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The New Machiavelli Chapter 8 Part 1 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Chapter eight, Section one of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Antoniogus.
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Speaker 1: The House in Westminster one. Margaret had already taken a
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Speaker 1: little house in Radnor Square, Westminster, before our marriage, a
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Speaker 1: house that seemed particularly adaptable to our needs as public
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Speaker 1: spirited efficients. It had been very pleasantly painted and papered
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Speaker 1: under Margaret's instructions, white paints and clean, open purples and
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Speaker 1: green predominating. And now we set to work at once
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Speaker 1: upon the interesting business of arranging, and with our Venetian glasses,
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Speaker 1: beginning furnishing it. We had been fairly fortunate with our
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Speaker 1: wedding presents, and for the most part it was open
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Speaker 1: to us to choose just exactly what we would have
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Speaker 1: and just precisely where we would put it. Margaret had
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Speaker 1: a sense of form and color altogether superior to mine,
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Speaker 1: and so quite apart from the fact that it was
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Speaker 1: her money equipped us. I stood aside from all these
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Speaker 1: matters and obeyed her summons to a consultation, only to
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Speaker 1: endorse her judgment very readily. Until everything was settled, I
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Speaker 1: went every day to my old rooms in Vincent's Square
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Speaker 1: and worked at a series of papers that were originally
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Speaker 1: intended for the Fortnightly Review. The papers that afterwards became
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Speaker 1: my fourth book, New Aspects of Liberalism. I still remember
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Speaker 1: as delightful most of the circumstances of getting into seventy
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Speaker 1: nine Radnes Square. The thin flavor of indecision about Margaret
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Speaker 1: disappeared altogether. In a shop, she had the precisest ideas
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Speaker 1: of what she wanted, and the devices of the salesman
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Speaker 1: did not sway her. It was very pleasant to find
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Speaker 1: her taking things out of my hands with a certain masterfulness,
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Speaker 1: showing the distinctest determination to make a house in which
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Speaker 1: I shall be able to work in that great project
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Speaker 1: of doing something for the world. And I do want
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Speaker 1: to make things pretty about us. She said, you don't
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Speaker 1: think it wrong to have things pretty. I want them.
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Speaker 1: So Altiora has things hard. Altiora, I answered, takes a
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Speaker 1: pride in standing ugly and uncomfortable things. But I don't
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Speaker 1: see that they help her anyhow. They won't help me.
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Speaker 1: So Margaret went to the best shops and got everything
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Speaker 1: very simple and very good. She bought some pictures very well. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: there was a Little Sussex Landscape full of Wind and
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Speaker 1: Sunshine by Nicholson for my study. That hit my taste
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Speaker 1: far better than if I had gone out to get
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Speaker 1: some such expression for myself. We will buy a picture
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Speaker 1: just now and then, she said, sometimes when we see one.
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Speaker 1: I would come back through the january mire of fog
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Speaker 1: from Vincent's Square to the door of seventy nine, and
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Speaker 1: reach it at last, with a quite childish appreciation of
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Speaker 1: the fact that its solid george and proportions, and its
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Speaker 1: fine brass furnishings belonged to my home. I would use
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Speaker 1: my latch key and discover Margaret in the warm lit,
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Speaker 1: spacious hall with a partially open packing case, fatigued but happy,
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Speaker 1: or go up to have tea with her. Out of
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Speaker 1: the right tea things come at last, or be told
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Speaker 1: to notice what was fresh there. It wasn't simply that
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Speaker 1: I had never had a house before, but I had
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Speaker 1: really never been, except in the most transitory way, in
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Speaker 1: any house that was nearly so delightful as mine promised
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Speaker 1: to be. Everything was fresh and bright and softly and
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Speaker 1: harmoniously toned. Downstairs, we had a green dining room with
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Speaker 1: gleaming silver, dark oak, and English color prints. Above was
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Speaker 1: a large drawing room that could be made still larger
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Speaker 1: by throwing open folding doors. And it was all carefully
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Speaker 1: done in grays and blues for the most part, with
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Speaker 1: real sherat and supplemented by shereton so skillfully imitated by
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Speaker 1: an expert Margaret had discovered as to be indistinguishable except
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Speaker 1: to a minute scrutiny. And for me above this and
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Speaker 1: next to my bedroom there was a roomy study with
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Speaker 1: specially thick stair carpet outside and thick carpets in the
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Speaker 1: bedroom overhead, and a big old desk for me to
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Speaker 1: sit at and work between fire and window, and another
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Speaker 1: desk specially made for me by that expert if I
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Speaker 1: chose to stand and write an open bookshelves and bookcases
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Speaker 1: and every sort of convenient fitting. There were electric heaters
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Speaker 1: beside the open fire, and everything was put for me
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Speaker 1: to make tea at any time, electric kettle infuser biscuits
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Speaker 1: and fresh butter, so that I could get up and
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Speaker 1: work at any hour of the day or night. I
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Speaker 1: could do no work in this apartment. For a long time.
