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The New Machiavelli Chapter 6 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter six, Section one of the New Machiavelli 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: Antoniogus Margaret in London One. I was twenty seven when
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Speaker 1: I met Margaret again, and the intervening five years have
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Speaker 1: been years a vigorous activity for me, if not a
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Speaker 1: very remarkable growth. When I saw her again, I could
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Speaker 1: count myself a grown man. I think, indeed, I counted
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Speaker 1: myself more completely grown than I was at any rate
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Speaker 1: by all ordinary standards. I had got on very well,
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Speaker 1: and my ideas, if they had not changed very greatly,
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Speaker 1: had become much more definite, and my ambitions clearer and bolder.
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Speaker 1: I had long since abandoned my fellowship and come to London.
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Speaker 1: I had published two books that had been talked about,
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Speaker 1: and several articles, and established a regular relationship with the
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Speaker 1: Weekly Review and the Evening Gazette. I was a member
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Speaker 1: of the eighty Club, and learning to adapt the style
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Speaker 1: of the Cambridge Union to larger uses. The London world
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Speaker 1: had opened out to me very readily. I had developed
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Speaker 1: a pleasant variety of social connections. I had made the
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Speaker 1: acquaintance of mister Evesham, who had been attracted by my
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Speaker 1: new ruler, and who talked about it and me, and
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Speaker 1: so did a very great deal to make a way
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Speaker 1: for me into the company of prominent and amusing people.
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Speaker 1: I dined out quite frequently. The glitter and interest of
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Speaker 1: good London dinner parties became a common experience. I liked
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Speaker 1: the sort of conversation one got at them extremely, the
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Speaker 1: little glow of duelogues burning up into more general discussions,
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Speaker 1: the closing in of the men after the going of
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Speaker 1: the women, the sage substantial masculine gossiping, the later resumption
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Speaker 1: of effective talk with unpleasant woman graciously at her best.
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Speaker 1: I had a wide range of houses. Cambridge had linked
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Speaker 1: me to one or two correlated sets of artistic and
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Speaker 1: literary people, and my books of mister Evesham had opened
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Speaker 1: to me the big, vague world of society. I wasn't aggressive,
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Speaker 1: nor particularly snobbish or troublesome. Sometimes I talked well, and
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Speaker 1: if I had nothing interesting to say, I said as
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Speaker 1: little as possible. And I had a youthful gravity of
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Speaker 1: manner that was liked by hostesses, and the other side
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Speaker 1: of my nature that first flared through the cover of
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Speaker 1: restraints at Lacano, that too, had had opportunity to develop
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Speaker 1: along the line London renders practicable. I had had my
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Speaker 1: experiences and secrets and adventures among that fringe of illmated
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Speaker 1: or erratic or discredited women the London world possesses. The
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Speaker 1: thing had long ago ceased to be a matter of
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Speaker 1: magic mystery, and had become a question of appetites and excitement, and,
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Speaker 1: among other things, the excitement of not being found out.
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Speaker 1: I write rather doubtfully of my growing during this period. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: I find it hard to judge whether I can say
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Speaker 1: that I grew at all in any real sense of
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Speaker 1: the word. Between three and twenty and twenty seven it
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Speaker 1: seems to me now to have been rather a phase
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Speaker 1: of realization and clarification. All the broad lines of my
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Speaker 1: thought were laid down, I'm sure, by the date of
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Speaker 1: my Lacano adventure. But in those five years I discussed
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Speaker 1: things over and over again with myself and others, filled
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Speaker 1: out with concrete fact forms. I had at first apprehended
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Speaker 1: sketchually and conversationally measured my powers against my ideals and
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Speaker 1: the forces in the world about me. It was evident
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Speaker 1: that many men no better than myself and with no
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Speaker 1: greater advantages than mine, had raised themselves to influential and
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Speaker 1: even decisive positions in the worlds of politics and thought.
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Speaker 1: I was gathering the confidence and knowledge necessary to attack
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Speaker 1: the world in the large manner. I found I could write,
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Speaker 1: and that people would let me write if I chose
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Speaker 1: as one having authority, and not as the scribes. Socially
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Speaker 1: and politically and intellectually. I knew myself an honest man,
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Speaker 1: and that quite without any deliberation on my part, this
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Speaker 1: showed and made things easier for me. People trusted my
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Speaker 1: good faith from the beginning, for all that I came
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Speaker 1: from nowhere and had no better position than any adventurer.
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Speaker 1: But the growth process was arrested. I was nothing bigger
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Speaker 1: at twenty seven than at twenty two, however much saner
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Speaker 1: and stronger, and anyone looking closely into my mind during
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Speaker 1: that period might well have imagined growth finished altogether. It
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Speaker 1: is particularly evident to me now that I came no
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Speaker 1: nearer to any understanding of women during that time. That
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Speaker 1: Lacano affair was infinitely more to me than I had supposed.
