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Certain Personal Matters - Thoughts on Cheapness and My Aunt Charlotte · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of Certain Personal Matters. This is a librifox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All libervox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Phone Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells. Thoughts
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  Speaker 1: on cheapness and my Aunt Charlotte the world mens. In
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  Speaker 1: my younger days, people believed in mahogany. Some of my
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  Speaker 1: readers will remember it a heavy, shining substance, having a
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  Speaker 1: singularly close resemblance to raw liver, exceedingly heavy to move,
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  Speaker 1: and esteemed on one or other count the noblest of
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  Speaker 1: all woods. Such of us as were very poor and
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  Speaker 1: had no mahogany, pretended to have mahogany, and the proper
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  Speaker 1: hepatite tint was got by veneering. That makes one inclined
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  Speaker 1: to think it was the color that pleased people. In
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  Speaker 1: those days. There was a word trashy, now almost lost
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  Speaker 1: to the world. My dear aunt Charlotte used that epithet when,
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  Speaker 1: in her feminine way, she swore at people she did
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  Speaker 1: not like. Trashy and poultry and brumagum was the very
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  Speaker 1: worst she could say of them, and she had I
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  Speaker 1: remember an intense aversion to plated goods and bronze hofpens.
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  Speaker 1: The halfpins of her youth had been vast and corpulent,
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  Speaker 1: red brown discs, which it was folly to speak of
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  Speaker 1: as small change. They were fine, handsome coins, and almost
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  Speaker 1: as inconvenient as ground pieces. I remember, she corrected me
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  Speaker 1: once when I was very young. Don't call a penny
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  Speaker 1: a copper, dear, she said, copper is a metal. The
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  Speaker 1: pennies they have nowadays are bronze. It is odd how
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  Speaker 1: our childish impressions cling to us. I still regard bronze
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  Speaker 1: as a kind of upstart intruder, a mere trashy pretender
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  Speaker 1: among metals. All my on Charlett's furniture was thoroughly good,
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  Speaker 1: and most of it extremely uncomfortable. There was not a
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  Speaker 1: thing for a little boy to break an escape damnation
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  Speaker 1: in the household. Her china was the only thing with
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  Speaker 1: a touch of beauty in it, at least, I remember
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  Speaker 1: nothing else. And each of her blessed plates was worth
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  Speaker 1: the happiness of a mortal for days together, And they
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  Speaker 1: dressed me in a ness's suit of valuable garments. I
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  Speaker 1: learned the value of thoroughly good things only too early.
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  Speaker 1: I knew the equivalent of a teacup to the very
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  Speaker 1: last skull, and I have hated good, handsome property ever since.
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  Speaker 1: For my part, I love cheap things, trashy things, things
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  Speaker 1: made of the commonest rubbish that money can possibly buy,
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  Speaker 1: Things as vulgar as primroses, and as transitory as a
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  Speaker 1: morning's frost. Think of all the advantages of a cheap possession,
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  Speaker 1: cheap and nasty, if you will, compared with some valuable substitute.
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  Speaker 1: Suppose you need this or that, get a good one,
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  Speaker 1: advises on Charlotte. One that will last you do, And
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  Speaker 1: it does last. It lasts like a family curse. These great, plain,
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  Speaker 1: valuable things, as plain as good women, as complacantly assured
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  Speaker 1: of their intrinsic worth. Who does not know them? My
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  Speaker 1: aunt Charlotte Scarcely had a new thing in her life.
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  Speaker 1: Her mahogany was avuncular, her china remotely ancestral. Her feather
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  Speaker 1: beds and her bedsteads. They were haunted. The births, marriages
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  Speaker 1: and deaths associated with the best one was the history
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  Speaker 1: of her race for three generations. There was more in
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  Speaker 1: her house than the tombstone rectitude of the chair backs.
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  Speaker 1: To remind me of the graveyard. I can still remember
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  Speaker 1: the somber isles of that house, the vault like shadows,
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  Speaker 1: the magnificent window curtains that blotted out the windows. Life
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  Speaker 1: was too trivial for such things. Never knew she tired
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  Speaker 1: of them, but she did. That was the secret of
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  Speaker 1: her temper I think they engendered her somber calvinism, her
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  Speaker 1: perception of the trashy quality of human life. The pretense
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  Speaker 1: that they were the accessories to human life was too transparent.
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  Speaker 1: We were the accessories. We minded them for a little while,
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  Speaker 1: and then we passed away. They were us out and
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  Speaker 1: constance aside. We were the changing scenery. They were the
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  Speaker 1: actors who played on through the piece. It was even
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  Speaker 1: so with clothing. We buried my other maternal aunt, aunt Adelaide,
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  Speaker 1: and wept and partly forgot her, but her wonderful silk dresses,
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  Speaker 1: they would stand alone still went rustling cheerfully about an
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  Speaker 1: ephumeral world. All that offended my sense of proportion, my
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  Speaker 1: feeling of what is due to human life, even when
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  Speaker 1: I was a little boy. I want things of my own,
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  Speaker 1: things I can break without breaking my heart, and since
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  Speaker 1: one can live but once, I want some change in
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  Speaker 1: my life to have this kind of thing, and then
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  Speaker 1: that I never valued Aunt Charlotte's good old things until
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  Speaker 1: I sold them. They sold remarkably well, those chairs like
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  Speaker 1: nether millstones for the grinding away of men, the fragile
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  Speaker 1: china and incessant anxiety until accident broke it, and the
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  Speaker 1: spell of it at the same time, the silver spoons
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  Speaker 1: by virtue of which Aunt Charlotte went in fear of
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  Speaker 1: burglary for six and fifty years. The bed from which
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  Speaker 1: I alone, of all my kindred, had escaped, the wonderful old, erect,
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  Speaker 1: high shouldered, silver faced clock. But as I say, our
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  Speaker 1: ideas are changing. Mahogany is gone and wrapped curtains. Articles
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  Speaker 1: are made for man nowadays, and not man by careful
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  Speaker 1: early training. For articles, I feel myself to be in
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  Speaker 1: many respects on link with the past. Commodities come like
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  Speaker 1: the spring flowers and vanish again. Who steals my watch
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  Speaker 1: steals trash, As some poet has remarked, the thing has
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  Speaker 1: made of I know not watch metal, And if I
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  Speaker 1: leave it on the mantle for a day or so,
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  Speaker 1: it goes a deep blackish purple that delights me exceedingly.
