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The New Machiavelli Chapter 11 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter eleven 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 Secession one. At last, out of a vast accumulation
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Speaker 1: of impressions, decision distilled. Quite suddenly. I succumbed to Evesham,
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Speaker 1: and that dream of the right thing triumphant through expression.
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Speaker 1: I determined I would go over to the Conservatives and
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Speaker 1: use my every gift and power on the side of
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Speaker 1: such forces on that side as made for educational reorganization,
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Speaker 1: scientific research, literature, criticism, and intellectual development. That was in
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Speaker 1: nineteen o nine. I judged the Tories who were driving
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Speaker 1: straight at a conflict with the country, and I thought
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Speaker 1: them bound to incur an electoral defeat. I underestimated their
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Speaker 1: strength in the county they would follow. I calculated a
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Speaker 1: period of profound reconstruction in method and policy alike. I
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Speaker 1: was entirely at one with Krupp in perceiving in this
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Speaker 1: an immense opportunity for the things we desired. An aristocracy
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Speaker 1: quickened by conflict and on the defensive, and full of
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Speaker 1: the idea of justification by reconstruction, might prove altogether more
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Speaker 1: apt for thought and high professions than missus Redmonson's spoilt children.
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Speaker 1: Behind the now inevitable struggle for a form of the
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Speaker 1: House of Lords, there would be great heart searchings and
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Speaker 1: educational endeavor on that we reckoned. At last, we talked
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Speaker 1: it out to the practical Pitch and Crupp and Shuesmith,
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Speaker 1: and I am gain made our definite agreement together. I
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Speaker 1: emerged from enormous silences upon Margaret one evening. She was
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Speaker 1: just back from the display of some new music at
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Speaker 1: the Hartstein's. I remember she wore a dress of gold
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Speaker 1: and satin, very rich looking and splendid. About her slender
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Speaker 1: neck there was a rope of gold set amber beads.
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Speaker 1: Her hair caught up and echoed and returned these golden notes.
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Speaker 1: I too was in an evening dress, but where I
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Speaker 1: had been escapes me some forgotten dinner. I suppose I
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Speaker 1: went into her room. I remember I didn't speak for
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Speaker 1: some moments. I went across to the window and pulled
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Speaker 1: the blind aside, and looked out upon the rail garden
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Speaker 1: of the square, with its shrubs and shadowed turf, gleaming
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Speaker 1: pallidly and irregularly in the light of the big electric
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Speaker 1: standard in the corner. Margaret, I said, I think I
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Speaker 1: shall break with the party. She made no answer. I
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Speaker 1: turned presently a movement of inquiry. I was afraid you
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Speaker 1: meant to do that, she said. I'm out of touch,
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Speaker 1: I explained altogether. Oh I know it places me in
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Speaker 1: a difficult position, I said. Margaret stood at her dressing table,
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Speaker 1: looking steadfastly at herself in the glass, and with her
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Speaker 1: fingers playing with a litter of stoppered bottles of tinted glass.
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Speaker 1: I was afraid it was coming to this, she said,
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Speaker 1: in a way. I said, we've been allies. I owe
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Speaker 1: my seat to you. I couldn't have gone into parliament.
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Speaker 1: I don't want considerations like that to affect us, she interrupted.
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Speaker 1: There was a pause. She sat down in a chair
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Speaker 1: by her dressing table, lifted an ivory hand glass and
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Speaker 1: put it down again. I wish, she said, with something
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Speaker 1: like a sob in her voice, it were possible that
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Speaker 1: you shouldn't do this. She stopped abruptly, and I did
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Speaker 1: not look at her, because I could feel the effort
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Speaker 1: she was making to control herself. I thought, she began again,
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Speaker 1: when you came into parliament. There came another silence. It's
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Speaker 1: all gone so differently, she said, Everything has gone so differently.
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Speaker 1: I had a sudden memory of her shining triumphant after
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Speaker 1: the Kinghampstead election, and for the first time I realized
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Speaker 1: just how perplexing and disappointing my subsequent career must have
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Speaker 1: been to her. I'm not doing this without consideration, I said.
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Speaker 1: I know, she said, in a voice of despair. I've
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Speaker 1: seen it coming, but I still don't understand it. I
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Speaker 1: don't understand how you can go over. My ideas have
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Speaker 1: changed and developed, I said. I walked across to her
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Speaker 1: bare skin hearth rug and stood by the mantle. To
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Speaker 1: think that you, she said, you might have been leader.
