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The Passionate Friends Chapter 2 - Boyhood Parts 4-7 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter two, parts four to seven of The Passionate Friends
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Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells. This LibriVox recording is in the
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Speaker 1: public domain recording by Peter Eastman, Chapter The Second Boyhood
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Speaker 1: continued four. I do not want to leave the impression
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Speaker 1: which my last section may have conveyed, that, at the
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Speaker 1: age of thirteen or thereabouts, I walked about with mister
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Speaker 1: Siddens discussing doubt in a candid and intelligent manner, and
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Speaker 1: maintaining theological positions. That particular conversation you must imagine with
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Speaker 1: mister Siddens somewhat monologing, addressing himself not only to my
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Speaker 1: present self, but with an unaccustomed valiance to my absent father.
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Speaker 1: What I may have said or not said, whether I
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Speaker 1: did indeed dispute or merely and by a kind of
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Speaker 1: accident implied objections, I have altogether for gotten long ago.
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Speaker 1: A boy, far more than a man, is mentally a
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Speaker 1: discontinuous being. The drifting chaos of his mind makes its
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Speaker 1: experimental beginnings at a hundred different points, and in a
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Speaker 1: hundred different spirits and directions. Here he flashes into a
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Speaker 1: concrete realization, here, into a conviction unconsciously incompatible Here is
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Speaker 1: something originally conceived here, something uncritically accepted. I know that
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Speaker 1: I criticized mister Siddons quite acutely and disbelieved in him.
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Speaker 1: I know also that I accepted all sorts of suggestions
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Speaker 1: from him quite unhesitatingly, and that I did my utmost
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Speaker 1: to satisfy his standards and realize his ideals of me.
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Speaker 1: Like an outer casing to that primordial creature of senses
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Speaker 1: and dreams which came to the surface in the solitudes
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Speaker 1: of the park, was my sitonesque self, a high minded
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Speaker 1: and clean and brave English boy, conscientiously loyalty queen and
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Speaker 1: country athletic and a good sportsman, and acutely alive to
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Speaker 1: good and bad form. Mister Sidens made me aware of
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Speaker 1: my clothed self as a visible object. I surveyed my
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Speaker 1: garmented being in mears, and was trained to feel the
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Speaker 1: awfulness of various other small boys who appeared transitorially in
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Speaker 1: the smaller park. When Lady Ladislaw extended her wide hospitality
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Speaker 1: to certain benevolent Lendon associations, their ill fitting clothing, their
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Speaker 1: undisciplined outcries, their slouching, their bad throwing, and defective aspirates
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Speaker 1: were made matters for detestation. In my plastic mind, those things,
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Speaker 1: I was assured placed them outside the pale of any
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Speaker 1: common humanity. Very unfortunate in all that, said, mister Siddens,
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Speaker 1: and uncommonly good of Lady Ladislaw to have them down.
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Speaker 1: But dirty little cads, Stephen, dirty little cads, So don't
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Speaker 1: go near him if you can help it. They played
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Speaker 1: an indecent sort of cricket with coats instead of a wicket.
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Speaker 1: Mister Siddons was very grave about games and the strict
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Speaker 1: ritual and proper apparatus for games. He believed that Waterloo
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Speaker 1: was won by the indirect influence of public school cricket,
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Speaker 1: disregarding many other contributory factors. We did not play very much,
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Speaker 1: but we practiced sedulously at a net in the paddock
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Speaker 1: with the gardener and the doctor's almost grown up sons.
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Speaker 1: I thought missing a possible catch was in impropriety. I
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Speaker 1: studiously maintained the correct attitude, alert and elastic while I
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Speaker 1: was fielding. Moreover, I had a shameful secret that I
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Speaker 1: did not really know where a ball ought to pitch.
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Speaker 1: I wasn't clear about it, and I did not dare
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Speaker 1: to ask. Also, until I was nearly thirteen, I couldn't
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Speaker 1: bowl over arm. Such is the enduring force of early suggestion,
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Speaker 1: my dear son, that I feel a faint twinch of
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Speaker 1: shame as I set this down for your humiliated eyes.
