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The New Machiavelli Chapter 5 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter five, 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 five. My cousins did more than in the straight
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  Speaker 1: marks for me. They also undertook a stage of my
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  Speaker 1: emotional education. Their method in that, as in everything else,
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  Speaker 1: was extremely simple, but it took my inexperience by surprise.
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  Speaker 1: It must have been on my third visit that Sybil
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  Speaker 1: took me in hand. Hitherto I seemed to have seen
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  Speaker 1: her only in profile, but now she became almost completely
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  Speaker 1: full face, manifestly regarded me with those violet eyes of hers.
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  Speaker 1: She passed me things I needed at breakfast. It was
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  Speaker 1: the first morning of my visit before I asked for them.
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  Speaker 1: When young men are looked at by pretty cousins, they
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  Speaker 1: become intensely aware of those cousins. It seemed to me
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  Speaker 1: that I had always admirred Sybil's eyes very greatly, and
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  Speaker 1: that there was something in her temperament congenial to mine.
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  Speaker 1: It was odd I had not noted it on my
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  Speaker 1: previous visits. We walked round the garden somewhen that morning
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  Speaker 1: and talked about Cambridge. She asked quite a lot of
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  Speaker 1: questions about my work and my ambitions. She said she
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  Speaker 1: had always felt sure I was clever. The conversation anguished
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  Speaker 1: a little, and we picked some flowers for the house.
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  Speaker 1: Then she asked if I could run. I conceded her
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  Speaker 1: various starts, and we raced up and down the middle
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  Speaker 1: garden path. Then, a little breathless, we went into the
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  Speaker 1: new twenty five guinea summer house at the end of
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  Speaker 1: the herbaceous border. We sat side by side, pleasantly hidden
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  Speaker 1: from the house, and she became anxious about her hair,
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  Speaker 1: which was slightly and prettily disarranged, and asked me to
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  Speaker 1: help her with the adjustment of a hairpin. I had
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  Speaker 1: never in my life been so near the soft, curly
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  Speaker 1: hair and the dainty eyebrow, an eyelid, and warm, soft
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  Speaker 1: cheek of a girl. And I was stirred. It stirs
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  Speaker 1: me now to recall it. I became a battleground of
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  Speaker 1: impulses and inhibitions. Thank you, said my cousin, and moved
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  Speaker 1: a little away from me. She began to talk about
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  Speaker 1: friendship and lost her thread and forgot the little electric
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  Speaker 1: stress between us. In rather meandering analysis of her principal
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  Speaker 1: girl friends. But afterwards she resumed her purpose. I went
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  Speaker 1: to bed that night with one proposition overshadowing everything else
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  Speaker 1: in my mind, namely that kissing my cousin Sybil was
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  Speaker 1: a difficult but not impossible achievement. I do not recall
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  Speaker 1: any shadow of a doubt whether on the whole it
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  Speaker 1: was worth doing. The thing had come into my existence,
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  Speaker 1: disturbing and interrupt its flow, exactly as a fever does.
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  Speaker 1: Sybil had infected me with herself. The next day, matters
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  Speaker 1: came to a crisis in the little upstairs sitting room,
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  Speaker 1: which had been assigned me as a study during my visit.
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  Speaker 1: I was working up there, or rather trying to work
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  Speaker 1: in spite of the outrageous capering of some very primitive
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  Speaker 1: elements in my brain, when she came up to me
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  Speaker 1: under a transparent pretext of looking for a book. I
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  Speaker 1: turned round and then got up at the sight of her.
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  Speaker 1: I quite forget what our conversation was about, but I
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  Speaker 1: know she led me to believe I might kiss her.
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  Speaker 1: Then when I attempted to do so, she averted her face.