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Speaker 1: She could not finish it. All the forces of reaction,
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Speaker 1: she threw out. I don't think they are the forces
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Speaker 1: of reaction, I said. I think I can find work
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Speaker 1: to do better work on that side against us, she said,
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Speaker 1: as if progress wasn't hard enough, as if it didn't
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Speaker 1: call upon every able man. I don't think liberalism is
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Speaker 1: a monopoly of progress. She did not answer that. She
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Speaker 1: sat quite still, looking in front of her. Why have
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Speaker 1: you gone over, she asked, abruptly, as though I had
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Speaker 1: said nothing. There came a silence that I was impelled
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Speaker 1: to end. I began a stiff dissertation from the hearth rug.
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Speaker 1: I am going over because I think I may join
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Speaker 1: in an intellectual renaissance on the conservative side. I think
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Speaker 1: that in the coming struggle there will be a partial,
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Speaker 1: an altogether confused and demoralizing victory for democracy that will
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Speaker 1: stir the classes which now dominate the Conservative Party into
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Speaker 1: an energetic revival. They will set out to win back
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Speaker 1: and win back. Even if my estimate of contemporary forces
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Speaker 1: is wrong, and they win, they will still be forced
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Speaker 1: to reconstruct their outlook. A war abroad will supply the
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Speaker 1: chastening If home politics fail. The effort at renaissance is
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Speaker 1: bound to come by either alternative. I believe I can
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Speaker 1: do more in relation to that effort than in any
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Speaker 1: other connection in the world of politics at the present time.
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Speaker 1: That's my case, Margaret, She certainly did not grasp what
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Speaker 1: I said. And so you will throw aside all the beginnings,
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Speaker 1: all the beliefs and pledges. Again, her sentence remained incomplete.
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Speaker 1: I doubt if even once you have gone over, they
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Speaker 1: will welcome you. That hardly matters. I made an effort
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Speaker 1: to resume my speech I came into parliament, Margaret, I
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Speaker 1: said a little prematurely. Still, I suppose it was only
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Speaker 1: by coming into parliament that I could see things as
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Speaker 1: I do now in terms of personality and imaginative range.
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Speaker 1: I stopped her, stiff, unhappy, unlistening silence broke up my disquisition.
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Speaker 1: After all, I remarked, most of this has been implicit
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Speaker 1: in my writings. She made no sign of admission. What
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Speaker 1: are you going to do, she asked, Keep my seat
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Speaker 1: for a time and make the reasons of my breach clear.
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Speaker 1: Then either I must resign or probably this new budget
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Speaker 1: will lead to a general election. It's evidently meant to
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Speaker 1: strain the lords and provoke a quarrel. You might, I think,
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Speaker 1: have stayed to fight for the budget. I'm not, I said,
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Speaker 1: so keen against the lords on that we halted. But
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Speaker 1: what are you going to do? She asked, I shall
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Speaker 1: make my quarrel over some points in the budget. I
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Speaker 1: can't quite tell you yet where my chance will come.
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Speaker 1: Then I shall either resign my seat, or if things
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Speaker 1: drift a dissolution, I shall stand again. It's political suicide,
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Speaker 1: not altogether. I can't imagine you out of Parliament again.
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Speaker 1: It's just like like I'm doing all we have done.
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Speaker 1: What will you do right? Make a new, more definite
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Speaker 1: place for myself? You know, of course there's already a
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Speaker 1: sort of group about crap and gain. Margaret seemed lost
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Speaker 1: for a time in painful thought. For me, She said,
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Speaker 1: at last, our political work has been a religion. It
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Speaker 1: has been more than a religion. I heard in silence.
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Speaker 1: I had no form of protest available against the implications
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Speaker 1: of that. And then I find you turning against all
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Speaker 1: we aim to do, talking of going over almost lightly
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Speaker 1: to those others. She was white lipped as she spoke
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Speaker 1: in the most curious way. She had captured the moral
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Speaker 1: value of the situation. I found myself protesting ineffectually against
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Speaker 1: her fixed conviction. It's because I think my duty lies
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Speaker 1: in this change that I make it, I said, I
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Speaker 1: don't see how you can say that, she replied quietly.
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Speaker 1: There was another pause between us. Oh, she said, and
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Speaker 1: clenched her hand upon the table. That it should have
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Speaker 1: come to this. She was extraordinarily dignified and extraordinarily absurd.
