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The New Machiavelli Chapter 10 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter ten, Section two of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
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  Speaker 1: Antoniogus six. I sit writing in this little logia to
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  Speaker 1: the sound of dripping water. This morning we had rain,
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  Speaker 1: and the roof of our little kasa is still not dry.
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  Speaker 1: There are pools in the rocks under the sweet chestnuts,
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  Speaker 1: and the torrent that crosses the Salita is full and boastful.
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  Speaker 1: And I try to recall the order of my impressions
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  Speaker 1: during that watchful, dubious time before I went over to
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  Speaker 1: the Conservative Party, I was trying chaotic task to gauge
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  Speaker 1: the possibilities inherent in the quality of the British aristocracy.
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  Speaker 1: There comes a broad spectacular effect of wide parks diversified
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  Speaker 1: by woods and bracken valleys and dappled with deer, of
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  Speaker 1: great smooth lawn shaded by ancient trees, of big facades,
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  Speaker 1: of sunlit buildings dominating the countryside, of large, fine rooms
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  Speaker 1: full of handsome, easy mannered people, as a sort of
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  Speaker 1: representative picture to set off against those other pictures of
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  Speaker 1: liberals and of socialists I have given. I recall one
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  Speaker 1: of those huge assemblies. The Duchess of Cleines inaugurated at
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  Speaker 1: Stamford House. Place itself is one of the vastest private
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  Speaker 1: houses in London, a huge clustering mass of white and
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  Speaker 1: gold saloons, with polished floors and wonderful pictures and staircases
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  Speaker 1: and galleries on a gargantuan scale. And there she sought
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  Speaker 1: to gather all that was most representative of English activities,
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  Speaker 1: and did, in fact, in those brilliant nocturnal crowds, get
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  Speaker 1: samples of nearly every section of our social and intellectual life,
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  Speaker 1: with a mark predominance upon the political and social side.
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  Speaker 1: I remember sitting in one of the recesses at the
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  Speaker 1: end of the big saloon with Missus Redmondson, one of
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  Speaker 1: those sharp minded, beautiful rich women one meet so often
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  Speaker 1: in London, who seemed to have done nothing and to
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  Speaker 1: be capable of everything. And we watched the crowd uniforms
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  Speaker 1: and splendors were streaming in from a state ball and
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  Speaker 1: exchanged information. I told her about the politicians and intellectuals,
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  Speaker 1: and she told me about the aristocrats, and we sharpened
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  Speaker 1: our wit on them and counted the percentage of beautiful
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  Speaker 1: people among the latter and wondered if the general effect
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  Speaker 1: of tallness was or was not an illusion. They were,
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  Speaker 1: we agreed, for the most part, bigger than the average
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  Speaker 1: of people in London, and a handsome lot. Even when
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  Speaker 1: they were not subtly individualized. They looked so well nurtured,
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  Speaker 1: I said, well cared for. I like their why at
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  Speaker 1: well trained movements. They're pleasant, consideration for each other, kindly,
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  Speaker 1: good tempered, and a bottom utterly selfish, she said, like
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  Speaker 1: big rather carefully trained, rather pampered children. What else can
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  Speaker 1: you expect from them? They're good tempered anyhow, I witnessed,
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  Speaker 1: and that's an achievement. I don't think I could ever
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  Speaker 1: be content under a bad tempered, sentimentalizing, strenuous government. That's
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  Speaker 1: why I couldn't stand the Roosevelt regime in America. One's
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  Speaker 1: chief surprise when one comes across these big people for
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  Speaker 1: the first time is their admirable easiness and a real
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  Speaker 1: personal modesty. I confess I admire them. Oh, I like them.
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  Speaker 1: I wouldn't at all, mind, I believe giving over the
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  Speaker 1: country to this aristocracy, given something which they haven't got,
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  Speaker 1: which they haven't got, or they'd be the finest sort
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  Speaker 1: of people in the world. That's something, she inquired. I
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  Speaker 1: don't know. I've been puzzling my wits to know they've
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  Speaker 1: done all sorts of things. That's Lord Russeleton, she interrupted,
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  Speaker 1: whose leg was broken? You remember it, spine cop. It's
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  Speaker 1: healed very well. I like the gold lace and the
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  Speaker 1: white glove resting with quite a nice awkwardness on the sword.