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  Speaker 1: How could you, she said, I didn't mean that. That
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  Speaker 1: remained the state of our relations for two days. I
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  Speaker 1: developed a growing irritation with and resentment against Cousin Sybil,
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  Speaker 1: combined with an intense desire to get kiss, for which
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  Speaker 1: I hungered and thirsted. Cousin Sybil went about in the
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  Speaker 1: happy persuasion that I was madly in love with her,
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  Speaker 1: and her game, so far as she was concerned, was
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  Speaker 1: played and won. It wasn't until I had fretted for
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  Speaker 1: two days that I realized that I was being used
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  Speaker 1: for the commonest form of excitement possible to a commonplace girl,
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  Speaker 1: that dozens, perhaps of young men had played the part
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  Speaker 1: of Tantalus at Cousin Sybil's lips. I walked about my
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  Speaker 1: room at nights, damning her and calling her by terms
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  Speaker 1: which on the whole she rather deserved. While Sybil went
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  Speaker 1: to sleep pitying poor old dick. Damn it, I said,
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  Speaker 1: I will be equal with you, but I never did
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  Speaker 1: equalize the disadvantage. And perhaps it's as well, for I
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  Speaker 1: fancy that sort of revenge cuts both people too much
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  Speaker 1: for a rational man to seek it. Why are men
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  Speaker 1: so silly? Said Cousin Sybil next morning, wriggling back with
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  Speaker 1: down bent head to release herself from what should have
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  Speaker 1: been a compelling embrace. Confound it, I said, with a
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  Speaker 1: flash of clear vision, you started this game. Oh. She
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  Speaker 1: stood back against a hedge of roses, a little flushed
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  Speaker 1: and excited and interested, and ready for the delightful defensive.
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  Speaker 1: If I should renew my attack, beastly hot for scuffling,
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  Speaker 1: I said, white with anger. I don't know whether I'm
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  Speaker 1: so keen on kissing you, Sybil. After all, I just
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  Speaker 1: thought you wanted me to. I could have whipped her,
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  Speaker 1: and my voice stung more than my words. Our eyes
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  Speaker 1: met a real hatred in hers, leaping up to meet mine.
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  Speaker 1: Let's play tennis, I said, after a moment's pause. No,
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  Speaker 1: she answered shortly, I'm going indoors very well, and that
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  Speaker 1: ended the affair with Sybil. I was still in the
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  Speaker 1: full glare of this disillusionment when Gertrude awoke from some
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  Speaker 1: preoccupation to an interest in my existence. She developed a
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  Speaker 1: disposition to touch my hand by accident, and let her
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  Speaker 1: fingers rest in contact with it for a moment. She
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  Speaker 1: had pleasant, soft hands. She began to drift into summer
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  Speaker 1: houses with me, to let her arm rest trustfully against mine,
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  Speaker 1: to ask questions about Cambridge. They were much the same
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  Speaker 1: questions that Sybil had asked. But I controlled myself and
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  Speaker 1: maintained a profile of intelligent and entirely civil indifference to
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  Speaker 1: her blandishments. What Gertrude made of it came out one
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  Speaker 1: evening in some talk. I forget about what with Sybil,
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  Speaker 1: oh Dick, said Gertrude a little impatiently Dick's pie, And
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  Speaker 1: I never disillusioned her by any subsequent levity from this
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  Speaker 1: theory of my innate and virginal piety. Six. It was
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  Speaker 1: against this harsh and crude Staffordshire background that I think
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  Speaker 1: I must have seen Margaret for the first time. I
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  Speaker 1: say I think, because it is quite possible that we
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  Speaker 1: had passed each other in the streets of Cambridge, no doubt,
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  Speaker 1: with that affectation of mutual disregard which was once customary
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  Speaker 1: between undergraduates and Newnham girls. But if that were so,
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  Speaker 1: I had noted nothing of the slender graciousness that shone
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  Speaker 1: out so pleasingly against the bleaker Midland surroundings. She was
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  Speaker 1: a younger school fellow of my cousins, and the step
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  Speaker 1: daughter of Seddon, a prominence lister of Burslem. She was
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  Speaker 1: not only not in my cousin's generation, but not in
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  Speaker 1: their set. She was one of a small hard working
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  Speaker 1: group who kept immaculate note books and did as much
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  Speaker 1: as is humanly possible of that insensate pile of written
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  Speaker 1: work that the girl's public school movement has inflicted upon schoolgirls.
