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The New Machiavelli Chapter 9 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book three of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Antoniogus,
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Speaker 1: Book three, The Heart of Politics, Chapter nine, The Riddle
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Speaker 1: for the Statesman One. I have been planning and replanning, writing,
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Speaker 1: and rewriting this next portion of my book for many days.
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Speaker 1: I perceive I must leave it raw, edged, and ill joined.
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Speaker 1: I have learnt something of the impossibility of history. For
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Speaker 1: all I have had to tell is the story of
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Speaker 1: one man's convictions and aims and how they reacted upon
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Speaker 1: his life. And I find it too subtle and involved
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Speaker 1: and intricate for the doing. I find it taxes all
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Speaker 1: my powers to convey even the main forms and forces
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Speaker 1: in that development. It is like looking through moving media
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Speaker 1: of changing hue and variable refraction at something vitally unstable.
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Speaker 1: Broad theories and generalizations are mingled with personal influences, with
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Speaker 1: prevalent prejudices, and not only colored but altered by phases
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Speaker 1: of hopefulness and moods of depression. The web is made
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Speaker 1: up of the most diverse elements, beyond treatment multitudinous. For
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Speaker 1: a week or so, I desisted altogether and walked over
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Speaker 1: the mountains, and returned to sit through the warm, soft
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Speaker 1: mornings among the shaded rocks above this little perched up
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Speaker 1: house of ours. Discussing my difficulties with Isabelle, and I
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Speaker 1: think on the whole, complicating them further in the effort
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Speaker 1: to simplify them to manageable and statable elements. Let me
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Speaker 1: nevertheless attempt a rough preliminary analysis of this confused process.
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Speaker 1: A main strand is quite easily traceable. This main strand
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Speaker 1: is the story of my obvious life, my life as
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Speaker 1: it must have looked to most of my acquaintances. It
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Speaker 1: presents you with a young couple, bright, hopeful, and energetic,
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Speaker 1: starting out under alt your resourcepices to make a career.
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Speaker 1: You figure us well dressed and active, running about in
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Speaker 1: motor cars, visiting in great people's houses, dining amidst brilliant companies,
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Speaker 1: going to the theater, meeting in the lobby. Margaret wore
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Speaker 1: hundreds of beautiful dresses. We must have had an air
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Speaker 1: of succeeding meritoriously during that time. We did very continually
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Speaker 1: and faithfully serve our joint career. I thought about it
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Speaker 1: a great deal, and did and refrained from doing ten
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Speaker 1: thousand things. For the sake of it. I kept up
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Speaker 1: a solicitude for it, as it were, by inertia, long
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Speaker 1: after things had happened and changes occurred in me that
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Speaker 1: rendered its completion impossible. Under certain very artless pretenses, we
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Speaker 1: wanted steadfastly to make a handsome position in the world,
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Speaker 1: achieve respect, succeed. Enormous unseen changes have been in progress
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Speaker 1: for years in my mind and the realities of my life,
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Speaker 1: before our general circle could have had any inkling of
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Speaker 1: their existence or suspected the appearances of our life. Then
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Speaker 1: suddenly our proceedings began to be deflected, our outward unanimity
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Speaker 1: visibly strained and marred by the insurgence of these so
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Speaker 1: long hidden developments. That career had its own hidden side,
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Speaker 1: of course. But when I write of these unseen factors,
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Speaker 1: I do not mean that, but something altogether broader. I
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Speaker 1: do not mean the everyday petternesses which gave the cynical
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Speaker 1: observer scope and told of a narrower base aspect of
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Speaker 1: the fair but limited ambitions of my ostensible self. This
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Speaker 1: sub careerist element noted little things that affected the career
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Speaker 1: made me suspicious of the rivalry of so and so,
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Speaker 1: propitiatory to so and so, whom, as a matter of fact,
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Speaker 1: I didn't respect or feel in the least sympathetic towards
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Speaker 1: guarded with that man, who, for all his charm and interest,
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Speaker 1: wasn't helpful and a little touchy at the appearance of
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Speaker 1: neglect from that. No, I mean something greater and not
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Speaker 1: something smaller. When I write of a hidden life in
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Speaker 1: the ostensible self, who glowed under the approbation of Alteorra Bailey,
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Speaker 1: and was envied and discussed, praised and depreciated in the
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Speaker 1: house and in smoking room gossip, you really have as
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Speaker 1: much of a man as usually figures in a novel
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Speaker 1: or an obituary. Notice. But I am tremendously impressed now
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Speaker 1: in the retrospect by the realization of how little that
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Speaker 1: frontage represented me, and just how little such frontages do
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Speaker 1: represent the complexities of the intelligent contemporary behind it. Yet,
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Speaker 1: struggling to disorder and alter it altogether was a far
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Speaker 1: more essential reality, a selfless personal, less individualized and broader
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Speaker 1: in its references. It aims whenever simply to get on.