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  Speaker 1: When I was a little boy, I wanted to wear
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  Speaker 1: clothed like that, and the stars. He's got the VC.
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  Speaker 1: Most of these people here have, at any rate shown pluck,
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  Speaker 1: you know, brought something off. Not quite enough, she suggested.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's it. I said, not quite enough, not
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  Speaker 1: quite hard enough, I added. She laughed and looked at me.
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  Speaker 1: You'd like to make us, she said, what hard? I
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  Speaker 1: don't think you'll go on. If you don't get hard,
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  Speaker 1: we sha'n't be pleasant if we do well. There, my
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  Speaker 1: puzzled wits come in again. I don't see why an
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  Speaker 1: aristocracy shouldn't be rather hard trained and yet kindly. I
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  Speaker 1: am not convinced that the resources of education are exhausted.
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  Speaker 1: I want a better this because it already looked so good.
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  Speaker 1: How are we to do it? Asked missus Redmondson. How
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  Speaker 1: are there you have me. I've been spending my time
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  Speaker 1: lately and trying to answer that. It makes me quarrel with.
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  Speaker 1: I held up my fingers and ticked the items off.
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  Speaker 1: The public schools, the private tutors, the army exams, the universities,
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  Speaker 1: the church, the general attitude of the country towards science
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  Speaker 1: and literature. We all do, said Missus Redmondson. We can't
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  Speaker 1: begin again at the beginning, she added, couldn't one? I
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  Speaker 1: nodded at the assembly in general. Start a movement. There's
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  Speaker 1: the Confederates, she said, with a faint smile that mastered
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  Speaker 1: a gleam of curiosity. You want, she said, to say,
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  Speaker 1: to the aristocracy, be aristocrats, no bless obleege. Do you
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: remember what happened to the monarcha was told to be
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  Speaker 1: a king? Well, I said, I want an aristocracy. This,
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  Speaker 1: she said, smiling, is the pick of them. The backwoodsmen
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  Speaker 1: are off the stage. These are the brilliant ones, the
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  Speaker 1: smart and the blues. They cost a lot of money.
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  Speaker 1: You know so far, Missus Redmondson. But the picture remained
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  Speaker 1: full of things not stated in our speech. They were
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  Speaker 1: on the whole, handsome people, charitable, minded, happy and easy.
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  Speaker 1: They led spacious lives, and there was something free and
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  Speaker 1: fearless about their bearing that I liked extremely. The women, particularly,
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  Speaker 1: were wide reading, fine thinking. Missus Redmondson talked as fully
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  Speaker 1: and widely and boldly as a man, and with those
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  Speaker 1: flashes of intuition, those startling, sudden delicacies of perception few
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  Speaker 1: men display. I liked too the relations that held between
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  Speaker 1: women and men, their general tolerance, their antagonism to the
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  Speaker 1: harsh jealousies that are the essence of the middle class order.
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  Speaker 1: After all, if one's aim resolved itself into the development
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  Speaker 1: of a type and culture of men, why shouldn't one
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  Speaker 1: begin at this end. It is very easy, indeed, to
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  Speaker 1: generalize about a class of human beings, but much harder
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  Speaker 1: to produce. A sample. Was Old Lady fort hundred, for
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  Speaker 1: instance's fairly sample. I remember her as a smiling, magnificent presence,
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  Speaker 1: a tiring accumulation of figure, and wonderful shimmering blue silk
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  Speaker 1: and black lace and black hair, and small fine features,
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  Speaker 1: and chins and chins and chins, disposed in a big
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  Speaker 1: cane chair with wraps and cushions upon the great terrace
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  Speaker 1: of champneys. Her eye was blue and hard and her
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  Speaker 1: accent and intonation were exactly what you would expect from
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  Speaker 1: a rather commonplace stress maker pretending to be aristocratic. I
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  Speaker 1: was I am afraid posing a little as the intelligent
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  Speaker 1: but respectful from below investigating the great world. And she
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  Speaker 1: was certainly posing as my informant. She affected a cynical coarseness.
