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The Passionate Friends Chapter 10 - Mary Writes Part 4 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter ten, Part four of The Passionate Friends by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
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  Speaker 1: Peter Eastman. Chapter the tenth, Mary writes four. I did
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  Speaker 1: not answer Mary's letter for seven or eight days. During
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  Speaker 1: that period, my mind was full of her, to the
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  Speaker 1: exclusion of every other interest. I re read all that
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  Speaker 1: she had to say many times, and with each reading,
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  Speaker 1: the effect of her personality deepened. It was all so
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  Speaker 1: intensely familiar, the flashes of insight, the blazing frankness, the
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  Speaker 1: quick turns of thought, and her absurd confidence in a
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  Speaker 1: sort of sane stupidity that she had always insisted upon
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  Speaker 1: my possessing, and her unembarrassed affectionateness. Her quick, irregular writing
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  Speaker 1: seemed to bring back with it the changing light in
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  Speaker 1: her eyes, the intonations of her voice, something of her gesture.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't go on discussing with myself whether we too
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  Speaker 1: ought to correspond. That problem disappeared from my thoughts. Her
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  Speaker 1: challenge to me to justify myself took possession of my mind.
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  Speaker 1: That thrust towards self examination was the very essence of
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  Speaker 1: her ancient influence. How did I justify myself? I was
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  Speaker 1: under a peculiar compulsion to answer that to her satisfaction,
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  Speaker 1: she had picked me up out of my work, and
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  Speaker 1: accumulating routines with that demand made me look at myself
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  Speaker 1: and my world again as a whole. I had a case.
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  Speaker 1: I have a case. It is a case of passionate faith,
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  Speaker 1: trying over every doubt and impossibility, a case real enough
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  Speaker 1: to understand for those who understand, but very difficult to state.
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  Speaker 1: I tried to convey it to her. I do not
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  Speaker 1: remember at all clearly what I wrote to her. It
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  Speaker 1: has disappeared from existence, but it was certainly a long letter.
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  Speaker 1: Throughout this book, I have been trying to tell you
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  Speaker 1: the growth of my views of life and its purpose,
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  Speaker 1: from my childish dreams and Harbury attitudes to those ideas
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  Speaker 1: of human development that have made me undertake the work
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  Speaker 1: I do. It is not glorious work, I know, as
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  Speaker 1: the work of great artists and poets and leaders is glorious.
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  Speaker 1: But it is what I find best suits my gifts
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  Speaker 1: and my want of gifts. Greater men will come at
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  Speaker 1: last to build within my scaffoldings. In some summary phrasing,
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  Speaker 1: I must have set out the gist of this I
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  Speaker 1: must have explained by sense of the supreme importance of
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  Speaker 1: mental clarification in human life. All this is manifest in
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  Speaker 1: her reply, and I think too. I did my best
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  Speaker 1: to tell her plainly the faith that was in me
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  Speaker 1: and why life seemed worth while to me. Her second
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  Speaker 1: letter came, after an interval of only a few days
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  Speaker 1: from the despatch of mine. She began abruptly, I won't
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  Speaker 1: praise your letter or your beliefs. They are fine and
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  Speaker 1: large and generous, like you, just a little artificial. But
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  Speaker 1: you will admit that as though you had felt them
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  Speaker 1: give here and there and had made up your mind,
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  Speaker 1: they shouldn't. At times. It's oddly like looking at the Alps,
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  Speaker 1: the real Alps, and finding that every now and then
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  Speaker 1: the mountains have been eked out with a plank and
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  Speaker 1: canvas Earl's court background. Yes, I like what you say
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  Speaker 1: about faith. I believe you are right. I wish I could.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps some day I shall light up and feel you
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  Speaker 1: are right. But but that large, respectable project, the increase
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  Speaker 1: of wisdom and freedom and self knowledge in the world,
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  Speaker 1: the calming of wars, the ending of economic injustice, and
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  Speaker 1: so on and so on. When I read it first
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  Speaker 1: It was like looking at a man in profile and
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  Speaker 1: finding him solid and satisfactory. And then afterwards, when I
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  Speaker 1: thought it all over and looked for the particular things
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  Speaker 1: that really matter to me and tried to translate it
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  Speaker 1: into myself. Nothing is of the slightest importance in the
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  Speaker 1: world that one cannot translate into oneself. Then I began
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  Speaker 1: to realize just how how amazingly deficient you are. It
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  Speaker 1: was like walking round that person in profile and finding
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  Speaker 1: his left side, wasn't there? With everything perfect on the
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  Speaker 1: right down to the buttons. A kind of intellectual lorelei sideways.