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Speaker 1: It ended. Something nipped something in the bud, perhaps took
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Speaker 1: me at a stride from a vague, fine, ignorant, closed
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Speaker 1: world of emotion to intrigue and a perfectly definite and
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Speaker 1: limited sensuality. It ended my youth, and for a time
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Speaker 1: it prevented my manhood. I had never yet even peeped
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Speaker 1: at the sweetest, profoundest thing in the world the heart
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Speaker 1: and meaning of a girl, or dreamt with any quality
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Speaker 1: of reality of a wife, or any such thing as
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Speaker 1: a friend among womanhood. My vague anticipation of such things
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Speaker 1: in life had vanished altogether. I turned away from their possibility.
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Speaker 1: It seemed to me I knew what had to be
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Speaker 1: known about womankind. I wanted to work hard to get
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Speaker 1: on to a position in which I could develop and
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Speaker 1: forward my constructive projects. Women I thought had nothing to
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Speaker 1: do with that. It seemed clear I could not marry.
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Speaker 1: For some years, I was attractive to certain types of women.
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Speaker 1: I had vanity enough to give me an agreeable confidence
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Speaker 1: in love making, and I went about seeking a convenient mistress,
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Speaker 1: quite deliberately, someone who should serve my purpose and say,
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Speaker 1: in the end, like that kindly first mistress of mine,
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Speaker 1: I've done you no harm, and so release me. It
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Speaker 1: seemed the only wise way of disposing of urgencies that
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Speaker 1: might otherwise entangle and wreck the career I was intent upon.
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Speaker 1: I don't apologize for or defend my mental immoral phases.
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Speaker 1: So it was I praised life and prepared to take it,
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Speaker 1: and so it is a thousand ambitious men see it
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Speaker 1: to day for the rest. These five years were a
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Speaker 1: period of definition. My political conceptions were perfectly plain and honest.
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Speaker 1: I had one constant desire ruling my thoughts. I meant
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Speaker 1: to leave England and the Empire better ordered than I
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Speaker 1: found it, to organize and discipline, to build up a
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Speaker 1: constructive and controlling state out of my world's confusions we had.
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Speaker 1: I saw to suffuse education with public intention, to develop
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Speaker 1: a new, better living generation, with a collectivist habit of thought,
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Speaker 1: to link now chaotic activities in every human affair, and
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Speaker 1: particularly to catch that escaped world making world ruining dangerous
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Speaker 1: thing industrial and financial enterprise, and bring it back to
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Speaker 1: the service of the general good. I had then the
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Speaker 1: precise image that still serves me as a symbol for
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Speaker 1: all I wished to bring about. The image of an
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Speaker 1: engineer built holding a lock in a swelling torrent, with
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Speaker 1: water pressure as his only source of power. My thoughts
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Speaker 1: and acts were habitually turned to that enterprise. It gave
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Speaker 1: shape and direction to all my life. The problem that
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Speaker 1: most engaged my mind during those years was the practical
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Speaker 1: and personal problem of just where to apply myself to
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Speaker 1: serve this almost innate purpose. How as I a child
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Speaker 1: of this confusion, struggling upward through the confusion to take
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Speaker 1: hold of things Somewhere between politics and literature, my grip
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Speaker 1: must needs be found. But where always? I seemed to
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Speaker 1: have been looking for that in those opening years, and
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Speaker 1: disregarding everything else to discover it. Two the bailies under
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Speaker 1: whose auspices I met Margaret again, were in the sharpest
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Speaker 1: contrast with the narrow industrialism of the Staffordshire world. They were,
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Speaker 1: indeed at the other extreme of the scale. Two active,
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Speaker 1: self centered people excessively devoted to the public service. It
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Speaker 1: was natural I should gravitate to them, for they seemed
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Speaker 1: to stand for the maturer, more disciplined, better informed expression
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Speaker 1: of all I was then urgents to attempt to do.
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Speaker 1: The bulk of their friends were politicians or public officials.
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Speaker 1: They described themselves as publicists, a vague yet sufficiently significant term.
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Speaker 1: They lived and worked in a hard little house in
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Speaker 1: Chambers Street, Westminster, and made a center for quite an
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Speaker 1: astonishing amount of political and social activity. Willesley took me
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Speaker 1: there one evening. The place was almost pretentiously, matter of
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Speaker 1: fact and unassuming. The narrow passage hall, papered with some
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Speaker 1: ancient yellowish paper grained to imitate wood, was choked with
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Speaker 1: hats and cloaks, and an acad feminine rap motioned rather
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Speaker 1: than announced by a tall Scotch servant woman, the only
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Speaker 1: domestic I ever remember seeing there. We made our way
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Speaker 1: up a narrow staircase, past the open door of a
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Speaker 1: small study packed with blue books, to discover Altura Bailey
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Speaker 1: receiving before the fireplace in her drawing room. She was
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Speaker 1: a tall, commanding figure, splendid but a little untidy in
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Speaker 1: black silken red beads, with dark eyes that had no depths,
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Speaker 1: with a clear, hard voice that had an almost visible prominence,
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Speaker 1: aquiline features, and straight black hair that was apt to
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Speaker 1: get a stray that was now astray like the head
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Speaker 1: feathers of an eagle in a gale. She stood with
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Speaker 1: her hands behind her back and talked in a high
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Speaker 1: tenor of a projected town planning bill with blup, who
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Speaker 1: was practically in those days the secretary of the local government.
