Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The Passionate Friends Chapter 9 - The Spirit of the New World Parts 8-12

Transcript

The Passionate Friends Chapter 9 - The Spirit of the New World Parts 8-12 · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter nine, parts eight to twelve of The Passionate Friends
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: by H. G. Wells. This LibriVox recording is in the
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: public domain recording by Peter Eastman, Chapter the ninth, The
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Spirit of the New World eight. The onset of New
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: York was extraordinarily stimulating to me. I write onset. It
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: is indeed that New York rides up out of the
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: waters a cliff of man's making. Its great buildings at
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: a distance seem like long Chinese banners held up against
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: the sky. From Sandy Hook to the great landing stages,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and the swirling hooting traffic of the Hudson River. There
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: fails nothing in that magnificent crescendo of approach, and New
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: York keeps the promise of its first appearance. There is
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: no such fullness of life elsewhere in all the world.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: The common man in the streets is a bigger common
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: man than any old World city can show, physically bigger.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: There is hope in his eyes and embraced defiance. New
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: York may be harsh and blusterous and violent, but there
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: is a breeze from the sea, and a breeze of
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: fraternity in the streets. And the Americans of all peoples
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: in the world are a nation of still unbroken men.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I went to America curious, balancing between hope and skepticism.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: The European world is full of the criticism of America,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and for the matter of that, America too is full
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: of it. Hostility and depreciation prevail over much. For in
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: spite of rawness and vehemence, and a scum of bladant
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a white, asinine fall, the United States of America remains
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: the greatest country in the world and the living hope
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: of mankind. It is the supreme break with the old tradition.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: It is the freshest and most valiant beginning that has
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: ever been made in human life. Here was the antithesis
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: of India. Here were no peasants whatever, no traditional culture,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: no castes, no established differences except for the one schism
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: of color. This amazing place had never had a famine,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: never a plague. Here were no temples and no priesthoods
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: dominating the lives of the people. Old Trinity Church, embedded
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: amidst towering skyscrapers, was a symbol forasmuch as they had
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: of all that. And here too, there was no crown,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: no affectations of an ancient loyalty, no visible army, no
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: traditions of hostility, For the old defiance of Britain is
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: a thing now ridiculous and dead. And every one I
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: met had an air as if he knew that tomorrow
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: must be different from today, and different and novel and
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: remarkable by virtue of himself and such as himself. I
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: went about New York with the incredulous satisfaction of a
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: man who has long doubted to find that, after all,
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: America was coming true. The very clatter pleased me. The crowds,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: the camp like slovenliness, a disorder so entirely different from
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: the established and accepted untidiness of China or India. Here
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: was something the old world had never shown me, a
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: new enterprise, a fresh vigor. In the old world, there
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: is change, a mighty wave now of change. But it
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: drives men before it, as if or a power outside
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: them and not in them. They do not know, they
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: do not believe. But here the change is in the
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: very blood and spirit of mankind. They breathe it in
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: even before the launch has brought their feet to Ellis
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Island soil. In six months, they are Americanized. Does it
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: matter that a thing so gigantic should be a little
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: coarse and blundering in detail. If this stumbling giant of
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: the new time breaks a gracious relic, or so in
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: his eager clutch and treads a little on the flowers.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Nine And in this setting of energy and activity, towering
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: city life and bracing sea breezes, I met Getting again,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: whom I had last seen, departing into Egypt to look
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: more particularly as the prehistoric remains and the temples of
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: the first and second dinos at Abidis. It was at
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: a dinner party, one of those large gatherings that welcome
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: interesting visitors. It wasn't, of course, I who was the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: center of interest, but a distinguished French portrait painter. I
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: was there as just any guest. I hadn't even perceived
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Getting until he came round to me in that precious
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: gap of masculine intercourse that ensues upon the departure of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: the ladies. That gap is one of the rare opportunities
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: for conversation men Get in America. I don't know whether
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: you will remember me, he said, but perhaps you remember
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: crete in the sunrise and no end of talk afterwards,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: I said, grasping his hand no end for we didn't
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: half finish. Did you have a good time in Egypt.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk to you about Egypt, said Gidding.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I'm through with ruins. I'm going to ask you. You
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: know what, I'm going to ask you what I think
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: of America. It's the same inevitable question. I think everything
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: of it. It's the stepping off place. I've come here
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: at last because it matters most. That's what we all
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: want to believe, said Getting. That's what we want you
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: to tell us. He reflected, It's immense, isn't it perfectly immense?