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  Speaker 1: She developed a theory on the governance of England. Beautifully
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  Speaker 1: frank and simple. Give em all a peerage when they
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  Speaker 1: get twenty thousand a year, she maintained. That's my remedy
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  Speaker 1: in my new role of theoretical aristocrat. I felt a
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  Speaker 1: little abashed. Twenty thousand, she repeated with conviction. It occurred
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  Speaker 1: to me that I was in the presence of the
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  Speaker 1: aristocratic theory currently working as distinguished from my as yet
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  Speaker 1: unformulated intentions. You'll get a lot of loafers and scamps
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  Speaker 1: among em, said Lady fort hundred. You get loafers and
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  Speaker 1: scamps everywhere, but you'll get a lot of men who
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  Speaker 1: work hard to keep things together. And that's what we're
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  Speaker 1: all after, isn't it. It's not an ideal arrangement. Tell
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  Speaker 1: me anything better, said Lady fort hundred. On the whole,
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  Speaker 1: and because she refused emphatically to believe in education. Lady
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  Speaker 1: fort hundreds scored. We have been discussing Cossington's recent peerage.
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  Speaker 1: For Cossington, my old schoolfellow at City Merchants, and my
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  Speaker 1: victor in the affair of the magazine, had clambered to
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  Speaker 1: an amazing wealth up a piled heap of energetically pushed
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  Speaker 1: Penny and Hapenny magazines and a group of daily newspapers.
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  Speaker 1: I had expected to find the Great Lady hostile to
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  Speaker 1: the newcomer, but she accepted him. She gloried in him.
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  Speaker 1: We're a peerage, she said, but none of us have
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  Speaker 1: ever had any nonsense about nobility. She turned and smiled
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  Speaker 1: down on me. We English, she said, are a practical people.
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  Speaker 1: We assimilate em. Then I suppose they don't give trouble.
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  Speaker 1: Then they don't give trouble. They learned to shoot and
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  Speaker 1: all that, said Lady fort hundred. Yes, and things go on,
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  Speaker 1: sometimes better than others, But they go on somehow. It
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  Speaker 1: depends very much on the sort of butler who pokes
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  Speaker 1: them about. I suggested that it might be possible to
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  Speaker 1: get us secure twenty thousand a year by at least
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  Speaker 1: detrimental methods socially speaking, we must take the bad and
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  Speaker 1: the good of them, said Lady fort hundred courageously. Now
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  Speaker 1: was she a sample? It happened she talked? What was
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  Speaker 1: there in the brains of the multitude of her first, second, third, fourth,
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  Speaker 1: and fifth cousins who didn't talk, who shone tall and
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  Speaker 1: bearing themselves. Finally, against a background of deft, attentive maids
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  Speaker 1: and valets on every space of social scene, how did
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  Speaker 1: things look to them? Seven signed by side with Lady
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  Speaker 1: fort hundred. It is curious to put Evesham, with his tall,
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  Speaker 1: bent body, his little featured, almost elvish face, his unequal
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  Speaker 1: mild brown eyes, his gentle manner, his sweet, amazing oratory.
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  Speaker 1: He led all these people wonderfully. He was always curious
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  Speaker 1: and interested about life, weary beneath a pleasing frankness. And
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  Speaker 1: I tormented my brain to get to the bottom of him.
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  Speaker 1: For a long time he was the most powerful man
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  Speaker 1: in England under the throne. He had the lords in
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  Speaker 1: his hand and a great majority in the Commons, and
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  Speaker 1: the discontents and intrigues that are the concomitants of an
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  Speaker 1: overwhelming party advantage broke against him as waves break against
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  Speaker 1: a Cliff. He foresaw so far in these matters that
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  Speaker 1: it seemed he scarcely troubled to foresee. He brought political
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  Speaker 1: art to the last triumph of naturalness. Always for me,
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  Speaker 1: he has been the typical aristocrat, so typical and above
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  Speaker 1: the mere forms of aristocracy that he remained a commoner
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  Speaker 1: to the end of his days. I had met him
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  Speaker 1: at the beginning of my career. He read some early
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  Speaker 1: papers of mine and asked to see me, and I
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  Speaker 1: conceived a flattering liking for him that strengthened to a
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  Speaker 1: very strong feeling. Indeed, he seemed to me to stand alone,
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  Speaker 1: without an equal, the greatest man in British political life.