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  Speaker 1: My grandfather's hat. I understood when I was a little
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  Speaker 1: boy that I was to have that someday. But now
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  Speaker 1: I get a hat for ten shillings or less, two
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  Speaker 1: or three times a year. In the old days, buying
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  Speaker 1: clothes was well nigh as irrevocable as marriage. Our flat
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  Speaker 1: is furnished with glittering things, wanton armchairs, just strong enough
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  Speaker 1: not to collapse under you, books, in gay covers, carpets.
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  Speaker 1: You are free to drop lighted fuses upon You may
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  Speaker 1: scratch what you like, Upset your coffee, cast your cigar
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  Speaker 1: ash to the four quarters of heaven. Our guests, at
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  Speaker 1: any rate, are not snubbed by our furniture. It knows
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  Speaker 1: its place. But it is in a case of art
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  Speaker 1: and adornment that cheapness is most delightful. The only thing
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  Speaker 1: that betrayed care for beauty on the part of my
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  Speaker 1: aunt was her dear old flower garden, and even there
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  Speaker 1: she was not above suspicion. Her favorite flowers were tulips,
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  Speaker 1: rigid culips with opulent crimson streaks. She despised wildings. Her
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  Speaker 1: ornaments were simply displays of the precious metal. Had she
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  Speaker 1: known the price of platinum, she would have worn that
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  Speaker 1: by preference. Her chains and breeches and rings were bought
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  Speaker 1: by weight. She would have turned her back on Benvenuto
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  Speaker 1: Sellini if he was not twenty two carats fine. She
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  Speaker 1: despised water color art. Her conception of a picture was
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  Speaker 1: a vast domain of oily brown by an old master.
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  Speaker 1: The Babbages at the Hull had a display of gold
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  Speaker 1: plates swaggering in the corner of the dining room, and
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  Speaker 1: the visitor, restrained by a plush rope from examining the workmanship,
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  Speaker 1: was told to value and so passed on. I like
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  Speaker 1: my art, unadorned thought and skill, and the other strange
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  Speaker 1: quality that is added there too, to make things beautiful,
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  Speaker 1: and nothing more a farthing's worth of paint and paper.
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  Speaker 1: And behold a saying of beauty, as they do in Japan.
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  Speaker 1: And if it should fall into the fire, well it
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  Speaker 1: has gone like yesterday's sunset, and to morrow there will
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  Speaker 1: be another. These Japanese are indeed the apostles of cheapness.
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  Speaker 1: The Greeks lived to teach the world beauty, their Hebrews
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  Speaker 1: to teach ad morality, and now the Japanese are hammering
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  Speaker 1: in the lesson that men may be honorable daily life delightful,
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  Speaker 1: and a nation great without either freestone houses, marble mantlepieces,
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  Speaker 1: or mahogany side boards. I have sometimes wished that my
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  Speaker 1: Aunt Charlotte could have traveled among the Japanese nation. She would,
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  Speaker 1: I know, have called it a parcel of trash. Their
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  Speaker 1: use of paper, paper suits, paper pocket handkerchiefs would have
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  Speaker 1: made her rigid with contempt. I have tried, but I
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  Speaker 1: cannot imagine my Aunt Charlotte in paper underclothing. Her aversion
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  Speaker 1: to paper was extraordinary. Her Book of Beauty was printed
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  Speaker 1: on satin, and all her books were bound in leather.
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  Speaker 1: The boards regulated rather than decorated, with a severe oblong.
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  Speaker 1: Her proper sphere was among the ancient Babylonians, among which
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  Speaker 1: massive populace. Even the newspapers were built of brick. She
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  Speaker 1: would have compared with the King's daughter, whose raiment was
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  Speaker 1: of wrought gold. When I was a little boy, I
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  Speaker 1: used to think she had a mahogany skeleton. However, she
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  Speaker 1: has gone, poor old lady, and at least she left
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  Speaker 1: near furniture. Her ghost was torn in pieces after the
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  Speaker 1: sale must have been even the old China went this way,
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  Speaker 1: and that I took what was perhaps a mean revenge
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  Speaker 1: of her for the innumerable black holings, bread and water dinners,
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  Speaker 1: summary chastisements, and impossible tasks he inflicted upon me, for
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  Speaker 1: offenses against her two solid possessions. You will see it
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  Speaker 1: at Woking. It is a light and graceful cross. It
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  Speaker 1: is a mere speck of white between the monstrous granite
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  Speaker 1: paper weights that pressed the dead on either side of her.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes I am half sorry for that, when the end comes,
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  Speaker 1: I shall not care to look her in the face.
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  Speaker 1: She will be so humiliated. End of Chapter one