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Speaker 1: She was hurt and thwarted beyond measure. She had no
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Speaker 1: place in her ideas. I thought for me I could
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Speaker 1: see how it appeared to her, but I could not
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Speaker 1: make her see anything of the intricate process that had
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Speaker 1: brought me to this divergence. The opposition of our intellectual
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Speaker 1: temperaments was like a gag in my mouth. What was
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Speaker 1: there for me to say? A flash of intuition told
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Speaker 1: me that behind her white dignit was a passionate disappointment,
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Speaker 1: a shattering of dreams that kneaded before everything else, the
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Speaker 1: relief of weeping. I've told you, I said awkwardly. As
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Speaker 1: soon as I could. There was another long silence. So
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Speaker 1: that is how we stand, I said, with an air
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Speaker 1: of having things defined. I walked slowly to the door
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Speaker 1: she had risen, and stood now staring in front of her.
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Speaker 1: Good Night, I said, making no movement towards our habitual kiss.
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Speaker 1: Good Night, she answered, in a tragic note. I closed
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Speaker 1: the door softly. I remained for a moment or so
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Speaker 1: on the big landing, hesitating between my bedroom and my study.
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Speaker 1: As I did so, I heard the soft rustle of
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Speaker 1: her movement and the click of the key in her
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Speaker 1: bedroom door. Then everything was still. She hid her tears
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Speaker 1: from me. Something gripped my heart at the thought, damnation
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Speaker 1: I said, wincing, why the devil can't people at least
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Speaker 1: think in the same manner? Two? And that insufficient colloquy
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Speaker 1: was the beginning of a prolonged estrangement between us. It
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Speaker 1: was characteristic of our relations that we never reopened the discussion.
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Speaker 1: The thing had been in the air for some time,
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Speaker 1: we had recognized it. Now the widening breach between us
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Speaker 1: was confessed. My own feelings were curiously divided. It is
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Speaker 1: remarkable that my very real affection for Margaret only became
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Speaker 1: evident to me with this quarrel. The changes of the
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Speaker 1: heart are very subtle changes. I am quite unaware how
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Speaker 1: or when my early romantic love for her purity and
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Speaker 1: beauty and high principled devotion evaporated from my life, but
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Speaker 1: I do know that quite early in my parliamentary days
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Speaker 1: there had come a vague, unconfessed resentment at the tie
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Speaker 1: that seemed to hold me in servitude to her standards
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Speaker 1: of private living and public act. I felt I was caught,
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Speaker 1: and none the less so because it had been my
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Speaker 1: own act to rivet on my shackles. So long as
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Speaker 1: I still held myself bound to her. That resentment grew. Now,
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Speaker 1: since I had broken my bonds and taken my line.
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Speaker 1: It withered again, and I could think of Margaret with
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Speaker 1: a returning kindliness. But I still felt embarrassment with her.
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Speaker 1: I felt myself dependent upon her for house room and
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Speaker 1: food and social support, as it were, under false pretenses.
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Speaker 1: I would have liked to have separated our financial affairs altogether,
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Speaker 1: but I knew that to raise the issue would have
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Speaker 1: seemed a last brutal indelicacy. So I tried, almost furtively
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Speaker 1: to keep my personal expenditure within the scope of the
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Speaker 1: private income I made by writing. And we went out
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Speaker 1: together in her motor broom, dined and made appearances, met
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Speaker 1: politely at breakfast, parted at night with a kiss upon
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Speaker 1: her cheek. The locking of her door upon me, which
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Speaker 1: at that time I quite understood, which I understand now
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Speaker 1: became for a time in my mind through some obscure
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Speaker 1: process of the soul an offense. I never crossed the
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Speaker 1: landing to her room again. In all this matter, and
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Speaker 1: indeed in all my relations with Margaret, I perceive now
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Speaker 1: I behaved badly and foolishly. My manifest blunder is that I,
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Speaker 1: who was several years older than she, much subtler and
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Speaker 1: in many ways wiser, never in any measure sought to
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Speaker 1: guide and control her. After our marriage, I treated her
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Speaker 1: always as an equal and let her go her. Held
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Speaker 1: her responsible for all the weak and ineffective and unfortunate
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Speaker 1: things she said and did to me. She wasn't clever
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Speaker 1: enough to justify that. It wasn't fair to expect her
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Speaker 1: to sympathize, anticipate, and understand. I ought to have taken
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Speaker 1: care of her, roped her to me when it came
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Speaker 1: to crossing the difficult places. If I had loved her
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Speaker 1: more and wiselier and more tenderly, if there had not
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Speaker 1: been the consciousness of my financial dependence on her, always
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Speaker 1: stiffening my pride, I think she would have moved with
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Speaker 1: me from the outset and left the liberals with me.
