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Tono-Bungay Book 2 Chapter 4 - Parts 1-3 · The H. G. Wells Library

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Speaker 1: Book, second chapter, fourth Parts one to three of Tono Bungay.
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Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
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Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
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Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by William tom Coo Tono
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Speaker 1: Bungay by H. G. Wells, Book, second chapter, fourth Parts
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Speaker 1: one to three, Chapter the fourth Marian One. As I
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Speaker 1: look back on those days in which we build up
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Speaker 1: the great Tono Bungay property out of human hope and
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Speaker 1: credit for bottles and rent and printing, I see my
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Speaker 1: life as it were arranged in two parallel columns of
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Speaker 1: unequal wid a wider, more diffused, eventful, and various one
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Speaker 1: which continually broadens out the business side of my life,
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Speaker 1: and a narrow, darker and darkling one, shot ever and
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Speaker 1: again with a gleam of happiness by home life with Marian.
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Speaker 1: For of course I married Marian. I did it, as
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Speaker 1: a matter of fact, marry her until a year after
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Speaker 1: Tono Bungay was thoroughly afloat, and then only after conflicts
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Speaker 1: and discussion of a quite strenuous sort. By that time
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Speaker 1: I was twenty four. It seems the next thing to
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Speaker 1: childhood now, we were both, in certain directions, unusually ignorant
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Speaker 1: and simple. We were temperamentally antagonistic, and we hadn't I
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Speaker 1: don't think we were capable of an idea in common.
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Speaker 1: She was young and extraordinarily conventional. She seemed never to
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Speaker 1: have an idea of her own, but always the idea
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Speaker 1: of her class. And I was young and skeptical, enterprising
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Speaker 1: and passionate. The two links that held us together were
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Speaker 1: the intense appeal her physical beauty had for me, and
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Speaker 1: her appreciation of her importance in my thoughts. There can
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Speaker 1: be no doubt my passion for her. In her I
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Speaker 1: had discovered woman desired the nights I have lain awake
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Speaker 1: on account of her writhing, biting my wrists in a
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Speaker 1: fever of longing. I have told how I got myself
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Speaker 1: a silk hat and black coat to please her on Sunday,
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Speaker 1: to the derision of some of my fellow students who
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Speaker 1: charged to meet me, and how we became engaged. But
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Speaker 1: that was only the beginning of our difference to her.
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Speaker 1: That meant the beginning of a not unpleasant little secrecy,
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Speaker 1: an occasional use of verbal endearments, perhaps even kisses. It
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Speaker 1: was something to go on indefinitely, interfering in no way
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Speaker 1: with her gossiping spells of work at Smithy's. To me,
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Speaker 1: it was a pledge to come together into the utmost
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Speaker 1: intimacy of soul and body so soon as we could
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Speaker 1: contrive it. I don't know if it will strike the
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Speaker 1: reader that I am setting out to discuss the queer
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Speaker 1: unwise love relationship and my bungle of a marriage with
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Speaker 1: excessive solemnity, But to me it seems to reach out
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Speaker 1: to vastly wider issues than our little personal affair. I've
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Speaker 1: thought over my life in these last few years. I've
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Speaker 1: tried to get at least a little wisdom out of it,
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Speaker 1: And in particular i've thought over this part of my life.
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Speaker 1: I am enormously impressed by the ignorant, unguided way in
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Speaker 1: which we two entangled ourselves with each other. It seems
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Speaker 1: to me the queerest thing in all this network of
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Speaker 1: misunderstandings and misstatements and faulty and ramshackle conventions which makes
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Speaker 1: up our social order as the individual meets it, that
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Speaker 1: we should have come together so accidentally and so blindly,
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Speaker 1: because we were no more than samples of the common fate.
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Speaker 1: Love is not only the cardinal fact in the individual life,
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Speaker 1: but the most important concern of the community. After all,
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Speaker 1: the way in which the young people of this generation
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Speaker 1: pair off determines the fate of the nation. All the
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Speaker 1: other affairs of the state are subsidiary to that. And
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Speaker 1: we leave it to flushed and blundering youth to stumble
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Speaker 1: on its own significance, with nothing to guide in but
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Speaker 1: shocked looks and sentimental twaddle and base whisperings and can't
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Speaker 1: speared examples. I have tried to indicate something of my
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Speaker 1: own sexual development in the preceding chapter. Nobody was ever
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Speaker 1: frank and decent with me in this relation. Nobody, no
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Speaker 1: book ever came and said to me, thus and thus
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Speaker 1: is the world made, and so and so is necessary.