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Speaker 1: But so it was. May you be more precocious. Then
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Speaker 1: I was induced to believe that I really liked hunting
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Speaker 1: and killing things. In the depths of my being, I
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Speaker 1: was a gentle and primitive savage towards animals. I believed
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Speaker 1: they were as subtle and wise as myself, and full
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Speaker 1: of the magic of their own. But mister Siddons nevertheless
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Speaker 1: got me out into the south warren, where I had
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Speaker 1: often watched the rabbits setting their silly, cockyered sentinels and
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Speaker 1: lollapang out to feed about sundown, and beguiled me into
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Speaker 1: shooting a furry little fellow creature. I can still see
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Speaker 1: its eyelid quiver as it does, and carrying it home
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Speaker 1: in triumph. On another occasion, I remember I was worked
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Speaker 1: up into a ferocious excitement about the rats in the
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Speaker 1: old barn. We went ratting, just as though I was
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Speaker 1: Tom Brown or Hairy East or any other of the
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Speaker 1: beastly little models of cant and cruelty we English boys
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Speaker 1: were trained to imitate. It was great sport. It was
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Speaker 1: a tremendous spree. The distracted movements, the scampering and pawing
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Speaker 1: of the little pink fore feet of one squawking little
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Speaker 1: fugitive that I hit with a stick and then beat
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Speaker 1: to a shapeless bag of fur, haunted my dreams for years.
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Speaker 1: And then I saw the bowels of another still living
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Speaker 1: victim that had been torn open by one of the terriers,
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Speaker 1: and abruptly I fled out into the yard and was
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Speaker 1: violently sick. The best of the fun was over, so
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Speaker 1: far as I was concerned. My cousin saved me from
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Speaker 1: the uttermost shame of my failure by saying that I
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Speaker 1: had been excited too soon after my dinner. And also
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Speaker 1: I collected stamps and birds eggs. Mister Siddons hypnotized me
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Speaker 1: into believing that I really wanted these things. He gave
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Speaker 1: me an egg cabinet for a birthday present, and told
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Speaker 1: me exemplary stories of the wonderful collections other boys had made.
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Speaker 1: My own natural disposition to watch nests and establish heaven
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Speaker 1: knows what friendly intimacy with the birds. Perhaps I dreamt
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Speaker 1: their mother might let me help to feed the young ones.
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Speaker 1: Gave place to a feverish, artful hunting a clutch, and
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Speaker 1: then detestable process the blowing of the egg. Of course
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Speaker 1: we were very humane. We never took the nest, but
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Speaker 1: just frightened off the sitting bird and grabbed a warm
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Speaker 1: egg or so, and the poor perforated, rather damaged little
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Speaker 1: egg shells accumulated in the drawers against the wished for
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Speaker 1: but never actually realized day of glory when we should
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Speaker 1: meet another collector who wouldn't have something that we had
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Speaker 1: so far as it was for anything, and not mere
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Speaker 1: imbecile imitativeness. It was for that. And writing thus of
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Speaker 1: eggs reminds me that I got into a row with
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Speaker 1: mister Siddons for cruelty. I discovered there was the nest
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Speaker 1: of a little tit in a hole between two stones
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Speaker 1: in the rock bank that bordered the lawn. I found
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Speaker 1: it out when I was sitting on the garden seat
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Speaker 1: near by, learning Latin irregular verbs. I saw the minute
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Speaker 1: preposterous round birds going and coming, and I found something
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Speaker 1: so absurdly amiable and confiding about them. They sat balancing
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Speaker 1: and oscillating on a standard rose, and cheaped at me
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Speaker 1: to go, and then dived now nestward and gave away
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Speaker 1: their secret out of sheer impatience that I could not
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Speaker 1: bring myself to explore further, and kept the matter altogether
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Speaker 1: secret from the enthusiasm of mister Siddons. And in a
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Speaker 1: few days there were no more eggs, and I could
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Speaker 1: hear the hungry little nestlings making the minutest of fairy
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Speaker 1: hullabaloos the very finest spun silk of sound. A tremendous
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Speaker 1: traffic and victual began, and I was the trusted friend
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Speaker 1: of the family. Then one morning I was filled with
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Speaker 1: amazement and anguish. There was a rock torn down and
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Speaker 1: lying in the path. A paw had gone up to
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Speaker 1: that little warm place across the gravel, shreds of the
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Speaker 1: nest and a wisp or so of down were scattered.