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Speaker 1: I was so interested in the perfection of its arrangements,
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Speaker 1: and when I brought in my books and papers from
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Speaker 1: Vincent Square. Margaret seized upon all the really shabby volumes
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Speaker 1: and had them rebound in a fine, official looking leather.
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Speaker 1: I can remember sitting down at that desk and looking
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Speaker 1: round me and feeling with a queer effect of surprise that,
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Speaker 1: after all, even a place in the cabinet, though infinitely remote,
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Speaker 1: was nevertheless in the same large world with these fine
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Speaker 1: and quietly expensive things. On the same floor, Margaret had
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Speaker 1: a den, a very neat and pretty den with good
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Speaker 1: color prints of bodicellis and carpaccios. And there was a
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Speaker 1: third apartment for sectarial purposes, should the necessity for them arise,
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Speaker 1: with a severe looking desk equipped with patent files. And
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Speaker 1: Margaret would come flitting into the room to me, or
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Speaker 1: appear noiselessly standing a tall, gracefully drooping form in the
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Speaker 1: wide open doorway. Is everything right, dear, she would ask?
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Speaker 1: Come in, I would say, I'm sorting out papers. She
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Speaker 1: would come to the hearth rug. I mustn't disturb you,
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Speaker 1: she would remark, I'm not busy yet. Things are getting
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Speaker 1: into order. Then we must make out a timetable, as
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Speaker 1: the bailiers do, and begin Altiora came in to see
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Speaker 1: us once or twice, and a number of serious young
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Speaker 1: wives known to Altiora called and was shown over the
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Speaker 1: house and discussed its arrangements with Margaret. They were all
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Speaker 1: tremendously keen on efficient arrangements. A little pretty, said Altiora,
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Speaker 1: with the faintest disapproval. A still it was clear she
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Speaker 1: thought we should grow out of that. From the day
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Speaker 1: of our return, we found other people's houses open to
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Speaker 1: us and eager for us. We went out of London
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Speaker 1: for week ends and dined out and began discussing our
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Speaker 1: projects for reciprocating these hospitalities. As a single man, unattached,
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Speaker 1: I had had a wide and miscellaneous social range. But
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Speaker 1: now I found myself falling into place in a set.
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Speaker 1: For a time I acquiesced in this. I went very
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Speaker 1: little to my clubs, the Climax and the National Liberal,
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Speaker 1: and participated in no bachelor dinners at all. For a
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Speaker 1: time too, I dropped out of the garous literary and
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Speaker 1: journalistic circles I had frequented. I put up for the reform,
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Speaker 1: not so much for the use of the club as
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Speaker 1: a sign of serious and substantial political standing. I didn't
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Speaker 1: go up to Cambridge. I remember for nearly a year,
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Speaker 1: so occupied was I with my new adjustments. The people
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Speaker 1: we found ourselves among at this time were people, to
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Speaker 1: put it roughly, of the parliamentary candidate class, people already
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Speaker 1: actually placed in the political world. They ranged between very
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Speaker 1: considerable wealth and such a hard bare independence, as old
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Speaker 1: Willisley and the sister who kept house for him possessed.