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Speaker 1: It had an altogether different system of demands and satisfactions.
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Speaker 1: It was critical, curious more than a little unfeeling and
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Speaker 1: relentlessly illuminating. It is just the existence and development of
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Speaker 1: this more generalized self behind the frontage that is making
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Speaker 1: modern life so much more subtle and intricate to render,
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Speaker 1: and so much more hopeful in its relations to the
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Speaker 1: perplexities of the universe. I see this mental and spiritual
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Speaker 1: hinterland vary enormously in the people about me, from a
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Speaker 1: type which seems to keep, as people say, all its
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Speaker 1: goods in the window to others who like myself, come
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Speaker 1: to regard the ostensible existence more and more as a
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Speaker 1: mere experimental feling feeder, an agent for that greater personality behind.
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Speaker 1: And this back self has its history of phases, its
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Speaker 1: crises and happy accidents, and irrevocable conclusions, more or less
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Speaker 1: distinct from the adventures and achievements of the ostensible self.
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Speaker 1: It meets persons and phrases. It assimilates the spirit of
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Speaker 1: a book. It is startled into new realizations by some
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Speaker 1: accident that seems altogether irrelevant to the general tenor of
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Speaker 1: one's life. Its increasing independence of the ostensible career makes
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Speaker 1: it the organ of corrective criticism. It accumulates disturbing energy,
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Speaker 1: then it breaks our overt promises and repudiates our pledges,
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Speaker 1: coming down at last like an overbearing mentor upon the
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Speaker 1: small engagements of the pupil. In the life of the individual.
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Speaker 1: It takes the role that the growth of philosophy, science,
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Speaker 1: and creative literature may play in the development of mankind. Two.
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Speaker 1: It is curious to recall how Britain helped shatter that obvious,
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Speaker 1: lucidly explicable presentation of myself upon which I had embarked
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Speaker 1: with Margaret. He returned to revive a memory of adolescent
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Speaker 1: dreams and a habit of adolescent frankness. He reached through
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Speaker 1: my shallow frontage as no one else seemed capable of doing,
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Speaker 1: and dragged that back self into relation with it. I
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Speaker 1: remember very distinctly a dinner and a subsequent walk with him,
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Speaker 1: which presents itself now as altogether typical of the quality
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Speaker 1: of his influence. I had come upon him one day
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Speaker 1: while lunching with Summers and Sudden at the Playwrights Club,
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Speaker 1: and had asked him to dinner on the spur of
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Speaker 1: the moment. He was oddly the same, curly headed, red
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Speaker 1: face ventriloquist, an oddly different, rather seedy as well as
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Speaker 1: un tidy, and at first a little inclined to make
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Speaker 1: comparisons with my speak successfulness. But that disposition presently evaporated,
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Speaker 1: and his talk was good and fresh and provocative, and
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Speaker 1: something that had long been straining at its checks in
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Speaker 1: my mind flapped over, and he and I found ourselves
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Speaker 1: of one accord. Altiora wasn't at this dinner. When she came,
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Speaker 1: matters were apt to become confusedly strenuous. There was always
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Speaker 1: a slight and ineffectual struggle at the end on the
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Speaker 1: part of Margaret to anticipate Altiora's overpowering tendency to a
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Speaker 1: rally and the establishment of some entirely unjustifiable conclusion by
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Speaker 1: coup de mains. When, however, Altiora was absent, the quieter
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Speaker 1: influence of the Cramptons prevailed. Temperaments and information for its
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Speaker 1: own sake prevailed excessively over dinner and the play of thought.
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Speaker 1: Good Lord, what bore the Cramptons were? I wonder I
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Speaker 1: endured them as I did. They had, all of them,
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Speaker 1: the trick of lying in wait conversationally. They had no
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Speaker 1: sense of the self exposures, the gallant experiments in statement
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Speaker 1: that are necessary for good conversation. They would watch one
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Speaker 1: talking with an expression exactly like peeping through bushes. Then
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Speaker 1: they would, as it were, dash out descent succinctly contradict
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Speaker 1: some secondary fact, and back to cover. They gave one
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Speaker 1: twilight nerves. Their wives were easier, but still difficult to
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Speaker 1: the stretch. They talked a good deal about children and servants,
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Speaker 1: but with an air caught from altiora of making observations
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Speaker 1: upon sociological types. Lewis gossiped about the house in an
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Speaker 1: entirely finite manner. He never raised a discussion. Nobody ever
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Speaker 1: raised a discussion. He would ask what we thought of
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Speaker 1: Evesham's question that afternoon, and Edward would say it was good,
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Speaker 1: and missus Willie, who had been behind the grill, would
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Speaker 1: think it was very good. And then Willie, parting the branches,
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Speaker 1: would say rather conclusively that he didn't think it was
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Speaker 1: very much good. And I would deny hearing the question
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Speaker 1: in order to evade a profitless statement of views in
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Speaker 1: that vacuum, and then we would cast about in our
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Speaker 1: minds for some other topic of equal interest. On this occasion,
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Speaker 1: Alteora was absent, and to qualify our young liberal bleakness.