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  Speaker 1: You've planned out your understandings and tolerances and enquiries and
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  Speaker 1: clearings up as if the world were all just men
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  Speaker 1: or citizens and nothing doing but racial and national and
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  Speaker 1: class prejudices and the exacting and shirking of labor. And
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  Speaker 1: you seem to ignore altogether that man is a sexual animal.
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  Speaker 1: First first stephen First, that he has that in common
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  Speaker 1: with all the animals, that it made him, indeed, because
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  Speaker 1: he has it more than they have. And after that,
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  Speaker 1: a long way after that he is the labor economizing,
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  Speaker 1: war and feud making creature. You make him out to
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  Speaker 1: be a long way after that man is the most
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  Speaker 1: sexual of all the beasts, Stephen, half of him. Womankind,
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  Speaker 1: rather more than half, isn't simply human at all. It's specialized,
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  Speaker 1: specialized for the young, not only naturally and physically as
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  Speaker 1: animals are, but mentally and artificially. Womankind isn't human, It's
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  Speaker 1: reduced human. It's the sex, as the Victorians used to say.
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  Speaker 1: And from the point of view of the Lextulia, and
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  Speaker 1: the point of view of mister Malthus, and the point
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  Speaker 1: of view of biologists and saints and artists and everyone
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  Speaker 1: who deals in feeling and emotion, and from the point
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  Speaker 1: of view of all as poor specialists smothered up in
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  Speaker 1: our clothes and restrictions, the future of the sex is
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  Speaker 1: the center of the whole problem of the human future
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  Speaker 1: about which you are concerned. All this great world state
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  Speaker 1: of your man's imagination is going to be wrecked by us.
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  Speaker 1: If you ignore us, we women are going to be
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  Speaker 1: the goths and huns of another decline and fall. We
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  Speaker 1: are going to sit in the conspicuous places of the
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  Speaker 1: world and lute all your patient accumulations. We are going
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  Speaker 1: to abolish your offspring and turn the princes among you
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  Speaker 1: into undignified slaves, because you see specialized as we are,
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  Speaker 1: we are not quite specialized. We are specialized under duress,
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  Speaker 1: and at the first glimpse of a chance, we abandon
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  Speaker 1: our cradles and drop our pots and pans, and go
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  Speaker 1: for the vast and elegant side possibilities of our specialization.
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  Speaker 1: Out we come looking for the fun the men are
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  Speaker 1: having tress us, feed us, play with us. We'll pay
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  Speaker 1: you an excitement, tremendous excitement the state. Indeed, all you,
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  Speaker 1: your little triumphs of science and economy, call your little
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  Speaker 1: accumulations of wealth that you think will presently make the
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  Speaker 1: struggle for life an old story and the millennium possible,
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  Speaker 1: we spend and all your dreams of brotherhood. We will
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  Speaker 1: set you by the ears. We hold ourselves up as
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  Speaker 1: my little Christian nephews. Philip's boys do some coveted object
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  Speaker 1: and say queas, and the whole brotherhood shouts ago to
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  Speaker 1: the challenge. Back you go into individualism at the word,
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  Speaker 1: and all your brotherhood crumbles to dust again. How are
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  Speaker 1: you going to remedy it? How are you going to
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  Speaker 1: protect that great state of your dreams from this anti
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  Speaker 1: citizenship of sex. You give no hint. You are planning nothing, Stephen,
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  Speaker 1: nothing to meet this. You are fighting with an army
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  Speaker 1: all looting, an undisciplined, frantic, with the private jealousies that
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  Speaker 1: center about us, feuds, cuts, expulsions, revenges, and you are
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  Speaker 1: giving out orders for an army of saints. You treat
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  Speaker 1: us as a negligible quantity, and we are about as
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  Speaker 1: negligible as a fire in the woodwork of a house
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  Speaker 1: that is being built. I read what I have written, Stephen,
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  Speaker 1: and I perceive I have the makings of a fine
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  Speaker 1: scold in me. Perhaps under happier conditions, I should certainly
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  Speaker 1: have scolded you constantly, continually. Never did a man so
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  Speaker 1: need scolding. And like any self respecting woman, I see
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  Speaker 1: that I use half my words in the wrong meanings
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  Speaker 1: in order to emphasize my point. Of course, when I
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  Speaker 1: write woman in all that has gone before, I don't
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  Speaker 1: mean woman. It is a woman's privilege to talk or
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  Speaker 1: write incomprehensibly and insist upon being understood, so that I