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Speaker 1: I could imagine the brief horrors of that night attack.
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Speaker 1: I started off picking up stones as I went to
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Speaker 1: murder that sandy devil, the stable cat. I got her
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Speaker 1: once alas that I am still glad to think of it,
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Speaker 1: and just missed her as she flashed a ginger streak
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Speaker 1: through the gate into the paddock. Now step, Now came
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Speaker 1: mister Siddons's voice behind me. How can one explain things
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Speaker 1: of that sort to a man like Sidens? I took
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Speaker 1: my lecture on the utter cattishness of wanton cruelty in
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Speaker 1: a black, rebellious silence. The affair and my own emotions
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Speaker 1: were not only far beyond my powers of explanation, but
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Speaker 1: far beyond my power of understanding. Just then, my soul
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Speaker 1: was in shapeless and aimless revolt against something greater and higher,
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Speaker 1: and deeper and darker than Siddens, and his reproaches were
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Speaker 1: no more than the chattering of a squirrel while a
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Speaker 1: storm uproots great trees. I wanted to kill the cat.
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Speaker 1: I wanted to kill whatever had made that cat. Five.
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Speaker 1: Mister Siddens, it was who first planted the conception of
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Speaker 1: life as a career in my mind. In those talks
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Speaker 1: that did so much towards shaping me into the likeness
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Speaker 1: of a modest, reserved, sporting, seemly clean and brave, patriotic
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Speaker 1: and decently slangy young englishman, he was constantly reverting to
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Speaker 1: that view of existence. He spoke of failures and successes,
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Speaker 1: talked of statesmen and administrators, peerages and Westminster Abbey. Nelson,
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Speaker 1: he said, was once a clergyman's son, like you. England
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Speaker 1: has been made by the sons of the clergy. He
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Speaker 1: talked of the things that led to failure and the
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Speaker 1: things that had made men prominent and famous. Discursiveness ruins
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Speaker 1: a man. I remember him saying, choose your goal and
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Speaker 1: press to it. Never do anything needlessly odd. It's a
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Speaker 1: sort of impertinence to all the endless leaders of the
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Speaker 1: past who created our traditions. Do not commit yourself hastily
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Speaker 1: to opinions. But once you have done so, stick to them.
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Speaker 1: The world would far rather have a firm man wrong
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Speaker 1: than a weak man hesitatingly right. Stick to them. One
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Speaker 1: has to remember, I recall him, meditating far over my
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Speaker 1: head with his face upturned, that institutions are more important
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Speaker 1: than views. Very often one adopts a view only to
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Speaker 1: express one's belief in an institution. Men can do with
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Speaker 1: almost all sorts of views, but only with certain institutions.
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Speaker 1: All this doubt doesn't touch a truth like that. One
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Speaker 1: does not refuse to live in a house because of
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Speaker 1: the old symbols. No one finds upon the door if
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Speaker 1: they are old symbols. Out of such private contemplations, he
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Speaker 1: would descend suddenly upon me. What are you going to
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Speaker 1: do with your life, Steve? He would ask, There is
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Speaker 1: no happiness in life without some form of service. Where
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Speaker 1: do you mean to serve? With your bent for science
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Speaker 1: and natural history? It wouldn't be difficult for you to
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Speaker 1: get into the ICs. I doubt if you do anything
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Speaker 1: at the law. It's a rough game, Steve. Though the
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Speaker 1: prizes are big, big prizes, the lawyers get. I've known
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Speaker 1: a man in the Privy Council under forty and that
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Speaker 1: without anything much in the way of a family. But
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Speaker 1: always one must concentrate. The one thing England will not
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Speaker 1: stand is a loafer, a wool gatherer, a man who
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Speaker 1: goes about musing and half awake. It's our energy. We're Western,
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Speaker 1: It's that has made us all we are. I knew
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Speaker 1: whither that pointed. Never, so far as I can remember,
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Speaker 1: did mister Siddens criticize either myself or my father directly.
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Speaker 1: But I understood with the utmost clearness that he found
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Speaker 1: my father indolent and hesitating, and myself more than a
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Speaker 1: little bit of a molly coddle and an urgent need
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Speaker 1: of pulling together. Six Harbury went on with that process
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Speaker 1: of suppressing, encrusting, hardening and bracing up which mister Siddens
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Speaker 1: had begun for a time. I pulled myself together very thoroughly.