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: But I am afraid at times we're too disposed to
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: forget just what it's all about. We've got to be
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: reminded that, you know, is why we keep on asking.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: He went on to question me where I had been,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: what I had done, what I made of things? He'd never,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: he said, forgotten our two days gossip in the levant,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: and all the wide questions about the world and ourselves
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: that we had approached then and left so open. I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: soon found myself talking very freely to him. I am
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: not a ready or abundant talker, but Gidding has the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: knack of precipitating my ideas. He is America to my Europe,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: and at his touch all that has been hanging in
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: concentrated solution in my mind comes crystallizing out. He has
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: to a peculiar degree that directness and simplicity, which is
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the distinctive American quality. I tried to explain to his
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: solemnly nodding head and entirely intelligent eyes just exactly what
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: I was making of things of the world, of humanity,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: of myself. It was an odd theme for two men
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: to attempt after dinner, servants hovering about them, their two
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: faces a little flushed by wine and good eating, their
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: keen interest masked from the others around them by a
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: gossip affectation, their hands going out as they talked for
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: matches or cigarette. And before we had gone further than
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: to fling out a few intimations to each other, our
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: colloquy was interrupted by our host standing up, and by
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the general stir that preluded our return to feminine society.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: We've got more to say than this, said gidding, We've
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: got to talk. He brought out a little engagement book
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: that at once drew out mine in response, and a
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: couple of days after we spent a morning and afternoon
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: together and got down to some very intimate conversation. We
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: motored out to lunch at a place called Nayak above
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the Palisades. We crossed on a ferry to reach it,
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: and we visited the house of Washington irving near Yonkers
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: on our way. I've still a vivid picture in my
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: mind of the little lawn at Irvington that looks out
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: upon the rushing steel of Hudson River, where Getting opened
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: his heart to me. I can see him now as
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: he leant a little forward over the table with his
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: wrists resting upon it, his long, clean shaven face, very
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: solemn and earnest and gray against the hard American sunlight
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: in the greenery about us. Well, he told me in
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: that deliberate American voice of his, and with the deliberate
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: American solemnity of his desire to do some decent thing
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: with life. He was very anxious to set himself completely
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: before me. I remember on that occasion there was a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: peculiar mental kinship between us that even the profound differences
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: of our English and American trainings could not mask. And
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: now he told me almost everything material about his life
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: for the first time I learned how enormously rich he was,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: not only by reason of his father's acquisitions, but also
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: because of his own almost instinctive aptitude for business. I've got,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: he said, to begin with what almost all men spent
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: their whole lives in trying to get, and it amounts
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: to nothing. It leaves me with life like a blank
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: sheet of paper and nothing in particular to write on it.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: You know, he said, it's exasperating. I'm already half way
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: to threescore and ten and I'm still wandering about, wondering
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: what to do with this piece of life God has
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: given me. He had lived, as people say, he had
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: been in scrapes and scandals, tasted to the full the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: bitter intensities of the personal life. He had come by
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: a different route to the same conclusions as myself. Was
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: as anxious as I to escape from memories and associations
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: and feuds, and that excessive vividness of individual feeling which
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: blinds us to the common humanity, the common interest, the gentler,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: larger reality which lies behind each toddrilly, emphatic self. It's
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a sort of inverted homeopathy. I want, he said, the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: big thing to cure the little thing. But I will
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: say no more of that side of our friendship, because
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: the ideas of it are spread all through this book,
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: from the first page to the last. What concerns me
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: now is not our sympathy and agreement, but that other
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: aspect of our relations, in which getting becomes impulse and urgency.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Seeing we have these ideas, said he, and mind you,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: there must be others who have them or are getting
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to them. For nobody thinks all alone in this world.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Seeing we have these ideas, what are we going to do? Ten?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: That meeting was followed by another before I left New York,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: and presently Getting joined me at Denver, where I was
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: trying to measure the true significance of a labor paper
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: called the Appeal to Reason, that, in spite of a
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: rigid boycott by the ordinary agencies for news distribution, went
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: out in the Middle West to nearly half a million subscribers,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: and was filled with such a fierceness of insurrection against
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: labor conditions, such a hatred, blind and impassioned as I
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: had never known before. Gidding remained with me there and
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: came back with me to Chicago, where I wanted to
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: see something of the americanization of the immigrant, and my
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: survey of America. The social and economic problem of America
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: resolved itself more and more into a conference with him.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: There is no more fruitless thing in the world. Then