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Speaker 1: Everything came obscurely, indefinitely, perplexingly, and all I knew of
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Speaker 1: law or convention in the matter had the form of
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Speaker 1: threatenings and prohibitions. Except through the furtive, shameful talk of
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Speaker 1: my coevals at Goudhurst and Wimblehurst, I was not even
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Speaker 1: worn against quite horrible dangers. My ideas were made partly
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Speaker 1: of instinct, partly of a romantic imagination, partly woven out
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Speaker 1: of a medley of scraps of signs congestion that came to
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Speaker 1: me haphazard. I had read widely and confusedly Vathek Shelley,
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Speaker 1: Tom Payne, Plutarch, Carlyle Heckel, William Morris, the Bible, the Freethinker,
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Speaker 1: the Clarion, the woman who did I mentioned the ingredients
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Speaker 1: that come first to mind. All sorts of ideas were
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Speaker 1: jumbled up in me at never elucid explanation. But it
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Speaker 1: was evident to me that the world regarded Shelley, for example,
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Speaker 1: as a very heroic as well as beautiful person, and
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Speaker 1: that to defy convention and succumb magnificently to passion was
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Speaker 1: a proper thing to do to gain the respect and
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Speaker 1: affection of all decent people. And the make up of
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Speaker 1: Marian's mind in the matter was an equally irrational affair.
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Speaker 1: Her training had been one not simply of silences but suppressions.
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Speaker 1: An enormous force of suggestion had so shaped her that
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Speaker 1: the intense natural fastidiousness of girlhood had developed into an
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Speaker 1: absolute perversion of instinct. For all that, as cardinal in
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Speaker 1: this essential business of life, she had one inseparable epithet horrid.
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Speaker 1: Without any such training, she would have been a shy lover,
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Speaker 1: but now she was an impossible one. For the rest
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Speaker 1: she had derived, I suppose, partly from the sort of
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Speaker 1: fiction she got from the public library, and partly from
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Speaker 1: the work room talk at Smithy's. So far as the
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Speaker 1: former origin went, she had an idea of love as
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Speaker 1: a state of worship and service on the part of
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Speaker 1: the man, and of condescension on the part of the woman.
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Speaker 1: There was nothing horrid about it in any fiction she
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Speaker 1: had read. The man gave presents, did services, sought to
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Speaker 1: be in every way delightful. The woman went out with him,
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Speaker 1: smiled at him, was kissed by him in decorous secrecy,
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Speaker 1: and if he chanced to offend, denied her countenance and presence.
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Speaker 1: Usually she did something for his good to him, made
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Speaker 1: him go to church, made him give up smoking or gambling,
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Speaker 1: smartened him up quite At the end of the story
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Speaker 1: came a marriage, and after that the interest ceased. That
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Speaker 1: was the tenor of Marian's fiction, But I think the
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Speaker 1: work table conversation at Smithy's did something to modify that.
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Speaker 1: At Smithy's it was recognized. I think that a fellow
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Speaker 1: was a possession to be desired, that it was better
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Speaker 1: to be engaged to a fellow than not, that fellows
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Speaker 1: had to be kept, they might be mislaid, they might
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Speaker 1: even be stolen. There was a case of stealing at Smithy's,
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Speaker 1: and many tears. Smithy I met before we were married,
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Speaker 1: and afterwards she became a frequent visitor to our house
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Speaker 1: at ealing. She was a thin, bright colored, hawk nosed
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Speaker 1: girl of thirty odd with prominent teeth, a high pitched,
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Speaker 1: eager voice, and a disposition to be urgently smart in
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Speaker 1: her dress, her hats were startling and various, but invariably disconcerting,
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Speaker 1: and she talked in a rapid, nervous flow that was
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Speaker 1: hilarious rather than witty, and broken by little screams of
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Speaker 1: oh my dear, and you never did. She was the
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Speaker 1: first woman I ever met who used scent. Poor old Smithy.
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Speaker 1: What a harmless, kindly soul she really was, and how
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Speaker 1: heartily I detested her Out of the prophets on the
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Speaker 1: Persian robes. She supported a sister's family of three children,
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Speaker 1: She helped a worthless brother, and overflowed in help even
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Speaker 1: to her work girls. But that didn't weigh with me
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Speaker 1: in those youthfully narrow times. It was one of the
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Speaker 1: intense minor irritations of my married life that Smithy's whirlwind
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Speaker 1: chatter seemed to me to have far more influence with
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Speaker 1: Marian than anything I had to say before all things.
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Speaker 1: I coveted her grip upon Marian's inaccessible mind. In the
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Speaker 1: work room at Smithy's, I gathered they always spoke of
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Speaker 1: me demurely as a certain person. I was rumored to
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Speaker 1: be dreadfully clever, and there were doubts, not altogether without
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Speaker 1: justification of the sweetness of my temper. Two well, these
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Speaker 1: general explanations will enable the reader to understand the distressful
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Speaker 1: times we two had together when presently I began to
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Speaker 1: feel on a footing with Marian and to fumble conversationally
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Speaker 1: for the mind and the wonderful passion I felt, obstinately
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Speaker 1: and stupidly must be in her. I think she thought
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Speaker 1: me the maddest of sane men, clever in fact, which
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Speaker 1: at Smithe's was. I suppose the next thing to insanity,
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Speaker 1: a word intimating incomprehensible and incalculable motives. She could be
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Speaker 1: shocked at anything. She misunderstood everything, and her weapon was
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Speaker 1: a sulky silence that knitted her brows, spoiled her mouth,
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Speaker 1: and robbed her face of beauty. Well, if we can't agree,
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Speaker 1: I don't see why you should go on talking, She
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Speaker 1: used to say. That would always enrage me beyond measure.
