyes glowed, for she was thinking of her +splendid friends. “<i>No.</i> Greediness is in everyone, but it can +be conquered. Socialism is the way.... I wish you could meet Evelyn +Peters. She’s joined the Social Democratic Federation.... I want to ask +her here to stay in June. She’s not just an ordinary person, you know. +She’s splendid. She’s six years older than me, and enormously cleverer, +and she’s read everything and met everyone.... I can’t tell you how I +feel about her.”</p> + +<p>Obvious, thought Rome, how Stanley felt with her shining eyes and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span> +flushed cheeks, and shy, changing voice. In love; that was what Stanley +was. Stanley was for ever in and out of love; she had been the same +all through her school days. So had Vicky, but with Vicky it was men, +and less romantic and earnest. Stanley was always flinging her whole +being prostrate in adoring enthusiasm before someone or something, +funny child. She was looking at Rome now in shy, gleaming hesitation, +wondering if Rome were despising her, laughing at her, but not able +to keep Evelyn Peters to herself. To say “Evelyn Peters is my friend” +was an exquisite æsthetic joy and made their friendship a more real, +achieved thing.</p> + +<p>Rome felt a little uncomfortable behind her bland nonchalance; +Stanley’s emotions were so strong.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">7<br> +GRANDPAPA</p> + + +<p>When Maurice was there Stanley did not talk about her friends; such +talk was not suitable for Maurice, whose own friendships were so +different. Often in these days they talked politics. Maurice was a +radical.</p> + +<p>“Chamberlain’s the man,” he said, “Chamberlain and Dilke. Whiggery’s +played out; dead as mutton. Mild liberalism has had its day. +Yes, pater, your day is over. The seventies have been the heyday +of liberalism. I grant you it’s done well—Education Act, Irish +disestablishment, abolition of tests, and so on. Such obvious reforms, +you see, that every sane person has <i>had</i> to be a Liberal. That’s +watered liberalism down. Now we’ve got to go further, and only the +extremists will stick on; the old gang will desert. Radicalism’s the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span> +only thing for England now.”</p> + +<p>Maurice, pacing the room with his quick little steps, his hands in +his pockets, his chin in the air, would talk thus in his crisp, +rapid, asseverating voice, even to grandpapa, who had, when he had +done the same thing as a schoolboy, ordered him out of the room for +impertinence. Grandpapa and Maurice did not, in fact, each really like +the other—obstinate age and opinionated youth. Because grandpapa +was in the room, Maurice said, “They’ve returned old Bradlaugh for +Northampton all right. Now we shall see some fun,” and grandpapa said, +“Don’t mention that abominable blasphemer in my presence.”</p> + +<p>Papa said, gently, with his cultured tolerance, “A good deal, I fancy, +has been attributed to Bradlaugh of which he has not been guilty.”</p> + +<p>“Are you denying,” enquired grandpapa, “that the fellow is a miserable +blaspheming atheist and a Malthusian?”</p> + +<p>“An atheist,” papa admitted, discreetly passing over the last charge, +“no doubt he is. And very undesirably coarse and violent in his methods +of controversy and propaganda. But I am not sure that the charge of +blasphemy is a fair one, on the evidence we have.”</p> + +<p>“Any man,” said grandpapa, sharply, “who denies his Maker blasphemes.”</p> + +<p>“In that case,” said Maurice, moodily, “I blaspheme,” and left the room.</p> + +<p>Papa apologised for him.</p> + +<p>“You must forgive the boy; he is still crude.”</p> + +<p>Grandpapa shut his firm mouth tightly, and Rome thought, “He is still +cruder.”</p> + +<p>Vicky asked lightly, “What is a Malthusian, grandpapa?” and grandpapa, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span> +who came of a coarse and outspoken generation, snapped, “A follower of +Malthus.”</p> + +<p>“And who was Malthus, grandpapa?”</p> + +<p>Grandpapa, catching his daughter’s eye, and recollecting that it was +the year 1880, not the coarse period of his own youth, hummed and +cleared his throat and said, “A very ungentlemanly fellow, my dear.”</p> + +<p>And that was all about Malthus that young misses of 1880 needed to +know. Or so their elders believed. But in 1880, as now, young misses +often knew more than their parents and grandparents supposed. Rome and +Stanley, better read in history than Vicky, could have enlightened both +her and grandpapa on the theme of Malthus.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">8<br> +DISCUSSING RELIGION</p> + + +<p>It was a good thing that grandpapa’s visit ended next day. Without him +Maurice was better-mannered, less truculent. They could then discuss +Radicalism, Bradlaugh, blasphemy, beauty, Malthus and the elections, +<i>en famille</i>, without prejudice. They were, as a family, immense +talkers, inordinate arguers. The only two who did not discuss life at +large were Irving and Una; their conversation was and always would be +of the lives they personally led, and those led by such animals as they +kept. The lives led by others worried them not at all. They recked not +of the Woman’s Movement, but Irving amiably held Maurice’s high bicycle +while Stanley, divested of her tight skirt and clad in a pair of his +knickerbockers, mounted it and pedalled round and round the quiet +square. It was Irving who knew that a lower kind of bicycle was on its +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span> +way, had even been seen in embryo.</p> + +<p>“But girls’ll never ride it,” he opined. “That’s jolly certain.”</p> + +<p>“Girls will probably be wearing knickerbockers in a year or two,” +Stanley, always hopeful, asserted. “For exercise and games and things. +Or else a new kind of skirt will come in, short and wide. Our clothes +are absurd.”</p> + +<p>“Women’s clothes always are,” said Irving, content that this should be +so.</p> + +<p>Stanley would rush in, happy and bruised, assume again her absurd, +caught-in-at-the-knees skirt, and argue desperately with Maurice about +Christian socialism. Stanley was a Christian, ardent and practical; +that was the effect Oxford was having on her. She privately wondered +how papa, having known and loved Oxford, could bear the Ethical Church. +But probably the Oxford Anglicanism of papa’s day had not been so +inspiring.</p> + +<p>Vicky told Stanley that socialism, Christian or un-Christian, was very +crude; religion was an affair of art and beauty, not of economics.</p> + +<p>“Religion—oh, I don’t know.” Stanley wondered, frowning. “What +<i>is</i> religion, Rome?”</p> + +<p>Rome, looking up from Samuel Butler, merely said, “How should I know? +You’d better ask papa. He should know; he’s writing a book about it.”</p> + +<p>“No; I didn’t mean comparative religions. I mean <i>religion</i>....”</p> + +<p>“A primitive insurance against disaster,” Maurice defined it. He +always looked up and took notice when religion was mentioned; to this +family the word was like “rats” to a dog, owing, perhaps, to their +many clerical ancestors, perhaps to the fact that they were latish +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span> +Victorians.</p> + +<p>“But it <i>courts</i> disaster....” Stanley was sure of that. “Look +where it leads people. Into all sorts of hardships and dangers and +sacrifices. Look at Christianity—in the Gospels, I mean.”</p> + +<p>“That’s a perversion. Originally religion was merely a function of the +self-preservative instinct. Offer sacrifices to the gods and save your +crops. And even Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the +flaws in this life by belief in another.”</p> + +<p>“What about the Ethical Church? They don’t believe in another.”</p> + +<p>“A perversion too. A mere sop thrown to the religious instinct by +people who don’t like to starve it altogether. A morbid absurdity. A +house without foundations. If they simply mean, as they appear to, that +they think they ought to be good, why meet in South Place and sing +about it?”</p> + +<p>“Why,” enquired Rome, who never did so, “meet anywhere and sing about +anything?”</p> + +<p>“Why,” said Maurice, “indeed? A morbid instinct inherent in human +nature. Mine, I am glad to say, is untainted by it; so is yours, Rome. +Vicky has it badly, and Stanley, who gets everything in turns, has it +on and off, but she is young and may get over it.... The queer thing +about Stanley is that she’s trying to run two quite incompatible things +at the same time. Æsthetics and Christian Socialism—you might as well +be a cricketer and a rowing man, or hang Dickens and Whistler together +on your walls. The æsthetes may go slumming, in the absurd way Vicky +does, but they’ve no use for socialism.”</p> + +<p>“I’m <i>not</i> an æsthete,” Stanley cried, finding it out suddenly. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span> +“I’m through with that. I’m going in with the socialists all the way. I +shall join the Socialist Democratic Federation at once.”</p> + +<p>That was Stanley’s headlong manner of entering into movements. She was +a great and impetuous joiner.</p> + +<p>But Rome, playing with her monocle on its dangling ribbon, looked +at all movements with fastidious rejection. <i>Cui</i>, her faintly +mocking regard would seem to enquire, <i>bono</i>?</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">9<br> +DISCUSSING LIFE</p> + + +<p>1880 pursued its way. Mr. Gladstone formed his cabinet of sober peers +and startling commoners, the new parliament met, the Radicals at once +began to shock the Whigs with their unheard-of proposals for so-called +reform, Lord Randolph Churchill and his Fourth Party mounted guard, +brisk and pert, in the offing, Parnell and his thirty-five Irishmen +scowled from another offing, demanding the three F’s, and, for a +special comic turn side-show, Mr. Bradlaugh, the unbeliever, was +hustled in and out of the House, claiming to affirm, being ejected with +violence, returning at a rush, ejected yet again, and so on and so +forth, until gentlemanly unbelievers said, “A disgraceful business. Why +can’t the man behave like other agnostics, without all this fuss?” and +gentlemanly Christians said, “Why can’t the House let him alone?” and +the dignified press said, “It is repugnant to public opinion that one +who openly denies his God should be allowed in a House representative +of a great Christian nation,” for, believe it or not as you choose, +that was the way the press still talked in the year 1880.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span></p> + +<p>Maurice Garden and his friends at Cambridge greeted Mr. Bradlaugh’s +determined onslaughts with encouraging cheers. Maurice Garden enjoyed +battle, and he rightly thought the cause of liberty of thought served +by this tempestuous affair.</p> + +<p>Freedom: that was at this time the obsession of Maurice Garden and +his compeers. Freedom of thought, freedom of speech (though not, of +course, of action), freedom of small nations (such as Armenia, Ireland, +Poland and the Transvaal Boers), for that was a catchword among our +forefathers of the nineteenth century; freedom even of large ones, +such as India; freedom of women, that strange, thin cry raised so far +only by sparse, sporadic groups, freedom of labour (whatever that may +have meant, and Maurice Garden, a clear-thinking young man, could have +told you precisely and at length what he meant by it), freedom even of +Russians, that last word in improbabilities.</p> + +<p>“Freedom?” queried Rome. “A word that wants defining,” and that was all +she had to say of it. While Maurice and Stanley went, hot heads down, +for the kernel, she was for ever meticulously, aloofly, fingering the +shell, reducing it to absurdity. That seemed, at times, to be all that +Rome cared about, all she had the humanity, the vital energy, to seek. +Stanley, rushing buoyantly through Oxford, seizing upon this new idea +and that, eagerly mapping out her future, ardently burning her present +candle at both ends, intellectually, socially and athletically (so far +as young women were allowed to be athletic in those days, when hockey +and bicycling had not come in and lawn tennis consisted in lobbing a +ball gently over a net with a racket weighing seventeen pounds and +shaped like a crooked spoon)—Stanley seemed to Rome, whom God had +saved from too much love of living, amusingly violent and crude.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span></p> + +<p>They were oddly different, these four sisters; Vicky so spritely, Rome +so cool, Stanley so eager, Una so placid.</p> + +<p>“Your languid indifference is tip-top form, my dear,” Vicky would say +to Rome. “You’re <i>fin-de-siècle</i>—that’s utterly the last word +to-day. But I can’t emulate you.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t you want to <i>do</i> anything, Rome?” Stanley, home for the +long vacation, asked, and Rome’s eyebrows went up.</p> + +<p>“Do anything? <i>Jamais de ma vie.</i> What should I do?”</p> + +<p>“Well, anything. Any of the things women do. Teaching. Settlement work. +Doctoring. Writing. Painting. Anything.”</p> + +<p>“What a list! What frightful labours! I do not.”</p> + +<p>“But aren’t you bored?”</p> + +<p>“In moderation. I survive. I even amuse myself.”</p> + +<p>“<i>I</i> think, you know, that women <i>ought</i> to do things, just +as much as men.”</p> + +<p>“And just as little. What’s worth doing, after all?”</p> + +<p>“Things <i>need</i> doing. The world is so shocking.... All this time +women have been suppressed and kept under and not allowed to help in +putting things right, and now they’re just getting free....”</p> + +<p>“There’s one thing about freedom” (a word upon which Rome had of late +been speculating); “each generation of people begins by thinking +they’ve got it for the first time in history, and ends by being sure +the generation younger than themselves have too much of it. It can’t +really always have been increasing at the rate people suppose, or there +would be more of it by now.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p> + +<p>“It’s only lately begun, for women. What was there for mamma to do, +when <i>she</i> was young? Nothing. Only to marry papa. But now....”</p> + +<p>“What is there for Vicky to do, now <i>she’s</i> young? Nothing. Only +to marry Charles—or another.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well, Vicky slums. And she could do any of the other things if she +liked.... Anyhow, Rome, you’re not supporting <i>marriage</i> as the +only woman’s job worth doing!”</p> + +<p>“No. Not even marriage. Perhaps, in fact, marriage less than most +things. I only said it is, so far as one can infer, Vicky’s job.... The +only job worth doing in this curious fantasia of a world, as I see it, +is to amuse oneself as well as may be and to get through it with no +more trouble than need be. What else is there?”</p> + +<p>With all the desperate needs of the certainly curious but as certainly +necessitous world crying in her ears, with vistas of adventure and +achievement stretching inimitably before her eyes, Stanley found this +too immense a question. She could only answer it with another. “Why do +you think we were born, then?” and Rome’s matter of fact “Obviously +because papa and mamma got married” sent her sulkily away to play +cricket on the lawn with Irving and Una. Apathy, languor, selfishness, +did very greatly anger her. She was the more troubled in that she +knew Rome to be clever—cleverer than herself. Rome could have done +anything, and elected to do nothing. Rome would probably not even +marry; her caustic tongue and cool indifference kept those who admired +her at arm’s length; she made them feel that any expression of regard +was an error in taste; she shrivelled it up by an amused, enquiring +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span> +look through the deadly monocle she placed in one blue-green eye for +the purpose.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">10<br> +VICKY GETS MARRIED</p> + + +<p>Vicky, on the contrary, became, during this summer, definitely +affianced to Charles, whom she decided to marry next spring. She had +not, as yet, made of Charles either an æsthete or a ritualist, but +these things, she hoped, would come after marriage, and anyhow Charles +was intelligent, his career promised well, he had sufficient income, +and, in fine, she loved him.</p> + +<p>“The main thing, after all, Vicky,” papa inevitably said.</p> + +<p>“No, papa; the <i>main</i> thing is that the American merchant +princesses are descending on the land like locusts, and that if I +don’t secure Charles they will, even though he hasn’t a title—yet. +He’s so obviously a distinguished person in embryo. American merchant +princesses have brains.”</p> + +<p>Vicky, having surrendered, put on a new tenderness, even an occasional +gravity. It was as if you could catch glimpses here and there of the +gay wife and mother that was to supersede the flighty girl. Beneath +her chaff and bickerings with her Charles, her love swelled into that +stream so necessary to carry her through the long and arduous business. +She did her shopping for her new life with gusto and taste, tempering +Morris picturesqueness with Chippendale elegance, chasing Queen Anne +with unflagging energy from auction to auction and from one Israelitish +shop to another, tinkling the while with snakish bangles, swinging +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span> +golden swine from her ears, as was the barbarous and yet graceful +custom of our ancestresses in that year.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">11<br> +MAURICE STARTS LIFE</p> + + +<p>Maurice left Cambridge, armed with a distinguished first in his +classical tripos.</p> + +<p>“And now what?” enquired papa, indulgently.</p> + +<p>“Wilbur has offered me a job on the <i>New View</i>. That will do me, +for a bit.”</p> + +<p>The <i>New View</i> was a weekly paper of the early eighties, started +to defeat Whiggery by the spread of Radicalism. Its gods were Sir +Charles Dilke and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, its objects to introduce a +more democratic taxation, to reform the suffrage, to free Ireland, +to curtail Empire, and so forth. As its will was strong, it suffered +but it did not suffer long, and is, in fact, now forgotten but by the +seekers among the pathetic chronicles of wasted years. All the same, +it was, in its brief day, not unfruitful of good; it was deeply, if +not widely, respected, and many of our more intelligent forbears +wrote for it for a space, particularly that generation which left +the Universities round about the year 1880. It was hoped by some of +them (including Maurice Garden), that it would make a good jumping +off ground for a political career. As it turned out, the first thing +into which Maurice jumped off from it was love. At dinner at the +Wilburs’ he met Amy Wilbur, the young daughter of his editor. She was +small and ivory-coloured, with long dark eyes under slanting brows, a +large, round, shallow dimple in each smooth cheek, a small tilting +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span> +red mouth (red even in those days, when lip salve was not used except +in the half world), a smooth, childlike voice and a laugh like silver +bells. Maurice thought her like a geisha out of the new opera, “The +Mikado,” and was enchanted with her lovely gaiety. Such is love and its +blindness that Maurice, who detested both silliness and petty malice +in male or female, did not see that his Amy was silly and malicious. +He saw nothing but her enchanting exterior and on that and his small +salary he got married in haste. None of the Gardens except himself +and papa much cared about Amy and papa liked nearly everyone, and +certainly nearly all pretty girls. As to mamma’s feelings towards her +daughter-in-law, who could divine them?</p> + +<p>Vicky said to Rome: “They are both making a horrific mistake. Maurice +is a prickly person, who won’t suffer fools. In a year he’ll be wanting +to beat her. She hasn’t the wits or the personality to be the least +help to him in his career, either. When he’s a rising politician and +she ought to be holding salons, she won’t be able to. Her salons will +be mere At Homes.”</p> + +<p>“When,” Rome speculated, “does an At Home become a salon? I’ve often +wondered.”</p> + +<p>They decided that it was a salon when several distinguished people came +to it, rather from habit than from accident. Also the conversation must +be reasonably intelligent (or, anyhow, the conversers must believe that +it was so, for that is all that can be hoped of any conversation). And +people must come, or pretend that they came, mainly for the talk and +not so much for any food there might be, or to show their new clothes.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p> + +<p>“Asses they must be,” said Una, who was listening. “I shan’t go to +salons ever.”</p> + +<p>“No one will ask you, my child. Anything <i>you’ll</i> find yourself at +will be a common party, with food and drink and foolish chit-chat.”</p> + +<p>“Like <i>your</i> parties,” Una agreed, amiably content. No teasing +worried Una; she was as placid as a young cow.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">12<br> +EIGHTIES</p> + + +<p>So, with Vicky and Maurice happily wedded (<i>settled</i>, as they +wittily called it in those days, though indeed they knew as well as +we do that marriage is likely to be as inconclusive and unsettling an +affair as any other and somewhat more than most), and papa and mamma +happily, if impermanently, ethicised, and the three younger children +still pursuing, or being pursued by, education and Rome perfunctorily, +amusedly and inactively surveying the foolish world, the Garden family +entered on that eager, clever, civilised, earnest decade, the eighteen +eighties. Earnest indeed it was, for people still took politics +seriously, and creeds, and literature, and life. Over the period still +brooded the mighty ones, those who are usually called the Giants +(literary and scientific) of the Victorian era, for the nineteenth +century was an age of giant-makers, of hero-worshippers.</p> + +<p>The eighties were also a great time for women. What was called +<i>emancipation</i> then occurred to them. Young ladies were getting +education and it went to their heads. No creature was ever more solemn, +more earnest, more full of good intentions for the world, than the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span> +university-educated young female of the eighties. We shall not look +upon her like again; she has gone, to make place for her lighter-minded +daughters, surely a lesser generation, without enthusiasm, ardour or +aspiration.</p> + +<p>It was these ardent good intentions, this burning social conscience, +as well as the desire to do the emancipated thing, that drove Stanley, +leaving Oxford in 1882, to take up settlement work in Poplar. So +Poplarised, so orientalised, did she become, that she took to speaking +of her parental home in Bloomsbury as being in the West End. To her +everything west of St. Paul’s became the West End. The West End, its +locality and its limits, is indeed a debatable land. Where you think +it is seems to depend on where you live or work. To those who work +in Fleet Street, as do so many journalists, it seems that anything +west of the Strand is the West End. “West End cocaine orgy,” you see +on newspaper placards and find that the orgy occurred in Piccadilly +or Soho. Mayfair and its environments are also spoken of by these +scribblers of the East as the West End. But to those who live in +Mayfair, the West End begins at about Edgware Road and Mayfair seems +about the middle, and to the denizens of Edgware Road the West End +is Bayswater, Kensington or Shepherds Bush. The dwellers in these +outlying lands of the sunset do really acknowledge that they are the +West End; and to them Mayfair and Piccadilly are not even the middle, +but the east. A strange, irrational phrase, which bears so fluctuating +and dubious a meaning. But then nearly all phrases are strange and +irrational, like most of those who use them.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, and be that as it may, Stanley went and worked in Poplar to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span> +ameliorate the lot of the extremely poor, who lived there then as now. +She took up with Fabians, and admired greatly Mr. Bernard Shaw, while +cleaving still to William Morris. She was concerned about Sweated +Women, and served on Women’s Labour Committees. Her good working +intelligence caused people to give her charges and responsibilities +beyond her years. She was now a sturdy, capable, square-set, +brown-faced young woman, attractive, with her thrust-out under-lip and +chin, and her beautiful blue eyes under heavy black brows. She spoke +well on platforms in a deep, girlish voice, was as strong as a pony +and could work from morning till night without flagging. There was +something candid and lovable about Stanley. A doctor and a clergyman +asked her in wedlock, but she did not much care about them and was too +busy and interested to think about marriage.</p> + +<p>She had, among other strong and ardent beliefs, belief in God. She had +religion, inherited perhaps from her papa, but taking in her a more +concentrated and less diffused form. To her the Christian church was +a militant church, the sword of God come to do battle for the poor +and oppressed. To her a church was an enchanted house, glorious as a +child’s dream, the mass as amazing as a fairy story and as true as +sunrise. She did not much mind at which churches she attended this +miracle, but on the whole preferred those of the Anglican establishment +to the Roman variety, finding these latter rather more lacking in +beauty than churches need be. Stanley was an optimist. She looked on +the shocking, wicked and ill-constructed universe, and felt that there +must certainly be something behind this odd business. There must, +she reasoned, be divine spirit and fire somewhere, to account for +such flashes of good as were so frequently evident in it. Something +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span> +gallant, unquenchable, imperishably ardent and brave, must burn at its +shoddy heart.</p> + +<p>Vicky complained that Stanley thought of God (“in whom, of course,” +said Vicky, “we all believe”), as a socialist agitator, and Stanley +perhaps did. Certainly God, she believed, was fighting sweated +industries.</p> + +<p>“With signally small success,” Maurice said, for the commission on +these industries had just concluded.</p> + +<p>“God very seldom succeeds,” Stanley agreed. “He has very nearly +everything against Him, of course.”</p> + +<p>She seldom mentioned God, being, for the most part, as shyly +inarticulate as a schoolgirl on this theme so vital to her. But +of unemployment, labour troubles, and sweated industries, she and +Maurice would talk by the hour. She wrote articles for his paper on +the conditions of working women in Poplar. She attended street labour +meetings in the east, while Maurice did the same in Trafalgar Square +and Hyde Park.</p> + +<p>In 1882, the year that Stanley left Oxford, Una left school. It was +no use sending her to college, for she had not learning, nor the +inclination to acquire it. She had done with lessons.</p> + +<p>“You don’t want just to slack about for ever, I suppose?” Stanley put +it to her, sternly.</p> + +<p>“For ever....” Una looked at her with wide, sleepy blue eyes, trying +and failing to think of eternity. Una lived in to-day, not in yesterday +or to-morrow. She was rather like a puppy.</p> + +<p>“I don’t much care,” she said at length. “I mean, I’ve never thought +about it. I’m never bored, anyhow. There’s theatres, and badminton and +dancing, and all the shops, and taking the dogs in the parks.... Of +course I’d like better to live in the country again. But London’s all +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span> +right. <i>I’m</i> all right. I’m not booky like you, you see.”</p> + +<p>Stanley said it had nothing to do with being booky; there were things +that wanted doing. Doubtless there were. But she failed to rouse Una to +any thought of doing them. Una stayed at home, and went to parties, and +theatres, and played games, and occasionally rode, and walked the dogs +in the parks, and stayed with friends in the country, and enjoyed life.</p> + +<p>“I suppose she’ll just marry,” Stanley disappointedly said, for in +the eighteen eighties marriage was not well thought of, though freely +practised, by young feminine highbrows.</p> + +<p>As to Irving, another cheery hedonist, he was enjoying himself very +much at Cambridge and reading for a pass.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">13<br> +PARENTS</p> + + +<p>The eighteen eighties were freely strewn with, among other things, +Vicky’s children. The halcyon period for children had not yet set +in; did not, in fact, set in until well on in the twentieth century. +In the eighteen eighties and nineties children were still thwarted, +still disciplined, still suppressed, though with an abatement of +mid-Victorian savagery. The idea had not yet started that they were +interesting little creatures who should be permitted, even encouraged, +to lift their voices in public and interrupt the conversation of +their elders. On the whole, the bringing up of children (at best a +poor business) was perhaps less badly done during the last fifteen +years of the nineteenth century than before or since. It may safely +be said that it is always pretty badly done, since most parents and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span> +all children are very stupid and uncivilised, and anyhow to “bring up” +(queer phrase!) the unfortunate raw material that human nature is, to +bring it up to any semblance of virtue or intelligence (the parents, +probably, having but small acquaintance with either), is a gargantuan +task, almost beyond human powers. Some children do, indeed, grow up +as well as can, in the circumstances, be expected, but this is, as a +rule, in spite of, rather than on account of, the misguided efforts of +their parents. And most children do not grow up well at all, but quite +otherwise, which is why the world is as we see it.</p> + +<p>Vicky was, as parents go, not a bad one. She loved her children, +but did not unduly spoil them or turn their heads with injudicious +attentions. Year by year her nursery filled with nice, pretty little Du +Maurier boys, fine, promising little Du Maurier girls, in sailor suits, +jerseys, tam-o’-shanters, and little frocks sashed about the knees, and +year by year Vicky was to be found again in what newspaper reporters, +in their mystic jargon, call, for reasons understood by none but +themselves, “a certain condition.” “The woman,” they will write, “said +she was in a certain condition.” As if everyone, all the time, was not +in a certain condition. Whether these journalists think the statement +“she was going to have a baby” indecent, or coarse, will probably never +transpire, for they are a strange, instinct-driven, non-analytical +race, who can seldom give reasons for their terminology. Who shall see +into their hearts? Perhaps they really do think that the human race +should not be mentioned until it is visible to the human eye.</p> + +<p>Anyhow Vicky, of a franker breed than these, said year by year, with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span> +resignation, “<i>Again</i>, my dears, I replenish the earth,” and added +sometimes, in petulant enquiry, “How long, O Lord, how long?”</p> + +<p>But Amy, the wife of Maurice, had, like newspaper men, her pruderies. +Of her coming infants she preferred to speak gently, in fretful +undertones. When she told Maurice about the first, she did not, like +Vicky, sing out, on his return from the office, “What <i>do</i> you +think? There’s a baby on the way!” but, drawing her inspiration +from fiction, she hid her face against his coat and murmured, “Oh, +<i>Maurice</i>! Guess.”</p> + +<p>Maurice said, “Guess what? How do you mean, guess, darling?” to which +she replied, “Well, I do think you’re slow to-night.... Oh, Maurice....”</p> + +<p>And then Maurice, instead of saying, like the young husbands in the +fiction she was used to, “Darling, you <i>can’t</i> mean.... What +angels women are!” said instead, “Oh, I say, do you mean we’ve got a +baby coming? Good business.”</p> + +<p>A baby. What a coarse, downright word for the little creature. Later, +of course, one got used to it, but just at first, at the very, very +outset, the dimmest dawn of its tiny being, it was scarcely a baby. And +what about her being an angel? Obviously Maurice did not know the rules +of this game.</p> + +<p>When the baby, and the subsequent baby (there were only two +altogether), arrived, Amy spoiled them. She was a depraved mother. Also +she was unjust. She was, of course, the type of mother whose strong +sex instinct leads her to prefer boys to girls, and she took no pains +to hide this. Maurice said, stubbornly, “The girl shall have as good a +chance as the boy, and as good an education. We’ll make no difference,” +but Amy said, “Chance! Fiddlesticks! What chances does a girl want, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span> +except to marry well? What does a girl want with education? I’m not +going to have her turned into a blue-stocking. Girls can’t have real +brains, anyhow. They can’t <i>do</i> anything—only sit about and look +superior.”</p> + +<p>This referred to Rome, and these were the remarks that fell like +nagging drops of water on Maurice’s sensitive, irritable nerves and +mind, slowly teasing love out of existence, and beating into him (less +slowly) that he had married a fool.</p> + +<p class="space-above2"> +Maurice found outlet from domestic irritation in political excitement. +There was, for instance, the Home Rule Bill. It seemed to Maurice, +as to many others, immeasurably important that this bill should go +through. Its failure to do so, his own failure to be elected in the +elections of 1886, and the victory of the Unionists, plunged him into +a sharper and more militant radicalism. At the age of twenty-nine he +was an ardent, scornful, clear-brained idealist and cynic, successful +on platforms and brilliant with pens. He was becoming a stand-by of +the Radical press, a thorn in the Tory flesh. His wife, by this time, +after four years of marriage, definitely disliked him, because he had +bad, sharp manners, was often disagreeable to her, often drank a little +too much, and obviously despised the things she said. She consoled +herself with going to parties, spoiling her babies, and flirting with +other people. He consoled himself with politics, writing, talking and +drinking. An ill-assorted couple. Maurice hoped that his children +would be more what he desired. So far, of course, they were fonder of +Amy. Even the boy was fonder of Amy, though sons often have a natural +leaning towards their fathers, and frequently grow up with no more +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span> +than a careless affection for their mothers for, contrary to a common +belief, the great affection felt by Œdipus for his mother is most +unusual, and, indeed, Œdipus would probably have felt nothing of the +sort had he known of the relationship. It is noticeable that sons +usually select as a bride a woman as unlike their mothers and sisters +as possible. It makes a change.</p> + +<p>So Maurice had reason to hope that his son, anyhow, would prefer him +as time went on, and therefore be inclined to share his point of view +about life. As to the girl, she might grow up a fool or she might not; +impossible to tell, at three years old. Most girls did.</p> + +<p>In 1887 the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria occurred. Maurice wrote +a deplorably unsuitable article for the occasion, called “Gaudeamus,” +and taking for its theme the subject races of Ireland and India and +the less fortunate and less moneyed classes in Great Britain, which +brought him into a good deal of disrepute, and made Amy more than ever +disgusted with him.</p> + +<p>“Hardly the moment,” papa commented. “One sympathises with his +impatience, but the dear old lady’s jubilee is hardly the moment to rub +in the flaws of her empire.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">14<br> +PAPA AND THE FAITH</p> + + +<p>Papa was now a Roman Catholic again. After three or four years of +Ethicism, the absence of a God had begun to tell on him. It had slowly +sapped what had always been the very foundation of his life—his +belief in absolute standards of righteousness. For, if there were no +God, on what indeed did these standards rest? It was all very well to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span> +sing in South Place of “the great, the lovely and the true,” but what +things <i>were</i> great, lovely and true, and how could one be sure +of them, if they derived their sanction from nothing but man’s own +self-interested and fluctuating judgments? Deeply troubled by these +thoughts, which were, of course, by no means new to him, papa was +driven at last out of his beautiful and noble half-way house to the +bleak cross roads.</p> + +<p>Either he must become a moral nihilist, or he must believe again in a +God. Since to become a moral nihilist was to papa unthinkable, so alien +was it from all his habits, his traditions and his thought, so alien, +indeed, from all the thought of his period, the only alternative was +to believe in a God. And papa, swung by reaction, determined that this +time (was it by way of atonement, or safeguard?) he would do the thing +thoroughly. He would enter once more into that great ark of refuge from +perplexing thoughts, the Roman branch of the Catholic Church. There (so +long as he should remain there) he would be safe. He would rest therein +like a folded sheep, and wander no more. So, humbly, in the year 1886, +he did allegiance again to this great and consoling Church (which, as +he said, he had never left, for you cannot leave it, though you may be +unfaithful), and worshipped inconspicuously and devoutly in a small and +austere Dominican chapel.</p> + +<p>His only grief was that mamma at this point struck. She made the +great refusal. She loved papa no less faithfully than ever, but his +continuous faiths had worn her out. She said, quietly, “I am not going +to be a Roman Catholic again, Aubrey.”</p> + +<p>He bowed his head to her decision. It was perhaps, he admitted, too +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span> +much to expect that she should. “But not <i>Roman</i> Catholic, dearest +...” was his only protest. “Surely not <i>Roman</i>, now.”</p> + +<p>“I beg your pardon, Aubrey. Catholic. Anyhow, I am too old to join new +churches, or even the old ones again.”</p> + +<p>“You will stay an Ethicist, then,” he said, tentatively.</p> + +<p>“No. I have never cared very much for that. I don’t think I shall +attend any place of worship in future.”</p> + +<p>He looked at her, startled, and placed his hand on hers, impeding the +rapidity of her embroidery needle.</p> + +<p>“Anne—my dear love. You haven’t lost faith in everything, as I have +been in danger of doing during the last year? The South Place chapel +hasn’t done that to you, dear one?”</p> + +<p>Mamma let her work lie still on her lap, while papa’s hand rested on +hers. She seemed to consider, looking inwards and backwards, down and +down the years.</p> + +<p>“No, Aubrey,” she said presently. “The South Place chapel hasn’t done +that to me. It wasn’t important enough....”</p> + +<p>Her faint smile at him was enigmatic.</p> + +<p>“I don’t,” she added, “quite know what I do believe. But I have long +ago come to the conclusion that it matters very little. You, you see, +have seemed equally happy for a time, equally unhappy after a time, in +all the creeds or no-creeds. And equally good, my dear. I suppose I may +say that I believe in none of them, or believe in all. In any case, it +matters very little. I have come with you always into the churches and +out of them, but now I think you will find peace in the Rom—in the +Catholic Church, without me, and I fear that so much ritual, after so +much lack of it, would only fuss me. I shall stay at home. There is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span> +a good deal to do there always, and I am afraid I am better at doing +practical things than at thinking difficult things out. You won’t mind, +Aubrey?”</p> + +<p>“My darling, no. You must follow your own conscience. Mine has been a +sad will-o’-the-wisp to us both—but, God helping me, it has lighted me +now into my last home.... Yet who knows, who knows?...”</p> + +<p>Mamma gently patted his hand and went on with her embroidery, bending +over it her patient, near-sighted, spectacled eyes. She was mildly, +unenthusiastically relieved to be done with the Ethical Church. She had +never really liked those hymns.... Dear Aubrey, he would be happier +again now. He could take to himself confidently once more those eternal +moral values which had threatened him during the past six months with +their utter wreckage and collapse. Once more he would be able to give +reasons for his faith in virtue, for his belief that lying, theft, +selfishness and adultery were wrong. Once more the world’s foundations +stood, and papa would not lie wakeful in the night and sigh to watch +them shake.</p> + +<p>But the solitary, unworthy little thought nagged at mamma’s mind, “Amy +will sneer. Amy will make foolish, common fun of him....”</p> + +<p>Dismissing Amy as a silly and vulgar little creature, mamma folded her +embroidery and went to speak to the cook.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">15<br> +KEEPING HOUSE</p> + + +<p>Speaking to the cook. What a delightful kind of conversation this must +be. For, if you are a proper housewife, you do not just say to the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span> +cook, “Kindly provide meals, as usual, for the household to-day. That +is, in fact, what you are paid to do. So do it, and let me hear no +more about it.” Instead, you go to the larder and see what is in it. +You find a piece of meat, and try to guess what it is. You say, “We +will have that neck of mutton, or loin of beef” (or whatever you think +it is) “roasted, boiled, or fricasseed, for lunch. Then, of what is +left of it, you will make some nice cutlets for dinner. Now how about +sweets?” Then you and the cook will settle down happily for a long +gossip about sweets—a delightful topic. The cook says, “I had thought +of a nice jam roll.” You say that you, for your part, had thought of +something else, and so it goes on, like a drawing-room game, until you +or the cook win, by sheer strength of will. Cooks usually have most of +this, so they nearly always win. They can think of more reasons than +you can why the thing suggested is impossible. They know there is not +enough jam, or cream, or mushrooms, or bread-crumbs—not enough to make +it <i>nice</i>, as it should be made. Rather would they suggest a nice +apple charlotte....</p> + +<p>“Very well, cook; have it your own way. You have won, as usual. But +it has been a good game and I have Kept House.” That is what the good +housewife (presumably) reflects, as she leaves the kitchen.</p> + +<p>Perhaps there is more to it than this; perhaps bills are also +discussed, and butchers and groceries, and the price of comestibles. +No one who has not done it knows precisely what is done, or how. It is +the cook’s hour and the housewife’s, and no fifth ear overhears. Mrs. +Garden in the year 1886 had done it every day for thirty-one years. +Whether as an Anglican, a Unitarian, a Roman Catholic, an Agnostic, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span> +a Quaker, an Irvingite, a Seventh-day Adventist, a Baptist, or an +Ethicist, still she had daily Kept House. Magic phrase! What happens to +houses unkept, Rome had idly asked. Mamma had shaken a dubious head. No +house that she had ever heard of had been unkept.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">16<br> +UNA</p> + + +<p>Una, staying in Essex with friends, contracted an engagement with a +neighbouring young yeoman farmer, whom she used to meet out riding. The +friends protested, dismayed at such a mésalliance having been arranged +for under, so to speak, their auspices. But Una, now twenty-three, +grandly beautiful, alternately lazy and amazingly energetic, looking +like Diana or a splendid young Ceres, with no desires, it seemed, but +for the healthy pleasures of the moment, held firmly to her decision. +She loved her Ted, and loved, too, the life he led. She would wed him +without delay. She went home and told her family so.</p> + +<p>Papa said, “If you are sure of your love and his, that is all that +matters, little Una—” (with the faint note of deprecation, even of +remorse, with which he was wont to say her name, in these days when he +believed once again in the Athanasian creed; for, though he might have +bestowed this name in the most Trinitarian orthodoxy, the fact was that +he had not; it had been a badge of incomplete belief).</p> + +<p>Mamma said, “Well, child, you were bound to marry someone in the +country. I always knew that. And you won’t mind that he and his people +eat and talk a little differently from you, so I think you’ll be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span> +happy. Bless you.”</p> + +<p>To Rome mamma said, “There’s one thing about Una; she always knows what +she wants and goes straight for it. I wish she could have married a +gentleman, but this young fellow is a good mate for her, I believe. She +won’t care about the differences. There’s no humbug about Una. She’s +the modern girl all through. Splendid, direct, capable children they +are.”</p> + +<p>That was in the year 1887, and mamma did not know that in the nineteen +twenties there would still be girls like Una, and people would still +be calling them the modern girl, and saying how direct, admirable and +wonderful, or how independent, reckless and headstrong, they were, and, +in either case, how unlike the girls of thirty and forty years ago. +For, in popular estimation, girls must be changing all the time—new +every morning; there must be a new fashion in girls, as in hats, every +year. But those who have lived on this earth as much as sixty years +know (though they never say, for they like, amiably, to keep in with +the young by joining in popular cries, and are too elderly to go to +the trouble of speaking the truth), that girls, like other persons, +have always been much the same, and always will be. Not the same as one +another, for the greyhound is not more different from the spaniel than +is one girl from the next; but the same types of girls and of boys, of +women and of men, have for ever existed, and will never cease to exist, +and there is nothing new under the sun. Yet in the eighteen eighties +and nineties our ancestors were talking blandly of the New Woman, just +as to-day people babble of the Modern Girl.</p> + +<p>Rome said, “Yes, Una’ll be all right. She knows the way to live” ... +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span> +and was caught by her own phrase into the question, what <i>is</i> the +way to live, then? Mine, Una’s, Vicky’s, Stanley’s, Maurice’s, papa’s? +Perhaps there is no way to live. Perhaps the thing is just to live, +without a way. And that is, actually, what Una will do.</p> + +<p>Una’s Ted came to stay in Bloomsbury with the Gardens. He was large and +silent and beautiful, and ate hugely, and looked awful, said Vicky, +in his Sunday clothes, which were the ones he wore all the time in +London. Also, his boots creaked. But you could see, through it all, how +he would be striding about his native fields in gaiters and breeches +and old tweeds, sucking a pipe and looking like a young earth-god. You +could see, therefore, why Una loved him; you could see it even while he +breathed hard at meals in his tight collar, and sucked his knife. He +was physically glorious; a young Antæus strayed by mistake to town. He +and Una were a splendid pair.</p> + +<p>Una cared not at all what impression he made on her family. She was +not sensitive. The touch of his hands made her quiver luxuriously, and +when he took her in his arms and turned her face up to his and bruised +her mouth with kisses, the world’s walls shivered and dissolved round +her and she was poured out like water. He was beautiful and splendid +and her man, and knew all about the things she cared for, and she loved +him with a full, happy passion that responded frankly and generously +to his. They chaffed and bickered and played and caressed, and talked +about horses and dogs and love, and went to the Zoo.</p> + +<p>Amy giggled behind the young man’s back, and said, “<i>Did</i> you see +him stuffing his mouth with bun and trying to wash it down with tea out +of his saucer?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p> + +<p>“Why not?” said Rome. “And he did wash it down; he didn’t only try.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Well!</i>” Amy let out a breath and nodded twice. “Rather Una than +me; that’s all.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">17<br> +STANLEY</p> + + +<p>These years, ’87, ’88, ’89, were stirring years for Maurice and Stanley. +In them were founded the Independent Labour Party and the Christian +Social Union and the <i>Star</i> newspaper. And there was the great +dock strike and “bloody Sunday,” on which Maurice disgraced Amy and +himself by joining in an unseemly fracas with the police, in which he +incurred a sprained wrist and a night in prison. In point of fact, as +Amy said, he was rather drunk at the time.</p> + +<p>Stanley enjoyed the labour movement. She was not, like Maurice, merely +up against things; she eagerly swam with the tide and the tide which +carried her during this particular phase of her life was revolutionary +labour. She was joyously in the van of the movement. The dock strike +stirred her more than the Pigott forgeries, more than the poisoning of +Mr. Maybrick by Mrs. Maybrick, more than the death of Robert Browning.</p> + +<p>Stirring times indeed. But in ’89 something happened which stirred +Stanley more profoundly than the times. She fell in love and married. +It was bound to occur to such an ardent claimer of life. The man was a +writer of light essays and short stories and clever unproduced plays. +He was thirty, and he had an odd, short white face and narrow laughing +eyes beneath a clever forehead, and little money, but a sense of irony +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span> +and of form and of the stage. He was in the most modern literary set in +London and his name was Denman Croft. At first Stanley thought him very +affected and she was right, for the most modern literary set <i>was</i> +affected just then; but in a month or so she loved him with an acute, +painful ecstasy that made her dizzy and blinded her to all the world +besides. Her work lost interest; she was alive only in those hours +when they were together; her love absorbed her body and soul. Why, he +protested, did she not live in the more reasonable parts of London and +meet people worth meeting? All sorts of exciting, amusing things were +happening in the world of letters and art just now and she ought to be +in it. Stanley began to feel that perhaps she ought. After all, one +could be progressive and fight for labour reform and trade unions as +well in the west as in the east. Then, while she was thus reflecting, +it became apparent to her that Denman Croft was going immediately to +propose marriage to her. She had for some weeks known that he loved +her, but was scarcely ready for this crisis when it came. Passionate +ecstasy possessed them both; they sank into it blind and breathless and +let its waves break over them.</p> + +<p>Life, life, life. Stanley, who had always lived to the uttermost, felt +that she had never lived before. Spirit, brain and body interacted and +co-operated in the riot of their passion.</p> + +<p>They married almost at once and took a house in Margaretta Street, +Chelsea.</p> + +<p>Stanley always reflected her time and it was, people said, a time of +transition. For that matter, times always are, and one year is always +rather different from the last. In this year, the threshold of the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span> +nineties, all things were, it was said, being made new. New forms of +art and literature were being experimented with, new ideas aired. New +verse was being written, new drama, essays, fiction and journalism. +Stanley was so much interested in it all (being, as she now was, in +close touch with the latest phase in these matters) that her social +and political earnestness flagged, for you cannot have all kinds of +earnestness at once. Instead of going in the evenings to committee +meetings and mass labour meetings, she now went to plays and literary +parties. Instead of writing articles on women’s work, she began to +write poetry and short sketches. All this, together with the social +life she now led and the excitement of love, of Denman, and of her new +home, was so stimulating and absorbing that she had little attention to +spare for anything else. Stanley was like that—enthusiastic, headlong, +a deep plunger, a whole-hogger.</p> + +<p>“They do have the most fantastic beings to dinner,” Vicky said to her +Charles. “Velvet coats and immense ties.... It reminds me of ten years +ago, when I was being æsthetic. But these people are much smarter +talkers. Denman says they are really doing something good, too. He’s +an attractive creature, though I think his new play is absurd and he’s +desperately affected. The way that child adores him! Stanley does go +so head over ears into everything. None of the rest of us could love +like that. It frightens one for her.... But anyhow I’m glad she’s off +that stupid trade union and sweated labour fuss. Maurice does more +than enough of that for the family and I was afraid Stan was going to +turn into a female fanatic, like some of those short-haired friends of +hers. That’s not what we women ought to be, is it, my Imogen?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p> + +<p>Vicky caught up her Imogen, an infant of one summer, in her arms, and +kissed her. But Imogen, neither then nor at any later time, had any +clear idea about what women ought or ought not to be. Anything they +liked, she probably thought. If, indeed, there were, specifically, any +such creatures as women.... For Imogen was born to have a doubting +mind on this as on other subjects. She might almost have been called +mentally defective in some directions, of so little was she ever to be +sure.</p> + +<p>“Stanley,” pronounced Vicky, “has more Zeitgeist” (for that unpleasant +word had of late come in) “than anyone I ever met.”</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II">PART II<br> +FIN-DE-SIÈCLE</h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p> + +<p class="nindc">1<br> +ROME</p> +</div> + + +<p class="nind"> +<span class="dropcap">T</span>HE threshold of the nineties. Decades have a delusive edge to them. +They are not, of course, really periods at all, except as any other +ten years may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the different +name each bears, and give them different attributes, and tie labels +on them, as if they were flowers in a border. The nineties, we say, +were gay, tired, <i>fin-de-siècle</i>, witty, dilettante, decadent, +yellow, and Max Beerbohm was their prophet; or they were noisy, +imperial, patriotic, militant, crude, and Kipling was their prophet. +And, indeed, you may find attributes to differentiate any period from +any other. What people said and wrote of the nineties at the time was +that they were modern, which of course at the time they were; that +they were hustling ... (“In these days of hurry and rapid motion, +when there is so little time to rest and reflect,” as people say in +sermons and elsewhere, as if the greater rapidity of motion did not +give one more time to rest and reflect, since one the sooner arrives +at one’s destination); that they were noisy; that literary output was +enormous; that (alternatively) the new writers were very good, or that +the good writers had gone from among us. One knows the kind of thing; +all discourses on contemporary periods have been full of it, from the +earliest times even unto these last.</p> + +<p>Rome was thirty-one. She was of middle height, a slight, pale, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span> +delicate young woman, with ironic blue-green eyes and mocking lips a +little compressed at the corners, and a pointed kind of face, and fair, +silky hair which she wore no longer short but swept gracefully up and +back from her small head, defining its shape and showing the fine line +from nape to crown. She was a woman of the world, a known diner-out, +a good talker, something of a wit, so that her presence was sought by +hostesses as that of an amusing bachelor is sought. She had elegance, +distinction, brain, a light and cool touch on the topics of her world, +a calm, mocking, sceptical detachment, a fastidious taste in letters +and in persons. She knew her way about, as the phrase goes, and could +be relied on to be socially adequate, in spite of a dangerous distaste +for fools, and in spite of the “dancing and destructive eye” (to use a +phrase long afterwards applied to one whose mentality perhaps a little +resembled hers) which she turned on all aspects of the life around +her. People called her intensely modern—whatever that might mean. In +1890 it presumably meant that you would have been surprised to find +her type in 1880. But as a matter of fact, you would not, had you been +endowed with a little perspicacity, have been in the least surprised; +you would have found it, had you looked, all down the ages (though +always as a rare growth). In 1790, 1690, 1590, and back through every +decade of every century, there have been Rome Gardens, fastidious, +<i>mondaine</i>, urbane, lettered, critical, amused, sceptical, and +what was called in 1890 <i>fin-de-siècle</i>. It is not a type which, +so to speak, makes the world go round; it does not assist movements nor +join in crusades; it coolly distrusts enthusiasm and eschews the heat +and ardour of the day. It is to be found among both sexes equally, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span> +is the stuff of which the urbane bachelor and spinster, rather than the +spouse and parent, are made. For mating and producing (as a career, not +as an occasional encounter) are apt to destroy the type, by forcing +it to too continuous and ardent intercourse with life; that graceful +and dilettante aloofness can scarcely survive such prolonged heat. To +be cool, sceptical and passionate at one and the same time—it has +been done, but it remains difficult. To love ardently such absurdities +as infants, and yet to retain unmarred the sense of the absurdity of +all life—this too has been done, but the best parents do not do it. +Something has to go, as a sacrifice to the juggernaut life, which +rebels against being regarded as merely absurd (and rightly, for, in +truth, it is not merely absurd, and this is one of the things which +should always be remembered about it).</p> + +<p>The literary persons of the early nineties wanted Rome to join them in +their pursuits.</p> + +<p>Why so, Rome questioned. Money? Very certainly I have not enough, but +I should not have appreciably more if I wrote and published essays +or even books. Notoriety? It might well be of the wrong kind; and +anyhow does it add to one’s pleasure? Miss Rome Garden, the author of +those clever critical essays.... Or perhaps of those dull critical +essays.... Either way, what did one gain? Why write? Why this craze for +transmitting ideas by means of marks on paper? Why not, if one must +transmit ideas, use the tongue, that unruly member given us for the +purpose? Better still, why not retain the ideas for one’s own private +edification, untransmitted? Writing. There was this about writing—or +rather about publishing—it showed that someone had thought it worth +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span> +while to pay for having one’s ideas printed. For printers were paid, +and binders, even if not oneself. So it conferred a kind of cachet. +Most literary persons sorely needed such a cachet, for you would never +guess from meeting them that anyone would pay them for their ideas. On +the other hand, publishing one’s folly gave it away; one was then known +for a fool, whereas previously people might have only suspected it.... +In brief and in fine, writing was not worth while. Wise men and women +would derive such pleasure as they could from the writings of others, +without putting themselves to the trouble of providing reading matter +in their turn. Reading matter was not like dinners, concerning which +there must be give and take.</p> + +<p>Thus the do-nothing Miss Rome Garden to the eager literary young men +and women about her, who all thought that literature was having a new +birth and that they were its brilliant midwives, as, indeed, it is not +unusual to think. And possibly it was the case. Literature has so many +new births; it is a hardy annual. The younger literary people of 1890 +had a titillating feeling of standing a-tiptoe to welcome a new day. +“A great creative period is at hand,” they said. The old and famous +still brooded over the land like giant trees. Such a brooding, indeed, +has scarcely since been known, for in these later days we allow no +trees to become giants. But in their shadow the rebellious young shoots +sprang up, sharp and green and alive. The mid-Victorians were passing; +the Edwardians were in the schoolroom or the nursery, the Georgians +in the cradle or not yet anywhere; here was a clear decade in which +the late Victorian stars might dance. It was a period of experiment; +new forms were being tried, new ideas would have been aired were any +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span> +ideas ever new; new franknesses, so called, were permitted, or anyhow +practised—the mild beginnings of the returning tide which was to break +against the reticence of fifty years.</p> + +<p>“I don’t,” said Mrs. Garden to Rome, “care about all these sex novels +people have taken to writing now.”</p> + +<p>But Rome rejected the phrase.