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: to speculate how life would have gone if this thing
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: or that had not happened yet, I cannot help but
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: wonder how far I might have traveled along the lines
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: of my present work if I had gone to America
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: and not met getting, or if I had met him
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: without visiting America. The man and his country are inextricably
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: interwoven in my mind. Yet I do think that his
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: simplicity and directness, his force of initiative that turned me
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: from a mere inquirer into an active writer and organizer,
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: are qualities less his in particular than America's in general.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: There is in America a splendid crudity, a directness that
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: cleared my spirit as a bracing wind will sweep the
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: clouds from mountain scenery. Compared with her older countenance, America
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: is mankind stripped for achievement. So many things are not
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: there at all, need not be considered. No institutional aristocracy,
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: no kaisers, csars, nor king emperors to maintain a litigious
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: sequel to the Empire of Rome. It has no uneducated,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: immovable peasantry rooted to the soil. Indeed, it has no
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: rooting to the soil at all. It is from the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: forty ninth parallel to the tip of Cape Horn, one
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: triumphant embodiment of freedom and deliberate agreement. For I mean
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: all America, Spanish speaking as well as English speaking, they
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: have this detachment from tradition in common. See how the
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: United States, for example, stands flatly on that bare piece
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: of eighteenth century intellectualism, the Constitution, and is by virtue
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: of that a structure either wilful and intellectual or absurd.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: That sense of incurable servitude to fate and past traditions,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: that encumbrance with ruins, pledges, laws, and ancient institutions, the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: perpetual complication of considerations, and those haunting memories of preceding
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: human failures which dwarf the courage of destiny in Europe
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: and Asia vanish from the mind. Within a week of
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: one's arrival in the new world. Naturally one begins to
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: do things. One is inspired to do things. One feels
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: that one has escaped, One feels that the time is
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: now all America, north and south alike is one tremendous
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: escape from ancient obsessions into activity and making. And by
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the time I had reached America, I had already come
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: to see that just as the issues of party politics
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: at home and international politics abroad are mere superficialities above
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the greater struggle of an energetic minority to organize and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: exploit the labor of the masses of mankind, so that
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: struggle also is only a huge incident in the still
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: more than half unconscious impulse to replace the ancient way
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: of human living by a more highly organized worldwide social order,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: by a world civilization embodying itself in a world state.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: And I saw now how that impulse could neither cease,
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: nor could it, on the other hand, realize itself until
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: it became conscious and deliberate and merciful, free from haste
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: and tyranny, persuasive and sustained by a nearly universal sympathy
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: and understanding. For until that arrives, the creative forces must
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: inevitably spend themselves very largely in blind alleys, feudal Russias,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: and destructive conflict. Upon that our two minds were agreed.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: We have said, getting to understand and make understanding that
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: is the real work for us to do. Stratton, that
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: is our job. The world, as you say, has been
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: floundering about half making civilization and never achieving it. Now
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: we I don't mean just you and me Stratton particularly,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: but every intelligent man among us, have got to set
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: to and make it thorough. There is no other same
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: policy for a man outside his private passions, but that
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: so let's get at it. I find it now impossible
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: to trace the phases by which I reached these broad
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: ideas upon which I rest all my work, but certainly
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: they were present very early in my discussions with getting.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: We two men had been thinking independently, but very similarly,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: and it is hard to say just what completing touches
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: either of us gave to the others propositions. We found ourselves,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: rather than arrived, at the conception of ourselves as the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: citizens neither of the United States nor of England, but
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: of a state that had still to come into being,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: a world state, a great unity behind and embracing the
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: ostensible political fabrics of today, a unity to be reached
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: by weakening antagonisms, by developing understandings and toleration by fostering
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the sense of brotherhood across the ancient bounds. We believed,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: and we believe, that such a creative conception of a
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: human commonweal can be fostered in exactly the same way
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: that the idea of German unity was fostered behind the dukedoms,
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: the free cities and kingdoms of Germany, a conception so
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: creative that it can dissolve tradition, hatreds, incorporate narrower loyalties,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and replace a thousand suspicions and hostilities by a common
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: passion for collective achievement so creative that at last, the
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: national boundaries of today may become obstacles as trivial to
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: the amplifying good will of men, as the imaginary line
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: the Sievers Normandy from Brittany or Berwick from Northumberland. And
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: it is not only a great peace about the earth
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: that this idea of a world state means for us,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: but social justice also. We are both convinced altogether that
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: there survives no reason for lives of toil, for hardship, poverty, famine,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: infectious disease, for the continuing cruelties of wild beasts, and
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: the greater multitude of crimes, but mismanagement and waste, and
