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In the Days of the Comet Book Second Chapter Third Section 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Book two, Chapter three, Section one of In the Days
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  Speaker 1: of the Comet. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
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  Speaker 1: recordings are in the public domain. For more information or
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  Speaker 1: to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. In the Days
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  Speaker 1: of the Comet by H. G. Wells, Book two, Chapter three,
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  Speaker 1: Section one. The Cabinet Council, And what a strange, unprecedented
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  Speaker 1: thing was that Cabinet Council at which I was present,
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  Speaker 1: The council that was held two days later in Melmont's bungalow,
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  Speaker 1: and which convene the conference to frame the constitution of
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  Speaker 1: the world state. I was there because it was convenient
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  Speaker 1: for me to stay with Melmount. I had nowhere to go, particularly,
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  Speaker 1: and there was no one at his bungalow to which
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  Speaker 1: his broken ankle confined him, but a secretary and the
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  Speaker 1: valet to help him to begin his share of the
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  Speaker 1: enormous labors that evidently lay before the rulers of the world.
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  Speaker 1: I wrote shorthand, and as there was not even a
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  Speaker 1: phonograph available, I went in so soon as his ankle
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  Speaker 1: had been dressed, and sat at his desk to write
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  Speaker 1: at his dictation. It is characteristic of the Odd's slackness
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  Speaker 1: that went with the spasmodic violence of the old epoch.
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  Speaker 1: That the secretary could not use shorthand, and that there
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  Speaker 1: was no telephone whatever in the place. Every message had
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  Speaker 1: to be taken to the village post office, in that
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  Speaker 1: grocer shop at Menton half a mile away. And so
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  Speaker 1: I sat in the back of Melmont's room. His desk
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  Speaker 1: had been thrust aside, and made such memoranda as were
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  Speaker 1: needed at that time. His room seemed to me the
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  Speaker 1: most beautifully furnished in the world, and I could identify
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  Speaker 1: now the vivid cheerfulness of the chintz of the sofa
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  Speaker 1: on which the great statesmen lay just in front of me,
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  Speaker 1: the fine, rich paper, the red sealing wax, the silver
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  Speaker 1: equipage of the desk I used. I know now that
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  Speaker 1: my presence in that room was a strange and remarkable thing,
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  Speaker 1: the open door, even the coming and going of Parker,
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  Speaker 1: the secretary innovations. In the old days, a cabinet council
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  Speaker 1: was a secret conclave. Secrecy and furtiveness were in the
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  Speaker 1: texture of all public life in the old days. Everybody
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  Speaker 1: was always keeping something back from somebody. Being weary and
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  Speaker 1: cunning prevaricating, misleading, for the most part, for no reason
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  Speaker 1: at all, almost unnoticed that secrecy had dropped out of life.
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  Speaker 1: I closed my eyes and see those men again, hear
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  Speaker 1: their deliberating voices. First I see them a little diffusely
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  Speaker 1: in the cold explicitness of daylight, and then concentrated and
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  Speaker 1: drawn together amidst the shadow and mystery about shaded lamps.
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  Speaker 1: Integral to this, and very clear, is the memory of
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  Speaker 1: biscuit crumbs and the drop of spilt water that at
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  Speaker 1: first stood shining upon and then sank into the green
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  Speaker 1: table cloth. I remember particularly the figure of Lord Adisham.