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Speaker 1: There were quite a number of young couples like ourselves,
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Speaker 1: a little younger and more artless, or a little older
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Speaker 1: and more established. Among the younger men, I had a
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Speaker 1: sort of distinction because of my Cambridge reputation and my writing,
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Speaker 1: and because unlike them, I was an adventurer and had
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Speaker 1: won and married my way into their circles instead of
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Speaker 1: being naturally there. They couldn't quite reckon upon what I
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Speaker 1: should do. They felt I had reserves of experience and
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Speaker 1: incalculable traditions. Close to us were the Cramptons. Willie Crampton,
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Speaker 1: who has since been Postmaster General, rich and very important
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Speaker 1: in Rockshire, and his younger brother Edward, who has specialized
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Speaker 1: in history and become one of those unimaginative men of
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Speaker 1: letters who are the glory of lace day England. Then
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Speaker 1: there was Lewis, further towards Kensington, where his cousins, the
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Speaker 1: Solomons and the Hartsteins lived, a brilliant representative of his race,
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Speaker 1: able industriss and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little
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Speaker 1: in revolt against the racial tradition of feminine servitude and
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Speaker 1: inclined to the suffragette point of view, and bunting harblow
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Speaker 1: an old blue, and with an erratic disposition, well under
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Speaker 1: the control of the able little cousin he had married.
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Speaker 1: I had known all these men, but now without your
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Speaker 1: afloating angelically in benediction, they opened their hearts to me
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Speaker 1: and took me into their order. They were all, like myself,
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Speaker 1: prospective liberal candidates, with a feeling that the period of
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Speaker 1: wandering in the wilderness of opposition was drawing near its close.
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Speaker 1: They were all tremendously keen upon social and political service,
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Speaker 1: and all greatly under the sway of the ideal of
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Speaker 1: a simple, strenuous life, a life find its satisfactions in
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Speaker 1: political achievements and distinctions. The young wives were as keen
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Speaker 1: about it as the young husband's margaret most of all.
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Speaker 1: And I whatever elements in meat in March, with the
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Speaker 1: attitudes and habits of this set were very much in
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Speaker 1: the background. During that time. We would give little dinners
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Speaker 1: and have evening gatherings at which everything was very simple
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Speaker 1: and very good, with a slight but perceptible austerity, and
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Speaker 1: there was more good fruit and flowers, and less, perhaps
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Speaker 1: in the way of savories, patties and entrees than was customary.
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Speaker 1: Sherry we banished and massaran the cures, and there was
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Speaker 1: always good home made lemonade available. No men waited, but
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Speaker 1: very expert parlor maids. Our meat was usually Welsh mutton.
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Speaker 1: I don't know why, unless that mountains have ever been
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Speaker 1: the last refuge of the severer virtues. And we taught
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Speaker 1: politics and books and ideas. And Bernard Sure, who was
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Speaker 1: the department by himself and supposed in those days to
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Speaker 1: be ethically sound at bottom, and mingled with the intellectuals.
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Speaker 1: I myself was, as it were, a promoted intellectual. The
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Speaker 1: Cramptons had a tendency to read good things aloud on
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Speaker 1: their less frequented receptions. But I have never been able
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Speaker 1: to participate submissively in this hyperdigestion of written matter, and
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Speaker 1: generally managed to provoke a disruptive debate. We were all
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Speaker 1: very earnest to make the most of ourselves and to
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Speaker 1: be and do. And I wonder still, at times, with
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Speaker 1: an unassuaged perplexity, how it is that in that phase
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Speaker 1: of utmost earnestness, I have always seemed to myself to
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Speaker 1: be most remote from reality. Two. I look back now
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Speaker 1: across the detaching intervention of sixteen crowded years critically, and
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Speaker 1: I fancy almost impartially to those beginnings of my married life.
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Speaker 1: I try to recall something near to their proper order,
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Speaker 1: the developing phases of relationship. I am struck most of
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Speaker 1: all by the immense, unpremeditated, generous spirit and insincerities upon
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Speaker 1: which Margaret and I were building. It seems to me
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Speaker 1: that here I have to tell perhaps the commonest experience
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Speaker 1: of all among married educated people, the deliberate, shy, complex
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Speaker 1: effort to fill the yawning gaps in temperament as they appear,
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Speaker 1: the sustained, failing attempt to bridge abysses, leveled barriers, evade
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Speaker 1: violent pressures. I have come, these latter years of my
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Speaker 1: life to believe that it is possible for a man
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Speaker 1: and woman to be absolutely real with one another, to
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Speaker 1: stand naked souled to each other, unashamed and unafraid. Because
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Speaker 1: of the natural, all glorifying love between them, it is
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Speaker 1: possible to love and be loved untroubling as a bird
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Speaker 1: flies through the But it is a rare and intricate
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Speaker 1: chance that brings two people within sight of that essential union,
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Speaker 1: and for the majority, marriage must adjust itself on other terms.