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Speaker 1: A very short, broad man with thick ears and fat
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Speaker 1: white hands writhing intertwined behind him, stood with his back
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Speaker 1: to us, eager to bark interruptions into Altiora's discourse. A
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Speaker 1: slender girl in pale blue manifestly a young political wife,
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Speaker 1: stood with one foot on the fender, listening with an
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Speaker 1: expression of entirely puzzled propitiation. A tall, sandy bearded bishop,
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Speaker 1: with the expression of a man in a trance, completed
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Speaker 1: this central group. The room was one of those long apartments,
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Speaker 1: once divided by folding doors and reaching from back to front,
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Speaker 1: that are common upon the first floors of London houses.
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Speaker 1: Its walls were hung with two or three indifferent watercolors.
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Speaker 1: There was scarcely any furniture but a sofa or so
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Speaker 1: and a chair, and the floor, severely carpeted with matting,
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Speaker 1: was crowded with a cueurious medley of people, men predominating.
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Speaker 1: Several were in evening dress, but most had the morning
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Speaker 1: garb of the politician. The women were either severely rational
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Speaker 1: or ragingly magnificent. Willesley pointed out to me the wife
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Speaker 1: of the Secretary of State for War, and I recognized
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Speaker 1: the Duchess of Cleines, who at that time cultivated intellectuality.
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Speaker 1: I looked round, identifying a face here or there, and
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Speaker 1: stepping back, trod on someone's toe, and turned to find
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Speaker 1: it belonged to the right Honorable G. B. Motysham, dear
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Speaker 1: to the punch caricaturists. He received my apology with that
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Speaker 1: intentional charm that is one of his most delightful traits,
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Speaker 1: and resumed his discussion. Beside him was as Maar of Trinity,
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Speaker 1: whom I had not seen since my Cambridge days. Willesley
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Speaker 1: found an ex member of the school board for whom
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Speaker 1: he had affinities, and left me to exchange experiences and
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Speaker 1: comments upon the company with esmre Esmere was still a down,
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Speaker 1: but he was nibbling, he said, at certain negotiations with
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Speaker 1: the Times that might bring him down to London. He
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Speaker 1: wanted to come to London. We peep at things from Cambridge,
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Speaker 1: he said. This sort of thing, I said, makes London necessary.
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Speaker 1: It's the oddest gathering everyone comes here, said Esmere. Mostly
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Speaker 1: we hate them like poison, jealousy and little irritations, and
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Speaker 1: a turea could be a horror at times, but we
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Speaker 1: have to come. Things are being done. Oh, no doubt
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Speaker 1: of it. It's one of the parts of the British
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Speaker 1: machinery that doesn't show. But nobody else could do it.
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Speaker 1: Two people said, esmre who've planned to be a power
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Speaker 1: in an original way, And by jove, they've done it.
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Speaker 1: I did not for some time pick out Oscar Bailey,
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Speaker 1: and then Esmere showed him to me in a lably
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Speaker 1: confidential talk in a corner with a distinguished looking stranger
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Speaker 1: wearing a ribbon. Oscar had none of the fine appearance
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Speaker 1: of his wife. He was a short, sturdy figure with
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Speaker 1: a rounded, protruding abdomen and a curious, broad, flattened, clean
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Speaker 1: shaven face that seemed nearly all forehead. He was of
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Speaker 1: Anglo Hungarian extraction, and I have always fancied something Mongolian
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Speaker 1: in his type. He peered up with reddish, swollen looking
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Speaker 1: eyes over gilt edged glasses that were divided horizontally into
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Speaker 1: portions of different refractive power, and he talked in an
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Speaker 1: ingratiating undertone, with busy, thin lips, an eager lisp, and
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Speaker 1: nervous movements of the hand. People say that thirty years
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Speaker 1: before at Oxford. He was almost exactly the same eager,
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Speaker 1: clever little man he was when I first met him.
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Speaker 1: He had come up to Balliol Bristling with extraordinary de
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Speaker 1: degrees and prizes captured in provincial and Irish and Scotch universities,
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Speaker 1: and had made a name for himself as the most
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Speaker 1: formidable dealer, in exact fact, the rhetoricians of the Union
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Speaker 1: had ever had to encounter. From Oxford, he had gone
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Speaker 1: on to a position in the higher division of the
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Speaker 1: civil service, I think in the War Office, and had
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Speaker 1: speedily made a place for himself as a political journalist.