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  Speaker 1: He came to the bungalow day before the others because
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  Speaker 1: he was Melmont's personal friend. Let me describe the statesman
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  Speaker 1: to you. This one of the fifteen men who made
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  Speaker 1: the last war. He was the youngest member of the government,
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  Speaker 1: and an altogether pleasant and sunny man of forty. He
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  Speaker 1: had a clear profile to his clean gray face, a
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  Speaker 1: smiling eye, a friendly, careful voice upon his thin, clean
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  Speaker 1: shaven lips, and easy disabusing manner. He had the perfect
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  Speaker 1: quality of a man who had fallen easily into a
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  Speaker 1: place prepared for him. He had the temperament of what
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  Speaker 1: we used to call a philosopher and indifferent. That is
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  Speaker 1: to say, the change had caught him at his week
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  Speaker 1: end recreation fly fishing, And indeed he said, I remember
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  Speaker 1: that he recovered to find himself with his head within
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  Speaker 1: a yard of the water's brim. In times of crises,
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  Speaker 1: Lord Adisham invariably went fly fishing at the week end
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  Speaker 1: to keep his mind in tone. And when there was
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  Speaker 1: no crisis, then there was nothing he liked so much
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  Speaker 1: to do as fly fishing, and so, of course, as
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  Speaker 1: there was nothing to prevent it, he fished. He came resolved,
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  Speaker 1: among other things, to give up fly fishing altogether. I
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  Speaker 1: was present when he came to Melmount and heard him
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  Speaker 1: say as much, and by a more naive route, it
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  Speaker 1: was evident that he had arrived at the same scheme
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  Speaker 1: of intention as my master. I left them to talk,
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  Speaker 1: but afterward I came back to take down their long
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  Speaker 1: telegrams to their coming colleagues. He was no doubt as
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  Speaker 1: profoundly affected as Melmount by the change, but his tricks
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  Speaker 1: of civility and irony and acceptable humor had survived the change,
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  Speaker 1: and he expressed his altered attitude his expanded emotions in
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  Speaker 1: a quaint modification of the old time man of the
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  Speaker 1: world style, with excessive moderation, with the trained horror of
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  Speaker 1: the enthusiasm that swayed him. These fifteen men who ruled
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  Speaker 1: the British Empire were curiously unlike anything I had expected,
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  Speaker 1: and I watched them intently whenever my services were not
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  Speaker 1: in request. They made a peculiar class at that time,
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  Speaker 1: these English politicians and statesmen, class that has now completely
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  Speaker 1: passed away. In some respects, they were unlike the statesmen
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  Speaker 1: of any other region of the world. And I do
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  Speaker 1: not find that any really adequate account remains of them.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps you are a reader of the old books. If so,
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  Speaker 1: you will find them rendered with a note of hostile
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  Speaker 1: exaggeration by Dickens in Bleak House, with a mingling of
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  Speaker 1: gross flattery and keen ridicule by Disraeli, who ruled among
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  Speaker 1: them accidentally by misunderstanding them and pleasing the court. And
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  Speaker 1: all their assumptions are set forth portentously, perhaps, but truthfully,
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  Speaker 1: so far as people of the permanent official class saw them.
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  Speaker 1: In the novels of Missus Humphrey Ward. All these books
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  Speaker 1: are still in this world, and at the disposal of
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  Speaker 1: the curious, And in addition, the philosopher Badgehot and the
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  Speaker 1: picturesque historian Macaulay give something of their method of thinking.
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  Speaker 1: The novelist Thackeray skirts the seamy side of their social life,
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  Speaker 1: and there are some good passages of irony, personal descriptions
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  Speaker 1: and reminiscence to be found in the twentieth century Garner
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  Speaker 1: from the pens of such writers, for example, as Sydney Low.
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  Speaker 1: But a picture of them as a whole is wanting.
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  Speaker 1: Then they were too near and too great. Now, very
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  Speaker 1: rapidly they have become incomprehensible. We common people of the
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  Speaker 1: old time based our conception of our statesmen almost entirely
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  Speaker 1: on the caricatures that formed the most powerful weapon in
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  Speaker 1: political controversy. Like almost every main feature of the old
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  Speaker 1: condition of things, these caricatures were an unanticipated development. They
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  Speaker 1: were a sort of parasitic outgrowth from which had finally
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  Speaker 1: altogether replaced the thin and vague aspirations of the original
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  Speaker 1: democratic ideals. They presented not only the personalities who led
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  Speaker 1: up public life, but the most sacred structural conceptions of
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  Speaker 1: that life, in ludicrous, vulgar, and dishonorable aspects. That in
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  Speaker 1: the end came near to destroying entirely all grave and
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  Speaker 1: honorable emotion or motive towards the state. The state of
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  Speaker 1: Britain was represented nearly always by a red faced, purse
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  Speaker 1: proud farmer with an enormous belly that find dream of freedom.