</p> + +<p>“Sex novels, mamma? What are they? Novels have always been about sex, +or rather sexes. There’s nothing new in that; it’s the oldest story in +the world. People must have a sex in this life; it’s inevitable. Novels +must be about people; that’s inevitable too. So novels must be partly +about sex, and they’re nearly always about two sexes, and usually +largely about the relations of the two sexes to one another. They +always have been....”</p> + +<p>All the same, mamma did <i>not</i> care about these sex novels that +people had taken to writing now. <i>Problem</i> novels, she called +them, for reasons of her own. Rome thought sex no problem; the least +problematic affair, perhaps, in this world. Of course there were +problems connected with it, as with everything else, but in itself sex +was no problem. Rather the contrary. “The Moonstone,” now—<i>that</i> +was a problem novel.</p> + +<p>“I don’t like indecency,” said mamma, in her delicate, clipped voice. +“These modern writers will say anything. It’s ill-bred.”</p> + +<p>Mamma could not be expected to know that these literary libertines of +1890 would be regarded as quaint Victorian prudes in 1920.</p> + +<p>“As to that book Mr. Jayne gave you, I call it merely silly,” mamma +murmured, with raised brows, and so settled “Dorian Gray.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span></p> + +<p>“Silly it is,” Rome agreed. “But here and there, though too seldom, it +has a wit.”</p> + +<p>But mamma was not listening. Her mamma-like mind was straying after Mr. +Jayne....</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">2<br> +MR. JAYNE</p> + + +<p>Mr. Jayne and Rome. Both brilliant, both elegant, both urbane, both so +gracefully of the world worldly, yet both scholars too. Mr. Jayne wrote +memoirs and enchanting historical and political essays. An amusing, yet +erudite Oxford man, who had formerly been at the British Embassy at St. +Petersburg. Hostesses desired him for their more sophisticated parties, +because he had a wit, and knew Russia, which was at once more unusual +and more fashionable then than now. It was at one of Vicky’s dinner +parties that he and Rome had first met. If Vicky thought, how suitable, +it was only what anyone in the world must think about these two. +Afterwards they met continually and became friends. Rome thought him +conceited, clever, entertaining, attractive and disarming and the most +companionable man of her wide acquaintance. By June, 1890, they were in +love; a state of mind unusual in both. They did not mention it, but in +July he mentioned to her, what he mentioned to few people, that he had +a Russian wife living with her parents, a revolutionary professor and +his wife, in the country outside Moscow.</p> + +<p>They were spending Sunday on the Thames, rowing up from Bourne End +to Marlow. They spoke of this matter of Mr. Jayne’s wife after their +lunch, which they ate on the bank, in the shade of willows.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span></p> + +<p>“How delightful,” said Rome, taking a Gentleman’s Relish sandwich.</p> + +<p>Delightful to have a wife in Russia; to have a reason, and such a +reason, for visiting that interesting land. Delightful for Mr. Jayne +to have waiting for him, among steppes and woods, a handsome Russian +female and two fair Slav infants ... or perhaps they were English, +these little Jaynes, with beautiful mouths and long, thrust-out +chins.... Delightful, anyhow. The Russian country in the summer, all +corn and oil and moujiks. Moscow in the autumn, all churches and +revolutionaries and plots and secret police. And in the winter ... but +one cannot think about Russia in the winter at all; it does not bear +contemplation, and one does not visit it.... What a romance! Mr. Jayne +was indeed fortunate.</p> + +<p>So Miss Garden conveyed.</p> + +<p>“I am not there very much,” said Mr. Jayne. “Only on and off. Olga +prefers to live there, with her parents and our two children. She +has many friends there, all very busy plotting. They are of the +intelligentsia. Life is very interesting to her.”</p> + +<p>“I can imagine that it must be.”</p> + +<p>So cool and well-bred were Miss Garden and Mr. Jayne, that you never +would have divined that the latter, eating sandwiches, was crying +within his soul, “My dearest Rome. I dislike my wife. We make each +other sick with ennui when we meet. We married in a moment’s mania. It +is you I want. Don’t you know it? Won’t you let me tell you?” or that +the former, sipping cider, was saying silently, “You have told me this +at last because you know that we have fallen in love. Why not months +ago? And what now?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span></p> + +<p>Nothing of this they showed, but lounged in the green shade, and +drank and ate, Miss Garden clear-cut and cool, in a striped cotton +boating-dress, with a conically-shaped straw hat tipped over her eyes, +Mr. Jayne in flannels, long and slim, his palish face shaved smooth +in the new fashion, so that you saw the lines of his clever mouth +and long, thrust-out chin. Mr. Jayne’s eyes were deep-set and grey, +and he wore pince-nez, and he was at this time thirty-six years old. +At what age, Rome wondered, had he married Mrs. Jayne of the Russian +intelligentsia?</p> + +<p>However, they did not enter into this, but began to discuss the plays +of Mr. Bernard Shaw, a well-known socialist writer, and Mr. Rudyard +Kipling, a young man in India who was making some stir.</p> + +<p>“We can still be friends,” thought Rome, on their way home. “Nothing +need be changed between us. This Olga of his is his wife; I am his +friend. It would be very bourgeois to be less his friend because he has +a wife. That is a view of life I dislike; we are civilised people, Mr. +Jayne and I.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">3<br> +CIVILISED PEOPLE</p> + + +<p>And civilised they were, for the rest of the summer of 1890. In +November Rome asked Mr. Jayne, who was having tea with her alone, +whether he was visiting Russia shortly. He replied in the negative, for +he was, he said, too busy working on his new book to get abroad.</p> + +<p>“And further,” he added, in the same composed tone, “I prefer to remain +in the same country with you. I can’t, you see, do without you at hand. +You know how often I consult you, and talk things over with you.... +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span> +And further still,” continued Mr. Jayne, quietly, “I love you.”</p> + +<p>So saying, he rose and stood over her, bending down with his hands on +her shoulders and his pale face close to hers.</p> + +<p>“My dearest,” he said. “Let us stop pretending. <i>Shall</i> we stop +pretending? Does our pretence do us or anyone else any good? I love you +more than any words I’ve got can say. You know it, you know it ... dear +heart....”</p> + +<p>He drew her up from her chair and looked into her face, and that was +the defeat of their civilisation, for at their mutual touch it broke in +disorder and fled. He kissed her mouth and face and hands, and passion +rose about them like a sea in which they drowned.</p> + +<p>Five minutes later they talked it out, sitting with a space between +them, for “While you hold me I can’t think,” Rome said. She passed her +hand over her face, which felt hot and stung from the hard pressing +of his mouth, and tried to assemble her thoughts, shaken by the first +passion of her thirty-one agreeable and intelligent years.</p> + +<p>“I’m not,” she said, “going to take you away from your wife. Not in any +way. What we have must make no difference to what <i>she</i> has....”</p> + +<p>It will be seen, therefore, that their conversation was as old as the +world, and scarcely worth recording. It pursued the normal lines. That +is to say, Mr. Jayne replied, “She has nothing of me that matters,” +rather inaccurately classing under the head of what did not matter, his +children, his name, and the right to his bed and board. As is the habit +in these situations, Mr. Jayne meant that what mattered, and what Mrs. +Jayne had not got, was his love, his passion, his spirit and his soul. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span> +These, he indicated, were Rome’s alone, as Rome’s were his.</p> + +<p>What to do about it was the question. One must, said Rome, holding +herself in, continue to be civilised. And what, enquired Mr. Jayne, is +civilisation—this arbitrary civilisation of society’s making, that +binds the spirit’s freedom in chains? It was all founded on social +expediency, on primitive laws to protect inheritance, to safeguard +property.... Had Rome read Professor Westermarck’s great work on the +history of human marriage? Rome had. What of it? The point was, there +was Mrs. Jayne in Russia, and Mr. and Mrs. Jayne’s two children. These +were Mr. Jayne’s obligations, and nothing he and she did must come +between him and them. That laid firmly down, she and Mr. Jayne could +do what they liked; that was how Rome saw it. One must keep one’s +contracts, and behave as persons of honour and breeding should behave.</p> + +<p>“As I see it,” said Rome, “the fact that we love each other needn’t +prevent our being friends. We are not babies....”</p> + +<p>“Friends,” said Mr. Jayne, in agreement, doubt, scepticism, contempt, +hope, or bitter derision, as the case might be.</p> + +<p>And more they said, until they were interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. +Garden’s papa, the Dean, who had called in his brougham to see mamma, +but, mamma being out at Vicky’s, he sat down between these two white, +disturbed, hot-eyed and shaken persons and began to talk of Mr. Parnell +and his disgrace.</p> + +<p>Grandpapa opined that Mr. Parnell had no more place in public life.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne replied that anyhow it appeared that he would be hounded out +of it.</p> + +<p>“Cant,” he said. “Truckling to nonconformist cant and humbug and +Catholic bigotry. A man’s private affairs have nothing to do with his +public life. It’s contemptible, the way the Nationalists have caved in +to that old humbug, Gladstone.”</p> + +<p>Grandpapa had always thought Gladstone a humbug (though not so old if +it came to that; he himself was eighty-five and going strong), but with +the rest of Mr. Jayne’s thesis he was in disagreement. Our political +leaders must not be men of notoriously loose lives. The sanctity of the +home must, at all costs, be upheld.</p> + +<p>“O’Shea’s home,” said Mr. Jayne, “never had much of that. Neither +O’Shea nor Mrs. O’Shea was great on it.”</p> + +<p>“For that matter,” Rome joined in, crisp and bland, as if civilisation +had not met its débâcle in the drawing-room but a half hour since, +“for that matter, what homes <i>have</i> sanctity? Why do people think +that sanctity is particularly to be found in homes, of all places? And +can a bachelor’s or spinster’s home have it, or do the people in the +home need to be married? What is it, this curious <i>sanctity</i>, +that bishops write to the papers about, and that is, they say, being +attacked all the time, and is so easily destroyed? In what homes is it +to be found? I have often wondered.”</p> + +<p>“Whom God hath joined together,” replied grandpapa, readily. “That is +the answer to your question, my dear child, is it not?”</p> + +<p>“O God,” muttered Mr. Jayne, but probably rather as an ejaculation than +as a sceptical comment on the authority behind matrimony.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span></p> + +<p>Whichever it was, grandpapa did not care about the phrase, and looked +at him sharply. He believed Mr. Jayne to be an unbeliever, and did not +greatly care for the tone of his writings. However, they conversed +intelligently for a while about the future of the Irish party before +Mr. Jayne rose to go.</p> + +<p>“Come into the hall,” his eyes said. But Rome did not go into the hall.</p> + +<p>He was gone. Rome sat still in the shadow of the window. His steps +echoed down the square.</p> + +<p>“Do you see much of that young fellow, my dear?” grandpapa asked, in +his old rumbling voice.</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes,” said Rome, feeling exalted and light in the head, and as if +she had drunk alcohol. “Oh, yes, grandpapa. We are great friends.”</p> + +<p>“Do your parents like him, my child?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, grandpapa. Very much. Oh, I think everyone likes him. He is a +great success, you know.”</p> + +<p>She was talking foolishly and at random, straying about the room, +taking up books, wishing grandpapa would go.</p> + +<p>Grandpapa grunted. Rather queer goings on, he thought, for Rome to be +entertaining young men by herself when her papa and mamma were out. +What were unmarried young women coming to? If mamma had gone on like +that thirty years ago.... But this, of course, was 1890—desperately +modern. Grandpapa, though he not infrequently wrote to the +<i>Times</i>, the <i>Spectator</i> and the <i>Guardian</i>, to say how +modern the current year was (for, of course, current years always were +and are), did not always remember it. The untrammelled (it seemed to +him untrammelled) freedom of intercourse enjoyed by modern young men +and women (especially young women) continually shocked him. Grandpapa +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span> +had enjoyed much free and untrammelled intercourse in his own distant +youth, during the Regency, but fifty years of Victorianism had since +intervened, and he believed that intercourse should not now be free. He +could not understand his granddaughter, Stanley, who was continually +abusing what she called the conventional prudery of the age; what +further liberties, in heaven’s name, did young women want? To do her +justice, Rome did not join in this cry for further emancipation; Rome +accepted the conventions, with an acquiescent, ironic smile. There they +were: why make oneself hot with kicking over the traces? One accepted +the social follies and codes....</p> + +<p>(“On the contrary,” Maurice would say, “I refuse them.”</p> + +<p>“It will make no difference to them either way,” said Rome.)</p> + +<p>Rome, a good <i>raconteuse</i> and mimic, proceeded to entertain +grandpapa with an account of a dinner party at which she had been +taken in by that curious and noisy member of Parliament, Mr. Augustus +Conybeare, whom grandpapa disliked exceedingly.</p> + +<p>Then mamma and papa came home, and Rome went upstairs to dress for +another dinner party. Thus do social life and the storm-tossed journey +of the human soul run on concurrently, and neither makes way for the +other.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">4<br> +ON THE PINCIO</p> + + +<p>Through that winter civilisation fought its losing battle with more +primitive forces over the souls and bodies of Miss Garden and Mr. +Jayne.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span></p> + +<p>“There is only one way in which we can meet and be together,” said +Rome, “and that is as friends. There is no other relation possible in +the circumstances. I will be party to no scandal, my best. If we can’t +meet one another with self-control, then we mustn’t meet at all. What +is the use of tilting at the laws of society? There they are, and thus +it is....”</p> + +<p>“You make a fetish of society,” said Mr. Jayne, with gloom. “For a +woman of your brains, it is queer.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps,” said Rome.</p> + +<p>Then, it becoming apparent that she and Mr. Jayne were not at present +going to meet one another with self-control, Rome went for the winter +to the city of that name, with her papa, whose spiritual home it, of +course, now was. Mrs. Garden did not go, because she desired to be in +at the birth of Stanley’s baby.</p> + +<p>But civilisation had not reckoned sufficiently with the forces of +emotion. These led Mr. Jayne, but a few weeks after Miss Garden had +departed, to follow her to Italy, and, in fact, to Rome.</p> + +<p>So, one bright February morning, he called at the Gardens’ hotel +pension in the Via Babuino, and found Rome and her papa about to +set forth for a walk on the Pincio. Miss Garden, looking pale, fair +and elegant in a long, fur-edged, high-shouldered cape coat and a +tall, pointed, blue velvet hat beneath which her hair gleamed gold, +received him as urbanely, as coolly, as detachedly as ever; she seemed +to have got her emotions well under control in the month since they +had parted. Mr. Jayne responded to her tone, and all the morning, as +they strolled about with Mr. Garden, they were bland and cool and +amusing; well-bred English visitors, turning interested and satirical +eyes on the fashionable crowds about them, stopping now and then to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span> +exchange amenities with fellow-strollers, for Mr. Jayne knew Roman +society well, and Mr. Garden had come armed with introductions from +his co-religionists, though, indeed, he was little disposed for much +society, wishing to spend such time as he did not devote to seeing +Rome in studious research at the Vatican library. His daughter was a +little afraid that the Eternal City might seriously disturb his faith, +and that papa might fall under the undeniably fascinating influence +of paganism, which makes so far finer and nobler a show in Rome than +mediæval Christianity. And, indeed, with St. Peter’s papa was not +pleased; he scarcely liked to say so, even to himself, but it did seem +to him to be of a garish hugeness that smacked almost of vulgarity, +and pained his fastidious taste. On the other hand, there were many +old churches of a more pleasing style, and in these his soul found +rest when disturbed by the massive splendours of classical Rome. No; +papa would not become a pagan; he knew too much of pagan corruptions +and cruelties for that. Corruptions and cruelties he admitted, of +course, in the history of Christianity also; corruption and cruelty +are, indeed, properties of the unfortunate and paradoxical human race; +but papa was persuaded that only defective Christians (after all, +Christians always are and have been defective) were corrupt and cruel, +whereas the most completely pagan of pagans had been so, and paganism +is, indeed, rather an incentive than a discouragement to vice. In +fact, papa was, by this time, thoroughly biassed in this matter, and +so was probably safe. Or, anyhow, so his daughter hoped. For it would, +there was no denying it, be exceedingly awkward were papa to become +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span> +a pagan, quite apart from the preliminary anguish with which his soul +would be torn were he to be shaken from his present faith. Were there +pagan places of worship in London? Probably papa would have to build a +private chapel, and in it erect images of his new gods.... For pagans +had never been happy without much worship; they had been the most +religious of believers. Except, of course, the lax and broad-church +pagans, and probably papa, if he got paganism at all, would get it +strong.</p> + +<p>So Rome was quite pleased that papa should be walking on the Pincio +with her, getting a good view of the dome of St. Peter’s, which is +the finest and most impressive part of that cathedral, rather than +wandering about the Forum and peering into the new excavations, +murmuring scraps of Latin as he peered.</p> + +<p>In the warm, sunlit air, with the band playing Verdi and the gay crowds +promenading, and the enchanted city spread all a-glitter beneath them, +Rome was caught into a deep and intoxicated joy. The bitter, restless +struggling of the last months gave way to peace; the happy peace that +looks not ahead, but rejoices in the moment. The tall and gay companion +strolling at her side, so fluent in several languages, so apt to catch +a half-worded meaning, to smile at an unuttered jest, so informed, so +polished, so of the world worldly ... take Mr. Jayne as merely that, +and she had her friend and companion back again, which was deeply +restful and vastly stimulating. And beneath that was her lover, whom +she loved; beneath his urbane exterior his passion throbbed and leaped, +and his deep need of her cried, and in her the answering need cried +back.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">5<br> +IN THE CAMPAGNA</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span></p> + + +<p>Together they walked in the Campagna, in the bright soft wash of the +February sun. Mr. Jayne had been in Rome a week, and they had gone +out to Tivoli together, without papa, who was reading in the Vatican +library. They lunched at the restaurant by the waterfalls, then +explored Hadrian’s Villa with the plan in Murray, and quarrelled about +which were the different rooms. Failing to agree on this problem, they +sat down in the Triclinium and looked at the view and discussed the +more urgent problem of their lives.</p> + +<p>“You must,” said Mr. Jayne, “come to me. It is the only right and +reasonable way out. We’ll live in no half-way house, with secrecy +and concealment. We should both hate that. But Olga will not divorce +me; it’s no use thinking of that. In her view, and that of all her +countrywomen, husbands are never faithful. The infidelity of a husband +is no reason to a Russian woman for divorce. Unless she herself wants +to marry another man, and that is likely enough, in Olga’s case, to +happen. We are nothing to each other, she and I. Such love as we +had—and it was never love—is dead long ago. We don’t even like each +other.”</p> + +<p>“Curious,” mused Rome, “not to foresee these developments at the +outset, before taking the serious step of marriage. Marriage is an +action too freely practised and too seldom adequately considered.”</p> + +<p>“That is so,” Mr. Jayne agreed. “But, and however that may be, what +is done is done. What we now have to consider, however inadequately, +is the future. It is very plain that you and I must be together. +Yes, yes, yes. Nothing else is plain, but that is. The one light in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span> +chaos.... My dearest love, you can’t be denying that. It is the only +conceivable thing—the only thinkable way out.”</p> + +<p>“Way out,” said Rome. “I think, rather, a way in.... Which way do we +take—out or in?” Musingly she looked over the Campagna to blue hills, +and Mr. Jayne, his eyes on her white profile, on the gleam of gold hair +beneath her dark fur cap, and on her slender hands that clasped her +knees, leant closer to her and replied, with neither hesitation nor +doubt, “In.”</p> + +<p>“Indeed,” said Miss Garden, “these questions can’t be decided in this +rough and ready, impetuous manner. The mind must have its share in +deciding these important matters, not merely the emotions and desires. +Or else what is the good of education, or of having learnt to think +clearly at all?”</p> + +<p>“Very little,” said Mr. Jayne. “However, in this case the more clearly +one thinks the more plain the way to take becomes. It is confused and +muddled thinking that would lead us to conform to convention and give +one another up, merely because of a social code.”</p> + +<p>“The social code,” said Miss Garden, “though as a rule I prefer to +observe it, is in this case neither here nor there. I have ruled that +out; cleared the field, so to speak, for the essentials. Now, what +<i>are</i> the essentials? Your wife, whom you have undertaken to live +with ...”</p> + +<p>“By mutual agreement, we have given that up long since,” said Mr. +Jayne, not for the first time.</p> + +<p>“... and your children, whom you have brought into the world and are +responsible for.”</p> + +<p>“They are their mother’s. She lets me see nothing of them. She is +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span> +determined to bring them up as Russian patriots.”</p> + +<p>“Still, they are half yours, and it is a question whether you should +not claim your share. In fact, I think it is certain that you should. +If you broke off completely from your wife and lived with me, your +right in them would be gone.... Then, of course, there is the ethical +point as to your contract, the vows you made to your wife on marriage, +which positively exclude similar relations with anyone else while she +remains your wife.”</p> + +<p>“I ought never to have made them. I was a fool. The wrong is in the +vows, not in their breach.”</p> + +<p>“Granted that they were wrong, that does not settle the further point +of whether, having been made, with every circumstance of deliberation, +they should not be kept.”</p> + +<p>“O God,” said Mr. Jayne. “You talk, my dearest, like a pedant, a prig, +or a book of logic. Don’t you <i>care</i>, Rome?”</p> + +<p>“You know,” said Miss Garden, “that I do.... No, don’t touch me. I +must think it out. I <i>am</i> a pedant and a prig, if you like, and +I <i>must</i> think it out, not only feel. But now I will think of +the other side. Oh, yes, I know there is another side. We love one +another, and we can neither of us be happy, or fully ourselves, without +being together. Without one another we shall be incomplete, unhappy +and perhaps (not certainly) morally and mentally stunted and warped. +Indeed, I see that as clearly as you can. Further, our being together +may, as you say, not hurt your wife; she may not care in the least. As +to that, I simply don’t know. How could I? She may even let you still +have a share in your children. Russian points of view are so different +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span> +from ours. But one should be certain of that before taking any steps. +Then there are still points on the other side, that we have to think +of. Any children we might have would be illegitimate. That would be +hard on them.”</p> + +<p>“In point of fact,” said Mr. Jayne, “it is largely illusory, that +hardship. And in this case they (if they should ever exist) needn’t +even know. You would take my name. Who is to go on remembering that I +have a Russian wife? Very few people in England even know it. We should +soon live down any talk there might be.”</p> + +<p>“And then,” went on Rome, ticking off another point on her fingers, +“there are my papa and mamma, whom we should hurt very badly. In their +eyes what we are discussing isn’t a thing to be discussed at all; it is +a deadly sin, and there’s an end of it. They are very fond of me, and +they would be terribly unhappy. That too is a point to be considered.”</p> + +<p>“Perhaps. But not to be given much weight to. It’s damnable to have +to hurt the people we love—but, after all, we can’t let our parents +rule our lives. We’re living in the eighteen nineties; we’re not +mid-Victorians. And we have to make up our own minds what to do with +our lives. We can’t be tied up by anyone else’s views, either those +of our relations or of society in general. We have to make our own +judgments and choices, all along. And parents shouldn’t be hurt by +their children’s choices, even if they do think them wrong; they +should live and let live. All this judging for other people, and being +hurt, is poisonous. It’s a relic of the patriarchal system—or the +matriarchal.”</p> + +<p>Miss Garden smiled.</p> + +<p>“Possibly. I should say, rather, that it was incidental to parental +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span> +affection, and always will be. Anyhow, there it is.... They don’t, of +course, even believe that divorce is right, let alone adultery.” Her +cool, thoughtful enunciation of the last word gave it its uttermost +value. Miss Garden never slurred or shirked either words or facts.</p> + +<p>“But that,” she added, “doesn’t, of course, dispose of our lives. +That’s only one point out of many. The question is, what is, now and +ultimately, the right and best thing for me and you to do. You’ve +decided. Well, I haven’t—yet. Give me a week, Francis. I promise I +won’t take more.”</p> + +<p>“You are so beautiful,” said Mr. Jayne, changing the subject and +speaking inaccurately, and lifted her hands to his face. “You are so +beautiful. There is no one like you. You are like the golden sickle +moon riding over the world. You hold my life in your two hands. Be kind +to it, Rome. <i>I love you, I love you, I love you.</i> If we deny our +love we shall be blaspheming. Love like ours transcends all barriers, +and well you know it. Take your week, if you must, only decide rightly +at the end of it, my heart’s glory. The fine thing we shall make of +life together, you and I, the fine, precious, lovely thing. It’s been +so poor and common—full of bickerings and jars and commonness and +discontents....</p> + +<p><i>O Rome!</i>...”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">6<br> +RUSSIAN TRAGEDY</p> + + +<p>The Russian woman, with her two beautiful children and her stout, +dazed, unhappy mamma, waited in the hall of the flat of Mr. Jayne. +They were weary, having travelled across Russia and from Russia to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span> +London, to find Mr. Jayne, and then, having learnt that he was in Rome, +straight from London thither, spending two nights in the train and +arriving this morning, more alive than dead (for who, this side of the +grave, is not?) but very tired. The two children were so tired that +they whimpered disagreeably, and their mother often wiped their noses +with her travel-grimed handkerchief, but not so often as they required +it.</p> + +<p>Olga Petrushka was a beautiful woman, square-headed, with a fair +northern skin and large deep blue eyes, black-lashed, and massive +plaits of flaxen hair. Her eyes looked wild and haunted, for Russians +have such dreadful experiences, and her cheeks were hollowed; she +looked like a woman who has seen death and worse too close, as indeed +she had. She was shabbily dressed in an old fur dolman over a scarlet +dress and a fur cap. The two children were bundled up in bearskin +coats, like little animals. Her little dancing bears, she would call +them in lighter moments. Ever and anon she would fling them sweet cakes +out of her reticule, and they would gobble them greedily.</p> + +<p>But Nina Naryshkin, their grandmother, sat and rocked to and fro, to +and fro, and said nothing but, “Aie, aie, aie.”</p> + +<p>The hall porter turned on the little family a beaming and kindly eye. +They were, in all probability, thieves, and not, as the Russian lady +asserted, the family of Signor Jayne, so he would not admit them into +Signor Jayne’s rooms, but he liked to see their gambols.</p> + +<p>Every now and then the younger lady would say, in Russian, “Cheer +up, then, little children. Your father will soon be here and he will +give you more sweet cakes. Aha, how your dirty little mouths water to +hear it! Boris, you rascal, don’t pull your sister’s pigtail. What +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span> +children! They drive me to despair.”</p> + +<p>And then Mr. Jayne arrived. He came in at the open hall door, with a +tall, fair English lady, and he was saying to her, “If you don’t mind +coming in for a moment, I will get you the book.”</p> + +<p>The hall porter stepped forward with a bow, and indicated in the +background Mrs. Jayne, her mamma, and the little Jaynes.</p> + +<p>What a moment for Mr. Jayne! What a moment for Mrs. Jayne, her mamma +and the little Jaynes! What a moment for Miss Garden! What a moment for +the hall porter, who loved both domestic reunions and quarrels, and was +as yet uncertain which this would be (it might even be both), but above +all loved moments, and that it would certainly be.</p> + +<p>And so it proved. Where Russians are, there, one may say, moments are, +for these live in moments.</p> + +<p>Olga Petrushka stepped forward with a loud cry and outstretched arms, +and exclaimed in Russian, “Ah, Franya Stefanovitch!” (one of the names +she had for him, for Russians give one another hundreds of names each, +and this accounts in part for the curious, confused state in which this +nation is often to be found)—“I have found you at last.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne, always composed, retained his calm. He shook hands with his +wife and mother-in-law and addressed them in French.</p> + +<p>“How are you, my dear Olga? Why did you not tell me you wanted to see +me? I would have come to Moscow. It is a long way to have come, with +your mother and the children too. How are you, my little villains?”</p> + +<p>“Ah, my God,” said Mrs. Jayne, also now in French, which she +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span> +spoke with rapidity and violence. “How could I stay another day in +Russia? The misery I have been through? Poor little papa—Nicolai +Nicolaivitch—they have arrested him for revolutionary propaganda and +sent him to Siberia, with my brother Feodor. They had evidence also +against mamma and myself and would have arrested us, and only barely we +escaped in time, with the little bears. The poor cherubs—kiss them, +Franya. They have been crying for their little father and the love and +good food and warm house he will give them. For now they and we have no +one but you. ‘Go to England, Olga,’ papa said as they took him. ‘It is +the one safe country. The English are good to Russian exiles, and your +husband will take care of you and mamma and the little ones....’ But +you are with a lady, Franya. Introduce us.”</p> + +<p>“I beg your pardon. Miss Garden, my wife, and Madame Naryshkin, her +mother. Miss Garden and her father are great friends of mine.... If you +will go into my rooms and wait for me a moment, Olga, I will see Miss +Garden to her pension and return.”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Miss Garden, in her fluent and exquisite French. “No, I +beg of you. I will go home alone; indeed, it is no way. Good-evening, +Madame Jayne and Madame Naryshkin.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne went out into the street with her. His unhappy eyes met hers.</p> + +<p>“To-morrow morning,” he muttered, “I shall call.... This alters +nothing.... I will come to-morrow morning and we will talk.”</p> + +<p>“Yes,” said Miss Garden. “We must talk.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne went back into the hall and escorted his family upstairs to +his rooms.</p> + +<p>“Aie, aie, aie,” shuddered Olga Petrushka, flinging off her fur coat +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span> +and cap and leaping round the room in her red dress, like a Russian +in a novel. “Let’s get warm. Come, little bears”—she spoke German +now—“to your papa’s arms. Kiss him, Katya; hug him, Boris. Tell him +we have come across Europe to be with him, now that all else is gone. +Forgive and forget, eh, Franya Maryavitch? You and I must keep one +another warm.... Aie, aie, aie, my poor papa,” she wailed in Russian. +“I keep seeing his face as they took him, and my poor Feodor’s. As +to mamma, she is dazed; she will never get over it. We must keep her +always with us, poor little mamma.... Tea at once, Franya. I am going +to be sick,” she added in Magyar, and was.</p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne laid his wife on his bed and took off her shoes and bathed +her forehead, while she moaned in Polish. Then he made tea for her and +the children and his mother-in-law, who sat heavily in a chair and +drank five cups, and looked at him with drowsy, inimical eyes, saying +never a word. He felt like a dead man, in a world full of ghosts. Who +were these, who had this claim upon him? Their clinging hands were +pulling him down, out of life into a tomb. The February evening shadows +lay coldly on his heart. These poor distraught women, these little +children—he must take infinite care of them, and let them lack for +nothing, but he must not let them come close into his life; they would +throttle it. His life, his true life, was with Rome. Rome, the gallant, +fastidious dandy, with her delicate poise, her pride, her cool wit and +grace. Not with this violent, unhappy, inconsequent Slav, chattering in +several tongues upon his bed.</p> + +<p>To-morrow he would go and talk to Rome ... explain to Rome....</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">7<br> +ENGLISH TRAGEDY</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p> + + +<p>Miss Garden received Mr. Jayne. Neither had slept much, for Mr. Jayne +had given his bed to his family and lain himself on a horsehair couch, +and Miss Garden had been troubled by her thoughts. Their faces were +pale and shadowed and heavy-eyed.</p> + +<p>Miss Garden said, “This is the end, of course. I shan’t need a week +now. Fate has intervened very opportunely.”</p> + +<p>“No,” said Mr. Jayne, with passion. “No. Nothing is changed. For God’s +sake, don’t think that our situation is changed. It is not. She wants +protection and security and a home, and I will provide all those for +her and her mother and the children. Me she does not want. They shall +have everything they want. But I shall not live with them.”</p> + +<p>“You still think that you and I can live together?” Miss Garden was +sceptical of his optimism. “I don’t think your wife would tolerate +that. No, Frank, it’s no use. They belong to you. They need you. I +can’t come between you. It would be heartless and selfish. Imagine the +situation for a moment ... it is impossible.”</p> + +<p>They both imagined it. Mr. Jayne shuddered, like a man very cold.</p> + +<p>“You don’t want to be involved in such a—such a melodrama,” he said, +bitterly.</p> + +<p>“Put it at that if you like. I take it we are neither of us fond of +melodrama. But, apart from that, I said all along, and meant it, that +if your wife wants you I can’t take you. She has first claim.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span></p> + +<p>“I shall not live with Olga Petrushka and her mother.”</p> + +<p>“That’s your own affair, of course. You are very likely right, since +you don’t get on well together. But you must see that you and I +can’t....”</p> + +<p>Miss Garden stopped, for her voice began to shake. How she loved him! +She pressed her hands together in her lap till the rings bruised her +fingers.</p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne gazed at her gloomily, observing her lightly poised body, +slim and elegant in a dark blue taffeta dress which stood out behind +below the waist in a kind of shelf, and made her shape rather like that +of a swan. He saw her slight, anguished hands that hurt each other, and +the pale tremor of her face.</p> + +<p>“She’s been through hell, and she wants you,” said Miss Garden, trying +to keep control.</p> + +<p>“I tell you I can’t live with her, nor she with me. Do you want to turn +my life into a tragi-comic opera?”</p> + +<p>“Most life is a tragi-comic opera,” said Rome, trying to smile. +“Perhaps all.”</p> + +<p>“But you’re resolved anyhow to keep yours clear of my tragi-comedies,” +he flung at her.</p> + +<p>Then he apologised.</p> + +<p>“I don’t mean that; I don’t know what I’m saying.... Oh, I won’t press +you now to decide. We’ll wait, Rome. You’ll see, in a month or so, how +things have arranged themselves—how easy it will all be. Olga will +have recovered her balance by then; she changes from hour to hour, like +all Russians. In a few weeks she will be tired of me and want to be in +Paris, or back in Russia. She doesn’t really want me; it’s only that +she is unstrung by trouble. Upset; that’s what she is. All I ask you to +do is to wait.”</p> + +<p>“No, Frank. It can never be, unless she goes sometime to live with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span> +someone else—some other man. Otherwise she would be likely, even if +she left you for a time, to want you again at intervals. I can’t make a +third.... You see, whatever happens now, your family must always be a +real fact to me, not an abstraction. I’ve seen them.... Katya is just +like you—your chin and eyes.... The children love you very much; I saw +that.... And she loves you, too....”</p> + +<p>“She does not. That’s not love—not as I know love.”</p> + +<p>“As to that, we all know love in different ways, I suppose.... Truly, +Francis, I have quite decided. I can’t live with you.... No, no, +don’t....”</p> + +<p>He was holding her in his arms and kissing her face, her lips, her +eyes, muttering entreaties.</p> + +<p>“If you loved me you’d do it.”</p> + +<p>“I do love you, and I shan’t do it.”</p> + +<p>“I’m asking nothing dishonourable of you. You don’t think it wrong on +general principles; yesterday you were willing to consider it. You’re +just refusing life for a quixotic whim ... refusing, denying life.... +Rome, you can’t do it. Don’t you know, now you’re in my arms, that you +can’t, that it would be to deny the best in us?”</p> + +<p>“What’s the best, what’s the worst? I don’t know, nor do you. I’m not +an ethicist. All I know is that your wife, while she wants you, or +thinks she wants you, has first claim. It’s a question of fairness and +decent feeling.... Or bring it down, if you like, to a question of +taste. Perhaps that is the only basis there really is for decisions of +this sort for people like us.”</p> + +<p>“Taste. That’s a fine cry to mess up two lives by. I’d almost rather +you were religious and talked of the will of God. One could respect +that, at least.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span></p> + +<p>“I can’t do that, as I happen not to be sure whether God exists. And +it would make nothing simpler really, since one would then have to +discover what one believed the will of God to be. Don’t do religious +people the injustice of believing that anything is simpler or easier +for them; it’s more difficult, since life is more exacting.... But it +comes to the same thing; all these processes of thought lead to the +same result if applied by the same mind. It depends on the individual +outlook. And this is mine.... Oh, don’t make it so damnably difficult +for us both, my dearest....”</p> + +<p>Miss Garden, who never swore and never wept, here collapsed into tears, +all her urbane breeding broken at last. He consoled her so tenderly, so +pitifully, so mournfully, that she wept the more for love of him.</p> + +<p>“Go now,” she said at last. “We mustn’t meet again till we can both do +it quietly, without such pain. Papa and I are going back to London next +week. Write to me sometime and let me know how you do and where you +are. My dearest Frank....”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">8<br> +FOUNDERED</p> + + +<p>Rome was alone. She sat in a hard Italian chair, quite still, and felt +cold and numb, and as if she had died. Drowned she felt, under deep +cold seas of passion and of pain. Wrecked and foundered and drowned, +at the bottom of grey seas. Something cried, small and weak and hurt +within her, and it was the voice of love, or (as Mr. Jayne would have +it) of life; life which she had denied and slain. Never had she greatly +loved before; never would she greatly love again; and the great love +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span> +she now had she was slaying. That was what the hurt voice cried in +her as she sat alone in the great, bare, chilly room, the sad little +scaldino on the floor at her feet.</p> + +<p>She was dry-eyed now that she was alone, and had no more to face Mr. +Jayne’s love and pain. Her own she could bear. Harder and harder and +cooler and more cynical she would grow, as she walked the world alone, +leaving love behind. Was that the choice? Did one either do the decent, +difficult thing, and wither to bitterness in doing it, or take the +easy road, the road of joy and fulfilment, and be thereby enriched and +fulfilled? And what was fulfilment, and what enrichment? What, ah, +what, was this strange tale that life is; what its meaning, what its +purpose, what its end?</p> + +<p>Rome did not know. She knew one thing only. Frustration, renunciation, +death—whether you called your criterion the will of God, or social +ethics, or a quixotic whim, or your own private standards of decency +and taste, it led you to these; led you to the same sad place, where +you lay drowned, dead beneath bitter seas.</p> + +<p>Mid-day chimed over the city. Miss Garden rose, and put on her outdoor +things, and went forth to meet her papa for lunch. Life moves on, +through whatever deserts, and one must compose oneself to meet it, +never betraying one’s soul.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">9<br> +VICKY ON THE WORLD</p> + + +<p>“It’s good to have you back again, my Rome,” Vicky said. “I miss you +at my parties. There are lots of new people I want you to meet. An +adorable Oxford youth, whom you’ll find after your own heart. Already +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span> +he writes essays like a polished gentleman of the world, and he a +round-faced cherub barely out of school. A coming man, my dear, mark +my words. Such brilliance, such style, such absurd urbanity! Denman +introduced him. I prefer him enormously to Denman’s other cronies—that +affected Mr. Le Gallienne for instance, and that conceited young +Beardsley. Not but that young Beardsley, too, has a wit. I’ll say that +for Denman—he keeps a witty table.... Well, have you brought papa back +still a good Roman? Father Stanton says, by the way, we’re to call the +Pope’s church in this country the Italian Mission. It’s quite time papa +had a change of creed, anyhow; I begin to fear for his health since he +read ‘Robert Elsmere’ and wasn’t driven by it to honest doubt.”</p> + +<p>“Neither,” said Rome, “was he driven by the Forum to the pagan gods. +One begins to think that papa is settling down.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I trust not. Dear papa, he’s not old yet.... What a country you +have come back to, though, my dear. Strikes everywhere—dockers, +railwaymen, miners, even tailors.... Maurice is perfectly happy, +encouraging them all. But, darling Maurice, I’m <i>seriously</i> afraid +he may cut Amy’s throat one day. Serve her right, the little cat. If +I were Maurice I’d beat her. Perhaps he will one day, when he’s not +quite sober. I wish she’d run off with one of the vulgar men she flirts +with, and leave him in peace. <i>He’ll</i> never run off, because he +won’t leave the children to her. Poor old boy, he’s so desperately up +against things the whole time. Mamma’s miserable about him. I know, +though she never says a word. However, she’s consoled by all her nice +grandchildren. Even grandpapa, you know, admits that the deplorable +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span> +modern generation is doing its duty as regards multiplication. Why +<i>do</i> old Bible clergymen like grandpapa think it so important to +produce more life? One would think, one really <i>would</i> think, +that there was plenty of that already. But no. Be fruitful, they say: +multiply: replenish the earth. It says so in Genesis, and clergymen of +grandpapa’s generation can’t get away from Genesis. Poor grandpapa. +He’s writing to the <i>Guardian</i>, as usual, about the Modern Woman. +She’s dreadfully on his mind. Latchkeys. He doesn’t think women +ought to have them. Why not? He doesn’t explain. Men may open their +front doors with keys, but women must, he thinks, always ring up the +unfortunate maids. He can think of no reasons why; he is past reasons, +but not past convictions. What, he asked in Stanley’s drawing-room the +other day, is to take the place, for women, of the old sanctities and +safeties?” “The new safeties, I imagine, sir,” Denman replied. “Grandpa +grunted and frowned; he thinks women on bicycles really indecent, poor +old dear. As a matter of fact, Denman does, too—at least ungraceful, +which to him is the same thing. But Rome, my dear, you simply must +get one. We’re all doing it now. It’s glorious; the nearest approach +to wings permitted to men and women here below. Intoxicating! Stanley +lives on hers, now her son has safely arrived. And it’s transforming +clothes. Short jackets and cloth caps are coming in. Bustles are +no more. And, my dear—<i>bloomers</i> are seen in the land! Yes, +actually. Stanley cycles in them; she looks delightful, whatever +Denman says. No, I don’t. Charles doesn’t approve. Conspicuous, he +thinks. And, of course, so it is. Well, men will be men. They’ll never +be civilised where women are concerned, most of them. But the poor +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span> +silly old world really does march a little. We’re all getting most +thrillingly <i>fin-de-siècle</i>. I wonder if all times have been as +deliriously modern, while they lasted, as our times.”</p> + +<p>“Probably,” said Rome. “It’s one of the more certain, though more +ephemeral, qualities that times have. I wonder at what age grandpapa +began deploring it. Not during the Regency or under William the Fourth, +I imagine. I suppose <i>his</i> grandpapa was deploring it then.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, and there’s another shocking female modernism become quite common +this winter, my dear. <i>Cigarettes!</i> I haven’t perpetrated that +myself yet, as Charles thinks that unfeminine too, and I’m sure the +children would steal them and be sick. Besides, I don’t think it really +becoming to an elegant female. But Stanley does. That literary set of +hers is a funny mixture of forwardness and reaction. Forward women +and reactionary men, I think. Grandpapa hasn’t tumbled to Stanley’s +cigarettes yet. My hat, when he does! Well, it’s a funny world. I +suppose my daughters will grow up smoking like their brothers, without +thinking twice about it.... The darlings, they’re all so troublesome +just now. That kindergarten can’t or won’t teach Imogen to speak +properly. If she gabbles like this at three, what will she do at +thirty? And Hughie drawls and contradicts....”</p> + +<p>Their talk then ran along family lines.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">10<br> +STANLEY AND DENMAN</p> + + +<p>Stanley pedalled swiftly, a sturdy, attractive figure in serge +knickerbockers (“bloomers” they were called while that graceful and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span> +sensible fashion of our ancestresses endured), along a smooth, sandy +road between pine woods. The April sunlight flickered on the pale brown +needle-strewn road; the light wind sang in the pines and blew dark +curls of hair from under Stanley’s sailor-hat brim. Her bicycle basket +was full of primroses. Her round, brown cheeks glowed pink; her lips +were parted in a low, tuneless song (tuneless because Stanley could +never get a tune right). It expressed her happiness, relieved the +pressure of her joy at being alive. Such a day! Such a bicycle! Such +sweet and merry air!</p> + +<p>She stopped, got off her bicycle, leant it against a gate, and lay +down flat on her back in the wood, staring up into the green gloom. +London, Denman, her baby, were far off. She was alone with beauty. She +was passionately realising the moment, its fleeting exquisiteness, its +still, fragile beauty. So exquisite it was, so frail and so transitory, +that she could have wept, even as she clasped it close. To savour the +loveliness of moments, to bathe in them as in a wine-gold, sun-warmed +sea, and then to pass on to the next—that was life.</p> + +<p>Then, presently, the moment lost its keenness, and she was no longer +alone with beauty. Her husband and her baby broke the charmed circle, +looking in. How she loved them! But they took from her something; +her loneliness, that queer, eerie separateness, that only bachelors +and spinsters know. They need not, to know it, be unattached, virgin +bachelors and spinsters; love does not spoil separateness, but +households do.</p> + +<p>Stanley rose to her feet, brushed the pine-needles from her neat +clothes and untidy hair, put on her sailor-hat and got on her bicycle +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span> +again. Before her there was a long slope down. To take it, brakeless, +feet up on the rest, was like flying. Stanley was no longer a mystic, a +wife or a mother; she was a hoydenish little girl out for a holiday.</p> + +<p>She reached Weybridge station and entrained for London in one of +the halting, smoke-palled, crawling trains of the period. In it she +read Ibsen’s “Doll’s House,” for she and Denman were going to see it +next week at the Independent Theatre. What a play! What moralising! +What purpose! What deplorable solemnity! There seemed, to the set of +light-hearted and cynical æsthetes among whom Stanley moved, nothing +to do about “A Doll’s House” but to laugh at it. These strange, solemn +Scandinavians! Yet numbers of cultured readers in England took it +seriously, as cultured English readers love to take foreign plays. They +found it impressive and fine, almost a gospel. Further, the bourgeois, +the Philistines, the people who are inaccurately said to spend more +time than the elect <i>in the street</i> (why is this believed of +them?), mocked at it, so that there must be something in it, for, as +has been well said (or if it has not, it should have been), majorities +are always wrong.</p> + +<p>“The fact is,” said Stanley to herself, “the fact is, cultivated people +like tracts. Especially cultivated women like tracts about their own +emancipation. And, of course, in a way, they’re right.... But plays +with purposes....”</p> + +<p>It will be observed that Stanley, whom nature had made to welcome +purposes wherever found, had well assimilated the spirit of her +literary group, which preferred art to be for the sake of art only. She +had, as Vicky said of her, so much Zeitgeist. What seemed to her and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span> +her friends the good drama of the moment was light social comedy, full +of gay, sparkling nonsense and epigrams for the sake of epigrams. Or +the more profound and mordant wit of Mr. George Bernard Shaw, who had +lately begun to write plays. Mr. Shaw had, indeed, purpose, but his wit +carried it off.</p> + +<p>Waterloo. Even the trains of 1891 got there at last. Stanley went to +look for her bicycle. Finding it and wheeling it off, she felt herself +to be one of the happiest persons in the station. She had everything. A +bicycle, a husband, a baby, a house, freedom, love, literary and social +opportunity, charming friends. Life was indeed felicitous to such as +she.</p> + +<p>“Progress of Royal Labour Commission,” the newspaper placards shouted. +“More L.C.C. scandals. Free brass bands for the poor!”</p> + +<p>Stanley frowned. It was a damnable world, after all. A vulgar, +grudging, grabbing world. The voice of the press was as the shrill +voice of Amy, the wife of Maurice. “Free brass bands for the poor!” +That was how Amy would say it, with her silly, gibing laugh. Even, a +little, how Irving would say it. But Irving, though he despised the +democratic ways of the London County Council, and free brass bands +for the poor, was not silly or spiteful. He was merely a delightful, +philistine young gentleman on the Stock Exchange.</p> + +<p>Stanley bicycled (amid perils less great, less numerous in the year +1891 than now) to Margaretta Street, Chelsea. There was the house, +small, dingy, white, with a green door and a tiny square of front +garden. Stanley found her latchkey, flung open the green door with a +kind of impetuous, happy eagerness, and came face to face with her +husband in the little hall.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span></p> + +<p>“Hullo,” he said, and quizzically surveyed her, up and down, from her +blown hair and flushed cheeks to her neat, roomy knickerbockers and +stout brogues. “Hullo.”</p> + +<p>“Hullo, Den. I’ve had the <i>rippingest</i> ride. How’s baby? And +yourself?”</p> + +<p>“Both flourish, I believe.... You know we’ve people to dinner to-night? +You’ve not left yourself a great deal of time, have you?... You don’t +look your best, my dear girl, if I may say so.”</p> + +<p>“No, I expect not; I’m blown to bits. What’s it matter? Come on, Den, +we must both hurry.”</p> + +<p>She ran upstairs, turned hot water into the bath, tiptoed into the +nursery where her son slept, and back to her room. Denman was in his +dressing-room, beyond the open door.</p> + +<p>“I’ve had a lovely ride, Den. Weybridge way.”</p> + +<p>“Glad you enjoyed it. But lovely’s the wrong word. Anything less lovely +than a woman in those unspeakable garments I never saw. I detest them. +Women ought to wear graceful, trailing things always.... I can’t think +why you <i>do</i> it. Your sense of beauty must be sadly defective.”</p> + +<p>“Beauty—oh, well, it’s convenience that matters most, surely. For that +matter, very few modern clothes, male or female, are beautiful. But I +don’t think these are ugly. One can’t trail all the time; it’s a dirty +trick on foot and dangerous on a bicycle.”</p> + +<p>“It’s better to be elegant, dirty and dangerous than frumpish, clean +and safe. That’s an epigram. The fact is, women ought never to indulge +in activities, either of body or mind; it’s not their rôle. They can’t +do it gracefully.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p> + +<p>“What do you want them to do then, poor things? Just sit about?”</p> + +<p>“Precisely that. You’ve expressed it accurately, if not very +beautifully. An elegant inertia is what is required of women ... what +on earth has that girl done with my black socks?... Any activity +necessary to the human race can be performed by such men as are +prepared to sacrifice themselves. All this feminine pedalling about and +playing ridiculous games and speaking on platforms and writing books +and serving on committees—Lord save us.”</p> + +<p>“They’d get awfully fat, your sitting-about females; they wouldn’t be +graceful long. Hurry up, Den, or you’ll be late, not I.”</p> + +<p>“We shall both be late. It matters very little. If any of our +guests have the bad taste to be punctual it will serve them right. +Crackanthorpe won’t be punctual, anyhow, he never is.... Make yourself +lovely to-night, Stan; I want to forget those awful bloomers. They make +you look like a horrible joke in <i>Punch</i> about the New Woman.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I’d rather look like the New Woman than like the ‘Woman (not +new)’ in the same pictures—sanctimonious idiots.... Really, Den, +you’re silly about women....”</p> + +<p>“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Denman, smothered in his shirt.</p> + +<p>Stanley went to the bathroom with a touch of ill-humour, which she sang +away, like a kettle, in clouds of steam.</p> + +<p>Denman, hearing the tuneless song, winced in amused distaste. As a +matter of fact, he would have liked a bath himself.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span></p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">11<br> +A YOUNG MASHER</p> + + +<p>How agreeable, how elegant and how fastidious were the young mashers +of the early nineties! We shall not look upon their like again. Du +Maurier has immortalised them, beautiful creatures with slim waists +and swallow-tailed evening coats and clear-cut patrician features, +chatting to magnificent women with curled mouths, straight brows and +noble, sweeping figures. The women of those days, if we are to believe +Du Maurier, were nobly built as goddesses, classical-featured, generous +of stature and of bosom, but roped in straitly between ribs and hips, +so as to produce waists that nature never planned. Because of this +compression, they would often suffer greatly, and sometimes fall ill +with anæmia, or cancer, or both, and die in great anguish. But, while +they yet lived and breathed, they were noble and elegant objects, and +their gentlemen friends matched them for grace.</p> + +<p>Irving Arthur Penrhyn Garden, aged twenty-eight, earning a comfortable +and honest livelihood on the Stock Exchange, was a masher. He lived in +bachelor chambers in Bruton Street, and was a popular diner-out and +dance-goer, for, though he had not brilliance or fame, he had dark +and slim good looks, cheerfulness, <i>savoir faire</i>, and was that +creature so sought of hostesses, an agreeable young bachelor. His +tastes were healthy, his wits sound, his political and religious views +gentlemanly, and his prospects satisfactory. Present correctness and +future prosperity were stamped on Irving Garden; so unlike that queer +fish, his brother Maurice, the Radical journalist, who was stamped +with present incorrectness and future failure. Irving would, no doubt, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span> +make a good marriage sometime. Meanwhile he was enjoying life. He had +no part with the highbrows, the cranks, the fops, the æsthetes or any +other extreme persons; he took no interest in foreign literature, +Home Rule for Ireland, the Woman’s Movement, the Independent Theatre, +labour agitations, the new art, George Meredith, or Russian exiles, +finding them (respectively) uninteresting, impracticable, unattractive, +depressing, paid-by-anarchist-gold, queer, unintelligible and a damned +nuisance. He considered his brother Maurice to be playing the wrong +game; Stanley’s friends he thought an affected, conceited crew, both +the men and the women being unsexed, and for ever writing things one +didn’t want to read. Rome fell too easily into superfluous irony, +so that people never knew when she was pulling their legs, and if +she didn’t marry soon, now that she was over thirty, people would +begin thinking her an old maid. Una was all right, but shouldn’t have +married down. And, though Irving was an affectionate youth and loved +his parents, he did think it a little comic of the pater to change his +religion <i>quite</i> so often; it made people smile. There should be +limits to the number of religions allowed to each man in his life. +Anyhow, what was wrong with the C. of E.? On the whole, Vicky was the +member of his family of whom Irving most approved. Vicky seemed to him +what a woman should be. She looked pretty, dressed and danced well, +was amusing, lived in the right part of London, and gave very decent, +lively little dinners, at which people weren’t always trying to be +clever. Or anyhow <i>he</i> wasn’t asked to the ones at which they +tried to be clever.</p> + +<p>And with all this, Irving was no fool. He was doing very well at his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span> +job, had a good sound head, quite well stocked with ideas, and knew his +way about.</p> + +<p>Such was Irving Arthur Penrhyn Garden, walking cheerfully, gracefully +and competently through the year of grace 1891.