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  Speaker 1: Some men one sees through and understands, some one cannot
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  Speaker 1: see into or round because they are of opaque clay.
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  Speaker 1: But about Evesham, I had a sense of things hidden
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  Speaker 1: as it were, by depth and mists, because he was
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  Speaker 1: so big, an atmospheric a personality. No other contemporary has
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  Speaker 1: had that effect upon me. I've sat beside him at dinners,
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  Speaker 1: stayed in houses with him. He was in the Big
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  Speaker 1: House party at Champney's, talked to him, sounded him, watching
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  Speaker 1: him as I sat beside him. I could talk to
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  Speaker 1: him with extraordinary freedom and a rare sense of being understood.
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  Speaker 1: Other men have to be treated in a special manner,
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  Speaker 1: approached through their own mental dialect, flattered by a minute
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  Speaker 1: regard for what they have said and done. Evesham was
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  Speaker 1: as widely and charitably receptive as any man I have
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  Speaker 1: ever met. The common politicians beside him seemed like rows
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  Speaker 1: of stuffy little rooms looking out upon the sea. And
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  Speaker 1: what was he up to? What did he think we
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  Speaker 1: were doing with mankind that I thought worth knowing? I
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  Speaker 1: remember his talking on one occasion at the Hartsteins that
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  Speaker 1: it in as so tremendously floriferous and equipped that we
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  Speaker 1: were almost forced into duologs about the possible common constructive
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  Speaker 1: purpose in politics. I feel so much. He said that
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  Speaker 1: the best people in every party converge. We don't differ
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  Speaker 1: at Westminster as they do in the country towns. There's
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  Speaker 1: a sort of extending common policy that goes on under
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  Speaker 1: every government because on the whole it's the right thing
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  Speaker 1: to do, and people know it. Things that used to
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  Speaker 1: be matters of opinion become matters of science and cease
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  Speaker 1: to be party questions. The instant education apart said I
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  Speaker 1: from the religious question. Apart from the religious question. He
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  Speaker 1: dropped that aspect with an easy grace, and went on
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  Speaker 1: with his general theme that political conflict was the outcome
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  Speaker 1: of uncertainty. Directly, you get a thing established so that
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  Speaker 1: people can say, now, this is right, with the same
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  Speaker 1: conviction that people can say water is a combination of
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  Speaker 1: oxygen and hydrogen. There's no more to be said. The
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  Speaker 1: thing has to be done. And to put against this
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  Speaker 1: effect of Eveshan broad and humanely tolerant posing as the
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  Speaker 1: minister of a steadily developing, constructive conviction, there are other memories.
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  Speaker 1: Have I not seen him in the house persistent, persuasive, indefatigable,
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  Speaker 1: and by all my standards, wickedly perverse, leaning over the
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  Speaker 1: table with those insistent movements of his hand upon it,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: or swaying forward with a grip upon his coat lapel,
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  Speaker 1: fighting with a diabolical skill to preserve what are in
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  Speaker 1: effect religious tests. Tests he must have known would outrage
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: and humiliate and injure the consciences of a quarter, and
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  Speaker 1: that perhaps the best quarter of the youngsters who come
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  Speaker 1: to the work of elementary education. In praying for points
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: in the game of party advantage, Evesham displayed at times
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: a quite wicked unscrupulousness in the use of his subtle mind.
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  Speaker 1: I would sit on the liberal benches and watch him,
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  Speaker 1: and listen to his urbane voice, fascinated by him. Did
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  Speaker 1: he really care? Did anything matter to him? And if
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  Speaker 1: it really mattered nothing, why did he trouble to serve
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the narrowness and passion of his side? Or did he
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: see far beyond my scope so that this petty iniquity
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  Speaker 1: was justified by greater remote ends of which I had
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: no intimation. They accused him of nepotism. His friends and
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: family were certainly well cared for. In private life he
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: was full of an affectionate intimacy. He pleased by being
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: charmed and pleased. One might think at times there was
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  Speaker 1: no more of him than a clever man, happily circumstanced
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: and finding an interest and occupation in politics. And then
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: came a glimpse of thought, of imagination, like the sight
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: of a soaring eagle through a staircase skylight. Though beyond
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: question he was great. No other contemporary politician had his quality.
