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Certain Personal Matters - The Pleasure of Quarrelling · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty five of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Greg Giardano. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: Chapter thirty five. The pleasure of quarreling. Your cultivated man
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  Speaker 1: is apt to pity the respectable poor on the score
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  Speaker 1: of their lack of small excitements, and even in the
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  Speaker 1: excess of his generous sympathy to go a toinbee howling
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  Speaker 1: in their case. And Sir Walter Basant once wrote a
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  Speaker 1: book about Hoxton, saying, among other things, how monotonous life
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  Speaker 1: was there? That is your modern fallacy respecting the lower
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  Speaker 1: middle class. One might multiply instances. The tenor of the
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  Speaker 1: pity is always the same. No music, says the cultivated man,
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  Speaker 1: no pictures, no books to read, nor leisure to read it.
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  Speaker 1: How can they pass their lives? The answer is simple enough,
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  Speaker 1: as Emily Brontegnau, They quarrel, and an excellent way of
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  Speaker 1: passing the time. It is so excellent, indeed, that the
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  Speaker 1: pity were better inverted. But we all lack the knowledge
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  Speaker 1: of our chiefest needs in the first place, and mainly
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  Speaker 1: it is hygienic to quarrel. It disengages floods of nervous energy.
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  Speaker 1: The pulse quickens, the breathing is accelerated, the digestion improved.
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  Speaker 1: Then it sets one stagnant brains astir and quickens the imagination.
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  Speaker 1: It clears the mind of vapors as thunder clears the air,
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  Speaker 1: And finally, is a natural function of the body. In
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  Speaker 1: his natural state, man is always quarreling by instinct. Not
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  Speaker 1: to quarrel is indeed one of the vices of our civilization,
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  Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we are neurotic and anemic,
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  Speaker 1: and all these things. And at last our enfeebler palates
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  Speaker 1: have even lost the capacity for enjoying a jolly good row.
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  Speaker 1: There can be no more melancholy sight in the world
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  Speaker 1: than that of your young man or young woman suffering
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  Speaker 1: from suppressed pugnacity. Up to the end of the school years,
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  Speaker 1: it was well with them. They had ample scope for
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  Speaker 1: this wholesome commerce, the neat give and take of offense.
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  Speaker 1: In the family circle, too, there are still but the
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  Speaker 1: full chances of acquiring the taste. Then suddenly they must
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  Speaker 1: be gentle and considerate, and all the rest of it
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  Speaker 1: a wholesome shindy. So soon as toga and long skirts
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  Speaker 1: arrive is looked upon as positively wrong. Even the dear
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  Speaker 1: old institution of the cut is falling into disrepute. The
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  Speaker 1: quarreling is all forced back into the system, as it were.
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  Speaker 1: It poisons the blood. This is why our literature grows
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  Speaker 1: sinister and bitter, and our daughters yearn after this and
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  Speaker 1: that write odd books and ride about on bicycles and
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  Speaker 1: remarkable clothes. They have shut down the safety valve. They
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  Speaker 1: suffer from the present lamentable increase of gentleness. They must
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  Speaker 1: find some outlet or perish. If they could only put
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  Speaker 1: their arms akimbo and tell each other a piece of
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  Speaker 1: their minds for a little in the ancient way, there
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  Speaker 1: can be not the slightest doubt that much of this
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  Speaker 1: funde siecla unwholesomeness would disappear. Possibly his fashion of gentleness
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  Speaker 1: will pass, Yet it has had increasing sway now for
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  Speaker 1: some years. An unhealthy generation has arisen among the more
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  Speaker 1: educated class. At least the quarrels little regards the function
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  Speaker 1: as a vice or a nuisance, as the east ender
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  Speaker 1: does a taste for fine art or literature. We seem,
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  Speaker 1: indeed to be getting altogether out of the way of it.
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  Speaker 1: Rare quarrels, no doubt, occur to everyone. But rare quarreling
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  Speaker 1: is no quarreling at all. Like beer, smoking, sea bathing, cycling,
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  Speaker 1: and the like delights. You cannot judge of quarreling by
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  Speaker 1: the early essay. But to show how good it is,
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  Speaker 1: did you ever know a quarrelsome person give up the
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  Speaker 1: use alcohol. You may wean a man from and Barry
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  Speaker 1: says he gave up the Arcadia mixture, and de Quincey
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  Speaker 1: conquered opium. But once you are set as a quarreler,
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  Speaker 1: you quarrel and quarrel till you die. How to quarrel
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  Speaker 1: well and often has ever been something of an art,
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  Speaker 1: And it becomes more of an art with the general
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  Speaker 1: decline of spirit, for it takes two to make a quarrel.
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  Speaker 1: Time was when you turn to the handiest human being,
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  Speaker 1: and with small care or labor, had the comfortable warmth
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  Speaker 1: you needed in a minute or so. There was theology.
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  Speaker 1: Even in the fifties. It was ample, cause with two
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  Speaker 1: out of three you met. Now people will express a
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  Speaker 1: lamentable indifference in politics again but a little while ago.