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">12<br> +RUSSIAN INTERLUDE</p> + + +<p>That summer Russian refugees were greatly the mode. They would flee +to Great Britain in shoals from the fearful atrocities of their +government. Those who came were mostly of the intellectual classes (the +less intellectual being too stupid to move), who had been plotting, +or writing, or speaking, or otherwise expressing their distaste for +their country’s constitution, and thus incurring the displeasure of the +authorities. Some of them had been sent to Siberia and had escaped; +others had served their time there and returned; others again had not +yet visited that land, but feared that they might. Once in London, they +found kind English intellectuals eager to take an interest in them, +and plenty of their own countrymen with whom to meet and continue to +plot. It was quite the fashion, in the nineties, to have a few exiled +Russians at your parties. They introduced a new way of taking tea, very +nasty, with lemon and no milk. Vicky’s youngest daughter, Imogen, as +an infant, was once given a sip of this tea from the cup of a hairy +Russian professor, and was sent up to the nursery for spewing it out. +Imogen developed thus an early and unjust distaste for Russians which +did not leave her through life.</p> + +<p>In the May of 1891, some new Russian refugees suddenly broke +on London—the unexpected and hitherto little mentioned wife, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span> +mother-in-law and children of Mr. Jayne, the brilliant writer of essays +and memoirs. It had been vaguely rumoured before, that Mr. Jayne had +some kind of Russian wife, but no one had expected her to make an +appearance; it had been supposed that Mr. Jayne, being a man of some +<i>savoir faire</i>, would have seen to that. However, here she was, a +large and handsome Russian woman with two large and handsome children, +a stout, tragic, yet conversational mamma, an inconsequent manner of +speech, like that of Russians in novels, and a wide acquaintance with +other Russian refugees, with whom she plotted on Sunday afternoons and +all through Thursday nights. She settled, with her mother and children, +in Mr. Jayne’s flat. Mr. Jayne left the flat to them and took rooms of +his own some way off; he probably thought he would be in the way if he +lived in the flat, where Mrs. Jayne entertained her fellow countrymen +a good deal. Mrs. Jayne accused him bitterly of neglecting her in her +loneliness and grief. He replied that experience had proved that they +were not happy together, and that, therefore, he would provide for the +support of her, her mother and his two children, but would not share a +dwelling with them, which would be both foolish and immoral. He added +that, as she knew, he wished she and her mother would sometime see +their way to living abroad, where they would be much happier. Mrs. +Jayne replied that they intended to live in London until the Day of +Deliverance, by which she meant the day when they could with safety +return to Russia. She then went into hysterics and said that doubtless +he wished her dead.</p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne said, “These scenes make life impossible. You drive me to +leave London. I shall live in Italy for the present. My bank will pay +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span> +you an allowance, and I will visit you from time to time.”</p> + +<p>“Why do you hate me so, Franya Stefanovitch?” she cried.</p> + +<p>“I don’t hate you. But you know as well as I do what a poor business we +make of living together. It is one of the worst and most unintelligent +forms of immorality for two people who irritate each other to expose +themselves to misery and anger by living together. Therefore, with no +malice, we will live apart.”</p> + +<p>“There’s another woman. You wish to live with a mistress. I know it.”</p> + +<p>“If you think so, get a divorce.”</p> + +<p>“Never. I will never divorce you. You are my husband, and the father of +my poor little bears. Who ever heard of a faithful husband? We say in +Russia that they are like the golden bear—a fabulous creature. No, I +must put up with your infidelities. But if you leave me for too long I +shall come and find you, and stick a knife into you and your mistress. +I am not patient, Franya.”</p> + +<p>“I never supposed that you were, Olga. And I may tell you, though I do +not expect you to believe me, that I have no mistress, and never have +had.”</p> + +<p>She laughed at him.</p> + +<p>“Ha! ha! Are you the golden bear, then, found at last? Go away with +you, you and your lies. You make me sick.... I wish that you were dead.”</p> + +<p>The last part of this conversation took place at the hall door, and, as +Mr. Jayne went out, a young Russian came in. He was Sergius Dmitri, a +cousin of Mrs. Jayne’s, a student, who had also fled from Russia during +the recent troubles. He was a passionate admirer of his cousin, and +wished very much that she would get rid of this cold, unloving English +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span> +husband of hers, and come to live with him. He heard her last words to +Mr. Jayne.</p> + +<p>“Sergius,” she said, seeing him, “I want you to do me a service. Follow +my husband this afternoon and see where he goes and whom he sees. I +suspect him of having a mistress, and I wish to be certain. If he +has, he will go straight to her now.... I’ll be revenged on him, the +villain. After him, Sergius.”</p> + +<p>The young Russian saw Mr. Jayne disappearing round the corner and +hurried after him.</p> + +<p>Mr. Jayne went to call on the Gardens. He took Rome out with him, and +they sat on a bench in the garden in Bloomsbury Square.</p> + +<p>“You must come away with me,” he said. “We will live in Italy. She +hates me. So does her mother. I can’t live in the same town with them, +let alone the same house. I have told her so. I am going to live in +Italy, and work there at my books. Am I to go alone, or will you come?”</p> + +<p>Rome saw across the square the windows of the house of her papa and +mamma. She considered them; she considered also life, in many of its +aspects. She considered international marriages, and unhappy family +life. Love she considered, and hate, the enduringness and the moral and +spiritual consequences of each. She thought of her own happiness, of +Mr. Jayne’s, of Mrs. Jayne’s, of that of their two children. Of social +ethics she thought, and of personal joy, and of human laws, which of +them stand merely on expediency, which on some ultimate virtue. She +thought also of vows, of contracts, and of honour. Having considered +these things, and considering also her very great love for Mr. Jayne +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span> +and his for her, she turned to him and opened her lips to reply.</p> + +<p>But the words, whatever they were which she would have uttered—and +neither Mr. Jayne nor anyone else was ever to know—were checked before +her tongue formed them. For someone jumped out of the trees behind the +bench on which they sat, and jabbed a long knife into Mr. Jayne’s back, +between the shoulders, and rushed away.</p> + +<p>Other people near ran up. Mr. Jayne had fallen choking forward. They +did not dare to remove the knife, but carried him out into the square +and into the Gardens’ house, where he lay on his side on a couch, +unconscious, choking and bleeding at the lungs. The doctor was in +attendance in ten minutes, but could do little, and in twenty Mr. Jayne +was dead.</p> + +<p>The assassin had, meanwhile, been captured. He proved to be a Russian, +one Sergius Dmitri, described as a student, living in London. The only +account of his action he gave was that he had known Mr. Jayne in Russia +and disliked him, and that Mr. Jayne had not done his duty by his wife, +who was Sergius Dmitri’s cousin. So Sergius Dmitri had, in a moment of +impulse, knifed Mr. Jayne. No, he could not say that he regretted his +action.</p> + +<p>His record showed him to be of the anarchist persuasion, and a thrower +of several bombs in his native land, some of which had reached their +mark. Human life was not, it was apparent, sacred to him. Mrs. Jayne, +prostrated with grief, cursed him for murdering her husband, the father +of her children, who had devotedly loved her and whom she had devotedly +loved. He had never neglected her; that was a fancy of her cousin’s, +who had been a prey to jealousy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p> + +<p>Sergius Dmitri was hanged. Mrs. Jayne continued for a time to live +in her husband’s flat, supported by his money, but, soon tiring of +widowhood, married a fellow-countryman and went, with her mother and +children, to live in Paris.</p> + +<p>Miss Garden, who had been so close a witness of the horrid event, and +who was known besides as an intimate friend of Mr. Jayne’s, never +afterwards referred to the affair, even to her relatives. Miss Garden +was no giver of confidences; no one ever learnt how she had felt about +the business or about Mr. Jayne. There were not wanting, of course, +those who said that these two had loved too well, had, in fact, been +involved in an affair. But, in view of Miss Garden’s reputation for +cool inviolability, and of her calm manner after the tragedy, such +rumours obtained little credence. Miss Garden did, indeed, leave London +shortly after the inquest, and spent the rest of the summer in the +country, but she returned in the autumn as apparently bland, cool and +composed as always.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">13<br> +NINETY-TWO</p> + + +<p>Eighteen ninety-two. Mr. Garden was troubled by the death, in January, +of Cardinal Manning, and by the disputes conducted in the press between +Professor Huxley, Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll concerning the +Book of Genesis and the existence of God, which had, in the eyes of all +these eminent persons, some strange connection one with another. Mrs. +Garden’s father, the Dean, was, on the contrary, troubled by neither of +these events, since he did not care for the Cardinal, knew that the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span> +Professor had not, theologically, a leg to stand on, and the Duke, at +most, one. Grandpapa was more stirred, in the early part of 1892, by +the untimely death of the Duke of Clarence, by the alarming increase of +female bicyclists, and by the prevalent nuisance of that popular song, +“Ta-ra-ra-ra-boomdeay.”</p> + +<p>Vicky was stirred by Paderewski, by the influenza epidemic, which all +her children got, and by the new high-shouldered sleeve; Maurice by the +doings of the L.C.C. Progressives, the imminence of the parliamentary +elections, the just claims but ignorant utterances of the Labour +Party, woman’s suffrage, the birth of the <i>Morning Leader</i>, and +Mr. Charles Booth’s “Life and Labour in London”; Stanley by woman’s +suffrage, “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” the comedies of Mr. Oscar Wilde +and Mr. J. M. Barrie, “The Light That Failed,” and Mr. H. G. Wells; +Irving by golf, Mr. Arthur Roberts, Miss Marie Lloyd and “Sherlock +Holmes”; and Una by the arrival of a new baby and the purchase of a new +hunter.</p> + +<p>Rome was not very greatly stirred by any of these things. Into her +old detached amusement at the queer pageant of life had come a faint +weariness, as if nothing were very much worth while. If she thought +anything worth serious comment, she did not reveal it. Life was to +her at this time more than ever a tale told by an idiot, signifying +nothing. She went on her way as usual, reading, seeing pictures, +hearing music, meeting people, talking, smoking, bicycling, leading the +life led by intelligent dilettanti in the small, cultivated nucleus +of a great city. There was nothing to show that she endured the world +with difficulty; that in the early mornings she would wake and lie +helpless, without armour, waiting the onslaught of the new day, and in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span> +the evenings would slip from her armour with a shivering sigh, to drown +engulfed by darkness and the hopeless passion of the night. “Some day,” +she would say to herself, “I shall not mind so much. The edge will get +blunt. Some day ... some day....”</p> + +<p>But the black night mocked her, and she could not see that day on the +furthermost dip of the horizon; she could only see Mr. Jayne’s dear, +pale face turned to her with wistful hoping in his grey eyes behind +their glasses, and he was saying, “Am I to go alone, or will you come?” +and then, even as, having considered life, she opened her lips to +reply, there was Mr. Jayne lurching forward, choked with blood, his +question answered, for he was to go alone.</p> + +<p>“My dear,” whispered Rome, in tears, to the unanswering, endless +night. “My dear. Come back to me, and I will give you anything and +everything.... But you will never come back, and I can give you nothing +any more.”</p> + +<p>And thus she could not see, however far off, that day when she should +not mind so much, that day when the edge should get blunt.</p> + +<p>Maurice, in 1892, was against very nearly everything. He was against +the Conservative party, for the usual reasons. He was against the +Liberal party, because Mr. Gladstone opposed woman’s suffrage and +the Labour party and the Eight Hour Day. He was against the Woman’s +Suffrage Bill because it was a class Bill. He was against Mr. Keir +Hardie and the new Labour party because they talked what he considered +sentimental tosh, damaging their own cause, and because Amy, his wife, +echoed it parrot-like. He was against the Social Democratic Federation +for the same reasons, and because it did not prevent its members +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span> +from making bombs. He was against the socialist meetings in Hyde Park +and Trafalgar Square which he had been used to approve, because they +too talked tosh. More and more, as Maurice advanced from the heat +of youth into the clear-sighted unsentimentality of middle life (he +was now thirty-five), he disliked tosh, and more and more most of +the world seemed to him to be for ever talking it. The people, the +parliamentarians, the press, the government classes, the imperialists, +the democrats, the middle classes, rivalled one another in the flow of +cant and nonsense they emitted. O God, for clear heads and hard facts, +unmuddled by humbug and romanticism! Almost, Maurice was impelled to +vote for Lord Salisbury, whose cool, cynical hardness was a relief; +but, after all, deeper than his hatred of sentimentalism, lay his +hatred of injustice and economic cruelty and class privilege. He was a +democrat impatient with democracy, a journalist despising journalism, +the product of an expensive education at war with educational +inequality, a politician loathing politics, a husband chafing at his +wife, a child of his age in rebellion against it, an agnostic irritated +by the thoughtful, loquacious agnosticism of his day.</p> + +<p>“There seems,” as his mother said of him, “to be no hole into which +Maurice fits. Whereas Stanley fits into them all. They are both too +extreme, dear children. It is neither necessary, surely, to be fighting +everything all one’s time, nor to chase after every wind that blows.... +I sometimes think that the best balanced and the most <i>solid</i> of +you all is Una.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, dear mamma,” Vicky replied. “Una is fast-rooted in the soil. +Country people are always the best balanced. The only new things Una +takes up are bicycles and golf; the only old things she drops are her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span> +<i>g</i>’s. Una is eternal and sublime; there’s nothing of the new +woman about her, and nothing of the reactionary, either. There never +was anyone less self-conscious, or less conscious of her period. All +the rest of us think we’re moderns, but Una knows not times; she merely +swings along, her dogs at her heels, her children at her skirts, her +golf-clubs over her shoulder, and always another baby on the way. And +the beauty of the child! She’d make a sensation in London—though she’s +not the type of the moment, not elegant or artificial, too much the +unsophisticated child of nature. Oh, yes, Una is on the grand scale.”</p> + +<p>“Well, your grandfather thinks even Una is too modern. It’s the golf +and bicycling and the <i>g</i>’s, I suppose. I suppose the fact is that +it’s difficult, in these days, to avoid being new. You children and +your friends all are. In fact, the whole world seems to be.”</p> + +<p>“The world is always new, mamma darling, and always old. It’s no newer +than it was in 1880, or 1870—in fact, not so new, by some years. The +only year in which it was really new was, according to grandpapa and +the annotators of the Book of Genesis, B.C. 4004.”</p> + +<p>“Yes, I daresay it was sadly new then, and no doubt grandpapa would +have found it so. But somehow one hears the <i>word</i> a good deal +just now, used by young people as well as old. What with new women, +and new art, and new literature, and new humour, and the new hedonism +that Denman and Stanley talk about, and that seems to mean making your +drawing-room like an old curiosity shop and burning incense in it and +lighting it with darkened crimson lamps and lying on divans with black +and gold cushions and smoking scented cigarettes and reading improper +plays aloud.... Only Rome says that isn’t new in the least, but +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span> +thousands of years old.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Rome! Rome thinks nothing new. She was born blasé. She hasn’t got +grandpapa’s or Stanley’s fresh mind. She always expects the unexpected. +Oscar Wilde says that to do that shows a thoroughly modern mind. If +Rome had been Eve, she’d have looked at the new world through a monocle +(she’d have worn that, even if nothing else) and seen that it was +stale, and said with a yawn, All this is very <i>vieux jeu</i>.”</p> + +<p>“And very possibly,” said mamma, “it was.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">14<br> +FIN-DE-SIÈCLE</p> + + +<p>Ninety-three passed. In it grandpapa died, others said of influenza +following on old age, but he himself would have it that it was of a +shock he received one day when driving, convalescent, in Hyde Park; +for his horses, very respectable and old-fashioned animals, shied at a +lady bicyclist, and grandpapa’s heart jolted, and when he got home he +took to his bed and never rose again. So much, he whispered, hoarsely +and somewhat sardonically, to his daughter, for the New Woman and her +pranks. But what did it signify, he added. If he was not to get well +of this attack, he was ready to go. He trusted (though a worm) in his +Maker, and was not unprepared. So grandpapa, dignified to the last, +departed from this life, one of the last of the Regency bucks and the +Tory clerics, perhaps the last of all to condemn on theological grounds +the arithmetic book of Bishop Colenso.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span></p> + +<p>Fantastic observers might have imagined that, with the departure of +this firm old Victorian, who had so disapproved of novelty, life span +still more giddily on its rapid way. Certainly the years 1893 and 1894 +do, for some reason, appear to have struck both those who gloried +in novelty, and those whom it shocked, as more than usually new. +The audacious experimentalism which is always with us was even more +self-conscious then than is customary. Such are time’s revenges that +the so daring social, literary and intellectual cleavages made by our +forefathers in those years are now regarded as quaintly old-fashioned +compromises with freedom, even as our own audacities will doubtless be +regarded thirty years hence. But the people of the nineties, even as +the people of the eighties, seventies, sixties, and so back, and even +as the people of the twentieth century, thought they were emancipating +themselves from tradition, saw themselves as bold buccaneers sailing +uncharted seas, and found it great fun. The illusion of advance is +sustaining, to all right-minded persons, and should by all means be +cultivated. It gives self-confidence and poise. It even seems to please +elderly persons to mark or fancy changes of habit, which they have no +wish to emulate, among their juniors, and it certainly pleases their +juniors to be thus remarked upon, for they, too, believe that they +are something new—the new young, as they have always delighted to +call themselves—so all are pleased and no harm is done. The eighteen +nineties were no different in this respect, from the nineteen twenties.</p> + +<p>But 1894 does actually seem to have been a more amusing year than most +that we have now. What with the New Humour, and the New Earnestness, +and the New Writers, and the New Remorse, and the New Woman, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span> +the New Drama, and the New Journalism, and the New Child, and the +New Parent, and the New Conversation, and the telephone, and the +gramophone, and the new enormous sleeves, there was a great deal of +novelty about.</p> + +<p>It is a curious time to look back upon to-day. Curious to read the +newspapers, reviews and comic papers of the time; to find, for +instance, in the <i>Observer</i> a leading article on the last novel +of Mrs. Humphry Ward, as if it were a European event, and one the +next Sunday on “What is the modern girl coming to, for she opens her +front door with a key?” To come, too, on reviews of Mr. Hall Caine’s +“Manxman,” such as that by Mr. Edmund Gosse in the <i>St. James’ +Gazette</i>—“A contribution to literature, and the most fastidious +critic would give in exchange for it a wilderness of that deciduous +trash which our publishers call fiction. It is not possible to +part from it without a warm tribute of approval.” But how possible +it has now become! Indeed, in our times it has been known that a +certain author, having in an unguarded hour committed to print an +appreciation of this famous writer, and then having learnt his mistake, +has changed his name and started life again, unable otherwise to +support his disgrace. <i>Autres temps, autres mœurs.</i> Certainly +the nineties were a long time ago. Strange, too, to read some of the +contemporary press comments on that innocent, well-produced, extremely +well-illustrated, and on the whole capable periodical, the <i>Yellow +Book</i>—“the outcry,” as Mr. Arthur Symons put it later, when the +publication of the <i>Savoy</i> was greeted with much the same noise, +“the outcry for no reason in the world but the human necessity for +making a noise.” You would think that the worst that could be said of +the <i>Yellow Book</i> was that it was not eclectic, that it opened +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span> +its hospitable doors to the worse writers as well as to the better, +and that its intellectually lowest contributions were too widely +sundered from its highest; and the best that could be said for it +(and how much this is!) is that Aubrey Beardsley drew for it, Henry +James and Max Beerbohm wrote prose for it, and W. B. Yeats poetry, and +that it had, on the whole, some of the more capable writers of the +day as contributors. But, in point of fact, the best that was said of +it was that it was brilliant, daring, courageous, new and intensely +modern, and the worst that it was bizarre, revolting, affected, new and +decadent. It appears to a later generation to have been none of these +things; that is, it was brilliant in patches only, and commonplace +in patches; it was not daring except in that it is greatly daring to +publish any periodical ever; it was not more intensely modern than +everything always is, and most of its contributors were middle-aged; +its weak and trite contributions (though indeed it did at times sink +pretty low) were too few to allow of the word revolting being properly +applied to the whole magazine, even by him whom Mr. Gosse called, in +another context, the most fastidious critic; and as for decadent, this +it may, indeed, have been, as no one has ever discovered what, if +anything, this word, as generally used at this time, meant. Exhibiting +those qualities which mark the decline of a great period, it should +mean: whereas many of those who survive from the nineties maintain +that, on the other hand, they marked the beginning of a good period. +Or it may mean merely less good than its predecessors, and this the +<i>Yellow Book</i> was assuredly not, but quite the contrary. It was, +in fact, not unlike various capable, well-produced periodicals of our +own day. Many of its surviving contributors contribute now to these +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span> +newer journals. But how seldom does one now hear them or their writings +or the periodicals to which they contribute called ultra-modern, +daring, shocking, decadent or bizarre? Rather, in fact, the contrary. +Thus, it will be observed, do the moderns of one day become the safe +establishments of the next. In ten years the public will be saying +of our present moderns, “They are safe. They are <i>vieux jeu</i>. +They resemble cathedrals.” What a death’s head at the feast of life +is this fearful fate which is suspended before even the newest of us, +and which, if we survive long enough, we shall by no means avoid. +Happy, possibly, were those moderns of the nineties who died with +their modernity still enveloping them, so that no one shall ever call +them cathedrals. Gloriously decadent, though no longer new, they shall +for ever remain, and no man shall call Aubrey Beardsley respectable, +established or dull, for he belonged to the Beardsley period, and, +though he may be outmoded, he shall never be outrun.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">15<br> +AT THE CROFTS’</p> + + +<p>The Denman Crofts thought it was delightfully new of them to have to +one of their Sunday evenings a good-looking young pickpocket and a +handsome woman whose profession it was to ply for hire on the streets. +The pickpocket had been captured with his hand in Stanley’s pocket, +and brought home to supper as an alternative to being delivered to +the constabulary, for three reasons: first, he was good-looking, and +masculine beauty was in fashion that year; secondly, he was a sinner, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span> +and sins were talked of with approbation just then by the most modern +literary set, particularly strange sins of divers colours, and as no +one knew which sins were strange or coloured and which were plain, it +might be that picking pockets was as strange and as coloured as any. +Thirdly, to have a pickpocket at a Sunday evening party was New, and +the other guests would be pleased and envious. The lady was there for +reasons very similar, and both were a great success. Everyone treated +them with friendliness and tact, so that they soon ceased to be shy, +though remaining to the end a trifle puzzled and suspicious, and not +very fluent in conversation. Possibly, their host suggested to Rome, +they were suffering from an embarrassing attack of the New Remorse.</p> + +<p>“Strange sinners certainly seem a little <i>difficile</i>,” agreed +Rome, who had been making exhausting efforts with the pickpocket, “and +loose livers sometimes appear to be rather tight talkers. Your protégés +cannot be said precisely to birrell.”</p> + +<p>“Anyhow, dear Denman,” added a graceful young gentleman at her side, +“picking pockets is a banal vice. I should scarcely call it a vice at +all; it is nearly as innocent as picking cowslips on a May morning. +I wish I could have procured you a lady who knelt in front of me in +church yesterday afternoon while I was waiting to make my confession. +She was improving the time by extracting the contents of the reticule +left in the seat next her by the penitent who had gone up to her duties +before her. A piquant idea, for she would get absolution almost in the +moment of sinning.”</p> + +<p>“Well,” said Denman, “we did the best we could at short notice. I would +have preferred to have obtained a bomb-fiend. The latest vice, you +know, is secreting bombs in Hyde Park. We shall all be doing it soon. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span> +It is reported to be even more stimulating than secreting opium. There +is no need, unless desired, ever to find the bombs again, still less +to use them; that is an extension of the vice, only practised by those +who wish to qualify as extremists, or bomb-fiends. The ordinary victims +of the bomb habit merely secrete; they make a cache, and store away +bombs as squirrels’ nuts. A pretty habit, but ceasing by now even to be +strange. It is deplorable how the best vices become vulgarised. Rome, +will you join me in a bomb-secreting orgy to-morrow at dusk?”</p> + +<p>“By all means, Denman. It would restore my spirits. I have been sadly +depressed lately by reading in one week Sarah Grand, ‘A Yellow Aster,’ +‘Marcella,’ ‘The Manxman,’ and Mr. Zangwill and Mrs. Lynn Linton in +the <i>New Review</i> on ‘What Women Should Know.’ There is no more +spirit in me. Though I was a little revived by the ‘Green Carnation.’ +An entrancing work, about all of us. But really entertaining.”</p> + +<p>“Why such a desperate orgy of literature? I thought you were of a more +fastidious habit—not like Stanley, who insists on reading everything, +even ‘Discords’ and the Dreyfus case. I can seldom read any novels. I +find their reviews enough, if not too much. I read of ‘The Manxman’ +that it would be read and re-read by many thousands with human tears +and human laughter, and that settled ‘The Manxman.’ Where do reviewers +get their inimitably delicious phrases from? And if one asked them +with the tears and laughter of what animal other than the human animal +could human beings read, or even re-read, a book, how would they reply? +Perhaps in the same way that old Meredith did the other day when Dick +Le Gallienne asked him to give the public a few words to explain his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span> +peculiar style. ‘Posterity will still be explaining me, long after I am +dead. Why, then, should I forestal their labours?’”</p> + +<p>“I wonder,” Rome mused, “if posterity will really be so diligent and +so intelligent as their ancestors seem to think. People always say +they write for posterity when they are not appreciated at the moment. +They seem to imagine posterity as a smug and spectacled best scholar, +spending its time delving among the chronicles of wasted years in +the reading-room of the British Museum, and hailing with rapture the +literary efforts of their ancestors.”</p> + +<p>“Whereas I,” said Denman, “see posterity as a leaping savage, enjoying +nameless orgies among the ruins of our civilisation, but not enjoying +literature. Possibly, even, there will be no posterity. The débâcle of +our civilisation—and it’s obviously too good to last—may mean the +débâcle of the world itself. I hope so. <i>A bas le</i> posterity, I +say. Who wants it? I scorn to write for it, or to plant horrible little +baby trees for it, or to suck up to it in any way whatsoever. Crude and +uncultured savage. <i>Vive l’aujourd’hui!</i>”</p> + +<p>“And I,” said Rome, “see posterity as a being precisely like ourselves. +It will read every morning in its newspapers, just as we do, that our +relations with France are strained, that so many people have been +murdered, born, divorced, married, that such and such a war is in +progress, that such and such a law has been passed, or speech made, +or book published, and it will know, just as we do, that none of it +matters in the least.... I’ve no grudge against posterity. Let it have +its little day.”</p> + +<p>“It will,” said the graceful young man, with gloom. “I can’t share +Denman’s faith in the approaching annihilation of humanity. Humanity +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span> +in general is much too bourgeois and uninteresting to do anything but +increase greatly and keep the earth replenished. It is impossible to +imagine that the gods love it. <i>We</i> shall perish; we, the fine +exotic flower of an effete civilisation—(by the way, how exquisitely +lovely and innocently wicked Lady Pember looks to-night; she, not the +cow-like young woman talking to Mrs. Croft ought to be the strange +scarlet—or is it mauve—sinner)—but we are a small minority. The +majority, which hasn’t even the art of gracefully fading out, will +heavily continue. It is thus that I picture posterity—a ponderous +suburban bourgeois in mutton-chop whiskers or tight stays, sniffing +at our poetry, our wit and our <i>Yellow Book</i>, and saying, ‘How +decadent they were in the nineties!’ By the way, what does decadent +mean? I always understood that man fell once and for all, long ago, +and could not therefore be falling still. I prefer deciduous. How +deliciously it slides round the tongue, like an over-ripe peach. I +wonder it is not more used in verse. To me it suggests a creamy green +absinthe, or a long, close kiss on moist, coral-pink lips. Disgusting. +I detest moist lips, and absinthe makes me feel sick, though I try and +pretend it doesn’t.”</p> + +<p>Stanley, charming and smiling, with her pleasant round, brown face, +lively deep blue eye, and enormous box sleeve, darted across the room +to them.</p> + +<p>“Den, we <i>must</i> remove our strange sinners now. I’m worn out +with them. They’ll neither of them say more than yes, no, and eh, and +they’ve both drunk too much already, and keeping one eye on Mr. Sykes +lest he get too near people’s pockets and the other on the lady lest +she get hold of more whiskey, is too heavy a responsibility. You must +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span> +take them away. And then Lady Pember wants to talk to you, darling.”</p> + +<p>Denman gave her a queer, quick look out of his narrow, smiling eyes, as +he turned away.</p> + +<p>“And Rome, love, I want to bring Aubrey Beardsley to you. He is being +assaulted by Miss Carruthers, who has been reading ‘Marcella,’ ‘Our +Manifold Nature,’ by Sarah Grand, and the newspapers, and wants to +know what he thinks of the Emancipation of Women, the Double Standard +of Morality, and the approaching death of Mr. Froude. Poor Aubrey has +never thought of any of them; he takes no interest in emancipations, +and his taste in women is most reactionary—anyone could tell that, +from the ladies he draws; he thinks any other kind most unwholesome; he +never reads protestant historians; and he has never thought about even +a single standard of morality. Double standard, indeed! As if there +weren’t as many standards as there are people.”</p> + +<p>“Not nearly, Mrs. Croft, fortunately. I’m sure Aubrey himself can’t +contribute one; nor can I. But it is stupid of Aubrey not to read poor +Mr. Froude. He is such a noble and happy liar. He really does practise +lying for lying’s sake—not like Macaulay, mere utilitarian lying, for +principle’s sake, though he does some of that too. Froude is an artist. +He will be missed, even though he is a protestant. He hates accuracy +with as much passion as the good popes hated thought, as Oscar Wilde +says somewhere à propos of something else. (Oscar’s grammar is so +often loose.) How right both Mr. Froude and the good popes are! Look +at Denman being firm with the sinners; how delightfully he does it; he +would make a good prison warder.”</p> + +<p>“The sinners,” said Miss Garden, regarding them through her monocle, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span> +“certainly are rather strange. I am afraid they have both drunk to +excess. There, now he has piloted them safely to the door; that is +a relief. Yes, Stanley, do fetch me Mr. Beardsley. Will he shock me +to-night? I was told that the other evening he shocked his table at +the Café Royal to death by his talk. John Lane had to remove him. It +is possible to go too far even for the Café Royal, and he did it. I +suppose that is why he is looking so elated to-night, like Alexander +seeking fresh worlds to conquer. ‘He shocked the Café Royal.’ What +an epitaph! On the other hand, I hear that he was shocked himself +the other day. Mr. Henley did it, in bluff mood, at a party at the +Pennells’. How do you do, Mr. Beardsley?”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">16<br> +DIVORCE AT THE CROFTS’</p> + + +<p>It did not last, the Crofts’ marriage. In the spring of ’95, Stanley +wearied of her husband’s infidelities, and could not bear them any +more. As to Denman, he felt often, though he loved her, that he had +married a young woman who had her tiresome aspects; she was a feminist, +a prig, she tried to write, and badly at that, she was still over-much +concerned with public affairs, with committees, with the emancipation +(save the mark!) of women. And she was for ever fussing over the +children, who should be treated as amusing toys. He loved her, but +she tried him often. She was strident, obstinate, stupidly in earnest +about things that seemed to him to demand a light indifference; then, +cumbrously, she would try to adopt his tone, and fail. Marriage. Well, +it presented great difficulties. He sighed sometimes for the freedom +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span> +of his bachelor days. Meanwhile, life had its moments, exquisite, +fleeting, frail. And at these Stanley, who was not really stupid, +guessed quite accurately, and was stabbed by each afresh until her very +life-blood seemed to drain away, leaving her, so she felt, a helpless +ghost of a woman, without assurance, heart or power to go on, but only +her stabbed love and a proud, burning rage. And, in the spring of ’95, +she broached this matter of divorce.</p> + +<p>He asked her forgiveness.</p> + +<p>“I can’t help it, Stanley. I suppose it’s the way I’m made.... The +queer thing is, I’ve loved you all the time. You can’t understand that. +Women are so—so monogamous.”</p> + +<p>“That old cliché, Den! It isn’t clever enough for you. Some men +are monogamous. Some men couldn’t love several women at the same +time. And some women can.... I’m dead sick of it, anyhow. All this +beastly philandering. It’s merely trivial. It <i>means</i> nothing. +It’s turning life and love into a parlour game. Do you take nothing +seriously, Denman—not your relations with people, or with love, or +with life—not even your fatherhood?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, don’t preach at me. I’m a waster, if you like, and let’s leave it +at that.... I’m damnably sorry for everything, of course.... But you’re +not altogether and always easy to live with, you know. All this stuff +about women, for instance ... you know how I hate it....”</p> + +<p>“You know how I hate <i>your</i> stuff about women, if we are to drag +in that now.... Oh, Den, don’t let’s be childish. What does all that +matter now? We’re up against a much bigger thing than a difference of +opinion about the suffrage.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span></p> + +<p>“You can’t forgive me, of course. And I suppose you’re justified.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I suppose I could forgive you. I could forgive you anything, +perhaps. I have before, after all. But I think I had better not, for +all our sakes. You’d rather be free, wouldn’t you? Oh, you needn’t +answer. I know you’d rather be free. I don’t suspect you of wanting to +live permanently with Alice Pember, or with anyone else; you just want +to be free and irresponsible, and make love to whom you like. Well, you +shall. I shan’t keep you. You’re not meant for a husband and father, +and you’ve tired yourself long enough trying to be one. You can drop it +now.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose you’re right, from your point of view. You’d better divorce +me.... I’m terribly sorry, Stan. We were so tremendously happy once.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t.” Stanley caught her breath and sharply bit her lip. “You’ve no +right to talk of that. That’s all past. We’ve not been happy for a long +time now.... And you know you despise me and think me a fool.... Oh, +what’s the use of talking?...”</p> + +<p>Three days later Stanley, with her son and daughter, aged four and +two, left her husband’s house and took up her temporary abode with her +parents, while her divorce suit slowly prepared itself.</p> + +<p>“Divorce is damnable,” Stanley said to Rome. “Why should people be +penalised by having to go through this ghastly business, with all +its loathsome publicity, merely because they wish to annul a private +contract which only concerns themselves? Why shouldn’t they be able to +go to a lawyer together and say, ‘Annul this contract,’ as with any +other contract? Instead of which, if it’s even suspected that they +<i>both</i> want it annulled, they’re not allowed to do it at all; and +if it’s the wife who wants it, they have to fake up this ridiculous +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span> +cruelty-or-desertion business. And, above all, why should we be +gibbetted in the newspapers for doing a purely private piece of legal +business? Why, in the name of decency and common-sense, should a thing +become public news merely because it occurs in a law-court? And is our +whole English constitution and system so rotten because we are rotten, +or aren’t our laws a long way behind public opinion?... Sometimes I +think I can’t go through with it, it’s all so beastly, but that we’ll +just live apart without a divorce. But I know that wouldn’t do. There’s +got to be something desperately final between Denman and me, or we +might be coming together again, when he’s tired of Alice Pember. I +love him so much, beneath everything, that if he wanted to I probably +should. And I know it would be no use. We should make nothing of it +now. It would be bad for both of us, and worse for Billy and Molly. And +it would all happen again. No, it’s got to be a clean cut, even if the +imbecile state only allows us to have it on these disgusting terms.... +Sometimes, Rome, I think the whole world and its laws and systems and +conventions is just a lunatic asylum.”</p> + +<p>“I’ve always known that, my dear. What else should it be?”</p> + +<p>“<i>Rome, how does one bear it?</i>”</p> + +<p>Stanley, whose way it was to express her joys and griefs—she was not +self-contained, like Rome—was pacing up and down the room, her hands +clenched behind her, her cheeks flushed with feverish, waking nights, +her eyes heavy under sullen brows.</p> + +<p>“I hardly know,” Rome answered her, gently. “I hardly know. But, +somehow, one goes on, and one learns to be amused again.... I am hoping +that when one is elderly one will mind less. You <i>will</i> mind +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span> +less, Stanley, in a few years. Life’s so strong, it carries one on all +the time to new things. Particularly, I think, you, because you are so +alive. You’ll come through even this desperate business.”</p> + +<p>Stanley said, “Life’s broken to bits. I was so happy once.... Broken +to jagged bits,” and left the room to cry. For, contrary to a common +belief, those who feel most usually cry most too. Stanley was afraid +that she was contracting a tearful habit such as she might never +outgrow, but she did not much care. She did not much care for anything +in these days.</p> + +<p>She missed Denman. Missing him was like the continual sharp ache of +a gathered tooth. She missed his charm, his brilliance, his love, +his careless, casual ways, his intense life, his soft, husky voice, +the smile on his queer white face and narrow eyes. She missed his +gay, youthful talk, the parties and plays they had been used to go to +together, his constant presence in the house. She would wake in the +nights, thinking he lay beside her, and that his arm would be thrown, +in a half waking caress, across her; but he was not there. She would +wake in the mornings, thinking to see his rumpled brown head sunk in +the pillow beside hers; but there was no head and no pillow but her +own. When her son and daughter entered her room in the morning and +climbed upon her bed, after the irritating manner of infants, and woke +her by pulling at her two dark plaits, she would open drowsy eyes that +looked for her husband’s short, delightful face smiling above her; but +there were only the two young children, with their restless antics +and imbecile prattlings. Fatuous beings! One day she would enjoy them +again, antics, fatuity and all, even as she had enjoyed them before, +but in these days her love for them lay frozen and almost lifeless, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span> +with all other love but that one love that tore at her heart with +fierce, clawing fingers. It seemed that this love and this anguish +consumed her wholly, leaving nothing over. She had never been first a +mother; she had been first an individual, a human creature sensitively +reacting to all the contacts of the engrossing world, and secondly she +had been a wife, a woman who loved a man. A mother, perhaps, third. +And now the secondary function, in its death agony, had taken entire +possession, and she was no longer either an individual creature or a +mother, but only a lover who had lost all.</p> + +<p>To tear him out of her heart—that was her constant object. And if the +heart (since we are, by foolish custom, so impelled to call the seat of +the affections) had been alone involved, she might have done so. But +who should tear the beloved from the roots he had in her whole daily +life for five years, from his place in her mind, her brain, her body, +her whole being? She knew him for a philanderer, a trivial taster in +love and life; selfish, spoilt, vain, with idiotic opinions about one +half of the human race. It was, indeed, her knowledge of all this in +him that informed her brain that their separation must be final and +complete. But, with it all, she could not tear him from her heart, her +soul, her body, her entire and constant life. He was herself, and she +herself was being torn in two.</p> + +<p>Life was a continual anguish. She saw that she must leave her parents’ +home and live alone. She was bringing misery into Bloomsbury Square. +And daily, night and morning, her parents kissed her, and their kisses +were to her, who craved so bitterly those kisses that she might no +longer have, a continual reminder and torment. She was trying to shut +off that side of life, but they did not understand, and kissed her. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span> +Rome, who understood too well, did not kiss her. She knew that she must +be alone with her children, that she was no fit housemate for a loving +family or friends. So, presently, she went into rooms, and this was a +more bearable loneliness.</p> + +<p>But it left more time on her hands; more time in which to brood on +life, on love, on illusion, on women and on men. How had she failed +in this job of marriage, of constructing an enduring life with a +man she had loved, who had loved her? How had they both failed? How +frequent was this failure! It seemed that love was not enough. Such +deep misunderstandings prevail, between any two human beings. Sex +bridges many of them, but not all. Stanley began, at this time, to +generalise dangerously and inaccurately (since all such generalisations +are inaccurate) about women and about men. She saw women as eager, +restless, nervous children, chattering, discussing, joking, turning +the world upside down together while they smoked or brushed their +hair, and all to so little purpose. Meanwhile there were men; the sex; +sphinx-like, placid, inscrutable, practical, doing the next thing, +gently smiling at the fuss women made about ideas. Men knew that they +did not matter, these excitements and fusses of women, any more than +the toys children play with matter. They dismissed them with that +serene smile of theirs, and busied themselves with the elemental, +enduring things: sex, fatherhood, work. They knew what mattered; they +went for the essentials. They didn’t waste their time frothing about +with words and ideas. Men were somehow admirable, in their strong +stability. Their nervous systems were so magnificent. They could kill +animals without feeling sick, break the necks of fishes, put worms +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span> +on hooks, shoot rabbits and birds, jab bayonets into bodies. Women +would never amount to much in this world, because they nearly all have +a nervous disease; they are strung on wires; they are like children +frightened of the dark and excited by the day. It seems fundamental, +this difference between the nerves of most women and most men. You see +it among little girls and boys; most little boys, but how few little +girls, can squash insects and kill rabbits without a qualm. It is this +difference which gives even a stupid man often a greater mastery over +life than a clever woman. He is not frightened by life. Women, for +the most part, are. Life may be a joke to them, but it is often also +a nightmare. To the average man it is neither. Men are marvellously +restful. Eternal symbols of parenthood and the stability of life, to +which women come back, as to strong towers of refuge, after their +excursions and alarms.</p> + +<p>This was the kind of nonsense which Stanley wove to herself during +these unbalanced days of her life. Nonsense, because all generalities +about human beings are nonsense. But many people, including Stanley, +find interest in making them up, and it is a harmless game.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">17<br> +PANTA REI</p> + + +<p>It seemed to Stanley, through this spring and summer of 1895, that a +phase was over, not only in her own life, which was apt so faithfully +to mirror the fleeting times, but in the world at large. That literary, +artistic and social movement so vaguely described as “decadent” by +those who could scarcely define that or any other word, nor would +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span> +greatly care to if they could, seemed to be on the wane. The trial and +conviction of Mr. Oscar Wilde did it no good, and the many who had been +unjust towards the movement before became unjuster still, adopting an +“I told you so” air, which mattered as little as any other air adopted +by those of like mentality, but which had, nevertheless, its effect on +strengthening the forces of so-called healthy philistines in the land. +As a contemporary poet sang:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“If these be artists, then may Philistines</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Arise, plain sturdy Britons as of yore,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sweep them off, and purge away the signs</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That England e’er such noxious offspring bore.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Even the anti-Philistines, the so-called decadents themselves, were +disconcerted and shaken by this public débâcle of one of the most +prominent of their number. “Those who write, draw and talk in this +clever new manner that we have never liked,” said the Philistines, +firmly assured, “are obviously as unpleasant as, even more unpleasant +than, we have believed.” “They might as well say,” said the practisers +of the elegant, clever new manner, “that because Ladas, owned by +a Liberal leader, won the Derby last year, all Liberals are as +intelligent about horses, even more intelligent about horses than they +have believed. They might as well say....” But it is of no use to tell +people of this mentality what they might as well say. They will as +likely as not proceed to say it, and it is very certain that they will +not therefrom see the absurdity of that which they have already said. +There is, in fact, no way of dealing with these persons; they are the +world’s masters, laying the ponderous weight of their foolish and heavy +minds upon all subtleties, delicacies and discriminations to flatten +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span> +them, talking very loudly, firmly and fatuously the while through their +hats, and through their mouthpiece, the press. There is no dealing +with them; it is they who make England, and indeed the world, what it +is. “This nation believes ...” “The people of this country have always +held ...” says the press, grandly, as if indeed <i>that</i> made it +any more likely to be true, instead of far less. “This asylum has +always believed that the best form of government is a party system,” +the newspapers published in asylums no doubt continually remark. “The +inhabitants of this asylum have always said....”</p> + +<p>And so much for public opinion.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, from whatever cause, there began at this time, to put it +briefly, a slump in decadence. Max Nordau wrote this year, with his +customary exaggeration, his essay on “<i>Fin-de-siècle</i>.”</p> + +<p>“An epoch of history is unmistakably in its decline, and another is +approaching its birth. There is a sound of rending in every tradition, +and it is as though the morrow could not link itself with to-day. +Things as they are totter and plunge, and they are suffered to reel and +fall because man is weary, and there is no faith that it is worth an +effort to uphold them. Views that have hitherto governed minds are dead +or driven hence like disenthroned kings. Meanwhile interregnum, in all +its terror, prevails.... Such is the spectacle presented by the doings +of men in the reddened light of the Dusk of the Nations.”</p> + +<p>Max Nordau was a man of imagination, and had an excessive way of +putting things, and seems to have been hypnotised by the arbitrary +divisions into which man has chopped time; but, whatever he may have +meant, it is quite true that no period is precisely like another, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span> +and that life is, as has been well said, a flux. In brief, <i>panta +rei</i>, and no less in the middle nineties than at other times.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">18<br> +RELIGION</p> + + +<p>Of the many impulsions that drive human beings to one form or +another of religion, the strongest, perhaps, is pain. The other +impulsions—conscience, the mystic sense, personal influence, +conviction, experimentalism, loneliness, boredom, remorse, and so +forth—all work powerfully on their respective subjects. But pain, +mental anguish so great that human nature is driven by it from cover to +cover, seeking refuge and finding none, is the most powerful and the +most frequent agent for the churches. “There is no help for me in this +world,” tortured human creatures cry, and are often driven by that cry +to questioning whether there may not, perhaps, be help in some other. +Anyhow, they think, it is worth the experiment, and the experiment +proves an anodyne and a gate of escape from what could scarcely, +otherwise, be borne.</p> + +<p>Such was Stanley Croft’s method of approach to a closer contact with +religion than any she had had before, though, before her marriage, +she had had a mystical belief in God, which had, during the last +five years, all but died out in an atmosphere not well suited to it. +Now it returned to her again, touched with just enough remorse for +past neglect as might serve for a temperate shadow of that hectic +and enjoyable repentance which drove, then and later, so many of +her literary contemporaries into the fold of the Catholic Church. +In reality, perhaps, though it seemed that pain was her immediate +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span> +impeller, it was ultimately, as usual, the spirit of her age which +seized her and drove her to prayer.</p> + +<p>She would turn into dark and silent churches, seeking desperately the +relief from herself that life denied her, and fall on her knees and +there stay, numb and helpless, her forehead dropped on her arms, till +the sweet, often incense-laden atmosphere (for that was the kind of +church she preferred) enveloped her like a warm and healing garment, +and she whispered into the dim silence, “God! God! If you are there, +speak to me and help me! God! God! God!”</p> + +<p>From that cry, for long the only prayer she could utter, other prayers +at last grew. The silence melted round her and became a living thing; +the red sanctuary lamp was as the light of God flaming in a dim world, +a light shining in darkness, and the darkness encompassed it not. The +undefeated life of God, burning like a brave star in a stormy night, +by which broken, all but foundered ships might steer. It was so that +Stanley saw it, and slowly it did actually guide her to a kind of +painful peace.</p> + +<p>“I wish the poor child would join the true Church,” Mr. Garden said to +Mrs. Garden, for he was still, though now a little dubiously, a member +of that church. “I think it would help her.”</p> + +<p>Mamma looked sceptical.</p> + +<p>“I think not, Aubrey. She doesn’t want to be bothered with joining +churches just now, and she certainly has no energy to give to it. +Besides, she likes English Catholicism. It has, you must admit, rather +more liberty of thought than your branch.” (Mamma knew, having tried +both more than once.) “Besides,” she added, quickly, to change the +subject from liberty of thought, which always in these days made papa +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span> +look sad—in fact, she had mentioned it in a moment of carelessness +which she immediately regretted—“besides, there is the divorce.”</p> + +<p>Papa sighed and looked sadder than ever.</p> + +<p>“Yes. This horrid, this distressing business. I wish she may give it up +before it is too late. Even High Anglicanism does not allow divorce.”</p> + +<p>“On that point,” said mamma, “and, I fancy, on a good many others, +Stanley does not agree with High Anglicanism. Fortunately that does not +prevent her from finding comfort in its forms of worship. I am only +thankful that she can. It is hard for those in trouble who have no +faith in another world.” Possibly her mind had turned to Rome, whose +faith in worlds, either this we live in or any other, was negligible.</p> + +<p>But papa’s mind was turned inward, upon his own torn soul. Mamma +watched him with experienced anxiety. She knew the signs, and feared +that the Mother of the Churches would not for long hold papa in her +firm arms. Dear Aubrey; he was so restless. And he had lately been +reading a lot of odd, mystic books....</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">19<br> +CELTIC TWILIGHT</p> + + +<p>It was very certain that Stanley would not join the Roman Church. +She had too mystic an imagination to enter any body so definite and +sharp of doctrine. She was more at one at this time with the Celtic +poets, with their opening of strange gates onto dim magic lands. The +loveliness, like the wavering, lovely rhythms of the sea, of W. B. +Yeats, took her, as it took her whole generation, by storm; the tired +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span> +twilight sadness of Fiona Macleod was balm to her.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>O years with tears, and tears through weary years,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>How weary I, who in your arms have lain;</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Now I am tired: the sound of slipping spears</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Moves soft, and tears fall in a bloody rain,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And the chill footless years go over me, who am slain.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>I hear, as in a wood dim with old light, the rain</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Slow falling; old, old weary human tears,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And in the deepening dusk my comfort is my pain,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sole comfort left of all my hopes and fears,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Pain that alone survives, gaunt hound of the shadowy years.</i>”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">And</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>Between the grey pastures and the dark wood</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>A valley of white poppies is lit by the low moon,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>It is the grave of dreams, a holy rood.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>It is quiet there: no wind doth ever fall.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Long, long ago a wind sang once a heart-sweet rune.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Now the white poppies grow, silent and tall.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>A white bird floats there like a drifting leaf:</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>It feeds upon faint sweet hopes and perishing dreams,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And the still breath of unremembering grief.</i></div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>And as a silent leaf the white bird passes,</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>Winnowing the dusk by dim, forgetful streams.</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>I am alone now among the silent grasses.</i>”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +In such soft and melancholy enchantment as this Stanley’s desolation +found, for a time, comfort.</p> + +<p>(Vicky’s Imogen, aged seven, found this book at her grandparents’ house +one day, opened it, read, breathing noisily for excitement, and tucked +it furtively away in the pouch of her sailor frock, where she often +kept rabbits, or eggs for hatching. She bore it home undiscovered, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span> +spent the evening lying on her stomach and elbows beneath the nursery +table reading it, with moving lips and fingers in her ears, deaf to +the clamour and summons of her brethren, until at last she was haled +to bed, hot-cheeked and wet-eyed, silent upon a peak in Darien. She +had found a new enchantment; it was better than Mowgli, even. But, +since she was not really a dishonest little girl, when next she went +to Bloomsbury Square she slipped the book unobtrusively back into the +shelf from which she had stolen it, and took “The Manxman” instead, +thinking, with the fatuity of her years, to find that it concerned a +tailless cat; but with regard to this book she was disappointed, and +unable to agree with Mr. Gosse.)