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  Speaker 1: expect you already to understand, and that what I mean
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  Speaker 1: isn't that men are creative and unselfish and brotherly and
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  Speaker 1: so forth, And that women are spoiling and going to
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  Speaker 1: spoil the game, although and notwithstanding that is exactly what
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  Speaker 1: I have written, but that humans are creative and unselfish,
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  Speaker 1: et cetera, and so forth, and that it is their sexual, egotistical,
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  Speaker 1: passionate side which is ever so much bigger relatively in
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  Speaker 1: a woman than in a man. And that is why
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  Speaker 1: I wrote as I did, which is going to upset
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  Speaker 1: your noble and beautiful apple card. But it is not
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  Speaker 1: only that by nature we are more largely and gravely
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  Speaker 1: and importantly sexual than men, but that men have shifted
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  Speaker 1: the responsibility for attraction and passion upon us and made
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  Speaker 1: us pay in servitude and restriction and blame for the
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  Speaker 1: common defect of the species. So that you see, really
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  Speaker 1: I was right all along in writing of this, as
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  Speaker 1: though it was women, when it wasn't. I hope now
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  Speaker 1: it is unnecessary for me to make my meaning clearer
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  Speaker 1: than it is now and always has been in this matter.
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  Speaker 1: And so resuming our discourse, Stephen, which only my sense
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  Speaker 1: of your invincible literalness could ever have interrupted, what are
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  Speaker 1: you going to do with us? I gather from a hint,
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  Speaker 1: rather than accept as a statement that you propose to
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  Speaker 1: give us votes, Stephen, do you really think that we
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  Speaker 1: are going to bring anything to bear upon public affairs
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  Speaker 1: worth having? I know something of the contemporary feminine intelligence.
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  Speaker 1: Justin makes no serious objection to a large and various
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  Speaker 1: circle of women friends. And over my little sitting room
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  Speaker 1: fire in the winter, and in my corners of our
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  Speaker 1: various gardens in the summer, and in walks over the
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  Speaker 1: heather at Martin's and in Scotland, there are great talks
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  Speaker 1: and confessions of love, of mental freedom, of ambitions, and
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  Speaker 1: belief and unbelief, more particularly of unbelief. I have sometimes
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  Speaker 1: thought of compiling a dictionary of unbelief, a great list
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  Speaker 1: of the things that a number of sweet submissive value
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  Speaker 1: above Ruby's wives have told me they did not believe in.
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  Speaker 1: It would amaze their husbands beyond measure. The state of
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  Speaker 1: mind of women about these things. Stephen is dreadful, I
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  Speaker 1: mean about all these questions. You know what I mean.
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  Speaker 1: The bold, striving spirits do air their views a little,
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  Speaker 1: and always in a way that makes one realize how
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  Speaker 1: badly they need airing. But most of the nicer women
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  Speaker 1: are very chary of talk. They have to be drawn
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  Speaker 1: out a hint of opposition makes them start back or prevaricate,
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  Speaker 1: and I see them afterwards with their husbands, pretty silken, furry, feathery,
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  Speaker 1: jeweled silences. All their suppression doesn't keep the orthodox. It
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  Speaker 1: only makes them furtive and crumpled and creased in their
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  Speaker 1: minds in just the way that things get crumpled and creased.
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  Speaker 1: If they are always being shoved back into a drawer,
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  Speaker 1: you have only to rout about in their minds for
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  Speaker 1: a bit. They pretend at first to be quite correct,
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  Speaker 1: and that out comes the nasty little courage of the darkness.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes there is even an apologetic titter. They are quite emancipated,
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  Speaker 1: they say, I have misunderstood them. Their emancipation is like
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  Speaker 1: those horrid white lizards that grow in the Kentucky caves
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  Speaker 1: out of the sunlight. They tell you they don't see
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  Speaker 1: why they shouldn't do this or that. Mean things underhand, things,
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  Speaker 1: cheap fishes, sensual things are there. I wonder the same
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  Speaker 1: dreadful little caverns in men. I doubt it. And then
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  Speaker 1: comes a situation that really tries their quality. Think of
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  Speaker 1: the quandary I got into with you, Stephen, And for
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  Speaker 1: my sex, I'm rather a daring person the way in
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  Speaker 1: which I went so far and then ran away. I
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  Speaker 1: had a kind of excuse in my illness, that illness,
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  Speaker 1: such a queer, untimely feminine illness. We're all to pieces, Stephen.