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Speaker 1: Or I'm afraid I'm not clever enough to understand that
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Speaker 1: silly little people. I see it all now, But then
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Speaker 1: I was no older than she, and I couldn't see
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Speaker 1: anything but that Marian, for some inexplicable reason, wouldn't come alive.
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Speaker 1: We would contrive semi surreptitious walks on Sunday and part
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Speaker 1: speechless with the anger of indefinable offenses. Poor Marian, the
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Speaker 1: things I tried to put before her, my fermenting ideas
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Speaker 1: about theology, about socialism, about esthetics, the very words appalled her,
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Speaker 1: gave her the faint chill of approaching impropriety, the terror
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Speaker 1: of a very present intellectual impossibility. Then, by an enormous effort,
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Speaker 1: I would suppress myself for a time and continue a
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Speaker 1: talk that made her happy, about Smithy's brother, about the
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Speaker 1: new girl who had come to the work room, about
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Speaker 1: the house we would presently live in. But there we
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Speaker 1: differed a little. I wanted to be accessible to Saint
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Speaker 1: Paul's or Cannon Street station, and she had set her
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Speaker 1: mind quite resolutely upon eating. It wasn't by any means
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Speaker 1: quarreling all the time. You understand. She liked me to
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Speaker 1: play the lover nicely. She liked the effect of going about.
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Speaker 1: We had lunches. We went to Earl's Court to queue
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Speaker 1: to theaters and concerts, but not often to concerts, because
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Speaker 1: though Marian liked music, she didn't like too much of
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Speaker 1: it to picture shows and there was a nonsensical sort
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Speaker 1: of baby talk I picked up. I forget where. Now
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Speaker 1: that became a mighty peacemaker. Her worst offense for me
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Speaker 1: was an occasional excursion into the Smithy style of dressing
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Speaker 1: debased west Kensington, for she had no sense at all
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Speaker 1: of her own beauty. She had no comprehension whatever of
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Speaker 1: beauty of the body, and she could slash her beautiful
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Speaker 1: lines to rags with hat brims and trimmings. Thank Heaven,
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Speaker 1: A natural refinement, a natural timidity, and her extremely slender
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Speaker 1: purse kept her from the real Smithy efflorescence. Poor, simple, beautiful,
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Speaker 1: kindly limited Marian. Now that I am forty five, I
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Speaker 1: can look back at her with all my old admiration
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Speaker 1: and none of my old bitterness, with a new affection
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Speaker 1: and not a scrap of passion, and take her part
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Speaker 1: against the equally stupid, drivingly energetic, sensuous, intellectual sprawl I
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Speaker 1: used to be. I was a young beast for her
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Speaker 1: to have married a hound beast with her, it was
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Speaker 1: my business to understand and control, and I exacted fellowship passion.
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Speaker 1: We became engaged, as I have told, we broke it
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Speaker 1: off and joined again. We went through a succession of
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Speaker 1: such phases. We had no sort of idea what was
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Speaker 1: wrong with us. Presently we were formally engaged. I had
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Speaker 1: a wonderful interview with her father, in which she was
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Speaker 1: stupendously grave and h less, wanted to know about my origins,
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Speaker 1: and was tolerant, exasperatingly tolerant because my mother was a servant.
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Speaker 1: And afterwards her mother took to kissing me, and I
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Speaker 1: bought a ring. But the speechless aunt I gathered didn't approve,
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Speaker 1: having doubts of my religiosity. Whenever we were estranged, we
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Speaker 1: could keep apart for days, And to begin with, every
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Speaker 1: such separation was a relief and then I would want her.
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Speaker 1: A restless longing would come upon me. I would think
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Speaker 1: of the flow of her arms, of the soft, gracious
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Speaker 1: bend of her body. I would lie awake or dream
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Speaker 1: of a transfigured Marian of light and fire. It was
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Speaker 1: indeed Dame Nature driving me on to womankind in her stupid,
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Speaker 1: inexorable way. But I thought it was the need of
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Speaker 1: Marian that troubled me. So I always went back to
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Speaker 1: Marian at last and made it up, and more or
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Speaker 1: less concealed or ignored whatever thing had parted us. And
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Speaker 1: more and more I urged her to marry me. In
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Speaker 1: the long run, that became a fixed idea. It entangled
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Speaker 1: my will and my pride. I told myself I was
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Speaker 1: not going to be beaten. I hardened to the business.
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Speaker 1: I think, as a matter of fact, my real passion
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Speaker 1: for Marian had waned enormously long before we were married.
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Speaker 1: That she had lived down by sheer irresponsiveness. When I
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Speaker 1: felt sure of my three hundred a year, she stipulated
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Speaker 1: for delay, twelve months delay to see how things would
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Speaker 1: turn out. There were times when she seemed simply an antagonist,
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Speaker 1: holding out irritatingly against something I had to settle. Moreover,
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Speaker 1: I began to be greatly distracted by the interest and
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Speaker 1: excitement of Tono Bungay's success, by the change and movement
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Speaker 1: in things, the going to and fro. I would forget
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Speaker 1: her for days together, and then desire her with an
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Speaker 1: I I retaining intensity. At last, one Saturday afternoon, after
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Speaker 1: a brooding morning, I determined almost savagely that these delays
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Speaker 1: must end. I went off to the little home at
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Speaker 1: Wallam Green and made Marian come with me to Putney Common.