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Speaker 1: We had Missus Millingham, with her white hair and her
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Speaker 1: fresh mind and complexion, and Esmere. Willie Crampton was with us,
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Speaker 1: but not his wife, who was having her third baby.
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Speaker 1: On principle, his brother Edward was present, and the Lewises,
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Speaker 1: and of course the Bunting Harblows. There was also some
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Speaker 1: other lady. I remember her as pale Blue, but for
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Speaker 1: the life of me I cannot remember her name. Quite
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Speaker 1: early there was a little brief ease between Edward Crampton
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Speaker 1: and Esmir, who had ventured an opinion about the partition
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Speaker 1: of Poland. Edward was at work then upon the seventh
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Speaker 1: volume of his monumental Life of Costcusco, and a little
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Speaker 1: impatient with views perhaps not altogether false, but betraying a
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Speaker 1: lamentable ignorance of accessible literature. At any rate, his correction
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Speaker 1: of Esmere was magisterial. After that there was a distinct
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Speaker 1: and not altogether delightful pause, and then someone it may
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Speaker 1: have been the Pale Blue Lady, asked Missus Lewis whether
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Speaker 1: her aunt, Lady Carl Mixter, had returned from her rest
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Speaker 1: and son cure in Italy. That led to a rather
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Speaker 1: anxiously sustained talk about regimen, and Willie told us how
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Speaker 1: he had profited by the no breakfast system. It had
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Speaker 1: increased his power of work enormously. He could get through
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Speaker 1: ten hours a day now without inconvenience. What you do,
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Speaker 1: said Esmere abruptly. Oh, no end of work. There's all
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Speaker 1: the estate and looking after things. But publicly. I asked
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Speaker 1: three questions yesterday, and for one of them I had
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Speaker 1: to consult nine books. We were drifting. I could see
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Speaker 1: towards doctor Haynes's system of dietary and whether the exclusion
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Speaker 1: or inclusion of fish and chicken were most conducive to
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Speaker 1: high efficiency. When Britain, who had refused lemonade and claret
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Speaker 1: and demanded Burgundy, broke out and was discovered to be
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Speaker 1: demanding in his throat. Just what we young liberals thought
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Speaker 1: we were up to? I want, said Britain, repeating his
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Speaker 1: challenge a little louder to hear. Just exactly what you
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Speaker 1: think you're doing in parliament. Lewis laughed nervously and thought
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Speaker 1: we were seeking the good of the community. Oh, beneficient legislation,
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Speaker 1: said Lewis. Beneficient in what direction? Insisted Britain. I want
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Speaker 1: to know where you think you're going amelioration of social conditions,
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Speaker 1: said Lewis. That's only a phrase. You wouldn't have me
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Speaker 1: sketch bills at dinner. I'd like you to indicate directions,
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Speaker 1: said Britain, and waited upward and on, said Louis with
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Speaker 1: conscious neatness, and turned to ask Missus bunting Harblow about
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Speaker 1: her little boy's French. For a time talk frothed over
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Speaker 1: Britain's head, but the natural mischief in Missus Millingham had
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Speaker 1: been stirred, and she was presently echoing his demand in
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Speaker 1: lisping quasi confidential undertones. What are we liberals doing? Then
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Speaker 1: Esmere fell in with the revolutionaries to begin with. I
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Speaker 1: was a little shocked by this clamor for fundamentals, and
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Speaker 1: a little disconcerted. I had the experience that I suppose
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Speaker 1: comes to every one at times of discovering oneself together
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Speaker 1: with two different sets of people, with whom one has
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Speaker 1: maintained two different sets of attitudes. It had always been
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Speaker 1: I perceived an instinctive suppression in our circle that we
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Speaker 1: shouldn't be more than vague about our political ideals. It
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Speaker 1: had almost become part of my morality to respect this convention.
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Speaker 1: It was understood we were all working hard and keeping
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Speaker 1: ourselves fit, tremendously fit under Altiora's inspiration pro bono publico.
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Speaker 1: Bunting Harblow had his under secretaryship, and Lewis was on
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Speaker 1: the verge of the cabinet, and these things we considered
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Speaker 1: to be in the nature of confirmations. It added to
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Speaker 1: the discomfort of the situation that these plunging inquiries were
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Speaker 1: being made in the presence of our wives. The rebel
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Speaker 1: section of our party forced the talk Edward Crampton was
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Speaker 1: presently declaring, I forget in what relation the country is
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Speaker 1: with us. My long controlled hatred of the Crampton stereotyped
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Speaker 1: phrases about the country in the house got the better
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Speaker 1: of me. I showed my cloven hoof to my friends
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Speaker 1: for the first time. We don't respect the country as
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Speaker 1: we used to do, I said, we haven't the same
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Speaker 1: belief we used to have in the will of the people.