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  Speaker 1: Fat for the fire of any male gathering is now
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  Speaker 1: a topic of mere tapidity. So you were forced to
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  Speaker 1: be more subtle, more patient in your quarreling. You play
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  Speaker 1: like a little boy playing cricket with his sisters. With
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  Speaker 1: those who do not understand a fellow, voucherie is a
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  Speaker 1: rare treat. As a rule, you have to lure and
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  Speaker 1: humor your antagonist like a child. The wooing is as
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  Speaker 1: intricate and delicate as any wooing can well be. To
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  Speaker 1: quarrel now, indeed, requires an infinity of patience. The good
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  Speaker 1: old days of thumb biting, Do you bite your thumbs
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  Speaker 1: at us, sir? And so to clash and stab are
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  Speaker 1: gone forever. There are certain principles in quarreling, however, that
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  Speaker 1: the true quarrel ever bears in mind, in which duly
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  Speaker 1: observed do much to facilitate encounters in the first place,
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  Speaker 1: cultivate distrust. Have always before you that this is a
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  Speaker 1: wicked world full of insidious people, and you never know
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  Speaker 1: what villainous encroachments upon you may be hidden under fair
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  Speaker 1: seeming appearances. That is the flavor of it. At the
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  Speaker 1: first suspicion, Stick up for your rights, as the vulgar say,
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  Speaker 1: and see that you do it suddenly, smite promptly, and
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  Speaker 1: the surprise and sting of your unjust this should provoke
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  Speaker 1: an excellent reply. And where there is at least ground
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  Speaker 1: for suspicion, there remember is the most the right handed
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  Speaker 1: fellowship extended towards you is one of the best openings
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  Speaker 1: you have. Not such a fool is the kind of
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  Speaker 1: attitude to assume. And you don't put upon me so easy.
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  Speaker 1: Your adversary resents this a little, and Rankling tries to explain.
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  Speaker 1: You find a personal inference in the expostulation, next to
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  Speaker 1: a wariness respecting your interests is a keen regard for
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  Speaker 1: your honor. Have concealed in the privacy of your mind,
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  Speaker 1: a code of what is due to you. Expand or
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  Speaker 1: modify it as occasion offers, be as it were, a
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  Speaker 1: collector of what you are called slights, and never let
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  Speaker 1: one pass you. Watch your friend indoorways passages, when he
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  Speaker 1: eats by you, when he drinks with you, when he
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  Speaker 1: addresses you, when you write you letters. It will be
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  Speaker 1: hard if you cannot catch him smuggling some deadly insult
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  Speaker 1: into your presence, tax him with it. He did not
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  Speaker 1: think forsooth, tell him no gentleman would do such a
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  Speaker 1: thing thinkingly or not, that you certainly will not stand it. Again,
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  Speaker 1: say you will show him. He will presently argue or
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  Speaker 1: contradict so to your climax. Then again there is the
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  Speaker 1: personal reference, meaning me, sir, your victim with a blithe heart,
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  Speaker 1: babbles of this or that. You let him in meander
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  Speaker 1: here and there, watching him as if you were in ambush.
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  Speaker 1: Presently he comes into your spring. Of course, you say,
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  Speaker 1: I saw what you were driving at just this minute
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  Speaker 1: when you mentioned mustard and salad dressing. But if I
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  Speaker 1: am peppery, I am not mean. And if I have
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  Speaker 1: a thing to say, I say it straight out. A
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  Speaker 1: good gamb at this, and well unto him from the start.
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  Speaker 1: The particular beauty of this is that you get him
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  Speaker 1: apologetic at first, and can score heavily before he rises
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  Speaker 1: to the defensive. Then finally there is your abstract cause,
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  Speaker 1: once very fruitful, indeed, but now sadly gone in decay,
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  Speaker 1: except perhaps in specialist society. As an example, let there
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  Speaker 1: be one who is giving genially at some topic or other.
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  Speaker 1: At Japanese King crabs, or the inductive process, or any
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  Speaker 1: other topic which cannot possibly affect you one atom. Then
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  Speaker 1: is the time to drop all these merely selfish interests,
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  Speaker 1: and to champion the cause of truth. Fall upon him
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  Speaker 1: a fine glow of indignation, and bring your contradiction across
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  Speaker 1: his face. Whack, so that all that he will may hear.
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  Speaker 1: Tell him with his pardon that the king crab is
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  Speaker 1: no more a crab than you are a jellyfish, Or
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  Speaker 1: that mill has been superseded these ten years. Ask how
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  Speaker 1: can you say such things? From thence, to his general
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  Speaker 1: knowledge is a short flight, and so to his veracity,
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  Speaker 1: his reasoning powers, his mere common sense. Let me tell you, sir,
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  Speaker 1: is the special incantation for the storm. These are the
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  Speaker 1: four chief ways of quarreling, the four gates to this
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  Speaker 1: delightful city. For it is delightful once your prentice days
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  Speaker 1: are pasted. In a way, it is like a cold
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  Speaker 1: bath on a winter's morning, and you glow all day.
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  Speaker 1: In a way is like football, as the nimble aggravation
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  Speaker 1: dances to and fro. In a way is like chess. Indeed,
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  Speaker 1: all games of skill are watered quarrels, quarrel and soda.
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  Speaker 1: Come to see them in a proper light, and without quarreling,
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  Speaker 1: you have not fully appreciated your fellow man. For in
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  Speaker 1: the ultimate is the train and compli meant of love,
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  Speaker 1: the shadow that rounds off the delight we take in
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  Speaker 1: poor humanity. It is the vinegar and pepper of existence.
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  Speaker 1: And long after our taste for sweets is vanished, it
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  Speaker 1: will be the solace of our declining years. End of
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  Speaker 1: chapter thirty five. Recording by Greg Giardano, Newport, Ritchey, Florida.