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Speaker 1: Marian wasn't at home when I got there, and I
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Speaker 1: had to fret for a time and talk to her father,
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Speaker 1: who was just back from his office. He explained and
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Speaker 1: enjoying himself in his own way in the greenhouse, I'm
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Speaker 1: going to ask your daughter to marry me, I said.
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Speaker 1: I think we've been waiting long enough. I don't approve
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Speaker 1: of long engagements either, said her father. But Marian will
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Speaker 1: have her own way about it anyhow, seen this new
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Speaker 1: powdered fertilizer, I went in to talk to missus Ramboat.
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Speaker 1: She'll want time to get her things, said missus Ramboat.
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Speaker 1: I and Marian sat down together on a little seat
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Speaker 1: under some trees at the top of Putney Hill, and
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Speaker 1: I came to my point abruptly. Look here, Marian, I said,
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Speaker 1: are you going to marry me? Or are you not?
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Speaker 1: She smiled at me. Well, she said, we're engaged, aren't we.
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Speaker 1: That can't go on forever? Will you marry me next week?
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Speaker 1: She looked at me in the face. We can't, she said,
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Speaker 1: you promised to marry me when I had three hundred
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Speaker 1: a year. She was silent for a space. Can't we
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Speaker 1: go on for a time as we are? We could
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Speaker 1: marry on three hundred a year, but it means a
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Speaker 1: very little house. There's Smithy's brother. They manage on two
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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty. But that's very little, she says. They
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Speaker 1: have a semi detached house, almost on the road, and
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Speaker 1: hardly a bit of garden, and the wall to next
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Speaker 1: door is so thin they hear everything. When her baby cries,
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Speaker 1: they rap, and people stand against the railings and talk.
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Speaker 1: Can't we wait? You're doing so well? An extraordinary bitterness
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Speaker 1: possessed me at this invasion of the stupendous, beautiful business
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Speaker 1: of love by sordid necessity. I answered her with immense restraint.
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Speaker 1: If I said we could have a double fronted detached
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Speaker 1: house at ealing say, with a square patch of lawn
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Speaker 1: in front and a garden behind, and and a tiled bathroom,
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Speaker 1: there would be sixty pounds a year at least, which
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Speaker 1: means five hundred a year. Yes, well, you see, I
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Speaker 1: told my uncle I wanted that, and I've got it,
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Speaker 1: got what five hundred pounds a year? Five hundred pounds?
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Speaker 1: I burst into laughter that had more than a taste
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Speaker 1: of bitterness. Yes, I said, really, And now what do
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Speaker 1: you think? Yes, she said, a little flushed, but be sensible.
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Speaker 1: Do you really mean you've got a rise all at
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Speaker 1: once of two hundred a year to Marianne? Yes, she
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Speaker 1: scrutinized me a moment. You've done this as a surprise,
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Speaker 1: she said, and laughed at my laughter. She had become radiant,
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Speaker 1: and that made me radiant too, Yes, I said, yes,
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Speaker 1: and laughed no longer bitterly. She clasped her hands and
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Speaker 1: looked me in the eyes. She was so pleased that
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Speaker 1: I forgot absolutely my disgust of a moment before, I
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Speaker 1: forgot that she had raised her price two hundred pounds
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Speaker 1: a year, and that I had bought her at that come,
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Speaker 1: I said, standing up, let's go towards the sunset, dear,
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Speaker 1: and talk about it all. Do you know this is
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Speaker 1: a most beautiful world, an amazingly beautiful world. And when
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Speaker 1: the sunset falls upon you, it makes you into shining gold,
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Speaker 1: no not gold, into golden glass, into something better than
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Speaker 1: either glass or gold. And for all that evening I
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Speaker 1: wooed her and glad she made me repeat my assurances
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Speaker 1: over again, and still doubted a little. We furnished a
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Speaker 1: double fronted house from attic and ran to an attic
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Speaker 1: to sell her, and created a garden. Do you know
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Speaker 1: Pampa's grass, said Marian, I love Pampa's grass. If there
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Speaker 1: is room, you shall have pampas grass, I declared. And
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Speaker 1: there were moments, as we would in imagination about that
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Speaker 1: house together, when my whole being cried out to take
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Speaker 1: her in my arms now, But I refrained on that
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Speaker 1: aspect of life. I touched very lightly in that talk,
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Speaker 1: very lightly, because I had had my lessons. She promised
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Speaker 1: to marry me within two months time. Shyly, reluctantly she
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Speaker 1: named a day, and next afternoon, in heat and wrath,
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Speaker 1: we broke it off again for the last time. We
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Speaker 1: split upon procedure. I refused flatly to have a normal wedding,
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Speaker 1: with wedding cake, in white favors, carriages and the rest
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Speaker 1: of it. It dawned upon me suddenly, in conversation with
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Speaker 1: her and her mother that this was implied. I blurted
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Speaker 1: out my objection forthwith, And this time it wasn't any
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Speaker 1: ordinary difference of opinion. It was a row. I don't
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Speaker 1: remember a quarter of the things we flung out in
20:19
Speaker 1: that dispute. I remember her mother reiterating in tones of
20:23
Speaker 1: gentle remonstrance. But George, dear, you must have a cake
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Speaker 1: to send home. I think we all reiterated things. I
20:32
Speaker 1: seem to remember a refrain of my own. A marriage
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Speaker 1: is too sacred, a thing, too private, a thing for
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Speaker 1: this display. Her father came in and stood behind me
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Speaker 1: against the wall, and her aunt appeared beside the sideboard
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Speaker 1: and stood with arms, looking from speaker to speaker, a
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Speaker 1: sternly gratified prophetess. It didn't occur to me then how
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Speaker 1: painful it was to Marian for these people to witness
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Speaker 1: my rebellion. But George said, her father was so of marriage.