</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">20<br> +THE STAR IN THE EAST</p> + + +<p>Strange books and pamphlets littered papa’s study table. He met +and dined with Mr. George Russell (the Irish poet, not the English +Churchman). He admired and liked Mr. Russell so much that for his sake +he attended the lectures of Madame Blavatsky, and perused the works of +Colonel Olcott, W. Q. Judge and Mrs. Besant. A feeling of expansion +took him, as if the bands of rigid orthodoxy, which had restrained him +for the last nine years, were being forced asunder.... It was, with +papa, the eternally recurrent springtime of his soul’s re-birth; he +was in travail with a new set of ideas, and their pressure rent him +cruelly. Then one day, “I have seen his star in the east,” cried papa, +and became a Theosophist.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p> + +<p>He wanted to lead Stanley also to Buddha (mamma said firmly that she +herself was too old), but Stanley would have none of it. To change +your religion you need a certain vitality, an energy of mind and will, +an alertness towards fresh ideas, and Stanley at this time had little +of these things. She clung to a desperate and passionate faith, as a +drowning man to a raft; gradually she even came to take pleasure in +services, and would find at the early mass at St. Alban’s, Holborn, an +exalted, mystic, half sensuous joy. But she was in no mood to choose +and investigate a new creed. Besides, Theosophy....</p> + +<p>However, papa enjoyed it. Papa was now sixty-five years of age, but +his feeling for religions had not waned. Mamma, who had been a little +afraid that papa might next be a Jew (for he had been writing a +monograph on the Hebrew prophets, whom he greatly admired, and also +seeing a good deal of Mr. Zangwill), was on the whole relieved. For a +long time papa had not been happy in the Roman Catholic Church, finding +many of the papal bulls difficult of digestion, and the doctrines +of hell-fire and transubstantiation (as interpreted by most of the +priesthood) painfully materialistic; neither was he happy about the +attitude of the Church towards M. Loisy and other modernists.</p> + +<p>So, when he saw the star in the east, he set out for it with a sigh of +relief.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">21<br> +IRVING</p> + + +<p>While papa followed the star, and Stanley doggedly and bitterly sued +her husband for restitution of conjugal rights, and Rome urbanely +surveyed the world through a monocle and drove elegantly in hansoms, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span> +often with an enormous wolfhound or a couple of poms, and Maurice fired +squibs of angry eloquence at everything that came into his line of +vision, their brother Irving made a fortune by speculating in South +African gold mine shares. Irving, as has been said earlier, was a lucky +young man, whom God had fashioned for prosperity. Having made his +fortune, he married a handsome, agreeable and healthy young woman, one +Lady Marjorie Banister, the daughter of an obscure north-country earl, +and settled down to make more.</p> + +<p>It was an epoch of fortune-making. Mr. Cecil Rhodes loomed in the +south, an encouraging and stimulating figure to those who had +enterprise and a little capital. The new rich were filling Mayfair, +making it hum with prosperity. Irving too hummed with prosperity, and +took a house in Cumberland Place. He found life an excellent affair, +though he had his grievances, one of which was that motor cars were not +allowed on English roads without a man walking with a flag before them. +“We are a backward nation,” Irving grumbled, after visits to Paris, +as so many have grumbled before and since. But, on the whole, Irving +approved of modern life. He thought Maurice, who did not, a bear with a +sore head.</p> + +<p>Maurice was now the editor of an intelligent but acid weekly paper, +which carried on a running fight with the government, the opposition, +all foreign governments, the British public, most current literature, +nearly all current ideas, and the bulk of the press, particularly +Henley’s <i>New Review</i>, which boomed against him monthly. Having +a combatant spirit, he found life not unenjoyable, now that he had +become so used and so indifferent to his wife as to have acquired +armour against the bitter chafing she had caused him of yore, and to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span> +find some domestic pleasure in annoying her. He considered it a low +and imbecile world, but to that too one gets used, and a weekly paper +is, as many have found, a gratifying vent for scorn. Saturday after +Saturday, through 1895, the <i>Gadfly</i> railed at the unsatisfactory +attitude of our Colonial Secretary towards South Africa, the existence +of Mr. Cecil Rhodes and the British South Africa Company, the tepid and +laissez-faire temperament of Lord Rosebery, the shocking weather, the +absurd inhibitions against motor cars, the vulgarity of the cheaper +press, the futility of the controversies on education, the slowness of +progress in developing Röntgen Rays and flying machines, the immense +wealth made by the undeserving in cycle companies and gold mines, +the smugness of Liberals, the inanity of Tories, the ignorance of +the Labour Party, the blatancy of current forms of patriotism, the +arrogance of the victory-swollen Japanese, the bad manners of France, +the aggressiveness of Germany, the feebleness of current literature, +and so on and so forth.</p> + +<p>“That’s right, old smiler, keep it up. That’s the stuff to give them,” +Irving amiably encouraged him, as he and his wife ate at the dinner +table of his brother. “<i>They</i> don’t mind, and it makes you happy. +But what’s bitten you to set you against company promoters? I didn’t +care for your column about them last week. They’ve done you no harm, +have they? The fact is, I was going to ask you if you’d care to come +in to a small affair I’m helping to float. Bicycle bolts are a back +number, and that’s a fact. In November next year the red flag comes +off, and motor cars begin in earnest all over the roads. Amberley and I +are specialising in tyres. We’ve got Lord Mortlake in too. It’s a sure +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span> +thing. We shall be coining thousands in a couple of years. You’d better +come in early. Am I right?”</p> + +<p>Amy’s mirth chimed like sweet bells.</p> + +<p>“Motor cars! Oh, I do like that! Why not flying machines at once?”</p> + +<p>Irving regarded her with tolerant scorn.</p> + +<p>“Why not, indeed? You may well ask. But for the moment motor cars will +do us. I daresay it will be fliers in ten years or so. And moving +photographs too. I’m not, you see, a pessimist, like poor dear Maurice. +I believe in Progress. And in Capital. And in the Future of the Race. +And in getting rich quick. Maurice, am I right?”</p> + +<p>“Probably,” said Maurice. “You’re certainly not bad at getting rich +quick; I’ll say that for you. But I am. So, on the whole....”</p> + +<p>“Motor car tyres!” Amy still jeered, being of those who obtain one idea +at a time and grapple it to their souls with hoops of steel. “Motor car +tyres! They won’t wear out many tyres trundling away behind those old +chaps with the flags.”</p> + +<p>Maurice finished his sentence otherwise than he had intended.</p> + +<p>“On the whole I’m inclined to take shares in this company of yours. +Send me along the details as soon as you can.”</p> + +<p>Amy’s utterances often had this subversive effect on his own. He threw +her a malevolent glance, and poured himself out some more claret.</p> + +<p>Amy put up her pretty, dark eyebrows. She pursed her mouth. She nodded.</p> + +<p>“That’s right. Throw our money away. Don’t bother a bit about me or the +children.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span></p> + +<p>“Now, Amy, don’t nag him. I’m answerable for this little show, and +I can tell you I’m right. Remember I told him to put his shirt on +Persimmon. Well, he didn’t. You know the results. I don’t want to brag, +but—well, there it is. Maurice, I think better of your wits than I +have for the last ten years.”</p> + +<p>Maurice, sipping his claret, still kept his sardonic gaze on his wife, +who rose and took Irving’s wife to another room. Often Amy wished that +she had chanced to marry Irving instead of Maurice, though he was too +young for her. Oftener Maurice wished that he had married no one, for +marriage was oppressive.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">22<br> +RULE BRITANNIA</p> + + +<p>’95 swept on, and speeded up to a riotous finish, with the British +South African troops, under the imprudent Dr. Jameson, galloping over +the Transvaal Border to protect the British of the Rand. Loud applause +from the British Isles. In the legal language of the Bow Street trial +that followed, “certain persons, in the month of December, 1895, in +South Africa, within Her Majesty’s dominions, and without licence of +Her Majesty, did unlawfully prepare a military expedition to proceed +against the dominions of a certain friendly State, to wit the South +African Republic, contrary to the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment +Act.” In the more poetic language of the Laureate,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Wrong, is it wrong? Well, maybe,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But I’m going, boys, all the same:</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Do they think me a burgher’s baby,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">To be scared by a prating name?”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span></p> + +<p class="nind"> +In the episcopal language of the Bishop of Mashonaland, “Whether the +English people liked the exploits of Dr. Jameson or not, the Empire had +been built up by such men. They had a Colonial Secretary with his eyes +open, who could see further than most people thought. Africa must take +a foremost place in the Empire, and the Church should go hand in hand +with its development.”</p> + +<p>And, in the journalistic language of the <i>Daily Mail</i> (born early +in ’96, and, like other new-born infants, both noisy and pink), “It +is well known in official circles that England and the Transvaal must +eventually come into collision.”</p> + +<p>Vicky’s children, in a fever of martial jingoism, temporarily abandoned +the Sherlock Holmes crime-tracking exploits which were engaging their +attention those Christmas holidays, for the Jameson Raid, riding +bestridden chairs furiously round the schoolroom, chanting,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Then over the Transvaal border,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And a gallop for life or death—”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +until two chairs broke into pieces and Imogen, thrown, cut her head on +the fender, and the game was forbidden by authority.</p> + +<p>The adventure of the raid tickled up British imperialism, which, like +the imperialism in Vicky’s schoolroom, began to ride merrily for a +fall. ’96 dawned on a country growing drunk with pride of race and +possessions; working up, in fact, for the Diamond Jubilee. Dr. Jameson +and his confederates were received with the cheers of the populace and +the adoration of the <i>Daily Mail</i>, and sentenced to short terms of +imprisonment.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span></p> + +<p>Soon after the birth of the <i>Daily Mail</i> came the <i>Savoy</i>, +the last stand of eclectic æstheticism. Stanley Croft had, for a +while, an odd feeling of standing hesitant between two forces, one of +which was loosening its grasp on her, the other taking hold. The newer +force conquered, and she was carried, step by step, from æstheticism +to imperialism, from belief in art and intellect to belief in the +dominance of the British race over the world. She read Henley and +Kipling. She found pride in,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Out of the night that covers me,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Black as the pit from pole to pole,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">I thank whatever gods may be</div> + <div class="verse indent0">For my unconquerable soul....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Her religion ceased to be a mystic twilight passion. A renascence of +sturdy courage took her back into the common ways, where, her divorce +now accomplished, she pursued her old aims. She took up life, and +became alert to the world again, responsive, like a ship in full sail, +to every wind that blew. And the wind that blew on her was a wind of +reaction from her recent past, and it drove her out on the seas of +ambitious imperialism, so that love of country became in her, as in so +many, a kind of swaggering tribal pride. The romance of Greater Britain +took her by storm. Not the infant Imogen, stirred to tears by the +swinging by of red-coated troops to a band, seethed with a more exalted +jingoism. Glory, adventure, pride of race, and the clash of arms—what +stimulating dreams were these, and how primeval their claim upon the +soul! While Stanley’s friends shrugged cynical shoulders over Dr. Jim’s +exploit and the attitude towards it of the great British public, while +her papa gravely misdoubted such militant aggression, while Maurice +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span> +sneered and tilted at it in a weekly column, while Rome contemplated +the spectacle with the detached, intelligent amusement of the blasé +but interested theatre-goer, while Irving, cynically approving, said, +“That’s good,” thinking of the Rand gold, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes observed +that his friend the doctor had upset the apple-cart—while all these +made the comments natural to their tastes, temperaments and points +of view, Stanley, like a martial little girl, flew high the flag +of “Britain for ever! Up the Rand!” and her spirit marched as to a +military band.</p> + +<p>Vicky also, in her more careless and casual way, was a supporter of +Empire. “Whatever Charles and Maurice and all those informed people +may say, my dear, this Dr. Jim is a gallant creature, dashing off to +the rescue of his fellow countrymen and countrywomen like that. For, +even if they weren’t in actual danger, they <i>were</i> inconvenienced, +those poor tiresome Uitlanders. And how dreadful to be governed by +Boers! What people! Canting, Old Testament humbugs! One dislikes them +so excessively, even from here, that one can imagine the feelings +of those who live among them. Even Maurice isn’t so perverse as to +maintain that Boers are tolerable. Oh, I’m all for Dr. Jim. I insist +on taking in that cheery pink new daily that pets him as if he were a +Newfoundland dog that has saved a boat-load of drowning people. Such a +bright, pleased tone it has. ‘The British Public know a good man when +they see one,’ it says. So much more amiable and pleasant an attitude +towards us than Maurice’s ‘The public be damned. All it knows about +anything that matters would go into a walnut shell and then rattle.’ +Maurice gets so terribly contemptuous and conceited. I tremble to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span> +think what he will be like at sixty, should nature keep him alive, +if he finds the world so silly when he is but thirty-eight. Perhaps, +however, he will have mellowed.”</p> + + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">23<br> +MAURICE, ROME, STANLEY AND THE QUEEN</p> + + +<p>’96 ran out. Irving’s tyre company began to make money, and Maurice +grew richer. He sent Amy to the Riviera for the winter, and Rome kept +his house for him. He was sweeter-tempered than usual. Rome was, in +his eyes, a <i>flâneuse</i> and a dilettante of life, but her clear, +cynical mind was agreeable to him. Her intelligent mockery was, after +Amy’s primitive jeering, as caviare after rotten eggs. God! If only +Amy need never come back. But she would inevitably come back. And the +children loved her. Children are like that; no discrimination. They +loved Maurice too, but more mildly. And, very temperately, they liked +their Aunt Rome, whom they often suspected of making fun of them, and, +even oftener, of being completely bored. In point of fact, Rome was +apt to be bored by persons under sixteen or so. She allowed childhood +to be a necessary stage in the growth of human beings, but she found +it a tiresome one, and saw no reason why children should consort with +adults. Stanley, on the other hand, being by now partially restored +to her general goodwill towards humanity, threw herself ardently into +the society and interests of her own children and those of others. She +taught them imperialism, and about the English flag, and told them +adventure stories, and played with them the games suitable to their +years. She told them about the Diamond Jubilee, the great event of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span> +’97, and how our good, wise and aged queen would, by next June, have +reigned for sixty years. Victoria was in fashion just then. She was +well thought of, both morally and intellectually. “To the ripe sagacity +of the politician,” said the loyal press, “she adds the wide knowledge +acquired by sixty years of statesmanship. Many a strained international +situation has been saved by her personal tact.” That was the way the +late nineteenth century press spoke of Victoria, the English being a +loyal people, with a strong sense of royalty. So the Diamond Jubilee +would be a great day for the Queen. Since the last Jubilee, in ’87, +the Empire, or anyhow the sense of Empire, had grown and developed. +Imperialism was now a very heady wine, to those who liked that tipple. +To others, such as Maurice Garden, it was more of an emetic.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">24<br> +NANSEN IN THE ALBERT HALL</p> + + +<p>Dr. Nansen came to London early in ’97. Whatever else you thought +of anything or anyone, you had to admire Dr. Nansen. He addressed +thousands of people in the Albert Hall. Vicky took her children to hear +him. Already they had read “Farthest North.” Imogen, at eight years +old, had read it, absorbed, breathless, intent, tongue clenched between +teeth. The man who had sailed through ice, and all but got to the Pole. +He was better than soldiers. As good, almost, as sailors. What a man! +And there he stood, a giant dwarfed to smallness on the platform of the +vast hall, a Scandinavian god, blonde and grave and calm, waiting to +begin his lecture, but unable to because the crowd roared and clapped +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span> +and stamped their feet and would not stop.</p> + +<p>At that huge explosion of welcome, Imogen’s skin pringled and pricked +all over, as if soldiers were swinging by to music, or a fire engine +to the sound of bells, or as if the sun was setting in a glory of gold +and green, or as if she was reading “The Revenge,” or “The Charge of +the Light Brigade,” or “I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree.” +Imogen wept. She did not know that she wept, until the applause was at +last over and Nansen began to speak. Then her brother Hugh poked her +in the back and said, “What’s up? Wipe your nose and don’t snivel,” +and she was ashamed, and though she retorted, “Wipe your own. Snivel +yourself,” it was no satisfaction, because Hughie was not snivelling. +Boys didn’t, she had learnt, except when there was something to snivel +about. They did not understand the female weakness which wept at fire +engines, poetry and clapping, and was sick at squashed insects. Imogen +wanted (even still half hoped) to be a boy, so she tried to hide her +weaknesses.</p> + +<p>Nansen began to speak.</p> + +<p>“They’re all quiet now. A pin might drop,” said Imogen to herself, +having lately learnt that phrase, but not getting it quite right.</p> + +<p>But disappointment took her. Strain as she would, she could not hear +what the god said. She could not make it into words, except now and +then. It boomed along, sonorous, fluent English, above her plane of +listening. A sentence here and there she got, entrancing and teasing, +then away the voice soared, booming in another dimension.... Imogen had +never learnt to listen; now for the first time she knew remorse for +sermon-times spent in day-dreams, lessons at school during which her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span> +mind had drifted away on seas of fancy like a rudderless boat, to be +sharply recalled by “Imogen Carrington, what have I just said?” Seldom, +indeed, did Imogen Carrington know. She would blush and stammer and get +an inattention mark. No one in the second form had so many inattention +marks as she had. Perhaps if she had fewer she could have understood +Nansen now.</p> + +<p>“Hughie, can you hear?”</p> + +<p>“Most of the time. Don’t interrupt.”</p> + +<p>Yes, Hughie could hear. Hughie was two years older; Hughie was ten, and +into his square, solid, intelligent head the sounds emitted by Nansen +were penetrating as words. Hughie could listen, when he had a mind +to. Hughie was more clever than Imogen. Phyllis and Nancy could hear +too, of course; they were older. Not Tony; but then Tony, who was only +seven, wouldn’t be trying. He didn’t really care.</p> + +<p>“Mother, <i>I can’t hear</i>.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t talk, darling. I’ll tell you afterwards....”</p> + +<p>But what was the good of that?</p> + +<p>Imogen’s strained attention flagged. If she couldn’t hear, she +couldn’t. She sighed and gave up. She stared, fascinated, at the +splendid figure on the platform, and imagined him on the <i>Fram</i>, +sailing along through chunks of floating ice, and on each chunk a great +white bear. Floes, they were, not chunks.... She and the boys meant, +when they should be grown up, to fit out a <i>Fram</i> for themselves +and find the Pole. Hughie had some idea of the South Pole. The sort +of unusual, intelligent idea Hughie did get. But to Imogen the North +was the Pole that called. Away they sailed, away and away.... Tony +was attacked, as he fished from a floe, by a huge mother bear, with +three cubs. Imogen got there just in time; she slew the bear with her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span> +long knife, at imminent personal risk; it toppled backwards into the +ice-cold water and died. The green sea reddened hideously. But the +three little cubs Imogen kept. She took them back to the <i>Fram</i>, +and there was one for each of them, and they were called Mowgli, Marcus +and Mercia, and Marcus was hers (the children had been taken to “The +Sign of the Cross” last summer. There was a play indeed!), and the cubs +slept in their bunks with them, and ate from their plates at meals....</p> + +<p>Another storm of clapping. It was over.</p> + +<p>“Did you like it, Jennie? How much did you follow?”</p> + +<p>“I liked it very much. I followed it a lot.... Mother, do you think, +when I’m big, I shall ever <i>speak</i> to him? I mean, when Hughie and +Tony and I have got our ship and have been to the Pole?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, darling. I should think when that happens, certainly. Only +Dr. Nansen may be dead by that time, I’m afraid.”</p> + +<p>“Is he old, mother? Is he very old? Will he die before we grow up? Will +he, mother?”</p> + +<p>“Children, be careful crossing the road.... What’s the matter, Imogen?”</p> + +<p>“Will he die, mother, before we’re grown up?”</p> + +<p>“Who? Dr. Nansen? Oh, no, I hope not, why should he? Tony, don’t +dawdle. We’ll go home by the Park. Keep together, children, there’s +such a crowd.... Imogen, <i>don’t</i> play with strange dogs—I keep +telling you.”</p> + +<p>“Mother, he’s such a weeny one ... all white, with a black nose and a +red tongue.... Mother, when <i>can</i> I have a puppy?”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">25<br> +JUBILEE</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span></p> + + +<p>Jubilee Day. Sweltering heat, after a grey beginning; baked streets. +Irving, out of his wealth and generosity, had bought a block of seats +in the Mall for the procession, and there the family sat. Papa, mamma, +Vicky and Charles and their daughter Imogen (their other children were +away at school), Rome, Stanley, Irving and his wife, and Una and Ted +up from the country, with two stout and handsome children. The ladies +wore beflowered, rakish, fly-away hats, and dresses with high collars +and hunched sleeves and small waists. They look absurd now, in old +pictures of the period, but they did not look absurd to one another at +the time; they looked natural, and <i>comme-il-faut</i>, and smart. The +boys wore their Eton suits and the girls light frocks. Imogen had a +blue smock, gathered across the yoke, so that when she ran her fingers +across the smocking it made a little soft, crisp noise. She sat next +her little cousins from the country. But she was shy of them and turned +her face away, and would say nothing to them after she had asked, “How +is Rover? How is Lassie? Are the puppies born yet?” Fits of shyness +seized upon Imogen like toothache, even now that she had been ever so +long at school, and she would hang her head, and mutter monosyllabic +answers, and wish she were Prince Prigio, with his cap of darkness, +and when, in church, it came to the psalm about “Deliver me from the +hands of strange children,” she would pray it ardently, feeling how +right David (if that psalm were one of his) had been. She was not shy +of her cousins when she stayed at the farm with them, for the farm was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span> +like paradise, full of calves, puppies, pigs and joy, and Katie, Dick, +Martin and Dolly were its hierophants, and, though they weren’t much +good at being pirates or Red Indians, it was, no doubt, because they +were always employed to better purpose. But in the Mall, seated in a +tidy row waiting for the procession, it was different. Imogen wished +that two of her brothers and sisters could have been there, instead +of Katie and Dick. She held a fold of her mother’s soft foulard dress +tightly between her hot fingers. She whispered,</p> + +<p>“Mother. Suppose someone felt sick and couldn’t get out?”</p> + +<p>“<i>Jean</i>—you don’t feel sick, do you, child?” Vicky was alarmed, +knowing the weakness of her daughter’s stomach.</p> + +<p>“Oh, no, <i>I</i> don’t feel sick. But if someone did? What +<i>would</i> they do, mother? Suppose the lady just above <i>you</i> +felt sick, mother? Suppose she <i>was</i> sick? What would you do, +mother?”</p> + +<p>“Don’t be silly, Imogen. If you talk like that you’ll feel sick +yourself. Talk to Katie. Don’t you see you’re interrupting grandmamma +and me?”</p> + +<p>But Imogen’s grandmamma smiled across at her small pink, freckled face.</p> + +<p>“Are you enjoying yourself, Jennie?”</p> + +<p>“Yes, grandmamma ... is the Queen older than you, grandmamma?”</p> + +<p>“Yes. The Queen is seventy-eight. I am sixty-three. When I was only +three years old, the Queen was crowned.”</p> + +<p>“Did you see her crowned?”</p> + +<p>“No. I was too young.”</p> + +<p>“Is it a very big crown? Will she have it on?... +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span> +<i>Mother</i>”—Imogen had a terrible thought and whispered +it—“suppose <i>the Queen</i> was sick in her carriage, just opposite +here? What <i>would</i> happen, mother? Would the procession wait or go +on?”</p> + +<p>“Now, Jennie, that will do. You’re being tiresome and silly. Talk to +Katie and Dick. I’m talking to grandmamma; I told you before.”</p> + +<p>(For that was the way in which children were kept under in the last +century. Things have changed.)</p> + +<p>Gold and purple and crimson. Silver and scarlet and gold. Fluttering +pennons on tall Venetian masts. The Mall was a street in fairyland, or +the New Jerusalem. And thronged with those who would never see either +more nearly, being neither fantastic nor good. Never would most of +those enter through the strait gate and see the gates of pearl and the +city of golden streets. But was not this as good? Silver and violet and +crimson and gold; gay streamers flying on the wind. Beautiful as an +army with banners, the Mall was....</p> + +<p>“Let’s count the flags,” said Imogen to Katie and Dick.</p> + +<p>“I remember the coronation,” said Mr. Garden, half to Irving, half to +anyone sitting about who might be interested, after the way of elderly +persons. “I was a very small boy, but my father took me to see the +procession. I remember he put me up on his shoulder while it passed.... +There wasn’t quite such a crowd then as to-day, I think.”</p> + +<p>“People have increased,” said Rome. “Particularly in London. There are +now too many, that is certain.”</p> + +<p>“The crowd,” said Mr. Garden, his memory straying over that day sixty +years ago, “was <i>prettier</i> then. I am nearly sure it was prettier. +Costumes were better.”</p> + +<p>“They could hardly,” said Rome, “have been worse.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p> + +<p>“I remember my mother, in a violet pelisse, that I think she had got +new for the occasion, and a crinoline.... Crinolines hadn’t grown +large in ’37—they were very graceful, I think.... And a pretty poke +bonnet. And my father in a cravat, with close whiskers (whiskers +hadn’t grown large, either), and a tall grey hat.... And myself done +up tight in blue nankeen with brass buttons, and your aunt Selina with +white frilled garments showing below her frock. Little girls weren’t +so pretty,” he added, looking across at Imogen’s straight blue smock. +“Well, well, sixty years ago. A great deal has happened since then. A +great reign and a great time.”</p> + +<p>“They’re pretty nearly due now,” said Irving, consulting his watch. +“Sure to be late, though.”</p> + +<p>“Who’ll come first, mother?” Imogen asked.</p> + +<p>“Captain Ames, on a horse. And behind him Life Guards and dragoons and +that kind of person.... So I said to her, mamma, that really unless she +could undertake to.... Oh, listen, they really <i>are</i> coming now. +Listen to the cheering, Jennie.”</p> + +<p>The noise of loyalty beat and broke like a sea from west to east. The +sound shivered down Imogen’s spine like music, and, as usual in such +moments, her eyes pringled with hot tears, which she squeezed away. +Then came the blaring of the trumpets and the rolling of the drums, +and, singing high above them like a kettle on the boil, the faint, thin +skirling of the pipes.</p> + +<p>Imogen’s hot hand clutched Vicky’s dress.</p> + +<p>“Now, Jean, don’t get too excited, darling. Try and be quiet and +sensible, like Katie and Dick.”</p> + +<p>“Mother, I <i>am</i> too excited, already. <i>Look</i>, mother—is that +Captain Ames on a horse?”</p> + +<p>Captain Ames on a horse (and what a horse!) it was. And behind him +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span> +Life Guards, dragoons, lancers, and that kind of person, in noble +profusion. Very gallant and proud and lovely, prancing, curvetting, gay +as bright flowers in a wind.... O God, what military men!</p> + +<p>A little white-moustached general rode by, and great cheers crashed. +“That’s Lord Roberts, Imogen.” Imogen, who knew her Kipling, had a lump +in her throat for Bobs of Kandahar.</p> + +<p>“And that’s Lord Charles Beresford—with the cocked hat, do you see?”</p> + +<p>Then came the great guns, running on their carriages.</p> + +<p>And then the cheering broke to a mighty storm, as it always does when +sailors go by.</p> + +<p>The sailors too had guns. Blue-jackets and smart, neat officers, +Britannia’s pets, Britannia’s pride....</p> + +<p>Imogen, who had always meant to be a sailor, and who even now blindly +hoped that somehow, before she reached the age for Osborne, a way would +be made for her (either she would become a boy, or dress up as a boy, +or the rule excluding girls from the senior service would be relaxed), +gasped and screwed her hands tightly together against her palpitating +breast. Here were sailors. Straight from the tossing blue sea; straight +from pacing the quarter-deck, spyglass in hand, spying for enemy craft, +climbing the rigging, setting her hard-a-port, manning the guns, +raking the enemy amidships, holding up slavers, receiving surrendered +swords.... Here, in brief, were sailors; and the junior service faded +from the stage. Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. The moment +was almost too excessive for a budding sailor, with wet eyes and lips +pressed tight together to keep the face steady. Fortunately it passed, +and was succeeded by the First Prussian Dragoon Guards, great men with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span> +golden helmets, who could be admired without passion, and by strange +brown men with turbans and big beards.</p> + +<p>“Indians,” Vicky said, and Indians too one knew from Kipling. And, “Sir +Partab Singh,” added the informing voice.</p> + +<p>“Is he the chief of the Indians, mother?”</p> + +<p>“Some kind of chief, yes.”</p> + +<p>Other brown men followed the Indians—little coppery, fuzzy Maoris; and +with them rode splendid white men from New Zealand, and slouch-hatted +Rhodesian Horse.</p> + +<p>“From South Africa.... You remember Dr. Jim and his raid and Cecil +Rhodes ... the Christmas holidays before last....”</p> + +<p>“When the chair broke and I cut my head.” Yes, Imogen remembered, +though she had been only seven then. Over the Transvaal border, then a +gallop for life or death.... The chair was still broken.... Everyone +seemed to remember Dr. Jim and his raid and Cecil Rhodes, for the +slouch-hatted riders were cheered and cheered. Hurrah for South Africa! +“Political trouble, much less war, cannot now be apprehended,” the +<i>Times</i> had said that morning, in a pæan of Jubilee satisfaction +with sixty years of progress abroad and at home.</p> + +<p>The best was over, for now began carriages—landaus and pairs. Foreign +envoys. The Papal Nuncio sharing a landau with a gentleman from China, +who cooled himself with a painted fan. Landau after landau bearing +royal gentlemen, royal ladies. What a pity for them to be borne tamely +in landaus instead of a-horseback!</p> + +<p>A colonial escort; an Indian escort; Lord Wolseley.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span></p> + +<p>And then the procession’s meaning and climax. “The Queen, Jennie.”</p> + +<p>Eight cream horses soberly drawing an open carriage, surrounded by +postillions and red-coated running footmen; and in the carriage the +little stout old lady, black-dressed, with black and white bonnet, and +with her the beautiful Princess in heliotrope, dressed in the then +current fashion, which royal ladies have adhered to ever since, never +allowing themselves to be unsettled by the modes of the new century.</p> + +<p>The Queen, God save her. The noise was monstrous, louder than any real +noise could be.</p> + +<p>“Dear old soul,” cried Vicky’s clear voice as she lustily clapped white +kid hands.</p> + +<p>Papa’s blue eyes looked kindly down on the old lady whose coronation he +remembered.</p> + +<p>“A record to be proud of,” said papa.</p> + +<p>“Oh, yes, she’s seen some life this sixty years, the old lady,” +admitted Irving.</p> + +<p>“I expect she is feeling the heat a bit,” said Una. “Well, I hope she’s +happy.”</p> + +<p>Behind them people were saying loyal Victorian things to one another +about the dear old Queen.</p> + +<p>“She’s got the hearts of the Empire all right,” they were saying, +“whether they’re under white skins or brown,” and, “God bless our dear +Queen,” and, “How well she looks to-day,” and, “She’s an Empress, but +she’s a woman first. That’s why we all love her so,” and so on and so +forth.</p> + +<p>And, “There goes the Prince,” they said, applauding now the burly +middle-aged gentleman riding his horse by his mother’s carriage.</p> + +<p>“He must be gettin’ pretty impatient, poor man,” said Amy. “Nearly +sixty himself, and mamma still going strong. I expect he thinks this +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span> +ought to be his silver Jubilee, not mamma’s diamond one.”</p> + +<p>Mr. Garden looked pained. He often looked and was pained at the wife of +Maurice.</p> + +<p>Imogen’s heart swelled for the Empress-Queen and the crash of loyalty, +but not to bursting-point; for here was only a little old lady in a +carriage (though drawn by eight cream horses like a fairy godmother’s), +and it is the swagger of gallantry that stirs. Sailors, soldiers, +explorers, martyrs, firemen, circus-riders, Blondin on his rope, Christ +on his cross, Joan of Arc on her white steed or her red pile—these are +they that shake the soul to tears. Not old ladies, however mighty, who +have sat on a throne for sixty years.</p> + +<p>“The Prince, Jennie. The Prince of Wales.”</p> + +<p>“<i>Oh, mother, where?</i>”</p> + +<p>The Prince of Wales. Gallant figure of legend. Young, noble, princely, +with caracolling charger and a triple white plume in a silver helm. The +bravest and the most chivalrous of the knights. Where was the Prince of +Wales—“<i>Oh, mother, where?</i>”</p> + +<p>“There—don’t you see him? The big man in uniform with a grey beard, +riding by the Queen’s carriage.”</p> + +<p>The big man.... Oh, no, that must be a mistake.</p> + +<p>“<i>That’s</i> not the Prince of Wales, mother. Not <i>that</i> one....”</p> + +<p>“Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”</p> + +<p>A thousand reasons why it shouldn’t be. A hundred thousand reasons.... +But in vain their legions beat against the hard little fact it +<i>was</i>. Imogen’s soaring heart sank like a stone in water. Fearful +doubts whispered. Had all the Princes of Wales been like that—fat +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span> +elderly men with grey beards? The Black Prince.... Oh, no, not the +Black Prince....</p> + +<p>“The Black Prince wasn’t like that, mother, was he?”</p> + +<p>“It must be nearly the end now. Here’s the music.... +What, Jean? What’s bothering you now?”</p> + +<p>“The Black Prince....”</p> + +<p>“Forget him, my precious. Don’t let any prince weigh on your little +mind. Here comes the music. Do you hear the pipes, children?”</p> + +<p>So the great procession passed eastward, to rejoice Trafalgar Square, +the Strand, Fleet Street and the lands across the river.</p> + +<p>“It’ll be a job getting out of this. Hold on to me, Imogen. Did you +enjoy it, darling?”</p> + +<p>“Yes.” Imogen nodded, with the sun in her screwed-up eyes. “I wish we +could run very fast down the streets to where they haven’t passed yet, +and see them all again. Do you think we could, mother?”</p> + +<p>“I’m sure we couldn’t.... You’re not over-tired, mamma dear?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, no. I feel very well.... But that child has turned green.”</p> + +<p>Vicky looked down, startled, at her daughter.</p> + +<p>“<i>Imogen.</i> Aren’t you well?”</p> + +<p>“Mother, I think I may be going to be sick.”</p> + +<p>“Well, sit down till it’s over.... Bless the child. It’s the heat and +the excitement. She gets taken like that sometimes, by way of reaction +after her treats—most tiresome.”</p> + +<p>“Poor little mite.”</p> + +<p>“How are you feeling now, Jennie?”</p> + +<p>Imogen said nothing. Yellow as cream cheese, she sat in her seat and +asked God not to disgrace her by letting her be sick in public, in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span> +grand stand, on Jubilee Day, with all London looking on.</p> + +<p>But, “I’m not sure, mother, that I do very much believe in prayers,” +she said to Vicky that evening.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">26<br> +RECESSIONAL</p> + + +<p>Triumphant patriotism is all very well; Proud imperialism is all very +well. But these things should be carried on with a swagger, like a +panache, with a hint of the gay and the absurd, marching, as it were, +to the wild, conceited noise of skirling pipes. People of all nations, +but more particularly the English, are apt to forget this, and bear +their patriotism heavily, unctuously, speak solemnly of the white man’s +burden, and introduce religion into the gay and worldly affair.</p> + +<p>Rudyard Kipling did this, on July 17th of Jubilee year, when he +published in the <i>Times</i> “Recessional,” beginning,—</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“God of our fathers, known of old,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Lord of our far-flung battle line,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Dominion over palm and pine—</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lest we forget, lest we forget.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Stanley read it at breakfast, and shuddered. It was such a poem as the +Jews might have made, in the days of Israel’s glory—terribly godly and +solemn. It was addressed to Jehovah, the Jewish Lord of Hosts. Those +Jews! How their influence lasts! Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold.... +Awful is a bad word, and hand should never, whosesoever hand it is, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span> +have a capital “h” (but that might have been the printer’s fault, as +anyone who knows printers must, in fairness, admit), and dominion over +palm and pine is much too delightful and romantic a thing to be spoilt +by being thus held. And, further down, it was worse.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“If, drunk with sight of power, we loose</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Such boasting as the Gentiles use,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Or lesser breeds without the Law....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Are we then Jews, and not Gentiles? And what Law? And lesser +breeds—that was worst of all.</p> + +<p>The whole poem seemed to Stanley so heavily ruinous of a jolly thing, +so terribly expressive of the solemn pomposity into which national +pride is ever ready to stumble, that it tarnished for her something +young and buoyant and absurd into which she had flung herself of late. +As Miss Edith Cavell remarked twenty years later, patriotism is not +enough. It needs to be as the cherishing love a man has for the soil +of his home; or as the bitter, desperate striving unto death of the +oppressed race, the damned desperation of the rebel; or as the gay and +gallant flying of gaudy banners. Successful, smug, solemn, conquering +patriotism is not nearly enough—or perhaps it is a good deal too much. +Anyhow, it is all wrong.</p> + +<p>“What a man!” Stanley muttered, meaning Mr. Rudyard Kipling, who +did, if anyone, know all about the adventure of empire-building, its +swagger, glitter and romance, and must needs turn himself into a +preacher.</p> + +<p>Stanley’s niece, Imogen, happened to have “Recessional” read aloud to +her form at school, by one whom she greatly loved (for it must be +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span> +owned that this unbalanced child only too readily adored those who +taught her), and shyly she wriggled her mind away from the sense of the +sounding lines. She liked,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Far-called, our navies melt away;</div> + <div class="verse indent2">On dune and headland sinks the fire;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lo, all our pomp of yesterday</div> + <div class="verse indent2">Is one with Nineveh and Tyre....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">and,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“The tumult and the shouting dies,</div> + <div class="verse indent2">The captains and the kings depart....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">and,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“All valiant dust that builds on dust....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +but disliked the rest. If Miss Treherne liked it, it must, she knew, be +somehow good; further, it was by Kipling, who had made Mowgli, and,</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“It’s north you may run to the rime-ringed sun,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Or south to the blind Horn’s hate;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Or east all the way into Mississippi Bay,</div> + <div class="verse indent4">Or west to the Golden Gate....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +But all the same, Imogen had no use for it. In the foolish jargon of +school, it was “pi.”</p> + +<p>But newspapers said at the time, and history books have said since, +that this poem sounded a fine and needed note; and, in fact, it was +a good deal liked. Mr. Garden liked it. Mr. Garden was afraid that +Britain was getting a little above itself with Empire. As, indeed, it +doubtless was, said Stanley, and why not? Empires, like life, only +endure for a brief period, and we may as well enjoy them while we may. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span> +They are wasted on those who do not enjoy them. Time bears us off, as +lightly as the wind lifts up the smoke and carries it away.... The +grave’s a fine and private place, but in it there are no empires, only +the valiant dust that builds on dust, and has come to dust at the last. +So let us by all means be above ourselves while we may and if we can, +in the brief space that is ours before we must be below ourselves for +ever.</p> + +<p>Mr. Garden replied that there may be many brief spaces to come, for +all of us, and we should be training ourselves for these.... For +papa was still a Theosophist, and believed in infinitely numerous +reincarnations. He did not desire them, for he had had troubles enough, +for one; but he knew that they would occur. He looked with apprehension +down a vista of lives. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, to the +last syllable of recorded time—or anyhow, until papa should be made +perfect—and that, papa humbly felt, was a very long time ahead.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">27<br> +BOND STREET</p> + + +<p>London glittered sweetly, washed by the May sun. The streets were bland +and gay, like a lady of fashion taking the air. Miss Garden walked +abroad, bland and gay too, slim and erect in neat coat and skirt (skirt +touching the pavement as she walked—disgusting, but skirts did), +lace jabot at the high stock collar, and large beribboned hat, tipped +a little forward so that the sunshine caught the fair hair sweeping +upward from the nape. She led a huge Borzoi on a leash, and as she +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span> +walked she surveyed London, its people, its streets, its shops. In +a gold net purse bag she carried notes and clinking sovereigns. She +had gambled to good purpose last night at bridge, the new card game. +She was a great gambler. Bridge, whist, baccarat, poker, roulette and +Monte Carlo—at all these she won and lost, with the same equable +sangfroid. Her parents did not like it, though Rome’s income, left her +by her grandfather, was her own. They did not, in many ways, approve +of their clever Rome, so unlike themselves. But on such disapprovals, +so Rome assured them, family life is based. Mutual disapproval, mutual +toleration; that is family, as, indeed, so much other, life.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, Rome gambled. The older she grew the more greatly and +intelligently she gambled. She had her systems, ingeniously worked +out, for Monte Carlo. She had been there this Easter, together with +her friend and ally, Guy Donkin, a cheerful barrister three years her +junior, who had been used to ask her to marry him, but had now settled +down to a sporting friendship and confided to her his fleeting affairs +of the heart. Here again Mr. and Mrs. Garden disapproved. Going to +Monte Carlo to meet a man; staying at the same hotel with him; seen +everywhere with him; even in the late, the very late thirties, was this +right or wise? It set people talking....</p> + +<p>“As to that,” Rome carelessly dismissed it, “be sure people will +always talk. You may be sure, too, mamma, that Guy and I do nothing +not <i>comme-il-faut</i>. We are both too worldly-wise for that. We +may <i>épater</i> the bourgeois possibly, but we shan’t <i>épater</i> +our own world. We know its foolish rules, and we both find it more +comfortable to keep them.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span></p> + +<p>Entirely of the world Miss Garden looked, this May morning, strolling +down Bond Street, a little cynical, a little blasé, very well-dressed, +intensely civilised, exquisitely poised, delicately, cleanly fair. She +would soon be thirty-nine, and looked just that, neither more nor less.</p> + +<p>A window full of jade caught her roving eye. She went in; she bought a +clear jade elephant, and a dull jade lump that swung on a fine platinum +chain. She also got a tortoise-shell cigarette case.</p> + +<p>She stopped next at a window full of little dogs. Big-headed Sealeyham +puppies; Poltalloch terriers. These she looked at critically. She meant +to have a Poltalloch, but to order one from their home in the West +Highlands when next she stayed there. Adorable puppies. The Borzoi +sniffed at them through plate glass, and grunted.</p> + +<p>Irish lace. Jabots of <i>pointe de Venise</i>, and deep collars of +Honiton and <i>pointe de Flandres</i>, and handkerchiefs edged with +Chantilly. Miss Garden entered the shop; came out with a jabot for +herself, handkerchiefs for Vicky’s birthday. Then ivory opera glasses, +and an amber cigarette holder caught her fancy. Soon her free hand was +slung with neat paper packages. That was a bore; she wished she had had +them all sent.</p> + +<p>She strolled on, turned into Stewart’s, ordered a box of chocolates for +Stanley’s children, and met Mr. Guy Donkin for lunch. They were going +to a picture show together.</p> + +<p>“I am not,” said Miss Garden, “fit for a respectable picture gallery, +as you see.” She indicated the packages and the Borzoi. “But +nevertheless we will go. Jeremy shall wait in the street while we +criticise the art of our friends. I was overtaken this morning by the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span> +lust of possession. I often get it on fine mornings after fortunate +nights. I find that the gambler’s life works out, on the whole, pretty +evenly—what one makes at the dice one loses in the shops. And what +one loses at play one saves off the shops. One walk abroad, looking at +everything and buying nothing, will save one some hundreds of pounds. +It is the easiest way of gaining, though not the most amusing.... I see +you have a lunch edition. How go the wars?”</p> + +<p>The most noticeable wars at the moment were those between America and +Spain, and between Great Britain and the Soudanese.</p> + +<p>“Dewey’s occupied Manila. The Fuzzies have lost three more zarebas. +It must be warm for fighting out there to-day.... Here’s an article +by some Dean on the vulgarity of modern extravagances. Meant for +you, Rome, with all your packages.... <i>Are</i> we specially +extravagant just now? I suppose there’s a lot of money going about, +one way and another. Business is so good. And all these gold mines +and companies.... The Dean is worrying about the growing habit of +entertaining in restaurants instead of in the home. Why not? And about +women taking to cosmetics again, after a century of abstinence. Again, +why not? I agree with Max about that. The clergy do worry so, poor +dears; if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Oh, and on Tuesday we’re +all to wear a white rose, for the Old Man’s funeral day.”</p> + +<p>“How touching! It will please papa. He’s really distressed about the +Old Man; he thinks politics on the grand scale are over, and that the +giants are dead. Politics and politicians are certainly intensely dull +in these days; but then, except for an occasional gleam, they probably +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span> +always were. Partly because people insist on taking them so solemnly, +instead of as a farce.... There’s my ex-brother-in-law, lunching with a +quite new and lovely young woman. He always smiles at me, blandly and +without shame. I can’t forgive him for spoiling Stanley’s life, but +I can’t help rather liking him still. He always sends us tickets for +his first nights, and they’re very amusing. A shameless reactionary, +but so witty. Maurice and Irving cut him, which I think crude. Men are +so intolerant. I cut no one, except when I’m afraid of being bored by +them. Thank you, yes: Turkish.”</p> + +<p>They strolled off through the pleasant city to look at pictures, +which they could both criticise with as much intelligence as was +necessary, and Miss Garden with rather more. Then Mr. Donkin returned +to the Bar, and Miss Garden drove home in a hansom with the Borzoi and +the gleanings from Bond Street. At five she was going to an At Home +somewhere; later she was dining out and going to the opera. Life was +full; life was amusing; life hung a brilliant curtain over the abyss. +From the abyss Miss Garden turned her eyes; in it lay love and death, +locked bitterly together for evermore.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">28<br> +LAST LAP</p> + + +<p>1898 swaggered by under a hot summer sun. The century swaggered +deathwards, gay with gold and fatness, unsteady, dark and confused. +“The Belle of New York” at the theatres, the Simple Life on the +land, free-wheel bicycles on the road, motor cars, coming first in +single spies, then in battalions, the victory of Omdurman, Kitchener +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span> +occupying Khartoum and the French Fashoda, unpleasant international +incidents (for international incidents are always unpleasant), +millionaires rising like stars, fortunes made and spent, business +booming, companies floated and burst, names of drinks, provender and +medicines flaming from the skies, Swinburne publishing “Rosamund, +Queen of the Lombards,” Mr. Yeats “The Wind Among the Reeds,” Mr. +Kipling “Stalky & Co.” and “The Day’s Work,” Mr. Conrad “Tales of +Unrest,” Mr. Stephen Phillips “Paolo and Francesca,” Mr. Thomas Hardy +“Wessex Poems,” Mr. H. G. Wells “The War of the Worlds,” Miss Mary +Cholmondeley “Red Pottage,” Mrs. Humphry Ward “Helbeck of Bannisdale,” +Mr. Maurice Hewlett “The Forest Lovers,” Mr. Kenneth Grahame “Dream +Days,” Mr. Hall Caine “The Christian,” George Meredith greeted by +literary England on his seventieth birthday, bad novels pouring into +the libraries with terrifying increase of speed, wireless telegraphy +used at sea, flying machines experimented with, Liberals sickening with +Imperialism or Little Englandism, Conservatives with jingoism run mad, +the <i>Speaker</i> changing hands, the Encyclopædia Britannica sold +by the <i>Times</i>, anti-ritualist agitations, armament limitation +conferences convened by Russia and attended by the Powers, all of +whom were busy as bees at home increasing their armies and navies and +hatching military plots.</p> + +<p>And then the South African Uitlanders sent complaints and petitions +from the Rand, and despatches began to pass between Her Majesty’s +government and President Kruger’s. Despatches are most unfortunate and +unwise means of communication; they always make trouble.</p> + +<p>There was bound to be war, people began saying. Mr. Chamberlain and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span> +Mr. Rhodes intended it, and would not be happy till they got it. +Probably President Kruger and his Burghers also intended it. Certainly +the Uitlanders hoped for it. The British public were not averse. They +hated the Boers, and wanted excitement and more Empire. It was a +hopeless business. War was bound to come, and came, in October, 1899.</p> + +<p>Mr. Garden said, “A bad business. Gladstone would never have let it +come to this. One doesn’t trust Chamberlain. A bad, dishonest business.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Garden said, “Those poor lads going out just before the winter....”</p> + +<p>Vicky said, “Charles says it won’t be long. We shall have them asking +for terms in a month.”</p> + +<p>Maurice said, “That damned jingo, Chamberlain,” and filled his fountain +pen with more vitriol.</p> + +<p>Amy said, “Those canting, snuffling old farmers. <i>They</i> won’t keep +us long.”</p> + +<p>Rome said, “Unfortunate. But it’s a way in which centuries often end.”</p> + +<p>Stanley said, “Right or wrong, we’ve got to win now.”</p> + +<p>Irving said, “I shall take the opportunity to run out and see to my +mining interests. Up the Rand,” and he enlisted in the C. I. V. and +went.</p> + +<p>Una said, “War! How silly. If it isn’t one thing it’s another. Why not +leave the poor farmers alone?” For she sympathised with farmers, and +was all for leaving people alone.</p> + +<p>The children of all of them shouted for the soldiers and the flag, and +sang “Soldiers of the Queen.”</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“And when we say we’ve always won,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And when they ask us how it’s done....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span></p> + +<p>A very bright song. That was the right, amusing spirit of patriotism, +not the “Recessional,” and not prayers sent forth for the people’s use +by Bishops.</p> + +<p>Vicky’s children got up early one morning in the Christmas holidays +without leave, and saw a detachment of the C. I. V. go off from +Victoria. There was a raw, yellow fog, and the khaki figures loomed +oddly through it. The press of the swaying, shouting crowd was +terrifying, exhilarating. Imogen, linked up between Phyllis and Hugh, +was crushed, swung, caught off her feet. Persons of eleven had no +business in that crowd. Phyllis and Nancy had not wanted her and Tony +to come, but they had firmly done so. Imogen could scarcely see the +soldiers, only the broad backs her face was pressed against. Herd +enthusiasm caught and held them all, and they shouted and sang with the +rest, hoarsely, choking in the fog.</p> + +<p>“They’ll all be killed,” sobbed a woman close to them. “We’ll never see +their brave faces again....”</p> + +<p>At that Imogen’s eyes brimmed over, but she could not put up her hands +to wipe them, for her arms were tight wedged. She could only snuffle +and blink. Splendid heroes! They would be killed by the Boers, sure +enough, every one of them.... Horrible Boers with great Bibles and +sjamboks and guns. Hateful, hateful Boers. If only one were allowed +to go and fight them, as Uncle Irving was going. Thank Heaven, it was +rather age than sex that kept one from doing that; the boys couldn’t +go any more than Imogen could. If the boys had been old enough and had +gone, Imogen would somehow, she felt sure, have gone too. To be left +out was too awful.</p> + +<p>But these were grown men. Splendid men. Lucky men, for they would soon +be roving the veldt with guns and bayonets under the African sun; they +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span> +would lurk in ambush behind kopjes and arise and slay their brother +Boer, the canting, bearded foe, with great slaughter. Even if they did +never come back, how could man die better?</p> + +<p>The crowd swayed and shoved, lifting the children from their feet. +Imogen’s chest was crushed against the back in front of her; she fought +for breath. There was an acrid, musty smell; the raw air was close with +breathing.</p> + +<p>A crowd is queer. A number of individuals gather together for one +purpose, and you get not a number of individuals, but a crowd. It is +like a new, strange animal, sub-human. It may do anything. Go crazy +with panic, or rage, or excitement, or delight. Now it was enthusiasm +that gripped and swayed it, and caused it to shout and sing. Songs +rippled over it, starting somewhere, caught from mouth to mouth.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Cook’s son, duke’s son, son of a belted earl....</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Fifty thousand horse and foot going to Table Bay....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind"> +And then again the constant chorus—“God bless you, Tommy Atkins, +here’s your country’s love to you!”</p> + +<p class="space-above2"> +It was over at last. The heroes had gone. The crowd broke and pushed +out from the station gates, flooding the choked yellow streets.</p> + +<p>“There’s our bus,” said Phyllis, a good organiser. “Come on. Stick +together.”</p> + +<p>They besieged and rushed the bus as troops rush a fort. Being vigorous +and athletic children, they stormed it successfully.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span></p> + +<p>“We shall catch it from mother,” said Phyllis, now they had leisure to +look ahead. “But it’s been worth it.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">29<br> +OF CENTURIES</p> + + +<p>That sad, disappointing, disillusioning, silly war crawled through +that bitter winter of defeat, until by sheer force of numbers, the +undefeatable Boers were a little checked in the spring of 1900.</p> + +<p>Life is disappointing. Imogen, along with many others, thought and +hoped that 1900 would be a new century. It was not a new century. There +was quite a case for its being so. When you turned twelve, you began +your thirteenth year. When you had counted up to 100 you had completed +that hundred and were good for the next. It all depended on whether you +numbered the completion of a year from the first day when you began +saying 1900, or not till its last day, when you stopped saying it. The +Astronomer Royal adjudicated that it was on its last day, and that they +had, in fact, said 1900 prematurely, saying it before the last second +of December the 31st. He may have been right. He probably was right. +But the disappointment of the young, to whom a year is very long, its +end hidden in mists, like mountain tops which you perhaps shall never +reach—the disappointment of the young at the opening of the year 1900 +was very great.</p> + +<p>“At all events,” said Imogen, “we can write 1900. We can say, ‘It’s +1900.’” But what one could not say was, “I remember, last century, +going to the sea-side for the holidays....” “Last century bicycles and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span> +steam engines came in ...” or, “We, of the twentieth century....” That +would have to wait.