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Speaker 1: It's no good Crampton trying to keep that up. We
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Speaker 1: liberals know, as a matter of fact, nowadays every one
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Speaker 1: knows that the monster that brought us into power has,
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Speaker 1: among other deficiencies, no head. We've got to give it
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Speaker 1: one if possible, with brains and a will that lies
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Speaker 1: in the future. For the present, if the country is
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Speaker 1: with us, it means merely that we happen to have
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Speaker 1: hold of its tether. Lewis was shocked. A mandate from
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Speaker 1: the country was sacred to his system of pretenses. Britain
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Speaker 1: wasn't subdued by his first rebuff. Presently he was at
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Speaker 1: us again. There were several attempts to check his outbreak
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Speaker 1: of interrogation. I remember the Cramptons asked questions about the
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Speaker 1: welfare of various cousins of Lewis who were unknown to
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Speaker 1: the rest of us. And Margaret tried to engage Britain
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Speaker 1: in the sympathetic discussion of the Arts and Crafts exhibition,
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Speaker 1: but Britain and Zma were persistent. Missus Millingham was mischievous,
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Speaker 1: and in the end our rising hopes of young liberalism
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Speaker 1: took to their thickets for good, while we talked all
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Speaker 1: over them of the prevalent vacuity of political intentions. Margaret
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Speaker 1: was perplexed by me. It is only now I perceive
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Speaker 1: just how perplexing I must have been. Of course, she said,
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Speaker 1: with that faint stress of apprehension. In her eyes, one
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Speaker 1: must have aims, and it isn't always easy to put
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Speaker 1: everything into phrases. Don't be long, said Missus Edward Crampton
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Speaker 1: to her husband as the wives trooped out, And afterwards,
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Speaker 1: when we went upstairs, I had an indefinable persuasion that
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Speaker 1: the ladies had been criticizing Britain's share in our talk
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Speaker 1: altogether unfavorable spirit. Missus Edward evidently thought him aggressive and impertinent,
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Speaker 1: and Margaret, with a quiet firmness that brook no resistance,
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Speaker 1: took him at once into a corner and showed him
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Speaker 1: Italian photographs by Cockburn. We dispersed early. I walked with
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Speaker 1: Britain along the Chelsea back streets towards Battersea Bridge. He
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Speaker 1: lodged on the south side. Missus Millingham's a dear he began.
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Speaker 1: She's a dear being in power. I liked her demand
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Speaker 1: for a handsome because a four wheeler was too safe.
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Speaker 1: She was worked up. I said, she's a woman of
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Speaker 1: faultless character, but her instincts, as Alsiora would say, are
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Speaker 1: anarchistic when she gives them a chance, so she takes
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Speaker 1: it out in handsome cabs. Handsome cabs. She's wise, said Britain.
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Speaker 1: I hope Remington, He went on, after a pause. I
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Speaker 1: didn't rag your other guests to much of a sort
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Speaker 1: of feeling at moments, Remmington, those chaps are so infernally
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Speaker 1: not bloody. It's part of a man's duty sometimes at
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Speaker 1: least to eat red beef and get drunk. How was
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Speaker 1: he to understand government? If he doesn't, it scares me
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Speaker 1: to think of your lot by sort of misapprehension, being
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Speaker 1: in power, a kind of neralgia in the head, by
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Speaker 1: way of government. I don't understand where you come in.
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Speaker 1: Those others, they're no lusts. Their ideal is anemia. You
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Speaker 1: and I we had at least a lust to take
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Speaker 1: hold of life and make something of it. They they
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Speaker 1: want to take hold of life and make nothing of it.
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Speaker 1: They want to cut out all the stimulants, just as
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Speaker 1: though life was anything else but a reaction to stimulation.
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Speaker 1: He began to talk of his own life. He had
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Speaker 1: had ill fortune through most of it. He was poor
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Speaker 1: and unsuccessful, and a girl he had been very fond
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Speaker 1: of had been attacked and killed by a horse in
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Speaker 1: a field in a very horrible manner. These things had
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Speaker 1: wounded and tortured him, but they hadn't broken him. They had,
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Speaker 1: it seemed to me, made a kind of crippled and
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Speaker 1: ugly demigod of him. He was, I began to perceive
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Speaker 1: so much better than I had any right to expect.