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  Speaker 1: She really learnt French German admirably and thoroughly. She got
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  Speaker 1: as far in mathematics as an unflinching industry can carry
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  Speaker 1: anyone with no great natural aptitude, and she went up
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  Speaker 1: to Bennett Hall, Newnham, after the usual conflict with her family,
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  Speaker 1: to work for the history tripos there. In her third year.
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  Speaker 1: She made herself thoroughly ill through overwork, so ill that
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  Speaker 1: she had to give up Newnham altogether and go abroad
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  Speaker 1: with her stepmother. She made herself ill, as so many
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  Speaker 1: girls do in those university colleges, through the badness of
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  Speaker 1: her home and school training. She thought study must needs
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  Speaker 1: be a hard straining of the mind. She worried her work.
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  Speaker 1: She gave herself no leisure to see it as a whole.
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  Speaker 1: She felt herself not making headway, and she cut her
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  Speaker 1: games and exercise in order to increase her hours of toil,
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  Speaker 1: and worked into the night she carried a knack of
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  Speaker 1: laborious thoroughness into the blind alleys and in essentials of
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  Speaker 1: her subject. It didn't need the badness of the food
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  Speaker 1: for which Bennett Hall is celebrated and the remarkable dietary
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  Speaker 1: of nocturnal cocoa cakes and soft biscuits with which the
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  Speaker 1: girls have supplemented it to ensure her collapse. Her mother
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  Speaker 1: brought her home fretting and distressed, and then, finding her
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  Speaker 1: hopelessly unhappy at home, took her and her half brother,
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  Speaker 1: a rather ailing youngster of ten who died three years later,
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  Speaker 1: for a journey to Italy. Italy did much to assuage
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  Speaker 1: Margaret Chagrin. I think all three of them had a
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  Speaker 1: very good time there. At home, mister sed and her
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  Speaker 1: stepfather played the part of a well meaning blight by
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  Speaker 1: reason of the moods that arose from nervous dyspepsia. They
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  Speaker 1: went to Florence, equipped with various introductions and much sound
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  Speaker 1: advice from sympathetic Cambridge friends, and having acquired an ease
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  Speaker 1: in Italy, there went on to Sieno or Vieto, and
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  Speaker 1: at last Rome they returned, if I remember rightly, by
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  Speaker 1: Pisa Genoa, Milan and Paris. Six months or more they
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  Speaker 1: had had abroad, and now Margaret was back in Burslem,
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  Speaker 1: in health again and consciously a very civilized person. New
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  Speaker 1: ideas were abroad. It was May time and a spring
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  Speaker 1: of abundant flowers. Daffodils were particularly good that year, and
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  Speaker 1: Missus Seddon celebrated her return by giving an afternoon reception
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  Speaker 1: at short notice, with the clear intention of letting everyone
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  Speaker 1: out into the garden if the weather held. The Sedends
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  Speaker 1: had a big old farmhouse modified to modern ideas of
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  Speaker 1: comfort on the road out towards Misterton, with an orchard
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  Speaker 1: that had been rather pleasantly subdued from use to ornament.
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  Speaker 1: It had rich, blossoming cherry and apple trees. Large patches
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  Speaker 1: of grass full of nodding yellow trumpets had been left
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  Speaker 1: amidst the not too precisely mown grass, which was, as
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  Speaker 1: it were, grass path with an occasional lapse into lawn
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  Speaker 1: or glade. And Margaret, hatless, with the fair hair above
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  Speaker 1: her thin, delicately pink face, very simply done, came to
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  Speaker 1: meet our rather too consciously dressed party. We had come
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  Speaker 1: in the motor force, strong with my aunt in gray silk.