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: that mismanagement and waste spring from no other source than ignorance,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and from stupid divisions and jealousies, base patriotisms, fanaticisms, prejudices,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: and suspicions that are all no more than ignorance a
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: little mingled with viciousness. We have looked closely into the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: servitude of modern labor. We have seen its injustice fester
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: towards syndicalism and revolutionary socialism. And we know these things
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: for the mere aimless, ignorant resentments. They are punishments, not remedies.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: We have looked into the portentous threat of modern war,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: and it is ignorant vanity and ignorant suspicion, the bargaining
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: aggression of the British prosperous and the swaggering vulgarity of
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: the German Junker that make can sustain that monstrous European
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: devotion to arms. And we are convinced there is nothing
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: in these eases and conflicts that light may not dispel.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: We believe that these things can be dispelled, that the
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: great universals science, which has limitations, neither of race nor class.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Art which speaks to its own in every rank and nation.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Philosophy and literature, which broaden sympathy and banish prejudice, can
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: flood and submerge, and will yet flow over and submerge
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: every one of these separations between man and man. I
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: will not say that this great state, this world republic
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: of civilized men, is our dream, because it is not
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: a dream. It is a manifestly reasonable possibility. It is
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: our intention. It is what we are deliberately making, and
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: what in a little while very many men and women
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: will be making. We are secessionists from all contemporary nationalities
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: and loyalties. We have set ourselves, with all the capacity
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and energy at our disposal, to create a worldwide common
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: fund of ideas and knowledge, and to evoke a worldwide
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: sense of human solidarity in which the existing limitations of
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: political structure must inevitably melt away. It was Getting and
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: his Americanism, his inborn predisposition to innovation, and the large
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: freedom of his wealth, that turn these ideas into immediate,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: concrete undertakings. I see more and more that it is
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: here that we of the old European stocks, who still
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: grow upon the old wood, differ most from those vigorous
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: grafts of our race in America and Africa and Australia
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, and from the renaiscent peoples of
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: the East on the other, that we have lost the
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: courage of youth, and have not yet gained the courage
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: of desperate humiliations in taking hold of things to getting
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: it was neither preposterous nor insufferably magnificent that we should
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: set about a propaganda of all science, all knowledge, all
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: philosophical and political ideas round about the habitable globe. His
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: mind began producing concrete projects as a firework being lit
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: produces sparks, and soon he was figuring out the most
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: colossal of printing and publishing projects, as a man might
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: work out the particulars for an alteration to his bathroom.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: It was so entirely natural to him, it was so
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: entirely novel to me to go on from the proposition
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: that understanding was the primary need of humanity to the
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: systematic organization a free publishing, exhaustive discussion, intellectual stimulation. He
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: set about it as a company of pharmacists might organize
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: the distribution of some beneficial cure, say Stratton. He said,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: after a conversation that had seemed to me half fantasy.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. There are moments still when it seems
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to me that this life of mine has become the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: most preposterous of adventures. We two absurd human beings, are
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: spending our days and nights in a sustained and growing
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: attempt to do what, to destroy certain obsessions, and to
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: give the universal human mind a form and a desire
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: for expression. We have put into the shape of one
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: comprehensive project, that force of released wealth that has already
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: dotted America with universities, libraries, institutions for research and enquiry.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Already there are others at work with us, and presently
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: there will be a great number. We have started an
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: avalanche above the old politics, and it gathers mass and pace.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And there never was an impulse towards endeavor in a
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: human heart that wasn't preposterous. Man is a preposterous animal.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Thereby he ceases to be a creature and becomes a creator.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: He turns upon the powers that made him and subdues
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: them to his service. By his sheer impudence, he establishes
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: his claim to possess a soul. But I need not
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: write at all fully of my work here. This book
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: is not about that, but about my coming to that.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Long before this manuscript reaches your hands. If ultimately I
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: decide that it shall reach your hands, you will be
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: taking your share. I hope, in this open conspiracy against
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: pretent hates and prejudices and all the separating powers of
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: darkness eleven. I would if I could omit one thing
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: that I must tell you here, because it goes so
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: close to the very core of all this book as
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: to convey I wish I could leave it out altogether.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I wish I could simplify my story by smoothing out
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: this wrinkle at least, and obliterating a thing that was
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: at once very real and very ugly. You see, I
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: had at last struggled up to a sustaining idea, to
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: a conception of work and duty to which I could
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: shortly give my life. I had escaped from my pit
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: so far, and it was natural that now, with something
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to give, I should turn not merely for consolation and service,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: but for help and fellowship to that dear human being