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Speaker 1: At first, I had been rather struck by his unkempt look,
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Speaker 1: and it made my reaction all the stronger. There was
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Speaker 1: about him, something, a kind of raw and bleeding faith
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Speaker 1: in the deep things of life that stirred me profoundly
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Speaker 1: as he showed it. My set of people had irritated
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Speaker 1: him and disappointed him. I discovered at his touch how
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Speaker 1: they irritated him. He reproached me boldly. He made me
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Speaker 1: feel ashamed of my easy acquiescences as I walked in
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Speaker 1: my sleek, tall, neatness, beside his rather old coat, his
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Speaker 1: rather battered hat, his sturdier, shorter shape, and listened to
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Speaker 1: his denunciations of our self satisfied new liberalism and progressivism.
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Speaker 1: It has the same relation to progress, the reality of progress,
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Speaker 1: that the things they paint on door panels in the
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Speaker 1: suburbs have to art and beauty. There's a sort of filiation.
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Speaker 1: Your altior is just the political equivalent of the ladies
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Speaker 1: who sell trace cloth for embroidery. She's a dealer in
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Speaker 1: refined social reform for the parlor. The real progress. Remington
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Speaker 1: is a graver thing, and a painfuller thing, and a
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Speaker 1: slower thing altogether. Look that, and he pointed to where
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Speaker 1: under a boarding, in the light of a gas lamp,
20:36
Speaker 1: a dingy prostitute stood lurking was in Babylon and ninevah,
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Speaker 1: your little lot, make believe there won't be anything of
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Speaker 1: the sort after this parliament. They're going to vanish in
20:46
Speaker 1: a few top notes from Altiore or a Bailey Remington.
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Speaker 1: It's foolery, it's prigs at play, it's make believe. Make
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Speaker 1: believe your people there haven't got hold of things, need
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Speaker 1: to get hold of things. Don't know anything of life
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Speaker 1: at all. Shirk life, avoid life, Get in little, bright,
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Speaker 1: clean rooms and talk big over your bumpers of lemonade,
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Speaker 1: while the night goes by outside untouched. Those cramped and
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Speaker 1: fools slink by all this, he waved at the woman again.
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Speaker 1: Pretend it doesn't exist or is going to be banished
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Speaker 1: root and branch by an act to keep children in
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Speaker 1: the wet outside public houses. Do you think they really care, Remington,
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Speaker 1: I don't. It's make believe. What they want to do.
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Speaker 1: What Lewis wants to do, what missus Bunting Harblow wants
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Speaker 1: her husband to do, is to sit and field very
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Speaker 1: grave and necessary and respected on the government benches. They
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Speaker 1: think of putting their feet out like statesmen and tilting
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Speaker 1: shiny hats with becoming brims down over their successful noses,
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Speaker 1: presentation portrait to a club at fifty. That's the reality.
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Speaker 1: That's their scope. They don't. It's manifest want to think
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Speaker 1: beyond that. The things there are, Remington, they'll never face
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Speaker 1: the wonder and the depth of life, lust and the
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Speaker 1: night's sky pain. But the good intention, I pleaded, the
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Speaker 1: good will sentimentality, said Britain. No good will is anything
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Speaker 1: but dishonesty unless it frets and burns and hurts and
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Speaker 1: destroys a man. That lot of yours have nothing but
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Speaker 1: a good will to think they have good will? Do
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Speaker 1: you think they lie awake of nights, searching their hearts
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Speaker 1: as we do. Lewis Crampton, or those neat and marring,
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Speaker 1: satisfied little wives. See how they shrank from the probe.
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Speaker 1: We all, I said, shrink from the probe, God help us,
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Speaker 1: said Britain. We are but vermin at the best Remington,
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Speaker 1: he broke out, and the greatest saint, only a worm
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Speaker 1: that has lifted its head for a moment from the dust.
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Speaker 1: We are damned, We are meant to be damned, coral
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Speaker 1: animal Couli building upward, upward, in a sea of damn nation.
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Speaker 1: But of all the damned things that ever were damned,
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Speaker 1: your damned, shirking temperament, sham efficient, self satisfied, respectable, make believe, fabian, spirited,
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Speaker 1: young liberal is the utterly damnadist. He paused for a
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Speaker 1: moment and resumed in an entirely different note, Which is
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Speaker 1: why I was so surprised, Remington, to find you in
23:34
Speaker 1: this set. You're just the old plunger used to be britten,
23:39
Speaker 1: I said, You're going too far with all your might
23:42
Speaker 1: for the sake of the dams, like a donkey that
23:45
Speaker 1: drags its cart up a bank to get thistles. There's
23:48
Speaker 1: depth in liberalism. We were talking about liberals, liberty, liberty.
23:54
Speaker 1: What do your little lot know of liberty? What does
23:58
Speaker 1: any little lot know of liberty? It waits outside, too
24:02
Speaker 1: big for our understanding, Like the night and the stars
24:06
Speaker 1: and lust, Remington, Lust and bitterness. Don't I know them?