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Speaker 1: But she did not get any inkling of the ends
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Speaker 1: I sought in my change of sides. It must have
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Speaker 1: seemed to her inexplicable perversity She had I knew for
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Speaker 1: surely I knew it then, an immense capacity for loyalty
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Speaker 1: and devotion. There she was, with these treasures, untouched and
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Speaker 1: colected and perplexed. A woman who loves wants to give
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Speaker 1: It is the duty and business of the man she
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Speaker 1: has married for love, to help her, to help and give.
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Speaker 1: But I was stupid. My eyes had never been opened.
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Speaker 1: I was stiff with her and difficult to her, because
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Speaker 1: even on my wedding morning, there had been deep down
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Speaker 1: in my soul, voiceless though present, something weakly protesting, a
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Speaker 1: faint perception of wrongdoing, the infinitesimally small, slow, multiplying germs
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Speaker 1: of shame. Three. I made my breach with the Party
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Speaker 1: on the budget. In many ways, I was disposed to
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Speaker 1: regard the nineteen o nine budget as a fine piece
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Speaker 1: of state craft. Its production was certainly a very unexpected
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Speaker 1: display of vigor on the liberal side. But on the whole,
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Speaker 1: this movement towards collector vist organization on the part of
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Speaker 1: the Liberals rather strengthened than weaken my resolve to cross
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Speaker 1: the floor of the House. It made it more necessary,
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Speaker 1: I thought, to leaven the purely obstructive and reactionary elements
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Speaker 1: that are all once manifest in the opposition. I assailed
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Speaker 1: the land taxation proposals in one main speech and a
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Speaker 1: series of minor speeches in committee. The line of attack
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Speaker 1: I chose was that the land was a great public
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Speaker 1: service that needed to be controlled on broad and far
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Speaker 1: sighted lines. I had no objection to its nationalization, but
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Speaker 1: I did object most strenuously to the idea of leaving
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Speaker 1: it in private hands and attempting to produce beneficial social
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Speaker 1: results through the pressure of taxation upon the land owning
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Speaker 1: class that might break it up in an utterly disastrous way.
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Speaker 1: The drift of the government proposals was all in the
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Speaker 1: direction of sweating the landowner to get immediate value from
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Speaker 1: his property, and such a course of action was bound
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Speaker 1: to give us an irritated and vindictive landowning class, the
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Speaker 1: class upon which we had hitherto relied not unjustifiably for
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Speaker 1: certain broad patriotic services, and an influence upon our collective
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Speaker 1: judgments that no other class seemed prepared to exercise. Abolish landlordism,
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Speaker 1: if you will, I said, buy it out, but do
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Speaker 1: not drive it to a defensive fight and leave it
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Speaker 1: still sufficiently strong and wealthy to become a malcontent element
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Speaker 1: in your state. You have taxed and controlled the brewer
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Speaker 1: and the publican until the outraged liquor interest has become
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Speaker 1: a national danger. You now propose to do the same
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Speaker 1: thing on a larger scale. You turn a class which
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Speaker 1: has many fine and truly aristocratic traditions towards revolt. And
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Speaker 1: there is nothing in these or any other of your
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Speaker 1: proposals that shows any sense of the need for leadership
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Speaker 1: to replace these traditional leaders you were ousting. This was
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Speaker 1: the substance of my case, and I hammered at it,
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Speaker 1: not only in the house but in the press. The
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Speaker 1: king Hampstead Division remained for some time insensitive to my defection.
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Speaker 1: Then it woke up suddenly and began in the columns
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Speaker 1: of the king Hampstead Guardian an indignant, confused outcry. I
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Speaker 1: was treated to an open letter signed Junius secundus, and
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Speaker 1: I replied in provocative terms. There were two thinly attended
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Speaker 1: public meetings at different ends of the constituency, and then
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Speaker 1: I had a correspondence with my old friend Parville, the photographer,
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Speaker 1: which ended in my seeing a deputation. My impression is
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Speaker 1: that it consisted of about eighteen or twenty people. They
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Speaker 1: had had to come upstairs to me, and they were
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Speaker 1: manifestly full of indignation and a little short of breath.