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  Speaker 1: That's what brought down Rome. The women went to pieces then,
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  Speaker 1: and the women are going to pieces to day. What's
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  Speaker 1: the good of having your legions and the Grampians and
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  Speaker 1: marching up defilee while the wives are talking treason in
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  Speaker 1: your houses. It's no good telling us to go back
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  Speaker 1: to the ancient virtues. The ancient virtues haven't kept the
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  Speaker 1: ancient virtues in an advanced state of decay? Is what
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  Speaker 1: was the matter with Rome? And what is the matter
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  Speaker 1: with us? You can't tell a woman to go back
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  Speaker 1: to the spinning wheel, into the kitchen and the cradle.
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  Speaker 1: When you have power looms, French cooks, hotels, restaurants and
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  Speaker 1: modern nurseries. We've overflowed. We've got to go on to
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  Speaker 1: a lot of new virtues. And at all the prospect
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  Speaker 1: before me, I can't descry one clear, simple thing to do,
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  Speaker 1: but I'm running on. I want to know, Stephen, why
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  Speaker 1: you've got nothing to say about all this. It must
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  Speaker 1: have been staring you in the face ever since. I
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  Speaker 1: spent my very considerable, superfluous energies in wrecking your career.
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  Speaker 1: Because you know I wrecked it, Stephen. I knew I
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  Speaker 1: was wrecking it, and I wrecked it. I knew exactly
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  Speaker 1: what I was doing all the time. I had meant
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  Speaker 1: to be so fine a thing for you, a mothering friend,
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  Speaker 1: to have that dear, consecutive, kindly mind of your steadying mind,
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  Speaker 1: to have seen you grow to power over men, me
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  Speaker 1: helping me, admiring. It was to have been so fine,
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  Speaker 1: so fine. Didn't I urge you to marry Rachel, make
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  Speaker 1: you talk of her? Don't you remember that? And one
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  Speaker 1: day when I saw you thinking of Rachel, saw a
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  Speaker 1: kind of pride in your eyes. Suddenly I couldn't stand it.
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  Speaker 1: I went to my room after you had gone, and
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  Speaker 1: thought of you and her until I wanted to scream.
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  Speaker 1: I couldn't bear it. It was intolerable. I was violent
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  Speaker 1: to my toilet things. I broke a hand glass, your dignified, selfish,
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  Speaker 1: self controlled Mary, smashed a silver hand mirror. I never
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  Speaker 1: told you that. You know what followed. I pounced on
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  Speaker 1: you and took you. Wasn't I a soft and scented hawk,
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  Speaker 1: was either of us better than some creature of instinct
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  Speaker 1: that does what it does because it must. It was
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  Speaker 1: like a gust of madness, and I cared. I found
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  Speaker 1: no more for your career than I cared for any
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  Speaker 1: other little thing, for honor, for Rachel, for justin that
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  Speaker 1: stood between us, my dear. Wasn't all that time, all
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  Speaker 1: that heat and hunger of desire, all that secret futility
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  Speaker 1: of passion, the very essence of the situation between men
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  Speaker 1: and women. Now we are all trying most desperately to
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  Speaker 1: be human beings, to walk correct, to work together. What
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  Speaker 1: was your phrase? In a multitudinous unity, to share what
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  Speaker 1: you call a common collective thought that shall rule mankind.
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  Speaker 1: And this tremendous force which seizes us and says to us,
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  Speaker 1: make that other being yours, bodily, yours, mentally, yours, wholly yours,
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  Speaker 1: at any price, no matter the price. Bars all are
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  Speaker 1: you unifications. It splits the whole world into couples watching
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  Speaker 1: each other, until all our laws, all our customs, seem
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  Speaker 1: the servants of that. It is the passion of the
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  Speaker 1: body swamping the brain. It's an ape that has seized
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  Speaker 1: a gun, a beautiful modern gun. Here am I Justin's captive,
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  Speaker 1: and he mine? He mine because at the first escapade
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  Speaker 1: of his I get my liberty. Here are we two,
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  Speaker 1: I and you barred forever from the side of one another,
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  Speaker 1: and I and you riding I at any rate in
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  Speaker 1: spite of the ill concealed resentment of my partner. We're
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  Speaker 1: just two peeping through our bars of a universal multitude
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  Speaker 1: everywhere this prison of sex. Have you ever thought just
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  Speaker 1: all that it means when every woman in the world
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  Speaker 1: goes dressed in a costume to indicate her sex, her
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  Speaker 1: cardinal fact, so that she dare not even mount a
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  Speaker 1: bicycle in knickerbockers. She has her hair grown long to
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  Speaker 1: its longest because yours is short, And everything conceivable is
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  Speaker 1: done to emphasize and remind us and you of the
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  Speaker 1: fundamental trouble between us, as if there was need of
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  Speaker 1: reminding Stephen, Is there no way out of this? Is
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  Speaker 1: there no way at all? Because if there is naught,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: then I had rather go back to the Harim than
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  Speaker 1: live as I do now, imprisoned in glass, with all
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  Speaker 1: of life inside of me and none in reach. I
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  Speaker 1: had rather Justin beat me into submission and mental tranquility,
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  Speaker 1: and that I bore him an annual, probably deciduous child.