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  Speaker 1: In no man have I perceived so sympathetically the great
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: contrast between warm personal things and the white dream of
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: state craft, except that he had it seemed no hot passions,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: but only in interest and fine affections and indolences. He
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  Speaker 1: paralleled the conflict of my life. He saw and thought
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: widely and deeply, But at times it seemed to me
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: his greatness stood over and behind the reality of his life,
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: like some splendid servant thinking his own thoughts, who waits
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: behind a lesser master's chair. Eight. Of course, when Evesham
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  Speaker 1: talked to this ideal of the organized state becoming so
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: finely true to practicability, and so clearly stated as to
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: have the compelling conviction of physical science, he spoke quite
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  Speaker 1: after my heart. Had he really embodied the attempt to
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: realize that I could have done no more than follow
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  Speaker 1: him blindly. But neither he nor I embodied that. And
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: there lies the gist of my story. And when it
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: came to a study of others, among the leading tories
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and imperialists, the doubt increased, until with some at last
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: it was possible to question whether they had any imaginative
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: conception of constructive state craft at all, whether they didn't
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: opaquely accept the world for what it was and set
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: themselves single mindedly to make a place for themselves and
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: cut a figure in it. There were some very fine
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: personalities among them. There were the great peers who had
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: administered Egypt, India, South Africa, Framboya, Cromer, Kitchener, Kurz and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Milner Gain, for example. So far as that easier task
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: of holding sword and scales had gone, they had shown
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: the finest qualities. But they had returned to the perplexing
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and exacting problem of the home country. A little glorious,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: a little too simply bold. They wanted to arm, and
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: they wanted to educate. But the habit of immediate necessity
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: made them far more eager to arm than to educate,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: and their experience of heterogeneous controls made them overrate the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: need for obedience in a Hormondels country. They didn't understand
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: raw men, ill trained men, uncertain minds and intelligent women,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: and these are the things that matter in England. They
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: were also the great business adventurers, from Cramber to Cossington,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: who was now Lord Paddockhurst. My mind remained unsettled and
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: went up and down the scale between a belief in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: their far sighted purpose and the perception of crude vanities
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: coarse ambitions, vulgar competitiveness, and a mere habitual persistence in
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: the pursuit of gain. For a time I saw a
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: good deal of Cossington. I wish I had kept a
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: diary of his talk and gestures to mark how he
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: could vary from day to day between a poseur, a
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: smart tradesman, and a very bold and wide thinking political schemer.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: He had a vanity of sweeping actions, motor car pounces,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: napoleonic rushes that led to violent, ineffectual changes in the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: policy of his papers, and a haunting pursuit by parallel
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: columns in the liberal press that never abashed him in
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: the slightest degree by an accident. I plumbed the folly
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: in him, but I feel I never plumbed his wisdom.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: I remember him one day, after lunch at the barns, saying, suddenly,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: out of profound meditation over the end of a cigar,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: one of those sentences that seemed to light the whole
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: interior being of a man. Some day, he said, softly,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: rather to himself than to me, and are propos of nothing?