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  Speaker 1: The United States by a cunning, lean faced rascal in
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  Speaker 1: striped trousers and the blue coat. The chief ministers of
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  Speaker 1: state were pickpockets, washerwomen, clowns, whales, asses, elephants and what not,
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  Speaker 1: and issues that affected the welfare of millions of men
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  Speaker 1: were dressed and judged like a rally. In some idiotic pantomime,
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  Speaker 1: a tragic war in South Africa that wrecked many thousand homes,
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  Speaker 1: impoverished two whole lands, and brought death and disablement to
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  Speaker 1: fifty thousand men was presented as a quite comical quarrel
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  Speaker 1: between a violent queer being named Chamberlain with an eye glass,
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  Speaker 1: an orchid and a short temper, and an old cruder,
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  Speaker 1: an obstinate and very cunning old man in a shocking
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  Speaker 1: bad hat. The conflict was carried through in a mood,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes of brutish irritability and sometimes of lax sloveliness. The
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  Speaker 1: merry peculator plied his trade congenially in that asinine squabble,
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  Speaker 1: and behind these fooleries, and masked by them, marched fate,
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  Speaker 1: until at last the clowning of the booth opened and
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  Speaker 1: revealed hunger and suffering, brands, burning and swords and shame.
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  Speaker 1: These men had come to fame and power in that atmosphere.
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  Speaker 1: And to me that day there was the oddest suggestion
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  Speaker 1: in them of actors who have suddenly laid aside grotesque
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  Speaker 1: and foolish parts. The paint was washed from their faces,
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  Speaker 1: the posing put aside. Even when the presentation was not
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  Speaker 1: frankly grotesque and degrading, it was entirely misleading. When I
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  Speaker 1: read of Laycock, for example, there arises a picture of
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  Speaker 1: a large, active, if a little wrong headed intelligence in
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  Speaker 1: a compact heroic body, emitting that goliath speech of his
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  Speaker 1: that did so much to precipitate hostilities Italies, not at
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  Speaker 1: all with a stammering, high pitched, slightly bald, and very
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  Speaker 1: conscience stricken personage I saw, nor with Melmont's contemptuous first
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  Speaker 1: description of him. I doubt if the world at large
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  Speaker 1: will ever get a proper vision of those men as
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  Speaker 1: they were before the change. Each year they pass more
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  Speaker 1: and more incredibly beyond our intellectual sympathy. Our estrangement cannot
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  Speaker 1: indeed rob them of their position in the past, but
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  Speaker 1: it will rob them of any effect of reality. The
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  Speaker 1: whole of their history becomes more and more foreign, more
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  Speaker 1: and more like some queer barbaric drama played in a
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  Speaker 1: forgotten tongue. There they strut through their weird menamorphoses of caricature,
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  Speaker 1: those premiers and precedents, their height preposterously exaggerated by political buskins,
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  Speaker 1: and their faces covered by great resonant inhuman masks, their
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  Speaker 1: voices couched in the foolish idiom of public utterance, disguised
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  Speaker 1: beyond any semblance to sane humanity, roaring and squeaking through
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  Speaker 1: the public press. There it stands, this incomprehensible, faded show,
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  Speaker 1: a thing left on one side, and now still and
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  Speaker 1: deserted by any interest. Its many emptinesses as inexplicable now
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  Speaker 1: as the cruelties of medieval Venice the theology of old Byzantium.
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  Speaker 1: And they ruled and influenced the lives of nearly a
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  Speaker 1: quarter of mankind. These politicians, their clownish conflicts weighed the
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  Speaker 1: world made mirth, perhaps made excitement, and permitted infinite misery.
