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A Modern Utopia Chapter 8 - My Utopian Self · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight of A Modern Utopia. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. A
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  Speaker 1: Modern Utopia by H. G. Wells, Chapter eight, My Utopian Self,
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  Speaker 1: Section one. It falls to few of us to interview
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  Speaker 1: our better selves. My utopian self is, of course my
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  Speaker 1: better self, according to my best endeavors, and I must
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  Speaker 1: confess myself fully, alive to the difficulties of the situation.
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  Speaker 1: When I came to this utopia, I had no thought
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  Speaker 1: of any such intimate self examination. The whole fabric of
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  Speaker 1: that other universe sways. For a moment. As I come
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  Speaker 1: into his room, into his clear and well ordered work room,
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  Speaker 1: I am trembling. A figure rather taller than myself stands
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  Speaker 1: against the light. He comes towards me. As I advance
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  Speaker 1: to meet him, stumble against a chair. Then still, without
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  Speaker 1: a word, we are clasping hands. I stand now so
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  Speaker 1: that the light falls upon him and I can see
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  Speaker 1: his face better. He is a little taller than I,
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  Speaker 1: younger looking, and sounder looking. He has missed an illness
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  Speaker 1: or two, and there is no scar over his eye.
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  Speaker 1: His training has been subtly finer than mine. He has
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  Speaker 1: made himself a better face than mine. These things I
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  Speaker 1: might have counted upon, I can fancy, he winces, with
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  Speaker 1: a twinge of sympathetic understanding at my manifest inferiority. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: I come trailing clouds of earthly confusion and weakness. I
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  Speaker 1: bear upon me all the defects of my world, he wears.
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  Speaker 1: I see that white tunic with the purple band that
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  Speaker 1: I have already begun to consider the proper utopian clothing
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  Speaker 1: for grave men. And his face is clean shaven. We
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  Speaker 1: forget to speak at first, in the intensity of our
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  Speaker 1: mutual inspection. When at last I do gain my voice,
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  Speaker 1: it is to say something quite different from the fine,
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  Speaker 1: significant openings of my premeditated dialogues. You have a pleasant room,
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  Speaker 1: I remark, and look about, a little disconcerted because there
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  Speaker 1: is no fireplace for me to put my back against,
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  Speaker 1: or hearthrug to stand upon. He pushes me a chair
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  Speaker 1: into which I plump, and we hang over an immensity
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  Speaker 1: of conversational possibilities. I say, I plunge. What do you
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  Speaker 1: think of me? You don't think I'm an impostor not?
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  Speaker 1: Now that I've seen you, No, am I so like you,
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  Speaker 1: like me and your story exactly. You haven't any doubt left,
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  Speaker 1: I ask, not in the least since I saw you enter.
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  Speaker 1: You come from the world beyond, Sirius twin to this, Eh,
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  Speaker 1: and you don't. I don't want to know how I
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  Speaker 1: got here. I've ceased Stephen to wonder how I got here,
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  Speaker 1: He says, with the laugh that that goes mine. He
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  Speaker 1: leans back in his chair, and I in mine, And
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  Speaker 1: the absurd parody of our attitude strikes us both. Well,
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  Speaker 1: we say simultaneously and laugh together. I will confess this
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  Speaker 1: meeting is more difficult even than I anticipated. Section two.
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  Speaker 1: Our conversation at that first encounter would do very little
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  Speaker 1: to develop the modern utopia in my mind. Inevitably, it
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  Speaker 1: would be personal and emotional. He would tell me how
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  Speaker 1: he stood in his world, and I how I stood
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  Speaker 1: in mine. I should have to tell him things, I
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  Speaker 1: should have to explain things. No, the conversation will contribute
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  Speaker 1: nothing to a modern utopia, and so I leave it
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  Speaker 1: out Section three. But I should go back to my
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  Speaker 1: botanist in a state of emotional relaxation. At first, I
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  Speaker 1: should not heed the fact that he too had been
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  Speaker 1: in some manner, stirred. I have seen him, I should say, needlessly,
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  Speaker 1: and seemed to be on the verge of telling the untellable.
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  Speaker 1: Then I should fade off into the strangest thing. He
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  Speaker 1: would interrupt me with his own preoccupation, you know, he
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  Speaker 1: would say, I've seen someone. I should pause and look
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  Speaker 1: at him. She is in this world, he says. Who
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  Speaker 1: was in this world? Mary? I have not heard her
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  Speaker 1: name before, but I understand, of course, at once I
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  Speaker 1: saw her, he explains, saw her. I'm certain it was her.
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  Speaker 1: Certain she was far away, across the gardens near here,
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  Speaker 1: and before I had recovered from my amazement, she had gone.