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Speaker 1: He was a particularly neat controversialist and very full of
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Speaker 1: political and sociological ideas. He had a quite astounding memory
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Speaker 1: for facts and a mastery of detailed analysis, and the
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Speaker 1: time afforded scope for these gifts. The later eighties were
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Speaker 1: full of politico social discussion, and he became a prominent
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Speaker 1: name upon the contents list of the nineteenth century the
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Speaker 1: Fortnightly and Contemporary, chiefly as a half sympathetic but frequently
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Speaker 1: very damaging critic of the socialism of that period. He
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Speaker 1: won the immense respect of everyone specially interested in social
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Speaker 1: and political questions. He soon achieved the limited distinction that
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Speaker 1: is awarded such capacity, and at that I think he
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Speaker 1: would have remained for the rest of his life if
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Speaker 1: he had not encountered Altiora. But Altiora mcvitti was an
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Speaker 1: altogether exceptional woman, an extraordinary mixture of qualities, the one
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Speaker 1: woman in the world who could make something more out
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Speaker 1: of Bailey than that. She had much of the vigor
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Speaker 1: and handsomeness of a slender, impudent young man, and an
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Speaker 1: unscrupulousness altogether feminine. She was one of those women who
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Speaker 1: were waiting in what is the word muliebrity. She had
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Speaker 1: courage and initiative and a philosophical way of handling questions,
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Speaker 1: and she could be bored by regular work like a man.
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Speaker 1: She was entirely unfitted for her sex's sphere. She was
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Speaker 1: neither on certain coy nor hard to please, and altogether
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Speaker 1: too stimulating and aggressive for any gentleman's hours of ease.
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Speaker 1: Her cookery would have been about as sketchy as her handwriting,
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Speaker 1: which was generally quite illegible, and she would have made,
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Speaker 1: I feel sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't
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Speaker 1: imagine she was an inelegant or unbeautiful woman, and she
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Speaker 1: is inconceivable to me in high collars or any sort
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Speaker 1: of masculine garment. But her soul was bony, and at
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Speaker 1: the base of her was a vanity, gaunt and greedy
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Speaker 1: when she wasn't in a state of personal untidiness that
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Speaker 1: was partly a protest against the waste of ours exacted
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Speaker 1: by the toilet, and partly a natural disinclination. She had
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Speaker 1: a gipsy splendor of black and red and silver all
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Speaker 1: her own and some When in the early nineties she
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Speaker 1: met and married Bailey, I know very little about her
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Speaker 1: early years. She was the only daughter of Sedayton mcvittie,
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Speaker 1: who applied the Eoda form process to cotton, and only
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Speaker 1: his subsequent unfortunate attempts to become a cotton king prevented
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Speaker 1: her being a very rich woman. As it was, she
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Speaker 1: had a tolerable independence. She came into prominence as one
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Speaker 1: of the more able of the little shoal of young
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Speaker 1: women who were led into politico philanthropic activities by the
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Speaker 1: influence of the earlier novels of Missus Humphrey Ward The
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Speaker 1: Marcella Crop. She went slumming with distinguished figure which was
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Speaker 1: quite usual in those days, and returned from her experiences
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Speaker 1: as an amateur flower girl with clear and original views
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Speaker 1: about the problem which he isn't always had been unusual.
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Speaker 1: She had not married, I suppose, because her standards were
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Speaker 1: high and men are cowards, and with an instinctive appetite
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Speaker 1: for mouleebrity. She had kept house for her father by
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Speaker 1: speaking occasionally to the housekeeper, butler and cook her mother
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Speaker 1: had left her, and gathering the most interesting dinner parties
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Speaker 1: she could, and had married off four orphan nieces in
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Speaker 1: a harsh and successful manner. After her father's smash and death,
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Speaker 1: she came out as a writer upon social Questions, an
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Speaker 1: a scathing critic of the charity organization society. And she
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Speaker 1: was three and thirty and a little at loose ends
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Speaker 1: when she met Oscar Bailey, so to speak in the
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Speaker 1: contemporary review, The lurking woman in her nature was fascinated
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Speaker 1: by the ease and precision with which the little man
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Speaker 1: rolled over all sorts of important and authoritative people. She
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Speaker 1: was the first to discover a sort of imaginative bigness
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Speaker 1: in his still growing mind. The forehead perhaps carried him
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Speaker 1: off physically, and she took occasion to meet and subjugate him,
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Speaker 1: and so soon as he had sufficiently recovered from his
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Speaker 1: abject humility and a certain panic at her attentions, marry him.
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Speaker 1: This had opened a new phase in the lives of
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Speaker 1: Bailey and herself. The two supplemented each other to an
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Speaker 1: extraordinary extent. Their subsequent career was, I think almost entirely
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Speaker 1: her invention. She was aggressive, imaginative, and had a great
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Speaker 1: capacity for ideas, while he was almost destitute of initiative
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Speaker 1: and could do nothing with ideas except remembering discuss them.