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Some day I will raise the country? Why not, I said,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: after a pause, and leant across him. For the little
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: silver spirit lamp to light my cigarette. Then the Tories
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: had for another section, the ancient creations. And again there
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: were the financial peers, men accustomed to reserve, and their
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: big lawyers, accustomed to well qualified statement. And below the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: giant personalities for the party were the young bloods, young
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: adventurous men of the type of Lord Tavreville, who had
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: seen service in South Africa, who had traveled and hunted, explorers,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: keen motorists, interested in aviation, active in army organization, good
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: brown faced stuff. They were, but impervious to ideas outside
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  Speaker 1: the range of their activities, more ignorant of science than
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: their chauffeurs, and of the quality of English people than
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: welt politicians, contemptuous of school and university by reason of
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the Gateses and flax and Codgers who had come their way, witty,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: light hearted, patriotic at the kipling level, with a certain
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: aptitude for bullying. They varied in insensible gradations between the
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: noble sportsmen on the one hand, and men like Gain
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: and the Tories of our Pentagram Club on the other.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: You perceive how a man might exercise his mind in
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the attempt to strike an average of public serviceability in
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: the smiths Elenie, and mixed up with these, mixed up
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: sometimes in the same man was the pure reactionary, whose
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: predominant idea was that the village schools should confine themselves
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: to teaching the Catechism, hat touching and courtesying, and be
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: given a holiday whenever beaters were in request. I find
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: now in my mind as a sort of counterpoise to Evesham,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: the figure of old Lord Wardingham asleep in the largest
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: armchair in the library of Stamford Court after lunch. One
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: foot rested on one of those things I think they
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: are called gout stools. He had been playing golf for
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: the morning and wearied a week in step. At lunch
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: he had sat at my table and talked in the
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: overbearing manner permitted to irascible important men whose in steps
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: are painful. Among other things, he had flouted the idea
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: that women would ever understand state craft or be more
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: than a nuisance in politics, denied flatly that Hindus were
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: capable of anything whatever except excesses in population, Regretted he
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: could not sense of picture galleries and circulating libraries, and
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: declared that dissenters were people who pretended to take theology seriously,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: with the express purpose of upsetting the entirely satisfactory compromise
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: of the established church. No sensible people with anything to
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: gain or lose argue about religion. He said, they mean mistif.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Having delivered his soul upon these points, and silenced the
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: little conversation to the left of him from which they
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: had arisen, he became, after an appreciative encounter with a
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: sanguinary woodcock, more amiable, responded to some respectful initiatives of croups,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: and related a number of classical anecdotes of those blighting, snubs,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: vindictive retorts, and scandalous miscarriages of justice that are so
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: dear to the forensic mind. Now he reposed, he was
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: breathing heavily, with his mouth a little open, and his
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: head on one side. One whisker was turned back against
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the comfortable padding. His plump, strong hands gripped the arms
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: of his chair, and his frown was a little assuaged.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: How tremendously fed up he looked honor's wealth, influence, respect
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: he had them all, How scornful and hard it had
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: made his unguarded expression. I note without comment that it
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: didn't even occur to me then to wake him up
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: and ask him what he was up to with mankind. Nine.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: One countervailing influence to my drift to Toryism in those
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: days was Margaret's quite religious faith in the liberals. I
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: realized that slowly and with a mild astonishment. It set me, indeed,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: even then questioning my own change of opinion. We came
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: at last, incidentally, as our way was to an exchange
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: of views. It was as nearly a quarrel as we
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: had before I came over to the conservative side. It
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: was at Champney's, and I think during the same visit
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: that wisnessed my exploration of Lady fort hundred. It arose indirectly,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: I think, out of some comments of mine upon our
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: fellow guests. But it is one of those memories of
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: which the scene and quality remain more vivid than the
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: things said, a memory without any very definite beginning or end.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: It was afternoon, in the pause between tea and the
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: dressing bell, and we were in Margaret's big silver adorned
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Chintz bright room, looking out on the trim Italian garden. Yes,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the beginning of it has escaped me altogether, but I
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: remember it as an odd, exceptional little wrangle. At first,
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: we seem to have split upon the moral quality of
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: the aristocracy, and I had an odd sense that, in
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: some way too feminine for me to understand, our hostess
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: had aggrieved her. She said, I know that Champney's distressed her,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: made her eager for work and reality again. But aren't
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: these people real? They're so superficial, so extravagant, I said.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: I was not shocked by their unreality. They seemed the
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: least affected people I had ever met. And are they
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: really so extravagant? I asked, and put it to her
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: that her dresses cost quite as much as any other
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: woman's in the house. It's not only their dresses, Margaret parried,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: it's the scale and spirit of things. I questioned that
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: they're cynical, said Margaret, staring before her out of the window.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I challenged her, and she quoted the Brabants about whom
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: there had been an ancient scandal. She'd heard of it
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: from Alteorra, and it was also Alteorra had given her
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: a horror of Lord Carnaby, who was also with us.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: You know his reputation, said Margaret, that normandy girl every
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: one knows about it. I shiver when I look at him.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: He seems, oh like something not of our civilization. He
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: will come and say little things to me, offensive things,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: no politenesses and things. Of course his manners are quite right.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: That only makes it worse. I think he shows he
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: might have helped all that happened. I'd all I can
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: to make him see. I don't like him. But none
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: of the others make the slightest objection to him. Perhaps
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: those people imagine something might be said for him. That's
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: just it, said Margaret Charity. I suggested, I don't like
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: that sort of toleration. I was oddly annoyed, like eating
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: with publicans and sinners, I said, no, But scandals and
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the contempt for rigid standards their condemnation displayed weren't more
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: and the sharp edge of the trouble. It's their whole position,
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: their selfish predominance, their class conspiracy against the mass of people,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: said Margaret. When I sit at dinner in that splendid room,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: with its glitter and white reflections and candle light, and
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: its flowers, and its wonderful service, and its candelabra of
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: solid gold, I seem to feel the slums and the mines,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: and the overcrowded cottages stuffed away under the table. I
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: reminded Margaret that she was not altogether innocent of unearned increment,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: but are we doing our best to give it back?