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  Speaker 1: Margaret wore a soft, flowing, flowered blue dress of diaphanous material,
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  Speaker 1: all unconnected with a fashion, and tied with pretty ribbons,
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  Speaker 1: like a slenderer, unbountiful primavera. It was one of those
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  Speaker 1: may days that ape the light and heat of summer,
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  Speaker 1: and I remember, disconnectedly, quite a number of brightly lit
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  Speaker 1: figures and groups walking about, and a white gate between
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  Speaker 1: orchard and garden, and a large lawn with an oak tree,
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  Speaker 1: and a red Georgian house with a veranda and open
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  Speaker 1: French windows through which the tea drinking had come out
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  Speaker 1: upon the moss edge flagsters. Even as missus Seddon had planned,
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  Speaker 1: the party was almost entirely feminine, except for a little
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  Speaker 1: curate with a large head, a good voice, and a
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  Speaker 1: radiant manner, who was obviously attracted by Margaret, and two
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  Speaker 1: or three young husbands still sufficiently addicted to their wives
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  Speaker 1: to accompany them. One of them I recall as a
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  Speaker 1: quite romantic figure with abundant blonde, curly hair, on which
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  Speaker 1: was poised a gray felt hat encircled by a refined
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  Speaker 1: black band. He wore moreover a loose, rich shot silk
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  Speaker 1: tie of red and purple, a long frock coat, gray
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  Speaker 1: trousers and brown shoes, and presently he removed his hat
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  Speaker 1: and carried it in one hand. There were two tennis
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  Speaker 1: playing youths. Besides myself. There was also one father with
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  Speaker 1: three daughters in anxious control, a father of the old school,
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  Speaker 1: scarcely half broken, in reluctant, rebellious and consciously and conscientiously
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  Speaker 1: rate Staffordshire. The daughters were all alert to suppress the
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  Speaker 1: possible plungings, the undesirable humorous impulses of this almost feral guest.
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  Speaker 1: They nipped his very gestures in the bud. The rest
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  Speaker 1: of the people were mainly mothers with daughters, daughters of
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  Speaker 1: all ages, and a scattering of ants, and there was
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  Speaker 1: a tendency to clotting parties kept together and regarded parties suspiciously.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Seddon was in hiding, i think all the time,
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  Speaker 1: though not formally absent. Matters centered upon the tea in
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  Speaker 1: the long room of the French windows, where four trim
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  Speaker 1: maids went to and fro busily between the house and
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  Speaker 1: the clumps of people seated or standing before it, and
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  Speaker 1: tennis and croquet were intermittently visible and audible beyond a
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  Speaker 1: bank of rock work rich with the spikes and cups
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  Speaker 1: and bells of high space. Missus Seddon presided at the
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  Speaker 1: tea urn, and Margaret partly assisted and partly talked to
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  Speaker 1: me and my cousin Sybil. Gertrude had found a disused
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  Speaker 1: and faded initial and was partnering him at tennis in
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  Speaker 1: a state of gentle revival, while their mother exercised a
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  Speaker 1: divided chaperonage from a seat near Missus Seddon. The little curate,
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  Speaker 1: stirring a partially empty cup of tea, mingled with our
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  Speaker 1: party and preluded. I remember every observation he made by
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  Speaker 1: a vigorous resumption of stirring. We talked of Cambridge, and
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  Speaker 1: Margaret kept us to it. The Curate was a selwyn
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  Speaker 1: Man and had taken a past degree in theology. But
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  Speaker 1: Margaret had come to gay Lord Lector's in Trinity for
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  Speaker 1: a term before her breakdown and understood these differences. She
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  Speaker 1: had the eagerness of an exile to hear the old
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  Speaker 1: familiar names of places and personalities. We capped familiar anecdotes
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  Speaker 1: and were enthusiastic about King's Chapel and the backs and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: the Curate, addressing himself more particularly to Sybil, told a
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  Speaker 1: long confused story illustrative of his disposition to reckless devilry
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  Speaker 1: of a pure minded, kindly sort about upsetting two canoes
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  Speaker 1: quite needlessly on the way to Grantchester. I can still
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  Speaker 1: see Margaret as I saw her that afternoon, See her
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  Speaker 1: fresh fair face, with the little obliquity of the upper lip,
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  Speaker 1: and her brow always slightly knitted, and her manner as
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  Speaker 1: of one breathlessly shy but determined. She had rather open
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  Speaker 1: blue eyes, and she spoke in an even musical voice,
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  Speaker 1: with the gentlest of stresses and the ghost of a lisp.
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  Speaker 1: And it was true she gathered that Cambridge still existed.