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Speaker 1: She was, if not exact, at least indolent, with a
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Speaker 1: strong disposition to save energy by sketching. Even her handwriting
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Speaker 1: showed that while he was inexhaustibly industrious, with a relentless
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Speaker 1: invariable calligraphy that grew larger and clearer as the years
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Speaker 1: passed by, she had a considerable power of charming. She
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Speaker 1: could be just as ane to people and incidentally, just
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Speaker 1: as nasty as she wanted to. He was always just
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Speaker 1: the same, a little confidential and sotto votche, artlessly rude
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Speaker 1: and egoistic in an undignified way. She had considerable social experience,
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Speaker 1: good social connections, and considerable social ambition, while he had
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Speaker 1: none of these things. She saw in a flash her
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Speaker 1: opportunity to redeem his defects, use his powers, and do large,
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Speaker 1: novel rather startling things. She ran him her marriage, which
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Speaker 1: shocked her friends and relations beyond measure. For time there
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Speaker 1: would only speak of Bailey as that gnome was a
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Speaker 1: stroke of genius, And forthwith they proceeded to make themselves
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Speaker 1: the most formidable and distinguished couple conceivable. PBP, she boasted,
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Speaker 1: was engraved inside their wedding rings pro bono publico, and
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Speaker 1: she meant it to be no idle threat. She had
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Speaker 1: discovered very early that the last thing influential people would
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Speaker 1: do is to work. Everything in their lives tends to
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Speaker 1: make them dependent upon a supply of confidently administered detail.
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Speaker 1: Their businesses with the window and not the stock behind,
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Speaker 1: and in the end they are dependent upon the stock
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Speaker 1: behind for what goes into the window. She linked with
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Speaker 1: that the fact that Bailey had a mind as orderly
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Speaker 1: as a museum and an invincible power over detail. She
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Speaker 1: saw that if two people took the necessary pains to
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Speaker 1: know the facts of government and administration with precision to
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Speaker 1: gather together knowledge that was dispersed and confused to be
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Speaker 1: able to say precisely what had to be done and
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Speaker 1: what avoided in this eventuality, or that they would necessarily
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Speaker 1: become a center of reference for all sorts of legislative
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Speaker 1: proposals and political expedients. And she went unhesitatingly upon that Bailey,
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Speaker 1: under her vigorous direction, threw up his post in the
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Speaker 1: civil service and abandoned sporadic controversies. And they devoted themselves
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Speaker 1: to the elaboration and realization of this center of public
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Speaker 1: information she had conceived as their role. They set out
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Speaker 1: to study the methods and organization and realities of government
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Speaker 1: in the most elaborate manner. They did the work as
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Speaker 1: no one had ever hitherto dreamt of doing it. They
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Speaker 1: planned the research on a thoroughly satisfying scale, and arranged
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Speaker 1: their lives almost entirely for it. They took that house
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Speaker 1: in Chambers Street and furnished it with severe economy. They
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Speaker 1: discovered that Scotch domestic who is destined to be the
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Speaker 1: guardian and tyrant of their declining years. And they set
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Speaker 1: to work their first book, The Permanent Official, filled three
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Speaker 1: plump volumes, and took them and their two secretaries upwards
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Speaker 1: of four years to do. It is an amazingly good
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Speaker 1: book and enduring achievement. In a hundred directions, the history
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Speaker 1: and the administrative treatment of the public service was clarified
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Speaker 1: for all time. They worked regularly every morning from nine
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Speaker 1: to twelve. They lunched lightly but severely. In the afternoon
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Speaker 1: they took exercise. Or Bailey attended meetings of the London
24:21
Speaker 1: School Board, on which he served, he said, for the
24:24
Speaker 1: purposes of study. He also became a railway director for
24:28
Speaker 1: the same end. In the late afternoon, Altiora was at
24:32
Speaker 1: home to various callers, and in the evening came dinner
24:36
Speaker 1: or a reception or both. Her dinners and gatherings were
24:41
Speaker 1: a very important feature in their scheme. She got together
24:45
Speaker 1: all sorts of interesting people in or about the public service.
24:49
Speaker 1: She mixed the obscurely efficient with the ill instructed, famous,
24:54
Speaker 1: and the rudderless rich. Got together in one room more
24:57
Speaker 1: of the factors in our strange jumble of a public
25:00
Speaker 1: life than had ever met easily before. She fed them
25:05
Speaker 1: with a shameless austerity that kept the conversation brilliant. On
25:09
Speaker 1: a soup, a plain fish and mutton or boiled fowl
25:13
Speaker 1: and milk pudding, with nothing to drink but whiskey and
25:16
Speaker 1: soda and hot and cold water and milk and lemonade.
25:20
Speaker 1: Everybody was soon very glad indeed to come to that.
25:24
Speaker 1: She boasted how little her housekeeping cost her, and sought
25:28
Speaker 1: constantly for fresh economies that would enable her. She said,
25:32
Speaker 1: to sustain an additional private secretary. Secretaries with the Bailey's
25:37
Speaker 1: want extravagance. They loved to think of searches going on
25:40
Speaker 1: in the British Museum, and letters being cleared up, and
25:44
Speaker 1: praise he made over head while they sat in the
25:47
Speaker 1: little study and worked together. Bailey with a clockwork industry
25:51
Speaker 1: an Altiora, in splendid flashes between intervals of cigarettes and meditation.