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  Speaker 1: But it was Mary, He takes my arm. You know
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  Speaker 1: I did not understand this, he says, I did not
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  Speaker 1: really understand that. When you said utopia, you meant I
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  Speaker 1: was to meet her in happiness. I didn't. It works
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  Speaker 1: out at that you haven't met her yet, I shall.
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  Speaker 1: It makes everything different, to tell you the truth. I've
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  Speaker 1: rather there hated this utopia of yours at times. You
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  Speaker 1: mustn't mind me saying it, But there's something of the gradgrind.
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  Speaker 1: Probably I should swear at that what he says, nothing
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  Speaker 1: but you spoke, I was purring. I'm a gradgrind. It's
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  Speaker 1: quite right. Anything you can say about Herbert Spencer Vivisector's
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  Speaker 1: materialistic science or atheists applies without correction to me. Beg
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  Speaker 1: be away, But now you think better of a modern utopia.
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  Speaker 1: Was the lady looking well? It was her real self, yes,
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  Speaker 1: not the broken woman I met in the real world,
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  Speaker 1: and as though she was pining for you. He looks puzzled.
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  Speaker 1: Look there, I say, he looks. We are standing high
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  Speaker 1: above the ground in the loggia into which our apartments open,
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  Speaker 1: and I point across the soft haze of the public
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  Speaker 1: gardens to a tall, white mass of university buildings that
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  Speaker 1: rise with a free and fearless gesture to lift saluting
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  Speaker 1: pinnacles against the clear evening sky. Don't you think that
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  Speaker 1: rather more beautiful than say, our National Gallery? He looks
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  Speaker 1: at it critically. There's a lot of metal in it.
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  Speaker 1: He objects what I've heard. But anyhow, whatever you can't
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  Speaker 1: see in that, you can, I suppose see that it
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  Speaker 1: is different from anything in your world. It lacks the
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  Speaker 1: kindly humanity of a red brick Queen anne Villa residence,
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  Speaker 1: with its gables and bulges and bow windows, and its
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  Speaker 1: stained glass fanlight and so forth. It lacks the self
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  Speaker 1: complacent unreasonableness of board of works classicism. There's something in
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  Speaker 1: its proportions as though someone with brains had taken a
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  Speaker 1: lot of care to get it quite right, someone who
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  Speaker 1: not only knew what metal can do, but what a
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  Speaker 1: university ought to be. Somebody who had found the Gothic
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  Speaker 1: spirit enchanted petrified in a cathedral and had set it free.
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  Speaker 1: But what has this he asks to do with her?
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  Speaker 1: Very much, I say, this is not the same world.
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  Speaker 1: If she is here, she will be younger in spirit
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  Speaker 1: and wiser. She will be in many ways more refined.
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  Speaker 1: No one, he begins with a note of indignation. No, no,
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  Speaker 1: she couldn't be. I was wrong there. But she will
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  Speaker 1: be different. Grant that at any rate, when you go
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  Speaker 1: forward to speak to her. She may not remember very
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  Speaker 1: many things. You remember things that happened at Frognall, dear
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  Speaker 1: romantic walks through the Sunday summer evenings. Practically you two alone,
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  Speaker 1: you and your adolescent silk hat and your nice, gentlemanly gloves.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps that did not happen here, And she may have
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  Speaker 1: other memories of things that down there haven't happened. You
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  Speaker 1: noted her costume. She wasn't, by any chance, one of
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  Speaker 1: the samurai. He answers with a note of satisfaction. No,
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  Speaker 1: she wore a womanly dress of grayish green, probably under
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  Speaker 1: the lesser rule. I don't know what you mean by
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  Speaker 1: the lesser rule. She wasn't one of the samurai. And
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  Speaker 1: after all, you know, I keep on reminding you, and
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  Speaker 1: you keep on losing touch with the fact that this
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  Speaker 1: world contains your double. He pales and his countenance is disturbed.
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  Speaker 1: Thank Heaven, I've touched him at last. This world contains
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  Speaker 1: your double. But conceivably everything may be different here. The
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  Speaker 1: whole romantic story may have run a different course. It
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  Speaker 1: was as it was in our world by the accidents
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  Speaker 1: of custom and proximity. Adolescence is a defenseless, plastic period.
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  Speaker 1: You are a man to form great anae noble, great affections.
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  Speaker 1: You might have met anyone almost at that season and
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  Speaker 1: formed the same attachment. For a time. He is perplexed
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  Speaker 1: and troubled by the suggestion. No, he says a little doubtfully. No,
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  Speaker 1: it was herself. Then emphatically no. Section four. For a time,
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  Speaker 1: we say no more, and I fall musing about my
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  Speaker 1: strange encounter with my utopian double. I think of the
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  Speaker 1: confessions I have just made to him, the strange admissions,
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  Speaker 1: both to him and myself, I have stirred up. The
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  Speaker 1: stagnations of my own emotional life, the pride that is slumbered,
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  Speaker 1: the hopes and disappointments that have not troubled me for years.