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Speaker 1: Most coupled people never really look at one another. They
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Speaker 1: look a little away to preconceived ideas, and each, from
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Speaker 1: the first days of love making hides from the other,
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Speaker 1: is afraid of disappointing, afraid of offending, afraid of discoveries.
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Speaker 1: In either sense, They build not solidly upon the rock
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Speaker 1: of truth, but upon arches and pillars and queer provisional
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Speaker 1: supports that are needed to make a common foundation. And below,
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Speaker 1: in the imprisoned darknesses, below the fine fabric they sustain
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Speaker 1: together begins for each of them a cavernous hidden life.
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Speaker 1: Down there, things may be prowling that scarce ever peep
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Speaker 1: out to consciousness, except in the gray half light of
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Speaker 1: sleepless nights, passions that flash out for an instant, in
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Speaker 1: an angry glance, and a scene no more starved victims
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Speaker 1: and beautiful dreams pricked up to die. For the most
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Speaker 1: of us, there is no jail delivery of those inner depths,
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Speaker 1: and the life above goes on to its honorable end.
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Speaker 1: I have told how I loved Margaret and how I
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Speaker 1: came to marry her, Perhaps already unintentionally, I have indicated
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Speaker 1: the quality of the injustice our marriage did us both.
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Speaker 1: There was no kindred between us and no understanding. We
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Speaker 1: were drawn to one another by the unlikeness of our quality,
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Speaker 1: by the things we misunderstood in each other. I know
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Speaker 1: a score of couples who have married in that fashion.
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Speaker 1: Modern conditions and modern ideas, and in particular the intenser
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Speaker 1: and subtler perceptions of modern life, press more and more
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Speaker 1: more heavily upon a marriage tie whose fashion comes from
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Speaker 1: an earlier and less discriminating time, when the wife was
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Speaker 1: her husband's subordinate, meeting him simply and uncritically for simple ends.
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Speaker 1: When marriage was a purely domestic relationship, leaving thought and
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Speaker 1: the vivid things of life almost entirely to the unencumbered man.
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Speaker 1: Mental and temperamental incompatibilities mattered comparatively little. But now the
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Speaker 1: wife and particularly the loving childless wife unpremeditatively makes a
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Speaker 1: relentless demand for a complete association, and the husband exacts
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Speaker 1: unthought of delicacies of understanding and cooperation. These are stupendous demands.
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Speaker 1: People not only think more fully and elaborately about life
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Speaker 1: than they ever did before, but marriage obliges us to
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Speaker 1: make that ever more accidented progress, a three legged race
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Speaker 1: of carelessly asa sorted couples. Our very mental texture was different.
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Speaker 1: I was rough minded, to use the phrase of William James,
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Speaker 1: primary and intuitive and illogical. She was tender minded, logical,
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Speaker 1: refined and secondary. She was loyal to pledge and persons,
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Speaker 1: sentimental and faithful. I am loyal to ideas and instincts,
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Speaker 1: emotional and scheming. My imagination moves in broad gestures. Hers
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Speaker 1: was delicate, with a real dread of extravagance. My quality
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Speaker 1: is sensuous and ruled by warm impulses. Hers was discriminating
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Speaker 1: and essentially inhibitry. I like the facts of the case
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Speaker 1: and to mention everything. I like naked bodies and the
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Speaker 1: jolly smells of things. She abounded in reservations, in circumlocutions,
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Speaker 1: and evasions, in keenly appreciated secondary points. Perhaps the reader
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Speaker 1: knows that Tintoretto in the National Gallery the origin of
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Speaker 1: the Milky Way. It is an admirable test of temperamental quality.
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Speaker 1: In spite of my early training, I have come to
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Speaker 1: regard that picture as altogether delightful. To Margaret has always
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Speaker 1: been needlessly offensive in that you have our fundamental breach.
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Speaker 1: She had a habit, by no means rare of damning
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Speaker 1: what she did not like or find sympathetic in me,
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Speaker 1: on the score that it was not my true self.
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Speaker 1: And she did not so much accept the universe as
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Speaker 1: select from it and do her best to ignore the rest.
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Speaker 1: And also I had far more initiative than had she.