</p> + +<p>The funny thing was that you could not, however hard you thought, lay +your finger on the moment when the new century would be born. Imogen +used to try, lying in bed before she went to sleep. One second you +said, “We of the nineteenth century”; the next second you said, “We of +the twentieth century.” But there must be a moment in between, when it +was neither; surely there must. A queer little isolated point in time, +with no magnitude, but only position.... The same point must be between +one day and the next, one hour and the next ... all points in time were +such points ... but you could never find them ... always you either +looked forward or looked back ... you said, “now—now—now,” trying to +catch now, but you never could ... and such vain communings with time +lead one drowsily into sleep.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">30<br> +PRO-BOER</p> + + +<p>In Stanley the Boer War slew the jingo spirit, turned back on itself +the cresting wave of imperialism. Not because it was an ill-fought, +stupidly managed, for long unsuccessful war, but because it was war, +and war was, when seen functioning, senseless and horrible. It was +nearly as bad when Great Britain at last began to defeat the too clever +farmers. It was almost worst in the summer of 1900, when the news of +the relief of Mafeking caused so much more tempestuous a hysteria +than the other reliefs had caused, and when Lord Roberts occupied +Johannesburg and proclaimed the annexation of the Orange Free State, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span> +and when Pretoria was taken, and yet the war went on and on and on.</p> + +<p>“Is this the way,” asked Liberals, “to secure in the end any kind of +working reconciliation between ourselves and the conquered enemy? If +Great Britain wishes to be burdened for ever with a sullen, hostile, +exasperated people, embittered with the memory of burnt farms, useless +slaughter and destruction, she is taking the right course.” And so +forth. Liberals always talk like that. Those who disagreed merely +retorted, “Pro-Boer,” which took less time. The Latin word “pro” has +been found always very useful and insulting.</p> + +<p>Stanley became a pro-Boer. She disliked all she knew of Boers very +much, but that had nothing to do with it. A pro-Boer, like a pro-German +much later, was one who was in favour of making terms with the enemy on +the victories already gained. The Conciliation Committee were pro-Boer. +The Liberal newspapers were pro-Boer, except the <i>Chronicle</i>, +which threw Mr. Massingham overboard to be pro-Boer by himself. Maurice +Garden was, of course, pro-Boer. He loathed Boers, the heavy-witted, +brutal Bible-men, with their unctuous Cromwellian cant. But fiercely +and contemptuously he was pro-Boer. Rome, too, was pro-Boer; had been +from the first.</p> + +<p>“A most unpleasant people,” she had said. “What a mistake not to leave +them to themselves! If the Uitlanders disliked them as much as I +should, they wouldn’t go on living there and sending complaints to us; +they would come away. All this imperialism is so very unbalanced.”</p> + +<p>“Worse than unbalanced, Rome,” her papa sadly said. “One hesitates to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span> +speak harshly, but it must be called un-Christian. The Churches have +gone terribly astray over it. The unhappy Churches....”</p> + +<p>Unhappy because terribly astray on so many topics, papa meant. Even +now he was mourning the death of his friend Dr. Mivart, who had been +deprived of the sacraments of his church because he had, in the +<i>Nineteenth Century</i> and the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, written +articles, however reverent, on “The Continuity of Catholicism,” and +in them seemed to give to the infallible authority of the Church a +lower place than to human reason. Alas for the Catholic Church, which +so treated its best sons! Never, papa knew, could he join that great +Church again. Religion too had suffered a heavy blow in the death, in +January, of Dr. Martineau. And Ruskin also went that month.... Like +leaves the great Victorians were falling. Papa, brooding over a great +epoch so soon to close, could not but be a pro-Boer and hope that this +horrid war, which jarred and confused its last years, would soon end.</p> + +<p>As for Maurice, his newspaper office was raided and smashed on Mafeking +night, and he himself carried out and ducked in Trafalgar Square basin. +No one hurt him. No one wanted, on this happy, good-humoured night, +to hurt this small, frail, scornful, slightly intoxicated, obviously +courageous editor, who brightly insulted them to their faces as they +tied him up.</p> + +<p>Vicky’s children were not pro-Boer. No one could have called them that. +They were all for a good whacking victory. Imogen, it must be owned, +did once, in a moment of seeing the point of view of the foe (Imogen +usually saw all the points of view there were to see; her eye was not +single, which made life a very dizzy business for her), write a poem +beginning:</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span></p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Across the great Vaal River we northward trekked and came,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Set up our own dominion, and men acknowledged the same;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And close behind us followed the Alien whom we scorn,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">With his eager clutching fingers and his lust for gold new-born.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent8">“‘There is wealth,’ he cried;</div> + <div class="verse indent8">‘I will dig,’ he cried;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Between him and us may the Lord decide!</div> + <div class="verse indent8">Through the Lord’s good might, 5 1-2</div> + <div class="verse indent8">By the sword’s good right,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Let us up and smite our enemies and put our foes to flight!”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Imogen was not ill-pleased with that poem, which had ten verses, and +which she wrote for a school composition. It seemed to her a fine +expression of sturdy Boer patriotism, however misguided.</p> + +<p>“I can see their point of view,” she said to herself, righteously, and +pleased with the phrase. “Most people” (which meant, it need scarcely +be said, most of the other girls at school), “can’t see it, but I can. +They’re beastly, and I’m glad they’re beaten, but I see their point of +view.” She said so to some other little girls in the Third Remove. But +the other little girls, who didn’t see the Boers’ point of view, said, +“Oh! Are you a pro-Boer? I say, Imogen Carrington’s a pro-Boer.” “Your +uncle was ducked in Trafalgar Square, wasn’t he?” said someone else, +curiously but not unkindly, and in the diffident voice suitable to +family scandals, “for being a pro-Boer. Do you think the same as him?”</p> + +<p>Imogen, blushing, disclaimed this.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span></p> + +<p>“Daddy and mother think Uncle Maurice awfully wrong, and so do I. He’s +a <i>real</i> pro-Boer.”</p> + +<p>“Well, what are you? Are you only shamming pro-Boer?”</p> + +<p>“I’m not a pro-Boer at all. I’m pro-us. I only said I could see their +point of view....”</p> + +<p>“Oh, you do talk tosh. Point of view. No one but grown-up people uses +words like that. Imogen’s getting awfully cocky now Miss Cradock always +says her compositions are good. Come and play tig.”</p> + +<p>And, since little girls at school are very seldom unkind, they included +Imogen in the game and bore no malice.</p> + +<p>Irving was no pro-Boer. He wrote home, in the autumn of 1900, “We’re +getting on, but we’re not near finished with brother Boer yet. Maurice +is talking through his hat, as usual. Any fool out here knows that +if we’re to suck any advantage out of this war (and there’s no small +advantage to be sucked, I can tell you), we’ve got to <i>win</i> it. +Those radical gas-bags at home don’t know the first thing about it.”</p> + +<p>It is an eternal and familiar dispute, and which side one takes in it +really seems to depend more on temperament than on the amount one knows +about it.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">31<br> +END OF VICTORIANISM</p> + + +<p>The nineteenth century did actually end at last. Probably everyone over +twelve and under seventy sat up to see it out, to see the twentieth in, +to catch that elusive, dramatic moment and savour it.</p> + +<p>The twentieth century. Imogen, when she woke on New Year’s Day, could +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span> +scarcely believe it. It was perhaps, she thought, a drunken dream. For +the Carringtons, like all right-thinking persons, always kept Hogmanny +in punch. But the twentieth century it was, and a clear frosty morning. +Imogen shouted to Nancy, lying in intoxicated slumbers in the other +bed, “Happy new century,” lest Nancy should say it first, then looked +at the new century out of the window. What a jolly century it looked; +what a jolly century it was going to be! A hundred happy years. At +the end of it she would be 112. A snowy-haired but still active old +lady, living in a white house on a South Sea Island, bathing every +morning (but not too early) and then getting back into bed and eating +her breakfast of mangoes, bread-fruit, delicious home-grown coffee and +honey. Then a little roller skating on the shining parquet floor of +the hall; a lovely hall, hung with the trophies of her bow—reindeer, +sand-bok, polar bear, grizzly, lion, tiger, cheetah, wombat and wolf. +No birds. Shooting birds was no fun. Imogen knew, for she had shot +her first and only sparrow last week, with her new catapult. The boys +had been delighted, but she had nearly cried. It had been beastly. +Hereafter she meant only to use the catapult on cows, brothers and +sisters, and still life. That old lady of the year 2,000 should have +only one bird to her score.</p> + +<p>The question was, what to do till getting-up time. Wake Nancy—but this +was next to impossible. Nancy was a remarkably fast sleeper. One might +go and try to wake the boys, and get them to come out catapulting in +the garden, or roller skating in the square. Or one might snuggle down +in bed again and read “Treasure Island.” Or not read, but lie and think +about the new century; perhaps make a poem about it. Imogen extracted +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span> +from the pocket of her frock, that hung on a chair, a stubby pencil, a +note-book and a stick of barley-sugar. With these she curled up among +the bedclothes. Happily she sucked and pondered. Holidays; breakfast +time not for ages; Christmas presents with the gloss still on (among +them a pair of roller skates and <i>Brassey’s Naval Annual</i> and a +new bow and arrows), and a brand new century to explore. Sing joy, sing +joy.</p> + +<p>“Roland lay in his bunk,” murmured Imogen, “and heard the prow of the +ship grinding through ice-floes as she pursued her way. Eight bells +sounded. With a hijous shock he remembered the events of last night. +He put his hand to his head; it was caked with dried blood where the +pirates had struck him with the crowbar. A faint moan of anguish was +wrung from his white lips....”</p> + +<p>Roland was Imogen, and his adventures had meandered on in serial +form in her mind for several months. She had always, ever since she +remembered, impersonated some boy or youth as she went about. “Lithe +as a panther,” she would murmur within herself, as she climbed a tree, +“Wilfrid swarmed up the bare trunk. He scanned the horizon. In the +distance he saw a puff of smoke, and heard, far away, faint shrieks. +‘Indians,’ he said, ‘at their howwid work. The question for me is, can +I warn the settlers in time? If the Redskins catch me, I shall wish I +had never been born. No; I will escape now and save myself.’”</p> + +<p>It was characteristic of Wilfrid, or Roland, or Dennis, or whatever +he was at the moment called, that he usually did a cowardly thing at +first, then repented and acted like a hero, suffering thereby both the +condemnation of his friends for his cowardice and the tortures of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span> +his foes for his courage. He was a rather morbid youth, who enjoyed +repentance and heroic amendment, no simple, stalwart soul. Usually he +was in the navy.</p> + +<p>Thus, in idle, barley-sugared dreamings, this representative of the +young generation began the new century.</p> + +<p>“What,” mused her grandfather, watching from his bed the winter morning +grow, “will the new age be?”</p> + +<p>“Much like the old ages, I shouldn’t wonder,” Mrs. Garden murmured, +drowsily. “People and things stay much the same ... much the same....”</p> + +<p>“The eternal wheel,” papa speculated, still adhering to his latest +faith, but with a note of question. “The eternal, turning wheel. I +wonder....”</p> + +<p>But what mamma wondered, catching the familiar note of doubt in his +voice, was where the eternal turning wheel would next land papa.</p> + +<p>“What a world we’ll make it, won’t we, my son and daughter,” Stanley +hopefully exclaimed to her children as they rioted about her room. +“What a century we’ll have! It belongs to the people of your age, you +know. You’ve got to see it’s a good one.... Now take yourselves off and +let me get up. Run and turn on the cold tap for me, and put the warm at +a trickle.”</p> + +<p>Stanley whistled as she dressed.</p> + +<p>“Yet another century,” her sister Rome commented, with languid +amusement, as her early tea was brought to her. “How many we have, to +be sure! I wonder if, perhaps, it is not even too many?”</p> + +<p>“<i>Maurice</i>,” shrilly called Maurice’s wife, entering his room at +nine o’clock. “Well, I declare!”</p> + +<p>Maurice lay heavily sleeping, and whiskey exhaled from his breath. He +had come home at three o’clock this morning.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span></p> + +<p>“A nice way to begin the new year,” said Amy; she did not say “new +century,” because she was of those who could not see but that the +century had been new in 1900. She shook her husband’s shoulder, looking +down with distaste at his thin, sharp-featured sleeping face, its usual +pallor heavily flushed.</p> + +<p>“A nice example to the children. And you always writing rubbish about +social reform.... You make me sick.”</p> + +<p>“Go away,” said Maurice, half opening hot eyes. “Le’me alone. My head’s +bad....”</p> + +<p>“So I should imagine,” said Amy. “I’m sick and tired of you, Maurice.”</p> + +<p>“Go away then. Right away. We’d both be happier. Why don’t you?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I daresay I’m old-fashioned,” said Amy. “I was brought up to +think a wife’s place was with her husband. Of course, I’m probably +<i>wrong</i>. I’m always surprised <i>you</i> don’t leave <i>me</i>, +feeling as you do.”</p> + +<p>Maurice, waking a little more, surveyed her with morose, heavy, aching +eyes, and moistened his dry lips.</p> + +<p>“You’re not surprised. You know it’s because of the children. It’s my +job to see they grow up decently, with decent ideas and a chance.”</p> + +<p>At that Amy’s mirth overcame her.</p> + +<p>“Decent ideas! You’re a nice educator of children, aren’t you! +<i>Look</i> at yourself lying there....”</p> + +<p>She pointed to the looking-glass opposite his bed.</p> + +<p>“Get out, please,” said Maurice, coldly. “I’ve got to write my leader.”</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the most august representative of the Victorian age wavered +wearily between her own century and this strange new one, peering +blindly down the coming road as into a grave. It did not belong to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span> +her, the new century. She had had her day. A few days of the new young +era, and she would slip into the night, giving place to the rough young +forces knocking at the door.</p> + +<p>The great Victorian century was dead.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_III">PART III<br> +EDWARDIAN</h2> +</div> + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span></p> +<p class="nindc">1<br> +DISCURSIVE</p> +</div> + + +<p class="nind"> +<span class="dropcap">T</span>HE Edwardians were, as we now think, a brief generation to themselves, +set between Victorianism and neo-Georgianism (it is a pity that we +should have no better name for the present reign, for “Georgian” +belongs by right to a period quite other; royalty having ever been +sadly unimaginative in its choice of Christian names). Set between +the nineteenth century and the full swing of the twentieth, those +brief ten years we call Edwardian seem now like a short spring day. +They were a gay and yet an earnest time. A time of social reform on +the one hand and social brilliance on the other. The heyday at once +of intellectual Fabianism and of extravagant dissipation. The hour of +the repertory theatres, the Irish Players, Bernard Shaw and Granville +Barker at the Court, Miss Horniman in the provinces, absurd musical +comedies that bloomed like gay flowers of a day and died. The onrush +of motor cars and the decline of bicycles and the horse; extravagant +country-house parties at which royalty consented to be entertained, +with royal bonhomie and royal exactions of etiquette.... “Mr. Blank, +have we not seen that suit rather often before?” “Lady Dash, surely we +remember this wall-paper....” “Lord Somebody, this is a very abominable +dinner....” What standards to live up to! There was nothing dowdy about +our King Edward. He set the stakes high, and all who could afford it +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span> +played. Pageants and processions passed in regal splendour. Money nobly +flowed.</p> + +<p>Ideals changed. The sanctity and domesticity of the <i>Heim</i> was no +more a royal fetish. “Respectability,” that good old word, degraded and +ill-used for so long, sank into discredit, sank lower in the social +scale. No more were unfortunate ladies who had had marital troubles +coldly banned from court, for a larger charity (except as to suits, +dinners and wall-papers) obtained. Victorian sternness, Victorian +prudery and intolerance, still prevailed among some of the older +aristocracy, among most of the smaller squirearchy, the professional +classes and the petty bourgeoisie; but among most of the wealthy, most +of the titled, most of the gay and extravagant classes, a wider liberty +grew.</p> + +<p>In the intervals of social pleasures, Edward the Peacemaker was busy +about the Balance of Power in Europe. He did not care about his cousin +Wilhelm. He made an Entente with France, and came to an understanding +with Russia, so that when the Trouble should come—and experienced +royalty knows that from time to time, the Trouble is bound to come—we +should not meet it singly. The weak point about ententes is that when +the Trouble comes to one’s fellow-members, they do not meet it singly +either. Considering this, and considering also the annoyance and alarm +they inspire in those not in them, and taking them all round, ententes +seem on the whole a pity. But at the time English people were pleased +with this one, and Edward was hopefully called the Peacemaker, just as +Victoria had been called Good, and Elizabeth Virgin, and Mary Bloody. +We love to name our royalties, and we much prefer to name them kindly. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span> +Mary must have been, and doubtless was, very bloody indeed before her +people bestowed on her that opprobrious title. Other sovereigns—most +other sovereigns—have been pretty bloody too, but none of them bloody +enough to be so called.</p> + +<p>A queer time! Perhaps a transition time; for that matter, this is +one of the things times always are. The world of fashion led by an +elderly royal gentleman bred at the Victorian court of his mother, and +retaining queer Victorian traditions that younger gentlemen and ladies +did not observe. King Edward, for instance, observed Sunday with some +strictness. He thought it right; he felt it should be done. The British +Sunday was an institution, and King Edward was all for institutions. A +generation was growing up, had already grown up, who did not understand +about Sunday in that sense. But you may observe about elderly Victorian +persons that, however loosely they may sit to Sunday, they usually have +a sense of it. They play or work on it consciously, with a feeling +that they are breaking a foolish rule, possibly offending an imaginary +public opinion. They seldom quite realise that the rule and the opinion +they are thinking of are nearly obsolete. They seldom regard Sunday +(with reference to the occupations practised on it), precisely as if +it were a weekday. Institutions die hard. They linger long after their +informing spirit has died.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, King Edward VII was a Victorian gentleman long before he was an +Edwardian. So he observed Sunday and the lesser proprieties, without +self-consciousness. He was like his mother, with a difference. Both had +a sense of royal dignity and of the Proper Thing. His subjects, too, +had a sense of the Proper Thing: people always have. But the Proper +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span> +Thing, revered as ever, gradually changed its face, or rather turned a +somersault and alighted on its head.</p> + +<p>Well, the Edwardians, like the Elizabethans, the Jacobeans, the +Carolines, the Georgians, the Victorians, and the neo-Georgians, were +a mixed lot. This attempt to class them, to stigmatise them with +adjectives, is unscientific, sentimental, and wildly incorrect. But, +because it is rather more interesting than to admit frankly that they +were merely a set of individuals, it will always be done.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">2<br> +VIVE LE ROI</p> + + +<p><i>La reine est morte. Vive le roi.</i> King Edward was proclaimed by +heralds, by trumpeters, and with the rolling of drums; and God save +the King. Then they buried the late queen with royal pomp, and kings, +emperors, archdukes and crown princes rode with her to the tomb.</p> + +<p>King Edward opened Parliament in state. A great king he was for +pageantry and for state. He read the Accession Declaration. It was a +tactlessly worded declaration in some ways, for it was drawn up in +days when Roman Catholicism was not well thought of by the Head of the +Church and Defender of the Faith. King Edward did not like it. “His +Majesty,” wrote the outraged Catholic peers, “would willingly have been +relieved from the necessity of branding with contumelious epithets the +religious tenets of any of his subjects.” There were protests not only +from Roman Catholics, but from Protestants and agnostics, who all, in +the main, thought it rude. But some there were who, though they knew +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span> +it was rude, knew also that it was right to be rude to Roman Catholics. +“They are the king’s subjects as much as others, and belong to a +distinguished old church,” the protesters declared. “The thing is an +antediluvian piece of ill-breeding.”</p> + +<p>“Bloody Mary. The Inquisition. No Popery,” was the crude reply. “And +are not Roman Catholics always rude to our religion? Why, then, should +we not be rude to theirs?”</p> + +<p>“Roman Catholics,” replied the more polite and sophisticated, “cannot +help being a little rude—if you call it so—to other faiths. They +are not to blame. It is an article of their faith that theirs is the +only true and good church. There is no such article in other faiths. +We are not obliged by our religion to believe them wrong, as they +are, unfortunately, obliged to believe us wrong. Obviously, then, we +should practise the courtesy forbidden to them. It is more generous +and dignified. Also, they are as good as we are. All religions are +doubtless in the main inaccurate, and one does not differ appreciably +from another. And His Majesty ought to preserve a strict impartiality +concerning the many and various faiths of his people. The Declaration +is ignorant, unstatesmanlike and obscurantist, and smacks of vulgar +seventeenth century protestantism. It is a worse scandal than the +Thirty-nine Articles.”</p> + +<p>But “No Popery” was still the cry of the noisy few, and the scandal +remained. Reluctantly protesting his firm intention to give no +countenance to the religion of some millions of his subjects, and +solemnly in the presence of God professing, testifying and declaring +that he did make this declaration in the plaine and ordinary sense of +the words as they were commonly understood by English Protestants, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span> +without any evasion, equivocation or mental reservation whatsoever, +without any dispensation from the Pope, either already granted or to +be sought later, the king opened his khaki-elected Parliament, which +proved as ineffective as parliaments always do. It is of no importance +which side is in office in Parliament; any study of the subject must +convince the earnest student that all parties are about equally +stupid. By some fluke, useful Acts may from time to time get passed by +any government that happens to be in power. More often, foolish and +injurious Acts get passed. Personality and intelligence in ministers +do certainly make some difference; but party, it seems, makes none. +The stupid, the inert, the dishonest and the ill-intentioned flourish +like bay-trees impartially on both sides of the avenue. Only the very +<i>naïf</i> can believe that party matters, in the long run. This first +Parliament of the twentieth century proved, perhaps, even more than +usually inept, as parliaments elected during war excitements are apt to +be. It could deal neither with education, defences, labour, finance nor +poisoned beer.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">3<br> +PAPA’S NEW FAITH</p> + + +<p>The war scrambled on; a tedious, ineffective guerilla business. The +Concentration Camp trouble began, and over its rights and wrongs +England was split.</p> + +<p>Mr. Garden hated the thought of these camps, where Boer women and +children, driven from their homes, dwelt in discomfort (so said Miss +Emily Hobhouse and others), and fell ill and died. They might be, +as their defenders maintained, kindly meant, but it was all very +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span> +disagreeable. In fact, the whole war preyed on papa’s mind and nerves. +More and more it seemed to him a hideous defiance of any possible +Christian order of society, a thing wholly outside the sphere of God’s +scheme for the world. But, then, of course, nearly everything was that, +and always had been. So utterly outside that sphere were most of the +world’s happenings that it sometimes seemed to papa as if they could +scarcely <i>be</i> happenings, as if they must be evil illusions of +our own, outside the great Reality. The more papa brooded over this +Reality, the more he became persuaded that it must be absolute and +all pervasive, that nothing else really existed. “We make evil by our +thought,” said papa. “God knows no evil.... God does not know about the +war. Nor about the Concentration Camps....”</p> + +<p>It will be seen that papa was ripe for the acceptance of a new +creed which had recently come across the Atlantic and was becoming +fashionable in this country. Christian Science fastened on papa like a +mosquito, and bit him hard. It comforted him very much to think that +God did not know about the war. He told his grandchildren about this +ignorance on the part of the Deity.</p> + +<p>Imogen pondered it. She had a metaphysical and enquiring mind, and was +always interested in God.</p> + +<p>“What <i>does</i> God think all those soldiers are doing out in Africa, +grandpapa?” she asked, after a considering pause. “Or doesn’t he know +they’re soldiers?”</p> + +<p>“He knows they are unhappy people following an evil illusion, my +child,” her grandpapa told her. “You see, there is no war really—not +on God’s plane. There couldn’t be.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span></p> + +<p>Imogen pondered it again, corrugating her forehead. She dearly liked to +understand things.</p> + +<p>“Will God know about the peace, when it comes?”</p> + +<p>“He will know his children have stopped imagining the evil of war. And +he will be very glad.”</p> + +<p>“Doesn’t he know about the soldiers who are killed? What does he think +they’ve died of?”</p> + +<p>“He knows they are slain by their evil imaginings and those of their +enemies. You see, God knows his children <i>believe</i> themselves to +be at war, and that as long as they go on believing it they will hurt +each other and themselves.”</p> + +<p>It seemed to Imogen that, in that case, God knew all that was really +necessary about the war.</p> + +<p>“Are you the only person, besides God, who doesn’t believe in the war, +grandpapa?” she presently enquired.</p> + +<p>“No, my child. There are others.... Perhaps one day, when you are +older, you will understand more about it, and try and think all evil +and all pain out of existence.”</p> + +<p>“P’raps.” Imogen was dubious. She did not quite get the idea. “Of +course I’d <i>like</i> it, grandpapa, because then I shouldn’t get hurt +any more.” She rubbed the back of her head, onto which she had fallen +that afternoon while roller skating round the square. Her grandfather +had told her that God didn’t know she had fallen and hurt herself, and, +in fact, that she was not really hurt at all. God didn’t know a great +deal about roller skates, Imogen concluded, if he didn’t know that +people who used them very frequently did fall. But perhaps he didn’t +know there were any roller skates; perhaps roller skates were another +evil illusion of ours, like the war. Not a bad illusion; one we had +better keep, bruises and all. But perhaps, thought Imogen, who liked +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span> +to think things out thoroughly, it was really that God didn’t know that +the contact of the human head with another hard substance caused pain. +After all, people who have never tried <i>don’t</i> know that. Babies +don’t....</p> + +<p>Imogen began to be afraid she was blaspheming. She put the problem +later to her mother, but Vicky was less interested than her youngest +daughter in metaphysical problems, and merely said, “Oh, Jennie +darling, you needn’t puzzle your head about what grandpapa tells you. +Things that suit learned old gentlemen like him don’t always do for +little girls like you. Anyhow, don’t ever you get thinking that it +won’t hurt you when you tumble on your head, because it always will. +<i>You’ll</i> never get rid of that illusion, you may be sure. What +<i>you’ve</i> got to learn is not to be so careless, and not to spend +all your time climbing and racketing about. So long as you’ll do that +you’ll get tumbles, and they’ll hurt, and don’t you forget it.”</p> + +<p>Imogen sighed a little. Her mother was so practical. You asked her for +doctrine and she gave you advice. Being married, and particularly being +a mother, often makes women like that. They know that doctrine is no +use, and cherish the illusion that advice is.</p> + +<p>“Papa is very happy in this new no-evil religion he has,” mamma said to +Rome. “It suits him very well. Better than theosophy did, I think.”</p> + +<p>Papa’s new religion might, from her placid, casual, considering tone, +have been a new suit of clothes.</p> + +<p>Papa’s daughter-in-law, Amy, screamed with mirth over it. Christian +Science seemed to her an excellent joke.</p> + +<p>“Oh, you’re not really hurt,” she would say if her daughter Iris came +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span> +in from hockey with a black eye. “It’s all an illusion! What do you +want embrocation for? I’ll tell your grandpapa of you....”</p> + +<p>“Christian Science,” Maurice said to her at last, gloomily +contemptuous, “is not much more absurd than other religions. Suppose +you were to take another for your hourly jokes to-day, just for the +sake of a change. It makes no difference which; you don’t begin to +understand any of them, and you can, no doubt, get a good laugh out of +them all, if you try.”</p> + +<p>Amy said, “There you go, as usual! I suppose you’ll be saying +<i>you’re</i> a Christian Science crank next. Anyway, I don’t know what +you want to speak to me in that way for, just because I like a little +fun.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t want to speak to you in any way,” replied Maurice.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">4<br> +ON EDUCATION</p> + + +<p>Stanley, turning forty this year, was sturdier than of old, softer +and broader of face, blunt-nosed, chubby, maternal, her deep blue +eyes more ardent and intent. Now that her children, who were ten and +eight, both went to day schools, she had taken up her old jobs, and +was working for Women’s Trade Unions, going every day to an office, +sitting on committees, speaking on platforms. Phases come and phases +go, and particularly with Stanley, who inherited much from her +papa. Stanley was in these days a stop-the-war, pacificist Little +Englander, anti-militarist, anti-Chamberlain, anti-Concentration Camp. +She would shortly be a Fabian, but had not quite got there yet. She +was, of course, a suffragist, but suffragists in 1901 were still a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span> +very forlorn outpost; they were considered crankish and unpractical +dreamers. She also spoke and wrote on Prison Reform, Democratic +Education, Divorce Reform, Clean Milk and Health Food. She was an +admirer of Mr. Eustace Miles’ views on food, Mr. G. B. Shaw’s drama +and social ethics, Mr. G. K. Chesterton’s romantic Christianity, and +no one’s political opinions. She believed in the future of the world, +which was to be splendidly managed by the children now growing up, who +were to be splendidly educated for that purpose.</p> + +<p>“But how improbable,” Rome mildly expostulated, “that they should +manage it any better or any worse than everyone else has. Your maternal +pride carries you away, my dear. Parents can never be clear-sighted; +often have I observed it. Blessed, as the Bible says somewhere, are +the barren and they that have not brought forth, for they are the only +people with any chance of looking at the world with clear and detached +eyes. And even they haven’t much.... But why do you think the present +young will do so unusually well with the future?”</p> + +<p>“Of course,” Stanley replied, “they won’t do it of themselves. Only so +far as they are educated up to it.”</p> + +<p>“Well, I can’t see that educational methods are improving noticeably. +Obviously democratic education is not at present to be encouraged by +our governing classes. Look at the Cockerton case....”</p> + +<p>“It will come,” said Stanley. “This new Bill won’t go far, but it will +do something. Meanwhile, those parents who have thought it out at all +are doing rather better by their children than parents used to do. At +least we can tell them the truth.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span></p> + +<p>“So far as you see it yourselves. Is that, in most cases, saying much?”</p> + +<p>“No, very little. But—to take a trivial thing—we can at least, for +instance, tell them the truth about such things as the birth of life. +That’s something. Billy and Molly already know as much as they need +about that.”</p> + +<p>“Well, they don’t actually need very much yet, do they? I’m sure it +won’t hurt them to know anything of that sort, but I don’t see exactly +how it’s going to help them to manage the world any better. Because, +when the time comes for doing that, they’d know about the birth of life +in any case. Boys always seem to pick it up at school, whatever else +they don’t learn. However, I admit that I think you bring up Billy and +Molly very well.”</p> + +<p>“It’s facing facts,” said Stanley, “that I want to teach them. The art +of not being afraid of life. They’ve got to do their share in cleaning +up the world, and before they can do that they’ve got to face it +squarely. One wants to do away with muffling things up, whatever they +are. That’s why I tell them everything they ask, so far as I know it, +and a lot they don’t. The knowledge doesn’t matter either way, but the +atmosphere of daylight does. I want them to feel there are no facts +that can’t be talked about.”</p> + +<p>“But, my dear, what a social training! Because, you know, there +<i>are</i>. Anyhow in drawing-rooms, and places where they chat.”</p> + +<p>“They’ll learn all that soon enough,” Stanley placidly said. “The world +is as vulgar as it is mainly because of its prudery. I’m giving my +children weapons against that.”</p> + +<p>She had given them also a weapon against their cousins, the children +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span> +of Vicky, who had not been told Facts. Anyhow Imogen hadn’t. Her +sisters were older, and boys, as Rome had said, do seem to pick things +up at school. But Imogen at thirteen was still in the ignorance thought +by Vicky suitable to her years. So, when she exasperated her cousin +Billy by her superior proficiency in climbing, running, gymnastics, and +all active games—a proficiency natural to her three years’ seniority +but growing tiresome during a whole afternoon spent in trials of +skill—Billy could at least retort, “I know something you don’t. I know +how babies come.”</p> + +<p>“Don’t care how they come,” Imogen returned, astride on a higher bough +of the aspen tree than her cousin could attain to. “They’re no use +anyhow, the little fools. Who wants babies?”</p> + +<p>Billy, having meditated on this unanswerable question, amended his +vaunt. “Well, I know how puppies come, too. So there.”</p> + +<p>Imogen was stumped. You can’t say that puppies are no use. She could +think of no retort but the ancient one of sex insult.</p> + +<p>“Boys are always bothering about stupid things like how babies come. As +if it mattered. <i>I’d</i> rather know the displacement and horse-power +and knots of all the battleships and first-class cruisers.”</p> + +<p>“You don’t.”</p> + +<p>“I do.”</p> + +<p>“Bet you a bull’s-eye you don’t.”</p> + +<p>“Done. A pink one. Ask any you like.”</p> + +<p>“Well, what’s the <i>Terrible</i>?”</p> + +<p>“14,200 tons; 25,000 horse-power; 22.4 knots. That’s an easy one.”</p> + +<p>“The <i>Powerful</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p> + +<p>“Same, of course. No, she only makes 22.1 knots. Stupid to ask twins.”</p> + +<p>Billy considered. He did not like to own it, but he could not remember +at the moment any other ships of His Majesty’s fleet.</p> + +<p>“Well, what’s the biggest, anyhow?”</p> + +<p>“The <i>Dominion</i> and the <i>King Edward VII</i>. 16,350 tons; +18,000 horse-power; 18.5 knots.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t know that any of that’s true.”</p> + +<p>“You can look in ‘Brassey’ and find out, then.”</p> + +<p>“I don’t care. Anyone can mug up ‘Brassey.’ Anyhow girls can’t go into +the navy.”</p> + +<p>Imogen jogged up and down on the light swinging branch, whistling +through her teeth, pretending not to hear.</p> + +<p>“And anyhow,” added the taunter below, “<i>you’d</i> be no use on a +ship, ’cause you’d be sick.”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t.”</p> + +<p>“You would.”</p> + +<p>“I wouldn’t.”</p> + +<p>“You would.”</p> + +<p>“You’re sick yourself if you smoke a woodbine.”</p> + +<p>“So are you. <i>You’re</i> sick if you squash a fly. Girls are. They +can’t dissect a rabbit. I can.”</p> + +<p>The sex war was in full swing.</p> + +<p>“Boys crib at their lessons. Boys don’t wash their necks.”</p> + +<p>“Nor do girls. You’re dirty now. Girls don’t play footer at school.”</p> + +<p>“Hockey’s as good. Boys are greedy pigs; they spend their pennies on +tuck.”</p> + +<p>“Who bought eight bull’s-eyes this afternoon and sucked six?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, well.” Imogen collapsed into sudden good temper. “Don’t let’s +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span> +rot. Why did the gooseberry fool?”</p> + +<p>To change the subject further, she swung herself backwards and hung +from the branch by her knees, her short mop of curls swinging upside +down, the blood singing in her head. Billy, a nice but not very clever +little boy, said, “Because the raspberry syrup,” and truce was signed. +Who, as Imogen had asked, cared how babies came?</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">5<br> +PING-PONG</p> + + +<p>Everywhere people ping-ponged. One would have thought there was no war +on. Instead of doing their bits, as we did in a more recent and more +serious war, they all ping-ponged, and, when not ping-ponging, asked, +“Why did the razor-bill raise her bill? Why did the coal scuttle? What +did Anthony Hope?” and answered, “Because the woodpecker would peck +her. Because the table had cedar legs. To see the salad dressing,” and +anything else of that kind they could think of. Some people, mostly +elderly people, could only answer vaguely to everything, “Because the +razor-bill razor-bill,” and change the subject, thinking how stupid +riddles in these days were. Some people excelled at riddles, others +at ping-pong, others again at pit, which meant shouting “oats, oats, +oats,” or something similar, until they were hoarse. No one would have +thought there was a war on.</p> + +<p>Indeed, there scarcely was a war on, now. Not a war to matter. Only +rounding up, and blockhouses, and cordons, and guerilla fighting. +Irving Garden had had enteric, and was invalided home. He meant to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span> +return to South Africa directly peace should be signed, to investigate +a good thing he had heard of in the Rand. His nephews and nieces, +with whom he was always popular, worshipped at his shrine. He had +wonderfully funny stories of the war to tell them. But he preferred +to ask them such questions as, “What made Charing Cross?” and to +supply them with such answers as, “Teaching London Bridge. Am I +right?” Such questions, such answers, they found so funny as to be +almost painful. Imogen and Tony would giggle until tears came into +their eyes. Certainly Uncle Irving was amusing. And clever. He drove +himself and other people about in a grey car that travelled like the +wind and was cursed like the devil by pedestrians and horse-drivers on +the roads. His brother Maurice cursed him, but good-temperedly, for +he liked Irving, and, further, he despised the unenterprising Public +for fools. That was why no section of the community gave Maurice and +his paper their entire confidence. He attacked what he and those who +agreed with him held for evils, but would round, with a contemptuous +gesture, on those whose grievances he voiced. He ridiculed the present +inefficiency, and ridiculed also the ideals of those who cried for +improvement. He threw himself into the struggle for educational +reform, and sneered at all reforms proposed as inadequate, pedestrian +or absurd. He condemned employers as greedy, and Trade Unions as +retrograde. He jeered at the inefficiency of the conduct of what +remained of the war, at the stupid brutality of concentration camps, +at the sentimentality of the Pro-Boer party (as they were still +called), at the militarism of the Tory militants, the imperialism of +the Liberals, and the sentimental radical humanitarianism of Mr. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span> +Lloyd George and his party. He addressed Stop-the-War meetings until +they were broken up with violence by earnest representatives of the +Continue-the-War party, and suffered much physical damage in the +ensuing conflicts; yet the Stop-the-War party did not really trust +him. They suspected him of desiring, though without hope, to stop not +only the war but all human activities, and indeed the very universe +itself; and this is to go further than is generally approved. The +Continue-the-War party has risen and fallen with every war; but the +Continue-the-World party has a kind of solid permanency, and something +of the universal in its ideals. Not to be of it is to be out of +sympathy with the great majority of one’s fellows. At any time and in +any country, but perhaps particularly in England in the early years +of the twentieth century, when there was a good deal of enthusiasm +for continuance and progress. The early Edwardians were not, as we +are to-day, dispirited and discouraged with the course of the world, +though they were vexed about the Boer War and the consequent economic +depression of the country. They did not, for the most part, feel that +life was a bad business and the future outlook too dark and menacing +to be worth encouraging. On the contrary, they believed in Life with a +capital L. The young were bitten by the dry reforming zeal of Mr. and +Mrs. Sidney Webb, or the gay faith in life of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, or +the bounding scientific hopefulness of Mr. H. G. Wells, or the sharp +social and ethical criticism of Mr. George Bernard Shaw.</p> + +<p>Stanley Croft, young for ever in mind, was bitten by all these and +much more. Imperialism left slain behind, she embraced with ardour the +fantastic ideal of the cleaning up of England. After the war; then +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span> +indeed they would proceed furiously with the building of Jerusalem in +England’s green and pleasant land.</p> + +<p>And meanwhile the war went on, and times were bad, and everywhere +people ping-ponged. A lack of seriousness was complained of. It always +is complained of in this country, which is not, indeed, a very serious +one, but always contains some serious persons to complain of the +others. “The ping-pong spirit,” the graver press called the national +lightness; and clergymen took up the phrase and preached about it.</p> + +<p>The public, they said, were like street gamins, loafing about on the +watch for any new distraction.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">6<br> +GAMIN</p> + + +<p>Imogen and Tony slipped out into the street. It was the first Sunday of +the summer holidays, and the first day of August. The sun beat hotly +on the asphalt, making it soft, so that one could dent it with one’s +heels. The children sauntered down Sloane Street, loitering at the +closed shop windows, clinking their shillings in their pockets. They +enjoyed the streets with the zest of street Arabs. They were a happy +and untidy pair; the girl in a short butcher blue cotton frock, grubby +with a week’s wear, and a hole in the knee of one black-stockinged +leg, a soiled white linen cricket hat slouched over her short mop of +brown curls, her small pink face freckled and tanned; the boy, a year +younger, grimy, dark-eyed and beautiful, like his Uncle Irving in face, +clad in a grey flannel knickerbocker suit. Neither had dressed for the +street in the way that they should have; they had slipped out, unseen, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span> +in their garden clothes and garden grime, to make the most of the last +day before they went away for the holidays.</p> + +<p>They knew what they meant to do. They were going to have their +money’s worth, and far more than their money’s worth, of underground +travelling. Round and round and round; and all for a penny fare.... +This was a favourite occupation of theirs, a secret, morbid vice. They +indulged in it at least twice every holidays. The whole family had been +used to do it, but all but these two had now outgrown it. Phyllis, now +at Girton, had outgrown it long ago. “The twopenny tube for me,” she +said. “It’s cleaner.” “But it doesn’t go <i>round</i>,” said Imogen. +“Who wants to go round, you little donkey? It takes you where you want +to go to; that’s the object of a train.” It was obvious that Phyllis +had grown up. She would not even track people in the street now. It +must happen, soon or late, to all of us. Even Hughie, fifteen and at +Rugby, found this underground game rather weak.</p> + +<p>But Imogen and Tony still sneaked out, a little shamefaced and +secretive, to practise their vice.</p> + +<p>Sloane Square. Two penny fares. Down the stairs, into the delicious, +romantic, cool valley. The train thundered in, Inner Circle its style. +A half empty compartment; there was small run on the underground this +lovely August Sunday. Into it dashed the children; they had a corner +seat each, next the open door. They bumped up and down on the seats, +opposite each other. The train speeded off, rushing like a mighty wind. +South Kensington Station. More people coming in, getting out. Off +again. Gloucester Road, High Street, Notting Hill Gate, Queen’s Road +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span> +... the penny fare was well over. Still they travelled, and jogged up +and down on the straw seats, and chanted softly, monotonously, so that +they could scarcely be heard above the roaring of the train.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the winds are all asleep;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the salt weed sways in the stream,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Dry their mail and bask in the brine;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Where great whales come sailing by,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sail and sail with unshut eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Round the world for ever and aye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><span class="allsmcap">ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE</span>....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Then again, “Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep....”</p> + +<p>At Paddington they saw the conductor eyeing them, and changed their +compartment. This should be done from time to time.</p> + +<p>And so on, past King’s Cross and Farringdon Street, towards the wild +romantic stations of the east: Liverpool Street, Aldgate, and so round +the bend, sweeping west like the sun. Blackfriars, Temple, Charing +Cross, Westminster, St. James’ Park, Victoria, <span class="allsmcap">SLOANE SQUARE</span>. +Oh, joy! Sing for the circle completed, the new circle begun.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Where great whales come sailing by,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Sail and sail with unshut eye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Round the world for ever and aye,</div> + <div class="verse indent0"><span class="allsmcap">ROUND THE WORLD FOR EVER AND AYE</span>....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span></p> + +<p class="nind">Imogen changed her chant, and dreamily crooned:</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“The world is round, so travellers tell,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And straight though reach the track;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">The way will guide one back.</div> + <div class="verse indent0">But ere the circle homeward hies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Far, far must it remove;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">White in the moon the long road lies</div> + <div class="verse indent0">That leads me from my love.”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p>Round the merry world again. Put a girdle round the earth in forty +minutes. Round and round and round. What a pennyworth! You can’t buy +much on an English Sunday, but, if you can buy eternal travel, Sunday +is justified.</p> + +<p>But two Inner Circles and a bit are really enough. If you had three +whole ones you might begin to feel bored, or even sick. Sloane +Square again; the second circle completed. South Kensington. The two +globetrotters emerged from their circling, handed in their penny +tickets, reached the upper air, hot and elated.</p> + +<p><i>Now</i> what? For a moment they loitered at the station exit, +debating in expert minds the next move. Money was short: no luxurious +joys could be considered.</p> + +<p>Imogen suddenly gripped Tony by the arm.</p> + +<p>“Hist, Watson. You see that man in front?”</p> + +<p>Watson, well-trained, nodded.</p> + +<p>“We’re going to track him. I have a very shrewd suspicion that he is +connected with the Sloane Square murder mystery. Now mind, we must keep +ten paces behind him wherever he goes; not less, or he’ll notice. Like +the woman in Church Street did. He’s off; come on.... Do you observe +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span> +anything peculiar about him, Watson?”</p> + +<p>“He’s a jolly lean old bird. I expect he’s hungry.”</p> + +<p>“My good Watson, look at his clothes. They’re a jolly sight better than +ours. He’s a millionaire, as it happens. If you want to know a few +facts about him, I’ll tell you. He moved his washstand this morning +from the left side of his bed to the right; he forgot to wind up his +watch last night; he went to church before breakfast; he had kidneys +when he came in; and he’s now on his way to meet a confederate at +lunch.”</p> + +<p>“Piffle. You can’t prove any of it.”</p> + +<p>“I certainly can, my good Watson....”</p> + +<p>“Golly, he’s calling a hansom. Shall we hang on behind?”</p> + +<p>Watson’s beautiful brown eyes beamed with hope; Holmes’ small +green-grey ones held for a moment an answering gleam. But only for a +moment. Holmes knew by now, having learnt from much sad experience, +what adventures could be profitably undertaken and what couldn’t.</p> + +<p>“No use. We’d be pulled off at once....”</p> + +<p>Morosely they watched their victim escape.</p> + +<p>Then, “Look, Watson. The fat lady in purple. She must have been to +church.... Oh, quite simple, Watson, I assure you ... she has a +prayerbook.... Come on. It won’t matter how late we get back, because +they’re having a lunch party and we’re feeding in the schoolroom. We’ll +sleuth her to hell.”</p> + +<p>In this manner Sunday morning passed very pleasantly and profitably for +Vicky’s two youngest children.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span></p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">7<br> +AUTUMN, 1901</p> + + +<p>1901 drew to its close. An odd, restless, gay, unhappy year, sad with +war and poverty, bitter with quarrels about inefficiency, concentration +camps, Ahmednagar (the home of the Boers in India, and a name much +thrown about by the pro-Boers in their “ignorant and perverse outcry”), +education, religion, finance, politics, prisons, motor cars, and +stopping the war; gay with new drama (Mr. Bernard Shaw was being +produced, and many musical comedies), new art (at the New English Art +Club), new jokes, new books (Mr. Conrad had published “Lord Jim,” Mr. +Henry James “The Sacred Fount,” Mr. Hardy “Poems New and Old,” Mr. +Wells “Love and Mr. Lewisham,” Mr. Yeats “The Shadowy Waters,” Mrs. +Chesterton “The Wild Knight,” Mr. Kipling “Kim,” Mr. Belloc “The Path +to Rome,” Lady Russell “The Benefactress,” Mr. Laurence Housman “A +Modern Antæus,” Mr. Anthony Hope “Tristram of Blent,” Mrs. Humphry Ward +“Eleanor,” Mr. Arnold Bennett “The Grand Babylon Hotel,” Mr. Charles +Marriott “The Column,” Mr. George Moore “Sister Teresa,” Mr. Max +Beerbohm “And Yet Again”), new clothes and new games.</p> + +<p>Popular we were not. That prevalent disease, Anglophobia, raged +impartially in every country except, possibly, Japan. Even as far as +the remote Bermudas, continental slanders against us roared. We are +a maligned race; there is no doubt of it. All races are, in their +degree, maligned, but none so greatly as we—unless it should be the +Children of Israel. It is sad to think it, but there must be something +about us that is not attractive to foreigners. They have always +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span> +grieved at our triumphs and rejoiced at our sorrows. By the end of 1901 +our friendlessness was such (in November Lord Salisbury said at the +Guildhall, “It is a matter for congratulation that we have found such +a friendly feeling and such a correct attitude on the part of all the +great powers”), that we thought we had better enter into an alliance +with the Japanese, who were still pleased with us for admiring them +about their war with China.</p> + +<p>In the autumn of this year, Stanley published her small book, +“Conditions of Women’s Work,” and Mr. Garden, after years of labour, +his mighty work, “Comparative Religions.”</p> + +<p>Mrs. Garden had influenza and pneumonia in December, and Mr. Garden, in +an anguish of anxiety, called in three doctors and admitted that his +faith had failed. God’s disapproving ignorance of mamma’s pneumonia +made intolerable a burden of anxiety which would have been heavy even +with Divine sympathy; and if, by some awful chance, mamma were to pass +on, papa’s grief, guilty and unrecognised, would have been too bitter +to be borne. Christian Science had had but a brief day, but it was +over. In a fit of reaction, papa became an Evangelical, and took to +profound meditation on the suffering, human and divine, which he had +for so long ignored. He now found the love of God in suffering, not in +its absence.</p> + +<p>Always honourable, he recanted the instructions on the limitations of +divine knowledge which he had given to his grandchildren.</p> + +<p>“You perhaps remember, Jennie my child, what I said to you last year +about God’s not knowing of the war. Well, I have come to the conclusion +that I was mistaken. I believe now that God knows all about his +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span> +children’s griefs and pains. He knows more about them than we do. +Possibly—who knows—suffering is a necessary part of the scheme of +redemption....”</p> + +<p>Imogen looked and felt intelligent. When anyone spoke of theology to +her, it was as if the blood of all her clerical ancestors mounted to +the call. She was nearly fourteen now, and had recently become an +agnostic, owing to having perused Renan and John Stuart Mill. She was +at the stage in life when she read, with impartial ardour, such writers +as these, as well as E. Nesbit’s “Wouldbegoods,” Max Pemberton’s “Iron +Pirate,” and other juvenile works (particularly school stories), +Rudyard Kipling, Marryat, the Brontës, and any poetry she could lay +hands on, but especially that of W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Algernon +Swinburne, William Morris, Lewis Carroll and Walter Ramal.</p> + +<p>She said to her grandfather, casually, but a little wistfully too, +“I’m not sure, grandpapa, that I believe in God at all. The arguments +against him seem very strong, don’t they?”</p> + +<p>Mr. Garden looked a little startled. Possibly he thought that Imogen +was beginning too young.</p> + +<p>“Ah, Jennie, my child—‘If my doubt’s strong, my faith’s still +stronger....’ That’s what Browning said about it, you know.”</p> + +<p>Imogen nodded.</p> + +<p>“I know. I’ve read that. I s’pose his faith was. Mine isn’t. My +<i>doubt’s</i> stronger, grandpapa.”</p> + +<p>“Well, my child....” Mr. Garden, gathering together his resources, gave +this strayed lamb (that was how, in his new terminology he thought of +her) a little evangelical homily on the love of God. Unfortunately +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span> +Imogen had, then and through life, an intemperate distaste for +evangelical language; it made her feel shy and hot; and, though she +loved her grandfather, she was further alienated from faith. She wrote +a poem that evening about the dark, terrifying and Godless world, which +she found very good. She would have liked to show it to the others, +that they too might find it good, but the tradition of her family and +her school was that this wasn’t done. One wrote anything one liked, if +one suffered from that itch, but to show it about was swank. “Making a +donkey of yourself.” The Carringtons, shy, vain and reserved, did not +care to do that.</p> + +<p>“Some day,” thought Imogen, “I’ll write <i>books</i>. Then people can +read them without my showing them. I’ll write a book full of poems.” +The new poet. Even—might one dare to imagine it—the new <i>great</i> +poet, Imogen Carrington. Or should one be anonymous? Anon. That was a +good old poet’s name.</p> + +<p>“Few people knew,” said Imogen, within herself, “that this slender +book of verse, ‘Questionings,’ bound in green, with gold edges, which +had made such a stir in lit’ry London, was by a wiry, brown-faced, +blue-eyed young lieutenant-commander, composed while he navigated +his first-class gunboat, the <i>Thrush</i> (805 tons, 1,200 h.p., +13 knots, 6 four-inch guns, 2 quick-firers, 2 machine), among the +Pacific Islands, taking soundings. The whole service knew Denis Carton +as a brilliant young officer, but only two or three—or perhaps a +dozen—knew he was a poet too and had written that green book with gold +edges that lay on every drawing-room table and was stacked by hundreds +in every good bookshop.” (I cannot account for the confused workings of +this poor child’s mind; I can only record the fact that she still, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span> +for many years to come, thought of herself, with hope growing faint and +ever fainter, as a brown-skinned, blue-eyed young naval man.)</p> + +<p>As to her religious difficulties, they were, after the first flush of +unbelief, driven into the background of her mind by school, hockey, the +Christmas holidays, and missing word competitions, and did not obtrude +themselves aggressively again until the time came when her mother +decided that she should be confirmed. She then said to her brother +Hugh, now in the Fifth at Rugby, what did one do about confirmation +if one believed Nothing? Hugh did not think it mattered particularly +what one believed. One was confirmed; it did no harm; it was done; it +saved argument. Himself, he believed very little of All That, but he +had suffered confirmation, saying nothing. No good making fusses, and +worrying mother. Jennie had much better go through with it, like other +people.</p> + +<p>“Well ... of course, <i>I</i> don’t care ... if it’s not cheating....”</p> + +<p>“Course it isn’t. Cheating who? <i>They</i> don’t care what we believe, +they’re not such sops. They only want us to do the ordinary things, +like other people, and save bother. And, of course”—Hugh was a very +fair-minded boy and no bigot—“there may be something in it, after all. +Lots of people, quite brainy, sensible chaps, think there is. Anyhow, +it can’t hurt.” So Imogen was confirmed.</p> + +<p>“Perhaps I shall be full of the Holy Ghost,” she thought. “Perhaps +there really <i>is</i> a Holy Ghost. Perhaps my life will be made +all new, with tongues of fire upon my head and me telling in strange +languages the wonderful works of God.... Perhaps.... But more prob’ly +not....”