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  Speaker 1: I went to Grantchester, she said, last year, and had
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  Speaker 1: tea under the apple blossom. I didn't think then I
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  Speaker 1: should have to come down. It was that started the
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  Speaker 1: Curate upon his anecdote. I've seen a lot of pictures
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  Speaker 1: and learned a lot about them, and the pity and
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  Speaker 1: the brearer. The bearer is wonderful, wonderful places, but it
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  Speaker 1: isn't like real study, she was saying. Presently we bought
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  Speaker 1: bales of photographs. She said, I thought the bells a
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  Speaker 1: little out of keeping, but fair haired and quite simply,
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  Speaker 1: and yet graciously and fancifully dressed, talking of art and
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  Speaker 1: beautiful things and a beautiful land, and with so much
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  Speaker 1: manifest regret for learning denied. She seemed a different kind
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  Speaker 1: of being altogether from my smart, hard, high colored, black
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  Speaker 1: haired and resolutely hatted cousin. She seemed translucent beside Gertrude.
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  Speaker 1: Even the little twist and droop of her slender body
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  Speaker 1: was a grace to me. I liked her from the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: moment I saw her, and set myself to interest and
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  Speaker 1: please her as well as I knew how we recalled
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  Speaker 1: a case of ragging that had rustled the shrubs of Newnham.
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  Speaker 1: And then Chris Robinson's visit. He had given a talk
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  Speaker 1: to Bennett Hall also, and our impression of him. He
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  Speaker 1: disappointed me too, said Margaret. I was moved to tell
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  Speaker 1: Margaret something of my own views in the matter of
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  Speaker 1: social progress. And she listened, oh, with a kind of
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  Speaker 1: urged attention, and her brow a little more knitted, very earnestly.
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  Speaker 1: The little curate desisted from the appendacees and refuse heaps
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  Speaker 1: and general debris of his story, and made himself look
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  Speaker 1: very alert and intelligent. We did a lot of that
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  Speaker 1: when I was up in the eighties. He said, I'm
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  Speaker 1: glad imperialism hasn't swamped you fellows altogether. Gertrude, looking bright
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  Speaker 1: and confident, came to join our talk from the shrubbery.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: The Initial, a little flushed and evidently in a state
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  Speaker 1: of refreshed relationship, came with her, and a cheerful lady
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  Speaker 1: in pink and more, particularly distinguished by a pink bonnet,
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  Speaker 1: joined our little group. Gertrude had been sipping admiration and
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  Speaker 1: was not disposed to play a passive part in the
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  Speaker 1: talk socialism. She cried, catching the word it's well, par
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  Speaker 1: isn't here. He has fits when people talk of socialism fits.
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  Speaker 1: The initial laughed in a general kind of way. The
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  Speaker 1: curate said, there was socialism and socialism, and looked at
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  Speaker 1: Margaret to gauge whether he had been too bold in
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  Speaker 1: this utterance. But she was all he perceived for broad mindness,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: and he stirred himself and incidentally his tea distill more
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  Speaker 1: liberality of expression. He said, the state of the poor
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  Speaker 1: was appalling, simply appalling. That there were times when he
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  Speaker 1: wanted to shatter the whole system only, he said, turning
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  Speaker 1: to me appealingly. What have we got to put in
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  Speaker 1: its place? The thing that exists is always the more
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  Speaker 1: evident alternate, I said. The little curate looked at it
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  Speaker 1: for a moment. Precisely, he said, explosively, and turned, stirring
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  Speaker 1: and with his head a little on one side, to
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  Speaker 1: hear what Margaret was saying. Margaret was saying with a
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  Speaker 1: swift blush and an effect of daring, that she had
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  Speaker 1: no doubt she was a socialist, and wearing a gold chain,
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  Speaker 1: said Gertrude, and drinking out of egg's shell. I like that.
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  Speaker 1: I came to Margaret's rescue. It doesn't follow that because
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  Speaker 1: one's a socialist, one ought to dress in sackcloth and ashes.