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Speaker 1: I am not ungrateful nor unfaithful to Harbury. In your turn,
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Speaker 1: you will go there. You will have to live your
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Speaker 1: life in this British world of ours, and you must
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Speaker 1: learn its language and manners, acquire its reserves, and develop
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Speaker 1: the approved toughness and patterning of cuticle. Afterwards, if you please,
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Speaker 1: you may quarrel with it, but don't when the time comes,
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Speaker 1: quarrel with the present conditions of human association, and think
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Speaker 1: it is only with Harbory you quarrel what man has
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Speaker 1: become and may become, beneath the masks and impositions of civilization,
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Speaker 1: in his intimate texture and in the depths of his being.
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Speaker 1: I begin now, in my middle age to appreciate no
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Speaker 1: longer is he an instinctive savage, but a creature of
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Speaker 1: almost incredible variability and wonderful new possibilities, marvels undreamt of
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Speaker 1: power still inconceivable, an empire beyond the uttermost stars. Such
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Speaker 1: is man's inheritance. But for the present, until we get
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Speaker 1: a mastery of those vague and mighty intimations at once
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Speaker 1: so perplexing and so reassuring. If we are to live
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Speaker 1: at all in the multitudinousness of human society, we must
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Speaker 1: submit to some scheme of clumsy compromises and conventions or other.
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Speaker 1: And for us Stratton's the Harbory system is the most convenient.
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Speaker 1: You will have to go to the old school. I
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Speaker 1: went to Randalls. I just missed getting into college. I
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Speaker 1: was two places below the lowest successful boy. I was
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Speaker 1: Maxton's fag to begin with, and my chief chum was Raymond,
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Speaker 1: who is your friend also, and who comes so often
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Speaker 1: to this house. I preferred water to land boats to
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Speaker 1: cricket because of that difficulty about pitch I have already mentioned.
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Speaker 1: But I was no great sportsman. Raymond and I shared
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Speaker 1: a boat and spent most of the time we gave
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Speaker 1: to it under the big trees near Darkpool, lock reading
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Speaker 1: or talking. We would pull up to Sandy Hall perhaps
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Speaker 1: once a week. I never rowed in any of the eighths,
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Speaker 1: though I was urged to do so. I swam fairly
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Speaker 1: well and got my colors on the strength of my
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Speaker 1: diving on the whole, I found Harbury a satisfactory and
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Speaker 1: amusing place. I was neither bullied, nor do I think
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Speaker 1: I greatly bullied, And of all that furtive and puerile
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Speaker 1: lasciviousness of which one hears so many hints. Nowadays, excitable
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Speaker 1: people talk of it as though it was the most
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Speaker 1: monstrous and singular avices, instead of a slightly debasing but
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Speaker 1: almost unavoidable and very obvious result of heaping boys together
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Speaker 1: under the inefficient control of a timid, pretentious class of men.
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Speaker 1: Of such uncleanness, as I say, scarcely more than a
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Speaker 1: glimpse and a whisper and a vague tentative talk, or
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Speaker 1: so reached me. Little more will reach you for that
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Speaker 1: kind of thing, like the hells of Swdenborg finds its own.
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Speaker 1: I had already developed my growing instinct for observance to
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Speaker 1: a very considerable extent under sits and at Harbury. I
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Speaker 1: remember myself, and people remember me as an almost stiffly
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Speaker 1: correct youth. I was pretty good at most of the work,
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Speaker 1: and exceptionally so at history, geology, and the biological side
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Speaker 1: of natural science. I had to restrain my interest in
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Speaker 1: these latter subjects, lest I should appear to be a
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Speaker 1: swat and a modern side swat at that I was
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Speaker 1: early in the sixth and rather a favorite with Old Latimer.