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: She said? I was moved to question her. Do you
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: really think, I asked, that the Tories and peers and
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: rich people are to blame for social injustice as we
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: have it to day? Do you really see politics as
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: a struggle of light on the liberal side against darkness
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: on the Tory They must know, said Margaret. I found
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: myself questioning that I see now that to Margaret it
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: must have seen the perversest carping against manifest things. But
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: at the time I was concentrated simply upon the elucidation
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: of her view and my own. I wanted to get
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: at her conception in the sharpest, hardest lines that were possible.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: It was perfectly clear that she saw Toryism as the
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: diabolical element in affairs. The thing showed in its hopeless untruth,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: all the clearer for the fine, clean emotion with which
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: she gave it out to me, my sleeping peer in
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: the library at Stamford Court, and eves from talking luminously
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: behind the Hartstein flowers embodied the devil and my replete
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: citizens sucking at his cigar. In the National Liberal Club,
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Willie Crampton discussing the care and management of the stomach
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: over a specially hygienic lemonade, and Doctor Tumpany in his
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: aggressive frock coat pegging out to sort of copyright in
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: socialism were the center and wings of the angelic side.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: It was nonsense. But how was I to put the
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: truth to her? I don't see things at all as
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: you do, I said, I don't see things in the
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: same way. Think of the poor, said Margaret, going off
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: at a tangent, Think of everyone, I said. We liberals
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: have done more mischief through well intentioned benevolence, than all
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: the selfishness in the world could have done. We built
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: up the liquor interest, we cried Margaret. How could you
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: say that it's against us naturally? But we made it
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: a monopoly in our clumsy efforts to prevent people drinking
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: what they liked because it interfered with industrial regularity. Oh,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: cried Margaret, stun and I could see she thought I
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: was talking mere wickedness. That's it, I said, But would
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: you have people drink whatever they pleased. Certainly, what right
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: have I to take to other men and women? But
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: think of the children. Ah, there you have the folly
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: of modern liberalism. It's half cunning, half silly way of
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: getting at everything in a roundabout fashion. If neglecting children
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: is an offense, and it is an offense, then deal
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: with it as such. But don't go battering and restricting
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: people who sell something that may, possibly in some cases,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: lead to a neglect of children. If drunkenness is an offense,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: punish it. But don't punish a man for selling on
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: his drink that perhaps, after all, won't make anyone drunk
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: at all. Don't intensify the viciousness of the public house
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: by assuming the place isn't fit for women and children.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: That's either spite or folly. Make the public house fit
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: for women and children, Make it a real public house.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: If we liberals go on as we are going, we
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: shall presently want to stop the sale of ink and paper,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: because those things tempt men to forgery. We do already
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: threaten the privacy of the post because of betting Tout's letters.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: The drift of all that kind of thing is narrow
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: an imaginative, mischievous, stupid. I stopped short and walked to
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the window and surveyed a pretty fountain, fat simile of
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: one in Verona, amidst trim cut borderings of view beyond,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: and seen between the stems of Alec's trees, was a
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: great blaze of yellow flowers. But prevention, I heard Margaret
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: behind me, is the essence of our work. I turned.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: There's no prevention but education. There's no antiseptics in life,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: but love and fine thinking make people fine, make fine people.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Don't be afraid. These Tory leaders are better people individually
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: than the average. Why cast them for the villains of
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: the piece. The real villain in the piece, in the
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: whole human drama, is the muddle headedness. And it matters
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: very little if it's virtuous minded or wicked. I want
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: to get up muddle headedness. If I could do that,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: I could let all that you call wickedness in the
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: world run about and do what it jolly well pleased.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: It would matter about as much as a slightly neglected
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: dog in an otherwise well managed home. My thoughts had
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: run away with me. I can't understand you, said Margaret,
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: in the profoundest distress. I can't understand how it is
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: you are coming to see things like this. Ten. The
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: moods of a thinking man in politics are curiously evasive
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and difficult to describe. Neither the public nor the historian
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: will permit the statesman moods. He has from the first
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: to assume he has an aim, a definite aim, and
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: to pretend to an absolute consistency with that. Those subtle
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: questionings about the very fundamentals of life which plague us
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: all so relentlessly nowadays, are supposed to be silenced. He
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: lifts his chin and pursues his aim explicitly in the
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: sight of all men. Those who have no real political
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: experience can scarcely imagine the immense mental and moral strain
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: there is between one's everyday acts and utterances on the
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: one hand, and the thinking out process on the other.