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  Speaker 1: There are things that happened to me in my adolescence
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  Speaker 1: that no discipline of reason will ever bring to a
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  Speaker 1: just proportion for me. The first humiliations I was made
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  Speaker 1: to suffer, the waste of all the fine, irrevocable loyalties
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  Speaker 1: and passions of my youth, the dull, base cast of
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  Speaker 1: my little personal tragical I have ostensibly forgiven, I have
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  Speaker 1: for the most part forgotten, And yet when I recall them,
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  Speaker 1: I hate each actor still, whenever it comes into my mind,
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  Speaker 1: I do my best to prevent it. There it is,
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  Speaker 1: and these detestable people blot out the stars for me.
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  Speaker 1: I have told all that story to my double, and
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  Speaker 1: he has listened with understanding eyes. But for a little while,
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  Speaker 1: those squalid memories will not sink back into the deeps.
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  Speaker 1: We lean side by side over our balcony, lost in
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  Speaker 1: such egotistical absorptions, quite heedless of the great palace of
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  Speaker 1: noble dreams to which our first enterprise has brought us
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  Speaker 1: Section five. I can understand the botanist this afternoon, for
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  Speaker 1: once we are in the same key. My own mental
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  Speaker 1: temper has gone for the day, and I know what
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  Speaker 1: it means to be untempered. Here is a world, and
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  Speaker 1: a glorious world, and it is for me to take
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  Speaker 1: hold of it, to have to do with it here
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  Speaker 1: and now, and behold, I can only think that I
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  Speaker 1: am burnt and scarred, and there rankles the wretched peace
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  Speaker 1: of business, the mean, unimaginative triumph of my antagonist. I
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  Speaker 1: wonder how many men have any real freedom of mind, are,
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  Speaker 1: in truth unhampered by such associations, to whom all that
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  Speaker 1: is great and noble in life does not, at times,
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  Speaker 1: at least, if not always, seem secondary to obscure rivalries
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  Speaker 1: and considerations, to the petty hates that are like germs
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  Speaker 1: in the blood, to the luss for self assertion, to
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  Speaker 1: dwarfish pride, to affections they gave and pledge even before
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  Speaker 1: they were men. The botanists beside me dreams. I know
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  Speaker 1: of vindications for that woman. All this world before us,
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  Speaker 1: and its order and liberty are no more than a
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  Speaker 1: painted scene before which he is to meet her at last,
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  Speaker 1: freed from that scoundrel. He expects that scoundrel really to
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  Speaker 1: be present, And as it were, writhing under their feet,
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  Speaker 1: I wonder if that man was a scoundrel. He has
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  Speaker 1: gone wrong on earth, no doubt, has failed and degenerated.
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  Speaker 1: But what was it that sent him wrong? Was his
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  Speaker 1: failure inherent? Or did some net of cross purposes tangle
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  Speaker 1: about his feet? Suppose he is not a failure in utopia?
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  Speaker 1: I wonder that this has never entered the botanists heads. He,
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  Speaker 1: with his vaguer mind, can overlook, spite of my ruthless
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  Speaker 1: reminders all that would mar his vague anticipations. That too,
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  Speaker 1: if I suggested it, he would overcome and disregard. He
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  Speaker 1: has the most amazing powers of resistance to uncongenial ideas.
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  Speaker 1: Amazing that is to me, he hates the idea of
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  Speaker 1: meeting his double, and consequently, so soon as I cease
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  Speaker 1: to speak of that, with scarcely an effort of his will,
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  Speaker 1: it fades again from his mind. Down below, in the gardens,
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  Speaker 1: two children pursue one another, and one near caught, screams
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  Speaker 1: aloud and rouses me from my reverie. I follow their
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  Speaker 1: little butterfly antics until they vanish behind the thicket of
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  Speaker 1: flowering rhododendra, And then my eyes go back to the
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  Speaker 1: great facade of the university buildings. He dislikes it because
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  Speaker 1: he suspects it of wanting to leafful chamber his aunt's
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  Speaker 1: dear old doggie. And now he is reconciled to it
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  Speaker 1: because a certain Mary looks much younger and better here
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  Speaker 1: than she did on earth. And here am I near
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  Speaker 1: fallen into the same way of dealing. We agreed to
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  Speaker 1: purge the state and all the people in it, of traditions, associations, bias, laws,
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  Speaker 1: and artificial entanglements, and begin anew, But we have no
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  Speaker 1: power to liberate ourselves. Our past, even its accidents, its
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  Speaker 1: accidents above all, and ourselves are one. End Chapter eight.