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Speaker 1: Do you want you don't want to go to one
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Speaker 1: of those there registry offices? That's exactly what I like
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Speaker 1: to do. Marriage is too private, a thing I shouldn't
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Speaker 1: feel married, said missus Rambot. Look here, Marian, I said,
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Speaker 1: we are going to be married at a registry office.
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Speaker 1: I don't believe in all these fripperies and superstitions, and
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Speaker 1: I don't submit to them. I've agreed to all sorts
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Speaker 1: of things to please you. What's he agreed to? Said
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Speaker 1: her father, unheeded. I can't marry at a registry office,
21:35
Speaker 1: said Marian sallow white. Very well, I said, I'll marry
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Speaker 1: nowhere else. I can't marry at a registry office, very well,
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Speaker 1: I said, standing up, white and tense, and it amazed me,
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Speaker 1: but I was also exalted. Then we won't marry at all.
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Speaker 1: She leaned forward over the table, staring blankly, but presently
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Speaker 1: her half averted face began to haunt me as she
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Speaker 1: had sat at the table, and her arm and the
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Speaker 1: long droop of her shoulder. Three the next day, I
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Speaker 1: did an unexampled thing. I sent a telegram to my
22:14
Speaker 1: uncle bad Temper not coming to business, and set off
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Speaker 1: for Highgate and Ewart. He was actually at work on
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Speaker 1: a bust of Milly and seemed very glad for my interruption. Ewart,
22:29
Speaker 1: you old fool, I said, knock off, and come for
22:32
Speaker 1: a day's gossip. I'm rotten. There's a sympathetic sort of
22:36
Speaker 1: lunacy about you. Let's go to stains and paddle up
22:39
Speaker 1: to Windsor, girl, said Ewart, putting down a chisel. Yes,
22:46
Speaker 1: that was all I told him of my affair. I've
22:49
Speaker 1: got no money, he remarked, to clear up ambiguity in
22:53
Speaker 1: my invitation. We got a jar of shandy gaff, some food,
22:57
Speaker 1: and on Ewart's suggestion to Japan any sunshades and stains,
23:02
Speaker 1: we demanded extra cushions at the boat house, and we
23:04
Speaker 1: spent an enormously soothing day in discourse and meditation, our
23:09
Speaker 1: boat moored in a shady place this side of Windsor.
23:13
Speaker 1: I seem to remember Ewart with a cushion forward, only
23:16
Speaker 1: his heels and sunshade and some black ends of hair
23:19
Speaker 1: showing a voice and no more against the shining, smoothly
23:24
Speaker 1: streaming mirror of the trees and bushes. It's not worth,
23:28
Speaker 1: it was the burthen of the voice. You'd better get
23:31
Speaker 1: yourself a milly ponderevo, and then you wouldn't feel so upset,
23:37
Speaker 1: No I said, decidedly, that's not my way. A thread
23:41
Speaker 1: of smoke ascended from Eward for a while, like smoke
23:45
Speaker 1: from an altar. Everything's a muddle, and you think it
23:48
Speaker 1: isn't nobody knows where we are, because as a matter
23:52
Speaker 1: of fact, we aren't anywhere. Are women property or are
23:56
Speaker 1: they fellow creatures or a sort of proprietary goddess? They
24:01
Speaker 1: are so obviously fellow creatures. You believe in the goddess. No,
24:06
Speaker 1: I said, that's not my idea. What is your idea? Well,
24:12
Speaker 1: hum said Ewart in my pause. My idea, I said,
24:17
Speaker 1: is to meet one person who will belong to me,
24:20
Speaker 1: to whom I shall belong body and soul. No half gods,
24:25
Speaker 1: wait till she comes, if she comes at all, we
24:28
Speaker 1: must come to each other, young and pure. There's no
24:32
Speaker 1: such thing as a pure person or an impure person mixed.