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: It is perplexingly difficult to keep in your mind fixed
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and firm a scheme essentially complex, to keep balancing a
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: swaying possibility, while at the same time, under jealous, hostile
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and stupid observation you tread your part in the platitudinous
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: quarrelsome ill presented march of affairs. The most impossible. Of
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: all autobiographies is an intellectual autobiography. I have thrown together,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: in the crudest way the elements of the problem I
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: struggled with. But I can give no record of the
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: subtle details I can tell of the long vacillations between
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: protein values, the talks and retalks, the meditations, the bleak
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: lucidities of sleepless nights. And yet these things I have
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: struggled with must be thought out, and to begin with,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: they must be thought out in this muddled, experimenting way.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: To go into a study to think about state craft
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: is to turn your back on the realities you're constantly
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: needing to feel and test and sound. If your thinking
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: is to remain vital, to choose an aim and pursue
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: it in despite of all subsequent questionings is to bury
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: the talent of your mind. It is no use dealing
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: with the intricate, as though it were simple to leap
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: had hazard at the first course of action that presents itself.
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: The whole world of politicians is far too like a
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: man who snatches a poker to a failing watch. It
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: is easy to say he wants to get something done.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: The only sane thing to do for the moment is
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: to put aside that poker and take thought and get
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: a better implement. One of the results of these fundamental
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: preoccupations of mine was a curious irritability towards Margaret that
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: I found difficult to conceal. It was one of the
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: incidental cruelties of our position that this should happen. I
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: was in such doubt myself that I had no power
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: to phrase things for her in a form she could use. Hitherto,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I had stage managed our serious conversations. Now I was
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: too much in earnest and too uncertain to go on
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: doing this. I avoided talk with her. Her serene sustained
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: confidence in vague formulae and sentimental aspirations exasperated me. Her
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: want of sympathetic apprehension made my few efforts to indicate
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: my changing attitudes distressing and futile. It wasn't that I
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: was always thinking right and that she was always saying wrong.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: It was that I was struggling to get hold of
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: a difficult thing that was at any rate half true
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: I could not gauge how true, and that Margaret's habitual
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: phrasing ignored these elusive elements of truth and without premeditation,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: fitted into the weaknesses of my new intimations as though
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: they had nothing but weaknesses. It was, for example, obvious
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: that these big people who were the backbone of imperialism
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: and conservatism were temperamentally lax, much more indolent, much more
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: sensuous than our deliberately virtuous young liberals. I didn't want
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: to be reminded of that. Just when I was in
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: full effort to realize the finer elements in their composition,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Margaret classed them and disposed of them. It was our
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: incurable differences in habits and gestures of thought coming between
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: us again, the desert of misunderstanding widened. I was forced
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: back upon myself and my own secret counsels. For a time,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: I went my way alone, an unmixed evil for both
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: of us. Except for that Pentagram evening, a series of
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: talks with Isabelle Rivers, who is now becoming more and
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: more important in my intellectual life, and the arguments I
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: maintained with Krupp. I never really opened my mind at
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: all during that period of indecisions, slow abandonments, and slow acquisitions.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter ten, Section two