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Speaker 1: This is no catalog of rights and wrongs, or superiorities
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Speaker 1: and inferiorities. It is a catalog of differences between two
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Speaker 1: people linked in a relationship that constantly becomes more intolerant
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Speaker 1: of differences. This is how we stood to each other,
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Speaker 1: and none of it was clear to either of us
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Speaker 1: at the outset. To begin with, I found myself reserving
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Speaker 1: myself from her, then slowly apprehending a jarring between our
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Speaker 1: minds and what seemed to me at first a queer
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Speaker 1: little habit of misunderstanding in her. It did not hinder
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Speaker 1: my being very fond of her. Where our system of
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Speaker 1: reservation became at once most usual and most astounding, was
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Speaker 1: in our personal relations. It is not too much to
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Speaker 1: say that in that regard we never for a moment
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Speaker 1: achieved sincerity with one another during the first six years
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Speaker 1: of our life together. It goes even deeper than that,
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Speaker 1: For in my effort to realize the ideal of my marriage,
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Speaker 1: I ceased even to attempt to be sincere with myself.
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Speaker 1: I would not omit my own perceptions and interpretations. I
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Speaker 1: tried to fit myself to her when or un finer determinations.
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Speaker 1: There are people who will say, with a note of approval,
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Speaker 1: that I was learning to conquer myself. I record that
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Speaker 1: much without any note of approval. For some years I
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Speaker 1: never deceived Margaret about any concrete fact. Nor, except for
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Speaker 1: the silence about my earlier life that she had almost
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Speaker 1: forced upon me, did I hide any concrete fact that
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Speaker 1: seemed to affect her. But from the outset I was
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Speaker 1: guilty of immense spiritual concealments. My very marriage was based,
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Speaker 1: I see now on a spiritual subterfuge. I hid moods
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Speaker 1: from her pretended feelings three, the interests and excitement of
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Speaker 1: setting up a house, of walking about it from room
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Speaker 1: to room and from floor to floor, or sitting at
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Speaker 1: one's own dinner table and watching one's wife control conversation
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Speaker 1: with a pretty timid resolution of taking a place among
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Speaker 1: the secure and free people of our world, passed almost
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Speaker 1: insensibly into the interest and excitement of my parliamentary candidature
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Speaker 1: for the Kinghamstead Division, that shapeless chunk of agricultural midland
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Speaker 1: between the Great Western and the north Western railways. I
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Speaker 1: was going to take hold at last. The kingham Staid
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Speaker 1: Division was my appointed handle. I was to find my
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Speaker 1: place in the rather indistinctly sketched constructions that were implicit
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Speaker 1: in the minds of all our circle. The precise place
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Speaker 1: I had to fill and the precise functions I had
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Speaker 1: to discharge were not as yet very clear, but all
20:41
Speaker 1: that we felt sure would become plain as things developed.
20:47
Speaker 1: A few brief months of vague activities of nursing gave
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Speaker 1: place to the excitements of the contest that followed the
20:53
Speaker 1: return of mister campbell bannerment of power in nineteen o five.
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Speaker 1: So far as the kingham Staid Division was concerned. It
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Speaker 1: was a depressed and tepid battle. I went about the
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Speaker 1: constituency making three speeches that were soon threadbare, and an
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Speaker 1: odd little collection of people worked for me. Two solicitors,
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Speaker 1: a cheap photographer, a democratic parson, a number of dissenting ministers,
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Speaker 1: the mayor of Kinghamstead, and Missus Bulger, the widow of
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Speaker 1: an old chartist who had grown rich through electric traction patterns.
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Speaker 1: Sir Roderick Newton, a jew who had bought Callisham Castle,
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Speaker 1: and old Sir Graham Rivers, that sturdy old soldier, were
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Speaker 1: among my chief supporters. We had headquarters in each town village.
21:40
Speaker 1: Mostly there were empty shops released temporarily, and there at
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Speaker 1: least a sort of fastener coming and going were maintained.