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Speaker 1: There was Parville himself JP, dressed holy in black. I
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Speaker 1: think to mark his sense of the occasion, and curiously
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Speaker 1: suggestive in his respect for my character and his concern
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Speaker 1: for the honorableness of the King. Hampstead Guardian editor of
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Speaker 1: Mark Antony. At the funeral of Caesar, there was Missus Bulger,
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Speaker 1: also in mourning. She had never abandoned the widow's streamers
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Speaker 1: since the death of her husband ten years ago, and
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Speaker 1: her loyalty to liberalism of the severest type was part,
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Speaker 1: as it were, of her weeds. There was a neview
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Speaker 1: of Sir Roderick Newton, a bright young Hebrew of the
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Speaker 1: graver type, and a couple of dissenting ministers in high
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Speaker 1: collars and hats that stopped half way between the bowl
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Speaker 1: of this world and the shovel hat of Heaven. There
19:51
Speaker 1: was also a young solicitor from Lurki, done in the
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Speaker 1: Horsey style, and there was a very little nervous man
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Speaker 1: with a high brow and a face contracting below as
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Speaker 1: though the jaw bones and teeth had been taken out
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Speaker 1: and the features compressed. The rest of the deputation, which
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Speaker 1: included two other public spirited ladies and several ministers of religion,
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Speaker 1: might have been raked out of any omnibus going strandward
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Speaker 1: during the main meetings. They thrust Pavel forward as spokesman,
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Speaker 1: and manifested a strong disposition to say here here to
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Speaker 1: his more strenuous protests. Provided my eye wasn't upon them
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Speaker 1: at the time. I regarded this appalling deputation. As Parvill's
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Speaker 1: apologetic but quite definite utterances drew to an end. I
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Speaker 1: had a moment of vision behind them, I saw the
20:45
Speaker 1: wonderful array of skeleton forces that stand for public opinion,
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Speaker 1: that are as much public opinion as exists. Indeed at
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Speaker 1: the present time. The whole process of politics, which bulks
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Speaker 1: so solidly in his way, seemed for that clairvoyant instant
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Speaker 1: but a froth of petty motives above abysms of indifference.
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Speaker 1: Someone had finished, I perceived I had to speak very well.
21:13
Speaker 1: I said, I won't keep you long in replying. I'll
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Speaker 1: resign if there isn't a dissolution before next February, and
21:20
Speaker 1: if there is, I shan't stand again. You don't want
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Speaker 1: the bother and expense of a by election. Approving murmurs
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Speaker 1: if it can be avoided. But I may tell you
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Speaker 1: plainly now that I don't think it will be necessary
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Speaker 1: for me to resign, and the sooner you find my
21:36
Speaker 1: successor the better for the party. The lords are in
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Speaker 1: a corner. They've got to fight now or never, and
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Speaker 1: I think they will throw out the budget. Then they
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Speaker 1: will go on fighting. It is a fight that will
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Speaker 1: last for years. They have a sort of social discipline
21:52
Speaker 1: and you haven't. You liberals will find yourselves with a
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Speaker 1: country behind you, vaguely indignant perhaps, but totally unprepared with
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Speaker 1: any ideas whatever in the matter, face to face with
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Speaker 1: the problem of bringing the British Constitution up to date.
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Speaker 1: Anything may happen, provided only that it is sufficiently absurd.
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Speaker 1: If the King backs the Lord's and I don't see
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Speaker 1: why he shouldn't, you have no republican movement whatever to
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Speaker 1: fall back upon. You lost it during the era of
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Speaker 1: good taste. The country, I say, is destitute of ideas,
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Speaker 1: and you have no ideas to give it. I don't
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Speaker 1: see what you will do for my own part. I
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Speaker 1: mean to spend a year or so between a window
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Speaker 1: and my writing desk. I paused. I think, gentlemen, began Parvill,
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Speaker 1: that we hear all this with very great regret. Four.