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  Speaker 1: I saw these men, quickened indeed by the change, but
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  Speaker 1: still wearing the queer clothing of the old time, the
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  Speaker 1: manners and conventions of the old time. If they had
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  Speaker 1: disengaged themselves from the outlook of the old time, they
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  Speaker 1: still had to refer back to it constantly as a
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  Speaker 1: common starting point. My refreshed intelligence was equal to that,
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  Speaker 1: so that I think I did indeed see them. There
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  Speaker 1: was Gorl Browning, the Chancellor of the Duchy. I remember
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  Speaker 1: him as a big, round faced man, the essential vanity
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  Speaker 1: and foolishness of whose expression, whose habit of voluminous, platitudinous
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  Speaker 1: speech triumphed absurdly once or twice over the roused spirit within.
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  Speaker 1: He struggled with it. He burlesqued himself and laughed. Suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: he said, simply, intensely, it was a moment for every
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  Speaker 1: one of clean, clear pain. I have been a vain
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  Speaker 1: and self indulgent and presumptuous old man. I am of
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  Speaker 1: little use here. I have given myself to politics and intrigues,
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  Speaker 1: and life is gone from me. And then for a
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  Speaker 1: long time he sat still. There was Carton the Lord Chancellor,
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  Speaker 1: a white faced man with understanding. He had a heavy
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  Speaker 1: shaven face that might have stood among the busts of
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  Speaker 1: the Caesars, a slow, elaborating voice with self indulgent, slightly
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  Speaker 1: oblique and triumphant lips, and the momentary, voluntary, humorous twinkle.
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  Speaker 1: We have to forgive, he said, We have to forgive
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  Speaker 1: even ourselves. These two were at the top corner of
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  Speaker 1: the table, so that I saw their faces well. Maget,
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  Speaker 1: the Home Secretary, a smaller man with wrinkled eyebrows and
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  Speaker 1: the frozen smile on his thin, wry mouth, came next
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  Speaker 1: to Carton. He contributed little to the discussion save intelligent comments,
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  Speaker 1: and when the electric lights above glowed out, the shadows
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  Speaker 1: deepened queerly in his eye sockets and gave him the
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  Speaker 1: quizzical expression of an ironical goblin. Next him was that
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  Speaker 1: great peer, the Earl of Richover, whose self indulgent indolence
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  Speaker 1: had accepted the role of a twentieth century British Roman
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  Speaker 1: patrician of culture, who had divided his time almost equally
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  Speaker 1: between his jockeys, politics, and the composition of literary studies.
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  Speaker 1: In the key of his role, we have done nothing
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  Speaker 1: worth doing, he said. As for me, I have cut
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  Speaker 1: a figure. He reflected no doubt on his ample patrician years,
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  Speaker 1: on the fine great houses that had been his setting,
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  Speaker 1: the teeming race courses that had roared his name, the
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  Speaker 1: enthusiastic meetings he had fed with fine hopes, the futile
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  Speaker 1: olympian beginnings. I have been a fool, he said compactly.
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  Speaker 1: They heard him, in a sympathetic and respectful silence. Girker,
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  Speaker 1: the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was partially occulted, so far
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  Speaker 1: as I was concerned by the back of Lord Adisham. Ever,
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  Speaker 1: and again Girka protruded into the discussion, swaying forward, a
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  Speaker 1: deep throaty voice, a big nose, a coarse mouth, with
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  Speaker 1: a drooping, everted lower lip, eyes peering amidst foals and wrinkles.
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  Speaker 1: He made his confession for his race. We Jews, he said,
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  Speaker 1: have gone through the system of this world, creating nothing,
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  Speaker 1: consolidating many things, destroying much our racial self Conceit has
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  Speaker 1: been monstrous. We seem to have used our ample, coarse
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  Speaker 1: intellectuality for nor the purpose than to develop and to
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  Speaker 1: master and maintain the convention of property, to turn life
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  Speaker 1: into a sort of mercantile chess and spend our winnings grossly.