21:48
Speaker 1: The rest of the population stared in a state of
21:51
Speaker 1: suspended judgment as we went about the business. The country
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Speaker 1: was supposed to be in a state of intellectual conflict
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Speaker 1: and deliberate decision. In history, it will no doubt figure
22:02
Speaker 1: as a momentous conflict. Yet, except for an occasional flare
22:06
Speaker 1: of bills sticking, or a bell in a window, or
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Speaker 1: a placard plustered motor car, or an argumentative group of
22:13
Speaker 1: people outside a public house, or a sluggish movement towards
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Speaker 1: the schoolroom or village hall. There was scarcely a sign
22:21
Speaker 1: than a great empire was revising its destinies. Now and
22:25
Speaker 1: then one saw a canvasor on a door step. For
22:28
Speaker 1: the most part, people went about their business with an
22:31
Speaker 1: entirely irresponsible confidence in the stability of the universe. At
22:36
Speaker 1: times one felt a little absurd with one's flutter of
22:39
Speaker 1: colors and one's air of saving the country. My opponent
22:44
Speaker 1: was a quite undistinguished major general who relied upon his
22:48
Speaker 1: advocacy of protection, and was particularly anxious we should avoid
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Speaker 1: personalities and fight the constituency in a gentlemanly spirit. He
22:57
Speaker 1: was always writing me notes apologies, rising for excesses on
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Speaker 1: the part of his supporters, or pointing out the undesirability
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Speaker 1: of some course taken by mine. My speeches had been
23:09
Speaker 1: planned upon broad lines, but they lost touch with these
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Speaker 1: as the polling approached. To begin with, I made a
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Speaker 1: real attempt to put what was in my mind before
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Speaker 1: the people I was to supply. With a political voice.
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Speaker 1: I spoke of the greatness of our empire and its destinies,
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Speaker 1: of the splendid projects and possibilities of life and order
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Speaker 1: that lay before the world, of all that a resolute
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Speaker 1: and constructive effort might do. At the present time, we
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Speaker 1: are building a state, I said, secure and splendid. We
23:40
Speaker 1: are in the dawn of the great age of mankind.
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Speaker 1: Sometimes that would get a solitary area. Then, having created,
23:48
Speaker 1: as I imagined, a fine atmosphere, I turned upon the
23:52
Speaker 1: history of the last Conservative administration and brought it into
23:55
Speaker 1: contrast with the wide occasions of the age. Its failure
24:01
Speaker 1: to control the grasping financiers in South Africa, its failure
24:05
Speaker 1: to release public education from sectarian squabbles, its misconduct of
24:10
Speaker 1: the Boer War, its waste of the world's resources. It
24:15
Speaker 1: soon became manifest that my opening and my general spaciousness
24:19
Speaker 1: of method bored my audiences a good deal. The richer
24:23
Speaker 1: and wider my phrases, the thinner sounded my voice. In
24:27
Speaker 1: these non resonating gatherings. Even the platform supporters grew restive unconsciously,
24:34
Speaker 1: and stirred and coughed. They did not recognize themselves as
24:38
Speaker 1: mankind building an empire, preparing a fresh stage in the
24:43
Speaker 1: history of humanity had no appeal for them. They were
24:47
Speaker 1: mostly every day toiling people full of small personal solicitudes,
24:51
Speaker 1: and they came to my meetings, I think very largely
24:54
Speaker 1: as a relaxation. This stuff was not relaxing. They did
24:59
Speaker 1: not think politics was a great constructive process. They thought
25:03
Speaker 1: it was a kind of dogfight. They wanted fun, they
25:06
Speaker 1: wanted spice, They wanted hits. They wanted also a chance
25:11
Speaker 1: to say ear ear in an intelligent and honorable manner,
25:14
Speaker 1: and clap their hands and drum with their feet. The
25:18
Speaker 1: great constructive process in history gives a little scope for
25:22
Speaker 1: clapping and drumming and saying ear ear. I might as
25:25
Speaker 1: well think of hounding on the solar system. So after
25:29
Speaker 1: one or two attempts to lift my audiences to the
25:32
Speaker 1: level of the issues involved, I began to adapt myself
25:35
Speaker 1: to them. I cut down my review of our imperial
25:39