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Speaker 1: My estrangement from Margaret stands in my memory now as
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Speaker 1: something that played itself out within the four walls of
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Speaker 1: our house in Radnes Square, which was indeed confined to
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Speaker 1: those limits. I went to and fro between my house
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Speaker 1: and the House of Commons, and the dining rooms and
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Speaker 1: clubs and offices in which we were preparing our new
23:13
Speaker 1: developments in a state of aggressive and energetic dissociation in
23:19
Speaker 1: the nascent states. As a chemist would say, I was
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Speaker 1: free now and greedy for fresh combination. I had a
23:27
Speaker 1: tremendous sense of released energies. I had got back to
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Speaker 1: the sort of thing I could do, and to the
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Speaker 1: work that had been shaping itself for so long. In
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Speaker 1: my imagination, our purpose now was plain, bold and extraordinarily congenial.
23:43
Speaker 1: We meant no less than to organize a new movement
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Speaker 1: in English thought and life, to resuscitate a public opinion,
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Speaker 1: and prepare the ground for a revise and renovated ruling culture.
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Speaker 1: For a time, I seemed quite wonderfully able to do
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Speaker 1: whatever I wanted to do. Shuesmith responded to my first advances.
24:06
Speaker 1: We decided to create a weekly paper as our Nucleus
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Speaker 1: and Crap, and I set to work forthwith to collect
24:13
Speaker 1: a group of writers and speakers, including as Mere Briton,
24:17
Speaker 1: Lord Game Neil on one or two younger men, which
24:20
Speaker 1: would constitute a more or less definite editorial council about me,
24:24
Speaker 1: and meeted a weekly lunch on Tuesday to sustain our
24:28
Speaker 1: general cooperations. We marked our claim upon Toryism even in
24:33
Speaker 1: the color of our rapper, and spoke of ourselves collectively
24:37
Speaker 1: as the Blue Weeklies. But our lunches were open to
24:41
Speaker 1: all sorts of guests, and our deliberations were never of
24:45
Speaker 1: a character to control me effectively in my editorial decisions.
24:50
Speaker 1: My only influential counselor at first was Old Britain, who
24:54
Speaker 1: became my sub editor. It was curious how we too
24:58
Speaker 1: had picked up our ancient in meacy again and resumed
25:01
Speaker 1: the easy give and take of our speculative, dreaming schoolboy days.
25:08
Speaker 1: For a time, my life centered altogether upon this journalistic work.
25:13
Speaker 1: Britain was an experienced journalist, and I had most of
25:16
Speaker 1: the necessary instincts for the business. We meant to make
25:20
Speaker 1: the paper write and good down to the smallest detail,
25:24
Speaker 1: and we set ourselves at this with extraordinary zeal. It
25:28
Speaker 1: wasn't our intention to show our political motives too markedly
25:32
Speaker 1: at first and through all the dust storm and tumult
25:36
Speaker 1: and stress of the political struggle of nineteen ten. We
25:40
Speaker 1: made a little intellectual oasis of good art, criticism, and
25:44
Speaker 1: good writing. It was the firm belief of nearly all
25:49
Speaker 1: of us that the lords were destined to be beaten
25:52
Speaker 1: badly in nineteen ten, and our game was the longer
25:55
Speaker 1: game of reconstruction that would begin when the shouting and
25:59
Speaker 1: tumult of that immediate conflict were over. Meanwhile, we had
26:04
Speaker 1: to get into touch with just as many good minds
26:07
Speaker 1: as possible as we felt our feet. I developed slowly
26:12
Speaker 1: and carefully a broadly conceived and consistent political attitude. As
26:17
Speaker 1: I will explain later, we were feminists from the outset,
26:21
Speaker 1: though that caused Shusmith in gain great searching of heart.
26:26
Speaker 1: We developed Esmere's House of Lord's reform scheme into a
26:29
Speaker 1: general cult of the aristocratic virtues, and we did much
26:34
Speaker 1: to humanize and liberalize the narrow excellencies of that break
26:38
Speaker 1: up of the poor law agitation, which had been organized
26:42
Speaker 1: originally by Beatrice and Sidney Webb. In addition, without any
26:47
Speaker 1: very definite explanation to any one but Esmre and Isabel Rivers,
26:51
Speaker 1: and as it was quite a small matter. I set
26:54
Speaker 1: myself to secure a uniform philosophical quality in our columns
27:00
Speaker 1: that indeed was the peculiar virtue and characteristic of the
27:04
Speaker 1: Blue Weekly. I was now very definitely convinced that much
27:09
Speaker 1: of the confusion and futility of contemporary thought was due
27:13
Speaker 1: to the general need of metaphysical training. The great mass
27:18
Speaker 1: of people are not simply common people, but people active
27:22
Speaker 1: and influential in intellectual things. Are still quite untrained in
27:27
Speaker 1: the methods of thought, and absolutely innocent of any criticism
27:31
Speaker 1: of method. It is scarcely a caricature to call their
27:36
Speaker 1: thinking a crazy patch work, discontinuous and chaotic. They arrive
27:42
Speaker 1: at conclusions by kind of accident, and do not suspect
27:45
Speaker 1: any other way may be found to their attainment. A
27:49
Speaker 1: stage above this general condition stands that minority of people
27:54
Speaker 1: who have, at some time or other discovered general terms
27:57
Speaker 1: and a certain use for generalization. They are to fall
28:02
Speaker 1: back on the ancient technicality. Realists of a crude sort.