24:11
Speaker 1: With all the sweetness and hope of life bitten and trampled,
24:15
Speaker 1: the dear eyes and the brain that loved and understood,
24:19
Speaker 1: and my poor mumble of a life going on, and
24:23
Speaker 1: within sight of being a drunkard Remington, I'm a failure
24:26
Speaker 1: by most standards. Life has cut me to the bone,
24:30
Speaker 1: but I'm not afraid of it any more. I've paid
24:33
Speaker 1: something of the price. I've seemed something of the meaning.
24:37
Speaker 1: He flew off at a tangent. I'd rather dined delirium tremends,
24:42
Speaker 1: he cried, than be a Crampton or a Lewis. Make believe,
24:48
Speaker 1: Make believe. The phrase and britten squat gestures haunted me
24:53
Speaker 1: as I walked homeward alone. I went to my room
24:57
Speaker 1: and stood before my desk and surveyed papers and files
25:01
Speaker 1: and Margaret's admirable equipment of me. I perceived, in the
25:06
Speaker 1: lurid light of Britain's suggestions, that so it was mister
25:10
Speaker 1: George Alexander would have mounted a statesman's private room. Three.
25:17
Speaker 1: I was never, at any stage a loyal party man.
25:21
Speaker 1: I doubt if party will ever again be the force
25:23
Speaker 1: it was during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Men are
25:27
Speaker 1: becoming increasingly constructive and selective, less patient under tradition and
25:33
Speaker 1: the bondage of initial circumstances. As education becomes more universal
25:38
Speaker 1: and liberating, men will sort themselves more and more by
25:42
Speaker 1: their intellectual temperaments, and less and less by their accidental associations.
25:48
Speaker 1: The past will rule them less, the future more. It
25:52
Speaker 1: is not simply party, but school and college and county
25:55
Speaker 1: and country that lose their glamour. One does not hear
25:59
Speaker 1: nearly as much as our forefathers did of the old Herovian,
26:03
Speaker 1: old Harvonian, old Etonian claim to this or that unfair
26:08
Speaker 1: advantage or unearned sympathy. Even the Scotch and the Devonians
26:13
Speaker 1: weaken a little in their clannishness. A widening sense of
26:18
Speaker 1: fair play destroys such things. They follow freemasonry down, freemasonry
26:24
Speaker 1: of which one is chiefly reminded nowadays in England by
26:27
Speaker 1: propitiatory symbols outside shady public houses. There is, of course,
26:33
Speaker 1: a type of man which clings very obstinately to party ties.
26:38
Speaker 1: These are the men with strong reproductive imaginations and no
26:42
Speaker 1: imaginative initiative. Such men as cladding Bowl, for example, or Dayton,
26:48
Speaker 1: they are the scholars at large in life. For them,
26:51
Speaker 1: the fact that the party system has been essentral in
26:54
Speaker 1: the history of England for two hundred years gives it
26:58
Speaker 1: an overwhelming glamor. They have read histories and memoirs. They
27:02
Speaker 1: see the great gray pile of Westminster, not so much
27:06
Speaker 1: for what it is as for what it was. Rich
27:09
Speaker 1: with dramatic memories, populous with glorious ghosts, phrasing itself inevitably
27:15
Speaker 1: in anecdotes and quotations. It seems almost scandalous that new
27:20
Speaker 1: things should continue to happen, swamping with strange qualities. The
27:25
Speaker 1: savor of these old associations that Ramsay mac donald should
27:30
Speaker 1: walk through Westminster Hall thrust himself it may be through
27:34
Speaker 1: the very piece of space that once held Charles the
27:36
Speaker 1: martyr pleading for his life, seems horrible profanation. To Dayton,
27:41
Speaker 1: a last posthumous outrage, and he would, I think, like
27:45
Speaker 1: to have the front benches left empty now forever, or
27:48
Speaker 1: at most adorned with laureated ivory tablets. Here Dizzy sat,
27:53
Speaker 1: and on this spot William Ewart Gladstone made his first
27:56
Speaker 1: Budget's speech. Failing this, he demanded, if only as signs
28:01
Speaker 1: of modesty and respect on the part of the survivors
28:04
Speaker 1: meticulous imitation. Mister g he Murmurs would not have done that,
28:11
Speaker 1: and laments a vanished subtlety. Even while mister Evesham is speaking,
28:16
Speaker 1: he is always gloomily disposed to lapse into wonderings about
28:19
Speaker 1: what things are coming to, wonderings that have no grain
28:23
Speaker 1: of curiosity. His conception of perfect conduct is industrious persistence
28:29
Speaker 1: along the worn down, well marked grooves of the great
28:32
Speaker 1: recorded days. So infinitely more important to him is a documented,
28:38
Speaker 1: respected thing than the elusive present. Cladding Bowl and Dayton
28:43