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  Speaker 1: I can understand so well now that feminine attitude that implies, well,
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  Speaker 1: if I must have a master, then the more master
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  Speaker 1: the better. Perhaps that is the way that nature will
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  Speaker 1: not let us poor humans get away from sex. And
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  Speaker 1: I am merely, what is it, an abnormality, with whiskers
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  Speaker 1: of enquiry sprouting from my mind. Yet I don't feel
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  Speaker 1: like that. I am pouring into these letters, Stephen, the
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  Speaker 1: concentrated venom of years of brooding. My heart is black
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  Speaker 1: with rebellion against my lot and against the lot of woman.
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  Speaker 1: I have been given life and a fine position in
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  Speaker 1: the world. I made one fatal blunder in marrying to
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  Speaker 1: make these things secure, and now I can do nothing
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  Speaker 1: with it all, and I have nothing to do with it.
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  Speaker 1: It astounds me to think of the size of our establishment, Stephen,
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  Speaker 1: of the extravagant way in which whole counties and great
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: countries pay tribute to pile up the gigantic heap of
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  Speaker 1: wealth upon which we two lead our lives of utile entanglement.
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  Speaker 1: In this place alone, there are fourteen gardeners and garden helps.
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  Speaker 1: And this is not one of our garden places. Three
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  Speaker 1: weeks ago, I spend a thousand pounds on clothes in
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  Speaker 1: one great week of shopping, And her yearly expenditure upon
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  Speaker 1: personal effect, upon our magnificence and our margians cannot be
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  Speaker 1: greatly less than forty five thousand pounds. I walk about
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  Speaker 1: our house and gardens, I take one of the carriages
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  Speaker 1: or one of the automobiles, and go to some large,
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  Speaker 1: pointless gathering of hundreds and thousands and thousands of pounds,
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  Speaker 1: and we walk about and say empty little things. And
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  Speaker 1: the servants don't laugh at us, the butlers don't laugh
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  Speaker 1: at us. The people in the street tolerate us. It
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  Speaker 1: has an effect of collective insanity. You know the story
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: of one of those dear barrens of the sink ports,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: a decent plumber body from Rye Winchelsey, one of the
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  Speaker 1: six or eight who claimed the privilege of carrying the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: canopy over the king. She is speaking of King Edward's coronation,
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  Speaker 1: of course, how that he was discovered suddenly to be
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  Speaker 1: speaking quite audibly to the sacred presence so near to him.
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  Speaker 1: It is very remarkable we should be here, your majesty,
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  Speaker 1: Very remarkable and then he subsided, happily unheard into hopeless embarrassment.
