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Certain Personal Matters - The Poet and the Emporium · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight of Certain Personal Matters. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Graham Scott, Cheltenham, England, Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells,
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  Speaker 1: The Poet and the Emporium. I am beginning life, he said,
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  Speaker 1: with a sigh, Great heavens, I have spent a day
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  Speaker 1: a day in a shop. Three bedroom suites and a
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  Speaker 1: side board are among the unanticipated pledges of our affection.
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  Speaker 1: Have you, Lithia, for a man of twelve limited editions,
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  Speaker 1: This has been a terrible day. I saw to his
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  Speaker 1: creature comforts. His tie was hanging outside his waistcoat, and
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  Speaker 1: his complexion was like white pasteboard that has got wet. Courage,
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  Speaker 1: said I. It will not occur again. It will, said he.
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  Speaker 1: We have to get there again to morrow. We have
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  Speaker 1: what is it? Carpets, curtains. He produced his tablets. I
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  Speaker 1: was amazed those receptacles of choice thoughts, the amber sunlight
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  Speaker 1: splashing through the leaky leafy interlacing green. He read, No,
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  Speaker 1: that's not it. Ah, here curtains, drawing room not to
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  Speaker 1: cost more than thirty shillings. And there's all the kitchen hardware, thanks,
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  Speaker 1: dining room chairs, queery rush bottoms. What's this g l,
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  Speaker 1: I s ah, glistering through deeps of glaucophane. That's nothing
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  Speaker 1: men to see. Can we afford Indian needlework chairs fifty
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  Speaker 1: seven shillings and sixpence? It's dreadful bellows. He helped himself
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  Speaker 1: to a cigarette find. The salesman pleasant, said, I delightful,
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  Speaker 1: assumed I was a spendthrift millionaire. At first produced in
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  Speaker 1: an off hand way an eighty guinea bedroom suite. We're
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  Speaker 1: trying to do the entire business, you know, in about
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  Speaker 1: two hundred pounds. Well that's ten editions. You know, came
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  Speaker 1: down with evidently dwindling respect to things that were still
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  Speaker 1: ruinously expensive. I told him we wanted an idle love
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  Speaker 1: in a cottage and all that kind of thing. He
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  Speaker 1: brushed that on one side, said idols were upstairs in
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  Speaker 1: the Japanese department, and that perhaps we might do with
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  Speaker 1: a servants set of bedroom furniture. Do with a set.
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  Speaker 1: He was a gloomy man with I should judge some
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  Speaker 1: internal pain. I tried to tell him that there was
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  Speaker 1: quite a lot of middle class people like myself in
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  Speaker 1: the country, people of limited or precarious means, whose existence
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  Speaker 1: he seemed to ignore assured him some of them let
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  Speaker 1: quite beautiful lives. But he had no ideas beyond wardrobes.
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  Speaker 1: I quite forgot the business of shopping. In an attempt
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  Speaker 1: to kindle little human enthusiasm in his heart, we were
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  Speaker 1: in a great, vast place full of wardrobes, with a remote,
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  Speaker 1: glittering vista of brass bedsteads, skeleton beds, you know. And
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  Speaker 1: had tried to inspire him with some of the potry
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  Speaker 1: of his emporium, tried to make him imagine these beds
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  Speaker 1: and things going east and west, north and south, to
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  Speaker 1: take sorrow, servitude, joy, worry, failing strength, restless ambition in
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  Speaker 1: their impartial embraces. He only turned round to Annie and
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  Speaker 1: asked her if she thought she could do with enameled.
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  Speaker 1: But I was quite taken with my idea, where is it?
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  Speaker 1: I left Annie to settle with this mizenthrope. Amidst his
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  Speaker 1: raw frameworks of the homes of the future, he fumbled
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  Speaker 1: with his tablets mets for hall not to exceed three
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  Speaker 1: shillings ninepence curbs in a child hearth. Ah, here we are,
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  Speaker 1: Ballard of the bedroom, sweet, noble the oak you are
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  Speaker 1: now displaying subtly the hazel's graining go walnuts charm. There
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  Speaker 1: is no gainsaying red as red wine as your rosewoods glow,
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  Speaker 1: brave and brilliant. The ash you show rich, your mahogany's
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  Speaker 1: hepatite shine, cool and sweet your enamel. But oh, where
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  Speaker 1: are the wardrobes of painted pine? They have them in
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  Speaker 1: the catalog at five guineas with a picture quite as good.
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  Speaker 1: They are as the more expensive ones to judge by
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  Speaker 1: the picture, But that's scarcely the idea you started with.
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  Speaker 1: I began not he'd went wrong. Ballards often do. The
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  Speaker 1: preoccupation of the painted pine was too much for me.