Speaker 1: outlook and destinies more and more, and developed a series
25:43
Speaker 1: of hits and anecdotes and what shall I call them
25:46
Speaker 1: crudifications of the issue. My help has congratulated me on
25:51
Speaker 1: the rapid improvement of my platform style. I ceased to
25:55
Speaker 1: speak of the late Prime Minister with the respect I
25:58
Speaker 1: bore him, and began to fall in with the popular
26:01
Speaker 1: caricature of him as an artful, rabbit witted person intent
26:06
Speaker 1: only on keeping his leadership in spite of the vigorous
26:09
Speaker 1: attempts of mister Joseph Chamberlain, who asked him therefrom I
26:14
Speaker 1: ceased to qualify my statement the protection would make food
26:17
Speaker 1: dearer for the agricultural laborer. I began to speak of
26:21
Speaker 1: mister Alfred Lyttleton as an influence, at once insane and diabolical,
26:26
Speaker 1: as a man inspired by a passionate desire to substitute
26:30
Speaker 1: manacled but still criminal Chinese for honest British laborers throughout
26:34
Speaker 1: the world. And when it came to the mention of
26:37
Speaker 1: our own kindly leader, of mister John Burns, or any
26:41
Speaker 1: one else of any prominence at all on our side,
26:44
Speaker 1: I fell more and more into the intonation of one
26:46
Speaker 1: who mentions the high gods. And I had my reward
26:50
Speaker 1: in brighter meetings and readier and readier applause. One goes
26:55
Speaker 1: on from phase to phase in these things. After all,
26:59
Speaker 1: I told myself, if one wants to get to Westminster,
27:02
Speaker 1: one must follow the road that leads there. But I
27:05
Speaker 1: found the road nevertheless rather unexpectedly distasteful. When one gets
27:10
Speaker 1: there I said, then, is one begins? But I would
27:14
Speaker 1: lie awake at nights with that sore throat and headache
27:18
Speaker 1: and fatigue which come from speaking in ill ventilated rooms,
27:22
Speaker 1: and wondering how far it was possible to educate a
27:25
Speaker 1: whole people to great political ideals. Why should political work
27:30
Speaker 1: always rock down to personalities and personal appeals? In this
27:33
Speaker 1: way life is I suppose to begin with an end,
27:37
Speaker 1: with a matter of personalities. From personalities, all our broader
27:41
Speaker 1: interests arise, and to personalities they return. All our social
27:46
Speaker 1: and political effort, all of it is like trying to
27:49
Speaker 1: make a crowd of people fall into formation. The broader
27:53
Speaker 1: lines appear, but then come a rush and excitement and
27:56
Speaker 1: irrelevancy and forthwith. The incipient order has vanished, and the
28:01
Speaker 1: marshals must begin the work over again. My memory of
28:06
Speaker 1: all that time is essentially confusion. There was a frightful
28:10
Speaker 1: lot of tarsome locomotion in it. For the Kinghamstead Division
28:14
Speaker 1: is extensive, abounding in ill graded and badly metlled cross
28:19
Speaker 1: roads and vicious little hills, and singularly unpleasing to the
28:23
Speaker 1: eye in a muddy winter. It is sufficiently near to
28:26
Speaker 1: London to have undergone the same process of ill regulated
28:30
Speaker 1: expansion that made Bronsteed the place it is. Several of
28:35
Speaker 1: its overgrown villages have developed strings of factories and sidings
28:39
Speaker 1: along the railway lines, and there is an abundance of
28:42
Speaker 1: petty villas. There seemed to be no place at which
28:46
Speaker 1: one could take hold of more than this or that
28:48
Speaker 1: element of the population. Now we met in a meeting house,
28:52
Speaker 1: Now in a Masonic hall or drill hall. I also
28:56
Speaker 1: did a certain amount of open air speaking in the
28:58
Speaker 1: dinner hour outside gas works and groups of factories. Some
29:02
Speaker 1: special sort of people was, as it were, secreted. In
29:05
Speaker 1: response to each special appeal, one said things carefully adjusted
29:10
Speaker 1: to the distinctive limitations of each gathering. Jokes of an
29:15
Speaker 1: incredible silliness and shallowness drifted about us. Our advisers made
29:20
Speaker 1: us declare that if we were elected, we would live
29:23
Speaker 1: in the district. And one hasty agent had bills printed,
29:27
Speaker 1: if mister Remington is elected, he will live here. The
29:31
Speaker 1: enemy obtained a number of these bills and stuck them
29:34
Speaker 1: on outhouses, pig styes, dog kennels. You cannot imagine how
29:39
Speaker 1: irksome the repetition of that just became the vast drifting
29:43
Speaker 1: indifference in between my meetings impressed me more and more.
29:48
Speaker 1: I realized the vagueness of my own plans, as I
29:51
Speaker 1: had never done before. I brought them to the test
29:53
Speaker 1: of this experience. I was perplexed by the riddle of
29:57
Speaker 1: just how far I was in any sense the word
30:01
Speaker 1: taking hold at all, How far I wasn't myself flowing
30:04
Speaker 1: into an accepted groove. Margaret was troubled by no such doubts.