28:07
Speaker 1: When I say realist, of course, I mean realist as
28:10
Speaker 1: opposed to nominalist, and not realist in the almost diametrically
28:14
Speaker 1: different sense of opposition to idealist. Such are the bailies
28:20
Speaker 1: such to take their great prototype was Herbert Spencer, who
28:23
Speaker 1: couldn't read Kant. Such are whole regiments of prominent and
28:27
Speaker 1: entirely self satisfied contemporaries. They go through queer little processes
28:33
Speaker 1: of definition and generalization and deduction with the completest belief
28:38
Speaker 1: in the validity of the intellectual instrument they are using.
28:42
Speaker 1: They are realists, cockturists in matter of fact, sentimentalists in behavior.
28:50
Speaker 1: The bailies having got to this glorious stage in mental development.
28:54
Speaker 1: It is glorious because it has no doubts. Were always
28:57
Speaker 1: talking about training experts to apply the simple process to
29:01
Speaker 1: all the affairs of mankind. Well, realism isn't the last
29:06
Speaker 1: word of human wisdom. Modest minded people, doubtful people, subtle people,
29:12
Speaker 1: and the like the kind of people William James writes
29:15
Speaker 1: of is tough minded go on beyond this methodical happiness
29:19
Speaker 1: and forever after, critical of premises and terms, they are
29:24
Speaker 1: truer and less confident. They have reached skepticism and the
29:28
Speaker 1: artistic method. They have emerged into the new nominalism. Both
29:34
Speaker 1: Isabelle and I believe firmly that these differences of intellectual
29:38
Speaker 1: method matter profoundly in the affairs of mankind, that the
29:42
Speaker 1: collective mind of this intricate, complex modern state can only
29:47
Speaker 1: function properly upon neo nominalist lines. This has always been
29:52
Speaker 1: her side of our mental cooperation. Rather than mind, her
29:57
Speaker 1: mind as the light movement that goes so often with
30:00
Speaker 1: natural mental power. She has a wonderful art in illustration,
30:05
Speaker 1: and as the reader probably knows already, she writes of
30:09
Speaker 1: metaphysical matters with a rare charm and vividness. So far
30:14
Speaker 1: there has been no collection of her papers published, but
30:17
Speaker 1: they are to be found not only in the Blue
30:19
Speaker 1: Weekly columns, but scattered about the monthlies. Many people must
30:23
Speaker 1: be familiar with her style. It was an intention we
30:27
Speaker 1: did much to realize before our private downfall, that we
30:31
Speaker 1: would use the Blue Weekly to maintain a stream of
30:34
Speaker 1: suggestion against crude thinking. And at last, scarcely a week past,
30:40
Speaker 1: but some popular distinction, some large imposing generalization, was touched
30:46
Speaker 1: to flacidity by her pen or mine. I was at
30:51
Speaker 1: great pains to give my philosophical, political, and social matter
30:55
Speaker 1: the best literary and critical backing we could get in London.
30:59
Speaker 1: I hunt insedulously for good descriptive writing and good criticism.
31:04
Speaker 1: I was indefatigable in my readiness to hear and consider,
31:08
Speaker 1: if not to accept advice. I watched every corner of
31:12
Speaker 1: the paper and had a dozen men alert to get
31:16
Speaker 1: me special matter of the sort that draws in the
31:19
Speaker 1: unattached reader. The chief dangered on the literary side of
31:23
Speaker 1: a weekly is that it should fall into the hands
31:26
Speaker 1: of some particular school, and this I watched for closely.