Speaker 1: do not shine in the house, though cladding Bowl is
28:46
Speaker 1: a sound man on a committee, and Dayton keeps the
28:49
Speaker 1: Old Country Gazette, the most gentlemanly paper in London. They prevail, however,
28:55
Speaker 1: in their clubs at lunch time. There, with the pleasant
28:59
Speaker 1: consciousness of a morning's work, free from either zeal or shirking,
29:04
Speaker 1: they mingle with permanent officials, prominent lawyers, even a few
29:08
Speaker 1: of the sober type of business men, and relax their
29:12
Speaker 1: minds in the discussion of the morning paper, of the
29:15
Speaker 1: architecture of the West End, and of the latest public
29:18
Speaker 1: appointments of golf, of holiday resorts, of the last, judicial
29:23
Speaker 1: witticisms and forensic crushers. The New Year and birthday honours
29:29
Speaker 1: lists are always very sagely and exhaustively considered, and anecdotes
29:34
Speaker 1: are popular and keenly judged. They do not talk of
29:38
Speaker 1: the things that are really active in their minds, but
29:41
Speaker 1: in the formal and habitual manner they suppose to be
29:44
Speaker 1: proper to intelligent but still honorable men. Socialism, individual money, matters,
29:51
Speaker 1: and religion are forbidden topics and sex and women only
29:54
Speaker 1: in so far as they appear in the law courts.
29:58
Speaker 1: It is to me the strangest of ca coves, this
30:01
Speaker 1: assumption of unreal loyalties and traditional respects, this repudiation and
30:07
Speaker 1: concealment of passionate interests. It is like wearing gloves in
30:11
Speaker 1: summer fields, or bathing in a gown, or falling in
30:15
Speaker 1: love with the heroine of a novel, or writing under
30:18
Speaker 1: a pseudonym, or becoming a masked ture egg. It is
30:22
Speaker 1: not I think that men of my species are insensitive
30:25
Speaker 1: to the great past that is embodied in Westminster and
30:28
Speaker 1: its traditions. We are not so much wanting in the
30:31
Speaker 1: historical sense, as alive to the greatness of our present
30:35
Speaker 1: opportunities and the still vaster future that is possible to us.
30:41
Speaker 1: London is the most interesting, beautiful and wonderful city in
30:44
Speaker 1: the world to me, delicate in her incidental and multitudinous littleness,
30:50
Speaker 1: and stupendous in her pregnant totality. I cannot bring myself
30:54
Speaker 1: to use her as a museum or an old bookshop.
30:58
Speaker 1: When I think of Whitehall, that little affair on the
31:01
Speaker 1: scaffold outside the banqueting Hall seems trivial and remote in
31:05
Speaker 1: comparison with the possibilities that offer themselves to my imagination
31:10
Speaker 1: within the great gray government buildings close at hand. It
31:14
Speaker 1: gives me a qualm of nostalgia even to name those places. Now,
31:19
Speaker 1: I think of Saint Stephen's Tower, streaming upwards into the
31:22
Speaker 1: misty London night, and the great wet quadrangle of New
31:26
Speaker 1: Palace Yard, from which the handsome cabs of my first
31:29
Speaker 1: experiences were asked in more and more by taxi cabs.
31:34
Speaker 1: As the Second Parliament of King Edward the seventh aged,
31:38
Speaker 1: I think of the Admiralty and War Office, with their
31:40
Speaker 1: tall marcone masts sending out invisible threads of direction, to
31:45
Speaker 1: the armies in the camps, to great fleets about the world.
31:49
Speaker 1: The crowded, darkly shining river goes flooding through my memory
31:54
Speaker 1: once again, on to those narrow seas that part us
31:57
Speaker 1: from our rival nations. I see quadrangles and corridors of spacious,
32:03
Speaker 1: gray toned offices, in which undistinguished little men and little
32:07
Speaker 1: files of papers link us to islands in the tropics,
32:11
Speaker 1: to frozen wildernesses gashed for gold, to vast temple studded plains,
32:17
Speaker 1: to forest worlds and mountain worlds, to ports and fortresses
32:21
Speaker 1: and lighthouses and watch towers, and grazing lands and corn lands,
32:26
Speaker 1: all about the globe. Once more, I traverse Victorious Street,
32:32
Speaker 1: grimy and dark, where the agents of the Empire jostle
32:36
Speaker 1: one another, past the big embassies in the West End
32:39
Speaker 1: with their flags and scutcheons. Follow the broad avenue that
32:43
Speaker 1: leads to Buckingham Palace. Witness the coming and going of
32:47
Speaker 1: troops and officials and guests along it from every land
32:51
Speaker 1: on Earth. Interwoven in the texture of it all, mocking, perplexing, stimulating,
32:58
Speaker 1: beyond measure, is the gleaming consciousness, the challenging knowledge you
33:03
Speaker 1: and your kind might still, if you could but grasp it.