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: across the seas who had offered them to me so
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: straightly and sweetly. All that is brave and good, and
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: as you would have me. Is it not only, dear son,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: that is not all the truth? There was still in
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: my mind for long. It remained in my mind a
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: bitterness against Mary. I had left her, I had lost her.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: We had parted, but from Germany to America, and all
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: through America and home again to my marriage, and with me.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: After my marriage, it rankled that she could still go
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: on living a life independent of mine. I had not
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: yet lost my desire to possess her, to pervade and
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: dominate her existence. My resentment that though she loved me,
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: she had first not married me, and afterwards not consented
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: to come away with me, was smoldering under the closed
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: hatches of my mind. And so while the better part
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: of me was laying hold of this work because it
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: gave me the hope of a complete distraction and escape
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: from my narrow and jealous self, that lower being of
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the pit was also rejoicing in the great enterprises before me,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: and in the marriage upon which I had now determined,
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: because it was a last trampling upon my devotion to Mary,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: because it defied and denied some lurking claims to empire,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: I could suspect in her. I want to tell you that,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: particularly because so I am maze, so you are made,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: so most of us are made. There is scarcely a
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: high purpose in all the world that has no dwarfish
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: footman at its stirrup, no base intention over which there
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: does not ride at least the phantom of an angel
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: constantly in those days, it seems to me now I
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: was haunted by my own imagination of merry amiably reconciled
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: to Justin, bearing him children, forgetful of or repudiating all
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: the sweetness, all the wonder and beauty we had shared.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: It was an unjust and ungenerous conception. I knew it
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: for a caricature even as I entertained it, and yet
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: it tormented me. It stung me like a spur. It
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: kept me at work, and if I strayed into indolence,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: brought me back to work with a mind galled and
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: bleeding twelve. And I suppose it is mixed up with
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: all this that I could not make love easily and
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: naturally to Rachel. I could not write love letters to her.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: There is a burlesque quality in these scruples, I know,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: seeing that I was now resolved to marry her. But
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: that is the quality, that is the mixed texture of life.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: We overcome the greater things and are conscience stricken by
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the details. I wouldn't even at the price of losing her,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and I was now passionately anxious not to lose her
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: use a single phrase of endearment that did not come
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: out of me, almost in spite of myself, at any rate,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: I would not cheat her. And my offer of marriage,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: when at last I sent it to her from Chicago, was,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: as I remember it, almost bit like I atoned soon
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: enough for that arid letter in ten thousand sweet words
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: that came of themselves to my lips. And she paid
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: me at any rate in my own coin when she
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: sent me her answer by cable, the one word yes.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: And indeed I was already in love with her long
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: before I wrote. It was only a dread of giving
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: her a single undeserved cheapness that had held me back
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: so long. It was that and the perplexity that Mary
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: still gripped my feelings. My old love for her was
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: there in my heart in spite of my new passion
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: for Rachel. It was blackened, perhaps, and ruined and changed,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: but it was there. It was as if a new
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: crater burnt now in the ampler circumference of an old volcano,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: which showed all the more death and sorrowful and obsolete
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: for the warm light of the new flames. How impatiently
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I came home. Thoughts of England I had not dared
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: to think for three long years, might now do what
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: they would in me. I dreamt of the Surrey Hills
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: and the great woods of Burnmore Park, of the changing
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: skies and stirring soft winds of our gray, green motherland.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: There was fog in the Irish Sea, and we lost
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the better part of a day hooting our way towards Liverpool.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: While I fretted about the ship with all my luggage packed,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: staring at the gray waters that weltered under the mist.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: It was the longest day in my life. My heart
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: was full of desire. My eyes ached for the little
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: fields and golden October skies of England, England that was
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: widing to welcome me back for my exile with such
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: open arms. I was coming home home. I hurried through
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: London into Surrey, and in my father's study, warned by
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: a telegram, I found a bright eyed, resolute young woman
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: awaiting me with the quality about her of one who
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: embarks upon a long premeditated adventure. And I found two
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: a family, her sisters and her brother, all gladly ready
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: for me. My father too, was a happy man, and
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: on the eighth of November in nineteen o six, Rachel
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: and I were married in the little church at Chaer.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: We stayed for a week or so in Hampshire, near Ringwood.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: The season was late that year, and the trees still
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: very beautiful, and then we went to Portofino on the
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: Ligurian coast. There, presently getting joined us, and we began
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to work out the schemes we had made in America,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: the schemes that now fill my life. End of Chapter nine.