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  Speaker 1: We have had no sense of service to mankind beauty
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  Speaker 1: which is God, had we made it a possession. These men,
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  Speaker 1: and these sayings particularly remain in my memory. Perhaps indeed
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  Speaker 1: I wrote them down at one time, but that I
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  Speaker 1: do not now remember. How Sir Digby, Privet, Revel, Markheimer,
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  Speaker 1: and the others sat I do not now recall. They
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  Speaker 1: came in as voices, interruptions, imperfectly assigned comments. One got
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  Speaker 1: a queer impression that, except perhaps for Gurker or Revel,
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  Speaker 1: these men had not particularly wanted the power. They held
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  Speaker 1: a desire to do nothing very much in the positions
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  Speaker 1: they had secured. They had found themselves in the cabinet,
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  Speaker 1: and until this moment of illumination, they had not been ashamed.
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  Speaker 1: But they had made no ungentlemanly fuss about the matter.
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  Speaker 1: Aid of that fifteen came from the same school, had
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  Speaker 1: gone through an entirely parallel education. Some Greek linguistics, some
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  Speaker 1: elementary mathematics, some emasculated science, A little history, a little reading.
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  Speaker 1: In the silent or timidly orthodox English literature of the seventeenth,
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  Speaker 1: eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. All eight had imbibed the same dull,
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  Speaker 1: gentlemanly tradition of behavior, essentially boyish, unimaginative, with neither keen
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  Speaker 1: swords nor art in it, a tradition apt to slobber
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  Speaker 1: into sentiment at a crisis and make a great virtue
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  Speaker 1: of a simple duty rather clumsily done. None of these
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  Speaker 1: eight had made any real experiments with life. They had
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  Speaker 1: lived in blinkers. They had been passed from nurse to governess,
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  Speaker 1: from governess to preparatory school, from Eton to Oxford, from
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  Speaker 1: Oxford to the politico social routine. Even their vices and
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  Speaker 1: lapses had been according to certain conceptions of good form.
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  Speaker 1: They had all gone to the races serreuptuously from Eton,
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  Speaker 1: had all cut up to town from Oxford to see life,
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  Speaker 1: music hall, life, had all come to heal again. Now
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  Speaker 1: suddenly they discovered their limitations. What are we to do?
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  Speaker 1: Asked Melmount. We have awakened this empire in our hands.
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  Speaker 1: I know this will seem the most fabulous of all
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  Speaker 1: the things I have to tell of the old order.
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  Speaker 1: But indeed I saw it with my eyes, I heard
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  Speaker 1: it with my ears. It is a fact that this
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  Speaker 1: group of men who constituted the government of one fifth
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  Speaker 1: of the habitable land of the earth, who ruled over
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  Speaker 1: a million of armed men, who had such navies as
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  Speaker 1: mankind had never seen before, whose empire of nations, tongues,
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  Speaker 1: peoples still dazzles in these greater days, had no common
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  Speaker 1: idea whatever of what they meant to do with the world.
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  Speaker 1: They had been a government for three long years, and
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  Speaker 1: before the change came to them, it had never even
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  Speaker 1: occurred to them that it was necessary to have no
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  Speaker 1: common idea. There was no common idea at all. That
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  Speaker 1: great empire was no more than a thing adrift, an
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  Speaker 1: aimless thing that ate and drank and slept and bore arms,
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  Speaker 1: and was inordinately proud of itself because it had chanced
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  Speaker 1: to happen. It had no plan, no intention, It meant
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  Speaker 1: nothing at all. And the other great empires, adrift, perilously
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  Speaker 1: adrift like marine mines, were in the self same case
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  Speaker 1: absurd as a British cabinet council must seem to you now,
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  Speaker 1: it was no whit more absurd than the controlling ganglion,
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  Speaker 1: autocratic council, President's Committee, or what not of each of
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  Speaker 1: its blind rivals. End of Book two Chapter three, Section one,