33:07
Speaker 1: Here mold all the destiny of man. Four. My first
33:14
Speaker 1: three years in Parliament were years of active discontent. The
33:18
Speaker 1: little group of younger Liberals to which I belonged was
33:22
Speaker 1: very ignorant of the traditions and qualities of our older leaders,
33:26
Speaker 1: and quite out of touch with the mass of the party.
33:30
Speaker 1: For a time Parliament was enormously taken up with moribundissues
33:34
Speaker 1: and old quarrels. The early educational legislation was sectarian and unenterprising,
33:41
Speaker 1: and the licensing Bill went little further than the attempted
33:44
Speaker 1: rectification of a conservative mistake. I was altogether for the
33:50
Speaker 1: nationalization of the public houses, and of this end the
33:53
Speaker 1: bill gave no intimations. It was just beer baiting. I
33:58
Speaker 1: was reculcitrant almost from the beginning, and spoke against the
34:02
Speaker 1: government so early as the second reading of the first
34:05
Speaker 1: education Bill, the one the lords rejected in nineteen o six.
34:11
Speaker 1: I went a little beyond my intention in the heat
34:13
Speaker 1: of speaking it is away with inexperienced man. I called
34:18
Speaker 1: the bill timid, narrow, a mere sop to the jealousies
34:21
Speaker 1: of sect and little minded people. I contrasted its aim
34:26
Speaker 1: and methods with the manifest needs of the time. I
34:30
Speaker 1: am not a particularly good speaker, after the manner of
34:34
Speaker 1: a writer. I worry to find my meaning too much,
34:38
Speaker 1: but this was one of my successes. I spoke after
34:42
Speaker 1: dinner and to a fairly full house, for people were
34:44
Speaker 1: already a little curious about me because of my writings.
34:49
Speaker 1: Several of the Conservative leaders were present and stayed, and
34:53
Speaker 1: mister Evesham, I remember, came ostentatiously to hear me, with
34:57
Speaker 1: that engaging friendliness of his gave me at the first chance.
35:01
Speaker 1: And approving here here I can still recall quite distinctly
35:06
Speaker 1: my too futile attempts to catch the speaker's eye before
35:10
Speaker 1: I was able to begin the nervous quiver of my
35:14
Speaker 1: rather too prepared opening, the effect of hearing my own voice,
35:18
Speaker 1: and my subconscious wonder as to what I could possibly
35:21
Speaker 1: be talking about, the realization that I was getting on
35:25
Speaker 1: fairly well, the immense satisfaction afterwards of having on the
35:29
Speaker 1: whole brought it off, and the absurd gratitude I felt
35:33
Speaker 1: for that encouraging cheer. Addressing the House of Commons is
35:38
Speaker 1: like no other public speaking in the world. Its semi
35:41
Speaker 1: colloquial methods give it an air of being easy, but
35:45
Speaker 1: its shifting audience, the comings and goings and hesitations of
35:49
Speaker 1: members behind the chair, not mere audience units, but men
35:53
Speaker 1: who matter. The desolating emptiness that spreads itself round the
35:58
Speaker 1: man who fells to interest, the little compact, disciplined crowd
36:02
Speaker 1: in the stranger's gallery. The light, elusive, flickering movements high
36:07
Speaker 1: up behind the grill, the wiged, attentive, weary speaker, the
36:12
Speaker 1: table and the mace, and the chapeled likeke gothic background
36:15
Speaker 1: with its somber shadows conspire together produce a confused, uncertain
36:21
Speaker 1: feeling in me, as though I was walking upon a
36:24
Speaker 1: pavement full of trap doors and patches of uncovered morass.
36:29
Speaker 1: A misplaced well meant here here is apt to be
36:33
Speaker 1: extraordinarily disconcerting, And under no other circumstances have I had
36:38
Speaker 1: to speak with quite the same sideways twist that the
36:41
Speaker 1: arrangement of the house imposes. One does not recognize one's
36:46
Speaker 1: own voice threading out into the stirring brown, unless I
36:51
Speaker 1: was excited or speaking to the mind of some particular
36:54
Speaker 1: person in the house. I was apt to lose my
36:56
Speaker 1: feeling of an auditor. I had no sense of wi
37:00
Speaker 1: that my sentences were going, such as one has with
37:02
Speaker 1: a public meeting well under one's eye. And to lose
37:06
Speaker 1: one's sense of an auditor is for a man of
37:09
Speaker 1: my temperament to lose one's sense of the immediate, and
37:13
Speaker 1: to become prolixs and vague with qualifications. End of Chapter nine,
37:19
Speaker 1: Section one,