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  Speaker 1: That is exactly how I feel, Stephen. I feel I
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  Speaker 1: can't stand it much longer that presently I shall splutter
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  Speaker 1: and spoil the procession. Perhaps I don't properly estimate our
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  Speaker 1: position in the fabric, but I can't get away from
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  Speaker 1: the feeling that everything in social life leads up to this,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: to us, the ridiculous canopy. If so, then the universe
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: means nothing. It's blowing great forms and shapes as a
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: swamp blows bubbles. A little while ago it was megatheriums
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: and pleasasauriums, if that's the name for them, And now
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: it is country houses and motor cars and coronation festivals.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: And in the end, it is all nonsense, Stephen, It
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: is utter nonsense. If it isn't nonsense, tell me what
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: it is for me at any rate, it's nonsense. And
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: for every intelligent woman about me, for I talk to
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: some of them, we indulge in seditious whisperings and wit.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: And there isn't one who seems to have been able
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: to get to anything solider than I have done. Each
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: of us has had her little fling at maternity about
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: as much as a washerwoman does in her odd time
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: every two or three years. And that is our uttermost reality,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: all the rest trimming. We go about the world, Stephen,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: tressing and meeting each other with immense ceremony. We have
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: our seasonal movements in relation to the ritual of politics
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: and sport. We travel south for the budget and north
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: for the grouse. We play games to amuse the men
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: who keep us. Not a woman would play a game
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: for its own sake. We dabble with social reform and
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: politics for which few of us care a rap except
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: as an occupation. We discover artists or musicians or lecturers
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: as though we cared. We try to believe in lovers,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: or still harder, try to believe in old or new religions.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: And most of us I don't do our best to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: give the gratifications and exercise the fascinations that are expected
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: of us. Something has to be done for women, Stephen.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: We are the heart of life, birth and begetting the
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: home where future grows. And your schemes ignore us and
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: slight about over the superficialities of things. We are spoiling
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: the whole process of progress. We are turning all the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: achievements of mankind to nothingness. Men invent, create, to miracles
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: with the world, and we translate it all into shopping,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: into a glitter of dresses and households, into an immense
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: parade of pride and excitement. We excite men, We stir
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: them to get us and keep us. Men turn from
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: their ideas of brotherhood to elaborate our separate cages. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: am Justin's wife, not a thing in my heavens or
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: my earth that is not subordinated to that. Something has
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: to be done for women, Stephen something urgently, and nothing
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: is done until that is done, some release from their intolerance,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: subjection to sex, so that for us everything else in life, respect, freedom,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: social standing is entirely secondary to that. But what has
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to be done we women do not know. Our efforts
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: to know are among the most desolating of spectacles. I
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: read the papers of those suffrage women. The effect is
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: more like agitated geese upon a common than anything human
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: has a right to be. That's why I turn to you.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Years ago I felt, and now I know, there is
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: about you a simplicity of mind, a foolishness of faith
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: that is stronger and greater than the cleverness of any
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: woman alive. You are one of those strange men who
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: take high and sweeping views as lark sore. It isn't
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: that you yourself are high in sweeping No, but still
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I turn to you. In the old days I used
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: to turn to you and shake your mind and make
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: you think about things you seemed too sluggish to think
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: about without my clamor Once, do you remember at Martin's
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: I shook you by the ears and what I made
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: you think? You thought as I could never do. Think
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: now about women, Stephen, there are moments when it seems
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: to me that this futility of women, this futility of
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: men's effort through women, is a faded futility in the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: very nature of things. We may be saddled with it,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: as we are with all the animal infirmities we have,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: with appendixes and such like things inside of us, and
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the passions and rages of apes, and a tail. I
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: believe we have a tail curled away somewhere, haven't we.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: Perhaps mankind is so constituted that badly as they get
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: along now, they couldn't get along at all if they
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: let women go free and have their own way with life.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Perhaps you can't have two sexes loose together, you must
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: shut up one. I've a horrible suspicion that all these
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: anti suffrage men like Lord Cromer and Sir Ray Lancaster
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: must know a lot about life that I do not know.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: And that other man, Sir Something or other right who
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: said plainly that men cannot work side by side with
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: women because they get excited. And yet you know, women
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: have had glimpses of a freedom that was not mischievous.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: I could have been happy as a lady abbess. I
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: must have space and dignity, Stephen. And those women had
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: things in their hands, as no women have things in
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: their hands to day. They came to the house of lords,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: but they lost all that was there some sort of
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: natural selection. Stephen. You were made to answer my mind.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: And if you cannot do it, nobody can. What is
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: your outlook for women? Are we to go back to
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: seclusion or will it be possible to minimize sex? If
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: you are going to minimize sex, how are you going
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: to do it? Suppression? There is plenty of suppression now
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: increase or diminish the pains and penalties. My nephew Philip's boy.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Philip Christian was explaining to me the other day that
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: if you boil water in an open bowl, it just
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: boils away, and that if you boil it in a
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: corked bottle, it bangs everything to pieces, and you have
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: he says, to look out. But I feel that's a
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: bad image. Boiling water isn't frantically jealous, and men and
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: women are. But still, suppose suppose you trained people not
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: to make such an awful fuss about things, Now you
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: train them to make as much fuss as possible. Oh,
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: bother it all, Stephen, Where is your mind in these matters?
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Why haven't you tackled these things? Why do you leave
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: it to me to dig these questions into you like
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: opening a reluctant oyster. Aren't they patent? You up? And
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: answer them, Stephen, or this correspondence will become abusive. End
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: of Chapter ten, Part four,