25:58
Speaker 1: All efficient public careers, said Altiora, consists in the proper
26:02
Speaker 1: direction of secretaries. If everything goes well, I shall have
26:06
Speaker 1: another secretary next year. Altiora told me, I wish I
26:10
Speaker 1: could refuse people dinner napkins. Imagine what it means in washing.
26:15
Speaker 1: I dare most things, but as it is, they stand
26:19
Speaker 1: a lot of hardship here. There's something of the miser
26:23
Speaker 1: in both these people, said Esmeir, And the thing was
26:26
Speaker 1: perfectly true, For after all, the miser is nothing more
26:31
Speaker 1: than a man who, either through want of imagination or
26:34
Speaker 1: want of suggestion, misapplies to a base use a natural
26:39
Speaker 1: power of concentration upon one end. The concentration itself is
26:44
Speaker 1: neither good nor evil, but a power that can be
26:46
Speaker 1: used in either way, and the bail is gathered and
26:50
Speaker 1: reinvested usuriously, not money, but knowledge of the utmost value
26:55
Speaker 1: in human affairs. They produce an effect of having found
26:59
Speaker 1: themselves completely. One envied them at times extraordinarily. I was attracted,
27:05
Speaker 1: I was dazzled, And at the same time there was
27:08
Speaker 1: something about Bailey's big wrinkled forehead, his list being broad mouth,
27:13
Speaker 1: the gestures of his hands, and an uncivil preoccupation I
27:18
Speaker 1: could not endure. Three. Their effect upon me was from
27:25
Speaker 1: the outset very considerable. Both of them found occasion on
27:29
Speaker 1: that first visit of mine to talk to me about
27:32
Speaker 1: my published writings, and particularly about my then just published book,
27:37
Speaker 1: The New Ruler, which had interested them very much. It
27:41
Speaker 1: fell in, indeed, so closely with their own way of thinking,
27:45
Speaker 1: that I doubt if they ever understood how independently I
27:48
Speaker 1: had arrived at my conclusions. It was their weakness to
27:52
Speaker 1: claim excessively. That irritation, however, came later. We discovered each
27:58
Speaker 1: other immensely. For a time it produced a tremendous sense
28:02
Speaker 1: of kindred and co operation. Altiora, I remember maintained that
28:07
Speaker 1: there existed a great army of such constructive minded people
28:11
Speaker 1: as ourselves, as yet undiscovered by one another. It's like
28:16
Speaker 1: boring a tunnel through a mountain, said Oscar, and presently
28:20
Speaker 1: hearing the tapping of the workers from the other end.
28:24
Speaker 1: If you didn't know of them beforehand, I said, it
28:27
Speaker 1: might be a rather badly joined tunnel, exactly, said Alteora,
28:33
Speaker 1: with a high note. And that's why we all want
28:35
Speaker 1: to find out each other. They didn't talk like that
28:39
Speaker 1: on our first encounter, but they urged me to lunch
28:42
Speaker 1: with them next day, and then it was we went
28:45
Speaker 1: into things. A woman factory inspector, and the educational minister
28:50
Speaker 1: for New Banksland and his wife were also there, but
28:54
Speaker 1: I don't remember they made any contribution to the conversation.
28:58
Speaker 1: The bailies sought to that. They kept on at me
29:01
Speaker 1: in an urgent, litigious way. We have read your book.
29:04
Speaker 1: Each began as though it had been a joint function,
29:07
Speaker 1: and we consider yes, I protested, I think that was
29:11
Speaker 1: a secondary matter. They did not consider, said Altiora, raising
29:16
Speaker 1: her voice and going right over me, that I had
29:18
Speaker 1: allowed sufficiently for the inevitable development of an official administrative
29:23
Speaker 1: class in the modern state, nor of its importance, echoed Oscar,
29:30
Speaker 1: That they explained in a sort of chorus, was the
29:33
Speaker 1: cardinal idea of their lives, what they were up to,
29:37
Speaker 1: what they stood for. We want to suggest to you,
29:40
Speaker 1: they said, and I found this was a stock opening
29:43
Speaker 1: of theirs, that from the mere necessities of convenience, elected
29:47
Speaker 1: bodies must avail themselves more and more of the services
29:51
Speaker 1: of expert officials. We have that very much in mind.
29:55
Speaker 1: The more complicated and technical affairs become, the less confident
30:00
Speaker 1: will the elected official have in himself. We want to
30:04
Speaker 1: suggest that these expert officials must necessarily develop into a
30:08
Speaker 1: new class, and a very powerful class in the community.