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  Speaker 1: The initial colored deeply, and, having secured my attention by
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: prodding me slightly with the wrist of the hand that
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: held his teacup, cleared his throat and suggested that one
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  Speaker 1: ought to be consistent. I perceived we were embarked upon
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  Speaker 1: a discussion of the elements. We began an interesting little wrangle,
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  Speaker 1: one of those crude discussions of general ideas that a
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  Speaker 1: deer to the heart you iron. Margaret supported one another
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  Speaker 1: as socialists. Gertrude and Sybil, and the initial maintained an
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  Speaker 1: anti socialist position. The curate attempted a cross bench position
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  Speaker 1: with an air of intending to come down upon us
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  Speaker 1: presently with a casting vote. He reminded us of a
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  Speaker 1: number of useful principles too often overlooked, an argument that
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: in a big question like this, there was much to
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  Speaker 1: be said on both sides, that if everyone did his
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  Speaker 1: or her duty to every one about them, there would
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  Speaker 1: be no difficulty with social problems at all. That over
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: and above all enactments, we needed moral changes in people themselves.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: My cousin Gertrude was a difficult controversialist to manage, being
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  Speaker 1: unconscious of inconsistency in statement and absolutely impervious to reply.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Her standpoint was essentially materialistic. She didn't see why she
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  Speaker 1: shouldn't have a good time, because as other people didn't,
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  Speaker 1: they would have a good time. She was sure if
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  Speaker 1: she didn't. She said that if we did give up
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  Speaker 1: everything we had to other people, they wouldn't very likely
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  Speaker 1: know what to do with it. She asked, if we
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  Speaker 1: were so fond of work people, why we didn't go
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  Speaker 1: and live among them, and expressed the inflexible persuasion that
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: if we had socialism, everything would be just the same
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: again in ten years time. She also threw upon us
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: the imputation of ingratitude for a beautiful world by saying
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: that so far as she was concerned, she didn't want
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to upset everything. She was contented with things as they were,
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: thank you. The discussion led in some way that I
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: don't in the least recall now, and possibly by abrupt
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: transitions to a croquet foursome in which Margaret involved the
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: curate without involving herself, and then stood beside me on
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: the edge of the lawn while the others played. We
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: watched silently for a moment. I hate that sort of view,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: she said, suddenly, in a confidential undertone, with her delicate
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: pink flush returning it's want of imagination, I said to
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: think we are just to enjoy ourselves, she went on,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: just to go on dressing and playing and having meals
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: and spending money. She seemed to be referring not simply
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to my cousins, but to the whole world of industry
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and property about us. But what is one to do,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: she asked, I do wish I had not had to
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: come down. It's all so pointless here. There seems to
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: be nothing going forward, no ideas, no dreams. No one
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: here seems to feel quite what I feel, the sort
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: of need there is for meaning in things. I hate
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: things without meaning. Don't you do local work? I suppose
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I shall. I suppose I must find something. Do you
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: think if one were attempt to some sort of propaganda,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: could you I began a little doubtfully. I suppose I couldn't,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: she answered, after a thoughtful moment, I suppose it would
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: come to nothing. And yet I feel there is so
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: much to be done for the world, so much one
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: ought to be doing. I want to do something for
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: the world. I can see her now, as she stood there,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: with her brows nearly frowning, her blue eyes looking before her,
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: her mouth almost petulant. One feels that there are so
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: many things going on out of one's reach, she said.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: I went back in the motor car with my mind
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: full of her. The quality of delicate discontent, the suggestion
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: of exile, even a kind of weakness in her was sympathetic,
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: she told, tremendously against her background. She was, I say,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: like a protesting blue flower upon a cinder heap. It
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: is curious too, how she connects and mingles with a
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: furious quarrel I had with my uncle that very evening
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: that came absurdly indirectly. Margaret was responsible. My mind was
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: running on ideas she had revived and questions she had
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: set clamoring, and quite inadvertently, in my attempt to find solutions,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: I talked so as to outrage his profoundest feelings. Seven.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: What a preposterous shindy that was. I sat with him
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: in the smoking room, propounding what I considered to be
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the most indisputable and non contentious propositions conceivable, until, to
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: my infinite amazement, he exploded and called me a damned
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: young puppy. It was seismic, tremendously interesting time, I said,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: just in the beginning of making a civilization. Ah, he said,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: with an averted face and nodded, leaning forward over his cigar.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: I had not the remotest thought of annoying him. Monstrous