31:31
Speaker 1: It seems impossible to get vividness of apprehension and breadth
31:35
Speaker 1: of view together in the same critic, so it falls
31:38
Speaker 1: to the wise editor to secure the first and impose
31:42
Speaker 1: the second directly. I detected the shrill partisan note in
31:47
Speaker 1: our criticism, the attempt to puff a poor thing because
31:51
Speaker 1: it was in the right direction, or damn a vigorous
31:55
Speaker 1: piece of work because it wasn't. I tackled the man
31:58
Speaker 1: and had it out with him. Our pay was good
32:02
Speaker 1: enough for that to matter a good deal. Our distinctive
32:05
Speaker 1: little blue and white poster kept up its neat, persistent
32:09
Speaker 1: appeal to the public eye, and before nineteen eleven was out,
32:13
Speaker 1: the Blue Weekly was printing twenty pages of publishers advertisements,
32:18
Speaker 1: and went into all the clubs in London and three
32:21
Speaker 1: quarters of the country houses where weekend parties gathered together.
32:26
Speaker 1: Its sale by newsagents and book stools grew steadily. One
32:30
Speaker 1: got more and more the reassuring sense of being discussed
32:34
Speaker 1: and influencing discussion. Five. Our office was at the very
32:42
Speaker 1: top of a big building near the end of Adolphi Terrace.
32:46
Speaker 1: The main window beside my desk, a big undivided window
32:50
Speaker 1: of plate glass, looked out upon Cleopatra's needle, the corner
32:55
Speaker 1: of the hotel cecil, the fine arches of Waterloo Bridge,
32:59
Speaker 1: and the long weap of South Bank with its shots,
33:02
Speaker 1: towers and chimneys, past bankside, to the dimly seen piers
33:07
Speaker 1: of the Great Bridge. Below the tower, the dome of
33:10
Speaker 1: Saint Paul's just floated into view on the left against
33:14
Speaker 1: the hotel facade. By night and day, in every light
33:19
Speaker 1: and atmosphere, it was a beautiful and various view, alive
33:23
Speaker 1: as a throbbing heart. A perpetual flow of traffic plowed
33:27
Speaker 1: and splashed the streaming silver of the river, and by
33:32
Speaker 1: night the shapes of things became velvet black and gray,
33:35
Speaker 1: and the water a shining mirror of steel, wearing coruscating
33:39
Speaker 1: gems of light in the foreground, the embankment. Trams sailed
33:45
Speaker 1: glowing by across the water, Advertisements flashed and flickered, trains
33:51
Speaker 1: went and came, and a rolling drift of smoke reflected
33:54
Speaker 1: unseen fires. By day, that spectacle was sometimes a marvel
34:00
Speaker 1: of shining, wet and wind cleared atmosphere, sometimes a mystery
34:04
Speaker 1: of drifting fog, sometimes a miracle of crowded details, minutely fine.
34:12
Speaker 1: As I think of that view, so variously spacious in effect,
34:16
Speaker 1: I am back there, and this sunlit paper might be
34:20
Speaker 1: lamp lit, and lying on my old desk, I see
34:24
Speaker 1: it all again, feel it all again. In the foreground
34:28
Speaker 1: is a green shaded lamp, and crumpled galley, slips and
34:32
Speaker 1: paged proofs and letters, two or three papers in manuscript,
34:36
Speaker 1: and so forth. In the shadows, a chairs, and another
34:41
Speaker 1: table bearing papers and books, a rotating bookcase dimly seen,
34:46
Speaker 1: a long window seat black in the darkness, and then
34:50
Speaker 1: the cool, unbroken spectacle of the window. How often I
34:54
Speaker 1: would watch some tramcar, some string of barges go from me,
34:58
Speaker 1: slowly out of sight. The people were black animal culi
35:03
Speaker 1: by day, clustering, collecting, dispersing. By night they were phantom
35:09
Speaker 1: face specks coming, vanishing, stirring obscurely between light and shade.
35:16
Speaker 1: I recall many hours at my desk in that room
35:19
Speaker 1: before the crisis came. Ours full of the peculiar happiness
35:24
Speaker 1: of effective, strenuous work. Once some piece of writing went on,
35:30
Speaker 1: holding me intent and forgetful of time, until I looked
35:33
Speaker 1: up from the warm circle of my electric lamp to
35:36
Speaker 1: see the eastward sky above the pale silhouette of the
35:40
Speaker 1: tower bridge flushed and banded brightly with the dawn. End
35:46
Speaker 1: of Chapter eleven,