24:36
Speaker 1: To begin with, this was so manifestly true that it
24:40
Speaker 1: silenced me altogether. And if you belong to her and
24:44
Speaker 1: she to you, ponderrevo which ends the head? I mean
24:48
Speaker 1: no answer except an impatient Oh. For a time we
24:53
Speaker 1: smoked in silence. Did I tell you ponderrevo of a
24:57
Speaker 1: wonderful discovery I've made. Ewert began presently. No, I said,
25:03
Speaker 1: what is it? There's no missus Grundy. No, no, practically not.
25:11
Speaker 1: I just thought all that business out. She's merely an instrument. Ponderevo.
25:16
Speaker 1: She's borne the blame. Grundy's a man, Grundy unmasked, rather
25:21
Speaker 1: lean and out of sorts, early middle age, with bunchy
25:25
Speaker 1: black whiskers and a worried eye. Been good so far,
25:28
Speaker 1: and it's fretting him moods. There's Grundy in a state
25:33
Speaker 1: of sexual panic, for example, For God's sake, cover it up.
25:37
Speaker 1: They get together, they get together. It's too exciting. The
25:41
Speaker 1: most dreadful things are happening, rushing about, long arms, going
25:45
Speaker 1: like a windmill. They must be kept apart. Starts out
25:50
Speaker 1: for an absolute obliteration of everything, absolute separations, one side
25:55
Speaker 1: of the road for men and the other for women,
25:57
Speaker 1: and a hoarding without posters beach between them. Every boy
26:01
Speaker 1: and girl to be sewed up in a sack and
26:03
Speaker 1: sealed just ahead, and hands and feet out until twenty
26:07
Speaker 1: one music abolished calico garments for the lower animals. Sparrows
26:13
Speaker 1: to be suppressed absolutely, I laughed, abruptly. Well, that's mister
26:20
Speaker 1: Grundy in one mood, and it puts missus Grundy. She's
26:24
Speaker 1: a much maligned person. Ponderrevo a rake at heart, and
26:28
Speaker 1: it puts her in a most painful state of fluster,
26:31
Speaker 1: most painful. She's an amenable creature. When Grundy tells her
26:36
Speaker 1: things are shocking, she's shocked, pink and breathless. She goes
26:40
Speaker 1: about trying to conceal her profound sense of guilt behind
26:44
Speaker 1: a haughty expression. Grundy, meanwhile, is in a state of
26:48
Speaker 1: complete whirlabout long, lean, nugly hands, pointing and gesticulating. They're
26:55
Speaker 1: still thinking of things, thinking of things. It's dreadful. They
26:59
Speaker 1: get it out of books. I can't imagine where they
27:02
Speaker 1: get it. I must watch. There are people over there whispering.
27:07
Speaker 1: Nobody ought to whisper. There's something suggestive in the mere act.
27:12
Speaker 1: Then pictures in the museum, things too dreadful for words.
27:17
Speaker 1: Why can't we have pure art with the anatomy, all
27:20
Speaker 1: wrong and pure and nice and pure fiction, pure poetry,
27:25
Speaker 1: instead of all this stuff with allusions allusions? Excuse me,
27:31
Speaker 1: there's something up behind that locked door, the key hole
27:35
Speaker 1: in the interests of public morality. Yes, sir, as a
27:39
Speaker 1: pure good man, I insist I'll look. It won't hurt me.
27:44
Speaker 1: I insist on looking my duty. Hum the key hole.
27:50
Speaker 1: He kicked his legs about extravagantly, and I laughed again.
27:54
Speaker 1: That's Grundy in one mood, ponderevo. It isn't missus Grundy.
27:59
Speaker 1: That's one of the lies we tell about women. They're
28:02
Speaker 1: too simple. Simple women are simple. They take on just
28:07
Speaker 1: what men tell em Eward meditated for a space, just
28:12
Speaker 1: exactly as it's put to them, he said, and resumed
28:16
Speaker 1: the moods of mister Grundy. Then you get old Grundy
28:20
Speaker 1: in another mood. Ever caught him nosing, ponderevo, mad with
28:24
Speaker 1: the idea of mysterious, unknown, wicked, delicious things, things that
28:29
Speaker 1: aren't respectable, Wow, things he mustn't do. Anyone knows about
28:36
Speaker 1: these things, knows. They's just as much mystery and deliciousness
28:39
Speaker 1: about Grundy's forbidden things as there is about eating ham.
28:44
Speaker 1: Jolly nice if it's a bright morning and you're well
28:47
Speaker 1: and hungry and having breakfast in the open air. Jolly
28:51
Speaker 1: unattractive if you're off color, but Grundy's covered it all
28:54
Speaker 1: up and hidden it and put mucky shades and covers
28:58
Speaker 1: over it until he's forgotten it. It begins to fester
29:02
Speaker 1: round it in his mind, has dreadful struggles with himself
29:06
Speaker 1: about impure thoughts. Then you set Grundy with hot ears,
29:11
Speaker 1: curious in undertones, Grundy on the loose, Grundy in a
29:15
Speaker 1: hoarse whisper, and with furtive eyes and convulsive movements making
29:19
Speaker 1: things indecent, evolving in dense vapors indecency. Grundy sins, oh, yes,
29:27
Speaker 1: he's a hypocrite, sneaks around a corner and sins ugly,
29:32
Speaker 1: it's Grundy and his dark corners that make vice vice.