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span></p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">8<br> +1902</p> + + +<p>1902 was a great year, for in it the British Empire ceased its tedious +fighting with the Boer Republics, and made a meal of them. So the +Empire was the richer by so many miles of Africa, with the gold mines, +black persons, and sulky Dutchmen appertaining thereto, and the poorer +by so many thousand soldiers’ lives, so many million pounds, and a good +deal of self-confidence and prestige. Anyhow, however you worked out +the gain and loss, here was peace, and people shouted and danced for +joy and made bonfires in college courts. Thank God, <i>that</i> was +over.</p> + +<p>A wave of genial friendliness flowed from the warm silly hearts of +Britons towards the conquered foe. Four surly enemy generals were +brought to London; asked if they would like to see the Naval Review; +declined with grave thanks; were escorted through London amid a +cheering populace—“Our friends the enemy,” cried the silly crowd, +and “Brave soldiers all!” and surrounded them with hearty British +demonstration and appeals for “a message for England.” There was no +message for England; no smiles; no words. The warm, silly Britons were +a little hurt. The psychology of conquered nations was a riddle to +them, it seemed.... “God, what an exhibition!” said Maurice Garden in +his paper the next day.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile King Edward VII had, after some unavoidable procrastination, +been crowned, Mr. Horatio Bottomley had won a thousand pounds from +the editor of the <i>Critic</i>, in that this editor had impugned his +financial probity, and the Man with the Beflowered Buttonhole (as +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span> +they called him in the French press) whose Besotted Pride had caused +to flow for three years so much Gold and Tears and Blood had received +the Freedom of London for his services to his country. This year, also, +Mr. Rudyard Kipling delighted athletes by his allusions to flannelled +fools and muddied oafs, that ineffectual body the National Service +League was formed, Germany and Great Britain began to eye each other’s +land and sea forces with an increase of hostile emulation which was +bound to end in sorrow, and there was much trouble over bad trade and +wages, unemployment, taxation and the Education Bill. Passive Resisters +rose violently to the foray over this last, their Puritan blood hot +within them, and would not pay rates for schools managed by the Church +of England in which their nonconformist children were given Church +teaching. It made a pretty squabble, and a good cry for Liberals, +and why it was not settled by representatives of every sect which so +desired being allowed access to the schools alternately is not now +clear. The parliamentary mind moves in a mysterious way; it seldom +adopts the simple solutions of problems which commend themselves to the +more ingenuous laity. Anything to make contention and trouble, it seems +to feel.</p> + +<p>In such disputations 1902 wore itself away. And starving ex-soldiers +played accordions or sold matches by the pavements, their breasts +decorated with larger nosegays of war-medals than any one man-at-arms +could conceivably have won by his own prowess in the field, for then, +as after a more recent war, you could buy these medals cheap in +second-hand shops. “Fought for my country” ran their sad, proud legends +about themselves, “and am now starving. Have a wife and sixteen small +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span> +children....” The families of ex-soldiers were terrific, then as now. A +wretched business altogether.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">9<br> +EXIT MAMMA</p> + + +<p>Edwardianism was in full swing. People began to recover from the war. +They became rich again, and very gay, and the arts flourished. Irving +Garden, his fortune made in Rand mines, could really afford almost +anything he liked. He bought and drove two motor cars, a grey one and a +navy blue, and presented to Rome, on her forty-fourth birthday, a very +graceful little scarlet three seater, in which she drove everywhere. +Sometimes she drove her parents out, but the traffic made her papa +nervous. Mamma was of calmer stuff, and sat placid and unmoved while +her daughter ran skilfully like a flame between the monsters of the +highway. She did not think that Rome had accidents; she believed in +Rome.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately mamma developed cancer in the spring of 1903, and died, +after the usual sufferings and operations, in the autumn.</p> + +<p>“It doesn’t much matter,” she said to Rome, hearing that her death was +certain and soon. “A little more or a little less.... After all, I am +sixty-nine. My only real worry about it is papa. We both hoped that I +might be the survivor. I could have managed better.”</p> + +<p>Mamma’s faint sigh flickered. Dear papa. Poor papa. Indeed, thought +Rome, he will not manage at all....</p> + +<p>No charge was laid on Rome to look after poor papa. Mamma did not do +such things; dying, she left the living free. That ultimate belief in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span> +the inalienable freedom of the human being looked unconquered out of +her tired, still eyes. Mamma had never believed in coercion, even the +coercion of love. Modern writers say that Victorian parents did believe +in parental tyranny. There is seldom any need to believe modern, or any +other, writers. What they seem sometimes to forget is that Victorian +parents were like any other parents in being individuals first, and the +sovereign who happened to reign over them did not reduce all Victorians +to a norm, some good, some bad, as the Poet Laureate of the day had +put it, but all stamped with the image of the Queen. You would think, +to hear some persons talk, that Victoria had called into existence +little images of herself all over England, instead of being merely one +very singular and characteristic old lady, who might just as well have +occurred to-day. In short, the Victorians were not like Queen Victoria, +any more than the Edwardians were like King Edward, or the Georgians +are like King George, for all creatures are merely themselves.</p> + +<p>Mamma, being merely herself, left her family free of all behests, and +drew to her end with an admirable stoic gentleness. Dying was to her no +great matter or disturbance.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">Time bears us off, as lightly as the wind</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Lifts up the smoke and carries it away,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And all we know is that a longer life</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gives but more time to think of our decay.</div> + </div> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">We live till Beauty fails and Passion dies,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And sleep’s our one desire in every breath,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And in that strong desire, our old love, Life,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Gives place to that new love whose name is Death.</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span></p> + +<p>Mamma would sometimes murmur these lines by Mr. W. H. Davies, a poet +(formerly Victorian, now Edwardian, later to become Georgian), of whom +she was very fond, because he noticed all the charming things in the +countryside that she always observed herself, such as wet grass, and +rainbows, and cuckoos, and birds’ eggs, and coughing sheep (who had +always stirred her to pity).</p> + +<p>“My beloved,” papa would say, quietly, restraining his anguish that he +might not distress her, “my best beloved, I shall join you before long, +where there is no more parting....” (Thank God, thank God, he was at +this time a believer in that reunion, and could say it from his heart. +Supposing he had still been a Theosophist, believing that mamma would +merely go on to another spoke of the Eternal Wheel, and that he would +never, try as he might, catch her up.... Or even a Roman Catholic, +believing that mamma and he would both have to suffer a long expiation, +presumably not together, in purgatory. Thank God, evangelicals believed +in an immediate heaven for the redeemed, and surely papa and mamma +would be found numbered among the redeemed....)</p> + +<p>Mamma’s hand would gently stroke his.</p> + +<p>“Yes, dear. Of course you will join me soon.”</p> + +<p>Who should see, who had ever seen, into mamma’s mind that lay so deep +and still beneath veils?</p> + +<p>“Yes, Aubrey. Of course, of course. Quite soon, dear.”</p> + +<p>They spoke often of that further life; but of papa’s life between now +and then they did not dare to speak much.</p> + +<p>Mamma loved papa, her lover and friend of half a century, and she loved +all her children, and all her grandchildren too, the dear, happy boys +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span> +and girls. But at the last—or rather just before the last, for the end +was dark silence—it was only her eldest son, Maurice, on whose name +she cried in anguish.</p> + +<p>“Maurice—Maurice—my boy, my boy! O God, have pity on my boy!”</p> + +<p>Maurice was there, sitting at her side, holding her wet, shaking hand +in his.</p> + +<p>“Mother, mother. It’s all right, dear mother. I’m here, close to you.”</p> + +<p>But still she moaned, “Have pity—have pity on my boy.... Maurice, my +darling.... Have pity....” as if her own pain, cutting her in two, were +his, not hers.</p> + +<p>They had not known—not one of them had wholly known—of those storms +that had beaten her through the long years because of Maurice, her +eldest boy.</p> + +<p>His tears burned in his hot eyes; the easy tears of the constant +drinker.</p> + +<p>They put her under an anaesthetic; the pain was too great; and she died +at dawn.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">10<br> +SPIRITUALISM</p> + + +<p>Papa could not bear it. It was all very well to talk of joining mamma +before long, but papa was not more than seventy-three years of age, +and how should he live without mamma for perhaps ten, fifteen, even +twenty years? That unfailing comfort, sympathy and love that had been +hers; that patient, silent understanding, that strength and pity for +his weakness, that wifely regard for his scholar’s mind, that dear +companionship that had never failed—having had these for close on +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span> +fifty years, how should he live without them? He could not live without +them. Somehow, he must find them again—reach across the grave to where +mamma’s love awaited him in the land of the redeemed.... The redeemed. +Already this evangelistic phraseology did not wholly suit his needs. He +wanted mamma nearer than that....</p> + +<p>In 1904 there was, as usual, much talk of spiritualism, of establishing +connection with the dead. The Psychical Research Society had been +flourishing for many years, but papa had never, until now, taken much +interest in it. There had been periods in his career when he had +believed, with his Church, that God did not smile on such researches, +or wish the Veil drawn from the unseen world, and that the researchers, +if they too inquisitively drew it, got into shocking company, got, +in fact, into touch with those evil spirits who were always waiting +ready to pose as the deceased relatives and friends of enquirers. +Other periods there had been when papa had believed that the thing +was all pathetic buncombe (that was how papa spelt it), since there +was unfortunately, nothing to get into touch with. But now he was +sure that he had, in both these beliefs, erred. God could not frown +on his bereaved children’s efforts to communicate with the beloved +who had made life for them. And beyond the Veil waited not the great +nothingness, but God and the dear dead. God and mamma. He must and +would get into touch with mamma.</p> + +<p>Papa attended séances, with what are called Results. Mamma came and +talked with him, through the voice of a table or of a medium; she +said all kinds of things that only she could have said; she even told +him where a lost thimble of hers was, and sure enough, there it was, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span> +dropped behind the sofa cushions. And once materialisation occurred, +and mamma, like a luminous wraith, floated about the room. It made papa +very happy. He asked her how she did, and what it was like where she +now was, and she told him that she did, on the whole, very well, but, +as to what it was like, that he would never understand, did she tell +him for a year.</p> + +<p>“They can’t tell us. It’s too difficult, too different,” the lady who +managed the séances explained to papa afterwards. Papa did not greatly +care for this lady, and he always winced a little at the thought that +mamma had become “They.” But he only said, “Yes, I suppose it is.”</p> + +<p>The séances exhausted him a good deal, but it was worth while.</p> + +<p>“So long as it makes him happier,” said Rome. “Poor <i>darling</i>.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">11<br> +THE HAPPY LIBERALS</p> + + +<p>1905 was a year of great happiness, intelligence and virtue for the +Liberal party in the state. It was to be their last happy, intelligent +or virtuous year for many a long day; indeed, they have not as +yet known another, for such a gracious state is only possible to +oppositions, and the next time that the Liberals were the Opposition +it was too late, for by then oppositions were, like other persons, too +tired, war-spoilt, disillusioned and dispirited to practise anything +but an unidealistic and unhopeful nagging. But in 1905, with the Tories +executing, to the satisfaction of their opponents, the ungracious +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span> +task of performance, which is, one may roughly say, never a success, +the Liberals were very jolly, united, optimistic, and full of energy +and plans. What would they not do when they should come, in their +turn, into power? What Tory iniquities were there not, for them now +to oppose, for them in the rosy future to reverse? What Aunt Sallies +did not the governing party erect for them to shy at? Chinese labour, +that yellow slavery which was degrading (were that possible) South +Africa; the Licensing Act, the Education Act, the Little Loaf, which +could be made so pitiable a morsel on posters—against all these they +tilted. As to what they would do, once in power, it included the +setting of trade again upon its legs, the enriching of the country, +the reform of the suffrage, the relief of unemployment, the issue of +an Education Bill which should distress no one. Ardent progressives +hoped much from this party; they even hoped, without grounds, for the +removal of sex disabilities in the laws relating to the suffrage, +which unlikely matter was part of the programme drawn up in 1905 by +the National Liberal Federation. Life was very glorious to any party, +in those Edwardian days, before it got in. Liberals in opposition were +democratic idealists, in office makeshift opportunists, backing out and +climbing down.</p> + +<p>Stanley Croft, in 1905, was ardent in Liberal hope. She hoped for +everything, even for a vote. This sex disability in the matter of votes +oppressed her very seriously. She saw no sense or reason in it, and +resented the way the question, whenever it was raised in Parliament, +was treated as a joke, like mothers-in-law, or drunkenness, or twins. +Were women really a funny topic? Or rather, were they funnier than men? +And if so, why? In vain her female sense of humour sought to probe +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span> +this subject, but no female sense of humour, however acute, has ever +done so. Women may and often do regard all humanity as a joke, good or +bad, but they can seldom see that they themselves are more of a joke +than men, or that the fact of their wanting rights as citizens is more +amusing than men wanting similar rights. They can no more see it than +they can see that they are touching, or that it is more shocking that +women should be killed than that men should, which men see so plainly. +Women, in fact, cannot see why they should not be treated like other +persons. Stanley could not see it. To her the denial of representation +in the governing body of her country on grounds of sex was not so much +an injustice as a piece of inexplicable lunacy, as if all persons +measuring, say, below five foot eight, had been denied votes. She saw +no more to it than that, in spite of all the anti-suffrage speakers +whom she heard say very much more. She became embittered on this +subject, with a touch of the feminist bitterness that marked many of +the early strugglers for votes. She admitted that men were, taking them +in the main, considerably the wiser, the more capable and the more +intelligent sex; that is to say that, though most people were ignorant +fools, there were even more numerous and more ignorant fools among +women than among men; but there it was, and there was no reason why +the female fools should have less say than the male fools as to which +of the other fools represented their interests in Parliament, and what +measures were passed affecting their foolish lives. No; on the face of +it, it was lunatic and irrational, and no excuse was possible, and that +was that.</p> + +<p>It certainly was, Rome agreed, but then, in a lunatic and irrational +world, was any one extra piece of lunacy worth a fuss? Was, in fact, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span> +anything worth a fuss? In the answer to these questions, the sisters +fundamentally differed, for Stanley believed very many things to be +worth a fuss, and made it accordingly. She was busy now making fusses +from most mornings to most evenings, sitting on committees for the +improvement of the world, even of the Congo, and so forth. She was what +is called a useful and public-spirited woman. Rome, on the other hand, +grew with the years more and more the dilettante idler. At forty-six +she found very few things worth bothering about. She strolled, drove +or motored round the town, erect, slim and debonair, increasingly +distinguished as grey streaked her fair hair and time chiselled +delicate lines in her fine, clear skin. Rome cared neither for the +happy Liberals nor for the unhappy Tories; she regarded both parties as +equally undistinguished.</p> + +<p>Fabianism became increasingly the fashion for young intellectuals. Girl +and boy undergraduates flung themselves with ardour into this movement, +sitting at the feet of Mr. Bernard Shaw and the Sidney Webbs. Stanley +was a keen Fabian, and even attended summer schools. They were not +attractive, but yet she hoped that somehow good would be the final goal +of ill. She was sorry that none of her nephews and nieces joined her in +this movement, though several had attained the natural age for it.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">12<br> +THE HAPPY YOUNG</p> + + +<p>Maurice’s Roger, who had not intellect and meant to be a novelist, was +a gay youth now at Cambridge. His sister Iris had even less intellect +and meant to be a wife. Nature had not fitted her for learning, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span> +when she left school she merely came out (as the phrase goes). Parties: +these were what Iris liked. Society, not societies. Stanley, aunt-like, +thought it a great pity that Maurice’s offspring were thus, and blamed +Maurice for leaving them too much to Amy. As to Vicky’s children, +Phyllis, who had done quite adequately at Girton, now lived at home +and helped her mother with entertaining and drawing-room meetings, +and was in politics on the whole a Tory; Nancy, at twenty-one, was at +the Slade, learning, so everyone but her teachers believed, to draw +and paint; Hugh was at Cambridge, a lad of good intelligence which he +devoted to the study of engineering; Tony was still at school; and +Imogen was to leave it this summer. Imogen was not for college; she +would, it was generally believed by her teachers and relatives, not +make much of that. Imogen was quite content; she was, as always, busy +writing stories and sunk deep in her own imaginings, which were still +of a very puerile sort. Imogen read a great deal, but was not really +intelligent; it was as if she had not yet grown up. She knew and cared +little about politics or progress. Bernard Shaw was to her merely the +most enchanting of playwrights. She was happy, drugged with poetry (her +own and that of others), and adventurous dreams. She was a lanky slip +of an undeveloped girl, light-footed, active as a cat, but more awkward +with her hands than any creature before her; at once a romantic dreamer +and a tomboyish child, loving school, her friends, active games, +bathing, climbing, reading and writing, animals, W. B. Yeats, Conrad, +Kipling, Henry Seton Merriman, Shelley, William Morris, Stevenson, “A +Shropshire Lad,” meringues, battleships, marzipan, Irene Vanbrugh, +Granville Barker and practically all drama; hating strangers, society, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span> +drawing-room meetings, needlework, love stories, people who talked +about clothes, sentimentalists, and her Aunt Amy. She was at this +time as sexless as any girl or boy may be. She was still, in all her +imaginings, her continuous, unwritten stories about herself, a young +man.</p> + +<p>As to Stanley’s children, Irving’s and Una’s, they were still at +school. Stanley watched her son and daughter with hope and joy; they +were such delightful, exciting creatures, and one day they would take +their place in the world and help to upset it and build it up again. +<i>They</i>, at least, should certainly join the Fabians when they were +old enough. Billy and Molly should not be slack, uninterested or Tory. +They should join in the game of life as eagerly as now they joined in +treasure hunts, that curious rage of this year which caused young and +old to fall to digging up the earth, seeking for discs.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">13<br> +THE YEAR</p> + + +<p>The year and the government petered towards their end. In the east the +Japanese were beating the Russians, hands down. In the Dogger Bank, the +Russians fired on a fishing-fleet from Hull, and there was trouble. +In European politics, the Anglo-French <i>entente</i> throve, and +Anglo-German rivalry swelled the navies. In Scotland, the Wee Frees +split from the U.P.’s, and fought successfully for the lion’s share +of the loot. In Wales, Evan Roberts’ odd religious revival swept the +country, throwing strong men and women into hysteria and bad men and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span> +women into virtue, reforming the sinners and seriously annoying the +publicans. In the Congo, rubber was grown and collected amid scenes +of distressing cruelty, and reports of the horrid business were +published in this country by Mr. Roger Casement and Mr. E. D. Morel. +In India, Lord Curzon quarrelled with Lord Kitchener. In Thibet, the +British expedition got to Lhassa. In Tangier, the Kaiser Wilhelm of +Germany made a speech. In Ireland, Mr. Wyndham resigned. In London, +the government apathetically stayed in office, the Tariff Reform +campaign raged, treasure discs were dug for, bridge was much played, +the Vedrenne-Barker company acted at the Court Theatre, many books +were published and pictures painted, and money brightly changed hands. +And in the provinces, by-election after by-election was lost to the +government, until at last, in November, Mr. Balfour resigned.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">14<br> +ROCKETS</p> + + +<p>They stood in the new open space at Aldwych, watching the election +results proclaimed by magic lanterns on great screens and flung to +the sky in coloured rockets. They had made up a family election +party—Maurice, Vicky, Charles, Rome, Stanley and Irving, and many +of their young. Stanley had brought Billy and Molly, that they might +rejoice in the great Liberal victory and always remember it. She had +bought them each, at their request, a little clacker, with which to +signal the triumph of right to the world. For to-night was to be a +triumph indeed; liberalism was to sweep the country. Though even +Stanley did not guess to what extent, or how far the inevitable +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span> +pendulum had swung.</p> + +<p>Imogen was entranced by the dark, clear night, the coloured lights, +the crowd, the excitement, and little thrills ran up and down her as +names and figures and rockets were greeted with cheers and hoots. She +cared nothing for the results; to her the thing was a sporting event on +which she had no money. Aunt Stanley, she knew, had her shirt on the +Liberals. So had Uncle Maurice. But Aunt Rome had nothing either way. +Imogen’s own parents were Conservatives. So, on the whole, was Phyllis, +and Phyllis’s young man. So was Uncle Irving, who was for Tariff +Reform. Probably, on the whole, Liberals were the more right, thought +Imogen. But probably no party was particularly right. How excited they +all got, anyhow, right or wrong!</p> + +<p>The Liberals were forging ahead. There was another Manchester division +going up on the screen. Three Manchester seats had already been lost to +the Tories. “Bet you an even twopence it’s a Lib.” Tony was saying.</p> + +<p>“Right you are. Oh, it’s Balfour’s....”</p> + +<p>“Well, he’s lost it. Hand over.”</p> + +<p>The crowd roared with laughter, distress and joy. Balfour out.... What +next?</p> + +<p>“Very badly managed,” Irving was complaining all the time, to no one in +particular. “Shockingly mismanaged. The most comic election I ever saw. +There’ll be no Front Bench left.”</p> + +<p>“And a jolly good thing.” That was Stanley, getting more and more +triumphant. “There goes Brodrick....”</p> + +<p>Imogen felt dazed and happy, and as if she were in a fairy palace, all +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span> +blue and red lights. Her upstrained face was stiff and cold, her mouth +open with joy, so that the cold air flowed in. She wasn’t betting any +more, for neither she nor Tony would bet on the Tories now. The Tories +were a dead horse. One was sorry for them, but one couldn’t bet on +them. Did the poor men who lost their seats mind much? Perhaps some of +them were pleased. After all, they had none of them sought or desired +office.... Statesmen always said that of themselves; they only wanted +to get in because they thought they were the ones who would do most +good; always they said that. Divine guidance, they said, had laid this +heavy burden on them, though it was a most frightful bore, and though +the thing they wanted to do was to live in the country and keep pigs.</p> + +<p>“If I was in office,” thought Imogen, “I wouldn’t say that. I’d say, +I sought and wanted office, and I’m jolly glad I’ve got it, though I +expect I’ll be rotten at it. I simply love being in power, and thank +you awfully for putting me in, and I hope I’ll stop in for ages.”</p> + +<p>How shocked everyone would be. That wasn’t the way public men ever +talked. Would women, if ever they got into Parliament, like Aunt +Stanley wanted them to? Perhaps they would at first, not being used to +proper public manners, but they would soon learn that it wasn’t nice to +talk like that and would begin on the I-never-wanted-it stunt.</p> + +<p>More rockets; more blue flares. Lovely. Like a great garden of coloured +flowers. <i>Night is a garden gay with flowers....</i> Hours. Showers. +Dowers. Bowers. Cowers....</p> + +<p><i>Their flaring blinds the sleepy hours....</i> No. <i>The small dim +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span> +hours are lit, are starred.</i> Better. The rhymes alternately in the +middle and end of the lines, all through. That made it chime, like +bells beneath the sea....</p> + +<p>“Lord, what a bungle!” Irving grunted. “It’s all up now. Nothing can +save it now. We may as well go home and get warm. What?”</p> + +<p>His fine, dark, clear-cut face was beautiful in the coloured flares, +as he stared up, a cigar in the corner of his mouth. How interesting +people were, thought Imogen, the way they all wanted different things, +and in different ways. There was Uncle Maurice now, smiling over his +briar, as pleased as anything.... And Billy and Molly, silly little +goats, twirling away with their clackers and shouting with Liberal +joy because Aunt Stanley told them to.... Anyhow it couldn’t really +<i>matter</i> who got in. Not matter, like the night, and the lights, +and poetry, and the lovely thrill of it all. Results didn’t matter, +only the thing itself.</p> + +<p>“Brrr!” said Vicky, hunching herself together and hugging her muff. +“It’s too cold to watch the wrong side winning any more. Charles, I’m +going home to bed. Come along, all of you, or you’ll catch your deaths.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, mother, mayn’t I stay as long as father does?”</p> + +<p>“If you like. Very silly of you, Jennie, you’re blue and shivering +already. Stanley, aren’t you going to take those noisy and misguided +children of yours home? It’s nearly midnight.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose I must. But what a night for them to remember always.”</p> + +<p>What a night, thought Imogen, huddling up in her coat with a happy +shiver, to remember always. Indeed yes. Ecstasy and gaudy blossoms of +the night. <i>The gaudy blossoms of the night.... Sharp swords of +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span> +light....</i> Bloss, moss, doss, toss ... toss ought to do....</p> + +<p>“There goes Lyttelton. So much for those beastly Chinamen,” cried +Maurice.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">15<br> +ON PARTIES</p> + + +<p>So much for the beastly Chinamen, and so much for the beastly little +loaf and the tax on the People’s Food, so much for class legislation +and sectarian education bills. So much, in fact, for Toryism, for the +happy Liberals were in, and would be in, growing ever less and less +happy, for close on ten years.</p> + +<p>“<i>Now</i> we’ll show the world,” said Stanley.</p> + +<p>Maurice cynically grinned at her.</p> + +<p>“If you mean you think you’re going to get a vote, my dear, you’re off +it. This cabinet hasn’t the faintest intention of accommodating you. +Not the very faintest. And if ever they did put up a bill, they’d never +get it through the Lords. You may send all the deputations you like, +but you won’t move them. Woman’s suffrage is merely the House joke.”</p> + +<p>“We’ll see,” said Stanley, who was of a hopeful colour.</p> + +<p>“All you can say of Liberals,” said Maurice, who was not, “is that +they’re possibly (not certainly) one better than Conservatives. +However, I’m not crabbing them. They’ve got their chance, and let’s +hope they take it. First they’ve got to undo all the follies the last +government perpetrated. Every government ought to begin with that, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span> +always. Then they’ve got to concentrate on Home Rule. As you say, we +shall see.”</p> + +<p>“Anyhow,” said Stanley, “we’ve got our chance.... And there’s the +<i>Tribune</i>. Penny liberalism at last.”</p> + +<p>“I give it a year,” said Maurice. “If it takes longer dying, Thomasson +is an even more stubborn lunatic than I think him. They’ve started +all right; quite a good first number, only how any Liberal paper can +publish a polite message from that damned Tsar beats one. I believe my +paper is really the only one that insults the Russian government as it +ought to be insulted. All the others either make up to the Tsar for his +armies or butter him up because of the Hague Conference and his silly +prattle about a world peace. It makes one sick. Liberals are as bad as +the rest.”</p> + +<p>It was edifying, during the election days, to learn from various +authorities the reasons for the Liberal victory. The <i>Times</i> said +it was the effect, long delayed, of the suffrage reform bills; the +working classes, at last articulate, had determined to dictate their +own policy; no triumph for liberalism, no humiliation for conservatism, +but an experiment on the part of Labour. The <i>Morning Post</i> said +the victory was due to the misrepresentation of Chinese labour by +Liberals, false promises, and the inevitable swing of the pendulum. +The <i>Daily Mail</i> said it was the swing of the pendulum, Chinese +labour, the over continuance in office of the last government, the +Education Act, taxation, unfair food-tax cries, and a liking for +antiquated methods of commerce. The <i>Daily News</i> said it was +a rebellion against reaction, protection and the Little Loaf. The +<i>Tribune</i> said it was a rebellion also against poverty, the +direction of companies by Ministers, and the undoing of the great +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span> +Victorian reforms; it was, in fact, the protest of Right against +Force, of the common good against class interest, of the ideal element +in political life against merely mechanical efficiency. (“Mechanical +efficiency!” Maurice jeered. “Much there was of that in the last +government. As to the ideal element, the Liberal ideal is a large loaf +and low taxes. Quite a sound one, but nothing to be smug about.”) +However, the whole press was smug, as always, and so were nearly all +statesmen in public speeches; their cynicism they kept for private +life. Mr. Asquith, for instance, said that this uprising of the +people was due to moral reprobation of the double dealing of the late +government; plain dealing was what they wanted. And Mr. Lloyd George, +in his best vein, spoke of a fearful reckoning. A tornado, he called +it, of righteous indignation with the trifling that had been going +on in high places for years with all that was sacred to the national +heart. The oppression of Nonconformists at home, the staining of the +British flag abroad with slavery, the rivetting of the chains of the +drink traffic on the people of this country—against all these had the +people risen in wrath. It was a warning to ministers not to trifle with +conscience, or to menace liberty in a free land. The people meant to +save themselves; the dykes had been opened, and reaction in all its +forms would be swept away by the deluge.</p> + +<p>Mr. Balfour, less excited and more philosophic, observed, at his own +defeat at Manchester, that, after all, the Tories had been in office +ten years, and would doubtless before long be in office again, and +that these oscillations of fortune would and did always occur. He +was probably nearer the truth about the elections than most of those +who pronounced upon them. It is a safe assertion that no government +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span> +is popular for long; get rid of it and let’s try another, for anyhow +another can’t be sillier, is the voter’s very natural and proper +feeling. The sophisticated voter knows that it will almost certainly be +as silly, but, after all, it seems only fair to let each side have its +innings.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, and whatever the reasons that brought liberalism into power, +there it was. It was expressed by a House which was at present, and +before its enthusiasms were whittled away in action, composed largely +of political and social theorists, men new to politics and brimming +with plans. Mr. H. W. Massingham said it was the ablest Parliament he +had ever known, but not the most distinguished.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">16<br> +DREADNOUGHT</p> + + +<p>Imogen saved up her pocket money for the cheap excursion fare to +Portsmouth, and slipped off there alone, on a raw February morning, by +the special early train, to see the King launch the <i>Dreadnought</i>. +The <i>Dreadnought</i> was a tremendous naval event. She displaced +19,900 tons, beating the <i>Dominion</i> and the <i>King Edward VII</i> +by 1,200 tons, and she would make 21 knots to their 16.5, and had +turbine engines, and carried ten 12-inch guns, and her outline was +smooth and lovely and unbroken by casemates, for she was built for +speed. Imogen had to go. She slipped off without a word at home, for +she had a cough and objections would have been raised. She stood wedged +for hours in a crowd on the docks in cold rain that pitted the heaving +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span> +green harbour seas, and coughed. She did not command a view of the +actual launching, but would see the splendid creature as she left the +slip and took the water. Before that there was a service; the service +appointed to be used at the launching of the ships of His Majesty’s +Navy. “They that go down to the sea in ships: and occupy their business +in great waters; These men see the works of the Lord: and his wonders +in the deep. For at his word the stormy wind ariseth: which lifteth up +the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven, and down again to +the deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble. They reel to +and fro and stagger like a drunken man: and are at their wit’s end....”</p> + +<p>After this, Hymn 592 (A & M) was irritating and silly, but hymns cannot +be helped, bishops will have them.</p> + +<p>Then the King smashed the bottle of wine on her and, christened, she +took the water. She left the slip and came into the view of the crowd, +and a great shout went up. “She’s moving!”</p> + +<p>Imogen, thrilled, gazed at the lovely, the amazing creature, the giant +of the navy. What a battleship! With professional interest Imogen +examined her points through her father’s field glasses. No openings in +the bulkheads—it was that which gave her her smooth, fleet look. She +was made for a running fight. She was glorious.</p> + +<p>Imogen travelled home wet through, shivering, her cough tearing at her +chest, and went to bed for a month with bronchitis. So much for the +navy, said Vicky crossly. But the amazing grey ship was a comfort to +Imogen through her fevered waking dreams.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">17<br> +AT THE FARM</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span></p> + + +<p>Imogen, bow and arrows in hand, crawled through the wood, beneath +overhanging boughs of oaks and elders and beeches and the deep green +arms of pines, that shut the little copse from the August sun into a +fragrant gloom. Every now and then she stopped, listened, and laid her +ear to the mossy ground.</p> + +<p>“Three miles off and making a bee line south,” she observed, frowning. +“My God.”</p> + +<p>“Michael crawled on,” she continued, “crawling, keeping his head low, +so as not to afford a target for any stray arrows. Who knew what +sinister shadows lurked in the forest, to right and to left?... Hist! +What was that sound? Something cracked in the tangle of scrub near +him.... A Cherokee on a lone trail, possibly.... A Cherokee: the most +deadly of the Red Tribes.... Cold sweat stood out on Michael’s brow. +Could he reach the camp in time? Again he laid his ear to the ground +and listened. They were only two miles now, and still that swift, +terrible, travelling.... The sun beat upon his head and neck; he felt +dizzy and sick. Suppose he fainted before he reached his goal.... That +damned cracking in the bushes again.... Good God!... out of the thicket +sprang a huge Redskin, uttering the horrid war-whoop of the Cherokee, +which, once heard, is never forgotten. Michael leaped to his feet, +pulled his bow-string to his ear, let fly....”</p> + +<p>Imogen too let fly.</p> + +<p>“Missed him,” she muttered, and swarmed nimbly up the gnarled trunk of +an oak until she reached the lower boughs, from whence she looked down +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span> +into a fierce red face, eagle-nosed, feather-crowned.</p> + +<p>“Oh, Big Buffalo,” she softly called. “Will you parley?”</p> + +<p>Big Buffalo grunted, and they parleyed. If Michael would betray +the whereabouts of his friends, Big Buffalo would grant him his +life. If not, no such easy death as the arrow awaited him, “for we +Cherokees well understand the art of killing....” Michael, sick with +fear, betrayed his friends, and Big Buffalo left him, primed with +information. (In common with other heroes of fiction, Michael never +thought of giving incorrect or misleading information.)</p> + +<p>“Michael lay in the forest, his head upon his arms. What had he done? +There was no undoing it now. Why didn’t I choose the stake? Oh, damn, +why didn’t I....”</p> + +<p>It was too warm, sweet and drowsy for prolonged remorse. Michael forgot +his shame. The breeze in the pine trees sang like low harps.... The +shadowy copse was soaked in piney sweetness, golden and dim. Michael, +with his bow, his Redskins, and his broken honour, faded out in the +loveliness of the hour.</p> + +<p>Ecstasy descended on the wood; enchantment held it, saturating it with +golden magic. Ants and little wood-beetles scuttled over Imogen’s +outstretched hands and bare, rough head. Rabbits bobbed and darted +close to her. She was part of the woods, caught breathless into that +fairy circle like a stolen, enchanted child.</p> + +<p>“I am full of the Holy Ghost,” said Imogen. “This is the Holy +Ghost....” And loveliness shook her, as a wind shakes a leaf. These +strange, dizzy moments lurked hidden in the world like fairies in +a wood, and at any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span> +emotion, however often repeated, was each time as keen. They would +spring forth and grip her, turning the dædal earth to magic, at any +lovely hour, in wood or lane or street, or among the wavering candles +and the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and through with beauty +sweet as honey and sharp as a sword, and it was as if her heart must +break in her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or +pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her actually did +break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up words. That was how poems +came. After the anguished joy, the breaking loose of the words, then +the careful stringing of them together on a chain, the fastidious, +conscious arranging. Then the setting them down, and reading them over, +and the happy, dizzy (however erroneous) belief that they were good.... +That was how poems came, and that was life at its sharpest, its highest +intensity. Afterwards, one sent them to papers, and it was pleasant and +gratifying if other people saw them and liked them too. But all that +was a side-issue. Vanity is pleasant, gratified ambition is pleasant, +earning money is very pleasant, but these are not life at its highest +power. You might at once burn every poem you wrote, but you would still +have known life.</p> + +<p>The song the pines hummed became words, half formed, drifting, +sweet.... Imogen listened, agape, like an imbecile. It was a lovely, +jolly, woody thing that was being sung to her ... she murmured it +over....</p> + +<p>A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered eternity to +fragments. Imogen yawned, got up, brushed pine needles out of her hair +and clothes, took up her bow, and strolled out of fairyland. It was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span> +tea-time at the farm.</p> + +<p>As she sauntered through the little wood, she shot arrows at the +trees and stopped to retrieve them. Then she found a long, sharp +stick, pointed, like a spear, and became a knight in a Norman forest. +She encountered another knight, a hated foe. There was a fight <i>à +outrance</i>. They fenced, parried, lunged....</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“Swerve to the right, son Roger, he said,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">When you catch his eye through the helmet’s slit;</div> + <div class="verse indent0">Swerve to the right, then out at his head,</div> + <div class="verse indent0">And the Lord God give you joy of it....”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p class="nind">A swinging thrust....</p> + +<p>“Got him, pardie!”</p> + +<p>“Hullo.”</p> + +<p>Imogen faced about, and there, on the cart track between the wood and +the home farm, stood her Uncle Ted, large and red in breeches and +gaiters, his pipe between his teeth.</p> + +<p>“Oh, hullo, Uncle Ted.”</p> + +<p>Imogen had turned red. She had been seen making an ass of herself alone +in the wood. Behaving like a maniac. Damn.</p> + +<p>“Anything the matter? Got the staggers, have you?” asked Uncle Ted, as +if she were a cow.</p> + +<p>“No, I’m all right. Looking for arrows and things, that’s all.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, I see.... Comin’ up to tea?”</p> + +<p>They walked across the home field together. Imogen was sulky and +ashamed. She was emptied of enchantment and the Holy Ghost, and was +nothing but an abrupt, slangy, laconic girl, going sullenly in to tea, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span> +feeling an ass. Uncle Ted was thinking farmer’s thoughts, of crops and +the like, not of Imogen.</p> + +<p>But afterwards he said to Una, “Not quite all there, eh, that girl +of Vicky’s? Flings herself about in the wood when she’s alone, like +someone not right, and talks to herself, too. Nineteen, is she? It’d be +right enough if she was twelve. But at eighteen or nineteen....”</p> + +<p>“Oh, Imogen’s all right. She’s childish for her age, that’s all.”</p> + +<p>Una took everyone for granted.</p> + +<p>“Childish, yes. That’s what I say. They ought to have her seen to. +Gabbles, too. I can’t make out half she’s saying.... Katie may do her +good, I daresay. Katie’s got sense.... It’s against a girl, going on +like that. No sensible young fellow would like it. They ought to have +her seen to. What?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, she’s all right,” said Una again. “There she is in the field +playing rounders with the others quite sensibly, you see.”</p> + +<p>“I daresay. She may be all right at games, but she oughtn’t to be let +loose alone in woods. She’ll get herself talked about....”</p> + +<p>Katie too thought Imogen mad. But quite nicely mad. Harmless. Like +a kid. Katie was a few months younger, but she felt that Imogen was +a kid. She said and did such mad things. And she lacked the most +elementary knowledge; she didn’t know the first thing, for instance, +about clothes, what they were made of, and how they should be made. She +was like an imbecile about them; didn’t care, either. She would stare, +pleased and admiring, at Katie, who had beauty, as if Katie were a +lovely picture, but she never said the right things about her clothes. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span> +You’d think, almost, she didn’t know one material from another.</p> + +<p>When they had done playing rounders, and when Imogen and Tony, who was +staying at the farm too, had done damming the brook at the bottom of +the field, and when Tony had gone off rook shooting with his cousin +Dick, Imogen sat by the brook, her bare muddy legs in a pool scaring +minnows, and brooded over life. Rotten it was, being grown up. Simply +rotten. Because you weren’t really grown up. You hadn’t changed at +all. You knew some more, and you cared for a lot of fresh books, but +you liked doing all the things you had liked doing before you grew +up. Climbing, and playing Red Indians, and playing with soldiers, and +walking on stilts. But when you put your hair up, you had to hide all +sorts of things away, like a guilty secret. You could play real games, +like tennis and cricket and hockey and rounders, and even football, +and you could perhaps do the other things with someone else, but +not alone. If people found you alone up a tree, or climbing a roof, +or listening with your ear to the ground, or astride on a wall, or +pretending with a sword, they put up their eyebrows and thought you +an ass. Your mother told people you were a tomboy. A tomboy. Imbecile +word. As if girls didn’t like doing nice things as much as boys. Who +started the idea they didn’t, or shouldn’t?... Oh, it was rotten, being +grown up. Grown-up people had a hideous time. They became so queer, +talking so much, wanting to go to parties, and even meetings, and all +kinds of rotten shows. Mother held meetings in the drawing-room, for +good objects. So did Aunt Stanley. Different objects, but equally +good, no doubt. People came to the meetings and jabbered away, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span> +sometimes you were made to be there, “to learn to take an interest.” +Votes, cruelty to animals or children, sweated labour, bazaars, white +slaves, the Conservative party, the Liberal party.... What did any of +them matter? Phyllis was good at them. But now Phyllis was going to be +married. And Nancy was at the Slade, and wouldn’t attend the meetings; +she was too busy drawing and going to dances and parties. The modern +girl, mother said; independent, selfish, dashing about with young men +and no chaperons. The Edwardian young woman, so different from the +Victorian young woman.... Only Aunt Rome said she was not different, +but just the same.... Anyhow, Nancy wouldn’t take her turn at the +meetings. So Imogen, younger and more docile, was being trained up. But +she would never be any good. She hated them. Why shouldn’t the boys +take their turn? No one made them. It wasn’t fair.</p> + +<p>Imogen kicked viciously at the minnows. Rotten, being a girl.... +Perhaps she would run away to sea ... round the world ... the South Sea +Islands....</p> + +<p>It was getting chilly. Imogen drew her legs out of the brook and dried +them on her handkerchief. Filthy they were, with mud. She put on her +stockings and old tennis shoes, and wondered what next. Tony was still +rooking. One might go and catch the colt in the meadow and ride him....</p> + +<p>Katie appeared over the hunched shoulder of the field.</p> + +<p>“Imogen, do you want to come and milk? It’s time.... Oh, I say, you +<i>are</i> in a mess. You ass, what’ve you been up to?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span></p> + +<p>“Only damming the brook, and wading. Yes, I want to milk, rather.”</p> + +<p>“Hurry up then.”</p> + +<p>Katie was as beautiful as a June morning. As beautiful as Una. Pale as +milk, with eyes like violets and dark, clustering curls. And clever. +She could do nearly everything. Imogen, six months older, was as nought +beside her. But Katie liked her, and was very kind to her. Katie had +just left Roedean; she had been captain of the school hockey team, and +was going now to play for Essex. A splendid girl. Imogen believed that +Katie had none of the dark and cold forebodings, the hot excitements, +the black nightmares, the sharp, sweet ecstasies, the mean and base +feelings, that assailed herself, any more than Katie would be found +making an ass of herself playing in a wood. Katie, like her mother, +was balanced. This tendency to believe that others are balanced, and +are not rent by the sad and glad storms which one’s own soul knows, is +common to many. One supposes it to be because human beings put such a +calm face on things, so the heart alone knows its own turbulence.</p> + +<p>Imogen grinned at Katie, and went with her to the milking.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">18<br> +HIGHER THOUGHT</p> + + +<p>Papa had aged very much in the last two years since mamma had died. +He had had wonderful experiences; he had constantly spoken with, +even seen, mamma; it had made him very happy. But he was aware that +the séances greatly strained and fatigued him. He slept badly; his +nerves seemed continually on edge. Further, he could not by any means +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span> +overcome the distaste he felt for the medium who made it her special +business to open the door between him and mamma. A common little +person, he could not help, even in his charity, thinking her. And +Flossie, the spirit on the Other Side, who spoke for mamma (except on +those rare occasions when mamma spoke for herself) was, to judge from +her manner, voice and choice of language, even commoner. And silly. +Papa scarcely liked to admit to himself <i>how</i> silly Flossie seemed +to him to be. Mamma must dislike Flossie a good deal, he sometimes +thought, but then recollected that, where mamma had gone to dwell, +dislike was no more felt, only compassion. He would have liked to ask +mamma, on the rare occasions when she spoke for herself, what she +thought of Flossie, and of Miss Smythe, the medium on this side. But he +did not like to, for Flossie would certainly, and Miss Smythe possibly, +through her trance, hear his question and mamma’s reply. How he longed +for a little private talk, of the kind that mamma and he used to have +of old! But he was not ungrateful. He was in touch with mamma; he knew +her to be extant as a personality, and accessible to him, and that was +surely enough. As to the fatigue, that was a small price to pay.</p> + +<p>Then, one tragic day, in the autumn of 1906, came one of those great +exposures which dog the steps of psychical men and women. Some of the +sharp, inquisitive persons who make it their business to nose out +frauds and write to <i>Truth</i> about them, turned their attention +to Miss Smythe and her séances. In a few weeks—these things are very +easy, and do not take long—Miss Smythe was pilloried in the press +as a complete and accomplished fraud. She had, it was made clear +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span> +except to the most obstinate believers, never been in a trance, never +called spirits, from the vasty deep, never opened any spiritual doors. +The mechanism of the materialisation was once more discovered and +exposed.... (“What a stale old story,” said Rome. “As if we didn’t know +all about it long ago. These heavy-footed creatures, trampling over +children’s fairylands. Why can’t they let things be?”) ... and even +Flossie, that bright, silly, chatty spirit, was discredited. Flossie +was a quack, and had known about the thimble behind the sofa and the +other things in some cheap, sly way, or else just guessed.</p> + +<p>Alas for papa! The gates of paradise clanged in his face; he might +believe by faith that paradise was there, and mamma in it, but the +door between him and it was shut. Great and bitter sorrow shook him, +and shame, for that he had so made cheap his love and mamma’s for the +benefit of common frauds. He sank into inert grief, from which he was +roused, in March 1907, by the call of Higher Thought. The name, in +the first instance, appealed to him. Thought should be higher; it was +usually lower, and very certainly much too low.</p> + +<p>“Higher than what, papa dear?” Rome enquired. “These comparatives, in +the air, are so unfinished. Higher education, higher criticism, the +larger hope, the younger generation.... Higher, I mean than what other +thought?”</p> + +<p>Than the thought customary on similar subjects, papa supposed.</p> + +<p>“These geometrical metaphors,” Rome murmured. “Well, papa, I am sure it +must be very interesting.”</p> + +<p>It was very interesting. Papa was introduced to a little temple near +High Street, Kensington, which, when you stepped on the entrance +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span> +mat, broke into “God is Love” in electric light over the altar. Here +he worshipped and thought highly, in company with a small but ardent +band of other high thinkers, who were led in prayer by a Guru of +immense power—the power of thought which was not merely higher but +highest—over mind and matter. So great was the power of this Guru that +he not only could cure diseased bodies and souls, but could correct +physical malformations, merely by absent treatment. A lame young man +was brought to him, one of whose legs was shorter than its fellow. +Certainly, said the Guru, this defect would yield to absent treatment. +Further, the treatment would in this case be doubly effective, as +he happened to be about to make a journey to Thibet, to visit the +Lama, the very centre of fervent prayer, absent treatment, and higher +thought. The nearer the Guru got to Thibet, the more powerful would +become, he said, the action of his treatment on the leg of the young +man. And, sure enough, so it proved. The shorter leg began, as the +Guru receded towards Asia, to grow. It grew, and it grew, and it grew. +There came a joyful day when the two legs were of identical length. The +power of absent treatment was triumphantly justified. But it proved to +be a power even greater than the young man and his family had desired +or deserved. For the short leg did not stop when it had caught up +its companion; on the contrary, it seemed to be growing with greater +velocity than before. And indeed, it was; for the Guru, now far beyond +reach of communication by letter or telegram, was journeying ever +deeper and deeper into the great heart of prayer, Holy Thibet, and as +he penetrated it his prayer intensified and multiplied in power, like +the impetus of a ball rolling down hill. The short leg surpassed its +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span> +brother, shot on, and on, and on....</p> + +<p>It was still shooting on when papa was told of the curious phenomenon.</p> + +<p>“Strange,” said papa. “Strange, indeed.”</p> + +<p>But it was not these portents, however strange, that papa valued in +his new faith. It was the freedom, the prayerfulness, the rarefied +spiritual atmosphere; in brief, the height. After Miss Smythe, after +the darkened room and the rapping table and the lower thinking of poor +Flossie, it was like a mountain top, where the soul was purged of +commonness.</p> + +<p>Mamma, papa sometimes thought, would have approved of Higher Thought; +might even, had she been spared, have become a Higher Thinker herself. +(It should be remembered, in this connection, that papa, since the +exposure of poor Flossie, was no longer in touch with mamma.)</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">19<br> +LIBERALS IN ACTION</p> + + +<p>It is a pity to crab all governments and everything they do. For +occasionally it occurs that some government or other (its political +colour is an even chance) passes some measure or other which is not so +bad as the majority of measures. The Liberal government elected in 1906 +composed tolerable bills more than once. It even succeeded, though more +rarely, in getting them, in some slightly warped form, tolerated by +the Upper House. The Trades Disputes Bill, for instance, got through. +Either the Lords were caught napping, or they felt they had to let +something through, just to show that things <i>could</i> get through, +as at hoop-la the owner of the booth has, here and there, among +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span> +hundreds of objects too large to be ringed by the hoop, one of trifling +value which can fairly be ringed and won, just to show that the thing +can be done. Anyhow, the Trades Disputes Bill did get through, before +the game began of chucking all bills mechanically back, or amending +them out of all meaning so that the Commons disowned them and threw +them away.</p> + +<p>Mr. Birrell had no luck with his Education Bill. It was a good, +rational bill, as education bills (a sad theme) go, and no party liked +it much, and the Upper House saw that it would not do at all, and sent +it back plastered all over with amendments that gave it a new and silly +face, like a lady over-much made up. So the Commons would have none of +it, and that was the end, for the moment, of attempts to improve the +management of our elementary schools.</p> + +<p>The Lords were now getting into their form, and threw out the Plural +Voting Bill with no nonsense about amendments, and no trouble at all. +After all, what were they there for, if not to throw out? What, indeed, +asked the Lower House, many members of whom had for long wondered. As +to any kind of Woman’s Suffrage Bill, the Commons, as firmly as the +Lords, would have none of it. It was when this was made clear that +the Women’s Social and Political Union, that new, vigorous and vulgar +body, began to bestir itself, and to send bodies of women to waylay +members on their way to the House; in fact, the militant suffragist +nuisance began. There were processions, demonstrations, riots, arrests +and imprisonments. Stanley threw herself into these things at first +with dogged fervour; she did not like them, but held them advantageous +to the Cause. Her niece, Vicky’s Nancy, a very wild young woman, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span> +who enjoyed fighting and making a disturbance on any pretext, threw +herself also into the Cause, fought policemen with vigour, and was +dragged off to prison with joy. Imogen wouldn’t participate in these +public-spirited orgies; she was too shy. And she couldn’t see that it +was any use, either. She had a hampering and rather pedantic sense of +logic, that prevented her from flinging herself into movements with +sentimental ardour; she preferred to know exactly how the methods +adopted were supposed to work, and to see clearly cause and effect, +and no one ever made it precisely clear to her how making rows in the +streets was going to get a suffrage bill passed. It seemed, in fact, +to be working the other way, and alienating some of the few hitherto +sympathetic. Her Aunt Stanley told her, “It’s to show the public and +the government how much we care. They’re crude weapons, but the only +ones we have. Constitutional methods have failed, so far.”</p> + +<p>“But, Aunt Stanley, how do you know these are weapons at all?” Imogen +argued.</p> + +<p>“We can but try them,” Stanley answered, herself a little doubtful on +the point.</p> + +<p>“Anyhow,” she added, “anyhow, no woman who cares about citizenship can +be happy sitting still and doing nothing while we’re denied it. You do +care about the suffrage, don’t you, Imogen?”