30:12
Speaker 1: We want to organize that it may be the power
30:16
Speaker 1: of the future. They will necessarily have to have very
30:19
Speaker 1: much of a common training. We consider ourselves as amateur,
30:24
Speaker 1: unpaid precursors of such a class. The vision they displayed
30:29
Speaker 1: for my consideration, as the aim of public spirited endeavor,
30:33
Speaker 1: seemed like a hard and narrower, more specialized version of
30:37
Speaker 1: the idea of a trained and disciplined state that Willesley
30:41
Speaker 1: and I had worked out in the Alps. They wanted
30:44
Speaker 1: things more organized, more correlated with government and a collective purpose,
30:49
Speaker 1: just as we did. But they saw it not in
30:51
Speaker 1: terms of a growing collective understanding, but in terms of functionaries,
30:56
Speaker 1: legislative change, and methods of administration. It wasn't clear at
31:02
Speaker 1: first how we differed. The bailies were very anxious to
31:05
Speaker 1: win me to go operation, and I was quite prepared
31:08
Speaker 1: at first to identify their distinctive expressions with phrases of
31:13
Speaker 1: my own. And so we came very readily into an
31:17
Speaker 1: alliance that was to last some years and break at last,
31:20
Speaker 1: very painfully out or manifestly. Like me, I was soon
31:25
Speaker 1: discussing with her the perplexity I found in placing myself
31:29
Speaker 1: efficiently in the world, the problem of how to take
31:32
Speaker 1: hold of things that occupied my thoughts, and she was
31:36
Speaker 1: sketching out careers for my consideration, very much as an
31:40
Speaker 1: architect on his first visit sketches houses, considers requirements, and
31:45
Speaker 1: puts before you this example and that of the more
31:49
Speaker 1: or less similar thing already done four. It is easy
31:56
Speaker 1: to see how much in common there was between the
31:58
Speaker 1: Bailies and me, and how natural it was that I
32:01
Speaker 1: should become a constant visitor at their house and an
32:04
Speaker 1: ally of theirs in many enterprises. It is not nearly
32:08
Speaker 1: so easy to define the profound antagonism of spirit that
32:13
Speaker 1: also held between us. There was a different in texture,
32:17
Speaker 1: a difference in quality. How can I express it? The
32:21
Speaker 1: shapes of our thoughts were the same, but the substance
32:25
Speaker 1: quite different. It was as if they had made in
32:28
Speaker 1: china or cast iron what I had made in transparent,
32:32
Speaker 1: living matter. The comparison is manifestly from my point of view.
32:37
Speaker 1: Certain things never seemed to show through their ideas that
32:40
Speaker 1: were visible, refracted perhaps and distorted, but visible always through mine.
32:47
Speaker 1: I thought, for a time the essential difference lay in
32:50
Speaker 1: our relation to beauty. With me, beauty is quite primary
32:54
Speaker 1: in life. I like truth, order, and goodness wholly because
32:59
Speaker 1: they are beautiful or leads straight to beautiful consequences. The
33:03
Speaker 1: bailies either hadn't got that, or they didn't see it.
33:07
Speaker 1: They seemed at times to prefer things harsh and ugly
33:11
Speaker 1: that puzzled me extremely. The esthetic quality of many of
33:15
Speaker 1: their proposals. The manners of their work, so to speak,
33:19
Speaker 1: were at times as dreadful as well. War Office Barrack architecture,
33:23
Speaker 1: a caricature, by its exaggerated statements, will sometimes serve to
33:28
Speaker 1: point a truth by antagonizing falsity and falsity. I remember
33:33
Speaker 1: talking to a prominent museum official in need of more
33:36
Speaker 1: public funds for the work he had in hand. I
33:39
Speaker 1: mentioned the possibility of enlisting Bailey's influence. Oh we don't
33:44
Speaker 1: want philistines like that infernal bottle imp running us, he
33:48
Speaker 1: said hastily, and would hear of no concerted action for
33:52
Speaker 1: the end he had in view. I'd rather not have
33:55
Speaker 1: the extension, you see. He went on to explain Bail's
33:59
Speaker 1: wanting in the essentials. What essential? Said I, Oh, he'd
34:04
Speaker 1: be like a nasty, oily efficient little machine for some
34:07
Speaker 1: merely subordinate necessity among all my delicate stuff. He'd do
34:11
Speaker 1: all we wanted, no doubt in the way of money
34:14
Speaker 1: and powers, and he'd do it wrong and mess the
34:16
Speaker 1: place forever, hands all black. You know, He's just a means,
34:21
Speaker 1: just a very aggressive and unmanageable means. This isn't a
34:24
Speaker 1: plumber's job. I stuck to my argument. I don't like him,
34:29
Speaker 1: said the official conclusively, and it seemed to me at
34:33
Speaker 1: the time he was just blind prejudice speaking. I came
34:38
Speaker 1: nearer the truth of the matter as I came to
34:40
Speaker 1: realize that our philosophies differed profoundly. That isn't a very
34:45
Speaker 1: curable difference once people have grown up. Theirs was a
34:49
Speaker 1: philosophy devoid of finesse Temperamentally, the bailies were specialized, concentrated, accurate,
34:58
Speaker 1: while I emerged, either by some force or some entirely
35:01
Speaker 1: assimilated influence in my training, always to round off and
35:05
Speaker 1: shadow my outlines. I hate them hard. I would sacrifice
35:10
Speaker 1: detail to modeling always, and the Baileyes that seemed to
35:14
Speaker 1: me loved a world as flat and metallic as Sydney
35:17
Speaker 1: Cooper's cows. If they had the universe in hand, I
35:22
Speaker 1: know they would take down all the trees and put
35:24
Speaker 1: up stamped tin, green shades and sunlight accumulators. Alteiora thought
35:31
Speaker 1: trees hopelessly irregular, and sea cliffs a great mistake. I
35:36
Speaker 1: got things clearer as time went on, though it was
35:40
Speaker 1: an Hegalian mess of which I had partaken at Codger's table.