29:36
Speaker 1: We artists, We have no vices. And then he's frantic
29:41
Speaker 1: with repentance and wants to be cruel to fallen women,
29:44
Speaker 1: add decent, harmless sculptures of the simple nude like me,
29:49
Speaker 1: And so back to his panic again. Missus Grundy, I
29:53
Speaker 1: suppose doesn't know, he sins, I remarked, no, I'm not
29:58
Speaker 1: so sure, but bliss her heart. She's a woman, she's
30:02
Speaker 1: a woman. Then again you get Grundy with a large,
30:06
Speaker 1: greasy smile, like an accident to a butter tub. All
30:09
Speaker 1: over his face, being liberal minded, Grundy in his anti
30:14
Speaker 1: Puritan moments, trying not to see harm in it. Grundy,
30:19
Speaker 1: the friend of innocent pleasure. He makes you sick with
30:22
Speaker 1: the harm he's trying not to see in it, And
30:25
Speaker 1: that's why everything's wrong, ponderevo. Grundy damn him stands in
30:31
Speaker 1: the light, and we young people can't see. His moods
30:35
Speaker 1: affect us. We catch his gusts of panic, his disease
30:39
Speaker 1: of nosing, his greasiness. We don't know what we may think,
30:44
Speaker 1: what we may say. He does his silly utmost to
30:47
Speaker 1: prevent our reading and seeing the one thing, the one
30:50
Speaker 1: sort of discussion we find quite naturally and properly supremely interesting,
30:57
Speaker 1: So we don't adolescence, We blunder up to sex, dare
31:02
Speaker 1: dare to look, and he may dirt you forever. The
31:06
Speaker 1: girls are terror stricken to silence by his significant whiskers,
31:10
Speaker 1: by the bleary something in his eyes. Suddenly, Ewart, with
31:15
Speaker 1: an almost Jack in the box effect, sat up. He's
31:20
Speaker 1: about us everywhere, ponderevo, he said, very solemnly. Sometimes sometimes
31:26
Speaker 1: I think he is in our blood, in mine. He
31:31
Speaker 1: regarded me for my opinion, very earnestly, with his pipe
31:35
Speaker 1: in the corner of his mouth. You're the remotest cousin
31:39
Speaker 1: he ever had, I said, I reflected, Look here, Ewart,
31:44
Speaker 1: I asked, how would you have things different? He wrinkled
31:48
Speaker 1: up his queer face, regarded the weight, and made his
31:51
Speaker 1: pipe gurgle for a space, thinking deeply. There are implications,
31:56
Speaker 1: I admit, we've grown up under the terror of Grundy
31:59
Speaker 1: and that innocent madocile, and yes, formidable lady his wife.
32:05
Speaker 1: I don't know how far the complications are a disease,
32:09
Speaker 1: a sort of bleaching under the Grundy shadow. It is
32:13
Speaker 1: possible there are things I have still to learn about women.
32:17
Speaker 1: Man has eaten of the tree of knowledge. His innocence
32:21
Speaker 1: is gone. You can't have your cake and eat it.
32:24
Speaker 1: We're in for knowledge. Let's have it plained and straight.
32:28
Speaker 1: I should begin, I think, by abolishing the ideas of
32:31
Speaker 1: decency and indecency. Grundy would have fits, I injected, Grundy
32:37
Speaker 1: Ponderevo would have cold douches publicly if the sight was
32:42
Speaker 1: not too painful, three times a day. But I don't think,
32:46
Speaker 1: mind you, that I should let the sexes run about together.
32:50
Speaker 1: No The fact behind the sexes is sex. It's no
32:55
Speaker 1: good humbugging. It trails about. Even in the best mixed
33:00
Speaker 1: company tugs at your ankle, the men get showing off
33:04
Speaker 1: and quarreling, and the women or their board. I suppose
33:09
Speaker 1: the ancestral males have competed for the ancestral females ever
33:12
Speaker 1: since they were both some sort of grubby little reptile.
33:16
Speaker 1: You aren't going to alter that in a thousand years
33:19
Speaker 1: or so. Never should you have a mixed company. Never
33:23
Speaker 1: except with only one man or only one woman. How
33:26
Speaker 1: would that be? Or duets only? How to manage it?
33:32
Speaker 1: Some rule of etiquette? Perhaps he became portentously grave. Then
33:38
Speaker 1: his long hand went out in weird gestures. I seem
33:42
Speaker 1: to see. I seemed to see a sort of city
33:46
Speaker 1: of women ponderrevo. Yes, a walled enclosure, a good stone
33:52
Speaker 1: mason's work, a city wall high as the walls of Rome,
33:56
Speaker 1: going about, a garden, dozens of square miles of garden, trees, fountains, arbors, lakes,
34:04
Speaker 1: lawns on which the women play, avenues in which they gossip. Boats.