</p> + +<p>“Oh, rather, Aunt Stanley, of course I do. I think it’s awful cheek +not giving it us. There’s no <i>sense</i> in it, is there; no meaning. +Anti-suffragists do talk a lot of rot.... Only don’t you think +suffragists do too, sometimes? I mean, Aunt Stanley, people do so, +when they talk, get off the <i>point</i>, don’t they. It would be +a lot easier to be keen if people didn’t talk so much. They talk +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span> +<i>round</i>, not along. Really, there’s hardly anything to say about +anything; I mean, you could say it all, all that mattered, in a few +sentences. But people go on talking about things for hours, saying +the same things twice, and a lot of other things that don’t really +apply, and everything in hundreds of words when quite a few would do. I +noticed it in the House the other day when we were there. Two-thirds of +what they all said was just flapping about. And they say, ‘I have said +before, Mr. Speaker, and I say again....’ But <i>why</i> do they say +it again? It isn’t awfully good even the first time. I do wonder why +people are like that, don’t you?”</p> + +<p>“Soft heads and long tongues, my dear, that’s why. Can’t be helped. +One’s got to bear it and go ahead.... I wish Molly was five years +older; she’ll be so tremendously keen....”</p> + +<p>Imogen said nothing to that. She knew Molly, her small elfish cousin +of fourteen, pretty well. Molly, with her short white face and merry, +narrow eyes, and quick wits and easy selfishness and charm, was, +though Imogen couldn’t know that, her father over again, without his +abilities. Imogen was afraid that Molly, when she left school and grew +up, was not going to take that place among the world’s workers that +Aunt Stanley hoped.</p> + +<p>As to Billy, a cheerful, stocky Rugby boy of sixteen, he had no views +on the suffrage. He didn’t care. Politics bored him.</p> + +<p>Poor Aunt Stanley. Aunt Stanley was a great dear; treated one always +as a friend, not as a niece; explained things, and discussed, and +said what she meant. She was easy to talk to. Easier than Vicky, whom +one loved, but couldn’t discuss things with; one couldn’t formulate +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span> +and express one’s ideas and project them into that spate of charming, +inconsequent talk, that swept on gaily over anything one said. Imogen +tried to please Aunt Stanley by seeming really keen about suffrage, but +it was difficult, because the things she actually was keen on were so +many and absorbing that they didn’t leave much time over. Imogen felt +that she was no good at these large, unselfish causes that Aunt Stanley +had at heart; she hadn’t soul enough, or brain enough, or imagination +enough, or something. And she did hate meetings. If one had to sit +indoors in the afternoon, were there not the galleries and theatres, +her point of view was. Perhaps, she thought, Nancy, who enjoyed it, +could do the votes-for-women business for the family.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Mr. W. H. Dickinson’s Suffrage Bill failed to come to +anything, and it became obvious that the Liberal government, in this +matter, was to be no use at all.</p> + +<p>It was quite a question whether it was going to be much use in any +other matter. Poor Law Reform it had postponed; likewise Old Age +Pensions. Licensing Reform was dropped; so was Mr. McKenna’s new +Education Bill, the Land Valuation Bill, and Irish Home Rule. It looked +as if the Liberal programme was running away like wax in the heat and +trouble of the day. How few party programmes, for that matter, ever do +become accomplished achievements! They are frail plants, and cannot +easily come to fruit in the rough air of office. What with one thing, +what with another, they wilt away in flower and die.</p> + +<p>To make up for the stagnation of home politics, there was, in 1906 and +1907, plenty of international activity. The nations of Europe were +ostensibly drawing together, a happy family. British journalists +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span> +were entertained in Berlin, German journalists in London, amid some +mutual execration and dislike. A <i>rapprochement</i> took place +between ourselves and Russia, for it was quite the fashion in Europe +to fraternise with Russia, her armies were so huge, even if not, +apparently, very good at what armies should be good at. There were +those in this country who held that it was not quite nice to fraternise +with Russia, disapproving of her governmental system, and of the +Tsar’s very natural suppression of the Duma that had for a few days +and by an oversight so strangely existed and actually dared to demand +constitutional reform. There were those in Great Britain who said that +we should not be at all friendly with a government so little liberal +in mentality. But, after all, you must take nations as you find them, +and their domestic affairs are quite their own concern, and one should +not be provincial in one’s judgments, but should make friends even with +the mammon of unrighteousness for the sake of the peace of Europe, +which was a good deal talked of just then by the Powers, though it is +doubtful whether any of them really believed in it. It is certain that +the nations by no means neglected the steady increase and building +up of armaments by land and sea. They hurried away from the Hague +Conference to lay down new battleships at a reckless pace; even Mr. W. +T. Stead said, “Let us strengthen our navy, for on its fighting power +the peace of Europe depends.” Strengthen our navy we did; but as to the +peace of Europe, that lovely, insubstantial wraith, she was perhaps +frightened by all those armoured ships, all those noisy guns, all those +fluent statesmen talking, for she never put on much flesh and bones.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">20<br> +1907</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span></p> + + +<p>Outside politics, 1907 was a gay year enough. There was a severe +outbreak of pageantitis, which many people enjoyed very much, and +others found vastly disagreeable. Drama was noticeably good; the +Vedrenne-Barker company moved from the Court to the Savoy, and the +intelligent play-goer moved after it. Miss Horniman’s Repertory Theatre +toured the provinces; and the Abbey Theatre players took English +audiences by storm. Acting was good, literature and the arts were much +encouraged, dancing and social entertainments were more than ever the +fashion. Society, it was said, was getting rowdier. For that matter, +society has always been getting rowdier, since the dawn of time. How +rowdy it will end, in what nameless orgies it will be found at the Last +Day, is a solemn thought indeed.</p> + +<p>As to the young they were thought of and written of much as ever, much +as now. The New Young were discovered afresh, and the Edwardian variety +was much like the Victorian and the Georgian. They were wild, people +said; they went their own way; they were hard, reckless, independent, +enquiring, impatient of control, and yet rather noble.</p> + +<p>“Youth in the new century has broken with tradition,” people said. “It +is no longer willing to accept forms and formulæ only on account of +their age. It has set out on a voyage of enquiry, and, finding some +things which are doubtful, others which are insufficient, is searching +for forms of experience more in harmony with the realities of life and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span> +of knowledge....”</p> + +<p>Youth was, in fact, at it again.</p> + +<p>“Girls are so wild in these days,” Vicky cheerfully complained. “Nancy +and Imogen both go on in a way we’d <i>never</i> have dared to do. +Nancy dances all night (of course chaperons are a back number now), +and comes home alone, or with some wild, arty young men and women, +or, worse still, with one wild, arty young man, at five o’clock in +the morning, and lets herself in with a bang and a rush, and often +lets the arty young people in too. No, Nancy, I say to her, you don’t +let your friends into my house before breakfast, and that’s that. Not +several of them at once, nor one by herself or himself. If they don’t +want to go home to their own beds, they must just go and carouse in any +hotel that will receive them, for in my house they shall <i>not</i> +carouse. <i>Nor</i> sit on the dining-room sofa and smoke, and carry +on conversations in tones that I suppose you all think are hushed. +It shall not be done, I said, so that is settled. But is it settled? +Not a bit of it. Nancy merely changes the subject, and Charles and I +are woken by the hushed voices again next morning. Edwardian manners, +people tell me; well, I’m Victorian, and I don’t care if it <i>is</i> +1907.”</p> + +<p>“You were doing much the same in 1880, my dear,” Rome interpolated.</p> + +<p>“Oh, well, I’ve forgotten ... were we?... Well, anyhow, you can’t say +I was behaving like Imogen. She doesn’t care for dancing much, and +she’s such a baby still that cocktails make her tipsy and cigarettes +sick; she prefers raspberry syrup and chocolate cigars, which is really +more indecent at her age. At her age <i>I</i> was thinking of proper +young-ladyish things, like young men, and getting engaged; but Imogen +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span> +seems never to have heard of either—I mean, not of young men in +their proper uses. She plays childish games, and dashes about on her +bicycle, and makes ridiculous lists of all the ships in the navy and +how much they weigh and how many horses they’re equal to, and slips +off to Portsmouth all by herself to see them launched, without a word +to anyone, and of course makes herself ill. I said to her one day, I +suppose you’ll go and marry into the navy some day, Jennie; nothing +else will satisfy you. But she opened her eyes and said, <i>Marry</i> +the navy? Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I should be too jealous of him. +You see, I want to be in the navy myself, and I know I should hate his +being in it when I couldn’t. It would only rub it in. I want to do nice +things myself, not to marry people who do them. I believe, mother, I’m +perhaps too selfish to marry; it’s <i>my</i> life I want to enjoy, not +anyone else’s. Besides, there might be babies, and they would get so +in the way, little sillies. They wouldn’t get in your way, I told her +(only of course it isn’t true, because they always do, the wretches), +if only you’d behave like other grown girls, and not be forever +climbing about and playing silly games. You’re such a baby yourself, +that’s what’s the matter. What on earth the child’s book will be like +that she’s so busy with I can’t imagine. <i>She</i> knows nothing about +life, bless her. There’s Phyllis married, and running her home so +capably, and Nancy at least carrying on like a girl, not like a child +in the nursery—but Imogen! I lose my patience with her sometimes.”</p> + +<p>And even as her mother spoke, Imogen was in Hamley’s in Regent Street, +looking at toy pistols and blushing. She was blushing because she had +just been deceitful, and was afraid that the lady attending on her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span> +guessed. “For what aged child is it?” this helpful lady had asked. +“Would caps or blank cartridges be what he’d want? I mean, if he’s +<i>very</i> young....”</p> + +<p>“Oh, no,” Imogen mumbled, “he’s not awfully young. Blank cartridges, he +likes....”</p> + +<p>She bent her abashed face over the weapons, fingering them. A sordid +fib; was she seen through? She chose her pistol quickly, paid for it, +and hurried out of the shop. When she got well away, she extracted the +weapon from its cardboard box and tucked it, with a guilty look round, +into the side pocket of her skirt.</p> + +<p>She strode along with a new reckless gallantry.</p> + +<p>“Patrick slipped among the crowd; that queer, cosmopolitan, rather +sinister crowd that is to be found around the Marseilles docks. Was he +followed? His hand strayed to his hip pocket. His keen, veiled eyes +took in the passers-by without seeming to look. If he could get through +the next hour without mishap, he would be aboard and a-sail. But could +he? Prob’ly not....”</p> + +<p>While Imogen thus walked in foreign ports or trackless forests, a +happy, dreaming spinster, a reckless adventurer armed to the teeth, +many of her contemporaries and elders walked in suffragist processions, +adventurers too, and no less absorbed than she. Stanley, disgusted now +by the increasingly reasonless methods of the militants, had definitely +turned her back on them and joined the constitutionals. These arranged +orderly and lady-like processions, headed at times by Lady Carlisle.</p> + +<p>“There can be no doubt,” wrote the more dignified press, after one +such procession, “that many of these lady suffragettes are absolutely +in earnest, and honestly believe that the cause for which they are +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span> +contending is a just and sane one. But the fact remains that they +are in the minority; that the sex, <i>qua</i> sex, is still content, +and proud to be content, to accept the symbol of petticoat....” +(“How indecent,” cried Vicky, “to gossip about our underwear in a +leader by a man!”) ... “the symbol of petticoat as the badge of +disenfranchisement.” Women, the article continued, are of low mental +calibre, and will never understand politics, and if they did it would +interfere with their only duty, the propagation of the race.</p> + +<p>“I love journalists,” said Rome, reading this to her papa at their +Sunday breakfast. “They always write as if women did that job +single-handed. They are so modest about man’s share in it, which is +really quite as important as ours. They even kindly call us the fount +of life. Dear, generous, self-effacing creatures....”</p> + +<p>But papa was shaking his head, gravely.</p> + +<p>“You make a joke of it, my dear. But this low mental equipment on the +part of the writers on our leading papers is really a tragedy. The +guiders of public opinion.... The blind leading the blind ... how can +we avoid the ditch?”</p> + +<p>“Indeed, we don’t avoid the ditch. We are all in it, up to the neck. +But if one is to be sad on account of the low mental equipment of +writers or others, there will be very little joy left. For my part, I +find a considerable part of my joy in it; it assists in providing the +cheering spectacle of human absurdity.”</p> + +<p>“Pass me the paper, my dear. I want to read about.... I want to see it.”</p> + +<p>Rome smiled behind the screen of paper which papa put up between him +and her. Well she knew what papa wanted to read in it. He was looking +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span> +for news of Mr. R. J. Campbell and his New Theology, searching for +tidings of Pantheism and the Divine Immanence. And, sure enough, he +found them. There was a Saying of the Week. Among the eminent persons +who had said other things, such as Dr. Clifford, who had remarked, +a little meiosistically, “It is not necessary to burn a man who is +seeking the truth,” and the Lord Chief Justice, who had observed, more +topically, “One of the greatest errors that motorists can make is to +believe that upon their blowing their horns everybody should clear out +of the way,” and Prince Fushimi from Japan, who had said, “I do not +wish to object to ‘The Mikado,’ as I am sure its writers did not intend +to hurt the feelings of a great nation, but I shall, of course, be +glad if it is not performed,” and two doctors, one of whom had said, +“Kissing consists in depositing some saliva on the lips or cheeks of +another person,” and the other, “Those who do not like milk will get +cancer”—among all these utterers of truth came Mr. R. J. Campbell, +remarking brightly, not for the first time nor for the last, “The New +Theology is the gospel of the humanity of God and of the divinity of +man.”</p> + +<p>“True,” said papa, within himself. “Very true. Very proper and +intelligent indeed.”</p> + +<p>He sighed gently behind the newspaper. He had had, of late, his doubts +as to Higher Thought; as to whether it was very intelligent, very +proper, or very true. It was strange in so many ways; high, doubtless, +but perhaps for earth too high. And there were strange tales going +about concerning the Gurus who led in prayer and in thought. And the +leg of that unfortunate young man ... how could people believe such +nonsense? The element of folly in all human creeds was becoming, in +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span> +the case of the Higher Thought, painfully evident to papa.</p> + +<p>This New Theology now—this young man Campbell—he seemed, somehow, +nearer to solid earth than did the Higher Thinkers. He might talk of +the Divinity of Man, but he did not, as papa, having read his book on +the subject, knew, mean anything silly by it, only what all the mystics +have meant—the divine spark in the human heart. As to the humanity +of God—well, he probably meant no harm by that either. He was but an +anthropomorphist, like the rest of us.</p> + +<p>The theologians had been hard upon that book of his. It was not, of +course, the book of a scholar; all it said had been said much better +by Loisy and other Catholic modernists, whom Mr. Campbell palely +reflected. But it gave a good peptonised version, suitable for the +unscholarly mind. And its reviewers had been unkind. They had nearly +all attacked it. Dr. Robertson Nicoll in the <i>British Weekly</i> had +snubbed it at considerable length. The <i>Church Times</i> had said, +“The book is one long offence against good taste,” and the <i>Methodist +Recorder</i>, “Frankly, we do not think this book worth reading, and +to price it at six shillings is enough to make us join in the Book +War.” Theological reviewers were not always fair, as papa, since he had +published his own mighty and erudite work on Comparative Religions, had +known. For himself, he had liked Mr. Campbell’s book, even though it +was rather bright than scholarly, more an appeal to the man in the City +Temple than to the student or the theologian. Papa, besides being a +student and a theologian, had of late been also on Sundays a man in the +City Temple. He had said nothing of it yet to anyone; he was trying it. +He liked it; there was nothing in it to bewilder or offend. The Divine +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span> +Immanence; call it Pantheism who chose, it was a beautiful idea. It was +in no degree incompatible with the Divine Transcendence; why should it +be, since there was also the Divine Ubiquity?</p> + +<p>Brooding on these matters, papa finished breakfast somewhat silently, +and lit his pipe.</p> + +<p>“A beautiful day,” said Rome, smoking her cigarette at the open window. +“I shall be out for lunch and tea, papa. I am joining a party of +pleasure; we are going to explore, in our cars, to Newlands Corner, +where we shall have trials of skill and of speed. You won’t come with +me, I suppose?”</p> + +<p>“No, thank you, dear, I think not. I’m too old for trials of skill and +speed; too old, even, for exploring.”</p> + +<p>Precisely, thought Rome, glancing at him with her indulgent smile, what +papa was not and never would be. He would very surely go exploring this +morning, searching the riches of the spiritual kingdoms. Much more +exciting than Newlands Corner.... To papa at seventy-seven, as to Mr. +R. J. Campbell at whatever age he might be, theology could still seem +new. Rome wondered whether it was an advantage or a misfortune that +to her, at forty-eight, all theologies, as most other of the world’s +businesses, seemed so very old. The only things that seemed new to her +in 1907 were taximeter cabs.</p> + +<p>“Well, good-bye, dear, and good luck,” Rome wished her papa.</p> + +<p>Of 1907 there is not very much more to record. Two or three items of +news may perhaps be mentioned. Maurice’s son Roger, aged twenty-four, +now attached, at his own urgent desire, to the literary side of +his father’s paper—(“He can’t do much harm there, I suppose,” +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span> +Maurice said, “though he’ll not do any good either; he hasn’t the +brains.”)—published a novel. It was a long novel, and it was about +a youth not unlike what Roger conceived himself to be, only his home +was different, for his father was a church-warden and bare the bag in +church, and bullied and beat and prayed over his children; fathers in +fiction must be like this, not heretical and intelligent journalists. +The book conducted the youth from the nursery through his private and +public schools (house matches, school politics, vice, expulsions, +and so on), through Cambridge (the Union, the river, tobacconists’ +assistants, tripos), to journalistic, social and literary London, where +it left him, at twenty-four, having just published his first novel, +which was a great success.</p> + +<p>“God, what tripe,” Maurice commented, but to himself, as he turned the +pages. “Exactly what the boy <i>would</i> write, I fear. No better, +no worse. Well, poor lad, he’s pleased with it enough. And it will +probably be handsomely reviewed. It’s the stuff to give the public all +right.” His thoughts strayed to a familiar, rather bitter point. If he +had been given (by Amy: how fantastic a thought!) a son with brains; a +son with a hard, clear head or an original imagination; a son who, if +he wrote at all, wouldn’t produce the stuff to give the public, a son +who, like himself, would see the public damned first....</p> + +<p>Roger was, as his father had predicted, handsomely reviewed, for the +Edwardians rather liked the biography-of-a-young-man type of novel, and +loved details of school life. Roger had his feet well on the ladder of +successful fiction-writing. Roger would be all right. Meanwhile, his +head swelled even larger than before. His father perceived that the +innocent youth really believed his reviewers, and conceived himself to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span> +be a writer and a clever young man.</p> + +<p>The other items I record of the year 1907 I quote from the diary of +Imogen for the 16th of March.</p> + +<p>“<i>Indomitable</i> launched, Glasgow. Largest and quickest cruiser in +the world. 17,250 tons. 41,000 h.p. 25 knots. <i>Invincible</i> and +<i>Inflexible</i>, same type, building. Finished book, began to type +it. Got guinea prize from <i>Saturday Westminster</i> for poem.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">21<br> +WHITHER?</p> + + +<p>And so to the last years of Edwardianism. In them that gay, eager, +cultivated period listed gently to the political left. The Socialist +Budget, as it was called by its opponents, “the end of all things” as +Lord Rosebery a little optimistically called it, agitated the country. +Old Age Pensions were at last established, to the disgust of Tories, +who had, however, when members of Parliament, to be careful how they +expressed their disgust, for fear of their needy constituents. “Whither +are we drifting?” enquired the Conservative press, in anger and fear. +“Here is Socialism unabashed: the thin end of the wedge which shall at +last undermine the integrity and liberty of our Constitution.” Here +were sixty millions a year, not insurance but a free dole, squandered +on supporting old persons who might just as well be supported in +workhouses. What would that come to in Dreadnoughts? Anyhow, we had +got to lay down six or seven Dreadnoughts a year for the present, if +we were to be to Germany in the ratio of two keels to one, which was +assuredly essential. “They are ringing their bells; they will soon +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span> +be wringing their hands,” said the Tory leaders. The Radical element +in the government strengthened; Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman died, +and in Mr. Asquith’s ministry Mr. Lloyd George was Chancellor of +the Exchequer. But it remained, on the whole, a Liberal-Imperialist +government, and left most of the radicalism to Labour, whose +parliamentary strength was increasing and unifying. Wherever we were +drifting, it was not towards extreme radicalism.</p> + +<p>As to Ireland, a bill was passed to reduce her docks, thistles and +noxious weeds: no other bill.</p> + +<p>Parliamentary affairs and party politics were no more exciting and no +more tedious (for that is impossible) than usual. Of more interest +were the first flying machines that really flew, the drawings of Mr. +Augustus John exhibited at the New English Art Club and condemned by +all critics (except the few who liked the kind of thing), as essays +in a savage and childish archaism, and deliberate insults to our +intelligence; (whither indeed was art drifting, when such drawings +could be praised?); and the establishment of the White City at +Shepherds Bush, with the Franco-British Exhibition (sadly dull) and +flip-flaps, switchbacks, wiggle-woggles and scenic railways (most +exciting, and an insidious snare for pocket money; you could get rid +there in one evening of the careful hoardings of weeks; also, if you +were as weak in the stomach as Imogen, you felt repentant after a few +goes). Thither President Fallières, on a visit to King Edward, was +taken, to enjoy the Franco-British Exhibition and cement the <i>entente +cordiale</i>, which, however, needed it less then than now, for the +Edwardians were on the whole most enthusiastic about this international +understanding. “There is no longer a Channel,” they said, publicly and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span> +politely; but in their hearts, for they were no more foolish than we, +they still gave thanks for this useful, if unpleasing, strip of sea.</p> + +<p>To forge faster the other link in the Triple Entente, that only +possible guarantee for a world peace, King Edward visited the Tsar of +all the Russias, at Reval. So there we were, grasping these two great +military powers by the hand, ready to face any emergency. We had got +ahead of Germany in this matter of Russia. For all the European Powers, +discreetly averting their eyes from the chronic blood stains on the +bear’s savage claws, were courting her for her legions. To have the +bear at their beck and call—that was what everyone wanted, against the +emergencies which might arise. And never was a time when emergencies +seemed more imminent, more dangerous, more frequent; such a state of +simmering unrest was Europe’s in the days of Edward the Peacemaker. Of +the Kaiser Wilhelm and his Uncle Bertie it has been said that their +relations “lapsed into comparative calm only when they were apart from +one another.” Their subjects hated and feared each other; the press in +each country stirred up terror of invasion by the other; “the German +invasion,” “the English invasion”—these phrases were bandied about in +two jealous, frightened empires. The German spy scare, the British spy +scare, these fevers were worked up in the jingo press of two countries. +“You English are mad, mad, mad,” said Wilhelm. “I strive without +ceasing to improve relations and you retort that I am your arch-enemy. +You make it very hard for me.”</p> + +<p>For that matter, nations always make it hard for one another; it is +their function. We did make it hard for Germany, and Germany made it +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span> +hard for us, and France made it hard for everyone.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, here was the Triple Entente, full-armed, to meet the Triple +Alliance, and some one or other would see to it that they did meet +before long.</p> + +<p>The chief European emergency which arose at the moment was an attack of +megalomania on the part of Servia, in 1909. The Serbs had the madness +to dream of a greater Servia, which should unite the scattered peoples +of their race—“a dream,” said the English press, “as hopeless as that +of Poland <i>rediviva</i>. Greater Servia either will be realised under +the sceptre of the Hapsburgs, or will not be realised at all.” The +awkwardness of the situation, so far as we were concerned, was that +Russia was, as usual, backing her mad little militant friend, and had +to be dissuaded with great tact from upsetting the apple cart. However, +a joint note to Servia from the Powers quieted her for the time being, +and the lid was shut down temporarily on the seething European kettle +of fish.</p> + +<p>Other intriguing matters of this year were the building, in British +dockyards, of three huge battleships for Brazil, which disgusted +others than young Imogen Carrington; the Olympic Games in July; the +publication of various not unamusing books; and the deaths of two old +men, Algernon Swinburne and George Meredith. Our two greatest Grand +Old Men had departed from us, and no more would pilgrims alight at the +Pines, Putney, or go exploring to Box Hill. The office of our literary +G. O. M. was filled now only by Mr. Thomas Hardy, for Mr. Henry James +was still an American. Sometimes one speculates, aghast, what would +happen should we ever be left with no candidates for that honourable +post—that is to say, with no celebrated literary man or woman (for +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span> +there might, though improbably, be a G. O. W. some day) over seventy +years, no Master for the younger writers to greet on the festival of +his birth. It would be an undignified state of affairs indeed; and one +need not anticipate it at present, for behind Mr. Hardy there looms +more than one candidate of respectable claims.</p> + +<p>The closing years of this reign were brightened further by Commander +Peary and Dr. Cook, who both maintained that they had discovered the +North Pole. It was ultimately decided that only the Commander had +done so, as the doctor had had the misfortune to mislay his papers +in Greenland; but his was a sporting venture, and deserving of all +applause, and he had a good run for his money.</p> + +<p>And so an end to Edwardianism. The new Georgianism dawned on a nervous, +gay, absorbed nation, experimenting in new but cautious legislation, +alive, on the whole, to new literature and new art, alive wholly to +whatever enjoyment it could find, and thoroughly tied up in continental +politics, so that when that mine was fired we should go up with it +sky-high.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span></p> + +<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_IV">PART IV<br> +GEORGIAN<br> +<span class="allsmcap">FIRST PERIOD: CIRCUS</span></h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span></p> +<p class="nindc">1<br> +THE HAPPY GEORGIANS</p> +</div> + + +<p class="nind"> +<span class="dropcap">T</span>HE first Georgian years, the years between 1910 and 1914, are now +commonly thought of as gay, as very happy, hectic, whirling, butterfly +years, punctuated indeed by the too exciting doings of dock and +transport strikers, Ulstermen, suffragists, the <i>Titanic</i>, and Mr. +Lloyd George, but, all the same, gay years. Like other generalisations +about periods, this is a delusion. Those years only seem especially gay +to us because, since July, 1914, the years have not been gay at all. +Really they were quite ordinary years. In fact, it is folly to speak of +these insensate seasonal periods as happy or the reverse. It is only +animate creatures which can be that, and it is unlikely that all, or +the majority, of animate creatures should be visited by circumstances +making for pleasurable emotion or the reverse at the same time as one +another, except in the case of some great public event. Some early +Georgians were gay, some sad, some bored, some tepid and indifferent, +as at any other time.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, it so happened that the persons in this so-called +narrative were all quite sufficiently happy during this period. They +were all having, in their several ways, a fairly good time.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">2<br> +PAPA</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span></p> + + +<p>Mr. Garden’s way was, it need scarcely be said, a spiritual way. He +was now over eighty, and his was the garnered fruit of a long life of +spiritual adventure. He had believed so much, he had believed so often, +he had fought with doubt so ardently and with such repeated success, he +had explored every avenue of faith with such adventurous zeal, that he +had at last reached a table-land from whence he could survey all creeds +with loving, impartial pleasure. Even Mr. Campbell’s New Theology had +not enmeshed him for long; he passed through it and out of it, and it +took its place among the ranks of Creeds I Have Believed.</p> + +<p>And now, in some strange, transcendent manner, he believed them all. +Nothing is true but thinking makes it so; papa thought all these +faiths, and for him they were all true. What, after all, is truth? +An unanswerable riddle, to which papa replied, “The truth for each +soul is that faith by which it holds.” So truth, for papa, was +many-splendoured, many-faced. God must exist, he knew, or he could +not have believed in Him so often and so much. The sunset of life was +to papa very lovely, as he journeyed westward into it, murmuring, “I +believe.... I believe....” Catholicism (Roman and Anglo), Evangelicism, +Ethicism, Unitarianism, Latitudinarian Anglicism, Seventh-Day +Adventism, Christian Science, Irvingitism, even poor Flossie and her +chat, he did very happily and earnestly believe. He believed in a +mighty sacramental Church that was the voice of God and the store-house +of grace; he believed that he was saved through private intercourse +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span> +and contract with his Lord; he believed in the Church established in +this country, and that it should be infinitely adaptable to the new +knowledge and demands of men; he believed that the world was (very +likely) to be ended in a short time by the second coming of Christ; he +believed that God was love, and evil a monstrous illusion; he believed +that God permitted the veil between this world and the next to be rent +by the meanest and most trivial of His creatures, if they had the +knack. Indeed, papa might be said to have learnt the art of believing +anything.</p> + +<p>Irving said it was pleasant to find that papa was once again an +Irvingite. Indeed, the creeds after which he had named his children now +all flourished in papa’s soul. No longer did he shake his head when +he remembered in what spiritual moods he had named Una, and Rome, or +sigh after that lost exultation of the soul commemorated in Vicky. Had +another child been given to him now he would have named it Verity, in +acknowledgment of the fact that nearly everything was true.</p> + +<p>What wonder, then, that papa was a happy Georgian?</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">3<br> +VICKY</p> + + +<p>Vicky, dashing full-sail through her fifties, was a happy Georgian +too. She was handsome in her maturity, and merry. People she loved, +and parties, and gossip, and bridge, and her husband and children, and +the infants of her daughter Phyllis, and food and drink and clothes, +and Ascot, and going abroad, and new novels from Mudie’s, and theatres +and concerts and meetings and causes, and talk, talk, talk. Life, she +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span> +held, is good as you get on in it; a broad, sunny, amusing stream, +having its tiresome worries, no doubt, but, in the main, certainly a +comedy. Vicky as an early Georgian was a generously fashioned matron, +broader and fuller than of old, with her fair skin little damaged by +time, and not much grey in her chestnut hair, which she wore piled in a +mass of waves and curls, in the manner of the early Georgian matrons. A +delightful woman, with an unfailing zest for life. You couldn’t exactly +discuss things with her, but she could and did discuss them with you. +She would tell you what she thought about the world and its ways in +a flow of racy comment, skimming from one topic to another with an +agile irrelevance that grew with the years. A merry, skimming matron; +certainly a happy Georgian.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">4<br> +MAURICE</p> + + +<p>Maurice had not, since he married Amy, been a happy Victorian or +Edwardian, and he did not become an exactly happy Georgian, but he +was happier than before. In his fifties he was no nearer accepting +the world as he found it than he had ever been. It still appeared to +him to be a hell of a place. He was, in his fifties, a lean, small, +bitter man, his light hair greying on the temples and receding from the +forehead, his sensitive mouth and long jaw sardonically, cynically set. +He was popular in London, for all his bitter tongue and pen; he and his +paper were by now an institution, known for their brilliance, clarity, +hard, unsentimental intolerance, and honesty. You might disagree with +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span> +Maurice Garden; you might even think that he had an evil temper and a +habit of mild intoxication; but you had to respect two things about +him, his intelligence and his sincerity. Tosh and slush he would not +stand, whether it might be about the Empire, about the poor suffragists +in prison who would not eat, about White Slaves (whom his paper +called, briefly and precisely, prostitutes, holding that the colour +of their skins was an irrelevant point to raise when considering the +amelioration of their lot), about the poor tax-robbed upper classes, or +the poor labour-ground lower. He would print no correspondence couched +in sentimental terms; if people desired to write about the sufferings, +say, of birds deprived of their feathers for hats, they had to put it +in a few concise words, and to say precisely what steps they wished to +see taken about it. No superfluous wailings or tears were permitted, +on any topic, to the writers in the <i>Gadfly</i>. The editor had +a good deal of trouble with the literary side of his paper, which +inclined, in his opinion, to roll logs, to be slavishly in the fashion +in the matter of admiring the right people, to accept weak articles +and rubbishy poems from people with budding or full-blown reputations, +and, generally, to be like most literary papers. His son Roger he did +not for long permit to adorn the literary staff; to do so would have +been, in view of the calibre of Roger’s intelligence, gross nepotism. +Roger had to get another literary job on a less fastidious paper; +meanwhile, to his father’s disgust, he continued to produce novels, +and even began on verse, so that he appeared in current anthologies of +contemporary poetry. Also, he got married. So did his sister Iris. That +settled, and his children well off his hands, Maurice felt that his +only and dubious link with family life was snapped, and that he was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span> +free to go his own way. He left his wife, offering to provide her with +any material she preferred for a divorce, from a mistress to a black +eye. Amy accepted the offer, and these two victims of a singularly +unfortunate entanglement found rest from one another at last. It was, +Amy complained, too late for her to marry again; of course Maurice, +selfish pig, had waited till it was too late for her but not for him. +But Maurice had no inclination to remarry; he had had more than enough +of that business. The only woman he had ever seriously loved had +married ten years ago, ending deliberately an unhappy, passionate and +fruitless relationship. Maurice’s thoughts were not now woman-ward; he +lived for his job, and for interest in the bitter comedy of affairs +that the world played before him. His silly, common, nagging wife, his +silly, ordinary, disappointing children, no more oppressed him; they +could, for him, now go their own silly ways. He was free.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">5<br> +ROME</p> + + +<p>Rome was a happy Georgian. For her the comedy of the world was too +amusing to be bitter. She, in her splendid, idle fifties, was known +in London as a lady of wits, of charm, of humour; a gentlewoman of +parts, the worldly, idle, do-nothing, care-nothing sister of the busy +and useful Mrs. Croft, contributing nothing, to the world beyond an +attractive presence, good dinner-table talk, a graceful zest for +gambling, an intelligent, cynical running commentary on life, and a +tolerant, observing smile. Life was a good show to her; it arranged +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span> +itself well, and she was clever at picking out the best scenes. When, +for instance, she had an inclination to visit the House of Commons, +she would discover first on which afternoon the Labour members, or the +Irish, were going to have a good row, or Mr. Lloyd George was going +to talk like an excited street preacher, or Sir Edward Carson like an +Orangeman, or any other star performer do his special turn, and she +would select that afternoon and have her reward. Our legislators were +to her just that—circus turns, some good, some poor, but none of them +with any serious relation to life as lived (if, indeed, any relation +with that absurd business could be called serious, which was doubtful).</p> + +<p>So the cheerful spectacle of a world of fools brightened Rome’s +afternoon years. Before long, the folly was to become too desperate, +too disastrous, too wrecking a business to be a comic show even to the +most amused eyes; the circus was, all too soon, to go smash, and the +folly of the clowns who had helped to smash it became a bitterness, and +the idiot’s tale held too much of sound and fury to be borne. But these +first Georgian years were, to Rome, twinkling with bland absurdity. She +cheered up Maurice in the matter of that prose and verse by means of +which his son made of himself a foolish show, reminding him that we all +make of ourselves foolish shows in one way or another, and the printed +word was one of the less harmful ways of doing this. It was no worse, +she maintained, to be a Georgian novelist and poet than any other kind +of Georgian fool, and one kind or another we all are. After all, he +might be instead a swindling company-promoter....</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span></p> + +<p>“No,” said Maurice. “He hasn’t the wits. And, you know, I don’t share +your philosophy. I still believe, in the teeth of enormous odds, +that it is possible to make something of this life—that one kind of +achievement is more admirable—or less idiotic, if you like—than +another. I still think bad, shallow, shoddy work like Roger’s damnable, +however unimportant it may be. It’s a mark on the wrong side, the side +of stupidity. You don’t believe in sides, but I do. And I’m glad I do, +so don’t try to infect me with your poisonous indifference. I am a man +of faith, I tell you; I have a soul. You are merely a cynic, the basest +of God’s creatures. You disbelieve in everything. I disbelieve in +nearly everything, but not quite. So I shall be saved and you will not. +Have a cocktail, Gallio.”</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">6<br> +STANLEY</p> + + +<p>Stanley’s son was at Oxford, reading for a pass, for it was no manner +of use, they said, his reading for anything more. He was a nice boy, +but not yet clever. “Not yet,” Stanley had said of him all through +his schooldays, meaning that Billy was late in developing. “Not yet,” +she still said, meaning that he was so late that he would not have +developed properly until his last year at Oxford, or possibly after +that. Not that Billy was stupid; he was quite intelligent about a +number of things, but not, on the whole, about the things in books, +which made it awkward about examinations. Nor was he intelligent +about politics; in fact, politics bored him a good deal. However, he +was destined for a political career. Stanley’s cousin, Sir Giles +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span> +Humphries, a Liberal member of Parliament, had promised Stanley to take +Billy as a junior secretary when he left Oxford, if he should show any +capacity for learning the job. Billy’s Liberal political career would +thus be well begun. Meanwhile, Billy was an affectionate, companionable +boy, who hid his boredom and his ignorance from his mother as well +as might be, and very nicely refrained from making mock of militant +suffragists in her presence, for, though Stanley had ceased to be a +militant, many of her friends were, in these years, in and out of +prison.</p> + +<p>Molly wouldn’t go to college. No one, indeed, but her mother suggested +that she should. She was obviously not suited, by either inclination or +capacities, for the extension of her education. Stanley would have been +glad to have Molly at home with her when she left school, for Molly +had the heartbreaking charm of her father, even down to his narrow, +laughing eyes and odd, short face. Stanley adored Molly. Molly was +tepid and casual about votes, and had no head for books, and not the +most rudimentary grasp on public affairs, and she was worse at meetings +and causes than any girl in the world. She didn’t even pretend, like +Billy. She would laugh in Stanley’s face, with her incomparable +impudence, when Stanley was talking, and say, “Mumsie darling, stop +committing. Oh, Mumsie, not before your chee-ild,” and flutter a +butterfly kiss on Stanley’s cheek to change the subject. And she wanted +to go on the stage. She wanted to go, and went, to a dramatic school, +to learn to act. Well, better that than nothing, Stanley sighed. If she +<i>does</i> learn to act, it will be all right. If she doesn’t, she’s +learning something. If it doesn’t make her affected and stupid, like +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span> +actresses, I don’t mind. And surely nothing can make Molly less than +entrancing. But, whatever comes of it, Molly has a right to choose +her own life; it’s no business of mine what the children decide to +do. In her conscious reaction from the one-time parental tyranny over +daughters, Stanley forgot that there might also be tyranny over sons, +and that Billy too had a right to choose his own life. It is creditable +to Billy that she could forget it. Billy was the best of sons.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Stanley was fighting (constitutionally) for votes, women’s +trade unions, the welfare of factory girls, continuation schools, +penal reform, clean milk, and the decrease of prostitution. It may be +imagined that all these things together kept her pretty busy; unlike +Rome, she had no time to visit Parliament on its best days; she only +went there when one of the topics in which she was interested was going +to be raised. She got thus, Rome told her, all the dry bread and none +of the jam. However, Stanley preferred the dry bread days, though they +were invariably stupid and disappointing.</p> + +<p>Though only a very little of all she had at heart got done, Stanley was +happy. She laboured under the delusion that the constitution and social +condition of her country were, on the whole, faintly on the upward +plane. That was because she was unfairly biassed towards the Liberal +party in the state, and too apt to approve of the measures they passed. +She approved of Old Age Pensions; she even approved, on the whole, of +Mr. Lloyd George’s Insurance Act; and she approved of the People’s +Budget very much.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">7<br> +IRVING</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span></p> + + +<p>Irving was nearly always cheerful, except when he was cross. Irving was +like that. He had been a cheerful Victorian and a cheerful Edwardian, +and was now, in his late forties, a cheerful Georgian. He had a +beautiful and charming wife, creditable children, a house in Devonshire +and a house in London, and a great deal of money (though the super-tax +robbed him of much of it), two motor cars, good fishing, shooting and +stag-hunting, and an excellent digestion. He had his troubles. The +People’s Budget troubled him a good deal, and the Land Taxes, and all +the unfair socialist legislation to which he was subject. He sometimes +threatened to go and live abroad, to escape it. But he did not go and +live abroad. He was, for all his troubles, a happy Englishman.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">8<br> +UNA</p> + + +<p>Una, too, was cheerful. She was unaffected by reigns and periods. She +was a very unconscious Georgian. Not like Stanley, who said, “We are +now Georgians. Georgian England must be much better than any England +before it,” nor like Roger, who would murmur, “We Georgians face facts” +... nor like Vicky, who cried, “I will <i>not</i> be called a Georgian; +not while that little Welsh horror rules over us.” Una hardly knew +she was a Georgian, and, indeed, she was not, in any but a strictly +technical sense. Her mind was unstirred by what used, long ago, to +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span> +be called the Zeitgeist. She was happy; she enjoyed good health; her +daughters were like polished corners and her sons like young plants; +her husband’s acres flourished and his corn and wine and oil increased +(as a matter of fact his wine, always a trifle too much, had of late +years decreased; Ted was a soberer man than of old); Katie, their +handsome eldest, had married well; and Una found in the countryside +the profound, unconscious content that animals find. Riding, walking, +gardening, driving about the level Essex lands, she, attuned to the +soil on which she lived, was happy and serene.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">9<br> +IMOGEN</p> + + +<p>The younger generation of Georgians were happy enough. They were +married, engaged, painting, writing, dancing, at the bar, at the +universities, at school. They were behaving in the several manners +suitable to their temperaments and years. Their lives were full of +interests, artistic, literary, athletic and social. Vicky’s Nancy +was learning to paint futuristically; she had now a little studio in +Chelsea, where she could be as Bohemian as she liked, and have her +friends all night without disturbing anyone. Night-clubs, too, had of +late come in, and were a great convenience. Phyllis was bringing up +her children. Hugh, eating dinners in the Temple, read of torts and +morts, but dreamed of machinery, and drew diagrams in court of pistons +and valves, and jotted down algebraic formulæ when he should have been +jotting down legal notes. Hugh was really a mechanician, and his heart +was not in law, though he liked it well enough. His brother Tony had +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span> +gone from Cambridge to the Foreign Office and, when not writing drafts, +was a merry youth about town.</p> + +<p>Imogen was happy. She felt her life to be pleasure-soaked; a lovely, +an elegant orgy of joy. And pleasure, orgies of dissipation even, did +not absorb her, but were ministrants to the clear, springing life of +the imagination. Imagination brimmed the cup of her spirit like golden +wine. She felt happy and good, like a child in an orchard, ripe apples +and pears tumbling in soft grass about her, the silver boat of the +moon riding in a green sky. For her birds sang, sweet bells chimed +and clashed, the stars made a queer, thin, tinkling song on still +and moonless nights. The people hurrying about the city streets and +squares were kind and merry and good, like brownies; the city itself +was a great gay booth, decked and lit. Dawn came on a golden tide of +peace; noon drove a flaming chariot behind the horses of the sun; +evening spread soft wings, tender and blue and green; night was sweet +as a dream of apple-blossoms by running water. When she wrote, whether +by day or by night, her brain felt clear and lit, as by a still, +bright taper burning steadily. Her thoughts, her words, rose up in her +swiftly, like silver fishes in a springing rock pool; round and round +they swam, and she caught them and landed them before they got away. +While she wrote, nothing mattered but to seize and land what she saw +thus springing up, to reach down her net and catch it while she might. +Verse she wrote, and prose, with growing fastidiousness as to form and +words. When she had first begun publishing what she wrote, she had +been too young; she had fumbled after style like a blind puppy; she +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span> +had been, like nearly all very young writers, superfluous of phrase, +redundant. She read with fastidious disgust in her first book of +stories such meaningless phrases as, “He lifted the child bodily over +the rail and dropped it into the sea.” Bodily; as if the victim might, +on the other hand, have been only caught up in the spirit, like St. +Paul. What did I mean, she asked, across the years, of that bungling +child, knowing that she had indeed meant nothing. But now style, the +stark, bare structure of language, was to her a fetish. It was good to +be getting on in life—twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six—so that +one’s head was clearer, if not yet very clear. The very young, thought +Imogen, are muddled; they love cant and shun truth; they adopt and use +imitative phrases; they are sentimental and easy idealists behind their +masks of cheerful, slangy hardness. Undergraduates, male and female, +and their non-collegiate contemporaries, are the most obscurantist +of reactionaries; facts annoy them and they pretend they do not see +them, preferring to walk muffled through life, until life forcibly, +year by year, tears the bandages from their eyes. The later Georgian, +the post-war very young, were to be even more sentimental, muffled +and imitative than their predecessors, because of the demoralising +war, which was to give them false standards in the schoolroom. But the +pre-war adolescents were sentimental enough.</p> + +<p>The sharp, clear and bitter truth—that was the thing to aim at, +thought Imogen, in her twenty-fifth year, knowing she was still far, +but not knowing how far, from that. That courageous realism which +should see things as they were, she desired, knowing herself to be +still a false seer, blinded and dazzled by her personal circumstances, +warped and circumscribed in her vision by the circle of her life. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span> +Perhaps she was too comfortable, too happy.... Or perhaps, like most +people, too emotionally alive, strung too sharply to every vibration, +for the clear, detached intellectuality she craved.</p> + +<p>I feel things too much, she thought, smiling, to be thinking what so +many people thought, what too many even said, of themselves.</p> + +<p>I don’t feel things much. I am not easily moved by life.... Why did +people so seldom say that, and so much more seldom think it? No doubt +because everyone feels things terrifically, is quite horribly moved by +this most moving business, life. No one believes him or herself to be +insensitive, for no one is insensitive, life not being an affair it is +possible to be insensitive to.</p> + +<p>In a deeper layer of consciousness, where herself watched herself, +Imogen thought that, though she might believe herself to be sensitive +to life, she at any rate knew why she believed it, knew why everyone +believed it of himself, and that redeemed her from the commonplace +boast, and gave her over the people who say, “I <i>feel</i> too much, +that’s where it is,” the advantage that the conscious must always have +over the unconscious, the advantage, if it be one, that is perhaps the +main difference between sophisticated and primitive forms of life.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Imogen, like her cousin Roger, wrote and published verse +and prose. After all, it didn’t matter what one wrote. People wrote +and wrote, and nearly every kind of thing got written by someone or +other, well or ill, usually ill, and never so well as to touch more +than the very outside edge of the beauty and adventure which was life. +Written words opened the door, that was all. Beyond the door lay the +adventure, bright and still and eerily clear, like a dream. Strange +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span> +seas, purple with racing currents in the open, but under the eaves of +coral islands green and clear like jade; white beaches of those same +islands, hot in the sunshine under the spreading leaves of bread-fruit +trees; yams and cocoanuts and pineapples dropping with nutty noises +on to emerald-green grass; a little boat moored at the edge of the +lapping, creamy waves; witty monkeys and brilliant parrots chattering +in the jungle; a little fire at night outside the tent, and a gun ready +to one’s hand. Great fishes and small fishes swimming deeply in the +jade rock pools, sailing and sailing with unshut eye; the little boat +sailing too, pushing off into the wide seas dotted with islands, white +wings pricking sky-ward like fawns’ ears. Or deep orchards adrift with +blossom, rosy-white; jolly colts in paddocks, dragging with soft lips +and hard gums at their mothers’ milk; the winds of April hurtling the +cloud shadows across the grass. Long lanes running between deep hedges +in the evening, and the rustle of the sea not far, and the velvet dusk +waiting for the moonrise, and queer, startled noises in the hedges, and +quiet munching noises in the fields, and the cold mocking stars looking +down. And painted carts of gypsies, and roadside fires, and wood-smoke +and ripe apples. And hills silver and black with olives and cypresses, +and steep roads spiralling up them to little walled towns, and hoarse, +chanted songs lilting among vineyards, and the jingling of the bells +of oxen. And the streets and squares of rainbow-coloured towns, noisy +cafés and lemon trees in tubs, beautiful men noble with the feathers +of cocks, beautiful women in coloured head-kerchiefs, incense drifting +out of churches into piazzas, coffee roasting in deep streets. To swim, +to sail, to run naked on hot sands, to lie eating and eating in deep +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span> +scented woods, and then to sleep; to wake and slip into clear brown +pools in sunshine, to spin words as a spider his silvery web; to wear a +scarlet silk jacket like a monkey’s and little white trousers, and, for +best, a little scarlet crinoline over them, sticking out, very wide and +short and jaunty, and a scarlet sunshade lined with white, and on one’s +shoulder a tiny flame-red cockatoo, and at one’s heels two little black +slaves, shining and black as ebony, with ivory teeth a-glisten and +banjos tucked beneath their arms. To clap one’s hands, twice, thrice, +and presto! an elegant meal—mushrooms, cider and <i>pêche melba</i>, +and mangoes and pineapple to end it, and then, when it was ended, a +three-coloured ice. What joy! Dear God, what a world! What adventure, +what loveliness, what dreams! Beauty without end, amen.</p> + +<p>Then why write of what should, instead, be lived? Wasn’t the marvellous +heritage, the brilliant joke, the ghostly dream, of life enough? +Nevertheless, one did write, and was, inexplicably, praised for it. +Black marks on paper, scribbled and niggled and scrawled—and here and +there the splendour and the joke and the dream broke through them, like +sunshine flashing through prison bars, like music breaking through the +written notes.</p> + +<p>While she gave to the fashioning of the written word all the +fastidious, meticulous austerity of devotion that she knew, Imogen in +her personal life was not austere or fastidious or devoted at all. +She idled; she lounged about; she was slovenly; she bought and sucked +toffee; she read omnivorously, including much trash; she was a prey to +shoddy, facile emotions and moods, none of which had power to impel her +to any action, because a deep, innate scepticism underlay them all; +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span> +she was a sentimental cynic. She loved too lightly and too slightly; +she was idle, greedy, foolish, childish, impatient and vain, sliding +out of difficulties like a tramp who fears a job of work. She did not +care for great causes; public affairs were to her only an intriguing +and entertaining show. She was a selfish girl, a shallow girl, a shoddy +girl, enmeshed in egotism, happy in her own circus, caring little +whether or no others had bread. Happy in her circus, and yet often +wretched too, for life is like that—exquisite and agonising. She +wanted to go to the Pacific Islands and bathe from coral reefs; wanted +money and fame; wanted to be delivered for ever from meetings and +tea-parties, foolish talkers and bores; wanted to save a life, watched +by cheering crowds; wanted a motor bicycle; wanted to be a Christian; +wanted to be a young man. But not now a naval man; she had seen through +the monotony and routine of that life. She wanted in these days to +be a journalist, a newspaper correspondent, sent abroad on exciting +jobs, to report wars, and eruptions of Vesuvius, and earthquakes, and +Cretan excavations, and revolutions in South America, and international +conferences.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">10<br> +ON PUBLISHING BOOKS</p> + + +<p>From time to time Imogen, in common with many others, brought out +books, large and small. They would arrive in a parcel of six, and +lie on the breakfast table, looking silly, in clownish wrappers with +irrelevant pictures on them. Imogen would examine them with mild +distaste. How common they looked, to be sure, now that they were +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span> +bound! As common as most books, as the books by others. Dull, too. +What if all the reviews said so? One couldn’t help caring what reviews +said, however hard one tried not to. It was petty and trivial to be +cast up and cast down by the opinions of one’s fellows, no wiser than +oneself, expressed in print, but so it was. Why? Chiefly because they +<i>were</i> expressed in print, to be read by all. One’s disgrace, +if it were a disgrace, was so public. People who didn’t know that +reviewers were just ordinary people, with no more authority or judgment +than they had themselves, believed them. If people read in a review, +“It cannot be said that Miss Carrington has been successful in her new +book of stories,” they thought that it really could not, not knowing +that almost anything can, as a matter of fact, be said, and often is. +And if a reviewer said (as was more usual, for reviewers are, taking +them all in all, a kindly race), “This is a good book,” people who +didn’t know any better really thought that it was so. Then the author +was pleased. Particularly as the book wasn’t really good in the least.