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Speaker 1: He incited me to exercise what he called a wholesome
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Speaker 1: influence on the younger boys, and I succeeded in doing
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Speaker 1: this fairly well, without any gross interventions. I implied, rather
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Speaker 1: than professed, soundly orthodox views about things in general. And
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Speaker 1: I was extremely careful to tilt my straw hat forward
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Speaker 1: over my nose, so as just not to expose the
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Speaker 1: crown of my head behind, and to turn up my
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Speaker 1: trousers with exactly that width of margin which the judgment
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Speaker 1: of my fellow creatures had decided was correct. My socks
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Speaker 1: were spirited without being vulgar, and the ties I wore
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Speaker 1: were tied with a studious avoidance of either slovenliness or
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Speaker 1: priggish neatness. I wrote two articles in the Harboronian, became
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Speaker 1: something of a debater in the literacy and political, conducted
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Speaker 1: many long conversations with my senior contemporaries upon religion, politics, sport,
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Speaker 1: and social life, and concealed my inmost thoughts from every
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Speaker 1: human being. Indeed, so effective had been the training of
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Speaker 1: Harbury and mister Siddens, that I think at that time
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Speaker 1: I came very near concealing them from myself. I could
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Speaker 1: suppress wonder, I could pass by beauty as if I
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Speaker 1: did not see it. Almost I think I did not
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Speaker 1: see it for a time, and yet I remember it
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Speaker 1: in those years too, a hundred beautiful things. Harbury itself
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Speaker 1: is a very beautiful place. The country about it has
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Speaker 1: all the charm of river scenery in a settled and
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Speaker 1: ancient land, and the great castle and piled town of Wetmore.
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Speaker 1: Cliffs of battlemented gray wall rising above a dense cluster
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Speaker 1: of red roofs, form the background to innumerable gracious prospects
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Speaker 1: of great stream fed trees, level meadows of buttercups, sweeping
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Speaker 1: curves of osure and rush rimmed river, the playing fields,
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Speaker 1: and the sedgy, lily spangled levels of Avonlea. The college
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Speaker 1: itself is mostly late Tudor and Stuart brickwork, very ripe
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Speaker 1: and mellow now, but the great gray Chapel, with its
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Speaker 1: glorious east window, floats over the whole like a voice
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Speaker 1: singing in the evening, and the evening cloudscapes of Harbury
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Speaker 1: are a perpetual succession of glorious anas facts, now serene,
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Speaker 1: now mysteriously threatening and profound, now towering to incredible heights,
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Speaker 1: now revealing undreamt of distances of luminous color. Assuredly I
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Speaker 1: must have delighted in all those aspects, or why should
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Speaker 1: I remember them so well? But I recall I mean,
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Speaker 1: no confessed recognition of them, no deliberate going out of
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Speaker 1: my spirit, open and unashamed to such things. I suppose
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Speaker 1: one's early adolescence is necessarily the period of maximum shyness
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Speaker 1: in one's life. Even to Raymond, I attempted no extremities
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Speaker 1: of confidence. Even to myself, I tried to be the
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Speaker 1: thing that was expected of me. I professed a modest
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Speaker 1: desire for temperate and tolerable achievement in life, though deep
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Speaker 1: in my lost depths I wanted passionately to excel. I
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Speaker 1: worked hard, much harder than I allowed to appear, and
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Speaker 1: I said I did it for the credit of the school.
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Speaker 1: I affected a dignified loyalty to queen and country and church.
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Speaker 1: I pretended a stoical disdain for appetites and delights and
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Speaker 1: all the arts, though now and then a chance. Fragment
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Speaker 1: of poetry would light me like a fire or a
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Speaker 1: lovely picture, stir unwanted urgencies, though visions of delight haunted
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Speaker 1: the shadows of my imagination and did not always fly
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Speaker 1: when I regarded them. But on the other hand, I
21:33
Speaker 1: affected an interest in games that I was far from feeling.