34:11
Speaker 1: Women like that sort of thing. Any woman who's been
34:14
Speaker 1: to a good, eventful girls school lives on the memory
34:17
Speaker 1: of it for the rest of her life. It's one
34:20
Speaker 1: of the pathetic things about women, the superiority of school
34:24
Speaker 1: and college to anything they get afterwards. And this city,
34:29
Speaker 1: garden of women, will have beautiful places for music, places
34:32
Speaker 1: for beautiful dresses, places for beautiful work, everything a woman
34:37
Speaker 1: can want, nurseries, kindergartens, schools, and no man except to
34:43
Speaker 1: do rough work, perhaps ever comes in. The men live
34:47
Speaker 1: in a world where they can hunt and engineer, invent
34:51
Speaker 1: and mine and manufacture sail ships, drink deep and practice
34:56
Speaker 1: the arts, and fight. Yes, I say, but he stilled
35:01
Speaker 1: me with a gesture. I'm coming to that. The homes
35:05
Speaker 1: of the women Ponderevo will be set in the wall
35:08
Speaker 1: of their city. Each woman will have her own particular
35:11
Speaker 1: house and home, furnished after her own heart, in her
35:14
Speaker 1: own manner, with a little balcony on the outside wall
35:18
Speaker 1: built into the wall, and a little balcony, and there
35:22
Speaker 1: she will go and look out when the mood takes her.
35:25
Speaker 1: And all round the city there will be a broad
35:28
Speaker 1: road and seats and great shady trees, and men will
35:32
Speaker 1: stroll up and down there when they feel the need
35:34
Speaker 1: of feminine company, when for instance, they want to talk
35:38
Speaker 1: about their souls, or their characters, or any of the
35:41
Speaker 1: things that only women will stand. The women will lean
35:45
Speaker 1: over and look at the men and smile and talk
35:47
Speaker 1: to them as they fancy. And each woman will have this.
35:51
Speaker 1: She will have a little silken ladder she can let
35:54
Speaker 1: down if she chooses, if she wants to talk closer.
35:59
Speaker 1: The men would still be competing there, perhaps, yes, but
36:03
Speaker 1: they'd have to abide by the women's decisions. I raised
36:07
Speaker 1: one or two difficulties, and for a while we played
36:10
Speaker 1: with this idea. Ewert, I said, this is like Doll's island.
36:16
Speaker 1: Suppose I reflected, an unsuccessful man laid siege to a
36:20
Speaker 1: balcony and would let his rival come near it move
36:23
Speaker 1: him on, said Ewert, by a special regulation, as one
36:27
Speaker 1: does organ grinders. No difficulty about that, and you could
36:31
Speaker 1: forbid it, make it against the etiquette. No life is
36:35
Speaker 1: decent without etiquette, and people obey etiquette sooner than laws,
36:40
Speaker 1: hum I said, and was struck by an idea that
36:44
Speaker 1: is remote in the world of a young man. How
36:47
Speaker 1: about children, I asked. In the city, girls are all
36:51
Speaker 1: very well, but boys, for example, grow up, Ah, said Ewert. Yes,
36:57
Speaker 1: I forgot they mustn't grow up in they'd turned out
37:01
Speaker 1: the boys when they were seven. The father must come
37:04
Speaker 1: with a little pony and a little gun, and manly weare,
37:08
Speaker 1: and take the boy away. Then one could come afterwards
37:11
Speaker 1: to one's mother's balcony. It must be fine to have
37:15
Speaker 1: a mother, the father and the son. This is all
37:19
Speaker 1: very pretty in its way, I said at last, But
37:22
Speaker 1: it's a dream. Let's come back to reality. What I
37:25
Speaker 1: want to know is, what are you going to do
37:28
Speaker 1: in Brompton? Let us say or Walum Green? Now, oh
37:34
Speaker 1: damn it, he remarked, Walum Green, what a chap you are? Ponderevo,
37:40
Speaker 1: and he made an abrupt end to his discourse. He
37:43
Speaker 1: wouldn't even reply to my tentatives for a time, while
37:47
Speaker 1: I was just talking. Just now, he remarked, presently, I
37:51
Speaker 1: had a quite different idea. What for a masterpiece? A
37:56
Speaker 1: series like the busts of the Caesars, only not heads.
38:00
Speaker 1: You know, we don't see the people who do things
38:02
Speaker 1: to us nowadays. How will you do it? Then? Hands
38:07
Speaker 1: a series of hands, the hands of the twentieth century.
38:11
Speaker 1: I'll do it. Some day someone will discover it. Go there,
38:15
Speaker 1: see what I have done, and what is meant by it?
38:20
Speaker 1: See it where on the tombs? Why not the unknown
38:24
Speaker 1: master of the Highgate slope, all the little, soft feminine hands,
38:29
Speaker 1: the nervous ugly males, the hands of the flops, and
38:32
Speaker 1: the hands of the snatchers, and Grundy's loose, lean, nuckley affair,
38:37
Speaker 1: Grundy the terror, the little wrinkles, and the thumb. Only
38:42
Speaker 1: it ought to hold all the others together in a
38:44
Speaker 1: slightly disturbing squeeze, like Rodin's great hand. You know the thing.
38:52
Speaker 1: End of book, second chapter, fourth parts one to three.
38:58
Speaker 1: Recording by William tom Co