30:11
Speaker 1: She was clear I had to go into Parliament on
30:13
Speaker 1: the side of liberalism and the light, as against the
30:16
Speaker 1: late government and darkness. Essential to the memory of my
30:20
Speaker 1: first contest is the memory of her clear, bright face,
30:24
Speaker 1: very resolute and grave, helping me consciously, steadfastly, with all
30:29
Speaker 1: her strength, her quiet confidence, while I was so dissatisfied,
30:34
Speaker 1: worked curiously towards the alienation of my sympathies. I felt
30:39
Speaker 1: she had no business to be so sure of me.
30:41
Speaker 1: I had moments of vivid resentment at being thus marched
30:45
Speaker 1: towards Parliament. I seem now always to be discovering alien
30:50
Speaker 1: forces of character in her. Her way of taking life
30:54
Speaker 1: diverged from me. More and more she sounded amazing independent notes.
31:00
Speaker 1: She bought some particularly costly furs for the campaign that
31:04
Speaker 1: roused enthusiasm whenever she appeared. She also made me a
31:09
Speaker 1: birthday present in November of a heavily fur trimmed coat,
31:13
Speaker 1: and this she would make me remove as I went
31:15
Speaker 1: on to the platform, and hold over her arm until
31:18
Speaker 1: I was ready to resume it. It was fearfully heavy
31:22
Speaker 1: for her, and she liked it to be heavy for her.
31:25
Speaker 1: That act of servitude was, in essence a towering self assertion.
31:30
Speaker 1: I would glance sideways while some chairman floundered through his introduction,
31:36
Speaker 1: and see the clear blue eye with which she regarded
31:38
Speaker 1: the audience which existed so far as she was concerned
31:42
Speaker 1: merely to return me to Parliament. It was a friendly eye,
31:46
Speaker 1: provided they were not silly or troublesome. But it kindled
31:50
Speaker 1: a little at the hint of a hostile question. After
31:53
Speaker 1: we had come so far and taken so much trouble,
31:58
Speaker 1: she constituted herself that dragoman of our political travels. In hotels,
32:03
Speaker 1: she was serenely resolute for the quietest and the best.
32:07
Speaker 1: She rejected all their proposals for meals and substituted a
32:12
Speaker 1: severely nourishing dietary of her own and even in private houses.
32:16
Speaker 1: She astonished me by her tranquil insistence upon special comforts
32:21
Speaker 1: and sustenance. I can see her face now as it
32:24
Speaker 1: would confront her hostess, a little intent, but sweetly resolute
32:29
Speaker 1: and assured. Since our marriage, she had read a number
32:32
Speaker 1: of political memoirs, and she had been particularly impressed by
32:36
Speaker 1: the career of Missus Gladstone. I don't think it occurred
32:40
Speaker 1: to her to compare and contrast my quality with that
32:43
Speaker 1: of Missus Gladstone's husband. I suspect her of a deliberate
32:47
Speaker 1: intention of achieving parallel results by parallel methods. I was
32:52
Speaker 1: to be gladstonized. Gladstone, it appeared, used to lubricate his
32:56
Speaker 1: speeches with a mixture, if my memory serves me, right
33:00
Speaker 1: of air. Beaten up in Sherry, and Margaret was very
33:03
Speaker 1: anxious I should take a leaf from that celebrated book.
33:06
Speaker 1: She wanted, I know, to hold the glass in her
33:09
Speaker 1: hand while I was speaking. But here I was firm No,
33:14
Speaker 1: I said, very decisively, simply, I won't stand that. It's
33:17
Speaker 1: a matter of conscience. I shouldn't feel democratic. I'll take
33:22
Speaker 1: my chance of the common water in the craft on
33:24
Speaker 1: the chairman's table. I do wish you wouldn't, she said, distressed.
33:31
Speaker 1: It was absurd to feel irritated. It was so admirable
33:35
Speaker 1: of her, a little childish, infinitely womanly and devoted and fine.
33:40
Speaker 1: And I see now how pathetic. But I could not
33:44
Speaker 1: afford to succumb to her. I wanted to follow my
33:47
Speaker 1: own leading, to see things clearly. And this reassuring pose
33:52
Speaker 1: of a high destiny, of an almost terribly efficient pursuit
33:55
Speaker 1: of a fixed end, when as a matter of fact
33:58
Speaker 1: I had a very doubtful end and an aim as
34:01
Speaker 1: yet by no means fixed, was all too seductive for dalliance.
34:07
Speaker 1: End of Chapter eight, Section one