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: muddle of things we have got, I said, jumbled streets,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: ugly population, ugly factories. You'd do a sight better if
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: you had to do with it, said my uncle, regarding
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: me a skance. Not me, but a world that had
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: a collective plan and knew where it meant to be going,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: would do a site better. Anyhow, we're all swimming in
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: a flood of ill calculated chances. You'll be making out.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I organized that business down there by chance, next, said
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: my uncle, his voice thick with challenge. I went on,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: as though I was back in Trinity. There's a lot
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: of chance in the making of all great businesses, I said.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: My uncle remarked that that showed how much I knew
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: about businesses. If chance made businesses, why was it that
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: he always succeeded and grew while those fools Acroyds and
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Sons always took second place. He showed a disposition to
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: tell the glorious history of how once Acroids overshadowed him,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: and how now he could buy up Ackroyds three times over.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to get out what was in my mind. Oh,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I said, as between man and man and business and business,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: some of course get the pull by this quality or that,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: But its forces quite outside the individual case that make
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the big part of any success under modern conditions. You
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: never invented pottery, nor any process in pottery that matters
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: a rap in your works. It wasn't your foresight that
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: joined all England up with railways and made it possible
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: to organize production on an altogether different scale. You, really,
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: at the utmost, can't take credit for much more than
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: being the sort of man who happened to fit what
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: happened to be the requirements of the time, and who
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: happened to be in a position to take advantage of them.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: It was then my uncle cried out and called me
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a damned young puppy, and became involved in some unexpected
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: trouble of his own. I woke up, as it were,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: from my analysis of the situation, to discover him bent
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: over a splendid spittoon, cursing incoherently, wretching a little, and
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: spitting out the end of his cigar, which he had
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: bitten off in his last attempt at self control, and
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: withal fully prepared as soon as he had cleared for action,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: to give me just all that he considered to be
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the contents of his mind upon the condition of mine. Well,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: why shouldn't I talk my mind to him? He never
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: had an outside view of himself for years, and I
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: resolved to stand up to him. We went at it,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: hammer and tongs, it became clear that he supposed me
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: to be a socialist, a zealous, embittered hater of all ownership,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: and also an educated man of the vilest, most pretentiously
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: superior description. His principal grievance was that I thought I
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: knew everything. To that, he recurred again and again. We
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: had been maintaining an armed truce with each other since
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: my resolve to go up to Cambridge, and now we
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: had out all that accumulated between us. There had been
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: stupendous accumulations. The particular things we said and did in
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: that balling encounter matter nothing at all in this story.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I can't now estimate how near we came to fisticuffs.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: It ended with my saying, after a pungent reminder of
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: benefits conferred and remembered, that I didn't want to stay
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: another hour in his house. I went upstairs, in a
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: state of puerile fury, to pack and go off to
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: the railway hotel, while he, with ironical civility, telephoned for
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: a cab go a redance, shouted my uncle, seeing me
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: off into the night. On the face of it, our
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: row was preposterous, but the underlying reality of our quarrel
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: was the essential antagonism, it seemed to me, in all
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: huge human affairs, the antagonism between ideas and the established method.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: That is to say, between ideas and the rule of thumb.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: The world I hate is the rule of thumb world.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: The thing I and my kind of people exist for
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: primarily is to battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: reconstruct it. We question everything, disturb anything that cannot give
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: a clear justification to our questioning, because we believe inherently
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: that our sense of disorder implies the possibility of a
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: better order. Of course, we are detestable. My uncle was
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: of that other vast mass who accept everything for the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: thing it seems to be. Hate inquiry and analysis as
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: a tramp, hates washing, dread and resist change, oppose experiment,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: despise science. The world is our battle ground, and all history,
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: all literature that matters, all science, deals with this conflict,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: with the thing that is and the speculative if that
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: will destroy it. But that is why I did not
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: see Margaret Settin again for five years. End of chapter
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: five