</p> + +<p>“I can’t say I am much concerned about my reviews, one way or another,” +Roger had once said to Imogen. But he <i>was</i> concerned, all the +same. Did he, did all the people who said they didn’t mind things, +know that they really did? Or were they indeed deluded? People were +surely often deluded; they said such odd things. “It’s not that I mind +a bit for myself, it’s the principle of the thing,” they would say. +Or, “I don’t care a damn what anyone says of me,” or, “It isn’t that +<i>I’d</i> mind taking the risk, but one has to think of other people.” +And the people who said, “I know you won’t mind my saying ...” when +they knew you would, or, “I don’t want to spread gossip, but ...” when +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span> +that was just what they did want, or, “You mustn’t think I’m vexed with +you, dear,” when they left you nothing else to think.</p> + +<p>Did these lie? Or were they deceived? Imogen, pondering these +apparently so confused minds in her own, which was more approximately +accurate (for she would deceive others, but could not easily deceive +herself), could not decide.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">11<br> +ON SUNDAY WALKS</p> + + +<p>On Sundays the early Georgians used to go from London in trains, +getting out somewhere in Surrey, Sussex, Bucks or Herts, to walk in +muddy lanes or over blown downs, or through dim green-grey beechwoods +or fragrant forests of pine. It is pleasanter to walk alone, or with +one companion, or even two, but sometimes unfortunately one walks (and +so did the early Georgians) in large groups, or parties of pleasure. +Imogen found that she occasionally did this, for it was among the minor +bad habits of her set. It did not greatly matter, and these strange +processions could not really spoil the country, even though they did +very greatly talk. How they talked! Books, politics, personal gossip, +good jokes and bad, acrostics, stories, discussions—with these the +paths and fields they traversed echoed. But Imogen, like a lower +animal, felt stupid and happy and alone, and rooted about the ditches +for violets and the hedges for nests, and smelt at the moss in the +woods, and broke off branches to carry home. To herself she would hum a +little tune, some phrase of music over and over again, and sometimes +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span> +words would be born in her and sing together like stars of the morning. +But for the most part she only rooted about like a cheerful puppy, +alive with sensuous joy. Her companions she loved and admired, but +could not emulate, for they were wise about things she knew not of. +Even about the fauna and flora of the countryside they really knew more +than she, who could only take in them an ignorant and animal pleasure. +She had long since guessed herself to be an imbecile, and, with the +imbecile’s cunning, tried to hide it from others. What if suddenly +everyone were to find out, discover that she was an imbecile, with a +quite vacant, unhinged mind? If these informed, educated, sophisticated +people should discover that, they would dismiss her from their ken; +she would no more be their friend. She would be cast out, left to root +about alone in the ditches, like a shameless, naked, heathen savage.</p> + +<p>As she thought about this, someone would come and walk by her side and +talk, and she would pull herself together and pretend to be passably +intelligent, albeit she was really drunk with the soft spring wind and +the earthy smell of the wood.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">12<br> +ON MARRIAGE</p> + + +<p>Imogen loved lightly and slightly, her heart not being much in +that business. Life was full of stimulating contacts. She admired +readily, and liked, was interested, charmed and entertained. Men and +women passed to and fro on her stage, delightful, witty, graceful, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span> +brilliant, even good, and found favour in her eyes. Poets, politicians +and priests, journalists and jesters, artists and writers, scholars +and social reformers, lovely matrons, witty maids, and cheerful +military men, toilers, spinners, and lilies of the field—a pleasant, +various crowd, they walked and worked and talked. So many people were +alluring, so many tedious, so many tiresome. One could, unless one was +careless, evade the tedious and the tiresome. But supposing that one +had been very careless, and had married one of them? What a shocking +entanglement life might then become! How monstrously jarring and +fatiguing would be the home!</p> + +<p>“Whether one marries or remains celibate,” Imogen reflected, in her +pedantic, deliberating way, “that is immaterial. Both have advantages. +But to marry one of the right people, if at all, is of the greatest +consequence for a happy life. People do not always think intelligently +enough on this important subject. Too often, they appear to act on +impulse, or from some inadequate motive. And the results are as we +see.” For she was seeing at the moment several ill-mated couples of her +acquaintance, some of whom made the best of it, others the worst. Many +sought and found affinities elsewhere, for affinities they must (or so +they believed) have. Others, renouncing affinity as a baseless dream, +wisely accepted less of life than that, and lived in disillusioned +amenity with their spouses.</p> + +<p>An amazing number of marriages came, on the other hand, off, and +these were a pleasant sight to see. To come home every evening to the +companion you preferred and who preferred you—that would be all right. +(Only there might be babies, and that would be all wrong, because they +would want bathing or something just when you were busy with something +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span> +else.) Or to come home to no one; or (better still) not to come home at +all. So many habits of life were enjoyable, but not that of perpetual +unsuitable companionship.</p> + +<p>Thus Imogen reflected and philosophised on this great topic of marriage +and of love, which did not, however, really interest her so much as +most other topics, for she regarded it as a little primitive, a little +elementary, lacking in the more entertaining complexities of thought. +Metaphysics, poetry, psychology and geography made to her a stronger +intellectual appeal; the non-emotional functionings of the dwellers on +this planet she found more amusing, and the face of the planet itself +more beautiful.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, to be a little in love is fun, and makes enchantment +of the days. A little in love, a little taste of that hot, blinding +cup—but only enough to stimulate, not to blind. One is so often a +little in love....</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">13<br> +BILLY</p> + + +<p>Billy left Oxford with his pass. His Liberal cousin accepted him, +having it on the authority of Stanley, whom he greatly regarded, that +Billy had the makings of a good secretary. Billy denied this, and +said he would prefer to be a veterinary surgeon, or else to farm in +a colony. But his mother had decided that he was to be political. +Political. He thought he saw himself.... And anyhow, where was the +sense of politics? A jolly old mess the politicians made of things, and +always had.... Somehow politics didn’t seem a real thing, like vetting +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span> +or farming. There was so much poppycock mixed up with it....</p> + +<p>But there it was. His mother must have her way. He supposed it would +be a shame to disappoint her. Molly wouldn’t look at politics, and one +of them must. So in October he was to begin looking at them. One thing +was, Giles Humphries wouldn’t keep him long; he’d soon see through +him....</p> + +<p>“Doesn’t make much odds, anyhow,” he reflected gloomily. “One damn +silly job or another. Mother’ll never let me do what I want. ’Tisn’t +good enough for her. I wish people wouldn’t <i>want</i> things for one; +wish they’d let one alone. Being let alone ... that’s the thing.”</p> + +<p>Rome said to Stanley, “You’ll never make a politician of that boy. Why +try?”</p> + +<p>“He’s too young to say that about yet, Rome. I <i>should</i> like to +see him doing some work for his country....”</p> + +<p>“They don’t do that, my dear. You’ve been misinformed. I thought you +went to the House sometimes.... Really, Stan, I can’t imagine why +you should try and turn Billy, who’d be some use in the world as an +animals’ doctor, or a tiller of the soil, or, I daresay, as a number of +other things, into anything so futile and so useless and so singularly +unsuited both to his talents and to his honest nature as a politician. +I suppose you’ll make him stand for Parliament eventually. Well, he’ll +quite likely get in. People will elect anyone. But he’d only be bored +and stupid and wretched there. He’s got no gift of the gab, for one +thing. You let the child do what he wants.”</p> + +<p>“I’m not forcing him. He knows he is free.”</p> + +<p>“He knows nothing of the sort. He knows you’ve set your heart on this, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span> +and he doesn’t want to vex you. Really, you mothers ...”</p> + +<p>So Billy, in the autumn of 1913, became the inefficient secretary +of his kind, inefficient Liberal cousin, who was, however, no more +inefficient than his fellow members of Parliament.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">14<br> +EXIT PAPA</p> + + +<p>Those were inefficient years; silly years, full of sound and fury, +signifying nothing. They were not much sillier than usual, but there +was rather more sound and fury than had been customary of late. It was +made by militant suffragists, who smashed public property and burned +private houses with an ever more ardent abandon; by Welsh churchmen who +marched through London declaring that on no account would they have +their church either disestablished or disendowed; by dock and transport +strikers, who had a great outbreak of indomitability and determination +in 1911, and another in 1912; by Mr. Lloyd George’s Insurance Act, +which caused much gnashing of teeth, foaming of mouths and flashing of +eyes; by Liberals and Conservatives, who, for some reason, suddenly +for a time abandoned that sporting good humour which has always made +English political life what it is, a thing some like and others scorn, +and took on to dislike each other, even leaving dinner parties to which +members of the opposition party had been carelessly invited; and by the +men of Ulster, who, being convinced in their consciences that Home Rule +would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster, covenanted +to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span> +in Ireland, and, to this end, got a quite good conspiracy going +themselves. There was also, it need hardly be said, plenty of sound and +fury on the continent, particularly in the Balkans.</p> + +<p>They make, these years, a noisy, silly, rowdy, but on the whole cheery +chapter of the idiot’s tale. Howbeit, they were less noisy and less +silly, and far more cheery, than the chapter which was to follow.</p> + +<p>Just before this chapter began, papa died. Afterwards they said, it +is a mercy papa is dead; that he died before the smash that would so +have shattered him. Papa, gentle and sensitive and eighty-four, could +scarcely have endured the great war. Down what fresh avenues of faith +it would have sent his still adventurous soul exploring, seeking +strength and refuge from the nightmare, would never be known. He died +in May, 1914. He died as he had lived, a great and wide believer, +still murmuring, “I believe ... I believe ... I believe ...”—a +credulous, faithful, comprehensive, happy Georgian. He had moments when +agnosticism or scepticism was the dominant creed in his soul, but they +were only moments; soon the tide of his many faiths would surge over +him again, and in all these he died.</p> + +<p>“Dear papa,” said Vicky, weeping. “To think that he is with mamma at +last! And to think that now he <i>knows</i> what is true.... Oh, dear, +how will he ever get on without all those speculations and new beliefs? +One knows, of course, that he is happy, darling papa ... but will he +find it at all the <i>same</i>?”</p> + +<p>Rome said, “Why? Taking your hypothesis, that there is another life, +why should it be supposed to be a revelation of the truth about the +universe, or about God? Why should not papa go on speculating and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span> +guessing at truth, trying new faiths? You people who believe in what +you call heaven seem to have no justification for making it out such an +informed place.”</p> + +<p>“Oh, my dear; aren’t we told that all shadows shall flee away, and that +we shall <i>know</i>? I’m sure we are, somewhere, only you won’t read +the Bible ever.”</p> + +<p>“On the contrary, I read the Bible a good deal. I find it enormously +interesting. But the one thing we can be quite sure about all those +who wrote it is that they had no information at all as to what would +occur to them after their deaths. That is among the very large quantity +of information that no one alive has ever yet had. So, if you think +of papa in heaven, why not think of him in the state in which he +would certainly be happiest and most himself—still exploring for +truth? Why should death bring a sudden knowledge of all the secrets +of the universe? You believers make so many and such large and such +unwarrantable assumptions.”</p> + +<p>“My dear, we must make assumptions, or how get through life at all?”</p> + +<p>“Very true. How indeed? One must make a million unwarrantable +assumptions, such as that the sun will rise to-morrow, and that the +attraction of the earth for our feet will for a time persist, and that +if we do certain things to our bodies they will cease to function, +and that if we get into a train it will probably carry us along, and +so forth. One must assume these things just enough to take action on +them, or, as you say, we couldn’t get through life at all. But those +are hypothetical, pragmatical assumptions, for the purposes of action; +there is no call actually to believe them, intellectually. And still +less call to increase their number, and carry assumptions into spheres +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span> +where it doesn’t help us to action at all. For my part, I assume +practically a great deal, intellectually nothing.”</p> + +<p>Vicky was going through her engagement book, seeing what she would have +to cancel because of papa’s death, and all she answered was, absently, +“Dear papa!”</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="SECOND_PERIOD_SMASH">SECOND PERIOD: SMASH</h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span></p> +<p class="nindc">1<br> +SOUND AND FURY</p> +</div> + + +<p class="nind"> +<span class="dropcap">T</span>HE so bitter, so recent, so familiar, so agonising tale of the four +years and a quarter between August, 1914, and November, 1918, has been +told and re-told too often, and will not be told in detail here. It is +enough, if not too much, to say that there was a great and dreadful +war in Europe, and that nightmare and chaos and the abomination +of desolation held sway for four horrid years. All there was of +civilisation—whatever we mean by that unsatisfactory, undefined, +relative word—suffered irretrievable damage. All there was of greed, +of cruelty, of barbarism, of folly, incompetence, meanness, valour, +heroism, selfishness, littleness, self-sacrifice and hate, rose to +the call in each belligerent country and showed itself for what it +was. Men and women acted blindly, according to their kind; they used +the torments of others as stepping stones to prosperity or fame; they +endured torments themselves, with complaining, with courage, or with +both; they did work they held to be useful, and got out of it what +credit and profit they could; or work they knew was folly, and still +got out of it what they could. They went to the war, they stayed at +home, they scrambled for jobs among the chaos, they got rich, they got +poor, they died, were maimed, medalled, frostbitten, tortured, bored, +imprisoned, embittered, enthusiastic, cheerful, hopeless, patient, +or matter-of-fact, according to circumstances and temperament. Many +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span> +people said a great deal, others very little. Some parents boasted, “I +have given my all,” others said, “Well, I suppose they’ve got to go +into the damned thing,” some men said, “I must go into it; it’s right,” +some, “I shall go into it: it’s an adventure,” some “I must go into it +like other people, though it’s all wrong,” some, “It may be all right +for others, but I shan’t go into it,” some, “I shan’t go until I’m +forced,” some, “I shan’t go even then.” There were, in fact, all manner +of different attitudes and ways of procedure with regard to the war. +To some it was a necessary or unnecessary hell, to some a painful and +tedious affair enough, but with interests and alleviations and a good +goal in sight; to some an adventure; to some (at home) a satisfactory +sphere for work they enjoyed, to some a holy war, to others a devil’s +dance in which they would take no part, or which they wearily did what +they could to alleviate, or in which they joined with cynical and +conscious resolve not to be left out of whatever profits might accrue.</p> + +<p>But to the majority in each country it was merely a catastrophe, like +an earthquake, to be gone through blindly, until better might be.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">2<br> +THE FAMILY AT WAR</p> + + +<p>Of the Garden family, Vicky was horrified but enthusiastically +pro-war. Her two sons got commissions early, and she helped the war +by organising bazaars and by doing whatever it was that one did (in +the early stages, for in the later more of violence had to be done) to +Belgian refugees. Maurice and his paper were violently pacificist, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span> +became a by-word. Rome saw the war and what had led up to it as the +very crown and sum of human folly, and helped, very capably and neatly, +to pack up and send off food and clothes to British prisoners. Stanley +was caught in the tide of war fervour. She worked in a canteen, and +served on committees for all kinds of good objects, and behaved with +great competence and energy, her heart wrung day and night with fear +for Billy. In 1917 she caught peace fever, joined the peace party and +the Women’s International League, signed petitions and manifestos in +support of Lord Lansdowne, and spoke on platforms about it, which Billy +thought tiresome of her.</p> + +<p>Irving lent a car to an ambulance, and his services to the Ministry of +Munitions, and became a special constable. Una sent cakes to her sons +and farm-hands at the front, and employed landgirls on the farm. She +took the war as all in the day’s work; there had been wars before in +history, and there would be wars again. It was awfully sad, all the +poor boys being taken like that; but it sent up the price of corn and +milk, and that pleased Ted, for all his anxiety for his sons.</p> + +<p>The younger generation acted and reacted much as might be expected +of them. Vicky’s Hugh, who joined the gunners, was interested in the +business and came tolerably well through it, only sustaining a lame +leg. Tony, the younger, was killed in 1916. Maurice’s Roger, whose +class was B2, served in France for a year, and wrote a good deal of +trench poetry. He was then invalided out, and entered the Ministry +of Information, where he continued, in the intervals of compiling +propaganda intended to interest the natives of Iceland in the cause of +the Allies, to publish trench poetry, full of smells, shells, corpses, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span> +mud and blood.</p> + +<p>“I simply can’t read the poetry you write in these days, Roger,” his +mother, Amy, complained. “It’s become too terribly beastly and nasty +and corpsey. I can’t think what you want to write it for, I’m sure.”</p> + +<p>“Unfortunately, mother,” Roger explained, kindly, “war <i>is</i> rather +beastly and nasty, you know. And a bit corpsey, too.”</p> + +<p>“My dear boy, I know that; I’m not an idiot. Don’t, for goodness’ sake, +talk to me in that superior way, it reminds me of your father. All I +say is, why <i>write</i> about the corpses? There’ve always been plenty +of them, people who’ve died in their beds of diseases. You never used +to write about <i>them</i>.”</p> + +<p>“I suppose one’s object is to destroy the false glamour of war. There’s +no glamour about disease.”</p> + +<p>“Glamour, indeed! There you go again with that terrible nonsense. +I don’t meet any of these people you talk about who think there’s +glamour in war. I’m sure <i>I</i> never saw any glamour in it, with all +you boys in the trenches and all of us at home slaving ourselves to +death and starving on a slice of bread and margarine a day. Glamour, +indeed! I’ll tell you what it is, a set of you young men have invented +that glamour theory, just so as to have an excuse for what you call +destroying it, with your nasty talk. Like you’ve invented those awful +Old Men you go on about, who like the war. I’m sick of your Old Men and +your corpses.”</p> + +<p>“I’m sick of them myself,” said Roger, gloomily, and changed the +subject, for you could not argue with Amy. But he went on writing war +poetry, and gained a good deal of reputation as one of our soldier +poets. On the whole he was more successful as a poet than as a +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span> +propagandist to Iceland, which cool island remained a little detached +about the war.</p> + +<p>Stanley’s Billy hailed the outbreak of hostilities with some pleasure, +and was among the first civilians to enlist. Here, he felt, was a job +more in his line than being secretary to his Liberal cousin, which he +had found more and more tedious as time passed. He fought in France, in +Flanders, in Gallipoli, and in Mesopotamia, was wounded three times, +and recovered each time to fight again. He was a cheerful, ordinary, +unemotional young soldier, a good deal bored, after a bit, with the +war. On one of his leaves, in 1916, he married a young lady from the +Vaudeville Theatre, whom Stanley could not care about.</p> + +<p>“I know mother wanted me to marry a highbrow girl,” he confided to +Molly. “Some girl who’s been to college or something. But I haven’t +much to say to that sort ever, nor they to me. Now Dot....”</p> + +<p>But even Molly had her misgivings about Dot. She was not sure that Dot +would prove quite monogamous enough. And, as it turned out, Dot did not +prove monogamous at all, but rather the contrary.</p> + +<p>Molly herself had become an ambulance driver in France. She frankly +enjoyed the war. She became engaged to officers, successively and +simultaneously. She acted at canteen entertainments and gained a +charming reputation as a comedienne. At the end of the war she received +the O. B. E. for her distinguished services.</p> + +<p>Her mother knew about some of the engagements, and thought them too +many, but did not know that Molly had for a time been more than +engaged. She never would know that, for Molly kept her own counsel. +Molly knew that to Stanley, with her idealistic view of life and her +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span> +profound belief in the enduring seriousness of personal relations, it +would have seemed incredibly trivial, light and loose to be a lover and +pass on, to commit oneself so deeply and yet not count it deep at all, +but emerge free and untrammelled for the next adventure. It had seemed +incredible to Stanley in her husband; it would seem more incredible in +her daughter.</p> + +<p>“Mother’s so different,” thought Molly. “She’d never understand.... +Aunt Rome’s different too, but she’d understand about me; she always +understands things, even if she despises them. She <i>would</i> despise +this, but she wouldn’t be surprised.... Mother would be hurt to death. +She must never, never guess.”</p> + +<p>As to Vicky’s daughters, Phyllis was useful in some competent, +part-time, married way that may be imagined. Nancy turned violently +anti-war and became engaged to a Hungarian artist, who was subsequently +removed from his studio in Chelsea and interned. Imogen was everything +by turns and nothing long. The war very greatly discomposed her. It +seemed to her a very shocking outrage both that there should be a +war, and that, since there was a war, she should be found, owing to a +mere fluke of sex, among the non-combatants. The affair was a horrid +nightmare, which she had to stand and watch. People of her age simply +<i>weren’t</i> non-combatants; that was how she felt about it. Strong, +active people in the twenties; it seemed a disgrace to her, who had +never before so completely realised that she was not, in point of +fact, a young man. War was ghastly and beastly; but if it was there, +people like her ought to be in it. However, since this was obviously +impossible, she sulkily and simultaneously joined a pacifist league +and became a V. A. D., in the hope of getting sent out to France. She +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span> +was an infinitely incapable V. A. D., did everything with remarkable +incompetence, and fainted or was sick when her senses and nerves were +more displeased than usual by what they encountered, which was often. +She was soon told that she had no gifts for nursing and had better +stick to cleaning the wards. This she did, with relief, for some time, +until her friends said, why not get a job in a government office, which +was much more lucrative and amusing. Sick of hospitals, she did so. She +was under no delusions as to the usefulness of any work she was likely +to do in an office; but still, one had to do something. She could not +write; her jarred, unhappy nerves sought and found a certain degree of +oblivion in the routine, the camaraderie, the demoralising absurdity, +of office work, which was like being at school again. Also, it was +paid, and, as she could not write, she must earn money somehow.</p> + +<p>So, indolent, greedy, unbalanced, trivial and demoralised, Imogen, +like many others, drifted through the great war. Two deaths occurred +to her—the death of her brother and companion Tony, which blackened +life and made the war seem to her more than ever a hell of futile +devilry; and the death of Neville, a young naval officer, to whom she +had become engaged in 1915, and who was killed in 1916. It was a queer +affair, born of the emotionalism and sensation-seeking that beset many +people at that time. She had not known him long; she did not know him +well. She was aware that it was ignominious of her to encourage him, +merely on the general love she bore to the navy, a little flattered +excitement, and a desire, new-born, to experience the sensation of +engagement. They had few thoughts in common, but they could joke +together, and talk of ships, and of how they loved one another, and +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</span> +about him was the glamour of the navy, and she felt, when he kissed +her, that stimulation of the emotions and senses that passes for love. +When they talked about things in general, and not about their love, +she heard within her that cold voice that never lied, saying, “You +cannot live with this nice young naval man. You will tire each other.” +Worse, they sometimes shocked one another. Could it be—disastrous +thought—that she had outgrown the navy?</p> + +<p>“You’re a rum kid, darling,” he said to her. “You and I disagree about +nearly everything, it seems to me. We shall have a lively married +life.... But I don’t care....”</p> + +<p>But he did care a little, all the same. Imogen sometimes suspected +that, like herself, he had begun to think they had made a mistake. But +then he would take her in his arms, and when they embraced neither of +them felt that they had made a mistake.</p> + +<p>However, one is not embracing all the time, and Imogen slowly came +to the point, between one leave and another, of deciding to end the +affair. The navy and she had grown away from each other; there was no +doubt about that.</p> + +<p>But before they could discuss this point, Neville was killed at Jutland.</p> + +<p>Imogen wept for him, and believed for a time that she loved him +profoundly and missed him horribly. But the small cold voice within her +that never lied whispered, “You are only sorry that he is dead for his +sake, because he loved being alive and ought to be alive. You sometimes +miss his kisses and his love, but you are glad that you are free.”</p> + +<p>She spent an unhappy week-end with his parents in the country. They +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span> +did not very greatly care for her—cared only for Neville’s sake. +Neville’s father was a rector, very simple and village, his mother a +rector’s wife, very parochial and busy. With them Imogen felt leggy and +abrupt, and the wrong kind of a girl. She couldn’t be articulate with +them, or show them how bitterly she felt Neville’s death before he had +properly lived. They were unhappy but not bitter; they said, “It was +God’s will,” and she could not tell them that, in her view, they spoke +inaccurately and blasphemed. Yet their hearts were (to use the foolish +phrase) broken, and hers by no means. She caught Neville’s mother +looking at her speculatively from behind her glasses, and wondered if +she were wondering how much this gauche young woman had loved her boy. +She wanted to beg her pardon and dash for the next train. They could +not want her with them; to have her was a duty they thought they owed +to Neville. “I’ve no right here,” she cried to herself. “They loved +him. I was only in love with his love for me. Their lives are spoilt, +mine isn’t.”</p> + +<p>She did not visit them again. That was over. Neville took his place in +her memory not as a personal loss but as a gay, heartbreaking figure, a +tragic symbol of murdered, outraged youth.</p> + +<p>But when Tony was killed, the world’s foundations shook. He was her +darling brother, her beloved companion in adventure, scrapes and +enterprises from their childhood up. She could by no means recover from +the cruel death of Tony, which shattered the life of his home.</p> + +<p>But daily work in an office, so cheerful, so fruitless, so absurd, was +an anodyne. Offices were full of people who did not mind the war, who, +some of them, rather enjoyed the war. There are no places more cynical +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</span> +than the offices of governments. Not parliaments in session, not +statesmen in council, not cardinals in conclave, not even journalists +emitting their folly in the dead of the night. Encased in an armour of +this easy cynicism against the savage darts of the most horrid war, +Imogen and many others drifted through its last years to the war’s +cynical culmination, the horrid but welcome peace.</p> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</span></p> +<h2 class="nobreak" id="THIRD_PERIOD_DEBRIS">THIRD PERIOD: DÉBRIS</h2> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</span></p> +<p class="nindc">1<br> +PEACE</p> +</div> + + +<p class="nind"> +<span class="dropcap">A</span> HORRID peace it was and is. It is the fashion to say so, and, unlike +most fashionable sayings, it is true. But at first the fact that it +<i>was</i> peace, that people were not killing each other (in such +large numbers and for such small reasons) any more, was enough and made +everyone happy. A poor peace enough; but the fact remains that the +worst peace is heaven compared with the best war. It was like the first +return of chocolate éclairs. “They’re rather funny ones,” people said, +“not quite like the old kind; but still, they <i>are</i> éclairs.” +So peace. It was indeed a rather funny one, not quite like the old +kind; but still, it was peace. And what, if you come to that, was the +old kind, that any other should be compared unfavourably with it? The +trouble is, perhaps, rather that this new variety <i>is</i> like it.</p> + +<p>The Peace Treaty has been called all kinds of names—patchwork, +violent, militarist, manufactured, makeshift, frail, silly, uneconomic, +unstatesmanlike; and all the names except the last may be true. +(Unstatesmanlike the treaty was certainly not; very few treaties drawn +up by statesmen unfortunately are that; and, in passing, this word +unstatesmanlike seems often to be curiously and thoughtlessly used, in +a sense directly contrary to that which it should bear.) Well, even +if nearly all these opprobrious names were true, it seems a pity to +be always discontented. Wiser were those who encouraged the infant, +patted it on the back, and greeted the unseen with a cheer. Like beer, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</span> +like shoeleather, it seemed costly and poor. But who are we, that we +can afford to be particular? We should make the best of whatever peace +is given us, even if it is not the brand we should have preferred. +“We’ve got,” said the resigned citizen, “to put up with these poor, +nasty-looking things, that last no time at all. Beer it’s not, and +shoeleather it’s not, and peace it won’t be, properly speaking. A kind +of substitute they all are, like margarine. But what I say is, we’re +lucky to get them.” So we were.</p> + +<p>Idealists, such as Stanley Croft, though they did not admire the Treaty +of Versailles, saw it as the material out of which the living temple +of peace might yet be built, on that great cornerstone, the League of +Nations. The League of Nations was to the peace-wishers as his creed is +to the Christian; it bound them to believe in a number of difficult, +happy, unlikely and highly incompatible things, such as lasting peace, +the freedom of small nations, arbitration between large ones, and so +forth. They joined the League of Nations Union, full of hope and faith. +Stanley did so, at its inception, and became, in fact, a speaker on +platforms in the cause.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">2<br> +THE LAST HOPE</p> + + +<p>Stanley, in her late fifties, looked and spoke well on platforms; she +looked both nice and important. Her blue eyes, under their thick, level +brows, were as starry as ever, her voice as deep and full and good, +her mind young and alert. A clever, high-minded, balanced, vigorous, +educated matron of close on sixty; that was what Stanley was. She was +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</span> +the kind of matron to whom younger women gave their confidence. Her son +and daughter did not give her their whole confidence, but that was not +her fault.</p> + +<p>Billy was demobilised. A seamed scar cut across his cheek, and his eyes +were queer and sulky and brooding. He disliked by now his wife, Dot. +She reciprocated the feeling, and very soon left him for another, so +he divorced her. Stanley could not help being glad, Dot had been such +a mistake. She was not the kind of wife to help her husband in his +parliamentary career. She was the more the kind who succeeds him in it, +but even that Stanley could not know in 1919, and she regarded Dot as, +from every point of view, a wash-out.</p> + +<p>“Look here, mother,” Billy said to her, with nervous, sulky decision. +“I can’t go back to that secretary job. Nor any other job of that +kind. Sitting jobs and writing jobs bore me stiff. I’ve done too much +sitting, in those beastly trenches. And politics anyhow seem to me +plain rot. I want to train for a vet. I’m awfully sorry if you’re +sick about it, but there it is. Why don’t you make Molly take on a +secretary-to-a-Liberal job? She couldn’t be worse than I was, anyhow.”</p> + +<p>“A vet, Billy! Darling boy, why a vet? Why not a human doctor, if you +must be something of that sort?”</p> + +<p>“Want to be a vet,” said Billy, and was.</p> + +<p>As to Molly, she became secretary to no Liberal, for she married, +in 1919, a flight commander, and his politics, if any, were +Coalition-Unionist.</p> + +<p>So much for Stanley’s hopes for political careers for her children. She +sighed, and accepted the inevitable, and put her hope more than ever +in the League of Nations. If that could not save the world, nothing +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</span> +could....</p> + +<p>Certainly nothing could, said Rome. Nothing ever had yet. At least, +what did people mean, precisely, by save? Words, words, words. They +signified, as commonly and lightly used, so very little.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">3<br> +THE CHARABANC</p> + + +<p>The post-war period swung and jolted along, like a crazy, broken-down +charabanc full of persons of varying degrees of mental weakness, all +out on an asylum treat. Every now and then the charabanc stopped +for a picnic, or conference, at some nice continental or English +watering-place, and these were very cosy, chatty, happy, expensive +little times, enjoyed by all, and really not doing very much more +harm to Europe than any other form of treat would have done, since +they had, as a rule (the amusing reconstruction of the map of Europe +once effected), practically no effects of any kind, beyond, of +course, strengthening the already perfect harmony prevalent among the +victorious allied nations.</p> + +<p>Reparations was the great topic at these chats; but it was and is such +a very difficult topic that no one there (no one there being very +clever), made much of it, and it has not really been decided about even +now.</p> + +<p>International politics were, in fact, in the years following the +great war, even more greatly confused than is usual. Only one great +international principle remained, as ever, admirably lucid—that +principle so simply explained by M. Anatole France’s Penguin peasant +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</span> +to the Porpoise philosopher.</p> + +<p>“Vous n’aimez pas les Marsouins?”</p> + +<p>“Nous les haïssons.”</p> + +<p>“Pour quelle raison les haïssez-vous?”</p> + +<p>“Vous le demandez? Les Marsouins ne sont-ils pas les voisins des +Pingouins?”</p> + +<p>“Sans doute.”</p> + +<p>“Eh bien, c’est pour cela que les Pingouins haïssent les Marsouins.”</p> + +<p>“Est-ce une raison?”</p> + +<p>“Certainement. Qui dit voisins dit ennemis.... Vous ne savez donc pas +ce que c’est que le patriotisme?”</p> + +<p>There was no confusion here.</p> + +<p>Home politics, in each country, seemed to lack even this dominant +<i>motif</i>, and confusion reigned unrelieved. In Great Britain a +Coalition government was in power. The usual view about this government +is that it was worse and more incompetent than other governments; but +it seems bold to go as far as this. “The nation wants a return to a +frank party government,” non-coalition Liberals and Conservatives began +saying, and said without intermission until they got it, in 1922. They +sometimes explained why they preferred a frank party government, but +none of their reasons seemed very good reasons; the real reason was +that they, very properly and naturally, wished their own party to be in +power. The Die-Hards and the Wee Frees came to be regarded as valiant, +incorruptible little bands, daring to stand alone; Co-Liberals and +Co-Unionists were understood, somehow, to have compromised with Satan +for reward. There is a good deal of unkindness in political life.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">4<br> +SETTLING DOWN</p> +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</span></p> + + +<p>Meanwhile, the people settled down, were demobilised from the army, +and from the various valuable services which they had been rendering +to their country, and began to fall back into the old grooves, began +to recover, at least partially, from the war. But the war had left its +heritage of poverty, of wealth, of disease, of misery, of discontent, +of feverish unrest.</p> + +<p>“Now to write again,” said Imogen, and did so, but found it difficult, +for the nervous strain of the years past, and the silliness of the +avocations she had pursued through them, had paralysed initiative, and +given her, in common with many others, an inclination to sally forth +after breakfast and catch a train or a bus, seeking such employment as +might be created for her, instead of creating her own. The helpless +industry of the slave had become hers, and to regain that of the +independent and self-propelled worker was a slow business.</p> + +<p>Further, she was absorbed, shaken and disturbed by a confusing and +mystifying love into which she had fallen, blind and unaware, even +before peace had descended. She very greatly loved someone whom she +could not, what with one thing, what with another, hope to marry. All +values were to her subverted; she fumbled blindly at a world grown +strange, a world as to whose meaning and whose laws she groped in the +dark, and emotion drowned her like a flood.</p> + +<p>There revived in force about this time the curious old legend about the +young. The post-war young, they were now called, and once more people +began to believe and to say that one young person closely resembles +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</span> +other young persons, and many more things about them.</p> + +<p>“The war,” they said, “has caused a hiatus, and thought has broken with +tradition. Thus youth is no longer willing to accept forms and formulæ +only on account of their age. It has set out on a voyage of enquiry, +and, finding some things which are doubtful and others which are +insufficient, is searching for forms of expression more in harmony with +the realities of life and knowledge.”</p> + +<p>Many novels were written about the New Young, half in reprobation, +half in applause; famous literary men praised them in speeches; they +were much spoken of in newspapers. All the things were said of them +that have been said of the young at all times, only now their newness, +their special quality, was attributed to the European war, in which +they were too young to have actively participated, but which had, +it was believed, exercised upon them some mystic and transmuting +influence. Once more the legend flourished that the number of years +lived constitutes some kind of temperamental bond, so that people of +the same age are many minds with but a single thought, bearing one +to another a close resemblance. The young were commented on as if +they were some new and just discovered species of animal life, with +special qualities and habits which repaid investigation. “Will these +qualities wear off?” precise-minded and puzzled enquirers asked. “When +the present young are thirty and middle-aged, will they still possess +them? Do the qualities depend upon their age, or upon the period of the +world’s history in which they happen to be that age?” But no precise +or satisfactory reply was ever given. It never is. Enquirers into the +exact meaning of popular theories and phrases are of all persons +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</span> +the least and the worst answered. You may, for instance, enquire of +a popular preacher, or anyone else, who denounces his countrymen as +“pagan” (as speakers, and even Bishops, at religious gatherings have +been known to do), what exactly he means by this word, and you will +find that he means irreligious, and is apparently oblivious of the +fact that pagans were and are, in their village simplicity, the most +religious persons who have ever flourished, having more gods to the +square mile than the Christian or any other Church has ever possessed +or desired, and paying these gods more devout and more earnest devotion +than you will meet even among Anglo-Catholics in congress. To be pagan +may not be very intelligent; it is rustic and superstitious, but it is +at least religious. Yet you will hear the word “pagan” flung loosely +about for “irreligious,” or sometimes as meaning joyous, material and +comfort-loving, whereas the simple pagans walked the earth full of +what is called holy awe and that mystic faith in unseen powers which +is the antithesis of materialism, and gloomy with apprehension of the +visitations of their horrid and vindictive gods; and, though no doubt, +like all men, they loved comfort, they only obtained, just as we do, as +much of that as they could afford. And, whatever Bishops mean by pagan, +as applied to modern Englishmen, it is almost certain that they do not +mean all this.</p> + +<p>Never, perhaps, was thinking, writing and talking looser, vaguer and +more sentimental than in the years following the European war. It was +as if that disaster had torn great holes in the human intelligence, +which it could ill afford. There was much writing both of verse and of +prose, much public and private speaking much looking for employment +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</span> +and not finding it, much chat about the building of new houses, much +foolish legislation, much murder and suicide, much amazement on the +part of the press. Newspapers are always easily amazed, but since +the war weakened even their intelligence there could not be so much +as a little extra departure from railway stations on a Bank Holiday +(surely most natural, if one thinks it out) without the ingenuous press +placarding London with “Amazing scenes.” The press was even amazed if a +married couple sought divorce, or if it thundered, or was at all warm. +“Scenes” they would say, “Scenes”; and the eager reader, searching +their columns for these, could find none worthy of the name. One +pictures newspaper reporters going about, struck dumb with amazement at +every smallest incident in this amazing life we lead, hurrying back to +their offices and communicating their emotion to editors, news editors +and leader writers, so that the whole staff gapes, round-eyed, at the +astonishing world on which they have to comment. An ingenuous race; but +they make the mistake of forgetting that many of their readers are so +very experienced that they are seldom surprised at anything.</p> + +<p>During these years, the sex disability as regards the suffrage being +now removed, women stood freely for Parliament, but the electorate, +being mostly of the male sex, showed that the only women they desired +to have in Parliament were the wives of former members who had ceased +to function as such, through death, peerage, or personal habits. Many +women, including Stanley Croft, who of course stood herself, found this +very disheartening. It seemed that the only chance for a woman who +desired a political career was to marry a member and then put him out +of action. Such women as were political in their own persons, who were +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</span> +educated and informed on one or more public topics, had small chance. +“We don’t want to be ruled by the ladies,” the electorate firmly +maintained. “It’s not their job. Their place is ...” etc.</p> + +<p>The world had not changed much since the reign of Queen Victoria.</p> + +<p>And so, with the French firmly and happily settled in the Ruhr, their +hearts full of furious fancies, declaring that it would not be French +to stamp on a beaten foe, but that their just debts they would have, +with Germany rapidly breaking to pieces, drifting towards the rocks +of anarchy or monarchy, and working day and night at the industry of +printing million-mark notes, with Russia damned, as usual, beyond any +conceivable recovery, with Italy suffering from a violent attack of +Fascismo, with Austria counted quite out, with a set of horrid, noisy +and self-conscious little war-born states in the heart of Europe, all +neighbours and all feeling and acting as such, with Turkey making of +herself as much of an all-round nuisance as usual, with Great Britain +anxiously, perspiringly endeavouring both to arrest the progressive +wreckage of Europe and to keep on terms with her late allies, and with +Ireland enjoying at last the peace and blessings of Home Rule, Europe +entered on her fifth year since the armistice.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">5<br> +A NOTE ON MAURICE</p> + + +<p>In this year Maurice’s paper perished, having long ceased to pay its +way, and, in fact, like so many papers, suffering loss on each copy +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</span> +that was bought. This is as natural a state of affairs for papers +as living on over-drafts is for private persons, but neither state, +unfortunately, can last for ever. The money behind the <i>Gadfly</i> +at last gave out, and the <i>Gadfly</i> ceased to be. Maurice, at the +age of sixty-five, was deprived of his job and his salary, and became +a free-lance, but no less fiery and stubborn, journalist. There were +more things to oppose, in his view, than ever before, and he opposed +them at large, in the hospitable pages of many a friendly periodical. +His opposition had no effect on the affairs of the world, but, in +combination with an adequate supply of alcoholic nourishment and +his blessed emancipation from married life, it caused him to remain +self-respecting and fit, kept senility at bay, and assisted him to bear +up against the repeated shocks of Roger’s published works.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">6<br> +A NOTE ON IMOGEN</p> + + +<p>The P. & O. liner hooted its way down Southampton Water. The land, the +Solent, the open sea, were veiled in February mist. Imogen, leaning on +the rail and straining her eyes shore-ward, could only see it dimly, +darkly, looming like a ghost through fog. That was England, and life in +England; a mist-bound world wherein one blindly groped. A mist-bound +and yet radiant world, holding all one valued, all that gave life +meaning, all that one was leaving behind.</p> + +<p>For Imogen was going, for a year, to the Pacific Islands. Hugh too was +going there, to make maps and plans for the government. Imogen was +going with him, exploring, wandering about at leisure from island +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</span> +to island. The perfect life, she had once believed this to be. And +still the thought of coral islands, of palm and yam and bread-fruit +trees, with the fruits thereof dropping ripely on emerald grass, with +monkeys and gay parakeets screaming in the branches, and great turtles +flopping in blue seas, with beachcombers drinking palm-toddy on white +beaches, the crystal-clear lagoon in which to swim, and, beyond, the +blue island-dotted open sea—even now these things tugged at Imogen’s +heart-strings and made her feel again at moments the adventurous little +girl she had once been, dreaming vagabond dreams.</p> + +<p>But more often this bright, still world beyond the mists seemed like +the paradise of a hymn, a far, unnatural, brilliant, alien place, which +would make one sick for home.</p> + +<p>Yet she had chosen to go, and no remonstrances, repentances and +waverings had quite undone that choice. In that far, bright, clear, +alien place, beyond the drifting mists, perhaps thought too was lucid +and unconfused, not the desperate, mist-bound, storm-driven, helpless +business it was in London. In London all values and all meanings +were fluid, were as windy clouds, drifting and dissolving into +strange shapes. Life bore too intense, too passionate an emotional +significance; personal relationships were too tangled; clear thought +was drowned in desire. One could not see life whole, only a flame, a +burning star, at its heart.</p> + +<p>Through years and years this could not go on; the entanglement of +circumstance, the enmeshing of soul and will, was too close for any +unravelling; it could only be cut. Under the knife that cut it—and yet +was it cut at all, or only hacked all in vain?—Imogen’s soul seemed +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</span> +to bleed to death, to bleed and swoon quite away.</p> + +<p>What had she done, and why? All reasons seemed to reel from sight as +they churned for open sea between those mist-blind shores. Parakeets? +Bread-fruit? Lagoons and coral reefs? O God, she cared for none of +them. She had been mad, mad, mad.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p>“<i>To leave me for so long ... you can’t mean to do it.</i>...”</p> +</div> + +<p>Above the turning, churning screws the hurt voice spoke, how truly, and +stabbed her through once more. Can’t mean to do it ... can’t do it ... +can’t.... Oh, how very true indeed. And yet she must do it and would. +It was no use; it would solve nothing, settle nothing; merely for a +year she would be sick for home among the alien yams.</p> + +<p>But, at the thought of the yams, and the bread-fruit, and the grass and +parakeets more green than any imagining, and of the very blue lagoons, +a little comfort stole into her heavy heart. A merry beachcomber on +a white beach—that was the thing to be, even if nothing could be a +really happy arrangement but to be two merry beachcombers together. At +the thought of the two merry beachcombers who might have been so very +happy, the tears brimmed and blinded Imogen’s eyes.</p> + +<p>What a mess, what a mess, what a bitter, bemusing muddle, life was! One +renounced its best gifts, those things in it which seemed finest, most +ennobling, most enriching, holding most of beauty and of good; these +things one renounced, and filled the dreadful gap with turtles, with a +little palm-toddy, with a few foolish parakeets.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</span></p> + +<p>What an irony!</p> + +<p>Through the blinding mist, above the rushing sound of foaming waters, +the voice cried to her ... <i>Imogen, Imogen ... come back</i>.</p> + +<p>Imogen wept.</p> + +<p>Alas for the happy vagabond, fallen into such sad state.</p> + + + + +<p class="nindc space-above2">7<br> +FINAL</p> + + +<p>Rome saw Stanley off to Geneva. Stanley had obtained employment in the +Labour department of the League of Nations. She was pleased, and keen, +and full of hope. The League would save the world yet....</p> + +<p>“It’s going to be the most interesting work of my life, so far,” +said Stanley, leaning out of the train. “To find one’s best job at +sixty-two—that’s rather nice, I think. Life’s so full of <i>hope</i>, +Rome. Oh, I do feel happy about it.”</p> + +<p>“Good,” said Rome, and, “Good-bye, my dear,” for the train began to +move.</p> + +<p>“Good-bye, Romie.... Take care of yourself; you’re looking tired +lately.”</p> + +<p>“I’m very old, you see,” Rome said, after the retreating train, and a +passer-by, turning to glance at the slight, erect, grey-haired lady, +thought that she did not look very old at all.</p> + +<p>But she was very old, for she would soon be sixty-four, and, further, +she was very tired, for she had cancer coming on, inherited from mamma. +She had not mentioned it to anyone yet, beyond the doctor, who had told +her that, unless she had operations, she would die within a year. +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</span> +Operations nothing, Rome had said; such a bore, and only to prolong +the agony; if she had to die, she would die as quickly as might be. +She further decided that, before the pain should become acute or the +illness overwhelming, she would save trouble to herself and others by +an apparently careless overdose of veronal. Meanwhile, she had a few +months to live.</p> + +<p>The thought that it would only, probably, be a few months, set her +considering, as she drove herself home in her car, her practised hands +steady on the wheel, life, its scope, its meaning, and its end. Life +was well enough, she thought; well enough, and a gay enough business +for those who had the means to make it so and the temperament to find +it so. Life was no great matter, nor, certainly, was death; but it was +well enough. We come and we go; we are born, we live, and we die; this +poor ball, thought Rome, serves us for all that; and, on the whole, +we make too much complaint of it, expect, one way and another, too +much of it. It is, after all, but a turning ball, which has burst, for +some reason unknown to science, into a curious, interesting and rather +unwholesome form of animal and vegetable life. Indeed, thought Rome, I +think it is a rather remarkable ball. But of course it can be but of +the slightest importance, from the point of view of the philosopher +who considers the very great extent and variety of the universe and +the extremely long stretching of the ages. Its inhabitants tend to +over-rate its importance in the scheme of things. Human beings surely +tend to over-rate their own importance. Funny, hustling, strutting, +vain, eager little creatures that we are, so clever and so excited +about the business of living, so absorbed and intent about it all, so +proud of our achievements, so tragically deploring our disasters, +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</span> +so prone to talk about the wreckage of civilisations, as if it +mattered much, as if civilisations had not been wrecked and wrecked +all down human history, and it all came to the same thing in the end. +Nevertheless, thought Rome, we are really rather wonderful little +spurts of life. The brief pageant, the tiny, squalid story of human +life upon this earth, has been lit, among the squalour and the greed, +by amazing flashes of intelligence, of valour, of beauty, of sacrifice, +of love. A silly story if you will, but a somewhat remarkable one. +Told by an idiot, and not a very nice idiot at that, but an idiot +with gleams of genius and of fineness. The valiant dust that builds +on dust—how valiant, after all, it is. No achievement can matter, +and all things done are vanity, and the fight for success and the +world’s applause is contemptible and absurd, like a game children play, +building their sand castles which shall so soon one and all collapse; +but the queer, enduring spirit of enterprise which animates the dust we +are is not contemptible nor absurd.</p> + +<p>Rome mused, running leisurely across Hyde Park, of herself, her +parents, and her sisters and brothers, of how variously they had all +taken life. Her papa had made of it a great spiritual adventure. Her +mamma—what had mamma made of life? She had, anyhow, accepted papa +and his spiritual adventure, and accepted all her children and their +lives. And yet, always and always, mamma had remained delicately apart, +detached, too gentle to be called cynical, too practical to be called +a philosopher, too shrewd to be deceived by life. Dear mamma. Rome +very often missed her still. As to Vicky, she had skimmed gracefully +over life’s surface like a swallow, dipping her pretty wings in the +<span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</span> +shallows and splashing them about, or like a bee, sipping and tasting +each flower. She had plunged frequently, ardently and yet lightly into +life. Maurice had not plunged into life; he had fought it, opposed +it, treated it as an enemy in a battle; he had made no terms with it. +Stanley had, on the other hand, embraced it like a lover, or like a +succession of lovers, to each of which she gave the best of her heart +and soul and mind before she passed on to the next. Stanley believed in +life, that it was or could be splendid and divine. Irving and Una both +accepted it calmly, cheerfully, without speculation, as a good enough +thing, Irving with more of enterprise and more of progressive desire, +Una placidly, statically, eating the meal set before her and wishing +nothing more, nothing less. Both these accepted.</p> + +<p>And Rome herself had rejected. Without opposition and without heat, she +had refused to be made an active participant in the business, but had +watched it from her seat in the stalls as a curious and entertaining +show. That was, and must always, in any circumstances, have been her +way. Had she married, or had she gone away, long ago, with Mr. Jayne, +would she then have been forced into some closer, some more intimate +spiritual relationship with the show? Possibly. Or possibly not. Life +is infinitely compelling, but the spirit remains infinitely itself.</p> + +<p>Anyhow, it mattered not at all. Life, whatever it had, whatever it +might have meant to her, was in its last brief lap.</p> + +<div class="poetry-container"> +<div class="poetry"> + <div class="stanza"> + <div class="verse indent0">“<i>And all our yesterdays have lighted fools</i></div> + <div class="verse indent0"><i>The way to dusty death.</i>...”</div> + </div> +</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</span></p> + +<p>Her little drift of dust was so soon to return and subside whence it +came, dust to dust.</p> + +<p>She thought that she would miss the queer, absurd show, which would +go on with its antics without her, down who knew what æons? Perhaps +not very many after all; perhaps all life was before long dustily to +subside, leaving the ball, like a great revolving tomb, to spin its way +through space. Or perhaps the ball itself would dash suddenly from its +routine spinning, would fly, would rush like a moth for a lamp, to some +great bright sun and there burst into flame, till its last drift of +ashes should be consumed and no more seen.</p> + +<p>A drift of dust, a drift of storming dust. It settles, and the little +stir it has made is over and forgotten. The winds will storm on among +the bright and barren stars.</p> + +<p>Rome smiled, as she neatly swung out at the Grosvenor Gate.</p> + + +<p class="nindc space-above2 space-below2">THE END</p> + + + + +<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop"> + +<div class="chapter"> +<div class="transnote spa1"> +<p class="nindc"><b>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</b></p> + + +<p>Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced +quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and +otherwise left unbalanced.</p> + +<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a +predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they +were not changed.</p> +</div></div> + +<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75677 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/75677-h/images/cover.jpg b/75677-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..61f8a97 --- /dev/null +++ b/75677-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/75677-h/images/logo.jpg b/75677-h/images/logo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..536294d --- /dev/null +++ b/75677-h/images/logo.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b5dba15 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This book, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. 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