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Speaker 1: Of some boys. I was violently jealous, and this also
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Speaker 1: I masked beneath a generous appreciation. Certain popularities I applauded
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Speaker 1: while I doubted. Whatever my intimate motives, I became less
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Speaker 1: and less disposed to obey them until I had translated
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Speaker 1: them into a plausible rendering of the accepted code. If
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Speaker 1: I could not so translate them, I found it wise
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Speaker 1: to control them. When I wanted urgently one summer to
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Speaker 1: wander by night over the hills toward Kestering, and lie
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Speaker 1: upon heather and look up at the stars and wonder
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Speaker 1: about them. I cast about, and at last he had
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Speaker 1: upon the well known and approved sport of treacling for
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Speaker 1: moths as a cloak for so strange an indulgence. I
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Speaker 1: must have known even then what a mask in front
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Speaker 1: I was, because I knew quite well how things were
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Speaker 1: with other people. I listened politely and respected and understood
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Speaker 1: the admirable explanations of my friends. When some fellow got
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Speaker 1: a scholarship unexpectedly and declared it was what in bad
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Speaker 1: luck on the other chap, seeing the papers he had done,
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Speaker 1: and doubted whether he shouldn't resign, I had an intuitive
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Speaker 1: knowledge that he wouldn't resign. And I do not remember
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Speaker 1: any time in my career as the respectful listener to
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Speaker 1: mister siddens aspirations for service and devotion, when I did
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Speaker 1: not perceive quite clearly his undeviating eye upon a bishopric.
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Speaker 1: He thought of gaiters, though he talked of wings, how
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Speaker 1: firmly the bonds of an old relationship can hold one.
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Speaker 1: I remember when a few years ago he reached that
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Speaker 1: toiled four goal. I wrote, in a tone of gratified
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Speaker 1: surprise that in this blatant age, such disinterested effort as
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Speaker 1: his should receive even so belated a recognition. Yet what
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Speaker 1: else was there for me to write? We all have
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Speaker 1: our citzences, with whom there are no alternatives but insincerity
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Speaker 1: or a disproportionate destructiveness. I am still largely citensized, little son,
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Speaker 1: and so I fear you will have to be seven
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Speaker 1: the clue to all the perplexities of law and custom
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Speaker 1: lies in this that human association is an artificiality. We
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Speaker 1: do not run together naturally and easily, as grazing deer do,
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Speaker 1: or feeding starlings or a shoal of fish. We are
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Speaker 1: a sort of creature which is only resuming association after
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Speaker 1: a long heredity of extreme separation. We are beings strongly individualized.
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Speaker 1: We are dominated by that passion which is no more
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Speaker 1: and no less than individuality in action jealousy. Jealousy is
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Speaker 1: a fierce insistence on ourselves, an instinctive intolerance of our
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Speaker 1: fellow creatures, ranging between an insatiable aggression as its buoyant
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Speaker 1: phase and a savage defensiveness when it is touched by fear.
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Speaker 1: In our expansive moments, we want to dominate and control
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Speaker 1: every one and destroy every unlikeness to ourselves. In our
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Speaker 1: recessive phases, our homes are our castles, and we want
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Speaker 1: to be let alone. Now. All law, all social order,
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Speaker 1: all custom is a patch up and a concession to
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Speaker 1: the separating passion of self insistence. It is an evasion
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Speaker 1: of conflict and social death. Human society is as yet
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Speaker 1: only a truce and not an alliance. When you understand that,
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Speaker 1: you will begin to understand a thousand perplexing things in
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Speaker 1: legislation and social life. You will understand the necessity of
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Speaker 1: all those restrictions that are called conventionality, and the inevitableness
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Speaker 1: of the general hostility to singularity. To be exceptional is
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Speaker 1: to assert a difference, to disregard the banked up forces
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Speaker 1: of jealousy, and break the essential conditions of the social contract.
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Speaker 1: It invites either resentment or aggression. So we all wear
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Speaker 1: much the same clothing, affect modesty, use the same phrases,
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Speaker 1: respect one another's writes, and pretend a greater disinterestedness than
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Speaker 1: we feel. You have to face this reality as you
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Speaker 1: must face all reality. This is the reality of laws
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Speaker 1: and government, This is the reality of customs and institutions,
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Speaker 1: a convention between jealousies. This is reality, just as the
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Speaker 1: cat's way with the nestlings was reality, and the squealing
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Speaker 1: rat when smashed in a paroxysm of cruelty and disgust
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Speaker 1: in the barn. But it isn't. The only reality equally
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Speaker 1: real is the passionate revolt of my heart against cruelty,
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Speaker 1: and the deep, fluctuating impulse not to pretend, to set
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Speaker 1: aside fear and jealousy, to come nakedly out of the
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Speaker 1: compromises and secretive methods of everyday living, into the light,
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Speaker 1: into a wide, impersonal love, into a new way of
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Speaker 1: living for mankind. End of Chapter two,