35:44
Speaker 1: By way of philosophical training. My sympathies have always been pragmatists.
35:50
Speaker 1: I belong almost by nature to that school of pragmatism that,
35:55
Speaker 1: following the medieval nominalists, base its itself upon a denial
36:00
Speaker 1: of the reality of classes and of the validity of
36:03
Speaker 1: general laws. The Bailies classified everything they were in the
36:08
Speaker 1: scholastic sense, which so oddly contradicts the modern use of
36:12
Speaker 1: the world realists. They believed classes were real and independent
36:18
Speaker 1: of their individuals. This is the common habit of all
36:21
Speaker 1: so called educated people who have no metaphysical aptitude and
36:26
Speaker 1: no metaphysical training. It leads them to a progressive misunderstanding
36:31
Speaker 1: of the world. It was a favorite trick of Altiora's
36:35
Speaker 1: to speak of everybody as a type. She saw men
36:39
Speaker 1: as samples. Moving her dining room became a chamber of representatives.
36:45
Speaker 1: It gave a tremendously scientific air to many of their generalizations.
36:50
Speaker 1: Using scientific in its nineteenth century uncritical Herbert Spencer sense,
36:56
Speaker 1: an air that only began to disappear when you thought
36:59
Speaker 1: them over again. In terms of actuality and the people
37:02
Speaker 1: one knew at the Bailies, one always seemed to be
37:06
Speaker 1: getting one's hands on the very strings that guided the world.
37:11
Speaker 1: You heard legislation projected to affect this type and that
37:15
Speaker 1: statistics marched by you with sin and shame and injustice
37:19
Speaker 1: and misery reduced to quite manageable percentages. You found men
37:24
Speaker 1: who were to frame or amen bills in grave and
37:27
Speaker 1: intimate exchange with Bailey's omniscience. You heard altiora canvassing approaching
37:33
Speaker 1: resignations and possible appointments that might make or mar a
37:37
Speaker 1: revolution in administrative methods, and doing it with a vigorous
37:41
Speaker 1: directness that manifestly swayed the decision. And you felt you
37:46
Speaker 1: were in a sort of signal box, with levers all
37:49
Speaker 1: about you, and the world outside there, albeit a little
37:53
Speaker 1: dark and mysterious beyond the window, running on its lines,
37:57
Speaker 1: in ready obedience to these unhesitating lights, true and steady
38:02
Speaker 1: to trim termini. And then, with all this administrative fizzle,
38:07
Speaker 1: this pseudo scientific administrative chatter dying away in your head,
38:12
Speaker 1: out you went into the limitless, grimy chaos of London
38:16
Speaker 1: streets and squares, roads and avenues, lined with teeming houses,
38:21
Speaker 1: each larger than the Chambers Street house and at least
38:24
Speaker 1: equally alive. You saw the chaotic clamor of hoardings, the
38:29
Speaker 1: jumble of traffic, the coming and going of mysterious myriads.
38:34
Speaker 1: You heard the rumble of traffic like the noise of
38:36
Speaker 1: a torrent, a vague, incessant murmur of cries and voices.
38:41
Speaker 1: Wanton crimes and accidents balled at you from the placards. Imperative,
38:46
Speaker 1: unaccountable fashions swaggered triumphant in dazzling windows of the shops,
38:53
Speaker 1: and you found yourself swaying back to the opposite conviction
38:57
Speaker 1: that the huge, formless spirit of the world it was
39:01
Speaker 1: that held the strings and danced the puppets On the
39:04
Speaker 1: Bailey stage under the lamps. You were jostled by people
39:08
Speaker 1: like my stavature uncle out for a spree. You saw
39:12
Speaker 1: shy youths conversing with prostitutes. You passed young lovers pairing
39:17
Speaker 1: with an entire disregard of the social suitability of the
39:21
Speaker 1: types they might blend or create. You saw men leaning
39:25
Speaker 1: drunken against lamp posts, whom you knew for the type
39:28
Speaker 1: that will charge with fixed baarnets into the face of death.
39:32
Speaker 1: And you found yourself unable to imagine Little Bailey achieving
39:36
Speaker 1: either drunkenness, or the careless defiance of annihilation. You realized
39:42
Speaker 1: that quite a lot of types were under represented in
39:45
Speaker 1: Chambers Street, that feral and obscure and altogether monstrous forces
39:50
Speaker 1: must be at work, as yet altogether unassimilated by those
39:55
Speaker 1: neat administrative reorganizations. End of Chapter six, Section one,