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  Speaker 1: What's this? N be sludge cells music stores at no
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  Speaker 1: Here we are first half a written white, enameled like
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  Speaker 1: driven snow picked with just one delicate line. Price you
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  Speaker 1: were saying is fourteen? No where are the wardrobes of
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  Speaker 1: painted pine? Comes round again? You see then l'u voi salesmen,
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  Speaker 1: sad is the truth? I trow winsome walnut can never
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  Speaker 1: be mine. Poets are cheap, and their poetry so where
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  Speaker 1: are the wardrobes of painted pine prosaic, as all true
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  Speaker 1: poetry is nowadays. But how I tired as the afternoon
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  Speaker 1: moved on. At first, I was interested in the shopman's
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  Speaker 1: amazing lack of imagination, and the glory of that fond
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  Speaker 1: dream of mine love in a cottage, you know, still
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  Speaker 1: hung about me. I had ideas come like that ballad,
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  Speaker 1: and every now and then Annie told me to write notes.
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  Speaker 1: I think my last gleam of pleasure was in choosing
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  Speaker 1: the drawing room, then his scope for fantasy and chairs.
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  Speaker 1: Then he took some more whiskey. A kind of gray
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  Speaker 1: horror came upon me. I don't know if I can
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  Speaker 1: describe it. We went through vast vistas of chairs, of
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  Speaker 1: hall tables, a machine made pictures of curtains, huge wildernesses
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  Speaker 1: of carpets, and ever, this cold, unsympathetic shopman led us
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  Speaker 1: on and ever and again made us buy this or that.
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  Speaker 1: He had a perfectly gray eye, the color of an
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  Speaker 1: overcast sky in January. And he seemed neither to haters
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  Speaker 1: nor to detest us, but simply to despise us, to
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  Speaker 1: feel such an overwhelming contempt for our petty means and
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  Speaker 1: our petty lives as an archangel might feel for an
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  Speaker 1: apple maggot. It made me think he lit a fresh cigarette,
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  Speaker 1: had a kind of vision. I do not know if
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  Speaker 1: you will understand the warehouse of life, with our individual
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  Speaker 1: fate hurrying each of us through showing us with a
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  Speaker 1: covert sneer, all the good things that we cannot afford.
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  Speaker 1: A magnificent rosewood love affair for insance, deep and rich,
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  Speaker 1: fitted complete, some hours of perfect life, some acts of
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  Speaker 1: perfect self sacrificed, perfect self devotion. You ask the price.
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  Speaker 1: He shrugged his shoulders. Where are the wardrobes of painted pine?
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  Speaker 1: I quoted? That's it, all the things one might do
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  Speaker 1: if the purse of one's courage were not so shallow.
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  Speaker 1: If it wasn't for the lack of that coinage bellows,
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  Speaker 1: every man might be magnificent. There's heroism, there's such nobility
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  Speaker 1: as no one has ever attained to ready to hand
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  Speaker 1: any one. If it were not for this lack of means,
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  Speaker 1: might be a human god. In twenty four hours, you
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  Speaker 1: see the article. You cannot buy it, No one buys it.
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  Speaker 1: It stands in the emporium. I suppose for show on
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  Speaker 1: the chance of a millionaire and the shopman waves his
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  Speaker 1: hand to it. On your way to the painted pine.
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  Speaker 1: Then you meet other couples and solitary people going about,
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  Speaker 1: each with a gloomy salesman leading the run. Of them
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  Speaker 1: look uncomfortable, some are hot about the years, and in
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  Speaker 1: the spiteful phase of ill temper. All looks sick of
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  Speaker 1: the business, except the raw newcomers. It's the only time
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  Speaker 1: they will ever select any furniture, their first chance and
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  Speaker 1: their last. Most of their selections are hurried a little.
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  Speaker 1: The salesman must not be kept all day. Yet it
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  Speaker 1: goes hard with you if you buy your object in
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  Speaker 1: life and find it just a special line made to sell.
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  Speaker 1: We're all amateurs at living, just as we're all amateurs
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  Speaker 1: at furnishing or dying. Some of the poor devils one
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  Speaker 1: meets carry tattered little scraps of paper and fumble conscientiously
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  Speaker 1: with stumpy pencils. It's a comfort to see how you go,
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  Speaker 1: even if you do have to buy rubbish. If we
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  Speaker 1: have this so good, dear, I don't know how we
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  Speaker 1: shall manage in the kitchen, says the careful housewife. So
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  Speaker 1: it is we do our shopping in the great emporium.
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  Speaker 1: You will have to rewrite your ballard, said I, and
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  Speaker 1: put all that in I wish I could, said the poet.
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  Speaker 1: And while you were having these very fine moods any
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  Speaker 1: and the shopmen settled most of the furniture between them.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps it's just as well. I was never very good
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  Speaker 1: at the practical details of life. Cigarettes out have you
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  Speaker 1: any more matches? Horribly depressed you are, I said this
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  Speaker 1: to morrow. Well well, And then he went off at
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  Speaker 1: a tangent to tell me what he expected to make
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  Speaker 1: by his next volume of poems. And so came to
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  Speaker 1: the congenial business of running down his contemporaries, and became
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  Speaker 1: again the cheerful little poet that I know. End of
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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight.