Skip to main content

Full text of "Reading I've liked: a personal selection drawn from two decades of reading and reviewing, presented with an informal prologue ad various commentaries"

See other formats


UNIVERSITY 
OF  FLORIDA 
LIBRARIES 


COLLEGE  LIBRARY 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

LYRASIS  Members  and  Sloan  Foundation 


http://www.archive.org/details/readingivelikedpfadi 


Reading 
I've  Liked 

A  PERSONAL  SELECTION 

DRAWN  FROM  TWO  DECADES 

OF  READING  AND  REVIEWING 

PRESENTED  WITH  AN 

INFORMAL  PROLOGUE  AND 

VARIOUS  COMMENTARIES 

BY 

Clifton  Fadiman 


SIMON  AND   SCHUSTER 

NEW  YORK 

I94I 


ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 

INCLUDING  THE  RIGHT  OF  REPRODUCTION 

IN  WHOLE  OR  IN  PART  IN  ANY  FORM 

COPYRIGHT,  I94I,  BY  SIMON  AND  SCHUSTER,  INC. 

PUBLISHED  BY  SIMON  AND  SCHUSTER,  INC. 

ROCKEFELLER  CENTER,   I23O  SIXTH  AVENUE, 

NEW  YORK,  N.  Y. 


(Is  *      4Z. 


MANUFACTURED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 
AMERICAN   BOOK-STRATFORD   PRESS,   INC.,   NEW   YORK 


C  -  3 


PRESENTING 


MY  LIFE  IS  AN  OPEN  BOOK:   CONFESSIONS  AND 

DIGRESSIONS  OF  AN  INCURABLE  xm 

Clifton  Fadiman 

l^OUR  YEARS  IN  A  SHED  [from  "madame  curie"]  1 

Eve  Curie 

^/ENTRANCE  FEE   V  18 

Alexander  Woollcott 

VPUTZI  22 

Ludwig  Bemelmans        A 

MARIO  AND  THE  MAGICIAN  30 

Thomas  Mann 

SNOW  [from  "the  magic  mountain"]  77 

Thomas  Mann 

;  ARMINIA  EVANS  AVERY  [from  "America's  growing  pains"]    116 
George  R.  Leighton 

METROPOLIS  AND  HER  CHILDREN  122 

Vincent  McHugh 

^TIN  LIZZIE   [from  "u.s.a."]  143 

John  Dos  Passos 

THE  CAMPERS  AT  KITTY  HAWK    [from  "u.s.a."]  155 

John  Dos  Passos 

v  MEESTER  VEELSON   [from  "u.s.a."]  161 

John  Dos  Passos 

VTHE  TREASURE  I  169 

W.  Somerset  Maugham 

THE  FACTS  OF  LIFE      y  191 

W.  Somerset  Maugham 

THE  UNKNOWABLE      I  210 

George  Santayana 


1329-56 


VI  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

EXCERPTS  FROM  "A  DICTIONARY  OF  MODERN 

ENGLISH  USAGE"  2^3 

H.  W.  Fowler 

THE  NEW  BRITANNICA  247 

C.  K.  Ogden 

TRIALS  OF  AN  ENCYCLOPEDIST  272 

Frank  Moore  Colby 

CONFESSIONS  OF  A  GALLOMANIAC     V  287 

Frank  Moore  Colby 

MY  LIFE  AND  HARD  TIMES  292 

James  Thurber 

SUCCESS  352 

R.  B.  Cunninghame  Graham 

MR.  BENNETT  AND  MRS.  BROWN  359 

Virginia  Woolf 

A  DECISION  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  DISTRICT 

COURT  380 

Hon.  John  M.  Woolsey 

MY  OWN  CENTENARY  389 

E.  M.  Forster 

THE  CONSOLATIONS  OF  HISTORY  394 

E.  M.  Forster 

A  WHITE  HERON  398 

Sarah  Orne  Jewett 

THE  LOVE  NEST  410 

Ring  Lardner 

THE  SNOWS  OF  KILIMANJARO  426 

Ernest  Hemingway 

THE  RED  PONY  459 

John  Steinbeck 

DUST  [from  "the  grapes  of  wrath"]  518 

John  Steinbeck 


PRESENTING  VII 

THE  TURTLE  [from  "the  grapes  of  wrath"]  V  522 

John  Steinbeck 

THE  STANDING  AND  THE  WAITING  525 

M.  F.  K.  Fisher 

CfiSAR  539 

M.  F.  K.  Fisher 

THE  SALZBURG  TALES   [the  prologue  and  the 
personages] 
Christina  Stead  545 

A  LITTLE  BOY'S  LONG  JOURNEY  [from  "men  of 

good  will"]  582 

Jules  Romains 

PORTRAIT  OF  FRANCE  IN  JULY  'i4  [from  "men  of 

good  will"]  609 

Jules  Romains 

HOW  VERDUN  MANAGED  TO  HOLD  OUT  [from 

"men  of  good  will"]  623 

Jules  Romains 

AN  EXCERPT  FROM  "THE  WORLD  OF  THE 

THIBAULTS"  636 

Roger  Martin  du  Gard 

FELIX  TINCLER  654 

A.  E.  Coppard 

ARABESQUE:  THE  MOUSE  666 

A.  E.  Coppard 

DUSKY  RUTH  673 

A.  E.  Coppard 

AUGUST  HEAT  682 

W.  F.  Harvey 

JAMES  PETHEL  690 

Max  Beerbohm 

LORD  MOUNTDRAGO  709 

W.  Somerset  Maugham 


VIII  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

SILENT  SNOW,  SECRET  SNOW  734 

Conrad  Aiken 

THE  DOOR  754 

E.  B.  White 

U^9yS  THERE  AN  OSTEOSYNCHRONDROITRICIAN  V 

IN  THE  HOUSE?  760 

S.  J.  Perelman 

A  FREE  MAN'S  WORSHIP  764 

Bertrand  Russell 

NOON  WINE  775 

Katherine  Anne  Porter 

THE  SAYINGS  OF  ABE  MARTIN  825 

Kin  Hubbard 

AN  ALMANAC  FOR  MODERNS  [selections]  831 

Donald  Culross  Peattie 

A  LETTER  TO  THE  DEAN  OF  THE  PHILO- 
SOPHICAL FACULTY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  BONN  896 

Thomas  Mann 

AN  EXCERPT  FROM  A  SPEECH  905 

Justice  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


My  thanks  are  due  to: 

D.  Appleton-Century  Co.,  Inc.,  for  their  permission  to  quote  horn 
The  Salzburg  Tales  by  Christina  Stead,  copyright,  1934,  by  D.  Apple- 
ton-Century Co.,  Inc.  The  Bohhs-Merrill  Company  for  their  per- 
mission to  quote  horn  Abe  Martin's  Pump  hy  Kin  Hubbard,  copy- 
right, 1929.  Mrs.  Kin  Hubbard  for  selection  of  excerpts  from  her 
husband's  writings.  Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company,  Inc.,  for  permission 
to  reprint  Noon  Wine  by  Katherine  Anne  Porter,  copyright,  1939,  by 
Katherine  Anne  Porter;  and  to  reprint  two  essays  from  Abinger  Har- 
vest by  E.  M.  Forster,  copyright,  1936,  by  E.  M.  Forster.  Brandt  & 
Braridt  for  the  selection  from  Seven  Men  by  Max  Beerbohm,  copy- 
right, 1920,  by  Max  Beerbohm  and  published  by  Alfred  A.  Knopf, 
Inc.;  and  for  selections  from  Adam  and  Eve  and  Pinch  Me  by  A.  E. 
Coppard,  copyright,  1922,  by  A.  E.  Coppard  and  published  by  Alfred 
A.  Knopf,  Inc.  The  Clarendon  Press,  Oxford,  England,  for  permission 
to  quote  from  Fowler's  Modern  English  Usage.  /.  M.  Dent  &  Sons, 
Ltd.,  London,  for  permission  to  include  W.  F.  Harvey  s  "August  Heat" 
from  The  Midnight  House.  John  Dos  Passos  and  his  publishers, 
Harcourt,  Brace  and  Company,  Inc.,  for  permission  to  reprint  excerpts 
from  U.S. A.  by  John  Dos  Passos,  copyright,  1937,  by  John  Dos  Passos. 
Doubleday,  Doran  and  Company,  Inc.,  for  permission  to  reprint  three 
stories  from  The  Mixture  as  Before  by  W.  Somerset  Maugham,  copy- 
right, 1940,  by  W.  Somerset  Maugham;  to  reprint  one  chapter  from 
Madame  Curie  by  Eve  Curie,  copyright,  1937,  by  Doubleday,  Doran 
&  Co.,  Inc.;  to  reprint  an  essay  from  Rodeo  by  R.  B.  Cunninghame 
Graham,  copyright,  1936,  by  Doubleday,  Doran  &  Co.,  Inc.;  to  reprint 
an  essay  from  The  Hogarth  Essays,  copyright,  1928,  by  Doubleday, 
Doran  &  Co.,  Inc.  Harper  &  Brothers  for  permission  to  reprint  in  its 
entirety  My  Life  and  Hard  Times  by  James  Thurber,  copyright,  1933, 
by  James  Thurber;  to  reprint  a  selection  from  America's  Growing 
Pains  by  George  R.  Leighton,  copyright,  1939,  by  Harper  &  Brothers; 
to  reprint  two  chapters  from  Serve  It  Forth  by  M.  F.  K.  Fisher,  copy- 


X  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

right,  193J,  by  Harper  &  Brothers;  to  reprint  two  essays  from  The 
Colby  Essays  hy  Frank  Moore  Colby,  copyright,  1926,  by  Harper  & 
Brothers.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  for  permission  to  reprint  horn  An 
Almanac  for  Moderns  by  Donald  Culross  Peattie,  copyright,  1935, 
by  Donald  Culross  Peattie.  Alfred  A.  Knopf,  Inc.,  authorized  pub- 
lishers, by  permission  and  special  arrangement  to  make  selections 
horn  Jules  Romains'  Men  of  Good  Will,  copyright,  1933,  Death  of  a 
World,  copyright,  1938,  Verdun,  copyright,  1939;  from  Thomas 
Manns  Stories  of  Three  Decades,  copyright,  1936,  The  Magic  Moun- 
tain, copyright,  1927,  Letter  to  the  Chancellor  of  Bonn,  copyright, 
1937.  Little,  Brown  &  Company  for  permission  to  quote  from 
Speeches  by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  copyright,  1891,  by  Oliver  Wen- 
dell Holmes,  Jr.  Houghton  Mifflin  Company  for  permission  to  use 
one  of  The  Best  Stories  of  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  copyright,  1923,  by  Mary 
R.  Jewett.  W.  W.  Norton  &  Company,  Inc.,  for  permission  to  reprint 
an  essay  from  Mysticism  and  Logic  by  Bertrand  Russell,  copyright, 
1939,  by  W.  W.  Norton  &  Company,  Inc.  Random  House,  Inc.,  for 
permission  to  use  selections  from  Look  Who's  Talking  by  S.  /.  Perel- 
man,  copyright,  1940,  by  S.  /.  Perelman;  and  from  The  American 
Guide  Series,  "Metropolis  and  her  Children,"  copyright,  1939,  by 
Random  House,  Inc.  George  Santayana  for  his  Oxford  address 
entitled  The  Unknowable,  copyright,  1923,  by  George  Santayana. 
The  Saturday  Review  of  Literature  and  C.  K.  Ogden  for  permission 
to  reprint  The  New  Britannica,  copyright,  October  23,  1926,  by  The 
Saturday  Review  of  Literature.  Charles  Scribner's  Sons  for  permission 
to  reprint  "The  Snows  of  Kilimanjaro"  from  The  Fifth  Column  by 
Ernest  Hemingway,  copyright,  1935,  by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons;  uThe 
Love  Nest"  from  Round  Up  by  Ring  W.  Lardner,  copyright,  1929, 
by  Ellis  A.  Lardner;  Silent  Snow,  Secret  Snow  by  Conrad  Aiken. 
Simon  and  Schuster,  Inc.,  for  permission  to  reprint  uThe  Door"  by 
E.  B.  White  from  their  collection  of  stories  entitled  Short  Stories 
from  The  New  Yorker,  copyright,  1940,  by  F-R  Publishing  Corporation. 
The  Viking  Press,  Inc.,  for  their  permission  to  reprint  excerpts  from 
While  Rome  Burns  by  Alexander  Woollcott,  copyright,  1934,  by 
Alexander  Woollcott;  Small  Beer  by  Ludwig  Bemelmans,  copyright, 
2939,  by  Ludwig  Bemelmans;  The  Long  Valley  by  John  Steinbeck, 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  XI 

copyright,  1939,  by  John  Steinbeck;  The  Thibaults  by  Roger  Martin 
du  Gard,  copyright,  1939,  by  The  Viking  Press,  Inc.;  and  The  Grapes 
of  Wrath  by  John  Steinbeck,  copyright,  1939,  by  John  Steinbeck. 

To  the  editors  oi  The  New  Yorker  I  am  indebted  tor  kind  permis- 
sion to  reprint,  in  modified  form,  many  passages  from  reviews  that 
originally  appeared  in  its  pages.  I  am  similarly  obliged  to  the  editors 
of  The  Nation  for  abetting  me  in  one  or  two  petty  larcenies  from 
myself. 

Franklin  P.  Adams,  Henry  Seidel  Canby,  J.  A.  Goodman,  M.  Lin- 
coin  Schuster,  Judge  Sidney  St.  F.  Thaxter  of  Portland,  Maine,  and 
Jerome  Weidman  gave  much-appreciated  help. 

This  compilation,  whatever  its  merits  or  demerits,  could  never  have 
been  completed  without  the  unfailing  co-operation,  relentless  prod- 
ding, and  stern  good  sense  of  my  friend  and  assistant,  Miss  Bert 
Hunt,  to  whom  I  owe  an  unrepayable  debt  of  gratitude. 

C.F. 


MY  LIFE  IS  AN  OPEN  BOOK: 

CONFESSIONS   AND  DIGRESSIONS 

OF   AN   INCURABLE 


Is  it  some  constant  nervous  need  for  reassurance  that  makes  human 
beings  so  aleit  to  point  out  the  capacities  that  separate  them  horn 
the  lower  animals?  Thus,  we  have  rationality  (I  am  hastily  wiping 
that  silly  grin  off  my  face),  and  the  heasts  do  not.  We  use  tools;  they 
don't.  Man,  some  solemn  ass  once  pointed  out,  is  an  animal  that 
laughs;  animals  do  not  laugh.  We  have  Jong  memories;  beasts,  save 
{or  the  proverbial  elephants,  do  not.  We  maJce  war  on  each  other 
and  have  at  last,  after  much  trial  and  error,  learned  how  to  extermi- 
nate our  species,  whereas  the  animals  have  to  depend  for  their  own 
destruction  largely  on  the  mere  accidents  of  nature. 

These  are  some  of  the  criteria  which  man  has  set  up  to  demon- 
strate his  superiority.  Criteria  being  cheap,  I  should  like  to  add 
another.  Man,  modern  man,  is  a  word-making  and  word-reading 
animal.  Both  of  us,  I  who  compile  this  book,  you  who  read  it,  are 
engaged  in  specifically  human  acts.  Writing,  and  more  especially 
reading,  represent  habits  that  we  engage  in  constantly  almost  from 
the  cradle  to  the  grave.  Civilized  man  is  a  reader.  Irrevocably  he 
would  appear  to  be  committed  to  the  scanning  of  small  black  marks 
on  plane  surfaces.  It  is,  when  you  come  to  think  it  over,  an  odd 
gesture,  like  the  movement  the  camera  catches  of  the  heads  of  a 
tennis  audience.  But  there  it  is— we  are  readers,  and  it's  too  late  to 
change. 

Some  are  more  delivered  over  to  the  habit  than  others.  With  them 
reading  has  become  as  closely  interwoven  with  life  in  general  as, 
let  us  say,  the  killing  of  defenseless  animals  has  become  interwoven 
with  the  life  'of  the  (former)  British  hunting  aristocracy.  In  both 
cases  a  hobby  has  developed  into  a  passion,  and  this  passion  colors 
all  others.  There  is  no  doubt,  for  instance,  that  a  fox-slaughtering 
man  makes  love  in  a  manner  subtly  different  from  the  way  a  non- 


XIV  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

fox-slaughtering  man  does.  The  same  must  be  true  of  an  omnivorous 
reader  and  a  more  desultory  one.  In  some  cases  the  impulse  to  read 
(and  reflect  on  what  one  has  read)  dominates  completely.  Then  you 
\  get  queer  but  interesting  specimens  like  Robert  Burton,  who  wrote 
?^The  Anatomy  of  Melancholy.  In  such  a  case  reading  has  become  a 
kind  of  disease,  a  fascinating,  proliferating  cancer  of  the  mind. 

Between  Robert  Burton  and  the  Nazi  who  said,  "When  I  hear 
the  word  culture  I  draw  my  revolver,"  stand  the  great  majority  of 
us,  ranging  all  the  way  from  the  casual  reader  who  can  take  his  book 
or  let  it  alone,  to  the  reading  enthusiast  who  knows  that  books  are 
but  a  part  of  life  but  would  feel  a  serious  void  if  deprived  of  that 
part. 

This  collection  is  compiled  by  a  reading  enthusiast  and  will  prob- 
ably be  read  by  others  whose  inclinations  are  somewhat  similar.  It 
might,  then,  be  mildly  appropriate  to  arrange  this  casual  commentary 
in  the  form  of  some  confessions— and  digressions— of  an  incurable 
reader.  I  guarantee  this  as  my  first,  last,  and  only  venture  into  auto- 
biography. 

Those  to  whom  reading  is  fated  to  become  important  generally 
shake  hands  with  books  early.  But  this  is  not  always  true.  Many  dis- 
tinguished writers  were  blockheads  at  their  letters  until  a  compara- 
tively advanced  age.  I  think,  however,  of  an  undistinguished  one  who 
was  a  busy  reader  at  four:  me.  My  first  book  was  entitled  The  Overall 
Boys.  The  Overall  Boys  was  and  doubtless  still  is  a  rousing  tale  of 
two  devoted  brothers,  aged  Eve  and  seven,  and  their  monosyllabic 
adventures  on  a  farm.  The  style  was  of  transparent  lucidity.  I  found 
The  Overall  Boys  a  perfect  job  then,  and,  looking  back,  I  haven  t 
yet  been  able  to  detect  any  flaws  in  it.  I  remember  it  in  greater  detail 
and  certainly  with  greater  pleasure  than  I  do  the  ^-/6-page  novel  I 
Enished  yesterday.  At  four  I  was  convinced  that  The  Overall -Boys 
represented  the  peak  of  the  art  of  narrative  and  sternly  rejected  all 
attempts  to  make  me  continue  my  reading  adventures.  This  resistance 
endured  for  a  lengthy  period— about  a  week,  I  should  say.  Then  I 
broke  down,  tried  another  book,  and  have  been  doing  the  same  sort 
of  thing  ever  since.  But  all  devout  readers  will  agree  that  my  first 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XV 

literary  judgment  was  correct.  Everything  after  The  Overall  Boys  has 
been  anticlimax.  The  same  new  world  can  never  be  discovered  twice. 
One's  first  hook,  kiss,  home  run,  is  always  the  best. 

Between  the  ages  of  four  and  ten  I  read  hut  moderately  and  with 
absolute  catholicity.  We  had  in  our  household  the  usual  meaningless 
miscellany  that  accumulates  if  the  parents  are  not  specifically  literary. 
Thus  I  read  whatever  lay  behind  the  glassed-in  shelves  of  two  dreary- 
looking  black-walnut  bookcases.  I  devoured  the  standard  "boys' 
books"  scornfully  discarded  by  my  elder  brother.  I  bored  my  way 
through  at  least  ten  volumes  of  an  unreadable  set  of  historical  novels 
by  some  worthy  named  Muhlbach,  I  think,  and  got  absolutely  noth- 
ing from  them;  the  same  result  would  be  achieved  were  I  to  read  them 
now.  I  read  an  adventure  story  about  the  Belgian  Congo  that  made 
an  anti-imperialist  out  of  me  when  I  was  eight;  I  have  seen  no  reason 
to  change  my  views  since  then.  Something  called  Buck  Jones  at 
Annapolis  similarly  made  me  permanently  skeptical  of  the  warrior 
virtues. 

I  read  an  odd  collection  of  "daring"  books  that  many  families  of 
the  period  kept  around  the  house,  often  hidden  under  lock  and  key: 
Reginald  Wright  Kaufmans  The  House  of  Bondage;  something  called 
The  Yoke,  which  was  on  the  same  order;  Maupassant  complete, 
though  this  may  not  have  been  until  I  had  reached  the  mature  estate 
of  twelve  or  thirteen;  and  similar  luridnesses.  These  had  no  effect  of 
any  sort  on  me,  as  far  I  can  recollect,  though  I  suppose  a  psycho- 
analyst could,  at  a  price,  make  me  tell  a  different  story. 

The  child  reader  is  an  automatic  selecting  mechanism.  What  he  is 
not  emotionally  ready  to  absorb,  his  mental  system  quietly  rejects. 
When  in  later  years  I  became  a  teacher  of  literature  I  could  never  see 
the  point  in  censoring  my  young  charges'  extracurricular  reading. 
Very  often  the  mothers  (never  the  fathers)  of  my  high-school  stu- 
dents would  ask  me  to  explain  my  refusal  to  forbid  Mary  or  John  to 
read  James  Joyce's  Ulysses.  I  never  offered  any  satisfactory  explana- 
tion except  to  say  that  if  John  or  Mary  were  ready  to  understand 
Ulysses  then  they  were  ready  to  understand  Ulysses,  which  was  a 
Good  Thing.  If  they  were  not  ready  to  understand  it,  which  was  apt 
to  be  the  case,  then  Ulysses  would  at  most  waste  their  time,  on  which 


XVI  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

I  was  not  prepared  to  set  any  exaggerated  value.  Often  an  anxious 
mother  would  inquire  whether  I  didn't  agree  that  the  last  chapter 
(Mrs.  Leopold  Bloom's  uncorseted  memories  ot  an  exuberant  lite) 
was  shocking.  My  reply  may  have  ^>een  frivolous,  but  it  seems  to  me 
it  contained  the  germ  ot  the  truth:  that  she  found  it  shocking  mainly 
because  she  had  not  had  the  chance  to  read  Ulysses  when  she  was 
seventeen,  wherein  Mary  or  John  had  an  advantage  over  her.  This 
generally  closed,  without  settling,  the  controversy. 

As  you  can  see,  part  of  my  four-to-ten  reading  was  unorthodox  for 
a  small  child  (I  forgot  to  tell  you  that  I. also  toddled  through  a  vol- 
ume of  Ihsen,  and  found  him  impenetrable)  but  the  unorthodoxies 
had  no  effect  whatsoever.  What  I  really  liked  was  what  any  small  boy 
or  girl  would  like— what  I  was  ready  for.  This  included,  of  course,  a 
moderate  amount  of  what  is  called  trash— the  Rover  Boys,  Horatio 
Alger,  Wild  West  yarns,  Jack  Harkaway,  the  whole  conventional 
canon  of  those  days. 

I  say  trash.  Actually  such  hooks  are  "trash"  only  by  standards  which 
should  not  he  applied  to  children's  reading.  They  have  the  incal- 
culable value  that  listening  to  perfectly  inane  adult  conversation 
holds  for  children:  they  increase  the  child's  general  awareness.  They 
provide  admittedly  rough  paradigms  of  character,  motivation,  life 
experiences.  That  is  why  it  seems  to  me  that  the  trash  of  my  genera- 
tion was  superior  to  the  trash  of  today.  I  submit  that  The  Rover  Boys 
in  the  Everglades  and  Frank  on  a  Gunboat  are  preferable  to  Super- 
man and  his  kind  on  two  counts:  they  were  cleanly  and  clearly  writ- 
ten, and  their  characters  were  credible  and  not  entirely  unrelated  to 
the  child' s  experience.  When  J  was  nine  J  could  learn  something 
interesting  about  life  from  even  such  highly  colored  affairs  as  the 
Frank  Merriwell  series,  but  I  know  that  my  son  can  learn  nothing 
whatsoever  of  genuine  interest  (that  is,  which  he  can  check  against 
the  expanding  universe  within  himself)  from  the  comics.  I  believe 
firmly  that  the  current  juvenile  literature  of  the  impossible  is  mere- 
rjiciouscompared  with  the  honest  hackwork  my  own  generation  en- 
joyed. I  also  think  that  the  kids  are  about  ready  to  kick  over  this 
thriller  fare  in  favor  of  something  saner  and  more  natural. 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XVII 

During  my  younger  years,  mainly  between  the  ages  of  eight  and 
ten,  I,  like  my  contemporaries,  read  a  few  "good"  hooks,  though 
they  were  not  recommended  to  me  as  good.  Such  recommenda- 
tions are  hardly  necessary.  The  child,  it  reasonably  intelligent,  has 
almost  infallible  good  taste.  Probably  his  good  taste  reaches  its  peak 
at  that  time.  We  all  felt,  when  we  encountered  Tom  Sawyer  or,  to 
hit  a  lower  lever,  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich's  Story  of  a  Bad  Boy  or,  on 
a  still  lower  level,  that  fine  New  England  classic  Lem  (is  it  still  read?) 
that  these  books  had  something  not  possessed  by  The  Pony  Rider 
Boys  in  the  Ozarks.  It  wasn't  that  they  were  more  exciting,  for 
sometimes  they  weren't,  but  that  they  were  more  "real."  The  other 
books  were  read  eagerly  and  with  joy,  and  then  forgotten— indeed, 
they  were  read  to  be  forgotten,  to  be  "finished."  But  Tom  Sawyer 
was  something  you  caught  yourself  remembering  a  week  later,  and  a 
year  later.  I  know  now,  of  course,  the  reason  the  child  feels  these 
books  is  that  the  authors  felt  them.  It  is  as  simple  as  that.  That  is 
why  the  so-called  "better"  juveniles  that  Eood  the  bookdealers' 
shelves  every  year— the  skillfully  constructed,  highly  educational,  care- 
fully suited-to-age,  morally  sanitary,  psychologically  impeccable  chil- 
dren's books— don't  really  make  much  of  a  dent  on  the  child's 
consciousness.  They  are  constructed  for  "the  market."  I  dont  mean 
the  commercial  market,  but  the  market  that  is  supposed  to  be  the 
child's  brain,  as  if  that  brain  were  a  kind  of  transaction  center  in 
which  each  transaction  was  expressible  in  definite  educational  quanta. 

The  trouble  with  these  juveniles  is  that  their  authors  are  greatly 
interested  in  children  and  not  at  all  interested  in  themselves.  Now, 
when  Mark  Twain  wrote  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huckleberry  Finn  he 
never  stopped  to  figure  out  whether  his  "boy  psychology"  was  correct, 
or  whether  his  story  was  properly  adapted  to  a  given  age  level.  He 
wrote  because  he  was  passionately  interested  in  himself,  and  the 
Mississippi  River  in  himself,  and  the  boy  still  alive  in  himself.  Chil- 
dren ever  since  have  unconsciously  felt  this  intense  reality,  and  that's 
what  they've  loved. 

They've  loved  Huckleberry  Finn  even  though  it  is  over  their  heads, 
or  written  in  old-fashioned  English  or  dialect,  or  concerned  with 


XVIII  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

events  that  happened  a  long  time  ago.  The  machine-turned  juveniles 
of  our  own  day  are  "carefully  adapted  to  the  child's  understanding/' 
and  that  isn't  what  the  child  ieally  wants.  The  child  wants  to  he 
puzzled— not  too  much,  hut  just  enough.  He  doesn't  want  the  char- 
acters' motivations  to  he  automatically  clear  to  him.  He  wants  the 
satisfaction  oi  figuring  them  out.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  child  de- 
lights as  much  in  ambiguity  as  he  does  in  clarity.  Alice  in  Wonder- 
land is  still  an  overwhelming  favorite,  not  because  it's  so  funny  but 
because  it's  so  strange;  it's  a  wonderful,  gorgeous  puzzle. 

In  this  connection  I  always  think  of  a  comment  my  great  and  good 
friend  Hendrik  van  Loon  made  to  me  one  day.  Going  over,  for  edi- 
torial purposes,  one  of  his  manuscripts  intended  primarily  for  chil- 
dren, I  pointed  out  to  him  the  large  number  of  long,  difficult  words 
which,  as  I  thought,  youngsters  would  never  understand.  He  merely 
said,  "I  put  them  in  on  purpose."  I  learned  later  what  he  meant:  that 
long  words  tickle  the  fancy  of  children,  that  they  like  the  slight 
atmosphere  of  mystery  distilled  by  a  really  bang-up  polysyllable. 

J  think  also  that  children — just  ordinary,  wholesome  children,  not 
bookworms— are  more  sensitive  to  beautiful  writing  than  is  generally 
supposed.  They'll  read  reams  of  careless  prose  with  great  enjoyment, 
but  when  they  come  across  the  real  thing,  they  know  it.  I  don't  know 
how  they  know  it,  but  they  do.  My  own  son  is  not  overfond  of  books. 
Rather  than  forgo  an  airplane  Eight  he  would  willingly  see  the  Forty- 
second  Street  library  vanish  in  flames.  Two  years  ago  I  tried  the 
young  barbarian — he  was  about  seven— on  The  Wind  in  the  Willows, 
and  he  could  make  nothing  of  it.  I  tried  him  again  some  few  months 
ago.  He  Enished  it  with  absorbed  calm,  clapped  the  book  to,  and 
said  with  Enality,  "Now,  that's  what  I  call  well  written!"  He  has 
never  said  this  about  any  other  book  he's  read,  many  of  which  he 
has  "enjoyed"  more.  The  fact  is  that  The  Wind  in  the  Willows  is 
the  best-written  book  he  has  read  so  far,  and  he  somehow  knew  it, 
though  he  had  never  been  given  any  hint  to  affect  his  judgment. 

The  smooth  confections  the  publishers  turn  out  today  are  not  well 
written  in  the  sense  that  The  Wind  in  the  Willows  is.  They  are 
merely  correctly  written.  The  authors  in  most  cases  have  uncon- 
sciously curbed  any  impulse  toward  style,  because  style  would  express 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XIX 

themselves,  whereas  they  are  supposed  to  be  writing  for  the  sake  of 
the  children.  If  they  would  forget  all  about  the  children  and  set  down 
freely  and  lovingly  the  child  in  themselves,  they  might  by  some 
glorious  accident  produce  masterpieces.  Little  Women  was  not  writ- 
ten for  little  women  or  little  men  or  little  anybodies;  it  was  the 
expression  of  a  passionate  memory.  When  Louisa  May  Alcott  set 
herself  to  produce  "juveniles"  the  result  was  often  unsatisfactory, 
except  when  her  native  genius  outwitted  her  conscious  resolutions. 

I  am  a  firm  believer  in  the  newer  methods  of  understanding  and 
handling  children.  But  it  is  arguable  that  they  have  made  difficult 
the  creation  of  a  twentieth-century  Little  Women  or  Alice  in  Won- 
derland. Such  books  are  the  product  not  of  knowledge,  or  even  of 
wisdom,  but  of  a  kind  of  dream  life,  a  dreaming-back  to  childhood 
on  the  part  of  the  writer.  That  dream  life  and  "child  psychology"  do 
not  mix.  That  perhaps  is  why  the  modern  child  classics  are  not  to 
be  found  in  books  at  all,  but  in  the  cartoons  of  Walt  Disney,  master 
of  an  art  newer,  nai'ver,  less  touched  by  "science"  than  is  the  art  of 
literature. 

This  has  been  along  and  prosy  digression,  and  while  Vm  at  it,  Vd 
like  to  make  it  a  trine  longer.  One  of  the  games  bibliomaniacs  play 
in  their  weaker  moments  is  the  game  of  Century-Hencery,  or  literary 
prophecy.  It's  a  harmless  sport,  the  best  part  of  it  being  that  there 
can  never  be  a  loser.  Here's  how  it  works.  You  list  the  ten  books  you 
believe  will  be  most  widely  read  and  generally  admired  a  hundred  or 
five  hundred  or  a  thousand  years  from  now.  Then  you  defend  your 
choices.  Making  the  unwarrantable  assumption  that  in  2441  our  civi- 
lization will  still  be  recognizably  related  to  that  of  1941,  J  will  now 
set  down  the  ten  works  of  literary  imagination  produced  by  the 
English-speaking  race  that  I  believe  will  be  most  universally  alive  (not 
merely  admired  in  the  schoolroom)  Eve  hundred  years  from  now. 
Here  they  are,  in  no  special  order: 

.The  Plays  of  William  Shakespeare 
Moby  Dick 
Gulliver's  Travels 
v  Robinson  Crusoe 


XX  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Alice  in  Wonderland 
Huckleberry  Finn 
Little  Women 
V     Some  novel  oi  Charles  Dickens,  probably 
David  Copperfield  or  Pickwick  Papers 
Treasure  Island 
The  Mother  Goose  Rhymes 

It  is  possible  that  in  constructing  this  list  I  have  been  ingenious 
rather  than  ingenuous.  Whether  by  accident  or  design  it  reflects  one 
oi  my  favorite  theories— that  the  gods  tend  to  grant  immortality  to 
those  books  which,  in  addition  to  being  great,  are  loved  by  children. 
For  mark  well  that  only  two  books  out  of  the  ten— Shakespeare  and 
Moby  Dick— cannot,  generally  speaking,  be  enjoyed  by  youngsters. 
Of  the  remaining  eight,  seven  are  usually  ranked  as  children's  favor- 
ites. My  point  is  simple:  as  the  generations  pass,  children's  tastes 
change  more  slowly  than  do  those  of  grownups.  They  are  not  affected 
by  the  ukas&s  of  critics  or  the  whims  oi  literary  fashion.  Thus  Shake- 
speare was  not  universally  admired  by  the  eighteenth  century  and 
again  may  not  be  (though  I'd  place  a  small  bet  against  that  possi- 
bility) by  the  twenty-third.  But  the  rhymes  of  Mother  Goose— to  my 
mind  literature,  even  if  of  a  simple  order — have  suffered  no  diminution 
of  popularity  and,  being  unmoved  by  the  winds  oi  literary  doctrine, 
are  not  likely  to  suffer  any. 

This  is  what  happens.  All  children  who  read  at  all  are  introduced 
at  a  iairly  early  age  to,  let  us  say,  Robinson  Crusoe.  Most  oi  them 
like  it.  Later  on  they  meet  it  again  in  school.  They  are  told  it  is 
literature,  and  its  hold  on  their  minds  is  re-enforced.  Still  later,  in 
adult  Hie,  they  may  encounter  it  again,  when  they  are  ripe  to  see 
in  it  qualities  not  apparent  to  them  as  children.  Any  possible  resist- 
ance to  accepting  Robinson  Crusoe  as  a  great  book  had  been  broken 
down  years  ago  during  their  childhood.  Thus  Robinson  Crusoe's 
prestige  remains  undimmed.  But  a  classic  oi  greater  artistic  weight, 
such  as  Paradise  Lost,  does  not  enjoy  the  advantage  oi  having  been 
liked  by  readers  as  children.  It  is  read  by  a  small,  select  group  oi 
adults  (college  students)  and  so  never  passes  into  the  consciousness 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XXI 

of  the  generality.  I  do  not  mean  that  Milton  will  not  he  read  five 
hundred  years  from  now.  I  mean  he  will  not  he  a  casually  accepted, 
generally  enjoyed  classic  as  I  think  Little  Women  or  even  Treasure 
Island  (the  most  uncertain  item,  by  the  way,  on  my  list)  is  apt  to  he. 
But  rememher,  the  hook  must  he  literature  to  begin  with.  Defoe's 
Robinson  Crusoe  will  live,  hut  A.  R.  Wyss'  The  Swiss  Family  Rob- 
inson is  already  dying. 

We  talk  a  great  deal  about  the  Greek  classics.  Yet  what  Greek 
classic  has  really  penetrated  among  us?  Not  Plato  surely,  or  any  oi 
the  dramatists,  hut  Homer  and  more  particularly  the  simple,  beau- 
tiful Greek  myths  that  are  read  with  pleasure  by  each  generation  of 
children.  Similarly,  I  think  Perrault  and  The  Three  Musketeers  will 
outlast  Proust  and  Stendhal,  and  Grimm's  fairy  tales  still  he  widely 
read  when  Goethe  is  forgotten.  If  you  wish  to  live  long  in  the  mem- 
ory of  men,  perhaps  you  should  not  write  for  them  at  all.  You  should 
write  what  their  children  will  enjoy.  Or,  to  put  it  in  another  way  and 
use  a  phrase  that  I  think  belongs  to  Lewis  Mumford,  a  book  already 
has  one  leg  on  immortality  s  trophy  when  uthe  words  are  for  chil- 
dren and  the  meanings  are  for  men." 

May  I  make  one  or  two  further  random  comments  on  this  list? 
Note  that  three  titles— Moby  Dick,  Robinson  Crusoe,  and  Treasure 
Island— have  no  women  characters  to  speak  of,  and  several  of  the 
others  depend  hardly  at  all  on  romantic  interest.  I  do  not  believe  that 
love,  commonly  considered  one  of  the  great  staples  of  literature,  tends 
as  a  subject  to  have  any  supreme  preservative  value.  It  is  Dickens' 
sentiment  and  humor,  not  his  lovers,  that  attract  us.  It  is  hardly  the 
most  romantic  of  Shakespeare's  plays  that  stand  highest  in  popular 
esteem.  And  Melville,  in  providing  his  masterpiece  with  an  all-male 
cast,  knew  what  he  was  doing. 

Finally,  if  I  were  asked  to  make  a  wild  stab  at  the  one  book  likely 
to  outlast  the  nine  others,  I  would  name  Alice  in  Wonderland.  This 
does  not  mean  it  is  the  "best"  book  on  the  list,  for  obviously  it  is  not. 
In  the  end  the  best  survives  but  the  best  of  the  best  does  not  neces- 
sarily survive  longest.  Mankind  will  cling  to  what  it  admires,  but  even 
more  fiercely  will  it  cling  to  what  it  loves.  And  what  we  love  perhaps 
above  all  else  (as  Dr.  Freud  pointed  out  in  other  and  more  dismaying 


XXII  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

connections)  is  ourselves  as  children.  That  is  why  I  think  it  quite 
conceivable  that  Lewis  Canoll  will  he  read  at  some  remote  future 
time  when  Shakespeare  is  no  more  remembered  than,  let  us  say, 
Plautus  and  Terence  are  today.  Twenty  centuries  horn  now  Shake- 
speare may  be  entirely  owned  and  operated  by  scholars.  But  I  do  not 
see  why  people  should  not  still  be  laughing  and  exclaiming  over  Alice 
in  Wonderland.  Among  the  few  things  resistant  to  the  tooth  of  time, 
great  fantasy  is  one,  and  great  fantasy  is  always  the  special  possession 
of  children. 

I  seem  to  have  abandoned  myself  some  pages  back.  I  had  just 
reached  the  age  of  ten.  Between  ten  and  seventeen  I  did  the  major 
bulk  of  my  reading.  I  have  never  read  as  many  books  (I  don't  mean 
manuscripts)  per  year  since,  nor  do  I  expect  to  in  the  future.  Those 
were  the  splendid  years,  and  it  is  my  notion  that  they  are  the  splendid 
years  of  most  devoted  readers.  After  seventeen  (in  some  cases  a  year  or 
two  later)  the  books  choose  you,  not  you  the  books.  You  read  within 
limits.  Reading  becomes  a  program.  You  read  as  part  of  your  col- 
lege curriculum,  or  to  gain  knowledge  in  a  specific  Held,  or  to  be  able 
to  bore  your  neighbor  at  dinner-table  conversation.  Adult  reading  is 
usually  purposive.  In  my  own  case— I  shall  speak  of  this  later  on— 
it  is  more  than  purposive.  I  make  a  Jiving  by  it. 

Even  the  reading  done  during  one's  college  years  lacks  the  spon- 
taneity, the  high  waywardness  of  one's  pre-adolescent  and  adolescent 
reading.  It  circles  around  the  classroom.  It  consists  of  authors  recom- 
mended by  authority  or  who  you  feel  should  be  "covered."  Or  it  has 
to  do  with  books  you  know  a  good  deal  about  in  advance,  one  of 
the  most  effective  ways  to  spoil  one's  reading  pleasure.  Such  reading 
may  be  mentally  stimulating  or  socially  useful.  It  may  benefit  you  in 
a  dozen  ways.  But  it  is  not  an  adventure  in  quite  the  same  sense  that 
reading  in  your  second  decade  so  often  is. 

I  am  not,  in  this  random  biblio-autobiography,  proposing  to  list 
the  books  I  have  read.  Nothing  could  be  duller  or  less  useful,  except 
when  he  who  does  the  listing  owns  a  mind  whose  operations  are  really 
of  interest  to  mankind,  as  was  the  case,  for  example,  with  John  Stuart 
Mill.  All  I  am  here  endeavoring  to  do  is  to  outline  some  of  the 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XXIII 

processes  whereby  an  average  person  became  an  above-the-average 
reader,  which  is  what  I  immodestly  chim  to  be.  To  understand  these 
processes  a  mere  catalogue  of  titles  is  of  no  avail. 

Yet  I  would  like  to  list  a  few  names,  mainly  to  indicate  the  kind 
of  writer  that,  as  I  recall,  influenced  the  more  bookish  boys  and 
girls  of  my  generation.  Shaw,  Galsworthy,  Bennett,  Conrad,  Merrick, 
Barrie,  Moore,  Dunsany,  Yeats,  Synge,  Swinnerton,  Chesterton,  Mere- 
dith, Wilde,  Hewlett,  Gissing,  Zangwill,  and  above  all  H.  G.  Wells— 
these,  to  confine  the  list  to  Englishmen  only,  are  a  few  of  the  authors 
I  remember  devouring  from  my  tenth  to  my  eighteenth  year,  mis- 
comprehending many,  overprizing  some,  but  getting  from  all  an 
exultant  sense  of  discovery,  a  peak-in-Darien  thriJI  rarely  enjoyed 
since. 

The  secret  of  second-decade  reading,  of  course,  is  that  you  are  not 
really  Ending  out  what  Shaw  thinks  or  Conrad  feels,  but  what  you 
think  and  you  feel.  Shaw  and  Conrad  and  the  rest  are  but  handy 
compasses  to  guide  you  through  the  fascinating  jungle  of  your  young 
self.  When  I  read  Wells'  Tono-Bungay  at  fourteen  or  fifteen,  I  found 
myself  saying  in  delight,  uBut  that's  just  the  way  I  feeir  When  I  now 
read  Thomas  Manns  Joseph  story  I  find  myself  thinking  how  true 
it  is  to  the  experience  of  men  in  general.  There  is  a  difference  in  the 
quality  of  the  emotion.  The  grown-up  emotion  may  be  larger  and 
wiser  (and  probably  more  pompous),  but  the  boyish  one  is  unique 
just  because  it  is  so  utterly,  innocently  self -centered. 

During  this  adolescent  period  of  my  reading  life  I  had  a  lucky 
break.  My  brother,  five  years  my  senior  and  a  student  at  Columbia 
College,  was  at  the  time  taking  a  conventional  survey  course  that 
used  a  sound  standard  anthology  known,  I  think,  as  Century  Read- 
ings in  English  Literature,  edited  by  Cunliffe,  Pyre,  and  Young.  For 
some  reason,  possibly  a  mild  fraternal  sadism,  he  made  me  take  the 
course  along  with  him — he  at  college,  I  at  home.  The  whole  thing 
was  over  my  head— I  was  fourteen — but  when  J  had  Enished  my  Cen- 
tury Readings,  which  took  a  year,  I  had  at  least  a  hazy  notion  of  the 
course  and  development,  from  Beowulf  to  Stevenson,  of  the  most 
magniEcent,  after  the  Greek,  of  all  literatures.  I  remember  writing 
essays,  perhaps  no  more  interminable  than  my  subjects,  on  Hakluyt 


XXIV  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and  Spenser.  I  am  still  unable  to  dislodge  horn  my  memory— which 
is  not  a  good  one— odd  lines  of  verse  horn  suhminor  poets  like  Dray- 
ton. That  is  all  oi  no  account  The  important  thing  is  that  I  got 
through  my  head  at  an  early  age  a  few  simple  truths:  that  the  proper 
reading  of  a  good  writer  requires  energy  and  application;  that  reading 
is  not  mere  "diversion";  that  it  is  impossible  to  admire  writing  you 
do  not  understand;  that  understanding  it  does  not  destroy  but  rather 
enhances  its  beauty;  that  unless  a  writer's  mind  is  superior  to,  more 
complicated  than,  your  own,  it  is  a  bore  to  read  him.  (That  is  why 
I  never  recommend  a  book  to  a  person  if  it  is  on  his  own  mental 
level.) 

I  learned  also  that  daydreaming  and  intelligent  reading  do  not  go 
together.  There  is  a  story  told  by  Dr.  Sandor  Ferenczi,  the  psycho- 
analyst, about  a  Hungarian  aristocrat  who,  while  devouring  a  quick 
lunch  between  trains,  was  recognized  by  a  boorish  acquaintance. 
"My  dear  Count!  How  are  you?" 
"Umph." 

"And  how  is  the  Countess?" 
"Dead." 

"How  shocking!  It  must  be  terrible  for  your  daughter." 
"She's  dead." 
"But  your  son—" 

"Dead!  Everybody's  dead  when  I'm  eating!" 

During  my  all-out  period  everybody  was  dead  when  I  was  reading. 
Most  children  and  adolescents  know  this  magical  secret  of  concen- 
tration, though  it  is  not  till  they  are  older  and  duller  that  thev 
realize  it  was  magical. 

I  remember  that,  when  I  was  fourteen,  we  lived  about  two  miles 
from  the  nearest  library.  I  had  a  choice.  I  could  cycle  there,  borrow 
my  books,  and  cycle  back  in  a  very  few  minutes— but  those  few- 
minutes  were  lost  to  reading.  Or,  if  I  wished,  I  could  walk  to  the 
library,  reading  the  last  fifty  or  seventy-five  pages  of  my  calculated!}- 
unfinished  book  en  route,  make  my  borrowings,  and  walk  back,  read- 
ing a  new  volume  on  the  way.  I  usually  preferred  the  latter  procedure. 
It  is  no  trick  at  all  to  read  while  walking,  to  step  off  and  onto  curbs 
with  unconscious  skill,  to  avoid  other  pedestrians  while  your  eyes  aw 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XXV 

riveted  to  the  page.  There  was  a  special  pleasure  in  it:  I  had  outwitted 
Father  Time.  I  think  Providence  meant  me  to  he  an  ambulant 
reader,  for  I  never  once  even  stumbled.  But  one  afternoon  when  I 
was  cycling  home  horn  the  library  with  my  wire  basket  full  of  books, 
I  was  hit  from  behind  by  a  car  and  sent  sprawling. 

This  absorption,  this  ''losing  yourself7  in  a  book,  though  clearly 
quite  remote  from  "practical  life"  (for  children  "practical  life"  is 
simply  what  grownups  want  them  to  do),  is  not  daydreaming.  The 
child  does  not  interpose  a  continuous,  fuzzy,  wavering  screen  of  per- 
sonal desires  and  wishful  visions  between  himself  and  the  page. 
On  the  contrary,  he  and  the  page  are  one.  The  Victorian  female, 
with  whom  novel  reading  was  a  disease,  was  the  real  daydreamer. 
For  her,  reading  became  a  drug,  a  kind  of  literary  marijuana,  an 
instrumentality  for  the  production  of  needed  visions.  The  child's 
hearty  relation  to  his  book  is  devoid  of  this  sick  quality. 

Well,  the  course  my  brother  gave  me,  via  that  blessed  trinity 
Cunliffe,  Pyre,  and  Young,  was  calculated  to  make  me  understand 
that  literature,  beyond  helping  one  to  discover  oneself,  has  a  higher, 
more  impersonal  function.  It  is  a  challenge  issued  by  a  higher  mind, 
the  author  s,  to  a  lower  mind,  the  reader's.  Even  if  the  challenge  is 
not  met,  much  pleasure  may  still  result.  But  if  it  is  met,  or  if  a  sin- 
cere attempt  to  meet  it  is  made,  a  finer,  rarer  pleasure  is  experienced. 
If  you  read  for  pure  diversion,  well  and  good,  but  if  you  read  for  any 
other  purpose,  always  read  above  yourself.  One  of  the  reasons  for 
the  general  mental  fuzziness  of  most  "cultivated"  people  we  know 
is  that  publishers  have  become  too  shrewd.  They  have  learned,  the 
cunning  little  fellows,  just  how  to  temper  their  books  to  the  lamb- 
like mental  innocence  of  their  readers.  The  result  is  that  every  week 
we  are  deluged  with  books  which,  the  publishers  assure  us,  we  can 
understand.  It  is  quite  true.  We  can  understand  them,  all  too  easily. 
It  would  be  much  better  for  us  if  now  and  then  we  read  a  book  just 
a  few  rungs  beyond  our  mental  capacities  in  their  most  relaxed  state. 

My  second-decade  reading— and  I  think  this  is  sadly  true  of  most 
of  us— was  in  this  sense  educationally  more  valuable  than  any  J  have 
done  since,  with  certain  notable  (and  I  shall  note  them  later)  excep- 
tions. During  adolescence  our  feeling  of  bewilderment  and  insecurity 


XXVI  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

tends  to  be  greater  than  at  any  other  time.  Hence  the  need  to  know, 
to  learn,  is  greater.  Therefore  whatever  reading  is  done  is  intense. 
It  is  utterly  assimilated.  We  pay  absorbed  attention  to  it,  as  we  would 
to  the  instructions  of  an  expert  before  venturing  into  a  trackless 
forest. 

It  seems  to  me  that  in  my  late  teens  I  did  more  "heavy"  reading 
and  digested  it  more  thoroughly  than  at  any  succeeding  period.  In 
this  connection  I  recall  two  antithetical  experiments  I  made  extend- 
ing over  an  interval  of  six  months.  The  first  was  an  experiment  in 
difficult  reading.  The  other  was  an  experiment  in  nonreading. 

One  summer  I  decided  to  spend  my  evenings  reading  only  "hard" 
books.  I  went  at  it  with  the  humorless  obstinacy  of  a  sixteen-year- 
old— and  I  was  more  humorless  and  more  obstinate  than  most.  I  stag- 
gered wildly  through  stuff  like  Ueberweg's  History  of  Philosophy, 
Winwood  Readers  Martyrdom  of  Man,  Saintsbury's  History  of  Eng- 
lish Prosody,  Taine's  History  of  English  Literature,  Gibbons  Decline 
and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  It  was  enough  for  a  book  to  seem 
important  and  forbidding — I  read  it  at  once.  No  novels,  no  light 
literature  of  any  sort,  no  magazines  for  three  solid  months— hot 
months,  too.  Now,  as  I  look  back  on  this  extravagant  experiment,  it 
seems  like  the  disagreeable  behavior  of  a  young  prig.  Yet  I  was  not 
really  priggish;  I  didnt  read  for  show-off  purposes.  I  read  my  Ueber- 
weg  as  a  challenge  to  myself,  as  a  test,  as  a  deliberate  gesture,  if  you 
will,  of  self -punishment.  The  boy  of  sixteen  by  overexercise  will  pun- 
ish his  body  deliberately  just  to  see  how  much  it  can  take.  That  same 
boy  may  punish  his  mind  in  the  same  way.  It  is  a  kind  of  initiation 
ceremony  that  he  performs  upon  himself,  a  queer,  grotesque  test  of 
approaching  manhood.  Sometimes  he  will  decide  to  go  right  through 
The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 

The  notable  part  of  the  experience  is  that  just  because  that  sum- 
mer's reading  came  out  of  a  powerful  emotional  impulse  it  has  stuck 
with  me,  as  more  formal  reading,  particularly  that  done  as  part  of 
my  school  work,  has  not.  Also,  it  left  me  with  a  taste  for  a  certain 
kind  of  "difficult"  reading,  a  taste  which,  because  I  am  a  book 
reviewer,  I  rarely  have  an  opportunity  to  indulge.  This  does  not  mean 
that  I  read  heavy  books  with  ease.  On  the  contrary,  I  have  to  go 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XXVII 

through  painful  mental  struggles  to  understand  them,  but  the  struggle 
still  gives  me  an  odd  satisfaction,  which  I  know  has  something  to 
do  with  that  lunatic  summer  I  spent  perusing  nothing  hut  huge 
volumes  several  miles  above  my  head. 

Today,  for  example,  the  hooks  I  look  forward  with  most  pleasure 
to  reading  and  reviewing  are  hooks  of  popular  science,  of  the  Hoghen- 
Julian  Huxley-Eddington  type.  I  am  not  really  competent  to  judge 
them,  hut  I  like  to  read  them,  perhaps  primarily  because  for  me— 
I  am  a  scientific  illiterate— they  present  challenging  difficulties.  It  may 
be  an  illusion,  but  I  always  feel,  when  I  have  Enished  a  book  of  this 
sort,  that  I  have  "got"  something  out  of  it.  I  hardly  ever  get  this  feel- 
ing from  a  novel  or  a  conventional  biography. 

^  Well,  that  was  Experiment  Number  One.  The  second  was  its  polar 
opposite.  I  decided  to  spend  three  months  reading  nothing  at  all, 
not  even  a  daily  newspaper.  (The  three  months  coincided  with  a  long 
absence  from  school,  so  the  conditions  for  the  experiment  were  at 
their  optimum.)  Novv^wliy  did  I  want  to  do  this?  It  was  again  a 
matter  of  self-testing.  I  felt  I  had  grown  too  dependent  upon  other 
people's  ideas.  The  only  way  I  could  perceive  to  cure  myself  of  this 
dependence  was  to  abjure,  other  people's  ideas  completely.  The  men- 
tal life  of  the  adolescent  is  frequently  characterized  by  this  oscillatory 
quality.  He  can  End  out  what  his  real  nature  is  only  by  leaping  from 
one  extreme  to  the  other. 

And  so  for  three  months  I  read,  as  nearly  as  I  can  recall,  virtu- 
ally nothing.  It  was  by  no  means  a  fruitless  experiment,  and  to  those 
held  too  tightly  in  the  grip  of  the  reading  habit  I  heartily  recommend 
it.  The  effect  is  purgatiyj^-The  mind  disgorges  a  good  deal  of  waste 
and  clutter,  it  slows  down,  for  a  time  it  seems  vacant.  Then  gradu- 
ally it  Ells  again,  this  time  not  with  the  myriad,  secondhand  impres- 
sions induced  by  nonstop  reading,  but  with  the  few  clear  ideas  and 
desires  that  reflect  more  accurately  your  true  self.  The  experience,  in 
addition  to  being  cleansing,  is  humbling;  you  realize  how  sparse  is  the 
net  content  of  your  mind. 

I  have  known  men  and  women  who  read  so  voraciously  and  con- 
tinuously that  they  never  have  the  time  or  opportunity  to  discover 
who  they  really  are.  Indeed,  I  suspect  it  is  precisely  because  they 


v 


XXVIII  READING  I'VE  LI'KED^ 

prefer  not  to  make  that  discovery  that  they  cling  so  limpetlike,  to 
hooks.  I  suppose  this  is  better  for  them  than  alcohol  or  hasheesh, 
hut  it  is  not  very  different.  All  of  us,  J  am  sure,  have  noticed  peopled 
who  suffer  from  reader s  fidgets.  If  there  is  a  hook,  a  magazine** 
any  piece  of  print  within  easy  reach,  they  will  at  once  take  it  up, 
idly,  without  real  intent  to  peruse  it,  hut  out  of  a  kind  of  mechanical 
compulsion.  They  will  do  this  while  they  are  talking  to  you,  while 
you  are  talking  to  them,  while  engaged  in  some  other  activity.  They 
are  victims  of  print.  Perhaps  some  dim  premonition  that  unless  I 
watched  out  I  too  would  become  afflicted  with  reader's  fidgets  made 
me  carry  through  with  entire  success  my  three  months'  literary  fast. 

Some  years  ago  I  helped  to  manage  a  bookstore  featuring  a  circu- 
lating library.  The  main  body  of  customers  consisted  of  commuters.'  i 
Every  evening,  a  few  minutes  after  five,  the  commuters  would  dash  in. 

"Give  me  a  novel/" 

"Any  special  title?" 

"No,  any  novel  will  do:  it's  for  my  wife"— as  if  that  somehow  made 
everything  clear. 

These  commuters'  wives— there  are  tens  of  thousands  of  them — 
were  not  really  in  any  active  sense  doing  any  reading  at  all.  They 
were  taking  their  daily  novel  in  a  numbed  or  somnambulistic  state. 
They  were  using  books  not  for  purposes  of  en tertainmentTBuX as  an 
anodjne,  a  time-killer,  a  life-killer.  Many  "great  readers"  are  of  this 
class.  Truth  to  tell,  they  have  never  read  a  book  in  their  lives. 

Akin  to  these  novel-addicts  are  the  newspaper  fiends  who  read 
three,  four,  or  five  papers  a  day  and  supplement  them  with  radio 
news  reports.  There  is  only  one  Keeley  cure  I  can  recommend  for  this 
weakness,  and  that  is  for  these  people  to  save  their  papers  for  a  week, 
and  go  back  and  read  the  news  of  seven  days  before.  They  will  then 
see,  even  in  the  short  perspective  thus  provided,  how  contradictory, 
foolish,  ineptly  stated  most  "spot  news"  is.  They  will  perceive  that, 
if  taken  in  overfrequent  doses,  its  main  effect  is  to  bewilder  or  even 
to  frighten,  rather  than  to  inform.  A  ration  of  one  newspaper  a  day 
ought  to  be  enough  for  anyone  who  still  prefers  to  retain  a  little 
mental  balance. 


.CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XXIX 

Serious  reading  is  an  art.  An  art  is  something  you  have  to  learn. 
To  learn  an  art  requires^  teacher.  There  are  too  few  such  teachers 
of  reading  in  the  United  States,  and  that  is  one  of  the  reasons  why 
We  are  still  only  a  semieducated  people.  I,  like  my  fellow  Americans, 
was  never  taught,  in  elementary  and  high  school,  how  to  read  prop- 
erly. Thus,  when  I  reached  college,  I  was  hut  ill-equipped  to  under- 
stand any  really  original  hook  that  was  handed  to  me,  though  I  found 
no  particular  difficulty  in  getting  through  the  required  texthooks, 
manuals,  and  other  predigested  matter.  I  do  not  think  I  would  ever 
have  learned  how  to  read  had  it  not  been  for  one  man  and  one 
college  course. 

The  man  was  John  Erskine  and  the  course  was,  rather  absurdly, 
called  Honors.  Erskine  himself  was  largely  responsible  for  the  con- 
ception underlying  Honors,  which  in  turn  was  the  only  begetter  of 
Robert  Hutchins'  Chicago  P4an7  of  the  St.  Johns  College  classics 
curriculum,  and  in  fact  of  the  whole  return  in  modern  education  to 
the  great  tradition  of  Western  thought.  John  Erskine  is  a  man  of 
such  varied  talents  that  his  original  contribution  to  American  educa- 
tion is  often  forgotten. 

It  is  very  hard  to  explain  why  Erskine  was  a  great  teacher.  He  was 
not  a  character  as  Copeland  of  Harvard  was.  Although  always  genial 
and  fair,  he  never  attempted  to  make  the  students  like  him.  He  did 
not  act  as  if  he  were  a  perennial  contestant  in  a  popularity  contest. 
(I  am  convinced,  by  the  way,  that  those  teachers  who  year  after  year 
are  voted  Most  Popular  by  the  undergraduates  are  rarely  educators 
of  great  value.)  In  his  literature  courses  Erskine  never  swooned  over 
beauty  or  tried  to  make  you  "feeY7  the  lines  or  the  paragraph. 

There  were  two  things  about  Erskine  that  may  help  to  explain 
the  influence  he  wielded  over  his  students,  even  over  those  who  didnt 
care  greatly  about  literature.  One  was  his  enormous  respect  (not 
merely  liking)  for  his  subject  matter.  This  may  seem  a  common- 
place, but  it  is  not.  Many  teachers— no  more  surprisingly  than  other 
frustrated  human  beings— have  a  silent,  gnawing  contempt  for  what 
they  teach.  Unaware  of  this  contempt,  they  often  find  it  subtly 
translated  into  a  resentment  of  their  students.  The  result  is  vitiated 
teaching,  teaching  of  a  purely  formal  sort. 


XXX  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Erskine  not  only  loved  his  subject  but  reverenced  it  and  respected 
himself  for  teaching  it.  There  was  thus  a  good  moral  relationship 
between  himself  and  his  work.  It  may  seem  high-flown  to  say  that 
this  moral  relationship  was  a  vital  aid  in  the  production  of  good 
teaching.  Yet  I'm  sure  this  was  the  case.  He  could  teach  his  students 
to  read  because  he  had  a  large  and  lofty  attitude  toward  what  we 
were  reading. 

At  the  same  time,  if  Erskine  had  been  able  to  communicate  only 
this  attitude,  he  would  not  have  been  the  great  teacher  he  was.  He 
went  beyond  this.  To  put  it  simply,  he  challenged  us  to  understand 
what  we  were  reading.  He  called  upon  us  for  a  kind  of  mental  exer- 
cise that  is  ordinarily  devoted  to  mastering  such  "hard"  subjects  as 
philosophy  and  the  sciences.  (Actuary,  there  are  no  "hard"  or  "easy" 
subjects.  Donne  is  as  difficult  and  as  rewarding  as  Euclid.)  Erskine 
made  us  work  and  the  odd  thing  about  it  was  that  the  more  we 
understood,  the  more  we  liked  the  particular  book  we  were  reading. 

The  Honors  Course  was  but  a  systematic  extension  of  the  Erskine 
educational  program.  For  two  years,  under  the  guidance  of  a  group 
of  selected  instructors,  we  read  and  talked  about  one  great  book  a 
week,  beginning  with  Homer  and  concluding,  as  I  recollect,  with 
William  James.  That  was  all  there  was  to  the  course,  and  it  was  by 
far  the  most  valuable  one  I  took  at  college.  You  will  find  a  good 
account  of  it  and  its  influence  in  How  to  Read  a  Book.  (Mortimer 
Adler  was  also  one  of  my  teachers,  and  a  first-rate  one,  too.) 

This  course  in  the  classics  has  had  a  somewhat  souring  effect  on 
my  work  as  a  reviewer.  Just  because  I  was  forced  to  spend  a  week 
on  Fielding's  Tom  Jones,  J  could  not  possibly,  let  us  say,  hail  Anthony 
Adverse  as  a  great  novel.  I  have  been  compulsorily  provided  with  a 
standard  of  comparison  that  proves  a  handicap  to  me.  I  may  seem 
curmudgeonly  and  grudging  when  really  my  whole  trouble  is  that  I 
cannot  forget  my  Honors  class. 

Well,  Erskine  and  a  few  other  teachers  (particularly  the  poet  Mark 
Van  Doren)  plus  the  two  years  I  spent  in  the  excellent  company  of 
fifty  or  sixty  of  the  great  writers  of  all  time  taught  me,  I  hope  and 
believe,  how  to  read.  Later  on,  a  year  or  so  after  I  was  graduated, 
I  myself  helped  in  a  fumbling  way  to  teach  this  same  course  to 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XXXI 

others.  They  weren't  college  students.  They  were  laborers,  clerks, 
recently  naturalized  Americans— just  men  and  women  of  imperfect 
education  hut  reasonable  intelligence  and  great  willingness  to  think. 
The  group  of  which  I  was  one  taught  Plato  and  Gibbon  and  Mon- 
taigne and  Thomas  Aquinas  to  small  classes  all  over  the  city,  in  pub- 
lic libraries,  Y.M.C.A.  classrooms,  and  at  Cooper  Union.  We  taught 
them  to  anybody  who  cared  to  learn  how  to  read  the  best.  I,  of  course, 
learned  more  than  my  students,  but  the  most  valuable  part  of  what  I 
learned  was  that  the  abundant  wealth  of  great  literature  lies  open  to 
anyone  with  a  functioning  brain.  The  great  books  have  no  particular 
home.  They  do  not  belong  only  behind  college  walls.  But  fifteen  years 
ago  the  notion  that  they  were  anybody's  property  was  a  novel  one. 
Today  that  is  all  changing.  Today  the  universal  appeal  of  our  Western 
tradition  is  readily  acknowledged.  You  can  turn  your  radio  dial  (at  the 
moment,  at  least)  and  listen  to  a  discussion  of  these  same  books  by 
three  competent  readers  and  talkers,  one  of  whom,  Mark  Van  Doren, 
originally  taught  this  same  Honors  group  in  Columbia  way  back  in 
the  early  twenties,  when  all  the  world  was  young,  lad,  and  all  the 
trees  were  green. 

I  had  the  good  luck,  as  I  say,  to  be  a  member  of  this  college  Honors 
group.  But,  as  it  happens,  during  those  same  college  years,  I  engaged 
in  a  number  of  extracurricular  activities,  some  of  which  by  accident 
re-enforced  my  interest  in  reading,  writing,  and  talking  about  books. 
Two  of  these  jobs  I  particularly  remember. 

For  the  better  part  of  a  year  I  acted  as  reader  to  a  charming  and 
generous  lady  who  had  once  been  a  fairly  well-known  actress.  Her 
eyesight  was  impaired  and  it  was  my  job  not  only  to  read  to  her  but 
to  select  the  reading  matter.  I  chose  whatever  book  happened  to  inter- 
est me  at  the  moment,  and  this  high-handed  procedure  seemed  to 
work  out  quite  smoothly.  One  learns  a  great  deal  about  literature 
in  general  from  reading  even  one  good  book  aloud  slowly.  Our  fore- 
fathers, for  whom  such  reading  was  a  usual  thing,  read  fewer  books 
than  we  do,  but  probably  also  had  a  finer  feeling  for  literary  values 
than  we  have.  It  is  regrettable  that  modern  living  makes  impossible 
the  practice  of  reading  aloud.  Perhaps  the  radio  can  do  something 
about  it.  My  hunch  is  that  if  it  can  develop  a  group  of  really  first- 


XXXII  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

class  narrators  (not  actors,  which  is  a  different  thing  entirely)  their 
efforts  would  in  time  attract  a  good-sized  audience.  Experiments  in 
this  direction  have  already  been  made,  hut  with  insufficient  hacking. 

Another  odd  job  I  had  during  my  college  years  resulted  in  a  closer 
acquaintance  with  the  works  of  William  Shakespeare  than  I  would 
ordinarily  have  secured.  One  afternoon  the  college  /ob-placement 
bureau  (to  whom  I  really  owe  my  college  education,  for  without  the 
bureau  I  would  never  have  been  able  to  pay  for  it)  sent  me  to  see  a 
prospective  employer.  Let  us  call  him  Mr.  Jones. 

I  was  informed  that  Mr.  Jones  wanted  a  reader.  (It  turned  out  that 
this  was  not  precisely  the  case.)  He  was  about  seventy-Eve.  He  looked 
like  a  slightly  insane  old  wolf.  In  fact,  in  his  more  vigorous  years, 
he  had  been  a  wolf,  a  wolf  of  the  Wall  Street  variety,  a  terrific,  ruth- 
less plunger  the  legend  of  whose  feats  was  yet  green  in  the  memories 
of  the  Wall  Street  Hot  Stove  League.  Though  he  still  visited  his 
office  regularly,  Mr^fones^mterest in  the  market  had  gradually  attenu- 
ated, and:  its  place,  so  far  as  I  could  judge,  was  now  taken  up  by  a 
miscellaneous  assortment  of  activities,  including  an  extraordinary  kind 
of  golf  (see  below),  the  making  and  imbibing  of  Martinis,  furious 
running  quarrels  with  his  household— and  the  study  of  Shakespeare. 
I  was  the  Shakespeare  boy.  I  learned  later  that  I  was  merely  the 
latest  of  a  long  line. 

I  visited  Mr.  Jones  three  afternoons  a  week,  from  3:30  to  6.  Our 
routine  never  varied.  I  would  knock  on  the  door  of  his  study  on  the 
fourth  floor  of  a  decaying  but  luxurious  old  house  fit  only  to  be 
the  setting  for  a  murder  mystery.  Mr.  Jones  would  scream  something 
— he  never  talked.  I  would  yell  out  my  name  (which  he  never  remem- 
bered) and  then  shout,  "It's  the  young  man!"  Mr.  Jones  would  admit 
the  young  man,  violently  lock  the  door  of  his  study,  and  begin  to 
pile  chairs,  a  table,  any  easily  movable  furniture,  against  it.  This  barri- 
cade completed,  he  would  shriek,  "Now,  you  cant  come  in,  you 
prowling  apes!"  or  some  similar  phrase.  Who  these  prowling  apes 
were  I  never  found  out,  though  I  got  to  know  Mr.  Jones  fairly  well. 

Then,  with  his  own  hands,  and  very  much  as  if  he  were  an  alche- 
mist transmuting  a  base  metal  into  gold,  he  would  prepare  a  shakerful 


ULIFTON   FADIMAN  XXXIII 

}f  Martinis  (this  was  during  prohibition).  They  were  very  good  Mar- 
tinis and  J  always  wanted  more  than  the  one  he  allowed  me.  Mr. 
tones  would  drink  about  six  during  the  afternoon,  always  to  the 
iccompaniment  of  violent,  self-accusatory  exclamations:  'This  will 
be  the  death  of  me,  I  know  it  will,  I'm  killing  myself,  I'm  my  own 
nurderer." 

Mr.  Jones  was,  as  J  have  indicated,  a  Shakespeare  addict,  but  of 
i  highly  specialized  sort.  He  was  really  familiar,  in  an  unintelligent 
yay,  with  all  of  Shakespeare,  but  his  particular  interest  lay  in  those 
massages  of  an  inflammatory,  lickerish,  and  erotic  nature.  He  had,  for 
example,  memorized  the  whole  of  Venus  and  Adonis,  a  rather  long 
loem.  It  was  my  duty,  book  in  hand,  to  listen  to  him  recite.  It  was 
nildly  fantastic:  the  locked  door  with  its  furniture  barricade,  Mr. 
rones  hopping  about,  Martini  in  hand,  quoting,  in  a  voice  that 
uingled  a  shriek,  a  snarl,  and  a  whine,  some  torrid  passage,  and 
nyself,  crowded  into  a  corner,  doing  my  best  to  handle  the  old  gentle- 
nan  tactfully.  Naturally,  he  would  stumble  from  time  to  time,  but 
voe  to  me  if  I  prompted  him!  His  emendations  of  Shakespeare  were 
extraordinary  but  I  soon  found  it  expedient  to  let  them  stand. 

On  Saturdays  we  would  repair  to  the  golf  links.  I  had  two  duties 
here.  One  was  to  keep  shouting,  as  he  addressed  the  ball,  "Keep  your 
lead  down!"  The  other  was  to  listen  to  him  recite  his  favorite  pas- 
sages of  Shakespeare  between  strokes.  The  caddy,  had  he  possessed 
iny  Elizabethan  vocabulary,  would  surely  have  been  shocked. 

My  association  with  Mr.  Jones  must  have  been  satisfactory  to  him, 
)r  else  his  love  of  the  bard  gradually  deepened,  for  one  day  he  pro- 
posed to  me  an  additional  duty:  that  I  accompany  him  downtown  in 
lis  car  every  morning,  attended  by  good  old  Shakespeare.  As  I  got 
Ive  dollars  an  hour  for  these  services  (ten  on  Saturdays,  for  some 
'eason)  and  as  I  was  receiving  a  free  education  in  a  great  classic,  I 
nade  no  objection. 

Now,  this  part  of  the  story  is  somewhat  indelicate.  I  must  warn 
/ou  that  Mr.  Jones,  like  many  elderly  people,  was  troubled  with  an 
nconvenient  weakness  of  the  bladder.  In  the  morning  we  would 
>tart  out  in  the  car,  Shakespeare  going  full  blast.  The  drive  took 


XXXIV  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

about  forty  minutes.  But  forty  minutes  just  about  represented  the 
limit  of  Mr.  Jones'  endurance.  The  last  Eve  minutes  of  the  drive  may 
have  sounded  something  like  this: 

"Now  quick  desire— O  God!— hath  caught  the  yielding  prey— how 
much  longer  is  it?— and  glutton-like  she  feeds,  yet  never  iilleth— God 
almighty,  you're  driving  like  a  damned  turtle— where  was  I?— Her  lips 
—her  lips  are  conquerors,  his  lips  obey — Lord,  how  everybody  makes 
me  suffer! — his  lips  obey — Ow!— Paying  what  ransom  the  insulter 
willeth — hurry,  hurry,  you  confounded  slow-coach!— O  Lord!" 

Shakespeare  was  never  intoned  in  stranger  circumstances.  Some- 
times art  won  and  sometimes  nature. 

But  Mr.  Jones  was  the  means  whereby  the  works  of  Shakespeare, 
or,  at  any  rate,  certain  parts  of  them,  became  as  familiar  to  me  as 
my  own  name.  Mr.  Jones  died  owing  me  twenty  dollars,  but  I  hold 
no  rancor.  Take  him  all  in  all,  he  was  a  good  boss.  I  shall  not  look 
upon  his  like  again. 

In  1927,  a  couple  of  years  after  college  had  Enished  with  me,  I  began 
a  new  and  entirely  different  course  of  reading,  a  course  that  lasted 
almost  a  decade.  I  became  an  editorial  assistant  in  what  was  then 
an  up-and-coming  publishing  house  and  is  now  a  staid,  highly  respect- 
able establishment.  During  a  period  of  almost  ten  years  I  read  miU 
lions  upon  millions  of  words,  of  which  only  the  tiniest  fraction  were 
the  right  ones  in  the  right  order.  I  have  not  read  as  much  good  lit- 
erature as  thousands  of  others  have,  but  I  think  I  have  read  as  much 
bad  literature  as  any  man  or  woman  of  my  age.  This  is  a  boast  that, 
on  the  whole,  I  would  prefer  not  to  be  able  to  make,  for,  except  as 
a  means  of  making  a  living,  I  dont  think  the  experience  was  particu- 
larly valuable. 

It  revealed  to  me  one  thing,  however— the  profound,  unconscious 
egotism  of  the  human  race.  Our  universal  capacity  for  self-esteem  has, 
I  am  told,  been  remarked  by  other  observers.  Each  of  us  makes  the 
discovery  in  his  own  way.  My  way  involved  the  reading  of  twenty- 
Eve  hundred  hopeless  manuscripts  each  year  for  ten  years. 

It  is  a  fact  that  no  man  will  set  out  to  knock  together  a  bookcase 
or  repair  a  leak  in  the  plumbing  unless  he  knows  how  to  handle  the 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XXXV 

tools  required  and  has  a  fair  notion  of  the  problems  involved.  A 
woman  who  has  never  boiled  an  egg  in  her  life  will  not  volunteer  to 
prepare  a  five-course  dinner.  Yet  this  same  man,  this  same  woman 
will  cheerfully  write  you  a  book,  though  he  or  she  may  not  have  the 
remotest  idea  of  how  books  are  written. 

There  are  no  "born"  writers.  Writing  can  be  an  art.  On  its  lower 
levels  it  is  certainly  at  least  a  craft,  which  means  that  it  must  be 
learned.  Yet  I  should  say  that  not  fifty  out  of  the  twenty-Eve  hundred 
would-be  authors  whose  works  J  annually  considered  had  even  a 
remote  glimpse  of  this  simple  truth. 

Most  of  the  manuscripts  were  really  disguised  confessions— novels, 
plays,  poems,  essays,  each  in  one  way  or  another  an  outlet  for  the 
author  s  sense  of  his  own  personal  tragedy  or  dilemma.  They  were  not 
books.  They  were  diaries.  They  were  merely  a  mechanism  whereby  the 
author  "expressed"  himself.  They  were  a  circuitous  and  therapeutically 
valueless  substitute  for  the  Catholic  confessional,  the  psychoanalyst's 
couch,  or  the  ear  of  a  friend.  Particularly  the  last,  for  most  of  these 
manuscripts  supplied  pathetic  testimony  to  the  spiritual  loneliness  of 
so  many  of  us  Americans.  They  were  voices  crying  in  the  dark. 

But  the  voices— this  was  the  unsettling  part  of  it— had  a  note  of 
strident  self-confidence.  The  authors  of  these  manuscripts  had  no  ink- 
ling that  they  were  not  writers  but  just  people  in  trouble.  They  acted 
like  writers,  they  demanded  criticism,  and  they  were  often  sore  when 
they  got  it.  It  was  all  very  odd. 

And  each  hopeless  manuscript  represented  at  least  a  year  or  more 
of  its  author's  life.  I  used  to  reflect  sadly  on  this  enormous  wastage, 
on  all  the  man-hours  of  energy  that  go  annually  into  the  useless  pro- 
duction of  unpunishable  words.  There  should  be  some  small  central 
editorial  board  (not  one  in  each  of  sixty  publishing  houses)  which 
would  act  as  a  gentle  discourager  to  all  these  well-meaning  amateurs. 
For  a  very  small  sum— say  fifty  cents— it  would  pass  judgment  on 
manuscripts.  But  not  on  Enished  ones.  Just  the  Erst  chapter  would 
be  enough— indeed,  I  may  say  in  conEdence,  just  the  Erst  paragraph. 
No  geniuses,  I  assure  you,  would  be  overlooked,  no  lives  ruined,  but 
many  perfectly  amiable  people  would  be  saved  from  wasted  effort  and 
eventual  disillusionment. 


XXXVI  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

My  job  as  a  publisher  s  reader,  then,  gave  me  a  wholesome  respect 
iox  the  mere  emit  of  writing.  This  respect  I  have  never  since  lost. 
It  is  only  after  you  have  read  a  few  million  bad  sentences  that  you 
realize  what  thought  goes  into  the  construction  of  a  single  good  one. 

This  realization  has  probably  saved  the  American  public  from  at 
least  one  bad  book.  Had  it  not  been  for  my  editorial  labors,  had  I  not 
been  driven  to  understand  how  the  English  language  must  not  be 
misused,  I  would  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt  have  written  a  novel. 
With  publishing  standards  as  generous,  shall  we  say,  as  they  are,  it 
would  have  achieved  publication.  It  is  even  possible  that  some  of  my 
present  audience  might  have  been  seduced  into  reading  it.  But  this  did 
not  happen  and  will  never  happen,  a  happy  circumstance  that  you 
and  J  owe  to  my  melancholy  experience  with  twenty-iive  thousand 
examples  of  organized  literary  mediocrity. 

I  suppose,  like  any  nasty  old  frustrated  writer,  I  have  had  to  secure 
my  revenge  somehow.  Perhaps  that  accounts  for  the  persistent, 
monotonous  reiteration  of  my  belief  that  most  young  American  nov- 
elists (the  ones  who  do  get  published)  simply  do  not  know  their  trade. 
I  dont  care  what  the  richness  or  depth  of  their  experience  may  be; 
they  do  not  know  the  rules  of  rhetoric.  The  English  language  is  a  mag- 
nificently flexible  instrument,  but  it  asks  of  every  writer  that  he  use  it 
with  a  certain  regard  for  its  possibilities  and  its  limitations.  The  sav- 
age, spontaneous  young  people  who  rush  their  novels  into  print  every 
year  are  superior  to  these  possibilities  and  these  limitations.  It  is  true 
that  they  get  by  for  a  while  on  a  certain  childish  freshness,  a  certain 
apparent  originality.  Then  they  are  forgotten.  But  in  the  meantime 
they  have  cluttered  up  the  book  market,  wasted  the  time  of  readers, 
and  certainly  contributed  nothing  to  the  clarification  or  development 
of  sound  literary  standards.  I  hope  this  does  not  sound  too  righteous; 
it's  so  sore  a  point  with  me  that  I  End  it  hard  to  be  gently  humorous. 
Every  man,  in  addition  to  his  formal  religion,  has  a  private  religion, 
consisting  of  a  set  of  ideas,  or  a  hobby  or  perhaps,  like  Dubedat  in  The 
Doctor's  Dilemma,  a  group  of  heroes.  I  have  that  feeling  about  the 
English  language.  I  don't  mean  its  great  masters,  but  the  tongue  itself. 
I  am  myself  a  most  indifferent  wielder  of  English,  but  a  sinner  is  not 
debarred  from  worship.  And  I  think  that,  in  our  own  strange,  wild, 


:lifton  fadiman  xxxvii 

leadlong  period,  reverence  for  the  language  is  growing  rarer  and  rarer. 
When  it  is  not  present  in  professional  writers,  in  those  who  owe  their 
rery  being  to  it,  I  get  depressed,  and  so,  I  think,  do  all  those  who 
■eally  love  the  tongue  they  speak. 

The  plain  fact  of  the  matter  is— every  publisher  knows  it  but  which 
)ne  will  dare  confess  it?— that  about  twenty  per  cent  of  the  new  books 
ssued  are  actually  worth  publishing,  from  a  literary  and,  I  daresay, 
?ven  from  a  commercial  point  of  view.  I  do  not  propose  to  discuss 
he  conditions  that  account  for  the  other  eighty  per  cent.  They  are 
complex  and  somewhat  technical.  But  every  honest  reviewer,  when  he 
pes  back  over  the  books  of  the  preceding  year  (not  at  the  time  he 
■eads  each  book)  admits  in  his  heart  that  the  great  majority  of  them 
vere  hardly  worth  the  attention  he  gave  them.  It  isn't  that  they  are 
leEnitely  bad,  it's  that  they  just  aren't  good  enough,  dont  move 
mough  people,  dont  contribute  enough  to  the  general  sum  of  things 
:o  make  their  publication,  involving  the  labor  of  thousands  of  men 
ind  women,  worth  while. 

Since  about  1915  the  American  publishing  business  has  been  over- 
producing beyond  reason.  Perhaps  publishers  are  unconsciously  real- 
zing  this,  which  would  explain  the  emergence  of  so  many  excellent 
:heap  reprint  series,  the  new  emphasis  on  the  classics,  and  even  such 
nodest  ventures  as  this  volume  itself. 

I  referred  above  to  reviewers.  Perhaps,  in  this  prologue  which  so 
:"ar  consists  almost  entirely  of  digressions,  here  is  as  good  a  place  as  any 
:o  talk  for  a  while  about  the  reviewing  business.  For  more  than  fif- 
:een  years  I  have  been  a  reviewer  of  new  books.  That  means  that  most 
-)f  my  reading  during  this  period  has  been  confined  to  ephemera,  to 
books  certainly  better  than  those  I  read  in  manuscript  form  as  a  pub- 
lisher's assistant,  but  not  so  much  better  (with  the  usual  exceptions) 
that  the  world  could  not  have  wagged  along  quite  well  without  them. 
I  propose  to  talk  for  a  few  pages  about  this  business  of  mine,  for  it 
has  certainly  played  its  part  in  the  autobiography  of  this  particular 
reader. 

Note  that  in  using  the  word  "business,"  I  employ  it  as  a  wedge 
with  which  to  separate  book  reviewing  from  literary  criticism.  Literary 
criticism  is  an  art,  like  the  writing  of  tragedies  or  the  making  of  love, 


XXXVIII  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and,  similarly,  does  not  pay.  Book  reviewing  is  a  device  tor  earning 
a  living,  one  of  the  many  weiid  results  oi  Gutenberg's  invention. 
Movable  type  made  books  too  easy  to  publish.  Some  sort  oi  sieve  had 
to  be  interposed  between  printer  and  public.  The  reviewer  is  that 
sieve,  a  generally  honest,  usually  uninspired,  and  mildly  useful  sieve. 

To  use  an  example  conveniently  near  at  hand,  the  compiler  of  this 
volume  is  such  a  sieve.  To  the  best  of  my  knowledge  and  belief  I  have 
never  written  a  sentence  of  literary  criticism  in  my  life.  Unless  I 
become  a  vastly  different  person  from  what  I  now  am,  I  never  will. 
My  colleagues  and  myself  are  often  called  critics,  a  consequence  of 
the  amiable  national  trait  that  turns  Kentuckians  into  colonels  and 
the  corner  druggist  into  Doc.  But,  no  matter  what  my  publishers  may 
say,  I  am  a  mere  book  reviewer. 

True  literary  criticism  is  a  subtle  and  venerable  art,  going  back  to 
the  ancient  Hindoos,  who  doubtless  wrote  sanskriticism.  Aristotle  was 
the  Erst  great  literary  Poo-Bah.  He  had  no  more  charm  than  an  old 
knothole,  but  the  things  he  said  about  narrative  and  drama  are  so 
sensible  that  they're  still  useful  today.  Aristotle  had  a  first-rate  mind, 
which  is  what  most  really  good  literary  critics  have,  or  something 
pretty  near  it.  You  can  number  the  top-notchers  on  your  fingers  and 
toes— that's  the  way  I  taught  my  small  son  to  count:  Aristotle,  Horace, 
Coleridge,  Lessing,  Sainte-Beuve,  Taine,  Goethe,  Arnold,  Shaw  (one 
of  the  greatest),  and  a  few  others.  In  our  own  time  and  nation,  lit- 
erary criticism  is  almost  a  lost  art,  partly  because  no  one  except  a  few 
other  literary  critics  cares  to  read  it. 

What  follows,  then,  is  not  a  discussion  of  literary  criticism  but 
merely  shop  talk  about  my  trade.  I  justify  its  inclusion  on  the  some- 
what boggy  ground  that  this  book  is  largely  a  by-product  of  that  trade. 
I  offer  herein  the  selections  not  of  a  reader  but  of  a  particular  kind 
of  reader,  specialized  like  a  retriever  or  an  aphid:  in  short,  a  reviewer. 
A  literary  critic  (just  this  once  and  then  we're  through  with  him)  is  a 
whole  man  exercising  his  wholeness  through  the  accidental  medium 
of  books  and  authors.  A  reviewer  is  not  a  whole  man.  He  is  that  par- 
tial man,  an  expert.  Many  of  his  human  qualities  are  vestigial,  others 
hypertrophied.  All  experts  are  monsters.  I  shall  now  briefly  demon- 
strate the  reviewer's  monstrosity. 


3LIFTON  FADIMAN  XXXIX 

We  must  first  of  all  remember  that  reading  maketh  not  a  full  man. 
A.ny  reviewer  who  has  been  in  harness  for  twenty  years  or  so  will  be 
zager  to  tell  you  that  Bacon  was  just  dreaming  up  sentences.  I  sup- 
pose J  have  read  Eve  or  ten  thousand  books— it  doesnt  matter  which 
—in  the  last  couple  of  decades.  Every  so  often  I  catch  myself  wonder- 
ing whether  I  wouldn't  be  a  sight  wiser  if  I  had  read  only  fifteen,  and 
"hey  the  right  ones.  You  see,  a  reviewer  does  not  read  to  instruct 
limself.  If  he  remembered  even  a  moderate  quantum  of  what  he  read, 
ie  would  soon  be  unfit  for  his  job.  Forced  to  comment  on  book  Z,  he 
vould  at  once  recollect  everything  that  books  A  to  Y,  previously 
•eviewed,  contained  that  might  throw  light  on  Z.  This  is  not  the 
nental  attitude  that  makes  for  useful  book  reviewing.  As  a  matter 
)f  fact,  what  the  reviewer  should  have  above  all  things  is  a  kind  of 
nental  virginity,  a  continual  capacity  to  react  freshly.  I  said  that  he 
vas  an  expert.  He  is.  He  is  an  expert  in  surprisability.  The  poor  fool 
s  always  looking  forward  to  the  next  book.  — 

This  does  not  mean  the  reviewer  has  the  memory  of  a  moron.  He 
doubtless  remembers  something  of  what  he  has  read,  but  not  enough 
L.o  handicap  him.  His  mind  is  not  so  much  well  stocked  as  well 
ndexed.  If  challenged,  I  think  I  could  tell  you  the  authors  and  titles 
-yf  the  three  or  four  best  books  of  the  last  ten  years  dealing  with  the 
indent  Maya  civilization.  I  can  even  make  a  fair  Est  at  grading  the 
oooks  in  the  order  of  their  completeness,  authority,  and  readability. 
But  what  I  dont  know  about  the  Mayans  in  the  way  of  real  informa- 
tion would  Ell  several  volumes  and  no  doubt  has  done  so. 

The  reviewer,  then,  granting  him  any  mind  at  all,  has  a  fresh  one. 
Prank  Moore  Colby,  whom  I  greatly  admire  (you  will  End  some  of 
his  work  starting  on  pages  2j$  and  287),  held  a  different  point  of 
view.  In  1921  he  wrote  a  little  piece  from  which  I  quote: 

Beans  Again 

[f  a  man  had  for  one  day  a  puree  of  beans,  and  the  next  day  haricots 
/erts,  and  then  in  daily  succession  bean  soup,  bean  salad,  butter  beans, 
ima,  black,  navy,  Boston  baked,  and  kidney  beans,  and  then  back  to 
Duree  and  all  over  again,  he  would  not  be  in  the  relation  of  the  gen- 


XL  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

eral  eater  to  food.  Nor  would  he  be  in  the  relation  of  a  general  reader 
to  books.  But  he  would  be  in  the  relation  of  a  reviewer  toward  novels. 
He  would  soon  perceive  that  the  relation  was  neither  normal  nor 
desirable,  and  he  would  take  measures,  violent  if  need  be,  to  change 
it.  He  would  not  say  on  his  navy-bean  day  that  they  were  as  brisk 
and  stirring  little  beans  of  the  sea  as  he  could  recall  in  his  recent 
eating.  He  would  say  grimly,  "Beans  again,"  and  he  would  take  prompt 
steps  to  intermit  this  abominable  procession  of  bean  dishes. 

If  change  for  any  reason  were  impossible  he  would  either  conceive 
a  personal  hatred  toward  all  beans  that  would  make  him  unjust  to  any 
bean  however  meritorious,  or  he  would  acquire  a  mad  indiscrimi- 
nateness  of  acquiescence  and  any  bean  might  please.  And  his  judg- 
ment would  be  in  either  case  an  unsafe  guide  for  general  eaters. 

This,  I  believe,  is  what  happens  to  almost  all  reviewers  of  fiction 
after  a  ceriaintime^and  it  accounts  satisfactorily  for  various  phenom- 
ena that  are  often  attributed  to  a  baser  cause.  It  is  the  custom  at 
certain  intervals  to  denounce  reviewers  for  their  motives.  They  are 
called  venal  and  they  are  called  cowardly  by  turns.  They  are  blamed 
for  having  low  standards  or  no  standards  at  all.  I  think  their  defects 
are  due  chiefly  to  the  nature  of  their  calling;  that  they  suffer  from 
an  occupational  disease. 

Now,  J  can  understand  why  Colby  felt  this  way.  He  could  afford 
to  be  superior.  He  was  an  encyclopedia  editor,  which  is  several  cuts 
above  a  reviewer.  But  his  beans-again  notion,  though  plausible,  is  not 
cogent.  The  truth  is,  that  a  competent  reviewers  stomach  does  not 
summon  up  remembrance  of  beans  past.  Though  there  are  exceptions 
(I  shall  mention  some  of  my  own  weaknesses  in  a  moment),  he  does 
not  hail  or  damn  novels  out  of  a  kind  of  hysteria  of  surfeit.  If  he 
makes  a  stupid  judgment  it  is  simply  because  his  judgment  is  stupid. 
It  may  be.  stupid  for  a  variety  of  reasons,  no  one  of  which  will  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  fact  that  he  reads  half  a  dozen  novels  a  week. 
In  other  words,  a  jaded  reviewer  sooner  or  later  realizes  that  he  is  not 
a  good  reviewer,  and  tries  to  get  another  job.  A  good  reviewer  is  a 
perennially  fresh  hack. 

But,  as  I  say,  this  doesnt  work  out  one  hundred  per  cent  of  the 


:lifton  fadiman  xli 

ime.  For  example,  I  confess  that  I  no  longer  look  forward  to  next 
veek's  American  historical  novel  with  any  bridegroom  eagerness. 
I  have  read  too  many  such.  I  am  positive  that  they  (not  I,  you  sec) 
lave  slipped  into  a  groove,  are  standardized  products,  and  therefore 
here  is  nothing  helpful  I  can  say  about  them.  (Yet  my  fatuousness  is 
;uch  that  I  do  not  honestly  believe  I  would  muff  another  Red  Badge 
)f  Courage  if  by  some  miracle  one  were  published  tomorrow.) 

Never  to  be  bored  is  merely  an  active  form  of  imbecility.  Do  not 
lust  the^marij\^io_is_unterested  in  everything."  He  is  covering  up 
lome  fearful  abyss  of  spiritual  vacancy.  Ennui,  felt  on  the  proper 
occasions,  is  a  sign  of  intelligence^  All  this  is  by  way  of  saying  that,  of 
:ourse,  no  reviewer  is  interested  h\  every  book  he  reads.  He  should 
lave  the  ability  to  be  bored,  even  if\his  ability  is  much  feebler  than 
lis  ability  not  to  be  bored.  A  competent  reviewer  knows  his  blind 
spots,  tries  to  counteract  them,  and,  if  \he  can't,  never  drives  himself 
hto  phony  enthusiasm.  Indiscriminate  love  of  books  is  a  disease,  like 
satyriasis,  and  stern  measures  should  be  applied  to  it. 

I,  for  example,  do  not  react  eagerly  to  books  on  the  delights  of 
gardening;  to  novels  about  very  young  men  lengthily  and  discursively 
n  love;  to  amateur  anthropologists  who  hide  a  pogrom-mania  under 
earned  demonstrations  of  the  superiority  of  Nordic  man;  to  books  by 
bright  children  Who  Don't  Know  How  Funny  They're  Being;  to 
diplomatic  reminiscences  by  splendid  ga&ers  with  long  memories  and 
brief  understandings;  to  autobiographies  by  writers  who  feel  that  to 
have  reached  the  age  of  thirty-Eve  is  an  achievement  of  pivotal  sig- 
nificance; to  thorough  jobs  on  Chester  A.  Arthur;  to  all  tomes  that 
lim  to  make  me  a  better  or  a  more  successful  man  than  I  would  be 
comfortable  being;  to  young,  virile  novelists  who  would  rather  be 
found  dead  than  grammatical;  to  most  anthologies  of  humor;  to  books 
ibout  Buchmanism,  astrology,  Yogi,  and  internal  baths,  all  of  which 
seem  to  me  to  deal  with  the  same  subject  matter  as  does  the  last  of 
the  four  subjects  named;  to  the  prospect  of  further  "country"  books, 
such  as  Country  Mortician,  Country  Dog-Catcher,  and  Country  Old 
Ladies'  Home  Attendant. 

It  is  books  like  these  that  make  a  successful  appeal  to  my  apathy. 
Every  reviewer  has  his  own  list.  He  does  his  best  to  keep  it  a  small 


XLII  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

one,  for  he  knows  that  his  responsibility  is  to  his  public,  not  himself. 
He  knows  that  he  cannot  atloid  to  any  great  extent  the  luxury  of 
indulging  his  own  prejudices.  A  reviewer  is  not  in  the  self-expression 
business.  If  he  were  he  would  run  the  risk  of  becoming  an  artist.  He 
is,  by  the  nature  of  his  trade,  uncreative,  or,  if  his  creative  impulses 
are  too  strong,  he  sooner  or  later  finds  himself  a  dud  at  his  job,  and 
turns  into  a  writer.  But  if  he  is  a  good  reviewer  and  keeps  in  the 
groove  fifteen  or  twenty  years,  he  has  no  more  chance  of  becoming 
a  writer  than  a  pig  has  of  flying.  There  is  nothing  tragic  about  this 
and  no  reviewer  who  has  any  respect  for  his  trade  wastes  any  senti- 
mentality over  it.  One  decent  hack,  to  my  mind,  is  worth  a  stable  of 
would-be  Pegasuses. 

Reviewers  interest  the  public.  I  cannot  fathom  the  reason,  for  we 
are  among  the  mildest  and  most  conventional  of  citizens,  pure  Gluyas 
Williams  types.  A  life  spent  among  ephemeral  best  sellers  and  pub- 
lishers' announcements  is  not  apt  to  produce  characters  of  unusual 
contour.  But  the  fact  remains  that  people  are  curious  about  us  and 
are  likely  to  ask  more  questions  of  a  reviewer  than  they  would  of  a 
successful  truss  manufacturer,  though  probably  the  tiussman  leads 
the  more  abundant  life. 

To  satisfy  this  curiosity  I  list  herewith  a  few  of  the  queries  most 
commonly  directed  at  my  tribe,  together  with  one  mans  answers: 

Do  you  really  read  all  those  books?  This  question  is  generally  put 
with  an  odd  inflection,  combining  cynical  disbelief  with  man-of-the- 
world  willingness  to  overlook  any  slight  dishonesty.  There  is  no  need 
for  this  hard-boiled  attitude.  A  reviewer  reads  the  books  he  reviews, 
exactly  as  an  accountant  examines  his  cost  sheets,  with  the  same 
routine  conscientiousness.  It's  his  job,  that's  all. 

Back  of  this  question,  however,  lies  a  peculiar  condition*  which 
baffles  me  and  I  think  many  others  who  are  forced  to  read  a  great 
deal.  The  reason  people  think  we  bluff  is  that  they  themselves  read 
so  slowly  they  cannot  believe  we  read  as  "fast"  as  we  actually  do. 
Now,  I  do  not  believe  dogmatically  either  in  fast  or  slow  reading. 
I  believe  tripe  should  be  read  practically  with  the  speed  of  light  and, 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XLIII 

let  us  say,  Toynbee's  A  Study  of  History  with  tortoise  deliberation. 
And  most  books  are  nearer  to  tripe  than  to  Toynbee.  But  the  trouble 
with  practically  all  of  us  is  that  we  sutler  from  chronic  reverence. 
We  make  the  unwarranted  assumption  that  because  a  man  is  in  print 
he  has  something  to  say,  and,  acting  on  this  assumption,  we  read  his 
every  word  with  scrupulous  care.  This  may  be  good  manners,  but  it's 
a  confounded  waste  of  time. 

If  I  am  at  all  partial,  it  is  to  the  man  who  reads  rapidly.  One  of  the 
silliest  couplets  ever  composed  is  to  be  found  in  The  Art  of  Reading, 
by  one  William  Walker,  a  seventeenth-century  hollow-head  who 
wrote: 

Learn  to  read  slow;  all  other  graces 
Will  follow  in  their  proper  places. 

This  is  unmitigated  balderdash  and  if  taken  seriously  can  easily  result 
in  the  wasting  of  ten  or  fifteen  per  cent  of  the  few  waking  hours  God 
has  put  at  our  disposal. 

For  example,  I  am  simply  unable  to  understand  those— and  there 
must  be  millions  of  them — who  spend  hours  over  the  daily  paper. 
Why,  if  you  add  up  those  hours,  you  will  End  that  some  people  pass 
more  time  with  the  Herald  Tribune  than  they  do  with  their  wives  or 
husbands.  I  do  not  draw  from  this  any  conclusions  about  the  state 
of  either  American  journalism  or  American  matrimony.  J  merely  infer 
that  such  paper-maniacs  simply  do  not  know  how  to  skip,  to  take  in 
a  paragraph  at  a  time,  to  use  the  headlines,  one  of  mankinds  most 
blessed  inventions. 

No,  reviewers  do  their  job,  but  they  know  how  to  read  quickly, 
in  large  units,  to  seize  a  point  and  be  off  to  the  next  one  while  the 
author  is  still  worrying  the  first  one  to  death.  Anybody  can  learn  to 
do  this;  the  reviewer  simply  is  forced  to  learn  it.  I  happen  to  be  an 
exceptionally  rapid  reader,  which  is  no  more  to  my  credit  than  would 
be  the  possession  of  exceptionally  bushy  eyebrows.  Of  the  average 
novel  (a  description  that  covers  virtually  all  novels)  I  can  read  one 
hundred  pages  an  hour.  Of  the  average  historical  novel  I  can  read 
two  hundred  pages  an  hour,  but  that  is  because  I  am  so  familiar  with 


XLIV  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  plot  and  characters.  It  took  me  two  weeks,  about  five  hours  a  day, 
to  read  Thomas  Manns  Joseph  in  Egypt.  J  submit  that  in  all  three 
cases  I  did  my  leading  with  the  proper  speed  and  with  conscientious 
attention  to  the  value  of  what  was  being  said. 

How  do  you  select  books  for  review?  Well,  each  reviewer  has  his 
own  system.  Here's  mine.  I  try  to  juggle  five  factors,  whose  relative 
importance  varies  with  each  book. 

First,  I  ask  myself  whether  the  book  is  apt  to  interest  me.  This  is 
only  fair.  I  am  apt  to  write  better,  more  usefully,  about  something 
that  naturally  engages  my  attention.  I  don't  have  to  like  the  book, 
necessarily.  It  may  interest  me  because  its  author  happens  to  repre- 
sent a  great  many  things  I  dislike,  as  is  the  case  with  Gertrude  Stein, 
Mabel  Dodge  Luhan,  Charles  Morgan,  and  William  Faulkner. 

Second,  does  the  book  have  news  value?  A  book  reviewer  is  partly 
a  purveyor ^or"  Hews.  Any  book  by  Ernest  Hemingway  would  have  to 
be  reviewed  whether  it  be  a  good  one,  like  For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls, 
or  a  poor  one,  like  Green  Hills  of  Africa,  for  Hemingway  is  news. 
This  does  not  make  him  a  better  or  a  worse  writer,  of  course.  It  has 
nothing  to  do  with  his  literary  value,  but  it  has  a  great  deal  to  do 
with  whether  or  not  the  public  expects  information  about  his  new 
book. 

Let  me  give  you  another  example.  A  few  years  ago  everybody  was 
all  worked  up  over  the  Edward-Simpson  affair  (remember?).  I  said 
then  and  I  say  now  (nobody  listened  then  and  nobody  s  listening  now) 
that  the  whole  mess  was  of  very  little  political  importance  and  that 
the  persons  involved  were  not  sufficiently  interesting  even  for  the 
thing  to  have  much  scandal  value.  I  was  in  a  chilly  minority  of  one. 
One  week,  with  public  interest  at  fever  heat,  three  or  four  books  bear- 
ing on  the  case  appeared.  Not  one  of  them  would  have  been  worth 
a  line  of  comment  had  it  not  possessed  at  the  moment  an  inflated 
news  value.  To  my  mind  they  weren't  worth  a  line  of  comment  any- 
way, but  I  would  have  been  an  incompetent  reviewer  had  I  not  given 
them  considerable  space.  A  reviewer  is  a  journalist. 

The  third  factor  is  allied  to  the  second:  Is  the  book  apt  to  be  of 
interest  to  the  reviewer's  particular  audience?  At  the  present  time  I 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XLV 

have  a  job  with  The  New  Yorker,  a  humorous  and  satirical  family 
magazine.  There  is  no  such  animal  as  a  typical  New  Yorker  reader, 
but  we  know  that  most  of  this  magazines  readers  do  not  enjoy 
Temple  Bailey,  and  no  doubt  vice  versa.  Miss  Bailey  has  her  virtues 
(indeed  she  is  all  virtue),  but  they  are  not  the  virtues  that  happen  to 
interest  the  people  who  read  my  small  screeds.  Hence  Miss  Bailey 
does  not  get  a  look-in  in  my  column.  I  cannot  notice  that  her  sales 
suffer  in  consequence. 

The  fourth  factor  is  the  only  one  that  might  not  occur  to  a  non- 
professional. A  reviewer,  in  selecting  books,  takes  into  careful  account 
the  opinion  of  the  publisher  with  respect  to  his  own  publications. 
If  a  publisher  writes  me  that  Hyacinthe  Doakesy  novel  is  terrific,  that 
it  is  his  fall  leader,  that  he  is  going  to  lay  $10,000  worth  of  advertising 
money  on  the  line— why,  I  make  a  note  to  read  Hyacinthe' s  book  with 
zare.  I  may  not  like  it,  and  in  that  case  will  say  so.  (I  have  not  once, 
in  more  than  fifteen  years  in  the  trade,  received  a  letter  of  protest 
from  any  publisher  whose  offering  I  had  panned,  except  in  a  few  cases 
when  I  had  made  misstatements  of  fact.)  But  the  truth  is  that  I  am 
more  apt  to  like  it  than  I  am  to  like  some  little  yarn  that  this  same 
oublisher  is  so  ashamed  of  he  hides  it  away  in  the  back  of  his  cata- 
logue. Publishers  have  their  faults  (a  profound  remark  that  I  have 
iften  heard  them  apply  to  reviewers),  but  they  know  a  good  deal 
ibout  books  and  their  judgment  of  the  relative  values  of  their  pro- 
ductions is  hearkened  to  by  any  sensible  reviewer. 

Finally,  a  book  may  not  be  of  great  personal  interest,  it  may  pos- 
sess no  news  value,  my  audience  may  not  care  deeply  about  it,  and 
the  publisher  will  not  be  in  a  position  to  give  it  any  special  publiciz- 
ing. Nevertheless,  I  will  review  it  in  some  detail.  Why?  Because  I  feel 
It  to  be  important.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  a  book  of  literary  or  instructive 
value  by  a  criterion  (a  cloudy  one,  I  admit)  that  has  nothing  to  do 
with  the  four  factors  already  mentioned.  A  short  time  ago,  as  these 
words  were  written,  there  appeared  a  long,  scholarly,  rather  solemn 
\work  of  literary  criticism,  American  Renaissance,  by  F.  O.  Matthies- 
>en.  Factor  1  applied  moderately;  factors  2,  3,  4  hardly  applied  at 
ill.  But  I  gave  it  a  column  and  a  half.  I  did  so  because  the  book  is 
dearly  an  important  work  of  creative  scholarship  and  in  years  to  come 


XLVI  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

is  bound  to  take  a  considerable  place  in  its  restricted  field.  It  is  my 
duty  (to  whom  I  don't  know;  I  suppose  to  Literature  itself)  to  com- 
ment on  such  a  hook  to  the  best  oi  my  ability.  Every  reviewer  ieels 
the  same  way  and  does  the  same  thing. 

How  reliable  are  reviewers'  estimates?  There's  no  exact  answer  to 
that  one.  If  his  estimates  weren't  appreciably  more  reliable  than  those 
oi  your  dinner-table  companion,  he  wouldn't  hold  his  job  long.  But 
he  is  several  light-years  distant  horn  infallibility.  He  works  under  pres- 
sure, he's  human,  he's  been  out  too  late  the  night  before,  his  eyes 
bother  him— for  one  reason  or  another,  the  result  may  be  a  stupid 
verdict.  I've  rendered  many.  At  the  end  of  each  year  I  give  myself 
something  life  itself,  less  generous  than  I  am,  doesn't  allow  us:  a  sec- 
ond chance.  I  go  over  the  books  I've  reviewed  and  correct  my  Erst 
estimates.  I  try  to  be  honest,  but  it's  not  easy. 

This  annual  donning  of  sackcloth  and  ashes,  by  the  way,  began 
some  years  back.  At  the  end  of  the  book  season,  one  cold  December, 
the  lull  was  terrific.  I  had  no  books  to  review  and  a  column  to  deliver. 
To  fill  the  gap  I  decided  to  assume  the  winter  garment  of  repentance. 
A  column  resulted.  Readers  liked  it,  I  have  kept  it  up  ever  since,  and 
at  present  enjoy  a  somewhat  unmerited  reputation  for  extreme  con- 
scientiousness. 

As  to  this  question  of  reliability,  I  would  say  that  on  the  whole  we 
reviewers  err  in  the  direction  of  overamiability,  though  not  so  notice- 
ably as  was  the  case  fifteen  years  ago,  when  the  Great  American  Novel 
was  being  hailed  about  as  regularly  as  a  Fifth  Avenue  bus.  What  has 
happened,  roughly,  is  that  the  old  type  of  book  reviewer,  to  whom  the 
job  was  a  game,  has  gradually  been  replaced  by  a  new  type,  to  whom 
the  job  is  a  job.  In  the  days  of  Laurence  Stallings  and  Heywood 
Broun  you  would  on  occasion  get  superb  pieces  of  enthusiastic  jour- 
nalism, but  more  frequently  sickening  examples  of  hullabalunacy . 
Today  book  reviewing  is  staider,  duller,  but  unquestionably  juster 
and  more  serious.  It  has  a  professional  touch.  It  is  growing  up. 

Nevertheless,  I  should  hazard  a  guess  that  its  standards  of  judgment 
are  still  too  relaxed.  Just  what  my  tribe  has  to  be  mellow  about  I 
can't  figure  out,  but  we  are  mellow,  and  the  result  is  a  certain  lack  of 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XLVII 

acerbity.  There's  too  much  good-nature-faking  among  us,  a  continu- 
ous observance  of  Be-Kind-To-Dumb-Novelists  Week.  Literature  does 
not  grow  only  on  praise.  It  needs  the  savage  and  tartarly  note,  even 
the  astiingence  of  insult. 

In  order  to  keep  his  sword  sharp,  the  reviewer  should  see  to  it  that 
he  does  not  make  too  many  close  friends  among  writers.  A  decade 
or  so  ago ,  during  the  heyday  of  the  literary  tea  and  the  publisher's 
cocktail  party,  this  was  a  difficult  assignment.  Today,  now  that  book 
publishers  have  finally  put  on  long  pants,  the  problem  is  easier. 
A  reviewer  may  go  from  one  end  of  the  year  to  the  other  without 
flushing  a  single  novelist,  and  I  have  known  some  reviewers,  now  quite 
?rown  men,  who  have  never  met  a  literary  agent  in  the  flesh.  This 
riienation  from  what  used  to  be  known  laughingly  as  the  Literary 
Life  is  a  good  thing  for  us.  It  makes  possible  a  cool  inhumanity  toward 
authors,  which  in  turn  results  in  more  detached  comment.  The  road 
to  a  reviewer's  disintegration  is  marked  by  many  milestones,  each 
one  a  statue  erected  to  commemorate  a  beautiful  friendship.  I  am 
sure  of  this  even  though  I  would  not  go  so  far  as  to  agree  with  the 
man  who  thought  the  proper  relationship  between  reviewer  and 
mthor  should  be  that  between  a  knife  and  a  throat. 

What,  then,  is  a  reviewer  to  do  when  unavoidably  confronted  with 
a  book  written  by  a  close  friend?  I  have  had  to  face  this  situation  per- 
haps a  dozen  times  in  the  course  of  my  daily  work,  and  it  is  not  an 
easy  one  to  handle  if  one  wishes  to  be  scrupulously  honest.  In  my 
:ase  the  difficulty  was  never  disastrous,  for  it  is  my  policy,  when  choos- 
ing friends  who  write,  to  choose  of  course  only  those  who  write  well, 
thus  making  it  a  matter  of  inexorable  duty  for  me  to  praise  their 
work.  So  far  this  policy  has  worked  pretty  successfully.  I  do  not  know 
what  would  happen  in  the  event  that  I  should  get  to  conceive  a  warm 
oersonal  affection  for,  let  us  say,  Miss  Gertrude  Stein.  However,  care- 
ful planning  should  enable  me  to  head  off  this  possibility. 

The  fact  is  that  no  reviewer  is  really  objective  when  dealing  with  a 
Mend's  book,  for  if  the  book  has  anything  to  it  at  all,  he  is  really 
dealing  with  the  friend  himself.  He  does  the  best  he  can,  trying  not 
to  crack  his  spine  in  an  attempt  to  lean  over  backward.  But  I  doubt 
he  final  accuracy  of  his  judgment.  For  example,  I  have  praised  rather 


XLVIII  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

heatedly  two  hooks  by  close  friends  of  mine:  Mortimer  Adler's  How 
to  Read  a  Book  and  Oscar  Levant's  A  Smattering  of  Ignorance.  I  still 
do  not  know  whether  these  hooks  are  as  good  as  J  made  them  out  to 
be.  On  rereading  my  admittedly  amiable  pieces,  I  detect  no  conscious 
dishonesty.  Of  course,  as  one  of  my  most  sympathetic  readers,  I  may 
be  giving  myself  the  benefit  of  the  doubt.  There  are  some  Alexanders 
among  us  who  cut  the  Gordian  knot,  such  as  the  famous  literary  com- 
mentator who  is  reported  to  have  said  with  dulcet  candor,  "Any 
reviewer  who  won't  praise  a  friend's  book  is  a  louse." 

How  influential  are  reviewers?  This  is  a  hard  one  to  answer.  All  the 
publishers'  questionnaires,  scientifically  designed  to  discover  just  why 
a  given  book  is  bought,  throw  but  a  dim  light  on  the  subject,  though 
they  provide  any  desired  quantity  of  statistics.  Reader  A  buys  a  book 
because  his  friend  B  has  mentioned  it;  that  is  apparently  the  strongest 
single  definable  factor.  But  this  means  nothing  unless  you  know  why 
B  happened  to  mention  it.  You  ask  B.  B  replies,  let  us  suppose,  that 
he  himself  bought,  read  and  recommended  the  hook  as  the  result  of 
reading  an  advertisement.  Now  you  have  to  &nd  out  what  in  that 
particular  advertisement  caused  the  positive  reaction  to  the  hook. 
Was  it  the  publisher  s  statement  of  the  hook's  merits?  Was  it  a  quo- 
tation from  a  reviewer?  If  the  latter,  B  bought  the  book  because  the 
reviewer  liked  it— and  therefore  A  indirectly  did  the  same.  The  whole 
matter  is  very  complex. 

With  a  great  best  seller,  a  large  number  of  factors  operate  simul- 
taneously or  follow  rapidly  on  each  other,  causing  an  irresistible,  con- 
stantly  mounting  wave  of  popularity.  If  we  take  the  case  of  For  Whom 
the  Bell  Tolls,  we  might  list  these  factors  somewhat  as  follows,  in  the 
order  of  their  conceivable  importance: 

(1)  Author's  reputation  (but  that  didn't  make  a  best  seller  of  his 
previous  book). 

(2)  Timeliness  and  importance  of  the  subject  matter. 

(3)  Literary  excellence. 

(4)  It  was  a  Book-of-the-Month  Club  selection,  which  auto- 
matically set  in  motion  a  wave  of  bookish  conversation,  for  the  club 
members  form  a  mighty  army  of  talkers. 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  XLIX 

{5)  Almost  unanimously  favorable  reviews. 

(6)  Erotic  and  "shocking"  passages. 

(7)  Book-store  recommendation.  (A  factor  very  difficult  to  judge- 
perhaps  it  should  be  placed  much  higher  in  the  list.) 

(8)  Publisher's  advertising  and  general  promotion— in  this  case,  I 
should  say,  a  minor  factor. 

(  )  Talkability.  I  don't  give  this  a  number  because  any  of  the  fac- 
tors (1)  to  (8)  might  have  contributed  to  the  book's  talkability,  and 
no  one  can  determine  the  relative  importance  of  any  of  them. 

Now,  this  casual  analysis  (whose  arrangement  would  probably  be 
sharply  questioned  by  my  colleagues,  the  publisher,  and  Mr.  Hem- 
ingway) would  not  apply  identically  to  any  other  great  best  seller. 
In  some  cases  (8)  might  be  very  near  the  head  of  the  list.  Anthony 
Adverse,  for  example,  benefited  by  one  of  the  most  skillful  advertis- 
ing campaigns  in  recent  publishing  history;  Jurgen  was  made  mainly 
by  (6),  or  rather  by  a  Vice  Society's  alert  appreciation  of  (6);  and  so 
it  goes.  Mrs.  Lindbergh's  sublime  example  of  the  prophetic  fallacy, 
The  Wave  of  the  Future,  succeeded  through  a  combination  of  (1) 
and  (2)  plus  certain  other  less  savory  factors. 

The  reviewer  alone  cannot  make  a  book  popular.  A  superb  novel 
such  as  Elizabeth  Bowen's  Death  of  the  Heart  may  be  praised  by 
every  reviewer  who  knows  his  job  and  still  sell  but  a  few  thousand 
copies.  Only  factors  (3)  and  (5)  applied  to  this  book;  other  factors 
would  have  been  necessary  to  push  it  over  into  solid  popularity. 

Occasionally  a  book  may  be  "made"  or  set  in  motion  by  one  man's 
recommendation.  William  Lyon  Phelps  did  a  great  deal  for  The 
Bridge  of  San  Luis  Rey.  Will  Rogers'  admiration  for  The  Good 
Earth  helped  that  book.  A  book  of  some  years  back  called  Recovery, 
by  Sir  Arthur  Salter,  owed  its  success  almost  entirely  to  Walter  Lipp- 
mann.  More  recently  Alexander  Woollcott  tickled  the  lachrymatory 
glands  of  all  America  to  the  considerable  advantage  of  Mr.  James 
Hilton.  It's  interesting  to  observe  that  none  of  these  four  commen- 
tators is  or  was  a  regular  day-in-day-out  book  reviewer.  They're  Gentle- 
men rather  than  Players.  We  professionals  do  not  in  the  nature  of 
things  wield  any  such  power.  I  have  never  heard  of  Lewis  Gannett  or 
Harry  Hansen  or  Sterling  North  or  Joseph  Henry  Jackson  or  Donald 


L  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Adams  or  Clifton  Fadiman  "making"  a  book  singlehanded.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  a  few  of  the  authors  included  in  this  volume  are 
present  because  all  my  tumult  and  shouting,  when  theii  hooks  first 
appeared,  resulted  in  nothing  but  a  nation-wide  lack  of  demand. 

A  minor  trait  in  the  American  character  makes  us  pay  less  atten- 
tion to  the  literary  judgments  of  professionals  than  to  those  of  dis- 
tinguished nonprofessionals.  A  striking  instance,  to  go  hack  almost  a 
generation,  is  the  instant  popularity  into  which  J.  S.  Fletcher,  the 
English  detective-story  writer,  sprang  when  Woodrow  Wilson,  then 
President,  happened  to  praise  his  work,  which  was  no  better  or  worse 
than  that  of  fifty  other  thriller  manufacturers.  A  parallel  instance  in 
England  was  Stanley  Baldwins  endorsement  some  years  ago  of  the 
novels  of  Mary  Webb.  They  were  at  once  gobbled  up  by  the  thou- 
sand, unfortunately  a  little  too  late  to  do  the  author  any  good,  for 
she  had  died  some  time  before  in  utter  poverty. 

If  Franklin  D.  Roosevelt  should  happen  to  go  all  out  for  some 
novel  tomorrow  it  would  at  once  become  a  best  seller,  irrespective  of 
its  real  merits,  but  if  he  should  issue  a  weekly  verdict  on  new  books, 
his  opinion  within  a  few  months  would  cease  to  have  any  great 
influence. 

Columnists,  radio  commentators,  editorial  writers,  lecturers,  even 
big  businessmen  will  on  occasion  influence  the  sale  of  books  more 
sharply  than  reviewers  can.  On  the  other  hand,  preachers,  whose  lit- 
erary influence  a  generation  or  so  ago  was  marked,  have  now  sunk  to 
a  minor  role  as  book  recom menders. 

One  of  the  paradoxes  of  bookselling,  observable  only  during  the 
last  few  years,  is  that  a  book  may  be  helped  by  one  or  more  of  the 
so-called  competitive  media.  A  book's  sale  will  be  increased  by  its 
translation  into  a  moving  picture.  Alice  Duer  Miller's  The  White 
Cliffs  became  a  best  seller  largely  because  it  was  so  successfully  broad- 
cast. And,  to  take  a  more  striking  example,  the  condensations^  of 
popular  books  to  be  found  in  the  Reader's  Digest  frequently  tend  to 
accelerate  the  sale  of  these  publications  in  their  original  form.  There 
is  no  such  thing  as  bad  publicity  for  books. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  one  thing  that  does  not  sell  them  is  the 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  LI 

publisher's  jacket  blurb.  This  is  generally  written  after  much  brow 
furrowing  and  is  almost  completely  ineffective.  Sometimes  blurbs  help 
the  reviewer,  but  not  much;  more  often  they  aid  the  harried  book- 
seller. Yet  I  have  never  seen  a  potential  book  buyer  influenced  by 
them.  My  own  practice  is  to  be  wary  of  them.  Their  extravagance  is 
often  so  absurd  that  the  reviewer  loses  his  detachment  and  is  unduly 
severe  with  the  innocent  book.  "One  of  the  outstanding  biographers 
of  our  time/'  said  the  blurbist  a  year  or  two  ago— about  whom?  About 
a  journalist  named  Hector  Bolitho,  who  has  devoted  himself  to  the 
extremely  dull  task  of  composing  official  slop  about  the  English  royal 
family.  "The  greatest  of  living  historians"  is  the  blurb  characteriza- 
tion of  Philip  Guedalla,  a  writer  of  quality,  but  no  more  the  greatest 
of  living  historians  than  I  am.  A  tedious  Scandinavian  named  Trygve 
Gulbranssen  was  tagged  by  his  publishers  as  "One  of  the  great  writers 
of  the  day,"  which  may  have  been  literally  true,  the  day  being  un- 
specified. This  jacket  racket  alienates  reviewers. 

One  comment  I  must  add  about  my  life  as  a  reviewer.  It  is  directly 
responsible  for  the  making  of  this  book.  This  is  a  book  of  rereadings. 
In  fact,  I  had  originally  intended  to  call  it  A  Reviewer's  Rereader. 
It  is  the  result  of  a  re-examination  or  reconsideration  of  a  great  many 
of  the  thousands  of  books  I  have  read  and  reviewed  or  just  read.  1 
wanted  for  my  own  satisfaction  to  discover  how  much  of  what  I  had 
read  (or  characteristic  excerpts  from  it)  would  stand  the  entirely  per- 
sonal acid  test  of  at  least  three  reperusals. 

In  this  business  of  reperusal  I  spent  many  interesting  months.  I 
got  a  great  deal  of  fun  out  of  it,  and  many  disappointments,  too.  As 
I  read  I  thought  of  some  of  my  friends  who  never  reread  and  of 
others  who  don't  like  any  book  unless,  like  game,  it  is  just  a  trifle 
moldy.  I  must  admit  that  I  could  never  exercise  any  Christian  charity 
on  that  old  gander  who  said  with  lardy  self-satisfaction  that  whenever 
a  new  book  appeared  he  reread  an  old  one.  What  did  he  do  in  1849 
when  David  Copperfield  was  a  new  book?  I  don't  suppose  he  paid 
any  attention  in  1605  when  a  grizzled  Spanish  veteran  came  out  with 
a  tale  called  Don  Quixote  de  la  Mancha.  And  the  Erst  time  Homer 


LII  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

smote  'is  bloomiri  lyre  I  imagine  our  friend  was  busy  scrutinizing 
the  cave  diawings  of  Altamira. 

That  most  of  the  best  hooks  were  written  some  time  ago  we  may 
freely  admit.  But  when  you  consider  how  much  more  Was  than  Now 
there  has  always  been  (with  every  passing  moment  busily  increasing 
the  odds  in  Was'  favor)  the  circumstance  is  not  surprising.  But  what 
of  it?  Can  we  May-fly  mortals  afford  to  spend  all  our  brief  allotment 
reading  only  the  best?  So  much  is  missed  that  way.  Transients  and 
second-raters  ourselves,  why  should  we  deny  ourselves  the  warm  and 
homely  feeling  of  kinship  that  comes  of  reading  the  pages  of  other 
transients  and  second-raters? 

"Old  wine,  old  friends,  old  books  are  best,"  said  Hug-the-Hearth, 
wrapping  the  mantle  of  conservatism  about  the  trembling  bones  of 
his  timidity.  This  may  be  so,  in  a  measure,  but  that  is  no  reason  for 
not  testing  our  palate  against  new  wine,  our  personality  against  new 
friends,  our  mental  pliancy  against  new  books.  How  many  males  in 
full  possession  of  their  faculties  have  been  put  off  the  quest  of  novelty 
by  the  reflection  that  to  know  one  woman  is  to  know  all?  The  rut  of 
uthe  best  that  has  been  thought  and  said  in  the  world"  is  nonetheless 
a  rut,  if  a  noble  one. 

How  often  have  you  not  fled  the  biblio-hobbyists  who  sport  a 
favorite  author  as  they  would  a  favorite  flower?  The  whimsical  bores 
who  "Jcnow  their  Alice"— and  little  else.  The  Jane-ites,  so  proud  and 
prejudiced,  for  whom  nothing  has  happened  to  the  English  novel 
since  Miss  Austen  turned  up  her  genteel  toes.  The  Thackerayans,  for 
whom  rereading  The  Newcomes  semiannually  is  a  religious  rite.  The 
W.  S.  Gilbert-quoters,  the  Moby  Dickensians—but  why  go  on?  Som- 
erset Maugham  puts  it  mildly  but  well:  "I  know  people  who  read  the 
same  book  over  and  over  again.  It  can  only  be  that  they  read  with 
their  eyes  and  not  with  their  sensibility.  It  is  a  mechanical  exercise 
like  the  Tibetan  turning  of  a  prayer  wheel.  It  is  doubtless  a  harmless 
occupation  but  they  are  wrong  if  they  think  it  is  an  intelligent  one." 

On  the  other  hand— these  matters  are  always  conveniently  ambi- 
dextrous—he is  no  less  tiresome  who  "keeps  up  with  the  new  books" 
as  though  current  literature  were  a  motor-paced  bicycle  race.  I  should 
say  they  are  well  worth  shunning,  those  earnest  souls  to  whom  read- 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  LIII 

ing  is  a  form  of  competition,  who,  on  finishing  a  new  publication, 
feel  they  have  beaten  someone  or  something.  Such  worship  of  the 
book-of-the-day  is  infantile. 

My  venerated  Columbia  professor,  Raymond  Weaver,  whose  knowl- 
edge and  personality  are  alike  classical,  is  credited  with  an  apposite 
legend.  At  a  dinner  party  one  evening  a  bright  young  thing  queried, 
in  her  most  buffed  and  polished  finishing-school  voice,  "Mr.  Weaver, 
have  you  read  So-and-so's  book?"  (naming  a  modish  best  seller  of  the 
moment). 

Mr.  Weaver  confessed  he  had  not. 

"Oh,  you'd  better  hurry  up— it's  been  out  over  three  months!" 

Mr.  Weaver,  an  impressive  gentleman  with  a  voice  like  a  Greek 
herald,  turned  to  her,  and  said,  "My  dear  young  lady,  have  you  read 
Dante's  Divine  Comedy?" 

"No." 

"Then  youd  better  hurry  up— it's  been  out  over  six  hundred  years." 

To  the  average  male  there  is  something  a  little  ridiculous  in  the 
aspect  of  a  woman  wearing  a  hat  which  he  has  just  seen  advertised  as 
the  very  latest  thing.  More,  to  him  she  is  provincial.  Lacking  the  in- 
dependence that  would  permit  her  to  choose  a  hat  of  yesterday,  of 
tomorrow,  or  even  a  timeless  hat,  if  timeless  hats  there  be,  she  is,  in 
his  eyes,  the  prisoner  of  the  moment,  her  hat-horizon  bounded  by  the 
confines  of  a  split  second.  The  stylish  (repulsive  word)  hat  has  no 
true  style. 

As  with  millinery,  so  with  literature.  There  is  no  reader  so  parochial 
as  the  one  who  reads  none  but  this  mornings  books.  Books  are  not 
rolls,  to  be  devoured  only  when  they  are  hot  and  fresh.  A  good 
book  retains  its  interior  heat  and  will  warm  a  generation  yet  un- 
born. He  who  conEnes  himself  only  to  today  s  books  is  more  nar- 
rowly circumscribed  by  time  than  he  who  reads  only  yesteryear's.  You 
can  be  inexorably  old-fashioned  or  perennially  up  to  the  minute.  In 
either  case  you  are  dated. 

We  are  driven,  then,  to  the  dull,  sane  conclusion  that  the  proper 
diet  is  a  mixed  one.  No  special  magic  virtue  inheres  in  either  old  or 
new  books. 


LIV  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

But  let  us  return  to  our  muttonhead  who,  whenever  a  new  book 
appeared,  reread  an  old  one.  He  must  have  owned  one  of  Mr.  Lind- 
bergh's mechanical  hearts,  incapable  oi  mutation,  for  rereading  is 
one  of  the  barometers  by  which  we  note  the  changes  in  our  mental 
and  emotional  climate.  Rarely  do  we  reread  a  book  once  greatly  loved 
and  receive  from  it  exactly  our  original  pleasure.  Note  that  I  say 
receive;  this  is  not  to  assert  that  we  cannot  recall  our  original  pleas- 
ure, but  that  is  not  the  same  thing. 

Of  this  recall  value  William  Hazlitt  says:  "In  reading  a  book  which 
is  an  old  favourite  with  me  (say  the  Erst  novel  I  ever  read)  I  not  only 
have  the  pleasure  of  imagination  and  of  a  critical  relish  of  the  work, 
but  the  pleasures  of  memory  added  to  it.  It  recalls  the  same  feelings 
and  associations  which  I  had  in  Erst  reading  it,  and  which  I  can  never 
have  again  in  any  other  way.  Standard  productions  of  this  kind  are 
links  in  the  chain  of  out  conscious  being.  They  bind  together  the  dif- 
ferent scattered  divisions  of  our  personal  identity.  They  are  landmarks 
and  guides  in  our  journey  through  life.  They  are  pegs  and  loops  on 
which  we  can  hang  up,  or  from  which  we  can  take  down,  at  pleasure, 
the  wardrobe  of  a  moral  imagination,  the  relics  of  our  best  affections, 
the  tokens  and  records  of  our  happiest  hours.  They  are  'for  thoughts 
and  for  remembrance!'  They  are  like  Fortunatus's  Wishing-Cap—they 
give  us  the  best  riches— those  of  Fancy;  and  transport  us,  not  over 
half  the  globe,  but  (which  is  better)  over  half  our  lives,  at  a  word's 
notice!" 

There  you  have  the  sunny  side  of  rereading.  In  the  course  of  pre- 
paring this  collection,  however,  I  have  constantly  been  confronted 
with  a  shady  side  also.  For  the  "pleasures  of  memory"  are  not  all 
Hazlitt  cracked  them  up  to  be.  Most  of  the  time  rereading  is  a  melan- 
choly experience.  Turning  pages  out  of  which  a  decade  or  two  ago 
surprise  and  excitement  fairly  leaped  at  us,  we  End  surprise  and  excite- 
ment no  longer  summonable.  A  breath  of  autumn  invades  the  heart- 
vacancy,  almost  a  kind  of  paralysis.  Surely  this  is  not  the  book  we 
once  read,  but  a  faded  photograph  of  it,  with  all  its  original  lights 
and  shadows  smoked  over  into  a  dim,  pathetic  grayness.  We  close 
the  book  ruefully.  It  is,  we  say,  dated. 

Dated?  But  perhaps  it  is  we  who  are  dated.  The  book  may  have 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  LV 

died,  but  just  as  frequently  we  have  died  ourselves,  or  changed  our 
temperament  just  as  the  physiologists  tell  us  we  replace  our  bodies 
completely  every  seven  years  or  so.  The  other  day,  for  example,  I 
reread  Knut  Hamsun  s  Pan.  A  score  of  years  ago  it  moved  me  greatly; 
today  I  cannot  stomach  it.  Who  has  changed,  Hamsun  or  I?  Like  the 
unfortunate  little  old  woman  in  the  rhyme,  the  one  whose  petticoats 
were  half  shot  from  under  her,  I  found  myself  wondering  if  this 
could  be  I. 

And  it  was  not  I,  or  not  the  same  I. 1  tried  to  figure  it  out.  Perhaps 
my  taste  had  decayed.  Oi  perhaps  the  book  had  been  bad  all  along, 
and  my  original  judgment  was  faulty.  My  pride  (one  of  the  elements 
of  the  human  personality  which  apparently  remains  constant)  pre- 
vented me  from  accepting  either  solution  with  pleasure.  I  introspected 
busily  for  a  half-hour  or  so,  and  came  up  with  an  odd  tangle  of 
theoretical  explanations. 

Pan  deals  in  part  with  romantic  love,  a  subject  in  which  I  had  a 
more  burning  interest  at  seventeen  than  I  now  have  at  thirty-seven. 
There  is  a  kind  of  emotional  mistiness  about  Pan  which  corre- 
sponded, it  may  be,  to  the  Schwarmerei  of  youth.  Today,  quite  pos- 
sibly overvaluing  it,  I  look  for  clarity  above  all  in  what  I  read. 
Finally,  today  I  dislike  Hamsun  because  he  is  a  Nazi.  Who  am  J  to 
say  that  my  subconscious  (never  a  sound  literary  critic)  does  not  rise 
up  to  prevent  me  from  enjoying  anything  at  all  by  a  man  whose  po- 
litical opinions  I  now  detest? 

What  I  am  struggling  to  indicate  is  that  a  book  may  be  a  "good" 
book  at  one  stage  of  your  life  and  a  "bad"  book  at  another— and  to 
tell  absolutely  how  "bad"  or  "good"  it  is  is  impossible.  The  factors 
that  make  it  good  or  bad  may  be  nonliterary,  matters  of  accident. 

There  is  the  whole  question  of  "mood" — a  question  so  involved 
that  neither  psychologists  nor  literary  critics  can  say  anything  about  it 
at  all  convincing.  You  just  "happen"  to  pick  up  a  book  on  Wednesday 
evening,  and  it  reads  well.  On  Tuesday  evening  it  might  have  seemed 
a  bore.  What  factors  enter  here?  Who  knows— metabolic  rate,  what 
you  did  at  the  office  during  the  day,  the  presence  or  absence  of  fatigue, 
worry.  .  .  .  The  fact  is  that  a  book,  if  it  has  blood  in  it  and  is  not 
merely  some  standard  confection,  is  a  vital  thing.  To  read  a  book  is 


LVI  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

to  enter  into  contact  with  something  alive.  It  is  more  like  talking  to 
a  friend  than  like  driving  a  car.  Reading  is  not  an  operation  per- 
formed on  something  inert  hut  a  relationship  entered  into  with  an- 
other heing. 

At  certain  times  you  just  "can't  stand"  anybody— your  hest  friend? 
your  wife  or  husband;  it  makes  no  difference.  You  dont  really  know 
why  your  mind  refuses  to  touch  that  of  another  person,  but  you  know 
that  it  does  refuse.  So  is  it  with  hooks— and  that  is  one  reason  re- 
reading even  the  hest  of  hooks  is  often  a  disillusioning  procedure. 

Are  there  any  hooks  that  the  "intelligent  reader"  (a  phrase  invented 
by  critics  to  circumvent  immodesty)  can  always  profitably  reread? 
People  like  Mortimer  Adler  are  certain  that  there  are.  He  calls 
them  classics,  and  would  base  education  on  them.  To  a  degree  he  is 
right.  There  is  a  quality  of  inexhaustibility  about  some  of  the  great 
Greeks,  for  example,  that  makes  them  always  rereadable  in  that 
there  are  always  new  insights  to  be  drawn  from  them.  They  have  also 
the  quality  of  difficulty  (not  to  be  confused  with  obscurity)— a  qual- 
ity which  often  helps  to  keep  alive  a  book  that  would  perish  were 
it  simpler.  But  even  these  great  classics  can  on  occasion  be  unreread- 
able.  I  do  not  contest  the  greatness  of  Plato,  and  yet  there  are  certain 
moods  in  which  I  cannot  read  him,  moods  in  which  he  (or  his  mouth- 
piece Socrates)  seems  to  me  to  be  a  clever,  self-satisEed,  quibbling? 
hair-splitting,  intellectual  snob.  And  when  I  feel  this  way,  the  page 
of  Plato  turns  to  dust  and  ashes,  and  even  the  Phaedo  (which  I 
know  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  things  ever  written)  seems  contrived. 
No  matter  how  superior  the  author  may  be  to  the  reader,  there  must 
be  a  certain  harmony  between  them,  or  they  cannot  mate.  This 
harmony  is  elusive,  unattainable  by  mere  wishing,  a  function  of 
mood,  whim,  perhaps  even  temperature.  I  should  not  be  surprised 
if  our  reading  reactions  were  in  part  influenced  by  the  sunspots. 

There  are  certain  books  that  you  attempt  again  and  again,  "and 
which  continue  to  resist  you  because  you  are  not  ripe  for  them.  Dur- 
ing the  last  twenty  years,  for  instance,  I  have  tried  perhaps  ten  times 
to  read  The  Brothers  Karamazov  and  each  time  given  up  in  a  rage 
directed  equally  at  Dostoevsky  and  myself.  Only  recently  I  tried  it 
once  more  and  found  its  reputation  thoroughly  deserved.  Reading  it 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  LVII 

now  with  the  greatest  absorption,  I  am  convinced  it  is  the  sort  oi 
hook  that  requires  the  reader  (that  is,  most  readers)  to  he  oi  a  certain 
age.  Until  now  I  was  simply  too  young  for  it,  and  that's  why  it 
seemed  to  me  dull  and  farfetched.  It  is  a  hook  you  (I  mean  myself) 
have  to  grow  up  to.  One  of  these  days  I  am  going  to  reread  Turgenev's 
Fathers  and  Sons,  which  I  raced  through  at  fifteen,  getting,  I  am 
sure,  precisely  nothing  from  it.  I  have  the  feeling  that  I  am  now  about 
ready  for  it.  But  I  may  be  mistaken;  I  may  still  be  too  young  for  it. 

I  often  think  of  that  quiet  story  of  the  Franciscan  monk  who  was 
found  reading  Willa  Cathefs  Death  Comes  for  the  Archbishop. 
Aslced  his  opinion  of  it,  he  replied,  "Well,  J  have  read  it  five  times, 
but,  you  see,  I  have  not  finished  it  yet."  All  of  us  have  read  books 
that  we  have  not  finished  yet,  books  perhaps  unfinishable,  books  so 
subtle  and  multileveled  as  to  reveal  themselves  newly  with  each  re- 
reading. I  have,  for  example,  reread  Thomas  Mann's  The  Magic 
Mountain  five  times  (there  is  an  extract  from  it  in  this  book)  and  I 
know  I  have  still  to  give  it  a  final  reading.  Such  books  do  not  sur- 
render themselves  at  once  but  are  like  the  most  desirable  of  women, 
difficult  in  the  beginning  but,  once  won,  durable  in  their  appeal. 

What  makes  a  book  rereadable?  The  answer  depends  on  the  reader 
as  well  as  on  the  book.  To  Mr.  Adler  a  rereadable  book  is  an  "origi- 
nal communication,"  one  marking  a  milestone  in  the  history  of  West- 
ern thought  and  imagination.  To  the  sentimentalist  (that  takes  in  a 
lot  of  us)  it  may  be  a  book  read  in  childhood;  he  rereads  and  reloves 
not  only  the  book,  but  himself  as  a  child.  (This  explains  why  so  many 
people  to  whom  their  childhood  is  an  obsession  cannot  bear  to  throw 
away  their  nursery  classics.)  To  another  a  book  may  be  rereadable  if 
it  echoes  his  own  unalterable  prejudices.  It  is  a  gauge  by  which  he 
may  complacently  measure  his  lack  of  mental  progress.  People  who 
believe  in  The  Truth  often  read  one  book  or  group  of  books  all  their 
lives.  For  them  the  last  word  has  been  uttered  by,  say,  Thomas 
Aquinas  or  Adolf  Hitler  or  Friedrich  Nietzsche.  Hence  they  stick  to 
their  particular  Bible  and  wear  it  to  shreds.  Such  readers  are  almost 
always  psychopaths.  A  one-book  man  is  a  dangerous  man  and  should 
be  taken  in  hand  and  taught  how  to  diversify  his  literary  investments. 


LVIII  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

J  have  been  trying  for  some  time  to  determine  what  kind  of  book 
I  myself  reread  with  pleasure.  This  is  an  exercise  of  no  particular 
importance  to  anyone.  Still,  inasmuch  as  this  entire  volume  consists  of 
material  that  I  have  enjoyed,  its  purchaser  is  perhaps  entitled  to  some 
explanation  of  my  choices. 

All  of  us  are  familiar  with  the  dismaying  fact  that  an  attractive 
personality  often  has  little  to  do  with  a  persons  moral  qualities  or 
even  his  physical  appearance.  It  is  quite  possible  to  be  extremely  fond 
of  a  man  who  neglects  his  mother.  Even  his  mother  is  often  fond  of 
him.  Similarly,  what  I  call  the  "magical"  quality  of  a  book— the 
quality  which  for  me  makes  it  rereadable—is  not  necessarily  de- 
pendent on  the  book's  importance,  its  intellectual  weight,  its  position 
in  the  critics7  hierarchy  of  values. 

For  example,  serious  students  of  literature  would  doubtless  rank 
Madame  Bovary  as  a  more  significant  work  of  fiction  than  Great 
Expectations.  Probably  it  is.  There  is  no  question  but  that  it  has 
influenced  the  course  of  literature,  whereas  Great  Expectations  hap- 
pens to  be  merely  a  Dickens  novel  that  millions  of  plain  readers  have 
enjoyed.  But  for  me  Madame  Bovary  has  no  virtues  except  those  of 
perfection.  It  is  without  magic,  without  personality,  it  is  not  reread- 
able.  It  is  about  as  interesting  as  Sir  Galahad.  Great  Expectations,  on 
the  other  hand,  is  magical,  and  its  magic  works  every  time.  For  me  the 
scene  on  the  deserted  moor  in  which  Pip  meets  the  convict  beats  any- 
thing in  Madame  Bovary.  I  dont  quite  understand  why  this  should 
be  so,  but  so  it  is.  A  lycee-trained  Frenchman  might  have  the  opposite 
reaction  and  be  equally  unable  to  defend  it. 

Now  this  magic  is  a  very  elusive  thing.  It  may  have  any  of  a 
hundred  shapes  and  forms.  It  may  be  a  comic  magic,  as  in  the 
"swarry"  scene  from  Pickwick.  It  may  be  a  fearsome  magic,  as  in 
the  cave  episode  from  Tom  Sawyer.  It  may  be  deeply  tragical- 
Lear  on  the  heath.  In  all  these  cases  the  writing  has  a  penumbra,  a 
"thickness"  which  the  most  intellectually  precise  notation  of  a  Flau- 
bert does  not  have.  This  penumbra  does  not  necessarily  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  remoteness  from  reality,  with  "romanticism."  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  "romantic"  than  the  talcs  of  Poe.  Yet,  to  my  taste, 
admirable  as  they  are,  they  lack  magic.  They  are  mathematical,  their 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  LIX 

romance  is  calculated.  Indeed,  most  tales  of  the  supernatural  have 
this  planned  quality  and  that  is  why  so  few  of  them  are  great  litera- 
ture. It  is  when  the  supernatural  is  accepted  by  the  author  as  related 
to  the  human  that  literature  results.  There  is  nothing  artificial  about 
the  Iliad  or  the  Odyssey,  though  they  are  full  of  miracles  and 
divinities. 

Penumbral  literature,  to  use  a  horrible  phrase,  is  not  necessarily 
fanciful,  then.  Cabell  is  full  of  fancy  but  he  has  no  magic.  His  words 
cast  no  shadow.  Huck  Finn  and  Jim  on  the  river  are  about  as  unfanci- 
ful  as  you  can  imagine.  But  what  they  say  has  nonterminating  rever- 
berations. 

Magic  is  not  confined  to  "imaginative"  literature.  For  me  there  is 
magic  in  Russell's  "A  Free  Mans  Worship,"  which  you  will  End  in 
this  book.  There  is  magic  in  Gibbons  explanation  of  how  he  came  to 
write  the  Decline  and  Fall.  There  is  magic  in  the  scientific  populariza- 
tions of  Sir  Arthur  Eddington.  All  of  these  works  set  a  bell  ringing  in 
the  brain.  They  do  not  become  merely  additions  to  your  mental  store 
but  inhabitants  of  your  mind.  There  are  certain  clear  and  precise 
ideas  that  are  as  haunting  as  Heathcliff.  Descartes7  system  of  ana- 
lytical geometry  can  be  as  stimulating  to  the  imagination  as  the 
soliloquies  of  Ahab,  though  on  a  different  level. 

A  few  pages  back  I  said  that  everything  in  this  book  has  been 
read  by  the  compiler  at  least  three  times  with  pleasure.  By  this  I  do 
not  mean  that  everything  in  this  book  is  forever  rereadable  or  that 
all  of  it  is  great  literature.  Some  of  it  I  am  sure  is,  but  many  things 
are  included  that  are  not  of  permanent  value.  For  example,  the  in- 
cluded stories  of  Somerset  Maugham  have  no  immortal  qualities. 
They  set  no  bells  ringing  in  the  mind.  But  they  are  so  admirably 
composed,  they  do  so  perfectly  the  minor  thing  the  author  set  out 
to  do,  they  are  so  exact  an  expression  of  a  particular  attitude  toward 
life,  that  they  give  me  a  rare  and  special  pleasure.  I  have  found  this 
pleasure,  I  say,  repeatable  three  times.  Three  times  should  be  enough 
for  any  man. 

In  making  up  the  contents  of  this  book  I  worked  within  no  limi- 
tations except  my  own  taste,  a  certain  size,  in  excess  of  which  the 


LX  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

volume  would  not  have  been  commercially  feasible,  and  the  usual 
restrictions  of  copyright.  With  respect  to  the  last,  however,  I  may 
say  that  everything  I  originally  wanted  to  include  is  here,  with  one 
exception— Lee  Strout  Whites  ineEably  touching  "Farewell  to  Model 
T,"  which  was  gently  denied  me  for  reasons  I  found  perfectly  satis- 
factory. Please  manage  to  read  it  anyway. 

I  have  made  no  attempt  to  "balance"  the  reading  ration,  to  have 
equal  proportions  of  "light"  and  "heavy'  material,  or  of  English  and 
American  productions.  I  included  what  I  liked  of  the  work  I  had 
read  and  reviewed,  or  in  some  cases  only  read,  during  the  last  two 
decades  or  so. 

It  happens  that  you  will  End  in  this  hook  biographies,  anecdotes, 
brief  Ection,  semilong  Ection,  excerpts  from  novels,  sketches,  essays 
(both  familiar  and  formal),  a  book  review,  humorous  pieces  (includ- 
ing one  complete  book  of  humor),  excerpts  from  a  dictionary,  a 
judicial  decision,  reflections  on  nature,  a  long  letter,  an  excerpt  from 
a  speech,  and  a  collection  of  epigrams.  You  will  End  work  by 
Americans,  Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  Germans,  a  Spanish-American, 
and  an  Australian.  You  will  End  lengthy  pieces  and  brief  pieces,  trivial 
work  and  weighty  work,  work  that  I  believe  permanent  and  work 
that  I  know  is  transient,  work  by  established  writers  and  by  new- 
comers, by  the  radical  and  the  reactionary,  the  traditionalist  and  the 
experimentalist,  the  old  and  the  young,  the  living  and  the  dead. 
Variety  is  not  a  major  virtue,  but  this  book  has  it. 

It  may  be  objected  that  the  taste  which  governed  the  selection  is 
so  catholic  as  to  be  in  eEect  no  taste  at  all.  How  can  a  man  be  so* 
barren  of  the  salt  of  preference  that  he  can  at  the  same  time  like  a 
gentle  old  lady  such  as  Sarah  Orne  Jewett  and  a  tough  mug  such  as 
Ernest  Hemingway?  How  can  he  at  once  admire  the  elegant  frippery7 
of  Alexander  Woollcott  and  the  profound  seriousness  of  Thomas 
Mann?  What  is  there  in  common  between  the  homely  Indiana 
cracker-box  philosophy  of  Kin  Flubbard  and  the  jeweled  suavity  of 
Santayana's  sinuous  thought? 

I  must  unmask  and  declare  myself  at  once.  My  friends,  I  am  that 
most  despised  of  literary  animals,  an  eclectic.  I  am  so  disuniEed,  such 
a  miserable  polymorph  of  a  man,  that  my  nature  responds  to  other 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  LXI 

natures  that  are  wildly  disparate.  I  suppose  the  humanists  of  a  decade 
ago  would  say  that  I  have  no  standards.  Moralists  of  any  decade 
would  say  that  I  have  no  convictions.  Logicians  will  point  out  that  my 
taste  is  contradictory.  And  my  colleagues  will  simply  say  that  I  could 
have  made  better  choices,  which  is  quite  possible. 

I  plead  guilty  to  the  charge  of  being  able  to  enjoy  more  than  one 
kind  of  writing,  which  is  far  from  equivalent  to  enjoying  all  kinds. 
(Someday  I  should  like  to  compile  an  anthology  of  work  that  I  detest, 
with  reasons.)  My  personality,  like  that  of  most  people  I  meet,  is 
full  of  splits;  and  the  variations  in  temper  and  mood  that  you  will 
End  in  this  book  correspond,  I  dimly  feel,  to  those  lines  of  cleavage. 
Something  in  me  is  satisfied  by  the  lunacies  of  S.  J.  Perelman 
and  something  else  by  the  lucidities  of  Bertrand  Russell.  Yet  I  feel  it 
is  somehow  the  same  fellow  that  is  satisfied,  that  I  am  not  a  ragbag 
but  a  man. 

A  keen  critic— perhaps  it  was  Edmund  Wilson— once  pointed  out 
that  the  major  characters  in  a  great  novel  were  often  unconscious 
projections  of  unreconciled  factors  in  the  author's  own  character.  I 
believe  this  to  be  profoundly  true.  I  suppose  that  on  an  inconceivably 
lower  level  this  book  is  a  projection  of  unreconciled  factors  in  the 
character  of  the  compiler.  No  doubt  a  good  analyst  (he  must  also  be 
a  man  of  literary  perception)  could,  by  a  careful  examination  of  the 
contents,  make  a  shrewd  guess  at  the  personality  of  the  compiler. 
For  just  as  all  actions  imply  a  choice,  so  all  choices  are  actions,  and 
actions  are  the  man. 

But  these  are  refinements  that  have  little  to  do  with  whether  or 
not  you  will  enjoy  this  book.  I  can  only  say  that  I  have  not  con- 
sciously included  anything  insincere  or  false,  or  anything  careless  in 
craftsmanship.  I  believe  everything  you  will  read  here,  if  the  product 
of  hands  other  than  my  own,  is  of  its  kind  extremely  well  written. 
I  believe  nothing  here  is  dead,  inert,  but  that  these  words,  whether 
major  or  minor,  are  vascular. 

As  to  the  commentaries  that  accompany  them,  I  would  say  only 
that  they  are  intended  not  to  be  criticism  but  rather  the  most  infor- 
mal kind  of  personal  annotation.  Most  of  them  are  examples  of  what 
Swinburne  called  uthe  noble  pleasure  of  praising,"  for  this  is  a  book 


LXII  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  enthusiasms.  The  commentaries  need  not  be  read  at  all,  if  the 
reader  so  wishes,  for  each  selection  is  perfectly  comprehensible  with- 
out their  aid.  I  guess  I  just  enjoyed  writing  them. 

One  last  word.  It  is  in  a  way  a  fatuous  gesture,  some  might  think, 
to  produce  a  hook  of  this  character  at  a  time  when  mankind  is 
engaged  in  a  life-and-death  struggle  with  itself.  Why  should  we  con- 
cern ourselves  with  these  stories  and  essays,  however  pleasing  they 
may  be,  when  in  another  decade  the  very  conditions  that  produced 
them  may  have  vanished  from  the  tormented  face  of  the  earth?  I 
say,  for  that  very  reason. 

I  have  lately  been  reading  a  disturbing  hook  called  The  Managerial 
Revolution,  by  a  professor  of  philosophy  named  James  Burnham. 
(One  should  never  underestimate  professors  of  philosophy;  Socrates 
was  one.)  Mr.  Burnhanis  thesis  is  at  the  moment  being  widely  dis- 
cussed, I  am  told,  by  businessmen,  a  circumstance  I  happen  to  find 
almost  humorous,  for  among  the  groups  who  will  have  no  place  in 
Mr.  Burnham's  projected  society  of  the  future  will  assuredly  be  those 
accustomed  to  thinking  in  terms  of  buying  and  selling,  profit  and 
loss. 

Briefly,  here  is  what  Mr.  Burnham  expounds,  with  a  chilly  logic 
that  is  perhaps  too  symmetrical  to  be  completely  convincing.  The 
whole  world  is  now  in  the  grip  of  an  irreversible  revolutionary  proc- 
ess. This  revolution  has  nothing  to  do  with  traditional  socialist  or 
communist  conceptions.  On  the  contrary,  socialism  has  already  failed 
irretrievably,  and  capitalism  has  either  abdicated  or  is  abdicating.  The 
world  of  the  immediate  future  (we  are  already  partially  living  in  that 
future)  is  a  world  of  superstates,  probably  three  in  number,  in  which 
the  master  class  will  be  a  group  of  "managers"  and  their  bureaucratic, 
technical,  and  military  assistants.  This  class  will  dominate  completely 
a  servile  mass  of  workers  and  common  fodder.  The  objective  of  the 
superstate,  within  its  own  confines,  will  be  not  profit  but  order.  This 
order  is  largely  definable  in  terms  of  efficient  production.  The  final 
objective  of  each  of  the  three  superstates  (the  European,  dominated 
by  Germany;  the  Asiatic,  dominated  by  Japan;  the  American,  domi- 
nated by  the  United  States)  is  world  mastery,  obtainable  by  war. 


CLIFTON  FADIMAN  LXIII 

This  war  has  already  begun.  We  are  in  its  first  phase.  This  is  the 
Erst  managerial  war.  It  will  be  won  (temporarily)  by  that  state  which 
most  efficiently  substitutes  managerial  techniques  for  the  outmoded 
democratic-capitalist  ones. 

Mr.  Burnham,  by  the  way,  does  not  like  the  world  whose  blue- 
prints he  so  firmly  draws.  But  he  is  quite  convinced  of  its  imminence. 
Any  fair-minded  reader  will  have  to  admit  that  much  of  what  he 
says  seems  at  the  moment  to  make  sense  of  a  horrible  kind. 

It  may  be  that  he  is  right.  It  may  be  that  mankind's  next  stage 
is  the  managerial  state— possibly,  as  Mr.  Burnham  hopes,  a  managerial 
state  in  which  will  be  incorporated  some  of  the  humane  and  demo- 
cratic values  in  which  you  and  I  believe.  But  these  values,  if  Mr. 
Burnham  is  right,  will  be  subordinated,  at  least  in  the  near  future, 
to  the  military  and  economic  necessities  of  the  state,  and  to  high 
conceptions  of  efficiency  and  order. 

That  means  the  death  of  the  individual,  for  the  masters,  if  they 
are  to  remain  masters,  will  have  to  abandon  their  unique  personalities 
just  as  surely  as  will  the  serfs.  They,  too,  will  become  the  slaves  of 
the  state  they  head,  even  if  all  the  emoluments— mainly  power- 
revert  to  them. 

And  with  the  death  of  the  individual  comes  the  death  of  the  arts, 
literature  among  them.  After  all,  what  is  art?  It  is  the  mode  by  which 
the  solitary  heart  of  any  one  man  bridges  the  gap  which  separates 
him  from  all  of  his  brothers,  mankind  in  general .  All  literature  is 
but  a  message,  strong  or  feeble,  sent  out  by  an  individual  and 
addressed  to  the  human  race.  "Only  connect,"  says  E.  M.  Forster; 
literature  is  such  a  means  of  connection. 

But  if  the  future  is  to  abolish  the  individual,  it  must  also  abolish 
the  notion  of  humanity  in  general,  in  favor  of  the  state.  When  the 
individual  and  humanity  have  both  vanished,  who  shall  send  a 
message  to  whom?  Thus  literature  perishes,  and  art  and  architecture 
and  music,  and  all  the  great  and  little  outcries  of  man. 

I  do  not  admit  that  there  is  no  alternative  to  this  Spenglerian 
world  view,  but  I  am  not  so  naive  as  not  to  see  that  already  the 
system  of  the  superstate  obtains  over  large  portions  of  our  planet. 
The  new  Dark  Age  has  begun.  Already  the  man  of  words,  the  man 


LXIV  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  sounds,  the  man  of  patterns,  the  man  of  symbols,  is  losing  face, 
ior  he  does  not  seem  necessary  if  wars  are  to  he  won,  trade  routes 
guarded,  homhs  dropped,  and  bodies  smashed.  He  is  not  at  all  the 
bringer  of  order  but  rather  of  that  divine  disorder  which  expresses 
mans  painful  desire  to  communicate  without  coalescing.  He  is,  it 
may  be,  already  out  of  date. 

But,  as  it  seems  to  me,  if  he  is  out  of  date,  it  is  because  he  is  date- 
less. He  may,  perhaps  he  will,  disappear  for  a  time,  a  long  time.  But 
disappear  forever  he  cannot,  for  he  is  man  himself,  just  as  truly  as 
the  bomb  dropper  and  the  sword  wielder  are  man  himself.  This  is  a 
great  civil  war  in  which  we  are  engaged,  greater,  I  think,  than  even 
Mr.  Burnham  conceives.  Man  is  struggling  with  himself.  A  certain 
part  of  him  is  now  paramount— the  blind  impulse  to  mass  unity, 
the  blind  impulse  to  obedience,  and  the  blind  impulse,  most  pow- 
erful of  all,  to  death.  Yet  these  impulses  war  with  others,  now  sub- 
merged and  overcast— the  impulse  to  communicate,  the  impulse  to 
free  one's  self  and  one's  neighbor,  the  impulse  to  live.  Sooner  or 
later,  and  it  may  be  very  much  later,  that  part  of  man  which  sings 
and  writes,  paints  and  prays,  laughs  and  cries  will  rise  like  Excalibur 
from  the  deep  lake  into  which  it  has  been  thrown. 

In  the  meantime  we  can  and  must,  by  a  crazy  paradox,  shed  blood 
in  order  that  the  shedding  of  blood  may  once  again  become  a  de- 
testable rather  than  an  habitual  thing.  And  in  the  meantime,  whether 
we  enter  a  Dark  Age  or  overcome  it,  it  is  our  duty  to  keep  alive  in 
our  own  memories,  confused  and  shaken  as  they  be,  the  tones  of  men 
who  believe  in  each  other,  who  talk  to  each  other,  using  words,  simple 
or  profound,  but  words,  living  speech,  the  signature  of  civilization. 

Clifton  Fadiman 
New  York  City 
July  10,  1941 


r^KHTX: 


rwf  r  i 


Reading 
I've  Liked 


/ 


.X 


EVE  CURIE 


COMMENTARY 


It  is  hard  to  think  of  many  first-rate  scientists  in  whom  some 
major  flaw  of  character  does  not  show  itself,  confounding  our  natural 
desire  for  wholehearted  hero  worship.  Descartes  was  ignoble,  Leib- 
nitz a  fawning  courtier,  Willard  Gibbs  a  recluse,  Gauss  cold  and  se- 
cretive. For  all  his  nobility,  Pasteur  was  stained  with  chauvinism  and 
race  hatred.  An  infantile  religiosity  clouded  to  the  end  the  magnifi- 
cent minds  of  Newton  and  Pascal.  But  the  lives  of  Marie  and  Pierre 
Curie,  two  of  the  most  beautiful  lives,  I  suppose,  that  have  ever  been 
lived,  provide  exceptions.  It  was  theatrically  apt  that  these  characters 
of  shining  purity  should  have  built  their  careers  around  a  physical 
element  recognizable  by  its  inner  radiance. 

Eve  Curies  life  of  her  mother,  published  in  English  in  1937,  al- 
ready has  the  ling  of  a  classic.  The  chapter  following,  one  of  the 
Bnest,  describes  the  climax  of  a  life  that  might  have  been  conceived 
by  the  patterning  brain  of  a  tragic  dramatist.  Before  you  read  it,  I 
suggest  that  you  look  at  a  photograph  of  Madame  Curie.  I  have  one 
before  me  now,  taken  when  she  was  sixty-two.  The  face  is  lined.  From 
underneath  the  white  and  casually  arranged  hair  arcs  an  abnormally 
spacious  brow.  She  is  dressed  in  a  simple  black  dress  that  looks  like 
a  laboratory  smock.  The  face  is  that  of  a  truly  beautiful  woman,  the 
beauty  lying  in  the  bones  and  in  the  brain  that  sends  its  clear  signals 
through  the  deep,  penetrating  eyes. 

The  story  of  Marie  Curie  is  not  merely  that  of  a  poor  Polish  gov- 
erness who  struggled  triumphantly  against  adversity.  The  story  of 
Marie  Curie  lies  in  the  fact  that  she  was  happiest  during  her  struggles 
and  least  happy  when  a  vulgar  world  acclaimed  her.  Hers  is  a  success 
story  a  rebours.  Einstein  has  said,  "Marie  Curie  is,  of  all  celebrated 
beings,  the  only  one  whom  fame  has  not  corrupted."  "She  did  not 
know  how  to  be  famous"  says  Eve  Curie.  In  one  deliberate  sentence 
she  strikes  to  the  heart  of  the  secret:  "I  hope  that  the  reader  may 
constantly  feel,  across  the  ephemeral  movement  of  one  existence, 

1 


2  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

what  in  Marie  Curie  was  even  more  rare  than  her  work  or  her  life: 
the  immovable  structure  of  a  character;  the  stubborn  effort  of  an  in- 
telligence; the  free  immolation  of  a  human  being  that  could  give  all 
and  take  nothing,  could  even  receive  nothing;  and  above  all  the  qual- 
ity of  a  soul  in  which  neither  fame  nor  adversity  could  change  the 
exceptional  purity!' 

Recall  that  unbelievable  dramatic  life.  She  is  born  Marya  Sklodov- 
ska,  youngest  child  of  a  Warsaw  physicist  and  a  sensitive,  tubercular 
mother.  The  childhood  is  unhappy,  torn  by  the  death  of  mother  and 
eldest  sister,  grayed  by  poverty,  given  a  certain  tenseness  by  the  fact 
that  she  is  a  member  of  a  subject  race,  the  Poles.  She  grows  up,  be- 
comes the  conventional  intellectual  rebel  of  her  time,  like  "all  the 
little  Polish  girls  who  had  gone  mad  for  culture.7'  She  is  intelligent, 
but  nothing  yet  reveals  that  "immovable  structure"  of  which  her 
daughter  speaks.  She  becomes  a  governess,  a  bit  of  a  bluestocking 
touched  with  Tolstoyan  sentimentality.  Now  "the  eternal  student" 
begins  to  rise  in  her.  The  little  child  who  at  Eve  stood  in  rapt  awe 
before  her  father's  case  containing  the  "phys-ics  ap-pa-ra-tus"  re- 
awakens in  the  girl  of  eighteen.  Her  duties  as  a  governess  do  not  pre- 
vent her  from  studying.  She  has  no  money,  not  even  for  stamps  so 
that  she  may  write  to  her  brother.  But  "I  am  learning  chemistry  from 
a  book."  Back  in  Warsaw,  she  is  allowed  to  perform  elementary  chem- 
ical experiments  in  a  real  laboratory,  and,  at  last,  after  inconceivable 
setbacks  and  economies,  after  years  of  weary  waiting,  she  goes  to 
Paris  to  study  at  the  Sorbonne. 

In  1894  s^e  meek>  Pierre  Curie,  already  a  physicist  of  note,  a  mind 
"both  powerful  and  noble."  In  an  atmosphere  of  garrets  and  labora- 
tories, these  two,  very  grave  and  serious,  conduct  their  love  affair. 
They  marry.  On  her  wedding  day,  to  the  generous  friend  who  wishes 
to  give  her  a  bridal  dress,  she  writes,  "I  have  no  dress  except  the  one 
I  wear  every  day.  If  you  are  going  to  be  kind  enough  to  give  me  one, 
please  let  it  be  practical  and  dark  so  that  I  can  put  it  on  afterwards 
to  go  to  the  laboratory." 

It  is  a  perfect  marriage,  the  marriage  not  merely  of  two  people  who 
love  each  other  but,  what  is  incomparably  more  important,  of  two 
great  physicists  who  can  help  each  other.  It  is  Marie,  attracted  by  the 


EVE   CURIE  3 

uranium  researches  of  Becquerel,  who  starts  herself  and  her  husband 
on  the  long,  tedious,  glorious  path  at  the  end  of  which  glows  radium. 
They  know  that  radium  and  polonium  (named  hy  Marie  to  com- 
memorate her  beloved  native  land)  exist,  but  they  must  prove  it. 
From  1898  to  1902,  in  a  dilapidated,  leaking,  freezing  shed,  with 
primitive  apparatus,  with  little  or  no  help,  unaided  by  the  scientific 
bureaucracy  or  by  the  State,  these  two  gentle  fanatics  work  in  an 
absorption  that  is  like  a  dream.  The  government  is  too  busy  spending 
money  on  armament  to  buy  them  the  few  tons  of  pitchblende  they 
need.  Somehow  they  get  their  pitchblende,  paying  for  its  transporta- 
tion themselves  out  of  their  insufficient  salaries.  With  "her  terrible 
patience,"  Marie,  doing  the  work  of  four  strong  men,  pounds  away 
at  her  chemical  masses,  boils,  separates,  reEnes,  stirs,  strains.  Some- 
where in  this  inert  brown  stuff  lies  radium.  During  these  five  years 
Marie  loses  fifteen  pounds.  At  last  they  isolate  the  element. 

All  this  time  they  have  been  bringing  up  a  family.  They  have  had 
sorrows,  family  illnesses.  Pierre's  mother  has  died  of  the  very  disease 
against  which  radium  is  soon  to  prove  a  beneficent  weapon.  All  this 
time  no  provision  is  made  for  these  selfless  geniuses.  The  State,  as 
always,  cares  nothing.  Recognition  comes  Erst  from  other  countries, 
from  Switzerland,  England.  "With  great  merit  and  even  greater 
modesty,"  says  Montaigne,  "one  can  remain  unknown  for  a  long 
time." 

Now  the  full  implications  of  their  work  begin  to  appear.  The  im- 
movable atom  moves;  matter  is  touched  with  a  mysterious  life;  physics 
revises  its  nineteenth-century  conceptions  of  the  indestructibility  of 
matter  and  the  conservation  of  energy.  The  Curies  are  triumphant; 
and  their  Erst  major  decision  is  to  refrain  from  patenting  their  radium- 
extraction  process.  Says  Pierre:  "Radium  is  not  to  enrich  anyone.  It 
is  an  element;  it  is  for  all  the  people.77  They  offer  it  freely  to  the 
world.  This  gesture  alone,  the  inevitable  expression  of  their  charac- 
ters, is  enough  to  give  their  lives  a  depth  that  can  never  attach  to  a 
commercial  career  like  that  of  Edison.  The  difference  between  a 
Curie  and  an  Edison  is  not  merely  one  of  scientiEc  genius,  it  is  a 
difference  of  order.  The  Curies  are  one  kind  of  human  being,  Edison 
was  another. 


4  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

In  1903  the  Curies,  with  Becquerel,  receive  the  Nohel  Prize  for 
Physics.  The  world  pursues  them.  They  must  flee  the  world.  "In 
science  we  must  he  interested  in  things,  not  in  persons/'  says  Marie, 
who  was  never  to  he  interested  in  herself.  One  evening,  at  the  height 
of  their  fame,  as  they  are  about  to  leave  for  a  banquet,  Pierre  looks  at 
his  wife,  with  her  ash-gray  eyes,  her  ash-blond  hair,  her  exquisite 
wrists  and  ankles,  and  he  murmurs,  "It's  a  pity.  Evening  dress  he- 
comes  you."  Then,  with  a  sigh,  he  adds,  "But  there  it  is,  we  haven't 
got  time" 

They  are  offered  the  slimy  vulgarity  of  decorations,  rihhons,  ro- 
settes. But  no  laboratory.  (Pierre  eventually  died  without  getting  his 
laboratory,  without  being  allowed  to  work  properly.)  The  Hie  of  the 
Curies  will  remain,  forever  terrible,  as  a  somber  reminder  of  the 
stupidity,  the  greed,  even  the  sadism  of  the  French  ruling  class  of  the 
period,  the  class  which,  biding  its  time,  was  at  last  to  betray  its  coun- 
try thoroughly  and  forever. 

Then  on  April  19,  1906,  Aeschylean  tragedy,  cutting  Marie's  life 
in  two,  giving  it  at  the  same  time  a  new  emotional  dimension.  Pierre's 
head  is  crushed  by  a  van  in  a  street  accident,  and  Marie  becomes  "a 
pitiful  and  incurably  lonely  woman."  She  refuses  a  pension  (always 
the  State  makes  its  generous  offers  too  late);  she  proceeds  with  the 
education  of  her  daughters;  she  takes  over  Pierre's  teaching  post  and, 
in  a  dry,  monotonous  voice,  without  making  any  reference  to  her 
predecessor,  resumes  the  lectures  at  the  exact  point  at  which  Pierre 
had  left  off. 

The  rest  of  her  life  is  the  story  of  her  marriage  with  radium.  For 
her  laboratory,  for  science,  she  will  do  anything,  even  try  to  be  "fa- 
mous." In  1911  she  receives  the  Nobel  Prize  for  Chemistry.  During 
the  war  she  equips,  with  superhuman  energy,  a  fleet  of  radiological 
cars  so  that  the  wounded  may  be  helped  by  X  rays.  She  is  no  roto- 
gravure ministering  angel,  no  Queen  Marie  of  Rumania.  She  actually 
works — works  for  the  State  which  had  done  its  best  in  those  dark 
years  to  prevent  her  from  working.  Later,  again  for  the  sake  of 
science,  she  comes  to  America  to  receive  a  gram  of  radium  from  the 
hand  of  an  amiable  poker  player  who  could  not  possibly  have  under- 
stood even  the  most  trivial  of  the  thoughts  in  Marie  Curie's  mind. 


EVE  CURIE  5 

Then,  applauded  by  all  America,  she  goes  back  to  France,  and  all 
America  turns  to  the  next  celebrity,  Carpentier,  to  lavish  an  identical 
adulation  upon  him.  Almost  blind,  her  hands  and  arms  scarred,  pitted, 
and  burned  by  thirty  years  of  radium  emanations,  she  continues  her 
work  almost  to  the  day  of  her  death,  caused  in  part  by  that  very 
element  which  she  had  released  for  the  use  of  mankind. 


Four  Years  in  a  Shed 

FROM    "MADAME    CURIE"    BY 

EVE  CURIE 


A  man  chosen  at  random  from  a  crowd  to  read  an  account  of  the 
discovery  of  radium  would  not  have  doubted  for  one  moment  that 
radium  existed:  beings  whose  critical  sense  has  not  been  sharpened 
and  simultaneously  deformed  by  specialized  culture  keep  their  imagina- 
tions fresh.  They  are  ready  to  accept  an  unexpected  fact,  however 
extraordinary  it  may  appear,  and  to  wonder  at  it. 

The  physicist  colleagues  of  the  Curies  received  the  news  in  slightly 
different  fashion.  The  special  properties  of  polonium  and  radium  upset 
fundamental  theories  in  which  scientists  had  believed  for  centuries. 
How  was  one  to  explain  the  spontaneous  radiation  of  the  radioactive 
bodies?  The  discovery  upset  a  world  of  acquired  knowledge  and 
contradicted  the  most  firmly  established  ideas  on  the  composition  of 
matter.  Thus  the  physicist  kept  on  the  reserve.  He  was  violently 
interested  in  Pierre  and  Marie's  work,  he  could  perceive  its  infinite 
developments,  but  before  being  convinced  he  awaited  the  acquisition 
of  decisive  results. 

The  attitude  of  the  chemist  was  even  more  downright.  By  definition, 
a  chemist  only  believes  in  the  existence  of  a  new  substance  when  he 
has  seen  the  substance,  touched  it,  weighed  and  examined  it,  con- 
fronted it  with  acids,  bottled  it,  and  when  he  has  determined  its 
"atomic  weight." 

Now,  up  to  the  present,  nobody  had  "seen"  radium.  Nobody  knew 
the  atomic  weight  of  radium.  And  the  chemists,  faithful  to  their 
principles,  concluded:  "No  atomic  weight,  no  radium.  Show  us  some 
radium  and  we  will  believe  you." 

To  show  polonium  and  radium  to  the  incredulous,  to  prove  to  the 


EVE  CURIE  7 

world  the  existence  of  their  "children,"  and  to  complete  their  own  con- 
viction, M.  and  Mme  Curie  were  now  to  labor  for  four  years. 

The  aim  was  to  obtain  pure  radium  and  polonium.  In  the  most 
strongly  radioactive  products  the  scientists  had  prepared,  these  sub- 
stances figured  only  in  imperceptible  traces.  Pierre  and  Marie  already 
knew  the  method  by  which  they  could  hope  to  isolate  the  new  metals, 
but  the  separation  could  not  be  made  except  by  treating  very  large 
quantities  of  crude  material. 

Here  arose  three  agonizing  questions: 

How  were  they  to  get  a  sufficient  quantity  of  ore?  What  premises 
could  they  use  to  effect  their  treatment?  What  money  was  there  to 
pay  the  inevitable  cost  of  the  work? 

Pitchblende,  in  which  polonium  and  radium  were  hidden,  was  a 
costly  ore,  treated  at  the  St  Joachimsthal  mines  in  Bohemia  for  the 
extraction  of  uranium  salts  used  in  the  manufacture  of  glass.  Tons  of 
pitchblende  would  cost  a  great  deal:  a  great  deal  too  much  for  the 
Curie  household. 

Ingenuity  was  to  make  up  for  wealth.  According  to  the  expectation 
of  the  two  scientists,  the  extraction  of  uranium  should  leave,  intact 
in  the  ore,  such  traces  of  polonium  and  radium  as  the  ore  contains. 
There  was  no  reason  why  these  traces  should  not  be  found  in  the 
residue.  And,  whereas  crude  pitchblende  was  costly,  its  residue  after 
treatment  had  very  slight  value.  By  asking  an  Austrian  colleague  for 
a  recommendation  to  the  directors  of  the  mine  of  St  Joachimsthal 
would  it  not  be  possible  to  obtain  a  considerable  quantity  of  such 
residue  for  a  reasonable  price? 

It  was  simple  enough:  but  somebody  had  to  think  of  it. 

It  was  necessary,  of  course,  to  buy  this  crude  material  and  pay  for 
its  transportation  to  Paris.  Pierre  and  Marie  appropriated  the  required 
sum  from  their  very  slight  savings.  They  were  not  so  foolish  as  to 
ask  for  official  credits.  ...  If  two  physicists  on  the  scent  of  an  im- 
mense discovery  had  asked  the  University  of  Paris  or  the  French  gov- 
ernment for  a  grant  to  buy  pitchblende  residue  they  would  have  been 
laughed  at.  In  any  case  their  letter  would  have  been  lost  in  the  files 
of  some  office,  and  they  would  have  had  to  wait  months  for  a  reply, 


8  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

probably  unfavorable  in  the  end.  Out  of  the  traditions  and  principles 
of  the  French  Revolution,  which  had  created  the  metric  system, 
founded  the  Normal  School,  and  encouraged  science  in  many  circum- 
stances, the  State  seemed  to  have  retained,  after  more  than  a  century, 
only  the  deplorable  words  pronounced  by  Fouquier-Tinville  at  the 
trial  in  which  Lavoisier  was  condemned  to  the  guillotine:  "The  Re- 
public has  no  need  for  scientists." 

But  at  least  could  there  not  be  found,  in  the  numerous  buildings 
attached  to  the  Sorbonne,  some  kind  of  suitable  workroom  to  lend 
to  the  Curie  couple?  Apparently  not.  After  vain  attempts,  Pierre  and 
Marie  staggered  back  to  their  point  of  departure,  which  is  to  say 
to  the  School  of  Physics  where  Pierre  taught,  to  the  little  room  where 
Marie  had  done  her  first  experiments.  The  room  gave  on  a  courtyard, 
and  on  the  other  side  of  the  yard  there  was  a  wooden  shack,  an 
abandoned  shed,  with  a  skylight  roof  in  such  bad  condition  that  it 
admitted  the  rain.  The  Faculty  of  Medicine  had  formerly  used  the 
place  as  a  dissecting  room,  but  for  a  long  time  now  it  had  not  even 
been  considered  fit  to  house  the  cadavers.  No  floor:  an  uncertain 
layer  of  bitumen  covered  the  earth.  It  was  furnished  with  some  worn 
kitchen  tables,  a  blackboard  which  had  landed  there  for  no  known 
reason,  and  an  old  cast-iron  stove  with  a  rusty  pipe. 

A  workman  would  not  willingly  have  worked  in  such  a  place:  Marie 
and  Pierre,  nevertheless,  resigned  themselves  to  it.  The  shed  had  one 
advantage:  it  was  so  untempting,  so  miserable,  that  nobody  thought 
of  refusing  them  the  use  of  it.  Schutzenberger,  the  director  of  the 
school,  had  always  been  very  kind  to  Pierre  Curie  and  no  doubt 
regretted  that  he  had  nothing  better  to  offer.  However  that  may  be, 
he  offered  nothing  else;  and  the  couple,  very  pleased  at  not  being  put 
out  into  the  street  with  their  material,  thanked  him,  saying  that  "this 
would  do"  and  that  they  would  "make  the  best  of  it." 

As  they  were  taking  possession  of  the  shed,  a  reply  arrived  from 
Austria.  Good  news!  By  extraordinary  luck,  the  residue  of  recent 
extractions  of  uranium  had  not  been  scattered.  The  useless  material 
had  been  piled  up  in  a  no-man's-land  planted  with  pine  trees,  near 
the  mine  of  St  Joachimsthal.  Thanks  to  the  intercession  of  Professor 


EVE   CURIE  9 

Suess  and  the  Academy  of  Science  of  Vienna,  the  Austrian  govern- 
ment, which  was  the  proprietor  of  the  State  factory  there,  decided  to 
present  a  ton  of  residue  to  the  two  French  lunatics  who  thought  they 
needed  it.  If,  later  on,  they  wished  to  be  sent  a  greater  quantity  of 
the  material,  they  could  obtain  it  at  the  mine  on  the  best  terms.  For 
the  moment  the  Curies  had  to  pay  only  the  transportation  charges 
on  a  ton  of  ore. 

One  morning  a  heavy  wagon,  like  those  which  deliver  coal,  drew 
up  in  the  Rue  Lhomond  before  the  School  of  Physics.  Pierre  and 
Marie  were  notified.  They  hurried  bareheaded  into  the  street  in  their 
laboratory  gowns.  Pierre,  who  was  never  agitated,  kept  his  calm;  but 
the  more  exuberant  Marie  could  not  contain  her  joy  at  the  sight  of  the 
sacks  that  were  being  unloaded.  It  was  pitchblende,  her  pitchblende, 
for  which  she  had  received  a  notice  some  days  before  from  the  freight 
station.  Full  of  curiosity  and  impatience,  she  wanted  to  open  one  of 
the  sacks  and  contemplate  her  treasure  without  further  waiting.  She 
cut  the  strings,  undid  the  coarse  sackcloth  and  plunged  her  two  hands 
into  the  dull  brown  ore,  still  mixed  with  pine  needles  from  Bohemia. 

There  was  where  radium  was  hidden.  It  was  from  there  that  Marie 
must  extract  it,  even  if  she  had  to  treat  a  mountain  of  this  inert  stuff 
like  dust  on  the  road. 

Marya  Sklodovska  had  lived  through  the  most  intoxicating  moments 
of  her  student  life  in  a  garret;  Marie  Curie  was  to  know  wonderful 
joys  again  in  a  dilapidated  shed.  It  was  a  strange  sort  of  beginning 
over  again,  in  which  a  sharp  subtle  happiness  (which  probably  no 
woman  before  Marie  had  ever  experienced)  twice  elected  the  most 
miserable  setting. 

The  shed  in  the  Rue  Lhomond  surpassed  the  most  pessimistic  ex- 
pectations of  discomfort.  In  summer,  because  of  its  skylights,  it  was 
as  stifling  as  a  hothouse.  In  winter  one  did  not  know  whether  to 
wish  for  rain  or  frost;  if  it  rained,  the  water  fell  drop  by  drop,  with 
a  soft,  nerve-racking  noise,  on  the  ground  or  on  the  worktables,  in 
places  which  the  physicists  had  to  mark  in  order  to  avoid  putting 
apparatus  there.  If  it  froze,  one  froze.  There  was  no  recourse.  The 


10  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

stove,  even  when  it  was  stoked  white,  was  a  complete  disappointment. 
If  one  went  near  enough  to  touch  it  one  received  a  little  heat,  but 
two  steps  away  and  one  was  back  in  the  zone  of  ice. 

It  was  almost  better  for  Marie  and  Pierre  to  get  used  to  the  cruelty 
of  the  outside  temperature,  since  their  technical  installation — hardly 
existent — possessed  no  chimneys  to  carry  off  noxious  gases,  and  the 
greater  part  of  their  treatment  had  to  be  made  in  the  open  air,  in  the 
courtyard.  When  a  shower  came  the  physicists  hastily  moved  their 
apparatus  inside:  to  keep  on  working  without  being  suffocated  they 
set  up  draughts  between  the  opened  door  and  windows. 

Marie  probably  did  not  boast  to  Dr  Vauthier  of  this  very  peculiar 
cure  for  attacks  of  tuberculosis. 

We  had  no  money,  no  laboratory  and  no  help  in  the  conduct  of  this  im- 
portant and  difficult  task  [she  was  to  write  later].  It  was  like  creating 
something  out  of  nothing,  and  if  Casimir  Dluski  once  called  my  student 
years  "the  heroic  years  of  my  sister-in-law's  life,"  I  may  say  without  exag- 
geration that  this  period  was,  for  my  husband  and  myself,  the  heroic  period 
of  our  common  existence. 

.  .  .  And  yet  it  was  in  this  miserable  old  shed  that  the  best  and  happiest 
years  of  our  life  were  spent,  entirely  consecrated  to  work.  I  sometimes 
passed  the  whole  day  stirring  a  mass  in  ebullition,  with  an  iron  rod  nearly 
as  big  as  myself.  In  the  evening  I  was  broken  with  fatigue. 

In  such  conditions  M.  and  Mme  Curie  worked  for  four  years  from 
1898  to  1902. 

During  the  first  year  they  busied  themselves  with  the  chemical 
separation  of  radium  and  polonium  and  they  studied  the  radiation  of 
the  products  (more  and  more  active)  thus  obtained.  Before  long  they 
considered  it  more  practical  to  separate  their  efforts.  Pierre  Curie  tried 
to  determine  the  properties  of  radium,  and  to  know  the  new  metal 
better.  Marie  continued  those  chemical  treatments  which  would  per- 
mit her  to  obtain  salts  of  pure  radium. 

In  this  division  of  labor  Marie  had  chosen  the  "man's  job."  She 
accomplished  the  toil  of  a  day  laborer.  Inside  the  shed  her  husband 
was  absorbed  by  delicate  experiments.  In  the  courtyard,  dressed  in  her 
old  dust-covered  and  acid-stained  smock,  her  hair  blown  by  the  wind, 


EVE   CURIE  11 

surrounded  by  smoke  which  stung  her  eyes  and  throat,  Marie  was 
a  sort  of  factory  all  by  herself. 

I  came  to  treat  as  many  as  twenty  kilograms  of  matter  at  a  time  [she 
writes],  which  had  the  effect  of  filling  the  shed  with  great  jars  full  of  pre- 
cipitates and  liquids.  It  was  killing  work  to  carry  the  receivers,  to  pour  off 
the  liquids  and  to  stir,  for  hours  at  a  stretch,  the  boiling  matter  in  a  smelt- 
ing basin. 

Radium  showed  no  intention  of  allowing  itself  to  be  known  by 
human  creatures.  Where  were  the  days  when  Marie  naively  expected 
the  radium  content  of  pitchblende  to  be  one  per  cent?  The  radiation 
of  the  new  substance  was  so  powerful  that  a  tiny  quantity  of  radium, 
disseminated  through  the  ore,  was  the  source  of  striking  phenomena 
which  could  be  easily  observed  and  measured.  The  difficult,  the 
impossible  thing,  was  to  isolate  this  minute  quantity,  to  separate  it 
from  the  gangue  in  which  it  was  so  intimately  mixed. 

The  days  of  work  became  months  and  years :  Pierre  and  Marie  were 
not  discouraged.  This  material  which  resisted  them,  which  defended 
its  secrets,  fascinated  them.  United  by  their  tenderness,  united  by 
their  intellectual  passions,  they  had,  in  a  wooden  shack,  the  "anti- 
natural"  existence  for  which  they  had  both  been  made,  she  as  well 
as  he. 

At  this  period  we  were  entirely  absorbed  by  the  new  realm  that  was, 
thanks  to  an  unhoped-for  discovery,  opening  before  us  [Marie  was  to 
write].  In  spite  of  the  difficulties  of  our  working  conditions,  we  felt  very 
happy.  Our  days  were  spent  at  the  laboratory.  In  our  poor  shed  there 
reigned  a  great  tranquillity:  sometimes,  as  we  watched  over  some  opera- 
tion, we  would  walk  up  and  down,  talking  about  work  in  the  present  and 
in  the  future;  when  we  were  cold  a  cup  of  hot  tea  taken  near  the  stove 
comforted  us.  We  lived  in  our  single  preoccupation  as  if  in  a  dream. 

.  .  .  We  saw  only  very  few  persons  at  the  laboratory;  among  the  physicists 
and  chemists  there  were  a  few  who  came  from  time  to  time,  either  to  see 
our  experiments  or  to  ask  for  advice  from  Pierre  Curie,  whose  competence 
in  several  branches  of  physics  was  well-known.  Then  took  place  some  con- 
versations before  the  blackboard — the  sort  of  conversation  one  remembers 
well  because  it  acts  as  a  stimulant  for  scientific  interest  and  the  ardor  for 


12  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

work  without  interrupting  the  course  o£  reflection  and  without  troubling 
that  atmosphere  of  peace  and  meditation  which  is  the  true  atmosphere  of 
a  laboratory. 

Whenever  Pierre  and  Marie,  alone  in  this  poor  place,  left  their 
apparatus  for  a  moment  and  quietly  let  their  tongues  run  on,  their 
talk  about  their  beloved  radium  passed  from  the  transcendent  to  the 
childish. 

"I  wonder  what  It  will  be  like,  what  It  will  look  like,"  Marie  said 
one  day  with  the  feverish  curiosity  of  a  child  who  has  been  promised 
a  toy.  "Pierre,  what  form  do  you  imagine  It  will  take?" 

"I  don't  know,"  the  physicist  answered  gently.  "I  should  like  it  to 
have  a  very  beautiful  color.  .  .  ." 

It  is  odd  to  observe  that  in  Marie  Curie's  correspondence  we  find, 
upon  this  prodigious  effort,  none  of  the  sensitive  comments,  decked 
out  with  imagery,  which  used  to  flash  suddenly  amid  the  familiarity 
of  her  letters.  Was  it  because  the  years  of  exile  had  somewhat  relaxed 
the  young  woman's  intimacy  with  her  people?  Was  she  too  pressed 
by  work  to  find  time? 

The  essential  reason  for  this  reserve  is  perhaps  to  be  sought  else- 
where. It  was  not  by  chance  that  Mme  Curie's  letters  ceased  to  be 
original  at  the  exact  moment  when  the  story  of  her  life  became  excep- 
tional. As  student,  teacher  or  young  wife,  Marie  could  tell  her  story.  . .  . 
But  now  she  was  isolated  by  all  that  was  secret  and  inexpressible  in 
her  scientific  vocation.  Among  those  she  loved  there  was  no  longer 
anybody  able  to  understand,  to  realize  her  worries  and  her  difficult 
design.  She  could  share  her  obsessions  with  only  one  person,  Pierre 
Curie,  companion.  To  him  alone  could  she  confide  rare  thoughts  and 
dreams.  Marie,  from  now  on,  was  to  present  to  all  others,  however 
near  they  might  be  to  her  heart,  an  almost  commonplace  picture  of 
herself.  She  was  to  paint  for  them  only  the  bourgeois  side  of  her  life. 
She  was  to  find  sometimes  accents  full  of  contained  emotion  to  express 
her  happiness  as  a  woman.  But  of  her  work  she  was  to  speak  only 
in  laconic,  inexpressive  little  phrases:  news  in  three  lines,  without  even 
attempting  to  suggest  the  wonders  that  work  meant  to  her. 


EVE  CURIE  13 

Here  we  feel  an  absolute  determination  not  to  illustrate  the  singular 
profession  she  had  chosen  by  literature.  Through  subtle  modesty,  and 
also  through  horror  of  vain  talk  and  everything  superfluous,  Marie 
concealed  herself,  dug  herself  in;  or  rather,  she  offered  only  one  of 
her  profiles.  Shyness,  boredom,  or  reason,  whatever  it  may  have  been, 
the  scientist  of  genius  effaced  and  dissimulated  herself  behind  "a 
woman  like  all  others." 

Marie  to  Bronya,  1899: 

Our  life  is  always  the  same.  We  work  a  lot  but  we  sleep  well,  so  our 
health  does  not  suffer.  The  evenings  are  taken  up  by  caring  for  the  child. 
In  the  morning  I  dress  her  and  give  her  her  food,  then  I  can  generally  go 
out  at  about  nine.  During  the  whole  of  this  year  we  have  not  been  either 
to  the  theater  or  a  concert,  and  we  have  not  paid  one  visit.  For  that  matter, 
we  feel  very  well.  ...  I  miss  my  family  enormously,  above  all  you,  my 
dears,  and  Father.  I  often  think  of  my  isolation  with  grief.  I  cannot  com- 
plain of  anything  else,  for  our  health  is  not  bad,  the  child  is  growing  well, 
and  I  have  the  best  husband  one  could  dream  of;  I  could  never  have 
imagined  finding  one  like  him.  He  is  a  true  gift  of  heaven,  and  the  more 
we  live  together  the  more  we  love  each  other. 

Our  work  is  progressing.  I  shall  soon  have  a  lecture  to  deliver  on  the 
subject.  It  should  have  been  last  Saturday  but  I  was  prevented  from  giving 
it,  so  it  will  no  doubt  be  this  Saturday,  or  else  in  a  fortnight. 

This  work,  which  is  so  dryly  mentioned  in  passing,  was  in  fact  pro- 
gressing magnificently.  In  the  course  of  the  years  1899  and  1900  Pierre 
and  Marie  Curie  published  a  report  on  the  discovery  of  "induced 
radioactivity"  due  to  radium,  another  on  the  effects  of  radioactivity, 
and  another  on  the  electric  charge  carried  by  the  rays.  And  at  last  they 
drew  up,  for  the  Congress  of  Physics  of  1900,  a  general  report  on  the 
radioactive  substances,  which  aroused  immense  interest  among  the 
scientists  of  Europe. 

The  development  of  the  new  science  of  radioactivity  was  rapid,  over- 
whelming— the  Curies  needed  fellow  workers.  Up  to  now  they  had 
had  only  the  intermittent  help  of  a  laboratory  assistant  named  Petit, 
an  honest  man  who  came  to  work  for  them  outside  his  hours  of 
service — working  out  of  personal  enthusiasm,  almost  in  secret.  But 
they  now  required  technicians  of  the  first  order.  Their  discovery  had 


14  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

important  extensions  in  the  domain  of  chemistry,  which  demanded 
attentive  study.  They  wished  to  associate  competent  research  workers 
with  them. 

Our  work  on  radioactivity  began  in  solitude  [Marie  was  to  write].  But 
before  the  -breadth  of  the  task  it  became  more  and  more  evident  that  col- 
laboration would  be  useful.  Already  in  1898  one  of  the  laboratory  chiefs 
of  the  school,  G.  Bemont,  had  given  us  some  passing  help.  Toward  1900 
Pierre  Curie  entered  into  relations  with  a  young  chemist,  Andre  Debierne, 
assistant  in  the  laboratory  of  Professor  Friedel,  who  esteemed  him  highly. 
Andre  Debierne  willingly  accepted  work  on  radioactivity.  He  undertook 
especially  the  research  of  a  new  radio  element,  the  existence  of  which  was 
suspected  in  the  group  of  iron  and  rare  clays.  He  discovered  this  element, 
named  "actinium."  Even  though  he  worked  in  the  physico-chemical  labora- 
tory at  the  Sorbonne  directed  by  Jean  Perrin,  he  frequendy  came  to  see  us 
in  our  shed  and  soon*  became  a  very  close  friend  to  us,  to  Dr  Curie  and 
later  on  to  our  children. 

Thus,  even  before  radium  and  polonium  were  isolated,  a  French 
scientist,  Andre  Debierne,  had  discovered  a  "brother,"  actinium. 

At  about  the  same  period  [Marie  tells  us],  a  young  physicist,  Georges 
Sagnac,  engaged  in  studying  X  rays,  came  frequently  to  talk  to  Pierre 
Curie  about  the  analogies  that  might  exist  between  these  rays,  their  sec- 
ondary rays,  and  the  radiation  of  radioactive  bodies.  Together  they  per- 
formed a  work  on  the  electric  charge  carried  by  these  secondary  rays. 

Marie  continued  to  treat,  kilogram  by  kilogram,  the  tons  of  pitch- 
blende residue  which  were  sent  her  on  several  occasions  from  St 
Joachimsthal.  With  her  terrible  patience,  she  was  able  to  be,  every  day 
for  four  years,  a  physicist,  a  chemist,  a  specialized  worker,  an  engineer 
and  a  laboring  man  all  at  once.  Thanks  to  her  brain  and  muscle,  the 
old  tables  in  the  shed  held  more  and  more  concentrated  products — 
products  more  and  more  rich  in  radium.  Mme  Curie  was  approaching 
the  end:  she  no  longer  stood  in  the  courtyard,  enveloped  in  bitter 
smoke,  to  watch  the  heavy  basins  of  material  in  fusion.  She  was  now 
at  the  stage  of  purification  and  of  the  "fractional  crystallization"  of 
strongly  radioactive  solutions.  But  the  poverty  of  her  haphazard  equip- 


EVE  CURIE  15 

ment  hindered  her  work  more  than  ever.  It  was  now  that  she  needed 
a  spotlessly  clean  workroom  and  apparatus  perfectly  protected  against 
cold,  heat  and  dirt.  In  this  shed,  open  to  every  wind,  iron  and  coal 
dust  was  afloat  which,  to  Marie's  despair,  mixed  itself  into  the  products 
purified  with  so  much  care.  Her  heart  sometimes  constricted  before 
these  little  daily  accidents,  which  took  so  much  of  her  time  and  her 
strength. 

Pierre  was  so  tired  of  the  interminable  struggle  that  he  would  have 
been  quite  ready  to  abandon  it.  Of  course,  he  did  not  dream  of  drop- 
ping the  study  of  radium  and  of  radioactivity.  But  he  would  willingly 
have  renounced,  for  the  time  being,  the  special  operation  of  preparing 
pure  radium.  The  obstacles  seemed  insurmountable.  Could  they  not 
resume  this  work  later  on,  under  better  conditions?  More  attached  to 
the  meaning  of  natural  phenomena  than  to  their  material  reality,  Pierre 
Curie  was  exasperated  to  see  the  paltry  results  to  which  Marie's  ex- 
hausting effort  had  led.  He  advised  an  armistice. 

He  counted  without  his  wife's  character.  Marie  wanted  to  isolate 
radium  and  she  would  isolate  it.  She  scorned  fatigue  and  difficulties, 
and  even  the  gaps  in  her  own  knowledge  which  complicated  her  task. 
After  all,  she  was  only  a  very  young  scientist:  she  still  had  not  the 
certainty  and  great  culture  Pierre  had  acquired  by  twenty  years'  work, 
and  sometimes  she  stumbled  across  phenomena  or  methods  of  calcula- 
tion which  she  knew  very  little,  and  for  which  she  had  to  make  hasty 
studies. 

So  much  the  worse!  With  stubborn  eyes  under  her  great  brow,  she 
clung  to  her  apparatus  and  her  test  tubes. 

In  1902,  forty-five  months  after  the  day  on  which  the  Curies  an- 
nounced the  probable  existence  of  radium,  Marie  finally  carried  of!  the 
victory  in  this  war  of  attrition:  she  succeeded  in  preparing  a  decigram 
of  pure  radium,  and  made  a  first  determination  of  the  atomic  weight 
of  the  new  substance,  which  was  225. 

The  incredulous  chemists — of  whom  there  were  still  a  few — could 
only  bow  before  the  facts,  before  the  superhuman  obstinacy  of  a 
woman. 

Radium  officially  existed. 

It  was  nine  o'clock  at  night.  Pierre  and  Marie  Curie  were  in  their 


16  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

little  house  at  108  Boulevard  Kellermann,  where  they  had  been  living 
since  1900.  The  house  suited  them  well.  From  the  boulevard,  where 
three  rows  of  trees  half  hid  the  fortifications,  could  be  seen  only  a 
dull  wall  and  a  tiny  door.  But  behind  the  one-story  house,  hidden  from 
all  eyes,  there  was  a  narrow  provincial  garden,  rather  pretty  and  very 
quiet.  And  from  the  "barrier"  of  Gentilly  they  could  escape  on  their 
bicycles  toward  the  suburbs  and  the  woods.  .  .  . 

Old  Dr  Curie,  who  lived  with  the  couple,  had  retired  to  his  room. 
Marie  had  bathed  her  child  and  put  it  to  bed,  and  had  stayed  for  a 
long  time  beside  the  cot.  This  was  a  rite.  When  Irene  did  not  feel  her 
mother  near  her  at  night  she  would  call  out  for  her  incessantly,  with 
that  "Me!"  which  was  to  be  our  substitute  for  "Mamma"  always.  And 
Marie,  yielding  to  the  implacability  of  the  four-year-old  baby,  climbed 
the  stairs,  seated  herself  beside  the  child  and  stayed  there  in  the  dark- 
ness until  the  young  voice  gave  way  to  light,  regular  breathing.  Only 
then  would  she  go  down  again  to  Pierre,  who  was  growing  impatient. 
In  spite  of  his  kindness,  he  was  the  most  possessive  and  jealous  of 
husbands.  He  was  so  used  to  the  constant  presence  of  his  wife  that  her 
least  eclipse  kept  him  from  thinking  freely.  If  Marie  delayed  too  long 
near  her  daughter,  he  received  her  on  her  return  with  a  reproach  so 
unjust  as  to  be  comic: 

"You  never  think  of  anything  but  that  child!" 

Pierre  walked  slowly  about  the  room.  Marie  sat  down  and  made 
some  stitches  on  the  hem  of  Irene's  new  apron.  One  of  her  principles 
was  never  to  buy  ready-made  clothes  for  the  child:  she  thought  them 
too  fancy  and  impractical.  In  the  days  when  Bronya  was  in  Paris  the 
two  sisters  cut  out  their  children's  dresses  together,  according  to  pat- 
terns of  their  own  invention.  These  patterns  still  served  for  Marie. 

But  this  evening  she  could  not  fix  her  attention.  Nervous,  she  got 
up;  then,  suddenly: 

"Suppose  we  go  down  there  for  a  moment?" 

There  was  a  note  of  supplication  in  her  voice — altogether  superfluous, 
for  Pierre,  like  herself,  longed  to  go  back  to  the  shed  they  had  left 
two  hours  before.  Radium,  fanciful  as  a  living  creature,  endearing  as 
a  love,  called  them  back  to  its  dwelling,  to  the  wretched  laboratory. 

The  day's  work  had  been  hard,  and  it  would  have  been  more  reason- 


EVE  CURIE  17 

able  for  the  couple  to  rest.  But  Pierre  and  Marie  were  not  always 
reasonable.  As  soon  as  they  had  put  on  their  coats  and  told  Dr  Curie 
of  their  flight,  they  were  in  the  street.  They  went  on  foot,  arm  in  arm, 
exchanging  few  words.  After  the  crowded  streets  of  this  queer  district, 
with  its  factory  buildings,  wastelands  and  poor  tenements,  they  arrived 
in  the  Rue  Lhomond  and  crossed  the  little  courtyard.  Pierre  put  the 
key  in  the  lock.  The  door  squeaked,  as  it  had  squeaked  thousands  of 
times,  and  admitted  them  to  their  realm,  to  their  dream. 

"Don't  light  the  lamps!"  Marie  said  in  the  darkness.  Then  she  added 
with  a  little  laugh: 

"Do  you  remember  the  day  when  you  said  to  me  'I  should  like 
radium  to  have  a  beautiful  color'?" 

The  reality  was  more  entrancing  than  the  simple  wish  of  long  ago. 
Radium  had  something  better  than  "a  beautiful  color":  it  was  spon- 
taneously luminous.  And  in  the  somber  shed  where,  in  the  absence  of 
cupboards,  the  precious  particles  in  their  tiny  glass  receivers  were 
placed  on  tables  or  on  shelves  nailed  to  the  walls,  their  phosphorescent 
bluish  outlines  gleamed,  suspended  in  the  night. 

"Look  .  .  .  Look!"  the  young  woman  murmured. 

She  went  forward  cautiously,  looked  for  and  found  a  straw-bottomed 
chair.  She  sat  down  in  the  darkness  and  silence.  Their  two  faces 
turned  toward  the  pale  glimmering,  the  mysterious  sources  of  radia- 
tion, toward  radium — their  radium.  Her  body  leaning  forward,  her 
head  eager,  Marie  took  up  again  the  attitude  which  had  been  hers  an 
hour  earlier  at  the  bedside  of  her  sleeping  child. 


ALEXANDER    WOOLLCOTT 


COMMENTARY 


The  story  which  follows  shows  us  how  a  first-rate  raconteur  can  make 
literature,  if  of  puff-paste  lightness,  out  of  a  simple  anecdote.  Mr. 
Woollcott  did  not  invent  "Entrance  Fee."  It  had  been  Boating 
about  the  world  like  thistledown  for  many  years,  no  doubt  often  in 
ruder  forms,  and  no  one  had  had  the  wit  to  reduce  it,  or  inflate  it,  to 
writing.  Mr.  Woollcott  has  worked  out  the  perfect  tone:  elegant, 
wistful,  and,  of  course,  aseptic. 

"Entrance  Fee,f  persuades  one  to  reflect  sadly  on  the  taboos  which 
make  impossible  in  our  as-yet-primitive  moral  era  the  publication  in 
artistic  form  of  a  thousand  other  contes  drolatiques,  many  of  them, 
it  may  be,  slightly  more  earthy.  It  is  an  open  secret  that  some  of  the 
wisest,  some  of  the  funniest,  some  of  the  most  searching  tales  the 
fancy  of  man  (and  woman,  if  the  truth  were  known)  has  devised 
must  be  circulated  orally.  Many  such  stories  would  be  offensive  only 
to  a  minority,  but  so  far  this  minority  has  established  a  successful 
censorship.  Occasionally  it  has  suffered  a  setback  (see  Judge  Wool- 
seys  decision  on  page  382  of  this  book). 

Do  not  put  this  comment  down  as  a  plea  for  erotica,  an  inferior 
form  of  literature  suitable  only  to  very  young  men  and  women  and 
very  old  men  and  women.  It  is  merely  a  melancholy  rumination  on 
the  curious  herd  morality  that  prevents  the  artistic  development  of 
one  of  the  forms  of  narration  most  natural  to  the  human  animal:  the 
gallant  tale  revolving  around  the  incredible  grotesqueness  and  high 
splendor  of  the  fact  that  the  world  is  permanently  divided  into  two 
main  sexes. 


IS 


Entrance  Fee 


BY 

ALEXANDER  WOOLLCOTT 


This,  then,  is  the  story  of  Cosette  and  the  Saint-Cyrien,  much  as  they 
tell  it  (and  these  many  years  have  been  telling  it)  in  the  smoky 
gopotes  of  the  French  army. 

In  the  nineties,  when  one  heard  less  ugly  babel  of  alien  tongues  in 
the  sidewalk  cafes,  the  talk  at  the  aperitif  hour  was  sure  to  turn  sooner 
or  later  on  Cosette — Mile.  Cosette  of  the  Varietes,  who  was  regarded 
by  common  consent  as  the  most  desirable  woman  in  France.  She  was 
no  hedged-in  royal  courtesan,  as  her  possessive  fellow-citizens  would 
point  out  with  satisfaction,  but  a  distributed  du  Barry,  the  chere  amie 
of  a  republic. 

Her  origins  were  misty.  Some  said  she  had  been  born  of  fisher 
folk  at  Plonbazlanec  on  the  Brittany  coast.  Others  preferred  the  tale 
that  she  was  the  love-child  of  a  famous  actress  by  a  very  well-known 
king.  In  any  case,  she  was  now  a  national  legend,  and  in  her  pre- 
eminence the  still-bruised  French  people  found  in  some  curious  way 
a  balm  for  their  wounded  self-esteem.  Her  photographs,  which  usually 
showed  her  sitting  piquantly  on  a  cafe  table,  were  cut  from  h'iliustra- 
-tion  and  pinned  up  in  every  barracks.  Every  French  lad  dreamed  of 
her,  and  every  right-minded  French  girl  quite  understood  that  her 
sweetheart  was  saying  in  effect,  "Since  I  cannot  hope  to  have  Cosette, 
will  you  come  to  the  river's  edge  at  sundown?"  Quite  understood, 
and  did  not  blame  him. 

Everyone  had  seen  the  pictures  of  Cosette's  tiny,  vine-hung  villa 
at  Saint-Cloud,  with  its  high  garden  wall  and  its  twittering  aviary. 
And  even  those  for  whom  that  wall  was  hopelessly  high  took  morbid 
pride  in  a  persistent  detail  of  the  legend  which  said  that  no  man  was 

19 


20  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

ever  a  guest  there  for  the  night  who  could  not  bring  five  thousand 
francs  with  him.  This  was  in  the  nineties,  mind  you,  when  francs 
were  francs,  and  men — by  a  coincidence  then  more  dependable — were 
men. 

The  peasant  blend  of  charm  and  thrift  in  Cosette  filled  the  cadets 
at  Saint-Cyr  with  a  gentle  melancholy.  In  their  twilight  hours  of 
relaxation  they  talked  it  over,  and  all  thought  it  a  sorrowful  thing 
that,  so  wretched  is  the  soldier's  pittance,  not  one  of  those  who  must 
some  day  direct  the  great  Revanche  would  ever  carry  into  battle  a 
memory  of  the  fairest  woman  in  France.  For  what  cadet  could  hope 
to  raise  five  thousand  francs?  It  was  very  sad.  But,  cried  one  of  their 
number,  his  voice  shaking,  his  eyes  alight,  there  were  a  thousand 
students  at  Saint-Cyr,  and  not  one  among  them  so  lacking  in  resource 
that  he  could  not,  if  given  time,  manage  to  raise  at  least  five  francs. // 

That  was  how  the  Cosette  Sweepstakes  were  started.  There  followed 
then  all  the  anxious  distraction  of  ways  and  means,  with  such  Spartan 
exploits  in  self-denial,  such  Damon-and-Pythias  borrowings,  such 
flagrant  letters  of  perjured  appeal  to  unsuspecting  aunts  and  god- 
mothers, as  Saint-Cyr  had  never  known.  But  by  the  appointed  time 
the  last  man  had  his,  or  somebody's,  five  francs. 

The  drawing  of  numbers  was  well  under  way  when  a  perplexed 
instructor  stumbled  on  the  proceedings  and  reported  his  discovery 
to  the  Commandant.  When  the  old  General  heard  the  story  he  was 
so  profoundly  moved  that  it  was  some  time  before  he  spoke. 

"The  lad  who  wins  the  lottery,"  he  said  at  last,  "will  be  the  envy 
of  his  generation.  But  the  lad  who  conceived  the  idea — ah,  he,  my 
friend,  will  some  day  be  a  Marshal  of  France!" 

Then  he  fell  to  laughing  at  the  .thought  of  the  starry-eyed  youngster 
arriving  at  the  stage  door  of  the  Varietes  with  nothing  but  his  youth 
and  his  entrance  fee.  The  innocent  budget  had  made  no  provision  for 
the  trip  to  Paris,  none  for  a  carriage,  a  bouquet,  perhaps  a  -supper 
party.  The  Commandant  said  that  he  would  wish  to  meet  this  margin 
of  contingency  from  his  own  fatherly  pocket. 

"There  will  be  extras,"  he  said.  "Let  the  young  rascal  who  wins 
be  sent  to  me  before  he  leaves  for  Paris." 

It  was  a  cadet  from  the  Vendee  who  reported  to  the  Commandant 


ALEXANDER  WOOLLCOTT  21 

next  afternoon — very  trim  in  his  red  breeches  and  blue  tunic,  his 
white  gloves  spotless,  his  white  cockade  jaunty,  his  heart  in  his  mouth. 
The  Commandant  said  no  word  to  him,  but  put  a  little  purse  of  gold 
iouis  in  his  hand,  kissed  him  on  both  cheeks  in  benediction,  and  stood 
at  his  window,  moist-eyed  and  chuckling,  to  watch  until  the  white 
cockade  disappeared  down  the  avenue  of  trees. 

The  sunlight,  latticed  by  the  jalousies,  was  making  a  gay  pattern 
on  Cosette's  carpet  the  next  morning  when  she  sat  up  and  meditated 
on  the  day  which  stretched  ahead  of  her.  Her  little  cadet  was  cradled 
in  a  sweet,  dreamless  sleep,  and  it  touched  her  rather  to  see  how 
preposterously  young  he  was.  Indeed,  it  quite  set  her  thinking  of  herr 
early  days,  and  how  she  had  come  up  in  the  world.  Then  she  began 
speculating  on  his  early  days,  realized  with  a  pang  that  he  was  still  in 
the  midst  of  them,  and  suddenly  grew  puzzled.  Being  a  woman  of 
action,  she  prodded  him. 

"Listen,  my  old  one,"  she  said,  "how  did  a  cadet  at  Saint-Cyr  ever 
get  hold  of  five  thousand  francs?" 

Thus  abruptly  questioned,  he  lost  his  head  and  blurted  out  the  tale 
of  the  sweepstakes.  Perhaps  he  felt  it  could  do  no  harm  now,  and 
anyway  she  listened  so  avidly,  with  such  flattering  little  gasps  of  sur- 
prise and  such  sunny  ripples  of  laughter,  that  he  quite  warmed  to 
his  story.  When  he  came  to  the  part  about  the  Commandant,  she  rose 
and  strode  up  and  down,  the  lace  of  her  peignoir  fluttering  behind  her, 
tears  in  her  violet  eyes. 

"Saint-Cyr  has  paid  me  the  prettiest  compliment  I  have  ever  known/' 
she  said,  "and  I  am  the  proudest  woman  in  France  this  day.  But 
surely  I  must  do  my  part.  You  shall  go  back  and  tell  them  all  that 
Cosette  is  a  woman  of  sentiment.  When  you  are  an  old,  old  man  in  the 
Vendee  you  shall  tell  your  grandchildren  that  once  in  your  youth 
you  knew  the  dearest  favors  in  France,  and  they  cost  you  not  a  sou. 
Not  a  sou." 

At  that  she  hauled  open  the  little  drawer  where  he  had  seen  her 
lock  up  the  lottery  receipts  the  night  before. 

"Here,"  she  said,  with  a  lovely  gesture.  "I  give  you  back  your 
money." 

And  she  handed  him  his  five  francs. 


LUDWIG  BEMELMANS 


COMMENTARY 


"Putzi"  is,  I  wager,  the  only  successful  story  ever  written  about  an 
embryo.  Certainly  it  is  the  only  humorous  one.  And  /ust  as  certainly 
it  could  have  been  devised  hy  none  hut  Ludwig  Bemelmans.  His 
sympathies  are  so  catholic,  his  fancy  is  so  flexible,  that  he  sees  noth- 
ing impossible  or  even  incongruous  in  combining  an  anecdote  about 
the  weather  with  an  account  of  a  miscarriage.  Across  the  years  this 
South  German  ex-waiter  receives  a  smile  of  understanding  from  an- 
other poetical  prankster,  the  one  who  put  an  ass'  head  in  fairyland. 

I  wish  we  could  reproduce  in  this  book  some  of  the  absurd  pen- 
and-inks  and  colored  drawings  of  Bemelmans.  They  will  never  influ- 
ence the  course  of  the  history  of  art,  but  on  the  other  hand  the 
course  of  the  history  of  art  will  never  influence  Bemelmans,  a  com- 
forting reflection.  His  vision  is  his  own.  It  is  inaccurate  to  say  that 
his  simple  hues,  droll  perspectives,  and  gnomelike  figures  have  the 
charm  of  children's  drawings.  They  may  remind  you  of  kindergarten 
art,  but  no  child  could  command  the  gemiitlich  irony  informing 
them.  No  child,  I  say,  could  draw  them,  but  the  child  hidden  in  the 
chuckling  man  could,  and  does.  The  singularity  of  Bemelmans, 
whether  he  draws  or  writes,  is  his  double  capacity  to  see  freshly  like 
a  child  and  comment  shrewdly  like  a  grownup.  The  product  is  an 
awry  wisdom,  the  wisdom  of  a  reflective  innocent  who  is  surprised  at 
nothing  and  delighted  with  everything. 

I  am  not  a  pro-whimsey  man,  because  the  whimsey  masters  seem 
to  me  generally  such  fools  about  everything  else.  But  the  Bemelmans 
whimsey  is  of  a  different  order;  it  is  the  wisdom  of  a  volatile  but  not 
irresponsible  mind.  For  proof  I  refer  you  to  his  books,  notably  My 
War  with  the  United  States,  Life  Class,  and  The  Donkey  Inside. 

Bemclmans,  humor  is  national;  that  is,  it  is  South  German.  Its 
drollery  is  (or  was,  for  I  suppose  drollery  too  can  be  glcichschaltet) 
the  kind  you  find  in  the  people  of  Austria  and  Bavaria  and  the  Tirol. 
It  can  be  at  once  slightly  delicate  and  slightly  gross;  it  is  always  eccen- 

22 


LUDWIG  BEMELMANS  23 

trie,  yet  firmly  founded  in  its  own  folk  wisdom;  it  is  gently  philo- 
sophical; it  is  leisurely;  above  all,  it  is  harmless.  As  a  good  brief 
example  of  it  I  repeat  here  the  classic  Bemelmans  story  of  the  ele- 
phant cutlet.  The  story  is  probably  not  his7  but  the  manner  is  pure 
Bemelmans.  I  give  you 

THE  ELEPHANT  CUTLET 

Once  upon  a  time  there  were  two  men  in  Vienna  who  wanted  to 
open  a  restaurant.  One  was  a  Dentist  who  was  tired  of  fixing  teeth 
and  always  wanted  to  own  a  restaurant,  and  the  other  a  famous  cook 
by  the  same  of  Souphans. 

The  Dentist  was,  however,  a  little  afraid.  "There  are/'  he  said, 
"already  too  many  restaurants  in  Vienna,  restaurants  of  every  kind, 
Viennese,  French,  Italian,  Chinese,  American,  American-Chinese, 
Portuguese,  Armenian,  Dietary,  Vegetarian,  Jewish,  Wine  and  Beer 
Restaurants,  in  short  all  sorts  of  restaurants." 

But  the  Chef  had  an  Idea.  "There  is  one  kind  of  restaurant  that 
Vienna  has  not/'  he  said. 

"What  kind?"  said  the  Dentist. 

"A  restaurant  such  as  has  never  existed  before,  a  restaurant  for  cut- 
lets from  every  animal  in  the  world." 

The  Dentist  was  afraid,  but  finally  he  agreed,  and  the  famous  Chef 
went  out  to  buy  a  house,  tables,  and  chairs,  and  engaged  help,  pots 
and  pans  and  had  a  sign  painted  with  big  red  letters  ten  feet  high 
saying: 

"Cutlets  from  Every  Animal  in  the  World." 

The  first  customer  that  entered  the  door  was  a  distinguished  lady, 
a  Countess.  She  sat  down  and  asked  for  an  Elephant  Cutlet. 

"How  would  Madame  like  this  Elephant  Cutlet  cooked?"  said 
the  waiter. 

"Oh,  Milanaise,  saute  in  butter,  with  a  little  spaghetti  over  it,  on 
that  a  filet  of  anchovy,  and  an  olive  on  top,"  she  said. 

"That  is  very  nice,"  said  the  waiter  and  went  out  to  order  it. 

"Jessas  Maria  and  Joseph!"  said  the  Dentist  when  he  heard  the 


24  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

order,  and  he  turned  to  the  Chef  and  cried:  "What  did  I  tell  you? 
Now  what  are  we  going  to  do?" 

The  Chef  said  nothing,  he  put  on  a  clean  apron  and  walked  into 
the  dining  room  to  the  table  of  the  Lady.  There  he  bowed,  bent 
down  to  her  and  said:  "Madame  has  ordered  an  Elephant  Cutlet?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  Countess. 

"With  spaghetti  and  a  filet  of  anchovy  and  an  olive?" 

"Yes." 

"Madame  is  all  alone?" 

"Yes,  yes." 

"Madame  expects  no  one  else?" 

"No." 

"And  Madame  wants  only  one  cutlet?" 

"Yes,"  said  the  Lady,  "but  why  all  these  questions?" 

"Because,"  said  the  Chef,  "because,  Madame,  I  am  very  sorry,  but 
for  one  Cutlet  we  cannot  cut  up  our  Elephant." 


Putzi 

BY 

LUDWIG  BEMELMANS 


They  thought  he  had  asked  for  more  volume,  but  Nekisch,  the 
conductor,  had  caught  a  raindrop  on  the  end  of  his  baton  and  another 
in  the  palm  of  his  hand. 

He  stopped  the  orchestra,  glared  up  into  the  sky  and  then  at 
Ferdinand  Loeffler,  the  Konzertmeister. 

Loeffler  reached  out  for  a  flying-away  page  of  Finlandia,  and  the 
audience  opened  umbrellas  and  left.  The  musicians  ran  into  the  shelter 
of  the  concert  hall  carrying  their  instruments,  and  Herr  Loeffler  walked 
sadly  to  the  back  of  the  wide  stage  and  took  off  his  long  black  coat 
and  shook  the  rain  out  of  it. 

There  Nekisch  arrested  him  with  his  baton.  He  stuck  it  into  Herr 
Loeffler,  between  the  two  upper  buttons  of  his  waistcoat,  and  held 
him  there  against  the  tall  platform.  Ganghofer,  the  percussionist,  could 
hear  him  say,  "You're  an  ass,  Herr  Loeffler,  not  a  Konzertmeister,  an 
ass;  it's  the  last  time,  Herr  Loeffler;  you  can't  do  the  simplest  things 
right;  we  have  a  deficit,  Herr  Loeffler,  these  are  not  the  good  old  days, 
Herr  Loeffler — I  am  telling  you  for  the  last  and  last  time:  Inside! 
Here  in  this  hall  we  play  when  it  rains,  and  outside  when  the  sun 
shines." 

Herr  Loeffler  silently  took  his  blue  plush  hat  and  his  first  violin 
and  went  out  and  waited  for  a  street  car  to  take  him  to  that  part 
of  the  city  where  his  wife's  brother  Rudolf  had  a  small  cafe,  The 
Three  Ravens. 

Frau  Loeffler  sat  in  a  corner  of  the  little  cafe  reading  the  Neue  Freie 
Presse  out  of  a  bamboo  holder.  She  stirred  her  coffee. 

"Ah,  Ferderl,"  she  said,  and  squeezed  his  hand,  "but  you  are  early 

25,,*  '      ., 


26  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

today."  She  could  read  his  face  .  .  .  and  she  looked  with  him  through 
the  plate  glass  windows  into  the  dripping  street. 

"Outside  again,"  she  said,  and  turned  to  the  front  page  of  the  Freie 
Presse,  and,  pointing  to  the  weather  report,  read,  "Slight  disturbances 
over  Vienna  but  lovely  and  bright  in  the  Safe  jammer  gut. 

"Inside,  outside,"  she  said,  over  and  over  again.  These  two  words 
had  taken  on  the  terror  that  the  words  death,  fire,  police,  and  bank- 
ruptcy have  for  other  people. 

Behind  a  counter,  next  to  the  cash  register,  sat  Frau  Loeffler 's  sister 
Frieda.  Frau  Loeffler  pointed  at  her  with  the  thumb  of  her  right  hand. 
"Look,  Ferderl.  Look  at  Frieda.  Since  I  am  waiting  for  you  she  has 
eaten  three  ice  creams,  four  slices  of  nut  tart,  two  cream  pufTs,  and  two 
portions  of  chocolate,  and  now  she's  looking  at  the  petits  fours." 

"Yes,"  said  Herr  Loeffler. 

"Ah,  why,  Ferderl,  haven't  we  a  little  restaurant  like  this,  with 
guests  and  magazines  and  newspapers,  instead  of  worrying  about  that 
conductor  Nekisch  and  inside  and  outside?" 

"He  called  me  an  ass,  Nekisch  did,"  said  Herr  Loeffler.  "  'It's  the 
last  time,'  he  said." 

"Who  does  he  think  you  are?  The  Pope?  Why  doesn't  he  decide 
himself,  if  he's  so  smart!  I  go  mad,  Ferderl — I  can't  sleep  for  two 
days  when  you  play,  reading  about  the  weather,  calling  up,  looking  at 
the  mountains,  even  watching  if  dogs  eat  grass.  I  tried  to  ask  farmers — 
they  don't  know  either.  You  can  never  be  sure,  they  come  from 
nowhere — these  clouds — when  you  don't  want  them,  and  when  you 
play  inside  and  hope  that  it  rains  outside,  the  sun  shines,  just  like  in 
spite,  and  they  blame  you!" 

They  put  their  four  hands  together  in  silent  communion,  one  on 
top  of  another,  as  high  as  a  waterglass.  Frau  Loeffler  looked  into  her 
coffee  cup  and  she  mumbled  tenderly,  "Ferderl,  I  have  to  tell  you 
something."  With  this  she  looked  shy,  like  a  small  girl,  then  she  told 
him  into  his  ear.  .  .  . 

"No!"  said  LoefTler,  with  unbelieving  eyes. 

"Yes!  Yes,  Ferderl!"  she  said. 

"When?"  asked  Herr  Loeffler. 

"In  January.  About  the  middle  of  January  .  .  .  Dr.  Grausbirn 
said.  .  .  ." 


LUDWIG  BEMELMANS  27 

Loeffler  guessed  right  about  the  weather  for  the  next  two  concerts. 
[The  sun  shone.  Outside,  it  was.  Nekisch  was  talking  to  him  again 
and  Loeffler  walked  to  the  concerts  with  light  steps,  whistling. 

One  day  at  a  rehearsal  of  Till  Eulenspiegel,  he  could  hold  it  in  no 
longer;  he  had  to  tell  them.  They  patted  his  shoulder  and  shook  his 
hand.  Even  Nekisch  stepped  down  from  his  stand  and  put  both  hands 
on  Loeffler's  arms.  "Herr  Loeffler,"  he  said,  just  "Herr  Loeffler." 

And  then  one  day,  after  the  "Liebestod,"  Loeffler  coming  home, 
found  in  front  of  his  house  the  horse  and  carriage  of  Dr.  Grausbirn. 

Loeffler  ran  upstairs  and  into  the  living-room,  just  as  Dr.  Grausbirn 
came  out  of  the  other  door,  from  his  wife's  room. 

"My  wife?"  asked  Herr  Loeffler. 

"No,"  said  Dr.  Grausbirn.  "No,  Herr  Loeffler,  not  your  wife."  Dr. 
Grausbirn  washed  his  hands.  Herr  Loeffler  went  to  kiss  his  poor  wife 
and  came  back  again. 

"Herr  Doktor,"  he  said,  "we  won't — I  am  not  going  to " 

Dr.  Grausbirn  closed  his  bag  and  slipped  on  his  cuffs. 

"Pull  yourself  together,  Loeffler.  Be  a  man,"  he  said,  "but  you  won't 
be  a  father " 

"Never?"  asked  Herr  Loeffler. 

"Never,"  said  Dr.  Grausbirn. 

Herr  Loeffler  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  his  chair.  "We  are  simple 
people,"  he  addressed  the  table  in  front  of  him.  "We  ask  so  little  of 
life.  We  have  always  wanted  him.  We  have  even  named  him — Putzi, 
we  call  him — why,  Annie  has  burned  candles  to  St.  Joseph,  the  patron 
saint  of  fathers."  He  sighed  again. 

"Why  does  this  happen  to  me?"  he  said.  "And  how  could  it  happen? 
We  ask  so  little." 

Dr.  Grausbirn  pointed  out  of  the  window.  "There,  Herr  Loeffler," 
he  said.  "It's  like  this.  Do  you  see  that  lovely  little  late-blooming  apple 
tree?  It  has  many  blossoms.  .  .  . 

"Then  comes  the  wind."  Dr.  Grausbirn  reached  into  the  air  and 
swept  down.  "Schramm — like  this — and  some  of  the  blossoms  fall — 
and  the  rain — takes  more" — with  his  short  fat  fingers  the  doctor  imi- 
tated the  rain — "and  brr  r  r,  the  frosts — more  blossoms  fall — they  are 
not  strong  enough.  Do  you  understand,  Herr  Loeffler,  what  I  mean?" 


28  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

They  looked  out  at  the  little  tree:  it  was  rich  with  blossoms,  so  rich 
that  the  earth  below  it  was  white. 

"That  blossom,  our  little  Putzi — "  said  Herr  Loeffler. 

"Yes,"  said  the  doctor.  "Where  is  my  hat?" 

The  doctor  looked  for  his  hat  and  Herr  Loeffler  walked  down  the 
stairs  with  him. 

"If  you  are  going  into  town — "  said  Dr.  Grausbirn,  opening  the 
door  of  his  landau.  Loeffler  nodded  and  stepped  in. 

At  the  end  of  the  street  a  lamp  post  was  being  painted.  The  carriage 
turned  into  the  tree-lined  avenue;  a  column  of  young  soldiers  passed 
them.  After  the  lamp  post,  Herr  Loeffler  talked  earnestly  to  Dr.  Graus- 
birn, but  the  doctor  shook  his  head — "No  no  no,  no  no,  Herr  Loeffler. 
Impossible — cannot  be  done."  Herr  Loeffler  mumbled  on,  "We  ask  so 
little."  He  underlined  his  words,  "the  only  one — never  again — my 
poor  wife — love — family" — and  all  this  time  he  tried  to  tie  a  knot  in 
the  thick  leather  strap  that  hung  down  the  door  of  the  wagon. 

"No,"  said  Dr.  Grausbirn. 

The  driver  pulled  in  his  reins  and  the  horse  stopped  to  let  a  street 
car  and  two  motor  cars  pass.  Herr  Loeffler  was  red  in  the  face.  Under 
the  protection  of  the  noises  of  starting  motors,  horns,  and  the  bell  of 
the  trolley,  he  shouted,  "Putzi  belongs  to  us!"  and  he  banged  with  his 
umbrella  three  times  on  the  extra  seat  that  was  folded  up  in  front 
of  him.  The  driver  looked  around. 

"Putzi?"  asked  Dr.  Grausbirn. 

"Our  little  blossom,"  said  Herr  Loeffler,  pointing  to  the  doctor's  bag. 

Dr.  Grausbirn  followed  the  flight  of  a  pigeon  with  his  eyes.  The 
pigeon  flew  to  a  fountain  and  drank.  Under  the  fountain  was  a  dog; 
he  ate  grass  and  then  ran  to  the  curb.  From  there  the  doctor's  eyesj 
turned  to  the  back  of  the  driver  and  across  to  Herr  Loeffler — a  tear 
ran  down  the  Konzertmeister's  face.  The  doctor  put  his  hand  on 
Loeffler's  knee. 

"Loeffler,  I'll  do  it.  There's  no  law — every  museum  has  one.  Properly 
prepared,  of  course  ...  in  a  bottle  .  .  .  next  Monday  .  .  .  Servus,  Herr 
Loeffler." 

"Auf  Wiedersehen,  Herr  Doctor." 

And  so  Putzi   was  delivered  to   Herr  Loeffler.   Herr  Loeffler,  whoj 


LUDWIG  BEMELMANS  29 

wrote  a  fine  hand,  designed  a  lovely  label  for  the  bottle.  "Our  dear 
Putzi,"  he  wrote,  and  under  the  name  he  printed  the  date. 

The  next  week  Herr  Loeffler  guessed  wrong  again — rain  for  Beetho- 
ven outside — and  sunshine  for  Brahms  inside — and  conductor  Nekisch 
broke  his  baton. 

"Go  away,  Herr  Loeffler,"  he  said.  "I  am  a  man  of  patience,  but 
you've  done  this  once  too  often.  Get  out  of  my  sight,  far  away — where 
I  never  see  you  again,  ass  of  a  Konzertmeister!" 

Herr  Loeffler  walked  home.  .  .  . 

For  a  year  Putzi  had  stood  on  the  mantelpiece.  He  was  presented 
widi  flowers  on  his  birthday,  and  on  Christmas  he  had  a  little  tree 
with  one  candle  on  it.  Now  Herr  Loeffler  sat  for  hours  in  his  chair, 
looking  out  the  window  and  at  little  Putzi  in  his  bottle,  and  thought 
about  the  weather,  about  the  orchestra — about  inside  and  outside. 

The  Neue  Freie  Presse  was  mostly  wrong;  the  government  reports 
were  seldom  right.  Nekisch  was  always  wrong — more  often  than  when 
Loeffler  had  given  the  word — but  Putzi  in  his  little  bottle,  Putzi  was 
always  right,  well  in  advance.  .  .  . 

It  was  not  until  months  had  passed,  though,  that  Herr  Loeffler 
noticed  it.  He  watched  closely  for  a  few  more  days  and  then  he  told 
his  wife.  He  took  a  pad  and  a  pencil  and  he  drew  a  line  across  the 
middle  of  the  pad.  On  the  lower  half  he  wrote  "Inside,"  on  the  upper 
half  "Outside" — then  he  rubbed  his  hands  and  waited.  .  .  . 

Long,  long  ere  the  tiniest  blue  cloud  showed  over  the  rim  of  any  of 
the  tall  mountains  that  surrounded  the  beautiful  valley  of  Salzburg, 
Putzi  could  tell:  he  sank  to  the  bottom  of  his  bottle,  a  trace  of  two 
wrinkles  appeared  on  his  little  forehead,  and  the  few  tiny  hairs  which 
were  growing  over  his  left  ear  curled  into  tight  spirals. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  tomorrow's  sun  promised  to  rise  into  the 
clear  mountain  air  to  shine  all  day,  Putzi  swam  on  top  of  his  bottle 
with  a  Lilliputian  smile  and  rosy  cheeks. 

"Come,  Putzi,"  said  Herr  Loeffler,  when  the  pad  was  filled — and 
he  took  him  and  the  chart  to  Nekisch.  .  .  . 

Herr  Loeffler  now  is  back  again — Inside  when  it  rains — Outside 
when  the  sun  shines. 


THOMAS   MANN 


COMMENTARY 


Where  live  Thomas  Mann  and  those  oi  his  temper,  however  scat- 
tered 01  broken  they  he,  there  lives  Germany. 

The  career  of  Thomas  Mann  offers  the  rare  spectacle  of  a  youthful 
prodigy  who  has  never  stopped  developing.  It  is  a  career  which  opens 
in  the  flush  of  genius  and  continues  to  progress  with  almost  sym- 
phonic logic,  harmony,  and  beauty.  At  twenty-five  he  had  written 
Buddenbrooks,  a  novel  of  the  first  order.  In  his  late  forties  he  had 
gone  far  beyond  Buddenbrooks  to  the  heights  of  The  Magic  Moun- 
tain, a  long  selection  from  which  I  include  in  this  book.  Now,  in  his 
full  maturity,  he  is  completing  his  profoundest  work,  his  great  Biblical 
tetralogy  of  Joseph  and  his  brothers. 

It  is  appalling  to  reflect  that  in  his  mid-twenties  he  had  completed 
not  merely  Buddenbrooks  but  two  long  short  stories  of  genius- 
"Tonio  Kroger"  and  "Tristan"  One  already  feels  here  something  far 
more  imposing  than  the  lushly  lauded  prodigies  of  a  youthful  Keats  or 
Shelley.  But  Mann,  calmly,  surely,  with  the  unremitting  serenity  of 
a  Goethe,  was  to  go  on  to  "Death  in  Venice,"  written  in  his  thirty- 
sixth  year.  I  say  "written,"  but  in  fact  "Death  in  Venice"  seems 
rather  to  be  played  on  a  cello.  The  tone,  in  its  mingling  of  melan- 
choly, gravity,  and  controlled  power,  is  equivalent  to  that  of  Casals. 
"Death  in  Venice"  is  a  sort  of  culmination,  for  in  it  Mann  gathered 
up  all  the  themes  upon  which  he  had  touched  during  the  first  fifteen 
years  of  his  writing  career— the  anomalous  position  of  the  artist  in 
bourgeois  society,  the  sinister  attraction  of  decadence  and  disease,  the 
fusion  of  Northern  and  pagan  modes  of  feeling,  the  troubling  and 
even  evil  effects  of  beauty  upon  those  well  past  their  youth. 

Thomas  Mann,  though  he  has  never  since  written  anything  as 
purely  beautiful  as  "Death  in  Venice,"  was  to  go  beyond  it  in  other 
ways.  In  1925  came  "Disorder  and  Early  Sorrow,"  in  which  the  terrible 
pulse  of  the  German  inflation  beats  through  a  narrative  that  is  on  the 
surface  a  tender,  muted  story  about  a  child's  ephemeral  grief.  The 

30 


THOMAS  MANN  31 

finest  of  all  his  short  stories,  however,  is  "Mario  and  the  Magician" 
(1929),  which  I  have  chosen  because  it  seems  to  me  to  dig  even 
deeper  than  does  "Death  in  Venice/' 

Here  is  the  tale  of  a  stage  hypnotist  and  the  fate  he  meets  at  the 
hands  of  one  of  his  puppets.  But  to  call  this  the  story  of  Mario  and 
the  magician  is  to  say  that  Moby  Dick  is  about  a  mad  sea  captain 
who  revengefully  pursues  a  white  whale  and  is  at  last  destroyed  by 
his  quarry.  "Mario"  is  brief,  simple,  a  small  fragment  of  life,  and 
Moby  Dick  is  vast  as  the  Pacific.  Yet  they  are  written  on  the  same 
emotional  level.  Mann  and  Melville  are  identically  obsessed.  Both 
are  tortured  by  the  metaphysical  problem  of  evil,  though  Mann, 
writing  in  a  psychoanalytic  age,  sees  evil  as  illness,  as  a  multiform 
malady.  Confronted  by  a  riotously  rotting  society,  he  has  sought  the 
cancerous  spots,  particularly  in  their  subtler  manifestations.  From 
the  diseases  of  its  parts  he  deduces  the  nature  of  the  whole.  The 
ground  theme  of  Buddenbrooks — what  is  it  but  the  sickness  of  an 
acquisitive  society,  considered  as  a  sickness?  To  the  same  problem, 
more  grandly  treated,  the  pages  of  The  Magic  Mountain  are  de- 
voted. And  this  little  tale  of  Mario  and  the  magician  emerges  from 
the  identical  preoccupation.  It  is  a  study  of  malevolence,  of  the  power 
the  will  attains  when  it  is  distorted  and  willing  to  crucify  itself  that 
it  may  dominate  other,  healthier  wills.  "Shall  we  go  away,"  muses  the 
author,  "whenever  life  looks  like  turning  the  slightest  uncanny,  or 
not  quite  normal,  or  even  rather  painful  and  mortifying?"  As  ever,  his 
answer  is  "No,  surely  not." 

Had  Mann  been  content  merely  to  pose  and  examine  the  prob- 
lem of  the  will  to  evil  in  terms  of  the  magician  Cipolla  and  the  youth 
Mario,  his  story  would  have  been  interesting,  but  possibly  rather  thin, 
as  this  sort  of  symbolism  is  apt  to  be.  With  weird  skill,  however,  he 
thickens  his  narrative,  carefully  blurs  its  implications,  so  that  the  idea 
skeleton  does  not  affright  us  with  its  bare  and  pallid  bones.  By  insen- 
sible degrees  we  are  led  along  a  pathway  of  conflict  and  unwhole- 
someness,  beginning  with  the  petty  irritations  offered  by  an  over- 
bearing hotel  management  and  closing  with  a  horrible  psychic  struggle 
mded  only  by  death.  When  we  reach  the  last  page  we  realize  that 
it  is  the  honor  of  the  human  race  which  has  been  resisting  the  evil 


32  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

Cipolla.  Thus  the  tone  of  the  story  preserves  a  deepening  unity  of 
atmosphere  which  mesmerizes  us  apart  from  the  incidents.  Again, 
the  macabre  qualify  of  these  incidents  is  touched  with  its  own  special 
irony  in  that  we  are  hidden  to  view  them  through  the  gleefully 
uncomprehending  eyes  of  little  children.  To  the  children,  of  course, 
Cipolla's  entire  performance  is  a  sort  of  glorified  romp.  Who,  indeed, 
can  tell  how  far  Manns  irony  extends?  Cipolla,  with  his  strident  and 
theatrical  patriotism,  seems  a  deep  thrust  at  the  domination  ideal 
of  the  Fascisti,  a  prophecy  of  the  pit  they  are  digging  for  themselves. 
Also,  and  perhaps  more  obviously,  this  Cipolla  is  a  type  figure  out  of 
Freud:  his  hump  is  a  symbol  of  his  organ  inferiority,  he  is  destroyed 
by  the  very  Eros  he  thinks  to  mock. 

Finally,  the  chiaroscuro  attains  an  added  density  and  terror  through 
the  circumstance  that  the  chief  character  is  both  trickster  and  miracle 
worker.  To  that  misty  mid-region  of  phenomena  which  seems  to  par- 
take both  of  charlatanry  and  the  supernatural,  Thomas  Mann  has 
always    been    attracted— witness    the    manifestation    scene    in  The 
Magic  Mountain  and  his  interest  in  Schrenck-Notzing.  What  attracts 
the  psychologist  in  him  is  the  ambiguity  of  the  human  will,  which,  I 
even  when  it  seeks  merely  to  exercise  itself  playfully  or  out  of  the 
mere  pride  of  technique,  Ends  itself  involved  in  the  darkest  of  human  j 
relationships  and  at  times  with  powers  we  cannot  or  dare  not  name,  i 
Cipolla  becomes  more  than  a  super-Svengali.  The  theatrical  atmos-j 
phere  with  which  he  surrounds  himself  is  more  than  theatrical.  It  is\ 
agonized  and  broken  and  disturbing.  It  haunts  us,  not  like  the  elegiac 
strains  of  "Death  in  Venice"  but  like  a  nightmare  which  is  also  a 
parable. 


Mario  and  the  Magician 

BY 

THOMAS  MANN 


The  atmosphere  of  Torre  di  Venere  remains  unpleasant  in  the  mem- 
ory. From  the  first  moment  the  air  o£  the  place  made  us  uneasy,  we 
felt  irritable,  on  edge;  then  at  the  end  came  the  shocking  business  of 
Cipolla,  that  dreadful  being  who  seemed  to  incorporate,  in  so  fateful 
and  so  humanly  impressive  a  way,  all  the  peculiar  evilness  of  the  skua- 
tion  as  a  whole.  Looking  back,  we  had  the  feeling  that  the  horrible 
end  of  the  affair  had  been  preordained  and  lay  in  the  nature  of  things; 
that  the  children  had  to  be  present  at  it  was  an  added  impropriety, 
due  to  the  false  colours  in  which  the  weird  creature  presented  himself. 
Luckily  for  them,  they  did  not  know  where  the  comedy  left  off  and 
the  tragedy  began;  and  we  let  them  remain  in  their  happy  belief  that 
the  whole  thing  had  been  a  play  up  till  the  end. 

Torre  di  Venere  lies  some  fifteen  kilometres  from  Portoclemente, 
one  of  the  most  popular  summer  resorts  on  the  Tyrrhenian  Sea.  Porto- 
clemente is  urban  and  elegant  and  full  to  overflowing  for  months  on 
end.  Its  gay  and  busy  main  street  of  shops  and  hotels  runs  down  to 
a  wide  sandy  beach  covered  with  tents  and  pennanted  sand-castles  and 
sunburnt  humanity,  where  at  all  times  a  lively  social  bustle  reigns,  and 
much  noise.  But  this  same  spacious  and  inviting  fine-sanded  beach, 
this  same  border  of  pine  grove  and  near,  presiding  mountains,  con- 
tinues all  the  way  along  the  coast.  No  wonder  then  that  some  compe- 
tition of  a  quiet  kind  should  have  sprung  up  further  on.  Torre  di 
Venere — the  tower  that  gave  the  town  its  name  is  gone  long  since,  one 
looks  for  it  in  vain — is  an  offshoot  of  the  larger  resort,  and  for  some 
years  remained  an  idyll  for  the  few,  a  refuge  for  more  unworldly 
spirits.  But  the  usual  history  of  such  places  repeated  itself:  peace  has 

33 


34  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

had  to  retire  further  along  the  coast,  to  Marina  Petriera  and  dear 
knows  where  else.  We  all  know  how  the  world  at  once  seeks  peace  and 
puts  her  to  flight — rushing  upon  her  in  the  fond  idea  that  they  two 
will  wed,  and  where  she  is,  there  it  can  be  at  home.  It  will  even  set 
up  its  Vanity  Fair  in  a  spot  and  be  capable  of  thinking  that  peace  is 
still  by  its  side.  Thus  Torre — though  its  atmosphere  so  far  is  more 
modest  and  contemplative  than  that  of  Portoclemente — has  been  quite 
taken  up,  by  both  Italians  and  foreigners.  It  is  no  longer  the  thing  to 
go  to  Portoclemente — though  still  so  much  the  thing  that  it  is  as  noisy 
and  crowded  as  ever.  One  goes  next  door,  so  to  speak:  to  Torre.  So 
much  more  refined,  even,  and  cheaper  to  boot.  And  the  attractiveness 
of  these  qualities  persists,  though  the  qualities  themselves  long  ago 
ceased  to  be  evident.  Torre  has  got  a  Grand  Hotel.  Numerous  pensions 
have  sprung  up,  some  modest,  some  pretentious.  The  people  who  own 
or  rent  the  villas  and  pinetas  overlooking  the  sea  no  longer  have  it  ali 
their  own  way  on  the  beach.  In  July  and  August  it  looks  just  like  the 
beach  at  Portoclemente:  it  swarms  with  a  screaming,  squabbling, 
merrymaking  crowd,  and  the  sun,  blazing  down  like  mad,  peels  the 
skin  off  their  necks.  Garish  little  flat-bottomed  boats  rock  on  the  glit- 
tering blue,  manned  by  children,  whose  mothers  hover  afar  and  fill  the 
air  with  anxious  cries  of  Nino!  and  Sandro!  and  Bice!  and  Maria!  ; 
Pedlars  step  across  the  legs  of  recumbent  sun-bathers,  selling  flowers 
and  corals,  oysters,  lemonade,  and  cornetti  al  burro,  and  crying  their 
wares  in  the  breathy,  full-throated  southern  voice. 

Such  was  the  scene  that  greeted  our  arrival  in  Torre:  pleasant 
enough,  but  after  all,  we  thought,  we  had  come  too  soon.  It  was  the 
middle  of  August,  the  Italian  season  was  still  at  its  height,  scarcely 
the  moment  for  strangers  to  learn  to  love  the  special  charms  of  the 
place.  What  an  afternoon  crowd  in  the  cafes  on  the  front!  For  instance, 
in  the  Esquisito,  where  we  sometimes  sat  and  were  served  by  Mario, 
that  very  Mario  of  whom  I  shall  have  presently  to  tell.  It  is  well-nigh 
impossible  to  find  a  table;  and  the  various  orchestras  contend  together 
in  the  midst  of  one's  conversation  with  bewildering  effect.  Of  course, 
it  is  in  the  afternoon  that  people  come  over  from  Portoclemente.  Thej 
excursion  is  a  favourite  one  for  the  restless  denizens  of  that  pleasure 
resort,  and  a  Fiat  motor-bus  plies  to  and  fro,  coating  inch-thick  with 


THOMAS  MANN  35 

dust  the  oleander  and  laurel  hedges  along  the  highroad — a  notable  if 
repulsive  sight. 

Yes,  decidedly  one  should  go  to  Torre  in  September,  when  the 
great  public  has  left.  Or  else  in  May,  before  the  water  is  warm  enough 
to  tempt  the  Southerner  to  bathe.  Even  in  the  before  and  after  seasons 
i  Torre  is  not  empty,  but  life  is  less  national  and  more  subdued.  English, 
French,  and  German  prevail  under  the  tent-awnings  and  in  the  pension 
dining-rooms;  whereas  in  August — in  the  Grand  Hotel,  at  least,  where, 
in  default  of  private  addresses,  we  had  engaged  rooms — the  stranger 
finds  the  field  so  occupied  by  Florentine  and  Roman  society  that  he 
feels  quite  isolated  and  even  temporarily  declasse. 

We  had,  rather  to  our  annoyance,  this  experience  on  the  evening 
we  arrived,  when  we  went  in  to  dinner  and  were  shown  to  our  table 
by  the  waiter  in  charge.  As  a  table,  it  had  nothing  against  it,  save 
that  we  had  already  fixed  our  eyes  upon  those  on  the  veranda  beyond, 
built  out  over  the  water,  where  little  red-shaded  lamps  glowed — and 
there  were  still  some  tables  empty,  though  it  was  as  full  as  the  dining- 
room  within.  The  children  went  into  raptures  at  the  festive  sight,  and 
without  more  ado  we  announced  our  intention  to  take  our  meals 
by  preference  in  the  veranda.  Our  words,  it  appeared,  were  prompted 
by  ignorance;  for  we  were  informed,  with  somewhat  embarrassed 
politeness,  that  the  cosy  nook  outside  was  reserved  for  the  clients  of 
the  hotel:  at  nostri  clienti.  Their  clients?  But  we  were  their  clients. 
We  were  not  tourists  or  trippers,  but  boarders  for  a  stay  of  some 
three  or  four  weeks.  However,  we  forbore  to  press  for  an  explanation 
of  the  difference  between  the  likes  of  us  and  that  clientele  to  whom  it 
was  vouchsafed  to  eat  out  there  in  the  glow  of  the  red  lamps,  and 
took  our  dinner  by  the  prosaic  common  light  of  the  dining-room 
chandelier — a  thoroughly  ordinary  and  monotonous  hotel  bill  of  fare, 
be  it  said.  In  Pensione  Eleonora,  a  few  steps  landward,  the  table,  as 
we  were  to  discover,  was  much  better. 

And  thither  it  was  that  we  moved,  three  or  four  days  later,  before 
we  had  had  time  to  settle  in  properly  at  the  Grand  Hotel.  Not  on 
account  of  the  veranda  and  the  lamps.  The  children,  straightway 
on  the  best  of  terms  with  waiters  and  pages,  absorbed  in  the  joys  of 
life  on  the  beach,  promptly  forgot  those  colourful  seductions.  But  now 


36  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

there  arose,  between  ourselves  and  the  veranda  clientele — or  perhaps 
more  correctly  with  the  compliant  management — one  of  those  little 
unpleasantnesses  which  can  quite  spoil  the  pleasure  of  a  holiday. 
Among  the  guests  were  some  high  Roman  aristocracy,  a  Principe  X 
and  his  family.  These  grand  folk  occupied  rooms  close  to  our  own, 
and  the  Principessa,  a  great  and  a  passionately  maternal  lady,  was 
thrown  into  a  panic  by  the  vestiges  of  a  whooping-cough  which  our 
little  ones  had  lately  got  over,  but  which  now  and  then  still  faintly 
troubled  the  unshatterable  slumbers  of  our  youngest-born.  The  nature 
of  this  illness  is  not  clear,  leaving  some  play  for  the  imagination. 
So  we  took  no  oflence  at  our  elegant  neighbour  for  clinging  to  the 
widely  held  view  that  whooping-cough  is  acoustically  contagious  and 
quite  simply  fearing  lest  her  children  yield  to  the  bad  example  set  by 
ours.  In  the  fullness  of  her  feminine  self-confidence  she  protested  to 
the  management,  which  then,  in  the  person  of  the  proverbial  frock- 
coated  manager,  hastened  to  represent  to  us,  with  many  expressions  of 
regret,  that  under  the  circumstances  they  were  obliged  to  transfer  us 
to  the  annexe.  We  did  our  best  to  assure  him  that  the  disease  was  in 
its  very  last  stages,  that  it  was  actually  over,  and  presented  no  danger 
of  infection  to  anybody.  All  that  we  gained  was  permission  to  bring 
the  case  before  the  hotel  physician — not  one  chosen  by  us — by  whose 
verdict  we  must  then  abide.  We  agreed,  convinced  that  thus  we  should 
at  once  pacify  the  Princess  and  escape  the  trouble  of  moving.  The 
doctor  appeared,  and  behaved  like  a  faithful  and  honest  servant  of 
science.  He  examined  the  child  and  gave  his  opinion:  the  disease  was 
quite  over,  no  danger  of  contagion  was  present.  We  drew  a  long  breath 
and  considered  the  incident  closed — until  the  manager  announced  that 
despite  the  doctor's  verdict  it  would  still  be  necessary  for  us  to  give  up 
our  rooms  and  retire  to  the  dependance.  Byzantinism  like  this  out- 
raged us.  It  is  not  likely  that  the  Principessa  was  responsible  for  the 
wilful  breach  of  faith.  Very  likely  the  fawning  management  had  not 
even  dared  to  tell  her  what  the  physician  said.  Anvhow,  we  made  it 
clear  to  his  understanding  that  we  preferred  to  leave  the  hotel  alto- 
gether and  at  once — and  packed  our  trunks.  We  could  do  so  with  a 
light  heart,  having  already  set  up  casual  friendly  relations  with  Casa 
Eleonora.  We  had  noticed  its  pleasant  exterior  and  formed  the  ac- 


THOMAS  MANN  37 

quaintance  of  its  proprietor,  Signora  Angiolieri,  and  her  husband:  she 
slender  and  black-haired,  Tuscan  in  type,  probably  at  the  beginning 
of  the  thirties,  with  the  dead  ivory  complexion  of  the  southern  woman, 
he  quiet  and  bald  and  carefully  dressed.  They  owned  a  larger  estab- 
lishment in  Florence  and  presided  only  in  summer  and  early  autumn 
over  the  branch  in  Torre  di  Venere.  But  earlier,  before  her  marriage, 
our  new  landlady  had  been  companion,  fellow-traveller,  wardrobe 
mistress,  yes,  friend,  of  Eleonora  Duse  and  manifestly  regarded  that 
period  as  the  crown  of  her  career.  Even  at  our  first  visit  she  spoke  of 
it  with  animation.  Numerous  photographs  of  the  great  actress,  with 
affectionate  inscriptions,  were  displayed  about  the  drawing-room,  and 
other  souvenirs  of  their  life  together  adorned  the  little  tables  and 
etageres.  This  cult  of  a  so  interesting  past  was  calculated,  of  course, 
to  heighten  the  advantages  of  the  signora's  present  business.  Neverthe- 
less our  pleasure  and  interest  were  quite  genuine  as  we  were  conducted 
through  the  house  by  its  owner  and  listened  to  her  sonorous  and 
staccato  Tuscan  voice  relating  anecdotes  of  that  immortal  mistress, 
depicting  her  suffering  saintliness,  her  genius,  her  profound  delicacy 
of  feeling. 

Thither,  then,  we  moved  our  effects,  to  the  dismay  of  the  staff  of 
the  Grand  Hotel,  who,  like  all  Italians,  were  very  good  to  children. 
Our  new  quarters  were  retired  and  pleasant,  we  were  within  easy  reach 
of  the  sea  through  the  avenue  of  young  plane  trees  that  ran  down  to 
the  esplanade.  In  the  clean,  cool  dining-room  Signora  Angiolieri  daily 
served  the  soup  with  her  own  hands,  the  service  was  attentive  and 
good,  the  table  capital.  We  even  discovered  some  Viennese  acquaint- 
ances, and  enjoyed  chatting  with  them  after  luncheon,  in  front  of 
the  house.  They,  in  their  turn,  were  the  means  of  our  finding  others 
— in  short,  all  seemed  for  the  best,  and  we  were  heartily  glad  of  the 
change  we  had  made.  Nothing  was  now  wanting  to  a  holiday  of  the 
most  gratifying  kind. 

And  yet  no  proper  gratification  ensued.  Perhaps  the  stupid  occa- 
sion of  our  change  of  quarters  pursued  us  to  the  new  ones  we  had 
found.  Personally,  I  admit  that  I  do  not  easily  forget  these  collisions 
with  ordinary  humanity,  the  naive  misuse  of  power,  the  injustice,  the 
sycophantic  corruption.  I  dwelt  upon  the  incident  too  much,  it  irri- 


38  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

tated  me  in  retrospect — quite  futilely,  of  course,  since  such  phenomena 
are  only  all  too  natural  and  all  too  much  the  rule.  And  we  had  not 
broken  off  relations  with  the  Grand  Hotel.  The  children  were  as 
friendly  as  ever  there,  the  porter  mended  their  toys,  and  we  sometimes 
took  tea  in  the  garden.  We  even  saw  the  Principessa.  She  would  come 
out,  with  her  firm  and  delicate  tread,  her  lips  emphatically  corallined, 
to  look  after  her  children,  playing  under  the  supervision  of  their 
English  governess.  She  did  not  dream  that  we  were  anywhere  near,  for 
so  soon  as  she  appeared  in  the  offing  we  sternly  forbade  our  little  one 
even  to  clear  his  throat. 

The  heat — if  I  may  bring  it  in  evidence — was  extreme.  It  was  Afri- 
can. The  power  of  the  sun,  directly  one  left  the  border  of  the  indigo- 
blue  wave,  was  so  frightful,  so  relentless,  that  the  mere  thought  of 
the  few  steps  between  the  beach  and  luncheon  was  a  burden,  clad 
though  one  might  be  only  in  pyjamas.  Do  you  care  for  that  sort  of 
thing?  Weeks  on  end?  Yes,  of  course,  it  is  proper  to  the  south,  it  is 
classic  weather,  the  sun  of  Homer,  the  climate  wherein  human  culture 
came  to  flower — and  all  the  rest  of  it.  But  after  a  while  it  is  too  much 
for  me,  I  reach  a  point  where  I  begin  to  find  it  dull.  The  burning  void 
of  the  sky,  day  after  day,  weighs  one  down;  the  high  coloration,  the 
enormous  naivete  of  the  unrefracted  light — they  do,  I  dare  say,  in- 
duce light-heartedness,  a  carefree  mood  born  of  immunity  from  down- 
pours and  other  meteorological  caprices.  But  slowly,  slowly,  there  makes 
itself  felt  a  lack:  the  deeper,  more  complex  needs  of  the  northern  soul 
remain  unsatisfied.  You  are  left  barren — even,  it  may  be,  in  time,  a  little 
contemptuous.  True,  without  that  stupid  business  of  the  whooping- 
cough  I  might  not  have  been  feeling  these  things.  I  was  annoyed, 
very  likely  I  wanted  to  feel  them  and  so  half-unconsciously  seized 
upon  an  idea  lying  ready  to  hand  to  induce,  or  if  not  to  induce,  at 
least  to  justify  and  strengthen,  my  attitude.  Up  to  this  point,  then,  if 
you  like,  let  us  grant  some  ill  will  on  our  part.  But  the  sea;  and  the 
mornings  spent  extended  upon  the  fine  sand  in  face  of  its  eternal 
splendours — no,  the  sea  could  not  conceivably  induce  such  feelings. 
Yet  it  was  none  the  less  true  that,  despite  all  previous  experience,  we 
were  not  at  home  on  the  beach,  we  were  not  happy. 

It  was  too  soon,  too  soon.  The  beach,  as  I  have  said,  was  still  in  the 


THOMAS  MANN  39 

hands  of  the  middle-class  native.  It  is  a  pleasing  breed  to  look  at,  and 
among  the  young  we  saw  much  shapeliness  and  charm.  Still,  we  were 
necessarily  surrounded  by  a  great  deal  of  very  average  humanity — 
a  middle-class  mob,  which,  you  will  admit,  is  not  more  charming 
under  this  sun  than  under  one's  own  native  sky.  The  voices  these 
women  have!  It  was  sometimes  hard  to  believe  that  we  were  in  the 
land  which  is  the  western  cradle  of  the  art  of  song.  "Fuggiero!"  I  can 
still  hear  that  cry,  as  for  twenty  mornings  long  I  heard  it  close  behind 
me,  breathy,  full-throated,  hideously  stressed,  with  a  harsh  open  e, 
uttered  in  accents  of  mechanical  despair.  "Fuggiero!  Rispondi  almenol" 
Answer  when  I  call  you!  The  sp  in  rispondi  was  pronounced  like  shp, 
as  Germans  pronounce  it;  and  this,  on  top  of  what  I  felt  already, 
vexed  my  sensitive  soul.  The  cry  was  addressed  to  a  repulsive  youngster 
whose  sunburn  had  made  disgusting  raw  sores  on  his  shoulders.  He 
outdid  anything  I  have  ever  seen  for  ill-breeding,  refractoriness^  and 
temper  and  was  a  great  coward  to  boot,  putting  the  whole  beach  in 
an  uproar,  one  day,  because  of  his  outrageous  sensitiveness  to  the 
slightest  pain.  A  sand-crab  had  pinched  his  toe  in  the  water,  and  the 
minute  injury  made  him  set  up  a  cry  of  heroic  proportions — the  shout 
of  an  antique  hero  in  his  agony — that  pierced  one  to  the  marrow  and 
called  up  visions  of  some  frightful  tragedy.  Evidently  he  considered 
himself  not  only  wounded,  but  poisoned  as  well;  he  crawled  out  on 
the  sand  and  lay  in  apparently  intolerable  anguish,  groaning  "Ohil" 
and  "Ohimel"  and  threshing  about  with  arms  and  legs  to  ward  off 
his  mother's  tragic  appeals  and  the  questions  of  the  bystanders.  An 
audience  gathered  round.  A  doctor  was  fetched — the  same  who  had 
pronounced  objective  judgment  on  our  whooping-cough — and  here 
again  acquitted  himself  like  a  man  of  science.  Good-naturedly  he 
reassured  the  boy,  telling  him  that  he  was  not  hurt  at  all,  he  should 
simply  go  into  the  water  again  to  relieve  the  smart.  Instead  of  which, 
Fuggiero  was  borne  off  the  beach,  followed  by  a  concourse  of  people. 
But  he  did  not  fail  to  appear  next  morning,  nor  did  he  leave  off  spoil- 
ng  our  children's  sand-castles.  Of  course,  always  by  accident.  In  short, 
i  perfect  terror. 

And  this  twelve-year-old  lad  was  prominent  among  the  influences 
hat,  imperceptibly  at  first,  combined  to  spoil  our  holiday  and  render 


40  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

it  unwholesome.  Somehow  or  other,  there  was  a  stiffness,  a  lack  of 
innocent  enjoyment.  These  people  stood  on  their  dignity — just  wh 
and  in  what  spirit,  it  was  not  easy  at  first  to  tell.  They  displayed  muc, 
self-respectingness;  towards  each  other  and  towards  the  foreigner  the 
bearing  was  that  of  a  person  newly  conscious  of  a  sense  of  honou 
And  wherefore?  Gradually  we  realized  the  political  implications  and 
understood  that  we  were  in  the  presence  of  a  national  ideal.  Th 
beach,  in  fact,  was  alive  with  patriotic  children— a  phenomenon  as 
unnatural  as  it  was  depressing.  Children  are  a  human  species  and  i. 
society  apart,  a  nation  of  their  own,  so  to  speak.  On  the  basis  of  their 
common  form  of  life,  they  find  each  other  out  with  the  greatest  ease, 
no  matter  how  different  their  small  vocabularies.  Ours  soon  played 
with  natives  and  foreigners  alike.  Yet  they  were  plainly  both  puzzled 
and  disappointed  at  times.  There  were  wounded  sensibilities,  displays 
of  assertiveness— or   rather  hardly  assertiveness,  for  it  was  too   self- 
conscious  and  too  didactic  to  deserve  the  name.  There  were  quarrels 
over    flags,    disputes    about    authority    and    precedence.    Grown-ups 
joined  in,  not  so  much  to  pacify  as  to  render  judgment  and  enunciate 
principles.  Phrases  were  dropped  about  the  greatness  and  dignity  of 
Italy,  solemn  phrases  that  spoilt  the  fun.  We  saw  our  two  little  ones 
retreat,  puzzled  and  hurt,  and  were  put  to  it  to  explain  the  situation. 
These  people,  we  told  them,  were  just  passing  through  a  certain  stage, 
something   rather   like   an    illness,   perhaps;    not   very    pleasant,   but 
probably  unavoidable. 

We  had  only  our  own  carelessness  to  thank  that  we  came  to  blows 
in  the  end  with  this  "stage"— which,  after  all,  we  had  seen  and  sized 
up  long  before  now.  Yes,  it  came  to  another  "cross-purposes,"  so 
evidently  the  earlier  ones  had  not  been  sheer  accident.  In  a  word,  we 
became  an  offence  to  the  public  morals.  Our  small  daughter— eight 
years  old,  but  in  physical  development  a  good  year  younger  and  thin 
as  a  chicken— had  had  a  good  long  bathe  and  gone  playing,  in  the 
warm  sun  in  her  wet  costume.  We  told  her  that  she  might  take  off 
her  bathing-suit,  which  was  stiff  with  sand,  rinse  it  in  the  sea,  and  put 
it  on  again,  after  which  she  must  take  care  to  keep  it  cleaner.  Off 
goes  the  costume  and  she  runs  down  naked  to  the  sea,  rinses  her  little 
jersey,  and  comes  back.  Ought  we  to  have  foreseen  the  outburst  of 


THOMAS  MANN  41 

pnger  and  resentment  which  her  conduct,  and  thus  our  conduct,  called 

-3rth?  Without  delivering  a  homily  on  the  subject,  I  may  say  that  in 
line  last  decade  our  attitude  towards  the  nude  body  and  our  feelings 

jgarding  it  have  undergone,  all  over  the  world,  a  fundamental  change. 

Jhere  are  things  we  "never  think  about"  any  more,  and  among  them 
is  the  freedom  we  had  permitted  to  this  by  no  means  provocative  little 
childish  body.  But  in  these  parts  it  was  taken  as  a  challenge.  The 
.patriotic  children  hooted.  Fuggiero  whistled  on  his  fingers.  The  sud- 
den buzz  of  conversation  among  the  grown  people  in  our  neighbour- 
hood boded  no  good.  A  gentleman  in  city  togs,  with  a  not  very  apropos 
bowler  hat  on  the  back  of  his  head,  was  assuring  his  outraged  women- 
folk that  he  proposed  to  take  punitive  measures;  he  stepped  up  to  us, 
and  a  philippic  descended  on  our  unworthy  heads,  in  which  all  the 
emotionalism  of  the  sense-loving  south  spoke  in  the  service  of  morality 
•and  discipline.  The  offence  against  decency  of  which  we  had  been 
guilty  was,  he  said,  the  more  to  be  condemned  because  it  was  also  a 
gross  ingratitude  and  an  insulting  breach  of  his  country's  hospitality. 
We  had  criminally  injured  not  only  the  letter  and  spirit  of  the  public 
bathing  regulations,  but  also  the  honour  of  Italy;  he,  the  gentleman 
in  the  city  togs,  knew  how  to  defend  that  honour  and  proposed  to 
see  to  it  that  our  offence  against  the  national  dignity  should  not  go 
unpunished. 

We  did  our  best,  bowing  respectfully,  to  give  ear  to  this  eloquence. 
To  contradict  the  man,  overheated  as  he  was,  would  probably  be  to 
fall  from  one  error  into  another.  On  the  tips  of  our  tongues  we  had 
various  answers:  as,  that  the  word  "hospitality,"  in  its  strictest  sense, 
was  not  quite  the  right  one,  taking  all  the  circumstances  into  considera- 
tion. We  were  not  literally  the  guests  of  Italy,  but  of  Signora  Angio- 
lieri,  who  had  assumed  the  role  of  dispenser  of  hospitality  some  years 
ago  on  laying  down  that  of  familiar  friend  to  Eleonora  Duse.  We 
longed  to  say  that  surely  this  beautiful  country  had  not  sunk  so  low 
as  to  be  reduced  to  a  state  of  hypersensitive  prudishness.  But  we  con- 
fined ourselves  to  assuring  the  gentleman  that  any  lack  of  respect,  any 
provocation  on  our  parts,  had  been  the  furthest  from  our  thoughts. 
And  as  a  mitigating  circumstance  we  pointed  out  the  tender  age 
and  physical  slightness  of  the  little  culprit.  In  vain.  Our  protests  were 


42  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

waved  away,  he  did  not  believe  in  them;  our  defence  would  not  hold 
water.  We  must  be  made  an  example  of.  The  authorities  were  notified, 
by  telephone,  I  believe,  and  their  representative  appeared  on  the  beach. 
He  said  the  case  was  "molto  grave."  We  had  to  go  with  him  to  the 
Municipio  up  in  the  Piazza,  where  a  higher  official  confirmed  the 
previous  verdict  of  "molto  grave!'  launched  into  a  stream  of  the  usual 
didactic  phrases— the  selfsame  tune  and  words  as  the  man  in  the 
bowler  hat-and  levied  a  fine  and  ransom  of  fifty  lire.  We  felt  that 
the  adventure  must  willy-nilly  be  worth  to  us  this  much  of  a  contribu- 
tion to  the  economy  of  the  Italian  government;  paid,  and  left.  Ought 
we  not  at  this  point  to  have  left  Torre  as  well? 

If  we  only  had!  We  should  thus  have  escaped  that  fatal  Cipolla. 
But  circumstances  combined  to  prevent  us  from  making  up  our  minds 
to  a  change.  A  certain  poet  says  that  it  is  indolence  that  makes  us 
endure  uncomfortable  situations.  The  apereu  may  serve  as  an  explana- 
tion for  our  inaction.  Anyhow,  one  dislikes  voiding  the  field  immedi- 
ately upon  such  an  event.  Especially  if  sympathy  from  other  quarters 
encourages  one  to  defy  it.  And  in  the  Villa  Eleonora  they  pronounced 
as  with  one  voice  upon  the  injustice  of  our  punishment.  Some  Italian 
after-dinner  acquaintances  found  that  the  episode  put  their  country 
in  a  very  bad  light,  and  proposed  taking  the  man  in  the  bowler  hat 
to  task,  as  one  fellow-citizen  to  another.  But  the  next  day  he  and  his 
party  had  vanished  from  the  beach.  Not  on  our  account,  of  course. 
Though  it  might  be  that  the  consciousness  of  his  impending  departure 
had  added  energy  to  his  rebuke;  in  any  case  his  going  was  a  relief. 
And,  furthermore,  we  stayed  because  our  stay  had  by  now  become 
remarkable  in  our  own  eyes,  which  is  worth  something  in  itself,  quite 
apart  from  the  comfort  or  discomfort  involved.  Shall  we  strike  sail, 
avoid  a  certain  experience  so  soon  as  it  seems  not  expressly  calculated 
to  increase  our  enjoyment  or  our  self-esteem?  Shall  we  go  away  when- 
ever life  looks  like  turning   in   the   slightest  uncanny,  or  not  quite 
normal,  or  even  rather  painful  and  mortifying?  No,  surely  not.  Rather 
stay  and  look  matters  in  the  face,  brave  them  out;  perhaps  precisely  in 
so  doing  lies  a  lesson  for  us  to  learn.  We  stayed  on  and  reaped  as 
the   awful   reward  of  our  constancy  the  unholy  and  staggering  ex 
perience  with  Cipolla. 


THOMAS  MANN  43 

I  have  not  mentioned  that  the  after  season  had  begun,  almost  on 
the  very  day  we  were  disciplined  by  the  city  authorities.  The  worship- 
ful gentleman  in  the  bowler  hat,  our  denouncer,  was  not  the  only 
person  to  leave  the  resort.  There  was  a  regular  exodus,  on  every  hand 
you  saw  luggage-carts  on  their  way  to  the  station.  The  beach  de- 
nationalized itself.  Life  in  Torre,  in  the  cafes  and  the  pinetas,  became 
more  homelike  and  more  European.  Very  likely  we  might  even  have 
eaten  at  a  table  in  the  glass  veranda,  but  we  refrained,  being  content 
at  Signora  Angiolieri's — as  content,  that  is,  as  our  evil  star  would  let 
us  be.  But  at  the  same  time  with  this  turn  for  the  better  came  a  change 
in  the  weather:  almost  to  an  hour  it  showed  itself  in  harmony  with 
the  holiday  calendar  of  the  general  public.  The  sky  was  overcast;  not 
that  it  grew  any  cooler,  but  the  unclouded  heat  of  the  entire  eighteen 
days  since  our  arrival,  and  probably  long  before  that,  gave  place  to  a 
stifling  sirocco  air,  while  from  time  to  time  a  little  ineffectual  rain 
sprinkled  the  velvety  surface  of  the  beach.  Add  to  which,  that  two- 
thirds  of  our  intended  stay  at  Torre  had  passed.  The  colourless,  lazy 
sea,  with  sluggish  jellyfish  floating  in  its  shallows,  was  at  least  a 
change.  And  it  would  have  been  silly  to  feel  retrospective  longings 
after  a  sun  that  had  caused  us  so  many  sighs  when  it  burned  down  in 
all  its  arrogant  power. 

At  this  juncture,  then,  it  was  that  Cipolla  announced  himself. 
Cavaliere  Cipolla  he  was  called  on  the  posters  that  appeared  one  day 
stuck  up  everywhere,  even  in  the  dining-room  of  Pensione  Eleonora. 
A  travelling  virtuoso,  an  entertainer,  "forzatore,  illusionista,  prestidiga- 
tore"  as  he  called  himself,  who  proposed  to  wait  upon  the  highly  re- 
spectable population  of  Torre  di  Venere  with  a  display  of  extraordinary 
phenomena  of  a  mysterious  and  staggering  kind.  A  conjuror!  The 
bare  announcement  was  enough  to  turn  our  children's  heads.  They  had 
never  seen  anything  of  the  sort,  and  now  our  present  holiday  was  to 
afford  them  this  new  excitement.  From  that  moment  on  they  besieged 
us  with  prayers  to  take  tickets  for  the  performance.  We  had  doubts, 
from  the  first,  on  the  score  of  the  lateness  of  the  hour,  nine  o'clock; 
but  gave  way,  in  the  idea  that  we  might  see  a  little  of  what  Cipolla 
had  to  offer,  probably  no  great  matter,  and  then  go  home.  Besides, 
of  course,  the  children  could  sleep  late  next  day.  We  bought  four 


44  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

tickets  of  Signora  Angiolieri  herself,  she  having  taken  a  number  of 
the  stalls  on  commission  to  sell  them  to  her  guests.  She  could  not 
vouch  for  the  man's  performance,  and  we  had  no  great  expectations. 
But  we  were  conscious  of  a  need  for  diversion,  and  the  children's 
violent  curiosity  proved  catching. 

The  Cavaliere's  performance  was  to  take  place  in  a  hall  where  during 
the  season  there  had  been  a  cinema  with  a  weekly  programme.  We  had 
never  been  there.  You  reached  it  by  following  the  main  street  under 
the  wall  of  the  "palazzo"  a  ruin  with  a  "For  sale"  sign,  that  sug- 
gested a  castle  and  had  obviously  been  built  in  lordlier  days.  In  the 
same  street  were  the  chemist,  the  hairdresser,  and  all  the  better  shops; 
it  led,  so  to  speak,  from  the  feudal  past  the  bourgeois  into  the  prole- 
tarian, for  it  ended  off  between  two  rows  of  poor  fishing-huts,  where 
old  women  sat  mending  nets  before  the  doors.  And  here,  among  the 
proletariat,  was  the  hall,  not  much  more,  actually,  than  a  wooden 
shed,  though  a  large  one,  with  a  turreted  entrance,  plastered  on  either 
side  with  layers  of  gay  placards.  Some  while  after  dinner,  then,  on 
the  appointed  evening,  we  wended  our  way  thither  in  the  dark,  the 
children  dressed  in  their  best  and  blissful  with  the  sense  of  so  much 
irregularity.  It  was  sultry,  as  it  had  been  for  days;  there  was  heat 
lightning  now  and  then,  and  a  little  rain;  we  proceeded  under  um- 
brellas. It  took  us  a  quarter  of  an  hour. 

Our  tickets  were  collected  at  the  entrance,  our  places  we  had  to  find 
ourselves.  They  were  in  the  third  row  left,  and  as  we  sat  down  we  saw 
that,  late  though  the  hour  was  for  the  performance,  it  was  to  be  inter- 
preted with  even  more  laxity.  Only  very  slowly  did  an  audience— 
who  seemed  to  be  relied  upon  to  come  late — begin  to  fill  the  stalls. 
These  comprised  the  whole  auditorium;  there  were  no  boxes.  This 
tardiness  gave  us  some  concern.  The  children's  cheeks  were  already 
flushed  as  much  with  fatigue  as  with  excitement.  But  even  when  we 
entered,  the  standing-room  at  the  back  and  in  the  side  aisles  was 
already  well  occupied.  There  stood  the  manhood  of  Torre  di  Venere, 
all  and  sundry,  fisherfolk,  rough-and-ready  youths  with  bare  forearms 
crossed  over  their  striped  jerseys.  We  were  well  pleased  with  the 
presence  of  this  native  assemblage,  which  always  adds  colour  and 
animation  to  occasions  like  the  present;  and  the  children  were  frankly 


THOMAS  MANN  45 

delighted.  For  they  had  friends  among  these  people — acquaintances 
picked  up  on  afternoon  strolls  to  the  further  ends  of  the  beach.  We 
would  be  turning  homeward,  at  the  hour  when  the  sun  dropped  into 
the  sea,  spent  with  the  huge  effort  it  had  made  and  gilding  with 
reddish  gold  the  oncoming  surf;  and  we  would  come  upon  bare- 
legged fisherfolk  standing  in  rows,  bracing  and  hauling  with  long- 
drawn  cries  as  they  drew  in  the  nets  and  harvested  in  dripping  baskets 
their  catch,  often  so  scanty,  of  jrutta  di  mare.  The  children  looked  on, 
helped  to  pull,  brought  out  their  little  stock  of  Italian  words,  made 
friends.  So  now  they  exchanged  nods  with  the  "standing-room"  clien- 
tele; there  was  Guiscardo,  there  Antonio,  they  knew  them  by  name 
and  waved  and  called  across  in  half-whispers,  getting  answering  nods 
and  smiles  that  displayed  rows  of  healthy  white  teeth.  Look,  there  is 
even  Mario,  Mario  from  the  Esquisito,  who  brings  us  the  chocolate. 
He  wants  to  see  the  conjuror,  too,  and  he  must  have  come  early,  for 
he  is  almost  in  front;  but  he  does  not  see  us,  he  is  not  paying  attention; 
that  is  a  way  he  has,  even  though  he  is  a  waiter.  So  we  wave  instead 
to  the  man  who  lets  out  the  little  boats  on  the  beach;  he  is  there  too, 
standing  at  the  back. 

It  had  got  to  a  quarter  past  nine,  it  got  to  almost  half  past.  It  was 
natural  that  we  should  be  nervous.  When  would  the  children  get  to 
bed?  It  had  been  a  mistake  to  bring  them,  for  now  it  would  be  very 
hard  to  suggest  breaking  oif  their  enjoyment  before  it  had  got  well 
under  way.  The  stalls  had  filled  in  time;  all  Torre,  apparently,  was 
there:  the  guests  of  the  Grand  Hotel,  the  guests  of  Villa  Eleonora, 
familiar  faces  from  the  beach.  We  heard  English  and  German  and 
the  sort  of  French  that  Rumanians  speak  with  Italians.  Madame 
Angiolieri  herself  sat  two  rows  behind  us,  with  her  quiet,  bald-headed 
spouse,  who  kept  stroking  his  moustache  with  the  two  middle  fingers 
of  his  right  hand.  Everybody  had  come  late,  but  nobody  too  late. 
Cipolla  made  us  wait  for  him. 

He  made  us  wait.  That  is  probably  the  way  to  put  it.  He  heightened 
the  suspense  by  his  delay  in  appearing.  And  we  could  see  the  point  of 
this,  too — only  not  when  it  was  carried  to  extremes.  Towards  half  past 
nine  the  audience  began  to  clap — an  amiable  way  of  expressing  justi- 
fiable impatience,  evincing  as  it  does  an  eagerness  to  applaud.  For  the 


46  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

little  ones,  this  was  a  joy  in  itself — all  children  love  to  clap.  From  the 
popular  sphere  came  loud  cries  of  "Prontil"  ' 'Cominciamo!"  And  lo, 
it  seemed  now  as  easy  to  begin  as  before  it  had  been  hard.  A  gong 
sounded,  greeted  by  the  standing  rows  with  a  many-voiced  "Ah-h!" 
and  the  curtains  parted.  They  revealed  a  platform  furnished  more 
like  a  schoolroom  than  like  the  theatre  of  a  conjuring  performance — 
largely  because  of  the  blackboard  in  the  left  foreground.  There  was  a 
common  yellow  hat-stand,  a  few  ordinary  straw-bottomed  chairs,  and 
further  back  a  little  round  table  holding  a  water  carafe  and  glass,  also 
a  tray  with  a  liqueur  glass  and  a  flask  of  pale  yellow  liquid.  We  had 
still  a  few  seconds  of  time  to  let  these  things  sink  in.  Then,  with  no 
darkening  of  the  house,  Cavaliere  Cipolla  made  his  entry. 

He  came  forward  with  a  rapid  step  that  expressed  his  eagerness 
to  appear  before  his  public  and  gave  rise  to  the  illusion  that  he  had 
already  come  a  long  way  to  put  himself  at  their  service — whereas,  of 
course,  he  had  only  been  standing  in  the  wings.  His  costume  supported 
the  fiction.  A  man  of  an  age  hard  to  determine,  but  by  no  means 
young;  with  a  sharp,  ravaged  face,  piercing  eyes,  compressed  lips, 
small  black  waxed  moustache,  and  a  so-called  imperial  in  the  curve 
between  mouth  and  chin.  He  was  dressed  for  the  street  with  a  sort  of 
complicated  evening  elegance,  in  a  wide  black  pelerine  with  velvet 
collar  and  satin  lining;  which,  in  the  hampered  state  of  his  arms,  he 
held  together  in  front  with  his  white-gloved  hands.  He  had  a  white 
scarf  round  his  neck;  a  top  hat  with  a  curving  brim  sat  far  back  on 
his  head.  Perhaps  more  than  anywhere  else  the  eighteenth  century 
is  still  alive  in  Italy,  and  with  it  the  charlatan  and  mountebank  type 
so  characteristic  of  the  period.  Only  there,  at  any  rate,  does  one  still 
encounter  really  well-preserved  specimens.  Cipolla  had  in  his  whole 
appearance  much  of  the  historic  type;  his  very  clothes  helped  to  con- 
jure up  the  traditional  figure  with  its  blatantly,  fantastically  foppish 
air.  His  pretentious  costume  sat  upon  him,  or  rather  hung  upon  him, 
most  curiously,  being  in  one  place  drawn  too  tight,  in  another  a  mass 
of  awkward  folds.  There  was  something  not  quite  in  order  about  his 
figure,  both  front  and  back — that  was  plain  later  on.  But  I  must 
emphasize  the  fact  that  there  was  not  a  trace  of  personal  jocularity  or 
clownishness  in  his  pose,  manner,  or  behaviour.  On  the  contrary,  there 


THOMAS  MANN  17 

was  complete  seriousness,  an  absence  of  any  humorous  appeal;  occa- 
sionally even  a  cross-grained  pride,  along  with  that  curious,  self- 
satisfied  air  so  characteristic  of  the  deformed.  None  of  all  this,  however, 
prevented  his  appearance  from  being  greeted  with  laughter  from 
more  than  one  quarter  of  the  hall. 

All  the  eagerness  had  left  his  manner.  The  swift  entry  had  been 
merely  an  expression  of  energy,  not  of  zeal.  Standing  at  the  footlights 
he  negligently  drew  off  his  gloves,  to  display  long  yellow  hands,  one  of 
them  adorned  with  a  seal  ring  with  a  lapis-lazuli  in  a  high  setting.  As 
he  stood  there,  his  small  hard  eyes,  with  flabby  pouches  beneath  them, 
roved  appraisingly  about  the  hall,  not  quickly,  rather  in  a  considered 
examination,  pausing  here  and  there  upon  a  face  with  his  lips  clipped 
together,  not  speaking  a  word.  Then  with  a  display  of  skill  as  surpris- 
ing as  it  was  casual,  he  rolled  his  gloves  into  a  ball  and  tossed  them 
across  a  considerable  distance  into  the  glass  on  the  table.  Next  from 
an  inner  pocket  he  drew  forth  a  packet  of  cigarettes;  you  could  see  by 
the  wrapper  that  they  were  the  cheapest  sort  the  government  sells. 
With  his  fingertips  he  pulled  out  a  cigarette  and  lighted  it,  without 
looking,  from  a  quick-firing  benzine  lighter.  He  drew  the  smoke  deep 
into  his  lungs  and  let  it  out  again,  tapping  his  foot,  with  both  lips 
drawn  in  an  arrogant  grimace  and  the  grey  smoke  streaming  out  be- 
tween broken  and  saw-edged  teeth. 

With  a  keenness  equal  to  his  own  his  audience  eyed  him.  The  youths 
at  the  rear  scowled  as  they  peered  at  this  cocksure  creature  to  search  out 
his  secret  weaknesses.  He  betrayed  none.  In  fetching  out  and  putting 
back  the  cigarettes  his  clothes  got  in  his  way.  He  had  to  turn  back  his 
pelerine,  and  in  so  doing  revealed  a  riding-whip  with  a  silver  claw- 
handle  that  hung  by  a  leather  thong  from  his  left  forearm  and  looked 
decidedly  out  of  place.  You  could  see  that  he  had  on  not  evening 
clothes  but  a  frock-coat,  and  under  this,  as  he  lifted  it  to  get  at  his 
pocket,  could  be  seen  a  striped  sash  worn  about  the  body.  Somebody 
behind  me  whispered  that  this  sash  went  with  his  title  of  Cavaliere.  I 
give  the  information  for  what  it  may  be  worth — personally,  I  never 
heard  that  the  title  carried  such  insignia  with  it.  Perhaps  the  sash  was 
sheer  pose,  like  the  way  he  stood  there,  without  a  word,  casually  and 
arrogantly  puffing  smoke  into  his  audience's  face. 


48  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

People  laughed,  as  I  said.  The  merriment  had  become  almost  gen- 
eral when  somebody  in  the  "standing  seats,"  in  a  loud,  dry  voice,  re- 
marked: "Buona  sera." 

Cipolla  cocked  his  head.  "Who  was  that?"  asked  he,  as  though  he 
had  been  dared.  "Who  was  that  just  spoke?  Well?  First  so  bold  and 
now  so  modest?  Paura,  eh?"  He  spoke  with  a  rather  high,  asthmatic 
voice,  which  yet  had  a  metallic  quality.  He  waited. 

"That  was  me,"  a  youth  at  the  rear  broke  into  the  stillness,  seeing 
himself  thus  challenged.  He  was  not  far  from  us,  a  handsome  fellow 
in  a  woollen  shirt,  with  his  coat  hanging  over  one  shoulder.  He  wore 
his  curly,  wiry  hair  in  a  high,  dishevelled  mop,  the  style  affected  by 
the  youth  of  the  awakened  Fatherland;  it  gave  him  an  African  appear- 
ance that  rather  spoiled  his  looks.  "Bel  That  was  me.  It  was  your  busi- 
ness to  say  it  first,  but  I  was  trying  to  be  friendly." 

More  laughter.  The  chap  had  a  tongue  in  his  head.  "Ha  sciolto  la 
scilingudgnolo,"  I  heard  near  me.  After  all,  the  retort  was  deserved. 

"Ah,  bravo!"  answered  Cipolla.  "I  like  you,  giovanotto.  Trust  me, 
I've  had  my  eye  on  you  for  some  time.  People  like  you  are  just  in  my 
line.  I  can  use  them.  And  you  are  the  pick  of  the  lot,  that's  plain  to 
see.  You  do  what  you  like.  Or  is  it  possible  you  have  ever  not  done 
what  you  liked — or  even,  maybe,  what  you  didn't  like?  What  some- 
body else  liked,  in  short?  Hark  ye,  my  friend,  that  might  be  a  pleasant 
change  for  you,  to  divide  up  the  willing  and  the  doing  and  stop  tack- 
ling both  jobs  at  once.  Division  of  labour,  sistema  americano ,  sal  For 
instance,  suppose  you  were  to  show  your  tongue  to  this  select  and  hon- 
ourable audience  here — your  whole  tongue,  right  down  to  the  roots?" 

"No,  I  won't,"  said  the  youth,  hostilely.  "Sticking  out  your  tongue 
shows  a  bad  bringing-up." 

"Nothing  of  the  sort,"  retorted  Cipolla.  "You  would  only  be  doing 
it.  With  all  due  respect  to  your  bringing-up,  I  suggest  that  before  I 
count  ten,  you  will  perform  a  right  turn  and  stick  out  your  tongue  at 
the  company  here  further  than  you  knew  yourself  that  you  could  stick 
it  out." 

He  gazed  at  the  youth,  and  his  piercing  eyes  seemed  to  sink  deeper 
into  their  sockets.  "Unol"  said  he.  He  had  let  his  riding-whip  slide 
down  his  arm  and  made  it  whistle  once  through  the  air.  The  boy  faced; 


THOMAS  MANN  49 

i  about  and  put  out  his  tongue,  so  long,  so  extendedly,  that  you  could 
see  it  was  the  very  uttermost  in  tongue  which  he  had  to  offer.  Then 
turned  back,  stony-faced,  to  his  former  position. 

"That  was  me,"  mocked  Cipolla,  with  a  jerk  of  his  head  towards 
the  youth.  "Be!  That  was  me."  Leaving  the  audience  to  enjoy  its  sen- 
sations, he  turned  towards  the  little  round  table,  lifted  the  bottle, 
poured  out  a  small  glass  of  what  was  obviously  cognac,  and  tipped  it 
up  with  a  practised  hand. 

The  children  laughed  with  all  their  hearts.  They  had  understood 
practically  nothing  of  what  had  been  said,  but  it  pleased  them  hugely 
that  something  so  funny  should  happen,  straightaway,  between  that 
queer  man  up  there  and  somebody  out  of  the  audience.  They  had  no 
preconception  of  what  an  "evening"  would  be  like  and  were  quite 
ready  to  find  this  a  priceless  beginning.  As  for  us,  we  exchanged  a 
glance  and  I  remember  that  involuntarily  I  made  with  my  lips  the 
sound  that  Cipolla's  whip  had  made  when  it  cut  the  air.  For  the  rest, 
it  was  plain  that  people  did  not  know  what  to  make  of  a  preposterous 
beginning  like  this  to  a  sleight-of-hand  performance.  They  could  not 
see  why  the  giovanotto,  who  after  all  in  a  way  had  been  their  spokes- 
man, should  suddenly  have  turned  on  them  to  vent  his  incivility.  They 
felt  that  he  had  behaved  like  a  silly  ass  and  withdrew  their  counte- 
nances from  him  in  favour  of  the  artist,  who  now  came  back  from  his 
refreshment  table  and  addressed  them  as  follows: 

"Ladies  and  gentlemen,"  said  he,  in  his  wheezing,  metallic  voice, 
"you  saw  just  now  that  I  was  rather  sensitive  on  the  score  of  the  re- 
buke this  hopeful  young  linguist  saw  fit  to  give  me" — "questo  lin- 
guista  di  belle  speranze"  was  what  he  said,  and  we  all  laughed  at  the 
pun.  "I  am  a  man  who  sets  some  store  by  himself,  you  may  take  it 
from  me.  And  I  see  no  point  in  being  wished  a  good-evening  unless  it 
is  done  courteously  and  in  all  seriousness.  For  anything  else  there  is  no 
occasion.  When  a  man  wishes  me  a  good-evening  he  wishes  himself 
one,  for  the  audience  will  have  one  only  if  I  do.  So  this  lady-killer  of 
Torre  di  Venere"  (another  thrust)  "did  well  to  testify  that  I  have  one 
tonight  and  that  I  can  dispense  with  any  wishes  of  his  in  the  matter.  I 
can  boast  of  having  good  evenings  almost  without  exception.  One  not 
so  good  does  come  my  way  now  and  again,  but  very  seldom.  My  call- 


50  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

ing  is  hard  and  my  health  not  of  the  best.  I  have  a  little  physical  de- 
fect which  prevented  me  from  doing  my  bit  in  the  war  for  the  greater 
glory  of  the  Fatherland.  It  is  perforce  with  my  mental  and  spiritual 
parts  that  I  conquer  life — which  after  all  only  means  conquering  one- 
self. And  I  flatter  myself  that  my  achievements  have  aroused  interest 
and  respect  among  the  educated  public.  The  leading  newspapers  have 
lauded  me,  the  Corriere  della  Sera  did  me  the  courtesy  of  calling  me  a 
phenomenon,  and  in  Rome  the  brother  of  the  Duce  honoured  me  by 
his  presence  at  one  of  my  evenings.  I  should  not  have  thought  that  in  a 
relatively  less  important  place"  (laughter  here,  at  the  expense  of  poor 
little  Torre)  "I  should  have  to  give  up  the  small  personal  habits  which 
brilliant  and  elevated  audiences  had  been  ready  to  overlook.  Nor  did  I 
think  I  had  to  stand  being  heckled  by  a  person  who  seems  to  have 
been  rather  spoilt  by  the  favours  of  the  fair  sex."  All  this  of  course  at 
the  expense  of  the  youth  whom  Cipolla  never  tired  of  presenting  in 
the  guise  of  donnahiolo  and  rustic  Don  Juan.  His  persistent  thin- 
skinnedness  and  animosity  were  in  striking  contrast  to  the  self-confi- 
dence and  the  worldly  success  he  boasted  of.  One  might  have  assumed 
that  the  giovanotto  was  merely  the  chosen  butt  of  Cipolla's  customary 
professional  sallies,  had  not  the  very  pointed  witticisms  betrayed  a  gen- 
uine antagonism.  No  one  looking  at  the  physical  parts  of  the  two  men 
need  have  been  at  a  loss  for  the  explanation,  even  if  the  deformed  man 
had  not  constantly  played  on  the  other's  supposed  success  with  the  fair 
sex.  "Well,"  Cipolla  went  on,  "before  beginning  our  entertainment  this 
evening,  perhaps  you  will  permit  me  to  make  myself  comfortable." 

And  he  went  towards  the  hat-stand  to  take  oft  his  things. 

"Parla  benissimo,"  asserted  somebody  in  our  neighbourhood.  So  far, 
the  man  had  done  nothing;  but  what  he  had  said  was  accepted  as  an 
achievement,  by  means  of  that  he  had  made  an  impression.  Among 
southern  peoples  speech  is  a  constituent  part  of  the  pleasure  of  living,  it 
enjoys  far  livelier  social  esteem  than  in  the  north.  That  national  ce- 
ment, the  mother  tongue,  is  paid  symbolic  honours  down  here,  and 
there  is  something  blithely  symbolical  in  the  pleasure  people  take  in 
their  respect  for  its  forms  and  phonetics.  They  enjoy  speaking,  they 
enjoy  listening;  and  they  listen  with  discrimination.  For  the  way  a 
man  speaks  serves  as  a  measure  of  his  personal  rank;  carelessness  and 


THOMAS  MANN  51 

clumsiness  are  greeted  with  scorn,  elegance  and  mastery  are  rewarded 
with  social  eclat.  Wherefore  the  small  man  too,  where  it  is  a  question 
of  getting  his  effect,  chooses  his  phrase  nicely  and  turns  it  with  care. 
On  this  count,  then,  at  least,  Cipolla  had  won  his  audience;  though  he 
by  no  means  belonged  to  the  class  of  men  which  the  Italian,  in  a  sin- 
gular mixture  of  moral  and  aesthetic  judgments,  labels  "simpatico." 

After  removing  his  hat,  scarf,  and  mantle  he  came  to  the  front  of 
the  stage,  settling  his  coat,  pulling  down  his  curls  with  their  large  cuff- 
buttons,  adjusting  his  absurd  sash.  He  had  very  ugly  hair;  the  top  of 
his  head,  that  is,  was  almost  bald,  while  a  narrow,  black-varnished  frizz 
of  curls  ran  from  front  to  back  as  though  stuck  on;  the  side  hair,  like- 
wise blackened,  was  brushed  forward  to  the  corners  of  the  eyes — it 
was,,  in  short,  the  hairdressing  of  an  old-fashioned  circus-director,  fan- 
tastic, but  entirely  suited  to  his  outmoded  personal  type  and  worn  with 
so  much  assurance  as  to  take  the  edge  off"  the  public's  sense  of  humour. 
The  little  physical  defect  of  which  he  had  warned  us  was  now  all  too 
visible,  though  the  nature  of  it  was  even  now  not  very  clear:  the  chest 
was  too  high,  as  is  usual  in  such  cases;  but  the  corresponding  malfor- 
mation of  the  back  did  not  sit  between  the  shoulders,  it  took  the  form 
of  a  sort  of  hips  or  buttocks  hump,  which  did  not  indeed  hinder  his 
movements  but  gave  him  a  grotesque  and  dipping  stride  at  every  step 
he  took.  However,  by  mentioning  his  deformity  beforehand  he  had 
broken  the  shock  of  it,  and  a  delicate  propriety  of  feeling  appeared  to 
reign  throughout  the  hall. 

"At  your  service,"  said  Cipolla.  "With  your  kind  permission,  we  will 
begin  the  evening  with  some  arithmetical  tests." 

Arithmetic?  That  did  not  sound  much  like  sleight-of-hand.  We 
began  to  have  our  suspicions  that  the  man  was  sailing  under  a  false 
flag,  only  we  did  not  yet  know  which  was  the  right  one.  I  felt  sorry 
on  the  children's  account;  but  for  the  moment  they  were  content 
simply  to  be  there. 

The  numerical  test  which  Cipolla  now  introduced  was  as  simple  as  it 
was  baffling.  He  began  by  fastening  a  piece  of  paper  to  the  upper 
right-hand  corner  of  the  blackboard;  then  lifting  it  up,  he  wrote  some- 
thing underneath.  He  talked  all  the  while,  relieving  the  dryness  of  his 
offering  by  a  constant  flow  of  words,  and  showed  himself  a  practised 


52  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

speaker,  never  at  a  loss  for  conversational  turns  of  phrase.  It  was  in 
keeping  with  the  nature  of  his  performance,  and  at  the  same  time 
vastly  entertained  the  children,  that  he  went  on  to  eliminate  the  gap 
between  stage  and  audience,  which  had  already  been  bridged  over  by 
the  curious  skirmish  with  the  fisher  lad:  he  had  representatives  from 
the  audience  mount  the  stage,  and  himself  descended  the  wooden  steps 
to  seek  personal  contact  with  his  public.  And  again,  with  individuals, 
he  fell  into  his  former  taunting  tone.  I  do  not  know  how  far  that  was 
a  deliberate  feature  of  his  system;  he  preserved  a  serious,  even  a  peev- 
ish air,  but  his  audience,  at  least  the  more  popular  section,  seemed  con- 
vinced that  that  was  all  part  of  the  game.  So  then,  after  he  had  written 
something  and  covered  the  writing  by  the  paper,  he  desired  that  two 
persons  should  come  up  on  the  platform  and  help  to  perform  the  calcu- 
lations. They  would  not  be  difficult,  even  for  people  not  clever  at  fig- 
ures. As  usual,  nobody  volunteered,  and  Cipolla  took  care  not  to  molest 
the  more  select  portion  of  his  audience.  He  kept  to  the  populace.  Turn- 
ing to  two  sturdy  young  louts  standing  behind  us,  he  beckoned  them 
to  the  front,  encouraging  and  scolding  by  turns.  They  should  not  stand 
there  gaping,  he  said,  unwilling  to  oblige  the  company.  Actually,  he 
got  them  in  motion;  with  clumsy  tread  they  came  down  the  middle 
aisle,  climbed  the  steps,  and  stood  in  front  of  the  blackboard,  grinning 
sheepishly  at  their  comrades'  shouts  and  applause.  Cipolla  joked  with 
them  for  a  few  minutes,  praised  their  heroic  firmness  of  limb  and  the 
size  of  their  hands,  so  well  calculated  to  do  this  service  for  the  public. 
Then  he  handed  one  of  them  the  chalk  and  told  him  to  write  down 
the  numbers  as  they  were  called  out.  But  now  the  creature  declared 
that  he  could  not  write!  "Non  so  scrivere"  said  he  in  his  gruff  voice, 
and  his  companion  added  that  neither  did  he. 

God  knows  whether  they  told  the  truth  or  whether  they  wanted  to 
make  game  of  Cipolla.  Anyhow,  the  latter  was  far  from  sharing  the 
general  merriment  which  their  confession  aroused.  He  was  insulted 
and  disgusted.  He  sat  there  on  a  straw-bottomed  chair  in  the  centre  of 
the  stage  with  his  legs  crossed,  smoking  a  fresh  cigarette  out  of  his 
cheap  packet;  obviously  it  tasted  the  better  for  the  cognac  he  had  in- 
dulged in  while  the  yokels  were  stumping  up  the  steps.  Again  he  in- 
haled the  smoke  and  let  it  stream  out  between  curling  lips.  Swinging 


THOMAS  MANN  53 

his  leg,  with  his  gaze  sternly  averted  from  the  two  shamelessly  chuck- 
ling creatures  and  from  the  audience  as  well,  he  stared  into  space  as 
one  who  withdraws  himself  and  his  dignity  from  the  contemplation  of 
an  utterly  despicable  phenomenon. 

"Scandalous,"  said  he,  in  a  sort  of  icy  snarl.  "Go  back  to  your  places! 
In  Italy  everybody  can  write — in  all  her  greatness  there  is  no  room  for 
ignorance  and  unenlightenment.  To  accuse  her  of  them,  in  the  hear- 
ing of  this  international  company,  is  a  cheap  joke,  in  which  you  your- 
selves cut  a  very  poor  figure  and  humiliate  the  government  and  the 
whole  country  as  well.  If  it  is  true  that  Torre  di  Venere  is  indeed  the 
last  refuge  of  such  ignorance,  then  I  must  blush  to  have  visited  the 
place — being,  as  I  already  was,  aware  of  its  inferiority  to  Rome  in  more 
than  one  respect " 

Here  Cipolla  was  interrupted  by  the  youth  with  the  Nubian  coiffure 
and  his  jacket  across  his  shoulder.  His  fighting  spirit,  as  we  now  saw, 
had  only  abdicated  temporarily,  and  he  now  flung  himself  into  the 
breach  in  defence  of  his  native  heath.  "That  will  do,"  said  he  loudly. 
"That's  enough  jokes  about  Torre.  We  all  come  from  the  place  and  we 
won't  stand  strangers  making  fun  of  it.  These  two  chaps  are  our 
friends.  Maybe  they  are  no  scholars,  but  even  so  they  may  be  straighter 
than  some  folks  in  the  room  who  are  so  free  with  their  boasts  about 
Rome,  though  they  did  not  build  it  either." 

That  was  capital.  The  young  man  had  certainly  cut  his  eye-teeth. 
And  this  sort  of  spectacle  was  good  fun,  even  though  it  still  further 
:  delayed  the  regular  performance.  It  is  always  fascinating  to  listen  to 
\  an  altercation.  Some  people  it  simply  amuses,  they  take  a  sort  of  kill- 
joy pleasure  in  not  being  principals.  Others  feel  upset  and  uneasy,  and 
my  sympathies  are  with  these  latter,  although  on  the  present  occasion 
I  was  under  the  impression  that  all  this  was  part  of  the  show — the 
analphabetic  yokels  no  less  than  the  giovanotto  with  the  jacket.  The 
children  listened  well  pleased.  They  understood  not  at  all,  but  the 
sound  of  the  voices  made  them  hold  their  breath.  So  this  was  a  "magic 
evening" — at  least  it  was  the  kind  they  have  in  Italy.  They  expressly 
found  it  "lovely." 

Cipolla  had  stood  up  and  with  two  of  his  scooping  strides  was  at 
the  footlights. 


54  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Well,  well,  see  who's  here!"  said  he  with  grim  cordiality.  "An  old 
acquaintance!  A  young  man  with  his  heart  at  the  end  of  his  tongue" 
(he  used  the  word  linguaccia,  which  means  a  coated  tongue,  and  gave 
rise  to  much  hilarity).  "That  will  do,  my  friends,"  he  turned  to  the 
yokels.  "I  do  not  need  you  now,  I  have  business  with  this  deserving 
young  man  here,  con  questo  torregiano  di  Venere,  this  tower  of  Venus, 
who  no  doubt  expects  the  gratitude  of  the  fair  as  a  reward  for  his 
prowess " 

"Ah,  non  scherziamol  We're  talking  earnest,"  cried  out  the  youth. 
His  eyes  flashed,  and  he  actually  made  as  though  to  pull  off  his  jacket 
and  proceed  to  direct  methods  of  settlement. 

Cipolla  did  not  take  him  too  seriously.  We  had  exchanged  appre- 
hensive glances;  but  he  was  dealing  with  a  fellow-countryman  and  had 
his  native  soil  beneath  his  feet.  He  kept  quite  cool  and  showed  com- 
plete mastery  of  the  situation.  He  looked  at  his  audience,  smiled,  and 
made  a  sideways  motion  of  the  head  towards  the  young  cockerel  as 
though  calling  the  public  to  witness  how  the  man's  bumptiousness 
only  served  to  betray  the  simplicity  of  his  mind.  And  then,  for  the 
second  time,  something  strange  happened,  which  set  Cipolla's  calm  su- 
periority in  an  uncanny  light,  and  in  some  mysterious  and  irritating 
way  turned  all  the  explosiveness  latent  in  the  air  into  matter  for 
laughter. 

Cipolla  drew  still  nearer  to  the  fellow,  looking  him  in  the  eye  with 
a  peculiar  gaze.  He  even  came  half-way  down  the  steps  that  led  into 
the  auditorium  on  our  left,  so  that  he  stood  directly  in  front  of  the 
trouble-maker,  on  slightly  higher  ground.  The  riding-whip  hung  from 
his  arm. 

"My  son,  you  do  not  feel  much  like  joking,"  he  said.  "It  is  only  too 
natural,  for  anyone  can  see  that  you  are  not  feeling  too  well.  Even 
your  tongue,  which  leaves  something  to  be  desired  on  the  score  of 
cleanliness,  indicates  acute  disorder  of  the  gastric  system.  An  evening 
entertainment  is  no  place  for  people  in  your  state;  you  yourself,  I  can 
tell,  were  of  several  minds  whether  you  would  not  do  better  to  put  on 
a  flannel  bandage  and  go  to  bed.  It  was  not  good  judgment  to  drink 
so  much  of  that  very  sour  white  wine  this  afternoon.  Now  you  have 
such  a  colic  you  would  like  to  double  up  with  the  pain.  Go  ahead, 


THOMAS  MANN  55 

don't  be  embarrased.  There  is  a  distinct  relief  that  comes  from  bending 
over,  in  cases  of  intestinal  cramp." 

He  spoke  thus,  word  for  word,  with  quiet  impressiveness  and  a 
kind  of  stern  sympathy,  and  his  eyes,  plunged  the  while  deep  in  the 
young  man's,  seemed  to  grow  very  tired  and  at  the  same  time  burning 
above  their  enlarged  tear-ducts — they  were  the  strangest  eyes,  you  could 
tell  that  not  manly  pride  alone  was  preventing  the  young  adversary 
from  withdrawing  his  gaze.  And  presently,  indeed,  all  trace  of  its 
former  arrogance  was  gone  from  the  bronzed  young  face.  He  looked 
open-mouthed  at  the  Cavaliere  and  the  open  mouth  was  drawn  in  a 
rueful  smile. 

"Double  over,"  repeated  Cipolla.  "What  else  can  you  do?  With  a 
colic  like  that  you  must  bend.  Surely  you  will  not  struggle  against  the 
performance  of  a  perfectly  natural  action  just  because  somebody  sug- 
gests it  to  you?" 

Slowly  the  youth  lifted  his  forearms,  folded  and  squeezed  them 
across  his  body;  it  turned  a  little  sideways,  then  bent,  lower  and 
lower,  the  feet  shifted,  the  knees  turned  inward,  until  he  had  become 
a  picture  of  writhing  pain,  until  he  all  but  grovelled  upon  the  ground. 
Cipolla  let  him  stand  for  some  seconds  thus,  then  made  a  short  cut 
through  the  air  with  his  whip  and  went  with  his  scooping  stride  back 
to  the  little  table,  where  he  poured  himself  out  a  cognac. 

"II  boit  beaucoup,"  asserted  a  lady  behind  us.  Was  that  the  only 
thing  that  struck  her  ?  We  could  not  tell  how  far  the  audience  grasped 
the  situation.  The  fellow  was  standing  upright  again,  with  a  sheepish 
grin — he  looked  as  though  he  scarcely  knew  how  it  had  all  happened. 
The  scene  had  been  followed  with  tense  interest  and  applauded  at  the 
end;  there  were  shouts  of  "Bravo,  Cipolla!"  and  "Bravo,  giovanottol" 
Apparently  the  issue  of  the  duel  was  not  looked  upon  as  a  personal 
defeat  for  the  young  man.  Rather  the  audience  encouraged  him  as  one 
does  an  actor  who  succeeds  in  an  unsympathetic  role.  Certainly  his  way 
of  screwing  himself  up  with  cramp  had  been  highly  picturesque,  its 
appeal  was  directly  calculated  to  impress  the  gallery — in  short,  a  fine 
dramatic  performance.  But  I  am  not  sure  how  far  the  audience  were 
moved  by  that  natural  tactfulness  in  which  the  south  excels,  or  how 
far  it  penetrated  into  the  nature  of  what  was  going  on. 


56  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

The  Cavaliere,  refreshed,  had  lighted  another  cigarette.  The  nu- 
merical tests  might  now  proceed.  A  young  man  was  easily  found  in 
the  back  row  who  was  willing  to  write  down  on  the  blackboard  the 
numbers  as  they  were  dictated  to  him.  Him  too  we  knew;  the  whole 
entertainment  had  taken  on  an  intimate  character  through  our  ac- 
quaintance with  so  many  of  the  actors.  This  was  the  man  who  worked 
at  the  greengrocer's  in  the  main  street;  he  had  served  us  several  times, 
with  neatness  and  dispatch.  He  wielded  the  chalk  with  clerkly  confi- 
dence, while  Cipolla  descended  to  our  level  and  walked  with  his  de- 
formed gait  through  the  audience,  collecting  numbers  as  they  were 
given,  in  two,  three,  and  four  places,  and  calling  them  out  to  the 
grocer's  assistant,  who  wrote  them  down  in  a  column.  In  all  this, 
everything  on  both  sides  was  calculated  to  amuse,  with  its  jokes  and 
its  oratorical  asides.  The  artist  could  not  fail  to  hit  on  foreigners,  who 
were  not  ready  with  their  figures,  and  with  them  he  was  elaborately 
patient  and  chivalrous,  to  the  great  amusement  of  the  natives,  whom 
he  reduced  to  confusion  in  their  turn,  by  making  them  translate  num- 
bers that  were  given  in  English  or  French.  Some  people  gave  dates 
concerned  with  great  events  in  Italian  history.  Cipolla  took  them  up 
at  once  and  made  patriotic  comments.  Somebody  shouted  "Number 
one!"  The  Cavaliere,  incensed  at  this  as  at  every  attempt  to  make 
game  of  him,  retorted  over  his  shoulder  that  he  could  not  take  less 
than  two-place  figures.  Whereupon  another  joker  cried  out  "Number 
two!"  and  was  greeted  with  the  applause  and  laughter  which  every 
reference  to  natural  functions  is  sure  to  win  among  southerners. 

When  fifteen  numbers  stood  in  a  long  straggling  row  on  the  board, 
Cipolla  called  for  a  general  adding-match.  Ready  reckoners  might  add 
in  their  heads,  but  pencil  and  paper  were  not  forbidden.  Cipolla,  while 
the  work  went  on,  sat  on  his  chair  near  the  blackboard,  smoked  and 
grimaced,  with  the  complacent,  pompous  air  cripples  so  often  have. 
The  five-place  addition  was  soon  done.  Somebody  announced  xhe  an- 
swer, somebody  else  confirmed  it,  a  third  had  arrived  at  a  slightly  dif- 
ferent result,  but  the  fourth  agreed  with  the  first  and  second.  Cipolla 
got  up,  tapped  some  ash  from  his  coat,  and  lifted  the  paper  at  the 
upper  right-hand  corner  of  the  board  to  display  the  writing.  The  cor- 


THOMAS  MANN  57 

rect  answer,  a  sum  close  on  a  million,  stood  there;  he  had  written  it 
down  beforehand. 

Astonishment,  and  loud  applause.  The  children  were  overwhelmed. 
How  had  he  done  that,  they  wanted  to  know.  We  told  them  it  was  a 
trick,  not  easily  explainable  offhand.  In  short,  the  man  was  a  con- 
juror. This  was  what  a  sleight-of-hand  evening  was  like,  so  now  they 
knew.  First  the  fisherman  had  cramp,  and  then  the  right  answer  was 
written  down  beforehand — it  was  all  simply  glorious,  and  we  saw 
with  dismay  that  despite  the  hot  eyes  and  the  hand  of  the  clock  at 
almost  half  past  ten,  it  would  be  very  hard  to  get  them  away.  There 
would  be  tears.  And  yet  it  was  plain  that  this  magician  did  not 
"magick" — at  least  not  in  the  accepted  sense,  of  manual  dexterity — 
and  that  the  entertainment  was  not  at  all  suitable  for  children.  Again, 
I  do  not  know,  either,  what  the  audience  really  thought.  Obviously 
there  was  grave  doubt  whether  its  answers  had  been  given  of  "free 
choice";  here  and  there  an  individual  might  have  answered  of  his  own 
motion,  but  on  the  whole  Cipolla  certainly  selected  his  people  and 
thus  kept  the  whole  procedure  in  his  own  hands  and  directed  it  to- 
wards the  given  result.  Even  so,  one  had  to  admire  the  quickness  of 
his  calculations,  however  much  one  felt  disinclined  to  admire  anything 
else  about  the  performance.  Then  his  patriotism,  his  irritable  sense  of 
dignity — the  Cavaliere's  own  countrymen  might  feel  in  their  element 
with  all  that  and  continue  in  a  laughing  mood;  but  the  combination 

I  certainly  gave  us  outsiders  food  for  thought. 

Cipolla  himself  saw  to  it — though  without  giving  them  a  name — 
that  the  nature  of  his  powers  should  be  clear  beyond  a  doubt  to  even 

I  the  least-instructed  person.  He  alluded  to  them,  of  course,  in  his  talk — 
and  he  talked  without  stopping — but  only  in  vague,  boastful,  self- 
advertising  phrases.  He  went  on  awhile  with  experiments  on  the  same 
lines  as  the  first,  merely  making  them  more  complicated  by  introduc- 
ing operations  in  multiplying,  subtracting,  and  dividing;  then  he  sim- 
plified them  to  the  last  degree  in  order  to  bring  out  the  method.  He 
simply  had  numbers  "guessed"  which  were  previously  written  under 
the  paper;  and  the  guess  was  nearly  always  right.  One  guesser  ad- 
mitted that  he  had  had  in  mind  to  give  a  certain  number,  when  Ci- 


58  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

polla's  whip  went  whistling  through  the  air,  and  a  quite  different  one 
slipped  out,  which  proved  to  be  the  "right"  one.  Cipolla's  shoulders 
shook.  He  pretended  admiration  for  the  powers  of  the  people  he  ques- 
tioned. But  in  all  his  compliments  there  was  something  fleering  and 
derogatory;  the  victims  could  scarcely  have  relished  them  much,  al- 
though they  smiled,  and  although  they  might  easily  have  set  down 
some  part  of  the  applause  to  their  own  credit.  Moreover,  I  had  not  the 
impression  that  the  artist  was  pop*ular  with  his  public.  A  certain  ill  will 
and  reluctance  were  in  the  air,  but  courtesy  kept  such  feelings  in 
check,  as  did  Cipolla's  competency  and  his  stern  self-confidence.  Even 
the  riding-whip,  I  think,  did  much  to  keep  rebellion  from  becoming 
overt. 

From  tricks  with  numbers  he  passed  to  tricks  with  cards.  There 
were  two  packs,  which  he  drew  out  of  his  pockets,  and  so  much  I  still 
remember,  that  the  basis,  of  the  tricks  he  played  with  them  was  as  fol- 
lows :  from  the  first  pack  he  drew  three  cards  and  thrust  them  without 
looking  at  them  inside  his  coat.  Another  person  then  drew  three  out 
of  the  second  pack,  and  these  turned  out  to  be  the  same  as  the  first 
three — not  invariably  all  the  three,  for  it  did  happen  that  only  two  were 
the  same.  Bur  in  the  majority  of  cases  Cipolla  triumphed,  showing  his 
three  cards  with  a  little  bow  in  acknowledgment  of  the  applause  with 
which  his  audience  conceded  his  possession  of  strange  powers — strange 
whether  for  good  or  evil.  A  young  man  in  the  front  row,  to  our  right, 
an  Italian,  with  proud,  finely  chiselled  features,  rose  up  and  said  that 
he  intended  to  assert  his  own  will  in  his  choice  and  consciously  to  re- 
sist any  influence,  of  whatever  sort.  Under  these  circumstances,  what 
did  Cipolla  think  would  be  the  result?  "You  will,"  answered  the 
Cavaliere,  "make  my  task  somewhat  more  difficult  thereby.  As  for  the 
result,  your  resistance  will  not  alter  it  in  the  least.  Freedom  exists,  and 
also  the  will  exists;  but  freedom  of  the  will  does  not  exist,  for  a  will 
that  aims  at  its  own  freedom  aims  at  the  unknown.  You  are  free  to 
draw  or  not  to  draw.  But  if  you  draw,  you  will  draw  the  right  cards — 
the  more  certainly,  the  more  wilfully  obstinate  your  behaviour." 

One  must  admit  that  he  could  not  have  chosen  his  words  better,  to 
trouble  the  waters  and  confuse  the  mind.  The  refractory  youth  hesi- 
tated before  drawing.  Then  he  pulled  out  a  card  and  at  once  de- 


THOMAS  MANN  59 

manded  to  see  if  it  was  among  the  chosen  three.  "But  why?"  queried 
Cipolla.  "Why  do  things  by  halves?"  Then,  as  the  other  defiantly  in- 
sisted, "E  servito,"  said  the  juggler,  with  a  gesture  of  exaggerated 
servility;  and  held  out  the  three  cards  fanwise,  without  looking  at 
them  himself.  The  left-hand  card  was  the  one  drawn. 

Amid  general  applause,  the  apostle  of  freedom  sat  down.  How  far 
Cipolla  employed  small  tricks  and  manual  dexterity  to  help  out  his 
natural  talents,  the  deuce  only  knew.  But  even  without  them  the  result 
would  have  been  the  same:  the  curiosity  of  the  entire  audience  was 
unbounded  and  universal,  everybody  both  enjoyed  the  amazing  char- 
acter of  the  entertainment  and  unanimously  conceded  the  professional 
skill  of  the  performer.  "Lavora  bene,"  we  heard,  here  and  there  in  our 
neighbourhood;  it  signified  the  triumph  of  objective  judgment  over 
antipathy  and  repressed  resentment. 

After  his  last,  incomplete,  yet  so  much  the  more  telling  success,  Ci- 
polla had  at  once  fortified  himself  with  another  cognac.  Truly  he  did 
"drink  a  lot,"  and  the  fact  made  a  bad  impression.  But  obviously  he 
needed  the  liquor  and  the  cigarettes  for  the  replenishment  of  his  en- 
ergy, upon  which,  as  he  himself  said,  heavy  demands  were  made  in  all 
directions.  Certainly  in  the  intervals  he  looked  very  ill,  exhausted  and 
hollow-eyed.  Then  the  little  glassful  would  redress  the  balance,  and  the 
flow  of  lively,  self-confident  chatter  run  on,  while  the  smoke  he  inhaled 
gushed  out  grey  from  his  lungs.  I  clearly  recall  that  he  passed  from 
the  card-tricks  to  parlour  games — the  kind  based  on  certain  powers 
which  in  human  nature  are  higher  or  else  lower  than  human  reason: 
on  intuition  and  "magnetic"  transmission;  in  short,  upon  a  low  type 
of  manifestation.  What  I  do  not  remember  is  the  precise  order  things 
came  in.  And  I  will  not  bore  you  with  a  description  of  these  experi- 
ments; everybody  knows  them,  everybody  has  at  one  time  or  another 
taken  part  in  this  finding  of  hidden  articles,  this  blind  carrying  out  of 
a  series  of  acts,  directed  by  a  force  that  proceeds  from  organism  to 
organism  by  unexplored  paths.  Everybody  has  had  his  little  glimpse 
into  the  equivocal,  impure,  inexplicable  nature  of  the  occult,  has  been 
conscious  of  both  curiosity  and  contempt,  has  shaken  his  head  over 
the  human  tendency  of  those  who  deal  in  it  to  help  themselves  out 
with  humbuggery,  though,  after  all,  the  humbuggery  is  no  disproof 


60  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

whatever  of  the  genuineness  of  the  other  elements  in  the  dubious 
amalgam.  I  can  only  say  here  that  each  single  circumstance  gains  in 
weight  and  the  whole  greatly  in  impressiveness  when  it  is  a  man  like 
Cipolla  who  is  the  chief  actor  and  guiding  spirit  in  the  sinister  busi- 
ness. He  sat  smoking  at  the  rear  of  the  stage,  his  back  to  the  audience 
while  they  conferred.  The  object  passed  from  hand  to  hand  which  it 
was  his  task  to  find,  with  which  he  was  to  perform  some  action  agreed 
upon  beforehand.  Then  he  would  start  to  move  zigzag  through  the 
hall,  with  his  head  thrown  back  and  one  hand  outstretched,  the  other 
clasped  in  that  of  a  guide  who  was  in  the  secret  but  enjoined  to  keep 
himself  perfectly  passive,  with  his  thoughts  directed  upon  the  agreed 
goal.  Cipolla  moved  with  the  bearing  typical  in  these  experiments :  now 
groping  upon  a  false  start,  now  with  a  quick  forward  thrust,  now 
pausing  as  though  to  listen  and  by  sudden  inspiration  correcting  his 
course.  The  roles  seemed  reversed,  the  stream  of  influence  was  moving 
in  the  contrary  direction,  as  the  artist  himself  pointed  out,  in  his  cease- 
less flow  of  discourse.  The  suffering,  receptive,  performing  part  was 
now  his,  the  will  he  had  before  imposed  on  others  was  shut  out,  he 
acted  in  obedience  to  a  voiceless  common  will  which  was  in  the  air. 
But  he  made  it  perfectly  clear  that  it  all  came  to  the  same  thing.  The 
capacity  for  self-surrender,  he  said,  for  becoming  a  tool,  for  the  most 
unconditional  and  utter  self-abnegation,  was  but  the  reverse  side  of  that 
other  power  to  will  and  to  command.  Commanding  and  obeying 
formed  together  one  single  principle,  one  indissoluble  unity;  he  who 
knew  how  to  obey  knew  also  how  to  command,  and  conversely;  the 
one  idea  was  comprehended  in  the  other,  as  people  and  leader  were 
comprehended  in  one  another.  But  that  which  was  done,  the  highly 
exacting  and  exhausting  performance,  was  in  every  case  his,  the  lend- 
er's and  mover's,  in  whom  the  will  became  obedience,  the  obedience 
will,  whose  person  was  the  cradle  and  womb  of  both,  and  who  thus 
suffered  enormous  hardship.  Repeatedly  he  emphasized  the  fact  that 
his  lot  was  a  hard  one— presumably  to  account  for  his  need  of  stimu- 
lant and  his  frequent  recourse  to  the  little  glass. 

Thus  he  groped  his  way  forward,  like  a  blind  seer,  led  and  sustained 
by  the  mysterious  common  will.  He  drew  a  pin  set  with  a  stone  out 
of  its  hiding-place  in  an  Englishwoman's  shoe,  carried  it,  halting  and 


THOMAS  MANN  61 

pressing  on  by  turns,  to  another  lady — Signora  Angiolieri — and  handed 
it  to  her  on  bended  knee,  with  the  words  it  had  been  agreed  he  was  to 
utter.  "I  present  you  with  this  in  token  of  my  respect,"  was  the  sen- 
tence. Their  sense  was  obvious,  but  the  words  themselves  not  easy  to 
hit  upon,  for  the  reason  that  they  had  been  agreed  on  in  French;  the 
language  complication  seemed  to  us  a  little  malicious,  implying  as  it 
did  a  conflict  between  the  audience's  natural  interest  in  the  success  of 
the  miracle,  and  their  desire  to  witness  the  humiliation  of  this  pre- 
sumptuous man.  It  was  a  strange  sight:  Cipolla  on  his  knees  before  the 
signora,  wrestling,  amid  efforts  at  speech,  after  knowledge  of  the  pre- 
ordained words.  "I  must  say  something,"  he  said,  "and  I  feel  clearly 
what  it  is  I  must  say.  But  I  also  feel  that  if  it  passed  my  lips  it  would 
be  wrong.  Be  careful  not  to  help  me  unintentionally!"  he  cried  out, 
though  very  likely  that  was  precisely  what  he  was  hoping  for.  "Pensez 
tres  fort,"  he  cried  all  at  once,  in  bad  French,  and  then  burst  out  with 
the  required  words — in  Italian,  indeed,  but  with  the  final  substantive 
pronounced  in  the  sister  tongue,  in  which  he  was  probably  far  from 
fluent:  he  said  veneration  instead  of  venerazione,  with  an  impossible 
nasal.  And  this  partial  success,  after  the  complete  success  before  it,  the 
finding  of  the  pin,  the  presentation  of  it  on  his  knees  to  the  right  per- 
son— was  almost  more  impressive  than  if  he  had  got  the  sentence  ex- 
actly right,  and  evoked  bursts  of  admiring  applause. 

Cipolla  got  up  from  his  knees  and  wiped  the  perspiration  from  his 
brow.  You  understand  that  this  experiment  with  the  pin  was  a  single 
case,  which  I  describe  because  it  sticks  in  my  memory.  But  he  changed 
his  method  several  times  and  improvised  a  number  of  variations  sug- 
gested by  his  contact  with  his  audience;  a  good  deal  of  time  thus  went 
by.  He  seemed  to  get  particular  inspiration  from  the  person  of  our 
landlady;  she  drew  him  on  to  the  most  extraordinary  displays  of  clair- 
voyance. "It  does  not  escape  me,  madame,"  he  said  to  her,  "that  there 
is  something  unusual  about  you,  some  special  and  honourable  distinc- 
tion. He  who  has  eyes  to  see  descries  about  your  lovely  brow  an  aureola 
— if  I  mistake  not,  it  once  was  stronger  than  now — a  slowly  paling 
radiance  .  .  .  hush,  not  a  word!  Don't  help  me.  Beside  you  sits  your 
husband — yes?"  He  turned  towards  the  silent  Signor  Angiolieri.  "You 
are  the  husband  of  this  lady,  and  your  happiness  is  complete.  But  in 


62  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  midst  of  this  happiness  memories  rise  .  .  .  the  past,  signora,  so  it 
seems  to  me,  plays  an  important  part  in  your  present.  You  knew  a 
king  .  .  .  has  not  a  king  crossed  your  path  in  bygone  days?" 

"No,"  breathed  the  dispenser  of  our  midday  soup,  her  golden-brown 
eyes  gleaming  in  the  noble  pallor  of  her  face. 

"No?  No,  not  a  king;  I  meant  that  generally,  I  did  not  mean  literally 
a  king.  Not  a  king,  not  a  prince,  and  a  prince  after  all,  a  king  of  a 
loftier  realm;  it  was  a  great  artist,  at  whose  side  you  once — you  would 
contradict  me,  and  yet  I  am  not  wholly  wrong.  Well,  then!  It  was  a 
woman^  a  great,  a  world-renowned  woman  artist,  whose  friendship 
you  enjoyed  in  your  tender  years,  whose  sacred  memory  overshadows 
and  transfigures  your  whole  existence.  Her  name?  Need  I  utter  it, 
whose  fame  has  long  been  bound  up  with  the  Fatherland's,  immortal 
as  its  own?  Eleonora  Duse,"  he  finished,  softly  and  with  much  solem- 
nity. 

The  little  woman  bowed  her  head,  overcome.  The  applause  was  like 
a  patriotic  demonstration.  Nearly  everyone  there  knew  about  Signora 
Angiolieri's  wonderful  past;  they  were  all  able  to  confirm  the  Cava- 
liere's  intuition — not  least  the  present  guests  of  Casa  Eleonora.  But  we 
wondered  how  much  of  the  truth  he  had  learned  as  the  result  of  pro- 
fessional inquiries  made  on  his  arrival.  Yet  I  see  no  reason  at  all  to 
cast  doubt,  on  rational  grounds,  upon  powers  which,  before  our  very 
eyes,  became  fatal  to  their  possessor. 

At  this  point  there  was  an  intermission.  Our  lord  and  master  with- 
drew. Now  I  confess  that  almost  ever  since  the  beginning  of  my  tale 
I  have  looked  forward  with  dread  to  this  moment  in  it.  The  thoughts 
of  men  are  mostly  not  hard  to  read;  in  this  case  they  are  very  easy. 
You  are  sure  to  ask  why  we  did  not  choose  this  moment  to  go  away — 
and  I  must  continue  to  owe  you  an  answer.  I  do  not  know  why.  I  can- 
not defend  myself.  By  this  time  it  was  certainly  eleven,  probably  later. 
The  children  were  asleep.  The  last  series  of  tests  had  been  too  long, 
nature  had  had  her  way.  They  were  sleeping  in  our  laps,  the  little  one 
on  mine,  the  boy  on  his  mother's.  That  was,  in  a  way,  a  consolation; 
but  at  the  same  time  it  was  also  ground  for  compassion  and  a  clear  j 
leading  to  take  them  home  to  bed.  And  I  give  you  my  word  that  we 
wanted  to  obey  this  touching  admonition,  we  seriously  wanted  to.  We 


THOMAS  MANN  63 

roused  the  poor  things  and  told  them  it  was  now  high  time  to  go.  But 
they  were  no  sooner  conscious  than  they  began  to  resist  and  implore — 
you  know  how  horrified  children  are  at  the  thought  of  leaving  before 
the  end  of  a  thing.  No  cajoling  has  any  effect,  you  have  to  use  force. 
It  was  so  lovely,  they  wailed.  How  did  we  know  what  was  coming 
next?  Surely  we  could  not  leave  until  after  the  intermission;  they  liked 
a  little  nap  now  and  again — only  not  go  home,  only  not  go  to  bed, 
while  the  beautiful  evening  was  still  going  on! 

We  yielded,  but  only  for  the  moment,  of  course — so  far  as  we  knew 
— only  for  a  little  while,  just  a  few  minutes  longer.  I  cannot  excuse  our 
staying,  scarcely  can  I  even  understand  it.  Did  we  think,  having  once 
said  A,  we  had  to  say  B — having  once  brought  the  children  hither  we 
had  to  let  them  stay?  No,  it  is  not  good  enough.  Were  we  ourselves  so 
highly  entertained?  Yes,  and  no.  Our  feelings  for  Cavaliere  Cipolla 
were  of  a  very  mixed  kind,  but  so  were  the  feelings  of  the  whole  audi- 
ence, if  I  mistake  not,  and  nobody  left.  Were  we  under  the  sway  of  a 
fascination  which  emanated  from  this  man  who  took  so  strange  a  way 
to  earn  his  bread;  a  fascination  which  he  gave  out  independently  of  the 
programme  and  even  between  the  tricks  and  which  paralysed  our  re- 
solve? Again,  sheer  curiosity  may  account  for  something.  One  was 
curious  to  know  how  such  an  evening  turned  out;  Cipolla  in  his  re- 
marks having  all  along  hinted  that  he  had  tricks  in  his  bag  stranger 
than  any  he  had  yet  produced. 

But  all  that  is  not  it — or  at  least  it  is  not  all  of  it.  More  correct  it 
would  be  to  answer  the  first  question  with  another.  Why  had  we  not 
left  Torre  di  Venere  itself  before  now?  To  me  the  two  questions  are 
one  and  the  same,  and  in  order  to  get  out  of  the  impasse  I  might 
simply  say  that  I  had  answered  it  already.  For,  as  things  had  been  in 
Torre  in  general:  queer,  uncomfortable,  troublesome,  tense,  oppressive, 
so  precisely  they  were  here  in  this  hall  tonight.  Yes,  more  than  pre- 
cisely. For  it  seemed  to  be  the  fountain-head  of  all  the  uncanniness  and 
all  the  strained  feelings  which  had  oppressed  the  atmosphere  of  our 
holiday.  This  man  whose  return  to  the  stage  we  were  awaiting  was 
the  personification  of  all  that;  and,  as  we  had  not  gone  away  in  gen- 
eral, so  to  speak,  it  would  have  been  inconsistent  to  do  it  in  the  par- 
ticular case.  You  may  call  this  an  explanation,  you  may  call  it  inertia, 


64  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

as  you  see  fit.  Any  argument  more  to  the  purpose  I  simply  do  not 
know  how  to  adduce. 

Well,  there  was  an  interval  of  ten  minutes,  which  grew  into  nearly 
twenty.  The  children  remained  awake.  They  were  enchanted  by  our 
compliance,  and  filled  the  break  to  their  own  satisfaction  by  renewing 
relations  with  the  popular  sphere,  with  Antonio,  Guiscardo,  and  the 
canoe  man.  They  put  their  hands  to  their  mouths  and  called  messages 
across,  appealing  to  us  for  the  Italian  words.  "Hope  you  have  a  good 
catch  tomorrow,  a  whole  netful!"  They  called  to  Mario,  Esquisito 
Mario:  "Mario,  una  cioccolata  e  biscottil"  And  this  time  he  heeded  and 
answered  with  a  smile:  "Subito,  signorinil"  Later  we  had  reason  to  re- 
call this  kindly,  if  rather  absent  and  pensive  smile. 

Thus  the  interval  passed,  the  gong  sounded.  The  audience,  which 
had  scattered  in  conversation,  took  their  places  again,  the  children  sat 
up  straight  in  their  chairs  with  their  hands  in  their  laps.  The  curtain 
had  not  been  dropped.  Cipolla  came  forward  again,  with  his  dipping 
stride,  and  began  to  introduce  the  second  half  of  the  programme  with 
a  lecture. 

Let  me  state  once  for  all  that  this  self-confident  cripple  was  the  most 
powerful  hypnotist  I  have  ever  seen  in  my  life.  It  was  pretty  plain  now 
that  he  threw  dust  in  the  public  eye  and  advertised  himself  as  a  presti- 
digitator on  account  of  police  regulations  which  would  have  prevented 
him  from  making  his  living  by  the  exercise  of  his  powers.  Perhaps  this 
eye-wash  is  the  usual  thing  in  Italy;  it  may  be  permitted  or  even  con- 
nived at  by  the  authorities.  Certainly  the  man  had  from  the  beginning 
made  little  concealment  of  the  actual  nature  of  his  operations;  and  this 
second  half  of  the  programme  was  quite  frankly  and  exclusively  de- 
voted to  one  sort  of  experiment.  While  he  still  practised  some  rhetorical 
circumlocutions,  the  tests  themselves  were  one  long  series  of  attacks 
upon  the  will-power,  the  loss  or  compulsion  of  volition.  Comic,  excit- 
ing, amazing  by  turns,  by  midnight  they  were  still  in  full  swing;  we 
ran  the  gamut  of  all  the  phenomena  this  natural-unnatural  field  has  to 
show,  from  the  unimpressive  at  one  end  of  the  scale  to  the  monstrous) 
at  the  other.  The  audience  laughed  and  applauded  as  they  followed 
the  grotesque  details;  shook  their  heads,  clapped  their  knees,  fell  very' 
frankly  under  the  spell  of  this  stern,  self-assured  personality.  At  the| 


THOMAS  MANN  65 

same  time  I  saw  signs  that  they  were  not  quite  complacent,  not  quite 
unconscious  of  the  peculiar  ignominy  which  lay,  for  the  individual 
and  for  the  general,  in  Cipolla's  triumphs. 

Two  main  features  were  constant  in  all  the  experiments:  the  liquor 
glass  and  the  claw-handled  riding-whip.  The  first  was  always  invoked 
to  add  fuel  to  his  demoniac  fires;  without  it,  apparently,  they  might 
have  burned  out.  On  this  score  we  might  even  have  felt  pity  for  the 
man;  but  the  whistle  of  his  scourge,  the  insulting  symbol  of  his  domi- 
nation, before  which  we  all  cowered,  drowned  out  every  sensation  save 
a  dazed  and  outbraved  submission  to  his  power.  Did  he  then  lay  claim 
to  our  sympathy  to  boot?  I  was  struck  by  a  remark  he  made — it  sug- 
gested no  less.  At  the  climax  of  his  experiments,  by  stroking  and 
breathing  upon  a  certain  young  man  who  had  offered  himself  as  a 
subject  and  already  proved  himself  a  particularly  susceptible  one,  he 
had  not  only  put  him  into  the  condition  known  as  deep  trance  and  ex- 
tended his  insensible  body  by  neck  and  feet  across  the  backs  of  two 
chairs,  but  had  actually  sat  down  on  the  rigid  form  as  on  a  bench, 
without  making  it  yield.  The  sight  of  this  unholy  figure  in  a  frock- 
coat  squatted  on  the  stiff  body  was  horrible  and  incredible;  the  audi- 
ence, convinced  that  the  victim  of  this  scientific  diversion  must  be 
suffering,  expressed  its  sympathy:  "Ah,  poverettol"  Poor  soul,  poor 
soul!  "Poor  soul!"  Cipolla  mocked  them,  with  some  bitterness.  "Ladies 
and  gentlemen,  you  are  barking  up  the  wrong  tree.  Sono  io  it  pove- 
retto.  I  am  the  person  who  is  suffering,  I  am  the  one  to  be  pitied."  We 
pocketed  the  information.  Very  good.  Maybe  the  experiment  was  at  his 
expense,  maybe  it  was  he  who  had  suffered  the  cramp  when  the  gio- 
vanotto  over  there  had  made  the  faces.  But  appearances  were  all 
against  it;  and  one  does  not  feel  like  saying  poveretto  to  a  man  who 
is  suffering  to  bring  about  the  humiliation  of  others. 

I  have  got  ahead  of  my  story  and  lost  sight  of  the  sequence  of  events. 
To  this  day  my  mind  is  full  of  the  Cavaliere's  feats  of  endurance;  only 
I  do  not  recall  them  in  their  order — which  does  not  matter.  So  much  I 
do  know:  that  the  longer  and  more  circumstantial  tests,  which  got  the 
most  applause,  impressed  me  less  than  some  of  the  small  ones  which 
passed  quickly  over.  I  remember  the  young  man  whose  body  Cipolla 
converted  into  a  board,  only  because  of  the  accompanying  remarks 


as 


wi 


66  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

which  I  have  quoted.  An  elderly  lady  in  a  cane-seated  chair  was  lulled 
by  Cipolla  in  the  delusion  that  she  was  on  a  voyage  to  India  and  gave 
a  voluble  account  of  her  adventures  by  land  and  sea.  But  I  found  this 
phenomenon  less  impressive   than  one  which  followed  immediately 
after  the  intermission.  A  tall,  well-built,  soldierly  man  was  unable  to 
lift  his  arm,  after  the  hunchback  had  told  him  that  he  could  not  and 
given  a  cut  through  the  air  with  his  whip.  I  can  still  see  the  face  of  that 
stately,  mustachioed   colonel  smiling  and   clenching  his  teeth   as   he 
struggled  to  regain  his  lost  freedom  of  action.  A  staggering  perform- 
ance!  He  seemed  to  be  exerting  his  will,  and  in  vain;  the  trouble, 
however,  was  probably  simply  that  he  could  not  will.  There  was  in- 
volved here  that  recoil  of  the  will  upon  itself  which  paralyses  choice— 
our  tyrant  had  previously  explained  to  the  Roman  gentleman. 
Still  less  can  I  forget  the  touching  scene,  at  once  comic  and  horrible, 
ith  Signora  Angiolieri.  The  Cavaliere,  probably  in  his  first  bold  sur- 
vey of  the  room,  had  spied  out  her  ethereal  lack  of  resistance  to  his 
power.  For  actually  he  bewitched  her,  literally  drew  her  out  of  her 
seat,  out  of  her  row,  and  away  with  him  whither  he  willed.  And  in 
order  to  enhance  his  effect,  he  bade  Signor  Angiolieri  call  upon  his 
wife  by  her  name,  to  throw,  as  it  were,  all  the  weight  of  his  existence 
and  his  rights  in  her  into  the  scale,  to  rouse  by  the  voice  of  her  husband 
everything  in  his  spouse's  soul  which  could  shield  her  virtue  against 
the  evil  assaults  of  magic.  And  how  vain  it  all  was!  Cipolla  was  stand- 
ing at  some  distance  from  the  couple,  when  he  made  a  single  cut  with 
his  whip  through  the  air.  It  caused  our  landlady  to  shudder  violently 
and  turn  her  face  towards  him.  "Sofronia!"  cried  Signor  Angiolieri— 
we  had  not  known  that  Signora  Angiolieri's  name  was  Sofronia.  And  he 
did  well  to  call,  everybody  saw  that  there  was  no  time  to  lose.  His  wife 
kept  her  face  turned  in  the  direction  of  the  diabolical  Cavaliere,  who 
with  his  ten  long  yellow  fingers  was  making  passes  at  his  victim,  mov- 
ing backwards  as  he  did  so,  step  by  step.  Then  Signora  Angiolieri,  her 
pale  face  gleaming,  rose  up  from  her  seat,  turned  right  round,  and 
began  to  glide  after  him.  Fatal  and  forbidding  sight!    Her  face  as 
though  moonstruck,  stiff-armed,  her  lovely  hands  lifted  a  little  at  the 
wrists,  the  feet  as  it  were  together,  she  seemed  to  float  slowly  out  of 
her    row   and    after    the    tempter.    "Call    her,    sir,    keep   on    calling," 


THOMAS  MANN  67 

prompted  the  redoubtable  man.  And  Signor  Angiolieri,  in  a  weak 
voice,  called:  "Sofronia!"  Ah,  again  and  again  he  called;  as  his  wife 
went  further  of!  he  even  curved  one  hand  round  his  lips  and  beckoned 
with  the  other  as  he  called.  But  the  poor  voice  of  love  and  duty  echoed 
unheard,  in  vain,  behind  the  lost  one's  back;  the  signora  swayed  along, 
moonstruck,  deaf,  enslaved;  she  glided  into  the  middle  aisle  and  down 
it  towards  the  fingering  hunchback,  towards  the  door.  We  were  con- 
vinced, we  were  driven  to  the  conviction,  that  she  would  have  fol- 
lowed her  master,  had  he  so  willed  it,  to  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

" Accidentel"  cried  out  Signor  Angiolieri,  in  genuine  affright,  spring- 
ing up  as  the  exit  was  reached.  But  at  the  same  moment  the  Cavaliere 
put  aside,  as  it  were,  the  triumphal  crown  and  broke  off.  "Enough, 
signora,  I  thank  you,"  he  said,  and  offered  his  arm  to  lead  her  back  to 
her  husband.  "Signor,"  he  greeted  the  latter,  "here  is  your  wife.  Un- 
harmed, with  my  compliments,  I  give  her  into  your  hands.  Cherish 
with  all  the  strength  of  your  manhood  a  treasure  which  is  so  wholly 
yours,  and  let  your  zeal  be  quickened  by  knowing  that  there  are  pow- 
ers stronger  than  reason  or  virtue,  and  not  always  so  magnanimously 
ready  to  relinquish  their  prey!" 

Poor  Signor  Angiolieri,  so  quiet,  so  bald !  He  did  not  look  as  though 
he  would  know  how  to  defend  his  happiness,  even  against  powers 
much  less  demoniac  than  these  which  were  now  adding  mockery  to 
frightfulness.  Solemnly  and  pompously  the  Cavaliere  retired  to  the 
stage,  amid  applause  to  which  his  eloquence  gave  double  strength.  It 
was  this  particular  episode,  I  feel  sure,  that  set  the  seal  upon  his  as- 
cendancy. For  now  he  made  them  dance,  yes,  literally;  and  the  dancing 
lent  a  dissolute,  abandoned,  topsy-turvy  air  to  the  scene,  a  drunken  ab- 
dication of  the  critical  spirit  which  had  so  long  resisted  the  spell  of 
this  man.  Yes,  he  had  had  to  fight  to  get  the  upper  hand — for  instance 
against  the  animosity  of  the  young  Roman  gentleman,  whose  rebellious 
spirit  threatened  to  serve  others  as  a  rallying-point.  But  it  was  precisely 
upon  the  importance  of  example  that  the  Cavaliere  was  so  strong.  He 
had  the  wit  to  make  his  attack  at  the  weakest  point  and  to  choose  as 
his  first  victim  that  feeble,  ecstatic  youth  whom  he  had  previously 
made  into  a  board.  The  master  had  but  to  look  at  him,  when  this 
young  man  would  fling  himself  back  as  though  struck  by  lightning, 


68  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

place  his  hands  rigidly  at  his  sides,  and  fall  into  a  state  of  military 
somnambulism,  in  which  it  was  plain  to  any  eye  that  he  was  open  to 
the  most  absurd  suggestion  that  might  be  made  to  him.  He  seemed 
quite  content  in  his  abject  state,  quite  pleased  to  be  relieved  of  the  bur- 
den of  voluntary  choice.  Again  and  again  he  offered  himself  as  a  sub- 
ject and  gloried  in  the  model  facility  he  had  in  losing  consciousness. 
So  now  he  mounted  the  platform,  and  a  single  cut  of  the  whip  was 
enough  to  make  him  dance  to  the  Cavaliere's  orders,  in  a  kind  of  com- 
placent ecstasy,  eyes  closed,  head  nodding,  lank  limbs  flying  in  all 
directions. 

It  looked  unmistakably  like  enjoyment,  and  other  recruits  were  not 
long  in  coming  forward:  two  other  young  men,  one  humbly  and  one 
well  dressed,  were  soon  jigging  alongside  the  first.  But  now  the  gen- 
tleman from  Rome  bobbed  up  again,  asking  defiantly  if  the  Cavaliere 
would  engage  to  make  him  dance  too,  even  against  his  will. 

"Even  against  your  will,"  answered  Cipolla,  in  unforgettable  accents. 
That  frightful  "anche  se  non  vuole"  still  rings  in  my  ears.  The  strug- 
gle began.  After  Cipolla  had  taken  another  little  glass  and  lighted  a 
fresh  cigarette  he  stationed  the  Roman  at  a  point  in  the  middle  aisle 
and  himself  took  up  a  position  some  distance  behind  him,  making  his 
whip  whistle  through  the  air  as  he  gave  the  order:  "Ballal"  His  oppo- 
nent did  not  stir.  "Ballal"  repeated  the  Cavaliere  incisively,  and 
snapped  his  whip.  You  saw  the  young  man  move  his  neck  round  in  his 
collar;  at  the  same  time  one  hand  lifted  slightly  at  the  wrist,  one  ankle 
turned  outward.  But  that  was  all,  for  the  time  at  least;  merely  a  tend- 
ency to  twitch,  now  sternly  repressed,  now  seeming  about  to  get  the 
upper  hand.  It  escaped  nobody  that  here  a  heroic  obstinacy,  a  fixed 
resolve  to  resist,  must  needs  be  conquered;  we  were  beholding  a  gallant 
effort  to  strike  out  and  save  the  honour  of  the  human  race.  He 
twitched  but  danced  not;  and  the  struggle  was  so  prolonged  that  the 
Cavaliere  had  to  divide  his  attention  between  it  and  the  stage,  turning 
now  and  then  to  make  his  riding-whip  whistle  in  the  direction  of  the 
dancers,  as  it  were  to  keep  them  in  leash.  At  the  same  time  he  advised 
the  audience  that  no  fatigue  was  involved  in  such  activities,  however 
long  they  went  on,  since  it  was  not  the  automatons  up  there  who 
danced,  but  himself.  Then  once  more  his  eye  would  bore  itself  into  the 


THOMAS  MANN  69 

back  of  the  Roman's  neck  and  lay  siege  to  the  strength  of  purpose 
which  defied  him. 

One  saw  it  waver,  that  strength  of  purpose,  beneath  the  repeated 
summons  and  whip-crackings.  Saw  with  an  objective  interest  which 
yet  was  not  quite  free  from  traces  of  sympathetic  emotion — from  pity, 
even  from  a  cruel  kind  of  pleasure.  If  I  understand  what  was  going 
on,  it  was  the  negative  character  of  the  young  man's  fighting  position 
which  was  his  undoing.  It  is  likely  that  not  willing  is  not  a  practicable 
state  of  mind;  not  to  want  to  do  something  may  be  in  the  long  run  a 
mental  content  impossible  to  subsist  on.  Between  not  willing  a  certain 
thing  and  not  willing  at  all — in  other  words,  yielding  to  another  per- 
son's will — there  may  lie  too  small  a  space  for  the  idea  of  freedom  to 
squeeze  into.  Again,  there  were  the  Cavaliere's  persuasive  words, 
woven  in  among  the  whip-crackings  and  commands,  as  he  mingled 
effects  that  were  his  own  secret  with  others  of  a  bewilderingly  psycho- 
logical kind.  "Ballal"  said  he.  "Who  wants  to  torture  himself  like  that? 
Is  forcing  yourself  your  idea  of  freedom?  Una  ballatina!  Why,  your 
arms  and  legs  are  aching  for  it.  What  a  relief  to  give  way  to  them — 
there,  you  are  dancing  already!  That  is  no  struggle  any  more,  it  is  a 
pleasure!"  And  so  it  was.  The  jerking  and  twitching  of  the  refractory 
youth's  limbs  had  at  last  got  the  upper  hand;  he  lifted  his  arms,  then 
his  knees,  his  joints  quite  suddenly  relaxed,  he  flung  his  legs  and 
danced,  and  amid  bursts  of  applause  the  Cavaliere  led  him  to  join  the 
row  of  puppets  on  the  stage.  Up  there  we  could  see  his  face  as  he  "en- 
joyed" himself;  it  was  clothed  in  a  broad  grin  and  the  eyes  were  half- 
shut.  In  a  way,  it  was  consoling  to  see  that  he  was  having  a  better  time 
than  he  had  had  in  the  hour  of  his  pride. 

His  "fall"  was,  I  may  say,  an  epoch.  The  ice  was  completely  broken, 
Cipolla's  triumph  had  reached  its  height.  The  Circe's  wand,  that  whis- 
tling leather  whip  with  the  claw  handle,  held  absolute  sway.  At  one  time 
— it  must  have  been  well  after  midnight — not  only  were  there  eight  or 
ten  persons  dancing  on  the  little  stage,  but  in  the  hall  below  a  varied 
animation  reigned,  and  a  long-toothed  Anglo-Saxoness  in  a  pince-nez 
left  her  seat  of  her  own  motion  to  perform  a  tarantella  in  the  centre 
aisle.  Cipolla  was  lounging  in  a  cane-seated  chair  at  the  left  of  the 
stage,  gulping  down  the  smoke  of  a  cigarette  and  breathing  it  impu- 


70  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

dently  out  through  his  bad  teeth.  He  tapped  his  foot  and  shrugged  his 
shoulders,  looking  down  upon  the  abandoned  scene  in  the  hall;  now 
and  then  he  snapped  his  whip  backwards  at  a  laggard  upon  the  stage. 
The  children  were  awake  at  the  moment.  With  shame  I  speak  of  them. 
For  it  was  not  good  to  be  here,  least  of  all  for  them;  that  we  had  not 
taken  them  away  can  only  be  explained  by  saying  that  we  had  caught 
the  general  devil-may-careness  of  the  hour.  By  that  time  it  was  all  one. 
Anyhow,  thank  goodness,  they  lacked  understanding  for  the  disrep- 
utable side  of  the  entertainment,  and  in  their  innocence  were  per- 
petually charmed  by  the  unheard-of  indulgence  which  permitted  them 
to  be  present  at  such  a  thing  as  a  magician's  "evening."  Whole  quarter- 
hours  at  a  time  they  drowsed  on  our  laps,  waking  refreshed  and  rosy- 
cheeked,  with  sleep-drunken  eyes,  to  laugh  to  bursting  at  the  leaps  and 
jumps  the  magician  made  those  people  up  there  make.  They  had  not 
thought  it  would  be  so  jolly;  they  joined  with  their  clumsy  little 
hands  in  every  round  of  applause.  And  jumped  for  joy  upon  their 
chairs,  as  was  their  wont,  when  Cipolla  beckoned  to  their  friend  Ma- 
rio from  the  Esquisito,  beckoned  to  him  just  like  a  picture  in  a  book, 
holding  his  hand  in  front  of  his  nose  and  bending  and  straightening 
the  forefinger  by  turns. 

Mario  obeyed.  I  can  see  him  now  going  up  the  stairs  to  Cipolla,  who 
continued  to  beckon  him,  in  that  droll,  picture-book  sort  of  way.  He 
hesitated  for  a  moment  at  first;  that,  too,  I  recall  quite  clearly.  During 
the  whole  evening  he  had  lounged  against  a  wooden  pillar  at  the  side  en- 
trance, with  his  arms  folded,  or  else  with  his  hands  thrust  into  his  jacket 
pockets.  He  was  on  our  left,  near  the  youth  with  the  militant  hair,  and 
had  followed  the  performance  attentively,  so  far  as  we  had  seen,  if  with 
no  particular  animation  and  God  knows  how  much  comprehension. 
He  could  not  much  relish  being  summoned  thus,  at  the  end  of  the 
evening.  But  it  was  only  too  easy  to  see  why  he  obeyed.  After  all, 
obedience  was  his  calling  in  life;  and  then,  how  should  a  simple  lad 
like  him  find  it  within  his  human  capacity  to  refuse  compliance  to  a 
man  so  throned  and  crowned  as  Cipolla  at  that  hour?  Willy-nilly  he 
left  his  column  and  with  a  word  of  thanks  to  those  making  way  for 
him  he  mounted  the  steps  with  a  doubtful  smile  on  his  full  lips. 

Picture  a  thickset  youth  of  twenty  years,  with  dipt  hair,  a  low  fore- 


THOMAS  MANN  7l 

head,  and  heavy-lidded  eyes  of  an  indefinite  grey,  shot  with  green  and 
yellow.  These  things  I  knew  from  having  spoken  with  him,  as  we 
often  had.  There  was  a  saddle  of  freckles  on  the  flat  nose,  the  whole 
upper  half  of  the  face  retreated  behind  the  lower,  and  that  again  was 
dominated  by  thick  lips  that  parted  to  show  the  salivated  teeth.  These 
thick  lips  and  the  veiled  look  of  the  eyes  lent  the  whole  face  a  primitive 
melancholy— it  was  that  which  had  drawn  us  to  him  from  the  first.  In 
it  was  not  the  faintest  trace  of  brutality— indeed,  his  hands  would  have 
|  given  the  lie  to  such  an  idea,  being  unusually  slender  and  delicate  even 
for  a  southerner.  They  were  hands  by  which  one  liked  being  served. 

We  knew  him  humanly  without  knowing  him  personally,  if  I  may 
make  that  distinction.  We  saw  him  nearly  every  day,  and  felt  a  certain 
kindness  for  his  dreamy  ways,  which  might  at  times  be  actual  inatten- 
tiveness,  suddenly  transformed  into  a  redeeming  zeal  to  serve.  His 
mien  was  serious,  only  the  children  could  bring  a  smile  to  his  face.  It 
was  not  sulky,  but  uningratiating,  without  intentional  effort  to  please 
—or,  rather,  it  seemed  to  give  up  being  pleasant  in  the  conviction  that 
it  could  not  succeed.  We  should  have  remembered  Mario  in  any  case, 
as  one  of  those  homely  recollections  of  travel  which  often  stick  in  the 
mind  better  than  more  important  ones.  But  of  his  circumstances  we 
knew  no  more  than  that  his  father  was  a  petty  clerk  in  the  Municipio 
and  his  mother  took  in  washing. 

His  white  waiter's-coat  became  him  better  than  the  faded  striped 
suit  he  wore,  with  a  gay  coloured  scarf  instead  of  a  collar,  the  ends 
tucked  into  his  jacket.  He  neared  Cipolla,  who  however  did  not  leave 
off  that  motion  of  his  finger  before  his  nose,  so  that  Mario  had  to  come 
still  closer,  right  up  to  the  chair-seat  and  the  master's  legs.  Whereupon 
the  latter  spread  out  his  elbows  and  seized  the  lad,  turning  him  so  that 
we  had  a  view  of  his  face.  Then  gazed  him  briskly  up  and  down,  with 
a  careless,  commanding  eye. 

"Well,  ragazzo  mio,  how  comes  it  we  make  acquaintance  so  late  in 
the  day?  But  believe  me,  I  made  yours  long  ago.  Yes,  yes,  I've  had  you 
in  my  eye  this  long  while  and  known  what  good  stuff  you  were  made 
of.  How  could  I  go  and  forget  you  again?  Well,  I've  had  a  good  deal 

to  think  about Now  tell  me,  what  is  your  name?  The  first  name, 

that's  all  I  want." 


72  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"My  name  is  Mario,"  the  young  man  answered,  in  a  low  voice. 

"Ah,  Mario.  Very  good.  Yes,  yes,  there  is  such  a  name,  quite  a  com- 
mon name,  a  classic  name  too,  one  of  those  which  preserve  the  heroic 
traditions  of  the  Fatherland.  Bravo!  Salve!"  And  he  flung  up  his  arm 
slantingly  above  his  crooked  shoulder,  palm  outward,  in  the  Roman 
salute.  He  may  have  been  slightly  tipsy  by  now,  and  no  wonder;  but 
he  spoke  as  before,  clearly,  fluently,  and  with  emphasis.  Though  about 
this  time  there  had  crept  into  his  voice  a  gross,  autocratic  note,  and  a 
kind  of  arrogance  was  in  his  sprawl. 

"Well,  now,  Mario  mio,"  he  went  on,  "it's  a  good  thing  you  came 
this  evening,  and  that's  a  pretty  scarf  you've  got  on;  it  is  becoming  to 
your  style  of  beauty.  It  must  stand  you  in  good  stead  with  the  girls, 
the  pretty  pretty  girls  of  Torre " 

From  the  row  of  youths,  close  by  the  place  where  Mario  had  been 
standing,  sounded  a  laugh.  It  came  from  the  youth  with  the  militant 
hair.  He  stood  there,  his  jacket  over  his  shoulder,  and  laughed  out- 
right, rudely  and  scornfully. 

Mario  gave  a  start.  I  think  it  was  a  shrug,  but  he  may  have  started 
and  then  hastened  to  cover  the  movement  by  shrugging  his  shoulders, 
as  much  as  to  say  that  the  neckerchief  and  the  fair  sex  were  matters  of 
equal  indifference  to  him. 

The  Cavaliere  gave  a  downward  glance. 

"We  needn't  trouble  about  him,"  he  said.  "He  is  jealous,  because 
your  scarf  is  so  popular  with  the  girls,  maybe  partly  because  you  and 
I  are  so  friendly  up  here.  Perhaps  he'd  like  me  to  put  him  in  mind  of 
his  colic — I  could  do  it  free  of  charge.  Tell  me,  Mario.  You've  come 
here  this  evening  for  a  bit  of  fun — and  in  the  daytime  you  work  in  an 
ironmonger's  shop?" 

"In  a  cafe,"  corrected  the  youth. 

"Oh,  in  a  cafe.  That's  where  Cipolla  nearly  came  a  cropper!  What  you 
are  is  a  cup-bearer,  a  Ganymede — I  like  that,  it  is  another  classical  al- 
lusion— Salvietta!"  Again  the  Cavaliere  saluted,  to  the  huge  gratifica- 
tion of  his  audience. 

Mario  smiled  too.  "But  before  that,"  he  interpolated,  in  the  interest 
of  accuracy,  "I  worked  for  a  while  in  a  shop  in  Portoclemente."  He 


THOMAS  MANN 


71 


seemed  visited  by  a  natural  desire  to  assist  the  prophecy  by  dredging 
out  its  essential  features. 
"There,  didn't  I  say  so?  In  an  ironmonger's  shop?" 
"They  kept  combs  and  brushes,"  Mario  got  round  it. 
"Didn't  I  say  that  you  were  not  always  a  Ganymede?  Not  always 
at  the  sign  of  the  serviette  ?  Even  when  Cipolla  makes  a  mistake,  it  is 
a  kind  that  makes  you  believe  in  him.  Now  tell  me:  Do  you  believe  in 
me?" 
An  indefinite  gesture. 

"A  half-way  answer,"  commented  the  Cavaliere.  "Probably  it  is  not 
easy  to  win  your  confidence.  Even  for  me,  I  can  see,  it  is  not  so  easy.  I 
see  in  your  features  a  reserve,  a  sadness,  un  tratto  di  malinconia  .  .  . 
tell  me"  (he  seized  Mario's  hand  persuasively)  "have  you  troubles?" 
"Nossignore"  answered  Mario,  promptly  and  decidedly. 
"You  have  troubles,"  insisted  the  Cavaliere,  bearing  down  the  denial 
by  the  weight  of  his  authority.  "Can't  I  see?  Trying  to  pull  the  wool 
over  Cipolla's  eyes,  are  you?  Of  course,  about  the  girls — it  is  a  girl,  isn't 
it?  You  have  love  troubles?" 

Mario  gave  a  vigorous  head-shake.  And  again  the  giovanotto's  brutal 
laugh  rang  out.  The  Cavaliere  gave  heed.  His  eyes  were  roving  about 
somewhere  in  the  air;  but  he  cocked  an  ear  to  the  sound,  then  swung 
his  whip  backwards,  as  he  had  once  or  twice  before  in  his  conversation 
with  Mario,  that  none  of  his  puppets  might  flag  in  their  zeal.  The  ges- 
ture had  nearly  cost  him  his  new  prey:  Mario  gave  a  sudden  start  in 
the  direction  of  the  steps.  But  Cipolla  had  him  in  his  clutch. 

"Not  so  fast,"  said  he.  "That  would  be  fine,  wouldn't  it?  So  you 
want  to  skip,  do  you,  Ganymede,  right  in  the  middle  of  the  fun,  or, 
rather,  when  it  is  just  beginning?  Stay  with  me,  I'll  show  you  some- 
thing nice.  I'll  convince  you.  You  have  no  reason  to  worry,  I  promise 
you.  This  girl— you  know  her  and  others  know  her  too— what's  her 
name?  Wait!  I  read  the  name  in  your  eyes,  it  is  on  the  tip  of  my 

tongue  and  yours  too " 

"Silvestra!"  shouted  the  giovanotto  from  below. 

The  Cavaliere's  face  did  not  change. 

"Aren't  there  the  forward  people?"  he  asked,  not  looking  down, 


74  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

more  as  in  undisturbed  converse  with  Mario.  "Aren't  there  the  young 
fighting-cocks  that  crow  in  season  and  out?  Takes  the  word  out  of 
your  mouth,  the  conceited  fool,  and  seems  to  think  he  has  some  special 
right  to  it.  Let  him  be.  But  Silvestra,  your  Silvestra — ah,  what  a  girl 
that  is!  What  a  prize!  Brings  your  heart  into  your  mouth  to  see  her 
walk  or  laugh  or  breathe,  she  is  so  lovely.  And  her  round  arms  when 
she  washes,  and  tosses  her  head  back  to  get  the  hair  out  of  her  eyes! 
An  angel  from  paradise!" 

Mario  stared  at  him,  his  head  thrust  forward.  He  seemed  to  have 
forgotten  the  audience,  forgotten  where  he  was.  The  red  rings  round 
his  eyes  had  got  larger,  they  looked  as  though  they  were  painted  on. 
His  thick  lips  parted. 

"And  she  makes  you  suffer,  this  angel,"  went  on  Cipolla,  "or,  rather, 
you  make  yourself  suffer  for  her — there  is  a  difference,  my  lad,  a  most 
important  difference,  let  me  tell  you.  There  are  misunderstandings  in 
love,  maybe  nowhere  else  in  the  world  are  there  so  many.  I  know  what 
you  are  thinking:  what  does  this  Cipolla,  with  his  little  physical  defect, 
know  about  love?  Wrong,  all  wrong,  he  knows  a  lot.  He  has  a  wide 
and  powerful  understanding  of  its  workings,  and  it  pays  to  listen  to 
his  advice.  But  let's  leave  Cipolla  out,  cut  him  out  altogether  and  think 
only  of  Silvestra,  your  peerless  Silvestra!  What!  Is  she  to  give  any  young 
gamecock  the  preference,  so  that  he  can  laugh  while  you  cry?  To  pre- 
fer him  to  a  chap  like  you,  so  full  of  feeling  and  so  sympathetic?  Not 
very  likely,  is  it  ?  It  is  impossible — we  know  better,  Cipolla  and  she.  If 
I  were  to  put  myself  in  her  place  and  choose  between  the  two  of  you, 
a  tarry  lout  like  that — a  codfish,  a  sea-urchin — and  a  Mario,  a  knight  of 
the  serviette,  who  moves  among  gentlefolk  and  hands  round  refresh- 
ments with  an  air — my  word,  but  my  heart  would  speak  in  no  uncer- 
tain tones — it  knows  to  whom  I  gave  it  long  ago.  It  is  time  that  he 
should  see  and  understand,  my  chosen  one!  It  is  time  that  you  see  me 
and  recognize  me,  Mario,  my  beloved!  Tell  me,  who  am  I?" 

It  was  grisly,  the  way  the  betrayer  made  himself  irresistible,  wreathed 
and  coquetted  with  his  crooked  shoulder,  languished  with  the  puffy 
eyes,  and  showed  his  splintered  teeth  in  a  sickly  smile.  And  alas,  at  his 
beguiling  words,  what  was  come  of  our  Mario?  It  is  hard  for  me  to 
tell,  hard  as  it  was  for  me  to  see;  for  here  was  nothing  less  than  an 


THOMAS  MANN  75 

utter  abandonment  of  the  inmost  soul,  a  public  exposure  of  timid  and 
deluded  passion  and  rapture.  He  put  his  hands  across  his  mouth,  his 
shoulders  rose  and  fell  with  his  pantings.  He  could  not,  it  was  plain, 
trust  his  eyes  and  ears  for  joy,  and  the  one  thing  he  forgot  was  pre- 
cisely that  he  could  not  trust  them.  "Silvestra!"  he  breathed,  from  the 
very  depths  of  his  vanquished  heart. 

"Kiss  me!"  said  the  hunchback.  "Trust  me,  I  love  thee.  Kiss  me 
here."  And  with  the  tip  of  his  index  finger,  hand,  arm,  and  little  fin- 
ger outspread,  he  pointed  to  his  cheek,  near  the  mouth.  And  Mario 
bent  and  kissed  him. 

It  had  grown  very  still  in  the  room.  That  was  a  monstrous  moment, 
grotesque  and  thrilling,  the  moment  of  Mario's  bliss.  In  that  evil  span 
of  time,  crowded  with  a  sense  of  the  illusiveness  of  all  joy,  one  sound 
became  audible,  and  that  not  quite  at  once,  but  on  the  instant  of  the 
melancholy  and  ribald  meeting  between  Mario's  lips  and  the  repulsive 
flesh  which  thrust  itself  forward  for  his  caress.  It  was  the  sound  of  a 
laugh,  from  the  giovanotto  on  our  left.  It  broke  into  the  dramatic  sus- 
pense of  the  moment,  coarse,  mocking,  and  yet — or  I  must  have  been 
grossly  mistaken — with  an  undertone  of  compassion  for  the  poor  be- 
wildered, victimized  creature.  It  had  a  faint  ring  of  that  "Poveretto" 
which  Cipolla  had  declared  was  wasted  on  the  wrong  person,  when  he 
claimed  the  pity  for  his  own. 

The  laugh  still  rang  in  the  air  when  the  recipient  of  the  caress  gave 
his  whip  a  little  swish,  low  down,  close  to  his  chair-leg,  and  Mario 
started  up  and  flung  himself  back.  He  stood  in  that  posture  staring, 
his  hands  one  over  the  other  on  those  desecrated  lips.  Then  he  beat  his 
temples  with  his  clenched  fists,  over  and  over;  turned  and  staggered 
down  the  steps,  while  the  audience  applauded,  and  Cipolla  sat  there 
with  his  hands  in  his  lap,  his  shoulders  shaking.  Once  below,  and  even 
while  in  full  retreat,  Mario  hurled  himself  round  with  legs  flung  wide 
apart;  one  arm  flew  up,  and  two  flat  shattering  detonations  crashed 
through  applause  and  laughter. 

There  was  instant  silence.  Even  the  dancers  came  to  a  full  stop  and 
stared  about,  struck  dumb.  Cipolla  bounded  from  his  seat.  He  stood 
with  his  arms  spread  out,  slanting  as  though  to  ward  everybody  off,  as 
though  next  moment  he  would  cry  out:  "Stop!  Keep  back!  Silence! 


76  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

What  was  that?"  Then,  in  that  instant,  he  sank  back  in  his  seat,  his 
head  rolling  on  his  chest;  in  the  next  he  had  fallen  sideways  to  the  floor, 
where  he  lay  motionless,  a  huddled  heap  of  clothing,  with  limbs  awry. 

The  commotion  was  indescribable.  Ladies  hid  their  faces,  shudder- 
ing, on  the  breasts  of  their  escorts.  There  were  shouts  for  a  doctor,  for 
the  police.  People  flung  themselves  on  Mario  in  a  mob,  to  disarm  him, 
to  take  away  the  weapon  that  hung  from  his  fingers — that  small,  dull- 
metal,  scarcely  pistol-shaped  tool  with  hardly  any  barrel — in  how 
strange  and  unexpected  a  direction  had  fate  levelled  it! 

And  now — now  finally,  at  last — we  took  the  children  and  led  them 
towards  the  exit,  past  the  pair  of  carabinieri  just  entering.  Was  that  the 
end,  they  wanted  to  know,  that  they  might  go  in  peace?  Yes,  we  as- 
sured them,  that  was  the  end.  An  end  of  horror,  a  fatal  end.  And  yet  a 
liberation — for  I  could  not,  and  I  cannot,  but  find  it  so! 


THOMAS   MANN 


COMMENTARY 


w 


J  have  often  reflected,  as  doubtless  many  have  before  me,  that  su- 
preme works  oi  literary  ait  generally  combine  clarity  and  ambiguity. 
By  ambiguity  I  do  not  mean  obscurity.  I  mean  they  can  be  under- 
stood in  more  than  one  sense.  A  great  book  is  never  unclear  but  it  is 
rarely  clear  in  only  one  way.  It  is  not  a  reflecting  mirror  but  that  far 
more  fascinating  object,  a  kaleidoscope,  capable  oi  a  variety  oi  images. 

To  take  a  simple  example,  Gulliver's  Travels  may  be  read  by  chil- 
dren for  its  ianciiul  story  and  by  men  for  its  satire  on  themselves., 
Swiit  never  bothered  to  point  out  this  plain  fact.  Dante,  a  much  more 
solemn  and  portentous  iellow,  stated  explicitly  that  his  Divine  Com- 
edy was  " poly semous"— comprehensible  in  any  oi  four  ways:  literally, 
allegorically  (or  mystically),  morally,  or  anagogically.  This  pronounce- 
ment has  been  for  centuries  the  cornerstone  oi  the  iortunes  oi  Dante 
commentators. 

Most  great  works  oi  the  imagination  have  this  quality  oi  ambiguity. 
It  is  a  quality  oi  which  the  creator  may  be  blandly  unaware.  Take 
Charles  Dickens.  When  this  twenty-four-year-old  shorthand  reports 
undertook  the  job  oi  providing  serial  letterpress  to  accompany  the 
drawings  oi  a  popular  illustrator,  he  had  not  the  remotest  idea  that 
he  was  about  to  create  a  story  that  will  probably  live  as  long  as  men 
know  how  to  laugh.  (Right  now,  that  doesnt  seem  so  very  long.} 
Dickens  sat  down  to  write  a  rollicking  narrative  oi  comic  incident 
He  succeeded.  But  so,  to  take  the  first  example  that  comes  to  mind, 
is  Lover  s  Handy  Andy  a  rollicking  narrative  oi  comic  incident 
Handy  Andy  is  a  curio,  Pickwick  a  masterpiece.  Why?  Pickwick  is 
better  written?  Granted.  Its  characters  are  better  drawn?  Agreed.  Its 
episodes  are  funnier?  Admitted,  though  Andy's  trouble  with  the  "soda, 
wather"  is  as  iunny  as  most  things  in  Pickwick.  J  think  we  must  go 
deeper. 

Here  is  where  our  old  iriend  ambiguity  raises  his  Janus  head,  or 
even  his  Hydra  head.  Pickwick  exists  on  two  levels,  like  Grand  Cen- 

77 


78  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

tral  station.  Grand  Central's  lower  level  is  suburban,  sewing  useful 
but  unromantic  places  like  Yonkers  and  Scarsdale.  But  from  the 
upper  level  depart  the  gleaming  chariots  of  the  streamliners,  bound 
for  the  remotest  names  on  a  broad  continent.  Similarly,  on  its  lower, 
mundane  level,  Pickwick  is  a  loose-jointed  yarn  about  readily  recog- 
nizable comic  personages,  careering  through  a  perfectly  real  and  solid 
England.  But  on  its  upper  level  Pickwick  is  a  great  comic  myth.  It  is 
nearer  to  the  Odyssey  than  it  is  to  Handy  Andy.  Sam  Wetter  tells 
tales  of  the  street,  but  they  are  mythical  tales.  Sam  Weller  issues 
moral  quips,  but  they  are  odds  and  ends  from  a  gigantic  underground 
system  of  folk  wisdom.  Sam  Weher  is  a  miracle  worker,  his  great 
talent  lying  in  his  possession  of  that  most  uncommon  of  qualities, 
the  common  touch.  Because  of  the  Fat  Boy,  the  entire  magnificent 
conception  of  gormandizing  will  mean  something  to  us  a  thousand 
years  hence,  even  if  we  should  happen  to  be  living  on  dark-brown 
vitamin  tablets.  The  medical  students,  Jack  Hopkins  and  Bob  Sawyer, 
cannot  be  tied  down  to  the  time,  place,  and  profession  they  are  sup- 
posed to  satirize.  They  are  buoyant  with  a  helium  life  of  their  own 
and  escape  at  once  to  those  upper  airs  where  they  soar  and  curvet 
forever  with  Falstaff  and  Uncle  Toby.  Pickwick  lasts  because  it  is  a 
branch  on  one  of  the  evergreens  of  literature,  the  fairy  tale. 

I  have  spoken  of  Pickwick  at  perhaps  tedious  length  precisely  be- 
cause at  first  blush  it  seems  so  remote  from  Thomas  Mann's  The 
Magic  Mountain,  a  selection  from  which  you  may  read  at  once  by 
skipping  the  next  thousand  words  or  so.  My  point  is  simple:  The 
Magic  Mountain  and  Pickwick  are  alike  in  that  both  are  works  of 
double-entendre.  Mann  and  Dickens  are  both  symbolists,  the  differ- 
ence being  that  Mann  is  a  conscious  symbolist  and  Dickens  an  un- 
conscious one.  It  is  an  odd  fact  that  symbols,  so  vague  and  evasive, 
last.  We  are  so  constituted  as  to  be  fascinated  forever  by  the  idea  of 
a  thing  that  stands  for  something  else.  Our  greatest  works  of  art  have 
about  them  this  atmosphere  of  indirection.  That  is  what  binds  all 
great  books  together.  That  is  why  Pickwick  and  The  Magic  Mountain 
are  brothers  under  their  skin.  For  all  masterful  creative  stories  are 
nourished  by  the  same  amniotic  Euid  circulating  in  the  womb  of  the 
great  mother  of  myths. 


THOMAS  MANN  79 

Pickwick  deals  with  cockneys  and  comic  mishaps.  The  Magic 
Mountain  deals  with  the  profoundest  problems  of  life  and  death. 
Mann  may  he  more  intelligent  than  Dickens  hut  I  do  not  believe  he 
is  one  whit  the  greater  artist.  Both  are  myth  makers.  Both  hooks  have 
a  value  beyond  that  of  mere  narrative.  With  both  books  you  find 
yourself  interested  in  something  more  than  uhow  the  story  comes 
out!'  This  something  more  is  what  makes  both  of  them  works  of  art. 
One  of  the  ways  by  which  a  supreme  literary  character  is  identified 
is  our  lack  of  interest  in  his  fate.  The  least  important  thing  about 
Hamlet  is  his  death.  Who,  save  the  Baker  Street  Irregulars,  remem- 
bers how  Sherlock  Holmes  perished,  locked  in  the  arms  of  Moriarty? 

Now  let  me  recall  for  you  the  simple  outlines  of  The  Magic  Moun- 
tain. It  is  a  long,  leisurely  novel.  Mae  West  once  remarked,  "I  like 
a  man  who  takes  his  time."  Thomas  Mann  has  put  it  in  another 
way:  "Only  the  exhaustive  is  truly  interesting."  The  setting  is  a  Swiss 
tuberculosis  sanitarium  during  the  years  immediately  preceding  the 
outbreak  of  the  First  (or  Rehearsal)  World  War.  The  characters  com- 
prise the  patients,  their  visitors,  and  the  hospital  staff.  The  hero  is 
Hans  Castorp,  an  intelligent,  amiable,  naive  young  German.  On  the 
surface  the  book  concerns  itself  with  the  "education"  of  Hans;  his 
education  by  the  disease  insidiously  inhabiting  him,  his  education  by 
other  characters — the  rationalist  Settembrini;  the  Jesuit-Jew  Naphta, 
that  terrifying  prefiguring  of  certain  Nazi  doctrines;  the  enigmatic 
Clavdia  Chauchat,  with  whom  Hans  falls  so  fatally  in  love;  "Rhada- 
manthus"  the  doctor;  and  others.  The  Magic  Mountain  is  about  the 
adventures  of  Hans'  mind.  It  is  a  picaresque  novel  of  the  intellect  as 
Pickwick  is  a  picaresque  novel  of  the  body. 

But  just  as  there  is  an  underside  to  Pickwick,  so  there  are  many 
undersides  to  The  Magic  Mountain.  Not  incidentally  but  essentially, 
Manns  book  is  the  following:  an  imaginative  discourse  on  the  nature 
of  time;  a  study  of  the  interrelationship  of  life,  disease,  and  death; 
a  Faustian  novel  about  the  soul  of  man  (see  whether  you  can  sense 
this  in  the  extract  here  presented);  a  dramatic  illumination  of  the 
sickness  of  an  acquisitive  society  (for  remember  that  the  Berghof 
Sanitarium  is  also  another  name  for  bourgeois  Europe);  an  interpre- 


80  READING  I'VE   LIKE 

tation  of  European  history,  past,  present,  and  future.  We  say  glib;- 
that  The  Magic  Mountain  is  a  philosophical  novel.  This  does  n\ 
mean  that  the  characters  sit  around  and  talk  "philosophy."  Philosoph 
means  the  love  of,  wisdom.  A  philosophical  novel  therefore  is  one 
informed  with  wisdom.  Wisdom  has  to  do  with  unalterable  truths; 
hence  a  philosophical  novel  is  always  about  something  more  perma- 
nent than  the  time  and  place  that  make  up  its  setting. 

Novelists  and  poets  have  their  own  way  of  expressing  wisdom. 
Their  tool  is  the  symbol,  their  form  the  myth.  The  richer  the  sym- 
bolism and  the  more  complex  the  myth,  the  more  enduring  is  the 
work  of  art.  The  myth  of  Oedipus  is  a  lode— one  might  even  say  a 
mother  lode— still  yielding  gold.  The  sad  fact  is  that  an  author,  if 
he  desires  immortality,  should  never  say  exactly  what  he  means.  It 
is  even  better  if,  like  Dostoevsky,  he  doesn't  even  always  know  what 
he  means.  For  example,  The  Grapes  of  Wrath,  which  I  happen  to 
admire  greatly,  will  not,  I  imagine,  be  read  a  hundred  years  from 
now.  Its  trouble  is  that  Mr.  Steinbeck  is  too  clear  a  writer.  He  is  too 
explicit  a  writer.  He  keeps  his  eye  on  the  object.  The  object  happens 
to  interest  us  a  great  deal  now.  But  when  the  object— the  plight  of 
the  Dust  Bowl  farmers— disappears  or  changes  its  form,  The  Grapes 
of  Wrath  will  no  longer  be  read.  Parts  of  it,  which  have  very  little  to 
do  with  the  object,  will  still  be  moving.  I  have  included  two  of  those 
parts  in  tin's  book.  If  I've  chosen  the  wrong  ones  Til  feel  a  perfect 
fool  a  hundred  years  from  now. 

Let's  get  back  to  The  Magic  Mountain.  Perhaps  it  is  foolhardy  of 
me  to  scissor  out  a  chapter  from  it  and  offer  it  to  you  with  any  hope 
of  having  you  enjoy  it.  The  Magic  Mountain  is  really  a  mountain; 
more,  it  is  a  monolith.  It  does  not  break  up  well  into  purple  patches 
or  set  pieces. 

I  chose  the  chapter  "Snow"  because  it  may  be  read,  I  hope,  with- 
out much  knowledge  or  recollection  of  the  plot  and  characters.  Al- 
though devoid  of  action,  conflict,  intrigue,  it  is  the  nearest  thing  in 
the  book  to  a  self-contained  short  story.  It  moves  me  for  a  number 
of  reasons. 

It  moves  me  first  because  it  bares  certain  fundamental  and  perma- 


IOMAS  MANN 
,4 


nt  sensations  of  man— the  sensation  of  solitude,  for  example,  the 

nsation  of  lostness,  spiritual  as  well  as  physical. 

Second,  I  have  chosen  this  chapter  because  it  is  an  excellent  pro- 
action  of  one  of  the  main  themes  of  the  book,  Hans'  thought  that 
all  interest  in  death  and  disease  is  only  another  expression  of  interest 
m  lifer 

Finally,  Hans'  vision  of  the  smiling  pagan  world,  with  its  heart  of 
horror,  is  an  example  of  that  masterful  ambiguity  we  have  been  dis- 
cussing—for it  is  at  once  the  sort  of  delirious  fantasy  that  might 
logically  invade  such  a  mind  as  that  of  Hans  Castorp,  and  at  the 
same  time  a  perfect  expression  of  the  Teutonic  Sehnsucht  after  the 
South,  the  land  of  beauty,  the  country  of  the  classic.  Here  we  have 
perfect  proof  that  a  great  writer  always  writes  better  than  he  knows. 
Hans'  phantasmagoria  was  moving  when  I  first  read  it,  but  now  that 
Hitler  has  compelled  Germany  (perhaps  forever)  to  kill  \hat  element 
in  her  which  longs  for  harmony  and  reason,  the  phantasmagoria  sud- 
denly assumes  added  significance.  That  is  the  way  with  great  works 
of  art.  The  events  of  history  in  some  mysterious  manner  enhance 
rather  than  obscure  them. 


Snow 


FROM        THE    MAGIC    MOUNTAIN         BY 

THOMAS  MANN 


Daily,  five  times  a  day,  the  guests  expressed  unanimous  dissatisfaction 
with  the  kind  of  winter  they  were  having.  They  felt  it  was  not  what 
they  had  a  right  to  expect  of  these  altitudes.  It  failed  to  deliver  the 
renowned  meteorological  specific  in  anything  like  the  quantity  indi- 
cated by  the  prospectus,  quoted  by  old  inhabitants,  or  anticipated  by 
new.  There  was  a  very  great  failure  in  the  supply  of  sunshine,  an  ele- 
ment so  important  in  the  cures  achieved  up  here  that  without  it  they 
were  distinctly  retarded.  And  whatever  Herr  Settembrini  might  think 
of  the  sincerity  of  the  patients'  desire  to  finish  their  cure,  leave  "home" 
and  return  to  the  flat-land,  at  any  rate  they  insisted  on  their  just  dues. 
They  wanted  what  they  were  entitled  to,  what  their  parents  or  hus- 
bands had  paid  for,  and  they  grumbled  unceasingly,  at  table,  in  lift, 
and  in  hall.  The  management  showed  a  consciousness  of  what  it  owed 
them  by  installing  a  new  apparatus  for  heliotherapy.  They  had  two 
already,  but  these  did  not  suffice  for  the  demands  of  those  who  wished 
to  get  sunburnt  by  electricity — it  was  so  becoming  to  the  ladies,  young 
and  old,  and  made  all  the  men,  though  confirmed  horizontallers,  look 
irresistibly  athletic.  And  the  ladies,  even  though  aware  of  the  mechanico- 
cosmetical  origin  of  this  conquering-hero  air,  were  foolish  enough  to 
be  carried  away  by  it.  There  was  Frau  Schonfeld,  a  red-haired,  red- 
eyed  patient  from  Berlin.  In  the  salon  she  looked  thirstily  at  a  long- 
legged,  sunken-chested  gallant,  who  described  himself  on  his  visiting- 
card  as  " Aviate ur  diplome  et  Enseigne  de  la  Marine  allemande."  He 
was  fitted  out  with  the  pneumothorax  and  wore  "smoking"  at  the  mid- 
day meal  but  not  in  the  evening,  saying  this  was  their  custom  in  the 
navy.  "My  God,"  breathed  Frau  Schonfeld  at  him,  "what  a  tan  this 

82 


THOMAS  MANN  83 

demon  has — he  gets  it  from  the  helio — it  makes  him  look  like  a  hunter 
of  eagles!"  "Just  wait,  nixie!"  he  whispered  in  her  ear,  in  the  lift, 
"I'll  make  you  pay  for  looking  at  me  like  that!"  It  made  goose-flesh 
and  shivers  run  over  her.  And  along  the  balconies,  past  the  glass 
partitions,  the  demon  eagle-hunter  found  his  way  to  the  nixie. 

But  the  artificial  sun  was  far  from  making  up  for  the  lack  of  the 
real  one.  Two  or  three  days  of  full  sunshine  in  the  month — it  was 
not  good  enough,  gorgeous  though  these  were,  with  deep,  deep  vel- 
vety blue  sky  behind  the  white  mountain  summits,  a  glitter  as  of 
diamonds  and  a  fine  hot  glow  on  the  face  and  the  back  of  the  neck, 
when  they  dawned  resplendent  from  the  prevailing  thick  mantle  of 
grey  mist.  Two  or  three  such  days  in  the  course  of  weeks  could  not 
satisfy  people  whose  lot  might  be  said  to  justify  extraordinary  de- 
mands from  the  external  world.  They  had  made  an  inward  compact, 
by  the  terms  of  which  they  resigned  the  common  joys  and  sorrows 
proper  to  flat-land  humanity,  and  in  exchange  were  made  free  of  a 
life  that  was,  to  be  sure,  inactive,  but  on  the  other  hand  very  lively 
and  diverting,  and  care-free  to  the  point  of  making  one  forget  alto- 
gether the  flight  of  time.  Thus  it  was  not  much  good  for  the  Hofrat 
to  tell  them  how  favourably  the  Berghof  compared  with  a  Siberian 
mine  or  a  penal  settlement,  nor  to  sing  the  praises  of  the  atmos- 
phere, so  thin  and  light,  well-nigh  as  rare  as  the  empty  universal  ether, 
free  of  earthly  admixture  whether  good  or  bad,  and  even  without  ac- 
tual sunshine  to  be  preferred  to  the  rank  vapours  of  the  plain.  Despite 
all  he  could  say,  the  gloomy  disaffection  gained  ground,  threats  of  un- 
licensed departure  were  the  order  of  the  day,  were  even  put  into  execu- 
tion, without  regard  for  the  warning  afforded  by  the  melancholy  re- 
turn of  Frau  Salomon  to  the  fold,  now  a  "life  member,"  her  tedious 
but  not  serious  case  having  taken  that  turn  by  reason  of  her  self-willed 
visit  to  her  wet  and  windy  Amsterdam. 

But  if  they  had  no  sun,  they  had  snow.  Such  masses  of  snow  as  Hans 
Castorp  had  never  till  now  in  all  his  life  beheld.  The  previous  winter 
had  done  fairly  well  in  this  respect,  but  it  had  been  as  nothing  com- 
pared to  this.  The  snow-fall  was  monstrous  and  immeasurable,  it  made 
one  realize  the  extravagant,  outlandish  nature  of  the  place.  It  snowed 
day  in,  day  out,  and  all  through  the  night.  The  few  roads  kept  open 


84  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

were  like  tunnels,  with  cowering  walls  of  snow  on  either  side,  crystal 
and  alabaster  surfaces  that  were  pleasant  to  look  at,  and  on  which  the 
guests  scribbled  all  sorts  of  messages,  jokes  and  personalities.  But  even 
this  path  between  walls  was  above  the  level  of  the  pavement,  and  made 
of  hard-packed  snow,  as  one  could  tell  by  certain  places  where  it  gave 
way,  and  let  one  suddenly  sink  in  up  to  the  knee.  One  might,  unless 
one  were  careful,  break  a  leg.  The  benches  had  disappeared,  except 
for  the  high  back  of  one  emerging  here  and  there.  In  the  town,  the 
street  level  was  so  raised  that  the  shops  had  become  cellars,  into  which 
one  descended  by  steps  cut  in  the  snow. 

And  on  all  these  lying  masses  more  snow  fell,  day  in,  day  out.  It  fell 
silently,  through  air  that  was  moderately  cold,  perhaps  twenty  to  thirty 
degrees  of  frost.  One  did  not  feel  the  cold,  it  might  have  been  much 
less,  for  the  dryness  and  absence  of  wind  deprived  it  of  sting.  The 
mornings  were  very  dark,  breakfast  was  taken  by  the  light  of  the 
artificial  moon  that  hung  from  the  vaulted  ceiling  of  the  dining-room, 
above  the  gay  stencilled  border.  Outside  was  the  reeking  void,  the 
world  enwrapped  in  grey-white  cotton-wool,  packed  to  the  window- 
panes  in  snow  and  mist.  No  sight  of  the  mountains;  of  the  nearest 
evergreens  now  and  again  a  glimpse  through  the  fog,  standing  laden, 
and  from  time  to  time  shaking  free  a  bough  of  its  heavy  load,  that  flew 
into  the  air,  and  sent  a  cloud  of  white  against  the  grey.  At  ten  o'clock 
the  sun,  a  wan  wisp  of  light,  came  up  behind  its  mountain,  and  gave 
the  indistinguishable  scene  some  shadowy  hint  of  life,  some  sallow 
glimmer  of  reality;  yet  even  so,  it  retained  its  delicate  ghostliness,  its 
lack  of  any  definite  line  for  the  eye  to  follow.  The  contours  of  the 
peaks  dissolved,  disappeared,  were  dissipated  in  the  mist,  while  the 
vision,  led  on  from  one  pallidly  gleaming  slope  of  snow  to  another, 
lost  itself  in  the  void.  Then  a  single  cloud,  like  smoke,  lighted  up  by 
the  sun,  might  spread  out  before  a  wall  of  rock  and  hang  there  for 
long,  motionless. 

At  midday  the  sun  would  half  break  through,  and  show  signs  of 
banishing  the  mist.  In  vain — yet  a  shred  of  blue  would  be  visible,  and 
suffice  to  make  the  scene,  in  its  strangely  falsified  contours,  sparkle 
marvellously  far  and  wide.  Usually,  at  this  hour,  the  snow-fall  stopped, 
as  though  to  have  a  look  at  what  it  had  done;  a  like  effect  was  pro- 


THOMAS  MANN  85 

duced  by  the  rare  days  when  the  storm  ceased,  and  the  uninterrupted 
power  of  the  sun  sought  to  thaw  away  the  pure  and  lovely  surface 
from  the  new-fallen  masses.  The  sight  was  at  once  fairylike  and 
comic,  an  infantine  fantasy.  The  thick  light  cushions  plumped  up  on 
the  boughs  of  trees,  the  humps  and  mounds  of  snow-covered  rock- 
cropping  or  undergrowth,  the  droll,  dwarfish,  crouching  disguise  all 
ordinary  objects  wore,  made  of  the  scene  a  landscape  in  gnome-land, 
an  illustration  for  a  fairy-tale.  Such  was  the  immediate  view — weari- 
some to  move  in,  quaintly,  roguishly  stimulating  to  the  fancy.  But 
when  one  looked  across  the  intervening  space,  at  the  towering  marble 
statuary  of  the  high  Alps  in  full  snow,  one  felt  a  quite  different  emo- 
tion, and  that  was  awe  of  their  majestic  sublimity. 

Afternoons  between  three  and  four,  Hans  Castorp  lay  in  his  balcony 
box,  well  wrapped,  his  head  against  the  cushion,  not  too  high  or  too 
low,  of  his  excellent  chair,  and  looked  out  at  forest  and  mountain  over 
his  thick-upholstered  balustrade.  The  snow-laden  firs,  dark-green  to 
blackness,  went  marching  up  the  sides  of  the  valley,  and  beneath  them 
the  snow  lay  soft  like  down  pillows.  Above  the  tree  line,  the  mountain 
walls  reared  themselves  into  the  grey-white  air :  huge  surfaces  of  snow, 
with  softly  veiled  crests,  and  here  and  there  a  black  jut  of  rock.  The 
snow  came  silently  down.  The  scene  blurred  more  and  more,  it  in- 
clined the  eye,  gazing  thus  into  woolly  vacuity,  to  slumber.  At  the 
moment  of  slipping  off  one  might  give  a  start — yet  what  sleep  could  be 
purer  than  this  in  the  icy  air  ?  It  was  dreamless.  It  was  as  free  from  the 
burden — even  the  unconscious  burden — of  organic  life,  as  little  aware 
of  an  effort  to  breathe  this  contentless,  weightless,  imperceptible  air 
as  is  the  breathless  sleep  of  the  dead.  When  Hans  Castorp  stirred  again, 
the  mountains  would  be  wholly  lost  in  a  cloud  of  snow;  only  a  pin- 
nacle, a  jutting  rock,  might  show  one  instant,  to  be  rapt  away  the 
next.  It  was  absorbing  to  watch  these  ghostly  pranks;  one  needed  to 
keep  alert  to  follow  the  transmutations,  the  veiling  and  unveiling. 
One  moment  a  great  space  of  snow-covered  rock  would  reveal  itself, 
standing  out  bold  and  free,  though  of  base  or  peak  naught  was  to  be 
seen.  But  if  one  ceased  to  fix  one's  gaze  upon  it,  it  was  gone,  in  a 
breath. 

Then  there  were  storms  so  violent  as  to  prevent  one's  sitting  on  the 


86  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

balcony  for  the  driven  snow  which  blew  in,  in  such  quantity  as  to 
cover  floor  and  chair  with  a  thick  mantle.  Yes,  even  in  this  sheltered 
valley  it  knew  how  to  storm.  The  thin  air  would  be  in  a  hurly-burly, 
so  whirling  full  of  snow  one  could  not  see  a  hand's  breadth  before 
one's  face.  Gusts  strong  enough  to  take  one's  breath  away  flung  the 
snow  about,  drew  it  up  cyclone-fashion  from  the  valley  floor  to  the 
upper  air,  whisked  it  about  in  the  maddest  dance;  no  longer  a  snow- 
storm, it  was  a  blinding  chaos,  a  white  dark,  a  monstrous  dereliction 
on  the  part  of  this  inordinate  and  violent  region;  no  living  creature 
save  the  snow-bunting — which  suddenly  appeared  in  troops — could 
flourish  in  it. 

And  yet  Hans  Castorp  loved  this  snowy  world.  He  found  it  not  un- 
like life  at  the  sea-shore.  The  monotony  of  the  scene  was  in  both  cases 
profound.  The  snow,  so  deep,  so  light,  so  dry  and  spotless,  was  the 
sand  of  down  below.  One  was  as  clean  as  the  other:  you  could  shake 
the  snow  from  boots  and  clothing,  just  as  you  could  the  fine-ground, 
dustless  stone  and  shell,  product  of  the  sea's  depth — neither  left  trace 
behind.  And  walking  in  the  snow  was  as  toilsome  as  on  the  dunes; 
unless,  indeed,  a  crust  had  come  upon  it,  by  dint  of  thawing  and  freez- 
ing, when  the  going  became  easy  and  pleasant,  like  marching  along 
the  smooth,  hard,  wet,  and  resilient  strip  of  sand  close  to  the  edge  of 
the  sea. 

But  the  storms  and  high-piled  drifts  of  this  year  gave  pedestrians 
small  chance.  They  were  favourable  only  for  skiing.  The  snow-plough, 
labouring  its  best,  barely  kept  free  the  main  street  of  the  settlement 
and  the  most  indispensable  paths.  Thus  the  few  short  feasible  stretches 
were  always  crowded  with  other  walkers,  ill  and  well:  the  native,  the 
permanent  guest,  and  the  hotel  population;  and  these  in  their  turn 
were  bumped  by  the  sleds  as  they  swung  and  swerved  down  the  slopes, 
steered  by  men  and  women  who  leaned  far  back  as  they  came  on,  and 
shouted  importunately,  being  obsessed  bv  the  importance  of  their'occu- 
pation.  Once  at  the  bottom  they  would  turn  and  trundle  their  toy 
sledges  uphill  again. 

Hans  Castorp  was  thoroughly  sick  of  all  the  walks.  He  had  two 
desires:  one  of  them,  the  stronger,  was  to  be  alone  with  his  thoughts 


THOMAS  MANN  87 

and  his  stock-taking  projects;  and  this  his  balcony  assured  to  him.  But 
the  other,  allied  unto  it,  was  a  lively  craving  to  come  into  close  and 
freer  touch  with  the  mountains,  the  mountains  in  their  snowy  desola- 
tion; toward  them  he  was  irresistibly  drawn.  Yet  how  could  he,  all 
unprovided  and  footbound  as  he  was,  hope  to  gratify  such  a  desire  ?  He 
had  only  to  step  beyond  the  end  of  the  shovelled  paths — an  end  soon 
reached  upon  any  of  them — to  plunge  breast-high  in  the  snowy  ele- 
ment. 

Thus  it  was  Hans  Castorp,  on  a  day  in  his  second  winter  with  those 
up  here,  resolved  to  buy  himself  skis  and  learn  to  walk  on  them, 
enough,  that  is,  for  his  purposes.  He  was  no  sportsman,  had  never  been 
physically  inclined  to  sport;  and  did  not  behave  as  though  he  were, 
as  did  many  guests  of  the  cure,  dressing  up  to  suit  the  mode  and  the 
spirit  of  the  place.  Hermine  Kleefeld,  for  instance,  among  other  fe- 
males, though  she  was  constantly  blue  in  the  face  from  lack  of  breath, 
loved  to  appear  at  luncheon  in  tweed  knickers,  and  loll  about  after  the 
meal  in  a  basket-chair  in  the  hall,  with  her  legs  sprawled  out.  Hans 
Castorp  knew  that  he  would  meet  with  a  refusal  were  he  to  ask  the 
Hofrat  to  countenance  his  plan.  Sports  activities  were  unconditionally 
forbidden  at  the  Berghof  as  in  all  other  establishments  of  the  kind. 
This  atmosphere,  which  one  seemed  to  breathe  in  so  effortlessly,  was 
a  severe  strain  on  the  heart,  and  as  for  Hans  Castorp  personally,  his 
lively  comment  on  his  own  state,  that  "getting  used  to  being  up  here 
consisted  in  getting  used  to  not  getting  used,"  had  continued  in  force. 
His  fever,  which  Rhadamanthus  ascribed  to  a  moist  spot,  remained 
obstinate.  Why  else  indeed  should  he  be  here?  His  desire,  his  present 
purpose  was  then  clearly  inconsistent  and  inadmissible.  Yet  we  must 
be  at  the  pains  to  understand  him  aright.  He  had  no  wish  to  imitate 
the  fresh-air  faddists  and  smart  pseudo-sportsmen,  who  would  have 
been  equally  eager  to  sit  all  day  and  play  cards  in  a  stuffy  room,  if  only 
that  had  been  interdicted  by  authority.  He  felt  himself  a  member  of 
another  and  closer  community  than  this  small  tourist  world;  a  new 
and  a  broader  point  of  view,  a  dignity  and  restraint  set  him  apart  and 
made  him  conscious  that  it  would  be  unfitting  for  him  to  emulate  their 
rough-and-tumbling  in  the  snow.  He  had  no  escapade  in  view,  his 


88 


READING  I'VE   LIKED 


plans  were  so  moderate  that  Rhadamanthus  himself,  had  he  known, 
might  well  have  approved  them.  But  the  rules  stood  in  the  way,  and 
Hans  Castorp  resolved  to  act  behind  his  back. 

He  took  occasion  to  speak  to  Herr  Settembrini  of  his  plan— who  for 
sheer  joy  could  have  embraced  him.  "Si,  si,  si!  Do  so,  do  so,  Engineer, 
do  so  with  the  blessing  of  God!  Ask  after  nobody's  leave,  but  simply 
do  it!  Ah,  your  good  angel  must  have  whispered  you  the  thought!  Do 
it  straightway,  before  the  impulse  leaves  you.  Ill  go  along,  I'll  go  to 
the  shop  with  you,  and  together  we  will  acquire  the  instruments  of  this 
happy  inspiration.  I  would  go  with  you  even  into  the  mountains,  I 
would  be  by  your  side,  on  winged  feet,  like  Mercury's— but  that  I  may 
not.  May  not!  If  that  were  all,  how  soon  would  I  do  it!  That  I  cannot 
is  the  truth,  I  am  a  broken  man.— But  you— it  will  do  you  no  harm, 
none  at  all,  if  you  are  sensible  and  do  nothing  rash.  Even— even  if  it 
did  you  harm— just  a  little  harm— it  will  still  have  been  your  good 
angel  roused  you  to  it.  I  say  no  more.  Ah,  what  an  unsurpassable  plan! 
Two  years  up  here,  and  still  capable  of  such  projects— ah,  yes,  your 
heart  is  sound,  no  need  to  despair  of  you.  Bravo,  bravo!  By  all  means 
pull  the  wool  over  the  eyes  of  your  Prince  of  Shadows!  Buy  the  snow- 
shoes,  have  them  sent  to  me  or  Lukacek,  or  the  chandler  below-stairs. 
You  fetch  them  from  here  to  go  and  practise,  you  go  ofl  on  them " 

So  it  befell.  Under  Herr  Settembrini's  critical  eye— he  played  the 
connoisseur,  though  innocent  of  sports— Hans  Castorp  acquired  a  pair 
of  oaken  skis,  finished  a  light-brown,  with  tapering,  pointed  ends  and 
the  best  quality  of  straps.  He  bought  the  iron-shod  start  with  the  little 
wheel,  as  well,  and  was  not  content  to  have  his  purchases  sent,  but 
carried  them  on  his  shoulder  to  Settembrini's  quarters,  where  he  ar- 
ranged with  the  grocer  to  take  care  of  them  for  him.  He  had  looked 
on  enough  at  the  sport  to  know  the  use  of  his  tools;  and  choosing  for 
his  practice-ground  an  almost  treeless  slope  not  far  behind  the  sana- 
torium, remote  from  the  hubbub  of  the  spot  where  other  beginners 
learned  the  art,  he  began  daily  to  make  his  first  blundering  attempts, 
watched  by  Herr  Settembrini,  who  would  stand  at  a  little  distance, 
leaning  on  his  cane,  with  legs  gracefully  crossed,  and  greet  his  nurs- 
ling's progress  with  applause.  One  day  Hans  Castorp,  steering  down 
the  cleared  drive  toward  the  Dorf,  in  act  to  take  the  skis  back  to  the 


THOMAS  MANN  89 

grocer's,  ran  into  the  Hofrat.  Behrens  never  recognized  him,  though  it 
was  broad  day,  and  our  beginner  had  well-nigh  collided  with  him. 
Shrouded  in  a  haze  of  tobacco-smoke,  he  stalked  past  regardless. 

Hans  Castorp  found  that  one  quickly  gets  readiness  in  an  art  where 
strong  desire  comes  in  play.  He  was  not  ambitious  for  expert  skill,  and 
all  he  needed  he  acquired  in  a  few  days,  without  undue  strain  on  wind 
or  muscles.  He  learned  to  keep  his  feet  tidily  together  and  make  paral- 
lel tracks;  to  avail  himself  of  his  stick  in  getting  off;  he  learned  how 
to  take  obstacles,  such  as  small  elevations  of  the  ground,  with  a  slight 
soaring  motion,  arms  outspread,  rising  and  falling  like  a  ship  on  a 
billowy  sea;  learned,  after  the  twentieth  trial,  not  to  trip  and  roll  over 
when  he  braked  at  full  speed,  with  the  right  Telemark  turn,  one  leg 
forward,  the  other  bent  at  the  knee.  Gradually  he  widened  the  sphere 
of  his  activities.  One  day  it  came  to  pass  that  Herr  Settembrini  saw  him 
vanish  in  the  far  white  mist;  the  Italian  shouted  a  warning  through 
cupped  hands,  and  turned  homewards,  his  pedagogic  soul  well-pleased. 

It  was  beautiful  here  in  these  wintry  heights:  not  mildly  and  ingra- 
tiatingly beautiful,  more  as  the  North  Sea  is  beautiful  in  a  westerly 
gale.  There  was  no  thunder  of  surf,  a  deathly  stillness  reigned,  but 
roused  similar  feelings  of  awe.  Hans  Castorp's  long,  pliant  soles  carried 
him  in  all  directions:  along  the  left  slope  to  Clavadel,  on  the  right  to 
Frauenkirch  and  Glaris,  whence  he  could  see  the  shadowy  massif  of 
the  Amselfluh,  ghostlike  in  the  mist;  into  the  Dischma  valley,  or  up 
behind  the  Berghof  in  the  direction  of  the  wooded  Seehorn,  only  the 
top  of  which,  snow-covered,  rose  above  the  tree  line,  or  the  Drusatscha 
forest,  with  the  pale  outline  of  the  Rhatikon  looming  behind  it, 
smothered  in  snow.  He  took  his  skis  and  went  up  on  the  funicular  to 
the  Schatzalp;  there,  rapt  six  thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  he  revelled 
at  will  on  the  gleaming  slopes  of  powdery  snow — whence,  in  good 
weather,  there  was  a  view  of  majestic  extent  over  all  the  surrounding 
territory. 

He  rejoiced  in  his  new  resource,  before  which  all  difficulties  and 
hindrances  to  movement  fell  away.  It  gave  him  the  utter  solitude  he 
craved,  and  filled  his  soul  with  impressions  of  the  wild  inhumanity, 
the  precariousness  of  this  region  into  which  he  had  ventured.  On  his 
one  hand  he  might  have  a  precipitous,  pine-clad  declivity,  falling  away 


90  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

into  tne  mists;  on  the  other  sheer  rock  might  rise,  with  masses  of 
snow,  in  monstrous,  Cyclopean  forms,  all  domed  and  vaulted,  swelling 
or  cavernous.  He  would  halt  for  a  moment,  to  quench  the  sound  of  his 
own  movement,  when  the  silence  about  him  would  be  absolute,  com- 
plete, a  wadded  soundlessness,  as  it  were,  elsewhere  all  unknown. 
There  was  no  stir  of  air,  not  so  much  as  might  even  lightly  sway  the 
tree-boughs;  there  was  not  a  rustle,  nor  the  voice  of  a  bird.  It  was 
primeval  silence  to  which  Hans  Castorp  hearkened,  when  he  leaned 
thus  on  his  staff,  his  head  on  one  side,  his  mouth  open.  And  always  it 
snowed,  snowed  without  pause,  endlessly,  gently,  soundlessly  falling. 
No,  this  world  of  limitless  silences  had  nothing  hospitable;  it  re- 
ceived the  visitor  at  his  own  risk,  or  rather  it  scarcely  even  received 
him,  it  tolerated  his  penetration  into  its  fastnesses,  in  a  manner  that 
boded  no  good;  it  made  him  aware  of  the  menace  of  the  elemental, 
a  menace  not  even  hostile,  but  impersonally  deadly.  The  child  of  civili- 
zation, remote  from  birth  from  wild  nature  and  all  her  ways,  is  more 
susceptible  to  her  grandeur  than  is  her  untutored  son  who  has  looked 
at  her  and  lived  close  to  her  from  childhood  up,  on  terms  of  prosaic 
familiarity.  The  latter  scarcely  knows  the  religious  awe  with  which 
the  other  regards  her,  that  awe  which  conditions  all  his  feeling  for 
her,  and  is  present,  a  constant,  solemn  thrill,  in  the  profoundest  depth 
of  his  soul.  Hans  Castorp,  standing  there  in  his  puttees  and  long- 
sleeved  camel's-hair  waistcoat,  on  his  skis  de  luxe,  suddenly  seemed  to 
himself  exceedingly  presumptuous,  to  be  thus  listening  to  the  primeval 
hush,  the  deathlike  silence  of  these  wintry  fastnesses.  He  felt  his  breast 
lightened  when,  on  his  way  home,  the  first  chalets,  the  first  abodes  of 
human  beings,  loomed  visible  through  the  fog.  Only  then  did  he 
become  aware  that  he  had  been  for  hours  possessed  by  a  secret  awe 
and  terror.  On  the  island  of  Sylt  he  had  stood  by  the  edge  of  the  thun- 
dering surf.  In  his  white  flannels,  elegant,  self-assured,  but  most 
respectful,  he  had  stood  there  as  one  stands  before  a  lion's  cage  and 
looks  deep  into  the  yawning  maw  of  the  beast,  lined  with  murderous 
fangs.  He  had  bathed  in  the  surf,  and  heeded  the  blast  of  the  coast- 
guard's horn,  warning  all  and  sundry  not  to  venture  rashly  beyond 
the  first  line  of  billows,  not  to  approach  too  nearly  the  oncoming  tem- 
pest— the  very  last  impulse  of  whose  cataract,  indeed,  struck  upon  him 


I 


THOMAS  MANN  91 

like  a  blow  from  a  lion's  paw.  From  that  experience  our  young  man 
had  learned  the  fearful  pleasure  of  toying  with  forces  so  great  that  to 
approach  them  nearly  is  destruction.  What  he  had  not  then  felt  was 
the  temptation  to  come  closer,  to  carry  the  thrilling  contact  with  these 
deadly  natural  forces  up  to  a  point  where  the  full  embrace  was  immi- 
nent. Weak  human  being  that  he  was — though  tolerably  well  equipped 
with  the  weapons  of  civilization — what  he  at  this  moment  knew  was 
the  fascination  of  venturing  just  so  far  into  the  monstrous  unknown, 
or  at  least  abstaining  just  so  long  from  flight  before  it,  that  the  adven- 
ture grazed  the  perilous,  that  it  was  just  barely  possible  to  put  limits 
to  it,  before  it  became  no  longer  a  matter  of  toying  with  the  foam  and 
playfully  dodging  the  ruthless  paw — but  the  ultimate  adventure,  the 
billow,  the  lion's  maw,  and  the  sea. 

In  a  word,  Hans  Castorp  was  valorous  up  here — if  by  valor  we  mean 
not  mere  dull  matter-of-factness  in  the  face  of  nature,  but  conscious 
submission  to  her,  the  fear  of  death  cast  out  by  irresistible  oneness. 
Yes,  in  his  narrow,  hypercivilized  breast,  Hans  Castorp  cherished  a 
feeling  of  kinship  with  the  elements,  connected  with  the  new  sense  of 
superiority  he  had  lately  felt  at  sight  of  the  silly  people  on  their  little 
sleds;  it  had  made  him  feel  that  a  pro  founder,  more  spacious,  less 
luxuriant  solitude  than  that  afforded  by  his  balcony  chair  would  be 
beyond  all  price.  He  had  sat  there  and  looked  abroad,  at  those  mist- 
wreathed  summits,  at  the  carnival  of  snow,  and  blushed  to  be  gaping 
thus  from  the  breastwork  of  material  well-being.  This  motive,  and  no 
momentary  fad — no,  nor  yet  any  native  love  of  bodily  exertion — was 
what  impelled  him  to  learn  the  use  of  skis.  If  it  was  uncanny  up 
there  in  the  magnificence  of  the  mountains,  in  the  deathly  silence  of 
the  snows — and  uncanny  it  assuredly  was,  to  our  son  of  civilization — 
this  was  equally  true,  that  in  these  months  and  years  he  had  already 
drunk  deep  of  the  uncanny,  in  spirit  and  in  sense.  Even  a  colloquy 
with  Naphta  and  Settembrini  was  not  precisely  the  canniest  thing  in 
the  world,  it  too  led  one  on  into  uncharted  and  perilous  regions.  So 
if  we  can  speak  of  Hans  Castorp's  feeling  of  kinship  with  the  wild 
powers  of  the  winter  heights,  it  is  in  this  sense,  that  despite  his  pious 
awe  he  felt  these  scenes  to  be  a  fitting  theatre  for  the  issue  of  his 
involved  thoughts,  a  fitting  stage  for  one  to  make  who,  scarcely  know- 


92  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

ing  how,  found  it  had  devolved  upon  him  to  take  stock  of  himself, 
in  reference  to  the  rank  and  status  of  the  Homo  Dei. 

No  one  was  here  to  blow  a  warning  to  the  rash  one — unless,  indeed, 
Herr  Settembrini,  with  his  farewell  shout  at  Hans  Castorp's  disap- 
pearing back,  had  been  that  man.  But  possessed  by  valorous  desire, 
our  youth  had  given  the  call  no  heed — as  little  as  he  had  the  steps 
behind  him  on  a.  certain  carnival  night.  "Eh,  Ingegnere,  tin  po'  di 
ragione,  sal"  "Yes,  yes,  pedagogic  Satana,  with  your  ragione  and  your 
ribellione,"  he  thought.  "But  I'm  rather  fond  of  you.  You  are  a  wind- 
bag and  a  hand-organ  man,  to  be  sure.  But  you  mean  well,  you  mean 
much  better,  and  more  to  my  mind,  than  that  knife-edged  little  Jesuit 
and  Terrorist,  apologist  of  the  Inquisition  and  the  knout,  with  his 
round  eye-glasses — though  he  is  nearly  always  right  when  you  and 
he  come  to  grips  over  my  paltry  soul,  like  God  and  the  Devil  in  the 
mediaeval  legends." 

He  struggled,  one  day,  powdered  in  snow  to  the  waist,  up  a  succes- 
sion of  snow-shrouded  terraces,  up  and  up,  he  knew  not  whither. 
No  whither,  perhaps;  these  upper  regions  blended  with  a  sky  no  less 
misty-white  than  they,  and  where  the  two  came  together,  it  was  hard 
to  tell.  No  summit,  no  ridge  was  visible,  it  was  a  haze  and  a  nothing, 
toward  which  Hans  Castorp  strove;  while  behind  him  the  world,  the 
inhabited  valley,  fell  away  swiftly  from  view,  and  no  sound  mounted 
to  his  ears.  In  a  twinkling  he  was  as  solitary,  he  was  as  lost,  as  heart 
could  wish,  his  loneliness  was  profound  enough  to  awake  the  fear 
which  is  the  first  stage  of  valour.  "Prceterit  figitra  hnius  mundi,"  he 
said  to  himself,  quoting  Naphta,  in  a  Latin  hardly  humanistic  in  spirit. 
He  stopped  and  looked  about.  On  all  sides  there  was  nothing  to  see, 
beyond  small  single  flakes  of  snow,  which  came  out  of  a  white  sky 
and  sank  to  rest  on  the  white  earth.  The  silence  about  him  refused  to 
say  aught  to  his  spirit.  His  gaze  was  lost  in  the  blind  white  void,  he 
felt  his  heart  pulse  from  the  effort  of  the  climb — that  muscular  organ 
whose  animal-like  shape  and  contracting  motion  he  had  watched, 
with  a  feeling  of  sacrilege,  in  the  x-ray  laboratory.  A  naive  reverence 
filled  him  for  that  organ  of  his,  for  the  pulsating  human  heart,  up 
here  alone  in  the  icy  void,  alone  with  its  question  and  its  riddle. 

On  he  pressed;   higher  and  higher  toward  the  sky.  Walking,  he 


THOMAS  MANN  93 

thrust  the  end  of  his  stick  in  the  snow  and  watched  the  blue  light 
follow  it  out  of  the  hole  it  made.  That  he  liked;  and  stood  for  long 
at  a  time  to  test  the  little  optical  phenomenon.  It  was  a  strange,  a 
subtle  colour,  this  greenish-blue;  colour  of  the  heights  and  deeps, 
ice-clear,  yet  holding  shadow  in  its  depths,  mysteriously  exquisite.  It 
reminded  him  of  the  colour  of  certain  eyes,  whose  shape  and  glance 
had  spelled  his  destiny;  eyes  to  which  Herr  Settembrini,  from  his 
humanistic  height,  had  referred  with  contempt  as  "Tartar  slits"  and 
"wolf's  eyes" — eyes  seen  long  ago  and  then  found  again,  the  eyes  of 
Pribislav  Hippe  and  Clavdia  Chauchat.  "With  pleasure,"  he  said 
aloud,  in  the  profound  stillness.  "But  don't  break  it — c'est  a  visser, 
tu  sais."  And  his  spirit  heard  behind  him  words  of  warning  in  a  mel- 
lifluous tongue. 

A  wood  loomed,  misty,  far  off  to  the  right.  He  turned  that  way,  to 
the  end  of  having  some  goal  before  his  eyes,  instead  of  sheer  white 
transcendence;  and  made  toward  it  with  a  dash,  not  remarking  an 
intervening  depression  of  the  ground.  He  could  not  have  seen  it,  in 
fact;  everything  swam  before  his  eyes  in  the  white  mist,  obliterating 
all  contours.  When  he  perceived  it,  he  gave  himself  to  the  decline, 
unable  to  measure  its  steepness  with  his  eye. 

The  grove  that  had  attracted  him  lay  the  other  side  of  the  gully 
into  which  he  had  unintentionally  steered.  The  trough,  covered  with 
fluffy  snow,  fell  away  on  the  side  next  the  mountains,  as  he  observed 
when  he  pursued  it  a  little  distance.  It  went  downhill,  the  steep  sides 
grew  higher,  this  fold  of  the  earth's  surface  seemed  like  a  narrow 
passage  leading  into  the  mountain.  Then  the  points  of  his  skis  turned 
up  again,  there  began  an  incline,  soon  there  were  no  more  side  walls; 
Hans  Castorp's  trackless  course  ran  once  more  uphill  along  the 
mountain-side. 

He  saw  the  pine  grove  behind  and  below  him,  on  his  right,  turned 
again  toward  it,  and  with  a  quick  descent  reached  the  laden  trees; 
they  stood  in  a  wedge-shaped  group,  a  vanguard  thrust  out  from  the 
mist-screened  forests  above.  He  rested  beneath  their  boughs,  and 
smoked  a  cigarette.  The  unnatural  stillness,  the  monstrous  solitude, 
still  oppressed  his  spirit;  yet  he  felt  proud  to  have  conquered  them, 


94  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

brave  in  the  pride  of  having  measured  to  the  height  of  surroundings 
such  as  these. 

It  was  three  in  the  afternoon.  He  had  set  out  soon  after  luncheon, 
with  the  idea  of  cutting  part  of  the  long  rest-cure,  and  tea  as  well,  in 
order  to  be  back  before  dark.  He  had  brought  some  chocolate  in  his 
breeches  pocket,  and  a  small  flask  of  wine;  and  told  himself  exultantly 
that  he  had  still  several  hours  to  revel  in  all  this  grandeur. 

The  position  of  the  sun  was  hard  to  recognize,  veiled  as  it  was  in 
haze.  Behind  him,  at  the  mouth  of  the  valley,  above  that  part  of  the 
mountains  that  was  shut  oft  from  view,  the  clouds  and  mist  seemed 
to  thicken  and  move  forward.  They  looked  like  snow— more  snow- 
as  though  there  were  pressing  demand  for  it!  Like  a  good  hard  storm. 
Indeed,  the  little  soundless  flakes  were  coming  down  more  quickly  as 
he  stood. 

Hans  Castorp  put  out  his  arm  and  let  some  of  them  come  to  rest 
on  his  sleeve;  he  viewed  them  with  the  knowing  eye  of  the  nature- 
lover.  They  looked  mere  shapeless  morsels;  but  he  had  more  than 
once  had  their  like  under  his  good  lens,  and  was  aware  of  the  exquisite 
precision  of  form  displayed  by  these  little  jewels,  insignia,  orders, 
agraffes— no  jeweller,  however  skilled,  could  do  finer,  more  minute 
work.  Yes,  he  thought,  here  was  a  difference,  after  all,  between  this 
light,  soft,  white  powder  he  trod  with  his  skis,  that  weighed  down  the 
trees,  and  covered  the  open  spaces,  a  difference  between  it  and  the 
sand  on  the  beaches  at  home,  to  which  he  had  likened  it.  For  this 
powder  was  not  made  of  tiny  grains  of  stone;  but  of  myriads  of  tiniest 
drops  of  water,  which  in  freezing  had  darted  together  in  symmetrical 
variation— parts,  then,  of  the  same  anorganic  substance  which  was  the 
source  of  protoplasm,  of  plant  life,  of  the  human  body.  And  among 
these  myriads  of  enchanting  little  stars,  in  their  hidden  splendour  that 
was  too  small  for  man's  naked  eye  to  see,  there  was  not  one  like  unto 
another;  an  endless  inventiveness  governed  the  development  and 
unthinkable  differentiation  of  one  and  the  same  basic  scheme,  the 
equilateral,  equiangled  hexagon.  Yet  each,  in  itself— this  was  the 
uncanny,  the  anti-organic,  the  life-denying  character  of  them  all— each 
of  them  was  absolutely  symmetrical,  icily  regular  in  form.  They  were 
too  regular,  as  substance  adapted  to  life  never  was  to  this  degree— 


THOMAS  MANN  95 

the  living  principle  shuddered  at  this  perfect  precision,  found  it 
deathly,  the  very  marrow  of  death — Hans  Castorp  felt  he  understood 
now  the  reason  why  the  builders  of  antiquity  purposely  and  secretly 
introduced  minute  variation  from  absolute  symmetry  in  their  columnar 
structures. 

He  pushed  off  again,  shuffling  through  the  deep  snow  on  his  flexible 
runners,  along  the  edge  of  the  wood,  down  the  slope,  up  again,  at 
random,  to  his  heart's  content,  about  and  into  this  lifeless  land.  Its 
empty,  rolling  spaces,  its  dried  vegetation  of  single  dwarf  firs  sticking 
up  through  the  snow,  bore  a  striking  resemblance  to  a  scene  on  the 
dunes.  Hans  Castorp  nodded  as  he  stood  and  fixed  the  likeness  in 
his  mind.  Even  his  burning  face,  his  trembling  limbs,  the  peculiar  and 
half-intoxicated  mingled  sensations  of  excitement  and  fatigue  were 
pleasurable,  reminding  him  as  they  did  of  that  familiar  feeling  induced 
by  the  sea  air,  which  could  sting  one  like  whips,  and  yet  was  so  laden 
with  sleepy  essences.  He  rejoiced  in  his  freedom  of  motion,  his  feet 
were  like  wings.  He  was  bound  to  no  path,  none  lay  behind  him  to 
take  him  back  whence  he  had  come.  At  first  there  had  been  posts, 
staves  set  up  as  guides  through  the  snow — but  he  had  soon  cut  free 
from  their  tutelage,  which  recalled  the  coastguard  with  his  horn,  and 
seemed  inconsistent  with  the  attitude  he  had  taken  up  toward  the 
wild. 

He  pressed  on,  turning  right  and  left  among  rocky,  snow-clad  eleva- 
tions, and  came  behind  them  on  an  incline,  then  a  level  spot,  then  on 
the  mountains  themselves — how  alluring  and  accessible  seemed  their 
softly  covered  gorges  and  defiles!  His  blood  leaped  at  the  strong  allure- 
ment of  the  distance  and  the  height,  the  ever  profounder  solitude.  At 
risk  of  a  late  return  he  pressed  on,  deeper  into  the  wild  silence,  the^ 
monstrous  and  the  menacing,  despite  that  gathering  darkness  was 
sinking  down  over  the  region  like  a  veil,  and  heightening  his  inner 
apprehension  until  it  presently  passed  into  actual  fear.  It  was  this  fear 
which  first  made  him  conscious  that  he  had  deliberately  set  out  to 
lose  his  way  and  the  direction  in  which  valley  and  settlement  lay — 
and  had  been  as  successful  as  heart  could  wish.  Yet  he  knew  that  if 
he  were  to  turn  in  his  tracks  and  go  downhill,  he  would  reach  the 
valley  bottom — even  if  at  some  distance  from  the  Berghof — and  that 


96  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

sooner  than  he  had  planned.  He  would  come  home  too  early,  not 
have  made  full  use  of  his  time.  On  the  other  hand,  if  he  were  over- 
taken unawares  by  the  storm,  he  would  probably  in  any  case  not  find 
his  way  home.  But  however  genuine  his  fear  of  the  elements,  he 
refused  to  take  premature  flight;  his  being  scarcely  the  sportsman's 
attitude,  who  only  meddles  with  the  elements  so  long  as  he  knows 
himself  their  master,  takes  all  precautions,  and  prudently  yields  when 
he  must— whereas  what  went  on  in  Hans  Castorp's  soul  can  only  be 
described  by  the  one  word  challenge.  It  was  perhaps  a  blameworthy, 
presumptuous  attitude,  even  united  to  such  genuine  awe.  Yet  this  much 
is  clear,  to  any  human  understanding:  that  when  a  young  man  has 
lived  years  long  in  the  way  this  one  had,  something  may  gather— may 
accumulate,  as  our  engineer  might  put  it— in  the  depths  of  his  soul, 
until  one  day  it  suddenly  discharges  itself,  with  a  primitive  exclama- 
tion of  disgust,  a  mental  "Oh,  go  to  the  devil!"  a  repudiation  of  all 
caution  whatsoever,  in  short  with  a  challenge.  So  on  he  went,  in  his 
seven-league  slippers,  glided  down  this  slope  too  and  pressed  up  the 
incline  beyond,  where  stood  a  wooden  hut  that  might  be  a  hayrick 
or  shepherd's  shelter,  its  roof  weighted  with  flat  stones.  On  past  this 
to  the  nearest  mountain  ridge,  bristling  with  forest,  behind  whose 
back  the  giant  peaks  towered  upward  in  the  mist.  The  wall  before 
him,  studded  with  single  groups  of  trees,  was  steep,  but  looked  as 
though  one  might  wind  to  the  right  and  get  round  it  by  climbing  a 
little  way  up  the  slope.  Once  on  the  other  side,  he  could  see  what  lay 
beyond.  Accordingly  Hans  Castorp  set  out  on  this  tour  of  investiga- 
tion, which  began  by  descending  from  the  meadow  with  the  hut  into 
another  and  rather  deep  gully  that  dropped  off  from  right  to  left. 

He  had  just  begun  to  mount  again  when  the  expected  happened, 
*and  the  storm  burst,  the  storm  that  had  threatened  so  long.  Or  may 
one  say  "threatened"  of  the  action  of  blind,  nonscntient  forces,  which 
have  no  purpose  to  destroy  us— that  would  be  comforting  by  compari- 
son—but are  merely  horribly  indifferent  to  our  fate  should  we  become 
involved  with  them?  "Hullo!"  Hans  Castorp  thought,  and  stood  still, 
as  the  first  blast  whirled  through  the  densely  falling  snow  and  caught 
him.  "That's  a  gentle  zephyr— tells  you  what's  coming."  And  truly 
this  wind  was  savage.  The  air  was  in  reality  frightfully  cold,  probably 


THOMAS  MANN  97 

some  degrees  below  zero;  but  so  long  as  it  remained  dry  and  still  one 
almost  found  it  balmy.  It  was  when  a  wind  came  up  that  the  cold 
began  to  cut  into  the  flesh;  and  in  a  wind  like  the  one  that  blew  now, 
of  which  that  first  gust  had  been  a  forerunner,  the  furs  were  not 
bought  that  could  protect  the  limbs  from  its  icy  rigours.  And  Hans 
Castorp  wore  no  fur,  only  a  woollen  waistcoat,  which  he  had  found 
quite  enough,  or  even,  with  the  faintest  gleam  of  sunshine,  a  burden. 
But  the  wind  was  at  his  back,  a  little  sidewise;  there  was  small  induce- 
ment to  turn  and  receive  it  in  the  face;  so  the  mad  youth,  letting  that 
fact  reinforce  the  fundamental  challenge  of  his  attitude,  pressed  on 
among  the  single  tree-trunks,  and  tried  to  outflank  the  mountain  he 
had  attacked. 

It  was  no  joke.  There  was  almost  nothing  to  be  seen  for  swimming 
snow-flakes,  that  seemed  without  falling  to  fill  the  air  to  suffocation 
by  their  whirling  dance.  The  icy  gusts  made  his  ears  burn  painfully,  his 
limbs  felt  half  paralysed,  his  hands  were  so  numb  he  hardly  knew  if 
they  held  the  staff.  The  snow  blew  inside  his  collar  and  melted  down 
his  back.  It  drifted  on  his  shoulders  and  right  side;  he  thought  he 
should  freeze  as  he  stood  into  a  snow-man,  with  his  staff  stiff  in  his 
hands.  And  all  this  under  relatively  favouring  circumstances;  for  let 
him  turn  his  face  to  the  storm  and  his  situation  would  be  still  worse. 
Getting  home  would  be  no  easy  task — the  harder,  the  longer  he  put 
it  off. 

At  last  he  stopped,  gave  an  angry  shrug,  and  turned  his  skis  the 
other  way.  Then  the  wind  he  faced  took  his  breath  on  the  spot,  so 
that  he  was  forced  to  go  through  the  awkward  process  of  turning 
round  again  to  get  it  back,  and  collect  his  resolution  to  advance  in 
the  teeth  of  his  ruthless  foe.  With  bent  head  and  cautious  breathing 
he  managed  to  get  under  way;  but  even  thus  forewarned,  the  slowne#t 
of  his  progress  and  the  difficulty  of  seeing  and  breathing  dismayed 
him.  Every  few  minutes  he  had  to  stop,  first  to  get  his  breath  in  the 
lee  of  the  wind,  and  then  because  he  saw  next  to  nothing  in  the  blind- 
ing whiteness,  and  moving  as  he  did  with  head  down,  had  to  take 
care  not  to  run  against  trees,  or  be  flung  headlong  by  unevenness  in 
the  ground.  Hosts  of  flakes  flew  into  his  face,  melted  there,  and  he 
anguished  with  the  cold  of  them.  They  flew  into  his  mouth,  and  died 


98  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

away  with  a  weak,  watery  taste;  flew  against  his  eyelids  so  that  he 
winked,  overflowed  his  eyes  and  made  seeing  as  difficult  as  it  was  now 
almost  impossible  for  other  reasons:  namely,  the  dazzling  effect  of  all 
that  whiteness,  and  the  veiling  of  his  field  of  vision,  so  that  his  sense 
of  sight  was  almost  put  out  of  action.  It  was  nothingness,  white, 
whirling  nothingness,  into  which  he  looked  when  he  forced  himself 
to  do  so.  Only  at  intervals  did  ghostly-seeming  forms  from  the  world 
of  reality  loom  up  before  him :  a  stunted  fir,  a  group  of  pines,  even  the 
pale  silhouette  of  the  hay-hut  he  had  lately  passed. 

He  left  it  behind,  and  sought  his  way  back  over  the  slope  on  which 
it  stood.  But  there  was  no  path.  To  keep  direction,  relatively  speaking, 
into  his  own  valley  would  be  a  question  far  more  of  luck  than  man- 
agement; for  while  he  could  see  his  hand  before  his  face,  he  could 
not  see  the  ends  of  his  skis.  And  even  with  better  visibility,  the  host  of 
difficulties  must  have  combined  to  hinder  his  progress:  the  snow  in 
his  face,  his  adversary  the  storm,  which  hampered  his  breathing,  made 
him  fight  both  to  take  a  breath  and  to  exhale  it,  and  constantly  forced 
him  to  turn  his  head  away  to  gasp.  How  could  anyone — either  Hans 
Castorp  or  another  and  much  stronger  than  he — make  head?  He 
stopped,  he  blinked  his  lashes  free  of  water  drops,  knocked  off  the 
snow  that  like  a  coat  of  mail  was  sheathing  his  body  in  front — and  it 
struck  him  that  progress,  under  the  circumstances,  was  more  than 
anyone  could  expect. 

And  yet  Hans  Castorp  did  progress.  That  is  to  say,  he  moved  on. 
But  whether  in  the  right  direction,  whether  it  might  not  have  been 
better  to  stand  still,  remained  to  be  seen.  Theoretically  the  chances 
were  against  it;  and  in  practice  he  soon  began  to  suspect  something 
was  wrong.  This  was  not  familiar  ground  beneath  his  feet,  not  the 
easy  slope  he  had  gained  on  mounting  with  such  difficulty  from  the 
ravine,  which  had  of  course  to  be  retraversed.  The  level  distance  was 
too  short,  he  was  already  mounting  again.  It  was  plain  that  the  storm, 
which  came  from  the  south-west,  from  the  mouth  of  the  valley,  had 
with  its  violence  driven  him  from  his  course.  He  had  been  exhausting 
himself,  all  this  time,  with  a  false  start.  Blindly,  enveloped  in  white, 
whirling  night,  he  laboured  deeper  and  deeper  into  this  grim  and 
callous  sphere. 


THOMAS  MANN  99 

"No,  you  don't,"  said  he,  suddenly,  between  his  teeth,  and  halted. 
The  words  were  not  emotional,  yet  he  felt  for  a  second  as  though  his 
heart  had  been  clutched  by  an  icy  hand;  it  winced,  and  then  knocked 
rapidly  against  his  ribs,  as  it  had  the  time  Rhadamanthus  found  the 
moist  cavity.  Pathos  in  the  grand  manner  was  not  in  place,  he  knew, 
in  one  who  had  chosen  defiance  as  his  role,  and  was  indebted  to  him- 
self alone  for  all  his  present  plight.  "Not  bad,"  he  said,  and  discovered 
that  his  facial  muscles  were  not  his  to  command,  that  he  could  not 
express  in  his  face  any  of  his  soul's  emotions,  for  that  it  was  stiff  with 
cold.  "What  next?  Down  this  slope;  follow  your  nose  home,  I  sup- 
pose, and  keep  your  face  to  the  wind — though  that  is  a  good  deal 
easier  said  than  done,"  he  went  on,  panting  with  his  efforts,  yet 
actually  speaking  half  aloud,  as  he  tried  to  move  on  again :  "but  some- 
thing has  to  happen,  I  can't  sit  down  and  wait,  I  should  simply  be 
buried  in  six-sided  crystalline  symmetricality,  and  Settembrini,  when 
he  came  with  his  little  horn  to  find  me,  would  see  me  squatting  here 
with  a  snow-cap  over  one  ear."  He  realized  that  he  was  talking  to 
himself,  and  not  too  sensibly — for  which  he  took  himself  to  task,  and 
then  continued  on  purpose,  though  his  lips  were  so  stiff  he  could  not 
shape  the  labials,  and  so  did  without  them,  as  he  had  on  a  certain 
other  occasion  that  came  to  his  mind.  "Keep  quiet,  and  get  along 
with  you  out  of  here,"  he  admonished  himself,  adding:  "You  seem  to 
be  wool-gathering,  not  quite  right  in  your  head,  and  that  looks  bad 
for  you." 

But  this  he  only  said  with  his  reason — to  some  extent  detached  from 
the  rest  of  him,  though  after  all  nearly  concerned.  As  for  his  natural 
part,  it  felt  only  too  much  inclined  to  yield  to  the  confusion  which 
laid  hold  upon  him  with  his  growing  fatigue.  He  even  remarked  this 
tendency  and  took  thought  to  comment  upon  it.  "Here,"  said  he,  "we 
have  the  typical  reaction  of  a  man  who  loses  himself  in  the  mountains 
in  a  snow-storm  and  never  finds  his  way  home."  He  gasped  out  other 
fragments  of  the  same  thought  as  he  went,  though  he  avoided  giving 
it  more  specific  expression.  "Whoever  hears  about  it  afterwards,  imag- 
ines it  as  horrible;  but  he  forgets  that  disease — and  the  state  I  am  in 
is,  in  a  way  of  speaking,  disease — so  adjusts  its  man  that  it  and  he 
can  come  to  terms;  there  are  sensory  appeasements,  short  circuits,  a 


100  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

merciful  narcosis — yes,  oh  yes,  yes.  But  one  must  fight  against  them, 
after  all,  for  they  are  two-faced,  they  are  in  the  highest  degree  equiv- 
ocal, everything  depends  upon  the  point  of  view.  If  you  are  not  meant 
to  get  home,  they  are  a  benefaction,  they  are  merciful;  but  if  you  mean 
to  get  home,  they  become  sinister.  I  believe  I  still  do.  Certainly  I  don't 
intend — in  this  heart  of  mine  so  stormily  beating  it  doesn't  appeal  to 
me  in  the  least — to  let  myself  be  snowed  under  by  this  idiotically 
symmetrical  crystallometry." 

In  truth,  he  was  already  affected,  and  his  struggle  against  oncoming 
sensory  confusion  was  feverish  and  abnormal.  He  should  have  been 
more  alarmed  on  discovering  that  he  had  already  declined  from  the 
level  course — this  time  apparently  on  the  other  slope.  For  he  had 
pushed  off  with  the  wind  coming  slantwise  at  him,  which  was  ill- 
advised,  though  more  convenient  for  the  moment.  "Never  mind,"  he 
thought,  "I'll  get  my  direction  again  down  below."  Which  he  did,  or 
thought  he  did — or,  truth  to  tell,  scarcely  even  thought  so;  worst  of  all, 
began  to  be  indifferent  whether  he  had  done  or  no.  Such  was  the 
effect  of  an  insidious  double  attack,  which  he  but  weakly  combated. 
Fatigue  and  excitement  combined  were  a  familiar  state  to  our  young 
man — whose  acclimatization,  as  we  know,  still  consisted  in  getting 
used  to  not  getting  used;  and  both  fatigue  and  excitement  were  now 
present  in  such  strength  as  to  make  impossible  any  thought  of  assert- 
ing his  reason  against  them.  He  felt  as  often  after  a  colloquy  with 
Settembrini  and  Naphta,  only  to  a  far  greater  degree:  dazed  and 
tipsy,  giddy,  a-tremble  with  excitement.  This  was  probably  why  he 
began  to  colour  his  lack  of  resistance  to  the  stealing  narcosis  with 
half-maudlin  references  to  the  latest-aired  complex  of  theories.  Despite 
his  scornful  repudiation  of  the  idea  that  he  might  lie  down  and  be 
covered  up  with  hexagonal  symmetrically,  something  within  him 
maundered  on,  sense  or  no  sense:  told  him  that  the  feeling  of  duty 
which  bade  him  fight  against  insidious  sensory  appeasements  was  a 
purely  ethical  reaction,  representing  the  sordid  bourgeois  view  of  life, 
irreligion,  Philistinism;  while  the  desire,  nay,  craving,  to  lie  down  and 
rest,  whispered  him  in  the  guise  of  a  comparison  between  this  storm 
and  a  sand-storm  on  the  desert,  before  which  the  Arab  flings  himself 
down  and  draws  his  burnous  over  his  head.  Only  his  lack  of  a  bur- 


THOMAS   MANN  101 

nous,  the  unfeasibility  of  drawing  his  woollen  waistcoat  over  his  head, 
prevented  him  from  following  suit — this  although  he  was  no  longer 
a  child,  and  pretty  well  aware  of  the  conditions  under  which  a  man 
freezes  to  death. 

There  had  been  a  rather  steep  declivity,  then  level  ground,  then 
again  an  ascent,  a  stiff  one.  This  was  not  necessarily  wrong;  one  must 
of  course,  on  the  way  to  the  valley,  traverse  rising  ground  at  times. 
The  wind  had  turned  capriciously  round,  for  it  was  now  at  Hans 
Castorp's  back,  and  that,  taken  by  itself,  was  a  blessing.  Owing,  per- 
haps, to  the  storm,  or  the  soft  whiteness  of  the  incline  before  him, 
dim  in  the  whirling  air,  drawing  him  toward  it,  he  bent  as  he  walked. 
Only  a  little  further — supposing  one  were  to  give  way  to  the  tempta- 
tion, and  his  temptation  was  great;  it  was  so  strong  that  it  quite  lived 
up  to  the  many  descriptions  he  had  read  of  the  "typical  danger-state." 
It  asserted  itself,  it  refused  to  be  classified  with  the  general  order  of 
things,  it  insisted  on  being  an  exception,  its  very  exigence  challenged 
comparison — yet  at  the  same  time  it  never  disguised  its  origin  or  aura, 
never  denied  that  it  was,  so  to  speak,  garbed  in  Spanish  black,  with 
snow-white,  fluted  ruff,  and  stood  for  ideas  and  fundamental  concep- 
tions that  were  characteristically  gloomy,  strongly  Jesuitical  and  anti- 
human,  for  the  rack-and-knout  discipline  which  was  the  particular 
horror  of  Herr  Settembrini,  though  he  never  opposed  it  without  mak- 
ing himself  ridiculous,  like  a  hand-organ  man  for  ever  grinding  out 
"ragione"  to  the  same  old  tune. 

And  yet  Hans  Castorp  did  hold  himself  upright  and  resist  his 
craving  to  lie  down.  He  could  see  nothing,  but  he  struggled,  he  came 
forward.  Whether  to  the  purpose  or  not,  he  could  not  tell;  but  he  did 
his  part,  and  moved  on  despite  the  weight  the  cold  more  and  more 
laid  upon  his  limbs.  The  present  slope  was  too  steep  to  ascend  directly, 
so  he  slanted  a  little,  and  went  on  thus  awhile  without  much  heed 
whither.  Even  to  lift  his  stiffened  lids  to  peer  before  him  was  so  great 
and  so  nearly  useless  an  effort  as  to  offer  him  small  incentive.  He 
merely  caught  glimpses:  here  clumps  of  pines  that  merged  together; 
there  a  ditch  or  stream,  a  black  line  marked  out  between  overhanging 
banks  of  snow.  Now,  for  a  change,  he  was  going  downhill,  with  the 
wind  in  his  face,  when,  at  some  distance  before  him,  and  seeming  to 


102  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

hang  in  the  driving  wind  and  mist,  he  saw  the  faint  outline  of  a  human 
habitation. 

Ah,  sweet  and  blessed  sight!  Verily  he  had  done  well,  to  march 
stoutly  on  despite  all  obstacles,  until  now  human  dwellings  appeared, 
in  sign  that  the  inhabited  valley  was  at  hand.  Perhaps  there  were  even 
human  beings,  perhaps  he  might  enter  and  abide  the  end  of  the  storm 
under  shelter,  then  get  directions,  or  a  guide  if  the  dark  should  have 
fallen.  He  held  toward  this  chimerical  goal,  that  often  quite  vanished 
in  mist,  and  took  an  exhausting  climb  against  the  wind  before  it  was 
reached;  finally  drew  near  it — to  discover,  with  what  staggering  aston- 
ishment and  horror  may  be  imagined,  that  it  was  only  the  hay-hut 
with  the  weighted  roof,  to  which,  after  all  his  striving,  by  all  his  devi- 
ous paths,  he  had  come  back. 

That  was  the  very  devil.  Hans  Castorp  gave  vent  to  several  heart- 
felt curses — of  which  his  lips  were  too  stiff  to  pronounce  the  labials. 
He  examined  the  hut,  to  get  his  bearings,  and  came  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  he  had  approached  it  from  the  same  direction  as  before — 
namely,  from  the  rear;  and  therefore,  what  he  had  accomplished  for 
the  past  hour — as  he  reckoned  it — had  been  sheer  waste  of  time  and 
effort.  But  there  it  was,  just  as  the  books  said.  You  went  in  a  circle, 
gave  yourself  endless  trouble  under  the  delusion  that  you  were  accom- 
plishing something,  and  all  the  time  you  were  simply  describing  some 
great  silly  arc  that  would  turn  back  to  where  it  had  its  beginning, 
like  the  riddling  year  itself.  You  wandered  about,  without  getting 
home.  Hans  Castorp  recognized  the  traditional  phenomenon  with  a 
certain  grim  satisfaction — and  even  slapped  his  thigh  in  astonishment 
at  this  punctual  general  law  fulfilling  itself  in  his  particular  case. 

The  lonely  hut  was  barred,  the  door  locked  fast,  no  entrance  pos- 
sible. But  Hans  Castorp  decided  to  stop  for  the  present.  The  projecting 
roof  gave  the  illusion  of  shelter,  and  the  hut  itself,  on  the  side  turned 
toward  the  mountains,  afforded,  he  found,  some  little  protection 
against  the  storm.  He  leaned  his  shoulder  against  the  rough-hewn 
timber,  since  his  long  skis  prevented  him  from  leaning  his  back.  And 
so  he  stood,  obliquely  to  the  wall,  having  thrust  his  staff  in  the  snow; 
hands  in  pockets,  his  collar  turned  up  as  high  as  it  would  go,  bracing 
himself  on  his  outside  leg,  and  leaning  his  dizzy  head  against  the 


THOMAS  MANN  103 

wood,  his  eyes  closed,  but  opening  them  every  now  and  then  to  look 
down  his  shoulder  and  across  the  gully  to  where  the  high  mountain 
wall  palely  appeared  and  disappeared  in  mist. 

His  situation  was  comparatively  comfortable.  "I  can  stick  it  like 
this  all  night,  if  I  have  to,"  he  thought,  "if  I  change  legs  from  time 
to  time,  lie  on  the  other  side,  so  to  speak,  and  move  about  a  bit 
between  whiles,  as  of  course  I  must.  I'm  rather  stiff,  naturally,  but  the 
effort  I  made  has  accumulated  some  inner  warmth,  so  after  all  it  was 
not  quite  in  vain,  that  I  have  come  round  all  this  way.  Come  round — 
not  coming  round — that's  the  regular  expression  they  use,  of  people 
drowned  or  frozen  to  death. — I  suppose  I  used  it  because  I  am  not 
quite  so  clear  in  the  head  as  I  might  be.  But  it  is  a  good  thing  I  can 
stick  it  out  here;  for  this  frantic  nuisance  of  a  snow-storm  can  carry 
on  until  morning  without  a  qualm,  and  if  it  only  keeps  up  until  dark 
it  will  be  quite  bad  enough,  for  in  the  dark  the  danger  of  going 
round  and  round  and  not  coming  round  is  as  great  as  in  a  storm.  It 
must  be  toward  evening  already,  about  six  o'clock,  I  should  say,  after 
all  the  time  I  wasted  on  my  circular  tour.  Let's  see,  how  late  is  it?'* 
He  felt  for  his  watch;  his  numbed  fingers  could  scarcely  find  and 
draw  it  from  his  pocket.  Here  it  was,  his  gold  hunting-watch,  with 
his  monogram  on  the  lid,  ticking  faithfully  away  in  this  lonely  waste, 
like  Hans  Castorp's  own  heart,  that  touching  human  heart  that  beat 
in  the  organic  warmth  of  his  interior  man. 

It  was  half  past  four.  But  deuce  take  it,  it  had  been  nearly  so  much 
before  the  storm  burst.  Was  it  possible  his  whole  bewildered  circuit 
had  lasted  scarcely  a  quarter  of  an  hour  ?  "  'Coming  round'  makes 
time  seen  long,"  he  noted.  "And  when  you  don't  'come  round'— does 
it  seem  longer?  But  the  fact  remains  that  at  five  or  half  past  it  will 
be  regularly  dark.  Will  the  storm  hold  up  in  time  to  keep  me  from 
running  in  circles  again?  Suppose  I  take  a  sip  of  port — it  might 
strengthen  me." 

He  had  brought  with  him  a  bottle  of  that  amateurish  drink,  simply 
because  it  was  always  kept  ready  in  flat  bottles  at  the  Berghof,  for 
excursions — though  not,  of  course,  excursions  like  this  unlawful  esca- 
pade. It  was  not  meant  for  people  who  went  out  in  the  snow  and  got 
lost  and  night-bound  in   the   mountains.   Had  his   senses  been   less 


104  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

befogged,  he  must  have  said  to  himself  that  if  he  were  bent  on  getting 
home,  it  was  almost  the  worst  thing  he  could  have  done.  He  did  say 
so,  after  he  had  drunk  several  swallows,  for  they  took  efTect  at  once, 
and  it  was  an  efTect  much  like  that  of  the  Kulmbacher  beer  on  the 
evening  of  his  arrival  at  the  Berghof,  when  he  had  angered  Settem- 
brini  by  his  ungoverned  prattle  anent  fish-sauces  and  the  like — Herr 
Ludovico,  the  pedagogue,  the  same  who  held  madmen  to  their  senses 
when  they  would  give  themselves  rein.  Hans  Castorp  heard  through 
thin  air  the  mellifluous  sound  of  his  horn;  the  orator  and  schoolmaster 
was  nearing  by  forced  marches,  to  rescue  his  troublesome  nursling, 
life's  delicate  child,  from  his  present  desperate  pass  and  lead  him 
home. — All  which  was  of  course  sheer  rubbish,  due  to  the  Kulmbacher 
he  had  so  foolishly  drunk.  For  of  course  Herr  Settembrini  had  no 
horn,  how  could  he  have?  He  had  a  hand-organ,  propped  by  a  sort 
of  wooden  leg  against  the  pavement,  and  as  he  played  a  sprightly  air, 
he  flung  his  humanistic  eyes  up  to  the  people  in  the  houses.  And 
furthermore  he  knew  nothing  whatever  of  what  had  happened,  as  he 
no  longer  lived  in  House  Berghof,  but  with  Lukacek  the  tailor,  in  his 
little  attic  room  with  the  water-bottle,  above  Naphta's  silken  cell. 
Moreover,  he  would  have  nor  right  nor  reason  to  interfere — no  more 
than  upon  that  carnival  night  on  which  Hans  Castorp  had  found  him- 
self in  a  position  quite  as  mad  and  bad  as  this  one,  when  he  gave  the 
ailing  Clavdia  Chauchat  back  son  crayon — his,  Pribislav  Hippe's,  pencil. 
What  position  was  that  ?  What  position  could  it  be  but  the  horizontal, 
literally  and  not  metaphorically  the  position  of  all  long-termers  up 
here?  Was  he  himself  not  used  to  lie  long  hours  out  of  doors,  in  snow 
and  frost,  by  night  as  well  as  day?  And  he  was  making  ready  to 
sink  down  when  the  idea  seized  him,  took  him  as  it  were  by  the  collar 
and  fetched  him  up  standing,  that  all  this  nonsense  he  was  uttering 
was  still  inspired  by  the  Kulmbacher  beer  and  the  impersonal,  quite 
typical  and  traditional  longing  to  lie  down  and  sleep,  of  which  he 
had  always  heard,  and  which  would  by  quibbling  and  sophistry  now 
betray  him. 

"That  was  the  wrong  way  to  go  to  work,"  he  acknowledged  to 
himself.  "The  port  was  not  at  all  the  right  thing;  just  the  few  sips 
of  it  have  made  my  head  so  heavy  I  cannot  hold  it  up,  and  my  thoughts 


THOMAS  MANN  105 

are  all  just  confused,  stupid  quibbling  with  words.  I  can't  depend  on 
them — not  only  the  first  thought  that  comes  into  my  head,  but  even 
the  second  one,  the  correction  which  my  reason  tries  to  make  upon 
the  first — more's  the  pity.  'Son  crayon!'  That  means  her  pencil,  not 
his  pencil,  in  this  case;  you  only  say  son  because  crayon  is  masculine. 
The  rest  is  just  a  pretty  feeble  play  on  words.  Imagine  stopping  to 
talk  about  that  when  there  is  a  much  more  important  fact;  namely, 
that  my  left  leg,  which  I  am  using  as  a  support,  reminds  me  of  the 
wooden  leg  on  Settembrini's  hand-organ,  that  he  keeps  jolting  over 
the  pavement,  with  his  knee,  to  get  up  close  to  the  win  do  w  and  hold 
out  his  velvet  hat  for  the  girl  up  there  to  throw  something  into.  And 
at  the  same  time,  I  seem  to  be  pulled,  as  though  with  hands,  to  lie 
down  in  the  snow.  The  only  thing  to  do  is  to  move  about.  I  must 
pay  for  the  Kulmbacher,  and  limber  up  my  wooden  leg." 

He  pushed  himself  away  from  the  wall  with  his  shoulder.  But  one 
single  pace  forward,  and  the  wind  sliced  at  him  like  a  scythe,  and 
drove  him  back  to  the  shelter  of  the  wall.  It  was  unquestionably  the 
position  indicated  for  the  time;  he  might  change  it  by  turning  his 
left  shoulder  to  the  wall  and  propping  himself  on  the  right  leg,  with 
sundry  shakings  of  the  left,  to  restore  the  circulation  as  much  as  might 
be.  "Who  leaves  the  house  in  weather  like  this?"  he  said.  "Moderate 
activity  is  all  right;  but  not  too  much  craving  for  adventure,  no  coying 
with  the  bride  of  the  storm.  Quiet,  quiet — if  the  head  be  heavy,  let 
it  droop.  The  wall  is  good,  a  certain  warmth  seems  to  come  from  the 
logs — probably  the  feeling  is  entirely  subjective. — Ah,  the  trees,  the 
trees!  Oh,  living  climate  of  the  living — how  sweet  it  smells!" 

It  was  a  park.  It  lay  beneath  the  terrace  on  which  he  seemed  to 
stand — a  spreading  park  of  luxuriant  green  shade-trees,  elms,  planes, 
beeches,  oaks,  birches,  all  in  the  dappled  light  and  shade  of  their 
fresh,  full,  shimmering  foliage,  and  gently  rustling  tips.  They  breathed 
a  deliciously  moist,  balsamic  breath  into  the  air.  A  warm  shower 
passed  over  them,  but  the  rain  was  sunlit.  One  could  see  high  up  in 
the  sky  the  whole  air  filled  with  the  bright  ripple  of  raindrops.  How 
lovely  it  was!  Oh,  breath  of  the  homeland,  oh,  fragrance  and  abun- 
dance of  the  plain,  so  long  foregone!  The  air  was  full  of  bird  song — 
dainty,  sweet,  blithe  fluting,  piping,  twittering,  cooing,  trilling,  war- 


106  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

bling,  though  not  a  single  little  creature  could  be  seen.  Hans  Castorp 
smiled,  breathing  gratitude.  But  still  more  beauties  were  preparing. 
A  rainbow  flung  its  arc  slanting  across  the  scene,  most  bright  and 
perfect,  a  sheer  delight,  all  its  rich  glossy,  banded  colours  moistly 
shimmering  down  into  the  thick,  lustrous  green.  It  was  like  music, 
like  the  sound  of  harps  commingled  with  flutes  and  violins.  The  blue 
and  the  violet  were  transcendent.  And  they  descended  and  magically 
blended,  were  transmuted  and  reunfolded  more  lovely  than  at  first. 
Once,  some  years  before,  our  young  Hans  Castorp  had  been  privileged 
to  hear  a  world-famous  Italian  tenor,  from  whose  throat  had  gushed 
a  glorious  stream  to  witch  the  world  with  gracious  art.  The  singer 
took  a  high  note,  exquisitely;  then  held  it,  while  the  passionate  har- 
mony swelled,  unfolded,  glowed  from  moment  to  moment  with  new 
radiance.  Unsuspected  veils  dropped  from  before  it  one  by  one;  the 
last  one  sank  away,  revealing  what  must  surely  be  the  ultimate  tonal 
purity — yet  no,  for  still  another  fell,  and  then  a  well-nigh  incredible 
third  and  last,  shaking  into  the  air  such  an  extravagance  of  tear- 
glistening  splendour,  that  confused  murmurs  of  protest  rose  from  the 
audience,  as  though  it  could  bear  no  more;  and  our  young  friend 
found  that  he  was  sobbing. — So  now  with  the  scene  before  him,  con- 
stantly transformed  and  transfigured  as  it  was  before  his  eyes.  The 
bright,  rainy  veil  fell  away;  behind  it  stretched  the  sea,  a  southern  sea 
of  deep,  deepest  blue  shot  with  silver  lights,  and  a  beautiful  bay,  on 
one  side  mistily  open,  on  the  other  enclosed  by  mountains  whose 
outline  paled  away  into  blue  space.  In  the  middle  distance  lay  islands, 
where  palms  rose  tall  and  small  white  houses  gleamed  among  cypress 
groves.  Ah,  it  was  all  too  much,  too  blest  for  sinful  mortals,  that  glory 
of  light,  that  deep  purity  of  the  sky,  that  sunny  freshness  on  the 
water!  Such  a  scene  Hans  Castorp  had  never  beheld,  nor  anything 
like  it.  On  his  holidays  he  had  barely  sipped  at  the  south,  the  sea  for 
him  meant  the  colourless,  tempestuous  northern  tides,  to  which  he 
clung  with  inarticulate,  childish  love.  Of  the  Mediterranean,  Naples, 
Sicily,  he  knew  nothing.  And  yet — he  remembered.  Yes,  strangely 
enough,  that  was  recognition  which  so  moved  him.  "Yes,  yes,  its  very 
image,"  he  was  crying  out,  as  though  in  his  heart  he  had  always 
cherished   a  picture  of  this  spacious,  sunny  bliss.  Always — and  that 


THOMAS  MANN  107 

always  went  far,  far,  unthinkably  far  back,  as  far  as  the  open  sea  there 
on  the  left  where  it  ran  out  to  the  violet  sky  bent  down  to  meet  it. 

The  sky-line  was  high,  the  distance  seemed  to  mount  to  Hans 
Castorp's  view,  looking  down  as  he  did  from  his  elevation  on  the 
spreading  gulf  beneath.  The  mountains  held  it  embraced,  their  tree- 
clad  foot-hills  running  down  to  the  sea;  they  reached  in  half -circle 
from  the  middle  distance  to  the  point  where  he  sat,  and  beyond.  This 
was  a  mountainous  littoral,  at  one  point  of  which  he  was  crouching 
upon  a  sun-warmed  stone  terrace,  while  before  him  the  ground,  de- 
scending among  undergrowth,  by  moss-covered  rocky  steps,  ran  down 
to  a  level  shore,  where  the  reedy  shingle  formed  little  blue-dyed  bays, 
minute  archipelagoes  and  harbours.  And  all  the  sunny  region,  these 
open  coastal  heights  and  laughing  rocky  basins,  even  the  sea  itself  out 
to  the  islands,  where  boats  plied  to  and  fro,  was  peopled  far  and  wide. 
On  every  hand  human  beings,  children  of  sun  and  sea,  were  stirring 
or  sitting.  Beautiful  young  human  creatures,  so  blithe,  so  good  and  gay, 
so  pleasing  to  see — at  sight  of  them  Hans  Castorp's  whole  heart 
opened  in  a  responsive  love,  keen  almost  to  pain. 

Youths  were  at  work  with  horses,  running  hand  on  halter  alongside 
their  whinnying,  head-tossing  charges;  pulling  the  refractory  ones  on 
a  long  rein,  or  else,  seated  bareback,  striking  the  flanks  of  their  mounts 
with  naked  heels,  to  drive  them  into  the  sea.  The  muscles  of  the  riders' 
backs  played  beneath  the  sun-bronzed  skin,  and  their  voices  were  en- 
chanting beyond  words  as  they  shouted  to  each  other  or  to  their 
animals.  A  little  bay  ran  deep  into  the  coast  line,  mirroring  the  shore 
as  does  a  mountain  lake;  about  it  girls  were  dancing.  One  of  them 
sat  with  her  back  toward  him,  so  that  her  neck,  and  the  hair  drawn  to 
a  knot  above  it,  smote  him  with  loveliness.  She  sat  with  her  feet  in  a 
depression  of  the  rock,  and  played  on  a  shepherd's  pipe,  her  eyes  roving 
above  the  stops  to  her  companions,  as  in  long,  wide  garments,  smiling, 
with  outstretched  arms,  alone,  or  in  pairs  swaying  gently  toward  each 
other,  they  moved  in  the  paces  of  the  dance.  Behind  the  flute-player — 
she  too  was  white-clad,  and  her  back  was  long  and  slender,  laterally 
rounded  by  the  movement  of  her  arms — other  maidens  were  sitting, 
or  standing  entwined  to  watch  the  dance,  and  quietly  talking.  Beyond 
them  still,  young  men  were  practising  archery.  Lovely  and  pleasant 


108  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

it  was  to  see  the  older  ones  show  the  younger,  curly-locked  novices, 
how  to  span  the  bow  and  take  aim;  draw  with  them,  and  laughing 
support  them  staggering  back  from  the  push  of  the  arrow  as  it  leaped 
from  the  bow.  Others  were  fishing,  lying  prone  on  a  jut  of  rock, 
waggling  one  leg  in  the  air,  holding  the  line  out  over  the  water, 
approaching  their  heads  in  talk.  Others  sat  straining  forward  to  fling 
the  bait  far  out.  A  ship,  with  mast  and  yards,  lying  high  out  of  the 
tide,  was  being  eased,  shoved,  and  steadied  into  the  sea.  Children 
played  and  exulted  among  the  breaking  waves.  A  young  female,  lying 
outstretched,  drawing  with  one  hand  her  flowered  robe  high  between 
her  breasts,  reached  with  the  other  in  the  air  after  a  twig  bearing  fruit 
and  leaves,  which  a  second,  a  slender-hipped  creature,  erect  at  her 
head,  was  playfully  withholding.  Young  folk  were  sitting  in  nooks 
of  the  rocks,  or  hesitating  at  the  water's  edge,  with  crossed  arms 
clutching  either  shoulder,  as  they  tested  the  chill  with  their  toes. 
Pairs  strolled  along  the  beach,  close  and  confiding,  at  the  maiden's 
ear  the  lips  of  the  youth.  Shaggy-haired  goats  leaped  from  ledge  to 
ledge  of  the  rocks,  while  the  young  goatherd,  wearing  perched  on  his 
brown  curls  a  little  hat  with  the  brim  turned  up  behind,  stood  watch- 
ing them  from  a  height,  one  hand  on  his  hip,  the  other  holding  the 
long  start  on  which  he  leaned. 

"Oh,  lovely,  lovely,"  Hans  Castorp  breathed.  "How  joyous  and 
winning  they  are,  how  fresh  and  healthy,  happy  and  clever  they  look! 
It  is  not  alone  the  outward  form,  they  seem  to  be  wise  and  gentle 
through  and  through.  That  is  what  makes  me  in  love  with  them,  the 
spirit  that  speaks  out  of  them,  the  sense,  I  might  almost  say,  in  which 
they  live  and  play  together."  By  which  he  meant  the  friendliness,  the 
mutual  courteous  regard  these  children  of  the  sun  showed  to  each 
other,  a  calm,  reciprocal  reverence  veiled  in  smiles,  manifested  almost 
imperceptibly,  and  yet  possessing  them  all  by  the  power  of  sense  asso- 
ciation and  ingrained  idea.  A  dignity,  even  a  gravity,  was  held?  as  it 
were,  in  solution  in  their  lightest  mood,  perceptible  only  as  an  inef- 
fable spiritual  influence,  a  high  seriousness  without  austerity,  a  reasoned 
goodness  conditioning  every  act.  All  this,  indeed,  was  not  without  its 
ceremonial  side.  A  young  mother,  in  a  brown  robe  loose  at  the  shoul- 
der, sat  on  a  rounded  mossy  stone  and  suckled  her  child,  saluted  by 


THOMAS  MANN  109 

all  who  passed  with  a  characteristic  gesture  which  seemed  to  compre- 
hend all  that  lay  implicit  in  their  general  bearing.  The  young  men,  as 
they  approached,  lightly  and  formally  crossed  their  arms  on  their 
breasts,  and  smilingly  bowed;  the  maidens  shaped  the  suggestion  of 
a  curtsy,  as  the  worshipper  does  when  he  passes  the  high  altar,  at  the 
same  time  nodding  repeatedly,  blithely  and  heartily.  This  mixture  of 
formal  homage  with  lively  friendliness,  and  the  slow,  mild  mien  of 
the  mother  as  well,  where  she  sat  pressing  her  breast  with  her  fore- 
finger to  ease  the  flow  of  milk  to  her  babe,  glancing  up  from  it  to 
acknowledge  with  a  smile  the  reverence  paid  her — this  sight  thrilled 
Hans  Castorp's  heart  with  something  very  close  akin  to  ecstasy.  He 
could  not  get  his  fill  of  looking,  yet  asked  himself  in  concern  whether 
he  had  a  right,  whether  it  was  not  perhaps  punishable,  for  him,  an 
Outsider,  to  be  a  party  to  the  sunshine  and  gracious  loveliness  of  all 
these  happy  folk.  He  felt  common,  clumsy-booted.  It  seemed  unscrupu- 
lous. 

A  lovely  boy,  with  full  hair  drawn  sideways  across  his  brow  and 
falling  on  his  temples,  sat  directly  beneath  him,  apart  from  his  com- 
panions, with  arms  folded  on  his  breast — not  sadly,  not  ill-naturedly, 
quite  tranquilly  on  one  side.  This  lad  looked  up,  turned  his  gaze 
upward  and  looked  at  him,  Hans  Castorp,  and  his  eyes  went  between 
the  watcher  and  the  scenes  upon  the  strand,  watching  his  watching, 
to  and  fro.  But  suddenly  he  looked  past  Hans  Castorp  into  space,  and 
that  smile,  common  to  them  all,  of  polite  and  brotherly  regard,  dis- 
appeared in  a  moment  from  his  lovely,  purely  cut,  half-childish  face. 
His  brows  did  not  darken,  but  in  his  gaze  there  came  a  solemnity 
that  looked  as  though  carven  out  of  stone,  inexpressive,  unfathomable, 
a  deathlike  reserve,  which  gave  the  scarcely  reassured  Hans  Castorp  a 
thorough  fright,  not  unaccompanied  by  a  vague  apprehension  of  its 
meaning. 

He  too  looked  in  the  same  direction.  Behind  him  rose  towering 
columns,  built  of  cylindrical  blocks  without  bases,  in  the  joinings  of 
which  moss  had  grown.  They  formed  the  facade  of  a  temple  gate,  on 
whose  foundations  he  was  sitting,  at  the  top  of  a  double  flight  of  steps 
with  space  between.  Heavy  of  heart  he  rose,  and,  descending  the  stair 
on  one  side,  passed  through  the  high  gate  below,  and  along  a  flagged 


110  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

street,  which  soon  brought  him  before  other  propylaea.  He  passed 
through  these  as  well,  and  now  stood  facing  the  temple  that  lay  before 
him,  massy,  weathered  to  a  grey-green  tone,  on  a  foundation  reached 
by  a  steep  flight  of  steps.  The  broad  brow  of  the  temple  rested  on  the 
capitals  of  powerful,  almost  stunted  columns,  tapering  toward  the 
top — sometimes  a  fluted  block  had  been  shoved  out  of  line  and  pro- 
jected a  little  in  profile.  Painfully,  helping  himself  on  with  his  hands, 
and  sighing  for  the  growing  oppression  of  his  heart,  Hans  Castorp 
mounted  the  high  steps  and  gained  the  grove  of  columns.  It  was  very 
deep,  he  moved  in  it  as  among  the  trunks  in  a  forest  of  beeches  by  the 
pale  northern  sea.  He  purposely  avoided  the  centre,  yet  for  all  that 
slanted  back  again,  and  presently  stood  before  a  group  of  statuary, 
two  female  figures  carved  in  stone,  on  a  high  base:  mother  and 
daughter,  it  seemed;  one  of  them  sitting,  older  than  the  other,  more 
dignified,  right  goddesslike  and  mild,  yet  with  mourning  brows  above 
the  lightless  empty  eye-sockets;  clad  in  a  flowing  tunic  and  a  mantle 
of  many  folds,  her  matronly  brow  with  its  waves  of  hair  covered  with 
a  veil.  The  other  figure  stood  in  the  protecting  embrace  of  the  first, 
with  round,  youthful  face,  and  arms  and  hands  wound  and  hidden 
in  the  folds  of  the  mantle. 

Hans  Castorp  stood  looking  at  the  group,  and  from  some  dark 
cause  his  laden  heart  grew  heavier  still,  and  more  oppressed  with  its 
weight  of  dread  and  anguish.  Scarcely  daring  to  venture,  but  follow- 
ing an  inner  compulsion,  he  passed  behind  the  statuary,  and  through 
the  double  row  of  columns  beyond.  The  bronze  door  of  the  sanctuary 
stood  open,  and  the  poor  soul's  knees  all  but  gave  way  beneath  him  at 
the  sight  within.  Two  grey  old  women,  witchlike,  with  hanging 
breasts  and  dugs  of  finger-length,  were  busy  there,  between  flaming 
braziers,  most  horribly.  They  were  dismembering  a  child.  In  dreadful 
silence  they  tore  it  apart  with  their  bare  hands — Hans  Castorp  saw 
the  bright  hair  blood-smeared — and  cracked  the  tender  bones  between 
their  jaws,  their  dreadful  lips  dripped  blood.  An  icy  coldness  held 
him.  He  would  have  covered  his  eyes  and  fled,  but  could  not.  Thev 
at  their  gory  business  had  already  seen  him,  they  shook  their  reeking 
fists  and  uttered  curses — soundlessly,  most  vilely,  with  the  last  obscen- 
ity, and  in  the  dialect  of  Hans  Castorp's  native  Hamburg.  It  made 


THOMAS  MANN  1  1  1 

him  sick,  sick  as  never  before.  He  tried  desperately  to  escape;  knocked 
into  a  column  with  his  shoulder — and  found  himself,  with  the  sound 
of  that  dreadful  whispered  brawling  still  in  his  ears,  still  wrapped 
in  the  cold  horror  of  it,  lying  by  his  hut,  in  the  snow,  leaning  against 
one  arm,  with  his  head  upon  it,  his  legs  in  their  skis  stretched  out 
before  him. 

It  was  no  true  awakening.  He  blinked  his  relief  at  being  free  from 
those  execrable  hags,  but  was  not  very  clear,  nor  even  greatly  con- 
cerned, whether  this  was  a  hay-hut,  or  the  column  of  a  temple,  against 
which  he  lay;  and  after  a  fashion  continued  to  dream,  no  longer  in 
pictures,  but  in  thoughts  hardly  less  involved  and  fantastic. 

"I  felt  it  was  a  dream,  all  along,"  he  rambled.  "A  lovely  and  horrible 
dream.  I  knew  all  the  time  that  I  was  making  it  myself — the  park  with 
the  trees,  the  delicious  moisture  in  the  air,  and  all  the  rest,  both  dread- 
ful and  dear.  In  a  way,  I  knew  it  all  beforehand.  But  how  is  it  a  man 
can  know  all  that  and  call  it  up  to  bring  him  bliss  and  terror  both 
at  once?  Where  did  I  get  the  beautiful  bay  with  the  islands,  where 
the  temple  precincts,  whither  the  eyes  of  that  charming  boy  pointed 
me,  as  he  stood  there  alone?  Now  I  know  that  it  is  not  out  of  our 
single  souls  we  dream.  We  dream  anonymously  and  communally,  if 
each  after  his  fashion.  The  great  soul  of  which  we  are  a  part  may 
dream  through  us,  in  our  manner  of  dreaming,  its  own  secret  dreams, 
of  its  youth,  its  hope,  its  joy  and  peace — and  its  blood-sacrifice.  Here 
I  lie  at  my  column  and  still  feel  in  my  body  the  actual  remnant  of 
my  dream — the  icy  horror  of  the  human  sacrifice,  but  also  the  joy  that 
had  filled  my  heart  to  its  very  depths,  born  of  the  happiness  and  brave 
bearing  of  those  human  creatures  in  white.  It  is  meet  and  proper, 
I  hereby  declare  that  I  have  a  prescriptive  right  to  lie  here  and  dream 
these  dreams.  For  in  my  life  up  here  I  have  known  reason  and 
recklessness.  I  have  wandered  lost  with  Settembrini  and  Naphta  in 
high  and  mortal  places.  I  know  all  of  man.  I  have  known  mankind's 
flesh  and  blood.  I  gave  back  to  the  ailing  Clavdia  Chauchat  Pribislav 
Hippe's  lead-pencil.  But  he  who  knows  the  body,  life,  knows  death. 
And  that  is  not  all;  it  is,  pedagogically  speaking,  only  the  beginning. 
One  must  have  the  other  half  of  the  story,  the  other  side.  For  all 
interest  in  disease  and  death  is  only  another  expression  of  interest  in 


112  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

life,  as  is  proven  by  the  humanistic  faculty  of  medicine,  that  addresses 
life  and  its  ails  always  so  politely  in  Latin,  and  is  only  a  division  of 
the  great  and  pressing  concern  which,  in  all  sympathy,  I  now  name 
by  its  name:  the  human  being,  the  delicate  child  of  life,  man,  his 
state  and  standing  in  the  universe.  I  understand  no  little  about  him,  I 
have  learned  much  from  'those  up  here,'  I  have  been  driven  up  from 
the  valley,  so  that  the  breath  almost  left  my  poor  body.  Yet  now  from 
the  base  of  my  column  I  have  no  meagre  view.  I  have  dreamed  of 
man's  state,  of  his  courteous  and  enlightened  social  state;  behind 
which,  in  the  temple,  the  horrible  blood-sacrifice  was  consummated. 
Were  they,  those  children  of  the  sun,  so  sweetly  courteous  to  each 
other,  in  silent  recognition  of  that  horror?  It  would  be  a  fine  and  right 
conclusion  they  drew.  I  will  hold  to  them,  in  my  soul,  I  will  hold 
with  them  and  not  with  Naphta,  neither  with  Settembrini.  They  are 
both  talkers;  the  one  luxurious  and  spiteful,  the  other  for  ever  blow- 
ing on  his  penny  pipe  of  reason,,  even  vainly  imagining  he  can  bring 
the  mad  to  their  senses.  It  is  all  Philistinism  and  morality,  most  cer- 
tainly it  is  irreligious.  Nor  am  I  for  little  Naphta  either,  or  his  re- 
ligion, that  is  only  a  guazzabitglio  of  God  and  the  Devil,  good  and 
evil,  to  the  end  that  the  individual  soul  shall  plump  into  it  head  first, 
for  the  sake  of  mystic  immersion  in  the  universal.  Pedagogues  both! 
Their  quarrels  and  counter-positions  are  just  a  guazzabuglio  too,  and 
a  confused  noise  of  battle,  which  need  trouble  nobody  who  keeps  a 
little  clear  in  his  head  and  pious  in  his  heart.  Their  aristocratic  ques- 
tion! Disease,  health!  Spirit,  nature!  Are  those  contradictions?  I  ask, 
are  they  problems?  No,  they  are  no  problems,  neither  is  the  problem 
of  their  aristocracy.  The  recklessness  of  death  is  in  life,  it  would  not  be 
life  without  it — and  in  the  centre  is  the  position  of  the  Homo  Dei, 
between  recklessness  and  reason,  as  his  state  is  between  mystic  com- 
munity and  windy  individualism.  I,  from  my  column,  perceive^  all 
this.  In  this  state  he  must  live  gallantly,  associate  in  friendly  reverence 
with  himself,  for  only  he  is  aristocratic,  and  the  counter-positions  are 
not  at  all.  Man  is  the  lord  of  counter-positions,  they  can  be  only 
through  him,  and  thus  he  is  more  aristocratic  than  they.  More  so  than 
death,  too  aristocratic  for  death — that  is  the  freedom  of  his  mind.  More 
aristocratic  than  life,  too  aristocratic  for  life,  and  that  is  the  piety  in 


THOMAS  MANN  113 

his  heart.  There  is  both  rhyme  and  reason  in  what  I  say,  I  have  made 
a  dream  poem  of  humanity.  I  will  cling  to  it.  I  will  be  good.  I  will 
let  death  have  vQ>  mastery  over  my  thoughts.  For  therein  lies  goodness 
and  love  of  humankind,  and  in  nothing  else.  Death  is  a  great  power. 
One  takes  off  one's  hat  before  him,  and  goes  weavingly  on  tiptoe. 
He  wears  the  stately  ruff  of  the  departed  and  we  do  him  honour  in 
solemn  black.  Reason  stands  simple  before  him,  for  reason  is  only 
virtue,  while  death  is  release,  immensity,  abandon,  desire.  Desire,  says 
my  dream.  Lust,  not  love.  Death  and  love — no,  I  cannot  make  a  poem 
of  them,  they  don't  go  together.  Love  stands  opposed  to  death.  It  is 
love,  not  reason,  that  is  stronger  than  death.  Only  love,  not  reason, 
gives  sweet  thoughts.  And  from  love  and  sweetness  alone  can  form 
come:  form  and  civilization,  friendly,  enlightened,  beautiful  human 
intercourse — always  in  silent  recognition  of  the  blood-sacrifice.  Ah, 
yes,  it  is  well  and  truly  dreamed.  I  have  taken  stock.  I  will  remember. 
I  will  keep  faith  with  death  in  my  heart,  yet  well  remember  that 
faith  with  death  and  the  dead  is  evil,  is  hostile  to  humankind,  so 
soon  as  we  give  it  power  over  thought  and  action.  For  the  sake  of 
goodness  and  love,  man  shall  let  death  have  no  sovereignty  over  his 
thoughts. — And  with  this — I  awake.  For  I  have  dreamed  it  out  to  the 
end,  I  have  come  to  my  goal.  Long,  long  have  I  sought  after  this 
word,  in  the  place  where  Hippe  appeared  to  me,  in  my  loggia,  every- 
where. Deep  into  the  snow  mountains  my  search  has  led  me.  Now  I 
have  it  fast.  My  dream  has  given  it  me,  in  utter  clearness,  that  I  may 
know  it  for  ever.  Yes,  I  am  in  simple  raptures,  my  body  is  warm,  my 
heart  beats  high  and  knows  why.  It  beats  not  solely  on  physical 
grounds,  as  finger-nails  grow  on  a  corpse;  but  humanly,  on  grounds  of 
my  joyful  spirits.  My  dream  word  was  a  draught,  better  than  port  or 
ale,  it  streams  through  my  veins  like  love  and  life,  I  tear  myself  from 
my  dream  and  sleep,  knowing  as  I  do,  perfectly  well,  that  they  are 
highly  dangerous  to  my  young  life.  Up,  up!  Open  your  eyes!  These 
are  your  limbs,  your  legs  here  in  the  snow!"  Pull  yourself  together, 
and  up!  Look — fair  weather!" 

The  bonds  held  fast  that  kept  his  limbs  involved.  He  had  a  hard 
struggle  to  free  himself — but  the  inner  compulsion  proved  stronger. 
With  a  jerk  he  raised  himself  on  his  elbows,  briskly  drew  up  his 


114  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

knees,  shoved,  rolled,  wrestled  to  his  feet;  stamped  with  his  skis  in 
the  snow,  flung  his  arms  about  his  ribs  and  worked  his  shoulders 
violently,  all  the  while  casting  strained,  alert  glanced  about  him  and 
above,  where  now  a  pale  blue  sky  showed  itself  between  grey-bluish 
clouds,  and  these  presently  drew  away  to  discover  a  thin  sickle  of  a 
moon.  Early  twilight  reigned:  no  snow-fall,  no  storm.  The  wall  of 
the  opposite  mountain,  with  its  shaggy,  tree-clad  ridge,  stretched  out 
before  him,  plain  and  peaceful.  Shadow  lay  on  half  its  height,  but  the 
upper  half  was  bathed  in  palest  rosy  light.  How  were  things  in  the 
world?  Was  it  morning?  Had  he,  despite  what  the  books  said,  lain 
all  night  in  the  snow  and  not  frozen?  Not  a  member  was  frost-bitten, 
nothing  snapped  when  he  stamped,  shook  and  struck  himself,  as  he 
did  vigorously,  all  the  time  seeking  to  establish  the  facts  of  his  situa- 
tion. Ears,  toes,  finger-tips,  were  of  course  numb,  but  not  more  so 
than  they  had  often  been  at  night  in  his  loggia.  He  could  take  his  watch 
from  his  pocket — it  was  still  going,  it  had  not  stopped,  as  it  did  if  he 
forgot  to  wind  it.  It  said  not  yet  five — was  in  fact  considerably  earlier, 
twelve,  thirteen  minutes.  Preposterous!  Could  it  be  he  had  lain  here 
in  the  snow  only  ten  minutes  or  so,  while  all  these  scenes  of  horror 
and  delight  and  those  presumptuous  thoughts  had  spun  themselves  in 
his  brain,  and  the  hexagonal  hurly  vanished  as  it  came?  If  that  were 
true,  then  he  must  be  grateful  for  his  good  fortune;  that  is,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  safe  home-coming.  For  twice  such  a  turn  had  come, 
in  his  dream  and  fantasy,  as  had  made  him  start  up — once  from 
horror,  and  again  for  rapture.  It  seemed,  indeed,  that  life  meant  well 
by  her  lone-wandering  delicate  child. 

Be  all  that  as  it  might,  and  whether  it  was  morning  or  afternoon — 
there  could  in  fact  be  no  doubt  that  it  was  still  late  afternoon — in  any 
case,  there  was  nothing  in  the  circumstances  or  in  his  own  condition 
to  prevent  his  going  home,  which  he  accordingly  did:  descending  in 
a  fine  sweep,  as  the  crow  flies,  to  the  valley,  where,  as  he  reached  it, 
lights  were  showing,  though  his  way  had  been  well  enough  lighted 
by  reflection  from  the  snow.  He  came  down  the  Brehmenbiihl,  along 
the  edge  of  the  forest,  and  was  in  the  Dorf  by  half  past  five.  He  left 
his  skis  at  the  grocer's,  rested  a  little  in  Herr  Settembrini's  attic  cell, 
and  told  him  how  the  storm  had  overtaken  him  in  the  mountains. 


THOMAS  MANN 


115 


The  horrified  humanist  scolded  him  roundly,  and  straightway  lighted 
his  spirit-kettle  to  brew  coffee  for  the  exhausted  one — the  strength  of 
which  did  not  prevent  Hans  Castorp  from  falling  asleep  as  he  sat. 

An  hour  later  the  highly  civilized  atmosphere  of  the  Berghof 
caressed  him.  He  ate  enormously  at  dinner.  What  he  had  dreamed 
was  already  fading  from  his  mind.  What  he  had  thought — even  that 
selfsame  evening  it  was  no  longer  so  clear  as  it  had  been  at  first. 


& 


GEORGE   R.   LEIGHTON 


COMMENTARY 


Somewhere  in  Housman's  The  Name  and  Nature  of  Poetry  he  says 
something  to  the  effect  that  a  line  may  come  to  him  while  shaving, 
and  then  his  heard  prickles  and  his  skin  contracts,  and  he  knows  it 
is  a  good  line.  Each  oi  us  has  some  such  physical  reaction  to  what 
he  considers  a  really  tine  joh  oi  writing.  I  find  myself  catching  my 
breath  and  then  uttering,  in  a  tone  combining  reverence  and  a  kind 
of  pain,  the  ridiculous  vocable  "Wow!"  The  lifle  sketch  that  follows 
is  a  Wow  piece. 

George  R.  Leighton,  a  talented  journalist,  wrote  a  book  a  few  years 
ago  called  America's  Growing  Pains.  It  deals  searchingly  with  the 
birth,  youth,  maturity,  and  variant  stages  of  decay  oi  Eve  American 
cities:  Shenandoah,  Louisville,  Birmingham,  Omaha,  Seattle.  To  the 
book,  factual,  reportorial,  and  perishable  in  interest,  he  affixed  a  few 
prefatory  pages  that  dont  seem  to  have  much  to  do  with  those  that 
follow  them.  Almost  by  accident,  it  seems  to  me — much  rTne  writing 
is  semiaccidental—he  has  in  this  introduction  written  something  ex- 
traordinarily moving,  rhythmical,  and  truly  American. 

The  point  is  that  though  Mr.  Leighton  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  tal- 
ented journalist,  this  little  piece  is  far  more  than  talented  journalism. 
I  may  be  off  my  base,  but  to  my  ear  it  has  the  true  Gettysburg  ring, 
the  same  ring  you  End  in  Edgar  Lee  Masters  "Lucinda  Matlock" 
and  ''Ann  Rutledge."  Try  reading  it  aloud  to  the  family. 


116 


Arminia  Evans  Avery 

from   "America's  growing  pains"   by 
GEORGE  R.  LEIGHTON 


On  an  afternoon  in  March,  1938,  Arminia  Evans  Avery  lay  asleep 
in  Tunkhannock,  a  little  Pennsylvania  town  on  the  Susquehanna 
River,  not  far  north  of  Wilkes-Barre.  She  was  ninety-four  years  old 
and  she  was  dying  a  slow,  deliberate  death  of  old  age.  During  the 
preceding  days  her  descendants  had  been  coming  by  ones  and  twos 
to  take  their  farewell.  Now  beside  her  bed  were  her  grandson  and  her 
one  great-grandson  awaiting  their  turn. 

She  was  intensely  old.  In  maturity  she  had  been  a  slender  woman 
with  delicate  features.  Now  her  head  was  barely  more  than  a  skull,  all 
the  bones  showing  plainly  and  her  closed  eyes  sunk  deep  in  their 
sockets.  Her  white  hair  was  cut  short,  one  hand  little  more  than  bone 
rested  upon  the  patchwork  comfortable.  Her  breath  came  in  long, 
slow  breaths,  so  slow  that  sometimes  it  seemed  that  breathing  had 
stopped  altogether.  Then  it  would  come,  evidence  that  the  machinery 
that  had  operated  so  faithfully  all  those  ninety-four  years  was  still 
obedient  to  the  demands  made  upon  it. 

"Is  she  dead  yet?"  said  the  little  boy. 

"No,"  said  his  father.  "She's  asleep.  She  will  wake  up  pretty  soon." 

The  man  and  the  little  boy  watched. 

This  woman's  preacher  father  had  ridden  circuit  through  this  Penn- 
sylvania wilderness  region  where  Indians  still  lived,  helping  the  settlers 
build  log  churches.  This  woman's  mother  had  told  her  of  a  day  when 
money  was  scarcely  seen,  when  a  little  silver  was  hoarded  to  pay  taxes 
and  buy  tea.  This  woman's  Welsh  grandfather,  a  soldier  in  the  British 
Army  sent  to  subdue  the  rebellious  colonists,  was  buried  over  on  the 
other  side  of  Miller  Mountain.  Nothing  was  known  of  him  except 

117 


118  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

that  he  could  write  his  name  and  was  thought  to  have  been  a  yeoman. 
The  bones  of  another  forebear  were  in  the  Wyoming  monument, 
along  with  the  others  killed  in  the  massacre.  All  were  immigrants  from 
the  old  country,  settling  in  a  wilderness. 

When  this  woman  at  sixteen  went  to  the  Seminary,  she  went  down 
the  river  road  to  Kingston  in  a  stagecoach.  She  was  at  school  there 
when  the  news  came  of  the  firing  on  Sumter  and  she  had  said  good- 
bye to  Southern  boys,  going  home  to  fight.  She  had  seen  the  war  spirit 
die  away  and  in  her  own  village  had  heard  the  cursing  against  the 
draft.  In  1864  she  had  married  a  young  man  who  ran  a  grist  mill  down 
by  the  river  and  had  seen  him  die  of  a  mysterious  "consumption."  As 
a  widow  she  kept  a  dame  school  in  the  village  and  so  little  was  known 
of  contagion  that  her  own  small  daughter,  ill  of  scarlet  fever,  was  left 
in  bed  near  the  schoolroom. 

Her  own  brother,  a  wilderness  boy,  had  gone  to  New  York  in  the 
sixties  and  become  an  iron  broker.  She  had  married  again  and  had 
seen  the  village  tannery  bought  by  "the  Trust"  and  closed  down;  she 
had  seen  her  husband's  foundry  and  machine  shop  slowly  fade  out 
and  her  sons  become  interested  in  automobiles.  She  had  seen  the  old 
stagecoach  river  road  turned  into  a  concrete  highway  for  trucks  that 
never  stopped  in  the  village  but  went  straight  through  to  Buffalo. 
She  had  seen  the  farm  families  over  the  river  die  out  one  by  one  and 
the  farms  go  to  ruin.  She  had  seen  Polish  coal  miners  come  up  from 
Wilkes-Barre  and  Pittston  and  buy  the  run-down  farms  and  make 
them  bloom  again.  She  had  seen  almost  a  hundred  years  of  America 
and  now  she  was  dying. 

Slowly  her  eyelids  lifted  and  the  old  woman  lay  quiet,  looking 
straight  up  at  the  ceiling. 

"Has  the  funeral  been  arranged?"  she  said,  seeing  no  one. 

Her  daughter  heard,  looked  in  the  door,  and  then  went  away  again. 

Then,  with  deliberation  so  slow  that  it  was  difficult  to  follow  the 
movement,  the  old  woman  began  to  turn  her  head.  Little  by  little  it 
moved  until,  after  a  lapse  of  minutes,  her  eyes,  gray  and  clear  and 
steady,  rested  upon  the  man  and  the  little  boy.  There  was  no  recogni- 
tion. But  as  the  two  watched  they  could  see  the  recognition  coming, 


GEORGE  R.   LEIGHTON  119 

just  as  deliberately  as  had  been  the  turning  of  the  head.  At  last  it 
came.  She  knew. 

"I  am  glad  that  you  have  come,"  she  said. 

She  looked  at  the  little  boy  for  a  while. 

"A  fine  boy,"  she  said. 

She  looked  at  the  man. 

"How  is  everything?" 

"All  right." 

There  was  a  considerable  pause  while  she  thought. 

"Are  you  finding  out  a  good  deal  about  the  country?" 

"A  good  deal,"  the  man  said. 

"You  have  found  out  some  things  about  the  people  in  those  towns 
but  not  all.  Shenandoah  you  tell  about.  They  have  trouble  now  but 
they  do  not  have  a  lot  of  the  trouble  you  tell  about  because  the  people 
who  had  those  troubles  are  all  dead  and  it  was  long  ago." 

The  old  woman  closed  her  eyes. 

"Can  I  go  now?"  the  little  boy  asked. 

"Yes,"  his  father  said. 

After  a  while  the  old  woman  opened  her  eyes  again  and,  without 
effort,  since  her  head  was  turned,  looked  directly  at  her  grandson. 

"I  would  like  to  ask  you  a  question,"  he  said. 

"All  right." 

"Why  was  it  that  you  never  gave  anyone — your  children,  your 
friends,  anyone — your  confidence?  Did  you  have  some  secret?" 

The  old  woman's  eyes  were  fixed  upon  her  grandson. 

"The  secret  is  that  there  was  never  any  secret  ...  I  didn't  give 
anybody  any  confidences  because  there  weren't  any  to  give." 

She  was  silent  again  and  it  was  almost  as  though  under  the  skull 
and  the  transparent  skin  the  machinery  of  her  mind  could  be  seen  at 
work — thinking — so  slowly  that  one  could  all  but  see  each  thought 
being  put  together,  every  nail  and  screw  in  each  thought,  slowly  and 
surely  being  driven  home.  Finally: 

"For  a  long  time  when  I  was  young  it  was  very  difficult  for  me  to 
talk  to  people.  I  could  not  get  through.  It  troubled  me  a  great  deal 
because  I  was  fond  of  people,  I  could  not  live  without  them.  I  was 


120  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

uneasy  and  could  not  feel  at  home  ...  in  the  world.  Then,  one  day, 
I  knew.  I  knew  that  in  some  way  I  could  not  understand,  people 
knew  how  I  felt  and  that  I  did  not  need  to  worry  or  work  over  it  any 
more.  That  is  all  there  is  to  the  secret  and  that  is  why  there  were  no 
confidences.  Confidences  are  made  by  people  who  are  afraid,  but  I 
was  no  longer  afraid  and  so  there  was  nothing  to  tell." 

She  stopped  talking  in  order  to  think  again. 

"The  world,"  she  said,  "is  in  dreadful  torment  now."  The  clock  on 
her  dresser  could  be  heard  ticking.  "I  hear  a  great  deal  of  criticism 
of  the  President.  Do  you?" 

Her  grandson  nodded. 

"Do  you  know  anyone,"  she  said,  "who  could  do  any  better?" 

"No." 

"Neither  do  I,"  she  said. 

The  old  woman's  daughter  came  into  the  room. 

"Are  you  tired  from  talking,  Mother?"  she  asked. 

"If  I  don't  talk  now,"  said  the  old  woman,  "I  never  will." 

She  looked  at  her  grandson  again. 

"Do  you  believe— you  know,  Hitler,  Russia,  people  here  without 
food  or  hope— do  you  believe  that  the  world  is  coming  to  an  end?" 

"Almost,"  the  man  said,  "but  not  quite." 

A  look  of  confidence,  born  out  of  some  knowledge  that  the  man 
could  not  fathom,  spread  over  the  old  woman's  face.  Her  body  was 
almost  done,  but  thought  and  spirit  remained. 

"It  isn't  coming  to  an  end.  It's  such  a  little  while  since  men  got  up 
off  the  ground.  So  many  ways  are  useless  now.  They  shut  down  the 
tannery.  They  don't  come  down  the  river  road  to  market  any  more." 

With  the  slowest  of  motions  she  raised  her  hand,  so  soon  to  be  just 
a  member  of  a  skeleton,  and  laid  it  against  her  face. 

"We  get  so  used  to  doing  things  one  way  .  .  .  and  you  can  only 

change  a  little  at  a  time.  We  have  got  to  believe  we  can  find  new 

ways  because  that  is  what  we  always  do  and  until  we  do  believe  it, 

people  are  afraid.  That's  what  makes  this  awful  trouble,  being  afraid." 

She  closed  her  eyes  again  and  then  spoke  without  opening  them. 

"All  over  the  world  there  are  people  afraid  .  .  .  millions  of  people 


GEORGE   R.   LEIGHTON  121 

crying  in  the  dark.  They  are  frightened  .  .  .  they  tear  each  other  to 
pieces." 

When  she  opened  her  eyes  again  her  grandson  could  see  in  them 
complete  repose. 

"It  will  never  work  that  way,"  she  said.  "But  when  the  strain  gets 
so  people  can't  stand  it  any  more,  somehow  light  will  come  and  we 
shall  see  many  things  that  have  been  here  all  the  time." 

She  was  very  tired  now  but  from  somewhere  in  her  she  found  a 
breath  of  effort  left. 

"You  have  to  work  with  what  you've  got  and  that's  all  there  is  to 
work  with.  You  can't  start  out  anywhere  except  from  the  place  you 
come  from.  People  can't  do  it  any  other  way  here  in  the  United  States 
either.  It's  all  plain,  but  we  don't  see  it  yet.  The  people  in  all  those  towns, 
they  are  frightened  and  sometimes  murderous,  just  because  in  one  way 
or  another  they're  crying  in  the  dark.  And  that's  all,  I  guess." 

Just  before  suppertime  she  died. 


VINCENT   McHUGH 


COMMENTARY 


m 


I  advance  two  reasons  for  including  in  this  book  the  piece  that  fol- 
lows. The  first  is  that  Mr.  McHugh  writes  brilliantly.  The  second  is 
connected  with  the  fact  that  in  a  sense  Mr.  McHugh  didnt  write  it 
at  all 

In  1938  Random  House,  a  firm  of  New  York  publishers,  issued  New 
York  Panorama,  subtitled  "A  Comprehensive  View  oi  the  Metropolis, 
Presented  in  a  Series  of  Articles  Prepared  by  the  Federal  Writers 
Project  of  the  Works  Progress  Administration  in  New  York  City." 
The  book  was  one  of  the  American  Guide  Series,  which  when  com- 
plete will  for  the  Erst  time  introduce  all  of  the  United  States  to  all  of 
its  citizens. 

New  York  Panorama  is  a  communal  project.  It  issued  from  the 
labor  of  a  number  of  New  York  writers,  some  good,  some  bad,  for 
whom  our  competitive  system  at  the  time  had  no  place.  It  is 
assembly-line  composition,  and  in  its  field  highly  meritorious.  When 
I  Erst  read  it  I  was  struck  by  the  fact  that  the  introductory  chapter 
was  composed  on  a  level  of  feeling  and  insight  to  which  the  balance 
of  the  book  did  not  attain.  A  bit  of  minor  sleuthing  revealed  that  it 
had  been  written  by  a  young  novelist  and  poet  named  Vincent 
McHugh.  Thus  we,  the  citizens  of  the  United  States,  through  our 
support  of  the  WPA,  have  all  inadvertently  become  the  sponsors 
of  a  piece  of  literature. 

I  remarked  that  in  a  sense  Mr.  McHugh  didnt  write  this  at  all. 
His  facts,  in  some  cases,  were  garnered  by  coworkers  and  the  whole 
spirit  of  the  enterprise  was  communal  and  anonymous.  The  intro- 
ductory chapter  itself,  however,  bears  the  stamp  of  a  powerfully  indi- 
vidual style.  It  may  have  had  a  group  inception  but  the  final  product 
is  one  mans  job. 

I  do  not  know  anyone  who  has  written  more  truly  about  New 
York  in  as  little  space.  Mr.  McHugh  develops  his  discussion  of  New 
York  through  two  central  concepts:  the  notion  (true)  of  the  city  as 


VINCENT  McHUGH  123 

an  accumulation,  a  mere  gigantic  exercise  in  quantification,  with  all 
the  misery,  waste,  and  ugliness  that  such  an  exercise  always  brings 
in  its  train;  and  the  notion  (true)  that  implicit  in  the  citys  develop- 
ment  and  today  becoming  more  and  more  explicit  is  an  equally  pow- 
erful drive  toward  unity  and  order.  These  concepts  he  expresses  and 
re-expresses  in  a  dozen  ways,  and  particularly  through  the  use  of  a 
striking  vocabulary,  poetical  on  the  one  hand  and  twentieth-century- 
technical  on  the  other. 

It  has  oiten  been  pointed  out  that  much  of  the  best  writing  about 
the  city  is  the  work  of  nonnatives.  I  like  to  reflect  that  The  New 
Yorker,  a  magazine  which  behind  its  casual  airs  and  mock  self-depre- 
ciation conceals  a  precise  feeling  for  much  of  the  city's  life,  is  largely 
edited  by  men  and  women  from  the  outlands,  its  central  genius  being 
a  Coloradoan.  The  images  that  gather  in  our  minds  when  we  think 
of  the  city  are  images  of  approach.  Dos  Passos  called  his  novel  Man- 
hattan Transfer.  Thomas  Wolfe  wrote  best  about  the  city  when 
telling  us  how  it  feels  to  enter  it.  New  York  is  a  place  to  which  people 
come;  it  is  hard  to  remember  that  it  is  also  a  place  in  which  people 
are  born.  It  is  this  which  differentiates  it  in  essence  from  such  cities 
as  Philadelphia  and  Boston,  and  it  is  this  which  makes  New  York 
an  apt  image,  as  Whitman  felt,  of  the  democratic  process.  The  sense 
of  the  city  as  a  place  to  approach,  as  a  goal,  as  the  end  of  a  quest, 
informs  Mr.  McHugh's  essay,  and  perhaps  would  not  so  subtly  inform 
it  were  Mr.  McHugh  a  native  New  Yorker.  He  hails  from  Rhode 
Island. 

A  word  or  two  about  him.  He  has  written  two  novels,  one  of  which, 
Sing  Before  Breakfast,  has  been  highly  praised  by  good  authorities. 
To  a  not  sufficiently  large  public  he  is  also  known  as  the  author  of 
Caleb  Catlum's  America,  as  successful  an  attempt  as  has  yet  been 
made  to  condense  the  history  of  our  country  into  one  great,  jolly, 
sprawling  comic  legend.  My  faith  in  Mr.  McHuglis  literary  future 
rests  in  the  main  on  his  capacity  to  feel  and  record  the  complex 
pulse  of  American  life  and  at  the  same  time  to  make  use  of  the  lit- 
erary techniques  and  insights  of  Continental  writing.  Though  he  feels 
America  as  his  particular  province,  he  feels  all  literature  as  one.  It 
is  a  combination  not  too  frequently  found  in  our  young  writers.  I 
hope  you  will  feel  its  force  in  the  pages  that  follow. 


Metropolis  and  Her  Children 

BY 

VINCENT  McHUGH 


The  rumor  of  a  great  city  goes  out  beyond  its  borders,  to  all  the  lati- 
tudes of  the  known  earth.  The  city  becomes  an  emblem  in  remote 
minds;  apart  from  the  tangible  export  of  goods  and  men,  it  exerts 
its  cultural  instrumentality  in  a  thousand  phases:  as  an  image  of  glit- 
tering light,  as  the  forcing  ground  which  creates  a  new  prose  style 
or  a  new  agro-biological  theory,  or  as  the  germinal  point  for  a  fresh 
technique  in  metal  sculpture,  biometrics  or  the  fixation  of  nitrogen. 
Its  less  ponderable  influence  may  be  a  complex  of  inextricable  ideas, 
economic  exchanges,  associations,  artifacts :  the  flask  of  perfume  which 
brings  Fifth  Avenue  to  a  hacienda  in  the  Argentine,  the  stencil  marks 
on  a  packing  case  dumped  on  the  wharf  at  Beira  or  Reykjavik,  a 
flurry  of  dark-goggled  globe-trotters  from  a  cruise  ship,  a  book  of  verse 

Under  the  stone  I  saw  them  flow 
express  Times  Square  at  five  o'clock 
eyes  set  in  darkness 

read  in  a  sheepherder's  hut  in  New  South  Wales,  or  a  Harlem  band 
playing  Young  Woman's  Blues  from  a  phonograph  as  the  safari  breaks 
camp  in  Tanganyika  under  a  tile-blue  morning  sky. 

The  orbit  of  such  a  world  city  as  New  York  also  intersects  the  orbits 
of  other  world  cities.  New  York,  London,  Tokyo,  Rome  exchange 
preferred  stocks  and  bullion,  ships'  manifests  and  radio  programs— 
in  rivalry  or  well-calculated  friendship.  During  the  1920's,  for  example,  | 
a  jump  spark  crackled  between  New  York  and  Paris.  The  art  of 
Matisse,  Derain,  Picasso  commanded  the  Fifty-Seventh  Street  market. 

124 


VINCENT  McHUGH  125 

The  French  developed  a  taste  for  le  jazz  and  le  sport;  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  war  debts  and  the  Young  Plan,  the  Americanization  of 
Europe  was  mentioned.  Paris,  capital  of  the  Valutaschweine,  became 
the  bourne  of  good  and  gay  New  Yorkers,  the  implicit  heroine  of  a 
comedy  by  Philip  Barry  or  a  novel  by  Ernest  Hemingway.  The  French 
replied,  though  not  always  in  kind.  Georges  Duhamel  pronounced  a 
jeremiad  against  the  machine  apocalypse  in  America  and  Paul  Morand, 
an  amateur  of  violence,  explored  the  sensational  diversity  of  New 
York.  These  were  symptomatic.  The  comments  of  Jules  Romains  went 
deeper  and  established  fixed  points  for  contrast  with  a  later  period. 

All  the  rays  of  force  alive  in  the  modern  world  move  inward  upon 
the  city,  and  the  burning  glass  of  its  attraction  concentrates  them  in 
the  flame  that  is  New  York.  Historically,  it  has  been  to  an  exceptional 
degree  a  city  of  accumulation:  its  methods  promotion  and  commerce, 
its  principle  aggrandizement.  About  a  nucleus  of  Dutch  and  English 
— even  French  Huguenot — settlers  it  subsequently  collected  swarm 
after  swarm  of  Irish,  German,  Italian,  Jewish  and  Russian  immigrants, 
a  proportion  of  other  nationalities,  and  Americans  of  many  stocks 
from  the  seaboard  and  the  interior.  For  the  most  part,  those  immi- 
grants who  remained  in  the  city  were  compacted  into  districts  espe- 
cially suited  to  their  exploitation,  districts  as  verminous  and  sunless 
as  the  Cloaca  Maxima.  Here,  in  dwellings  that  reproduced  the  foetor 
of  the  slave  ship  in  all  but  the  promise  of  eventual  liberty  held  out 
to  the  more  intelligent  or  ruthless,  they  formed  a  crawling  agglomera- 
tion. This  was  the  frontier  of  New  York  and  the  grim  apotheosis  of 
the  frontier  in  the  United  States,  preserved  almost  untouched  into  the 
third  decade  of  the  20th  century. 

The  shawled  refugees  from  European  want  and  oppression,  most 
of  whom  crossed  the  ocean  in  immigrant  ships  under  conditions  of 
the  utmost  squalor,  were  also  transported  by  a  succession  of  great 
New  York  trade  vessels:  the  Black  Ball  and  other  Western  Ocean 
packet  lines,  the  world-ranging  Donald  McKay  clippers,  the  first  wood 
and  iron  steamships.  These  were  conned  through  the  Narrows  by 
men  off  the  superb  Sandy  Hook  pilot  schooners  which  had  been 
worked  out  from  the  designs  of  Isaac  Webb  in  the  1830's,  the  hollow- 
entrance  experiments  of  Griffiths  in  the  1840's,  and  the  later  masterly 


126  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

work  of  George  Steers  in  such  craft  as  the  Moses  H.  Grinnell  and  the 
America,  for  which  the  Americas  Cup  was  named.  Great  numbers  of 
immigrants  and  New  Yorkers  moved  inland  by  way  of  the  Hudson 
River  sloops  and  steamboats,  the  Conestoga  wagons,  the  Erie  Canal 
barges  and  the  railroads.  Very  early,  therefore,  the  history  of  New  York 
began  to  be  a  history  of  the  successive  phases  in  American  transporta- 
tion. As  its  lines  of  influence  spread  out  into  the  interior,  thickened 
and  were  fixed,  it  became  more  and  more  the  commanding  American 
city,  the  maker  or  merchant  of  dress  silks  and  pannikins  and  spices, 
wines  and  beds  and  grub  hoes.  Long  before  the  paramount  age  of 
sail  ended,  New  York  had  taken  on  its  alternate  character  as  a  great 
two-way  transfer  point  and  classification  yard  for  men  and  goods  and 
ideas  moving  between  the  other  countries  of  the  world  and  the  great 
central  plain  of  America.  It  has  consolidated  and  enlarged  this  charac- 
ter with  a  multiplicity  of  functions  which  help  to  determine  its  posi- 
tion as  the  first  city  of  the  Western  Hemisphere. 

Approach  to  the  City 

For  the  American  traveler  coming  home  from  Cape  Town  or  St. 
Moritz  or  the  Caribbean,  and  for  those  others  who  converge  upon  the 
city  from  Chicago  and  El  Paso  and  Kildeer  and  Tonopah,  New  York 
has  a  nearer  meaning.  It  is,  in  whatever  sense,  a  substitute  home  town 
—a  great  apartment  hotel,  as  Glenway  Wescott  wrote,  in  which  every- 
one lives  and  no  one  is  at  home.  In  other  eyes  it  may  be  a  state  fair 
grown  to  magnificence,  a  Main  Street  translated  into  the  imperial 
splendor  of  Fifth  Avenue.  For  such  travelers  the  city  is  a  coat  of  many 
colors— becoming  to  each,  but  not  quite  his  own.  It  is  both  novelty  and 
recognition  that  pleases  him:  the  novelty  of  its  actual  and  amazing  en- 
compassment,  the  recognition  of  great  shafts  and  crowds  and  thorough- 
fares remembered  from  a  hundred  motion  pictures,  rotogravures  and 
advertisements. 

The  man  from  another  city  will  perhaps  be  least  discommoded,  his 
sense  of  the  familiar  both  intensified  and  expanded.  But  to  the  men 
and  women  of  the  small  towns,  the  sierras,  the  cornlands  and  grass- 
lands   the  seaboard  coves  and  Gulf  bayous— farmers,  automobile  me- 


VINCENT  McHUGH 


127 


chanics,  pack-rats,  schoolteachers— New  York  cannot  help  but  stand 
as  a  special  order :  the  place  which  is  not  wilderness,  the  place  of  light 
and  warmth  and  the  envelopment  of  the  human  swarm,  the  place  in 
which  everyone  is  awake  and  laughing  at  three  in  the  morning.  These 
things  are  not  altogether  true,  of  course — but  magic  does  not  need  to 
be  true. 

The  traveler  will  know  many  things  about  New  York  and  there  will 
be  guides  to  tell  him  many  more,  in  the  particular  and  the  large;  but 
he  will  see  by  looking,  and  find  out  by  asking,  and  match  the  figure 
to  the  phenomenon.  He  may  know  that  New  York  City  is  made  up  of 
five  boroughs,  four  of  which— Brooklyn,  Queens,  Richmond,  the 
Bronx— compose  like  crinkled  lily  pads  about  the  basking  trout  of 
Manhattan.  He  will  not  know,  perhaps,  that  he  and  the  other  men  and 
women  who  travel  with  him  helped  to  make  up  a  total  of  68,999,376 
visitors  to  the  city  in  1936,  an  off  year.  If  he  is  an  agronomist,  he  may 
find  a  certain  perverse  irony  in  the  fact  that  the  198,330  acres  of  the 
five  boroughs,  without  any  tillage  worth  mentioning,  supported  an  esti- 
mated population  of  7,434,346  in  1937. 

But  it  is  less  likely  that  the  visitor  who  moves  down  one  of  those 
enormous  radials  that  converge  on  New  York  from  Seattle  and  Gal- 
veston and  Los  Angeles  and  Chicago  will  understand  how  Thomas 
Campanula's  vision  of  a  City  of  the  Sun,  published  in  1623,  has  influ- 
enced the  growth  of  such  a  modern  metropolis  as  New  York.  Nor  will 
he  be  aware,  perhaps,  that  the  verses  of  Walt  Whitman  and  the  paint- 
ings of  "The  Eight"  and  the  landscape  architecture  of  Olmsted  the 
elder,  quite  as  much  as  the  Roeblings'  Brooklyn  Bridge  and  the  Hoe 
press  and  the  steel  converters  of  Kelly  and  Bessemer,  helped  to  create 
the  social  climate  of  the  emerging  city. 

In  the  larger  aspects  of  New  York  he  may  glimpse  not  only  the  re- 
sults of  the  Randall  Plan  of  181 1,  but  evidences  of  the  influence  of 
Geddes,  Norton,  Wright,  McClellan,  Bassett,  Delano,  Burnham,  Kep- 
pel,  James,  the  Olmsteds,  Lewis,  Whitten,  Howard,  Unwin,  Wilgus, 
Mumford,  Adams,  McAneny,  Stein,  Perkins,  Walsh,  the  indefatigable 
Moses,  and  a  hundred  others  of  the  noble  guild  of  city  planners,  up  to 
and  including  the  work  of  the  Regional  Plan  of  New  York  and  Its 
Environs,  the  Port  of  New  York  Authority,  the  New  York  Depart- 


128  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

ment  of  Parks  and  the  New  York  City  Planning  Commission.  He  will 
wish  to  know  how  the  city  changes,  the  extent  and  character  of  its 
physical  property,  and  something  about  the  nature  and  complexity  of 
its  functions.  But  he  will  understand  that  plant  and  function  are  never 
more  than  indicators  of  a  series  of  cultural  choices  and  directions. 
Finally,  he  will  be  made  aware  of  these  choices  and  directions  at  their 
source,  in  the  character,  convictions  and  behavior  of  New  Yorkers 
themselves:  the  faces,  vivid  or  distracted,  washed  in  neon  light  the 
color  of  mercurochrome,  faces  of  men  and  women  who  work  and  eat 
and  make  love  in  catacombs  under  the  enormous  pylons  of  their  city. 

The  traveler  approaches  in  bare  winter  or  rainy  autumn,  in  keen  sea- 
board spring  or  the  dog  days.  He  drives  a  faded  sedan  with  a  child 
slung  in  a  hammock  cradle  in  the  rear;  or  he  takes  the  hot  bouillon 
and  crackers  of  the  great  airlines.  He  walks  the  glassed-in  promenade 
deck  of  the  Normandie  or  the  open  boat  deck  of  the  Nieuw  Amster- 
dam; or  he  lounges  in  the  doorway  of  the  Manhattan's  radio  room. 
In  the  streamlined  club  cars  of  the  Yankee  Clipper,  the  Twentieth 
Century,  the  Royal  Blue,  the  Broadway  Limited,  or  in  the  day  coaches 
of  slower  trains,  he  turns  the  pages  of  a  national  or  trade  journal  pub- 
lished in  New  York — Women's  Wear,  Collier's,  Life,  Variety,  Printers' 
ln\ — and  watches  the  conglomerate  backyards  of  Albany-Bridgeport- 
Trenton  slide  past  the  window.  Painted  with  slipstream  whorls,  his 
blunt-nosed  bus  trundles  out  of  the  lunch  stop  and  bores  Manhattan- 
ward  again,  the  whipcord  back  of  the  driver  twisted  as  he  pulls  out 
and  around  a  great  dark  pantechnicon  truck  with  small  lamps  at  its 
clearance  points. 

The  traveler  is  a  fuel  company  executive  returning  from  a  trip 
through  the  West,  a  copy  of  Saward's  Coal  Annual  wedged  into  the 
briefcase  beside  him;  an  elementary  school  principal  from  Lewiston, 
bound  for  special  courses  at  Barnard  College;  a  Cleveland  printer  out 
of  a  job,  a  men's  wear  buyer  from  Jacksonville,  a  Brooklyn  clergyman 
on  his  return  trip  from  Rome,  a  Pittsburgh  engineer  coming  back  from 
a  South  American  cruise,  a  San  Francisco  divorcee  loosed  in  Reno  and 
remarried  to  a  Hollywood  fashion  designer  commuting  to  New  York. 
These  make  up  a  composite  American  as  alive  and  definite  as  Chau- 
cer's pilgrims  or  Whitman's  cameradoes  of  democracy. 


VINCENT  McHUGH  129 

But  perhaps  only  the  industrial  engineer  begins  to  comprehend  the 
technical  changes  in  transportation  between  Chaucer's  time — or  even 
Whitman's — and  the  1930's.  Unless  the  traveler  drives  his  own  car,  he 
must  resign  himself  to  the  helmsmen  of  the  neotechnic  age — locomo- 
tive engineers,  ships'  quartermasters,  bus  drivers,  transport  pilots — 
whose  responsibilities  have  been  reapportioned  into  a  vast  complex  of 
schedules,  maintenance  men,  radio  directional  and  telephone  signals, 
cartographers,  traffic  lights,  instrument  panels  and  routine  instructions, 
all  centered  on  New  York. 

The  helmsmen  themselves  are  aware  of  their  place  in  this  network. 
The  locomotive  engineer  knows  it,  intent  on  the  block  signals  aimed 
at  and  swallowed  by  the  rush  of  his  train,  a  full  minute  to  be  made  up 
between  Poughkeepsie  and  Grand  Central  Terminal.  The  bus  driver 
gunning  his  coach  in  heavy  traffic  over  USi  from  New  England,  or 
the  Albany  Post  Road,  or  the  Sunrise  Highway,  or  the  loop  over  the 
Pulaski  Skyway  into  the  Jersey  City  mouth  of  the  Holland  Tunnel 
feels  responsibility  like  a  small  knot  between  his  shoulder  blades:  the 
need  for  quick  and  certain  decisions,  the  judgment  of  space  and  time 
and  the  intent  of  drivers  and  a  small  boy  heedless  on  a  bicycle. 

The  pilot  of  Flight  16  eastbound,  crossing  the  Alleghenies  in  cloud 
at  7,000  feet,  knows  it  well.  When  his  tally  of  instruments — altimeter, 
clock,  air  speed,  bank  and  turn,  artificial  horizon — indicates  that  he 
has  passed  the  outer  marker,  he  reports  by  radio  to  the  company  dis- 
patcher at  Newark  Metropolitan  Airport,  chief  terminus  for  the  New 
York  district.  Passengers  rub  at  the  bleared  windows.  But  as  he  nears 
the  inner  marker  at  Martin's  Creek,  the  mist  begins  to  fade  apart  into 
soft  translucent  islands  drenched  with  sun  and  the  voice  from  the 
Newark  radio  control  tower  comes  in  with  the  tone  of  a  man  speaking 
clearly  in  the  same  room:  "WREE  to  Western  Trip  16,  Pilot  Johnson. 
Stuff  breaking  up  fast.  You  are  cleared  at  3,000  feet  to  the  range  sta- 
tion. You're  Number  Two  airplane." 

In  the  chart-room  of  a  transatlantic  liner  inbound  from  Cherbourg 
to  New  York,  200  miles  off  Fire  Island  in  a  pea-soup  fog,  the  blasts 
of  the  automatic  ship's  siren  at  intervals  of  one  minute  vibrate  amongst 
the  polished  metal  or  enameled  instruments:  the  chronometers,  tele- 
phone, radio  compass,  loudspeaker,  mercury  and  aneroid  barometers, 


130  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

gyro  course-indicator  and  other  devices  of  the  new  scientific  navigation. 
The  senior  watch  officer  checks  his  chronometers  against  time  signals 
from  Nauen,  Arlington  and  the  Eiffel  Tower.  A  seaman  at  the  radio 
directional  compass  slowly  swivels  the  frame  of  his  antenna  ring  until 
the  note  of  the  Fire  Island  radio  beacon — plangent  as  a  tuning  fork, 
but  crisper — is  loudest  in  his  headphones.  Making  a  cross-check,  the 
junior  watch  officer  sets  down  fathometer  depth  readings  on  a  length 
of  tracing  paper  in  such  a  way  that  it  can  be  laid  over  the  chart  for 
comparison  with  course  and  position  marks. 

Immobile  in  the  dark  wheelhouse,  the  helmsman  concentrates  on  the 
lighted  compass  before  him.  No  longer  must  he  watch  for  the  telltale 
flutter  of  the  leech,  or  nurse  his  ship  in  weather  seas.  In  the  330  years 
between  Henry  Hudson's  Half  Moon,  steered  into  the  future  New 
York  Harbor  with  a  wheel-and-whipstaff  rig  that  resembled  a  four- 
armed  capstan  with  elongated  bars,  and  the  great  express  ships  of  the 
i93o's,  already  obsolescent  in  view  of  operating  costs,  irreducible  vibra- 
tion and  other  factors,  the  helmsman's  responsibilities  have  been  shorn 
away  by  engineers  and  technicians.  The  automatic  steering  device,  or 
"Iron  Mike,"  has  even  in  part  replaced  him. 

These  new  helmsmen  of  land  and  sea  and  air  are  the  creatures  of 
demanding  time,  their  senses  extended  in  the  antennules  of  a  hundred 
instruments.  So  they  must  necessarily  regard  the  city  a  little  as  the 
gunnery  officer  does  his  target;  but  they  too  feel  its  magnetism.  It 
comes  to  the  traveler  a  great  way  off,  like  the  intimation  of  any  other 
dense  human  engagement.  The  expectant  nerves  contract,  the  mind  is 
sensitized  in  advance.  A  familiar  visitor,  a  New  Yorker,  waits  for  the 
sense  of  the  city's  resumed  envelopment;  but  the  bus  passenger  com- 
ing down  over  the  Boston  Post  Road  from  New  England  watches 
traffic  slow  and  thicken  as  the  environs  towns  become  larger,  draw  to- 
gether, give  off  the  effect  of  a  brisker  life.  There  is  a  moment  in  which 
he  asks  himself:  "Are  we  in  the  city  yet?  Is  this  New  YorkP'^The 
visitor  by  rail,  if  he  approaches  from  the  south,  may  get  hardly  a 
glimpse  of  the  towers  before  he  tunnels  under  the  river  and  coasts  to 
a  stop  along  the  platform  at  Pennsylvania  Station.  Coming  in  from  the 
north,  he  cannot  help  but  be  struck  by  the  infinite  pueblo  of  the  Bronx. 

But  to  the  traveler  by  air,  especially  from  the  north  or  east,  the  city 


VINCENT  McHUGH  131 

appears  with  the  instancy  o£  revelation:  the  slowly  crinkling  samite 
of  its  rivers  and  New  York  Harbor  vaporous  beyond,  the  Bronx 
splayed  out  and  interwoven  with  the  tight  dark  Hudson  Valley  foli- 
age, Brooklyn  and  Queens  and  Staten  Island  dispersed  in  their  enor- 
mous encampments  about  the  narrow  seaward-thrusting  rock  of  Man- 
hattan. Seen  thus  from  above,  the  pattern  of  the  island  suggests  a 
weirdly  shaped  printer's  form.  It  is  as  if  the  lead  rules  had  been  picked 
out  for  avenues  between  the  solid  lines  of  type  which  are  buildings. 
The  skyscrapers — those  characters  too  pointed  to  be  equalized  by  the 
wooden  mallet  of  the  makeup  man — prickle  up  along  the  lower  rim  of 
Central  Park,  through  the  midtown  section,  and  most  densely  at  die 
foot  of  the  island. 

These  last  are  what  the  homebound  traveler  by  water  sees  as  his  ves- 
sel comes  through  the  Narrows  into  the  Lower  Bay,  a  journey  and 
journey's  end  which  has  always  somehow  the  quality  of  a  public  tri- 
umph. There  stand  the  inconceivable  spires  of  Manhattan — composed, 
repeating  the  upthrust  torch  of  Liberty,  at  first  almost  without  the 
sense  of  great  weight,  the  distraction  of  archaic  and  heterogeneous  de- 
tail. The  forms  of  "gypsum  crystals,"  a  giant's  cromlech,  a  mass  of 
stalagmites,  "the  Cathedrals  and  Great  White  Thrones  of  the  National 
Parks,"  an  Arizona  mesa,  a  "ship  of  living  stone,"  a  petrified  forest, 
"an  irregular  tableland  intersected  by  shadowy  canons,"  a  mastodon 
herd,  "a  pin-cushion,"  the  Henry  Mountains  in  Utah,  "a  vertical  ag- 
gregation," dividends  in  the  sky:  such  metaphors  reflect  its  diversity 
of  association.  As  Melville's  Red  burn  indicates,  the  term  skyscraper  it- 
self— a  noun  full  in  the  homely  tradition  of  the  American  vernacular 
— was  once  synonymous  with  moon-sail  and  cloud-raker  as  the  name 
for  a  ship's  topmost  kites. 

Le  Corbusier,  celebrated  French  architect  in  the  International  style, 
refers  to  this  massed  upthrust  as  "the  winning  of  a  game:  proclamation 
by  skyscraper."  And  in  the  third  book  of  Jules  Romains'  Psyche,  Pierre 
Febvre  thinks  of  it  as  "a  rivalry  of  tumefactions  constructed  in  haste 
on  the  rock  of  Manhattan,  a  typical  fragment  of  American  unreality." 
Taken  together,  both  images — a  sense  of  the  grandiose  subjective  ex- 
emplified in  architectural  terms,  and  the  perhaps  consequent  suggestion 
of  imperfectly  realized  forms — help  to  clarify  a  profound  intimation  of 


132  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  familiar  experienced  by  many  travelers,  even  those  who  have  no 
acquaintance  with  the  city.  In  one  of  the  Regional  Plan  volumes,  this 
intimation  is  dramatized,  simply  enough,  by  photographs  on  facing 
pages:  one  of  lower  Manhattan,  the  other  of  Mont-Saint-Michel,  the 
ancient  fortress  rock  of  France,  a  cluster  of  towers  about  which  the 
tides  swirl  like  level  avalanches. 

The  visual  analogy  is  striking,  but  it  does  not  end  there.  The  image 
of  the  medieval  castle-town  has  gone  deep  into  the  consciousness  of 
western  man.  Preserved  in  masonry  at  Mont-Saint-Michel  and  Carcas- 
sonne, stylized  in  the  perspectives  of  a  hundred  medieval  and  Renais- 
sance painters,  translated  into  fantasy  in  the  fairy  tales  of  Andersen 
and  Perrault  and  the  towers  of  Cloud  Cuckoo  Land,  popularized  in 
the  colors  of  Dulac  and  Rackham  and  Parrish  and  the  mass-production 
lampshade,  it  reappears  in  the  apparition  of  lower  Manhattan  evoked 
by  the  new  technology:  the  medieval  image  of  power,  the  infantile  or 
schizoid  fantasy  of  withdrawal,  the  supreme  image  of  escape  to  the 
inaccessible. 

The  Concept  of  the  City 

Historically,  as  Robert  L.  DufTus  points  out  in  Mastering  a  Metrop- 
olis, cities  "have  tended  to  grow  up  around  something — a  fortification, 
a  temple,  a  market-place,  a  landing-place."  In  other  words,  the  selec- 
tion of  site  and  arrangement  have  usually  been  determined  by  a  choice 
of  social  function,  a  definite  cultural  emphasis.  Sometimes  it  was  rela- 
tively accidental.  On  the  principle  that  travelers  may  be  customers,  a 
market  town  grew  up  at  a  crossroads.  The  walled  towns  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  usually  grouped  about  a  castle  for  efficient  defense,  retained  to 
some  extent  the  lines  of  a  military  camp;  but  the  exigencies  of  space 
within  the  walls  made  for  a  certain  homogeneous  and  charming  ir- 
regularity. The  radial  plans  of  the  Renaissance,  of  which  Karlsruhe  is 
the  most  striking  example,  probably  developed  from  the  Greek  and 
Roman  cities  clustered  around  a  central  temple  or  forum,  although 
they  retained  some  of  the  medieval  irregularities. 

Parallel  with  the  unplanned  growth  of  cities,  there  has  always  been 
a  tradition  of  planned  cities,  conceived  either  as  Utopias — by  Plato  in 


VINCENT  McHUGH  133 

his  Republic,  More  in  his  Utopia,  Campanella  in  his  City  of  the  Sun, 
Bellamy  in  his  Looking  Backward,  Samuel  Butler  in  his  Erewhon,  to 
name  only  a  few — or  by  architects  and  city  planners  for  actual  realiza- 
tion in  stone  and  mortar.  The  geometrical  design  for  Alexandria,  and 
Wren's  project  for  the  rebuilding  of  London  after  the  great  fire  were 
examples  of  this  kind.  Notable  among  them  was  the  plan  for  Wash- 
ington. Challenged  by  the  unexpectedly  possible,  Jefferson  studied  the 
city  patterns  of  Europe  and  with  Washington  and  L'Enfant  evolved 
the  American  capital  city. 

But  it  is  significant  that  in  general  the  tradition  of  abstract  design, 
surviving  through  the  Renaissance,  through  Karlsruhe  and  Palladio 
and  Wren  into  the  era  of  L'Enfant's  Washington  and  Haussmann's 
renovation  of  Paris,  is  basically  eclectic,  corresponding  almost  exactly  to 
the  anachronistic  revivals  of  the  classic  orders  or  the  Gothic  in  archi- 
tecture. But  the  criticism  is  not  merely  negative;  it  implies  a  basic 
disregard  of  the  primacy  of  cultural  function,  of  the  possible  and 
fruitful  coordination  between  plant  and  function  and  environment  in 
a  new  order  of  the  city. 

In  any  case,  for  good  or  ill,  planned  cities  did  not  by  any  means 
represent  the  dominant  mode  in  urban  evolution.  If  there  was  one, 
it  can  only  be  called  agglomeration;  the  gathering  of  flies  around  a 
stain  of  honey.  More  often  than  not,  that  honey  was  commerce,  addi- 
tionally sweetened  by  the  perquisites  of  a  capital  city.  Philip  II,  for 
example,  deliberately  built  up  the  municipal  strength  of  Paris  as  an 
offset  to  the  challenge  of  the  nobles,  thus  contributing  to  the  new 
nationalism  and  the  upswing  of  the  merchant  classes.  Tudor  London, 
clamorous  with  trades  and  spiky  with  the  masts  of  ships,  added  central 
cells  of  industry  to  the  commercial  swarming  of  the  city.  After  the 
great  fires  of  the  next  century,  Wren  suggested  that  wherever  possible 
industries  should  be  relocated  on  the  outer  margins  of  the  city — a 
recommendation  seconded  by  Walter  Curt  Behrendt  and  the  New 
York  Regional  Plan  in  the  1930's. 

The  advent  of  what  Sir  Patrick  Geddes  called  the  paleotechnic 
period,  early  in  the  19th  century,  with  its  criteria  of  absolute  utilitar- 
ianism, gradually  created  the  inhuman  ratholes  of  London  and  Glas- 
gow and  Birmingham  and  New  York  and  Berlin — that  "home  city 


134  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  the  rent  barracks."  Dickens  described  a  composite  of  industrial  cities 
as  Coketown.  "It  had  a  black  canal  in  it,  and  a  river  that  ran  purple 
with  ill-smelling  dye";  and  "the  piston  of  the  steam  engine  worked 
monotonously  up  and  down,  like  the  head  of  an  elephant  in  a  state 
of  melancholy  madness.  It  contained  several  large  streets  all  very  like 
one  another,  inhabited  by  people  exactly  like  one  another,  who  all 
went  in  and  out  at  the  same  hours,  with  the  same  sound  upon  the 
same  pavements  to  do  the  same  work,  and  to  whom  every  day  was 
the  same  as  yesterday  and  tomorrow,  and  every  year  the  counterpart 
of  the  last  and  the  next." 

New  York  City,  of  all  the  great  communities  in  the  modern  world, 
has  been  most  acted  upon  by  the  agencies  incident  to  the  19th  century 
revolution  in  industry  and  techniques,  most  subject  to  the  devastating 
consequences  of  19th  century  laissez  faire  and  the  tensions  of  exces- 
sively rapid  growth,  most  influenced  by  the  multiplication  and  hyper- 
trophy of  functions,  most  compromised  by  a  street  plan  which  united 
some  of  the  inconvenient  features  of  the  rigidly  classical  and  the 
narrowly  utilitarian,  most  unstable  in  the  number  and  distribution 
of  its  population,  most  opportunistic  in  land  uses,  most  anarchic  in  the 
character  of  its  building,  and  most  dynamic  in  the  pulse  and  variety 
of  its  living  ways. 

In  a  history  of  some  330  years,  of  which  hardly  more  than  a  century 
has  been  taken  up  with  major  growth,  New  York  has  somehow  con- 
densed and  accommodated  the  stresses  of  20  centuries  in  the  evolution 
of  Rome  or  Paris.  Such  drastic  foreshortening  exacted  a  price  and 
developed  an  opportunity.  The  price  was  paid  and  is  being  paid  in  the 
primary  conception  of  the  city  as  merely  an  accumulation:  the  largest 
size,  the  greatest  number  (even  of  units  of  quality),  and  the  highest 
speed.  It  was  paid  in  the  ruthlessness — and  the  complementary  melior- 
ism that  all  this  would  somehow  right  itself — of  what  may  be  called 
the  utilitarian  imperative,  which  cut  of?  waterside  areas  from  public 
use,  gobbled  up  available  park  sites,  covered  blocks  with  sunless  tene- 
ments and  no  less  sunless  apartment  houses,  made  night  and  day 
indistinguishable  under  the  overhanging  scarps  of  lower  Manhattan, 
fostered  duplication  and  peculation  and  high  taxes  in  municipal  gov- 
ernment, and   centered   a  terrific  volume  of  traffic  in   a   few  sectors 


VINCENT  McHUGH  135 

already  overburdened  by  subway  and  elevated  concentration,  the  lack 
o£  through  highways  and  the  density  of  building. 

These  became  commonplaces,  even  rules  of  thumb.  At  a  certain 
point,  the  practical  effect  was  that  a  man  could  not  go  to  the  theater 
or  visit  a  friend  without  a  wholly  disproportionate  expenditure  of  time, 
energy,  ingenuity  and  money.  But  in  the  deepest  sense — the  sense,  that 
is,  in  which  these  processes  were  at  once  an  expression  and  reflection 
of  the  New  Yorker's  cultural  attitude  toward  his  city — such  factors 
tended  to  become  psychological  vested  interests.  The  healthy  dynamism 
of  a  developing  metropolis  was  perpetuated  as  neurotic  action  for  its 
own  sake.  The  original  necessity  of  enduring  noise,  dirt,  conflict,  con- 
fusion as  symptoms  of  a  transitional  phase  developed  into  a  taste  for 
the  mindless  intoxicant  of  sensation.  Tall  buildings  convenient  for 
intracommunication  in  such  activities  as  finance  became  tall  buildings 
for  the  sake  of  mere  height  and  vainglory.  In  fine,  the  psychology  of 
swift  growth — its  quick  sense  of  the  expedient,  its  prompt  resource,  its 
urgent  energy,  its  prodigality  in  human  waste,  its  impatience  with 
deeper  interrelationships  and  effects,  by-products  or  details — was  car- 
ried over  and  intensified  in  a  period  which  demanded  consolidation, 
an  assay  of  cultural  attitudes  and  values,  planning,  a  new  concept  of 
the  city. 

By  1938  the  signs  of  this  new  attitude  were  already  sharply  manifest. 
Long  before  that,  in  1931,  Thomas  Adams  could  write:  "There  is 
no  city  in  the  world  that  has  a  greater  influence  than  New  York.  .  .  . 
All  over  this  continent  it  is  imitated,  even  where  it  is  said  to  be  feared. 
Men  say  New  York  is  a  warning  rather  than  an  example,  and  then 
proceed  to  make  it  an  example.  Outside  America,  New  York  is  Amer- 
ica, and  its  skyscraper  a  symbol  of  the  spirit  of  America.  It  is  not  only 
the  largest  city  in  the  world,  it  is  the  greatest  and  most  powerful  city 
that  is  not  a  capital  of  a  nation."  There  were  jeremiads  and  panegyrics; 
this  was  a  temperate  statement  of  the  fact. 

All  through  the  1920's,  New  York  had  been  not  only  the  symbol  of 
America  but  the  daemonic  symbol  of  the  modern — the  fortunate  giant 
in  his  youth,  the  world  city  whose  past  weighed  least  heavily  upon 
its  future.  Had  not  Paul  Morand  testified  that  the  latest  skyscraper 
was  always  the  best?  It  was  a  city  infallible  in  finance,  torrential  in 


136  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

pace,  unlimited  in  resource,  hard  as  infrangible  diamonds,  forever 
leaping  upon  the  moment  beyond.  "You  can  get  away  with  anything," 
said  Ellen  Thatcher  in  John  Dos  Passos'  Manhattan  Transfer,  "if  you 
do  it  quick  enough."  Speed — with  its  dividend,  sensation — became  the 
master  formula  in  every  human  activity  and  technique:  Wall  Street, 
dancing,  crime,  the  theater,  construction,  even  death.  "Don't  get  much 
time  to  sleep,"  said  a  Broadway  soda  clerk.  "I  have  to  sleep  so  fast 
I'm  all  tired  out  when  I  get  up  in  the  morning."  This  was  rueful 
Eddington,  the  telescoping  of  time  and  space — a  cliche  of  the  period — 
in  terms  of  the  wear  and  tear  on  human  metabolism.  Photographers, 
draughtsmen,  commentators  all  attempted  to  catch  this  loud  moment 
or  to  translate  it  in  terms  of  indefinite  extension.  An  aseptic  skyscraper 
city,  an  immense  machine  for  living,  was  projected  by  such  draughts- 
men and  writers  as  Hugh  Ferriss,  Sheldon  Cheney,  Raymond  Hood 
and  Norman  Bel  Geddes  (of  whom  an  anonymous  satirist  remarked  in 
1937  that  he  suffered  from  "an  edifice  complex"). 

In  this  period  too  New  York  had  broken  out  full  sail  as  the  American 
capital  of  the  arts  and  a  world  capital  of  major  importance.  This  was 
in  itself  an  extraordinary  phenomenon.  Other  large,  recently  colonial 
cities — Melbourne,  Rio  de  Janeiro,  Toronto,  even  Mexico  City — had 
shown  no  such  versatile  and  autochthonous  upsurge.  It  could  be  ex- 
plained only  in  part  by  a  reference  to  great  concentration  of  wealth 
and  commerce — as  usual,  a  concentration  in  which  artists  had  little 
share  and  against  which,  for  the  most  part,  they  swung  the  shoulder 
of  revolt.  This  cultural  definition  came  out  of  the  native  genius  of  the 
city  itself  and  was  inseparably  collateral  with  it.  To  a  remarkable 
degree,  the  formulation  and  interpretation  of  that  genius  became  the 
first  task  of  the  artist  in  New  York. 

Historians  of  another  age  may  find  the  cultural  rivalries  of  the 
Eastern  seaboard  cities  in  the  middle  of  the  19th  century  as  fruitful  a 
source  of  social  interpretation  as  their  contests  in  trade.  Philadelphia 
had  receded,  Charleston  and  Baltimore  settled  into  their  graceful  mold. 
But  Boston,  as  Van  Wyck  Brooks  has  superbly  recreated  it  in  The 
Flowering  of  New  England,  produced  a  culture  articulated  in  all  its 
parts.  It  is  necessary  to  indicate  more  closely  here  the  relative  scale  of 
that  culture.  Its  perfect  symbol,  perhaps,  was  the  figure  of  Hawthorne 


VINCENT  McHUGH  137 

confronting  the  Marble  Faun.  Its  faithfulness  to  a  special  Anglo- 
American  tradition  at  once  defined  its  limits  and  committed  it  to 
contest  with  the  assimilative  turbulence  of  its  more  democratic  neigh- 
bor to  the  southward.  Even  in  Emerson,  perhaps,  there  was  something 
of  the  merely  benign  clergyman ;  even  in  Thoreau,  a  little  of  the  truant 
schoolboy  decorating  his  metaphorical  hut  at  Walden  with  the  knick- 
knacks  of  Athens  and  Rome.  And  even  in  Emily  Dickinson's  triumph 
of  the  microcosmic,  it  was  possible  to  feel  the  sedate  child  who  with- 
draws from  the  world  to  thread  in  quietude  the  quicksilver  necklaces 
of  the  imagination.  The  neat  coherence  of  parts,  the  good  scholars 
competing  for  the  prizes  of  the  intelligence,  the  inflexibility  of  ethical 
referents,  the  absence  of  that  excess  which  is  also  the  evidence  of 
supreme  vitality,  the  frugality  and  unanimity  of  pattern — all  these  were 
the  sedate  lamplight  of  a  provincial  culture,  a  culture  comparable  to 
that  of  Ghent  in  the  late  14th  century  or  18th  century  Dublin  and 
Stockholm. 

But  there  were  giants  to  the  southward — men  who  had  consorted 
with  the  buffalo  and  leviathan,  who  were  privy  to  enormous  griefs 
and  ecstasies,  who  had  faced  the  tremendous  gales  of  the  world  in 
their  most  disintegrative  onslaught.  These  men — Whitman  and  Mel- 
ville— were  of  another  breed,  another  stature;  and  they  proclaimed 
themselves  men  of  Manhattan.  They  came  of  the  same  Dutch-English 
stock,  bred  by  that  Empire  State  through  which  the  commerce  of  the 
nation  had  begun  to  pour.  Moby  Dic\  appeared  in  1851,  heaves  of 
Grass  in  1855.  Both  books  were  shunned  or  excoriated.  Then  and  later, 
the  culture  of  New  York  resembled  the  tumultuous  cross-rips  of  Hell 
Gate.  Museums,  opera,  the  theater,  libraries,  lecture  halls,  schools,  the 
superb  education  of  street  and  waterfront :  these  were  lavishly  available, 
and  Whitman  in  particular  made  good  use  of  them.  But  the  dominant 
tenor  of  the  city  was  savage  in  its  commercial  excesses,  ravenous  in 
land  use  (though  the  salvaging  of  Central  Park  began  a  few  years 
before  the  Civil  War)  and  brutal  in  its  disregard  for  health,  amenities, 
the  elementary  kindness  of  life.  The  deeper  significance  of  such  per- 
sonalities as  Whitman  and  Melville  is  that  they  were  archetypes  of  the 
city's  character-to-be.  Their  decisive  feeling  for  the  supreme  importance, 
the  frequent  nobility  of  the  common  man,  their  immersion  by  choice 


138  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

in  his  hopes  and  occupations — these  were  as  foreign  to  the  men  of 
Boston,  with  their  uneasy  self-awareness  in  the  role  of  scholar-gentle- 
men, as  they  would  have  been  to  that  earlier  New  Yorker,  the  James 
Fenimore  Cooper  who  wrote  The  American  Democrat. 

"He  who  touches  the  soil  of  Manhattan  and  the  pavement  of  New 
York,"  said  Lewis  Mumford,  "touches,  whether  he  knows  it  or  not, 
Walt  Whitman."  Certainly  it  was  Whitman  who  conceived  the  city 
as  an  image  of  the  democratic  process — an  historic  reversal,  it  may  be 
noted,  of  Thomas  Jefferson's  primary  design.  The  city  spoke  out  of 
Whitman's  fiber:  out  of  the  broadest  and  most  intimate  lines  of  A 
Broadway  Pageant  and  Crossing  Brooklyn  Bridge,  out  of 

Walt  Whitman,  a  kosmos,  of  Manhattan  the  son, 
Turbulent,  fleshy,  sensual,  eating,  drinking 
and  breeding, 

or  out  of 

.  .  .  submit  to  no  models 

but  your  own  O  city! 

But  in  Democratic  Vistas  he  faced  all  the  implications  of  his  image: 
splendor  in  the  amplitude  and  onrush,  "the  sparkling  sea-tides"  and 
"masses  of  gay  color"  which  were  New  York,  but  confession  that  to 
the  cold  eye  appeared  "pervading  flippancy  and  vulgarity,  low  cunning, 
infidelity"  and  the  rest,  even  to  a  degree  beyond  the  average  of  man- 
kind. But  there  were  poets  to  be  called  up,  poets  to  make  "a  literature 
underlying  life";  to  fertilize  it,  to  create  again  and  again  the  corrective 
vision  of  the  city  in  an  order  more  nobly  human  than  itself.  Whitman 
said  it  and  said  it  plain: 

A  great  city  is  that  which  has  the  greatest  men  and  women. 

Did  he  not  help  to  make  good  his  own  words? 

But  in  its  essence,  Whitman's  concept  of  New  York  as  a  symbol  of 
the  democratic  maelstrom  was  a  neo-romantic  one.  It  rejoiced  in  the 


VINCENT  McHUGH  139 

splendor  of  the  fact,  hewed  close  to  it,  made  it  Homeric.  But  was  it 
not,  even  in  that  society  of  transitional  latitude,  precisely  a  begging 
of  the  question  as  to  what  means  were  to  be  applied  to  the  creation  of 
what  forms  for  what  ends — ends,  that  is,  which  might  be  translated 
concretely  from  the  abstract  liberty,  equality,  fraternity,  plenty?  Af- 
firmation of  greatness  to  nurture  greatness,  exultation  in  diversity  for 
the  use  and  promise  of  diversity,  acceptance  of  barbarous  poverty  and 
wrong  in  the  name  of  a  more  humane  future,  faith  in  the  destiny  of 
the  free  man  intermingling  freely  with  his  fellows:  these  demanded 
a  confident  and  practical  vision  of  the  city  as  a  whole — a  vision  broader 
than  Campanella's,  as  instrumental  as  the  machine  lathe — formulated 
and  canalized  in  terms  of  New  York's  own  native  function  and  genius. 

On  the  contrary,  Whitman's  noble  disorder,  with  its  hospitality  to 
everything  human,  tended  to  emphasize  precisely  those  impulses  to- 
ward unoriented  mass,  energy,  diversity  which  came  to  their  anarchic 
ultimate  at  the  end  of  the  1920's.  It  was  Whitman's  dynamic,  with  its 
dramatization  of  the  common  impulse,  that  prevailed  in  the  evolving 
folkways  of  New  York.  Even  in  1937,  the  city  was  most  often  presented 
in  terms  of  speed,  energy,  quantity  rather  than  as  a  correlative  for 
human  use  and  aspiration.  Nor  is  it  enough  to  point  out,  as  Marie 
Swabey  does  in  Theory  of  the  Democratic  State,  that  the  natural  cri- 
teria of  democracy  are  predominantly  quantitative.  The  confusion 
inheres  in  the  fact  that  big  numbers  have  so  often  been  used  as  if  they 
were  equivalent  to  definitions  of  quality — as  if  a  tremendous  number 
of  housing  units,  even  slum  dwellings,  somehow  indicated  a  corre- 
sponding total  of  human  happiness. 

Side  by  side  with  the  most  devouring  greed,  it  has  almost  always 
been  possible  to  find  a  superb  generosity  of  life  in  New  York — even, 
in  the  late  i93o's,  signs  of  a  nascent  change  of  heart.  If  the  vainglory 
of  power  began  to  give  way  a  little  to  the  order  of  a  genuine  and 
mature  society,  there  were  men  to  be  thanked  for  it — too  many  names 
for  this  place.  These  were  the  men  who  created  and  recreated  values; 
who  translated  those  values,  under  one  form  or  another,  into  instru- 
ments of  civic  welfare;  and  who  implemented  the  common  aspiration. 
Together  with  that  aspiration,  the  sum  of  their  vision  and  accomplish- 
ments determined  the  living  concept  of  New  York:  that  basic  unity, 


140  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

that  prerequisite  and  final  virtue  of  persons,  which  must  be  vital  to 
the  coherence  of  any  human  organization. 

There  were  engineers — the  Roeblings  of  Brooklyn  Bridge,  Clifford 
M.  Holland  of  the  Holland  Tunnel,  Nelson  P.  Lewis  of  the  Board  of 
Estimate  and  Apportionment,  Singstad  and  Amman  of  the  Port 
Authority — whose  probity  blossomed  in  highways  and  tunnels,  or  in 
the  piers  and  cables  of  a  bridge:  such  a  bridge  as  Hart  Crane  had 
envisaged,  a  figure  of  the  flight  of  time  and  the  passage  of  mankind 
across  the  gulf.  Stubborn  bands  and  lone  fighters — John  Peter  Zenger 
of  the  New  York  Weekly  Journal,  whose  trial  in  1735  vindicated  free 
expression  in  the  press;  Nast  and  Parkhurst  and  the  Lexow  Commit- 
tee; Seabury  and  the  City  Affairs  Committee  of  the  1920's — these  and 
a  hundred  others  struck  for  the  integrity  of  a  free  commonwealth. 
Scientists  and  research  technicians,  who  worked  with  sludge  digestion 
tanks  and  chlorination  and  polyphase  alternators,  created  a  fresh  en- 
vironment available  to  the  social  imagination  of  an  ampler  culture. 
A  John  Dewey  reground  the  tools  of  the  mind;  a  Thorstein  Veblen 
challenged  the  directions  of  American  civilization,  especially  those 
directions  which  New  York  had  long  controlled. 

"A  very  little  boy  stood  upon  a  heap  of  gravel  for  the  honor  of 
Rum  Alley"  in  Stephen  Crane's  exact  nightmare  of  the  slum;  John 
Dos  Passos'  Ellen  Thatcher  murmured:  "I  think  that  this  city  is  full  of 
people  wanting  inconceivable  things";  and  Thomas  Wolfe's  Eugene 
Gant  cried:  "Proud,  cruel,  everchanging  and  ephemeral  city,  to  whom 
we  came  once  when  our  hearts  were  high  .  .  ."  These  were  novelists 
answerable  to  the  truth  of  the  living.  There  were  men  who  created 
vivid  museums,  set  up  liberal  schools,  fought  to  establish  capable 
hospitals.  Even  politicians  who  hoped  for  nothing  but  their  own 
advantage  sometimes  inadvertently  contributed  to  the  civic  total,  as 
Tweed  did  in  setting  out  the  pleasant  boulevard  along  Broadway 
north  of  Sixty-Fifth  Street,  later  routed  by  the  subway. 

Painters  and  photographers — Albert  Ryder  and  Thomas  Eakins,  the 
ancestors;  Stieglitz  and  Paul  Strand  and  Berenice  Abbott;  the  genre 
work  of  Sloan,  Glenn  Coleman,  Reginald  Marsh,  Lavvson,  Glackens, 
Kenneth  Hayes  Miller;  John  Marin's  vision  of  the  skyscrapers  in  a 
vibrating  rondure  of  forms;  Demuth's  My  Egypt  and  Billings'  and 


VINCENT  McHUGH  141 

Sheeler's  stylization  of  industrial  masses — these  and  others  literally 
created  the  human  face  of  the  city  for  the  endowment  of  its  citizens. 
The  work  of  Hardenbergh  and  R.  M.  Hunt,  among  the  older  men, 
and  of  McKim  and  Stanford  White  in  the  1890's;  Goodhue's  churches 
and  Snyder's  neo-Gothic  schools;  the  loft  buildings  of  Ely  Jacques 
Kahn;  the  skyscraper  designs  of  Harvey  Wiley  Corbett  and  Raymond 
Hood;  the  model  apartment  groups  laid  out  by  Clarence  Stein  and 
Henry  Wright,  which  helped  to  anticipate  the  Federal  Government's 
plans  for  housing  developments  in  the  1930's:  these  were  among  the 
factors  that  made  New  York  architecture  the  most  exciting  and 
various,  if  not  always  the  soundest,  in  the  world.  Too,  Whitman  had 
his  poets — not  often  prophets,  but  men  and  women  who  struck  a  dark 
accusatory  music  from  the  city's  agonism:  Edna  St.  Vincent  Millay, 
Hart  Crane,  Louise  Bogan,  Archibald  MacLeish,  Horace  Gregory. 

Forecast  by  such  lively  wine  salesmen  of  the  arts  as  James  Huneker, 
a  more  thorough  school  of  cultural  commentators  whose  origins  were 
mainly  literary  set  out  in  the  early  logo's  to  reexamine  the  pattern  of 
New  York  as  a  prefiguration  of  the  new  America.  Randolph  Bourne's 
voice,  and  such  books  as  Harold  Stearns'  Civilization  in  the  United 
States,  Waldo  Frank's  Our  America,  Paul  Rosenfeld's  Port  of  New 
Yor\,  Van  Wyck  Brooks'  Americas  Coming  of  Age  and  William 
Carlos  Williams'  In  the  American  Grain  managed  to  make  themselves 
heard  above  the  noise  of  traffic.  Lewis  Mumford's  broad  and  precise 
imagination,  the  warmth  and  vitality  of  his  interpenetrating  sense  of 
the  whole  distinguished  half  a  dozen  volumes  that  culminated  in  the 
definitive  Technics  and  Civilization  and  The  Culture  of  Cities.  There 
were,  finally,  the  innumerable  common  heroes  in  the  patient  and 
immense  body  of  the  city:  the  workers  in  laboratories  and  hospitals 
who  died  of  X-ray  burns  or  a  finger  pricked  at  an  autopsy;  the  riveter 
tumbled  from  his  hawk's  perch,  falling  voiceless  and  alone;  orange- 
helmeted  sandhogs  coughing  with  silicosis  or  twisted  with  the  bends; 
and  the  men  who  could  work  no  more,  the  unremembered  ones 
Stephen  Crane  found  in  the  city's  scratch  houses  in  An  Experiment  in 
Misery,  whose  successors  were  still  there  when  Joseph  Mitchell  pub- 
lished his  sketch,  A  Cold  Night  Downtown,  in  1938. 

Together  these  engineers  and  artists  and  milk-wagon  drivers  forged 


142  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

a  concept  of  the  city,  a  unity  for  the  city,  out  of  the  collective  character 
and  history  of  its  inhabitants,  just  as  the  individuality  of  Paris  was 
defined  by  Villon's  reckless  verses,  the  gardens  of  Marie  Antoinette, 
Julian  the  Apostate's  addresses  to  "my  dear  Lutetia,"  Victor  Hugo,  the 
engineer  Eiffel,  Marie  Curie's  dedication  and  Jules  Romains'  great 
antiphonal  hymn.  This  unity,  in  fact,  is  at  the  root  of  the  caricature 
visualized  by  outsiders  as  "a  real  New  Yorker" — a  certain  large  and 
shrewd  liberality  of  thought  and  behavior,  easy  wit,  compulsive  energy, 
a  liking  for  risk  and  the  new,  curiosity,  restlessness. 
|  There  are  those  who  consider  that  it  is  impossible  to  find  any  unity 
in  the  chaotic  pattern  of  New  York;  or  that,  romantically  enough, 
the  emergence  of  unity  would  cancel  its  major  charm.  But  the  uneco- 
nomic and  anti-social  nature  of  many  of  the  city's  living  ways  demands 
a  clear  reorientation.  The  potential  unity  necessary  to  such  reorienta- 
tion already  exists  in  the  New  Yorker's  own  concept  of  his  city.  In  this 
shared  consciousness — generated  by  a  look,  a  grin,  an  anecdote  as 
cabalistic  to  outsiders  as  the  shop  talk  of  mathematicians — the  complex 
of  the  metropolis  finds  its  organizing  principle,  deeper  than  civic  pride 
and  more  basic  than  the  domination  of  mass  or  power.  To  the  degree 
that  this  principle,  this  wise  geolatry,  can  be  instrumented  by  the 
forms  and  processes  appropriate  to  it,  New  York  will  emerge  in  great- 
ness from  the  paradox  of  its  confusion. 


JOHN   DOS   PASSOS 


COMMENTARY 


What  the  French  are  at  this  writing  no  one,  perhaps  least  of  all  the 
French,  knows.  They  used  to  he  a  race  who  carefully  and  profitably 
cultivated  a  reputation  for  frivolity  and  were  at  bottom  extremely 
grave.  They  had  a  commercial  phrase  that  was  illuminating:  maison 
serieuse.  A  maison  serieuse  means  one  that  is  solidly  established  and 
keeps  its  responsibilities  constantly  in  mind.  We  would  say  "it  really 
means  business." 

In  this  sense  there  are  certain  writers,  not  necessarily  the  best,  who 
are  serieux.  Others,  often  talented,  are  not.  Miss  Margaret  Mitchell, 
for  example,  is  not  serious.  (This  does  not  mean  that  she  is  frivolous.) 
If  we  were  to  list  the  truly  serious  American  novelists,  John  Dos 
Passos  would  be  near  the  top.  He  is  not,  for  me,  a  great  writer  or 
even  a  brilliant  one.  But  he  means  business.  He  is  less  interested  in 
striking  attitudes,  however  memorable,  of  his  own  than  in  noting  the 
far  more  memorable  attitudes  of  whole  classes  and  generations.  He  is 
not,  like  that  gloomy  Robinson  Crusoe,  William  Faulkner,  marooned 
on  the  island  of  his  own  sensibility.  When  he  grasps  American  life 
it  is  always  at  the  center.  He  works  with  cross  sections,  but  the  cross 
sections  are  of  maximum  density.  When  he  fails,  as  he  does  on  occa- 
sion, it  is  still  with  major  material.  If  you  lean  to  the  exquisite  and 
prefer  small  things  done  perfectly,  Dos  Passos  is  not  your  man,  nor 
are  you  his. 

His  solidest  work  to  date  consists  of  the  trilogy  U.S.  A.,  composed 
of  The  42nd  Parallel,  Nineteen  Nineteen,  and  The  Big  Money.  This 
triptych  attempts  to  do  on  a  relatively  small  scale  what  Jules  Romains 
does  on  a  larger  one.  Romains  gives  you  France  from  1908  to — well, 
name  your  own  date.  Dos  Passos  traces  the  crosscurrents  of  American 
life  in  the  post-First  World  War  years. 

To  do  this  at  all  intelligently  requires  the  invention  of  some  kind 
of  shorthand,  otherwise  the  material  would  overwhelm  one.  Dos 
Passos  works  out  four  sets  of  symbols.  The  first  and  most  conventional 

143 


144  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

consists  of  the  biographies  oi  a  few  crucially  representative  imagina- 
tive Americans.  The  second  is  the  life  histories  of  a  few  equally  rep- 
resentative actual  ones.  The  third  is  the  Newsreel,  made  up  of  scraps 
of  popular  songs,  newspaper  headlines,  advertisements,  speeches — 
a  recall  device  to  bring  back  the  time  from  your  unconscious  memory, 
a  kind  of  mood  music,  as  the  Hollywood  composer  would  call  it.  The 
fourth  symbol  is  the  Camera  Eye,  consisting  of  lyric  flashbacks  which 
derive  from  the  author's  own  experience.  By  manipulating,  inter- 
twining, and  counterpointing  this  quartet  of  devices  Dos  Passos  estab- 
lishes a  hundred  and  one  lines  of  relation  and  so  maps  the  general 
pattern  of  the  life  of  the  era. 

The  Camera  Eye  is  pretty  arty  at  its  worst,  the  Newsreel  has  its 
tedious  moments,  the  fictional  biographies  are  sound,  interesting,  and 
packed  with  meaning.  Yet  for  me  the  straightaway  narratives  of  the 
careers  of  real  Americans  show  Dos  Passos  at  his  best.  Read  casually, 
they  do  not  seem  extraordinary,  merely  clean,  journalistic,  biograph- 
ical rewrites.  But  analyze  them  carefully  and,  best  of  all,  read  them 
aloud,  and  you  will  see  how  powerful  they  can  be. 

In  the  Erst  place  they  have  rhythm.  It  is  not  mere  typographical 
whimsicality  that  makes  Dos  Passos  break  up  his  long  sentences  and 
paragraph  clauses  as  he  does. 

In  the  second  place,  they  have  meaning.  Each  man  is  cunningly 
chosen  for  a  speciEc  purpose,  to  bear  a  dense  weight  of  social  interpre- 
tation. For  example,  in  The  Big  Money,  dealing  with  the  "boom 
decade,"  Dos  Passos  tells  the  life  stories  of  ten  Americans.  Four  of 
them— Frederick  Winslow  Taylor,  Henry  Ford,  and  the  Wright 
brothers— provided  the  technical  framework  of  ideas  and  inventions 
that  made  possible  the  lunatic  industrial  expansion  of  the  decade. 
Two—Samuel  Insull  and  William  Randolph  Hea-rst— represent  the 
kind  of  success  the  decade  most  valued.  The  arts  yield  a  shrewdly 
selected  trio:  Rudolph  Valentino,  whose  own  life  was  not  of  great 
importance,  but  who,  by  the  adoration  in  which  he  was  held,  revealed 
as  in  a  mirror  the  emotional  anemia  of  the  lives  of  millions  of  others; 
Isadora  Duncan,  the  bohemian  rebel;  and  the  architect,  Frank  Lloyd 
Wright,  the  real  rebel  who  had  all  to  give  but  few  takers.  The  final 
exhibit  is  Thorstein  Veblen,  who  understood  the  whole  "big  money" 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  145 

period  in  terms  of  its  basic  economic  weaknesses.  I  submit  that  when 
you  have  studied  carefully  Dos  Passos'  account  of  the  lives  of  these 
ten  men  and  women,  you  already  know  a  good  deal  about  the  spir- 
itual contour  of  the  twenties. 

But  these  narratives  do  more  than  convey  significant  information. 
They  do  more  than  put  across,  often  with  subtle  irony,  a  moral  judg- 
ment. They  are  more  than  swift,  direct  pieces  of  American  prose, 
making  unobtrusive  use  of  our  vernacular  rhythms  and  folk  sayings. 
They  are— and  that  is  why  I  have  included  three  of  them  in  this 
book— first-rate  versions  of  great  American  legends.  For  our  legendary 
literature  no  longer  consists  of  sweet  little  stories  about  Hiawatha. 
It  does  not  even  consist  primarily  of  folk  tales  on  the  Paul  Bunyan 
order.  The  point  is  that,  owing  to  the  outsize,  fabulous  character  of 
our  history,  there  is  more  mythic  poetry  in  the  true  stories  of  cer- 
tain Americans  than  there  is  in  all  of  our  fantastic  fables. 

Henry  Ford,  the  Wright  brothers,  Wilson  are  not  only  interesting 
and  important  men.  They  are  representative  figures,  almost  as  Pro- 
metheus is  representative.  They  are  not  only  part  of  American  history 
but  part  of  the  American  imagination.  They  are,  whether  you  admire 
them  or  not,  Heroes.  It  is  this  which  comes  through  to  us  in  Dos 
Passos'  sharp,  economical  narrative.  These  stories  have  been  told  a 
hundred  times  in  a  hundred  ways,  and  they  will  be  told  again,  when 
you  and  I  are  forgotten  and  Dos  Passos  may  be.  But  for  our  time, 
for  the  particular  level  of  historic  self-consciousness  that  we  have 
reached,  Dos  Passos  tells  the  stories  in  what  seems  to  me  a  classic 
form.  He  does  this  quite  without  romanticizing  his  subjects.  He  cre- 
ates his  Heroes  without  any  admixture  of  Hero  worship.  But  he  is 
all  the  more  truly  American  for  his  cool,  man-to-man  democratic 
treatment. 

At  times  even  his  unbluffable  eye  kindles  at  the  sight  of  something 
truly  noble,  and  his  direct  lines  of  prose  unconsciously  change  char- 
acter, and  swell  with  emotion,  and  we  get  a  passage  like  the  moving 
conclusion  to  "The  Campers  at  Kitty  Hawk." 


Tin  Lizzie 

FROM    "U.S.A."    BY 

JOHN  DOS  PASSOS 


"Mr.  Ford  the  automobileer,"  the  featurewriter  wrote  in  1900, 

"Mr.  Ford  the  automobileer  began  by  giving  his  steed  three  or  four 
sharp  jerks  with  the  lever  at  the  righthand  side  of  the  seat;  that  is,  he 
pulled  the  lever  up  and  down  sharply  in  order,  as  he  said,  to  mix  air 
with  gasoline  and  drive  the  charge  into  the  exploding  cylinder.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Ford  slipped  a  small  electric  switch  handle  and  there  followed  a 
puff,  puff,  puff.  .  .  .  The  puffing  of  the  machine  assumed  a  higher  \ey. 
She  was  flying  along  about  eight  miles  an  hour.  The  ruts  in  the  road 
were  deep,  but  the  machine  certainly  went  with  a  dreamli\e  smooth- 
ness. There  was  none  of  the  bumping  common  even  to  a  streetcar.  .  .  . 
By  this  time  the  boulevard  had  been  reached,  and  the  automobileer , 
letting  a  lever  fall  a  little,  let  her  out.  Whiz!  She  picked  up  speed  with 
infinite  rapidity.  As  she  ran  on  there  was  a  clattering  behind,  the  new 
noise  of  the  automobile." 

For  twenty  years  or  more, 

ever  since  he'd  left  his  father's  farm  when  he  was  sixteen  to  get  a  job. 
in  a  Detroit  machineshop,  Henry  Ford  had  been  nuts  about  machin- 
ery. First  it  was  watches,  then  he  designed  a  steamtractor,  then  he  built 
a  horseless  carriage  with  an  engine  adapted  from  the  Otto  gasengine 
he'd  read  about  in  The  World  of  Science,  then  a  mechanical  buggy 
with  a  onecylinder  fourcycle  motor,  that  would  run  forward  but  not 
back; 

at  last,  in  ninetyeight,  he  felt  he  was  far  enough  along  to  risk  throw- 
ing up  his  job  with  the  Detroit  Edison  Company,  where  he'd  worked 
his  way  up  from  night  fireman  to  chief  engineer,  to  put  all  his  time 
into  working  on  a  new  gasoline  engine, 

146 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  147 

(in  the  late  eighties  he'd  met  Edison  at  a  meeting  of  electriclight 
employees  in  Atlantic  City.  He'd  gone  up  to  Edison  after  Edison  had 
delivered  an  address  and  asked  him  if  he  thought  gasoline  was  practi- 
cal as  a  motor  fuel.  Edison  had  said  yes.  If  Edison  said  it,  it  was  true. 
Edison  was  the  great  admiration  of  Henry  Ford's  life) ; 

and  in  driving  his  mechanical  buggy,  sitting  there  at  the  lever  jaun- 
tily dressed  in  a  tightbuttoned  jacket  and  a  high  collar  and  a  derby  hat, 
back  and  forth  over  the  level  illpaved  streets  of  Detroit, 

scaring  the  big  brewery  horses  and  the  skinny  trotting  horses  and 
the  sleekrumped  pacers  with  the  motor's  loud  explosions, 

looking  for  men  scatterbrained  enough  to  invest  money  in  a  factory 
for  building  automobiles. 

He  was  the  eldest  son  of  an  Irish  immigrant  who  during  the  Civil 
War  had  married  the  daughter  of  a  prosperous  Pennsylvania  Dutch 
farmer  and  settled  down  to  farming  near  Dearborn  in  Wayne  County, 
Michigan; 

like  plenty  of  other  Americans,  young  Henry  grew  up  hating  the 
endless  sogging  through  the  mud  about  the  chores,  the  hauling  and 
pitching  manure,  the  kerosene  lamps  to  clean,  the  irk  and  sweat  and 
solitude  of  the  farm. 

He  was  a  slender,  active  youngster,  a  good  skater,  clever  with  his 
hands;  what  he  liked  was  to  tend  the  machinery  and  let  the  others  do 
the  heavy  work.  His  mother  had  told  him  not  to  drink,  smoke,  gam- 
ble or  go  into  debt,  and  he  never  did. 

When  he  was  in  his  early  twenties  his  father  tried  to  get  him  back 
from  Detroit,  where  he  was  working  as  mechanic  and  repairman  for 
the  Drydock  Engine  Company  that  built  engines  for  steamboats,  by 
giving  him  forty  acres  of  land. 

Young  Henry  built  himself  an  uptodate  square  white  dwellinghouse 
with  a  false  mansard  roof  and  married  and  settled  down  on  the  farm, 

but  he  let  the  hired  men  do  the  farming; 

he  bought  himself  a  buzzsaw  and  remed  a  stationary  engine  and  cut 
the  timber  off  the  woodlots. 

He  was  a  thrifty  young  man  who  never  drank  or  smoked  or  gam- 


148  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

bled  or  coveted  his  neighbor's  wife,  but  he  couldn't  stand  living  on 
the  farm. 

He  moved  to  Detroit,  and  in  the  brick  barn  behind  his  house  tink- 
ered for  years  in  his  spare  time  with  a  mechanical  buggy  that  would 
be  light  enough  to  run  over  the  clayey  wagonroads  of  Wayne  County, 
Michigan. 

By  1900  he  had  a  practicable  car  to  promote. 

He  was  forty  years  old  before  the  Ford  Motor  Company  was  started 
and  production  began  to  move. 

Speed  was  the  first  thing  the  early  automobile  manufacturers  went 
after.  Races  advertised  the  makes  of  cars. 

Henry  Ford  himself  hung  up  several  records  at  the  track  at  Grosse 
Pointe  and  on  the  ice  on  Lake  St.  Clair.  In  his  999  he  did  the  mile 
in  thirtynine  and  fourfifths  seconds. 

But  it  had  always  been  his  custom  to  hire  others  to  do  the  heavy 
work.  The  speed  he  was  busy  with  was  speed  in  production,  the  rec- 
ords records  in  efficient  output.  He  hired  Barney  Oldfield,  a  stunt  bi- 
cyclerider  from  Salt  Lake  City,  to  do  the  racing  for  him. 

Henry  Ford  had  ideas  about  other  things  than  the  designing  of 
motors,  carburetors,  magnetos,  jigs  and  fixtures,  punches  and  dies;  he 
had  ideas  about  sales, 

that  the  big  money  was  in  economical  quantity  production,  quick 
turnover,  cheap  interchangeable  easilyreplaced  standardized  parts; 

it  wasn't  until  1909,  after  years  of  arguing  with  his  partners,  that 
Ford  put  out  the  first  Model  T. 

Henry  Ford  was  right. 

That  season  he  sold  more  than  ten  thousand  tin  lizzies,  ten  years 
later  he  was  selling  almost  a  million  a  year. 

In  these  years  the  Taylor  Plan  was  stirring  up  plantmanagers  "and 
manufacturers  all  over  the  country.  Efficiency  was  the  word.  The  same 
ingenuity  that  went  into  improving  the  performance  of  a  machine 
could  go  into  improving  the  performance  of  the  workmen  producing 
the  machine. 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  149 

In  1913  they  established  the  assemblyline  at  Ford's.  That  season  the 
profits  were  something  like  twentyfive  million  dollars,  but  they  had 
trouble  in  keeping  the  men  on  the  job,  machinists  didn't  seem  to  like 
it  at  Ford's. 

Henry  Ford  had  ideas  about  other  things  than  production. 

He  was  the  largest  automobile  manufacturer  in  the  world;  he  paid 
high  wages;  maybe  if  the  steady  workers  thought  they  were  getting 
a  cut  (a  very  small  cut)  in  the  profits,  it  would  give  trained  men  an 
inducement  to  stick  to  their  jobs, 

wellpaid  workers  might  save  enough  money  to  buy  a  tin  lizzie;  the 
first  day  Ford's  announced  that  cleancut  properlymarried  American 
workers  who  wanted  jobs  had  a  chance  to  make  five  bucks  a  day  (of 
course  it  turned  out  that  there  were  strings  to  it;  always  there  were 
strings  to  it) 

such  an  enormous  crowd  waited  outside  the  Highland  Park  plant 

all  through  the  zero  January  night 

that  there  was  a  riot  when  the  gates  were  opened;  cops  broke  heads, 
jobhunters  threw  bricks;  property,  Henry  Ford's  own  property,  was 
destroyed.  The  company  dicks  had  to  turn  on  the  firehose  to  beat  back 
the  crowd. 

The  American  Plan;  automotive  prosperity  seeping  down  from 
above;  it  turned  out  there  were  strings  to  it. 

But  that  five  dollars  a  day 

paid  to  good,  clean  American  workmen     ^ 

who  didn't  drink  or  smoke  cigarettes  or  read  or  think, 

and  who  didn't  commit  adultery 

and  whose  wives  didn't  take  in  boarders, 

made  America  once  more  the  Yukon  of  the  sweated  workers  of  the 
world; 

made  all  the  tin  lizzies  and  the  automotive  age,  and  incidentally, 

made  Henry  Ford  the  automobileer,  the  admirer  of  Edison,  the 
birdlover, 

the  great  American  of  his  time. 


150  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

But  Henry  Ford  had  ideas  about  other  things  besides  assemblylines 
and  the  livinghabits  of  his  employees.  He  was  full  of  ideas.  Instead  of 
going  to  the  city  to  make  his  fortune,  here  was  a  country  boy  who'd 
made  his  fortune  by  bringing  the  city  out  to  the  farm.  The  precepts 
he'd  learned  out  of  McGuffey's  Reader,  his  mother's  prejudices  and 
preconceptions,  he  had  preserved  clean  and  unworn  as  freshprinted 
bills  in  the  safe  in  a  bank. 

He  wanted  people  to  know  about  his  ideas,  so  he  bought  the  Dear- 
born  Independent  and  started  a  campaign  against  cigarettesmoking. 

When  war  broke  out  in  Europe,  he  had  ideas  about  that  too.  (Sus- 
picion of  armymen  and  soldiering  were  part  of  the  midwest  farm 
tradition,  like  thrift,  stickativeness,  temperance  and  sharp  practice  in 
money  matters.)  Any  intelligent  American  mechanic  could  see  that  if 
the  Europeans  hadn't  been  a  lot  of  ignorant  underpaid  foreigners  who 
drank,  smoked,  were  loose  about  women  and  wasteful  in  their  meth- 
ods of  production,  the  war  could  never  have  happened. 

When  Rosika  Schwimmer  broke  through  the  stockade  of  secretaries 
and  servicemen  who  surrounded  Henry  Ford  and  suggested  to  him 
that  he  could  stop  the  war, 

he  said  sure  they'd  hire  a  ship  and  go  over  and  get  the  boys  out  of 
the  trenches  by  Christmas. 

He  hired  a  steamboat,  the  Oscar  II,  and  filled  it  up  with  pacifists  and 
socialworkers, 

to  go  over  to  explain  to  the  princelings  of  Europe 

that  what  they  were  doing  was  vicious  and  silly. 

It  wasn't  his  fault  that  Poor  Richard's  commonsense  no  longer  rules 
the  world  and  that  most  of  the  pacifists  were  nuts, 

goofy  with  headlines. 

When  William  Jennings  Bryan  went  over  to  Hoboken  to  see  him 
off,  somebody  handed  William  Jennings  Bryan  a  squirrel  in  a  cage; 
William  Jennings  Bryan  made  a  speech  with  the  squirrel  under  his 
arm.  Henry  Ford  threw  American  Beauty  roses  to  the  crowd.  The 
band  played  /  Didn't  Raise  My  Boy  to  Be  a  Soldier.  Practical  jokers 
let  loose  more  squirrels.  An  eloping  couple  was  married  by  a  platoon 


JOHN  DOS   PASSOS  151 

of  ministers  in  the  saloon,  and  Mr.  Zero,  the  flophouse  humanitarian, 
who  reached  the  docks  too  late  to  sail, 

dove  into  the  North  River  and  swam  after  the  boat. 

The  Oscar  II  was  described  as  a  floating  Chautauqua;  Henry  Ford 
said  it  felt  like  a  middlewestern  village,  but  by  the  time  they  reached 
Christiansand  in  Norway,  the  reporters  had  kidded  him  so  that  he  had 
gotten  cold  feet  and  gone  to  bed.  The  world  was  too  crazy  outside  of 
Wayne  County,  Michigan.  Mrs.  Ford  and  the  management  sent  an 
Episcopal  dean  after  him  who  brought  him  home  under  wraps, 

and  the  pacifists  had  to  speechify  without  him. 

Two  years  later  Ford's  was  manufacturing  munitions,  Eagle  boats; 
Henry  Ford  was  planning  oneman  tanks,  and  oneman  submarines 
like  the  one  tried  out  in  the  Revolutionary  War.  He  announced  to  the 
press  that  he'd  turn  over  his  war  profits  to  the  government, 

but  there's  no  record  that  he  ever  did. 

One  thing  he  brought  back  from  his  trip 

was  the  Protocols  of  the  Elders  of  Zion. 

He  started  a  campaign  to  enlighten  the  world  in  the  Dearborn  In- 
dependent; the  Jews  were  why  the  world  wasn't  like  Wayne  County, 
Michigan,  in  the  old  horse  and  buggy  days; 

the  Jews  had  started  the  war,  Bolshevism,  Darwinism,  Marxism, 
Nietzsche,  short  skirts  and  lipstick.  They  were  behind  Wall  Street 
and  the  international  bankers,  and  the  whiteslave  traffic  and  the  movies 
and  the  Supreme  Court  and  ragtime  and  the  illegal  liquor  business. 

Henry  Ford  denounced  the  Jews  and  ran  for  senator  and  sued  the 
Chicago  Tribune  for  libel, 

and  was  the  laughingstock  of  the  kept  metropolitan  press; 

but  when  the  metropolitan  bankers  tried  to  horn  in  on  his  business 

he  thoroughly  outsmarted  them. 

In  191 8  he  had  borrowed  on  notes  to  buy  out  his  minority  stock- 
holders for  the  picayune  sum  of  seventy-five  million  dollars. 

In  February,  1920,  he  needed  cash  to  pay  ofT  some  of  these  notes  that 
were  coming  due.  A  banker  is  supposed  to  have  called  on  him  and 


152  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

offered  him  every  facility  if  the  bankers  representative  could  be  made 
a  member  of  the  board  of  directors.  Henry  Ford  handed  the  banker 
his  hat, 

and  went  about  raising  the  money  in  his  own  way: 

he  shipped  every  car  and  part  he  had  in  his  plant  to  his  dealers  and 
demanded  immediate  cash  payment.  Let  the  other  fellow  do  the  bor- 
rowing had  always  been  a  cardinal  principle.  He  shut  down  produc- 
tion and  canceled  all  orders  from  the  supplyfirms.  Many  dealers  were 
ruined,  many  supplyfirms  failed,  but  when  he  reopened  his  plant, 

he  owned  it  absolutely, 

the  way  a  man  owns  an  unmortgaged  farm  with  the  taxes  paid  up. 

In  1922  there  started  the  Ford  boom  for  President  (high  wages, 
waterpower,  industry  scattered  to  the  small  towns)  that  was  skillfully 
pricked  behind  the  scenes 

by  another  crackerbarrel  philosopher, 

Calvin  Coolidge; 

but  in  1922  Henry  Ford  sold  one  million  three  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  thousand  two  hundred  and  nine  tin  lizzies;  he  was  the  richest 
man  in  the  world. 

Good  roads  had  followed  the  narrow  ruts  made  in  the  mud  by  the 
Model  T.  The  great  automotive  boom  was  on.  At  Ford's  production 
was  improving  all  the  time;  less  waste,  more  spotters,  strawbosses, 
stoolpigeons  (fifteen  minutes  for  lunch,  three  minutes  to  go  to  the 
toilet,  the  Taylorized  speedup  everywhere,  reach  under,  adjust  washer, 
screw  down  bolt,  shove  in  cotterpin,  reachunder  adjustwasher,  screw- 
down  bolt,  reachunderadjustscrewdownreachunderadjust  until  every 
ounce  of  life  was  sucked  off  into  production  and  at  night  the  workmen 
went  home  grey  shaking  husks). 

Ford  owned  every  detail  of  the  process  from  the  ore  in  the  hills  until 
the  car  rolled  oft  the  end  of  the  assemblyline  under  its  own  power,  the 
plants  were  rationalized  to  the  last  tenthousandth  of  an  inch  as  meas- 
ured by  the  Johansen  scale; 

in  1926  the  production  cycle  was  reduced  to  eightyone  hours  from 
the  ore  in  the  mine  to  the  finished  salable  car  proceeding  under  its  own 
power, 

but  the  Model  T  was  obsolete. 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  153 

New  Era  prosperity  and  the  American  Plan 

(there  were  strings  to  it,  always  there  were  strings  to  it) 

had  killed  Tin  Lizzie. 

Ford's  was  just  one  of  many  automobile  plants. 

When  the  stockmarket  bubble  burst, 

Mr.  Ford  the  crackerbarrel  philosopher  said  jubilantly, 

"I  told  you  so. 

Serves  you  right  for  gambling  and  getting  in  debt. 

The  country  is  sound." 

But  when  the  country  on  cracked  shoes,  in  frayed  trousers,  belts 
tightened  over  hollow  bellies, 

idle  hands  cracked  and  chapped  with  the  cold  of  that  coldest  March 
day  of  1932, 

started  marching  from  Detroit  to  Dearborn,  asking  for  work  and 
the  American  Plan,  all  they  could  think  of  at  Ford's  was  machineguns. 

The  country  was  sound,  but  they  mowed  the  marchers  down. 

They  shot  four  of  them  dead. 

Henry  Ford  as  an  old  man 

is  a  passionate  antiquarian, 

(lives  besieged  on  his  father's  farm  embedded  in  an  estate  of  thou- 
sands of  millionaire  acres,  protected  by  an  army  of  servicemen,  secre- 
taries, secret  agents,  dicks  under  orders  of  an  English  exprizefighter, 

always  afraid  of  the  feet  in  broken  shoes  on  the  roads,  afraid  the 
gangs  will  kidnap  his  grandchildren, 

that  a  crank  will  shoot  him, 

that  Change  and  the  idle  hands  out  of  work  will  break  through  the 
gates  and  the  high  fences; 

protected  by  a  private  army  against 

the  new  America  of  starved  children  and  hollow  bellies  and  cracked 
shoes  stamping  on  souplines, 

that  has  swallowed  up  the  old  thrifty  farmlands 

of  Wayne  County,  Michigan, 

as  if  they  had  never  been). 

Henry  Ford  as  an  old  man 

is  a  passionate  antiquarian. 


154  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

He  rebuilt  his  father's  farmhouse  and  put  it  back  exactly  in  the  state 
he  remembered  it  in  as  a  boy.  He  built  a  village  of  museums  for  bug- 
gies, sleighs,  coaches,  old  plows,  waterwheels,  obsolete  models  of  motor- 
cars. He  scoured  the  country  for  fiddlers  to  play  old-fashioned  square- 
dances. 

Even  old  taverns  he  bought  and  put  back  into  their  original  shape, 
as  well  as  Thomas  Edison's  early  laboratories. 

When  he  bought  the  Wayside  Inn  near  Sudbury,  Massachusetts,  he 
had  the  new  highway  where  the  newmodel  cars  roared  and  slithered 
and  hissed  oilily  past  {the  new  noise  of  the  automobile), 

moved  away  from  the  door, 

put  back  the  old  bad  road, 

so  that  everything  might  be 

the  way  it  used  to  be, 

in  the  days  of  horses  and  buggies. 


The  Campers  at  Kitty  Hawk 

FROM    "U.S.A."    BY 

JOHN  DOS  PASSOS 


On  December  seventeenth,  nineteen  hundred  and  three,  Bishop 
Wright  of  the  United  Brethren  onetime  editor  of  the  Religions  Tele- 
scope received  in  his  frame  house  on  Hawthorn  Street  in  Dayton, 
Ohio,  a  telegram  from  his  boys  Wilbur  and  Orville  who'd  gotten  it 
into  their  heads  to  spend  their  vacations  in  a  little  camp  out  on  the 
dunes  of  the  North  Carolina  coast  tinkering  with  a  homemade  glider 
they'd  knocked  together  themselves.  The  telegram  read: 

SUCCESS  FOUR  FLIGHTS  THURSDAY  MORNING  ALL  AGAINST  TWENTYONE  MILE 
WIND  STARTED  FROM  LEVEL  WITH  ENGINEPOWER  ALONE  AVERAGE  SPEED 
THROUGH  AIR  THIRTYONE  MILES  LONGEST  FIFTYSEVEN  SECONDS  INFORM  PRESS 
HOME  CHRISTMAS 

The  figures  were  a  little  wrong  because  the  telegraph  operator  mis- 
read Orville's  hasty  penciled  scrawl 
but  the  fact  remains 

that  a  couple  of  young  bicycle  mechanics  from  Dayton,  Ohio 
had  designed  constructed  and  flown 
for  the  first  time  ever  a  practical  airplane. 

After  running  the  motor  a  few  minutes  to  heat  it  up  I  released  the 
wire  that  held  the  machine  to  the  trac\  and  the  machine  started  for- 
ward into  the  wind.  Wilbur  ran  at  the  side  of  the  machine  holding  the 
wing  to  balance  it  on  the  trac\.  Unli\e  the  start  on  the  14th  made  in  a 
calm  the  machine  facing  a  27  mile  wind  started  very  slowly.  .  .  .  Wilbur 
was  able  to  stay  with  it  until  it  lifted  from  the  trac\  after  a  forty-foot 

155 


156  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

run.  One  of  the  lifesaving  men  snapped  the  camera  for  us  taking  a 
picture  just  as  it  reached  the  end  of  the  trac\  and  the  machine  had 
risen  to  a  height  of  about  two  feet.  .  .  .  The  course  of  the  -flight  up  and 
down  was  extremely  erratic,  partly  due  to  the  irregularities  of  the  air, 
partly  to  lac\  of  experience  in  handling  this  machine.  A  sudden  dart 
when  a  little  over  a  hundred  and  twenty  feet  from  the  point  at  which 
it  rose  in  the  air  ended  the  flight.  .  .  .  This  flight  lasted  only  12  seconds 
but  it  was  nevertheless  the  first  in  the  history  of  the  world  in  which  a 
machine  carrying  a  man  had  raised  itself  by  its  own  power  into  the 
air  in  full  flight,  had  sailed  forward  without  reduction  of  speed  and 
had  finally  landed  at  a  point  as  high  as  that  from  which  it  started. 

A  little  later  in  the  day  the  machine  was  caught  in  a  gust  of  wind 
and  turned  over  and  smashed,  almost  killing  the  coastguardsman  who 
tried  to  hold  it  down; 

it  was  too  bad 

but  the  Wright  brothers  were  too  happy  to  care 

they'd  proved  that  the  damn  thing  flew. 

When  these  points  had  been  definitely  established  we  at  once  packed 
our  goods  and  returned  home  \nowing  that  the  age  of  the  flying 
machine  had  come  at  last. 

They  were  home  for  Christmas  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  where  they'd  been 
born  in  the  seventies  of  a  family  who  had  been  settled  west  of  the 
Alleghenies  since  eighteen  fourteen,  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  where  they'd 
been  to  grammarschool  and  highschool  and  joined  their  father's  church 
and  played  baseball  and  hockey  and  worked  out  on  the  parallel  bars 
and  the  flying  swing  and  sold  newspapers  and  built  themselves  a  print- 
ingpress  out  of  odds  and  ends  from  the  junkheap  and  flown  kites  and 
tinkered  with  mechanical  contraptions  and  gone  around  town  as  boys 
doing  odd  jobs  to  turn  an  honest  penny. 

The  folks  claimed  it  was  the  bishop's  bringing  home  a  helicopter,  a 
fiftycent  mechanical  toy  made  of  two  fans  worked  by  elastic  bands  that 
was  supposed  to  hover  in  the  air,  that  had  got  his  two  youngest  boys 
hipped  on  the  subject  of  flight 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  157 

so  that  they  stayed  home  instead  of  marrying  the  way  the  other  boys 
did,  and  puttered  all  day  about  the  house  picking  up  a  living  with 
jobprinting, 

bicyclerepair  work, 

sitting  up  late  nights  reading  books  on  aerodynamics. 

Still  they  were  sincere  churchmembers,  their  bicycle  business  was 
prosperous,  a  man  could  rely  on  their  word.  They  were  popular  in 
Dayton. 

In  those  days  flyingmachines  were  the  big  laugh  of  all  the  cracker- 
barrel  philosophers.  Langley's  and  Chanute's  unsuccessful  experiments 
had  been  jeered  down  with  an  I-told-you-so  that  rang  from  coast  to 
coast.  The  Wrights'  big  problem  was  to  find  a  place  secluded  enough 
to  carry  on  their  experiments  without  being  the  horselaugh  of  the 
countryside.  Then  they  had  no  money  to  spend; 

they  were  practical  mechanics;  when  they  needed  anything  they 
built  it  themselves. 

They  hit  on  Kitty  Hawk, 

on  the  great  dunes  and  sandy  banks  that  stretch  south  towards  Hat- 
teras  seaward  of  Albemarle  Sound, 

a  vast  stretch  of  seabeach 

empty  except  for  a  coastguard  station,  a  few  fishermen's  shacks  and 
the  swarms  of  mosquitoes  and  the  ticks  and  chiggers  in  the  crabgrass 
behind  the  dunes 

and  overhead  the  gulls  and  swooping  terns,  in  the  evening  fishhawks 
and  cranes  flapping  across  the  saltmarshes,  occasionally  eagles 

that  the  Wright  brothers  followed  soaring  with  their  eyes 

as  Leonardo  watched  them  centuries  before 

straining  his  sharp  eyes  to  apprehend 

the  laws  of  flight. 

Four  miles  across  the  loose  sand  from  the  scattering  of  shacks,  the 
Wright  brothers  built  themselves  a  camp  and  a  shed  for  their  gliders. 
It  was  a  long  way  to  pack  their  groceries,  their  tools,  anything  they 
happened  to  need;  in  summer  it  was  hot  as  blazes,  the  mosquitoes 
were  hell; 

but  they  were  alone  there 


158  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

and  they'd  figured  out  that  the  loose  sand  was  as  soft  as  anything 
they  could  find  to  fall  in. 

There  with  a  glider  made  of  two  planes  and  a  tail  in  which  they 
lay  flat  on  their  bellies  and  controlled  the  warp  of  the  planes  by  shim- 
mying their  hips,  taking  off  again  and  again  all  day  from  a  big  dune 
named  Kill  Devil  Hill, 

they  learned  to  fly. 

Once  they'd  managed  to  hover  for  a  few  seconds 
and  soar  ever  so  slightly  on  a  rising  aircurrent 
they  decided  the  time  had  come 
to  put  a  motor  in  their  biplane. 

Back  in  the  shop  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  they  built  an  airtunnel,  which 
is  their  first  great  contribution  to  the  science  of  flying,  and  tried  out 
model  planes  in  it. 

They  couldn't  interest  any  builders  of  gasoline  engines  so  they  had 
to  build  their  own  motor. 

It  worked;  after  that  Christmas  of  nineteen  three  the  Wright  broth- 
ers weren't  doing  it  for  fun  any  more;  they  gave  up  their  bicycle  busi- 
ness, got  the  use  of  a  big  old  cowpasture  belonging  to  the  local  banker 
for  practice  flights,  spent  all  the  time  when  they  weren't  working  on 
their  machine  in  promotion,  worrying  about  patents,  infringements, 
spies,  trying  to  interest  government  officials,  to  make  sense  out  of  the 
smooth  involved  heartbreaking  remarks  of  lawyers. 

In  two  years  they  had  a  plane  that  would  cover  twentyfour  miles  at 
a  stretch  round  and  round  the  cowpasture. 

People  on  the  interurban  car  used  to  crane  their  necks  out  of  the 
windows  when  they  passed  along  the  edge  of  the  field,  startled  by  the 
clattering  pop  pop  of  the  old  Wright  motor  and  the  sight  of  the  white 
biplane  like  a  pair  of  ironingboards  one  on  top  of  the  other  chugging 
along  a  good  fifty  feet  in  the  air.  The  cows  soon  got  used  to  it. 

As  the  flights  got  longer 

the  Wright  brothers  got  backers, 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  159 

engaged  in  lawsuits, 

lay  in  their  beds  at  night  sleepless  with  the  whine  of  phantom  mil- 
lions, worse  than  the  mosquitoes  at  Kitty  Hawk. 

In  nineteen  seven  they  went  to  Paris, 

allowed  themselves  to  be  togged  out  in  dress  suits  and  silk  hats, 

learned  to  tip  waiters 

talked  with  government  experts,  got  used  to  gold  braid  and  post- 
ponements and  vandyke  beards  and  the  outspread  palms  of  politicos. 
For  amusement 

they  played  diabolo  in  the  Tuileries  gardens. 

They  gave  publicized  flights  at  Fort  Myers,  where  they  had  their 
first  fatal  crackup,  St.  Petersburg,  Paris,  Berlin;  at  Pau  they  were  all 
the  rage, 

such  an  attraction  that  the  hotelkeeper 

wouldn't  charge  them  for  their  room. 

Alfonso  of  Spain  shook  hands  with  them  and  was  photographed 
sitting  in  the  machine, 

King  Edward  watched  a  flight, 

the  Crown  Prince  insisted  on  being  taken  up, 

the  rain  of  medals  began. 

They  were  congratulated  by  the  Czar 

and  the  King  of  Italy  and  the  amateurs  of  sport,  and  the  society 
climbers  and  the  papal  titles, 

and  decorated  by  a  society  for  universal  peace. 

Aeronautics  became  the  sport  of  the  day. 

The  Wrights  don't  seem  to  have  been  very  much  impressed  by  the 
upholstery  and  the  braid  and  the  gold  medals  and  the  parades  of  plush 
horses, 

they  remained  practical  mechanics 

and  insisted  on  doing  all  their  own  work  themselves, 

even  to  filling  the  gasolinetank. 


160  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

In  nineteen  eleven  they  were  back  on  the  dunes 

at  Kitty  Hawk  with  a  new  glider. 

Orville  stayed  up  in  the  air  for  nine  and  a  half  minutes,  which  re- 
mained a  long  time  the  record  for  motorless  flight. 

The  same  year  Wilbur  died  of  typhoidfever  in  Dayton. 

in  the  rush  of  new  names:  Farman,  Bleriot,  Curtiss,  Ferber,  Esnault- 
Peltrie,  Delagrange; 

in  the  snorting  impact  of  bombs  and  the  whine  and  rattle  of  shrap- 
nel and  the  sudden  stutter  of  machineguns  after  the  motor's  been  shut 
oft  overhead, 

and  we  flatten  into  the  mud 

and  make  ourselves  small  cowering  in  the  corners  of  ruined  walls, 

the  Wright  brothers  passed  out  of  the  headlines 

but  not  even  headlines  or  the  bitter  smear  of  newsprint  or  the  choke 
of  smokescreen  and  gas  or  chatter  of  brokers  on  the  stockmarket  or 
barking  of  phantom  millions  or  oratory  of  brasshats  laying  wreaths 
on  new  monuments 

can  blur  the  memory 

of  the  chilly  December  day 

two  shivering  bicycle  mechanics  from  Dayton,  Ohio, 

first  felt  their  homemade  contraption 

whittled  out  of  hickory  sticks, 

gummed  together  with  Arnstein's  bicycle  cement, 

stretched  with  muslin  they'd  sewn  on  their  sister's  sewingmachine 
in  their  own  backyard  on  Hawthorn  Street  in  Dayton,  Ohio, 

soar  into  the  air 

above  the  dunes  and  the  wide  beach 

at  Kitty  Hawk. 


Meestcr  Veclson 

FROM     "U.S.A."     BY 

JOHN  DOS  PASSOS 


The  year  that  Buchanan  was  elected  president  Thomas  Woodrow 
Wilson 

was  born  to  a  presbyterian  minister's  daughter 

in  the  manse  at  Staunton  in  the  valley  of  Virginia;  it  was  the  old 
Scotch-Irish  stock;  the  father  was  a  presbyterian  minister  too  and  a 
teacher  of  rhetoric  in  theological  seminaries;  the  Wilsons  lived  in  a 
universe  of  words  linked  into  an  incontrovertible  firmament  by  two 
centuries  of  calvinist  divines, 

God  was  the  Word 

and  the  Word  was  God. 

Dr.  Wilson  was  a  man  of  standing  who  loved  his  home  and  his  chil- 
dren and  good  books  and  his  wife  and  correct  syntax  and  talked  to  God 
every  day  at  family  prayers; 

he  brought  his  sons  up 

between  the  bible  and  the  dictionary. 

The  years  of  the  Civil  War 

the  years  of  fife  and  drum  and  platoonfire  and  proclamations 

the  Wilsons  lived  in  Augusta,  Georgia;  Tommy  was  a  backward 
child,  didn't  learn  his  letters  till  he  was  nine,  but  when  he  learned  to 
read  his  favorite  reading  was  Parson  Weems' 

Life  of  Washington. 

In  1870  Dr.  Wilson  was  called  to  the  Theological  Seminary  at  Co- 
lumbia, South  Carolina;  Tommy  attended  Davidson  college, 
where  he  developed  a  good  tenor  voice; 

161 


162  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

then  he  went  to  Princeton  and  became  a  debater  and  editor  of  the 
Princetonian.  His  first  published  article  in  the  Nassau  Literary  Maga- 
zine was  an  appreciation  of  Bismarck. 

Afterwards  he  studied  law  at  the  University  of  Virginia;  young  Wil- 
son wanted  to  be  a  Great  Man,  like  Gladstone  and  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury English  parliamentarians;  he  wanted  to  hold  the  packed  benches 
spellbound  in  the  cause  of  Truth;  but  lawpractice  irked  him;  he  was 
more  at  home  in  the  booky  air  of  libraries,  lecturerooms,  college  chapel, 
it  was  a  relief  to  leave  his  lawpractice  at  Atlanta  and  take  a  Historical 
Fellowship  at  Johns  Hopkins;  there  he  wrote  Congressional  Govern- 
ment. 

At  twentynine  he  married  a  girl  with  a  taste  for  painting  (while 
he  was  courting  her  he  coached  her  in  how  to  use  the  broad  "a")  and 
got  a  job  at  Bryn  Mawr  teaching  the  girls  History  and  Political  Econ- 
omy. When  he  got  his  Ph.Do  from  Johns  Hopkins  he  moved  to  a  pro- 
fessorship at  Wesleyan,  wrote  articles,  started  a  History  of  the  United 
States, 

spoke  out  for  Truth  Reform  Responsible  Government  Democracy 
from  the  lecture  platform,  climbed  all  the  steps  of  a  brilliant  university 
career;  in  1901  the  trustees  of  Princeton  offered  him  the  presidency; 

he  plunged  into  reforming  the  university,  made  violent  friends  and 
enemies,  set  the  campus  by  the  ears, 

and  the  American  people  began  to  find  on  the  front  pages 

the  name  of  Woodrow  Wilson. 

In  1909  he  made  addresses  on  Lincoln  and  Robert  E.  Lee 

and  in  1910 

the  democratic  bosses  of  New  Jersey,  hardpressed  by  muckrakers 
and  reformers,  got  the  bright  idea  of  offering  the  nomination  foj  gov- 
ernor to  the  stainless  college  president  who  attracted  such  large  audi- 
ences 

by  publicly  championing  Right. 

When  Mr.  Wilson  addressed  the  Trenton  convention  that  nominated 
him  for  governor  he  confessed  his  belief  in  the  common  man,  (the 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  163 

smalltown   bosses   and    the    wardheelers   looked    at   each   other   and 
scratched  their  heads) ;  he  went  on,  his  voice  growing  firmer: 

that  is  the  man  by  whose  judgment  I  for  one  wish  to  be  guided,  so 
that  as  the  tas\s  multiply,  and  as  the  days  come  when  all  will  feel 
confusion  and  dismay,  we  may  lift  up  our  eyes  to  the  hills  out  of  these 
dar\  valleys  where  the  crags  of  special  privilege  overshadow  and  darken 
our  path,  to  where  the  sun  gleams  through  the  great  passage  in  the 
broken  cliffs,  the  sun  of  God, 

the  sun  meant  to  regenerate  men, 

the  sun  meant  to  liberate  them  from  their  passion  and  despair  and 
lift  us  to  those  uplands  which  are  the  promised  land  of  every  man  who 
desires  liberty  and  achievement. 

The  smalltown  bosses  and  the  wardheelers  looked  at  each  other  and 
scratched  their  heads;  then  they  cheered;  Wilson  fooled  the  wiseacres 
and  doublecrossed  the  bosses,  was  elected  by  a  huge  plurality; 

so  he  left  Princeton  only  half  reformed  to  be  Governor  of  New 

Jersey, 

and  became  reconciled  with  Bryan 

at  the  Jackson  Day  dinner:  when  Bryan  remarked,  "I  of  course 
knew  that  you  were  not  with  me  in  my  position  on  the  currency," 
Mr.  Wilson  replied,  "All  I  can  say,  Mr.  Bryan,  is  that  you  are  a  great 

big  man." 

He  was  introduced  to  Colonel  House, 

that  amateur  Merlin  of  politics  who  was  spinning  his  webs  at  the 

Hotel  Gotham 

and  at  the  convention  in  Baltimore  the  next  July  the  upshot  of  the 
puppetshow  staged  for  sweating  delegates  by  Hearst  and  House  behind 
the  scenes,  and  Bryan  booming  in  the  corridors  with  a  handkerchief 
over  his  wilted  collar,  was  that  Woodrow  Wilson  was  nominated  for 
the  presidency. 

The  bolt  of  the  Progressives  in  Chicago  from  Taft  to  T.R.  made  his 

election  sure; 

so  he  left  the  State  of  New  Jersey  halfreformed 

(pitiless  publicity  was  the  slogan  of  the  Shadow  Lawn  Campaign) 

and  went  to  the  White  House 


164  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

our  twentyeighth  president. 

While  Woodrow  Wilson  drove  up  Pennsylvania  Avenue  beside 
Taft  the  great  buttertub,  who  as  president  had  been  genially  undoing 
T.R.'s  reactionary  efforts  to  put  business  under  the  control  of  the  gov- 
ernment, 

J.  Pierpont  Morgan  sat  playing  solitaire  in  his  back  office  on  Wall 
Street,  smoking  twenty  black  cigars  a  day,  cursing  the  follies  of  democ- 
racy. 

Wilson  flayed  the  interests  and  branded  privilege  refused  to  recog- 
nize Huerta  and  sent  the  militia  to  the  Rio  Grande 

to  assume  a  policy  of  watchful  waiting.  He  published  The  New 
Freedom  and  delivered  his  messages  to  Congress  in  person,  like  a  col- 
lege president  addressing  the  faculty  and  students.  At  Mobile  he  said: 

/  wish  to  ta\e  this  occasion  to  say  that  the  United  States  will  never 
again  see\  one  additional  foot  of  territory  by  conquest; 

and  he  landed  the  marines  at  Vera  Cruz. 

We  are  witnessing  a  renaissance  of  public  spirit,  a  reawakening  of 
sober  public  opinion,  a  revival  of  the  power  of  the  people  the  begin^ 
ning  of  an  age  of  thoughtful  reconstruction  .  .  . 

but  the  world  had  started  spinning  round  Sarajevo. 

First  it  was  neutrality  in  thought  and  deed,  then  too  proud  to  fight 
when  the  Lusitania  sinking  and  the  danger  to  the  Morgan  loans  and 
the  stones  of  the  British  and  French  propagandists  set  all  the  financial 
centers  in  the  East  bawling  for  war,  but  the  suction  of  the  drumbeat 
and  the  guns  was  too  strong;  the  best  people  took  their  fashions  from 
Paris  and  their  broad  "a's"  from  London,  and  T.R.  and  the  House  of 
Morgan. 

Five  months  after  his  reelection  on  the  slogan  He  \ept  us  out  of 
war,  Wilson  pushed  the  Armed  Ship  Bill  through  congress  and  de- 
clared that  a  state  of  war  existed  between  the  United  States  and- the 
Central  Powers: 

Force  without  stint  or  limit,  force  to  the  utmost. 

Wilson  became  the  state  (war  is  the  health  of  the  state),  Washing- 
ton  his  Versailles,  manned  the  socialized  government  with  dollar  a 


JOHN  DOS  PASSOS  165 

year  men  out  of  the  great  corporations  and  ran  the  big  parade 

of  men  munitions  groceries  mules  and  trucks  to  France.  Five  million 
men  stood  at  attention  outside  of  their  tarpaper  barracks  every  sun- 
down while  they  played  The  Star  Spangled  Banner. 

War  brought  the  eight  hour  day,  women's  votes,  prohibition,  com- 
pulsory arbitration,  high  wages,  high  rates  of  interest,  cost  plus  con- 
tracts and  the  luxury  of  being  a  Gold  Star  Mother. 

If  you  objected  to  making  the  world  safe  for  cost  plus  democracy 
you  went  to  jail  with  Debs. 

Almost  too  soon  the  show  was  over,  Prince  Max  of  Baden  was 
pleading  for  the  Fourteen  Points,  Foch  was  occupying  the  bridgeheads 
on  the  Rhine  and  the  Kaiser  out  of  breath  ran  for  the  train  down  the 
platform  at  Potsdam  wearing  a  silk  hat  and  some  say  false  whiskers. 

With  the  help  of  Almighty  God,  Right,  Truth,  Justice,  Freedom, 
Democracy ,  the  Self  determination  of  Nations,  No  indemnities  no  an- 
nexations, 

and  Cuban  sugar  and  Caucasian  manganese  and  Northwestern 
wheat  and  Dixie  cotton,  the  British  blockade,  General  Pershing,  the 
taxicabs  of  Paris  and  the  seventyfive  gun 

we  won  the  war. 

On  December  4th,  1918,  Woodrow  Wilson,  the  first  president  to 
leave  the  territory  of  the  United  States  during  his  presidency,  sailed  for 
France  on  board  the  George  Washington, 

the  most  powerful  man  in  the  world. 

In  Europe  they  knew  what  gas  smelt  like  and  the  sweet  sick  stench 
of  bodies  buried  too  shallow  and  the  grey  look  of  the  skin  of  starved 
children;  they  read  in  the  papers  that  Meester  Veelson  was  for  peace 
and  freedom  and  canned  goods  and  butter  and  sugar; 

he  landed  at  Brest  with  his  staff  of  experts  and  publicists  after  a 
rough  trip  on  the  George  Washington. 

La  France  heroique  was  there  with  the  speeches,  the  singing  school- 
children, the  mayors  in  their  red  sashes.  (Did  Meester  Veelson  see 
the  gendarmes  at  Brest  beating  back  the  demonstration  of  dockyard 
workers  who  came  to  meet  him  with  red  flags?) 


166  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

At  the  station  in  Paris  he  stepped  from  the  train  onto  a  wide  red 
carpet  that  led  him,  between  rows  of  potted  palms,  silk  hats,  legions 
of  honor,  decorated  busts  of  uniforms,  frockcoats,  rosettes,  bouton- 
nieres,  to  a  Rolls  Royce.  (Did  Meester  Veelson  see  the  women  in 
black,  the  cripples  in  their  little  carts,  the  pale  anxious  faces  along  the 
streets,  did  he  hear  the  terrible  anguish  of  the  cheers  as  they  hurried 
him  and  his  new  wife  to  the  hotel  de  Murat,  where  in  rooms  full  of 
brocade,  gilt  clocks,  Buhl  cabinets  and  ormolu  cupids  the  presidential 
suite  had  been  prepared?) 

While  the  experts  were  organizing  the  procedure  of  the  peace  con- 
ference, spreading  green  baize  on  the  tables,  arranging  the  protocols, 

the  Wilsons  took  a  tour  to  see  for  themselves:  the  day  after  Christ- 
mas they  were  entertained  at  Buckingham  Palace;  at  Newyears  they 
called  on  the  pope  and  on  the  microscopic  Italian  king  at  the  Quirinal. 
(Did  Meester  Veelson  know  that  in  the  peasants'  wargrimed  houses 
along  the  Brenta  and  the  Piave  they  were  burning  candles  in  front  of 
his  picture  cut  out  of  the  illustrated  papers?)  (Did  Meester  Veelson 
know  that  the  people  of  Europe  spelled  a  challenge  to  oppression  out 
of  the  Fourteen  Points  as  centuries  before  they  had  spelled  a  challenge 
to  oppression  out  of  the  ninetyfive  articles  Martin  Luther  nailed  to  the 
churchdoor  in  Wittenberg?) 

January  18,  1919,  in  the  midst  of  serried  uniforms,  cocked  hats  and 
gold  braid,  decorations,  epaulettes,  orders  of  merit  and  knighthood,  the 
High  Contracting  Parties,  the  allied  and  associated  powers  met  in  the 
Salon  de  l'Horloge  at  the  quai  d'Orsay  to  dictate  the  peace, 

but  the  grand  assembly  of  the  peace  conference  was  too  public  a 
place  to  make  peace  in 

so  the  High  Contracting  Parties 

formed  the  Council  of  Ten,  went  into  the  Gobelin  Room  and,  sur- 
rounded by  Rubens's  History  of  Marie  de  Medici, 

began  to  dictate  the  peace. 

But  the  Council  of  Ten  was  too  public  a  place  to  make  peace  in 

so  they  formed  the  Council  of  Four. 

Orlando  went  home  in  a  huft 

and  then  there  were  three: 

Clemenceau, 


JOHN  DOS   PASSOS  .      -  167 

Lloyd  George, 

Woodrow  Wilson. 

Three  old  men  shuffling  the  pack, 

dealing  out  the  cards: 

the  Rhineland,  Danzig,  the  Polish  corridor,  the  Ruhr,  self  determi- 
nation of  small  nations,  the  Saar,  League  of  Nations,  mandates,  the 
Mespot,  Freedom  of  the  Seas,  Transjordania,  Shantung,  Fiume  and 
the  Island  of  Yap : 

machine  gun  fire  and  arson 

starvation,  lice,  cholera,  typhus; 

oil  was  trumps. 

Woodrow  Wilson  believed  in  his  father's  God 

so  he  told  the  parishioners  in  the  little  Lowther  Street  Congrega- 
tional church  where  his  grandfather  had  preached  in  Carlisle  in  Scot- 
land, a  day  so  chilly  that  the  newspaper  men  sitting  in  the  old  pews 
all  had  to  keep  their  overcoats  on. 

On  April  7th  he  ordered  the   George  Washington   to  be  held  at 
Brest  with  steam  up  ready  to  take  the  American  delegation  home; 
but  he  didn't  go. 

On  April  19  sharper  Clemenceau  and  sharper  Lloyd  George  got  him 
into  their  little  cosy  threecardgame  they  called  the  Council  of  Four. 

On  June  28th  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  was  ready 

and  Wilson  had  to  go  back  home  to  explain  to  the  politicians  who'd 
been  ganging  up  on  him  meanwhile  in  the  Senate  and  House  and  to 
sober  public  opinion  and  to  his  father's  God  how  he'd  let  himself  be 
trimmed  and  how  far  he'd  made  the  world  safe 

for  democracy  and  the  New  Freedom. 

From  the  day  he  landed  in  Hoboken  he  had  his  back  to  the  wall  of 
the  White  House,  talking  to  save  his  faith  in  words,  talking  to  save  his 
faith  in  the  League  of  Nations,  talking  to  save  his  faith  in  himself,  in 
his  father's  God. 

He  strained  every  nerve  of  his  body  and  brain,  every  agency  of  the 


168  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

government  he  had  under  his  control;  (i£  anybody  disagreed  he  was 
a  crook  or  a  red;  no  pardon  for  Debs). 

In  Seattle  the  wobblies  whose  leaders  were  in  jail,  in  Seattle  the  wob- 
blies  whose  leaders  had  been  lynched,  who'd  been  shot  down  like  dogs, 
in  Seattle  the  wobblies  lined  four  blocks  as  Wilson  passed,  stood  silent 
with  their  arms  folded  staring  at  the  great  liberal  as  he  was  hurried 
past  in  his  car,  huddled  in  his  overcoat,  haggard  with  fatigue,  one  side 
of  his  face  twitching.  The  men  in  overalls,  the  workingstiffs  let  him 
pass  in  silence  after  all  the  other  blocks  of  handclapping  and  patriotic 
cheers. 

In  Pueblo,  Colorado,  he  was  a  grey  man  hardly  able  to  stand,  one 
side  of  his  face  twitching: 

Now  that  the  mists  of  this  great  question  have  cleared  away,  I  be- 
lieve that  men  will  see  the  Truth,  eye  for  eye  and  face  to  face.  There 
is  one  thing  the  American  People  always  rise  to  and  extend  their  hand 
to,  that  is,  the  truth  of  justice  and  of  liberty  and  of  peace.  We  have 
accepted  that  truth  and  we  are  going  to  be  led  by  it,  and  it  is  going  to 
lead  us,  and  through  us  the  world,  out  into  pastures  of  quietness  and 
peace  such  as  the  world  never  dreamed  of  before. 

That  was  his  last  speech; 

on  the  train  to  Wichita  he  had  a  stroke.  He  gave  up  the  speaking 
tour  that  was  to  sweep  the  country  for  the  League  of  Nations.  After 
that  he  was  a  ruined  paralysed  man  barely  able  to  speak; 

the  day  he  gave  up  the  presidency  to  Harding  the  joint  committee 
of  the  Senate  and  House  appointed  Henry  Cabot  Lodge,  his  lifelong 
enemy,  to  make  the  formal  call  at  the  executive  office  in  the  Capitol 
and  ask  the  formal  question  whether  the  president  had  any  message 
for  the  congress  assembled  in  joint  session; 

Wilson  managed  to  get  to  his  feet,  lifting  himself  painfully  by  the 
two  arms  of  the  chair.  "Senator  Lodge,  I  have  no  further  communica- 
tion to  make,  thank  you  .  .  .  Good  morning,"  he  said. 

In  1924  on  February  3rd  he  died. 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM 


COMMENTARY 


Most  writers,  even  those  who  talk  glibly  oi  his  "selling  out/'  have  a 
genuine  respect  for  Somerset  Maugham.  They  respect  him  because, 
whatever  his  limitations  as  an  artist,  he  is  an  honest  craftsman  and  an 
honest  man.  Perhaps  honest  isn't  the  word.  Ingenuous  might  be  better. 
I  dont  mean  that  he  is  naive,  but  rather  that  he  is  an  ingenuous 
hawker  of  his  wares.  Every  so  often  he  will  do  a  job  obviously  car- 
pentered for  the  trade  and  with  little  else  to  recommend  it.  My  point 
is  that  he  doesnt  really  dissimulate.  When  he  prepares  tripe,  he 
practically  puts  a  label  on  it  stating  its  high  percentage  of  adultera- 
tion. I  find  this  a  virtue.  It  makes  his  work  so  much  more  agreeable 
than  the  novels,  for  example,  of  Mr.  Charles  Morgan,  which  are  not 
only  tripe  but  are  rendered  doubly  unpalatable  by  the  fact  that  Mr. 
Morgan  doesnt  seem  to  know  it. 

Take  Mr.  Maugham's  recent  confection,  Up  at  the  Villa.  The  ma- 
terials are  stock  melodrama  but  Maugham's  touch  relieves  them  of 
their  vulgarity.  It's  almost  a  pleasure  to  be  sold  so  smooth  and  shiny 
a  gold  brick.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  his  novel  Theatre,  whose  title 
is  suspiciously  apt.  It  is  a  clockwork  job  of  gadgetry.  It's  old  hat,  but 
old  hat  from  an  old  hand,  deft  as  the  devil  at  refurbishing  the  back- 
shelf  millinery,  the  faded  Rowers  and  dead  birds  of  fiction.  Theatre 
may  be  theatrical,  but  it's  a  good  show. 

No,  Somerset  Maugham  doesn't  fool  himself.  In  The  Summing 
Up,  a  book  of  reEections  tinged  with  autobiography,  he  says,  "I  have 
a  clear  and  logical  brain,  but  not  a  very  subtle  nor  a  very  powerful 
one."  He  has  not  tried  to  write  subtly  or  powerfully,  to  make  grand 
generalizations  about  humanity,  to  beat  his  breast  in  public.  He 
knows  what  he  can  do.  "Never  having  felt  some  of  the  fundamental 
emotions  of  normal  men,  it  is  impossible  that  my  work  should  have 
the  intimacy,  the  broad  human  touch  and  the  animal  serenity  which 
the  greatest  writers  alone  can  give."  I  do  not  believe  Maugham  has 

169 


170  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

ever  struck  a  pose  in  his  work.  His  plays  are  often  cheap,  but  they 
have  an  honest  and  candid  cheapness. 

He  will  live  mainly  by  one  hook,  hut  it  is  unfair  to  say  that  he 
could  have  followed  it,  had  he  wished,  with  otheis  just  as  good.  Of 
Human  Bondage  was  the  product  of  a  brief  period  of  belief,  of  cer- 
tain special  emotional  pressures  in  his  life,  pressures  that  never  re- 
peated themselves.  At  ail  times  he  wrote  what  he  could,  and  that 
alone. 

Writers  respect  Maugham,  too,  because  he  respects  his  own  craft. 
He  has  actually  spent  years  of  his  life  studying  it.  How  many  Ameri- 
can novelists,  now  in  their  twenties  or  early  thirties,  have  considered 
it  necessary  to  spend  several  hours  a  day  doing  what  Maugham  did— 
analyzing  model  prose  writers,  charting  his  limitations,  working  out  a 
style  that  would  correspond  both  to  what  he  was  as  a  person  and 
what  he  wanted  to  be  as  a  writer?  "On  taking  thought  it  seemed  to 
me  that  I  must  aim  at  lucidity,  simplicity  and  euphony."  He  has 
attained  them  by  diligence,  patience,  and  the  subordination  of  his 
ego  to  his  craft. 

I  suppose  Somerset  Maugham  is  really  the  cynical,  embittered  man 
of  the  world  that  rumor  makes  him.  Still,  I  cannot  help  feeling  that 
he  must  be  getting  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  out  of  these,  his  latter 
years.  For  one  thing,  his  contemporaries  are  dying  off  in  the  most 
satisfactory  manner.  Not  only  his  own  talent  but  mortality  itself  is 
helping  him  to  a  commanding  position  in  the  literary  hierarchy. 
Again,  by  some  curious  twist,  while  his  colleagues  as  they  age  lose 
almost  daily  in  reputation,  he  seems  to  gain.  Even  his  poorer  books 
are  greated  with  salvos  of  approbation,  and  the  fact  that  he  has  pro- 
duced only  one  important  work  is  an  asset  rather  than  a  liability, 
for  at  least  it  is  a  novel  everyone  has  read  and  none  disliked.  But 
most  gratifying  of  all,  I  should  imagine,  is  the  complete  mastery  he 
has  gained  in  late  maturity  over  his  own  talents.  Through  study  and 
hard  work  he  has  finally  evolved  a  style  adequate  to  anything  he 
wishes  to  say. 

It  is  this  which  accounts  for  the  feeling  we  have,  when  we  open  a 
new  Maugham,  that  although  wc  will  never  be  lifted  up,  we  will 
never  be  let  down.  He  is  the  most  comforting,  if  not  the  weightiest, 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  171 

of  modern  English  writers.  When  he  is  entertaining,  he  is  so  without 
vulgarity  or  pretentiousness.  When  he  is  thoughtful,  he  offers  his 
undeniable  cultivation  oi  mind  without  pompousness  or  any  claim 
upon  the  attention  of  posterity. 

A  good  example  oi  what  I  mean  is  to  he  found  in  "Don  Fer- 
nando/' a  ruminative  essay,  which  I  should  think  many  might  enjoy, 
on  the  Golden  Age  of  Spain.  "Don  Fernando"  has  no  great  depth- 
it  is  almost  too  consciously  civilized  for  that— but  it  is  far  from  super- 
ficial. Maugham  does  not  say  a  single  witty  thing,  yet  he  gives  the 
constant  impression  of  wit.  He  is  never  enthusiastic,  always  interest- 
ing; never  learned,  always  easy  and  copious  in  his  fund  of  informa- 
tion; never  daringly  original,  yet  a  personality  is  quietly  present  in 
every  line.  He  is  neither  Hispanophile  nor  Hispanophobe.  He  writes 
not  to  persuade  us  to  any  special  view  of  the  epoch  of  Cervantes  or 
El  Greco  but  merely  to  amuse  himself,  intelligently,  without  frivolity. 
His  fatal  fault  is  one  he  would  gladly  confess— complete  lack  of  con- 
viction. But  opinions  dressed  in  charm  offer  a  palatable  substitute. 

In  "Don  Fernando"  he  has  much  to  say  of  the  art  of  prose.  Many 
of  his  comments  are  self-flattering  half-truths,  such  as  his  judgment 
that  "good  writing  should  be  like  the  conversation  of  a  well-bred 
man."  Apropos  the  autobiography  of  Saint  Teresa,  he  remarks  upon 
"that  sound  of  the  living  voice  that  we  all,  for  the  most  part  without 
success,  aim  at."  He  has  aimed  at  it  successfully.  His  books  of  non- 
fiction  are  causerie  carried  to  its  highest  point  of  development. 

Maugham  is  one  of  those  writers,  never  of  the  highest  rank,  who 
seem  to  have  been  born  civilized.  He  takes  his  own  disillusion  calmly, 
without  emphasis,  making  no  Noel  Coward  pose  of  it.  He  is  always 
interesting  and  never  absorbing,  always  intelligent  and  intelligible  but 
quite  without  the  passion,  the  frenzy,  that  he  admires  in  the  great 
Russians.  His  mind  is  made  up.  He  observes  the  vagaries  of  humans 
with  a  sympathy  that  enlists  the  reader  s  eager  interest  but  never 
betrays  Maugham  himself  into  anything  like  abandon.  Thus  his 
insights  are  always  shrewd,  rarely  deep,  and  his  stories  more  remark- 
able for  their  lucidity  and  formal  perfection  than  for  those  more 
enduring  qualities  we  associate  with  the  masters. 

In  one  of  his  tales  he  makes  a  character  (obviously  close  to  his  own 


172  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

heart)  say,  "li  to  look  truth  in  the  face  and  not  resent  it  when  it's 
unpalatable,  and  take  human  nature  as  you  End  it,  smiling  when  it's 
absurd  and  grieved  without  exaggeration  when  it's  pitiful,  is  to  be 
cynical,  then  I  suppose  I'm  a  cynic."  There  is  a  casual  gravity  about 
the  statement  which  removes  it  completely  from  a  merely  literary 
attitude. 

To  read  his  stories  is  like  listening  to  the  reminiscential  talk  of 
a  man  who  has  been  everywhere  and  seen  everything  but  prefers  not 
to  absorb  too  much,  not  to  take  anything  either  too  seriously  or  too 
frivolously.  Among  those  authors  who  steer  a  kind  of  middle  course 
between  first-rate  art  and  first-rate  entertainment,  Somerset  Maugham 
emerges  foremost  by  a  generous  margin.  He  is  as  good  a  writer  as  a 
man  of  the  world  can  possibly  be. 

"In  my  twenties,"  he  says,  and  he  is  not  complaining,  uthe  critics 
said  I  was  brutal,  in  my  thirties  they  said  I  was  flippant,  in  my  forties 
they  said  I  was  cynical,  in  my  Efties  they  said  I  was  competent,  and 
now  in  my  sixties  they  say  I  am  superficial."  It  is  an  excellent  sum- 
ming up  of  the  changes  in  public  taste  as  well  as  of  the  curve  of 
Maugham's  own  development.  He  has  been  all  of  these  things,  but 
one  thing  he  has  never  been:  careless. 

Of  Human  Bondage,  of  course,  is  in  a  class  by  itself.  Of  his  other 
novels  I  think  only  one  will  last:  Cakes  and  Ale,  one  of  the  most 
masterly  satires  on  the  literary  temperament  to  be  found  anywhere. 
It  is  minor  and  it  is  delicious.  Maugham  obviously  enjoyed  writing 
it,  and  as  long  as  people  enjoy  a  perfect  puncturing  of  pretense  and 
hypocrisy  they  will  enjoy  reading  it. 

Then  there  are  the  short  stories.  For  the  purposes  of  this  book  I 
reread  them— there  must  be  around  a  hundred— and  discovered  a  fact 
about  Maugham  that  he  may  not  be  aware  of  himself.  The  best 
stories  are  the  most  recent  the  ones  you  will  End  in  a  collection 
called  The  Mixture  as  Before.  In  his  introduction  to  this  volume 
Maugham,  as  the  title  indicates,  seems  to  assume  that  his  latest 
stories  are  about  on  a  level  with  his  earlier  ones.  I  thought  this 
was  probably  so,  until  I  went  through  the  whole  series.  My  judg- 
ment may  be  faulty,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  these  swan-song  tales 
(the  author  says,  "I  shall  not  write  any  more"  of  them)  have  a  con- 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  173 

cision,  a  directness,  that  his  earlier  stories,  even  the  famous  "Sadie 
Thompson,7'  Jack.  Also,  they  are  less  mechanical.  Their  comments  on 
life,  though  oi  a  piece  with  everything  Maugham  has  ever  said  about 
that  popular  institution,  are  no  longer  slick  ironies,  hut  genuine 
worldly  wisdom,  and  there  is  a  place  in  literature  for  wisdom  that  is 
worldly. 

From  this  volume  I  have  chosen  three  tales.  One  oi  them,  "Lord 
Mountdrago,"  is  just  a  trick  story  and  has  been  placed,  for  a  reason, 
in  another  part  of  this  hook.  The  remaining  two,  "The  Treasure7 
and  "The  Facts  of  Life,"  show  Maugham  at  his  best.  They  are  urbane 
without  affectation,  they  are  sagacious  without  cynicism,  they  have 
that  note  of  perfect  craftsmanship,  literary  conscientiousness,  modest 
reasonableness  which  is  pure  Somerset  Maugham.  And  they  are  in- 
fused with  a  dry-sherry  humor  that  will,  I  think,  keep  them  alive  when 
his  more  famous  short  stories— the  ones  they  make  bad  films  out  of— 
are  no  longer  read. 


■£_..£ 


xyn_       or 


The  Treasure 


BY 

W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM 


Richard  Harenger  was  a  happy  man.  Notwithstanding  what  the  pes- 
simists, from  Ecclesiastes  onwards,  have  said,  this  is  not  so  rare  a 
thing  to  find  in  this  unhappy  world,  but  Richard  Harenger  knew  it, 
and  that  is  a  very  rare  thing  indeed.  The  golden  mean  which  the 
ancients  so  highly  prized  is  out  of  fashion,  and  those  who  follow  it 
must  put  up  with  polite  derision  from  those  who  see  no  merit  in  self- 
restraint  and  no  virtue  in  common  sense.  Richard  Harenger  shrugged 
a  polite  and  amused  shoulder.  Let  others  live  dangerously,  let  others 
burn  with  a  hard  gemlike  flame,  let  others  stake  their  fortunes  on  the 
turn  of  a  card,  walk  the  tightrope  that  leads  to  glory  or  the  grave,  or 
hazard  their  lives  for  a  cause,  a  passion  or  an  adventure.  He  neither 
envied  the  fame  their  exploits  brought  them  nor  wasted  his  pity  on 
them  when  their  efforts  ended  in  disaster. 

But  it  must  not  be  inferred  from  this  that  Richard  Harenger  was  a 
selfish  or  a  callous  man.  He  was  neither.  He  was  considerate  and  of 
a  generous  disposition.  He  was  always  ready  to  oblige  a  friend,  and 
he  was  sufficiently  well  off  to  be  able  to  indulge  himself  in  the  pleasure 
of  helping  others.  He  had  some  money  of  his  own,  and  he  occupied  in 
the  Home  Office  a  position  that  brought  him  an  adequate  stipend.  The 
work  suited  him.  It  was  regular,  responsible  and  pleasant.  Every  day 
when  he  left  the  office  he  went  to  his  club  to  play  bridge  for  a  couple 
of  hours,  and  on  Saturdays  and  Sundays  he  played  golf.  He  went 
abroad  for  his  holidays,  staying  at  good  hotels,  and  visited  churches, 
galleries  and  museums.  He  was  a  regular  first-nighter.  He  dined  out 
a  good  deal.  His  friends  liked  him.  He  was  easy  to  talk  to.  He  was 
well  read,  knowledgeable  and  amusing.  He  was  besides  of  a  personable 

174 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  175 

exterior,  not  remarkably  handsome,  but  tall,  slim  and  erect  of  carriage, 
with  a  lean,  intelligent  face;  his  hair  was  growing  thin,  for  he  was 
now  approaching  the  age  of  fifty,  but  his  brown  eyes  retained  their 
smile  and  his  teeth  were  all  his  own.  He  had  from  nature  a  good 
constitution,  and  he  had  always  taken  care  of  himself.  There  was  no 
reason  in  the  world  why  he  should  not  be  a  happy  man,  and  if  there 
had  been  in  him  a  trace  of  self-complacency  he  might  have  claimed 
that  he  deserved  to  be. 

He  had  the  good  fortune  even  to  sail  safely  through  those  perilous, 
unquiet  straits  of  marriage  in  which  so  many  wise  and  good  men  have 
made  shipwreck.  Married  for  love  in  the  early  twenties,  his  wife  and 
he,  after  some  years  of  almost  perfect  felicity,  had  drifted  gradually 
apart.  Neither  of  them  wished  to  marry  anyone  else,  so  there  was 
no  question  of  divorce  (which  indeed  Richard  Harenger's  situation  in 
the  government  service  made  undesirable),  but  for  convenience'  sake, 
with  the  help  of  the  family  lawyer,  they  arranged  a  separation  which 
left  them  free  to  lead  their  lives  as  each  one  wished  without  inter- 
ference from  the  other.  They  parted  with  mutual  expressions  of  respect 
and  good  will. 

Richard  Harenger  sold  his  house  in  St.  John's  Wood  and  took  a 
flat  within  convenient  walking  distance  of  Whitehall.  It  had  a  sitting 
room  which  he  lined  with  his  books,  a  dining  room  into  which  his 
Chippendale  furniture  just  fitted,  a  nice-sized  bedroom  for  himself, 
and  beyond  the  kitchen  a  couple  of  maids'  rooms.  He  brought  his 
cook,  whom  he  had  had  for  many  years,  from  St.  John's  Wood,  but 
needing  no  longer  so  large  a  staff  dismissed  the  rest  of  the  servants 
and  applied  at  a  registry  office  for  a  house-parlourmaid.  He  knew 
exactly  what  he  wanted,  and  he  explained  his  needs  to  the  superin- 
tendent of  the  agency  with  precision.  He  wanted  a  maid  who  was 
not  too  young,  first  because  young  women  are  flighty  and  secondly 
because,  though  he  was  of  mature  age  and  a  man  of  principle,  people 
would  talk,  the  porter  and  the  tradesmen  if  nobody  else,  and  both 
for  the  sake  of  his  own  reputation  and  that  of  the  young  person  he 
considered  that  the  applicant  should  have  reached  years  of  discretion. 
Besides  that  he  wanted  a  maid  who  could  clean  silver  well.  He  had 
always  had  a  fancy  for  old  silver,  and  it  was  reasonable  to  demand 


176  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

that  the  forks  and  spoons  that  had  been  used  by  a  woman  of  quality 
under  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  should  be  treated  with  tenderness  and 
respect.  He  was  of  a  hospitable  nature  and  liked  to  give  at  least  once 
a  week  little  dinners  of  not  less  than  four  people  and  not  more  than 
eight.  He  could  trust  his  cook  to  send  in  a  meal  that  his  guests  would 
take  pleasure  in  eating  and  he  desired  his  parlourmaid  to  wait  with 
neatness  and  dispatch.  Then  he  needed  a  perfect  valet.  He  dressed 
well,  in  a  manner  that  suited  his  age  and  condition,  and  he  liked 
his  clothes  to  be  properly  looked  after.  The  parlourmaid  he  was  looking 
for  must  be  able  to  press  trousers  and  iron  a  tie,  and  he  was  very 
particular  that  his  shoes  should  be  well  shone.  He  had  small  feet,  and 
he  took  a  good  deal  of  trouble  to  have  well-cut  shoes.  He  had  a  large 
supply,  and  he  insisted  that  they  should  be  treed  up  the  moment  he 
took  them  ofT.  Finally  the  flat  must  be  kept  clean  and  tidy.  It  was  of 
course  understood  that  any  applicant  for  the  post  must  be  of  irreproach- 
able character,  sober,  honest,  reliable  and  of  a  pleasing  exterior.  In 
return  for  this  he^  was  prepared  to  ofler  good  wages,  reasonable  liberty 
and  ample  holidays.  The  superintendent  listened  without  batting  an 
eyelash,  and  telling  him  that  she  was  quite  sure  she  could  suit  him, 
sent  him  a  string  of  candidates  which  proved  that  she  had  not  paid 
the  smallest  attention  to  a  word  he  said.  He  saw  them  all  personally. 
Some  were  obviously  inefficient,  some  looked  fast,  some  were  too  old, 
others  too  young,  some  lacked  the  presence  he  thought  essential;  there 
was  not  one  to  whom  he  was  inclined  even  to  give  a  trial.  He  was  a 
kindly,  polite  man,  and  he  declined  their  services  with  a  smile  and  a 
pleasant  expression  of  regret.  He  did  not  lose  patience.  He  was  pre- 
oared  to  interview  house-parlourmaids  till  he  found  one  who  was 
suitable. 

Now  it  is  a  funny  thing  about  life,  if  you  refuse  to  accept  anything 
but  the  best  you  very  often  get  it:  if  you  utterly  decline  to  make  do 
with  what  you  can  get,  then  somehow  or  other  you  are  verv  likely 
to  get  what  you  want.  It  is  as  though  Fate  said,  "This  man's  a  perfect 
fool,  he's  asking  for  perfection,"  and  then  just  out  of  her  feminine 
wilfulness  flung  it  in  his  lap.  One  day  the  porter  of  the  flats  said  to 
Richard  Harenger  out  of  a  blue  sky: 


W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  177 

"I  hear  you're  lookin'  for  a  house-parlourmaid,  sir.  There's  someone 
I  know  lookin'  for  a  situation  as  might  do." 

"Can  you  recommend  her  personally?" 

Richard  Harenger  had  the  sound  opinion  that  one  servant's  recom- 
mendation of  another  was  worth  much  more  than  that  of  an  em- 
ployer. 

"I  can  vouch  for  her  respectability.  She's  been  in  some  very  good 
situations." 

"I  shall  be  coming  in  to  dress  about  seven.  If  that's  convenient  to 
her  I  could  see  her  then." 

"Very  good,  sir.  I'll  see  that  she's  told." 

He  had  not  been  in  more  than  five  minutes  when  the  cook,  having 
answered  a  ring  at  the  front  door,  came  in  and  told  him  that  the 
person  the  porter  had  spoken  to  him  about  had  called. 
,  "Show  her  in,"  he  said. 

He  turned  on  some  more  light  so  that  he  could  see  what  the  appli- 
cant looked  like,  and  getting  up,  stood  with  his  back  to  the  fireplace. 
A  woman  came  in  and  stood  just  inside  the  door  in  a  respectful  atti- 
tude. 

"Good  evening,"  he  said.  "What  is  your  name?" 

"Pritchard,  sir." 

"How  old  are  you?" 

"Thirty-five,  sir." 

"Well,  that's  a  reasonable  age." 

He  gave  his  cigarette  a  puff  and  looked  at  her  reflectively.  She  was 
on  the  tall  side,  nearly  as  tall  as  he,  but  he  guessed  that  she  wore  high 
heels.  Her  black  dress  fitted  her  station.  She  held  herself  well.  She 
had  good  features  and  a  rather  high  colour. 

"Will  you  take  off  your  hat?"  he  asked. 

She  did  so,  and  he  saw  that  she  had  pale  brown  hair.  It  was  neatly 
and  becomingly  dressed.  She  looked  strong  and  healthy.  She  was 
neither  fat  nor  thin.  In  a  proper  uniform  she  would  look  very  pre- 
sentable. She  was  not  inconveniently  handsome,  but  she  was  certainly 
a  comely,  in  another  class  of  life  you  might  almost  have  said  a  hand- 
some, woman.  He  proceeded  to  ask  her  a  number  of  questions.  Her 
answers  were  satisfactory.  She  had  left  her  last  place  for  an  adequate 


178  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

reason.  She  had  been  trained  under  a  butler  and  appeared  to  be  well 
acquainted  with  her  duties.  In  her  last  place  she  had  been  head  parlour- 
maid of  three,  but  she  did  not  mind  undertaking  the  work  of  the  flat 
single-handed.  She  had  valeted  a  gentleman  before  who  had  sent  her 
to  a  tailor's  to  learn  how  to  press  clothes.  She  was  a  little  shy,  but 
neither  timid  nor  ill  at  ease.  Richard  asked  her  his  questions  in  his 
amiable,  leisurely  way,  and  she  answered  them  with  modest  compo- 
sure. He  was  considerably  impressed.  He  asked  her  what  references 
she  could  give.  They  seemed  extremely  satisfactory. 

"Now  look  here,"  he  said,  "I'm  very  much  inclined  to  engage  you. 
But  I  hate  changes,  I've  had  my  cook  for  twelve  years:  if  you  suit 
me  and  the  place  suits  you  I  hope  you'll  stay.  I  mean,  I  don't  want 
you  to  come  to  me  in  three  or  four  months  and  say  that  you're  leaving 
to  get  married." 

"There's  not  much  fear  of  that,  sir.  I'm  a  widow.  I  don't  believe 
marriage  is  much  catch  for  anyone  in  my  position,  sir.  My  husband 
never  did  a  stroke  of  work  from  the  day  I  married  him  to  the  dav 
he  died,  and  I  had  to  keep  him.  What  I  want  now  is  a  good  home." 

"I'm  inclined  to  agree  with  you,"  he  smiled.  "Marriage  is  a  very 
good  thing,  but  I  think  it's  a  mistake  to  make  a  habit  of  it." 

She  very  properly  made  no  reply  to  this,  but  waited  for  him  to 
announce  his  decision.  She  did  not  seem  anxious  about  it.  He  reflected 
that  if  she  was  as  competent  as  she  appeared  she  must  be  well  aware 
that  she  would  have  no  difficulty  in  finding  a  place.  He  told  her  what 
wages  he  was  offering,  and  these  seemed  to  be  satisfactory  to  her. 
He  gave  her  the  necessary  information  about  the  place,  but  she  gave 
him  to  understand  that  she  was  already  apprised  of  this,  and  he  re- 
ceived the  impression,  which  amused  rather  than  disconcerted  him, 
that  she  had  made  certain  enquiries  about  him  before  applying  for 
the  situation.  It  showed  prudence  on  her  part  and  good  sense. 

"When  would  you  be  able  to  come  in  if  I  engaged  you?  I  haven*' t 
got  anybody  at  the  moment.  The  cook's  managing  as  best  she  can 
with  a  char,  but  I  should  like  to  get  settled  as  soon  as  possible/' 

"Well,  sir,  I  was  going  to  give  myself  a  week's  holiday,  but  if  it's 
a  matter  of  obliging  a  gentleman  I  don't  mind  giving  that  up.  I  could 
come  in  tomorrow  if  it  was  convenient." 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  179 

Richard  Harenger  gave  her  his  attractive  smile. 

"I  shouldn't  like  you  to  do  without  a  holiday  that  I  daresay  you've 
been  looking  forward  to.  I  can  very  well  go  on  like  this  for  another 
week.  Go  and  have  your  holiday  and  come  to  me  when  it's  over." 

"Thank  you  very  much,  sir.  Would  it  do  if  I  came  in  tomorrow 
week?" 

"Quite  well." 

When  she  left,  Richard  Harenger  felt  he  had  done  a  good  day's 
work.  It  looked  as  though  he  had  found  exactly  what  he  was  after. 
He  rang  for  the  cook  and  told  her  he  had  engaged  a  house-parlour- 
maid at  last. 

"I  think  you'll  like  her,  sir,"  she  said.  "She  came  in  and  'ad  a  talk 
with  me  this  afternoon.  I  could  see  at  once  she  knew  her  duties.  And 
she's  not  one  of  them  flighty  ones." 

"We  can  but  try,  Mrs.  Jeddy.  I  hope  you  gave  me  a  good  character." 

"Well,  I  said  you  was  particular,  sir.  I  said  you  was  a  gentleman  as 
liked  things  just  so." 

"I  admit  that." 

"She  said  she  didn't  mind  that.  She  said  she  liked  a  gentleman  as 
knew  what  was  what.  She  said  there's  no  satisfaction  in  doing  things 
proper  if  nobody  notices.  I  expect  you'll  find  she'll  take  a  rare  lot  of 
pride  in  her  work." 

"That's  what  I  want  her  to  do.  I  think  we  might  go  farther  and 
fare  worse." 

"Well,  sir,  there  is  that  to  it,  of  course.  And  the  proof  of  the  pud- 
ding's the  eating.  But  if  you  ask  my  opinion  I  think  she's  going  to 
be  a  real  treasure." 

And  that  is  precisely  what  Pritchard  turned  out.  No  man  was  ever 
better  served.  The  way  she  shone  shoes  was  marvellous,  and  he  set 
out  of  a  fine  morning  for  his  walk  to  the  office  with  a  more  jaunty- 
step  because  you  could  almost  see  yourself  reflected  in  them.  She 
looked  after  his  clothes  with  such  attention  that  his  colleagues  began 
to  chaff  him  about  being  the  best-dressed  man  in  the  Civil  Service. 
One  day,  coming  home  unexpectedly,  he  found  a  line  of  socks  and 
handkerchiefs  hung  up  to  dry  in  the  bathroom.  He  called  Pritchard. 


180  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

"D'you  wash  my  socks  and  handkerchiefs  yourself,  Pritchard?  I 
should  have  thought  you  had  enough  to  do  without  that." 

"They  do  ruin  them  so  at  the  laundry,  sir.  I  prefer  to  do  them  at 
home  if  you  have  no  objection." 

She  knew  exactly  what  he  should  wear  on  every  occasion,  and  with- 
out asking  him  was  aware  whether  she  should  put  out  a  dinner  jacket 
and  a  black  tie  in  the  evening  or  a  dress  coat  and  a  white  one.  When 
he  was  going  to  a  party  where  decorations  were  to  be  worn  he  found 
his  neat  little  row  of  medals  automatically  affixed  to  the  lapel  of  his 
coat.  He  soon  ceased  to  choose  every  morning  from  his  wardrobe  the 
tie  he  wanted,  for  he  found  that  she  put  out  for  him  without  fail 
the  one  he  would  have  himself  selected.  Her  taste  was  perfect.  He 
supposed  she  read  his  letters,  for  she  always  knew  what  his  move- 
ments were,  and  if  he  had  forgotten  at  what  hour  he  had  an  engage- 
ment he  had  no  need  to  look  in  his  book,  for  Pritchard  could  tell  him. 
She  knew  exactly  what  tone  to  use  with  persons  with  whom  she 
conversed  on  the  telephone.  Except  with  tradesmen,  with  whom  she 
was  apt  to  be  peremptory,  she  was  always  polite,  but  there  was  a  dis- 
tinct difference  in  her  manner  if  she  was  addressing  one  of  Mr. 
Harenger's  literary  friends  or  the  wife  of  a  Cabinet  Minister.  She 
knew  by  instinct  with  whom  he  wished  to  speak  and  with  whom 
he  didn't.  From  his  sitting  room  he  sometimes  heard  her  with  placid 
sincerity  assuring  a  caller  that  he  was  out,  and  then  she  would  come 
in  and  tell  him  that  So-and-so  had  rung  up,  but  she  thought  he 
wouldn't  wish  to  be  disturbed. 

"Quite  right,  Pritchard,"  he  smiled. 

"I  knew  she  only  wanted  to  bother  you  about  that  concert,"  said 
Pritchard. 

His  friends  made  appointments  with  him  through  her,  and  she 
would  tell  him  what  she  had  done  on  his  return  in  the  evening. 

"Mrs.  Soames  rang  up,  sir,  and  asked  if  you  would  lunch  with  her 
on  Thursday,  the  eighth,  but  I  said  you  were  very  sorry  but  you  were 
lunching  with  Lady  Versinder.  Mr.  Oakley  rang  up  and  asked  if 
you'd  go  to  a  cocktail  party  at  the  Savoy  next  Tuesday  at  six.  I  said 
vou  would  if  you  possibly  could,  but  you  might  have  to  go  to  the 
dentist's." 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  181 

"Quite  right." 

"I  thought  you  could  see  when  the  time  came,  sir." 

She  kept  the  flat  like  a  new  pin.  On  one  occasion  soon  after  she 
entered  his  service,  Richard,  coming  back  from  a  holiday,  took  out 
a  book  from  his  shelves  and  at  once  noticed  that  it  had  been  dusted. 
He  rang  the  bell. 

"I  forgot  to  tell  you,  when  I  went  away,  under  no  circumstances  ever 
to  touch  my  books.  When  books  are  taken  out  to  be  dusted  they're 
never  put  back  in  the  right  place.  I  don't  mind  my  books  being  dirty, 
but  I  hate  not  being  able  to  find  them." 

"I'm  very  sorry,  sir,"  said  Pritchard.  "I  know  some  gentlemen  are 
very  particular  and  I  took  care  to  put  back  every  book  exactly  where 
I  took  it  from." 

Richard  Harenger  gave  his  books  a  glance.  So  far  as  he  could  see5 
every  one  was  in  its  accustomed  place.  He  smiled. 

"I  apologize,  Pritchard." 

"They  were  in  a  muck,  sir.  I  mean,  you  couldn't  open  one  without 
getting  your  hands  black  with  dust." 

She  certainly  kept  his  silver  as  he  had  never  had  it  kept  before.  He 
felt  called  upon  to  give  her  a  special  word  of  praise. 

"Most  of  it's  Queen  Anne  and  George  I,  you  know,"  he  explained. 

"Yes,  I  know,  sir.  When  you've  got  something  good  like  that  to 
look  after,  it's  a  pleasure  to  keep  it  like  it  should  be." 

"You  certainly  have  a  knack  for  it.  I  never  knew  a  butler  who  kept 
his  silver  as  well  as  you  do." 

"Men  haven't  the  patience  women  have,"  she  replied  modestly. 

As  soon  as  he  thought  Pritchard  had  settled  down  in  the  place,  he 
resumed  the  little  dinners  he  was  fond  of  giving  once  a  week.  He 
had  already  discovered  th^t  she  knew  how  to  wait  at  table,  but  it 
was  with  a  warm  sense  of  complacency  that  he  realized  then  how 
competently  she  could  manage  a  party.  She  was  quick,  silent  and 
watchful.  A  guest  had  hardly  felt  the  need  of  something  before 
Pritchard  was  at  his  elbow  offering  him  what  he  wanted.  She  soon 
learned  the  tastes  of  his  more  intimate  friends  and  remembered  that 
one  liked  water  instead  of  soda  with  his  whisky  and  that  another 
particularly  fancied  the  knuckle  end  of  a  leg  of  lamb.  She  knew 


182  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

exactly  how  cold  a  hock  should  be  not  to  ruin  its  taste  and  how  long 
claret  should  have  stood  in  the  room  to  bring  out  its  bouquet.  It  was 
a  pleasure  to  see  her  pour  out  a  bottle  o£  burgundy  in  such  a  fashion 
as  not  to  disturb  the  grounds.  On  one  occasion  she  did  not  serve  the 
wine  Richard  had  ordered.  He  somewhat  sharply  pointed  this  out  to 
her. 

"I  opened  the  bottle,  sir,  and  it  was  slightly  corked.  So  I  got  the 
Chambertin,  as  I  thought  it  was  safer." 

"Quite  right,  Pritchard." 

Presently  he  left  this  matter  entirely  in  her  hands,  for  he  discovered 
that  she  knew  perfectly  what  wines  his  guests  would  like.  Without 
orders  from  him  she  would  provide  the  best  in  his  cellar  and  his 
oldest  brandy  if  she  thought  they  were  the  sort  of  people  who  knew 
what  they  were  drinking.  She  had  no  belief  in  the  palate  of  women, 
and  when  they  were  of  the  party  was  apt  to  serve  the  champagne 
which  had  to  be  drunk  before  it  went  off.  She  had  the  English  serv- 
ant's instinctive  knowledge  of  social  differences,  and  neither  rank 
nor  money  blinded  her  to  the  fact  that  someone  was  not  a  gentleman, 
but  she  had  favourites  among  his  friends,  and  when  someone  she 
particularly  liked  was  dining,  with  the  air  of  a  cat  that  has  swallowed 
a  canary  she  would  pour  out  for  him  a  bottle  of  a  wine  that  Harenger 
kept  for  very  special  occasions.  It  amused  him. 

"You've  got  on  the  right  side  of  Pritchard,  old  boy,"  he  exclaimed. 
"There  aren't  many  people  she  gives  this  wine  to." 

Pritchard  became  an  institution.  She  was  known  very  soon  to  be 
the  perfect  parlourmaid.  People  envied  Harenger  the  possession  of  her 
as  they  envied  nothing  else  that  he  had.  She  was  worth  her  weight 
in  gold.  Her  price  was  above  rubies.  Richard  Harenger  beamed  with 
self-complacency  when  they  praised  her. 

"Good  masters  make  good  servants,"  he  said  gaily. 

One  evening,  when  they  were  sitting  over  their  port  and  she  had 
left  the  room,  they  were  talking  about  her. 

"It'll  be  an  awful  blow  when  she  leaves  you." 

"Why  should  she  leave  me?  One  or  two  people  have  tried  to  get 
her  away  from  me,  but  she  turned  them  down.  She  knows  where  she's 
well  off." 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  183 

"She'll  get  married  one  of  these  days." 

"I  don't  think  she's  that  sort." 

"She's  a  good-looking  woman." 

"Yes,  she  has  quite  a  decent  presence." 

"What  are  you  talking  about?  She's  a  very  handsome  creature.  In 
another  class  of  life  she'd  be  a  well-known  society  beauty  with  her 
photograph  in  all  the  papers." 

At  that  moment  Pritchard  came  in  with  the  coffee.  Richard  Haren- 
ger  looked  at  her.  After  seeing  her  every  day,  or?  and  on,  for  four  years 
it  was  now,  my  word,  how  time  flies,  he  had  really  forgotten  what 
she  looked  like.  She  did  not  seem  to  have  changed  much  since  he 
had  first  seen  her.  She  was  no  stouter  than  then,  she  still  had  the 
high  colour,  and  her  regular  features  bore  the  same  expression  which 
was  at  once  intent  and  vacuous.  The  black  uniform  suited  her.  She 
left  the  room. 

"She's  a  paragon,  and  there's  no  doubt  about  it." 

"I  know  she  is,"  answered  Harenger.  "She's  perfection.  I  should  be 
lost  without  her.  And  the  strange  thing  is  that  I  don't  very  much  like 
her." 

"Why  not?'' 

"I  think  she  bores  me  a  little.  You  see,  she  has  no  conversation.  I've 
often  tried  to  talk  to  her.  She  answers  when  I  speak  to  her,  but  that's 
all.  In  four  years  she's  never  volunteered  a  remark  of  her  own.  I 
know  absolutely  nothing  about  her.  I  don't  know  if  she  likes  me  or 
if  she's  completely  indifferent  to  me.  She's  an  automaton.  I  respect 
her,  I  appreciate  her,  I  trust  her.  She  has  every  quality  in  the  world, 
and  I've  often  wondered  why  it  is  that  with  all  that  I'm  so  completely 
indifferent  to  her.  I  think  it  must  be  that  she  is  entirely  devoid  of 
charm." 

They  left  it  at  that. 

Two  or  three  days  after  this,  since  it  was  Pritchard's  night  out  and 
he  had  no  engagement,  Richard  Harenger  dined  by  himself  at  his 
club.  A  page  boy  came  to  him  and  told  him  that  they  had  just  rung 
up  from  his  flat  to  say  that  he  had  gone  out  without  his  keys  and 
should  they  be  brought  along  to  him  in  a  taxi?  He  put  his  hand 
to  his  pocket.  It  was  a  fact.  By  a  singular  chance  he  had  forgotten 


184  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

to  place  them  when  he  had  changed  into  a  blue  serge  suit  before 
coming  out  to  dinner.  His  intention  had  been  to  play  bridge,  but  it 
was  an  off  night  at  the  club,  and  there  seemed  little  chance  of  a 
decent  game;  it  occurred  to  him  that  it  would  be  a  good  opportunity 
to  see  a  picture  that  he  had  heard  talked  about,  so  he  sent  back  the 
message  by  the  page  that  he  would  call  for  the  keys  himself  in  half 
an  hour. 

He  rang  at  the  door  of  his  flat,  and  it  was  opened  by  Pritchard. 
She  had  the  keys  in  her  hand. 

"What  are  you  doing  here,  Pritchard?"  he  asked.  "It's  your  night 
out,  isn't  it?" 

"Yes,  sir.  But  I  didn't  care  about  going,  so  I  told  Mrs.  Jeddy  she 
could  go  instead." 

"You  ought  to  get  out  when  you  have  the  chance,"  he  said,  with 
his  usual  thoughtfulness.  "It's  not  good  for  you  to  be  cooped  up 
here  all  the  time." 

"I  get  out  now  and  then  on  an  errand,  but  I  haven't  been  out  in 
the  evening  for  the  last  month." 

"Why  on  earth  not?" 

"Well,  it's  not  very  cheerful  going  out  by  yourself,  and  somehow 
I  don't  know  anyone  just  now  that  I'm  particularly  keen  on  going 
out  with." 

"You  ought  to  have  a  bit  of  fun  now  and  then.  It's  good  for  you." 

"I've  got  out  of  the  habit  of  it  somehow." 

"Look  here,  I'm  just  going  to  the  cinema.  Would  you  like  to  come 
along  with  me?" 

He  spoke  in  kindliness,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  and  the  moment 
he  had  said  the  words  half  regretted  them. 

"Yes,  sir,  I'd  like  to,"  said  Pritchard. 

"Run  along  then  and  put  on  a  hat." 

"I  shan't  be  a  minute." 

She  disappeared,  and  he  went  into  the  sitting  room  and  lit  a  cigarette. 
He  was  a  little  amused  at  what  he  was  doing,  and  pleased,  too;  it  was 
nice  to  be  able  to  make  someone  happy  with  so  little  trouble  to  himself. 
It  was  characteristic  of  Pritchard  that  she  had  shown  neither  surprise 
nor  hesitation.  She  kept  him  waiting  about  five  minutes,  and  when 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  185 

she  came  back  he  noticed  that  she  had  changed  her  dress.  She  wore 
a  blue  frock  in  what  he  supposed  was  artificial  silk,  a  small  black  hat 
with  a  blue  brooch  on  it,  and  a  silver  fox  round  her  neck.  He  was 
a  trifle  relieved  to  see  that  she  looked  neither  shabby  nor  showy.  It 
would  never  occur  to  anyone  who  happened  to  see  them  that  this  was 
a  distinguished  official  in  the  Home  Office  taking  his  housemaid  to 
the  pictures. 

"I'm  sorry  to  have  kept  you  waiting,  sir." 

"It  doesn't  matter  at  all,"  he  said  graciously. 

He  opened  the  front  door  for  her,  and  she  went  out  before  him. 
He  remembered  the  familiar  anecdote  of  Louis  XIV  and  the  courtier 
and  appreciated  the  fact  that  she  had  not  hesitated  to  precede  him. 
The  cinema  for  which  they  were  bound  was  at  no  great  distance  from 
Mr.  Harenger's  flat,  and  they  walked  there.  He  talked  about  the 
weather  and  the  state  of  the  roads  and  Adolf  Hitler.  Pritchard  made 
suitable  replies.  They  arrived  just  as  Mickey  the  Mouse  was  starting, 
and  this  put  them  in  a  good  humour.  During  the  four  years  she  had 
been  in  his  service  Richard  Harenger  had  hardly  ever  seen  Pritchard 
even  smile,  and  now  it  diverted  him  vastly  to  hear  her  peal  upon 
peal  of  joyous  laughter.  He  enjoyed  her  pleasure.  Then  the  principal 
attraction  was  thrown  on  the  screen.  It  was  a  good  picture,  and  they 
both  watched  it  with  breathless  excitement.  Taking  his  cigarette  case 
out  to  help  himself,  he  automatically  offered  it  to  Pritchard. 

"Thank  you,  sir,"  she  said,  taking  one. 

He  lit  it  for  her.  Her  eyes  were  on  the  screen  and  she  was  almost 
unconscious  of  his  action.  When  the  picture  was  finished  they  streamed 
out  with  the  crowd  into  the  street.  They  walked  back  towards  the 
flat.  It  was  a  fine  starry  night. 

"Did  you  like  it?"  he  said. 

"Like  anything,  sir.  It  was  a  real  treat." 

A  thought  occurred  to  him. 

"By  the  way,  did  you  have  any  supper  tonight?" 

"No,  sir.  I  didn't  have  time." 

"Aren't  you  starving?" 

"I'll  have  a  bit  of  bread  and  cheese  when  I  get  in  and  I'll  make  me- 
self  a  cup  of  cocoa." 


186  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"That  sounds  rather  grim."  There  was  a  feeling  of  gaiety  in  the 
air,  and  the  people  who  poured  past  them,  one  way  and  another, 
seemed  filled  with  a  pleasant  elation.  In  for  a  penny,  in  for  a  pound, 
he  said  to  himself.  "Look  here,  would  you  like  to  come  and  have  a 
bit  of  supper  with  me  somewhere?" 

"If  you'd  like  to,  sir." 
Come  on. 

He  hailed  a  cab.  He  was  feeling  very  philanthropic  and  it  was  not 
a  feeling  that  he  disliked  at  all.  He  told  the  driver  to  go  to  a  restaurant 
in  Oxford  Street  which  was  gay,  but  at  which  he  was  confident  there 
was  no  chance  of  meeting  anyone  he  knew.  There  was  an  orchestra, 
and  people  danced.  It  would  amuse  Pritchard  to  see  them.  When  they 
sat  down  a  waiter  came  up  to  them. 

"They've  got  a  set  supper  here,"  he  said,  thinking  that  was  what 
she  would  like.  "I  suggest  we  have  that.  What  would  you  like  to 
drink?  A  little  white  wine?" 

"What  I  really  fancy  is  a  glass  of  ginger  beer,"  she  said. 

Richard  Harenger  ordered  himself  a  whisky  and  soda.  She  ate  the 
supper  with  hearty  appetite,  and  though  Harenger  was  not  hungry, 
to  put  her  at  her  ease  he  ate  too.  The  picture  they  had  just  seen 
gave  them  something  to  talk  about.  It  was  quite  true  what  they  had 
said  the  other  night,  Pritchard  was  not  a  bad-looking  woman,  and 
even  if  someone  had  seen  them  together  he  would  not  have  minded. 
It  would  make  rather  a  good  story  for  his  friends  when  he  told  them 
how  he  had  taken  the  incomparable  Pritchard  to  the  cinema  and  then 
afterwards  to  supper.  Pritchard  was  looking  at  the  dancers  with  a 
faint  smile  on  her  lips. 

"Do  you  like  dancing?"  he  said. 

"I  used  to  be  a  rare  one  for  it  when  I  was  a  girl.  I  never  danced 
much  after  I  was  married.  My  husband  was  a  bit  shorter  than  me, 
and  somehow  I  never  think  it  looks  well  unless  the  gentleman's  taller, 
if  you  know  what  I  mean.  I  suppose  I  shall  be  getting  too  old  for  it 
soon." 

Richard  was  certainly  taller  than  his  parlourmaid.  They  would  look 
all  right.  He  was  fond  of  dancing  and  he  danced  well.  But  he  hesitated. 
He  did  not  want  to  embarrass  Pritchard  by  asking  her  to  dance  with 


W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  187 

him.  It  was  better  not  to  go  too  far  perhaps.  And  yet  what  did  it 
matter?  It  was  a  drab  life  she  led.  She  was  so  sensible,  if  she  thought 
it  a  mistake  he  was  pretty  sure  she  would  find  a  decent  excuse. 

"Would  you  like  to  take  a  turn,  Pritchard?"  he  said,  as  the  band 
struck  up  again. 

"I'm  terribly  out  of  practice,  sir." 

"What  does  that  matter?" 

"If  you  don't  mind,  sir,"  she  answered  coolly,  rising  from  her  seat. 

She  was  not  in  the  least  shy.  She  was  only  afraid  that  she  would  not 
be  able  to  follow  his  step.  They  moved  on  to  the  floor.  He  found  she 
danced  very  well. 

"Why,  you  dance  perfectly,  Pritchard,"  he  said. 

"It's  coming  back  to  me." 

Although  she  was  a  big  woman,  she  was  light  on  her  feet,  and  she 
had  a  natural  sense  of  rhythm.  She  was  very  pleasant  to  dance  with. 
He  gave  a  glance  at  the  mirrors  that  lined  the  walls,  and  he  could  not 
help  reflecting  that  they  looked  very  well  together.  Their  eyes  met  in 
the  mirror;  he  wondered  whether  she  was  thinking  that,  too.  They 
had  two  more  dances,  and  then  Richard  Harenger  suggested  that 
they  should  go.  He  paid  the  bill  and  they  walked  out.  He  noticed 
that  she  threaded  her  way  through  the  crowd  without  a  trace  of  self- 
consciousness.  They  got  into  a  taxi  and  in  ten  minutes  were  at  home. 

"I'll  go  up  the  back  way,  sir,"  said  Pritchard. 

"There's  no  need  to  do  that.  Come  up  in  the  lift  with  me." 

He  took  her  up,  giving  the  night  porter  an  icy  glance,  so  that  he 
should  not  think  it  strange  that  he  came  back  at  that  somewhat  late 
hour  with  his  parlourmaid,  and  with  his  latchkey  let  her  into  the  flat. 

"Well,  good  night,  sir,"  she  said.  "Thank  you  very  much.  It's  been 
a  real  treat  for  me." 

"Thank  you,  Pritchard.  I  should  have  had  a  very  dull  evening  by 
myself.  I  hope  you've  enjoyed  your  outing." 

"That  I  have,  sir,  more  than  I  can  say." 

It  had  been  a  success.  Richard  Harenger  was  satisfied  with  himself. 
It  was  a  kindly  thing  for  him  to  have  done.  It  was  a  very  agreeable 
sensation   to   give   anyone   so   much   real  pleasure.   His  benevolence 


188  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

warmed  him  and  for  a  moment  he  felt  a  great  love  in  his  heart  for 
the  whole  human  race, 

"Good  night,  Pritchard,"  he  said,  and  because  he  felt  happy  and 
good  he  put  his  arm  round  her  waist  and  kissed  her  on  the  lips. 

Her  lips  were  very  soft.  They  lingered  on  his,  and  she  returned  his 
kiss.  It  was  the  warm,  hearty  embrace  of  a  healthy  woman  in  the 
prime  of  life.  He  found  it  very  pleasant,  and  he  held  her  to  him  a 
little  more  closely.  She  put  her  arms  round  his  neck. 

As  a  general  rule  he  did  not  wake  till  Pritchard  came  in  with  his 
letters,  but  next  morning  he  woke  at  half  past  seven.  He  had  a  curious 
sensation  that  he  did  not  recognize.  He  was  accustomed  to  sleep  with 
two  pillows  under  his  head,  and  he  suddenly  grew  aware  of  the 
fact  that  he  had  only  one.  Then  he  remembered  and  with  a  start  looked 
round.  The  other  pillow  was  beside  his  own.  Thank  God,  no  sleeping 
head  rested  there,  but  it  was  plain  that  one  had.  His  heart  sank.  He 
broke  out  into  a  cold  sweat. 

"My  God,  what  a  fool  I've  been!"  he  cried  out  loud. 

How  could  he  have  done  anything  so  stupid?  What  on  earth  had 
come  over  him  ?  He  was  the  last  man  to  play  about  with  servant  girls. 
What  a  disgraceful  thing  to  do!  At  his  age  and  in  his  position.  He  had 
not  heard  Pritchard  slip  away.  He  must  have  been  asleep.  It  wasn't 
even  as  if  he'd  liked  her  very  much.  She  wasn't  his  type.  And  as  he 
had  said  the  other  night,  she  rather  bored  him.  Even  now  he  only 
knew  her  as  Pritchard.  He  had  no  notion  what  her  first  name  was. 
What  madness!  And  what  was  to  happen  now?  The  position  was 
impossible.  It  was  obvious  he  couldn't  keep  her,  and  yet  to  send  her 
away  for  what  was  his  fault  as  much  as  hers  seemed  shockingly  unfair. 
How  idiotic  to  lose  the  best  parlourmaid  a  man  ever  had  just  for  an 
hour's  folly! 

"It's  that  damned  kindness  of  heart  of  mine,"  he  groaned. 

He  would  never  find  anyone  else  to  look  after  his  clothes  so  admi- 
rably or  clean  the  silver  so  well.  She  knew  all  his  friends'  telephone 
numbers,  and  she  understood  wine.  But  of  course  she  must  go.  She 
must  see  for  herself  that  after  what  had  happened  things  could  never 
be  the  same.  He  would  make  her  a  handsome  present  and  give  her 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  189 

an  excellent  reference.  At  any  minute  she  would  be  coming  in  now. 
Would  she  be  arch,  would  she  be  familiar?  Or  would  she  put  on  airs? 
Perhaps  even  she  wouldn't  trouble  to  come  in  with  his  letters.  It  would 
be  awful  if  he  had  to  ring  the  bell  and  Mrs.  Jeddy  came  in  and  said: 
"Pritchard's  not  up  yet,  sir,  she's  having  a  lie  in  after  last  night." 

"What  a  fool  I've  been!  What  a  contemptible  cad!" 

There  was  a  knock  at  the  door.  He  was  sick  with  anxiety. 

"Come  in." 

Richard  Harenger  was  a  very  unhappy  man. 

Pritchard  came  in  as  the  clock  struck.  She  wore  the  print  dress  she 
was  in  the  habit  of  wearing  during  the  early  part  of  the  day. 

"Good  morning,  sir,"  she  said. 

"Good  morning." 

She  drew  the  curtains  and  handed  him  his  letters  and  the  papers. 
Her  face  was  impassive.  She  looked  exactly  as  she  always  looked.  Her 
movements  had  the  same  competent  deliberation  that  they  always  had. 
She  neither  avoided  Richard's  glance  nor  sought  it. 

"Will  you  wear  your  grey,  sir  ?  It  came  back  from  the  tailor's  yester- 
day." 

"Yes." 

He  pretended  to  read  his  letters,  but  he  watched  her  from  under 
his  eyelashes.  Her  back  was  turned  to  him.  She  took  his  vest  and 
drawers  and  folded  them  over  a  chair.  She  took  the  studs  out  of  the 
shirt  he  had  worn  the  day  before  and  studded  a  clean  one.  She  put  out 
some  clean  socks  for  him  and  placed  them  on  the  seat  of  a  chair  with 
the  suspenders  to  match  by  the  side.  Then  she  put  out  his  grey  suit  and 
attached  the  braces  to  the  back  buttons  of  the  trousers.  She  opened  his 
wardrobe  and  after  a  moment's  reflection  chose  a  tie  to  go  with  the 
suit.  She  collected  on  her  arm  the  suit  of  the  day  before  and  picked 
up  the  shoes. 

"Will  you  have  breakfast  now,  sir,  or  will  you  have  your  bath  first?" 

"I'll  have  breakfast  now,"  he  said. 

"Very  good,  sir." 

With  her  slow  quiet  movements,  unruffled,  she  left  the  room.  Her 
face  bore  that  rather  serious,  deferential,  vacuous  look  it  always  bore. 
What  had  happened  might  have  been  a  dream.  Nothing  in  Pritchard's 


190  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

demeanour  suggested  that  she  had  the  smallest  recollection  of  the 
night  before.  He  gave  a  sigh  of  relief.  It  was  going  to  be  all  right.  She 
need  not  go,  she  need  not  go.  Pritchard  was  the  perfect  parlourmaid. 
He  knew  that  never  by  word  nor  gesture  would  she  ever  refer  to  the 
fact  that  for  a  moment  their  relations  had  been  other  than  those  of 
master  and  servant.  Richard  Harenger  was  a  very  happy  man. 


The  Facts  of  Life 

BY 

W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM 


It  was  Henry  Garnet's  habit  on  leaving  the  city  of  an  afternoon  to 
drop  in  at  his  club  and  play  bridge  before  going  home  to  dinner.  He 
was  a  pleasant  man  to  play  with.  He  knew  the  game  well,  and  you 
could  be  sure  that  he  would  make  the  best  of  his  cards.  He  was  a  good 
loser;  and  when  he  won  was  more  inclined  to  ascribe  his  success  to 
his  luck  than  to  his  skill.  He  was  indulgent,  and  if  his  partner  made 
a  mistake,  could  be  trusted  to  find  an  excuse  for  him.  It  was  surprising 
then  on  this  occasion  to  hear  him  telling  his  partner  with  unnecessary 
sharpness  that  he  had  never  seen  a  hand  worse  played;  and  it  was 
more  surprising  still  to  see  him  not  only  make  a  grave  error  himself, 
an  error  of  which  you  would  never  have  thought  him  capable,  but 
when  his  partner,  not  unwilling  to  get  a  little  of  his  own  back,  pointed 
it  out,  insist  against  all  reason  and  with  considerable  heat  that  he  was 
perfectly  right.  But  they  were  all  old  friends,  the  men  he  was  playing 
with,  and  none  of  them  took  his  ill  humour  very  seriously.  Henry 
Garnet  was  a  broker,  a  partner  in  a  firm  of  repute,  and  it  occurred  to 
one  of  them  that  something  had  gone  wrong  with  some  stock  he  was 
interested  in. 

"How's  the  market  today?"  he  asked. 

"Booming.  Even  the  suckers  are  making  money." 

It  was  evident  that  stocks  and  shares  had  nothing  to  do  with  Henry 
Garnet's  vexation;  but  something  was  the  matter;  that  was  evident, 
too.  He  was  a  hearty  fellow  who  enjoyed  excellent  health;  he  had 
plenty  of  money;  he  was  fond  of  his  wife  and  devoted  to  his  children. 
As  a  rule  he  had  high  spirits,  and  he  laughed  easily  at  the  nonsense 
they  were  apt  to  talk  while  they  played;  but  today  he  sat  glum  and 

191 


192  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

silent.  His  brows  were  crossly  puckered,  and  there  was  a  sulky  look 
about  his  mouth.  Presently,  to  ease  the  tension,  one  of  the  others  men- 
tioned a  subject  upon  which  they*  all  knew  Henry  Garnet  was  glad 
to  speak. 

"How's  your  boy,  Henry?  I  see  he's  done  pretty  well  in  the  tourna- 
ment." 

Henry  Garnet's  frown  grew  darker. 

"He's  done  no  better  than  I  expected  him  to." 

"When  does  he  come  back  from  Monte?" 

"He  got  back  last  night." 

"Did  he  enjoy  himself?" 

"I  suppose  so;  all  I  know  is  that  he  made  a  damned  fool  of  himself." 

"Oh.  How?" 

"I'd  rather  not  talk  about  it  if  you  don't  mind." 

The  three  men  looked  at  him  with  curiosity.  Henry  Garnet  scowled 
at  the  green  baize. 

"Sorry,  old  boy.  Your  call." 

The  game  proceeded  in  a  strained  silence.  Garnet  got  his  bid,  and 
when  he  played  his  cards  so  badly  that  he  went  three  down  not  a  word 
was  said.  Another  rubber  was  begun,  and  in  the  second  game  Garnet 
denied  a  suit. 

"Having  none?"  his  partner  asked  him. 

Garnet's  irritability  was  such  that  he  did  not  even  reply,  and  when 
at  the  end  of  the  hand  it  appeared  that  he  had  revoked,  and  that  his 
revoke  cost  the  rubber,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  his  partner 
should  let  his  carelessness  go  without  remark. 

"What  the  devil's  the  matter  with  you,  Henry?"  he  said.  "You're 
playing  like  a  fool." 

Garnet  was  disconcerted.  He  did  not  so  much  mind  losing  a  big 
rubber  himself,  but  he  was  sore  that  his  inattention  should  have  made 
his  partner  lose  too.  He  pulled  himself  together. 

"I'd  better  not  play  any  more.  I  thought  a  few  rubbers  would  calm 
me,  but  the  fact  is  I  can't  give  my  mind  to  the  game.  To  tell  you  the 
truth  I'm  in  a  hell  of  a  temper." 

They  all  burst  out  laughing. 

"You  don't  have  to  tell  us  that,  old  boy.  It's  obvious." 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  193 

Garnet  gave  them  a  rueful  smile. 

"Well,  I  bet  you'd  be  in  a  temper  if  what's  happened  to  me  had  hap- 
pened to  you.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I'm  in  a  damned  awkward  situation, 
and  if  any  of  you  fellows  can  give  me  any  advice  how  to  deal  with 
it  I'd  be  grateful." 

"Let's  have  a  drink  and  you  tell  us  all  about  it.  With  a  K.C.,  a 
Home  Office  official  and  an  eminent  surgeon — if  we  can't  tell  you  how 
to  deal  with  a  situation,  nobody  can." 

The  K.C.  got  up  and  rang  the  bell  for  a  waiter. 

"It's  about  that  damned  boy  of  mine,"  said  Henry  Garnet. 

Drinks  were  ordered  and  brought.  And  this  is  the  story  that  Henry 
Garnet  told  them. 

The  boy  of  whom  he  spoke  was  his  only  son.  His  name  was 
Nicholas,  and  of  course  he  was  called  Nicky.  He  was  eighteen.  The 
Garnets  had  two  daughters  besides,  one  of  sixteen  and  the  other  of 
twelve,  but  however  unreasonable  it  seemed,  for  a  father  is  gener- 
ally supposed  to  like  his  daughters  best,  and  though  he  did  all  he 
could  not  to  show  his  preference,  there  was  no  doubt  that  the  greater 
share  of  Henry  Garnet's  affection  was  given  to  his  son.  He  was  kind, 
in  a  chafing,  casual  way,  to  his  daughters,  and  gave  them  handsome 
presents  on  their  birthdays  and  at  Christmas;  but  he  doted  on  Nicky. 
Nothing  was  too  good  for  him.  He  thought  the  world  of  him.  He 
could  hardly  take  his  eyes  off  him.  You  could  not  blame  him,  for 
Nicky  was  a  son  that  any  parent  might  have  been  proud  of.  He  was 
six  foot  two,  lithe  but  muscular,  with  broad  shoulders  and  a  slim  waist, 
and  he  held  himself  gallantly  erect;  he  had  a  charming  head,  well 
placed  on  the  shoulders,  with  pale  brown  hair  that  waved  slightly, 
blue  eyes  with  long  dark  lashes  under  well-marked  eyebrows,  a  full 
red  mouth  and  a  tanned,  clean  skin.  When  he  smiled  he  showed  very 
regular  and  very  white  teeth.  He  was  not  shy,  but  there  was  a  modesty 
in  his  demeanour  that  was  attractive.  In  social  intercourse  he  was  easy, 
polite  and  quietly  gay.  He  was  the  offspring  of  nice,  healthy,  decent 
parents,  he  had  been  well  brought  up  in  a  good  home,  he  had  been 
sent  to  a  good  school,  and  the  general  result  was  as  engaging  a  speci- 
men of  young  manhood  as  you  were  likely  to  find  in  a  long  time.  You 
felt  that  he  was  as  honest,  open  and  virtuous  as  he  looked.  He  had 


194  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

never  given  his  parents  a  moment's  uneasiness.  As  a  child  he  was 
seldom  ill  and  never  naughty.  As  a  boy  he  did  everything  that  was 
expected  of  him.  His  school  reports  were  excellent.  He  was  wonder- 
fully popular,  and  he  ended  his  career,  with  a  creditable  number  of 
prizes,  as  head  of  the  school  and  captain  of  the  football  team.  But 
this  was  not  all.  At  the  age  of  fourteen  Nicky  had  developed  an 
unexpected  gift  for  lawn  tennis.  This  was  a  game  that  his  father  not 
only  was  fond  of,  but  played  very  well,  and  when  he  discerned  in  the 
boy  the  promise  of  a  tennis  player  he  fostered  it.  During  the  holidays 
he  had  him  taught  by  the  best  professionals,  and  by  the  time  he  was 
sixteen  he  had  won  a  number  of  tournaments  for  boys  of  his  age.  He 
could  beat  his  father  so  badly  that  only  parental  affection  reconciled 
the  older  player  to  the  poor  show  he  put  up.  At  eighteen  Nicky  went 
to  Cambridge  and  Henry  Garnet  conceived  the  ambition  that  before 
he  was  through  with  the  university  he  should  play  for  it.  Nicky  had 
all  the  qualifications  for  becoming  a  great  tennis  player.  He  was  tall, 
he  had  a  long  reach,  he  was  quick  on  his  feet  and  his  timing  was 
perfect.  He  realized  instinctively  where  the  ball  was  coming  and, 
seemingly  without  hurry,  was  there  to  take  it.  He  had  a  powerful 
serve,  with  a  nasty  break  that  made  it  difficult  to  return,  and  his  fore- 
hand drive,  low,  long  and  accurate,  was  deadly.  He  was  not  so  good 
on  the  backhand  and  his  volleying  was  wild,  but  all  through  the 
summer  before  he  went  to  Cambridge  Henry  Garnet  made  him  work 
on  these  points  under  the  best  teacher  in  England.  At  the  back  of 
his  mind,  though  he  did  not  even  mention  it  to  Nicky,  he  cherished 
a  further  ambition,  to  see  his  son  play  at  Wimbledon,  and  who  could 
tell,  perhaps  be  chosen  to  represent  his  country  in  the  Davis  Cup.  A 
great  lump  came  into  Henry  Garnet's  throat  as  he  saw  in  fancy  his 
son  leap  over  the  net  to  shake  hands  with  the  American  champion 
whom  he  had  just  defeated,  and  walk  off  the  court  to  the  deafening 
plaudits  of  the  multitude. 

As  an  assiduous  frequenter  of  Wimbledon,  Henry  Garnet  had  a 
good  many  friends  in  the  tennis  world,  and  one  evening  he  found 
himself  at  a  city  dinner  sitting  next  to  one  of  them,  a  Colonel  Braba- 
zon,  and  in  due  course  began  talking  to  him  of  Nicky  and  what  chance 
there  might  be  of  his  being  chosen  to  play  for  his  university  during 
the  following  season. 


195 

"Why  don't  you  let  him  go  down  to  Monte  Carlo  and  play  in  the 
spring  tournament  there?"  said  the  Colonel  suddenly. 

"Oh,  I  don't  think  he's  good  enough  for  that.  He's  not  nineteen 
yet,  he  only  went  up  to  Cambridge  last  October;  he  wouldn't  stand 
a  chance  against  all  those  cracks." 

"Of  course,  Austin  and  Von  Cramm  and  so  on  would  knock  spots 
off  him,  but  he  might  snatch  a  game  or  two;  and  if  he  got  up  against 
some  of  the  smaller  fry  there's  no  reason  why  he  shouldn't  win  two 
or  three  matches.  He's  never  been  up  against  any  of  the  first-rate 
players,  and  it  would  be  wonderful  practice  for  him.  He'd  learn  a  lot 
more  than  he'll  ever  learn  in  the  seaside  tournaments  you  enter  him 
for." 

"I  wouldn't  dream  of  it.  I'm  not  going  to  let  him  leave  Cambridge 
in  the  middle  of  a  term.  I've  always  impressed  upon  him  that  tennis 
is  only  a  game  and  it  mustn't  interfere  with  work." 

Colonel  Brabazon  asked  Garnet  when  the  term  ended. 

"That's  all  right. -.jyte'd  only  have  to  cut  about  three  days.  Surely 
that  could  be  arranged.  You  see,  two  of  the  men  we  were  depending 
on  have  let  us  down,  and  we're  in  a  hole.  We  want  to  send  as  good  a 
team  as  we  can.  The  Germans  are  sending  their  best  players,  and  so 
are  the  Americans." 

"Nothing  doing,  old  boy.  In  the  first  place  Nicky's  not  good  enough, 
and  secondly,  I  don't  fancy  the  idea  of  sending  a  kid  like  that  to 
Monte  Carlo  without  anyone  to  look  after  him.  If  I  could  get  away 
myself  I  might  think  of  it,  but  that's  out  of  the  question." 

"I  shall  be  there.  I'm  going  as  the  nonplaying  captain  of  the  English 
team.  I'll  keep  an  eye  on  him." 

"You'll  be  busy,  and  besides,  it's  not  a  responsibility  I'd  like  to  ask 
you  to  take.  He's  never  been  abroad  in  his  life,  and  to  tell  you  the 
truth,  I  shouldn't  have  a  moment's  peace  all  the  time  he  was  there." 

They  left  it  at  that,  and  presently  Henry  Garnet  went  home.  He  was 
so  flattered  by  Colonel  Brabazon's  suggestion  that  he  could  not  help 
telling  his  wife. 

"Fancy  his  thinking  Nicky's  as  good  as  that.  He  told  me  he'd  seen 
him  play  and  his  style  was  fine.  He  only  wants  more  practice  to  get 
into  the  first  flight.  We  shall  see  the  kid  playing  in  the  semifinals  at 
Wimbledon  yet,  old  girl." 


196  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

To  his  surprise  Mrs.  Garnet  was  not  so  much  opposed  to  the  notion 
as  he  would  have  expected. 

"After  all  the  boy's  eighteen.  Nicky's  never  got  into  mischief  yet, 
and  there's  no  reason  to  suppose  he  will  now." 

"There's  his  work  to  be  considered;  don't  forget  that.  I  think  it 
would  be  a  very  bad  precedent  to  let  him  cut  the  end  of  term." 

"But  what  can  three  days  matter?  It  seems  a  shame  to  rob  him  of 
a  chance  like  that.  I'm  sure  he'd  jump  at  it  if  you  asked  him." 

"Well,  I'm  not  going  to.  I  haven't  sent  him  to  Cambridge  just  to 
play  tennis.  I  know  he's  steady,  but  it's  silly  to  put  temptation  in  his 
way.  He's  much  too  young  to  go  to  Monte  Carlo  by  himself." 

"You  say  he  won't  have  a  chance  against  these  crack  players,  but 
you  can't  tell." 

Henry  Garnet  sighed  a  little.  On  the  way  home  in  the  car  it  had 
struck  him  that  Austin's  health  was  uncertain  and  that  Von  Cramm 
had  his  off  days.  Supposing,  just  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  Nicky 
had  a  bit  of  luck  like  that — then  there  would  be  no  doubt  that  he 
would  be  chosen  to  play  for  Cambridge.  But  of  course  that  was  all 
nonsense. 

"Nothing  doing,  my  dear.  I've  made  up  my  mind,  and  I'm  not 
going  to  change  it." 

Mrs.  Garnet  held  her  peace.  But  next  day  she  wrote  to  Nicky,  telling 
him  what  had  happened,  and  suggested  to  him  what  she  would  do 
in  his  place  if,  wanting  to  go,  he  wished  to  get  his  father's  consent. 
A  day  or  two  later  Henry  Garnet  received  a  letter  from  his  son.  He 
was  bubbling  over  with  excitement.  He  had  seen  his  tutor,  who  was 
a  tennis  player  himself,  and  the  Provost  of  his  college,  who  happened 
to  know  Colonel  Brabazon,  and  no  objection  would  be  made  to  his 
leaving  before  the  end  of  term;  they  both  thought  it  an  opportunity 
that  shouldn't  be  missed  He  didn't  see  what  harm  he  could  come  to, 
and  if  only,  just  this  once,  his  father  would  stretch  a  point,  well,  next 
term,  he  promised  faithfully,  he'd  work  like  blazes.  It  was  a  very  pretty 
letter.  Mrs.  Garnet  watched  her  husband  read  it  at  the  breakfast 
table;  she  was  undisturbed  by  the  frown  on  his  face.  He  threw  it  over 
to  her. 

"I  don't  know  why  you  thought  it  necessary  to  tell  Nicky  something 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  197 

I  told  you  in  confidence.  It's  too  bad  of  you.  Now  you've  thoroughly 
unsettled  him." 

"I'm  so  sorry.  I  thought  it  would  please  him  to  know  that  Colonel 
Brabazon  had  such  a  high  opinion  of  him.  I  don't  see  why  one  should 
only  tell  people  the  disagreeable  things  that  are  said  about  them.  Of 
course  I  made  it  quite  clear  that  there  could  be  no  question  of  his 
going." 

"You've  put  me  in  an  odious  position.  If  there's  anything  I  hate  it's 
for  the  boy  to  look  upon  me  as  a  spoilsport  and  a  tyrant." 

"Oh,  he'll  never  do  that.  He  may  think  you  rather  silly  and  un- 
reasonable, but  I'm  sure  he'll  understand  that  it's  only  for  his  own 
good  that  you're  being  so  unkind." 

"Christ,"  said  Henry  Garnet. 

His  wife  had  a  great  inclination  to  laugh.  She  knew  the  battle  was 
won.  Dear,  oh  dear,  how  easy  it  was  to  get  men  to  do  what  you 
wanted.  For  appearance'  sake  Henry  Garnet  held  out  for  forty-eight 
hours,  but  then  he  yielded,  and  a  fortnight  later  Nicky  came  to  Lon- 
don. He  was  to  start  for  Monte  Carlo  next  morning,  and  after  dinner, 
when  Mrs.  Garnet  and  her  elder  daughter  had  left  them,  Henry  took 
the  opportunity  to  give  his  son  some  good  advice. 

"I  don't  feel  quite  comfortable  about  letting  you  go  off  to  a  place  like 
Monte  Carlo  at  your  age  practically  by  yourself,"  he  finished,  "but 
there  it  is,  and  I  can  only  hope  you'll  be  sensible.  I  don't  want  to  play 
the  heavy  father,  but  there  are  three  things  especially  that  I  want  to 
warn  you  against:  one  is  gambling,  don't  gamble;  the  second  is  money, 
don't  lend  anyone  money;  and  the  third  is  women,  don't  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  women.  If  you  don't  do  any  of  those  three  things  you 
can't  come  to  much  harm,  so  remember  them  well." 

"All  right,  Father,"  Nicky  smiled. 

"That's  my  last  word  to  you,  I  know  the  world  pretty  well,  and  be- 
lieve me,  my  advice  is  sound." 

"I  won't  forget  it.  I  promise  you." 

"That's  a  good  chap.  Now  let's  go  up  and  join  the  ladies." 

Nicky  beat  neither  Austin  nor  Von  Cramm  in  the  Monte  Carlo 
tournament,  but  he  did  not  disgrace  himself.  He  snatched  an  unex- 
pected victory  over  a  Spanish  player  and  gave  one  of  the  Austrians  a 


198  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

closer  match  than  anyone  had  thought  possible.  In  the  mixed  doubles 
he  got  into  the  semifinals.  His  charm  conquered  everyone,  and  he 
vastly  enjoyed  himself.  It  was  generally  allowed  that  he  showed  prom- 
ise, and  Colonel  Brabazon  told  him  that  when  he  was  a  little  older 
and  had  had  more  practice  with  first-class  players  he  would  be  a  credit 
to  his  father.  The  tournament  came  to  an  end,  and  the  day  following 
he  was  to  fly  back  to  London.  Anxious  to  play  his  best,  he  had  lived 
very  carefully,  smoking  little  and  drinking  nothing,  and  going  to  bed 
early;  but  on  his  last  evening  he  thought  he  would  like  to  see  some- 
thing of  the  life  in  Monte  Carlo  of  which  he  had  heard  so  much.  An 
official  dinner  was  given  to  the  tennis  players,  and  after  dinner  with  the 
rest  of  them  he  went  into  the  Sporting  Club.  It  was  the  first  time  be 
had  been  there.  Monte  Carlo  was  very  full,  and  the  rooms  were 
crowded.  Nicky  had  never  before  seen  roulette  played  except  in  the 
pictures;  in  a  maze  he  stopped  at  the  first  table  he  came  to;  chips  of 
different  sizes  were  scattered  over  the  green  cloth  in  what  looked  like 
a  hopeless  muddle;  the  croupier  gave  the  wheel  a  sharp  turn  and  with 
a  flick  threw  in  the  little  white  ball.  After  what  seemed  an  endless 
time  the  ball  stopped  and  another  croupier  with  a  broad,  indifferent 
gesture  raked  in  the  chips  of  those  who  had  lost. 

Presently  Nicky  wandered  over  to  where  they  were  playing  trente 
et  quarante,  but  he  couldn't  understand  what  it  was  all  about,  and  he 
thought  it  dull.  He  saw  a  crowd  in  another  room  and  sauntered  in.  A 
big  game  of  baccara  was  in  progress,  and  he  was  immediately  con- 
scious of  the  tension.  The  players  were  protected  from  the  thronging 
bystanders  by  a  brass  rail;  they  sat  round  the  table,  nine  on  each  side, 
with  the  dealer  in  the  middle  and  the  croupier  facing  him.  Big  money 
was  changing  hands.  The  dealer  was  a  member  of  the  Greek  Syndi- 
cate. Nicky  looked  at  his  impassive  face.  His  eyes  were  watchful,  but 
his  expression  never  changed  whether  he  won  or  lost.  It  was  a  terri- 
fying, strangely  impressive  sight.  It  gave  Nicky,  who  had  been  thriftily 
brought  up,  a  peculiar  thrill  to  see  someone  risk  a  thousand  pounds  on 
the  turn  of  a  card  and  when  he  lost  make  a  little  joke  and  laugh.  It 
was  all  terribly  exciting.  An  acquaintance  came  up  to  him. 

"Been  doing  any  good?"  he  asked. 

"I  haven't  been  playing." 


W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  199 

"Wise  of  you.  Rotten  game.  Come  and  have  a  drink." 

"All  right." 

While  they  were  having  it  Nicky  told  his  friend  that  this  was  the 
first  time  he  had  ever  been  in  the  rooms. 

"Oh,  but  you  must  have  one  little  flutter  before  you  go.  It's  idiotic  to 
leave  Monte  without  having  tried  your  luck.  After  all  it  won't  hurt  you 
to  lose  a  hundred  francs  or  so." 

"I  don't  suppose  it  will,  but  my  father  wasn't  any  too  keen  on  my 
coming  at  all,  and  one  of  the  three  things  he  particularly  advised  me 
not  to  do  was  to  gamble." 

But  when  Nicky  left  his  companion  he  strolled  back  to  one  of  the 
tables  where  they  were  playing  roulette.  He  stood  for  a  while  looking 
at  the  losers'  money  being  raked  in  by  the  croupier  and  the  money 
that  was  won  paid  out  to  the  winners.  It  was  impossible  to  deny  that 
it  was  thrilling.  His  friend  was  right,  it  did  seem  silly  to  leave  Monte 
without  putting  something  on  the  table  just  once.  It  would  be  an  ex- 
perience, and  at  his  age  you  had  to  have  all  the  experience  you  could 
get.  He  reflected  that  he  hadn't  promised  his  father  not  to  gamble, 
he'd  promised  him  not  to  forget  his  advice.  It  wasn't  quite  the  same, 
was  it?  He  took  a  hundred-franc  note  out  of  his  pocket  and  rather 
shyly  put  it  on  number  eighteen.  He  chose  it  because  that  was  his  age. 
With  a  wildly  beating  heart  he  watched  the  wheel  turn;  the  little 
white  ball  whizzed  about  like  a  small  demon  of  mischief;  the  wheel 
went  round  more  slowly,  the  little  white  ball  hesitated,  it  seemed 
about  to  stop,  it  went  on  again;  Nicky  could  hardly  believe  his  eyes 
when  it  fell  into  number  eighteen.  A  lot  of  chips  were  passed  over  to 
him,  and  his  hands  trembled  as  he  took  them.  It  seemed  to  amount  to 
a  lot  of  money.  He  was  so  confused  that  he  never  thought  of  putting 
anything  on  the  following  round;  in  fact  he  had  no  intention  of  play- 
ing any  more,  once  was  enough;  and  he  was  surprised  when  eighteen 
again  came  up.  There  was  only  one  chip  on  it. 

"By  George,  you've  won  again,"  said  a  man  who  was  standing  near 
to  him. 

"Me?  I  hadn't  got  anything  on." 

"Yes,  you  had.  Your  original  stake.  They  always  leave  it  on  unless 
you  ask  for  it  back.  Didn't  you  know?" 


200  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Another  packet  of  chips  was  handed  over  to  him.  Nicky's  head 
reeled.  He  counted  his  gains:  seven  thousand  francs.  A  queer  sense  of 
power  seized  him;  he  felt  wonderfully  clever.  This  was  the  easiest  way 
of  making  money  that  he  had  ever  heard  of.  His  frank,  charming  face 
was  wreathed  in  smiles.  His  bright  eyes  met  those  of  a  woman  stand- 
ing by  his  side.  She  smiled. 

"You're  in  luck,"  she  said. 

She  spoke  English,  but  with  a  foreign  accent. 

"I  can  hardly  believe  it.  It's  the  first  time  I've  ever  played." 

"That  explains  it.  Lend  me  a  thousand  francs,  will  you?  I've  lost 
everything  I've  got.  I'll  give  it  you  back  in  half  an  hour." 

"All  right." 

She  took  a  large  red  chip  from  his  pile  and  with  a  word  of  thanks 
disappeared.  The  man  who  had  spoken  to  him  before  grunted. 

"You'll  never  see  that  again." 

Nicky  was  dashed.  His  father  had  particularly  advised  him  not  to 
lend  anyone  money.  What  a  silly  thing  to  do!  And  to  somebody  he'd 
never  seen  in  his  life.  But  the  fact  was,  he  felt  at  that  moment  such  a 
love  for  the  human  race  that  it  had  never  occurred  to  him  to  refuse. 
And  that  big  red  chip,  it  was  almost  impossible  to  realize  that  it  had 
any  value.  Oh,  well,  it  didn't  matter,  he  still  had  six  thousand  francs, 
he'd  just  try  his  luck  once  or  twice  more,  and  if  he  didn't  win  he'd  go 
home.  He  put  a  chip  on  sixteen,  which  was  his  elder  sister's  age,  but 
it  didn't  come  up;  then  on  twelve,  which  was  his  younger  sister's,  and 
that  didn't  come  up  either;  he  tried  various  numbers  at  random,  but 
without  success.  It  was  funny,  he  seemed  to  have  lost  his  knack.  He 
thought  he  would  try  just  once  more  and  then  stop;  he  won.  He  made 
up  all  his  losses  and  had  something  over.  At  the  end  of  an  hour,  after 
various  ups  and  downs,  having  experienced  such  thrills  as  he  had  never 
known  in  his  life,  he  found  himself  with  so  many  chips  that  they 
would  hardly  go  in  his  pockets.  He  decided  to  go.  He  went  to-  the 
changers'  office,  and  he  gasped  when  twenty  thousand-franc  notes  were 
spread  out  before  him.  He  had  never  had  so  much  money  in  his  life. 
He  put  it  in  his  pocket  and  was  turning  away  when  the  woman  to 
whom  he  had  lent  the  thousand  francs  came  up  to  him. 

"I've  been  looking  for  you  everywhere,"  she  said.  "I  was  afraid  you'd 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  201 

gone.  I  was  in  a  fever,  I  didn't  know  what  you'd  think  of  me.  Here's 
your  thousand  francs  and  thank  you  so  much  for  the  loan." 

Nicky,  blushing  scarlet,  stared  at  her  with  amazement.  How  he  had 
misjudged  her!  His  father  had  said,  don't  gamble;  well,  he  had,  and 
he'd  made  twenty  thousand  francs;  and  his  father  had  said,  don't  lend 
anyone  money;  well,  he  had,  he'd  lent  quite  a  lot  to  a  total  stranger, 
and  she'd  returned  it.  The  fact  was  that  he  wasn't  nearly  such  a  fool  as 
his  father  thought:  he'd  had  an  instinct  that  he  could  lend  her  the 
money  with  safety,  and  you  see,  his  instinct  was  right.  But  he  was  so 
obviously  taken  aback  that  the  little  lady  was  forced  to  laugh. 

"What  is  the  matter  with  you?"  she  asked. 

"To  tell  you  the  truth  I  never  expected  to  see  the  money  back." 

"What  did  you  take  me  for?  Did  you  think  I  was  a — cocotte?" 

Nicky  reddened  to  the  roots  of  his  wavy  hair. 

"No,  of  course  not." 

"Do  I  look  like  one?" 

"Not  a  bit." 

She  was  dressed  very  quietly,  in  black,  with  a  string  of  gold  beads 
round  her  neck;  her  simple  frock  showed  off  a  neat,  slight  figure;  she 
had  a  pretty  little  face  and  a  trim  head.  She  was  made  up,  but  not  ex- 
cessively, and  Nicky  supposed  that  she  was  not  more  than  three  or 
four  years  older  than  himself.  She  gave  him  a  friendly  smile. 

"My  husband  is  in  the  administration  in  Morocco,  and  I've  come  to 
Monte  Carlo  for  a  few  weeks  because  he  thought  I  wanted  a  change." 

"I  was  just  going,"  said  Nicky  because  he  couldn't  think  of  anything 
else  to  say. 

"Already!" 

"Well,  I've  got  to  get  up  early  tomorrow.  I'm  going  back  to  London 
by  air." 

"Of  course.  The  tournament  ended  today,  didn't  it?  I  saw  you  play, 
you  know,  two  or  three  times." 

"Did  you?  I  don't  know  why  you  should  have  noticed  me." 

"You've  got  a  beautiful  style.  And  you  looked  very  sweet  in  your 
shorts." 

Nicky  was  not  an  immodest  youth,  but  it  did  cross  his  mind  that 


202  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

perhaps  she  had  borrowed  that  thousand  francs  in  order  to  scrape  ac- 
quaintance with  him. 

"Do  you  ever  go  to  the  Knickerbocker?"  she  asked. 

"No.  I  never  have." 

"Oh,  but  you  mustn't  leave  Monte  without  having  been  there.  Why 
don't  you  come  and  dance  a  little?  To  tell  you  the  truth,  I'm  starving 
with  hunger,  and  I  should  adore  some  bacon  and  eggs." 

Nicky  remembered  his  father's  advice  not  to  have  anything  to  do 
with  women,  but  this  was  different;  you  had  only  to  look  at  the  pretty 
little  thing  to  know  at  once  that  she  was  perfectly  respectable.  Her  hus- 
band was  in  what  corresponded,  he  supposed,  to  the  civil  service.  His 
father  and  mother  had  friends  who  were  civil  servants,  and  they  and 
their  wives  sometimes  came  to  dinner.  It  was  true  that  the  wives  were 
neither  so  young  nor  so  pretty  as  this  one,  but  she  was  just  as  ladylike 
as  they  were.  And  after  winning  twenty  thousand  francs  he  thought  it 
wouldn't  be  a  bad  idea  to  have  a  little  fun. 

"I'd  love  to  go  with  you,"  he  said.  "But  you  won't  mind  if  I  don't 
stay  very  long.  I've  left  instructions  at  my  hotel  that  I'm  to  be  called 
at  seven." 

"We'll  leave  as  soon  as  ever  you  like." 

Nicky  found  it  very  pleasant  at  the  Knickerbocker.  He  ate  his  bacon 
and  eggs  with  appetite.  They  shared  a  bottle  of  champagne.  They 
danced,  and  the  little  lady  told  him  he  danced  beautifully.  He  knew  he 
danced  pretty  well,  and  of  course  she  was  easy  to  dance  with.  As  light 
as  a  feather.  She  laid  her  cheek  against  his  and  when  their  eves  met 
there  was  in  hers  a  smile  that  made  his  heart  go  pit-a-pat.  A  coloured 
woman  sang  in  a  throaty,  sensual  voice.  The  floor  was  crowded. 

"Have  you  ever  been  told  that  you're  very  good-looking?"  she  asked. 

"I  don't  think  so,"  he  laughed.  "Gosh,"  he  thought,  "I  believe  she's 
fallen  for  me." 

Nicky  was  not  such  a  fool  as  to  be  unaware  that  women  often  Piked 
him,  and  when  she  made  that  remark  he  pressed  her  to  him  a  little 
more  closely.  She  closed  her  eyes,  and  a  faint  sigh  escaped  her  lips. 

"I  suppose  it  wouldn't  be  quite  nice  if  I  kissed  you  before  all  these 
people,"  he  said. 

"What  do  you  think  they  would  take  me  for?" 


W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  203 

It  began  to  grow  late,  and  Nicky  said  that  really  he  thought  he 
ought  to  be  going. 

"I  shall  go  too,"  she  said.  "Will  you  drop  me  at  my  hotel  on  your 
way?" 

Nicky  paid  the  bill.  He  was  rather  surprised  at  its  amount,  but  with 
all  that  money  he  had  in  his  pocket  he  could  afford  not  to  care,  and 
they  got  into  a  taxi.  She  snuggled  up  to  him,  and  he  kissed  her.  She 
seemed  to  like  it. 

"By  Jove,"  he  thought,  "I  wonder  if  there's  anything  doing." 

It  was  true  that  she  was  a  married  woman,  but  her  husband  was  in 
Morocco,  and  it  certainly  did  look  as  if  she'd  fallen  for  him.  Good  and 
proper.  It  was  true  also  that  his  father  had  warned  him  to  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  women,  but,  he  reflected  again,  he  hadn't  actually 
promised  he  wouldn't,  he'd  only  promised  not  to  forget  his  advice* 
Well,  he  hadn't;  he  was  bearing  it  in  mind  that  very  minute.  But  cir- 
cumstances alter  cases.  She  was  a  sweet  little  thing;  it  seemed  silly  to 
miss  the  chance  of  an  adventure  when  it  was  handed  to  you  like  that 
on  a  tray.  When  they  reached  the  hotel  he  paid  off  the  taxi. 

"I'll  walk  home,"  he  said.  "The  air  will  do  me  good  after  the  stufify 
atmosphere  of  that  place." 

"Come  up  a  moment,"  she  said.  "I'd  like  to  show  you  the  photo  of 
my  little  boy." 

"Oh,  have  you  got  a  little  boy?"  he  exclaimed,  a  trifle  dashed. 

"Yes,  a  sweet  little  boy." 

He  walked  upstairs  after  her.  He  didn't  in  the  least  want  to  see  the 
photograph  of  her  little  boy,  but  he  thought  it  only  civil  to  pretend  he 
did.  He  was  afraid  he'd  made  a  fool  of  himself;  it  occurred  to  him 
that  she  was  taking  him  up  to  look  at  the  photograph  in  order  to  show 
him  in  a  nice  way  that  he'd  made  a  mistake.  He'd  told  her  he  was 
eighteen. 

"I  suppose  she  thinks  I'm  just  a  kid." 

He  began  to  wish  he  hadn't  spent  all  that  money  on  champagne  at 
the  night  club. 

But  she  didn't  show  him  the  photograph  of  her  little  boy  after  all. 
They  had  no  sooner  got  into  her  room  than  she  turned  to  him,  flung 


204  .  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

her  arms  round  his  neck,  and  kissed  him  full  on  the  lips.  He  had  never 
in  all  his  life  been  kissed  so  passionately. 

"Darling,"  she  said. 

For  a  brief  moment  his  father's  advice  once  more  crossed  Nicky  s 
mind,  and  then  he  forgot  it. 

Nicky  was  a  light  sleeper,  and  the  least  sound  was  apt  to  wake  him. 
Two  or  three  hours  later  he  awoke  and  for  a  moment  could  not  im- 
agine where  he  was.  The  room  was  not  quite  dark,  for  the  door  of  the 
bathroom  was  ajar,  and  the  light  in  it  had  been  left  on.  Suddenly  he 
was  conscious  that  someone  was  moving  about  the  room.  Then  he  re- 
membered. He  saw  that  it  was  his  little  friend,  and  he  was  on  the  point 
of  speaking  when  something  in  the  way  she  was  behaving  stopped 
him.  She  was  walking  very  cautiously,  as  though  she  were  afraid  of 
waking  him;  she  stopped  once  or  twice  and  looked  over  at  the  bed.  He 
wondered  what  she  was  after.  He  soon  saw.  She  went  over  to  the  chair 
on  which  he  had  placed  his  clothes  and  once  more  looked  in  his  direc- 
tion. She  waited  for  what  seemed  to  him  an  interminable  time.  The 
silence  was  so  intense  that  Nicky  thought  he  could  hear  his  own  heart 
beating.  Then,  very  slowly,  very  quietly,  she  took  up  his  coat,  slipped 
her  hand  into  the  inside  pocket  and  drew  out  all  those  beautiful  thou- 
sand-franc notes  that  Nicky  had  been  so  proud  to  win.  She  put  the 
coat  back  and  placed  some  other  clothes  on  it  so  that  it  should  look  as 
though  it  had  not  been  disturbed,  then,  with  the  bundle  of  notes  in  her 
hand,  for  an  appreciable  time  stood  once  more  stock-still.  Nicky  had  re- 
pressed an  instinctive  impulse  to  jump  up  and  grab  her;  it 'was  partly 
surprise  that  had  kept  him  quiet,  partly  the  notion  that  he  was  in  a 
strange  hotel,  in  a  foreign  country,  and  if  he  made  a  row  he  didn't 
know  what  might  happen.  She  looked  at  him.  His  eyes  were  partly 
closed,  and  he  was  sure  that  she  thought  he  was  asleep.  In  the  silence 
she  could  hardly  fail  to  hear  his  regular  breathing.  When  she  had  re- 
assured herself  that  her  movements  had  not  disturbed  him,  she  stepped, 
with  infinite  caution,  across  the  room.  On  a  small  table  in  the  window 
a  cineraria  was  growing  in  a  pot.  Nicky  watched  her  now  with  his 
eyes  wide  open.  The  plant  was  evidently  placed  quite  loosely  in  the 
pot,  for,  taking  it  by  the  stalks,  she  lifted  it  out;  she  put  the  bank  notes 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  205 

in  the  bottom  of  the  pot  and  replaced  the  plant.  It  was  an  excellent  hid- 
ing place.  No  one  could  have  guessed  that  anything  was  concealed 
under  that  richly  flowering  plant.  She  pressed  the  earth  down  with  her 
fingers  and  then,  very  slowly,  taking  care  not  to  make  the  smallest 
noise,  crept  across  the  room  and  slipped  back  into  bed. 

"Cheri,"  she  said,  in  a  caressing  voice. 

Nicky  breathed  steadily,  like  a  man  immersed  in  deep  sleep.  The 
little  lady  turned  over  on  her  side  and  disposed  herself  to  slumber.  But 
though  Nicky  lay  so  still,  his  thoughts  worked  busily.  He  was  ex- 
tremely indignant  at  the  scene  he  had  just  witnessed,  and  to  himself 
he  spoke  his  thoughts  with  vigour. 

"She's  nothing  but  a  damned  tart.  She  and  her  dear  little  boy  and 
her  husband  in  Morocco.  My  eye!  She's  a  rotten  thief,  that's  what  she 
is.  Took  me  for  a  mug.  If  she  thinks  she's  going  to  get  away  with  any- 
thing like  that,  she's  mistaken." 

He  had  already  made  up  his  mind  what  he  was  going  to  do  with 
the  money  he  had  so  cleverly  won.  He  had  long  wanted  a  car  of  his 
own  and  had  thought  it  rather  mean  of  his  father  not  to  have  given  him 
one.  After  all,  a  feller  doesn't  always  want  to  drive  about  in  the  family 
bus.  Well,  he'd  just  teach  the  old  man  a  lesson  and  buy  one  himself. 
For  twenty  thousand  francs,  two  hundred  pounds  roughly,  he  could 
get  a  very  decent  second-hand  car.  He  meant  to  get  the  money  back, 
but  just  then  he  didn't  quite  know  how.  He  didn't  like  the  idea  of 
kicking  up  a  row,  he  was  a  stranger,  in  a  hotel  he  knew  nothing  of;  it 
might  very  well  be  that  the  beastly  woman  had  friends  there;  he  didn't 
mind  facing  anyone  in  a  fair  fight,  but  he'd  look  pretty  foolish  if 
someone  pulled  a  gun  on  him.  He  reflected  besides,  very  sensibly,  that 
he  had  no  proof  the  money  was  his.  If  it  came  to  a  showdown  and  she 
swore  it  was  hers,  he  might  very  easily  find  himself  hauled  off  to  a 
police  station.  He  really  didn't  know  what  to  do.  Presently  by  her 
regular  breathing  he  knew  that  the  little  lady  was  asleep.  She  must 
have  fallen  asleep  with  an  easy  mind,  for  she  had  done  her  job  without 
a  hitch.  It  infuriated  Nicky  that  she  should  rest  so  peacefully  while  he 
lay  awake,  worried  to  death.  Suddenly  an  idea  occurred  to  him.  It  was 
such  a  good  one  that  it  was  only  by  the  exercise  of  all  his  self-control 
that  he  prevented  himself  from  jumping  out  of  bed  and  carrying  it  out 


206  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

at  once.  Two  could  play  at  her  game.  She'd  stolen  his  money;  well, 
he'd  steal  it  back  again,  and  they'd  be  all  square.  He  made  up  his 
mind  to  wait  quite  quietly  until  he  was  sure  that  deceitful  woman  was 
sound  asleep.  He  waited  for  what  seemed  to  him  a  very  long  time.  She 
did  not  stir.  Her  breathing  was  as  regular  as  a  child's. 

''Darling,"  he  said  at  last. 

No  answer.  No  movement.  She  was  dead  to  the  world.  Very  slowly, 
pausing  after  every  movement,  very  silently,  he  slipped  out  of  bed.  He 
stood  still  for  a  while,  looking  at  her  to  see  whether  he  had  disturbed 
her.  Her  breathing  was  as  regular  as  before.  During  the  time  he  was 
waiting  he  had  taken  note  carefully  of  the  furniture  in  the  room  so 
that  in  crossing  it  he  should  not  knock  against  a  chair  or  a  table  and 
make  a  noise.  He  took  a  couple  of  steps  and  waited;  he  took  a  couple 
of  steps  more;  he  was  very  light  on  his  feet  and  made  no  sound  as  he 
walked;  he  took  fully  five  minutes  to  get  to  the  window,  and  here  he 
waited  again.  He  started,  for  the  bed  slightly  creaked,  but  it  was  only 
because  the  sleeper  turned  in  her  sleep.  He  forced  himself  to  wait  till  he 
had  counted  one  hundred.  She  was  sleeping  like  a  log.  With  infinite 
care  he  seized  the  cineraria  by  the  stalks  and  gently  pulled  it  out  of  the 
pot;  he  put  his  other  hand  in,  his  heart  beat  nineteen  to  the  dozen  as 
his  fingers  touched  the  notes,  his  hand  closed  on  them  and  he  slowly 
drew  them  out.  He  replaced  the  plant  and  in  his  turn  carefully  pressed 
down  the  earth.  While  he  was  doing  all  this  he  had  kept  one  eye  on 
the  form  lying  in  the  bed.  It  remained  still.  After  another  pause  he 
crept  softly  to  the  chair  on  which  his  clothes  were  lying.  He  first  put 
the  bundle  of  notes  in  his  coat  pocket  and  then  proceeded  to  dress.  It 
took  him  a  good  quarter  of  an  hour,  because  he  could  afford  to  make 
no  sound.  He  had  been  wearing  a  soft  shirt  with  his  dinner  jacket,  and 
he  congratulated  himself  on  this  because  it  was  easier  to  put  on  silently 
than  a  stiff  one.  He  had  some  difficulty  in  tying  his  tie  without  a  look- 
ing glass,  but  he  very  wisely  reflected  that  it  didn't  really  matter  if  it 
wasn't  tied  very  well.  His  spirits  were  rising.  The  whole  thing  now 
began  to  seem  rather  a  lark.  At  length  he  was  completely  dressed  ex- 
cept for  his  shoes,  which  he  took  in  his  hand;  he  thought  he  would 
put  them  on  when  he  got  into  the  passage.  Now  he  had  to  cross  the 
room  to  get  to  the  door.  He  reached  it  so  quietly  that  he  could  not  have 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  207 

disturbed  the  lightest  sleeper.  But  the  door  had  to  be  unlocked.  He 
turned  the  key  very  slowly;  it  creaked. 

"Who's  that?" 

The  little  woman  suddenly  sat  up  in  bed.  Nicky's  heart  jumped  to 
his  mouth.  He  made  a  great  effort  to  keep  his  head. 

"It's  only  me.  It's  six  o'clock  and  I've  got  to  go.  I  was  trying  not  to 
wake  you." 

"Oh,  I  forgot." 

She  sank  back  onto  the  pillow. 

"Now  that  you're  awake  I'll  put  on  my  shoes." 

He  sat  down  on  the  edge  of  the  bed  and  did  this. 

"Don't  make  a  noise  when  you  go  out.  The  hotel  people  don't  like  it. 
Oh,  I'm  so  sleepy." 

"You  go  right  off  to  sleep  again." 

"Kiss  me  before  you  go."  He  bent  down  and  kissed  her.  "You're  a 
sweet  boy  and  a  wonderful  lover.  Bon  voyage." 

Nicky  did  not  feel  quite  safe  till  he  got  out  of  the  hotel.  The  dawn 
had  broken.  The  sky  was  unclouded,  and  in  the  harbour  the  yachts 
and  the  fishing  boats  lay  motionless  on  the  still  water.  On  the  quay 
fishermen  were  getting  ready  to  start  on  their  day's  work.  The  streets 
were  deserted.  Nicky  took  a  long  breath  of  the  sweet  morning  air.  He 
felt  alert  and  well.  He  also  felt  as  pleased  as  Punch.  With  a  swinging 
stride,  his  shoulders  well  thrown  back,  he  walked  up  the  hill  and 
along  the  gardens  in  front  of  the  Casino — the  flowers  in  that  clear  light 
had  a  dewy  brilliance  that  was  delicious — till  he  came  to  his  hotel. 
Here  the  day  had  already  begun.  In  the  hall  porters  with  mufflers 
round  their  necks  and  berets  on  their  heads  were  busy  sweeping.  Nicky 
went  up  to  his  room  and  had  a  hot  bath.  He  lay  in  it  and  thought  with 
satisfaction  that  he  was  not  such  a  mug  as  some  people  might  think. 
After  his  bath  he  did  his  exercises,  dressed,  packed  and  went  down  to 
breakfast.  He  had  a  grand  appetite.  No  continental  breakfast  for  him! 
He  had  grapefruit,  porridge,  bacon  and  eggs,  rolls  fresh  from  the  oven, 
so  crisp  and  delicious  they  melted  in  your  mouth,  marmalade  and  three 
cups  of  coffee.  Though  feeling  perfectly  well  before,  he  felt  better  after 
that.  He  lit  the  pipe  he  had  recently  learnt  to  smoke,  paid  his  bill  and 
stepped  into  the  car  that  was  waiting  to  take  him  to  the  aerodrome  on 


208  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  other  side  of  Cannes.  The  road  as  far  as  Nice  ran  over  the  hills,  and 
below  him  was  the  blue  sea  and  the  coast  line.  He  couldn't  help  think- 
ing it  damned  pretty.  They  passed  through  Nice,  so  gay  and  friendly 
in  the  early  morning,  and  presently  they  came  to  a  long  stretch  of 
straight  road  that  ran  by  the  sea.  Nicky  had  paid  his  bill,  not  with  the 
money  he  had  won  the  night  before,  but  with  the  money  his  father  had 
given  him;  he  had  changed  a  thousand  francs  to  pay  for  supper  at  the 
Knickerbocker,  but  that  deceitful  little  woman  had  returned  him  the 
thousand  francs  he  had  lent  her,  so  that  he  still  had  twenty  thousand- 
franc  notes  in  his  pocket.  He  thought  he  would  like  to  have  a  look  at 
them.  He  had  so  nearly  lost  them  that  they  had  a  double  value  for 
him.  He  took  them  out  of  his  hip  pocket  into  which  for  safety's  sake 
he  had  stuffed  them  when  he  put  on  the  suit  he  was  travelling  in,  and 
counted  them  one  by  one.  Something  very  strange  had  happened  to 
them.  Instead  of  there  being  twenty  notes,  as  there  should  have  been, 
there  were  twenty-six.  He  couldn't  understand  it  at  all.  He  counted 
them  twice  more.  There  was  no  doubt  about  it;  somehow  or  other  he 
had  twenty-six  thousand  francs  instead  of  the  twenty  he  should  have 
had.  He  couldn't  make  it  out.  He  asked  himself  if  it  was  possible  that 
he  had  won  more  at  the  Sporting  Club  than  he  had  realized.  But  no, 
that  was  out  of  the  question;  he  distinctly  remembered  the  man  at  the 
desk  laying  the  notes  out  in  four  rows  of  five,  and  he  had  counted 
them  himself.  Suddenly  the  explanation  occurred  to  him;  when  he  had 
put  his  hand  into  the  flower  pot,  after  taking  out  the  cineraria,  he  had 
grabbed  everything  he  felt  there.  The  flower  pot  was  the  little  hussy's 
money  box,  and  he  had  taken  out  not  only  his  own  money,  but  her 
savings  as  well.  Nicky  leant  back  in  the  car  and  burst  into  a  roar  of 
laughter.  It  was  the  funniest  thing  he  had  ever  heard  in  his  life.  And 
when  he  thought  of  her  going  to  the  flower  pot  sometime  later  in  the 
morning  when  she  awoke,  expecting  to  find  the  money  she  had  so 
cleverly  got  away  with,  and  finding,  not  only  that  it  wasn't  there,"but 
that  her  own  had  gone  too,  he  laughed  more  than  ever.  And  so  far  as 
he  was  concerned  there  was  nothing  to  do  about  it,  he  knew  neither 
her  name  nor  the  name  of  the  hotel  to  which  she  had  taken  him.  He 
couldn't  return  her  money  even  if  he  wanted  to. 
"It  serves  her  damned  well  right,"  he  said. 


W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  209 

This  then  was  the  story  that  Henry  Garnet  told  his  friends  over  the 
bridge  table,  for  the  night  before,  after  dinner  when  his  wife  and 
daughter  had  left  them  to  their  port,  Nicky  had  narrated  it  in  full. 

"And  you  know  what  infuriated  me  is  that  he's  so  damned  pleased 
with  himself.  Talk  of  a  cat  swallowing  a  canary.  And  d'you  know 
what  he  said  to  me  when  he'd  finished?  He  looked  at  me  with  those 
innocent  eyes  of  his  and  said:  'You  know,  Father,  I  can't  help  thinking 
there  was  something  wrong  about  the  advice  you  gave  me.  You  said, 
don't  gamble;  well,  I  did,  and  I  made  a  packet;  you  said,  don't  lend 
money;  well,  I  did,  and  I  got  it  back;  and  you  said,  don't  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  women;  well,  I  did,  and  I  made  six  thousand  francs 
on  the  deal' " 

It  didn't  make  it  any  better  for  Henry  Garnet  that  his  three  com- 
panions burst  out  laughing. 

"It's  all  very  well  for  you  fellows  to  laugh,  but  you  know,  I'm  in  a 
damned  awkward  position.  The  boy  looked  up  to  me,  he  respected  me, 
he  took  whatever  I  said  as  gospel  truth,  and  now,  I  saw  it  in  his  eyes, 
he  just  looks  upon  me  as  a  drivelling  old  fool.  It's  no  good  my  saying 
one  swallow  doesn't  make  a  summer;  he  doesn't  see  that  it  was  just  a 
fluke,  he  thinks  the  whole  thing  was  due  to  his  own  cleverness.  It  may 
ruin  him." 

"You  do  look  a  bit  of  a  damned  fool,  old  man,"  said  one  of  the  oth- 
ers. "There's  no  denying  that,  is  there?" 

"I  know  I  do,  and  I  don't  like  it.  It's  so  dashed  unfair.  Fate  has  no 
right  to  play  one  tricks  like  that.  After  all,  you  must  admit  that  my 
advice  was  good." 

"Very  good." 

"And  the  wretched  boy  ought  to  have  burnt  his  fingers.  Well,  he 
hasn't.  You're  all  men  of  the  world,  you  tell  me  how  I'm  to  deal  with 
the  situation  now." 

But  they  none  of  them  could. 

"Well,  Henry,  if  I  were  you  I  wouldn't  worry,"  said  the  lawyer.  "My 
belief  is  that  your  boy's  born  lucky,  and  in  the  long  run  that's  better 
than  to  be  born  clever  or  rich." 


GEORGE   SANTAYANA 


COMMENTARY 


The  following  essay  was  delivered  at  Oxford  on  the  twenty-fourth  of 
October,  1923,  as  the  Herbert  Spencer  Lecture  for  that  year.  J  quote 
from  a  recent  letter  from  Mr.  Santayana:  "ft  was  a  curious  occasion, 
that  lecture  of  mine  in  Oxford.  I  was  entrusted  to  the  care  of  a  sci- 
entific Don,  doubtless  of  the  committee  for  the  Spencer  Lectureship; 
and  when  I  called  at  his  house  by  appointment  an  hour  before  the 
time  for  the  lecture,  his  wife  said  he  was  so  sorry  but  had  been  called 
away  to  receive  4000  butterflies  that  had  just  arrived  for  him  from 
South  America.  He  turned  up  later,  however,  and  took  me  to  the 
Natural  History  Museum,  to  a  lecture-room  with  a  deep  pit,  and  large 
maps  on  the  walls,  and  instead  of  introducing  me  he  only  said,  'Oh, 
you  might  as  well  begin.7  The  audience  was  small,  a  few  ladies,  and 
a  good  many  Indians  and  Japanese:  However,  I  recognized  old  Pro- 
fessor Stewart  of  Christ  Church  and  F.  R.  S.  Schiller.  This  audience, 
however,  was  most  sympathetic,  didnt  mind  the  length  of  the  lec- 
ture, and  applauded  heartily  at  the  end.  But  there  was  nothing 
Oxonian  about  the  occasion:  might  have  been  at  Singapoor." 

Nor  did  very  many  people  on  this  side  of  the  water  pay  any  atten- 
tion to  "The  Unknowable.7'  I  remember  that  some  months  later  a 
few  copies  of  it  in  pamphlet  form  reached  a  small  group  of  Serious 
Thinkers  attending  Columbia  College.  At  that  time  a  number  of  us 
were  accepting  the  consolations  of  philosophy  from  the  lips  of  such 
mentors  as  Frederick  Woodbridge  (the  only  philosopher  I  have  ever 
met  who  looked  completely  like  one),  John  Dewey  (the  only  philoso- 
pher I' have  ever  met  who  looked  completely  unlike  one),  and  Irwin 
Edman,  who,  I  believe,  tipped  us  off  to  the  essay,  acting  in  his 
capacity  of  permanent  advance  agent  for  Santayana. 

You  wont  believe  this,  but  when  we  read  "The  Unknowable7  we 
became  highly  excited.  Some  of  us,  I  recall,  committed  to  memory  its 
final  paragraph,  in  which  the  nature  of  substance,  the  mystery  of 

210 


GEORGE  SANTAYANA  211 

love,  and  the  fascination  of  jewels  are  combined  to  yield  one  of  the 
most  perfectly  cadenced  pieces  of  prose  in  out  language. 

I  find  myself,  almost  twenty  years  afterward,  smiling,  as  perhaps 
you  are  smiling,  at  the  ludicrous  picture  of  a  dozen  schoolboys  going 
into  a  lather  over  this  profound  metaphysical  meditation.  No  doubt 
our  excitement  was  thoroughly  unhealthy.  We  should  have  been  agi- 
tated over  the  prospects  of  the  football  team.  (I  suppose  some  of  us 
who  could  double  in  brass  were.)  Yet  I  imagine  that  what  the  foot- 
ball team  did  that  season  is  today  of  only  remote  interest,  whereas 
"The  Unknowable"  is  still  of  considerable  value. 

Though  I  do  not  say  that  we  understood  everything  Santayana  was 
saying,  we  had  enough  sense  to  realize  that  "The  Unknowable"  was 
a  masterpiece  of  its  sort.  It  is  still  a  masterpiece  and  J  am  still  not 
sure  that  I  understand  everything  in  it.  Yet  it  is  at  no  point  obscure, 
if  at  many  points  difficult.  Those  of  my  patient  readers  who  have  no 
turn  for  speculation  may  skip  it,  and  the  heavens  will  not  fall.  Santa- 
yana will  lack  a  reader  or  two,  you  will  lack  Santayana,  and  neither 
you  nor  Santayana  will  be  any  the  worse  off. 

I  have  included  "The  Unknowable"  because  I  am  fascinated  by 
the  beautiful  labyrinth  of  its  argument  and  because  I  see  no  reason 
why  a  collection  such  as  this  must  necessarily  confine  itself  to  so- 
called  "easy"  reading.  Santayana  (I  quote  again  from  his  letter)  says: 
"I  think  it  is  one  of  the  most  reasonable  things  I  have  written,  reason- 
able yet  not  cold,  and  I  am  encouraged  to  find  that  it  has  not  been- 
altogether  forgotten." 

"The  Unknowable,"  let  me  say  at  once,  deals  with  the  profoundest, 
the  most  arcane  problem  that  man  in  his  most  passionately  medita- 
tive moments  has  put  to  himself.  What  is  the  nature, of  Reality7? 
What  underlies  the  seeable,  graspable  flow  of  events  we  call  experi- 
ence? Is  there  a  Substance,  immutable  and  eternal,  of  which  the 
things  that  we  "know"  are  the  expressions,  the  projections,  the  inti- 
mations? It  is  a  question  that  engaged  the  subtlest  intellects  of  the 
Greeks  and  ancient  Hindus.  It  continues  persistently  to  engage  us 
during  those  fleeting  instants  when  we  act  as  rational  beings.  That 
dour  old  systematist,  Herbert  Spencer,  had  his  notion  of  Substance, 
and  it  is  Santayana's  purpose  in  this  essay  to  explain  and  vindicate  it, 


212  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and  to  set  it  in  a  clearer  and  more  impressive  light  than  Spencer  did. 

During  the  last  thirty  years  the  reputation  of  Santayana  has  under- 
gone some  curious  vicissitudes.  He  was  at  one  time  frowned  upon  by 
professional  philosophers  (so  often  merely  a  dignified  term  for  philo- 
sophical professors)  because  he  wrote  too  well  to  he  trustworthy.  He 
was  infra  dig,  I  suppose,  because  he  has  always  tried  to  transform  the 
perspective  of  the  metaphysician  into  the  vision  of  the  artist.  To  his 
mind  a  professional  philosopher  is  a  notion  as  absurd  as  a  professional 
father  or  a  professional  child,  or,  indeed,  a  professional  human  being. 
For  him  a  philosopher  is  what  the  Greeks  said  he  was— a  lover  of 
wisdom.  But  this  was  enough  to  cut  him  off  from  the  world  of  the 
academy. 

Then,  for  a  time,  he  was  in  the  hands  of  a  hand  of  exquisites  who 
swooned  over  his  rhythms  and  treated  him  as  if  he  were  a  seduction 
rather  than  a  thinker.  For  years  he  was  neglected,  his  influence  on  the 
course  of  American  thought  being  not  readily  observable.  Then  came 
another  sharp  turn  in  the  attitude  of  his  audience:  The  Last  Puritan, 
the  work  of  a  man  of  seventy-two,  was  published,  and  the  remote, 
aristocratic  Santayana  became  a  best  seller. 

But  all  this  while,  it  seems  to  me,  his  essential  value  remained  un- 
changed. He  is  a  profound  interpreter  of  the  strange  constructs  that 
man  throws  up  in  his  imagination:  the  great  symbolisms  of  art,  reli- 
gion, science,  philosophy.  Santayana' s  irony  has  been  overemphasized. 
He  is  a  classic  ironist  but  his  irony  is  tinged  with  reverence.  He  is, 
I  have  no  doubt,  a  poor  systematist.  But  if  he  is  no  systematist  it  is 
because  he  feels  that  a  system  is  just  another  of  those  grandiose  meta- 
phors invented  by  man  that  he  may  image  in  his  own  mind  the 
nature  of  what  Spencer  called  The  Unknowable. 


The  Unknowable 

BY 

GEORGE  SANTAYANA 


Your  kind  invitation  to  deliver  the  Herbert  Spencer  Lecture  of  this 
year,  apart  from  the  honour  and  pleasure  it  brings  me,  enables  me  to 
perform  a  small  act  of  piety.  On  the  whole,  with  qualifications  which 
will  appear  presently,  I  belong  to  Herbert  Spencer's  camp;  and  I  am 
glad  of  so  favourable  an  opportunity  to  offer  a  grain  of  propitiatory 
incense  to  his  shade,  which  I  feel  to  be  wandering  in  our  midst  some- 
what reproachfully.  Fashion  has  completely  deserted  him,  and  the 
course  of  evolution  in  which  he  trusted  has  not  taken  his  hints.  Even 
where  some  philosophy  of  evolution  is  still  in  vogue,  it  is  not  his  phi- 
losophy, but  perhaps  that  of  Hegel  or  Bergson,  who  conceive  evolution 
as  imposed  on  nature  by  some  magic  or  dialectical  force,  contrary  to 
an  alleged  helplessness  in  matter.  Such  devices  were  far  removed  from 
the  innocence  of  Herbert  Spencer,  who  dutifully  gathered  reports  from 
every  quarter  and  let  them  settle  as  they  would  in  the  broad  levels  of 
his  system,  as  in  geological  strata;  whence  that  Homeric  sweep  with 
which  he  pictures  progress  and  decay,  not  in  aversion  from  the  sever- 
ities of  natural  existence,  but  as  the  mechanical  sediment  of  the  tides 
of  matter  and  motion,  perpetually  surging.  Of  course  this  epic  move- 
ment, as  Spencer  describes  it,  is  but  a  human  perspective;  he  instinc- 
tively imposes  his  grandiloquent  rhythms  on  things  as  he  does  his 
ponderous  Latin  vocabulary,  or  as  Empedocles  or  Lucretius  imposed 
their  hexameters;  but  that  is  the  case  with  every  human  system;  it  is 
and  can  be  nothing  but  human  discourse.  Science  and  philosophy  cast 
a  net  of  words  into  the  sea  of  being,  happy  in  the  end  if  they  draw 
anything  out  besides  the  net  itself,  with  some  holes  in  it.  The  meshes 
of  Spencer's  net  were  not  subtle;  a  thousand  amiable  human  things 

213 


214  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

slipped  through  them  like  water,  and  compared  with  the  studied  en- 
tanglements of  more  critical  systems,  his  seem  scandalously  coarse  and 
wide:  yet  they  caught  the  big  fish.  When  I  rub  my  eyes  and  look  at 
things  candidly,  it  seems  evident  to  me  that  this  world  is  the  sort  of 
world  described  by  Herbert  Spencer,  not  the  sort  of  world  described 
by  Hegel  or  Bergson.  At  heart  these  finer  philosophers,  like  Plato,  are 
not  seeking  to  describe  the  world  of  our  daily  plodding  and  commerce, 
but  to  supply  a  visionary  interpretation  of  it,  a  refuge  from  it  in  some 
contrasted  spiritual  assurance,  where  the  sharp  facts  vanish  into  a  clar- 
ified drama  or  a  pleasant  trance.  Far  be  it  from  me  to  deride  the  im- 
agination, poetic  or  dialectical;  but  after  all  it  is  a  great  advantage  for 
a  system  of  philosophy  to  be  substantially  true. 

In  political  speculation,  too,  the  times  have  turned  their  back  on 
Herbert  Spencer.  Everything  he  saw  waxing  is  now  visibly  waning: 
liberalism,  individualism,  faith  in  science,  complacency  at  recent  prog- 
ress, assurance  of  further  progress  to  come.  Doubtless  it  is  fortunate 
for  those  who  are  not  philosophers  to  share  unreservedly  the  spirit  of 
their  age.  It  must  be  exhilarating  to  stand  on  the  hill-tops  and  point 
the  way  to  future  generations,  when  you  are  confident  that  future  gen- 
erations must  anyhow  take  that  road.  Such  prophets  have  their  reward. 
They  have  seemed  leaders  in  their  day,  they  remain  its  representatives, 
and  hereafter  they  may  prove  a  landmark  to  the  historian  or  a  find  for 
the  antiquary.  Time  also  has  its  revenges,  and  after  an  honest  man  has 
been  laughed  at  for  a  century  or  two  as  a  simpleton  or  a  scholastic,  his 
turn  may  come  round  again,  and  he  may  find  keen  advocates  and 
young  defenders.  But  frankly,  if  in  some  respects  Herbert  Spencer's 
views  have  so  soon  grown  obsolete,  I  think  he  deserved  his  fate.  A 
philosopher  should  not  be  subject  to  the  mood  of  the  age  in  which  he 
happens  to  be  born.  When  a  man  swims  to  eminence  and  to  joyous 
conviction  on  the  crest  of  that  wave,  he  must  expect  to  be  left  high 
and  dry  at  the  ebb-tide.  A  believer  in  evolution  is  indeed  justified  in 
assuming  that  the  latest  view  and  the  latest  practice  are  the  best  so  far; 
but  in  consistency  he  must  admit  that  the  next  view  and  subsequent 
practice  will  be  better  still;  so  that  his  real  faith  is  pinned  by  anticipa- 
tion on  an  ultimate  view  and  an  ultimate  practice,  in  which  evolution 
will  reach  its  goal.  Evolution,  in  the  proper  sense  of  this  word,  is  not 


GEORGE   SANTAYANA  215 

a  mere  flux  expected  to  be  endless;  evolution  must  have  a  goal,  it  must 
unfold  a  germ  in  a  determinate  direction  towards  an  implicit  ideal; 
otherwise  there  would  be  no  progress  involved,  no  means  of  distin- 
guishing changes  for  the  better  from  changes  for  the  worse.  I  think  it 
was  a  merit  in  Spencer  to  admit  that  evolution  would  culminate  in  a 
state  from  which  any  deviation  would  be  decay;  and  he  not  only  ad- 
mitted such  a  goal  in  the  abstract,  but  conceived  it  clearly.  The  goal 
was  vital  equilibrium,  the  adjustment  and  adaptation  of  living  beings 
to  their  environment,  or  of  their  environment  to  them.  The  end  of 
progress  was  harmony,  that  celestial  harmony  spoken  of  by  a  very  dif- 
ferent philosopher,  which  ran  through  all  the  gamut  of  the  worlds,  the 
diapason  ending  full,  not  exactly  in  man,  but  in  any  and  every  creature 
that  might  achieve  a  perfect  harmony  in  nature.  This  confirms  what  I 
was  saying  just  now  about  a  system  of  philosophy — this  philosophy  of 
evolution,  for  instance — being  but  a  human  perspective.  For  the  rein- 
deer or  the  polar  bear,  evolution  culminated  in  the  glacial  period;  it 
culminated  in  the  cities  of  Greece  for  one  sort  of  man;  it  will  culminate 
in  other  perfections,  if  there  is  plasticity  enough  in  living  creatures  to 
adapt  them  to  their  conditions,  before  these  conditions  have  passed 
away.  Evolution,  for  any  observer,  will  mean  that  strain  in  the  total 
movement  of  nature  which  has  ministered  to  the  formation  of  his 
spirit,  and  to  its  full  expression. 

It  is  not,  however,  as  a  philosopher  of  evolution  or  as  a  political 
prophet  that  I  wish  to  consider  Herbert  Spencer.  I  should  like  to  con- 
fine myself,  if  it  were  possible,  to  one  point  in  his  system,  not  especially 
characteristic  of  his  age  nor  of  ours,  a  point  in  which  he  seems  to  me 
to  have  been  a  true  philosopher  such  as  any  age  might  produce;  for  if 
nature  has  made  a  man  observant,  intelligent,  and  speculative,  the 
times  cannot  prevent  him  from  being  so.  I  refer  to  his  belief  in  a  sub- 
stance which  by  its  secret  operation,  in  infinite  modes,  kindles  experi- 
ence, so  that  all  phenomena  as  they  appear  and  all  minds  observing 
these  appearances  are  secondary  facts  and  not,  as  is  often  alleged,  the 
fundamental  or  only  realities.  On  the  contrary,  any  experience  is  inci- 
dental to  animal  life  and  animal  passions,  which  in  turn  are  incidental 
to  the  general  flux  of  substance  in  the  world.  Appearances  and  feelings 
and  consciousness  itself  are  in  their  nature  desultory  and  unsubstantial, 


216  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

yet  not  groundless  nor  altogether  mad,  because  substance  creates  and 
sustains  them  by  its  steady  rhythms,  so  that  they  are  truly  expressive 
and,  when  intelligence  arises,  may  become  terms  and  symbols  in  true 
knowledge. 

This  is  of  course  no  new  doctrine,  but  as  old  as  the  hills.  It  is  an 
opinion  which  any  man,  if  not  otherwise  prejudiced  or  indoctrinated, 
might  well  come  to  by  himself.  It  was  embraced  by  Spencer  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  held  perhaps  all  the  more  resolutely  because  he 
was  not  too  respectful  of  academic  tradition.  Had  he  been  expert  in 
metaphysics  and  educated  at  a  university,  he  might  have  missed  the 
obvious. 

Unfortunately,  in  wishing  to  pick  out  from  Spencer's  system  this  one 
ancient  and  familiar  belief,  and  to  defend  it,  I  am  arrested  at  once  by 
an  untoward  circumstance.  Herbert  Spencer  called  this  substance  be- 
neath all  appearances  the  Unknowable.  This  negative  appellation  is 
evidently  drawn  from  a  critical  and  subjective  philosophy,  such  as 
Spencer's  was  not.  It  belongs  to  the  vocabulary  of  disappointment;  it  is 
a  romantic  word.  It  transports  us  far  from  the  region  of  eager  inquiry, 
experiment,  statistics,  miscellaneous  information,  and  scientific  enlight- 
enment in  which  Spencer's  other  theories  had  bloomed.  Why  this 
anomaly?  Why  any  metaphysical  preface  at  all  to  a  work  of  straight- 
forward natural  philosophy? 

I  think  the  reason  was  that  Spencer,  not  being  by  nature  a  logician, 
bowed  in  logic  to  casual  authorities,  and  relied  too  much,  in  this  sub- 
ject too,  on  the  fashion  of  the  hour.  He  supposed,  as  some  do  today, 
that  the  latest  logic  was  the  last.  Dean  Mansel,  Sir  William  Hamilton, 
and  Kant  would  never  be  superseded.  He  hardly  considered  the  at- 
mosphere, the  implications,  or  the  contradictions  of  the  doctrines  he 
quoted  from  those  worthies;  he  appealed  to  them  on  one  point,  in 
order  to  discredit  all  their  other  arguments.  Metaphysics  should  be 
proved,  out  of  the  mouths  of  the  metaphysicians  themselves,  to  -be  in- 
competent to  revise  his  scientific  speculations,  or  to  refute  his  con- 
clusions. He  hardly  cared,  therefore,  if  the  language  of  his  metaphys- 
ical preface  was  that  of  his  natural  enemies,  and  perverse  essentially: 
that  fact  seemed  almost  an  advantage  since  it  locked  the  gates  against 
those  enemies  with  their  own  bolts. 


GEORGE   SANTAYANA  217 

Yet  words  are  weapons,  and  it  is  dangerous  in  speculation,  as  in 
politics,  to  borrow  them  from  the  arsenal  of  the  enemy.  In  consenting 
to  call  substance  unknowable,  Spencer  exposed  himself  to  the  derisive 
question  how,  if  substance  was  unknowable,  he  ever  came  to  know  of 
its  existence.  Indeed,  if  the  epithet  were  taken  strictly,  it  would  pos- 
itively contradict  and  abolish  belief  in  that  tremendous  reality  on 
which  he  bestowed  it,  partly  perhaps  in  reverence,  and  partly  in  haste 
to  be  done  with  reverence  and  to  come  to  business.  But  Spencer  did  not 
take  the  epithet  strictly,  since  he  spoke  of  modes  of  the  unknowable 
and  regarded  phenomena  everywhere  as  its  manifestations;  and  if  we 
take  the  word  knowledge  in  its  natural  sense  (of  which  I  shall  speak 
presently)  it  is  hard  to  see  how  anything  could  be  better  revealed  than 
by  being  manifested  everywhere.  The  fact  is  that  relative  and  oblique 
designations,  such  as  the  unknowable  or  the  unconscious,  cannot  be 
taken  strictly:  they  cannot  be  intended  to  describe  anything  in  its 
proper  nature,  but  only  in  its  accidental  relation  to  something  else — 
to  a  would-be  knower  who  is  unable  to  know  it,  or  to  an  ulterior 
sensibility  which  as  yet  has  not  arisen.  Nothing  can  be  intrinsically  un- 
knowable; for  if  any  one  was  tempted  to  imagine  a  substance  such 
that  it  should  antecedently  defy  description,  inasmuch  as  that  substance 
had  no  assignable  character,  he  would  be  attributing  existence  to  a 
nonentity.  It  would  evidently  make  no  difference  in  the  universe 
whether  a  thing  without  any  character  were  added  to  it  or  were  taken 
away.  If  substance  is  to  exist,  it  must  have  a  character  distinguishing  it 
from  nothing,  and  also  from  everything  else.  In  saying  this  I  do  not 
mean  to  ignore  those  renowned  philosophers  who  have  maintained 
that  the  entire  essence  of  substance  is  pure  Being:  I  can  easily  con- 
ceive that  in  some  other  world  pure  Being  should  be  all  in  all.  Pure 
Being  is  itself  a  particular  essence,  the  simplest  essence  of  all,  clearly 
distinguishable,  both  in  definition  and  in  experience,  from  every  other 
essence,  and  loudly  contrary  to  nothing,  with  which  Hegel  would 
identify  it,  not  (I  think)  honestly;  and  if  pure  Being  by  chance  were 
the  essence  of  substance,  substance  would  be  so  far  from  unknowable 
that  it  would  be  thoroughly  well  known,  and  we  should  always  carry 
with  us,  as  Spinoza  observes,  an  adequate  idea  of  it.  That  the  sub- 
stance of  this  world  has  a  far  more  elaborate  nature  I  believe  can  be 


218  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

easily  proved;  but  I  cannot  enter  here  into  that  argument.  It  is  easy  to 
conceive,  however,  that  the  intrinsic  nature  of  substance  may  be  very 
recondite  and  very  rich,  so  that  the  human  mind  has  no  occasion  and 
no  capacity  to  describe  it  adequately — and  this  perhaps  comes  nearer 
to  Spencer's  intention  in  calling  it  unknowable.  In  this  sense  not  only 
God  but  the  remoter  parts  of  space  and  time,  and  probably  the  depths 
of  matter,  would  be  unknowable  to  man.  Even  then,  however,  the 
intrinsic  nature  of  substance  could  offer  no  resistance  to  being  discov- 
ered, if  any  one  had  the  means  and  the  wit  to  do  so;  and  if  substance 
remains  largely  unknown  to  mankind,  the  reason  will  not  be  any  re- 
calcitrancy on  its  part,  but  rather  a  casual  coincidence  in  ourselves  of 
curiosity  with  blindness,  so  that  we  earnestly  desire  to  search  the 
depths  of  substance,  but  cannot. 

In  this  measure  the  emotion  suggested  by  the  term  unknowable  is  a 
legitimate  emotion.  It  expresses  an  integral  part  of  the  tragedy  involved 
in  being  finite  and  mortal — perhaps  in  being  a  mind  or  spirit  at  all. 
Poets  and  philosophers  sometimes  talk  as  if  life  were  an  entertainment, 
a  feast  of  ordered  sensations;  but  the  poets,  if  not  the  philosophers, 
know  too  well  in  their  hearts  that  life  is  no  such  thing:  it  is  a  pre- 
dicament. We  are  caught  in  it;  it  is  something  compulsory,  urgent, 
dangerous,  and  tempting.  We  are  surrounded  by  enormous,  mysteri- 
ous, only  half-friendly  forces.  This  is  our  experience  in  the  dilemmas 
of  conduct,  in  religion,  in  science,  and  in  the  arts;  so  that  the  usual 
sequel  to  agnosticism,  when  impatient  people  deny  that  the  unknown 
exists,  far  from  being  a  rational  simplification,  is  a  piece  of  arrant  folly: 
one  of  those  false  exits  in  the  comedy  of  thought  which,  though  dra- 
matic, are  ignominious,  because  the  mind  must  revert  from  them  to 
the  beginning  of  the  scene,  and  play  it  over  again  on  some  other  prin- 
ciple. All  the  reasons  that  originally  suggested  the  belief  in  substance 
remain  unimpaired,  and  suggest  the  same  belief  again  and  again.  We 
are  not  less  dependent  than  our  forefathers  on  food,  on  circumstances, 
on  our  own  bodies;  the  incubus  of  the  not-ourselves  is  not  lifted  from 
us;  or  if  in  some  respects  we  have  acquired  a  greater  dominion  over 
nature,  this  only  adds  positive  knowledge  of  substance  to  the  dumb 
sense  we  had  before  of  its  environing  presence.  How  far  this  under- 
standing of  substance  shall  go  depends  on  the  endowment  of  the  pro- 


GEORGE  SANTAYANA  219 

posed  knower,  and  on  the  distance,  scale,  and  connexions  of  the  things 
he  is  attempting  to  describe.  How  far  knowledge  is  possible,  therefore, 
can  never  be  determined  without  first  knowing  the  circumstances;  and 
the  very  notion  of  knowledge — by  which  I  do  not  mean  mere  feeling 
or  consciousness,  but  the  cognizance  which  one  existence  can  take  of 
another — is  a  notion  that  never  could  be  framed  without  confident  ex- 
perience of  sundry  objects  known  and  of  persons  able  to  know  them. 
In  saying  this  I  am  not  merely  expressing  my  own  view  of  the 
matter;  I  am  thinking  of  the  agnosticism  prevalent  in  Spencer's  gen- 
eration. It  was  no  general  scepticism;  it  did  not,  even  in  Kant,  chal- 
lenge the  possibility  of  knowledge  on  account  of  the  audacious  claim 
which  all  transitive  or  informing  knowledge  puts  forth  in  professing 
to  report  and  describe  something  absent.  On  the  contrary,  such  transi- 
tive and  informing  knowledge  was  still  assumed  to  exist;  the  essential 
miracle  of  it  was  not  denied,  because  it  was  not  noticed.  Everybody 
was  assumed  to  know  his  own  past,  not  merely  to  imagine  it;  every- 
body was  assumed  to  know,  not  merely  to  imagine,  the  conscious  ex- 
istence of  others,  and  the  laws  and  phenomena  of  nature  ad  infinitum. 
But  all  these  known  facts,  however  remote  and  unobservable,  were 
phenomena  that  had  appeared,  or  might  have  appeared,  to  some  human 
mind.  What  was  condemned  never  to  be  known  was  only  the  envi- 
ronment of  this  experience,  which  experience  had  always  supposed  it 
possessed  and  observed,  and  which  had  been  called  matter,  God,  or  the 
natural  world.  Yet  the  existence  of  these  objects  was  not  denied:  had 
there  really  been  no  God,  no  matter,  and  no  natural  world,  I  do  not 
see  how  incapacity  to  discover  them  could  have  been  called  agnosti- 
cism. The  agnostic  was  haunted  by  ghosts  of  substance,  filling  his 
whole  experience  with  a  sense  of  discomfort,  ignorance,  and  defeat. 
Those  substances  were  real  but  elusive;  and  though  he  never  saw 
them,  the  agnostic  remembered  only  too  well  the  tales  once  told  con- 
cerning them,  and  secretly  desired  to  have  assurance  of  their  truth; 
only  he  thought  such  assurance  was  eternally  denied  him  by  his  psy- 
chological constitution.  As  speech  has  been  called  a  means  of  conceal- 
ing thought,  so  knowledge  was  a  screen  cutting  off  reality.  Evidently 
this  agnosticism,  besides  assuming  true  knowledge  of  much  absent  ex- 
perience, presupposed  accurate  knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and  its 


220  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

categories,  conceived  to  be  unalterable;  and  it  also  presupposed  a  defi- 
nition of  that  veiled  reality  definite  enough  to  assure  us  that  no  defi- 
nition of  it  would  ever  be  given. 

So  much  sure  knowledge  at  home  had  a  tendency  to  console  the 
agnostic  for  his  ignorance  abroad.  If  metaphysics  had  closed  its  doors 
upon  him,  science  was  inviting  him  to  a  feast.  Science  was  then  be- 
lieved to  be  so  clear  and  unquestionable,  and  practically  so  beneficent, 
that  human  life  would  presently  be  filled  to  the  brim  with  busy  knowl- 
edge, busy  wealth,  and  busy  happiness.  Mankind  being  thus  happily 
occupied,  like  the  busy  bee,  would  have  no  reason  to  regret  its  igno- 
rance of  what  did  not  concern  it.  Yet  this  contentment  in  agnosticism, 
so  wise  in  its  humility  and  so  natural  in  an  age  of  material  progress, 
is  fatal  sooner  or  later  to  agnosticism  itself.  If  you  are  not  a  wistful 
and  distressed  agnostic,  you  will  forget  ere  long  that  you  are  an  ag- 
nostic at  all.  Why  should  you  believe  in  those  ghosts  of  substance,  if 
you  never  see  them  ?  There  were  once,  or  there  seemed  to  be,  substan- 
tial and  formidable  realities  which  everybody  was  sure  of— God,  mat- 
ter, the  natural  world;  but  after  literary  psychology  had  proved  that 
you  could  know  nothing  but  your  own  ideas,  and  you  found  that,  in 
spite  of  your  incredulity,  these  ideas  continued  to  flow  as  pleasantly  as 
ever,  what  reason  could  you  have  to  imagine  the  existence  of  anything 
else?  Thus  the  agnostic  who  has  lost  his  sense  of  bereavement  will 
readily  revert  to  dogmatism.  He  will  relapse  into  the  innocent  habit 
of  mind  which  regards  what  we  see  as  existing  substantially,  and  what 
we  do  not  see  as  nothing. 

You  will  not  expect  me,  in  these  few  minutes,  to  discuss  the  logic 
of  idealism,  but  it  is  interesting  to  note  how  two  important  phases  of 
this  logic  reappear  in  Spencer.  One  phase  is  the  Socratic  doctrine  that 
knowledge  is  recognition.  To  know  a  thing,  according  to  this  view,  is 
to  be  able  to  say  what  it  is;  in  other  words,  to  name  and  to  classify  it. 
The  logical  conclusion  from  this  was  drawn  by  Plato.  He  saw  that  the 
only  true  objects  of  knowledge  were  the  types  of  being  which  we  rec- 
ognized things  to  possess.  These  types  he  called  Ideas;  earthly  and 
transitory  things  could  be  understood  only  in  so  far  as  one  or  another 
of  these  Ideas  was  illustrated  in  them,  or  at  least  suggested  by  them  in 
their  confusion  and  imperfection.  There  is  a  curious  approximation  to 


GEORGE   SANTAYANA  221 

this  view  in  the  Spencerian  cosmology,  where  various  principles  of  evo- 
lution are  traced  through  all  departments  of  nature,  and  represented 
as  a  sort  of  framework  of  eternal  necessity  on  which  the  frail  web  of 
phenomena  is  stretched,  and  must  be  stretched  in  all  future  time.  Law 
is  the  modern  equivalent  for  the  Ideas  of  Plato:  there  is  no  reason, 
save  the  plastic  habit  of  the  Hellenic  imagination,  why  forms  of  mo- 
tion or  of  relation  should  not  have  been  counted  amongst  Platonic 
Ideas  as  honourably  as  the  forms  of  animals  or  the  categories  of  lan- 
guage. The  radical  divergence  of  modern  rationalism  from  that  of 
antiquity  comes  at  another  point.  The  modern  is  an  agnostic  in  his 
idealism;  he  is  subjective;  he  cannot  believe  that  the  laws  that  hold 
the  world  together  are  its  true  substance.  They  seem  to  him  evidently 
figments  of  the  mind,  and  he  is  driven  to  put  substance  in  some  nearer 
plane,  a  plane  which  on  Socratic  principles  would  be  unknowable, 
since  only  laws  or  types  of  being  can  be  defined  in  thought. 

The  other  phase  of  idealistic  logic  which  enters  into  Spencer's  ag- 
nosticism is  sensualism,  or  the  doctrine  that  the  only  object  of  knowl- 
edge is  the  datum  of  sense.  It  is  usual  to  identify  this  datum  of  sense, 
which  is  properly  a  visionary  essence,  with  the  sensation  which  reveals 
it,  a  sensation  which  is  an  event  in  somebody's  personal  experience 
and  an  historical  fact.  Sensations  will  then  seem  to  be  the  substantial 
facts;  for  although  they  will  remain  unknowable  in  the  sense  of  being 
indefinable,  they  will  be  felt  and  found,  each  at  its  own  time;  and  this 
is  the  empirical  criterion  of  reality  and  knowledge.  But  it  is  not  clear 
how  one  sensation  can  know  another,  nor  is  it  clear  in  what  medium, 
if  sensations  are  the  only  reality,  they  can  arise  or  can  be  related;  and 
a  bottomless  abyss  of  scepticism  opens  before  anyone  who  takes  the 
doctrine  seriously  that  nothing  can  exist  except  sensations,  each  know- 
ing itself  only.  Spencer  was  spared  these  perplexities  by  his  robust 
faith  in  substance.  Deeply  influenced  as  he  was  by  his  idealistic  friends, 
he  could  not  forget  that  sensations  had  roots.  They  expressed  bodily 
states,  and  effects  of  the  environment.  But  as  only  laws  or  Platonic 
types  could  be  defined,  and  only  sensations  could  be  felt,  and  as  feeling 
and  defining  were  the  sole  ways  of  knowing  admitted  by  the  two 
schools  of  idealistic  logic,  Spencer  was  confirmed  in  his  conviction 
that  only  appearances  were  knowable.  To  be  known  in  either  of  those 


222  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

ways  is  incongruous  with  the  nature  of  substance.  This  fact  does  not 
militate  against  its  existence;  it  militates  against  the  illusion  that  any- 
thing existent  can  be  known  in  either  of  those  ways. 

What  jurisdiction  can  any  feeling  have,  or  any  logic,  over  what  shall 
arise  or  not  arise  in  the  universe  ?  Even  when  we  assert  that  the  self- 
contradictory  cannot  exist,  I  suppose  what  we  mean,  if  we  are  reason- 
able, is  that  some  notion  of  ours,  which  contradicts  itself,  cannot  be 
the  true  or  complete  description  of  the  object  we  mean  to  describe  by 
it.  But  often  the  objects  to  which  we  attempt  to  apply  such  notions  are 
the  things  most  indubitably  existing  in  the  world,  such  for  instance  as 
motion,  and  as  this  very  fact  of  knowledge  which  we  are  now  trying  to 
understand.  Motion  and  knowledge  are  facts  perfectly  notorious  and 
familiar,  although  several  great  philosophers  deny  them  to  be  possible, 
because  the  definitions  they  have  given  of  them  are  self-contradictory. 
It  is  nothing  against  the  existence  of  such  things  that  they  should  be 
inexpressible  in  the  terms  of  a  particular  logic,  or  unknowable  to  a 
stone.  The  lack  of  possible  communication  between  two  creatures  is 
not  necessarily  a  reproach  to  either.  Even  when  they  are  sensitive,  and 
are  intelligent  enough  to  take  their  sensations  for  signs  of  an  external 
agent,  the  connexion  may  be  too  slight,  or  the  scale  too  different,  for 
mutual  knowledge  to  be  possible  or  important.  But  when  it  is  impor- 
tant it  is  usually  possible.  We  need  but  to  sharpen  our  wits,  and  shake 
our  minds  loose  from  prejudice,  trying  new  categories,  until  we  come 
nearer  to  the  heart  of  those  substantial  dynamic  objects  which  confront 
us  in  action.  This  approach  need  not  be  by  a  miraculous  divination  of 
their  essence,  although  when  the  object  recognized  is  a  mind  like  our 
own,  such  literal  divination  is  not  impossible.  Usually,  however,  the 
approach  is  by  refinements  of  adaptation,  as  in  the  moods  and  tenses  of 
verbs,  or  the  application  of  mathematics  to  nature;  there  is  no  similar- 
ity established  of  a  pictorial  sort  between  the  symbol  in  the  fancy  and 
the  fact  in  the  world,  but  only  a  methodical  correspondence  in  some 
one  direction.  If,  however,  we  find  that  our  senses  and  our  logic  are 
obdurate  and  incapable  of  further  adaptations,  we  may  reflect  that  all 
knowledge  of  fact,  by  its  very  privilege  of  transcending  the  data,  is 
condemned  to  be  external  and  symbolical,  and  that  the  most  plastic 
and  penetrating  intellect,  being  still  an  animal  function,  will  never  dis- 


GEORGE  SANTAYANA  223 

cover  the  whole  of  things,  either  in  their  extent  or  in  their  structure. 
Things  will  not  be  unknown,  since  notice  will  have  been  taken  of  them 
and  their  appearance,  in  some  respect,  will  have  been  recorded;  we 
shall  understand  that  there  is  one  strain,  at  least,  in  their  constitution 
and  movement  fitted  to  provoke  our  perception  and  to  render  our  de- 
scription applicable  and  correct.  Even  that  intrinsic  character  of  things, 
which  remains  undiscovered  or  inexpressible  in  our  particular  lan- 
guage, is  a  perfectly  knowable  character,  and  would  be  disclosed  at 
any  moment,  in  any  particular,  if  a  new  observer  turned  up  with  the 
requisite  organs,  and  a  more  sympathetic  imagination. 

Calling  substance  unknowable,  then,  is  like  calling  a  drum  inaudible, 
for  the  shrewd  reason  that  what  you  hear  is  the  sound  and  not  the 
drum.  It  is  a  play  on  words,  and  little  better  than  a  pun.  In  the  sense 
in  which  what  is  heard  is  the  sound,  hearing  is  intuition:  in  the  sense 
in  which  what  is  heard  is  the  drum,  hearing  is  an  instance  of  animal 
faith,  of  that  sort  of  perception  which  includes  understanding  and 
readiness  to  assume  much  that  is  not  perceived,  and  to  act  on  that  as- 
sumption. Certainly  if  nature  had  confined  our  cognitive  powers  to  in- 
tuition of  absolute  data,  and  we  were  incorrigibly  aesthetic  idiots,  sub- 
stance would  be  unknowable  to  us;  but  in  that  case  we  should  not  be 
agnostics  about  substance,  since  we  should  have  not  the  least  inkling 
that  such  a  thing  might  exist,  nor  the  least  notion  of  its  nature.  But 
mankind  has  always  had  ideas  of  matter,  of  God  or  the  gods,  and  of  a 
natural  world,  full  of  hidden  processes  and  powers;  these  objects,  just 
because  they  existed,  were  necessarily  removed  from  intuition;  but 
everybody  knew  the  quarter  in  which  they  lay  and  the  circle  of  ex- 
periences in  which  each  of  them  was  manifested.  Everybody  knew 
what  he  meant  by  believing  in  them,  and  what  sort  of  things  they 
would  be  if  it  was  really  on  them,  and  not  on  something  quite  differ- 
ent, that  his  action  was  directed.  For  instance,  at  this  moment,  not  be- 
ing able  to  discard  the  rude  logic  of  my  animal  ancestors,  I  think  I 
find  indications  before  me  of  the  four  walls  of  this  room  and  of  you 
sitting  within  them,  both  you  and  the  walls  being  possessed  of  a  sub- 
stantial existence,  that  is,  having  existed  prior  to  my  arrival  in  Oxford 
and  existing  apart,  even  now,  from  my  summary  intuitions  of  you, 
vague  symbols  to  me  of  your  being  and  of  your  presence.  Nor  does  the 


224  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

equal  substantiality  which  I  attribute  to  you  and  to  the  walls  at  all  im- 
ply an  identity  of  nature  between  the  two.  On  the  contrary,  I  should 
be  utterly  lacking  in  sanity,  as  well  as  in  civility,  if  I  now  turned  my 
back  upon  you  and  addressed  the  wall;  yet  on  the  hypothesis  that  my 
perceptions  do  not  convey  knowledge  of  substance,  but  are  intuitions 
of  pure  ideas,  it  would  be  equally  vain  to  address  myself  to  you  or  to 
the  wall,  since  in  either  case  I  should  be  haranguing  my  own  sensa- 
tions. The  fact  that  substantial,  and  substantially  different,  realities 
must  be  posited  beyond  myself  and  my  data,  one  sort  amenable  to  per- 
suasion and  the  other  deaf,  is  something  I  assume  because  the  enter- 
prise of  life  in  me  at  this  moment  demands  that  I  should  do  so.  I  am 
pledged  by  my  instant  adventure  and  by  the  general  art  of  living 
(which  has  a  groundless  ascendancy  over  all  animals)   to  take  for 
granted  that  you  are  sitting  there,  admirable  in  your  patience  and  in- 
scrutable in  your  thoughts;  and  that  just  as  in  speaking  to  you  I  posit 
your  substantial  existence,  so  you  in  your  turn  are  kindly  positing 
mine,  over  and  above  the  volatile  sounds  which  you  actually  hear:  and 
I  am  sure  you  are  intelligently  recognizing  me  and  my  thoughts  very 
much  for  what  we  really  are. 

Thus  the  Spencerian  Unknowable  is  unknowable  only  to  idealists, 
who  identify  knowledge  with  intuition,  and,  if  they  are  consistent, 
deny  the  capacity  of  thought  to  indicate  anything  external,  whether  an 
event,  a  substance,  or  another  actual  thought.  But  these  objects  with- 
drawn from  intuition  are  the  objects  of  daily  knowledge  and  of  sci- 
ence: and  Spencer  believed  he  knew  them  very  well.  The  scruples  that 
made  him  substitute  the  word  unknowable  for  the  word  force  or  the 
word  force  for  the  word  matter,  were  the  scruples  of  an  idealist,  such 
as  he  did  not  intend  to  be.  They  sprang  from  the  habit  of  reducing 
things  to  their  adventitious  relation  to  ourselves,  the  habit  of  egotism; 
as  if  the  difficulty  we  may  have  in  approaching  them  could  constitute 
their  intrinsic  being. 

There  was,  however,  a  motive  of  quite  another  sort  leading  Spencer 
to  disguise  the  substance  of  things  under  the  name  of  the  Unknowable. 
He  wished  to  reconcile  science  with  religion.  It  is  easy  to  deride  this 
pretension  in  one  who  had  so  little  sympathy  with  religious  institutions 
and  with  religious  experience.  Religion  in  the  mass  of  mankind  has 


GEORGE   SANTAYANA  225 

never  been  a  mere  sense  of  mystery.  It  has  been  a  positive  belief,  and 
an  experimental  effort,  directed  on  the  means  of  salvation.  A  prophet, 
conscious  of  some  promise  or  warning  conveyed  to  him  miraculously, 
cannot  substitute  for  this  specific  faith  an  official  assurance  that  science 
will  never  quite  succeed  in  dissipating  the  mystery  of  things:  it  is  not 
what  he  will  never  know  that  interests  him,  but  what  he  thinks  he  has 
discovered.  Genuine  religion  professes  to  have  positive  knowledge  and 
to  bring  positive  benefits:  it  is  an  art;  and  to  ask  it  to  be  satisfied  with 
knowing  that  no  knowledge  can  penetrate  to  the  heart  of  things  is 
sheer  mockery:  the  opposite  is  what  religion  instinctively  asserts.  Like 
science,  religion  is  solid  only  in  so  far  as  by  faith  and  art — the  two 
wings  of  true  knowledge — it  can  really  survey  human  destiny  and  re- 
veal the  divine  decrees  on  which  human  destiny  depends.  And  yet  I 
think  that  Herbert  Spencer,  in  throwing  somewhat  contemptuously 
that  sop  to  religion,  was  in  fact  silently  reconciling  religion  with  science 
behind  his  back  and  without  suspecting  it.  The  substance  envisaged  in 
science  and  that  envisaged  in  religion  have  always  been  the  same.  The 
paths  of  discovery  are  different,  but,  if  they  convey  true  knowledge, 
they  must  ultimately  converge  upon  the  same  facts,  on  the  same 
ground  of  necessity  in  things.  In  the  recognition  of  a  universal  sub- 
stance far  removed  from  the  imagination  and  the  will  of  men,  yet  cre- 
ating this  will  and  imagination  at  the  appropriate  places,  and  giving 
them  their  natural  scope,  there  lies  a  quite  positive  religion,  and  by 
no  means  a  new  one.  Substance,  if  we  admit  it  at  all,  is  by  definition 
the  source  of  our  life  and  the  dispenser  to  us  of  good  and  evil.  Respect 
for  it,  then,  is  the  beginning  of  wisdom,  and  harmony  with  it  is  the 
sign  of  salvation.  I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  that  all  religion  is  addressed 
to  such  a  real  and  formidable  object.  There  are  strains  in  religion  of 
quite  another  quality.  There  is,  for  instance,  a  rapturous  strain,  the 
impulse  to  praise,  to  sing,  to  mythologize,  to  escape  from  all  the  limita- 
tions and  cares  of  mortality  into  an  ecstatic  happiness.  But  I  ask  myself 
this  question:  What  would  ecstasy  be  but  madness  if  it  were  not  the 
voice  of  a  substantial  harmony  with  the  substance  of  things  and  with 
its  movement?  Though  substance  may  be  forgotten,  and  only  light 
and  music  may  seem  to  remain,  it  is  the  massive  harmonies  in  sub- 
stance that  justify  those  mystic  feelings,  if  anything  justifies  them  at 


226  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

all.  If  the  spheres  did  not  revolve  according  to  law,  the  morning  stars 
would  not  sing  together;  and  the  God  of  Aristotle  would  not  think 
his  eternal  thoughts.  Even  enthusiasm,  therefore,  when  not  vapid,  ex- 
presses respect  for  substance  and  happy  union  with  its  motion.  Those 
prosaic  terms  of  Spencer's— adaptation  and  equilibrium— really  express 
admirably   the  basis  of   the   most  ecstatic   emotions,   when   they  are 
healthy  and  deserving  of  a  place  in  human  economy.  It  would  be  a  sad 
compliment  to  pay  to  religion  to  identify  it  with  fatuous  and  ephem- 
eral heats,  divorced  from  all  perception  of  substance  and  of  its  true 
fertility.  Religion  of  the  sober,  practical,  manly  sort,  Roman  piety,  is 
emphatically  reverence  for  the  nature  of  things,  for  the  ways  of  sub- 
stance. How  far  such  manly  piety  may  have  been  misled  by  supersti- 
tion, or  by  hasty  and  sentimental  science,  so  as  to  distort  the  laws  of  the 
world  and  found  a  false  religion,  is  a  question  of  fact  for  soberer  sci- 
ence to  examine.  If  a  traditional  deity  proves  to  be  a  living  power,  if 
it  is  the  whole  or  a  part  of  the  substance  actually  confronting  us,  then 
serious  piety  will  revere  that  deity  and  meditate  on  its  ways.  If  on  the 
contrary  the  only  substance  that  controls  our  destiny  or  can  reward 
our  obedience  is  a  natural  substance,  manifested  in  all  nature  and 
plastic  to  common  arts,  then  a  serious  piety  will  study  the  ways  and 
sing  the  praises  of  this  natural  substance.  Piety  is  on  the  side  of  belief 
in  substance:  the  existence  of  substance  is  the  basis  of  piety.  To  set  up 
in  the  place  of  substance  any  spontaneous  ideas  or  pert  exigences  of 
our  own  is  contrary  to  religion:  a  mind  that  professes  to  create  matter, 
to  create  truth,  and  to  create  itself  is  a  satanic  mind.  At  least  Lucifer 
and  the  ancient  sceptics  were  disinterested,  and  disdained  a  world  in 
which  they  did  not  believe;  but  modern  rebels,  religious  or  political, 
are  without  asceticism;  like  Doctor  Faustus  they  are  crammed  with 
pretentious  learning,  they  trust  in  magic  and  in  their  own  will,  covet 
all  experience,  and  hanker  for  the  promised  land;  but  they  will  never 
see  it  except  in  a  mirage  if,  in  contempt  of  substance,  they  merely  com- 
mand it  to  appear. 

There  is  a  maxim  which  counsels  a  man  lost  in  a  wood  to  walk  on 
steadily  in  any  one  direction,  no  matter  which,  lest  by  turning  and 
turning  in  a  circle  he  should  never  come  out  into  the  open.  Spencer 
might  have  followed  this  maxim  to  advantage,  and  by  sticking  to  his 


GEORGE  SANTAYANA  227 

own  cosmic  principles  he  might  have  arrived  at  a  theory  of  substance 
and  of  knowledge  which  would  have  been  adequate  to  the  facts,  and 
potentially  just  also  to  the  experience  and  logic  of  idealism  (which  are 
pathetically  human),  without  departing  at  any  point  from  the  method 
of  external  observation  or  the  doctrine  of  natural  evolution.  Knowl- 
edge, whatever  else  it  may  be,  is  certainly  an  incident  in  life.  If  all 
things  were  dead,  no  one  of  them  could  know  another,  much  less  it- 
self. Now  of  the  nature  of  life  Spencer  had  a  very  just,  if  external, 
conception:  life  is  a  form  of  adaptation,  a  moving  equilibrium,  an  ad- 
justment of  inner  to  outer  relations.  If  a  dog  winces  when  struck,  he 
is  alive  and  has  felt  the  blow;  if  a  fly,  when  you  try  to  catch  it,  escapes 
by  flight,  it  has  perceived  the  hand  descending  upon  it.  I  am  far  from 
wishing  to  maintain  a  behaviourist  psychology,  or  to  say  that  in  such 
observable  cases  of  knowledge  there  is  nothing  that  is  not  observable; 
on  the  contrary,  I  believe  that  every  natural  event  has  several  ontolog- 
ical  dimensions:  it  moves  in  the  realm  of  matter,  it  is  definable  in  the 
realm  of  truth,  perhaps  it  flashes  and  burns  for  a  moment  in  the  realm 
of  spirit,  forming  an  actual  feeling  or  thought.  But  the  material  facts, 
which  biology  might  survey,  are  sufficient  to  determine  the  distribution 
of  life  and  knowledge,  as  well  as  the  distribution  of  all  the  other  di- 
mensions and  values  which  the  facts  may  involve.  The  state  of  our 
organs  determines  our  sensations;  our  actions,  or  our  perceptible  im- 
pulses to  act,  determine  our  passions;  our  words  enact  and  define  our 
thoughts.  Knowledge  in  its  natural  basis,  bearing  with  it  all  its  spiritual 
accompaniments,  is  thus  a  perfectly  ascertainable  fact  of  natural  history. 
It  is  a  relation  of  living  bodies  to  their  environment,  such  that  the  acts 
and  words  flowing  from  the  body  fit  their  external  occasions,  chang- 
ing in  a  way  relevant  to  these  occasions  but  prompted  by  the  native 
impulses  of  those  bodies.  Apart  from  such  external  adjustments  there 
would  be  no  telling  whether  the  inner  visions  of  any  mind  were 
knowledge  or  not.  Intrinsically  they  are  dream-images  in  any  case; 
and  they  would  never  be  anything  more  if  directly  or  indirectly,  by  the 
action  which  accompanies  them,  they  found  no  point  of  application  in 
the  material  world. 

The  question  what  is  knowable  and  what  unknowable  to  any  animal 
is  accordingly  easily  answered  by  a  biologist  enjoying  the  requisite  fa- 


228  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

cilities  for  observation:  if  an  animal  possesses  organs  capable  of  dis- 
criminating response  to  a  determinate  thing,  that  animal  can  know 
this  thing:  if  on  the  contrary  the  presence  of  this  thing  in  influencing 
the  animal  materially  does  not  stimulate  any  reaction  focused  upon 
that  thing — any  turning,  or  visible  contemplation,  or  defensive  move- 
ment, or  pursuit — then  the  thing  in  question  is  unknowable  to  that 
particular  animal,  and  can  never  become  an  object  of  his  thought,  ac- 
tion, or  desire.  In  the  first  case,  when  a  fit  reaction  occurs,  any  sensu- 
ous image  or  any  logical  system  which  might  then  fill  the  mind  would 
express  that  reaction;  and  this  expression  would  not  be  meaningless  to 
the  active  animal  in  whom  it  arose;  he  would  instinctively  understand 
it  to  be  the  voice  of  the  substance  confronting  him,  his  opposite  partner 
in  the  dance.  Having  announced  its  presence,  and  provoked  in  its  host 
some  reaction  of  sense  or  fancy,  that  neighbour  substance  will  have  re- 
vealed itself  in  the  only  way  in  which  anything  existent  and  collateral 
can  be  revealed  at  all — by  producing  some  slight  disturbance,  which  in 
an  active  animal  calls  attention  to  its  source;  so  that  the  intruder  ac- 
quires a  reputation  for  good  or  ill,  and  a  character  in  the  social  world. 

Human  experience  is  filled  full  with  such  appropriate  comments  on 
neighbouring  modes  of  substance,  and  with  appropriate  names  and 
sketches  clapped  upon  events.  Amongst  these  signs  and  tokens  there 
are  some  especially  venerable  symbols,  those  same  ideas  already  men- 
tioned of  matter,  of  God,  of  the  natural  world,  of  various  persons  and 
passions.  These  venerable  symbols  are  characters  attributed  to  substance 
and  its  modes  by  the  human  imagination,  after  long  experience  and 
much  puzzled  reflection:  the  degree  of  truth  and  precision  which  they 
may  possess  will  naturally  vary,  partly  with  the  articulation  they  re- 
ceive— the  more  articulate,  the  truer  or  the  falser  they  will  become — 
and  partly  with  the  range  of  substantive  being  to  which  they  are  ap- 
plied. Intrinsically  they  are  all  poetic  ideas,  fictions  of  the  fancy;  a 
fact  which  does  not  prevent  them  from  being  true  symbolically  and 
even  literally,  if  they  are  so  happily  framed  as  to  attribute  to  substance 
no  character  which  substance  does  not  actually  possess. 

When  people  discuss  the  existence  of  matter  or  the  existence  of  God, 
the  problem  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  well  stated.  It  is  as  if  we  began 
to  discuss  the  existence  of  our  friends.  In  the  material  locus  in  which 


GEORGE  SANTAYANA  229 

we  place  the  persons  of  our  acquaintance  there  is  undoubtedly  some- 
thing, and  not  something  of  any  sort,  but  a  mode  of  substance  with 
precisely  the  active  powers  exerted  upon  us  from  that  quarter.  This 
reality  is  no  less  real  than  ourselves,  being  in  dynamic  interplay  with 
the  substance  of  our  own  being.  To  deny  the  reality  of  one's  friends, 
though  possible  to  a  determined  sceptic,  is  idle  and  in  the  end  dishon- 
est; because  we  can  be  sure  of  nothing  and  can  believe  nothing,  if  we 
do  not  allow  ourselves  to  believe  and  to  be  sure  that  we  are  in  contact 
with  a  substance  not  ourselves  when  we  fight,  love,  or  talk.  This  sub- 
stance may  be  recognized  and  named  without  being  at  all  compre- 
hended; merely  the  different  instincts  awakened  in  its  presence  may 
suffice  to  distinguish  it  clearly,  as  when  a  child  says  John,  mother,  dog. 
It  does  not  follow  that  these  names,  and  the  sentiment  each  mutely 
awakens,  are  similar  to  the  substance  they  indicate,  or  form  any  part 
of  that  substance.  Even  the  barking  of  the  dog,  not  to  speak  of  the 
dog  himself,  is  not  very  like  the  bow-wow  of  the  childish  vocabulary. 
I  see  no  necessity  that  our  ideas  of  matter  or  of  God  should  be  truer 
than  that;  yet  they  have  substantial  and  unequivocal  objects.  If,  for  in- 
stance, in  denying  that  persons  exist,  a  philosopher  like  Buddha  had 
meant  that  the  idea  we  commonly  form  of  persons  does  not  rightly  de- 
scribe the  substance  at  work  in  those  places,  he  might  have  been  more 
than  justified;  a  supposed  spiritual  substance  called  the  soul  is  not  eas- 
ily to  be  found  there;  but  he  could  hardly  have  maintained  his  nega- 
tion if  he  had  meant  that  there  is  no  substance  of  any  sort  for  which 
the  idea  of  persons  is  a  conventional  mask.  In  fact  Buddha  himself 
implicitly  believed  in  Karma,  a  principle  of  inheritance  and  continuity 
which  was  the  parent  of  all  illusions  and  the  substance  of  our  imag- 
inary selves.  No  doubt  this  conception  of  Karma,  like  the  notion  of  a 
person,  needs  to  be  clarified;  but  it  is  a  splendid  instrument  of  moral 
synthesis,  and  describes  the  operations  of  substance  in  one  important 
respect,  though  doubtless  without  understanding  the  mechanism  which 
actually  subtends  human  character  and  moral  inheritance. 

Knowledge,  then,  is  not  knowledge  of  appearance,  but  appearances 
are  knowledge  of  substance  when  they  are  taken  for  signs  of  it.  The 
stuff  and  texture  of  knowledge,  its  verbal  and  pictorial  terms,  are  flex- 
ible and  subject  to  progressive  correction.  Thus  the  notion  ot  matter, 


230  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

of  God,  of  a  human  person,  may  continually  vary,  and  may  end  by 
shedding  completely  the  specious  character  it  had  at  first:  as,  for 
instance,  this  Buddhistic  notion  of  what  a  person  really  is,  namely, 
a  moral  heritage,  is  a  complete  denial  of  several  grosser  definitions 
of  a  human  spirit;  but  these  reformed  ideas  and  new  names  are  meant 
to  be  applicable  to  the  same  object  formerly  conceived  otherwise;  for 
this  reason  they  may  be  truer  and  better.  In  like  manner  the  idea  of 
matter  or  of  God  may  be  reformed;  it  may  even  be  reformed  so 
radically  that  a  fresh  word  may  be  thought  necessary  to  designate 
the  new  conception,  and  the  old  substance  will  receive  a  new  name; 
but  controversy  is  misguided  if  it  turns  on  hypostatizing  either  idea, 
and  asking  which  of  them  exists.  The  answer  is,  neither:  what  exists 
is  the  substance  at  work,  and  this  substance  is  never  an  idea  hypos- 
tatized.  It  is  prior  to  all  ideas  and  descriptions  of  it,  the  object  that  in 
their  rivalry  they  are  all  endeavouring  to  report  truly.  In  its  local 
modes,  or  in  its  broad  relations  to  some  human  interest,  it  bears  with- 
out a  murmur  whatsoever  names  any  one's  tongue,  in  its  pathetic 
spontaneity,  may  impose  upon  it;  here  it  is  called  mother,  there  John, 
there  bow-wow;  in  one  broad  aspect  it  is  called  matter,  in  another  it 
is  called  God.  When  such  names,  in  physics  or  in  theology,  are  ex- 
panded into  articulate  systems,  the  question  may  arise  whether  they 
continue  to  be  appropriate  to  the  part  or  aspect  of  substance  on  which 
they  were  first  bestowed :  and  this  is  a  doubt  for  further  study  to  solve, 
patiently  directed  upon  the  same  object.  A  man  may  then  honestly 
ask  himself  whether  he  believes  in  matter;  meaning  that  he  does  not 
regard  the  conventional  notion  of  matter  as  certainly  applicable  to  the 
substance  meant;  or  if  he  likes  to  startle  the  pious  he  may  say  he 
does  not  believe  in  God,  because  he  may  not  regard  the  conventional 
notion  of  God,  or  perhaps  any  notion  bred  in  the  region  of  dramatic 
emotion,  as  honestly  applicable  to  the  substance  actually  operative  in 
that  sphere — say,  in  the  sphere  of  momentous  events  and  ultimate 
destiny.  Evidently  further  study  of  momentous  events,  and  further 
reflection  on  destiny,  might  decide  this  question  for  him,  as  further 
study  of  physics  might  decide  the  other;  but  whether  we  think  fit  to 
call  substance  there  matter,  and  substance  here  God,  or  invent  other 
names,  substance  will  remain  what  it  is;  our  appellations  and  ideas  will 


GEORGE   SANTAYANA  231 

have  no  power  to  create  it  where  it  is  not,  or  to  dislodge  it  or  modify 
it  where  it  is.  Illusions  have  their  own  specious  reality  and  physiog- 
nomy, curious  as  folklore  is  curious;  but  it  is  substance  as  it  exists 
that  is  momentous,  since  it  determines  events,  including  our  illusions 
and  the  disappointments  they  entail.  I  should  be  sorry  to  think  for 
one  moment  that  any  philosopher,  much  less  any  religious  man,  could 
cling  to  his  beliefs  merely  because  they  were  his,  or  he  liked  them, 
or  had  defended  them  before.  Of  course  every  earnest  mind  recoils 
from  self-deception  and  from  the  thought  that  its  dearest  feelings 
might  go  up  in  smoke;  of  course  it  is  singly  devoted  to  discovering 
the  facts,  whatever  they  may  be,  and  to  assuming  towards  them  a 
brave  and  becoming  attitude. 

My  conclusion  accordingly  is  this:  Belief  in  substance,  besides  being 
inevitable  in  daily  life  (which  I  think  is  the  right  place  for  philosophy), 
is  vindicated  by  the  adequacy  and  harmony  of  the  view  it  gives  us 
of  existence;  and  the  notion  that  substance  is  unknowable  is  reduced 
to  a  misunderstanding — intelligible  but  unfortunate — due  to  a  con- 
fusion of  knowledge  with  intuition.  If  by  knowledge  we  understood 
an  intuition  containing  no  element  of  faith,  but  simply  inspecting  the 
obvious,  then  indeed  all  substance  would  be  unknowable;  but  this 
necessary  ignorance  would  then  extend  to  every  subsisting  fact  assumed 
in  science  and  in  daily  life:  not  only  would  matter  and  God  disappear 
from  the  scene,  but  the  whole  past  and  future  would  be  denied, 
together  with  all  that  flux  of  experience  which  social  intercourse,  psy- 
chology, and  history  presuppose.  Nothing  would  then  be  knowable 
save  the  feeling  or  image  present  at  the  moment  to  the  mind;  and 
even  this  would  not  be  known  for  a  fact  or  event  in  the  world,  but 
all  that  would  be  known  in  it,  or  through  it,  would  be  its  own  specious 
nature,  the  idea  presented  or  the  sensation  felt.  To  limit  knowledge 
to  intuition  of  such  obvious  essences  is  to  deny  knowledge:  it  is  to 
revoke  the  whole  transitive  intention  or  significance  of  ideas.  The 
knowledge  that  mankind  claims  and  rejoices  in  is  of  quite  another 
sort;  it  consists  in  information  about  removed  facts,  intuitively  un- 
discoverable.  To  a  mortal  creature,  hounded  by  fate,  and  not  merely 
engaged  in  seraphic  contemplation,  absent  things  are  the  things  im- 
portant to  know;  it  is  they  that  have  created  us,  and  can  now  feed 


232  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

or  entice  us;  it  is  they  that  our  moral  nature  hangs  upon  and  looks  to 
with  respect. 

I  have  sometimes  wondered  at  the  value  ladies  set  upon  jewels: 
as  centres  of  light,  jewels  seem  rather  trivial  and  monotonous.  And  yet 
there  is  an  unmistakable  spell  about  these  pebbles;  they  can  be  taken 
up  and  turned  over;  they  can  be  kept;  they  are  faithful  possessions; 
the  sparkle  of  them,  shifting  from  moment  to  moment,  is  constant 
from  age  to  age.  They  are  substances.  The  same  aspects  of  light  and 
colour,  if  they  were  homeless  in  space,  or  could  be  spied  only  once  and 
irrecoverably,  like  fireworks,  would  have  a  less  comfortable  charm. 
In  jewels  there  is  the  security,  the  mystery,  the  inexhaustible  fixity 
proper  to  substance.  After  all,  perhaps  I  can  understand  the  fascination 
they  exercise  over  the  ladies;  it  is  the  same  that  the  eternal  feminine 
exercises  over  us.  Our  contact  with  them  is  unmistakable,  our  contem- 
plation of  them  gladly  renewed,  and  pleasantly  prolonged;  yet  in  one 
sense  they  are  unknowable;  we  cannot  fathom  the  secret  of  their 
constancy,  of  their  hardness,  of  that  perpetual  but  uncertain  brilliancy 
by  which  they  dazzle  us  and  hide  themselves.  These  qualities  of  the 
jewel  and  of  the  eternal  feminine  are  also  the  qualities  of  substance 
and  of  the  world.  The  existence  of  this  world — unless  we  lapse  for 
a  moment  into  an  untenable  scepticism — is  certain,  or  at  least  it  is 
unquestioningly  to  be  assumed.  Experience  may  explore  it  adventur- 
ously, and  science  may  describe  it  with  precision;  but  after  you  have 
wandered  up  and  down  in  it  for  many  years,  and  have  gathered  all 
you  could  of  its  ways  by  report,  this  same  world,  because  it  exists 
substantially  and  is  not  invented,  remains  a  foreign  thing  and  a  marvel 
to  the  spirit:  unknowable  as  a  drop  of  water  is  unknowable,  or  un- 
knowable like  a  person  loved. 


H.  W.   FOWLER 


COMMENTARY 


People  who  try  to  use  the  language  with  respect  will  do  well  to  keep 
on  hand  the  fattish,  blue-hound  volume  known  as  H.  W.  Fowler's 
Dictionary  of  Modern  English  Usage.  It  should  he  a  brain-side 
book  for  every  writer,  amateur  as  well  as  professional,  since  each  of 
its  742  type-filled  pages  is  a  teacher  of  true  humility.  I  refer  to  Fow- 
ler often,  but  not  necessarily  to  solve  a  problem  in  usage,  grammar, 
or  pronunciation.  I  refer  to  it  for  spiritual  sustenance.  It  shows  me 
how  bad  a  writer  I  am  and  encourages  me  to  do  better. 

I  am  one  of  that  dwindling  band  that  believes  the  English  language, 
Eexible  as  it  is,  obeys  certain  laws  and  regulations.  I  do  not  believe 
writers  are  superior  to  these  laws  unless,  like  James  Joyce,  they  have 
earned  the  right  to  that  superiority.  If  a  writer  is  vulgar  in  mind, 
sloppy  in  thought,  and  crude  in  manner,  his  language  will  betray  him; 
his  syntax  will  find  him  out.  By  examining  his  language  with  the  kind 
of  microscope  Fowler  supplies,  he  can  spy  upon  his  own  defects  of 
character  and  temperament. 

I  read,  for  example,  the  essays  on  Genteelisms  and  Hackneyed 
Phrases  and  I  realize  with  a  sense  of  shame  that  I  have  been  guilty 
of  many  of  them,  not  alone  in  speech  but  in  formal  prose.  This  does 
not  argue  that  I  am  a  character  of  black  iniquity,  but  it  does  point 
to  a  tendency  of  mine  to  borrow  the  stale  wit  and  ingenuity  of  others 
or  to  dress  up  linsey-woolsey  thoughts  in  ostentatious  finery.  These 
are  small  faults  of  taste  and  tiny  derelictions  of  morality.  They  are 
worth  correcting. 

Somerset  Maugham  sums  up  Fowler  thus: 

"I  have  read  many  books  on  English  prose,  but  have  found  it 
hard  to  profit  by  them;  for  the  most  part  they  are  vague,  unduly 
theoretical,  and  often  scolding.  But  you  cannot  say  this  of  Fowler's 
Dictionary  of  Modern  English  Usage.  It  is  a  valuable  work.  I  do 
not  think  anyone  writes  so  well  that  he  cannot  learn  much  from  it. 

233 


234  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

It  is  lively  reading.  Fowler  liked  simplicity,  straightforwardness  and 
common  sense.  He  had  no  patience  with  pretentiousness.  He  had 
a  sound  feeling  that  idiom  was  the  backbone  of  a  language  and  he 
was  all  for  the  racy  phrase.  He  was  no  slavish  admirer  of  logic  and 
*  was  willing  enough  to  give  usage  right  of  way  through  the  exact 
demesnes  of  grammar." 

J  must  add  that  Fowler  is  not  only  useful  but  diverting.  He  is  him- 
self, if  something  of  a  precisian,  a  sound  writer,  witty  and  ironical 
when  he  wishes  to  be  (note,  for  example,  the  high  comedy  in  his  dis- 
course on  the  Split  Infinitive,  here  included),  and  able  to  make 
lucid  the  most  subtle  and  difficult  distinctions  of  usage  and  shades 
of  linguistic  feeling.  He  is  also,  on  occasion,  a  vest-pocket  essayist  of 
no  mean  ability,  as  the  little  table  on  Wit,  Humor,  Irony,  etc.,  indi- 
cates. 

Naturally  the  few  selections  I  have  made  give  no  complete  idea  of 
the  worth  of  his  dictionary,  but  they  do  afford  a  clue  to  the  sort  of 
pleasure  you  can  get  from  the  book  if  you  happen  to  be  the  sort 
of  person  who  gets  pleasure  from  this  sort  of  book. 


Excerpts  from  "A  Dictionary  of  Modern 
English  Usage" 


BY 

H.  W.  FOWLER 


GENTEELISM.  By  genteelism  is  here  to  be  understood  the  substitut- 
ing, for  the  ordinary  natural  word  that  first  suggests  itself  to  the  mind, 
of  a  synonym  that  is  thought  to  be  less  soiled  by  the  lips  of  the  com- 
mon herd,  less  familiar,  less  plebeian,  less  vulgar,  less  improper,  less 
apt  to  come  unhandsomely  betwixt  the  wind  &  our  nobility.  The  truly 
genteel  do  not  offer  beer,  but  ale;  invite  one  to  step,  not  come,  this 
way;  take  in  not  lodgers,  but  paying  guests;  send  their  boys  not  to 
school,  but  to  college;  never  help,  but  assist,  each  other  to  potatoes; 
keep  stomachs  &  domestics  insteads  of  bellies  &  servants;  &  have  quite 
forgotten  that  they  could  ever  have  been  guilty  of  toothpowder  &  nap- 
kins &  underclothing,  of  before  &  except  &  about,  where  nothing  now 
will  do  for  them  but  dentifrice,  serviette,  lingerie,  ere,  save,  anent. 

The  reader  need  hardly  be  warned  that  the  inclusion  of  any  par- 
ticular word  in  the  small  selection  of  genteelisms  offered  below  does 
not  imply  that  that  word  should  never  be  used.  All  or  most  of  these,  & 
of  the  hundreds  that  might  be  classed  with  them,  have  their  proper 
uses,  in  which  they  are  not  genteel,  but  natural.  Ale  is  at  home  in  his- 
torical novels,  ere  &  save  in  poetry,  mirrors  in  marble  halls,  the  military 
in  riots,  dentifrices  in  druggists'  lists,  &  so  forth;  but  out  of  such  con- 
texts, &  in  the  conditions  explained  above,  the  taint  of  gentility  is  on 
them.  To  illustrate  a  little  more  in  detail,  "He  went  out  without  shut- 
ting the  door"  is  plain  English;  with  closing  substituted  for  shutting 
it  becomes  genteel;  nevertheless,  to  close  the  door  is  justified  if  more  is 
implied  than  the  mere  not  leaving  it  open: — "Before  beginning  his 

235 


236 


READING  I'VE  LIKED 


story,  he  crossed  the  room  &  closed  the  door,"  i.e.  placed  it  so  as  to 
obviate  overhearing;  "Six  people  sleeping  in  a  small  room  with  closed 
windows,"  i.e.  excluding  air.  Or  again,  "The  schoolroom  roof  fell  in, 
&  two  of  the  boys  (or  girls,  or  children)  were  badly  injured";  scholars 
for  boys  &c.  would  be  a  genteelism,  &  a  much  more  flagrant  one  than 
closing  in  the  previous  example;  yet  scholar  is  not  an  obsolete  or  ar- 
chaic word;  it  is  no  longer  the  natural  English  for  a  schoolboy  or 
schoolgirl,  that  is  all. 

The  reader  may  now  be  left  to  the  specimen  list  of  genteelisms, 
which  he  will  easily  increase  for  himself.  The  point  is  that,  when  the 
word  in  the  second  column  is  the  word  of  one's  thought,  one  should 
not  consent  to  displace  it  by  the  word  in  the  first  column  unless  an  im- 
provement in  the  meaning  would  result. 


Genteelisms 

Normal  words 

Genteelisms 

Normal  words 

ale 

beer 

lady-dog 

bitch 

anent 

about 

lady  help 

servant 

assist 

help 

lingerie 

underclothing 

carafe 

water-bottle 

military,  the 

soldiers 

cease 

stop 

mirror 

looking-glass 

chiropodist 

corn-cutter 

odour 

smell 

close 

shut 

paying  guest 

boarder 

coal-vase 

coal-scuttle 

perspire,  -ration 

sweat 

college 

school 

peruse 

read 

couch 

sofa 

place 

put 

dentifrice 

toothpowder 

preserve 

jam 

distingue 

striking 

proceed 

g° 

domestic 

servant 

recreation 

amusement 

edifice 

building 

save 

except 

endeavour 

try 

scholar 

boy  &c. 

ere 

before 

serviette 

napkin 

exclusive 

select 

step 

come,  go 

expectorate 

spit 

stomach 

belly 

hither 

here 

sufficient 

enough 

inquire 

ask 

woolly 

sweater 

kinema 

cinema 

tipsy 

drunk 

H.  W.  FOWLER  237 

HACKNEYED  PHRASES.  When  Punch  set  down  a  heading  that 
might  be,  &  very  likely  has  been,  the  title  of  a  whole  book,  "Advice 
to  those  about  to  marry,"  &  boiled  down  the  whole  contents  into  a 
single  word,  &  that  a  surprise,  the  thinker  of  the  happy  thought  de- 
served congratulations  for  a  week;  he  hardly  deserved  immortality, 
but  he  has — anonymously,  indeed — got  it;  a  large  percentage  of  the 
great  British  people  cannot  think  of  the  dissuasive  "don't"  without  re- 
membering, &,  alas!  reminding  others,  of  him.  There  are  thousands  to 
whose  minds  the  cat  cannot  effect  an  entrance  unaccompanied  by 
"harmless  necessary";  nay,  in  the  absence  of  the  cat,  "harmless"  still 
brings  "necessary"  in  its  train;  &  all  would  be  well  if  the  thing  stopped 
at  the  mind,  but  it  issues  by  way  of  the  tongue,  which  is  bad,  or  of  the 
pen,  which  is  worse.  King  David  must  surely  writhe  as  often  as  he 
hears  it  told  in  Sheol  what  is  the  latest  insignificance  that  may  not  be 
told  in  Gath.  How  many  a  time  has  Galileo  longed  to  recant  the  re- 
canting of  his  recantation,  as  "e  pur  si  muove"  was  once  more  applied 
or  misapplied!  And  the  witty  gentleman  who  equipped  coincidence 
with  her  long  arm  has  doubtless  suffered  even  in  this  life  at  seeing  that 
arm  so  mercilessly  overworked. 

The  hackneyed  phrases  are  counted  by  the  hundred,  &  those  regis- 
tered below  are  a  mere  selection.  Each  of  them  comes  to  each  of  us 
at  some  moment  in  life  with,  for  him,  the  freshness  of  novelty  upon  it; 
on  that  occasion  it  is  a  delight,  &  the  wish  to  pass  on  that  delight  is 
amiable;  but  we  forget  that  of  any  hundred  persons  for  whom  we  at- 
tempt this  good  office,  though  there  may  be  one  to  whom  our  phrase 
is  new  &  bright,  it  is  a  stale  offence  to  the  ninety  &  nine. 

The  purpose  with  which  these  phrases  are  introduced  is  for  the  most 
part  that  of  giving  a  fillip  to  a  passage  that  might  be  humdrum  with- 
out them;  they  do  serve  this  purpose  with  some  readers — the  less  dis- 
cerning— though  with  the  other  kind  they  more  effectually  disserve 
k;  but  their  true  use  when  they  come  into  the  writer's  mind  is  as 
danger-signals;  he  should  take  warning  that  when  they  suggest  them- 
selves it  is  because  what  he  is  writing  is  bad  stuff,  or  it  would  not  need 
such  help;  let  him  see  to  the  substance  of  his  cake,  instead  of  decorat- 
ing with  sugarplums.  In  considering  the  following  selection,  the  reader 
will  bear  in  mind  that  he  &  all  of  us  have  our  likes  &  our  dislikes  in 


238  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

this  kind;  he  may  find  pet  phrases  of  his  own  in  the  list,  or  miss  his 
pet  abominations;  he  should  not  on  that  account  decline  to  accept  a 
caution  against  the  danger  of  the  hackneyed  phrase.  Suffer  a  sea 
change./Sleep  the  sleep  of  the  just./The  cups  that  cheer  but  not  in- 
ebriate./Conspicuous  by  his  absence./The  feast  of  reason./The  flow 
of  soul./A  chartered  libertine./A  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished./ 

All  that  was  mortal  of ./Which  would  be  laughable  if  it  were  not 

tragic/But  that  is  another  story  ./Had  few  equals  &  no  superior./But 
it  was  not  to  be./Come  into  one's  life./Has  the  defects  of  his  quali- 
ties./Leave  severely  alone./Take  in  each  other's  washing./In  her  great 
sorrow./Metal  more  attractive./More  sinned  against  than  sinning./ 
There  is  balm  in  Gilead./Fit  audience  though  few./My  prophetic 
soul!/The  scenes  he  loved  so  well./A  work  of  supererogation./The 
irony  of  fate./The  pity  of  it! /The  psychological  moment./Curses  not 
loud  but  deep./More  in  sorrow  than  in  anger./Heir  of  all  the  ages./ 
There's  the  rub./The  curate's  egg./To  be  or  not  to  be./Hinc  illae 

lacrimae./Filthy  lucre./The  outer  man./The  inner  man./Of  the 

persuasion./Too  funny  for  words./Get  no  forrader./My  better  half./ 
Eagle  eye./Young  hopeful./Seriously  incline./  Snapper-up  of  uncon- 
sidered trifles./The  logic  of  facts,  events./The  tender  mercies  of./Olive 
branches./Pity  'tis,  'tis  true./Have  one's  quiver  full./In  durance  vile./ 
At  the  parting  of  the  ways./Not  wisely,  but  too  well. 

HUMOUR,  WIT,  SATIRE,  SARCASM,  INVECTIVE,  IRONY, 
CYNICISM,  THE  SARDONIC.  So  much  has  been  written  upon  the 
nature  of  some  of  these  words,  &  upon  the  distinctions  between  pairs 
or  trios  among  them  (wit  &  humour,  sarcasm  &  irony  &  satire),  that 
it  would  be  both  presumptuous  &  unnecessary  to  attempt  a  further  dis- 
quisition. But  a  sort  of  tabular  statement  may  be  of  service  against 
some  popular  misconceptions.  No  definition  of  the  words  is  offered, 
but  for  each  its  motive  or  aim,  its  province,  its  method  or  means,  &  its 
proper  audience,  are  specified.  The  constant  confusion  between"  sar- 
casm, satire,  &  irony,  as  well  as  that  now  less  common  between  wit  & 
humour,  seems  to  justify  this  mechanical  device  of  parallel  classifica- 
tion ;  but  it  will  be  of  use  only  to  those  who  wish  for  help  in  determin- 
ing which  is  the  word  that  they  really  want. 


H.   W.   FOWLER 


239 


MOTIVE 
or  AIM 

PROVINCE 

METHOD 
or  MEANS 

AUDIENCE 

humour 
wit 
satire 
sarcasm 

invective 

irony 

cynicism 

The  sardonic 

Discovery 
Throwing  light 
Amendment 
Inflicting  pain 

Discredit 
Exclusiveness 
Self -justification 

Self-relief 

Human  nature 
Words  &  ideas 
Morals  &  manners 
Faults  &  foibles 

Misconduct 
Statement  of  facts 
Morals 

Adversity 

Observation 
Surprise 
Accentuation 
Inversion 

Direct  statement 
Mystification 
Exposure  of  na- 
kedness 
Pessimism 

The  sympathetic 
The  intelligent 
The  self-satisfied 
Victim  &  bystand- 
er 
The  public 
An  inner  circle 
The  respectable 

Self 

IRRELEVANT  ALLUSION.  We  all  know  the  people-for  they 
are  the  majority,  &  probably  include  our  particular  selves — who  cannot 
carry  on  the  ordinary  business  of  everyday  talk  without  the  use  of 
phrases  containing  a  part  that  is  appropriate  &  another  that  is  pointless 
or  worse;  the  two  parts  have  associated  themselves  together  in  their 
minds  as  making  up  what  somebody  has  said,  &  what  others  as  well 
as  they  will  find  familiar,  &  they  have  the  sort  of  pleasure  in  produc- 
ing the  combination  that  a  child  has  in  airing  a  newly  acquired  word. 
There  is  indeed  a  certain  charm  in  the  grown-up  man's  boyish  ebul- 
lience, not  to  be  restrained  by  thoughts  of  relevance  from  letting  the 
exuberant  phrase  jet  forth.  And  for  that  charm  we  put  up  with  it  when 
one  draws  our  attention  to  the  methodical  by  telling  us  there  is  method 
in  the  madness,  though  method  &  not  madness  is  all  there  is  to  see, 
when  another's  every  winter  is  the  winter  of  his  discontent,  when  a 
third  cannot  complain  of  the  light  without  calling  it  religious  as  well 
as  dim,  when  for  a  fourth  nothing  can  be  rotten  except  in  the  state  of 
Denmar\,  or  when  a  fifth,  asked  whether  he  does  not  owe  you  1/6 
for  that  cabfare,  owns  the  soft  impeachment.  Other  phrases  of  the  kind 
will  be  found  in  the  article  Hackneyed  phrases.  A  slightly  fuller  ex- 
amination of  a  single  example  may  be  useful.  The  phrase  to  leave 
severely  alone  has  two  reasonable  uses — one  in  the  original  sense  of  to 
leave  alone  as  a  method  of  severe  treatment,  i.e.  to  send  to  Coventry 
or  show  contempt  for;  &  the  other  in  contexts  where  severely  is  to  be 
interpreted  by  contraries — to  leave  alone  by  way  not  of  punishing  the 
object,  but  of  avoiding  consequences  for  the  subject.  The  straightfor- 


240  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

ward  meaning,  &  the  ironical,  are  both  good;  anything  between  them, 
in  which  the  real  meaning  is  merely  to  leave  alone,  &  severely  is  no 
more  than  an  echo,  is  pointless  &  vapid  &  in  print  intolerable.  Exam- 
ples follow:  (i,  straightforward)  You  must  show  him,  by  leaving  him 
severely  alone,  by  putting  him  into  a  moral  Coventry,  your  detestation 
of  the  crime;  (2,  ironical)  Fish  of  prey  do  not  appear  to  relish  the  sharp 
spines  of  the  sticklebac\,  &  usually  seem  to  leave  them  severely  alone; 
(3,  pointless)  Austria  forbids  children  to  smo\e  in  public  places;  &  in 
German  schools  &  military  colleges  there  are  laws  upon  the  subject; 
France,  Spain,  Greece,  &  Portugal,  leave  the  matter  severely  alone.  It 
is  obvious  at  once  how  horrible  the  faded  jocularity  of  N°  3  is  in  print; 
&,  though  things  like  it  come  crowding  upon  one  another  in  most  con- 
versation, they  are  not  very  easy  to  find  in  newspapers  &  books  of  any 
merit;  a  small  gleaning  of  them  follows: — The  moral,  as  Alice  would 
say,  appeared  to  be  that,  despite  its  difference  in  degree,  an  obvious 
essential  in  the  right  hind  of  education  had  been  equally  lacking  to 
both  these  girls  (as  Alice,  or  indeed  as  you  or  I,  might  say). /Resigna- 
tion became  a  virtue  of  necessity  for  Sweden  (If  you  do  what  you  must 
with  a  good  grace,  you  make  a  virtue  of  necessity;  without  make,  a 
virtue  of  necessity  is  meaningless) .  //  strongly  advise  the  single  word- 
ing-man who  would  become  a  successful  backyard  poultry-deeper  to 
ignore  the  advice  of  Punch,  &  to  secure  a  useful  helpmate./  The  be- 
loved lustige  Wien  [merry  Vienna]  of  his  youth  had  suffered  a  sea 
change.  The  green  glacis  .  .  .  was  blocked  by  ranges  of  grand  new 
buildings  (Ariel  must  chuckle  at  the  odd  places  in  which  his  sea 
change  turns  up). /Many  of  the  celebrities  who  in  that  most  frivolous 
of  watering-places  do  congregate./ When  about  to  quote  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge's  tribute  to  the  late  leader,  Mr  Law  drew,  not  a  dial,  but  what 
was  obviously  a  penny  memorandum  boo\  from  his  pocket  (You  want 
to  mention  that  Mr  Bonar  Law  took  a  notebook  out  of  his  pocket;  but 
pockets  are  humdrum  things;  how  give  a  literary  touch?  call  it  a  pol{e? 
no,  we  can  better  that;  who  was  it  drew  what  from  his  poke?  why, 
Touchstone  a  dial,  to  be  sure!  &  there  you  are). 

SPLIT  INFINITIVE.  The  English-speaking  world  may  be  divided 
into  (1)  those  who  neither  know  nor  care  what  a  split  infinitive  is; 


H.   W.  FOWLER  241 

(2)  those  who  do  not  know,  but  care  very  much;  (3)  those  who  know 
&  condemn;  (4)  those  who  know  &  approve;  &  (5)  those  who  know 
&  distinguish. 

1.  Those  who  neither  know  nor  care  are  the  vast  majority,  &  are  a 
happy  folk,  to  be  envied  by  most  of  the  minority  classes;  "to  really  un- 
derstand" comes  readier  to  their  lips  &  pens  than  "really  to  understand," 
they  see  no  reason  why  they  should  not  say  it  (small  blame  to  them, 
seeing  that  reasons  are  not  their  critics'  strong  point),  &  they  do  say 
it,  to  the  discomfort  of  some  among  us,  but  not  to  their  own. 

2.  To  the  second  class,  those  who  do  not  know  but  do  care,  who 
would  as  soon  be  caught  putting  their  knives  in  their  mouths  as  split- 
ting an  infinitive  but  have  hazy  notions  of  what  constitutes  that  de- 
plorable breach  of  etiquette,  this  article  is  chiefly  addressed.  These 
people  betray  by  their  practice  that  their  aversion  to  the  split  infinitive 
springs  not  from  instinctive  good  taste,  but  from  tame  acceptance  of 
the  misinterpreted  opinion  of  others;  for  they  will  subject  their  sen- 
tences to  the  queerest  distortions,  all  to  escape  imaginary  split  infini- 
tives. "To  really  understand"  is  a  s.i.;  "to  really  be  understood"  is  a 
s.i.;  "to  be  really  understood"  is  not  one;  the  havoc  that  is  played  with 
much  well-intentioned  writing  by  failure  to  grasp  that  distinction  is  in- 
credible. Those  upon  whom  the  fear  of  infinitive-splitting  sits  heavy 
should  remember  that  to  give  conclusive  evidence,  by  distortions,  of 
misconceiving  the  nature  of  the  s.i.  is  far  more  damaging  to  their 
literary  pretensions  than  an  actual  lapse  could  be;  for  it  exhibits  them 
as  deaf  to  the  normal  rhythm  of  English  sentences.  No  sensitive  ear 
can  fail  to  be  shocked,  if  the  following  examples  are  read  aloud,  by  the 
strangeness  of  the  indicated  adverbs.  Why  on  earth,  the  reader  won- 
ders, is  that  word  out  of  its  place?  He  will  find,  on  looking  through 
again,  that  each  has  been  turned  out  of  a  similar  position,  viz  between 
the  word  be  &  a  passive  participle.  Reflection  will  assure  him  that  the 
cause  of  dislocation  is  always  the  same — all  these  writers  have  sacri- 
ficed the  run  of  their  sentences  to  the  delusion  that  "to  be  really  under- 
stood" is  a  split  infinitive.  It  is  not;  &  the  straitest  non-splitter  of  us  all 
can  with  a  clear  conscience  restore  each  of  the  adverbs  to  its  rightful 
place: — He  was  proposed  at  the  last  moment  as  a  candidate  likely  gen- 


242  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

erally  to  be  accepted./When  the  record  of  this  campaign  comes  dis- 
passionately to  be  written,  &  in  just  perspective,  it  will  be  found  that 
.  .  ./The  leaders  have  given  instructions  that  the  lives  &  property  of 
foreigners  shall  scrupulously  be  respected./New  principles  will  have 
boldly  to  be  adopted  if  the  Scottish  case  is  to  be  met  ./This  is  a  very 
serious  matter,  which  clearly  ought  further  to* be  inquired  into./There 
are  many  points  raised  in  the  report  which  need  carefully  to  be  ex- 
plored./Only  two  ways  of  escaping  from  the  conflict  without  loss,  by 
this  time  become  too  serious  squarely  to  be  faced,  have  ever  offered 
themselves./The  Headmaster  of  a  public  school  possesses  very  great 
powers,  which  ought  most  carefully  &  considerately  to  be  exercised./ 
The  time  to  get  this  revaluation  put  through  is  when  the  amount  paid 
by  the  State  to  the  localities  is  very  largely  to  be  increased. /But  the 
party  whose  Leader  in  the  House  of  Commons  acts  in  this  way  cannot 
fail  deeply  to  be  discredited  by  the  way  in  which  he  flings  out  &  about 
these  false  charges. 

3.  The  above  writers  are  bogy-haunted  creatures  who  for  fear  of  split- 
ting an  infinitive  abstain  from  doing  something  quite  different,  i.e.  di- 
viding be  from  its  complement  by  an  adverb.  Those  who  presumably  do 
know  what  split  infinitives  are,  &  condemn  them,  are  not  so  easily  iden- 
tified, since  they  include  all  who  neither  commit  the  sin  nor  flounder 
about  in  saving  themselves  from  it,  all  who  combine  with  acceptance  of 
conventional  rules  a  reasonable  dexterity.  But  when  the  dexterity  is  lack- 
ing, disaster  follows.  It  does  not  add  to  a  writer's  readableness  if  readers 
are  pulled  up  now  &  again  to  wonder — Why  this  distortion  ?  Ah,  to  be 
sure,  a  non-split  die-hard!  That  is  the  mental  dialogue  occasioned  by  each 
of  the  adverbs  in  the  examples  below.  It  is  of  no  avail  merely  to  fling 
oneself  desperately  out  of  temptation;  one  must  so  do  it  that  no  traces 
of  the  struggle  remain;  that  is,  sentences  must  be  thoroughly  remod- 
elled instead  of  having  a  word  lifted  from  its  original  place  &  dumped 
elsewhere: — What  alternative  can  be  found  which  the  Pope  has  not 
condemned,  &  which  will  make  it  possible  to  organize  legally  public 
worship ?/If  it  is  to  do  justice  between  the  various  parties  &  not  un- 
duly to  burden  the  State,  it  will  .  .  ./It  will,  when  better  understood, 
tend  firmly  to  establish  relations  between  Capital  &  Labour./Both  Ger- 


H.  W.  FOWLER  243 

many  &  England  have  done  ill  in  not  combining  to  forbid  flatly  hos- 
tilities./Nobody  expects  that  the  executive  of  the  Amalgamated  So- 
ciety is  going  to  assume  publicly  sackcloth  &  ashes./Every  effort  must 
be  made  to  increase  adequately  professional  knowledge  &  attainments./ 
We  have  had  to  shorten  somewhat  Lord  Denbigh's  letter./  The  kind  of 
sincerity  which  enables  an  author  to  move  powerfully  the  heart  would 
.  .  .  /Safeguards  should  be  provided  to  prevent  effectually  cosmopolitan 
fin     ciers  from  manipulating  these  reserves. 

4.  Just  as  those  who  know  &  condemn  the  s.i.  include  many  who  are 
not  recognizable,  only  the  clumsier  performers  giving  positive  proof 
of  resistance  to  temptation,  so  too  those  who  know  &  approve  are  not 
distinguishable  with  certainty;  when  a  man  splits  an  infinitive,  he  may 
be  doing  it  unconsciously  as  a  member  of  our  class  1,  or  he  may  be 
deliberately  rejecting  the  trammels  of  convention  &  announcing  that 
he  means  to  do  as  he  will  with  his  own  infinitives.  But,  as  the  follow- 
ing examples  are  from  newspapers  of  high  repute,  &  high  newspaper 
tradition  is  strong  against  splitting,  it  is  perhaps  fair  to  assume  that 
each  specimen  is  a  manifesto  of  independence: — It  will  be  found  pos- 
sible to  considerably  improve  the  present  wages  of  the  miners  without 
jeopardizing  the  interests  of  capital./ Always  providing  that  the  Im- 
perialists do  not  feel  strong  enough  to  decisively  assert  their  power  in 
the  revolted  provinces./But  even  so,  he  seems  to  still  be  allowed  to 
speak  at  Unionist  demonstrations./It  is  the  intention  of  the  Minister  of 
Transport  to  substantially  increase  all  present  rates  by  means  of  a  gen- 
eral percentage./The  men  in  many  of  the  largest  districts  are  declared 
to  strongly  favour  a  strike  if  the  minimum  wage  is  not  conceded. 

It  should  be  noticed  that  in  these  the  separating  adverb  could  have 
been  placed  outside  the  infinitive  with  little  or  in  most  cases  no  dam- 
age to  the  sentence-rhythm  {considerably  after  miners,  decisively  after 
power,  still  with  clear  gain  after  be,  substantially  after  rates,  &  strongly 
at  some  loss  after  strike),  so  that  protest  seems  a  safe  diagnosis. 

5.  The  attitude  of  those  who  know  &  distinguish  is  something  like 
this:  We  admit  that  separation  of  to  from  its  infinitive  (viz  be,  do, 
have,  sit,  doubt,  kjll,  or  other  verb  inflexionally  similar)  is  not  in  itself 
desirable,  &  we  shall  not  gratuitously  say  either  "to  mortally  wound" 


244  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

or  "to  mortally  be  wounded";  but  we  are  not  foolish  enough  to  con- 
fuse the  latter  with  "to  be  mortally  wounded",  which  is  blameless  Eng- 
lish, nor  "to  just  have  heard"  with  "to  have  just  heard",  which  is  also 
blameless.  We  maintain,  however,  that  a  real  s.i.,  though  not  desirable 
in  itself,  is  preferable  to  either  of  two  things,  to  real  ambiguitv,  &  to 
patent  artificiality.  For  the  first,  we  will  rather  write  "Our  object  is  to 
further  cement  trade  relations"  than,  by  correcting  into  "Our  object  is 
further  to  cement  .  .  .",  leave  it  doubtful  whether  an  additional  object 
or  additional  cementing  is  the  point.  And  for  the  second,  we  take  it 
that  such  reminders  of  a  tyrannous  convention  as  "in  not  combining 
to  forbid  flatly  hostilities"  are  far  more  abnormal  than  the  abnormality 
they  evade.  We  will  split  infinitives  sooner  than  be  ambiguous  or  arti- 
ficial; more  than  that,  we  will  freely  admit  that  sufficient  recasting  will 
get  rid  of  any  s.i.  without  involving  either  of  those  faults,  &  yet  re- 
serve to  ourselves  the  right  of  deciding  in  each  case  whether  recasting 
is  worth  while.  Let  us  take  an  example:  "In  these  circumstances,  the 
Commission,  judging  from  the  evidence  taken  in  London,  has  been 
feeling  its  way  to  modifications  intended  to  better  equip  successful 
candidates  for  careers  in  India  &  at  the  same  time  to  meet  reasonable 
Indian  demands".  To  better  equip?  We  refuse  "better  to  equip"  as  a 
shouted  reminder  of  the  tyranny;  we  refuse  "to  equip  better"  as  am- 
biguous {better  an  adjective?);  we  regard  "to  equip  successful  candi- 
dates better"  as  lacking  compactness,  as  possibly  tolerable  from  an  anti- 
splitter,  but  not  good  enough  for  us.  What  then  of  recasting?  "Intended 
to  make  successful  candidates  fitter  for"  is  the  best  we  can  do  if  the 
exact  sense  is  to  be  kept;  it  takes  some  thought  to  arrive  at  the  cor- 
rection; was  the  game  worth  the  candle? 

After  this  inconclusive  discussion,  in  which,  however,  the  author's 
opinion  has  perhaps  been  allowed  to  appear  with  indecent  plainness, 
readers  may  like  to  settle  for  themselves  whether,  in  the  following  sen- 
tence, "either  to  secure"  followed  by  "to  resign",  or  "to  either  secure" 
followed  by  "resign",  should  have  been  preferred — an  issue  in  which 
the  meaning  &  the  convention  are  pitted  against  each  other: — The 
speech  has  drawn  an  interesting  letter  from  Sir  Antony  MacDonnelL 
who  states  that  his  agreement  with  Mr  Wyndham  was  never  cancelled. 


H.  W.  FOWLER  245 

&  that  Mr  Long  was  too  weak  either  to  secure  the  dismissal  of  Sir  An- 
tony or  himself  to  resign  office. 

It  is  perhaps  hardly  fair  that  this  article  should  have  quoted  no  split 
infinitives  except  such  as,  being  reasonably  supposed  (as  in  4)  to  be 
deliberate,  are  likely  to  be  favourable  specimens.  Let  it  therefore  con- 
clude with  one  borrowed  from  a  reviewer,  to  whose  description  of  it 
no  exception  need  be  taken :  "A  book  ...  of  which  the  purpose  is  thus 
— with  a  deafening  split  infinitive — stated  by  its  author: — 'Its  main 
idea  is  to  historically,  even  while  events  are  maturing,  &  divinely — from 
the  Divine  point  of  view — impeach  the  European  system  of  Church 
&  State.' " 

WORN-OUT  HUMOUR.  "We  are  not  amused";  so  Queen  Vic- 
toria baldly  stated  a  fact  that  was  disconcerting  to  someone;  yet  the 
thing  was  very  likely  amusing  in  its  nature;  it  did  not  amuse  the  per- 
son whose  amusement  mattered,  that  was  all.  The  writer's  Queen  Vic- 
toria is  his  public,  &  he  would  do  well  to  keep  a  bust  of  the  old  Queen 
on  his  desk  with  the  legend  "We  are  not  amused"  hanging  from  it. 
His  public  will  not  be  amused  if  he  serves  it  up  the  small  facetiae  that 
it  remembers  long  ago  to  have  taken  delight  in.  We  recognize  this 
about  anecdotes,  avoid  putting  on  our  friends  the  depressing  duty  of 
simulating  surprise,  &  sort  our  stock  into  chestnuts  &  still  possibles. 
Anecdotes  are  our  pounds,  &  we  take  care  of  them;  but  of  the  phrases 
that  are  our  pence  we  are  more  neglectful.  Of  the  specimens  of  worn- 
out  humour  exhibited  below  nearly  all  have  had  point  &  liveliness  in 
their  time;  but  with  every  year  that  they  remain  current  the  proportion 
of  readers  who  "are  not  amused"  to  those  who  find  them  fresh  &  new 
inexorably  rises. 

Such  grammatical  oddities  as  muchly;  such  puns  as  Bedfordshire  & 
the  Land  of  Nod;  such  allusions  as  the  Chapter  on  Snakes  in  Iceland; 

such  parodies  as  To  or  not  to  ;  such  quotations  as  On  

intent,  or  single  blessedness,  or  suffer  a  sea  change;  such  oxymorons 
as  The  gentle  art  of  doing  something  ungentle;  such  polysyllabic  un- 
couthness  as  calling  a  person  an  individual  or  an  old  maid  an  unappro- 
priated blessing;  such  needless  euphemisms  as  unmentionables  or  a 


246  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

table's  limbs;  such  meioses  as  the  herringpond,  or  Epithets  the  reverse 
of  complimentary,  or  "some"  as  a  superlative;  such  playful  archaisms  as 

hight  or  yclept;  such  legalisms  as  (the)  said ,  &  the  same,  &  this 

deponent;  such  shiftings  of  application  as  innocent  or  guiltless  of  hs, 
or  of  the  military  persuasion ,  or  to  spell  ruin  or  discuss  a  roast  fowl  or 
be  too  previous;  such  metonymies  as  the  leather  &  the  ribbons  for  ball 
h  reins;  such  metaphors  as  timberyard  &  s\y -pilot  &  priceless;  such 
zeugmas  as  in  top-boots  &  a  temper;  such  happy  thoughts  as  takjng 
in  each  other's  washing — with  all  these  we,  i.e.  the  average  adult,  not 
only  are  not  amused;  we  feel  a  bitterness,  possibly  because  they  remind 
us  of  the  lost  youth  in  which  we  could  be  tickled  with  a  straw,  against 
the  scribbler  who  has  reckoned  on  our  having  tastes  so  primitive. 


C.   K.   OGDEN 


COMMENTARY 


Except  by  divine  accident,  book  reviews  are  not  works  of  literature. 
Called  into  being  by  trivial  causes,  they  are  generally  written  in  haste 
and  forgotten  at  the  same  tempo.  In  England,  during  the  early  nine- 
teenth century,  book  reviews  were  massive  and  learned;  sometimes 
three  months  might  be  taken  in  their  composition.  (They  were  often, 
one  should  add,  extremely  dull.)  Today  book  reviews  are  at  best  in- 
formative, sprightly,  and  intelligent.  At  worst  they  are  merely  in- 
formative. 

Perhaps  they  are  not  literature,  not  only  because  book  reviewers 
are  not  first-rate  writers  but  because  a  book  review  is  the  wrong 
length.  It  is  difficult  to  say  anything  moving  and  memorable  about 
a  book  in  a  thousand  words.  One  needs  either  ten  words  or  ten  thou- 
sand. That  is  why  the  reviews  I  remember  with  most  pleasure  have 
been  very  long  or  very  short.  The  little  girl  who  wrote  "This  book 
tells  me  more  about  penguins  than  I  am  interested  in  knowing"  was 
the  author  of  a  classic  sentence  and  a  classic  book  review.  Those  old 
single  line  crushers,  "The  only  unity  the  book  has  was  given  it  by  the 
binder'  and  "There  is  too  much  space  between  the  covers  of  this 
book77— these  are  good,  direct-action  reviews.  If  the  truth  were  told, 
they  would  be  appropriate  to  at  least  fifty  per  cent  of  the  volumes 
that  are  accorded  more  extended  treatment. 

When  I  think  of  the  best  reviews  I  have  read  in  the  last  twenty 
years,  two  come  quickly  to  mind.  One  was  a  whopper  of  a  job  by 
Laurence  Stallings  in  the  Sun  of  perhaps  twelve  years  ago.  It  per- 
formed several  major  operations  on  the  autobiography  of  Emma 
Goldman,  as  a  result  of  which  the  patient  expired.  It  was  cruel,  but 
it  was  superb. 

The  other  I  am  reprinting  here.  It  appeared  in  the  October  23, 
1926,  issue  of  The  Saturday  Review  of  Literature,  rudely  displacing 
practically  all  the  other  reviews  scheduled  for  that  week.  The  irate 
reader  may  well  ask  why  at  this  late  date  I  am  digging  up  this  mam- 

247 


248  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

moth  commentary  full  oi  strange  names  and  allusions  and  apoplectic 
with  erudition.  I  have  one  or  two  reasons  ready,  none  oi  which,  it 
is  quite  possible,  will  seem  cogent  to  anyone  else. 

In  the  Erst  place,  Mr.  C.  K.  Ogden,  its  author,  was  handed  what 
is  about  the  toughest  assignment  any  reviewer  can  face:  The  Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica.  The  mere  possession  of  erudition  (and  it  will 
be  seen  that  Mr.  Ogden  has  what  might  almost  be  called  a  corner  on 
general  information)  will  not  suffice.  You  must  make  your  erudition 
comprehensible  and  you  must  make  your  erudition  entertaining.  I 
submit  that  Mr.  Ogden  meets  these  three  tests  superbly.  I  draw  par- 
ticular attention  to  the  fact  that  this  lengthy  comment  on  matters 
which  after  all  do  not  concern  us  vitally  is  not  only  interesting  but 
frequently  funny.  Through  it  blows  like  a  favoring  wind  that  amus- 
ingly cheeky  English  urbanity  which  we  now  know  to  be  the  draw- 
ing-room face  of  stoical  English  courage. 

Mr.  Ogden  s  piece  was  thrown  off  hurriedly  as  a  bit  of  journalism. 
Yet  it  is  full  of  good  sense,  good  writing,  and  good  humor.  It  is  stuffed 
with  jokes  and  puns,  some  of  them  donnish,  it  is  true,  others  fresh 
and  merry,  one  at  least  a  most  outrageous  double-entendre.  (No,  End 
it  yourself.)  A  man  so  flexible  and  humane  of  temperament  that  he 
can  play  games  with  the  Britannica  and  at  the  same  time  accord  it 
the  reverence  that  noble  institution  deserves  is  a  phenomenon  worthy 
of  your  attention. 

The  minds  of  polymaths,  though  fascinating  to  the  psychologist 
tend  to  repel  us  ordinary  folk.  It  is  difficult  to  pump  up  enthusiasm 
over  the  personalities  of  such  KnowrEverythings  as  Macaulay,  von 
Ranke,  or  Lord  Acton.  C.  K.  Ogden,  if  less  imposing  than  any  of 
these,  has  their  same  catholicity  of  intellectual  interest.  But  his  mind 
remains  playful,  even  skittish,  and  his  learning  sits  lightly  upon  his 
sentences.  He  will  even  teach  you  a  new  parlor  game— the  one  he 
calls  Offs  and  Ons.  It  is  fun  to  watch  a  brain  like  this  at  work. 

It  may  also  be  of  interest  to  some  to  note  how  shrewdly  Ogden 
called  the  intellectual  turn  fifteen  years  ago.  His  amiable  strictures 
on  the  Britannica's  sins  of  omission  in  1926  are  indicative  of  the  state 
of  vanguard  knowledge  at  that  time.  For  example,  he  scolds  the 
supplementary  edition  of  the  Britannica,  which  he  is  reviewing,  for 


C.   K.   OGDEN  249 

omitting  or  treating  insufficiently  such  names  as  Charles  Peirce,  Tos- 
canini,  Stokowski,  Gershwin,  Le  Corbusier,  Zaharoff,  General  Hoff- 
mann, Laski,  William  Morton  Wheeler,  Tawney,  T.S.  Eliot,  Rebecca 
West.  Today  it  is  a  bit  easier  to  estimate  the  importance  of  these 
figures.  But  in  1926  it  required  rare  erudition,  judgment,  and  bold- 
ness to  be  as  certain  of  their  worth  as  was  C.  K.  Ogden. 

Ogden  is  a  Cambridge  scholar.  His  special  province  is  psychology 
and  semantics.  He  is  the  author,  with  I.  A.  Richards,  of  The  Mean- 
ing of  Meaning  (not  recommended  as  light  literature)  and  of  a  num- 
ber of  other  books.  His  most  important  recent  contribution  is  his 
invention  of  Basic  English,  a  scientific  vocabulary  of  about  eight  hun- 
dred common  English  words  with  which  most  ordinary  discourse  can 
be  effectively  conducted.  Basic  English  has  nothing  in  common  with 
such  ''international  languages"  as  Esperanto,  Ido,  or  Volapiik.  It  is 
an  auxiliary,  a  tool  constructed  to  serve  as  a  supplement  to  existing 
languages.  It  is  already  being  widely  taught  in  Russia  and  parts  of 
China  and,  properly  used,  may  turn  out  a  valuable  aid  in  the  gradual 
formation  of  that  world-mindedness  which  must  ensue  if  the  present 
war  is  won  by  the  democracies. 

After  the  publication  of  the  piece  that  follows,  one  of  the  Ency- 
clopaedia Britannica  people  came  to  Henry  Seidel  Canby,  then  editor 
of  The  Saturday  Review,  in  a  state  of  considerable  choler.  He  felt 
that  the  Ogden  review  might  be  considered  prejudicial  and  talked 
of  bringing  suit.  Dr.  Canby  inquired  mildly  what  the  grounds  of  com- 
plaint were.  The  other  replied  that  Dr.  Canby  was  responsible  for 
having  chosen  an  incompetent  to  write  the  review.  "In  that  case,7' 
replied  Dr.  Canby  very  gently,  'T  suggest  that  you  look  up  the 
Britannica  article  on  Aesthetics  and  bring  suit  against  yourself."  The 
article  in  question  was,  of  course,  by  C.  K.  Ogden. 


The  New  Britannica 

BY 

C.  K.  OGDEN 


Between  the  ages  of  ten  and  twenty-five  the  growing  organism  is  pre- 
pared for  the  Battle  with  Death.  So  too  with  the  Body  of  Knowledge. 
Between  1910  and  1925,  it  "just  growed" — and  after  Topsy,  the  Au- 
topsy. Its  debonair  grandsire  the  eighteenth,  its  heavy  father  the  nine- 
teenth, of  a  long  line  of  centuries,  were  dissected  and  embalmed  in 
those  twelve  monumental  cenotaphs — the  successive  editions  of  the 
Encyclopaedia  Britannica  as  we  have  known  it  hitherto.  But  with  the 
Resurrection  at  the  dawn  of  the  new  century,  a  new  Body  was  formed. 
Overshadowed  in  infancy,  it  grew  slowly;  but  since  1910  its  progress 
has  been  phenomenal,  and  now  we  can  profitably  take  stock  of  the 
adolescent  period,  for  the  three  new  volumes  of  the  Encyclopaedia  are 
before  us.* 

Once  upon  a  time  the  writing  of  encyclopaedias  was  a  glorious  ad- 
venture, and  if  your  work  ever  reached  a  conclusion,  i.e.,  if  you  eventu- 
ally got  out  of  prison  and  could  prevent  the  printers  from  mutilating 
your  proofs  at  the  last  minute,  you  might  even  initiate  a  revolution. 
Diderot,  as  we  know,  was  the  Debs  of  Encyclopaedism,  and  it  is  to  Vol- 
taire, who  pronounced  his  achievement  a  compound  of  marble  and 
wood,  that  we  owe  the  description  of  the  Royal  supper-party  in  1774 
after  the  first  twenty-one  volumes  had  been  suppressed.  He  tells  us»how 
the  conversation  turned  on  the  nature  of  gunpowder;  how  Madame 
Pompadour  complained  that  since  the  confiscation  she  had  no  idea 


*  The  present  survey  deals  only  with  the  three  new  volumes.  But  these  are  intended 
to  be  regarded  as  supplementing  the  nth  Edition,  1910  (so  as  to  supersede  the  War 
Volumes,  1921,  known  as  the  12th  Edition),  and  forming  with  it  a  complete  13th  Edi- 
tion. 

250 


C.   K.   OGDEN  251 

what  even  her  rouge  or  her  stockings  were  made  of;  how  the  king 
thereupon  sent  for  the  volumes,  and  three  servants  eventually  staggered 
in  with  a  load  which  answered  all  the  questions  mooted;  and  how  the 
next  ten  volumes  were  then  sanctioned. 

That  was  the  moment  chosen  by  "a  society  of  gentlemen"  in  Scot-, 
land  to  launch  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica.  But  with  a  very  different 
motive,  as  is  shown  by  the  dedication  of  the  two  supplementary  vol- 
umes in  1800,  anent  Diderot's  "dissemination  of  the  seeds  of  anarchy 
and  atheism." — If  they  "shall  in  any  degree  counteract  the  tendency  of 
that  pestiferous  work,  even  these  two  volumes  will  not  be  wholly  un- 
worthy of  your  Majesty's  attention."  Needless  to  say,  no  one  has  ever, 
before  or  since,  accused  the  Britannica  of  radical  or  unsettling  tenden- 
cies; nor  are  they  likely  to  do  so,  as  long  as  the  judicious  impartiality 
of  Mr.  Garvin  is  in  evidence. 

These  three  volumes,  however,  considerably  larger  in  themselves 
than  the  entire  first  edition  of  1771,  are  remarkable  for  the  extent  to 
which  the  barriers  which  have  hitherto  preserved  the  public  from  the 
inroads  of  modernity  have  been  broken  down.  Thus,  the  Rev.  J.  M. 
Creed  does  not  hesitate  to  expound  Leuba's  view  that  there  is  no  es- 
sential difference  between  the  so-called  religious  experience  of  the 
mystic  and  the  illusions  of  narcotic  intoxication:  "Other  psychologists 
have  argued  that  religion  is  to  be  explained  in  terms  of  hallucinatory 
images  formed  by  the  mind,  to  which  objective  reality  is  wrongly 
ascribed."  Diderot  himself  could  scarcely  ask  for  more. 

This  attempt  to  put  at  our  disposal  a  means  of  understanding  the 
material  and  intellectual  forces  which  have  made  the  past  fifteen  years 
amongst  the  most  momentous  in  history  must  be  pronounced  a  tri- 
umph of  publishing  and  organization  by  everyone  who  realizes  the 
labor  and  goodwill  that  have  gone  to  its  making.  In  particular,  a 
notable  advance  can  be  recorded  in  all  that  pertains  to  the  American 
scene,  and  here  the  name  of  Mr.  Hooper  has  to  be  joined  with  those 
of  the  Editor  and  Mr.  Holland  in  awarding  to  all  their  due  meed  of 
praise.  The  gradual  widening  of  the  Britannica  horizon  is  also  evi- 
dent in  the  effort  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  average  family  as  well  as 
of  the  librarian  and  the  specialist. 

Never,  we  feel,  has  such  a  comprehensive  record  of  human  endeavor 


252  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

been  offered  in  so  small  a  compass.  Amongst  the  contributions  which 
no  one  can  afford  to  miss  are  the  masterly  architectural  survey  bv  the 
designer  of  Bush  House,  supplemented  by  the  study  of  City  planning 
(which  might  with  advantage  have  referred  to  Le  Corbusier's  visions 
of  the  Paris  of  tomorrow) ;  Leon  Gaster's  description  of  the  possibili- 
ties of  artificial  light;  Professor  Raymond  Pearl's  discussion  of  the  prob- 
abilities of  artificial  rejuvenation  (though  both  he  and  Serge  Voronoff 
are  agreed  that  we  cannot  yet  altogether  escape  Death — or  even,  be  it 
added,  add  to  our  expectation  of  life) ;  Stefansson's  survey  of  Arctic 
resources;  Henry  Ford  on  Mass  Production;  Professor  Rankine  on 
Sound;  Professor  R.  W.  Gregory  on  Color  and  Race;  and  the  formid- 
able sextet  on  the  various  aspects  of  Evolution. 

The  section  on  Archaeology  is  another  notable  triumph  of  composite 
work,  though  strangely  enough  so  eminent  and  active  an  archaeologist 
as  Mr.  Harold  Peake  is  not  indexed;  the  unique  account  of  the  new 
developments  of  air  photography  in  the  detection  of  ancient  sites,  by 
O.  G.  S.  Crawford,  is  embellished  by  a  convincing  illustration. 

Many  would  have  favored  the  adoption  of  the  same  method  for 
the  War  itself,  and  will  deplore  the  practice  of  splitting  up  the  various 
military  episodes  whereby  the  world  was  made  a  Safe  for  Democracy 
— to  which  we  have  apparently  lost  the  key.  The  recurrence  every 
few  pages  of  a  purely  strategic  narrative,  under  the  name  of  some 
arbitrarily  selected  battle  or  campaign,  in  addition  to  elaborate  studies 
of  the  various  fronts  and  full  military  histories  of  the  different  bel- 
ligerent powers,  gives  the  impression  that  the  Britannica  has  never 
been  properly  demobilized. 

The  articles  on  Economics  and  Social  Science  are  naturally  scattered, 
and  number  about  two  hundred,  supplemented  by  over  a  hundred 
biographies.  The  right  man  for  the  subject,  as  in  1910,  has  been  sought, 
regardless  of  prejudices,  and  the  result  is  a  sense  of  freshness  and 
authority  which  rivals  even  that  of  the  slightly  more  technical  En- 
gineering contributions.  These,  by  the  way,  the  literary  reader  should 
not  shirk,  for  the  marvels  of  modern  engineering  are  often  reflected 
in  a  brilliant  linguistic  technique  for  grappling  with  the  most  intricate 
mechanical  constructions.  The  Currency  and  Finance  section,  in 
twenty-four  divisions,  will  be  as  valuable  to  everyone  concerned  with 


C.  K.  OGDEN  253 

business  and  administration  as  the  less  complicated  articles  on  com- 
mercial topics  proper. 

The  practical  note  of  Professor  Ashley's  central  summary  is  echoed 
in  the  thoughtful  essays  of  T.  E.  Gregory,  Sir  Josiah  Stamp,  Gustav 
Cassel,  Moritz  Julius  Bonn,  and  even  in  the  Cassandra-tones  of  Joseph 
Caillaux.  The  international  scope  of  the  work,  too,  is  here  seen  to 
special  advantage. 

A  special  word  of  praise  is  necessary  for  many  of  the  biographies. 
Mr.  Ervine,  in  particular,  is  in  his  element  on  the  subject  of  Shaw, 
and  includes  a  brief  excursus  on  the  Shavian  religion,  showing  how 
American  influences  were  twice  paramount.  Mr.  D.  G.  Hogarth  tells 
the  romantic  story  of  Colonel  Lawrence;  and  in  the  parallel  column 
the  secret  is  out  that  the  author  of  "The  White  Peacock"  has  written 
a  successful  manual  of  modern  history.  In  a  word  the  new  volumes 
have,  where  suitable,  sufficiently  subordinated  the  formal  character 
which  we  associate  with  Encyclopaedias  to  become  readable  and  enter- 
taining in  the  best  sense. 

Here  is  Trotsky  assuring  us  that  Lenin  was  courteous  and  attentive, 
especially  to  the. weak  and  oppressed,  and  to  children,  and  Freud  ex- 
plaining why  medical  hostility  could  not  check  the  progress  of  psycho- 
analysis. Dr.  E.  J.  Dillon  refuses  to  believe  "that  Izvolsky  was  respon- 
sible for  the  World  War,"  and  G.  B.  S.  tweaks  the  beard  of  Capitalism 
so  violently  that  the  editor  has  to  launch  a  special  bulletin  to  make 
it  quite  clear  that  Wall  Street  is  still  hale  and  hirsute.  The  author  of 
"Thunder  on  the  Left"  gives  us  a  brisk  column  on  O.  Henry,  who 
"often  arouses  the  trained  reader's  amazement,"  while  the  sound 
scholars  who  believe  that  our  language  is  going  to  the  dogs  will  hear 
them  barking  in  every  line  of  Mr.  Mencken's  excellent  essay  on 
Americanisms.  Joyce's  "Ulysses,"  it  appears,  is  "little  known  to  the 
general  public,"  Bela  Kun  "was  a  man  of  medium  size,  rather  plump," 
and  Noel  Coward  "has  made  himself  an  international  figure."  Mary 
Pickford's  violet  eyes  smile  at  us  from  her  niche  alongside  Doug., 
and  even  Charlie's  feet  twinkle  through  a  respectful  black-type  blurb. 

In  the  exact  sciences,  of  course,  the  high  standard  of  the  main  En- 
cyclopaedia is  fully  maintained.  Sir  Ernest  Rutherford  and  Sir  J.  J. 
Thomson,  the  knights  unerrant  of  physics,  are  ably  assisted  by  Pro- 


254  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

fessors  Bohr,  Eddington,  McLennan,  Millikan,  and  Soddy.  To  get 
Mr.  F.  W.  Aston  to  write,  "Within  a  tumbler  of  water  lies  sufficient 
energy  to  propel  the  Mauretania  across  the  Atlantic  and  back  at  full 
speed,"  and  Einstein  to  assert  that  "we  fare  no  better  in  our  specula- 
tions than  a  fish  which  should  strive  to  become  clear  as  to  what  is 
water,"  is  an  achievement  after  which  any  editor  might  claim  a  long 
week-end. 

Medicine,  too,  is  well  represented,  and  a  fair  balance  is  struck  be- 
tween the  Clinicians  and  the  Bacteriologists.  Sir  Humphrey  Rolleston, 
Professor  L.  F.  Barker,  Dr.  Alexis  Carrel,  Hideyo  Noguchi  (Nogouchi 
at  H-474,  as  in  both  lists  of  contributors),  Adolf  Lorenz,  Sir  Almroth 
Wright,  and  Dr.  Kinnier  Wilson,  all  contribute  of  their  best.  The  last 
named,  by  the  way,  has  lately  produced  a  manual  for  general  practi- 
tioners embodying  all  the  most  recent  work  on  speech  defects,  and 
Pieron's  summary  of  continental  experience  over  the  last  decade,  in 
his  popular  exposition  "Thought  and  the  Brain,"  runs  to  over  a 
hundred  pages;  but  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  one  of  the  chief  medical 
results  of  the  War  was  the  stimulus  it  gave  to  Aphasia,  even  the 
single  allusion  to  Dr.  Henry  Head  in  these  volumes  (III-257)  does 
not  get  the  subject  indexed.  Another  missing  entry  is  Chronaxy,  with 
its  intriguing  neurological  implications;  Bourguignon's  contribution, 
for  example. 

But  let  the  reader  beware  of  getting  a  false  impression  from  any 
captious  remarks  he  may  read  by  young  men  in  a  hurry  to  air  their 
own  omniscience.  Such  an  enterprise  as  this  cannot  be  judged  by  one 
or  two  lapses,  however  serious,  nor  yet  by  fifty.  A  few  days  ago  the 
Chinese  delegate  at  Geneva,  on  the  pretext  of  presenting  to  the  League 
of  Nations  a  Chinese  Encyclopedia,  used  his  moments  on  the  plat- 
form to  insinuate  a  number  of  tuitional  statements  about  gunboats 
and  cruisers  on  distant  waters.  Just  as  we  cannot  condemn  the  whole  of 
China  even  for  such  a  lapse,  as  this,  so  we  may  hesitate  to  decry  the 
Britannica  because,  as  we  shall  contend,  the  analogy  is  not  altogether 
inapplicable.  Its  methods  and  its  material  may  frequently  be  at  fault, 
but  let  us  generously  acknowledge  the  great  stride  an  institution  158 
years  old  has  taken  towards  a  renewal  of  those  spacious  days  of 
Encyclopaxlia-making,  when  Pierre  Bayle  would  write  down  all  that 


C.  K.  OGDEN  255 

he  knew  in  alphabetical  order,  because  he  enjoyed  doing  it,  with  taste 
and  gusto.  Fresh  breezes  are  blowing  through  these  3,000  pages,  and 
a  new  and  welcome  spirit  informs  the  majority  o£  its  1,200  contributors. 
With  this  preamble,  let  us  muster  such  reverence  as  befits  an  advocatus 
diaboli  confronted  by  their  labors. 


II 

A  just  criticism,  we  readily  admit,  makes  much  of  good  points  and 
only  mentions  flaws  for  the  purpose  of  future  improvement.  Our  sole 
reason  for  adding  a  second  part  to  this  survey  is  the  supreme  impor- 
tance and  outstanding  merits  of  the  new  Britannica.  It  would  be  an 
easy  and  a  pleasant  task  to  continue  to  lay  stress  on  those  merits,  but 
for  the  discerning  reader  every  further  inch  devoted  to  this  edition  is 
actually  a  further  compliment.  The  following  notes,  then,  are  designed 
primarily  for  persons  who  are  already  in  possession  of  the  volumes 
and  who  expect  from  the  Saturday  Review  some  indication  of  the 
extent  to  which  their  record  of  modern  achievement  can  claim  to  be 
"complete." 

Since  any  such  probe  in  these  degenerate  days  is  liable  to  be  mis- 
interpreted, let  it  be  explained  at  the  outset  that  the  Britannica  survives 
the  test  with  flying  colors — relatively  to  any  other  Encyclopaedia  in 
the  world.  But  Homer's  occasional  surreptitious  nod  does  not  license 
the  stertorous  exhibitionism  of  his  rivals.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  state 
that  the  mention  of  an  omission  is  not  a  demand  for  a  biography. 
Every  reader  of  the  Britannica  knows  that  only  a  very  small  propor- 
tion of  those  included  are  treated  separately.  Omissions  are  judged 
by  the  comparative  standards  set  in  these  volumes  themselves  and  by 
the  public  claims  to  completeness  which  have  been  made  for  them. 
In  other  words,  90  per  cent  of  the  names  he  has  looked  for  in  vain 
are  regarded  by  the  reviewer  as  more  important  than  30  per  cent  of 
the  corresponding  inclusions.  It  should  be  possible  for  an  inquirer  at 
once  to  discover  from  these  three  thousand  pages  whether  and  whereby 
they  are  able,  notable,  or  noble,  i.e.,  whether  their  success  is  due  to 
brains,  behavior,  or  blood. 

The  Britannica  does  not  regard  itself  as  impressionistic  or  eclectic, 


256  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and  it  is  not  so  regarded.  The  reader  who  failed  at  once  to  find  Low 
or  Weyl  might  complain  that  American  Administration  and  the  Uni- 
verse respectively  had  been  inadequately  treated;  so  the  Britannica  has 
exalted  each  in  its  own  way.  Britons  must  just  accept  the  fact  (though 
they  may  balk  at  the  misplaced  and  misprinted  entry  "Weil's  hypoth- 
esis"), but  when  they  hear  the  cognoscenti  acclaiming  Sacharoff  and 
Robeson  they  will  find  that  here  their  needs  have  been  less  carefully 
considered,  though  in  both  fields  ample  space  has  been  devoted  to  nu- 
merous lesser  personalities. 

The  criticism,  then,  is  one  of  judgment  and  correlation  rather  than 
of  policy  or  intention.  The  Britannica,  in  fact,  has  doubled  its  value 
by  opening  its  pages  to  modernity,  but  it  is  not  surprising  that  in  such 
an  intellectual  hurricane  the  editorial  trireme  rocks  a  trifle.  Every  little 
while  the  oars  do  not  beat  in  unison,  and  a  crab  is  caught.  Imagine, 
for  instance,  a  man  "temperamentally  desperate,  loving  extremes,  .  .  . 
almost  querulously  criticizing  the  world's  workings."  There  is  in  fact 
such  a  miserable  specimen  of  humanity.  His  name,  according  to  the 
Britannica  biography,  is  Bertrand  Arthur  William  Russell.  He  "has 
been  peculiarly  successful  in  eliciting  from  contemporary  physics  those 
theorems  that  are  most  consonant  with  his  own  temper."  Bearing  that 
in  mind,  locate  now  the  most  crucial  article  in  the  whole  three  volumes, 
the  one  that  requires  for  its  composition  the  acutest,  the  astutest,  the 
most  balanced,  and  the  best  informed  mind  in  Christendom.  There  is 
such  an  article.  It  is  on  Knowledge  itself — what  we  can  know  and 
how  we  know  it.  And  whom  does  the  editor  select  to  write  that  article  ? 
The  whole  royal  stable  and  all  Cal's  men  will  not  induce  me  to  give 
him  away. 

Something  has  gone  wrong  somewhere.  As  Mr.  Russell  himself 
writes:  "I  have  read  accounts  of  my  own  death  in  the  newspapers,  but 
I  abstained  from  inferring  that  I  was  a  ghost."  Nay  more:  Mr.  Russell 
visited  Russia  shortly  after  the  war  with  the  Labor  delegation,  and 
published  a  book  expressing  his  disapproval  of  what  he  saw.  He  was 
subsequently  appointed  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  the  University  of 
Peking,  being  the  first  European  thinker  of  first-class  attainments  to 
win  the  confidence  of  the  East.  The  significance  of  such  a  contact  for 
the  future  thought  of  the  world  has  yet  to  be  appreciated.  The  Britan- 


C.   K.  OGDEN  257 

nica  allows  these  events  to  be  recorded  as  follows:  "He  travelled 
through  China  and  Bolshevik  Russia." 

In  the  biography  of  F.  H.  Bradley  we  are  informed  that  he  "once 
and  for  all  established  the  supremacy  of  idealism  over  realism,  in 
dialectical  controversy."  On  page  332  of  Volume  III,  where  modern 
thought  says  its  last  word,  this  is  very  properly  contradicted — "It  is  a 
mistake  to  suppose  that  relativity  adopts  an  idealistic  picture  of  the 
world."  But  when  we  finally  reach  the  Golden  Gates  behind  which 
"there  is  found  to  be  a  residue  not  dependent  upon  the  point  of  view 
of  the  observer"  we  are  met  by  the  magic  word  Tensors.  The  editors 
have  presumably  not  noticed  that  after  thus  whetting  our  curiosity 
about  this  mysterious  cosmic  mantram,  "the  importance  of  which  can 
hardly  be  exaggerated,"  the  Britannica,  though  not  elsewhere  afraid 
of  technicalities,  leaves  us  in  the  lurch:  for  Professor  Eddington,  who 
likewise  contracts  a  tensor  just  at  this  point  (III-9o8a),  also  contracts 
his  exegetic  antennae. 

The  Britannica  has  always  featured  the  Population  problem  and 
Malthus  himself  adorned  the  supplement  to  the  fifth  edition.  But  it 
is  too  little  known  that  Malthus  was  a  clergyman  and  a  Fellow  of 
Jesus  College,  Cambridge.  Consequently  it  is  a  new  departure  to  be 
informed  that  Dr.  Marie  Stopes'  "exhaustive  treatise  has  been  largely 
used  by  doctors  and  medical  students."  The  Rev.  Sir  James  Marchant 
is  further  inspired  by  his  subject,  Birth  Control,  to  quote: 

By  filching  all  the  substance  of  the  fit 
We  make  the  rotten  multiply  as  it. 

Perhaps  in  the  fourteenth  edition  he  will  rise  to  the  worthier  lines: 

There  was  an  old  woman  who  lived  in  a  stew: 

She  had  so  many  children;  she  didn't  know  what  to  do. 

The  recent  triumphs  of  Parasitology  and  the  discovery  of  a  virus  or  a 
tic  in  connection  with  so  many  of  the  ills  to  which  flesh  is  heir  seem 
to  have  led  to  a  new  and  somewhat  sinister  form  of  medical  optimism 
which  might  be  christened  V trusties.  At  any  rate  both  Professor  S.  L. 


258  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

Cummins  (II-474),  and  still  more  confidently  Dr.  C.  M.  Wenyon 
(III-50D),  as  well  as  Dr.  Tidy  (I-978),  envisage  the  complete  virustica- 
tion  of  Influenza. 

Meanwhile  we  would  have  welcomed  an  article  on  the  exorcism  of 
the  common  cold,  or  of  alopecia,  to  show  just  how  far  we  really  have 
progressed  beyond  our  grandmothers.  For  though  there  is  nearly  a 
page  of  information  and  advice  (how  to  move  the  bowels,  etc.)  should 
you  be  stricken  by  Phlebotomous  fever  in  Malta,  there  is  nothing  to 
warn  Americans  against  facing  possible  death  by  inoculation  for  ty- 
phoid prior  to  a  European  pleasure  trip — and  returning  to  find  that 
the  family  has  caught  it  in  New  York.  Nor  is  anything  said  about 
Mongolian  imbecility,  for  which  this  year's  Bradshaw  lecturer  pro- 
pounded so  challenging  an  aetiology  in  1924;  about  the  effects  of  Noise 
and  its  abatement;  or  about  Abrams'  box. 

Such  reticence,  when  we  reach  topics  which  interest  intelligent  people 
not  over-endowed  with  special  knowledge,  is  distressing.  Apart  from  an 
unindexed  allusion,  under  Pragmatism,  there  is  no  mention  of  that 
outstanding  American  genius,  Charles  Santiago  Sanders  Peirce;  nor 
of  such  pioneers  of  modern  thought  as  Smith  Ely  Jelliffe,  William  A. 
White,  Stewart  Paton,  G.  M.  Gould,  Charles  R.  Stockard,  R.  W.  Wood, 
and  J.  J.  Putnam  (Major  Putnam's  name  by  the  way  is  also  notably 
inconspicuous).  Edward  Carpenter  fails  to  register,  though  throughout 
the  period  covered  his  influence  on  thought  both  in  England  and 
America  has  been  considerable.  More  astonishing  still  is  the  fact  that 
we  search  in  vain  for  G.  Lowes  Dickinson  and  Rebecca  West.  And 
Stop,  Look,  Listen! — for  Professor  W.  Z.  Ripley  (at  whose  whisper 
Wall  Street  winces)  is  not  reckoned  among  the  First  Hundred  Thou- 
sand of  his  compatriots.  No  wonder  the  Britannica  suggests  (I-420)* 
that  had  Carpentier  come  to  New  York,  he  would  have  been  a  mere 
pork  and  beaner. 

Though  incorrigibly  repetitive,  the  treatment  of  Armageddon  is  ad- 
mittedly authoritative.  We  search,  however,  without  success  for  anv 
mention  of  General  Hoffmann,  the  opponent  of  Ludendorff,  whose. 
book  "The  War  of  Lost  Opportunities"  is  surely  one  of  the  most 
notable  documents  of  the  last  ten  ye^.rs.  His  role  in  shaping  recent 
history  was   presumably   as  great   as   that  of,   say   Johann   Friedrich 


C.  K.  OGDEN  259 

(q.v.) ;  which  also  applies  to  the  Hon.  James  M.  Beck,  Frederic  Cou- 
dert,  Sir  Geoffrey  Butler,  and  Arthur  Ponsonby.  Nor  do  we  find  any 
allusion  to  the  exploits  of  Nogales  Bey.  Rasputin  is  in,  but  not  Burt 
Reese.  It  is  curious,  too,  that  J.  B.  S.  Haldane's  "Callinicus"  is  not 
mentioned  even  in  the  bibliography  of  the  lengthy  article  on  Chemical 
Warfare.  That  he  himself  is  not  in  the  index  is,  however,  merely  a 
mistake;  for  he  is  there  confused  with  his  father,  the  Vitalist — after 
the  best  traditions  of  the  American  press,  which  throughout  the  divorce 
proceedings  against  Cambridge  University  insisted  on  using  photo- 
graphs of  the  Oxford  Professor  in  spectacles. 

Marshal  Foch  asserts  (II-950)  that  the  British  Tommy  marched 
into  battle  "to  the  cry  of  'Lusitania.' "  We  are  more  inclined  to  believe 
him  when  he  declares  that  while  soldiers  wait  in  the  trenches,  "hours 
succeed  hours,  nights  follow  days,  and  weeks  go  by."  It  may  be  noted 
that  though  there  is  an  arresting  supernumerary  article  on  War,  like 
Pelion  piled  on  Ossa,  by  Sir  Ian  Hamilton,  there  is  no  sign  of  a  com- 
panion plea  for  Peace.  A  dirge  on  World  Recovery  and  three  despon- 
dent epithalamfa  on  International  Rapprochement  do  not  adequately 
counterbalance  the  70,000-word  epic  entitled  World  War;  and  by 
the  same  token  the  name  Norman  Angell  is  not  in  the  index.  Several 
of  the  193  special  military  contributions  look,  or  shall  we  say  point, 
forward  to  the  Next  War.  Two  and  a  half  pages,  for  example,  are 
devoted  to  devices  for  attacking  submerged  hostile  submarines,  when 
your  vessel  is  moving  at  a  high  speed,  by  means  of  paravanes  equipped 
with  automatic  dynamometer  switch  trippers.  In  other  words  a  highly 
technical  article,  dealing  chiefly  with  offensive  tactics  in  active  warfare 
and  quite  likely  to  be  out  of  date  next  year,  gets  more  than  twice  the 
space  devoted  to  the  whole  subject  of  Anaesthetics! 

In  their  advertisements  the  Britannica  Company  referred  to  seven- 
teen of  their  contributors  as  having  won  the  Nobel  Prize.  We  turn 
to  the  entry  Nobel  Prize  to  discover  what  standard  it  has  maintained 
since  1910,  but  there  is  no  such  entry.  To  verify  a  hazy  recollection 
that  the  Prime  Minister  of  Great  Britain  recommended  Mr.  E.  D. 
Morel,  just  before  his  death,  for  the  said  prize,  we  look  the  traitor  up; 
no  mention.  The  Congo,  then:  again  the  slippery  scamp  escapes  us. 
The  Union  of  Democratic  Control,  which  he  founded  and  whose 


260  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

committee  afterwards  virtually  formed  the  British  Cabinet;  no  men- 
tion. Quakers — with  whom  he  plotted;  no  mention.  Pacifism — in  which 
he  saw  the  hope  of  the  future;  no  mention.  Wearily  we  try  the  League 
of  Nations — yes,  Mr.  Garvin  allows  us  to  hear  of  that. 

Graham  Wallas  draws  a  blank.  So  does  Dr.  Eileen  Power,  most 
erudite  and  gracious  of  modern  historians.  Where  then  is  the  "New 
History"  of  which  the  biographer  of  James  Harvey  Robinson  gives  us 
a  tantalizing  glimpse?  The  "A.  K.  Travelling  Fellowships,"  designed 
to  broaden  the  minds  of  historians;  no  mention.  Albert  Kahn  himself, 
who  gave  all  that  money?  Nor  Otto  Kahn,  who  gave  more  still  to 
still  more  deserving  causes?  Shame!  Then  Otto  Beit,  perhaps,  whose 
generosity  has  made  his  name  a  household  word  amongst  scientists? 
Or  Arthur  Serena,  who  founded  so  many  costly  chairs  to  make  Italian 
thought  and  culture  better  known  to  the  English-speaking  world;  not 
a  word  of  either.  And  in  spite  of  those  chairs,  neither  Sante  de  Sanctis, 
nor  Federigo  Enriques,  nor  Eugenio  Rignano,  nor  Professor  Luciani  is 
known  to  the  Britannica  index,  where  even  Gentile  is  misspelt.  Such 
is  gratitude — but  perhaps  Sir  Basil  Zaharoff,  since  he  has  both  endowed 
learning  and  influenced  the  destinies  of  nations,  is  more  fortunate;  not 
even  he. 

As  regards  history,  then,  and  the  making  of  history  the  Britannica 
cannot  be  unequivocally  congratulated.  The  lid  is  still  down  on  J.  L. 
Hammond,  Montague  Summers,  G.  G.  Coulton,  H.  J.  Laski,  Norman 
Baynes,  Alfred  Zimmern,  M.  Dorothy  George,  Sir  Samuel  Dill,  E. 
Lipson,  Professors  Gras,  Arias,  Brodnitz  and  Kosminsky,  and  R.  H. 
Tawney.  Not  one  of  these  prime  determinants  of  twentieth  century 
revaluations  gets  a  mention.  And  you  may  read  right  through  the 
index  without  finding  the  name  of  Mr.  G.  P.  Gooch. 

Reverting  for  a  moment  to  Sir  Basil's  interest  in  Athens,  Oxford 
and  Monte  Carlo  (Harvard  men  can  agree  to  symbolically  omit  the 
comma,  since  the  Britannica  omits  Professor  Kittredge),  we  are  re- 
minded of  the  classic  game  of  chance  known  as  Oils  and  Ons.  \ou 
write  down  all  the  world-famous  names  you  know  that  end  in  off, 
and  for  each  that  is  not  in  the  Encyclopaedia  index  you  score  another 
point.  The  same  with  the  Ons.  My  score  to  date,  including  Rachma- 
ninoff and  Carrie  Nation,  is  twenty. 


C.  K.  OGDEN  261 

The  English  reader,  like  the  dilettante,  turns  eagerly  to  the  survey 
of  American  literature,  where  he  had  had  so  little  opportunity  o£ 
forming  a  just  estimate;  and  he  discovers  a  mine  of  valuable  informa- 
tion. We  note  that  America  accepts  E.  E.  Cummings,  but  England 
has  not  yet  adopted  T.  S.  Eliot — even  as  a  critic.  German  literature 
is  admirably  covered  by  Soergel;  but  when  we  come  to  Britain  we 
must  confess  that  if  the  Britannica  makes  any  claim  to  completeness, 
the  omissions  we  have  already  recorded,  where  so  many  hundreds 
are  admitted,  would  already  give  us  pause.  Moreover,  here  are  ten 
names  not  one  of  which  can  be  found  in  the  index:  Arthur  Symons, 
Laurence  Housman,  R.  Y.  Tyrrell,  Eden  Phillpotts,  Israel  Zangwill, 
Rose  Macaulay,  Wyndham  Lewis,  Harold  Munro,  Alfred  Noyes,  Al- 
dous  Huxley.  A  careful  search,  however,  does  discover  allusions  to 
the  last  five  in  the  main  text,  as  well  as  of  the  unindexed  Sir  Owen 
Seaman  (I-ioio;  though  Punch  "continued  to  reflect  the  prejudices 
rather  than  the  judgments  of  the  educated  middle  class."  I-539).  But 
let  the  American  reader  who  so  readily  gets  confused  by  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Leonard  Woolf,  Humbert  Wolfe,  Wolfe  the  painter,  Wolf  the  Macca- 
baean,  and  now  "Turbott  Wolfe,"  see  what  assistance  he  can  get;  for 
even  with  the  aid  of  the  text  itself  I  have  only  tracked  down  a  single 
Woolf,  in  Virginia  (I-20o8a). 

Where  more  than  a  page  is  devoted  to  praise  of  Alice  Meynell,  some- 
one might  put  in  a  word  for  England's  most- delectable  emotionalist, 
Arthur  Machen,  though  he  did  bring  the  Angels  to  Mons;  or  a  line 
for  that  master  of  word-craft,  Mr.  Powys  Mathers,  though  he  did 
translate  those  "Nights"  (Mardrus  himself  should  appear) ;  or  a  para- 
graph for  the  sophisticated  satire  of  Norman  Douglas,  though  he  does 
live  in  Capri.  And  might  not  Edward  M.  C.  Mackenzie  (for  so  Mr. 
Compton  Mackenzie  appears  in  the  index,  where  the  reference  at  I-1008 
should  be  added)  be  allowed  some  credit  for  his  Phonograph  record? 
Darrell  Figgis,  too;  and  the  whole  Sitwell  family  would  seem  to  be- 
long to  the  period  covered,  or  vice  versa. 

But  perhaps  literature  is,  as  they  say,  a  matter  of  prejudices,  and 
anyhow  space  had  to  be  found  for  the  news  that  "men,  women,  and 
children  of  all  colors"  answered  the  queen-mother's  appeal  for  a  Kitch- 
ener memorial. 


262  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Yet  it  cannot  be  a  matter  of  space,  for  look  at  the  biographies  of 
Carlo  Caneva,  Luigi  Capello,  James  Schoolcraft  Sherman,  or  Count 
Casimir  Badeni  (who  died  in  1909  and  gets  as  many  inches  as  John 
Dewey),  and  the  article  on  Choral  singing  which  shows  how  "square- 
toed  Choralism  has  been  shaken  to  the  roots"  so  that  now  "first  rate 
work  can  be  produced  anywhere" — not  only  in  Yorkshire.  Now,  too, 
"the  dominions  bid  fair  to  follow  the  good  example  of  the  mother 
country,"  but  "America  has  not  yet  produced  a  composer  of  outstand- 
ing choral  works." 

And  need  those  homes  of  culture,  the  townships  of  Lancashire,  ad- 
vertize their  parochial  misfortunes  at  quite  such  length?  In  Preston, 
we  are  glad  to  learn,  "much  attention  has  been  given  to  the  health  of 
the  city  and  to  the  provision  of  hospitals,  infant  welfare  centres,  etc." 
We  had  already  wondered  whether  the  drainage  problem  was  still 
engaging  the  attention  of  the  Mayor.  From  Salford  come  tidings  that 
"a  wide  new  road  was  opened  at  Pendleton  in  1925,  and  further  road 
improvements  were  under  consideration  in  1926,"  while  in  Bolton  "a 
Presbyterian  Church  and  the  Claremont  Baptist  Institute  were  erected 
in  1910."  At  Blackburn,  "St.  Jude's  Church  was  built  and  its  parish 
formed  from  that  of  St.  Thomas  in  1914."  Blackpool  has  prepared 
"an  ambitious  scheme  of  development,  including  a  'social  centre,'  a 
restaurant,  and  a  lake."  What  is  Wigan  going  to  do  about  it?  A  cafe- 
teria perhaps? 

The  articles  on  the  social  side  of  Industry  are  for  the  most  part 
hardly  less  uninspired  than  the  disconnected  oddments  on  international 
organization  (Arbitration  and  the  various  Pacts).  "Health,"  we  read 
(III-463)  "is  needed  for  efficient  work";  and  Miss  May  Smith  occupies 
two  whole  pages  in  elaborating  the  thesis  that  we  cannot  work  for 
twenty-four  hours  a  day.  ("The  physiological  necessity  for  sleep  pre- 
vented the  complete  working  out  of  this  principle.")  We  also  learn 
that  "a  good  industrial  leader  should  possess  vitality,  sympathy,  justice, 
and  humor,  as  well  as  knowledge  of  the  work."  The  late  P.  E.  B.  Jour- 
dain,  the  paralytic  mathematician,  possessed  all  these  qualities  in  a 
supreme  degree.  So,  one  would  suppose,  does  Mr.  Ring  Lardner.  The 
Girl  Scouts,  "known  as  Brownies, "  who  are  to  be  found  under  the 
Boy  Scouts  at  page  42}  of  Vol.  I,  may,  however,  be  without  humor. 


C.   K.   OGDEN  263 

Everything,  too,  is  provided  for  domestic  bliss,  from  dish-washers  to 
fire-extinguishers.  The  attempt  to  cope  with  Divorce  strikes  a  layman 
as  less  adequate,  and  aspirants  pressed  for  time  would  probably  be 
better  advised  to  go  direct  to  Dudley  Field  Malone — another  inter- 
national name  for  the  Editors  to  note  on  their  cuffs. 

Without  a  System,  modern  business  would  undoubtedly  be  back  at 
1910.  By  the  best  people,  "motor-driven  machines  are  used  for  endors- 
ing large  numbers  of  cheques.  .  .  .  Cheques  are  fed  by  hand  one  at  a 
time."  And  again  (III-ioo5d),  "a  stenographer  employed  in  taking 
notes  and  transcribing  letters,  will  do  much  more  effective  work  than 
one  who  also  keeps  and  files  records":  but  will  she  abstain  from  putting 
commas  between  subjects  and  their  verbs,  Mr.  Leffingwell?  Vivent  les 
fourmisl  Our  little  friends  the  ants  have  reached  an  even  higher 
degree  of  efficiency  in  the  polycalic  formicary. 

Education  is  equally  badly  served.  Lord  Haldane  and  Professor 
Judd  give  us  little  idea  of  the  ferment  of  new  life  which  their  stuffy 
summaries  conceal.  It  is  something  that  "Metaphysics"  has  vanished; 
but  "Philosophy"  remains,  undisturbed  by  the  fact  that  its  foundations, 
too,  have  lately  been  removed;  and  Theology,  unaware  that  Mr.  Clive 
Bell's  "significant  form"  has  silently  withdrawn  before  the  shafts  of 
linguistic  analysis,  is  reduced  to  hoping  that  the  even  more  naive 
verbal  projections  of  Otto  may  establish  the  existential  validity  of  the 
numinous.  In  Logic  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  work  of  Driesch 
and  Royce  was  the  most  important  contribution  between  1910  and 
1921 — though  the  articles  on  Knowledge,  Mathematics,  Philology,  and 
Pragmatism  fortunately  combine  to  stultify  this  estimate. 

Scepticism  is  gingerly  tackled,  but  something  must  be  done  when 
the  scientists  are  so  disparaging  about  our  eyes  and  ears.  Thus  "it  is 
impossible  to  rely  upon  audition,  handicapped  as  it  is  by  the  vagaries 
of  the  ear"  (III-590).  Sound,  however,  is  not  something  which  we  hear. 
Nor  is  color  what  we  see;  that  is  only  visible  color.  The  really  exciting 
colors,  explains  Professor  Thorpe,  are  the  invisible  ones!  Visible  color, 
such  as  it  is,  receives  inadequate  treatment,  however.  The  systems  of 
Ross  and  Munsell,  the  experiments  of  Ladd-Franklin,  and  the  work 
of  Dr.  Mary  Collins  are  all  passed  over.  Even  in  its  biography  of 
Ostwald  the  Britannica  omits  to  record  that  the  last  ten  years  of  his 


264  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

life  have  been  devoted  to  Color,  and  to  the  publication  of  a  number  of 
fundamental  studies  bearing  on  a  system  of  standardization  which 
will  only  be  superseded  when  the  Tudor-Hart  double  inverted  cones 
are  finally  available.  The  bibliographies  are  said  to  "provide  lists  of 
books  carefully  selected  by  the  specialist  who  contributes  the  article." 
As  one  narcissist  to  another,  I  particularly  commend  the  care  with 
which  Dr.  Edridge-Green  has  selected  his  bibliography. 

While  it  is  indeed  gratifying  to  have  Dr.  John  B.  Watson's  crystalli- 
zation of  Behaviorism  it  is  disappointing  to  find  no  mention  of  so  pro- 
found and  influential  a  thinker  as  Professor  W.  M.  Wheeler,  America's 
leading  entomologist  and  perhaps  her  leading  sociologist  as  well.  Mr. 
Cornelius  Newton  Bliss  and  Mr.  James  Carrol  Beckwith  are  dignified 
by  full  biographies,  but  Professors  W.  B.  Cannon  and  C.  Judson 
Herrick,  who  have  contributed  so  brilliantly  to  our  understanding  of 
the  body  and  mind  of  man,  receive  no  word  of  appreciation.  Sir 
Richard  Burbidge  sefur&s  a  handsome  tribute,  but  Major  Darwin's  life- 
service  to  Eugenics  evokes  no  echo.  Charles  Frohman  is  immortalized 
at  length,  but  Mr.  Qrage's  decade  of  intellectual  pioneering  on  the 
New  Age  is  greeted  with  silence,  and  even  his  journal  draws  a  blank; 
the  same  applies  to  Henry  Goddard  Leach,  while  Herbert  Croly  is 
indexed  as  Croley.  Dean  Keppef  is  side-stepped  no  less  than  J.  O'Hara 
Cosgrave,  Walkley,  Hartley  W^hers,  Bruce  Richmond,  and  Norman 
Hapgood.  Frank  Harris  suffers  with  them.  Baron  Corvo  rings  no 
bells,  nor  Panait  Istrati,  nor  the  Poet  Laureate's  "discovery"  of  Gerard 
Hopkins.  Even  capricoprophijy  avails  Aleister  Crowley  naught,  though 
his  claims  as  poet  are  at  least  equal  to  those  of  Edna  St.  Vincent 
Millay;  and  it  is  a  pity  that  Rudolph  Valentino  lived  and  died  in  vain. 

Why,  if  Douglas  Fairbanks,  not  Jackie  Coogan,  Billy  Sunday,  San- 
■  dow,  Frank  Crane,  Pola  Negri,  Madame  Nazimova,  Emil  Jannings, 
Raquel  Meller  and  Mistinguette  ?  I  say  nothing  of  the  aristocracy  of 
Variety — Lady  Peel,  Earl  Carroll,  and  Lord  George  Sanger — though 
the  Sanger  circus,  pace  the  index,  does  secure  a  mention  at  I-6^8d;  but 
•where  are  Mascagni  and  Toscanini,  and  where  Jeritza?  Surely  those 
who  stir  the  emotions  of  millions  should  have  absolute  precedence 
over  the  Philatelists  and  their  acquisitive  idiosvncrasies.  More  than  a 
'hundred  words  are, consecrated  to  Aerophilosemy  (q.  v.)  but  Eugene 


C.   K.  OGDEN  265 

Goossens,  who  re-introduced  Stravinsky  to  England,  conducted  the 
Russian  Ballet,  became  the  father  of  twins,  thrice  visited  Rochester, 
and  is  now  due  in  Hollywood,  receives  no  recognition,  though  he 
should  be  in  as  a  composer,  quite  apart  from  the  allure  of  his  vie 
de  baton.  His  predecessor  in  Hollywood,  Sir  Henry  Wood,  is 
equally  unfortunate.  So  is  Ysaye.  Some  would  regard  Mme  Suggia 
as  more  than  a  John,  but  she  might  have  been  listed  as  that  (II-610). 
John  McCormack  need  only  open  his  mouth  for  thirty  minutes  once 
a  year  to  keep  himself  and  family  in  food  and  clothing,  but  of  those 
minutes  the  tens  of  thousands  who  hang  on  his  lips  cherish  a  lasting 
memory;  yet  he  returns  from  his  triumphs  in  China  to  find  that  the 
Britannica  can  dispense  with  him  altogether.  Ruth  Draper  is  the  out- 
standing personality  of  the  American  solipsist  stage,  but  neither  she 
nor  her  locally  eminent  medical  brother  (in  spite  of  his  concern  for 
the  Constitution,  admitted  at  I-981)  is  allowed  to  snip  half  an  inch 
of?  those  treatises  on  square-toed  Choralism  and  detonating  Paravanes. 

The  Drama  gets  plenty  of  space;  but  unless  we  can  assume  that  mis- 
prints occur  in  key  articles,  Mr.  St.  John  Ervine  might  find  a  better 
predicate  than  "meritable"  to  apply  to  his  own  "Jane  Clegg"  (I-86ox). 
Literary  Criticism  has  not  yet  heard  of  I.  A.  Richards,  nor  Dancing  of 
Margaret  Morris  or  the  Quadro  Flamenco,  though  the  Charleston 
"was  already  dying  out  in  1926."  We  find  no  allusion  to  Gurdjeff,  and 
Geoffrey  Toye's  colleagues,  Leopold  Stokowski  and  Ernest  Bloch, 
should  at  least  be  given  half  a  line  if  so  full  a  biography  is  to  reward 
Sousa's  services  to  music  since  1910.  Gershwin  must  get  busy  with 
some  Out  in  the  Cold  Blues,  nor  has  the  editorial  chariot  swung  low 
enough  for  Roland  Hayes.  Somewhere  between  Aesthetics  and  Atmos- 
pherics we  had  half  expected  to  hear  of  Antheil,  and  somewhere  be- 
tween Albee  and  Ziegfeld  we  might  have  glimpsed  Will  Rogers  or 
Florence  Mills,  but  all  three  have  escaped  this  gross  reticulation. 
Amongst  the  scores  of  black  and  white  bruisers  whose  form  is  ana- 
lyzed at  I-420,  we  miss  the  only  one  who  has  punched  continuously 
since  1919  without  striking  his  match,  viz  Tunney;  while  Fish  is 
correspondingly  absent  from  a  further  long  list  of  successful  black  and 
white  artists  at  I-539- 

Since  Science  and  Learning  refuse  to  play  at  all  with  their  eminent 


266  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

sons  Professors  Herbert  A.  Giles  and  E.  W.  Parker  the  sinologists, 
J.  W.  Postgate  and  Fritz  Mauthner  the  protagonists  of  semantics,  Flick 
and  Feuter  the  historiographers,  Jacques  de  Morgan  and  Dechelette 
the  pre-historians,  and  since  both  von  Buschan  and  von  Uexkiill  are 
also  absent  from  the  index,  the  biography  accorded  to  Professor  Fitz- 
maurice-Kelly  is  all  the  more  significant  as  a  tribute  to  the  progress 
of  Hispanic  philology.  Fabre  is  in,  but  Donisthorpe,  Bugnion,  Emery 
and  Escherich,  no  less  than  Mr.  Ernest  Thompson  Seton,  have  natural- 
ized in  vain;  and  Father  Wasmann  is  apparently  too  myrmecophilous 
even  to  be  entered  as  a  symposiast  in  the  Animal  Intelligence  contro- 
versy. 

Having  approached  our  Britannica  from  the  standpoint  of  knowl- 
edge, let  us  now  for  a  moment  consider  her  in  the  family  way.  America 
is  proud  of  her  Cabots,  but  is  given  instead  a  single  Lodge.  Britain 
is  proud  of  her  golf  champions  and  would  like  to  see  them  indexed, 
but  since  even  "Mr.  R.  T.  Jones,  commonly  called  'Bobby,' "  is  not 
indexed  in  spite  of  all  the  nice  things  Darwin's  grandson  says  about 
him  on  the  same  page,  what  can  plain  John  Ball  expect?  And  where 
is  the  rest  of  this  potent  English  stock  ?  Most  of  us  remember  how  the 
heavens  were  first  opened  for  them  by  the  late  Sir  Robert  Ball,  the 
author  of  the  astronomical  articles  in  the  1910  Britannica.  Neither 
he,  nor  W.  W.  Rouse  Ball,  the  genial  historian  of  Mathematics,  nor 
C.  T.  Ball  the  Assyriologist,  nor  Sidney  Ball  who  moulded  the  social 
thought  of  so  many  generations  of  Oxonians,  nor  J.  Ball,  the  geog- 
rapher of  Africa,  is  so  much  as  alluded  to;  nor  yet  the  Nottingham 
aces.  No  Balls  at  all,  but  discreet  pages,  covering  both  Whales  and 
Earnings,  by  Bowley  and  Borley,  a  carillon  of  Bells,  a  long  range 
of  Hills,  six  Fishers,  six  Morgans,  six  Joneses  (without  Bobby),  six 
Murrays,  six  Robertsons,  seven  Scotts,  eight  Millers,  eight  Walkers, 
nine  Andersons,  and  fourteen  Smiths. 

After  the  family  the  nation,  so  let  us  once  more  vary  the  venue 
by  a  geographical  approach  and  consider  specifically  the  intellectual 
achievements  of  France.  There  is  assuredly  no  prejudice  as  yet  against 
our  glorious  ally  and  presumably  every  effort  has  been  made  to  reflect 
and  interpret  her  thought.  Yet  here  is  a  list  of  names  which  everyone 
who  knows  anything  of  the  movement  of  ideas  must  agree  are  hardly 


C.   K.   OGDEN  267 

less  significant  than  those  of  the  Rev.  Lyman  Abbott,  Mr.  Owen 
Wister,  Mr.  Edward  Arber,  or  John  Strange  Winter.  Starting  with 
the  doyen  of  French  letters,  Ferdinand  Brunot,  we  proceed  as  follows : 
Julien  Benda,  Henri  Berr,  Rene  Berthelot,  Georges  Blondel,  Leon 
Brunschwicg,  Rene  Cruchet,  Georges  Dumas,  Espinas,  Giard,  Grand- 
jean,  Goblot,  Laignel-Lavastine,  Lalande,  Le  Dantec,  Milhaud,  Mari- 
tain,  Paulhan,  Piaget,  de  Pressense,  Pradines,  Rabaud,  Riviere,  Rougier, 
Segond,  Seailles,  concluding  with  Georges  Sorel,  whose  "Reflexions  on 
Violence"  surely  exercised  more  influence  on  this  generation  than  all 
the  works  of  Ferdinand  Tonnies  and  Sir  Frederick  Wedmore  com- 
bined. 

Not  one  of  these  leaders  of  French  thought  can  be  found  in  the 
Britannica  index!  And  where  are  Richepin,  Henri  de  Regnier,  Colette 
Willy,  Dufy,  and  the  builder  of  the  Eiffel  Tower?  As  for  other  domi- 
nating figures  in  the  record  of  the  last  fifteen  years,  it  would  be  hard  to 
find  more  startling  omissions  than  Auguste  Forel,  Leon  Duguit,  and 
Vilfredo  Pareto,  though  an  equally  formidable  trio  consists  of  Rops, 
Lipps,  and  Stumpf  (I  would  have  added  Wundt  for  euphony,  were  it 
not  that  he  does  happen  to  have  caught  the  editor's  fancy).  But  before 
we  leave  the  subject  of  eminent  Frenchmen  we  may  note  that  Jules 
Romains  (wrongly  spelt  without  an  s  on  five  separate  occasions)  is 
not  the  real  name  of  the  author  of  "Dr.  Knock,"  that  he  did  not  "make 
a  reputation  for  himself"  by  that  play,  but  was  justly  famous  even  ten 
years  earlier,  and  that  his  much  discussed  work,  "Eyeless  Sight,"  was 
written  under  his  own  name  of  Louis  Farigoule  and  should  not  be 
overlooked. 

But  would  not  the  rectification  of  these  omissions  require  more 
space  than  the  Britannica  had  at  its  command?  If  so,  much  of  the 
above  would,  of  course,  be  irrelevant.  Our  point  is,  however,  that 
judgment  and  adjustment  alone  are  involved;  or  at  most  the  extra 
space  which  would  be  available  if  such  curiosities  as  "Time  Sales"  and 
"Hythe,  Conference  of"  were  reconsidered,  the  articles  on  Barracks 
and  Canteens  curtailed,  and  the  experts  on  Ping  Pong,  Luck,  and 
possibly  Ballistics  appropriately  curbed!  The  index  could  then  include 
such  names  as  the  following,  who  by  all  the  canons  of  Encyclopaedism 
belong  to  these  eventful  years,  even  if  they  figured  to  some  extent  in 


268  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

the  older  volumes.  Sir  Francis  Younghusband,  Iwan  Bloch,  Sir  William 
Barrett,  Professor  James  Sully,  Professor  William  Smart,  Vaihinger, 
H.  B.  Irving,  A.  H.  Fried,  Benjamin  Kidd,  Sir  Victor  Horsley,  .and 
Lady  Welby.  And  what  is  psychiatry  without  Emil  Kraepelin,  phonet- 
ics without  the  researches  of  E.  W.  Scripture,  the  press  without  Mr. 
Swope,  or  sport  without  Babe  Ruth,  whose  English  counterpart,  by 
the  way,  is  wrongly  listed  as  G.  B.  Hobbs? 

Occasionally,  as  we  have  seen,  the  index  may  fail  to  do  justice  to  the 
Britannica  even  where  the  giants  are  concerned.  A  glaring  example  is 
the  case  of  Wolfgang  Kohler  who  appears,  wrongly  spelt,  at  I-383,  but 
summa  cum  laude  at  II-495.  H.  S.  Jennings  is  in  at  I-382,  Glotz  at 
I-178,  Professor  Rothenstein  can  be  found  at  II-6,  and  Mr.  Rutherston 
at  III-411,  while  Gilbert  and  Stanley  Spencer  both  occur  at  III-8;  thus 
scoring  over  Duveen  and  Berenson  alike.  Neither  Meinong  nor  Hus- 
serl  has  really  been  omitted — except  where  we  should  expect  them; 
the  former,  however,  appears  as  Alexander  instead  of  Alexius  (Il-icjod). 
There  is  no  excuse  for  such  misleading  omissions,  when  Kalkstickstoff 
(sic),  Stic\sto^hal\  and  two  other  chance  synonyms  for  crude  cyana- 
mide  are  all  gravely  entered.  Indeed  the  indexing  as  a  whole  seems 
to  have  been  done  on  somewhat  arbitrary  principles,  which,  where 
arrangement  and  contents  are  equally  arbitrary,  is  particularly  to 
be  deprecated. 

In  our  opinion  it  would  have  been  more  important  to  be  able  to 
find  quickly  in  these  new  volumes  such  names  as  Avenarius,  F.  C. 
Conybeare,  W.  A.  Craigie,  Edward  J.  Dent,  Michael  Farbman,  Jane 
Harrison,  and  Baron  Meyendorft  (so  far,  we  have  only  found  the 
first  two)  than  that  "brilliant  filly"  Fifinella  (Steinberg,  obiit  1908), 
the  gallant  Shcherbackev  (q.  v.),  or  even  the  heroic  Shtcherbachev 
(q.  v.)  who  constitutes  a  good  example  of  literary  double-exposure. 

In  a  work  of  this  sort  a  complete  and  impeccable  index  is  essential. 
But  some  articles,  such  as  that  of  Mr.  Cochran,  seem  hardly  to  have 
been  judged  worthy  of  attention,  and  another  example  is  to  be  found 
in  the  Johns  Hopkins  column,  where  Doctor  Wilmer  may  ultimately 
be  located.  Moorish  names  seem  early  to  have  been  given  up  in  despair, 
after  an  amusing  attempt  to  index  one  misprint  by  another  (Anoal, 
III-614C).  We  should  be  surprised  to  find  that  more  than  five  per 


C.   K.   OGDEN  269 

cent  of  the  persons  referred  to  in  the  bibliographies  and  bibliographical 
sections  are  indexed.  Thus  Mr.  Garvin  himself  in  his  article  on  Capi- 
talism (L-528b)  singles  out  for  recommendation  a  book  which  no 
American  publisher  can  be  persuaded  to  accept,  Mr.  M.  H.  Dobb's 
"Capitalist  Enterprise  and  Social  Progress"  ("an  acute  critical  analysis 
of  the  place  of  the  entrepreneur").  Yet  this  able  young  Cambridge 
economist  does  not  get  into  the  index,  whereas,  for  example,  Carter 
G.  Woodson,  mentioned  only  in  the  bibliographical  notes  on  Negro 
literature  (I-ina),  is  duly  inserted.  Joseph  Priestley  is  wrongly  spelt 
in  the  index;  Ellen  Terry  on  the  other  hand,  like  the  Ford  Peace  Ship, 
is  not  there  at  all,  though  the  one  is  referred  to  in  the  full  text  at 
I-756  and  the  other  at  II-270  ("In  1915  he  was  convinced  by  certain 
peace  advocates  of  foreign  extraction,"  etc.;  which  the  reader  may 
compare  with  Mr.  Lochner's  version  in  "America's  Don  Quixote"). 
The  Harvard  notational  relativist,  H.  M.  Shelter  (II-83ob),  is  not 
listed,  nor  is  the  dramatist  H.  M.  Harwood  (II-870,  III-873),  nor  the 
chief  references  to  Professor  Elliot  Smith  (I-385,  II-567),  nor  Charles 
M.  Doughty's  appearances  as  a  geographer  (I-1091,  II-171). 

Particularly  unsystematic  is  the  listing  of  periodicals.  Shnplicissimus 
appears  in  italics  and  quotes,  Jugend  not  at  all,  though  in  the  text  they 
occur  together.  Harper's  Bazaar  and  Harper's  Magazine  are  in  roman 
type,  The  Century  in  italics,  while  the  Forum  is  nowhere  to  be  found. 
Though  Capablanca's  prowess  at  chess  is  squarely  dealt  with,  Bogolju- 
bofT,  who  won  the  1926  Tournament  and  is  thrice  referred  to  (I-602), 
must  be  content  with  that,  like  Euwe,  Samisch,  and  others  whose 
exploits  with  Rooks  and  Knights  Mr.  Van  Vleit  has  so  faithfully 
chronicled.  Professor  F.  C.  Burkitt,  who  seems  to  have  been  totally 
overlooked,  will  be  sorry  to  see  his  son's  name  misspelt  in  the  Editorial 
Preface. 

Among  five  million  words  at  least  a  dozen  will  always  be  errors 
or  omissions.  That  proposition  is  proved  once  more  in  the  case  of  the 
Britannica  as  follows:  Duhamel  should  be  Georges  not  George,  Pro- 
fessor Lashley  is  K.  S.,  not  L.  S.,  and  the  foremost  educationist  of  this 
century  is  Georg,  not  H.,  Kerschensteiner.  Sydney  Webb  (I-390) 
should  be  Sidney  and  should  receive  fair  treatment  in  the  index  (III- 
525,  IH-572)  even  if  he  was  a  failure  in  the  Cabinet.  Wicod  (II-830) 


270  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

is  a  disconcerting  misprint  for  the  late  Jean  Nicod  who  should  be 
indexed,  and  who  also  occurs  at  II-644CI.  Incidentally,  if  Wittgenstein 
is  as  important  as  Mr.  Ramsey  makes  him  in  the  article  on  Mathe- 
matics, he  certainly  deserves  a  biography.  Kandinsky  has  been  over- 
looked at  I-190  and  II-793,  where  he  is  wrongly  spelt  on  both  occasions. 
Kurt  Koflfka,  please,  not  C.  Koffka,  Mr.  Printer,  for  this  is  unfor- 
tunately the  only  reference  to  the  brilliant  apostle  of  Gesta.lt  in  the 
whole  three  volumes,  and  he  is  due  back  in  America  this  week.  A 
sentence  has  gone  astray  at  I-ioiod,  complete  should  be  incomplete  at 
III-915C,  and  Pragmatistism  Pragmatism  at  III-2o6c.  I  also  note  that 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  is  made  to  attribute  war  "on  a  scale  which  threatens 
not  only  civilization  but  human  existence"  to  the  "nobility"  of  capital. 
This  rivals  the  famous  printer's  error,  Hotario  Bottomley,  who  does 
not  get  in  even  as  Horatio,  though  he  is  now  at  large  again. 

In  many  cases  there  is  no  indication  that  the  works  of  a  foreign 
author  are  available  in  good  English  translations — a  particularly  strik- 
ing example  being  Romain  Rolland.  This  is  presumably  due  to  the 
fact  that  recourse  has  been  had  to  foreign  writers  for  many  of  these 
biographies.  Tischner  is  recommended  in  the  German  and  not  the 
English  edition  by  the  writer  of  the  article  on  Psychical  Research,  who, 
we  think,  is  ill-advised  in  attaching  so  much  importance  to  the  "medi- 
um" Willy  Schneider. 

Students  of  the  occult  will  notice  that  Houdini  curtly  dismisses  all 
mediums,  including  "Margery"  and  the  makers  of  "ectoplasm,"  in  his 
brief  article  on  Conjuring;  and  in  general  there  is  an  abundance  of 
piquant  material  scattered  about  for  the  curious  reader.  Thus  the 
Britannica  understands  that  a  Tibetan  lad  is  starting  a  small  hydro- 
electric scheme  in  Lhasa  (III-777C).  Elsewhere  it  records  that  the 
Ringlings  "set  out  from  New  York  in  four  or  five  trains,"  this  spring 
(I-637).  It  is  interesting  to  know  that  America  can  claim  the  first  five 
and  twenty  years  of  the  life  of  Jacob  Epstein  (not  to  be  confused 
with  his  patron,  Mr.  Jacob  Epstein  of  Baltimore,  the  possessor  of  the 
Raphaels  and  the  Rembrandts) ;  we  are  given  a  superb  picture  of 
Lower  Manhattan,  some  life-like  Mendelian  rats,  and  a  faithful  study 
of  Musicians  recording;  and  the  colored  illustrations  add  greatlv  to 


C.  K.   OGDEN  271 

the  impression  of  magnificence  which  pervades  this  stupendous  under- 
taking. 

For  when  all  is  said,  these  5,000,000  words  are  a  more  worthy  record 
of  our  time  than  anything  that  has  hitherto  been  published.  Mr.  Garvin 
may  not  go  down  to  history  as  the  man  who  transformed  Swords  into 
Ploughshares,  but  at  least  he  can  be  hailed  as  the  man  who  took  the 
initial  sibilance  out  of  Swords.  Let  us  add  wings  to  his  words  by 
promptly  beckoning  them  to  our  shelves. 


FRANK  MOORE   COLBY 


COMMENTARY 


Only  moderate  notice  was  taken  when  Frank  Moore  Colby  died 
in  1925.  During  his  life  he  was  no  great  seeker  of  society,  and  society 
has  not  sought  him  since  his  death.  I  do  not  suppose  many  people 
have  read  his  essays:  "Imaginary  Obligations"  (1904),  "Constrained 
Attitudes"  (1910),  and  "The  Margin  of  Hesitation"  (1921).  Yet  he 
was  one  of  the  hest  informal  essayists  produced  in  this  country,  the 
negligent  master  of  a  style  witty,  humorous,  and  urbane.  With  all 
this,  American  writers  have  hardly  been  conscious  of  his  influence. 

Perhaps  to  be  "influential"  in  the  modern  journalistic  sense,  one 
must  have  in  one's  make-up  at  least  a  thin  streak  of  vulgarity.  Colby 
had  none.  During  a  period  when  complacence  and  mediocrity  for  the 
most  part  ruled  the  literary  roost,  he  paid  the  penalty  that  comes  of 
being  almost  puritanically  conscientious. 

Colby  was  not  a  professional  writer.  After  a  brief  period  of  teach- 
ing at  Columbia  and  New  York  University,  he  succeeded  Ham- 
Thurston  Peck  (there's  another  neglected  figure  for  you)  as  editor 
of  the  New  International  Encyclopedia  and  the  New  International 
Yearbook.  His  trade,  then,  for  the  larger  part  of  his  mature  life  was 
that  of  an  encyclopedist,  which  is,  as  he  tells  us,  an  executive  rather 
than  a  literary  job.  From  our  point  of  view  it  was  a  silly  waste  of  a 
fine  brain,  but  Colby  must  have  had  his  own  reasons  for  doing  what 
he  did,  and  it  is  not  for  us  to  question  them. 

Perhaps  this  splitting  of  his  life  had  its  good  points.  It  helped  to 
produce  in  him  a  humorous  attitude  toward  books  and  writers,  the 
long,  ironic  view  that  the  professional  en';:,  busily,  busily,  busily 
reading  all  day  long,  tends  to  h  ;e.  This  attitude  has  its  limitations, 
too.  Colby  wrote  at  times  like  a  gentleman  scholar,  as  it  lie  had  been 
comfortably  retired  since  infancy.  But  his  detachment  never  weak- 
ened into  mere  elegance.  He  was  too  self-distrustful  for  that.  Philip 
Littell,  who  knew  him,  wrote,  "His  was  the  face  of  a  person  having 

272 


FRANK  MOORE  COLBY  273 

authority,  to  whom  authority  was  distrustful,  and  who  thought  the 
idea  that  he  himself  possessed  it  altogether  absurd." 

Today  the  literature  of  discursive  reflection  seems  on  its  last  legs. 
We  no  longer  ask  of  a  writer  whether  he  has  an  interesting  mind; 
we  ask  what  his  mind  stands  for.  Our  public  thinking  is  done  for  a 
purpose.  We  have  not  the  time— or  the  time  does  not  encourage  us 
—to  let  our  mind  drift,  its  oars  shipped,  its  rudder  loose.  Colby  had 
the  kind  of  discursive  intellect  that  has  ceased  to  be  fashionable.  He 
was  as  interested  in  how  much  play  he  could  get  out  of  it  as  in  how 
much  work  it  could  produce.  Perhaps  that  is  the  definition  of  a 
humorist,  and  Colby  was  one. 

Like  many  humorists— Aristophanes  was  the  Erst,  and  a  good  ex- 
ample— he  was  conservative.  He  was  fond  of  ringing  changes  on  his 
aphorism  "A  'new  thinker/  when  studied  closely,  is  merely  a  man 
who  does  not  know  what  other  people  have  thought."  He  was,  I 
should  judge,  a  fairly  good  classicist,  in  the  eighteenth-century  Eng- 
lish manner,  and  because  he  was  familiar  with  the  standards  set  up 
by  writers  of  the  past,  he  was  not  for  a  moment  taken  in  by  the 
puerilities  of  current  literary  fashion.  He  is  an  excellent  monitor  for 
book  reviewers,  which  is  one  reason  I  reread  him  often  and  with 
profit.  He  knows  my  tribe  perfectly:  "A  critic  is  commonly  a  person 
who  reads  with  an  unusual  show  of  feeling  some  very  usual  book, 
then  tries  to  turn  the  writer  s  head  completely  or  else  to  take  it  off!7 
And  of  the  great  works  of  the  past  he  has  said  with  penetrating 
shrewdness,  'The  classics  are  not  and  never  have  been  chiefly  valu- 
able as  the  means  of  success.  They  are  obviously  valued  as  the  means 
of  escaping  its  consequences."  This  is  pretty  much  what  Mortimer 
Adler  teaches,  though  more  systematically,  in  How  to  Read  a  Book. 

If  circumstances  allow  me  to  do  another  of  these  grab  bags  I 
should  like  to  include  some  of  Frank  Moore  Colby's  writings  on  writ- 
ing. You  will  End  many  of  the  best  of  them  in  a  two-volume  collec- 
tion called  The  Colby  Essays,  selected  and  edited  after  his  death  by 
his  friend  Clarence  Day.  From  these  volumes  I  have  chosen  two 
pieces,  neither  of  them  critical.  The  Erst  is  "Trials  of  an  Encyclo- 
pedist" diverting  in  itself  and  also  useful  as  a  mild  counterblast  to 
C.  K.  Ogdens  review  of  the  Britannica.  After  all,  the  encyclopedists 


274  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

have  a  case  to  make,  too,  and  Colby  makes  it  for  them,  though  not 
perhaps  precisely  in  the  way  they  would  prefer.  J  hope  other  readers 
will  share  my  pleasure  in  Colby  s  account  of  his  invented  clergyman 
and  the  story  of  his  adventure  with  the  biologists. 

The  second  selection,  ''Confessions  of  a  Gallomaniac,"  is  one  of 
the  most  delicious  pieces  Colby  ever  wrote.  Philip  Littell  praises  it 
aptly  when  he  says  that  the  essay  "as  a  whole  is  to  Mark  Twain  on 
the  German  language  what  comedy  is  to  farce."  Its  humor,  so  pure 
and  true,  links  it  with  the  humor  of  James  Thurber. 

Here,  Enally,  is  a  small  handful  of  Colby  isms  that  may  give  you 
the  twist  of  his  mind: 

"Horace  Walpole  with  his  even  Row  of  animal  spites." 

"Never  burn  an  uninteresting  letter  is  the  first  rule  of  British  aris- 
tocracy." 

"One  learns  little  more  about  a  man  from  the  feats  of  his  literary 
memory  than  from  the  feats  of  his  alimentary  canal." 

"By  rights,  satire  is  a  lonely  and  introspective  occupation,  for  no- 
body can  describe  a  fool  to  the  life  without  much  patient  self- 
inspection." 

"Self-esteem  is  the  most  voluble  of  the  emotions." 

"When  a  young  American  writer  seems  mad  it  is  usually  because 
an  old  one  drives  him  almost  crazy." 

(Of  H.G.  Wells)  "He  is  annoyed  by  the  senseless  refusal  of  almost 
everybody  to  shape  his  life  in  such  a  manner  as  will  redound  to  the 
advantage  of  the  beings  who  will  people  the  earth  a  hundred  thou- 
sand years  hence." 


Trials  of  an  Encyclopedist 

BY 

FRANK  MOORE  COLBY 


For  the  past  twenty  years,  with  occasional  interruptions,  I  have  been 
associated  with  encyclopedias  either  as  a  department  editor  or  as  an 
editor  of  the  work  as  a  whole.*  I  began  by  writing  for  an  encyclopedia 
that  has  since  gone  into  the  junk-shop  things  beginning  with  the  letter 
A.  It  may  have  been  the  Jewish  month  Abib.  More  likely  it  was  one 
of  those  two  familiar  animals  Aardvark  and  Aardwolf  that  are  always 
at  the  mouth  of  every  encyclopedia  Hades.  I  don't  remember  my 
maiden  effort — nor  does  anybody  else.  I  didn't  dream  that  twenty  years 
later  I  should  be  worrying  lest  I  hadn't  said  the  latest  thing  about  Zulu- 
land  in  an  annual  volume  covering  the  year  1909.  It  began  with  a  flirta- 
tion and  ended  in  marriage.  I  am  still  what  Dr.  Johnson  called  the 
lexicographer — "a  harmless  drudge." 

From  the  advertisements  one  would  never  guess  that  encyclopedias 
are  made  by  human  beings.  Nor  does  a  casual  encounter  with  ency- 
clopedia editors,  of  whom  fortunately  there  are  very  few,  always  carry 
a  strong  conviction  on  that  point.  I  am  myself  aware  of  being  badly 
damaged  by  my  calling.  I  feel  drier  after  twenty  years  of  it  than  I 
believe  I  should  have  felt  after  an  equal  time  at  some  more  gregarious 
occupation,  and  I  fancy  other  people  sometimes  find  me  even  drier 


*  This  essay  is  one  of  the  many  that  Colby  published  anonymously.  It  appeared  in 
191 1,  when  he  was  forty-six,  over  the  semi-transparent  pseudonym  of  C.  M.  Francis. 
Colby  was  editor  of  the  New  International  Encyclopedia,  and  of  the  International  Year 
Book,  and  he  used  to  say  that  after  each  new  edition  appeared  his  mind  was  so  stuffed 
with  facts  that  he  had  to  pluck  them  out  of  his  memory  one  by  one,  like  slivers.  Or  he 
would  vary  the  simile  and  complain  that  while  the  work  was  in  progress  his  brain  had 
felt  like  a  coal-chute — tons  of  general  information  rattling  through  it  in  one  long  deaf- 
ening roar.  (Clarence  Day,  Jr.,  in  his  edition  of  The  Colby  Essays,  1926.) 

275 


276  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

than  I  feel.  Twenty  years  among  the  barebones  of  all  subjects,  and  see- 
ing the  full  rotundity  of  none,  must  surely  leave  its  mark  upon  one. 

If  it  were  a  profession,  it  would  be  different.  No  one  ever  really 
means  to  be  an  encyclopedia  editor.  It  merely  happens  to  him.  We  do 
not  hear  children  say  they  wish  to  be  encyclopedia  editors  when  they 
grow  up.  If  we  did  we  should  probably  punish  them.  No  one  ought 
f  ever  to  desire  to  be  an  encyclopedia  editor.  But  though  a  peculiar  call- 
ing, segregating  and  to  a  certain  degree  dehumanizing,  it  is  not  nearly 
so  bad  as  might  be  inferred  from  advertisements  and  editorial  an- 
nouncements. Behind  those  smooth  absurdities  there  often  lurk  actual 
men,  withered  perhaps,  but  fellow-beings  nevertheless. 

And  so  far  as  there  is  any  honesty  in  them  they  will  not  confound 
their  miscellaneous  and  unassimilated  information  with  true  knowl- 
edge. There  is  a  good  deal  of  nonsense  talked  about  "varied  learning," 
"enormous  range  of  information,"  and  so  forth.  If  there  really  is  a  man 
who  with  any  justice  is  entitled  a  "walking  encyclopedia,"  I  should  be 
glad  if  some  one  would  have  a  shot  at  him.  It  would  scarcely  be  a  case 
of  homicide.  Universality  at  the  present  stage  of  knowledge  is  a  syno- 
nym for  scatterbrains.  Even  in  Diderot's  time  it  was  a  doubtful  com- 
pliment. No  encyclopedia  editor  ever  let  so  large  a  part  of  the  work 
pass  through  his  own  head  as  Diderot,  and  certainly  no  encyclopedia 
editor  ever  had  such  a  fiery  head.  The  result  was  that  his  was  not  an 
encyclopedia  in  the  present  sense  but  a  huge  polemical  pamphlet.  Its 
attacks  on  the  existing  order  were  covert  and  indirect,  because  it  was 
under  governmental  control;  but  by  subterfuge,  veiled  irony,  secret 
thrusts,  Diderot  never  lost  a  chance  to  insinuate  the  spirit  that  was  to 
overturn  the  Church  and  State.  As  to  his  universality  Diderot  con- 
fessed : 

I  know  indeed  a  great  enough  number  of  things,  but  there  is  hardly 
any  one  who  does  not  know  his  own  subject  better  than  I.  This  mediocrity 
in  all  fields  is  the  result  of  an  unbridled  curiosity  and  of  means  so  straitened 
that  I  could  never  give  myself  up  wholly  to  a  single  branch  of  learning. 
I  have  been  forced  all  my  life  to  follow  occupations  for  which  I  am  not 
fitted  and  to  leave  aside  those  to  which  my  taste  calls  me. 


FRANK  MOORE  COLBY  277 

Sainte-Beuve,  to  be  sure,  says  of  him  that  he  showed  so  much  genius 
in  his  many-sidedness  that  "one  is  tempted  to  believe  that  he  best 
fulfilled  his  destiny  in  thus  scattering  himself." 

Nowadays  Diderot's  universality  would  be  embarrassment.  The 
modern  editor  is  primarily  an  executive.  His  worth  is  in  no  wise  meas- 
ured by  the  span  of  his  information — a  narrow  span  at  best.  To  know 
is  impossible,  but  it  is  not  impossible  to  know  the  men  who  should. 
Diderot's  methods  would  ruin  any  modern  encyclopedic  enterprise. 
If  I  were  a  publisher  I  should  distrust  the  omnivorous  reader,  still 
more  a  mind  acquisitive  of  universal  scraps.  He  would  be  more  likely 
to  consume  the  stock  than  organize  it.  He  would  be  addicted  to  "drink- 
ing behind  the  bar." 

Giants  of  learning  are  not  at  the  present  time  needed  for  the  work. 
For  as  Owen  Meredith  sang  in  lines  too  atrocious  to  be  forgotten: 

A  dwarf  on  a  dead  giant's  shoulders  sees  more 
Than  the  live  giant's  eyesight  availed  to  explore. 

And  I  venture  to  say  that  a  quite  commonplace  person,  provided  only 
that  he  had  an  open  mind  and  plenty  of  time  and  money,  could  easily 
devise  an  encyclopedia  today  that  should  surpass  all  its  predecessors. 
Diderot  gave  the  keynote  to  the  present  encyclopedia  title  list  and  its 
scope.  There  is  no  such  break  between  the  French  encyclopedia  and  its 
successors  in  these  respects  as  divided  it  from  those  which  went  before. 
Every  encyclopedia  maker  turns  as  a  matter  of  course  to  the  title  list 
of  his  predecessors.  That  is  the  way  to  begin  and  there  is  no  trick 
about  it.  People  have  often  asked  me  how  the  editor  knows  what  titles 
to  select.  They  do  not  stop  to  think  that  the  majority  of  subjects  in  any 
one  encyclopedia  are  in  all  the  other  encyclopedias.  The  editor  is  for- 
ever poring  over  the  title  lists  of  his  predecessors.  He  may  combine 
them  in  a  single  list  or  card  catalog.  He  may  sift  into  it  the  title  lists 
of  special  reference  books,  as  dictionaries  of  architecture,  music  and 
mechanic  arts,  reader's  handbooks,  or  titles  from  the  indexes  of  special 
treatises,  and  his  department  editors  or  contributors  will  swell  the  list 
from  still  more  special  sources.  But  the  bulk  of  the  titles  remains  the 
same  from  decade  to  decade. 


278  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

The  exercise  of  a  rational  judgment  in  selection  is  not  the  thing  that 
surprises  one  who  has  seen  encyclopedias  in  the  making.  The  really 
amazing  thing  is  their  imitativeness  and  formalism.  In  every  long-lived 
encyclopedia,  titles  are  carried  for  a  generation  for  no  other  reason 
than  that  they  have  been  found  in  some  preceding  work.  There  is 
hardly  a  page  of  any  encyclopedia,  even  the  best,  that  does  not  include 
matters  of  less  significance  than  something  which  has  been  left  out. 

In  the  department  of  biography,  for  instance,  names  of  men  and 
women  are  preserved  merely  as  the  result  of  the  whim  of  some  hack 
writer  long  since  dead.  If  the  late  Leslie  Stephen,  in  his  much  re- 
spected "Dictionary  of  National  Biography,"  had  in  a  sportive  mood 
written  three  pages  apiece  on  six  purely  imaginary  British  worthies — 
invented  their  names,  dates,  the  books  they  wrote,  the  offices  they  held, 
their  birthplaces  and  burial  places — you  would  no  doubt  find  them  all 
in  condensed  form  in  the  new  edition  of  the  "Britannica."  At  the  next 
revision  of  "La  Grande"  they  would  probably  appear  in  a  concise 
French  version,  and  the  indefatigable  "Brockhaus"  and  "Meyers" 
would  surely  catch  them  up.  Posterity  would  be  certain  to  encounter 
some  of  them. 

I  myself  as  a  hack  writer  once  invented  a  clergyman.  That  his  title 
to  fame  might  pass  unchallenged,  I  said  he  was  the  author  of  the  well- 
known  hymn,  "Leap,  Leap,  My  Soul."  No  one  cared  to  admit  that  that 
hymn  was  unfamiliar.  I  watched  his  life,  carefully  prepared  in  the  en- 
cyclopedic style  appropriate  to  clergymen,  pass  through  the  successive 
editorial  stages.  The  article  underwent  the  scrutiny  of  department 
editor,  managing  editor,  editor-in-chief,  and  all  the  little  sub-editors, 
and  emerged  unscathed;  then  it  went  into  first  proof,  second  proof, 
revise,  and  pages,  and  I  pulled  it  out  barely  in  time  to  save  it  from  the 
plates.  Otherwise  he  might  have  lived  for  fifty  years  in  the  hearts  of 
his  countrymen. 

Hence  to  ask  an  encyclopedia  editor  how  he  knows  what  to  put  into 
his  volume  is  greatly  to  embarrass  the  poor  creature.  He  does  not  know 
what  to  put  in.  He  has  his  precautions,  his  more  or  less  elaborate  sys- 
tem of  subdivision  and  of  checks.  He  can  say  that  a  certain  title  was 
taken  from  such  and  such  a  source,  that  it  was  assigned  to  the  editor 
or  contributor-in-chief  of  a  certain  department,  that  it  was  written  by 


FRANK  MOORE  COLBY  279 

him  or  one  of  his  collaborators-,  that  it  passed  through  the  hands  of  a 
certain  office  editor  whose  duty  it  was  to  read  all  the  articles  of  this 
and  certain  related  departments,  that  the  managing  editor  saw  it,  the 
editor-in-chief  saw  it,  the  editorial  proofreader  read  it,  and  changed  a 
noun  from  singular  to  plural,  and  the  second  proofreader  read  it,  and 
caught  two  p's  that  were  standing  upside  down.  But  he  knows  that 
many  titles  find  their  way  into  his  work  and  into  every  other  as  the 
result  of  a  foolish  guess,  and  that  all  conceivable  safeguards  can  only 
reduce  the  damage  done  by  routine  thinking,  credulity,  somnolence, 
conventionality,  and  imitativeness. 

Luckily  for  him,  encyclopedias  are  seldom  criticized  for  this  useless 
lumber.  The  great  body  of  criticism  is  concentrated  on  omissions.  En- 
cyclopedia-making is  a  form  of  journalism — ponderous  and  intermit- 
tent, but  journalism  nevertheless.  In  order  to  tell  people  what  they  wish 
to  know  it  casts  its  dragnet  far  and  wide.  Like  the  newspapers  and 
magazines  it  tells  a  great  deal  that  nobody  wishes  to  know. 

I  know  nothing  of  the  peculiar  problems  that  beset  editors  of  dic- 
tionaries, encyclopedias  of  names,  or  special  works  of  reference.  I  am 
speaking  only  of  general  encyclopedias,  of  which  five  have  been  my 
portion,  all  straining  to  be  "universal"  and  one  perishing  miserably  in 
the  attempt,  for  lack  of  capital.  In  the  course  of  this  experience,  one 
great  difficulty  has  been  the  lack  of  intelligent  adverse  criticism.  To  be 
sure  I  have  been  aided  by  some  censorious  but  able  reviewers,  who 
were  willing  to  take  pains  in  order  to  inflict  them,  and  I  recall  one 
long,  envenomed  article  which  enabled  me  to  revise  an  entire  depart- 
ment to  its  great  advantage.  But  in  the  press  generally  I  have  been  in- 
sanely praised  and  so  discouraged  from  doing  better.  Praise  to  an 
encyclopedia  reviewer  is  the  line  of  least  resistance.  To  find  fault  he 
would  have  to  read  the  text. 

Still  the  best  criticism  is  to  be  found  in  the  reviews.  That  which 
comes  to  the  editor's  desk  by  mail  is  not  reassuring  as  to  the  alertness 
of  the  public  mind.  The  greater  part  of  it  is  local  or  trivial.  A  church 
steeple  is  ten  feet  too  low.  A  Western  railway  is  not  long  enough. 
Somebody's  relative  is  omitted.  Correspondents  in  the  West  seem  par- 
ticularly engrossed  in  the  sheer  size  of  everything,  and  the  omission 


280  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  any  large  object  situated  in  or  near  a  Western  town  angers  the 
inhabitants  exceedingly. 

I  have  been  sometimes  attacked  on  dogmatic  or  historical  grounds. 
I  have  been  accused  of  a  deep-seated  personal  hatred  of  Ireland  and  of 
a  determined  purpose  always  to  snub  Australia.  To  state  both  sides  of 
a  disputed  question  fairly  is  not  so  safe  as  it  seems.  It  angers  the  ex- 
tremists on  each  side.  It  angers  one  party  even  to  have  the  views  of  the 
other  mentioned.  State  one  side  and  the  missiles  all  come  only  from 
the  other.  State  both  sides  and  you  are  exposed  to  a  raking  cross-fire 
from  each.  Nor  is  peace  maintained  always  by  preserving  a  mild  de- 
meanor. If  you  are  calm  you  are  sometimes  doubly  provocative.  Many 
people  lose  their  tempers  merely  from  seeing  you  keep  yours.  "You 
are  incapable,"  wrote  one  accuser,  "of  an  honest  statement  of  plain 
facts,"  and  then  substituted  a  new  and  hitherto  private  history  of  the 
heavens  and  the  earth.  I  have  learned  to  regard  with  suspicion  anyone 
who  inquires  vehemently,  "What  are  the  facts?"  That  outward  devo- 
tion to  fact  seems  to  increase  with  the  power  of  misstatement,  and  it  is 
a  safe  rule  for  an  editor  on  reading  a  prefatory  eulogy  of  truth  in  gen- 
eral to  brace  himself  for  some  giant  falsehoods  in  particular.  .  .  .  There 
is  nothing  stubborn  about  a  fact.  It  is  a  time-server  and  a  lickspittle 
and  whenever  it  meets  a  fool  it  is  ready  to  lay  down  its  life  for  him. 

It  will  do  so  sometimes  for  a  genius.  "It  is  my  stern  desire,"  said 
Ruskin,  in  one  of  his  delightful  letters  to  Mr.  Norton,  "to  get  at  the 
pure  facts,  and  nothing  less  or  more,  which  gives  me  whatever  power 
I  have."  Accordingly  our  Civil  War  was  to  him  "a  squabble  between 
black  and  red  ants,"  and  Cervantes  and  Dickens  were  merely  "mis- 
chievous," and  Sainte-Beuve  was  a  hopelessly  "shallow"  creature,  and 
so  on  through  a  thousand  charming  vagaries  (sternly  pursued  as 
"facts"),  till  he  became  quite  mad,  still  convinced  that  he  was  merely 
judicious. 

On  the  whole,  however,  the  editor  has  little  to  fear  from  the  odium 
theologicum.  We  are  so  used  to  free  thought  that  restraint  is  hardly 
imaginable.  It  is  not  easy  to  picture  Diderot  with  nine  censors  placed 
over  him,  "one  of  whom  must  be  an  orthodox  theologian."  Once  the 
whole  work  was  snatched  away  from  him  and  turned  over  to  the 
Jesuits,  and  it  was  only  because  they  could  not  make  head  or  tail  of  it 


FRANK  MOORE  COLBY  281 

that  he  got  it  back  again.  It  goes  without  saying  that  in  our  day  the 
state  does  not  bother  with  such  matters.  The  only  tyrannical  laws  now 
are  those  of  demand  and  supply.  But  it  does  seem  rather  remarkable 
that  the  people  themselves  are  so  good  natured.  Sects  that  presumably 
would  desire  proselytes  or  at  least  wish  to  defend  themselves  are  in  the 
main  quite  unconcerned  with  the  statement  of  principles  that  under- 
mine their  foundations.  The  Catholic  Church  is,  as  it  always  has  been, 
the  most  alert;  but  in  this  country  at  least  it  does  not  do  much  to  stifle 
heresy  at  its  source. 

I  remember  years  ago  writing  a  school  history  intended  for  the  use 
of  both  Catholics  and  Protestants.  The  publishers  impressed  on  me  the 
importance  of  presenting  both  sides  fairly.  Accordingly,  as  I  was  reared 
in  the  Protestant  tradition,  and  knew  very  well  that  I  could  not  help 
inclining  to  that  point  of  view,  I  determined  to  seek  counsel  of  the 
Jesuits.  I  submitted  the  proof  to  a  Jesuit  father,  the  head  of  a  well- 
known  American  seminary,  and,  in  a  conversation  with  him  afterward, 
warned  him  against  the  inevitable  Protestant  bias  of  my  work.  But 
what  did  he,  breathing  the  latitudinarian  air  of  this  country,  care  for 
a  Protestant  bias?  His  suggested  changes  pertained,  as  I  recall,  to  a 
few  phrases  about  Tetzel  and  the  Sale  of  Indulgences.  Yet  at  a  hundred 
points  the  book  showed  a  spirit  utterly  at  variance  with  Catholicism. 

It  has  been  much  the  same  in  editing  encyclopedias.  I  have  courted 
the  criticism  of  both  sides.  Neither  has  seemed  to  care  very  much.  I 
have  taken  the  utmost  pains  to  submit  articles  on  delicate  doctrinal 
points  to  both  Protestants  and  Catholics,  only  to  find  on  each  side  a 
weary  and  flaccid  acquiescence.  I  have  found  the  Jesuits  more  wide- 
awake than  others.  Yet  they,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  questioned  only  the 
most  obvious  points — as  in  the  case  of  that  historical  textbook.  And 
this,  though  we  all  know  that  a  Protestant  or  Roman  Catholic  color 
runs  all  through  modern  secular  history  in  matters  remote  from  defi- 
nite doctrines.  There  is,  of  course,  a  Catholic  and  a  Protestant  view  of 
the  modern  world.  As  Bishop  Stubbs  has  said,  history  cannot  be  writ- 
ten later  than  the  fourteenth  century.  All  that  follows  is  subject  of 
present-day  religious  controversy. 

We  laugh  at  the  Middle  Ages  for  applying  the  test  of  orthodoxy  to 
every  branch  of  learning — an  heretical  or  orthodox  astronomy,  a  bias- 


232  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

phemous  view  of  the  solar  system,  an  irreligious  physical  law.  I  hazard 
the  question  whether  we  have  not  gone  to  the  opposite  extreme.  We 
play  at  ostrich  with  one  another.  We  hide  one  portion  of  our  intellect 
from  the  rest.  We  profess  a  principle  of  faith  that  makes  our  scientific 
teaching  ridiculous,  and  we  accept  as  a  matter  of  course  scientific  the- 
ories that  would  blow  our  churches  into  the  air.  We  call  it  practical — 
this  intellectual  hide-and-seek.  As  a  matter  of  fact  we  prefer  not  to 
know  what  our  minds  are  up  to. 

Schoolmasters,  as  a  recent  English  writer  points  out,  treat  a  boy's 
mind  "as  if  it  were  a  badger's  pit.  You  put  in  the  badger  and  you  put 
in  the  dog,  and  you  wait  to  see  which  comes  out  first.  They  throw  in 
the  Catechism  and  they  throw  in  the  Chemical  Theory,  and  then  they 
wait  to  see  whether  he  will  turn  out  a  Christian  or  an  Atheist." 

What  interests  me  is  not  that  we  are  constantly  doing  these  things, 
but  that  we  are  so  sublimely,  so  complacently  unconscious  that  we  are 
doing  it — and  that  we  think  the  Middle  Ages  so  absurd.  I  contend  that 
the  joke  on  human  nature  is  permanent.  Persecution  was  at  least  a 
sign  of  personal  interest.  Tolerance  is  composed  of  nine  parts  of  apathy 
to  one  of  brotherly  love.  We  don't  care  to  think  where  principles  lead 
to.  Once  I  found  on  the  margin  of  a  seventeenth-century  treatise  on 
mathematics,  in  the  crabbed  writing  of  some  monkish  reader,  this 
exclamation  in  Latin:  "Luther  and  Melanchthon  and  those  who  think 
with  them  be  damned."  Apropos  of  mathematics,  mind  you.  Now- 
adays Christianity  and  its  refutation  live  together  in  perfect  amity  in 
the  same  mind.  People  make  up  little  nosegays  of  doctrines  for  them- 
selves out  of  the  New  Testament  and  Haeckel.  I  am  not  deploring  the 
decline  of  bigotry.  I  am  merely  pointing  to  the  well-known  fact,  which 
is  brought  out  strongly  in  my  experience  as  an  encyclopedia  editor, 
that  it  has  been  replaced  by  the  Religion  of  Sloppy-Mindedness. 

Of  course  the  direst  problem  of  all  is  presented  by  modern  special- 
ism. The  aim  of  the  French  Encyclopedia,  as  set  forth  in  its  prospectus, 
was  to  serve  as  a  reference  library  for  every  intelligent  man  on  all  sub- 
jects save  his  own.  That  has  remained  the  aim  of  general  encyclopedias 
ever  since.  It  is  obvious  that  if  every  subject  were  written  in  such  a 
way  as  to  appeal  to  the  man  who  had  specialized  in  it,  few  others 
could  make  much  out  of  it.  But  here  is  the  difficulty:  Though  the 


FRANK  MOORE  COLBY  283 

topics  of  a  given  science  cannot  be  written  for  specialists,  they  must 
either  be  contributed  by  specialists  or  rest  on  their  authority.  The 
groundwork  of  any  good  encyclopedia  must  rest  on  special  scholar- 
ship. I  say  any  good  encyclopedia.  A  bad  one  may  make  quite  as  much 
money,  perhaps  more.  A  financially  successful  encyclopedia  may  be 
made  without  any  bothersome  recourse  to  specialists.  Buy  up  the  plates 
of  some  dead  predecessor,  get  four  or  five  hack  writers,  and  the  thing 
is  done,  provided  only  you  can  swing  a  good  force  of  those  amazing 
hypnotists  and  prestidigitators — the  subscription  agents.  Time  and 
again  they  have  told  me  they  could  sell  anything,  however  bad;  and 
from  the  books  that  they  have  sold,  I  know  it  is  true.  One  of  them 
went  to  a  publisher  and  gave  him  this  simple  plan  for  a  book.  He  said 
all  that  he  asked  was  that  it  should  have  plenty  of  pictures  of  the 
Virgin  Mary  in  it.  He  wanted  merely  to  turn  over  the  pages  rapidly 
and  sell  it  at  the  back  door.  Of  course  the  subscription  business  as 
carried  on  in  certain  quarters  is  notorious — one  of  the  scandals  into 
which  muck-rakers  have  not  yet  gone,  hence  still  very  fraudulent  and 
comfortable. 

Any  good  encyclopedia  will  carry  specialization  to  the  furthest  point 
that  is  possible  without  sacrificing  the  interests  of  the  layman.  He 
is  supposed  to  be  a  rather  robust  and  intelligent  layman  willing  to  take 
some  pains.  The  encyclopedia  is  not  intended  to  coax  the  layman.  It  is 
not  a  baby  pathfinder  or  a  guide  to  little  feet.  Without  some  very 
formidable  technicalities  many  subjects  could  not  be  treated  at  all.  It 
is  not  the  aim  of  an  encyclopedia  to  do  away  with  technicality  or  com- 
plexity, but  only  wich  that  portion  of  it  which  inheres  not  in  the  sub- 
ject itself  but  in  the  muddled  mind  of  the  man  who  writes  about  it. 
There  is  no  less  pedantry  today  than  there  ever  was.  I  have  never  read 
a  college  textbook  on  any  subject,  science  or  other,  that  was  free  from 
it.  It  is  human  nature.  I  have  never  known  a  man  who  could  so  well 
digest  his  information  that  he  did  not  occasionally  show  signs  of  flatu- 
lence. That  is  what  pedantry  means.  That  is  why  this  is  so  hard  a 
problem. 

If  one  could  find  men  of  the  Huxley  type  for  every  science  it  would 
be  easy.  Huxley  liked  to  think  himself  a  specialist.  He  called  himself 
the  "Reverend  Father  of  Worms  and  Bishop  of  Annelida."  But  he 


284  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

elsewhere  gave  himself  a  better  title— that  of  "something  between  a 
gladiator-general  of  science  and  a  maid  of  all  work."  Huxley's  mind 
would  often  wander  gladly  far  from  his  specialty.  Nowadays  the  man 
of  worms  is  homesick  when  away  from  them.  He  is  moreover  disdain- 
ful of  all  elements  that  are  accessible  to  laymen.  He  calls  it  populariz- 
ing to  mention  them.  Popularizing  has  a  bad  name  with  specialists 
and  they  include  in  it  almost  every  means  for  the  diffusion  of  knowl- 
edge. 

There  is  much  to  justify  their  contempt.  Making  things  "readable" 
is  often  synonymous  with  making  them  silly.  As  a  country  we  are 
much  given  to  a  sort  of  democratic  insipidity.  Witness  the  speeches  of 
our  public  men,  college  presidents,  culture  courses,  presidential  mes- 
sages, popular  magazines.  When  we  talk  down,  we  talk  too  far  down. 
Consider  President  Roosevelt*  on  the  home  and  woman,  and  how 
there  are  good  people  and  bad  people,  and  how  man  should  be  manly 
and  woman  womanly.  The  most  adroit  politician  we  have  had  in  a 
generation  in  the  executive  chair  has  talked  more  like  a  Sunday-school 
leaflet  than  any  ruler  or  statesman  ever  did  before. 

Hence  the  embarrassment  of  the  middleman  of  information,  the 
encyclopedia  editor,  vibrating  between  specialist  and  layman,  an  object 
of  suspicion  to  both.  I  am  snubbed  by  the  learned  and  yet  not  wel- 
comed by  the  totally  illiterate. 

It  may  be  merely  an  accident,  but  somehow  I  have  always  fared  the 
worst  among  zoologists  and  botanists.  Naturally,  an  editor  of  an  en- 
cyclopedia cannot  have  a  sub-editor  for  every  animal,  but  that  is  what 
the  zoologist  apparently  expected  of  me.  Matters  are  far  worse  than  in 
the  days  of  Dr.  Holmes's  naturalist  who  flew  into  a  rage  because  some 
one  called  him  a  Coleopterist.  He  was  no  smatterer,  he  said,  trying  to 
spread  himself  over  the  Coleoptera;  he  was  a  Scaraba:ist.  Nowadays  a 
zoologist  seeks  out  his  animal  in  early  life  and  henceforth  stays  with 
it.  Often  the  intimacy  between  them  is  so  great  that  it  seems  indelicate 
to  intrude.  I  have  known  a  bivalve  and  a  man  to  develop  interests  in 
common  so  exclusively  molluscous  or  bivalvular  that  no  human  being 
dared  break  in. 


•Theodore,  it  need  hardly  be  mentioned.- 


FRANK  MOORE  COLBY  285 

When  I  tried  to  organize  a  department  of  biology,  I  soon  found  that 
it  was  impossible  to  thresh  the  matter  out  by  correspondence.  No  one 
cared  to  be  superficial  enough  to  take  charge  of  any  branch  of  that 
subject,  to  say  nothing  of  the  whole.  No  man  would  leave  his  insect 
for  that  foolish,  scattering  popular  subject,  entomology.  So  one  day  I 
went  to  Washington,  where  biologists,  I  understood,  were  very  thick 
and  tame;  and  I  had  myself  put  up  at  a  certain  learned  club,  which 
seemed  to  be  a  sort  of  runway  for  biologists,  where  the  layman  might 
watch  them  as  they  came  to  drink.  I  have  counted  eight  or  ten  dis- 
tinct and  mutually  unintelligible  varieties  in  the  same  room  at  once. 

But  when  I  came  to  meet  them  it  was  no  easier.  It  was  impossible 
to  get  the  mosquito  man  away  from  his  mosquito,  the  fossil  horse  man 
would  not  dismount,  and  the  fish  people,  though  kind,  were  firmly 
fishy.  Day  after  day  I  was  passed  from  one  kind  of  biologist  to  an- 
other. ...  At  length  one  man  stooped  so  far  as  to  help  me  with  a  plan, 
but  it  involved  a  subdivision  of  zoology  into  thirty  departments  with 
no  one  responsible  for  the  whole.  Less  specialization  than  that  would, 
he  said,  be  vain  and  shallow.  This  would  have  left  me  alone  to 
drive  that  herd  of  thirty  rearing  and  plunging  zoologists. 

I  left  Washington  and  again  had  recourse  to  correspondence.  I  wrote 
many  letters,  full  of  an  Oriental  flattery — abject  grovelling  letters  in  a 
style  that  I  had  learned  as  a  layman  addressing  specialists.  Finally  I 
got  a  man  to  take  charge  of  the  department.  It  was  understood  that  he 
might  gather  about  him  all  the  zoologists  he  could  find,  but  that  he 
must  be  responsible  for  the  whole  department.  He  carried  the  work 
half  through,  then  forgot  it  and  sailed  for  Europe,  chasing  some  in- 
sect, I  suppose.  In  his  absence  I  fell  into  the  hands  of  a  group  of 
zoologists  whose  eccentricities  were  scandalous.  Part  of  the  work  had 
to  be  done  over  twice;  part  of  it  three  times. 

This  illustrates  the  difficulty  of  making  the  knowledge  of  specialists 
available — not  alluring,  or  exciting — but  merely  available  to  intelligent 
persons,  even  to  persons  of  their  own  size,  but  of  unlike  experience. 
It  is  hard  to  convince  many  of  them  that  the  work  is  worth  doing. 
It  is  a  natural  feeling  but  it  is  indulged  to  a  point  where  it  becomes 
a  vice. 

Bishop  Stubbs  once  said  that  anything  that  he  wrote  that  was  read- 


286  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

able  was  trivial  and  that  anything  worth  while  was  unreadable.  A  great 
deal  of  the  unreadable  qualities  in  his  writings,  however,  did  not  arise 
from  having  gone  too  deep  into  history.  They  arose  from  not  having 
gone  deep  enough  into  the  expressive  capacities  of  the  English  lan- 
guage. Specialists  must  not  be  allowed  to  become  completely  inarticu- 
late. Otherwise  we  shall  have  the  state  of  things  described  by  the  old 
philosopher  when  he  said:  Those  who  tell  do  not  know,  and  those 
who  know  don't  tell. 


Confessions  of  a  Gallomaniac 

BY 

FRANK  MOORE  COLBY 


Down  to  the  outbreak  of  the  war  I  had  no  more  desire  to  converse 
with  a  Frenchman  in  his  own  language  than  with  a  modern  Greek. 
I  thought  I  understood  French  well  enough  for  my  own  purposes,  be- 
cause I  had  read  it  off  and  on  for  twenty  years,  but  when  the  war 
aroused  sympathies  and  sharpened  curiosities  that  I  had  not  felt  before, 
I  realized  the  width  of  the  chasm  that  cut  me  off  from  what  I  wished 
to  feel.  Nor  could  it  be  bridged  by  any  of  the  academic,  natural,  or 
commercial  methods  that  I  knew  of.  They  were  either  too  slow  or  they 
led  in  directions  that  I  did  not  wish  to  go.  I  tried  a  phonograph,  and 
after  many  bouts  with  it  I  acquired  part  of  a  sermon  by  Bossuet  and 
real  fluency  in  discussing  a  quinsy  sore  throat  with  a  Paris  physician, 
in  case  I  ever  went  there  and  had  one.  I  then  took  fourteen  conver- 
sation lessons  from  a  Mme.  Carnet,  and  being  rather  well  on  in  years 
at  the  start,  I  should,  if  I  had  kept  on  diligently,  have  been  able  at  the 
age  of  eighty-five  to  inquire  faultlessly  my  way  to  the  post-office.  I 
could  already  ask  for  butter  and  sing  a  song  written  by  Henry  IV — 
when  my  teacher  went  to  France  to  take  care  of  her  half-brother's 
children.  I  will  say  this  for  Mme.  Carnet.  I  came  to  understand  per- 
fectly the  French  for  all  her  personal  and  family  affairs.  No  human 
being  has  ever  confided  in  me  so  abundantly  as  she  did.  No  human 
being  has  ever  so  sternly  repressed  any  answering  confidences  of  my 
own.  Her  method  of  instruction,  if  it  was  one,  was  that  of  jealous, 
relentless,  unbridled  soliloquy. 

Thrown  on  the  world  with  no  power  of  sustaining  a  conversation  on 
any  other  subject  than  the  members  of  the  Carnet  family,  I  neverthe- 
less resolved  to  take  no  more  lessons  but  to  hunt  down  French  people 

287 


288  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and  make  them  talk.  What  I  really  needed  was  a  governess  to  take 
me  to  and  from  my  office  and  into  the  park  at  noon,  but  at  my  age 
that  was  out  of  the  question.  Then  began  a  career  of  hypocritical 
benevolence.  I  scraped  acquaintance  with  every  Frenchman  whom  I 
heard  talking  English  very  badly,  and  I  became  immensely  interested 
in  his  welfare.  I  formed  the  habit  of  introducing  visiting  Frenchmen 
to  French-speaking  Americans,  and  sitting,  with  open  mouth,  in  the 
flow  of  their  conversation.  Then  I  fell  in  with  M.  Bernou,  the  commis- 
sioner who  was  over  here  buying  guns,  and  whose  English  and  my 
French  were  so  much  alike  that  we  agreed  to  interchange  them.  We 
met  daily  for  two  weeks  and  walked  for  an  hour  in  the  park,  each 
tearing  at  the  other's  language.  Our  conversations,  as  I  look  back  on 
them,  must  have  run  about  like  this: 

"It  calls  to  wal\"  said  he,  smiling  brilliantly. 

"It  is  good  morning,"  said  I,  "better  than  I  had  extended." 

"I  was  at  you  ye  stair  day  ze  morning,  but  I  deed  not  find." 

"I  was  obliged  to  leap  early"  said  I,  "and  I  was  busy  standing  up 
straight  all  around  the  forenoon" 

"The  boo\  I  prayed  you  send,  he  came,  and  I  than\,  but  positively 
are  you  not  deranged?" 

"Don't  tal\"  said  I.  "Never  tal\  again.  It  was  really  nothing  any- 
where. I  had  been  very  happy,  I  reassure." 

"Pardon,  I  glide,  I  glode.  There  was  the  hide  of  a  banane.  Did  I 
crash  you?" 

"I  noticed  no  insults,"  I  replied.  "You  merely  gnawed  my  arm." 

Gestures  and  smiles  of  perfect  understanding. 

I  do  not  know  whether  Bernou,  who  like  myself  was  middle-aged, 
felt  as  I  did  on  these  occasions,  but  by  the  suppression  of  every 
thought  that  I  could  not  express  in  my  childish  vocabulary,  I  came  to 
feel  exactly  like  a  child.  They  said  I  ought  to  think  in  French  and  I 
tried  to  do  so,  but  thinking  in  French,  when  there  is  so  little  French 
to  think  with,  divests  the  mind  of  its  acquisitions  of  forty  years.  Ex- 
perience slips  away  for  there  are  not  words  enough  to  lay  hold  of  it. 
Knowledge  of  good  and  evil  does  not  exist;  the  sins  have  no  names; 


FRANK  MOORE   COLBY  289 

and  the  mind  under  its  linguistic  limitations  is  like  a  rather  defective 
toy  Noah's  ark.  From  the  point  of  view  of  Bernou's  and  my  vocabu- 
lary, Central  Park  was  as  the  Garden  of  Eden  after  six  months — new 
and  unnamed  things  everywhere.  A  dog,  a  tree,  a  statue  taxed  all  our 
powers  of  description,  and  on  a  complex  matter  like  a  policeman  our 
minds  could  not  meet  at  all.  We  could  only  totter  together  a  few  steps 
in  any  mental  direction.  Yet  there  was  a  real  pleasure  in  this  earnest 
interchange  of  insipidities  and  they  were  highly  valued  on  each  side. 
For  my  part  I  shall  always  like  Bernou,  and  feel  toward  him  as  my 
childhood's  friend.  I  wonder  if  he  noticed  that  I  was  an  old,  battered 
man,  bothered  with  a  tiresome  profession.  I  certainly  never  suspected 
that  he  was.  His  language  utterly  failed  to  give  me  that  impression. 

After  I  lost  Bernou  I  fastened  upon  an  unfrocked  priest  who  had 
come  over  here  and  gone  into  the  shoe  trade — a  small,  foxy  man,  who 
regarded  me,  I  think,  in  the  light  of  an  aggressor.  He  wanted  to  be- 
come completely  American  and  forget  France,  and  as  I  was  trying  to 
reverse  the  process,  I  rather  got  in  his  way.  He  could  talk  of  mediaeval 
liturgies  and  his  present  occupation,  but  nothing  in  between,  and  as 
he  spoke  English  very  well,  his  practical  mind  revolted  at  the  use  of 
a  medium  of  communication  in  which  one  of  us  almost  strangled  when 
there  was  another  available  in  which  we  both  were  at  ease.  I  could  not 
pump  much  French  out  of  him.*  He  would  burst  into  English  rather 
resentfully.  Then  I  took  to  the  streets  at  lunch-time  and  tried  news- 
dealers, book-shops,  restaurants,  invented  imaginary  errands,  bought 
things  that  I  did  not  want,  and  exchanged  them  for  objects  even  less 
desirable.  That  kept  a  little  conversation  going  day  by  day,  but  on  the 
whole  it  was  a  dry  season.  It  is  a  strange  thing.  There  are  more  than 
thirty  thousand  of  them  in  the  city  of  New  York,  and  I  had  always 
heard  that  the  French  are  a  clannish  folk  and  hate  to  learn  another 
language,  but  most  of  my  overtures  in  French  brought  only  English 
upon  me.  The  more  pains  I  took  the  more  desirable  it  seemed  to  them 
that  I  should  be  spared  the  trouble  of  continuing.  I  was  always  diving 
into  French  and  they  were  always  pulling  me  out  again.  They  thought 
they  were  humane. 

French  people  hate  broken  French  worse  than  most  of  us  hate  bro- 
ken English.  But  when  dragged  out  into  the  light  of  English  I  tried  to 


290  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

talk  just  as  foolishly  in  order  that  they  might  think  it  was  not  really 
my  French  that  was  the  matter  with  me.  Sometimes  that  worked  quite 
well.  Finding  me  just  as  idiotic  in  my  own  language  they  went  back 
to  theirs.  It  certainly  worked  well  with  my  friend  M.  Bartet,  a  paralytic 
tobacconist  in  the  West  Thirties  near  the  river,  to  whom  my  relation 
was  for  several  months  that  of  a  grandchild,  though  I  believe  we  were 
of  the  same  age.  He  tried  to  form  my  character  by  bringing  me  up  on 
such  praiseworthy  episodes  of  his  early  life  as  he  thought  I  was  able 
to  grasp. 

Now  at  the  end  of  a  long  year  of  these  persistent  puerilities  I  am 
able  to  report  two  definite  results:  In  the  first  place  a  sense  of  my 
incapacity  and  ignorance  infinitely  vaster  than  when  I  began,  and  in 
the  second  a  profound  distrust,  possibly  vindictive  in  its  origin,  of  all 
Americans  in  the  city  of  New  York  who  profess  an  acquaintance  with 
French  culture,  including  teachers,  critics,  theater  audiences,  lecture 
audiences,  and  patronesses  of  visiting  Frenchmen. 

It  was  perhaps  true,  as  people  said  at  the  time,  that  a  certain  French 
theatrical  experiment  in  New  York  could  not  continue  for  the  simple 
reason  that  it  was  too  good  a  thing  for  the  theater-going  public  to  sup- 
port. It  may  be  that  the  precise  equivalent  of  the  enterprise,  even  if  not 
hampered  by  a  foreign  language,  could  not  have  permanently  endured. 
Yet  from  what  I  saw  of  its  audiences,  critics,  enthusiasts,  and  from 
what  I  know  of  the  American  Gallophile  generally,  including  myself, 
I  believe  the  linguistic  obstacle  to  have  been  more  serious  than  they 
would  have  us  suppose — serious  enough  to  account  for  the  situation 
without  dragging  in  our  aesthetic  incapacity.  It  was  certainly  an  obstacle 
that  less  than  one-half  of  any  audience  ever  succeeded  in  surmounting. 

I  do  not  mean  that  the  rest  of  the  audience  got  nothing  out  of  it, 
for  so  expressive  were  the  players  by  other  means  than  words,  that 
they  often  sketched  the  play  out  in  pantomime.  The  physical  activities 
of  the  troupe  did  not  arise,  as  some  of  the  critics  declared,  from  the 
vivacity  of  the  Gallic  temperament;  nor  were  they  assumed,  as  others 
believed,  because  in  the  seventeenth  century  French  actors  had  been 
acrobats.  These  somewhat  exaggerated  gestures  were  occasioned  by  the 
perception  that  the  majority  of  the  spectators  were  beginners  in  French. 


FRANK  MOORE  COLBY  291 

They  were  supplied  by  these  ever-tactful  people  as  a  running  transla- 
tion for  a  large  body  of  self-improving  Americans. 

I  do  not  blame  other  Americans  for  dabbling  in  French,  since  I  my- 
self am  the  worst  of  dabblers,  but  I  see  no  reason  why  any  of  us  should 
pretend  that  it  is  anything  more  than  dabbling.  The  usual  way  of 
reading  French  does  not  lead  even  to  an  acquaintance  with  French 
literature.  Everybody  knows  that  words  in  a  living  language  in  order 
to  be  understood  have  to  be  lived  with.  They  are  not  felt  as  a  part  of 
living  literature  when  you  see  them  pressed  out  and  labeled  in  a  glos- 
sary, but  only  when  you  hear  them  fly  about.  A  word  is  not  a  definite 
thing  susceptible  of  dictionary  explanation.  It  is  a  cluster  of  associa- 
tions, reminiscent  of  the  sort  of  men  that  used  it,  suggestive  of  social 
class,  occupation,  mood,  dignity  or  the  lack  of  it,  primness,  violences, 
pedantries,  or  platitudes.  It  hardly  seems  necessary  to  say  that  words 
in  a  living  literature  ought  to  ring  in  the  ear  with  the  sounds  that 
really  belong  to  them,  or  that  poetry  without  an  echo  cannot  be  felt. 

It  may  be  that  there  is  no  way  out  of  it.  Perhaps  it  is  inevitable  that 
the  colleges  which  had  so  long  taught  the  dead  languages  as  if  they 
were  buried  should  now  teach  the  living  ones  as  if  they  were  dead. 
But  there  is  no  need  of  pretending  that  this  formal  acquaintance  with 
books  results  in  an  appreciation  of  literature.  No  sense  of  the  intimate 
quality  of  a  writer  can  be  founded  on  a  verbal  vacuum.  His  plots,  his 
place  in  literature,  his  central  motives,  and  the  opinion  of  his  critics 
could  all  be  just  as  adequately  conveyed,  if  his  books  were  studied  in 
the  language  of  the  deaf  and  dumb.  Of  course,  one  may  be  drawn  to 
an  author  by  that  process  but  it  would  hardly  be  the  artistic  attraction 
of  literature;  it  is  as  if  one  felt  drawn  to  a  woman  by  an  interest  ex- 
clusively in  her  bones. 

Elementary  as  these  remarks  may  seem  I  offer  them  to  Gallophiles 
without  apology.  On  the  contrary  I  rather  fear  that  I  am  writing  over 
their  heads. 


JAMES  THURBER 


COMMENTARY 


J  do  not  propose  to  explain  Mr.  James  Thurber,  or  his  doleful  dogs, 
or  his  funny  little  men,  or  his  terrifying  little  women.  Explanations 
of  humor  are  usually  made  by  analytical  fellows  who  substitute  an 
awesome  knowledge  of  why  we  should  laugh  for  their  own  inability 
to  do  so.  Philosophers  of  humor,  like  Sigmund  Freud  and  Henri 
Bergson,  often  possess  high  intelligences  which  they  employ  with 
great  dexterity  on  a  problem  which  seems  somehow  to  elude  them. 
For  humor  is  not  perceived  by  the  intelligence  alone;  often  it  is  not 
perceived  by  the  intelligence  at  all.  The  sudden  interior  burst  of 
delight  that  comes  of  catching  the  humor  of  a  remark  or  a  situation 
seems  ventral  rather  than  cerebral.  It  is  not  an  intellectual  satisfac- 
tion, but  one  much  more  akin  to  the  pleasure  of  consuming  a  good 
dinner. 

The  humor-analysts  appear  to  think  that  a  joke  is  related  to  a  rid- 
dle. It  is  not;  it  is  much  more  nearly  related  to  a  tickle.  Those  jokes 
which  are  iilce  riddles,  which  have  a  complicated  point,  are  precisely 
the  jokes  that  have  the  shortest  life  and  are  least  able  to  bear  re- 
hearing. Practically  all  radio  humor  is  of  this  variety,  and  that  is  why 
it  uses  itself  up  so  quickly.  Radio  gags  of  the  Bob  Hope  order  are 
often  admirably  clever,  but  on  some  people,  including  myself,  they 
have  the  same  effect  as  does  a  troupe  of  performing  acrobats.  Watch- 
ing acrobats  can  be  interesting,  but  it  is  also  a  little  painful,  because 
of  empathy,  the  process  by  which  you  put  yourself  in  the  other 
fellow's  place.  It  is  also,  when  the  act  is  over,  in  a  way  disappointing. 
You  are  left  with  an  empty  feeling,  or  no  feeling  at  all.  Gag  humor 
has  the  same  effect  on  me.  I  am  lost  in  gap-mouthed  wonder  at  Mr. 
Hope's  rapid-fire  quips.  At  the  same  time  I  am  tense  lest  I  lose  the 
point  of  one  of  them,  and  I  suffer  lest  Mr.  Hope  should  fail  to  do 
the  expected,  to  top  his  previous  gag,  or  cap  his  stooge's  remark.  And 
when  it  is  all  over  I  find  I  am  a  trifle  tired  and  vacant-minded. 

True  humor  (and,  mind,  I  am  not  explaining  it)  does  something 

292 


JAMES  THURBER  293 

to  you,  like  great  literature.  It  changes  your  feelings,  usually  in  the 
direction  of  greater  well-being  and  general  expansiveness.  Instead  oi 
tensing  you,  it  relaxes  you.  It  works  not  on  the  nerves  and  the  brain 
but  on  the  heart  and  the  imagination.  It  does  not  have  a  "point" 
which  is  a  hard,  direct  thing.  It  suffuses  an  atmosphere,  which  is  a 
soft  and  subtle  thing. 

That  is  why  good  humor  is  enjoyable  again  and  again.  Once  you 
have  "got  the  point"  of  something  that  has  only  "point"  to  offer, 
you  are  through,  but  an  atmosphere  is  no  more  exhaustible  than  a 
fine  landscape.  The  point  of  the  fence-whitewashing  chapter  in 
Tom  Sawyer  is  that  if  you  wish  a  person  to  perform  a  tiresome 
job  you  should  make  it  appear  a  hard-to-win  privilege.  The  point 
of  it,  however,  has  precious  little  to  do  with  the  humor,  which  you 
can  resavor  even  when  you  know  the  point  in  advance. 

The  humor  of  James  Thurber  (I  am  still  not  explaining  it)  is  of 
this  subtle,  atmospheric  kind.  It  is  the  distillation  of  a  rich  tempera- 
ment and  so  it  is  "rich"  humor. 

Perhaps  it  would  be  more  correct  to  speak  of  two  temperaments, 
or,  better,  two  sides  of  the  same  temperament.  The  Thurber  of  Let 
Your  Mind  Alone  and  the  Fables  for  Our  Time  shows  one  side. 
The  Thurber  of  My  Life  and  Hard  Times  and  The  Male  Ani- 
mal *  shows  another.  The  Erst  Thurber  is  the  Sane  Innocent;  the 
second  is  the  Confused  Innocent.  Actually,  Mr.  Thurber  is  never 
confused  and  never  innocent.  His  confusion  and  his  innocence, 
though,  are  not  just  poses,  but  positions  which  he  assumes  in  order 
to  allow  his  humor  to  play  more  readily. 

The  Sane  Innocent  is  the  Thurber  who  makes  you  laugh  because 
he  sees  through  imposture  (such  as  that  of  the  self-improvement 
school)  from  an  angle  that  the  rest  of  us  would  never  think  of.  He  is 
to  comedy  what  Dostoevskys  wise  idiots  are  to  tragedy.  The  pleasure 
you  get  from  this  Thurber  is  the  pleasure  of  sudden  illumination. 

The  Confused  Innocent  is  the  Thurber  who  makes  you  laugh  not 
because  he  sees  through  things  but,  on  the  contrary,  because  he  is 
bewildered  by  them.  (Actually,  this  bewilderment  is  merely  a  slyer 


*  Written  in  collaboration  with  J.  C.  Nugent. 


294  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

form  of  understanding.)  The  pleasure  you  get  from  this  Thurher  is 
that  wry  and  rueful  satisfaction  that  comes  of  watching  somebody 
make  a  fool  of  himself  in  a  maze.  Don  Quixote  and  a  drunk,  Caspar 
Milquetoast  and  Mr.  Pickwick,  Mr.  Disney  s  Dopey  and  Mr.  Thin- 
ner's persecuted  males— all  are  examples,  on  various  levels,  of  the 
comedy  of  befuddlement. 

You  will  note  that  I  have  still  not  explained  the  humor  of  James 
Thurber. 

One  of  the  staples  of  our  writers  is  the  Great  American  Eccentric 
Family.  Examples:  Mr.  Caldwell's  Tobacco  Roaders,  Thomas  Wolfe  s 
Gants,  Kaufman  and  Hart's  Sycamores,  Mr.  Saroyans  Saroyans— 
one  could  easily  extend  the  list.  There  have  been  so  many  of  these 
grotesques  in  the  last  decade  that  it  almost  seems  as  though  they 
were  called  into  being  to  redress  a  balance.  During  the  period  domi- 
nated by  Sinclair  Lewis  and  the  realistic  school  the  stupefying  con- 
ventionality of  American  family  life  was  the  thing  emphasized.  The 
pendulum  has  swung  back,  and  we  are  now  hip-deep  in  grotesques. 

My  Life  and  Hard  Times  is  about  an  eccentric  family,  too,  but 
not  a  very  eccentric  one.  The  Thurbers  are  only  slightly  off-balance. 
Still,  that  small  disequilibrium  is  enough  to  upset  them  and  propel 
them  into  situations  that  are  thoroughly  and  hilariously  abnormal. 
"The  little  perils  of  routine  living,"  in  Thurber  s  phrase,  form  the 
base  of  his  "autobiography"  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  Thurbers  are 
ordinary  people.  It  is  to  say  that  the  Thurbers  are  mildly  extraor- 
dinary people  whose  domestic  lives  from  time  to  time  burst  into 
small  volcanic  eruptions  of  comic  disaster. 

This  is  especially  true  of  a  certain  level  of  American  life.  It  is  pre- 
cisely such  respectable  middle-class  inhabitants  of  Columbus,  Ohio, 
whose  public  lives  are  models  of  modest  deportment,  that  develop 
within  the  family  circle  a  compensating  environment  of  eccentricity . 
It  takes  a  James  Thurber,  of  course,  to  see  how  funny  the  other 
Thurbers  are.  They  themselves  probably  have  no  inkling  of  the  fig- 
ures they  cut. 

The  humor  of  this  book  docs  not  lie  in  the  fact  that  crazy  things 
happen.  It  lies  in  the  fact  that  everybody  in  it  is  trying  to  be  reason- 


JAMES  THURBER  295 

able  about  the  crazy  things  that  happen.  Mr.  Thurber  s  mother,  for 
example  (a  precious  creation  who  must  be  waiting  for  her  son  to  put 
her  full-face  into  a  book),  is  funny  because  she  is  so  bent  on  ration- 
alizing the  odd  cataclysms  that  shake  her  household.  Her  iron  deter- 
mination to  be  sensible  amid  this  crowd  of  muddled  maniacs  is  the 
root  of  her  comicality.  And  the  humor  of  Grandfather,  of  course, 
lies  not  in  his  Gts  of  lunacy  but  in  his  spasms  of  sanity. 

Everybody  misunderstands  everybody  else — a  tiny  reflection  of  the 
whole  universe  of  human  discourse.  The  mishaps  of  misunderstand- 
ing generally  yield  farce.  Here  they  yield  true  comedy,  as  in  the  in- 
comparable Perth  Amboy  episode  (which,  just  as  a  test,  I  have  often 
tried  to  read  through  without  breaking  into  laughter,  failing  each 
time);  as  in  the  story  of  the  day  the  dam  broke,  which  is  a  treatise 
by  he  Bon  translated  by  the  comic  spirit;  as  in  the  narratives  of  the 
night  the  bed  fell  on  Father  and  the  night  the  ghost  got  in. 

Thurber  is,  true  enough,  a  quiet  writer  who  creates  his  effects  with 
the  most  dexterous  and  light  touches,  but  his  understatement  is  a 
little  different  from  the  British  variety,  as  one  can  see  by  comparing 
him  with  the  much  less  funny  P.  G.  Wodehouse.  For  one  thing,  he 
is  subtler.  For  another,  there  is  an  odd,  almost  furtive  touch  of  fancy 
that  one  does  not  End  among  the  English.  Here,  for  example,  is  a 
typical  Thurber  sentence:  "In  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, Columbus  won  out,  as  State  capital,  by  only  one  vote  over 
Lancaster,  and  ever  since  then  has  had  the  hallucination  that  it  is 
being  followed,  a  curious  municipal  state  of  mind  which  affects,  in 
some  way  or  other,  all  those  who  live  there."  No  one  but  Thurber 
could  have  written  this,  and  surely  no  Englishman,  though  the  Eng- 
lish are  among  Thurber's  most  devoted  admirers. 

My  Life  and  Hard  Times  is  so  vivid  and  real  as  a  family  portrait 
that  one  sometimes  forgets  it  is  also  a  parody,  a  delicate  parody  on 
all  the  pompous,  self-important  autobiographies  of  the  last  fifteen 
years.  Beyond  all  this,  despite  Thurber's  disclaimer,  it  is  a  curiously 
intimate  picture  of  a  time  and  place— the  comfortable,  quiet,  almost 
somnolent  Middle  West  during  the  years  just  preceding  the  out- 
break of  the  First  World  War.  Finally,  it  is  a  fine  piece  of  prose.  It 
flows  along  so  easily  that  only  the  attentive  student  marks  how  ex- 


■ 


296  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

actly  Thuibei  manages  his  sentences  so  as  to  accommodate  them  to 
the  effects  he  is  after  and  the  tempo  he  is  setting. 

There  is  one  misconception  about  Thuibei  that  I  have  always 
found  it  hard  to  understand.  That  is  the  notion  that  he  is  typical  of 
a  New  Yorker  school  of  humoi.  There  is  no  New  Yorker  school  of 
humor.  J  cannot  conceive  a  moie  wildly  dispaiate  and  ill-assoited 
group  than,  let  us  say,  S.  J.  Peielman,  Frank  Sullivan,  John  O'Haia, 
Ruth  McKenny,  Arthur  Kober,  Wolcott  Gibbs,  and  James  Thuibei. 
All  of  them  abhoi  gags,  except  Peielman,  who  uses  them  for  pur- 
poses of  parody,  but  otheiwise  I  can  see  nothing  that  unites  them. 
Of  the  lot,  Thuibei  is  the  most  individual,  the  least  a  servant  to 
formula.  He  has  the  most  unexpected  and,  I  should  say,  the  wisest 
mind,  and,  though  they  all  write  well,  Thuibei  is  more  than  a  good 
wiitei.  He  is  an  aitist. 

But  enough  of  not  explaining  James  Thuibei.  His  life  and  hard 
times,  given  heie  in  full,  speak  foi  themselves. 


My  Life  and  Hard  Times 


BY 


JAMES  THURBER 


PREFACE  TO  A  LIFE 


Benvenuto  Cellini  said  that  a  man  should  be  at  least  forty  years  old 
before  he  undertakes  so  fine  an  enterprise  as  that  of  setting  down  the 
story  of  his  life.  He  said  also  that  an  autobiographer  should  have  ac- 
complished something  of  excellence.  Nowadays  nobody  who  has  a 
typewriter  pays  any  attention  to  the  old  master's  quaint  rules.  I  myself 
have  accomplished  nothing  of  excellence  except  a  remarkable  and,  to 
some  of  my  friends,  unaccountable  expertness  in  hitting  empty  ginger 
ale  bottles  with  small  rocks  at  a  distance  of  thirty  paces.  Moreover,  I 
am  not  yet  forty  years  old.  But  the  grim  date  moves  toward  me  apace; 
my  legs  are  beginning  to  go,  things  blur  before  my  eyes,  and  the  faces 
of  the  rose-lipped  maids  I  knew  in  my  twenties  are  misty  as  dreams. 

At  forty  my  faculties  may  have  closed  up  like  flowers  at  evening, 
leaving  me  unable  to  write  my  memoirs  with  a  fitting  and  discreet 
inaccuracy  or,  having  written  them,  unable  to  carry  them  to  the  pub- 
lisher's. A  writer  verging  into  the  middle  years  lives  in  dread  of  losing 
his  way  to  the  publishing  house  and  wandering  down  to  the  Bowery 
or  the  Battery,  there  to  disappear  like  Ambrose  Bierce.  He  has  some- 
times also  the  kindred  dread  of  turning  a  sudden  corner  and  meeting 
himself  sauntering  along  in  the  opposite  direction.  I  have  known  writ- 
ers at  this  dangerous  and  tricky  age  to  phone  their  homes  from  their 
offices,  or  their  offices  from  their  homes,  ask  for  themselves  in  a  low 
tone,  and  then,  having  fortunately  discovered  that  they  were  "out," 
to  collapse  in  hard-breathing  relief.  This  is  particularly  true  of  writers 
of  light  pieces  running  from  a  thousand  to  two  thousand  words. 

The  notion  that  such  persons  are  gay  of  heart  and  carefree  is  curi- 

297 


298  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

ously  untrue.  They  lead,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  an  existence  of  jumpiness 
and  apprehension.  They  sit  on  the  edge  of  the  chair  of  Literature.  In 
the  house  of  Life  they  have  the  feeling  that  they  have  never  taken  oft 
their  overcoats.  Afraid  of  losing  themselves  in  the  larger  flight  of  the 
two-volume  novel,  or  even  the  one-volume  novel,  they  stick  to  short 
accounts  of  their  misadventures  because  they  never  get  so  deep  into 
them  but  that  they  feel  they  can  get  out.  This  type  of  writing  is  not  a 
joyous  form  of  self-expression  but  the  manifestation  of  a  twitchiness 
at  once  cosmic  and  mundane.  Authors  of  such  pieces  have,  nobody 
knows  why,  a  genius  for  getting  into  minor  difficulties:  they  walk 
into  the  wrong  apartments,  they  drink  furniture  polish  for  stomach 
bitters,  they  drive  their  cars  into  the  prize  tulip  beds  of  haughty  neigh- 
bors, they  playfully  slap  gangsters,  mistaking  them  for  old  school 
friends.  To  call  such  persons  "humorists,"  a  loose-fitting  and  ugly 
word,  is  to  miss  the  nature  of  their  dilemma  and  the  dilemma  of  their 
nature.  The  little  wheels  of  their  invention  are  set  in  motion  by  the 
damp  hand  of  melancholy. 

Such  a  writer  moves  about  restlessly  wherever  he  goes,  ready  to  get 
the  hell  out  at  the  drop  of  a  pie-pan  or  the  lift  of  a  skirt.  His  gestures 
are  the  ludicrous  reflexes  of  the  maladjusted;  his  repose  is  the  momen- 
tary inertia  of  the  nonplussed.  He  pulls  the  blinds  against  the  morn- 
ing and  creeps  into  the  smokey  corners  at  night.  He  talks  largely 
about  small  matters  and  smally  about  great  affairs.  His  ears  are  shut 
to  the  ominous  rumblings  of  the  dynasties  of  the  world  moving  toward 
a  cloudier  chaos  than  ever  before,  but  he  hears  with  an  acute  percep- 
tion the  startling  sounds  that  rabbits  make  twisting  in  the  bushes 
along  a  country  road  at  night  and  a  cold  chill  comes  upon  him  when 
the  comic  supplement  of  a  Sunday  newspaper  blows  unexpectedly  out 
of  an  areaway  and  envelops  his  knees.  He  can  sleep  while  the  com- 
monwealth crumbles  but  a  strange  sound  in  the  pantry  at  three  in  the 
morning  will  strike  terror  into  his  stomach.  He  is  not  afraid,  or  much 
aware,  of  the  menaces  of  empire  but  he  keeps  looking  behind  him  as 
he  walks  along  darkening  streets  out  of  the  fear  that  he  is  being  softly 
followed  by  little  men  padding  along  in  single  file,  about  a  foot  and  a 
half  high,  large-eyed,  and  whiskered. 

It  is  difficult  for  such  a  person  to  conform  to  what  Ford  Madox  Ford 


JAMES  THURBER  299 

in  his  book  o£  recollections  has  called  the  sole  reason  for  writing  one's 
memoirs:  namely,  to  paint  a  picture  of  one's  time.  Your  short-piece 
writer's  time  is  not  Walter  Lippmann's  time,  or  Stuart  Chase's  time, 
or  Professor  Einstein's  time.  It  is  his  own  personal  time,  circumscribed 
by  the  short  boundaries  of  his  pain  and  his  embarrassment,  in  which 
what  happens  to  his  digestion,  the  rear  axle  of  his  car,  and  the  con- 
fused flow  of  his  relationships  with  six  or  eight  persons  and  two  or 
three  buildings  is  of  greater  importance  than  what  goes  on  in  the  na- 
tion or  in  the  universe.  He  knows  vaguely  that  the  nation  is  not  much 
good  any  more;  he  has  read  that  the  crust  of  the  earth  is  shrinking 
alarmingly  and  that  the  universe  is  growing  steadily  colder,  but  he 
does  not  believe  that  any  of  the  three  is  in  half  as  bad  shape  as  he  is. 

Enormous  strides  are  made  in  star-measurement,  theoretical  eco- 
nomics, and  the  manufacture  of  bombing  planes,  but  he  usually  doesn't 
find  out  about  them  until  he  picks  up  an  old  copy  of  "Time"  on  a 
picnic  grounds  or  in  the  summer  house  of  a  friend.  He  is  aware  that 
billions  of  dollars  are  stolen  every  year  by  bankers  and  politicians,  and 
that  thousands  of  people  are  out  of  work,  but  these  conditions  do  not 
worry  him  a  tenth  as  much  as  the  conviction  that  he  has  wasted  three 
months  on  a  stupid  psychoanalyst  or  the  suspicion  that  a  piece  he  has 
been  working  on  for  two  long  days  was  done  much  better  and  prob- 
ably more  quickly  by  Robert  Benchley  in  1924. 

The  "time"  of  such  a  writer,  then,  is  hardly  worth  reading  about  if 
the  reader  wishes  to  find  out  what  was  going  on  in  the  world  while 
the  writer  in  question  was  alive  and  at  what  might  be  laughingly  called 
"his  best."  All  that  the  reader  is  going  to  find  out  is  what  happened  to 
the  writer.  The  compensation,  I  suppose,  must  lie  in  the  comforting 
feeling  that  one  has  had,  after  all,  a  pretty  sensible  and  peaceful  life,  by 
comparison.  It  is  unfortunate,  however,  that  even  a  well-ordered  life 
can  not  lead  anybody  safely  around  the  inevitable  doom  that  waits  in 
the  skies.  As  F.  Hopkinson  Smith  long  ago  pointed  out,  the  claw  of 
the  sea-puss  gets  us  all  in  the  end. 

J.T. 
Sandy  Hoo\, 
Connecticut, 
September  25,  1933. 


CHAPTER    ONE 


THE  NIGHT  THE  BED  FELL 


I  suppose  that  the  high-water  mark  of  my  youth  in  Columbus,  Ohio, 
was  the  night  the  bed  fell  on  my  father.  It  makes  a  better  recitation 
(unless,  as  some  friends  of  mine  have  said,  one  has  heard  it  five  or  six 
times)  than  it  does  a  piece  of  writing,  for  it  is  almost  necessary  to 
throw  furniture  around,  shake  doors,  and  bark  like  a  dog,  to  lend  the 
proper  atmosphere  and  verisimilitude  to  what  is  admittedly  a  some- 
what incredible  tale.  Still,  it  did  take  place. 

It  happened,  then,  that  my  father  had  decided  to  sleep  in  the  attic 
one  night,  to  be  away  where  he  could  think.  My  mother  opposed  the 
notion  strongly  because,  she  said,  the  old  wooden  bed  up  there  was 
unsafe:  it  was  wobbly  aria1  the  heavy  headboard  would  crash  down  on 
father's  head  in  case  the  bed  fell,  and  kill  him.  There  was  no  dissuad- 
ing him,  however,  and  at  a  quarter  past  ten  he  closed  the  attic  door 
behind  him  and  went  up  the  narrow  twisting  stairs.  We  later  heard 
ominous  creakings  as  he  crawled  into  bed.  Grandfather,  who  usually 
slept  in  the  attic  bed  when  he  was  with  us,  had  disappeared  some  days 
before.  (On  these  occasions  he  was  usually  gone  six  or  eight  days  and 
returned  growling  and  out  of  temper,  with  the  news  that  the  federal 
Union  was  run  by  a  passel  of  blockheads  and  that  the  Army  of  the 
Potomac  didn't  have  any  more  chance  than  a  fiddler's  bitch.) 

We  had  visiting  us  at  this  time  a  nervous  first  cousin  of  mine  named 
Briggs  Beall,  who  believed  that  he  was  likely  to  cease  breathing  when 
he  was  asleep.  It  was  his  feeling  that  if  he  were  not  awakened  every 
hour  during  the  night,  he  might  die  of  suffocation.  He  had  been  ac- 
customed to  setting  an  alarm  clock  to  ring  at  intervals  until  morning, 
but  I  persuaded  him  to  abandon  this.  He  slept  in  my  room  and  I  told 
him  that  I  was  such  a  light  sleeper  that  if  anybody  quit  breathing  in 

300 


JAMES  THURBER  301 

the  same  room  with  me,  I  would  wake  instantly.  He  tested  me  the 
first  night — which  I  had  suspected  he  would — by  holding  his  breath 
after  my  regular  breathing  had  convinced  him  I  was  asleep.  I  was  not 
asleep,  however,  and  called  to  him.  This  seemed  to  allay  his  fears  a 
little,  but  he  took  the  precaution  of  putting  a  glass  of  spirits  of  camphor 
on  a  little  table  at  the  head  of  his  bed.  In  case  I  didn't  arouse  him 
until  he  was  almost  gone,  he  said,  he  would  sniff  the  camphor,  a  pow- 
erful reviver.  Briggs  was  not  the  only  member  of  his  family  who  had 
his  crotchets.  Old  Aunt  Melissa  Beall  (who  could  whistle  like  a  man, 
with  two  fingers  in  her  mouth)  suffered  under  the  premonition  that 
she  was  destined  to  die  on  South  High  Street,  because  she  had  been 
born  on  South  High  Street  and  married  on  South  High  Street.  Then 
there  was  Aunt  Sarah  Shoaf,  who  never  went  to  bed  at  night  without 
the  fear  that  a  burglar  was  going  to  get  in  and  blow  chloroform  under 
her  door  through  a  tube.  To  avert  this  calamity — for  she  was  in  greater 
dread  of  anesthetics  than  of  losing  her  household  goods — she  always 
piled  her  money,  silverware,  and  other  valuables  in  a  neat  stack  just 
outside  her  bedroom,  with  a  note  reading:  "This  is  all  I  have.  Please 
take  it  and  do  not  use  your  chloroform,  as  this  is  all  I  have."  Aunt 
Gracie  Shoaf  also  had  a  burglar  phobia,  but  she  met  it  with  more  forti- 
tude. She  was  confident  that  burglars  had  been  getting  into  her  house 
every  night  for  forty  years.  The  fact  that  she  never  missed  anything 
was  to  her  no  proof  to  the  contrary.  She  always  claimed  that  she 
scared  them  ofT  before  they  could  take  anything,  by  throwing  shoes 
down  the  hallway.  When  she  went  to  bed  she  piled,  where  she  could 
get  at  them  handily,  all  the  shoes  there  were  about  her  house.  Five 
minutes  after  she  had  turned  off  the  light,  she  would  sit  up  in  bed  and 
say  "Hark!"  Her  husband,  who  had  learned  to  ignore  the  whole  situ- 
ation as  long  ago  as  1903,  would  either  be  sound  asleep  or  pretend  to 
be  sound  asleep.  In  either  case  he  would  not  respond  to  her  tugging 
and  pulling,  so  that  presently  she  would  arise,  tiptoe  to  the  door,  open 
it  slightly  and  heave  a  shoe  down  the  hall  in  one  direction,  and  its 
mate  down  the  hall  in  the  other  direction.  Some  nights  she  threw  them 
all,  some  nights  only  a  couple  of  pair. 

But  I  am  straying  from  the  remarkable  incidents  that  took  place 
during  the  night  that  the  bed  fell  on  father.  By  midnight  we  were  all 


302  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

in  bed.  The  layout  of  the  rooms  and  the  disposition  of  their  occupants 
is  important  to  an  understanding  of  what  later  occurred.  In  the  front 
room  upstairs  (just  under  father's  attic  bedroom)  were  my  mother  and 
my  brother  Herman,  who  sometimes  sang  in  his  sleep,  usually  "March- 
ing Through  Georgia"  or  "Onward,  Christian  Soldiers."  Briggs  Beall 
and  myself  were  in  a  room  adjoining  this  one.  My  brother  Roy  was  in 
a  room  across  the  hall  from  ours.  Our  bull  terrier,  Rex,  slept  in  the 
hall. 

My  bed  was  an  army  cot,  one  of  those  affairs  which  are  made  wide 
enough  to  sleep  on  comfortably  only  by  putting  up,  flat  with  the  mid- 
dle section,  the  two  sides  which  ordinarily  hang  down  like  the  side- 
boards of  a  drop-leaf  table.  When  these  sides  are  up,  it  is  perilous  to 
roll  too  far  toward  the  edge,  for  then  the  cot  is  likely  to  tip  com- 
pletely over,  bringing  the  whole  bed  down  on  top  of  one,  with  a 
tremendous  banging  crash.  This,  in  fact,  is  precisely  what  happened, 
about  two  o'clock  in  the  morning.  (It  was  my  mother  who,  in  recall- 
ing the  scene  later,  first  referred  to  it  as  "the  night  the  bed  fell  on 
your  father.") 

Always  a  deep  sleeper,  slow  to  arouse  (I  had  lied  to  Briggs),  I  was 
at  first  unconscious  of  what  had  happened  when  the  iron  cot  rolled 
me  onto  the  floor  and  toppled  over  on  me.  It  left  me  still  warmly 
bundled  up  and  unhurt,  for  the  bed  rested  above  me  like  a  canopy. 
Hence  I  did  not  wake  up,  only  reached  the  edge  of  consciousness  and 
went  back.  The  racket,  however,  instantly  awakened  my  mother,  in 
the  next  room,  who  came  to  the  immediate  conclusion  that  her  worst 
dread  was  realized:  the  big  wooden  bed  upstairs  had  fallen  on  father. 
She  therefore  screamed,  "Let's  go  to  your  poor  father!"  It  was  this 
shout,  rather  than  the  noise  of  my  cot  falling,  that  awakened  Herman, 
in  the  same  room  with  her.  He  thought  that  mother  had  become,  for 
no  apparent  reason,  hysterical.  "You're  all  right,  Mamma!"  he  shouted, 
trying  to  calm  her.  They  exchanged  shout  for  shout  for  perhaps  ten 
seconds:  "Let's  go  to  your  poor  father!"  and  "You're  all  right!"  That 
woke  up  Briggs.  By  this  time  I  was  conscious  of  what  was  going  on, 
in  a  vague  way,  but  did  not  yet  realize  that  I  was  under  my  bed  in- 
stead of  on  it.  Briggs,  awakening  in  the  midst  of  loud  shouts  of  fear 
and  apprehension,  came  to  the  quick  conclusion  that  he  was  suflfocat- 


JAMES   THURBER  303 

ing  and  that  we  were  all  trying  to  "bring  him  out."  With  a  low  moan, 
he  grasped  the  glass  of  camphor  at  the  head  of  his  bed  and  instead  of 
sniffing  it  poured  it  over  himself.  The  room  reeked  of  camphor.  "Ugf, 
ahfg,"  choked  Briggs,  like  a  drowning  man,  for  he  had  almost  suc- 
ceeded in  stopping  his  breath  under  the  deluge  of  pungent  spirits.  He 
leaped  out  of  bed  and  groped  toward  the  open  window,  but  he  came 
up  against  one  that  was  closed.  With  his  hand,  he  beat  out  the  glass, 
and  I  could  hear  it  crash  and  tinkle  on  the  alleyway  below.  It  was 
at  this  juncture  that  I,  in  trying  to  get  up,  had  the  uncanny  sensation 
of  feeling  my  bed  above  me!  Foggy  with  sleep,  I  now  suspected,  in 
my  turn,  that  the  whole  uproar  was  being  made  in  a  frantic  endeavor 
to  extricate  me  from  what  must  be  an  unheard-of  and  perilous  situ- 
ation. "Get  me  out  of  this!"  I  bawled.  "Get  me  out!"  I  think  I  had 
the  nightmarish  belief  that  I  was  entombed  in  a  mine.  "Gugh,"  gasped 
Briggs,  floundering  in  his  camphor. 

By  this  time  my  mother,  still  shouting,  pursued  by  Herman,  still 
shouting,  was  trying  to  open  the  door  to  the  attic,  in  order  to  go  up 
and  get  my  father's  body  out  of  the  wreckage.  The  door  was  stuck, 
however,  and  wouldn't  yield.  Her  frantic  pulls  on  it  only  added  to  the 
general  banging  and  confusion.  Roy  and  the  dog  were  now  up,  the 
one  shouting  questions,  the  other  barking. 

Father,  farthest  away  and  soundest  sleeper  of  all,  had  by  this  time 
been  awakened  by  the  battering  on  the  attic  door.  He  decided  that  the 
house  was  on  fire.  "I'm  coming,  I'm  coming!"  he  wailed  in  a  slow, 
sleepy  voice — it  took  him  many  minutes  to  regain  full  consciousness. 
My  mother,  still  believing  he  was  caught  under  the  bed,  detected  in 
his  "I'm  coming!"  the  mournful,  resigned  note  of  one  who  is  prepar- 
ing to  meet  his  Maker.  "He's  dying!"  she  shouted. 

"I'm  all  right!"  Briggs  yelled  to  reassure  her.  "I'm  all  right!"  He 
still  believed  that  it  was  his  own  closeness  to  death  that  was  worrying 
mother.  I  found  at  last  the  light  switch  in  my  room,  unlocked  the 
door,  and  Briggs  and  I  joined  the  others  at  the  attic  door.  The  dog, 
who  never  did  like  Briggs,  jumped  for  him — assuming  that  he  was  the 
culprit  in  whatever  was  going  on — and  P.oy  had  to  throw  Rex  and 
hold  him.  We  could  hear  father  crawling  out  of  bed  upstairs.  Roy 
pulled  the  attic  door  open,  with  a  mighty  jerk,  and  father  came  down 


304  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  stairs,  sleepy  and  irritable  but  safe  and  sound.  My  mother  began 
to  weep  when  she  saw  him.  Rex  began  to  howl.  "What  in  the  name  of 
God  is  going  on  here?"  asked  father. 

The  situation  was  finally  put  together,  like  a  gigantic  jigsaw  puzzle. 
Father  caught  a  cold  from  prowling  around  in  his  bare  feet  but  there 
were  no  other  bad  results.  "I'm  glad,"  said  mother,  who  always  looked 
on  the  bright  side  of  things,  "that  your  grandfather  wasn't  here." 


■  -3^ 


CHAPTER    TWO 


THE  CAR  WE  HAD  TO  PUSH 


Many  autobiographers,  among  them  Lincoln  Steflfens  and  Gertrude 
Atherton,  describe  earthquakes  their  families  have  been  in.  I  am  un- 
able to  do  this  because  my  family  was  never  in  an  earthquake,  but  we 
went  through  a  number  of  things  in  Columbus  that  were  a  great  deal 
like  earthquakes.  I  remember  in  particular  some  of  the  repercussions 
of  an  old  Reo  we  had  that  wouldn't  go  unless  you  pushed  it  for  quite 
a  way  and  suddenly  let  your  clutch  out.  Once,  we  had  been  able  to 
start  the  engine  easily  by  cranking  it,  but  we  had  had  the  car  for  so 
many  years  that  finally  it  wouldn't  go  unless  you  pushed  it  and  let 
your  clutch  out.  Of  course,  it  took  more  than  one  person  to  do  this; 
it  took  sometimes  as  many  as  five  or  six,  depending  on  the  grade  of 
the  roadway  and  conditions  underfoot.  The  car  was  unusual  in  that 
the  clutch  and  brake  were  on  the  same  pedal,  making  it  quite  easy  to 
stall  the  engine  after  it  got  started,  so  that  the  car  would  have  to  <be 
pushed  again. 

My  father  used  to  get  sick  at  his  stomach  pushing  the  car,  and  very 
often  was  unable  to  go  to  work.  He  had  never  liked  the  machine,  even 
when  it  was  good,  sharing  my  ignorance  and  suspicion  of  all  auto- 
mobiles of  twenty  years  ago  and  longer.  The  boys  I  went  to  school 
with  used  to  be  able  to  identify  every  car  as  it  passed  by:  Thomas 
Flyer,  Firestone-Columbus,  Stevens  Duryea,  Rambler,  Winton,  White 
Steamer,  etc.  I  never  could.  The  only  car  I  was  really  interested  in 
was  one  that  the  Get-Ready  Man,  as  we  called  him,  rode  around  town 
in :  a  big  Red  Devil  with  a  door  in  the  back.  The  Get-Ready  Man  was 
a  lank  unkempt  elderly  gentleman  with  wild  eyes  and  a  deep  voice 
who  used  to  go  about  shouting  at  people  through  a  megaphone  to 
prepare  for  the  end  of  the  world,  "get  ready!  get  read-y!"  he  would 

305 


306  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

bellow,  "the  worllld  is  coming  to  an  end!"  His  startling  exhortations 
would  come  up,  like  summer  thunder,  at  the  most  unexpected  times 
and  in  the  most  surprising  places.  I  remember  once  during  MantelFs 
production  of  ''King  Lear"  at  the  Colonial  Theatre  that  the  Get- 
Ready  Man  added  his  bawlings  to  the  squealing  of  Edgar  and  the 
ranting  of  the  King  and  the  mouthing  of  the  Fool,  rising  from  some- 
where in  the  balcony  to  join  in.  The  theatre  was  in  absolute  darkness 
and  there  were  rumblings  of  thunder  and  flashes  of  lightning  offstage. 
Neither  father  nor  I,  who  were  there,  ever  completely  got  over  the 
scene,  which  went  something  like  this: 

Edgar:  Tom's  a-cold. — O,  do  de,  do  de,  do  de! — Bless  thee  from 
whirlwinds,  star-blasting,  and  taking  .  .  .  the  foul  fiend  vexes! 

(Thunder  off. 

Lear:  What!  Have  his  daughters  brought  him  to  this  pass? — 

Get-Ready  Man:  Get  ready!  Get  ready! 

Edgar:  Pillicock  sat  on  Pillicock-hill: — 

Halloo,  halloo,  loo,  loo! 
(Lightning  fashes. 

Get-Ready  Man:  The  Worllld  is  com-ing  to  an  End! 

Fool:  This  cold  night  will  turn  us  all  to  fools  and  madmen! 

Edgar:  Take  heed  o'  the  foul  fiend:  obey  thy  paren 

Get-Ready  Man:  Get  Rea-dy\ 

*Edga.r:  Tom's  a.-cold\ 

Get-Ready  Man:  The  Worr-u\d  is  coming  to  an  end!  .  .  . 

They  found  him  finally,  and  ejected  him,  still  shouting.  The  The- 
atre, in  our  time,  has  known  few  such  moments. 

But  to  get  back  to  the  automobile.  One  of  my  happiest  memories  of 
it  was  when,  in  its  eighth  year,  my  brother  Roy  got  together  a  great 
many  articles  from  the  kitchen,  placed  them  in  a  square  of  canvas, 
and  swung  this  under  the  car  with  a  string  attached  to  it  so  that,  at  a 
twitch,  the  canvas  would  give  way  and  the  steel  and  tin  things  would 
clatter  to  the  street.  This  was  a  little  scheme  of  Roy's  to  frighten 
father,  who  had  always  expected  the  car  might  explode.  It  worked 
perfectly.  That  was  twenty-five  years  ago,  but  it  is  one  of  the  few 
things  in  my  life  I  would  like  to  live  over  again  if  I  could.  I  don't 
suppose  that  I  can,  now.  Roy  twitched  the  string  in  the  middle  of  a 


JAMES  THURBER  307 

lovely  afternoon,  on  Bryden  Road  near  Eighteenth  Street.  Father  had 
closed  his  eyes  and,  with  his  hat  off,  was  enjoying  a  cool  breeze.  The 
clatter  on  the  asphalt  was  tremendously  effective:  knives,  forks,  can- 
openers,  pie  pans,  pot  lids,  biscuit-cutters,  ladles,  egg-beaters  fell,  beau- 
tifully together,  in  a  lingering,  clamant  crash.  "Stop  the  carl"  shouted 
father.  "I  can't,"  Roy  said.  "The  engine  fell  out."  "God  Almighty!" 
said  father,  who  knew  what  that  meant,  or  knew  what  it  sounded  as  if 
it  might  mean. 

It  ended  unhappily,  of  course,  because  we  finally  had  to  drive  back 
and  pick  up  the  stuff  and  even  father  knew  the  difference  between 
the  works  of  an  automobile  and  the  equipment  of  a  pantry.  My 
mother  wouldn't  have  known,  however,  nor  her  mother.  My  mother, 
for  instance,  thought — or,  rather,  knew — that  it  was  dangerous  to  drive 
an  automobile  without  gasoline:  it  fried  the  valves,  or  something. 
"Now  don't  you  dare  drive  all  over  town  without  gasoline!"  she 
would  say  to  us  when  we  started  off.  Gasoline,  oil,  and  water  were 
much  the  same  to  her,  a  fact  that  made  her  life  both  confusing  and 
perilous.  Her  greatest  dread,  however,  was  the  Victrola — we  had  a 
very  early  one,  back  in  the  "Come  Josephine  in  My  Flying  Machine" 
days.  She  had  an  idea  that  the  Victrola  might  blow  up.  It  alarmed  her, 
rather  than  reassured  her,  to  explain  that  the  phonograph  was  run 
neither  by  gasoline  nor  by  electricity.  She  could  only  suppose  that  it 
was  propelled  by  some  newfangled  and  untested  apparatus  which  was 
likely  to  let  go  at  any  minute,  making  us  all  the  victims  and  martyrs 
of  the  wild-eyed  Edison's  dangerous  experiments.  The  telephone  she 
was  comparatively  at  peace  with,  except,  of  course,  during  storms, 
when  for  some  reason  or  other  she  always  took  the  receiver  off  the 
hook  and  let  it  hang.  She  came  naturally  by  her  confused  and  ground- 
less fears,  for  her  own  mother  lived  the  latter  years  of  her  life  in  the 
horrible  suspicion  that  electricity  was  dripping  invisibly  all  over  the 
house.  It  leaked,  she  contended,  out  of  empty  sockets  if  the  wall  switch 
had  been  left  on.  She  would  go  around  screwing  in  bulbs,  and  if  they 
lighted  up  she  would  hastily  and  fearfully  turn  off  the  wall  switch 
and  go  back  to  her  Pearson's  or  Everybody's,  happy  in  the  satisfaction 
that  she  had  stopped  not  only  a  costly  but  a  dangerous  leakage.  Noth- 
ing could  ever  clear  this  up  for  her. 


308  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Our  poor  old  Reo  came  to  a  horrible  end,  finally.  We  had  parked 
it  too  far  from  the  curb  on  a  street  with  a  car  line.  It  was  late  at  night 
and  the  street  was  dark.  The  first  streetcar  that  came  along  couldn't 
get  by.  It  picked  up  the  tired  old  automobile  as  a  terrier  might  seize  a 
rabbit  and  drubbed  it  unmercifully,  losing  its  hold  now  and  then  but 
catching  a  new  grip  a  second  later.  Tires  booped  and  whooshed,  the 
fenders  queeled  and  graked,  the  steering-wheel  rose  up  like  a  spectre 
and  disappeared  in  the  direction  of  Franklin  Avenue  with  a  melan- 
choly whistling  sound,  bolts  and  gadgets  flew  like  sparks  from  a 
Catherine  wheel.  It  was  a  splendid  spectacle  but,  of  course,  saddening 
to  everybody  (except  the  rnotorman  of  the  streetcar,  who  was  sore).  I 
think  some  us  broke  down  and  wept.  It  must  have  been  the  weeping 
that  caused  grandfather  to  take  on  so  terribly.  Time  was  all  mixed  up 
in  his  mind;  automobiles  and  the  like  he  never  remembered  having 
seen.  He  apparently  gathered,  from  the  talk  and  excitement  and  weep- 
ing, that  somebody  had  died.  Nor  did  he  let  go  of  this  delusion.  He 
insisted,  in  fact,  after  almost  a  week  in  which  we  strove  mightily  to 
divert  him,  that  it  was  a  sin  and  a  shame  and  a  disgrace  on  the  family 
to  put  the  funeral  off  any  longer.  "Nobody  is  dead!  The  automobile 
is  smashed!"  shouted  my  father,  trying  for  the  thirtieth  time  to  ex- 
plain the  situation  to  the  old  man.  "Was  he  drunk?"  demanded  grand- 
father, sternly.  "Was  who  drunk?"  asked  father.  "Zenas,"  said  grand- 
father. He  had  a  name  for  the  corpse  now:  it  was  his  brother  Zenas, 
who,  as  it  happened,  was  dead,  but  not  from  driving  an  automobile 
while  intoxicated.  Zenas  had  died  in  1866.  A  sensitive,  rather  poetical 
boy  of  twenty-one  when  the  Civil  War  broke  out,  Zenas  had  gone  to 
South  America — "just,"  as  he  wrote  back,  "until  it  blows  over."  Re- 
turning after  the  war  had  blown  over,  he  caught  the  same  disease  that 
was  killing  off  the  chestnut  trees  in  those  years,  and  passed  away.  It 
was  the  only  case  in  history  where  a  tree  doctor  had  to  be  called  in  to 
spray  a  person,  and  our  family  had  felt  it  very  keenly;  nobody  else  in 
the  United  States  caught  the  blight.  Some  of  us  have  looked  upon 
Zenas'  fate  as  a  kind  of  poetic  justice. 

Now  that  grandfather  knew,  so  to  speak,  who  was  dead,  it  became 
increasingly  awkward  to  go  on  living  in  the  same  house  with  him  as 
if  nothing  had  happened.  He  would  go  into  towering  rages  in  Which 


JAMES  THURBER  309 

he  threatened  to  write  to  the  Board  of  Health  unless  the  funeral  were 
held  at  once.  We  realized  that  something  had  to  be  done.  Eventually, 
we  persuaded  a  friend  of  father's,  named  George  Martin,  to  dress  up 
in  the  manner  and  costume  of  the  eighteen-sixties  and  pretend  to  be 
Uncle  Zenas,  in  order  to  set  grandfather's  mind  at  rest.  The  impostor 
looked  fine  and  impressive  in  sideburns  and  a  high  beaver  hat,  and 
not  unlike  the  daguerreotypes  of  Zenas  in  our  album.  I  shall  never  for- 
get the  night,  just  after  dinner,  when  this  Zenas  walked  into  the  living- 
room.  Grandfather  was  stomping  up  and  down,  tall,  hawk-nosed, 
round-oathed.  The  newcomer  held  out  both  his  hands.  "Clem!"  he 
cried  to  grandfather.  Grandfather  turned  slowly,  looked  at  the  in- 
truder, and  snorted.  "Who  air  you?"  he  demanded  in  his  deep,  reso- 
nant voice.  "I'm  Zenas!"  cried  Martin.  "Your  brother  Zenas,  fit  as  a 
fiddle  and  sound  as  a  dollar!"  "Zenas,  my  foot!"  said  grandfather. 
"Zenas  died  of  the  chestnut  blight  in  '66V 

Grandfather  was  given  to  these  sudden,  unexpected,  and  extremely 
lucid  moments;  they  were  generally  more  embarrassing  than  his  other 
moments.  He  comprehended  before  he  went  to  bed  that  night  that  the 
old  automobile  had  been  destroyed  and  that  its  destruction  had  caused 
all  the  turmoil  in  the  house:  "It  flew  all  to  pieces,  Pa,"  my  mother  told 
him,  in  graphically  describing  the  accident.  "I  knew  'twould,"  growled 
grandfather.  "I  alius  told  ye  to  git  a  Pope-Toledo." 


CHAPTER   THREE 


THE  DAY   THE  DAM   BROKE 


My  memories  of  what  my  family  and  I  went  through  during  the 
1913  flood  in  Ohio  I  would  gladly  forget.  And  yet  neither  the  hard- 
ships we  endured  nor  the  turmoil  and  confusion  we  experienced  can 
alter  my  feeling  toward  my  native  state  and  city.  I  am  having  a  fine 
time  now  and  wish  Columbus  were  here,  but  if  anyone  ever  wished 
a  city  was  in  hell  it  was  during  that  frightful  and  perilous  afternoon 
in  1913  when  the  dam  broke,  or,  to  be  more  exact,  when  everybody  in 
town  thought  that  the  dam  broke.  We  were  both  ennobled  and  de- 
moralized by  the  experience.  Grandfather  especially  rose  to  magnifi- 
cent heights  which  can  never  lose  their  splendor  for  me,  even  though 
his  reactions  to  the  flood  were  based  upon  a  profound  misconception; 
namely,  that  Nathan  Bedford  Forrest's  cavalry  was  the  menace  we 
were  called  upon  to  face.  The  only  possible  means  of  escape  for  us 
was  to  flee  the  house,  a  step  which  grandfather  sternly  forbade,  bran- 
dishing his  old  army  sabre  in  his  hand.  "Let  the  sons come!" 

he  roared.  Meanwhile  hundreds  of  people  were  streaming  by  our 
house  in  wild  panic,  screaming  "Go  east!  Go  east!"  We  had  to  stun 
grandfather  with  the  ironing  board.  Impeded  as  we  were  by  the  inert 
form  of  the  old  gentleman — he  was  taller  than  six  feet  and  weighed 
almost  a  hundred  and  seventy  pounds — we  were  passed,  in  the  first 
half-mile,  by  practically  everybody  else  in  the  city.  Had  grandfather 
not  come  to,  at  the  corner  of  Parsons  Avenue  and  Town  Street",  we 
would  unquestionably  have  been  overtaken  and  engulfed  by  the 
roaring  waters — that  is,  if  there  had  been  any  roaring  waters.  Later, 
when  the  panic  had  died  down  and  people  had  gone  rather  sheepishly 
back  to  their  homes  and  their  offices,  minimizing  the  distances  they 
had   run   and   offering   various   reasons   for   running,   city   engineers 

310 


JAMES  THURBER  311 

pointed  out  that  even  if  the  dam  had  broken,  the  water  level  would 
not  have  risen  more  than  two  additional  inches  in  the  West  Side. 
The  West  Side  was,  at  the  time  of  the  dam  scare,  under  thirty  feet 
of  water — as,  indeed,  were  all  Ohio  river  towns  during  the  great  spring 
floods  of  twenty  years  ago.  The  East  Side  (where  we  lived  and  where 
all  the  running  occurred)  had  never  been  in  any  danger  at  all.  Only 
a  rise  of  some  ninety-five  feet  could  have  caused  the  flood  waters  to  flow 
over  High  Street — the  thoroughfare  that  divided  the  east  side  of  town 
from  the  west — and  engulf  the  East  Side. 

The  fact  that  we  were  all  as  safe  as  kittens  under  a  cookstove  did 
not,  however,  assuage  in  the  least  the  fine  despair  and  the  grotesque 
desperation  which  seized  upon  the  residents  of  the  East  Side  when 
the  cry  spread  like  a  grass  fire  that  the  dam  had  given  way.  Some  of 
the  most  dignified,  staid,  cynical,  and  clear-thinking  men  in  town 
abandoned  their  wives,  stenographers,  homes,  and  offices  and  ran  east. 
There  are  few  alarms  in  the  world  more  terrifying  than  "The  dam  has 
broken!"  There  are  few  persons  capable  of  stopping  to  reason  when 
that  clarion  cry  strikes  upon  their  ears,  even  persons  who  live  in 
towns  no  nearer  than  five  hundred  miles  to  a  dam. 

The  Columbus,  Ohio,  broken-dam  rumor  began,  as  I  recall  it,  about 
noon  of  March  12,  1913.  High  Street,  the  main  canyon  of  trade,  was 
loud  with  the  placid  hum  of  business  and  the  buzzing  of  placid  business- 
men arguing,  computing,  wheedling,  offering,  refusing,  compromising. 
Darius  Conningway,  one  of  the  foremost  corporation  lawyers  in  the 
Middle-West,  was  telling  the  Public  Utilities  Commission  in  the 
language  of  Julius  Caesar  that  they  might  as  well  try  to  move  the 
Northern  star  as  to  move  him.  Other  men  were  making  their  little 
boasts  and  their  little  gestures.  Suddenly  somebody  began  to  run.  It 
may  be  that  he  had  simply  remembered,  all  of  a  moment,  an  engage- 
ment to  meet  his  wife,  for  which  he  was  now  frightfully  late.  What- 
ever it  was,  he  ran  east  on  Broad  Street  (probably  toward  the  Mara- 
mor  Restaurant,  a  favorite  place  for  a  man  to  meet  his  wife). 
Somebody  else  began  to  run,  perhaps  a  newsboy  in  high  spirits.  An- 
other man,  a  portly  gentleman  of  affairs,  broke  into  a  trot.  Inside  of 
ten  minutes,  everybody  on  High  Street,  from  the  Union  Depot  to 
the  Courthouse  was  running.  A  loud  mumble  gradually  crystallized 


312  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

into  the  dread  word  "dam."  "The  dam  has  broke!"  The  fear  was  put 
into  words  by  a  little  old  lady  in  an  electric,  or  by  a  traffic  cop,  or  by 
a  small  boy:  nobody  knows  who,  nor  does  it  now  really  matter.  Two 
thousand  people  were  abruptly  in  full  flight.  "Go  east!"  was  the  cry 
that  arose — east  away  from  the  river,  east  to  safety.  "Go  east!  Go  east! 
Go  east!" 

Black  streams  of  people  flowed  eastward  down  all  the  streets  leading 
in  that  direction;  these  streams,  whose  headwaters  were  in  the  dry- 
goods  stores,  office  buildings,  harness  shops,  movie  theatres,  were  fed 
by  trickles  of  housewives,  children,  cripples,  servants,  dogs,  and  cats, 
slipping  out  of  the  houses  past  which  the  main  stream  flowed,  shouting 
and  screaming.  People  ran  out  leaving  fires  burning  and  food  cooking 
and  doors  wide  open.  I  remember,  however,  that  my  mother  turned  out 
all  the  fires  and  that  she  took  with  her  a  dozen  eggs  and  two  loaves 
of  bread.  It  was  her  plan  to  make  Memorial  Hall,  just  two  blocks  away, 
and  take  refuge  somewhere  in  the  top  of  it,  in  one  of  the  dusty  rooms 
where  war  veterans  met  and  where  old  battle  flags  and  stage  scenery 
were  stored.  But  the  seething  throngs,  shouting  "Go  east!,"  drew  her 
along  and  the  rest  of  us  with  her.  When  grandfather  regained  full 
consciousness,  at  Parsons  Avenue,  he  turned  upon  the  retreating  mob 
like  a  vengeful  prophet  and  exhorted  the  men  to  form  ranks  and  stand 
off  the  Rebel  dogs,  but  at  length  he,  too,  got  the  idea  that  the  dam 
had  broken  and,  roaring  "Go  east!"  in  his  powerful  voice,  he  caught 
up  in  one  arm  a  small  child  and  in  the  other  a  slight  clerkish  man 
of  perhaps  forty-two  and  we  slowly  began  to  gain  on  those  ahead 
of  us. 

A  scattering  of  firemen,  policemen,  and  army  officers  in  dress  uni- 
forms— there  had  been  a  review  at  Fort  Hayes,  in  the  northern  part 
of  town — added  color  to  the  surging  billows  of  people.  "Go  east!"  cried 
a  little  child  in  a  piping  voice,  as  she  ran  past  a  porch  on  which 
drowsed  a  lieutenant-colonel  of  infantry.  Used  to  quick  decisions, 
trained  to  immediate  obedience,  the  officer  bounded  off  the  porch  and, 
running  at  full  tilt,  soon  passed  the  child,  bawling  "Go  east!"  The 
two  of  them  emptied  rapidly  the  houses  of  the  little  street  they  were 
on.  "What  is  it?  What  is  it?"  demanded  a  fat,  waddling  man  who 
intercepted   the  colonel.  The  officer  dropped  behind   and  asked   the 


JAMES  THURBER  313 

little  child  what  it  was.  "The  dam  has  broke!"  gasped  the  girl.  "The 
dam  has  broke!"  roared  the  colonel.  "Go  east!  Go  east!  Go  east!"  He 
was  soon  leading,  with  the  exhausted  child  in  his  arms,  a  fleeing  com- 
pany of  three  hundred  persons  who  had  gathered  around  him  from 
living-rooms,  shops,  garages,  backyards,  and  basements. 

Nobody  has  ever  been  able  to  compute  with  any  exactness  how 
many  people  took  part  in  the  great  rout  of  1913,  for  the  panic,  which 
extended  from  the  Winslow  Bottling  Works  in  the  south  end  to 
Clintonville,  six  miles  north,  ended  as  abruptly  as  it  began  and  the 
bobtail  and  ragtag  and  velvet-gowned  groups  of  refugees  melted  away 
and  slunk  home,  leaving  the  streets  peaceful  and  deserted.  The  shout- 
ing, weeping,  tangled  evacuation  of  the  city  lasted  not  more  than  two 
hours  in  all.  Some  few  people  got  as  far  east  as  Reynoldsburg,  twelve 
miles  away;  fifty  or  more  reached  the  Country  Club,  eight  miles  away; 
most  of  the  others  gave  up,  exhausted,  or  climbed  trees  in  Franklin 
Park,  four  miles  out.  Order  was  restored  and  fear  dispelled  finally  by 
means  of  militiamen  riding  about  in  motor  lorries  bawling  through 
megaphones:  "The  dam  has  not  broken!"  At  first  this  tended  only 
to  add  to  the  confusion  and  increase  the  panic,  for  many  stampeders 
thought  the  soldiers  were  bellowing  "The  dam  has  now  broken!," 
thus  setting  an  official  seal  of  authentication  on  the  calamity. 

All  the  time,  the  sun  shone  quietly  and  there  was  nowhere  any 
sign  of  oncoming  waters.  A  visitor  in  an  airplane,  looking  down  on 
the  straggling,  agitated  masses  of  people  below,  would  have  been 
hard  put  to  it  to  divine  a  reason  for  the  phenomenon.  It  must  have 
inspired,  in  such  an  observer,  a  peculiar  kind  of  terror,  like  the  sight 
of  the  Marie  Celeste,  abandoned  at  sea,  its  galley  fires  peacefully  burn- 
ing, its  tranquil  decks  bright  in  the  sunlight. 

An  aunt  of  mine,  Aunt  Edith  Taylor,  was  in  a  movie  theatre  on 
High  Street  when,  over  and  above  the  sound  of  the  piano  in  the  pit 
(a  W.  S.  Hart  picture  was  being  shown),  there  rose  the  steadily  in- 
creasing tromp  of  running  feet.  Persistent  shouts  rose  above  the  tromp- 
ing.  An  elderly  man,  sitting  near  my  aunt,  mumbled  something,  got 
out  of  his  seat,  and  went  up  the  aisle  at  a  dogtrot.  This  started  every- 
body. In  an  instant  the  audience  was  jamming  the  aisles.  "Fire!" 
shouted  a  woman  who  always  expected  to  be  burned  up  in  a  theatre; 


314  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

but  now  the  shouts  outside  were  louder  and  coherent.  "The  dam  has 
broke!"  cried  somebody.  "Go  east!"  screamed  a  small  woman  in  front 
of  my  aunt.  And  east  they  went,  pushing  and  shoving  and  clawing, 
knocking  women  and  children  down,  emerging  finally  into  the  street, 
torn  and  sprawling.  Inside  the  theatre,  Bill  Hart  was  calmly  calling 
some  desperado's  bluff  and  the  brave  girl  at  the  piano  played  "Row! 
Row!  Row!"  loudly  and  then  "In  My  Harem."  Outside,  men  were 
streaming  across  the  Statehouse  yard,  others  were  climbing  trees,  a 
woman  managed  to  get  up  onto  the  "These  Are  My  Jewels"  statue, 
whose  bronze  figures  of  Sherman,  Stanton,  Grant,  and  Sheridan 
watched  with  cold  unconcern  the  going  to  pieces  of  the  capital  city. 

"I  ran  south  to  State  Street,  east  on  State  to  Third,  south  on  Third 
to  Town,  and  out  east  on  Town,"  my  Aunt  Edith  has  written  rne. 
"A  tall  spare  woman  with  grim  eyes  and  a  determined  chin  ran  past 
me  down  the  middle  of  the  street.  I  was  still  uncertain  as  to  what  was 
the  matter,  in  spite  of  all  the  shouting.  I  drew  up  alongside  the  woman 
with  some  effort,  for  although  she  was  in  her  late  fifties,  she  had  a 
beautiful  easy  running  form  and  seemed  to  be  in  excellent  condition. 
'What  is  it?'  I  puffed.  She  gave  me  a  quick  glance  and  then  looked 
ahead  again,  stepping  up  her  pace  a  trifle.  'Don't  ask  me,  ask  God!'  she 
said. 

"When  I  reached  Grant  Avenue,  I  was  so  spent  that  Dr.  H.  R. 
Mallory — you  remember  Dr.  Mallory,  the  man  with  the  white  beard 
who  looks  like  Robert  Browning? — well,  Dr.  Mallory,  whom  I  had 
drawn  away  from  at  the  corner  of  Fifth  and  Town,  passed  me.  'It's  got 
us!'  he  shouted,  and  I  felt  sure  that  whatever  it  was  did  have  us,  for 
you  know  what  conviction  Dr.  Mallory's  statements  always  carried. 
I  didn't  know  at  the  time  what  he  meant,  but  I  found  out  later.  There 
was  a  boy  behind  him  on  rollerskates,  and  Dr.  Mallory  mistook  the 
swishing  of  the  skates  for  the  sound  of  rushing  water.  He  eventually 
reached  the  Columbus  School  for  Girls,  at  the  corner  of  Parsons 
Avenue  and  Town  Street,  where  he  collapsed,  expecting  the  cold 
frothing  waters  of  the  Scioto  to  sweep  him  into  oblivion.  The  boy 
on  the  skates  swirled  past  him  and  Dr.  Mallorv  realized  for  the  hist 
time  what  he  had  been  running  from.  Looking  back  up  the  street, 
he  could  see  no  signs  of  water,  but  nevertheless,  after  resting  a  few 


JAMES  THURBER  315 

minutes,  he  jogged  on  east  again.  He  caught  up  with  me  at  Ohio 
Avenue,  where  we  rested  together.  I  should  say  that  about  seven 
hundred  people  passed  us.  A  funny  thing  was  that  all  of  them  were  on 
foot.  Nobody  seemed  to  have  had  the  courage  to  stop  and  start  his 
car;  but  as  I  remember  it,  all  cars  had  to  be  cranked  in  those  days, 
which  is  probably  the  reason." 

The  next  day,  the  city  went  about  its  business  as  if  nothing  had 
happened,  but  there  was  no  joking.  It  was  two  years  or  more  before 
you  dared  treat  the  breaking  of  the  dam  lightly.  And  even  now,  twenty 
years  after,  there  are  a  few  persons,  like  Dr.  Mallory,  who  will  shut 
up  like  a  clam  if  you  mention  the  Afternoon  of  the  Great  Run. 


W&Ssu 


CHAPTER   FOUR 


THE  NIGHT  THE  GHOST   GOT   IN 


The  ghost  that  got  into  our  house  on  the  night  of  November  17,  1915, 
raised  such  a  hullabaloo  of  misunderstandings  that  I  am  sorry  I  didn't 
just  let  it  keep  on  walking,  and  go  to  bed.  Its  advent  caused  my  mother 
to  throw  a  shoe  through  a  window  of  the  house  next  door  and  ended 
up  with  my  grandfather  shooting  a  patrolman.  I  am  sorry,  therefore, 
as  I  have  said,  that  I  ever  paid  any  attention  to  the  footsteps. 

They  began  about  a  quarter  past  one  o'clock  in  the  morning,  a 
rhythmic,  quick-cadenced  walking  around  the  dining-room  table.  My 
mother  was  asleep  in  one  room  upstairs,  my  brother  Herman  in 
another;  grandfather  was  in  the  attic,  in  the  old  walnut  bed,  which,  as 
you  will  remember,  once  fell  on  my  father.  I  had  just  stepped  out 
of  the  bathtub  and  was  busily  rubbing  myself  with  a  towel  when  I 
heard  the  steps.  They  were  the  steps  of  a  man  walking  rapidly  around 
the  dining-room  table  downstairs.  The  light  from  the  bathroom  shone 
down  the  back  steps,  which  dropped  directly  into  the  dining-room;  I 
could  see  the  faint  shine  of  plates  on  the  plate-rail;  I  couldn't  see 
the  table.  The  steps  kept  going  round  and  round  the  table;  at  regular 
intervals  a  board  creaked,  when  it  was  trod  upon.  I  supposed  at  first 
that  it  was  my  father  or  my  brother  Roy,  who  had  gone  to  Indianapolis 
but  were  expected  home  at  any  time.  I  suspected  next  that  it  was  a 
burglar.  It  did  not  enter  my  mind  until  later  that  it  was  a  ghost. 

After  the  walking  had  gone  on  for  perhaps  three  minutes,  I  tiptoed 
to  Herman's  room.  "Psst!"  I  hissed,  in  the  dark,  shaking  him.  "Awp," 
he  said,  in  the  low,  hopeless  tone  of  a  despondent  beagle — he  always 
half  suspected  that  something  would  "get  him"  in  the  night.  I  told  him 
who  I  was.  "There's  something  downstairs!"  I  said.  He  got  up  and 
followed  me  to  the  head  of  the  back  staircase.  We  listened  together. 

316 


JAMES  THURBER  317 

There  was  no  sound.  The  steps  had  ceased.  Herman  looked  at  me 
in  some  alarm:  I  had  only  the  bath  towel  around  my  waist.  He  wanted 
to  go  back  to  bed,  but  I  gripped  his  arm.  "There's  something  down 
there!"  I  said.  Instantly  the  steps  began  again,  circled  the  dining-room 
table  like  a  man  running,  and  started  up  the  stairs  toward  us,  heavily, 
two  at  a  time.  The  light  still  shone  palely  down  the  stairs;  we  saw 
nothing  coming;  we  only  heard  the  steps.  Herman  rushed  to  his  room 
and  slammed  the  door.  I  slammed  shut  the  door  at  the  stairs  top  and 
held  my  knee  against  it.  After  a  long  minute,  I  slowly  opened  it  again. 
There  was  nothing  there.  There  was  no  sound.  None  of  us  ever 
heard  the  ghost  again. 

The  slamming  of  the  doors  had  aroused  mother:  she  peered  out 
of  her  room.  "What  on  earth  are  you  boys  doing?"  she  demanded. 
Herman  ventured  out  of  his  room.  "Nothing,"  he  said  gruffly,  but  he 
was,  in  color,  a  light  green.  "What  was  all  that  running  around  down- 
stairs?" said  mother.  So  she  had  heard  the  steps,  too!  We  just  looked 
at  her.  "Burglars!"  she  shouted,  intuitively.  I  tried  to  quiet  her  by 
starting  lightly  downstairs. 

"Come  on,  Herman,"  I  said. 

"I'll  stay  with  mother,"  he  said.  "She's  all  excited." 

I  stepped  back  onto  the  landing. 

"Don't  either  of  you  go  a  step,"  said  mother.  "We'll  call  the  police." 
Since  the  phone  was  downstairs,  I  didn't  see  how  we  were  going  to 
call  the  police — nor  did  I  want  the  police — but  mother  made  one  of 
her  quick,  incomparable  decisions.  She  flung  up  a  window  of  her 
bedroom  which  faced  the  bedroom  windows  of  the  house  of  a  neigh- 
bor, picked  up  a  shoe,  and  whammed  it  through  a  pane  of  glass  across 
the  narrow  space  that  separated  the  two  houses.  Glass  tinkled  into 
the  bedroom  occupied  by  a  retired  engraver  named  Bodwell  and  his 
wife.  Bodwell  had  been  for  some  years  in  rather  a  bad  way  and  was 
subject  to  mild  "attacks."  Most  everybody  we  knew  or  lived  near  had 
some  kind  of  attacks. 

It  was  now  about  two  o'clock  of  a  moonless  night;  clouds  hung 
black  and  low.  Bodwell  was  at  the  window  in  a  minute,  shouting, 
frothing  a  little,  shaking  his  fist.  "We'll  sell  the  house  and  go  back 
to  Peoria,"  we  could  hear  Mrs.  Bodwell  saying.  It  was  some  time 


318  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

before  mother  "got  through"  to  Bodwell.  "Burglars!"  she  shouted. 
"Burglars  in  the  house!"  Herman  and  I  hadn't  dared  to  tell  her  that 
it  was  not  burglars  but  ghosts,  for  she  was  even  more  afraid  of  ghosts 
than  of  burglars.  Bodwell  at  first  thought  that  she  meant  there  were 
burglars  in  his  house,  but  finally  he  quieted  down  and  called  the 
police  for  us  over  an  extension  phone  by  his  bed.  After  he  had  dis- 
appeared from  the  window,  mother  suddenly  made  as  if  to  throw 
another  shoe,  not  because  there  was  further  need  of  it  but,  as  she 
later  explained,  because  the  thrill  of  heaving  a  shoe  through  a  window 
glass  had  enormously  taken  her  fancy.  I  prevented  her. 

The  police  were  on  hand  in  a  commendably  short  time:  a  Ford  sedan 
full  of  them,  two  on  motorcycles,  and  a  patrol  wagon  with  about  eight 
in  it  and  a  few  reporters.  They  began  banging  at  our  front  door. 
Flashlights  shot  streaks  of  gleam  up  and  down  the  walls,  across  the 
yard,  down  the  walk  between  our  house  and  Bodwell's.  "Open  up!" 
cried  a  hoarse  voice.  "We're  men  from  Headquarters!"  I  wanted  to 
go  down  and  let  them  in,  since  there  they  were,  but  mother  wouldn't 
hear  of  it.  "You  haven't  a  stitch  on,"  she  pointed  out.  "You'd  catch 
your  death."  I  wound  the  towel  around  me  again.  Finally  the  cops 
put  their  shoulders  to  our  big  heavy  front  door  with  its  thick  beveled 
glass  and  broke  it  in:  I  could  hear  a  rending  of  wood  and  a  splash  of 
glass  on  the  floor  of  the  hall.  Their  lights  played  all  over  the  living- 
room  and  crisscrossed  nervously  in  the  dining-room,  stabbed  into 
hallways,  shot  up  the  front  stairs  and  finally  up  the  back.  They  caught 
me  standing  in  my  towel  at  the  top.  A  heavy  policeman  bounded  up 
the  steps.  "Who  are  you?"  he  demanded.  "I  live  here,"  I  said.  "Well, 
whattsa  matta,  ya  hot?"  he  asked.  It  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  cold; 
I  went  to  my  room  and  pulled  on  some  trousers.  On  my  way  out,  a 
cop  stuck  a  gun  into  my  ribs.  "Whatta  you  doin'  here?"  he  demanded. 
"I  live  here,"  I  said. 

The  officer  in  charge  reported  to  mother.  "No  sign  of  nobody,  lady," 
he  said.  "Musta  got  away — whatt'd  he  look  like?"  "There  were  two 
or  three  of  them,"  mother  said,  "whooping  and  carrying  on  and  slam- 
ming doors."  "Funny,"  said  the  cop.  "All  ya  windows  and  doors  was 
locked  on  the  inside  tight  as  a  tick." 

Downstairs,  we  could  hear  the  tromping  of  the  other  police.  Police 


JAMES  THURBER  319 

were  all  over  the  place;  doors  were  yanked  open,  drawers  were  yanked 
open,  windows  were  shot  up  and  pulled  down,  furniture  fell  with  dull 
thumps.  A  half-dozen  policemen  emerged  out  of  the  darkness  of  the 
front  hallway  upstairs.  They  began  to  ransack  the  floor:  pulled  beds 
away  from  walls,  tore  clothes  off  hooks  in  the  closets,  pulled  suitcases 
and  boxes  off  shelves.  One  of  them  found  an  old  zither  that  Roy  had 
won  in  a  pool  tournament.  "Looky  here,  Joe,"  he  said,  strumming  it 
with  a  big  paw.  The  cop  named  Joe  took  it  and  turned  it  over.  "What 
is  it?"  he  asked  me.  "It's  an  old  zither  our  guinea  pig  used  to  sleep 
on,"  I  said.  It  was  true  that  a  pet  guinea  pig  we  once  had  would  never 
sleep  anywhere  except  on  the  zither,  but  I  should  never  have  said  so. 
Joe  and  the  other  cop  looked  at  me  a  long  time.  They  put  the  zither 
back  on  a  shelf. 

"No  sign  o'  nuthin',"  said  the  cop  who  had  first  spoken  to  mother. 
"This  guy,"  he  explained  to  the  others,  jerking  a  thumb  at  me,  "was 
nekked.  The  lady  seems  historical."  They  all  nodded,  but  said  noth- 
ing; just  looked  at  me.  In  the  small  silence  we  all  heard  a  creaking  in 
the  attic.  Grandfather  was  turning  over  in  bed.  "What's  'at?"  snapped 
Joe.  Five  or  six  cops  sprang  for  the  attic  door  before  I  could  inter- 
vene or  explain.  I  realized  that  it  would  be  bad  if  they  burst  in  on 
grandfather  unannounced,  or  even  announced.  He  was  going  through 
a  phase  in  which  he  believed  that  General  Meade's  men,  under  steady 
hammering  by  Stonewall  Jackson,  were  beginning  to  retreat  and  even 
desert. 

When  I  got  to  the  attic,  things  were  pretty  confused.  Grandfather 
had  evidently  jumped  to  the  conclusion  that  the  police  were  deserters 
from  Meade's  army,  trying  to  hide  away  in  his  attic.  He  bounded  out 
of  bed  wearing  a  long  flannel  nightgown  over  long  woolen  underwear, 
a  nightcap,  and  a  leather  jacket  around  his  chest.  The  cops  must  have 
realized  at  once  that  the  indignant  white-haired  old  man  belonged  in 
the  house,  but  they  had  no  chance  to  say  so.  "Back,  ye  cowardly  dogs!" 
roared  grandfather.  "Back  t'  the  lines,  ye  goddam  lily-livered  cattle!" 
With  that,  he  fetched  the  officer  who  found  the  zither  a  flat-handed 
smack  alongside  his  head  that  sent  him  sprawling.  The  others  beat 
a  retreat,  but  not  fast  enough;  grandfather  grabbed  Zither's  gun  from 
its  holster  and  let  fly.  The  report  seemed  to  crack  the  rafters;  smoke 


320  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

filled  the  attic.  A  cop  cursed  and  shot  his  hand  to  his  shoulder.  Some- 
how, we  all  finally  got  downstairs  again  and  locked  the  door  against 
the  old  gentleman.  He  fired  once  or  twice  more  in  the  darkness  and 
then  went  back  to  bed.  "That  was  grandfather,"  I  explained  to  Joe,  out 
of  breath.  "He  thinks  you're  deserters."  "I'll  say  he  does,"  said  Joe. 

The  cops  were  reluctant  to  leave  without  getting  their  hands  on 
somebody  besides  grandfather;  the  night  had  been  distinctly  a  defeat 
for  them.  Furthermore,  they  obviously  didn't  like  the  "layout";  some- 
thing looked — and  I  can  see  their  viewpoint — phony.  They  began  to 
poke  into  things  again.  A  reporter,  a  thin-faced,  wispy  man,  came  up 
to  me.  I  had  put  on  one  of  mother's  blouses,  not  being  able  to  find 
anything  else.  The  reporter  looked  at  me  with  mingled  suspicion  and 
interest.  "Just  what  the  hell  is  the  real  lowdown  here,  Bud?"  he  asked. 
I  decided  to  be  frank  with  him.  "We  had  ghosts,"  I  said.  He  gazed  at 
me  a  long  time  as  if  I  were  a  slot  machine  into  which  he  had,  without 
results,  dropped  a  nickel.  Then  he  walked  away.  The  cops  followed 
him,  the  one  grandfather  shot  holding  his  now-bandaged  arm,  cursing 
and  blaspheming.  "I'm  gonna  get  my  gun  back  from  that  old  bird," 
said  the  zither-cop.  "Yeh,"  said  Joe.  "You — and  who  else?"  I  told  them 
I  would  bring  it  to  the  station  house  the  next  day. 

"What  was  the  matter  with  that  one  policeman?"  mother  asked, 
after  they  had  gone.  "Grandfather  shot  him,"  I  said.  "What  for?"  she 
demanded.  I  told  her  he  was  a  deserter.  "Of  all  things!"  said  mother. 
"He  was  such  a  nice-looking  young  man." 

Grandfather  was  fresh  as  a  daisy  and  full  of  jokes  at  breakfast  next 
morning.  We  thought  at  first  he  had  forgotten  all  about  what  had 
happened,  but  he  hadn't.  Over  his  third  cup  of  coffee,  he  glared  at 
Herman  and  me.  "What  was  the  idee  of  all  them  cops  tarryhootin' 
round  the  house  last  night?"  he  demanded.  He  had  us  there. 


CHAPTER    FIVE 


MORE  ALARMS  AT  NIGHT 


One  o£  the  incidents  that  I  always  think  of  first  when  I  cast  back  over 
my  youth  is  what  happened  the  night  that  my  father  "threatened  to 
get  Buck."  This,  as  you  will  see,  is  not  precisely  a  fair  or  accurate  de- 
scription of  what  actually  occurred,  but  it  is  the  way  in  which  I  and 
the  other  members  of  my  family  invariably  allude  to  the  occasion.  We 
were  living  at  the  time  in  an  old  house  at  77  Lexington  Avenue,  in 
Columbus,  Ohio.  In  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Colum- 
bus won  out,  as  state  capital,  by  only  one  vote  over  Lancaster,  and 
ever  since  then  has  had  the  hallucination  that  it  is  being  followed,  a 
curious  municipal  state  of  mind  which  affects,  in  some  way  or  other, 
all  those  who  live  there.  Columbus  is  a  town  in  which  almost  anything 
is  likely  to  happen  and  in  which  almost  everything  has. 

My  father  was  sleeping  in  the. front  room  on  the  second  floor  next 
to  that  of  my  brother  Roy,  who  was  then  about  sixteen.  Father  was 
usually  in  bed  by  nine-thirty  and  up  again  by  ten-thirty  to  protest 
bitterly  against  a  Victrola  record  we  three  boys  were  in  the  habit  of 
playing  over  and  over,  namely,  "No  News,  or  What  Killed  the  Dog," 
a  recitation  by  Nat  Wills.  The  record  had  been  played  so  many  times 
that  its  grooves  were  deeply  cut  and  the  needle  often  kept  revolving 
in  the  same  groove,  repeating  over  and  over  the  same  words.  Thus: 
"ate  some  burnt  hoss  flesh,  ate  some  burnt  hoss  flesh,  ate  some  burnt 
hoss  flesh."  It  was  this  reiteration  that  generally  got  father  out  of  bed. 

On  the  night  in  question,  however,  we  had  all  gone  to  bed  at  about 
the  same  time,  without  much  fuss.  Roy,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  had  been 
in  bed  all  day  with  a  kind  of  mild  fever.  It  wasn't  severe  enough  to 
cause  delirium  and  my  brother  was  the  last  person  in  the  world  to 

321 


322  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

give  way  to  delirium.  Nevertheless,  he  had  warned  father  when  father 
went  to  bed  that  he  might  become  delirious. 

About  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  Roy,  who  was  wakeful,  decided 
to  pretend  that  delirium  was  on  him,  in  order  to  have,  as  he  later  ex- 
plained it,  some  "fun."  He  got  out  of  bed  and,  going  to  my  father's 
room,  shook  him  and  said,  "Buck,  your  time  has  come!'.'  My  father's 
name  was  not  Buck  but  Charles,  nor  had  he  ever  been  called  Buck. 
He  was  a  tall,  mildly  nervous,  peaceable  gentleman,  given  to  quiet 
pleasures,  and  eager  that  everything  should  run  smoothly.  "Hmm?" 
he  said,  with  drowsy  bewilderment.  "Get  up,  Buck,"  said  my  brother, 
coldly,  but  with  a  certain  gleam  in  his  eyes.  My  father  leaped  out  of 
bed,  on  the  side  away  from  his  son,  rushed  from  the  room,  locked  the 
door  behind  him,  and  shouted  us  all  up. 

We  were  naturally  enough  reluctant  to  believe  that  Roy,  who  was 
quiet  and  self-contained,  had  threatened  his  father  with  any  such 
abracadabra  as  father  said  he  had.  My  older  brother,  Herman,  went 
back  to  bed  without  any  comment.  "You've  had  a  bad  dream,"  mv 
mother  said.  This  vexed  my  father.  "I  tell  you  he  called  me  Buck  and 
told  me  my  time  had  come,"  he  said.  We  went  to  the  door  of  his 
room,  unlocked  it,  and  tiptoed  through  it  to  Roy's  room.  He  lay  in 
his  bed,  breathing  easily,  as  if  he  were  fast  asleep.  It  was  apparent  at  a 
glance  that  he  did  not  have  a  high  fever.  My  mother  gave  my  father 
a  look.  "I  tell  you  he  did,"  whispered  father. 

Our  presence  in  the  room  finally  seemed  to  awaken  Roy  and  he  was 
(or  rather,  as  we  found  out  long  afterward,  pretended  to  be)  aston- 
ished and  bewildered.  "What's  the  matter?"  he  asked.  "Nothing," 
said  my  mother.  "Just  your  father  had  a  nightmare."  "I  did  not  have 
a  nightmare,"  said  father,  slowly  and  firmly.  He  wore  an  old-fash- 
ioned, "side-slit"  nightgown  which  looked  rather  odd  on  his  tall,  spare 
figure.  The  situation,  before  we  let  it  drop  and  everybody  went  back 
to  bed  again,  became,  as  such  situations  in  our  family  usually  did, 
rather  more  complicated  than  ironed  out.  Rov  demanded  to  know 
what  had  happened,  and  my  mother  told  him,  in  considerably  garbled 
fashion,  what  father  had  told  her.  At  this  a  light  dawned  in  Roy's 
eyes.  "Dad's  got  it  backward,"  he  said.  He  then  explained  that  he  had 
heard  father  get  out  of  bed  and  had  called  to  him.  "I'll  handle  this," 


JAMES   THURBER  323 

his  father  had  answered.  "Buck  is  downstairs."  "Who  is  this  Buck?" 
my  mother  demanded  of  father.  "I  don't  know  any  Buck  and  I  never 
said  that,"  father  contended,  irritably.  None  of  us  (except  Roy,  of 
course)  believed  him.  "You  had  a  dream,"  said  mother.  "People  have 
these  dreams."  "I  did  not  have  a  dream,"  father  said.  He  was  pretty 
well  nettled  by  this  time,  and  he  stood  in  front  of  a  bureau  mirror, 
brushing  his  hair  with  a  pair  of  military  brushes;  it  always  seemed  to 
calm  father  to  brush  his  hair.  My  mother  declared  that  it  was  "a  sin 
and  a  shame"  for  a  grown  man  to  wake  up  a  sick  boy  simply  because 
he  (the  grown  man :  father)  had  got  on  his  back  and  had  a  bad  dream. 
My  father,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  had  been  known  to  have  nightmares, 
usually  about  Lillian  Russell  and  President  Cleveland,  who  chased 
him. 

We  argued  the  thing  for  perhaps  another  half-hour,  after  which 
mother  made  father  sleep  in  her  room.  "You're  all  safe  now,  boys,"  she 
said,  firmly,  as  she  shut  her  door.  I  could  hear  father  grumbling  for  a 
long  time,  with  an  occasional  monosyllable  of  doubt  from  mother. 

It  was  some  six  months  after  this  that  father  went  through  a  similar 
experience  with  me.  He  was  at  that  time  sleeping  in  the  room  next  to 
mine.  I  had  been  trying  all  afternoon,  in  vain,  to  think  of  the  name 
Perth  Amboy.  It  seems  now  like  a  very  simple  name  to  recall  and  yet 
on  the  day  in  question  I  thought  of  every  other  town  in  the  country, 
as  well  as  such  words  and  names  and  phrases  as  terra  cotta,  Walla- 
Walla,  bill  of  lading,  vice  versa,  hoity-toity,  Pall  Mall,  Bodley  Head, 
Schumann-Heink,  etc.,  without  even  coming  close  to  Perth  Amboy.  I 
suppose  terra  cotta  was  the  closest  I  came  although  it  was  not  very 
close. 

Long  after  I  had  gone  to  bed,  I  was  struggling  with  the  problem.  I 
began  to  indulge  in  the  wildest  fancies  as  I  lay  there  in  the  dark,  such 
as  that  there  was  no  such  town,  and  even  that  there  was  no  such  state 
as  New  Jersey.  I  fell  to  repeating  the  word  "Jersey"  over  and  over 
again,  until  it  became  idiotic  and  meaningless.  If  you  have  ever  lain 
awake  at  night  and  repeated  one  word  over  and  over,  thousands  and 
millions  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  millions  of  times,  you  know  the 
disturbing  mental  state  you  can  get  into.  I  got  to  thinking  that  there 
was  nobody  else  in  the  world  but  me,  and  various  other  wild  imagin- 


324  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

ings  of  that  nature.  Eventually,  lying  there  thinking  these  outlandish 
thoughts,  I  grew  slightly  alarmed.  I  began  to  suspect  that  one  might 
lose  one's  mind  over  some  such  trivial  mental  tic  as  a  futile  search  for 
terra  firma  Piggly  Wiggly  Gorgonzola  Prester  John  Arc  de  Triomphe 
Holy  Moses  Lares  and  Penates.  I  began  to  feel  the  imperative  neces- 
sity of  human  contact.  This  silly  and  alarming  tangle  of  thought  and 
fancy  had  gone  far  enough.  I  might  get  into  some  kind  of  mental 
aberrancy  unless  I  found  out  the  name  of  that  Jersey  town  and  could 
go  to  sleep.  Therefore,  I  got  out  of  bed,  walked  into  the  room  where 
father  was  sleeping,  and  shook  him.  "Um?"  he  mumbled.  I  shook  him 
more  fiercely  and  he  finally  woke  up,  with  a  glaze  of  dream  and  ap- 
prehension in  his  eyes.  "What's  matter?"  he  asked,  thickly.  I  must,  in- 
deed, have  been  rather  wild  of  eye,  and  my  hair,  which  is  unruly,  be- 
comes monstrously  tousled  and  snarled  at  night.  "Wha's  it?"  said  my 
father,  sitting  up,  in  readiness  to  spring  out  of  bed  on  the  far  side. 
The  thought  must  have  been  going  through  his  mind  that  all  his  sons 
were  crazy,  or  on  the  verge  of  going  crazy.  I  see  that  now,  but  I  didn't 
then,  for  I  had  forgotten  the  Buck  incident  and  did  not  realize  how 
similar  my  appearance  must  have  been  to  Roy's  the  night  he  called 
father  Buck  and  told  him  his  time  had  come.  "Listen,"  I  said.  "Name 
some  towns  in  New  Jersey  quick!"  It  must  have  been  around  three  in 
the  morning.  Father  got  up,  keeping  the  bed  between  him  and  me, 
and  started  to  pull  his  trousers  on.  "Don't  bother  about  dressing,"  I 
said.  "Just  name  some  towns  in  New  Jersey."  While  he  hastily  pulled 
on  his  clothes — I  remember  he  left  his  socks  off  and  put  his  shoes  on 
his  bare  feet — father  began  to  name,  in  a  shaky  voice,  various  New 
Jersey  cities.  I  can  still  see  him  reaching  for  his  coat  without  taking  his 
eyes  oft  me.  "Newark,"  he  said,  "Jersey  City,  Atlantic  City,  Elizabeth, 
Paterson,  Passaic,  Trenton,  Jersey  City,  Trenton,  Paterson — "  "It  has 
two  names,"  I  snapped.  "Elizabeth  and  Paterson,"  he  said.  "No,  no!" 
I  told  him,  irritably.  "This  is  one  town  with  one  name,  but  there  are 
two  words  in  it,  like  helter-skelter."  "Helter-skelter,"  said  my  father, 
moving  slowly  toward  the  bedroom  door  and  smiling  in  a  faint, 
strained  way  which  I  understand  now — but  didn't  then — was  meant  to 
humor  me.  When  he  was  within  a  few  paces  of  the  door,  he  fairly 
leaped  for  it  and  ran  out  into  the  hall,  his  coat-tails  and  shoelaces  fly- 


JAMES  THURBER  325 

ing.  The  exit  stunned  me.  I  had  no  notion  that  he  thought  I  had  gone 
out  of  my  senses;  I  could  only  believe  that  he  had  gone  out  of  his  or 
that,  only  partially  awake,  he  was  engaged  in  some  form  of  running 
in  his  sleep.  I  ran  after  him  and  I  caught  him  at  the  door  of  mother's 
room  and  grabbed  him,  in  order  to  reason  with  him.  I  shook  him  a 
little,  thinking  to  wake  him  completely.  "Mary!  Roy!  Herman!"  he 
shouted.  I,  too,  began  to  shout  for  my  brothers  and  my  mother.  My 
mother  opened  her  door  instantly,  and  there  we  were  at  3:30  in  the 
morning  grappling  and  shouting,  father  partly  dressed,  but  without 
socks  or  shirt,  and  I  in  pajamas. 

''Now,  what?"  demanded  my  mother,  grimly,  pulling  us  apart.  She 
was  capable,  fortunately,  of  handling  any  two  of  us  and  she  never  in 
her  life  was  alarmed  by  the  words  or  actions  of  any  one  of  us. 

"Look  out  for  Jamie!"  said  father.  (He  always  called  me  Jamie  when 
excited.)  My  mother  looked  at  me. 

"What's  the  matter  with  your  father?"  she  demanded.  I  said  I  didn't 
know;  I  said  he  had  got  up  suddenly  and  dressed  and  ran  out  of  the 
room. 

"Where  did  you  think  you  were  going?"  mother  asked  him,  coolly. 
He  looked  at  me.  We  looked  at  each  other,  breathing  hard,  but  some- 
what calmer. 

"He  was  babbling  about  New  Jersey  at  this  infernal  hour  of  the 
night,"  said  father.  "He  came  to  my  room  and  asked  me  to  name 
towns  in  New  Jersey."  Mother  looked  at  me. 

"I  just  asked  him,"  I  said.  "I  was  trying  to  think  of  one  and  couldn't 
sleep." 

"You  see?"  said  father,  triumphantly.  Mother  didn't  look  at  him. 

"Get  to  bed,  both  of  you,"  she  said.  "I  don't  want  to  hear  any  more 
out  of  you  tonight.  Dressing  and  tearing  up  and  down  the  hall  at 
this  hour  in  the  morning!"  She  went  back  into  the  room  and  shut  her 
door.  Father  and  I  went  back  to  bed.  "Are  you  all  right?"  he  called  to 
me.  "Are  you?"  I  asked.  "Well,  good  night,"  he  said.  "Good  night," 
I  said. 

Mother  would  not  let  the  rest  of  us  discuss  the  affair  next  morning 
at  breakfast.  Herman  asked  what  the  hell  had  been  the  matter.  "We'll 
go  on  to  something  more  elevating,"  said  mother. 


Tip  <~\¥T  t 


CHAPTER    SIX 


A  SEQUENCE  OF  SERVANTS 


When  I  look  back  on  the  long  line  of  servants  my  mother  hired  dur- 
ing the  years  I  lived  at  home,  I  remember  clearly  ten  or  twelve  of 
them  (we  had  about  a  hundred  and  sixty-two,  all  told,  but  few  of 
them  were  memorable) .  There  was,  among  the  immortals,  Dora  Gedd, 
a  quiet,  mousy  girl  of  thirty-two  who  one  night  shot  at  a  man  in  her 
room,  throwing  our  household  into  an  uproar  that  was  equalled  per- 
haps only  by  the  goings-on  the  night  the  ghost  got  in.  Nobody  knew 
how  her  lover,  a  morose  garage  man,  got  into  the  house,  but  every- 
body for  two  blocks  knew  how  he  got  out.  Dora  had  dressed  up  in 
a  lavender  evening  gown  for  the  occasion  and  she  wore  a  mass  of  jew- 
elry, some  of  which  was  my  mother's.  She  kept  shouting  something 
from  Shakespeare  after  the  shooting — I  forget  just  what — and  pursued 
the  gentleman  downstairs  from  her  attic  room.  When  he  got  to  the 
second  floor  he  rushed  into  my  father's  room.  It  was  this  entrance,  and 
not  the  shot  or  the  shouting,  that  aroused  father,  a  deep  sleeper  always. 
"Get  me  out  of  here!"  shouted  the  victim.  This  situation  rapidly  de- 
veloped, from  then  on,  into  one  of  those  bewildering  involvements  for 
which  my  family  had,  I  am  afraid,  a  kind  of  unhappy  genius.  When 
the  cops  arrived  Dora  was  shooting  out  the  Welsbach  gas  mantles  in 
the  living  room,  and  her  gentleman  friend  had  fled.  By  dawn  every- 
thing was  quiet  once  more. 

There  were  others.  Gertie  Straub:  big,  genial,  and  ruddy,  a  collector 
of  pints  of  rye  (we  learned  after  she  was  gone),  who  came  in  after 
two  o'clock  one  night  from  a  dancing  party  at  Buckeye  Lake  and 
awakened  us  by  bumping  into  and  knocking  over  furniture.  "Who's 
down   there?"   called   mother   from   upstairs.   "It's   me,   dearie,"   said 

326 


JAMES  THURBER  327 

Gertie,  "Gertie  Straub."  "What  are  you  doing?"  demanded  mother. 
"Dusting,"  said  Gertie. 

Juanemma  Kramer  was  one  of  my  favorites.  Her  mother  loved  the 
name  Juanita  so  dearly  that  she  had  worked  the  first  part  of  it  into 
the  names  of  all  her  daughters — they  were  (in  addition  to  a  Juanita) 
Juanemma,  Juanhelen,  and  Juangrace.  Juanemma  was  a  thin,  nervous 
maid  who  lived  in  constant  dread  of  being  hypnotized.  Nor  were  her 
fears  unfounded,  for  she  was  so  extremely  susceptible  to  hypnotic  sug- 
gestion that  one  evening  at  B.  F.  Keith's  theatre  when  a  man  on  the 
stage  was  hypnotized,  Juanemma,  in  the  audience,  was  hypnotized 
too  and  floundered  out  into  the  aisle  making  the  same  cheeping  sound 
that  the  subject  on  the  stage,  who  had  been  told  he  was  a  chicken, 
was  making.  The  act  was  abandoned  and  some  xylophone  players 
were  brought  on  to  restore  order.  One  night,  when  our  house  was  deep 
in  quiet  slumber,  Juanemma  became  hypnotized  in  her  sleep.  She 
dreamed  that  a  man  "put  her  under"  and  then  disappeared  without 
"bringing  her  out."  This  was  explained  when,  at  last,  a  police  surgeon 
whom  we  called  in — he  was  the  only  doctor  we  could  persuade  to  come 
out  at  three  in  the  morning — slapped  her  into  consciousness.  It  got  so 
finally  that  any  buzzing  or  whirring  sound  or  any  flashing  object 
would  put  Juanemma  under,  and  we  had  to  let  her  go.  I  was  reminded 
of  her  recently  when,  at  a  performance  of  the  movie  "Rasputin  and 
the  Empress,"  there  came  the  scene  in  which  Lionel  Barrymore  as  the 
unholy  priest  hypnotizes  the  Czarevitch  by  spinning  before  his  eyes  a 
glittering  watch.  If  Juanemma  sat  in  any  theatre  and  witnessed  that 
scene  she  must,  I  am  sure,  have  gone  under  instantly.  Happily,  she 
seems  to  have  missed  the  picture,  for  otherwise  Mr.  Barrymore  might 
have  had  to  dress  up  again  as  Rasputin  (which  God  forbid)  and  jour- 
ney across  the  country  to  get  her  out  of  it — excellent  publicity  but  a 
great  bother. 

Before  I  go  on  to  Vashti,  whose  last  name  I  forget,  I  will  look  in 
passing  at  another  of  our  white  maids  (Vashti  was  colored).  Belle 
Giddin  distinguished  herself  by  one  gesture  which  fortunately  did  not 
result  in  the  bedlam  occasioned  by  Juanemma's  hypnotic  states  or  Dora 
Gedd's  shooting  spree.  Belle  burned  her  finger  grievously,  and  pur- 
posely, one  afternoon  in  the  steam  of  a  boiling  kettle  so  that  she  could 


328  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

find  out  whether  the  pain-killer  she  had  bought  one  night  at  a  tent- 
show  for  fifty  cents  was  any  good.  It  was  only  fair. 

Vashti  turned  out,  in  the  end,  to  be  partly  legendary.  She  was  a 
comely  and  sombre  negress  who  was  always  able  to  find  things  my 
mother  lost.  "I  don't  know  what's  become  of  my  garnet  brooch,"  my 
mother  said  one  day.  "Yassum,"  said  Vashti.  In  half  an  hour  she  had 
found  it.  "Where  in  the  world  was  it?"  asked  mother.  "In  de  yahd," 
said  Vashti.  "De  dog  mussa  drug  it  out." 

Vashti  was  in  love  with  a  young  colored  chauffeur  named  Charley, 
but  she  was  also  desired  by  her  stepfather,  whom  none  of  us  had  ever 
seen  but  who  was,  she  said,  a  handsome  but  messin'  round  gentleman 
from  Georgia  who  had  come  north  and  married  Vashti's  mother  just 
so  he  could  be  near  Vashti.  Charley,  her  fiance,  was  for  killing  the 
stepfather  but  we  counselled  flight  to  another  city.  Vashti,  however, 
would  burst  into  tears  and  hymns  and  vow  she'd  never  leave  us;  she 
got  a  certain  pleasure  out  of  bearing  her  cross.  Thus  we  all  lived  in 
jeopardy,  for  the  possibility  that  Vashti,  Charley,  and  her  stepfather 
might  fight  it  out  some  night  in  our  kitchen  did  not,  at  times,  seem 
remote.  Once  I  went  into  the  kitchen  at  midnight  to  make  some  cof- 
fee. Charley  was  standing  at  a  window  looking  out  into  the  backyard; 
Vashti  was  rolling  her  eyes.  "Heah  he  come!  Heah  he  come!"  she 
moaned.  The  stepfather  didn't  show  up,  however. 

Charley  finally  saved  up  twenty-seven  dollars  toward  taking  Vashti 
away  but  one  day  he  impulsively  bought  a  .22  revolver  with  a  mother- 
of-pearl  handle  and  demanded  that  Vashti  tell  him  where  her  mother 
and  stepfather  lived.  "Doan  go  up  dere,  doan  go  up  dere!"  said  Vashti. 
"Mah  mothah  is  just  as  rarin'  as  he  is!"  Charley,  however,  insisted.  It 
came  out  then  that  Vashti  didn't  have  any  stepfather;  there  was  no 
such  person.  Charley  threw  her  over  for  a  yellow  gal  named  Nancy: 
he  never  forgave  Vashti  for  the  vanishing  from  his  life  of  a  menace 
that  had  come  to  mean  more  to  him  than  Vashti  herself.  Afterwards, 
if  you  asked  Vashti  about  her  stepfather  or  about  Charley  she  would 
say,  proudly,  and  with  a  woman-of-the-world  air,  "Neither  one  ob  'em 
is  messin'  round  me  any  mo'." 

Mrs.  Doody,  a  huge,  middle-aged  woman  with  a  religious  taint, 
came  into  and  went  out  of  our  house  like  a  comet.  The  second  night 


JAMES  THURBER  329 

she  was  there  she  went  berserk  while  doing  the  dishes  and,  under  the 
impression  that  father  was  the  Antichrist,  pursued  him  several  times 
up  the  backstairs  and  down  the  front.  He  had  been  sitting  quietly 
over  his  coffee  in  the  living  room  when  she  burst  in  from  the  kitchen 
waving  a  bread  knife.  My  brother  Herman  finally  felled  her  with  a 
piece  of  Libby's  cut-glass  that  had  been  a  wedding  present  of  moth- 
er's. Mother,  I  remember,  was  in  the  attic  at  the  time,  trying  to  find 
some  old  things,  and,  appearing  on  the  scene  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  got 
the  quick  and  mistaken  impression  that  father  was  chasing  Mrs. 
Doody. 

Mrs.  Robertson,  a  fat  and  mumbly  old  colored  woman,  who  might 
have  been  sixty  and  who  might  have  been  a  hundred,  gave  us  more 
than  one  turn  during  the  many  years  that  she  did  our  washing.  She 
had  been  a  slave  down  South  and  she  remembered  having  seen  the 
troops  marching — "a  mess  o'  blue,  den  a  mess  o'  gray."  "What,"  my 
mother  asked  her  once,  "were  they  fighting  about?"  "Dat,"  said  Mrs. 
Robertson,  "Ah  don't  know."  She  had  a  feeling,  at  all  times,  that 
something  wa^  going  to  happen.  I  can  see  her  now,  staggering  up 
from  the  basement  with  a  basketful  of  clothes  and  coming  abruptly 
to  a  halt  in  the  middle  of  the  kitchen.  "Hahk!"  she  would  say,  in  a 
deep,  guttural  voice.  We  would  all  hark;  there  was  never  anything  to 
be  heard.  Neither,  when  she  shouted  "Look  yondah!"  and  pointed  a 
trembling  hand  at  a  window,  was  there  ever  anything  to  be  seen. 
Father  protested  time  and  again  that  he  couldn't  stand  Mrs.  Robertson 
around,  but  mother  always  refused  to  let  her  go.  It  seems  that  she  was 
a  jewel.  Once  she  walked  unbidden,  a  dishpan  full  of  wrung-out 
clothes  under  her  arm,  into  father's  study,  where  he  was-  engrossed  in 
some  figures.  Father  looked  up.  She  regarded  him  for  a  moment  in 
silence.  Then — "Look  out!"  she  said,  and  withdrew.  Another  time,  a 
murky  winter  afternoon,  she  came  flubbering  up  the  cellar  stairs  and 
bounced,  out  of  breath,  into  the  kitchen.  Father  was  in  the  kitchen 
sipping  some  black  coffee;  he  was  in  a  jittery  state  of  nerves  from  the 
effects  of  having  had  a  tooth  out,  and  had  been  in  bed  most  of  the 
day.  "Dey  is  a  death  watch  downstaihs!"  rumbled  the  old  colored 
lady.  It  developed  that  she  had  heard  a  strange  "chipping"  noise  back 
of  the  furnace.  "That  was  a  cricket,"  said  father.  "Um-k,"  said  Mrs. 


330  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

Robertson.  "Dat  was  uh  death  watch!"  With  that  she  put  on  her  hat 
and  went  home,  poising  just  long  enough  at  the  back  door  to  observe 
darkly  to  father,  "Dey  ain't  no  way!"  It  upset  him  for  days. 

Mrs.  Robertson  had  only  one  great  hour  that  I  can  think  of — Jack 
Johnson's  victory  over  Mistah  Jeffries  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1910.  She 
took  a  prominent  part  in  the  colored  parade  through  the  South  End 
that  night,  playing  a  Spanish  fandango  on  a  banjo.  The  procession  was 
led  by  the  pastor  of  her  church  who,  Mrs.  Robertson  later  told  us,  had 
'splained  that  the  victory  of  Jack  over  Mistah  Jeffries  proved  "de  'spe- 
riority  ob  de  race."  "What,"  asked  my  mother,  "did  he  mean  by  that?" 
"Dat,"  said  Mrs.  Robertson,  "Ah  don't  know." 

Our  other  servants  I  don't  remember  so  clearly,  except  the  one  who 
set  the  house  on  fire  (her  name  eludes  me),  and  Edda  Millmoss. 
Edda  was  always  slightly  morose,  but  she  had  gone  along  for  months, 
all  the  time  she  was  with  us,  quietly  and  efficiently  attending  to  her 
work,  until  the  night  we  had  Carson  Blair  and  F.  R.  Gardiner  to  dinner 
— both  men  of  importance  to  my  father's  ambitions.  Then  suddenly, 
while  serving  the  entree,  Edda  dropped  everything  and,  pointing  a 
quivering  finger  at  father,  accused  him  in  a  long  rigmarole  of  having 
done  her  out  of  her  rights  to  the  land  on  which  Trinity  Church  in 
New  York  stands.  Mr.  Gardiner  had  one  of  his  "attacks"  and  the 
whole  evening  turned  out  miserably. 


y&yp- 


CHAPTER    SEVEN 


THE  DOG  THAT  BIT  PEOPLE 


Probably  no  one  man  should  have  as  many  dogs  in  his  life  as  I  have 
had,  but  there  was  more  pleasure  than  distress  in  them  for  me  except 
in  the  case  of  an  Airedale  named  Muggs.  He  gave  me  more  trouble 
than  all  the  other  fifty-four  or  five  put  together,  although  my  moment 
of  keenest  embarrassment  was  the  time  a  Scotch  terrier  named  Jeannie, 
who  had  just  had  six  puppies  in  the  clothes  closet  of  a  fourth  floor 
apartment  in  New  York,  had  the  unexpected  seventh  and  last  at  the 
corner  of  Eleventh  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue  during  a  walk  she  had 
insisted  on  taking.  Then,  too,  there  was  the  prize-winning  French 
poodle,  a  great  big  black  poodle — none  of  your  little,  untroublesome 
white  miniatures — who  got  sick  riding  in  the  rumble  seat  of  a  car  with 
me  on  her  way  to  the  Greenwich  Dog  Show.  She  had  a  red  rubber 
bib  tucked  around  her  throat  and,  since  a  rain  storm  came  up  when 
we  were  half  way  through  the  Bronx,  I  had  to  hold  over  her  a  small 
green  umbrella,  really  more  of  a  parasol.  The  rain  beat  down  fearfully 
and  suddenly  the  driver  of  the  car  drove  into  a  big  garage,  filled  with 
mechanics.  It  happened  so  quickly  that  I  forgot  to  put  the  umbrella 
down  and  I  will  always  remember,  with  sickening  distress,  the  look 
of  incredulity  mixed  with  hatred  that  came  over  the  face  of  the  par- 
ticular hardened  garage  man  that  came  over  to  see  what  we  wanted, 
when  he  took  a  look  at  me  and  the  poodle.  All  garage  men,  and  peo- 
ple of  that  intolerant  stripe,  hate  poodles  with  their  curious  hair  cut, 
especially  the  pom-poms  that  you  have  got  to  leave  on  their  hips  if  you 
expect  the  dogs  to  win  a  prize. 

But  the  Airedale,  as  I  have  said,  was  the  worst  of  all  my  dogs.  He 
really  wasn't  my  dog,  as  a  matter  of  fact:  I  came  home  from  a  vaca- 
tion one  summer  to  find  that  my  brother  Roy  had  bought  him  while 

331 


332  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

I  was  away.  A  big,  burly,  choleric  dog,  he  always  acted  as  if  he  thought 
I  wasn't  one  of  the  family.  There  was  a  slight  advantage  in  being  one 
of  the  family,  for  he  didn't  bite  the  family  as  often  as  he  bit  strangers. 
Still,  in  the  years  that  we  had  him  he  bit  everybody  but  mother,  and 
he  made  a  pass  at  her  once  but  missed.  That  was  during  the  month 
when  we  suddenly  had  mice,  and  Muggs  refused  to  do  anything 
about  them.  Nobody  ever  had  mice  exactly  like  the  mice  we  had  that 
month.  They  acted  like  pet  mice,  almost  like  mice  somebody  had 
trained.  They  were  so  friendly  that  one  night  when  mother  enter- 
tained at  dinner  the  Friraliras,  a  club  she  and  my  father  had  belonged 
to  for  twenty  years,  she  put  down  a  lot  of  little  dishes  with  food  in 
them  on  the  pantry  floor  so  that  the  mice  would  be  satisfied  with  that 
and  wouldn't  come  into  the  dining  room.  Muggs  stayed  out  in  the 
pantry  with  the  mice,  lying  on  the  floor,  growling  to  himself — not  at 
the  mice,  but  about  all  the  people  in  the  next  room  that  he  would 
have  liked  to  get  at.  Mother  slipped  out  into  the  pantry  once  to  see 
how  everything  was  going.  Everything  was  going  fine.  It  made  her 
so  mad  to  see  Muggs  lying  there,  oblivious  of  the  mice — they  came 
running  up  to  her — that  she  slapped  him  and  he  slashed  at  her,  but 
didn't  make  it.  He  was  sorry  immediately,  mother  said.  He  was  al- 
ways sorry,  .she  said,  after  he  bit  someone,  but  we  could  not  under- 
stand how  she  figured  this  out.  He  didn't  act  sorry. 

Mother  used  to  send  a  box  of  candy  every  Christmas  to  the  people 
the  Airedale  bit.  The  list  finally  contained  forty  or  more  names.  No- 
body could  understand  why  we  didn't  get  rid  of  the  dog.  I  didn't 
understand  it  very  well  myself,  but  we  didn't  get  rid  of  him.  I  think 
that  one  or  two  people  tried  to  poison  Muggs — he  acted  poisoned  once 
in  a  while — and  old  Major  Moberly  fired  at  him  once  with  his  service 
revolver  near  the  Seneca  Hotel  in  East  Broad  Street — but  Muggs  lived 
to  be  almost  eleven  years  old  and  even  when  he  could  hardly  get 
around  he  bit  a  Congressman  who  had  called  to  see  my  father  on 
business.  My  mother  had  never  liked  the  Congressman — she  said  the 
signs  of  his  horoscope  showed  he  couldn't  be  trusted  (he  was  Saturn 
with  the  moon  in  Virgo) — but  she  sent  him  a  box  of  candy  that 
Christmas.  He  sent  it  right  back,  probably  because  he  suspected  it 
was  trick   candy.  Mother   persuaded  herself  it  was  all  for  the  best 


JAMES  THURBER  333 

that  the  dog  had  bitten  him,  even  though  father  lost  an  important 
business  association  because  of  it.  "I  wouldn't  be  associated  with  such 
a  man,"  mother  said.  "Muggs  could  read  him  like  a  book." 

We  used  to  take  turns  feeding  Muggs  to  be  on  his  good  side,  but 
that  didn't  always  work.  He  was  never  in  a  very  good  humor,  even 
after  a  meal.  Nobody  knew  exactly  what  was  the  matter  with  him, 
but  whatever  it  was  it  made  him  irascible,  especially  in  the  mornings. 
Roy  never  felt  very  well  in  the  morning,  either,  especially  before 
breakfast,  and  once  when  he  came  downstairs  and  found  that  Muggs 
had  moodily  chewed  up  the  morning  paper  he  hit  him  in  the  face  with 
a  grapefruit  and  then  jumped  up  on  the  dining  room  table,  scattering 
dishes  and  silverware  and  spilling  the  coffee.  Muggs'  first  free  leap 
carried  him  all  the  way  across  the  table  and  into  a  brass  fire  screen  in 
front  of  the  gas  grate  but  he  was  back  on  his  feet  in  a  moment  and  in 
the  end  he  got  Roy  and  gave  him  a  pretty  vicious  bite  in  the  leg.  Then 
he  was  all  over  it;  he  never  bit  anyone  more  than  once  at  a  time. 
Mother  always  mentioned  that  as  an  argument  in  his  favor;  she  said 
he  had  a  quick  temper  but  that  he  didn't  hold  a  grudge.  She  was 
forever  defending  him.  I  think  she  liked  him  because  he  wasn't  well. 
"He's  not  strong,"  she  would  say,  pityingly,  but  that  was  inaccurate; 
he  may  not  have  been  well  but  he  was  terribly  strong. 

One  time  my  mother  went  to  the  Chittenden  Hotel  to  call  on  a 
woman  mental  healer  who  was  lecturing  in  Columbus  on  the  subject 
of  "Harmonious  Vibrations."  She  wanted  to  find  out  if  it  was  pos- 
sible to  get  harmonious  vibrations  into  a  dog.  "He's  a  large  tan-colored 
Airedale,"  mother  explained.  The  woman  said  that  she  had  never 
treated  a  dog  but  she  advised  my  mother  to  hold  the  thought  that  he 
did  not  bite  and  would  not  bite.  Mother  was  holding  the  thought  the 
very  next  morning  when  Muggs  got  the  iceman  but  she  blamed  that 
slip-up  on  the  iceman.  "If  you  didn't  think  he  would  bite  you,  he 
wouldn't,"  mother  told  him.  He  stomped  out  of  the  house  in  a  ter- 
rible jangle  of  vibrations. 

One  morning  when  Muggs  bit  me  slightly,  more  or  less  in  passing, 
I  reached  down  and  grabbed  his  short  stumpy  tail  and  hoisted  him 
into  the  air.  It  was  a  foolhardy  thing  to  do  and  the  last  time  I  saw 
my  mother,  about  six  months  ago,  she  said  she  didn't  know  what  pos- 


334  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

sessed  me.  I  don't  either,  except  that  I  was  pretty  mad.  As  long  as  I 
held  the  dog  off  the  floor  by  his  tail  he  couldn't  get  at  me,  but  he 
twisted  and  jerked  so,  snarling  all  the  time,  that  I  realized  I  couldn't 
hold  him  that  way  very  long.  I  carried  him  to  the  kitchen  and  flung 
him  onto  the  floor  and  shut  the  door  on  him  just  as  he  crashed 
against  it.  But  I  forgot  about  the  backstairs.  Muggs  went  up  the  back- 
stairs and  down  the  frontstairs  and  had  me  cornered  in  the  living 
room.  I  managed  to  get  up  onto  the  mantelpiece  above  the  fireplace, 
but  it  gave  way  and  came  down  with  a  tremendous  crash  throwing 
a  large  marble  clock,  several  vases,  and  myself  heavily  to  the  floor. 
Muggs  was  so  alarmed  by  the  racket  that  when  I  picked  myself  up 
he  had  disappeared.  We  couldn't  find  him  anywhere,  although  we 
whistled  and  shouted,  until  old  Mrs.  Detweiler  called  after  dinner 
that  night.  Muggs  had  bitten  her  once,  in  the  leg,  and  she  came  into 
the  living  room  only  after  we  assured  her  that  Muggs  had  run  away. 
She  had  just  seated  herself  when,  with  a  great  growling  and  scratch- 
ing of  claws,  Muggs  emerged  from  under  a  davenport  where  he  had 
been  quietly  hiding  all  the  time,  and  bit  her  again.  Mother  examined 
the  bite  and  put  arnica  on  it  and  told  Mrs.  Detweiler  that  it  was  only 
a  bruise.  "He  just  bumped  you,"  she  said.  But  Mrs.  Detweiler  left  the 
house  in  a  nasty  state  of  mind. 

Lots  of  people  reported  our  Airedale  to  the  police  but  my  father 
held  a  municipal  office  at  the  time  and  was  on  friendly  terms  with 
the  police.  Even  so,  the  cops  had  been  out  a  couple  of  times — once 
when  Muggs  bit  Mrs.  Rufus  Sturtevant  and  again  when  he  bit  Lieu- 
tenant-Governor Malloy — but  mother  told  them  that  it  hadn't  been 
Muggs'  fault  but  the  fault  of  the  people  who  were  bitten.  "When  he 
starts  for  them,  they  scream,"  she  explained,  "and  that  excites  him." 
The  cops  suggested  that  it  might  be  a  good  idea  to  tie  the  dog  up, 
but  mother  said  that  it  mortified  him  to  be  tied  up  and  that  he 
wouldn't  eat  when  he  was  tied  up. 

Muggs  at  his  meals  was  an  unusual  sight.  Because  of  the  fact  that  if 
you  reached  toward  the  floor  he  would  bite  you,  we  usually  put  his 
food  plate  on  top  of  an  old  kitchen  table  with  a  bench  alongside  the 
table.  Muggs  would  stand  on  the  bench  and  eat.  I  remember  that  my 
mother's  Uncle  Horatio,  who  boasted  that  he  was  the  third  man  up 


JAMES  THURBER  335 

Missionary  Ridge,  was  splutteringly  indignant  when  he  found  out 
that  we  fed  the  dog  on  a  table  because  we  were  afraid  to  put  his  plate 
on  the  floor.  He  said  he  wasn't  afraid  of  any  dog  that  ever  lived  and 
that  he  would  put  the  dog's  plate  on  the  floor  if  we  would  give  it  to 
him.  Roy  said  that  if  Uncle  Horatio  had  fed  Muggs  on  the  ground 
just  before  the  battle  he  would  have  been  the  first  man  up  Missionary 
Ridge.  Uncle   Horatio   was  furious.   "Bring  him  in!    Bring  him   in 

now!"  he  shouted.  "I'll  feed  the  on  the  floor!"  Roy  was  all  for 

giving  him  a  chance,  but  my  father  wouldn't  hear  of  it.  He  said  that 
Muggs  had  already  been  fed.  "I'll  feed  him  again!"  bawled  Uncle 
Horatio.  We  had  quite  a  time  quieting  him. 

In  his  last  year  Muggs  used  to  spend  practically  all  of  his  time  out- 
doors. He  didn't  like  to  stay  in  the  house  for  some  reason  or  other — 
perhaps  it  held  too  many  unpleasant  memories  for  him.  Anyway,  it 
was  hard  to  get  him  to  come  in  and  as  a  result  the  garbage  man,  the 
iceman,  and  the  laundryman  wouldn't  come  near  the  house.  We  had 
to  haul  the  garbage  down  to  the  corner,  take  the  laundry  out  and 
bring  it  back,  and  meet  the  iceman  a  block  from  home.  After  this 
had  gone  on  for  some  time  we  hit  on  an  ingenious  arrangement  for 
getting  the  dog  in  the  house  so  that  we  could  lock  him  up  while  the 
gas  meter  was  read,  and  so  on.  Muggs  was  afraid  of  only  one  thing, 
an  electrical  storm.  Thunder  and  lightning  frightened  him  out  of  his 
senses  (I  think  he  thought  a  storm  had  broken  the  day  the  mantel- 
piece fell).  He  would  rush  into  the  house  and  hide  under  a  bed  or  in 
a  clothes  closet.  So  we  fixed  up  a  thunder  machine  out  of  a  long  nar- 
row piece  of  sheet  iron  with  a  wooden  handle  on  one  end.  Mother 
would  shake  this  vigorously  when  she  wanted  to  get  Muggs  into  the 
house.  It  made  an  excellent  imitation  of  thunder,  but  I  suppose  it  was 
the  most  roundabout  system  for  running  a  household  that  was  ever 
devised.  It  took  a  lot  out  of  mother. 

A  few  months  before  Muggs  died,  he  got  to  "seeing  things."  He 
would  rise  slowly  from  the  floor,  growling  low,  and  stalk  stiff-legged 
and  menacing  toward  nothing  at  all.  Sometimes  the  Thing  would  be 
just  a  little  to  the  right  or  left  of  a  visitor.  Once  a  Fuller  Brush  sales- 
man got  hysterics.  Muggs  came  wandering  into  the  room  like  Hamlet 
following  his  father's  ghost.*  His  eyes  were  fixed  on  a  spot  just  to  the 


336  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

left  of  the  Fuller  Brush  man,  who  stood  it  until  Muggs  was  about 
three  slow,  creeping  paces  from  him.  Then  he  shouted.  Muggs  wav- 
ered on  past  him  into  the  hallway  grumbling  to  himself  but  the 
Fuller  man  went  on  shouting.  I  think  mother  had  to  throw  a  pan  of 
cold  water  on  him  before  he  stopped.  That  was  the  way  she  used  to 
stop  us  boys  when  we  got  into  fights. 

Muggs  died  quite  suddenly  one  night.  Mother  wanted  to  bury  him 
in  the  family  lot  under  a  marble  stone  with  some  such  inscription  as 
"Flights  of  angels  sing  thee  to  thy  rest"  but  we  persuaded  her  it  was 
against  the  law.  In  the  end  we  just  put  up  a  smooth  board  above  his 
grave  along  a  lonely  road.  On  the  board  I  wrote  with  an  indelible 
pencil  "Cave  Canem."  Mother  was  quite  pleased  with  the  simple 
classic  dignity  of  the  old  Latin  epitaph. 


CHAPTER    EIGHT 


UNIVERSITY  DAYS 


I  passed  all  the  other  courses  that  I  took  at  my  University,  but  I  could 
never  pass  botany.  This  was  because  all  botany  students  had  to  spend 
several  hours  a  week  in  a  laboratory  looking  through  a  microscope  at 
plant  cells,  and  I  could  never  see  through  a  microscope.  I  never  once 
saw  a  cell  through  a  microscope.  This  used  to  enrage  my  instructor. 
He  would  wander  around  the  laboratory  pleased  with  the  progress 
all  the  students  were  making  in  drawing  the  involved  and,  so  I  am 
told,  interesting  structure  of  flower  cells,  until  he  came  to  me.  I  would 
just  be  standing  there.  "I  can't  see  anything,"  I  would  say.  He  would 
begin  patiently  enough,  explaining  how  anybody  can  see  through  a 
microscope,  but  he  would  always  end  up  in  fury,  claiming  that  I  could 
too  see  through  a  microscope  but  just  pretended  that  I  couldn't.  "It 
takes  away  from  the  beauty  of  flowers  anyway,"  I  used  to  tell  him. 
"We  are  not  concerned  with  beauty  in  this  course,"  he  would  say.  "We 
are  concerned  solely  with  what  I  may  call  the  mechanics  of  flars." 
"Well,"  I'd  say,  "I  can't  see  anything."  "Try  it  just  once  again,"  he'd 
say,  and  I  would  put  my  eye  to  the  microscope  and  see  nothing  at  all, 
except  now  and  again  a  nebulous  milky  substance — a  phenomenon  of 
maladjustment.  You  were  supposed  to  see  a  vivid,  restless  clockwork 
of  sharply  defined  plant  cells.  "I  see  what  looks  like  a  lot  of  milk,"  I 
would  tell  him.  This,  he  claimed,  was  the  result  of  my  not  having  ad- 
justed the  microscope  properly,  so  he  would  readjust  it  for  me,  or 
rather,  for  himself.  And  I  would  look  again  and  see  milk. 

I  finally  took  a  deferred  pass,  as  they  called  it,  and  waited  a  year  and 
tried  again.  (You  had  to  pass  one  of  the  biological  sciences  or  you 
couldn't  graduate.)  The  professor  had  come  back  from  vacation  brown 
as  a  berry,  bright-eyed,  and  eager  to  explain  cell-structure  again  to  his 

337 


338  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

classes.  "Well,"  he  said  to  me,  cheerily,  when  we  met  in  the  first  lab- 
oratory hour  of  the  semester,  "we're  going  to  see  cells  this  time,  aren't 
we?"  "Yes,  sir,"  I  said.  Students  to  right  of  me  and  to  left  of  me  and 
in  front  of  me  were  seeing  cells;  what's  more,  they  were  quietly  draw- 
ing pictures  of  them  in  their  notebooks.  Of  course,  I  didn't  see  any- 
thing. 

"We'll  try  it,"  the  professor  said  to  me,  grimly,  "with  every  adjust- 
ment of  the  microscope  known  to  man.  As  God  is  my  witness,  I'll 
arrange  this  glass  so  that  you  see  cells  through  it  or  I'll  give  up  teach- 
ing. In  twenty-two  years  of  botany,  I — "  He  cut  off  abruptly  for  he 
was  beginning  to  quiver  all  over,  like  Lionel  Barrymore,  and  he  genu- 
inely wished  to  hold  onto  his  temper;  his  scenes  with  me  had  taken  a 
great  deal  out  of  him. 

So  we  tried  it  with  every  adjustment  of  the  microscope  known  to 
man.  With  only  one  of  them  did  I  see  anything  but  blackness  or  the 
familiar  lacteal  opacity,  and  that  time  I  saw,  to  my  pleasure  and 
amazement,  a  variegated  constellation  of  flecks,  specks,  and  dots. 
These  I  hastily  drew.  The  instructor,  noting  my  activity,  came  back 
from  an  adjoining  desk,  a  smile  on  his  lips  and  his  eyebrows  high  in 
hope.  He  looked  at  my  cell  drawing.  "What's  that?"  he  demanded, 
with  a  hint  of  a  squeal  in  his  voice.  "That's  what  I  saw,"  I  said.  "You 
didn't,  you  didn't,  you  didnW"  he  screamed,  losing  control  of  his 
temper  instantly,  and  he  bent  over  and  squinted  into  the  microscope. 
His  head  snapped  up.  "That's  your  eye!"  he  shouted.  "You've  fixed 
the  lens  so  that  it  reflects!  You've  drawn  your  eye!" 

Another  course  that  I  didn't  like,  but  somehow  managed  to  pass, 
was  economics.  I  went  to  that  class  straight  from  the  botany  class, 
which  didn't  help  me  any  in  understanding  either  subject.  I  used  to 
get  them  mixed  up.  But  not  as  mixed  up  as  another  student  in  my 
economics  class  who  came  there  direct  from  a  physics  laboratory.  He 
was  a  tackle  on  the  football  team,  named  Bolenciecwcz.  At  that  time 
Ohio  State  University  had  one  of  the  best  football  teams  in  the  coun- 
try, and  Bolenciecwcz  was  one  of  its  outstanding  stars.  In  order  to  be 
eligible  to  play  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  keep  up  in  his  studies,  a 
very  difficult  matter,  for  while  he  was  not  dumber  than  an  ox  he  was 
not  any  smarter.  Most  of  his  professors  were  lenient  and  helped  him 


JAMES  THURBER  339 

along.  None  gave  him  more  hints,  in  answering  questions,  or  asked 
him  simpler  ones  than  the  economics  professor,  a  thin,  timid  man 
named  Bassum.  One  day  when  we  were  on  the  subject  of  transporta- 
tion and  distribution,  it  came  Bolenciecwcz's  turn  to  answer  a  question. 
"Name  one  means  of  transportation,"  the  professor  said  to  him.  No 
light  came  into  the  big  tackle's  eyes.  "Just  any  means  of  transporta- 
tion," said  the  professor.  Bolenciecwcz  sat  staring  at  him.  "That  is," 
pursued  the  professor,  "any  medium,  agency,  or  method  of  going  from 
one  place  to  another."  Bolenciecwcz  had  the  look  of  a  man  who  is 
being  led  into  a  trap.  "You  may  choose  among  steam,  horse-drawn,  or 
electrically  propelled  vehicles,"  said  the  instructor.  "I  might  suggest  the 
one  which  we  commonly  take  in  making  long  journeys  across  land." 
There  was  a  profound  silence  in  which  everybody  stirred  uneasily,  in- 
cluding Bolenciecwcz  and  Mr.  Bassum.  Mr.  Bassum  abruptly  broke 
this  silence  in  an  amazing  manner.  "Choo-choo-choo,"  he  said,  in  a 
low  voice,  and  turned  instantly  scarlet.  He  glanced  appealingly  around 
the  room.  All  of  us,  of  course,  shared  Mr.  Bassum's  desire  that  Bolen- 
ciecwcz should  stay  abreast  of  the  class  in  economics,  for  the  Illinois 
game,  one  of  the  hardest  and  most  important  of  the  season,  was  only  a 
week  off.  "Toot,  toot,  too-tooooooot!"  some  student  with  a  deep  voice 
moaned,  and  we  all  looked  encouragingly  at  Bolenciecwcz.  Somebody 
else  gave  a  fine  imitation  of  a  locomotive  letting  off  steam.  Mr.  Bassum 
himself  rounded  off  the  little  show.  "Ding,  dong,  ding,  dong,"  he  said, 
hopefully.  Bolenciecwcz  was  staring  at  the  floor  now,  trying  to  think, 
his  great  brow  furrowed,  his  huge  hands  rubbing  together,  his  face  red. 

"How  did  you  come  to  college  this  year,  Mr.  Bolenciecwcz?"  asked 
the  professor.  "Chufia.  chuffa,  chufia.  chuflfa." 

"M'father  sent  me,"  said  the  football  player. 

"What  on?"  asked  Bassum. 

"I  git  an  'lowance,"  said  the  tackle,  in  a  low,  husky  voice,  obviously 
embarrassed. 

"No,  no,"  said  Bassum.  "Name  a  means  of  transportation.  What  did 
you  ride  here  on?" 

"Train,"  said  Bolenciecwcz. 

"Quite  right,"  said  the  professor.  "Now,  Mr.  Nugent,  will  you  tell 
us " 


340  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

If  I  went  through  anguish  in  botany  and  economics — for  different 
reasons — gymnasium  work  was  even  worse.  I  don't  even  like  to  think 
about  it.  They  wouldn't  let  you  play  games  or  join  in  the  exercises 
with  your  glasses  on  and  I  couldn't  see  with  mine  off.  I  bumped  into 
professors,  horizontal  bars,  agricultural  students,  and  swinging  iron 
rings.  Not  being  able  to  see,  I  could  take  it  but  I  couldn't  dish  it  out. 
Also,  in  order  to  pass  gymnasium  (and  you  had  to  pass  it  to  graduate) 
you  had  to  learn  to  swim  if  you  didn't  know  how.  I  didn't  like  the 
swimming  pool,  I  didn't  like  swimming,  and  I  didn't  like  the  swim- 
ming instructor,  and  after  all  these  years  I  still  don't.  I  never  swam 
but  I  passed  my  gym  work  anyway,  by  having  another  student  give 
my  gymnasium  number  (978)  and  swim  across  the  pool  in  my  place. 
He  was  a  quiet,  amiable  blond  youth,  number  473,  and  he  would 
have  seen  through  a  microscope  for  me  if  we  could  have  got  away 
with  it,  but  we  couldn't  get  away  with  it.  Another  thing  I  didn't  like 
about  gymnasium  work  was  that  they  made  you  strip  the  day  you 
registered.  It  is  impossible  for  me  to  be  happy  when  I  am  stripped  and 
being  asked  a  lot  of  questions.  Still,  I  did  better  than  a  lanky  agricul- 
tural student  who  was  cross-examined  just  before  I  was.  They  asked 
each  student  what  college  he  was  in — that  is,  whether  Arts,  Engineer- 
ing, Commerce,  or  Agriculture.  "What  college  are  you  in?"  the  in- 
structor snapped  at  the  youth  in  front  of  me.  "Ohio  State  University," 
he  said  promptly. 

It  wasn't  that  agricultural  student  but  it  was  another  a  whole  lot 
like  him  who  decided  to  take  up  journalism,  possibly  on  the  ground 
that  when  farming  went  to  hell  he  could  fall  back  on  newspaper  work. 
He  didn't  realize,  of  course,  that  that  would  be  very  much  like  falling 
back  full-length  on  a  kit  of  carpenter's  tools.  Haskins  didn't  seem  cut 
out  for  journalism,  being  too  embarrassed  to  talk  to  anybody  and  un- 
able to  use  a  typewriter,  but  the  editor  of  the  college  paper  assigned 
him  to  the  cow  barns,  the  sheep  house,  the  horse  pavilion,  and  the 
animal  husbandry  department  generally.  This  was  a  genuinely  big 
"beat,"  for  it  took  up  five  times  as  much  ground  and  got  ten  times  as 
great  a  legislative  appropriation  as  the  College  of  Liberal  Arts.  The 
agricultural  student  knew  animals,  but  nevertheless  his  stories  were 


JAMES  THURBER  341 

dull  and  colorlessly  written.  He  took  all  afternoon  on  each  of  them, 
on  account  of  having  to  hunt  for  each  letter  on  the  typewriter.  Once 
in  a  while  he  had  to  ask  somebody  to  help  him  hunt.  "C"  and  "L,"  in 
particular,  were  hard  letters  for  him  to  find.  His  editor  finally  got 
pretty  much  annoyed  at  the  farmer-journalist  because  his  pieces  were 
so  uninteresting.  "See  here,  Haskins,"  he  snapped  at  him  one  day. 
"Why  is  it  we  never  have  anything  hot  from  you  on  the  horse  pavil- 
ion ?  Here  we  have  two  hundred  head  of  horses  on  this  campus — more 
than  any  other  university  in  the  Western  Conference  except  Purdue — 
and  yet  you  never  get  any  real  lowdown  on  them.  Now  shoot  over 
to  the  horse  barns  and  dig  up  something  lively."  Haskins  shambled  out 
and  came  back  in  about  an  hour;  he  said  he  had  something.  "Well, 
start  it  off  snappily,"  said  the  editor.  "Something  people  will  read." 
Haskins  set  to  work  and  in  a  couple  of  hours  brought  a  sheet  of  type- 
written paper  to  the  desk;  it  was  a  two-hundred- word  story  about 
some  disease  that  had  broken  out  among  the  horses.  Its  opening  sen- 
tence was  simple  but  arresting.  It  read:  "Who  has  noticed  the  sores  on 
the  tops  of  the  horses  in  the  animal  husbandry  building?" 

Ohio  State  was  a  land  grant  university  and  therefore  two  years  of 
military  drill  was  compulsory.  We  drilled  with  old  Springfield  rifles 
and  studied  the  tactics  of  the  Civil  War  even  though  the  World  War 
was  going  on  at  the  time.  At  n  o'clock  each  morning  thousands  of 
freshmen  and  sophomores  used  to  deploy  over  the  campus,  moodily 
creeping  up  on  the  old  chemistry  building.  It  was  good  training  for 
the  kind  of  warfare  that  was  waged  at  Shiloh  but  it  had  no  connection 
with  what  was  going  on  in  Europe.  Some  people  used  to  think  there 
was  German  money  behind  it,  but  they  didn't  dare  say  so  or  they 
would  have  been  thrown  in  jail  as  German  spies.  It  was  a  period  of 
muddy  thought  and  marked,  I  believe,  the  decline  of  higher  educa- 
tion in  the  Middle  West. 

As  a  soldier  I  was  never  any  good  at  all.  Most  of  the  cadets  were 
glumly  indifferent  soldiers,  but  I  was  no  good  at  all.  Once  General 
Littlefield,  who  was  commandant  of  the  cadet  corps,  popped  up  in 
front  of  me  during  regimental  drill  and  snapped,  "You  are  the  main 
trouble  with  this  university!"  I  think  he  meant  that  my  type  was  the 


342  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

main  trouble  with  the  university,  out  ne  may  have  meant  me  indi- 
vidually. I  was  mediocre  at  drill,  certainly — that  is,  until  my  senior 
year.  By  that  time  I  had  drilled  longer  than  anybody  else  in  the  West- 
ern Conference,  having  failed  at  military  at  the  end  of  each  preceding 
year  so  that  I  had  to  do  it  all  over  again.  I  was  the  only  senior  still  in 
uniform.  The  uniform  which,  when  new,  had  made  me  look  like  an 
interurban  railwav  conductor,  now  that  it  had  become  faded  and  too 
tight  made  me  look  like  Bert  Williams  in  his  bell-boy  act.  This  had  a 
definitely  bad  effect  on  my  morale.  Even  so,  I  had  become  by  sheer 
practise  little  short  of  wonderful  at  squad  manoeuvres. 

One  day  General  Littlefield  picked  our  company  out  of  the  whole 
regiment  and  tried  to  get  it  mixed  up  by  putting  it  through  one  move- 
ment after  another  as  fast  as  we  could  execute  them:  squads  right, 
squads  left,  squads  on  right  into  line,  squads  right  about,  squads  left 
front  into  line,  etc.  In  about  three  minutes  one  hundred  and  nine  men 
were  marching  in  one  direction  and  I  was  marching  away  from  them 
at  an  angle  of  forty  degrees,  all  alone.  "Company,  halt!"  shouted  Gen- 
eral Littlefield.  "That  man  is  the  only  man  who  has  it  right!"  I  was 
made  a  corporal  for  my  achievement. 

The  next  day  General  Littlefield  summoned  me  to  his  office.  He  was 
swatting  flies  when  I  went  in.  I  was  silent  and  he  was  silent  too,  for 
a  long  time.  I  don't  think  he  remembered  me  or  why  he  had  sent  for 
me,  but  he  didn't  want  to  admit  it.  He  swatted  some  more  flies,  keep- 
ing his  eyes  on  them  narrowly  before  he  let  go  with  the  swatter.  "But- 
ton your  coat!"  he  snapped.  Looking  back  on  it  now  I  can  see  that  he 
meant  me  although  he  was  looking  at  a  fly,  but  I  just  stood  there.  An- 
other fly  came  to  rest  on  a  paper  in  front  of  the  general  and  began 
rubbing  its  hind  legs  together.  The  general  lifted  the  swatter  cau- 
tiously. I  moved  restlessly  and  the  fly  flew  away.  "You  startled  him!" 
barked  General  Littlefield,  looking  at  me  severely.  I  said  I  was  sorry. 
"That  won't  help  the  situation!"  snapped  the  General,  with  cold 
military  logic.  I  didn't  sec  what  I  could  do  except  ofTer  to  chase  some 
more  flies  toward  his  desk,  but  I  didn't  say  anything.  He  stared  out 
the  window  at  the  faraway  figures  of  co-eds  crossing  the  campus  to- 
ward the  library.  Finally,  he  told  me  I  could  go.  So  I  went.  Lie  either 


JAMES  THURBER  343 

didn't  know  which  cadet  I  was  or  else  he  forgot  what  he  wanted  to 
see  me  about.  It  may  have  been  that  he  wished  to  apologize  for  having 
called  me  the  main  trouble  with  the  university;  or  maybe  he  had  de- 
cided to  compliment  me  on  my  brilliant  drilling  of  the  day  before  and 
then  at  the  last  minute  decided  not  to.  I  don't  know.  I  don't  think 
about  it  much  any  more. 


CHAPTER    NINE 


DRAFT  BOARD  NIGHTS 


I  left  the  University  in  June,  191 8,  but  I  couldn't  get  into  the  army 
on  account  of  my  sight,  just  as  grandfather  couldn't  get  in  on  account 
of  his  age.  He  applied  several  times  and  each  time  he  took  off  his  coat 
and  threatened  to  whip  the  men  who  said  he  was  too  old.  The  disap- 
pointment of  not  getting  to  Germany  (he  saw  no  sense  in  everybody 
going  to  France)  and  the  strain  of  running  around  town  seeing  influ- 
ential officials  finally  got  him  down  in  bed.  He  had  wanted  to  lead  a 
division  and  his  chagrin  at  not  even  being  able  to  enlist  as  a  private 
was  too  much  for  him.  His  brother  Jake,  some  fifteen  years  younger 
than  he  was,  sat  up  at  night  with  him  after  he  took  to  bed,  because  we 
were  afraid  he  might  leave  the  house  without  even  putting  on  his 
clothes.  Grandfather  was  against  the  idea  of  Jake  watching  over  him — 
he  thought  it  was  a  lot  of  tomfoolery — but  Jake  hadn't  been  able  to 
sleep  at  night  for  twenty-eight  years,  so  he  was  the  perfect  person  for 
such  a  vigil. 

On  the  third  night,  grandfather  was  wakeful.  He  would  open  his 
eyes,  look  at  Jake,  and  close  them  again,  frowning.  He  never  an- 
swered any  question  Jake  asked  him.  About  four  o'clock  that  morn- 
ing, he  caught  his  brother  sound  asleep  in  the  big  leather  chair  beside 
the  bed.  When  once  Jake  did  fall  asleep  he  slept  deeply,  so  that  grand- 
father was  able  to  get  up,  dress  himself,  undress  Jake,  and  put  him  in 
bed  without  waking  him.  When  my  Aunt  Florence  came  into  the 
room  at  seven  o'clock,  grandfather  was  sitting  in  the  chair  reading  the 
Memoirs  of  U.  S.  Grant  and  Jake  was  sleeping  in  the  bed.  "He  watched 
while  I  slept,"  said  grandfather,  "so  now  I'm  watchin'  while  he 
sleeps."  It  seemed  fair  enough. 

One  reason  we  didn't  want  grandfather  to  roam  around  at  night 

"  34-4 


JAMES  THURBER  345 

was  that  he  had  said  something  once  or  twice  about  going  over  to  Lan- 
caster, his  old  home  town,  and  putting  his  problem  up  to  "Cump" — 
that  is,  General  William  Tecumseh  Sherman,  also  an  old  Lancaster 
boy.  We  knew  that  his  inability  to  find  Sherman  would  be  bad  for  him 
and  we  were  afraid  that  he  might  try  to  get  there  in  the  little  electric 
runabout  that  had  been  bought  for  my  grandmother.  She  had  become, 
surprisingly  enough,  quite  skilful  at  getting  around  town  in  it. 
Grandfather  was  astonished  and  a  little  indignant  when  he  saw  her 
get  into  the  contraption  and  drive  off  smoothly  and  easily.  It  was  her 
first  vehicular  triumph  over  him  in  almost  fifty  years  of  married  life 
and  he  determined  to  learn  to  drive  the  thing  himself.  A  famous  old 
horseman,  he  approached  it  as  he  might  have  approached  a  wild  colt. 
His  brow  would  darken  and  he  would  begin  to  curse.  He  always 
leaped  into  it  quickly,  as  if  it  might  pull  out  from  under  him  if  he 
didn't  get  into  the  seat  fast  enough.  The  first  few  times  he  tried  to  run 
the  electric,  he  went  swiftly  around  in  a  small  circle,  drove  over  the 
curb,  across  the  sidewalk,  and  up  onto  the  lawn.  We  all  tried  to  per- 
suade him  to  give  up,  but  his  spirit  was  aroused.  "Git  that  goddam 
buggy  back  in  the  road!"  he  would  say,  imperiously.  So  we  would 
manoeuver  it  back  into  the  street  and  he  would  try  again.  Pulling  too 
savagely  on  the  guiding-bar — to  teach  the  electric  a  lesson — was  what 
took  him  around  in  a  circle,  and  it  was  difficult  to  make  him  under- 
stand that  it  was  best  to  relax  and  not  get  mad.  He  had  the  notion 
that  if  you  didn't  hold  her,  she  would  throw  you.  And  a  man  who  (or 
so  he  often  told  us)  had  driven  a  four-horse  McCormick  reaper  when 
he  was  five  years  old  did  not  intend  to  be  thrown  by  an  electric  run- 
about. 

Since  there  was  no  way  of  getting  him  to  give  up  learning  to  operate 
the  electric,  we  would  take  him  out  to  Franklin  Park,  where  the  road- 
ways were  wide  and  unfrequented,  and  spend  an  hour  or  so  trying  to 
explain  the  differences  between  driving  a  horse  and  carriage  and  driv- 
ing an  electric.  He  would  keep  muttering  all  the  time;  he  never  got 
it  out  of  his  head  that  when  he  took  the  driver's  seat  the  machine  flat- 
tened its  ears  on  him,  so  to  speak.  After  a  few  weeks,  nevertheless,  he 
got  so  he  could  run  the  electric  for  a  hundred  yards  or  so  along  a  fairly 
straight  line.  But  whenever  he  took  a  curve,  he  invariably  pulled  or 


346  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

pushed  the  bar  too  quickly  and  too  hard  and  headed  for  a  tree  or  a 
flower  bed.  Someone  was  always  with  him  and  we  would  never  let  him 
take  the  car  out  of  the  park. 

One  morning  when  grandmother  was  all  ready  to  go  to  market,  she 
called  the  garage  and  told  them  to  send  the  electric  around.  They  said 
that  grandfather  had  already  been  there  and  taken  it  out.  There  was  a 
tremendous  to-do.  We  telephoned  Uncle  Will  and  he  got  out  his 
Lozier  and  we  started  oft  to  hunt  for  grandfather.  It  was  not  yet  seven 
o'clock  and  there  was  fortunately  little  traffic.  We  headed  for  Franklin 
Park,  figuring  that  he  might  have  gone  out  there  to  try  to  break  the 
car's  spirit.  One  or  two  early  pedestrians  had  seen  a  tall  old  gentleman 
with  a  white  beard  driving  a  little  electric  and  cussing  as  he  drove.  We 
followed  a  tortuous  trail  and  found  them  finally  on  Nelson  Road, 
about  four  miles  from  the  town  of  Shepard.  Grandfather  was  standing 
in  the  road  shouting,  and  the  back  wheels  of  the  electric  were  deeply 
entangled  in  a  barbed-wire  fence.  Two  workmen  and  a  farmhand  were 
trying  to  get  the  thing  loose.  Grandfather  was  in  a  state  of  high  wrath 
about  the  electric.  "The backed  up  on  me!"  he  told  us. 

But  to  get  back  to  the  war.  The  Columbus  draft  board  never  called 
grandfather  for  service,  which  was  a  lucky  thing  for  them  because 
they  would  have  had  to  take  him.  There  were  stories  that  several  old 
men  of  eighty  or  ninety  had  been  summoned  in  the  confusion,  but 
somehow  or  other  grandfather  was  missed.  He  waited  every  day  for 
the  call,  but  it  never  came.  My  own  experience  was  quite  different.  I 
was  called  almost  every  week,  even  though  I  had  been  exempted  from 
service  the  first  time  I  went  before  the  medical  examiners.  Either  they 
were  never  convinced  that  it  was  me  or  else  there  was  some  clerical 
error  in  the  records  which  was  never  cleared  up.  Anyway,  there  was 
usually  a  letter  for  me  on  Monday  ordering  me  to  report  for  examina- 
tion on  the  second  floor  of  Memorial  Hall  the  following  Wednesday 
at  9  p.m.  The  second  time  I  went  up,  I  tried  to  explain  to  one  of  the 
doctors  that  I  had  already  been  exempted.  "You're  just  a  blur  to  me," 
I  said,  taking  ofT  my  glasses.  "You're  absolutely  nothing  to  me,"  he 
snapped,  sharply. 

I  had  to  take  oft  all  my  clothes  each  time  and  jog  around  the  hall 


JAMES  THURBER  347 

with  a  lot  of  porters  and  bank  presidents'  sons  and  clerks  and  poets. 
Our  hearts  and  lungs  would  be  examined,  and  then  our  feet;  and 
finally  our  eyes.  That  always  came  last.  When  the  eye  specialist  got 
around  to  me,  he  would  always  say,  "Why,  you  couldn't  get  into  the 
service  with  sight  like  that!"  "I  know,"  I  would  say.  Then  a  week  or 
two  later  I  would  be  summoned  again  and  go  through  the  same  rig- 
marole. The  ninth  or  tenth  time  I  was  called,  I  happened  to  pick  up 
one  of  several  stethoscopes  that  were  lying  on  a  table  and  suddenly, 
instead  of  finding  myself  in  the  line  of  draft  men,  I  found  myself  in 
the  line  of  examiners.  "Hello,  doctor,"  said  one  of  them  nodding. 
"Hello,"  I  said.  That,  of  course,  was  before  I  took  my  clothes  ofif;  I 
might  have  managed  it  naked,  but  I  doubt  it.  I  was  assigned,  or  rather 
drifted,  to  the  chest-and-lung  section,  where  I  began  to  examine  every 
other  man,  thus  cutting  old  Dr.  Ridgeway's  work  in  two.  "I'm  glad  to 
have  you  here,  doctor,"  he  said. 

I  passed  most  of  the  men  that  came  to  me,  but  now  and  then  I 
would  exempt  one  just  to  be  on  the  safe  side.  I  began  by  making  each 
of  them  hold  his  breath  and  then  say  "mi,  mi,  mi,  mi,"  until  I  no- 
ticed Ridgeway  looking  at  me  curiously.  He,  I  discovered,  simply 
made  them  say  "ah,"  and  sometimes  he  didn't  make  them  say  any- 
thing. Once  I  got  hold  of  a  man  who,  it  came  out  later,  had  swallowed 
a  watch — to  make  the  doctors  believe  there  was  something  wrong  with 
him  inside  (it  was  a  common  subterfuge:  men  swallowed  nails,  hair- 
pins, ink,  etc.,  in  an  effort  to  be  let  out).  Since  I  didn't  know  what  you 
were  supposed  to  hear  through  a  stethoscope,  the  ticking  of  the  watch 
at  first  didn't  surprise  me,  but  I  decided  to  call  Dr.  Ridgeway  into 
consultation,  because  nobody  else  had  ticked.  "This  man  seems  to 
tick,"  I  said  to  him.  He  looked  at  me  in  surprise  but  didn't  say  any- 
thing. Then  he  thumped  the  man,  laid  his  ear  to  his  chest,  and  finally 
tried  the  stethoscope.  "Sound  as  a  dollar,"  he  said.  "Listen  lower 
down,"  I  told  him.  The  man  indicated  his  stomach.  Ridgeway  gave 
him  a  haughty,  indignant  look.  "That  is  for  the  abdominal  men  to 
worry  about,"  he  said,  and  moved  of?.  A  few  minutes  later,  Dr.  Blythe 
Ballomy  got  around  to  the  man  and  listened,  but  he  didn't  blink  an 
eye;  his  grim  expression  never  changed.  "You  have  swallowed  a  watch, 
my  man,"  he  said,  crisply.  The  draftee  reddened  in  embarrassment 


348  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and  uncertainty.  "On  purpose?"  he  asked.  "That  I  can't  say,"  the  doc- 
tor told  him,  and  went  on. 

I  served  with  the  draft  board  for  about  four  months.  Until  the  sum- 
monses ceased,  I  couldn't  leave  town  and  as  long  as  I  stayed  and  ap- 
peared promptly  for  examination,  even  though  I  did  the  examining,  I 
felt  that  technically  I  could  not  be  convicted  of  evasion.  During  the 
daytime,  I  worked  as  publicity  agent  for  an  amusement  park,  the  man- 
ager of  which  was  a  tall,  unexpected  young  man  named  Byron  Landis. 
Some  years  before,  he  had  dynamited  the  men's  lounge  in  the  state- 
house  annex  for  a  prank;  he  enjoyed  pouring  buckets  of  water  on 
sleeping  persons,  and  once  he  had  barely  escaped  arrest  for  jumping 
off  the  top  of  the  old  Columbus  Transfer  Company  building  with  a 
homemade  parachute. 

He  asked  me  one  morning  if  I  would  like  to  take  a  ride  in  the  new 
Scarlet  Tornado,  a  steep  and  wavy  roller-coaster.  I  didn't  want  to  but 
I  was  afraid  he  would  think  I  was  afraid,  so  I  went  along.  It  was  about 
ten  o'clock  and  there  was  nobody  at  the  park  except  workmen  and  at- 
tendants and  concessionaires  in  their  shirtsleeves.  We  climbed  into  one 
of  the  long  gondolas  of  the  roller-coaster  and  while  I  was  looking 
around  for  the  man  who  was  going  to  run  it,  we  began  to  move  off. 
Landis,  I  discovered,  was  running  it  himself.  But  it  was  too  late  to  get 
out;  we  had  begun  to  climb,  clickety-clockety,  up  the  first  steep  incline, 
down  the  other  side  of  which  we  careened  at  eighty  miles  an  hour. 
"I  didn't  know  you  could  run  this  thing!"  I  bawled  at  my  companion, 
as  we  catapulted  up  a  sixty-degree  arch  and  looped  headlong  into 
space.  "I  didn't  either!"  he  bawled  back.  The  racket  and  the  rush  of 
air  were  terrific  as  we  roared  into  the  pitch-black  Cave  of  Darkness 
and  came  out  and  down  Monohan's  Leap,  so  called  because  a  work- 
man named  Monohan  had  been  forced  to  jump  from  it  when  caught 
between  two  approaching  experimental  cars  while  it  was  being  com- 
pleted. That  trip,  although  it  ended  safely,  made  a  lasting  impression 
on  me.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  it  has  flavored  my  life.  It  is  the 
reason  I  shout  in  my  sleep,  refuse  to  ride  on  the  elevated,  keep  jerking 
the  emergency  brake  in  cars  other  people  are  driving,  have  the  sensa- 


JAMES  THURBER  349 

tion  of  flying  like  a  bird  wlien  I  first  lie  down,  and  in  certain  months 
can't  keep  anything  on  my  stomach. 

During  my  last  few  trips  to  the  draft  board,  I  went  again  as  a  draft 
prospect,  having  grown  tired  of  being  an  examiner.  None  of  the  doc- 
tors who  had  been  my  colleagues  for  so  long  recognized  me,  not  even 
Dr.  Ridgeway.  When  he  examined  my  chest  for  the  last  time,  I  asked 
him  if  there  hadn't  been  another  doctor  helping  him.  He  said  there 
had  been.  "Did  he  look  anything  like  me?"  I  asked.  Dr.  Ridgeway 
looked  at  me.  "I  don't  think  so,"  he  said,  "he  was  taller."  (I  had  my 
shoes  oif  while  he  was  examining  me.)  "A  good  pulmonary  man," 
added  Ridgeway.  "Relative  of  yours?"  I  said  yes.  He  sent  me  on  to  Dr. 
Quimby,  the  specialist  who  had  examined  my  eyes  twelve  or  fifteen 
times  before.  He  gave  me  some  simple  reading  tests.  "You  could  never 
get  into  the  army  with  eyes  like  that,"  he  said.  "I  know,"  I  told  him. 

Late  one  morning,  shortly  after  my  last  examination,  I  was  awak- 
ened by  the  sound  of  bells  ringing  and  whistles  blowing.  It  grew 
louder  and  more  insistent  and  wilder.  It  was  the  Armistice. 


A  NOTE  AT  THE  END 


The  hard  times  of  my  middle  years  I  pass  over,  leaving  the  ringing 
bells  of  1918,  with  all  their  false  promise,  to  mark  the  end  of  a  special 
sequence.  The  sharp  edges  of  old  reticences  are  softened  in  the  auto- 
biographer  by  the  passing  of  time — a  man  does  not  pull  the  pillow 
over  his  head  when  he  wakes  in  the  morning  because  he  suddenly  re- 
members some  awful  thing  that  happened  to  him  fifteen  or  twenty 
years  ago,  but  the  confusions  and  the  panics  of  last  year  and  the  year 
before  are  too  close  for  contentment.  Until  a  man  can  quit  talking 
loudly  to  himself  in  order  to  shout  down  the  memories  of  blunderings 
and  gropings,  he  is  in  no  shape  for  the  painstaking  examination  of 
distress  and  the  careful  ordering  of  event  so  necessary  to  a  calm  and 
balanced  exposition  of  what,  exactly,  was  the  matter.  The  time  I  fell 
out  of  the  gun  room  in  Mr.  James  Stanley's  house  in  Green  Lake, 
New  York,  is,  for  instance,  much  too  near  for  me  to  go  into  with  any 
peace  of  mind,  although  it  happened  in  1925,  the  ill-fated  year  of 
"Horses,  Horses,  Horses"  and  "Valencia."  There  is  now,  I  under- 
stand, a  porch  to  walk  out  onto  when  you  open  the  door  I  opened 
that  night,  but  there  wasn't  then. 

The  mistaken  exits  and  entrances  of  my  thirties  have  moved  me  sev- 
eral times  to  some  thought  of  spending  the  rest  of  my  days  wandering 
aimlessly  around  the  South  Seas,  like  a  character  out  of  Conrad,  silent 
and  inscrutable.  But  the  necessity  for  frequent  visits  to  my  oculist  and 
dentist  has  prevented  this.  You  can't  be  running  back  from  Singapore 
every  few  months  to  get  your  lenses  changed  and  still  retain  the 
proper  mood  for  wandering.  Furthermore,  my  horn-rimmed  glasses 
and  my  Ohio  accent  betray  me,  even  when  I  sit  on  the  terrasses  of 
little  tropical  cafes,  wearing  a  pith  helmet,  staring  straight  ahead,  and 
twitching  a  muscle  in  my  jaw.  I  found  this  out  when  I  tried  wandering 
around  the  West  Indies  one  summer.  Instead  of  being  followed  by 

550 


JAMES  THURBER  351 

the  whispers  of  men  and  the  glances  of  women,  I  was  followed  by 
bead  salesmen  and  native  women  with  postcards.  Nor  did  any  dark 
girl,  looking  at  all  like  Tondeleyo  in  "White  Cargo,"  come  forward 
and  offer  to  go  to  pieces  with  me.  They  tried  to  sell  me  baskets. 

Under  these  circumstances  it  is  impossible  to  be  inscrutable  and  a 
wanderer  who  isn't  inscrutable  might  just  as  well  be  back  at  Broad 
and  High  Streets  in  Columbus  sitting  in  the  Baltimore  Dairy  Lunch. 
Nobody  from  Columbus  has  ever  made  a  first  rate  wanderer  in  the 
Conradean  tradition.  Some  of  them  have  been  fairly  good  at  disap- 
pearing fur  a  few  days  to  turn  up  in  a  hotel  in  Louisville  with  a  bad 
headache  and  no  recollection  of  how  they  got  there,  but  they  always 
scurry  back  to  their  wives  with  some  cock-and-bull  story  of  having  lost 
their  memory  or  having  gone  away  to  attend  the  annual  convention 
of  the  Fraternal  Order  of  Eagles. 

There  was,  of  course,  even  for  Conrad's  Lord  Jim,  no  running  away. 
The  cloud  of  his  special  discomfiture  followed  him  like  a  pup,  no 
matter  what  ships  he  took  or  what  wilderness  he  entered.  In  the  path- 
ways between  office  and  home  and  home  and  the  houses  of  settled  peo- 
ple there  are  always,  ready  to  snap  at  you,  the  little  perils  of  routine 
living,  but  there  is  no  escape  in  the  unplanned  tangent,  the  sudden 
turn.  In  Martinique,  when  the  whistle  blew  for  the  tourists  to  get  back 
on  the  ship,  I  had  a  quick,  wild,  and  lovely  moment  when  I  decided  I 
wouldn't  get  back  on  the  ship.  I  did,  though.  And  I  found  that  some- 
body had  stolen  the  pants  to  my  dinner  jacket. 


R.   B.   CUNNINGHAME   GRAHAM 


COMMENTARY 


Robert  Bontine  Cunninghame  Graham,  who  died  in  10.36  at  the  age 
oi  eighty-iour,  could  have  been  almost  anything  he  pleased,  had  he 
wanted  to.  The  essence  oi  his  Hie  and  character  lies  in  the  iact  that 
he  did  not  want  to.  He  might  have  been  a  successiul  politician— 
with  Keir  Hardie  he  founded  the  Scottish  Labor  Party  in  1890,  and 
later  served  in  Parliament.  He  might  have  been  a  notable  explorer— 
in  1898,  disguised  as  a  Turkish  doctor,  he  penetrated  the  mysterious 
fastnesses  of  Morocco.  His  ancestry,  some  say,  made  him  the  legiti- 
mate King  of  Scotland,  but  he  never  even  cared  to  become  the  au- 
thentic grand  laird  appropriate  to  his  station.  He  might  have  de- 
veloped into  a  leading  socialist  revolutionary— he  spent  two  months 
in  prison  on  a  charge  of  attacking  the  police  during  the  Bloody  Sun- 
day riots  in  Trafalgar  Square  in  November  of  1887.  And,  finally,  he 
might  have  become  a  great  writer,  had  he  devoted  himself  to  the 
fob. 

But  Cunninghame  Graham,  called  by  Conrad  "the  periection  oi 
scorn,yy  was  the  hidalgo  type,  holding  a  certain  offhand  amateurism 
the  mark  of  true  nobility  of  soul.  In  his  life  he  did  many  things  be- 
sides those  I  have  listed.  He  was  a  rancher  in  the  Argentine,  a  horse- 
trader  for  the  British  government,  a  fencing  master  in  Mexico,  a 
gentleman  farmer  in  Scotland,  and  (what  here  concerns  us)  a  vol- 
uminous writer  oi  essays,  sketches,  short  stories,  travel  books,  and 
biographies,  most  oi  them  on  South  American  and  Spanish  themes. 

His  Erst  book  came  out  when  he  was  forty-three,  and  thereaiter 
he  wrote  only  to  please  himself.  His  subjects  were  not  popular  and 
he  was  never  widely  read.  This  doubtless  pleased  him,  as  readers  oi 
the  essay  which  iollows  will  perceive.  With  what  arrogant  finality  he 
writes,  "Success,  which  touches  nothing  that  it  does  not  vulgarize, 
should  be  its  own  reward.  In  iact,  rewards  oi  any  kind  are  but  vul- 
garities/7 This  attitude  he  preserved  all  his  liic.  In  London,  during 
the  great  days  oi  The  Saturday  Review,  he  would  occasionally  turn 

352 


R.   B.   CUNNINGHAME  GRAHAM  353 

in  a  piece  so  brilliant  that  writers  like  George  Bernard  Shaw  were 
glad  that  Cunninghame  Graham's  contributions  were  so  infrequent, 
for  had  he  put  his  mind  to  it  he  might  have  outshone  all  his  col- 
leagues. 

But  Cunninghame  Graham  preferred  loneliness,  a  kind  of  noble 
melancholy,  and  the  acquaintance  of  his  own  soul  to  pre-eminence  in 
any  of  the  fields  he  entered.  He  wanted  to  be  Cunninghame  Graham, 
not  a  writer,  or  a  politician,  or  a  farmer.  He  expressed  himself  pri- 
marily in  action.  Words,  though  he  handled  them  so  superbly,  were 
a  by-product.  He  belongs  with  Englishmen  like  Doughty,  Richard 
Burton,  T.  E.  Lawrence— solitary  creatures,  flawed  artists,  geniuses 
of  adventure.  His  spiritual  affiliations  were  largely  with  the  Spanish 
conquistadores  whose  lives  he  studied  so  carefully.  He  was  indeed 
more  Spanish  than  Scottish.  His  grandmother  was  Spanish  and  he 
spoke  Castilian  before  he  learned  English.  But  he  acted  Castilian 
all  his  life. 

The  piece  I  have  chosen  for  this  collection  shows  him  at  his 
most  characteristic.  It  is  a  successful  attack  on  success,  the  perfect 
expression  of  quixotism  and  the  immortal  charm  of  dead  causes.  As 
a  piece  of  writing  it  seems  to  me  marvelously  effective,  muscular  with 
magnificent  phrases  ('lthe  stolid  Georges  .  .  .  sunk  in  their  pudding 
and  prosperity,"  "the  prosperous  Elizabeth,  after  a  life  of  honours 
unwillingly  surrendering  her  cosmetics  up  to  death  in  a  state  bed"). 
Its  picture  of  the  deserted  Cuban  beach  and  the  skeleton  of  the 
Spanish  general  has  the  grandeur  of  all  truly  chosen  symbols.  The 
prose  has  the  ring  of  steel. 


W~*         n±r  n±r  o±r  o±r  n±r  air  a$r  Of/1 


^£_y^$_  Ji& .^\.Jt^^  j^^ji^^ji^  i^  j2v  j2\. 


success 

BY 

R.  B.  CUNNINGHAME  GRAHAM 


Success,  which  touches  nothing  that  it  does  not  vulgarize,  should  be 
its  own  reward.  In  fact,  rewards  of  any  kind  are  but  vulgarities. 

We  applaud  successful  folk,  and  straight  forget  them,  as  we  do 
ballet-dancers,  actors,  and  orators.  They  strut  their  little  hour,  and  then 
are  relegated  to  peerages,  to  baronetcies,  to  books  of  landed  gentry, 
and  the  like. 

Quick  triumphs  make  short  public  memories.  Triumph  itself  only 
endures  the  time  the  triumphal  car  sways  through  the  street.  Your  nine 
days'  wonder  is  a  sort  of  five-legged  calf,  or  a  two-headed  nightingale, 
and  of  the  nature  of  a  calculating  boy — a  seven  months'  prodigy,  born 
out  of  time  to  his  own  undoing  and  a  mere  wonderment  for  gaping 
dullards  who  dislocate  their  jaws  in  ecstasy  of  admiration  and  then 
start  out  to  seek  new  idols  to  adore.  We  feel  that  after  all  the  successful 
man  is  fortune's  wanton,  and  that  good  luck  and  he  have  but  been 
equal  to  two  common  men.  Poverty,  many  can  endure  with  dignity. 
Success,  how  few  can  carry  oft",  even  with  decency  and  without  baring 
their  innermost  infirmities  before  the  public  gaze. 

Caricatures  in  bronze  and  marble,  and  titles  made  ridiculous  by  their 
exotic  style  we  shower  upon  all  those  who  have  succeeded,  in  war,  in 
literature,  or  art;  we  give  them  money,  and  for  a  season  no  African 
Lucullus  in  Park  Lane  can  dine  without  them.  Then  having  given, 
feel  that  we  have  paid  for  service  rendered,  and  generally  withhold 
respect. 

For  those  who  fail,  for  those  who  have  sunk  still  battling  beneath 
the  muddy  waves  of  life,  we  keep  our  love,  and  that  curiosity  about 

354 


R.  B.  CUNNINGHAME  GRAHAM  355 

their  lives  which  makes  their  memories  green  when  the  cheap  gold  is 
dusted  over,  which  once  we  gave  success. 

How  few  successful  men  are  interesting!  Hannibal,  Alcibiades,  with 
Raleigh,  Mithridates,  and  Napoleon,  who  would  compare  them  for  a 
moment  with  their  mere  conquerors? 

The  unlucky  Stuarts,  from  the  first  poet  king  slain  at  the  ball  play, 
to  the  poor  mildewed  Cardinal  of  York,  with  all  their  faults,  they  leave 
the  stolid  Georges  millions  of  miles  behind,  sunk  in  their  pudding  and 
prosperity.  The  prosperous  Elizabeth,  after  a  life  of  honours  unwill- 
ingly surrendering  her  cosmetics  up  to  death  in  a  state  bed,  and  Mary 
laying  her  head  upon  the  block  at  Fotheringay  after  the  nine  and  forty 
years  of  failure  of  her  life  (failure  except  of  love),  how  many  million 
miles,  unfathomable  seas,  and  sierras  upon  sierras  separate  them? 

And  so  of  nations,  causes  and  events.  Nations  there  are  as  inter- 
esting in  decadence,  as  others  in  their  ten-percentish  apogee  are  dull 
and  commonplace.  Causes,  lost  almost  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world,  but  hardly  yet  despaired  of,  as  the  long  struggle  betwixt  rich 
and  poor,  which  dullards  think  eternal,  but  which  will  one  day  be  re- 
solved, either  by  the  absorption  of  the  rich  into  the  legions  of  the  poor, 
or  vice  versa,  still  remain  interesting,  and  will  do  so  whilst  the  unequal 
combat  yet  endures. 

Causes  gone  out  of  vogue,  which  have  become  almost  as  ludicrous 
as  is  a  hat  from  Paris  of  ten  years  ago;  causes  which  hang  in  monu- 
mental mockery  quite  out  of  fashion,  as  that  of  Poland,  still  are  more 
interesting  than  is  the  struggle  between  the  English  and  the  Germans, 
which  shall  sell  gin  and  gunpowder  to  negroes  on  the  Coast. 

Even  events  long  passed,  and  which  right-thinking  men  have  years 
ago  dismissed  to  gather  dust  in  the  waste  spaces  of  their  minds,  may 
interest  or  repel  according  as  they  may  make  for  failure  or  success. 

Failure  alone  can  interest  speculative  minds.  Success  is  for  the  mil- 
lions of  the  working  world,  who  see  the  engine  in  eight  hours  arrive 
in  Edinburgh  from  London,  and  marvel  at  the  last  improvement  in 
its  wheels.  The  real  interest  in  the  matters  being  the  forgotten  efforts 
of  some  alchemist  who,  with  the  majesty  of  law  ever  awake  to  burn 
him  as  a  witch,  with  the  hoarse  laughter  of  the  practical  and  business 


356  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

men  still  ringing  in  his  ears,  made  his  rude  model  o£  a  steam  engine, 
and  perhaps  lost  his  eyesight  when  it  burst. 

On  a  deserted  beach  in  Cuba,  not  far  from  El  Caney,  some  travellers 
not  long  ago  came  on  a  skeleton.  Seated  in  a  rough  chair,  it  sat  and 
gazed  upon  the  sea.  The  gulls  had  roosted  on  the  collar  bones,  and 
round  the  feet  sea-wreck  and  dulse  had  formed  a  sort  of  wreath.  A 
tattered  Spanish  uniform  still  fluttered  from  the  bones,  and  a  cigar- 
box  set  beside  the  chair  held  papers  showing  that  the  man  had  been 
an  officer  of  rank.  One  of  these  gave  the  password  of  the  day  when  he 
had  lost  his  life,  and  as  the  travellers  gazed  upon  the  bones,  a  land 
crab  peeped  out  of  a  hole  just  underneath  the  chair. 

All  up  and  down  the  coast  were  strewn  the  remnants  of  the  pomp 
and  circumstance  of  glorious  war.  Rifles  with  rusty  barrels,  the  stocks 
set  thick  with  barnacles,  steel  scabbards  with  bent  swords  wasted  to 
scrap  iron,  fragments  of  uniforms  and  belts,  ends  of  brass  chains  and 
bones  of  horses  reft  from  their  wind-swept  prairies  to  undergo  the 
agonies  of  transport  in  a  ship,  packed  close  as  sardines  in  a  box,  and 
then  left  to  die  wounded  with  the  vultures  picking  out  their  eyes.  All, 
all,  was  there,  fairly  spread  out  as  in  a  kindergarten,  to  point  the  lesson 
to  the  fools  who  write  of  war,  if  they  had  wit  to  see.  Gun  carriages 
half  silted  up  with  sand,  and  rusted  broken  Maxims,  gave  an  air  of 
ruin,  as  is  the  case  wherever  Titan  man  has  been  at  play,  broken  his 
toys,  and  then  set  out  to  kill  his  brother  fools. 

Withal  nothing  of  dignity  about  the  scene;  a  stage  unskilfully  set 
out  with  properties  all  go  up  on  the  cheap;  even  the  ribs  and  trucks  of 
the  decaying  ships  of  what  once  had  been  Admiral  Cervera's  fleet  stood 
roasting  in  the  sun,  their  port-holes  just  awash,  as  they  once  roasted  in 
the  flames  which  burned  them  and  their  crews.  Nothing  but  desolation 
in  the  scene,  and  yet  a  desolation  of  a  paltry  kind,  not  caused  by  time, 
by  famine,  pestilence,  or  anything  which  could  impart  an  air  of  "trag- 
edy, only  the  desolation  made  by  those  who  had  respectively  sent  their 
poor  helots  out  to  fight,  staying  themselves  smug  and  secure  at  home, 
well  within  reach  of  the  quotations  of  the  Stock  Exchange. 

So  in  his  mouldering  chair  the  general  sat,  his  password  antiquated 
and  become  as  much  the  property  of  the  first  passer-bv  as  an  advertise- 
ment of  "liver  pills."  His  uniform,  no  doubt  his  pride,  all  rags;  his 


R.  B.  CUNNINGHAME  GRAHAM  \  357 

sword  (bought  at  some  outfitter's)  long  stolen  away  and  sold  for 
drink  by  him  who  filched  it;  but  yet  the  sun-dried  bones,  which  once 
had  been  a  man,  were  of  themselves  more  interesting  than  were  his 
living  conquerors  with  their  cheap  air  of  insincere  success. 

The  world  goes  out  to  greet  the  conqueror  with  flowers  and  with 
shouts,  but  first  he  has  to  conquer,  and  so  draw  down  upon  himself 
the  acclamations  of  the  crowd,  who  do  not  know  that  hundreds  such 
as  the  man  they  stultify  with  noise  have  gloriously  failed,  and  that  the 
odium  of  success  is  hard  enough  to  bear,  without  the  added  ignominy 
of  popular  applause.  Who  with  a  spark  of  humour  in  his  soul  can  bear 
success  without  some  irritation  in  his  mind?  But  for  good  luck  he 
might  have  been  one  of  the  shouters  who  run  sweating  by  his  car; 
doubts  must  assail  him,  if  success  has  not  already  made  him  pachyder- 
matous to  praise,  that  sublimate  which  wears  away  the  angles  of  our 
self-respect,  and  leaves  us  smooth  to  catch  the  mud  our  fellows  fling 
at  us,  in  their  fond  adoration  of  accomplished  facts.  Success  is  but  the 
recognition  (chiefly  by  yourself)  that  you  are  better  than  your  fellows 
are.  A  paltry  feeling,  nearly  allied  to  the  base  scheme  of  punishments 
and  of  rewards  which  has  made  most  faiths  arid,  and  rendered  actions 
noble  in  themselves  mere  huckstering  affairs  of  fire  insurance. 

If  a  man  put  his  life  in  peril  for  the  Victoria  Cross,  or  pass  laborious 
days  in  laboratories  tormenting  dogs,  only  to  be  a  baronet  at  last,  a 
plague  of  courage  and  laborious  days.  Arts,  sciences,  and  literature, 
with  all  the  other  trifles  in  which  hard-working  idle  men  make  occu- 
pations for  themselves,  when  they  lead  to  material  success,  spoil  their 
professor,  and  degrade  themselves  to  piecework  at  so  many  pounds 
an  hour. 

Nothing  can  stand  against  success  and  yet  keep  fresh.  Nations  as 
well  as  individuals  feel  its  vulgarizing  power.  Throughout  all  Europe, 
Spain  alone  still  rears  its  head,  the  unspoiled  race,  content  in  philo- 
sophic guise  to  fail  in  all  she  does,  and  thus  preserve  the  individual 
independence  of  her  sons.  Successful  nations  have  to  be  content  with 
their  success,  their  citizens  cannot  be  interesting.  So  many  hundred 
feet  of  sanitary  tubes  a  minute  or  an  hour,  so  many  wage-saving  appli- 
cations of  machinery,  so  many  men  grow  rich;  fancy  a  poet  rich 
through  rhyming,  or  a  philosopher  choked  in  banknotes,  whilst  writ- 


358  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

ing  his  last  scheme  of  wise  philosophy.  Yet  those  who  fail,  no  matter 
how  ingloriously,  have  their  revenge  on  the  successful  few,  by  having 
kept  themselves  free  from  vulgarity,  or  by  having  died  unknown. 

A  miner  choked  with  firedamp  in  a  pit,  dead  in  the  vain  attempt  to 
save  some  beer-mused  comrade  left  behind  entombed,  cannot  be  vul- 
gar, even  if  when  alive  he  was  a  thief.  Your  crass  successful  man  who 
has  his  statue  set  up  in  our  streets  (apparently  to  scare  away  the 
crows),  and  when  he  dies  his  column  and  a  half  in  penny  cyclopaedias, 
turns  interest  to  ashes  by  his  apotheosis  in  the  vulgar  eye. 

But  the  forgotten  general  sitting  in  his  chair,  his  fleshless  feet  just 
lapping  in  the  waves,  his  whitening  bones  fast  mouldering  into  dust, 
nothing  can  vulgarize  him;  no  fool  will  crown  him  with  a  tin-foiled 
laurel  wreath,  no  poetaster  sing  his  praise  in  maudlin  ode  or  halting 
threnody,  for  he  has  passed  into  the  realm  of  those  who  by  misfortune 
claim  the  sympathy  of  writers  who  are  dumb. 

Let  him  sit  on  and  rest,  looking  out  on  the  sea,  where  his  last  vision 
saw  the  loss  of  his  doomed  country's  fleet. 

An  archetype  of  those  who  fail,  let  him  still  sit  watching  the  gulls 
fly  screaming  through  the  air,  and  mark  the  fish  spring  and  fall  back 
again  with  a  loud  crash,  in  the  still  waters  of  the  tropic  beach. 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF 

COMMENTARY 


On  April  2,  1941,  Virginia  Woolf,  fifty-nine  years  of  age,  left  a  note 
for  her  household  and  disappeared  forever.  Her  suicide  passed  almost 
unremarked  at  a  time  when  more  momentous  events  were  taking 
place  every  minute  of  the  day.  These  events  themselves  may  have 
helped  her  to  her  last  exit,  for  her  temperament,  all  delicate  balance 
and  vibration,  was  ill-adapted  to  the  rough  crash  and  strain  of  war. 
E.  M.  Forster  said  of  her  that  she  worked  in  a  storm  of  atoms  and 
seconds.  But  this  is  the  Bomb  Age.  The  atoms  of  personality,  the 
seconds  our  individual  hearts  tick  out,  are  crushed  and  dispersed 
under  the  impact  of  history  being  made  too  fast. 

Perhaps  Virginia  Woolf,  author  of  a  sheaf  of  essays  and  a  scattered 
half-dozen  novels,  had  completed  her  work.  With  her  vanishing  the 
Bloomsbury  school  she  helped  to  make  transiently  famous  may  be 
said  to  have  closed  its  gates.  The  best  writers  of  her  generation- 
Lawrence,  Joyce,  Strachey — are  dead;  a  marriage  has  been  arranged 
between  Aldous  Huxley  and  Hollywood;  E.  M.  Forster,  the  Enest  of 
living  English  novelists,  is  silent.  Virginia  Woolf's  era  is  Enished — 
a  stupid,  shallow  way  of  saying  that  at  the  moment  critics  and  readers 
are  not  paying  much  attention  to  it.  Perhaps  it  is  no  more  and  no 
less  Enished  than  the  preceding  Edwardian  era,  which  the  essay 
here  reprinted  attacks  with  such  charm  and  wit,  if  with  only  partial 
cogency. 

Literary  essays  are  usually  a  kind  of  dead  language,  kept  in  circula- 
tion by  the  determined  efforts  of  a  minority  group.  They  do  not 
seem  to  be  written  for  people,  but  are  communications,  often  of 
high  permanent  value,  from  one  specialist  to  another.  When  a  writer 
breaks  through  this  formal  mold  and  speaks  of  literature  not  as  if  it 
were  a  "subject,"  like  paleography,  but  a  passion,  like  love  or  hunger, 
the  result  is  an  essay  like  Virginia  Woolf  s  "Mr.  Bennett  and  Mrs. 
Brown."  Its  references  may  date,  but  its  ideas,  presented  without 

359 


360  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

benefit  of  literary  jargon,  do  not.  It  still  seems  to  me  a  sound  ex- 
planation of  why  novelists  are  interested  in  people,  what  interests 
them,  and  how  they  make  you  interested.  All  novels  begin,  as  Vir- 
ginia Woolf  says,  with  an  old  lady  in  the  corner  opposite— the  old 
lady  she  calls  Mrs.  Brown. 

The  Bennetts,  the  Wellses,  and  the  Galsworthys,  she  thinks,  forget 
all  about  Mrs.  Brown.  It  may  he  that  she  is  too  hard  on  them.  It  is 
true  that  their  reputations  have  declined,  that  they  overstuff  their 
hooks,  that  they  edify  and  prophesy  as  much  as  they  create  character. 
Yet  The  Old  Wives'  Tale,  J  think,  will  he  read  for  many  years, 
despite  its  upholstery,  and  the  Wells  who  wrote  The  History  of  Mr. 
Polly  has  created  character  as  freshly  as,  if  more  simply  than,  did 
any  Bloomshurian. 

This  does  not  controvert  Virginia  Woolf's  thesis,  of  course,  which 
stands  even  though  she  was  a  trifle  unfair  to  her  predecessors  and 
perhaps  a  little  rash  in  her  confidence  in  her  own  generation.  That 
great  age  of  English  literature  on  the  verge  of  which  she  thought  we 
were  trembling  in  1924  has  not  yet  shown  its  head.  Right  now  it 
looks  as  though  it  were  indefinitely  postponed. 

Her  work,  like  that  of  D.  H.  Lawrence  and  Lytton  Strachey,  has 
fallen  into  eclipse.  I  think  it  is  too  delicate  and  febrile  to  last;  her 
sensibility  was  so  great  as  often  to  obscure  the  sense,  except  for 
initiates.  She  used  a  private  language,  which  is  merely  a  barrier  to  be 
overcome  if,  as  in  the  case  of  James  Joyce,  the  private  language 
expresses  a  large  and  generous  sense  of  life.  I  do  not  feel  this  to  be 
the  case  in  her  own  novels,  but  my  own  obtuseness  may  be  at  fault. 
At  any  rate,  her  novels  are  not  read  as  much  as  once  they  were,  but 
her  literary  comments,  of  which  "Mr.  Bennett  and  Mrs.  Brown'  is 
one  of  the  Enest,  remain  as  fresh  and  pertinent  as  ever. 


Mr.  Bennett  and  Mrs.  Brown 

BY 

VIRGINIA  WOOLF 


It  seems  to  me  possible,  perhaps  desirable,  that  I  may  be  the  only 
person  in  this  room#  who  has  committed  the  folly  of  writing,  trying  to 
write,  or  failing  to  write,  a  novel.  And  when  I  asked  myself,  as  your 
invitation  to  speak  to  you  about  modern  fiction  made  me  ask  myself, 
what  demon  whispered  in  my  ear  and  urged  me  to  my  doom,  a  little 
figure  rose  before  me — the  figure  of  a  man,  or  of  a  woman,  who  said, 
"My  name  is  Brown.  Catch  me  if  you  can." 

Most  novelists  have  the  same  experience.  Some  Brown,  Smith,  or 
Jones  comes  before  them  and  says  in  the  most  seductive  and  charming 
way  in  the  world,  "Come  and  catch  me  if  you  can."  And  so,  led  on  by 
this  will-o'-the-wisp,  they  flounder  through  volume  after  volume, 
spending  the  best  years  of  their  lives  in  the  pursuit,  and  receiving  for 
the  most  part  very  little  cash  in  exchange.  Few  catch  the  phantom; 
most  have  to  be  content  with  a  scrap  of  her  dress  or  a  wisp  of  her  hair. 

My  belief  that  men  and  women  write  novels  because  they  are  lured 
on  to  create  some  character  which  has  thus  imposed  itself  upon  them 
has  the  sanction  of  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett.  In  an  article  from  which  I 
will  quote  he  says :  "The  foundation  of  good  fiction  is  character-creating 
and  nothing  else.  .  .  .  Style  counts;  plot  counts;  originality  of  outlook 
counts.  But  none  of  these  counts  anything  like  so  much  as  the  con- 
vincingness of  the  characters.  If  the  characters  are  real  the  novel  will 
have  a  chance;  if  they  are  not,  oblivion  will  be  its  portion.  .  .  ."  And 
he  goes  on  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  we  have  no  young  novelists  of 

*This  essay  was  originally  read  before  the  Heretics  club  at  Cambridge,  May  18, 
1924.— C.  F. 

361 


362  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

first-rate  importance  at  the  present  moment,  because  they  are  unable 
to  create  characters  that  are  real,  true,  and  convincing. 

These  are  the  questions  that  I  want  with  greater  boldness  than  dis- 
cretion to  discuss  to-night.  I  want  to  make  out  what  we  mean  when 
we  talk  about  "character"  in  fiction;  to  say  something  about  the  ques- 
tion of  reality  which  Mr.  Bennett  raises;  and  to  suggest  some  reasons 
why  the  younger  novelists  fail  to  create  characters,  if,  as  Mr.  Bennett 
asserts,  it  is  true  that  fail  they  do.  This  will  lead  me,  I  am  well  aware, 
to  make  some  very  sweeping  and  some  very  vague  assertions.  For  the 
question  is  an  extremely  difficult  one.  Think  how  little  we  know  about 
character — think  how  little  we  know  about  art.  But,  to  make  a  clear- 
ance before  I  begin,  I  will  suggest  that  we  range  Edwardians  and 
Georgians  into  two  camps;  Mr.  Wells,  Mr.  Bennett,  and  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy I  will  call  the  Edwardians;  Mr.  Forster,  Mr.  Lawrence,  Mr. 
Strachey,  Mr.  Joyce,  and  Mr.  Eliot  I  will  call  the  Georgians.  And  if  I 
speak  in  the  first  person,  with  intolerable  egotism,  I  will  ask  you  to 
excuse  me.  I  do  not  want  to  attribute  to  the  world  at  large  the  opinions 
of  one  solitary,  ill-informed,  and  misguided  individual. 

My  first  assertion  is  one  that  I  think  you  will  grant — that  every  one 
in  this  room  is  a  judge  of  character.  Indeed  it  would  be  impossible  to 
live  for  a  year  without  disaster  unless  one  practised  character-reading 
and  had  some  skill  in  the  art.  Our  marriages,  our  friendships  depend 
on  it;  our  business  largely  depends  on  it;  every  day  questions  arise 
which  can  only  be  solved  by  its  help.  And  now  I  will  hazard  a  second 
assertion,  which  is  more  disputable  perhaps,  to  the  effect  that  on  or 
about  December,  1910,  human  character  changed. 

I  am  not  saying  that  one  went  out,  as  one  might  into  a  garden,  and 
there  saw  that  a  rose  had  flowered,  or  that  a  hen  had  laid  an  egg.  The 
change  was  not  sudden  and  definite  like  that.  But  a  change  there  was, 
nevertheless;  and,  since  one  must  be  arbitrary,  let  us  date  it  about  the 
year  1910.  The  first  signs  of  it  are  recorded  in  the  books  of  Samuel 
Butler,  in  The  Way  of  All  Flesh  in  particular;  the  plays  of  Bernard 
Shaw  continue  to  record  it.  In  life  one  can  see  the  change,  if  I  may  use 
a  homely  illustration,  in  the  character  of  one's  cook.  The  Victorian 
cook  lived  like  a  leviathan  in  the  lower  depths,  formidable,  silent,  ob- 
scure, inscrutable;  the  Georgian  cook  is  a  creature  of  sunshine  and 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  363 

fresh  air;  in  and  out  of  the  drawing-room,  now  to  borrow  The  Daily 
Herald,  now  to  ask  advice  about  a  hat.  Do  you  ask  for  more  solemn 
instances  of  the  power  of  the  human  race  to  change?  Read  the  Aga- 
memnon, and  see  whether,  in  process  of  time,  your  sympathies  are  not 
almost  entirely  with  Clytemnestra.  Or  consider  the  married  life  of  the 
Carlyles,  and  bewail  the  waste,  the  futility,  for  him  and  for  her,  of  the 
horrible  domestic  tradition  which  made  it  seemly  for  a  woman  of 
genius  to  spend  her  time  chasing  beetles,  scouring  saucepans,  instead 
of  writing  books.  All  human  relations  have  shifted — those  between 
masters  and  servants,  husbands  and  wives,  parents  and  children.  And 
when  human  relations  change  there  is  at  the  same  time  a  change  in 
religion,  conduct,  politics,  and  literature.  Let  us  agree  to  place  one  of 
these  changes  about  the  year  1910. 

I  have  said  that  people  have  to  acquire  a  good  deal  of  skill  in  char- 
acter-reading if  they  are  to  live  a  single  year  of  life  without  disaster. 
But  it  is  the  art  of  the  young.  In  middle  age  and  in  old  age  the  art  is 
practised  mostly  for  its  uses,  and  friendships  and  other  adventures  and 
experiments  in  the  art  of  reading  character  are  seldom  made.  But  nov- 
elists differ  from  the  rest  of  the  world  because  they  do  not  cease  to  be 
interested  in  character  when  they  have  learnt  enough  about  it  for 
practical  purposes.  They  go  a  step  further;  they  feel  that  there  is  some- 
thing permanently  interesting  in  character  in  itself.  When  all  the  prac- 
tical business  of  life  has  been  discharged,  there  is  something  about 
people  which  continues  to  seem  to  them  of  overwhelming  importance, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  has  no  bearing  whatever  upon  their  happi- 
ness, comfort,  or  income.  The  study  of  character  becomes  to  them  an 
absorbing  pursuit;  to  impart  character  an  obsession.  Ajid  this  I  find  it 
very  difficult  to  explain:  what  novelists  mean  when  they  talk  about 
character,  what  the  impulse  is  that  urges  them  so  powerfully  every 
now  and  then  to  embody  their  view  in  writing. 

So,  if  you  will  allow  me,  instead  of  analyzing  and  abstracting,  I  will 
tell  you  a  simple  story  which,  however  pointless,  has  the  merit  of  being 
true,  of  a  journey  from  Richmond  to  Waterloo,  in  the  hope  that  I  may 
show  you  what  I  mean  by  character  in  itself;  that  you  may  realize  the 
different  aspects  it  can  wear;  and  the  hideous  perils  that  beset  you 
directly  you  try  to  describe  it  in  words. 


364  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

One  night  some  weeks  ago,  then,  I  was  late  for  the  train  and 
jumped  into  the  first  carriage  I  came  to.  As  I  sat  down  I  had  the 
strange  and  uncomfortable  feeling  that  I  was  interrupting  a  conversa- 
tion between  two  people  who  were  already  sitting  there.  Not  that  they 
were  young  or  happy.  Far  from  it.  They  were  both  elderly,  the  woman 
over  sixty,  the  man  well  over  forty.  They  were  sitting  opposite  each 
other,  and  the  man,  who  had  been  leaning  over  and  talking  emphati- 
cally to  judge  by  his  attitude  and  the  flush  on  his  face,  sat  back  and 
became  silent.  I  had  disturbed  him,  and  he  was  annoyed.  The  elderly 
lady,  however,  whom  I  will  call  Mrs.  Brown,  seemed  rather  relieved. 
She  was  one  of  those  clean,  threadbare  old  ladies  whose  extreme  tidi- 
ness— everything  buttoned,  fastened,  tied  together,  mended  and  brushed 
up — suggests  more  extreme  poverty  than  rags  and  dirt.  There  was 
something  pinched  about  her — a  look  of  suffering,  of  apprehension, 
and,  in  addition,  she  was  extremely  small.  Her  feet,  in  their  clean  little 
boots,  scarcely  touched  the  floor.  I  felt  that  she  had  nobody  to  support 
her;  that  she  had  to  make  up  her  mind  for  herself;  that,  having  been 
deserted,  or  left  a  widow,  years  ago,  she  had  led  an  anxious,  harried 
life,  bringing  up  an  only  son,  perhaps,  who,  as  likely  as  not,  was  by 
this  time  beginning  to  go  to  the  bad.  All  this  shot  through  my  mind 
as  I  sat  down,  being  uncomfortable,  like  most  people,  at  travelling  with 
fellow  passengers  unless  I  have  somehow  or  other  accounted  for  them. 
Then  I  looked  at  the  man.  He  was  no  relation  of  Mrs.  Brown's  I  felt 
sure;  he  was  of  a  bigger,  burlier,  less  refined  type.  He  was  a  man  of 
business,  I  imagined,  very  likely  a  respectable  corn-chandler  from  the 
North,  dressed  in  good  blue  serge  with  a  pocket-knife  and  a  silk  hand- 
kerchief, and  a  stout  leather  bag.  Obviously,  however,  he  had  an  un- 
pleasant business  to  settle  with  Mrs.  Brown;  a  secret,  perhaps  sinister 
business,  which  they  did  not  intend  to  discuss  in  my  presence. 

"Yes,  the  Crofts  have  had  very  bad  luck  with  their  servants,".  Mr. 
Smith  (as  I  will  call  him)  said  in  a  considering  way,  going  back  to 
some  earlier  topic,  with  a  view  to  keeping  up  appearances. 

"Ah,  poor  people,"  said  Mrs.  Brown,  a  trifle  condescendingly.  "My 
grandmother  had  a  maid  who  came  when  she  was  fifteen  and  stayed 
till  she  was  eighty"  (this  was  said  with  a  kind  of  hurt  and  aggressive 
pride  to  impress  us  both  perhaps). 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  365 

"One  doesn't  often  come  across  that  sort  of  thing  nowadays,"  said 
Mr.  Smith  in  conciliatory  tones. 

Then  they  were  silent. 

"It's  odd  they  don't  start  a  golf  club  there — I  should  have  thought 
one  of  the  young  fellows  would,"  said  Mr.  Smith,  for  the  silence  obvi- 
ously made  him  uneasy. 

Mrs.  Brown  hardly  took  the  trouble  to  answer. 

"What  changes  they're  making  in  this  part  of  the  world,"  said  Mr. 
Smith  looking  out  of  the  window,  and  looking  furtively  at  me  as 
he  did  so. 

It  was  plain,  from  Mrs.  Brown's  silence,  from  the  uneasy  affability 
with  which  Mr.  Smith  spoke,  that  he  had  some  power  over  her  which 
he  was  exerting  disagreeably.  It  might  have  been  her  son's  downfall, 
or  some  painful  episode  in  her  past  life,  or  her  daughter's.  Perhaps  she 
was  going  to  London  to  sign  some  document  to  make  over  some  prop- 
erty. Obviously  against  her  will  she  was  in  Mr.  Smith's  hands.  I  was 
beginning  to  feel  a  great  deal  of  pity  for  her,  when  she  said,  suddenly 
and  inconsequently, 

"Can  you  tell  me  if  an  oak-tree  dies  when  the  leaves  have  been  eaten 
for  two  years  in  succession  by  caterpillars?" 

She  spoke  quite  brightly,  and  rather  precisely,  in  a  cultivated,  in- 
quisitive voice. 

Mr.  Smith  was  startled,  but  relieved  to  have  a  safe  topic  of  conver- 
sation given  him.  He  told  her  a  great  deal  very  quickly  about  plagues 
of  insects.  He  told  her  that  he  had  a  brother  who  kept  a  fruit  farm  in 
Kent.  He  told  her  what  fruit  farmers  do  every  year  in  Kent,  and  so  on, 
and  so  on.  While  he  talked  a  very  odd  thing  happened.  Mrs.  Brown 
took  out  her  little  white  handkerchief  and  began  to  dab  her  eyes.  She 
was  crying.  But  she  went  on  listening  quite  composedly  to  what  he 
was  saying,  and  he  went  on  talking,  a  little  louder,  a  little  angrily,  as 
if  he  had  seen  her  cry  often  before;  as  if  it  were  a  painful  habit.  At  last 
it  got  on  his  nerves.  He  stopped  abruptly,  looked  out  of  the  window, 
then  leant  towards  her  as  he  had  been  doing  when  I  got  in,  and  said 
in  a  bullying,  menacing  way,  as  if  he  would  not  stand  any  more  non- 
sense, 


366  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"So  about  that  matter  we  were  discussing.  It'll  be  all  right?  George 
will  be  there  on  Tuesday?" 

"We  shan't  be  late,"  said  Mrs.  Brown,  gathering  herself  together 
with  superb  dignity. 

Mr.  Smith  said  nothing.  He  got  up,  buttoned  his  coat,  reached  his 
bag  down,  and  jumped  out  of  the  train  before  it  had  stopped  at  Clap- 
ham  Junction.  He  had  got  what  he  wanted,  but  he  was  ashamed  of 
himself;  he  was  glad  to  get  out  of  the  old  lady's  sight. 

Mrs.  Brown  and  I  were  left  alone  together.  She  sat  in  her  corner 
opposite,  very  clean,  very  small,  rather  queer,  and  suffering  intensely. 
The  impression  she  made  was  overwhelming.  It  came  pouring  out  like 
a  draught,  like  a  smell  of  burning.  What  was  it  composed  of — that 
overwhelming  and  peculiar  impression?  Myriads  of  irrelevant  and  in- 
congruous ideas  crowd  into  one's  head  on  such  occasions;  one  sees  the 
person,  one  sees  Mrs.  Brown,  in  the  centre  of  all  sorts  of  different 
scenes.  I  thought  of  her  in  a  seaside  house,  among  queer  ornaments: 
sea-urchins,  models  of  ships  in  glass  cases.  Her  husband's  medals  were 
on  the  mantelpiece.  She  popped  in  and  out  of  the  room,  perching  on 
the  edges  of  chairs,  picking  meals  out  of  saucers,  indulging  in  long, 
silent  stares.  The  caterpillars  and  the  oak-trees  seemed  to  imply  all  that. 
And  then,  into  this  fantastic  and  secluded  life,  broke  Mr.  Smith.  I  saw 
him  blowing  in,  so  to  speak,  on  a  windy  day.  He  banged,  he  slammed. 
His  dripping  umbrella  made  a  pool  in  the  hall.  They  sat  closeted 
together. 

And  then  Mrs.  Brown  faced  the  dreadful  revelation.  She  took  her 
heroic  decision.  Early,  before  dawn,  she  packed  her  bag  and  carried  it 
herself  to  the  station.  She  would  not  let  Smith  touch  it.  She  was 
wounded  in  her  pride,  unmoored  from  her  anchorage;  she  came  of 
gentlefolks  who  kept  servants — but  details  could  wait.  The  important 
thing  was  to  realize  her  character,  to  steep  oneself  in  her  atmosphere. 
I  had  no  time  to  explain  why  I  felt  it  somewhat  tragic,  heroic,  yet  with 
a  dash  of  the  flighty,  and  fantastic,  before  the  train  stopped,  and  I 
watched  her  disappear,  carrying  her  bag,  into  the  vast  blazing  station. 
She  looked  very  small,  very  tenacious;  at  once  very  frail  and  very 
heroic.  And  I  have  never  seen  her  again,  and  I  shall  never  know  what 
became  of  her. 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  367 

The  story  ends  without  any  point  to  it.  But  I  have  not  told  you  this 
anecdote  to  illustrate  either  my  own  ingenuity  or  the  pleasure  of  travel- 
ling from  Richmond  to  Waterloo.  What  I  want  you  to  see  in  it  is  this. 
Here  is  a  character  imposing  itself  upon  another  person.  Here  is  Mrs. 
Brown  making  someone  begin  almost  automatically  to  write  a  novel 
about  her.  I  believe  that  all  novels  begin  with  an  old  lady  in  the  corner 
opposite.  I  believe  that  all  novels,  that  is  to  say,  deal  with  character, 
and  that  it  is  to  express  character — not  to  preach  doctrines,  sing  songs, 
or  celebrate  the  glories  of  the  British  Empire,  that  the  form  of  the 
novel,  so  clumsy,  verbose,  and  undramatic,  so  rich,  elastic,  and  alive, 
has  been  evolved.  To  express  character,  I  have  said;  but  you  will  at 
once  reflect  that  the  very  widest  interpretation  can  be  put  upon  those 
words.  For  example,  old  Mrs.  Brown's  character  will  strike  you  very 
differently  according  to  the  age  and  country  in  which  you  happen  to 
be  born.  It  would  be  easy  enough  to  write  three  different  versions  of 
that  incident  in  the  train,  an  English,  a  French,  and  a  Russian.  The 
English  writer  would  make  the  old  lady  into  a  "character";  he  would 
bring  out  her  oddities  and  mannerisms;  her  buttons  and  wrinkles;  her 
ribbons  and  warts.  Her  personality  would  dominate  the  book.  A  French 
writer  would  rub  out  all  that;  he  would  sacrifice  the  individual  Mrs. 
Brown  to  give  a  more  general  view  of  human  nature;  to  make  a  more 
abstract,  proportioned,  and  harmonious  whole.  The  Russian  would 
pierce  through  the  flesh;  would  reveal  the  soul — the  soul  alone,  wan- 
dering out  into  the  Waterloo  Road,  asking  of  life  some  tremendous 
question  which  would  sound  on  and  on  in  our  ears  after  the  book  was 
finished.  And  then  besides  age  and  country  there  is  the  writer's  tem- 
perament to  be  considered.  You  see  one  thing  in  character,  and  I  an- 
other. You  say  it  means  this,  and  I  that.  And  when  it  comes  to  writing 
each  makes  a  further  selection  on  principles  of  his  own.  Thus  Mrs. 
Brown  can  be  treated  in  an  infinite  variety  of  ways,  according  to  the 
age,  country,  and  temperament  of  the  writer. 

But  now  I  must  recall  what  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  says.  He  says  that 
it  is  only  if  the  characters  are  real  that  the  novel  has  any  chance  of 
surviving.  Otherwise,  die  it  must.  But,  I  ask  myself,  what  is  reality? 
And  who  are  the  judges  of  reality?  A  character  may  be  real  to  Mr. 
Bennett  and  quite  unreal  to  me.  For  instance,  in  this  article  he  says 


368  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

that  Dr.  Watson  in  Sherloc\  Holmes  is  real  to  him:  to  me  Dr.  Watson 
is  a  sack  stuffed  with  straw,  a  dummy,  a  figure  of  fun.  And  so  it  is 
with  character  after  character — in  book  after  book.  There  is  nothing 
that  people  differ  about  more  than  the  reality  of  characters,  especially 
in  contemporary  books.  But  if  you  take  a  larger  view  I  think  that  Mr. 
Bennett  is  perfectly  right.  If,  that  is,  you  think  of  the  novels  which 
seem  to  you  great  novels — War  and  Peace,  Vanity  Fair,  Tristram 
Shandy,  Madame  Bovary,  Pride  and  Prejudice,  The  Mayor  of  Caster- 
bridge,  Villette — if  you  think  of  these  books,  you  do  at  once  think  of 
some  character  who  has  seemed  to  you  so  real  (I  do  not  by  that  mean 
so  lifelike)  that  it  has  the  power  to  make  you  think  not  merely  of  it 
itself,  but  of  all  sorts  of  things  through  its  eyes — of  religion,  of  love, 
of  war,  of  peace,  of  family  life,  of  balls  in  county  towns,  of  sunsets, 
moonrises,  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  There  is  hardly  any  subject  of 
human  experience  that  is  left  out  of  War  and  Peace  it  seems  to  me. 
And  in  all  these  novels  all  these  great  novelists  have  brought  us  to  see 
whatever  they  wish  us  to  see  through  some  character.  Otherwise,  they 
would  not  be  novelists;  but  poets,  historians,  or  pamphleteers. 

But  now  let  us  examine  what  Mr.  Bennett  went  on  to  say — he  said 
that  there  was  no  great  novelist  among  the  Georgian  writers  because 
they  cannot  create  characters  who  are  real,  true,  and  convincing.  And 
there  I  cannot  agree.  There  are  reasons,  excuses,  possibilities  which  I 
think  put  a  different  colour  upon  the  case.  It  seems  so  to  me  at  least, 
but  I  am  well  aware  that  this  is  a  matter  about  which  I  am  likely  to  be 
prejudiced,  sanguine,  and  near-sighted.  I  will  put  my  view  before  you 
in  the  hope  that  you  will  make  it  impartial,  judicial,  and  broad-minded. 
Why,  then,  is  it  so  hard  for  novelists  at  present  to  create  characters 
which  seem  real,  not  only  to  Mr.  Bennett,  but  to  the  world  at  large? 
Why,  when  October  comes  round,  do  the  publishers  always  fail  to 
supply  us  with  a  masterpiece? 

Surely  one  reason  is  that  the  men  and  women  who  began  writing 
novels  in  1910  or  thereabouts  had  this  great  difficulty  to  face — that  there 
was  no  English  novelist  living  from  whom  they  could  learn  their  busi- 
ness. Mr.  Conrad  is  a  Pole;  which  sets  him  apart,  and  makes  him, 
however  admirable,  not  very  helpful.  Mr.  Hardy  has  written  no  novel 
since  1895.  The  most  prominent  and  successful  novelists  in  the  year 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  369 

1910  were,  I  suppose,  Mr.  Wells,  Mr.  Bennett,  and  Mr.  Galsworthy. 
Now  it  seems  to  me  that  to  go  to  these  men  and  ask  them  to  teach  you 
how  to  write  a  novel — how  to  create  characters  that  are  real — is  pre- 
cisely like  going  to  a  bootmaker  and  asking  him  to  teach  you  how  to 
make  a  watch.  Do  not  let  me  give  you  the  impression  that  I  do  not 
admire  and  enjoy  their  books.  They  seem  to  me  of  great  value,  and 
indeed  of  great  necessity.  There  are  seasons  when  it  is  more  important 
to  have  boots  than  to  have  watches.  To  drop  metaphor,  I  think  that 
after  the  creative  activity  of  the  Victorian  age  it  was  quite  necessary, 
not  only  for  literature  but  for  life,  that  someone  should  write  the  books 
that  Mr.  Wells,  Mr.  Bennett,  and  Mr.  Galsworthy  have  written.  Yet 
what  odd  books  they  are!  Sometimes  I  wonder  if  we  are  right  to  call 
them  books  at  all.  For  they  leave  one  with  so  strange  a  feeling  of  in- 
completeness and  dissatisfaction.  In  order  to  complete  them  it  seems 
necessary  to  do  something — to  join  a  society,  or,  more  desperately,  to 
write  a  cheque.  That  done,  the  restlessness  is  laid,  the  book  finished; 
it  can  be  put  upon  the  shelf,  and  need  never  be  read  again.  But  with 
the  work  of  other  novelists  it  is  different.  Tristram  Shandy  or  Pride 
and  Prejudice  is  complete  in  itself;  it  is  self-contained;  it  leaves  one 
with  no  desire  to  do  anything,  except  indeed  to  read  the  book  again, 
and  to  understand  it  better.  The  difference  perhaps  is  that  both  Sterne 
and  Jane  Austen  were  interested  in  things  in  themselves;  in  character 
in  itself;  in  the  book  in  itself.  Therefore  everything  was  inside  the 
book,  nothing  outside.  But  the  Edwardians  were  never  interested  in 
character  in  itself;  or  in  the  book  in  itself.  They  were  interested  in 
something  outside.  Their  books,  then,  were  incomplete  as  books,  and 
required  that  the  reader  should  finish  them,  actively  and  practically, 
for  himself. 

Perhaps  we  can  make  this  clearer  if  we  take  the  liberty  of  imagining 
a  little  party  in  the  railway  carriage — Mr.  Wells,  Mr.  Galsworthy,  Mr. 
Bennett  are  travelling  to  Waterloo  with  Mrs.  Brown.  Mrs.  Brown,  I 
have  said,  was  poorly  dressed  and  very  small.  She  had  an  anxious, 
harassed  look.  I  doubt  whether  she  was  what  you  call  an  educated 
woman.  Seizing  upon  all  these  symptoms  of  the  unsatisfactory  condi- 
tion of  our  primary  schools  with  a  rapidity  to  which  I  can  do  no  jus- 
tice, Mr.  Wells  would  instantly  project  upon  the  windowpane  a  vision 


370  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  a  better,  breezier,  jollier,  happier,  more  adventurous  and  gallant 
world,  where  these  musty  railway  carnages  and  fusty  old  women  do 
not  exist;  where  miraculous  barges  bring  tropical  fruit  to  Camberwell 
by  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning;  where  there  are  public  nurseries,  foun- 
tains, and  libraries,  dining-rooms,  drawing-rooms,  and  marriages; 
where  every  citizen  is  generous  and  candid,  manly  and  magnificent, 
and  rather  like  Mr.  Wells  himself.  But  nobody  is  in  the  least  like  Mrs. 
Brown.  There  are  no  Mrs.  Browns  in  Utopia.  Indeed  I  do  not  think 
that  Mr.  Wells,  in  his  passion  to  make  her  what  she  ought  to  be, 
would  waste  a  thought  upon  her  as  she  is.  And  what  would  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy see?  Can  we  doubt  that  the  walls  of  Doulton's  factory  would 
take  his  fancy?  There  are  women  in  that  factory  who  make  twenty- 
five  dozen  earthenware  pots  every  day.  There  are  mothers  in  the  Mile 
End  Road  who  depend  upon  the  farthings  which  those  women  earn. 
But  there  are  employers  in  Surrey  who  are  even  now  smoking  rich 
cigars  while  the  nightingale  sings.  Burning  with  indignation,  stuffed 
with  information,  arraigning  civilization,  Mr.  Galsworthy  would  only 
see  in  Mrs.  Brown  a  pot  broken  on  the  wheel  and  thrown  into  the 
corner.  Mr.  Bennett,  alone  of  the  Edwardians,  would  keep  his  eyes  in 
the  carriage.  He,  indeed,  would  observe  every  detail  with  immense 
care.  He  would  notice  the  advertisements;  the  pictures  of  Swanage  and 
Portsmouth;  the  way  in  which  the  cushion  bulged  between  the  but- 
tons; how  Mrs.  Brown  wore  a  brooch  which  had  cost  three-and-ten- 
three  at  Whitworth's  bazaar;  and  had  mended  both  gloves — indeed 
the  thumb  of  the  left-hand  glove  had  been  replaced.  And  he  would 
observe,  at  length,  how  this  was  the  non-stop  train  from  Windsor 
which  calls  at  Richmond  for  the  convenience  of  middle-class  residents, 
who  can  afTord  to  go  to  the  theatre  but  have  not  reached  the  social 
rank  which  can  afTord  motor-cars,  though  it  is  true,  there  are  occasions 
(he  would  tell  us  what),  when  they  hire  them  from  a  company  (he 
would  tell  us  which).  And  so  he  would  gradually  sidle  sedately  to- 
wards Mrs.  Brown,  and  would  remark  how  she  had  been  left  a  little 
copyhold,  not  freehold,  property  at  Datchet,  which,  however,  was 
mortgaged  to  Mr.  Bungay  the  solicitor — but  why  should  I  presume  to 
invent  Mr.  Bennett?  Does  not  Mr.  Bennett  write  novels  himself?  I 
will  open  the  first  book  that  chance  puts  in  my  way — Hilda  Lessways. 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  371 

Let  us  see  how  he  makes  us  feel  that  Hilda  is  real,  true,  and  convinc- 
ing, as  a  novelist  should.  She  shut  the  door  in  a  soft,  controlled  way, 
which  showed  the  constraint  of  her  relations  with  her  mother.  She  was 
fond  of  reading  Maud;  she  was  endowed  with  the  power  to  feel  in- 
tensely. So  far,  so  good;  in  his  leisurely,  sure-footed  way  Mr.  Bennett 
is  trying  in  these  first  pages,  where  every  touch  is  important,  to  show 
us  the  kind  of  girl  she  was. 

But  then  he  begins  to  describe,  not  Hilda  Lessways,  but  the  view 
from  her  bedroom  window,  the  excuse  being  that  Mr.  Skellorn,  the 
man  who  collects  rents,  is  coming  along  that  way.  Mr.  Bennett  pro- 
ceeds : 

"The  bailiwick  of  Turnhill  lay  behind  her;  and  all  the  murky  dis- 
trict of  the  Five  Towns,  of  which  Turnhill  is  the  northern  outpost, 
lay  to  the  south.  At  the  foot  of  Chatterley  Wood  the  canal  wound  in 
large  curves  on  its  way  towards  the  undefiled  plains  of  Cheshire  and 
the  sea.  On  the  canal-side,  exactly  opposite  to  Hilda's  window,  was  a 
flour-mill,  that  sometimes  made  nearly  as  much  smoke  as  the  kilns 
and  the  chimneys  closing  the  prospect  on  either  hand.  From  the  flour- 
mill  a  bricked  path,  which  separated  a  considerable  row  of  new  cot- 
tages from  their  appurtenant  gardens,  led  straight  into  Lessways 
Street,  in  front  of  Mrs.  Lessways'  house.  By  this  path  Mr.  Skellorn 
should  have  arrived,  for  he  inhabited  the  farthest  of  the  cottages." 

One  line  of  insight  would  have  done  more  than  all  those  lines  of 
description;  but  let  them  pass  as  the  necessary  drudgery  of  the  novelist. 
And  now — where  is  Hilda  ?  Alas.  Hilda  is  still  looking  out  of  the  win- 
dow. Passionate  and  dissatisfied  as  she  was,  she  was  a  girl  with  an  eye 
for  houses.  She  often  compared  this  old  Mr.  Skellorn  with  the  villas 
she  saw  from  her  bedroom  window.  Therefore  the  villas  must  be  de- 
scribed. Mr.  Bennett  proceeds: 

"The  row  was  called  Freehold  Villas:  a  consciously  proud  name  in 
a  district  where  much  of  the  land  was  copyhold  and  could  only  change 
owners  subject  to  the  payment  of  'fines,'  and  to  the  feudal  consent  of 
a  'court'  presided  over  by  the  agent  of  a  lord  of  the  manor.  Most  of 
the  dwellings  were  owned  by  their  occupiers,  who,  each  an  absolute 
monarch  of  the  soil,  niggled  in  his  sooty  garden  of  an  evening  amid 
the  flutter  of  drying  shirts  and  towels.  Freehold  Villas  symbolized  the 


372  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

final  triumph  of  Victorian  economics,  the  apotheosis  of  the  prudent 
and  industrious  artisan.  It  corresponded  with  a  Building  Society  Secre- 
tary's dream  of  paradise.  And  indeed  it  was  a  very  real  achievement. 
Nevertheless,  Hilda's  irrational  contempt  would  not  admit  this." 

Heaven  be  praised,  we  cry!  At  last  we  are  coming  to  Hilda  herself. 
But  not  so  fast.  Hilda  may  have  been  this,  that,  and  the  other;  but 
Hilda  not  only  looked  at  houses,  and  thought  of  houses;  Hilda  lived 
in  a  house.  And  what  sort  of  a  house  did  Hilda  live  in?  Mr.  Bennett 
proceeds: 

"It  was  one  of  the  two  middle  houses  of  a  detached  terrace  of  four 
houses  built  by  her  grandfather  Lessways,  the  tea-pot  manufacturer; 
it  was  the  chief  of  the  four,  obviously  the  habitation  of  the  proprietor 
of  the  terrace.  One  of  the  corner  houses  comprised  a  grocer's  shop,  and 
this  house  had  been  robbed  of  its  just  proportion  of  garden  so  that  the 
seigneurial  garden-plot  might  be  triningly  larger  than  the  other.  The 
terrace  was  not  a  terrace  of  cottages,  but  of  houses  rated  at  from  twenty- 
six  to  thirty-six  pounds  a  year;  beyond  the  means  of  artisans  and  petty 
insurance  agents  and  rent-collectors.  And  further,  it  was  well  built, 
generously  built;  and  its  architecture,  though  debased,  showed  some 
faint  traces  of  Georgian  amenity.  It  was  admittedly  the  best  row  of 
houses  in  that  newly  settled  quarter  of  the  town.  In  coming  to  it  out 
of  Freehold  Villas  Mr.  Skellorn  obviously  came  to  something  superior, 
wider,  more  liberal.  Suddenly  Hilda  heard  her  mother's  voice.  .  .  ." 

But  we  cannot  hear  her  mother's  voice,  or  Hilda's  voice;  we  can 
only  hear  Mr.  Bennett's  voice  telling  us  facts  about  rents  and  freeholds 
and  copyholds  and  fines.  What  can  Mr.  Bennett  be  about?  I  have 
formed  my  own  opinion  of  what  Mr.  Bennett  is  about — he  is  trying 
to  make  us  imagine  for  him;  he  is  trying  to  hypnotize  us  into  the  be- 
lief that,  because  he  has  made  a  house,  there  must  be  a  person  living 
there.  With  all  his  powers  of  observation,  which  are  marvellous,  with 
all  his  sympathy  and  humanity,  which  are  great,  Mr.  Bennett  has  never 
once  looked  at  Mrs.  Brown  in  her  corner.  There  she  sits  in  the  corner 
of  the  carriage — that  carriage  which  is  travelling,  not  from  Richmond 
to  Waterloo,  but  from  one  age  of  English  literature  to  the  next,  for 
Mrs.  Brown  is  eternal,  Mrs.  Brown  is  human  nature,  Mrs.  Brown 
changes  only  on  the  surface,  it  is  the  novelists  who  get  in  and  out — 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  373 

there  she  sits  and  not  one  of  the  Edwardian  writers  had  so  much  as 
looked  at  her.  They  have  looked  very  powerfully,  searchingly,  and 
sympathetically  out  of  the  window;  at  factories,  at  Utopias,  even  at  the 
decoration  and  upholstery  of  the  carriage;  but  never  at  her,  never  at 
life,  never  at  human  nature.  And  so  they  have  developed  a  technique 
of  novel-writing  which  suits  their  purpose;  they  have  made  tools  and 
established  conventions  which  do  their  business.  But  those  tools  are  not 
our  tools,  and  that  business  is  not  our  business.  For  us  those  conven- 
tions are  ruin,  those  tools  are  death. 

You  may  well  complain  of  the  vagueness  of  my  language.  What  is 
a  convention,  a  tool,  you  may  ask,  and  what  do  you  mean  by  saying 
that  Mr.  Bennett's  and  Mr.  Wells's  and  Mr.  Galsworthy's  conventions 
are  the  wrong  conventions  for  the  Georgians  ?  The  question  is  difficult : 
I  will  attempt  a  short  cut.  A  convention  in  writing  is  not  much  differ- 
ent from  a  convention  in  manners.  Both  in  life  and  in  literature  it  is 
necessary  to  have  some  means  of  bridging  the  gulf  between  the  hostess 
and  her  unknown  guest  on  the  one  hand,  the  writer  and  his  unknown 
reader  on  the  other.  The  hostess  bethinks  her  of  the  weather,  for  gen- 
erations of  hostesses  have  established  the  fact  that  this  is  a  subject  of 
universal  interest  in  which  we  all  believe.  She  begins  by  saying  that 
we  are  having  a  wretched  May,  and,  having  thus  got  into  touch  with 
her  unknown  guest,  proceeds  to  matters  of  greater  interest.  So  it  is 
in  literature.  The  writer  must  get  into  touch  with  his  reader  by  putting 
before  him  something  which  he  recognizes,  which  therefore  stimulates 
his  imagination,  and  makes  him  willing  to  cooperate  in  the  far  more 
difficult  business  of  intimacy.  And  it  is  of  the  highest  importance  that 
this  common  meeting-place  should  be  reached  easily,  almost  instinc- 
tively, in  the  dark,  with  one's  eyes  shut.  Here  is  Mr.  Bennett  making 
use  of  this  common  ground  in  the  passage  which  I  have  quoted.  The 
problem  before  him  was  to  make  us  believe  in  the  reality  of  Hilda 
Lessways.  So  he  began,  being  an  Edwardian,  by  describing  accurately 
and  minutely  the  sort  of  house  Hilda  lived  in,  and  the  sort  of  house 
she  saw  from  the  window.  House  property  was  the  common  ground 
from  which  the  Edwardians  found  it  easy  to  proceed  to  intimacy.  In- 
direct as  it  seems  to  us,  the  convention  worked  admirably,  and  thou- 
sands  of   Hilda   Lessways   were   launched   upon   the   world   by   this 


374  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

means.  For  that  age  and  generation,  the  convention  was  a  good  one. 

But  now,  if  you  will  allow  me  to  pull  my  own  anecdote  to  pieces, 
you  will  see  how  keenly  I  felt  the  lack  of  a  convention,  and  how  seri- 
ous a  matter  it  is  when  the  tools  of  one  generation  are  useless  for  the 
next.  The  incident  had  made  a  great  impression  on  me.  But  how  was 
I  to  transmit  it  to  you?  All  I  could  do  was  to  report  as  accurately  as  I 
could  what  was  said,  to  describe  in  detail  what  was  worn,  to  say,  de- 
spairingly, that  all  sorts  of  scenes  rushed  into  my  mind,  to  proceed  to 
tumble  them  out  pell-mell,  and  to  describe  this  vivid,  this  overmaster- 
ing impression  by  likening  it  to  a  draught  or  a  smell  of  burning.  To 
tell  you  the  truth,  I  was  also  strongly  tempted  to  manufacture  a  three- 
volume  novel  about  the  old  lady's  son,  and  his  adventures  crossing  the 
Atlantic,  and  her  daughter,  and  how  she  kept  a  milliner's  shop  in 
Westminster,  the  past  life  of  Smith  himself,  and  his  house  at  Sheffield, 
though  such  stories  seem  to  me  the  most  dreary,  irrelevant,  and  hum- 
bugging affairs  in  the  world. 

But  if  I  had  done  that  I  should  have  escaped  the  appalling  effort  of 
saying  what  I  meant.  And  to  have  got  at  what  I  meant  I  should  have 
had  to  go  back  and  back  and  back;  to  experiment  with  one  thing  and 
another;  to  try  this  sentence  and  that,  referring  each  word  to  my  vision, 
matching  it  as  exactly  as  possible,  and  knowing  that  somehow  I  had  to 
find  a  common  ground  between  us,  a  convention  which  would  not 
seem  to  you  too  odd,  unreal,  and  far-fetched  to  believe  in.  I  admit  that 
I  shirked  that  arduous  undertaking.  I  let  my  Mrs.  Brown  slip  through 
my  fingers.  I  have  told  you  nothing  whatever  about  her.  But  that  is 
partly  the  great  Edwardians'  fault.  I  asked  them — they  are  my  elders 
and  betters — How  shall  I  begin  to  describe  this  woman's  character? 
And  they  said,  "Begin  by  saying  that  her  father  kept  a  shop  in  Har- 
rogate. Ascertain  the  rent.  Ascertain  the  wages  of  shop  assistants  in  the 
year  1878.  Discover  what  her  mother  died  of.  Describe  cancer.  De- 
scribe calico.  Describe — "  But  I  cried,  "Stop!  Stop!"  And  I  regret  to 
say  that  I  threw  that  ugly,  that  clumsy,  that  incongruous  tool  out  of 
the  window,  for  I  knew  that  if  I  began  describing  the  cancer  and  the 
calico,  my  Mrs.  Brown,  that  vision  to  which  I  cling  though  I  know  no 
way  of  imparting  it  to  you,  would  have  been  dulled  and  tarnished  and 
vanished  for  ever. 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  375 

That  is  what  I  meant  by  saying  that  the  Edwardian  tools  are  the 
wrong  ones  for  us  to  use.  They  have  laid  an  enormous  stress  upon  the 
fabric  of  things.  They  have  given  us  a  house  in  the  hope  that  we  may 
be  able  to  deduce  the  human  beings  who  live  there.  To  give  them  their 
due,  they  have  made  that  house  much  better  worth  living  in.  But  if 
you  hold  that  novels  are  in  the  first  place  about  people,  and  only  in  the 
second  about  the  houses  they  live  in,  that  is  the  wrong  way  to  set  about 
it.  Therefore,  you  see,  the  Georgian  writer  had  to  begin  by  throwing 
away  the  method  that  was  in  use  at  the  moment.  He  was  left  alone 
there  facing  Mrs.  Brown  without  any  method  of  conveying  her  to  the 
reader.  But  that  is  inaccurate.  A  writer  is  never  alone.  There  is  always 
the  public  with  him — if  not  on  the  same  seat,  at  least  in  the  compart- 
ment next  door.  Now  the  public  is  a  strange  travelling  companion.  In 
England  it  is  a  very  suggestive  and  docile  creature,  which,  once  you 
get  it  to  attend,  will  believe  implicitly  what  it  is  told  for  a  certain 
number  of  years.  If  you  say  to  the  public  with  sufficient  conviction, 
"All  women  have  tails,  and  all  men  humps,"  it  will  actually  learn  to 
see  women  with  tails  and  men  with  humps,  and  will  think  it  very  revo- 
lutionary and  probably  improper  if  you  say  "Nonsense.  Monkeys  have 
tails  and  camels  humps.  But  men  and  women  have  brains,  and  they 
have  hearts;  they  think  and  they  feel," — that  will  seem  to  it  a  bad 
joke,  and  an  improper  one  into  the  bargain. 

But  to  return.  Here  is  the  British  public  sitting  by  the  writer's  side 
and  saying  in  its  vast  and  unanimous  way,  "Old  women  have  houses. 
They  have  fathers.  They  have  incomes.  They  have  servants.  They  have 
hot  water  bottles.  That  is  how  we  know  that  they  are  old  women.  Mr. 
Wells  and  Mr.  Bennett  and  Mr.  Galsworthy  have  always  taught  us 
that  this  is  the  way  to  recognize  them.  But  now  with  your  Mrs.  Brown 
— how  are  we  to  believe  in  her?  We  do  not  even  know  whether  her 
villa  was  called  Albert  or  Balmoral;  what  she  paid  for  her  gloves;  or 
whether  her  mother  died  of  cancer  or  of  consumption.  How  can  she  be 
alive?  No;  she  is  a  mere  figment  of  your  imagination." 

And  old  women  of  course  ought  to  be  made  of  freehold  villas  and 
copyhold  estates,  not  of  imagination. 

The  Georgian  novelist,  therefore,  was  in  an  awkward  predicament. 
There  was  Mrs.  Brown  protesting  that  she  was  different,  quite  differ- 


376  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

ent,  from  what  people  made  out,  and  luring  the  novelist  to  her  rescue 
by  the  most  fascinating  if  fleeting  glimpse  of  her  charms;  there  were 
the  Edwardians  handing  out  tools  appropriate  to  house  building  and 
house  breaking;  and  there  was  the  British  public  asseverating  that  they 
must  see  the  hot  water  bottle  first.  Meanwhile  the  train  was  rushing 
to  that  station  where  we  must  all  get  out. 

Such,  I  think,  was  the  predicament  in  which  the  young  Georgians 
found  themselves  about  the  year  1910.  Many  of  thern — I  am  thinking 
of  Mr.  Forster  and  Mr.  Lawrence  in  particular — spoilt  their  early  work 
because,  instead  of  throwing  away  those  tools,  they  tried  to  use  them. 
They  tried  to  compromise.  They  tried  to  combine  their  own  direct 
sense  of  the  oddity  and  significance  of  some  character  with  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy's knowledge  of  the  Factory  Acts,  and  Mr.  Bennett's  knowledge 
of  the  Five  Towns.  They  tried  it,  but  they  had  too  keen,  too  overpow- 
ering a  sense  of  Mrs.  Brown  and  her  peculiarities  to  go  on  trying  it 
much  longer.  Something  had  to  be  done.  At  whatever  cost  of  life,  limb, 
and  damage  to  valuable  property  Mrs.  Brown  must  be  rescued,  ex- 
pressed, and  set  in  her  high  relations  to  the  world  before  the  train 
stopped  and  she  disappeared  for  ever.  And  so  the  smashing  and  the 
crashing  began.  Thus  it  is  that  we  hear  all  round  us,  in  poems  and 
novels  and  biographies,  even  in  newspaper  articles  and  essays,  the 
sound  of  breaking  and  falling,  crashing  and  destruction.  It  is  the  pre- 
vailing sound  of  the  Georgian  age — rather  a  melancholy  one  if  you 
think  what  melodious  days  there  have  been  in  the  past,  if  you  think 
of  Shakespeare  and  Milton  and  Keats  or  even  of  Jane  Austen  and 
Thackeray  and  Dickens;  if  you  think  of  the  language,  and  the  heights 
to  which  it  can  soar  when  free,  and  see  the  same  eagle  captive,  bald, 
and  croaking. 

In  view  of  these  facts — with  these  sounds  in  my  ears  and  these  fancies 
in  my  brain — I  am  not  going  to  deny  that  Mr.  Bennett  has  some  reason 
when  he  complains  that  our  Georgian  writers  are  unable  to  make  us 
believe  that  our  characters  are  real.  I  am  forced  to  agree  that  they  do 
not  pour  out  three  immortal  masterpieces  with  Victorian  regularity 
every  autumn.  But  instead  of  being  gloomy,  I  am  sanguine.  For  this 
state  of  things  is,  I  think,  inevitable  whenever  from  hoar  old  age  or 
callow  youth  the  convention  ceases  to  be  a  means  of  communication 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  377 

between  writer  and  reader,  and  becomes  instead  an  obstacle  and  an 
impediment.  At  the  present  moment  we  are  suffering,  not  from  decay, 
but  from  having  no  code  of  manners  which  writers  and  readers  accept 
as  a  prelude  to  the  more  exciting  intercourse  of  friendship.  The  literary 
convention  of  the  time  is  so  artificial — you  have  to  talk  about  the 
weather  and  nothing  but  the  weather  throughout  the  entire  visit — that, 
naturally,  the  feeble  are  tempted  to  outrage,  and  the  strong  are  led  to 
destroy  the  very  foundations  and  rules  of  literary  society.  Signs  of  this 
are  everywhere  apparent.  Grammar  is  violated;  syntax  disintegrated; 
as  a  boy  staying  with  an  aunt  for  the  week-end  rolls  in  the  geranium 
bed  out  of  sheer  desperation  as  the  solemnities  of  the  Sabbath  wear  on. 
The  more  adult  writers  do  not,  of  course,  indulge  in  such  wanton  ex- 
hibitions of  spleen.  Their  sincerity  is  desperate,  and  their  courage  tre- 
mendous; it  is  only  that  they  do  not  know  which  to  use,  a  fork  or  their 
fingers.  Thus,  if  you  read  Mr.  Joyce  and  Mr.  Eliot  you  will  be  struck 
by  the  indecency  of  the  one,  and  the  obscurity  of  the  other.  Mr.  Joyce's 
indecency  in  Ulysses  seems  to  me  the  conscious  and  calculated  inde- 
cency of  a  desperate  man  who  feels  that  in  order  to  breathe  he  must 
break  the  windows.  At  moments,  when  the  window  is  broken,  he  is 
magnificent.  But  what  a  waste  of  energy!  And,  after  all,  how  dull  in- 
decency is,  when  it  is  not  the  overflowing  of  a  super-abundant  energy 
or  savagery,  but  the  determined  and  public-spirited  act  of  a  man  who 
needs  fresh  air!  Again,  with  the  obscurity  of  Mr.  Eliot.  I  think  that 
Mr.  Eliot  has  written  some  of  the  loveliest  single  lines  in  modern 
poetry.  But  how  intolerant  he  is  of  the  old  usages  and  politenesses  of 
society — respect  for  the  weak,  consideration  for  the  dull!  As  I  sun  my- 
self upon  the  intense  and  ravishing  beauty  of  one  of  his  lines,  and  re- 
flect that  I  must  make  a  dizzy  and  dangerous  leap  to  the  next,  and  so 
on  from  line  to  line,  like  an  acrobat  flying  precariously  from  bar  to 
bar,  I  cry  out,  I  confess,  for  the  old  decorums,  and  envy  the  indolence 
of  my  ancestors  who,  instead  of  spinning  madly  through  mid-air, 
dreamt  quietly  in  the  shade  with  a  book.  Again,  in  Mr.  Strachey's 
books,  Eminent  Victorians  and  Queen  Victoria,  the  eflort  and  strain 
of  writing  against  the  grain  and  current  of  the  times  is  visible  too.  It 
is  much  less  visible,  of  course,  for  not  only  is  he  dealing  with  facts, 
which  are  stubborn  things,  but  he  has  fabricated,  chiefly  from  eight- 


378  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

eenth-century  material,  a  very  discreet  code  of  manners  of  his  own, 
which  allows  him  to  sit  at  table  with  the  highest  in  the  land  and  to 
say  a  great  many  things  under  cover  of  that  exquisite  apparel  which, 
had  they  gone  naked,  would  have  been  chased  by  the  men-servants 
from  the  room.  Still,  if  you  compare  Imminent  Victorians  with  some  of 
Lord  Macaulay's  essays,  though  you  will  feel  that  Lord  Macaulay  is 
always  wrong,  and  Mr.  Strachey  always  right,  you  will  also  feel  a  body, 
a  sweep,  a  richness  in  Lord  Macaulay's  essays  which  show  that  his  age 
was  behind  him;  all  his  strength  went  straight  into  his  work;  none 
was  used  for  purposes  of  concealment  or  of  conversion.  But  Mr. 
Strachey  has  had  to  open  our  eyes  before  he  made  us  see;  he  has  had 
to  search  out  and  sew  together  a  very  artful  manner  of  speech;  and 
the  effort,  beautifully  though  it  is  concealed,  has  robbed  his  work  of 
some  of  the  force  that  should  have  gone  into  it,  and  limited  his  scope. 

For  these  reasons,  then,  we  must  reconcile  ourselves  to  a  season  of 
failures  and  fragments.  We  must  reflect  that  where  so  much  strength 
is  spent  on  finding  a  way  of  telling  the  truth  the  truth  itself  is  bound 
to  reach  us  in  rather  an  exhausted  and  chaotic  condition.  Ulysses, 
Queen  Victoria,  Mr.  Prufrock — to  give  Mrs.  Brown  some  of  the  names 
she  has  made  famous  lately — is  a  little  pale  and  dishevelled  by  the  time 
her  rescuers  reach  her.  And  it  is  the  sound  of  their  axes  that  we  hear 
— a  vigorous  and  stimulating  sound  in  my  ears — unless  of  course  you 
wish  to  sleep,  when,  in  the  bounty  of  his  concern,  Providence  has  pro- 
vided a  host  of  writers  anxious  and  able  to  satisfy  your  needs. 

Thus  I  have  tried,  at  tedious  length,  I  fear,  to  answer  some  of  the 
questions  which  I  began  by  asking.  I  have  given  an  account  of  some 
of  the  difficulties  which  in  my  view  beset  the  Georgian  writer  in  all 
his  forms.  I  have  sought  to  excuse  him.  May  I  end  by  venturing  to 
remind  you  of  the  duties  and  responsibilities  that  are  yours  as  partners 
in  this  business  of  writing  books,  as  companions  in  the  railway  car- 
riage, as  fellow-travellers  with  Mrs.  Brown  P  For  she  is  just  as  visible  to 
you  who  remain  silent  as  to  us  who  tell  stories  about  her.  In  the  course 
of  your  daily  life  this  past  week  you  have  had  far  stranger  and  more 
interesting  experiences  than  the  one  I  have  tried  to  describe.  You  have 
overheard  scraps  of  talk  that  filled  you  with  amazement.  You  have 
gone  to  bed  at  night  bewildered  by  the  complexity  of  your  feelings. 


VIRGINIA  WOOLF  379 

In  one  day  thousands  of  ideas  have  coursed  through  your  brains;  thou- 
sands of  emotions  have  met,  collided,  and  disappeared  in  astonishing 
disorder.  Nevertheless,  you  allow  the  writers  to  palm  off  upon  you  a 
version  of  all  this,  an  image  of  Mrs.  Brown,  which  has  no  likeness  to 
that  surprising  apparition  whatsoever.  In  your  modesty  you  seem  to 
consider  that  writers  are  of  different  blood  and  bone  from  yourselves; 
that  they  know  more  of  Mrs.  Brown  than  you  do.  Never  was  there  a 
more  fatal  mistake.  It  is  this  division  between  reader  and  writer,  this 
humility  on  your  part,  these  professional  airs  and  graces  on  ours,  that 
corrupt  and  emasculate  the  books  which  should  be  the  healthy  off- 
spring of  a  close  and  equal  alliance  between  us.  Hence  spring  those 
sleek,  smooth  novels,  those  portentous  and  ridiculous  biographies,  that 
milk-and-watery  criticism,  those  poems  melodiously  celebrating  the  in- 
nocence of  roses  and  sheep  which  pass  so  plausibly  for  literature  at  the 
present  time. 

Your  part  is  to  insist  that  writers  shall  come  down  off  their  plinths 
and  pedestals,  and  describe  beautifully  if  possible,  truthfully  at  any  rate, 
our  Mrs.  Brown.  You  should  insist  that  she  is  an  old  lady  of  unlimited 
capacity  and  infinite  variety;  capable  of  appearing  in  any  place;  wear- 
ing any  dress;  saying  anything  and  doing  heaven  knows  what.  But  the 
things  she  says  and  the  things  she  does  and  her  eyes  and  her  nose  and 
her  speech  and  her  silence  have  an  overwhelming  fascination,  for  she 
is,  of  course,  the  spirit  we  live  by,  life  itself. 

But  do  not  expect  just  at  present  a  complete  and  satisfactory  pre- 
sentment of  her.  Tolerate  the  spasmodic,  the  obscure,  the  fragmentary, 
the  failure.  Your  help  is  invoked  in  a  good  cause.  For  I  will  make  one 
final  and  surpassingly  rash  prediction — we  are  trembling  on  the  verge 
of  one  of  the  great  ages  of  English  literature.  But  it  can  only  be  reached 
if  we  are  determined  never,  never  to  desert  Mrs.  Brown. 


HON.  JOHN  M.   WOOLSEY 


COMMENTARY 


James  Joyce  dedicated  his  first  play,  now  lost,  to  his  own  soul.  The 
gesture,  marrying  arrogance  to  humility,  is  the  trademark  of  his 
career,  recently  ended.  At  twenty  he  left  his  countrymen— " the  most 
belated  race  in  Europe,7'  he  overhitterly  called  them— and  came 
home,  as  it  were,  to  the  Continent.  At  twenty,  armed  with  the  only 
weapons  he  permitted  himself  to  use— ''silence,  exile,  and  cunning" 
— he  began  his  pilgrimage. 

I  should  think  that  James  Joyce  suffered  more  and  longer  than 
any  other  important  artist  of  our  time.  Through  it  all,  undetectable, 
he  kept  intact  his  obligations  to  his  own  genius.  He  was  a  romantic 
artist  of  a  type  now  going  out  of  fashion,  one  who  admitted  no 
values  more  imperative  than  those  of  his  own  creative  drive.  His  life 
was  one  of  poverty,  discouragement,  constant  literary  setbacks,  mis- 
understanding, physical  pain,  and  near-blindness.  All  this  he  bore, 
and  out  of  it  came  Ulysses,  several  great  short  stories,  Finnegans 
Wake  (which  I  confess  baffles  me),  and  a  personal  influence  that 
helped  to  revolutionize  the  literatures  of  half  a  dozen  countries. 

For  twelve  years  the  customs  authorities  of  our  country  refused  to 
permit  the  entry  of  Ulysses,  thus  protecting  you  and  me  from  the 
moral  contamination  that  comes  of  contact  with  a  masterpiece. 
Finally,  on  December  6, 1933,  the  ban  was  lifted  by  a  decision  of  the 
United  States  District  Court,  the  Honorable  John  M.  Woolsey  pre- 
siding. So  at  last  we  could  all  buy  and  read  a  long,  difficult  book 
which,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  guardians  of  our  morality,  dif- 
fered dangerously  from  other  books  in  that  it  contained  a  half-dozen 
monosyllables  of  all  work  which  English-speaking  men,  women,  and 
most  children  at  the  two  extremes  of  society  have  been  using  with 
unthinking  casualncss  ever  since  the  days  of  Henry  VIII.  So  at  last 
we  could  read  this  book,  a  whole  literature  in  itself,  the  best  and 
longest  anecdote  ever  told  about  a  Jew  and  an  Irishman. 

The  decision  in  which  the  government  of  this  country  sustained 
a  glorious  defeat  at  the  hands  of  Judge  Woolsey  is  classic.  Its  final 

380 


HON.  JOHN  M.   WOOLSEY  381 

statement— "Ulysses  may,  therefore,  be  admitted  into  the  United 
States"— is  a  declaration  of  historic  importance,  even  though  it  only 
deals  with  a  hook  most  people  will  never  read.  The  Peter  Zenger  case 
at  the  time  seemed  unimportant,  hut  in  retrospect  we  now  realize  it 
to  he  part  of  the  charter  of  our  liberties,  for  it  established  the  prin- 
ciple of  a  free  press. 

It  is  not  usual  for  novelists  to  take  judges  seriously  in  their  novels. 
It  is  even  rarer  for  judges  to  take  novelists  seriously  in  their  deci- 
sions. Judge  Woolsey  based  his  opinion  not  on  narrow  legalistic 
grounds  but  on  literary  ones.  The  principle  underlying  his  decision— 
though  he  does  not  so  enunciate  it,  for  it  is  an  esthetic  and  not  a 
juridical  principle— is  that  a  great  work  of  art  cannot  be  pornography. 
The  important  part  of  his  comment  is  that  in  which  he  demonstrates 
Ulysses  to  be  a  work  of  art.  The  description  of  Joyce's  aims  and 
method— you  will  find  it  in  Section  IV  of  the  decision — is  high-grade 
literary  analysis  which  puts  us  professional  boys  to  shame,  so  clear, 
just,  and  perceptive  is  it.  I  also  call  your  attention  to  the  fact  that 
the  judge  is  not  without  his  moments  of  sly  humor.  In  fact,  the  en- 
tire decision  deserves  to  be  called  a  piece  of  literature,  and  that  is 
why  I  have  included  it  here. 

The  whole  question  of  literary  censorship  will  sooner  or  later  be 
settled  in  one  of  two  ways.  A  completely  repressive  government,  such 
as  that  of  Germany,  will  consider  literature  only  in  terms  of  its  use- 
fulness to  the  power  of  the  state.  That  means  a  censorship  so  rigid 
as  to  achieve  in  the  end  the  slow  death  of  literature  itself.  A  com- 
pletely democratic  government,  which  our  grandchildren  may  live 
to  see,  will  impose  no  restrictions  at  all.  The  legal  definition  of  the 
word  "obscene"— printed  matter  which  tends  "to  stir  the  sex  im- 
pulses"—is  obviously  ludicrous.  The  sex  impulses  of  men  and  women 
are  stirred  daily  by  casual  stimuli  and  suggestions  that  are  far  beyond 
the  control  of  any  regulating  authority. .It  will  take  a  long  time,  but 
the  human  race  will  sooner  or  later  reach  the  conclusion  that  it  is  no 
more  vicious  or  unnatural  to  possess  stirrable  sex  impulses  than  it  is 
to  possess  a  normal  appetite  for  food  and  drink.  When  that  day 
comes  there  will  be  no  more  Ulysses  cases.  The  path  to  that  future  day 
is  pointed  out  to  us  in  our  own  time  by  such  men  as  Judge  Woolsey. 


dS-^Sl.. 


A  Decision  of  the  United  States  District  Court 

Rendered  December  6,  1933,  by  Hon.  John  M. 

Woolsey  Lifting  the  Ban  on  "Ulysses" 


UNITED  STATES  DISTRICT  COURT 

SOUTHERN  DISTRICT  OF  NEW  YORK 

United  States  of  America, 

Libelant 

v. 

One  Book  Called  "Ulysses" 

Random  House,  Inc., 

Claimant 


OPINION 

a.  110-59 


On  cross  motions  for  a  decree  in  a  libel  of  confiscation,  supplemented 
by  a  stipulation — hereinafter  described — brought  by  the  United  States 
against  the  boo\  "Ulysses"  by  fames  Joyce,  under  Section  305  of  the 
Tariff  Act  of  1930,  Title  19  United  States  Code,  Section  1305,  on  the 
ground  that  the  boo\  is  obscene  within  the  meaning  of  that  Section, 
and,  hence,  is  not  importable  into  the  United  States,  but  is  subject  to 
seizure,  forfeiture  and  confiscation  and  destruction. 

United  States  Attorney — by  Samuel  C.  Coleman,  Esq.,  and  Nicholas 
Atlas,  Esq.,  of  counsel — for  the  United  States,  in  support  of  motion  for 
a  decree  of  forfeiture,  and  in  opposition  to  motion  for  a  decree  dismiss- 
ing the  libel. 

Messrs.  Greenbaum,  Wolff  &  Ernst— by  Morris  L.  Ernst,  Esq.,  and 
Alexander  Lindey,  Esq.,  of  counsel — attorneys  for  claimant  Random 
House,  Inc.,  in  support  of  motion  for  a  decree  dismissing  the  libel,  and 
in  opposition  to  motion  for  a  decree  of  forfeiture. 

382 


HON.   JOHN  M.   WOOLSEY  383 

WOOLSEY,  J: 

The  motion  for  a  decree  dismissing  the  libel  herein  is  granted,  and, 
consequently,  of  course,  the  Government's  motion  for  a  decree  of  for- 
feiture and  destruction  is  denied. 

Accordingly  a  decree  dismissing  the  libel  without  costs  may  be  en- 
tered herein. 

I.  The  practice  followed  in  this  case  is  in  accordance  with  the  sug- 
gestion made  by  me  in  the  case  of  United  States  v.  One  Boo\  Entitled 
"Contraception" ,  51  F.  (2d)  525,  and  is  as  follows: 

After  issue  was  joined  by  the  filing  of  the  claimant's  answer  to  the 
libel  for  forfeiture  against  "Ulysses",  a  stipulation  was  made  between 
the  United  States  Attorney's  office  and  the  attorneys  for  the  claimant 
providing: 

1.  That  the  book  "Ulysses"  should  be  deemed  to  have  been  an- 
nexed to  and  to  have  become  part  of  the  libel  just  as  if  it  had  been 
incorporated  in  its  entirety  therein. 

2.  That  the  parties  waived  their  right  to  a  trial  by  jury. 

3.  That  each  party  agreed  to  move  for  decree  in  its  favor. 

4.  That  on  such  cross  motions  the  Court  might  decide  all  the  ques- 
tions of  law  and  fact  involved  and  render  a  general  finding  thereon. 

5.  That  on  the  decision  of  such  motions  the  decree  of  the  Court 
might  be  entered  as  if  it  were  a  decree  after  trial. 

It  seems  to  me  that  a  procedure  of  this  kind  is  highly  appropriate 
in  libels  for  the  confiscation  of  books  such  as  this.  It  is  an  especially 
advantageous  procedure  in  the  instant  case  because  on  account  of  the 
length  of  "Ulysses"  and  the  difficulty  of  reading  it,  a  jury  trial  would 
have  been  an  extremely  unsatisfactory,  if  not  an  almost  impossible, 
method  of  dealing  with  it. 

II.  I  have  read  "Ulysses"  once  in  its  entirety  and  I  have  read  those 
passages  of  which  the  Government  particularly  complains  several  times. 
In  fact,  for  many  weeks,  my  spare  time  has  been  devoted  to  the  con- 
sideration of  the  decision  which  my  duty  would  require  me  to  make 
in  this  matter. 

"Ulysses"  is  not  an  easy  book  to  read  or  to  understand.  But  there 


384  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

has  been  much  written  about  it,  and  in  order  properly  to  approach  the 
consideration  of  it  it  is  advisable  to  read  a  number  of  other  books 
which  have  now  become  its  satellites.  The  study  of  "Ulysses"  is,  there- 
fore, a  heavy  task. 

III.  The  reputation  of  "Ulysses"  in  the  literary  world,  however,  war- 
ranted my  taking  such  time  as  was  necessary  to  enable  me  to  satisfy 
myself  as  to  the  intent  with  which  the  book  was  written,  for,  of  course, 
in  any  case  where  a  book  is  claimed  to  be  obscene  it  must  first  be  de- 
termined, whether  the  intent  with  which  it  was  written  was  what  is 
called,  according  to  the  usual  phrase,  pornographic, — that  is,  written 
for  the  purpose  of  exploiting  obscenity. 

If  the  conclusion  is  that  the  book  is  pornographic  that  is  the  end  of 
the  inquiry  and  forfeiture  must  follow. 

But  in  "Ulysses",  in  spite  of  its  unusual  frankness,  I  do  not  detect 
anywhere  the  leer  of  the  sensualist.  I  hold,  therefore,  that  it  is  not  por- 
nographic. 

IV.  In  writing  "Ulysses",  Joyce  sought  to  make  a  serious  experiment 
in  a  new,  if  not  wholly  novel,  literary  genre.  He  takes  persons  of  the 
lower  middle  class  living  in  Dublin  in  1904  and  seeks  not  only  to  de- 
scribe what  they  did  on  a  certain  day  early  in  June  of  that  year  as  they 
went  about  the  City  bent  on  their  usual  occupations,  but  also  to  tell 
what  many  of  them  thought  about  the  while. 

Joyce  has  attempted — it  seems  to  me,  with  astonishing  success — to 
show  how  the  screen  of  consciousness  with  its  ever-shifting  kaleido- 
scopic impressions  carries,  as  it  were  on  a  plastic  palimpsest,  not  only 
what  is  in  the  focus  of  each  man's  observation  of  the  actual  things 
about  him,  but  also  in  a  penumbral  zone  residua  of  past  impressions, 
some  recent  and  some  drawn  up  by  association  from  the  domain  of 
the  subconscious.  He  shows  how  each  of  these  impressions  afTects  the 
life  and  behavior  of  the  character  which  he  is  describing. 

What  he  seeks  to  get  is  not  unlike  the  result  of  a  double  or,  if  that  is 
possible,  a  multiple  exposure  on  a  cinema  film  which  would  give  a 
clear  foreground  with  a  background  visible  but  somewhat  blurred  and 
out  of  focus  in  varying  degrees. 


HON.  JOHN  M.  WOOLSEY  385 

To  convey  by  words  an  effect  which  obviously  lends  itself  more  ap- 
propriately to  a  graphic  technique,  accounts,  it  seems  to  me,  for  much 
of  the  obscurity  which  meets  a  reader  of  "Ulysses".  And  it  also  explains 
another  aspect  of  the  book,  which  I  have  further  to  consider,  namely, 
Joyce's  sincerity  and  his  honest  effort  to  show  exactly  how  the  minds 
of  his  characters  operate. 

If  Joyce  did  not  attempt  to  be  honest  in  developing  the  technique 
which  he  has  adopted  in  "Ulysses"  the  result  would  be  psychologically 
misleading  and  thus  unfaithful  to  his  chosen  technique.  Such  an  atti- 
tude would  be  artistically  inexcusable. 

It  is  because  Joyce  has  been  loyal  to  his  technique  and  has  not  funked 
its  necessary  implications,  but  has  honestly  attempted  to  tell  fully  what 
his  characters  think  about,  that  he  has  been  the  subject  of  so  many  at- 
tacks and  that  his  purpose  has  been  so  often  misunderstood  and  mis- 
represented. For  his  attempt  sincerely  and  honestly  to  realize  his  ob- 
jective has  required  him  incidentally  to  use  certain  words  which  are 
generally  considered  dirty  words  and  has  led  at  times  to  what  many 
think  is  a  too  poignant  preoccupation  with  sex  in  the  thoughts  of  his 
characters. 

The  words  which  are  criticized  as  dirty  are  old  Saxon  words  known 
to  almost  all  men  and,  I  venture,  to  many  women,  and  are  such  words 
as  would  be  naturally  and  habitually  used,  I  believe,  by  the  types  of 
folk  whose  life,  physical  and  mental,  Joyce  is  seeking  to  describe.  In 
respect  of  the  recurrent  emergence  of  the  theme  of  sex  in  the  minds  of 
his  characters,  it  must  always  be  remembered  that  his  locale  was  Celtic 
and  his  season  Spring. 

Whether  or  not  one  enjoys  such  a  technique  as  Joyce  uses  is  a  matter 
of  taste  on  which  disagreement  or  argument  is  futile,  but  to  subject 
that  technique  to  the  standards  of  some  other  technique  seems  to  me 
to  be  little  short  of  absurd. 

Accordingly,  I  hold  that  "Ulysses"  is  a  sincere  and  honest  book  and 
I  think  that  the  criticisms  of  it  are  entirely  disposed  of  by  its  rationale. 

V.  Furthermore,  "Ulysses"  is  an  amazing  tour  de  force  when  one 
considers  the  success  which  has  been  in  the  main  achieved  with  such 
a  difficult  objective  as  Joyce  set  for  himself.  As  I  have  stated,  "Ulysses" 


386  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

is  not  an  easy  book  to  read.  It  is  brilliant  and  dull,  intelligible  and  ob- 
scure by  turns.  In  many  places  it  seems  to  me  to  be  disgusting,  but 
although  it  contains,  as  I  have  mentioned  above,  many  words  usually 
considered  dirty,  I  have  not  found  anything  that  I  consider  to  be  dirt 
for  dirt's  sake.  Each  word  of  the  book  contributes  like  a  bit  of  mosaic 
to  the  detail  of  the  picture  which  Joyce  is  seeking  to  construct  for  his 
readers. 

If  one  does  not  wish  to  associate  with  such  folk  as  Joyce  describes, 
that  is  one's  own  choice.  In  order  to  avoid  indirect  contact  with  them 
one  may  not  wish  to  read  "Ulysses";  that  is  quite  understandable.  But 
when  such  a  real  artist  in  words,  as  Joyce  undoubtedly  is,  seeks  to  draw 
a  true  picture  of  the  lower  middle  class  in  a  European  city,  ought  it  to 
be  impossible  for  the  American  public  legally  to  see  that  picture? 

To  answer  this  question  it  is  not  sufficient  merely  to  find,  as  I  have 
found  above,  that  Joyce  did  not  write  "Ulysses"  with  what  is  com- 
monly called  pornographic  intent,  I  must  endeavor  to  apply  a  more 
objective  standard  to  his  book  in  order  to  determine  its  effect  in  the 
result,  irrespective  of  the  intent  with  which  it  was  written. 

VI.  The  statute  under  which  the  libel  is  filed  only  denounces,  in  so 
far  as  we  are  here  concerned,  the  importation  into  the  United  States 
from  any  foreign  country  of  "any  obscene  book".  Section  305  of  the 
Tariff  Act  of  1930,  Title  19  United  States  Code,  Section  1305.  It  does 
not  marshal  against  books  the  spectrum  of  condemnatory  adjectives 
found,  commonly,  in  laws  dealing  with  matters  of  this  kind.  I  am, 
therefore,  only  required  to  determine  whether  "Ulysses"  is  obscene 
within  the  legal  definition  of  that  word. 

The  meaning  of  the  word  "obscene"  as  legally  defined  by  the  Courts 
is:  tending  to  stir  the  sex  impulses  or  to  lead  to  sexually  impure  and 
lustful  thoughts.  Dunlop  v.  United  States,  165  U.  S.  486,  501;  United 
States  v.  One  Boo\  Entitled  "Married  Love" ,  48  F.  (2d)  821,  824; 
United  States  v.  One  Boo\  Entitled  "Contraception" ,  51  F.  (2d)  525, 
528;  and  compare  Dysart  v.  United  States,  272  U.  S.  655,  657;  Swear- 
ingen  v.  United  States,  161  U.  S.  446,  450;  United  States  v.  Dennett, 
39  F.  (2d)  564,  568  (C.  C.  A.  2);  People  v.  Wendling,  258  N.  Y.  451, 

453- 


HON.  JOHN  M.   WOOLSEY  387 

Whether  a  particular  book  would  tend  to  excite  such  impulses  and 
thoughts  must  be  tested  by  the  Court's  opinion  as  to  its  effect  on  a 
person  with  average  sex  instincts — what  the  French  would  call  I'homme 
moyen  sensuel — who  plays,  in  this  branch  of  legal  inquiry,  the  same 
role  of  hypothetical  reagent  as  does  the  "reasonable  man"  in  the  law  of 
torts  and  "the  man  learned  in  the  art"  on  questions  of  invention  in 
patent  law. 

The  risk  involved  in  the  use  of  such  a  reagent  arises  from  the  in- 
herent tendency  of  the  trier  of  facts,  however  fair  he  may  intend  to 
be,  to  make  his  reagent  too  much  subservient  to  his  own  idiosyncra- 
sies. Here,  I  have  attempted  to  avoid  this,  if  possible,  and  to  make  my 
reagent  herein  more  objective  than  he  might  otherwise  be,  by  adopt- 
ing the  following  course: 

After  I  had  made  my  decision  in  regard  to  the  aspect  of  "Ulysses", 
now  under  consideration,  I  checked  my  impressions  with  two  friends 
of  mine  who  in  my  opinion  answered  to  the  above  stated  require- 
ment for  my  reagent. 

These  literary  assessors — as  I  might  properly  describe  them — were 
called  on  separately,  and  neither  knew  that  I  was  consulting  the 
other.  They  are  men  whose  opinion  on  literature  and  on  life  I  value 
most  highly.  They  had  both  read  "Ulysses",  and,  of  course,  were 
wholly  unconnected  with  this  cause. 

Without  letting  either  of  my  assessors  know  what  my  decision  was, 
I  gave  to  each  of  them  the  legal  definition  of  obscene  and  asked  each 
whether  in  his  opinion  "Ulysses"  was  obscene  within  that  definition. 

I  was  interested  to  find  that  they  both  agreed  with  my  opinion: 
that  reading  "Ulysses"  in  its  entirety,  as  a  book  must  be  read  on  such 
a  test  as  this,  did  not  tend  to  excite  sexual  impulses  or  lustful  thoughts 
but  that  its  net  effect  on  them  was  only  that  of  a  somewhat  tragic  and 
very  powerful  commentary  on  the  inner  lives  of  men  and  women. 

It  is  only  with  the  normal  person  that  the  law  is  concerned.  Such 
a  test  as  I  have  described,  therefore,  is  the  only  proper  test  of  obscenity 
in  the  case  of  a  book  like  "Ulysses"  which  is  a  sincere  and  serious  at- 
tempt to  devise  a  new  literary  method  for  the  observation  and  descrip- 
tion of  mankind. 

I  am  quite  aware  that  owing  to  some  of  its  scenes  "Ulysses"  is  a 


388  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

rather  strong  draught  to  ask  some  sensitive,  though  normal,  persons 
to  take.  But  my  considered  opinion,  after  long  reflection,  is  that 
whilst  in  many  places  the  effect  of  "Ulysses"  on  the  reader  undoubt- 
edly is  somewhat  emetic,  nowhere  does  it  tend  to  be  an  aphrodisiac. 
"Ulysses"  may,  therefore,  be  admitted  into  the  United  States. 

WOOLSEY 

UNITED    STATES    DISTRICT    JUDGE 

December  6,  193] 


E.   M.   FORSTER 


COMMENTARY 


Of  all  the  members  of  that  fading  Bloomsbury  group  of  which  Vir- 
ginia Woolf  was  a  prized  ornament,  it  is  E.  M.  Forster,  to  my  mind, 
who  has  received  the  least  attention  and  deserves  the  most.  Some 
of  the  neglect  allotted  him  is  doubtless  due  to  his  own  hypertrophied 
talent  for  privacy.  Some  of  it  results  from  his  infertility.  Mere  pro- 
ductivity — witness  the  case  of  the  pullulating  Mr.  Saroyan,  the  Mrs. 
Dionne  of  literature— often  aids  a  writer  to  secure  a  reputation.  The 
interval  between  Howards  End  (1910)  and  A  Passage  to  India 
(1924)  was  so  long  that  one  forgot  all  about  Forster,  and  there  has 
been  no  novel  from  him  since  1924.  Finally,  his  work  is  so  unaggres- 
sive that  its  voice  is  lost  amid  the  general  clamor. 

Sooner  or  later  such  Forster  books  as  A  Room  with  a  View  and 
Howards  End  will  be  rediscovered  and  it  will  be  found  that  they 
are  no  more  dated  than  Pride  and  Prejudice.  It  will  then  also  be 
found  that,  though  the  Forster  universe  is  extremely  limited— his 
people,  if  their  unearned  incomes  disappeared,  would  simply  dis- 
appear themselves— it  is  as  truly  and  wittily  pictured  as  the  universe 
of  any  English  novelist  of  our  time.  His  style  is  as  lucid,  unobtrusive, 
and  satisfying  as  a  glass  of  water— and  if  more  young  American  nov- 
elists studied  him  and  fewer  studied  Thomas  Wolfe,  the  quality  of 
our  literature  would  at  once  be  improved. 

E.  M.  Forster's  mind  is  not  easy  to  describe.  It  is  indirect,  it 
glances  off  things,  it  seems  never  to  grasp  firmly  the  object  of  its 
attention.  Yet  when  it  has  finished  its  work,  the  object  is  there, 
caught  cleanly,  all  ready  for  your  inspection.  His  humor,  too,  is 
oblique,  and  needs  careful  watching  lest  it  escape  one.  I  could  not 
hope  to  make  his  talent  clear  except  by  reprinting  one  of  his  novels 
complete,  which  is  impossible.  His  short  stories  are  not  to  my  taste, 
for  in  them  he  surrenders  to  one  of  his  few  vices,  a  taste  for  the 
sentimentally  fanciful. 

But  here  are  two  pieces  of  light  satire,  very  E.  M.  Forster.  One  of 

389 


390  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

them,  "The  Consolations  of  History/'  is  conceived  in  his  charac- 
teristically subtle,  satiric  vein,  and  exposes  some  of  the  pitiful  wots 
that  lie  beneath  our  appreciation  of  the  past.  The  other,  "My  Own 
Centenary,"  is  an  amiable  but  nonetheless  pointed  bit  of  mockery 
in  which  English  self-satisfaction  is  once  more  taken  for  a  ride.  The 
novelty  lies  not  in  the  content  of  the  satire  but  in  the  vehicle  Forster 
has  chosen,  for  offhand  I  do  not  remember  that  any  other  writer  ever 
wrote  his  own  centenary  address.  The  irony  of  the  piece  is  under- 
lined, I  think,  by  its  partial  truth.  For  it  is  a  fact  that  "his  contem- 
poraries did  not  recognize  the  greatness  of  Forster." 


My  Own  Centenary 

(from  "the  times"  of  a.d.  2027) 

BY 

E.  M.  FORSTER 


It  is  a  hundred  years  ago  today  since  Forster  died;  we  celebrate  his 
centenary  indeed  within  a  few  months  of  the  bicentenary  of  Beethoven, 
within  a  few  weeks  of  that  of  Blake.  What  special  tribute  shall  we 
bring  him?  The  question  is  not  easy  to  answer,  and  were  he  himself  still 
alive  he  would  no  doubt  reply,  "My  work  is  my  truest  memorial."  It 
is  the  reply  that  a  great  artist  can  always  be  trusted  to  make.  Conscious 
of  his  lofty  mission,  endowed  with  the  divine  gift  of  self-expression, 
he  may  rest  content,  he  is  at  peace,  doubly  at  peace.  But  we,  we  who 
are  not  great  artists,  only  the  recipients  of  their  bounty — what  shall  we 
say  about  Fosster?  What  can  we  say  that  has  not  already  been  said 
about  Beethoven,  about  Blake?  Whatever  shall  we  say? 

The  Dean  of  Dulborough,  preaching  last  Sunday  in  his  own  beau- 
tiful cathedral,  struck  perhaps  the  truest  note.  Taking  as  his  text  that 
profound  verse  in  Ecclesiasticus,  "Let  us  now  praise  famous  men,"  he 
took  it  word  by  word,  paused  when  he  came  to  the  word  "famous," 
and,  slowly  raising  his  voice,  said:  "He  whose  hundredth  anniversary 
we  celebrate  on  Thursday  next  is  famous,  and  why?"  No  answer  was 
needed,  none  came.  The  lofty  Gothic  nave,  the  great  western  windows, 
the  silent  congregation — they  gave  answer  sufficient,  and  passing  on  to 
the  final  word  of  his  text,  "men,"  the  Dean  expatiated  upon  what  is  per- 
haps the  most  mysterious  characteristic  of  genius,  its  tendency  to  appear 
among  members  of  the  human  race.  Why  this  is,  why,  since  it  is,  it  is 
not  accompanied  by  some  definite  outward  sign  through  which  it  might 
be  recognized  easily,  are  questions  not  lightly  to  be  raised.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  his  contemporaries  did  not  recognize  the  greatness  of 

391 


392  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Forster.  Immersed  in  their  own  little  affairs,  they  either  ignored  him, 
or  forgot  him,  or  confused  him,  or,  strangest  of  all,  discussed  him  as  if 
he  was  their  equal.  We  may  smile  at  their  blindness,  but  for  him  it  can 
have  been  no  laughing  matter,  he  must  have  had  much  to  bear,  and 
indeed  he  could  scarcely  have  endured  to  put  forth  masterpiece  after 
masterpiece  had  he  not  felt  assured  of  the  verdict  of  posterity. 

Sir  Vincent  Edwards,  when  broadcasting  last  night,  voiced  that  verdict 
not  uncertainly,  and  was  fortunately  able  to  employ  more  wealth  of 
illustration  than  had  been  appropriate  in  Dulborough  Minster  for  the 
Dean.  The  point  he  very  properly  stressed  was  our  writer's  loftiness  of 
aim.  "It  would  be  impossible,"  he  said,  "to  quote  a  single  sentence  that 
was  not  written  from  the  very  loftiest  motive,"  and  he  drew  from  this 
a  sharp  and  salutary  lesson  for  the  so-called  writers  of  today.  As  per- 
manent head  of  the  Ministry  of  Edification,  Sir  Vincent  has,  we  be- 
lieve, frequently  come  into  contact  with  the  younger  generation,  and 
has  checked  with  the  kindliness  of  which  he  is  a  past-master  their  self- 
styled  individualism — an  individualism  which  is  the  precise  antithesis 
of  true  genius.  They  confuse  violence  with  strength,  cynicism  with 
open-mindedness,  frivolity  with  joyousness — mistakes  never  made  by 
Forster  who  was  never  gay  until  he  had  earned  a  right  to  be  so,  and 
only  criticized  the  religious  and  social  institutions  of  h^s  time  because 
they  were  notoriously  corrupt.  We  know  what  the  twentieth  century 
was.  We  know  the  sort  of  men  who  were  in  power  under  George  V. 
We  know  what  the  State  was,  what  were  the  churches.  We  can  as 
easily  conceive  of  Beethoven  as  a  Privy  Councillor  or  of  Blake  as,  for- 
sooth, an  Archbishop  as  of  this  burning  and  sensitive  soul  acquiescing 
in  the  deadening  conditions  of  his  age.  What  he  worked  for — what  all 
great  men  work  for — was  for  a  New  Jerusalem,  a  vitalized  State,  a  pu- 
rified Church;  and  the  offertory  at  Dulborough  last  Sunday,  like  the 
success  of  Sir  Edward's  appeal  for  voluntary  workers  under  the  Min- 
istry, show  that  he  did  not  labour  in  vain. 

The  official  ceremony  is  for  this  morning.  This  afternoon  Lady  Tur- 
ton  will  unveil  Mr.  Boston  Jack's  charming  statue  in  Kensington 
Gardens,  and  so  illustrate  another  aspect  of  our  national  hero:  his  love 
of  little  children.  It  had  originally  been  Mr.  Boston  Jack's  intention  to 
represent  him  as  pursuing  an  ideal.  Since,  however,  the  Gardens  are 


E.  M.  FORSTER  393 

largely  frequented  by  the  young  and  their  immediate  supervisors,  it 
was  felt  that  something  more  whimsical  would  be  in  place,  and  a  but- 
terfly was  substituted.  The  change  is  certainly  for  the  better.  It  is  true 
that  we  cannot  have  too  many  ideals.  On  the  other  hand,  we  must  not 
have  too  much  of  them  too  soon,  nor,  attached  as  it  will  be  to  a  long 
copper  wire,  can  the  butterfly  be  confused  with  any  existing  species  and 
regarded  as  an  incentive  to  immature  collectors.  Lady  Turton  will 
couple  her  remarks  with  an  appeal  for  the  Imperial  Daisy  Chain,  of 
which  she  is  the  energetic  Vice-President,  and  simultaneously  there 
will  be  a  flag  collection  throughout  the  provinces. 

Dulborough,  the  Ministry  of  Edification,  the  official  ceremony, 
Kensington  Gardens!  What  more  could  be  said?  Not  a  little.  Yet 
enough  has  been  said  to  remind  the  public  of  its  heritage,  and  to  em- 
phasize and  define  the  central  essence  of  these  immortal  works.  And 
what  is  that  essence?  Need  we  say?  Not  their  greatness — they  are  ob- 
viously great.  Not  their  profundity — they  are  admittedly  profound. 'It 
is  something  more  precious  than  either:  their  nobility.  Noble  works, 
nobly  conceived,  nobly  executed,  nobler  than  the  Ninth  Symphony  or 
the  Songs  of  Innocence.  Here  is  no  small  praise,  yet  it  can  be  given,  we 
are  in  the  presence  of  the  very  loftiest,  we  need  not  spare  or  mince  our 
words,  nay,  we  will  add  one  more  word,  a  word  that  has  been  implicit 
in  all  that  have  gone  before:  like  Beethoven,  like  Blake,  Forster  was 
essentially  English,  and  in  commemorating  him  we  can  yet  again 
celebrate  what  is  best  and  most  permanent  in  ourselves. 


The  Consolations  of  History 

BY 

E.  M.  FORSTER 


It  is  pleasant  to  be  transferred  from  an  office  where  one  is  afraid  of 
a  sergeant-major  into  an  office  where  one  can  intimidate  generals,  and 
perhaps  this  is  why  History  is  so  attractive  to  the  more  timid  amongst 
us.  We  can  recover  self-confidence  by  snubbing  the  dead.  The  captains 
and  the  kings  depart  at  our  slightest  censure,  while  as  for  the  "hosts  of 
minor  officials"  who  cumber  court  and  camp,  we  heed  them  not,  al- 
though in  actual  life  they  entirely  block  our  social  horizon.  We  cannot 
visit  either  the  great  or  the  rich  when  they  are  our  contemporaries, 
but  by  a  fortunate  arrangement  the  palaces  of  Ujjain  and  the  ware- 
houses of  Ormus  are  open  for  ever,  and  we  can  even  behave  outrage- 
ously in  them  without  being  expelled.  The  King  of  Ujjain,  we  an- 
nounce, is  extravagant,  the  merchants  of  Ormus  unspeakably  licentious 
.  .  .  and  sure  enough  Ormus  is  a  desert  now  and  Ujjain  a  jungle.  Diffi- 
cult to  realize  that  the  past  was  once  the  present,  and  that,  transferred 
to  it,  one  would  be  just  the  same  little  worm  as  today,  unimportant, 
parasitic,  nervous,  occupied  with  trifles,  unable  to  go  anywhere  or  alter 
anything,  friendly  only  with  the  obscure,  and  only  at  ease  with  the 
dead;  while  up  on  the  heights  the  figures  and  forces  who  make  His- 
tory would  contend  in  their  habitual  fashion,  with  incomprehensible 
noises  or  in  ominous  quiet.  "There  is  money  in  my  house  .  .  .  there  is 
no  money  ...  no  house."  That  is  all  that  our  sort  can  ever  know 
about  doom.  The  extravagant  king,  the  licentious  merchants — they 
escape,  knowing  the  ropes. 

If  only  the  sense  of  actuality  can  be  lulled — and  it  sleeps  for  ever  in 
most  historians — there  is  no  passion  that  cannot  be  gratified  in  the  past. 
The  past  is  devoid  of  all  dangers,  social  and  moral,  and  one  can  meet 

394 


E.  M.  FORSTER  395 

with  perfect  ease  not  only  kings,  but  people  who  are  even  rarer  on 
one's  visiting  list.  We  are  alluding  to  courtesans.  It  is  seemly  and  de- 
cent to  meditate  upon  dead  courtesans.  Some,  like  Aspasia,  are  in 
themselves  a  liberal  education,  and  turning  from  these  as  almost  too 
awful  one  can  still  converse  unblamed  with  their  sisters.  There  is  no 
objection,  for  instance,  against  recalling  the  arrangements  of  the  six- 
teenth-century Hindu  kingdom  of  Vijayanagar.  The  courtesans  of 
Vijayanagar  were  beautiful  and  rich — one  of  them  left  over  ,£32,000. 
They  were  highly  esteemed,  which  also  seems  right;  some  were  house- 
maids, others  cooks,  and  live  hundred  were  attached  on  a  peace  basis 
to  the  army,  "all  great  musicians,  dancers  and  acrobats,  and  very  quick 
and  nimble  at  their  performances."  In  war  the  number  was  increased; 
indeed,  the  king  sent  the  entire  of  the  personable  population  into  the 
field,  judging  that  its  presence  would  enhearten  the  troops.  So  many 
ladies  hampered  his  strategy,  it  is  true,  but  the  opposing  army  was 
equally  hampered,  and  when  its  soldiers  ran  away,  its  ladies  sat  still, 
and  accrued  to  the  victors.  With  existence  as  it  threatens  today — a 
draggled  mass  of  elderly  people  and  barbed  wire — it  is  agreeable  to 
glance  back  at  those  enchanted  carnages,  and  to  croon  over  conditions 
that  we  now  subscribe  to  exterminate.  Tight  little  faces  from  Oxford, 
fish-shaped  faces  from  Cambridge — we  cannot  help  having  our  dreams. 
Was  life  then  warm  and  tremendous?  Did  the  Vijayanagar  Govern- 
ment really  succeed  in  adjusting  the  balance  between  society  and  sex? 
— a  task  that  has  baffled  even  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward.  We  cannot  tell; 
we  can  only  be  certain  that  it  acted  with  circumspection  and  pom- 
posity, and  that  most  of  its  subjects  did  not  know  what  it  was  up  to. 
The  myriads  of  nonentities  who  thronged  its  courts  and  camps,  and 
were  allotted  inferior  courtesans  or  none  at  all — alas!  it  is  with  these 
alone  that  readers  of  my  pages  can  claim  kinship. 

Yet  sweet  though  it  is  to  dally  with  the  past,  one  returns  to  the  finer 
pleasures  of  morality  in  the  end.  The  schoolmaster  in  each  of  us 
awakes,  examines  the  facts  of  History,  and  marks  them  on  the  result  of 
the  examination.  Not  all  the  marks  need  be  bad.  Some  incidents,  like 
the  Risorgimento,  get  excellent  as  a  matter  of  course,  while  others,  such 
as  the  character  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  get  excellent  in  the  long  run.  Nor 
must  events  be  marked  at  their  face  value.  Why  was  it  right  of  Drake 


396  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

to  play  bowls  when  he  heard  the  Armada  was  approaching,  but  wrong 
of  Charles  II  to  catch  moths  when  he  heard  that  the  Dutch  Fleet  had 
entered  the  Medway?  The  answer  is  "Because  Drake  won."  Why  was 
it  right  of  Alexander  the  Great  to  throw  away  water  when  his  army 
was  perishing,  but  wrong  of  Marie  Antoinette  to  say  "Let  them  eat 
cake"?  The  answer  is  "Because  Marie  Antoinette  was  executed."  Why 
was  George  Washington  right  because  he  would  not  tell  a  lie,  and 
Jael  right  because  she  told  nothing  else?  Answers  on  similar  lines. 
We  must  take  a  larger  view  of  the  past  than  of  the  present,  because 
when  examining  the  present  we  can  never  be  sure  what  is  going  to  pay. 
As  a  general  rule,  anything  that  ends  abruptly  must  be  given  bad 
marks;  for  instance,  the  fourth  century  b.c.  at  Athens,  the  year  1492  in 
Italy,  and  the  summer  of  1914  everywhere.  A  civilization  that  passes 
quickly  must  be  decadent,  therefore  let  us  censure  those  epochs  that 
thought  themselves  so  bright,  let  us  show  that  their  joys  were  hectic 
and  their  pleasures  vile,  and  clouded  by  the  premonition  of  doom.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  civilization  that  does  not  pass,  like  the  Chinese,  must 
be  stagnant,  and  is  to  be  censured  on  that  account.  Nor  can  one  ap- 
prove anarchy.  What  then  survives?  Oh,  a  greater  purpose,  the  slow 
evolution  of  Good  through  the  centuries — an  evolution  less  slow  than 
it  seems,  because  a  thousand  years  are  as  yesterday,  and  consequently 
Christianity  was  only,  so  to  speak,  established  on  Wednesday  last.  And 
if  this  argument  should  seem  flimsy  (it  is  the  Bishop  of  London's,  not 
our  own — he  put  it  into  his  Christmas  sermon)  one  can  at  all  events 
return  to  an  indubitable  triumph  of  evolution — oneself,  sitting  un- 
touched and  untouchable  in  the  professorial  chair,  and  giving  marks 
to  men. 

Sweet  then  is  dalliance,  censure  sweeter.  Yet  sweetest  of  all  is  pity, 
because  it  subtly  combines  the  pleasures  of  the  other  two.  To  pity  the 
dead  because  they  are  dead  is  to  experience  an  exquisite  pleasure,  iden- 
tical with  the  agreeable  heat  that  comes  to  the  eyes  in  a  churchyard.  The 
heat  has  nothing  to  do  with  sorrow,  it  has  no  connection  with  anything 
that  one  has  personally  known  and  held  dear.  It  is  half  a  sensuous  de- 
light, half  gratified  vanity,  and  Shakespeare  knew  what  he  was  about 
when  he  ascribed  such  a  sensation  to  the  fantastical  Armado.  They  had 
been  laughing  at  Hector,  and  Armado,  with  every  appearance  of  gen- 


E.  M.   FORSTER  397 

erosity,  exclaims:  "The  sweet  war-man  is  dead  and  rotten;  sweet 
chucks,  beat  not  the  bones  of  the  buried;  when  he  breathed  he  was 
a  man."  It  was  his  happiest  moment;  he  had  never  felt  more  certain 
either  that  he  was  alive  himself,  or  that  he  was  Hector.  And  it  is  a 
happiness  that  we  can  all  experience  until  the  sense  of  actuality  breaks  in. 
Pity  wraps  the  student  of  the  past  in  an  ambrosial  cloud,  and  washes 
his  limbs  with  eternal  youth.  "Dear  dead  women  with  such  hair  too," 
but  not  "I  feel  chilly  and  grown  old."  That  comes  with  the  awakening. 


04 


SARAH   ORNE   JEWETT 


COMMENTARY 


Willa  Cather,  in  her  fine  preface  to  the  Mayflower  Edition  of  the 
Best  Stories  of  Sarah  Orne  Jewett,  writes:  "If  I  were  asked  to  name 
three  American  hooks  which  have  the  possibility  of  a  long,  long  life, 
I  would  say  at  once,  The  Scarlet  Letter,  Huckleberry  Finn,  and  The 
Country  of  the  Pointed  Firs.  J  can  think  of  no  others  that  confront 
time  and  change  so  serenely.  The  latter  hook  seems  to  me  fairly  to 
shine  with  the  reflection  of  its  long,  joyous  future."  I  do  not  suppose 
many  would  agree  that  Sarah  Orne  Jewett  belongs  in  the  company  of 
Mark  Twain  and  Hawthorne,  but  there  is  something  in  her  tender 
genre  work,  a  Vermeer  quality,  that  may  perhaps  keep  her  memory 
quietly  alive  after  many  more  vigorous  talents  have  been  forgotten. 

Sarah  Orne  Jewett  died  years  ago,  in  1909.  Her  stories  of  old  New 
England,  a  New  England  long  since  vanished,  are  also  of  long  ago. 
She  cultivated  well  and  truly  a  tiny  patch  of  ground.  I  read  her  first 
twenty  years  back;  I  have  now  reread  her,  and  nothing  seems  lost. 

The  inclusion  of  one  of  her  stories  may  be  put  down  to  a  whim. 
I  thought  it  might  be  interesting  to  confront  my  readers  with  a  tale 
so  old-fashioned,  so  sentimental,  so  simple  as  this,  for  most  of  the 
reading  in  this  book  is  not  old-fashioned  or  sentimental  or  simple. 
Perhaps  the  minds  of  writers  like  Hemingway,  Steinbeck,  and  Kath- 
erine  Anne  Porter,  so  patently  of  our  own  time,  will  appear  in  sharper 
relief  when  set  against  the  mind  of  a  writer  like  Sarah  Omc  Jewett. 

But  quite  candidly  I  doubt  that  many  readers  will  care  for  this 
story.  I  suppose  some  will  laugh  at  it,  if  good-naturedly.  This  is  a  fine 
time  of  day,  one  can  hear  them  saying,  to  ask  us  to  read  a  tale  about 
a  cow,  a  little  girl,  an  old  lady,  a  young  man  who  hunts  birds,  a  pine 
tree,  and  a  white  heron.  Understanding  their  skepticism,  I  cannot 
share  it.  True,  the  materials  of  "The  White  Heron"  arc  ordinary 
enough.  Yet  I  hope  that  for  some  these  ordinary  materials  will  add 
up  to  something,  to  a  kind  of  New  England  fairy  talc,  moral,  like 
all  fairy  talcs,  and  carrying  with  it,  over  the  gulf  of  more  than  fifty 
years,  the  scent  of  beauty. 

398 


3H&X 


A  White  Heron 


BY 


SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT 


The  woods  were  already  filled  with  shadows  one  June  evening,  just 
before  eight  o'clock,  though  a  bright  sunset  still  glimmered  faintly 
among  the  trunks  of  the  trees.  A  little  girl  was  driving  home  her  cow, 
a  plodding,  dilatory,  provoking  creature  in  her  behavior,  but  a  valued 
companion  for  all  that.  They  were  going  away  from  the  western  light, 
and  striking  deep  into  the  dark  woods,  but  their  feet  were  familiar 
.with  the  path,  and  it  was  no  matter  whether  their  eyes  could  see  it  or 
not. 

There  was  hardly  a  night  the  summer  through  when  the  old  cow 
could  be  found  waiting  at  the  pasture  bars;  on  the  contrary,  it  was  her 
greatest  pleasure  to  hide  herself  away  among  the  high  huckleberry 
bushes,  and  though  she  wore  a  loud  bell  she  had  made  the  discovery 
that  if  one  stood  perfectly  still  it  would  not  ring.  So  Sylvia  had  to  hunt 
for  her  until  she  found  her,  and  call  Co'!  Co'!  with  never  an  answer- 
ing Moo,  until  her  childish  patience  was  quite  spent.  If  the  creature 
had  not  given  good  milk  and  plenty  of  it,  the  case  would  have  seemed 
very  different  to  her  owners.  Besides,  Sylvia  had  all  the  time  there  was, 
and  very  little  use  to  make  of  it.  Sometimes  in  pleasant  weather  it  was 
a  consolation  to  look  upon  the  cow's  pranks  as  an  intelligent  attempt 
to  play  hide  and  seek,  and  as  the  child  had  no  playmates  she  lent  her- 
self to  this  amusement  with  a  good  deal  of  zest.  Though  this  chase  had 
been  so  long  that  the  wary  animal  herself  had  given  an  unusual  signal 
of  her  whereabouts,  Sylvia  had  only  laughed  when  she  came  upon  Mis- 
tress Moolly  at  the  swamp-side,  and  urged  her  affectionately  home- 
ward with  a  twig  of  birch  leaves.  The  old  cow  was  not  inclined  to 
wander  farther,  she  even  turned  in  the  right  direction  for  once  as  they 
left  the  pasture,  and  stepped  along  the  road  at  a  good  pace.  She  was 

399 


400  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

quite  ready  to  be  milked  now,  and  seldom  stopped  to  browse.  Sylvia 
wondered  what  her  grandmother  would  say  because  they  were  so  late. 
It  was  a  great  while  since  she  had  left  home  at  half  past  five  o'clock, 
but  everybody  knew  the  difficulty  of  making  this  errand  a  short  one. 
Mrs.  Tilley  had  chased  the  horned  torment  too  many  summer  evenings 
herself  to  blame  any  one  else  for  lingering,  and  was  only  thankful  as 
she  waited  that  she  had  Sylvia,  nowadays,  to  give  such  valuable  as- 
sistance. The  good  woman  suspected  that  Sylvia  loitered  occasionally 
on  her  own  account;  there  never  was  such  a  child  for  straying  about 
out-of-doors  since  the  world  was  made!  Everybody  said  that  it  was  a 
good  change  for  a  little  maid  who  had  tried  to  grow  for  eight  years  in 
a  crowded  manufacturing  town,  but,  as  for  Sylvia  herself,  it  seemed  as 
if  she  never  had  been  alive  at  all  before  she  came  to  live  at  the  farm. 
She  thought  often  with  wistful  compassion  of  a  wretched  dry  gera- 
nium that  belonged  to  a  town  neighbor. 

"  'Afraid  of  folks,' "  old  Mrs.  Tilley  said  to  herself,  with  a  smile,  after 
she  had  made  the  unlikely  choice  of  Sylvia  from  her  daughter's  house- 
ful of  children,  and  was  returning  to  the  farm.  "  'Afraid  of  folks,'  they 
said!  I  guess  she  won't  be  troubled  no  great  with  'em  up  to  the  old 
place!"  When  they  reached  the  door  of  the  lonely  house  and  stopped 
to  unlock  it,  and  the  cat  came  to  purr  loudly,  and  rub  against  them, 
a  deserted  pussy,  indeed,  but  fat  with  young  robins,  Sylvia  whispered 
that  this  was  a  beautiful  place  to  live  in,  and  she  never  should  wish  to 
go  home. 

The  companions  followed  the  shady  wood-road,  the  cow  taking  slow 
steps,  and  the  child  very  fast  ones.  The  cow  stopped  long  at  the  brook 
to  drink,  as  if  the  pasture  were  not  half  a  swamp,  and  Sylvia  stood  still 
and  waited,  letting  her  bare  feet  cool  themselves  in  the  shoal  water, 
while  the  great  twilight  moths  struck  softly  against  her.  She  waded 
on  through  the  brook  as  the  cow  moved  away,  and  listened  to  the 
thrushes  with  a  heart  that  beat  fast  with  pleasure.  There  was  a  stir- 
ring in  the  great  boughs  overhead.  They  were  full  of  little  birds  and 
beasts  that  seemed  to  be  wide-awake,  and  going  about  their  world,  or 
else  saying  good-night  to  each  other  in  sleepy  twitters.  Sylvia  herself 
felt  sleepy  as  she  walked  along.  However,  it  was  not  much  farther  to 


SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT  401 

the  house,  and  the  air  was  soft  and  sweet.  She  was  not  often  in  the 
woods  so  late  as  this,  and  it  made  her  feel  as  if  she  were  a  part  of  the 
gray  shadows  and  the  moving  leaves.  She  was  just  thinking  how  long 
it  seemed  since  she  first  came  to  the  farm  a  year  ago,  and  wondering 
if  everything  went  on  in  the  noisy  town  just  the  same  as  when  she  was 
there;  the  thought  of  the  great  red-faced  boy  who  used  to  chase  and 
frighten  her  made  her  hurry  along  the  path  to  escape  from  the  shadow 
of  the  trees. 

Suddenly  this  little  woods-girl  is  horror-stricken  to  hear  a  clear  whis- 
tle not  very  far  away.  Not  a  bird's  whistle,  which  would  have  a  sort 
of  friendliness,  but  a  boy's  whistle,  determined,  and  somewhat  aggres- 
sive. Sylvia  left  the  cow  to  whatever  sad  fate  might  await  her,  and 
stepped  discreetly  aside  into  the  bushes,  but  she  was  just  too  late.  The 
enemy  had  discovered  her,  and  called  out  in  a  very  cheerful  and  per- 
suasive tone,  "Halloa,  little  girl,  how  far  is  it  to  the  road?"  and  trem- 
bling Sylvia  answered  almost  inaudibly,  "A  good  ways." 

She  did  not  dare  to  look  boldly  at  the  tall  young  man,  who  carried 
a  gun  over  his  shoulder,  but  she  came  out  of  her  bush  and  again  fol- 
lowed the  cow,  while  he  walked  alongside. 

"I  have  been  hunting  for  some  birds,"  the  stranger  said  kindly,  "and 
I  have  lost  my  way,  and  need  a  friend  very  much.  Don't  be  afraid,"  he 
added  gallantly.  "Speak  up  and  tell  me  what  your  name  is,  and 
whether  you  think  I  can  spend  the  night  at  your  house,  and  go  out 
gunning  early  in  the  morning." 

Sylvia  was  more  alarmed  than  before.  Would  not  her  grandmother 
consider  her  much  to  blame?  But  who  could  have  foreseen  such  an 
accident  as  this?  It  did  not  appear  to  be  her  fault,  and  she  hung  her 
head  as  if  the  stem  of  it  were  broken,  but  managed  to  answer  "Sylvy," 
with  much  effort  when  her  companion  again  asked  her  name. 

Mrs.  Tilley  was  standing  in  the  doorway  when  the  trio  came  into 
view.  The  cow  gave  a  loud  moo  by  way  of  explanation. 

"Yes,  you'd  better  speak  up  for  yourself,  you  old  trial!  Where 'd  she 
tucked  herself  away  this  time,  Sylvy?"  Sylvia  kept  an  awed  silence; 
she  knew  by  instinct  that  her  grandmother  did  not  comprehend  the 
gravity  of  the  situation.  She  must  be  mistaking  the  stranger  for  one  of 
the  farmer-lads  of  the  region. 


402  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

The  young  man  stood  his  gun  beside  the  door,  and  dropped  a  heavy 
game-bag  beside  it;  then  he  bade  Mrs.  Tilley  good-evening,  and  re- 
peated his  wayfarer's  story,  and  asked  if  he  could  have  a  night's  lodg- 
ing. 

'Tut  me  anywhere  you  like,"  he  said.  "I  must  be  of!  early  in  the 
morning,  before  day;  but  I  am  very  hungry,  indeed.  You  can  give  me 
some  milk  at  any  rate,  that's  plain." 

"Dear  sakes,  yes,"  responded  the  hostess,  whose  long  slumbering  hos- 
pitality seemed  to  be  easily  awakened.  "You  might  fare  better  if  vou 
went  out  on  the  main  road  a  mile  or  so,  but  you're  welcome  to  what 
we've  got.  I'll  milk  right  off,  and  you  make  yourself  at  home.  You  can 
sleep  on  husks  or  feathers,"  she  profTered  graciously.  "I  raised  them  all 
myself.  There's  good  pasturing  for  geese  just  below  here  towards  the 
ma'sh.  Now  step  round  and  set  a  plate  for  the  gentleman,  Sylvy!"  And 
Sylvia  promptly  stepped.  She  was  glad  to  have  something  to  do,  and 
she  was  hungry  herself. 

It  was  a  surprise  to  find  so  clean  and  comfortable  a  little  dwelling 
in  this  New  England  wilderness.  The  young  man  had  known  the  hor- 
rors of  its  most  primitive  housekeeping,  and  the  dreary  squalor  of  that 
level  of  society  which  does  not  rebel  at  the  companionship  of  hens. 
This  was  the  best  thrift  of  an  old-fashioned  farmstead,  though  on  such 
a  small  scale  that  it  seemed  like  a  hermitage.  He  listened  eagerly  to 
the  old  woman's  quaint  talk,  he  watched  Sylvia's  pale  face  and  shin- 
ing gray  eyes  with  ever  growing  enthusiasm,  and  insisted  that  this  was 
the  best  supper  he  had  eaten  for  a  month;  then,  afterward,  the  new- 
made  friends  sat  down  in  the  doorway  together  while  the  moon  came 
up. 

Soon  it  would  be  berry-time,  and  Sylvia  was  a  great  help  at  picking. 
The  cow  was  a  good  milker,  though  a  plaguy  thing  to  keep  track  of, 
the  hostess  gossiped  frankly,  adding  presently  that  she  had  buried  four 
children,  so  that  Sylvia's  mother,  and  a  son  (who  might  be  dead)  in 
California  were  all  the  children  she  had  left.  "Dan,  my  boy,  was  a 
great  hand  to  go  gunning,"  she  explained  sadly.  "I  never  wanted  for 
pa'tridges  or  gray  squer'ls  while  he  was  to  home.  He's  been  a  areat 
wand'rer,  I  expect,  and  he's  no  hand  to  write  letters.  There,  I  don't 
blame  him.  I'd  ha'  seen  the  world  mvself  if  it  had  been  so  I  could. 


SARAH   ORNE  JEWETT  403 

"Sylvia  takes  after  him,"  the  grandmother  continued  affectionately, 
after  a  minute's  pause.  "There  ain't  a  foot  o'  ground  she  don't  know 
her  way  over,  and  the  wild  creatur's  counts  her  one  o'  themselves. 
Squer'ls  she'll  tame  to  come  an'  feed  right  out  o'  her  hands,  and  all 
sorts  o'  birds.  Last  winter  she  got  the  jay-birds  to  bangeing  here,  and 
I  believe  she'd  'a'  scanted  herself  of  her  own  meals  to  have  plenty  to 
throw  out  amongst  'em,  if  I  hadn't  kep'  watch.  Anything  but  crows, 
I  tell  her,  I'm  willin'  to  help  support, — though  Dan  he  went  an'  tamed 
one  o'  them  that  did  seem  to  have  reason  same  as  folks.  It  was  round 
here  a  good  spell  after  he  went  away.  Dan  an'  his  father  they  didn't 
hitch, — but  he  never  held  up  his  head  ag'in  after  Dan  had  dared  him 
an'  gone  off." 

The  guest  did  not  notice  this  hint  of  family  sorrows  in  his  eager  in- 
terest in  something  else. 

"So  Sylvy  knows  all  about  birds,  does  she?"  he  exclaimed,  as  he 
looked  round  at  the  little  girl  who  sat,  very  demure  but  increasingly 
sleepy,  in  the  moonlight.  "I  am  making  a  collection  of  birds  myself.  I 
have  been  at  it  ever  since  I  was  a  boy."  (Mrs.  Tilley  smiled.)  "There 
are  two  or  three  very  rare  ones  I  have  been  hunting  for  these  five  years. 
I  mean  to  get  them  on  my  own  ground  if  they  can  be  found." 

"Do  you  cage  'em  up?"  asked  Mrs.  Tilley  doubtfully,  in  response  to 
this  enthusiastic  announcement. 

"Oh,  no,  they're  stuffed  and  preserved,  dozens  and  dozens  of  them," 
said  the  ornithologist,  "and  I  have  shot  or  snared  every  one  myself.  I 
caught  a  glimpse  of  a  white  heron  three  miles  from  here  on  Saturday, 
and  I  have  followed  it  in  this  direction.  They  have  never  been  found 
in  this  district  at  all.  The  little  white  heron,  it  is,"  and  he  turned  again 
to  look  at  Sylvia  with  the  hope  of  discovering  that  the  rare  bird  was 
one  of  her  acquaintances. 

But  Sylvia  was  watching  a  hop-toad  in  the  narrow  footpath. 

"You  would  know  the  heron  if  you  saw  it,"  the  stranger  continued 
eagerly.  "A  queer  tall  white  bird  with  soft  feathers  and  long  thin  legs. 
And  it  would  have  a  nest  perhaps  in  the  top  of  a  high  tree,  made  of 
sticks,  something  like  a  hawk's  nest." 

Sylvia's  heart  gave  a  wild  beat;  she  knew  that  strange  white  bird, 
and  had  once  stolen  softly  near  where  it  stood  in  some  bright  green 


404  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

swamp  grass,  away  over  at  the  other  side  o£  the  woods.  There  was  an 
open  place  where  the  sunshine  always  seemed  strangely  yellow  and 
hot,  where  tall,  nodding  rushes  grew,  and  her  grandmother  had 
warned  her  that  she  might  sink  in  the  soft  black  mud  underneath  and 
never  be  heard  of  more.  Not  far  beyond  were  the  salt  marshes  and  be- 
yond those  was  the  sea,  the  sea  which  Sylvia  wondered  and  dreamed 
about,  but  never  had  looked  upon,  though  its  great  voice  could  often 
be  heard  above  the  noise  of  the  woods  on  stormy  nights. 

"I  can't  think  of  anything  I  should  like  so  much  as  to  find  that 
heron's  nest,"  the  handsome  stranger  was  saying.  "I  would  give  ten 
dollars  to  anybody  who  could  show  it  to  me,"  he  added  desperately, 
"and  I  mean  to  spend  my  whole  vacation  hunting  for  it  if  need  be. 
Perhaps  it  was  only  migrating,  or  had  been  chased  out  of  its  own 
region  by  some  bird  of  prey." 

Mrs.  Tilley  gave  amazed  attention  to  all  this,  but  Sylvia  still  watched 
the  toad,  not  divining,  as  she  might  have  done  at  some  calmer  time, 
that  the  creature  wished  to  get  to  its  hole  under  the  doorstep,  and  was 
much  hindered  by  the  unusual  spectators  at  that  hour  of  the  evening. 
No  amount  of  thought,  that  night,  could  decide  how  many  wished-for 
treasures  the  ten  dollars,  so  lightly  spoken  of,  would  buy. 

The  next  day  the  young  sportsman  hovered  about  the  woods,  and 
Sylvia  kept  him  company,  having  lost  her  first  fear  of  the  friendly  lad, 
who  proved  to  be  most  kind  and  sympathetic.  He  told  her  many  things 
about  the  birds  and  what  they  knew  and  where  they  lived  and  what 
they  did  with  themselves.  And  he  gave  her  a  jack-knife,  which  she 
thought  as  great  a  treasure  as  if  she  were  a  desert-islander.  All  day 
long  he  did  not  once  make  her  troubled  or  afraid  except  when  he 
brought  down  some  unsuspecting  singing  creature  from  its  bough. 
Sylvia  would  have  liked  him  vastly  better  without  his  gun;  she  could 
not  understand  why  he  killed  the  very  birds  he  seemed  to  like  so  much. 
But  as  the  day  waned,  Sylvia  still  watched  the  young  man  with  loving 
admiration.  She  had  never  seen  anybody  so  charming  and  delightful; 
the  woman's  heart,  asleep  in  the  child,  was  vaguely  thrilled  by  a  dream 
of  love.  Some  premonition  of  that  great  power  stirred  and  swayed 
these  young  foresters  who  traversed  the  solemn  woodlands  with  soft- 
footed  silent  care.  They  stopped  to  listen  to  a  bird's  song;  they  pressed 


SARAH   ORNE  JEWETT  405 

forward  again  eagerly,  parting  the  branches, — speaking  to  each  other 
rarely  and  in  whispers;  the  young  man  going  first  and  Sylvia  follow- 
ing, fascinated,  a  few  steps  behind,  with  her  gray  eyes  dark  with 
excitement. 

She  grieved  because  the  longed-for  white  heron  was  elusive,  but  she 
did  not  lead  the  guest,  she  only  followed,  and  there  was  no  such  thing 
as  speaking  first.  The  sound  of  her  own  unquestioned  voice  would 
have  terrified  her, — it  was  hard  enough  to  answer  yes  or  no  when 
there  was  need  of  that.  At  last  evening  began  to  fall,  and  they  drove 
the  cow  home  together,  and  Sylvia  smiled  with  pleasure  when  they 
came  to  the  place  where  she  heard  the  whistle  and  was  afraid  only  the 
night  before. 

II 

Half  a  mile  from  home,  at  the  farther  edge  of  the  woods,  where  the 
land  was  highest,  a  great  pine-tree  stood,  the  last  of  its  generation. 
Whether  it  was  left  for  a  boundary  mark,  or  for  what  reason,  no  one 
could  say;  the  woodchoppers  who  had  felled  its  mates  were  dead  and 
gone  long  ago,  and  a  whole  forest  of  sturdy  trees,  pines  and  oaks  and 
maples,  had  grown  again.  But  the  stately  head  of  this  old  pine  towered 
above  them  all  and  made  a  landmark  for  sea  and  shore  miles  and 
miles  away.  Sylvia  knew  it  well.  She  had  always  believed  that  who- 
ever climbed  to  the  top  of  it  could  see  the  ocean;  and  the  little  girl  had 
often  laid  her  hand  on  the  great  rough  trunk  and  looked  up  wistfully 
at  those  dark  boughs  that  the  wind  always  stirred,  no  matter  how  hot  and 
still  the  air  might  be  below.  Now  she  thought  of  the  tree  with  a  new  ex- 
citement, for  why,  if  one  climbed  it  at  break  of  day,  could  not  one  see 
all  the  world,  and  easily  discover  whence  the  white  heron  flew,  and 
mark  the  place,  and  find  the  hidden  nest? 

What  a  spirit  of  adventure,  what  wild  ambition!  What  fancied  tri- 
umph and  delight  and  glory  for  the  later  morning  when  she  could 
make  known  the  secret!  It  was  almost  too  real  and  too  great  for  the 
childish  heart  to  bear. 

All  night  the  door  of  the  little  house  stood  open,  and  the  whippoor- 
wills  came  and  sang  upon  the  very  step.  The  young  sportsman  and  his 


406  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

old  hostess  were  sound  asleep,  but  Sylvia's  great  design  kept  her  broad 
awake  and  watching.  She  forgot  to  think  of  sleep.  The  short  summer 
night  seemed  as  long  as  the  winter  darkness,  and  at  last  when  the 
whippoorwills  ceased,  and  she  was  afraid  the  morning  would  after  all 
come  too  soon,  she  stole  out  of  the  house  and  followed  the  pasture 
path  through  the  woods,  hastening  toward  the  open  ground  beyond, 
listening  with  a  sense  of  comfort  and  companionship  to  the  drowsy 
twitter  of  a  half-awakened  bird,  whose  perch  she  had  jarred  in  passing. 
Alas,  if  the  great  wave  of  human  interest  which  flooded  for  the  first 
time  this  dull  little  life  should  sweep  away  the  satisfactions  of  an  ex- 
istence heart  to  heart  with  nature  and  the  dumb  life  of  the  forest! 

There  was  the  huge  tree  asleep  yet  in  the  paling  moonlight,  and 
small  and  hopeful  Sylvia  began  with  utmost  bravery  to  mount  to  the 
top  of  it,  with  tingling,  eager  blood  coursing  the  channels  of  her  whole 
frame,  with  her  bare  feet  and  fingers,  that  pinched  and  held  like  bird's 
claws  to  the  monstrous  ladder  reaching  up,  up,  almost  to  the  sky  itself. 
First  she  must  mount  the  white  oak  tree  that  grew  alongside,  where 
she  was  almost  lost  among  the  dark  branches  and  the  green  leaves 
heavy  and  wet  with  dew;  a  bird  fluttered  off  its  nest,  and  a  red  squir- 
rel ran  to  and  fro  and  scolded  pettishly  at  the  harmless  housebreaker. 
Sylvia  felt  her  way  easily.  She  had  often  climbed  there,  and  knew  that 
higher  still  one  of  the  oak's  upper  branches  chafed  against  the  pine 
trunk,  just  where  its  lower  boughs  were  set  close  together.  There, 
when  she  made  the  dangerous  pass  from  one  tree  to  the  other,  the 
great  enterprise  would  really  begin. 

She  crept  out  along  the  swaying  oak  limb  at  last,  and  took  the  dar- 
ing step  across  into  the  old  pine-tree.  The  way  was  harder  than  she 
thought;  she  must  reach  far  and  hold  fast,  the  sharp  dry  twigs  caught 
and  held  her  and  scratched  her  like  angry  talons,  the  pitch  made  her 
thin  little  fingers  clumsy  and  stiff  as  she  went  round  and  round  the 
tree's  great  stem,  higher  and  higher  upward.  The  sparrows  and  robins 
in  the  woods  below  were  beginning  to  wake  and  twitter  to  the  dawn, 
yet  it  seemed  much  lighter  there  aloft  in  the  pine-tree,  and  the  child 
knew  that  she  must  hurry  if  her  project  were  to  be  of  any  use. 

The  tree  seemed  to  lengthen  itself  out  as  she  went  up,  and  to  reach 
farther  and  farther  upward.  It  was  like  a  great  main-mast  to  the  voyag- 


SARAH   ORNE  JEWETT  407 

ing  earth;  it  must  truly  have  been  amazed  that  morning  through  all 
its  ponderous  frame  as  it  felt  this  determined  spark  of  human  spirit 
creeping  and  climbing  from  higher  branch  to  branch.  Who  knows  how 
steadily  the  least  twigs  held  themselves  to  advantage  this  light,  weak 
creature  on  her  way!  The  old  pine  must  have  loved  his  new  dependent. 
More  than  all  the  hawks,  and  bats,  and  moths,  and  even  the  sweet- 
voiced  thrushes,  was  the  brave,  beating  heart  of  the  solitary  gray-eyed 
child.  And  the  tree  stood  still  and  held  away  the  winds  that  June 
morning  while  the  dawn  grew  bright  in  the  east. 

Sylvia's  face  was  like  a  pale  star,  if  one  had  seen  it  from  the  ground, 
when  the  last  thorny  bough  was  past,  and  she  stood  trembling  and 
tired  but  wholly  triumphant,  high  in  the  tree-top.  Yes,  there  was  the 
sea  with  the  dawning  sun  making  a  golden  dazzle  over  it,  and  toward 
that  glorious  east  flew  two  hawks  with  slow-moving  pinions.  How 
low  they  looked  in  the  air  from  that  height  when  before  one  had  only 
seen  them  far  up,  and  dark  against  the  blue  sky.  Their  gray  feathers 
were  as  soft  as  moths;  they  seemed  only  a  little  way  from  the  tree, 
and  Sylvia  felt  as  if  she  too  could  go  flying  away  among  the  clouds. 
Westward,  the  woodlands  and  farms  reached  miles  and  miles  into 
the  distance;  here  and  there  were  church  steeples,  and  white  villages; 
truly  it  was  a  vast  and  awesome  world. 

The  birds  sang  louder  and  louder.  At  last  the  sun  came  up  bewil- 
deringly  bright.  Sylvia  could  see  the  white  sails  of  ships  out  at  sea, 
and  the  clouds  that  were  purple  and  rose-colored  and  yellow  at  first 
began  to  fade  away.  Where  was  the  white  heron's  nest  in  the  sea  of 
green  branches,  and  was  this  wonderful  sight  and  pageant  of  the  world 
the  only  reward  for  having  climbed  to  such  a  giddy  height?  Now 
look  down  again,  Sylvia,  where  the  green  marsh  is  set  among  the 
shining  birches  and  dark  hemlocks;  there  where  you  saw  the  white 
heron  once  you  will  see  him  again;  look,  look!  a  white  spot  of  him 
like  a  single  floating  feather  comes  up  from  the  dead  hemlock  and 
grows  larger,  and  rises,  and  comes  close  at  last,  and  goes  by  the  land- 
mark pine  with  steady  sweep  of  wing  and  outstretched  slender  neck 
and  crested  head.  And  wait!  wait!  do  not  move  a  foot  or  a  finger, 
little  girl,  do  not  send  an  arrow  of  light  and  consciousness  from  your 
two  eager  eyes,  for  the  heron  has  perched  on  a  pine  bough  not  far 


408  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

beyond  yours,  and  cries  back  to  his  mate  on  the  nest,  and  plumes  his 
feathers  for  the  new  day! 

The  child  gives  a  long  sigh  a  minute  later  when  a  company  of 
shouting  cat-birds  comes  also  to  the  tree,  and  vexed  by  their  fluttering 
and  lawlessness  the  solemn  heron  goes  away.  She  knows  his  secret 
now,  the  wild,  light,  slender  bird  that  floats  and  wavers,  and  goes  back 
like  an  arrow  presently  to  his  home  in  the  green  world  beneath.  Then 
Sylvia,  well  satisfied,  makes  her  perilous  way  down  again,  not  daring 
to  look  far  below  the  branch  she  stands  on,  ready  to  cry  sometimes 
because  her  fingers  ache  and  her  lamed  feet  slip.  Wondering  over  and 
over  again  what  the  stranger  would  say  to  her,  and  what  he  would 
think  when  she  told  him  how  to  find  his  way  straight  to  the  heron's 
nest. 

"Sylvy,  Sylvy!"  called  the  busy  old  grandmother  again  and  again, 
but  nobody  answered,  and  the  small  husk  bed  was  empty,  and  Sylvia 
had  disappeared. 

The  guest  waked  from  a  dream,  and  remembering  his  day's  pleasure 
hurried  to  dress  himself  that  it  might  sooner  begin.  He  was  sure 
from  the  way  the  shy  little  girl  looked  once  or  twice  yesterday  that 
she  had  at  least  seen  the  white  heron,  and  now  she  must  really  be 
persuaded  to  tell.  Here  she  comes  now,  paler  than  ever,  and  her  worn 
old  frock  is  torn  and  tattered,  and  smeared  with  pine  pitch.  The 
grandmother  and  the  sportsman  stand  in  the  door  together  and  ques- 
tion her,  and  the  splendid  moment  has  come  to  speak  of  the  dead 
hemlock-tree  by  the  green  marsh. 

But  Sylvia  does  not  speak  after  all,  though  the  old  grandmother 
fretfully  rebukes  her,  and  the  young  man's  kind  appealing  eyes  are 
looking  straight  into  her  own.  He  can  make  them  rich  with  money; 
he  has  promised  it,  and  they  are  poor  now.  He  is  so  well  worth  making 
happy,  and  he  waits  to  hear  the  story  she  can  tell. 

No,  she  must  keep  silence!  What  is  it  that  suddenly  forbids  her  and 
makes  her  dumb?  Has  she  been  nine  years  growing,  and  now,  when 
the  great  world  for  the  first  time  puts  out  a  hand  to  her,  must  she 
thrust  it  aside  for  a  bird's  sake?  The  murmur  of  the  pine's  green 
branches  is  in  her  ears,  she  remembers  how  the  white  heron  came 


SARAH  ORNE  JEWETT  409 

flying  through  the  golden  air  and  how  they  watched  the  sea  and 
the  morning  together,  and  Sylvia  cannot  speak;  she  cannot  tell  the 
heron's  secret  and  give  its  life  away. 

Dear  loyalty,  that  suffered  a  sharp  pang  as  the  guest  went  away  dis- 
appointed later  in  the  day,  that  could  have  served  and  followed  him 
and  loved  him  as  a  dog  loves!  Many  a  night  Sylvia  heard  the  echo 
of  his  whistle  haunting  the  pasture  path  as  she  came  home  with  the 
loitering  cow.  She  forgot  even  her  sorrow  at  the  sharp  report  of  his 
gun  and  the  piteous  sight  of  thrushes  and  sparrows  dropping  silent  to 
the  ground,  their  songs  hushed  and  their  pretty  feathers  stained  and 
wet  with  blood.  Were  the  birds  better  friends  than  their  hunter 
might  have  been, — who  can  tell?  Whatever  treasures  were  lost  to 
her,  woodlands  and  summer-time,  remember!  Bring  your  gifts  and 
graces  and  tell  your  secrets  to  this  lonely  country  child! 


RING  LARDNER 


COMMENTARY 


Ring  Lardner  spent  most  of  his  adult  life  among  ballplayers,  prize 
fighters,  Great  White  Highwaymen,  songwriters,  wealthy  Long 
Islanders,  and  upper-class  bridge-  and  golf-players.  He  saw  these  peo- 
ple at  their  worst,  during  the  Boom  Decade,  during  which  our  na- 
tional behavior  hit  a  record  low.  Though  he  never  left  them,  he  didnt 
like  them,  and  his  short  stories  are  the  record  of  that  dislike.  The 
odd  thing  is  that  when  he  wanted  to  be  just  funny,  he  could  shut  off 
his  irritation  and  write  pieces  that  still  make  you  laugh.  But  oftener 
you  End  yourself  laughing  on  the  wrong  side  of  your  face. 

William  Bolitho  divided  Lardner  s  population  into  fools  and  swine. 
That's  a  little  offhand,  but  there's  much  truth  in  it.  Lardner  went  a 
long  way  on  sheer  dislike  alone.  I  don't  think  he  even  cared  much 
for  himself,  but  he  was  wrong  there,  because  his  work,  though  he 
may  never  have  realized  it,  projects  a  picture  of  an  extraordinarily 
honest,  intelligent,  charming  person,  if  also  an  unhappy  one. 

It's  hard  to  remember  half  a  dozen  sympathetic  Lardner  charac- 
ters. Somewhere  he  refers  to  uthis  special  police  dog,"  which  "was 
like  most  of  them  and  hated  everybody."  Lardner  himself  was  a  sort 
of  police  dog,  but  his  hatred  was  not  mere  crabbedness.  It  was  an 
expression  of  his  insight  into  American  life  on  certain  levels  as  it  re- 
vealed itself  during  a  sordid  era. 

Lardner's  aim  is  deadly  because  he  is  cold.  There  is  almost  no  emo- 
tion. His  satire  is  negative;  that  is  why  it  never  caused  a  revolution  in 
American  manners,  as  Main  Street  did.  No  one  is  uneasy  under 
the  whiplash  of  Lardner  s  scorn,  for  he  is  not  really  worked  up  about 
anything.  Paradoxically  that  is  one  of  the  reasons  that  enabled  this 
complete  misanthrope  to  appear  in  the  most  popular  and  genial  of 
our  weekly  magazines.  He  never  rails  at  the  crowd  because  he  has 
passed  beyond  raillery. 

He  has  a  uniform  method  of  attack.  He  takes  some  national  trait 
which  is  ordinarily  treated  with  good-natured  humor  and  reduces  it 

410 


RING  LARDNER  411 

to  its  basic  viciousness.  Pullman-washroom  sociability  is  revealed  as 
a  vulgar  garrulity  which  conceals  a  brutal  egotism  ("Sun  Cured"). 
Simple  boy-and-girl  calf  love  is  shown  to  have  its  wots  in  colossal 
selfishness  ("Some  Like  Them  Cold").  The  practical  joker,  that  stand- 
by of  amiable  American  humor,  turns  out  to  be  cruel  and  heartless 
("Haircut"  "The  Maysville  Minstrel").  The  wife  who  is  proud  of  her 
husband's  achievements  betrays  herself  as  a  witless  bore  ("Who 
Dealt?").  The  lavish  hospitality  which  members  of  the  American 
upper  strata  are  supposed  to  extend  to  each  other  is  analyzed  and 
found  to  conceal  nosiness,  lack  of  imagination,  possessiveness,  and, 
if  you  go  deep  enough,  actual  antagonism  ("Liberty  Hall"). 

Lardner  is  best-natured  in  his  baseball  stories,  for  he  really  loved 
the  game.  But  his  love  never  prevented  him  from  seeing  through  it. 
He  had  a  press-bench  eye.  He  saw  baseball,  as  he  saw  all  American 
sport,  as  a  focal  point  drawing  together  bonehead  and  sharper.  For 
entertainment  purposes  he  chooses  to  devote  most  of  his  attention 
to  the  bonehead  ("You  Know  Me  Al"),  but  when  he  elects  to  attack  a 
professionalized  sport  without  any  gloves  on,  we  get  "Champion." 
The  direct,  vicious  hatred  that  animates  "Champion"  is  far  removed 
from  the  reined-in  fascination  underlying  a  fight  yarn  like  Heming- 
ways  "Fifty  Grand."  The  two  stories  are  equally  effective,  but  one 
feels  that  Lardner  is  far  closer  to  the  facts  of  American  sport  than  is 
Hemingway.  He  does  not  inject  himself  into  the  story,  hie  has  his  eye 
coldly  fixed  on  the  object,  whereas  Hemingway,  despite  the  famous 
lean,  pared  style,  is  lyrical. 

Lardner  is  a  great  master  of  mimicry,  catching  to  the  life  our  flat, 
democratic  speech.  The  effect  of  "Lardner  s  Ringlish"  is  often  humor- 
ous but  more  often  satiric.  If  the  mind  of  a  boob  is  fuzzy  and  banal, 
the  best  way  to  get  it  over  is  to  make  the  boob  open  his  mouth  and 
talk. 

To  see  how  instrumental  is  his  style,  note  how  he  handles  our  tra- 
ditional humor  of  exaggeration.  When  Mark  Twain  exaggerates,  it  is 
to  secure  an  effect  of  comic  absurdity,  but  when  Lardner  says,  "He 
give  her  a  look  that  you  could  pour  on  a  waffle/'  the  mad  metaphor 
has  the  power  to  fill  us  with  a  distaste  for  all  sentimental  affection. 


412  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Even  a  simple,  forthright  line  like  'Trench  trains  run  like  they  was 
on  pogo  sticks"  conceals  an  undercurrent  of  exacerbation. 

One  of  Lardner  s  worlds  is  filled  with  soreheads  and  kickers;  it  is  a 
land  in  a  never-ending  state  of  civil  war.  Any  two  Lardner  characters, 
when  they  get  together,  are  apt  to  quarrel  about  something.  He  is 
the  epic  recorder  of  hicker. 

This  appears  most  clearly  in  his  treatment  of  marriage.  If  his  men 
are  mainly  niggling  pewts  garrulously  trying  to  impress  the  world 
with  their  nonexistent  virtues,  his  women  are  mainly  egotists  of  the 
most  predatory  type,  barren  of  glamor,  charm,  humor,  and  sexual  at- 
tractiveness. His  vision  is  narrow  and  distorted,  but  it  is  powerful. 
In  his  stories  middle-class  marriage  is  filled  with  hypocrisy,  selfish- 
ness, and  constant  antagonism  between  husband  and  wife.  For  proof 
I  suggest  a  rereading  of  "The  Love  Nest"  which  I  have  selected  as  a 
typical  Lardner  story.  Passion,  sentiment,  generosity,  sympathy,  and 
humor  are  barred,  leaving  only  the  four  components  of  comic-strip 
marital  comedy:  contentiousness,  henpecking,  gold-digging,  and  that 
peculiar,  hopeless  irony  of  the  American  male  which  for  Lardner  is 
his  chief  defense  against  the  onslaughts  of  the  female. 

In  the  face  of  Lardner  s  perfectly  clear  simon-pure,  deliberate  mis- 
anthropy it  is  a  little  difficult  to  understand  how  readers  could  ever 
have  welcomed  him  as  a  standard,  "popular"  humorist.  The  world  he 
shows  us  is  a  world  of  mental  sadists,  fourEushers,  intolerable  gos- 
sipers,  meal-ticket  females,  interfering  morons,  brainless  Eirts,  liars, 
brutes,  spiteful  snobs,  vulgar  climbers,  dishonest  jockevs,  selEsh  chil- 
dren, dipsomaniacal  chorus  girls,  senile  chatterers,  idiotically  com- 
placent husbands,  mean  arrivistes,  drunks,  snoopers,  poseurs,  and 
bridge-players.  Yet,  despite  his  bitterness,  he  is  a  top-notch  humorist 
on  some  occasions,  as  he  is  a  great  satirist  on  almost  all. 


^^^w^W^w^wyT    ST  ST  SC  ST  SI  ST' 


The  Love  Nest 

BY 

RING  LARDNER 


"I'll  tell  you  what  I'm  going  to  do  with  you,  Mr.  Bartlett,"  said  the 
great  man.  "I'm  going  to  take  you  right  out  to  my  home  and  have  you 
meet  the  wife  and  family;  stay  to  dinner  and  all  night.  We've  got 
plenty  of  room  and  extra  pajamas,  if  you  don't  mind  them  silk.  I  mean 
that'll  give  you  a  chance  to  see  us  just  as  we  are.  I  mean  you  can  get 
more  that  way  than  if  you  sat  here  a  whole  week,  asking  me  questions." 

"But  I  don't  want  to  put  you  to  a  lot  of  trouble,"  said  Bartlett. 

"Trouble!"  The  great  man  laughed.  "There's  no  trouble  about  it. 
I've  got  a  house  that's  like  a  hotel.  I  mean  a  big  house  with  lots  of 
servants.  But  anyway  I'm  always  glad  to  do  anything  I  can  for  a  writ- 
ing man,  especially  a  man  that  works  for  Ralph  Doane.  I'm  very  fond 
of  Ralph.  I  mean  I  like  him  personally  besides  being  a  great  editor.  I 
mean  I've  known  him  for  years  and  when  there's  anything  I  can  do 
for  him,  I'm  glad  to  do  it.  I  mean  it'll  be  a  pleasure  to  have  you.  So  if 
you  want  to  notify  your  family " 

"I  haven't  any  family,"  said  Bartlett. 

"Well,  I'm  sorry  for  you!  And  I  bet  when  you  see  mine,  you'll  wish 
you  had  one  of  your  own.  But  I'm  glad  you  can  come  and  we'll  start 
now  so  as  to  get  there  before  the  kiddies  are  put  away  for  the  night. 
I  mean  I  want  you  to  be  sure  and  see  the  kiddies.  I've  got  three." 

"I've  seen  their  pictures,"  said  Bartlett.  "You  must  be  very  proud  of 
them.  They're  all  girls,  aren't  they?" 

"Yes,  sir;  three  girls.  I  wouldn't  have  a  boy.  I  mean  I  always  wanted 
girls.  I  mean  girls  have  got  a  lot  more  zip  to  them.  I  mean  they're  a 
lot  zippier.  But  let's  go!  The  Rolls  is  downstairs  and  if  we  start  now 

413 


414  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

we'll  get  there  before  dark.  I  mean  I  want  you  to  see  the  place  while 
it's  still  daylight." 

The  great  man — Lou  Gregg,  president  of  Modern  Pictures,  Inc. — 
escorted  his  visitor  from  the  magnificent  office  by  a  private  door  and 
down  a  private  stairway  to  the  avenue,  where  the  glittering  car  with 
its  glittering  chaufTeur  waited. 

"My  wife  was  in  town  today,"  said  Gregg  as  they  glided  northward, 
"and  I  hoped  we  could  ride  out  together,  but  she  called  up  about  two 
and  asked  would  I  mind  if  she  went  on  home  in  the  Pierce. ^She  was 
through  with  her  shopping  and  she  hates  to  be  away  from  the  house 
and  the  kiddies  any  longer  than  she  can  help.  Celia's  a  great  home 
girl.  You'd  never  know  she  was  the  same  girl  now  as  the  girl  I  mar- 
ried seven  years  ago.  I  mean  she's  different.  I  mean  she's  not  the  same. 
I  mean  her  marriage  and  being  a  mother  has  developed  her.  Did  you 
ever  see  her?  I  mean  in  pictures?" 

"I  think  I  did  once,"  replied  Bartlett.  "Didn't  she  play  the  young 
sister  in  'The  Cad'?" 

"Yes,  with  Harold  Hodgson  and  Marie  Blythe." 

"I  thought  I'd  seen  her.  I  remember  her  as  very  pretty  and  viva- 
cious." 

"She  certainly  was!  And  she  is  yet!  I  mean  she's  even  prettier,  but 
of  course  she  ain't  a  kid,  though  she  looks  it.  I  mean  she  was  only 
seventeen  in  that  picture  and  that  was  ten  years  ago.  I  mean  she's 
twenty-seven  years  old  now.  But  I  never  met  a  girl  with  as  much  zip 
as  she  had  in  those  days.  It's  remarkable  how  marriage  changes  them. 
I  mean  nobody  would  ever  thought  Celia  Sayles  would  turn  out  to  be 
a  sit-by-the-fire.  I  mean  she  still  likes  a  good  time,  but  her  home  and 
kiddies  come  first.  I  mean  her  home  and  kiddies  come  first." 

"I  see  what  you  mean,"  said  Bartlett. 

An  hour's  drive  brought  them  to  Ardsley-on-Hudson  and  the  great 
man's  home. 

"A  wonderful  place!"  Bartlett  exclaimed  with  a  heroic  semblance 
of  enthusiasm  as  the  car  turned  in  at  an  arc  de  triomphe  of  a  gateway 
and  approached  a  white  house  that  might  have  been  mistaken  for  the 
Yale  Bowl. 


RING  LARDNER  415 

"It  ought  to  be!"  said  Gregg.  "I  mean  I've  spent  enough  on  it.  I 
mean  these  things  cost  money." 

He  indicated  with  a  gesture  the  huge  house  and  Urbanesque  land- 
scaping. 

"But  no  amount  of  money  is  too  much  to  spend  on  home.  I  mean 
it's  a  good  investment  if  it  tends  to  make  your  family  proud  and  satis- 
fied with  their  home.  I  mean  every  nickel  I've  spent  here  is  like  so 
much  insurance;  it  insures  me  of  a  happy  wife  and  family.  And  what 
more  can  a  man  ask!" 

Bartlett  didn't  know,  but  the  topic  was  forgotten  in  the  business  of 
leaving  the  resplendent  Rolls  and  entering  the  even  more  resplendent 
reception  hall. 

"Forbes  will  take  your  things,"  said  Gregg.  "And,  Forbes,  you  may 
tell  Dennis  that  Mr.  Bartlett  will  spend  the  night."  He  faced  the  wide 
stairway  and  raised  his  voice.  "Sweetheart!"  he  called. 

From  above  came  the  reply  in  contralto:  "Hello,  sweetheart!" 

"Come  down,  sweetheart.  I've  brought  you  a  visitor." 

"All  right,  sweetheart,  in  just  a  minute." 

Gregg  led  Bartlett  into  a  living-room  that  was  five  laps  to  the  mile 
and  suggestive  of  an  Atlantic  City  auction  sale. 

"Sit  there,"  said  the  host,  pointing  to  a  balloon-stuffed  easy  chair, 
"and  I'll  see  if  we  can  get  a  drink.  I've  got  some  real  old  Bourbon  that 
I'd  like  you  to  try.  You  know  I  come  from  Chicago  and  I  always  liked 
Bourbon  better  than  Scotch.  I  mean  I  always  preferred  it  to  Scotch. 
Forbes,"  he  addressed  the  servant,  "we  want  a  drink.  You'll  find  a  full 
bottle  of  that  Bourbon  in  the  cupboard." 

"It's  only  half  full,  sir,"  said  Forbes. 

"Half  full!  That's  funny!  I  mean  I  opened  it  last  night  and  just  took 
one  drink.  I  mean  it  ought  to  be  full." 

"It's  only  half  full,"  repeated  Forbes,  and  went  to  fetch  it. 

"I'll  have  to  investigate,"  Gregg  told  his  guest.  "I  mean  this  ain't  the 
first  time  lately  that  some  of  my  good  stuff  has  disappeared.  When 
you  keep  so  many  servants,  it's  hard  to  get  all  honest  ones.  But  here's 
Celia!" 

Bartlett  rose  to  greet  the  striking  brunette  who  at  this  moment  made 


416  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

an  entrance  so  Delsarte  as  to  be  almost  painful.  With  never  a  glance 
at  him,  she  minced  across  the  room  to  her  husband  and  took  a  half 
interest  in  a  convincing  kiss. 

"Well,  sweetheart,"  she  said  when  it  was  at  last  over. 

"This  is  Mr.  Bartlett,  sweetheart,"  said  her  husband.  "Mr.  Bartlett, 
meet  Mrs.  Gregg." 

Bartlett  shook  his  hostess's  proffered  two  fingers. 

"I'm  so  pleased!"  said  Celia  in  a  voice  reminiscent  of  Miss  Claire's 
imitation  of  Miss  Barrymore. 

"Mr.  Bartlett,"  Gregg  went  on,  "is  with  Mankind,  Ralph  Doane's 
magazine.  He  is  going  to  write  me  up;  I  mean  us." 

"No,  you  mean  you,"  said  Celia.  "I'm  sure  the  public  is  not  interested 
in  great  men's  wives." 

"I  am  sure  you  are  mistaken,  Mrs.  Gregg,"  said  Bartlett  politely. 
"In  this  case  at  least.  You  are  worth  writing  up  aside  from  being  a 
great  man's  wife." 

"I'm  afraid  you're  a  flatterer,  Mr.  Bartlett,"  she  returned.  "I  have 
been  out  of  the  limelight  so  long  that  I  doubt  if  anybody  remembers 
me.  I'm  no  longer  an  artist;  merely  a  happy  wife  and  mother." 

"And  I  claim,  sweetheart,"  said  Gregg,  "that  it  takes  an  artist  to 
be  that." 

"Oh,  no,  sweetheart!"  said  Celia.  "Not  when  they  have  you  for 
a  husband!" 

The  exchange  of  hosannahs  was  interrupted  by  the  arrival  of  Forbes 
with  the  tray. 

"Will  you  take  yours  straight  or  in  a  high-ball?"  Gregg  inquired 
of  his  guest.  "Personally  I  like  good  whisky  straight.  I  mean  mixing 
it  with  water  spoils  the  flavor.  I  mean  whisky  like  this,  it  seems  like 
a  crime  to  mix  it  with  water." 

"I'll  have  mine  straight,"  said  Bartlett,  who  would  have  preferred 
a  high-ball. 

While  the  drinks  were  being  prepared,  he  observed  his  hostess  more 
closely  and  thought  how  much  more  charming  she  would  be  if  she  had 
used  finesse  in  improving  on  nature.  Her  cheeks,  her  mouth,  her  eyes, 
and  lashes  had  been,  he  guessed,  far  above  the  average  in  beauty 
before  she  had  begun  experimenting  with  them.  And  her  experiments 


RING  LARDNER  417 

had  been  clumsy.  She  was  handsome  in  spite  of  her  efforts  to  be  hand- 
somer. 

"Listen,  sweetheart,"  said  her  husband.  "One  of  the  servants  has 
been  helping  himself  to  this  Bourbon.  I  mean  it  was  a  full  bottle  last 
night  and  I  only  had  one  little  drink  out  of  it.  And  now  it's  less  than 
half  full.  Who  do  you  suppose  has  been  at  it?" 

"How  do  I  know,  sweetheart?  Maybe  the  groceryman  or  the  iceman 
or  somebody." 

"But  you  and  I  and  Forbes  are  the  only  ones  that  have  a  key.  I 
mean  it  was  locked  up." 

"Maybe  you  forgot  to  lock  it." 

"I  never  do.  Well,  anyway,  Bartlett,  here's  a  go!" 

"Doesn't  Mrs.  Gregg  indulge?"  asked  Bartlett. 

"Only  a  cocktail  before  dinner,"  said  Celia.  "Lou  objects  to  me 
drinking  whisky,  and  I  don't  like  it  much  anyway." 

"I  don't  object  to  you  drinking  whisky,  sweetheart.  I  just  object 
to  you  drinking  to  excess.  I  mean  I  think  it  coarsens  a  woman  to 
drink.  I  mean  it  makes  them  coarse." 

"Well,  there's  no  argument,  sweetheart.  As  I  say,  I  don't  care  whether 
I  have  it  or  not." 

"It  certainly  is  great  Bourbon!"  said  Bartlett,  smacking  his  lips  and 
putting  his  glass  back  on  the  tray. 

"You  bet  it  is!"  Gregg  agreed.  "I  mean  you  can't  buy  that  kind  of 
stuff  any  more.  I  mean  it's  real  stuff.  You  help  yourself  when  you 
want  another.  Mr.  Bartlett  is  going  to  stay  all  night,  sweetheart.  I 
told  him  he  could  get  a  whole  lot  more  of  a  line  on  us  that  way  than 
just  interviewing  me  in  the  office.  I  mean  I'm  tongue-tied  when  it 
comes  to  talking  about  my  work  and  my  success.  I  mean  it's  better 
to  see  me  out  here  as  I  am,  in  my  home,  with  my  family.  I  mean  my 
home  life  speaks  for  itself  without  me  saying  a  word." 

"But,  sweetheart,"  said  his  wife,  "what  about  Mr.  Latham?" 

"Gosh!  I  forgot  all  about  him!  I  must  phone  and  see  if  I  can  call 
it  off.  That's  terrible!  You  see,"  he  explained  to  Bartlett,  "I  made  a 
date  to  go  up  to  Tarrytown  tonight,  to  K.  L.  Latham's,  the  sugar 
people.  We're  going  to  talk  over  the  new  club.  We're  going  to  have 
a  golf  club  that  will  make  the  rest  of  them  look  like  a  toy.  I  mean  a 


418  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

real  golf  club!  They  want  me  to  kind  of  run  it.  And  I  was  to  go  up 
there  tonight  and  talk  it  over.  I'll  phone  and  see  if  I  can  postpone  it." 

"Oh,  don't  postpone  it  on  my  account!"  urged  Bartlett.  "I  can  come 
out  again  some  other  time,  or  I  can  see  you  in  town." 

"I  don't  see  how  you  can  postpone  it,  sweetheart,"  said  Celia.  "Didn't 
he  say  old  Mr.  King  was  coming  over  from  White  Plains?  They'll 
be  mad  at  you  if  you  don't  go." 

"I'm  afraid  they  would  resent  it,  sweetheart.  Well,  I'll  tell  you.  You 
can  entertain  Mr.  Bartlett  and  I'll  go  up  there  right  after  dinner  and 
come  back  as  soon  as  I  can.  And  Bartlett  and  I  can  talk  when  I  get 
back.  I  mean  we  can  talk  when  I  get  back.  How  is  that?" 

"That  suits  me,"  said  Bartlett. 

"I'll  be  as  entertaining  as  I  can,"  said  Celia,  "but  I'm  afraid  that 
isn't  very  entertaining.  However,  if  I'm  too  much  of  a  bore,  there's 
plenty  to  read." 

"No  danger  of  my  being  bored,"  said  Bartlett. 

"Well,  that's  all  fixed  then,"  said  the  relieved  host.  "I  hope  you'll 
excuse  me  running  away.  But  I  don't  see  how  I  can  get  out  of  it.  I 
mean  with  old  King  coming  over  from  White  Plains.  I  mean  he's 
an  old  man.  But  listen,  sweetheart — where  are  the  kiddies?  Mr.  Bartlett 
wants  to  see  them." 

"Yes,  indeed!"  agreed  the  visitor. 

"Of  course  you'd  say  so!"  Celia  said.  "But  we  are  proud  of  them! 
I  suppose  all  parents  are  the  same.  They  all  think  their  own  children 
are  the  only  children  in  the  world.  Isn't  that  so,  Mr.  Bartlett?  Or 
haven't  you  any  children?" 

"I'm  sorry  to  say  I'm  not  married." 

"Oh,  you  poor  thing!  We  pity  him,  don't  we,  sweetheart?  But  why 
aren't  you,  Mr.  Bartlett?  Don't  tell  me  you're  a  woman  hater!" 

"Not  now,  anyway,"  said  the  gallant  Bartlett. 

"Do  you  get  that,  sweetheart?  He's  paying  you  a  pretty  compli- 
ment." 

"I  heard  it,  sweetheart.  And  now  I'm  sure  he's  a  flatterer.  But  I 
must  hurry  and  get  the  children  before  Hortense  puts  them  to  bed." 

"Well,"  said  Gregg  when  his  wife  had  left  the  room,  "would  you 
say  she's  changed?" 


RING  LARDNER  419 

"A  little,  and  for  the  better.  She's  more  than  fulfilled  her  early 
promise." 

"I  think  so,"  said  Gregg.  "I  mean  I  think  she  was  a  beautiful  girl 
and  now  she's  an  even  more  beautiful  woman.  I  mean  wifehood  and 
maternity  have  given  her  a  kind  of  a — well,  you  know — I  mean  a  kind 
of  a  pose.  I  mean  a  pose.  How  about  another  drink?" 

They  were  emptying  their  glasses  when  Celia  returned  with  two 
of  her  little  girls. 

"The  baby's  in  bed  and  I  was  afraid  to  ask  Hortense  to  get  her  up 
again.  But  you'll  see  her  in  the  morning.  This  is  Norma  and  this  is 
Grace.  Girls,  this  is  Mr.  Bartlett ." 

The  girls  received  this  news  calmly. 

"Well,  girls,"  said  Bartlett. 

"What  do  you  think  of  them,  Bartlett?"  demanded  their  father.  "I 
mean  what  do  you  think  of  them?" 

"They're  great!"  replied  the  guest  with  creditable  warmth. 

"I  mean  aren't  they  pretty?" 

"I  should  say  they  are!" 

"There,  girls!  Why  don't  you  thank  Mr.  Bartlett?" 

"Thanks,"  murmured  Norma. 

"How  old  are  you,  Norma?"  asked  Bartlett. 

"Six,"  said  Norma. 

"Well,"  said  Bartlett.  "And  how  old  is  Grace?" 

"Four,"  replied  Norma. 

"Well,"  said  Bartlett.  "And  how  old  is  baby  sister?" 

"One  and  a  half,"  answered  Norma. 

"Well,"  said  Bartlett. 

As  this  seemed  to  be  final,  "Come,  girls,"  said  their  mother.  "Kiss 
daddy  good  night  and  I'll  take  you  back  to  Hortense." 

"I'll  take  them,"  said  Gregg.  "I'm  going  up-stairs  anyway.  And 
you  can  show  Bartlett  around.  I  mean  before  it  gets  any  darker." 

"Good  night,  girls,"  said  Bartlett,  and  the  children  murmured  a 
good  night. 

"I'll  come  and  see  you  before  you're  asleep,"  Celia  told  them.  And 
after  Gregg  had  led  them  out,  "Do  you  really  think  they're  prettv?" 
she  asked  Bartlett. 


420  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"I  certainly  do.  Especially  Norma.  She's  the  image  of  you,"  said 
Bartlett. 

"She  looks  a  little  like  I  used  to,"  Celia  admitted.  "But  I  hope  she 
doesn't  look  like  me  now.  I'm  too  old  looking." 

"You  look  remarkably  young!"  said  Bartlett.  "No  one  would  believe 
you  were  the  mother  of  three  children." 

"Oh,  Mr.  Bartlett!  But  I  mustn't  forget  I'm  to  'show  you  around.' 
Lou  is  so  proud  of  our  home!" 

"And  with  reason,"  said  Bartlett. 

"It  is  wonderful!  I  call  it  our  love  nest.  Quite  a  big  nest,  don't  you 
think?  Mother  says  it's  too  big  to  be  cosy;  she  says  she  can't  think 
of  it  as  a  home.  But  I  always  say  a  place  is  whatever  one  makes  of 
it.  A  woman  can  be  happy  in  a  tent  if  they  love  each  other.  And 
miserable  in  a  royal  palace  without  love.  Don't  you  think  so,  Mr. 
Bartlett?" 

"Yes,  indeed." 

"Is  this  really  such  wonderful  Bourbon?  I  think  I'll  just  take  a  sip 
of  it  and  see  what  it's  like.  It  can't  hurt  me  if  it's  so  good.  Do  you 
think  so,  Mr.  Bartlett?" 

"I  don't  believe  so." 

"Well,  then,  I'm  going  to  taste  it  and  if  it  hurts  me  it's  your  fault." 

Celia  poured  a  whisky  glass  two-thirds  full  and  drained  it  at  a  gulp. 

"It  is  good,  isn't  it?"  she  said.  "Of  course  I'm  not  much  of  a  judge 
as  I  don't  care  for  whisky  and  Lou  won't  let  me  drink  it.  But  he's 
raved  so  about  this  Bourbon  that  I  did  want  to  see  what  it  was  like. 
You  won't  tell  on  me,  will  you,  Mr.  Bartlett?" 

"Not  I!" 

"I  wonder  how  it  would  be  in  a  high-ball.  Let's  you  and  I  have 
just  one.  But  I'm  forgetting  I'm  supposed  to  show  you  the  place.  We 
won't  have  time  to  drink  a  high-ball  and  see  the  place  too  before*  Lou 
comes  down.  Are  you  so  crazy  to  see  the  place?" 

"Not  very." 

"Well,  then,  what  do  you  say  if  we  have  a  high-ball?  And  it'll  be  a 
secret  between  you  and  I." 

They  drank  in  silence  and  Celia  pressed  a  button  by  the  door. 

"You  may  take  the  bottle  and  trav,"  she  told  Forbes.  "And  now," 


RING  LARDNER  421 

she  said  to  Bartlett,  "we'll  go  out  on  the  porch  and  see  as  much  as  we 
can  see.  You'll  have  to  guess  the  rest." 

Gregg,  having  changed  his  shirt  and  collar,  joined  them. 

"Well,"  he  said  to  Bartlett,  "have  you  seen  everything?" 

"I  guess  I  have,  Mr.  Gregg,"  lied  the  guest  readily.  "It's  a  wonder- 
ful place!" 

"We  like  it.  I  mean  it  suits  us.  I  mean  it's  my  idear  of  a  real  home. 
And  Celia  calls  it  her  love  nest." 

"So  she  told  me,"  said  Bartlett. 

"She'll  always  be  sentimental,"  said  her  husband. 

He  put  his  hand  on  her  shoulder,  but  she  drew  away. 

"I  must  run  up  and  dress,"  she  said. 

"Dress!"  exclaimed  Bartlett,  who  had  been  dazzled  by  her  flowered 
green  chiffon. 

"Oh,  I'm  not  going  to  really  dress,"  she  said.  "But  I  couldn't  wear 
this  thing  for  dinner!" 

"Perhaps  you'd  like  to  clean  up  a  little,  Bartlett,"  said  Gregg.  "I 
mean  Forbes  will  show  you  your  room  if  you  want  to  go  up." 

"It  might  be  best,"  said  Bartlett. 

Celia,  in  a  black  lace  dinner  gown,  was  rather  quiet  during  the 
elaborate  meal.  Three  or  four  times  when  Gregg  addressed  her,  she 
seemed  to  be  thinking  of  something  else  and  had  to  ask,  "What  did 
you  say,  sweetheart?"  Her  face  was  red  and  Bartlett  imagined  that 
she  had  "sneaked"  a  drink  or  two  besides  the  two  helpings  of  Bourbon 
and  the  cocktail  that  had  preceded  dinner. 

"Well,  I'll  leave  you,"  said  Gregg  when  they  were  in  the  living-room 
once  more.  "I  mean  the  sooner  I  get  started,  the  sooner  I'll  be  back. 
Sweetheart,  try  and  keep  your  guest  awake  and  don't  let  him  die  of 
thirst.  Au  revoir,  Bartlett.  I'm  sorry,  but  it  can't  be  helped.  There's  a 
fresh  bottle  of  the  Bourbon,  so  go  to  it.  I  mean  help  yourself.  It's 
too  bad  you  have  to  drink  alone." 

"It  is  too  bad,  Mr.  Bartlett,"  said  Celia  when  Gregg  had  gone. 

"What's  too  bad?"  asked  Bartlett. 

"That  you  have  to  drink  alone.  I  feel  like  I  wasn't  being  a  good 
hostess  to  let  you  do  it.  In  fact,  I  refuse  to  let  you  do  it.  I'll  join  you 
in  just  a  little  wee  sip." 


422  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"But  it's  so  soon  after  dinner!" 

"It's  never  too  soon!  I'm  going  to  have  a  drink  myself  and  if  you 
don't  join  me,  you're  a  quitter." 

She  mixed  two  life-sized  high-balls  and  handed  one  to  her  guest. 

"Now  we'll  turn  on  the  radio  and  see  if  we  can't  stir  things  up. 
There!  No,  no!  Who  cares  about  the  old  baseball!  Now!  This  is 
better!  Let's  dance." 

"I'm  sorry,  Mrs.  Gregg,  but  I  don't  dance." 

"Well,  you're  an  old  cheese!  To  make  me  dance  alone!  'All  alone, 
yes,  I'm  all  alone.'  " 

There  was  no  affectation  in  her  voice  now  and  Bartlett  was  amazed 
at  her  unlabored  grace  as  she  glided  around  the  big  room. 

"But  it's  no  fun  alone,"  she  complained.  "Let's  shut  the  damn  thing 
off  and  talk." 

"I  love  to  watch  you  dance,"  said  Bartlett. 

"Yes,  but  I'm  no  Pavlowa,"  said  Celia  as  she  silenced  the  radio.  "And 
besides,  it's  time  for  a  drink." 

"I've  still  got  more  than  half  of  mine." 

"Well,  you  had  that  wine  at  dinner,  so  I'll  have  to  catch  up  with 
you." 

She  poured  herself  another  high-ball  and  went  at  the  task  of  "catch- 
ing up." 

"The  trouble  with  you,  Mr. — now  isn't  that  a  scream!  I  can't  think 
of  your  name." 

"Bartlett." 

"The  trouble  with  you,  Barker — do  you  know  what's  the  trouble 
with  you?  You're  too  sober.  See?  You're  too  damn  sober!  That's  the 
whole  trouble,  see?  If  you  weren't  so  sober,  we'd  be  better  off.  See? 
What  I  can't  understand  is  how  you  can  be  so  sober  and  me  so  high." 

"You're  not  used  to  it." 

"Not  used  to  it!  That's  the  cat's  pajamas!  Say,  I'm  like  this  half 
the  time,  see?  If  I  wasn't,  I'd  die!" 

"What  does  your  husband  say?" 

"He  don't  say  because  he  don't  know.  See,  Barker?  There's  nights 
when  he's  out  and  there's  a  few  nights  when  I'm  out  myself.  And 
there's  other  nights  when  we're  both  in  and  I  pretend  I'm  sleepy  and 


RING  LARDNER  423 

I  go  up-stairs.  See?  But  I  don't  go  to  bed.  See?  I  have  a  little  party  all 
by  myself.  See?  If  I  didn't,  I'd  die!" 

"What  do  you  mean,  you'd  die?" 

"You're  dumb,  Barker!  You  may  be  sober,  but  you're  dumb!  Did 
you  fall  for  all  that  apple  sauce  about  the  happy  home  and  the  con- 
tented wife?  Listen,  Barker — I'd  give  anything  in  the  world  to  be  out 
of  this  mess.  I'd  give  anything  to  never  see  him  again." 

"Don't  you  love  him  any  more?  Doesn't  he  love  you?  Or  what?" 

"Love!  I  never  did  love  him!  I  didn't  know  what  love  was!  And 
all  his  love  is  for  himself!" 

"How  did  you  happen  to  get  married?" 

"I  was  a  kid;  that's  the  answer.  A  kid  and  ambitious.  See?  He  was 
a  director  then  and  he  got  stuck  on  me  and  I  thought  he'd  make  me 
a  star.  See,  Barker?  I  married  him  to  get  myself  a  chance.  And  now 
look  at  me!" 

"I'd  say  you  were  fairly  well  off." 

"Well  off,  am  I?  I'd  change  places  with  the  scum  of  the  earth  just 
to  be  free!  See,  Barker?  And  I  could  have  been  a  star  without  any 
help  if  I'd  only  realized  it.  I  had  the  looks  and  I  had  the  talent.  I've 
got  it  yet.  I  could  be  a  Swanson  and  get  myself  a  marquis;  maybe 

a  prince!  And  look  what  I  did  get!  A  self-satisfieJ,  self-centered !  I 

thought  he'd  ma\e  me!  See,  Barker?  Well,  he's  made  me  all  right; 
he's  made  me  a  chronic  mother  and  it's  a  wonder  I've  got  any  looks 
left. 

"I  fought  at  first.  I  told  him  marriage  didn't  mean  giving  up  my 
art,  my  life  work.  But  it  was  no  use.  He  wanted  a  beautiful  wife 
and  beautiful  children  for  his  beautiful  home.  Just  to  show  us  ofT.  See? 
I'm  part  of  his  chattels.  See,  Barker?  I'm  just  like  his  big  diamond 
or  his  cars  or  his  horses.  And  he  wouldn't  stand  for  his  wife  lowering' 
herself  to  act  in  pictures.  Just  as  if  pictures  hadn't  made  him! 

"You  go  back  to  your  magazine  tomorrow  and  write  about  our 
love  nest.  See,  Barker?  And  be  sure  and  don't  get  mixed  and  call 
it  a  baby  ranch.  Babies!  You  thought  little  Norma  was  pretty.  Well, 

she  is.  And  what  is  it  going  to  get  her?  A  rich of  a  husband  that 

treats  her  like  a  !  That's  what  it'll  get  her  if  I  don't  interfere. 

I  hope  I  don't  last  long  enough  to  see  her  grow  up,  but  if  I  do,  I'm 


424  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

going  to  advise  her  to  run  away  from  home  and  live  her  own  life. 
And  be  somebody!  Not  a  thing  like  I  am!  See,  Barker?" 

"Did  you  ever  think  of  a  divorce?" 

"Did  I  ever  think  of  one!  Listen — but  there's  no  chance.  I've  got 
nothing  on  him,  and  no  matter  what  he  had  on  me,  he'd  never  let  the 
world  know  it.  He'd  keep  me  here  and  torture  me  like  he  does  now, 
only  worse.  But  I  haven't  done  anything  wrong,  see?  The  men  I  might 
care  for,  they're  all  scared  of  him  and  his  money  and  power.  See, 
Barker?  And  the  others  are  just  as  bad  as  him.  Like  fat  old  Morris, 
the  hotel  man,  that  everybody  thinks  he's  a  model  husband.  The 
reason  he  don't  step  out  more  is  because  he's  too  stingy.  But  I  could 
have  him  if  I  wanted  him.  Every  time  he  gets  near  enough  to  me,  he 

squeezes  my  hand.  I  guess  he  thinks  it's  a  nickel,  the  tight  old ! 

But  come  on,  Barker.  Let's  have  a  drink.  I'm  running  down." 

"I  think  it's  about  time  you  were  running  up — up-stairs,"  said 
Bartlett.  "If  I  were  you,  I'd  try  to  be  in  bed  and  asleep  when  Gregg 
gets  home." 

"You're  all  right,  Barker.  And  after  this  drink  I'm  going  to  do  just 
as  you  say.  Only  I  thought  of  it  before  you  did,  see?  I  think  of  it 
lots  of  nights.  And  tonight  you  can  help  me  out  by  telling  him  I 
had  a  bad  headache." 

Left  alone,  Bartlett  thought  a  while,  then  read,  and  finally  dozed 
off.  He  was  dozing  when  Gregg  returned. 


"Well,  well,  Bartlett,"  said  the  great  man,  "did  Celia  desert  vou 


"It  was  perfectly  all  right,  Mr.  Gregg.  She  had  a  headache  and  I 
told  her  to  go  to  bed." 

"She's  had  a  lot  of  headaches  lately;  reads  too  much,  I  guess.  Well, 
I'm  sorry  I  had  this  date.  It  was  about  a  new  golf  club  and  I  had  to 
be  there.  I  mean  I'm  going  to  be  president  of  it.  I  see  you  consoled 
yourself  with  some  of  the  Bourbon.  I  mean  the  bottle  doesn't  look 
as  full  as  it  did." 

"I  hope  you'll  forgive  me  for  helping  myself  so  generously,"  said 
Bartlett.  "I  don't  get  stuff  like  that  every  day!" 

"Well,  what  do  you  say  if  we  turn  in?  We  can  talk  on  the  way  to 
town  tomorrow.  Though  I  guess  you  won't  have  much  to  ask  me.  I 
<mess  you  know  all  about  us.  I  mean  you  know  all  about  us  now." 


RING  LARDNER  425 

"Yes,  indeed,  Mr.  Gregg.  I've  got  plenty  of  material  if  I  can  just 
handle  it." 

Celia  had  not  put  in  an  appearance  when  Gregg  and  his  guest  were 
ready  to  leave  the  house  next  day. 

"She  always  sleeps  late,"  said  Gregg.  "I  mean  she  never  wakes  up 
very  early.  But  she's  later  than  usual  this  morning.  Sweetheart!"  he 
called  up  the  stairs. 

"Yes,  sweetheart,"  came  the  reply. 

"Mr.  Bartlett's  leaving  now.  I  mean  he's  going." 

"Oh,  good-by,  Mr.  Bartlett.  Please  forgive  me  for  not  being  down 
to  see  you  off." 

"You're  forgiven,  Mrs.  Gregg.  And  thanks  for  your  hospitality." 

"Good-by,  sweetheart!" 

"Good-by,  sweetheart!" 


M 


ERNEST   HEMINGWAY 


COMMENTARY 


'The  Snows  of  Kilimanjaro"  is  one  of  Hemingway  s  most  recent 
short  stories.  I  think  it  is  also  his  best,  far  superior  to  "The  Killers" 
'The  Undefeated/'  and  "Fifty  Grand"  which  are  the  usual  pets  of 
anthologists.  It  goes  deeper  than  any  of  them  and  its  technique  is 
not  so  patent.  All  the  old  Hemingway  bitterness  is  still  there,  but 
also  greater  understanding.  The  story  stands  the  test  of  several 
readings. 

So  much  has  been  written  about  Hemingway  that  I  do  not  sup- 
pose the  reader  is  unduly  anxious  to  read  any  more.  If  he  does  not 
wish  to,  he  need  not;  he  will  find  "The  Snows  of  Kilimanjaro"  wait- 
ing for  him  a  few  pages  further  on.  For  those  dogged  few  who  read 
everything  in  a  book,  whether  they  like  it  or  not,  I  address  a  word  of 
explanation  to  account  for  the  inclusion  of  what  immediately  follows. 
In  January,  1933,  The  Nation  published  a  longish  essay  by  me  called 
"Ernest  Hemingway:  An  American  Byron."  It  was  not,  as  you  will 
see,  a  very  good  essay,  and  it  was  (you  will  see  this  even  more  quickly) 
a  youthful  essay,  but  it  said  some  true  things,  I  still  believe,  about 
the  Hemingway  of  that  period.  I  reproduce  it  here  in  condensed 
form.  I  also  reproduce  a  review  of  For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls  that 
appeared  in  The  New  Yorker  of  October  26,  1940.  It  is  by  comparing 
these  two  estimates,  written  almost  eight  years  apart,  that  you  get, 
I  think,  a  reasonably  clear  picture  of  Hemingway  s  growth. 

Here  is  the  early  piece.  Remember,  this  was  long,  long  ago,  in 
1933- 

'There  is  always  a  lost  generation;  and  there  is  always  a  book  in 
which  it  Ends  itself.  The  brilliance  of  his  writing  accounts  only  in 
part  for  Hemingway  s  success.  Had  he  written  half  as  well,  but  in  the 
same  manner  and  about  the  same  subjects,  he  would  have  become 
just  as  celebrated.  He  has  triumphed  more  as  hero  than  as  artist. 
Hemingway  is  a  man  born  in  his  due  time,  embodying  the  mute 

*126 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  427 

longings  and  confused  ideals  of  a  large  segment  of  his  own  and  the 
succeeding  generation.  He  is  the  unhappy  warrior  that  many  men 
would  like  to  he.  About  him  has  sprung  up  a  real  contemporary  hero- 
myth;  young  men  hy  the  thousand  are  concerned  with  the  im- 
portance of  being  Ernest. 

"Why  is  Hemingway  news?  It  is  because  this  young  Lochinvar  out 
of  the  Middle  West  is  a  hero.  It  is  because  he  apparently  creates  a 
new  tradition  for  those  who  have  rejected  the  old  ones.  He  provides 
a  modern  and  more  violent  romanticism  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
He  takes  a  spiritual  malaise  and  translates  it  into  something  vivid, 
vital,  even  splendid,  giving  to  bitterness  an  exuberance  that  joy  itself 
cannot  match. 

"The  generation  for  which  Hemingway  so  ably  speaks  is  not  only 
the  generation  that  lost  itself  in  the  Argonne  or  among  the  hassocks 
of  Gertrude  Steins  drawing  room.  A  part,  probably  a  major  part,  of 
the  succeeding  generation  is  equally  lost  today,  in  the  crisis.  Heming- 
way's present  readers,  I  would  hazard  a  guess,  are  largely  under  thirty. 
Though  to  this  group  the  war  can  mean  little  more  than  something 
in  a  book,  they  feel  as  vitally  maimed  as  the  hero  of  The  Sun  Also 
Rises.  They  are  the  defeated  and  the  betrayed,  so  disillusioned  as 
to  have  no  desire  to  attack  their  betrayers.  They  are  too  deeply 
wounded  for  the  easy  salve  of  sophistication.  The  values  with  which 
they  have  been  inoculated  they  discover  to  be  false.  The  culture 
which  they  have  been  instructed  to  flaunt  as  the  badge  of  their 
superiority  proves  hollow.  Since  most  of  the  grand  words  have  col- 
lapsed, they  throw  them  all  overboard.  They  become  rebels  who 
smile  at  reform  and  offer  a  bitter  shrug  to  revolution. 

"Where  are  these  young  people  to  place  the  animal  faith  deeply 
grounded  beneath  all  their  tragic  rejections?  In  historical  crises,  when 
the  flesh  of  the  dominant  system  has  withered  away  and  laid  bare 
the  bones  of  chaos,  the  superior  individual  either  makes  common 
cause  with  his  fellows  in  some  attempt  at  a  finer  order  or,  as  in  the 
novels  of  Hemingway,  retreats  upon  his  instincts.  He  abandons,  as 
Hemingway  puts  it,  all  efforts  "to  save  the  world."  He  cultivates 
those  primal  emotions  which  cannot  betray  him,  as  his  hands  and 
feet  cannot  betray  him.  Among  these  emotions  may  be  the  fear  of 


428  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

death  and  the  delight  in  it,  the  stoic  joy  of  battle  and  the  pleasur- 
able acceptance  of  the  flesh  and  the  muscles.  In  the  last  analysis  he 
worships  his  reflexes,  tending  to  exalt  any  activity  which  introspec- 
tion cannot  corrode.  He  reverts,  however  subtly,  to  the  primitive  and 
even  the  brutal,  because  on  these  levels  he  finds  no  echo  of  the 
culture  which  has  cheated  him.  He  attempts  to  cling  to  the  hands 
of  the  clock,  to  become  a  nonpolitical  animal,  an  individualist  con- 
temning all  creeds,  individualism  included. 

"He  is  at  home  in  all  countries.  He  puts  his  faith  in  simple  things 
rather  than  in  complicated  words.  He  seeks  the  companionship  and 
tries  to  share  the  experiences  of  booze- fighters,  killers,  athletes,  and 
sportsmen,  men  who  lead  careers  of  physical  sensation,  cut  off  from 
the  main  current  of  the  life  of  their  time.  He  may  even  cultivate  a 
special  interest  in  the  reactions  of  animals,  creatures  unspoiled  by 
the  general  infection  of  the  world.  Above  all,  he  looks  for  a  hero, 
one  who  does  all  this  with  efficiency  and  elegance  and  presents  a 
convincing  rationale  of  his  behavior. 

"Hemingway  is  the  hero  thrown  up  by  the  American  ferment. 
Hemingway  is  the  modern  primitive,  who  makes  as  fresh  a  start  with 
the  emotions  as  his  forefathers  did  with  the  soil.  He  is  the  frontiers- 
man of  the  loins,  heart,  and  biceps,  the  stoic  Red  Indian  minus  tra- 
ditions, scornful  of  the  past,  bare  of  sentimentality,  catching  the 
muscular  life  in  a  plain  and  muscular  prose.  He  is  the  hero  who  dis- 
trusts heroism.  He  is  the  prophet  of  those  who  are  without  faith. 

"If  we  compare  Hemingway  with  a  great  poet  who  died  a  little 
over  a  century  ago,  we  get  an  interesting  insight  into  the  manner  in 
which  similar  epochs  evoke  similar  personalities.  In  the  imagination 
of  young  Europeans,  Byron  in  his  time  occupied  a  place  strikingly 
like  Hemingway's  position  today. 

"Both  Byron  and  Hemingway  awake  to  End  themselves  famous  at 
twenty-five.  Both  cut  themselves  off  at  an  early  age  from  their  native 
lands.  Byron  adopts  Greece  and  Italy;  Hemingway  celebrates  Spain. 
In  Greece  Byron  finds  the  fatal  theater  in  which  to  stage  his  worship 
of  liberty.  In  Spain  Hemingway  discovers  the  shrine  for  his  cult  of 
violence,  and,  later,  an  object  in  which  to  repose  his  political  faith. 
Both  are  attracted  by  the  glory  of  military  life,  and  meet  with  disillu- 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  429 

sion.  Both  are  prepossessing  examples  of  maleness  and  both  exploit 
an  athleticism  which  wins  for  them— as  much  to  Byron  s  satisfaction 
as  to  Hemingway  s  disgust— a  matinee-idol  popularity.  Both  axe  at- 
tracted to  wild  and  romantic  places — Byron  to  the  Swiss  mountains 
and  the  Greek  coast,  Hemingway  to  Montana,  the  Ozarks,  Spain. 

"But  there  is  a  deeper  similarity  which  history  itself  points  out  for 
us.  Byron  is  a  product  of  the  post-Napoleonic  period.  His  defiant 
romanticism  focuses  the  turmoil,  the  disillusion,  and  the  bitterness 
which  flooded  Europe  after  her  first  great  imperialist  civil  war.  Hem- 
ingway is  no  less  clearly  a  product  of  the  second  breakdown,  and  the 
hard,  tense  quality  of  his  romanticism  marks  the  difference  in  spirit- 
ual tone  between  1825  and  1925.  But  the  hvo  are  distinctly  postwar 
men,  typical  of  a  period  of  violently  shifting  values.  Driven  by  the 
surrounding  chaos  in  upon  their  own  sensations,  they  inevitably 
charge  their  work  with  this  very  chaos  from  which  they  seek  to 
escape.  Byron,  writhing  under  the  spell  of  the  Judeo-Christian  mythf 
prefers  to  think  himself  'damned!  The  Manfred  pose  is  impossible 
to  the  more  sophisticated  Hemingway.  But  at  the  heart  of  both  lies 
a  tragic  sense  of  defeat,  vitalized  by  a  burning  rebellion. 

"This  rebellion  they  express  in  an  open  defiance  of  conventional 
morality — Byron  with  the  grandiose  gesture  of  the  aristocrat,  Hem- 
ingway with  the  casualness  of  the  hard-boiled  reporter.  In  controversy 
both  employ  an  acidulous  style,  and  each,  using  the  language  of  his 
day,  goes  as  far  as  postal  regulations  will  permit.  They  are  both  con- 
cerned with  the  odder  aspects  of  sex.  Byron  s  florid  incest  obsession7 
through  partly  rooted  in  his  biography,  is  as  much  a  reflection  of 
what  was  then  literary  fashion  as  Hemingway  s  bitter-comic  pre- 
occupation with  homosexuality,  nymphomania,  and  impotence.  Both 
laugh  off  their  lostness  with  a  certain  wild  morbidity.  Byron  drinks 
from  skulls.  Hemingway  enjoys  a  nice  cold  riot  in  bloody  hospital 
scenes  and  testicle  feasts. 

"Byron  is  torn  between  a  very  real  love  for  the  grand  words  of  his 
epoch — liberty,  freedom,  the  chainless  mind — and  Don  Juan's  cyni- 
cism, which  negates  them  all.  In  Hemingway  a  not  dissimilar  opposi- 
tion exists.  In  A  Farewell  to  Arms  he  writes:  'Abstract  words  such 
as  glory,  honor,  courage,  or  hallow  were  obscene  beside  the  concrete 


430  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

names  of  villages,  the  numbers  of  roads,  the  names  of  rivers,  the 
numbers  of  regiments,  and  the  dates.'  One  can  see  part  of  his  nature 
seeking  a  new  set  of  phrases,  Ending  them  perhaps  in  the  Spanish 
pundonor,  in  the  romantic  accent  he  gives  to  the  death  concept,  and 
in  the  very  vocabulary  of  disillusion  itself. 

"In  the  value  hierarchy  of  Hemingway  and  Byron  passion,  action, 
and  violence  reign  supreme.  Both  exalt  sport,  though  with  Byron 
this  is  owing  partly  to  his  clubfoot  and  partly  to  his  Tory,  country- 
gentleman  tradition.  Neither  has  much  capacity  for  logical  reflection, 
and  Goethe's  oft-quoted  remark  about  Byron  s  thinking  powers  may 
be  applied  with  some  justice  to  Hemingway.  This  lack  of  interest 
in  rational  analysis,  however,  is  responsible  for  a  great  deal  of  the 
drive  and  power  in  the  work  of  the  two  writers.  Both  admire  the 
noble,  the  chivalric  individual.  ('Nothing  ever  happens  to  the  brave.') 
This  admiration  is  founded  on  the  notion  of  the  superior  virtues  of 
a  trained  caste.  Byron  Ends  this  ideal  in  his  cloudy  Oriental  princes, 
Hemingway  in  his  matadors.  There  is  a  real  cousinship  between 
Manolo,  the  undefeated  bullEghter,  and  Byron's  corsairs.  Finally, 
like  Byron,  Hemingway  expresses  the  aspirations  of  that  portion  of 
his  generation  which  genuinely  feels  itself  lost  and  is  eager  to  ad- 
mire a  way  of  life  which  combines  lostness  with  courage  and  color. 
Both  Byron  and  Hemingway  have  an  unforced  faculty  for  creating 
an  aura  of  violence,  waywardness,  and  independence  which  dazzles 
the  imagination  of  those  among  their  readers  who  suffer,  in  Charles 
du  Bos'  admirable  phrase,  from  'the  need  of  fatality.'  " 

And  here  is  what  I,  a  representative  reader  and  reviewer,  felt  about 
Hemingway  seven  years  later: 

"It's  not  inaccurate  to  say  that  Hemingway's  For  WHiom  the 
Bell  Tolls  is  A  Farewell  to  Arms  with  the  background,  instead, 
the  Spanish  Civil  War.  The  hero,  Robert  Jordan,  a  young  Ameri- 
can Loyalist  sympathizer,  recalls  Frederic  Henry.  Like  Henry,  he 
is  antihcroically  heroic,  antiromantically  romantic,  very  male,  pas- 
sionate,  an  artist  of  action,  Mercutio  modernized.  Though  the 
heroine,  Maria,  reminds  one  rather  less  of  Catherine  Barklcy,  the 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  431 

two  women  have  much  in  common.  Also,  in  both  hooks  the 
mounting  interplay  of  death  and  sex  is  a  major  theme,  the  body's 
intense  aliveness  as  it  senses  its  own  destruction. 

"But  there,  I  think,  the  resemblance  ends.  For  this  book  is  not 
merely  an  advance  on  A  Farewell  to  Arms.  It  touches  a  deeper 
level  than  any  sounded  in  the  author's  other  books.  It  expresses 
and  releases  the  adult  Hemingway,  whose  voice  was  first  heard  in 
the  groping  To  Have  and  Have  Not.  It  is  by  a  better  man. 

"The  story  opens  and  closes  with  Robert  Jordan  lying  Eat  on 
the  pine-needle  floor  of  a  Spanish  forest.  When  we  first  meet  him 
he  is  very  much  alive  and  planning  the  details  of  his  job,  which  is 
to  join  forces  with  a  band  of  Spanish  guerrillas  and  with  their  aid 
blow  up  an  important  bridge  at  the  precise  instant  that  will  most 
help  the  Loyalist  advance  on  Segovia.  When  we  last  see  him  he 
has  fulfilled  his  mission  and  is  facing  certain  death.  Between  the 
opening  and  closing  pass  three  days  and  three  nights.  Between  the 
opening  and  closing  pass  a  lifetime  for  Robert  and  Maria  and 
something  very  much  like  a  lifetime  for  the  reader.  T  suppose/ 
thinks  Robert,  'it  is  possible  to  live  as  full  a  life  in  seventy  hours 
as  in  seventy  years'  The  full  life  lived  by  Robert  and  Maria  spills 
over  into  your  own  mind  as  you  read,  so  that  the  three  days  and 
three  nights  are  added  to  your  life,  and  you  are  larger  and  more  of 
a  person  on  page  471  than  you  were  on  page  1.  That  is  one  test  of 
a  first-rate  work  of  fiction. 

"For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls  is  about  serious  people  engaged  in 
serious  actions.  The  word  'serious'  (a  favorite  among  Spaniards) 
occurs  again  and  again.  The  thoughts  of  Robert,  even  at  his  most 
sardonic,  are  serious  thoughts.  'There  are  necessary  orders  that  are 
no  fault  of  yours  and  there  is  a  bridge  and  that  bridge  can  be  the 
point  on  which  the  future  of  the  human  race  can  turn.  As  it  can 
turn  on  everything  that  happens  in  this  war.'  It  is  a  stern  and  grave 
reflection,  sterner,  graver  than  anything  in  A  Farewell  to  Arms. 
The  title  itself  is  part  of  a  grave  reflection  from  the  Devotions  of 
John  Donne.  That  we  may  see  on  what  a  new  and  different  level 
of  emotion  Hemingway  now  works,  I  quote  the  sentence  from 
which  the  title  is  taken:  'No  man  is  an  Hand,  intire  of  it  selfe; 
every  man  is  a  peece  of  the  Continent,  a  part  of  the  maine;  if  a 
Clod  bee  washed  away  by  the  Sea,  Europe  is  the  lesse,  as  well  as 
if  a  Promontorie  were,  as  well  as  if  a  Mannor  of  thy  friends  or  of 


432  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

thine  owne  were;  any  mans  death  diminishes  me,  because  I  am 
involved  in  Mankinde;  And  therefore  never  send  to  know  for  whom 
the  bell  tolls;  It  tolls  for  thee! 

"This  utterance  (I  suppose  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  sentences  in 
English)  is  about  death  and  says  yes  to  life.  That  men  confer 
value  on  life  by  feeling  deeply  each  other's  mortality  is  the  under- 
lying theme  of  the  novel.  Here  is  something  other  than  Heming- 
way's old  romantic  absorption  in  death,  though  growing  out  of  it. 
Remember  that  For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls  is  an  anti-Fascist 
novel.  'Any  mans  death  diminishes  me,  because  I  am  involved  in 
Mankinde!  All  of  what  the  dictator  most  profoundly  and  re- 
ligiously disbelieves  is  in  that  sentence.  Hemingway  is  no  fool.  He 
portrays  many  of  the  Loyalists  as  cowards,  brutes,  and  politicians 
—as  they  undoubtedly  were.  He  portrays  some  of  the  Fascists  as 
men  of  twisted  nobility— as  they  undoubtedly  were.  But  he  Icnows 
that  the  war,  at  its  deepest  level  (the  Erst  battle  of  the  war  now 
on  your  front  pages),  is  a  war  between  those  who  deny  life  and 
those  who  affirm  it.  And  if  it  is  not  yet  such  a  war,  it  must  become 
so,  or  it  will,  no  matter  who  wins,  have  been  fought  in  vain.  I  take 
that  to  be  the  central  feeling  of  For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls,  and 
that  is  why  the  book  is  more  than  a  thrilling  novel  about  love  and 
death  and  battle  and  a  finer  work  than  A  Farewell  to  Arms. 

"It  is  interesting  to  watch  in  this  book  a  certain  process  of  ethe- 
realization.  Just  as  the  Wagnerian  death  fascination  of  Death  in 
the  Afternoon  changes  here  into  something  purer,  so  the  small- 
boy  Spartanism  and  the  parade  of  masculinity  which  weakened  the 
earlier  books  are  transformed  into  something  less  gross,  something 
— Hemingway  would  despise  the  word — spiritual.  And  yet  this  is 
by  far  the  most  sensual  of  all  his  books,  the  most  truly  passionate. 

"This  process  of  purification  extends  even  to  minor  matters.  In 
Hemingway's  other  books,  for  example,  drinking  is  described  as 
a  pleasure,  as  a  springboard  for  wit,  as  a  help  to  love,  as  fun,  as 
madness.  There  is  much  drinking  in  For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls, 
and  none  of  it  is  solemn,  but  it  becomes  at  times  a  serious  thing. 
Liquor,  drunk  by  these  Spanish  guerrillas  before  a  battle,  is  a  noble 
and  necessary  pleasure.  Drinking  has  dignit}7. 

"Dignity  also  is  what  each  of  the  characters  possesses,  from 
Fernando,  who  wears  it  like  another  skin,  down  to  Augustin, 
whose  every  third  word  is  an  obscenit}7.  Each  has  his  own  dignity. 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  433 

which  means  worth,  and  that  dignity  is  gradually  lifted  to  the  sur- 
face by  the  harsh  touch  of  death,  as  the  grain  of  a  fine  wood  reveals 
itself  with  polishing.  Anselmo,  the  Shakespearean  old  man  who 
fears  his  own  cowardice  ('I  remember  that  I  had  a  great  tendency 
to  run  at  Segovia')  and  comes  through  at  the  end  to  a  good  and 
sound  death;  Rafael,  the  gypsy,  unreliable,  gluttonous,  wild;  El 
Sordo,  the  deaf  guerrilla  leader;  Andres,  the  Bulldog  of  Villa- 
conejos;  Pablo,  the  sad-faced  revolutionary  with  the  spayed  spirit, 
the  treacherous  heart,  and  the  subtle,  ingrown  mind;  Pilar,  the 
greatest  character  in  the  book,  with  her  ugliness,  her  rages,  hei 
terrible  memories,  her  vast  love  for  the  Republic,  her  understand- 
ing and  envy  of  the  young  Robert  and  Maria;  Maria  herself,  knit- 
ting her  spirit  together  after  her  rape  by  the  Falangists,  finding  the 
purpose  of  her  young  life  in  the  three  days  and  nights  with  her 
American  lover— each  of  these  (all  of  them  flawed,  some  of  them 
brutal,  one  of  them  treacherous)  has  a  value,  a  personal  weight 
that  Hemingway  makes  us  feel  almost  tangibly,  so  that  their  lives 
and  deaths  are  not  incidents  in  a  story  but  matters  of  moment  to 
us  who  are  'involved  in  Mankinde! 

"For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls  rises  above  A  Farewell  to  Arms  in 
another  way.  The  love  story  in  A  Farewell  to  Arms  is  the  book. 
Chapters  like  that  describing  the  retreat  from  Caporetto  or  that 
beautiful  scene  of  the  conversation  with  the  old  man  at  the  bil- 
liard table  are  mere  set  pieces  and  might  conceivably  have  been 
used  in  some  other  novel.  But  the  love  of  Robert  and  Maria  is  a 
structural  part  of  For  Whom  the  Bell  Tolls.  It  is  not  'love  inter- 
est,' nor  is  it  the  whole  story,  either;  it  is  an  integral  portion  of 
three  days  and  three  nights  of  life  lived  by  two  young  people 
facing  death.  Furthermore,  though  this  love  does  not  rise  above 
passion,  it  endows  passion  with  an  end  and  a  meaning.  In  the 
great  scene  just  before  Robert  goes  out  to  blow  up  the  bridge, 
knowing  that  he  will  almost  surely  die,  when  he  makes  love  to 
Maria,  describing,  his  heart  breaking,  the  fine  life  he  knows  they 
will  never  lead,  he  arrives  at  an  identification  of  which  Heming- 
ways  other  heroes  were  incapable:  'I  love  thee  as  I  love  all  that 
we  have  fought  for.  I  love  thee  as  I  love  liberty  and  dignity  and 
the  rights  of  all  men  to  work  and  not  be  hungry.' 

liFine  as  the  Italians  were  in  A  Farewell  to  Arms,  these  Span- 
iards are  finer.  'There  is  no  people,'  thinks  Robert,  'like  them  when 


434  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

they  are  good  and  when  they  go  bad  there  is  no  people  that  is 
worse/  And  here  they  are,  good  and  bad.  They  are  in  some  ways 
like  Russians,  the  pie-Soviet  Russians,  very  philosophic  and  con- 
fessional and  poetical.  But  they  are  not  soft;  indeed,  the  Spanish 
fury  to  kill,  to  kill  as  a  pure  act  of  faith,  is  one  of  the  dominating 
emotions  of  the  book.  And  their  language  is  superb,  translated 
literally  out  of  its  elegant  and  formal  original,  a  trick  which 
sounds  as  if  it  might  be  atrocious  and  turns  out  one  hundred  per 
cent  effective.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  would  imagine  For  Whom 
the  Bell  Tolls  to  be  as  excellent  a  Spanish  novel  as  it  is  an  Ameri- 
can one. 

"I  have  no  idea  whether  it  is  a  'great7  book.  But  I  know  there 
are  great  things  in  it  and  that  the  man  who  wrote  it  is  a  bigger  man 
than  he  was  five  years  ago.  There  are  some  technical  flaws.  For 
example,  the  chapters  describing  the  disorganization  and  political 
chicanery  of  the  Loyalist  command  impede  the  story.  But  the 
faults  are  far  outweighed  by  a  dozen  episodes  that  invade  the 
memory  and  settle  there:  El  Sordo's  last  fight  on  the  hilltop;  any 
of  the  love  scenes;  the  struggle  at  the  bridge;  Pilar's  dreadful  story 
of  Pablo's  killing  of  the  Fascists;  Marias  recital  of  the  noble  death 
of  her  mother  and  father;  Filafs  memories  of  her  life  among  the 
bullfighters;  the  astounding  conversation — this  is  a  set  piece,  but 
it's  forgivable— about  'the  smell  of  death';  and  the  final  scene,  in 
which  Robert,  his  left  leg  smashed,  alone  and  on  the  threshold  of 
delirium,  trains  his  machine  gun  on  the  advancing  Fascists  and 
prepares  himself,  knowing  at  last  why  he  is  doing  so,  to  die. 

"So  I  do  not  much  care  whether  or  not  this  is  a  'great'  book.  I 
feel  that  it  is  what  Hemingway  wanted  it  to  be:  a  true  book.  It  is 
written  with  only  one  prejudice— a  prejudice  in  favor  of  the  com- 
mon human  being.  But  that  is  a  prejudice  not  easy  to  arrive  at  and 
which  only  major  writers  can  movingly  express. 

"Robert's  mission  is  to  blow  up  a  bridge,  and  he  does  so.  Oddly, 
it  is  by  the  blowing  up  of  just  such  bridges  that  we  may  be  able  to 
cross  over  into  the  future." 


The  Snows  of  Kilimanjaro 

BY 

ERNEST  HEMINGWAY 


Kilimanjaro  is  a  snow-covered  mountain  ig,Jio  feet  high,  and  is  said 
to  be  the  highest  mountain  in  Africa.  Its  western  summit  is  called 
the  Masai  "Ngaje  Ngai,"  the  House  of  God.  Close  to  the  western 
summit  there  is  the  dried  and  frozen  carcass  of  a  leopard.  No  one 
has  explained  what  the  leopard  was  seeding  at  that  altitude. 

"The  marvelous  thing  is  that  it's  painless,"  he  said.  "That's  how  you 
know  when  it  starts." 

"Is  it  really?" 

"Absolutely.  I'm  awfully  sorry  about  the  odor  though.  That  must 
bother  you."     , 

"Don't!  Please  don't." 

"Look  at  them,"  he  said.  "Now  is  it  sight  or  is  it  scent  that  brings 
them  like  that?" 

The  cot  the  man  lay  on  was  in  the  wide  shade  of  a  mimosa  tree 
and  as  he  looked  out  past  the  shade  onto  the  glare  of  the  plain  there 
were  three  of  the  big  birds  squatted  obscenely,  while  in  the  sky  a 
dozen  more  sailed,  making  quick-moving  shadows  as  they  passed. 

"They've  been  there  since  the  day  the  truck  broke  down,"  he  said. 
"Today's  the  first  time  any  have  lit  on  the  ground.  I  watched  the  way 
they  sailed  very  carefully  at  first  in  case  I  ever  wanted  to  use  them  in  a 
story.  That's  funny  now." 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't,"  she  said. 

"I'm  only  talking,"  he  said.  "It's  much  easier  if  I  talk.  But  I  don't 
want  to  bother  you." 

"You  know  it  doesn't  bother  me,"  she  said.  "It's  that  I've  gotten  so 

435 


436  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

very  nervous  not  being  able  to  do  anything.  I  think  we  might  make 
it  as  easy  as  we  can  until  the  plane  comes." 

"Or  until  the  plane  doesn't  come." 

"Please  tell  me  what  I  can  do.  There  must  be  something  I  can  do." 

"You  can  take  the  leg  oft  and  that  might  stop  it,  though  I  doubt 
it.  Or  you  can  shoot  me.  You're  a  good  shot  now.  I  taught  you  to  shoot, 
didn't  I?" 

"Please  don't  talk  that  way.  Couldn't  I  read  to  you?" 

"Read  what?" 

"Anything  in  the  book  bag  that  we  haven't  read." 

"I  can't  listen  to  it,"  he  said.  "Talking  is  the  easiest.  We  quarrel 
and  that  makes  the  time  pass." 

"I  don't  quarrel.  I  never  want  to  quarrel.  Let's  not  quarrel  any 
more.  No  matter  how  nervous  we  get.  Maybe  they  will  be  back  with 
another  truck  today.  Maybe  the  plane  will  come." 

"I  don't  want  to  move,"  the  man  said.  "There  is  no  sense  in  moving 
now  except  to  make  it  easier  for  you." 

"That's  cowardly." 

"Can't  you  let  a  man  die  as  comfortably  as  he  can  without  calling 
him  names?  What's  the  use  of  slanging  me?" 

"You're  not  going  to  die." 

"Don't  be  silly.  I'm  dying  now.  Ask  those  bastards."  He  looked  over 
to  where  the  huge,  filthy  birds  sat,  their  naked  heads  sunk  in  the 
hunched  feathers.  A  fourth  planed  down,  to  run  quick-legged  and 
then  waddle  slowly  toward  the  others. 

"They  are  around  every  camp.  You  never  notice  them.  You  can't  die 
if  you  don't  give  up." 

"Where  did  you  read  that?  You're  such  a  bloody  fool." 

"You  might  think  about  some  one  else." 

"For  Christ's  sake,"  he  said,  "that's  been  my  trade." 

He  lay  then  and  was  quiet  for  a  while  and  looked  across  the  heat 
shimmer  of  the  plain  to  the  edge  of  the  bush.  There  were  a  few 
Tommies  that  showed  minute  and  white  against  die  yellow  and,  far 
off,  he  saw  a  herd  of  zebra,  white  against  the  green  of  the  bush.  This 
was  a  pleasant  camp  under  big  trees  against  a  hill,  with  good  water, 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  437 

and  close  by,  a  nearly  dry  water  hole  where  sand  grouse  flighted  in  the 
mornings. 

"Wouldn't  you  like  me  to  read?"  she  asked.  She  was  sitting  on  a 
canvas  chair  beside  his  cot.  "There's  a  breeze  coming  up." 

"No  thanks." 

"Maybe  the  truck  will  come." 

"I  don't  give  a  damn  about  the  truck." 

"I  do." 

"You  give  a  damn  about  so  many  things  that  I  don't." 

"Not  so  many,  Harry." 

"What  about  a  drink?" 

"It's  supposed  to  be  bad  for  you.  It  said  in  Black's  to  avoid  all 
alcohol.  You  shouldn't  drink." 

"Molo!"  he  shouted. 

"Yes  Bwana." 

"Bring  whiskey-soda." 

"Yes  Bwana." 

"You  shouldn't,"  she  said.  "That's  what  I  mean  by  giving  up.  It  says 
it's  bad  for  you.  I  know  it's  bad  for  you." 

"No,"  he  said.  "It's  good  for  me." 

So  now  it  was  all  over,  he  thought.  So  now  he  would  never  have 
a  chance  to  finish  it.  So  this  was  the  way  it  ended  in  a  bickering  over 
a  drink.  Since  the  gangrene  started  in  his  right  leg  he  had  no  pain  and 
with  the  pain  the  horror  had  gone  and  all  he  felt  now  was  a  great  tired- 
ness and  anger  that  this  was  the  end  of  it.  For  this,  that  now  was 
coming,  he  had  very  little  curiosity.  For  years  it  had  obsessed  him; 
but  now  it  meant  nothing  in  itself.  It  was  strange  how  easy  being 
tired  enough  made  it. 

Now  he  would  never  write  the  things  that  he  had  saved  to  write 
until  he  knew  enough  to  write  them  well.  Well,  he  would  not  have 
to  fail  at  trying  to  write  them  either.  Maybe  you  could  never  write 
them,  and  that  was  why  you  put  them  off  and  delayed  the  starting. 
Well  he  would  never  know,  now. 

"I  wish  we'd  never  come,"  the  woman  said.  She  was  looking  at  him 
holding  the  glass  and  biting  her  lip.  "You  never  would  have  gotten 


438  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

anything  like  this  in  Paris.  You  always  said  you  loved  Paris.  We  could 
have  stayed  in  Paris  or  gone  anywhere.  I'd  have  gone  anywhere.  I 
said  I'd  go  anywhere  you  wanted.  If  you  wanted  to  shoot  we  could 
have  gone  shooting  in  Hungary  and  been  comfortable." 

"Your  bloody  money,"  he  said. 

"That's  not  fair,"  she  said.  "It  was  always  yours  as  much  as  mine. 
I  left  everything  and  I  went  wherever  you  wanted  to  go  and  I've 
done  what  you  wanted  to  do.  But  I  wish  we'd  never  come  here." 

"You  said  you  loved  it." 

"I  did  when  you  were  all  right.  But  now  I  hate  it.  I  don't  see  why 
that  had  to  happen  to  your  leg.  What  have  we  done  to  have  that  hap- 
pen to  us?" 

"I  suppose  what  I  did  was  to  forget  to  put  iodine  on  it  when  I  first 
scratched  it.  Then  I  didn't  pay  any  attention  to  it  because  I  never 
infect.  Then,  later,  when  it  got  bad,  it  was  probably  using  that  weak 
carbolic  solution  when  the  other  antiseptics  ran  out  that  paralyzed  the 
minute  blood  vessels  and  started  the  gangrene."  He  looked  at  her, 
"What  else?" 

"I  don't  mean  that." 

"If  we  would  have  hired  a  good  mechanic  instead  of  a  half  baked 
kikuyu  driver,  he  would  have  checked  the  oil  and  never  burned  out 
that  bearing  in  the  truck." 

"I  don't  mean  that." 

"If  you  hadn't  left  your  own  people,  your  goddamned  Old  West- 
bury,  Saratoga,  Palm  Beach  people  to  take  me  on " 

"Why,  I  loved  you.  That's  not  fair.  I  love  you  now.  I'll  always  love 
you.  Don't  you  love  me?" 

"No,"  said  the  man.  "I  don't  think  so.  I  never  have." 

"Harry,  what  are  you  saying?  You're  out  of  your  head." 

"No.  I  haven't  any  head  to  go  out  of." 

"Don't  drink  that,"  she  said.  "Darling,  please  don't  drink  that.  We 
have  to  do  everything  we  can." 

"You  do  it,"  he  said.  "I'm  tired." 

Now  in  hie  mind  he  saw  a  railway  station  at  Kara  gate  h  and  he  was 
standing  frith  his  pac\  and  that  was  the  headlight  of  the  Simplon- 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  439 

Orient  cutting  the  dar\  now  and  he  was  leaving  Thrace  then  after 
the  retreat.  That  was  one  of  the  things  he  had  saved  to  write,  with, 
in  the  morning  at  breakfast,  looking  out  the  window  and  seeing 
snow  on  the  ?nountains  in  Bulgaria  and  Nansen's  Secretary  asking  the 
old  man  if  it  were  snow  and  the  old  man  looking  at  it  and  saying, 
No,  that's  not  snow.  It's  too  early  for  snow.  And  the  Secretary  repeat- 
ing to  the  other  girls,  No,  you  see.  It's  not  snow  and  them  all  saying, 
It's  not  snow  we  were  mistaken.  But  it  was  the  snow  all  right  and  he 
sent  them  on  into  it  when  he  evolved  exchange  of  populations.  And 
it  was  snow  they  tramped  along  in  until  they  died  that  winter. 

It  was  snow  too  that  fell  all  Christmas  wee\  that  year  up  in  the 
Gauertal,  that  year  they  lived  in  the  woodcutter  s  house  with  the  big 
square  porcelain  stove  that  filled  half  the  room,  and  they  slept  on 
mattresses  filled  with  beech  leaves,  the  time  the  deserter  came  with  his 
feet  bloody  in  the  snow.  He  said  the  police  were  right  behind  him  and 
they  gave  him  woolen  soc\s  and  held  the  gendarmes  tal\ing  until 
the  traces  had  drifted  over. 

In  Schrunz,  on  Christmas  day,  the  snow  was  so  bright  it  hurt  your 
eyes  when  you  looked  out  from  the  weinstube  and  saw  every  one 
coming  home  from  church.  That  was  where  they  walked  up  the  sleigh- 
smoothed  urine-yellowed  road  along  the  river  with  the  steep  pine  hills, 
skis  heavy  on  the  shoulder,  and  where  they  ran  that  great  run  down 
the  glacier  above  the  Madlener-haus,  the  snow  as  smooth  to  see  as 
cake  frosting  and  as  light  as  powder  and  he  remembered  the  noiseless 
rush  the  speed  made  as  you  dropped  down  like  a  bird. 

They  were  snow-bound  a  wee\  in  the  Madlener-haus  that  time  in 
the  blizzard  playing  cards  in  the  smo\e  by  the  lantern  light  and  the 
stakes  were  higher  all  the  time  as  Herr  Lent  lost  more.  Finally  he  lost 
it  all.  Everything,  the  skjschule  money  and  all  the  season's  profit  and 
then  his  capital.  He  could  see  him  with  his  long  nose,  pic\ing  up  the 
cards  and  then  opening,  "Sans  Voir."  There  was  always  gambling  then. 
When  there  was  no  snow  you  gambled  and  when  there  was  too  much 
you  gambled.  He  thought  of  all  the  time  in  his  life  he  had  spent 
gambling. 

But  he  had  never  written  a  line  of  that,  nor  of  that  cold,  bright 
Christmas  day   with   the  mountains  showing  across  the  plain   that 


440  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

Barker  had  flown  across  the  lines  to  bomb  the  Austrian  officers'  leave 
train,  machine-gunning  them  as  they  scattered  and  ran.  He  remem- 
bered Barker  afterwards  coming  into  the  mess  and  starting  to  tell 
about  it.  And  how  quiet  it  got  and  then  somebody  saying,  "You  bloody 
murderous  bastard!' 

Those  were  the  same  Austrians  they  filled  then  that  he  s\ied  with 
later.  No  not  the  same.  Hans,  that  he  skied  with  all  that  year,  had 
been  in  the  Kaiser-] dgers  and  when  they  went  hunting  hares  together 
up  the  little  valley  above  the  saw-mill  they  had  talked  of  the  fighting 
on  Pasubio  and  of  the  attac\  on  Pertica  and  Asalone  and  he  had 
never  written  a  word  of  that.  Nor  of  Monte  Como,  nor  the  Siete 
Commum ,  nor  of  Arsiedo. 

How  many  winters  had  he  lived  in  the  Voralberg  and  the  Arlberg? 
It  was  four  and  then  he  remembered  the  man  who  had  the  fox  to  sell 
when  they  had  walked  into  Bludenz,  that  time  to  buy  presents,  and 
the  cherry-pit  taste  of  good  kjrscn>  the  fast-slipping  rush  of  running 
powder-snow  on  crust,  singing  "Hi!  Ho!  said  Roily!"  as  you  ran  down 
the  last  stretch  to  the  steey  drop,  taking  it  straight,  then  running  the 
orchard  in  three  turns  and  out  across  the  ditch  and  onto  the  icy  road 
behind  the  inn.  Knocking  your  bindings  loose,  kjc\ing  the  sl{is  free 
and  leaning  them  up  against  the  wooden  wall  of  the  inn,  the  lamp- 
light coming  from  the  window,  where  inside,  in  the  smoky,  new- 
wine  smelling  warmth,  they  were  playing  the  accordion. 

"Where  did  we  stay  in  Paris?"  he  asked  the  woman  who  was  sitting 
by  him  in  a  canvas  chair,  now,  in  Africa. 

"At  the  Crillon.  You  know  that." 

"Why  do  I  know  that?" 

"That's  where  we  always  stayed." 

"No.  Not  always." 

"There  and  at  the  Pavillion  Henri-Quatre  in  St.  Germain.  You  said 
you  loved  it  there." 

"Love  is  a  dunghill,"  said  Harry.  "And  I'm  the  cock  that  gets  on 
it  to  crow." 

"If  you  have  to  go  away,"  she  said,  "is  it  absolutely  necessary  to 
kill  off  everything  you  leave  behind  ?  I  mean  do  you  have  to  take  away 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  4 

everything?  Do  you  have  to  kill  your  horse,  and  your  wife  and  burn 
your  saddle  and  your  armour?" 

"Yes,"  he  said.  "Your  damned  money  was  my  armour.  My  Swift 
and  my  Armour." 

"Don't." 

"All  right.  I'll  stop  that.  I  don't  want  to  hurt  you." 

"It's  a  little  bit  late  now." 

"All  right  then.  I'll  go  on  hurting  you.  It's  more  amusing.  The 
only  thing  I  ever  really  liked  to  do  with  you  I  can't  do  now." 

"No,  that's  not  true.  You  liked  to  do  many  things  and  everything 
you  wanted  to  do  I  did." 

"Oh,  for  Christ  sake  stop  bragging,  will  you?" 

He  looked  at  her  and  saw  her  crying. 

"Listen,"  he  said.  "Do  you  think  that  it  is  fun  to  do  this?  I  don't 
know  why  I'm  doing  it.  It's  trying  to  kill  to  keep  yourself  alive,  I 
imagine.  I  was  all  right  when  we  started  talking.  I  didn't  mean  to 
start  this,  and  now  I'm  crazy  as  a  coot  and  being  as  cruel  to  you  as 
I  can  be.  Don't  pay  any  attention,  darling,  to  what  I  say.  I  love  you, 
really.  You  know  I  love  you.  I've  never  loved  any  one  else  the  way 
I  love  you." 

He  slipped  into  the  familiar  lie  he  made  his  bread  and  butter  by. 

"You're  sweet  to  me." 

"You  bitch,"  he  said.  "You  rich  bitch.  That's  poetry.  I'm  full  of 
poetry  now.  Rot  and  poetry.  Rotten  poetry." 

"Stop  it.  Harry,  why  do  you  have  to  turn  into  a  devil  now?" 

"I  don't  like  to  leave  anything,"  the  man  said.  "I  don't  like  to  leave 
things  behind." 

It  was  evening  now  and  he  had  been  asleep.  The  sun  was  gone  be- 
hind the  hill  and  there  was  a  shadow  all  across  the  plain  and  the  small 
animals  were  feeding  close  to  camp;  quick  dropping  heads  and  switch- 
ing tails,  he  watched  them  keeping  well  out  away  from  the  bush  now. 
The  birds  no  longer  waited  on  the  ground.  They  were  all  perched 
heavily  in  a  tree.  There  were  many  more  of  them.  His  personal  boy 
was  sitting  by  the  bed. 

"Memsahib's  gone  to  shoot,"  the  boy  said.  "Does  Bwana  want?" 


442  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Nothing." 

She  had  gone  to  kill  a  piece  of  meat  and,  knowing  how  he  liked 
to  watch  the  game,  she  had  gone  well  away  so  she  would  not  disturb 
this  little  pocket  of  the  plain  that  he  could  see.  She  was  always  thought- 
ful, he  thought.  On  anything  she  knew  about,  or  had  read,  or  that 
she  had  ever  heard. 

It  was  not  her  fault  that  when  he  went  to  her  he  was  already  over. 
How  could  a  woman  know  that  you  meant  nothing  that  you  said;  that 
you  spoke  only  from  habit  and  to  be  comfortable?  After  he  no  longer 
meant  what  he  said,  his  lies  were  more  successful  with  women  than 
when  he  had  told  them  the  truth. 

It  was  not  so  much  that  he  lied  as  that  there  was  no  truth  to  tell. 
He  had  had  his  life  and  it  was  over  and  then  he  went  on  living  it  again 
with  different  people  and  more  money,  with  the  best  of  the  same 
places,  and  some  new  ones. 

You  kept  from  thinking  and  it  was  all  marvellous.  You  were 
equipped  with  good  insides  so  that  you  did  not  go  to  pieces  that 
way,  the  way  most  of  them  had,  and  you  made  an  attitude  that  you 
cared  nothing  for  the  work  you  used  to  do,  now  that  you  could  no 
longer  do  it.  But,  in  yourself,  you  said  that  you  would  write  about 
these  people;  about  the  very  rich;  that  you  were  really  not  of  them 
but  a  spy  in  their  country;  that  you  would  leave  it  and  write  of  it 
and  for  once  it  would  be  written  by  some  one  who  knew  what  he 
was  writing  of.  But  he  would  never  do  it,  because  each  day  of  not 
writing,  of  comfort,  of  being  that  which  he  despised,  dulled  his 
ability  and  softened  his  will  to  work  so  that,  finally,  he  did  no  work 
at  all.  The  people  he  knew  now  were  all  much  more  comfortable 
when  he  did  not  work.  Africa  was  where  he  had  been  happiest  in 
the  good  time  of  his  life,  so  he  had  come  out  here  to  start  again.  They 
had  made  this  safari  with  the  minimum  of  comfort.  There  wa^  no 
hardship;  but  there  was  no  luxury  and  he  had  thought  that  he  could 
get  back  into  training  that  way.  That  in  some  way  he  could  work  the 
fat  off  his  soul  the  way  a  fighter  went  into  the  mountains  to  work  and 
train  in  order  to  burn  it  out  of  his  body. 

She  had  liked  it.  She  said  she  loved  it.  She  loved  anything  that 
was  exciting,  that  involved  a  change  of  scene,  where  there  were  new 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  443 

people  and  where  things  were  pleasant.  And  he  had  felt  the  illusion  of 
returning  strength  of  will  to  work.  Now  if  this  was  how  it  ended, 

and  he  knew  jt, wj,^  he  must  not  turn  like  some  snake  biting  itself 

because  its  back  was  broken.  It  wasn't  this  woman's  fault.  If  it  had 
not  been  she  it  would  have  been  another.  If  he  lived  by  a  lie  he  should 
try  to  die  by  it.  He  heard  a  shot  beyond  the  hill. 

She  shot  very  well  this  good,  this  rich  bitch,  this  kindly  caretaker 
and  destroyer  of  his  talent.  Nonsense.  He  had  destroyed  his  talent 
himself.  Why  should  he  blame  this  woman  because  she  kept  him  well  ? 
He  had  destroyed  his  talent  by  not  using  it,  by  betrayals  of  himself 
and  what  he  believed  in,  by  drinking  so  much  that  he  blunted  the 
edge  of  his  perceptions,  by  laziness,  by  sloth,  and  by  snobbery,  by 
pride  and  by  prejudice,  by  hook  and  by  crook.  What  was  this?  A 
catalogue  of  old  books?  What  was  his  talent  anyway?  It  was  a  talent 
all  right  but  instead  of  using  it,  he  had  traded  on  it.  It  was  never  what 
he  had  done,  but  always  what  he  could  do.  And  he  had  chosen  to  make 
his  living  with  something  else  instead  of  a  pen  or  a  pencil.  It  was 
strange,  too,  wasn't  it,  that  when  he  fell  in  love  with  another  woman, 
that  woman  should  always  have  more  money  than  the  last  one?  But 
when  he  no  longer  was  in  love,  when  he  was  only  lying,  as  to  this 
woman,  now,  who  had  the  most  money  of  all,  who  had  all  the  money 
there  was,  who  had  had  a  husband  and  children,  who  had  taken  lovers 
and  been  dissatisfied  with  them,  and  who  loved  him  dearly  as  a 
writer,  as  a  man,  as  a  companion  and  as  a  proud  possession;  it  was 
strange  that  when  he  did  not  love  her  at  all  and  was  lying,  that  he 
should  be  able  to  give  her  more  for  her  money  than  when  he  had 
really  loved. 

We  must  all  be  cut  out  for  what  we  do,  he  thought.  However  you 
make  your  living  is  where  your  talent  lies.  He  had  sold  vitality,  in  one 
form  or  another,  all  his  life  and  when  your  affections  are  not  too 
involved  you  give  much  better  value  for  the  money.  He  had  found 
that  out  but  he  would  never  write  that,  now,  either.  No,  he  would 
not  write  that,  although  it  was  well  worth  writing. 

Now  she  came  in  sight,  walking  across  the  open  toward  the  camp. 
She  was  wearing  jodhpurs  and  carrying  her  rifle.  The  two  boys  had 
a  Tommie  slung  and  they  were  coming  along  behind  her.  She  was 


444  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

still  a  good-looking  woman,  he  thought,  and  she  had  a  pleasant  body. 
She  had  a  great  talent  and  appreciation  for  the  bed,  she  was  not  pretty, 
but  he  liked  her  face,  she  read  enormously,  liked  to  ride  and  shoot 
and,  certainly,  she  drank  too  much.  Her  husband  had  died  when  she 
was  still  a  comparatively  young  woman  and  for  a  while  she  had 
devoted  herself  to  her  two  just-grown  children,  who  did  not  need 
her  and  were  embarrassed  at  having  her  about,  to  her  stable  of  horses, 
to  books,  and  to  bottles.  She  liked  to  read  in  the  evening  before  dinner 
and  she  drank  Scotch  and  soda  while  she  read.  By  dinner  she  was 
fairly  drunk  and  after  a  bottle  of  wine  at  dinner  she  was  usually 
drunk  enough  to  sleep. 

That  was  before  the  lovers.  After  she  had  the  lovers  she  did  not 
drink  so  much  because  she  did  not  have  to  be  drunk  to  sleep.  But 
the  lovers  bored  her.  She  had  been  married  to  a  man  who  had  never 
bored  her  and  these  people  bored  her  very  much. 

Then  one  of  her  two  children  was  killed  in  a  plane  crash  and  after 
that  was  over  she  did  not  want  the  lovers,  and  drink  being  no  anaes- 
thetic she  had  to  make  another  life.  Suddenly,  she  had  been  acutely 
frightened  of  being  alone.  But  she  wanted  some  one  that  she  re- 
spected with  her. 

It  had  begun  very  simply.  She  liked  what  he  wrote  and  she  had 
always  envied  the  life  he  led.  She  thought  he  did  exactly  what  he 
wanted  to.  The  steps  by  which  she  had  acquired  him  and  the  way 
in  which  she  had  finally  fallen  in  love  with  him  were  all  part  of  a 
regular  progression  in  which  she  had  built  herself  a  new  life  and  he 
had  traded  away  what  remained  of  his  old  life. 

He  had  traded  it  for  security,  for  comfort  too,  there  was  no  denying 
that,  and  for  what  else?  He  did  not  know.  She  would  have  bought 
him  anything  he  wanted.  He  knew  that.  She  was  a  damned  nice 
woman  too.  He  would  as  soon  be  in  bed  with  her  as  any  one;  rather 
with  her,  because  she  was  richer,  because  she  was  very  pleasant  and 
appreciative  and  because  she  never  made  scenes.  And  now  this  life 
that  she  had  built  again  was  coming  to  a  term  because  he  had  not 
used  iodine  two  weeks  ago  when  a  thorn  had  scratched  his  knee  as 
they  moved  forward  trying  to  photograph  a  herd  of  waterbuck  standing, 
their  heads  up,  peering  while  their  nostrils  searched  the  air,  their  ears 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  445 

spread  wide  to  hear  the  first  noise  that  would  send  them  rushing  into 
the  bush.  They  had  bolted,  too,  before  he  got  the  picture. 

Here  she  came  now. 

He  turned  his  head  on  the  cot  to  look  toward  her.  "Hello,"  he  said. 

"I  shot  a  Tommy  ram,"  she  told  him.  "He'll  make  you  good  broth 
and  I'll  have  them  mash  some  potatoes  with  the  Klim.  How  do  you 
feel?" 

"Much  better." 

"Isn't  that  lovely?  You  know  I  thought  perhaps  you  would.  You 
were  sleeping  when  I  left." 

"I  had  a  good  sleep.  Did  you  walk  far?" 

"No.  Just  around  behind  the  hill.  I  made  quite  a  good  shot  on  the 
Tommy." 

"You  shoot  marvellously,  you  know." 

"I  love  it.  I've  loved  Africa.  Really.  If  you're  all  right  it's  the  most 
fun  that  I've  ever  had.  You  don't  know  the  fun  it's  been  to  shoot  with 
you.  I've  loved  the  country." 

"I  love  it  too." 

"Darling,  you  don't  know  how  marvellous  it  is  to  see  you  feeling 
better.  I  couldn't  stand  it  when  you  felt  that  way.  You  won't  talk  to 
me  like  that  again,  will  you?  Promise  me?" 

"No,"  he  said.  "I  don't  remember  what  I  said." 

"You  don't  have  to  destroy  me.  Do  you?  I'm  only  a  middle-aged 
woman  who  loves  you  and  wants  to  do  what  you  want  to  do.  I've 
been  destroyed  two  or  three  times  already.  You  wouldn't  want  to 
destroy  me  again,  would  you?" 

"I'd  like  to  destroy  you  a  few  times  in  bed,"  he  said. 

"Yes.  That's  the  good  destruction.  That's  the  way  we're  made  to 
be  destroyed.  The  plane  will  be  here  tomorrow." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"I'm  sure.  It's  bound  to  come.  The  boys  have  the  wood  all  ready 
and  the  grass  to  make  the  smudge.  I  went  down  and  looked  at  it 
again  today.  There's  plenty  of  room  to  land  and  we  have  the  smudges 
ready  at  both  ends." 

"What  makes  you  think  it  will  come  tomorrow?" 

"I'm  sure  it  will.  It's  overdue  now.  Then,  in  town,  they  will  fix  up 


446  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

your  leg  and  then  we  will  have  some  good  destruction.  Not  that 
dreadful  talking  kind." 

"Should  we  have  a  drink?  The  sun  is  down." 

"Do  you  think  you  should?" 

"I'm  having  one." 

"We'll  have  one  together.  Molo,  letti  dui  whiskey-soda!"  she  called. 

"You'd  better  put  on  your  mosquito  boots,"  he  told  her. 

"I'll  wait  till  I  bathe  .  .  ." 

While  it  grew  dark  they  drank  and  just  before  it  was  dark  and  there 
was  no  longer  enough  light  to  shoot,  a  hyena  crossed  the  open  on  his 
way  around  the  hill. 

"That  bastard  crosses  there  every  night,"  the  man  said.  "Every 
night  for  two  weeks." 

"He's  the  one  makes  the  noise  at  night.  I  don't  mind  it.  They're 
a  filthy  animal  though." 

Drinking  together,  with  no  pain  now  except  the  discomfort  of 
lying  in  one  position,  the  boys  lighting  a  fire,  its  shadow  jumping  on 
the  tents,  he  could  feel  the  return  of  acquiescence  in  this  life  of  pleasant 
surrender.  She  was  very  good  to  him.  He  had  been  cruel  and  unjust 
in  the  afternoon.  She  was  a  fine  woman,  marvellous  really.  And_just 
then  it  occurred  to  him  that  he  was  going  to  die. 

It  came  with  a  rush;  not  as  a  rush  of  water  nor  of  wind;  but  of  a 
sudden  evil-smelling  emptiness  and  the  odd  thing  was  that  the  hyena 
slipped  lightly  along  the  edge  of  it. 

"What  is  it,  Harry?"  she  asked  him. 

"Nothing,"  he  said.  "You  had  better  move  over  to  the  other  side. 
To  windward." 

"Did  Molo  change  the  dressing?" 

"Yes.  I'm  just  using  the  boric  now." 

"How  do  you  feel?" 

"A  little  wobbly." 

"I'm  going  in  to  bathe,"  she  said.  "I'll  be  right  out.  I'll  eat  with 
you  and  then  we'll  put  the  cot  in." 

So,  he  said  to  himself,  we  did  well  to  stop  the  quarrelling.  He  had 
never  quarrelled  much  with  this  woman,  while  with  the  women  that 
he  loved  he  had  quarrelled  so  much  they  had  finally,  always,  with 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  447 

the  corrosion  of  the  quarrelling,  killed  what  they  had  together.  He 
had  loved  too  much,  demanded  too  much,  and  he  wore  it  all  out7^ 

He  thought  about  alone  in  Constantinople  that  time,  having  quar- 
relled in  Paris  before  he  had  gone  out.  He  had  whored  the  whole 
time  and  then,  when  that  was  over,  and  he  had  jailed  to  fyll  his  loneli- 
ness, but  only  made  it  worse,  he  had  written  her,  the  first  one,  the 
one  who  left  him,  a  letter  telling  her  how  he  had  never  been  able 
to  kjll  it.  .  .  .  How  when  he  thought  he  saw  her  outside  the  Regence 
one  time  it  made  him  go  all  faint  and  sick  inside,  and  that  he  would 
follow  a  woman  who  looked  like  her  in  some  way,  along  the  Boule- 
vard, afraid  to  see  it  was  not  she,  afraid  to  lose  the  feeling  it  gave  him. 
How  every  one  he  had  slept  with  had  only  made  him  miss  her  more. 
How  what  she  had  done  could  never  matter  since  he  knew  he  could 
not  cure  himself  of  loving  her.  He  wrote  this  letter  at  the  Club,  cold 
sober,  and  mailed  it  to  New  York  asking  her  to  write  him  at  the 
office  in  Paris.  That  seemed  safe.  And  that  night  missing  her  so  much 
it  made  him  feel  hollow  sick  inside,  he  wandered  up  past  Taxim's, 
picked  a  girl  up  a,nd  too\  her  out  to  supper.  He  had  gone  to  a  place 
to  dance  with  her  afterward,  she  danced  badly,  and  left  her  for  a  hot 
Armenian  slut,  that  swung  her  belly  against  him  so  it  almost  scalded. 
He  took  her  away  from  a  British  gunner  subaltern  after  a  row.  The 
gunner  asked  him  outside  and  they  fought  in  the  street  on  the  cobbles 
in  the  dar\.  He'd  hit  him  twice,  hard,  on  the  side  of  the  jaw  and 
when  he  didn't  go  down  he  knew  he  was  in  for  a  fight.  The  gunner 
hit  him  in  the  body,  then  beside  his  eye.  He  swung  with  his  left  again 
and  landed  and  the  gunner  fell  on  him  and  grabbed  his  coat  and  tore 
the  sleeve  off  and  he  clubbed  him  twice  behind  the  ear  and  then 
smashed  him  with  his  right  as  he  pushed  him  away.  When  the  gunner 
went  down  his  head  hit  first  and  he  ran  with  the  girl  because  they 
heard  the  M.  P.'s  coming.  They  got  into  a  taxi  and  drove  out  to 
Rimmily  Hissa  along  the  Bosphorus,  and  around,  and  back  ^n  the  cool 
night  and  went  to  bed  and  she  felt  as  over-ripe  as  she  loo\ed  but 
smooth,  rose-petal,  syrupy,  smooth-bellied,  big-breasted  and  needed  no 
pillow  under  her  buttoc\s,  and  he  left  her  before  she  was  awake  looking 
blousy  enough  in  the  first  daylight  and  turned  up  at  the  Pera  Palace 


448  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

with  a  blac\  eye,  carrying  his  coat  because  one  sleeve  was  missing. 

That  same  night  he  left  for  Anatolia  and  he  remembered,  later  on 
that  trip,  riding  all  day  through  fields  of  the  poppies  that  they  raised 
for  opium  and  how  strange  it  made  you  feel,  finally,  and  all  the 
distances  seemed  wrong,  to  where  they  had  made  the  attac\  with  the 
newly  arrived  Constantine  officers,  that  did  not  \now  a  god-damned 
thing,  and  the  artillery  had  fired  into  the  troops  and  the  British 
observer  had  cried  like  a  child. 

That  was  the  day  he'd  first  seen  dead  men  wearing  white  ballet 
shirts  and  upturned  shoes  with  pompons  on  them.  The  Turkj  had 
come  steadily  and  lumpily  and  he  had  seen  the  skirted  men  running 
and  the  officers  shooting  into  them  and  running  then  themselves  and 
he  and  the  British  observer  had  run  too  until  his  lungs  ached  and  his 
mouth  was  full  of  the  taste  of  pennies  and  they  stopped  behind  some 
roc\s  and  there  were  the  Tur\s  coming  as  lumpily  as  ever,  hater  he 
had  seen  the  things  that  he  could  never  thinly  of  and  later  still  he  had 
seen  much  worse.  So  when  he  got  bac\  to  Paris  that  time  he  could 
not  tal\  about  it  or  stand  to  have  it  mentioned.  And  there  in  the  cafe 
as  he  passed  was  that  American  poet  with  a  pile  of  saucers  in  front 
of  him  and  a  stupid  loo\  on  his  potato  face  talking  about  the  Dada 
movement  with  a  Roumanian  who  said  his  name  was  Tristan  Tzara, 
who  always  wore  a  monocle  and  had  a  headache,  and,  bac\  at  the 
apartment  with  his  wife  that  now  he  loved  again,  the  quarrel  all  over, 
the  madness  all  over,  glad  to  be  home,  the  office  sent  his  mail  up  to 
the  flat.  So  then  the  letter  in  answer  to  the  one  he'd  written  came  in 
on  a  platter  one  morning  and  when  he  saw  the  handwriting  he  went 
cold  all  over  and  tried  to  slip  the  letter  underneath  another.  But  his 
wife  said,  ''Who  is  that  letter  from,  dear?"  and  that  was  the  end  of  the 
beginning  of  that. 

He  remembered  the  good  times  with  them  all,  and  the  quarrels. 
They  always  picked  the  finest  places  to  have  the  quarrels.  And  why 
had  they  always  quarrelled  when  he  was  feeling  best?  He  had  never 
written  any  of  that  because,  at  first,  he  never  wanted  to  hurt  any  one 
and  then  it  seemed  at  though  there  was  enough  to  write  without  it. 
But  he  had  always  thought  that  he  would  write  it  finally.  There  was 
so  much  to  write.  He  had  seen  the  world  change;  not  just  the  events; 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  449 

although  he  had  seen  many  of  them  and  had  watched  the  people,  but 
he  had  seen  the  subtler  change  and  he  could  remember  how  the  people 
were  at  different  times.  He  had  been  in  it  and  he  had  watched  it  and 
it  was  his  duty  to  write  of  it;  but  now  he  never  would. 

"How  do  you  feel?"  she  said.  She  had  come  out  from  the  tent  now 
after  her  bath. 

"All  right." 

"Could  you  eat  now?"  He  saw  Molo  behind  her  with  the  folding 
table  and  the  other  boy  with  the  dishes. 

"I  want  to  write,"  he  said. 

"You  ought  to  take  some  broth  to  keep  your  strength  up." 

"I'm  going  to  die  tonight,"  he  said.  "I  don't  need  my  strength  up." 

"Don't  be  melodramatic,  Harry,  please,"  she  said. 

"Why  don't  you  use  your  nose?  I'm  rotted  half  way  up  my  thigh 
now.  What  the  hell  should  I  fool  with  broth  for  ?  Molo  bring  whiskey- 
soda." 

"Please  take  the  broth,"  she  said  gently. 

"All  right." 

The  broth  was  too  hot.  He  had  to  hold  it  in  the  cup  until  it  cooled 
enough  to  take  it  and  then  he  just  got  it  down  without  gagging. 

"You're  a  fine  woman,"  he  said.  "Don't  pay  any  attention  to  me." 

She  looked  at  him  with  her  well-known,  well-loved  face  from 
Spur  and  Town  and  Country,  only  a  little  the  worse  for  drink,  only 
a  little  the  worse  for  bed,  but  Town  and  Country  never  showed  those 
good  breasts  and  those  useful  thighs  and  those  lightly  small-of-back- 
caressing  hands,  and  as  he  looked  and  saw  her  well  known  pleasant 
^smile,  he  felt  death  come  again.  This  time  there  was  no  rush.  It  was 
a  puff,  as  of  a  wind  that  makes  a  candle  flicker  and  the  flame  go  tall. 

"They  can  bring  my  net  out  later  and  hang  it  from  the  tree  and 
build  the  fire  up.  I'm  not  going  in  the  tent  tonight.  It's  not  worth 
moving.  It's  a  clear  night.  There  won't  be  any  rain." 

So  this  was  how  you  died,  in  whispers  that  you  did  not  hear.  Well, 
there  would  be  no  more  quarrelling.  He  could  promise  that.  The  one 
experience  that  he- had  never  had  he  was  not  going  to  spoil  now.  He 
probably  would.  You  spoiled  everything.  But  perhaps  he  wouldn't. 


450  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

"You  can't  take  dictation,  can  you?" 

"I  never  learned,"  she  told  him. 

"That's  all  right." 

There  wasn't  time,  of  course,  although  it  seemed  as  though  it 
telescoped  so  that  you  might  put  it  all  into  one  paragraph  if  you  could 
get  it  right. 

There  was  a  log  house,  chinked  white  with  mortar,  on  a  hill  above 
the  la\e.  There  was  a  bell  on  a  pole  by  the  door  to  call  the  people  in 
to  meals.  Behind  the  house  were  fields  and  behind  the  fields  was  the 
timber.  A  line  of  lombardy  poplars  ran  from  the  house  to  the  doc\. 
Other  poplars  ran  along  the  point.  A  road  went  up  to  the  hills  along 
the  edge  of  the  timber  and  along  that  road  he  picked  blackberries. 
Then  that  log  house  was  burned  down  and  all  the  guns  that  had  been 
on  deer  foot  racks  above  the  open  fire  place  were  burned  and  after- 
wards their  barrels,  with  the  lead  melted  in  the  magazines,  and  the 
stocks  burned  away,  lay  out  on  the  heap  of  ashes  that  were  used  to 
make  lye  for  the  big  iron  soap  \ettles,  and  you  as\ed  Grandfather 
if  you  could  have  them  to  play  with,  and  he  said,  no.  You  see  they 
were  his  guns  still  and  he  never  bought  any  others.  Nor  did  he  hunt 
any  more.  The  house  was  rebuilt  in  the  same  place  out  of  lumber 
now  and  painted  white  and  from  its  porch  you  saw  the  poplars  and 
the  lake  beyond;  but  there  were  never  any  more  guns.  The  barrels 
of  the  guns  that  had  hung  on  the  deer  feet  on  the  wall  of  the  log 
house  lay  out  there  on  the  heap  of  ashes  and  no  one  ever  touched 
them. 

In  the  Blacky  Forest,  after  the  war,  we  rented  a  trout  stream  and 
there  were  two  ways  to  wal\  to  it.  One  was  down  the  valley  from 
Triberg  and  around  the  valley  road  in  the  shade  of  the  trees  that 
bordered  the  white  road,  and  then  up  a  side  road  that  went  up  through 
the  hills  past  many  small  farms,  with  the  big  Schwarzwald  houses, 
until  that  road  crossed  the  stream.  That  was  where  our  fishing  began. 

The  other  way  was  to  climb  steeply  up  to  the  edge  of  the  woods 
and  then  go  across  the  top  of  the  hills  through  the  pine  woods,  and 
then  out  to  the  edge  of  a  meadow  and  down  across  this  meadow  to 
the  bridge.  There  were  birches  along  the  stream  and  it  was  not  big, 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  451 

but  narrow,  clear  and  fast,  with  pools  where  it  had  cut  under  the 
roots  of  the  birches.  At  the  Hotel  in  Triberg  .the  proprietor  had  a 
fine  season.  It  was  very  pleasant  and  we  were  all  great  friends.  The 
next  year  came  the  inflation  and  the  money  he  had  made  the  year 
before  was  not  enough  to  buy  supplies  to  open  the  hotel  and  he  hanged 
himself. 

You  could  dictate  that,  but  you  could  hot  dictate  the  Place  Contre- 
scarpe  where  the  flower  sellers  dyed  their  flowers  in  the  street  and  the 
dye  ran  over  the  paving  where  the  autobus  started  and  the  old  men 
and  the  women,  always  drun\  on  wine  and  bad  marc;  and  the  chil- 
dren with  their  noses  running  in  the  cold;  the  smell  of  dirty  sweat 
and  poverty  and  drunkenness  at  the  Cafe  des  Amateurs  and  the 
whores  at  the  Bal  Musette  they  lived  above.  The  Concierge  who 
entertained  the  trooper  of  the  Garde  Republicaine  in  her  loge,  his 
horse-hair-plumed  helmet  on  a  chair.  The  locataire  across  the  hall 
whose  husband  was  a  bicycle  racer  and  her  joy  that  morning  at 
the  Cremerie  when  she  had  opened  L'Auto  and  seen  where  he  placed 
third  in  Paris-Tours,  his  first  big  race.  She  had  blushed  and  laughed 
and  then  gone  upstairs  crying  with  the  yellow  sporting  paper  in  her 
hand.  The  husband  of  the  woman  who  ran  the  Bal  Musette  drove 
a  taxi  and  when  he,  Harry,  had  to  ta\e  an  early  plane  the  husband 
knocked  upon  the  door  to  wake  him  and  they  each  drank  a  glass  of 
white  wine  at  the  zinc  of  the  bar  before  they  started.  He  \new  his 
neighbors  in  that  quarter  then  because  they  all  were  poor. 

Around  that  Place  there  were  two  kinds:  the  drunkards  and  the 
sportifs.  The  drunkards  filled  their  poverty  that  way;  the  sportifs 
too\  it  out  in  exercise.  They  were  the  descendants  of  the  Com- 
munards and  it  was  no  struggle  for  them  to  \now  their  politics.  They 
knew  who  had  shot  their  fathers,  their  relatives,  their  brothers,  and 
their  friends  when  the  Versailles  troops  came  in  and  too\  the  town 
after  the  Commune  and  executed  any  one  they  could  catch  with 
calloused  hands,  or  who  wore  a  cap,  or  carried  any  other  sign  he  was  a 
wording  man.  And  in  that  poverty,  and  in  that  quarter  across  the 
street  from  a  Boucherie  Chevaline  and  a  wine  co-operative  he  had 
written  the  start  of  all  he  was  to  do.  There  never  was  another  part  of 
Paris  that  he  loved  li\e  that,  the  sprawling  trees,  the  old  white  plastered 


452  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

houses  painted  brown  below,  the  long  green  of  the  autobus  in  that 
round  square,  the  purple  flower  dye  upon  the  paving,  the  sudden 
drop  down  the  hill  of  the  rue  Cardinal  Lemoine  to  the  River,  and 
the  other  way  the  narrow  crowded  world  of  the  rue  Mouffetard.  The 
street  that  ran  up  toward  the  Pantheon  and  the  other  that  he  always 
too\  with  the  bicycle,  the  only  asphalted  street  in  all  that  quarter, 
smooth  under  the  tires,  with  the  high  narrow  houses  and  the  cheap 
tall  hotel  where  Paul  Verlaine  had  died.  There  were  only  two  rooms 
in  the  apartments  where  they  lived  and  he  had  a  room  on  the  top 
floor  of  that  hotel  that  cost  him  sixty  francs  a  month  where  he  did 
his  writing,  and  from  it  he  could  see  the  roofs  and  chimney  pots  and 
all  the  hills  of  Paris. 

From  the  apartment  you  could  only  see  the  wood  and  coal  man's 
place.  He  sold  wine  too,  bad  wine.  The  golden  horse's  head  outside 
the  Boucherie  Chevaline  where  the  carcasses  hung  yellow  gold  and 
red  in  the  open  window,  and  the  green  painted  co-operative  where 
they  bought  their  wine;  good  wine  and  cheap.  The  rest  was  plaster 
walls  and  the  windows  of  the  neighbors.  The  neighbors  who,  at 
night,  when  some  one  lay  drun\  in  the  street,  moaning  and  groaning 
in  that  typical  French  ivresse  that  you  were  propaganded  to  believe 
did  not  exist,  would  open  their  windows  and  then  the  murmur  of  tal\. 

"Where  is  the  policeman?  When  you  don't  want  him  the  bugger 
is  always  there.  He's  sleeping  with  some  concierge.  Get  the  Agent." 
Till  some  one  threw  a  budget  of  water  from  a  window  and  the  moan- 
ing stopped.  "What's  that?  Water.  Ah,  that's  intelligent."  And  the 
windows  shutting.  Marie,  his  fern  me  de  menage,  protesting  against 
the  eight-hour  day 'saying,  "If  a  husband  worlds  until  six  he  gets  only 
a  little  drun\  on  the  way  home  and  does  not  waste  too  much.  If  he 
worlds  only  until  five  he  is  drun\  every  night  and  one  has  no  money. 
It  is  the  wife  of  the  wording  man  who  suffers  from  this  shortening 
of  hours." 

"Wouldn't  you  like  some  more  broth?"  the  woman  asked  him  now. 

"No,  thank  you  very  much.  It  is  awfully  good." 

"Try  just  a  little." 

"I  would  like  a  whiskey-soda." 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  453 

"It's  not  good  for  you." 

"No.  It's  bad  for  me.  Cole  Porter  wrote  the  words  and  the  music. 
This  knowledge  that  you're  going  mad  for  me." 

"You  know  I  like  you  to  drink." 

"Oh  yes.  Only  it's  bad  for  me." 

When  she  goes,  he  thought,  I'll  have  all  I  want.  Not  all  I  want 
but  all  there  is.  Ayee  he  was  tired.  Too  tired.  He  was  going  to  sleep 
a  little  while.  He  lay  still  and  death  was  not  there.  It  must  have 
gone  around  another  street.  It  went_iii  pairs,  on  bicycles,  and  moved 
absolutely  silently  on  the  pavements. 

No,  he  had  never  written  about  Paris.  Not  the  Paris  that  he  cared 
about.  But  what  about  the  rest  that  he  had  never  written? 

What  about  the  ranch  and  the  silvered  gray  of  the  sage  brush,  the 
quic\,  clear  water  in  the  irrigation  ditches,  and  the  heavy  green  of  the 
alfalfa.  The  trail  went  up  into  the  hills  and  the  cattle  in  the  summer 
were  shy  as  deer.  The  bawling  and  the  steady  noise  and  slow  mov- 
ing mass  raising  a  dust  as  you  brought  them  down  in  the  fall.  And 
behind  the  mountains ,  the  clear  sharpness  of  the  pea\  in  the  evening 
light  and,  riding  down  along  the  trail  in  the  moonlight,  bright  across 
the  valley.  Now  he  remembered  coming  down  through  the  timber 
in  the  dar\  holding  the  horse  s  tail  when  you  could  not  see  and  all  the 
stories  that  he  meant  to  write. 

About  the  half-wit  chore  boy  who  was  left  at  the  ranch  that  time 
and  told  not  to  let  any  one  get  any  hay,  and  that  old  bastard  from 
the  For\s  who  had  beaten  the  boy  when  he  had  worked  for  him 
stopping  to  get  some  feed.  The  boy  refusing  and  the  old  man  saying  he 
would  beat  him  again.  The  boy  got  the  rifle  from  the  kitchen  and 
shot  him  when  he  tried  to  come  into  the  barn  and  when  they  came 
bac\  to  the  ranch  he'd  been  dead  a  week,  frozen  in  the  corral,  and 
the  dogs  had  eaten  part  of  him.  But  what  was  left  you  packed  on  a 
sled  wrapped  in  a  blanket  and  roped  on  and  you  got  the  boy  to  help 
you  haul  it,  and  the  two  of  you  too\  it  out  over  the  road  on  s\is,  and 
sixty  miles  down  to  town  to  turn  the  boy  over.  He  having  no  idea 
that  he  would  be  arrested.  Thinking  he  had  done  his  duty  and  that 
you  were  his  friend  and  he  would  be  rewarded.  He'd  helped  to  haul 


454  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  old  man  in  so  everybody  could  hjiow  how  bad  the  old  man  had 
been  and  how  he'd  tried  to  steal  some  feed  that  didn't  belong  to  him, 
and  when  the  sheriff  put  the  handcuffs  on  the  boy  he  couldn't  believe 
it.  Then  he'd  started  to  cry.  That  was  one  story  he  had  saved  to 
write.  He  \new  at  least  twenty  good  stories  from  out  there  and  he 
had  never  written  one.  Why? 

"You  tell  them  why,"  he  said. 

"Why  what,  dear?" 

"Why  nothing." 

She  didn't  drink  so  much,  now,  since  she  had  him.  But  if  he  lived 
he  would  never  write  about  her,  he  knew  that  now,  Nor  about  any 
of  them.  The  rich  were  dull  and  they  drank  too  much,  or  they  played 
too  much  backgammon.  They  were  dull  and  they  were  repetitious.  He 
remembered  poor  Julian  and  his  romantic  awe  of  them  and  how  he 
had  started  a  story  once  that  began,  "The  very  rich  are  different  from 
you  and  me."  And  how  some  one  had  said  to  Julian,  Yes,  they  have 
more  money.  But  that,  was  not  humorous  to  Julian.  He  thought  they 
were  a  special  glamorous  race  and  when  he  found  they  weren't  it 
wrecked  him  just  as  much  as  any  other  thing  that  wrecked  him. 

He  had  been  contemptuous  of  those  who  wrecked.  You  did  not  have 
to  like  it  because  you  understood  it.  He  could  beat  anything,  he 
thought,  because  no  thing  could  hurt  him  if  he  did  not  care. 

All  right.  Now  he  would  not  care  for  death.  One  thing  he  had 
always  dreaded  was  the  pain.  He  could  stand  pain  as  well  as  any 
man,  until  it  went  on  too  long,  and  wore  him  out,  but  here  he  had 
something  that  had  hurt  frightfully  and  just  when  he  had  felt  it  break- 
ing him,  the  pain  had  stopped. 

He  remembered  long  ago  when  Williamson,  the  bombing  officer, 
had  been  hit  by  a  stic\  bomb  some  one  in  a  German  patrol  had 
thrown  as  he  was  coming  in  through  the  wire  that  night  and,  scream- 
ing, had  begged  every  one  to  /{ill  him.  He  was  a  fat  man,  very  brave, 
and  a  good  officer,  although  addicted  to  fantastic  shows.  But  that 
night  he  was  caught  in  the  wire,  with  a  flare  lighting  him  up  and  his 
bowels  spilled  out  into  the  wire,  so  when  they  brought  him  in,  alive, 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  455 

they  had  to  cut  him  loose.  Shoot  me,  Harry.  For  Christ  sa\e  shoot  me. 
They  had  had  an  argument  one  time  about  our  Lord  never  sending 
you  anything  you  could  not  bear  and  some  ones  theory  had  been  that 
meant  that  at  a  certain  time  the  pain  passed  you  out  automatically. 
But  he  had  always  remembered  Williamson,  that  night.  Nothing 
passed  out  Williamson  until  he  gave  him  all  his  morphine  tablets  that 
he  had  always  saved  to  use  himself  and  then  they  did  not  wor\  right 
away. 

Still  this  now,  that  he  had,  was  very  easy;  and  if  it  was  no  worse 
as  it  went  on  there  was  nothing  to  worry  about.  Except  that  he  would 
rather  be  in  better  company. 

He  thought  a  little  about  the  company  that  he  would  like  to  have. 

No,  he  thought,  when  everything  you  do,  you  do  too  long,  and  do 
too  late,  you  can't  expect  to  find  the  people  still  there.  The  people 
all  are  gone.  The  party's  over  and  you  are  with  your  hostess  now. 

I'm  getting  as  bored  with  dying  as  with  everything  else,  he  thought. 

"It's  a  bore,"  he  said  out  loud. 

"What  is,  my  dear?" 

"Anything  you  do  too  bloody  long." 

He  looked  at  her  face  between  him  and  the  fire.  She  was  leaning 
back  in  the  chair  and  the  firelight  shone  on  her  pleasantly  lined  face 
and  he  could  see  that  she  was  sleepy.  He  heard  the  hyena  make  a 
noise  just  outside  the  range  of  the  fire. 

"I've  been  writing,"  he  said.  "But  I  got  tired." 

"Do  you  think  you  will  be  able  to  sleep?" 

"Pretty  sure.  Why  don't  you  turn  in?" 

"I  like  to  sit  here  with  you." 

"Do  you  feel  anything  strange?"  he  asked  her. 

"No.  Just  a  little  sleepy." 

"I  do,"  he  said. 

He  had  just  felt  death  come  by  again. 

"You  know  the  only  thing  I've  never  lost  is  curiosity,"  he  said  to  her. 

"You've  never  lost  anything.  You're  the  most  complete  man  I've 
ever  known." 


~\ 


456  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Christ,"  he  said.  "How  little  a  woman  knows.  What  is  that?  Your 
intuition?" 

Because,  just  then,  death  had  come  and  rested  its  head  on  the  foot 
of  the  cot  and  he  could  smell  its  breath. 

"Never  believe  any  of  that  about  a  scythe  and  a  skull,"  he  told  her. 
"It  can  be  two  bicycle  policemen  as  easily,  or  be  a  bird.  Or  it  can 
have  a  wide  snout  like  a  hyena." 

It  had  moved  up  on  him  now,  but  it  had  no  shape  any  more.  It 
simply  occupied  space. 

"Tell  it  to  go  away." 

It  did  not  go  away  but  moved  a  little  closer. 

"You've  got  a  hell  of  a  breath,"  he  told  it.  "You  stinking  bastard." 

It  moved  up  closer  to  him  still  and  now  he  could  not  speak  to  it, 
and  when  it  saw  he  could  not  speak  it  came  a  little  closer,  and  now 
he  tried  to  send  it  away  without  speaking,  but  it  moved  in  on  him 
so  its  weight  was  all  upon  his  chest,  and  while  it  crouched  there  and 
he  could  not  move,  or  speak,  he  heard  the  woman  say,  "Bwana  is 
asleep  now.  Take  the  cot  up  very  gently  and  carry  it  into  the  tent." 

He  could  not  speak  to  tell  her  to  make  it  go  away  and  it  crouched 
now,  heavier,  so  he  could  not  breathe.  And  then,  while  they  lifted  the 
cot,  suddenly  it  was  all  right  and  the  weight  went  from  his  chest. 

It  was  morning  and  had  been  morning  for  some  time  and  he 
heard  the  plane.  It  showed  very  tiny  and  then  made  a  wide  circle 
and  the  boys  ran  out  and  lit  the  fires,  using  kerosene,  and  piled  on 
grass  so  there  were  two  big  smudges  at  each  end  of  the  level  place 
and  the  morning  breeze  blew  them  toward  the  camp  and  the  plane 
circled  twice  more,  low  this  time,  and  then  glided  down  and  levelled 
off  and  landed  smoothly  and,  coming  walking  toward  him,  was  old 
Compton  in  slacks,  a  tweed  jacket  and  a  brown  felt  hat. 

"What's  the  matter,  old  cock?"  Compton  said. 

"Bad  leg,"  he  told  him.  "Will  you  have  some  breakfast?" 

"Thanks.  I'll  just  have  some  tea.  It's  the  Puss  Moth  you  know.  I 
won't  be  able  to  take  the  Memsahib.  There's  only  room  for  one.  Your 
lorry  is  on  the  way." 


ERNEST  HEMINGWAY  457 

Helen  had  taken  Compton  aside  and  was  speaking  to  him.  Comp- 
ton  came  back  more  cheery  than  ever. 

"We'll  get  you  right  in,"  he  said.  "I'll  be  back  for  the  Mem.  Now 
I'm  afraid  I'll  have  to  stop  at  Arusha  to  refuel.  We'd  better  get  going." 

"What  about  the  tea?" 

"I  don't  really  care  about  it  you  know." 

The  boys  had  picked  up  the  cot  and  carried  it  around  the  green 
tents  and  down  along  the  rock  and  out  onto  the  plain  and  along 
past  the  smudges  that  were  burning  brightly  now,  the  grass  all  con- 
sumed, and  the  wind  fanning  the  fire,  to  the  little  plane.  It  was  diffi- 
cult getting  him  in,  but  once  in  he  lay  back  in  the  leather  seat,  and 
the  leg  was  stuck  straight  out  to  one  side  of  the  seat,  where  Compton 
sat.  Compton  started  the  motor  and  got  in.  He  waved  to  Helen  and 
to  the  boys  and,  as  the  clatter  moved  into  the  old  familiar  roar,  they 
swung  around  with  Compie  watching  for  wart-hog  holes  and  roared, 
bumping,  along  the  stretch  between  the  fires  and  with  the  last  bump 
rose  and  he  saw  them  all  standing  below,  waving,  and  the  camp  beside 
the  hill,  flattening  now,  and  the  plain  spreading,  clumps  of  trees,  and 
the  bush  flattening,  while  the  game  trails  ran  now  smoothly  to  the  dry 
waterholes,  and  there  was  a  new  water  that  he  had  never  known  of. 
The  zebra,  small  rounded  backs  now,  and  the  wildebeeste,  big-headed 
dots  seeming  to  climb  as  they  moved  in  long  fingers  across  the  plain, 
now  scattering  as  the  shadow  came  toward  them,  they  were  tiny  now, 
and  the  movement  had  no  gallop,  and  the  plain  was  as  far  as  you  could 
see,  gray-yellow  now  and  ahead  old  Compie's  tweed  back  and  the 
brown  felt  hat.  Then  they  were  over  the  first  hills  and  the  wildebeeste 
were  trailing  up  them,  and  then  they  were  over  mountains  with  sud- 
den depths  of  green-rising  forest  and  the  solid  bamboo  slopes,  and 
then  the  heavy  forest  again,  sculptured  into  peaks  and  hollows  until 
they  crossed,  and  hills  sloped  down  and  then  another  plain,  hot  now, 
and  purple  brown,  bumpy  with  heat  and  Compie  looking  back  to 
see  how  he  was  riding.  Then  there  were  other  mountains  dark  ahead. 

And  then  instead  of  going  on  to  Arusha  they  turned  left,  he  evi- 
dently figured  that  they  had  the  gas,  and  looking  down  he  saw  a  pink 
sifting  cloud,  moving  over  the  ground,  and  in  the  air,  like  the  first 


458  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

snow  in  a  blizzard,  that  comes  from  nowhere,  and  he  knew  the  locusts 
were  coming  up  from  the  South.  Then  they  began  to  climb  and  they 
were  going  to  the  East  it  seemed,  and  then  it  darkened  and  they  were 
in  a  storm,  the  rain  so  thick  it  seemed  like  flying  through  a  waterfall, 
and  then  they  were  out  and  Compie  turned  his  head  and  grinned  and 
pointed  and  there,  ahead,  all  he  could  see,  as  wide  as  all  the  world, 
great,  high,  and  unbelievably  white  in  the  sun,  was  the  square  top  of 
Kilimanjaro.  And  then  he  knew  that  there  was  where  he  was  going. 

Just  then  the  hyena  stopped  whimpering  in  the  night  and  started 
to  make  a  strange,  human,  almost  crying  sound.  The  woman  heard  it 
and  stirred  uneasily.  She  did  not  wake.  In  her  dream  she  was  at  the 
house  on  Long  Island  and  it  was  the  night  before  her  daughter's 
debut.  Somehow  her  father  was  there  and  he  had  been  very  rude. 
Then  the  noise  the  hyena  made  was  so  loud  she  woke  and  for  a 
moment  she  did  not  know  where  she  was  and  she  was  very  afraid. 
Then  she  took  the  flashlight  and  shone  it  on  the  other  cot  that  they 
had  carried  in  after  Harry  had  gone  to  sleep.  She  could  see  his  bulk 
under  the  mosquito  bar  but  somehow  he  had  gotten  his  leg  out  and 
it  hung  down  alongside  the  cot.  The  dressings  had  all  come  down  and 
she  could  not  look  at  it. 

"Molo,"  she  called,  "Molo!  Molo!" 

Then  she  said,  "Harry,  Harry!"  Then  her  voice  rising,  "Harry! 
Please,  Oh  Harry!" 

There  was  no  answer  and  she  could  not  hear  him  breathing. 

Outside  the  tent  the  hyena  made  the  same  strange  noise  that  had 
awakened  her.  But  she  did  not  hear  him  for  the  beating  of  her  heart. 


JOHN   STEINBECK 


COMMENTARY 


J  can't  understand  why  some  reviewers  persist  in  classing  John  Stein- 
beck as  a  hard-boiled  writer.  I  guess  it  must  be  because  he  uses  direct 
English  and  because  so  many  of  his  characters  are  socially  submerged 
—as  if  itinerant  workers  and  tramps  were  necessarily  more  hard- 
boiled  than  other  people.  Actually,  if  resistance  to  emotion  is  the 
true  mark  of  the  hard-boiled  writer,  Steinbeck  is  soft-boiled,  and  no 
bad  thing  either.  Far  from  being  tough,  he  is  exceptionally  sensitive, 
not  merely  to  the  cruder,  or  what  one  might  call  large-muscle,  emo- 
tions but  to  those  subtleties  of  feeling  that  are  the  stock  in  trade  of 
writers  like  Chekhov,  D.  H.  Lawrence,  and  Katherine  Mansfield. 

I  know  of  no  better  proof  of  this  than  'The  Red  Pony,"  a  heart- 
breakingly  true  picture  of  boyhood.  The  Grapes  of  Wrath  excepted, 
it  is  the  finest  writing  Steinbeck  has  so  far  done.  To  my  mind  it  is  far 
superior  to  the  overpublicized  Of  Mice  and  Men,  which  is  one  of 
those  stories  that  hit  you  in  the  solar  plexus  the  first  time  you  read 
it  and  makes  mighty  little  impression  the  second  time.  Of  Mice 
and  Men  betrays  Steinbeck's  one  major  fault— a  weakness  for  theatri- 
cal contrivance.  You  will  End  the  weakness  again  in  that  tawdry  end- 
ing of  The  Grapes  of  Wrath,  when  the  young  girl,  who  has  only  a 
day  or  two  before  given  birth  to  a  dead  child,  offers  the  milk  of  her 
breasts  to  a  starving  man. 

But  in  "The  Red  Pony"  there  is  no  hint  of  contrivance.  All  is 
warm,  intimate,  unworked  over.  The  story  tells  itself;  the  emotion 
comes  through  as  if  there  were  no  art  medium  between  you  and  the 
mind  of  little  Jody.  It  says  a  great  deal,  this  tale,  about  life  and  death 
—about  forgotten  elementals,  such  as  the  old  paisano's  dignified 
assumption  that  he  has  a  right  to  die  in  the  place  where  he  was 
born,  about  the  relationship  that  may  exist  between  a  human  being 
and  a  loved  animal,  about  fathers  and  sons,  about  small  boys  and 
what's  in  their  heads  and  their  capacity  for  joy  and  for  suffering.  It 

459 


460  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

says  all  this  very  quietly  and  indirectly,  and  it  says  it  in  a  way  that 
stays  with  you. 

The  two  brief  excerpts  from  The  Grapes  of  Wrath— "Dust"  and 
"The  Turtle"— will  he  familiar  to  all  readers  oi  the  hook.  They  are 
the  contemporary  equivalent,  lean,  intense,  of  the  old-fashioned 
"purple  patch." 


Jk. 


The  Red  Pony 


BY 


JOHN  STEINBECK 
I.  THE  GIFT 


At  daybreak  Billy  Buck  emerged  from  the  bunkhouse  and  stood  for  a 
moment  on  the  porch  looking  up  at  the  sky.  He  was  a  broad,  bandy- 
legged little  man  with  a  walrus  mustache,  with  square  hands,  purled 
and  muscled  on  the  palms.  His  eyes  were  a  contemplative,  watery  grey 
and  the  hair  which  protruded  from  under  his  Stetson  hat  was  spiky 
and  weathered.  Billy  was  still  stuffing  his  shirt  into  his  blue  jeans  as  he 
stood  on  the  porch.  He  unbuckled  his  belt  and  tightened  it  again.  The 
belt  showed,  by  the  worn  shiny  places  opposite  each  hole,  the  gradual 
increase  of  Billy's  middle  over  a  period  of  years.  When  he  had  seen  to 
the  weather,  Billy  cleared  each  nostril  by  holding  its  mate  closed  with 
his  forefinger  and  blowing  fiercely.  Then  he  walked  down  to  the  barn, 
rubbing  his  hands  together.  He  curried  and  brushed  two  saddle  horses 
in  the  stalls,  talking  quietly  to  them  all  the  time;  and  he  had  hardly 
finished  when  the  iron  triangle  started  ringing  at  the  ranch  house. 
Billy  stuck  the  brush  and  currycomb  together  and  laid  them  on  the 
rail,  and  went  up  to  breakfast.  His  action  had  been  so  deliberate  and 
yet  so  wasteless  of  time  that  he  came  to  the  house  while  Mrs.  Tiflin 
was  still  ringing  the  triangle.  She  nodded  her  grey  head  to  him  and 
withdrew  into  the  kitchen.  Billy  Buck  sat  down  on  the  steps,  because 
he  was  a  cow-hand,  and  it  wouldn't  be  fitting  that  he  should  go  first 
into  the  dining-room.  He  heard  Mr.  Tiflin  in  the  house,  stamping  his 
feet  into  his  boots. 

The  high  jangling  note  of  the  triangle  put  the  boy  Jody  in  motion. 
He  was  only  a  little  boy,  ten  years  old,  with  hair  like  dusty  yellow 

461 


462  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

grass  and  with  shy  polite  grey  eyes,  and  with  a  mouth  that  worked 
when  he  thought.  The  triangle  picked  him  up  out  of  sleep.  It  didn't 
occur  to  him  to  disobey  the  harsh  note.  He  never  had :  no  one  he  knew 
ever  had.  He  brushed  the  tangled  hair  out  of  his  eyes  and  skinned  his 
nightgown  ofT.  In  a  moment  he  was  dressed — blue  chambray  shirt  and 
overalls.  It  was  late  in  the  summer,  so  of  course  there  were  no  shoes 
to  bother  with.  In  the  kitchen  he  waited  until  his  mother  got  from  in 
front  of  the  sink  and  went  back  to  the  stove.  Then  he  washed  himself 
and  brushed  back  his  wet  hair  with  his  fingers.  His  mother  turned 
sharply  on  him  as  he  left  the  sink.  Jody  looked  shyly  away. 

"I've  got  to  cut  your  hair  before  long,"  his  mother  said.  "Breakfast's 
on  the  table.  Go  on  in,  so  Billy  can  come." 

Jody  sat  at  the  long  table  which  was  covered  with  white  oilcloth 
washed  through  to  the  fabric  in  some  places.  The  fried  eggs  lay  in 
rows  on  their  platter.  Jody  took  three  eggs  on  his  plate  and  followed 
with  three  thick  slices  of  crisp  bacon.  He  carefully  scraped  a  spot  of 
blood  from  one  of  the  egg  yolks. 

Billy  Buck  clumped  in.  "That  won't  hurt  you,"  Billy  explained. 
"That's  only  a  sign  the  rooster  leaves." 

Jody's  tall  stern  father  came  in  then  and  Jody  knew  from  the  noise 
on  the  floor  that  he  was  wearing  boots,  but  he  looked  under  the  table 
anyway,  to  make  sure.  His  father  turned  oft  the  oil  lamp  over  the 
table,  for  plenty  of  morning  light  now  came  through  the  windows. 

Jody  did  not  ask  where  his  father  and  Billy  Buck  were  riding  that 
day,  but  he  wished  he  might  go  along.  His  father  was  a  disciplinarian. 
Jody  obeyed  him  in  everything  without  questions  of  any  kind.  Now, 
Carl  Tiflin  sat  down  and  reached  for  the  egg  platter. 

"Got  the  cows  ready  to  go,  Billy?"  he  asked. 

"In  the  lower  corral,"  Billy  said.  "I  could  just  as  well  take  them  in 
alone." 

"Sure  you  could.  But  a  man  needs  company.  Besides  your  throat 
gets  pretty  dry."  Carl  Tiflin  was  jovial  this  morning. 

Jody's  mother  put  her  head  in  the  door.  "What  time  do  you  think  to 
be  back,  Carl?" 

"I  can't  tell.  I've  got  to  see  some  men  in  Salinas.  Might  be  gone  till 
dark." 


JOHN   STEINBECK  463 

The  eggs  and  coffee  and  big  biscuits  disappeared  rapidly.  Jody  fol- 
lowed the  two  men  out  of  the  house.  He  watched  them  mount  their 
horses  and  drive  six  old  milk  cows  out  of  the  corral  and  start  over  the 
hill  toward  Salinas.  They  were  going  to  sell  the  old  cows  to  the 
butcher. 

When  they  had  disappeared  over  the  crown  of  the  ridge  Jody  walked 
up  the  hill  in  back  of  the  house.  The  dogs  trotted  around  the  house 
corner  hunching  their  shoulders  and  grinning  horribly  with  pleasure. 
Jody  patted  their  heads — Doubletree  Mutt  with  the  big  thick  tail  and 
yellow  eyes,  and  Smasher,  the  shepherd,  who  had  killed  a  coyote  and 
lost  an  ear  in  doing  it.  Smasher's  one  good  ear  stood  up  higher  than  a 
collie's  ear  should.  Billy  Buck  said  that  always  happened.  After  the 
frenzied  greeting  the  dogs  lowered  their  noses  to  the  ground  in  a  busi- 
ness-like way  and  went  ahead,  looking  back  now  and  then  to  make 
sure  that  the  boy  was  coming.  They  walked  up  through  the  chicken 
yard  and  saw  the  quail  eating  with  the  chickens.  Smasher  chased  the 
chickens  a  little  to  keep  in  practice  in  case  there  should  ever  be  sheep 
to  herd.  Jody  continued  on  through  the  large  vegetable  patch  where 
the  green  corn  was  higher  than  his  head.  The  cow-pumpkins  were 
green  and  small  yet.  He  went  on  to  the  sagebrush  line  where  the  cold 
spring  ran  out  of  its  pipe  and  fell  into  a  round  wooden  tub.  He  leaned 
over  and  drank  close  to  the  green  mossy  wood  where  the  water  tasted 
best.  Then  he  turned  and  looked  back  on  the  ranch,  on  the  low,  white- 
washed house  girded  with  red  geraniums,  and  on  the  long  bunkhouse 
by  the  cypress  tree  where  Billy  Buck  lived  alone.  Jody  could  see  the 
great  black  kettle  under  the  cypress  tree.  That  was  where  the  pigs  were 
scalded.  The  sun  was  coming  over  the  ridge  now,  glaring  on  the  white- 
wash of  the  houses  and  barns,  making  the  wet  grass  blaze  softly.  Be- 
hind him,  in  the  tall  sagebrush,  the  birds  were  scampering  on  the 
ground,  making  a  great  noise  among  the  dry  leaves;  the  squirrels 
piped  shrilly  on  the  side-hills.  Jody  looked  along  at  the  farm  buildings. 
He  felt  an  uncertainty  in  the  air,  a  feeling  of  change  and  of  loss  and  of 
the  gain  of  new  and  unfamiliar  things.  Over  the  hillside  two  big  black 
buzzards  sailed  low  to  the  ground  and  their  shadows  slipped  smoothly 
and  quickly  ahead  of  them.  Some  animal  had  died  in  the  vicinity.  Jody 
knew  it.  It  might  be  a  cow  or  it  might  be  the  remains  of  a  rabbit.  The 


464  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

buzzards  overlooked  nothing.  Jody  hated  them  as  all  decent  things 
hate  them,  but  they  could  not  be  hurt  because  they  made  away  with 
carrion. 

After  a  while  the  boy  sauntered  down  hill  again.  The  dogs  had 
long  ago  given  him  up  and  gone  into  the  brush  to  do  things  in  their 
own  way.  Back  through  the  vegetable  garden  he  went,  and  he  paused 
for  a  moment  to  smash  a  green  muskmelon  with  his  heel,  but  he  was 
not  happy  about  it.  It  was  a  bad  thing  to  do,  he  knew  perfectly  well. 
He  kicked  dirt  over  the  ruined  melon  to  conceal  it. 

Back  at  the  house  his  mother  bent  over  his  rough  hands,  inspecting 
his  fingers  and  nails.  It  did  little  good  to  start  him  clean  to  school  for 
too  many  things  could  happen  on  the  way.  She  sighed  over  the  black 
cracks  in  his  fingers,  and  then  gave  him  his  books  and  his  lunch  and 
started  him  on  the  mile  walk  to  school.  She  noticed  that  his  mouth  was 
working  a  good  deal  this  morning. 

Jody  started  his  journey.  He  filled  his  pockets  with  little  pieces  of 
white  quartz  that  lay  in  the  road,  and  every  so  often  he  took  a  shot  at 
a  bird  or  at  some  rabbit  that  had  stayed  sunning  itself  in  the  road  too 
long.  At  the  crossroads  over  the  bridge  he  met  two  friends  and  the 
three  of  them  walked  to  school  together,  making  ridiculous  strides 
and  being  rather  silly.  School  had  just  opened  two  weeks  before.  There 
was  still  a  spirit  of  revolt  among  the  pupils. 

It  was  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  when  Jody  topped  the  hill  and 
looked  down  on  the  ranch  again.  He  looked  for  the  saddle  horses,  but 
the  corral  was  empty.  His  father  was  not  back  yet.  He  went  slowly, 
then,  toward  the  afternoon  chores.  At  the  ranch  house,  he  found  his 
mother  sitting  on  the  porch,  mending  socks. 

"There's  two  doughnuts  in  the  kitchen  for  you,"  she  said.  Jody  slid 
to  the  kitchen,  and  returned  with  half  of  one  of  the  doughnuts  already 
eaten  and  his  mouth  full.  His  mother  asked  him  what  he  had  learned 
in  school  that  day,  but  she  didn't  listen  to  his  doughnut-muffled  an- 
swer. She  interrupted,  "Jody,  tonight  see  you  fill  the  wood-box  clear 
full.  Last  night  you  crossed  the  sticks  and  it  wasn't  only  about  half  full. 
Lay  the  sticks  flat  tonight.  And  Jody,  some  of  the  hens  are  hiding  eggs, 
or  else  the  dogs  are  eating  them.  Look  about  in  the  grass  and  see  if 
you  can  find  any  nests." 


JOHN  STEINBECK  465 

Jody,  still  eating,  went  out  and  did  his  chores.  He  saw  the  quail 
come  down  to  eat  with  the  chickens  when  he  threw  out  the  grain.  For 
some  reason  his  father  was  proud  to  have  them  come.  He  never  al- 
lowed any  shooting  near  the  house  for  fear  the  quail  might  go  away. 

When  the  wood-box  was  full,  Jody  took  his  twenty-two  rifle  up  to 
the  cold  spring  at  the  brush  line.  He  drank  again  and  then  aimed  the 
gun  at  all  manner  of  things,  at  rocks,  at  birds  on  the  wing,  at  the  big 
black  pig  kettle  under  the  cypress  tree,  but  he  didn't  shoot  for  he  had 
no  cartridges  and  wouldn't  have  until  he  was  twelve.  If  his  father  had 
seen  him  aim  the  rifle  in  the  direction  of  the  house  he  would  have  put 
the  cartridges  off  another  year.  Jody  remembered  this  and  did  not 
point  the  rifle  down  the  hill  again.  Two  years  was  enough  to  wait  for 
cartridges.  Nearly  all  of  his  father's  presents  were  given  with  reserva- 
tions which  hampered  their  value  somewhat.  It  was  good  discipline. 

The  supper  waited  until  dark  for  his  father  to  return.  When  at  last 
he  came  in  with  Billy  Buck,  Jody  could  smell  the  delicious  brandy  on 
their  breaths.  Inwardly  he  rejoiced,  for  his  father  sometimes  talked  to 
him  when  he  smelled  of  brandy,  sometimes  even  told  things  he  had 
done  in  the  wild  days  when  he  was  a  boy. 

After  supper,  Jody  sat  by  the  fireplace  and  his  shy  polite  eyes  sought 
the  room  corners,  and  he  waited  for  his  father  to  tell  what  it  was  he 
contained,  for  Jody  knew  he  had  news  of  some  sort.  But  he  was  dis- 
appointed. His  father  pointed  a  stern  finger  at  him. 

"You'd  better  go  to  bed,  Jody.  I'm  going  to  need  you  in  the  morn- 

ing-" 

That  wasn't  so  bad.  Jody  liked  to  do  the  things  he  had  to  do  as  long 
as  they  weren't  routine  things.  He  looked  at  the  floor  and  his  mouth 
worked  out  a  question  before  he  spoke  it.  "What  are  we  going  to  do 
in  the  morning,  kill  a  pig?"  he  asked  softly. 

"Never  you  mind.  You  better  get  to  bed." 

When  the  door  was  closed  behind  him,  Jody  heard  his  father  and 
Billy  Buck  chuckling  and  he  knew  it  was  a  joke  of  some  kind. 
And  later,  when  he  lay  in  bed,  trying  to  make  words  out  of  the  mur- 
murs in  the  other  room,  he  heard  his  father  protest,  "But,  Ruth,  I 
didn't  give  much  for  him." 

Jody  heard  the  hoot-owls  hunting  mice  down  by  the  barn,  and  he 


466  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

heard  a  fruit  tree  limb  tap-tapping  against  the  house.  A  cow  was  low- 
ing when  he  went  to  sleep. 

When  the  triangle  sounded  in  the  morning,  Jody  dressed  more 
quickly  even  than  usual.  In  the  kitchen,  while  he  washed  his  face  and 
combed  back  his  hair,  his  mother  addressed  him  irritably.  "Don't  you 
go  out  until  you  get  a  good  breakfast  in  you." 

He  went  into  the  dining-room  and  sat  at  the  long  white  table.  He 
took  a  steaming  hotcake  from  the  platter,  arranged  two  fried  eggs  on 
it,  covered  them  with  another  hotcake  and  squashed  the  whole  thing 
with  his  fork. 

His  father  and  Billy  Buck  came  in.  Jody  knew  from  the  sound  on 
the  floer  that  both  of  them  were  wearing  flat-heeled  shoes,  but  he 
peered  under  the  table  to  make  sure.  His  father  turned  off  the  oil  lamp, 
for  the  day  had  arrived,  and  he  looked  stern  and  disciplinary,  but  Billy 
Buck  didn't  look  at  Jody  at  all.  He  avoided  the  shy  questioning  eyes 
of  the  boy  and  soaked  a  whole  piece  of  toast  in  his  coffee. 

Carl  Tiflin  said  crossly,  "You  come  with  us  after  breakfast!" 

Jody  had  trouble  with  his  food  then,  for  he  felt  a  kind  of  doom  in 
the  air.  After  Billy  had  tilted  his  saucer  and  drained  the  coffee  which 
had  slopped  into  it,  and  had  wiped  his  hands  on  his  jeans,  the  two  men 
stood  up  from  the  table  and  went  out  into  the  morning  light  together, 
and  Jody  respectfully  followed  a  little  behind  them.  He  tried  to  keep 
his  mind  from  running  ahead,  tried  to  keep  it  absolutely  motionless. 

His  mother  called,  "Carl!  Don't  you  let  it  keep  him.  from  school." 

They  marched  past  the  cypress,  where  a  singletree  hung  from  a  limb 
to  butcher  the  pigs  on,  and  past  the  black  iron  kettle,  so  it  was  not  a 
pig  killing.  The  sun  shone  over  the  hill  and  threw  long,  dark  shadows 
of  the  trees  and  buildings.  They  crossed  a  stubble-field  to  shortcut  to 
the  barn.  Jody's  father  unhooked  the  door  and  they  went  in.  They.had 
been  walking  toward  the  sun  on  the  way  down.  The  barn  was  black  as 
night  in  contrast  and  warm  from  the  hay  and  from  the  beasts.  Jody's 
father  moved  over  toward  the  one  box  stall.  "Come  here!"  he  ordered. 
Jody  could  begin  to  see  things  now.  He  looked  into  the  box  stall  and 
then  stepped  back  quickly. 

A  red  pony  colt  was  looking  at  him  out  of  the  stall.  Its  tense  ears 


JOHN  STEINBECK  467 

were  forward  and  a  light  of  disobedience  was  in  its  eyes.  Its  coat  was 
rough  and  thick  as  an  airedale's  fur  and  its  mane  was  long  and  tan- 
gled. Jody's  throat  collapsed  in  on  itself  and  cut  his  breath  short. 

"He  needs  a  good  currying,"  his  father  said,  "and  if  I  ever  hear  of 
you  not  feeding  him  or  leaving  his  stall  dirty,  I'll  sell  him  off  in  a 
minute." 

Jody  couldn't  bear  to  look  at  the  pony's  eyes  any  more.  He  gazed 
down  at  his  hands  for  a  moment,  and  he  asked  very  shyly,  "Mine?"  No 
one  answered  him.  He  put  his  hand  out  toward  the  pony.  Its  grey 
nose  came  close,  sniffing  loudly,  and  then  the  lips  drew  back  and  the 
strong  teeth  closed  on  Jody's  fingers.  The  pony  shook  its  head  up  and 
down  and  seemed  to  laugh  with  amusement.  Jody  regarded  his  bruised 
lingers.  "Well,"  he  said  with  pride — "Well,  I  guess  he  can  bite  all 
right."  The  two  men  laughed,  somewhat  in  relief.  Carl  Tiflin  went  out 
of  the  barn  and  walked  up  a  side-hill  to  be  by  himself,  for  he  was  em- 
barrassed, but  Billy  Buck  stayed.  It  was  easier  to  talk  to  Billy  Buck. 
Jody  asked  again — "Mine?" 

Billy  became  professional  in  tone.  "Sure!  That  is,  if  you  look  out  for 
him  and  break  him  right.  I'll  show  you  how.  He's  just  a  colt.  You  can't 
ride  him  for  some  time." 

Jody  put  out  his  bruised  hand  again,  and  this  time  the  red  pony  let 
his  nose  be  rubbed.  "I  ought  to  have  a  carrot,"  Jody  said.  "Where'd  we 
get  him,  Billy?" 

"Bought  him  at  a  sheriff's  auction,"  Billy  explained.  "A  show  went 
broke  in  Salinas  and  had  debts.  The  sheriff  was  selling  off  their  stuff." 

The  pony  stretched  out  his  nose  and  shook  the  forelock  from  his 
wild  eyes.  Jody  stroked  the  nose  a  little.  He  said  softly,  "There  isn't  a 
-saddle?" 

Billy  Buck  laughed.  "I'd  forgot.  Come  along." 

In  the  harness  room  he  lifted  down  a  little  saddle  of  red  morocco 
leather.  "It's  just  a  show  saddle,"  Billy  Buck  said  disparagingly.  "It 
isn't  practical  for  the  brush,  but  it  was  cheap  at  the  sale." 

Jody  couldn't  trust  himself  to  look  at  the  saddle  either,  and  he 
couldn't  speak  at  all.  He  brushed  the  shining  red  leather  with  his  fin- 
gertips, and  after  a  long  time  he  said,  "It'll  look  pretty  on  him  though." 
He  thought  of  the  grandest  and  prettiest  things  he  knew.  "If  he  hasn't 


468  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

a  name  already,  I  think  I'll  call  him  Gabilan  Mountains,"  he  said. 

Billy  Buck  knew  how  he  felt.  "It's  a  pretty  long  name.  Why  don't 
you  just  call  him  Gabilan?  That  means  hawk.  That  would  be  a  fine 
name  for  him."  Billy  felt  glad.  "If  you  will  collect  tail  hair,  I  might  be 
able  to  make  a  hair  rope  for  you  sometime.  You  could  use  it  for  a 
hackamore." 

Jody  wanted  to  go  back  to  the  box  stall.  "Could  I  lead  him  to  school, 
do  you  think — to  show  the  kids?" 

But  Billy  shook  his  head.  "He's  not  even  halter-broke  yet.  We  had 
a  time  getting  him  here.  Had  to  almost  drag  him.  You  better  be  start- 
ing for  school  though." 

"I'll  bring  the  kids  to  see  him  here  this  afternoon,"  Jody  said. 

Six  boys  came  over  the  hill  half  an  hour  early  that  afternoon,  run- 
ning hard,  their  heads  down,  their  forearms  working,  their  breath 
whistling.  They  swept  by  the  house  and  cut  across  the  stubble-field  to 
the  barn.  And  then  they  stood  self-consciously  before  the  pony,  and 
then  they  looked  at  Jody  with  eyes  in  which  there  was  a  new  admira- 
tion and  a  new  respect.  Before  today  Jody  had  been  a  boy,  dressed  in 
overalls  and  a  blue  shirt — quieter  than  most,  even  suspected  of  being  a 
little  cowardly.  And  now  he  was  different.  Out  of  a  thousand  centuries 
they  drew  the  ancient  admiration  of  the  footman  for  the  horseman. 
They  knew  instinctively  that  a  man  on  a  horse  is  spiritually  as  well  as 
physically  bigger  than  a  man  on  foot.  They  knew  that  Jody  had  been 
miraculously  lifted  out  of  equality  with  them,  and  had  been  placed 
over  them.  Gabilan  put  his  head  out  of  the  stall  and  sniffed  them. 

"Why'n't  you  ride  him?"  the  boys  cried.  "Why'n't  you  braid  his  tail 
with  ribbons  like  in  the  fair?"  "When  you  going  to  ride  him?" 

Jody's  courage  was  up.  He  too  felt  the  superiority  of  the  horseman. 
"He's  not  old  enough.  Nobody  can  ride  him  for  a  long  time.  I'm  going 
to  train  him  on  the  long  halter.  Billy  Buck  is  going  to  show  me  how." 

"Well,  can't  we  even  lead  him  around  a  little?" 

"He  isn't  even  halter-broke,"  Jody  said.  He  wanted  to  be  complctelv 
alone  when  he  took  the  pony  out  the  first  time.  "Come  and  see  the 
saddle." 

They  were  speechless  at  the  red  morocco  saddle,  completely  shocked 


JOHN  STEINBECK  469 

out  of  comment.  "It  isn't  much  use  in  the  brush,"  Jody  explained.  "It'll 
look  pretty  on  him  though.  Maybe  I'll  ride  bareback  when  I  go  into 
the  brush." 

"How  you  going  to  rope  a  cow  without  a  saddle  horn?" 

"Maybe  I'll  get  another  saddle  for  every  day.  My  father  might  want 
me  to  help  him  with  the  stock."  He  let  them  feel  the  red  saddle,  and 
showed  them  the  brass  chain  throat-latch  on  the  bridle  and  the  big 
brass  buttons  at  each  temple  where  the  headstall  and  brow  band 
crossed.  The  whole  thing  was  too  wonderful.  They  had  to  go  away 
after  a  little  while,  and  each  boy,  in  his  mind,  searched  among  his  pos- 
sessions for  a  bribe  worthy  of  offering  in  return  for  a  ride  on  the  red 
pony  when  the  time  should  come. 

Jody  was  glad  when  they  had  gone.  He  took  brush  and  currycomb 
from  the  wall,  took  down  the  barrier  of  the  box  stall  and  stepped  cau- 
tiously in.  The  pony's  eyes  glittered,  and  he  edged  around  into  kicking 
position.  But  Jody  touched  him  on  the  shoulder  and  rubbed  his  high 
arched  neck  as  he  had  always  seen  Billy  Buck  do,  and  he  crooned, 
"So-o-o  Boy,"  in  a  deep  voice.  The  pony  gradually  relaxed  his  tenseness. 
Jody  curried  and  brushed  until  a  pile  of  dead  hair  lay  in  the  stall  and 
until  the  pony's  coat  had  taken  on  a  deep  red  shine.  Each  time  he  fin- 
ished he  thought  it  might  have  been  done  better.  He  braided  the  mane 
into  a  dozen  little  pigtails,  and  he  braided  the  forelock,  and  then  he 
undid  them  and  brushed  the  hair  out  straight  again. 

Jody  did  not  hear  his  mother  enter  the  barn.  She  was  angry  when 
she  came,  but  when  she  looked  in  at  the  pony  and  at  Jody  working 
over  him,  she  felt  a  curious  pride  rise  up  in  her.  "Have  you  forgot 
the  wood-box?"  she  asked  gently.  "It's  not  far  of?  from  dark  and 
there's  not  a  stick  of  wood  in  the  house,  and  the  chickens  aren't  fed." 

Jody  quickly  put  up  his  tools.  "I  forgot,  ma'am." 

"Well,  after  this  do  your  chores  first.  Then  you  won't  forget.  I  ex- 
pect you'll  forget  lots  of  things  now  if  I  don't  keep  an  eye  on  you." 

"Can  I  have  carrots  from  the  garden  for  him,  ma'am?" 

She  had  to  think  about  that.  "Oh — I  guess  so,  if  you  only  take  the 
big  tough  ones." 

"Carrots  keep  the  coat  good,"  he  said,  and  again  she  felt  the  curious 
rush  of  pride. 


470  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Jody  never  waited  for  the  triangle  to  get  him  out  of  bed  after  the 
coming  of  the  pony.  It  became  his  habit  to  creep  out  of  bed  even  be- 
fore his  mother  was  awake,  to  slip  into  his  clothes  and  to  go  quietly 
down  to  the  barn  to  see  Gabilan.  In  the  grey  quiet  mornings  when  the 
land  and  the  brush  and  the  houses  and  the  trees  were  silver-grey  and 
black  like  a  photograph  negative,  he  stole  toward  the  barn,  past  the 
sleeping  stones  and  the  sleeping  cypress  tree.  The  turkeys,  roosting  in 
the  tree  out  of  coyotes'  reach,  clicked  drowsily.  The  fields  glowed  with 
a  grey  frost-like  light  and  in  the  dew  the  tracks  of  rabbits  and  of  field 
mice  stood  out  sharply.  The  good  dogs  came  stiffly  out  of  their  little 
houses,  hackles  up  and  deep  growls  in  their  throats.  Then  they  caught 
Jody's  scent,  and  their  stiff  tails  rose  up  and  waved  a  greeting — Double- 
tree Mutt  with  the  big  thick  tail,  and  Smasher,  the  incipient  shepherd 
— then  went  lazily  back  to  their  warm  beds. 

It  was  a  strange  time  and  a  mysterious  journey,  to  Jody — an  exten- 
sion of  a  dream.  When  he  first  had  the  pony  he  liked  to  torture  himself 
during  the  trip  by  thinking  Gabilan  would  not  be  in  his  stall,  and 
worse,  would  never  have  been  there.  And  he  had  other  delicious  little 
self-induced  pains.  He  thought  how  the  rats  had  gnawed  ragged  holes 
in  the  red  saddle,  and  how  the  mice  had  nibbled  Gabilan's  tail  until 
it  was  stringy  and  thin.  He  usually  ran  the  last  little  way  to  the  barn. 
He  unlatched  the  rusty  hasp  of  the  barn  door  and  stepped  in,  and  no 
matter  how  quietly  he  opened  the  door,  Gabilan  was  always  looking 
at  him  over  the  barrier  of  the  box  stall  and  Gabilan  whinnied  softly 
and  stamped  his  front  foot,  and  his  eyes  had  big  sparks  of  red  fire  in 
them  like  oakwood  embers. 

Sometimes,  if  the  work  horses  were  to  be  used  that  day,  Jody  found 
Billy  Buck  in  the  barn  harnessing  and  currying.  Billy  stood  with  him 
and  looked  long  at  Gabilan  and  he  told  Jody  a  great  many  things 
about  horses.  He  explained  that  they  were  terribly  afraid  for  their  feet, 
so  that  one  must  make  a  practice  of  lifting  the  legs,  and  patting  the 
hooves  and  ankles  to  remove  their  terror.  He  told  Jody  how  horses 
love  conversation.  He  must  talk  to  the  pony  all  the  time,  and  tell  him 
the  reasons  for  everything.  Billy  wasn't  sure  a  horse  could  understand 
everything  that  was  said  to  him,  but  it  was  impossible  to  say  how  much 
was  understood.  A  horse  never  kicked  up  a  fuss  if  some  one  he  liked 


JOHN  STEINBECK  471 

explained  things  to  him.  Billy  could  give  examples,  too.  He  had 
known,  for  instance,  a  horse  nearly  dead  beat  with  fatigue  to  perk  up 
when  told  it  was  only  a  little  farther  to  his  destination.  And  he  had 
known  a  horse  paralyzed  with  fright  to  come  out  of  it  when  his  rider 
told  him  what  it  was  that  was  frightening  him.  While  he  talked  in  the 
mornings,  Billy  Buck  cut  twenty  or  thirty  straws  into  neat  three-inch 
lengths  and  stuck  them  into  his  hatband.  Then  during  the  whole  day, 
if  he  wanted  to  pick  his  teeth  or  merely  to  chew  on  something,  he  had 
only  to  reach  up  for  one  of  them. 

Jody  listened  carefully,  for  he  knew  and  the  whole  country  knew 
that  Billy  Buck  was  a  fine  hand  with  horses.  Billy's  own  horse  was  a 
stringy  cayuse  with  a  hammer  head,  but  he  nearly  always  won  the 
first  prizes  at  the  stock  trials.  Billy  could  rope  a  steer,  take  a  double 
half-hitch  about  the  horn  with  his  riata,  and  dismount,  and  his  horse 
would  play  the  steer  as  an  angler  plays  a  fish,  keeping  a  tight  rope 
until  the  steer  was  down  or  beaten. 

Every  morning,  after  Jody  had  curried  and  brushed  the  pony,  he  let 
down  the  barrier  of  the  stall,  and  Gabilan  thrust  past  him  and  raced 
down  the  barn  and  into  the  corral.  Around  and  around  he  galloped, 
and  sometimes  he  jumped  forward  and  landed  on  stiff  legs.  He  stood 
quivering,  stiff  ears  forward,  eyes  rolling  so  that  the  whites  showed, 
pretending  to  be  frightened.  At  last  he  walked  snorting  to  the  water- 
trough  and  buried  his  nose  in  the  water  up  to  the  nostrils.  Jody  was 
proud  then,  for  he  knew  that  was  the  way  to  judge  a  horse.  Poor 
horses  only  touched  their  lips  to  the  water,  but  a  fine  spirited  beast  put 
his  whole  nose  and  mouth  under,  and  only  left  room  to  breathe. 

Then  Jody  stood  and  watched  the  pony,  and  he  saw  things  he  had 
never  noticed  about  any  other  horse,  the  sleek,  sliding  flank  muscles 
and  the  cords  of  the  buttocks,  which  flexed  like  a  closing  fist,  and  the 
shine  the  sun  put  on  the  red  coat.  Having  seen  horses  all  his  life,  Jody 
had  never  looked  at  them  very  closely  before.  But  now  he  noticed  the 
moving  ears  which  gave  expression  and  even  inflection  of  expression 
to  the  face.  The  pony  talked  with  his  ears.  You  could  tell  exactly  how 
he  felt  about  everything  by  the  way  his  ears  pointed.  Sometimes  they 
were  stiff  and  upright  and  sometimes  lax  and  sagging.  They  went  back 
when  he  was  angry  or  fearful,  and  forward  when  he  was  anxious  and 


472  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

curious  and  pleased;  and  their  exact  position  indicated  which  emotion 
he  had. 

Billy  Buck  kept  his  word.  In  the  early  fall  the  training  began.  First 
there  was  the  halter-breaking,  and  that  was  the  hardest  because  it  was 
the  first  thing.  Jody  held  a  carrot  and  coaxed  and  promised  and  pulled 
on  the  rope.  The  pony  set  his  feet  like  a  burro  when  he  felt  the  strain. 
But  before  long  he  learned.  Jody  walked  all  over  the  ranch  leading 
him.  Gradually  he  took  to  dropping  the  rope  until  the  pony  followed 
him  unled  wherever  he  went. 

And  then  came  the  training  on  the  long  halter.  That  was  slower 
work.  Jody  stood  in  the  middle  of  a  circle,  holding  the  long  halter.  He 
clucked  with  his  tongue  and  the  pony  started  to  walk  in  a  big  circle, 
held  in  by  the  long  rope.  He  clucked  again  to  make  the  pony  trot,  and 
again  to  make  him  gallop.  Around  and  around  Gabilan  went  thunder- 
ing and  enjoying  it  immensely.  Then  he  called,  "Whoa,"  and  the  pony 
stopped.  It  was  not  long  until  Gabilan  was  perfect  at  it.  But  in  many 
ways  he  was  a  bad  pony.  He  bit  Jody  in  the  pants  and  stomped  on 
Jody's  feet.  Now  and  then  his  ears  went  back  and  he  aimed  a  tre- 
mendous kick  at  the  boy.  Every  time  he  did  one  of  these  bad  things, 
Gabilan  settled  back  and  seemed  to  laugh  to  himself. 

Billy  Buck  worked  at  the  hair  rope  in  the  evenings  before  the  fire- 
place. Jody  collected  tail  hair  in  a  bag,  and  he  sat  and  watched  Billy 
slowly  constructing  the  rope,  twisting  a  few  hairs  to  make  a  string  and 
rolling  two  strings  together  for  a  cord,  and  then  braiding  a  number  of 
cords  to  make  the  rope.  Billy  rolled  the  finished  rope  on  the  floor 
under  his  foot  to  make  it  round  and  hard. 

The  long  halter  work  rapidly  approached  perfection.  Jody's  father, 
watching  the  pony  stop  and  start  and  trot  and  gallop,  was  a  little 
bothered  by  it. 

"He's  getting  to  be  almost  a  trick  pony,"  he  complained.  "I  don't 
like  trick  horses.  It  takes  all  the — dignity  out  of  a  horse  to  make  him 
do  tricks.  Why,  a  trick  horse  is  kind  of  like  an  actor — no  dignity,  no 
character  of  his  own."  And  his  father  said,  "I  guess  you  better  be  get- 
ting him  used  to  the  saddle  pretty  soon." 

Jody  rushed  for  the  harness-room.  For  some  time  he  had  been  riding 
the  saddle  on  a  sawhorse.  He  changed  the  stirrup  length  over  and  over, 


JOHN  STEINBECK  473 

and  could  never  get  it  just  right.  Sometimes,  mounted  on  the  sawhorse 
in  the  harness-room,  with  collars  and  hames  and  tugs  hung  all  about 
him,  Jody  rode  out  beyond  the  room.  He  carried  his  rifle  across  the 
pommel.  He  saw  the  fields  go  flying  by,  and  he  heard  the  beat  of  the 
galloping  hoofs. 

It  was  a  ticklish  job,  saddling  the  pony  the  first  time.  Gabilan 
hunched  and  reared  and  threw  the  saddle  of?  before  the  cinch  could 
be  tightened.  It  had  to  be  replaced  again  and  again  until  at  last  the 
pony  let  it  stay.  And  the  cinching  was  difficult,  too.  Day  by  day  Jody 
tightened  the  girth  a  little  more  until  at  last  the  pony  didn't  mind  the 
saddle  at  all. 

Then  there  was  the  bridle.  Billy  explained  how  to  use  a  stick  of 
licorice  for  a  bit  until  Gabilan  was  used  to  having  something  in  his 
mouth.  Billy  explained,  "Of  course  we  could  force-break  him  to  every- 
thing, but  he  wouldn't  be  as  good  a  horse  if  we  did.  He'd  always  be 
a  little  bit  afraid,  and  he  wouldn't  mind  because  he  wanted  to." 

The  first  time  the  pony  wore  the  bridle  he  whipped  his  head  about 
and  worked  his  tongue  against  the  bit  until  the  blood  oozed  from  the 
corners  of  his  mouth.  He  tried  to  rub  the  headstall  off  on  the  manger. 
His  ears  pivoted  about  and  his  eyes  turned  red  with  fear  and  with  gen- 
eral rambunctiousness.  Jody  rejoiced,  for  he  knew  that  only  a  mean- 
souled  horse  does  not  resent  training. 

And  Jody  trembled  when  he  thought  of  the  time  when  he  would 
first  sit  in  the  saddle.  The  pony  would  probably  throw  him  ofT.  There 
was  no  disgrace  in  that.  The  disgrace  would  come  if  he  did  not  get 
right  up  and  mount  again.  Sometimes  he  dreamed  that  he  lay  in  the 
dirt  and  cried  and  couldn't  make  himself  mount  again.  The  shame  of 
the  dream  lasted  until  the  middle  of  the  day. 

Gabilan  was  growing  fast.  Already  he  had  lost  the  long-leggedness 
of  the  colt;  his  mane  was  getting  longer  and  blacker.  Under  the  con- 
stant currying  and  brushing  his  coat  lay  as  smooth  and  gleaming  as 
orange-red  lacquer.  Jody  oiled  the  hoofs  and  kept  them  carefully 
trimmed  so  they  would  not  crack. 

The  hair  rope  was  nearly  finished.  Jody's  father  gave  him  an  old 
pair  of  spurs  and  bent  in  the  side  bars  and  cut  down  the  strap  and 


474  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

took  up  the  chainlets  until  they  fitted.  And  then  one  day  Carl  Tiflin 
said : 

"The  pony's  growing  faster  than  I  thought.  I  guess  you  can  ride 
him  by  Thanksgiving.  Think  you  can  stick  on?" 

"I  don't  know,"  Jody  said  shyly.  Thanksgiving  was  only  three  weeks 
off".  He  hoped  it  wouldn't  rain,  for  rain  would  spot  the  red  saddle. 

Gabilan  knew  and  liked  Jody  by  now.  He  nickered  when  Jody  came 
across  the  stubble-field,  and  in  the  pasture  he  came  running  when  his 
master  whistled  for  him.  There  was  always  a  carrot  for  him  every 
time. 

Billy  Buck  gave  him  riding  instructions  over  and  over.  "Now  when 
you  get  up  there,  just  grab  tight  with  your  knees  and  keep  your  hands 
away  from  the  saddle,  and  if  you  get  throwed,  don't  let  that  stop  you. 
No  matter  how  good  a  man  is,  there's  always  some  horse  can  pitch 
him.  You  just  climb  up  again  before  he  gets  to  feeling  smart  about  it. 
Pretty  soon,  he  won't  throw  you  no  more,  and  pretty  soon  he  can't 
throw  you  no  more.  That's  the  way  to  do  it." 

"I  hope  it  don't  rain  before,"  Jody  said. 

"Why  not?  Don't  want  to  get  throwed  in  the  mud?" 

That  was  partly  it,  and  also  he  was  afraid  that  in  the  flurry  of  buck- 
ing Gabilan  might  slip  and  fall  on  him  and  break  his  leg  or  his  hip. 
He  had  seen  that  happen  to  men  before,  had  seen  how  they  writhed  on 
the  ground  like  squashed  bugs,  and  he  was  afraid  of  it. 

He  practiced  on  the  sawhorse  how  he  would  hold  the  reins  in  his 
left  hand  and  a  hat  in  his  right  hand.  If  he  kept  his  hands  thus  busy, 
he  couldn't  grab  the  horn  if  he  felt  himself  going  off.  He  didn't  like 
to  think  of  what  would  happen  if  he  did  grab  the  horn.  Perhaps  his 
father  and  Billy  Buck  would  never  speak  to  him  again,  they  would  be 
so  ashamed.  The  news  would  get  about  and  his  mother  would  be 
ashamed  too.  And  in  the  school  yard — it  was  too  awful  to  contemplate. 

He  began  putting  his  weight  in  a  stirrup  when  Gabilan  was  saddled, 
but  he  didn't  throw  his  leg  over  the  pony's  back.  That  was  forbidden 
until  Thanksgiving. 

Every  afternoon  he  put  the  red  saddle  on  the  pony  and  cinched  it 
tight.  The  pony  was  learning  already  to  fill  his  stomach  out  unnatu- 
rally large  while  the  cinching  was  going  on,  and  then  to  let  it  down 


JOHN  STEINBECK  475 

when  the  straps  were  fixed.  Sometimes  Jody  led  him  up  to  the  brush 
line  and  let  him  drink  from  the  round  green  tub,  and  sometimes  he  led 
him  up  through  the  stubble-field  to  the  hilltop  from  which  it  was 
possible  to  see  the  white  town  of  Salinas  and  the  geometric  fields  of  the 
great  valley,  and  the  oak  trees  clipped  by  the  sheep.  Now  and  then 
they  broke  through  the  brush  and  came  to  little  cleared  circles  so 
hedged  in  that  the  world  was  gone  and  only  the  sky  and  the  circle  of 
brush  were  left  from  the  old  life.  Gabilan  liked  these  trips  and  showed 
it  by  keeping  his  head  very  high  and  by  quivering  his  nostrils  with 
interest.  When  the  two  came  back  from  an  expedition  they  smelled 
of.  the  sweet  sage  they  had  forced  through. 

Time  dragged  on  toward  Thanksgiving,  but  winter  came  fast.  The 
clouds  swept  down  and  hung  all  day  over  the  land  and  brushed  the 
hilltops,  and  the  winds  blew  shrilly  at  night.  All  day  the  dry  oak 
leaves  drifted  down  from  the  trees  until  they  covered  the  ground,  and 
yet  the  trees  were  unchanged. 

Jody  had  wished  it  might  not  rain  before  Thanksgiving,  but  it  did. 
The  brown  earth  turned  dark  and  the  trees  glistened.  The  cut  ends  of 
the  stubble  turned  black  with  mildew;  the  haystacks  greyed  from  ex- 
posure to  the  damp,  and  on  the  roofs  the  moss,  which  had  been  all 
summer  as  grey  as  lizards,  turned  a  brilliant  yellow-green.  During  the 
week  of  rain,  Jody  kept  the  pony  in  the  box  stall  out  of  the  dampness, 
except  for  a  little  time  after  school  when  he  took  him  out  for  exercise 
and  to  drink  at  the  water-trough  in  the  upper  corral.  Not  once  did 
Gabilan  get  wet. 

The  wet  weather  continued  until  little  new  grass  appeared.  Jody 
walked  to  school  dressed  in  a  slicker  and  short  rubber  boots.  At  length 
one  morning  the  sun  came  out  brightly.  Jody,  at  his  work  in  the  box 
stall,  said  to  Billy  Buck,  "Maybe  I'll  leave  Gabilan  in  the  corral  when 
I  go  to  school  today." 

"Be  good  for  him  to  be  out  in  the  sun,"  Billy  assured  him.  "No  ani- 
mal likes  to  be  cooped  up  too  long.  Your  father  and  me  are  going  back 
on  the  hill  to  clean  the  leaves  out  of  the  spring."  Billy  nodded  and 
picked  his  teeth  with  one  of  his  little  straws. 

"If  the  rain  comes,  though — "  Jody  suggested. 


476  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Not  likely  to  rain  today.  She's  rained  herself  out."  Billy  pulled  up 
his  sleeves  and  snapped  his  arm  bands.  "If  it  comes  on  to  rain — why  a 
little  rain  don't  hurt  a  horse." 

"Well,  if  it  does  come  on  to  rain,  you  put  him  in,  will  you,  Billy? 
I'm  scared  he  might  get  cold  so  I  couldn't  ride  him  when  the  time 
comes." 

"Oh  sure!  I'll  watch  out  for  him  if  we  get  back  in  time.  But  it  won  t 
rain  today." 

And  so  Jody,  when  he  went  to  school,  left  Gabilan  standing  out  in 
the  corral. 

Billy  Buck  wasn't  wrong  about  many  things.  He  couldn't  be.  But 
he  was  wrong  about  the  weather  that  day,  for  a  little  after  noon  the 
clouds  pushed  over  the  hills  and  the  rain  began  to  pour  down.  Jody 
heard  it  start  on  the  schoolhouse  roof.  He  considered  holding  up  one 
finger  for  permission  to  go  to  the  outhouse  and,  once  outside,  running 
for  home  to  put  the  pony  in.  Punishment  would  be  prompt  both  at 
school  and  at  home.  He  gave  it  up  and  took  ease  from  Billy's  assurance 
that  rain  couldn't  hurt  a  horse.  When  school  was  finally  out,  he  hur- 
ried home  through  the  dark  rain.  The  banks  at  the  sides  of  the  road 
spouted  little  jets  of  muddy  water.  The  rain  slanted  and  swirled  under 
a  cold  and  gusty  wind.  Jody  dog-trotted  home,  slopping  through  the 
gravelly  mud  of  the  road. 

From  the  top  of  the  ridge  he  could  see  Gabilan  standing  miserably 
in  the  corral.  The  red  coat  was  almost  black,  and  streaked  with  water. 
He  stood  head  down  with  his  rump  to  the  rain  and  wind.  Jody  arrived 
running  and  threw  open  the  barn  door  and  led  the  wet  pony  in  by  his 
forelock.  Then  he  found  a  gunny  sack  and  rubbed  the  soaked  hair  and 
rubbed  the  legs  and  ankles.  Gabilan  stood  patiently,  but  he  trembled  in 
gusts  like  the  wind. 

When  he  had  dried  the  pony  as  well  as  he  could,  Jody  went^  up  to 
the  horse  and  brought  hot  water  down  to  the  barn  and  soaked  the 
grain  in  it.  Gabilan  was  not  very  hungry.  He  nibbled  at  the  hot  mash, 
but  he  was  not  very  much  interested  in  it,  and  still  shivered  now  and 
then.  A  little  steam  rose  from  his  damp  back. 

It  was  almost  dark  when  Billy  Buck  and  Carl  Tiflin  came  home. 
"When  the  rain  started  we  put  up  at  Ben  Herche's  place,  and  the  rain 


JOHN  STEINBECK  477 

never  let  up  all  afternoon,"  Carl  Tiflin  explained.  Jody  looked  re- 
proachfully at  Billy  Buck  and  Billy  felt  guilty. 

"You  said  it  wouldn't  rain,"  Jody  accused  him. 

Billy  looked  away.  "It's  hard  to  tell,  this  time  of  year,"  he  said,  but 
his  excuse  was  lame.  He  had  no  right  to  be  fallible,  and  he  knew  it. 

"The  pony  got  wet,  got  soaked  through." 

"Did  you  dry  him  oil?" 

"I  rubbed  him  with  a  sack  and  I  gave  him  hot  grain." 

Billy  nodded  in  agreement. 

"Do  you  think  he'll  take  cold,  Billy?" 

"A  little  rain  never  hurt  anything,"  Billy  assured  him. 

Jody's  father  joined  the  conversation  then  and  lectured  the  boy  a 
little.  "A  horse,"  he  said,  "isn't  any  lap-dog  kind  of  thing."  Carl  Tiflin 
hated  weakness  and  sickness,  and  he  held  a  violent  contempt  for  help- 
lessness. 

Jody's  mother  put  a  platter  of  steaks  on  the  table  and  boiled  pota- 
toes and  boiled  squash,  which  clouded  the  room  with  their  steam.  They 
sat  down  to  eat.  Carl  Tiflin  still  grumbled  about  weakness  put  into 
animals  and  men  by  too  much  coddling. 

Billy  Buck  felt  bad  about  his  mistake.  "Did  you  blanket  him?"  he 
asked. 

"No.  I  couldn't  find  any  blanket.  I  laid  some  sacks  over  his  back." 

"We'll  go  down  and  cover  him  up  after  we  eat,  then."  Billy  felt 
better  about  it  then.  When  Jody's  father  had  gone  in  to  the  fire  and 
his  mother  was  washing  dishes,  Billy  found  and  lighted  a  lantern.  He 
and  Jody  walked  through  the  mud  to  the  barn.  The  barn  was  dark 
and  warm  and  sweet.  The  horses  still  munched  their  evening  hay. 
"You  hold  the  lantern!"  Billy  ordered.  And  he  felt  the  pony's  legs  and 
tested  the  heat  of  the  flanks.  He  put  his  cheek  against  the  pony's  grey 
muzzle  and  then  he  rolled  up  the  eyelids  to  look  at  the  eyeballs  and 
he  lifted  the  lips  to  see  the  gums,  and  he  put  his  fingers  inside  the 
ears.  "He  don't  seem  so  chipper,"  Billy  said.  "I'll  give  him  a  rub- 
down." 

Then  Billy  found  a  sack  and  rubbed  the  pony's  legs  violently  and 
he  rubbed  the  chest  and  the  withers.  Gabilan  was  strangely  spiritless. 
He  submitted  patiently  to  the  rubbing.  At  last  Billy  brought  an  old 


478  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

cotton  comforter  from  the  saddle-room,  and  threw  it  over  the  pony's 
back  and  tied  it  at  neck  and  chest  with  string. 

"Now  he'll  be  all  right  in  the  morning,"  Billy  said. 

Jody's  mother  looked  up  when  he  got  back  to  the  house.  "You're 
late  up  from  bed,"  she  said.  She  held  his  chin  in  her  hard  hand  and 
brushed  the  tangled  hair  out  of  his  eyes  and  she  said,  "Don't  worry 
about  the  pony.  He'll  be  all  right.  Billy's  as  good  as  any  horse  doctor 
in  the  country." 

Jody  hadn't  known  she  could  see  his  worry.  He  pulled  gently  away 
from  her  and  knelt  down  in  front  of  the  fireplace  until  it  burned  his 
stomach.  He  scorched  himself  through  and  then  went  in  to  bed,  but  it 
was  a  hard  thing  to  go  to  sleep.  He  awakened  after  what  seemed  a  long 
time.  The  room  was  dark  but  there  was  a  greyness  in  the  window 
like  that  which  precedes  the  dawn.  He  got  up  and  found  his  overalls 
and  searched  for  the  legs,  and  then  the  clock  in  the  other  room  struck 
two.  He  laid  his  clothes  down  and  got  back  into  bed.  It  was  broad 
daylight  when  he  awakened  again.  For  the  first  time  he  had  slept 
through  the  ringing  of  the  triangle.  He  leaped  up,  flung  on  his  clothes 
and  went  out  of  the  door  still  buttoning  his  shirt.  His  mother  looked 
after  him  for  a  moment  and  then  went  quietly  back  to  her  work.  Her 
eyes  were  brooding  and  kind.  Now  and  then  her  mouth  smiled  a  little 
but  without  changing  her  eyes  at  all. 

Jody  ran  on  toward  the  barn.  Halfway  there  he  heard  the  sound  he 
dreaded,  the  hollow  rasping  cough  of  a  horse.  He  broke  into  a  sprint 
then.  In  the  barn  he  found  Billy  Buck  with  the  pony.  Billy  was  rub- 
bing its  legs  with  his  strong  thick  hands.  He  looked  up  and  smiled 
gaily.  "He  just  took  a  little  cold,"  Billy  said.  "We'll  have  him  out  of  it 
in  a  couple  of  days." 

Jody  looked  at  the  pony's  face.  The  eyes  were  half  closed  and  the 
lids  thick  and  dry.  In  the  eye  corners  a  crust  of  hard  mucus  stuck. 
Gabilan's  ears  hung  loosely  sideways  and  his  head  was  low.  Jody  put 
out  his  hand,  but  the  pony  did  not  move  close  to  it.  He  coughed  again 
and  his  whole  body  constricted  with  the  effort.  A  little  stream  of  thin 
fluid  ran  from  his  nostrils. 

Jody  looked  back  at  Billy  Buck.  "He's  awful  sick,  Billy." 


JOHN  STEINBECK  479 

"Just  a  little  cold,  like  I  said,"  Billy  insisted.  "You  go  get  some  break- 
fast and  then  go  back  to  school.  I'll  take  care  of  him." 

"But  you  might  have  to  do  something  else.  You  might  leave  him." 

"No,  I  won't.  I  won't  leave  him  at  all.  Tomorrow's  Saturday.  Then 
you  can  stay  with  him  all  day."  Billy  had  failed  again,  and  he  felt 
badly  about  it.  He  had  to  cure  the  pony  now. 

Jody  walked  up  to  the  house  and  took  his  place  listlessly  at  the  table. 
The  eggs  and  bacon  were  cold  and  greasy,  but  he  didn't  notice  it.  He 
ate  his  usual  amount.  He  didn't  even  ask  to  stay  home  from  school. 
His  mother  pushed  his  hair  back  when  she  took  his  plate.  "Billy'll  take 
care  of  the  pony,"  she  assured  him. 

He  moped  through  the  whole  day  at  school.  He  couldn't  answer  any 
questions  nor  read  any  words.  He  couldn't  even  tell  anyone  the  pony 
was  sick,  for  that  might  make  him  sicker.  And  when  school  was  finally 
out  he  started  home  in  dread.  He  walked  slowly  and  let  the  other  boys 
leave  him.  He  wished  he  might  continue  walking  and  never  arrive  at 
the  ranch. 

Billy  was  in  the  barn,  as  he  had  promised,  and  the  pony  was  worse. 
His  eyes  were  almost  closed  now,  and  his  breath  whistled  shrilly  past 
an  obstruction  in  his  nose.  A  film  covered  that  part  of  the  eyes  that 
was  visible  at  all.  It  was  doubtful  whether  the  pony  could  see  any  more. 
Now  and  then  he  snorted,  to  clear  his  nose,  and  by  the  action  seemed 
to  plug  it  tighter.  Jody  looked  dispiritedly  at  the  pony's  coat.  The  hair 
lay  rough  and  unkempt  and  seemed  to  have  lost  all  of  its  old  luster. 
Billy  stood  quietly  beside  the  stall.  Jody  hated  to  ask,  but  he  had  to 
know. 

"Billy,  is  he — is  he  going  to  get  well?" 

Billy  put  his  fingers  between  the  bars  under  the  pony's  jaw  and  felt 
about.  "Feel  here,"  he  said  and  he  guided  Jody's  fingers  to  a  large 
lump  under  the  jaw.  "When  that  gets  bigger,  I'll  open  it  up  and  then 
he'll  get  better." 

Jody  looked  quickly  away,  for  he  had  heard  about  that  lump.  "What 
is  it  the  matter  with  him?" 

Billy  didn't  want  to  answer,  but  he  had  to.  He  couldn't  be  wrong 
three  times.  "Strangles,"  he  said  shortly,  "but  don't  you  worry  about 
that.  I'll  pull  him  out  of  it.  I've  seen  them  get  well  when  they  were 


480  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

worse  than  Gabilan  is.  I'm  going  to  steam  him  now.  You  can  help." 

"Yes,"  Jody  said  miserably.  He  followed  Billy  into  the  grain  room 
and'  watched  him  make  the  steaming  bag  ready.  It  was  a  long  canvas 
nose  bag  with  straps  to  go  over  a  horse's  ears.  Billy  filled  it  one-third 
lull  of  bran  and  then  he  added  a  couple  of  handfuls  of  dried  hops.  On 
top  of  the  dry  substance  he  poured  a  little  carbolic  acid  and  a  little  tur- 
pentine. "I'll  be  mixing  it  all  up  while  you  run  to  the  house  for  a  kettle 
of  boiling  water,"  Billy  said. 

When  Jody  came  back  with  the  steaming  kettle,  Billy  buckled  the 
straps  over  Gabilan's  head  and  fitted  the  bag  tightly  around  his  nose. 
Then  through  a  little  hole  in  the  side  of  the  bag  he  poured  the  boiling 
water  on  the  mixture.  The  pony  started  away  as  a  cloud  of  strong 
steam  rose  up,  but  then  the  soothing  fumes  crept  through  his  nose  and 
into  his  lungs,  and  the  sharp  steam  began  to  clear  out  the  nasal  pas- 
sages. He  breathed  loudly.  His  legs  trembled  in  an  ague,  and  his  eyes 
closed  against  the  biting  cloud.  Billy  poured  in  more  water  and  kept 
the  steam  rising  for  fifteen  minutes.  At  last  he  set  down  the  kettle  and 
took  the  bag  from  Gabilan's  nose.  The  pony  looked  better.  He  breathed 
freely,  and  his  eyes  were  open  wider  than  they  had  been. 

"See  how  good  it  makes  him  feel,"  Billy  said.  "Now  we'll  wrap  him 
up  in  the  blanket  again.  Maybe  he'll  be  nearly  well  by  morning." 

"I'll  stay  with  him  tonight,"  Jody  suggested. 

"No.  Don't  you  do  it.  I'll  bring  my  blankets  down  here  and  put 
them  in  the  hay.  You  can  stay  tomorrow  and  steam  him  if  he  needs  it." 

The  evening  was  falling  when  they  went  to  the  house  for  their  sup- 
per. Jody  didn't  even  realize  that  some  one  else  had  fed  the  chickens 
and  filled  the  wood-box.  He  walked  up  past  the  house  to  the  dark 
brush  line  and  took  a  drink  of  water  from  the  tub.  The  spring  water 
was  so  cold  that  it  stung  his  mouth  and  drove  a  shiver  through  him. 
The  sky  above  the  hills  was  still  light.  He  saw  a  hawk  flying  so  high 
that  it  caught  the  sun  on  its  breast  and  shone  like  a  spark.  Two  black- 
birds were  driving  him  down  the  sky,  glittering  as  they  attacked  their 
enemy.  In  the  west,  the  clouds  were  moving  in  to  rain  again. 

Jody's  father  didn't  speak  at  all  while  the  family  ate  supper,  but  after 
Billy  Buck  had  taken  his  blankets  and  gone  to  sleep  in  the  barn,  Carl 


JOHN  STEINBECK  481 

Tiflin  built  a  high  fire  in  the  fireplace  and  told  stories.  He  told  about 
the  wild  man  who  ran  naked  through  the  country  and  had  a  tail  and 
ears  like  a  horse,  and  he  told  about  the  rabbit-cats  of  Moro  Cojo  that 
hopped  into  the  trees  for  birds.  He  revived  the  famous  Maxwell  broth- 
ers who  found  a  vein  of  gold  and  hid  the  traces  of  it  so  carefully  that 
they  could  never  find  it  again. 

Jody  sat  with  his  chin  in  his  hands;  his  mouth  worked  nervously, 
and  his  father  gradually  became  aware  that  he  wasn't  listening  very 
carefully.  "Isn't  that  funny?"  he  asked. 

Jody  laughed  politely  and  said,  "Yes,  sir."  His  father  was  angry  and 
hurt,  then.  He  didn't  tell  any  more  stories.  After  a  while,  Jody  took  a 
lantern  and  went  down  to  the  barn.  Billy  Buck  was  asleep  in  the  hay, 
and,  except  that  his  breath  rasped  a  little  in  his  lungs,  the  pony  seemed 
to  be  much  better.  Jody  stayed  a  little  while,  running  his  fingers  over 
the  red  rough  coat,  and  then  he  took  up  the  lantern  and  went  back 
to  the  house.  When  he  was  in  bed,  his  mother  came  into  the  room. 

"Have  you  enough  covers  on?  It's  getting  winter." 

"Yes,  ma'am." 

"Well,  get  some  rest  tonight."  She  hesitated  to  go  out,  stood  uncer- 
tainly. "The  pony  will  be  all  right,"  she  said. 

Jody  was  tired.  He  went  to  sleep  quickly  and  didn't  awaken  until 
dawn.  The  triangle  sounded,  and  Billy  Buck  came  up  from  the  barn 
before  Jody  could  get  out  of  the  house. 

"How  is  he?"  Jody  demanded. 

Billy  always  wolfed  his  breakfast.  "Pretty  good.  I'm  going  to  open 
that  lump  this  morning.  Then  he'll  be  better  maybe." 

After  breakfast,  Billy  got  out  his  best  knife,  one  with  a  needle  point. 
He  whetted  the  shining  blade  a  long  time  on  a  little  carborundum 
stone.  He  tried  the  point  and  the  blade  again  and  again  on  his  cal- 
loused thumb-ball,  and  at  last  he  tried  it  on  his  upper  lip. 

On  the  way  to  the  barn,  Jody  noticed  how  the  young  grass  was  up 
and  how  the  stubble  was  melting  day  by  day  into  the  new  green  crop 
of  volunteer.  It  was  a  cold  sunny  morning. 

As  soon  as  he  saw  the  pony,  Jody  knew  he  was  worse.  His  eyes  were 


482  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

closed  and  sealed  shut  with  dried  mucus.  His  head  hung  so  low  that 
his  nose  almost  touched  the  straw  of  his  bed.  There  was  a  little  groan 
in  each  breath,  a  deep-seated,  patient  groan. 

Billy  lifted  the  weak  head  and  made  a  quick  slash  with  the  knife. 
Jody  saw  the  yellow  pus  run  out.  He  held  up  the  head  while  Billy 
swabbed  out  the  wound  with  weak  carbolic  acid  salve. 

"Now  he'll  feel  better,"  Billy  assured  him.  "That  yellow  poison  is 
what  makes  him  sick." 

Jody  looked  unbelieving  at  Billy  Buck.  "He's  awful  sick." 

Billy  thought  a  long  time  what  to  say.  He  nearly  tossed  oft  a  careless 
assurance,  but  he  saved  himself  in  time.  "Yes,  he's  pretty  sick,"  he  said 
at  last.  "I've  seen  worse  ones  get  well.  If  he  doesn't  get  pneumonia, 
we'll  pull  him  through.  You  stay  with  him.  If  he  gets  worse,  you  can 
come  and  get  me." 

For  a  long  time  after  Billy  went  away,  Judy  stood  beside  the  pony, 
stroking  him  behind  the  ears.  The  pony  didn't  flip  his  head  the  way 
he  had  done  when  he  was  well.  The  groaning  in  his  breathing  was 
becoming  more  hollow. 

Doubletree  Mutt  looked  into  the  barn,  his  big  tail  waving  provoca- 
tively, and  Jody  was  so  incensed  at  his  health  that  he  found  a  hard 
black  clod  on  the  floor  and  deliberately  threw  it.  Doubletree  Mutt  went 
yelping  away  to  nurse  a  bruised  paw. 

In  the  middle  of  the  morning,  Billy  Buck  came  back  and  made  an- 
other steam  bag.  Jody  watched  to  see  whether  the  pony  improved  this 
time  as  he  had  before.  His  breathing  eased  a  little,  but  he  did  not  raise 
his  head. 

The  Saturday  dragged  on.  Late  in  the  afternoon  Jody  went  to  the 
house  and  brought  his  bedding  down  and  made  up  a  place  to  sleep  in 
the  hay.  He  didn't  ask  permission.  He  knew  from  the  way  his  mother 
looked  at  him  that  she  would  let  him  do  almost  anything.  That  night 
he  left  a  lantern  burning  on  a  wire  over  the  box  stall.  Billy  had  told 
him  to  rub  the  pony's  legs  every  little  while. 

At  nine  o'clock  the  wind  sprang  up  and  howled  around  the  barn. 
And  in  spite  of  his  worry,  Jody  grew  sleepy.  He  got  into  his  blankets 
and  went  to  sleep,  but  the  breathy  groans  of  the  pony  sounded  in  his 
dreams.  And  in  his  sleep  he  heard  a  crashing  noise  which  went  on  and 


JOHN  STEINBECK  483 

on  until  it  awakened  him.  The  wind  was  rushing  through  the  barn. 
He  sprang  up  and  looked  down  the  lane  of  stalls.  The  barn  door  had 
blown  open,  and  the  pony  was  gone. 

He  caught  the  lantern  and  ran  outside  into  the  gale,  and  he  saw 
Gabilan  weakly  shambling  away  into  the  darkness,  head  down,  legs 
working  slowly  and  mechanically.  When  Jody  ran  up  and  caught  him 
by  the  forelock,  he  allowed  himself  to  be  led  back  and  put  into  his  stall. 
His  groans  were  louder,  and  a  fierce  whistling  came  from  his  nose. 
Jody  didn't  sleep  any  more  then.  The  hissing  of  the  pony's  breath 
grew  louder  and  sharper. 

He  was  glad  when  Billy  Buck  came  in  at  dawn.  Billy  looked  for  a 
time  at  the  pony  as  though  he  had  never  seen  him  before.  He  felt 
the  ears  and  flanks.  "Jody,"  he  said,  "I've  got  to  do  something  you 
won't  want  to  see.  You  run  up  to  the  house  for  a  while." 

Jody  grabbed  him  fiercely  by  the  forearm.  "You're  not  going  to 
shoot  him?" 

Billy  patted  his  hand.  "No.  I'm  going  to  open  a  little  hole  in  his 
windpipe  so  he  can  breathe.  His  nose  is  filled  up.  When  he  gets  well, 
we'll  put  a  little  brass  button  in  the  hole  for  him  to  breathe  through." 

Jody  couldn't  have  gone  away  if  he  had  wanted  to.  It  was  awful  to 
see  the  red  hide  cut,  but  infinitely  more  terrible  to  know  it  was  being 
cut  and  not  to  see  it.  "I'll  stay  right  here,"  he  said  bitterly.  "You  sure 
you  got  to?" 

"Yes.  I'm  sure.  If  you  stay,  you  can  hold  his  head.  If  it  doesn't  make 
you  sick,  that  is." 

The  fine  knife  came  out  again  and  was  whetted  again  just  as  care- 
fully as  it  had  been  the  first  time.  Judy  held  the  pony's  head  up  and 
the  throat  taut,  while  Billy  felt  up  and  down  for  the  right  place.  Jody 
sobbed  once  as  the  bright  knife  point  disappeared  into  the  throat.  The 
pony  plunged  weakly  away  and  then  stood  still,  trembling  violently. 
The  blood  ran  thickly  out  and  up  the  knife  and  across  Billy's  hand 
and  into  his  shirtsleeve.  The  sure  square  hand  sawed  out  a  round  hole 
in  the  flesh,  and  the  breath  came  bursting  out  of  the  hole,  throwing  a 
fine  spray  of  blood.  With  the  rush  of  oxygen,  the  pony  took  a  sudden 
strength.  He  lashed  out  with  his  hind  feet  and  tried  to  rear,  but  Jody 
held  his  head  down  while  Billy  mopped  the  new  wound  with  carbolic 


484  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

salve.  It  was  a  good  job.  The  blood  stopped  flowing  and  the  air  puffed 
out  the  hole  and  sucked  it  in  regularly  with  a  little  bubbling  noise. 

The  rain  brought  in  by  the  night  wind  began  to  fall  on  the  barn 
roof.  Then  the  triangle  rang  for  breakfast.  "You  go  up  and  eat  while 
I  wait,"  Billy  said.  "We've  got  to  keep  this  hole  from  plugging  up." 

Jody  walked  slowly  out  of  the  barn.  He  was  too  dispirited  to  tell 
Billy  how  the  barn  door  had  blown  open  and  let  the  pony  out.  He 
emerged  into  the  wet  grey  morning  and  sloshed  up  to  the  house,  taking 
a  perverse  pleasure  in  splashing  through  all  the  puddles.  His  mother 
fed  him  and  put  dry  clothes  on.  She  didn't  question  him.  She  seemed 
to  know  he  couldn't  answer  questions.  But  when  he  was  ready  to  go 
back  to  the  barn  she  brought  him  a  pan  of  steaming  meal.  "Give  him 
this,"  she  said. 

But  Jody  did  not  take  the  pan.  He  said,  "He  won't  eat  anything," 
and  ran  out  of  the  house.  At  the  barn,  Billy  showed  him  how  to  fix  a 
ball  of  cotton  on  a  stick,  with  which  to  swab  out  the  breathing  hole 
when  it  became  clogged  with  mucus. 

Jody's  father  walked  into  the  barn  and  stood  with  them  in  front  of 
the  stall.  At  length  he  turned  to  the  boy.  "Hadn't  you  better  come  with 
me?  I'm  going  to  drive  over  the  hill."  Jody  shook  his  head.  "You  bet- 
ter come  on,  out  of  this,"  his  father  insisted. 

Billy  turned  on  him  angrily.  "Let  him  alone.  It's  his  pony,  isn't  it?" 

Carl  Tiflin  walked  away  without  saying  another  word.  His  feelings 
were  badly  hurt. 

All  morning  Jody  kept  the  wound  open  and  the  air  passing  in  and 
out  freely.  At  noon  the  pony  lay  wearily  down  on  his  side  and  stretched 
his  nose  out. 

Billy  came  back.  "If  you're  going  to  stay  with  him  tonight,  you  bet- 
ter take  a  little  nap,"  he  said.  Jody  went  absently  out  of  the  barn.  The 
sky  had  cleared  to  a  hard  thin  blue.  Everywhere  the  birds  were  t>usy 
with  worms  that  had  come  to  the  damp  surface  of  the  ground. 

Jody  walked  to  the  brush  line  and  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  mossy  tub. 
He  looked  down  at  the  house  and  at  the  old  bunkhouse  and  at  the 
dark  cypress  tree.  The  place  was  familiar,  but  curiously  changed.  It 
wasn't  itself  any  more,  but  a  frame  for  things  that  were  happening.  A 
cold  wind  blew  out  of  the  east  now,  signifying  that  the  rain  was  over 


JOHN  STEINBECK  485 

for  a  little  while.  At  his  feet  Jody  could  see  the  little  arms  of  new  weeds 
spreading  out  over  the  ground.  In  the  mud  about  the  spring  were  thou- 
sands of  quail  tracks. 

Doubletree  Mutt  came  sideways  and  embarrassed  up  through  the 
vegetable  patch,  and  Jody,  remembering  how  he  had  thrown  the  clod, 
put  his  arm  about  the  dog's  neck  and  kissed  him  on  his  wide  black 
nose.  Doubletree  Mutt  sat  still,  as  though  he  knew  some  solemn  thing 
was  happening.  His  big  tail  slapped  the  ground  gravely.  Jody  pulled 
a  swollen  tick  out  of  Mutt's  neck  and  popped  it  dead  between  his 
thumb-nails.  It  was  a  nasty  thing.  He  washed  his  hands  in  the  cold 
spring  water. 

Except  for  the  steady  swish  of  the  wind,  the  farm  was  very  quiet. 
Jody  knew  his  mother  wouldn't  mind  if  he  didn't  go  in  to  eat  his  lunch. 
After  a  little  while  he  went  slowly  back  to  the  barn.  Mutt  crept  into 
his  own  little  house  and  whined  softly  to  himself  for  a  long  time. 

Billy  Buck  stood  up  from  the  box  and  surrendered  the  cotton  swab. 
The  pony  still  lay  on  his  side  and  the  wound  in  his  throat  bellowsed 
in  and  out.  When  Jody  saw  how  dry  and  dead  the  hair  looked,  he 
knew  at  last  that  there  was  no  hope  for  the  pony.  He  had  seen  the  dead 
hair  before  on  dogs  and  on  cows,  and  it  was  a  sure  sign.  He  sat  heav- 
ily on  the  box  and  let  down  the  barrier  of  the  box  stall.  For  a  long 
time  he  kept  his  eyes  on  the  moving  wound,  and  at  last  he  dozed,  and 
the  afternoon  passed  quickly.  Just  before  dark  his  mother  brought  a 
deep  dish  of  stew  and  left  it  for  him  and  went  away.  Jody  ate  a  little 
of  it,  and,  when  it  was  dark,  he  set  the  lantern  on  the  floor  by  the 
pony's  head  so  he  could  watch  the  wound  and  keep  it  open.  And  he 
dozed  again  until  the  night  chill  awakened  him.  The  wind  was  blow- 
ing fiercely,  bringing  the  north  cold  with  it.  Jody  brought  a  blanket 
from  his  bed  in  the  hay  and  wrapped  himself  in  it.  Gabilan's  breathing 
was  quiet  at  last;  the  hole  in  his  throat  moved  gently.  The  owls  flew 
through  the  hayloft,  shrieking  and  looking  for  mice.  Jody  put  his  hands 
down  on  his  head  and  slept.  In  his  sleep  he  was  aware  that  the  wind 
had  increased.  He  heard  it  slamming  about  the  barn. 

It  was  daylight  when  he  awakened.  The  barn  door  had  swung  open. 
The  pony  was  gone.  He  sprang  up  and  ran  out  into  the  morning  light. 


486  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

The  pony's  tracks  were  plain  enough,  dragging  through  the  frostlike 
dew  on  the  young  grass,  tired  tracks  with  little  lines  between  them 
where  the  hoofs  had  dragged.  They  headed  for  the  brush  line  halfway 
up  the  ridge.  Jody  broke  into  a  run  and  followed  them.  The  sun  shone 
on  the  sharp  white  quartz  that  stuck  through  the  ground  here  and 
there.  As  he  followed  the  plain  trail,  a  shadow  cut  across  in  front  of 
him.  He  looked  up  and  saw  a  high  circle  of  black  buzzards,  and  the 
slowly  revolving  circle  dropped  lower  and  lower.  The  solemn  birds 
soon  disappeared  over  the  ridge.  Jody  ran  faster  then,  forced  on  by 
panic  and  rage.  The  trail  entered  the  brush  at  last  and  followed  a  wind- 
ing route  among  the  tall  sage  bushes. 

At  the  top  of  the  ridge  Jody  was  winded.  He  paused,  puffing  noisily. 
The  blood  pounded  in  his  ears.  Then  he  saw  what  he  was  looking  for. 
Below,  in  one  of  the  little  clearings  in  the  brush,  lay  the  red  pony.  In 
the  distance,  Jody  could  see  the  legs  moving  slowly  and  convulsively. 
And  in  a  circle  around  him  stood  the  buzzards,  waiting  for  the  mo- 
ment of  death  they  know  so  well. 

Jody  leaped  forward  and  plunged  down  the  hill.  The  wet  ground 
muffled  his  steps  and  the  brush  hid  him.  When  he  arrived,  it  was  all 
over.  The  first  buzzard  sat  on  the  pony's  head  and  its  beak  had  just 
risen  dripping  with  dark  eye  fluid.  Jody  plunged  into  the  circle  like  a 
cat.  The  black  brotherhood  arose  in  a  cloud,  but  the  big  one  on  the 
pony's  head  was  too  late.  As  it  hopped  along  to  take  off,  Jody  caught 
its  wing  tip  and  pulled  it  down.  It  was  nearly  as  big  as  he  was.  The 
free  wing  crashed  into  his  face  with  the  force  of  a  club,  but  he  hung 
on.  The  claws  fastened  on  his  leg  and  the  wing  elbows  battered  his 
head  on  either  side.  Jody  groped  blindly  with  his  free  hand.  His  fin- 
gers found  the  neck  of  the  struggling  bird.  The  red  eyes  looked  into 
his  face,  calm  and  fearless  and  fierce;  the  naked  head  turned  from  side 
to  side.  Then  the  beak  opened  and  vomited  a  stream  of  putrefied  ^fluid. 
Jody  brought  up  his  knee  and  fell  on  the  great  bird.  He  held  the  neck 
to  the  ground  with  one  hand  while  his  other  found  a  piece  of  sharp 
white  quartz.  The  first  blow  broke  the  beak  sideways  and  black  blood 
spurted  from  the  twisted,  leathery  mouth  corners.  He  struck  again  and 
missed.  The  red  fearless  eyes  still  looked  at  him,  impersonal  and  un- 
afraid and  detached.  He  struck  again  and  again,  until  the  buzzard  lay 


JOHN  STEINBECK  487 

dead,  until  its  head  was  a  red  pulp.  He  was  still  beating  the  dead  bird 
when  Billy  Buck  pulled  him  off  and  held  him  tightly  to  calm  his 
shaking. 

Carl  Tiflin  wiped  the  blood  from  the  boy's  face  with  a  red  bandana. 
Jody  was  limp  and  quiet  now.  His  father  moved  the  buzzard  with  his 
toe.  "Jody,"  he  explained,  "the  buzzard  didn't  kill  the  pony.  Don't  you 
know  that?" 

"I  know  it,"  Jody  said  wearily. 

It  was  Billy  Buck  who  was  angry.  He  had  lifted  Jody  in  his  arms, 
and  had  turned  to  carry  him  home.  But  he  turned  back  on  Carl  Tiflin. 
"  'Course  he  knows  it,"  Billy  said  furiously,  "Jesus  Christ!  man,  can't 
you  see  how  he'd  feel  about  it?" 

II.    THE  GREAT  MOUNTAINS 

In  the  humming  heat  of  a  midsummer  afternoon  the  little  boy  Jody 
listlessly  looked  about  the  ranch  for  something  to  do.  He  had  been  to 
the  barn,  had  thrown  rocks  at  the  swallows'  nests  under  the  eaves  until 
every  one  of  the  little  mud  houses  broke  open  and  dropped  its  lining 
of  straw  and  dirty  feathers.  Then  at  the  ranch  house  he  baited  a  rat 
trap  with  stale  cheese  and  set  it  where  Doubletree  Mutt,  that  good  big 
dog,  would  get  his  nose  snapped.  Jody  was  not  moved  by  an  impulse 
of  cruelty;  he  was  bored  with  the  long  hot  afternoon.  Doubletree  Mutt 
put  his  stupid  nose  in  the  trap  and  got  it  smacked,  and  shrieked  with 
agony  and  limped  away  with  blood  on  his  nostrils.  No  matter  where 
he  was  hurt,  Mutt  limped.  It  was  just  a  way  he  had.  Once  when  he 
was  young,  Mutt  got  caught  in  a  coyote  trap,  and  always  after  that  he 
limped,  even  when  he  was  scolded. 

When  Mutt  yelped,  Jody's  mother  called  from  inside  the  house, 
"Jody!  Stop  torturing  that  dog  and  find  something  to  do." 

Jody  felt  mean  then,  so  he  threw  a  rock  at  Mutt.  Then  he  took  his 
slingshot  from  the  porch  and  walked  up  toward  the  brush  line  to  try  to 
kill  a  bird.  It  was  a  good  slingshot,  with  store-bought  rubbers,  but 
while  Jody  had  often  shot  at  birds,  he  had  never  hit  one.  He  walked  up 
through  the  vegetable  patch,  kicking  his  bare  toes  into  the  dust.  And 
on  the  way  he  found  the  perfect  slingshot  stone,  round  and  slightly 


488  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

flattened  and  heavy  enough  to  carry  through  the  air.  He  fitted  it  into 
the  leather  pouch  of  his  weapon  and  proceeded  to  the  brush  line.  His 
eyes  narrowed,  his  mouth  worked  strenuously;  for  the  first  time  that 
afternoon  he  was  intent.  In  the  shade  of  the  sagebrush  the  litde  birds 
were  working,  scratching  in  the  leaves,  flying  restlessly  a  few  feet  and 
scratching  again.  Jody  pulled  back  the  rubbers  of  the  sling  and  ad- 
vanced cautiously.  One  little  thrush  paused  and  looked  at  him  and 
crouched,  ready  to  fly.  Jody  sidled  nearer,  moving  one  foot  slowly  after 
the  other.  When  he  was  twenty  feet  away,  he  carefully  raised  the  sling 
and  aimed.  The  stone  whizzed;  the  thrush  started  up  and  flew  right 
into  it.  And  down  the  little  bird  went  with  a  broken  head.  Jody  ran 
to  it  and  picked  it  up. 

"Well,  I  got  you,"  he  said. 

The  bird  looked  much  smaller  dead  than  it  had  alive.  Jody  felt  a 
little  mean  pain  in  his  stomach,  so  he  took  out  his  pocket-knife  and 
cut  off  the  bird's  head.  Then  he  disemboweled  it,  and  took  of!  its  wings; 
and  finally  he  threw  all  the  pieces  into  the  brush.  He  didn't  care  about 
the  bird,  or  its  life,  but  he  knew  what  older  people  would  say  if  they 
had  seen  him  kill  it;  he  was  ashamed  because  of  their  potential  opin- 
ion. He  decided  to  forget  the  whole  thing  as  quickly  as  he  could,  and 
never  to  mention  it. 

The  hills  were  dry  at  this  season,  and  the  wild  grass  was  golden,  but 
where  the  spring-pipe  filled  the  round  tub  and  the  tub  spilled  over, 
there  lay  a  stretch  of  fine  green  grass,  deep  and  sweet  and  moist.  Jody 
drank  from  the  mossy  tub  and  washed  the  bird's  blood  from  his  hands 
in  cold  water.  Then  he  lay  on  his  back  in  the  grass  and  looked  up  at 
the  dumpling  summer  clouds.  By  closing  one  eye  and  destroying  per- 
spective he  brought  them  down  within  reach  so  that  he  could  put  up 
his  fingers  and  stroke  them.  He  helped  the  gentle  wind  push  them 
down  the  sky;  it  seemed  to  him  that  they  went  faster  for  his  help. One 
fat  white  cloud  he  helped  clear  to  the  mountain  rims  and  pressed  it 
firmly  over,  out  of  sight.  Jody  wondered  what  it  was  seeing,  then.  He 
sat  up  the  better  to  look  at  the  great  mountains  where  they  went  piling 
back,  growing  darker  and  more  savage  until  they  finished  with  one 
jagged  ridge,  high  up  against  the  west.  Curious  secret  mountains;  he 
thought  of  the  little  he  knew  about  them. 


JOHN   STEINBECK  489 

"What's  on  the  other  side?"  he  asked  his  father  once. 

"More  mountains,  I  guess.  Why?" 

"And  on  the  other  side  of  them?" 

"More  mountains.  Why?" 

"More  mountains  on  and  on?" 

"Well,  no.  At  last  you  come  to  the  ocean." 

"But  what's  in  the  mountains?" 

"Just  cliffs  and  brush  and  rocks  and  dryness." 

"Were  you  ever  there?" 

"No." 

"Has  anybody  ever  been  there?" 

"A  few  people,  I  guess.  It's  dangerous,  with  cliffs  and  things.  Why, 
I've  read  there's  more  unexplored  country  in  the  mountains  of  Mon- 
terey County  than  any  place  in  the  United  States."  His  father  seemed 
proud  that  this  should  be  so. 

"And  at  last  the  ocean?" 

"At  last  the  ocean." 

"But,"  the  boy  insisted,  "but  in  between?  No  one  knows?" 

"Oh,  a  few  people  do,  I  guess.  But  there's  nothing  there  to  get.  And 
not  much  water.  Just  rocks  and  cliffs  and  greasewood.  Why?" 

"It  would  be  good  to  go." 

"What  for?  There's  nothing  there." 

Jody  knew  something  was  there,  something  very  wonderful  because 
it  wasn't  known,  something  secret  and  mysterious.  He  could  feel 
within  himself  that  this  was  so.  He  said  to  his  mother,  "Do  you  know 
what's  in  the  big  mountains?" 

She  looked  at  him  and  then  back  at  the  ferocious  range,  and  she  said. 
"Only  the  bear,  I  guess." 

"What  bear?" 

"Why  the  one  that  went  over  the  mountain  to  see  what  he  could 
see." 

Jody  questioned  Billy  Buck,  the  ranch  hand,  about  the  possibility 
of  ancient  cities  lost  in  the  mountains,  but  Billy  agreed  with  Jody's 
father. 

"It  ain't  likely,"  Billy  said.  "There'd  be  nothing  to  eat  unless  a  kind 
of  people  that  can  eat  rocks  live  there." 


490  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

That  was  all  the  information  Jody  ever  got,  and  it  made  the  moun- 
tains dear  to  him,  and  terrible.  He  thought  often  of  the  miles  of  ridge 
after  ridge  until  at  last  there  was  the  sea.  When  the  peaks  were  pink 
in  the  morning  they  invited  him  among  them:  and  when  the  sun  had 
gone  over  the  edge  in  the  evening  and  the  mountains  were  a  purple- 
like despair,  then  Jody  was  afraid  of  them;  then  they  were  so  imper- 
sonal and  aloof  that  their  very  imperturbability  was  a  threat. 

Now  he  turned  his  head  toward  the  mountains  of  the  east,  the  Gabi- 
lans,  and  they  were  jolly  mountains,  with  hill  ranches  in  their  creases, 
and  with  pine  trees  growing  on  the  crests.  People  lived  there,  and  bat- 
tles had  been  fought  against  the  Mexicans  on  the  slopes.  He  looked 
back  for  an  instant  at  the  Great  Ones  and  shivered  a  little  at  the  con- 
trast. The  foothill  cup  of  the  home  ranch  below  him  was  sunny  and 
safe.  The  house  gleamed  with  white  light  and  the  barn  was  brown 
and  warm.  The  red  cows  on  the  farther  hill  ate  their  way  slowly 
toward  the  north.  Even  the  dark  cypress  tree  by  the  bunkhouse  was 
usual  and  safe.  The  chickens  scratched  about  in  the  dust  of  the  farm- 
yard with  quick  waltzing  steps. 

Then  a  moving  figure  caught  Jody's  eye.  A  man  walked  slowly  over 
the  brow  of  the  hill,  on  the  road  from  Salinas,  and  he  was  headed 
toward  the  house.  Jody  stood  up  and  moved  down  toward  the  house 
too,  for  if  someone  was  coming,  he  wanted  to  be  there  to  see.  By  the 
time  the  boy  had  got  to  the  house  the  walking  man  was  only  halfway 
down  the  road,  a  lean  man,  very  straight  in  the  shoulders.  Jody  could 
tell  he  was  old  only  because  his  heels  struck  the  ground  with  hard 
jerks.  As  he  approached  nearer,  Jody  saw  that  he  was  dressed  in  blue 
jeans  and  in  a  coat  of  the  same  material.  He  wore  clodhopper  shoes 
and  an  old  flat-brimmed  Stetson  hat.  Over  his  shoulder  he  carried  a 
gunny  sack,  lumpy  and  full.  In  a  few  moments  he  had  trudged  close 
enough  so  that  his  face  could  be  seen.  And  his  face  was  as  dark  as  dried 
beef.  A  mustache,  blue-white  against  the  dark  skin,  hovered  over  his 
mouth,  and  his  hair  was  white,  too,  where  it  showed  at  his  neck.  The 
skin  of  his  face  had  shrunk  back  against  the  skull  until  it  defined 
bone,  not  flesh,  and  made  the  nose  and  chin  seem  sharp  and  fragile. 
The  eyes  were  large  and  deep  and  dark,  with  eyelids  stretched  tightly 


JOHN  STEINBECK  491 

over  them.  Irises  and  pupils  were  one,  and  very  black,  but  the  eyeballs 
were  brown.  There  were  no  wrinkles  in  the  face  at  all.  This  old  man 
wore  a  blue  denim  coat  buttoned  to  the  throat  with  brass  buttons,  as  all 
men  do  who  wear  no  shirts.  Out  of  the  sleeves  came  strong  bony 
wrists  and  hands  gnarled  and  knotted  and  hard  as  peach  branches. 
The  nails  were  flat  and  blunt  and  shiny. 

The  old  man  drew  close  to  the  gate  and  swung  down  his  sack  when 
he  confronted  Jody.  His  lips  fluttered  a  little  and  a  soft  impersonal 
voice  came  from  between  them. 

"Do  you  live  here?" 

Jody  was  embarrassed.  He  turned  and  looked  at  the  house,  and  he 
turned  back  and  looked  toward  the  barn  where  his  father  and  Billy 
Buck  were.  "Yes,"  he  said,  when  no  help  came  from  either  direction. 

"I  have  come  back,"  the  old  man  said.  "I  am  Gitano,  and  I  have 
come  back." 

Jody  could  not  take  all  this  responsibility.  He  turned  abruptly,  and 
ran  into  the  house  for  help,  and  the  screen  door  banged  after  him.  His 
mother  was  in  the  kitchen  poking  out  the  clogged  holes  of  a  colander 
with  a  hairpin,  and  biting  her  lower  lip  with  concentration. 

"It's  an  old  man,"  Jody  cried  excitedly.  "It's  an  old  paisano  man,  and 
he  says  he's  come  back." 

His  mother  put  down  the  colander  and  stuck  the  hairpin  behind  the 
sink  board.  "What's  the  matter  now?"  she  asked  patiently. 

"It's  an  old  man  outside.  Come  on  out." 

"Well,  what  does  he  want?"  She  untied  the  strings  of  her  apron  and 
smoothed  her  hair  with  her  fingers. 

"I  don't  know.  He  came  walking." 

His  mother  smoothed  down  her  dress  and  went  out,  and  Jody  fol- 
lowed her.  Gitano  had  not  moved. 

"Yes?"  Mrs.  Tiflin  asked. 

Gitano  took  off  his  old  black  hat  and  held  it  with  both  hands  in 
front  of  him.  He  repeated,  "I  am  Gitano,  and  I  have  come  back." 

"Come  back?  Back  where?" 

Gitano's  whole  straight  body  leaned  forward  a  little.  His  right  hand 
described  the  circle  of  the  hills,  the  sloping  fields  and  the  mountains, 


492  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

and  ended  at  his  hat  again.  "Back  to  the  rancho.  I  was  born  here,  and 
my  father,  too." 

"Here?"  she  demanded.  "This  isn't  an  old  place." 

"No,  there,"  he  said,  pointing  to  the  western  ridge.  "On  the  other 
side  there,  in  a  house  that  is  gone." 

At  last  she  understood.  "The  old  'dobe  that's  washed  almost  away, 
you  mean?" 

"Yes,  senora.  When  the  rancho  broke  up  they  put  no  more  lime  on 
the  'dobe,  and  the  rains  washed  it  down." 

Jody's  mother  was  silent  for  a  little,  and  curious  homesick  thoughts 
ran  through  her  mind,  but  quickly  she  cleared  them  out.  "And  what 
do  you  want  here  now,  Gitano?" 

"I  will  stay  here,"  he  said  quietly,  "until  I  die." 

"But  we  don't  need  an  extra  man  here." 

"I  can  not  work  hard  any  more,  senora.  I  can  milk  a  cow,  feed  chick- 
ens, cut  a  little  wood;  no  more.  I  will  stay  here."  He  indicated  the  sack 
on  the  ground  beside  him.  "Here  are  my  things." 

She  turned  to  Jody.  "Run  down  to  the  barn  and  call  your  father." 

Jody  dashed  away,  and  he  returned  with  Carl  Tiflin  and  Billy  Buck 
behind  him.  The  old  man  was  standing  as  he  had  been,  but  he  was 
resting  now.  His  whole  body  had  sagged  into  a  timeless  repose. 

"What  is  it?"  Carl  Tiflin  asked.  "What's  Jody  so  excited  about?" 

Mrs.  Tiflin  motioned  to  the  old  man.  "He  wants  to  stay  here.  He 
wants  to  do  a  little  work  and  stay  here." 

"Well,  we  can't  have  him.  We  don't  need  any  more  men.  He's  too 
old.  Billy  does  everything  we  need." 

They  had  been  talking  over  him  as  though  he  did  not  exist,  and 
now,  suddenly,  they  both  hesitated  and  looked  at  Gitano  and  were 
embarrassed. 

He  cleared  his  throat.  "I  am  too  old  to  work.  I  come  back  where  I 
was  born." 

"You  weren't  born  here,"  Carl  said  sharply. 

"No.  In  the  'dobe  house  over  the  hill.  It  was  all  one  rancho  before 
you  came." 

"In  the  mud  house  that's  all  melted  down?" 

"Yes.  I  and  my  father.  I  will  stay  here  now  on  the  rancho." 


JOHN  STEINBECK  493 

"I  tell  you  you  won't  stay,"  Carl  said  angrily.  "I  don't  need  an  old 
man.  This  isn't  a  big  ranch.  I  can't  afford  food  and  doctor  bills  for 
an  old  man.  You  must  have  relatives  and  friends.  Go  to  them.  It  is 
like  begging  to  come  to  strangers." 

"I  was  born  here,"  Gitano  said  patiently  and  inflexibly. 

Carl  Tiflin  didn't  like  to  be  cruel,  but  he  felt  he  must.  "You  can  eat 
here  tonight,"  he  said.  "You  can  sleep  in  the  little  room  of  the  old 
bunkhouse.  We'll  give  you  your  breakfast  in  the  morning,  and  then 
you'll  have  to  go  along.  Go  to  your  friends.  Don't  come  to  die  with 
strangers." 

Gitano  put  on  his  black  hat  and  stooped  for  the  sack.  "Here  are  my 
things,"  he  said. 

Carl  turned  away.  "Come  on,  Billy,  we'll  finish  down  at  the  barn. 
Jody,  show  him  the  little  room  in  the  bunkhouse." 

He  and  Billy  turned  back  toward  the  barn.  Mrs.  Tiflin  went  into 
the  house,  saying  over  her  shoulder,  "I'll  send  some  blankets  down." 

Gitano  looked  questioningly  at  Jody.  "I'll  show  you  where  it  is," 
Jody  said. 

There  was  a  cot  with  a  shuck  mattress,  an  apple  box  holding  a  tin 
lantern,  and  a  backless  rocking-chair  in  the  little  room  of  the  bunk- 
house. Gitano  laid  his  sack  carefully  on  the  floor  and  sat  down  on  the 
bed.  Jody  stood  shyly  in  the  room,  hesitating  to  go.  At  last  he  said, 

"Did  you  come  out  of  the  big  mountains?" 

Gitano  shook  his  head  slowly.  "No,  I  worked  down  the  Salinas 
Valley." 

The  afternoon  thought  would  not  let  Jody  go.  "Did  you  ever  go  into 
the  big  mountains  back  there?" 

The  old  dark  eyes  grew  fixed,  and  their  light  turned  inward  on  the 
years  that  were  living  in  Gitano's  head.  "Once — when  I  was  a  little 
boy.  I  went  with  my  father." 

"Way  back,  clear  into  the  mountains?" 

"Yes." 

"What  was  there?"  Jody  cried.  "Did  you  see  any  people  or  any 
houses?" 

"No." 

"Well,  what  was  there?" 


494  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Gitano's  eyes  remained  inward.  A  little  wrinkled  strain  came  be- 
tween his  brows. 

"What  did  you  see  in  there?"  Jody  repeated. 

"I  don't  know,"  Gitano  said.  "I  don't  remember." 

"Was  it  terrible  and  dry?" 

"I  don't  remember." 

In  his  excitement,  Jody  had  lost  his  shyness.  "Don't  you  remember 
anything  about  it?" 

Gitano's  mouth  opened  for  a  word,  and  remained  open  while  his 
brain  sought  the  word.  "I  think  it  was  quiet — I  think  it  was  nice." 

Gitano's  eyes  seemed  to  have  found  something  back  in  the  years, 
for  they  grew  soft  and  a  little  smile  seemed  to  come  and  go  in  them. 

"Didn't  you  ever  go  back  in  the  mountains  again?"  Jody  insisted. 

"No." 

"Didn't  you  ever  want  to?" 

But  now  Gitano's  face  became  impatient.  "No,"  he  said  in  a  tone 
that  told  Jody  he  didn't  want  to  talk  about  it  any  more.  The  boy  was 
held  by  a  curious  fascination.  He  didn't  want  to  go  away  from  Gitano. 
His  shyness  returned. 

"Would  you  like  to  come  down  to  the  barn  and  see  the  stock?"  he 
asked. 

Gitano  stood  up  and  put  on  his  hat  and  prepared  to  follow. 

It  was  almost  evening  now.  They  stood  near  the  watering  trough 
while  the  horses  sauntered  in  from  the  hillsides  for  an  evening  drink. 
Gitano  rested  his  big  twisted  hands  on  the  top  rail  of  the  fence.  Five 
horses  came  down  and  drank,  and  then  stood  about,  nibbling  at  the 
dirt  or  rubbing  their  sides  against  the  polished  wood  of  the  fence. 
Long  after  they  had  finished  drinking  an  old  horse  appeared  over  the 
brow  of  the  hill  and  came  painfully  down.  It  had  long  yellow  teeth; 
its  hooves  were  flat  and  sharp  as  spades,  and  its  ribs  and  hip-bbnes 
jutted  out  under  its  skin.  It  hobbled  up  to  the  trough  and  drank  water 
with  a  loud  sucking  noise. 

"That's  old  Easter,"  Jody  explained.  "That's  the  first  horse  my  father 
ever  had.  He's  thirty  years  old."  He  looked  up  into  Gitano's  old  eyes 
for  some  response. 

"No  good  any  more,"  Gitano  said. 


JOHN  STEINBECK  495 

Jody's  father  and  Billy  Buck  came  out  of  the  barn  and  walked  over. 

"Too  old  to  work,"  Gitano  repeated.  "Just  eats  and  pretty  soon  dies." 

Carl  Tiflin  caught  the  last  words.  He  hated  his  brutality  toward  old 
Gitano,  and  so  he  became  brutal  again. 

"It's  a  shame  not  to  shoot  Easter,"  he  said.  "It'd  save  him  a  lot  of 
pains  and  rheumatism."  He  looked  secretly  at  Gitano,  to  see  whether 
he  noticed  the  parallel,  but  the  big  bony  hands  did  not  move,  nor  did 
the  dark  eyes  turn  from  the  horse.  "Old  things  ought  to  be  put  out  of 
their  misery,"  Jody's  father  went  on.  "One  shot,  a  big  noise,  one  big 
pain  in  the  head  maybe,  and  that's  all.  That's  better  than  stiffness  and 
sore  teeth." 

Billy  Buck  broke  in.  "They  got  a  right  to  rest  after  they  worked  all 
of  their  life.  Maybe  they  like  to  just  walk  around." 

Carl  had  been  looking  steadily  at  the  skinny  horse.  "You  can't  imag- 
ine now  what  Easter  used  to  look  like,"  he  said  softly.  "High  neck, 
deep  chest,  fine  barrel.  He  could  jump  a  five-bar  gate  in  stride.  I  won  a 
flat  race  on  him  when  I  was  fifteen  years  old.  I  could  of  got  two  hun- 
dred dollars  for  him  any  time.  You  wouldn't  think  how  pretty  he  was." 
He  checked  himself,  for  he  hated  softness.  "But  he  ought  to  be  shot 
now,"  he  said. 

"He's  got  a  right  to  rest,"  Billy  Buck  insisted. 

Jody's  father  had  a  humorous  thought.  He  turned  to  Gitano.  "If 
ham  and  eggs  grew  on  a  side-hill  I'd  turn  you  out  to  pasture  too,"  he 
said.  "But  I  can't  afford  to  pasture  you  in  my  kitchen." 

He  laughed  to  Billy  Buck  about  it  as  they  went  on  toward  the  house. 
"Be  a  good  thing  for  all  of  us  if  ham  and  eggs  grew  on  the  side-hills." 

Jody  knew  how  his  father  was  probing  for  a  place  to  hurt  in  Gitano. 
He  had  been  probed  often.  His  father  knew  every  place  in  the  boy 
where  a  word  would  fester. 

"He's  only  talking,"  Jody  said.  "He  didn't  mean  it  about  shooting 
Easter.  He  likes  Easter.  That  was  the  first  horse  he  ever  owned." 

The  sun  sank  behind  the  high  mountains  as  they  stood  there,  and 
the  ranch  was  hushed.  Gitano  seemed  to  be  more  at  home  in  the  eve- 
ning. He  made  a  curious  sharp  sound  with  his  lips  and  stretched  one 
of  his  hands  over  the  fence.  Old  Easter  moved  stiffly  to  him,  and 
Gitano  rubbed  the  lean  neck  under  the  mane. 


496  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"You  like  him?"  Jody  asked  softly. 

"Yes — but  he's  no  damn  good." 

The  triangle  sounded  at  the  ranch  house.  "That's  supper,"  Jody 
cried.  "Come  on  up  to  supper." 

As  they  walked  up  toward  the  house  Jody  noticed  again  that  Gitano's 
body  was  as  straight  as  that  of  a  young  man.  Only  by  a  jerkiness  in 
his  movements  and  by  the  scuffling  of  his  heels  could  it  be  seen  that 
he  was  old. 

The  turkeys  were  flying  heavily  into  the  lower  branches  of  the 
cypress  tree  by  the  bunkhouse.  A  fat  sleek  ranch  cat  walked  across  the 
road  carrying  a  rat  so  large  that  its  tail  dragged  on  the  ground.  The 
quail  on  the  side-hills  were  still  sounding  the  clear  water  call. 

Jody  and  Gitano  came  to  the  back  steps  and  Mrs.  Tiflin  looked  out 
through  the  screen  door  at  them. 

"Come  running,  Jody.  Come  in  to  supper,  Gitano." 

Carl  and  Billy  Buck  had  started  to  eat  at  the  long  oilcloth-covered 
table.  Jody  slipped  into  his  chair  without  moving  it,  but  Gitano  stood 
holding  his  hat  until  Carl  looked  up  and  said,  "Sit  down,  sit  down. 
You  might  as  well  get  your  belly  full  before  you  go  on."  Carl  was 
afraid  he  might  relent  and  let  the  old  man  stay,  and  so  he  continued  to 
remind  himself  that  this  couldn't  be. 

Gitano  laid  his  hat  on  the  floor  and  diffidently  sat  down.  He  wouldn't 
reach  for  food.  Carl  had  to  pass  it  to  him.  "Here,  fill  yourself  up." 
Gitano  ate  very  slowly,  cutting  tiny  pieces  of  meat  and  arranging  little 
pats  of  mashed  potato  on  his  plate. 

The  situation  would  not  stop  worrying  Carl  Tiflin.  "Haven't  you 
got  any  relatives  in  this  part  of  the  country?"  he  asked. 

Gitano  answered  with  some  pride,  "My  brother-in-law  is  in  Mon- 
terey. I  have  cousins  there,  too." 

"Well,  you  can  go  and  live  there,  then." 

"I  was  born  here,"  Gitano  said  in  gentle  rebuke. 

Jody's  mother  came  in  from  the  kitchen,  carrying  a  large  bowl  of 
tapioca  pudding. 

Carl  chuckled  to  her,  "Did  I  tell  you  what  I  said  to  him?  I  said  if 
ham  and  eggs  grew  on  the  side-hills  I'd  put  him  out  to  pasture,  like 
old  Easter." 


JOHN  STEINBECK  497 

Gitano  stared  unmoved  at  his  plate. 

"It's  too  bad  he  can't  stay,"  said  Mrs.  Tiflin. 

"Now  don't  you  start  anything,"  Carl  said  crossly. 

When  they  had  finished  eating,  Carl  and  Billy  Buck  and  Jody  went 
into  the  living-room  to  sit  for  a  while,  but  Gitano,  without  a  word  of 
farewell  or  thanks,  walked  through  the  kitchen  and  out  the  back  door. 
Jody  sat  and  secretly  watched  his  father.  He  knew  how  mean  his 
father  felt. 

"This  country's  full  of  these  old  paisanos,"  Carl  said  to  Billy  Buck. 

"They're  damn  good  men,"  Billy  defended  them.  "They  can  work 
older  than  white  men.  I  saw  one  of  them  a  hundred  and  five  years 
old,  and  he  could  still  ride  a  horse.  You  don't  see  any  white  men  as 
old  as  Gitano  walking  twenty  or  thirty  miles." 

"Oh,  they're  tough,  all  right,"  Carl  agreed.  "Say,  are  you  standing 
up  for  him  too?  Listen,  Billy,"  he  explained,  "I'm  having  a  hard 
enough  time  keeping  this  ranch  out  of  the  Bank  of  Italy  without  tak- 
ing on  anybody  else  to  feed.  You  know  that,  Billy." 

"Sure,  I  know,"  said  Billy.  "If  you  was  rich,  it'd  be  different." 

"That's  right,  and  it  isn't  like  he  didn't  have  relatives  to  go  to.  A 
brother-in-law  and  cousins  right  in  Monterey.  Why  should  I  worry 
about  him?" 

Jody  sat  quietly  listening,  and  he  seemed  to  hear  Gitano's  gentle 
voice  and  its  unanswerable,  "But  I  was  born  here."  Gitano  was  mys- 
terious like  the  mountains.  There  were  ranges  back  as  far  as  you  could 
see,  but  behind  the  last  range  piled  up  against  the  sky  there  was  a  great 
unknown  country.  And  Gitano  was  an  old  man,  until  you  got  to  the 
dull  dark  eyes.  And  in  behind  them  was  some  unknown  thing.  He 
didn't  ever  say  enough  to  let  you  guess  what  was  inside,  under  the 
eyes.  Jody  felt  himself  irresistibly  drawn  toward  the  bunkhouse.  He 
slipped  from  his  chair  while  his  father  was  talking  and  he  went  out 
the  door  without  making  a  sound. 

The  night  was  very  dark  and  far-off  noises  carried  in  clearly.  The 
hamebells  of  a  wood  team  sounded  from  way  over  the  hill  on  the 
county  road.  Jody  picked  his  way  across  the  dark  yard.  He  could  see 
a  light  through  the  window  of  the  little  room  of  the  bunkhouse.  Be- 
cause the  night  was  secret  he  walked  quietly  up  to  the  window  and 


498  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

peered  in.  Gitano  sat  in  the  rocking-chair  and  his  back  was  toward  the 
window.  His  right  arm  moved  slowly  back  and  forth  in  front  of  him. 
Jody  pushed  the  door  open  and  walked  in.  Gitano  jerked  upright  and. 
seizing  a  piece  of  deerskin,  he  tried  to  throw  it  over  the  thing  in  his 
lap,  but  the  skin  slipped  away.  Jody  stood  overwhelmed  by  the  thing 
in  Gitano's  hand,  a  lean  and  lovely  rapier  with  a  golden  basket  hilt. 
The  blade  was  like  a  thin  ray  of  dark  light.  The  hilt  was  pierced  and 
intricately  carved. 

"What  is  it?"  Jody  demanded. 

Gitano  only  looked  at  him  with  resentful  eyes,  and  he  picked  up  the 
fallen  deerskin  and  firmly  wrapped  the  beautiful  blade  in  it. 

Jody  put  out  his  hand.  "Can't  I  see  it?" 

Gitano's  eyes  smoldered  angrily  and  he  shook  his  head. 

"Where'd  you  get  it?  Where'd  it  come  from?" 

Now  Gitano  regarded  him  profoundly,  as  though  he  pondered.  "I 
got  it  from  my  father." 

"Well,  where'd  he  get  it?" 

Gitano  looked  down  at  the  long  deerskin  parcel  in  his  hand.  "I 
don'  know." 

"Didn't  he  ever  tell  you?" 

"No." 

"What  do  you  do  with  it?" 

Gitano  looked  slightly  surprised.  "Nothing.  I  just  keep  it." 

"Can't  I  see  it  again?" 

The  old  man  slowly  unwrapped  the  shining  blade  and  let  the  lamp- 
light slip  along  it  for  a  moment.  Then  he  wrapped  it  up  again.  "You 
go  now.  I  want  to  go  to  bed."  He  blew  out  the  lamp  almost  before 
Jody  had  closed  the  door. 

As  he  went  back  toward  the  house,  Jody  knew  one  thing  more 
sharply  than  he  had  ever  known  anything.  He  must  never  tell  anyone 
about  the  rapier.  It  would  be  a  dreadful  thing  to  tell  anyone  about  it, 
for  it  would  destroy  some  fragile  structure  of  truth.  It  was  a  truth  that 
might  be  shattered  by  division. 

On  the  way  across  the  dark  yard  Jody  passed  Billy  Buck.  "They're 
wondering  where  you  are,"  Billy  said. 


JOHN   STEINBECK  499 

Jody  slipped  into  the  living-room,  and  his  father  turned  to  him. 
"Where  have  you  been?" 
"I  just  went  out  to  see  if  I  caught  any  rats  in  my  new  trap." 
"It's  time  you  went  to  bed,"  his  father  said. 

Jody  was  first  at  the  breakfast  table  in  the  morning.  Then  his  father 
came  in,  and  last,  Billy  Buck.  Mrs.  Tiflin  looked  in  from  the  kitchen. 

"Where's  the  old  man,  Billy?"  she  asked. 

"I  guess  he's  out  walking,"  Billy  said.  "I  looked  in  his  room  and  he 
wasn't  there." 

"Maybe  he  started  early  to  Monterey,"  said  Carl.  "It's  a  long  walk." 

"No,"  Billy  explained.  "His  sack  is  in  the  little  room." 

After  breakfast  Jody  walked  down  to  the  bunkhouse.  Flies  were 
flashing  about  in  the  sunshine.  The  ranch  seemed  especially  quiet  this 
morning.  When  he  was  sure  no  one  was  watching  him,  Jody  went  into 
the  little  room,  and  looked  into  Gitano's  sack.  An  extra  pair  of  long 
cotton  underwear  was  there,  an  extra  pair  of  jeans  and  three  pairs  of 
worn  socks.  Nothing  else  was  in  the  sack.  A  sharp  loneliness  fell  on 
Jody.  He  walked  slowly  back  toward  the  house.  His  father  stood  on 
the  porch  talking  to  Mrs.  Tiflin. 

"I  guess  old  Easter's  dead  at  last,"  he  said.  "I  didn't  see  him  come 
down  to  water  with  the  other  horses." 

In  the  middle  of  the  morning  Jess  Taylor  from  the  ridge  ranch  rode 
down. 

"You  didn't  sell  that  old  gray  crowbait  of  yours,  did  you,  Carl?" 

"No,  of  course  not.  Why?" 

"Well,"  Jess  said.  "I  was  out  this  morning  early,  and  I  saw  a  funny 
thing.  I  saw  an  old  man  on  an  old  horse,  no  saddle,  only  a  piece  of 
rope  for  a  bridle.  He  wasn't  on  the  road  at  all.  He  was  cutting  right 
up  straight  through  the  brush.  I  think  he  had  a  gun.  At  least  I  saw 
something  shine  in  his  hand." 

"That's  old  Gitano,"  Carl  Tiflin  said.  "I'll  see  if  any  of  my  guns  are 
missing."  He  stepped  into  the  house  for  a  second.  "Nope,  all  here. 
Which  way  was  he  heading,  Jess?" 


500  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Well,  that's  the  funny  thing.  He  was  heading  straight  back  into 
the  mountains." 

Carl  laughed.  "They  never  get  too  old  to  steal,"  he  said.  "I  guess  he 
just  stole  old  Easter." 

"Want  to  go  after  him,  Carl?" 

"Hell  no,  just  save  me  burying  that  horse.  I  wonder  where  he  got 
the  gun.  I  wonder  what  he  wants  back  there." 

Jody  walked  up  through  the  vegetable  patch,  toward  the  brush  line. 
He  looked  searchingly  at  the  towering  mountains— ridge  after  ridge 
after  ridge  until  at  last  there  was  the  ocean.  For  a  moment  he  thought 
he  could  see  a  black  speck  crawling  up  the  farther  ridge.  Jody  thought 
of  the  rapier  and  of  Gitano.  And  he  thought  of  the  great  mountains.  A 
longing  caressed  him,  and  it  was  so  sharp  that  he  wanted  to  cry  to  get 
it  out  of  his  breast.  He  lay  down  in  the  green  grass  near  the  round  tub 
at  the  brush  line.  He  covered  his  eyes  with  his  crossed  arms  and  lay 
there  a  long  time,  and  he  was  full  of  a  nameless  sorrow. 

III.    THE  PROMISE 

In  a  mid-afternoon  of  spring,  the  little  boy  Jody  walked  martially 
along  the  brush-lined  road  toward  his  home  ranch.  Banging  his  knee 
against  the  golden  lard  bucket  he  used  for  school  lunch,  he  contrived 
a  good  bass  drum,  while  his  tongue  fluttered  sharply  against  his  teeth 
to  fill  in  snare  drums  and  occasional  trumpets.  Some  time  back  the 
other  members  of  the  squad  that  walked  so  smartly  from  the  school 
had  turned  into  the  various  little  canyons  and  taken  the  wagon  roads 
to  their  own  home  ranches.  Now  Jody  marched  seemingly  alone,  with 
high-lifted  knees  and  pounding  feet;  but  behind  him  there  was  a  phan- 
tom army  with  great  flags  and  swords,  silent  but  deadly. 

The  afternoon  was  green  and  gold  with  spring.  Underneath  the 
spread  branches  of  the  oaks  the  plants  grew  pale  and  tall,  and  on  the 
hills  the  feed  was  smooth  and  thick.  The  sagebrushes  shone  with  new 
silver  leaves  and  the  oaks  wore  hoods  of  golden  green.  Over  the  hills 
there  hung  such  a  green  odor  that  the  horses  on  the  flats  galloped 
madly,  and  then  stopped,  wondering;  lambs,  and  even  old  sheep, 
jumped  in  the  air  unexpectedly  and  landed  on  stiff  legs,  and  went  on 


JOHN  STEINBECK  501 

eating;  young  clumsy  calves  butted  their  heads  together  and  drew 
back  and  butted  again. 

As  the  grey  and  silent  army  marched  past,  led  by  Jody,  the  animals 
stopped  their  feeding  and  their  play  and  watched  it  go  by. 

Suddenly  Jody  stopped.  The  grey  army  halted,  bewildered  and  nerv- 
ous. Jody  went  down  on  his  knees.  The  army  stood  in  long  uneasy 
ranks  for  a  moment,  and  then,  with  a  soft  sigh  of  sorrow,  rose  up  in  a 
faint  grey  mist  and  disappeared.  Jody  had  seen  the  thorny  crown  of  a 
horny-toad  moving  under  the  dust  of  the  road.  His  grimy  hand  went 
out  and  grasped  the  spiked  halo  and  held  firmly  while  the  little  beast 
struggled.  Then  Jody  turned  the  horny-toad  over,  exposing  its  pale  gold 
stomach.  With  a  gentle  forefinger  he  stroked  the  throat  and  chest  until 
the  horny-toad  relaxed,  until  its  eyes  closed  and  it  lay  languorous  and 
asleep. 

Jody  opened  his  lunch  pail  and  deposited  the  first  game  inside.  He 
moved  on  now,  his  knees  bent  slightly,  his  shoulders  crouched ;  his  bare 
feet  were  wise  and  silent.  In  his  right  hand  there  was  a  long  grey  rifle. 
The  brush  along  the  road  stirred  restively  under  a  new  and  unexpected 
population  of  grey  tigers  and  grey  bears.  The  hunting  was  very  good, 
for  by  the  time  Jody  reached  the  fork  of  the  road  where  the  mail  box 
stood  on  a  post,  he  had  captured  two  more  horny-toads,  four  little  grass 
lizards,  a  blue  snake,  sixteen  yellow-winged  grasshoppers  and  a  brown 
damp  newt  from  under  a  rock.  This  assortment  scrabbled  unhappily 
against  the  tin  of  the  lunch  bucket. 

At  the  road  fork  the  rifle  evaporated  and  the  tigers  and  bears  melted 
from  the  hillsides.  Even  the  moist  and  uncomfortable  creatures  in  the 
lunch  pail  ceased  to  exist,  for  the  little  red  metal  flag  was  up  on  the 
mail  box,  signifying  that  some  postal  matter  was  inside.  Jody  set  his 
pail  on  the  ground  and  opened  the  letter  box.  There  was  a  Mont- 
gomery Ward  catalog  and  a  copy  of  the  Salinas  Weekly  Journal.  He 
slammed  the  box,  picked  up  his  lunch  pail  and  trotted  over  the  ridge 
and  down  into  the  cup  of  the  ranch.  Past  the  barn  he  ran,  and  past 
the  used-up  haystack  and  the  bunkhouse  and  the  cypress  tree.  He 
banged  through  the  front  screen  door  of  the  ranch  house  calling, 
"Ma'am,  ma'am,  there's  a  catalog." 

Mrs.  Tiflin  was  in  the  kitchen  spooning  clabbered  milk  into  a  cotton 


502  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

bag.  She  put  down  her  work  and  rinsed  her  hands  under  the  tap. 
"Here  in  the  kitchen,  Jody.  Here  I  am." 

He  ran  in  and  clattered  his  lunch  pail  on  the  sink.  "Here  it  is.  Can 
I  open  the  catalog,  ma'am?" 

Mrs.  Tiflin  took  up  the  spoon  again  and  went  back  to  her  cottage 
cheese.  "Don't  lose  it,  Jody.  Your  father  will  want  to  see  it."  She 
scraped  the  last  of  the  milk  into  the  bag.  "Oh,  Jody,  your  father  wants 
to  see  you  before  you  go  to  your  chores."  She  waved  a  cruising  fly 
from  the  cheese  bag. 

Jody  closed  the  new  catalog  in  alarm.  "Ma'am?" 

"Why  don't  you  ever  listen?  I  say  your  father  wants  to  see  you." 

The  boy  laid  the  catalog  gently  on  the  sink  board.  "Do  you — is  it 
something  I  did?" 

Mrs.  Tiflin  laughed.  "Always  a  bad  conscience.  What  did  you  do?" 

"Nothing,  ma'am,"  he  said  lamely.  But  he  couldn't  remember,  and 
besides  it  was  impossible  to  know  what  action  might  later  be  con- 
strued as  a  crime. 

His  mother  hung  the  full  bag  on  a  nail  where  it  could  drip  into  the 
sink.  "He  just  said  he  wanted  to  see  you  when  you  got  home.  He's 
somewhere  down  by  the  barn." 

Jody  turned  and  went  out  the  back  door.  Hearing  his  mother  open 
the  lunch  pail  and  then  gasp  with  rage,  a  memory  stabbed  him  and 
he  trotted  away  toward  the  barn,  conscientiously  not  hearing  the 
angry  voice  that  called  him  from  the  house. 

Carl  Tiflin  and  Billy  Buck,  the  ranch  hand,  stood  against  the  lower 
pasture  fence.  Each  man  rested  one  foot  on  the  lowest  bar  and  both 
elbows  on  the  top  bar.  They  were  talking  slowly  and  aimlessly.  In 
the  pasture  half  a  dozen  horses  nibbled  contentedly  at  the  sweet  grass. 
The  mare,  Nellie,  stood  backed  up  against  the  gate,  rubbing  her  but- 
tocks on  the  heavy  post. 

Jody  sidled  uneasily  near.  He  dragged  one  foot  to  give  an  impression 
of  great  innocence  and  nonchalance.  When  he  arrived  beside  the  men 
he  put  one  foot  on  the  lowest  fence  rail,  rested  his  elbows  on  the  second 
bar  and  looked  into  the  pasture  too.  The  two  men  glanced  sideways 
at  him. 


JOHN  STEINBECK  503 

"I  wanted  to  see  you,"  Carl  said  in  the  stern  tone  he  reserved  for 
children  and  animals. 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Jody  guiltily. 

"Billy,  here,  says  you  took  good  care  o£  the  pony  before  it  died." 

No  punishment  was  in  the  air.  Jody  grew  bolder.  "Yes,  sir,  I  did." 

"Billy  says  you  have  a  good  patient  hand  with  horses." 

Jody  felt  a  sudden  warm  friendliness  for  the  ranch  hand. 

Billy  put  in,  "He  trained  that  pony  as  good  as  anybody  I  ever  seen." 

Then  Carl  Tiflin  came  gradually  to  the  point.  "If  you  could  have 
another  horse  would  you  work  for  it?" 

Jody  shivered.  "Yes,  sir." 

"Well,  look  here,  then.  Billy  says  the  best  way  for  you  to  be  a  good 
hand  with  horses  is  to  raise  a  colt." 

"It's  the  only  good  way,"  Billy  interrupted. 

"Now,  look  here,  Jody,"  continued  Carl.  "Jess  Taylor,  up  to  the 
ridge  ranch,  has  a  fair  stallion,  but  it'll  cost  five  dollars.  I'll  put  up  the 
money,  but  you'll  have  to  work  it  out  all  summer.  Will  you  do  that?" 

Jody  felt  that  his  insides  were  shriveling.  "Yes,  sir,"  he  said  softly. 

"And  no  complaining?  And  no  forgetting  when  you're  told  to  do 
something?" 

"Yes,  sir." 

"Well,  all  right,  then.  Tomorrow  morning  you  take  Nellie  up  to 
the  ridge  ranch  and  get  her  bred.  You'll  have  to  take  care  of  her,  too, 
till  she  throws  the  colt." 

"Yes,  sir." 

"You  better  get  to  the  chickens  and  the  wood  now." 

Jody  slid  away.  In  passing  behind  Billy  Buck  he  very  nearly  put 
out  his  hand  to  touch  the  blue-jeaned  legs.  His  shoulders  swayed  a 
little  with  maturity  and  importance. 

He  went  to  his  work  with  unprecedented  seriousness.  This  night  he 
did  not  dump  the  can  of  grain  to  the  chickens  so  that  they  had  to 
leap  over  each  other  and  struggle  to  get  it.  No,  he  spread  the  wheat 
so  far  and  so  carefully  that  the  hens  couldn't  find  some  of  it  at  all. 
And  in  the  house,  after  listening  to  his  mother's  despair  over  boys 
who  fill  their  lunch  pails  with  slimy,  suffocated  reptiles,  and  bugs, 


504  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

he  promised  never  to  do  it  again.  Indeed,  Jody  felt  that  all  such  foolish- 
ness was  lost  in  the  past.  He  was  far  too  grown  up  ever  to  put  horny- 
toads  in  his  lunch  pail  any  more.  He  carried  in  so  much  wood  and 
built  such  a  high  structure  with  it  that  his  mother  walked  in  fear  of 
an  avalanche  of  oak.  When  he  was  done,  when  he  had  gathered  eggs 
that  had  remained  hidden  for  weeks,  Jody  walked  down  again  past 
the  cypress  tree,  and  past  the  bunkhouse  toward  the  pasture.  A  fat 
warty  toad  that  looked  out  at  him  from  under  the  watering  trough 
had  no  emotional  effect  on  him  at  all. 

Carl  Tiflin  and  Billy  Buck  were  not  in  sight,  but  from  a  metallic 
ringing  on  the  other  side  of  the  barn  Jody  knew  that  Billy  Buck  was 
just  starting  to  milk  a  cow. 

The  other  horses  were  eating  toward  the  upper  end  of  the  pasture, 
but  Nellie  continued  to  rub  herself  nervously  against  the  post.  Jody 
walked  slowly  near,  saying,  "So,  girl,  so-o,  Nellie."  The  mare's  ears 
went  back  naughtily  and  her  lips  drew  away  from  her  yellow  teeth. 
She  turned  her  head  around;  her  eyes  were  glazed  and  mad.  Jody 
climbed  to  the  top  of  the  fence  and  hung  his  feet  over  and  looked 
paternally  down  on  the  mare. 

The  evening  hovered  while  he  sat  there.  Bats  and  nighthawks 
flicked  about.  Billy  Buck,  walking  toward  the  house  carrying  a  full 
milk  bucket,  saw  Jody  and  stopped.  "It's  a  long  time  to  wait,"  he  said 
gently.  "You'll  get  awful  tired  waiting." 

"No  I  won't,  Billy.  How  long  will  it  be?" 

"Nearly  a  year." 

"Well,  I  won't  get  tired." 

The  triangle  at  the  house  rang  stridently.  Jody  climbed  down  from 
the  fence  and  walked  to  supper  beside  Billy  Buck.  He  even  put  out 
his  hand  and  took  hold  of  the  milk  bucket  to  help  carry  it. 

The  next  morning  after  breakfast  Carl  Tiflin  folded  a  five-dollar  bill 
in  a  piece  of  newspaper  and  pinned  the  package  in  the  bib  pocket  of 
Jody's  overalls.  Billy  Buck  haltered  the  mare  Nellie  and  led  her  out 
of  the  pasture. 

"Be  careful  now,"  he  warned.  "Hold  her  up  short  here  so  she  can't 
bite  you.  She's  crazy  as  a  coot." 

Jody  took  hold  of  the  halter  leather  itself  and  started  up  the  hill 


JOHN   STEINBECK  505 

toward  the  ridge  ranch  with  Nellie  skittering  and  jerking  behind  him. 
In  the  pasturage  along  the  road  the  wild  oat  heads  were  just  clearing 
their  scabbards.  The  warm  morning  sun  shone  on  Jody's  back  so 
sweetly  that  he  was  forced  to  take  a  serious  stiff-legged  hop  now  and 
then  in  spite  of  his  maturity.  On  the  fences  the  shiny  blackbirds  with 
red  epaulets  clicked  their  dry  call.  The  meadowlarks  sang  like  water, 
and  the  wild  doves,  concealed  among  the  bursting  leaves  of  the  oaks, 
made  a  sound  of  restrained  grieving.  In  the  fields  the  rabbits  sat  sun- 
ning themselves,  with  only  their  forked  ears  showing  above  the  grass 
heads. 

After  an  hour  of  steady  uphill  walking,  Jody  turned  into  a  narrow 
road  that  led  up  a  steeper  hill  to  the  ridge  ranch.  He  could  see  the  red 
roof  of  the  barn  sticking  up  above  the  oak  trees,  and  he  could  hear  a 
dog  barking  unemotionally  near  the  house. 

Suddenly  Nellie  jerked  back  and  nearly  freed  herself.  From  the 
direction  of  the  barn  Jody  heard  a  shrill  whistling  scream  and  a 
splintering  of  wood,  and  then  a  man's  voice  shouting.  Nellie  reared 
and  whinnied.  When  Jody  held  to  the  halter  rope  she  ran  at  him  with 
bared  teeth.  He  dropped  his  hold  and  scuttled  out  of  the  way,  into 
the  brush.  The  high  scream  came  from  the  oaks  again,  and  Nellie 
answered  it.  With  hoofs  battering  the  ground  the  stallion  appeared 
and  charged  down  the  hill  trailing  a  broken  halter  rope.  His  eyes 
glittered  feverishly.  His  stiff",  erected  nostrils  were  as  red  as  flame.  His 
black,  sleek  hide  shone  in  the  sunlight.  The  stallion  came  on  so  fast 
that  he  couldn't  stop  when  he  reached  the  mare.  Nellie's  ears  went 
back;  she  whirled  and  kicked  at  him  as  he  went  by.  The  stallion  spun 
around  and  reared.  He  struck  the  mare  with  his  front  hoof,  and  while 
she  staggered  under  the  blow,  his  teeth  raked  her  neck  and  drew  an 
ooze  of  blood. 

Instantly  Nellie's  mood  changed.  She  became  coquettishly  feminine. 
She  nibbled  his  arched  neck  with  her  lips.  She  edged  around  and 
rubbed  her  shoulder  against  his  shoulder.  Jody  stood  half-hidden  in 
the  brush  and  watched.  He  heard  the  step  of  a  horse  behind  him,  but 
before  he  could  turn,  a  hand  caught  him  by  the  overall  straps  and 
lifted  him  off  the  ground.  Jess  Taylor  sat  the  boy  behind  him  on  the 
horse. 


506  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"You  might  have  got  killed,"  he  said.  "Sundog's  a  mean  devil  some- 
times. He  busted  his  rope  and  went  right  through  a  gate." 

Jody  sat  quietly,  but  in  a  moment  he  cried,  "He'll  hurt  her,  he'll  kill 
her.  Get  him  away!" 

Jess  chuckled.  "She'll  be  all  right.  Maybe  you'd  better  climb  oft 
and  go  up  to  the  house  for  a  little.  You  could  get  maybe  a  piece  of 
pie  up  there." 

But  Jody  shook  his  head.  "She's  mine,  and  the  colt's  going  to  be 
mine.  I'm  going  to  raise  it  up." 

Jess  nodded.  "Yes,  that's  a  good  thing.  Carl  has  good  sense  some- 
times." 

In  a  little  while  the  danger  was  over.  Jess  lifted  Jody  down  and 
then  caught  the  stallion  by  its  broken  halter  rope.  And  he  rode  ahead, 
while  Jody  followed,  leading  Nellie. 

It  was  only  after  he  had  unpinned  and  handed  over  the  five  dollars, 
and  after  he  had  eaten  two  pieces  of  pie,  that  Jody  started  for  home 
again.  And  Nellie  followed  docilely  after  him.  She  was  so  quiet  that 
Jody  climbed  on  a  stump  and  rode  her  most  of  the  way  home. 

The  five  dollars  his  father  had  advanced  reduced  Jody  to  peonage 
for  the  whole  late  spring  and  summer.  When  the  hay  was  cut  he 
drove  a  rake.  He  led  the  horse  that  pulled  on  the  Jackson-fork  tackle, 
and  when  the  baler  came  he  drove  the  circling  horse  that  put  pressure 
on  the  bales.  In  addition,  Carl  Tiflin  taught  him  to  milk  and  put  a 
cow  under  his  care,  so  that  a  new  chore  was  added  night  and  morning. 

The  bay  mare  Nellie  quickly  grew  complacent.  As  she  walked 
about  the  yellowing  hillsides  or  worked  at  easy  tasks,  her  lips  were 
curled  in  a  perpetual  fatuous  smile.  She  moved  slowly,  with  the  calm 
importance  of  an  empress.  When  she  was  put  to  a  team,  she  pulled 
steadily  and  unemotionally.  Jody  went  to  see  her  every  day.  He  studied 
her  with  critical  eyes  and  saw  no  change  whatever. 

One  afternoon  Billy  Buck  leaned  the  many-tined  manure  fork 
against  the  barn  wall.  He  loosened  his  belt  and  tucked  in  his  shirt-tail 
and  tightened  the  belt  again.  He  picked  one  of  the  little  straws  from 
his  hatband  and  put  it  in  the  corner  of  his  mouth.  Jody,  who  was  help- 
ing Doubletree  Mutt,  the  big  serious  dog,  to  dig  out  a  gopher,  straight- 
ened up  as  the  ranch  hand  sauntered  out  of  the  barn. 


JOHN  STEINBECK  507 

"Let's  go  up  and  have  a  look  at  Nellie,"  Billy  suggested. 

Instantly  Jody  fell  into  step  with  him.  Doubletree  Mutt  watched 
them  over  his  shoulder;  then  he  dug  furiously,  growled,  sounded  little 
sharp  yelps  to  indicate  that  the  gopher  was  practically  caught.  When 
he  looked  over  his  shoulder  again,  and  saw  that  neither  Jody  nor  Billy 
was  interested,  he  climbed  reluctantly  out  of  the  hole  and  followed 
them  up  the  hill. 

The  wild  oats  were  ripening.  Every  head  bent  sharply  under  its 
load  of  grain,  and  the  grass  was  dry  enough  so  that  it  made  a  swishing 
sound  as  Jody  and  Billy  stepped  through  it.  Halfway  up  the  hill  they 
could  see  Nellie  and  the  iron-grey  gelding,  Pete,  nibbling  the  heads 
from  the  wild  oats.  When  they  approached,  Nellie  looked  at  them 
and  backed  her  ears  and  bobbed  her  head  up  and  down  rebelliously. 
Billy  walked  to  her  and  put  his  hand  under  her  mane  and  patted  her 
neck,  until  her  ears  came  forward  again  and  she  nibbled  delicately 
at  his  shirt. 

Jody  asked,  "Do  you  think  she's  really  going  to  have  a  colt?" 

Billy  rolled  the  lids  back  from  the  mare's  eyes  with  his  thumb  and 
forefinger.  He  felt  the  lower  lip  and  fingered  the  black,  leathery  teats. 
"I  wouldn't  be  surprised,"  he  said. 

"Well,  she  isn't  changed  at  all.  It's  three  months  gone." 

Billy  rubbed  the  mare's  flat  forehead  with  his  knuckle  while  she 
grunted  with  pleasure.  "I  told  you  you'd  get  tired  waiting.  It'll  be 
five  months  more  before  you  can  even  see  a  sign,  and  it'll  be  at  least 
eight  months  more  before  she  throws  the  colt,  about  next  January." 

Jody  sighed  deeply.  "It's  a  long  time,  isn't  it?" 

"And  then  it'll  be  about  two  years  more  before  you  can  ride." 

Jody  cried  out  in  despair,  "I'll  be  grown  up." 

"Yep,  you'll  be  an  old  man,"  said  Billy. 

"What  color  do  you  think  the  colt'll  be?" 

"Why,  you  can't  ever  tell.  The  stud  is  black  and  the  dam  is  bay. 
Colt  might  be  black  or  bay  or  gray  or  dappled.  You  can't  tell.  Some- 
times a  black  dam  might  have  a  white  colt." 

"Well,  I  hope  it's  black  and  a  stallion." 

"If  it's  a  stallion,  we'll  have  to  geld  it.  Your  father  wouldn't  let  you 
have  a  stallion." 


508  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Maybe  he  would,"  Jody  said.  "I  could  train  him  not  to  be  mean." 

Billy  pursed  his  lips,  and  the  little  straw  that  had  been  in  the  corner 
of  his  mouth  rolled  down  to  the  center.  "You  can't  ever  trust  a  stal- 
lion," he  said  critically.  "They're  mostly  fighting  and  making  trouble. 
Sometimes  when  they're  feeling  funny  they  won't  work.  They  make 
the  mares  uneasy  and  kick  hell  out  of  the  geldings.  Your  father 
wouldn't  let  you  keep  a  stallion." 

Nellie  sauntered  away,  nibbling  the  drying  grass.  Jody  skinned  the 
grain  from  a  grass  stem  and  threw  the  handful  into  the  air,  so  that 
each  pointed,  feathered  seed  sailed  out  like  a  dart.  "Tell  me  how  it'll 
be,  Billy.  Is  it  like  when  the  cows  have  calves?" 

"Just  about.  Mares  are  a  little  more  sensitive.  Sometimes  you  have 
to  be  there  to  help  the  mare.  And  sometimes  if  it's  wrong,  you  have 
to — "  he  paused. 

"Have  to  what,  Billy?" 

"Have  to  tear  the  colt  to  pieces  to  get  it  out,  or  the  mare'll  die." 

"But  it  won't  be  that  way  this  time,  will  it,  Billy?" 

"Oh,  no.  Nellie's  thrown  good  colts." 

"Can  I  be  there,  Billy?  Will  you  be  certain  to  call  me?  It's  my  colt." 

"Sure,  I'll  call  you.  Of  course  I  will." 

"Tell  me  how  it'll  be." 

"Why,  you've  seen  the  cows  calving.  It's  almost  the  same.  The  mare 
starts  groaning  and  stretching,  and  then,  if  it's  a  good  right  birth, 
the  head  and  forefeet  come  out,  and  the  front  hoofs  kick  a  hole  just 
the  way  the  calves  do.  And  the  colt  starts  to  breathe.  It's  good  to  be 
there,  'cause  if  its  feet  aren't  right  maybe  he  can't  break  the  sac,  and 
then  he  might  smother." 

Jody  whipped  his  leg  with  a  bunch  of  grass.  "We'll  have  to  be  there, 
then,  won't  we?" 

"Oh,  we'll  be  there,  all  right." 

They  turned  and  walked  slowly  down  the  hill  toward  the  barn. 
Jody  was  tortured  with  a  thing  he  had  to  say,  although  he  didn't  want 
to.  "Billy,"  he  began  miserably,  "Billy,  you  won't  let  anything  happen 
to  the  colt,  will  you?" 

And  Billy  knew  he  was  thinking  of  the  red  pony,  Gabilan,  and  of 
how  it  died  of  strangles.  Billy  knew  he  had  been  infallible  before  that, 


JOHN  STEINBECK  509 

and  now  he  was  capable  of  failure.  This  knowledge  made  Billy  much 
less  sure  of  himself  than  he  had  been.  "I  can't  tell,"  he  said  roughly. 
"All  sorts  of  things  might  happen,  and  they  wouldn't  be  my  fault. 
I  can't  do  everything."  He  felt  badly  about  his  lost  prestige,  and  so  he 
said,  meanly,  "I'll  do  everything  I  know,  but  I  won't  promise  anything. 
Nellie's  a  good  mare.  She's  thrown  good  colts  before.  She  ought  to 
this  time."  And  he  walked  away  from  Jody  and  went  into  the  saddle- 
room  beside  the  barn,  for  his  feelings  were  hurt. 

Jody  traveled  often  to  the  brushline  behind  the  house.  A  rusty  iron 
pipe  ran  a  thin  stream  of  spring  water  into  an  old  green  tub.  Where 
the  water  spilled  over  and  sank  into  the  ground  there  was  a  patch 
of  perpetually  green  grass.  Even  when  the  hills  were  brown  and  baked 
in  the  summer  that  little  patch  was  green.  The  water  whined  softly 
into  the  trough  all  the  year  round.  This  place  had  grown  to  be  a 
center-point  for  Jody.  When  he  had  been  punished  the  cool  green 
grass  and  the  singing  water  soothed  him.  When  he  had  been  mean 
the  biting  acid  of  meanness  left  him  at  the  brushline.  When  he  sat  in 
the  grass  and  listened  to  the  purling  stream,  the  barriers  set  up  in  his 
mind  by  the  stern  day  went  down  to  ruin. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  black  cypress  tree  by  the  bunkhouse  was  as 
repulsive  as  the  water-tub  was  dear;  for  to  this  tree  all  the  pigs  came, 
sooner  or  later,  to  be  slaughtered.  Pig  killing  was  fascinating,  with 
the  screaming  and  the  blood,  but  it  made  Jody's  heart  beat  so  fast 
that  it  hurt  him.  After  the  pigs  were  scalded  in  the  big  iron  tripod 
kettle  and  their  skins  were  scraped  and  white,  Jody  had  to  go  to  the 
water-tub  to  sit  in  the  grass  until  his  heart  grew  quiet.  The  water-tub 
and  the  black  cypress  were  opposites  and  enemies. 

When  Billy  left  him  and  walked  angrily  away,  Jody  turned  up 
toward  the  house.  He  thought  of  Nellie  as  he  walked,  and  of  the  little 
colt.  Then  suddenly  he  saw  that  he  was  under  the  black  cypress, 
under  the  very  singletree  where  the  pigs  were  hung.  He  brushed  his 
dry-grass  hair  ofif  his  forehead  and  hurried  on.  It  seemed  to  him  an 
unlucky  thing  to  be  thinking  of  his  colt  in  the  very  slaughter  place, 
especially  after  what  Billy  had  said  To  counteract  any  evil  result  of 
that  bad  conjunction  he  walked  quickly  past  the  ranch  house,  through 


510  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  chicken  yard,  through  the  vegetable  patch,  until  he  came  at  last 
to  the  brushline. 

He  sat  down  in  the  green  grass.  The  trilling  water  sounded  in  his 
ears.  He  looked  over  the  farm  buildings  and  across  at  the  round  hills, 
rich  and  yellow  with  grain.  He  could  see  Nellie  feeding  on  the  slope. 
As  usual  the  water  place  eliminated  time  and  distance.  Jody  saw  a 
black,  long-legged  colt,  butting  against  Nellie's  flanks,  demanding 
milk.  And  then  he  saw  himself  breaking  a  large  colt  to  halter.  All  in 
a  few  moments  the  colt  grew  to  be  a  magnificent  animal,  deep  of 
chest,  with  a  neck  as  high  and  arched  as  a  sea-horse's  neck,  with  a 
tail  that  tongued  and  rippled  like  black  flame.  This  horse  was  terrible 
to  everyone  but  Jody.  In  the  schoolyard  the  boys  begged  rides,  and 
Jody  smilingly  agreed.  But  no  sooner  were  they  mounted  than  the 
black  demon  pitched  them  ofif.  Why,  that  was  his  name,  Black  Demon! 
For  a  moment  the  trilling  water  and  the  grass  and  the  sunshine  came 
back,  and  then  .  .  . 

Sometimes  in  the  night  the  ranch  people,  safe  in  their  beds,  heard 
a  roar  of  hoofs  go  by.  They  said,  "It's  Jody,  on  Demon.  He's  helping 
out  the  sheriff  again."  And  then  .  .  . 

The  golden  dust  filled  the  air  in  the  arena  at  the  Salinas  Rodeo. 
The  announcer  called  the  roping  contests.  When  Jody  rode  the  black 
horse  to  the  starting  chute  the  other  contestants  shrugged  and  gave 
up  first  place,  for  it  was  well  known  that  Jody  and  Demon  could 
rope  and  throw  and  tie  a  steer  a  great  deal  quicker  than  any  roping 
team  of  two  men  could.  Jody  was  not  a  boy  any  more,  and  Demon 
was  not  a  horse.  The  two  together  were  one  glorious  individual. 
And  then  .  .  . 

The  President  wrote  a  letter  and  asked  them  to  help  catch  a  bandit 
in  Washington.  Jody  settled  himself  comfortably  in  the  grass.  The 
little  stream  of  water  whined  into  the  mossy  tub. 

The  year  passed  slowly  on.  Time  after  time  Jody  gave  up  his  colt 
for  lost.  No  change  had  taken  place  in  Nellie.  Carl  Tiflin  still  drove 
her  to  a  lierht  cart,  and  she  pulled  on  a  hay  rake  and  worked  the 
Jackson-fork  tackle  when  the  hay  was  being  put  into  the  barn. 

The  summer  passed,  and  the  warm  bright  autumn.  And  then  the 


JOHN   STEINBECK  511 

frantic  morning  winds  began  to  twist  along  the  ground,  and  a  chill 
came  into  the  air,  and  the  poison  oak  turned  red.  One  morning  in 
September,  when  he  had  finished  his  breakfast,  Jody's  mother  called 
him  into  the  kitchen.  She  was  pouring  boiling  water  into  a  bucket 
full  of  dry  midlings  and  stirring  the  materials  to  a  steaming  paste. 

"Yes,  ma'am?"  Jody  asked. 

"Watch  how  I  do  it.  You'll  have  to  do  it  after  this  every  other  morn- 
ing." 

"Well,  what  is  it?" 

"Why,  it's  warm  mash  for  Nellie.  It'll  keep  her  in  good  shape." 

Jody  rubbed  his  forehead  with  a  knuckle.  "Is  she  all  right?"  he  asked 
timidly. 

Mrs.  Tiflin  put  down  the  kettle  and  stirred  the  mash  with  a  wooden 
paddle.  "Of  course  she's  all  right,  only  you've  got  to  take  better  care 
of  her  from  now  on.  Here,  take  this  breakfast  out  to  her!" 

Jody  seized  the  bucket  and  ran,  down  past  the  bunkhouse,  past  the 
barn,  with  the  heavy  bucket  banging  against  his  knees.  He  found 
Nellie  playing  with  the  water  in  the  trough,  pushing  waves  and  toss- 
ing her  head  so  that  the  water  slopped  out  on  the  ground. 

Jody  climbed  the  fence  and  set  the  bucket  of  steaming  mash  beside 
her.  Then  he  stepped  back  to  look  at  her.  And  she  was  changed.  Her 
stomach  was  swollen.  When  she  moved,  her  feet  touched  the  ground 
gently.  She  buried  her  nose  in  the  bucket  and  gobbled  the  hot  break- 
fast. And  when  she  had  finished  and  had  pushed  the  bucket  around 
the  ground  with  her  nose  a  little,  she  stepped  quietly  over  to  Jody  and 
rubbed  her  cheek  against  him. 

Billy  Buck  came  out  of  the  saddle-room  and  walked  over.  "Starts 
fast  when  it  starts,  doesn't  it?" 

"Did  it  come  all  at  once?" 

"Oh,  no,  you  just  stopped  looking  for  a  while."  He  pulled  her  head 
around  toward  Jody.  "She's  goin'  to  be  nice,  too.  See  how  nice  her  eyes 
are!  Some  mares  get  mean,  but  when  they  turn  nice,  they  just  love 
everything."  Nellie  slipped  her  head  under  Billy's  arm  and  rubbed  her 
neck  up  and  down  between  his  arm  and  his  side.  "You  better  treat  her 
awful  nice  now,"  Billy  said. 

"How  long  will  it  be?"  Jody  demanded  breathlessly. 


512  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

The  man  counted  in  whispers  on  his  fingers.  "About  three  months," 
he  said  aloud.  "You  can't  tell  exactly.  Sometimes  it's  eleven  months  to 
the  day,  but  it  might  be  two  weeks  early,  or  a  month  late,  without 
hurting  anything." 

Jody  looked  hard  at  the  ground.  "Billy,"  he  began  nervously,  "Billy, 
you'll  call  me  when  it's  getting  born,  won't  you?  You'll  let  me  be 
there,  won't  you?" 

Billy  bit  the  tip  of  Nellie's  ear  with  his  front  teeth.  "Carl  says  he 
wants  you  to  start  right  at  the  start.  That's  the  only  way  to  learn.  No- 
body can  tell  you  anything.  Like  my  old  man  did  with  me  about  the 
saddle  blanket.  He  was  a  government  packer  when  I  was  your  size, 
and  I  helped  him  some.  One  day  I  left  a  wrinkle  in  my  saddle  blanket 
and  made  a  saddle-sore.  My  old  man  didn't  give  me  hell  at  all.  But 
the  next  morning  he  saddled  me  up  with  a  forty-pound  stock  saddle. 
I  had  to  lead  my  horse  and  carry  that  saddle  over  a  whole  damn  moun- 
tain in  the  sun.  It  darn  near  killed  me,  but  I  never  left  no  wrinkles  in  a 
blanket  again.  I  couldn't.  I  never  in  my  life  since  then  put  on  a  blanket 
but  I  felt  that  saddle  on  my  back." 

Jody  reached  up  a  hand  and  took  hold  of  Nellie's  mane.  "You'll  tell 
me  what  to  do  about  everything,  won't  you?  I  guess  you  know  every- 
thing about  horses,  don't  you?" 

Billy  laughed.  "Why  I'm  half  horse  myself,  you  see,"  he  said.  "My 
ma  died  when  I  was  born,  and  being  my  old  man  was  a  government 
packer  in  the  mountains,  and  no  cows  around  most  of  the  time,  why 
he  just  gave  me  mostly  mare's  milk."  He  continued  seriously,  "And 
horses  know  that.  Don't  you  know  it,  Nellie?" 

The  mare  turned  her  head  and  looked  full  into  his  eyes  for  a  mo- 
ment, and  this  is  a  thing  horses  practically  never  do.  Billy  was  proud 
and  sure  of  himself  now.  He  boasted  a  little.  "I'll  see  you  get  a.good 
colt.  I'll  start  you  right.  And  if  you  do  like  I  say,  you'll  have  the  best 
horse  in  the  county." 

That  made  Jody  feel  warm  and  proud,  too;  so  proud  that  when  he 
went  back  to  the  house  he  bowed  his  legs  and  swayed  his  shoulders  as 
horsemen  do.  And  he  whispered,  "Whoa,  you  Black  Demon,  you! 
Steady  down  there  and  keep  your  feet  on  the  ground." 


JOHN  STEINBECK  513 

The  winter  fell  sharply.  A  few  preliminary  gusty  showers,  and  then 
a  strong  steady  rain.  The  hills  lost  their  straw  color  and  blackened 
under  the  water,  and  the  winter  streams  scrambled  noisily  down  the 
canyons.  The  mushrooms  and  puffballs  popped  up  and  the  new  grass 
started  before  Christmas. 

But  this  year  Christmas  was  not  the  central  day  to  Jody.  Some  un- 
determined time  in  January  had  become  the  axis  day  around  which  the 
months  swung.  When  the  rains  fell,  he  put  Nellie  in  a  box  stall  and 
fed  her  warm  food  every  morning  and  curried  her  and  brushed  her. 

The  mare  was  swelling  so  greatly  that  Jody  became  alarmed.  "She'll 
pop  wide  open,"  he  said  to  Billy. 

Billy  laid  his  strong  square  hand  against  Nellie's  swollen  abdomen. 
"Feel  here,"  he  said  quietly.  "You  can  feel  it  move.  I  guess  it  would 
surprise  you  if  there  were  twin  colts." 

"You  don't  think  so?"  Jody  cried.  "You  don't  think  it  will  be  twins, 
do  you,  Billy?" 

"No,  I  don't,  but  it  does  happen,  sometimes." 

During  the  first  two  weeks  of  January  it  rained  steadily.  Jody  spent 
most  of  his  time,  when  he  wasn't  in  school,  in  the  box  stall  with  Nellie. 
Twenty  times  a  day  he  put  his  hand  on  her  stomach  to  feel  the  colt 
move.  Nellie  became  more  and  more  gentle  and  friendly  to  him.  She 
rubbed  her  nose  on  him.  She  whinnied  softly  when  he  walked  into 
the  barn. 

Carl  Tiflin  came  to  the  barn  with  Jody  one  day.  He  looked  admir- 
ingly at  the  groomed  bay  coat,  and  he  felt  the  firm  flesh  over  ribs  and 
shoulders.  "You've  done  a  good  job,"  he  said  to  Jody.  And  this  was 
the  greatest  praise  he  knew  how  to  give.  Jody  was  tight  with  pride  for 
hours  afterward. 

The  fifteenth  of  January  came,  and  the  colt  was  not  born.  And  the 
twentieth  came;  a  lump  of  fear  began  to  form  in  Jody's  stomach.  "Is 
it  all  right?"  he  demanded  of  Billy. 

"Oh,  sure." 

And  again,  "Are  you  sure  it's  going  to  be  all  right?" 

Billy  stroked  the  mare's  neck.  She  swayed  her  head  uneasily.  "I  told 
you  it  wasn't  always  the  same  time,  Jody.  You  just  have  to  wait." 

When  the  end  of  the  month  arrived  with  no  birth,  Jody  grew  fran- 


514  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

tic.  Nellie  was  so  big  that  her  breath  came  heavily,  and  her  ears  were 
close  together  and  straight  up,  as  though  her  head  ached.  Jody's  sleep 
grew  restless,  and  his  dreams  confused. 

On  the  night  of  the  second  of  February  he  awakened  crying.  His 
mother  called  to  him,  "J°cly,  you're  dreaming.  Wake  up  and  start  over 
again." 

But  Jody  was  filled  with  terror  and  desolation.  He  lay  quietly  a  few 
moments,  waiting  for  his  mother  to  go  back  to  sleep,  and  then  he 
slipped  his  clothes  on,  and  crept  out  in  his  bare  feet. 

The  night  was  black  and  thick.  A  little  misting  rain  fell.  The  cypress 
tree  and  the  bunkhouse  loomed  and  then  dropped  back  into  the  mist. 
The  barn  door  screeched  as  he  opened  it,  a  thing  it  never  did  in  the 
daytime.  Jody  went  to  the  rack  and  found  a  lantern  and  a  tin  box  of 
matches.  He  lighted  the  wick  and  walked  down  the  long  straw-covered 
aisle  to  Nellie's  stall.  She  was  standing  up.  Her  whole  body  weaved 
from  side  to  side.  Jody  called  to  her,  "So,  Nellie,  so-o,  Nellie,"  but  she 
did  not  stop  her  swaying  nor  look  around.  When  he  stepped  into  the 
stall  and  touched  her  on  the  shoulder  she  shivered  under  his  hand. 
Then  Billy  Buck's  voice  came  from  the  hayloft  right  above  the  stall. 

"Jody,  what  are  you  doing?" 

Jody  started  back  and  turned  miserable  eyes  up  toward  the  nest 
where  Billy  was  lying  in  the  hay.  "Is  she  all  right,  do  you  think?" 

"Why  sure,  I  think  so." 

"You  won't  let  anything  happen,  Billy,  you're  sure  you  won't?" 

Billy  growled  down  at  him,  "I  told  you  I'd  call  you,  and  I  will.  Now 
you  get  back  to  bed  and  stop  worrying  that  mare.  She's  got  enough  to 
do  without  you  worrying  her." 

Jody  cringed,  for  he  had  never  heard  Billy  speak  in  such  a  tone.  "I 
only  thought  I'd  come  and  see,"  he  said.  "I  woke  up." 

Billy  softened  a  little  then.  "Well,  you  get  to  bed.  I  don't  want  you 
bothering  her.  I  told  you  I'd  get  you  a  good  colt.  Get  along  now." 

Jody  walked  slowly  out  of  the  barn.  He  blew  out  the  lantern  and  set 
it  in  the  rack.  The  blackness  of  the  night,  and  the  chilled  mist  struck 
him  and  enfolded  him.  He  wished  he  believed  everything  Billy  said 
as  he  had  before  the  pony  died.  It  was  a  moment  before  his  eyes, 
blinded  by  the  feeble  lantern-flame,  could  make  any  form  of  the  dark- 


JOHN  STEINBECK  515 

ness.  The  damp  ground  chilled  his  bare  feet.  At  the  cypress  tree  the 
roosting  turkeys  chattered  a  little  in  alarm,  and  the  two  good  dogs  re- 
sponded to  their  duty  and  came  charging  out,  barking  to  frighten  away 
the  coyotes  they  thought  were  prowling  under  the  tree. 

As  he  crept  through  the  kitchen,  Jody  stumbled  over  a  chair.  Carl 
called  from  his  bedroom,  "Who's  there?  What's  the  matter  there?" 
And  Mrs.  Tiflin  said  sleepily,  "What's  the  matter,  Carl?" 
The  next  second  Carl  came  out  of  the  bedroom  carrying  a  candle, 
and  found  Jody  before  he  could  get  into  bed.  "What  are  you  doing 
out?" 
Jody  turned  shyly  away.  "I  was  down  to  see  the  mare." 
For  a  moment  anger  at  being  awakened  fought  with  approval  in 
Jody's  father.  "Listen,"  he  said,  finally,  "there's  not  a  man  in  this  coun- 
try that  knows  more  about  colts  than  Billy.  You  leave  it  to  him." 

Words  burst  out  of  Jody's  mouth.  "But  the  pony  died " 

"Don't  you  go  blaming  that  on  him,"  Carl  said  sternly.  "If  Billy 
can't  save  a  horse,  it  can't  be  saved." 

Mrs.  Tiflin  called,  "Make  him  clean  his  feet  and  go  to  bed,  Carl. 
He'll  be  sleepy  all  day  tomorrow." 

It  seemed  to  Jody  that  he  had  just  closed  his  eyes  to  try  to  go  to  sleep 
when  he  was  shaken  violently  by  the  shoulder.  Billy  Buck  stood  beside 
him,  holding  a  lantern  in  his  hand.  "Get  up,"  he  said.  "Hurry  up."  He 
turned  and  walked  quickly  out  of  the  room. 

Mrs.  Tiflin  called,  "What's  the  matter?  Is  that  you,  Billy?" 
Yes,  ma  am. 

"Is  Nellie  ready?" 

"Yes,  ma'am." 

"All  right,  I'll  get  up  and  heat  some  water  in  case  you  need  it." 

Jody  jumped  into  his  clothes  so  quickly  that  he  was  out  the  back 
door  before  Billy's  swinging  lantern  was  halfway  to  the  barn.  There 
was  a  rim  of  dawn  on  the  mountain-tops,  but  no  light  had  penetrated 
into  the  cup  of  the  ranch  yet.  Jody  ran  frantically  after  the  lantern  and 
caught  up  to  Billy  just  as  he  reached  the  barn.  Billy  hung  the  lantern 
to  a  nail  on  the  stall-side  and  took  off  his  blue  denim  coat.  Jody  saw 
that  he  wore  only  a  sleeveless  shirt  under  it. 


516  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Nellie  was  standing  rigid  and  stiff.  While  they  watched,  she 
crouched.  Her  whole  body  was  wrung  with  a  spasm.  The  spasm 
passed.  But  in  a  few  moments  it  started  over,  again,  and  passed. 

Billy  muttered  nervously,  "There's  something  wrong."  His  bare 
hand  disappeared.  "Oh,  Jesus,"  he  said.  "It's  wrong." 

The  spasm  came  again,  and  this  time  Billy  strained,  and  the  mus- 
cles stood  out  on  his  arm  and  shoulder.  He  heaved  strongly,  his  fore- 
head beaded  with  perspiration.  Nellie  cried  with  pain.  Billy  was  mut- 
tering, "It's  wrong.  I  can't  turn  it.  It's  way  wrong.  It's  turned  all 
around  wrong." 

He  glared  wildly  toward  Jody.  And  then  his  fingers  made  a  careful, 
careful  diagnosis.  His  cheeks  were  growing  tight  and  grey.  He  looked 
for  a  long  questioning  minute  at  Jody  standing  back  of  the  stall.  Then 
Billy  stepped  to  the  rack  under  the  manure  window  and  picked  up  a 
horseshoe  hammer  with  his  wet  right  hand. 

"Go  outside,  Jody,"  he  said. 

The  boy  stood  still  and  stared  dully  at  him. 

"Go  outside,  I  tell  you.  It'll  be  too  late." 

Jody  didn't  move. 

Then  Billy  walked  quickly  to  Nellie's  head.  He  cried,  "Turn  your 
face  away,  damn  you,  turn  your  face." 

This  time  Jody  obeyed.  His  head  turned  sideways.  He  heard  Billy 
whispering  hoarsely  in  the  stall.  And  then  he  heard  a  hollow  crunch  of 
bone.  Nellie  chuckled  shrilly.  Jody  looked  back  in  time  to  see  the 
hammer  rise  and  fall  again  on  the  flat,  forehead.  Then  Nellie  fell  heav- 
ily to  her  side  and  quivered  for  a  moment. 

Billy  jumped  to  the  swollen  stomach;  his  big  pocket-knife  was  in  his 
hand.  He  lifted  the  skin  and  drove  the  knife  in.  He  sawed  and  ripped 
at  the  tough  belly.  The  air  filled  with  the  sick  odor  of  warm  living 
entrails.  The  other  horses  reared  back  against  their  halter  chains  and 
squealed  and  kicked. 

Billy  dropped  the  knife.  Both  of  his  arms  plunged  into  the  terrible 
ragged  hole  and  dragged  out  a  big,  white,  dripping  bundle.  His  teeth 
tore  a  hole  in  the  covering.  A  little  black  head  appeared  through  the 
tear,  and  little  slick,  wet  ears.  A  gurgling  breath  was  drawn,  and  then 
another.  Billy  shucked  ofiF  the  sac  and  found  his  knife  and  cut  the 


JOHN  STEINBECK  517 

string.  For  a  moment  he  held  the  little  black  colt  in  his  arms  and 
looked  at  it.  And  then  he  walked  slowly  over  and  laid  it  in  the  straw 
at  Jody's  feet. 

Billy's  face  and  arms  and  chest  were  dripping  red.  His  body  shivered 
and  his  teeth  chattered.  His  voice  was  gone;  he  spoke  in  a  throaty 
whisper.  "There's  your  colt.  I  promised.  And  there  it  is.  I  had  to  do  it 
— had  to."  He  stopped  and  looked  over  his  shoulder  into  the  box  stall. 
"Go  get  hot  water  and  a  sponge,"  he  whispered.  "Wash  him  and  dry 
him  the  way  his  mother  would.  You'll  have  to  feed  him  by  hand.  But 
there's  your  colt,  the  way  I  promised." 

Jody  stared  stupidly  at  the  wet,  panting  foal.  It  stretched  out  its  chin 
and  tried  to  raise  its  head.  Its  blank  eyes  were  navy  blue. 

"God  damn  you,"  Billy  shouted,  "will  you  go  now  for  the  water? 
Will  you  go?" 

Then  Jody  turned  and  trotted  out  of  the  barn  into  the  dawn.  He 
ached  from  his  throat  to  his  stomach.  His  legs  were  stiff  and  heavy. 
He  tried  to  be  glad  because  of  the  colt,  but  the  bloody  face,  and  the 
haunted,  tired  eyes  of  Billy  Buck  hung  in  the  air  ahead  of  him. 


Dust 

FROM    "THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH"    BY 

JOHN  STEINBECK 


To  the  red  country  and  part  of  the  gray  country  of  Oklahoma,  the  last 
rains  came  gently,  and  they  did  not  cut  the  scarred  earth.  The  plows 
crossed  and  recrossed  the  rivulet  marks.  The  last  rains  lifted  the  corn 
quickly  and  scattered  weed  colonies  and  grass  along  the  sides  of  the 
roads  so  that  the  gray  country  and  the  dark  red  country  began  to  dis- 
appear under  a  green  cover.  In  the  last  part  of  May  the  sky  grew  pale 
and  the  clouds  that  had  hung  in  high  puffs  for  so  long  in  the  spring 
were  dissipated.  The  sun  flared  down  on  the  growing  corn  day  after 
day  until  a  line  of  brown  spread  along  the  edge  of  each  green  bayonet. 
The  clouds  appeared,  and  went  away,  and  in  a  while  they  did  not  try 
any  more.  The  weeds  grew  darker  green  to  protect  themselves,  and 
they  did  not  spread  any  more.  The  surface  of  the  earth  crusted,  a  thin 
hard  crust,  and  as  the  sky  became  pale,  so  the  earth  became  pale,  pink 
in  the  red  country  and  white  in  the  gray  country. 

In  the  water-cut  gullies  the  earth  dusted  down  in  dry  little  streams. 
Gophers  and  ant  lions  started  small  avalanches.  And  as  the  sharp  sun 
struck  day  after  day,  the  leaves  of  the  young  corn  became  less  stiff  and 
erect;  they  bent  in  a  curve  at  first,  and  then,  as  the  central  ribs  of 
strength  grew  weak,  each  leaf  tilted  downward.  Then  it  was  June,  and 
the  sun  shone  more  fiercely.  The  brown  lines  on  the  corn  leaves 
widened  and  moved  in  on  the  central  ribs.  The  weeds  frayecT  and 
edged  back  toward  their  roots.  The  air  was  thin  and  the  sky  more 
pale;  and  every  day  the  earth  paled. 

In  the  roads  where  the  teams  moved,  where  the  wheels  milled  the 
ground  and  the  hooves  of  the  horses  beat  the  ground,  the  dirt  crust 
broke  and  the  dust  formed.  Every  moving  thing  lifted  the  dust  into 

518 


JOHN  STEINBECK  519 

the  air:  a  walking  man  lifted  a  thin  layer  as  high  as  his  waist,  and  a 
wagon  lifted  the  dust  as  high  as  the  fence  tops,  and  an  automobile 
boiled  a  cloud  behind  it.  The  dust  was  long  in  settling  back  again. 

When  June  was  half  gone,  the  big  clouds  moved  up  out  of  Texas 
and  the  Gulf,  high  heavy  clouds,  rain-heads.  The  men  in  the  fields 
looked  up  at  the  clouds  and  sniffed  at  them  and  held  wet  fingers  up  to 
sense  the  wind.  And  the  horses  were  nervous  while  the  clouds  were  up. 
The  rain-heads  dropped  a  little  spattering  and  hurried  on  to  some  other 
country.  Behind  them  the  sky  was  pale  again  and  the  sun  flared.  In  the 
dust  there  were  drop  craters  where  the  rain  had  fallen,  and  there  were 
clean  splashes  on  the  corn,  and  that  was  all. 

A  gentle  wind  followed  the  rain  clouds,  driving  them  on  northward, 
a  wind  that  softly  clashed  the  drying  corn.  A  day  went  by  and  the 
wind  increased,  steady,  unbroken  by  gusts.  The  dust  from  the  roads 
fluffed  up  and  spread  out  and  fell  on. the  weeds  beside  the  fields,  and 
fell  into  the  fields  a  little  way.  Now  the  wind  grew  strong  and  hard 
and  it  worked  at  the  rain  crust  in  the  corn  fields.  Little  by  little  the 
sky  was  darkened  by  the  mixing  dust,  and  the  wind  felt  over  the  earth, 
loosened  the  dust,  and  carried  it  away.  The  wind  grew  stronger.  The 
rain  crust  broke  and  the  dust  lifted  up  out  of  the  fields  and  drove  gray 
plumes  into  the  air  like  sluggish  smoke.  The  corn  threshed  the  wind 
and  made  a  dry,  rushing  sound.  The  finest  dust  did  not  settle  back  to 
earth  now,  but  disappeared  into  the  darkening  sky. 

The  wind  grew  stronger,  whisked  under  stones,  carried  up  straws 
and  old  leaves,  and  even  little  clods,  marking  its  course  as  it  sailed 
across  the  fields.  The  air  and  the  sky  darkened  and  through  them  the 
sun  shone  redly,  and  there  was  a  raw  sting  in  the  air.  During  a  night 
the  wind  raced  faster  over  the  land,  dug  cunningly  among  the  rootlets 
of  the  corn,  and  the  corn  fought  the  wind  with  its  weakened  leaves 
until  the  roots  were  freed  by  the  prying  wind  and  then  each  stalk  set- 
tled wearily  sideways  toward  the  earth  and  pointed  the  direction  of  the 
wind. 

The  dawn  came,  but  no  day.  In  the  gray  sky  a  red  sun  appeared,  a 
dim  red  circle  that  gave  a  little  light,  like  dusk;  and  as  that  day  ad- 
vanced, the  dusk  slipped  back  toward  darkness,  and  the  wind  cried 
and  whimpered  over  the  fallen  corn. 


520  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Men  and  women  huddled  in  their  houses,  and  they  tied  handker- 
chiefs over  their  noses  when  they  went  out,  and  wore  goggles  to  pro- 
tect their  eyes. 

When  the  night  came  again  it  was  black  night,  for  the  stars  could 
not  pierce  the  dust  to  get  down,  and  the  window  lights  could  not  even 
spread  beyond  their  own  yards.  Now  the  dust  was  evenly  mixed  with 
the  air,  an  emulsion  of  dust  and  air.  Houses  were  shut  tight,  and  cloth 
wedged  around  doors  and  windows,  but  the  dust  came  in  so  thinly  that 
it  could  not  be  seen  in  the  air,  and  it  settled  like  pollen  on  the  chairs 
and  tables,  on  the  dishes.  The  people  brushed  it  from  their  shoulders. 
Little  lines  of  dust  lay  at  the  door  sills. 

In  the  middle  of  that  night  the  wind  passed  on  and  left  the  land 
quiet.  The  dust-filled  air  muffled  sound  more  completely  than  fog 
does.  The  people,  lying  in  their  beds,  heard  the  wind  stop.  They  awak- 
ened when  the  rushing  wind  was  gone.  They  lay  quietly  and  listened 
deep  into  the  stillness.  Then  the  roosters  crowed,  and  their  voices  were 
muffled,  and  the  people  stirred  restlessly  in  their  beds  and  wanted  the 
morning.  They  knew  it  would  take  a  long  time  for  the  dust  to  settle 
out  of  the  air.  In  the  morning  the  dust  hung  like  fog,  and  the  sun  was 
as  red  as  ripe  new  blood.  All  day  the  dust  sifted  down  from  the  sky, 
and  the  next  day  it  sifted  down.  An  even  blanket  covered  the  earth.  It 
settled  on  the  corn,  piled  up  on  the  tops  of  the  fence  posts,  piled  up  on 
the  wires;  it  settled  on  roofs,  blanketed  the  weeds  and  trees. 

The  people  came  out  of  their  houses  and  smelled  the  hot  stinging 
air  and  covered  their  noses  from  it.  And  the  children  came  out  of  the 
houses,  but  they  did  not  run  or  shout  as  they  would  have  done  after 
a  rain.  Men  stood  by  their  fences  and  looked  at  the  ruined  corn,  drying 
fast  now,  only  a  little  green  showing  through  the  film  of  dust.  The 
men  were  silent  and  they  did  not  move  often.  And  the  women  came 
out  of  the  houses  to  stand  beside  their  men — to  feel  whether  this  time 
the  men  would  break.  The  women  studied  the  men's  faces  secretly,  for 
the  corn  could  go,  as  long  as  something  else  remained.  The  children 
stood  near  by,  drawing  figures  in  the  dust  with  bare  toes,  and  the  chil- 
dren sent  exploring  senses  out  to  see  whether  men  and  women  would 
break.  The  children  peeked  at  the  faces  of  the  men  and  women,  and 
then  drew  careful  lines  in  the  dust  with  their  toes.  Horses  came  to  the 


JOHN   STEINBECK  521 

watering  troughs  and  nuzzled  the  water  to  clear  the  surface  dust. 
After  a  while  the  faces  of  the  watching  men  lost  their  bemused  per- 
plexity and  became  hard  and  angry  and  resistant.  Then  the  women 
knew  that  they  were  safe  and  that  there  was  no  break.  Then  they 
asked,  What'll  we  do?  And  the  men  replied,  I  don't  know.  But  it  was 
all  right.  The  women  knew  it  was  all  right,  and  the  watching  children 
knew  it  was  all  right.  Women  and  children  knew  deep  in  themselves 
that  no  misfortune  was  too  great  to  bear  if  their  men  were  whole.  The 
women  went  into  the  houses  to  their  work,  and  the  children  began  to 
play,  but  cautiously  at  first.  As  the  day  went  forward  the  sun  became 
less  red.  It  flared  down  on  the  dust-blanketed  land.  The  men  sat  in 
the  doorways  of  their  houses;  their  hands  were  busy  with  sticks  and 
little  rocks.  The  men  sat  still — thinking — figuring. 


The  Turtle 
ine  iurtie 

FROM    "THE    GRAPES    OF    WRATH       BY 

JOHN  STEINBECK 
I 

The  concrete  highway  was  edged  with  a  mat  of  tangled,  broken,  dry 
grass,'  and  the  grass  heads  were  heavy  with  oat  beards  to  catch  on  a 
dog's  coat,  and  foxtails  to  tangle  in  a  horse's  fetlocks,  and  clover  burrs 
to  fasten  in  sheep's  wool;  sleeping  life  waiting  to  be  spread  and  dis- 
persed, every  seed  armed  with  an  appliance  of  dispersal,  twisting  darts 
and  parachutes  for  the  wind,  little  spears  and  balls  of  tiny  thorns,  and 
all  waiting  for  animals  and  for  the  wind,  for  a  man's  trouser  cuff  or 
the  hem  of  a  woman's  skirt,  all  passive  but  armed  with  appliances  of 
activity,  still,  but  each  possessed  of  the  anlage  of  movement. 

The  sun  lay  on  the  grass  and  warmed  it,/  and  in  the  shade  under 
the  r^:ss  the  insects  moved,  ants  and  ant  lions  to  set  traps  for  them, 
grasshoi^  ts  to  jump  into  the  air  and  flick  their  yellow  wings  for  a 
second,  sow  bugs  like  little  armadillos,  plodding  restlessly  on  many 
tender  feet.  And  over  the  grass  at  the  roadside  a  land  turtle  crawled,' 
turning  aside  for  nothing,  dragging  his  high-domed  shell  over  the 
grass.  His  hard  legs  and  yellow-nailed  feet  threshed  slowly  through 
the  grass,  not  really  walking,  but  boosting  and  dragging  his  shell  along. 
The  barley  beards  slid  off  his  shell,  and  the  clover  burrs  fell  on  him 
and  rolled  to  the  ground.  His  horny  beak  was  partly  open,  and  his 
fierce,  humorous  eyes,  under  brows  like  fingernails,  stared  straight 
ahead.  He  came  over  the  grass  leaving  a  beaten  trail  behind  him,  and 
the  hill,  which  was  the  highway  embankment,  reared  up  ahead  of 
him.  For  a  moment  he  stopped,  his  head  held  high.  He  blinked  and 
looked  up  and  down.  At  last  he  started  to  climb  the  embankment. 
Front  clawed  feet  reached  forward  but  did  not  touch.  The  hind  feet 
kicked  his  shell  along/and  it  scraped  on  the  grass   and  on  the  gravel. 

522 


JOHN  STEINBECK  523 

As  the  embankment  grew  steeper  and  steeper,  the  more  frantic  were 
the  efforts  of  the  land  turtle.  Pushing  hindjegs  strained  and  slipped, 
boosting  the  shell  along/and  the  horny  head  protruded  as  far  as  the 
neck  could  stretch.  Little  by  little  the  shell  slid  up  the  embankment 
until  at  last  a  parapet  cut  straight  across  its  line  of  march/the  shoulder 
of  the  road,  a  concrete  wall  four  inches  high.  As  though  they  worked 
independently  the  hind  legs  pushed  the  shell  against  the  wall.  The 
head  upraised  and  peered  over  the  wall  to  the  broad  smooth  plain  of 
cement.  Now^  the  hands,  braced  on  top  of  the  wall,  strained  and  lifted, 
and  the  shell  came  slowly  up  and  rested  its  front  end  on  the  wall.  For 
a  moment  the  turtle  rested.  A  red  ant  ran  into  the  shell,  into  the  soft 
skin  inside  the  shell;  and  suddenly  head  and  legs  snapped- in,  and  the 
armored  tail  clamped  in  sideways.  The  red  ant  was  crushed  between 
body  and  legs.  And:one  head  of  wild  oats  was  clamped  into  the  shell 
by  a  front  leg.  For  a  long  moment  the  turtle  lay  still,  and  then  the 
neck  crept  out/and  the  old  humorous  frowning  eyes  looked  about/and 
the  legs  and  tail  came  out.  The  back  legs  went  to  work,  straining  like 
elephant  legs,  and  the  shell  tipped  to  an  angle  so  that  the  front  legs 
could  not  reach  the  level  cement  plain.  But  higher  and  higher  the  hind 
legs  boosted  it,  until  at  last  the  center  of  balance  was  reached/jthe  front 
tipped  down,  the  front  legs  scratched  at  the  pavement,  and  it  was  up. 
But  the  Hcc  1  of  wild  oats  was  held  by  its  stem  around  the  front  legs. 

Now  the  going  was  easy,  and  all  the  legs  worked,  and  the  shell 
boosted  along,  waggling  from  side  to  side.  A  sedan  driven  by  a  forty- 
year-old  woman  approached.  She  saw  the  turtle  and  swung  to  the 
right,  oil  the  high wayy  the  wheels  screamed  and  a  cloud  of  dust  boiled 
up.  Two  wheels  lifted  for  a  moment  and  then  settled.  The  car  skidded 
back  onto  the  road,  and  went  on,  but  more  slowly.  The  turtle  had 
jerked  into  its  shell,  but  now  it  hurried  on,  for  the  highway  was  burn- 
ing hot. 

And  now  a  light  truck  approached,  and  as  it  came  near,  the  driver 
saw  the  turtle  and  swerved  to  hit  it.  His  front  wheel  struck  the  edge 
of  the  shell,  flipped  the  turtle  like  a  tiddly-wink,  spun  it  like  a  coin, 
and  rolled  it  ofif  the  highway.  The  truck  went  back  to  its  course  along 
the  right  side.  Lying  on  its  back,  the  turtle  was  tight  in  its  shell  for  a 
long  time.  But  at  last  its  legs  waved  in  the  air,  reaching  for  something 


524  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

to  pull  it  over.  Its  front  foot  caught  a  piece  of  quartz  and  little  by  little 
the  shell  pulled  over  and  flopped  upright.  The  wild  oat  head  fell  out 
and  three  of  the  spearhead  seeds  stuck  in  the  ground.  And  as  the  tUF-^ 
tie  crawled  on  down  the  embankment,  its  shell  dragged  dirt  over  the 
seeds.  The  turtle  entered  a  dust  road  and  jerked  itself  along,  drawing  a 
wavy  shallow  trench  in  the  dust  with  its  shell.  The  old  humorous  eyes 
looked  ahead/and  the  horny  beak  opened  a  little.  His  yellow  toe  nails 
slipped  a  fraction  in  the  dust. 

■ 


M.   F.   K.   FISHER 


COMMENTARY 


It  is  as  interesting  as  it  is  unprofitable  to  speculate  on  what  writers 
will  concern  themselves  with  ten  thousand  years  from  now.  Hu- 
manity (well,  my  guess  is  as  good  as  yours)  will  he  unified  and  so 
there  will  be  no  literature  based  on  racial  or  national  differences. 
Money  and  the  class  struggle  will  both  have  been  liquidated;  im- 
agine what  that  will  do  to  the  novel  There  will  be  no  neuroses  or 
mental  conflicts,  so  a  rearisen  Sophocles  or  Dostoevsky  will  have 
nothing  to  write  about.  The  individual  will  probably  have  been  sub- 
merged in  an  efficient  mass  society— no  more  lyric  poetry.  The  pro- 
fessors may  even  have  fixed  up  love  so  that  there  will  be  more  than 
enough  to  go  round  and  nobody  will  be  unhappy  enough  (or  happy 
enough)  to  be  inspired  to  write  romances. 

One  theme  will  remain— maybe.  That's  eating.  The  way  things 
look  now,  the  palate  and  the  alimentary  canal  are  set  for  life,  foi 
the  life  of  man.  The  curious  pleasure  that  comes  of  chewing  and 
swallowing  miscellaneous  masses  of  nutritive  molecules  will  prob- 
ably still  exist  ten  thousand  years  hence,  unless  the  human  anatomy 
has  been  radically  remodeled  and  streamlined  in  the  interval. 

That  means  the  literature  of  gastronomy,  one  of  the  oldest  forms 
of  literature  we  know  of,  will  still  be  popular.  Not  that  good  books 
about  food  are  common,  though  you  would  imagine  the  subject, 
which  interests  everybody,  would  inspire  a  great  deal  of  fine  writing. 
The  fact  is  that  most  food  books  (I  am  not  here  speaking  of  cook- 
books or  recipe  collections,  which  belong  to  the  literature  of  knowl- 
edge, not  to  the  literature  of  power)  are  written  by  gourmets  for 
gourmets.  Even  so  delightful  a  volume  as  P.  Morton  Shand's  A 
Book  of  Food  has  a  touch  of  the  esoteric.  Or,  if  such  books  are  not 
full  of  gastronomic  chi-chi7  they  are  full  of  a  certain  unpalatable  fake- 
hearty  Rabelaisianism. 

That  is  why  I  sing  the  praises  of  Serve  It  Forth,  by  a  young 
woman  named  M.  F.  K.  Fisher.  It  is  a  book  as  charming  as  it  is  un- 

525 


526  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

pretentious-good  tall:  about  good  food  by  one  who  does  not  believe 
that  you  need  temperament  to  like  your  soup. 

Mrs.  Fisher  wrote  it  in  a  mild  huff  after  discovering  "that  no  self- 
respecting  restaurateur  will  pay  more  than  a  tolerant  and  patronizing 
half-attention  to  a  woman's  ideas  for  a  good  dinner."  The  huff  was 
a  lucky  one.  Serve  It  Forth  avoids  all  the  pitfalls  mentioned  in  its 
Erst  chapter.  It  does  not  "begin  with  witty  philosophizing  on  the 
pleasures  of  the  table7  or  end  with  a  suggested  menu  "for  an  inti- 
mate dinner  given  to  seven  gentlemen  who  know  his  wife,  by  a 
wealthy  old  banker  who  feels  horns  pricking  up  gently  from  his  bald 
skull ."  It  does  not  show  pictures  of  its  author  "standing  beside  a 
quaint  old  inn  near  Oxford  or  a  quaint  old  inn  near  Cannes."  It  was 
not  written  by  two  young  men  who  "are  young  and  full  of  intellec- 
tual fun  and  frolic,  and  making  a  gastronomic  tour  on  bicycles."  From 
its  pages  there  does  not  rise  "a  reek,  a  heady  stench  of  truffles,  Cha- 
teau Yquem,  and  quails  financiere." 

In  a  dozen  brief  chapters,  not  too  stuffy  with  facts,  Mrs.  Fisher 
manages  to  sketch  the  history  of  food,  from  the  Emperor  Shen- 
nung's  great  cookbook,  the  Hon-Zo  (about  2800  B.C.),  up  to  the 
celebrated  period  of  Careme.  To  ensure  easy  digestion,  she  interlards 
these  chapters  with  others,  more  personal  than  historical,  and  these 
latter  make  the  book  the  rare  and  fiavorous  thing  it  is.  There  is  a 
first-rate  essay  on  the  potato,  and  another  one  which  raises,  but  does 
not  settle,  the  whole  puzzling  question  of  the  social  status  of  vege- 
tables—why, for  example,  should  cabbage  be  infra  dig,  and  why  is 
broccoli  tony?  There  is  a  charming  chapter,  called  "Borderland,''  that 
deals  with  the  "secret  eatings'  each  of  us  has  a  passion  for.  (Somehow 
I  always  remember  Mary  MacLane,  "the  Butte  Bashkirtseff,"  and 
her  morbid  craving  for  a  cold  boiled  potato  extracted  from  the  ice- 
box at  two  in  the  morning  and  eaten  in  the  fingers,  without  jsaJt  or 
butter.)  Mrs.  Fisher's  private  vice  runs  to  sections  of  tangerine,  care- 
fully de-Strung,  slowly  melted  to  a  hot,  voluptuous  plumpness  on  a 
radiator,  and  then  placed  for  a  few  minutes  on  packed  snow,  to  en- 
sure the  forming  of  an  icy,  paper-thin  shell  of  sweetness. 

I  like,  too,  the  story  of  how  Papa  Papazi  prepared  snails,  not  to 


M.   F.   K.   FISHER  527 

mention  the  one  about  the  snails  that  exploded,  or  the  one  about 
the  last  virgin  woman  truffle-hunter  in  France. 

Of  recipes,  as  is  proper  in  such  a  book,  there  are  but  a  handful, 
carefully  chosen  for  their  nonpracticality .  They  are  not  intended  for 
use.  They  have  but  an  incantatory  value:  they  are  food  to  stimulate 
the  very  imaginations  of  our  palates.  Such  a  recipe  is  that  for  the 
authentic  Dijon  pain  d'epice,  according  to  which  the  paste,  worked 
up  on  a  base  of  old  black  honey  (prepared,  no  doubt,  by  some  old 
black  bees),  is  supposed  to  ripen  in  a  cold  temperature  for  several 
months  or  even  years.  To  those  seeking  desperately  a  novel  dish  for 
a  most  special  occasion,  I  recommend  one  startling  recipe  Mrs. 
Fisher  dug  up  out  of  a  six-hundred-year-old  manuscript.  It's  very 
simple:  uTake  a  capon  and  a  little  pig  and  smite  them  in  the  waist. 
Sew  the  hind  part  of  one  on  the  fore  quarters  of  the  other,  and  stuff, 
and  roast,  and  serve  them  forth  J7 

The  two  finest  chapters  in  Serve  It  Forth  happen,  J  think,  to  be 
literature.  They  are  really  tales.  One  is  achingly  sad,  one  is  muscularly 
gay.  The  finer  of  them,  uThe  Standing  and  the  Waiting,7*  slight  as 
it  is,  is  perfectly  written  and  reveals  a  gift  of  phrase  (who  can  forget 
Mrs.  Fisher's  Chinese  ueating  pate  in  a  trance  of  philosophical 
nausea"?)  that  should  make  Mrs.  Fisher  as  good  a  writer  as  she  is 
probably  a  cook. 


The  Standing  and  the  Waiting 

BY 

M.  F.  K.  FISHER 


It  was  at  the  top  of  the  stairs  that  I  first  felt  something  wrong.  Until 
then  all  had  been  as  I  last  knew  it:  the  archway,  the  irregular  honey- 
coloured  courtyard,  the  rounded  trees  in  tubs.  The  stairs,  too,  were 
the  same,  bending  round  and  back  over  themselves  in  several  shallow 
flights;  and  at  the  top  was  the  familiar  glass  box  with  trout,  a  plate 
of  mushrooms,  and  some  steaks  laid  carelessly  across  the  cold-pipes 
that  made  its  bottom. 

We  looked  for  a  moment  into  the  box,  Chexbres  with  the  hurried, 
timid  appraisal  of  a  man  who  is  in  a  strange  place  and  conscious  of 
being  watched  for  his  reactions  to  it  by  another  person  to  whom  it  is 
familiar,  I  with  the  proud  worry  of  a  woman  who  fears  she  has  too 
much  boasted. 

Would  the  dishes  be  as  exciting,  as  satisfying?  Would  the  wine 
still  be  the  best  wine?  And  I,  would  I  be  accepted,  a  loving  admirer, 
or  would  I  now  be  long  forgotten? 

Well,  the  glass  box  was  the  same.  Chexbres  flipped  me  a  quick 
smile  of  reassurance.  We  went  along  the  ugly  tiled  corridor,  past 
the  water-closets  where  I  felt  a  sudden  hilarious  memory  of  my  moth- 
er's consternation  when  she  had  first  entered  them  and  found  them 
full  of  men  all  chatting,  easing  themselves,  belching  appreciatively. 

I  started  to  tell  Chexbres  of  her  face,  puckered  in  an  effort  to  look 
broad-minded.  We  turned  the  first  abrupt  corner  of  the  hall,  the  corner 
where  the  kitchens  started. 

One  of  the  doors  opened.  A  rat-like  boy  darted  out,  ducking  his 
head  and  grinning  shyly  as  he  passed  us.  I  refused  to  look  at  Chexbres, 
for  I  knew  that  he  had  smelled,  as  I  had,  as  alas!  I  had,  that  faint 

528 


M.  F.  K.  FISHER  529 

trail  of  bad  air  following  after  the  scullion  like  the  silver  of  a  snail, 
bad  air  rising  noxiously  from  the  hidden  dirty  corners  of  the  kitchens. 

I  finished  the  story  of  my  mother's  dauntless  face,  as  we  hurried  on 
down  the  long  dim  corridor. 

"There  are  two  dining-rooms  for  the  pensionnaires ,"  I  chattered 
foolishly,  "and  the  pensionnaires  are  everybody — like  the  mayor  and 
the  rich  brothel-keepers  and  carpenters  and  Chinese  students. 

"And  here  is  Ribaudot's  office." 

I  was  trying  to  sound  casual,  but  I  felt  very  nervous.  Oh,  to  have 
talked  so  much  of  the  restaurant,  to  have  boasted!  And  then  that 
little  ominous  whiff!  Or  had  Chexbres  noticed  it? 

I  tapped  nonchalantly  on  the  half-open  glass  door  of  the  small,  in- 
credibly disordered  room. 

"Come  in,  then!"  The  voice  was  cross  and  muffled. 

We  pushed  into  the  office.  By  the  dim  window  two  cooks  in  very  tall 
hats  sat  with  their  bare  arms  leaning  on  a  table  covered  with  empty 
dishes.  A  cradled  bottle  lay  in  front  of  them.  They  smiled  impersonally. 

Ribaudot  stood  clumsily  with  one  leg  still  half  under  the  table,  his 
hands  leaning  on  his  tall  desk. 

"Come  in,  come  in,"  he  said,  more  pleasantly.  He  wiped  his  mouth, 
and  peered  politely  at  us. 

"How  do  you  do — good  afternoon,  Monsieur  Ribaudot.  I  am  sure 
you  don't  remember  me:  Madame  Fischer,  who  used  so  often  to  dine 
here?  I  used  to  come  here  with " 

"Oh,  of  course!  Why,  of  course!"  He  smiled  warmly,  but  I  could 
see  that  he  did  not  remember.  I  shrugged  inside,  and  while  I  intro- 
duced Chexbres  as  a  fervent  student  of  gastronomy,  and  we  all  chat- 
tered and  assured  each  other  of  remembrance  and  good  will,  I  looked 
for  change. 

If  the  whiff,  the  faint  bad  trail,  had  caught  Ribaudot,  it  was  not  yet 
evident.  His  office  was  filled  with  the  conglomerate  cooling  odours  of  a 
good  meal,  and  he  himself  with  the  first  leisurely  torpor  of  perfect 
digestion.  Yes,  of  course  he  looked  older,  perhaps  thinner,  uncombed 
as  ever,  though,  and  still  modestly  sure  of  being  a  great  restaurateur. 

"And  Charles,  little  Charles?"  I  asked,  suddenly. 

Several  looks  crossed  in  the  air.  Chexbres  looked  at  me,  warmly, 


530  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

smiling  at  my  nostalgic  probings  and  at  what  I  had  told  him  of 
the  waiter  Charles.  I  looked  first  at  Chexbres,  thanking  him  for  recog- 
nizing the  name,  and  assuring  him  that  even  if  Charles  were  long 
dead,  he  had  still  been  the  ultimate,  the  impeccable  peak  of  all  waiters. 
Then  I  saw  Ribaudot  look  swiftly  at  the  two  silent  cooks  and  they  at 
him,  a  look — a  look — I  felt  very  sad  and  puzzled. 

Ribaudot  interrupted  me. 

"The  little  Charles?"  he  asked,  blandly.  "Ah,  you  remember  the  little 
old  Charles?"  His  voice  was  noncommittal.  "But  certainly  he  is  here. 
We  will  call  him." 

Through  my  half-hearted  protestations  he  walked  majestically  the 
three  paces  to  the  door,  and  disappeared.  The  air  was  still  full  of 
crossed  meaningful  looks.  I  wondered  very  much,  and  watched  Chex- 
bres' impassive  interest  in  the  framed  diplomas  on  the  walls.  I  tried  to 
feel  impassive,  too. 

Chexbres  turned.  Charles  stood  in  the  doorway,  breathing  quickly, 
a  rumpled  napkin  over  one  arm.  Oh,  I  had  forgotten  how  small — but 
hadn't  he  been  fatter?  Yes,  old,  the  little  old  Charles. 

I  went  quickly  toward  him,  watching  his  pouchy  face  lighten 
quickly  from  peevish  bewilderment  to  pleasure. 

"Howdedo,  Charles.  I  don't  know  if  you  remember " 

"O  my  God!  Oh,  pardon,  pardon,  but  it  is  the  little  American 
student,  the  little  lady!" 

Behind  me,  Chexbres  laughed  to  hear  me  called  little  as  I  peered 
down  on  Charles,  he  up  at  me,  timidly  still,  but  recognizing  me. 

"And  you,  Madame?  And  how  long  is  it?  And  you,  are  you  well? 
Has  it  been  two  years?  Six?  Impossible!  But  it  is  good,  pardon  me 
for  saying  so,  but  it  is  good  to  see  you!" 

He  stopped  suddenly,  looking  confusedly  at  the  two  silent  cooks, 
and  then  at  Ribaudot.  He  seemed  to  shrink  even  smaller. 

"Monsieur  Ribaudot,"  I  said,  "would  it  be  possible  to  command  a 
dinner  for  this  evening,  and  ask  for  the  services  of  Charles?" 

"But  certainly,  certainly!"  He  pulled  a  pad  of  paper  toward  him, 
and  started  to  make  squiggles  on  it. 

"Until  eight  tonight,  then,  Charles.  And  the  old  table  in  the  corner 
— was  it  Number  Four?" 


M.  F.   K.   FISHER  531 

I  turned  to  Ribaudot  again.  He  seemed  to  know  me  at  last,  and  to 
be  trying  to  comfort  me,  to  soften  life  for  me.  And  all  the  time  we 
discussed  food  so  pleasantly  I  wondered  at  Charles'  quick,  poignant, 
wet  look  of — of  gratitude? — as  he  hurried  back  to  his  work. 

I  felt  sad,  but  said  nothing  to  Chexbres.  Instead,  we  talked  of  Bur- 
gundian  architecture,  not  even  mentioning  the  Burgundian  meal  we 
had  so  long  planned. 

At  eight  o'clock  the  small  dining-room  was  full,  except  for  our 
waiting  table.  As  we  sat  down  I  saw  in  one  easy  glance  that  the  people 
were  no  different  after  six  years.  There  was  the  old  woman  with  a 
dog  and  a  dancing-boy  on  her  way  to  Cannes,  and  the  table  of  Ameri- 
can school-teachers  eating  from  a  guide-book.  And  there  were  the  two 
big  young  Englishmen  in  brown  and  grey,  looking  embarrassed  before 
their  larks  on  toast. 

At  the  table  under  the  mirror  sat  a  college  professor;  the  College 
Professor,  twirling  a  glass  of  Corton,  the  pedagogic  connoisseur,  sip- 
ping alone  in  solemn  appreciation,  sure  that  his  accent  was  as  refined 
as  his  taste. 

There  were  two  tables  of  French  people,  gay  and  hungry.  I  remem- 
bered that  their  faces  would  grow  red,  later  on. 

A  Chinese  eating  truffled  pate  in  a  trance  of  philosophical  nausea, 
two  Lesbians  drinking  Vichy,  three  silent  pensionnaires,  a  priest — the 
hard  white  lights  burned  down  on  all  of  us,  the  mirror  reflected  our 
monotonous  gestures,  the  grey  walls  picked  out  our  pale  natures  and 
the  warmth  of  colour  and  odour  and  taste  before  us  on  the  white 
tables. 

"This  is  a  good  room,"  Chexbres  murmured,  lowering  his  eyelids 
and  straightening  a  straight  fork.  "I  like  small  rooms.  Small  rooms, 
for  eating — or  mountain-sides." 

"Good  evening!  Ah,  'sieur-'dame,  you  are  here!" 

Charles  stood  by  the  table,  breathing  fast.  His  minute  moustache 
was  newly  stiff  with  wax,  and  his  hair  was  plastered  in  a  thin  replica 
of  the  debonair  curlicues  he  used  to  wear.  He  beamed  anxiously  at  us. 

"Does — is  everything  as  you  wished?" 

"Everything  is  perfect,  Charles!"  I  wondered  if  my  voice  were  too 
fervent.  "Now  we  will  start  with  a  little  glass  of  Dubonnet,  please." 


532 


READING  I'VE   LIKED 


When  he  had  gone,  Chexbres  said:  "You  are  known,  my  dear!  You 
should  be  much  flattered— or  I  for  being  with  you." 

He  smiled,  the  sweet-tongued  self-mocker,  at  me  and  at  the  table, 
and  I  looked  with  less  haste  at  the  tall  crystal  tulips  to  hold  wine,  at 
the  napkins  folded  like  pheasants,  at  the  inky  menu  big  as  a  news- 
paper, and  our  own  little  typewritten  one  on  top  of  it,  at  the  flow- 


ers- 


Flowers  chez  Ribaudot,  Ribaudot  who  hated  any  foreign  odours  near 
his  plates  ?  Never  before— no,  we  were  the  only  diners  with  flowers  on 
our  table. 

On  the  little  serving-board  beside  us,  Charles  fussed  clumsily  with 
a  new  bottle  of  Dubonnet.  Finally  it  was  open.  He  poured  it  with 
a  misjudged  flourish.  Purple  spread  on  the  cloth.  I  looked  quickly, 
without  meaning  to,  at  Chexbres,  but  he  was  watching  the  quiet  colour 
in  his  glass.  Perhaps  he  had  not  seen,  had  not  realized,  the  fumblings 
of  my  perfect  waiter? 

He  raised  his  aperitif.  His  eyes  were  wide  and  candid. 

"I  drink  to  our  pasts— to  yours  and  mine.  And  to  ours.  The  wine 
is  strong.  Time  is  strong,  too."  He  bowed  slightly.  "I  grow  solemn— 
or  sententious." 

I  laughed  at  him.  "I'm  not  afraid  of  time." 

"Don't  boast." 

"I'm  not  boasting.  Really,  I'm  glad  six  years— oh,  it's  too  compli- 
cated. But  this  tastes  good.  I'm  hungry." 

"And  this  will  be  a  good  meal,  worth  waiting  even  longer  than 
six  years  for.  Do  you  know,"  he  asked  naively,  "that  I've  never  before 
had  a  menu  written  just  for  me?  It's  very  exciting." 

I  felt  my  self-confidence  sweep  back,  as  he  meant  it  to. 

"And  flowers,"  he  went  on.  "I've  had  flowers  on  my  tabic,  but  never 
the  only  ones,  in  a  room  of  such  important  people." 

We  looked  vaguely,  amicably,  at  the  stiff  little  bouquet,  mimosa 
and  a  purplish  rosebud  and  a  short  twig  of  cypress. 

Charles  steamed  beside  us,  with  a  tall  pitcher  of  soup.  While  he 
served  it,  it  spilled  from  the  trembling  cups  into  the  saucers.  I  felt  a 
flash  of  intense  irritation:  wet  saucers,  God!  how  they  irritate  me.  I 
looked  straight  into  his  eyes. 


M.   F.   K.   FISHER  533 

They  were  not  wet  and  grateful  now.  They  were  desperate  eyes, 
bloodshot,  frantic,  desperate.  I  cringed  away. 

"Oh,  Chexbres,"  I  whispered,  "don't  mind  the  spilling!  Don't!  It's 
that  he's  nervous.  His  hand's  shaking  because  of  that,  I  know." 

You  are  lying  to  save  your  own  boastful  face,  too,  I  said  inside.  You 
know  Charles  is  drunk.  Yes,  Charles,  the  perfect  waiter,  spilling  soup 
and  drunk,  and  it  hurts  your  pride. 

"Maybe  his  feet  hurt  him,"  I  went  on  very  fast.  "I  know  you  hate 
soup  in  saucers.  But  you  know  I've  heard  that  waiters  do  stranger 
things  than  most  criminals,  simply  because  their  feet  hurt." 

"Yes,  I'm  sure,"  Chexbres  agreed,  vaguely.  "This  is  really  delicious, 
my  dear. 

"You  know,"  he  said,  in  a  suddenly  direct  voice,  "I  can't  understand 
why  most  people  are  put  of?  at  first  by  the  coloured  tiles  on  the  roofs 
of  Burgundy.  It  seems  to  me  they're  a  definite  outcropping  of  the 
plebeian  in  architecture,  like  the  frescoes  of  Swiss  interiors  during  the 
same  period." 

For  a  moment  I  felt  rebuffed.  But  almost  at  once  I  knew  he  was 
right.  Six  years^ — six  hundred  years  .  .  .  architecture  was  better. 

We  talked,  and  well,  and  all  the  dinner  was  most  excellent,  and 
the  wine  was  like  music  on  our  tongues.  Time  was  forgotten,  and  its 
signals,  too.  But  I  noticed,  with  a  kind  of  fifth  eye,  that  Charles'  hand 
grew  steady,  and  his  own  eye  clear,  until  by  the  end  of  the  meal  I 
dared  preen  myself  upon  his  delicate  sure  touch. 

"Have  you  ever  seen  that  better  done?"  I  asked  Chexbres. 

"No.  No,  he  is  wonderful.  He  is  an  artist." 

We  watched  as  in  a  blissful  dream  the  small  fat  hands  moving  like 
magic  among  bottles  and  small  bowls  and  spoons  and  plates,  stirring, 
pouring,  turning  the  pan  over  the  flame  just  so,  just  so,  with  the  face 
bent  keen  and  intent  above. 

"It's  like  a  brain  operation,"  Chexbres  said,  " — the  hard  light,  the 
excitement,  the  great  surgeon.  Thank  you  for  bringing  me  here.  It's 
worth " 

It  was  done.  We  tasted.  We  nodded  silently,  and  smiled  at  Charles, 
and  he  looked  almost  like  the  old  Charles  again,  very  self-sure.  I  felt 
happy. 


534  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

After  coffee,  I  laughed  to  think  of  us  sitting  there  almost  the  last, 
and  at  what  I  was  going  to  do. 

"Chexbres,  you  think  I've  shown  of?,  but  that  was  only  the  begin- 
ning! Now  I  really  do  show  off,  and  all  for  your  benefit." 

We  smiled  at  each  other,  very  effortless  and  calm. 

"Charles,"  I  called,  warning  Chexbres  quickly,  "You  have  never 
tasted  the  local  marc,  remember! 

"Charles,  what  do  you  think  has  been  the  sad  experience — but  first, 
are  we  keeping  you  too  late?" 

I  waved  my  hand  at  the  now  empty  room,  dim  in  every  corner  but 
ours,  and  at  a  scullery  boy  scrubbing  the  hall.  I  felt  expansive,  warm 
from  the  wine,  at  ease  in  Time. 

"Oh,  but  what  an  idea!"  Charles  exploded.  "Excuse  me  for  chiding 
you,  Madame,  but  what  an  idea!  Madame,  you  must  know  that  for 
you  to  have  another  good  meal  chez  Ribaudot,  and  to  go  away  re- 
membering it  and  me,  I  would  gladly  stay  here  until  morning — no, 
until  tomorrow  night,  by  God!" 

Chexbres  and  I  bowed  courteously.  Charles  did,  too. 

"And  the  sad  experience,  Madame?" 

"Oh,  thank  you  for  recalling  me.  I  had  almost  forgotten.  Charles, 
last  night  we  had  a  stroke  of  luck  that  was  unfortunate — I  should 
say  almost  desolating.  I,  who  wished  to  introduce  our  good  friend 
Monsieur  Chexbres  to  the  famous  marc  of  Burgundy,  was  served  with 
a  glass  of  some  strange  liquid — thank  God  I  had  the  good  sense  to 
taste  it  before  letting  Monsieur  come  near  it! — some  strange  liquid, 
pale,  cut,  rank,  which  could  never " 

"Ah,  but  I  know!  I  know  where!"  Charles  beamed,  flourishing  his 
napkin  with  glee. 

"Oh,  but  naturally  I  would  not  be  so  indiscreet  as  to  mention  the 
name  of  the  miserable  restaurant,"  I  protested,  rhetorically.  I  glanced 
at  Chexbres  exultantly:  the  scene  was  beautiful. 

"No  need,  no  need,  Madame!  A  restaurant  serving  the  good  marc 
so  insultingly,  and  to  you,  a  connoisseur"  (here  I  bowed  graciously) 
"and  to  this  poor  gentleman  a  sure  amateur  having  his  first  taste  (here 
Chexbres  lowered  his  eyes  modestly) — "ah,  such  poisonous  conduct, 
my  God!  could  only  be  at"   (and  here  Charles  leaned  very  close  to 


M.   F.   K.  FISHER  535 

us  in   the  empty  room   and  hissed)    "could  only  be   at  La   Tour!" 

He  stood  ofT,  triumphant.  I  pressed  a  little  line  into  the  tablecloth 
with  my  thumb  nail,  smirking,  murmuring,  "Of  course  I  say  nothing, 
no  names!"  in  complete  agreement.  I  could  feel  Chexbres'  appreciation 
all  round  me. 

"But,  but  'dame,  we  must  rectify  that  infected  that — pardon  me — 
that  stinking  behaviour!" 

I  sighed  faintly.  It  had  worked! 

"Yes,  my  idea,  too.  But  no  ordinary  marc,  Charles,  no  liqueur  served 
on  any  one's  order.  This  must  be " 

"Yes,  very  special,"  he  finished  for  me.  "Trust  me,  Madame.  It  may 
take  a  few  extra  minutes.  A  little  more  filtre,  perhaps,  while  I  am 
gone?" 

Chexbres  and  I  sat  wordless,  looking  mildly  and  somnolently  at 
each  other.  We  sipped  at  the  bitter  black  coffee.  A  rickety  old  ven- 
tilator whirred  in  the  ceiling,  and  the  boy  cleaning  the  hall  bumped 
his  bucket  against  the  tiles.  Lights  went  out,  except  over  our  table. 

Charles  tiptoed  back,  wheezing,  but  his  face  full  of  life.  He  held  a 
filthy  old  green  bottle,  not  picturesquely  crusted,  but  filthy.  Silently  he 
poured  a  little  dark  brown  liquid  into  a  large  glass.  He  swirled  it 
round.  Chexbres  reached  for  it. 

"Permit  me,  sir,"  Charles  halted  him,  "permit  me  to  suggest  that 
Madame  taste  it." 

I  winked  slightly  at  Chexbres,  and  took  up  the  glass.  I  tried  to  look 
like  a  connoisseur,  a  little  pompous  probably.  I  sipped,  and  then  I 
could  only  look  beatifically  delighted,  for  it  was  the  cleanest,  smooth- 
est distillation  that  I  had  ever  met. 

"Ah!" 

Charles  sighed.  I  had  told  him.  He  poured  the  glass  almost  half 
full,  at  least  twice  as  full  as  he  should  have,  and  with  a  jubilant  look 
disappeared  into  the  wet  dark  hall. 

"Chexbres,  now  /  shall  be  solemn.  But  I  have  never  been  served  with 
such  marc!  Not  even  Ribaudot  would  serve  that  to  his  best  friends,  to 
any  one  less  than  the  mayor  or  maybe  the  Holy  Ghost.  Where  did 
Charles  get  it?" 

Chexbres  let  it  run  under  his  tongue,  and  sat  nodding  ecstatically  at 


536  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

me.  I  could  almost  see  it  seeping  through  his  head,  in  and  around  in 
a  hot  tonic  tide,  and  then  down  his  throat. 

"Dear  sweet  gentle  Jesus!"  he  remarked,  softly. 

"Oh,  I'm  glad  we  came,  Chexbres.  After  all,  I  mean." 

We  both  drank  at  the  one  glass,  and  talked  peacefully  under  the 
one  white  light.  Finally  the  marc  was  gone.  Charles  appeared,  carry- 
ing the  filthy  bottle. 

"Oh,  no  more,  no  more!  Really,  we  couldn't " 

He  stopped  very  still,  and  looked  at  me. 

"Madame,  you  must  drink  one  glass.  Please!"  he  said,  in  a  quiet 
voice,  almost  muttering.  "Please  drink  this  glass  from  me.  It  is  I, 
Charles,  who  offer  it  to  you  and  to  Monsieur  Chexbres." 

"But— it  is  so  late,  and—"  The  thought  of  swallowing  one  more 
mouthful  closed  my  throat,  almost. 

"I  have  said  I  would  stay  until  tomorrow  for  you.  I  would  stay 
until  the  end  of  the  world,  truly."  He  looked  at  me  calmly,  standing 
between  us  and  the  dark  doorway.  Beyond  him  I  could  see  nothing, 
and  there  was  not  a  sound  anywhere,  except  the  three  of  us  breathing 
rather  cautiously. 

"Thank  you,"  Chexbres  said,  warmly.  "Madame  was  afraid  only  of 
detaining  you  too  long,  Charles.  Otherwise  we  could  sit  for  ever,  too, 
drinking  this  miraculous  liqueur." 

He  held  out  the  glass.  With  a  hand  steady  as  oak,  Charles  poured 
it  to  the  brim,  a  good  half-pint  of  strong  marc. 

"Thank  you,  Charles,"  I  said.  "I  want  never  to  leave,  here  where 
I  have  so  often  been  happy.  It  may  be  six  years  again.  Will  you  pre- 
pare the  bill,  please?" 

We  knew  we  must  drink  it  all.  It  was  like  smouldering  fire,  won- 
derful still,  but  hard  now  to  swallow.  We  sat  without  moving,  con- 
scious suddenly  of  exhaustion,  and  of  being  perhaps  too  full  of  food, 
with  all  the  heady  wine-life  gone  out  of  us. 

Charles  came  back,  with  the  little  sheet  of  flimsy  paper  on  a  plate. 
I  wondered  about  the  tip:  in  a  way  I  felt  like  not  leaving  one,  be- 
cause he  seemed  more  than  a  waiter  now.  But  when  he  brought  back 
change,  I  left  it  all  on  the  plate. 
"Thank  vou,  Madame,"  he  said,  and  did  not  pick  it  up.  He  stood 


M.  F.  K.  FISHER  537 

watching  us  sip  resolutely  at  the  marc.  Finally  I  looked  up  at  him. 

"Madame,  thank  you,  thank  you  for  coming  again." 

I  wanted  not  to  be  personal,  so  I  said,  "But  why  not?  All  people 
who  love  good  food  come  to  Ribaudot's  again." 

"Yes,"  he  stuttered  slightly,  "but — pardon  me — but  I  mean  thank  you 
for  asking  for  me.  You  don't  know " 

"Oh,  Charles,  it  is  we  who  are  fortunate,  to  have  your  services." 
I  felt  very  polished  and  diplomatic,  but  at  the  same  time  sincere,  sin- 
cere as  hell  under  the  weariness  and  all  the  marc. 

"No,  no — I  mean,  you  will  never  know  what  it  meant,  tonight,  to 
have  you  ask  for  me,  little  old  Charles.  And  now,  good  evening." 

Chexbres  asked,  quickly,  "But  we  will  pass  this  way  again,  and  soon 
we  hope,  and  then  of  course ?" 

"Ah,  who  knows?"  Charles  raised  his  eyebrows  toward  his  thinning 
curlicue  of  hair,  restrained  a  gesture  to  stroke  his  little  whirlf  of  mous- 
tache, smiled  debonairly  at  us,  and  disappeared  finally  into  the  black 
corridor. 

"I  thought  he  said  he  would  wait  until  tomorrow  night,"  I  mur- 
mured, flippantly.  Then  I  felt  rather  ashamed,  and  apologized.  "He'll 
probably  be  waiting  at  the  end  of  the  hall,  the  top  of  the  stairs,  to 
help  us  with  our  coats." 

Chexbres  said  nothing,  but  slowly  drank  down  the  rest  of  the  marc. 

The  chairs  squawked  wildly  as  we  stood  up.  The  sound  was  almost 
good  in  that  silent  room. 

In  the  corridor  we  saw  a  dim  light,  and  as  we  went  by  Ribaudot's 
office,  his  silhouette  was  sharp  against  the  frosted  glass,  bent  over  his 
high  desk. 

"I  know  where  the  coats  are,"  I  whispered,  and  we  tiptoed  down 
the  hall. 

"Is  it  Madame  Fischer?"  His  voice  came  muffled  through  the  door. 
He  opened  it,  blinking  at  us,  with  his  hair  mussed. 

"Oh,  I'm  sorry!  I  do  hope  we  haven't  kept  you,"  I  said,  in  con- 
fusion. 

He  looked  very  tenderly  at  us.  "No.  And  have  you  dined  well?  I 
am  glad.  I  have  your  coats  in  here." 

We  stood  awkwardly  in  the  doorway  while  he  crossed  the  little 


538  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

room  to  the  table  where  the  two  cooks  had  sat  in  the  afternoon.  Our 
coats  were  piled  on  it,  to  one  side,  and  a  stiff  ugly  bouquet  of  mimosa 
and  two  purplish  rosebuds  and  a  twig  of  cypress  stood  by  them.  I 
looked  dully  at  it,  wishing  I  were  home  in  bed,  very  tired. 

"It  was  good  of  you  to  remember  Ribaudot,"  he  said. 

"It  was  very  natural.  Who  does  not?" 

"Ah,  things  nowadays— the  affairs— "  but  he  bowed,  acceptance  calm 
on  his  face. 

"And  the  poor  old  Charles.  It  was  especially  good  for  him.  I  see 
you  and  I  shared  the  honour  of  flowers  from  him."  He  looked  imper- 
sonally at  the  ugly  bouquet.  "Yes,  I  fired  Charles  today,  just  before 
your  first  visit.  He  is  on  his  way  to  the  South  by  now. 

"Permit  me  to  help  you  with  your  scarf.  It  was  sad — a  fine  waiter 
once,  a  brave  little  man  always— but  what  will  you  do?  Everything 
changes.  Everything  passes. 

"Good-night.  Good-night,  sir  and  Madame,  and  thank  you.  And 
good-bye." 

"Au  revoir,  we  hope,"  I  called  as  we  walked  away  from  him  towards 
the  dark. 

"Who  knows?"  He  shrugged,  and  closed  the  glass  door. 

In  the  long  hall  corruption  hung  faint  and  weakly  foul  on  the 
still  air.  The  stairs  were  deep,  with  the  empty  glass  box  like  a  dark 
ice  cube,  and  we  breathed  freely  once  out  in  the  courtyard. 

It  was  filled  with  moonlight.  The  trees  in  tubs  were  black,  and 
through  the  archway  the  tower  of  the  palace  gleamed  and  glowed 
against  the  black  sky. 

Chexbres  took  my  hand  gently,  and  pointed  to  the  roofs,  coloured 
tiles,  Burgundian,  drained  of  their  colour  now,  but  plainly  patterned. 
I  began  to  cry. 


Cesar 


BY 

M.  F.  K.  FISHER 


For  one  reason  or  another  it  is  thought  advisable  to  change  the  names 
of  real  people  when  you  write  about  them.  I  can  do  that  sometimes, 
but  not  now.  And  o£  course  there  is  no  reason  why  I  should.  Cesar 
is  very  real:  he  lives  more  surely  than  most  men;  and  if  he  does  read 
about  himself  in  any  book,  which  is  doubtful,  he  will  at  the  most 
be  amused. 

I  cannot  remember  how  we  first  met  him.  He  was  the  butcher  in 
a  village  of  fishermen.  We  were  foreigners,  who  stayed  in  the  village 
several  weeks.  It  is  probably  strange  that  we  knew  Cesar  so  well,  and 
he  us. 

The  women  of  the  village  hated  him  and  were  afraid  of  him,  but, 
"All  I  do  is  reach  through  my  window  at  night,"  said  Cesar,  "and 
there's  a  fine  piece  of  woman  waiting  for  me  in  the  dark  street.  Any 
time,  every  night,  I  pluck  them  in." 

The  women  hated  him  for  two  reasons.  He  had  been  very  cruel 
to  his  termagant  wife.  She  fled  from  him  finally,  and  the  two  sons 
with  her,  after  a  fight  between  them  and  their  father. 

They  were  very  strong  men,  all  three,  and  when  they  were  angry 
they  swelled  with  muscle  and  spleen.  Cesar  chased  them  out,  all  howl- 
ing maledictions. 

Later  one  of  the  sons  crept  back  and  stabbed  at  his  father,  but 
Cesar  broke  the  dagger  between  his  fists  and  gave  the  pieces  to  his  son's 
mistress,  one  night  after  he  had  plucked  her  through  his  window. 

But  it  was  sorrow  for  the  poor  wife,  even  if  she  was  a  foul-mouthed 
shrew,  that  made  the  village  women  hate  Cesar.  That  was  the  first 
reason.  The  second  was  that  the  men  in  the  village  loved  Cesar  more 

539 


READING   I'VE   LIKED 

than  they  did  their  women  or  their  sons  or  even  their  boats. 
They  loved  him  for  a  thousand  reasons  and  one  reason.  Cesar  was 
all  that  every  man  wants  secretly  to  be:  strong,  brave;  foul,  cruel, 
reckless;  desired  by  women  and  potent  as  a  goat:  tender  and  very 
sweet  with  children;  feared  by  the  priest,  respected  by  the  mayor; 
utterly  selfish  and  as  generous  as  a  prince;  gay.  Cesar  was  man,  Man 
noble  and  monstrous  again  after  so  many  centuries. 

Once  a  week,  two  or  three  times  a  week,  we'd  walk  down  the  one 
street,  after  noon  dinner.  All  the  boats  beached  on  one  side  of  us,  all 
the  doorsteps  empty  on  the  other,  desertion  would  lie  like  dust  in  the 
air,  with  here  and  there  a  woman  peering  sourly  from  a  dark  room. 
Madame  Revenusso  or  Madame  Medin,  maybe,  would  call  sullenly 
that  Cesar  was  looking  for  Monsieur  Fischer. 

Al's  face  would  flash  with  joy,  like  a  torch  or  a  trumpet  call.  He'd 
hurry  away.  I'd  go  home  alone,  understanding  some  of  the  village 
women's  jealous  anger. 

Cesar's  meat  shop  was  behind  the  chapel,  in  a  dirty  alley.  It  was  sel- 
dom peopled:  women  would  buy  no  cuts  from  him,  the  devil,  and 
even  if  they  had  wanted  to  he  was  always  saving  the  best  for  himself. 
Probably  he  ran  the  shop  because  it  was  an  easy  way  to  have  good 
meat  ready  to  hand. 

Back  of  the  store,  there  was  one  large  room.  It  was  dark,  spotless, 
full  of  clean  cold  air  from  stone  walls  and  floor,  and  almost  bare. 
Under  the  lone  window  was  Cesar's  big  bed,  very  conveniently  ar- 
ranged for  his  carnal  nocturnes.  A  wide  ledge  jutted  from  two  walls, 
wide  enough  to  sit  on  or  lie  on.  There  were  one  or  two  chairs  on 
the  scrubbed  tiles  of  the  floor,  nuisances  to  stumble  over  in  the  room's 

darkness. 

In  the  centre  was  the  heart,  the  yolk,  the  altar,  the  great  stone  fire- 
place flat  and  high  as  a  table,  with  an  iron  top  for  pots  and  a  grill. 
And  the  whole  ceiling  of  the  room  was  its  chimney,  rising  to  a  point 
and  a  far  hole  above  the  fire,  like  an  ancient  ducal  kitchen. 

It  was  there,  to  that  big  dark  room,  that  the  men  would  come, 
usually  in  the  afternoon.  I  never  saw  them  there,  nor  the  room,  neither, 
but  I  know  they  came  to  it  as  quickly  as  they  could,  very  joyfully. 
Cesar  would  say  "Come!"  and  they  would  hurry. 


M.   F.   K.  FISHER  541 

On  the  stove  there  was  always  something  steaming  in  a  great  black 
pot— a  stew  of  tiny  opaque  whitebait,  or  tripe  jugged  in  sour  white 
wine,  or  succulent  scraps  whose  origin  Cesar  leeringly  would  not  tell. 

Piled  on  a  chair,  or  on  the  floor  near  the  stove,  were  steaks  as  thick 
as  your  fist,  or  four  or  five  lamb's  legs,  or  a  kid  ready  to  broil.  On 
the  stone  ledge  were  two  kegs  of  wine,  or  three,  or  bottles  never 
counted. 

The  fire  was  hot,  the  steam  rose  toward  the  roof. 

Cesar  stood  taller  and  broader  than  any  other  man  before  his  stove, 
stirring,  basting,  smelling.  His  voice  was  mightier. 

"Drink!"  he  cried  out.  "Drink,  eat!"  And  he  roared  with  joy. 

In  the  other  houses  women  snapped  at  their  children  or  perked 
their  heads  towards  the  chapel  alley.  When  they  heard  songs  and 
wild  laughter,  or  more  alarming  silence,  they  sighed  and  looked  black. 
If  there'd  only  been  bad  strumpets  there  behind  the  butcher  shop, 
they  would  have  comprehended,  but  just  men— it  was  unnatural. 

If  their  husbands  came  home  before  dark,  they  would  not  eat  fish 
soup  and  bread  with  the  children.  If  they  came  too  late  for  that,  they 
leaped  fiercely  and  silently  on  the  sleeping  women,  or  stood  for  a  long 
time  looking  through  the  shutters  at  the  sea,  their  faces  very  gentle 
and  intent. 

The  women  hated  Cesar. 

The  mornings  after,  they  cackled  maliciously  when  his  shop  stayed 
closed  until  noon,  and  when  he  finally  opened  its  wide  door,  they 
looked  sideways  at  his  tired  thick  face. 

"M'sieur  Cesar  appears  ill  today,"  they  would  greet  him,  oilily. 

"111?  My  God,  no,  dear  Madame  Dirtypot!  Two  quarts  of  purgative 
water  is  all  I  need— or  three.  And  I'd  advise  the  same  for  your  hus- 
band—but in  proportion,  in  proportion,  my  good  Mrs.  Soilskirt.  I'd 
say  a  half-glass.  More  would  tear  his  vitals  clean  off,  with  more  loss 
to  you  than  to  him,  eh,  Madame  Foulface?" 

Cesar's  eyes,  almost  shut,  gleamed  wickedly,  and  he  hoisted  up  his 
big  sagging  belly  with  lewd  relish. 

Then  his  face  cleared.  A  young  woman  came  towards  him,  with  a 
warm  little  naked  child  on  one  arm.  Cesar  called  her. 
"Celestine!  How  goes  it  with  your  new  rascal?" 


542  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

He  paid  no  attention  to  her  still  mouth  and  forehead,  but  looked 
lovingly  at  the  tiny  brown  baby  she  had. 

"Oh,  he  is  a  beauty,  but  a  beauty,  so  strong  and  straight!  Celestine, 
you've  done  a  fine  job  here.  That's  right,  girl— smile.  Cesar  is  your 
good  friend,  really.  And  this  child!  He  is  a  grand  fellow,  I  tell  you. 
Here,  come  to  me,  you  little  beautiful  limb  of  the  devil!" 

Cesar  stood  in  the  strong  white  sunlight,  his  two  bottles  of  physic 
forgotten.  The  naked  baby  in  his  arms  grinned  up  at  him  candidly 
while  he  murmured  to  it.  He  turned  it  across  his  arm,  and  ran  his  huge 
hand  over  its  firm  little  bottom. 

"My  God!"  he  exclaimed,  suddenly,  "what  a  delicious,  truly  what  a 
delicious  morsel  that  would  be,  broiled!" 

With  an  outraged  squawk  Celestine  tore  her  baby  from  him  and 
scuttled  away.  Cesar  yelled  with  laughter,  belched  mightily,  and  went 
toward  his  shop,  his  physic  under  his  arms. 

Whenever  a  strange  creature  came  up  in  the  nets,  some  sea  beast's 
child  or  watery  vegetable,  the  fishermen  carried  it  to  Cesar. 

He'd  poke  it,  smell  it,  inevitably  taste  it.  If  he  spat  it  out,  they'd 
nod  wisely.  Poison!  If  he  gulped  it  down  alive,  or  cooked  it  up  into 
a  queer  stew,  they'd  talk  for  days,  admiringly.  Brave  man  to  eat  a 
mass  of  purple  jelly  with  a  little  green-toothed  mouth  in  its  middle! 

But  do  you  remember,  and  their  eyes  would  glisten  with  amazed 
delight,  do  you  remember  the  time  the  crocodile  died  at  the  big  zoo 
in  the  city,  and  Cesar  was  called  to  skin  it,  and  brought  himself  back 
a  fine  thick  steak  from  it?  Ah,  do  you  remember? 

The  time  came  for  us  to  go.  We  asked  Cesar  to  come  to  our  house 
to  eat  a  last  supper. 

I  felt  awkward,  because  I  was  a  woman— but  there  was  no  other 
place  for  me  to  eat.  Cesar  felt  awkward  for  the  same  reason. 

He  came  with  a  coat  on,  and  a  pink  shirt,  and  silently  handed  me  a 
massive  filet  of  beef.  I  left  the  room  with  it,  and  heard  him  talking 
to  Al,  but  when  I  came  back  he  stopped. 

The   meal   was   strained   at   the  beginning,  but   we   had   plenty  of 
good  wine,  and  the  meat  was  the  best  I  have  ever  tasted. 
Cesar  put  down  his  knife  and  fork. 


M.   F.   K.   FISHER  543 

"She  likes  it,  she  likes  good  food!"  he  said,  wonderingly,  to  Al. 
"She  cannot  be  a  real  woman!" 

After  that  things  were  very  pleasant.  He  took  off  his  coat,  and  we 
ate  and  drank  and  talked,  all  a  good  deal. 

"I  hear  you  are  married,"  Cesar  remarked.  "It  is  a  filthy  lie,  natu- 
rally?" 

"But  of  course  we  are  married,"  Al  protested.  "We  have  been  mar- 
ried for  several  years." 

Cesar  peered  incredulously  at  us,  and  then  laughed. 

"Ridiculous!  And  why?  Children,  you  are  not  married,  I  say — 
because  marriage  is  a  rotten  business,  and  you  are  not  rotten."  He 
spat  neatly  over  his  huge  pink  shoulder.  "If  you  were  married,  Alfred, 
Alfred-the-Penguin,  my  Al,  would  not  be  a  real  man,  happy.  And 
he  is.  And  you,"  he  glared  at  me,  "would  not  be  sitting  knowing  good 
meat  between  your  teeth.  And  you  are. 

"Therefore,  my  two  peculiar  little  foreign  children,  you  are  not 
married!  No,  you  are  brother  and  sister,  living  in  sinful  glory!" 

He  laughed  until  the  whole  room  shook,  and  tipped  a  full  bottle 
of  wine  down  his  throat. 

"I  shall  die  soon,"  he  said,  "and  when  I  die,  every  man  in  the 
village  will  laugh  for  many  days.  Do  you  know  why?  Because  they'll 
have  all  my  wine  to  drink,  barrels  and  casks  of  it,  to  drink  to  my 
commands,  and  they'll  all  try  to  drink  as  I  would,  as  I've  taught 
them. 

"Yes,  they'll  drink  for  me,  to  float  my  soul  to  Purgatory.  And  the 
biggest  cask  of  wine  will  be  my  coffin.  My  friends  know.  They'll 
put  me  in  it  and  bury  me  deep,  and  they  and  all  the  women,  too, 
will  weep." 

He  was  silent  for  a  minute,  and  then  roared  another  laugh. 

"And  grapes  will  grow  up  from  me,"  he  cried,  "and  by  God,  what 
wine  I'll  make!" 

Al  and  I  looked  and  recognized  there  a  ghost  with  us,  another 
Man  from  whose  dead  heart  had  sprung  a  vine.  Was  he  Cesar,  was 
Cesar  that  dim  great  figure  who  heard  of  Pan's  death  and  cried  tears 
as  big  as  ostrich  eggs? 


544  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

We  parted  merrily,  with  no  farewells. 

About  a  year  later,  a  shabby  post  card  came  from  the  village  on 
the  Mediterranean  coast.  It  was  stiffly  pencilled. 

"My  friends  in  Sinful  Glory,  plant  a  tree  somewhere  for  Cesar." 
Since  then  we  have  planted  many,  almost  all  for  him. 


CHRISTINA   STEAD 


COMMENTARY 


J  imagine  that  every  writer  who  has  a  dozen  unsalable  short  stories 
in  the  bottom  drawer  has  played  with  the  notion  of  stringing  to- 
gether a  modern  Decameron.  The  form  has  always  seemed  to  me 
dull,  and  so  has  Boccaccio,  the  most  overpraised  writer  oi  an  over- 
praised literary  epoch.  When  J  say  that  Miss  Christina  Steads  Salz- 
burg Tales  are  far  better  than  the  Decameron,  I  intend  nothing  but 
disrespect  to  Boccaccio,  prince  of  bores. 

Miss  Stead  impales  literary  butterflies  on  the  needles  of  malicious 
paragraphs,  weaves  medieval  legends  that  sound  as  if  you  had  looked 
in  upon  them  years  ago  through  the  dim  pages  of  the  Gesta  Ro- 
manorum,  relates  funny  stories  about  goldEsh  that  predict  the  fluc- 
tuations of  the  stock  market,  and  tricks  venerable  jokes  out  until 
they  become  tiny,  twinkling  masterpieces  of  gargoyle  humor. 

The  Salzburg  Tales  consists  of  forty  adult  fairy  stories,  bearing 
aloft  (to  steal  a  phrase  from  the  author)  "the  hundred  Rowers  of  her 
unpremeditated  virtuosity."  Gnomelike  mockery  alternates  with  a 
luxuriance  of  chills  and  fevers.  A  'partisan  of  the  improbable,"  she 
dares  to  tell  stories  of  morbid,  impassioned  lovers,  bleeding  hearts, 
imps  and  triskelions,  Don  Juan  as  a  matador,  sparrows  in  love,  ghosts 
and  gazelles  and  the  caverns  of  the  dead.  And  she  gets  away  with  it, 
partly  because  of  the  beauty  of  the  style,  which  occasionally  softens 
into  lushness,  and  partly  because  a  faint  ring  of  mockery  sounds  be- 
hind the  heaviest  and  most  shadowy  of  her  gothic  portals. 

Yet  the  best  thing  in  the  book  is  not  the  tales  themselves  (a  few 
of  them  are  tediously  complex)  but  forty  pages  of  introductory  mat- 
ter, in  which  she  characterizes  in  a  page  or  paragraph  the  personages, 
gathered  together  at  a  Salzburg  Festival,  into  whose  mouths  the  tales 
are  put.  For  wit,  fancy,  variety,  light-brushwork  satire,  and  almost 
offensive  polish,  these  miniature  novels  are  inimitable.  There  is 
nothing  medieval  about  them;  they  are  shrewdly  cosmopolitan,  jewel- 
work  by  a  contemporary  La  Bruyere.  I  include  here  this  introductory 

545 


546  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

section  and  suggest  that  you  get  the  book  and  try  the  tales  themselves, 
in  some  mood  that  rejects  the  probable,  the  plain,  the  quotidian. 

It  is  easy  to  say  that  Miss  Stead  is  no  artist,  but  rather  an  artificer, 
yet  her  artificiality  is  so  easy,  she  is  so  airily  confident  in  her  romanti- 
cism, claiming  nothing  for  it,  charging  it  with  no  message,  that  in 
the  end  the  most  commonsensical  reader  is  likely,  for  a  luxurious 
moment,  to  smile  with  pleasure  at  the  paradox  of  her  Philosopher 
when  he  says,  "I  only  tell  fairy  tales,  for  I  would  rather  be  seen  in 
their  sober  vestments  than  in  the  prismatic  unlikelihood  of  reality." 


The  Salzburg  Tales 

BY 

CHRISTINA  STEAD 

THE  PROLOGUE 

Salzburg,  old  princely  and  archiepiscopal  city,  and  its  fortress  Hohen- 
Salzburg,  lie  among  the  mountains  of  the  Tyrol,  in  Salzburg  Province, 
in  Austria.  The  river  Salzach,  swift  and  yellow  from  the  glaciers  and 
streaming  mountain  valleys,  flows  between  baroque  pleasure-castles 
standing  in  glassy  lakes,  and  peasant  villages  pricked  in  their  vine- 
yards, and  winds  about  to  reflect  the  citadel  rising  in  its  forests,  single 
eminence  in  the  plain.  The  river  divides  the  city,  leaving  a  wooded 
mound  on  either  hand,  rushes  noisily  under  the  bridges  between  Italian 
domes  and  boulevarded  banks,  and  rolls  out,  placid,  fast  and  deep, 
towards  the  Bavarian  plain  and  the  rain-burdened  evening  sky. 

Yesterday  morning,  the  city  flashed  like  an  outcrop  of  rock-crystals 
in  its  cliffs  by  the  river :  in  the  evening,  rain-clouds  sat  on  the  Kapuzin- 
erberg  and  the  Monchsberg  and  squirted  their  black  waters  on  the 
town  and  beat  down  the  mild  leafage  of  the  woods.  This  morning  the 
clouds  rolled  away  with  troutside  gleams  under  a  fresh  wind,  and 
the  river,  risen  a  foot  in  the  night,  and  roaring  like  the  wind,  is  again 
calm  and  yellow.  And  now,  on  this  last  day  of  July,  the  townspeople 
look  at  the  red  walls  of  the  naked  Tyrol  far  off  and  at  the  giant  peak 
of  the  Untersberg,  like  a  hatchet  in  the  air,  and  all  their  conversation 
is  that  they  hope  it  will  be  fine  for  the  first  day  of  the  August  festival, 
the  great  event  of  Salzburg  men. 

Now  the  streets  are  full:  bands  of  German  students  in  blue  linen 
coats  with  rucksacks  and  staves  lope  through  the  town  at  a  round 
pace,  counting  the  monuments  and  ignoring  the  tourists;  foreign 
women  in  summer  dresses  peer  in  jewellers'  windows  full  of  Swiss 

547 


548  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

clocks  and  edelweiss  pressed  under  glass,  foreign  gentlemen  buy  tufts 
of  reindeer  hair  to  put  in  their  hats,  and  trout-flies;  the  milk-wagons 
are  busy,  the  elegants  sit  in  the  cafes  and  drink  coffee  with  cream, 
and  the  men  going  home  from  work  on  their  bicycles  glance  thirstily 
in  the  low  leaded  panes  of  beer-cellars  on  the  Linzergasse,  and  see 
severe  Berlin  merchants  and  tall  blond  American  college  boys  drinking 
good  Salzburg  beer.  A  stage  has  been  put  up  in  the  Cathedral  Place  for 
the  Miracle  Play  of  "Jedermann,"  German  bands  are  playing  Mozart 
and  Wagner  in  all  the  cafes,  the  Residenz  Platz  is  packed  with  visitors 
waiting  to  hear  the  Glockenspiel  at  six  o'clock  ring  out  its  antique 
elfin  tunes,  tourists  pop  in  and  out  of  the  house  at  number  nine, 
Getreide-gasse,  where  Mozart  was  born,  musicians  and  actors  are  walk- 
ing and  talking  under  the  thick  trees  on  the  river-bank,  and  even  the 
poor  people  in  the  new  pink  and  blue  stucco  houses,  built  in  a  marsh 
on  the  Josef-Mayburger  Kai,  look  at  the  red  sunset  and  count  busily 
for  the  hundredth  time  the  little  profit  they  will  make  on  the  Vien- 
nese lady  who  has  rented  a  room  from  them  for  the  duration  of  the 
Festival. 

Opposite  the  fortress,  across  the  river,  is  the  yellow-walled  Capuchin 
convent  in  its  tall  wood.  One  has  to  pay  a  few  groschen  each  day  at  the 
convent  gate  to  enter  the  wood.  Within  the  gate,  transported  there 
from  Vienna,  stands  the  little  wooden  hut  in  which  Mozart  wrote  "The 
Magic  Flute."  Higher  up  the  hill  is  a  fine  outlook  towards  Bavaria, 
and  on  the  crest  of  the  hill  in  the  grounds  of  an  ancient  house  built 
of  beams  and  hung  with  vines,  in  which  the  monks  formerly  dwelt,  is 
a  vantage-point  commanding  the  city  and  its  environs. 

In  this  wood  the  visitors  to  the  August  Festival  walk  often,  and  often 
sit  long,  in  groups,  listening  to  the  innumerable  bells  of  the  town 
ringing  through  the  wood,  and  talking,  in  the  fresh  mornings.  The 
wood  is  tranquil  in  its  brown  hollows  and  full  of  sandalled  Capuchin 
monks  drawing  wagons  of  wood,  and  woodcutters  who  have  to  take 
their  carts  and  horses  down  the  steep  Calvary  Way  beyond  the  con- 
vent gate  to  reach  the  streets  of  the  town.  Sometimes  by  the  covered 
well  in  the  tall-wooded  hollow  are  heard  foreign  voices  relating  sono- 
rously the  marvellous  and  dark  and  bloody  annals  of  the  town,  or  some 
long-spun  story  brought  in  their  packs  with  them  from  overseas,  while 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  549 

the  soft  Austrian  breeze  entreats  the  leaves  in  the  tops  of  the  trees, 
squirrels  scrabble  in  the  roots  and  wild  violets  and  sun-coloured  fungi 
fill  the  hollows.  So  passionate  a  love  awakes  in  the  stranger's  breast 
as  he  scarcely  feels  for  his  native  land,  for  the  incomparable  beauty  of 
these  wild  peaks,  these  rose  walls  two  thousand  feet  in  air  and  this 
mediaeval  fortress  hanging  footless  on  an  adamantine  rock  against  the 
un weathered  cliffs  of  the  Untersberg:  and  as  he  walks,  meditative, 
along  some  lowland  or  upland  path,  listening  to  the  distant  voices,  the 
bells  and  the  diminutive  rustlings,  he  passes  an  old  inhabitant  with' 
large  brown  eyes,  sitting  immobile  on  a  log,  who  says  politely  in  his 
sweet  dialect,  "Good-day,"  as  he  would  to  a  son  of  the  city  come  from 
a  foreign  shore. 


THE   PERSONAGES 


A  fresh  wind  blew  in  the  woods,  the  pigeons  massed  in  the  Residenz 
Platz,  tooting  because  the  sky  was  bright,  and  the  fountain  dropped 
loudly  on  the  weedgrown  stones.  The  people  went  through  an  arch- 
way into  the  Domplatz  where  "Jedermann"  G£  the  poet  Hofmansthal 
was  to  be  played  in  the  open  air  before  the  cathedral.  Actors  in 
mediaeval  costumes  ran  about  in  the  nearby  streets  and  disappeared 
quickly  in  a  little  door  at  the  back  of  the  cathedral,  or  were  seen 
leaning  momentarily  over  the  high  cornices  of  the  roofs  of  the  Dom- 
platz. In  the  courtyard  of  the  fortress,  high  up  in  the  air,  tourists 
looking  like  flies  or  sparrows  hung  over  the  wall  and  peered  at  the 
Domplatz,  trying  to  make  out  whether  the  play  had  begun,  and 
whether  many  people  had  paid  for  seats.  In  the  middle  of  the  front 
seat  sat  the  Archbishop  of  Salzburg,  tall,  plump  and  dressed  in  red, 
with  white  linen  and  white  hands:  he  greeted  distinguished  visitors 
like  a  prince  welcoming  talent  to  his  court.  Near  him  on  the  same 
seat  sat  the  superior  from  the  Capuchin  Convent  and  the  Mayor  of 
Salzburg;  but  these  three  great  persons,  who  divided  the  town  into 
three  parts  between  them,  told  no  tales  in  the  Capuchin  Wood. 

The  Festival  Director  came  in  from  the  Cathedral  bareheaded, 
warm  with  his  last  instructions  to  the  actors.  He  bowed  to  the  Arch- 
bishop and  remarked  that  the  pontifical  sun  shone  on  their  labours,  in 
a  voice  unctuous  but  constrained,  for  he  was  small  and  stout,  while 
the  Archbishop  was  firm,  large  and  grey  as  a  gravestone:  likewise  the 
sun  shone  in  the  Director's  face  and  made  it  red,  and  he  was  aware 
that  the  Archbishop  did  not  give  a  benedicite  for  his  stvle.  Courteously 
he  bent  his  head  once  more  to  the  Archbishop's  chest  and  said,  he 
hoped  his  Grace  would  applaud  the  Miracle  Play  of  Everyman  which 
they  were  about  to  put  on  again,  and  that,  while  indoors  one  tricked 
the  eye  with  fat  columns  and  a  giant  cornice  to  suggest  boundless 

550 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  551 

space,  here  his  stage  was  two  bare  boards,  for  he  had  to  present 
simple  verities,  and  otherwise  his  theatre  was  exalted  above  fame  by 
the  redoubtable  acts  of  Salzburg's  Princes  of  the  Church.  Meanwhile, 
the  Director  cast  glances  about  him,  conscious  of  whispers  and  of 
people  standing  on  tiptoe  to  see  him.  He  murmured  discreetly  to  the 
Mayor  the  hiding-places  of  his  actors  concealed  on  the  roofs  and  ex- 
plained to  a  monk  that  the  church-bells  of  the  town  would  be  silent 
now  until  the  play  was  done.  Then,  he  glanced  over  the  audience, 
standing  three-quarters  on  to  the  Archbishop  still  with  a  gracious  air 
which  yet  lacked  polish,  for  he  was  a  ready,  practical  man  of  elephan- 
tine dreams,  who  tried  to  give  the  imagination  a  footrest  on  earth :  and 
he  was  always  casting  off  from  his  thick,  square  shoulders  set  on  his 
thick  long  torso,  presentiments  of  trouble,  of  criticism  and  of  failure. 
His  eye  grouped  the  audience  quickly  this  way  and  that  like  the  part- 
ing of  thick  hair  with  a  comb.  Here  were  the  art  patrons,  rich  ama- 
teurs, people  of  fashion,  the  Viennese,  Berliners,  New  Yorkers,  here 
the  musicians,  conductors  and  actors,  there  the  poor,  the  townspeople 
from  the  boarding-houses,  Cook's  tourists:  beyond  the  rope  were  the 
Naturfreande,  and  in  the  background  some  wretched  of  the  town,  and 
peasants  come  in  from  the  mountains  wearing  great  black  hats  and 
bell-bottomed  trousers,  and  monks  and  college  students,  and  fisher- 
men, and  conscripts  from  the  barracks  down  the  river,  and  idling 
shopboys  and  shopgirls  escaped  for  half  an  hour.  Smiling,  bowing  and 
turning  in  the  sun  like  a  buoy  in  the  bay,  the  Director  backed  away 
from  the  Archbishop  and  sat  down  a  few  seats  away,  waiting  for  the 
play  to  begin. 

After  the  Festival  Director  came  the  Viennese  Conductor,  with 
another  Conductor  from  Munich.  The  Viennese  Conductor  was  like 
a  tasselled  reed,  with  shoulders  and  hands  spreading  outwards,  delicate 
hips  and  a  soft,  long,  feline  stride:  he  sometimes  took  shorter  steps 
and  sometimes  longer  as  if  to  show  that  in  him  the  passion  of  rhythm 
was  constant  but  tidal.  He  looked  this  way  and  that  as  he  bowed 
obsequiously  over  his  companion's  conversation,  smiling  to  himself  on 
the  side,  as  if  he  had  a  tiding  of  joy  in  his  sleeve,  and  gathering  in 
the  ladies'  glances;  it  might  have  been  harvest-time  and  he  a  reaping- 
hook.  Bowing,  with  long  bright  looks  of  adulation,  he  acknowledged 


552  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  distinguished  guests,  and  stooped  with  manner  consciously  rich 
and  theatrical  to  the  Archbishop,  for  whom  he  did  not  give  a  fig.  He 
took  the  hand  of  an  aged  prima  donna  and  looked  as  if  he  would 
faint  from  excessive  admiration;  and  then  he  walked  on  indifferently, 
dropping  all  this  behind  him,  like  a  dolphin  in  the  waves,  going  on 
from  easy  conquest  to  easy  conquest,  speaking  of  violins  and  sunshine, 
of  Max  Reinhardt  and  overtones,  of  Mozart  and  Apollo,  easily,  wittily, 
with  everything  said  in  reverse,  in  order  to  amuse.  He  was  thirty  years 
of  age  and  had  conducted  orchestras  since  the  age  of  six.  He  delighted 
especially  in  chamber  concerts  where  the  atmosphere  was  intimate  and 
the  women  were  near  enough  to  study  his  attitudes,  how  he  swooned 
with  ecstasy  one  moment  and  closed  his  eyes  wearily  at  another,  how 
his  eyes  sparkled  when  the  soft  theme  rose  on  the  strings,  and  again, 
how  he  snapped  his  fingers  quickly,  impatient  to  hear  the  quick  tread 
of  the  bows  getting  through  the  thicket  of  notes  in  soldierly  unison: 
now  he  waved  them  oft  with  both  hands,  entreating  them  not  to  assail 
his  silken  nerves  with  such  boisterousness,  now  he  bowed  to  them,  and 
scooped  them  out  of  the  basin  of  the  orchestra,  then  he  smiled  like  a 
lover  to  one,  and  gave  a  snaky  look  to  another;  he  gathered  them  in 
his  arms  like  a  woman  gathering  chickens  in  her  apron,  he  danced  up 
and  down  on  his  toes  as  if  he  were  a  reed  alone  bearing  the  tremendous 
harmonies  of  the  wild.  At  the  end,  turning  from  the  performers,  he 
bowed  like  an  Eastern  prince  to  the  audience,  as  much  as  to  say,  "This 
is  what  I  draw  out  of  mere  things  of  catgut,  wood  and  silver,"  and 
when  the  stormy  applause  arose,  he  at  once,  with  the  same  bright  look, 
and  an  abnegatory  gesture,  deplored  it  and  deferred  to  it — "Are  we 
not  here  for  the  cause  of  art  alone— for  the  soul,  not  for  the  laurels"; 
and  all  the  time  he  smiled  to  himself  as  if  to  say,  "My  little  ones,  you 
ignorant  pusses,  my  tympanum  vibrates  like  a  film  of  air,  all  this  is 
a  thousand  times  more  exquisite  to  me";  and  then  he  turned  to  the 
orchestra  and  made  them  rise  with  the  gesture  of  a  good  host  who 
leaves  no  one  in  the  shade,  and  thanked  them  himself,  disregarding 
their  amused  glances  and  bluff  haste  to  be  packed  up  and  gone.  He 
was  a  wonderful  actor  of  concertos. 

These  two  conductors  then  passed  up  a  side  aisle  and  sat  into  their 
places  like  two  bars  of  music  well-fallen. 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  553 

After  them  came  the  Italian  Singer,  a  gentleman  of  fifty  years  or 
more,  with  a  ravaged  wrinkled  face,  like  a  mask  of  tragedy  carved 
in  wood;  he  wore  a  blue  silk  shirt  and  a  gold  bracelet.  When  he 
spoke  it  might  be  in  a  whisper,  or  cavernously,  or  gruffly:  the  ear  was 
at  first  repelled  by  the  harsh  voice  and  soon  after  was  surprised  and 
seduced  by  its  rich,  tormented  and  varying  tones.  He  seemed  to  be 
weeping  internally  even  when  he  broke  into  his  slow,  great  smile  of 
an  Easter  Island  idol.  He  was  a  famous  singer  and  had  once  been  the 
rival  of  the  greatest  singer  in  the  world.  For  years  the  balance  went 
up  and  down  between  them,  but  into  his  clear,  far-sounding  notes 
came  whisperings  and  rich  lachrymose  overtones;  disease  marched  on 
him  in  full  array.  Yet  even  now,  thrilling  and  deathly  to  hear  were 
the  infernal  rustlings  of  his  great  stage-whisper.  The  sun  silvered  his 
smooth,  black  hair  and  his  low,  satanic  forehead.  He  had  an  antique 
cast:  one  would  have  said  some  giant  warrior  who  had  kept  watch 
on  the  walls  of  Carthage.  His  melancholy  great  eyes,  deepset,  scaled 
the  castle-walls  as  if  pursuing  a  bird  of  prey  into  the  air.  His  large 
mouth  drew  down  the  curtain  of  gloom;  but  in  an  instant  the  scene 
was  changed  with  his  brilliant  teeth  flashing  at  a  pretty  neighbour.  He 
bowed  gravely  to  the  apostolic  damask. 

Next  came  two  women.  The  first  was  a  Frenchwoman,  tall,  slender 
and  fair,  from  the  south  of  France,  and  boasting  in  her  veins  an 
English  blood  that  sprinkled  the  soil  at  Poitiers.  Her  hair  was  yellow 
and  curled,  and  her  high  nose  looked  out  between  her  fine  cheekbones, 
like  a  thorn  between  two  buds.  Her  eyes  were  blue  and  clear  as  water, 
her  skin  was  golden  with  a  brown  shade  beneath,  and  her  lips  were 
full,  small  and  prettily  painted.  She  was  dressed  in  a  costume  of  black 
and  white  silk  in  small  stripes  like  hairs  laid  close  together,  with  a 
belt  of  red  leather  and  silver.  She  wore  high-heeled  black  slippers  and 
the  finest  silk  stockings  ever  seen;  they  were  of  pewter  grey.  She  wore 
a  blue  fox  fur  and  a  pair  of  white  gloves,  and  when  she  took  off  her 
gloves,  which  were  always  clean,  she  had  on  a  silver  chased  ring  for 
a  wedding  ring  and  a  platinum  ring  with  a  diamond  as  large  as  a 
shoe-button,  for  she  thought  she  might  one  day  have  to  fly  in  some 
sudden  uprising  of  the  farmers,  or  some  political  disorder  in  the  south, 
or  in  war,  or  pestilence;  her  family  was  so  old  that  they  had  seen  every 


554  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

kind  of  trouble.  When  she  spoke  she  spoke  excellently,  with  a  firm, 
caressing  voice;  to  everything  she  said  she  gave  an  aphoristic  turn; 
her  conversation  disarmed  the  jealous,  dismayed  the  dull  and  sharpened 
with  salt  the  wit  of  the  witty.  She  was  a  very  good  Catholic  and  met 
the  Archbishop  with  frank  pleasure.  She  had  already  visited  by  eight 
o'clock  in  the  morning  every  Catholic  altar  in  the  town.  She  had  been 
to  Lourdes,  to  Lisieux  and  Rome  and  to  all  the  famous  places  of  pil- 
grimage, travelling  richly  like  a  great  lady,  to  fall  on  the  stones  of 
some  obscure  chapel  and  receive  a  wafer  from  some  hasty  priest.  Yet 
she  always  had  a  tolerant  smile  for  unbelievers  and  jested  smartly 
with  those  who  laughed  at  her  piety.  Whatever  was  brought  against 
the  fathers  of  the  church,  the  scholarship,  beliefs  or  promises  of  the 
church,  against  local  credulity  or  pontifical  honour,  she  turned  against 
the  accuser  with  the  sharp  thrust  of  a  tongue  for  debate.  In  company 
she  had  no  equal;  she  was  benevolent  and  polished  in  repartee,  in 
anecdote  pithy  and  wise,  and  in  her  tales,  circumstantial  and  rotund 
with  a  long  line  of  development  and  a  sentimental  conclusion.  There 
was  nothing  she  loved  so  much  as  to  be  with  her  dressmaker  or  her 
friends.  When  she  was  with  her  friends,  who  were  of  all  classes  and 
temperaments,  she  forgave  them  all  their  errors  and  she  exerted  herself 
to  amuse  them.  When  she  sat  mistress  at  a  table  the  wines  were 
numerous,  course  followed  course  with  succulent  fleshes,  subtle  sauces 
and  new  garnishings,  and  compliment  followed  compliment  with  fresh 
blandishments;  at  the  end  she  had  always  some  little  flask  of  liqueur 
brought  from  her  own  vines,  dated  and  named  and  tended  at  home, 
which  kept  her  guests  sitting  hour  after  hour  from  evening  till  day- 
light, without  anyone  noticing  where  the  hours  had  flown. 

With  the  Frenchwoman  came  a  Doctress,  a  Scottish  woman  from 
Inverness,  jolly,  fresh-complexioned  and  round,  tall,  with  a  small  waist 
and  wide  bosom;  with  ginger  hair  and  russet  eyelids  and  eyes  like 
cats'-eyes.  Her  hair  was  long  and  loosely  wound  on  her  round  head. 
She  wore  a  brown  straw  hat  with  flowers  in  it,  a  brown,  yellow  and 
cream  dress  amply  draped  without  much  fashion,  small  shoes  of  kid, 
with  copper  buckles,  and  long  kid  gloves.  She  was  perhaps  thirty-eight 
years  old,  and  gay,  lively  and  affectionate  to  the  companion  of  the 
moment.  She  liked  to  be  with  men,  she  smoked  cigarettes  and  drank 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  555 

milk,  laughed  heartily  at  all  that  was  said  and  told  plenty  of  lively 
stories  herself:  but  if  she  did  not  think  enough  attention  was  paid 
her  she  showed  the  spitfire  under  the  skin;  a  grain  of  mustard-seed 
under  her  tongue  put  a  scornful  tang  into  what  she  said:  she  would 
have  liked  to  be  honey-voiced  but  she  was  too  impatient:  her  voice 
would  break  in  the  middle  of  a  flattery  and  she  would  snap  her  fingers 
and  say  no  more.  She  had  got  her  degree  in  Medical  School  after  sev- 
eral failures.  She  had  gone  into  the  Government  medical  service,  gave 
lectures  in  schools  to  embarrassed  adolescents  and  taught  nose-blowing 
to  kindergartners.  She  went  round  the  country  with  a  pair  of  calipers 
and  a  measuring  stick,  taking  the  height  and  cranial  capacity  of  school- 
children. She  liked  pretty  little  girls  but  detested  little  boys  with  their 
ink,  their  coils  of  string,  their  stamps  and  smells.  She  expected  to  go 
on  in  the  Department  until  the  age  of  retirement,  for  she  did  not 
think  of  marrying,  although  she  was  a  pretty  woman  and  liked  a 
house  of  her  own.  Her  most  sentimental  amusement  was  to  walk  in 
the  evening  with  some  middle-aged  man  of  distinction  with  black  or 
silver  hair  and  white  linen  and  clothes  of  a  good  cut,  and  listen  to 
his  sonorous  sentiments,  dispute  his  personalities  and  agree  at  bottom 
with  all  he  said.  The  stars  made  her  salty,  but  they  made  her  wise. 
She  opened  her  eyes  in  the  dark  like  a  cat;  it  seemed  that  an  immense 
affectionate  understanding  could  have  sprung  up  in  her  cold  bosom, 
but  that  was  only  her  comfortable  fat.  She  was  like  the  Frenchwoman 
in  this,  that  she  had  strong  prejudices  she  liked  to  discuss  publicly; 
and  she  liked  tales:  but  the  Doctress  preferred  scandalous  stories  and 
her  ideas  came  out  of  a  slipshod  imagination,  with  an  evident  inten- 
tion of  pleasing  only  herself,  whereas  the  Frenchwoman  far  exceeded 
any  other  woman  there  in  the  telling  of  tales. 

Next  came  in  an  English  Gentleman,  born  and  bred  on  an  estate 
in  one  of  the  southern  counties,  a  laureate  in  Greek  and  Latin  poetry, 
who  spoke  of  race  horses  and  foxhounds  in  unconscious  hexameters. 
He  wore  a  suit  of  Scottish  tweed  in  a  large  check  pattern,  a  brown 
shirt  in  a  small  check  pattern  and  a  cream  tie  with  a  fine  check;  and 
he  had  no  idea  of  the  value  of  money.  His  small  pale-thatched  head, 
the  size  and  appearance  of  a  rock  melon  almost,  he  made  as  insignifi- 
cant as  possible  by  wearing  an  unsuitable  (but  correct)  hat:  his  slender 


556  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

six-foot-two  he  reduced  by  a  studied  crouch;  his  natural  wit  he  veiled 
in  an  impenetrably  bad  accent  taught  at  home,  cultivated  at  Eton, 
brought  to  mysterious  flower  at  Balliol  and  improved  out  of  his  own 
fantasy.  His  intelligence  was  only  occasionally  allowed  to  gleam 
through  a  moving  cloud  of  flippancies  and  racing  metaphors :  his  natu- 
ral benevolence  and  soft  heart  he  would  have  concealed  if  he  had 
known  how  they  were  naked:  he  pretended,  with  all  the  ardour  of  his 
nature,  to  a  vapid  cynicism,  but  he  could  never  learn  the  art.  He  car- 
ried a  fine  snakewood  cane  with  a  gold  initial,  and  was  ready  to  wink 
and  pull  his  blond  moustache  at  any  lady  who  came  his  way. 

After  the  English  country  gentleman  came  two  women.  One  was 
forty  years  of  age  and  spoke  English  with  an  Irish  accent.  She  wore 
a  silk  coatee,  a  silk  dress  flowered  in  a  small  pattern,  a  hat  with  a  blue 
velvet  ribbon  and  forget-me-nots,  and  worn,  brown  kid  gloves;  and 
she  carried  a  large  brown  leather  bag.  She  had  a  paperwhite  skin  and 
greying  hair,  and  she  spoke  with  confidence  rare  phrases  of  guide- 
book German  to  help  out  her  description  of  all  she  had  seen  in  Europe. 
She  had  on  her  small  wrist,  from  which  a  round  bone  stuck  out,  a  gilt 
bracelet  set  with  malachite,  and  on  her  foulard  corsage,  flat  and  draped, 
she  wore  a  large  Victorian  brooch,  with  a  moonstone  heart  set  in  gold 
filigree.  Above,  on  her  bare,  wind-blown  neck,  pitted  with  a  web  of 
goose-flesh,  like  shagrin,  hung  a  plain  gold  cross  such  as  little  girls  get 
to  wear  to  Sunday  School.  She  ambled  along  in  high-heeled  kid  shoes 
with  six  or  seven  straps,  which  she  had  bought  in  an  expensive  Dublin 
shop.  She  almost  wept  talking  about  the  Falls  of  SchafThausen  and  the 
castled  crag  of  Drachenfels,  for  she  had  asked  Thomas  Cook  to  in- 
clude these  in  her  itinerary  and  it  would  cost  her  seventeen  pounds 
extra.  She  wished  to  see  the  Pitti  Palace,  the  tomb  of  Virgil  and  the 
David  of  Michel-Angelo,  whom  she  called,  clearing  her  throat,  "mik- 
kel-anghelo." 

The  second  woman,  a  Schoolteacher,  was  fifty  years  old,  taller, 
thinner,  with  no  rings  on  her  fingers,  but  gloves  of  brown  silk  net.  She 
sailed  along  on  her  long  legs,  like  a  bare  pole  on  a  smooth  sea.  She 
nodded  her  head,  smiling  with  purplish  lips  at  her  companion's  chat- 
ter, and  smoothed  down  her  brown  skirt  of  crepe-de-chine,  with  atten- 
tion; she  held  her  shoulders  straight,  plumped  out  her  frilled  blouse 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  557 

and  looked  in  the  mirrors  of  shops  as  they  passed,  at  her  straight  hair, 
the  colour  of  gold-bearing  sand,  done  up  in  a  neat  coil,  and  tilted  more 
fashionably  her  expensive  brown  satin  toque.  Wherever  she  moved  she 
gave  out  buff  or  yellow  shades.  She  put  her  hand  to  her  side  and  felt 
it,  for  she  had  a  pain  there,  and  she  smiled  still  more  obligingly  at  her 
garrulous  friend.  She  had  been  a  highschool  mistress  for  thirty  years 
and  now  lived  in  a  pretty  town  house  with  a  flower  garden,  and  on 
the  walls  the  prints  of  the  Medici  Society,  of  Botticelli  and  the  Dutch 
painters.  She  ate  delicately  of  chicken,  salad  and  jelly;  she  never  spoke 
loudly,  and  an  allusion,  however  discreet,  to  immodest  subjects  trou- 
bled and  shocked  her.  Although  she  was  a  good  scholar  and  an  apt 
learner  and  believed  in  modernism,  so  that  her  pupils  were  always 
reading  the  most  recent  books  put  out,  her  intricate,  delicate  and  tenu- 
ous mind  somehow  transformed  all  she  had  learned  into  a  kind  of 
mediaeval  manuscript  with  the  modern  instances  as  a  cynical  and  even 
comic  gloss.  She  said  she  believed  in  a  Divinity  not  in  God.  Liberal, 
rationalist,  philanthropist,  she  called  herself,  and  she  remained  as  fool- 
ishly credulous  as  a  girl  of  fifteen:  she  had  read  all  the  white,  blue, 
green,  brown  and  yellow  books  published  on  crime,  war,  drugs,  prosti- 
tution and  atrocities,  and  she  still  believed  in  the  sacredness  of  patri- 
otic passion  and  the  perspicacity  of  private  interest.  She  thought  these 
evils  which  she  read  about,  but  never  saw,  could  be  stamped  out  by 
strong-minded  old  ladies  with  fat  pocketbooks.  She  always  wept  when 
clergymen  and  publicists  spoke  of  the  welfare  of  man.  She  presented 
with  the  same  equanimity  to  the  jovial  misses  of  her  school,  the  system 
of  Bergson  and  the  little  flowers  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi.  She  now 
nodded  to  her  friend,  recommended  a  German  liner  for  Ireland,  said 
she  had  heard  the  Falls  of  Schaffhausen  were  much  spoiled,  and  all  the 
time  under  the  fortress,  now  in  shade  on  this  side,  and  the  mountain- 
pierced  sky,  the  sun  and  the  breeze  seemed  to  repeat  to  her  the  simple 
poetical  ideas  of  the  play  of  "Jedermann,"  which  she  had  just  read. 
She  spoke  German  fluently  and  listened  attentively  to  the  remarks  of 
the  bands  of  young  people,  so  that  she  could  use  their  words  as  an 
illustration  of  the  ideas  of  modern  youth  abroad,  when  she  gave  her 
address  to  the  Headmistress's  Association  in  her  own  country. 
There  came  in  next  the  Poet.  He  was  tall,  spare  and  ill,  with  hollow 


558  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

cheeks  and  eyes.  He  liked  to  rake  through  muck  for  a  jewel;  he  ex- 
alted things  like  himself,  useless  and  attenuated  in  form.  His  expiring 
sensibility  preferred  obscure  verbal  tingle-tongle  to  intelligible  verse, 
suggestiveness  of  syllable-sequence  to  the  banality  of  grammar,  phan- 
toms flying  out  of  a  dark  cloud  to  the  bright,  close-embroidered  visions 
of  reason,  with  their  everyday  woof  and  warp.  To  stimulate  his  dying 
talent  and  hope,  he  proclaimed  the  advent  of  mathematics  into  poetry, 
when  symbols  would  serve  for  concepts  and  kill  rhetoric.  He  published 
manifestoes  proclaiming  a  gentlemen's  revolution,  the  virgin  birth  and 
the  divine  right  of  an  aristocratic,  analphabetic,  table-rapping  soul;  he 
protested  against  the  cult  of  the  working  man,  although  he  made  use 
of  those  portions  of  his  vocabulary  which  permitted  him  to  shock  and 
mystify.  With  a  feverish  ear  for  assonances  and  puns  and  a  moribund 
imagination  he  tried  to  pierce  the  clouds  that  hung  over  his  lethargic 
soul,  or  to  transform  them  into  shapes  of  fantasy.  He  borrowed  phrases 
from  all  the  sciences  and  religions,  he  got  his  colours  from  the  plush, 
chalices,  laces,  windows  and  stone  angels  of  churches  and  tried  to  revive 
his  appetites  with  ever  wilder  perversities.  He  was  a  man  deathly  sick; 
he  had  struggled  all  his  life  against  extreme  poverty  and  he  retreated 
from  it  farther  and  farther  into  the  night,  bringing  up  in  his  dreams 
images  of  bounding  youth  and  female  beauty  as  a  last  hunger  for  life; 
and  in  despair,  ruined  with  drugs  (which  he  had  first  bought  to  calm 
neuralgia)  wasted  his  days  and  nights  without  knowing  their  number 
nor  the  seasons  that  passed  over  his  head,  in  the  luxurious  apartment 
in  which  a  wealthy  patron  kept  him.  When  they  asked  him  to  tell  a 
tale,  he  began  in  a  lively  way,  but  soon  his  voice  dropped  and  he 
pointed  to  his  companion,  a  pale,  lively  boy,  also  a  poet,  who  had  re- 
mained unnoticed  till  that  moment. 

Beside  the  seats  stood  a  band  of  school  and  college  girls,  travelling 
through  Europe  in  their  long  vacation.  They  imagined  that,  in*  gen- 
eral, the  real  was  the  contrary  of  the  apparent,  for  they  had  all  suf- 
fered gross  deceptions  when  very  young.  They  were  atheists,  anarchists 
and  hard  as  nails,  they  said;  they  were  profane,  sacrilegious  and  low  at 
one  moment,  and  the  next,  obscure,  lofty,  and  as  technical  with  their 
artistic  and  psychological  terms  as  a  magician's  apprentices  wrinkling 
their  brows  in  the  smoke  of  his  devil's  kitchen.  Beine  in  their  first  soft 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  559 

and  dazzling  youth,  with  strength  untried  and  impertinence  unre- 
proved,  and  savage  with  their  ripe  passions,  they  called  love  rough 
names  and  suspected  their  friends  of  psychological  and  even  moral 
perversions  from  every  sentence  uttered  in  conversation.  They  bandied 
about  the  names  and  works  of  all  the  high  priests  of  music,  letters  and 
art,  placing  them  into  a  rigid  hierarchy  which  no  one  questioned,  but 
which  varied  from  week  to  week;  but  they  were  ignorant  of  any  prin- 
ciple of  aesthetics  or  of  the  problems  of  composition.  They  were  fanciers 
of  the  infinitely  precious,  the  shockingly  immodest  and  the  undiscover- 
ably  insignificant;  they  reproved  symbolists  and  incoherent  poets  for 
lost  chances  of  obscurity,  and  themselves  wrote  verses  full  of  childish 
images  and  rhythms,  using  a  vocabulary  of  a  thousand  words  which 
had  been  signed  with  their  seal  and  signature.  They  read,  on  their 
trips  along  the  country  roads  and  in  the  students'  hostels,  passionate 
and  polite  verses,  sang  sea-chanties,  discussed  exotic  religions  and  did 
physical  exercises  together,  naked. 

There  was  one  of  them,  a  girl  of  sixteen,  whose  Eastern  face  was 
the  shape  of  the  most  beautiful  and  secret  of  triangles:  her  eyes  and 
hair  were  equally  bold,  wild  and  black,  and  she  seemed  to  bear  under 
her  ivory  skin  the  blue  which  she  had  knitted  into  her  grotesque  gar- 
ments. A  cobalt  blue  and  black  sweater,  badly-knitted,  ravelled,  with 
dropped  stitches,  and  skin-tight,  covered  the  smooth  triangle  of  her 
thorax:  her  breasts  stood  out  like  small  bosses  on  a  breastplate,  and  her 
waist  was  not  more  than  eighteen  inches  round  although  she  wore  no 
corset.  Her  skirt  of  cobalt  blue  serge,  impatiently  tightened  at  the  waist 
with  an  old  belt,  wrapped  round  her  like  a  chrysalis  skin,  gave  her 
greater  and  more  singular  beauty,  since  beneath  it,  perfectly  moulded, 
could  be  seen  her  pear-shaped  hips.  Her  legs  were  not  long,  but  thin, 
and  her  feet  and  hands,  both  bare,  were  burned  dark-brown.  A  scowl- 
ing, affronted  and  bitter  expression  contracted  her  childish  face;  she 
had  a  loud,  threatening  voice,  in  which  was  nevertheless  a  twanging, 
that  might  have  come  from  an  iEolian  harp.  Her  companions  had  her 
manners,  for  the  most  part,  but  not  her  harsh  beauty,  and  they  did  not 
arouse  love,  pity  and  horror  as  she  did. 

Yet  one  of  them  was  curious  to  see.  She  was  a  girl  of  seventeen  with 
a  sunburnt,  fair  skin,  a  ready  blush  and  pale  blue  eyes  with  large  pupils 


560  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

from  which  came  an  intense  liquid  glare  unusual  in  blue-eyed  persons. 
Her  hair  was  the  flax-colour  common  in  Norway  and  hung  round  her 
face  on  her  shoulders  straight  and  plain,  unwashed  and  unbrushed,  in 
strands;  but  she  had  bound  round  her  head  a  band  of  coloured  woollen 
flowers  she  had  bought  at  a  village  in  the  Tyrol;  and  this,  with  her 
blue  dress,  her  knapsack,  plump  coarse  face  with  large  bones  and  bare 
brown  feet,  gave  her  the  appearance  of  a  country  girl  transported 
there  from  the  far  north.  She  ordered  her  friends  about,  arranged 
everything  to  suit  her  convenience  and  took  a  seat  which  she  had  not 
paid  for,  but  which  was  empty:  then  in  the  hearing  of  half  a  hundred 
people,  she  began  to  read  a  letter  she  had  received  from  Wisconsin, 
from  her  mother,  that  morning,  laughing  at  its  stupidity,  describing,  in 
parenthesis,  her  mother's  slavery  in  a  tenement  kitchen  and  her  father's 
life,  labouring  for  forty  years  in  a  factory;  she  laughed  pleasantly  and 
pictured  her  mother  as  a  sow  routing  in  the  mud,  and  her  father  as  a 
mule  tied  to  a  turn-table:  "That  is  what  they  are,  exactly,"  she  cried, 
"if  we  are  to  be  Behaviourists!"  But  she  was  a  brave  and  adventurous 
girl  and  so  vigorous  that  no  miseries  could  move  her. 

There  was  near  them,  with  her  father,  a  Schoolgirl  of  different 
breeding.  She  had  fair  hair  curling  round  her  ears  and  her  face  seemed 
to  be  made  by  a  dollmaker:  her  small  nose  turned  up  and  her  large, 
pale,  well-shaped  mouth  weighted  well  her  cream,  untinted  face.  Her 
eyebrows  were  long,  crescent-shaped  and  dark,  and  the  flesh  swelled 
under  the  eyebrow  like  an  almond  lying  above  the  eye.  Her  eye  was 
large  and  grey.  She  had  the  attentive,  startled  looks  of  a  rabbit-girl,  a 
soft  and  trustful  smile;  and  in  everything  she  did  appeared  so  strong 
a  desire  to  sleep  on  a  faithful  heart  that  both  men  and  women  looked 
after  her  with  a  tender  smile.  She  spoke  in  a  hesitating  voice,  almost 
under  her  breath,  and  her  throat  creaked  and  whirred  out  of  pure 
timidity;  and  when  she  had  once  stated  her  opinion  she  at  once  de- 
ferred to  another  and  deplored  her  haste  in  statement.  Only  in  matters 
of  behaviour  her  opinion  was  strong,  her  judgments  were  harsh,  her 
rules  inflexible:  and  her  rule  of  behaviour  was  this,  that  no  one  should 
hurt  a  fly,  and  that  no  one  should  tell  a  lie.  Her  shoulders  were  broad, 
her  arms  white  and  her  breast  soft  and  prominent.  Her  waist  was 
narrow  and  her  hips  round  like  a  clock:  she  had  little  flesh  and  that 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  561 

was  light  and  almost  translucent,  but  it  was  elegantly  massed  and  dis- 
posed. Among  the  valleys  one  can  see  a  little  landscape,  verdant,  hilly 
and  lovely  to  the  eye,  which  has  no  rocks,  thick,  bristling  woods,  sharp 
precipices  or  loud  streams,  and  over  which  the  clouds,  hours  and  sea- 
sons, pass  with  a  thousand  superficial  moods  while  beneath  the  place 
is  always  soft  and  mild.  She  was  like  that.  Her  legs  were  not  long,  but 
her  feet  were  very  small  and  she  always  wore  expensive  shoes,  with 
thin  leathers  and  small  toes,  and  with  high  heels  like  threads.  Her  pale, 
small  hands  had  large  round  nails  like  rock-crystal.  She  always  wore 
a  scarf  over  her  shoulders,  which  were  rounded  a  bit,  as  if  in  modesty; 
out  of  timidity  she  blinked  when  she  was  spoken  to  suddenly.  But  al- 
though she  was  not  vain  and  not  assured  like  the  others,  she  was  full 
of  romantic  ideas  and  was  anxious  to  please,  so  that  if  they  asked  her 
to  amuse  them,  she  did  not  demur  but  did  her  best  to  speak. 

Then  there  stood  behind  the  rope  a  band  of  German  youths  and  girls 
on  a  walking  trip.  The  youths  wore  thick  woollen  stockings,  white, 
green  and  blue,  embroidered  in  cross-stitch,  linen  coats  in  white  or  blue 
and  heavy  corduroy  shorts,  the  shorts  very  dirty.  The  girls  wore  short 
socks,  discoloured  with  dust,  skirts  and  sweaters;  they  wore  no  corsets, 
and  some  of  them  wore  no  belts;  they  had  no  hats;  their  faces  were 
brown  and  dirty.  In  town,  over  their  blouses  they  wore  blue  linen  coats 
or  a  shawl:  they  leaned  forward  as  they  walked,  tramping  heavily,  with 
sweating  cheeks  and  wrinkled  foreheads,  like  peasant  women  who 
must  carry  a  great  burden  up  a  mountain-side.  Sometimes  they  all  sang 
together;  they  yodelled  in  the  mountains.  They  stopped  at  cheap  way- 
side houses  to  drink  bad  beer  and  eat  some  meat  stew  with  heavy 
piquant  sauce:  or  they  went  into  a  chapel  to  pray,  the  men  taking  off 
their  mountain  hats  of  felt  and  clanking  over  the  flagged  pavement 
with  their  hobnailed  boots  till  they  reached  the  altar;  the  women, 
kneeling  down  farther  back,  bending  their  fair,  unkempt  heads,  their 
large  bellies  and  bosoms  unstayed,  while  the  studded  soles  of  their 
boots  turned  up  in  line  along  the  bench.  These  students  stood  at  the 
barrier  in  the  cathedral  place  and  waited,  for  this  day  and  hour  had 
been  carefully  reckoned  with  in  their  schedules.  When  an  hour  had 
passed  they  would  be  on  their  way  with  their  road-maps  flapping,  in 
celluloid  cases,  on  their  hips.  They  could  not  afford  lodging  or  enter- 


562  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

tainments;  they  were  all  poor,  and  though  most  were  University  stu- 
dents, some  were  unemployed,  and  some  were  clerks  and  factory  hands. 
They  had  to  be  on  their  way  long  before  sunset.  They  had  many  ex- 
hausting miles  by  cloudy  thicket  and  mountain  stream,  on  hobnailed 
boots  or  leather-soled  bare  feet  uphill  and  down  dale,  to  cities,  rivers 
and  mountain  outlooks,  to  cathedrals,  birthplaces  of  famous  men  and 
picturesque  old  streets,  such  as  are  starred  in  Baedeker,  before  they 
could  return,  contented,  to  their  homes.  Their  cheeks  were  lean,  some 
were  hollow,  their  stomachs  were  bad  and  their  breaths  sour:  their 
clothing  was  scanty  and  they  had  only  a  few  marks  between  them,  but 
their  legs  and  arms  were  thick,  muscular  and  brown;  and  when  some- 
one said,  for  instance,  "Cologne  Cathedral  is  a  masterpiece,"  each  could 
say,  "I  have  seen  it:  it  is  marvellous!"  This  was  their  reward. 

They  were  to  sleep  that  night  in  a  cabin  on  a  hillside,  built  by  a 
society  of  round-walkers,  and  had  only  to  get  the  key  from  the  guard- 
ian in  the  village,  to  enter  into  their  own  demesne.  The  cabin  was  be- 
tween two  hills  on  a  green  hummock,  among  summer  gardens:  there 
was  a  smell  of  honeysuckle  in  the  air,  convolvuluses  grew  over  the 
walls  and  birds  and  insects  went  in  and  out  of  the  untenanted  cottage 
by  a  window  left  unfastened.  They  would  not  know  that;  but,  falling 
heavily  on  the  benches  and  floor  of  the  cabin,  would  sleep  like  beasts 
in  the  dark,  snoring,  and  flinging  their  limbs  about  in  their  exhaustion; 
but  seeing  perhaps  in  their  dreams  when  the  first  fatigue  had  passed, 
the  fantastic  spire  of  some  great  cathedral,  lacy  on  a  blue  sky,  the  cryp- 
tic black  marble  door  closing  in  the  sarcophagus  of  a  great  man,  or  a 
wide  outlook  over  a  blue  mountain  lake,  that  was  starred  in  Baedeker. 
O  passionate  and  devout  race!  They  had  no  time  to  pause:  they  told 
no  tales.  They  passed  on  and  went  back  to  their  dull,  oppressed  lives, 
their  ambitions  pacified  with  their  conquests  over  boulders  and  nettles, 
until  the  next  vacation. 

But  there  was  a  German  Student  who  had  travelled  with  them  from 
Innsbruck  only:  not  a  fair,  lantern-jawed,  blue-eyed  youth,  such  as  they 
all  were,  but  one  with  a  chubby  face  and  red  cheeks  and  fine  manners, 
who  raised  women's  hands  to  his  lips  when  he  saluted  them.  He  was 
a  student  in  philosophy.  He  squirmed  with  delight  at  the  sight  of  a 
little  bit  of  tracery  in  a  clerestory,  and  went  into  fits  over  the  counter- 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  563 

point  of  Brahms:  he  had  the  sententiousness  of  a  cherub  when  he  de- 
clared that  El  Greco  was  a  bac\  number  and  the  tricks  of  a  water 
spaniel  in  the  water  when  he  sang  from  Richard  Strauss's  operas.  He 
loved  singing  and  he  had  a  mild  will  but  absolute  judgment.  He  wor- 
shipped famous  people  and  ran  after  women,  who  were  his  despair. 
His  skin  was  white,  his  hair  black  and  he  wore  fine  clothes;  he  could 
not  bear  the  least  sight  of  blood  but  he  was  happy  one  day  to  give  his 
handkerchief  to  tie  up  the  leg  of  a  dog  run  over  by  a  cart:  and  when- 
ever he  heard  a  shot  rumble  in  the  hills  and  saw  the  birds  fly  scattered 
out  of  the  trees,  he  said,  "O,  my  goodness,  my  goodness,  isn't  that 
dreadful?  It  should  never  be  allowed." 

He  brought  in  with  him  a  Lawyer  from  Buda-Pesth,  a  swagger 
beau  who  spent  his  nights  in  night-clubs  and  paid  attention  to  every 
woman  he  met,  dark  or  fair,  pretty  or  plain,  sweet  or  forbidding,  out 
of  incontinence.  He  read  all  the  gossip  sheets  and  liked  to  pretend  that 
he  could  find  out  the  truth  of  every  affair  in  the  city,  by  fraud,  bribery, 
threats  and  natural  cunning.  He  believed  whatever  his  client  believed, 
affected  to  be  cynical  and  saturnine,  speaking  in  innuendoes;  or  jovial, 
sly  and  hail-fellow-well-met,  according  to  the  case.  He  soothed  and 
flattered  his  client  as  if  the  client  were  a  prince  and  he  the  prince's 
vizier.  He  examined  a  contract  so  closely  for  a  flaw  or  deceitful  intent, 
that  he  often  missed  the  nature  of  the  business  and  he  was  astonished 
to  observe  that  a  business  could  be  unsound  when  a  contract  was  water- 
tight. He  loved  to  crack  a  walnut  with  a  sledge-hammer.  He  gulped 
down  all  the  information  thrown  at  him,  went  ahead  in  business  and 
conversation  by  leaps  and  bounds,  was  called  for  that  a  bounder,  loved 
to  interrupt  a  business  conversation  with  a  quotation  from  his  school- 
book  poets,  read  the  memoirs  of  diplomats  with  fervour  and  credulity, 
rejoiced  at  the  crashing  fall  of  magnates  and  kings,  and  was  an  ardent 
patriot  and  a  conservative  voter.  He  was  like  a  man  who  has  got  into  a 
pair  of  bewitched  shoes  by  accident  and  must  always  be  hopping  and 
pirouetting,  curtseying  and  leaping  in  the  air,  malapropos.  He  was  a 
handsome  young  man  of  thirty-two  with  thick  curly  hair,  brown  eyes 
and  a  red  mouth:  he  wore  a  morning  coat  in  the  morning  and  an 
eyeglass  and  evening  dress  every  evening.  He  had  learned,  in  two  or 
three  hours,  all  about  the  people  in  the  hotel,  and  he  now  flattered  and 


564  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

fawned  on  them  shamelessly;  he  went  about  the  place  with  dancing 
steps  and  his  head  in  the  air,  delighted  to  be  able  to  show  his  glittering 
talents  to  so  cultivated  a  crowd.  He  was  not  a  bad  man,  but  very  fool- 
ish: he  was  rich,  because  he  had  married  a  rich  wife:  he  flattered  her 
to  her  heart's  content,  and  was  a  gay  man  about  town. 

Now  he  was  laughing  excessively  at  every  word  that  fell  out  of  the 
mouth  of  the  Philosopher.  The  philosopher  was  heir  to  a  noble  house, 
but  not  rich :  he  lived  from  his  lectures  and  his  writings.  He  was  odd  in 
appearance,  with  a  bloodless  face  and  a  receding  chin  and  an  underlip 
that  dropped  engagingly  like  a  young  foal's.  His  hands  were  the  colour 
of  bleached  bone,  and  when  he  stood,  he  stood  not  straight,  but  shift- 
ing from  one  foot  to  the  other  like  a  schoolboy  reciting  a  piece.  Noth- 
ing astonished  his  admirers  so  much  as  the  sight  of  him.  He  was  re- 
ceived like  a  grandee  in  every  country  in  the  world  and  his  books  on 
history  and  moral  philosophy,  written  clearly,  picturesquely,  with  an 
economy  of  words,  and  full  of  quaint,  moral  notions  often  caught  dur- 
ing illicit  revels  nightly  in  a  sphere  without  morals,  delighting  pastors 
and  schoolteachers,  were  translated  into  every  language.  He  had  rapid 
soft  speech  and  caressing  manners  like  an  adolescent  boy,  but  he  was 
nearly  fifty  years  old.  Ladies  were  very  partial  to  him,  saying  that  he 
looked  harmless,  but  knowing  quite  well  that  he  was  ardent,  well- 
born, enterprising  and  in  a  sphere  beyond  prejudices.  He  had  no  diffi- 
culty; he  never  had  to  eat  green  fruit  although  he  was  poor:  the  best 
and  ripest  fruit  fell  into  his  lap  from  the  highest  and  best-tended  trees, 
London  was  his  orchard,  the  world  was  his  estate.  He  ate  very  well 
and  was  one  of  the  first  gentlemen  of  the  realm,  but  his  shoes  were 
often  down-at-heel  and  he  did  not  give  a  rap  for  it.  He  liked  popu- 
larity, but  he  was  happy  in  his  soul,  and  unpopularity  was  the  same 
thing  to  him,  he  thought.  He  would  go  to  gaol  for  his  opinions,  he 
said:  and  because  he  liked  to  flout  opinions  in  fee  entail  and  mock  in- 
herited gentility,  he  never  visited  the  House  of  Lords,  which  he  called 
the  prosiest  and  least  select  of  all  private  clubs.  He  was  not  married 
and  had  no  children. 

There  was  also  a  Mathematician  born  in  Finland,  educated  in 
France,  America  and  Germany,  who  taught  in  Spain.  He  had  lived 
all  his  life  in  schools  and  universities,  and  knew  the  rough  and  tumble 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  565 

of  life  only  as  a  thorny  proposition.  His  brown,  thick  skin  was  pitted 
with  smallpox;  his  hair  was  so  thick  and  tufty  that  it  fell  into  his  eyes 
and  he  could  not  wear  a  hat.  His  eyes  were  deep-blue  and  narrowed 
under  brows  like  dried  peony  follicles,  dark,  twisted  and  cleft  sidelong : 
he  was  of  Tartar  blood.  He  had  a  large  library  of  books  in  four  lan- 
guages; many  languages  he  read  well  but  did  not  speak  with  ease.  He 
had  a  slight  impediment  in  his  speech  and  in  revenge  he  invented  a 
story  to  this  effect,  that  after  the  establishment  of  Grimm's  Law, 
Grimm  broke  his  heart  at  the  incorrect  deformation  of  primitive 
tongues  by  the  vulgar,  wooden-eared  and  thick-tongued,  that  he  went 
mad  and  went  to  a  mountain  fastness  where  he  established  Grimm's 
Anarchy  and  taught  to  a  simple  people  a  language  without  rhyme  or 
reason:  in  this  wav  arose  the  Basque  tongue.  For  every  anomaly  he 
invented  an  amusing  reason.  All  day  he  sat  before  a  quire  of  paper 
writing  and  figuring  in  a  crabbed  script,  in  his  leisure  hours  he  read 
to  his  young  wife.  He  pitied  women  for  their  thwarted  ambitions,  and 
found  many  diamonds  of  plain  truth  in  the  sand  of  their  conversation. 
He  meditated  everything  a  long  time :  he  liked  to  sleep  twelve  hours  a 
day  and  dream.  He  was  wrathful  at  the  errors  of  men,  at  fatuity, 
lunacy  and  dishonour,  because  he  was  forced  to  doubt  the  perfection 
of  his  own  organism.  He  was  in  his  relations  with  his  friends  violent, 
partial  in  love  or  hate,  easily  ofTended  and  given  to  bloody  ideas  of  re- 
venge like  a  schoolboy.  He  liked  the  cloistered  academic  path  he  would 
tread  all  his  life:  from  windows  of  universities  he  looked  out  specu- 
latively on  every  kind  of  activity.  He  was  not  indulgent  but  he  was 
kind.  He  had  cold  feet  because  he  liked  to  sit  hours  by  himself  spin- 
ning his  web  with  his  head  in  his  own  web.  He  dreamed  at  night  of 
curious  manipulations  of  logic  and  letters  from  which  he  got  the  sup- 
ple solutions  of  theorems.  He  liked  mathematical  tricks  and  logical 
puzzles:  at  dinner,  with  his  cofTee  he  would  puzzle  his  friends  with 
"the  class  of  all  classes."  Then  he  would  laugh,  show  his  white  teeth 
and  begin  to  sing  themes  from  Bach  in  a  sonorous  humming  tone,  or 
he  would  go  to  the  piano  and  play  with  a  firm,  delicate,  improvising 
touch.  He  liked  to  play  chess  and  learn  the  grammars  of  languages. 
He  had  a  brother  he  loved  so  dearly  he  would  have  died  for  him.  He 
calculated  his  brother's  chances  of  survival  with  a  slide-rule  and  his 


566  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

birthday,  according  to  the  Julian  calendar.  He  could  calculate  very 
well,  both  what  he  owed  and  what  was  owed  him.  He  liked  to  eat 
well,  go  in  his  friends'  automobiles,  wear  silk  shirts  not  overpriced, 
and  entertain  his  friends  generously,  for  by  spending  money  he  could 
be  potent  while  supine.  He  was  thin  and  flexible  as  a  fishing-rod  but 
his  grace  was  disguised  in  suits  of  expensive  tweed  cloth,  cut  in  pom- 
pous fashion.  The  cloth  was  chosen  for  the  sober  intricacy  of  its  pat- 
tern, but  the  colours,  violet,  blue,  russet  and  green,  were  always  at  vari- 
ance with  the  rest  of  his  turn-out  and  with  the  fashion;  he  lived  in  a 
world  of  black  and  white,  and  when  he  turned  his  attention  to  colours, 
he  was  without  prejudices.  His  house  was  barely  furnished  as  a  her- 
mit's cell,  so  that  his  wife  could  polish  her  mind  and  not  brass  fittings; 
but  he  bought  electrical  contrivances  of  every  sort,  out  of  curiosity, 
and  liked  to  fossick  in  ironmongery  shops  and  bring  home  patent  egg- 
shellers  and  butter-coolers,  or  anything  that  was  ingenious.  He  kept  his 
work  in  pigeon-holes  and  sent  by  registered  post  to  trusted  colleagues 
his  original  ideas  for  their  criticism,  but  he  was  careful  not  to  mention 
his  ideas  in  mixed  company;  he  knew  mathematicians  are  not  honest 
and  have  sharp  ears. 

If  he  found  fault  in  persons  he  thought  perfect  before,  he  suffered 
for  days;  he  came  back  to  the  imperfection  again  and  again  to  under- 
stand how  he  could  have  been  deceived  at  first,  or  else,  what  strange 
rule  of  harmony  permitted  these  flaws  to  reign  in  organisms  that 
pleased  him. 

In  the  middle  block,  which  is  the  most  expensive,  sat  a  Berlin  busi- 
ness man  with  his  wife,  richly  furred  and  gloved,  although  not  in  the 
best  style  either  of  Paris  or  Vienna.  Her  great  round  face  was  heavily 
topped  by  uncut  blonde  hair  and  a  fashionable  sunhat,  while  he  sat 
uncovered  and  mopped  with  a  silk  initialled  handkerchief  his  bald 
cranium  shaped  like  a  sea-elephant's. 

His  lady's  tongue,  flowered  head,  and  stout  bosom  under  a  lace  front, 
all  niddle-noddled;  he  barked  his  responses  in  stiff  Berlin  German, 
and  sniffed  the  perfume  and  eyed  the  white  silk  of  a  barearmed  So- 
ciety girl  who  sat  with  a  lapdog,  indifferent  on  his  left  hand.  A  long 
white  glove  covered  her  warm  arm  in  the  most  fashionable  wrinkles: 
when  she  asked  for  a  glass  of  milk  at  the  ambulant  milkstore  or  for  a 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  567 

book  of  verse  at  the  bookseller's,  her  voice  lisped  softer  than  milk  and 
sweeter  than  verses.  Always  a  sort  of  natural  fresh  odour  came  from 
her  as  one  seems  to  come  from  green  fields,  even  when  they  are  a  long 
way  off  and  no  wind  is  blowing. 

This  young  lady  turned  her  back  to  the  Berliner  (at  which  his  wife 
sighed  pleasantly),  and  answered  the  young  Viennese  woman  beside 
her,  who  asked  her  in  that  liquid  German  certainly  invented  by  the 
Rhine  maidens,  when  the  play  would  begin.  This  young  Viennese 
woman  was  dressed  in  costly  Swiss  embroidery  and  embroidered  gloves. 
Her  bronzed  hair  was  neatly  curled;  she  wore  a  small  crocheted  hat: 
her  little  white  and  black  shoes  shone  like  snakes'  heads,  with  their  jet 
stones.  She  wore  a  wedding-ring  and  a  necklace  of  crystals.  She  began 
to  confide  in  the  Berlin  girl  the  social  confidences  and  hurried  conven- 
tional raptures  of  one  who  is  a  little  fluttered  and  uneasy,  and  whose 
social  station  is  not  assured. 

"What  a  crowd  is  here  this  year!  They  say  the  American  President's 

financial  advisers  all  are  here:  there  are  five  millionaires The  first 

performance  of  Don  Juan  this  evening  will  unquestionably  be  brilliant! 
...  I  am  here  with  my  husband,"  said  the  Viennese  lady:  "he  has 
some  business  in  the  south,"  and  she  licked  her  dark  red  lips  and 
looked  appealing  at  her  confidante.  The  Berlin  girl's  practised  eyes 
turned  for  a  moment  to  her  lapdog  while  she  said  to  herself,  "She  is 
here  with  her  lover,  on  an  escapade";  then  she  prattled  sociably  on 
with  an  indefinite  note  of  patronage:  not  indeed,  for  the  escapade, 
but  for  the  weak  confidence. 

The  afternoon  shadows  drew  a  little  nearer.  The  Viennese  beauty, 
young,  appealing  and  lonely,  drew  a  bizarre  embroidered  scarf  round 
her  bust  and  sighed. 

Stolidly,  in  the  same  row,  but  in  the  cheapest  seat,  with  a  sharp  nose 
and  weary  and  uncoloured  face,  with  drab  hair  and  a  blue  dress,  a 
young  woman  clerk  from  Cologne  shaded  her  eyes  and  read  a  French 
literary  review.  She  raised  her  eyes  patiently  from  time  to  time  to  the 
back  of  the  stage,  quizzed  the  elegants  with  the  critical  looks  of  an 
ambitious  white-collar  who  has  had  to  buy  every  luxury  with  soul-dead- 
ening parsimony;  she  was  palely  but  precisely  aware  of  a  growing 
antipathy  for  a  Jewish  citizen  of  Vienna  who  sat  beside  her,  in  Tyro- 


568  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

lean  mountain  costume,  chortling  at  his  fine  seat,  declaiming  with  a 
soft  lisp  and  holding  his  wife's  gloved  hand. 

There  came  late  into  his  seat  a  thickset,  cheerful  Doctor  from  New 
York,  who  had  just  come  from  a  conference  in  Constantinople  on  hay- 
fever.  His  teeth,  his  starched  linen,  his  jewelled  shirt-studs,  his  finger- 
nails and  his  shoe-tops  all  shone  as  he  walked.  When  he  talked,  he 
often  spread  the  square  stubbed  fingers  of  his  small  hand  in  a  round 
gesture,  and  he  had  the  shadowy  smile  of  the  Mona  Lisa  hovering  un- 
consciously in  the  folds  of  his  firm  mouth.  He  was  very  rich;  he  loved 
art  and  music;  he  had  at  his  home  in  New  York  a  private  gallery;  he 
attracted  to  his  home  by  cajolery  and  good  suppers,  twice  a  week,  a 
trio  of  musicians  with  whom  he  practised  quartets.  He  was  so  strong 
that  he  would  keep  them  sitting  there  till  their  backs  cracked,  their 
wrists  were  sprained,  their  eyes  dropped  and  they  were  obliged  to  kick 
over  his  music-stands  by  stealth  to  interrupt  him.  When  he  began  to 
play  his  quartet,  to  pursue  an  indigent  painter  in  whose  work  he 
fancied  he  saw  a  profitable  streak,  or  to  make  a  scatter-diagram  of 
temperatures,  his  eyes  shone  and  he  became  insensible  to  other  things, 
like  a  figure  of  stone.  He  knew  to  the  least  detail  the  soft  scenes  pic- 
tured by  Sisley  and  the  dazzling  suns  of  Van  Gogh,  but  he  would 
walk  through  fields  and  by  streams  and  villages  unconscious  if  the 
sun,  moon  or  stars  shone,  or  if  his  way  was  lighted  by  rainbows, 
northern  lights,  lightning  or  roman  candles,  for  his  walks  onlv  served 
to  develop  his  theories  on  art  and  his  dexterity  in  determining  the 
coefficient  of  correlation  between  two  sets  of  facts.  He  had  taken  up  all 
his  hobbies  late,  after  a  mild  youth,  and  he  went  at  them  with  the 
pleasure  and  abandon  of  a  mastiff  pup  chasing  chickens. 

There  was  also  there  a  Chinaman,  the  Foreign  Correspondent  of  a 
French  newspaper.  He  spoke  five  languages,  and  all  without  a  foreign 
accent.  He  had  studied  in  Universities  in  America,  France  and  Ger- 
many. He  was  a  passionate  patriot,  but  he  said  little  about  his  own 
country  in  Western  European  society,  preferring  to  talk  about  his 
childhood  when  he  had  lived  in  sheltered  calm.  He  had  a  high  fore- 
head and  round  eyes  with  arched  brows  like  the  warriors  in  old  paint- 
ings; he  wore  European  dress.  He  spoke  in  clear  tones  like  a  clapper 
falling  on   thin   ivory;   his   red   mouth   smiled   sweetly   though   with 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  569 

melancholy,  and  everything  he  said  came  out  with  compressed  vision- 
ary epithets,  as  if  his  imagination  flowered  impetuously,  quicker  than 
the  tongue.  He  expected  many  more  years  of  trouble  for  his  country: 
this  cloud  sat  over  all  he  said  and  thought.  He  sat  shining  and  neat  in 
black  clothes  and  shining  shoes,  with  smooth  hair  and  bright  eyes,  re- 
sembling a  newt  or  other  smart  black  water  animal,  or  a  legendary 
dragon  very  small,  carved  on  an  urn  of  genii  from  the  old  tales. 

Next  came  sliding  and  bustling  across  the  centre  of  the  place,  from 
beneath  the  archway,  a  small-footed  man  with  a  thin  face.  Whenever 
the  centenary  of  the  birth  or  death  of  a  great  composer  of  music  ap- 
proached, he  flew  about  the  world  with  propaganda,  forming  commit- 
tees, cajoling  Departments  of  Education  and  of  the  Fine-Arts,  flat- 
tering musicians,  bribing  publishing  companies,  engaging  publicists, 
writing,  speaking,  wheedling,  persuading,  his  head  swarming  with 
wily,  original  schemes  for  making  the  world  take  an  interest  in  Haydn, 
Brahms,  Schubert,  or  whatever  other  musician  was  a  hundred  years 
born  or  dead.  It  was  he  who  first  conceived  the  idea  of  finishing  the 
Unfinished  Symphony,  and  he  who  wrote  and  distributed  to  school- 
masters, mayors  and  representatives  of  the  people,  the  Few  Thoughts 
on  the  Place  of  Music  in  the  Home  and  in  the  Market-place,  in  which 
he  worked  the  threads  of  patriotism  and  the  family,  public  education 
and  private  sensibility,  Schubert  and  the  wares  of  gramophone  com- 
panies. He  had  a  fine  ear,  long  with  a  large  orifice,  and  he  sang  in  an 
angelic  falsetto  which  resembled  at  will  a  wood  or  string  instrument, 
or  a  desert  voice  rising  through  the  sharp  edges  of  the  sand.  He  knew 
many  thousand  themes  from  the  master  musicians  and  many  peasant 
songs  and  single  strains  picked  up  here  and  there  on  the  earth:  he  had 
as  friends  all  the  musicians  and  was  able  to  make  a  child  understand  a 
theme.  He  loved  to  sit  in  a  large  audience  and  be  moved  with  its  emo- 
tions, as  if  his  heart  was  a  silver  disc  recording  an  orchestral  piece.  He 
was  as  sympathetic  as  a  nervous  beauty  to  his  hearers  and  endeavoured 
to  enchant  all  by  showing  the  glittering  facets  of  his  talents.  His  eyes 
with  animal  intensity  and  sagacity,  blue  and  oval,  darted  left  and  right: 
he  got  into  his  seat  with  the  movement  of  a  bird  settling  into  a  thick 
tree,  disappearing  in  the  crowd.  His  clothes  had  cost  him  a  great  deal 
but  seemed  unsuitable  to  his  movements  and  habit  of  mind:  he  should 


570  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

have  worn  a  smock,  or  Persian  trousers.  His  shoe  might  have  concealed 
the  long  tip  of  a  seraphic  wing  or  the  long  toe  of  a  satyr's  foot.  When 
Death  approached  in  the  Miracle  Play,  he  shuddered  and  cast  his  eyes 
discreetly  from  side  to  side  to  see  how  the  audience  took  it,  and  when 
the  heavenly  bells  and  voices  rang  out,  his  eyes  sent  out  points  of  light 
and  his  dark-veined  thin  hand  played  delicately  from  the  soft  pale  wrist 
on  which  was  a  gold  chain.  He  had  a  dark  crafty  profile,  like  an  an- 
cient Venetian,  with  a  long,  pointed  nose  and  thin  lips;  he  was  as  at- 
tentive as  a  lizard.  He  hummed  ever  and  again  to  himself  like  syrinx 
when  the  tide  is  rising  in  the  reeds.  He  was  full  of  tales  as  the  poets 
of  Persia:  he  unwound  endlessly  his  fabrics,  as  from  a  spool  the  silks 
of  Arabia.  He  was  a  publicist,  a  salesman,  but  of  so  peculiar  a  sort, 
specialising  in  the  centenaries  of  famous  men,  that  they  invented  a 
name  and  called  him  The  Centenarist. 

There  was  near  him,  amused  by  him,  sitting  with  the  five  million- 
aires, youngest  of  the  six  wealthy  men  that  the  other  guests  in  derision 
called  the  Gold  Trust,  a  very  thin  young  man,  with  a  long  Dutch  nose; 
a  Banker  he  was,  from  London.  He  had  a  sea-going  yacht,  three  motor- 
cars, a  house  in  Grosvenor  Square,  a  house  in  the  country,  three  race 
horses  and  twelve  servants:  he  gave  five  hundred  guineas  for  a  horse- 
race and  a  silver  cup  for  polo,  and  he  went  each  weekend  to  France  to 
get  the  sun.  But  in  town  his  chief  amusement  was  to  go  to  the  pictures 
with  his  wife  seven  times  a  week.  He  abhorred  the  opera  which  he 
thought  was  noisy  and  the  theatre  which  he  thought  oldfashioned  and 
wordy.  He  lived  in  the  depths  of  his  house  alone  with  his  wife;  and 
they  went  about  as  inseparable  as  twins.  He  dined  oft  an  omelette  and 
a  chop  badly  served  by  his  lazy  and  spoiled  French  chef,  and  sipped  a 
glass  of  bad,  red  wine  from  a  bin  in  the  pantry  furnished  by  his  thief 
of  a  butler.  He  knew  his  servants  robbed  him  but  could  not  bear  to 
sack  them  (he  said),  because  they  would  thereby  lose  their  jobs.  He 
did  not  like  to  go  to  friends'  houses  to  dine  for  he  could  not  understand 
the  sense  of  their  flippancies  and  their  high-church  passions  drove  him 
mad;  and  he  never  entertained,  for  he  liked  to  live  at  home  with  his 
wife  alone. 

If  he  met  a  pretty  girl,  he  looked  for  a  rich  husband  for  her  to  marry: 
if  he  was  amused  by  a  journalist  he  mentioned  his  name  to  some  cabi- 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  571 

net  minister  to  get  him  influence:  if  he  thought  an  author  hard-working 
and  mild,  he  would  think  about  his  case,  telling  him,  perhaps,  that  he 
could  work  quicker  if  he  took  the  stories  out  of  the  Arabian  Nights 
and  simply  changed  the  names,  and  local  colour,  such  as  the  degree  of 
heat  and  the  type  of  costume.  He  had  stolen  his  brother's  shillings 
when  they  were  in  the  nursery  together  and  had  only  been  beaten  by 
his  brother's  squirrel  secretiveness.  He  never  read  a  book;  and  he  had 
passed  through  the  costliest  and  most  famous  schools  of  his  land  and 
all  their  bosh  (he  said)  had  fallen  off  him  like  water  off  a  duck's  back. 
But  in  banking  he  knew  all  that  he  should  know.  His  natural  in- 
genuity was  so  complex  and  so  wakeful  that  if  a  clerk  made  an  error 
of  twopence  he  made  fourpence  out  of  it;  if  the  world  was  prosperous 
he  promoted  gambling-circles,  rotary  movements  and  publishing 
houses,  lent  money  to  liberal  professors  and  ne'er-do-weel  geniuses  and 
made  fortunes  in  speculation  in  fraudulent  inventions  exploited  on  the 
exchange;  and  if  the  world  was  black  and  most  men  were  ruined,  he 
laid  in  stocks  of  fat,  flour,  and  cotton,  speculated  in  armaments  and 
cheap  shirts  and  got  back  his  money  from  the  liberal  professors  now 
turned  conservative.  If  a  king  lay  at  death's  door,  he  bought  a  bolt  of 
crape,  if  a  peasant  girl  in  adolescent  delirium  saw  the  Virgin  at  her 
furrow's  end,  he  started  an  omnibus  line.  He  understood  only  one 
thing,  Profit;  he  thought  all  men  thought  as  he  did,  and  that  their 
bank-balances  were  the  measure  of  their  brains.  He  would  risk  half  his 
fortune  on  a  throw,  turn  head-over-heels  in  the  air  in  an  aeroplane, 
tell  anyone  in  the  world  to  go  to  Hell,  laugh  at  princes  and  throw  tax- 
collectors  out  the  door,  but  he  suffered  excessively  from  toothache  be- 
cause he  feared  the  dentist's  chair:  and  he  was  convinced  that  his  luck 
depended  on  numbers,  events,  persons,  odd  things  he  encountered;  his 
head  accountant  was  forced  to  wear  the  same  tie  for  six  weeks  because 
it  preserved  a  liberal  state  of  mind  in  the  Government  in  a  difficult 
time:  his  chauffeur  was  obliged  to  carry  for  nine  months  the  same 
umbrella,  rain,  hail  or  shine,  because  the  umbrella  depressed  the  mar- 
ket in  a  stock  he  had  sold  short. 

There  was  with  him  a  Solicitor  from  London.  He  liked  to  walk  in 
the  City  on  a  sunny  morning  swinging  his  cane  and  rubbing  shoulders 
with  the  crowd  in  Throgmorton  Street.  He  loved  a  little  chat,  with  a 


572  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

legal  joke  and  a  neat  personality,  and  a  little  cup  of  tea.  He  lived  at 
Streatham  and  always  wore  light  clothes,  although  his  income  was  not 
large,  because  he  was  blond,  delicate  and  pale-faced.  He  acted  the  male 
lead  in  private  theatricals  in  a  Y.M.C.A.  Literary  Club  and  played 
tennis  on  Saturday  afternoons.  In  the  train  in  the  morning,  he  read 
the  exchanges,  recommended  a  purchase  of  Witwatersrand,  asked  why 
the  Government  was  riding  the  fence  in  the  present  crisis,  and  knew 
the  sporting  news.  His  highest  ambition  was  to  come  by  a  great  deal 
of  money  one  day  and  go  shares  with  some  reliable  client  in  a  bill- 
broking  business.  He  wrote  a  genial  solicitor's  letters,  leaving  not  a 
single  knot  to  catch  his  foot  in,  and  even  in  conversation  his  remarks 
were  without  prejudice.  His  clients'  secrets  were  inviolate  with  him, 
but  if  a  wealthy  client  had  a  well-cut  suit  and  told  him  a  good  joke 
he  would  let  the  brush  tail  of  a  strong-scented  affair  peep  through  his 
thicket  of  discretion.  His  integrity  was  spotless;  and  he  always  saw 
that  his  clients  were  properly  protected.  His  knowledge  of  the  law  was 
exact  so  that  he  could  circumvent  it  with  grace,  but  it  was  necessary 
to  ask  his  services  with  a  merry  smiling  countenance  and  a  round, 
periphrastic  style.  He  kept  a  little  diary  at  home,  neat  as  a  sandwich 
bar,  where  he  noted  the  events  of  a  life  spent  among  the  great,  fruity 
with  sagacious  little  aphorisms.  He  strolled  out  on  Sunday  afternoons 
with  his  wife  along  the  hedges  and  explained  the  masonic  ritual  of 
his  business. 

There  was  a  Danish  Woman,  a  bookbinder  in  Paris.  She  had  bright 
blue  eyes  and  a  large  nose;  her  large  head  was  covered  with  curls.  She 
talked  all  day  and  recounted  hundreds  of  tales,  mostly  improbable,  like 
a  female  Munchhausen:  she  was  usually  gay,  but  sometimes  a  weird 
melancholy  fell  on  her,  like  the  gloomy  shades  of  the  north.  She  loved 
cats  and  bright-coloured  leathers,  dyes  and  gilt.  Her  workshop,  though 
in  a  cold  and  dirty  apartment  in  a  tumble-down  building  by  the  river, 
was  always  humming  with  talk,  hammer-taps,  the  creaking  of  presses 
and  the  roaring  of  flames  in  the  stove;  and  was  as  cheerful  as  the 
common-room  of  the  knights  in  heroic  times,  when  they  lived  and 
slept  by  the  fires  and  their  swords  jingled.  The  walls  were  covered 
with  papers  she  painted  and  dyed,  and  with  pictures  of  Copenhagen, 
and  caricatures  by  her  pupils.  She  was  lively  as  a  trooper  at  night,  and 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  573 

drank  wine,  beer,  punch,  champagne,  vodka  and  every  strong  drink 
they  had  at  the  table,  until  she  rolled  under  it.  She  was  as  free  as  a 
brother  with  men;  but  she  was  modest,  she  blushed  if  a  man  looked 
at  her  boldly,  was  faithful  to  her  husband,  and  would  stare  for  hours 
at  modern  books,  with  their  naked  men,  women  and  truths,  red,  gay, 
astonished  and  abashed. 

With  her  was  a  young  Architect,  a  gentle  creature,  modest  and  shy, 
whose  restless  fingers  designed  without  end,  even  as  they  tapped  on  his 
knee,  and  who  covered  his  walls,  trunks,  letters,  easels  and  restaurant 
tables  with  the  motifs  of  his  irrepressible  fantasy.  He  had  built  in  Rus- 
sia where  the  workers'  cities  are  made  of  glass,  aluminum,  stone  and 
tile,  and  in  Amsterdam  in  the  garden-cities,  and  in  Paris  where  they 
build  houses  of  glass  and  each  stone  is  chiselled  by  hand,  and  in  New 
York  where  they  tear  down  twenty-five  storey  buildings  in  which  the 
heating  is  expensive  to  put  up  thirty-five  storey  buildings  in  which  the 
heating  is  more  scientifically  planned,  and  in  Hollywood  where  the 
porches  must  frame  beauties  and  the  bathrooms  are  designed  for 
Houdini;  in  seaports  where  the  tiles  must  be  wavy-bendy  to  correspond 
with  the  waves  of  the  sea,  on  mountain-tops  where  the  beetling  walls 
must  fit  in  with  the  craggy  scenery,  and  in  wheat-growing  areas  where 
the  silos,  towering  in  the  fields,  must  look  like  a  mightier  cathedral. 
He  had  blossomed  out,  in  his  morning  sun  of  success,  and  was  the 
darling  of  poets  and  rich  amateurs.  His  curly  black  hair  fell  over  a 
white  and  red  face,  and  his  heart  was  simple,  although  he  wrote  cryp- 
tic verses.  He  danced  like  a  feather;  when  by  himself  he  capered,  sent 
up  darts,  and  sang,  for  he  liked  to  be  alone;  but  when  he  worked  in 
a  room  with  other  draughtsmen,  he  was  bemused,  putting  down  his 
first  strokes  with  diffidence  as  if  afraid  to  spoil  perfection,  until  the 
plan  burst  out  in  final  clarity,  like  a  rocket  in  his  forehead. 

An  Old  Lady  was  there  because  her  third  husband  had  been  a  con- 
ductor in  Vienna,  and,  dying,  had  left  her  with  plenty  of  money  and 
a  taste  for  elevated  society.  She  took  scores  to  every  performance,  al- 
ways turned  over  the  page  before  the  conductor  and  nodded  over  the 
last  page.  She  wore  a  long  gold  chain  and  a  lorgnette  and  an  expensive 
hat  made  of  satin,  feathers,  straw  and  tulle,  all  mixed  and  mummified 
together:  no  one  could  imagine  what  octogenarian  designer  and  what 


574  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

antediluvian  stock  of  unfashionable  materials  had  been  drawn  upon  to 
make  her  hat.  Perhaps  the  old  lady,  this  Frau  Hofrat,  designed  her 
own  hats,  or  had  them  made  by  her  maid,  taken  over  from  the  service 
of  some  ex-Empress.  She  was  dignified  at  table,  took  mineral  waters 
and  powders,  and  was  pleasantly  condescending  to  the  young.  She 
cleared  her  throat  often,  and  wore  a  high  white  lace  collar  and  a  chased 
gold  band  which  supported  her  old  dun  throat. 

There  was  an  Old  Man  who  liked  company  and  joined  in  all  the 
conversations  to  show  he  was  a  spark  and  an  accomplished  trifler.  He 
dressed  with  coquetry.  His  thin,  bent  head  nodded  every  few  minutes 
like  a  tremulous  head  of  oats,  and  the  skin  hung  down  on  his  neck. 
He  wore  soft  gloves;  his  handkerchief  and  thin  silver  hair  were  per- 
fumed with  a  thin,  fine  scent.  His  shoes  were  polished  like  glass  and 
his  clothes  pressed  every  morning  by  a  valet  who  travelled  with  him. 
When  he  was  at  home  he  exacted  a  special  service  of  his  five  sons :  each 
one  had  to  call  on  him  at  his  home,  in  a  morning  coat,  wearing  a 
flower  and  a  bowler  hat  to  pay  his  father  his  respects  and  kiss  the  hand 
of  his  mother.  The  old  man  had  disinherited  his  youngest  son,  a  Liberal 
Deputy,  who  refused  to  do  this.  Abroad,  he  treated  everyone  with 
caressing  condescension  but  he  was  cold  to  waiters.  His  manners  were 
so  fine  that  one  would  have  thought  they  had  been  invented  specially 
to  suit  his  frame:  he  wore  them  like  a  handmade  shirt  next  his  skin. 
He  thought  estates  were  bestowed  by  divine  mandate  and  that  those 
born  to  high  estate  should  show  that  God  had  chosen  well.  Not  even 
the  wines,  painters  and  race  horses  he  fancied  gave  him  the  pleasure 
that  he  had  from  contemplating  a  fine  family-tree;  he  imagined  that 
he  could  tell  noble  birth  even  in  a  monster,  if  a  monster  were  born  in 
a  great  family.  He  allowed  that  it  was  inoffensive  for  a  beautiful 
woman  or  an  artist,  low-born,  to  climb  out  of  their  natural  sphere, 
because,  on  the  one  hand,  women's  empiry  is  always  brief  and- rarely 
disturbs  an  inheritance,  and  on  the  other  hand,  artists  are  like  the 
alchemists  his  fathers  kept,  who  spun  money  out  of  thin  air,  sunshine, 
spoof. 

He  still  let  his  bright  brown  eyes,  clear  as  enamel,  rove  over  the 
women's  faces,  feet  and  bosoms,  and  he  heaved  delicate  sighs  before 
them,  as  if  a  zephyr  were  blowing  up  a  banked  fire,  or  as  if  autumnal 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  575 

breaths  were  there,  succeeding  summer,  but  with  winter  yet  a  long  way 
off.  He  put  his  hands  under  his  coat-tails  and  told  the  men  em- 
broidered anecdotes  of  the  old  days. 

There  was  a  Critic  of  Music  too,  a  columnist,  who  knew  a  musi- 
cian's art  by  the  way  he  whirled  his  stool,  pulled  at  his  collar,  shrugged 
his  shoulders,  spread  his  hands,  or  looked  in  profile;  by  his  manager  or 
his  bows;  and  in  music  he  knew  the  difference  between  staccato  and 
glissando,  between  Chopin  and  Rimsky-Korsakov,  between  fat  playing 
and  lean  playing.  He  disliked  versatile  performers,  he  liked  those  who 
had  a  single  doctrine  of  art  and  who  wrote  it  down  in  words.  But  he 
had  a  fine  ear :  he  could  hear  a  whisper  in  the  farthest  corner  of  a  con- 
cert hall,  and  if  he  heard  it  he  would  frown  tremendously:  and  he 
could  hear  the  opinions  of  other  critics  three  seats  away,  even  in  a  tu-' 
mult.  He  could  hear  the  fluid  in  the  tube  of  a  barometer  rising  and 
falling  and  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  tides  of  opinion.  He  could  predict 
fashions  in  music  a  year  away,  and  describe  his  state  of  mind  at  a  con- 
cert in  such  sympathetic  terms  that  the  majority  of  people  imagined  he 
had  heard  the  music.  He  was,  truth  to  tell,  a  very  poor  musician,  but  a 
good  journalist  and  a  natural  prestidigitateur :  he  could  squeeze  blood 
out  of  a  stone,  make  a  dinner  out  of  a  bar-room  invention,  and  borrow 
money  at  a  chess-table.  He  had  once  taken  to  agriculture  and  grown 
potato-plants  with  potatoes  in  the  leaves  and  to  cattle-raising  and  bred 
a  calf  with  two  heads.  This  experience  had  given  him  such  confidence 
that  he  expected  to  conquer  every  subject  with  like  ease,  producing 
miracles.  The  calf  should  have  been  blamed  for  his  musical  criticisms. 

A  quiet  man  was  there,  a  Naturalist,  who  had  come  over  the 
mountains  on  a  walking-tour,  with  his  lens  and  collecting-case.  His 
ear  was  so  fine  that  he  could  hear  caterpillars  eating  leaves  and  crickets 
burrowing  in  the  earth  and  buds  starting  out  of  nodes.  He  was  a  Rus- 
sian, gay,  full  of  songs  which  he  sang  by  himself  in  the  open.  He  had 
always  walking  with  him  a  Schoolboy  to  whose  ires,  fires  and  laments 
he  listened  with  the  attention  and  objections  of  a  naturalist. 

A  Public  Stenographer  was  passing  through  Salzburg  on  her  way 
home  to  a  rural  village  in  England  because,  she  said,  she  should  see 
the  sights  before  she  got  too  old.  She  had  a  large  office  in  Geneva  and 
hired  out  for  occasional  work  translators,  accountants  and  typists,  both 


576  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

men  and  women.  She  wore  black  cotton  gloves  and  buff  cotton  stock- 
ings and  a  navy-blue  silk  dress  which  she  thought  nice  for  all  occasions. 
She  had  greying  hair  arranged  in  scallops  round  her  long  face:  her 
skin  was  the  colour  of  young  corn  in  the  cob  and  wrinkled  round  the 
eyes.  Her  mouth  was  terra  cotta  and  she  had  a  faint  rufous  patch  on 
each  cheek  which  never  deepened,  but  which  faded  when  she  worked 
on  some  late  job,  through  the  night.  She  had  met  all  the  personalities 
of  the  League  of  Nations  since  1920:  she  knew  the  gay  gossip  of  the 
town,  how  they  all  sat  at  little  tables,  alone,  during  important  events 
so  that  they  should  not  gab;  how  a  Balkan  minister  had  walked  in 
the  bright  sunlight  with  his  umbrella  up  because  he  had  news  of  his 
recall.  She  knew  their  little  miseries,  and  if  they  wore  spats,  and  how 
'  they  should  be  handled  when  they  wanted  to  make  a  speech.  She  knew 
the  right  word  to  suggest  to  fill  a  space,  for  the  League  of  Nations  has 
a  word  for  everything.  She  knew  how  to  take  a  rebuff  from  bridling 
vanity;  but  she  looked  everyone  in  the  eye  with  her  small  brown  eyes, 
for  she  was  old,  tried  and  quite  ignorant  of  the  world.  She  had  eaten 
for  fifteen  years,  at  midday  and  in  the  evening,  in  the  same  large,  pub- 
lic restaurant  where  they  had  a  printed  card  with  perhaps  two  hundred 
dishes  to  choose  from.  In  the  face  of  all  those  diners,  of  the  changing 
waiters  and  of  the  generous  menu,  she  had  learned  to  hold  her  coun- 
tenance and  maintain  a  negligent  pose  as  well  as  any  pretty  darling  in 
a  young  ladies'  school,  but  she  walked  with  rapid,  dry  strides,  not 
sinuously  like  those,  because  she  had  often  to  hurry  to  a  man  in  the 
throes  of  delivery;  her  arms  were  thin,  muscular  and  rough  skinned  as 
a  shark's  fin  with  too  much  exercise.  At  night,  over  a  shaving  of 
cheese,  dry  and  old,  with  a  bitter,  mouldy  flavour  caught  in  the  res- 
taurant's damp  pantry  (but  which  she  thought  was  the  natural  flavour 
of  the  cheese  since  it  had  been  served  so  for  fifteen  years),  and  over  a 
small  cup  of  black  coffee,  her  single  exotic  habit  caught  in  forty  years 
abroad,  she  would  lean  forward  her  long  neck  out  of  a  halter  of 
Madeira  embroidery  and  would  amuse  herself  with  anecdotes  of  the 
comic,  pathetic  and  marvellous,  in  her  long  dull  life.  She  knew  a  for- 
tune-teller who  had  predicted  her  life  for  ten  years  (those  ten  years, 
she  had  sat  at  a  typewriter) ;  she  speculated  about  love  and  its  thick 
mystery;  she  recalled  breaths  of  the  supernatural  which  had  blown  on 


CHRISTINA  STEAD  577 

her  cheek,  and  the  great  strokes  of  luck  which  had  passed  within  a 
hand's-breadth  of  humble  workers  she  had  known.  She  knew  clerks  who 
had  made  immense  sums,  even  a  thousand  dollars,  by  intercepting  a 
private  telephone  call  passing  between  heads  of  firms  and  accountants 
who  had  correctly  calculated  a  firm's  position  from  a  disguised  balance- 
sheet;  she  knew  telegraph  girls  who  had  predicted  European  wars.  She 
could  not  understand  why  these  darlings  of  fate  had  not  afterwards 
had  a  brilliant  career  and  had  their  names  in  the  papers,  or  had  not  at 
least  become  heads  of  their  departments;  she  supposed  it  was  due  to  a 
freakishness  of  their  star,  to  pernicious  anaemia  in  the  seat  of  ambition. 

She  had  once,  she  remembered  out  of  forty  years,  drunk  a  very  fine 
drink  in  a  German  family,  curacao,  she  believed,  with  cream  and 
orange-juice,  and  in  her  opinion,  no  drink  could  be  like  that,  not  even 
champagne;  but  she  had  never  tasted  it  again.  Very  coy  she  had  been, 
on  first  going  into  Germany,  when  invited  by  a  girl  to  take  beer  in 
public;  but  coming  out,  she  had  slapped  down  her  money  at  a  bar  in 
the  French  railway-station  and  said,  "A  bock,"  and  laughed,  with  her 
sister,  to  think  what  they  would  say  at  home  in  England,  to  that. 
Workmen  had  offered  her  another  and  she  had  accepted  out  of  com- 
radeship. 

Then  she  had  long  winter  tales.  She  had  gone  home  to  a  new  apart- 
ment late  at  night,  in  a  storm  of  rain  or  snow,  and  found  the  window 
open  and  seen  an  apparition  weeping  on  the  mantelpiece — long  after- 
wards she  had  learned  that  a  girl  had  received  a  letter  from  her  mother, 
dead  immediately  afterwards,  in  the  room.  She  had  tales  of  cats  gone 
mad  with  hunger  in  cellars,  running  up  the  walls  in  frenzy  and  cling- 
ing to  the  ceiling,  their  red  eyes  glaring  in  the  dark;  and  of  seeing  her 
dead  grandmother's  ghost,  many  a  time,  sitting  in  the  corner  darning 
ghostly  socks  in  a  flowered  work-basket;  of  seeing  an  immaterial  per- 
sonage passing  by  the  hearth  leading  a  great  greyhound,  the  night  her 
mother  died.  She  had  once  slept  in  a  students'  hostel  in  a  foreign  land 
and  awakened  to  hear  a  coach  driving  up  with  the  jingling  of  bits  and 
the  sounds  of  passengers  getting  down;  and  had  been  astonished  at  the 
survival  of  coaching  in  this  land.  Later  in  the  night,  someone  had 
walked  from  a  door  in  her  room  to  her  bedside,  crying;  she  thought  it 
the  girl  next  door  and  had  comforted  it.  But  in  the  morning  she  had 


578  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

found  that  there  was  no  door  there,  but  a  gas-meter;  and  that  no  coach 
had  arrived.  Returning  that  way  months  later  she  had  heard  that  an 
old  passage  had  been  discovered,  covered  in  behind  the  gas-meter,  and 
in  the  passage  a  man  had  been  murdered  who  had  come  by  the  coach 
in  the  old  days.  She  knew,  too,  country  girls,  the  daughters  of  clergy- 
men and  honest  as  the  day,  who  had  seen  past  generations  rise  in  the 
wayside  grass,  and  children  who  had  seen  bloody  hands  appear  on 
plastered  walls  in  haunted  houses.  All  these  tales  she  told  in  a  quiet 
musing  tone  with  no  sign  of  nervousness :  she  told  about  the  old  bridge 
that  collapsed  near  her  home  and  a  fatal  card-party  in  the  village,  the 
discovery  of  an  adultery  by  dreams;  and  a  hundred  curious  things  such 
as  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research  used  to  discuss  solemnly.  She  told 
it  so  naturally,  with  such  an  air  of  belief,  that  the  hearers  at  hot  mid- 
day gave  a  shiver  of  surprise  and  superstition.  Behind  her  lay  the 
ghostly  tradition  of  English  literature,  the  genius  of  the  Brontes,  the 
popularity  of  Scott  and  the  mad  gifts  of  Protestantism,  but  she  did  not 
know  it.  When  she  had  told  her  tale,  she  would  blow  her  nose  in  a 
cheap  lawn  handkerchief  with  machine-made  lace  and  say,  "This  was 
given  me  by  a  man  I  did  work  for,  an  Under-Secretary,"  and  add,  "I 
often  think  if  I  could  tell  these  things  to  a  writer  he  could  write  them 
up."  She  would  say,  listening  to  a  conversation,  "What  is  happening 
in  the  world  ?  O,  dear,  who  knows  what  will  happen  ?  The  world  is  so 
mixed  up:  you  would  think  I  should  know  more  than  you,  working 
in  Geneva,  but  I  know  less  than  anybody  else." 

After  her  thin,  black  figure,  there  entered  late  a  stalwart  young  man 
with  dark  eyes  and  rubicund  in  a  furred  motoring-coat,  who  put  his 
automobile  behind  the  Cathedral.  His  self-possession  and  the  profes- 
sional glance  he  cast  on  the  audience,  drew  glances.  He  greeted  many 
people  in  the  crowd,  bowing  from  the  waist  to  some,  laughing  heartily 
at  others,  shaking  hands  again.  He  had  a  bounding,  healthy  look  and 
when  he  smiled,  brilliant  teeth  made  his  dark  face  seem  darker.  He 
was  the  Viennese  singer  who  played  the  part  of  "Don  Juan."  With 
him  was  a  thin,  sharp-nosed,  thick-browed  chap  with  thin  hair,  very 
much  wrinkled,  jealous  and  salty  as  a  long-tongued  woman;  a  Trans- 
lator he  was,  who  translated  all  the  modern  books,  flighty,  scandalous 
and  political,  that  were  written.  He  was  extremely  laborious,  verifying 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  579 

each  word  with  a  dozen  notes  at  the  foot  of  the  page,  and  bitter, 
stinging  with  a  thousand  imagined  affronts,  and  cruel,  ready  for  a 
thousand  expected  attacks.  He  would  run  down  even  his  dearest 
friends  for  the  pleasure  of  saying  something  original  on  his  own  ac- 
count, and  he  cried  like  a  child,  at  home,  if  he  was  found  out  in  a 
fault  of  grammar. 

There  was  a  Police  Commissioner,  a  lively,  political  journalist,  a 
moke  of  all  trades  who  worked  ambitiously  in  any  shafts  offered  him, 
thinking  he  would  one  day  have  a  chance  to  sit  on  the  driver's  seat  and 
show  a  long  head  despite  his  ass's  ears.  He  had  been  a  Minister  in  a 
Government,  but  he  drove  one  day  into  some  too,  too  slippery  mass  of 
garbage,  and  he  had  been  obliged  to  take  a  long  rest  in  the  country 
in  the  clover,  biding  his  time.  In  the  country,  he  had  improved  his 
manners,  taken  an  eye-glass,  studied  fine  eating,  invented  a  few  dishes, 
written  two  romances  and  a  book  of  aphorisms  and  learned  to  seem 
wise  by  ignoring  questions.  He  had  a  wife  with  whom  he  lived  at 
times  in  hotels,  and  then  the  pair  would  quarrel  so  loudly  that  every- 
one would  rap  on  the  walls  and  the  manager,  red  in  face,  would  en- 
deavour to  silence  the  domestic  ululations,  pacifying  madam,  expostu- 
lating with  the  gentleman,  bidding  him  remember  the  next  elections. 
And  when  his  wife  was  ill  and  went  to  a  sanatorium  in  Switzerland, 
the  Commissioner  published  in  modern  literary  journals,  post-dada-ist 
laments  on  his  tubercular  love.  When  he  had  put  his  finger  successfully 
into  several  lucrative  scandals  in  Persia,  Thibet  and  China,  he  retired  for 
a  season  again,  but  now  to  Biarritz,  where  he  met  the  best  people,  im 
eluding  princes  of  the  blood,  cinema  stars,  champion  Aberdeen  terriers 
and  bathing-suits  by  Patou  and  distinguished  himself  at  water-polo. 
His  supporters  then  thought  him  groomed  for  another  public  appear- 
ance and  he  emerged  as  Police  Commissioner  and  was  given  the 
Order  of  Merit  by  the  king  of  his  country.  There,  he  revolutionised 
the  police,  introduced  military  discipline,  gave  military  pay,  studied 
machine-guns  and  tear-gas  bombs  and  went  on  long  voyages.  During 
these,  he  visited  America  and  studied  their  automatic  prisons  and  the 
adroit  way  they  broadcast  robberies  so  that  their  police  can  give  the 
burglar  a  fair  avenue  of  escape;  went  to  London,  admired  Dartmoor 
and  crossed  the  crossing  at  the  Bank;  went  to  Paris  to  see  how  they 


580  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

provide  one  policeman  for  each  citizen,  and  visited  the  Quai  d'Orsay 
where  they  entertained  him  at  dinner:  went  to  Germany  and  learned 
how  to  turn  recidivists  into  citizens  by  kindness,  and  how  to  discover 
non-existent  documents.  Then  he  returned  home,  made  a  secret  report, 
was  feted  in  the  streets,  received  bouquets,  an  Order,  and  proposals  of 
marriage  from  ladies,  invented  a  new  dish,  appeared  in  the  films,  im- 
proved the  munition  factories  and  once  more  went  into  retirement  to 
be  groomed  for  a  coup  d'etat.  This  man  of  his  time  had  come  to  Salz- 
burg to  polish  himself  off  by  rubbing  shoulders  with  the  cultivated, 
and  to  meet  the  Gold  Trust.  In  the  meantime,  he  spread  sedulously 
his  reputation  for  caustic  repartee  and  looked  through  the  proofs  of  a 
slight  volume  of  neo-symbolist  poems  dedicated  to  his  Lady  of  the 

Snows. 

There  was,  among  many,  a  Musician  there,  a  tall,  broad-shouldered 
man  with  florid  thick  neck  and  face,  who  suffered  from  his  antipathy 
to  innumerable  conductors.  He  would  sweat  at  the  beginning  of  a  con- 
cert, lose  his  handkerchief,  fish  for  it  in  all  his  pockets,  cough,  sweat, 
drop  his  music,  tug  at  his  tie,  roll  his  piano-stool  too  low,  sigh  and  get 
red  to  the  roots  of  his  hair.  Only  when  his  fingers  touched  the  key- 
board did  he  get  calm  again,  and  then  the  delight  he  felt  at  being  at 
rest  pervaded  all  his  music.  This  musician  was  a  kindly  man,  modest 
and  unpretentious.  He  did  not  like  to  shine,  but  to  drink  beer  and  sit 
with  a  friend  or  two :  his  clothes  were  not  smart,  he  was  always  embar- 
rassed when  eating  in  society,  and  he  could  never  think  of  a  witty 
reply.  Nevertheless,  when  he  began  to  speak,  at  last,  and  he  was  at  his 
ease,  it  was  the  same  thing  as  with  his  music;  his  ideas  rolled  out 
freely  without  a  hitch  and  an  elevated,  regretful  and  sometimes  revolu- 
tionary sentiment  was  heard  in  his  words. 

There  was,  among  the  last  who  came  in  when  the  actors  were  as- 
sembled on  the  stage,  an  American  Broker  who  had  been,  when 
young,  an  orator  for  the  Democratic  Party,  and  a  musical  prodigy, 
but  he  had  left  the  orchestra  because  musicians  have  to  enter  the  the- 
atre through  a  side-door  while  the  front-door  is  reserved  for  the  do- 
nothings,  the  spectators;  and  he  had  left  oflE  speaking  for  the  Demo- 
cratic Party  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  when  he  was  employed  to  go  about 


CHRISTINA   STEAD  581 

the  country  to  raise  funds  for  the  starving  Armenians.  He  then  in- 
vented the  famous  slogan: — 

For  hungry  Armenians,  American  bread; 

For  sick  Armenians,  an  American  bed; 

An  American  winding  sheet  for  the  Armenian  dead.'' 

After  this,  he  became  private  secretary  to  a  man  who  invented  a  new 
type  of  female  screw  and  thus  made  millions,  and  when  the  millionaire 
retired  to  his  estates,  our  friend  entered  the  office  of  a  large  broking 
and  banking  firm  on  Wall  Street  and  devoted  himself  there  to  the 
various  branches  of  high  finance,  that  is,  literature,  the  fine  arts,  the 
entertainment  of  senators,  and  duplicate  book-keeping  by  high-pow- 
ered electrical  Lunar  machines.  On  fine  days  he  cut  up  ticker  tape  and 
threw  it  out  of  the  window  so  that  Tammany  Hall  would  be  able  to  jus- 
tify the  salaries  it  gave  its  street  cleaners  which  were  from  5,000  to  10,- 
000  dollars  a  year  for  casual  labour;  and  on  wet  days  he  went  about 
putting  gilt  edges  on  South  American  certificates.  He  was  a  tall, 
slender  gentleman  with  chestnut  hair;  he  was  educated  at  Groton 
and  at  Harvard,  and  wore  a  real  pearl  stud  and  the  sign  of  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  on  his  watch-chain.  He  had  an  air  of  extreme  refinement,  al- 
though he  spoke  German  with  a  perfect  accent,  and  it  was  rumoured 
that  he  would  be  admitted  to  the  Tennis  and  Racket  Club.  But,  in  pri- 
vate life,  as  they  said  in  the  magazines  which  gave  his  biography,  he 
loved  only  big  game  fishing  and  exotic  literature.  When  he  spoke,  his 
bright,  brown  eyes  rolled,  his  tongue  wallowed  through  a  heavy  swell 
of  epithets  and  he  had  a  jolly,  rollicking  style  among  men.  He  was  a 
man  whose  feet  were  on  earth,  and  who  liked  the  smell  of  earth. 

And  there  was  last  of  all,  a  Town  Councillor  of  Salzburg,  a  very 
pleasant,  honest  and  cultivated  man,  to  whom  everything  must  be 
ascribed:  for  he  accompanied  the  men  they  called  the  Gold  Trust,  and 
the  American  Broker,  and  others  into  the  Capuchin  Wood  the  next 
morning.  When  they  reached  the  outlook  over  the  city  and  sat  down, 
he  began,  by  accident,  to  relate  the  history  of  a  humble  man  who  had 
lived  in  Salzburg  and  been  a  friend  of  his;  and  that  was  the  first  story 
told. 


JULES   ROMAINS 


COMMENTARY 


Each  novelist  has  his  own  method  of  exploring  a  world.  Neverthe- 
less, the  methods  tend  to  fall  into  a  few  categories,  which  of  course 
overlap,  and  some  of  these  categories  may  be  expressed  by  simple 
diagrams. 

For  example,  the  basic  narrative  pattern— it  is  also  the  Erst,  for  it 
is  Homer  s— may  he  indicated  thus: 


A      B 


This  is  a  picture  of  the  adventure  story,  centered  in  an  individual 
hero,  who  starts  at  A  and  has  various  experiences,  B,  C,  D,  and  so 
on  up  to  Z,  which  represents  the  conclusion  of  the  story.  Often 
B,  C,  D,  and  the  rest  are  obstacles  that  he  must  overcome  to  reach 
Z.  Z  is  frequently  the  heroine.  The  narrative  line  A-Z  is  strictly 
chronological:  that  is,  B  follows  A  in  time,  C  follows  B,  etc.  Nothing 
could  be  simpler,  but  the  product  may  be  anything  from  Superman 
to  Tom  Jones.  When  the  incidents  are  largely  physical  we  get  the 
picaresque  novel,  of  which  Le  Sage's  Gil  Bias  is  a  pure  example.  But 
the  obstacles  or  experiences  may  also  be  mainly  mental,  in  which 
case  we  get  the  development-novel,  of  which  the  middle-period  books 
of  H.  G.  Wells— Marriage,  Tono-Btmgay,  The  Research  Magnificent 
—are  excellent  specimens. 

Now,  here  is  another  diagram: 


A          B          C  D  E 

•**       **••••*       **•••'*  **♦•••**  ***• 

|           |           J  |  J 

582 


JULES  ROMAINS  583 

This  is  meant  to  show  the  pattern  of  the  psychological  novel.  The 
interest  is  not  in  progressive  adventure,  whether  physical  or  mental, 
but  in  the  total  exploration  of  the  minds  of  the  characters,  here 
shown  as  A,  B,  C,  etc.  The  arrows  indicate  the  direction  of  that  ex- 
ploration, downward  into  the  unconscious.  The  narrative  often  is 
a-chronological,  with  cutbacks,  dream  episodes,  and  so  on,  as  in 
Proust.  The  novels  of  Virginia  Woolf  are  fair  examples  of  this 
method,  which  was  in  part  stimulated  hy  the  discoveries  of  Freud. 
It  is  at  present  rather  out  of  fashion. 

Certain  novels,  such  as  Vicki  Baum's  Grand  Hotel  and  Thornton 
Wilder  s  Bridge  of  San  Luis  Rey,  use  a  trick  form,  really  an  adapta- 
tion of  the  detective  story.  We  might  picture  it  this  way  and  call  it 
the  convergent  novel: 


\l 


s 


*\\ 


In  the  detective  story  each  of  the  arrows  represents  a  clue  (disguised 
as  a  character)  and  each  of  them— except  for  the  red  herrings— points 
toward  the  solution,  indicated  by  the  dot  at  the  center.  In  Wilder  s 
story,  the  dot  is  the  fall  of  the  bridge. 

Here  is  a  picture  of  still  another  kind  of  novel,  very  popular  about 
a  decade  ago: 


This  is  the  social  novel,  in  which  the  individual  hero  and  heroine 
are  submerged  in  the  class  or  group.  The  simplest  kind  of  social  novel 
is  shown  in  the  diagram.  A  is  one  class,  perhaps  the  working  class; 
B  may  represent  the  capitalist  class.  A  and  B  are  lines  of  force  that 


584  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

are  bound  to  collide— a  strike,  a  walkout,  a  riot,  a  revolution.  Zo7a's 
Germinal  is  a  classic  example  of  this  kind  of  book,  and  dozens  of 
others  will  occur  to  you  offhand. 

Tired  of  little  pictures?  Here's  one  more: 


With  a  single  exception  (the  mythical  or  symbolic  novel,  such  as 
Thomas  Manns  Joseph  and  His  Brothers,  or  James  Joyces  Finne- 
gans  Wake,  whose  method  is  so  complicated  that  only  a  tesseract 
could  serve  as  diagram),  this  represents  the  most  involved  form  of 
narrative  I  know.  It  is  peculiarly  the  expression  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, although  it  has  a  precursor  in  Emile  Zola's  Rougon-Macquart 
series.  Let  us  call  it  the  collective  novel.  Here  also,  as  in  the  social 
novel,  individuals  are  subordinated,  but  even  more  so.  The  collec- 
tive novel  does  not  aim  so  much  to  tell  a  story  as  to  describe  a  so- 
ciety. It  combines  the  viewpoint  of  anthropology  and  sociology  with 
the  methods  of  fiction. 

The  diagram,  in  a  rough  way,  attempts  to  illustrate  this.  The  rec- 
tangle A  represents  the  Held  of  investigation.  In  the  case  of  Dos 
Passosy  U.S.A.,  for  example,  that  would  be  postwar  America.  Each 
horizontal  dotted  line  stands  for  a  single  element  or  institution  or 
movement  that  played  an  important  role  in  forming  the  society7  the 
author  is  reproducing.  Each  vertical  line,  we  may  say,  represents  a 
key  character  whose  career  intersects  the  line  of  the  movement  or 
institution. 

Now,  the  collective  novel  attempts  to  give  a  complete  picture  of 
a  society.  It  cannot,  of  course,  do  so,  but  that  is  the  ideal  it  ap- 
proaches. The  nearer  complete  the  picture,  the  more  horizontal  and 
vertical  lines  we  would  have  to  draw  within  rectangle  A.  Obviously 


JULES  ROMAINS  585 

we  can  in  theory  draw  an  infinite  number  of  such  lines,  just  as  the 
collective  novelist  can  in  theory  describe  a  near-infinity  oi  characters 
and  institutions. 

And  this  at  last  brings  us  to  Jules  Romains.  Oi  all  writers,  living 
or  dead,  he  has  filled  the  rectangle  most  densely.  He  is  the  greatest 
oi  collective  novelists  and  to  my  mind  one  oi  the  greatest  oi  living 
novelists.  At  this  writing  there  have  been  published  in  English  nine 
volumes  oi  his  series,  Men  of  Good  Will,  ably  translated  by  Warre 
B.  Wells.  Each  oi  these  is  made  up  oi  two  oi  the  original  French  vol- 
umes. There  will  be  at  least  six,  and  probably  even  more,  oi  the 
latter  beiore  the  series  comes  to  an  end,  making  a  minimum  oi  6000 
pages.  This  is  the  most  gigantic  unified  effort  in  the  whole  oi  the 
worlds  literature,  ior  Zola's  Rougon-Macquart  series  has  only  a 
mechanical  coherence  and  Balzac  s  Human  Comedy  really  breaks 
down  into  separate  volumes. 

Romains  endeavors  in  Men  of  Good  Will  to  portray  not  charac- 
ters but  "liie  in  the  twentieth  century,  our  own  Hie  as  modern  men." 
Obviously  he  must  choose  a  terrain:  it  is  France  irom  1908  to,  one 
may  presume,  the  present,  or  very  close  to  it.  He  is  writing,  he  says, 
"one  single  novel,  and  its  plot  has  been  drafted  in  advance.7' 

For  almost  twenty  years  this  novelist,  poet,  dramatist,  and  author- 
ity on  extraretinal  vision  has  proclaimed  the  doctrine  oi  "unanimism." 
Long  ago  he  waved  farewell  to  the  individual  and  to  the  family  as 
literary  units.  Society  itseli  and  those  bonds,  tenuous  or  brutal,  which 
hold  society  together  form  his  theme.  Ii  there  is  a  hero  oi  his  epic 
it  may  be  said  to  be  Paris,  iocus  oi  European  civilization  as  we  knew 
it  up  to  1939. 

I  propose  to  offer  a  running  summary  oi  all  the  volumes  so  far 
available  in  English.  The  casual  reader  need  not  pay  any  attention 
to  this  summary,  but  it  may  be  oi  some  slight  use  to  those  who  seri- 
ously intend  to  go  through  the  entire  series,  an  undertaking  that 
involves  a  considerable  amount  oi  time. 

In  the  first  volume,  composed  oi  the  two  parts  "The  Sixth  oi 
October"  and  "Quinette's  Crime,"  Romains  introduces  us  to  a  large 


5g6  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

number  of  characters  (sixty,  to  be  exact),  most  of  whom  will  con- 
tinue to  play  their  parts  throughout  the  series.  At  once  he  reveals 
that  omniscience  which  is  his  hallmark. 

We  meet  in  this  first  section  the  haut  monde  of  society  and  finance, 
represented  by  the  Saint-Papouls,  the  de  Champcenais,  and  Samme- 
caud.  We  watch  the  actress  Germaine  Baader  considering  the  at- 
tractions of  her  body  and  the  security  of  her  investments.  The  deputy 
Gurau,  Germaine's  lover,  opens  up  for  us  the  world  of  European- 
politics.  Two  of  the  chief  characters  who  thread  the  entire  series- 
the  students  Jerphanion  and  Jallez-make  their  Erst  appearance. 
The  central  intrigue  is  provided  by  the  crime  of  the  bookbinder, 
Quinette.  Quinette,  with  his  carefully  kept  beard,  his  electric  health 
belt,  his  introspection,  becomes  the  very  image,  the  ghastly  pattern, 
of  the  defeated  intellectual  of  our  day,  forced  to  find  in  violent  ac- 
tion some  outlet  for  his  own  lack  of  balance. 

Before  the  penetrating  gaze  of  Jules  Romains  few  aspects  of  life 
seem  to  remain  sealed.  He  seizes  upon  the  contour  and  temperature 
of  a  street  crowd.  For  eight  breathless  pages  (I  have  included  them 
in  this  book),  he  makes  us  inhabit  the  mind  of  eleven-year-old  Louis 
Bastide  as  he  trundles  his  hoop  through  the  streets  of  Paris  on  a 
beautiful  October  day  of  1908.  Romains  draws  a  circle  which  circum- 
scribes prostitutes  and  financiers,  political  idealists  and  politicians, 
murderers  and  actresses,  policemen,  students,  manicurists,  cabinet- 
makers—human life  in  all  its  diversity  and  density. 

The  second  volume,  Passion's  Pilgrims,  is,  if  possible,  finer  than 
the  first,  more  acute,  more  subtle,  richer  in  characters,  and  less  de- 
pendent for  its  interest  on  the  Quinette  intrigue,  which  smells  ever 
so  slightly  of  melodrama.  The  scene  remains  Paris,  the  time  the 
autumn  of  1908.  The  wonder  and  complexity  of  Paris  (one  of  the 
major  motifs  of  the  series)  reach  us  through  the  alert  and  sensitive 
minds  of  Jerphanion  and  Jallcz.  Quinette,  the  intellectual  criminal, 
treads  his  subtle,  perverse  path  into  the  inner  circles  of  revolutionary 
intrigue.  This  gives  Romains  a  chance  to  expose  the  political  cancers 
of  Europe  just  before  the  First  World  War.  What  we  know  of  the 
contemporary  state  of  European  capitalism  is  suddenly  illuminated 
as  we  spy  upon  the  private  lives  of  the  oil  magnates,  Sammecaud  and 


JULES   ROMAINS  587 

de  Champcenais.  We  watch  the  liberal  politician  Gurau,  as,  with- 
out knowing  it,  he  sells  out  to  the  oil  industry.  The  hypnotic  dream 
of  monopoly  is  illustrated,  horn  another  point  of  view,  by  the  street 
urchin  Wazemmes  and  the  entrepreneur  Haverkamp,  who  begin  the 
task  of  establishing  a  corner  in  Paris  real  estate.  And  somehow, 
though  the  tone  of  this  volume  is  not  at  all  grim  or  foreboding,  we 
feel  in  every  chapter  the  Erst  faint  stirrings  of  an  imminent  Euro- 
pean cataclysm. 

The  dominating  theme,  however,  is  neither  war,  politics,  nor  in- 
dustry, for  Passion's  Pilgrims  is  primarily  concerned  with  the  varieties 
of  erotic  experience.  Here  Romains'  virtuosity  nears  the  incredible. 
He  is  equally  successful  whether  he  depicts  the  provincial  Jerphanion 
writhing  in  the  coils  of  youthful  lust,  or  Jallez  sentimentally  retriev- 
ing in  imagination  his  boyhood  romance,  or  Madame  de  Champ- 
cenais  hysterically  frigid  before  the  advances  of  Sammecaud,  or  the 
old  maid  Mile  Bernardine  cruelly  revealing  to  a  young  virgin  the 
final  secret  of  physical  love,  or  the  manicurist  Renee  casually  ex- 
plaining the  basis  of  a  healthy,  sensual  marriage. 

Passion,  politics,  industry,  revolution— even  these  do  not  begin  to 
exhaust  the  themes  Romains  handles  with  such  conEdent  power.  He 
seems  to  have  lived  for  years  on  intimate  terms,  not  so  much  with  a 
variety  of  characters  as  with  the  whole  population  of  a  great  city: 
society  romancers,  poules  de  luxe,  professors  of  literature,  secret- 
service  agents,  real-estate  speculators,  schoolgirls,  manicurists,  abbes, 
chauffeurs,  coachmen,  nymphomaniacal  lady  novelists,  revolutionaries, 
milliner's  assistants,  poets,  orators,  and  dogs. 

As  we  begin  the  third  volume,  The  Proud  and  the  Meek,  a  gnaw- 
ing discomfort  begins  to  unsettle  us.  There  is  something  a  triEe 
terrifying  about  this  Javert's  eye  that  remembers  where  all  the 
bodies,  every  last  one,  are  hidden. 

It  is  of  interest,  even  instructive,  for  us  to  be  neatly  wedged  be- 
neath the  adulterous  bed  of  Marie  de  Champcenais  and  Roger 
Sammecaud;  to  be  smuggled  into  a  closet  from  which  we  overlook 
the  cold,  exultant  play  of  Haverkamp's  mind  and  the  career  of  his 
body  in  a  house  of  convenience;  furtive  and  silent,  to  assist  at  the 
rites  of  Madame  Camille,  abortionist  and  seller  of  secret  herbs;  to 


588  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

spy  upon  the  soul  of  the  mystic  Abbe  Jeanne;  like  the  devil  on  two 
sticks,  to  peep  in  upon  the  roofless  homes  of  a  Parisian  workers' 
quarter;  or  with  godlike  calm  to  watch  four  crooks  float  a  bond 
issue  that  will  ruin  a  million  simple  Frenchmen. 

But,  we  catch  ourselves  asking  uneasily,  where  will  all  this  end? 
Here  is  this  superb  Romains,  more  confident  now  than  ever,  thread- 
ing humanity  s  steeplechase  maze  as  if  crossing  a  drawing  room, 
passing  with  negligent  ease  from  Sammecaud's  pied-a-terre  to  a  real- 
estate  promoter's  conference  room,  grasping  indifferently  the  sorrow- 
ful delight  of  a  mother  gazing  upon  her  little  sons  undersize  bed, 
the  premature  conscientiousness  of  nine-year-old  Louis  Bastide,  the 
twilight  mentality  of  the  de  Champcenais  idiot  boy,  the  upsurge  of 
revolutionary  feeling  in  Jerphanion,  the  sexual  calculus  of  a  high- 
grade  lady  of  pleasure.  When,  each  of  us  asks  with  a  wild  start,  does 
he  reach  me?  When  will  he  surprise  me  in  parlor,  bedroom,  or  bath? 
When  will  he  uncover,  with  his  frightening  impartiality,  those 
hoarded  secrets  and  hidden  shames  my  complacence  imagined  unique 
and  incommunicable? 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  part  of  the  fascination  of  Men  of  Good  Will, 
especially  marked  in  this  third  section,  lies  in  the  constant  stimulus 
given  our  sense  of  recognition.  On  almost  every  page  there  is  some- 
thing to  make  us  mutter,  "There,  by  the  grace  of  Romains,  go  I." 
Our  feeling  that  this  man  knows  everything  is  merely  a  translation 
of  the  fact  that  he  remembers  things  we  have  experienced  or  guessed 
at  and  then  forgotten.  The  mind  of  Jules  Romains  is  among  other 
things  a  one  hundred  per  cent  efficient  filing  system  in  which  is 
docketed,  under  a  thousand  related  heads,  the  life  of  modern  man. 
Possibly  there  is  also  even  an  entry  for  the  fall  of  sparrows. 

The  second  section  of  The  Proud  and  the  Meek  makes  us  realize 
that  if  Romains  lacks  Proust's  subtlety  and  poctrw  he  is  superior  to 
him  in  his  social  knowledge  and  sympathies.  The  Bastidcs  represent 
a  world  in  which  work  is  the  obsessive  value.  It  is  extremely  clever  of 
Romains  here  to  make  his  chief  character  a  child  of  nine,  rather  than 
an  adult;  through  Louis7  dawning  consciousness,  we  slowlv  discover, 
instead  of  being  told,  the  acid  fact  that  society  may  be  the  encmv 
of  man. 


JULES  ROMAINS  589 

Once  or  twice,  as  this  Nile  among  novels  continues  on  its  wayr 
Romains  gives  himself  a  sort  of  breathing  spell  in  the  form  of  a 
volume  devoid  of  high  points.  It  is  necessary,  for  a  true  Romains 
admirer,  to  take  these  duller  volumes  along  with  the  higher-pitched 
ones;  they  are  just  as  essential  to  his  grand  design.  The  fourth  vol- 
ume, The  World  from  Below,  belongs  to  this  class. 

The  Erst  part  of  The  World  from  Below  is  called  "The  Lonely," 
a  title  which  is  a  gratuitously  sappy  nonequivalent  for  the  precise 
"Recherche  d'une  Eglise"  of  the  original.  Some  of  "the  proud"  of  Vol- 
ume  Three  reappear.  But  the  chief  part  of  the  book  is  devoted  to 
Jerphanion  and  Jallez,  who,  it  is  an  easy  guess,  represent  two  elements 
in  the  personality  of  Romains  as  a  youth.  Jerphanion,  typifying  the 
lost  generation  of  the  time,  is  on  the  lookout  for  a  "church."  His 
quest  leads  him  to  Socialism  and  more  particularly  to  Freemasonry, 
which  occupied  the  mind  of  the  intellectuals  to  a  degree  we  in 
America,  who  lump  Masons  with  Elks,  Odd  Fellows,  and  Rotarians, 
can  hardly  understand.  Jallez,  on  the  other  hand,  represents  non- 
political,  introspective  youth.  His  entire  life  at  this  point  is  obsessed 
by  a  dangerous  and  frustrated  love  affair. 

The  second  part,  "Provincial  Interlude,"  is  a  showpiece.  It  is  al- 
most as  if  Romains  were  saying,  "To  convince  you  that  I  am  not 
bounded  by  the  streets  of  Paris,  Tm  going  to  describe  in  detail  the 
manners  of  the  squirearchy,  expose  a  complicated  financial  scandal 
involving  the  clergy  of  a  provincial  town,  deliver  up  the  private 
thoughts  of  a  farmer,  and  follow  the  fortunes  of  a  local  election" 
hie  does  all  this  with  the  greatest  of  ease,  but  the  tricks  are  not  as 
interesting  as  they  might  be,  and  the  relation  of  these  elaborate  ma- 
nipulations to  the  whole  scheme  is  foggy. 

In  the  fifth  volume,  The  Earth  Trembles,  the  tempo  changes.  The 
book  appeared  in  19.36,  when  Europe  was  stirring  uneasily  under  the 
threat  of  war  and  the  imminence  of  revolution.  The  Earth  Trembles 
opens  in  1920  and  runs  through  1911,  but  the  reader  gets  a  weird  no- 
tion that  Romains  was  writing  contemporary  history. 

One  notes,  too,  the  increased  seriousness  of  the  tone.  The  individual 
men  and  women  now  reveal  their  symbolic  values  in  a  giant  histori- 
cal process.  Thus  the  politician  Gurau  is,  to  be  sure,  studied  as  a 


590  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

fallible  human  being,  suffering  from  eczema,  tortured  by  ambition, 
narcotized  by  daydreams,  and  enfeebled  by  sensuality,  but  he  is 
studied  also  as  an  example  of  how  a  ufnend  of  the  people"  is  cor- 
rupted by  power  into  assuming  a  position  which  today  is  called  Fas- 
cist. 

Similarly,  each  of  the  other  characters  is  made  to  yield  a  meaning 
above  and  beyond  his  unique  personality.  Edmond  Maillecottin, 
latheworker  in  a  mass-production  auto  factory,  is  shown,  true  enough, 
in  a  complex  web  of  personal  relations,  but  his  importance  to  us  lies 
more  in  the  fact  that  through  him  we  get  a  clear  picture  of  the  mind 
of  a  class-conscious  proletarian,  a  picture  drawn  not  by  a  writer  of 
tracts  but  by  a  novelist. 

Light  episodes  are  sparse  and  there  are  only  a  few  of  those  trick 
set  pieces  that  Romains  will  occasionally  touch  off  merely  to  exhibit 
the  unfailing  powers  of  his  technique.  For  instance,  there  is  a  de- 
scription of  how  a  woman  feels  during  the  birth  of  a  baby.  The  prob- 
lem has  been  a  challenge  to  many  male  novelists.  I  know  of  none  ex- 
cept Romains  who  has  followed  it  up  with  a  perfectly  unhesitating 
record  of  how  the  baby  feels  during  the  process. 

We  might  expect  Romains  to  be  at  home  in  the  luxurious  milieu 
of  the  Champcenais,  but  in  this  volume  he  proves  himself  no  less 
conversant  with  the  life  of  the  industrial  suburbs  to  the  north  of 
Paris,  where  the  trade-union  movement  is  slowly  recruiting  its  revo- 
lutionary strength.  He  makes  an  easy  transition  to  provincial  France, 
where  the  agile  Abbe  Mionnet  is  involved  in  a  bit  of  scandal;  thence 
to  a  secret  organization,  half  pacifist,  half  anarchist,  all  a  little  unreal: 
thence  to  the  heart  of  French  politics,  where  we  listen  to  Briand, 
Delcasse,  Tardieu,  Jaures  planning,  equivocating,  fearing,  hoping; 
thence  to  the  superworld  of  Zulpicher,  a  great  industrialist,  arma- 
ments manufacturer,  and  war  fomenter,  to  whom  all  these  other  peo- 
ple are  merely  slight  conveniences  or  petty  obstacles.  The  decayed 
politics  surrounding  election  to  the  French  Academy,  the  sewer  of 
venal  Paris  journalism,  the  life  of  the  students  (for  Jerphanion  and 
Jallez,  with  their  walks  and  talks,  their  gradual  growth  into  typical 
"men  of  good  will,"  still  help  to  hold  the  narrative  together),  the 
mad  yet  logical  French  parliamentary  system,  the  atmosphere  of  a 


JULES  ROMAINS  591 

Erst-rate  house  of  prostitution,  the  forced  marches  oi  the  French 
Army  in  Morocco,  the  boudoir  conversations  of  smart  women,  and 
always  Paris,  and  again  Paris— these  are  a  few  of  the  matters  and 
milieus  upon  which  Romains  touches  with  a  sure  hand. 

In  this  volume  there  is  less  drama,  hut  more  magnitude,  less  bra- 
vura work  and  more  seriousness.  We  are  approaching  Sarajevo.  Europe 
holds  its  breath.  What  was  life  like  in  those  years  of  painful  breath- 
holding?  Romains  tells  us,  and  as  he  does  so  he  appears,  by  that 
miracle  only  great  novelists  command,  to  be  writing  of  ourselves. 

Volume  Six,  The  Depths  and  the  Heights,  has  passages  and  chap- 
ters superior  to  anything  that  has  gone  before.  I  wish  I  could  include 
some  of  them  in  this  collection  but,  torn  from  their  context,  they 
would  lose  much  of  their  force.  More  than  ever  we  are  struck  by  the 
phenomenal  quality  of  Romains*  genius.  He  seems  to  me  to  dwarf 
all  living  imaginative  writers  except  Thomas  Mann.  The  real  titans- 
Mann,  Tolstoy,  Dickens,  Balzac— have  a  certain  mark  of  greatness 
upon  them,  easy  to  recognize.  They  combine  a  passion  for  the  exact 
detail  with  a  never-failing  grasp  of  a  large  idea.  They  are  jewelers  and 
architects  at  once.  In  their  pages  the  large  and  the  little  reinforce 
each  other  constantly.  I  believe  Romains  shows  this  mark  of  great- 
ness. 

In  "To  the  Gutter"  (the  Grst  half  of  The  Depths  and  the 
Heights),  a  certain  number  of  minor  threads  continue  their  slow 
unwinding.  Jerphanion  and  Jallez,  the  nearest  thing  to  main  char- 
acters in  a  novel  based  on  the  denial  of  the  idea  of  main  charac- 
ters, act  as  choruses  and  editorial  voices,  write  each  other  long,  in- 
tellectual letters,  deepen  in  knowledge,  advance  ignorantly  to  their 
great  life  experience— the  time  is  two  years  before  the  outbreak  of 
the  Great  War.  The  Left  politician,  Gurau,  as  he  becomes  more 
powerful,  becomes  more  entrenched  in  the  very  system  he  has  sworn 
to  alter.  Gurau  is  the  fictional  representation  of  one  of  the  most 
characteristic  figures  of  our  time:  the  liberal  politician  who  keeps  on 
compromising  till  he  finds  himself  part  of  the  reaction.  Gurau  is 
Clemenceau,  he  is  Briand,  he  is  MacDonald.  If  the  records  of  these 
personages  should  disappear  from  history,  we  should  still  be  able,  at 


592  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

some  future  date,  to  reconstruct  their  characters,  even  the  outlines  of 
their  careers,  from  Romains'  cool  and  pitiless  study  of  Gurau. 

But  it  is  the  literary,  not  the  political,  mind  that  is  the  main  con- 
cern oi  "To  the  Gutter."  George  Allory,  a  second-rate  Bourget  (which 
is  to  say  a  third-rate  novelist),  fails,  after  much  wirepulling,  to  he 
elected  to  the  Academy.  (Academy  politics,  hy  the  way,  are  subjected 
to  a  dose  of  satire  that  will  forever  prevent  Romains  from  becoming 
one  of  the  Forty— hardly  a  tragic  circumstance.)  The  blow  shatters 
the  last  remnants  of  organization  in  AJIory's  already  feeble  moral 
character.  Impelled  by  the  sinister  Mrae  Raymonde,  he  sinks  bit  by 
bit  to  the  level  of  a  vicieux,  committing  finally  a  tawdry  sexual  offense 
that  leads  him  to  attempt  suicide.  Whatever  talent,  whatever  sensi- 
tivity he  has,  becomes  debased  and  discolored  in  the  service  of  his 
own  moral  decadence.  The  study  of  Allory  s  degeneration  is  typically 
French,  almost  mathematical  in  its  rigor,  subtle,  quite  shocking,  and 
quite  unshocked.  Huysmans  would  have  admired  it  and  would  have 
been  incapable  of  its  coolness  and  clarity. 

In  "To  the  Stars"  (the  second  half  of  The  Depths  and  the 
Heights),  the  minor  developments  are  overshadowed  by  the  story  of 
Dr.  Viaur.  Allory  is  a  study  in  decadence,  Viaur  a  study  of  creative 
energy  in  general  and  of  scientific  genius  in  particular.  Interested  in 
antisepsis  and  the  revitalizing  of  damaged  tissue,  Viaur  is  suddenly 
switched  from  the  path  he  has  laid  out  for  himself  by  his  discover}7 
of  a  freak  patient,  one  Vidalencque,  who  can  stop  his  own  heart  vol- 
untarily. Viaur  becomes  obsessed  by  the  case  and  embarks  on  a  long 
series  of  experiments  which  are  ultimately,  one  gathers,  to  change  the 
whole  course  of  biological  theory. 

I,  a  layman  knowing  practically  nothing  of  physiology  and  biolog\\ 
End  Viaur  convincing.  Experts  may  not.  But  Yd  place  bets  on  Ro- 
mains. After  all,  he  has  had  a  long  scientific  training  and  hixnself 
conducted  original  investigations  in  extraretinal  vision  and  related 
problems.  Romains  gives  you  detail.  He  shirks  nothing,  is  technical 
when  he  must  be  so,  never  writes  down.  In  short,  this  is  a  serious,  not 
a  literary,  study  of  genius.  I  know  of  nothing  like  it  in  fiction,  and 
in  nonaction  it  is  rivaled  only  by  Jules  Henri  Poincarcs  classic  ac- 
count of  the  way  the  mathematical  imagination  works.  As  for  other 


JULES   ROMAINS  593 

fictional  portrayals  of  genius— Jean  Christophe,  for  one— it  makes 
them  look  like  pinchbeck.  The  complicated  tracing  of  the  way  in 
which  training,  curiosity,  imagination,  intuition,  information,  and 
skepticism  all  merge  in  Viaur  s  mind  to  create  almost  symphonically 
a  new  scientific  truth— I  End  this  one  of  the  peaks  of  modern  fiction. 

The  seventh  volume,  Death  of  a  World,  carries  the  story,  or  stories, 
up  to  mobilization  day  in  1914.  Obviously  it  marks  something  in 
the  nature  of  a  turning  point  in  the  series.  From  now  on  the  multi- 
ple rays  of  Romains'  characters  are  to  be  focused  in  the  burning  glass 
of  war.  Lives  which  seemed  so  individual,  even  wayward— Ouinette, 
Haverkamp — prepare  to  empty  their  tiny  tributaries  into  the  vast 
stream  of  history.  Characters  who  already  possess  historical  meaning, 
whether  invented,  like  Gurau,  or  real,  like  James  and  Cardinal  Merry 
del  Vol,  will  have  that  meaning  augmented  and  clarified  by  the  uni- 
versal experience  of  1914-18.  The  pattern  of  Romains'  seeming  laby- 
rinth begins  to  establish  itself.  You  feel  at  last  that  the  author  has 
foreseen  everything,  and  with  relief  you  place  yourself  unreservedly 
in  his  hands. 

Death  of  a  World  consists  of  two  books— " Mission  to  Rome"  and 
"The  Black  Flag."  The  Romains  method  remains  constant:  each  of 
the  books  makes  use  Erst  of  a  dominating  theme  or  story  that  gives 
its  narrative  continuity,  and  second  of  a  group  of  minor  incidents 
which  pick  up  characters  previously  more  fully  treated  and  carry  them 
one  step  farther.  "Mission  to  Rome"  deals  mainly  with  the  subtle, 
worldly  Abbe  Mionnet  and  his  expedition.  The  Roman  adventures 
into  which  Mionnet  is  drawn  offer  Romains  an  opportunity  to  unlock 
for  us  another  of  his  apparently  inexhaustible  series  of  universes — in 
this  case,  Roman  ecclesiastical  and  near-ecclesiastical  society.  Some 
of  the  lighter  scenes  may  recall  Thornton  Wilder's  charming  The 
Cabala,  but  Romains  is  deeper  and  broader.  I  should  add  that  his 
picture  of  the  higher  clergy  is  not  entirely  Battering.  In  fact,  not  to 
put  too  fine  a  point  upon  it,  some  of  it  is  scandalous. 

The  second  part,  "The  Black  Flag,"  is  atmospheric  rather  than 
narrative— that  on-the-eve-of-war  atmosphere  curiously  compounded 
of  boredom,  lassitude,  desperation,  fear,  and  curiosity.  Europe  is 
waiting;  the  world  is  coming  to  an  end. 


594  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Of  Verdun,  the  eighth  volume,  I  think  one  may  maintain  that, 
whether  or  not  it  is  the  greatest  novel  so  far  written  about  the  First 
World  War,  it  is  clearly  the  most  adult.  By  contrast  the  best  of  the 
other  war  novels  appear  in  retrospect  a  shade  callow.  Hatred,  pity, 
and  indignation  (I'm  thinking  of  All  Quiet  on  the  Western  Front) 
form  an  inadequate  equipment  for  the  novelist  who  would  write 
greatly  about  a  great  conflict.  A  certain  maturity  of  vision  is  needed, 
at  times  even  a  certain  almost  cold  detachment.  To  see  war  steadily 
and  see  it  whole— the  author  of  War  and  Peace  turned  the  trick, 
and  perhaps  Romains  comes  as  close  as  any  to  doing  it  for  our  time. 
Verdun  is  not  a  record  of  one  mans  indignation.  It  is  not  emotional 
crusading.  Epic,  not  lyrical,  it  is  a  war  novel  in  the  grand  st}7le. 

For  me  it  tops  any  other  in  three  basic  particulars.  First,  Romains  has 
a  firm  intellectual  grasp  of  the  problems  of  war  qua  war.  That  is,  he  has 
gone  to  the  trouble  of  mastering  the  general  strategical  ideas  in  ac- 
cordance with  which  the  conflict  was  waged.  Second,  his  angle  of 
vision  is  enormously  wide,  so  that  you  get  the  impression  of  some- 
thing like  total  perspective.  Finally— lest  all  this  sound  too  inhuman 
— he  cuts  to  the  core  of  the  emotions  of  the  Eghting  soldier7  exposing 
it  without  prejudice,  endeavoring  to  illuminate  rather  than  to  shock. 

Romains'  understanding  of  the  meaning  of  Verdun  is  attested  by 
the  endorsement  of  Petain,  at  that  time  a  Frenchman,  who  took 
over  the  command  of  the  sector  at  the  outbreak  of  the  German 
attack  and  organized  the  victory.  But  the  reader  does  not  need  the 
approval  of  Petain.  He  can  feel  for  himself  that  Romains'  mind  must 
have  dominated  a  chaos  of  reports,  communiques,  official  narratives, 
specialists'  interpretations,  long  before  pen  was  set  to  paper.  The 
first  three  chapters  of  Verdun,  for  example,  are  brilliant  military  essays 
which  explain  in  dramatic  terms  how  the  struggle  developed,  contrary 
to  all  expectations,  into  a  stalemate  involving  millions,  so  that  the 
whole  concept  of  war  underwent  a  complete  change.  "The  war  will 
be  won  by  the  side  that  can  last  fifteen  minutes  longer  than  the 
other"  was  the  judgment  of  high  military  officials  on  both  sides. 
Along  with  Romains'  incisive  feeling  for  the  attritive  nature  of  1914-18 
goes  his  understanding  of  the  gigantic  order  of  the  war's  operations, 
of  the  part  which  chance  is  bound  to  play  in  so  incalculably  large  a 


JULES  ROMAINS  595 

field,  of  the  proportion  of  useful  actions  to  actions  whose  only  purpose 
is  to  satisfy  some  petty  official  vanity,  of  the  manner  in  which  a  new 
idea  percolates  through  the  military  hierarchy,  and,  generally,  of  the 
complex  way  in  which  a  thousand  technical  factors  and  a  thousand 
psychological  factors  intertwine  to  produce  the  unbelievable  phenom- 
enon of  whole  nations  engaged  in  mutual  murder.  The  generals,  or 
at  any  rate  the  intelligent  ones,  understand  these  things,  hut,  of 
course,  wont  or  cant  tell;  the  Remarques  do  not  know  enough.  Ro- 
mains  seems  to  add  the  dramatic  sense  of  a  Remarque  to  the  stra- 
tegical and  tactical  sense  of  a  good  military  mind. 

But  Verdun  is  more  than  the  clear  analysis  of  a  great  battle.  It  is 
a  motion  picture  of  a  great  battle  and  the  events  leading  up  to  it, 
a  picture  taken  with  a  wide-angle  lens.  No  single  novel  can  give  the 
war  complete,  hut  Verdun  comes  close  to  it.  Romains'  omniscience, 
which  in  some  of  the  earlier  volumes  may  have  smacked  of  the  exhi- 
bitionist, here  comes  into  serious  play  with  serious  effect.  Nothing 
seems  to  elude  him:  the  look  and  smell  of  an  old  trench,  a  combina- 
tion of  cemetery,  junk  pile,  and  midden;  how  it  feels  to  have  a  mine 
explode  near  you;  the  behind-the-lines  life  of  a  general;  two  deputies 
being  thoroughly  deceived  on  a  visit  of  inspection  to  the  front;  the 
minds  of  the  big  boys— the  cheerful  cherub  Joffre,  the  intelligent, 
suffering  Gallieni,  the  anxious,  hesitating  Wilhelm  II,  the  cool,  ex- 
ecutive Retain;  the  minds  of  the  men  in  the  trenches;  the  carpe  diem 
outlook  of  the  airmen;  the  action  of  a  305  gun;  tea-table  strategy  in 
a  Paris  salon;  Haverkamp  the  profiteer,  figuring  out  his  millions  over 
partridge  and  Burgundy;  the  strange,  slow,  almost  unmilitary  ad- 
vance of  the  German  infantry  on  the  Verdun  positions;  the  trench- 
ward  march  of  the  French  soldiers  from  the  rear  and  the  reverse 
stream  of  refugees  clogging  the  Voie  Sacree;  the  common  soldiers' 
grouse  against  the  civilians;  Maillecottin  the  munitions  worker, 
stricken  with  guilt  as  his  earnings  increase;  Wazemmes  the  royalist, 
killed  as  he  charges,  singing,  ironically  enough,  the  "Marseillaise"; 
Maykosen  the  international  journalist,  trying  to  explain  things  to  the 
Kaiser;  the  Abbe  Jeanne  Ending  excuses  for  God's  part  in  the  war; 
the  whole  sweep  and  range  of  the  battle,  photographed  by  a  lens  that 
has  also  the  quality  of  an  X  ray. 


596  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

But  military  grasp  and  encyclopedic  knowledge  would  not  be 
enough  to  give  Verdun  stature.  To  them,  Romains  adds  a  profound 
instinct  for  the  springs  of  human  action  in  an  environment  of  death. 
Using  Jerphanion,  now  a  second  lieutenant,  as  his  mouthpiece,  Ro- 
mains endeavors  to  answer  the  root  question:  how  can  men  stand 
war?  For  the  tragedy  lies  not  in  the  fact  that  men  suffer  in  war  but 
in  the  fact  that  they  suffer  war.  "Whence  do  I  draw  sufficient  cour- 
age to  endure  it?"  writes  Jerphanion  to  Jallez.  For  Jerphanion,  the 
thinking  man,  "nothing  can  he  worth  this,"  and  yet,  he  continues, 
"it  is  now  proved  beyond  power  of  contradiction  that  millions  of 
men  can  tolerate,  for  an  indefinite  period  and  without  spontaneously 
rising  in  revolt,  an  existence  more  terrible  and  more  degraded  than 
any  that  the  numberless  revolutions  of  history  were  held  to  have 
terminated  forever." 

What  deters  the  men  from  doing  the  sensible  thing— disarming 
their  officers  and  walking  home— is  a  complex  set  of  factors.  In  the 
Erst  place,  it  is  not  so  much  the  fear  of  court-martial  that  stops  them 
as  a  generalized,  intangible,  but  overshadowing  fear  of  society,  of 
what  "they"  (and  particularly  the  women)  will  say.  Also,  war  is  in  a 
horrible  way  its  own  best  propagandist.  The  soldier  becomes  used  to 
what  he  does.  Indeed,  it  releases  in  him  certain  drives  that  civil  life 
would  have  forever  repressed.  "What  we're  seeing  now,"  says  Jer- 
phanion—and  the  words  are  much  truer  today— "is  the  re-emergence 
of  the  warrior  spirit  in  the  bosom  of  society."  This  warrior  spirit  is 
more  than  a  rebirth  of  the  urge  to  kill,  it  is  a  paralysis  of  the  capacity 
to  feel  what  killing  means.  "One  of  the  most  extraordinary  things  in 
the  trenches" — J  am  again  quoting  Jerphanion— "is  the  apparent  in- 
ability of  the  soldier  to  imagine  any  connection  between  the  tiny 
movement  necessary  to  release  a  projectile— whether  it's  a  single  bul- 
let, a  machine-gun  belt,  or  a  trench-mortar  shell— a  movement  that's 
usually  the  result  of  sheer  boredom  or  momentary  nerves,  and  the 
effect  caused  at  the  other  end  of  the  trajectory  in  the  shape  of  smashed 
heads  or  torn  bodies." 

But  that  man  may  engage  in  this  "universal  crime,"  he  must  be 
more  than  subject  to  social  pressure,  more  than  merely  afraid  of  pun- 
ishment, more  than  callous,  lie  must  have  a  private  mythology,  a 


JULES   ROMAINS  597 

personal  faith  or  skepticism  all  his  own,  a  little  cave  in  his  mind  into 
which  he  can  retreat  when  the  horror  becomes  too  much.  Jerphanion 
has  his,  and  each  man  under  him  and  above  him  has  his.  Jerphanion 
explains  to  Jallez  how  each  soldier  constructs  and  then  clings  to  his 
own  special  philosophy.  It  is  this  Exed  idea  that  is  his  last  stand.  It 
is  this  Exed  idea  that  explains  how  men  could  face  the  hell  of  the 
German  artillery  bombardment  of  Verdun  and  not  go  mad.  This 
section,  I  think,  is  classic.  It  says  more  than  most  novels  of  the  war 
say  in  their  whole  length  about  the  profound  impulses  that  enable 
men  to  abandon  their  humanity.  I  have  included  it  in  this  book. 

Verdun,  though  many  of  the  old  characters  of  the  series  reappear, 
is  not  a  book  about  individuals.  It  is  a  book  about  a  battle  in  which 
guns  are  as  important  as  men,  and  men  in  the  mass  more  important 
than  personalities.  Its  scale  is  stepped  up  from  that  of  the  earlier  vol- 
umes. Niceties  of  psychological  penetration  go  by  the  board.  A  mo- 
ment of  history  is  grasped  almost  in  its  entirety.  Though  death  and 
disaster  are  the  materials  of  the  narrative,  it  is  in  a  way  less  exciting 
than  some  of  the  other,  lighter  volumes  have  been.  Romains  is  not 
out  to  startle  or  surprise  or  shock  or  touch  you  but  to  make  you  un- 
derstand, to  make  you  understand  a  whole  way  of  living  and  feeling 
grotesquely  and  horribly  peculiar  to  our  own  century,  which  has  ap- 
parently adopted  murder  as  its  norm  of  experience. 

Aftermath,  ninth  in  the  series,  is  a  letdown  from  the  magniEcences 
of  his  Verdun.  Part  of  Aftermath  is  pretty  dull,  particularly  its  second 
volume,  'The  Sweets  of  Life."  I  say  this  with  regret;  indignor  quan- 
doque  bonus  dormitat  Homerus. 

However,  Romains  is  not  precisely  nodding  in  the  Erst  half  of 
Aftermath,  which  is  a  dadaist  crime  thriller  of  great  sophistication, 
even  though  overelaborated.  Here  we  again  meet  our  old  friend  Qui- 
nette,  the  homicidal  bookbinder  we  Erst  encountered  eight  volumes 
back.  Ouinette  is  a  murder-for-murderfs-saker.  He  is  an  esthetic  killer. 
So  far  he  has  avoided  detection.  On  the  principle  that  it  takes  an  artist 
to  catch  an  artist,  Romains  now  introduces  a  weird  character  named 
Vorge,  a  dadaist  poet  whose  fantastic  imagination  is  given  over  to 
images  of  destruction,  sadism,  murder,  and  insanity.  In  the  quiet, 
unobtrusive  bookbinder,  Vorge's  intuition  recognizes  a  kindred  spirit 


598  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Romains  devotes  a  couple  oi  hundred  pages  to  the  manner  in  which 
Vorge  establishes  his  domination  over  Ouinette. 

The  Vorge-Ouinette  story,  I  think,  is  intended  to  carry  a  certain 
weight  oi  symbolism.  The  nihilist  disintegration  of  conscience  after 
the  First  World  War  is  reflected  in  Vorge  and  his  circle.  They  repre- 
sent the  eccentric,  the  "art"  form  of  the  will  to  death  which  the  Fas- 
cists have  organized  and  exploited  in  political  and  military  patterns. 

The  second  half  of  the  book  is  disappointing.  It  deals  mainly  with 
a  lyrical  love  affair  between  the  introspective  Jallez  and  a  little  maiden 
of  the  people,  Antonia.  There's  too  much  pedantic  soul-searching  on 
Jallez  part  to  please  our  downright  American  tastes,  I  fear.  In  fact, 
Jallez,  who  up  to  this  point  has  been  one  of  Romains7  most  appealing 
creations,  seems  to  be  slowly  turning  into  an  intellectual  prig.  Per- 
haps it's  only  a  phase.  Romains  is  too  wise  a  bird  to  let  one  of  his 
main  characters  get  out  of  hand.  In  general  you  come  to  feel  that  the 
author  is  having  trouble  in  starting  this  postwar  section  of  the  series. 
There  are  a  great  many  threads  to  tie  up,  a  whole  new  atmosphere  to 
project,  perhaps  even  a  new  tempo  to  establish.  The  volume  seems 
uncertain,  tentative,  but  once  Romains  gets  up  steam,  I  think,  its 
sequels  will  not  disappoint  us.  I'm  convinced  that  when  Men  of 
Good  Will  at  last  reaches  its  appointed  end  we  will  see  in  it  a  coher- 
ence of  parts  and  a  unity  of  conception  which  are  as  yet  only  half 
apparent. 

Shortcomings  Romains  has,  obviously.  He  exhibits  wide  sympathy 
but  little  passion,  irony  but  little  humor.  Occasionally  the  mania  for 
analysis  gets  the  better  of  him  and  the  body  of  the  novel  stiffens  sud- 
denly when  it  should  move  free  and  relaxed.  He  has  been  reproached 
by  some  for  the  detachment  of  his  social  viewpoint.  In  so  far  as  his 
political  sympathies  may  be  descried,  they  are  enlisted  sincerely  on 
the  side  of  the  weak  and  the  suffering.  One  cannot  render  a  final 
judgment  on  his  social  and  political  views,  which,  whatever  they  arc, 
undoubtedly  underlie  the  whole  of  his  vast  collective  epic.  The  very 
title  of  his  book,  however,  gives  us  the  clue  to  his  political  position, 
as  does  the  simple  fact  that  he  now  lives  in  our  country.  Romains, 
with  his  great  humanity,  his  deep  political  insight,  and  his  profound 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  his  time,  is  obviously  opposed  to  those 


JULES   ROMAINS  599 

who  would  be  the  first  to  destroy  the  very  culture  that  has  created 
him. 

The  three  excerpts  that  follow  can  give  one  no  more  idea  of  the 
vastness  and  the  momentum  of  the  whole  work  than  has  my  own  flat 
summary.  They  are  presented  simply  as  brilliant  pieces  of  writing 
that  happen  to  be  comprehensible  in  themselves.  The  first  exposes 
the  mind  of  a  little  boy  of  the  working  class.  The  second,  which  is 
an  essay— there  are  many  essays  in  Men  of  Good  Will,  just  as  there 
are  in  Tom  Jones— describes  the  permanent  France,  the  France  that 
will  still  be  there  when  "the  wave  of  the  future*  has  ebbed  back  into 
the  ooze  from  which  it  came.  The  third,  one  of  the  great  pieces  of 
modern  French  prose,  is  as  revealing  in  relation  to  today  s  events  as 
it  is  in  relation  to  Verdun.  My  hope  is  that  these  three  brief  chapters 
plus  the  resume  you  have  just  waded  through  may  induce  some  to 
engage  in  a  great  adventure— the  reading  of  the  entire  vast,  magnify 
cent  Men  of  Good  Will. 


A  Little  Boy's  Long  Journey 

FROM    "MEN    OF    GOOD    WILL"    BY 

JULES  ROMAINS 


Clanricard  had  not  seen  Louis  Bastide  passing  with  his  hoop.  Louis 
Bastide  had  come  up  the  rue  Clignancourt  from  the  corner  of  the  rue 
Ordener,  running  all  the  way.  The  slope  was  very  steep.  Horses  had 
to  take  it  at  a  walk;  and  they  pulled  their  loads  up  in  jerks,  straining 
for  all  they  were  worth  and  striking  sparks  out  of  the  stones.  One  day 
little  Louis  had  been  there  when  a  fire-engine  with  magnificent  horses 
arrived  at  a  gallop  and  attacked  the  slope.  A  few  yards  up  the  hill, 
they  had  to  slow  down  like  everybody  else. 

So  it  was  obviously  very  difficult  to  roll  a  hoop  up  such  a  slope.  It 
needed  plenty  of  enthusiasm  and  stout-heartedness  at  the  beginning; 
and  then  a  determination  not  to  weaken,  not  to  give  way  to  your  tired- 
ness— to  say  nothing  of  great  skill  in  handling  your  stick. 

When  he  got  out  of  school,  Louis  Bastide  had  gone  straight  home 
to  his  parents,  who  lived  in  the  rue  Duhesme,  on  the  third  floor,  quite 
near  the  boulevard  Ornano.  He  kissed  his  mother  and  showed  her  his 
copy-books  and  the  report  on  his  work  and  conduct.  He  did  not  ask 
for  anything,  but  his  eyes  shone.  His  mother  looked  at  his  pale  little 
cheeks  and  at  the  fine  sun  outside;  and  she  tried  not  to  let  him  see 
how  pleased  she  was  that  he  wanted  to  go  out  and  play. 

"All  right,"  she  said,  "take  your  hoop.  Mind  the  traffic.  Be  home  by 
five  o'clock." 

The  hoop  was  big  and  substantial — too  big  for  Louis's  size.  But  he 
had  chosen  it  himself  after  mature  consideration.  Long  before  buying 
it  he  had  seen  it  in  the  window  of  a  bazaar,  and  he  had  said  to  himself 
that  nobody  could  want  a  finer  hoop — perhaps  because  of  the  strong, 
healthy  look  of  the  wood,  whose  colour  was  clear  and  whose  joints  were 

600 


JULES  ROMAINS  601 

well  fitted.  You  had  only  to  look  at  it  to  realize  how  it  would  run  and 
jump. 

Its  dimensions  had  given  him  something  to  think  about.  But  Louis 
expected  to  go  on  growing  for  some  years  yet;  and  he  could  not  im- 
agine that  a  hoop  of  which  he  got  very  fond  might  some  day  cease  to 
be  dear  to  him  and  simply  strike  him  as  a  child's  trivial  toy.  His  only 
reason  for  ever  discarding  it  would  be  its  getting  too  small  for  him. 
In  choosing  a  rather  big  one,  Louis  was  taking  thought  for  the  future. 

He  went  down  the  stairs,  with  the  hoop  hanging  from  his  shoulder. 
Once  he  was  out  in  the  street,  he  stood  it  in  the  middle  of  the  sidewalk, 
very  straight  up,  holding  it  lightly  with  the  fingers  of  his  left  hand. 
Then  he  gave  it  a  smart  tap.  The  hoop  rolled  away.  The  end  of  the 
stick  caught  up  with  it  at  once,  keeping  it  in  the  right  direction;  and 
after  that  Bastide  and  his  hoop  had  run  one  after  the  other;  rather  like 
a  child  running  after  a  dog  that  he  has  on  a  leash;  and  also  rather  like 
a  rider  who  lets  himself  be  carried  along  by  his  horse,  but  at  the  same 
time  keeps  on  spurring  and  guiding  him. 

When  you  have  played  for  a  long  time  with  a  hoop,  as  Louis  Bas- 
tide had  done,  and  you  have  had  the  luck  to  find  one  of  which  you 
are  very  fond,  you  come  to  realize  that  things  are  quite  different  from 
going  out  in  the  ordinary  way.  Try  and  run  by  yourself;  you  will  be 
tired  in  a  few  minutes.  With  a  hoop,  you  can  keep  tiredness  at  bay 
indefinitely.  You  feel  as  though  you  were  holding  on  to  something, 
almost  as  though  you  were  being  carried  along.  If  you  happen  to  feel 
tired  for  a  moment,  it  seems  as  though  the  hoop  imparted  strength  to 
you  in  a  friendly  kind  of  way. 

Besides,  you  don't  have  to  run  fast  all  the  time.  If  you  know  how  to 
do  it,  you  can  go  almost  at  a  walking  pace.  The  trouble  is  to  keep  the 
hoop  from  falling  to  the  right  or  left;  or  clinging  to  the  legs  of  a 
passer-by,  who  struggles  like  a  rat  in  a  trap;  or  lying  down  flat  on  the 
ground  after  going  through  extraordinary  contortions.  You  must  know 
how  to  use  your  stick,  how  to  give  the  hoop  very  gentle  taps,  just  as 
though  you  were  stroking  it  and  helping  it  on  its  way.  Above  all,  in 
between  your  taps,  you  must  keep  control  over  any  tendency  of  the 
hoop  to  waver,  with  the  help  of  your  stick,  which  must  just  graze  the 
edge  of  it  on  one  side  or  the  other  all  the  time,  keeping  it  on  the  move 


602  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

or  changing  its  speed,  with  the  end  of  the  stick  held  ready  to  inter- 
vene quickly  at  any  point  where  the  hoop  threatens  to  fall  into  a  lurch. 

Louis  Bastide  need  not  have  kept  all  these  details  in  his  mind,  for 
he  had  been  playing  with  the  hoop  for  a  long  time,  and  he  had  become 
skilled  enough  in  handling  it  to  trust  to  most  of  his  actions  being  auto- 
matic. But  there  was  a  background  of  conscientiousness,  of  thorough- 
ness in  him  which  prevented  him  from  doing  anything  in  the  least 
important  without  taking  pains  over  it.  Nor  could  he  help  taking  pains 
even  over  his  pleasures.  Once  he  was  interested  in  anything,  he  applied 
himself  to  it  passionately,  and  the  smallest  details  struck  him  with 
pulsating  clearness,  with  a  sharpness  which  made  every  one  of  them 
something  unforgettable. 

He  was  born  to  be  a  man  with  the  utmost  presence  of  mind.  But  his 
capacity  for  taking  pains  did  not  prevent  him  from  taking  fire.  If  his 
control  of  the  hoop  never  ceased  for  a  moment  to  be  an  operation  of 
scientific  exactitude,  performed  in  a  sphere  of  pitiless  clarity,  his  run- 
ning through  the  streets  became  an  adventure  luxuriant  and  mys- 
terious, whose  connecting  thread  resembled  that  of  dreams,  and  whose 
inexplicable  ups  and  downs  led  him  little  by  little,  and  turn  by  turn,  to 
moments  of  enthusiasm,  or  of  intoxication,  or  of  a  melancholy  in  itself 
uplifting. 

Once  he  had  crossed  the  boulevard,  he  followed  the  rue  Champion- 
net.  It  was,  at  that  time,  a  rather  out-of-the-way  street,  still  full  of 
whiteness  and  brightness.  There  were  scarcely  any  tall  houses.  There 
were  low,  long  buildings,  opening  on  inside  courtyards,  with  nothing 
but  a  window  or  a  peep-hole  in  a  door  looking  out  on  the  street  now 
and  then.  It  was  a  street  with  gateways,  with  fences.  A  street  whose 
habitual  silence  was  broken  only  by  the  occasional  rumbling  passing  of 
a  three-horse  truck. 

The  sidewalk  was  bright,  and  wide  enough;  and  also  it  was  empty. 
The  long  wall  which  ran  on  your  right  accompanied  you  like  a  com- 
rade. There  were  only  three  or  four  lamp-posts  between  you  and  the 
next  crossing.  All  this  street  was  full  of  easiness,  of  security,  of  mute 
benevolence.  The  sky  above  it  was  spacious.  The  smoke  of  a  factory, 
in  the  distance,  emerged  almost  pure  white  and  displayed  itself  to  the 
right  of  the  tall  chimney  like  a  banner  floating  in  the  breeze. 


JULES  ROMAINS  603 

Happy  the  child  of  Paris  who  had  the  run  of  this  quiet  street.  He 
could  see  the  sky  and  the  smoke.  The  sky,  still  blue  and  sunny,  told 
you,  all  the  same,  that  night  was  coming.  It  bent  down  over  the  roofs 
of  the  sheds,  and  so  it  came  quite  close  to  you.  But  away  there  where 
the  smoke  was,  it  was  glorious,  deep,  distant. 

That  beloved  sky,  towards  which  your  eyes  kept  straying,  which  you 
kept  on  finding  from  time  to  time — this  evening  it  was  like  your  idea 
of  the  future.  It  did  not  promise  anything,  but  it  contained,  somehow 
or  other,  all  kinds  of  promises  which  the  heart  of  a  child  of  Paris  could 
divine.  It  reminded  him  of  certain  hazy  but  still  remembered  happi- 
nesses that  he  had  known  when  he  was  still  quite  small,  still  more  of 
a  child  than  he  was  now,  that  were  already  a  part  of  his  memory,  even 
while  he  was  running  behind  his  hoop,  that  were  already  his  own  per- 
sonal, incomparable,  secret  past. 

How  lovely  that  smoke  was!  A  quite  regular  series  of  puffs  that 
rolled  up  and  then  spread  out.  Something  like  those  magnificent  clouds 
of  summer,  but  with  a  will  of  their  own,  an  aim  of  their  own,  an  as- 
piration of  their  own.  They  conveyed  to  you  the  idea  of  a  spring;  and 
then  that  chimney,  which  you  could  see  sticking  out  of  the  city — it  was 
as  though  the  source  of  the  clouds,  coming  to  birth  in  the  depths  of 
Paris,  had  been  borne  up  there  into  the  sky. 

Sometimes  the  hoop  took  it  into  its  head  to  run  away.  The  end  of 
the  stick  pursued  it  without  succeeding  in  catching  up  with  it;  and  the 
hoop  leant  over  a  little,  it  veered  about.  It  behaved  just  like  an  animal 
which  loses  its  head  as  it  runs.  You  must  know  how  to  catch  up  with 
it  not  too  impatiently.  Otherwise  you  ran  the  risk  of  running  it  up 
against  a  wall  or  of  knocking  it  over. 

When  the  time  came  to  leave  the  sidewalk  and  cross  the  street,  it 
was  a  delight  to  wait  for  the  hoop's  little  leap  and  watch  over  it.  It 
was  exactly  as  though  you  were  dealing  with  a  sensitive,  nervous  beast. 
And  afterwards,  until  it  reached  the  opposite  sidewalk,  it  never  stopped 
leaping  on  the  stones,  in  their  cracks,  with  all  kinds  of  capricious  ir- 
regularities and  changes  of  direction. 

Louis  Bastide  pretended  that  he  had  a  mission  to  accomplish.  Some- 
body had  commissioned  him  to  follow  a  certain  course,  to  carry  some- 
thing, or  perhaps  to  herald  something.  But  the  itinerary  was  not  easy. 


604  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

He  had  to  keep  to  it,  respecting  all  its  unexpectedness,  all  its  oddness, 
both  because  this  was  a  law  and  also  because  there  were  dangers  and 
enemies  to  be  avoided. 

Here  was  the  immense  wall  of  the  freight  station,  and  the  rue  des 
Poissonniers,  whose  gas-lamps  were  so  strange.  They  had  a  crown,  like 
kings;  a  halo,  like  martyrs.  Louis's  mission  demanded  that  he  should 
turn  to  the  left,  across  the  street,  and  go  towards  the  fortifications,  fol- 
lowing the  long  wall  and  passing  underneath  those  strange  gas-lamps. 

The  day  was  declining  a  little.  The  street  was  beginning  to  be  filled 
with  bluish  shadows  and  with  an  almost  cold  air.  The  sky  remained 
luminous,  but  it  was  farther  away.  There  was  no  further  question  of 
the  promises  that  it  might  hold  for  a  boy  who  raised  his  eyes.  Louis 
slowed  down  to  a  little  running  step,  very  regular,  scarcely  faster  than 
the  walk  of  a  grown-up.  The  hoop  visibly  helped  him.  That  kind  of 
slender  wheel,  which  could  run  so  fast,  slackened  its  pace  so  as  not  to 
tire  Bastide.  At  this  rate  he  could  keep  on  going  to  the  other  end  of 
Paris. 

The  bridge  over  the  Ceinture  railway,  encircling  the  city.  What  had 
his  mission  to  say?  That  he  should  not  cross  it,  but  turn  to  the  left 
along  the  rue  Beliard. 

The  rue  Beliard  reminded  you  of  a  road  running  out  into  the  coun- 
try. Far  away,  in  the  provinces,  there  must  be  many  a  road  like  this, 
where  travellers  and  coaches  passed  along  at  the  fall  of  day.  Louis  re- 
membered an  engraving  in  a  school-book;  and  also  a  picture  in  a  postal 
almanac;  and,  most  of  all,  a  drawing  in  an  old  catalogue  of  the  Maga- 
sins  du  Bon  Marche. 

It  was  fine  to  have  got  as  far  away  as  this.  The  houses  at  the  side  of 
the  road  looked  at  you  with  astonishment.  They  all  looked  at  your  face 
and  said  to  themselves:  "How  tired  he  must  be!"  But  they  were  wrong 
if  they  imagined  that  Louis  had  come  there  for  their  benefit.  His  goal 
was  far  beyond,  and  he  must  get  there  before  night,  "before  night  over- 
took him,"  as  the  books  said. 

The  most  that  Louis  would  do  was  to  call  a  brief  halt  here.  The 
courier  would  not  even  dismount  from  his  horse.  He  would  let  his 
beast  go  slowly,  quite  slowly;  and  as  he  passed  the  trough,  he  would 


JULES   ROMAINS  605 

let  him  drink  a  little.  If  anybody  questioned  him,  he  would  make  no 
reply;  or  he  would  content  himself  with  "evasive  words." 

Thus  his  gallant  little  horse,  so  faithful  to  its  master,  recovered  its 
breath.  It  was  better  not  to  pay  any  attention  to  the  cutting  of  the 
Ceinture  railway,  which  lay  to  the  right.  Otherwise,  the  spell  would  be 
broken.  Unless,  indeed,  you  thought  of  mountains.  In  mountain  coun- 
try the  railway,  penetrating  any  number  of  tunnels,  made  its  way  to  a 
village.  Once  a  day  at  the  most,  the  mountaineers  watched  for  the 
arrival  of  the  train. 

In  the  inn,  which  was  that  shed  surrounded  by  a  bank,  opposite  the 
cut,  people  were  drinking  and  playing  cards  as  they  waited.  They 
might  be  hunters  who  had  come  down  from  the  mountain.  They  had 
not  come  down  to  take  the  train;  for  nothing  in  the  world  would  they 
leave  their  own  country-side;  but,  still,  they  were  waiting. 

Louis  imagined  himself  going  into  the  inn  for  a  moment.  He  left 
his  hoop  outside,  leaning  against  the  wall;  but  he  kept  his  stick  in  his 
hand,  just  as  you  keep  your  whip.  "A  glass  of  wine,  sir?"  "Yes,  but  I 
won't  sit  down,  because  I  haven't  time.  .  .  .  Good  health!  ...  Is  it 
freezing  in  the  mountains?"  "Yes,  they  say  that  right  at  the  top  the  pass 
is  covered  with  snow.  But  you'll  get  through,  if  you  don't  let  the  night 
overtake  you." 

The  courier  set  out  on  his  way  again.  Here  began  the  road  that  ran 
up  into  the  mountains,  that  led  to  the  pass  blocked  by  snow. 

How  fine  it  was,  a  street  that  went  up  straight  in  front  of  you  and 
ended  far  away  in  the  sky!  This  one  was  particularly  fine,  because  it 
was  never-ending  and  made  you  think  of  a  great  precipice  beyond  it. 
Louis's  father  called  it  "chaussee"  Clignancourt,  not  just  "street"  like 
the  others.  Louis  did  not  know  why,  but  he  was  not  surprised  that  this 
marvellous  street  should  have  a  name  all  to  itself. 

His  mission  now  was  to  get  to  the  top  of  it  before  he  was  "overtaken 
by  the  night";  higher  even  than  he  could  see;  right  up  to  the  top  of 
the  hill  of  Montmartre.  Then  it  would  be  his  mission  to  make  a  kind 
of  reconnaissance  by  following  the  end  of  the  rue  Lamarck,  like  a 
road  cut  in  a  rock,  from  which  you  could  see  the  whole  of  Paris  across 
the  new  gardens. 


READING  I'VE   LIKED 

Long  before  he  reached  the  slope,  there  was  still  a  fair  distance  on 
level  ground,  and,  since  the  hoop  was  bowling  along  without  his  touch- 
ing it,  as  though  the  wind  were  pushing  it,  Louis  imposed  a  quite 
moderate  pace  upon  himself.  On  the  other  hand,  he  made  a  vow  not 
to  slacken  up  the  slope  until  he  reached  the  pass  "blocked  by  snow." 
After  that  he  would  be  free  to  proceed  as  he  chose.  He  would  have 
left  the  road.  He  would  be  on  paths  where  it  was  permissible  and  even 
prudent  to  dismount. 

But  that  was  still  a  very  long  way  off!  Bastide  needed  all  his  courage, 
and  also  all  his  skill.  He  resisted  the  temptation  to  go  fast.  He  ap- 
proached the  dangerous  street-crossings  carefully.  His  mother  had 
warned  him  to  mind  the  traffic.  Louis  had  no  desire  to  be  killed;  but 
his  mother's  despair  if  he  were  killed  frightened  him  even  more  than 
the  idea  of  death.  The  stretcher  being  carried  upstairs;  "My  little 
Louis"  My  poor  little  boy!"  The  wreck  of  the  hoop,  which  they  might 
put  with  his  body;  the  stick,  which  he  might  still  clasp  in  his  hand. 

Still,  it  is  difficult  to  evade  a  law  which  you  have  laid  down  tor 
yourself.  Cross  the  boulevard  Ornano  with  his  hoop  hanging  from  his 
shoulder-that  was  something  which  Louis  could  not  bring  himself  to 
do.  He  even  had  a  feeling  that  he  would  be  punished  in  some  way  or 
other  if  he  did.  The  laws  which  you  lay  down  for  yourself,  or,  rather, 
the  orders  which  come  to  you  from  some  mysterious  depths  in  your- 
self, will  not  suffer  you  to  infringe  them  or  play  tricks  with  them.  You 
risk  much  less  in  disobeying  a  visible  master. 

Louis  had  the  right  to  stop,  he  and  his  hoop,  the  one  supporting  the 
other  But  so  long  as  the  course  was  not  finished,  the  hoop  must  not 
leave  the  ground,  must  not  cease  to  be  in  contact  with  the  ground;  for 
if  it  did,  he  would  cease  to  be  "true"  to  himself. 

The  rue  Marcadet  in  its  turn  was  successfully  negotiated.  The  long 
climb  began.  Louis,  who  knew  very  little  about  any  other  neighbour- 
hood, thought  that  in  the  whole  of  Pans  there  could  not  be  any  slope 
which  it  was  more  honourable  to  conquer.  He  who  was  capable  ot 
scaling  it,  without  the  hoop  that  he  guided  falling  down  or  running 
away,  need  not  be  dismayed  anywhere. 

But  the  passers-by  lacked  brains.  If  they  understood  the  value  of  the 
test,  they  would  not  hesitate  about  getting  out  of  the  way,  instead  of 


JULES  ROMAINS  607 

making  those  annoyed  faces,  or  looking  at  the  boy  with  contemptuous 
pity. 

So  it  was  that  Louis  Bastide  came  to  the  half-way  house  of  the  rue 
Custine.  He  saw  Clanricard  and  saluted  him  hastily,  raising  his  hand 
to  his  beret.  The  master  was  looking  the  other  way.  Bastide,  very  fond 
of  him  as  he  was,  could  not  possibly  stop.  The  private  law  which  he 
had  formulated  for  himself  at  the  bottom  of  the  slope  required  that  he 
should  reach  the  "pass  blocked  by  snow"  without  a  halt.  He  would 
have  liked  to  be  able  to  explain  to  his  master  that  he  was  not  imposing 
such  an  effort  on  himself  just  for  fun. 

So  he  kept  his  stride  and  did  not  allow  himself  to  take  breath  until 
he  was  at  the  top  of  the  street. 

After  that  it  was  almost  a  rest.  Louis  had  the  right  to  go  up  the  rue 
Muller  at  walking  pace.  To  help  his  hoop  to  keep  its  balance,  he  could 
even  support  it  gently  with  his  left  hand,  with  the  tips  of  his  fingers 
grazing  the  edge  of  the  wood.  On  mountain  paths  the  most  skilful 
horseman  dismounts  and,  taking  his  horse,  however  good  he  may  be, 
by  the  bridle,  guides  him  and  helps  him  not  to  stumble.  All  this  was 
inside  the  rules. 

When  he  reached  the  bottom  of  the  rue  Sainte-Marie,  he  asked  him- 
self whether  he  should  go  up  the  street  itself  or  up  the  steps.  He  chose 
the  steps.  The  other  way  was  much  longer  and  offered  no  opportunity 
of  picking  up  new  threads  of  adventure.  So  far  as  going  up  a  flight  of 
steps  like  this  with  a  hoop  was  concerned,  the  rule  to  be  followed  was 
self-evident.  While  Louis  himself  used  the  steps,  keeping  as  far  over 
to  the  left  as  possible,  the  hoop  made  use  of  the  granite  curb.  He  helped 
it  with  stick  and  hand.  It  was  a  delicate  manoeuvre,  the  more  so  in  that 
the  principal  role  devolved  upon  the  left  hand.  The  hoop  might  escape 
you  and  hop  backwards;  in  a  series  of  hops  it  might  run  away  alto- 
gether and  go  and  get  smashed  under  a  carriage.  But,  to  avert  such  a 
misfortune,  it  sufficed  to  be  very  careful — in  other  words,  to  be  very 
fond  of  your  hoop. 

As  he  climbed  up  the  steps,  Louis  met  a  keener  air,  less  tainted  with 
darkness.  The  cliff  of  houses  on  his  right  rose  in  successive  surges,  fol- 
lowing the  rhythm  of  the  steps,  and  at  its  peak  still  received  a  slanting 


608  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

but  dazzling  light.  The  windows  of  the  upper  floors  were  still  burn- 
ing with  reflections.  Without  stirring  from  their  rooms  women  could 
watch  the  sunset. 

And  the  boy  wanted  to  raise  himself  up  faster,  as  though  up  there, 
on  the  cornice  of  the  hill,  were  all  the  joy,  all  the  games,  all  the  adven- 
tures of  the  future.  The  very  noise  of  Paris  passed  into  his  body, 
though  he  was  not  aware  of  listening  to  it.  Up  with  you,  nimble 
hoop!  Trains  whistled  in  the  suburbs  in  the  plain.  The  child  of  the 
low  streets  recognized  their  cries  without  noticing  them,  as  though  he 
had  been  born  among  sea-birds.  Roofs  innumerable  creaked  in  the 
wind;  their  creakings  and  cracklings  sounded  above  the  rustle  of  the 
leaves  in  the  precipitous  gardens.  Like  all  these  noises,  the  hoop,  too, 
bounded  and  mounted.  The  child  of  Paris,  as  he  stopped  to  take 
breath,  drank  in  a  sound  of  destinies  that  came  to  him  from  every- 
where. 


Portrait  of  France  in  July  '14 

FROM    "MEN    OF    GOOD    WILL"    BY 

JULES  ROMAINS 


Thus  it  was  that  this  nation  of  decent  folk,  of  men  rather  badly 
dressed,  not  too  well  washed,  and  somewhat  undersized,  prepared  to 
march  once  again  into  the  pages  of  History. 

The  west  end  of  Paris  got  ready  with  a  bright  air  of  gallantry.  Beau- 
tiful women,  crossing  the  Place  de  1'Etoile  in  their  cars,  gazed  dream- 
ily at  the  Arc  de  Triomphe.  Retired  colonels  who  had  seen  the  war  of 
'70  and  served  in  the  campaign  of  Madagascar  screwed  their  monocles 
into  their  eyes  and  raised  their  walking-sticks  in  a  gesture  of  swagger. 
Racecourse  habitues,  their  grey  top  hats  set  at  rather  a  more  rakish 
angle  than  usual,  made  a  point  of  discussing  the  favourite's  chances  as 
calmly  as  though  their  hearts  were  not  already  beating  to  the  sound  of 
the  charge  and  the  booming  of  the  guns. 

The  farther  one  went  towards  the  east,  however,  the  more  definitely 
did  one  become  aware  of  a  troubled  undercurrent.  One  was  vaguely 
conscious  of  ideas  in  the  light  of  which  complacency  felt  sick.  Perhaps 
one  was  permitting  them  to  raise  their  uneasy  heads  now  for  the  last 
time,  before  letting  one's  feeling  sink  to  the  level  of  everyone  else's, 
before  calmly,  like  everyone  else,  crossing  the  threshold  of  a  heroic  age 
into  that  great  echoing  hall  of  heroisms,  that  side-show  of  freaks,  both 
men  and  women,  on  whose  behalf  the  newspapers  were  already  play- 
ing the  showman:  "Just  about  to  begin.  .  .  .  Fifteen  wild  savages  in  a 
state  of  nature.  .  .  .  Step  up,  ladies  and  gentlemen!" 

History  was  no  stranger  to  us.  From  the  open-air  restaurants  of 
Montmartre  men  had  already  seen,  in  former  days,  the  Prussian  bat- 
teries spouting  flame  from  beyond  Saint-Denis  or  Stains.  From  the 
open-air  restaurants  of  Belleville  their  fellows  had  watched  the  mili- 

609 


610  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

tiamen  marching  to  be  swallowed  up  in  the  battle  of  Champigny. 
From  a  certain  mound  near  Charonne,  just  above  the  ruined  build- 
ings, anxious  eyes  had  followed  the  flashes  on  the  far  slopes  of  Chatil- 
lon  and  been  terrified  at  times  by  the  sight  of  a  shell  crashing  into 
some  house  on  the  left  bank.  Men  had  helped  the  gunners  drag  their 
pieces  up  the  rue  du  Telegraphe  and  set  them  on  the  ramparts.  Later 
still  had  come  a  time  when  changed  circumstances  had  meant  changed 
targets  for  the  guns  of  Paris,  when  the  foe  had  been  no  longer  Prus- 
sian, but  French  troops  marching  from  Versailles.  But  at  such  a  dis- 
tance of  time  the  details  were  all  confused.  It  sufficed  for  those  others 
to  remember,  those  crowded,  indistinguishable  subjects  of  the  Kaiser, 
square-heads  beneath  spiked  helmets,  that  they  were  men  without  fear 
in  their  hearts,  ready  at  a  word  to  march. 

City  of  taut  nerves.  City  in  which  the  memories  of  History  had  had 
no  time  to  fade,  of  History  in  its  last  new  garb.  City  placed  always  at 
the  point  of  danger.  When  the  wind  blew  from  the  east — on  summer 
days  when  the  children  played  ball  on  the  slopes  of  Romainville — it 
could  come  in  a  short  three  hours  from  the  enemy  lines,  nor  find  its 
way  impeded.  The  plain  lay  open  to  its  onset;  "Blow  freely  above  mv 
spaces,"  said  the  plain.  City  that  must  sleep  always  with  one  eye  open. 
Strange  must  have  been  the  thoughts  of  those  who  set  her  there,  the 
kings  of  long  ago;  and  of  those  others,  older  still,  half-wild  men  with 
long  moustaches  and  great  spears  and  bodies  swathed  in  skins.  Far- 
ther ofT,  in  the  deep  heart  of  the  land,  they  might  have  found  high 
mountains  to  serve  them  in  the  place  of  walls.  Ah,  if  only  the  kings 
had  been  cunning,  had  built  their  Paris  among  the  slag-heaps  and 
the  mines,  the  Prussians  might  have  whistled  for  their  victory.  But 
could  anyone  seriously  regret  the  choice?  Could  anvone  think  of  Paris, 
of  the  Paris  of  the  Parisians,  set  among  the  slag-heaps  and  the  mines? 
A  fine  thing  that  would  have  been!  If  things  are  as  they  are,  it  is  be- 
cause a  destiny  has  guided  them. 

This  exposed  city,  with  her  flank  ever  open  to  the  attacks  of  History 
— again  and  again  she  has  tried  to  clothe  her  nakedness  with  walls, 
but  always  they  have  been  breached — this  city  is  where  she  is  because  a 
fate  has  set  her  there,  and  it  would  be  ungracious  to  complain  over- 


JULES   ROMAINS  611 

much,  since  there  is  so  much  beauty  in  her  choice  of  a  site,  marked 
out  at  a  meeting-place  of  many  ways.  The  rivers  called  for  her,  and 
the  open  plains.  The  folk,  wandering  at  first,  and  later  settled  on  their 
lands,  craved  her  presence.  The  people  of  the  mountains  found  it  good 
that  their  capital  should  be  builded  in  a  valley  low  and  fruitful.  Think- 
ing of  her,  men  have  been  ever  influenced  more  by  considerations  of 
convenience,  of  splendour,  of  adornment,  than  of  possible  danger.  Fa- 
mous throughout  the  world  as  a  place  of  pleasure,  she  has  ever  known 
a  destiny  of  peril.  At  her  back,  wide-stretching  miles  rise  to  slow  up- 
lands; before  her  the  plains  of  the  north-east  lie  bare,  so  that  she  re- 
sembles one  of  those  churches  that  we  see  perched  on  a  clifl-top's 
farthest  edge,  gazing  out  to  sea — a  Notre-Dame  du  Peril. 

And,  like  her  metropolis,  all  France  is  a  meeting-place  of  ways,  a 
country  ill  placed  for  security,  but  proud  of  her  post  of  danger  and  of 
honour,  a  country  set  on  the  extreme  point  of  a  lean  and  bony  con- 
tinent which  narrows  away  from  the  great  cow's  flanks  of  Asia  until 
at  last  it  fronts  the  Western  Ocean.  But  though  she  stands  at  this  far 
end  of  a  mass  of  land,  she  is  neither  cabined  nor  confined;  is  neither 
the  cul-de-sac  of  Europe,  a  backwater  whither  the  flood  of  wandering 
folk  have  drifted  when  all  other  lands  were  full,  nor  an  island  to 
which  men  have,  as  it  were,  swum  when  naught  but  safety  mattered, 
or  when  the  spirit  of  adventurous  daring  drove  them  onwards  in 
search  of  new  worlds  to  conquer. 

All  the  peoples  who  moved  slowly  through  the  centuries  from  east 
to  west  were  bound,  unless  they  settled  elsewhere  on  their  journey,  to 
come  at  last  to  France.  Not  a  race,  not  a  wandering  tribe,  but  some 
time  or  other  found  itself  within  her  borders  and  stood  on  her  high 
terraces  above  the  Ocean,  feeling  the  chill  air  on  naked  bodies,  sniffing 
the  winds  that  blew  from  far  immensities,  and  all  the  damp  sweetness 
of  the  gardened  land.  Many  of  them  turned  back  again  like  wild 
beasts  that,  from  the  prison  of  fair  meadows,  long  for  the  freedom  of 
open  spaces;  but  in  the  hearts  of  all  of  them  the  moist  sweetness  left 
its  memory,  so  that,  when  the  desire  to  wander  seized  upon  them  once 
again,  it  was  always  to  these  Western  gardens,  to  these  Ocean  terraces, 
that  they  tried  once  more  to  come. 

Vaguely  France  has  always  known  of  this  lure  she  exercises,  has 


612  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

taken  thought,  though  casually,  with  herself,  has  felt,  now  and  again, 
a  passing  fear  of  these  invading  strangers.  Sometimes  the  knowledge 
has  filled  her  with  pride.  She  has  found  it  but  natural  that  her  lands 
should  be  more  constantly  sought  than  any  others  of  the  world,  nor 
thought  it  hard  to  pardon  those  who,  from  time  to  time,  have  dis- 
turbed her  peace. 

But  on  her  perilous  situation,  which  so  often  has  cost  her  dear,  she 
has  never  brooded  with  a  dark,  aggressive  pride;  has  never  said  to  her- 
self: "I  am  the  rampart  of  a  continent;  through  me  the  world  breathes 
in  the  airs  of  Ocean";  nor,  when  what  was  once  for  her  "the  world" 
became  the  "Old  World,"  did  she  say:  "The  part  of  bastion  to  a  con- 
tinent thrust  forth  to  meet  the  challenge  of  new  lands  is  mine  and 
must  be  mine  to  play  alone,  whatever  the  cost.  Shamelessly  have  all 
the  races  of  the  Old  World  invaded  my  privacies,  crept  into  my  bosom, 
mixed  the  stream  of  their  lives  with  mine;  therefore  now,  tirelessly 
and  of  right,  warm  with  their  blood  and  avid  with  their  greed,  will  I 
greet  what  is  to  come  from  worlds  still  young."  By  force  and  fore- 
thought she  might  have  made  of  all  her  coastline  between  the  Pas-de- 
Calais  and  Brittany,  between  Finisterre  and  the  Pyrenees,  a  lurking 
trap,  facing  two  ways,  to  catch  and  hold  the  wanderer,  with,  at  its 
back,  netted  by  roads  and  canals  and  railway  lines,  a  land  fed  by 
skilled  farmers,  rich  in  factories  laboriously  installed,  dotted  with 
overcrowded  harbour  towns;  a  double-headed  tentacle  planted  there 
at  the  far  limit  of  Europe,  into  whose  clutches  the  Atlantic  must, 
willy-nilly,  have  surrendered  her  rich  and  aimless  freights,  her  fleets 
of  treasure  ships  at  sea  without  a  goal.  But  to  accomplish  such  an  end 
she  would  have  had  to  pursue,  through  long  generations,  one  of  those 
great  plans,  at  once  blindly  wrought  yet  cunningly  devised,  which  set 
a  seal  on  nature's  work  by  forcing  things  to  a  determined  shape,  feel- 
ing a  slow  way  to  achievement,  harnessing  necessity  to  wily  ends,  leav- 
ing to  chance  no  right  but  that  of  choosing  between  two  or  three 
alternative  channels  dug  to  make  doublv  sure  that  the  rich  waters 
shall  flow  in  set  courses  and  not  escape  elsewhere. 

But  to  realize  such  an  ambition  she  would  have  needed  what  she 
has  never  had,  a  grandiose  self-seeking  that  never  leaves  a  task  but  at 
completion.  Obstinate  she  may  have  been,  and  mad  at  times,  but  of 


JULES  ROMAINS  613 

the  unswerving  schemer  she  has  never  shown  a  trace.  When  the  de- 
lirium of  glory  has  seized  on  her,  it  has  always  been  with  the  desire 
to  accomplish  some  deed  islanded  in  History,  without  past  or  future, 
some  enterprise  envisaged  against  every  rule  of  caution,  and  for  ever 
at  the  beck  and  call  of  chance :  a  Europe  called  to  arms,  a  young  Corsi- 
can  leading  the  nation  to  the  world's  far  ends,  just  because,  with  his 
men  from  Brittany  and  Auvergne,  he  wished  to  build  again,  and  on 
a  greater  scale,  the  realm  of  Charlemagne.  Or  it  might  be  that  sud- 
denly she  held  it  to  be  a  point  of  honour  to  conquer  at  one  blow  more 
distant  lands  than  Spain  had  ever  done.  But  since,  with  the  prize  all 
but  in  her  grasp,  she  grew  sick  of  adventure,  nothing  of  Canada  has 
remained  to  her  but  an  isle  of  fisher-folk,  and  of  the  West  Indies  but 
a  strip  of  land  barely  large  enough  to  flaunt  her  flag.  Finding  no  satis- 
faction in  schemes  fashioned  with  an  eye  to  the  future,  she  has  taken 
pleasure  in  what  came  her  way,  and,  flushed  with  the  excitement  of 
the  moment,  has  grown  to  see  in  passing  triumphs  a  compensation  for 
the  longer  view.  She  constructed  the  Suez  Canal,  and  all  but  made  its 
twin  in  Panama;  but  the  ideal  of  linking  her  own  two  seas,  north  and 
south,  by  waterways  she  has  obstinately  regarded  as  a  madman's  dream 
to  which  never  again  would  she  set  her  hand.  She  has  equipped  with 
railways  all  the  new  countries,  taking  in  exchange  their  gold,  but  she 
has  never  seriously  considered  joining  Paris  and  the  Western  Ocean 
with  what  should  have  been  the  great  trunk  line  of  Europe.  And  with 
an  easy  negligence  she  still  faces  the  wide  new  world,  not  with  a  string 
of  overpeopled  harbour  towns  fitted  to  draw  to  her  the  trade  of  all 
the  world,  but  with  desolate  plains,  and  woods,  and  fields  of  vine. 

Once,  perhaps,  in  a  century  her  pride  has  found  a  vent;  but  between 
whiles  she  has  let  it  sleep,  preferring  the  self-love  that  turns  in  upon 
itself.  Prudent  and  capricious  she  has  been  by  turns;  more  sensible 
than  any  of  her  neighbours,  but  victim,  now  and  then,  of  fits  of  petu- 
lance. She  has  always  been  more  willing  to  lose  her  money  by  believ- 
ing in  the  illusions  of  others  than  by  using  it  to  back  her  own,  which 
she  has  ever  seen  with  too  clear  a  vision.  Economical  by  temperament, 
she  has  been  led  to  waste  her  substance  on  ill-planned  schemes.  In- 
tending peace,  she  has  more  than  once  been  forced  into  a  war  by  some 
movement  that  has  caught  her  unawares. 


614  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

True  it  is  that,  through  the  ages,  samples  of  all  the  hardiest  and  most 
adventurous  races  of  Europe  have  drifted  into  the  hexagon  of  France, 
as  later  they  were  to  filter  across  into  the  vast  quadrilateral  of  Amer- 
ica, but  they  never,  unlike  those  men  beyond  the  seas,  found  an 
empty  land  awaiting  them.  From  the  first  they  were  confronted  by 
the  squat  folk  of  the  mountains  already  thick  upon  the  ground,  a  stub- 
born people  content  to  live  on  little,  good  fighters  and  tenacious  of 
their  rights  in  a  land  where  they  had  settled  long  before  anybody  else. 
To  these,  the  earliest  inhabitants,  words  meant  nothing.  It  mattered 
little  to  them  that  their  country  was  the  point  at  which  all  roads  of 
the  Old  World  met,  the  great  assembly-ground  of  the  West,  the  sea 
strand  on  which  the  men  of  countless  lands  could  breathe  free  air,  a 
terrace  set  above  the  Ocean.  They  cared  only  about  holding  what  they 
had,  and  sending  the  intruders  back  whence  they  had  come.  And 
when,  in  their  despite,  the  intruders  stayed,  it  was,  in  their  turn,  to 
become  even  more  sensitive  than  their  predecessors  to  the  call  of  the 
new  homeland;  to  pretend  that  they  had  never  known  any  other. 

This  mixture  of  blood  has  been  common  to  all  the  provinces  of 
France,  but  it  was  achieved  without  bitterness,  and  in  no  two  places 
have  its  ingredients  been  exactly  the  same.  Brittany,  Normandy,  Au- 
vergne,  Burgundy,  Gascony  and  Provence,  all  are  alike  in  so  far  as  all 
contain  the  product  of  a  mixed  heritage.  But  in  some  places  the  squat 
men  of  the  mountains  still  form  the  heart  of  the  race,  having  absorbed 
each  new  wave  of  migration,  while  elsewhere  it  is  some  other  intrud- 
ing stock  that  has  become  predominant,  though  never  twice  the  same, 
nor  in  the  same  proportions.  The  one  constant  rule  has  been  that  each 
of  the  new  peoples  came  soon  to  forget  its  origins.  There  was  room  for 
every  mixture  of  strain,  and,  in  places,  for  pockets  even  of  the  un- 
sullied aborigines.  Here  and  there  the  old  blood  has  kept  itself  pure 
in  some  hidden  cranny,  and  ten  thousand  years  of  History  are.  seen 
to  have  been  as  nothing.  The  accidents  of  the  land  have  permitted  this 
interplay  of  race;  have,  to  some  extent,  conditioned  it  by  the  variety  of 
its  features,  its  natural  divisions,  its  watersheds,  its  slopes,  so  that  in 
places  certain  arrangements  have  been  almost  automatic,  while  in  oth- 
ers natural  obstacles  have  forced  life  to  adapt  itself  to  the  requirements 
of  the  surrounding  earth. 


JULES  ROMAINS  615 

France  is  a  land  o£  valleys,  majestic,  almost  royal  of  contour,  but  not 
drawn  on  a  scale  of  vastness.  No  one  of  them  is  central  to  the  whole 
country,  nor  drains  it  from  end  to  end.  It  is  a  land,  too,  of  many  moun- 
tains, easy  of  access,  yet  forming  many  self-contained  areas.  The  high- 
est of  them  make  its  frontiers  and  repel  invasion.  The  great  plains 
are  few,  and  lie  far  apart,  so  that  the  mixture  of  races  obtaining  in  one 
rarely  overflows  into  another,  and  intercommunication  is  exceptional. 
This  fact  has  led  to  the  coexistence  of  many  agglomerations,  no  one 
of  which  has  remained  definite  for  long.  It  is  a  land  of  many  prov- 
inces, yet  few  small  cantons  shut  away  from  the  world,  since,  with 
minor  exceptions  in  the  mountain  tracts,  communities  have  been  sep- 
arated by  obstacles  rather  than  by  imprisoning  walls,  while  what  walls 
there  have  been  have  never  been  impenetrable.  Since,  therefore,  the 
soil  is  fruitful,  many  peasant  communities  have  taken  root,  varying  in 
kind,  yet  all,  in  different  ways,  settled  and  obstinate.  Jostled  in  the 
course  of  History  they  may  have  been,  but  they  have  clung  desperately 
to  their  homes,  refusing,  whatever  legend  may  say  to  the  contrary,  to 
be  uprooted.  Some  individuals  have  migrated  to  the  cities,  but  they 
have  never  taken  their  roots  with  them.  Now  and  again  the  ancient 
stock  may  have  shown  a  trace  of  withering,  but  it  has  never  been  torn 
from  its  native  earth. 

True  to  the  lie  of  the  land,  these  peasant  communities  have  set  their 
boundaries,  marking  canton  from  canton,  village  from  village,  but  also 
field  from  field,  each  man  staking  his  claim  to  what  would  suffice  him 
for  a  livelihood.  No  work,  however  hard,  on  the  rolling  plough-lands 
has  broken  the  spirit  of  these  tillers  of  the  soil,  nor  has  the  power  of 
overlords,  sweeping  like  a  harrow  over  the  vast  acres,  dispossessed 
these  farmers  of  their  fields.  France  is  a  land  of  peasant  proprietors 
some  of  whom  may  have  been  called  serfs  when  the  word  was  in  fash- 
ion, but  none  of  whom  have  ever  really  been  slaves. 

Her  people  come  from  a  race  of  peasants  who,  through  the  cen- 
turies, have  loved  their  tiny  holdings — each  district  having  its  own 
methods  of  demarcation  and  enclosure,  jealously  held  to  since  the  first 
settling  of  the  tribes.  Knowing  they  are  in  matters  of  boundaries,  great 
disputers  in  questions  of  division,  curious  in  all  matters  of  usage  and 
strict  in  its  meticulous  observance.  Ready  at  all  times  they  are  to  listen 


gl6  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

to  the  law's  interpteters,  or  to  peer  through  spectacles  at  its  written 
authority.  The  "Code,"  for  them,  is  an  animal  only  less  attractive  than 
the  cow.  They  like  to  see  lines  of  ownership  sharp  drawn,  and  so,  to 
avoid  injustice  and,  better  still,  to  avoid  inequality,  they  incline  to  make 
all  shares  the  same.  Privilege,  the  lion's  part,  the  superior  claim  of  the 
eldest  born— these  things  are  anathema  to  them,  and  similarly  all  rights 
that  are  not  clearly  based,  the  justification  for  which  has  been  lost  in 
the  misty  distances  of  the  past  and  cannot  be  hammered  out  in  talk 
around  a  table.  In  this  category  they  include  the  claim  of  any  one  man 
to  issue  orders  to  another,  to  demand  tithes  of  his  produce,  or  to  live 
od  his  labour.  They  are  a  race  of  small-holders,  of  jurists,  of  equal 
shareholders  in  the  family  estate,  of  free  men.  A  race  which  has  created 
the  communes  of  France,  yet  has  always  striven  to  have  community  of 
ownership  in  as  few  things  as  possible. 

These  are  the  men  who  love  work,  so  it  be  in  their  own  fields  and 
for  their  own  advantage;  who  delight  in  the  vision  of  the  task  as  it 
emerges  to  the  call  of  their  tools  and  grows  to  perfection,  even  prefer- 
ring the  small  profit  made  in  the  sweat  of  their  brows,  but  without 
fear  or  favour,  to  the  wage  which  a  man  must  take  blindly,  which  may 
come  conjoined  with  fraud  and  treachery  in  its  concealing  envelope. 
Handymen  all  of  them,  Jacks  of  all  trades  since  the  days  of  the  cave- 
dwellers.  Still,  they  have  had  to  accept  the  age  of  factories,  though  it 
went  against  the  grain  for  them  to  do  so.  No  people  were  ever  less  in- 
tended by  nature  to  form  part  of  the  long  stream  that,  morning  and 
night,  crowds  the  suburban  thoroughfares.  Work,  yes-smce  work  is 
man's  destiny;  sixteen  hours  a  day  if  need  be  when  the  harvest  calls- 
but  not  the  slavery  of  the  shops.  To  war,  likewise,  they  will  submit, 
since  war,  so  they  are  told,  is  sometimes  necessary-but  not  to  the  bar- 
rack yard.  At  the  heart  of  the  proletarian  here  in  France  has  ever  dwelt 
the  essential  farmer;  beneath  the  soldier's  uniform  has  always  beat  the 
heart  of  a  rebel  drilled  by  authority  and  furiously  resentful. 

It  was  they  who  made  the  great  Revolution,  not  to  bring  to  birth 
some  vague  new  world  fated  to  end  in  disenchantment,  but  to  reform 
injustices  of  ancient  date,  to  have  done,  once  and  for  all,  with  old 
wronsrs,  to  make  it  possible  for  men  to  discuss  everything  under  the 
sun  freely  around  a  table.  They  had  no  quarrel  with  their  King,  nor 


JULES   ROMAINS  617 

would  ever  have  driven  him  from  his  throne  and  killed  him  had  he 
but  listened  to  the  voice  of  reason  and  consented  to  be  the  guardian 
of  the  law  and  the  protector  of  free  men.  Since  then  they  have  made 
other,  smaller  revolutions,  partly,  no  doubt,  because  their  nerves  were 
on  edge,  partly,  perhaps,  on  occasion,  to  satisfy  a  taste  for  violence 
left  as  a  heritage  from  '89;  but  whatever  the  cause,  it  has  never  lain 
in  the  desire  to  set  all  things  in  ruin.  Rather  has  it  sprung  from  a  long- 
ing to  protest  against  the  violation  by  others  of  a  contract,  to  re-establish 
order  on  a  firmer  basis.  At  bottom  the  French  peasant  proprietor  is 
neither  a  conservative  nor  a  revolutionary.  He  may  lose  respect  for  in- 
stitutions which  have  outlived  their  usefulness,  but  he  sees  no  reason 
to  believe  that  what  men  have  never  tried  must  necessarily  be  better 
than  what  they  have  always  known.  Anarchy  he  detests,  and  would 
rather,  if  it  came  to  a  choice,  suffer  from  an  excess  of  discipline,  hoping 
that  a  chance  may  come  later  of  restoring  a  truer  balance.  Law  and 
order  he  does  not  worship,  but  in  so  far  as  they  can  justify  themselves, 
he  loves  them. 

When  it  seemed  probable  that  the  age  of  factories  had  come  to  stay, 
those  whom  the  world  now  calls  "proletarians"  saw  that  they  had  been 
fooled;  that  the  cities  were  poor  substitutes  for  their  native  villages, 
that  the  Great  Revolution  had  foreseen  nothing  of  what  was  to  come; 
that  it  had  taken  very  few  years  for  new  masters  and  new  abuses  to 
arise  in  the  place  of  those  from  which  their  fathers  had  shaken  them- 
selves free.  And  since  they  could  not  go  back  to  their  villages,  where 
none  knew  them,  they  talked,  like  their  brothers  in  other  countries,  of 
the  possibility  of  making  a  new  beginning,  calling  it  the  "Social  Rev- 
olution." But  no  more  than  formerly  did  they  wish  to  hurl  themselves 
blindly  into  the  arms  of  a  new  world.  Their  object  was  mainly  that  of 
redressing  wrongs,  of  suppressing  the  policy  of  the  lion's  share  and 
the  claim  of  primogeniture,  of  re-establishing  an  equality  of  inher- 
itance, of  clothing  once  more  in  flesh  and  blood  the  essential  landowner 
who  had  lain  dormant  beneath  the  skin  of  the  proletarian. 

France  has  long  been  the  most  lay-minded  of  countries,  for  she  was 
the  first  to  discover  that  civil  society  can  function  in  its  every  part 
without  the  meddling  of  priests,  and  that  prayers  may  be  offered  to 


r.Q  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

61  o 

God,  morning  and  evening,  by  the  member  of  Parliament,  the  chief 
of  police,  and  the  paterfamilias.  She  might  well  have  been,  too,  the 
least  religious,  capable  as  she  is,  like  the  Chinese,  of  dispensing  with 
everything  that  is  not  of  this  world,  yet  at  the  same  time  of  finding 
this  world  a  pleasant  place  in  which  to  live.  But  she  has  always  liked 
to  take  stock  of  things,  nor  has  ever  lacked  a  passion  for  creation  and 
for  vast,  sweeping  movements  of  the  intellect,  with  the  result  that  she 
has  been  able  to  approach  God  by  way  of  the  mind,  to  build  for  Him 
the  loveliest  churches  in  the  world,  and  to  give  Him  an  honourable 
place  in  the  great  systems  of  her  philosophy. 

Furthermore,  she  has  ever  been  the  one  country  in  which  people  of 
vision,  with  an  interest  in  maintaining  ancient  privileges,  have  seen 
clearly  and  calmly  the  value  of  religion  in  the  purely  social  scheme. 
Having  at  first  decided  that  it  would  be  enough  to  keep  it  alive  among 
the  masses  as  a  quieting  influence,  without  themselves  having  to  sub- 
mit to  its  unnecessary  discipline,  these  people  soon  made  the  second 
discovery  that,  in  a  land  where  even  the  smallest  fry  were  gifted  with 
extreme  subtlety  of  intelligence,  the  best  way  of  maintaining  piety 
among  the  lower  orders  was  to  give  an  example  of  it  themselves.  They 
resumed,  therefore,  the  practices  of  their  faith,  and,  as  often  happens  in 
such  cases,  found  that  belief  followed  automatically.   But  since  the 
smaller  fry,  with  their  genuine  subtlety  of  intelligence,  had,  from  the 
beginning,  seen  through  the  whole  manoeuvre  and  realized  the  con- 
tempt for  themselves  which  it  implied,  they  refused  to  take  the  sequel 
at  its  face  value.  Pricked  to  suspicion  by  the  attitude  of  the  clergy  in 
every  political  struggle,  they  grew  accustomed,  by  degrees,  to  looking 
on  religion  as  one  of  those  weapons  employed  by  the  possessing  classes 
to  keep  them  in  poverty  and  subjection.  Consequently,  in  the  great 
cities  and  in  many  parts  of  the  country  men  lost  their  faith  as  well  as 
the  habit  of  religious  observance,  and,  finding  that  none  of  those  dis- 
asters befell  them  which  had  been  foretold,  grew  obstinate  in  their 
attitude  of  agnosticism.  So  much  was  this  so  that  France  became  al- 
most the  only  country— Italy  being  a  bad  second— in  which  religion 
was  identified  in  men's  minds  with  a  definite  political  and  social  out- 
look; where,  for  instance,  a  Socialist  leader  who  should  happen  to  men- 


JULES  ROMAINS  619 

tion  the  name  of  God  at  a  meeting  would  have  been  suspected  of  hav- 
ing lost  his  reason. 

But  it  is  also  the  one  country  in  which  religion  might  be  taken  seri- 
ously, because  it  is  the  one  country  in  which  it  is  quite  impossible  for 
a  mind  with  any  claim  to  seriousness  to  retain  or  to  discover  a  belief 
in  God  without  first  asking  itself  whether  it  is  being  tricked  by  con- 
siderations of  social  utility,  and  because  the  natural  intelligence  of  the 
French  people,  averse  as  it  is  to  all  mental  slovenliness  and  superficial 
cleverness,  keeps  them  from  remaining  in  a  state  of  complacent  satis- 
faction, suspended  half-way  between  faith  and  incredulity.  France,  in- 
deed, has  produced  a  peculiarly  national  type  of  mysticism,  which  has 
always  been  more  exacting  than  any  other,  since  it  has  never  ceased  to 
be  on  its  guard  against  the  hysteria  of  the  flesh  and  the  visions  of  an 
exaggerated  sensibility. 

There  is  no  human  excellence  of  which  this  people — with  the  mixed 
blood  of  all  Europe  in  its  veins — has  not  shown  itself  to  be  capable,  or, 
at  least,  of  becoming  so.  But,  except  in  certain  outstanding  instances, 
such,  for  example,  as  literature,  fashion,  and  the  arts  of  the  kitchen, 
it  has  rarely  tried  to  assert  itself.  Too  often  have  Frenchmen  been 
satisfied  with  the  mediocre,  or  rather  with  a  facile  and  careless  achieve- 
ment. Every  now  and  then,  in  a  sudden  burst  of  activity,  they  have 
realized  that  some  particular  department  of  human  endeavour  was 
important  and  glorious,  and  that  it  was  intolerable  that  they  should 
be  contented  to  occupy  a  back  place  among  its  practitioners.  When 
that  has  happened,  suddenly,  with  a  promptness  which  their  rivals 
have  found  disconcerting,  they  have  forced  their  way  to  the  front, 
amazed  to  find  pre-eminence,  after  all,  so  simple  a  matter.  For  instance, 
after  long  remaining  satisfied  to  be  a  country  well  in  the  wake  of  its 
neighbours,  in  which  an  occasional  painter  of  fine,  if  rather  academic, 
inspiration  broke  through  the  tradition  of  an  easy  pictorial  grace, 
France  all  at  once  decided  to  show  the  world  what  a  genuine  national 
school  might  achieve,  with  the  result  that,  to  the  amazement  of  all,  she 
has  produced  most  of  the  first-rate  painters  of  Europe  for  over  a 
century.  Without  any  apparent  difficulty,  painting  has  become  a  pe- 
culiarly French  art,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  Frenchman  is 


620  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

still,  of  all  Europeans,  the  least  susceptible  to  colour.  Similarly,  during 
the  last  thirty  years,  she  has  grown  sick  of  occupying  an  inferior  place 
in  the  world  of  music.  Without  even  having  the  time  to  teach  her  own 
people  to  sing  or  her  village  bands  to  play  in  tune,  she  is  now  well 
on  the  way  to  claim  a  monopoly  in  the  contemporary  field. 

It  is,  therefore,  as  well  for  a  man  to  be  on  his  guard  in  describing  and 
summing  up  the  French  nation,  or  in  foretelling  its  future.  A  good 
rule,  before  committing  himself  to  any  statement,  would  be  to  realize 
that,  in  her  case,  a  number  of  contradictory  formulas  are  simulta- 
neously true.  In  matters  relating  to  the  past,  contradictions  have  a  way 
of  seeming  natural  or  of  escaping  attention  altogether.  No  one,  for 
instance,  finds  it  difficult  to  accept  the  fact  that  this  nation  of  peasants, 
in  whose  veins  runs  the  blood  of  a  stocky  mountain  ancestry,  should 
have  given  birth  to  a  proud  aristocracy  and  been  the  one  country  in 
the  world  where  life  for  a  privileged  few  reached  its  highest  expression 
of  subtlety  and  elegance;  nor  yet  that  a  race  given,  above  all  others, 
to  a  close  domesticity  should  have  carried  to  perfection  the  arts  of 
social  intercourse,  of  conversation,  and  of  fine  manners.  No  one  is 
surprised  that  these  small-holders  and  careful  tradesmen  with  a  repu- 
tation for  miserliness  should,  ever  since  the  Middle  Ages,  have  coun- 
tenanced and  financed  so  many  works  of  mere  magnificence  that  their 
country  can  show  thousands  of  grandiose  cities  and  luxurious  buildings, 
a  few  dozen  of  which  would  have  satisfied  any  of  its  neighbours.  No 
one  is  surprised  when  it  learns  that  this  nation  of  doubters  and 
mockers  built  the  cathedrals  and  organized  the  Crusades;  that  these 
confirmed  stay-at-homes  and  fastidious  sensualists  have  waged  so 
many  wars  merely  to  please  a  king  or  an  emperor;  that  the  inventors 
of  patriotism,  the  cry  of  "Vive  la  Nation!"  and  the  mania  of  Monsieur 
Chauvin  could  also  declare  themselves,  almost  in  the  same  breath,  to  be 
the  champions  of  Universal  Peace  and  the  International  Republic; 
that  a  people  so  pleased  with  itself  and  so  completely  absorbed  in  its 
own  affairs  could  more  than  once  have  set  itself  to  preach  a  gospel 
through  the  length  and  breadth  of  Europe. 

Preach  a  gospel?  Yes,  the  worst  of  it  has  always  been  that,  with  their 
fatal  gift  for  turning  the  moment  to  account,  they  have  ever  been  too 


JULES   ROMAINS  621 

ready  to  begin  the  old  game  over  again.  It  took  them,  in  1914,  not 
longer  than  a  week  to  convince  themselves  that  if  History  was  calling 
them  to  arms,  it  was  as  the  result  of  no  sinister  concatenation  of  mis- 
haps and  misunderstandings,  no  mere  interplay  of  the  Forces  of  Eco- 
nomics and  the  Influences  of  the  Powers  that  Be.  It  did  not  take  them 
six  days  to  persuade  themselves  that  the  bugles  were  blowing  to  the 
last  great  battle  for  Liberty,  Justice,  and  Civilization.  The  voice  of 
History,  they  decided,  was  summoning  them  to  take  a  part  in  the 
supreme  struggle,  begun  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  earlier,  but  again 
and  again  interrupted  and  postponed,  of  Democracy  against  Abso- 
lutism, to  join  in  the  marshalling  of  the  Peoples  against  the  Kings  and 
the  Emperors.  The  object  to  be  attained  was  not  so  much  the  defeat 
of  the  Germans  and  the  Austrians  as  the  striking  of  the  fetters  from 
their  limbs.  Even  at  the  meetings  and  in  the  papers  of  the  revolutionary 
Left,  now  that  the  cry  of  History  had  sounded,  all  references  to  impe- 
rialist guilt,  to  the  joint  conspiracy  of  the  capitalist  governments,  to 
the  indifference  which  good  working-class  men  should  show  to  the 
criminal  call  of  patriotism,  were  soon  seen  to  be  out  of  fashion.  All 
these  over-recent  cries  of  an  academic  ideology  writhed  like  strips  of 
tinfoil  in  a  furnace  and  vanished,  touching  the  flames  with  a  faint  and 
fugitive  discoloration.  No  longer  was  it  a  question  of  the  class  war,  of 
Socialism,  of  conflicting  theories,  but  only  of  a  Crusade,  of  the  freeing 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre. 

Eastwards,  welded  to  the  land  of  France,  its  spear-head,  its  terraced 
watch-tower  on  the  Ocean  fringe,  lay  the  Continent.  Europe,  lean  and 
bony,  rich  and  turbulent,  close-knit  yet  divided,  one  but  never  united, 
a  place  of  Kings,  of  Emperors,  and  of  Peoples.  Neither  the  Kings,  the 
Emperors,  nor  the  Peoples  knew  really  why  they  set  such  store  on 
battle,  nor  for  what  end  they  fought.  None  of  them  had  ever  clearly 
viewed  the  miracle  of  this  continent,  nor  stopped  deeply  to  consider  the 
more  fragile  miracle  that  had  determined  its  position  in  the  world. 
This  Europe,  their  Europe,  which  had  become  the  mother  and  the 
teacher  of  all  the  countries  of  the  earth,  the  source  of  all  thought,  of 
all  invention,  the  guardian  of  all  the  high  secrets  of  mankind,  was  less 
precious  to  them  now  than  was  a  flag,  a  national  song,  an  accident  of 


622  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

language,  a  frontier  line,  the  name  of  a  battle  to  be  graven  on  a  stone, 
a  deposit  of  phosphates,  the  comparative  statistics  of  ocean  tonnage,  or 
the  pleasure  of  humiliating  a  neighbour. 

'  And  that  is  why,  on  the  ist  of  August,  at  half  past  four  in  the  after- 
noon, Jean  Jerphanion,  a  man  sprung  from  the  ancient  stock  of  France, 
and  one  among  the  many  million  inhabitants  of  Europe,  standing  with 
his  young  wife  beside  his  uncle  Crouziols,  heard  the  bell  of  Saint- Julien 
Chapteuil,  a  canton  similar  to  a  hundred  others,  sounding  for  the 
peasants  of  this  age-old  land  the  tocsin  cry  of  "Mobilize!" 


How  Verdun  Managed  to  Hold  Out 

FROM    "MEN    OF    GOOD    WILL"    BY 

JULES  ROMAINS 


On  leaving  the  boulevards,  they  wandered  down  to  the  quays  beside 
the  Seine  and,  as  pilgrims  might,  moved  slowly  along  the  left  bank 
towards  Notre-Dame.  Jerphanion  thus  found  himself  on  his  direct 
road  home. 

"Look  here,"  he  said  to  Jallez,  "if  you're  free  this  evening,  why  not 
come  and  dine  with  us?  Odette's  made  no  preparations,  but  that 
doesn't  matter.  I'll  buy  something  on  the  way.  Odette'll  be  delighted 
to  see  you.  She  wanted  to  come  with  me  to  our  appointment.  It  was 
I  who  asked  her  to  let  me  meet  you  alone.  I  felt  sure  that  we  should 
talk  frankly  about  all  our  concerns.  As  you  know,  she  is  very  intelli- 
gent. There's  nothing  she  can't  understand,  and  in  fact  I  never  hide 
anything  from  her.  But  there  are  certain  harshnesses  of  judgment, 
certain  bitternesses,  certain  extremes  of  suffering,  that  I  soft-pedal 
when  I  am  with  her,  because  they  would  rouse  in  her  such  a  terror 
of  despair  that  she  would  cry  suddenly  aloud:  'You  mustn't  go  back!' ': 

Jallez  was  caught  in  a  quick  wave  of  emotion  at  the  hint  of  tragedy 
which  his  friend's  last  words  had  disclosed. 

"Of  course  I'll  come,"  he  said.  "I  have  such  happy  memories  of 
hours  spent  with  you  two  when — there  still  seemed  a  hope  of  happi- 
ness for  the  world.  We've  spoken  so  much  about  the  war  that  perhaps 
we  can  turn  the  conversation  to  other  subjects  before  Odette,  eh?" 

"If  you  like  .  .  .  we'll  see.  ...  If  you've  anything  in  your  mind  that 
might  offer  a  little  comfort  for  the  future,  anything  that  might  bring 
the  prospect  of  peace  a  little  nearer  ...  it  would  be  very  welcome." 

"I'll  do  my  best,  old  man." 

623 


624  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"But  until  we  get  there,  don't  put  any  constraint  on  yourself.  Ask 
me  anything  you  still  want  to  know." 

Jallez  spoke  with  considerable  hesitation: 

"No  ...  I  feel  that  I'm  raking  things  up  unnecessarily  .  .  .  things 
that  you'd  much  rather  forget  while  you're  here." 

"Not  at  all.  .  .  .  Just  the  reverse,  in  fact.  I  like  getting  it  off  my  chest. 
During  all  this  hideous  experience  I've  become  more  than  ever  con- 
vinced that  Epictetus,  Marcus  Aurelius  .  .  .  Pascal  .  .  .  were  right. 
There's  only  one  really  heroic  remedy  for  an  excess  of  misery:  to  think 
the  misery  through  honestly  to  the  end.  I  told  myself  that  I  would  keep 
a  journal,  in  imitation  of  the  philosopher  Emperor;  but  I  lacked  the 
strength  of  character.  A  conversation  such  as  we've  just  had  takes  its 
place.  Besides,  I've  never  forgotten  what  you  once  said  on  the  subject 
of  'bearing  witness.'  Do  you  remember?  It  was  on  the  day  of  our  first 
walk  together,  our  very  first,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  rue  Claude- 
Bernard  and  the  avenue  des  Gobelins.  .  .  .  The  Road  to  Etnmaus.  .  .  . 
The  light  striking  the  top  of  a  wall.  .  .  .  Doesn't  it  all  come  back  ?  .  .  . 
What  beauty  we  knew  then!  How  lovely  life  could  be!  ...  And  look 
at  us  now,  creatures  of  shreds  and  patches!  .  .  .  Selfishly  speaking,  the 
greatest  comfort  I  could  have  found  in  this  war  would  have  been  to 
have  you  beside  me  in  the  trenches,  as  I  have  had  good  old  Fabre  .  .  . 
so  that  we  might  have  'borne  witness'  together  ...  so  that,  at  certain 
moments,  I  might  have  been  able  to  say:  'Do  you  see  this?  .  .  .  Did 
you  see  that?  .  .  .'  But  fate  ruled  otherwise.  ...  It  is  terribly  important, 
though,  for  me  to  be  able,  in  spite  of  everything,  to  make  you  a  wit- 
ness ...  to  think  all  these  things  with  you  beside  me.  .  .  .  One  of  the 
Disciples  at  Emmaus  was  absent  from  the  room  when  the  Figure 
appeared.  His  comrade,  who  witnessed  all,  could  not  rest  until  he  had 
explained  what  he  had  seen,  until  he  had  made  the  moment  'live  again' 
for  him.  That  was  what  he  was  after — to  make  the  moment  live  again 
for  his  friend.  ...  So  please  go  on;  ask  away." 

His  face  took  on  the  expression  of  a  man  setting  himself  to  listen 
intently.  At  the  same  time,  in  an  access  of  melting  tenderness,  his  eyes 
took  in  the  magnificent  pageant  of  the  river,  closed  at  its  far  end  by 
the  mass  of  Notre-Dame. 


JULES   ROMAINS  625 

"You've  told  me  much  that  I  find  thrilling,"  said  Jallez  in  measured 
tones;  "but  there  is  a  good  deal  that  still  remains  obscure.  I  don't  yet 
understand  the  nature  of  that  strength  which  can  support  millions  of 
men  in  the  life  of  an  endless  purgatory.  You  have  mentioned  the  trivial 
aids,  the  little  thoughts  that  buoy  them  up.  .  .  .  But  are  they  really 
enough  to  account  for  what  is  happening?  These  men  of  yours  are 
such  as  we  all  have  known:  men  cradled,  more  or  less,  by  civilization. 
It  was  not  idealism  that  swept  them  along.  .  .  .  Enthusiasm  ?  For  a  few 
days,  perhaps,  but  not  for  years.  How  does  it  come  about  that  these 
coddled,  these  matter-of-fact  homunculi  can  endure  so  much,  and 
over  such  long  periods?" 

"The  first  step  was  what  counted.  Once  you Ve  begun  a  thing,  it 
exercises  a  terrible  authority  over  you.  That  is  one  of  the  laws  of  exist- 
ence about  which  I  have  fewest  doubts.  But  if  one's  honest  with  oneself, 
one's  got  to  admit  that  there  is  yet  another  authority  which  governs 
everything  else.  One's  always  realizing  that  one  has  somehow  avoided 
mentioning  it.  Why?  .  .  .  Because  it's  axiomatic?  .  .  .  Because  one's 
shy  about  putting  it  into  words?  .  .  .  Even  when  one  does  take  it  into 
account  one  disguises  it  in  borrowed  plumage  that  gives  it  an  air  more 
flattering  to  self-pride:  one  calls  it  duty,  patriotism,  and  so  forth.  .  .  . 
Its  true  name  is  something  much  cruder :  nothing  more  or  less  than  the 
pressure  of  society.  Society  today  has  willed  that  men  should  suffer  and 
die  on  the  battlefield.  Well  then,  they  just  suffer  and  die.  That's  all 
there  is  to  it.  At  other  periods  it  has  willed  other  things,  and  men  have 
acted  accordingly.  The  only  disconcerting  feature  about  what  is  hap- 
pening now  is  this:  that  for  a  long  time  now  men  have  been  told  that 
society  no  longer  had  this  mystic  power  over  them;  that  they  had  cer- 
tain absolute  rights  as  individuals;  that  no  one  could  any  longer  de- 
mand of  them  anything  that  was  not  wholly  reasonable  from  the  point 
of  view  of  their  own  personal  existence.  Now,  from  such  a  point  of 
view,  it  does  seem  unreasonable  that  a  man  should  be  asked  to  give 
his  life — in  other  words,  his  all — just  to  defend  that  part  of  the  collec- 
tive interest,  often  a  very  small  part,  which  concerns  him  as  an  indi- 
vidual. Let  him  do  it  if  he  is  moved  to  do  it  of  his  own  free  will,  but 
no  one  can  'reasonably'  demand  it  of  him.  Well,  the  only  explanation 


626  READING   I'VE  LIKED 

to  account  for  what  we  are  seeing  is  that  mankind  has  not  yet  learned 
to  take  this  new  theory  at  its  face  value.  Certainly  no  one  has  been 
sufficiently  assured  to  claim  immunity  as  a  right." 

"Perhaps  you're  right.  What  seems  so  extraordinary  to  me  is  that 
this  pressure  should  at  all  times  be  strong  enough  to  overcome  even 
physical  fear." 

"It  might  be  truer  to  say  that  man's  fear  of  society  is  still  stronger 
than  his  fear  of  shells." 

"I  suppose  that's  it.  .  .  .  The  soldier  says  to  himself:  If  I  refuse  to 
go  forward,  if  I  run  away,  I  shall  be  shot.'  " 

"That's  not  it  exactly,  either.  .  .  .  Some  do  have  to  think  something 
like  that;  but  for  most  of  them  such  deliberate  argument  is  unneces- 
sary. Their  fear  of  society  is  not  a  physical  fear.  It  concerns  the  spirit 
rather  than  the  body.  Man  is  so  made  that  usually  fear  for  his  body  is 
less  strong  than  fear  that  touches  his  spirit." 

"Even  to  the  extent  of  controlling  his  immediate  reactions?  .  .  .  You 
start  going  over  the  top  .  .  .  shells  are  bursting  all  around  .  .  .  you  find 
yourself  in  a  machine-gun's  field  of  fire.  .  .  ." 

"The  point  is  that  the  mystical,  the  spiritual,  fear  of  society  can  take 
forms  which  themselves  produce  immediate  response.  On  one  side  of 
the  balance  is  the  fear  of  shells;  on  the  other  the  fear  of  what  vour 
pals,  what  your  officer,  what  your  men,  if  you  happen  to  be  an  officer, 
will  think.  In  some  ways  it  needs  more  courage  to  make  the  average 
man  face  being  dubbed  a  coward  than  to  get  him  to  stand  up  to  shell- 
fire." 

They  spoke  of  fear.  Jerphanion  maintained  that  at  the  front  everyone 
was  afraid,  just  as  everyone  is  cold  when  it  freezes,  the  only  difference 
in  the  way  fear  manifested  itself  being  due  to  variations  in  tempera- 
ment. The  constant  presence  of  danger  did,  of  course,  harden  men  to  a 
certain  degree  of  insensitiveness,  but  not  always.  Often,  indeed,  it-  had 
just  the  opposite  effect,  screwed  the  nerves  up  to  an  abnormal  pitch  of 
exasperation,  giving  an  added  horror  to  anticipation. 

"And  then,  you  see,  one  never  entirely  gets  rid  of  the  fear  one  has 
had  on  previous  occasions.  The  thought  of  the  advance  in  which  I  was 
wounded  last  year  still  terrifies  me.  If  I  had  to  go  over  the  top  again, 
I  should  be  far  more  frightened  than  I  was  the  first  time.  Fear,  too,  has 


JULES   ROMAINS  627 

its  periods;  it  goes  in  waves.  There  are  days  when  one  trembles  all 
over,  when  one  just  can't  control  one's  limbs,  and  other  days  when  one 
is  almost  indifferent.  Why  it's  impossible  to  say.  I've  found  out  that 
one  of  the  best  cures  for  fear  is  to  say  to  oneself  that  it's  completely 
useless  (the  same  holds  true  of  courage).  One  goes  on  saying  to  oneself: 
'Don't  be  a  fool.  Is  your  stomach  in  your  boots?  Are  you  all  strung 
up?  Do  your  teeth  want  to  chatter?  Well,  that  won't  make  the  slight- 
est difference  to  the  trajectory  of  the  next  shell  or  the  path  of  the  next 
bullets.  It's  merely  so  much  fatigue  the  more.'  On  such  occasions  one 
tries  to  behave  as  though  it  were  simply  a  question  of  going  out  in  the 
rain,  harmless,  ordinary  rain.  It  falls  in  big,  heavy  drops,  but  one  just 
thinks  of  something  else,  like  a  cop  huddled  up  in  his  cloak  at  a  street- 
crossing.  .  .  .  See  the  kind  of  thing  I  mean?  ...  Or  else  one  tries  to 
imagine  that  one  is  a  pedestrian  stranded  in  a  swirl  of  cars  in  the 
middle  of  the  Place  de  la  Concorde.  Each  of  them,  dashing  at  full 
speed  across  the  square,  is  more  than  capable  of  killing  a  man;  and 
since  they  are  all  converging  from  different  directions,  it  seems  that 
before  five  minutes  are  out,  one  must  crush  the  poor  wayfarer.  .  .  . 
And  yet,  if  you're  a  hardened  Parisian,  you  don't  tremble,  your  teeth 
don't  chatter.  .  .  .  You  realize  the  guile  of  my  system?  One  just  pre- 
tends to  believe  that  each  shell  will  miss  one  as  each  car  misses  one, 
and  that  one  can  be  killed  only  by  the  particular  projectile  loosed  with 
that  deliberate  object  by  some  mysterious  power.  .  .  .  You  remember 
Napoleon's  famous  phrase  about  the  bullet  that  hadn't  yet  been  cast? 
It's  not  much  of  a  self-deception,  but  it  works.  Little  things  like  that 
are  all  one  has  left  in  such  situations.  .  .  .  I'm  not  sure,  if  it  comes  to 
that,  that  it  is  so  little.  It's  just  fatalism  in  a  new  dress.  'I've  got  a  feel- 
ing that  destiny  has  not  willed  that  I  should  die  today.  If  it  has,  then 
there's  nothing  I  can  do  about  it,  so  why  worry?'  When  one's  lived 
some  time  under  the  constant  threat  of  danger,  one  begins  to  realize 
that  fatalism  is  a  necessary  drug,  just  as  alcohol  is  a  necessary  stimulant 
to  a  man  on  an  arctic  expedition.  One  of  the  secret  virtues  of  fatalism 
is  that  it  implies,  against  one's  better  judgment,  a  belief  in  the  super- 
natural. 'If  destiny  has  so  far  taken  charge  of  me  as  to  fix  the  moment 
of  my  death,  it's  not  likely  that  it's  going  to  leave  me  in  the  lurch 
afterwards.  It  will  take  me  through  to  another  stage.  The  adventure 


628  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

isn't  finished  yet.'  Fundamentally  all  that  man  asks  is  that  the  adven- 
ture should  not  be  ended.  He  doesn't  want  to  know  what  happens  next; 
he's  perfectly  willing  to  let  the  future  remain  a  mystery.  So  long  as  the 
adventure  is  not  finished,  he  can  bear  anything.  The  shells  hurtling 
down  on  the  trench,  the  advancing  wave  of  which  he  forms  a  part, 
the  storm  of  77's  and  machine-gun  bullets  which  will  probably  knock 
him  over  two  yards  farther  on  and  leave  him  with  his  head  smashed 
to  pulp  near  that  little  tree — all  these  things  become  merely  an  epi- 
sode. .  .  .  You've  no  idea,  my  dear  Jallez,  of  the  depths  of  inherited 
belief  that  are  stirred  by  such  tornadoes  of  death." 

"Yes,  I  have,  and  the  thought  moves  me  deeply."  (Far  ahead,  but 
nearer  now  than  it  had  been,  rose  Notre-Dame,  with  its  gargoyles  and 
its  dreaming  spires.) 

"What  I  want  to  make  you  realize  is  the  way  that  all  these  ideas 
swarm  and  jostle  and  come  and  go,  quite  arbitrarily,  in  a  man's  mind. 
That's  why  all  formulas  that  try  to  generalize  our  reactions  to  life  in 
the  front  line  are  false.  There  may  be  some  men  gifted  with  an  abnor- 
mal strength  of  mind,  whose  attitude  never  varies  .  .  .  but  they  can't  be 
many.  ...  I  can  look  back  now,  for  instance,  and  see  myself  as  I  was 
on  the  second  of  those  foodless  days  in  the  valley  of  Haudromont, 
about  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning.  A  good  many  77's  were  falling. 
Heavy  shrapnel  was  bursting  high  up  between  our  trenches  and  die 
crest  to  our  rear,  which  meant  that  the  bullets  had  a  good  chance  of 
coming  straight  down  into  what  shelter  we  had.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
I  had  one  killed  and  four  wounded  that  morning.  But  my  own  mood 
was  one  of  almost  complete  resignation.  I  could  hear  the  snapping  of 
the  branches,  the  burst  of  shells  in  the  damp  earth.  It  was  as  though  I 
were  standing  aside  from  my  own  destiny.  What  might  happen  to  me 
seemed  no  longer  to  have  any  significance.  I  didn't  even  have  to  take 
refuge  behind  my  little  tricks  of  mental  comfort.  My  attitude  was 
something  that  had  been  produced  without  any  conscious  exercise  of 
my  will.  'This  is  marvellous,'  I  said  to  myself;  'this  is  how  a  man  ought 
to  feel.  Let's  hope  it  continues.'  And  then,  two  hours  later,  when,  if 
anything,  the  shelling  was  rather  less  intense,  I  found  myself  in  a 
mood  of  hysterical  and  undisciplined  excitement.  But  note  this:  that 
these  ups  and  downs  of  the  spirit  can  often  have  very  awkward  se- 


JULES  ROMAINS  629 

quels.  A  man  may  be  perfectly  impotent  in  the  face  of  shell-fire;  still, 
the  care  or  the  speed  with  which  he  takes  certain  precautions  may  re- 
sult in  his  being  killed  within  the  next  three  minutes,  or  finding  him- 
self still  alive  at  the  day's  end.  During  those  periods  of  superb  indif- 
ference he  may  scorn  to  crouch  or  lie  flat,  may  carelessly  show  his  head 
above  the  parapet.  When  he  becomes  excited,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
may  get  himself  killed  as  the  result  of  a  clumsy  excess  of  precautions, 
such  as  changing  his  position  every  few  minutes,  and  the  like.  But  the 
body  is  wiser  than  the  mind.  It  draws  the  necessary  inferences,  adjusts 
the  balance,  looks  after  its  own  safety.  The  man  of  calm  resignation 
and  the  hysterical  worrier,  taking  the  lead  successively  in  each  one  of 
us,  perform  almost  precisely  the  same  automatic  movements  of  self- 
preservation." 

They  were  walking  very  slowly.  Every  few  moments  they  stopped, 
the  better  to  pick  out  for  scrutiny  some  particular  idea,  just  as  wood- 
cutters pause  to  choose  one  log  rather  than  another. 

A  little  later,  after  an  effort,  which  clearly  showed  in  the  expression 
of  his  face,  to  assemble  his  ideas,  Jerphanion  said: 

"I've  been  pondering  again  that  question  of  yours.  .  .  .  Yes,  the  great 
operative  influence  is,  I'm  quite  sure,  the  sense  of  social  pressure.  A 
man's  got  to  stay  where  he  is.  He's  caught  like  a  rat  in  a  trap,  in  a 
tangle  of  intersecting  threads — the  fear  of  a  firing  squad,  a  sense  of 
shame,  of  dishonour,  the  moral  impossibility  of  doing  otherwise,  a  sort 
of  mystical  terror — on  all  sides  he  is  hemmed  in.  Naturally,  he  is  free, 
if  he  pleases,  to  be  transported  by  ecstasy,  free  to  declare  that  he  is 
where  he  is  because  he  wants  to  do  his  duty,  because  he  loves  his  coun- 
try. He  is  free  into  the  bargain  to  accept  his  presence  there  as  an  act  of 
will.  .  .  .  And  that  will  may  be  perfectly  sincere.  ...  If  we  were  intent 
on  splitting  hairs,  we  could  prove  easily  enough  that  even  this  free  and 
sincere  will  to  sacrifice  was  something  that  he  would  never  have  come 
by  unaided,  that  it  is  the  product  of  that  silly  nonsense  called  educa- 
tion, or,  in  other  words,  of  society's  most  cunning  trick  to  mould  a 
man  to  its  design.  But  never  mind.  That's  not  what  I  meant.  .  .  .  No. 
. . .  My  point  is  that  man  is  like  any  other  animal :  when  there's  no  alter- 
native, he  gives  in.  Even  the  wild  beasts  give  in  under  such  conditions. 
.  .  .  Men  can  screw  themselves  up  to  resist  or  to  rebel  when  the  au- 


630  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

thority  that  enjoins  obedience  shows  signs  of  weakness.  It  may  be  all 
very  depressing,  but  it's  true.  In  the  old  days  my  'optimism'  wouldn't 
let  me  believe  it.  But  the  war  has  only  too  clearly  shown  me  that  I  was 
wrong.  Where  now  is  man's  vaunted  spirit  of  revolt,  of  'revolution'? 
Isn't  it  obvious  that  all  such  talk  was  never  anything  but  a  bad  joke? 
The  'governed'  make  revolutions  not  when  the  governors  most  abuse 
their  privileges,  but  when,  having  been  guilty  of  abuses — not,  perhaps, 
very  grave  abuses — they  lack  the  courage  to  abide  by  their  actions.  .  .  . 
As  my  friend  Griollet  said,  just  think  of  the  revolutionary  fervour  dis- 
played by  men  like  Pataud,  Puget,  Merrheim,  and  all  the  working- 
class  leaders  when  they  risked  nothing.  .  .  .  Are  they  quite  so  keen 
now?  Show  me  a  single  factory  hand  conscripted  on  war  work,  no 
matter  how  militant  he  was  in  days  gone  by,  who  refuses  to  turn  out 
shells  or  agitates  for  a  munition  strike  among  his  pals  to  stop  the 
slaughter  of  the  proletariat.  ...  If  the  governments  of  the  world  don't 
deduce  from  what's  happening  certain  philosophic  and  cynically  Machi- 
avellian truths  for  use  in  the  post-war  period,  that'll  only  be  because 
they  are  incapable  of  digesting  any  lesson  of  experience.  In  short,  man 
is  an  animal  who  does  what  he  is  made  to  do  very  much  more  readilv 
than  one  is  inclined  to  believe.  But  once  he  has  realized  that,  whatever 
happens,  he  has  got  to  do  what  he  is  told,  he  likes  nothing  so  much 
as  to  believe  that  the  initial  order  came  from  himself.  .  .  ." 

Jerphanion  paused  a  moment,  then  continued: 

"To  be  fair,  one  must  recognize  that,  in  a  sense,  it  does.  No  matter 
how  strong  or  how  cunning  the  collective  will  may  be,  it  could  not 
compel,  and  continue  to  compel,  the  individual  to  actions  that  were  at 
complete  variance  with  his  nature.  One  must  always  reckon,  for  in- 
stance, with  the  love  of  destruction,  which  is  deeply  rooted  in  human- 
ity. Man  loves  to  demolish  what  he  has  himself  created.  Don't  mothers 
say:  'Children  are  so  destructive'?  Think  of  the  rows  we  used  to  make 
over  the  food  at  college.  Most  of  us  were  only  too  delighted  to  discover 
once  or  twice  a  term  that  the  stew  was  uneatable,  because  it  gave  us 
an  excuse  for  throwing  our  plates  on  the  ground  and  smashing  them. 
Men  are  always  ready  to  revenge  themselves  on  the  increasing  com- 
plexity of  material  civilization.  The  ordered  life  of  society  forces  us  to 
give  too  much  time  to  the  making  of  too  many  things,  and  compels  us 


JULES  ROMAINS  631 

to  an  over-nice  exercise  of  care  in  using  them.  Bang,  bang,  bang,  go 
the  guns— partly  to  give  release  to  the  nerves  of  men  who  have  heard 
nothing  since  childhood  but  'Don't  touch  that!'  'Don't  upset  that!' 
'Don't  break  that!'  .  .  .  Then  there's  an  emotion  of  a  totally  different 
kind  to  reckon  with — humanity's  liking  for  sacrifice.  I'm  convinced 
that  it  exists,  that  it  is  no  mere  fantasy  of  a  morbid  literary  taste.  It's 
the  only  thing  that  can  explain  the  success,  the  fanatical  success,  that 
cruel  religions  have  always  had.  No  matter  how  ferocious  the  inven- 
tions of  their  leaders,  whether  lay  or  priestly,  there  has  never  been  any 
lack  of  willing  victims.  No  master  has  ever  succeeded  in  getting  men 
to  accept  such  things  against  their  wishes.  The  most  dearly  loved  lead- 
ers have  always  been  the  most  bloodthirsty.  There  has  never  ceased  to 
be  a  deep  complicity  between  martyr  and  executioner.  Certain  German 
theorists— you  know  more  about  these  things  than  I  do— have  assumed 
a  connexion  between  this  taste  for  sacrifice  and  sexual  perversion.  That 
is  being  unnecessarily  ingenious.  I  have  studied  my  own  reactions  and 
those  of  others  in  the  course  of  this  war.  My  impression  is  that,  unless 
they  are  under  the  strict  control  of  reason,  men  are  an  easy  prey  to  the 
attraction,  the  lure,  of  great  emotional  thrills.  For  anyone  in  the  prime 
of  life  there  is  no  thrill  comparable  to  the  horror  of  being  tortured  and 
killed.  .  .  .  The  anticipation  of  some  such  thrill  does,  of  course,  explain 
most  perversions  and  the  delight  of  the  sexual  act  in  general.  And, 
apropos  of  sex,  you  must  always  remember  that  among  the  influences 
that  conspire  to  keep  the  soldier  in  the  trenches,  exposed  to  constant 
shell-fire,  sex  is  by  no  means  the  least.  .  .  ." 

"Hm!"  interrupted  Jallez.  "Isn't  that  a  bit  far-fetched?   .  .  .  You 
can't  have  much  time  to  think  about  sex,  surely?" 

"In  the  crude,  carnal  sense,  no — except  when  we  are  in  quiet  rest- 
billets.  But  the  thought  of  women  never  leaves  us.  I'm  not  talking  of 
the  girls  in  pink  undies  cut  out  of  the  Vie  Parisienne  and  pinned  up 
in  every  hut  and  every  dug-out  .  .  .  though  they  are  not  without  their 
significance.  I'm  talking  of  the  idea  that  women  exist,  'way  back,  out 
of  the  war  zone.  .  .  ." 
"Whom  it's  up  to  you  to  defend?" 

"Well,  yes,  if  you  like  to  put  it  that  way,  but  it's  not  quite  that,  not 
so  sentimental  as  that.  .  .  .  What  I  mean  is  that  we're  always  conscious 


632  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

of  them  standing,  as  it  were,  on  the  walls  of  some  ancient  fortified  city, 
watching  and  criticizing.  .  .  ." 

"Isn't  that  all  a  bit  literary?  Aren't  you  rather  modulating  on  a  tradi- 
tional theme?" 

"No.  When  the  common  or  garden  poilu  dreams  of  getting  a  soft 
job,  one  argument  above  all  others  makes  him  pause,  especially  if  he 
happens  to  be  young.  .  .  .  I've  used  it  myself,  more  shame  to  me,  in 
talking  to  country  lads;  and  that  is:  'What'll  the  girls  at  home  say? 
They'll  never  look  at  you  again.'  Carry  that  same  motive  a  little  fur- 
ther, think  of  it  as  animating  the  man  going  over  the  top  with  his  rifle 
at  the  trail.  'The  women  are  watching,'  he  says  to  himself;  'watching 
to  see  whether  I'm  making  as  good  a  showing  as  the  rest  .  .  .  watch- 
ing to  see  whether  I  turn  tail  .  .  .  whether  I'm  going  to  sneak  into  a 
shell-hole  while  the  others  go  forward.'  And  if  that  constant  obsession 
is  not  enough,  there  are  always  the  war  'godmothers'— that  admirable 
invention  of  the  people  at  home  for  keeping  the  soldier  in  a  constant 
state  of  slightly  amorous  excitation  which,  it  is  supposed,  will  be  ulti- 
mately translated  into  patriotic  ardour.  Think  of  all  those  'godmothers' 
going  to  bed  with  their  proteges  when  they're  on  leave,  and  kissing 
them  good-bye  at  the  end  of  it,  with  a  'Be  brave,  darling,'  which  merely 
means:  'Do  the  sensible  thing  and  get  yourself  killed.  .  .  .'  How  thrill- 
ing it  must  be  for  all  these  women,  many  of  them  no  longer  young, 
to  have  such  interludes  of  love  with  fresh,  virile  boys,  always  with  the 
thought  at  the  back  of  their  minds  that  the  lover  is  going  from  their 
arms  straight  to  death.  .  .  .  The  purely  sensual  delight  of  the  female 
insect.  Sweep  away  all  women— women  in  the  narrow  sense  of  the 
word— from  the  back  areas;  leave  no  one  there  but  mothers,  old  men, 
and  children   (to  make  use  of  the  categories  beloved  of  the  official 
mind),  and  I  don't  mind  betting  that  the  war  would  soon  be  over." 

"It's  certainly  worth  thinking  about,"  said  Jallez.  "What  it  alt  comes 
to  is  that  war  touches  springs  that  lie  deep  at  the  heart  of  humanity." 

"Of  course  it  does.  In  a  way  that's  all  it  does.  But  even  thac's  not  the 
only  thing  I'm  after.  The  frightful  thing  about  war  is  that,  as  a  sub- 
ject, it's  inexhaustible.  One's  eye  is  always  being  caught  by  some  new 
aspect  of  the  business.  My  real  point  is  this:  that  for  the  men  in  the 
trenches— for  all  of  them,  that   is,  who  are  above  the  purely  animal 


JULES   ROMAINS  633 

level,  for  whom,  as  you  must  see  for  yourself,  it  is  most  necessary  to 
find  an  explanation — the  idea  that  they  must  stay  where  they  are  and 
get  on  with  their  job  because  there  is  no  real  alternative  is  not  enough 
to  keep  them  in  spirits,  to  prevent  their  moral  collapse.  Each  one  of 
them  has  got  to  find  some  effective  suggestion  that  will  touch  him  per- 
sonally, some  thought,  some  fixed  idea,  the  secret  of  which  is  known 
to  him  alone,  the  essence  of  which  he  can  absorb  drop  by  drop.  Some- 
times he  has  several  among  which  he  can  take  his  choice.  No  sooner 
does  one  begin  to  lose  its  potency  than  he  can  change  over  to  others. 
Take  my  own  case,  for  instance.  For  quite  a  while  I  managed  very 
comfortably  on  the  idea  that  I  was  the  kind  of  man  who  could  'rise 
superior  to  circumstances' — the  circumstances  in  question  being  partly 
composed  of  mental  distress,  partly  of  bodily  discomfort.  'I'd  like,'  said 
I,  'to  see  those  circumstances  to  which  I  could  not  rise  superior!'  While 
shrapnel  pattered  round  me  (it  was  at  the  time  when  a  good  deal  of 
shrapnel  was  being  used),  I  would  recite  to  myself  like  a  sort  of  magic 
formula,  those  terrific  lines  of  Horace: 

Si  jractus  illabatur  orbis 
Impavidum  ferient  ruince.  .  .  . 

It  really  is  a  magic  formula.  And  then,  one  day,  it  no  longer  worked. 
My  mental  distress  became  too  great,  my  fear  became  too  great,  and 
I  just  wanted  to  burst  into  tears  and  cry  'Mamma!'  like  a  little  boy. 
.  .  .  Then  take  the  young  second  lieutenant  fresh  from  Saint-Cyr,  all 
innocence  and  splendid  bravery,  who  says  to  himself:  'If  France  is  con- 
quered, life  will  be  impossible.  I  shall  feel  personally  dishonoured.  Far 
rather  would  I  have  my  name  on  a  headstone  with  the  words:  "Died 
on  the  field  of  honour,"  than  live  on  disgraced.'  Another  example  is 
that  of  the  reservist  with  a  taste  for  serious  reading  and  an  equipment 
of  large-hearted  ideals,  the  kind  of  man  who  says  to  himself:  'This  is 
the  war  that  will  end  war.  We  are  bringing  peace  to  the  whole  world. 
Thanks  to  our  sacrifice,  our  children  will  be  spared  knowledge  of  such 
horrors.'  Standing  next  to  him  in  the  same  trench  will  be  some  fellow 
who  thinks:  'This  is  the  end  of  the  world.  We're  all  in  for  it.  What 
does  it  matter  if  I  get  killed  a  little  sooner  or  a  little  later?'  Another 


634  READING  I'VE   EIKED 

there  may  be  who  believes  in  a  coming  reign  of  justice,  who  is  still 
convinced  that  victory  for  the  democracies  will  mean  freedom  for  the 
oppressed  everywhere  in  the  world,  the  end  of  the  domination  of 
money  and  social  iniquity,  who  would  be  willing  even  to  die  if  only 
he  could  be  sure  that  his  death  would  mean  greater  happiness  for  men 
yet  unborn.  Then  there's  the  sentimentalist,  for  whom  nothing  counts 
but  personal  relationships,  whose  world  is  made  up  of  just  a  few  dear 
friends,  who  argues:  'Most  of  my  pals  are  dead.  If  they  all  go,  what 
is  there  left  to  live  for?'  There's  the  man  whose  wife  left  him  as  soon 
as  he  was  called  up,  and  ran  off  with  someone  else;  who  gets  no  letters 
and  no  parcels;  who  feels  himself  too  old  to  start  life  afresh,  who 
would  just  as  soon  be  dead,  for  whom  the  very  fact  of  danger  is  a  dis- 
traction, because  it  gives  him  the  illusion  that  life  is  still  sweet.  There 
is  the  man  who  exists  in  a  world  of  dreams  and  takes  things  as  they 
come.  'Everything  is  predestined,'  says  he;  'I  always  knew  it.  No  use 
fighting  against  fate.  We  must  just  go  with  the  tide.'  There  is  the  man 
who  has  never  had  a  chance,  who  has  always  felt  himself  to  be  the  vic- 
tim of  injustice  and  insult,  who  has  always  envied  the  good  fortune 
of  others,  who  so  relishes  the  taste  of  equality  bred  of  a  general  misery 
that  he  pays  but  lip  service  to  the  desire  for  peace  with  all  the  bitterness 
that  it  will  bring  for  him  in  its  train.  Close  beside  him  is  another  in 
whom  the  war  has  waked  a  deep-seated  strain  of  pessimism,  who 
thinks  sincerely:  'The  universe  is  a  foul  absurdity.  It  was  always  pretty 
obvious,  but  the  war  has  proved  it  beyond  the  shadow  of  a  doubt.  Why 
cling  to  a  foul  absurdity?'  or:  'Humanity  is  the  work  of  the  Devil,  a 
blot  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  born  for  murder  and  self-slaughter.  So 
much  the  worse  for  humanity  (and  for  me,  who  am  part  of  humanity 
and  so  of  the  whole  putrescent  mess).'  There  is  the  fanatical  Catholic, 
who  thinks:  'This  is  God's  punishment  wrought  on  a  corrupt  and 
faithless  generation.  If  God  has  decided  that  I  too  must  pay  the  penalty, 
even  for  the  faults  of  others,  who  am  I  to  question  His  will?'  There  is 
the  gentle  Catholic  who  carries  tucked  away  in  his  pack  a  tiny  edition 
of  the  Imitation,  who,  when  night  falls,  says  his  prayers  in  his  shell- 
hole,  very  quietly,  so  that  no  one  shall  notice  him,  and  murmurs:  'Let 
me  suffer,  as  You  suffered,  Jesu  mine.  Why  should  I  be  spared,  since 
You  suffered  a  thousand  deaths  hanging  on  Your  cross?   Give  me 


JULES   ROMAINS  635 

strength  that  I  may  be  not  too  unworthy  of  You.'  Finally,  there  is  the 
man" — and  Jerphanion  made  a  gesture  towards  Notre-Dame,  which 
was  now  immediately  opposite  them,  across  the  river,  its  pinnacles  just 
touched  by  the  fading  day — "who  says:  'All  that  matters  to  me  in  this 
world  is  the  language  of  France,  the  cathedrals  of  our  French  country- 
side, the  quays  of  the  Seine,  landscapes  that  can  be  found  nowhere  else 
in  the  world,  a  way  of  life  that  is  unique.  If  all  that  is  to  be  taken 
away,  life  has  no  longer  any  point.  If,  by  dying,  I  can  ensure  that  all 
these  things  will  live  on  after  me,  then  death  is  right  and  proper.  .  .  .' 
Picture  to  yourself  trench  after  trench  filled  with  men  thinking  such 
thoughts,  and  you  will  find  the  answer  to  your  question.  .  .  .  That  is 
why  Verdun  still  stands." 


ROGER  MARTIN   DU   GARD 


COMMENTARY 


If  intelligence  is  the  word  for  Jules  Romains,  integrity  is  the  word 
for  Roger  Martin  du  Gard.  The  two  men  between  them  exemplify 
the  finest  qualities  of  what  was  a  short  while  ago  the  contemporary 
French  novel,  and  those  who  follow  its  course  cannot  risk  ignorance 
of  either.  There  are  many  who  rank  Martin  du  Gard  above  Romains 
and  would,  indeed,  place  him  among  the  three  or  four  greatest  living 
novelists.  However  one  estimates  Martin  du  Gard's  stature,  there 
will  he  few  readers  to  disagree  with  his  own  comment,  made  when, 
in  1937,  the  Swedish  Academy  awarded  him  the  Nobel  Prize.  He 
told  the  members  of  the  Academy  that  he  presumed  they  wished  to 
reward  "an  independent  writer  who  had  escaped  the  fascination  of 
partisan  ideologies,  an  investigator  as  objective  as  is  humanly  pos- 
sible, as  well  as  a  novelist  striving  to  express  the  tragic  quality  of 
individual  lives.,y  This  is  continental  candor,  but  it  is  true. 

There  are  certain  evident  resemblances  between  The  World  of 
the  Thibaults  and  Men  of  Good  Will.  Both  are  lengthy.  Both 
are  in  part  studies  of  prewar  French  society.  Both  are  written  with 
that  calm  but  not  chilly  intellectual  detachment  to  which  apparently 
only  French  novelists  still  possess  the  key.  In  both  the  drama  of 
medical  science  plays  a  large  part. 

But  the  differences  are  acute.  Romains  is  unrolling  a  social  pano- 
rama whose  aim  is  completeness.  Martin  du  Gard  paints  a  picture, 
broad  and  inclusive,  of  a  middle-class  French  family.  Romains  seems 
devoid  of  moral  prejudices  and  so  far  his  work  reveals  no  under- 
lying moral  system.  Martin  du  Gard  is  obviously  affected*  by  the 
values  of  that  same  bourgeois  Catholic  conservatism  whose  roots  he 
exposes  with  such  analytical  patience.  Romains  is  (for  me)  the 
greater  writer,  further  ranging  and,  in  the  best  sense,  more  sophisti- 
cated. He  also  has  at  his  command  a  dazzling  variety  of  techniques, 
to  which  the  more  plodding  Martin  du  Gard  cannot  lay  claim. 
The  head  of  the  Thibault  family  is  Oscar  Thibault,  fanatically 

636 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU   GARD  637 

Catholic,  patriarchal,  intensely  conservative,  a  family  tyrant  minus 
the  Clarence  Day  charm  hut  possessed  of  an  inner  strength  and 
narrow-minded  integrity  which  even  his  pair  of  rebellious  sons  must 
respect.  The  elder  son,  Antoine,  a  doctor,  is  a  man  of  action,  a 
Goethean  type  to  whom  experience  and  activity  are  ends  in  them- 
selves. The  younger  son,  Jacques,  is  more  complex  and,  one  must 
add,  less  successfully  characterized.  He  is  unbalanced,  capable  of 
decisive  shifts  of  temperament,  born  to  be  a  novelist.  The  varying 
tensions  between  the  three  Thibaults,  plus  the  love  affairs  of  Jacques 
and  Antoine,  furnish  the  main  threads  of  the  Erst  half  of  the  story. 

When  Martin  du  Gard  sticks  to  his  Thibaults,  to  the  class  of  which 
he  is  himself  a  product,  he  is  on  sure  ground.  When  he  tries  his 
hand  at  a  character  such  as  Rachel,  Antoine's  Jewish  mistress,  he  is 
less  certain.  The  tone  becomes  forced  and  even  melodramatic.  The 
high  points  of  the  book  are  not  the  love  passages— though  Martin 
du  Gard's  understanding  of  adolescence  is  simply  phenomenal— but 
those  connected  with  sickness  and  death:  Antoine  performing  a  split- 
second  dining-room-table  operation  on  a  little  girl;  Pastor  Gregory, 
the  Christian  healer,  saving  little  Jenny  de  Fontanin  by  an  act  of 
faith;  and  the  unforgettable  sickness,  death,  and  funeral  of  old  Oscar. 
This  last  series  of  scenes  comprises  two  hundred  pages;  it  is  as  ruth- 
less as  surgery,  with  not  a  detail  omitted— a  piece  of  mountingly 
tense  realistic  writing  for  which  I  know  of  no  exact  parallel  in  the 
modern  novel. 

The  first  half  of  The  World  of  the  Thibaults  is  called,  in  the 
two-volume  translation,  simply  uThe  Thibaults."  The  second  half  is 
titled  "Summer  1914." 

As  "Summer  1914"  opens,  we  see  Jacques  in  Geneva,  deeply  in- 
volved with  a  group  of  international  revolutionaries,  some  of  whom 
are  conspiring  to  avert  the  imminent  European  war,  some  of  whom 
are  planning  to  use  it  as  a  steppingstone  to  a  general  social  overturn. 
Jacques  is  not  a  true  revolutionary  but  rather  a  Earning  humanitarian 
for  whom  socialism  is  a  religious  gospel.  His  views  are  widely  at  vari- 
ance with  those  of  Antoine,  who,  though  sadly  troubled  by  the  ex- 
ploitation and  misery  he  sees  around  him,  has  no  solution  except  to 
trust  uthe  leaders.'7  Antoine  seeks  escape  in  his  comfortable  labo- 


638  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

ratory  and  a  feverish  erotic  life.  Jacques  deceives  himself  into  a  belief 
that  Eery  cafe-table  programs  and  conspiratorial  activities  in  behalf 
of  the  Second  International  are  the  keys  to  a  happy  world  future. 
The  war  comes.  Both  men  fail.  Jacques,  in  a  frenzied  gesture  recall- 
ing the  magnificent  suicide  Eight  of  the  anti-Fascist  poet-aviator 
Lauro  de  Bosis,  Eies  over  the  lines  in  August,  1914,  dropping  peace 
pamphlets,  and  is  unwittingly  killed  by  one  of  his  own  countrymen. 
Antoine,  gassed,  dies  a  horrible,  lingering  death,  every  detail  of  which 
he  notes  in  his  diary.  This  diary,  or  epilogue,  forming  the  concluding 
section  of  "Summer  1914,"  is  the  most  powerful  piece  of  writing  in 
the  whole  enormous  book. 

The  movement  of  "Summer  1914"  is  slow.  While  Jacques  and 
Antoine  and  the  women  they  love  are  the  characters  upon  whom  the 
plot  depends,  the  author  is  less  interested  in  them  than  in  painting 
a  truly  gigantic  picture  of  France  and,  by  implication,  Europe  on  the 
eve  of  the  war.  This  involves  a  great  deal  of  political  discussion,  por- 
traits of  Jaures  and  other  leaders,  and  descriptions  of  the  Brussels 
Congress,  which  was  supposed  to  head  off  the  war.  It  also  involves 
a  minute  tracing  of  the  complex  diplomatic  maneuvers  of  the  late 
summer  of  that  year.  Martin  du  Gard's  interpretation  is  that  of  the 
revisionist  school.  He  believes  in  the  theory  of  divided  guilt.  While  not 
absolving  Germany,  he  certainly  does  not  place  the  blame  squarely 
on  her  shoulders.  If  there  is  a  single  villain,  it  is  Russia,  but  it  would 
be  more  accurate  to  say  that  he  blames  European  capitalism  in  gen- 
eral, a  capitalism  too  blind  to  control  itself  but  too  strong  to  he 
curbed  by  the  growing  yet  futile  strength  of  labor.  "Summer  1914" 
might  be  subtitled  "The  Tragedy  and  Death  of  the  Second  Inter- 
national." 

Much  of  this  has  been  the  subject  of  innumerable  histories  and 
essays.  I  cannot  feel  that  Martin  du  Gard  complctclv  succeeds  in 
animating  it.  He  is  exquisitely  just  and  painstakinglv  detailed,  but  it 
is  when  he  is  most  just  and  most  detailed  that  he  somehow  ceases  to 
be  a  novelist.  In  "The  Thibaultsff  the  emphasis  was  all  on  individ- 
uals and  their  relation  to  society;  in  "Summer  1914"  society  itself 
almost  usurps  the  canvas.  For  mc,  there  is  a  certain  loss  of  power  and 
originality. 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU  GARD  639 

But  when  Martin  du  Gard  concentrates  he  approaches  magnifi- 
cence: in  his  study  of  the  Fontanin  family,  in  his  agonizingly  percep- 
tive account  of  the  love  between  Anne  and  Antoine,  in  his  heart- 
breaking record  of  the  slow  decay  of  the  mind  and  body  of  Antoine. 

As  a  whole,  The  World  of  the  Thibaults  is  unquestionably  an 
impressive  work.  That  world  is  now  dead,  its  final  hours  having  lasted 
from  1918  to  1939.  Someone  had  to  write  its  epitaph,  and  for  that 
epitaph  to  be  clear  it  was  necessary  to  go  back  to  the  roots  of  the 
Thibault  world  in  the  nineteenth  and  early  twentieth  centuries. 
This  was  Martin  du  Gard's  task,  to  which  he  has  now  devoted  two 
decades  of  his  life.  The  task,  presenting  almost  insuperable  difficul- 
ties, has  been  completed  with  honor. 

Martin  du  Gard  is  not  a  great  stylist;  he  writes  rather  conserva- 
tively, even  traditionally.  His  value  lies  not  in  the  originality  of  his 
prose  but  in  the  honesty  and  integrity  of  his  social  viewpoint.  He  is 
less  clever  than  Romains,  and— I  must  say  it— less  interesting  and  far 
less  various.  Still,  his  work  has  a  certain  solidity  that  some  prefer  to 
brilliance.  You  may  not  read  him  with  absorption;  you  will  read  him 
with  respect. 

It  is  rather  hard  to  select  any  section  of  the  whole  tremendous 
work  that  will  give  you  any  idea  of  Martin  du  Gard.  He  does  not 
deal  in  set  pieces  as  does  Romains;  he  writes  more  evenly  and,  of 
course,  his  story  is  more  conventionally  integrated.  I  have  chosen 
the  operation  chapter,  exciting  in  itself  and  a  superb  study  of  the 
character  of  Antoine.  It  shows  you,  by  the  way,  what  a  real  artist  can 
do  with  medical  material.  Dr.  A.  J.  Cronin  please  note. 


An  Excerpt  from 
"The  World  of  the  Thibaults" 

BY 

ROGER  MARTIN  DU  CARD 


When  the  taxi  pulled  up  near  the  Tuileries  in  front  of  the  house  in 
the  Rue  d'Alger  where  the  Chasles  lived,  Antoine  had  pieced  together, 
from  the  concierge's  flustered  explanations,  an  outline  of  the  accident. 
The  victim  was  a  little  girl  who  used  to  meet  "M.  Jules"  each  evening 
on  his  way  back.  Had  she  tried  to  cross  the  Rue  de  Rivoli  on  this  occa- 
sion, as  M.  Jules  was  late  in  coming  home?  A  delivery  tri-car  had 
knocked  her  down  and  passed  over  her  body.  A  crowd  had  gathered 
and  a  newspaper-vender  who  was  present  had  recognized  the  child  by 
her  plaited  hair,  and  furnished  her  address.  She  had  been  carried  un- 
conscious to  the  flat. 

M.  Chasle,  crouching  in  a  corner  of  the  taxi,  shed  no  tears,  but  each 
new  detail  drew  from  him  a  racking  sob,  half  muffled  by  the  hand 
he  pressed  against  his  mouth. 

A  crowd  still  lingered  round  the  doorway.  They  made  way  for 
M.  Chasle,  who  had  to  be  helped  up  the  stairs  as  far  as  the  top  landing 
by  his  two  companions.  A  door  stood  open  at  the  end  of  a  corridor, 
down  which  M.  Chasle  made  his  way  on  stumbling  feet.  The  concierge 
stood  back  to  let  Antoine  pass,  and  touched  him  on  the  arm. 

"My  wife,  who's  got  a  head  on  her  shoulders,  ran  off  to  fetch  the 
young  doctor  who  dines  at  the  restaurant  next  door.  I  hope  she  found 
him  there." 

Antoine  nodded  approval  and  followed  M.  Chasle.  They  crossed 
a  sort  of  anteroom,  redolent  of  musty  cupboards,  then  two  low  rooms 
with  tiled  floors;  the  light  was  dim  and  the  atmosphere  stifling  despite 
die  open  windows  giving  on  a  courtyard.  In  the  further  room  Antoine 

6-10 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU   GARD  641 

had  to  edge  round  a  circular  table  where  a  meal  for  four  was  laid  on  a 
strip  of  dingy  oilcloth.   M.  Chasle  opened  a   door   and,  entering  a 
brightly  lit  room,  stumbled  forward  with  a  piteous  cry: 
"Dedette!  Dedette!" 

"Now,  Jules!"  a  raucous  voice  protested. 

The  first  thing  Antoine  noticed  was  the  lamp  which  a  woman  in  a 
pink  dressing-gown  was  lifting  with  both  hands;  her  ruddy  hair,  her 
throat  and  forehead  were  flooded  with  the  lamplight.  Then  he  ob- 
served the  bed  on  which  the  light  fell,  and  shadowy  forms  bending 
above  it.  Dregs  of  the  sunset,  filtering  through  the  window,  merged  in 
the  halo  of  the  lamp,  and  the  room  was  bathed  in  a  half-light  where  all 
things  took  the  semblance  of  a  dream.  Antoine  helped  M.  Chasle  to  a 
chair  and  approached  the  bed.  A  young  man  wearing  pince-nez,  with 
his  hat  still  on,  was  bending  forward  and  slitting  up  with  a  pair  of 
scissors  the  blood-stained  garments  of  the  little  girl.  Her  face,  ringed 
with  matted  hair,  lay  buried  in  the  bolster.  An  old  woman  on  her 
knees  was  helping  the  doctor. 

"Is  she  alive?"  Antoine  asked. 

The  doctor  turned,  looked  at  him,  and  hesitated;  then  mopped  his 
forehead. 

"Yes."  His  tone  lacked  assurance. 

"I  was  with  M.  Chasle  when  he  was  sent  for,"  Antoine  explained, 
"and  I've  brought  my  first-aid  kit.  I'm  Dr.  Thibault,"  he  added  in  a 
whisper,  "house-physician  at  the  Children's  Hospital." 

The  young  doctor  rose  and  was  about  to  make  way  for  Antoine. 

"Carry  on!  Carry  on!"  Antoine  drew  back  a  step.  "Pulse?" 

"Almost  imperceptible,"  the  doctor  replied,  intent  once  more  on  his 
task. 

Antoine  raised  his  eyes  towards  the  red-haired  young  woman,  saw 
the  anxiety  in  her  face,  and  made  a  suggestion. 

"Wouldn't  it  be  best  to  telephone  for  an  ambulance  and  have  your 
child  taken  at  once  to  my  hospital?" 

"No!"  an  imperious  voice  answered  him. 

Then  Antoine  descried  an  old  woman  standing  at  the  head  of  the 
bed — was  it  the  child's  grandmother? — and  scanning  him  intently  with 
eyes  limpid  as  water,  a  peasant's  eyes.  Her  pointed  nose  and  resolute 


642  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

features  were  half  submerged  in  a  vast  sea  of  fat  that  heaved  in  billowy 
folds  upon  her  neck. 

"I  know  we  look  like  paupers,"  she  continued  in  a  resigned  tone, 
"but,  believe  me,  even  folk  like  us  would  rather  die  at  home  in  our 
own  beds.  Dedette  shan't  go  to  the  hospital." 

"But  why  not,  Madame?"  Antoine  protested. 

She  straightened  up  her  back,  thrust  out  her  chin,  and  sadly  but 
sternly  rebuked  him. 

"We  prefer  not,"  was  all  she  said. 

Antoine  tried  to  catch  the  eye  of  the  younger  woman,  but  she  was 
busy  brushing  off  the  flies  that  obstinately  settled  on  her  glowing 
cheeks,  and  seemed  of  no  opinion.  He  decided  to  appeal  to  M.  Chasle. 
The  old  fellow  had  fallen  on  his  knees  in  front  of  the  chair  to  which 
Antoine  had  led  him;  his  head  was  buried  on  his  folded  arms  as 
though  to  shut  out  all  sights  from  his  eyes,  and,  from  his  ears,  all 
sounds.  The  old  lady,  who  was  keenly  watching  Antoine's  movements, 
guessed  his  intention  and  forestalled  him. 

"Isn't  that  so,  Jules?" 

M.  Chasle  started. 

"Yes,  Mother." 

She  looked  at  him  approvingly  and  her  voice  grew  mothering. 

"Don't  stay  there,  Jules.  You'd  be  much  better  in  your  room." 

A  pallid  forehead  rose  into  view,  eyes  tremulous  behind  their  spec- 
tacles; then,  without  a  protest,  the  poor  old  fellow  stood  up  and  tip- 
toed from  the  room. 

Antoine  bit  his  lips.  Meanwhile,  pending  an  occasion  further  to  in- 
sist, he  took  ofT  his  coat  and  rolled  up  his  sleeves  above  the  elbows. 
Then  he  knelt  at  the  bedside.  He  seldom  took  thought  without  at  the 
same  time  beginning  to  take  action — such  was  his  incapacity  for  long 
deliberation  on  any  issue  raised,  and  such  his  keenness  to  be  up  and 
doing.  The  avoidance  of  mistakes  counted  less  with  him  than  bold 
decision  and  prompt  activity.  Thought,  as  he  used  it,  was  merely  the 
lever  that  set  an  act  in  motion — premature  though  it  might  be. 

Aided  by  the  doctor  and  the  old  woman's  trembling  hands,  he  had 
soon  stripped  off  the  child's  clothing;  pale,  almost  grey,  her  body  lay 
beneath  their  eves  in  its  frail  nakedness.  The  impact  of  the  car  must 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU  GARD  643 

have  been  very  violent,  for  she  was  covered  with  bruises,  and  a  black 
streak  crossed  her  thigh  transversely  from  hip  to  knee. 

"It's  the  right  leg,"  Antoine's  colleague  observed.  Her  right  foot  was 
twisted,  bent  inwards,  and  the  whole  leg  was  spattered  with  blood  and 
deformed,  shorter  than  the  other  one. 

"Fracture  of  the  femur?"  suggested  the  doctor. 

Antoine  did  not  answer.  He  was  thinking.  "That's  not  all,"  he  said 
to  himself;  "the  shock  is  too  great  for  that.  But  what  can  it  be?"  He 
tapped  her  knee-cap,  then  ran  his  fingers  slowly  up  her  thigh;  suddenly 
there  spurted  through  an  almost  imperceptible  lesion  on  the  inner  side 
of  the  thigh,  some  inches  above  the  knee,  a  jet  of  blood. 

"That's  it,"  he  said. 

"The  femoral  artery!"  the  other  exclaimed. 

Antoine  rose  quickly  to  his  feet.  The  need  to  make,  unaided,  a  deci- 
sion gave  him  a  new  access  of  energy  and,  as  ever  when  others  were 
present,  his  sense  of  power  intensified.  A  surgeon?  he  speculated.  No, 
we'd  never  get  her  alive  to  the  hospital.  Then  who  ?  I  ?  Why  not  ?  And, 
anyhow,  there's  no  alternative. 

"Will  you  try  a  ligature?"  asked  the  doctor,  piqued  by  Antoine's 
silence. 

But  Antoine  did  not  heed  his  question.  It  must  be  done,  he  was  think- 
ing, and  without  a  moment's  delay;  it  may  be  too  late  already,  who 
knows?  He  threw  a  quick  glance  round  him.  A  ligature.  What  can 
be  used?  Let's  see.  The  red-headed  girl  hasn't  a  belt;  no  loops  on  the 
curtains.  Something  elastic.  Ah,  I  have  it!  In  a  twinkling  he  had 
thrown  off  his  waistcoat  and  unfastened  his  braces.  Snapping  them 
with  a  jerk,  he  knelt  down  again,  made  with  them  a  tourniquet,  and 
clamped  it  tightly  round  the  child's  groin. 

"Good!  Two  minutes'  breathing-time,"  he  said  as  he  rose.  Sweat  was 
pouring  down  his  cheeks.  He  knew  that  every  eye  was  fixed  on  him. 
"Only  an  immediate  operation,"  he  said  decisively,  "can  save  her  life. 
Let's  try!" 

The  others  moved  away  at  once  from  the  bed — even  the  woman 
with  the  lamp,  even  the  young  doctor,  whose  face  had  paled. 

Antoine  clenched  his  teeth,  his  eyes  narrowed  and  grew  hard,  he 


644  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

seemed  to  peer  into  himself.  Must  keep  calm,  he  mused.  A  table  ?  That 
round  table  I  saw,  coming  in. 

"Bring  the  lamp!"  he  cried  to  the  young  woman,  then  turned  to  the 
doctor.  "You  there — come  with  me!"  He  strode  quickly  into  the  next 
room.  Good,  he  said  to  himself;  here's  our  operating-theatre.  With  a 
quick  gesture  he  cleared  the  table,  stacked  the  plates  in  a  pile.  "That's 
for  my  lamp."  Like  a  general  in  charge  of  a  campaign,  he  allotted  each 
thing  its  place.  "Now  for  our  little  patient."  He  went  back  to  the  bed- 
room. The  doctor  and  the  young  woman  hung  on  his  every  gesture 
and  followed  close  behind  him.  Addressing  the  doctor,  he  pointed  to 
the  child: 

"I'll  carry  her.  She's  light  as  a  feather.  Hold  up  her  leg,  you." 

As  he  slipped  his  arms  under  the  child's  back  and  carried  her  to  the 
table,  she  moaned  faintly.  He  took  the  lamp  from  the  red-haired 
woman  and,  removing  the  shade,  stood  it  on  the  pile  of  plates.  As  he 
surveyed  the  scene,  a  thought  came  suddenly  and  went:  "I'm  a  won- 
derful fellow!"  The  lamp  gleamed  like  a  brazier,  reddening  the  ambient 
shadow,  where  only  the  young  woman's  glowing  cheeks  and  the  doc- 
tor's pince-nez  showed  up  as  high-lights;  its  rays  fell  harshly  on  the 
little  body,  which  twitched  spasmodically.  The  swarming  flies  seemed 
worked  up  to  frenzy  by  the  oncoming  storm.  Heat  and  anxiety 
brought  beads  of  sweat  to  Antoine's  brow.  Would  she  live  through  it  ? 
he  wondered,  but  some  dark  force  he  did  not  analyse  buoyed  up  his 
faith;  never  had  he  felt  so  sure  of  himself. 

He  seized  his  bag  and,  taking  out  a  bottle  of  chloroform  and  some 
gauze,  handed  the  former  to  the  doctor. 

"Open  it  somewhere.  On  the  sideboard.  Take  off  the  sewing- 
machine.  Get  everything  out." 

As  he  turned,  holding  the  bottle,  he  noticed  two  dim  figures  in  the 
dark  doorway,  the  two  old  women  like  statues  posted  there.  One,  M. 
Chasle's  mother,  had  great,  staring  eyes,  an  owl's  eyes;  the  other  was 
pressing  her  breast  with  her  clasped  hands. 

"Go  away!"  he  commanded.  They  retreated  some  steps  into  the 
shadows  of  the  bedroom,  but  he  pointed  to  the  other  end  of  the  flat. 
"No.  Out  of  the  room.  That  way."  They  obeyed,  crossed  the  room, 
vanished  without  a  word. 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU   GARD  645 

"Not  you!"  he  cried  angrily  to  the  red-haired  woman,  who  was 
about  to  follow  them. 

She  turned  on  her  heel  and,  for  a  moment,  he  took  stock  of  her.  She 
had  a  handsome,  rather  fleshy  face,  touched  with  a  certain  dignity,  it 
seemed,  by  grief;  an  air  of  calm  maturity  that  pleased  him.  Poor 
woman!  he  could  not  help  thinking.  .  .  .  But  I  need  her! 

"You're  the  child's  mother?"  he  asked. 

"No."  She  shook  her  head. 

"All  the  better." 

As  he  spoke  he  had  been  soaking  the  gauze  and  now  he  swiftly 
stretched  it  over  the  child's  nose.  "Stand  there,  and  keep  this."  He 
handed  her  the  bottle.  "When  I  give  the  signal,  you'll  pour  some  more 
of  it  on." 

The  air  grew  heavy  with  the  reek  of  chloroform.  The  little  girl 
groaned,  drew  a  deep  breath  or  two,  grew  still. 

A  last  look  round.  The  field  was  clear;  the  rest  lay  with  the  surgeon's 
skill.  Now  that  the  crucial  moment  had  come,  Antoine's  anxieties 
vanished  as  if  by  magic.  He  went  to  the  sideboard  where  the  doctor, 
holding  the  bag,  was  laying  on  a  napkin  the  last  of  its  contents.  "Let's 
see,"  he  murmured,  as  though  to  gain  a  few  seconds'  respite.  "There's 
the  instrument-box;  good.  The  scalpel,  the  artery-forceps.  A  packet  of 
gauze,  cotton-wool,  that'll  do.  Alcohol.  Caffeine.  Tincture  of  iodine. 
And  so  forth.  .  .  .  All's  ready.  Let's  begin."  And  yet  again  there  came 
to  him  that  sense  of  buoyancy,  of  boundless  confidence,  of  vital  ener- 
gies tautened  to  breaking-point,  and,  crowning  all,  a  proud  awareness 
of  being  lifted  high  above  his  workaday  self. 

Raising  his  head,  he  looked  his  junior  for  a  moment  in  the  eyes. 
"Have  you  the  nerve?"  his  eyes  seemed  to  inquire.  "It's  going  to  be  a 
tough  job.  Now  for  it!" 

The  young  man  did  not  flinch.  And  now  he  hung  on  Antoine's 
gestures  with  servile  assiduity.  Well  he  knew  that  in  this  operation  lay 
their  only  hope,  but  never  would  he  have  dared  to  take  the  risk,  alone. 
With  Antoine,  however,  nothing  seemed  impossible. 

He's  not  so  bad,  this  young  chap,  thought  Antoine.  Lucky  for  me! 
Let's  see.  A  basin?  No  matter — this  will  do  as  well.  Grasping  the 
bottle  of  iodine  he  sluiced  his  arms  up  to  the  elbow  with  the  liquid. 


646  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Your  turn!"  He  passed  the  bottle  to  the  doctor,  who  was  feverishly 
polishing  the  lenses  of  his  pince-nez. 

A  vivid  lightning  flash,  closely  followed  by  a  deafening  clap  of 
thunder,  lit  up  the  window. 

"A  bit  previous,  the  applause,"  Antoine  said  to  himself.  "I  hadn't 
even  taken  up  my  lancet.  The  young  woman  didn't  turn  a  hair.  It'll 
cool  things  down;  good  for  our  nerves.  Must  be  pretty  nearly  a  hun- 
dred degrees  in  this  room." 

He  had  laid  out  a  series  of  compresses  round  the  injured  limb,  de- 
limiting the  operative  field.  Now  he  turned  towards  the  young  woman. 

"A  whiff  of  chloroform.  That'll  do.  Right!" 

She  obeys  orders,  he  mused,  like  a  soldier  under  fire.  Women!  Then, 
fixing  his  eyes  on  the  swollen  little  thigh,  he  swallowed  his  saliva  and 
raised  the  scalpel. 

"Here  goes!" 

With  one  neat  stroke  he  cut  the  skin. 

"Swab!"  he  commanded  the  doctor  bending  beside  him.  "What  a 
thin  child!"  he  said  to  himself.  "Well,  we'll  be  there  all  the  sooner. 
Hallo,  there's  little  Dedette  starting  snoring!  Good!  Better  be  quick 
about  it.  Now  for  the  retractors." 

"Now,  you,"  he  said  aloud,  and  the  other  let  fall  the  blood-stained 
swabs  of  cotton-wool  and,  grasping  the   retractors,  held  the  wound 

open. 

Antoine  paused  a  moment.  "Good!"  he  murmured.  "My  probe? 
Here  it  is.  In  Hunter's  canal.  The  classical  ligation;  all's  well.  Zip!  An- 
other flash!  Must  have  landed  pretty  near.  On  the  Louvre.  Perhaps  on 
the  gentlemen  at  Saint-Roch.'  "  He  felt  quite  calm— no  more  anxiety 
for  the  child,  none  for  death's  imminence— and  cheerfully  repeated 
under  his  breath:   "The  ligature  of  the  femoral  artery  in   Hunter's 

canal." 

Zip!  There  goes  another!  Hardly  any  rain,  either.  It's  stifling.  Artery 
injured  at  the  site  of  the  fracture;  the  end  of  the  bone  tore  it  open. 
Simple  as  anything.  Still  she  hadn't  much  blood  to  spare.  He  glanced 
at  the  little  girl's  face.  Hallo!  Better  hurry  up.  Simple  as  anything— 
but  could  be  fatal,  too.  A  forceps;  right!  Another;  that  will  do.  Zip! 
These  flashes  are  getting  a  bore;  cheap  effect!  I've  only  plaited  silk; 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU  GARD  647 

must  make  the  best  of  it.  Breaking  a  tube,  he  pulled  out  the  skein  and 
made  a  ligature  beside  each  forceps.  Splendid!  Almost  finished  now. 
The  collateral  circulation  will  be  quite  enough,  especially  at  that  age. 
I'm  really  wonderful!  Can  I  have  missed  my  vocation?  I've  all  the 
makings  of  a  surgeon,  sure  enough;  a  great  surgeon.  In  the  silent  inter- 
val between  two  thunder-claps  dying  into  the  distance,  the  sharp  metal- 
lic click  of  scissors  snipping  the  loose  ends  of  the  silk  was  audible.  Yes; 
quickness  of  eye,  coolness,  energy,  dexterity.  Suddenly  he  picked  up  his 
ears  and  his  cheeks  paled. 

"The  devil!"  he  muttered  under  his  breath. 

The  child  had  ceased  to  breathe. 

Brushing  aside  the  woman,  he  tore  away  the  gauze  from  the  uncon- 
scious child's  face  and  pressed  his  ear  above  her  heart.  Doctor  and 
young  woman  waited  in  suspense,  their  eyes  fixed  on  Antoine. 

"No!"  he  murmured.  "She's  breathing  still." 

He  took  the  child's  wrist,  but  her  pulse  was  so  rapid  that  he  did  not 
attempt  to  count  it.  "Ouf!"  He  drew  a  deep  breath,  the  lines  of  anxiety 
deepened  on  his  forehead.  The  two  others  felt  his  gaze  pass  across  their 
faces,  but  he  did  not  see  them. 

He  rapped  out  a  brief  command. 

"You,  doctor,  remove  the  forceps,  put  on  a  dressing,  and  then  undo 
the  tourniquet.  Quickly.  You,  Madame,  get  me  some  note-paper — no, 
you  needn't;  I've  my  note-book."  He  wiped  his  hands  feverishly  with 
a  wad  of  cotton-wool.  "What's  the  time?  Not  nine  yet.  The  phar- 
macist's open.  You'll  have  to  hurry." 

She  stood  before  him,  waiting;  her  tentative  gesture — to  wrap  the 
dressing-gown  more  closely  round  her  body — told  him  of  her  reluc- 
tance at  going  thus,  half  dressed,  into  the  streets,  and  for  the  fraction 
of  a  second  a  picture  of  the  opulent  form  under  the  garment  held  his 
imagination.  He  scribbled  a  prescription,  signed  it.  "A  two-pint  am- 
poule. As  quickly  as  you  can." 

"And  if — ?"  she  stammered. 

"If  the  pharmacist's  shut,  ring,  and  keep  on  hammering  on  the  door 
till  they  open.  Be  quick!" 

She  was  gone.  He  followed  her  with  his  eyes  to  make  sure  she  was 
running,  then  addressed  the  doctor. 


648  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"We'll  try  the  saline.  Not  subcutaneously;  that's  hopeless  now.  Intra- 
venously. Our  last  hope."  He  took  two  small  phials  from  the  sideboard. 

"You've  removed  the  tourniquet?  Right.  Give  her  an  injection  of 
camphor  to  begin  with,  then  the  caffeine — only  half  of  it  for  her,  poor 
kid!  Only,  for  God's  sake,  be  quick  about  it!" 

He  went  back  to  the  child  and  took  her  thin  wrist  between  his  fin- 
gers; now  he  could  feel  nothing  more  than  a  vague,  restless  fluttering. 
"It's  got  past  counting,"  he  said  to  himself.  And  suddenly  a  feeling  of 
impotence,  of  sheer  despair,  swept  over  him. 

"God  damn  it!"  he  broke  out.  "To  think  it  went  oft  perfectly — and 
it  was  all  no  use!" 

The  child's  face  became  more  livid  with  every  second.  She  was  dying. 
Antoine  observed,  beside  the  parted  lips,  two  slender  strands  of  curling 
hair,  lighter  than  gossamer,  that  rose  and  fell;  anyhow,  she  was  breath- 
ing still. 

He  watched  the  doctor  giving  the  injections.  Neat  with  his  fingers, 
he  thought,  considering  his  short  sight.  But  we  can't  save  her.  Vexation 
rather  than  grief  possessed  him.  He  had  the  callousness  common  to 
doctors,  for  whom  the  sufferings  of  others  count  only  as  so  much  new 
experience,  or  profit,  or  professional  advantage;  men  to  whose  fortunes 
death  and  pain  are  frequent  ministers. 

But  then  he  thought  he  heard  a  banging  door  and  ran  towards  the 
sound.  It  was  the  young  woman  coming  back  with  quick,  lithe  steps, 
trying  to  conceal  her  breathlessness.  He  snatched  the  parcel  from  her 
hands. 

"Bring  some  hot  water."  He  did  not  even  pause  to  thank  her. 

"Boiled?" 

"No.  To  warm  the  solution.  Be  quick!" 

He  had  hardly  opened  the  parcel  when  she  returned,  bringing  a 
steaming  saucepan. 

"Good!  Excellent!"  he  murmured,  but  did  not  look  towards  her. 

No  time  to  lose.  In  a  few  seconds  he  had  nipped  of!  the  tips  of  the 
ampoule  and  slipped  on  the  rubber  tubing.  A  Swiss  barometer  in 
carved  wood  hung  on  the  wall.  With  one  hand  he  unhooked  it,  while 
with  the  other  he  hung  the  ampoule  on  the  nail.  Then  he  took  the 
saucepan  of  hot  water,  hesitated   for  the  fraction  of  a   second,  and 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU  GARD  649 

looped  the  rubber  tubing  round  the  bottom  of  it.  That'll  heat  the  saline 
as  it  flows  through,  he  said  to  himself.  Smart  idea,  that!  He  glanced 
towards  the  other  doctor  to  see  if  he  had  noticed  what  he  had  done. 
At  last  he  came  back  to  the  child,  lifted  her  inert  arm,  and  sponged  it 
with  iodine.  Then,  with  a  stroke  of  his  scalpel,  he  laid  bare  the  vein, 
slipped  his  probe  beneath  it  and  inserted  the  needle. 

"It's  flowing  in  all  right,"  he  cried.  "Take  her  pulse.  I'll  stay  where 
I  am." 

The  ten  minutes  that  followed  seemed  an  eternity.  No  one  moved 
or  spoke. 

Streaming  with  sweat,  breathing  rapidly,  with  knitted  brows,  An- 
toine  waited,  his  gaze  riveted  on  the  needle.  After  a  while  he  glanced 
up  at  the  ampoule. 

"How  much  gone?" 

"Nearly  a  pint." 

"The  pulse?" 

The  doctor  silently  shook  his  head. 

Five  more  minutes  passed,  five  minutes  more  of  sickening  suspense. 
Antoine  looked  up  again. 

"How  much  left?" 

"Just  over  half  a  pint." 

"And  the  pulse?" 

The  doctor  hesitated. 

"I'm  not  sure.  I  almost  think  .  .  .  it's  beginning  to  come  back  a  little." 

"Can  you  count  it?" 

A  pause. 

"No." 

If  only  the  pulse  came  back!  sighed  Antoine.  He  would  have  given 
ten  years  of  his  own  life  to  restore  life  to  this  little  corpse.  Wonder 
what  age  she  is.  Seven?  And,  if  I  save  her,  she'll  fall  a  victim  to  con- 
sumption within  the  next  ten  years,  living  in  this  hovel.  But  shall  I 
save  her?  It's  touch  and  go;  her  life  hangs  on  a  thread.  Still — damn 
it! — I've  done  all  I  could.  The  saline's  flowing  well.  But  it's  too  late. 
There's  nothing  more  to  be  done,  nothing  else  to  try.  We  can  only 
wait.  .  .  .  That  red-haired  girl  did  her  bit.  A  good-looker.  She's  not 
the  child's  mother;  who  can  she  be  then?   Chasle  never  breathed  a 


650  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

word  about  all  these  people.  Not  his  daughter,  I  imagine.  Can't  make 
head  or  tail  of  it!  And  that  old  woman,  putting  on  airs.  .  .  .  Anyhow, 
they  made  themselves  scarce,  good  riddance!  Curious  how  one  sud- 
denly gets  them  in  hand.  They  all  knew  the  sort  of  man  they  had  to 
deal  with.  The  strong  hand  of  a  masterful  man.  But  it  was  up  to  me 
to  bring  it  ofif.  Shall  I  now?  No,  she  lost  too  much  blood  on  the  way 
here.  No  signs  of  improvement  so  far,  worse  luck!  Oh,  damn  it  all! 

His  gaze  fell  on  the  child's  pale  lips  and  the  two  strands  of  golden 
hair,  rising  and  falling  still.  The  breathing  struck  him  as  a  little  better. 
Was  he  mistaken?  Half  a  minute  passed.  Her  chest  seemed  to  flutter 
with  a  faint  sigh  which  slowly  died  into  the  air,  as  though  a  fragment 
of  her  life  were  passing  with  it.  For  a  moment  Antoine  stared  at  her  in 
perplexity.  No,  she  was  breathing  still.  Nothing  to  be  done  but  to  wait, 
and  keep  on  waiting. 

A  minute  later  she  sighed  again,  more  plainly  now. 

"How  much  left?" 

"The  ampoule's  almost  empty." 

"And  the  pulse?  Coming  back?" 

"Yes." 

Antoine  drew  a  deep  breath. 

"Can  you  count  it?" 

The  doctor  took  out  his  watch,  settled  his  pince-nez,  and,  after  a 
minute's  silence,  announced: 

"A  hundred  and  forty.  A  hundred  and  fifty,  perhaps." 

"Better  than  nothing!"  The  exclamation  was  involuntary,  for  An- 
toine was  straining  every  nerve  to  withstand  the  flood  of  huge  relief 
that  surged  across  his  mind.  Yet  it  was  not  imagination;  the  improve- 
ment was  not  to  be  gainsaid.  Her  breathing  was  steadier.  It  was  all  he 
could  do  to  stay  where  he  was;  he  had  a  childish  longing  to  sing  or 
whistle.  Better  than  nothing  tra-la-la — he  tried  to  fit  the  words  Jto  the 
tune  that  had  been  haunting  him  all  dav.  In  my  heart  tra-la-la.  In  my 
heart  sleeps  .  .  .  Sleeps — sleeps  what?  Got  it.  The  pale  moonlight. 

In  my  heart  sleeps  the  pale  moonlight 
Of  a  lovely  summer  night  .  .  . 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU  GARD  651 

The  cloud  of  doubt  lifted,  gave  place  to  radiant  joy. 
"The  child's  saved,"  he  murmured.  "She's  got  to  be  saved!" 

...  a  lovely  summer  night! 

"The  ampoule's  empty,"  the  doctor  announced. 

"Capital!" 

Just  then  the  child,  whom  his  eyes  had  never  left,  gave  a  slight 
shudder.  Antoine  turned  almost  gaily  to  the  young  woman,  who, 
leaning  against  the  sideboard,  had  been  watching  the  scene  with  steady 
eyes  for  the  past  quarter  of  an  hour. 

"Well,  Madame!"  he  cried  with  affected  gruff ness.  "Gone  to  sleep 
have  we?  And  how  about  the  hot-water  bottle?"  He  almost  smiled  at 
her  amazement.  "But,  my  dear  lady,  nothing  could  be  more  obvious. 
A  bottle,  piping  hot,  to  warm  her  little  toes!" 

A  flash  of  joy  lit  up  her  eyes  as  she  hastened  from  the  room. 

Then  Antoine,  with  redoubled  care  and  gentleness,  bent  down  and 
drew  out  the  needle,  and  with  the  tips  of  his  fingers  applied  a  compress 
to  the  tiny  wound.  He  ran  his  fingers  along  the  arm  from  which  the 
hand  still  hung  limp. 

"Another  injection  of  camphor,  old  man,  just  to  make  sure;  and 
then  we'll  have  played  our  last  card.  Shouldn't  wonder,"  he  added 
under  his  breath,  "if  we've  pulled  it  ofl:."  Once  more  that  sense  of 
power  that  was  half  joy  elated  him. 

The  woman  came  back  carrying  a  jar  in  her  arms.  She  hesitated, 
then,  as  he  said  nothing,  came  and  stood  by  the  child's  feet. 

"Not  like  that!"  said  Antoine,  with  the  same  brusque  cheerfulness. 
"You'll  burn  her.  Give  it  here.  Just  imagine  my  having  to  show  you 
how  to  wrap  up  a  hot-water  bottle!" 

Smiling  now,  he  snatched  up  a  rolled  napkin  that  caught  his  eye 
and,  flinging  the  ring  onto  the  sideboard,  wrapped  the  jar  in  it  and 
pressed  it  to  the  child's  feet.  The  red-haired  woman  watched  him, 
taken  aback  by  the  boyish  smile  that  made  his  face  seem  so  much 
younger. 

"Then  she's — saved?"  she  ventured  to  ask. 


652  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

He  dared  not  affirm  it  as  yet. 

"I'll  tell  you  in  an  hour's  time."  His  voice  was  gruff,  but  she  took  his 
meaning  and  cast  on  him  a  bold,  admiring  look. 

For  the  third  time  Antoine  asked  himself  what  this  handsome  girl 
could  be  doing  in  the  Chasle  household.  Then  he  pointed  to  the  door. 

"What  about  the  others?" 

A  smile  hovered  on  her  lips. 

"They're  waiting." 

"Hearten  them  up  a  bit.  Tell  them  to  go  to  bed.  You  too,  Madame, 
you'd  better  take  some  rest." 

"Oh,  as  far  as  I'm  concerned  .  .  ."  she  murmured,  turning  to  go. 

"Let's  get  the  child  back  to  bed,"  Antoine  suggested  to  his  colleague. 
"The  same  way  as  before.  Hold  up  her  leg.  Take  the  bolster  away; 
we'd  better  keep  her  head  down.  The  next  thing  is  to  rig  up  some  sort 
of  a  gadget.  .  .  .  That  napkin,  please,  and  the  string  from  the  parcel. 
Some  sort  of  extension,  you  see.  Slip  the  string  between  the  rails; 
handy  things  these  iron  bedsteads.  Now  for  a  weight.  Anything  will 
do.  How  about  this  saucepan?  No,  the  flat-iron  there  will  be  better. 
We've  all  we  need  here.  Yes,  hand  it  over.  Tomorrow  we'll  improve 
on  it.  Meanwhile  it  will  do  if  we  stretch  the  leg  a  bit,  don't  you  think 
so?" 

The  young  doctor  did  not  reply.  He  gazed  at  Antoine  with  spell- 
bound awe — the  look  that  Martha  may  have  given  the  Saviour  when 
Lazarus  rose  from  the  tomb.  His  lips  worked  and  he  stammered 
timidly: 

"May  I  .  .  .  shall  I  arrange  your  instruments?"  The  faltered  words 
breathed  such  a  zeal  for  service  and  for  devotion  that  Antoine  thrilled 
with  the  exultation  of  an  acknowledged  chief.  They  were  alone.  An- 
toine went  up  to  the  younger  man  and  looked  him  in  the  eyes. 

"You've  been  splendid,  my  dear  fellow." 

The  young  man  gasped.  Antoine,  who  felt  even  more  embarrassed 
than  his  colleague,  gave  him  no  time  to  put  in  a  word. 

"Now  you'd  better  be  ofT  home;  it's  late.  There's  no  need  for  two  of 
us  here."  He  hesitated.  "We  may  take  it  that  she's  saved,  I  think.  That's 
my  opinion.  However,  for  safety's  sake,  I'll  stay  here  for  the  night,  if 
you'll  permit  me."  The  doctor  made  a  vague  gesture.  "It  you  permit 


ROGER  MARTIN  DU   GARD  653 

me,  I  repeat.  For  I  don't  forget  that  she's  your  patient.  Obviously.  I 
only  gave  a  hand,  as  there  was  nothing  else  for  it.  That's  so,  eh?  But 
from  tomorrow  on  I  leave  her  in  your  hands.  They're  competent  hands 
and  I  have  no  anxiety."  As  he  spoke  he  led  the  doctor  towards  the 
door.  "Will  you  look  in  again  towards  noon?  I'll  come  back  when 
I'm  done  at  the  hospital  and  we  will  decide  on  the  treatment  to  fol- 
low." 
"Sir,  it's  .  .  .  it's  been  a  privilege  for  me  to  .  .  .  to  .  .  ." 
Never  before  had  Antoine  been  "sirred"  by  a  colleague,  never  before 
been  treated  with  such  deference.  It  went  to  his  head,  like  generous 
wine,  and  unthinkingly  he  held  out  both  hands  towards  the  young 
man.  But  in  the  nick  of  time  he  regained  his  self-control. 

"You've  got  a  wrong  impression,"  he  said  in  a  subdued  tone.  "I'm 
only  a  learner,  a  novice — like  you.  Like  so  many  others.  Like  everyone. 
Groping  our  way.  We  do  our  best — and  that's  all  there  is  to  it!" 


A.   E.   COPPARD 


COMMENTARY 


William  Blake  called  certain  of  his  poems  Songs  of  Innocence  and 
others  Songs  of  Experience.  Tales  may  be  similarly  divided.  Some 
storytellers— most  of  them,  perhaps— draw  their  narratives  from  ex- 
perience, their  own  or  another's,  and  the  mark  of  that  experience  is 
detectable  in  the  stones.  They  are,  we  say,  "real."  The  stories  of 
Somerset  Maugham  belong  to  this  class.  Other  storytellers,  more 
rarely  to  be  found,  apparently  invent  their  tales  out  of  whole  cloth; 
everything  in  them  seems  "thought  up"  and  bears  the  stamp  of 
invention,  fancy,  remoteness  from  verifiable  experience.  Such  stories 
are  often  "romantic."  A  man  may  write  well  or  poorly  in  either  cate- 
gory, though  the  greatest  tales  are  probably  tales  of  experience. 

To  the  second  class,  the  class  of  "innocence,"  belong  the  strange 
stories  of  A.  E.  Coppard,  an  Englishman  who  produces  little  and 
whose  more  recent  work  lacks  the  decisive  freshness  and  originalih- 
of  his  Erst  few  volumes.  His  tales  bear  out  whatever  truth  there  is  in 
Bacons  oft-quoted  assertion  that  "There  is  no  excellent  beaut}'  that 
hath  not  some  strangeness  in  the  proportion."  He  is  sometimes 
strange  to  the  point  of  eeriness,  as  in  his  best-known  short  story, 
''Adam  and  Eve  and  Pinch  Me."  When  he  attempts  anything  like 
realism,  he  is  apt  to  come  a  cropper.  When  he  steers  a  middle  course 
between  the  completely  believable  and  the  completely  unreal,  he  is 
most  successful. 

The  three  Coppard  tales  here  offered  have  for  me  that  magical 
quality  of  which  I  have  spoken  elsewhere  in  this  volume.  The  magic 
is  quite  minor,  but  it  is  magic  nonetheless.  The  illuminated  tov 
church  in  "Felix  Tinder,"  the  mother  of  "Arabesque"  squeezing 
the  milk  of  her  breasts  into  the  Ere,  the  man  undoing  the  hair  of 
Dusky  Ruth  as  she  sits  in  her  chair  in  the  taproom— these  pictures, 
ever  since  J  encountered  them  years  ago,  have  lain  quietlv  in  the 
back  of  my  mind  with  that  same  odd  persistence  possessed  bv  one's 
lovely  or  terrible  memories  of  childhood.  Not  great  stories,  they  kie 

654 


A.   E.   COPPARD  655 

touched  with  wonder.  Ford  Madox  Ford  once  wrote:  "Mr.  Coppard 
is  almost  the  Hist  English  writer  to  get  into  English  prose  the  pecul- 
iar quality  oi  English  lyric  poetry."  That  is  very  well  said. 

The  effect  of  "Felix  Tinder"  results  from  the  ingenious  way  in 
which  the  childs  charming  innocence,  symbolized  by  the  little  church, 
and  his  impending  doom,  symbolized  by  the  orphanage,  are  counter- 
pointed,  until  the  situation  is  resolved  by  the  dreadful  clangor  of 
the  bell. 

Arabesque  is  a  form  of  ornamentation  based  on  interlacing  lines 
and  curves.  Note  how  Coppard s  story  so  named  bears  out  its  title. 
The  Utamaro  color  print  carries  over  to  the  mans  recollection  of 
himself  as  a  child  caressing  his  mother;  the  playing  mouse  interlaces 
with  the  memory  of  the  mother  in  front  of  the  fire;  the  mother  with 
her  bleeding  stumps  ties  into  the  climax  of  the  story;  Cassia  putting 
her  hand  against  Filip's  breast  recalls  his  mother  again;  and  so  on. 
If  there  were  not  deep  feeling  in  "Arabesque'  this  would  all  seem 
prearranged  and  mechanical,  but  there  is  deep  feeling. 

"Dusky  Ruth"  seems  to  me  the  best  of  the  three  tales,  the  best 
Coppard  ever  wrote,  and  one  of  the  most  curiously  moving  stories 
I  know.  Perhaps  its  secret  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  tells  of  one  of  those 
imagined  adventures  that  every  man  in  his  hidden  heart  (I  cannot 
speak  for  women)  would  like  to  have  had  and  to  be  able,  many  years 
afterward,  to  remember. 


Felix  Tincler 

BY 

A.   E.  COPPARD 


The  child  was  to  have  a  birthday  to-morrow  and  was  therefore  not 
uneasy  about  being  late  home  from  school  this  afternoon.  He  had  lost 
his  pencil  case,  a  hollow  long  round  thing  it  was,  like  a  rolling-pin, 
only  it  had  green  and  yellow  rings  painted  upon  it.  He  kept  his  mar- 
bles in  it  and  so  he  was  often  in  a  trouble  about  his  pencils.  He  had 
not  tried  very  much  to  find  the  pencil  case  because  the  boys  "deludered" 
him — that's  what  his  father  always  said.  He  had  asked  Heber  Gleed 
if  he  had  seen  it — he  had  strange  suspicions  of  that  boy — but  Heber 
Gleed  had  sworn  so  earnestly  that  the  greengrocer  opposite  the  school 
had  picked  it  up,  he  had  even  "saw  him  do  it,"  that  Felix  Tincler  went 
into  Mr.  Gobbit's  shop,  and  when  the  greengrocer  lady  appeared  in 
answer  to  the  ring  of  the  door  bell  he  enquired  politely  for  his  pencil 
case.  She  was  tall  and  terrible  with  a  squint  and,  what  was  worse,  a 
large  velvety  mole  with  hairs  sprouting  from  it.  She  immediately  and 
with  inexplicable  fury  desired  him  to  flee  from  her  greengrocer  shop, 
with  a  threat  of  alternative  castigation  in  which  a  flat  iron  and  a  red- 
hot  pick-axe  were  to  figure  with  unusual  and  unpleasant  prominence. 
Well,  he  had  run  out  of  Mr.  Gobbit's  shop  and  there  was  Heber  Gleed 
standing  in  the  road  giggling  derisively  at  him.  Felix  walked  on  alone 
looking  in  the  gutters  and  areas  for  his  pencil  case  until  he  encoun- 
tered another  friendly  boy  who  took  him  to  dig  in  a  garden  where 
they  grew  castor-oil  plants.  When  he  went  home  it  was  late;  as  he  ran 
along  under  the  high  wall  of  the  orphanage  that  occupied  one  end  of 
his  street  its  harsh  peevish  bell  clanged  out  six  notes.  He  scampered 
past  the  great  gateway  under  the  dismal  arch  that  always  filled  him 
with  uneasiness,  he  never  passed  it  without  feeling  the  sad  trouble  that 

656 


A.  E.   COPPARD  657 

a  prison  might  give.  He  stepped  into  his  own  pleasant  home,  a  little 
mute,  and  a  little  dirty  in  appearance;  but  at  six  years  of  age  in  a 
home  so  comfortable  and  kind  the  eve  of  the  day  that  is  to  turn  you 
into  seven  is  an  occasion  great  enough  to  yield  an  amnesty  for  pecca- 
dilloes. His  father  was  already  in  from  work,  he  could  hear  him  sing- 
ing. He  gave  his  mother  the  sprigs  he  had  picked  from  the  castor-oil 
plant  and  told  her  about  the  pencil  case.  The  meal  was  laid  upon  the 
table,  and  while  mother  was  gone  into  the  kitchen  to  boil  the  water 
for  tea  he  sat  down  and  tried  to  smooth  out  the  stiff  creases  in  the 
white  table  cloth.  His  father  was  singing  gaily  in  the  scullery  as  he 
washed  and  shaved. 

High  cockalorum, 

Charlie  ate  the  spinach  .  .  . 

He  ceased  for  a  moment  to  give  the  razor  a  vigorous  stropping  and 
then  continued: 

High  cockalorum , 
High  coc\alee  .  .  . 

Felix  knew  that  was  not  the  conclusion  of  the  song.  He  listened,  but 
for  some  moments  all  that  followed  was  the  loud  crepitation  of  a  razor 
searching  a  stubborn  beard  and  the  sigh  of  the  kettle.  Then  a  new 
vigour  seized  the  singer: 

But  mother  brought  the  pandy  down 
And  bate  the  gree  .  .  . 

Again  that  rasping  of  chin  briefly  intervened,  but  the  conclusion  of  the 
cropping  was  soon  denoted  by  the  strong  rallentando  of  the  singer: 

.  .  .  dy  image, 
High  cock — alorum, 
High  cock — a — ^ee' 


658  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

Mrs.  Tincler  brought  in  the  teapot  and  her  husband  followed  her 
with  his  chin  tightly  shaven  but  blue,  crying  with  mock  horror: 

"Faylix,  my  son!  that  is  seven  years  old  to-morrow!  look  at  him, 
Mary,  the  face  of  him  and  the  hands  of  him!  I  didn't  know  there  was 
a  bog  in  this  parish;  is  it  creeping  in  a  bog  you  have  been?" 

The  boy  did  not  blench  at  his  father's  spurious  austerity,  he  knew 
he  was  the  soul  of  kindness  and  fun. 

"Go  wash  yourself  at  the  sink,"  interposed  his  mother.  Kevin  Tin- 
cler, taking  his  son  by  the  hand,  continued  with  mocking  admonish- 
ment: "All  the  fine  copybooks  of  the  world  that  you've  filled  up  with 
that  blather  about  cleanliness  and  holiness,  the  up  strokes  very  thin 
and  the  down  strokes  very  thick!  What  was  it,  Mary,  he  has  let  it  all 
out  of  his  mind?" 

"Go  and  wash,  Felix,  and  come  quickly  and  have  your  tea,"  laughed 
Mary  Tincler. 

"Ah,  but  what  was  it — in  that  grand  book  of  yours?" 

The  boy  stood,  in  his  short  burr  tunic,  regarding  his  father  with  shy 
amusement.  The  small  round  clear-skinned  face  was  lovely  with  its 
blushes  of  faint  rose;  his  eyes  were  big  and  blue,  and  his  head  was 
covered  with  thick  curling  locks  of  rich  brown  hair. 

"Cleanliness  comes  next  to  godliness,"  he  replied. 

"Does  it  so,  indeed?"  exclaimed  his  father.  "Then  you're  putting 
your  godliness  in  a  pretty  low  category!" 

"What  a  nonsense,"  said  Mary  Tincler  as  the  boy  left  them. 

The  Irishman  and  his  dark-eyed  Saxon  wife  sat  down  at  the  table 
waiting  for  their  son. 

"There's  a  bit  of  a  randy  in  the  Town  Gardens  to-night,  Marv, 
dancing  on  the  green,  fireworks!  When  the  boy  is  put  to  bed  we'll 
walk  that  way." 

Mary  expressed  her  pleasure,  but  then  declared  she  could  not  leave 
the  boy  alone  in  his  bed. 

"He'll  not  hurt,  Mary,  he  has  no  fear  in  him.  Give  him  the  birthday 
gift  before  we  go.  Whisht,  he's  coming!" 

The  child,  now  clean  and  handsome,  came  to  his  chair  and  looked 
up  at  his  father  sitting  opposite  to  him. 

"Holy  Mother!"  exclaimed  the  admiring  parent,  "it's  the  neck  of 


A.   E.   COPPARD  659 

a  swan  he  has.  Faylix  Tincler,  may  you  live  to  be  the  father  of  a 
bishop!" 

After  tea  his  father  took  him  upon  the  downs  for  an  hour.  As  they 
left  their  doorway  a  group  of  the  tidy  but  wretched  orphans  was 
marching  back  into  their  seminary,  little  girls  moving  in  double  col- 
umns behind  a  stiff-faced  woman.  They  were  all  dressed  alike  in  gar- 
ments of  charity,  exact  as  pilchards.  Grey  capes,  worsted  stockings, 
straw  hats  with  blue  bands  round  them,  and  hard  boots.  The  boys 
were  coming  in  from  a  different  direction,  but  all  of  them,  even  the 
minutest,  were  clad  in  corduroy  trousers  and  short  jackets  high 
throated  like  a  gaoler's.  This  identity  of  garment  was  contrary  to  the 
will  of  God,  for  He  had  certainly  made  their  pinched  bodies  diverse 
enough.  Some  were  short,  some  tall,  dark,  fair,  some  ugly,  others 
handsome.  The  sight  of  them  made  Felix  unhappy,  he  shrank  into 
himself,  until  he  and  his  father  had  slipped  through  a  gap  in  a  hedge 
and  were  going  up  the  hill  that  stretched  smoothly  and  easily  almost 
from  their  very  door.  The  top  of  the  down  hereabouts  was  quiet  and 
lovely,  but  a  great  flank  of  it  two  miles  away  was  scattered  over  with 
tiny  white  figures  playing  very  deliberately  at  cricket.  Pleasant  it  was 
up  there  in  the  calm  evening,  and  still  bright,  but  the  intervening  val- 
ley was  full  of  grey  ungracious  houses,  allotments,  railway  arches, 
churches,  graveyards,  and  schools.  Worst  of  all  was  the  dull  forbidding 
aspect  of  the  Orphanage  down  beyond  the  roof  of  their  own  house. 

They  played  with  a  ball  and  had  some  wrestling  matches  until  the 
declining  day  began  to  grow  dim  even  on  the  hill  and  the  fat  jumbo 
clouds  over  the  town  were  turning  pink.  If  those  elephants  fell  on  him 
— what  would  they  do?  Why  they'd  mix  him  up  like  ice-cream!  So 
said  his  father. 

"Do  things  ever  fall  out  of  the  sky?" 

"Rain,"  said  Mr.  Tincler. 

"Yes,  I  know." 

"Stars — maybe." 

"Where  do  they  go?" 

"Oh,  they  drop  on  the  hills  but  ye  can  never  find  em." 

"Don't  Heaven  ever?" 


660  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

"What,  drop  down!  No,"  said  Mr.  Tincler,  "it  don't.  I  have  not 
heard  of  it  doing  that,  but  maybe  it  all  just  stoops  down  sometimes, 
Faylix,  until  it's  no  higher  than  the  crown  of  your  hat.  Let  us  be  go- 
ing home  now  and  ye'll  see  something  this  night." 

"What  is  it?" 

"Wait,  Faylix,  wait!" 

As  they  crossed  from  the  hill  Mary,  drawing  down  the  blinds,  sig- 
nalled to  them  from  the  window. 

"Come  along,  Felix,"  she  cried,  and  the  child  ran  into  the  darkened 
room.  Upon  the  table  was  set  a  little  church  of  purest  whiteness.  Kevin 
had  bought  it  from  an  Italian  hawker.  It  had  a  wonderful  tall  steeple 
and  a  cord  that  came  through  a  hole  and  pulled  a  bell  inside.  And 
that  was  not  all;  the  church  was  filled  with  light  that  was  shining 
through  a  number  of  tiny  arched  windows,  blue,  purple,  green,  violet, 
the  wonderful  windows  were  everywhere.  Felix  was  silent  with  won- 
der; how  could  you  get  a  light  in  a  church  that  hadn't  a  door!  Then 
Mary  lifted  the  hollow  building  from  the  table;  it  had  no  floor,  and 
there  was  a  nightlight  glowing  in  one  of  her  patty-pans  filled  with 
water.  The  church  was  taken  up  to  bed  with  him  in  the  small  chamber 
next  his  parents'  room  and  set  upon  a  bureau.  Kevin  and  Mary  then 
went  oft  to  the  "bit  of  devilment"  in  the  town  gardens. 

Felix  kept  skipping  from  his  bed,  first  to  gaze  at  the  church,  and 
then  to  lean  out  of  the  window  in  his  night-shift,  looking  for  the 
lamplighter  who  would  come  to  the  street  lamp  outside.  The  house 
was  the  very  last  and  the  lamp  was  the  very  last  one  on  the  roads  that 
led  from  the  town  and  went  poking  out  into  the  steady  furze-covered 
downs.  And  as  the  lamp  was  the  very  last  to  be  lit  darkness  was  al- 
ways half-fallen  by  the  time  the  old  man  arrived  at  his  journey's  end. 
He  carried  a  pole  with  a  brass  tube  on  its  top.  There  were  holes  in  the 
brass  tube  showing  gleams  of  light.  The  pole  rested  upon  his  shoulders 
as  he  trudged  along,  humming  huskily. 

"Here  he  is,"  cried  Felix,  leaning  from  the  window  and  waving  a 
white  arm.  The  dull  road,  empty  of  traffic,  dim  as  his  mother's  pantry 
by  day,  curved  slightly,  and  away  at  the  other  end  of  the  curve  a  jet 
of  light  had  sprung  into  the  gloom  like  a  bright  flower  bursting  its 
sheath;  a  black  figure  moved  along  towards  him  under  the  Orphanage 


A.  E.   COPPARD  661 

wall.  Other  lamps  blossomed  with  light  and  the  lamplighter,  approach- 
ing the  Tinclers'  lamp,  thrust  the  end  of  his  pole  into  the  lantern,  his 
head  meanwhile  craning  back  like  the  head  of  a  horse  that  has  been 
pulled  violently  backwards.  He  deftly  turned  the  tap;  with  a  tiny  dull 
explosion  that  sounded  like  a  doormat  being  beaten  against  the  wall 
in  the  next  street  the  lamp  was  lit  and  the  face  of  the  old  man  sprang 
into  vague  brilliance,  for  it  was  not  yet  utterly  dark.  Vague  as  the 
light  was,  the  neighbouring  hills  at  once  faded  out  of  recognition  and 
became  black  bulks  of  oblivion. 

"Oi  .  .  .  Oi  .  .  ."  cried  the  child,  clapping  his  hands.  The  old  man's 
features  relaxed,  he  grunted  in  relief,  the  pole  slid  down  in  his  palm. 
As  the  end  of  it  struck  the  pavement  a  sharp  knock  he  drew  an  old 
pipe  from  his  pocket  and  lit  it  quite  easily,  although  one  of  his  hands 
was  deficient  of  a  thumb  and  some  fingers.  He  was  about  to  travel 
back  into  the  sparkling  town  when  Felix  called  to  him: 

"Soloman!  Soloman!" 

"Goo  an  to  yer  bed,  my  little  billycock,  or  you'll  ketch  a  fever." 

"No,  but  what's  this?"  Felix  was  pointing  to  the  ground  below  him. 
The  old  man  peered  over  the  iron  railings  into  the  front  garden  that 
had  just  sufficient  earth  to  cherish  four  deciduous  bushes,  two  plants 
of  marigold,  and  some  indeterminate  herbs.  In  the  dimness  of  their 
shadows  a  glowworm  beamed  clearly. 

"That?"  exclaimed  he;  "Oh,  s'dripped  off  the  moon,  yas,  right  of?, 
moon's  wasting  away,  you'll  see  later  on  if  you'm  watch  out  for  it, 
s'dripped  of?  the  moon,  right  off."  Chuckling,  he  blew  out  the  light  at 
the  end  of  his  pole,  and  went  away,  but  turned  at  intervals  to  wave  his 
hand  towards  the  sky,  crying  "Later  on,  right  of?!"  and  cackling  gen- 
ially until  he  came  to  a  tavern. 

The  child  stared  at  the  glowworm  and  then  surveyed  the  sky,  but 
the  tardy  moon  was  deep  behind  the  hills.  He  left  the  open  window 
and  climbed  into  bed  again.  The  house  was  empty,  but  he  did  not 
mind,  father  and  mother  had  gone  to  buy  him  another  birthday  gift. 
He  did  not  mind,  the  church  glowed  in  its  corner  on  the  bureau,  the 
street  lamp  shined  all  over  the  ceiling  and  a  little  bit  upon  the  wall 
where  the  splendid  picture  of  Wexford  Harbour  was  hanging.  It  was 
not  gloomy  at  all,  although  the  Orphanage  bell  once  sounded  very 


662  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

piercingly.  Sometimes  people  would  stroll  by,  but  not  often,  and  he 
would  hear  them  mumbling  to  each  other.  He  would  rather  have  a 
Chinese  lantern  first,  and  next  to  that  a  little  bagpipe,  and  next  to  that 
a  cockatoo  with  a  yellow  head,  and  then  a  Chinese  lantern,  and  then. 
.  .  .  He  awoke;  he  thought  he  heard  a  heavy  bang  on  the  door  as  if 
somebody  had  thrown  a  big  stone.  But  when  he  looked  out  of  the 
window  there  was  nobody  to  be  seen.  The  little  moon-drip  was  still 
lying  in  the  dirt,  the  sky  was  softly  black,  the  stars  were  vivid,  only 
the  lamp  dazzled  his  eyes  and  he  could  not  see  any  moon.  But  as  he 
yawned  he  saw  just  over  the  downs  a  rich  globe  of  light  moving  very 
gradually  towards  him,  swaying  and  falling,  falling  in  the  still  air.  To 
the  child's  dazzled  eyes  the  great  globe,  dropping  towards  him  as  if 
it  would  crush  the  house,  was  shaped  like  an  elephant,  a  fat  squat 
jumbo  with  a  green  trunk.  Then  to  his  relief  it  fell  suddenly  from  the 
sky  right  on  to  the  down  where  he  and  father  had  played.  The  light 
was  extinguished  and  black  night  hid  the  fire-balloon. 

He  scrambled  back  into  bed  again,  but  how  he  wished  it  was  morn- 
ing so  that  he  could  go  out  and  capture  the  old  elephant — he  knew  he 
would  find  it!  When  at  last  he  slept  he  sank  into  a  world  of  white 
churches  that  waved  their  steeples  like  vast  trunks,  and  danced  with 
elephants  that  had  bellies  full  of  fire  and  hidden  bells  that  clanged  im- 
petuously to  a  courageous  pull  of  each  tail.  He  did  not  wake  again 
until  morning  was  bright  and  birds  were  singing.  It  was  early,  but  it 
was  his  birthday.  There  were  no  noises  in  the  street  yet,  and  he  could 
not  hear  his  father  or  mother  moving  about.  He  crawled  silently  from 
his  bed  and  dressed  himself.  The  coloured  windows  in  the  little  white 
fane  gleamed  still  but  it  looked  a  little  dull  now.  He  took  the  cake  that 
mother  always  left  at  his  bedside  and  crept  down  the  stairs.  There  he 
put  on  his  shoes  and,  munching  the  cake,  tiptoed  to  the  front  door. 
It  was  not  bolted,  but  it  was  difficult  for  him  to  slip  back  the  latch 
quietly,  and  when  at  last  it  was  done  and  he  stood  upon  the  step  he 
was  doubly  startled  to  hear  a  loud  rapping  on  the  knocker  of  a  house 
a  few  doors  away.  He  sidled  quickly  but  warily  to  the  corner  of  the 
street,  crushing  the  cake  into  his  pocket,  and  then  peeped  back.  It  was 
more  terrible  than  he  had  anticipated!  A  tall  policeman  stood  outside 
that  house,  bawling  to  a  woman  with  her  hair  in  curl  papers  who  was 


A.  E.   COPPARD  663 

lifting  the  sash  of  an  upper  window.  Felix  turned  and  ran  through  the 
gap  in  the  hedge  and  onwards  up  the  hill.  He  did  not  wait;  he  thought 
he  heard  the  policeman  calling  out  "Tincler!"  and  he  ran  faster  and 
faster,  then  slower  and  more  slow  as  the  down  steepened,  until  he  was 
able  to  sink  down  breathless  behind  a  clump  of  the  furze,  out  of  sight 
and  out  of  hearing.  The  policeman  did  not  appear  to  be  following 
him;  he  moved  on  up  the  hill  and  through  the  soft  smooth  alleys  of 
the  furze  until  he  reached  the  top  of  the  down,  searching  always  for 
the  white  elephant  which  he  knew  must  be  hidden  close  there  and 
nowhere  else,  although  he  had  no  clear  idea  in  his  mind  of  the  ap- 
pearance of  his  mysterious  quarry.  Vain  search,  the  elephant  was  shy 
or  cunning  and  eluded  him.  Hungry  at  last  and  tired  he  sat  down  and 
leaned  against  a  large  ant  hill  close  beside  the  thick  and  perfumed 
furze.  Here  he  ate  his  cake  and  then  lolled,  a  little  drowsy,  looking  at 
the  few  clouds  in  the  sky  and  listening  to  birds.  A  flock  of  rooks  was 
moving  in  straggling  flight  towards  him,  a  wide  flat  changing  skein, 
like  a  curtain  of  crape  that  was  being  pulled  and  stretched  delicately 
by  invisible  fingers.  One  of  the  rooks  flapped  just  over  him;  it  had  a 
small  round  hole  right  through  the  feathers  of  one  wing — what  was 
that  for?  Felix  was  just  falling  to  sleep,  it  was  so  soft  and  comfortable 
there,  when  a  tiny  noise,  very  tiny  but  sharp  and  mysterious,  went 
"Ping!"  just  by  his  ear,  and  something  stung  him  lightly  in  the  neck. 
He  knelt  up,  a  little  startled,  but  he  peered  steadily  under  the  furze. 
"Ping!"  went  something  again  and  stung  him  in  the  ball  of  the  eye.  It 
made  him  blink.  He  drew  back;  after  staring  silently  at  the  furze  he 
said  very  softly,  "Come  out!"  Nothing  came;  he  beckoned  with  his 
forefinger  and  called  aloud  with  friendliness,  "Come  on,  come  out!" 
At  that  moment  his  nose  was  almost  touching  a  brown  dry  sheath  of 
the  furze  bloom,  and  right  before  his  eyes  the  dried  flower  burst  with 
the  faint  noise  of  "Ping!"  and  he  felt  the  shower  of  tiny  black  seeds 
shooting  against  his  cheek.  At  once  he  comprehended  the  charming 
mystery  of  the  furze's  dispersal  of  its  seeds,  and  he  submitted  himself 
to  the  fairylike  bombardment  with  great  glee,  forgetting  even  the  ele- 
phant until  in  one  of  the  furze  alleys  he  came  in  sight  of  a  heap  of 
paper  that  fluttered  a  little  heavily.  He  went  towards  it;  it  was  so  large 
that  he  could  not  make  out  its  shape  or  meaning.  It  was  a  great  white 


664  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

bag  made  of  paper,  all  crumpled  and  damp,  with  an  arrangement  of 
wire  where  the  hole  was,  and  some  burned  tow  fixed  in  it.  But  at  last 
he  was  able  to  perceive  the  green  trunk,  and  it  also  had  pink  eyes!  He 
had  found  it  and  he  was  triumphant!  There  were  words  in  large  black 
letters  painted  upon  it  which  he  could  not  read,  except  one  word  which 
was  CURE.  It  was  an  advertisement  fire-balloon  relating  to  a  specific 
for  catarrh.  He  rolled  the  elephant  together  carefully,  and  carrying 
the  mass  of  it  clasped  in  his  two  arms  he  ran  back  along  the  hill 
chuckling  to  himself,  "I'm  carrying  the  ole  elephant."  Advancing 
down  the  hill  to  his  home  he  was  precariously  swathed  in  a  drapery 
of  balloon  paper.  The  door  stood  open;  he  walked  into  the  kitchen. 
No  one  was  in  the  kitchen,  but  there  were  sharp  straight  voices  speak- 
ing in  the  room  above.  He  thought  he  must  have  come  into  the  wrong 
house,  but  the  strange  noises  frightened  him  into  silence;  he  stood 
quite  still  listening  to  them.  He  had  dropped  the  balloon  and  it  un- 
folded upon  the  floor,  partly  revealing  the  astounding  advertisement  of 

PEASEGOOD'S  PODOPHYLLIN 

The  voices  above  were  unravelling  horror  upon  horror.  He  knew 
by  some  divining  instinct  that  tragedy  was  happening  to  him,  had  in- 
deed already  enveloped  and  crushed  him.  A  mortar  had  exploded  at 
the  fireworks  display,  killing  and  wounding  people  that  he  knew. 

"She  had  a  great  hole  of  a  wound  in  the  soft  part  of  her  thigh  as 
you  could  put  a  cokernut  in  .  .  ." 

"God  a'mighty  .  .  ." 

"Died  in  five  minutes,  poor  thing." 

"And  the  husband  .  .  .  they  couldn't  ...  ?" 

"No,  couldn't  identify  .  .  .  they  could  not  identify  him  .  .  .  only  In- 
some  papers  in  his  pocket." 

"And  he'd  got  a  little  bagpipe  done  up  in  a  package  ...  for  their 
little  boy  .  .  ." 

"Never  spoke  a  word.  .  .  ." 

"Never  a  word,  poor  creature." 

"May  Christ  be  good  to  'em." 

"Yes,  yes,"  thev  all  said  softly. 


A.  E.   COPPARD  665 

The  child  walked  quietly  up  the  stairs  to  his  mother's  bedroom.  Two 
policemen  were  there  making  notes  in  their  pocket  books,  their  hel- 
mets lying  on  the  unused  bed.  There  were  also  three  or  four  friendly 
women  neighbours.  As  he  entered  the  room  the  gossip  ceased  abruptly. 
One  of  the  women  gasped  "O  Jesus!"  and  they  seemed  to  huddle  to- 
gether, eyeing  him  as  if  he  had  stricken  them  with  terror.  With  his 
lingers  still  upon  the  handle  of  the  door  he  looked  up  at  the  taller 
policeman  and  said: 

"What's  the  matter?" 

The  policeman  did  not  reply  immediately;  he  folded  up  his  note- 
book, but  the  woman  who  had  gasped  came  to  him  with  a  yearning 
cry  and  wrapped  him  in  her  protecting  arms  with  a  thousand  kisses. 

"Ye  poor  lamb,  ye  poor  little  orphan,  whatever  'ull  become  of  ye!" 

At  that  moment  the  bell  of  the  Orphanage  burst  into  a  peal  of  harsh 
impetuous  clangour  and  the  policemen  picked  up  their  helmets  from 
the  bed. 


X2 


Arabesque:  The  Mouse 

BY 

A.  E.  COPPARD 


In  the  main  street  amongst  tall  establishments  of  mart  and  worship 
was  a  high  narrow  house  pressed  between  a  coffee  factory  and  a  boot- 
maker's. It  had  four  flights  of  long  dim  echoing  stairs,  and  at  the  top, 
in  a  room  that  was  full  of  the  smell  of  dried  apples  and  mice,  a  man 
in  the  middle  age  of  life  had  sat  reading  Russian  novels  until  he 
thought  he  was  mad.  Late  was  the  hour,  the  night  outside  black  and 
freezing,  the  pavements  below  empty  and  undistinguishable  when  he 
closed  his  book  and  sat  motionless  in  front  of  the  glowing  but  nameless 
fire.  He  felt  he  was  very  tired,  yet  he  could  not  rest.  He  stared  at  a 
picture  on  the  wall  until  he  wanted  to  cry;  it  was  a  colour-print  by 
Utamaro  of  a  suckling  child  caressing  its  mother's  breasts  as  she  sits 
in  front  of  a  blackbound  mirror.  Very  chaste  and  decorative  it  was,  in 
spite  of  its  curious  anatomy.  The  man  gazed,  empty  of  sight  though 
not  of  mind,  until  the  sighing  of  the  gas-jet  maddened  him.  He  got 
up,  put  out  the  light,  and  sat  down  again  in  the  darkness  trying  to  com- 
pose his  mind  before  the  comfort  of  the  fire.  And  he  was  just  about  to 
begin  a  conversation  with  himself  when  a  mouse  crept  from  a  hole  in 
the  skirting  near  the  fireplace  and  scurried  into  the  fender.  The  man 
had  the  crude  dislike  for  such  sly  nocturnal  things,  but  this  mouse  was 
so  small  and  bright,  its  antics  so  pretty,  that  he  drew  his  feet  carefully 
from  the  fender  and  sat  watching  it  almost  with  amusement.  The 
mouse  moved  along  the  shadows  of  the  fender,  out  upon  the  hearth, 
and  sat  before  the  glow,  rubbing  its  head,  ears,  and  tiny  belly  with  its 
paws  as  if  it  were  bathing  itself  with  the  warmth,  until,  sharp  and 
sudden,  the  fire  sank,  an  ember  fell,  and  the  mouse  flashed  into  its  hole. 
The  man   reached   forward   to  the   mantelpiece  and   put  his  hand 

666 


A.  E.   COPPARD  667 

upon  a  pocket  lamp.  Turning  on  the  beam,  he  opened  the  door  of 
a  cupboard  beside  the  fireplace.  Upon  one  of  the  shelves  there  was  a 
small  trap  baited  with  cheese,  a  trap  made  with  a  wire  spring,  one  of 
those  that  smashed  down  to  break  the  back  of  ingenuous  and  unwary 
mice. 

"Mean — so  mean,"  he  mused,  "to  appeal  to  the  hunger  of  any  living 
thing  just  in  order  to  destroy  it." 

He  picked  up  the  empty  trap  as  if  to  throw  it  in  the  fire. 

"I  suppose  I  had  better  leave  it  though — the  place  swarms  with 
them."  He  still  hesitated.  "I  hope  that  little  beastie  won't  go  and  do 
anything  foolish."  He  put  the  trap  back  quite  carefully,  closed  the  door 
of  the  cupboard,  sat  down  again  and  extinguished  the  lamp. 

Was  there  anyone  else  in  the  world  so  squeamish  and  foolish  about 
such  things!  Even  his  mother,  mother  so  bright  and  beautiful,  even 
she  had  laughed  at  his  childish  horrors.  He  recalled  how  once  in  his 
childhood,  not  long  after  his  sister  Yosine  was  born,  a  friendly  neigh- 
bour had  sent  him  home  with  a  bundle  of  dead  larks  tied  by  the  feet 
"for  supper."  The  pitiful  inanimity  of  the  birds  had  brought  a  gush 
of  tears;  he  had  run  weeping  home  and  into  the  kitchen,  and  there  he 
had  found  the  strange  thing  doing.  It  was  dusk;  mother  was  kneel- 
ing before  the  fire.  He  dropped  the  larks. 

"Mother!"  he  exclaimed  softly. 

She  looked  at  his  tearful  face. 

"What's  the  matter,  Filip?"  she  asked,  smiling  too  at  his  astonish- 
ment. 

"Mother!  What  are  you  doing?" 

Her  bodice  was  open  and  she  was  squeezing  her  breasts;  long  thin 
streams  of  milk  spurted  into  the  fire  with  a  plunging  noise. 

"Weaning  your  little  sister,"  laughed  mother.  She  took  his  inquisi- 
tive face  and  pressed  it  against  the  delicate  warmth  of  her  bosom,  and 
he  forgot  the  dead  birds  behind  him. 

"Let  me  do  it,  mother,"  he  cried,  and  doing  so  he  discovered  the 
throb  of  the  heart  in  his  mother's  breast.  Wonderful  it  was  for  him  to 
experience  it,  although  she  could  not  explain  it  to  him. 

"Why  does  it  do  that?" 


668  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

"If  it  did  not  beat,  little  son,  I  should  die  and  the  Holy  Father 
would  take  me  from  you." 

"God?" 

She  nodded.  He  put  his  hand  upon  his  own  breast.  "Oh,  feel  it, 
Mother!"  he  cried.  Mother  unbuttoned  his  little  coat  and  felt  the  gentle 
tic\  tic\  with  her  warm  palm. 

"Beautiful!"  she  said. 

"Is  it  a  good  one?" 

She  kissed  his  smiling  lips.  "It  is  good  if  it  beats  truly.  Let  it  always 
beat  truly,  Filip;  let  it  always  beat  truly." 

There  was  the  echo  of  a  sigh  in  her  voice,  and  he  had  divined  some 
grief,  for  he  was  very  wise.  He  kissed  her  bosom  in  his  tiny  ecstasy 
and  whispered  soothingly:  "Little  mother!  little  mother!"  In  such  joys 
he  forgot  his  horror  of  the  dead  larks;  indeed  he  helped  mother  to 
pluck  them  and  spit  them  for  supper. 

It  was  a  black  day  that  succeeded,  and  full  of  tragedy  for  the  child. 
A  great  bay  horse  with  a  tawny  mane  had  knocked  down  his  mother 
in  the  lane,  and  a  heavy  cart  had  passed  over  her,  crushing  both  her 
hands.  She  was  borne  away  moaning  with  anguish  to  the  surgeon  who 
cut  off  the  two  hands.  She  died  in  the  night.  For  years  the  child's 
dreams  were  filled  with  the  horror  of  the  stumps  of  arms,  bleeding 
unendingly.  Yet  he  had  never  seen  them,  for  he  was  sleeping  when 
she  died. 

While  this  old  woe  was  come  vividly  before  him  he  again  became 
aware  of  the  mouse.  His  nerves  stretched  upon  him  in  repulsion,  but 
he  soon  relaxed  to  a  tolerant  interest,  for  it  was  really  a  most  engaging 
little  mouse.  It  moved  with  curious  staccato  scurries,  stopping  to  rub 
its  head  or  flicker  with  its  ears;  they  seemed  almost  transparent  ears. 
It  spied  a  red  cinder  and  skipped  innocently  up  to  it  .  .  .  sniffing  .  .  . 
sniffing  .  .  .  until  it  jumped  back  scorched.  It  would  crouch  as^  a  cat 
does,  blinking  in  the  warmth,  or  scamper  madly  as  if  dancing,  and  then 
roll  upon  its  side  rubbing  its  head  with  those  pliant  paws.  The  melan- 
choly man  watched  it  until  it  came  at  last  to  rest  and  squatted  medi- 
tatively upon  its  haunches,  hunched  up,  looking  curiously  wise,  a  pen- 
nyworth of  philosophy;  then  once  more  the  coals  sank  with  a  rattle 
and  again  the  mouse  was  gone. 


A.  E.   COPPARD  669 

The  man  sat  on  before  the  fire  and  his  mind  filled  again  with  un- 
accountable sadness.  He  had  grown  into  manhood  with  a  burning 
generosity  of  spirit  and  rifts  of  rebellion  in  him  that  proved  too  ex- 
acting for  his  fellows  and  seemed  mere  wantonness  to  men  of  casual 
rectitudes.  "Justice  and  Sin,"  he  would  cry,  "Property  and  Virtue — in- 
compatibilities! There  can  be  no  sin  in  a  world  of  justice,  no  property 
in  a  world  of  virtue!"  With  an  engaging  extravagance  and  a  certain 
clear-eyed  honesty  of  mind  he  had  put  his  two  and  two  together  and 
seemed  then  to  rejoice,  as  in  some  topsy-turvy  dream,  in  having  ren- 
dered unto  Cassar,  as  you  might  say,  the  things  that  were  due  to  Napo- 
leon! But  this  kind  of  thing  could  not  pass  unexpiated  in  a  world  of 
men  having  an  infinite  regard  for  Property  and  a  pride  in  their  tradi- 
tions of  Virtue  and  Justice.  They  could  indeed  forgive  him  his  sins, 
but  they  could  not  forgive  him  his  compassions.  So  he  had  to  go  seek 
for  more  melodious-minded  men  and  fair  unambiguous  women.  But 
rebuffs  can  deal  more  deadly  blows  than  daggers;  he  became  timid — a 
timidity  not  of  fear  but  of  pride — and  grew  with  the  years  into  misan- 
thropy, susceptible  to  trivial  griefs  and  despairs,  a  vessel  of  emotion 
that  emptied  as  easily  as  it  filled,  until  he  came  at  last  to  know  that  his 
griefs  were  half  deliberate,  his  despairs  half  unreal,  and  to  live  but  for 
beauty — which  is  tranquillity — to  put  her  wooing  hand  upon  him. 

Now,  while  the  mouse  hunts  in  the  cupboard,  one  fair  recollection 
stirs  in  the  man's  mind — of  Cassia  and  the  harmony  of  their  only  meet- 
ing, Cassia  who  had  such  rich  red  hair,  and  eyes,  yes,  her  eyes  were 
full  of  starry  inquiry  like  the  eyes  of  mice.  It  was  so  long  ago  that  he 
had  forgotten  how  he  came  to  be  in  it,  that  unaccustomed  orbit  of  vain 
vivid  things — a  village  festival,  all  oranges  and  houp-la.  He  could  not 
remember  how  he  came  to  be  there,  but  at  night,  in  the  court  hall,  he 
had  danced  with  Cassia — fair  and  unambiguous  indeed! — who  had 
come  like  the  wind  from  among  the  roses  and  swept  into  his  heart. 

"It  is  easy  to  guess,"  he  had  said  to  her,  "what  you  like  most  in  the 
world." 

She  laughed.  "To  dance?  Yes,  and  you  ...  ?" 

"To  find  a  friend." 

"I  know,  I  know,"  she  cried,  caressing  him  with  recognitions.  "Ah, 


670  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

at  times  I  quite  love  my  friends— until  I  begin  to  wonder  how  much 
they  hate  me!" 

He  had  loved  at  once  that  cool  pale  face,  the  abundance  of  her 
strange  hair  as  light  as  the  autumn's  clustered  bronze,  her  lilac  dress 
and  all  the  sweetness  about  her  like  a  bush  of  lilies.  How  they  had 
laughed  at  the  two  old  peasants  whom  they  had  overheard  gabbling  of 
trifles  like  sickness  and  appetite! 

"There's  a  lot  of  nature  in  a  parsnip,"  said  one,  a  fat  person  of  the 
kind  that  swells  grossly  when  stung  by  a  bee,  "a  lot  of  nature  when 
it's  young,  but  when  it's  old  it's  like  everything  else." 
I  rue  it  is. 
"And  I'm  very  fond  of  vegetables,  yes,  and  I'm  very  fond  of  bread." 
"Come  out  with  me,"  whispered  Cassia  to  Filip,  and  they  walked 
out  in  the  blackness  of  midnight  into  what  must  have  been  a  garden. 
"Cool  it  is  here,"  she  said,  "and  quiet,  but  too  dark  even  to  see  your 
face — can  you  see  mine?" 

"The  moon  will  not  rise  until  after  dawn,"  said  he,  "it  will  be  white 
in  the  sky  when  the  starlings  whistle  in  your  chimney." 

They  walked  silently  and  warily  about  until  they  felt  the  chill  of  the 
air.  A  dull  echo  of  the  music  came  to  them  through  the  walls,  then 
stopped,  and  they  heard  the  bark  of  a  fox  away  in  the  woods. 

"You  are  cold,"  he  whispered,  touching  her  bare  neck  with  timid 
fingers.  "Quite,  quite  cold,"  drawing  his  hand  tenderly  over  the  curves 
of  her  chin  and  face.  "Let  us  go  in,"  he  said,  moving  with  discretion 
from  the  rapture  he  desired.  "We  will  come  out  again,"  said  Cassia. 

But  within  the  room  the  ball  was  just  at  an  end,  the  musicians  were 
packing  up  their  instruments  and  the  dancers  were  flocking  out  and 
homewards,  or  to  the  buffet  which  was  on  a  platform  at  one  end  of 
the  room.  The  two  old  peasants  were  there,  munching  hugely. 

"I  tell  you,"  said  one  of  them,  "there's  nothing  in  the  world  for  it 
but  the  grease  of  an  owl's  liver.  That's  it,  that's  it!  Take  something 
on  your  stomach  now,  just  to  offset  the  chill  of  the  dawn!" 

Filip  and  Cassia  were  beside  them,  but  there  were  so  many  people 
crowding  the  platform  that  Filip  had  to  jump  down.  He  stood  then 
looking  up  adoringly  at  Cassia,  who  had  pulled  a  purple  cloak  around 
her. 


A.  E.   COPPARD  671 

"For  Filip,  Filip,  Filip,"  she  said,  pushing  the  last  bite  of  her  sand- 
wich into  his  mouth,  and  pressing  upon  him  her  glass  of  Loupiac. 
Quickly  he  drank  it  with  a  great  gesture,  and,  flinging  the  glass  to  the 
wall,  took  Cassia  into  his  arms,  shouting:  "I'll  carry  you  home,  the 
whole  way  home,  yes,  I'll  carry  you!" 

"Put  me  down!"  she  cried,  beating  his  head  and  pulling  his  ear,  as 
they  passed  among  the  departing  dancers.  "Put  me  down,  you  wild 
thing!" 

Dark,  dark  was  the  lane  outside,  and  the  night  an  obsidian  net,  into 
which  he  walked  carrying  the  girl.  But  her  arms  were  looped  around 
him;  she  discovered  paths  for  him,  clinging  more  tightly  as  he  stag- 
gered against  a  wall,  stumbled  upon  a  gulley,  or  when  her  sweet  hair 
was  caught  in  the  boughs  of  a  little  lime  tree. 

"Do  not  loose  me,  Filip,  will  you?  Do  not  loose  me,"  Cassia  said, 
putting  her  lips  against  his  temple. 

His  brain  seemed  bursting,  his  heart  rocked  within  him,  but  he 
adored  the  rich  grace  of  her  limbs  against  his  breast.  "Here  it  is," 
she  murmured,  and  he  carried  her  into  a  path  that  led  to  her  home  in 
a  little  lawned  garden  where  the  smell  of  ripe  apples  upon  the  branches 
and  the  heavy  lustre  of  roses  stole  upon  the  air.  Roses  and  apples! 
Roses  and  apples!  He  carried  her  right  into  the  porch  before  she  slid 
down  and  stood  close  to  him  with  her  hands  still  upon  his  shoulders. 
He  could  breathe  happily  at  the  release,  standing  silent  and  looking 
round  at  the  sky  sprayed  with  wondrous  stars  but  without  a  moon. 

"You  are  stronger  than  I  thought  you,  stronger  than  you  look;  you 
are  really  very  strong,"  she  whispered,  nodding  her  head  to  him.  Open- 
ing the  buttons  of  his  coat,  she  put  her  palm  against  his  breast. 

"Oh,  how  your  heart  does  beat!  Does  it  beat  truly — and  for  whom?" 

He  had  seized  her  wrists  in  a  little  fury  of  love,  crying:  "Little 
mother,  little  mother!" 

"What  are  you  saying?"  asked  the  girl;  but  before  he  could  con- 
tinue there  came  a  footstep  sounding  behind  the  door,  and  the  clack 
of  a  bolt.  .  .  . 

What  was  that?  Was  that  really  a  bolt  or  was  it  .  .  .  was  it  .  .  .  the 
snap  of  the  trap?  The  man  sat  up  in  his  room  intently  listening,  with 
nerves  quivering  again,  waiting  for  the  trap  to  kill  the  little  phi- 


672  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

losopher.  When  he  felt  it  was  all  over  he  reached  guardedly  in  the 
darkness  for  the  lantern,  turned  on  the  beam,  and  opened  the  door  of 
the  cupboard.  Focussing  the  light  upon  the  trap,  he  was  amazed  to  see 
the  mouse  sitting  on  its  haunches  before  it,  uncaught.  Its  head  was 
bowed,  but  its  bead-like  eyes  were  full  of  brightness,  and  it  sat  blink- 
ing, it  did  not  flee. 

"Shoosh!"  said  the  man,  but  the  mouse  did  not  move.  "Why  doesn't 
it  go?  Shoosh!"  he  said  again,  and  suddenly  the  reason  of  the  mouse's 
strange  behaviour  was  made  clear.  The  trap  had  not  caught  it  com- 
pletely, but  it  had  broken  off  both  its  forefeet,  and  the  thing  crouched 
there  holding  out  its  two  bleeding  stumps  humanly,  too  stricken  to  stir. 
Horror  flooded  the  man,  and  conquering  his  repugnance  he  plucked 
the  mouse  up  quickly  by  the  neck.  Immediately  the  little  thing  fas- 
tened its  teeth  in  his  finger;  the  touch  was  no  more  than  the  slight 
prick  of  a  pin.  The  man's  impulse  then  exhausted  itself.  What  should 
he  do  with  it?  He  put  his  hand  behind  him,  he  dared  not  look,  but 
there  was  nothing  to  be  done  except  kill  it  at  once,  quickly,  quickly. 
Oh,  how  should  he  do  it?  He  bent  towards  the  fire  as  if  to  drop  the 
mouse  into  its  quenching  glow;  but  he  paused  and  shuddered,  he 
would  hear  its  cries,  he  would  have  to  listen.  Should  he  crush  it  with 
finger  and  thumb?  A  glance  towards  the  window  decided  him.  He 
opened  the  sash  with  one  hand  and  flung  the  wounded  mouse  far  into 

the  dark  street.  Closing  the  window  with  a  crash,  he  sank  into  a  chair, 

limp  with  pity  too  deep  for  tears. 

So  he  sat  for  two  minutes,  five  minutes,  ten  minutes.  Anxiety  and 

shame  filled  him  with  heat.  He  opened  the  window  again,  and  the 

freezing  air  poured  in  and  cooled  him.  Seizing  his  lantern,  he  ran 

down  the  echoing  stairs,  into  the  dark  empty  street,  searching  long 

and  vainly  for  the  little  philosopher  until  he  had  to  desist  and  return 

to  his  room,  shivering,  frozen  to  his  very  bones. 

When  he  had  recovered  some  warmth  he  took  the  trap  from  its 

shelf.  The  two  feet  dropped  into  his  hand;  he  cast  them  into  the  fire. 

Then  he  once  more  set  the  trap  and  put  it  back  carefully  into  the 

cupboard. 


Dusky  Ruth 

BY 

A.  E.  COPPARD 


At  the  close  of  an  April  day,  chilly  and  wet,  the  traveller  came  to  a 
country  town.  In  the  Cotswolds,  though  the  towns  are  small  and  sweet 
and  the  inns  snug,  the  general  habit  of  the  land  is  bleak  and  bare.  He 
had  newly  come  upon  upland  roads  so  void  of  human  affairs,  so  lonely, 
that  they  might  have  been  made  for  some  forgotten  uses  by  departed 
men,  and  left  to  the  unwitting  passage  of  such  strangers  as  himself.  Even 
the  unending  walls,  built  of  old  rough  laminated  rock  that  detailed  the 
far-spreading  fields,  had  grown  very  old  again  in  their  courses;  there 
were  dabs  of  darkness,  buttons  of  moss,  and  fossils  on  every  stone.  He 
had  passed  a  few  neighbourhoods,  sometimes  at  the  crook  of  a  stream,  or 
at  the  cross  of  debouching  roads,  where  old  habitations,  their  gangre- 
nated  thatch  riddled  with  bird-holes,  had  not  been  so  much  erected  as  just 
spattered  about  the  places.  Beyond  these  signs  an  odd  lark  or  blackbird, 
the  ruckle  of  partridges,  or  the  nifty  gallop  of  a  hare,  had  been  the  only 
mitigation  of  the  living  loneliness  that  was  almost  as  profound  by  day  as 
by  night.  But  the  traveller  had  a  care  for  such  times  and  places.  There  are 
men  who  love  to  gaze  with  the  mind  at  things  that  can  never  be  seen, 
feel  at  least  the  throb  of  a  beauty  that  will  never  be  known,  and  hear  over 
immense  bleak  reaches  the  echo  of  that  which  is  no  celestial  music, 
but  only  their  own  hearts'  vain  cries;  and  though  his  garments  clung  to 
him  like  clay  it  was  with  deliberate  questing  step  that  the  traveller 
trod  the  single  street  of  the  town,  and  at  last  entered  the  inn,  shuffling 
his  shoes  in  the  doorway  for  a  moment  and  striking  the  raindrops 
from  his  hat.  Then  he  turned  into  a  small  smoking-room.  Leather- 
lined  benches,  much  worn,  were  fixed  to  the  wall  under  the  window 
and  in  other  odd  corners  and  nooks  behind  mahogany  tables.  One 

673 


674  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

wall  was  furnished  with  all  the  congenial  gear  of  a  bar,  but  without 
any  intervening  counter.  Opposite  a  bright  fire  was  burning,  and  a 
neatly-dressed  young  woman  sat  before  it  in  a  Windsor  chair,  staring 
at  the  flames.  There  was  no  other  inmate  of  the  room,  and  as  he  en- 
tered, the  girl  rose  up  and  greeted  him.  He  found  that  he  could  be  ac- 
commodated for  the  night,  and  in  a  few  moments  his  hat  and  scarf 
were  removed  and  placed  inside  the  fender,  his  wet  overcoat  was  taken 
to  the  kitchen,  the  landlord,  an  old  fellow,  was  lending  him  a  roomy 
pair  of  slippers,  and  a  maid  was  setting  supper  in  an  adjoining  room. 
He  sat  while  this  was  doing  and  talked  to  the  barmaid.  She  had  a 
beautiful,  but  rather  mournful,  face  as  it  was  lit  by  the  firelight,  and 
when  her  glance  was  turned  away  from  it  her  eyes  had  a  piercing 
brightness.  Friendly  and  well-spoken  as  she  was,  the  melancholy  in 
her  aspect  was  noticeable— perhaps  it  was  the  dim  room,  or  the  wet  day, 
or  the  long  hours  ministering  a  multitude  of  cocktails  to  thirsty  gal- 
lantry. 

When  he  went  to  his  supper  he  found  cheering  food  and  drink,  with 
pleasant  garniture  of  silver  and  mahogany.  There  were  no  other  vis- 
itors, he  was  to  be  alone;  blinds  were  drawn,  lamps  lit,  and  the  fire  at 
his  back  was  comforting.  So  he  sat  long  about  his  meal  until  a  white- 
faced  maid  came  to  clear  the  table,  discoursing  to  him  of  country 
things  as  she  busied  about  the  room.  It  was  a  long  narrow  room,  with 
a  sideboard  and  the  door  at  one  end  and  the  fireplace  at  the  other.  A 
bookshelf,  almost  devoid  of  books,  contained  a  number  of  plates;  the 
long  wall  that  faced  the  windows  was  almost  destitute  of  pictures,  but 
there  were  hung  upon  it,  for  some  inscrutable  but  doubtless  suihcient 
reason,  many  dish-covers,  solidly  shaped,  of  the  kind  held  in  such  mys- 
terious regard  and  known  as  "willow  pattern";  one  was  even  hung 
upon  the  face  of  a  map.  Two  musty  prints  were  mixed  with  them, 
presentments  of  horses  having  a  stilted,  extravagant  physique  and  be- 
stridden by  images  of  inhuman  and  incommunicable  dignity,  clothed 
in  whiskers,  coloured  jackets  and  tight  white  breeches. 

He  took  down  the  books  from  the  shelf,  but  his  interest  was  speedily 
exhausted,  and  the  almanacs,  the  county  directory,  and  various  guide- 
books were  exchanged  for  the  Cotswold  Chronicle.  With  this,  having 
drawn  the  deep  chair  to  the  hearth,  he  whiled  away  the  time.  The 


A.  E.   COPPARD  675 

newspaper  amused  him  with  its  advertisements  of  stock  shows,  farm 
auctions,  travelling  quacks  and  conjurers,  and  there  was  a  lengthy  ac- 
count of  the  execution  of  a  local  felon,  one  Timothy  Bridger,  who  had 
murdered  an  infant  in  some  shameful  circumstances.  This  dazzling 
crescendo  proved  rather  trying  to  the  traveller;  he  threw  down  the 
paper. 

The  town  was  all  quiet  as  the  hills,  and  he  could  hear  no  sounds  in 
the  house.  He  got  up  and  went  across  the  hall  to  the  smoke-room.  The 
door  was  shut,  but  there  was  light  within,  and  he  entered.  The  girl 
sat  there  much  as  he  had  seen  her  on  his  arrival,  still  alone,  with  feet 
on  fender.  He  shut  the  door  behind  him,  sat  down,  and  crossing  his 
legs,  puffed  at  his  pipe,  admired  the  snug  little  room  and  the  pretty 
figure  of  the  girl,  which  he  could  do  without  embarrassment  as  her 
meditative  head,  slightly  bowed,  was  turned  away  from  him.  He  could 
see  something  of  her,  too,  in  the  mirror  at  the  bar,  which  repeated  also 
the  agreeable  contours  of  bottles  of  coloured  wines  and  rich  liqueurs — 
so  entrancing  in  form  and  aspect  that  they  seemed  destined  to  charm- 
ing histories,  even  in  disuse — and  those  of  familiar  outline  containing 
mere  spirits  or  small  beer,  for  which  are  reserved  the  harsher  destinies 
of  base  oils,  horse  medicines,  disinfectants,  and  cold  tea.  There  were 
coloured  glasses  for  bitter  wines,  white  glasses  for  sweet,  a  tiny  leaden 
sink  beneath  them,  and  the  four  black  handles  of  the  beer  engine. 

The  girl  wore  a  light  blouse  of  silk,  a  short  skirt  of  black  velvet,  and 
a  pair  of  very  thin  silk  stockings  that  showed  the  flesh  of  instep  and 
shin  so  plainly  that  he  could  see  they  were  reddened  by  the  warmth  of 
the  fire.  She  had  on  a  pair  of  dainty  cloth  shoes  with  high  heels,  but 
what  was  wonderful  about  her  was  the  heap  of  rich  black  hair  piled 
at  the  back  of  her  head  and  shadowing  the  dusky  neck.  He  sat  puffing 
his  pipe  and  letting  the  loud  tick  of  the  clock  fill  the  quiet  room.  She 
did  not  stir  and  he  could  move  no  muscle.  It  was  as  if  he  had  been 
willed  to  come  there  and  wait  silently.  That,  he  felt  now,  had  been  his 
desire  all  the  evening;  and  here,  in  her  presence,  he  was  more  strangely 
stirred  than  by  any  event  he  could  remember. 

In  youth  he  had  viewed  women  as  futile  pitiable  things  that  grew 
long  hair,  wore  stays  and  garters,  and  prayed  incomprehensible  prayers. 
Viewing  them  in  the  stalls  of  the  theatre  from  his  vantage-point  in  the 


676  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

gallery,  he  always  disliked  the  articulation  of  their  naked  shoulders. 
But  still,  there  was  a  god  in  the  sky,  a  god  with  flowing  hair  and  ex- 
quisite eyes,  whose  one  stride  with  an  ardour  grandly  rendered  took 
him  across  the  whole  round  hemisphere  to  which  his  buoyant  limbs 
were  bound  like  spokes  to  the  eternal  rim  and  axle,  his  bright  hair 
burning  in  the  pity  of  the  sunsets  and  tossing  in  the  anger  of  the 
dawns. 

Master  traveller  had  indeed  come  into  this  room  to  be  with  this 
woman:  she  as  surely  desired  him,  and  for  all  its  accidental  occasion 
it  was  as  if  he,  walking  the  ways  of  the  world,  had  suddenly  come 
upon  .  .  .  what  so  imaginable  with  all  permitted  reverence  as,  well, 
just  a  shrine;  and  he,  admirably  humble,  bowed  the  instant  head. 

Were  there  no  other  people  within?  The  clock  indicated  a  few  min- 
utes to  nine.  He  sat  on,  still  as  stone,  and  the  woman  might  have  been 
of  wax  for  all  the  movement  or  sound  she  made.  There  was  allure- 
ment in  the  air  between  them;  he  had  forborne  his  smoking,  the  pipe 
grew  cold  between  his  teeth.  He  waited  for  a  look  from  her,  a  move- 
ment to  break  the  trance  of  silence.  No  footfall  in  street  or  house,  no 
voice  in  the  inn,  but  the  clock  beating  away  as  if  pronouncing  a  doom. 
Suddenly  it  rasped  out  nine  large  notes,  a  bell  in  the  town  repeated 
them  dolefully,  and  a  cuckoo  no  further  than  the  kitchen  mocked 
them  with  three  times  three.  After  that  came  the  weak  steps  of  the 
old  landlord  along  the  hall,  the  slam  of  doors,  the  clatter  of  lock  and 
bolt,  and  then  the  silence  returning  unendurably  upon  them. 

He  arose  and  stood  behind  her;  he  touched  the  black  hair.  She  made 
no  movement  or  sign.  He  pulled  out  two  or  three  combs,  and  drop- 
ping them  into  her  lap  let  the  whole  mass  tumble  about  his  hands.  It 
had  a  curious  harsh  touch  in  the  unravelling,  but  was  so  full  and  shin- 
ing; black  as  a  rook's  wings  it  was.  He  slid  his  palms  through  it.  His 
fingers  searched  it  and  fought  with  its  fine  strangeness;  into  his  mind 
there  travelled  a  serious  thought,  stilling  his  wayward  fancy — this  was 
no  wayward  fancy,  but  a  rite  accomplishing  itself!  (Run,  ran,  silly 
man,  y'are  lost!)  But  having  got  so  far  he  burnt  his  boats,  leaned  over, 
and  drew  her  face  back  to  him.  And  at  that,  seizing  his  wrists,  she 
gave  him  back  ardour  for  ardour,  pressing  his  hands  to  her  bosom, 


A.  E.   COPPARD  677 

while  the  kiss  was  sealed  and  sealed  again.  Then  she  sprang  up  and 
picking  his  hat  and  scarf  from  the  fender  said : 

"I  have  been  drying  them  for  you,  but  the  hat  has  shrunk  a  bit,  I'm 
sure — I  tried  it  on." 

He  took  them  from  her,  and  put  them  behind  him;  he  leaned  lightly 
back  upon  the  table,  holding  it  with  both  his  hands  behind  him;  he 
could  not  speak. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  thank  me  for  drying  them?"  she  asked,  pick- 
ing her  combs  from  the  rug  and  repinning  her  hair. 

"I  wonder  why  we  did  that?"  he  asked  shamedly. 

"It  is  what  I'm  thinking  too,"  she  said. 

"You  were  so  beautiful  about  .  .  .  about  it,  you  know." 

She  made  no  rejoinder,  but  continued  to  bind  her  hair,  looking 
brightly  at  him  under  her  brows.  When  she  had  finished  she  went 
close  to  him. 

"Will  that  do?" 

"I'll  take  it  down  again." 

"No,  no,  the  old  man  or  the  old  woman  will  be  coming  in." 

"What  of  that?"  he  said,  taking  her  into  his  arms.  "Tell  me  your 
name." 

She  shook  her  head,  but  she  returned  his  kisses  and  stroked  his  hair 
and  shoulders  with  beautifully  melting  gestures. 

"What  is  your  name,  I  want  to  call  you  by  your  name?"  he  said.  "I 
can't  keep  calling  you  Lovely  Woman,  Lovely  Woman." 

Again  she  shook  her  head  and  was  dumb. 

"I'll  call  you  Ruth  then,  Dusky  Ruth,  Ruth  of  the  black,  beautiful 
hair." 

"That  is  a  nice-sounding  name — I  knew  a  deaf  and  dumb  girl  named 
Ruth;  she  went  to  Nottingham  and  married  an  organ-grinder — but  I 
should  like  it  for  my  name." 

"Then  I  give  it  to  you." 

"Mine  is  so  ugly." 

"What  is  it?" 

Again  the  shaken  head  and  the  burning  caress. 

"Then  you  shall  be  Ruth;  will  you  keep  that  name?" 


678  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Yes,  if  you  give  me  the  name  I  will  keep  it  for  you." 

Time  had  indeed  taken  them  by  the  forelock,  and  they  looked  upon 
a  ruddled  world. 

"I  stake  my  one  talent,"  he  said  jestingly,  "and  behold  it  returns  me 
fortyfold;  I  feel  like  the  boy  who  catches  three  mice  with  one  piece  of 
cheese." 

At  ten  o'clock  the  girl  said : 

"I  must  go  and  see  how  they  are  getting  on,"  and  she  went  to  the 
door. 

"Are  we  keeping  them  up?" 

She  nodded. 

"Are  you  tired?" 

"No,  I  am  not  tired." 

She  looked  at  him  doubtfully. 

"We  ought  not  to  stay  in  here;  go  into  the  co free-room  and  I'll  come 
there  in  a  few  minutes." 

"Right,"  he  whispered  gaily,  "we'll  sit  up  all  night." 

She  stood  at  the  door  for  him  to  pass  out,  and  he  crossed  the  hall  to 
the  other  room.  It  was  in  darkness  except  for  the  flash  of  the  fire. 
Standing  at  the  hearth  he  lit  a  match  for  the  lamp,  but  paused  at  the 
globe ;  then  he  extinguished  the  match. 

"No,  it's  better  to  sit  in  the  firelight." 

He  heard  voices  at  the  other  end  of  the  house  that  seemed  to  have 
a  chiding  note  in  them. 

"Lord,"  he  thought,  "she  is  getting  into  a  row?" 

Then  her  steps  came  echoing  over  the  stone  floors  of  the  hall;  she 
opened  the  door  and  stood  there  with  a  lighted  candle  in  her  hand; 
he  stood  at  the  other  end  of  the  room,  smiling. 

"Good  night,"  she  said. 

"Oh  no,  no!  come  along,"  he  protested,  but  not  moving  from  the 
hearth. 

"Got  to  go  to  bed,"  she  answered. 

"Are  they  angry  with  you?" 

"No." 

"Well,  then,  come  over  here  and  sit  down." 

"Got  to  go  to  bed,"  she  said  again,  but  she  had  meanwhile  put  her 


A.  E.   COPPARD  679 

candlestick  upon  the  little  sideboard  and  was  trimming  the  wick  with 
a  burnt  match. 

"Oh,  come  along,  just  half  an  hour,"  he  protested.  She  did  not  an- 
swer but  went  on  prodding  the  wick  of  the  candle. 

"Ten  minutes,  then,"  he  said,  still  not  going  towards  her. 

"Five  minutes,"  he  begged. 

She  shook  her  head,  and  picking  up  the  candlestick  turned  to  the 
door.  He  did  not  move,  he  just  called  her  name:  "Ruth!" 

She  came  back  then,  put  down  the  candlestick  and  tiptoed  across 
the  room  until  he  met  her.  The  bliss  of  the  embrace  was  so  poignant 
that  he  was  almost  glad  when  she  stood  up  again  and  said  with  af- 
fected steadiness,  though  he  heard  the  tremor  in  her  voice: 

"I  must  get  you  your  candle." 

She  brought  one  from  the  hall,  set  it  on  the  table  in  front  of  him,  and 
struck  the  match. 

"What  is  my  number?"  he  asked. 

"Number  six  room,"  she  answered,  prodding  the  wick  vaguely  with 
her  match,  while  a  slip  of  white  wax  dropped  over  the  shoulder  of  the 
new  candle.  "Number  six  .  .  .  next  to  mine." 

The  match  burnt  out;  she  said  abruptly  "Good  night,"  took  up  her 
own  candle  and  left  him  there. 

In  a  few  moments  he  ascended  the  stairs  and  went  into  his  room. 
He  fastened  the  door,  removed  his  coat,  collar,  and  slippers,  but  the 
rack  of  passion  had  seized  him  and  he  moved  about  with  no  inclina- 
tion to  sleep.  He  sat  down,  but  there  was  no  medium  of  distraction. 
He  tried  to  read  the  newspaper  which  he  had  carried  up  with  him,  and 
without  realizing  a  single  phrase,  he  forced  himself  to  read  again  the 
whole  account  of  the  execution  of  the  miscreant  Bridger.  When  he  had 
finished  this  he  carefully  folded  the  paper  and  stood  up,  listening.  He 
went  to  the  parting  wall  and  tapped  thereon  with  his  finger-tips.  He 
waited  half  a  minute,  one  minute,  two  minutes;  there  was  no  answer- 
ing sign.  He  tapped  again,  more  loudly,  with  his  knuckles,  but  there 
was  no  response,  and  he  tapped  many  times.  He  opened  his  door  as 
noiselessly  as  possible;  along  the  dark  passage  there  were  slips  of  light 
under  the  other  doors,  the  one  next  his  own,  and  the  one  beyond  that. 
He  stood  in  the  corridor  listening  to  the  rumble  of  old  voices  in  the 


680  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

farther  room,  the  old  man  and  his  wife  going  to  their  rest.  Holding  his 
breath  fearfully,  he  stepped  to  her  door  and  tapped  gently  upon  it. 
There  was  no  answer,  but  he  could  somehow  divine  her  awareness  of 
him;  he  tapped  again;  she  moved  to  the  door  and  whispered,  "No,  no, 
go  away."  He  turned  the  handle,  the  door  was  locked. 

"Let  me  in,"  he  pleaded.  He  knew  she  was  standing  there  an  inch 
or  two  beyond  him. 

"Hush,"  she  called  softly.  "Go  away,  the  old  woman  has  ears  like  a 
fox." 

He  stood  silent  for  a  moment. 

"Unlock  it,"  he  urged;  but  he  got  no  further  reply,  and  feeling  fool- 
ish and  baffled  he  moved  back  to  his  own  room,  cast  his  clothes  from 
him,  doused  the  candle  and  crept  into  the  bed  with  soul  as  wild  as  a 
storm-swept  forest,  his  heart  beating  a  vagrant  summons.  The  room 
filled  with  strange  heat,  there  was  no  composure  for  mind  or  limb, 
nothing  but  flaming  visions  and  furious  embraces. 

"Morality  .  .  .  what  is  it  but  agreement  with  your  own  soul?" 

So  he  lay  for  two  hours — the  clocks  chimed  twelve — listening  with 
foolish  persistency  for  her  step  along  the  corridor,  fancying  every  light 
sound — and  the  night  was  full  of  them — was  her  hand  upon  the  door. 

Suddenly — and  then  it  seemed  as  if  his  very  heart  would  abash  the 
house  with  its  thunder — he  could  hear  distinctly  some  one  knocking  on 
the  wall.  He  got  quickly  from  his  bed  and  stood  at  the  door,  listening. 
Again  the  knocking  was  heard,  and  having  half  clothed  himself  he 
crept  into  the  passage,  which  was  now  in  utter  darkness,  trailing  his 
hand  along  the  wall  until  he  felt  her  door;  it  was  standing  open.  He 
entered  her  room  and  closed  the  door  behind  him.  There  was  not  the 
faintest  gleam  of  light,  he  could  see  nothing.  He  whispered  "Ruth!" 
and  she  was  standing  there.  She  touched  him,  but  not  speaking.  He 
put  out  his  hands,  and  they  met  round  her  neck;  her  hair  was  flowing 
in  its  great  wave  about  her;  he  put  his  lips  to  her  face  and  found  that 
her  eyes  were  streaming  with  tears,  salt  and  strange  and  disturbing. 
In  the  close  darkness  he  put  his  arms  about  her  with  no  thought  but 
to  comfort  her;  one  hand  had  plunged  through  the  long  harsh  tresses 
and  the  other  across  her  hips  before  he  realized  that  she  was  un- 
gowncd;  then  he  was  aware  of  the  softness  of  her  breasts  and  the  cold 


A.  E.   COPPARD  681 

naked  sleekness  of  her  shoulders.  But  she  was  crying  there,  crying  si- 
lently with  great  tears,  her  strange  sorrow  stifling  his  desire. 

"Ruth,  Ruth,  my  beautiful  dear!"  he  murmured  soothingly.  He  felt 
for  the  bed  with  one  hand,  and  turning  back  the  quilt  and  sheets  he 
lifted  her  in  as  easily  as  a  mother  does  her  child,  replaced  the  bedding, 
and,  in  his  clothes,  he  lay  stretched  beside  her  comforting  her.  They 
lay  so,  innocent  as  children,  for  an  hour,  when  she  seemed  to  have 
gone  to  sleep.  He  rose  then  and  went  silently  to  his  room,  full  of 
weariness. 

In  the  morning  he  breakfasted  without  seeing  her,  but  as  he  had 
business  in  the  world  that  gave  him  just  an  hour  longer  at  the  inn 
before  he  left  it  for  good  and  all,  he  went  into  the  smoke-room  and 
found  her.  She  greeted  him  with  curious  gaze,  but  merrily  enough,  for 
there  were  other  men  there  now,  farmers,  a  butcher,  a  registrar,  an 
old,  old  man.  The  hour  passed,  but  not  these  men,  and  at  length  he 
donned  his  coat,  took  up  his  stick,  and  said  good-bye.  Her  shining 
glances  followed  him  to  the  door,  and  from  the  window  as  far  as  they 
could  view  him. 


W.   F.   HARVEY 


COMMENTARY 


The  Eve  stones  that  follow  are  grouped  together  because  they  illus- 
trate as  many  different  ways  of  manipulating  outre  themes. 

The  Erst  of  them  is  a  horror  story  and  I  think  a  masterpiece  of 
its  kind. 

When  man  is  totally  religionless  such  themes  as  Mr.  Harvey's  and 
the  one  youll  find  in  uLord  Mountdrago,"  a  few  pages  further  on, 
will  disappear  from  literature,  hut  not  till  then.  Stories  using  them 
are  as  old  as  mans  sense  of  wonder  and  fear.  They  emerge  out  of 
that  sense  even  when  they  are  playful,  or  mechanical,  or  vulgar. 
Every  tribe,  every  race7  every  nation  produces  such  stories  and  will 
continue  to  produce  them  until  man  either  knows  everything  or  has 
convinced  himself  that  he  does. 

They  appeal  equally  to  the  sophisticated  mind— Henry  James  and 
Edith  Wharton  wrote  superb  horror  stories— and  to  the  naif  who 
revels  in  Superman.  They  have  a  double  function.  They  give  us  a 
pleasurable  shiver,  for  one  thing.  And  they  liberate  us  from  our 
daily  bondage  to  the  probable. 

W.  F.  Harvey  s  "August  Heat"  is  what  is  known  as  a  trick  story. 
Its  effect  depends  entirely  on  a  completely  impossible  plot  in  which 
for  ten  minutes  or  so  you  are  asked  to  believe.  It  differs  from  most 
other  trick  stories  in  that  a  second  or  third  reading  causes  you  to 
admire  it  more  rather  than  less.  You  may  not  get  from  a  rereading 
the  cold,  startled  thrill  that  I  think  it  gives  you  the  Erst  time,  but 
you  will  get  an  extra  pleasure  from  observing  its  Eawless  construc- 
tion and  the  extraordinary  economy  of  the  style. 

The  excessive  use  of  coincidence  generally  weakens  a  narrative. 
Here  is  one  composed  of  nothing  but  coincidence,  and  how  Mr. 
Harvey  gets  away  with  it! 

Readers  of  Dunne's  Experiment  with  Time  or  those  who  June 
come  across  his  theories  in  J.  B.  Priestley  s  wonder-eyed  populariza- 
tions will  note  how  ingeniously  Mr.  Harvey  uses  the  theme  of  pre- 

682 


W.  F.   HARVEY  683 

cognition  and  plays  upon  that  weird  feeling  we  have  all  experienced 
of  something  having  happened  to  us  before. 

It  is  only  honest  to  say  that  I  discovered  this  story  in  Alexander 
Laing7s  excellent  collection  of  horror  tales,  The  Haunted  Omnibus. 
For  one  anthologist  to  steal  from  another  is  at  best  a  form  of  laziness. 
I  hope  I  will  be  forgiven  simply  on  the  ground  that  "August  Heat"  is 
a  whacking  good  story  and  should  be  introduced  to  as  many  readers 
as  possible. 


August  Heat 

BY 

W.  F.  HARVEY 


Phenistone  Road,  Clapham, 
August  20th,  19 — .  I  have  had  what  I  believe  to  be  the  most  remark- 
able day  in  my  life,  and  while  the  events  are  still  fresh  in  my  mind,  I 
wish  to  put  them  down  on  paper  as  clearly  as  possible. 

Let  me  say  at  the  outset  that  my  name  is  James  Clarence  Withen- 
croft. 

I  am  forty  years  old,  in  perfect  health,  never  having  known  a  day's 
illness. 

By  profession  I  am  an  artist,  not  a  very  successful  one,  but  I  earn 
enough  money  by  my  black-and-white  work  to  satisfy  my  necessary 
wants. 

My  only  near  relative,  a  sister,  died  five  years  ago,  so  that  I  am  in- 
dependent. 

I  breakfasted  this  morning  at  nine,  and  after  glancing  through  the 
morning  paper  I  lighted  my  pipe  and  proceeded  to  let  my  mind  wan- 
der in  the  hope  that  I  might  chance  Upon  some  subject  for  my  pencil. 

The  room,  though  door  and  windows  were  open,  was  oppressively 
hot,  and  I  had  just  made  up  my  mind  that  the  coolest  and  most  com- 
fortable place  in  the  neighbourhood  would  be  the  deep  end  of  the 
public  swimming  bath,  when  the  idea  came. 

I  began  to  draw.  So  intent  was  I  on  my  work  that  I  left  my  lunch 
untouched,  only  stopping  work  when  the  clock  of  St.  Jude's  struck 
four. 

The  final  result,  for  a  hurried  sketch,  was,  I  felt  sure,  the  best  thing 
I  had  done. 

It  showed  a  criminal  in  the  dock  immediately  after  the  judge  had 

684 


W.  F.  HARVEY  685 

pronounced  sentence.  The  man  was  fat — enormously  fat.  The  flesh 
hung  in  rolls  about  his  chin;  it  creased  his  huge,  stumpy  neck.  He  was 
clean  shaven  (perhaps  I  should  say  a  few  days  before  he  must  have 
been  clean  shaven)  and  almost  bald.  He  stood  in  the  dock,  his  short, 
clumsy  fingers  clasping  the  rail,  looking  straight  in  front  of  him.  The 
feeling  that  his  expression  conveyed  was  not  so  much  one  of  horror 
as  of  utter,  absolute  collapse. 

There  seemed  nothing  in  the  man  strong  enough  to  sustain  that 
mountain  of  flesh. 

I  rolled  up  the  sketch,  and  without  quite  knowing  why,  placed  it  in 
my  pocket.  Then  with  the  rare  sense  of  happiness  which  the  knowl- 
edge of  a  good  thing  well  done  gives,  I  left  the  house. 

I  believe  that  I  set  out  with  the  idea  of  calling  upon  Trenton,  for  I 
remember  walking  along  Lytton  Street  and  turning  to  the  right  along 
Gilchrist  Road  at  the  bottom  of  the  hill  where  the  men  were  at  work 
on  the  new  tram  lines. 

From  there  onwards  I  have  only  the  vaguest  recollections  of  where 
I  went.  The  one  thing  of  which  I  was  fully  conscious  was  the  awful 
heat,  that  came  up  from  the  dusty  asphalt  pavement  as  an  almost  pal- 
pable wave.  I  longed  for  the  thunder  promised  by  the  great  banks  of 
copper-coloured  cloud  that  hung  low  over  the  western  sky. 

I  must  have  walked  five  or  six  miles,  when  a  small  boy  roused  me 
from  my  reverie  by  asking  the  time. 

It  was  twenty  minutes  to  seven. 

When  he  left  me  I  began  to  take  stock  of  my  bearings.  I  found  my- 
self standing  before  a  gate  that  led  into  a  yard  bordered  by  a  strip  of 
thirsty  earth,  where  there  were  flowers,  purple  stock  and  scarlet  gera- 
nium. Above  the  entrance  was  a  board  with  the  inscription — 

CHS.  ATKINSON  MONUMENTAL  MASON 

WORKER  IN  ENGLISH  AND  ITALIAN  MARBLES 

From  the  yard  itself  came  a  cheery  whistle,  the  noise  of  hammer 
blows,  and  the  cold  sound  of  steel  meeting  stone. 

A  sudden  impulse  made  me  enter. 

A  man  was  sitting  with  his  back  towards  me,  busy  at  work  on  a 


686  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

slab  of  curiously  veined  marble.  He  turned  round  as  he  heard  my  steps 
and  stopped  short. 

It  was  the  man  I  had  been  drawing,  whose  portrait  lay  in  my  pocket. 

He  sat  there,  huge  and  elephantine,  the  sweat  pouring  from  his 
scalp,  which  he  wiped  with  a  red  silk  handkerchief.  But  though  the 
face  was  the  same,  the  expression  was  absolutely  different. 

He  greeted  me  smiling,  as  if  we  were  old  friends,  and  shook  my 
hand. 

I  apologised  for  my  intrusion. 

"Everything  is  hot  and  glary  outside,"  I  said.  "This  seems  an  oasis 
in  the  wilderness." 

"I  don't  know  about  the  oasis,"  he  replied,  "but  it  certainly  is  hot,  as 
hot  as  hell.  Take  a  seat,  sir!" 

He  pointed  to  the  end  of  the  gravestone  on  which  he  was  at  work, 
and  I  sat  down. 

"That's  a  beautiful  piece  of  stone  you've  got  hold  of,"  I  said. 

He  shook  his  head.  "In  a  way  it  is,"  he  answered;  "the  surface  here 
is  as  fine  as  anything  you  could  wish,  but  there's  a  big  flaw  at  the  back, 
though  I  don't  expect  you'd  ever  notice  it.  I  could  never  make  really 
a  good  job  of  a  bit  of  marble  like  that.  It  would  be  all  right  in  the 
summer  like  this;  it  wouldn't  mind  the  blasted  heat.  But  wait  till  the 
winter  comes.  There's  nothing  quite  like  frost  to  find  out  the  weak 
points  in  stone." 

"Then  what's  it  for?"  I  asked. 

The  man  burst  out  laughing. 

"You'd  hardly  believe  me  if  I  was  to  tell  you  it's  for  an  exhibition, 
but  it's  the  truth.  Artists  have  exhibitions:  so  do  grocers  and  butchers; 
we  have  them  too.  All  the  latest  little  things  in  headstones,  you  know." 

He  went  on  to  talk  of  marbles,  which  sort  best  withstood  wind  and 
rain,  and  which  were  easiest  to  work;  then  of  his  garden  and  a  new 
sort  of  carnation  he  had  bought.  At  the  end  of  every  other  minute  he 
would  drop  his  tools,  wipe  his  shining  head,  and  curse  the  heat. 

I  said  little,  for  I  felt  uneasy.  There  was  something  unnatural,  un- 
canny, in  meeting  this  man. 

I  tried  at  first  to  persuade  myself  that  I  had  seen  him  before,  that 
his  face,  unknown  to  me,  had  found  a  place  in  some  out-of-the-way 


W.  F.  HARVEY  687 

corner  of  my  memory,  but  I  knew  that  I  was  practicing  little  more 
than  a  plausible  piece  of  self-deception. 

Mr.  Atkinson  finished  his  work,  spat  on  the  ground,  and  got  up 
with  a  sigh  of  relief. 

"There!  what  do  you  think  of  that?"  he  said,  with  an  air  of  evi- 
dent pride. 

The  inscription  which  I  read  for  the  first  time  was  this — 

SACRED  TO  THE  MEMORY 

OF 

JAMES  CLARENCE  WITHENCROFT. 

BORN  JAN.  18TH,  i860. 

HE  PASSED  AWAY  VERY  SUDDENLY 

ON  AUGUST  20TH,  19— 

"In  the  midst  of  life  we  are  in  death!' 

For  some  time  I  sat  in  silence.  Then  a  cold  shudder  ran  down  my 
spine.  I  asked  him  where  he  had  seen  the  name. 

"Oh,  I  didn't  see  it  anywhere,"  replied  Mr.  Atkinson.  "I  wanted 
some  name,  and  I  put  down  the  first  that  came  into  my  head.  Why 
do  you  want  to  know?" 

"It's  a  strange  coincidence,  but  it  happens  to  be  mine." 

He  gave  a  long,  low  whistle. 

"And  the  dates?" 

"I  can  only  answer  for  one  of  them,  and  that's  correct." 

"It's  a  rum  go!"  he  said. 

But  he  knew  less  than  I  did.  I  told  him  of  my  morning's  work.  I 
took  the  sketch  from  my  pocket  and  showed  it  to  him.  As  he  looked, 
the  expression  of  his  face  altered  until  it  became  more  and  more  like 
that  of  the  man  I  had  drawn. 

"And  it  was  only  the  day  before  yesterday,"  he  said,  "that  I  told 
Maria  there  were  no  such  things  as  ghosts!" 

Neither  of  us  had  seen  a  ghost,  but  I  knew  what  he  meant. 

"You  probably  heard  my  name,"  I  said. 

"And  you  must  have  seen  me  somewhere  and  have  forgotten  it! 
Were  you  at  Clacton-on-Sea  last  July?" 


688  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

I  had  never  been  to  Clacton  in  my  life.  We  were  silent  for  some 
time.  We  were  both  looking  at  the  same  thing,  the  two  dates  on  the 
gravestone,  and  one  was  right. 

"Come  inside  and  have  some  supper,"  said  Mr.  Atkinson. 

His  wife  is  a  cheerful  little  woman,  with  the  flaky  red  cheeks  of  the 
country-bred.  Her  husband  introduced  me  as  a  friend  of  his  who  was 
an  artist.  The  result  was  unfortunate,  for  after  the  sardines  and  water- 
cress had  been  removed,  she  brought  me  out  a  Dore  Bible,  and  I  had 
to  sit  and  express  my  admiration  for  nearly  half  an  hour. 

I  went  outside,  and  found  Atkinson  sitting  on  the  gravestone 
smoking. 

We  resumed  the  conversation  at  the  point  we  had  left  ofL 

"You  must  excuse  my  asking,"  I  said,  "but  do  you  know  of  anything 
you've  done  for  which  you  could  be  put  on  trial?" 

He  shook  his  head. 

"I'm  not  a  bankrupt,  the  business  is  prosperous  enough.  Three  years 
ago  I  gave  turkeys  to  some  of  the  guardians  at  Christmas,  but  that's 
all  I  can  think  of.  And  they  were  small  ones,  too,"  he  added  as  an 
afterthought. 

He  got  up,  fetched  a  can  from  the  porch,  and  began  to  water  the 
flowers.  "Twice  a  day  regular  in  the  hot  weather,"  he  said,  "and  then 
the  heat  sometimes  gets  the  better  of  the  delicate  ones.  And  ferns,  good 
Lord!  they  could  never  stand  it.  Where  do  you  live?" 

I  told  him  my  address.  It  would  take  an  hour's  quick  walk  to  get 
back  home. 

"It's  like  this,"  he  said.  "We'll  look  at  the  matter  straight.  If  you  go 
back  home  to-night,  you  take  your  chance  of  accidents.  A  cart  may 
run  over  you,  and  there's  always  banana  skins  and  orange  peel,  to  say 
nothing  of  fallen  ladders." 

He  spoke  of  the  improbable  with  an  intense  seriousness  that  would 
have  been  laughable  six  hours  before.  But  I  did  not  laugh. 

"The  best  thing  we  can  do,"  he  continued,  "is  for  you  to  stay  here 
till  twelve  o'clock.  We'll  go  upstairs  and  smoke;  it  may  be  cooler 
inside." 

To  my  surprise  I  agreed. 


W.   F.   HARVEY  689 

We  are  sitting  in  a  long,  low  room  beneath  the  eaves.  Atkinson  has 
sent  his  wife  to  bed.  He  himself  is  busy  sharpening  some  tools  at  a 
little  oilstone,  smoking  one  of  my  cigars  the  while. 

The  air  seems  charged  with  thunder.  I  am  writing  this  at  a  shaky 
table  before  the  open  window.  The  leg  is  cracked,  and  Atkinson,  who 
seems  a  handy  man  with  his  tools,  is  going  to  mend  it  as  soon  as  he 
has  finished  putting  an  edge  on  his  chisel. 

It  is  after  eleven  now.  I  shall  be  gone  in  less  than  an  hour. 

But  the  heat  is  stifling. 

It  is  enough  to  send  a  man  mad. 


MAX   BEERBOHM 


COMMENTARY 


Max  Beerbohm's  "James  Pethel"  is  not  by  any  exact  definition  a  hor- 
ror story,  nor  does  it  make  use  of  the  supernatural.  But  it  is  so  odd 
and  chilling  a  tale,  despite  the  elegant  air  with  which  it  is  told,  that 
I  include  it  here  in  my  miniature  collection  of  the  literature  of  the 
outre.  It  employs,  though  in  a  very  different  way,  the  theme  that 
lies  back  of  "August  Heat"— predestination.  For  Pethel  is  simply  a 
man  who  gambles  with  destiny. 

"James  Pethel"  is  one  of  the  tales  to  be  found  in  Beerbohms 
Seven  Men.  There  are  Eve  tales  in  this  book,  about  six  men.  The 
seventh  is  the  narrator  himself,  the  Incomparable  Max.  These  stories 
have  been  severally  reprinted  by  a  generation  of  anthologists—Seven 
Men  was  published  in  1919— but  the  volume  itself,  for  some  reason, 
masterpiece  though  it  is,  has  not  had  a  very  wide  circulation.  I  sup- 
pose this  is  because  Beerbohm  suffers  from  having  identified  himself 
too  perfectly  with  the  Yellow  Book  period.  People  think  of  him  as 
sadly  dated.  Some  of  him  is,  but  not  Seven  Men,  and  not  this  story 
of  James  Pethel. 


690 


James  Pethel 

BY 

MAX  BEERBOHM 


September  17,  19 12 
Though  seven  years  have  gone  by  since  the  day  when  last  I  saw  him, 
and  though  that  day  was  but  the  morrow  of  my  first  meeting  with 
him,  I  was  shocked  when  I  saw  in  my  newspaper  this  morning  the 
announcement  of  his  sudden  death. 

I  had  formed,  in  the  dim  past,  the  habit  of  spending  August  in 
Dieppe.  The  place  was  less  popular  then  than  it  is  now.  Some  pleasant 
English  people  shared  it  with  some  pleasant  French  people.  We  used 
rather  to  resent  the  race-week — the  third  week  of  the  month — as  an  in- 
trusion on  our  privacy.  We  sneered  as  we  read  in  the  Paris  edition  of 
the  New  Yor\  Herald  the  names  of  the  intruders.  We  disliked  the 
nightly  crush  in  the  baccarat  room  of  the  Casino,  and  the  croupiers' 
obvious  excitement  at  the  high  play.  I  made  a  point  of  avoiding  that 
room  during  that  week,  for  the  especial  reason  that  the  sight  of  seri- 
ous, habitual  gamblers  has  always  filled  me  with  a  depression  border- 
ing on  disgust.  Most  of  the  men,  by  some  subtle  stress  of  their  ruling 
passion,  have  grown  so  monstrously  fat,  and  most  of  the  women  so 
harrowingly  thin.  The  rest  of  the  women  seem  to  be  marked  out  for 
apoplexy,  and  the  rest  of  the  men  to  be  wasting  away.  One  feels  that 
anything  thrown  at  them  would  be  either  embedded  or  shattered,  and 
looks  vainly  among  them  for  a  person  furnished  with  the  normal 
amount  of  flesh.  Monsters  they  are,  all  of  them,  to  the  eye  (though 
I  believe  that  many  of  them  have  excellent  moral  qualities  in  private 
life);  but,  just  as  in  an  American  town  one  goes  sooner  or  later — goes 
against   one's   finer   judgment,   but   somehow   goes — into   the   dime- 

691 


692  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

museums,  so,  year  by  year,  in  Dieppe's  race-week,  there  would  be  al- 
ways one  evening  when  I  drifted  into  the  baccarat  room.  It  was  on 
such  an  evening  that  I  first  saw  the  man  whose  memory  I  here  cele- 
brate. My  gaze  was  held  by  him  for  the  very  reason  that  he  would 
have  passed  unnoticed  elsewhere.  He  was  conspicuous,  not  in  virtue 
of  the  mere  fact  that  he  was  taking  the  bank  at  the  principal  table,  but 
because  there  was  nothing  at  all  odd  about  him. 

Between  his  lips  was  a  cigar  of  moderate  size.  Everything  about 
him,  except  the  amount  of  money  he  had  been  winning,  seemed  mod- 
erate. Just  as  he  was  neither  fat  nor  thin,  so  had  his  face  neither  that 
extreme  pallor  nor  that  extreme  redness  which  belongs  to  the  faces  of 
seasoned  gamblers:  it  was  just  a  clear  pink.  And  his  eyes  had  neither 
the  unnatural  brightness  nor  the  unnatural  dullness  of  the  eyes  around 
him :  they  were  ordinarily  clear  eyes,  of  an  ordinary  grey.  His  very  age 
was  moderate:  a  putative  thirty-six,  not  more  ("Not  less,"  I  would 
have  said  in  those  days.)  He  assumed  no  air  of  nonchalance.  He  did 
not  deal  out  the  cards  as  though  they  bored  him.  But  he  had  no  look 
of  grim  concentration.  I  noticed  that  the  removal  of  his  cigar  from  his 
mouth  made  never  the  least  difference  to  his  face,  for  he  kept  his  lips 
pursed  out  as  steadily  as  ever  when  he  was  not  smoking.  And  this  con- 
stant pursing  of  his  lips  seemed  to  denote  just  a  pensive  interest. 

His  bank  was  nearly  done  now.  There  were  but  a  few  cards  left. 
Opposite  to  him  was  a  welter  of  parti-coloured  counters  which  the 
croupier  had  not  yet  had  time  to  sort  out  and  add  to  the  rouleaux 
already  made;  there  were  also  a  fair  accumulation  of  notes  and  sev- 
eral little  stacks  of  gold.  In  all,  not  less  than  five  hundred  pounds, 
certainly.  Happy  banker!  How  easily  had  he  won  in  a  few  minutes 
more  than  I,  with  utmost  pains,  could  earn  in  many  months!  I  wished 
I  were  he.  His  lucre  seemed  to  insult  me  personally.  I  disliked  him. 
And  yet  I  hoped  he  would  not  take  another  bank.  I  hoped  he  would 
have  the  good  sense  to  pocket  his  winnings  and  go  home.  Deliberately 
to  risk  the  loss  of  all  those  riches  would  intensify  the  insult  to  myself. 

"Messieurs,  la  banque  est  aux  encheresP  There  was  some  brisk  bid- 
ding, while  the  croupier  tore  open  and  shuffled  the  two  packs.  But  it 
was  as  I  feared:  the  gentleman  whom  I  resented  kept  his  place. 


MAX  BEERBOHM  693 

"Messieurs,  la  banque  est  faite.  Quinze  mille  francs  a  la  banque. 
Messieurs,  les  cartes  passent!  Messieurs,  les  cartes  passent!" 

Turning  to  go,  I  encountered  a  friend — one  of  the  race-weekers,  but 
in  a  sense  a  friend. 

"Going  to  play?"  I  asked. 

"Not  while  Jimmy  Pethel's  taking  the  bank,"  he  answered,  with  a 
laugh. 

"Is  that  the  man's  name?" 

"Yes.  Don't  you  know  him?  I  thought  every  one  knew  old  Jimmy 
Pethel." 

I  asked  what  there  was  so  wonderful  about  "old  Jimmy  Pethel"  that 
every  one  should  be  supposed  to  know  him. 

"Oh,  he's  a  great  character.  Has  extraordinary  luck.  Always." 

I  do  not  think  my  friend  was  versed  in  the  pretty  theory  that  good 
luck  is  the  unconscious  wisdom  of  them  who  in  previous  incarnations 
have  been  consciously  wise.  He  was  a  member  of  the  Stock  Exchange, 
and  I  smiled  as  at  a  certain  quaintness  in  his  remark.  I  asked  in  what 
ways  besides  luck  the  "great  character"  was  manifested.  Oh,  well, 
Pethel  had  made  a  huge  "scoop"  on  the  Stock  Exchange  when  he  was 
only  twenty-three,  and  very  soon  doubled  that,  and  doubled  it  again; 
then  retired.  He  wasn't  more  than  thirty-five  now.  And?  Oh,  well, 
he  was  a  regular  all-round  sportsman — had  gone  after  big  game  all 
over  the  world  and  had  a  good  many  narrow  shaves.  Great  steeple- 
chaser, too.  Rather  settled  down  now.  Lived  in  Leicestershire  mostly. 
Had  a  big  place  there.  Hunted  five  times  a  week.  Still  did  an  occa- 
sional flutter,  though.  Cleared  eighty  thousand  in  Mexicans  last  Feb- 
ruary. Wife  had  been  a  bar-maid  at  Cambridge.  Married  her  when 
he  was  nineteen.  Thing  seemed  to  have  turned  out  quite  well.  Alto- 
gether, a  great  character. 

Possibly,  thought  I.  But  my  cursory  friend,  accustomed  to  quick 
transactions  and  to  things  accepted  "on  the  nod,"  had  not  proved  his 
case  to  my  slower,  more  literary  intelligence.  It  was  to  him,  however, 
that  I  owed,  some  minutes  later,  a  chance  of  testing  his  opinion.  At  the 
cry  of  "Messieurs,  la  banque  est  aux  encheres"  we  looked  round  and 
saw  that  the  subject  of  our  talk  was  preparing  to  rise  from  his  place. 
"Now  one  can  punt!"  said  Grierson  (this  was  my  friend's  name),  and 


694  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

turned  to  the  bureau  at  which  counters  are  for  sale.  "If  old  Jimmy 
Pethel  punts,"  he  added,  "I  shall  just  follow  his  luck."  But  this  lodestar 
was  not  to  be.  While  my  friend  was  buying  his  counters,  and  I  won- 
dering whether  I  too  would  buy  some,  Pethel  himself  came  up  to  the 
bureau.  With  his  lips  no  longer  pursed,  he  had  lost  his  air  of  gravity, 
and  looked  younger.  Behind  him  was  an  attendant  bearing  a  big 
wooden  bowl — that  plain  but  romantic  bowl  supplied  by  the  establish- 
ment to  a  banker  whose  gains  are  too  great  to  be  pocketed.  He  and 
Grierson  greeted  each  other.  He  said  he  had  arrived  in  Dieppe  this 
afternoon — was  here  for  a  day  or  two.  We  were  introduced.  He  spoke 
to  me  with  some  empressement,  saying  he  was  a  "very  great  admirer" 
of  my  work.  I  no  longer  disliked  him.  Grierson,  armed  with  counters, 
had  now  darted  away  to  secure  a  place  that  had  just  been  vacated. 
Pethel,  with  a  wave  of  his  hand  towards  the  tables,  said,  "I  suppose  you 
never  condescend  to  this  sort  of  thing?" 

"Well — "  I  smiled  indulgently. 

"Awful  waste  of  time,"  he  admitted. 

I  glanced  down  at  the  splendid  mess  of  counters  and  gold  and  notes 
that  were  now  becoming,  under  the  swift  fingers  of  the  little  man  at 
the  bureau,  an  orderly  array.  I  did  not  say  aloud  that  it  pleased  me  to 
be,  and  to  be  seen,  talking  on  terms  of  equality,  to  a  man  who  had 
won  so  much.  I  did  not  say  how  wonderful  it  seemed  to  me  that  he, 
whom  I  had  watched  just  now  with  awe  and  with  aversion,  had  all 
the  while  been  a  great  admirer  of  my  work.  I  did  but  say  (again  indul- 
gently) that  I  supposed  baccarat  to  be  as  good  a  way  of  wasting  time 
as  another. 

"Ah,  but  you  despise  us  all  the  same!"  He  added  that  he  always 
envied  men  who  had  resources  within  themselves.  I  laughed  lightly, 
to  imply  that  it  was  very  pleasant  to  have  such  resources,  but  that  I 
didn't  want  to  boast.  And  indeed,  I  had  never,  I  vow,  felt  flimsier 
than  when  the  little  man  at  the  bureau,  naming  a  fabulous  sum,  asked 
its  owner  whether  he  would  take  the  main  part  in  notes  of  mille 
francs?  cinq  mille?  dix  mille?  quoi?  Had  it  been  mine,  I  should  have 
asked  to  have  it  all  in  five-franc  pieces.  Pethel  took  it  in  the  most  com- 
pendious form  and  crumpled  it  into  a  pocket.  I  asked  if  he  were  going 
to  play  any  more  to-night. 


MAX  BEERBOHM  695 

"Oh,  later  on,"  he  said.  "I  want  to  get  a  little  sea-air  into  my  lungs 
now";  and  he  asked  with  a  sort  of  breezy  diffidence  if  I  would  go 
with  him.  I  was  glad  to  do  so.  It  flashed  across  my  mind  that  yonder 
on  the  terrace  he  might  suddenly  blurt  out,  "I  say,  look  here,  don't 
think  me  awfully  impertinent,  but  this  money's  no  earthly  use  to  me: 
I  do  wish  you'd  accept  it,  as  a  very  small  return  for  all  the  pleasure 
your  work  has  given  me,  and  .  .  .  There!  Please!  Not  another  word!" 
— all  with  such  candour,  delicacy,  and  genuine  zeal  that  I  should  be 
unable  to  refuse.  But  I  must  not  raise  false  hopes  in  my  reader.  Noth- 
ing of  the  sort  happened.  Nothing  of  that  sort  ever  does  happen. 

We  were  not  long  on  the  terrace.  It  was  not  a  night  on  which  you 
could  stroll  and  talk:  there  was  a  wind  against  which  you  had  to 
stagger,  holding  your  hat  on  tightly  and  shouting  such  remarks  as 
might  occur  to  you.  Against  that  wind  acquaintance  could  make  no 
headway.  Yet  I  see  now  that  despite  that  wind — or  rather  because  of 
it — I  ought  already  to  have  known  Pethel  a  little  better  than  I  did 
when  we  presently  sat  down  together  inside  the  cafe  of  the  Casino. 
There  had  been  a  point  in  our  walk,  or  our  stagger,  when  we  paused 
to  lean  over  the  parapet,  looking  down  at  the  black  and  driven  sea. 
And  Pethel  had  shouted  that  it  would  be  great  fun  to  be  out  in  a 
sailing-boat  to-night  and  that  at  one  time  he  had  been  very  fond  of 
sailing. 

As  we  took  our  seats  in  the  cafe,  he  looked  around  him  with  boyish 
interest  and  pleasure.  Then,  squaring  his  arms  on  the  little  table,  he 
asked  me  what  I  would  drink.  I  protested  that  I  was  the  host — a  posi- 
tion which  he,  with  the  quick  courtesy  of  the  very  rich,  yielded  to  me 
at  once.  I  feared  he  would  ask  for  champagne,  and  was  gladdened  by 
his  demand  for  water.  "Apollinaris ?  St.  Galmier?  Or  what?"  I  asked. 
He  preferred  plain  water.  I  felt  bound  to  warn  him  that  such  water 
was  never  "safe"  in  these  places.  He  said  he  had  often  heard  that,  but 
would  risk  it.  I  remonstrated,  but  he  was  firm.  "Alors,"  I  told  the 
waiter,  "pour  Monsieur  un  verre  d'eau  fraiche,  et  pour  moi  un  demi 
blonde."  Pethel  asked  me  to  tell  him  who  every  one  was.  I  told  him 
no  one  was  any  one  in  particular,  and  suggested  that  we  should  talk 
about  ourselves.  "You  mean,"  he  laughed,  "that  you  want  to  know 
who  the  devil  I  am?"  I  assured  him  that  I  had  often  heard  of  him.  At 


696  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

this  he  was  unaffectedly  pleased.  "But,"  I  added,  "it's  always  more 
interesting  to  hear  a  man  talked  about  by  himself."  And  indeed,  since 
he  had  not  handed  his  winnings  over  to  me,  I  did  hope  he  would  at 
any  rate  give  me  some  glimpses  into  that  "great  character"  of  his.  Full 
though  his  life  had  been,  he  seemed  but  like  a  rather  clever  schoolboy 
out  on  a  holiday.  I  wanted  to  know  more. 

"That  beer  does  look  good,"  he  admitted  when  the  waiter  came 
back.  I  asked  him  to  change  his  mind.  But  he  shook  his  head,  raised 
to  his  lips  the  tumbler  of  water  that  had  been  placed  before  him,  and 
meditatively  drank  a  deep  draught.  "I  never,"  he  then  said,  "touch 
alcohol  of  any  sort."  He  looked  solemn;  but  all  men  do  look  solemn 
when  they  speak  of  their  own  habits,  whether  positive  or  negative, 
and  no  matter  how  trivial;  and  so  (though  I  had  really  no  warrant  for 
not  supposing  him  a  reclaimed  drunkard)  I  dared  ask  him  for  what 
reason  he  abstained. 

"When  I  say  I  never  touch  alcohol,"  he  said  hastily,  in  a  tone  as  of 
self-defence,  "I  mean  that  I  don't  touch  it  often — or  at  any  rate — well, 
I  never  touch  it  when  I'm  gambling,  you  know.  It — it  takes  the 
edge  of?." 

His  tone  did  make  me  suspicious.  For  a  moment  I  wondered  whether 
he  had  married  the  barmaid  rather  for  what  she  symbolised  than  for 
what  in  herself  she  was.  But  no,  surely  not:  he  had  been  only  nineteen 
years  old.  Nor  in  any  way  had  he  now — this  steady,  brisk,  clear-eyed 
fellow — the  aspect  of  one  who  had  since  fallen.  "The  edge  ofl  the 
excitement?"  I  asked. 

"Rather!  Of  course  that  sort  of  excitement  seems  awfully  stupid  to 
you.  But — no  use  denying  it — I  do  like  a  bit  of  a  flutter — just  occa- 
sionally, you  know.  And  one  has  to  be  in  trim  for  it.  Suppose  a  man 
sat  down  dead  drunk  to  a  game  of  chance,  what  fun  would  it  be  for 
him?  None.  And  it's  only  a  question  of  degree.  Soothe  yourself  ever 
so  little  with  alcohol,  and  you  don't  get  quite  the  full  sensation  of 
gambling.  You  do  lose  just  a  little  something  of  the  proper  tremors 
before  a  coup,  the  proper  throes  during  a  coup,  the  proper  thrill  of 
joy  or  anguish  after  a  coup.  .  .  .  You're  bound  to,  you  know,"  he 
added,  purposely  making  this  bathos  when  he  saw  me  smiling  at  the 
heights  to  which  he  had  risen. 


MAX  BEERBOHM  697 

"And  to-night,"  I  asked,  remembering  his  prosaically  pensive  de- 
meanour in  taking  the  bank,  "were  you  feeling  these  throes  and  thrills 
to  the  utmost?" 

He  nodded. 

"And  you'll  feel  them  again  to-night?" 

"I  hope  so." 

"I  wonder  you  can  stay  away." 

"Oh,  one  gets  a  bit  deadened  after  an  hour  or  so.  One  needs  to  be 
freshened  up.  So  long  as  I  don't  bore  you " 

I  laughed,  and  held  out  my  cigarette-case.  "I  rather  wonder  you 
smoke,"  I  murmured,  after  giving  him  a  light.  "Nicotine's  a  sort  of 
drug.  Doesn't  it  soothe  you?  Don't  you  lose  just  a  little  something  of 
the  tremors  and  things?" 

He  looked  at  me  gravely.  "By  Jove,"  he  ejaculated,  "I  never  thought 
of  that.  Perhaps  you're  right.  Ton  my  word,  I  must  think  that  over." 

I  wondered  whether  he  were  secretly  laughing  at  me.  Here  v/as  a 
man  to  whom  (so  I  conceived,  with  an  effort  of  the  imagination)  the 
loss  or  gain  of  a  few  hundred  pounds  could  not  matter.  I  told  him  I 
had  spoken  in  jest.  "To  give  up  tobacco  might,"  I  said,  "intensify  the 
pleasant  agonies  of  a  gambler  staking  his  little  all.  But  in  your  case — 
well,  frankly,  I  don't  see  where  the  pleasant  agonies  come  in." 

"You  mean  because  I'm  beastly  rich?" 

"Rich,"  I  amended. 

"All  depends  on  what  you  call  rich.  Besides,  I'm  not  the  sort  of 
fellow  who's  content  with  3  per  cent.  A  couple  of  months  ago — I  tell 
you  this  in  confidence — I  risked  practically  all  I  had,  in  an  Argentine 
deal." 

"And  lost  it?" 

"No,  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  made  rather  a  good  thing  out  of  it.  I  did 
rather  well  last  February,  too.  But  there's  no  knowing  the  future.  A 
few  errors  of  judgment — a  war  here,  a  revolution  there,  a  big  strike 
somewhere  else,  and — "  He  blew  a  jet  of  smoke  from  his  lips,  and 
looked  at  me  as  at  one  whom  he  could  trust  to  feel  for  him  in  a  crash 
already  come. 

My  sympathy  lagged,  and  I  stuck  to  the  point  of  my  inquiry.  "Mean- 
while," I  suggested,  "and  all  the  more  because  you  aren't  merely  a 


698  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

rich  man,  but  also  an  active  taker  of  big  risks,  how  can  these  tiny 
little  baccarat  risks  give  you  so  much  emotion?" 

"There  you  rather  have  me,"  he  laughed.  "I've  often  wondered  at 
that  myself.  I  suppose,"  he  puzzled  it  out,  "I  do  a  good  lot  of  make- 
believe.  While  I'm  playing  a  game  like  this  game  to-night,  I  imagine 
the  stakes  are  huge,  and  I  imagine  I  haven't  another  penny  in  the 
world." 

"Ah!  So  that  with  you  it's  always  a  life-and-death  affair?" 

He  looked  away.  "Oh,  no,  I  don't  say  that." 

"Stupid  phrase,"  I  admitted.  "But,"  there  was  yet  one  point  I  would 
put  to  him,  "if  you  have  extraordinary  luck — always " 

"There's  no  such  thing  as  luck." 

"No,  strictly,  I  suppose,  there  isn't.  But  if  in  point  of  fact  you  always 
do  win,  then — well,  surely,  perfect  luck  driveth  out  fear?" 

"Who  ever  said  I  always  won?"  he  asked  sharply. 

I  waved  my  hands  and  said,  "Oh,  you  have  the  reputation,  you 
know,  for  extraordinary  luck." 

"That  isn't  the  same  thing  as  always  winning.  Besides,  I  haven't 
extraordinary  luck — never  have  had.  Good  heavens,"  he  exclaimed, 
"if  I  thought  I  had  any  more  chance  of  winning  than  of  losing, 
I'd— I'd " 

"Never  again  set  foot  in  that  baccarat  room  to-night,"  I  soothingly 
suggested. 

"Oh,  baccarat  be  blowed!  I  wasn't  thinking  of  baccarat.  I  was  think- 
ing of — oh,  lots  of  things;  baccarat  included,  yes." 

"What  things?"  I  ventured  to  ask. 

"What  things?"  He  pushed  back  his  chair,  and  "Look  here,"  he 
said  with  a  laugh,  "don't  pretend  I  haven't  been  boring  your  head  off 
with  all  this  talk  about  myself.  You've  been  too  patient.  I'm  off. 
Shall  I  see  you  to-morrow?  Perhaps  you'd  lunch  with  us  to-morrow? 
It  would  be  a  great  pleasure  for  my  wife.  We're  at  the  Hotel 
Royal." 

I  said  I  should  be  most  happy,  and  called  the  waiter;  at  sight  of 
whom  my  friend  said  he  had  talked  himself  thirsty,  and  asked  for 
another  glass  of  water.  He  mentioned  that  he  had  brought  his  car 
over  with  him:  his  little  daughter  (by  the  news  of  whose  existence  I 


MAX  BEERBOHM  699 

felt  idiotically  surprised)  was  very  keen  on  motoring,  and  they  were 
all  three  starting  the  day  after  to-morrow  for  "a  spin  through  France." 
Afterwards,  they  were  going  on  to  Switzerland,  "for  some  climbing." 
Did  I  care  about  motoring?  If  so,  we  might  go  for  a  spin  after  lunch- 
eon, to  Rouen  or  somewhere?  He  drank  his  glass  of  water,  and,  link- 
ing a  friendly  arm  in  mine,  passed  out  with  me  into  the  corridor.  He 
asked  what  I  was  writing  now,  and  said  that  he  looked  to  me  to  "do 
something  big,  one  of  these  days,"  and  that  he  was  sure  I  had  it  "in" 
me.  This  remark  (though  of  course  I  pretended  to  be  pleased  by  it) 
irritated  me  very  much.  It  was  destined,  as  you  shall  see,  to  irritate 
me  very  much  more  in  recollection. 

Yet  was  I  glad  he  had  asked  me  to  luncheon.  Glad  because  I  liked 
him,  glad  because  I  dislike  mysteries.  Though  you  may  think  me  very 
dense  for  not  having  thoroughly  understood  Pethel  in  the  course  of 
my  first  meeting  with  him,  the  fact  is  that  I  was  only  conscious,  and 
that  dimly,  of  something  more  in  him  than  he  had  cared  to  reveal — 
some  veil  behind  which  perhaps  lurked  his  right  to  the  title  so  airily 
bestowed  on  him  by  Grierson.  I  assured  myself,  as  I  walked  home, 
that  if  veil  there  were  I  should  to-morrow  find  an  eyelet. 

But  one's  intuition  when  it  is  off  duty  seems  always  so  much  more 
powerful  an  engine  than  it  does  on  active  service;  and  next  day,  at 
sight  of  Pethel  awaiting  me  outside  his  hotel,  I  became  less  confident. 
His,  thought  I,  was  a  face  which,  for  all  its  animation,  would  tell 
nothing — nothing,  at  any  rate,  that  mattered.  It  expressed  well  enough 
that  he  was  pleased  to  see  me;  but  for  the  rest,  I  was  reminded,  it  had 
a  sort  of  frank  inscrutability.  Besides,  it  was  at  all  points  so  very  usual 
a  face — a  face  that  couldn't  (so  I  then  thought),  even  if  it  had  leave 
to,  betray  connexion  with  a  "great  character."  It  was  a  strong  face, 
certainly.  But  so  are  yours  and  mine. 

And  very  fresh  it  looked,  though,  as  he  confessed,  Pethel  had  sat  up 
in  "that  beastly  baccarat  room"  till  5  a.m.  I  asked,  had  he  lost?  Yes, 
he  had  lost  steadily  for  four  hours  (proudly  he  laid  stress  on  this), 
but  in  the  end — well  (he  admitted),  he  had  won  it  all  back  "and  a  bit 
more."  "By  the  way,"  he  murmured  as  we  were  about  to  enter  the 
hall,  "don't  ever  happen  to  mention  to  my  wife  what  I  told  you  about 
that  Argentine  deal.  She's  always  rather  nervous  about — investments. 


700  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

I  don't  tell  her  about  them.  She's  rather  a  nervous  woman  altogether, 
I'm  sorry  to  say." 

This  did  not  square  with  my  preconception  of  her.  Slave  that  I  am 
to  traditional  imagery,  I  had  figured  her  as  "flaunting,"  as  golden- 
haired,  as  haughty  to  most  men  but  with  a  provocative  smile  across 
the  shoulder  for  some.  Nor  indeed  did  her  husband's  words  prevent 
me  from  the  suspicion  that  my  eyes  deceived  me  when  anon  I  was 
presented  to  a  very  pale  small  lady  whose  hair  was  rather  white  than 
grey.  And  the  "little  daughter"!  This  prodigy's  hair  was  as  yet  "down," 
but  looked  as  if  it  might  be  up  at  any  moment:  she  was  nearly  as  tall 
as  her  father,  whom  she  very  much  resembled  in  face  and  figure  and 
heartiness  of  hand-shake.  Only  after  a  rapid  mental  calculation  could 
I  account  for  her.  "I  must  warn  you,  she's  in  a  great  rage  this  morn-, 
ing,"  said  her  father.  "Do  try  to  soothe  her."  She  blushed,  laughed, 
and  bade  her  father  not  be  so  silly.  I  asked  her  the  cause  of  her  great 
rage.  She  said,  "He  only  means  I  was  disappointed.  And  he  was  just  as 
disappointed  as  I  was.  Weren't  you,  now,  Father?" 

"I  suppose  they  meant  well,  Peggy,"  he  laughed. 

"They  were  quite  right,"  said  Mrs.  Pethel,  evidently  not  for  the 
first  time. 

"They,"  as  I  presently  learned,  were  the  authorities  of  the  bathing 
establishment.  Pethel  had  promised  his  daughter  he  would  take  her 
for  a  swim;  but  on  their  arrival  at  the  bathing-cabins  they  were  ruth- 
lessly told  that  bathing  was  "defendu  a  cause  du  mauvais  temps." 
This  embargo  was  our  theme  as  we  sat  down  to  luncheon.  Miss  Peggy 
was  of  opinion  that  the  French  were  cowards.  I  pleaded  for  them  that 
even  in  English  watering-places  bathing  was  forbidden  when  the  sea 
was  very  rough.  She  did  not  admit  that  the  sea  was  very  rough  to-day. 
Besides,  she  appealed  to  me,  what  was  the  fun  of  swimming  in  abso- 
lutely calm  water?  I  dared  not  say  that  this  was  the  only  sort  of  water 
I  liked  to  swim  in.  "They  were  quite  right,"  said  Mrs.  Pethel  yet 
again. 

"Yes,  but,  darling  Mother,  you  can't  swim.  Father  and  I  are  both 
splendid  swimmers." 

To  gloze  over  the  mother's  disability,  I  looked  brightly  at  Pethel, 
as  though  in  ardent  recognition  of  his  prowess  among  waves.  With  a 


MAX   BEERBOHM  701 

movement  of  his  head  he  indicated  his  daughter — indicated  that  there 
was  no  one  like  her  in  the  whole  world.  I  beamed  agreement.  Indeed, 
I  did  think  her  rather  nice.  If  one  liked  the  father  (and  I  liked  Pethel 
all  the  more  in  that  capacity),  one  couldn't  help  liking  the  daughter; 
the  two  were  so  absurdly  alike.  Whenever  he  was  looking  at  her  (and 
it  was  seldom  that  he  looked  away  from  her)  the  effect,  if  you  cared 
to  be  fantastic,  was  that  of  a  very  vain  man  before  a  mirror.  It  might 
have  occurred  to  me  that,  if  there  were  any  mystery  in  him,  I  could 
solve  it  through  her.  But,  in  point  of  fact,  I  had  forgotten  all  about 
that  possible  mystery.  The  amateur  detective  was  lost  in  the  sympa- 
thetic observer  of  a  father's  love.  That  Pethel  did  love  his  daughter  I 
have  never  doubted.  One  passion  is  not  less  true  because  another  pre- 
dominates. No  one  who  ever  saw  that  father  with  that  daughter  could 
doubt  that  he  loved  her  intensely.  And  this  intensity  gauges  for  me 
the  strength  of  what  else  was  in  him. 

Mrs.  Pethel's  love,  though  less  explicit,  was  not  less  evidently  pro- 
found. But  the  maternal  instinct  is  less  attractive  to  an  onlooker,  be- 
cause he  takes  it  more  for  granted,  than  the  paternal.  What  endeared 
poor  Mrs.  Pethel  to  me  was — well,  the  inevitability  of  the  epithet  I 
give  her.  She  seemed,  poor  thing,  so  essentially  out  of  it;  and  by  "it" 
is  meant  the  glowing  mutual  affinity  of  husband  and  child.  Not  that 
she  didn't,  in  her  little  way,  assert  herself  during  the  meal.  But  she 
did  so,  I  thought,  with  the  knowledge  that  she  didn't  count,  and  never 
would  count.  I  wondered  how  it  was  that  she  had,  in  that  Cambridge 
bar-room  long  ago,  counted  for  Pethel  to  the  extent  of  matrimony. 
But  from  any  such  room  she  seemed  so  utterly  remote  that  she  might 
well  be  in  all  respects  now  an  utterly  changed  woman.  She  did  pre- 
eminently look  as  if  much  had  by  some  means  been  taken  out  of  her, 
with  no  compensatory  process  of  putting  in.  Pethel  looked  so  very 
young  for  his  age,  whereas  she  would  have  had  to  be  quite  old  to  look 
young  for  hers.  I  pitied  her  as  one  might  a  governess  with  two  charges 
who  were  hopelessly  out  of  hand.  But  a  governess,  I  reflected,  can 
always  give  notice.  Love  tied  poor  Mrs.  Pethel  fast  to  her  present 
situation. 

As  the  three  of  them  were  to  start  next  day  on  their  tour  through 
France,  and  as  the  four  of  us  were  to  make  a  tour  to  Rouen  this  after- 


702  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

noon,  the  talk  was  much  about  motoring — a  theme  which  Miss  Peggy's 
enthusiasm  made  almost  tolerable.  I  said  to  Mrs.  Pethel,  with  more 
good-will  than  truth,  that  I  supposed  she  was  "very  keen  on  it."  She 
replied  that  she  was. 

"But  darling  Mother,  you  aren't.  I  believe  you  hate  it.  You're  always 
asking  Father  to  go  slower.  And  what  is  the  fun  of  just  crawling 
along?" 

"Oh,  come,  Peggy,  we  never  crawl,"  said  her  father. 

"No,  indeed,"  said  her  mother,  in  a  tone  of  which  Pethel  laugh- 
ingly said  it  would  put  me  off  coming  out  with  them  this  afternoon. 
I  said,  with  an  expert  air  to  reassure  Mrs.  Pethel,  that  it  wasn't  fast 
driving,  but  only  bad  driving,  that  was  a  danger.  "There,  Mother!" 
cried  Peggy.  "Isn't  that  what  we're  always  telling  you?" 

I  felt  that  they  were  always  either  telling  Mrs.  Pethel  something  or, 
as  in  the  matter  of  that  intended  bath,  not  telling  her  something.  It 
seemed  to  me  possible  that  Peggy  advised  her  father  about  his  "invest- 
ments." I  wondered  whether  they  had  yet  told  Mrs.  Pethel  of  their  in- 
tention to  go  on  to  Switzerland  for  some  climbing. 

Of  his  secretiveness  for  his  wife's  sake  I  had  a  touching  little  in- 
stance after  luncheon.  We  had  adjourned  to  have  coffee  in  front  of 
the  hotel.  The  car  was  already  in  attendance,  and  Peggy  had  darted 
off  to  make  her  daily  inspection  of  it.  Pethel  had  given  me  a  cigar, 
and  his  wife  presently  noticed  that  he  himself  was  not  smoking.  He 
explained  to  her  that  he  thought  he  had  smoked  too  much  lately,  and 
that  he  was  going  to  "knock  it  off"  for  a  while.  I  would  not  have 
smiled  if  he  had  met  my  eye.  But  his  avoidance  of  it  made  me  quite 
sure  that  he  really  had  been  "thinking  over"  what  I  had  said  last  night 
about  nicotine  and  its  possibly  deleterious  action  on  the  gambling 
thrill. 

Mrs.  Pethel  saw  the  smile  that  I  could  not  repress.  I  explained  that 
I  was  wishing  /  could  knock  off  tobacco,  and  envying  her  husband's 
strength  of  character.  She  smiled  too,  but  wanly,  with  her  eyes  on  him. 
"Nobody  has  so  much  strength  of  character  as  he  has,"  she  said. 

"Nonsense!"  he  laughed.  "I'm  the  weakest  of  men." 

"Yes,"  she  said  quietly.  "That's  true,  too,  James." 

Again  he  laughed,  but  he  flushed.  I  saw  that  Mrs.  Pethel  also  had 


MAX  BEERBOHM  703 

faintly  flushed;  and  I  became  horribly  conscious  o£  following  suit.  In 
the  sudden  glow  and  silence  created  by  Mrs.  Pethel's  paradox,  I  was 
grateful  to  the  daughter  for  bouncing  back  into  our  midst  and  asking 
how  soon  we  should  be  ready  to  start. 

Pethel  looked  at  his  wife,  who  looked  at  me  and  rather  strangely 
asked  if  I  were  sure  I  wanted  to  go  with  them.  I  protested  that  of 
course  I  did.  Pethel  asked  her  if  she  really  wanted  to  come:  "You  see, 
dear,  there  was  the  run  yesterday  from  Calais.  And  to-morrow  you'll 
be  on  the  road  again,  and  all  the  days  after." 

"Yes,"  said  Peggy,  "I'm  sure  you'd  much  rather  stay  at  home,  dar- 
ling Mother,  and  have  a  good  rest." 

"Shall  we  go  and  put  on  our  things,  Peggy?"  replied  Mrs.  Pethel, 
rising  from  her  chair.  She  asked  her  husband  whether  he  were  taking 
the  chauffeur  with  him.  He  said  he  thought  not. 

"Oh,  hurrah!"  cried  Peggy.  "Then  I  can  be  on  the  front  seat!" 

"No,  dear,"  said  her  mother.  "I  am  sure  Mr.  Beerbohm  would  like 
to  be  on  the  front  seat." 

"You'd  like  to  be  with  Mother,  wouldn't  you?"  the  girl  appealed. 
I  replied  with  all  possible  emphasis  that  I  should  like  to  be  with  Mrs. 
Pethel.  But  presently,  when  the  mother  and  daughter  reappeared  in 
the  guise  of  motorists,  it  became  clear  that  my  aspiration  had  been  set 
aside.  "I  am  to  be  with  Mother,"  said  Peggy. 

I  was  inwardly  glad  that  Mrs.  Pethel  could,  after  all,  assert  herself 
to  some  purpose.  Had  I  thought  she  disliked  me,  I  should  have  been 
hurt;  but  I  was  sure  her  desire  that  I  should  not  sit  with  her  was  due 
merely  to  a  belief  that  a  person  on  the  front  seat  was  less  safe  in  case 
of  accidents  than  a  person  behind.  And  of  course  I  did  not  expect  her 
to  prefer  my  life  to  her  daughter's.  Poor  lady!  My  heart  was  with  her. 
As  the  car  glided  along  the  sea-front  and  then  under  the  Norman 
archway,  through  the  town  and  past  the  environs,  I  wished  that  her 
husband  inspired  in  her  as  much  confidence  as  he  did  in  me.  For  me 
the  sight  of  his  clear,  firm  profile  (he  did  not  wear  motor-goggles) 
was  an  assurance  in  itself.  From  time  to  time  (for  I  too  was  ungog- 
gled)  I  looked  round  to  nod  and  smile  cheerfully  at  his  wife.  She 
always  returned  the  nod,  but  left  the  smile  to  be  returned  by  the 
daughter. 


704  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Pethel,  like  the  good  driver  he  was,  did  not  talk:  just  drove.  But  he 
did,  as  we  came  out  on  to  the  Rouen  road,  say  that  in  France  he  always 
rather  missed  the  British  police-traps.  "Not,"  he  added,  "that  I've  ever 
fallen  into  one.  But  the  chance  that  a  policeman  may  at  any  moment 
dart  out,  and  land  you  in  a  bit  of  a  scrape,  does  rather  add  to  the 
excitement,  don't  you  think?"  Though  I  answered  in  the  tone  of  one 
to  whom  the  chance  of  a  police-trap  is  the  very  salt  of  life,  I  did  not 
inwardly  like  the  spirit  of  his  remark.  However,  I  dismissed  it  from 
my  mind;  and  the  sun  was  shining,  and  the  wind  had  dropped:  it 
was  an  ideal  day  for  motoring;  and  the  Norman  landscape  had  never 
looked  lovelier  to  me  in  its  width  of  sober  and  silvery  grace. 

I  presently  felt  that  this  landscape  was  not,  after  all,  doing  itself 
full  justice.  Was  it  not  rushing  rather  too  quickly  past?  "James!"  said 
a  shrill,  faint  voice  from  behind;  and  gradually — "Oh,  darling  Mother, 
really!"  protested  another  voice — the  landscape  slackened  pace.  But 
after  a  while,  little  by  little,  the  landscape  lost  patience,  forgot  its  good 
manners,  and  flew  faster,  and  faster  than  before.  The  road  rushed 
furiously  beneath  us,  like  a  river  in  spate.  Avenues  of  poplars  flashed 
past  us,  every  tree  of  them  on  either  side  hissing  and  swishing  angrily 
in  the  draught  we  made.  Motors  going  Rouen-wards  seemed  to  be  past 
as  quickly  as  motors  that  bore  down  on  us.  Hardly  had  I  espied  in  the 
landscape  ahead  a  chateau  or  other  object  of  interest  before  I  was  cran- 
ing my  neck  round  for  a  final  glimpse  of  it  as  it  faded  on  the  back- 
ward horizon.  An  endless  up-hill  road  was  breasted  and  crested  in  a 
twinkling  and  transformed  into  a  decline  near  the  end  of  which  our 
car  leapt  straight  across  to  the  opposite  ascent,  and — "James!"  again, 
and  again  by  degrees  the  laws  of  Nature  were  re-established,  but 
again  by  degrees  revoked.  I  didn't  doubt  that  speed  in  itself  was  no 
danger;  but  when  the  road  was  about  to  make  a  sharp  curve  why 
shouldn't  Pethel,  just  as  a  matter  of  form,  slow  down  slightly  and 
sound  a  note  or  two  of  the  hooter?  Suppose  another  car  were — well, 
that  was  all  right:  the  road  was  clear.  But  at  the  next  turning,  when 
our  car  neither  slackened  nor  hooted  and  was,  for  an  instant,  fu'l  on 
the  wrong  side  of  the  road,  I  had  within  me  a  contraction  which  (at 
thought  of  what  must  have  been  if  .  .  .)  lasted  though  all  was  well. 
Loth  to  betray  fear,  I  hadn't  turned  my  face  to  Pethel.  Eyes  front! 


MAX  BEERBOHM  705 

And  how  about  that  wagon  ahead,  huge  hay-wagon  plodding  with 
its  back  to  us,  seeming  to  occupy  the  whole  road?  Surely  Pethel  would 
slacken,  hoot?  No.  Imagine  a  needle  threaded  with  one  swift  gesture 
from  afar.  Even  so  was  it  that  we  shot,  between  wagon  and  road's 
edge,  through;  whereon,  confronting  us  within  a  few  yards — inches 
now,  but  we  swerved — was  a  cart,  a  cart  that  incredibly  we  grazed 
not  as  we  rushed  on,  on.  Now  indeed  had  I  turned  my  eyes  on  Pethel's 
profile.  And  my  eyes  saw  there  that  which  stilled,  with  a  greater  emo- 
tion, all  fear  and  wonder  in  me. 

I  think  that  for  the  first  instant,  oddly,  what  I  felt  was  merely  satis- 
faction, not  hatred;  for  I  all  but  asked  him  whether  by  not  smoking 
to-day  he  had  got  a  keener  edge  to  his  thrills.  I  understood  him,  and 
for  an  instant  this  sufficed  me.  Those  pursed-out  lips,  so  queerly  differ- 
ent from  the  compressed  lips  of  the  normal  motorist,  and  seeming,  as 
elsewhere  last  night,  to  denote  no  more  than  pensive  interest,  had  told 
me  suddenly  all  that  I  needed  to  know  about  Pethel.  Here,  as  there — 
and  oh,  ever  so  much  better  here  than  there! — he  could  gratify  the 
passion  that  was  in  him.  No  need  of  any  "make-believe"  here!  I  re- 
membered the  strange  look  he  had  given  when  I  asked  if  his  gam- 
bling were  always  "a  life-and-death  affair."  Here  was  the  real  thing 
— the  authentic  game,  for  the  highest  stakes!  And  here  was  I,  a  little 
extra-stake  tossed  on  to  the  board.  He  had  vowed  I  had  it  "in"  me  to 
do  "something  big."  Perhaps,  though,  there  had  been  a  touch  of  his 
make-believe  about  that.  ...  I  am  afraid  it  was  not  before  my  thought 
about  myself  that  my  moral  sense  began  to  operate  and  my  hatred  of 
Pethel  set  in.  But  I  claim  that  I  did  see  myself  as  no  more  than  a  mere 
detail  in  his  villainy.  Nor,  in  my  just  wrath  for  other  sakes,  was  I 
without  charity  even  for  him.  I  gave  him  due  credit  for  risking  his 
own  life — for  having  doubtless  risked  it,  it  and  none  other,  again  and 
again  in  the  course  of  his  adventurous — and  abstemious — life  by  field 
and  flood.  I  was  even  rather  touched  by  memory  of  his  insistence  last 
night  on  another  glass  of  that  water  which  just  might  give  him  ty- 
phoid; rather  touched  by  memory  of  his  unsaying  that  he  "never" 
touched  alcohol — he  who,  in  point  of  fact,  had  to  be  always  gambling 
on  something  or  other.  I  gave  him  due  credit,  too,  for  his  devotion  to 
his  daughter.  But  his  use  of  that  devotion,  his  cold  use  of  it  to  secure 


706  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

for  himself  the  utmost  thrill  of  gambling,  did  seem  utterly  abominable 
to  me. 

And  it  was  even  more  for  the  mother  than  for  the  daughter  that  I 
was  incensed.  That  daughter  did  not  know  him,  did  but  innocently 
share  his  damnable  love  of  chances.  But  that  wife  had  for  years  known 
him  at  least  as  well  as  I  knew  him  now.  Here  again,  I  gave  him  credit 
for  wishing,  though  he  didn't  love  her,  to  spare  her  what  he  could. 
That  he  didn't  love  her  I  presumed  from  his  indubitable  willingness 
not  to  stake  her  in  this  afternoon's  game.  That  he  never  had  loved  her 
—had  taken  her,  in  his  precocious  youth,  simply  as  a  gigantic  chance 
against  him— was  likely  enough.  So  much  the  more  credit  to  him  for 
such  consideration  as  he  showed  her;  but  little  enough  this  was.  He 
could  wish  to  save  her  from  being  a  looker-on  at  his  game;  but  he 
could,  he  couldn't  not,  go  on  playing.  Assuredly  she  was  right  in 
deeming  him  at  once  the  strongest  and  the  weakest  of  men.  "Rather  a 
nervous  woman"!  I  remembered  an  engraving  that  had  hung  in  my 
room  at  Oxford— and  in  scores  of  other  rooms  there:  a  presentment 
by  Sir  Marcus  (then  Mr.)  Stone  of  a  very  pretty  young  person  in  a 
Gainsborough  hat,  seated  beneath  an  ancestral  elm,  looking  as  though 
she  were  about  to  cry,  and  entitled  "A  Gambler's  Wife."  Mrs.  Pethel 
was  not  like  that.  Of  her  there  were  no  engravings  for  undergraduate 
hearts  to  melt  at.  But  there  was  one  man,  certainly,  whose  compas- 
sion was  very  much  at  her  service.  How  was  he  going  to  help  her? 

I  know  not  how  many  hair's-breadth  escapes  we  may  have  had 
while  these  thoughts  passed  through  my  brain.  I  had  closed  my  eyes. 
So  preoccupied  was  I  that,  but  for  the  constant  rush  of  air  against  my 
face,  I  might,  for  aught  I  knew,  have  been  sitting  ensconced  in  an 
arm-chair  at  home.  After  a  while,  I  was  aware  that  this  rush  had 
abated;  I  opened  my  eyes  to  the  old  familiar  streets  of  Rouen.  We 
were  to  have  tea  at  the  Hotel  d'Angleterre.  What  was  to  be  my  line 
of  action?  Should  I  take  Pethel  aside  and  say  "Swear  to  me,  on  your 
word  of  honour  as  a  gentleman,  that  you  will  never  again  touch  the 
drivincr-aear  (or  whatever  you  call  it)  of  a  motor-car.  Otherwise  I 
shall  expose  you  to  the  world.  Meanwhile,  we  shall  return  to  Dieppe 
by  train"?  He  might  flush— for  I  knew  him  capable  of  flushing— as  he 
asked  me  to  explain.  And  after?   He  would  laugh  in  my  face.  He 


MAX  BEERBOHM  707 

would  advise  me  not  to  go  motoring  any  more.  He  might  even  warn 
me  not  to  go  back  to  Dieppe  in  one  of  those  dangerous  railway-trains. 
He  might  even  urge  me  to  wait  until  a  nice  Bath  chair  had  been  sent 
out  for  me  from  England.  .  .  . 

I  heard  a  voice  (mine,  alas)  saying  brightly,  "Well,  here  we  are!" 
I  helped  the  ladies  to  descend.  Tea  was  ordered.  Pethel  refused  that 
stimulant  and  had  a  glass  of  water.  I  had  a  liqueur  brandy.  It  was 
evident  to  me  that  tea  meant  much  to  Mrs.  Pethel.  She  looked  stronger 
after  her  second  cup,  and  younger  after  her  third.  Still,  it  was  my  duty 
to  help  her,  if  I  could.  While  I  talked  and  laughed,  I  did  not  forget 
that.  But — what  on  earth  was  I  to  do?  I  am  no  hero.  I  hate  to  be 
ridiculous.  I  am  inveterately  averse  from  any  sort  of  fuss.  Besides,  how 
was  I  to  be  sure  that  my  own  personal  dread  of  the  return-journey 
hadn't  something  to  do  with  my  intention  of  tackling  Pethel?  I 
thought  it  had.  What  this  woman  would  dare  daily  because  she  was 
a  mother,  could  not  I  dare  once?  I  reminded  myself  of  Pethel's  repu- 
tation for  invariable  luck.  I  reminded  myself  that  he  was  an  extraor- 
dinarily skilful  driver.  To  that  skill  and  luck  I  would  pin  my  faith.  .  .  . 

What  I  seem  to  myself,  do  you  ask  of  me? 

But  I  answered  your  question  a  few  lines  back.  Enough  that  my  faith 
was  rewarded.  We  did  reach  Dieppe  safely.  I  still  marvel  that  we  did. 

That  evening,  in  the  vestibule  of  the  Casino,  Grierson  came  up  to 
me:  "Seen  Jimmy  Pethel?  He  was  asking  for  you.  Wants  to  see  you 
particularly.  He's  in  the  baccarat  room,  punting — winning  hand  over 
fist,  of  course.  Said  he'd  seldom  met  a  man  he  liked  more  than  you. 
Great  character,  what?"  One  is  always  glad  to  be  liked,  and  I  plead 
guilty  to  a  moment's  gratification  at  the  announcement  that  Pethel 
liked  me.  But  I  did  not  go  and  seek  him  in  the  baccarat  room.  A  great 
character  assuredly  he  was;  but  of  a  kind  with  which  (very  imperfect 
though  I  am,  and  no  censor)  I  prefer  not  to  associate. 

Why  he  had  particularly  wanted  to  see  me  was  made  clear  in  a  note 
sent  by  him  to  my  room  early  next  morning.  He  wondered  if  I  could 
be  induced  to  join  them  in  their  little  tour.  He  hoped  I  wouldn't  think 
it  great  cheek,  his  asking  me.  He  thought  it  might  rather  amuse  me 


708  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

to  come.  It  would  be  a  very  great  pleasure  for  his  wife.  He  hoped  I 
wouldn't  say  No.  Would  I  send  a  line  by  bearer?  They  would  be 
starting  at  3  o'clock.  He  was  mine  sincerely. 

It  was  not  too  late  to  tackle  him,  even  now.  Should  I  go  round  to 
his  hotel?  I  hesitated  and — well,  I  told  you  at  the  outset  that  my  last 
meeting  with  him  was  on  the  morrow  of  my  first.  I  forget  what  I 
wrote  to  him,  but  am  sure  that  the  excuse  I  made  for  myself  was  a 
good  and  graceful  one,  and  that  I  sent  my  kindest  regards  to  Mrs. 
Pethel.  She  had  not  (I  am  sure  of  that,  too)  authorised  her  husband 
to  say  she  would  like  me  to  come  with  them.  Else  would  not  the 
thought  of  her  have  haunted  me  so  poignantly  as  for  a  long  time  it  did. 
I  do  not  know  whether  she  is  still  alive.  No  mention  is  made  of  her 
in  the  obituary  notice  which  woke  these  memories  in  me.  This  notice 
I  will,  however,  transcribe,  because  (for  all  its  crudeness  of  phrase- 
ology) it  is  rather  interesting  both  as  an  echo  and  as  an  amplification. 
Its  title  is — "Death  of  Wealthy  Aviator."  Its  text  is — "Widespread 
regret  will  be  felt  in  Leicestershire  at  the  tragic  death  of  Mr.  James 
Pethel,  who  had  long  resided  there  and  was  very  popular  as  an  all- 
round  sportsman.  In  recent  years  he  had  been  much  interested  in  avia- 
tion, and  had  become  one  of  the  most  enthusiastic  of  amateur  airmen. 
Yesterday  afternoon  he  fell  down  dead  quite  suddenly  as  he  was  re- 
turning to  his  house,  apparently  in  his  usual  health  and  spirits,  after 
descending  from  a  short  flight  which  despite  an  extremely  high  wind 
he  had  made  on  his  new  biplane  and  on  which  he  was  accompanied 
by  his  married  daughter  and  her  infant  son.  It  is  not  expected  that  an 
inquest  will  be  necessary,  as  his  physician,  Dr.  Saunders,  has  certified 
death  to  be  due  to  heart-disease,  from  which,  it  appears,  the  deceased 
gentleman  had  been  suffering  for  some  years.  Dr.  Saunders  adds  that 
he  had  repeatedly  warned  deceased  that  any  strain  on  the  nervous 
system  might  prove  fatal." 

Thus — for  I  presume  that  his  ailment  had  its  origin  in  his  habits — 
James  Pethel  did  not,  despite  that  merely  pensive  look  of  his,  live  his 
life  with  impunity.  And  by  reason  of  that  life  he  died.  As  for  the 
manner  of  his  death,  enough  that  he  did  die.  Let  not  our  hearts  be 
vexed  that  his  great  luck  was  with  him  to  the  end. 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM 


COMMENTARY 


Every  reviewer,  if  you  give  him  enough  to  drink,  will  break  down 
and  confess  that  there  are  certain  passages,  in  the  hooks  he  reads, 
that  he  does  not  read.  The  most  conscientious  of  us  skips  at  times, 
perhaps  without  quite  knowing  it.  I,  for  example,  am  quite  capable 
of  skipping,  in  a  kind  of  blank  trance,  entire  novels  about  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution.  But  even  in  books  that  interest  me,  there  are  things 
my  eye  skates  over  with  the  agility  of  a  Son/a  Henie. 

Dreams,  for  one.  Now,  most  people  who  have  any  iron  in  their 
nature  refuse  to  listen  to  accounts  of  other  people's  dreams.  The 
weaker  ones,  who  do  listen,  might  as  well  have  stopped  their  ears. 
A  says  to  B,  "I  had  the  queerest  dream  the  other  night,"  and  relates 
it.  "Make  any  sense  out  of  that?"  inquires  A.  "No,"  replies  honest  B. 
"Neither  can  I,"  concludes  A  thoughtfully.  It  is  of  such  stuff  and 
nonsense  that  dreams  are  made  on. 

When  I  come  to  a  description  of  a  dream  in  a  book,  I  by-pass  it. 
I  have  never  yet  found  that  I  missed  much.  But  this  excellent  rule  has 
its  exceptions,  and  one  of  them  has  to  do  with  Somerset  Maugham's 
spooky  story,  "Lord  Mountdrago."  The  story  is  about  nothing  but 
dreams,  about  two  men,  indeed,  who  inhabit  each  other's  dreams, 
and  in  my  literature  of  the  outre  it  gets  high  marks.  Like  ''August 
Heat,"  it  works  with  coincidence,  and  only  coincidence,  and,  like 
Mr.  Harvey,  Mr.  Maugham  gets  away  with  it.  It  is  unlike  his  usual 
work  and  that  is  why  I  have  placed  it  apart  from  the  other  Maugham 
stories  included  in  this  book.  It  isn't,  I  suppose,  even  remotely  a 
work  of  literary  art,  but  it  is  so  remarkable  a  work  of  literary  artful- 
ness that  I  predict  for  it  a  long  anthological  life. 


709 


Lord  Mountdrago 

BY 

W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM 


Dr.  Audlin  looked  at  the  clock  on  his  desk.  It  was  twenty  minutes  to 
six.  He  was  surprised  that  his  patient  was  late,  for  Lord  Mountdrago 
prided  himself  on  his  punctuality;  he  had  a  sententious  way  of  ex- 
pressing himself  which  gave  the  air  of  an  epigram  to  a  commonplace 
remark,  and  he  was  in  the  habit  of  saying  that  punctuality  is  a  com- 
pliment you  pay  to  the  intelligent  and  a  rebuke  you  administer  to  the 
stupid.  Lord  Mountdrago's  appointment  was  for  five-thirty. 

There  was  in  Dr.  Audlin's  appearance  nothing  to  attract  attention. 
He  was  tall  and  spare,  with  narrow  shoulders  and  something  of  a 
stoop;  his  hair  was  grey  and  thin;  his  long,  sallow  face  deeply  lined. 
He  was  not  more  than  fifty,  but  he  looked  older.  His  eyes,  pale  blue 
and  rather  large,  were  weary.  When  you  had  been  with  him  for  a 
while  you  noticed  that  they  moved  very  little;  they  remained  fixed  on 
your  face,  but  so  empty  of  expression  were  they  that  it  was  no  discom- 
fort. They  seldom  lit  up.  They  gave  no  clue  to  his  thoughts  nor 
changed  with  the  words  he  spoke.  If  you  were  of  an  observant  turn  it 
might  have  struck  you  that  he  blinked  much  less  often  than  most  of 
us.  His  hands  were  on  the  large  side,  with  long,  tapering  fingers;  they 
were  soft  but  firm,  cool  but  not  clammy.  You  could  never  have  said 
what  Dr.  Audlin  wore  unless  you  had  made  a  point  of  looking.  His 
clothes  were  dark.  His  tie  was  black.  His  dress  made  his  sallow  lined 
face  paler  and  his  pale  eyes  more  wan.  He  gave  you  the  impression  of  a 
very  sick  man. 

Dr.  Audlin  was  a  psychoanalyst.  He  had  adopted  the  profession  by 
accident  and  practised  it  with  misgiving.  When  the  war  broke  out  he 
had  not  been  long  qualified  and  was  getting  experience  at  various  hos- 

710  ' 


W.  SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  711 

pitals;  he  offered  his  services  to  the  authorities,  and  after  a  time  was 
sent  out  to  France.  It  was  then  that  he  discovered  his  singular  gift.  He 
could  allay  certain  pains  by  the  touch  of  his  cool,  firm  hands,  and  by 
talking  to  them  often  induce  sleep  in  men  who  were  suffering  from 
sleeplessness.  He  spoke  slowly.  His  voice  had  no  particular  colour,  and 
its  tone  did  not  alter  with  the  words  he  uttered,  but  it  was  musical, 
soft  and  lulling.  He  told  the  men  that  they  must  rest,  that  they  mustn't 
worry,  that  they  must  sleep;  and  rest  stole  into  their  jaded  bones,  tran- 
quillity pushed  their  anxieties  away,  like  a  man  finding  a  place  for 
himself  on  a  crowded  bench,  and  slumber  fell  on  their  tired  eyelids 
like  the  light  rain  of  spring  upon  the  fresh-turned  earth.  Dr.  Audlin 
found  that  by  speaking  to  men  with  that  low,  monotonous  voice  of  his, 
by  looking  at  them  with  his  pale,  quiet  eyes,  by  stroking  their  weary 
foreheads  with  his  long  firm  hands,  he  could  soothe  their  perturba- 
tions, resolve  the  conflicts  that  distracted  them  and  banish  the  phobias 
that  made  their  lives  a  torment.  Sometimes  he  effected  cures  that 
seemed  miraculous.  He  restored  speech  to  a  man  who,  after  being  bur- 
ied under  the  earth  by  a  bursting  shell,  had  been  struck  dumb,  and  he 
gave  back  the  use  of  his  limbs  to  another  who  had  been  paralyzed 
after  a  crash  in  a  plane.  He  could  not  understand  his  powers;  he  was 
of  a  sceptical  turn,  and  though  they  say  that  in  circumstances  of  this 
kind  the  first  thing  is  to  believe  in  yourself,  he  never  quite  succeeded 
in  doing  that;  and  it  was  only  the  outcome  of  his  activities,  patent  to 
the  most  incredulous  observer,  that  obliged  him  to  admit  that  he  had 
some  faculty,  coming  from  he  knew  not  where,  obscure  and  uncertain, 
that  enabled  him  to  do  things  for  which  he  could  offer  no  explanation. 
When  the  war  was  over  he  went  to  Vienna  and  studied  there,  and 
afterwards  to  Zurich;  and  then  settled  down  in  London  to  practise  the 
art  he  had  so  strongly  acquired.  He  had  been  practising  now  for  fif- 
teen years,  and  had  attained,  in  the  specialty  he  followed,  a  distin- 
guished reputation.  People  told  one  another  of  the  amazing  things  he 
had  done,  and  though  his  fees  were  high,  he  had  as  many  patients  as 
he  had  time  to  see.  Dr.  Audlin  knew  that  he  had  achieved  some  very 
extraordinary  results;  he  had  saved  men  from  suicide,  others  from  the 
lunatic  asylum,  he  had  assuaged  griefs  that  embittered  useful  lives,  he 
had  turned  unhappy  marriages  into  happy  ones,  he  had  eradicated 


712  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

abnormal  instincts  and  thus  delivered  not  a  few  from  a  hateful  bond- 
age, he  had  given  health  to  the  sick  in  spirit;  he  had  done  all  this,  and 
yet  at  the  back  of  his  mind  remained  the  suspicion  that  he  was  little 
more  than  a  quack. 

It  went  against  his  grain  to  exercise  a  power  that  he  could  not  under- 
stand, and  it  offended  his  honesty  to  trade  on  the  faith  of  the  people 
he  treated  when  he  had  no  faith  in  himself.  He  was  rich  enough  now 
to  live  without  working,  and  the  work  exhausted  him;  a  dozen  times 
he  had  been  on  the  point  of  giving  up  practice.  He  knew  all  that 
Freud  and  Jung  and  the  rest  of  them  had  written.  He  was  not  satis- 
fied; he  had  an  intimate  conviction  that  all  their  theory  was  hocus- 
pocus,  and  yet  there  the  results  were,  incomprehensible,  but  manifest. 
And  what  had  he  not  seen  of  human  nature  during  the  fifteen  years 
that  patients  had  been  coming  to  his  dingy  back  room  in  Wimpole 
Street?  The  revelations  that  had  been  poured  into  his  ears,  sometimes 
only  too  willingly,  sometimes  with  shame,  with  reservations,  with 
anger,  had  long  ceased  to  surprise  him.  Nothing  could  shock  him  any 
longer.  He  knew  by  now  that  men  were  liars,  he  knew  how  extrav- 
agant was  their  vanity;  he  knew  far  worse  than  that  about  them;  but 
he  knew  that  it  was  not  for  him  to  judge  or  to  condemn.  But  year  by 
year  as  these  terrible  confidences  were  imparted  to  him  his  face  grew 
a  little  greyer,  its  lines  a  little  more  marked  and  his  pale  eyes  more 
weary.  He  seldom  laughed,  but  now  and  again  when  for  relaxation  he 
read  a  novel  he  smiled.  Did  their  authors  really  think  the  men  and 
women  they  wrote  of  were  like  that?  If  they  only  knew  how  much 
more  complicated  they  were,  how  much  more  unexpected,  what  ir- 
reconcilable elements  coexisted  within  their  souls  and  what  dark  and 
sinister  contentions  afflicted  them! 

It  was  a  quarter  to  six.  Of  all  the  strange  cases  he  had  been  called 
upon  to  deal  with,  Dr.  Audlin  could  remember  none  stranger  than 
that  of  Lord  Mountdrago.  For  one  thing  the  personality  of  his  patient 
made  it  singular.  Lord  Mountdrago  was  an  able  and  a  distinguished 
man.  Appointed  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs  when  still  under  forty, 
now  after  three  years  in  office  he  had  seen  his  policy  prevail.  It  was 
generally  acknowledged  that  he  was  the  ablest  politician  in  the  Con- 
servative Party,  and  only  the  fact  that  his  father  was  a  peer,  on  whose 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  713 

death  he  would  no  longer  be  able  to  sit  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
made  it  impossible  for  him  to  aim  at  the  premiership.  But  if  in  these 
democratic  times  it  is  out  of  the  question  for  a  Prime  Minister  of  Eng- 
land to  be  in  the  House  of  Lords,  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  Lord 
Mountdrago  from  continuing  to  be  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs  in 
successive  Conservative  administrations  and  so  for  long  directing  the 
foreign  policy  of  his  country. 

Lord  Mountdrago  had  many  good  qualities.  He  had  intelligence 
and  industry.  He  was  widely  travelled  and  spoke  several  languages  flu- 
ently. From  early  youth  he  had  specialized  in  foreign  affairs  and  had 
conscientiously  made  himself  acquainted  with  the  political  and  eco- 
nomic circumstances  of  other  countries.  He  had  courage,  insight  and 
determination.  He  was  a  good  speaker,  both  on  the  platform  and  in 
the  House,  clear,  precise  and  often  witty.  He  was  a  brilliant  debater 
and  his  gift  of  repartee  was  celebrated.  He  had  a  fine  presence:  he  was 
a  tall,  handsome  man,  rather  bald  and  somewhat  too  stout,  but  this 
gave  him  solidity  and  an  air  of  maturity  that  were  of  service  to  him. 
As  a  young  man  he  had  been  something  of  an  athlete  and  had  rowed 
in  the  Oxford  boat,  and  he  was  known  to  be  one  of  the  best  shots  in 
England.  At  twenty-four  he  had  married  a  girl  of  eighteen  whose 
father  was  a  duke  and  her  mother  a  great  American  heiress,  so  that 
she  had  both  position  and  wealth,  and  by  her  he  had  had  two  sons. 
For  several  years  they  had  lived  privately  apart,  but  in  public  united, 
so  that  appearances  were  saved,  and  no  other  attachment  on  either  side 
had  given  the  gossips  occasion  to  whisper.  Lord  Mountdrago  indeed 
was  too  ambitious,  too  hard-working,  and  it  must  be  added  too  patri- 
otic, to  be  tempted  by  any  pleasures  that  might  interfere  with  his 
career.  He  had  in  short  a  great  deal  to  make  him  a  popular  and  suc- 
cessful figure.  He  had  unfortunately  great  defects. 

He  was  a  fearful  snob.  You  would  not  have  been  surprised  at  this  if 
his  father  had  been  the  first  holder  of  the  title.  That  the  son  of  an  en- 
nobled lawyer,  manufacturer  or  distiller  should  attach  an  inordinate 
importance  to  his  rank  is  understandable.  The  earldom  held  by  Lord 
Mountdrago's  father  was  created  by  Charles  II,  and  the  barony  held 
by  the  first  earl  dated  from  the  Wars  of  the  Roses.  For  three  hundred 
years  the  successive  holders  of  the  title  had  allied  themselves  with  the 


714  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

noblest  families  of  England.  But  Lord  Mountdrago  was  as  conscious 
of  his  birth  as  a  nouveau  riche  is  conscious  of  his  money.  He  never 
missed  an  opportunity  of  impressing  it  upon  others.  He  had  beautiful 
manners  when  he  chose  to  display  them,  but  this  he  did  only  with 
people  whom  he  regarded  as  his  equals.  He  was  coldly  insolent  to 
those  whom  he  looked  upon  as  his  social  inferiors.  He  was  rude  to  his 
servants  and  insulting  to  his  secretaries.  The  subordinate  officials  in  the 
government  offices  to  which  he  had  been  successively  attached  feared 
and  hated  him.  His  arrogance  was  horrible.  He  knew  that  he  was  a 
great  deal  cleverer  than  most  of  the  persons  he  had  to  do  with,  and 
never  hesitated  to  apprise  them  of  the  fact.  He  had  no  patience  with 
the  infirmities  of  human  nature.  He  felt  himself  born  to  command  and 
was  irritated  with  people  who  expected  him  to  listen  to  their  argu- 
ments or  wished  to  hear  the  reasons  for  his  decisions.  He  was  immeas- 
urably selfish.  He  looked  upon  any  service  that  was  rendered  him  as 
a  right  due  to  his  rank  and  intelligence  and  therefore  deserving  of  no 
gratitude.  It  never  entered  his  head  that  he  was  called  upon  to  do  any- 
thing for  others.  He  had  many  enemies:  he  despised  them.  He  knew 
no  one  who  merited  his  assistance,  his  sympathy  or  his  compassion.  He 
had  no  friends.  He  was  distrusted  by  his  chiefs,  because  they  doubted 
his  loyalty;  he  was  unpopular  with  his  party,  because  he  was  overbear- 
ing and  discourteous;  and  yet  his  merit  was  so  great,  his  patriotism  so 
evident,  his  intelligence  so  solid  and  his  management  of  affairs  so  bril- 
liant, that  they  had  to  put  up  with  him.  And  what  made  it  possible  to 
do  this  was  that  on  occasion  he  could  be  enchanting:  when  he  was  with 
persons  whom  he  considered  his  equals,  or  whom  he  wished  to  capti- 
vate, in  the  company  of  foreign  dignitaries  or  women  of  distinction,  he 
could  be  gay,  witty  and  debonair;  his  manners  then  reminded  you  that 
in  his  veins  ran  the  same  blood  as  had  run  in  the  veins  of  Lord  Ches- 
terfield; he  could  tell  a  story  with  point,  he  could  be  natural,  sensible 
and  even  profound.  You  were  surprised  at  the  extent  of  his  knowledge 
and  the  sensitiveness  of  his  taste.  You  thought  him  the  best  company 
in  the  world;  you  forgot  that  he  had  insulted  you  the  day  before  and 
was  quite  capable  of  cutting  you  dead  the  next. 

Lord  Mountdrago  almost  failed  to  become  Dr.  Audlin's  patient.  A 
secretary  rang  up  the  doctor  and  told  him  that  his  lordship,  wishing 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  715 

to  consult  him,  would  be  glad  if  he  would  come  to  his  house  at  ten 
o'clock  on  the  following  morning.  Dr.  Audlin  answered  that  he  was 
unable  to  go  to  Lord  Mountdrago's  house,  but  would  be  pleased  to 
give  him  an  appointment  at  his  consulting  room  at  five  o'clock  on  the 
next  day  but  one.  The  secretary  took  the  message  and  presently  rang 
back  to  say  that  Lord  Mountdrago  insisted  on  seeing  Dr.  Audlin  in 
his  own  house  and  the  doctor  could  fix  his  own  fee.  Dr.  Audlin  re- 
plied that  he  saw  patients  only  in  his  consulting  room  and  expressed 
his  regret  that  unless  Lord  Mountdrago  was  prepared  to  come  to  him 
he  could  not  give  him  his  attention.  In  a  quarter  of  an  hour  a  brief 
message  was  delivered  to  him  that  his  lordship  would  come  not  next 
day  but  one,  but  next  day,  at  five. 

When  Lord  Mountdrago  was  then  shown  in  he  did  not  come  for- 
ward, but  stood  at  the  door  and  insolently  looked  the  doctor  up  and 
down.  Dr.  Audlin  perceived  that  he  was  in  a  rage;  he  gazed  at  him, 
silently,  with  still  eyes.  He  saw  a  big  heavy  man,  with  greying  hair, 
receding  on  the  forehead  so  that  it  gave  nobility  to  his  brow,  a  puffy 
face  with  bold  regular  features  and  an  expression  of  haughtiness.  He 
had  somewhat  the  look  of  one  of  the  Bourbon  sovereigns  of  the  eight- 
eenth century. 

"It  seems  that  it  is  as  difficult  to  see  you  as  a  Prime  Minister,  Dr. 
Audlin.  I'm  an  extremely  busy  man." 

"Won't  you  sit  down?"  said  the  doctor. 

His  face  showed  no  sign  that  Lord  Mountdrago's  speech  in  any  way 
affected  him.  Dr.  Audlin  sat  in  his  chair  at  the  desk.  Lord  Mountdrago 
still  stood,  and  his  frown  darkened. 

"I  think  I  should  tell  you  that  I  am  His  Majesty's  Secretary  for  For- 
eign Affairs,"  he  said  acidly. 

"Won't  you  sit  down?"  the  doctor  repeated. 

Lord  Mountdrago  made  a  gesture,  which  might  have  suggested  that 
he  was  about  to  turn  on  his  heel  and  stalk  out  of  the  room;  but  if  that 
was  his  intention  he  apparently  thought  better  of  it.  He  seated  himself. 
Dr.  Audlin  opened  a  large  book  and  took  up  his  pen.  He  wrote  with- 
out looking  at  his  patient. 

"How  old  are  you?" 

"Forty-two." 


716  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Are  you  married?" 

"Yes." 

"How  long  have  you  been  married?" 

"Eighteen  years." 

"Have  you  any  children?" 

"I  have  two  sons." 

Dr.  Audlin  noted  down  the  facts  as  Lord  Mountdrago  abruptly  an- 
swered his  questions.  Then  he  leaned  back  in  his  chair  and  looked  at 
him.  He  did  not  speak;  he  just  looked,  gravely,  with  pale  eyes  that 
did  not  move. 

"Why  have  you  come  to  see  me?"  he  asked  at  length. 

"I've  heard  about  you.  Lady  Canute  is  a  patient  of  yours,  I  under- 
stand. She  tells  me  you've  done  her  a  certain  amount  of  good." 

Dr.  Audlin  did  not  reply.  His  eyes  remained  fixed  on  the  other's 
face,  but  they  were  so  empty  of  expression  that  you  might  have 
thought  he  did  not  even  see  him. 

"I  can't  do  miracles,"  he  said  at  length.  Not  a  smile,  but  the  shadow 
of  a  smile  flickered  in  his  eyes.  "The  Royal  College  of  Physicians 
would  not  approve  of  it  if  I  did." 

Lord  Mountdrago  gave  a  brief  chuckle.  It  seemed  to  lessen  his  hos- 
tility. He  spoke  more  amiably. 

"You  have  a  very  remarkable  reputation.  People  seem  to  believe  in 
you." 

"Why  have  you  come  to  me?"  repeated  Dr.  Audlin. 

Now  it  was  Lord  Mountdrago's  turn  to  be  silent.  It  looked  as  though 
he  found  it  hard  to  answer.  Dr.  Audlin  waited.  At  last  Lord  Mount- 
drago seemed  to  make  an  effort.  He  spoke. 

"I'm  in  perfect  health.  Just  as  a  matter  of  routine  I  had  myself  ex- 
amined by  my  own  doctor  the  other  day,  Sir  Augustus  Fitzherbert,  I 
daresay  you've  heard  of  him,  and  he  tells  me  I  have  the  physique  of 
a  man  of  thirty.  I  work  hard,  but  I'm  never  tired,  and  I  enjoy  my 
work.  I  smoke  very  little  and  I'm  an  extremely  moderate  drinker.  I 
take  a  sufficiency  of  exercise  and  I  lead  a  regular  life.  I  am  a  perfectly 
sound,  normal,  healthy  man.  I  quite  expect  you  to  think  it  very  silly 
and  childish  of  me  to  consult  you." 

Dr.  Audlin  saw  that  he  must  help  him. 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  717 

"I  don't  know  if  I  can  do  anything  to  help  you.  Ill  try.  You're  dis- 
tressed ?  " 

Lord  Mountdrago  frowned. 

"The  work  that  I'm  engaged  in  is  important.  The  decisions  I  am 
called  upon  to  make  can  easily  affect  the  welfare  of  the  country  and 
even  the  peace  of  the  world.  It  is  essential  that  my  judgment  should 
be  balanced  and  my  brain  clear.  I  look  upon  it  as  my  duty  to  eliminate 
any  cause  of  worry  that  may  interfere  with  my  usefulness." 

Dr.  Audlin  had  never  taken  his  eyes  off  him.  He  saw  a  great  deal. 
He  saw  behind  his  patient's  pompous  manner  and  arrogant  pride  an 
anxiety  that  he  could  not  dispel. 

"I  asked  you  to  be  good  enough  to  come  here  because  I  know  by  ex- 
perience that  it's  easier  for  someone  to  speak  openly  in  the  dingy  sur- 
roundings of  a  doctor's  consulting  room  than  in  his  accustomed  envi- 
ronment." 

"They're  certainly  dingy,"  said  Lord  Mountdrago  acidly.  He  paused. 
It  was  evident  that  this  man  who  had  so  much  self-assurance,  so  quick 
and  decided  a  mind  that  he  was  never  at  a  loss,  at  this  moment  was 
embarrassed.  He  smiled  in  order  to  show  the  doctor  that  he  was  at  his 
ease,  but  his  eyes  betrayed  his  disquiet.  When  he  spoke  again  it  was 
with  unnatural  heartiness. 

"The  whole  thing's  so  trivial  that  I  can  hardly  bring  myself  to 
bother  you  with  it.  I'm  afraid  you'll  just  tell  me  not  to  be  a  fool  and 
waste  your  valuable  time." 

"Even  things  that  seem  very  trivial  may  have  their  importance.  They 
can  be  a  symptom  of  a  deep-seated  derangement.  And  my  time  is  en- 
tirely at  your  disposal." 

Dr.  Audlin's  voice  was  low  and  grave.  The  monotone  in  which  he 
spoke  was  strangely  soothing.  Lord  Mountdrago  at  length  made  up 
his  mind  to  be  frank. 

"The  fact  is  I've  been  having  some  very  tiresome  dreams  lately.  I 
know  it's  silly  to  pay  any  attention  to  them,  but — well,  the  honest  truth 
is  that  I'm  afraid  they've  got  on  my  nerves." 

"Can  you  describe  any  of  them  to  me?" 

Lord  Mountdrago  smiled,  but  the  smile  that  tried  to  be  careless  was 
only  rueful. 


718  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"They're  so  idiotic,  I  can  hardly  bring  myself  to  narrate  them." 

"Never  mind." 

"Well,  the  first  I  had  was  about  a  month  ago.  I  dreamt  that  I  was 
at  a  party  at  Connemara  House.  It  was  an  official  party.  The  King 
and  Queen  were  to  be  there,  and  of  course  decorations  were  worn.  I 
was  wearing  my  ribbon  and  my  star.  I  went  into  a  sort  of  cloakroom 
they  have  to  take  off  my  coat.  There  was  a  little  man  there  called 
Owen  Griffiths,  who's  a  Welsh  member  of  Parliament,  and  to  tell  you 
the  truth,  I  was  surprised  to  see  him.  He's  very  common,  and  I  said 
to  myself:  'Really,  Lydia  Connemara  is  going  too  far,  whom  will  she 
ask  next?'  I  thought  he  looked  at  me  rather  curiously,  but  I  didn't 
take  any  notice  of  him;  in  fact  I  cut  the  little  bounder  and  walked 
upstairs.  I  suppose  you've  never  been  there?" 

"Never." 

"No,  it's  not  the  sort  of  house  you'd  ever  be  likely  to  go  to.  It's  a 
rather  vulgar  house,  but  it's  got  a  very  fine  marble  staircase,  and  the 
Connemaras  were  at  the  top  receiving  their  guests.  Lady  Connemara 
gave  me  a  look  of  surprise  when  I  shook  hands  with  her,  and  began 
to  giggle;  I  didn't  pay  much  attention— she's  a  very  silly,  ill-bred 
woman,  and  her  manners  are  no  better  than  those  of  her  ancestress 
whom  King  Charles  II  made  a  duchess.  I  must  say  the  reception 
rooms  at  Connemara  House  are  stately.  I  walked  through,  nodding 
to  a  number  of  people  and  shaking  hands;  then  I  saw  the  German 
Ambassador  talking  with  one  of  the  Austrian  archdukes.  I  particu- 
larly wanted  to  have  a  word  with  him,  so  I  went  up  and  held  out  my 
hand.  The  moment  the  Archduke  saw  me  he  burst  into  a  roar  of 
laughter.  I  was  deeply  affronted.  I  looked  him  up  and  down  sternly, 
but  he  only  laughed  the  more.  I  was  about  to  speak  to  him  rather 
sharply,  when  there  was  a  sudden  hush,  and  I  realized  that  the  King 
and  Queen  had  come.  Turning  my  back  on  the  Archduke,  I  stepped 
forward,  and  then,  quite  suddenly,  I  noticed  that  I  hadn't  got  any 
trousers  on.  I  was  in  short  silk  drawers,  and  I  wore  scarlet  sock  sus- 
penders. No  wonder  Lady  Connemara  had  giggled;  no  wonder  the 
Archduke  had  laughed!  I  cant  tell  you  what  that  moment  was.  An 
agony  of  shame.  I  awoke  in  a  cold  sweat.  Oh,  you  don't  know  the 
relief  I  felt  to  find  it  was  only  a  dream." 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  719 

"It's  the  kind  of  dream  that's  not  so  very  uncommon,"  said  Dr. 
Audlin. 

"I  daresay  not.  But  an  odd  thing  happened  next  day.  I  was  in  the 
lobby  of  the  House,  of  Commons,  when  that  fellow  Griffiths  walked 
slowly  past  me.  He  deliberately  looked  down  at  my  legs,  and  then  he 
looked  me  full  in  the  face,  and  I  was  almost  certain  he  winked.  A 
ridiculous  thought  came  to  me.  He'd  been  there  the  night  before  and 
seen  me  make  that  ghastly  exhibition  of  myself  and  was  enjoying  the 
joke.  But  of  course  I  knew  that  was  impossible  because  it  was  only  a 
dream.  I  gave  him  an  icy  glare,  and  he  walked  on.  But  he  was  grin- 
ning his  head  off." 

Lord  Mountdrago  took  his  handkerchief  out  of  his  pocket  and 
wiped  the  palms  of  his  hands.  He  was  making  no  attempt  now  to 
conceal  his  perturbation.  Dr.  Audlin  never  took  his  eyes  off  him. 

"Tell  me  another  dream." 

"It  was  the  night  after,  and  it  was  even  more  absurd  than  the  first 
one.  I  dreamt  that  I  was  in  the  House.  There  was  a  debate  on  foreign 
affairs  which  not  only  the  country,  but  the  world,  had  been  looking 
forward  to  with  the  gravest  concern.  The  government  had  decided  on 
a  change  in  their  policy  which  vitally  affected  the  future  of  the  Em- 
pire. The  occasion  was  historic.  Of  course  the  House  was  crowded.  All 
the  ambassadors  were  there.  The  galleries  were  packed.  It  fell  to  me 
to  make  the  important  speech  of  the  evening.  I  had  prepared  it  care- 
fully. A  man  like  me  has  enemies — there  are  a  lot  of  people  who  resent 
my  having  achieved  the  position  I  have  at  an  age  when  even  the  clev- 
erest men  are  content  with  situations  of  relative  obscurity — and  I  was 
determined  that  my  speech  should  not  only  be  worthy  of  the  occasion, 
but  should  silence  my  detractors.  It  excited  me  to  think  that  the  whole 
world  was  hanging  on  my  lips.  I  rose  to  my  feet.  If  you've  ever  been 
in  the  House  you'll  know  how  members  chat  to  one  another  during 
a  debate,  rustle  papers  and  turn  over  reports.  The  silence  was  the 
silence  of  the  grave  when  I  began  to  speak.  Suddenly  I  caught  sight 
of  that  odious  little  bounder  on  one  of  the  benches  opposite,  Griffiths, 
the  Welsh  member;  he  put  out  his  tongue  at  me.  I  don't  know  if 
you've  ever  heard  a  vulgar  music-hall  song  called  'A  Bicycle  Made 
for  Two.'  It  was  very  popular  a  great  many  years  ago.  To  show  Grif- 


720  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

fiths  how  completely  I  despised  him  I  began  to  sing  it.  I  sang  the  first 
verse  right  through.  There  was  a  moment's  surprise,  and  when  I  fin- 
ished they  cried  'Hear,  hear,'  on  the  opposite  benches.  I  put  up  my 
hand  to  silence  them  and  sang  the  second  verse.  The  House  listened 
to  me  in  stony  silence  and  I  felt  the  song  wasn't  going  down  very 
well.  I  was  vexed,  for  I  have  a  good  baritone  voice,  and  I  was  deter- 
mined that  they  should  do  me  justice.  When  I  started  the  third  verse 
the  members  began  to  laugh;  in  an  instant  the  laughter  spread;  the 
ambassadors,  the  strangers  in  the  Distinguished  Strangers'  Gallery, 
the  ladies  in  the  Ladies'  Gallery,  the  reporters,  they  shook,  they  bel- 
lowed, they  held  their  sides,  they  rolled  in  their  seats;  everyone  was 
overcome  with  laughter  except  the  ministers  on  the  Front  Bench  im- 
mediately behind  me.  In  that  incredible,  in  that  unprecedented,  uproar 
they  sat  petrified.  I  gave  them  a  glance,  and  suddenly  the  enormity 
of  what  I  had  done  fell  upon  me.  I  had  made  myself  the  laughing- 
stock of  the  whole  world.  With  misery  I  realized  that  I  should  have 
to  resign.  I  woke  and  knew  it  was  only  a  dream." 

Lord  Mountdrago's  grand  manner  had  deserted  him  as  he  narrated 
this,  and  now  having  finished  he  was  pale  and  trembling.  But  with 
an  efTort  he  pulled  himself  together.  He  forced  a  laugh  to  his  shaking 
lips. 

"The  whole  thing  was  so  fantastic  that  I  couldn't  help  being 
amused.  I  didn't  give  it  another  thought,  and  when  I  went  into  the 
House  on  the  following  afternoon  I  was  feeling  in  very  good  form. 
The  debate  was  dull,  but  I  had  to  be  there,  and  I  read  some  docu- 
ments that  required  my  attention.  For  some  reason  I  chanced  to  look 
up,  and  I  saw  that  Griffiths  was  speaking.  He  has  an  unpleasant  Welsh 
accent  and  an  unprepossessing  appearance.  I  couldn't  imagine  that  he 
had  anything  to  say  that  it  was  worth  my  while  to  listen  to,  and  I  was 
about  to  return  to  my  papers  when  he  quoted  two  lines  from  'A  Bi- 
cycle Made  for  Two.'  I  couldn't  help  glancing  at  him,  and  I  saw  that 
his  eyes  were  fixed  on  me  with  a  grin  of  bitter  mockery.  I  faintly 
shrugged  my  shoulders.  It  was  comic  that  a  scrubby  little  Welsh  mem- 
ber should  look  at  me  like  that.  It  was  an  odd  coincidence  that  he 
should  quote  two  lines  from  that  disastrous  song  that  I'd  sung  all 
through  in  my  dream.  I  began  to  read  my  papers  again,  but  I  don't 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  721 

mind  telling  you  that  I  found  it  difficult  to  concentrate  on  them.  I  was 
a  little  puzzled.  Owen  Griffiths  had  been  in  my  first  dream,  the  one 
at  Connemara  House,  and  I'd  received  a  very  definite  impression  af- 
terwards that  he  knew  the  sorry  figure  I'd  cut.  Was  it  a  mere  coinci- 
dence that  he  had  just  quoted  those  two  lines?  I  asked  myself  if  it 
was  possible  that  he  was  dreaming  the  same  dreams  as  I  was.  But  of 
course  the  idea  was  preposterous,  and  I  determined  not  to  give  it  a 
second  thought." 

There  was  a  silence.  Dr.  Audlin  looked  at  Lord  Mountdrago  and 
Lord  Mountdrago  looked  at  Dr.  Audlin. 

"Other  people's  dreams  are  very  boring.  My  wife  used  to  dream 
occasionally  and  insist  on  telling  me  her  dreams  next  day  with  circum- 
stantial detail.  I  found  it  maddening." 

Dr.  Audlin  faintly  smiled. 

"You're  not  boring  me." 

"I'll  tell  you  one  more  dream  I  had  a  few  days  later.  I  dreamt  that 
I  went  into  a  public  house  at  Limehouse.  I've  never  been  to  Lime- 
house  in  my  life  and  I  don't  think  I've  ever  been  in  a  public  house 
since  I  was  at  Oxford,  and  yet  I  saw  the  street  and  the  place  I  went 
into  as  exactly  as  if  I  were  at  home  there.  I  went  into  a  room — I  don't 
know  whether  they  call  it  the  saloon  bar  or  the  private  bar;  there  was 
a  fireplace  and  a  large  leather  armchair  on  one  side  of  it,  and  on  the 
other  a  small  sofa;  a  bar  ran  the  whole  length  of  the  room,  and  over 
it  you  could  see  into  the  public  bar.  Near  the  door  was  a  round  marble- 
topped  table  and  two  armchairs  beside  it.  It  was  a  Saturday  night,  and 
the  place  was  packed.  It  was  brightly  lit,  but  the  smoke  was  so  thick 
that  it  made  my  eyes  smart.  I  was  dressed  like  a  rough,  with  a  cap  on 
my  head  and  a  handkerchief  round  my  neck.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
most  of  the  people  there  were  drunk.  I  thought  it  rather  amusing. 
There  was  a  gramophone  going,  or  the  radio,  I  don't  know  which, 
and  in  front  of  the  fireplace  two  women  were  doing  a  grotesque 
dance.  There  was  a  little  crowd  round  them,  laughing,  cheering  and 
singing.  I  went  up  to  have  a  look,  and  some  man  said  to  me :  '  'Ave 
a  drink,  Bill.'  There  were  glasses  on  the  table  full  of  a  dark  liquid 
which  I  understand  is  called  brown  ale.  He  gave  me  a  glass,  and  not 
wishing  to  be  conspicuous  I  drank  it.  One  of  the  women  who  were 


722  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

dancing  broke  away  from  the  other  and  took  hold  of  the  glass.  '  'Ere, 
what's  the  idea?'  she  said.  'That's  my  beer  you're  putting  away.'  'Oh, 
I'm  so  sorry,'  I  said,  'this  gentleman  offered  it  me,  and  I  very  natu- 
rally thought  it  was  his  to  offer.'  'All  right,  mate,'  she  said,  'I  don't 
mind.  You  come  an'  'ave  a  dance  with  me.'  Before  I  could  protest 
she'd  caught  hold  of  me  and  we  were  dancing  together.  And  then  I 
found  myself  sitting  in  the  armchair  with  the  woman  on  my  lap  and 
we  were  sharing  a  glass  of  beer.  I  should  tell  you  that  sex  has  never 
played  any  great  part  in  my  life.  I  married  young  because  in  my  posi- 
tion it  was  desirable  that  I  should  marry,  but  also  in  order  to  settle 
once  for  all  the  question  of  sex.  I  had  the  two  sons  I  had  made  up  my 
mind  to  have,  and  then  I  put  the  whole  matter  on  one  side.  I've  always 
been  too  busy  to  give  much  thought  to  that  kind  of  thing,  and  living 
so  much  in  the  public  eye  as  I  do,  it  would  have  been  madness  to  do 
anything  that  might  give  rise  to  scandal.  The  greatest  asset  a  politician 
can  have  is  a  blameless  record  as  far  as  women  are  concerned.  I  have 
no  patience  with  the  men  who  smash  up  their  careers  for  women.  I 
only  despise  them.  The  woman  I  had  on  my  knees  was  drunk;  she 
wasn't  pretty  and  she  wasn't  young:  in  fact,  she  was  just  a  blowsy  old 
prostitute.  She  filled  me  with  disgust,  and  yet  when  she  put  her  mouth 
to  mine  and  kissed  me,  though  her  breath  stank  of  beer  and  her  teeth 
were  decayed,  though  I  loathed  myself,  I  wanted  her-I  wanted  her 
with  all  my  soul.  Suddenly  I  heard  a  voice:  'That's  right,  old  boy, 
have  a  good  time.'  I  looked  up,  and  there  was  Owen  Griffiths.  I  tried 
to  spring  out  of  the  chair,  but  that  horrible  woman  wouldn't  let  me. 
'Don't  you  pay  no  attention  to  'im,'  she  said,  '  'e's  only  one  of  them 
nosy  parkers.'  'You  go  to  it,'  he  said.  'I  know  Moll.  She'll  give  you 
your  money's  worth  all  right.'  You  know,  I  wasn't  so  much  annoyed 
at  his  seeing  me  in  that  absurd  situation  as  angry  that  he  should  ad- 
dress me  as  old  boy.  I  pushed  the  woman  aside  and  stood  up  and 
faced  him.  'I  don't  know  you,  and  I  don't  want  to  know  you,'  I  said. 
'I  know  you  all  right,'  he  said.  'And  my  advice  to  you,  Molly,  is,  see 
that  you  get  your  money,  he'll  bilk  you  if  he  can.'  There  was  a  bottle 
of  beer  standing  on  the  table  close  by.  Without  a  word  I  seized  it  by 
the  neck  and  hit  him  over  the  head  with  it  as  hard  as  I  could.  I  made 
such  a  violent  gesture  that  it  woke  me  up." 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  723 

"A  dream  of  that  sort  is  not  incomprehensible,"  said  Dr.  Audlin.  "It 
is  the  revenge  nature  takes  on  persons  of  unimpeachable  character." 

"The  story's  idiotic.  I  haven't  told  it  you  for  its  own  sake.  I've  told 
it  you  for  what  happened  next  day.  I  wanted  to  look  up  something  in 
a  hurry,  and  I  went  into  the  library  of  the  House.  I  got  the  book  and 
began  reading.  I  hadn't  noticed  when  I  sat  down  that  Griffiths  was 
sitting  in  a  chair  close  by  me.  Another  of  the  Labour  Members  came 
in  and  went  up  to  him.  'Hullo,  Owen,'  he  said  to  him,  'you're  looking 
pretty  dicky  to-day.'  'I've  got  an  awful  headache,'  he  answered,  'I  feel 
as  if  I'd  been  cracked  over  the  head  with  a  bottle.' " 

Now  Lord  Mountdrago's  face  was  grey  with  anguish. 

"I  knew  then  that  the  idea  I'd  had  and  dismissed  as  preposterous 
was  true.  I  knew  that  Griffiths  was  dreaming  my  dreams  and  that  he 
remembered  them  as  well  as  I  did." 

"It  may  also  have  been  a  coincidence." 

"When  he  spoke  he  didn't  speak  to  his  friend,  he  deliberately  spoke 
to  me.  He  looked  at  me  with  sullen  resentment." 

"Can  you  offer  any  suggestion  why  this  same  man  should  come  into 
your  dreams?" 

"None." 

Dr.  Audlin's  eyes  had  not  left  his  patient's  face  and  he  saw  that  he 
lied.  He  had  a  pencil  in  his  hand,  and  he  drew  a  straggling  line  or 
two  on  his  blotting  paper.  It  often  took  a  long  time  to  get  people  to 
tell  the  truth,  and  yet  they  knew  that  unless  they  told  it  he  could  do 
nothing  for  them. 

"The  dream  you've  just  described  to  me  took  place  just  over  three 
weeks  ago.  Have  you  had  any  since?" 

"Every  night." 

"And  does  this  man  Griffiths  come  into  them  all?" 

"Yes." 

The  doctor  drew  more  lines  on  his  blotting  paper.  He  wanted  the 
silence,  the  drabness,  the  dull  light  of  that  little  room  to  have  its  effect 
on  Lord  Mountdrago's  sensibility.  Lord  Mountdrago  threw  himself 
back  in  his  chair  and  turned  his  head  away  so  that  he  should  not  see 
the  other's  grave  eyes. 

"Dr.  Audlin,  you  must  do  something  for  me.  I'm  at  the  end  of  my 


724  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

tether.  I  shall  go  mad  if  this  goes  on.  I'm  afraid  to  go  to  sleep.  Two  or 
three  nights  I  haven't.  I've  sat  up  reading  and  when  I  felt  drowsy  put 
on  my  coat  and  walked  till  I  was  exhausted.  But  I  must  have  sleep. 
With  all  the  work  I  have  to  do  I  must  be  at  concert  pitch;  I  must  be 
in  complete  control  of  all  my  faculties.  I  need  rest;  sleep  brings  me 
none.  I  no  sooner  fall  asleep  than  my  dreams  begin,  and  he's  always 
there,  that  vulgar  little  cad,  grinning  at  me,  mocking  me,  despising 
me.  It's  a  monstrous  persecution.  I  tell  you,  Doctor,  I'm  not  the  man 
of  my  dreams;  it's  not  fair  to  judge  me  by  them.  Ask  anyone  you  like. 
I'm  an  honest,  upright,  decent  man.  No  one  can  say  anything  against 
my  moral  character  either  private  or  public.  My  whole  ambition  is  to 
serve  my  country  and  maintain  its  greatness.  I  have  money,  I  have 
rank,  I'm  not  exposed  to  many  of  the  temptations  of  lesser  men,  so 
that  it's  no  credit  to  me  to  be  incorruptible;  but  this  I  can  claim,  that 
no  honour,  no  personal  advantage,  no  thought  of  self  would  induce 
me  to  swerve  by  a  hairsbreadth  from  my  duty.  I've  sacrificed  every- 
thing to  become  the  man  I  am.  Greatness  is  my  aim.  Greatness  is 
within  my  reach,  and  I'm  losing  my  nerve.  I'm  not  that  mean,  despi- 
cable, cowardly,  lewd  creature  that  horrible  little  man  sees.  I've  told 
you  three  of  my  dreams;  they're  nothing;  that  man  has  seen  me  do 
things  that  are  so  beastly,  so  horrible,  so  shameful,  that  even  if  my 
life  depended  on  it  I  wouldn't  tell  them.  And  he  remembers  them.  I 
can  hardly  meet  the  derision  and  disgust  I  see  in  his  eyes,  and  I  even 
hesitate  to  speak  because  I  know  my  words  can  seem  to  him  nothing 
but  utter  humbug.  He's  seen  me  do  things  that  no  man  with  any 
self-respect  would  do,  things  for  which  men  are  driven  out  of  the. 
society  of  their  fellows  and  sentenced  to  long  terms  of  imprisonment; 
he's  heard  the  foulness  of  my  speech;  he's  seen  me  not  only  ridiculous, 
but  revolting.  He  despises  me  and  he  no  longer  pretends  to  conceal 
it.  I  tell  you  that  if  you  can't  do  something  to  help  me  I  shall  either 
kill  myself  or  kill  him." 

"I  wouldn't  kill  him  if  I  were  you,"  said  Dr.  Audlin  coolly,  in  that 
soothing  voice  of  his.  "In  this  country  the  consequences  of  killing  a 
fellow  creature  are  awkward." 

"I  shouldn't  be  hanged  for  it,  if  that's  what  you  mean.  Who  would 
know  that  I'd  killed  him?  That  dream  of  mine  has  shown  me  how.  I 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  725 

told  you,  the  day  after  I'd  hit  him  over  the  head  with  a  beer  bottle  he 
had  such  a  headache  that  he  couldn't  see  straight.  He  said  so  himself. 
That  shows  that  he  can  feel  with  his  waking  body  what  happens  to 
his  body  asleep.  It's  not  with  a  bottle  I  shall  hit  him  next  time.  One 
night,  when  I'm  dreaming,  I  shall  find  myself  with  a  knife  in  my 
hand  or  a  revolver  in  my  pocket — I  must  because  I  want  to  so  in- 
tensely— and  then  I  shall  seize  my  opportunity.  I'll  stick  him  like  a 
pig;  I'll  shoot  him  like  a  dog.  In  the  heart.  And  then  I  shall  be  free 
of  this  fiendish  persecution." 

Some  people  might  have  thought  that  Lord  Mountdrago  was  mad; 
after  all  the  years  during  which  Dr.  Audlin  had  been  treating  the  dis- 
eased souls  of  men  he  knew  how  thin  a  line  divides  those  whom  we 
call  sane  from  those  whom  we  call  insane.  He  knew  how  often  in  men 
who  to  all  appearance  were  healthy  and  normal,  who  were  seemingly 
devoid  of  imagination,  and  who  fulfilled  the  duties  of  common  life 
with  credit  to  themselves  and  with  benefit  to  their  fellows,  when  you 
gained  their  confidence,  when  you  tore  away  the  mask  they  wore  to 
the  world,  you  found  not  only  hideous  abnormality,  but  kinks  so 
strange,  mental  extravagances  so  fantastic,  that  in  that  respect  you 
could  only  call  them  lunatic.  If  you  put  them  in  an  asylum,  not  all  the 
asylums  in  the  world  would,  be  large  enough.  Anyhow,  a  man  was  not 
certifiable  because  he  had  strange  dreams  and  they  had  shattered  his 
nerve.  The  case  was  singular,  but  it  was  only  an  exaggeration  of  others 
that  had  come  under  Dr.  Audlin's  observation;  he  was  doubtful,  how- 
ever, whether  the  methods  of  treatment  that  he  had  so  often  found 
efficacious  would  here  avail. 

"Have  you  consulted  any  other  member  of  my  profession?"  he  asked. 

"Only  Sir  Augustus.  I  merely  told  him  that  I  suffered  from  night- 
mares. He  said  I  was  overworked  and  recommended  me  to  go  for  a 
cruise.  That's  absurd.  I  can't  leave  the  Foreign  Office  just  now  when 
the  international  situation  needs  constant  attention.  I'm  indispensable, 
and  I  know  it.  On  my  conduct  at  the  present  juncture  my  whole  future 
depends.  He  gave  me  sedatives.  They  had  no  effect.  He  gave  me  tonics. 
They  were  worse  than  useless.  He's  an  old  fool." 

"Can  you  give  any  reason  why  it  should  be  this  particular  man  who 
persists  in  coming  into  your  dreams?" 


726  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

"You  asked  me  that  question  before.  I  answered  it." 

That  was  true.  But  Dr.  Audlin  had  not  been  satisfied  with  the 
answer. 

"Just  now  you  talked  of  persecution.  Why  should  Owen  Griffiths 
want  to  persecute  you?" 

"I  don't  know." 

Lord  Mountdrago's  eyes  shifted  a  little.  Dr.  Audlin  was  sure  that  he 
was  not  speaking  the  truth. 

"Have  you  ever  done  him  an  injury?" 

"Never." 

Lord  Mountdrago  made  no  movement,  but  Dr.  Audlin  had  a  queer 
feeling  that  he  shrank  into  his  skin.  He  saw  before  him  a  large,  proud 
man  who  gave  the  impression  that  the  questions  put  to  him  were  an 
insolence,  and  yet  for  all  that,  behind  that  facade,  was  something  shift- 
ing and  startled  that  made  you  think  of  a  frightened  animal  in  a  trap. 
Dr.  Audlin  leaned  forward  and  by  the  power  of  his  eyes  forced  Lord 
Mountdrago  to  meet  them. 

"Are  you  quite  sure?" 

"Quite  sure.  You  don't  seem  to  understand  that  our  ways  lead  along 
different  paths.  I  don't  wish  to  harp  on  it,  but  I  must  remind  you  that 
I  am  a  Minister  of  the  Crown  and  Griffiths  is  an  obscure  member  of 
the  Labour  Party.  Naturally  there's  no  social  connection  between  us; 
he's  a  man  of  very  humble  origin,  he's  not  the  sort  of  person  I  should 
be  likely  to  meet  at  any  of  the  houses  I  go  to;  and  politically  our  re- 
spective stations  are  so  far  separated  that  we  could  not  possibly  have 
anything  in  common." 

"I  can  do  nothing  for  you  unless  you  tell  me  the  complete  truth." 

Lord  Mountdrago  raised  his  eyebrows.  His  voice  was  rasping. 

"I'm  not  accustomed  to  having  my  word  doubted,  Dr.  Audlin.  If 

you're  going  to  do  that,  I  think  to  take  up  any  more  of  your  time  can 

only  be  a  waste  of  mine.  If  you  will  kindly  let  my  secretary  know 

what  your  fee  is,  he  will  see  that  a  cheque  is  sent  to  you." 

For  all  the  expression  that  was  to  be  seen  on  Dr.  Audlin's  face  you 
might  have  thought  that  he  simply  had  not  heard  what  Lord  Mount- 
drago said.  He  continued  to  look  steadily  into  his  eyes,  and  his  voice 
was  grave  and  low. 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  727 

"Have  you  done  anything  to  this  man  that  he  might  look  upon  as 
an  injury?" 

Lord  Mountdrago  hesitated.  He  looked  away,  and  then,  as  though 
there  were  in  Dr.  Audlin's  eyes  a  compelling  force  that  he  could  not 
resist,  looked  back.  He  answered  sulkily: 
"Only  if  he  was  a  dirty,  second-rate  little  cad." 
"But  that  is  exactly  what  you've  described  him  to  be." 
Lord  Mountdrago  sighed.  He  was  beaten.  Dr.  Audlin  knew  that  the 
sigh  meant  he  was  going  at  last  to  say  what  he  had  till  then  held  back. 
Now  he  had  no  longer  to  insist.  He  dropped  his  eyes  and  began  again 
drawing  vague  geometrical  figures  on  his  blotting  paper.  The  silence 
lasted  two  or  three  minutes. 

"I'm  anxious  to  tell  you  everything  that  can  be  of  any  use  to  you. 
If  I  didn't  mention  this  before,  it's  only  because  it  was  so  unimportant 
that  I  didn't  see  how  it  could  possibly  have  anything  to  do  with  the 
case.  Griffiths  won  a  seat  at  the  last  election,  and  he  began  to  make  a 
nuisance  of  himself  almost  at  once.  His  father's  a  miner,  and  he 
worked  in  a  mine  himself  when  he  was  a  boy;  he's  been  a  school- 
master in  the  board  schools  and  a  journalist.  He's  that  half-baked,  con- 
ceited intellectual,  with  inadequate  knowledge,  ill-considered  ideas  and 
impractical  plans,  that  compulsory  education  has  brought  forth  from 
the  working  classes.  He's  a  scrawny,  grey-faced  man  who  looks  half 
starved,  and  he's  always  very  slovenly  in  appearance;  heaven  knows 
members  nowadays  don't  bother  much  about  their  dress,  but  his  clothes 
are  an  outrage  to  the  dignity  of  the  House.  They're  ostentatiously 
shabby,  his  collar's  never  clean,  and  his  tie's  never  tied  properly;  he 
looks  as  if  he  hadn't  had  a  bath  for  a  month,  and  his  hands  are  filthy. 
The  Labour  Party  have  two  or  three  fellows  on  the  Front  Bench 
who've  got  a  certain  ability,  but  the  rest  of  them  don't  amount  to 
much.  In  the  kingdom  of  the  blind  the  one-eyed  man  is  king:  because 
Griffiths  is  glib  and  has  a  lot  of  superficial  information  on  a  number 
of  subjects,  the  Whips  on  his  side  began  to  put  him  up  to  speak  when- 
ever there  was  a  chance.  It  appeared  that  he  fancied  himself  on  foreign 
affairs,  and  he  was  continually  asking  me  silly,  tiresome  questions.  I 
don't  mind  telling  you  that  I  made  a  point  of  snubbing  him  as  soundly 
as  I  thought  he  deserved.  From  the  beginning  I  hated  the  way  he 


728  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

talked,  his  whining  voice  and  his  vulgar  accent;  he  had  nervous  man- 
nerisms that  intensely  irritated  me.  He  talked  rather  shyly,  hesitatingly, 
as  though  it  were  torture  to  him  to  speak  and  yet  he  was  forced  to  by 
some  inner  passion,  and  often  he  used  to  say  some  very  disconcerting 
things.  I'll  admit  that  now  and  again  he  had  a  sort  of  tub-thumping 
eloquence.  It  had  a  certain  influence  over  the  ill-regulated  minds  of  the 
members  of  his  party.  They  were  impressed  by  his  earnestness,  and 
they  weren't,  as  I  was,  nauseated  by  his  sentimentality.  A  certain  sen- 
timentality is  the  common  coin  of  political  debate.  Nations  are  gov- 
erned by  self-interest,  but  they  prefer  to  believe  that  their  aims  are 
altruistic,  and  the  politician  is  justified  if  with  fair  words  and  fine 
phrases  he  can  persuade  the  electorate  that  the  hard  bargain  he  is 
driving  for  his  country's  advantage  tends  to  the  good  of  humanity. 
The  mistake  people  like  Griffiths  make  is  to  take  these  fair  words  and 
fine  phrases  at  their  face  value.  He's  a  crank,  and  a  noxious  crank.  He 
calls  himself  an  idealist.  He  has  at  his  tongue's  end  all  the  tedious 
blather  that  the  intelligentsia  have  been  boring  us  with  for  years.  Non- 
resistance.  The  brotherhood  of  man.  You  know  the  hopeless  rubbish. 
The  worst  of  it  was  that  it  impressed  not  only  his  own  party,  it  even 
shook  some  of  the  sillier,  more  sloppy-minded  members  of  ours.  I 
heard  rumours  that  Griffiths  was  likely  to  get  office  when  a  Labour 
Government  came  in;  I  even  heard  it  suggested  that  he  might  get  the 
Foreign  Office.  The  notion  was  grotesque  but  not  impossible.  One  day 
I  had  occasion  to  wind  up  a  debate  on  foreign  affairs  which  Griffiths 
had  opened.  He'd  spoken  for  an  hour.  I  thought  it  a  very  good  oppor- 
tunity to  cook  his  goose,  and  by  God,  sir,  I  cooked  it.  I  tore  his  speech 
to  pieces.  I  pointed  out  the  faultiness  of  his  reasoning  and  emphasized 
the  deficiency  of  his  knowledge.  In  the  House  of  Commons  the  most 
devastating  weapon  is  ridicule:  I  mocked  him;  I  bantered  him;  I  was 
in  good  form  that  day  and  the  House  rocked  with  laughter.  Their 
laughter  excited  me,  and  I  excelled  myself.  The  Opposition  sat  glum 
and  silent,  but  even  some  of  them  couldn't  help  laughing  once  or 
twice;  it's  not  intolerable,  you  know,  to  see  a  colleague,  perhaps  a  rival, 
made  a  fool  of.  And  if  ever  a  man  was  made  a  fool  of,  I  made  a  fool 
of  Griffiths.  He  shrank  down  in  his  seat;  I  saw  his  face  go  white,  and 
presently  he  buried  it  in  his  hands.  When  I  sat  down  I'd  killed  him. 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  729 

I'd  destroyed  his  prestige  for  ever;  he  had  no  more  chance  of  getting 
office  when  a  Labour  Government  came  in  than  the  policeman  at  the 
door.  I  heard  afterwards  that  his  father,  the  old  miner,  and  his  mother 
had  come  up  from  Wales,  with  various  supporters  of  his  in  the  con- 
stituency, to  watch  the  triumph  they  expected  him  to  have.  They  had 
seen  only  his  utter  humiliation.  He'd  won  the  constituency  by  the  nar- 
rowest margin.  An  incident  like  that  might  very  easily  lose  him  his 
seat.  But  that  was  no  business  of  mine." 

"Should  I  be  putting  it  too  strongly  if  I  said  you  had  ruined  his 
career?"  asked  Dr.  Audlin. 

"I  don't  suppose  you  would." 

"That  is  a  very  serious  injury  you've  done  him." 

"He  brought  it  on  himself." 

"Have  you  never  felt  any  qualms  about  it?" 

"I  think  perhaps  if  I'd  known  that  his  father  and  mother  were  there 
I  might  have  let  him  down  a  little  more  gently." 

There  was  nothing  further  for  Dr.  Audlin  to  say,  and  he  set  about 
treating  his  patient  in  such  a  manner  as  he  thought  might  avail.  He 
sought  by  suggestion  to  make  him  forget  his  dreams  when  he  awoke; 
he  sought  to  make  him  sleep  so  deeply  that  he  would  not  dream.  He 
found  Lord  Mountdrago's  resistance  impossible  to  break  down.  At  the 
end  of  an  hour  he  dismissed  him. 

Since  then  he  had  seen  Lord  Mountdrago  half  a  dozen  times.  He 
had  done  him  no  good.  The  frightful  dreams  continued  every  night 
to  harass  the  unfortunate  man,  and  it  was  clear  that  his  general  con- 
dition was  growing  rapidly  worse.  He  was  worn  out.  His  irritability 
was  uncontrollable.  Lord  Mountdrago  was  angry  because  he  received 
no  benefit  from  his  treatment,  and  yet  continued  it,  not  only  because 
it  seemed  his  only  hope,  but  because  it  was  a  relief  to  him  to  have 
someone  with  whom  he  could  talk  openly.  Dr.  Audlin  came  to  the 
conclusion  at  last  that  there  was  only  one  way  in  which  Lord  Mount- 
drago could  achieve  deliverance,  but  he  knew  him  well  enough  to  be 
assured  that  of  his  own  free  will  he  would  never,  never  take  it.  If  Lord 
Mountdrago  was  to  be  saved  from  the  breakdown  that  was  threatening, 
he  must  be  induced  to  take  a  step  that  must  be  abhorrent  to  his  pride 


730  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  birth  and  his  self-compiacency.  Dr.  Audlin  was  convinced  that  to 
delay  was  impossible.  He  was  treating  his  patient  by  suggestion,  and 
after  several  visits  found  him  more  susceptible  to  it.  At  length  he  man- 
aged to  get  him  into  a  condition  of  somnolence.  With  his  low,  soft, 
monotonous  voice  he  soothed  his  tortured  nerves.  He  repeated  the 
same  words  over  and  over  again.  Lord  Mountdrago  lay  quite  still,  his 
eyes  closed;  his  breathing  was  regular,  and  his  limbs  were  relaxed. 
Then  Dr.  Audlin  in  the  same  quiet  tone  spoke  the  words  he  had 
prepared. 

"You  will  go"' to  Owen  Griffiths  and  say  that  you  are  sorry  that  you 
caused  him  that  great  injury.  You  will  say  that  you  will  do  whatever 
lies  in  your  power  to  undo  the  harm  that  you  have  done  him." 

The  words  acted  on  Lord  Mountdrago  like  the  blow  of  a  whip 
across  his  face.  He  shook  himself  out  of  his  hypnotic  state  and  sprang 
to  his  feet.  His  eyes  blazed  with  passion,  and  he  poured  forth  upon 
Dr.  Audlin  a  stream  of  angry  vituperation  such  as  even  he  had  never 
heard.  He  swore  at  him.  He  cursed  him.  He  used  language  of  such 
obscenity  that  Dr.  Audlin,  who  had  heard  every  sort  of  foul  word, 
sometimes  from  the  lips  of  chaste  and  distinguished  women,  was  sur- 
prised that  he  knew  it. 

"Apologize  to  that  filthy  little  Welshman?  I'd  rather  kill  myself." 

"I  believe  it  to  be  the  only  way  in  which  you  can  regain  your 
balance." 

Dr.  Audlin  had  not  often  seen  a  man  presumably  sane  in  such  a  con- 
dition of  uncontrollable  fury.  Lord  Mountdrago  grew  red  in  the  face, 
and  his  eyes  bulged  out  of  his  head.  He  did  really  foam  at  the  mouth. 
Dr.  Audlin  watched  him  coolly,  waiting  for  the  storm  to  wear  itself 
out,  and  presently  he  saw  that  Lord  Mountdrago,  weakened  by  the 
strain  to  which  he  had  been  subjected  for  so  many  weeks,  was  ex- 
hausted. 

"Sit  down,"  he  said  then,  sharply. 

Lord  Mountdrago  crumpled  up  into  a  chair. 

"Christ,  I  feel  all  in.  I  must  rest  a  minute  and  then  111  go." 

For  five  minutes  perhaps  they  sat  in  complete  silence.  Lord  Mount- 
drago was  a  gross,  blustering  bully,  but  he  was  also  a  gentleman. 
When  he  broke  the  silence  he  had  recovered  his  self-control. 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  731 

"I'm  afraid  I've  been  very  rude  to  you.  I'm  ashamed  of  the  things 
I've  said  to  you,  and  I  can  only  say  you'd  be  justified  if  you  refused 
to  have  anything  more  to  do  with  me.  I  hope  you  won't  do  that.  I  feel 
that  my  visits  to  you  do  help  me.  I  think  you're  my  only  chance." 

"You  mustn't  give  another  thought  to  what  you  said.  It  was  of  no 
consequence." 

"But  there's  one  thing  you  mustn't  ask  me  to  do,  and  that  is  to  make 
excuses  to  Griffiths." 

"I've  thought  a  great  deal  about  your  case.  I  don't  pretend  to  under- 
stand it,  but  I  believe  that  your  only  chance  of  release  is  to  do  what  I 
proposed.  I  have  a  notion  that  we're  none  of  us  one  self,  but  many, 
and  one  of  the  selves  in  you  has  risen  up  against  the  injury  you  did 
Griffiths  and  has  taken  on  the  form  of  Griffiths  in  your  mind  and  is 
punishing  you  for  what  you  cruelly  did.  If  I  were  a  priest  I  should  tell 
you  that  it  is  your  conscience  that  has  adopted  the  shape  and  linea- 
ments of  this  man  to  scourge  you  to  repentance  and  persuade  you  to 
reparation." 

"My  conscience  is  clear.  It's  not  my  fault  if  I  smashed  the  man's 
career.  I  crushed  him  like  a  slug  in  my  garden.  I  regret  nothing." 

It  was  on  these  words  that  Lord  Mountdrago  had  left  him.  Reading 
through  his  notes,  while  he  waited,  Dr.  Audlin  considered  how  best 
he  could  bring  his  patient  to  the  state  of  mind  that,  now  that  his  usual 
methods  of  treatment  had  failed,  he  thought  alone  could  help  him.  He 
glanced  at  his  clock.  It  was  six.  It  was  strange  that  Lord  Mountdrago 
did  not  come.  He  knew  he  had  intended  to  because  a  secretary  had 
rung  up  that  morning  to  say  that  he  would  be  with  him  at  the  usual 
hour.  He  must  have  been  detained  by  pressing  work.  This  notion  gave 
Dr.  Audlin  something  else  to  think  of:  Lord  Mountdrago  was  quite 
unfit  to  work  and  in  no  condition  to  deal  with  important  matters  of 
state.  Dr.  Audlin  wondered  whether  it  behooved  him  to  get  in  touch 
with  someone  in  authority,  the  Prime  Minister  or  the  Permanent 
Under  Secretary  for  Foreign  Affairs,  and  impart  to  him  his  conviction 
that  Lord  Mountdrago's  mind  was  so  unbalanced  that  it  was  dangerous 
to  leave  affairs  of  moment  in  his  hands.  It  was  a  ticklish  thing  to  do. 
He  might  cause  needless  trouble  and  get  roundly  snubbed  for  his  pains. 
He  shrugged  his  shoulders. 


732  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"After  all,"  he  reflected,  "the  politicians  have  made  such  a  mess  of 
the  world  during  the  last  five-and-twenty  years,  I  don't  suppose  it 
makes  much  odds  if  they're  mad  or  sane." 

He  rang  the  bell. 

"If  Lord  Mountdrago  comes  now,  will  you  tell  him  that  I  have  an- 
other appointment  at  six-fifteen  and  so  I'm  afraid  I  can't  see  him." 

"Very  good,  sir." 

"Has  the  evening  paper  come  yet?" 

"I'll  go  and  see." 

In  a  moment  the  servant  brought  it  in.  A  huge  headline  ran  across 
the  front  page:  Tragic  Death  of  Foreign  Minister. 

"My  God!"  cried  Dr.  Audlin. 

For  once  he  was  wrenched  out  of  his  wonted  calm.  He  was  shocked, 
horribly  shocked,  and  yet  he  was  not  altogether  surprised.  The  possi- 
bility that  Lord  Mountdrago  might  commit  suicide  had  occurred  to 
him  several  times,  for  that  it  was  suicide  he  could  not  doubt.  The 
paper  said  that  Lord  Mountdrago  had  been  waiting  in  a  tube  station, 
standing  on  the  edge  of  the  platform,  and  as  the  train  came  in  was  seen 
to  fall  on  the  rail.  It  was  supposed  that  he  had  had  a  sudden  attack  of 
faintness.  The  paper  went  on  to  say  that  Lord  Mountdrago  had  been 
suffering  for  some  weeks  from  the  effects  of  overwork,  but  had  felt  it 
impossible  to  absent  himself  while  the  foreign  situation  demanded  his 
unremitting  attention.  Lord  Mountdrago  was  another  victim  of  the 
strain  that  modern  politics  placed  upon  those  who  played  the  more 
important  parts  in  it.  There  was  a  neat  little  piece  about  the  talents 
and  industry,  the  patriotism  and  vision,  of  the  deceased  statesman, 
followed  by  various  surmises  upon  the  Prime  Minister's  choice  of  his 
successor.  Dr.  Audlin  read  all  this.  He  had  not  liked  Lord  Mount- 
drago. The  chief  emotion  that  his  death  caused  in  him  was  dissatis- 
faction with  himself  because  he  had  been  able  to  do  nothing  for  him. 

Perhaps  he  had  done  wrong  in  not  getting  into  touch  with  Lord 
Mountdrago's  doctor.  He  was  discouraged,  as  always  when  failure 
frustrated  his  conscientious  efforts,  and  repulsion  seized  him  for  the 
theory  and  practice  of  this  empiric  doctrine  by  which  he  earned  his 
living.  He  was  dealing  with  dark  and  mysterious  forces  that  it  was 
perhaps  beyond  the  powers  of  the  human  mind  to  understand.  He  was 


W.   SOMERSET  MAUGHAM  733 

like  a  man  blindfold  trying  to  feel  his  way  to  he  knew  not  whither. 
Listlessly  he  turned  the  pages  of  the  paper.  Suddenly  he  gave  a  great 
start,  and  an  exclamation  once  more  was  forced  from  his  lips.  His  eyes 
had  fallen  on  a  small  paragraph  near  the  bottom  of  a  column.  Sudden 
Death  of  an  M.P.,  he  read.  Mr.  Owen  Griffiths,  member  for  so-and-so, 
had  been  taken  ill  in  Fleet  Street  that  afternoon  and  when  he  was 
brought  to  Charing  Cross  Hospital  life  was  found  to  be  extinct.  It  was 
supposed  that  death  was  due  to  natural  causes,  but  an  inquest  would 
be  held.  Dr.  Audlin  could  hardly  believe  his  eyes.  Was  it  possible  that 
the  night  before  Lord  Mountdrago  had  at  last  in  his  dream  found 
himself  possessed  of  the  weapon,  knife  or  gun,  that  he  had  wanted, 
and  had  killed  his  tormentor,  and  had  that  ghostly  murder,  in  the 
same  way  as  the  blow  with  the  bottle  had  given  him  a  racking  head- 
ache on  the  following  day,  taken  effect  a  certain  number  of  hours 
later  on  the  waking  man  ?  Or  was  it,  more  mysterious  and  more  fright- 
ful, that  when  Lord  Mountdrago  sought  relief  in  death,  the  enemy  he 
had  so  cruelly  wronged,  unappeased,  escaping  from  his  own  mortality, 
had  pursued  him  to  some  other  sphere,  there  to  torment  him  still?  It 
was  strange.  The  sensible  thing  was  to  look  upon  it  merely  as  an  odd 
coincidence.  Dr.  Audlin  rang  the  bell. 

"Tell  Mrs.  Milton  that  I'm  sorry  I  can't  see  her  this  evening,  I'm 
not  well." 

It  was  true;  he  shivered  as  though  of  an  ague.  With  some  kind  of 
spiritual  sense  he  seemed  to  envisage  a  bleak,  a  horrible  void.  The  dark 
night  of  the  soul  engulfed  him,  and  he  felt  a  strange,  primeval  terror 
of  he  knew  not  what. 


CONRAD  AIKEN 


COMMENTARY 


Much  pink-edged  nonsense  has  been  written  by  moony  adults  about 
the  child's  "dream  world.7'  Few  of  us  actually  remember  our  child- 
hood visions.  But  how  willing  most  of  us  are  to  think  up  the  kind  of 
visions  it  would  he  pleasant  to  remember  having  had!  Such  recon- 
structions are  generally  mere  compliments  paid  to  the  imaginative, 
poetical  children  we  would  so  like  to  have  been.  It  would  be  a  sad 
thing  for  sentiment  if  it  were  known  how  many  of  us  pass  through 
childhood  in  a  vacant  daze,  minds  half  closed  and  mouths  half  open. 

But  not  all.  A  certain  number  of  children  create  intense  imaginary 
worlds  for  themselves,  worlds  far  superior  in  interest  to  anything  real- 
ity has  to  offer.  They  do  not  tell  us  about  this  world,  except  by  vague 
hints,  for  communication  breaks  the  spell.  Under  sympathetic  adults 
call  these  vague  hints  lies.  Oversympathetic  adults  call  them  genius. 
Both  kinds  of  adults  are  wrong. 

The  child  generally  "outgrows,"  as  we  say,  his  fantasies.  "Outgrows" 
may  be  a  poor  word,  for  sometimes  the  fantasy  is  the  largest  thing 
the  child  will  ever  know  during  his  entire  life.  Adjustment  to  reality 
is  not  always  a  process  of  development;  it  may  involve  diminution. 
The  man  who  lives  and  dies  a  slave  may  have  had  his  largest  and  most 
liberated  moments  during  a  brief  period  of  childhood  reverie. 

But  the  fantasy  may  never  be  outgrown.  It  may  become  necessary 
to  the  child,  a  permanent  door  of  escape  from  the  outer  world.  It 
may,  as  in  the  Conrad  Aiken  story  that  follows,  "take  the  place  of 
everything."  Then  it  assumes  the  form  of  hallucination;  a  compulsion 
neurosis  is  born;  and  mental  derangement,  temporary  or  permanent, 
may  result.  This  is  the  situation  treated  in  "Silent  Snow,  Secret 
Snow,"  one  of  the  most  haunting  talcs  in  our  literature. 

Note  how  unclinical  it  is,  though  it  could  never  have  been  written 
before  the  birth  of  psychiatry  or  even,  I  should  judge,  before  the  ad- 
vent of  psychoanalysis.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  oversimplified. 

734 


CONRAD   AIKEN  735 

It  is  told  not  in  the  language  of  the  twelve-year-old  hoy  of  the  story 
hut  in  that  of  a  perceptive  adult. 

What  makes  uSilent  Snow,  Secret  Snow"  a  masterly  piece  oi  writ- 
ing is  not  that  it  is  a  successful  study  oi  the  mechanism  hy  which  a 
mind  fatally  splits  itself.  The  value  of  the  tale  lies  in  its  human  sym- 
pathy. Each  of  us  has  a  secret  place  of  his  own  into  which,  like  a 
wounded  animal,  he  crawls  when  things  get  too  much  for  him.  Paul 
Haslemans  place,  his  usecret  screen  of  new  snow  between  himself 
and  the  world,,f  is  merely  our  own  private  evasion  magnified  and  in- 
tensified. Paul  is  not  only  a  mental  case.  He  is,  so  wise  and  true  is 
this  story,  part  of  ourselves. 


Silent  Snow,  Secret  Snow 

BY 

CONRAD  AIKEN 


Just  why  it  should  have  happened,  or  why  it  should  have  happened 
just  when  it  did,  he  could  not,  of  course,  possibly  have  said;  nor  per- 
haps could  it  even  have  occurred  to  him  to  ask.  The  thing  was  above 
all  a  secret,  something  to  be  preciously  concealed  from  Mother  and 
Father;  and  to  that  very  fact  it  owed  an  enormous  part  of  its  delicious- 
ness.  It  was  like  a  peculiarly  beautiful  trinket  to  be  carried  unmen- 
tioned  in  one's  trouser-pocket— a  rare  stamp,  an  old  coin,  a  few  tiny 
gold  links  found  trodden  out  of  shape  on  the  path  in  the  park,  a  peb- 
ble of  carnelian,  a  sea  shell  distinguishable  from  all  others  by  an  un- 
usual spot  or  stripe— and,  as  if  it  were  anyone  of  these,  he  carried 
around  with  him  everywhere  a  warm  and  persistent  and  increasingly 
beautiful  sense  of  possession.  Nor  was  it  only  a  sense  of  possession— it 
was  also  a  sense  of  protection.  It  was  as  if,  in  some  delightful  way,  his 
secret  gave  him  a  fortress,  a, wall  behind  which  he  could  retreat  into 
heavenly  seclusion.  This  was  almost  the  first  thing  he  had  noticed 
about  it— apart  from  the  oddness  of  the  thing  itself— and  it  was  this 
that  now  again,  for  the  fiftieth  time,  occurred  to  him,  as  he  sat  in  the 
little  schoolroom.  It  was  the  half  hour  for  geography.  Miss  Buell  was 
revolving  with  one  finger,  slowly,  a  huge  terrestrial  globe  which  had 
been  placed  on  her  desk.  The  green  and  yellow  continents  passed  and 
repassed,  questions  were  asked  and  answered,  and  now  the  little  girl 
in   front  of  him,  Deirdre,  who   had   a   funny  little   constellation   of 
freckles  on  the  back  of  her  neck,  exactly  like  the  Big  Dipper,  was 
standing  up  and  telling  Miss  Buell  that  the  equator  was  the  line  that 
ran  around  the  middle. 

Miss  Buell's  face,  which  was  old  and  grayish  and  kindly,  with  gray 


CONRAD   AIKEN  737 

stiff  curls  beside  the  cheeks,  and  eyes  that  swam  very  brightly,  like 

little  minnows,  behind  thick  glasses,  wrinkled  itself  into  a  complication 

of  amusements. 
"Ah!  I  see.  The  earth  is  wearing  a  belt,  or  a  sash.  Or  someone  drew 

a  line  round  it!" 

"Oh,  no — not  that — I  mean " 

In  the  general  laughter,  he  did  not  share,  or  only  a  very  little.  He 
was  thinking  about  the  Arctic  and  Antarctic  regions,  which  of  course, 
on  the  globe,  were  white.  Miss  Buell  was  now  telling  them  about  the 
tropics,  the  jungles,  the  steamy  heat  of  equatorial  swamps,  where  the 
birds  and  butterflies,  and  even  the  snakes,  were  like  living  jewels.  As 
he  listened  to  these  things,  he  was  already,  with  a  pleasant  sense  of 
half-effort,  putting  his  secret  between  himself  and  the  words.  Was  it 
really  an  effort  at  all?  For  effort  implied  something  voluntary,  and 
perhaps  even  something  one  did  not  especially  want;  whereas  this  was 
distinctly  pleasant,  and  came  almost  of  its  own  accord.  All  he  needed 
to  do  was  to  think  of  that  morning,  the  first  one,  and  then  of  all  the 

others 

But  it  was  all  so  absurdly  simple!  It  had  amounted  to  so  little.  It  was 
nothing,  just  an  idea— and  just  why  it  should  have  become  so  wonder- 
ful, so  permanent,  was  a  mystery— a  very  pleasant  one,  to  be  sure,  but 
ilso,  in  an  amusing  way,  foolish.  However,  without  ceasing  to  listen  to 
vliss  Buell,  who  had  now  moved  up  to  the  north  temperate  zone,  he 
ieliberately  invited  his  memory  of  the  first  morning.  It  was  only  a  mo- 
nent  or  two  after  he  had  waked  up — or  perhaps  the  moment  itself. 
But  was  there,  to  be  exact,  an  exact  moment?  Was  one  awake  all  at 
>nce  ?  or  was  it  gradual  ?  Anyway,  it  was  after  he  had  stretched  a  lazy 
land  up  towards  the  headrail,  and  yawned,  and  then  relaxed  again 
imong  his  warm  covers,  all  the  more  grateful  on  a  December  morning, 
hat  the  thing  had  happened.  Suddenly,  for  no  reason,  he  had  thought 
I  the  postman,  he  remembered  the  postman.  Perhaps  there  was  noth- 
ng  so  odd  in  that.  After  all,  he  heard  the  postman  almost  every  morn- 
tig  in  his  life— his  heavy  boots  could  be  heard  clumping  round  the 
orner  at  the  top  of  the  little  cobbled  hill-street,  and  then,  progressively 
earer,  progressively  louder,  the  double  knock  at  each  door,  the  cross- 
igs  and  re-crossings  of  the  street,  till  finally  the  clumsy  steps  came 


738  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

stumbling  across  to  the  very  door,  and  the  tremendous  knock  came 
which  shook  the  house  itself. 

(Miss  Buell  was  saying  "Vast  wheat-growing  areas  in  North  Amer- 
ica and  Siberia." 

Deirdre  had  for  the  moment  placed  her  left  hand  across  the  back  of 
her  neck.) 

But  on  this  particular  morning,  the  first  morning,  as  he  lay  there 
with  his  eyes  closed,  he  had  for  some  reason  waited  for  the  postman. 
He  wanted  to  hear  him  come  round  the  corner.  And  that  was  precisely 
the  joke — he  never  did.  He  never  came.  He  never  had  come — round 
the  corner — again.  For  when  at  last  the  steps  were  heard,  they  had 
already,  he  was  quite  sure,  come  a  little  down  the  hill,  to  the  first 
house;  and  even  so,  the  steps  were  curiously  different — they  were  softer, 
they  had  a  new  secrecy  about  them,  they  were  muffled  and  indistinct; 
and  while  the  rhythm  of  them  was  the  same,  it  now  said  a  new  thing 
— it  said  peace,  it  said  remoteness,  it  said  cold,  it  said  sleep.  And  he 
had  understood  the  situation  at  once — nothing  could  have  seemed  sim- 
pier — there  had  been  snow  in  the  night,  such  as  all  winter  he  had  been 
longing  for;  and  it  was  this  which  had  rendered  the  postman's  first 
footsteps  inaudible,  and  the  later  ones  faint.  Of  course!  How  lovely! 
And  even  now  it  must  be  snowing — it  was  going  to  be  a  snowy  day — 
the  long  white  ragged  lines  were  drifting  and  sifting  across  the  street, 
across  the  faces  of  the  old  houses,  whispering  and  hushing,  making 
little  triangles  of  white  in  the  corners  between  cobblestones,  seething 
a  little  when  the  wind  blew  them  over  the  ground  to  a  drifted  corner; 
and  so  it  would  be  all  day,  getting  deeper  and  deeper  and  silenter  and 
silenter. 

(Miss  Buell  was  saying  "Land  of  perpetual  snow.") 

All  this  time,  of  course  (while  he  lay  in  bed),  he  had  kept  his  eyes 
closed,  listening  to  the  nearer  progress  of  die  postman,  the  muffled 
footsteps  thumping  and  slipping  on  the  snow-sheathed  cobbles;  and 
all  the  other  sounds — the  double  knocks,  a  frosty  far-off  voice  or  two, 
a  bell  ringing  thinly  and  softly  as  if  under  a  sheet  of  ice — had  the  same 
slightly  abstracted  quality,  as  if  removed  by  one  degree  from  actuality 
— as  if  everything  in  the  world  had  been  insulated  by  snow.  But  when 
at  last,  pleased,  he  opened  his  eyes,  and  turned  them  towards  the  win- 


CONRAD   AIKEN  739 

dow,  to  see  for  himself  this  long-desired  and  now  so  clearly  imagined 
miracle — what  he  saw  instead  was  brilliant  sunlight  on  a  roof;  and 
when,  astonished,  he  jumped  out  of  bed  and  stared  down  into  the 
street,  expecting  to  see  the  cobbles  obliterated  by  the  snow,  he  saw 
nothing  but  the  bare  bright  cobbles  themselves. 

Queer,  the  effect  this  extraordinary  surprise  had  had  upon  him — all 
the  following  morning  he  had  kept  with  him  a  sense  as  of  snow  falling 
about  him,  a  secret  screen  of  new  snow  between  himself  and  the  world. 
If  he  had  not  dreamed  such  a  thing — and  how  could  he  have  dreamed 
it  while  awake? — how  else  could  one  explain  it?  In  any  case,  the  de- 
lusion had  been  so  vivid  as  to  affect  his  entire  behavior.  He  could  not 
now  remember  whether  it  was  on  the  first  or  the  second  morning — or 
was  it  even  the  third? — that  his  mother  had  drawn  attention  to  some 
oddness  in  his  manner. 

"But  my  darling — "  she  had  said  at  the  breakfast  table — "what  has 
come  over  you?  You  don't  seem  to  be  listening.  .  .  ." 

And  how  often  that  very  thing  had  happened  since! 

(Miss  Buell  was  now  asking  if  anyone  knew  the  difference  between 
the  North  Pole  and  the  Magnetic  Pole.  Deirdre  was  holding  up  her 
flickering  brown  hand,  and  he  could  see  the  four  white  dimples  that 
marked  the  knuckles.) 

Perhaps  it  hadn't  been  either  the  second  or  third  morning — or  even 
the  fourth  or  fifth.  How  could  he  be  sure?  How  could  he  be  sure  just 
when  the  delicious  progress  had  become  clear  ?  Just  when  it  had  really 
begun?  The  intervals  weren't  very  precise.  .  .  .  All  he  now  knew  was, 
that  at  some  point  or  other — perhaps  the  second  day,  perhaps  the  sixth 
— he  had  noticed  that  the  presence  of  the  snow  was  a  little  more  in- 
sistent, the  sound  of  it  clearer;  and,  conversely,  the  sound  of  the  post- 
man's footsteps  more  indistinct.  Not  only  could  he  not  hear  the  steps 
come  round  the  corner,  he  could  not  even  hear  them  at  the  first  house. 
It  was  below  the  first  house  that  he  heard  them;  and  then,  a  few  days 
later,  it  was  below  the  second  house  that  he  heard  them;  and  a  few 
days  later  again,  below  the  third.  Gradually,  gradually,  the  snow  was 
becoming  heavier,  the  sound  of  its  seething  louder,  the  cobblestones 
more  and  more  muffled.  When  he  found,  each  morning,  on  going  to 
the  window,  after  the  ritual  of  listening,  that  the  roofs  and  cobbles 


740  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

were  as  bare  as  ever,  it  made  no  difference.  This  was,  after  all,  only 
what  he  had  expected.  It  was  even  what  pleased  him,  what  rewarded 
him :  the  thing  was  his  own,  belonged  to  no  one  else.  No  one  else  knew 
about  it,  not  even  his  mother  and  father.  There,  outside,  were  the  bare 
cobbles;  and  here,  inside,  was  the  snow.  Snow  growing  heavier  each 
day,  muffling  the  world,  hiding  the  ugly,  and  deadening  increasingly 
— above  all — the  steps  of  the  postman. 

"But  my  darling — "  she  had  said  at  the  luncheon  table — "what  has 
come  over  you?  You  don't  seem  to  listen  when  people  speak  to  you. 
That's  the  third  time  I've  asked  you  to  pass  your  plate.  .  .  ." 

How  was  one  to  explain  this  to  Mother?  or  to  Father?  There  was, 
of  course,  nothing  to  be  done  about  it:  nothing.  All  one  could  do  was 
to  laugh  embarrassedly,  pretend  to  be  a  little  ashamed,  apologize,  and 
take  a  sudden  and  somewhat  disingenuous  interest  in  what  was  being 
done  or  said.  The  cat  had  stayed  out  all  night.  He  had  a  curious  swell- 
ing on  his  left  cheek — perhaps  somebody  had  kicked  him,  or  a  stone 
had  struck  him.  Mrs.  Kempton  was  or  was  not  coming  to  tea.  The 
house  was  going  to  be  house  cleaned,  or  "turned  out,"  on  Wednesday 
instead  of  Friday.  A  new  lamp  was  provided,  for  his  evening  work — 
perhaps  it  was  eye-strain  which  accounted  for  this  new  and  so  peculiar 
vagueness  of  his — Mother  was  looking  at  him  with  amusement  as  she 
said  this,  but  with  something  else  as  well.  A  new  lamp?  A  new  lamp. 
Yes  Mother,  No  Mother,  Yes  Mother.  School  is  going  very  well.  The 
geometry  is  very  easy.  The  history  is  very  dull.  The  geography  is  very 
interesting — particularly  when  it  takes  one  to  the  North  Pole.  Why  the 
North  Pole?  Oh,  well,  it  would  be  fun  to  be  an  explorer.  Another 
Peary  or  Scott  or  Shackleton.  And  then  abruptly  he  found  his  interest 
in  the  talk  at  an  end,  stared  at  the  pudding  on  his  plate,  listened, 
waited,  and  began  once  more — ah  how  heavenly,  too,  the  first  begin- 
nings— to  hear  or  feel — for  could  he  actually  hear  it? — the  silent  snow, 
the  secret  snow. 

(Miss  Buell  was  telling  them  about  the  search  for  the  Northwest 
Passage,  about  Hendrik  Hudson,  the  Half  Moon.) 

This  had  been,  indeed,  the  only  distressing  feature  of  the  new  experi- 
ence: the  fact  that  it  so  increasingly  had  brought  him  into  a  kind  of 
mute  misunderstanding,  or  even  conflict,  with  his  father  and  mother. 


CONRAD  AIKEN  741 

It  was  as  if  he  were  trying  to  lead  a  double  life.  On  the  one  hand  he 
had  to  be  Paul  Hasleman,  and  keep  up  the  appearance  of  being  that 
person — dress,  wash,  and  answer  intelligently  when  spoken  to — ;  on 
the  other,  he  had  to  explore  this  new  world  which  had  been  opened 
to  him.  Nor  could  there  be  the  slightest  doubt — not  the  slightest — that 
the  new  world  was  the  profounder  and  more  wonderful  of  the  two. 
It  was  irresistible.  It  was  miraculous.  Its  beauty  was  simply  beyond 
anything — beyond  speech  as  beyond  thought — utterly  incommunicable. 
But  how  then,  between  the  two  worlds,  of  which  he  was  thus  con- 
stantly aware,  was  he  to  keep  a  balance?  One  must  get  up,  one  must 
go  to  breakfast,  one  must  talk  with  Mother,  go  to  school,  do  one's  les- 
sons— and,  in  all  this,  try  not  to  appear  too  much  of  a  fool.  But  if  all  the 
while  one  was  also  trying  to  extract  the  full  deliciousness  of  another 
and  quite  separate  existence,  one  which  could  not  easily  (if  at  all)  be 
spoken  of — how  was  one  to  manage  ?  How  was  one  to  explain  ?  Would 
it  be  safe  to  explain  ?  Would  it  be  absurd  ?  Would  it  merely  mean  that 
he  would  get  into  some  obscure  kind  of  trouble? 

These  thoughts  came  and  went,  came  and  went,  as  softly  and  se- 
cretly as  the  snow;  they  were  not  precisely  a  disturbance,  perhaps  they 
were  even  a  pleasure;  he  liked  to  have  them;  their  presence  was  some- 
thing almost  palpable,  something  he  could  stroke  with  his  hand,  with- 
out closing  his  eyes,  and  without  ceasing  to  see  Miss  Buell  and  the 
school-room  and  the  globe  and  the  freckles  on  Deirdre's  neck;  never- 
theless he  did  in  a  sense  cease  to  see,  or  to  see  the  obvious  external 
world,  and  substituted  for  this  vision  the  vision  of  snow,  the  sound 
of  snow,  and  the  slow,  almost  soundless,  approach  of  the  postman. 
Yesterday,  it  had  been  only  at  the  sixth  house  that  the  postman  had 
become  audible;  the  snow  was  much  deeper  now,  it  was  falling  more 
swiftly  and  heavily,  the  sound  of  its  seething  was  more  distinct,  more 
soothing,  more  persistent.  And  this  morning,  it  had  been — as  nearly  as 
he  could  figure — just  above  the  seventh  house — perhaps  only  a  step  or 
two  above:  at  most,  he  had  heard  two  or  three  footsteps  before  the 
knock  had  sounded.  .  .  .  And  with  each  such  narrowing  of  the  sphere, 
each  nearer  approach  of  the  limit  at  which  the  postman  was  first  audi- 
ble, it  was  odd  how  sharply  was  increased  the  amount  of  illusion  which 
had  to  be  carried  into  the  ordinary  business  of  daily  life.  Each  day,  it 


742  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

was  harder  to  get  out  of  bed,  to  go  to  the  window,  to  look  out  at  the 
— as  always — perfectly  empty  and  snowless  street.  Each  day  it  was  more 
difficult  to  go  through  the  perfunctory  motions  of  greeting  Mother  and 
Father  at  breakfast,  to  reply  to  their  questions,  to  put  his  books  to- 
gether and  go  to  school.  And  at  school,  how  extraordinarily  hard  to 
conduct  with  success  simultaneously  the  public  life  and  the  life  that 
was  secret.  There  were  times  when  he  longed — positively  ached — to 
tell  everyone  about  it — to  burst  out  with  it — only  to  be  checked  almost 
at  once  by  a  far-oil  feeling  as  of  some  faint  absurdity  which  was  in- 
herent in  it — but  was  it  absurd? — and  more  importantly  by  a  sense 
of  mysterious  power  in  his  very  secrecy.  Yes:  it  must  be  kept  secret. 
That,  more  and  more,  became  clear.  At  whatever  cost  to  himself,  what- 
ever pain  to  others 

(Miss  Buell  looked  straight  at  him,  smiling,  and  said,  "Perhaps  we'll 
ask  Paul.  I'm  sure  Paul  will  come  out  of  his  day-dream  long  enough 
to  be  able  to  tell  us.  Won't  you,  Paul?"  Pie  rose  slowly  from  his  chair, 
resting  one  hand  on  the  brightly  varnished  desk,  and  deliberately  stared 
through  the  snow  towards  the  blackboard.  It  was  an  effort,  but  it  was 
amusing  to  make  it.  "Yes,"  he  said  slowly,  "it  was  what  we  now  call 
the  Hudson  River.  This  he  thought  to  be  the  Northwest  Passage.  He 
was  disappointed."  He  sat  down  again,  and  as  he  did  so  Deirdre  half 
turned  in  her  chair  and  gave  him  a  shy  smile,  of  approval  and  ad- 
miration.) 

At  whatever  pain  to  others. 

This  part  of  it  was  very  puzzling,  very  puzzling.  Mother  was  very 
nice,  and  so  was  Father.  Yes,  that  was  all  true  enough.  He  wanted  to 
be  nice  to  them,  to  tell  them  everything — and  yet,  was  it  really  wrong 
of  him  to  want  to  have  a  secret  place  of  his  own  ? 

At  bedtime,  the  night  before,  Mother  had  said,  "If  this  goes  on,  my 
lad,  we'll  have  to  see  a  doctor,  we  will!  We  can't  have  our  boy — "  But 
what  was  it  she  had  said  ?  "Live ,  in  another  world"  ?  "Live  so  far 
away"?  The  word  "far"  had  been  in  it,  he  was  sure,  and  then  Mother 
had  taken  up  a  magazine  again  and  laughed  a  little,  but  with  an  ex- 
pression which  wasn't  mirthful.  He  had  felt  sorry  for  her.  .  .  . 

The  bell  rang  for  dismissal.  The  sound  came  to  him  through  long 


CONRAD  AIKEN  743 

curved  parallels  of  falling  snow.  He  saw  Deirdre  rise,  and  had  himself 
risen  almost  as  soon — but  not  quite  as  soon — as  she. 


ii 


On  the  walk  homeward,  which  was  timeless,  it  pleased  him  to  see 
through  the  accompaniment,  or  counterpoint,  of  snow,  the  items  of 
mere  externality  on  his  way.  There  were  many  kinds  of  bricks  in  the 
sidewalks,  and  laid  in  many  kinds  of  pattern.  The  garden  walls  too 
were  various,  some  of  wooden  palings,  some  of  plaster,  some  of  stone. 
Twigs  of  bushes  leaned  over  the  walls;  the  little  hard  green  winter- 
buds  of  lilac,  on  gray  stems,  sheathed  and  fat;  other  branches  very  thin 
and  fine  and  black  and  desiccated.  Dirty  sparrows  huddled  in  the 
bushes,  as  dull  in  color  as  dead  fruit  left  in  leafless  trees.  A  single  star- 
ling creaked  on  a  weather  vane.  In  the  gutter,  beside  a  drain,  was  a 
scrap  of  torn  and  dirty  newspaper,  caught  in  a  little  delta  of  filth:  the 
word  ECZEMA  appeared  in  large  capitals,  and  below  it  was  a  letter 
from  Mrs.  Amelia  D.  Cravath,  2100  Pine  Street,  Fort  Worth,  Texas, 
to  the  effect  that  after  being  a  sufferer  for  years  she  had  been  cured  by 
Caley's  Ointment.  In  the  little  delta,  beside  the  fan-shaped  and  deeply 
runneled  continent  of  brown  mud,  were  lost  twigs,  descended  from 
their  parent  trees,  dead  matches,  a  rusty  horse-chestnut  burr,  a  small 
concentration  of  sparkling  gravel  on  the  lip  of  the  sewer,  a  fragment  of 
eggshell,  a  streak  of  yellow  sawdust  which  had  been  wet  and  was  now 
dry  and  congealed,  a  brown  pebble,  and  a  broken  feather.  Further  on 
was  a  cement  sidewalk,  ruled  into  geometrical  parallelograms,  with  a 
brass  inlay  at  one  end  commemorating  the  contractors  who  had  laid 
it,  and,  halfway  across,  an  irregular  and  random  series  of  dog-tracks, 
immortalized  in  synthetic  stone.  He  knew  these  well,  and  always 
stepped  on  them;  to  cover  the  little  hollows  with  his  own  foot  had  al- 
ways been  a  queer  pleasure;  today  he  did  it  once  more,  but  perfunc- 
torily and  detachedly,  all  the  while  thinking  of  something  else.  That 
was  a  dog,  a  long  time  ago,  who  had  made  a  mistake  and  walked  on 
the  cement  while  it  was  still  wet.  He  had  probably  wagged  his  tail,  but 
that  hadn't  been  recorded.  Now,  Paul  Hasleman,  aged  twelve,  on  his 


744  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

way  home  from  school,  crossed  the  same  river,  which  in  the  meantime 
had  frozen  into  rock.  Homeward  through  the  snow,  the  snow  falling 
in  bright  sunshine.  Homeward? 

Then  came  the  gateway  with  the  two  posts  surmounted  by  egg- 
shaped  stones  which  had  been  cunningly  balanced  on  their  ends,  as  if 
by  Columbus,  and  mortared  in  the  very  act  of  balance:  a  source  of 
perpetual  wonder.  On  the  brick  wall  just  beyond,  the  letter  H  had 
been  stenciled,  presumably  for  some  purpose.  H?  H. 

The  green  hydrant,  with  a  little  green-painted  chain  attached  to  the 
brass  screw-cap. 

The  elm  tree,  with  the  great  gray  wound  in  the  bark,  kidney-shaped, 
into  which  he  always  put  his  hand — to  feel  the  cold  but  living  wood. 
The  injury,  he  had  been  sure,  was  due  to  the  gna wings  of  a  tethered 
horse.  But  now  it  deserved  only  a  passing  palm,  a  merely  tolerant  eye. 
There  were  more  important  things.  Miracles.  Beyond  the  thoughts  of 
trees,  mere  elms.  Beyond  the  thoughts  of  sidewalks,  mere  stone,  mere 
brick,  mere  cement.  Beyond  the  thoughts  even  of  his  own  shoes,  which 
trod  these  sidewalks  obediently,  bearing  a  burden — far  above — of 
elaborate  mystery.  He  watched  them.  They  were  not  very  well  pol- 
ished; he  had  neglected  them,  for  a  very  good  reason:  they  were  one 
of  the  many  parts  of  the  increasing  difficulty  of  the  daily  return  to 
daily  life,  the  morning  struggle.  To  get  up,  having  at  last  opened  one's 
eyes,  to  go  to  the  window,  and  discover  no  snow,  to  wash,  to  dress,  to 
descend  the  curving  stairs  to  breakfast 

At  whatever  pain  to  others,  nevertheless,  one  must  persevere  in 
severance,  since  the  incommunicability  of  the  experience  demanded  it. 
It  was  desirable  of  course  to  be  kind  to  Mother  and  Father,  especially 
as  they  seemed  to  be  worried,  but  it  was  also  desirable  to  be  resolute. 
If  they  should  decide — as  appeared  likely — to  consult  the  doctor,  Doc- 
tor Howells,  and  have  Paul  inspected,  his  heart  listened  to  through  a 
kind  of  dictaphone,  his  lungs,  his  stomach — well,  that  was  all  right. 
He  would  go  through  with  it.  He  would  give  them  answer  for  ques- 
tion, too — perhaps  such  answers  as  they  hadn't  expected?  No.  That 
would  never  do.  For  the  secret  world  must,  at  all  costs,  be  preserved. 

The  bird-house  in  the  apple-tree  was  empty — it  was  the  wrong  time 
of  year  for  wrens.  The  little  round  black  door  had  lost  its  pleasure. 


CONRAD  AIKEN  745 

The  wrens  were  enjoying  other  houses,  other  nests,  remoter  trees.  But 
this  too  was  a  notion  which  he  only  vaguely  and  grazingly  entertained 
— as  if,  for  the  moment,  he  merely  touched  an  edge  of  it;  there  was 
something  further  on,  which  was  already  assuming  a  sharper  impor- 
tance; something  which  already  teased  at  the  corners  of  his  eyes,  teas- 
ing also  at  the  corner  of  his  mind.  It  was  funny  to  think  that  he  so 
wanted  this,  so  awaited  it — and  yet  found  himself  enjoying  this  mo- 
mentary dalliance  with  the  bird-house,  as  if  for  a  quite  deliberate  post- 
ponement and  enhancement  of  the  approaching  pleasure.  He  was 
aware  of  his  delay,  of  his  smiling  and  detached  and  now  almost  un- 
comprehending gaze  at  the  little  bird-house;  he  knew  what  he  was 
going  to  look  at  next:  it  was  his  own  little  cobbled  hill-street,  his  own 
house,  the  little  river  at  the  bottom  of  the  hill,  the  grocer's  shop  with 
the  cardboard  man  in  the  window — and  now,  thinking  of  all  this,  he 
turned  his  head,  still  smiling,  and  looking  quickly  right  and  left 
through  the  snow-laden  sunlight. 

And  the  mist  of  snow,  as  he  had  foreseen,  was  still  on  it — a  ghost 
of  snow  falling  in  the  bright  sunlight,  softly  and  steadily  floating  and 
turning  and  pausing,  soundlessly  meeting  the  snow  that  covered,  as 
with  a  transparent  mirage,  the  bare  bright  cobbles.  He  loved  it — he 
stood  still  and  loved  it.  Its  beauty  was  paralyzing — beyond  all  words, 
all  experience,  all  dream.  No  fairy-story  he  had  ever  read  could  be 
compared  with  it — none  had  ever  given  him  this  extraordinary  com- 
bination of  ethereal  loveliness  with  a  something  else,  unnameable, 
which  was  just  faintly  and  deliciously  terrifying.  What  was  this  thing? 
As  he  thought  of  it,  he  looked  upward  toward  his  own  bedroom  win- 
dow, which  was  open — and  it  was  as  if  he  looked  straight  into  the 
room  and  saw  himself  lying  half  awake  in  his  bed.  There  he  was — at 
this  very  instant  he  was  still  perhaps  actually  there — more  truly  there 
than  standing  here  at  the  edge  of  the  cobbled  hill-street,  with  one  hand 
lifted  to  shade  his  eyes  against  the  snow-sun.  Had  he  indeed  ever  left 
his  room,  in  all  this  time?  since  that  very  first  morning?  Was  the 
whole  progress  still  being  enacted  there,  was  it  still  the  same  morning, 
and  himself  not  yet  wholly  awake?  And  even  now,  had  the  postman 
not  yet  come  round  the  corner  ?  .  .  . 

This  idea  amused  him,  and  automatically,  as  he  thought  of  it,  he 


746  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

turned  his  head  and  looked  toward  the  top  o£  the  hill.  There  was,  of 
course,  nothing  there — nothing  and  no  one.  The  street  was  empty  and 
quiet.  And  all  the  more  because  of  its  emptiness  it  occurred  to  him  to 
count  the  houses — a  thing  which,  oddly  enough,  he  hadn't  before 
thought  of  doing.  Of  course,  he  had  known  there  weren't  many — 
many,  that  is,  on  his  own  side  of  the  street,  which  were  the  ones  that 
figured  in  the  postman's  progress — but  nevertheless  it  came  to  him  as 
something  of  a  shock  to  find  that  there  were  precisely  six,  above  his 
own  house — his  own  house  was  the  seventh. 

Six! 

Astonished,  he  looked  at  his  own  house — looked  at  the  door,  on 
which  was  the  number  thirteen — and  then  realized  that  the  whole 
thing  was  exactly  and  logically  and  absurdly  what  he  ought  to  have 
known.  Just  the  same,  the  realization  gave  him  abrupdy,  and  even  a 
little  frighteningly,  a  sense  of  hurry.  He  was  being  hurried — he  was 
being  rushed.  For — he  knit  his  brows — he  couldn't  be  mistaken — it  was 
just  above  the  seventh  house,  his  own  house,  that  the  postman  had  first 
been  audible  this  very  morning.  But  in  that  case — in  that  case — did  it 
mean  that  tomorrow  he  would  hear  nothing?  The  knock  he  had  heard 
must  have  been  the  knock  of  their  own  door.  Did  it  mean — and  this 
was  an  idea  which  gave  him  a  really  extraordinary  feeling  of  surprise 
—that  he  would  never  hear  the  postman  again  ? — that  tomorrow  morn- 
ing the  postman  would  already  have  passed  the  house,  in  a  snow  by 
then  so  deep  as  to  render  his  footsteps  completely  inaudible?  That  he 
would  have  made  his  approach  down  the  snow-filled  street  so  sound- 
lessly, so  secretly,  that  he,  Paul  Hasleman,  there  lying  in  bed,  would 
not  have  waked  in  time,  or,  waking,  would  have  heard  nothing? 

But  how  could  that  be?  Unless  even  the  knocker  should  be  muffled 
in  the  snow — frozen  tight,  perhaps?  .  .  .  But  in  that  case 

A  vague  feeling  of  disappointment  came  over  him;  a  vague  sadness, 
as  if  he  felt  himself  deprived  of  something  which  he  had  long  looked 
forward  to,  something  much  prized.  After  all  this,  all  this  beautiful 
progress,  the  slow  delicious  advance  of  the  postman  through  the  silent 
and  secret  snow,  the  knock  creeping  closer  each  day,  and  the  footsteps 
nearer,  the  audible  compass  of  the  world  thus  daily  narrowed,  nar- 
rowed, narrowed,  as  the  snow  soothingly  and  beautifully  encroached 


CONRAD   AIKEN  747 

and  deepened,  after  all  this,  was  he  to  be  defrauded  of  the  one  thing 
he  had  so  wanted — to  be  able  to  count,  as  it  were,  the  last  two  or  three 
solemn  footsteps,  as  they  finally  approached  his  own  door?  Was  it  all 
going  to  happen,  at  the  end,  so  suddenly?  or  indeed,  had  it  already 
happened?  with  no  slow  and  subtle  gradations  of  menace,  in  which 
he  could  luxuriate? 

He  gazed  upward  again,  toward  his  own  window  which  flashed  in 
the  sun:  and  this  time  almost  with  a  feeling  that  it  would  be  better  if 
he  were  still  in  bed,  in  that  room;  for  in  that  case  this  must  still  be  the 
first  morning,  and  there  would  be  six  more  mornings  to  come — or,  for 
that  matter,  seven  or  eight  or  nine — how  could  he  be  sure? — or  even 
more. 

in 

After  supper,  the  inquisition  began.  He  stood  before  the  doctor, 
under  the  lamp,  and  submitted  silently  to  the  usual  thumpings  and 
tappings. 

"Now  will  you  please  say  'Ah!'?" 

"Ah!" 

"Now  again  please,  if  you  don't  mind." 

"Ah." 

"Say  it  slowly,  and  hold  it  if  you  can " 

"Ah-h-h-h-h-h " 

"Good." 

How  silly  all  this  was.  As  if  it  had  anything  to  do  with  his  throat! 
Or  his  heart  or  lungs! 

Relaxing  his  mouth,  of  which  the  corners,  after  all  this  absurd 
stretching,  felt  uncomfortable,  he  avoided  the  doctor's  eyes,  and  stared 
towards  the  fireplace,  past  his  mother's  feet  (in  gray  slippers)  which 
projected  from  the  green  chair,  and  his  father's  feet  (in  brown  slip- 
pers) which  stood  neatly  side  by  side  on  the  hearth  rug. 

"Hm.  There  is  certainly  nothing  wrong  there  .  .  ." 

He  felt  the  doctor's  eyes  fixed  upon  him,  and,  as  if  merely  to  be 
polite,  returned  the  look,  but  with  a  feeling  of  justifiable  evasiveness. 

"Now,  young  man,  tell  me — do  you  feel  all  right?" 

"Yes,  sir,  quite  all  right." 


748  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"No  headaches?  no  dizziness?" 

"No,  I  don't  think  so." 

"Let  me  see.  Let's  get  a  book,  if  you  don't  mind — yes,  thank  you, 
that  will  do  splendidly — and  now,  Paul,  if  you'll  just  read  it,  holding  it 
as  you  would  normally  hold  it " 

He  took  the  book  and  read: 

"And  another  praise  have  I  to  tell  for  this  the  city  our  mother,  the 
gift  of  a  great  god,  a  glory  of  the  land  most  high;  the  might  of  horses, 
the  might  of  young  horses,  the  might  of  the  sea.  .  .  .  For  thou,  son  of 
Cronus,  our  lord  Poseidon,  hast  throned  herein  this  pride,  since  in 
these  roads  first  thou  didst  show  forth  the  curb  that  cures  the  rage  of 
steeds.  And  the  shapely  oar,  apt  to  men's  hands,  hath  a  wondrous 
speed  on  the  brine,  following  the  hundred-footed  Nereids.  .  .  .  O  land 
that  art  praised  above  all  lands,  now  is  it  for  thee  to  make  those  bright 
praises  seen  in  deeds." 

He  stopped,  tentatively,  and  lowered  the  heavy  book. 

"No — as  I  thought — there  is  certainly  no  superficial  sign  of  eye- 
strain." 

Silence  thronged  the  room,  and  he  was  aware  of  the  focused  scrutiny 
of  the  three  people  who  confronted  him.  .  .  . 

"We  could  have  his  eyes  examined — but  I  believe  it  is  something 
else." 

"What  could  it  be?"  This  was  his  father's  voice. 

"It's  only  this  curious  absent-minded — "  This  was  his  mother's  voice. 

In  the  presence  of  the  doctor,  they  both  seemed  irritatingly  apolo- 
getic. 

"I  believe  it  is  something  else.  Now  Paul — I  would  like  very  much 
to  ask  you  a  question  or  two.  You  will  answer  them,  won't  you — you 
know  I'm  an  old,  old  friend  of  yours,  eh?  That's  right!  .  .  ." 

His  back  was  thumped  twice  by  the  doctor's  fat  list — then  the  doc- 
tor was  grinning  at  him  with  false  amiability,  while  with  one  finger- 
nail he  was  scratching  the  top  button  of  his  waistcoat.  Beyond  the 
doctor's  shoulder  was  the  fire,  the  fingers  of  flame  making  light  pres- 
tidigitation against  the  sooty  hreback,  the  soft  sound  of  their  random 
flutter  the  only  sound. 


CONRAD  AIKEN  749 

"I  would  like  to  know — is  there  anything  that  worries  you?" 
The  doctor  was  again  smiling,  his  eyelids  low  against  the  little  black 
pupils,  in  each  of  which  was  a  tiny  white  bead  of  light.  Why  answer 
him  ?  why  answer  him  at  all  ?  "At  whatever  pain  to  others" — but  it  was 
all  a  nuisance,  this  necessity  for  resistance,  this  necessity  for  attention: 
it  was  as  if  one  had  been  stood  up  on  a  brilliantly  lighted  stage,  under 
a  great  round  blaze  of  spotlight;  as  if  one  were  merely  a  trained  seal, 
or  a  performing  dog,  or  a  fish,  dipped  out  of  an  aquarium  and  held  up 
by  the  tail.  It  would  serve  them  right  if  he  were  merely  to  bark  or 
growl.  And  meanwhile,  to  miss  these  last  few  precious  hours,  these 
hours  of  which  every  minute  was  more  beautiful  than  the  last,  more 
menacing — ?«  He  still  looked,  as  if  from  a  great  distance,  at  the  beads 
of  light  in  the  doctor's  eyes,  at  the  fixed  false  smile,  and  then,  beyond, 
once  more  at  his  mother's  slippers,  his  father's  slippers,  the  soft  flutter 
of  the  fire.  Even  here,  even  amongst  these  hostile  presences,  and  in  this 
arranged  light,  he  could  see  the  snow,  he  could  hear  it — it  was  in  the 
corners  of  the  room,  where  the  shadow  was  deepest,  under  the  sofa, 
behind  the  half-opened  door  which  led  to  the  dining  room.  It  was 
gentler  here,  softer,  its  seethe  the  quietest  of  whispers,  as  if,  in  defer- 
ence to  a  drawing  room,  it  had  quite  deliberately  put  on  its  "manners"; 
it  kept  itself  out  of  sight,  obliterated  itself,  but  distinctly  with  an  air  of 
saying,  "Ah,  but  just  wait!  Wait  till  we  are  alone  together!  Then  I 
will  begin  to  tell  you  something  new!  Something  white!  something 
cold!  something  sleepy!  something  of  cease,  and  peace,  and  the  long 
bright  curve  of  space!  Tell  them  to  go  away.  Banish  them.  Refuse  to 
speak.  Leave  them,  go  upstairs  to  your  room,  turn  out  the  light  and 
get  into  bed — I  will  go  with  you,  I  will  be  waiting  for  you,  I  will  tell 
you  a  better  story  than  Little  Kay  of  the  Skates,  or  The  Snow  Ghost 
— I  will  surround  your  bed,  I  will  close  the  windows,  pile  a  deep  drift 
against  the  door,  so  that  none  will  ever  again  be  able  to  enter.  Speak 
to  them!  .  .  ."  It  seemed  as  if  the  little  hissing  voice  came  from  a  slow 
white  spiral  of  falling  flakes  in  the  corner  by  the  front  window — but 
he  could  not  be  sure.  He  felt  himself  smiling,  then,  and  said  to  the 

doctor,  but  without  looking  at  him,  looking  beyond  him  still 

"Oh,  no,  I  think  not " 


750  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"But  are  you  sure,  my  boy?" 

His  father's  voice  came  softly  and  coldly  then — the  familiar  voice  of 
silken  warning.  .  .  . 

"You  needn't  answer  at  once,  Paul — remember  we're  trying  to  help 
you — think  it  over  and  be  quite  sure,  won't  you?" 

He  felt  himself  smiling  again,  at  the  notion  of  being  quite  sure. 
What  a  joke!  As  if  he  weren't  so  sure  that  reassurance  was  no  longer 
necessary,  and  all  this  cross-examination  a  ridiculous  farce,  a  grotesque 
parody!  What  could  they  know  about  it?  These  gross  intelligences, 
these  humdrum  minds  so  bound  to  the  usual,  the  ordinary  ?  Impossible 
to  tell  them  about  it!  Why,  even  now,  even  now,  with  the  proof  so 
abundant,  so  formidable,  so  imminent,  so  appallingly  present  here  in 
this  very  room,  could  they  believe  it? — could  even  his  mother  believe 
it?  No — it  was  only  too  plain  that  if  anything  were  said  about  it,  the 
merest  hint  given,  they  would  be  incredulous — they  would  laugh — 
they  would  say  "Absurd!"  think  things  about  him  which  weren't 
true.  .  .  . 

"Why  no,  I'm  not  worried — why  should  I  be?" 

He  looked  then  straight  at  the  doctor's  low-lidded  eyes,  looked  from 
one  of  them  to  the  other,  from  one  bead  of  light  to  the  other,  and  gave 
a  little  laugh. 

The  doctor  seemed  to  be  disconcerted  by  this.  He  drew  back  in  his 
chair,  resting  a  fat  white  hand  on  either  knee.  The  smile  faded  slowly 
from  his  face. 

"Well,  Paul!"  he  said,  and  paused  gravely,  "I'm  afraid  you  don't  take 
this  quite  seriously  enough.  I  think  you  perhaps  don't  quite  realize — 
don't  quite  realize — "  He  took  a  deep  quick  breath,  and  turned,  as  il 
helplessly,  at  a  loss  for  words,  to  the  others.  But  Mother  and  Father 
were  both  silent — no  help  was  forthcoming. 

"You  must  surely  know,  be  aware,  that  you  have  not  been  quite 
yourself,  of  late?  don't  you  know  that?  .  .  ." 

It  was  amusing  to  watch  the  doctor's  renewed  attempt  at  a  smile,  a 
queer  disorganized  look,  as  of  confidential  embarrassment. 

"I  feel  all  right,  sir,"  he  said,  and  again  gave  the  little  laugh. 

"And  we're  trying  to  help  you."  The  doctor's  tone  sharpened. 

"Yes  sir,  I  know.  But  why?  I'm  all  right.  I'm  just  thinking,  that's  all." 


CONRAD   AIKEN  751 

His  mother  made  a  quick  movement  forward,  resting  a  hand  on  the 
back  of  the  doctor's  chair. 

"Thinking?"  she  said.  "But  my  dear,  about  what?" 

This  was  a  direct  challenge — and  would  have  to  be  directly  met.  But 
before  he  met  it,  he  looked  again  into  the  corner  by  the  door,  as  if  for 
reassurance.  He  smiled  again  at  what  he  saw,  at  what  he  heard.  The 
little  spiral  was  still  there,  still  softly  whirling,  like  the  ghost  of  a  white 
kitten  chasing  the  ghost  of  a  white  tail,  and  making  as  it  did  so  the 
faintest  of  whispers.  It  was  all  right!  If  only  he  could  remain  firm, 
everything  was  going  to  be  all  right. 

"Oh,  about  anything,  about  nothing — you  know  the  way  you  do!" 

"You  mean — day-dreaming?" 

"Oh,  no— thinking!" 

"But  thinking  about  what?" 

"Anything." 

He  laughed  a  third  time — but  this  time,  happening  to  glance  up- 
ward towards  his  mother's  face,  he  was  appalled  at  the  effect  his 
laughter  seemed  to  have  upon  her.  Her  mouth  had  opened  in  an  ex- 
pression of  horror.  .  .  .  This  was  too  bad!  Unfortunate!  He  had  known 
it  would  cause  pain,  of  course — but  he  hadn't  expected  it  to  be  quite 
so  bad  as  this.  Perhaps — perhaps  if  he  just  gave  them  a  tiny  gleaming 
hint ? 

"About  the  snow,"  he  said. 

"What  on  earth!"  This  was  his  father's  voice.  The  brown  slippers 
came  a  step  nearer  on  the  hearth  rug. 

"But  my  dear,  what  do  you  mean?"  This  was  his  mother's  voice. 

The  doctor  merely  stared. 

"Just  snow,  that's  all.  I  like  to  think  about  it." 

"Tell  us  about  it,  my  boy." 

"But  that's  all  it  is.  There's  nothing  to  tell.  You  know  what  snow  is?" 

This  he  said  almost  angrily,  for  he  felt  they  were  trying  to  corner 
him.  He  turned  sideways  so  as  no  longer  to  face  the  doctor,  and  the 
better  to  see  the  inch  of  blackness  between  the  window-sill  and  the 
lowered  curtain — the  cold  inch  of  beckoning  and  delicious  night.  At 
once  he  felt  better,  more  assured. 

"Mother — can  I  go  to  bed,  now,  please?  I've  got  a  headache." 


752  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"But  I  thought  you  said " 

"It's  just  come.  It's  all  these  questions—!  Can  I,  Mother?" 

"You  can  go  as  soon  as  the  doctor  has  finished." 

"Don't  you  think  this  thing  ought  to  be  gone  into  thoroughly,  and 
now?"  This  was  Father's  voice.  The  brown  slippers  again  came  a  step 
nearer,  the  voice  was  the  well-known  "punishment"  voice,  resonant 
and  cruel. 

"Oh,  what's  the  use,  Norman " 

Quite  suddenly,  everyone  was  silent.  And  without  precisely  facing 
them,  nevertheless  he  was  aware  that  all  three  of  them  were  watching 
him  with  an  extraordinary  intensity — staring  hard  at  him — as  if  he  had 
done  something  monstrous,  or  was  himself  some  kind  of  monster.  He 
could  hear  the  soft  irregular  flutter  of  the  flames;  the  cluck-click-cluck- 
click  of  the  clock;  far  and  faint,  two  sudden  spurts  of  laughter  from 
the  kitchen,  as  quickly  cut  off  as  begun;  a  murmur  of  water  in  the 
pipes;  and  then,  the  silence  seemed  to  deepen,  to  spread  out,  to  become 
worldlong  and  worldwide,  to  become  timeless  and  shapeless,  and  to 
center  inevitably  and  rightly,  with  a  slow  and  sleepy  but  enormous 
concentration  of  all  power,  on  the  beginning  of  a  new  sound.  What 
this  new  sound  was  going  to  be,  he  knew  perfectly  well.  It  might 
begin  with  a  hiss,  but  it  would  end  with  a  roar — there  was  no  time  to 
lose — he  must  escape.  It  mustn't  happen  here 

Without  another  word,  he  turned  and  ran  up  the  stairs. 


IV 


Not  a  moment  too  soon.  The  darkness  was  coming  in  long  white 
waves.  A  prolonged  sibilance  filled  the  night — a  great  seamless  seethe 
of  wild  influence  went  abruptly  across  it — a  cold  low  humming  shook 
the  windows.  He  shut  the  door  and  flung  off  his  clothes  in  the  dark. 
The  bare  black  floor  was  like  a  little  raft  tossed  in  waves  of  snow, 
almost  overwhelmed,  washed  under  whitely,  up  again,  smothered  in 
curled  billows  of  feather.  The  snow  Was  laughing:  it  spoke  from  all 
sides  at  once:  it  pressed  closer  to  him  as  he  ran  and  jumped  exulting 
into  his  bed. 

"Listen  to  us!"  it  said.  "Listen!  We  have  come  to  tell  you  the  story 


CONRAD  AIKEN  753 

we  told  you  about.  You  remember?  Lie  down.  Shut  your  eyes,  now 
— you  will  no  longer  see  much — in  this  white  darkness  who  could  see, 
or  want  to  see?  We  will  take  the  place  of  everything.  .  .  .  Listen " 

A  beautiful  varying  dance  of  snow  began  at  the  front  of  the  room, 
came  forward  and  then  retreated,  flattened  out  toward  the  floor,  then 
rose  fountain-like  to  the  ceiling,  swayed,  recruited  itself  from  a  new 
stream  of  flakes  which  poured  laughing  in  through  the  humming  win- 
dow, advanced  again,  lifted  long  white  arms.  It  said  peace,  it  said 
remoteness,  it  said  cold — it  said 

But  then  a  gash  of  horrible  light  fell  brutally  across  the  room  from 
the  opening  door — the  snow  drew  back  hissing — something  alien  had 
come  into  the  room — something  hostile.  This  thing  rushed  at  him, 
clutched  at  him,  shook  him — and  he  was  not  merely  horrified,  he  was 
filled  with  such  a  loathing  as  he  had  never  known.  What  was  this? 
this  cruel  disturbance?  this  act  of  anger  and  hate?  It  was  as  if  he  had 
to  reach  up  a  hand  toward  another  world  for  any  understanding  of  it 
— an  effort  of  which  he  was  only  barely  capable.  But  of  that  other 
world  he  still  remembered  just  enough  to  know  the  exorcising  words. 
They  tore  themselves  from  his  other  life  suddenly 

"Mother!  Mother!  Go  away!  I  hate  you!" 

And  with  that  effort,  everything  was  solved,  everything  became  all 
right:  the  seamless  hiss  advanced  once  more,  the  long  white  wavering 
lines  rose  and  fell  like  enormous  whispering  sea-waves,  the  whisper 
becoming  louder,  the  laughter  more  numerous. 

"Listen!"  it  said.  "We'll  tell  you  the  last,  the  most  beautiful  and 
secret  story — shut  your  eyes — it  is  a  very  small  story — a  story  that  gets 
smaller  and  smaller — it  comes  inward  instead  of  opening  like  a  flower 
—it  is  a  flower  becoming  a  seed — a  little  cold  seed — do  you  hear?  we 
are  leaning  closer  to  you " 

The  hiss  was  now  becoming  a  roar — the  whole  world  was  a  vast 
moving  screen  of  snow — but  even  now  it  said  peace,  it  said  remoteness, 
it  said  cold,  it  said  sleep. 


E.   B.   WHITE 


COMMENTARY 


On  March  6,  1939,  Life  published  an  illustrated  account  of  some  ex- 
periments on  rats  done  by  Professor  Norman  R.  F.  Maier  oi  the 
University  of  Michigan.  Professor  Maier,  by  changing  his  stimuli  in 
the  middle  of  the  experiment  or  by  removing  the  expected  satisfac- 
tion entirely,  found  that  he  could  drive  his  rats  crazy.  Three  weeks 
after  this  article  appeared,  E.B.  White,  an  old  Life  reader,  published 
'The  Door"  in  the  pages  of  The  New  Yorker.  If  I  were  asked  to 
name  the  most  brilliant  piece  of  prose  ever  to  appear  in  the  columns 
of  The  New  Yorker,  I  would  propose  "The  Door,"  a  freehand  trans- 
lation of  Professor  Maier's  experiments  into  terms  of  modern  living. 

Readers  may  not  End  everything  in  this  horrible,  wonderful  stor\r 
entirely  comprehensible,  but  what  is  frightening  is  that  they  will  not 
End  everything  entirely  incomprehensible  either.  It  would  be  more 
comforting  if  uThe  Door"  meant  absolutely  nothing  to  us  but  lunatic 
ravings.  The  trouble  lies  in  the  insidious  sense  it  makes.  For  which  of 
us,  living  as  we  do  in  a  synthetic  environment  ("everything  is  some- 
thing it  isnt")  and  subjected  to  strains  and  pressures  that  modern 
man  has  not  had  time  to  get  used  to,  does  not  feel  a  chilly  sense  of 
kinship  with  Mr.  White's  neurotic?  Which  of  us  does  not  recognize 
the  truth  of  Mr.  White's  marvelous  phrase,  "the  unspeakably  bright 
imploring  look  of  the  frustrated"?  We  are  all  living  in  the  Bomb 
Age,  the  Headline  Age,  the  Speed  Age,  the  Jitter  Age,  and  who  is 
there  whose  nerves  are  not  touched  or  tortured  by  it? 

It  is  this  uneasy,  cornered-rat  mood  of  our  period  that  Mr.  White 
has,  with  extraordinary  subtlety  and  ruthlessness,  distilled  in  "The 
Door." 


754 


The  Door 

BY 

E.  B.  WHITE 


Everything  (he  kept  saying)  is  something  it  isn't.  And  everybody  is 
always  somewhere  else.  Maybe  it  was  the  city,  being  in  the  city,  that 
made  him  feel  how  queer  everything  was  and  that  it  was  something 
else.  Maybe  (he  kept  thinking)  it  was  the  names  of  the  things.  Trie 
names  were  tex  and  frequently  koid.  Or  they  were  flex  and  oid  or  they 
were  duroid  (sani)  or  flexsan  (duro),  but  everything  was  glass  (but 
not  quite  glass)  and  the  thing  that  you  touched  (the  surface,  washable, 
crease-resistant)  was  rubber,  only  it  wasn't  quite  rubber  and  you  didn't 
quite  touch  it  but  almost.  The  wall,  which  was  glass  but  thrutex, 
turned  out  on  being  approached  not  to  be  a  wall,  it  was  somethmg 
else,  it  was  an  opening  or  doorway — and  the  doorway  (through  which 
he  saw  himself  approaching)  turned  out  to  be  something  else,  it  was  a 
wall.  And  what  he  had  eaten  not  having  agreed  with  him. 

He  was  in  a  washable  house,  but  he  wasn't  sure.  Now  about  those 
rats,  he  kept  saying  to  himself.  He  meant  the  rats  that  the  Professor 
had  driven  crazy  by  forcing  them  to  deal  with  problems  which  were 
beyond  the  scope  of  rats,  the  insoluble  problems.  He  meant  the  rats 
that  had  been  trained  to  jump  at  the  square  card  with  the  circle  in  the 
middle,  and  the  card  (because  it  was  something  it  wasn't)  would  give 
way  and  let  the  rat  into  a  place  where  the  food  was,  but  then  one  day 
it  would  be  a  trick  played  on  the  rat,  and  the  card  would  be  changed, 
and  the  rat  would  jump  but  the  card  wouldn't  give  way,  and  it  was  an 
impossible  situation  (for  a  rat)  and  the  rat  would  go  insane  and  into 
its  eyes  would  come  the  unspeakably  bright  imploring  look  of  the 
frustrated,  and  after  the  convulsions  were  over  and  the  frantic  racing 

755 


756  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

around,  then  the  passive  stage  would  set  in  and  the  willingness  to  let 
anything  be  done  to  it,  even  if  it  was  something  else. 

He  didn't  know  which  door  (or  wall)  or  opening  in  the  house  to 
jump  at,  to  get  through,  because  one  was  an  opening  that  wasn't  a 
door  (it  was  a  void,  or  koid)  and  the  other  was  a  wall  that  wasn't  an 
opening,  it  was  a  sanitary  cupboard  o£  the  same  color.  He  caught  a 
glimpse  of  his  eyes  staring  into  his  eyes,  in  the  thrutex,  and  in  them 
was  the  expression  he  had  seen  in  the  picture  of  the  rats — weary  after 
convulsions  and  the  frantic  racing  around,  when  they  were  willing 
and  did  not  mind  having  anything  done  to  them.  More  and  more  (he 
kept  saying)  I  am  confronted  by  a  problem  which  is  incapable  of  solu- 
tion (for  this  time  even  if  he  chose  the  right  door,  there  would  be  no 
food  behind  it)  and  that  is  what  madness  is,  and  things  seeming  dif- 
ferent from  what  they  are.  He  heard,  in  the  house,  where  he  was,  in 
the  city  to  which  he  had  gone  (as  toward  a  door  which  might,  or  i 
might  not,  give  way),  a  noise — not  a  loud  noise  but  more  of  a  low 
prefabricated  humming.  It  came  from  a  place  in  the  base  of  the  wall 
(or  stat)  where  the  flue  carrying  the  filterable  air  was,  and  not  far  from 
the  Minipiano,  which  was  made  of  the  same  material  nailbrushes  are 
made  of,  and  which  was  under  the  stairs.  "This,  too,  has  been  tested," 
she  said,  pointing,  but  not  at  it,  "and  found  viable."  It  wasn't  a  loud 
noise,  he  kept  thinking,  sorry  that  he  had  seen  his  eyes,  even  though  it 
was  through  his  own  eyes  that  he  had  seen  them. 

First  will  come  the  convulsions  (he  said),  then  the  exhaustion,  then 
the  willingness  to  let  anything  be  done.  "And  you  better  believe  it 
will  be." 

All  his  life  he  had  been  confronted  by  situations  which  were  in- 
capable of  being  solved,  and  there  was  a  deliberateness  behind  all  this, 
behind  this  changing  of  the  card  (or  door),  because  they  would  always 
wait  till  you  had  learned  to  jump  at  the  certain  card  (or  door) — the 
one  with  the  circle — and  then  they  would  change  it  on  you.  There 
have  been  so  many  doors  changed  on  me,  he  said,  in  the  last  twenty 
years,  but  it  is  now  becoming  clear  that  it  is  an  impossible  situation, 
and  the  question  is  whether  to  jump  again,  even  though  they  ruffle 
you  in  the  rump  with  a  blast  of  air — to  make  you  jump.  He  wished 
he  wasn't  standing  bv  the  Minipiano.  First  they  would  teach  you  the 


E.   B.   WHITE  757 

prayers  and  the  Psalms,  and  that  would  be  the  right  door  (the  one 
with  the  circle),  and  the  long  sweet  words  with  the  holy  sound,  and 
that  would  be  the  one  to  jump  at  to  get  where  the  food  was.  Then 
one  day  you  jumped  and  it  didn't  give  way,  so  that  all  you  got  was 
the  bump  on  the  nose,  and  the  first  bewilderment,  the  first  young  be- 
wilderment. 

I  don't  know  whether  to  tell  her  about  the  door  they  substituted  or 
not,  he  said,  the  one  with  the  equation  on  it  and  the  picture  of  the 
amoeba  reproducing  itself  by  division.  Or  the  one  with  the  photostatic 
copy  of  the  check  for  thirty-two  dollars  and  fifty  cents.  But  the  jump- 
ing was  so  long  ago,  although  the  bump  is  .  .  .  how  those  old  wounds 
hurt!  Being  crazy  this  way  wouldn't  be  so  bad  if  only,  if  only.  If  only 
when  you  put  your  foot  forward  to  take  a  step,  the  ground  wouldn't 
come  up  to  meet  your  foot  the  way  it  does.  And  the  same  way  in  the 
street  (only  I  may  never  get  back  to  the  street  unless  I  jump  at  the 
right  door),  the  curb  coming  up  to  meet  your  foot,  anticipating  ever 
so  delicately  the  weight  of  the  body,  which  is  somewhere  else.  "We 
could  take  your  name,"  she  said,  "and  send  it  to  you."  And  it  wouldn't 
be  so  bad  if  only  you  could  read  a  sentence  all  the  way  through  with- 
out jumping  (your  eye)  to  something  else  on  the  same  page;  and  then 
(he  kept  thinking)  there  was  that  man  out  in  Jersey,  the  one  who 
started  to  chop  his  trees  down,  one  by  one,  the  man  who  began  talking 
about  how  he  would  take  his  house  to  pieces,  brick  by  brick,  because 
he  faced  a  problem  incapable  of  solution,  probably,  so  he  began  to  hack 
at  the  trees  in  the  yard,  began  to  pluck  with  trembling  fingers  at  the 
bricks  in  the  house.  Even  if  a  house  is  not  washable,  it  is  worth  tak- 
ing down.  It  is  not  till  later  that  the  exhaustion  sets  in. 

But  it  is  inevitable  that  they  will  keep  changing  the  doors  on  you,  he 
said,  because  that  is  what  they  are  for;  and  the  thing  is  to  get  used  to 
it  and  not  let  it  unsettle  the  mind.  But  that  would  mean  not  jumping, 
and  you  can't.  Nobody  can  not  jump.  There  will  be  no  not-jumping. 
Among  rats,  perhaps,  but  among  people  never.  Everybody  has  to  keep 
jumping  at  a  door  (the  one  with  the  circle  on  it)  because  that  is  the 
way  everybody  is,  specially  some  people.  You  wouldn't  want  me,  stand- 
ing here,  to  tell  you,  would  you,  about  my  friend  the  poet  (deceased) 
who  said,  "My  heart  has  followed  all  my  days  something  I  cannot 


758  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

name"?  (It  had  the  circle  on  it.)  And  like  many  poets,  although  few 
so  beloved,  he  is  gone.  It  killed  him,  the  jumping.  First,  of  course, 
there  were  the  preliminary  bouts,  the  convulsions,  and  the  calm  and 
the  willingness. 

I  remember  the  door  with  the  picture  of  the  girl  on  it  (only  it  was 
spring),  her  arms  outstretched  in  loveliness,  her  dress  (it  was  the  one 
with  the  circle  on  it)  uncaught,  beginning  the  slow,  clear,  blinding  cas- 
cade— and  I  guess  we  would  all  like  to  try  that  door  again,  for  it 
seemed  like  the  way  and  for  a  while  it  was  the  way,  the  door  would 
open  and  you  would  go  through  winged  and  exalted  (like  any  rat) 
and  the  food  would  be  there,  the  way  the  Professor  had  it  arranged, 
everything  O.K.,  and  you  had  chosen  the  right  door  for  the  world  was 
young.  The  time  they  changed  that  door  on  me,  my  nose  bled  for  a 
hundred  hours — how  do  you  like  that,  Madam?  Or  would  you  prefer 
to  show  me  further  through  this  so  strange  house,  or  you  could  take 
my  name  and  send  it  to  me,  for  although  my  heart  has  followed  all 
my  days  something  I  cannot  name,  I  am  tired  of  the  jumping  and  I 
do  not  know  which  way  to  go,  Madam,  and  I  am  not  even  sure  that 
I  am  not  tried  beyond  the  endurance  of  man  (rat,  if  you  will)  and 
have  taken  leave  of  sanity.  What  are  you  following  these  days,  old 
friend,  after  your  recovery  from  the  last  bump?  What  is  the  name,  or 
is  it  something  you  cannot  name?  The  rats  have  a  name  for  it  by  this 
time,  perhaps,  but  I  don't  know  what  they  call  it.  I  call  it  plexikoid  and 
it  comes  in  sheets,  something  like  insulating  board,  unattainable  and 
ugli-proof. 

And  there  was  the  man  out  in  Jersey,  because  I  keep  thinking  about 
his  terrible  necessity  and  the  passion  and  trouble  he  had  gone  to  all 
those  years  in  the  indescribable  abundance  of  a  householder's  detail, 
building  the  estate  and  the  planting  of  the  trees  and  in  spring  the  lawn- 
dressing  and  in  fall  the  bulbs  for  the  spring  burgeoning,  and  the  water- 
ing of  the  grass  on  the  long  light  evenings  in  summer  and  the  gravel 
for  the  driveway  (all  had  to  be  thought  out,  planned)  and  the  dec- 
orative borders,  probably,  the  perennial's  and  the  bug  spray,  and  the 
building  of  the  house  from  plans  of  the  architect,  first  the  sills,  then  the 
studs,  then  the  full  corn  in  the  ear,  the  floors  laid  on  the  floor  timbers, 
smoothed,  and  then  the  carpets  upon  the  smooth  floors  and  the  cur- 


E.   B.   WHITE  759 

tains  and  the  rods  therefor.  And  then,  almost  without  warning,  he 
would  be  jumping  at  the  same  old  door  and  it  wouldn't  give:  they  had 
changed  it  on  him,  making  life  no  longer  supportable  under  the  elms 
in  the  elm  shade,  under  the  maples  in  the  maple  shade. 
"Here  you  have  the  maximum  of  openness  in  a  small  room." 
It  was  impossible  to  say  (maybe  it  was  the  city)  what  made  him 
feel  the  way  he  did,  and  I  am  not  the  only  one  either,  he  kept  think- 
ing— ask  any  doctor  if  I  am.  The  doctors,  they  know  how  many  there 
are,  they  even  know  where  the  trouble  is  only  they  don't  like  to  tell 
you  about  the  prefrontal  lobe  because  that  means  making  a  hole  in 
your  skull  and  removing  the  work  of  centuries.  It  took  so  long  com- 
ing, this  lobe,  so  many,  many  years.  (Is  it  something  you  read  in  the 
paper,  perhaps?)  And  now,  the  strain  being  so  great,  the  door  having 
been  changed  by  the  Professor  once  too  often  .  .  .  but  it  only  means  a 
whiff  of  ether,  a  few  deft  strokes,  and  the  higher  animal  becomes  a 
little  easier  in  his  mind  and  more  like  the  lower  one.  From  now  on, 
you  see,  that's  the  way  it  will  be,  the  ones  with  the  small  prefrontal 
lobes  will  win  because  the  other  ones  are  hurt  too  much  by  this  inces- 
sant bumping.  They  can  stand  just  so  much,  eh,  Doctor?  (And  what 
is  that,  pray,  that  you  have  in  your  hand?)  Still,  you  never  can  tell,  eh, 
Madam  ? 

He  crossed  (carefully)  the  room,  the  thick  carpet  under  him  softly, 
and  went  toward  the  door  carefully,  which  was  glass  and  he  could  see 
himself  in  it,  and  which,  at  his  approach,  opened  to  allow  him  to  pass 
through;  and  beyond  he  half  expected  to  find  one  of  the  old  doors  that 
he  had  known,  perhaps  the  one  with  the  circle,  the  one  with  the  girl 
her  arms  outstretched  in  loveliness  and  beauty  before  him.  But  he  saw 
instead  a  moving  stairway,  and  descended  in  light  (he  kept  thinking) 
to  the  street  below  and  to  the  other  people.  As  he  stepped  off,  the 
ground  came  up  slightly,  to  meet  his  foot. 


S.   J.   PERELMAN 


COMMENTARY 


S.  /.  PereJman  is  a  man  who  scorns  wet  hens,  because  he  is  so  much 
madder  than  they  are.  He  is  the  most  precious  lunatic  in  America 
and  it  is  much  more  important  to  preserve  him  permanently  than  it 
is  to  keep  that  irritating  old  chickens  heart  pulsating  over  at  the 
Rockefeller  Institute.  Yet  what  is  being  done  for  Perelman,  S.  J? 
Truly  we  are  a  nation  that  has  not  yet  learned  to  honor  its  great 
men.  Someday  you  11  be  sorry,  and  it'll  be  too  late. 

Perelman  is  very,  very  funny  but  he  is  not  so  very,  very  funny  as 
to  obscure  the  fact  that  he  is  also  an  extraordinary  prose  writer.  He's 
a  good  man  from  whom  to  learn  the  art  of  English.  He  has  a 
masterly  sense  of  cliche.  Sometimes  in  the  course  of  a  single  para- 
graph he  will  manipulate  a  number  of  different  vintages  of  slang  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  make  you  perceive  a  good  deal  about  the  muta- 
tions of  language.  He  handles  a  sentence  as  a  good  carpenter  does  a 
hammer  and  he  is  a  master  of  that  kind  of  comic  effect  which  arises 
from  a  subtle  use  of  the  unexpected. 

The  Crazy  School  of  American  humor  that  flourished  in  the 
twenties  is  pretty  nearly  extinct.  But  Perelman  persists.  May  he  per- 
sist in  persisting. 


on 


Is  There  an  Osteosynchrondroitrician 
in  the  House? 


BY 


S.  J.  PERELMAN 


Looking  back  at  it  now,  I  see  that  every  afternoon  at  4:30  for  the  past 
five  months  I  had  fallen  into  an  exact  routine.  First  ofT,  I'd  tap  the 
dottle  from  my  pipe  by  knocking  it  against  the  hob.  I  never  smoke  a 
pipe,  but  I  like  to  keep  one  with  a  little  dottle  in  it,  and  an  inexpensive 
hob  to  tap  it  against;  when  you're  in  the  writing  game,  there  are  these 
little  accessories  you  need.  Then  I'd  slip  of?  my  worn  old  green  smok- 
ing jacket,  which  I  loathe,  and  start  down  Lexington  Avenue  for 
home.  Sometimes,  finding  myself  in  my  shirtsleeves,  I'd  have  to  run 
back  to  my  atelier  for  my  jacket  and  overcoat,  but  as  I  say,  when 
you're  in  the  writing  game,  it's  strictly  head-in-the-clouds.  Now,  Lex- 
ington Avenue  is  Lexington  Avenue — when  you've  once  seen  Bloom- 
ingdale's  and  the  Wil-Low  Cafeteria,  you  don't  go  nostalgic  all  over 
as  you  might  for  the  Avenue  de  l'Observatoire  and  the  Closerie  des 
Lilas. 

Anyway,  I'd  be  head  down  and  scudding  along  under  bare  poles  by 
the  time  I  reached  the  block  between  Fifty-eighth  and  Fifty-seventh 
Streets,  and  my  glance  into  those  three  shop  windows  would  be  purely 
automatic.  First,  the  highly  varnished  Schnec\en  in  the  bakery;  then 
the  bones  of  a  human  foot  shimmying  slowly  on  a  near-mahogany 
pedestal  in  the  shoestore;  and  finally  the  clock  set  in  the  heel  of  a 
congress  gaiter  at  the  bootblack's.  By  now  my  shabby  old  reflexes 
would  tell  me  it  was  time  to  buy  an  evening  paper  and  bury  my  head 
in  it.  A  little  whim  of  my  wife's;  she  liked  to  dig  it  up,  as  a  puppy 
does  a  bone,  while  I  was  sipping  my  cocktail.  Later  on  I  taught  her 

761 


762  READING   I'VE   LIKED 

to  frisk  with  a  ball  of  yarn,  but  to  get  back  to  what  happened  Wash- 
ington's Birthday. 

I  was  hurrying  homeward  that  holiday  afternoon  pretty  much  in 
the  groove,  humming  an  aria  from  "Till  Tom  Special"  and  wishing  I 
could  play  the  clarinet  like  a  man  named  Goodman.  Just  as  it  occurred 
to  me  that  I  might  drug  this  individual  and  torture  his  secret  out  of 
him,  I  came  abreast  the  window  of  the  shoestore  containing  the  bones 
of  the  human  foot.  My  mouth  suddenly  developed  that  curious  dry 
feeling  when  I  saw  that  they  were  vibrating,  as  usual,  from  north  to 
south,  every  little  metatarsal  working  with  the  blandest  contempt  for 
all  I  hold  dear.  I  pressed  my  ear  against  the  window  and  heard  the 
faint  clicking  of  the  motor  housed  in  the  box  beneath.  A  little  scratch 
here  and  there  on  the  shellac  surface  showed  where  one  of  the  more 
enterprising  toes  had  tried  to  do  a  solo  but  had  quickly  rejoined  the 
band.  Not  only  was  the  entire  arch  rolling  forward  and  backward  in 
an  oily  fashion,  but  it  had  evolved  an  obscene  side  sway  at  the  same 
time,  a  good  deal  like  the  danse  a  ventre.  Maybe  the  foot  had  belonged 
to  an  Ouled-Nail  girl,  but  I  felt  I  didn't  care  to  find  out.  I  was  aware 
immediately  of  an  active  desire  to  rush  home  and  lie  down  attended 
by  my  loved  ones.  The  only  trouble  was  that  when  I  started  to  leave 
that  place,  I  could  feel  my  arches  acting  according  to  all  the  proper 
orthopedic  laws,  and  I  swear  people  turned  to  look  at  me  as  if  they 
heard  a  clicking  sound. 

The  full  deviltry  of  the  thing  only  became  apparent  as  I  lay  on  my 
couch  a  bit  later,  a  vinegar  poultice  on  my  forehead,  drinking  a  cup 
of  steaming  tea.  That  little  bevy  of  bones  had  been  oscillating  back  and 
forth  all  through  the  Spanish  Civil  War,  the  agony  of  Czechoslovakia, 
and  Danzig;  this  very  minute  it  was  undulating  turgidly,  heedless  of 
the  fact  the  store  had  been  closed  two  hours.  Furthermore,  if  its  prog- 
ress were  not  impeded  by  the  two  wires  snaffled  to  the  toes  (I'll  give 
you  that  thought  to  thrash  around  with  some  sleepless  night),  it  might 
by  now  have  encircled  the  world  five  times,  with  a  stopover  at  the  Eu- 
charistic  Congress  in  Manila.  For  a  moment  the  implications  were  so 
surrealist  that  I  started  up  alarmed.  But  since  my  loved  ones  had  gone 
off  to  the  movies  and  there  was  nobody  to  impress,  I  turned  over  and 
slept  like  a  top,  with  no  assistance  except  three  and  a  half  grains  of 
barbital. 


S.  J.   PERELMAN  763 

I  could  have  reached  my  workshop  the  next  morning  by  walking  up 
Third  Avenue,  taking  a  cab  up  Lexington,  or  even  crawling  on  my 
hands  and  knees  past  the  shoestore  to  avoid  that  indecent  window 
display,  but  my  feet  won  their  unequal  struggle  with  my  brain  and 
carried  me  straight  to  the  spot.  Staring  hypnotized  at  the  macabre 
shuffle  (halfway  between  a  rhumba  and  a  soft-shoe  step),  I  realized 
that  I  was  hearing  a  sign  from  above  to  take  the  matter  in  hand.  I 
spent  the  morning  shopping  lower  Third  Avenue,  and  at  noon, 
dressed  as  an  attache  of  the  Department  of  Sanitation,  began  to 
lounge  nonchalantly  before  the  store.  My  broom  was  getting  nearer 
and  nearer  the  window  when  the  manager  came  out  noiselessly.  My 
ducks  must  have  been  too  snowy,  for  he  gave  one  of  his  clerks  a  sig- 
nal and  a  moment  later  a  policeman  turned  the  corner.  Fortunately,  I 
had  stashed  my  civvies  in  the  lobby  of  Proctor's  Fifty-eighth  Street 
Theatre,  and  by  the  time  the  breathless  policeman  rushed  in,  I  had 
approached  the  wicket  as  cool  as  a  cucumber,  asked  for  two  cucum- 
bers in  the  balcony,  and  signed  my  name  for  Bank  Nite.  I  flatter  my- 
self that  I  brought  off  the  affair  rather  well. 

My  second  attempt,  however,  was  as  fruitless  as  the  first.  I  padded 
my  stomach  with  a  pillow,  grayed  my  hair  at  the  temples,  and  en- 
tered the  shop  fiercely.  Pointing  to  the  white  piping  on  my  vest,  I 
represented  myself  as  a  portly  banker  from  Portland,  Maine,  and 
asked  the  manager  what  he  would  take  for  the  assets  and  good  will, 
spot  cash.  I  was  about  to  make  him  a  firm  offer  when  I  found  myself 
being  escorted  out  across  the  sidewalk,  the  manager's  foot  serving  as 
fulcrum. 

And  there,  precisely,  the  matter  rests.  I  have  given  plenty  of  thought 
to  the  problem,  and  there  is  only  one  solution.  Are  there  three  young 
men  in  this  city,  with  stout  hearts  and  no  dependents,  who  know  what 
I  mean?  We  can  clean  out  that  window  with  two  well-directed  gre- 
nades and  get  away  over  the  rooftops.  Given  half  a  break,  we'll  stop 
that  grisly  pas  sent  ten  seconds  after  we  pull  out  the  pins  with  our 
teeth.  If  we're  caught,  there's  always  the  cyanide  in  our  belts.  First 
meeting  tonight  at  nine  in  front  of  the  Railroad  Men's  Y.M.C.A.,  and 
wear  a  blue  cornflower,  Up  the  rebels! 


BERTRAND   RUSSELL 


COMMENTARY 


Beitiand  Russell  wrote  "A  Free  Man's  Worship'  in  1903,  when  he 
was  only  thiity-one.  I  understand  that  he  does  not  think  so  highly 
of  it  now  and  perhaps  does  not  entirely  agree  with  the  Russell  oi 
almost  forty  years  ago.  Possibly  what  he  objects  to  is  its  note  of 
stoical  heroism  which  today  he  might  smile  at  as  romantic,  since 
Lord  Russell  not  only  looks  a  little  like  Voltaire  (which  means  noth- 
ing, for  so  does  Henry  Ford)  but  on  occasion  thinks  like  him.  This 
grave  and  musical  profession  of  faith  in  the  unconquerable  mind  of 
man  is  somewhat  removed  from  the  skepticism,  very  likely  a  little 
weary,  that  has  hallmarked  RusselYs  thought  for  the  last  decade  or  so. 

It  may  not  be  up-to-date  Russell  but  much  of  its  spirit  remains 
pertinent  today,  when  the  choice  between  Force  and  Reason  is 
presented  to  us  not  in  RusselYs  abstract  terms  but  in  a  manner  that 
the  simplest  mind  cannot  help  comprehending. 

"A  Free  Mans  Worship'  is  a  religious  essay;  that  is  to  say,  an 
emotional  expression  of  faith.  It  is  a  very  old  faith,  never  more 
movingly  expressed  than  by  the  Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius  (lords 
and  emperors  appear  to  have  a  special  affinity  for  stoicism),  though 
the  dilemmas  that  Russell  poses  are  those  brought  into  relief  by 
nineteenth-century  science.  Because  it  is  an  outburst  of  faith  and  not 
a  reasoned  argument,  you  are  invited  to  read  it  more  as  poetry  than 
as  truth.  Take  a  statement  such  as  "Only  within  the  scaffolding  of 
these  truths,  only  on  the  firm  foundation  of  unyielding  despair,  can 
the  souVs  habitation  henceforth  be  safely  built."  You  cannot  mark 
this  true  or  false,  but  you  may  be  moved  by  the  emotion  behind  it. 

"A  Free  Mans  Worship,"  despite  its  gallant  note  of  courage  at 
the  end,  is  one  of  the  classic  responses  of  pessimism  called  forth  by 
the  events  of  the  nineteenth  century.  That  century  taught  man  he 
was  a  helpless  atom  in  the  grip  of  mechanical  forces.  The  cries  of 
despair  that  resounded  produced  some  excellent  literature:  Steven- 
sons  ilPulvis  et  Umbra"  is  one  example,  RusselYs  essay  another. 

764 


BERTRAND  RUSSELL  765 

Today,  however,  our  pessimism  is  more  deeply  grounded  or  our  faith 
more  sorely  tested,  for  not  only  is  the  universe  against  us  (which 
might  he  home,  as  Russell  points  out)  hut  man  is  against  himself, 
which  is  intolerable.  It  is  the  intense  blackness  of  our  position  today 
that  makes  even  this  somber  utterance  seem  haloed  with  idealism. 


A  Free  Man's  Worship 

BY 

BERTRAND  RUSSELL 


To  Dr.  Faustus  in  his  study  Mephistopheles  told  the  history  of  the 
Creation,  saying: 

"The  endless  praises  of  the  choirs  of  angels  had  begun  to  grow 
wearisome;  for,  after  all,  did  he  not  deserve  their  praise?  Had  he  not 
given  them  endless  joy?  Would  it  not  be  more  amusing  to  obtain  un- 
deserved praise,  to  be  worshipped  by  beings  whom  he  tortured?  He 
smiled  inwardly,  and  resolved  that  the  great  drama  should  be  per- 
formed. 

"For  countless  ages  the  hot  nebula  whirled  aimlessly  through  space. 
At  length  it  began  to  take  shape,  the  central  mass  threw  off  planets, 
the  planets  cooled,  boiling  seas  and  burning  mountains  heaved  and 
tossed,  from  black  masses  of  cloud  hot  sheets  of  rain  deluged  the  barely 
solid  crust.  And  now  the  first  germ  of  life  grew  in  the  depths  of  the 
ocean,  and  developed  rapidly  in  the  fructifying  warmth  into  vast  for- 
est trees,  huge  ferns  springing  from  the  damp  mould,  sea  monsters 
breeding,  fighting,  devouring,  and  passing  away.  And  from  the  mon- 
sters, as  the  play  unfolded  itself,  Man  was  born,  with  the  power  of 
thought,  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  and  the  cruel  thirst  for  wor- 
ship. And  Man  saw  that  all  is  passing  in  this  mad,  monstrous  world, 
that  all  is  struggling  to  snatch,  at  any  cost,  a  few  brief  moments  of  life 
before  Death's  inexorable  decree.  And  Man  said:  'There  is  a  hidden 
purpose,  could  we  but  fathom  it,  and  the  purpose  is  good;  for  we  must 
reverence  something,  and  in  the  visible  world  there  is  nothing  worthy 
of  reverence.'  And  Man  stood  aside  from  the  struggle,  resolving  that 
God  intended  harmony  to  come  out  of  chaos  by  human  efforts.  And 
when  he  followed  the  instincts  which  God  had   transmitted  to  him 

766 


BERTRAND   RUSSELL  767 

from  his  ancestry  of  beasts  of  prey,  he  called  it  Sin,  and  asked  God  to 
forgive  him.  But  he  doubted  whether  he  could  be  justly  forgiven,  until 
he  invented  a  divine  Plan  by  which  God's  wrath  was  to  have  been  ap- 
peased. And  seeing  the  present  was  bad,  he  made  it  yet  worse,  that 
thereby  the  future  might  be  better.  And  he  gave  God  thanks  for  the 
strength  that  enabled  him  to  forgo  even  the  joys  that  were  possible. 
And  God  smiled;  and  when  he  saw  that  Man  had  become  perfect  in 
renunciation  and  worship,  he  sent  another  sun  through  the  sky,  which 
crashed  into  Man's  sun;  and  all  returned  again  to  nebula. 

"  'Yes,'  he  murmured,  'it  was  a  good  play;  I  will  have  it  performed 
again.'  " 

Such,  in  outline,  but  even  more  purposeless,  more  void  of  meaning, 
is  the  world  which  Science  presents  for  our  belief.  Amid  such  a  world, 
if  anywhere,  our  ideals  henceforward  must  find  a  home.  That  Man  is 
the  product  of  causes  which  had  no  prevision  of  the  end  they  were 
achieving;  that  his  origin,  his  growth,  his  hopes  and  fears,  his  loves  and 
his  beliefs,  are  but  the  outcome  of  accidental  collocations  of  atoms; 
that  no  fire,  no  heroism,  no  intensity  of  thought  and  feeling,  can  pre- 
serve an  individual  life  beyond  the  grave;  that  all  the  labours  of  the 
ages,  all  the  devotion,  all  the  inspiration,  all  the  noonday  brightness  of 
human  genius,  are  destined  to  extinction  in  the  vast  death  of  the  solar  * 
system,  and  that  the  whole  temple  of  Man's  achievement  must  irf^ 
evitably  be  buried  beneath  the  debris  of  a  universe  in  ruins — all  these 
things,  if  not  quite  beyond  dispute,  are  yet  so  nearly  certain,  that  no 
philosophy  which  rejects  them  can  hope  to  stand.  Only  within  the 
scaffolding  of  these  truths,  only  on  the  firm  foundation  of  unyielding 
despair,  can  the  soul's  habitation  henceforth  be  safely  built. 

How,  in  such  an  alien  and  inhuman  world,  can  so  powerless  a  crea- 
ture as  Man  preserve  his  aspirations  untarnished  ?  A  strange  mystery  it 
is  that  Nature,  omnipotent  but  blind,  in  the  revolutions  of  her  secular 
hurryings  through  the  abysses  of  space,  has  brought  forth  at  last  a 
child,  subject  still  to  her  power,  but  gifted  with  sight,  with  knowledge 
of  good  and  evil,  with  the  capacity  of  judging  all  the  works  of  his  un- 
thinking Mother.  In  spite  of  Death,  the  mark  and  seal  of  the  parental 
control,  Man  is  yet  free,  during  his  brief  years,  to  examine,  to  criticise, 
to  know,  and  in  imagination  to  create.  To  him  alone,  in  the  world 


768  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

with  which  he  is  acquainted,  this  freedom  belongs;  and  in  this  lies  his 
superiority  to  the  resistless  forces  that  control  his  outward  life. 

The  savage,  like  ourselves,  feels  the  oppression  of  his  impotence  be- 
fore the  powers  of  Nature;  but  having  in  himself  nothing  that  he  re- 
spects more  than  Power,  he  is  willing  to  prostrate  himself  before  his 
gods,  without  inquiring  whether  they  are  worthy  of  his  worship.  Pa- 
thetic and  very  terrible  is  the  long  history  of  cruelty  and  torture,  of 
degradation  and  human  sacrifice,  endured  in  the  hope  of  placating  the 
jealous  gods:  surely,  the  trembling  believer  thinks,  when  what  is  most 
precious  has  been  freely  given,  their  lust  for  blood  must  be  appeased, 
and  more  will  not  be  required.  The  religion  of  Moloch — as  such  creeds 
may  be  generically  called — is  in  essence  the  cringing  submission  of  the 
slave,  who  dare  not,  even  in  his  heart,  allow  the  thought  that  his  master 
deserves  no  adulation.  Since  the  independence  of  ideals  is  not  yet  ac- 
knowledged, Power  may  be  freely  worshipped,  and  receive  an  unlim- 
ited respect,  despite  its  wanton  infliction  of  pain. 

But  gradually,  as  morality  grows  bolder,  the  claim  of  the  ideal  world 
begins  to  be  felt;  and  worship,  if  it  is  not  to  cease,  must  be  given  to 
gods  of  another  kind  than  those  created  by  the  savage.  Some,  though 
they  feel  the  demands  of  the  ideal,  will  still  consciously  reject  them, 
still  urging  that  naked  Power  is  worthy  of  worship.  Such  is  the  atti- 
tude inculcated  in  God's  answer  to  Job  out  of  the  whirlwind:  the  di- 
vine power  and  knowledge  are  paraded,  but  of  the  divine  goodness 
there  is  no  hint.  Such  also  is  the  attitude  of  those  who,  in  our  own 
day,  base  their  morality  upon  the  struggle  for  survival,  maintaining 
that  the  survivors  are  necessarily  the  fittest.  But  others,  not  content 
with  an  answer  so  repugnant  to  the  moral  sense,  will  adopt  the  posi- 
tion which  we  have  become  accustomed  to  regard  as  speciallv  religious, 
maintaining  that,  in  some  hidden  manner,  the  world  of  fact  is  really 
harmonious  with  the  world  of  ideals.  Thus  Man  creates  God,  all-pow- 
erful and  all-good,  the  mystic  unity  of  what  is  and  what  should  be. 

But  the  world  of  fact,  after  all,  is  not  good;  and,  in  submitting  our 
judgment  to  it,  there  is  an  element  of  slavishness  from  which  our 
thoughts  must  be  purged.  For  in  all  things  it  is  well  to  exalt  the  dig- 
nity of  Man,  by  freeing  him  as  far  as  possible  from  the  tyranny  of 
•non-human  Power.  When  we  have  realised  that  Power  is  largely  bad, 


BERTRAND  RUSSELL  769 

that  man,  with  his  knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  is  but  a  helpless  atom 
in  a  world  which  has  no  such  knowledge,  the  choice  is  again  pre- 
sented to  us :  Shall  we  worship  Force,  or  shall  we  worship  Goodness  ? 
Shall  our  God  exist  and  be  evil,  or  shall  he  be  recognised  as  the  cre- 
ation of  our  own  conscience? 

The  answer  to  this  question  is  very  momentous,  and  affects  pro- 
foundly our  whole  morality.  The  worship  of  Force,  to  which  Carlyle 
and  Nietzsche  and  the  creed  of  Militarism  have  accustomed  us,  is  the 
result  of  failure  to  maintain  our  own  ideals  against  a  hostile  universe : 
it  is  itself  a  prostrate  submission  to  evil,  a  sacrifice  of  our  best  to  Mo- 
loch. If  strength  indeed  is  to  be  respected,  let  us  respect  rather  the 
strength  of  those  who  refuse  that  false  "recognition  of  facts"  which 
fails  to  recognise  that  facts  are  often  bad.  Let  us  admit  that,  in  the 
world  we  know,  there  are  many  things  that  would  be  better  otherwise, 
and  that  the  ideals  to  which  we  do  and  must  adhere  are  not  realised  in 
the  realm  of  matter.  Let  us  preserve  our  respect  for  truth,  for  beauty, 
for  the  ideal  of  perfection  which  life  does  not  permit  us  to  attain, 
though  none  of  these  things  meet  with  the  approval  of  the  unconscious 
universe.  If  Power  is  bad,  as  it  seems  to  be,  let  us  reject  it  from  our 
hearts.  In  this  lies  Man's  true  freedom:  in  determination  to  worship 
only  the  God  created  by  our  own  love  of  the  good,  to  respect  only  the 
heaven  which  inspires  the  insight  of  our  best  moments.  In  action,  in 
desire,  we  must  submit  perpetually  to  the  tyranny  of  outside  forces; 
but  in  thought,  in_asp_iration,  we  are  free,  free  from  our  fellow-men, 
free  from  the  petty  planet  on  which  our  bodies  impotently  crawl,  free 
even,  while  we  live,  from  the  tyranny  of  death.  Let  us  learn,  then,  that 
energy  of  faith  which  enables  us  to  live  constantly  in  the  vision  of  the 
good;  and  let  us  descend,  in  action,  into  the  world  of  fact,  with  that 
vision  always  before  us. 

When  first  the  opposition  of  fact  and  ideal  grows  fully  visible,  a 
spirit  of  fiery  revolt,  of  fierce  hatred  of  the  gods,  seems  necessary  to  the 
assertion  of  freedom.  To  defy  with  Promethean  constancy  a  hostile 
universe,  to  keep  its  evil  always  in  view,  always  actively  hated,  to  refuse 
no  pain  that  the  malice  of  Power  can  invent,  appears  to  be  the  duty 
of  all  who  will  not  bow  before  the  inevitable.  But  indignation  is  still  a 
bondage,  for  it  compels  our  thoughts  to  be  occupied  with  an  evil 


770  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

world;  and  in  the  fierceness  of  desire  from  which  rebellion  springs 
there  is  a  kind  of  self-assertion  which  it  is  necessary  for  the  wise  to 
overcome.  Indignation  is  a  submission  of  our  thoughts,  but  not  of  our 
desires;  the  Stoic  freedom  in  which  wisdom  consists  is  found  in  the 
submission  of  our  desires,  but  not  of  our  thoughts.  From  the  submis- 
sion of  our  desires  springs  the  virtue  of  resignation;  from  the  freedom 
of  our  thoughts  springs  the  whole  world  of  art  and  philosophy,  and 
the  vision  of  beauty  by  which,  at  last,  we  half  reconquer  the  reluctant 
world.  But  the  vision  of  beauty  is  possible  only  to  unfettered  contem- 
plation, to  thoughts  not  weighted  by  the  load  of  eager  wishes;  and 
thus  Freedom  comes  only  to  those  who  no  longer  ask  of  life  that  it 
shall  yield  them  any  of  those  personal  goods  that  are  subject  to  the  mu- 
tations of  Time. 

Although  the  necessity  of  renunciation  is  evidence  of  the  existence 
of  evil,  yet  Christianity,  in  preaching  it,  has  shown  a  wisdom  exceed- 
ing that  of  the  Promethean  philosophy  of  rebellion.  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that,  of  the  things  we  desire,  some,  though  they  prove  impos- 
sible, are  yet  real  goods;  others,  however,  as  ardently  longed  for,  do 
not  form  part  of  a  fully  purified  ideal.  The  belief  that  what  must  be 
renounced  is  bad,  though  sometimes  false,  is  far  less  often  false  than 
untamed  passion  supposes;  and  the  creed  of  religion,  by  providing  a 
reason  for  proving  that  it  is  never  false,  has  been  the  means  of  purify- 
ing our  hopes  by  the  discovery  of  many  austere  truths. 

But  there  is  in  resignation  a  further  good  element:  even  real  goods, 
when  they  are  unattainable,  ought  not  to  be  fretfully  desired.  To  every 
man  comes,  sooner  or  later,  the  great  renunciation.  For  the  young, 
there  is  nothing  unattainable;  a  good  thing  desired  with  the  whole 
force  of  a  passionate  will,  and  yet  impossible,  is  to  them  not  credible. 
Yet,  by  death,  by  illness,  by  poverty,  or  by  the  voice  of  duty,  we  must 
learn,  each  one  of  us,  that  the  world  was  not  made  for  us  and  that, 
however  beautiful  may  be  the  things  we  crave,  Fate  may  nevertheless 
forbid  them.  It  is  the  part  of  courage,  when  misfortune  comes,  to  bear 
without  repining  the  ruin  of  our  hopes,  to  turn  away  our  thoughts 
from  vain  regrets.  This  degree  of  submission  to  Power  is  not  only  just 
and  right:  it  is  the  very  gate  of  wisdom. 

But  passive  renunciation  is  not  the  whole  of  wisdom;  for  not  by  re- 


BERTRAND  RUSSELL  771 

nunciation  alone  can  we  build  a  temple  for  the  worship  of  our  own 
ideals.  Haunting  foreshadowings  of  the  temple  appear  in  the  realm  of 
imagination,  in  music,  in  architecture,  in  the  untroubled  kingdom  of 
reason,  and  in  the  golden  sunset  magic  of  lyrics,  where  beauty  shines 
and  glows,  remote  from  the  touch  of  sorrow,  remote  from  the  fear  of 
change,  remote  from  the  failures  and  disenchantments  of  the  world  of 
fact.  In  the  contemplation  of  these  things  the  vision  of  heaven  will 
shape  itself  in  our  hearts,  giving  at  once  a  touchstone  to  judge  the 
world  about  us,  and  an  inspiration  by  which  to  fashion  to  our  needs 
whatever  is  not  incapable  of  serving  as  a  stone  in  the  sacred  temple. 

Except  for  those  rare  spirits  that  are  born  without  sin,  there  is  a 
cavern  of  darkness  to  be  traversed  before  that  temple  can  be  entered.'' 
The  gate  of  the  cavern  is  despair,  and  its  floor  is  paved  with  the  grave- 
stones of  abandoned  hopes.  There  Self  must  die;  there  the  eagerness,  \K'S 
the  greed  of  untamed  desire  must  be  slain,  for  only  so  can  the  soul  be 
freed  from  the  empire  of  Fate.  But  out  of  the  cavern  the  Gate  of  Re- 
nunciation leads  again  to  the  daylight  of  wisdom,  by  whose  radiance 
a  new  insight,  a  new  joy,  a  new  tenderness,  shine  forth  to  gladden  the 
pilgrim's  heart. 

When,  without  the  bitterness  of  impotent  rebellion,  we  have  learnt 
both  to  resign  ourselves  to  the  outward  rule  of  Fate  and  to  recognise 
that  the  non-human  world  is  unworthy  of  our  worship,  it  becomes 
possible  at  last  so  to  transform  and  refashion  the  unconscious  universe, 
so  to  transmute  it  in  the  crucible  of  imagination,  that  a  new  image  of 
shining  gold  replaces  the  old  idol  of  clay.  In  all  the  multiform  facts  of 
the  world — in  the  visual  shapes  of  trees  and  mountains  and  clouds,  in 
the  events  of  the  life  of  Man,  even  in  the  very  omnipotence  of  Death 
— the  insight  of  creative  idealism  can  find  the  reflection  of  a  beauty 
which  its  own  thoughts  first  made.  In  this  way  mind  asserts  its  subtle 
mastery  over  the  thoughtless  forces  of  Nature.  The  more  evil  the  ma- 
terial with  which  it  deals,  the  more  thwarting  to  untrained  desire,  the 
greater  is  its  achievement  in  inducing  the  reluctant  rock  to  yield  up  its 
hidden  treasures,  the  prouder  its  victory  in  compelling  the  opposing 
forces  to  swell  the  pageant  of  its  triumph.  Of  all  the  arts,  Tragedy  is 
the  proudest,  the  most  triumphant;  for  it  builds  its  shining  citadel  in 
the  very  centre  of  the  enemy's  country,  on  the  very  summit  of  his 


772  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

highest  mountain;  from  its  impregnable  watchtowers,  his  camps  and 
arsenals,  his  columns  and  forts,  are  all  revealed;  within  its  walls  the 
free  life  continues,  while  the  legions  of  Death  and  Pain  and  Despair, 
and  all  the  servile  captains  of  tyrant  Fate,  afford  the  burghers  of  that 
dauntless  city  new  spectacles  of  beauty.  Happy  those  sacred  ramparts, 
thrice  happy  the  dwellers  on  that  all-seeing  eminence.  Honour  to  those 
brave  warriors  who,  through  countless  ages  of  warfare,  have  preserved 
for  us  the  priceless  heritage  of  liberty,  and  have  kept  undefiled  by  sac- 
rilegious invaders  the  home  of  the  unsubdued. 

But  the  beauty  of  Tragedy  does  but  make  visible  a  quality  which,  in 
more  or  less  obvious  shapes,  is  present  always  and  everywhere  in  life. 
In  the  spectacle  of  Death,  in  the  endurance  of  intolerable  pain,  and  in 
the  irrevocableness  of  a  vanished  past,  there  is  a  sacredness,  an  over- 
powering awe,  a  feeling  of  the  vastness,  the  depth,  the  inexhaustible 
mystery  of  existence,  in  which,  as  by  some  strange  marriage  of  pain, 
the  suflerer  is  bound  to  the  world  by  bonds  of  sorrow.  In  these  mo- 
ments of  insight,  we  lose  all  eagerness  of  temporary  desire,  all  strug- 
gling and  striving  for  petty  ends,  all  care  for  the  little  trivial  things 
that,  to  a  superficial  view,  make  up  the  common  life  of  day  by  day;  we 
see,  surrounding  the  narrow  raft  illumined  by  the  flickering  light  of 
human  comradeship,  the  dark  ocean  on  whose  rolling  waves  we  toss 
for  a  brief  hour;  from  the  great  night  without,  a  chill  blast  breaks  in 
upon  our  refuge;  all  the  loneliness  of  humanity  amid  hostile  forces  is 
concentrated  upon  the  individual  soul,  which  must  struggle  alone,  with 
what  of  courage  it  can  command,  against  the  whole  weight  of  a  uni- 
verse that  cares  nothing  for  its  hopes  and  fears.  Victory,  in  this  strug- 
gle with  the  powers  of  darkness,  is  the  true  baptism  into  the  glorious 
company  of  heroes,  the  true  initiation  into  the  overmastering  beauty 
of  human  existence.  From  that  awful  encounter  of  the  soul  with  the 
outer  world,  enunciation,  wisdom,  and  charity  are  born;  and  with 
their  birth  a  new  life  begins.  To  take  into  the  inmost  shrine  of  the 
soul  the  irresistible  forces  whose  puppets  we  seem  to  be — Death  and 
change,  the  irrevocableness  of  the  past,  and  the  powerlessness  of  Man 
before  the  blind  hurry  of  the  universe  from  vanity  to  vanity — to  feel 
these  things  and  know  them  is  to  conquer  them. 

This  is  the  reason   why   the  Past   has   such   magical   power.  The 


BERTRAND  RUSSELL  773 

beauty  of  its  motionless  and  silent  pictures  is  like  the  enchanted  purity 
of  late  autumn,  when  the  leaves,  though  one  breath  would  make  them 
fall,  still  glow  against  the  sky  in  golden  glory.  The  Past  does  not 
change  or  strive;  like  Duncan,  after  life's  fitful  fever  it  sleeps  well; 
what  was  eager  and  grasping,  what  was  petty  and  transitory,  has 
faded  away,  the  things  that  were  beautiful  and  eternal  shine  out  of  it 
like  stars  in  the  night.  Its  beauty,  to  a  soul  not  worthy  of  it,  is  unen- 
durable; but  to  a  soul  which  has  conquered  Fate  it  is  the  key  of 
religion. 

The  life  of  Man,  viewed  outwardly,  is  but  a  small  thing  in  compar- 
ison with  the  forces  of  Nature.  The  slave  is  doomed  to  worship  Time 
and  Fate  and  Death,  because  they  are  greater  than  anything  he  finds 
in  himself,  and  because  all  his  thoughts  are  of  things  which  they  de- 
vour. But,  great  as  they  are,  to  think  of  them  greatly,  to  feel  their 
passionless  splendour,  is  greater  still.  And  such  thought  makes  us  free 
men;  we  no  longer  bow  before  the  inevitable  in  Oriental  subjection, 
but  we  absorb  it,  and  make  it  a  part  of  ourselves.  To  abandon  the 
struggle  for  private  happiness,  to  expel  all  eagerness  of  temporary  de- 
sire, to  burn  with  passion  for  eternal  things — this  is  emancipation,  and 
this  is  the  free  man's  worship.  And  this  liberation  is  effected  by  a  con- 
templation of  Fate ;  for  Fate  itself  is  subdued  by  the  mind  which  leaves 
nothing  to  be  purged  by  the  purifying  fire  of  Time. 

United  with  his  fellow-men  by  the  strongest  of  all  ties,  the  tie  of  a 
common  doom,  the  free  man  finds  that  a  new  vision  is  with  him  al- 
ways, shedding  over  every  daily  task  the  light  of  love.  The  life  of  Man 
is  a  long  march  through  the  night,  surrounded  by  invisible  foes,  tor- 
tured by  weariness  and  pain,  towards  a  goal  that  few  can  hope  to 
reach,  and  where  none  may  tarry  long.  One  by  one,  as  they  march,  our 
comrades  vanish  from  our  sight,  seized  by  the  silent  orders  of  omnip- 
otent Death.  Very  brief  is  the  time  in  which  we  can  help  them,  in 
which  their  happiness  or  misery  is  decided.  Be  it  ours  to  shed  sunshine 
on  their  path,  to  lighten  their  sorrows  by  the  balm  of  sympathy,  to 
give  them  the  pure  joy  of  a  never-tiring  affection,  to  strengthen  failing 
courage,  to  instil  faith  in  hours  of  despair.  Let  us  not  weigh  in  grudg- 
ing scales  their  merits  and  demerits,  but  let  us  think  only  of  their  need 
— of  the  sorrows,  the  difficulties,  perhaps  the  blindnesses,  that  make 


774  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  misery  of  their  lives;  let  us  remember  that  they  are  fellow-sufferers 
in  the  same  darkness,  actors  in  the  same  tragedy  with  ourselves.  And 
so,  when  their  day  is  over,  when  their  good  and  their  evil  have  become 
eternal  by  the  immortality  of  the  past,  be  it  ours  to  feel  that,  where 
they  suffered,  where  they  failed,  no  deed  of  ours  was  the  cause;  but 
wherever  a  spark  of  the  divine  fire  kindled  in  their  hearts,  we  were 
ready  with  encouragement,  with  sympathy,  with  brave  words  in  which 
high  courage  glowed. 

Brief  and  powerless  is  Man's  life;  on  him  and  all  his  race  the  slow, 
sure  doom  falls  pitiless  and  dark.  Blind  to  good  and  evil,  reckless  of 
destruction,  omnipotent  matter  rolls  on  its  relentless  way;  for  Man, 
condemned  to-day  to  lose  his  dearest,  to-morrow  himself  to  pass 
through  the  gate  of  darkness,  it  remains  only  to  cherish,  ere  yet  the 
blow  falls,  the  lofty  thoughts  that  ennoble  his  little  day;  disdaining  the 
coward  terrors  of  the  slave  of  Fate,  to  worship  at  the  shrine  that  his 
own  hands  have  built;  undismayed  by  the  empire  of  chance,  to  pre- 
serve a  mind  free  from  the  wanton  tyranny  that  rules  his  outward  life; 
proudly  defiant  of  the  irresistible  forces  that  tolerate,  for  a  moment, 
his  knowledge  and  his  condemnation,  to  sustain  alone,  a  weary  but 
unyielding  Atlas,  the  world  that  his  own  ideals  have  fashioned  despite 
the  trampling  march  of  unconscious  power. 


KATHERINE   ANNE   PORTER 


COMMENTARY 


Katherine  Anne  Porter  does  not  write  like  Hemingway  or  feel  things 
the  way  he  does,  hut  she  shares  with  him  and  with  a  scattering  of. 
other  American  authors  both  the  will  and  the  ability  to  create  by 
suggestion.  She  makes  us  sense  more  than  she  tells.  The  apparent 
content  oi  her  stories  has  less  dimension  than  her  real  subject  matter. 
Her  very  sentences  and  paragraphs,  reverberating  quietly  in  the  mind, 
have  a  kind  of  echo  value.  Yet  she  never  stoops  to  the  easy  devices  of 
superficial  symbolism  but  writes  always  with  purity  and  directness. 

Another  quality  distinguishing  her  short  stories  from  the  work  of 
many  of  her  fellows  is  that  they  have  been  thought  out  in  advance. 
The  remark  is  not  quite  as  pointless  as  it  sounds.  So  much  contempo- 
rary American  fiction  bears  the  stamp  of  improvisation;  the  writer 
simply  hasn't  worked  hard  enough.  Miss  Porter  calculates  her  effects, 
which  is  not  to  say  that  she  gives  the  effect  of  calculation.  She  wastes 
not  a  word  and  each  word  has  a  purpose.  James  Joyce  had  a  simple 
but  profound  way  of  saying  of  an  author  whose  work  he  was  unable 
to  admire,  "But  it's  not  really  written!"  Miss  Porter's  stories  seem  to 
me  in  this  sense  written:  you  may  not  care  for  them,  but  you  would 
be  hard  put  to  it  to  think  of  any  other  way  in  which  they  could  be 
composed.  They're  final. 

Her  most  finished  work  the  curious  reader  will  End  in  a  collection 
of  three  long  short  stories,  called  Pale  Horse,  Pale  Rider.  They  are  all 
admirable.  When  J  first  read  them  I  thought  the  title  piece  the  best, 
but  a  rereading  convinces  me  that  "Noon  Wine,"  here  included, 
marks  the  high  point  of  Miss  Porter's  superb  art.  "Noon  Wine"  is  the 
kind  of  thing  our  earnest  young  Midwestern  naturalists  would  give 
their  right  arm  to  be  able  to  do  as  Miss  Porter  does.  It  is  a  story 
which,  despite  certain  wry,  humorous  overtones,  has  violence  and 
brutality  as  its  base.  Yet  it  is  not  the  violence  and  brutality  you  re- 
member but  the  characters,  so  simple,  so  perfectly  understood  and 
projected,  so  fatally  linked  by  a  destiny  imposed  upon  them  not  by 
the  patterning  hand  of  Miss  Porter  but  by  the  inarticulate,  inchoate 
drives  within  their  own  hearts.  I  believe  it  to  be  a  masterpiece. 

775 


Noon  Wine 


BY 

KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER 


Time:  1 896-1 905 

Place:  Small  South  Texas  Farm 

The  two  grubby  small  boys  with  tow-colored  hair  who  were  digging 
among  the  ragweed  in  the  front  yard  sat  back  on  their  heels  and  said, 
"Hello,"  when  the  tall  bony  man  with  straw-colored  hair  turned  in  at 
their  gate.  He  did  not  pause  at  the  gate;  it  had  swung  back,  conven- 
iently half  open,  long  ago,  and  was  now  sunk  so  firmly  on  its  broken 
hinges  no  one  thought  of  trying  to  close  it.  He  did  not  even  glance  at 
the  small  boys,  much  less  give  them  good-day.  He  just  clumped  down 
his  big  square  dusty  shoes  one  after  the  other  steadily,  like  a  man  fol- 
lowing a  plow,  as  if  he  knew  the  place  well  and  knew  where  he  was 
going  and  what  he  would  find  there.  Rounding  the  right-hand  corner 
of  the  house  under  the  row  of  chinaberry  trees,  he  walked  up  to  the 
side  porch  where  Mr.  Thompson  was  pushing  a  big  swing  churn  back 
and  forth. 

Mr.  Thompson  was  a  tough  weather-beaten  man  with  stiff  black  hair 
and  a  week's  growth  of  black  whiskers.  He  was  a  noisy  proud  man 
who  held  his  neck  so  straight  his  whole  face  stood  level  with  his 
Adam's  apple,  and  the  whiskers  continued  down  his  neck  and  disap- 
peared into  a  black  thatch  under  his  open  collar.  The  churn  rumbled 
and  swished  like  the  belly  of  a  trotting  horse,  and  Mr.  Thompson 
seemed  somehow  to  be  driving  a  horse  with  one  hand,  reining  it  in 
and  urging  it  forward;  and  every  now  and  then  he  turned  halfway 
around  and  squirted  a  tremendous  spit  of  tobacco  juice  out  over  the 
steps.  The  door  stones  were  brown  and  gleaming  with  fresh  tobacco 

776 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  777 

juice.  Mr.  Thompson  had  been  churning  quite  a  while  and  he  was 
tired  of  it.  He  was  just  fetching  a  mouthful  of  juice  to  squirt  again 
when  the  stranger  came  around  the  corner  and  stopped.  Mr.  Thomp- 
son saw  a  narrow-chested  man  with  blue  eyes  so  pale  they  were  almost 
white,  looking  and  not  looking  at  him  from  a  long  gaunt  face,  under 
white  eyebrows.  Mr.  Thompson  judged  him  to  be  another  of  these 
Irishmen,  by  his  long  upper  lip. 

"Howdy  do,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Thompson  politely,  swinging  his  churn. 

"I  need  work,"  said  the  man,  clearly  enough  but  with  some  kind  of 
[  foreign  accent  Mr.  Thompson  couldn't  place.  It  wasn't  Cajun  and  it 
wasn't  Nigger  and  it  wasn't  Dutch,  so  it  had  him  stumped.  "You  need 
a  man  here?" 

Mr.  Thompson  gave  the  churn  a  great  shove  and  it  swung  back  and 
forth  several  times  on  its  own  momentum.  He  sat  on  the  steps,  shot  his 
quid  into  the  grass,  and  said,  "Set  down.  Maybe  we  can  make  a  deal. 
I  been  kinda  lookin'  round  for  somebody.  I  had  two  niggers  but  they 
got  into  a  cutting  scrape  up  the  creek  last  week,  one  of  'em  dead  now 
and  the  other  in  the  hoosegow  at  Cold  Springs.  Neither  one  of  'em 
worth  killing,  come  right  down  to  it.  So  it  looks  like  I'd  better  get 
somebody.  Where'd  you  work  last?" 

"North  Dakota,"  said  the  man,  folding  himself  down  on  the  other 
end  of  the  steps,  but  not  as  if  he  were  tired.  He  folded  up  and  settled 
|  down  as  if  it  would  be  a  long  time  before  he  got  up  again.  He  never 
had  looked  at  Mr.  Thompson,  but  there  wasn't  anything  sneaking  in 
his  eye,  either.  He  didn't  seem  to  be  looking  anywhere  else.  His  eyes 
sat  in  his  head  and  let  things  pass  by  them.  They  didn't  seem  to  be 
expecting  to  see  anything  worth  looking  at.  Mr.  Thompson  waited  a 
long  time  for  the  man  to  say  something  more,  but  he  had  gone  into  a 
brown  study. 

"North  Dakota,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  trying  to  remember  where 
that  was.  "That's  a  right  smart  distance  oflF,  seems  to  me." 

"I  can  do  everything  on  farm,"  said  the  man;  "cheap.  I  need  work." 

Mr.  Thompson  settled  himself  to  get  down  to  business.  "My  name's 
Thompson,  Mr.  Royal  Earle  Thompson,"  he  said. 

"I'm  Mr.  Helton,"  said  the  man,  "Mr.  Olaf  Helton."  He  did  not 
move. 


778  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Well,  now,"  said  Mr.  Thompson  in  his  most  carrying  voice,  "I 
guess  we'd  better  talk  turkey." 

When  Mr.  Thompson  expected  to  drive  a  bargain  he  always  grew 
very  hearty  and  jovial.  There  was  nothing  wrong  with  him  except  that 
he  hated  like  the  devil  to  pay  wages.  He  said  so  himself.  "You  furnish 
grub  and  a  shack,"  he  said,  "and  then  you  got  to  pay  'em  besides.  It 
ain't  right.  Besides  the  wear  and  tear  on  your  implements,"  he  said, 
"they  just  let  everything  go  to  rack  and  ruin."  So  he  began  to  laugh 
and  shout  his  way  through  the  deal. 

"Now,  what  I  want  to  know  is,  how  much  you  fixing  to  gouge  outa 
me?"  he  brayed,  slapping  his  knee.  After  he  had  kept  it  up  as  long  as 
he  could,  he  quieted  down,  feeling  a  little  sheepish,  and  cut  himself  a 
chew.  Mr.  Helton  was  staring  out  somewhere  between  the  barn  and 
the  orchard,  and  seemed  to  be  sleeping  with  his  eyes  open. 

"I'm  good  worker,"  said  Mr.  Helton  as  from  the  tomb.  "I  get  dollar 
a  day." 

Mr.  Thompson  was  so  shocked  he  forgot  to  start  laughing  again  at 
the  top  of  his  voice  until  it  was  nearly  too  late  to  do  any  good.  "Haws 
haw,"  he  bawled.  "Why,  for  a  dollar  a  day  I'd  hire  out  myself.  What 
kinda  work  is  it  where  they  pay  you  a  dollar  a  day?" 

"Wheatfields,  North  Dakota,"  said  Mr.  Helton,  not  even  smiling. 

Mr.  Thompson  stopped  laughing.  "Well,  this  ain't  any  wheatfield 
by  a  long  shot.  This  is  more  of  a  dairy  farm,"  he  said,  feeling  apol- 
ogetic. "My  wife,  she  was  set  on  a  dairy,  she  seemed  to  like  working 
around  with  cows  and  calves,  so  I  humored  her.  But  it  was  a  mistake," 
he  said.  "I  got  nearly  everything  to  do,  anyhow.  My  wife  ain't  very 
strong.  She's  sick  today,  that's  a  fact.  She's  been  porely  for  the  last  few 
days.  We  plant  a  little  feed,  and  a  corn  patch,  and  there's  the  orchard, 
and  a  few  pigs  and  chickens,  but  our  main  hold  is  the  cows.  Now  just 
speakin'  as  one  man  to  another,  there  ain't  any  money  in  it.  Now  I 
can't  give  you  no  dollar  a  day  because  ackshally  I  don't  make  that 
much  out  of  it.  No,  sir,  we  get  along  on  a  lot  less  than  a  dollar  a  day, 
I'd  say,  if  we  figger  up  everything  in  the  long  run.  Now,  I  paid  seven 
dollars  a  month  to  the  two  niggers,  three-fifty  each,  and  grub,  but 
what  I  say  is,  one  middlin'-good  white  man  ekals  a  whole  passel  of 
niggers  any  day  in  the  week,  so  I'll  give  you  seven  dollars  and  you  eat 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  779 

at  the  table  with  us,  and  you'll  be  treated  like  a  white  man,  as  the  feller 
says " 


"That's  all  right,"  said  Mr.  Helton.  "I  take  it." 

"Well,  now  I  guess  we'll  call  it  a  deal,  hey?"  Mr.  Thompson  jumped 
up  as  if  he  had  remembered  important  business.  "Now,  you  just  take 
hold  of  that  churn  and  give  it  a  few  swings,  will  you,  while  I  ride  to 
town  on  a  coupla  little  errands.  I  ain't  been  able  to  leave  the  place  all 
week.  I  guess  you  know  what  to  do  with  butter  after  you  get  it,  don't 
you?" 

"I  know,"  said  Mr.  Helton  without  turning  his  head.  "I  know  butter 
business."  He  had  a  strange  drawling  voice,  and  even  when  he  spoke 
only  two  words  his  voice  waved  slowly  up  and  down  and  the  emphasis 
was  in  the  wrong  place.  Mr.  Thompson  wondered  what  kind  of  for- 
eigner Mr.  Helton  could  be. 

"Now  just  where  did  you  say  you  worked  last?"  he  asked,  as  if  he 
expected  Mr.  Helton  to  contradict  himself. 

"North  Dakota,"  said  Mr.  Helton. 

"Well,  one  place  is  good  as  another  once  you  get  used  to  it,"  said 
Mr.  Thompson,  amply.  "You're  a  forriner,  ain't  you?" 

"I'm  a  Swede,"  said  Mr.  Helton,  beginning  to  swing  the  churn. 

Mr.  Thompson  let  forth  a  booming  laugh,  as  if  this  was  the  best 
joke  on  somebody  he'd  ever  heard.  "Well,  I'll  be  damned,"  he  said  at 
the  top  of  his  voice.  "A  Swede:  well,  now,  I'm  afraid  you'll  get  pretty 
lonesome  around  here.  I  never  seen  any  Swedes  in  this  neck  of  the 
woods." 

"That's  all  right,"  said  Mr.  Helton.  He  went  on  swinging  the  churn 
as  if  he  had  been  working  on  the  place  for  years. 

"In  fact,  I  might  as  well  tell  you,  you're  practically  the  first  Swede 
I  ever  laid  eyes  on." 

"That's  all  right,"  said  Mr.  Helton. 

Mr.  Thompson  went  into  the  front  room  where  Mrs.  Thompson  was 
lying  down,  with  the  green  shades  drawn.  She  had  a  bowl  of  water  by 
her  on  the  table  and  a  wet  cloth  over  her  eyes.  She  took  the  cloth  off 
at  the  sound  of  Mr.  Thompson's  boots  and  said,  "What's  all  the  noise 
out  there?  Who  is  it?" 


780  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

"Got  a  feller  out  there  says  he's  a  Swede,  Ellie,"  said  Mr.  Thompson; 
"says  he  knows  how  to  make  butter." 

"I  hope  it  turns  out  to  be  the  truth,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson.  "Looks 
like  my  head  never  will  get  any  better." 

"Don't  you  worry,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "You  fret  too  much.  Now 
I'm  gointa  ride  into  town  and  get  a  little  order  of  groceries." 

"Don't  you  linger,  now,  Mr.  Thompson,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson. 
"Don't  go  to  the  hotel."  She  meant  the  saloon;  the  proprietor  also  had 
rooms  for  rent  upstairs. 

"Just  a  coupla  little  toddies,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  laughing  loudly, 
"never  hurt  anybody." 

"I  never  took  a  dram  in  my  life,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  "and  what's 
more  I  never  will." 

"I  wasn't  talking  about  the  womenfolks,"  said  Mr.  Thompson. 

The  sound  of  the  swinging  churn  rocked  Mrs.  Thompson  first  into 
a  gentle  doze,  then  a  deep  drowse  from  which  she  waked  suddenly 
knowing  that  the  swinging  had  stopped  a  good  while  ago.  She  sat  up 
shading  her  weak  eyes  from  the  flat  strips  of  late  summer  sunlight  be- 
tween the  sill  and  the  lowered  shades.  There  she  was,  thank  God,  still 
alive,  with  supper  to  cook  but  no  churning  on  hand,  and  her  head  still 
bewildered,  but  easy.  Slowly  she  realized  she  had  been  hearing  a  new 
sound  even  in  her  sleep.  Somebody  was  playing  a  tune  on  the  har- 
monica, not  merely  shrilling  up  and  down  making  a  sickening  noise, 
but  really  playing  a  pretty  tune,  merry  and  sad. 

She  went  out  through  the  kitchen,  stepped  off  the  porch,  and  stood 
facing  the  east,  shading  her  eyes.  When  her  vision  cleared  and  settled, 
she  saw  a  long,  pale-haired  man  in  blue  jeans  sitting  in  the  doorway 
of  the  hired  man's  shack,  tilted  back  in  a  kitchen  chair,  blowing  away 
at  the  harmonica  with  his  eyes  shut.  Mrs.  Thompson's  heart  fluttered 
and  sank.  Heavens,  he  looked  lazy  and  worthless,  he  did,  now.  First  a 
lot  of  no-count  fiddling  darkies  and  then  a  no-count  white  man.  It 
was  just  like  Mr.  Thompson  to  take  on  that  kind.  She  did  wish  he 
would  be  more  considerate,  and  take  a  little  trouble  with  his  business. 
She  wanted  to  believe  in  her  husband,  and  there  were  too  many  times 
when  she  couldn't.  She  wanted  to  believe  that  tomorrow,  or  at  least  the 
day  after,  life,  such  a  battle  at  best,  was  going  to  be  better. 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  781 

She  walked  past  the  shack  without  glancing  aside,  stepping  care- 
fully, bent  at  the  waist  because  of  the  nagging  pain  in  her  side,  and 
went  to  the  springhouse,  trying  to  harden  her  mind  to  speak  very 
plainly  to  that  new  hired  man  if  he  had  not  done  his  work. 

The  milk  house  was  only  another  shack  of  weather-beaten  boards 
nailed  together  hastily  years  before  because  they  needed  a  milk  house;  it 
was  meant  to  be  temporary,  and  it  was;  already  shapeless,  leaning  this 
way  and  that  over  a  perpetual  cool  trickle  of  water  that  fell  from  a 
little  grot,  almost  choked  with  pallid  ferns.  No  one  else  in  the  whole 
countryside  had  such  a  spring  on  his  land.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Thompson 
felt  they  had  a  fortune  in  that  spring,  if  ever  they  got  around  to  doing 
anything  with  it. 

Rickety  wooden  shelves  clung  at  hazard  in  the  square  around  the 
small  pool  where  the  larger  pails  of  milk  and  butter  stood,  fresh  and 
sweet  in  the  cold  water.  One  hand  supporting  her  flat,  pained  side,  the 
other  shading  her  eyes,  Mrs.  Thompson  leaned  over  and  peered  into 
the  pails.  The  cream  had  been  skimmed  and  set  aside,  there  was  a  rich 
roll  of  butter,  the  wooden  molds  and  shallow  pans  had  been  scrubbed 
and  scalded  for  the  first  time  in  who  knows  when,  the  barrel  was  full 
of  buttermilk  ready  for  the  pigs  and  the  weanling  calves,  the  hard 
packed-dirt  floor  had  been  swept  smooth.  Mrs.  Thompson  straightened 
up  again,  smiling  tenderly.  She  had  been  ready  to  scold  him,  a  poor 
man  who  needed  a  job,  who  had  just  come  there  and  who  might  not 
have  been  expected  to  do  things  properly  at  first.  There  was  nothing 
she  could  do  to  make  up  for  the  injustice  she  had  done  him  in  her 
thoughts  but  to  tell  him  how  she  appreciated  his  good  clean  work, 
finished  already,  in  no  time  at  all.  She  ventured  near  the  door  of  the 
shack  with  her  careful  steps ;  Mr.  Helton  opened  his  eyes,  stopped  play- 
ing, and  brought  his  chair  down  straight,  but  did  not  look  at  her,  or 
get  up.  She  was  a  little  frail  woman  with  long  thick  brown  hair  in  a 
braid,  a  suffering  patient  mouth  and  diseased  eyes  which  cried  easily. 
She  wove  her  fingers  into  an  eyeshade,  thumbs  on  temples,  and,  wink- 
ing her  tearful  lids,  said  with  a  polite  little  manner,  "Howdy  do,  sir. 
I'm  Miz  Thompson,  and  I  wanted  to  tell  you  I  think  you  did  real  well 
in  the  milk  house,  It's  always  been  a  hard  place  to  keep." 

He  said,  "That's  all  right,"  in  a  slow  voice,  without  moving. 


782  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Mrs.  Thompson  waited  a  moment.  "That's  a  pretty  tune  you're  play- 
ing. Most  folks  don't  seem  to  get  much  music  out  of  a  harmonica." 

Mr.  Helton  sat  humped  over,  long  legs  sprawling,  his  spine  in  a 
bow,  running  his  thumb  over  the  square  mouth-stops;  except  for  his 
moving  hand  he  might  have  been  asleep.  The  harmonica  was  a  big 
shiny  new  one,  and  Mrs.  Thompson,  her  gaze  wandering  about, 
counted  five  others,  all  good  and  expensive,  standing  in  a  row  on  the 
shelf  beside  his  cot.  "He  must  carry  them  around  in  his  jumper 
pocket,"  she  thought,  and  noted  there  was  not  a  sign  of  any  other  pos- 
session lying  about.  "I  see  you're  mighty  fond  of  music,"  she  said.  "We 
used  to  have  an  old  accordion,  and  Mr.  Thompson  could  play  it  right 
smart,  but  the  little  boys  broke  it  up." 

Mr.  Helton  stood  up  rather  suddenly,  the  chair  clattered  under  him, 
his  knees  straightened  though  his  shoulders  did  not,  and  he  looked  at 
the  floor  as  if  he  were  listening  carefully.  "You  know  how  little  boys 
are,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson.  "You'd  better  set  them  harmonicas  on  a 
high  shelf  or  they'll  be  after  them.  They're  great  hands  for  getting  into 
things.  I  try  to  learn  'em,  but  it  don't  do  much  good." 

Mr.  Helton,  in  one  wide  gesture  of  his  long  arms,  swept  his  har- 
monicas up  against  his  chest,  and  from  there  transferred  them  in  a 
row  to  the  ledge  where  the  roof  joined  to  the  wall.  He  pushed  them 
back  almost  out  of  sight. 

"That'll  do,  maybe,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson.  "Now  I  wonder,"  she 
said,  turning  and  closing  her  eyes  helplessly  against  the  stronger  west- 
ern light,  "I  wonder  what  became  of  them  little  tads.  I  can't  keep  up 
with  them."  She  had  a  way  of  speaking  about  her  children  as  if  they 
were  rather  troublesome  nephews  on  a  prolonged  visit. 

"Down  by  the  creek,"  said  Mr.  Helton,  in  his  hollow  voice.  Mrs. 
Thompson,  pausing  confusedly,  decided  he  had  answered  her  ques- 
tion. He  stood  in  silent  patience,  not  exactly  waiting  for  her  to  go, 
perhaps,  but  pretty  plainly  not  waiting  for  anything  else.  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son was  perfectly  accustomed  to  all  kinds  of  men  full  of  all  kinds  of 
cranky  ways.  The  point  was,  to  find  out  just  how  Mr.  Helton's  crank- 
iness was  different  from  any  other  man's,  and  then  get  used  to  it,  and 
let  him  feel  at  home.  Her  father  had  been  cranky,  her  brothers  and 
uncles  had  all  been  set  in  their  ways  and  none  of  them  alike;  and  every 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  783 

hired  man  she'd  ever  seen  had  quirks  and  crotchets  o£  his  own.  Now 
here  was  Mr.  Helton,  who  was  a  Swede,  who  wouldn't  talk,  and  who 
played  the  harmonica  besides. 

"They'll  be  needing  something  to  eat,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson  in  a 
vague  friendly  way,  "pretty  soon.  Now  I  wonder  what  I  ought  to  be 
thinking  about  for  supper  ?  Now  what  do  you  like  to  eat,  Mr.  Helton  ? 
We  always  have  plenty  of  good  butter  and  milk  and  cream,  that's  a 
blessing.  Mr.  Thompson  says  we  ought  to  sell  all  of  it,  but  I  say  my 
family  comes  first."  Her  little  face  went  all  out  of  shape  in  a  pained 
blind  smile. 

"I  eat  anything,"  said  Mr.  Helton,  his  words  wandering  up  and 
down. 

He  can't  talk,  for  one  thing,  thought  Mrs.  Thompson;  it's  a  shame 
to  keep  at  him  when  he  don't  know  the  language  good.  She  took  a 
slow  step  away  from  the  shack,  looking  back  over  her  shoulder.  "We 
usually  have  cornbread  except  on  Sundays,"  she  told  him.  "I  suppose  in 
your  part  of  the  country  you  don't  get  much  good  cornbread." 

Not  a  word  from  Mr.  Helton.  She  saw  from  her  eye-corner  that  he 
had  sat  down  again,  looking  at  his  harmonica,  chair  tilted.  She  hoped 
he  would  remember  it  was  getting  near  milking  time.  As  she  moved 
away,  he  started  playing  again,  the  same  tune. 

Milking  time  came  and  went.  Mrs.  Thompson  saw  Mr.  Helton  go- 
ing back  and  forth  betwen  the  cow  barn  and  the  milk  house.  He 
swung  along  in  an  easy  lope,  shoulders  bent,  head  hanging,  the  big 
buckets  balancing  like  a  pair  of  scales  at  the  ends  of  his  bony  arms. 
Mr.  Thompson  rode  in  from  town  sitting  straighter  than  usual,  chin 
in,  a  towsaek  full  of  supplies  swung  behind  the  saddle.  After  a  trip  to 
the  barn,  he  came  into  the  kitchen  full  of  good  will,  and  gave  Mrs. 
Thompson  a  hearty  smack  on  the  cheek  after  dusting  her  face  off  with 
his  tough  whiskers.  He  had  been  to  the  hotel,  that  was  plain.  "Took  a 
look  around  the  premises,  Ellie,"  he  shouted.  "That  Swede  sure  is 
grinding  out  the  labor.  But  he  is  the  closest  mouthed  feller  I  ever  met 
up  with  in  all  my  days.  Looks  like  he's  scared  he'll  crack  his  jaw  if  he 
opens  his  front  teeth." 

Mrs.  Thompson  was  stirring  up  a  big  bowl  of  buttermilk  corn- 
bread.  "You  smell  like  a  toper,  Mr.  Thompson,"  she  said  with  perfect 


784  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

dignity.  "I  wish  you'd  get  one  of  the  little  boys  to  bring  me  in  an  extra 
load  of  firewood.  I'm  thinking  about  baking  a  batch  of  cookies  tomor- 
row." 

Mr.  Thompson,  all  at  once  smelling  the  liquor  on  his  own  breath, 
sneaked  out,  justly  rebuked,  and  brought  in  the  firewood  himself.  Arthur 
and  Herbert,  grubby  from  thatched  head  to  toes,  from  skin  to  shirt, 
came  stamping  in  yelling  for  supper.  "Go  wash  your  faces  and  comb 
your  hair,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  automatically.  They  retired  to  the 
porch.  Each  one  put  his  hand  under  the  pump  and  wet  his  forelock, 
combed  it  down  with  his  fingers,  and  returned  at  once  to  the  kitchen, 
where  all  the  fair  prospects  of  life  were  centered.  Mrs.  Thompson  set 
an  extra  plate  and  commanded  Arthur,  the  eldest,  eight  years  old,  to 
call  Mr.  Helton  for  supper. 

Arthur,  without  moving  from  the  spot,  bawled  like  a  bull  calf, 
"Saaaaaay,  Hellllllton,  suuuuuupper's  ready!"  and  added  in  a  lower 
voice,  "You  big  Swede!'* 

"Listen  to  me,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  "that's  no  way  to  act.  Now  you 
go  out  there  and  ask  him  decent,  or  I'll  get  your  daddy  to  give  you  a 
good  licking." 

Mr.  Helton  loomed,  long  and  gloomy,  in  the  doorway.  "Sit  right 
there,"  boomed  Mr.  Thompson,  waving  his  arm.  Mr.  Helton  swung  his 
square  shoes  across  the  kitchen  in  two  steps,  slumped  onto  the  bench 
and  sat.  Mr.  Thompson  occupied  his  chair  at  the  head  of  the  table,  the 
two  boys  scrambled  into  place  opposite  Mr.  Helton,  and  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son sat  at  the  end  nearest  the  stove.  Mrs.  Thompson  clasped  her  hands, 
bowed  her  head  and  said  aloud  hastily,  "Lord,  for  all  these  and  Thy 
other  blessings  we  thank  Thee  in  Jesus'  name,  amen,"  trying  to  finish 
before  Herbert's  rusty  little  paw  reached  the  nearest  dish.  Otherwise 
she  would  be  duty-bound  to  send  him  away  from  the  table,  and  grow- 
ing children  need  their  meals.  Mr.  Thompson  and  Arthur  always 
waited,  but  Herbert,  aged  six,  was  too  young  to  take  training  yet. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Thompson  tried  to  engage  Mr.  Helton  in  conversation, 
but  it  was  a  failure.  They  tried  first  the  weather,  and  then  the  crops, 
and  then  the  cows,  but  Mr.  Helton  simply  did  not  reply.  Mr.  Thomp- 
son then  told  something  funny  he  had  seen  in  town.  It  was  about  some 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  785 

of  the  other  old  grangers  at  the  hotel,  friends  of  his,  giving  beer  to  a 
goat,  and  the  goat's  subsequent  behavior.  Mr.  Helton  did  not  seem  to 
hear.  Mrs.  Thompson  laughed  dutifully,  but  she  didn't  think  it  was 
very  funny.  She  had  heard  it  often  before,  though  Mr.  Thompson,  each 
time  he  told  it,  pretended  it  had  happened  that  self-same  day.  It  must 
have  happened  years  ago  if  it  ever  happened  at  all,  and  it  had  never 
been  a  story  that  Mrs.  Thompson  thought  suitable  for  mixed  com- 
pany. The  whole  thing  came  of  Mr.  Thompson's  weakness  for  a  dram 
too  much  now  and  then,  though  he  voted  for  local  option  at  every 
election.  She  passed  the  food  to  Mr.  Helton,  who  took  a  helping  of 
everything,  but  not  much,  not  enough  to  keep  him  up  to  his  full 
powers  if  he  expected  to  go  on  working  the  way  he  had  started. 

At  last,  he  took  a  fair-sized  piece  of  cornbread,  wiped  his  plate  up  as 
clean  as  if  it  had  been  licked  by  a  hound  dog,  stuffed  his  mouth  full, 
and,  still  chewing,  slid  off  the  bench  and  started  for  the  door. 

"Good  night,  Mr.  Helton,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  and  the  other 
Thompsons  took  it  up  in  a  scattered  chorus.  "Good  night,  Mr.  Helton!" 

"Good  night,"  said  Mr.  Helton's  wavering  voice  grudgingly  from  the 
darkness. 

"Gude  not,"  said  Arthur,  imitating  Mr.  Helton. 

"Gude  not,"  said  Herbert,  the  copy-cat. 

"You  don't  do  it  right,"  said  Arthur.  "Now  listen  to  me.  Guuuuuude 
naht,"  and  he  ran  a  hollow  scale  in  a  luxury  of  successful  impersona- 
tion. Herbert  almost  went  into  a  fit  with  joy. 

"Now  you  stop  that,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson.  "He  can't  help  the  way 
he  talks.  You  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourselves,  both  of  you,  making 
fun  of  a  poor  stranger  like  that.  How'd  you  like  to  be  a  stranger  in  a 
strange  land?" 

"I'd  like  it,"  said  Arthur.  "I  think  it  would  be  fun." 

"They're  both  regular  heathens,  Ellie,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "Just 
plain  ignoramuses."  He  turned  the  face  of  awful  fatherhood  upon  his 
young.  "You're  both  going  to  get  sent  to  school  next  year,  and  that'll 
knock  some  sense  into  you." 

"I'm  going  to  git  sent  to  the  'formatory  when  I'm  old  enough,"  piped 
up  Herbert.  "That's  where  I'm  goin'." 


786  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"Oh,  you  are,  are  you?"  asked  Mr.  Thompson.  "Who  says  so?" 

"The  Sunday  School  Superintendent,"  said  Herbert,  a  bright  boy 
showing  off. 

"You  see?"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  staring  at  his  wife.  "What  did  I 
tell  you?"  He  became  a  hurricane  of  wrath.  "Get  to  bed,  you  two," 
he  roared  until  his  Adam's  apple  shuddered.  "Get  now  before  I  take 
the  hide  off  you!"  They  got,  and  shortly  from  their  attic  bedroom  the 
sounds  of  scuffling  and  snoring  and  giggling  and  growling  filled  the 
house  and  shook  the  kitchen  ceiling. 

Mrs.  Thompson  held  her  head  and  said  in  a  small  uncertain  voice, 
"It's  no  use  picking  on  them  when  they're  so  young  and  tender.  I 
can't  stand  it." 

"My  goodness,  Ellie,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "we've  got  to  raise  'em. 
We  can't  just  let  'em  grow  up  hog  wild." 

She  went  on  in  another  tone.  "That  Mr.  Helton  seems  all  right,  even 
if  he  can't  be  made  to  talk.  Wonder  how  he  comes  to  be  so  far  from 
home." 

"Like  I  said,  he  isn't  no  whamper-jaw,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "but 
he  sure  knows  how  to  lay  out  the  work.  I  guess  that's  the  main  thing 
around  here.  Country's  full  of  fellers  trampin'  round  looking  for 
work." 

Mrs.  Thompson  was  gathering  up  the  dishes.  She  now  gathered  up 
Mr.  Thompson's  plate  from  under  his  chin.  "To  tell  you  the  honest 
truth,"  she  remarked,  "I  think  it's  a  mighty  good  change  to  have  a 
man  round  the  place  who  knows  how  to  work  and  keep  his  mouth 
shut.  Means  he'll  keep  out  of  our  business.  Not  that  we've  got  any- 
thing to  hide,  but  it's  convenient." 

"That's  a  fact,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "Haw,  haw,"  he  shouted  sud- 
denly. "Means  you  can  do  all  the  talking,  huh?" 

"The  only  thing,"  went  on  Mrs.  Thompson,  "is  this:  he  don't  eat 
hearty  enough  to  suit  me.  I  like  to  see  a  man  set  down  and  relish  a 
good  meal.  My  granma  used  to  say  it  was  no  use  putting  dependence 
on  a  man  who  won't  set  down  and  make  out  his  dinner.  I  hope  it 
won't  be  that  way  this  time." 

"Tell  you  the  truth,  Ellie,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  picking  his  teeth 
with  a  fork  and  leaning  back  in  the  best  of  good  humors,  "I  always 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  787 

thought  your  granma  was  a  ter'ble  ole  fool.  She'd  just  say  the  first 
thing  that  popped  into  her  head  and  call  it  God's  wisdom." 

"My  granma  wasn't  anybody's  fool.  Nine  times  out  of  ten  she  knew 
what  she  was  talking  about.  I  always  say,  the  first  thing  you  think  is 
the  best  thing  you  can  say." 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  going  into  another  shout,  "you're  so 
zee fined  about  that  goat  story,  you  just  try  speaking  out  in  mixed 
comp'ny  sometime!  You  just  try  it.  S'pose  you  happened  to  be  thinking 
about  a  hen  and  a  rooster,  hey?  I  reckon  you'd  shock  the  Babtist 
preacher!"  He  gave  her  a  good  pinch  on  her  thin  little  rump.  "No 
more  meat  on  you  than  a  rabbit,"  he  said,  fondly.  "Now  I  like  'em 
cornfed." 

Mrs.  Thompson  looked  at  him  open-eyed  and  blushed.  She  could 
see  better  by  lamplight.  "Why,  Mr.  Thompson,  sometimes  I  think 
you're  the  evilest-minded  man  that  ever  lived."  She  took  a  handful  of 
hair  on  the  crown  of  his  head  and  gave  it  a  good,  slow  pull.  "That's 
to  show  you  how  it  feels,  pinching  so  hard  when  you're  supposed  to 
be  playing,"  she  said,  gendy. 

In  spite  of  his  situation  in  life,  Mr.  Thompson  had  never  been  able 
to  outgrow  his  deep  conviction  that  running  a  dairy  and  chasing  after 
chickens  was  woman's  work.  He  was  fond  of  saying  that  he  could 
plow  a  furrow,  cut  sorghum,  shuck  corn,  handle  a  team,  build  a  corn 
crib,  as  well  as  any  man.  Buying  and  selling,  too,  were  man's  work. 
Twice  a  week  he  drove  the  spring  wagon  to  market  with  the  fresh 
butter,  a  few  eggs,  fruits  in  their  proper  season,  sold  them,  pocketed 
the  change,  and  spent  it  as  seemed  best,  being  careful  not  to  dig  into 
Mrs.  Thompson's  pin  money. 

But  from  the  first  the  cows  worried  him,  coming  up  regularly  twice 
a  day  to  be  milked,  standing  there  reproaching  him  with  their  smug 
female  faces.  Calves  worried  him,  fighting  the  rope  and  strangling 
themselves  until  their  eyes  bulged,  trying  to  get  at  the  teat.  Wrestling 
with  a  calf  unmanned  him,  like  having  to  change  a  baby's  diaper.  Milk 
worried  him,  coming  bitter  sometimes,  drying  up,  turning  sour.  Hens 
worried  him,  cackling,  clucking,  hatching  out  when  you  least  expected 
it  and  leading  their  broods  into  the  barnyard  where  the  horses  could 


788  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

step  on  them,  dying  of  roup  and  wryneck  and  getting  plagues  of 
chicken  lice;  laying  eggs  all  over  God's  creation  so  that  half  of  them 
were  spoiled  before  a  man  could  find  them,  in  spite  of  a  rack  of  nests 
Mrs.  Thompson  had  set  out  for  them  in  the  feed  room.  Hens  were  a 
blasted  nuisance. 

Slopping  hogs  was  hired  man's  work,  in  Mr.  Thompson's  opinion. 
Killing  hogs  was  a  job  for  the  boss,  but  scraping  them  and  cutting 
them  up  was  for  the  hired  man  again;  and  again  woman's  proper 
work  was  dressing  meat,  smoking,  pickling,  and  making  lard  and  sau- 
sage. All  his  carefully  limited  fields  of  activity  were  related  somehow 
to  Mr.  Thompson's  feeling  for  the  appearance  of  things,  his  own  ap- 
pearance in  the  sight  of  God  and  man.  "It  don't  loo\  right,"  was  his 
final  reason  for  not  doing  anything  he  did  not  wish  to  do. 

It  was  his  dignity  and  his  reputation  that  he  cared  about,  and  there 
were  only  a  few  kinds  of  work  manly  enough  for  Mr.  Thompson  to 
undertake  with  his  own  hands.  Mrs.  Thompson,  to  whom  so  many 
forms  of  work  would  have  been  becoming,  had  simply  gone  down  on 
him  early.  He  saw,  after  a  while,  how  short-sighted  it  had  been  of  him 
to  expect  much  from  Mrs.  Thompson;  he  had  fallen  in  love  with  her 
delicate  waist  and  lace-trimmed  petticoats  and  big  blue  eyes,  and, 
though  all  those  charms  had  disappeared,  she  had  in  the  meantime 
become  Ellie  to  him,  not  at  all  the  same  person  as  Miss  Ellen  Bridges, 
popular  Sunday  School  teacher  in  the  Mountain  City  First  Baptist 
Church,  but  his  dear  wife,  Ellie,  who  was  not  strong.  Deprived  as  he 
was,  however,  of  the  main  support  in  life  which  a  man  might  expect 
in  marriage,  he  had  almost  without  knowing  it  resigned  himself  to 
failure.  Head  erect,  a  prompt  payer  of  taxes,  yearly  subscriber  to  the 
preacher's  salary,  land  owner  and  father  of  a  family,  employer,  a  hearty 
good  fellow  among  men,  Mr.  Thompson  knew,  without  putting  it  into 
words,  that  he  had  been  going  steadily  down  hill.  God  amighty,  it 
did  look  like  somebody  around  the  place  might  take  a  rake  in  hand 
now  and  then  and  clear  up  the  clutter  around  the  barn  and  the  kitchen 
steps.  The  wagon  shed  was  so  full  of  broken-down  machinery  and 
ragged  harness  and  old  wagon  wheels  and  battered  milk  pails  and  rot- 
ting lumber  you  could  hardly  drive  in  there  anv  more.  Not  a  soul  on 
the  place  would  raise  a  hand  to  it,  and  as  for  him,  he  had  all  he  could 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  789 

do  with  his  regular  work.  He  would  sometimes  in  the  slack  season  sit 
for  hours  worrying  about  it,  squirting  tobacco  on  the  ragweeds  grow- 
ing in  a  thicket  against  the  wood  pile,  wondering  what  a  fellow  could 
do,  handicapped  as  he  was.  He  looked  forward  to  the  boys  growing 
up  soon;  he  was  going  to  put  them  through  the  mill  just  as  his  own 
father  had  done  with  him  when  he  was  a  boy;  they  were  going  to 
learn  how  to  take  hold  and  run  the  place  right.  He  wasn't  going  to 
overdo  it,  but  those  two  boys  were  going  to  earn  their  salt,  or  he'd 
know  why.  Great  big  lubbers  sitting  around  whittling!  Mr.  Thompson 
sometimes  grew  quite  enraged  with  them,  when  imagining  their  pos- 
sible future,  big  lubbers  sitting  around  whittling  or  thinking  about 
fishing  trips.  Well,  he'd  put  a  stop  to  that,  mighty  damn  quick. 

As  the  seasons  passed,  and  Mr.  Helton  took  hold  more  and  more, 
Mr.  Thompson  began  to  relax  in  his  mind  a  little.  There  seemed  to 
be  nothing  the  fellow  couldn't  do,  all  in  the  day's  work  and  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course.  He  got  up  at  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  boiled  his  own 
coffee  and  fried  his  own  bacon  and  was  out  in  the  cow  lot  before  Mr. 
Thompson  had  even  begun  to  yawn,  stretch,  groan,  roar  and  thump 
around  looking  for  his  jeans.  He  milked  the  cows,  kept  the  milk 
house,  and  churned  the  butter;  rounded  the  hens  up  and  somehow 
persuaded  them  to  lay  in  the  nests,  not  under  the  house  and  behind 
the  haystacks;  he  fed  them  regularly  and  they  hatched  out  until  you 
couldn't  set  a  foot  down  for  them.  Little  by  little  the  piles  of  trash 
around  the  barns  and  house  disappeared.  He  carried  buttermilk  and 
corn  to  the  hogs,  and  curried  cockleburs  out  of  the  horses'  manes.  He 
was  gentle  with  the  calves,  if  a  little  grim  with  the  cows  and  hens; 
judging  by  his  conduct,  Mr.  Helton  had  never  heard  of  the  difference 
between  man's  and  woman's  work  on  a  farm. 

In  the  second  year,  he  showed  Mr.  Thompson  the  picture  of  a  cheese 
press  in  a  mail  order  catalogue,  and  said,  "This  is  a  good  thing.  You 
buy  this,  I  make  cheese."  The  press  was  bought  and  Mr.  Helton  did 
make  cheese,  and  it  was  sold,  along  with  the  increased  butter  and  the 
crates  of  eggs.  Sometimes  Mr.  Thompson  felt  a  little  contemptuous 
of  Mr.  Helton's  ways.  It  did  seem  kind  of  picayune  for  a  man  to  go 
around  picking  up  half  a  dozen  ears  of  corn  that  had  fallen  off  the 
wagon  on  the  way  from  the  field,  gathering  up  fallen  fruit  to  feed  to 


790  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  pigs,  storing  up  old  nails  and  stray  parts  of  machinery,  spending 
good  time  stamping  a  fancy  pattern  on  the  butter  before  it  went  to 
market.  Mr.  Thompson,  sitting  up  high  on  the  spring-wagon  seat, 
with  the  decorated  butter  in  a  five-gallon  lard  can  wrapped  in  wet 
towsack,  driving  to  town,  chirruping  to  the  horses  and  snapping  the 
reins  over  their  backs,  sometimes  thought  that  Mr.  Helton  was  a  pretty 
meeching  sort  of  fellow;  but  he  never  gave  way  to  these  feelings,  he 
knew  a  good  thing  when  he  had  it.  It  was  a  fact  the  hogs  were  in  bet- 
ter shape  and  sold  for  more  money.  It  was  a  fact  that  Mr.  Thompson 
stopped  buying  feed,  Mr.  Helton  managed  the  crops  so  well.  When 
beef-  and  hog-slaughtering  time  came,  Mr.  Helton  knew  how  to  save 
the  scraps  that  Mr.  Thompson  had  thrown  away,  and  wasn't  above 
scraping  guts  and  filling  them  with  sausages  that  he  made  by  his  own 
methods.  In  all,  Mr.  Thompson  had  no  grounds  for  complaint.  In  the 
third  year,  he  raised  Mr.  Helton's  wages,  though  Mr.  Helton  had  not 
asked  for  a  raise.  The  fourth  year,  when  Mr.  Thompson  was  not  only 
out  of  debt  but  had  a  little  cash  in  the  bank,  he  raised  Mr.  Helton's 
wages  again,  two  dollars  and  a  half  a  month  each  time. 

"The  man's  worth  it,  Ellie,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  in  a  glow  of  self- 
justification  for  his  extravagance.  "He's  made  this  place  pay,  and  I 
want  him  to  know  I  appreciate  it." 

Mr.  Helton's  silence,  the  pallor  of  his  eyebrows  and  hair,  his  long, 
glum  jaw  and  eyes  that  refused  to  see  anything,  even  the  work  under 
his  hands,  had  grown  perfectly  familiar  to  the  Thompsons.  At  first, 
Mrs.  Thompson  complained  a  little.  "It's  like  sitting  down  at  the  table 
with  a  disembodied  spirit,"  she  said.  "You'd  think  he'd  find  something 
to  say,  sooner  or  later." 

"Let  him  alone,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "When  he  gets  ready  to  talk, 
he'll  talk." 

The  years  passed,  and  Mr.  Helton  never  got  ready  to  talk.  After  his 
work  was  finished  for  the  day,  he  would  come  up  from  the  barn  or 
the  milk  house  or  the  chicken  house,  swinging  his  lantern,  his  big 
shoes  clumping  like  pony  hoofs  on  the  hard  path.  They,  sitting  in  the 
kitchen  in  the  winter,  or  on  the  back  porch  in  summer,  would  hear 
him  drag  out  his  wooden  chair,  hear  the  creak  of  it  tilted  back,  and 
then  for  a  little  while  he  would  play  his  single  tune  on  one  or  another 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  791 

of  his  harmonicas.  The  harmonicas  were  in  different  keys,  some  lower 
and  sweeter  than  the  others,  but  the  same  changeless  tune  went  on,  a 
strange  tune,  with  sudden  turns  in  it,  night  after  night,  and  some- 
times even  in  the  afternoons  when  Mr.  Helton  sat  down  to  catch  his 
breath.  At  first  the  Thompsons  liked  it  very  much,  and  always  stopped 
to  listen.  Later  there  came  a  time  when  they  were  fairly  sick  of  it,  and 
began  to  wish  to  each  other  that  he  would  learn  a  new  one.  At  last 
they  did  not  hear  it  any  more,  it  was  as  natural  as  the  sound  of  the 
wind  rising  in  the  evenings,  or  the  cows  lowing,  or  their  own  voices. 

Mrs.  Thompson  pondered  now  and  then  over  Mr.  Helton's  soul.  He 
didn't  seem  to  be  a  church-goer,  and  worked  straight  through  Sunday 
as  if  it  were  any  common  day  of  the  week.  "I  think  we  ought  to  invite 
him  to  go  to  hear  Dr.  Martin,"  she  told  Mr.  Thompson.  "It  isn't  very 
Christian  of  us  not  to  ask  him.  He's  not  a  forward  kind  of  man.  He'd 
wait  to  be  asked." 

"Let  him  alone,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "The  way  I  look  at  it,  his 
religion  is  every  man's  own  business.  Besides,  he  ain't  got  any  Sunday 
clothes.  He  wouldn't  want  to  go  to  church  in  them  jeans  and  jumpers 
of  his.  I  don't  know  what  he  does  with  his  money.  He  certainly  don't 
spend  it  foolishly." 

Still,  once  the  notion  got  into  her  head,  Mrs.  Thompson  could  not 
rest  until  she  invited  Mr.  Helton  to  go  to  church  with  the  family  next 
Sunday.  He  was  pitching  hay  into  neat  little  piles  in  the  field  back  of 
the  orchard.  Mrs.  Thompson  put  on  smoked  glasses  and  a  sunbonnet 
and  walked  all  the  way  down  there  to  speak  to  him.  He  stopped  and 
leaned  on  his  pitchfork,  listening,  and  for  a  moment  Mrs.  Thompson 
was  almost  frightened  at  his  face.  The  pale  eyes  seemed  to  glare  past 
her,  the  eyebrows  frowned,  the  long  jaw  hardened.  "I  got  work,"  he 
said  bluntly,  and  lifting  his  pitchfork  he  turned  from  her  and  began 
to  toss  the  hay.  Mrs.  Thompson,  her  feelings  hurt,  walked  back  think- 
ing that  by  now  she  should  be  used  to  Mr.  Helton's  ways,  but  it  did 
seem  like  a  man,  even  a  foreigner,  could  be  just  a  little  polite  when 
you  gave  him  a  Christian  invitation.  "He's  not  polite,  that's  the  only 
thing  I've  got  against  him,"  she  said  to  Mr.  Thompson.  "He  just  can't 
seem  to  behave  like  other  people.  You'd  think  he  had  a  grudge  against 
the  world,"  she  said.  "I  sometimes  don't  know  what  to  make  of  it." 


792  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

In  the  second  year  something  had  happened  that  made  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son uneasy,  the  kind  of  thing  she  could  not  put  into  words,  hardly 
into  thoughts,  and  if  she  had  tried  to  explain  to  Mr.  Thompson  it 
would  have  sounded  worse  than  it  was,  or  not  bad  enough.  It  was  that 
kind  of  queer  thing  that  seems  to  be  giving  a  warning,  and  yet,  nearly 
always  nothing  comes  of  it.  It  was  on  a  hot,  still  spring  day,  and  Mrs. 
Thompson  had  been  down  to  the  garden  patch  to  pull  some  new  car- 
rots and  green  onions  and  string  beans  for  dinner.  As  she  worked, 
sunbonnet  low  over  her  eyes,  putting  each  kind  of  vegetable  in  a  pile 
by  itself  in  her  basket,  she  noticed  how  neatly  Mr.  Helton  weeded,  and 
how  rich  the  soil  was.  He  had  spread  it  all  over  with  manure  from  the 
barns,  and  worked  it  in,  in  the  fall,  and  the  vegetables  were  coming 
up  fine  and  full.  She  walked  back  under  the  nubbly  little  fig  trees 
where  the  unpruned  branches  leaned  almost  to  the  ground,  and  the 
thick  leaves  made  a  cool  screen.  Mrs.  Thompson  was  always  looking 
for  shade  to  save  her  eyes.  So  she,  looking  idly  about,  saw  through  the 
screen  a  sight  that  struck  her  as  very  strange.  If  it  had  been  a  noisy 
spectacle,  it  would  have  been  quite  natural.  It  was  the  silence  that 
struck  her.  Mr.  Helton  was  shaking  Arthur  by  the  shoulders,  fero- 
ciously, his  face  most  terribly  fixed  and  pale.  Arthur's  head  snapped 
back  and  forth  and  he  had  not  stiffened  in  resistance,  as  he  did  when 
Mrs.  Thompson  tried  to  shake  him.  His  eyes  were  rather  frightened, 
but  surprised,  too,  probably  more  surprised  than  anything  else.  Her- 
bert stood  by  meekly,  watching.  Mr.  Helton  dropped  Arthur,  and 
seized  Herbert,  and  shook  him  with  the  same  methodical  ferocity,  the 
same  face  of  hatred.  Herbert's  mouth  crumpled  as  if  he  would  cry, 
but  he  made  no  sound.  Mr.  Helton  let  him  go,  turned  and  strode  into 
the  shack,  and  the  little  boys  ran,  as  if  for  their  lives,  without  a  word. 
They  disappeared  around  the  corner  to  the  front  of  the  house. 

Mrs.  Thompson  took  time  to  set  her  basket  on  the  kitchen  table,  to 
push  her  sunbonnet  back  on  her  head  and  draw  it  forward  again,  to 
look  in  the  stove  and  make  certain  the  fire  was  going,  before  she  fol- 
lowed the  boys.  They  were  sitting  huddled  together  under  a  clump  of 
chinaberry  trees  in  plain  sight  of  her  bedroom  window,  as  if  it  were  a 
safe  place  they  had  discovered. 

"What  are  you  doing?"  asked  Mrs.  Thompson. 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  793 

They  looked  hang-dog  from  under  their  foreheads  and  Arthur 
mumbled,  "Nothin." 

"Nothing  now,  you  mean,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  severely.  "Well,  I 
have  plenty  for  you  to  do.  Come  right  in  here  this  minute  and  help 
me  fix  vegetables.  This  minute." 

They  scrambled  up  very  eagerly  and  followed  her  close.  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son tried  to  imagine  what  they  had  been  up  to;  she  did  not  like  the 
notion  of  Mr.  Helton  taking  it  on  himself  to  correct  her  little  boys, 
but  she  was  afraid  to  ask  them  for  reasons.  They  might  tell  her  a  lie, 
and  she  would  have  to  overtake  them  in  it,  and  whip  them.  Or  she 
would  have  to  pretend  to  believe  them,  and  they  would  get  in  the 
habit  of  lying.  Or  they  might  tell  her  the  truth,  and  it  would  be  some- 
thing she  would  have  to  whip  them  for.  The  very  thought  of  it  gave 
her  a  headache.  She  supposed  she  might  ask  Mr.  Helton,  but  it  was 
not  her  place  to  ask.  She  would  wait  and  tell  Mr.  Thompson,  and  let 
him  get  at  the  bottom  of  it.  While  her  mind  ran  on,  she  kept  the  little 
boys  hopping.  "Cut  those  carrot  tops  closer,  Herbert,  you're  just  being 
careless.  Arthur,  stop  breaking  up  the  beans  so  little.  They're  little 
enough  already.  Herbert,  you  go  get  an  armload  of  wood.  Arthur,  you 
take  these  onions  and  wash  them  under  the  pump.  Herbert,  as  soon  as 
you're  done  here,  you  get  a  broom  and  sweep  out  this  kitchen.  Arthur, 
you  get  a  shovel  and  take  up  the  ashes.  Stop  picking  your  nose,  Her- 
bert. How  often  must  I  tell  you?  Arthur,  you  go  look  in  the  top 
drawer  of  my  bureau,  left-hand  side,  and  bring  me  the  vaseline  for 
Herbert's  nose.  Herbert,  come  here  to  me.  .  .  ." 

They  galloped  through  their  chores,  their  animal  spirits  rose  with 
activity,  and  shortly  they  were  out  in  the  front  yard  again,  engaged  in 
a  wrestling  match.  They  sprawled  and  fought,  scrambled,  clutched, 
rose  and  fell  shouting,  as  aimlessly,  noisily,  monotonously  as  two  pup- 
pies. They  imitated  various  animals,  not  a  human  sound  from  them, 
and  their  dirty  faces  were  streaked  with  sweat.  Mrs.  Thompson,  sitting 
at  her  window,  watched  them  with  baffled  pride  and  tenderness,  they 
were  so  sturdy  and  healthy  and  growing  so  fast;  but  uneasily,  too,  with 
her  pained  little  smile  and  the  tears  rolling  from  her  eyelids  that 
clinched  themselves  against  the  sunlight.  They  were  so  idle  and  care- 
less, as  if  they  had  no  future  in  this  world,  and  no  immortal  souls  to 


794  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

save,  and  oh,  what  had  they  been  up  to  that  Mr.  Helton  had  shaken 
them,  with  his  face  positively  dangerous? 

In  the  evening  before  supper,  without  a  word  to  Mr.  Thompson  of 
the  curious  fear  the  sight  had  caused  her,  she  told  him  that  Mr.  Helton 
had  shaken  the  little  boys  for  some  reason.  He  stepped  out  to  the  shack 
and  spoke  to  Mr.  Helton.  In  five  minutes  he  was  back,  glaring  at  his 
young.  "He  says  them  brats  been  fooling  with  his  harmonicas,  Ellie, 
blowing  in  them  and  getting  them  all  dirty  and  full  of  spit  and  they 
don't  play  good." 

"Did  he  say  all  that?"  asked  Mrs.  Thompson.  "It  doesn't  seem  pos- 
sible." 

"Well,  that's  what  he  meant,  anyhow,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "He 
didn't  say  it  just  that  way.  But  he  acted  pretty  worked  up  about  it." 

"That's  a  shame,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  "a  perfect  shame.  Now 
we've  got  to  do  something  so  they'll  remember  they  mustn't  go  into 
Mr.  Helton's  things." 

"I'll  tan  their  hides  for  them,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "I'll  take  a  calf 
rope  to  them  if  they  don't  look  out." 

"Maybe  you'd  better  leave  the  whipping  to  me,"  said  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son. "You  haven't  got  a  light  enough  hand  for  children." 

"That's  just  what's  the  matter  with  them  now,"  shouted  Mr.  Thomp- 
son, "rotten  spoiled  and  they'll  wind  up  in  the  penitentiary.  You  don't 
half  whip  'em.  Just  little  love  taps.  My  pa  used  to  knock  me  down 
with  a  stick  of  stove  wood  or  anything  else  that  came  handy." 

"Well,  that's  not  saying  it's  right,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson.  "I  don't 
hold  with  that  way  of  raising  children.  It  makes  them  run  away  from 
home.  I've  seen  too  much  of  it." 

"I'll  break  every  bone  in  'em,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  simmering 
down,  "if  they  don't  mind  you  better  and  stop  being  so  bull-headed." 

"Leave  the  table  and  wash  your  face  and  hands,"  Mrs.  Thompson 
commanded  the  boys,  suddenly.  They  slunk  out  and  dabbled  at  the 
pump  and  slunk  in  again,  trying  to  make  themselves  small.  They  had 
learned  long  ago  that  their  mother  always  made  them  wash  when 
there  was  trouble  ahead.  They  looked  at  their  plates.  Mr.  Thompson 
opened  up  on  them. 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  795 

"Well,  now,  what  you  got  to  say  for  yourselves  about  going  into 
Mr.  Helton's  shack  and  ruining  his  harmonicas?" 

The  two  little  boys  wilted,  their  faces  drooped  into  the  grieved  hope- 
less lines  of  children's  faces  when  they  are  brought  to  the  terrible  bar 
of  blind  adult  justice;  their  eyes  telegraphed  each  other  in  panic,  "Now 
we're  really  going  to  catch  a  licking";  in  despair,  they  dropped  their 
buttered  cornbread  on  their  plates,  their  hands  lagged  on  the  edge  of 
the  table. 

"I  ought  to  break  your  ribs,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "and  I'm  a  good 
mind  to  do  it." 

"Yes,  sir,"  whispered  Arthur,  faintly. 

"Yes,  sir,"  said  Herbert,  his  lip  trembling. 

"Now,  papa,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson  in  a  warning  tone.  The  children 
did  not  glance  at  her.  They  had  no  faith  in  her  good  will.  She  had 
betrayed  them  in  the  first  place.  There  was  no  trusting  her.  Now  she 
might  save  them  and  she  might  not.  No  use  depending  on  her. 

"Well,  you  ought  to  get  a  good  thrashing.  You  deserve  it,  don't  you, 
Arthur?" 

Arthur  hung  his  head.  "Yes,  sir." 

"And  the  next  time  I  catch  either  of  you  hanging  around  Mr.  Hel- 
ton's shack,  I'm  going  to  take  the  hide  off  both  of  you,  you  hear  me, 
Herbert?" 

Herbert  mumbled  and  choked,  scattering  his  cornbread.  "Yes,  sir." 

"Well,  now  sit  up  and  eat  your  supper  and  not  another  word  out 
of  you,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  beginning  on  his  own  food.  The  little 
boys  perked  up  somewhat  and  started  chewing,  but  every  time  they 
looked  around  they  met  their  parents'  eyes,  regarding  them  steadily. 
There  was  no  telling  when  they  would  think  of  something  new.  The 
boys  ate  warily,  trying  not  to  be  seen  or  heard,  the  cornbread  sticking, 
the  buttermilk  gurgling,  as  it  went  down  their  gullets. 

"And  something  else,  Mr.  Thompson,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson  after  a 
pause.  "Tell  Mr.  Helton  he's  to  come  straight  to  us  when  they  bother 
him,  and  not  to  trouble  shaking  them  himself.  Tell  him  we'll  look  after 
that." 

"They're  so  mean,"  answered  Mr.  Thompson,  staring  at  them.  "It's 
a  wonder  he  don't  just  kill  'em  off  and  be  done  with  it."  But  there  was 


796  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

something  in  the  tone  that  told  Arthur  and  Herbert  that  nothing 
more  worth  worrying  about  was  going  to  happen  this  time.  Heaving 
deep  sighs,  they  sat  up,  reaching  for  the  food  nearest  them. 

"Listen,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  suddenly.  The  little  boys  stopped 
eating.  "Mr.  Helton  hasn't  come  for  his  supper.  Arthur,  go  and  tell 
Mr.  Helton  he's  late  for  supper.  Tell  him  nice,  now." 

Arthur,  miserably  depressed,  slid  out  of  his  place  and  made  for  the 
door,  without  a  word. 

There  were  no  miracles  of  fortune  to  be  brought  to  pass  on  a  small 
dairy  farm.  The  Thompsons  did  not  grow  rich,  but  they  kept  out  of 
the  poor  house,  as  Mr.  Thompson  was  fond  of  saying,  meaning  he  had 
got  a  little  foothold  in  spite  of  Ellie's  poor  health,  and  unexpected 
weather,  and  strange  declines  in  market  prices,  and  his  own  mysteri- 
ous handicaps  which  weighed  him  down.  Mr.  Helton  was  the  hope 
and  the  prop  of  the  family,  and  all  the  Thompsons  became  fond  of 
him,  or  at  any  rate  they  ceased  to  regard  him  as  in  any  way  peculiar, 
and  looked  upon  him,  from  a  distance  they  did  not  know  hew  to 
bridge,  as  a  good  man  and  a  good  friend.  Mr.  Helton  went  his  way, 
worked,  played  his  tune.  Nine  years  passed.  The  boys  grew  up  and 
learned  to  work.  They  could  not  remember  the  time  when  Ole  Hel- 
ton hadn't  been  there:  a  grouchy  cuss,  Brother  Bones;  Mr.  Helton,  the 
dairymaid;  that  Big  Swede.  If  he  had  heard  them,  he  might  have 
been  annoyed  at  some  of  the  names  they  called  him.  But  he  did  not 
hear  them,  and  besides  they  meant  no  harm — or  at  least  such  harm  as 
existed  was  all  there,  in  the  names;  the  boys  referred  to  their  father 
as  the  Old  Man,  or  the  Old  Geezer,  but  not  to  his  face.  They  lived 
through  by  main  strength  all  the  grimy,  secret,  oblique  phases  of  grow- 
ing up  and  got  past  the  crisis  safely  if  anyone  does.  Their  parents 
could  see  they  were  good  solid  boys  with  hearts  of  gold  in  spite  of 
their  rough  ways.  Mr.  Thompson  was  relieved  to  find  that,  without 
knowinp-  how  he  had  done  it,  he  had  succeeded  in  raising  a  set  of 
boys  who  were  not  trifling  whittlers.  They  were  such  good  boys  Mr. 
Thompson  began  to  believe  they  were  born  that  way,  and  that  he  had 
never  spoken  a  harsh  word  to  them  in  their  lives,  much  less  thrashed 
them.  Herbert  and  Arthur  never  disputed  his  word. 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  797 

Mr.  Helton,  his  hair  wet  with  sweat,  plastered  to  his  dripping  fore- 
head, his  jumper  streaked  dark  and  light  blue  and  clinging  to  his  ribs, 
was  chopping  a  little  firewood.  He  chopped  slowly,  struck  the  ax  into 
the  end  of  the  chopping  log,  and  piled  the  wood  up  neatly.  He  then 
disappeared  round  the  house  into  his  shack,  which  shared  with  the 
wood  pile  a  good  shade  from  a  row  of  mulberry  trees.  Mr.  Thompson 
was  lolling  in  a  swing  chair  on  the  front  porch,  a  place  he  had  never 
liked.  The  chair  was  new,  and  Mrs.  Thompson  had  wanted  it  on  the 
front  porch,  though  the  side  porch  was  the  place  for  it,  being  cooler; 
and  Mr.  Thompson  wanted  to  sit  in  the  chair,  so  there  he  was.  As  soon 
as  the  new  wore  off  of  it,  and  Ellie's  pride  in  it  was  exhausted,  he 
would  move  it  round  to  the  side  porch.  Meantime  the  August  heat 
was  almost  unbearable,  the  air  so  thick  you  could  poke  a  hole  in  it. 
The  dust  was  inches  thick  on  everything,  though  Mr.  Helton  sprin- 
kled the  whole  yard  regularly  every  night.  He  even  shot  the  hose 
upward  and  washed  the  tree  tops  and  the  roof  of  the  house.  They  had 
laid  waterpipes  to  the  kitchen  and  an  outside  faucet.  Mr.  Thompson 
must  have  dozed,  for  he  opened  his  eyes  and  shut  his  mouth  just  in 
time  to  save  his  face  before  a  stranger  who  had  driven  up  to  the  front 
gate.  Mr.  Thompson  stood  up,  put  on  his  hat,  pulled  up  his  jeans,  and 
watched  while  the  stranger  tied  his  team,  attached  to  a  light  spring 
wagon,  to  the  hitching  post.  Mr.  Thompson  recognized  the  team  and 
wagon.  They  were  from  a  livery  stable  in  Buda.  While  the  stranger 
was  opening  the  gate,  a  strong  gate  that  Mr.  Helton  had  built  and  set 
firmly  on  its  hinges  several  years  back,  Mr.  Thompson  strolled  down 
the  path  to  greet  him  and  find  out  what  in  God's  world  a  man's  busi- 
ness might  be  that  would  bring  him  out  at  this  time  of  day,  in  all  this 
dust  and  welter. 

He  wasn't  exactly  a  fat  man.  He  was  more  like  a  man  who  had 
been  fat  recently.  His  skin  was  baggy  and  his  clothes  were  too  big  for 
him,  and  he  somehow  looked  like  a  man  who  should  be  fat,  ordinarily, 
but  who  might  have  just  got  over  a  spell  of  sickness.  Mr.  Thompson 
didn't  take  to  his  looks  at  all,  he  couldn't  say  why. 

The  stranger  took  off  his  hat.  He  said  in  a  loud  hearty  voice,  "Is 
this  Mr.  Thompson,  Mr.  Royal  Earle  Thompson?" 


798  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"That's  my  name,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  almost  quietly,  he  was  so 
taken  aback  by  the  free  manner  of  the  stranger. 

"My  name  is  Hatch,"  said  the  stranger,  "Mr.  Homer  T.  Hatch,  and 
I've  come  to  see  you  about  buying  a  horse." 

"I  reckon  you've  been  misdirected,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "I  haven't 
got  a  horse  for  sale.  Usually  if  I've  got  anything  like  that  to  sell,"  he 
said,  "I  tell  the  neighbors  and  tack  up  a  little  sign  on  the  gate." 

The  fat  man  opened  his  mouth  and  roared  with  joy,  showing  rab- 
bit teeth  brown  as  shoeleather.  Mr.  Thompson  saw  nothing  to  laugh 
at,  for  once.  The  stranger  shouted,  "That's  just  an  old  joke  of  mine." 
He  caught  one  of  his  hands  in  the  other  and  shook  hands  with  him- 
self heartily.  "I  always  say  something  like  that  when  I'm  calling  on  a 
stranger,  because  I've  noticed  that  when  a  feller  says  he's  come  to  buy 
something  nobody  takes  him  for  a  suspicious  character.  You  see? 
Haw,  haw,  haw." 

His  joviality  made  Mr.  Thompson  nervous,  because  the  expression 
in  the  man's  eyes  didn't  match  the  sounds  he  was  making.  "Haw, 
haw,"  laughed  Mr.  Thompson  obligingly,  still  not  seeing  the  joke. 
"Well,  that's  all  wasted  on  me  because  I  never  take  any  man  for  a 
suspicious  character  'til  he  shows  hisself  to  be  one.  Says  or  does  some- 
thing," he  explained.  "Until  that  happens,  one  man's  as  good  as  an- 
other, so  far's  I'm  concerned." 

"Well,"  said  the  stranger,  suddenly  very  sober  and  sensible,  "I  ain't 
come  neither  to  buy  nor  sell.  Fact  is,  I  want  to  see  you  about  some- 
thing that's  of  interest  to  us  both.  Yes,  sir,  I'd  like  to  have  a  little  talk 
with  you,  and  it  won't  cost  you  a  cent." 

"I  guess  that's  fair  enough,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  reluctantly.  "Come 
on  around  the  house  where  there's  a  little  shade." 

They  went  round  and  seated  themselves  on  two  stumps  under  a 
chinaberry  tree. 

"Yes,  sir,  Homer  T.  Hatch  is  my  name  and  America  is  my  nation," 
said  the  stranger.  "I  reckon  you  must  know  the  name?  I  used  to  have 
a  cousin  named  Jameson  Hatch  lived  up  the  country  a  ways." 

"Don't  think  I  know  the  name,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "There's  some 
Hatchers  settled  somewhere  around  Mountain  City." 

"Don't  know  the  old  Hatch  family,"  cried  the  man  in  deep  concern. 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  799 

He  seemed  to  be  pitying  Mr.  Thompson's  ignorance.  "Why,  we  came 
over  from  Georgia  fifty  years  ago.  Been  here  long  yourself?" 

"Just  all  my  whole  life,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  beginning  to  feel  peev- 
ish. "And  my  pa  and  my  grampap  before  me.  Yes,  sir,  we've  been 
right  here  all  along.  Anybody  wants  to  find  a  Thompson  knows  where 
to  look  for  him.  My  grampap  immigrated  in  1836." 
"From  Ireland,  I  reckon?"  said  the  stranger. 

"From  Pennsylvania,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "Now  what  makes  you 
think  we  came  from  Ireland?" 

The  stranger  opened  his  mouth  and  began  to  shout  with  merriment, 
and  he  shook  hands  with  himself  as  if  he  hadn't  met  himself  for  a 
long  time.  "Well,  what  I  always  says  is,  a  feller's  got  to  come  from 
somewhere,  ain't  he?" 

While  they  were  talking,  Mr.  Thompson  kept  glancing  at  the  face 
near  him.  He  certainly  did  remind  Mr.  Thompson  of  somebody,  or 
maybe  he  really  had  seen  the  man  himself  somewhere.  He  couldn't 
just  place  the  features.  Mr.  Thompson  finally  decided  it  was  just  that 
all  rabbit-teethed  men  looked  alike. 

"That's  right,"  acknowledged  Mr.  Thompson,  rather  sourly,  "but 
what  I  always  say  is,  Thompsons  have  been  settled  here  for  so  long  it 
don't  make  much  difference  any  more  where  they  come  from.  Now  a 
course,  this  is  the  slack  season,  and  we're  all  just  laying  round  a  little, 
but  nevertheless  we've  all  got  our  chores  to  do,  and  I  don't  want  to 
hurry  you,  and  so  if  you've  come  to  see  me  on  business  maybe  we'd 
better  get  down  to  it." 

"As  I  said,  it's  not  in  a  way,  and  again  in  a  way  it  is,"  said  the  fat 
man.  "Now  I'm  looking  for  a  man  named  Helton,  Mr.  Olaf  Eric 
Helton,  from  North  Dakota,  and  I  was  told  up  around  the  country  a 
ways  that  I  might  find  him  here,  and  I  wouldn't  mind  having  a  little 
talk  with  him.  No,  siree,  I  sure  wouldn't  mind,  if  it's  all  the  same 
to  you." 

"I  never  knew  his  middle  name,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "but  Mr. 
Helton  is  right  here,  and  been  here  now  for  going  on  nine  years.  He's 
a  mighty  steady  man,  and  you  can  tell  anybody  I  said  so." 

"I'm  glad  to  hear  that,"  said  Mr.  Homer  T.  Hatch.  "I  like  to  hear  of 
a  feller  mending  his  ways  and  settling  down.  Now  when  I  knew  Mr. 


800  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Helton  he  was  pretty  wild,  yes,  sir,  wild  is  what  he  was,  he  didn't 
know  his  own  mind  atall.  Well,  now,  it's  going  to  be  a  great  pleasure 
to  me  to  meet  up  with  an  old  friend  and  find  him  all  settled  down 
and  doing  well  by  hisself." 

"We've  all  got  to  be  young  once,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "It's  like  the 
measles,  it  breaks  out  all  over  you,  and  you're  a  nuisance  to  yourself 
and  everybody  else,  but  it  don't  last,  and  it  usually  don't  leave  no  ill 
effects."  He  was  so  pleased  with  this  notion  he  forgot  and  broke  into 
a  guffaw.  The  stranger  folded  his  arms  over  his  stomach  and  went 
into  a  kind  of  fit,  roaring  until  he  had  tears  in  his  eyes.  Mr.  Thompson 
stopped  shouting  and  eyed  the  stranger  uneasily.  Now  he  liked  a  good 
laugh  as  well  as  any  man,  but  there  ought  to  be  a  little  moderation. 
Now  this  feller  laughed  like  a  perfect  lunatic,  that  was  a  fact.  And  he 
wasn't  laughing  because  he  really  thought  things  were  funny,  either. 
He  was  laughing  for  reasons  of  his  own.  Mr.  Thompson  fell  into  a 
moody  silence,  and  waited  until  Mr.  Hatch  settled  down  a  little. 

Mr.  Hatch  got  out  a  very  dirty  blue  cotton  bandanna  and  wiped 
his  eyes.  "That  joke  just  about  caught  me  where  I  live,"  he  said,  almost 
apologetically.  "Now  I  wish  I  could  think  up  things  as  funny  as  that 
to  say.  It's  a  gift.  It's  .  .  ." 

"If  you  want  to  speak  to  Mr.  Helton,  I'll  go  and  round  him  up," 
said  Mr.  Thompson,  making  motions  as  if  he  might  get  up.  "He  may 
be  in  the  milk  house  and  he  may  be  setting  in  his  shack  this  time  of 
day."  It  was  drawing  towards  five  o'clock.  "It's  right  around  the  cor- 
ner," he  said. 

"Oh,  well,  there  ain't  no  special  hurry,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "I've  been 
wanting  to  speak  to  him  for  a  good  long  spell  now  and  I  guess  a  few 
minutes  more  won't  make  no  difference.  I  just  more  wanted  to  locate 
him,  like.  That's  all." 

Mr.  Thompson  stopped  beginning  to  stand  up,  and  unbuttoned  one 
more  button  of  his  shirt,  and  said,  "Well,  he's  here,  and  he's  this  kind 
of  man,  that  if  he  had  any  business  with  you  he'd  like  to  get  it  over. 
He  don't  dawdle,  that's  one  thing  you  can  say  for  him." 

Mr.  Hatch  appeared  to  sulk  a  little  at  these  words.  He  wiped  his  face 
with  the  bandanna  and  opened  his  mouth  to  speak,  when  round  the 
house  there  came  the  music  of  Mr.  Helton's  harmonica.  Mr.  Thompson 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  801 

raised  a  finger.  "There  he  is,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "Now's  your  time." 

Mr.  Hatch  cocked  an  ear  towards  the  east  side  of  the  house  and 
listened  for  a  few  seconds,  a  very  strange  expression  on  his  face. 

"I  know  that  tune  like  I  know  the  palm  of  my  own  hand,"  said 
Mr.  Thompson,  "but  I  never  heard  Mr.  Helton  say  what  it  was." 

"That's  a  kind  of  Scandahoovian  song,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "Where  I 
come  from  they  sing  it  a  lot.  In  North  Dakota,  they  sing  it.  It  says 
something  about  starting  out  in  the  morning  feeling  so  good  you  can't 
hardly  stand  it,  so  you  drink  up  all  your  likker  before  noon.  All  the 
likker,  y'  understand,  that  you  was  saving  for  the  noon  lay-off.  The 
words  ain't  much,  but  it's  a  pretty  tune.  It's  a  kind  of  drinking  song." 
He  sat  there  drooping  a  little,  and  Mr.  Thompson  didn't  like  his  ex- 
pression. It  was  a  satisfied  expression,  but  it  was  more  like  the  cat  that 
et  the  canary. 

"So  far  as  I  know,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "he  ain't  touched  a  drop 
since  he's  been  on  the. place,  and  that's  nine  years  this  coming  Sep- 
tember. Yes,  sir,  nine  years,  so  far  as  I  know,  he  ain't  wetted  his  whis- 
tle once.  And  that's  more  than  I  can  say  for  myself,"  he  said,  meekly 
proud. 

"Yes,  that's  a  drinking  song,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "I  used  to  play  'Little 
Brown  Jug'  on  the  fiddle  when  I  was  younger  than  I  am  now,"  he 
went  on,  "but  this  Helton,  he  just  keeps  it  up.  He  just  sits  and  plays 
it  by  himself." 

"He's  been  playing  it  off  and  on  for  nine  years  right  here  on  the 
place,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  feeling  a  little  proprietary. 

"And  he  was  certainly  singing  it  as  well,  fifteen  years  before  that, 
in  North  Dakota,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "He  used  to  sit  up  in  a  straitjacket, 
practically,  when  he  was  in  the  asylum " 

"What's  that  you  say?"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "What's  that?" 

"Shucks,  I  didn't  mean  to  tell  you,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  a  faint  leer  of 
regret  in  his  drooping  eyelids.  "Shucks,  that  just  slipped  out.  Funny, 
now  I'd  made  up  my  mind  I  wouldn't  say  a  word,  because  it  would 
just  make  a  lot  of  excitement,  and  what  I  say  is,  if  a  man  has  lived 
harmless  and  quiet  for  nine  years  it  don't  matter  if  he  is  loony,  does 
it?  So  long's  he  keeps  quiet  and  don't  do  nobody  harm." 


802  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

"You  mean  they  had  him  in  a  straitjacket?"  asked  Mr.  Thompson, 
uneasily.  "In  a  lunatic  asylum?" 

"They  sure  did,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "That's  right  where  they  had  him, 
from  time  to  time." 

"They  put  my  Aunt  Ida  in  one  of  them  things  in  the  State  asylum," 
said  Mr.  Thompson.  "She  got  vi'lent,  and  they  put  her  in  one  of  these 
jackets  with  long  sleeves  and  tied  her  to  an  iron  ring  in  the  wall,  and 
Aunt  Ida  got  so  wild  she  broke  a  blood  vessel  and  when  they  went  to 
look  after  her  she  was  dead.  I'd  think  one  of  them  things  was  dan- 
gerous." 

"Mr.  Helton  used  to  sing  his  drinking  song  when  he  was  in  a  strait- 
jacket,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "Nothing  ever  bothered  him,  except  if  you 
tried  to  make  him  talk.  That  bothered  him,  and  he'd  get  vi'lent,  like 
your  Aunt  Ida.  He'd  get  vi'lent  and  then  they'd  put  him  in  the  jacket 
and  go  off  and  leave  him,  and  he'd  lay  there  perfickly  contented,  so 
tar's  you  could  see,  singing  his  song.  Then  one  night  he  just  disap- 
peared. Left,  you  might  say,  just  went,  and  nobody  ever  saw  hide  or 
hair  of  him  again.  And  then  I  come  along  and  find  him  here,"  said 
Mr.  Hatch,  "all  settled  down  and  playing  the  same  song." 

"He  never  acted  crazy  to  me,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "He  always 
acted  like  a  sensible  man,  to  me.  He  never  got  married,  for  one  thing, 
and  he  works  like  a  horse,  and  I  bet  he's  got  the  first  cent  I  paid  him 
when  he  landed  here,  and  he  don't  drink,  and  he  never  says  a  word, 
much  less  swear,  and  he  don't  waste  time  runnin'  around  Saturday 
nights,  and  if  he's  crazy,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "why,  I  think  I'll  go 
crazy  myself  for  a  change." 

"Haw,  ha,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "heh,  he,  that's  good!  Ha,  ha,  ha,  I 
hadn't  thought  of  it  jes  like  that.  Yeah,  that's  right!  Let's  all  go  crazy 
and  get  rid  of  our  wives  and  save  our  money,  hey?"  He  smiled  un- 
pleasantly, showing  his  little  rabbit  teeth. 

Mr.  Thompson  felt  he  was  being  misunderstood.  He  turned  around 
and  motioned  toward  the  open  window  back  of  the  honeysuckle  trellis. 
"Let's  move  off  down  here  a  little,"  he  said.  "I  oughta  thought  of  that 
before."  His  visitor  bothered  Mr.  Thompson.  He  had  a  way  of  taking 
the  words  out  of  Mr.  Thompson's  mouth,  turning  them  around  and 
mixing  them  up  until  Mr.  Thompson  didn't  know  himself  what  he 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  803 

had  said.  "My  wife's  not  very  strong,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "She's  been 
kind  of  invalid  now  goin'  on  fourteen  years.  It's  mighty  tough  on  a 
poor  man,  havin'  sickness  in  the  family.  She  had  four  operations,"  he 
said  proudly,  "one  right  after  the  other,  but  they  didn't  do  any  good. 
For  five  years  handrunnin',  I  just  turned  every  nickel  I  made  over  to 
the  doctors.  Upshot  is,  she's  a  mighty  delicate  woman." 

"My  old  woman,"  said  Mr.  Homer  T.  Hatch,  "had  a  back  like  a 
mule,  yes,  sir.  That  woman  could  have  moved  the  barn  with  her  bare 
hands  if  she'd  ever  took  the  notion.  I  used  to  say,  it  was  a  good  thing 
she  didn't  know  her  own  stren'th.  She's  dead  now,  though.  That  kind 
wear  out  quicker  than  the  puny  ones.  I  never  had  much  use  for  a 
woman  always  complainin'.  I'd  get  rid  of  her  mighty  quick,  yes,  sir, 
mighty  quick.  It's  just  as  you  say:  a  dead  loss,  keepin'  one  of  'em  up." 

This  was  not  at  all  what  Mr.  Thompson  had  heard  himself  say;  he 
had  been  trying  to  explain  that  a  wife  as  expensive  as  his  was  a  credit 
to  a  man.  "She's  a  mighty  reasonable  woman,"  said  Mr.  Thompson, 
feeling  baffled,  "but  I  wouldn't  answer  for  what  she'd  say  or  do  if  she 
found  out  we'd  had  a  lunatic  on  the  place  all  this  time."  They  had 
moved  away  from  the  window;  Mr.  Thompson  took  Mr.  Hatch  the 
front  way,  because  if  he  went  the  back  way  they  would  have  to  pass 
Mr.  Helton's  shack.  For  some  reason  he  didn't  want  the  stranger  to 
see  or  talk  to  Mr.  Helton.  It  was  strange,  but  that  was  the  way  Mr. 
Thompson  felt. 

Mr.  Thompson  sat  down  again,  on  the  chopping  log,  offering  his 
guest  another  tree  stump.  "Now,  I  mighta  got  upset  myself  at  such  a 
thing,  once,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "but  now  I  deefy  anything  to  get 
me  lathered  up."  He  cut  himself  an  enormous  plug  of  tobacco  with 
his  horn-handled  pocketknife,  and  offered  it  to  Mr.  Hatch,  who  then 
produced  his  own  plug  and,  opening  a  huge  bowie  knife  with  a  long 
blade  sharply  whetted,  cut  off  a  large  wad  and  put  it  in  his  mouth. 
They  then  compared  plugs  and  both  of  them  were  astonished  to  see 
how  different  men's  ideas  of  good  chewing  tobacco  were. 

"Now,  for  instance,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "mine  is  lighter  colored.  That's 
because,  for  one  thing,  there  ain't  any  sweetenin'  in  this  plug.  I  like  it 
dry,  natural  leaf,  medium  strong." 

"A  little  sweetenin'  don't  do  no  harm  so  far  as  I'm  concerned,"  said 


804  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Mr.  Thompson,  "but  it's  got  to  be  mighty  little.  But  with  me,  now,  I 
want  a  strong  leaf,  I  want  it  heavy-cured,  as  the  feller  says.  There's  a 
man  near  here,  named  Williams,  Mr.  John  Morgan  Williams,  who 
chews  a  plug — well,  sir,  it's  black  as  your  hat  and  soft  as  melted  tar. 
It  fairly  drips  with  molasses,  jus'  plain  molasses,  and  it  chews  like  lico- 
rice. Now,  I  don't  call  that  a  good  chew." 

"One  man's  meat,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "is  another  man's  poison.  Now, 
such  a  chew  would  simply  gag  me.  I  couldn't  begin  to  put  it  in  my 
mouth." 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  a  tinge  of  apology  in  his  voice,  "I  jus' 
barely  tasted  it  myself,  you  might  say.  Just  took  a  little  piece  in  my 
mouth  and  spit  it  out  again." 

"I'm  dead  sure  I  couldn't  even  get  that  far,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "I  like 
a  dry  natural  chew  without  any  artificial  flavorin'  of  any  kind." 

Mr.  Thompson  began  to  feel  that  Mr.  Hatch  was  trying  to  make 
out  he  had  the  best  judgment  in  tobacco,  and  was  going  to  keep  up 
the  argument  until  he  proved  it.  He  began  to  feel  seriously  annoyed 
with  the  fat  man.  After  all,  who  was  he  and  where  did  he  come  from  ? 
Who  was  he  to  go  around  telling  other  people  what  kind  of  tobacco 
to  chew? 

"Artificial  flavorin',"  Mr.  Hatch  went  on,  doggedly,  "is  jes  put  in  to 
cover  up  a  cheap  leaf  and  make  a  man  think  he's  gettin'  somethin' 
more  than  he  is  gettin'.  Even  a  little  sweetenin'  is  a  sign  of  a  cheap 
leaf,  you  can  mark  my  words." 

"I've  always  paid  a  fair  price  for  my  plug,"  said  Mr.  Thompson, 
stiffly.  "I'm  not  a  rich  man  and  I  don't  go  round  settin'  myself  up  for 
one,  but  I'll  say  this,  when  it  comes  to  such  things  as  tobacco,  I  buy 
the  best  on  the  market." 

"Sweetenin',  even  a  little,"  began  Mr.  Hatch,  shifting  his  plug  and 
squirting  tobacco  juice  at  a  dry-looking  little  rose  bush  that  was  hav- 
ing a  hard  enough  time  as  it  was,  standing  all  day  in  the  blazing  sun, 
its  roots  clenched  in  the  baked  earth,  "is  the  sign  of " 

"About  this  Mr.  Helton,  now,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  determinedly, 
"I  don't  see  no  reason  to  hold  it  against  a  man  because  he  went  loony 
once  or  twice  in  his  lifetime  and  so  I  don't  expect  to  take  no  steps 
about  it.  Not  a  step.  I've  got  nothin'  against  the  man,  he's  always 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  805 

treated  me  fair.  They's  things  and  people,"  he  went  on,  "  'nough  to 
drive  any  man  loony.  The  wonder  to  me  is,  more  men  don't  wind  up 
in  straitjackets,  the  way  things  are  going  these  days  and  times." 

"That's  right,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  promptly,  entirely  too  promptly,  as 
if  he  were  turning  Mr.  Thompson's  meaning  back  on  him.  "You  took 
the  words  right  out  of  my  mouth.  There  ain't  every  man  in  a  strait- 
jacket  that  ought  to  be  there.  Ha,  ha,  you're  right  all  right.  You  got 
the  idea." 

Mr.  Thompson  sat  silent  and  chewed  steadily  and  stared  at  a  spot 
on  the  ground  about  six  feet  away  and  felt  a  slow  muffled  resentment 
climbing  from  somewhere  deep  down  in  him,  climbing  and  spreading 
all  through  him.  What  was  this  fellow  driving  at?  What  was  he  try- 
ing to  say?  It  wasn't  so  much  his  words,  but  his  looks  and  his  way  of 
talking:  that  droopy  look  in  the  eye,  that  tone  of  voice,  as  if  he  was 
trying  to  mortify  Mr.  Thompson  about  something.  Mr.  Thompson 
didn't  like  it,  but  he  couldn't  get  hold  of  it  either.  He  wanted  to  turn 
around  and  shove  the  fellow  off  the  stump,  but  it  wouldn't  look  rea- 
sonable. Suppose  something  happened  to  the  fellow  when  he  fell  off 
the  stump,  just  for  instance,  if  he  fell  on  the  ax  and  cut  himself,  and 
then  someone  should  ask  Mr.  Thompson  why  he  shoved  him,  and 
what  could  a  man  say?  It  would  look  mighty  funny,  it  would  sound 
mighty  strange  to  say,  Well,  him  and  me  fell  out  over  a  plug  of  to- 
bacco. He  might  just  shove  him  anyhow  and  then  tell  people  he  was 
a  fat  man  not  used  to  the  heat  and  while  he  was  talking  he  got  dizzy 
and  fell  off  by  himself,  or  something  like  that,  and  it  wouldn't  be  the 
truth  either,  because  it  wasn't  the  heat  and  it  wasn't  the  tobacco.  Mr. 
Thompson  made  up  his  mind  to  get  the  fellow  off  the  place  pretty 
quick,  without  seeming  to  be  anxious,  and  watch  him  sharp  till  he  was 
out  of  sight.  It  doesn't  pay  to  be  friendly  with  strangers  from  another 
part  of  the  country.  They're  always  up  to  something,  or  they'd  stay  at 
home  where  they  belong. 

"And  they's  some  people,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "would  jus'  as  soon  have 
a  loonatic  around  their  house  as  not,  they  can't  see  no  difference  be- 
tween them  and  anybody  else.  I  always  say,  if  that's  the  way  a  man 
feels,  don't  care  who  he  associates  with,  why,  why,  that's  his  business, 
not  mine.  I  don't  wanta  have  a  thing  to  do  with  it.  Now  back  home 


806  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

in  North  Dakota,  we  don't  feel  that  way.  I'd  like  to  a  seen  anybody 
hiring  a  loonatic  there,  aspecially  after  what  he  done." 

"I  didn't  understand  your  home  was  North  Dakota,"  said  Mr. 
Thompson.  "I  thought  you  said  Georgia." 

"I've  got  a  married  sister  in  North  Dakota,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "mar- 
ried a  Swede,  but  a  white  man  if  ever  I  saw  one.  So  I  say  we  because 
we  got  into  a  little  business  together  out  that  way.  And  it  seems  like 
home,  kind  of." 

"What  did  he  do?"  asked  Mr.  Thompson,  feeling  very  uneasy  again. 

"Oh,  nothin'  to  speak  of,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  jovially,  "jus'  went  loony 
one  day  in  the  hayfield  and  shoved  a  pitchfork  right  square  through 
his  brother,  when  they  was  makin'  hay.  They  was  goin'  to  execute 
him,  but  they  found  out  he  had  went  crazy  with  the  heat,  as  the  feller 
says,  and  so  they  put  him  in  the  asylum.  That's  all  he  done.  Nothin' 
to  get  lathered  up  about,  ha,  ha,  ha!"  he  said,  and  taking  out  his  sharp 
knife  he  began  to  slice  off  a  chew  as  carefully  as  if  he  were  cutting 
cake. 

"Well,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "I  don't  deny  that's  news.  Yes,  sir, 
news.  But  I  still  say  somethin'  must  have  drove  him  to  it.  Some  men 
make  you  feel  like  giving  'em  a  good  killing  just  by  lookin'  at  you. 
His  brother  may  a  been  a  mean  ornery  cuss." 

"Brother  was  going  to  get  married,"  said  Mr.  Hatch;  "used  to  go 
courtin'  his  girl  nights.  Borrowed  Mr.  Helton's  harmonica  to  give  her 
a  serenade  one  evenin',  and  lost  it.  Brand  new  harmonica." 

"He  thinks  a  heap  of  his  harmonicas,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  "Only 
money  he  ever  spends,  now  and  then  he  buys  hisself  a  new  one.  Must 
have  a  dozen  in  that  shack,  all  kinds  and  sizes." 

"Brother  wouldn't  buy  him  a  new  one,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "so  Mr. 
Helton  just  ups,  as  I  says,  and  runs  his  pitchfork  through  his  brother. 
Now  you  know  he  musta  been  crazy  to  get  all  worked  up  over  a  little 
thing  like  that." 

"Sounds  like  it,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  reluctant  to  agree  in  anything 
with  this  intrusive  and  disagreeable  fellow.  He  kept  thinking  he 
couldn't  remember  when  he  had  taken  such  a  dislike  to  a  man  on 
first  sight. 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  807 

"Seems  to  me  you'd  get  pretty  sick  of  hearin'  the  same  tune  year  in, 
year  out,"  said  Mr.  Hatch. 

"Well,  sometimes  I  think  it  wouldn't  do  no  harm  if  he  learned  a 
new  one,"  said  Mr.  Thompson,  "but  he  don't,  so  there's  nothin'  to  be 
done  about  it.  It's  a  pretty  good  tune,  though." 

"One  of  the  Scandahoovians  told  me  what  it  meant,  that's  how  I 
come  to  know,"  said  Mr.  Hatch.  "Especially  that  part  about  getting 
so  gay  you  jus'  go  ahead  and  drink  up  all  the  likker  you  got  on  hand 
before  noon.  It  seems  like  up  in  them  Swede  countries  a  man  carries 
a  bottle  of  wine  around  with  him  as  a  matter  of  course,  at  least  that's 
the  way  I  understood  it.  Those  fellers  will  tell  you  anything,  though—" 
He  broke  off  and  spat. 

The  idea  of  drinking  any  kind  of  liquor  in  this  heat  made  Mr. 
Thompson  dizzy.  The  idea  of  anybody  feeling  good  on  a  day  like  this, 
for  instance,  made  him  tired.  He  felt  he  was  really  suffering  from  the 
heat.  The  fat  man  looked  as  if  he  had  grown  to  the  stump;  he  slumped 
there  in  his  damp,  dark  clothes  too  big  for  him,  his  belly  slack  in  his 
pants,  his  wide  black  felt  hat  pushed  off  his  narrow  forehead  red  with 
prickly  heat.  A  bottle  of  good  cold  beer,  now,  would  be  a  help,  thought 
Mr.  Thompson,  remembering  the  four  bottles  sitting  deep  in  the  pool 
at  the  springhouse,  and  his  dry  tongue  squirmed  in  his  mouth.  He 
wasn't  going  to  offer  this  man  anything,  though,  not  even  a  drop  of 
water.  He  wasn't  even  going  to  chew  any  more  tobacco  with  him.  He 
shot  out  his  quid  suddenly,  and  wiped  his  mouth  on  the  back  of  his 
hand,  and  studied  the  head  near  him  attentively.  The  man  was  no 
good,  and  he  was  there  for  no  good,  but  what  was  he  up  to?  Mr. 
Thompson  made  up  his  mind  he'd  give  him  a  little  more  time  to  get 
his  business,  whatever  it  was,  with  Mr.  Helton  over,  and  then  if  he 
didn't  get  off  the  place  he'd  kick  him  off. 

Mr.  Hatch,  as  if  he  suspected  Mr.  Thompson's  thoughts,  turned  his 
syes,  wicked  and  pig-like,  on  Mr.  Thompson.  "Fact  is,"  he  said,  as  if 
tie  had  made  up  his  mind  about  something,  "I  might  need  your  help 
in  the  little  matter  I've  got  on  hand,  but  it  won't  cost  you  any  trouble. 
Mow,  this  Mr.  Helton  here,  like  I  tell  you,  he's  a  dangerous  escaped 
ioonatic,  you  might  say.  Now  fact  is,  in  the  last  twelve  years  or  so  I 


808  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

musta  rounded  up  twenty-odd  escaped  loonatics,  besides  a  couple  o£ 
escaped  convicts  that  I  just  run  into  by  accident,  like.  I  don't  make  a 
business  of  it,  but  if  there's  a  reward,  and  there  usually  is  a  reward,  of 
course,  I  get  it.  It  amounts  to  a  tidy  little  sum  in  the  long  run,  but  that 
ain't  the  main  question.  Fact  is,  I'm  for  law  and  order,  I  don't  like  to 
see  lawbreakers  and  loonatics  at  large.  It  ain't  the  place  for  them.  Now 
I  reckon  you're  bound  to  agree  with  me  on  that,  aren't  you?" 

Mr.  Thompson  said,  "Well,  circumstances  alters  cases,  as  the  feller 
says.  Now,  what  I  know  of  Mr.  Helton,  he  ain't  dangerous,  as  I  told 
you."  Something  serious  was  going  to  happen,  Mr.  Thompson  could 
see  that.  He  stopped  thinking  about  it.  He'd  just  let  this  fellow  shoot 
off  his  head  and  then  see  what  could  be  done  about  it.  Without  think- 
ing he  got  out  his  knife  and  plug  and  started  to  cut  a  chew,  then  re- 
membered himself  and  put  them  back  in  his  pocket. 

"The  law,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "is  solidly  behind  me.  Now  this  Mr. 
Helton,  he's  been  one  of  my  toughest  cases.  He's  kept  my  record  from 
being  practically  one  hundred  per  cent.  I  knew  him  before  he  went 
loony,  and  I  know  the  fam'ly,  so  I  undertook  to  help  out  rounding 
him  up.  Well,  sir,  he  was  gone  slick  as  a  whistle,  for  all  we  knew  the 
man  was  as  good  as  dead  long  while  ago.  Now  we  never  might  have 
caught  up  with  him,  but  do  you  know  what  he  did?  Well,  sir,  about 
two  weeks  ago  his  old  mother  gets  a  letter  from  him,  and  in  that  letter, 
what  do  you  reckon  she  found  ?  Well,  it  was  a  check  on  that  little  bank 
in  town  for  eight  hundred  and  fifty  dollars,  just  like  that;  the  letter 
wasn't  nothing  much,  just  said  he  was  sending  her  a  few  little  savings, 
she  might  need  something,  but  there  it  was,  name,  postmark,  date, 
everything.  The  old  woman  practically  lost  her  mind  with  joy.  She's 
gettin'  childish,  and  it  looked  like  she  kinda  forgot  that  her  only  living 
son  killed  his  brother  and  went  loony.  Mr.  Helton  said  he  was  getting 
along  all  right,  and  for  her  not  to  tell  nobody.  Well,  natchally,  she 
couldn't  keep  it  to  herself,  with  that  check  to  cash  and  everything.  So 
that's  how  I  come  to  know."  His  feelings  got  the  better  of  him.  "You 
coulda  knocked  me  down  with  a  feather."  He  shook  hands  with  him- 
self and  rocked,  wagging  his  head,  going  "Heh,  heh,"  in  his  throat. 
Mr.  Thompson  felt  the  corners  of  his  mouth  turning  down.  Why,  the 
dirty  low-down  hound,  sneaking  around  spying  into  other  people's 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  809 

business  like  that.  Collecting  blood  money,  that's  what  it  was!  Let 
him  talk! 

"Yea,  well,  that  musta  been  a  surprise  all  right,"  he  said,  trying  to 
hold  his  voice  even.  "I'd  say  a  surprise." 

"Well,  siree,"  said  Mr.  Hatch,  "the  more  I  got  to  thinking  about  it, 
the  more  I  just  come  to  the  conclusion  that  I'd  better  look  into  the 
matter  a  little,  and  so  I  talked  to  the  old  woman.  She's  pretty  decrepit, 
now,  half  blind  and  all,  but  she  was  all  for  taking  the  first  train  out 
and  going  to  see  her  son.  I  put  it  up  to  her  square — how  she  was  too 
feeble  for  the  trip,  and  all.  So,  just  as  a  favor  to  her,  I  told  her  for  my 
expenses  I'd  come  down  and  see  Mr.  Helton  and  bring  her  back  all 
the  news  about  him.  She  gave  me  a  new  shirt  she  made  herself  by 
hand,  and  a  big  Swedish  kind  of  cake  to  bring  to  him,  but  I  musta 
mislaid  them  along  the  road  somewhere.  It  don't  reely  matter,  though, 
he  prob'ly  ain't  in  any  state  of  mind  to  appreciate  'em." 

Mr.  Thompson  sat  up  and  turning  round  on  the  log  looked  at  Mr. 
Hatch  and  asked  as  quietly  as  he  could,  "And  now  what  are  you  aim- 
ing to  do  ?  That's  the  question." 

Mr.  Hatch  slouched  up  to  his  feet  and  shook  himself.  "Well,  I  come 
all  prepared  for  a  little  scuffle,"  he  said.  "I  got  the  handcuffs,"  he  said, 
"but  I  don't  want  no  violence  if  I  can  help  it.  I  didn't  want  to  say 
nothing  around  the  countryside,  making  an  uproar.  I  figured  the  two 
of  us  could  overpower  him."  He  reached  into  his  big  inside  pocket 
and  pulled  them  out.  Handcuffs,  for  God's  sake,  thought  Mr.  Thomp- 
son. Coming  round  on  a  peaceable  afternoon  worrying  a  man,  and 
making  trouble,  and  fishing  handcuffs  out  of  his  pocket  on  a  decent 
family  homestead,  as  if  it  was  all  in  the  day's  work. 

Mr.  Thompson,  his  head  buzzing,  got  up  too.  "Well,"  he  said, 
roundly,  "I  want  to  tell  you  I  think  you've  got  a  mighty  sorry  job  on 
hand,  you  sure  must  be  hard  up  for  something  to.  do,  and  now  I  want 
to  give  you  a  good  piece  of  advice.  You  just  drop  the  idea  that  you're 
going  to  come  here  and  make  trouble  for  Mr.  Helton,  and  the  quicker 
you  drive  that  hired  rig  away  from  my  front  gate  the  better  I'll  be 
satisfied." 

Mr.  Hatch  put  one  handcuff  in  his  outside  pocket,  the  other  dangling 
down.  He  pulled  his  hat  down  over  his  eyes,   and  reminded  Mr. 


810  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Thompson  of  a  sheriff,  somehow.  He  didn't  seem  in  the  least  nervous, 
and  didn't  take  up  Mr.  Thompson's  words.  He  said,  "Now  listen  just 
a  minute,  it  ain't  reasonable  to  suppose  that  a  man  like  yourself  is 
going  to  stand  in  the  way  of  getting  an  escaped  loonatic  back  to  the 
asylum  where  he  belongs.  Now  I  know  it's  enough  to  throw  you  off, 
coming  sudden  like  this,  but  fact  is  I  counted  on  your  being  a  respect- 
able man  and  helping  me  out  to  see  that  justice  is  done.  Now  a  course, 
if  you  won't  help,  I'll  have  to  look  around  for  help  somewheres  else. 
It  won't  look  very  good  to  your  neighbors  that  you  was  harbring  an 
escaped  loonatic  who  killed  his  own  brother,  and  then  you  refused  to 
give  him  up.  It  will  look  mighty  funny." 

Mr.  Thompson  knew  almost  before  he  heard  the  words  that  it  would 
look  funny.  It  would  put  him  in  a  mighty  awkward  position.  He  said, 
"But  I've  been  trying  to  tell  you  all  along  that  the  man  ain't  loony 
now.  He's  been  perfectly  harmless  for  nine  years.  He's — he's " 

Mr.  Thompson  couldn't  think  how  to  describe  how  it  was  with  Mr. 
Helton.  "Why,  he's  been  like  one  of  the  family,"  he  said,  "the  best 
standby  a  man  ever  had."  Mr.  Thompson  tried  to  see  his  way  out.  It 
was  a  fact  Mr.  Helton  might  go  loony  again  any  minute,  and  now  this 
fellow  talking  around  the  country  would  put  Mr.  Thompson  in  a  fix. 
It  was  a  terrible  position.  He  couldn't  think  of  any  way  out.  "You're 
crazy,"  Mr.  Thompson  roared  suddenly,  "you're  the  crazy  one  around 
here,  you're  crazier  than  he  ever  was!  You  get  off  this  place  or  I'll 
handcuff  you  and  turn  you  over  to  the  law.  You're  trespassing,"  shouted 
Mr.  Thompson.  "Get  out  of  here  before  I  knock  you  down!" 

He  took  a  step  towards  the  fat  man,  who  backed  off,  shrinking,  "Try 
it,  try  it,  go  ahead!"  and  then  something  happened  that  Mr.  Thompson 
tried  hard  afterwards  to  piece  together  in  his  mind,  and  in  fact  it  never 
did  come  straight.  He  saw  the  fat  man  with  his  long  bowie  knife  in  his 
hand,  he  saw  Mr.  Helton  come  round  the  corner  on  the  run,  his  long 
jaw  dropped,  his  arms  swinging,  his  eyes  wild.  Mr.  Helton  came  in 
between  them,  fists  doubled  up,  then  stopped  short,  glaring  at  the  fat 
man,  his  big  frame  seemed  to  collapse,  he  trembled  like  a  shied  horse; 
and  then  the  fat  man  drove  at  him,  knife  in  one  hand,  handcuffs  in  the 
other.  Mr.  Thompson  saw  it  coming,  he  saw  the  blade  going  into  Mr. 
Helton's  stomach,  he  knew  he  had  the  ax  out  of  the  log  in  his  own 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  811 

hands,  felt  his  arms  go  up  over  his  head  and  bring  the  ax  down  on 
Mr.  Hatch's  head  as  if  he  were  stunning  a  beef. 

Mrs.  Thompson  had  been  listening  uneasily  for  some  time  to  the 
voices  going  on,  one  of  them  strange  to  her,  but  she  was  too  tired  at 
first  to  get  up  and  come  out  to  see  what  was  going  on.  The  confused 
shouting  that  rose  so  suddenly  brought  her  up  to  her  feet  and  out 
across  the  front  porch  without  her  slippers,  hair  half-braided.  Shading 
her  eyes,  she  saw  first  Mr.  Helton,  running  all  stooped  over  through 
the  orchard,  running  like  a  man  with  dogs  after  him;  and  Mr.  Thomp- 
son supporting  himself  on  the  ax  handle  was  leaning  over  shaking  by 
the  shoulder  a  man  Mrs.  Thompson  had  never  seen,  who  lay  doubled 
up  with  the  top  of  his  head  smashed  and  the  blood  running  away  in  a 
greasy-looking  puddle.  Mr.  Thompson,  without  taking  his  hand  from 
the  man's  shoulder,  said  in  a  thick  voice,  "He  killed  Mr.  Helton,  he 
killed  him,  I  saw  him  do  it.  I  had  to  knock  him  out,"  he  called  loudly, 
"but  he  won't  come  to." 

Mrs.  Thompson  said  in  a  faint  scream,  "Why,  yonder  goes  Mr.  Hel- 
ton," and  she  pointed.  Mr.  Thompson  pulled  himself  up  and  looked 
where  she  pointed.  Mrs.  Thompson  sat  down  slowly  against  the  side 
of  the  house  and  began  to  slide  forward  on  her  face;  she  felt  as  if  she 
were  drowning,  she  couldn't  rise  to  the  top  somehow,  and  her  only 
thought  was  she  was  glad  the  boys  were  not  there,  they  were  out,  fish- 
ing at  Halifax,  oh,  God,  she  was  glad  the  boys  were  not  there. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Thompson  drove  up  to  their  barn  about  sunset.  Mr. 
Thompson  handed  the  reins  to  his  wife,  got  out  to  open  the  big  door, 
and  Mrs.  Thompson  guided  old  Jim  in  under  the  roof.  The  buggy  was 
gray  with  dust  and  age,  Mrs.  Thompson's  face  was  gray  with  dust  and 
weariness,  and  Mr.  Thompson's  face,  as  he  stood  at  the  horse's  head 
and  began  unhitching,  was  gray  except  for  the  dark  blue  of  his  freshly 
shaven  jaws  and  chin,  gray  and  blue  and  caved  in,  but  patient,  like  a 
dead  man's  face. 

Mrs.  Thompson  stepped  down  to  the  hard  packed  manure  of  the 
barn  floor,  and  shook  out  her  light  flower-sprigged  dress.  She  wore  her 
smoked  glasses,  and  her  wide  shady  leghorn  hat  with  the  wreath  of 


812  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

exhausted  pink  and  blue  forget-me-nots  hid  her  forehead,  fixed  in  a 
knot  of  distress. 

The  horse  hung  his  head,  raised  a  huge  sigh  and  flexed  his  stiffened 
legs.  Mr.  Thompson's  words  came  up  muffled  and  hollow.  "Poor  ole 
Jim,"  he  said,  clearing  his  throat,  "he  looks  pretty  sunk  in  the  ribs.  I 
guess  he's  had  a  hard  week."  He  lifted  the  harness  up  in  one  piece, 
slid  it  off  and  Jim  walked  out  of  the  shafts  halting  a  little.  "Well,  this 
is  the  last  time,"  Mr.  Thompson  said,  still  talking  to  Jim.  "Now  you 
can  get  a  good  rest." 

Mrs.  Thompson  closed  her  eyes  behind  her  smoked  glasses.  The  last 
time,  and  high  time,  and  they  should  never  have  gone  at  all.  She  did 
not  need  her  glasses  any  more,  now  the  good  darkness  was  coming 
down  again,  but  her  eyes  ran  full  of  tears  steadily,  though  she  was  not 
crying,  and  she  felt  better  with  the  glasses,  safer,  hidden  away  behind 
them.  She  took  out  her  handkerchief  with  her  hands  shaking  as  they 
had  been  shaking  ever  since  that  day,  and  blew  her  nose.  She  said,  "I 
see  the  boys  have  lighted  the  lamps.  I  hope  they've  started  the  stove 
going." 

She  stepped  along  the  rough  path  holding  her  thin  dress  and  starched 
petticoats  around  her,  feeling  her  way  between  the  sharp  small  stones, 
leaving  the  barn  because  she  could  hardly  bear  to  be  near  Mr.  Thomp- 
son, advancing  slowly  towards  the  house  because  she  dreaded  going 
there.  Life  was  all  one  dread,  the  faces  of  her  neighbors,  of  her  boys,  of 
her  husband,  the  face  of  the  whole  world,  the  shape  of  her  own  house 
in  the  darkness,  the  very  smell  of  the  grass  and  the  trees  were  horrible 
to  her.  There  was  no  place  to  go,  only  one  thing  to  do,  bear  it  somehow 
— but  how?  She  asked  herself  that  question  often.  How  was  she  going 
to  keep  on  living  now  ?  Why  had  she  lived  at  all  ?  She  wished  now  she 
had  died  one  of  those  times  when  she  had  been  so  sick,  instead  of 
living  on  for  this. 

The  boys  were  in  the  kitchen;  Herbert  was  looking  at  the  funny 
pictures  from  last  Sunday's  newspapers,  the  Katzenjammer  Kids  and 
Happy  Hooligan.  His  chin  was  in  his  hands  and  his  elbows  on  the 
table,  and  he  was  really  reading  and  looking  at  the  pictures,  but  his 
face  was  unhappy.  Arthur  was  building  the  fire,  adding  kindling  a 
stick  at  a  time,  watching  it  catch  and  blaze.  His  face  was  heavier  and 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  813 

darker  than  Herbert's,  but  he  was  a  little  sullen  by  nature;  Mrs. 
Thompson  thought,  he  takes  things  harder,  too.  Arthur  said,  "Hello, 
Momma,"  and  went  on  with  his  work.  Herbert  swept  the  papers  to- 
gether and  moved  over  on  the  bench.  They  were  big  boys — fifteen  and 
seventeen,  and  Arthur  as  tall  as  his  father.  Mrs.  Thompson  sat  down 
beside  Herbert,  taking  off"  her  hat.  She  said,  "I  guess  you're  hungry. 
We  were  late  today.  We  went  the  Log  Hollow  road,  it's  rougher  than 
ever."  Her  pale  mouth  drooped  with  a  sad  fold  on  either  side. 

"I  guess  you  saw  the  Mannings,  then,"  said  Herbert. 

"Yes,  and  the  Fergusons,  and  the  Allbrights,  and  that  new  family 
McClellan." 

"Anybody  say  anything?"  asked  Herbert. 

"Nothing  much,  you  know  how  it's  been  all  along,  some  of  them 
keeps  saying,  yes,  they  know  it  was  a  clear  case  and  a  fair  trial  and  they 
say  how  glad  they  are  your  papa  came  out  so  well,  and  all  that,  some 
of  'em  do,  anyhow,  but  it  looks  like  they  don't  really  take  sides  with 
him.  I'm  about  wore  out,"  she  said,  the  tears  rolling  again  from  under 
her  dark  glasses.  "I  don't  know  what  good  it  does,  but  your  papa  can't 
seem  to  rest  unless  he's  telling  how  it  happened.  I  don't  know." 

"I  don't  think  it  does  any  good,  not  a  speck,"  said  Arthur,  moving 
away  from  the  stove.  "It  just  keeps  the  whole  question  stirred  up  in 
people's  minds.  Everybody  will  go  round  telling  what  he  heard,  and 
the  whole  thing  is  going  to  get  worse  mixed  up  than  ever.  It  just 
makes  matters  worse.  I  wish  you  could  get  Papa  to  stop  driving  round 
the  country  talking  like  that." 

"Your  papa  knows  best,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson.  "You  oughtn't  to 
criticize  him.  He's  got  enough  to  put  up  with  without  that." 

Arthur  said  nothing,  his  jaw  stubborn.  Mr.  Thompson  came  in,  his 
eyes  hollowed  out  and  dead-looking,  his  thick  hands  gray  white  and 
seamed  from  washing  them  clean  every  day  before  he  started  out  to  see 
the  neighbors  to  tell  them  his  side  of  the  story.  He  was  wearing  his 
Sunday  clothes,  a  thick  pepper-and-salt-colored  suit  with  a  black 
string  tie. 

Mrs.  Thompson  stood  up,  her  head  swimming.  "Now  you-all  get 
out  of  the  kitchen,  it's  too  hot  in  here  and  I  need  room.  I'll  get  us  a 
little  bite  of  supper,  if  you'll  just  get  out  and  give  me  some  room." 


814  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

They  went  as  if  they  were  glad  to  go,  the  boys  outside,  Mr.  Thomp- 
son into  his  bedroom.  She  heard  him  groaning  to  himself  as  he  took 
off  his  shoes,  and  heard  the  bed  creak  as  he  lay  down.  Mrs.  Thompson 
opened  the  icebox  and  felt  the  sweet  coldness  flow  out  of  it;  she  had 
never  expected  to  have  an  icebox,  much  less  did  she  hope  to  afford 
to  keep  it  filled  with  ice.  It  still  seemed  like  a  miracle,  after  two  or 
three  years.  There  was  the  food,  cold  and  clean,  all  ready  to  be  warmed 
over.  She  would  never  have  had  that  icebox  if  Mr.  Helton  hadn't  hap- 
pened along  one  day,  just  by  the  strangest  luck;  so  saving,  and  so 
managing,  so  good,  thought  Mrs.  Thompson,  her  heart  swelling  until 
she  feared  she  would  faint  again,  standing  there  with  the  door  open 
and  leaning  her  head  upon  it.  She  simply  could  not  bear  to  remember 
Mr.  Helton,  with  his  long  sad  face  and  silent  ways,  who  had  always 
been  so  quiet  and  harmless,  who  had  worked  so  hard  and  helped  Mr. 
Thompson  so  much,  running  through  the  hot  fields  and  woods,  being 
hunted  like  a  mad  dog,  everybody  turning  out  with  ropes  and  guns 
and  sticks  to  catch  and  tie  him.  Oh,  God,  said  Mrs.  Thompson  in  a 
long  dry  moan,  kneeling  before  the  icebox  and  fumbling  inside  for  the 
dishes,  even  if  they  did  pile  mattresses  all  over  the  jail  floor  and  against 
the  walls,  and  five  men  there  to  hold  him  to  keep  him  from  hurting 
himself  any  more,  he  was  already  hurt  too  badly,  he  couldn't  have  lived 
anyway.  Mr.  Barbee,  the  sheriff,  told  her  about  it.  He  said,  well,  they 
didn't  aim  to  harm  him  but  they  had  to  catch  him,  he  was  crazy  as  a 
loon;  he  picked  up  rocks  and  tried  to  brain  every  man  that  got  near 
him.  He  had  two  harmonicas  in  his  jumper  pocket,  said  the  sheriff,  but 
they  fell  out  in  the  scuffle,  and  Mr.  Helton  tried  to  pick  'em  up  again, 
and  that's  when  they  finally  got  him.  "They  had  to  be  rough,  Miz 
Thompson,  he  fought  like  a  wildcat."  Yes,  thought  Mrs.  Thompson 
again  with  the  same  bitterness,  of  course,  they  had  to  be  rough.  Thev 
always  have  to  be  rough.  Mr.  Thompson  can't  argue  with  a  man  and 
get  him  off  the  place  peaceably;  no,  she  thought,  standing  up  and  shut- 
ting the  icebox,  he  has  to  kill  somebody,  he  has  to  be  a  murderer  and 
ruin  his  boys'  lives  and  cause  Mr.  Helton  to  be  killed  like  a  mad  dog. 

Her  thoughts  stopped  with  a  little  soundless  explosion,  cleared  and 
began  again.  The  rest  of  Mr.  Helton's  harmonicas  were  still  in  the 
shack,  his  tune  ran  in  Mrs.  Thompson's  head  at  certain  times  of  the 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  815 

day.  She  missed  it  in  the  evenings.  It  seemed  so  strange  she  had  never 
known  the  name  of  that  song,  nor  what  it  meant,  until  after  Mr.  Hel- 
ton was  gone.  Mrs.  Thompson,  trembling  in  the  knees,  took  a  drink 
of  water  at  the  sink  and  poured  the  red  beans  into  the  baking  dish, 
and  began  to  roll  the  pieces  of  chicken  in  flour  to  fry  them.  There  was 
a  time,  she  said  to  herself,  when  I  thought  I  had  neighbors  and  friends, 
there  was  a  time  when  we  could  hold  up  our  heads,  there  was  a  time 
when  my  husband  hadn't  killed  a  man  and  I  could  tell  the  truth  to 
anybody  about  anything. 

Mr.  Thompson,  turning  on  his  bed,  figured  that  he  had  done  all  he 
could,  he'd  just  try  to  let  the  matter  rest  from  now  on.  His  lawyer, 
Mr.  Burleigh,  had  told  him  right  at  the  beginning,  "Now  you  keep 
calm  and  collected.  You've  got  a  fine  case,  even  if  you  haven't  got  wit- 
nesses. Your  wife  must  sit  in  court,  she'll  be  a  powerful  argument  with 
the  jury.  You  just  plead  not  guilty  and  I'll  do  the  rest.  The  trial  is 
going  to  be  a  mere  formality,  you  haven't  got  a  thing  to  worry  about. 
You'll  be  clean  out  of  this  before  you  know  it."  And  to  make  talk 
Mr.  Burleigh  had  got  to  telling  about  all  the  men  he  knew  around  the 
country  who  for  one  reason  or  another  had  been  forced  to  kill  some- 
body, always  in  self-defense,  and  there  just  wasn't  anything  to  it  at  all. 
He  even  told  about  how  his  own  father  in  the  old  days  had  shot  and 
killed  a  man  just  for  setting  foot  inside  his  gate  when  he  told  him  not 
to.  "Sure,  I  shot  the  scoundrel,"  said  Mr.  Burleigh's  father,  "in  self- 
defense;  I  told  him  I'd  shoot  him  if  he  set  his  foot  in  my  yard,  and  he 
did,  and  I  did."  There  had  been  bad  blood  between  them  for  years, 
Mr.  Burleigh  said,  and  his  father  had  waited  a  long  time  to  catch  the 
other  fellow  in  the  wrong,  and  when  he  did  he  certainly  made  the  most 
of  his  opportunity. 

"But  Mr.  Hatch,  as  I  told  you,"  Mr.  Thompson  had  said,  "made  a 
pass  at  Mr.  Helton  with  his  bowie  knife.  That's  why  I  took  a  hand." 

"All  the  better,"  said  Mr.  Burleigh.  "That  stranger  hadn't  any  right 
coming  to  your  house  on  such  an  errand.  Why,  hell,"  said  Mr.  Bur- 
leigh, "that  wasn't  even  manslaughter  you  committed.  So  now  you  just 
hold  your  horses  and  keep  your  shirt  on.  And  don't  say  one  word 
without  I  tell  you." 


816  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Wasn't  even  manslaughter.  Mr.  Thompson  had  to  cover  Mr.  Hatch 
with  a  piece  of  wagon  canvas  and  ride  to  town  to  tell  the  sheriff.  It  had 
been  hard  on  Ellie.  When  they  got  back,  the  sheriff  and  the  coroner 
and  two  deputies,  they  found  her  sitting  beside  the  road,  on  a  low 
bridge  over  a  gulley,  about  half  a  mile  from  the  place.  He  had  taken 
her  up  behind  his  saddle  and  got  her  back  to  the  house.  He  had  already 
told  the  sheriff  that  his  wife  had  witnessed  the  whole  business,  and  now 
he  had  time,  getting  her  to  her  room  and  in  bed,  to  tell  her  what  to  say 
if  they  asked  anything.  He  had  left  out  the  part  about  Mr.  Helton  be- 
ing crazy  all  along,  but  it  came  out  at  the  trial.  By  Mr.  Burleigh's  ad- 
vice Mr.  Thompson  had  pretended  to  be  perfectly  ignorant;  Mr.  Hatch 
hadn't  said  a  word  about  that.  Mr.  Thompson  pretended  to  believe 
that  Mr.  Hatch  had  just  come  looking  for  Mr.  Helton  to  settle  old 
scores,  and  the  two  members  of  Mr.  Hatch's  family  who  had  come 
down  to  try  to  get  Mr.  Thompson  convicted  didn't  get  anywhere  at 
all.  It  hadn't  been  much  of  a  trial,  Mr.  Burleigh  saw  to  that.  He  had 
charged  a  reasonable  fee,  and  Mr.  Thompson  had  paid  him  and  felt 
grateful,  but  after  it  was  over  Mr.  Burleigh  didn't  seem  pleased  to  see 
him  when  he  got  to  dropping  into  the  office  to  talk  it  over,  telling  him 
things  that  had  slipped  his  mind  at  first:  trying  to  explain  what  an 
ornery  low  hound  Mr.  Hatch  had  been,  anyhow.  Mr.  Burleigh  seemed 
to  have  lost  his  interest;  he  looked  sour  and  upset  when  he  saw  Mr. 
Thompson  at  the  door.  Mr.  Thompson  kept  saying  to  himself  that 
he'd  got  off,  all  right,  just  as  Mr.  Burleigh  had  predicted,  but,  but — 
and  it  was  right  there  that  Mr.  Thompson's  mind  struck,  squirming 
like  an  angleworm  on  a  fishhook:  he  had  killed  Mr.  Hatch,  and  he  was 
a  murderer.  That  was  the  truth  about  himself  that  Mr.  Thompson 
couldn't  grasp,  even  when  he  said  the  word  to  himself.  Why,  he  had 
not  even  once  thought  of  killing  anybody,  much  less  Mr.  Hatch,  and 
if  Mr.  Helton  hadn't  come  out  so  unexpectedly,  hearing  the  row,  why, 
then — but  then,  Mr.  Helton  had  come  on  the  run  that  way  to  help  him. 
What  he  couldn't  understand  was  what  happened  next.  He  had  seen 
Mr.  Hatch  go  after  Mr.  Helton  with  the  knife,  he  had  seen  the  point, 
blade  up,  go  into  Mr.  Helton's  stomach  and  slice  up  like  you  slice  a 
hog,  but  when  they  finally  caught  Mr.  Helton  there  wasn't  a  knife 
scratch  on  him.  Mr.  Thompson  knew  he  had  the  ax  in  his  own  hands 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  817 

and  felt  himself  lifting  it,  but  he  couldn't  remember  hitting  Mr.  Hatch. 
He  couldn't  remember  it.  He  couldn't.  He  remembered  only  that  he 
had  been  determined  to  stop  Mr.  Hatch  from  cutting  Mr.  Helton.  If  he 
was  given  a  chance  he  could  explain  the  whole  matter.  At  the  trial 
they  hadn't  let  him  talk.  They  just  asked  questions  and  he  answered 
yes  or  no,  and  they  never  did  get  to  the  core  of  the  matter.  Since  the 
trial,  now,  every  day  for  a  week  he  had  washed  and  shaved  and  put  on 
his  best  clothes  and  had  taken  Ellie  with  him  to  tell  every  neighbor  he 
had  that  he  never  killed  Mr.  Hatch  on  purpose,  and  what  good  did  it 
do?  Nobody  believed  him.  Even  when  he  turned  to  Ellie  and  said, 
"You  was  there,  you  saw  it,  didn't  you?"  and  Ellie  spoke  up,  saying, 
"Yes,  that's  the  truth.  Mr.  Thompson  was  trying  to  save  Mr.  Helton's 
life,"  and  he  added,  "If  you  don't  believe  me,  you  can  believe  my  wife. 
She  won't  lie,"  Mr.  Thompson  saw  something  in  all  their  faces  that 
disheartened  him,  made  him  feel  empty  and  tired  out.  They  didn't 
believe  he  was  not  a  murderer. 

Even  Ellie  never  said  anything  to  comfort  him.  He  hoped  she  would 
say  finally,  "I  remember  now,  Mr.  Thompson,  I  really  did  come  round 
the  corner  in  time  to  see  everything.  It's  not  a  lie,  Mr.  Thompson.  Don't 
you  worry."  But  as  they  drove  together  in  silence,  with  the  days  still 
hot  and  dry,  shortening  for  fall,  day  after  day,  the  buggy  jolting  in  the 
ruts,  she  said  nothing;  they  grew  to  dread  the  sight  of  another  house, 
and  the  people  in  it:  all  houses  looked  alike  now,  and  the  people — 
old  neighbors  or  new — had  the  same  expression  when  Mr.  Thompson 
told  them  why  he  had  come  and  began  his  story.  Their  eyes  looked  as 
if  someone  had  pinched  the  eyeball  at  the  back;  they  shriveled  and  the 
light  went  out  of  them.  Some  of  them  sat  with  fixed  tight  smiles  try- 
ing to  be  friendly.  "Yes,  Mr.  Thompson,  we  know  how  you  must  feel. 
It  must  be  terrible  for  you,  Mrs.  Thompson.  Yes,  you  know,  I've  about 
come  to  the  point  where  I  believe  in  such  a  thing  as  killing  in  self- 
defense.  Why,  certainly,  we  believe  you,  Mr.  Thompson,  why  shouldn't 
we  believe  you  ?  Didn't  you  have  a  perfectly  fair  and  above-board  trial  ? 
Well,  now,  natchally,  Mr.  Thompson,  we  think  you  done  right." 

Mr.  Thompson  was  satisfied  they  didn't  think  so.  Sometimes  the  air 
around  him  was  so  thick  with  their  blame  he  fought  and  pushed  with 
his  fists,  and  the  sweat  broke  out  all  over  him,  he  shouted  his  story  in  a 


S18  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

dust-choked  voice,  he  would  fairly  bellow  at  last:  "My  wife,  here,  you 
know  her,  she  was  there,  she  saw  and  heard  it  all,  if  you  don't  believe 
me,  ask  her,  she  won't  lie!"  and  Mrs.  Thompson,  with  her  hands 
knotted  together,  aching,  her  chin  trembling,  would  never  fail  to  say: 
"Yes,  that's  right,  that's  the  truth " 

The  last  straw  had  been  laid  on  today,  Mr.  Thompson  decided.  Tom 
Allbright,  an  old  beau  of  Ellie's,  why,  he  had  squired  Ellie  around  a 
whole  summer,  had  come  out  to  meet  them  when  they  drove  up,  and 
standing  there  bareheaded  had  stopped  them  from  getting  out.  He  had 
looked  past  them  with  an  embarrassed  frown  on  his  face,  telling  them 
his  wife's  sister  was  there  with  a  raft  of  young  ones,  and  the  house 
was  pretty  full  and  everything  upset,  or  he'd  ask  them  to  come  in. 
"We've  been  thinking  of  trying  to  get  up  to  your  place  one  of  these 
days,"  said  Mr.  Allbright,  moving  away  trying  to  look  busy,  "we've 
been  mighty  occupied  up  here  of  late."  So  they  had  to  say,  "Well,  we 
just  happened  to  be  driving  this  way,"  and  go  on.  "The  Allbrights," 
said  Mrs.  Thompson,  "always  was  fair-weather  friends."  "They  look 
out  for  number  one,  that's  a  fact,"  said  Mr.  Thompson.  But  it  was  cold 
comfort  to  them  both. 

Finally  Mrs.  Thompson  had  given  up.  "Let's  go  home,"  she  said. 
"Old  Jim's  tired  and  thirsty,  and  we've  gone  far  enough." 

Mr.  Thompson  said,  "Well,  while  we're  out  this  way,  we  might  as 
well  stop  at  the  McClellans'."  They  drove  in,  and  asked  a  little  cotton- 
haired  boy  if  his  mamma  and  papa  were  at  home.  Mr.  Thompson 
wanted  to  see  them.  The  little  boy  stood  gazing  with  his  mouth  open, 
then  galloped  into  the  house  shouting.  "Mommer,  Popper,  come  out 
hyah.  That  man  that  kilt  Mr.  Hatch  has  come  ter  see  yer!" 

The  man  came  out  in  his  sock  feet,  with  one  gallus  up,  the  other 
broken  and  dangling,  and  said,  "Light  down,  Mr.  Thompson,  and 
come  in.  The  ole  woman's  washing,  but  she'll  git  here."  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son, feeling  her  way,  stepped  down  and  sat  in  a  broken  rocking-chair 
on  the  porch  that  sagged  under  her  feet.  The  woman  of  the  house, 
barefooted,  in  a  calico  wrapper,  sat  on  the  edge  of  the  porch,  her  fat 
sallow  face  full  of  curiosity.  Mr.  Thompson  began,  "Well,  as  I  reckon 
you  happen  to  know,  I've  had  some  strange  troubles  lately,  and,  as 
the  feller  says,  it's  not  the  kind  of  trouble  that  happens  to  a  man  every 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  819 

day  in  the  year,  and  there's  some  things  I  don't  want  no  misunderstand- 
ing about  in  the  neighbors'  minds,  so — "  He  halted  and  stumbled  for- 
ward, and  the  two  listening  faces  took  on  a  mean  look,  a  greedy, 
despising  look,  a  look  that  said  plain  as  day,  "My,  you  must  be  a  purty 
sorry  feller  to  come  round  worrying  about  what  we  think,  we  know  you 
wouldn't  be  here  if  you  had  anybody  else  to  turn  to — my,  I  wouldn't 
lower  myself  that  much,  myself."  Mr.  Thompson  was  ashamed  of  him- 
self, he  was  suddenly  in  a  rage,  he'd  like  to  knock  their  dirty  skunk 
heads  together,  the  low-down  white  trash — but  he  held  himself  down 
and  went  on  to  the  end.  "My  wife  will  tell  you,"  he  said,  and  this  was 
the  hardest  place,  because  Ellie  always  without  moving  a  muscle  seemed 
to  stiffen  as  if  somebody  had  threatened  to  hit  her;  "ask  my  wife,  she 
won't  lie." 

"It's  true,  I  saw  it " 

"Well,  now,"  said  the  man,  drily,  scratching  his  ribs  inside  his  shirt, 
"that  sholy  is  too  bad.  Well,  now,  I  kaint  see  what  we've  got  to  do  with 
all  this  here  however.  I  kaint  see  no  good  reason  for  us  to  git  mixed  up 
in  these  murder  matters,  I  shore  kaint.  Whichever  way  you  look  at  it, 
it  ain't  none  of  my  business.  However,  it's  mighty  nice  of  you-all  to 
come  around  and  give  us  the  straight  of  it,  fur  we've  heerd  some 
mighty  queer  yarns  about  it,  mighty  queer,  I  golly  you  couldn't  hardly 
make  head  ner  tail  of  it." 

"Evvybody  goin'  round  shootin'  they  heads  off,"  said  the  woman. 
"Now  we  don't  hold  with  killin';  the  Bible  says " 

"Shet  yer  trap,"  said  the  man,  "and  keep  it  shet  'r  I'll  shet  it  fer  yer. 
Now  it  shore  looks  like  to  me " 

"We  mustn't  linger,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson,  unclasping  her  hands. 
"We've  lingered  too  long  now.  It's  getting  late,  and  we've  far  to  go." 
Mr.  Thompson  took  the  hint  and  followed  her.  The  man  and  the 
woman  lolled  against  their  rickety  porch  poles  and  watched  them  go. 

Now  lying  on  his  bed,  Mr.  Thompson  knew  the  end  had  come.  Now, 
this  minute,  lying  in  the  bed  where  he  had  slept  with  Ellie  for  eighteen 
years;  under  this  roof  where  he  had  laid  the  shingles  when  he  was 
waiting  to  get  married;  there  as  he  was  with  his  whiskers  already 
sprouting  since  his  shave  that  morning;  with  his  fingers  feeling  his 
bony  chin,  Mr.  Thompson  felt  he  was  a  dead  man.  He  was  dead  to  his 


820  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

other  life,  he  had  got  to  the  end  of  something  without  knowing  why, 
and  he  had  to  make  a  fresh  start,  he  did  not  know  how.  Something 
different  was  going  to  begin,  he  didn't  know  what.  It  was  in  some 
way  not  his  business.  He  didn't  feel  he  was  going  to  have  much  to  do 
with  it.  He  got  up,  aching,  hollow,  and  went  out  to  the  kitchen  where 
Mrs.  Thompson  was  just  taking  up  the  supper. 

"Call  the  boys,"  said  Mrs.  Thompson.  They  had  been  down  to  the 
barn,  and  Arthur  put  out  the  lantern  before  hanging  it  on  a  nail  near 
the  door.  Mr.  Thompson  didn't  like  their  silence.  They  had  hardly  said 
a  word  about  anything  to  him  since  that  day.  They  seemed  to  avoid 
him,  they  ran  the  place  together  as  if  he  wasn't  there,  and  attended  to 
everything  without  asking  him  for  any  advice.  "What  you  boys  been 
up  to?"  he  asked,  trying  to  be  hearty.  "Finishing  your  chores?" 

"No,  sir,"  said  Arthur,  "there  ain't  much  to  do.  Just  greasing  some 
axles."  Herbert  said  nothing.  Mrs.  Thompson  bowed  her  head:  "For 
these  and  all  Thy  blessings.  .  .  .  Amen,"  she  whispered  weakly,  and  the 
Thompsons  sat  there  with  their  eyes  down  and  their  faces  sorrowful, 
as  if  they  were  at  a  funeral. 

Every  time  he  shut  his  eyes,  trying  to  sleep,  Mr.  Thompson's  mind 
started  up  and  began  to  run  like  a  rabbit.  It  jumped  from  one  thing 
to  another,  trying  to  pick  up  a  trail  here  or  there  that  would  straighten 
out  what  had  happened  that  day  he  killed  Mr.  Hatch.  Try  as  he  might, 
Mr.  Thompson's  mind  would  not  go  anywhere  that  it  had  not  already 
been,  he  could  not  see  anything  but  what  he  had  seen  once,  and  he 
knew  that  was  not  right.  If  he  had  not  seen  straight  that  first  time, 
then  everything  about  his  killing  Mr.  Hatch  was  wrong  from  start  to 
finish,  and  there  was  nothing  more  to  be  done  about  it,  he  might  just 
as  well  give  up.  It  still  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  done,  maybe  not  the 
right  thing,  but  the  only  thing  he  could  do,  that  day,  but  had  he  ?  Did 
he  have  to  \ill  Mr.  Hatch?  He  had  never  seen  a  man  he  hated  more, 
the  minute  he  laid  eyes  on  him.  He  knew  in  his  bones  the  fellow  was 
there  for  trouble.  What  seemed  so  funny  now  was  this:  Why  hadn't  he 
just  told  Mr.  Hatch  to  get  out  before  he  ever  even  got  in? 

Mrs.  Thompson,  her  arms  crossed  on  her  breast,  was  lying  beside 
him,  perfectlv  still,  but  she  seemed  awake,  somehow.  "Asleep.  Ellie?" 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  821 

After  all,  he  might  have  got  rid  of  him  peaceably,  or  maybe  he  might 
have  had  to  overpower  him  and  put  those  handcuffs  on  him  and  turn 
him  over  to  the  sheriff  for  disturbing  the  peace.  The  most  they  could 
have  done  was  to  lock  Mr.  Hatch  up  while  he  cooled  off  for  a  few 
days  or  fine  him  a  little  something.  He  would  try  to  think  of  things  he 
might  have  said  to  Mr.  Hatch.  Why,  let's  see,  I  could  just  have  said, 
Now  look  here,  Mr.  Hatch,  I  want  to  talk  to  you  as  man  to  man.  But 
his  brain  would  go  empty.  What  could  he  have  said  or  done  ?  But  if  he 
could  have  done  anything  else  almost  except  kill  Mr.  Hatch,  then  noth- 
ing would  have  happened  to  Mr.  Helton.  Mr.  Thompson  hardly  ever 
thought  of  Mr.  Helton.  His  mind  just  skipped  over  him  and  went  on. 
If  he  stopped  to  think  about  Mr.  Helton  he'd  never  in  God's  world  get 
anywhere.  He  tried  to  imagine  how  it  might  all  have  been,  this  very 
night  even,  if  Mr.  Helton  were  still  safe  and  sound  out  in  his  shack 
playing  his  tune  about  feeling  so  good  in  the  morning,  drinking  up  all 
the  wine  so  you'd  feel  even  better;  and  Mr.  Hatch  safe  in  jail  some- 
where, mad  as  hops,  maybe,  but  out  of  harm's  way  and  ready  to  listen 
to  reason  and  to  repent  of  his  meanness,  the  dirty,  yellow-livered  hound 
coming  around  persecuting  an  innocent  man  and  ruining  a  whole  fam- 
ily that  never  harmed  him!  Mr.  Thompson  felt  the  veins  of  his  fore- 
head start  up,  his  fists  clutched  as  if  they  seized  an  ax  handle,  the  sweat 
broke  out  on  him,  he  bounded  up  from  the  bed  with  a  yell  smothered 
in  his  throat,  and  Ellie  started  up  after  him,  crying  out,  "Oh,  oh,  don't! 
Don't!  Don't!"  as  if  she  were  having  a  nightmare.  He  stood  shaking 
until  his  bones  rattled  in  him,  crying  hoarsely,  "Light  the  lamp,  light 
the  lamp,  Ellie." 

Instead,  Mrs.  Thompson  gave  a  shrill  weak  scream,  almost  the  same 
scream  he  had  heard  on  that  day  she  came  around  the  house  when  he 
Was  standing  there  with  the  ax  in  his  hand.  He  could  not  see  her  in 
the  dark,  but  she  was  on  the  bed,  rolling  violently.  He  felt  for  her  in 
horror,  and  his  groping  hands  found  her  arms,  up,  and  her  own  hands 
pulling  her  hair  straight  out  from  her  head,  her  neck  strained  back, 
and  the  tight  screams  strangling  her.  He  shouted  out  for  Arthur,  for 
Herbert.  "Your  mother!"  he  bawled,  his  voice  cracking.  As  he  held 
Mrs.  Thompson's  arms,  the  boys  came  tumbling  in,  Arthur  with  the 
lamp  above  his  head.  By  this  light  Mr.  Thompson  saw  Mrs.  Thomp- 


READING  I'VE  LIKED 
son's  eyes,  wide  open,  staring  dreadfully  at  him,  the  tears  pouring.  She 
sat  up  at  sight  of  the  boys,  and  held  out  one  arm  towards  them,  the 
hand  wagging  in  a  crazy  circle,  then  dropped  on  her  back  again,  and 
suddenly  went  limp.  Arthur  set  the  lamp  on  the  table  and  turned  on 
Mr.  Thompson.  "She's  scared,"  he  said,  "she's  scared  to  death."  His 
face  was  in  a  knot  of  rage,  his  fists  were  doubled  up,  he  faced  his 
father  as  if  he  meant  to  strike  him.  Mr.  Thompson's  jaw  fell,  he  was 
so  surprised  he  stepped  back  from  the  bed.  Herbert  went  to  the  other 
side.  They  stood  on  each  side  of  Mrs.  Thompson  and  watched  Mr. 
Thompson  as  if  he  were  a  dangerous  wild  beast.  "What  did  you  do  to 
her?"  shouted  Arthur,  in  a  grown  man's  voice.  "You  touch  her  again 
and  I'll  blow  your  heart  out!"  Herbert  was  pale  and  his  cheek  twitched, 
but  he  was  on  Arthur's  side;  he  would  do  what  he  could  to  help  Arthur! 
Mr.  Thompson  had  no  fight  left  in  him.  His  knees  bent  as  he  stood, 
his  chest  collapsed.  "Why,  Arthur,"  he  said,  his  words  crumbling  and 
his  breath   coming  short.  "She's  fainted  again.   Get  the   ammonia." 
Arthur  did  not  move.  Herbert  brought  the  bottle,  and  handed  it, 
shrinking,  to  his  father. 

^  Mr.  Thompson  held  it  under  Mrs.  Thompson's  nose.  He  poured  a 
little  in  the  palm  of  his  hand  and  rubbed  it  on  her  forehead.  She  gasped 
and  opened  her  eyes  and  turned  her  head  away  from  him.  Herbert  be- 
gan a  doleful  hopeless  sniffling.  "Mamma,"  he  kept  saying  "Mamma 
don't  die."  b 

"I'm  all  right,"  Mrs.  Thompson  said.  "Now  don't  you  worry  around. 
Now  Herbert,  you  mustn't  do  that.  I'm  all  right."  She  closed' her  eyes* 
Mr.  Thompson  began  pulling  on  his  best  pants;  he  put  on  his  socks 
and  shoes.  The  boys  sat  on  each  side  of  the  bed,  watching  Mrs.  Thomp- 
son's face.  Mr.  Thompson  put  on  his  shirt  and  coat.  He  said,  "I  reckon 
I'll  ride  over  and  get  the  doctor.  Don't  look  like  all  this  fainting  is  a 
good  sign.  Now  you  just  keep  watch  until  I  get  back."  They  listened, 
but  said  nothing.  He  said,  "Don't  you  get  any  notions  in  your  head.' 
I  never  did  your  mother  any  harm  in  my  life,  on  purpose."  He  went 
out,  and,  looking  back,  saw  Herbert  staring  at  him  from  under  his 
brows,  like  a  stranger.  "You'll  know  how  to  look  after  her,"  said  Mr. 
Thompson. 

Mr.  Thompson  went  through  the  kitchen.  There  he  lighted  the  Ian- 


KATHERINE  ANNE  PORTER  823 

tern,  took  a  thin  pad  of  scratch  paper  and  a  stub  pencil  from  the  shelf 
where  the  boys  kept  their  schoolbooks.  He  swung  the  lantern  on  his 
arm  and  reached  into  the  cupboard  where  he  kept  the  guns.  The  shot- 
gun was  there  to  his  hand,  primed  and  ready,  a  man  never  knows 
when  he  may  need  a  shotgun.  He  went  out  of  the  house  without  look- 
ing around,  or  looking  back  when  he  had  left  it,  passed  his  barn  with- 
out seeing  it,  and  struck  out  to  the  farthest  end  of  his  fields,  which  ran 
for  half  a  mile  to  the  east.  So  many  blows  had  been  struck  at  Mr. 
Thompson  and  from  so  many  directions  he  couldn't  stop  any  more  to 
find  out  where  he  was  hit.  He  walked  on,  over  plowed  ground  and 
over  meadow,  going  through  barbed  wire  fences  cautiously,  putting  his 
gun  through  first;  he  could  almost  see  in  the  dark,  now  his  eyes  were 
used  to  it.  Finally  he  came  to  the  last  fence;  here  he  sat  down,  back 
against  a  post,  lantern  at  his  side,  and,  with  the  pad  on  his  knee, 
moistened  the  stub  pencil  and  began  to  write: 

"Before  Almighty  God,  the  great  judge  of  all  before  who  I  am 
about  to  appear,  I  do  hereby  solemnly  swear  that  I  did  not  take  the  life 
of  Mr.  Homer  T.  Hatch  on  purpose.  It  was  done  in  defense  of  Mr. 
Helton.  I  did  not  aim  to  hit  him  with  the  ax  but  only  to  keep  him  off 
Mr.  Helton.  He  aimed  a  blow  at  Mr.  Helton  who  was  not  looking  for 
it.  It  was  my  belief  at  the  time  that  Mr.  Hatch  would  of  taken  the  life 
of  Mr.  Helton  if  I  did  not  interfere.  I  have  told  all  this  to  the  judge  and 
the  jury  and  they  let  me  off"  but  nobody  believes  it.  This  is  the  only 
way  I  can  prove  I  am  not  a  cold  blooded  murderer  like  everybody 
seems  to  think.  If  I  had  been  in  Mr.  Helton's  place  he  would  of  done 
the  same  for  me.  I  still  think  I  done  the  only  thing  there  was  to  do. 
My  wife " 

Mr.  Thompson  stopped  here  to  think  a  while.  He  wet  the  pencil 
point  with  the  tip  of  his  tongue  and  marked  out  the  last  two  words. 
He  sat  a  while  blacking  out  the  words  until  he  had  made  a  neat 
oblong  patch  where  they  had  been,  and  started  again: 

"It  was  Mr.  Homer  T.  Hatch  who  came  to  do  wrong  to  a  harmless 
man.  He  caused  all  this  trouble  and  he  deserved  to  die  but  I  am  sorry 
it  was  me  who  had  to  kill  him." 

He  licked  the  point  of  his  pencil  again,  and  signed  his  full  name 
carefully,  folded  the  paper  and  put  it  in  his  outside  pocket.  Taking  off 


824  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

his  right  shoe  and  sock,  he  set  the  butt  of  the  shotgun  along  the  ground 
with  the  twin  barrels  pointed  towards  his  head.  It  was  very  awkward. 
He  thought  about  this  a  little,  leaning  his  head  against  the  gun  mouth. 
He  was  trembling  and  his  head  was  drumming  until  he  was  deaf  and 
blind,  but  he  lay  down  flat  on  the  earth  on  his  side,  drew  the  barrel 
under  his  chin  and  fumbled  for  the  trigger  with  his  great  toe.  That 
way  he  could  work  it. 


KIN   HUBBARD 


COMMENTARY 


Hoosiers,  who  never  forget  a  native,  of  course  know  all  about  Frank 
McKinney  Hubbard  (1868-1930),  but  how  many  of  the  rest  of  us  do? 
From  1901  to  his  death  Kin  Hubbard  worked  on  the  Indianapolis 
News  and  in  its  columns  he  created  "The  Sayings  of  Abe  Martin/' 
Newspapermen  who  know  their  business  will  tell  you  that  technically 
Kin  Hubbard  was  the  greatest  of  American  paragraphers.  His  para- 
graphs hardly  ever  ran  above  a  sentence;  some  of  them  ("It's  the  good 
loser  that  finally  loses  out")  are  less  than  ten  words  long.  I  call  them 
paragraphs  because  they  are  really  telescoped  anecdotes  or  arguments. 
Sometimes  they  are  short  stories:  "Mr.  and  Mrs.  Lettie  Plum,  married 
in  June,  couldn  git  ther  car  out  o'  garage  last  evening  so  they  had  to 
go  to  bed  hungry."  Sometimes  they  are  a  fairly  complex  statement  in 
which  all  the  sentences  between  the  first  phrase  and  the  last  are  omit- 
ted: "Miss  Fawn  Lippincut  says  she  wouldn'  marry  tti  best  man  on 
earth,  but  we  supposed  she  wuz  much  younger." 

It  is  concision  that  is  Kin  Hubbard's  greatest  quality.  He  has  others, 
particularly  an  odd  Yankee  humor,  compounded  of  horse  sense  and 
an  almost  poetical  originaJity  of  observation:  "Bees  are  not  as  busy  as 
we  think  they  are.  They  jest  can't  buzz  any  slower"  or,  quite  as  good, 
"We're  all  purty  much  alike  when  we  git  out  o'  town." 

To  my  mind  Kin  Hubbard  is  the  best  of  the  cracker-barrel  phi- 
losophers, better  even  than  Mr.  Dooley.  His  range  is  extremely  nar- 
row, as  the  samples  here  given  indicate,  but  within  it  he  is  deadly 
accurate.  You  will  End  in  his  short,  abrupt  sentences  the  essence  of 
that  Middle  West  Lewis  and  Masters  were  later  to  convert  into  more 
complex  satirical  forms.  He  is  a  Hoosier  Rochefoucauld. 


825 


The  Sayings  of  Abe  Martin 

BY 

KIN  HUBBARD 


Miss  Fawn  Lippincut  went  t'  th'  city  t'day  t'  match  a  gold  fish. 

Miss  Fawn  Lippincut  says  she  wouldn'  marry  th'  best  man  on  earth, 
but  we  supposed  she  wuz  much  younger. 

Stew  Nugent's  mother  has  received  word  from  th'  authorities  of  an 
Illinoy  city  sayin'  he  is  takin'  th'  winter  short  course  in  broom  makin'. 

Lafe  Bud's  uncle  an'  two  cousins  wuz  killed  in  a  auto,  yisterday,  by 
a  train  which  refused  t'  change  its  course. 

Mrs.  Tipton  Bud's  uncle  met  with  a  serious  auto  accident  t'day,  owin' 
t'  a  near-sighted  windshield. 

Some  people  are  so  sensitive  that  they  feel  snubbed  if  an  epidemic 
overlooks  'em. 

It's  th'  good  loser  that  finally  loses  out. 

Miss  Tawney  Apple  is  confined  t'  her  home  by  a  swollen  dresser 
drawer. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Tilford  Moots  an'  niece,  Miss  Dody  Moon,  an'  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Fern  Pash  an'  son  RatclifTe,  attended  a  fire  yisterday. 

When  a  feller  says,  "It  hain't  th'  money,  but  th'  principle  o'  th' 
thing,"  it's  th'  money. 

826 


KIN  HUBBARD  827 

Mr.  Lemmie  Peters,  whose  graduation  essay,  "This  Is  Th'  Age  o' 
Opportunity,"  caused  so  much  favorable  comment  a  year  ago,  almost 
took  th'  agency  fer  th'  Eclipse  Fly  Swatter  yisterday. 

It  don't  make  no  difference  what  it  is,  a  woman'll  buy  anything  she 
thinks  a  store  is  losin'  money  on. 

I  don't  know  o'  nothin'  that's  as  willin'  an'  seems  to  really  enjoy  its 
work  like  a  revolvin'  storm  door. 

Mr.  an'  Mrs.  Lettie  Plum,  married  in  June,  couldn'  git  ther  car  out  o' 
garage  last  evenin'  so  they  had  to  go  to  bed  hungry. 

Bees  are  not  as  busy  as  we  think  they  are.  They  jest  can't  buzz  any 
slower. 

"I'm  through  with  funerals,"  said  Miss  Pearl  Purviance  when  she 
returned  from  the  cemetery  where  not  a  soul  mentioned  her  new  hat. 

One  o'  the  finest  accomplishments  is  makin'  a  long  story  short. 

President  Hoover  hain't  goin'  to  kiss  no  babies,  an'  accordin'  to  the 
newspaper  pictures,  those  he  picks  up  he  holds  like  a  Roman  candle. 

I  kin  alius  tell  a  feller  who  has  married  a  good  housekeeper  by  the 
way  he  brightens  up  when  I  speak  kindly  to  him. 

Lile  Tharp  wuz  held  up  an'  robbed  while  exercisin'  his  police  dog. 

"Paw  said  if  he  wuzn'  home  by  ten  o'clock  we'd  know  he'd  been 
held  up,  so  we  might  as  well  all  go  to  bed,"  said  Mrs.  Leghorn  Tharp, 
last  night. 

We're  all  purty  much  alike  when  we  git  out  o'  town. 

Ther  ought  t'  be  some  way  t'  eat  celery  so  it  wouldn'  sound  like  you 
wuz  steppin'  on  a  basket. 


828  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Stew  Nugent  has  decided  t'  go  t'  work  till  he  kin  find  somethin' 
better. 

Uncle  Ike  Weeks,  our  pop'lar  an'  accommodatin'  saddler,  took  his 
first  holiday  in  forty  years  yisterday  an'  picked  out  a  cemetery  lot. 

Now  an'  then  an  innocent  man  is  sent  t'  th'  legislature. 

Th'  world  gets  better  ever'  day — then  worse  agin  in  th'  evenin'. 

Two  homely  people  alius  seem  t'  be  so  genuinely  glad  t'  git  t'gether. 

The  hardest  thing  is  writin'  a  recommendation  fer  some  one  we 
know. 

Lafe  Bud  found  a  quarter  this  mornin'  jest  as  some  young  lady  wuz 
goin'  t'  step  on  it. 

Th'  trouble  with  killin'  somebuddy  or  stealin'  somethin'  is  that  we've 
got  t'  worry  thro'  a  long,  tiresome  trial  before  we  finally  reach  th' 
pardon  board. 

Oscar  Sapp,  who  wuz  buried  under  his  car,  t'day,  died  from  th'  loss 
o'  blood  while  th'  officers  searched  fer  liquor. 

Jake  Bentley  fell  of!  a  load  o'  hay  t'day  an'  had  t'  crawl  all  th'  way 
t'  th'  golf  links  t'  have  his  leg  set. 

Carpenter  Joe  Moots  dropped  a  hatchet  on  his  toe  when  th'  whistle 
blew  t'day. 

Mrs.  Tilford  Moots'  gran'father,  who  has  played  golf  fer  th'  past 
three  years,  died  anyhow  t'day. 

While  cuttin'  a  magazine  in  a  hammock  yisterday  Miss  Opal  Moots 
severed  a  artery  in  her  nose.  Her  mother,  who  wuz  ironin'  in  th'  cellar, 
escaped  uninjured. 


KIN  HUBBARD  829 

Miss  Tawney  Apple's  niece  wuz  prematurely  drowned  yisterday 
while  walkin'  in  a  canoe. 

Lafe  Bud  has  lost  his  job  at  th'  meat  shop  'cause  his  thumb  was  too 
light. 

Ike  Lark  stopped  in  th'  Strictly  Cash  Grocery  this  mornin'  t'  light 
his  pipe  an'  found  th'  proprietor  leanin'  o'er  th'  counter  dead.  Th' 
coroner  says  he's  prob'ly  been  dead  a  week  or  ten  days. 

We  like  little  children,  'cause  they  tear  out  as  soon  as  they  git  what 
they  want. 

Mrs.  Tipton  Bud  has  sold  her  gold  fish  as  they  kept  her  tied  down. 

Tell  Binkley  says  th'  Tornado  Insurance  Agents'  Union  '11  hold  an 
important  business  session  here  next  month  if  they  kin  git  an  oriental 
dancer. 

Mrs.  Artie  Small  talks  some  o'  movin'  t'  Niagary  Falls,  where  she 
wuz  so  happy  when  first  married. 

Miss  Eloise  Moots  has  resigned  from  th'  Monarch  5  &  10,  and'll  give 
her  whole  time  t'  her  hair. 

Th'  little  three-year-old  son  o'  Landlord  Gabe  Craw  got  caught  in 
th'  continuous  towel  t'day,  an'  wuz  thrown  violently  against  th'  ceilin\ 

Joe  Kite  has  quit  his  job  at  th'  saw  mill,  but  th'  idea  wuz  not  original 
with  him. 

Ez  Pash  says  he  alius  hates  t'  break  in  a  clean  towel. 

It's  no  disgrace  t'  be  poor,  but  it  might  as  well  be. 

Mr.  an'  Mrs.  Tipton  Bud,  who  have  been  quarantined  fer  two  weeks, 
have  both  applied  fer  a  divorce. 


830  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

Hon.  Ex-editur  Cale  Fluhart  wuz  a  power  politically  fer  years,  but  he 
never  got  prominent  enough  t'  have  his  speeches  garbled. 

Some  fellers  pay  a  compliment  like  they  expected  a  receipt. 

Miss  Fawn  Lippincut  took  th'  train  at  Morgantown  fer  Bloomin'ton 
t'day.  She's  gittin'  t'  be  quite  a  traveler  an'  kin  now  ride  without  buyin' 
a  orange. 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE 


COMMENTARY 


Donald  Cuhoss  Peattie's  An  Almanac  for  Moderns  is  already  a  classic, 
which  does  not  in  the  least  mean  that  a  sufficient  number  oi  people 
have  read  it.  I  have  selected  from  among  its  three  hundred  and  sixty- 
Eve  meditations  a  very  large  group,  enough,  I  hope,  to  give  you  the 
quality  oi  this  lovely  hook. 

I  should  say  at  once  that  I  am  not  one  of  your  bird-and-hee  lovers. 
I  turn  the  sour  eye  of  an  asphalt  slave  upon  those  hearty  sons  of 
Mother  Nature  who  organize  expeditions  to  the  country,  whip  out 
pocket  lenses,  and  challenge  you  to  name  the  Rowers  growing  along 
the  road.  Hence  my  deep  gratitude  to  Mr.  Peattie.  He  is  a  wide- 
visioned  and  catholic  naturalist.  He  does  not  make  me  feel  as  if 
I  were  myself  excluded  from  nature  merely  because  I  cannot  list  seven 
varieties  of  fern  and  have  never  gone  wading  in  a  swamp  at  five 
o'clock  in  the  morning. 

Though  not  of  their  stature,  Mr.  Peattie  has  in  him  the  spirit  of 
Thoreau  and  Huxley.  He  makes  tadpoles  and  ants  exciting,  celebrates 
the  charms  of  springhouses,  pays  judicious  tributes  to  the  great  nat- 
uralists who  have  preceded  him,  comments  upon  the  fact  that  Ed- 
ward Lear  at  twenty  was  a  perfect  painter  of  parrots,  ascends  to  poetry 
in  his  comparisons  (uthe  warning  cries  of  herons,  like  the  drop  of  an 
old  chain  on  its  own  coils''),  and  yet,  with  all  this  warmth,  never 
departs  from  "the  scientiEc  frame  of  mind  which  does  not  humanize 
or  sweeten  what  it  must  report." 

I  recommend  his  book  for  your  spring  reading,  and,  for  that  mat- 
ter, for  summer,  autumn,  and  winter.  An  eye  that,  without  losing  its 
sense  for  the  human  and  the  transitory,  trains  itself  on  such  constants 
as  the  nuclei  of  our  cells,  the  death  of  stars,  and  the  silent  multipli- 
cation of  bacteria  can  never  record  observations  that  are  merely  sea- 
sonable. It  reveals,  in  this  case,  the  very  poetry  of  biology. 


831 


An  Almanac  for  Moderns 

{Selections) 

BY 

DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE 
MARCH  TWENTY-FIRST 


On  this  chill  uncertain  spring  day,  toward  twilight,  I  have  heard  the 
first  frog  quaver  from  the  marsh.  That  is  a  sound  that  Pharaoh  listened 
to  as  it  rose  from  the  Nile,  and  it  blended,  I  suppose,  with  his  discon- 
tents and  longings,  as  it  does  with  ours.  There  is  something  lonely  in 
that  first  shaken  and  uplifted  trilling  croak.  And  more  than  lonely,  for 
I  hear  a  warning  in  it,  as  Pharaoh  heard  the  sound  of  plague.  It  speaks 
of  the  return  of  life,  animal  life,  to  the  earth.  It  tells  of  all  that  is  most 
unutterable  in  evolution — the  terrible  continuity  and  fluidity  of  proto- 
plasm, the  irrepressible  forces  of  reproduction — not  mystical  human 
love,  but  the  cold  batrachian  jelly  by  which  we  vertebrates  are  linked 
to  the  things  that  creep  and  writhe  and  are  blind  yet  breed  and  have 
being.  More  than  half  it  seems  to  threaten  that  when  mankind  has 
quite  thoroughly  shattered  and  eaten  and  debauched  himself  with  his 
own  follies,  that  voice  may  still  be  ringing  out  in  the  marshes  of  the 
Nile  and  the  Thames  and  the  Potomac,  unconscious  that  Pharaoh  wept 
for  his  son. 

It  always  seems  to  me  that  no  sooner  do  I  hear  the  first  frog  trill 
than  I  find  the  first  cloud  of  frog's  eggs  in  a  wayside  pool,  so  swiftly 
does  the  emergent  creature  pour  out  the  libation  of  its  cool  fertility. 
There  is  life  where  before  there  was  none.  It  is  as  repulsive  as  it  is 
beautiful,  as  silvery-black  as  it  is  slimy.  Life,  in  short,  raw  and  exciting, 
life  almost  in  primordial  form,  irreducible  element. 

832 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  833 

MARCH  TWENTY-SECOND 


For  the  ancients  the  world  was  a  little  place,  bounded  between  Ind 
and  Thule.  The  sky  bent  very  low  over  Olympus,  and  astronomers  had 
not  yet  taken  the  friendliness  out  of  the  stars.  The  shepherd  kings  of 
the  desert  called  them  by  the  names  Job  knew,  Al-Debaran,  Fomalhaut, 
Mizar,  Al-Goth,  Al-Tair,  Deneb  and  Achernar.  For  the  Greeks  the 
glittering  constellations  made  pictures  of  their  heroes  and  heroines,  and 
of  beasts  and  birds.  The  heavenly  truth  of  their  Arcadian  mythology 
blazed  nightly  in  the  skies  for  the  simplest  clod  to  read. 

Through  all  this  celestial  splendor  the  sun  plowed  yearly  in  a  broad 
track  that  they  called  the  zodiac.  As  it  entered  each  constellation  a  new 
month  with  fresh  significances  and  consequences  was  marked  down 
by  a  symbol.  Lo,  in  the  months  when  the  rains  descended,  when  the 
Nile  and  the  Tigris  and  Yangtse  rose,  the  sun  entered  the  constella- 
tions that  were  like  fishes,  and  like  a  water  carrier!  In  the  hot  dry 
months  it  was  in  the  constellation  that  is  unmistakably  a  scorpion,  bane 
of  the  desert.  Who  could  say  that  the  stars  in  their  orderly  procession 
did  not  sway  a  man's  destiny? 

Best  of  all,  the  year  began  with  spring,  with  the  vernal  equinox.  It 
was  a  natural,  a  pastoral,  a  homely  sort  of  year,  which  a  man  could 
take  to  his  heart  and  remember;  he  could  tell  the  date  by  the  feeling 
in  his  bones.  It  is  the  year  which  green  things,  and  the  beasts  and  birds 
in  their  migrations,  all  obey,  a  year  like  man's  life,  from  his  birth 
cry  to  the  snows  upon  the  philosopher's  head. 

MARCH  TWENTY-THIRD 


The  old  almanacs  have  told  off  their  years,  and  are  dead  with  them. 
The  weather-wisdom  and  the  simple  faith  that  cropped  up  through 
them  as  naturally  as  grass  in  an  orchard  are  withered  now,  and  their 
flowers  of  homely  philosophy  and  seasonable  prediction  and  reflection 
are  dry,  and  only  faintly,  quaintly  fragrant.  The  significance  of  the 
Bull  and  the  Crab  and  the  Lion  are  not  more  dead,  for  the  modern 


834  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

mind,  than  the  Nature  philosophy  of  a  generation  ago.  This  age  has 
seen  the  trees  blasted  to  skeletons  by  the  great  guns,  and  the  birds  feed- 
ing on  men's  eyes.  Pippa  has  passed. 

It  is  not  that  man  alone  is  vile.  Man  is  a  part  of  Nature.  So  is  the 
atomic  disassociation  called  high  explosive.  So  are  violent  death,  rape, 
agony,  and  rotting.  They  were  all  here,  and  quite  natural,  before  our 
day,  in  the  sweet  sky  and  the  blowing  fields. 

There  is  no  philosophy  with  a  shadow  of  realism  about  it,  save  a 
philosophy  based  upon  Nature.  It  turns  a  smiling  face,  a  surface  easily 
conquered  by  the  gun,  the  bridge,  the  dynamite  stick.  Yet  there  is  no 
obedience  but  to  its  laws.  Hammurabi  spoke  and  Rameses  commanded, 
and  the  rat  gnawed  and  the  sun  shone  and  the  hive  followed  its  multi- 
plex and  golden  order.  Flowers  pushed  up  their  child  faces  in  the 
spring,  and  the  bacteria  slowly  took  apart  the  stuff  of  life.  Today  the 
Kremlin  commands,  the  Vatican  speaks.  And  tomorrow  the  rat  will 
still  be  fattening,  the  sun  be  a  little  older,  and  the  bacteria  remain  lords 
of  creation,  whose  subtraction  would  topple  the  rest  of  life. 

Now  how  can  a  man  base  his  way  of  thought  on  Nature  and  wear 
so  happy  a  face  ?  How  can  he  take  comfort  from  withering  grass  where 
he  lays  his  head,  from  a  dying  sun  to  which  he  turns  his  face,  from  a 
mortal  woman's  head  pressed  on  his  shoulder?  To  say  how  that  might 
be,  well  might  he  talk  the  year  around. 

APRIL  FIRST 


I  say  that  it  touches  a  man  that  his  blood  is  sea  water  and  his  tears  are 
salt,  that  the  seed  of  his  loins  is  scarcely  different  from  the  same  cells  in 
a  seaweed,  and  that  of  stuff  like  his  bones  are  coral  made.  I  say  that 
physical  and  biologic  law  lies  down  with  him,  and  wakes  when  a  child 
stirs  in  the  womb,  and  that  the  sap  in  a  tree,  uprushing  in  the  spring, 
and  the  smell  of  the  loam,  where  the  bacteria  bestir  themselves  in  dark- 
ness, and  the  path  of  the  sun  in  the  heaven,  these  are  facts  of  first 
importance  to  his  mental  conclusions,  and  that  a  man  who  goes  in  no 
consciousness  of  them  is  a  drifter  and  a  dreamer,  without  a  home  or 
any  contact  with  reality. 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  835 


APRIL  SECOND 


Each  year,  and  above  all,  each  spring,  raises  up  for  Nature  a  new 
generation  of  lovers — and  this  quite  irrespective  of  the  age  of  the  new 
votary.  As  I  write  this  a  boy  is  going  out  to  the  marshes  to  watch  with 
field  glasses  the  mating  of  the  red-winged  blackbirds,  rising  up  in  airy 
swirls  and  clouds.  Or  perhaps  he  carries  some  manual  to  the  field,  and 
sits  him  down  on  an  old  log,  to  trace  his  way  through  Latin  names, 
that  seem  at  first  so  barbarous  and  stiff.  There  is  no  explaining  why 
the  boy  has  suddenly  forsaken  the  ball  and  bat,  or  finds  a  kite  less 
interesting  in  the  spring  skies  than  a  bird.  For  a  few  weeks,  or  a  few 
seasons,  or  perhaps  for  a  lifetime,  he  will  follow  this  bent  with  passion. 

And  at  the  same  time  there  will  be  a  man  who  all  his  life  has  put 
away  this  call,  or  never  heard  it  before,  who  has  come  to  the  easier, 
latter  end  of  life,  when  leisure  is  his  own.  And  he  goes  out  in  the 
woods  to  collect  his  first  botanical  specimen  and  to  learn  that  he  has 
much  to  learn  for  all  his  years. 

They  are  never  to  be  forgotten — that  first  bird  pursued  through 
thicket  and  over  field  with  serious  intent,  not  to  kill  but  to  know  it, 
or  that  first  plant  lifted  reverently  and  excitedly  from  the  earth.  No 
spring  returns  but  that  I  wish  I  might  live  again  through  the  moment 
when  I  went  out  in  the  woods  and  sat  down  with  a  book  in  my  hands, 
to  learn  not  only  the  name,  but  the  ways  and  the  range  and  the  charm 
of  the  windflower,  Anemone  quin  que  folia. 

APRIL  SIXTH 


The  last  fling  of  winter  is  over,  save  for  tingling  nights  and  dawns 
rimed  with  a  silver  frost.  Everywhere  I  hear  the  metallic  clinking  of 
the  cricket  frogs,  the  trilling  of  the  toads,  the  gabble  of  the  grackles. 
Today  the  first  dragonflies  have  emerged  to  dart  about  in  an  afternoon 
sunshine  that  in  the  leafless  thickets  seemed  as  intense  as  a  summer 
day,  and  over  the  swell  of  the  fields,  still  high  with  their  brown  and 


836  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

yellow  stands  of  grass  and  weeds,  the  heat  waves  shimmer.  The  earth, 
the  soil  itself,  has  a  dreaming  quality  about  it.  It  is  warm  now  to  the 
touch;  it  has  come  alive;  it  hides  secrets  that  in  a  moment,  in  a  little 
while,  it  will  tell.  Some  of  them  are  bursting  out  already — the  first 
leaves  of  windflowers  uncurling,  the  spears  of  mottled  adder's  tongue 
leaves  and  the  furled  up  flags  of  bloodroot.  Old  earth  is  great  with  her 
children,  the  bulb  and  the  grub,  and  the  sleepy  mammal  and  the  seed. 

APRIL  SEVENTH 


It  was  the  way  of  seers  of  old  to  read  in  the  flight  of  birds  and  the 
entrails  of  a  ram  destiny's  intentions.  Prophets  there  are  today — econo- 
mists, social  theorists,  iconoclasts  and  makers  of  new  ikons  for  old — 
who  read  the  doom  of  this  and  predict  the  rise  of  that,  in  the  configu- 
ration of  events  as  they  fly  overhead,  or  in  the  investigation  of  the 
past's  cold  carcass. 

Man's  ultimate  fate  is  not  written  in  the  works  of  Spengler  or 
Veblen  or  Marx,  but  in  the  nucleus  of  his  own  cells;  his  end,  if  it  be 
predestined,  is  in  the  death  of  a  star,  or  in  a  rising  of  the  bacteria.  He 
will  do  well  to  have  a  heed  to  the  nature  of  life,  for  of  life  there  is  but 
one  kind.  Man  shares  it  with  the  corn  and  the  crow,  the  oak  and  the 
mayfly.  Therefore  in  such  natural  things  may  he  well  search  for 
auguries. 

On  any  clear-skied  day  of  the  year  I  may  be  found  engrossed  in 
nothing  weightier  than  watching  an  anthill  or  gathering  inedible 
fungi,  to  all  appearance  strayed  from  the  argument  of  my  philosophy. 
But  in  truth  it  is  philosophy  that  has  a  weakness  toward  straying;  the 
facts  upon  which  it  is  builded  rest  firm,  and  impel  the  philosopher  to 
seek  them,  even  aside,  down  the  bypaths,  under  the  bracken,  in  the 
small,  anonymous  places.  Even  here,  escaped  from  all  but  a  bright 
bird  eye,  all  sound  of  traffic  but  the  brook's  over  its  stones,  man  is  not 
rid  of  his  crying  inner  query.  And  the  smiling  woodland  silence  falls 
knowledgeably  upon  his  ears. 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  837 


APRIL  TWELFTH 


There  came  a  moment  in  this  chill,  palely  green  afternoon,  as  all  the 
world  was  watery  with  running  ponds,  and  the  river  boiling  high  and 
yellow,  when  I  stood  among  the  uncoiling  fronds  of  the  cinnamon 
ferns  and  listened  to  the  first  piping  of  the  tree  frog.  I  used  not  to 
distinguish  him  from  the  pond  frogs,  but  my  ear  at  last  is  attuned  to 
the  difference.  A  pond  frog  is  a  coarse  and  booming  creature  com- 
pared with  the  eery,  contented  and  yet  lonely  little  tree  frog  thrilling 
the  light  airs  with  its  song. 

It  is  strange  how  a  note  that  must  assuredly  bespeak  contentment, 
almost  in  this  case  a  hymn  of  domestic  felicity,  can  so  trouble  the  heart 
of  the  listener.  For  the  song  rises  over  the  creak-crack  of  the  swamp 
frogs  with  an  unearthly  soaring  wail,  a  note  of  keening  that  the  coun- 
try folk  will  say  foretells  a  coming  rain.  And  they  are  right  in  this. 
The  tree  frog  never  cries  but  a  soft,  oppressive  dampness  hangs  upon 
the  air,  and  spring  thunder  speaks  in  the  western  sky.  Just  so,  in  sum- 
mer, do  the  cicadas,  early  in  the  morning,  foretell  a  blazing  day,  and 
crickets  in  the  autumn  grass  predict  their  deaths  of  frost. 

APRIL  EIGHTEENTH 


The  ancient  forms  from  which  today's  world  evolved  have  not  become 
impotent  with  age.  From  the  old  stumps  new  shoots  spring  up.  Primi- 
tive as  they  are,  those  clouds  of  diatoms  that  fill  the  ponds  in  the  first 
days  of  spring  are  new;  these  modern  algae  are  adapted  to  the  cold  seas 
and  the  frozen  ponds  of  our  barely  post-glacial  era,  little  hard  infran- 
gible atoms  carven  as  it  were  out  of  silicon  crystals.  Those  bacteria  that 
prey  exclusively  upon  men  and  the  higher  animals  cannot  be  anything 
but  recent  developments.  Everywhere  is  flow  and  flux. 

So  far  from  being  a  steady  progress  in  our  exalted  direction,  evolu- 
tion for  the  most  is  tending  quite  otherwheres.  It  may  troop  joyfully 
backwards  (or  it  looks  backward  from  our  view  point)  toward  sim- 


838  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

plification,  toward  a  successful  laziness.  Parasitism,  for  example,  is  a 
highly  lucrative  mode  of  life  that  has  probably  never  been  more  abun- 
dant than  in  the  present. 

In  short,  evolution  is  not  so  much  progress  as  it  is  simply  change. 
It  does  not  leave  all  its  primitive  forms  behind.  It  carries  them  over 
from  age  to  age,  well  knowing  that  they  are  the  precious  base  of  the 
pyramid  on  which  the  more  fantastic  and  costly  experiments  must  be 
carried. 

APRIL  NINETEENTH 


If  progress  is  an  increasing  power  to  master  and  mold  environment, 
then  there  is  a  strong  current  of  progress  in  evolution.  A  one-celled 
flagellate  certainly  has  but  the  dullest  awareness  of  its  environment  as 
it  bumps  aimlessly  about,  but  the  redwinged  blackbird  hanging  its 
nest  on  the  cattails  and  the  muskrat  digging  crafty  passages  into  and 
out  of  his  home — these  highly  sentient,  motile,  instinctive  and  often 
intelligent  creatures  are  a  world  and  many  ages  beyond  the  blind  and 
stupid  flagellate.  And  last,  in  his  majesty  comes  man,  who  if  he  does 
not  like  the  marsh,  will  dig  ditches  and  drain  it  off.  In  a  year  he  will 
be  turning  a  furrow  there,  sowing  his  domesticated  crop,  the  obedient 
grain;  he  will  drive  out  every  animal  and  plant  that  does  not  bow 
down  to  him. 

Man — man  has  the  world  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand.  He  is  a  stand- 
ing refutation  of  an  old  superstition  like  predestination — or  a  new  one 
like  determinism.  His  chances  seem  all  but  boundless,  and  boundless 
might  be  his  optimism  if  he  had  not  already  thrown  away  so  many  of 
his  opportunities.  That  very  marsh  was  the  home  of  waterfowl  as  valu- 
able as  they  were  beautiful.  Now  they  must  die,  because  in  this  world 
all  breeding  grounds  are  already  crammed  full.  When  he  slays  the 
birds,  he  lets  loose  their  prey,  and  his  worst  enemy,  the  insects.  He 
wastes  his  forests  faster  than  he  replaces  them,  and  slaughters  the  mink 
and  the  beaver  and  the  seal.  He  devours  his  limited  coal  supply  ever 
faster;  he  fouls  the  rivers,  invents  poison  gases  and  turns  his  destruc- 
tion even  on  his  own  kind.  And  in  the  end  he  may  present  the  spec- 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  839 

tacle  of  some  Brobdingnagian  spoiled  baby,  gulping  down  his  cake 
and  howling  for  it  too. 

APRIL  TWENTY-EIGHTH 


Under  Audubon's  brush,  birds  live  as  they  live  in  the  wild — forever 
in  motion,  now  teetering  on  a  bough,  now  flinging  themselves  upon 
the  blue  sea  of  air,  now  diving  like  the  kingfisher  or  osprey,  now  snap- 
ping up  an  insect  or  standing  almost  on  their  feathered  heads  to  reach 
a  pendent  cherry.  They  come  right  off  the  page;  they  fly  and  swing, 
they  scream  and  sing  and  fight,  they  eat,  court,  preen,  flutter,  hunt  lice 
under  their  wings,  or  hide  their  little  cold  heads  against  the  storm. 

Nor  are  they  merely  bits  of  emotional  impressionism,  these  bird 
paintings;  when  Audubon  was  not  pressed  for  time  he  rendered  the 
finest  details  of  plumage,  bent,  it  would  seem,  on  not  slurring  one 
barb  on  one  pinion.  His  drawings  thus  became  actually  more  valuable 
to  the  scientist,  who  would  not  give  a  farthing  for  a  bird  by  an  impres- 
sionist, than  even  museum  specimens.  For  it  was  Audubon's  way  to 
paint  from  creatures  which  had  been  dead  only  an  hour  or  two;  he 
maintained  that  the  luster  of  the  living  plumage  flies  before  sundown. 
He  invented  a  unique  method,  too,  of  so  wiring  the  little  dead  body 
that  it  caught  again  the  attributes  of  life. 

And  more.  He  painted  the  birds  in  their  habitats.  In  the  foregrounds 
he  would  place  the  vegetation  of  his  subject's  haunt,  and  he  seldom 
fails  to  give  us  the  food  it  eats,  be  it  berry,  insect  or  fish.  Ard  like  an 
Italian  master  of  old,  he  delights  in  completing  the  environmental 
study  by  little  landscapes  as  background,  perfect  little  glimpses  of  the 
wilderness  he  knew.  He  gives  us  the  dark  cypress  swamp,  the  dreamy 
live-oaks  hung  with  Spanish  moss,  the  shining  wood-ringed  lakes  and 
the  slow  vast  rivers.  No  greater  technical  demands  were  ever  made 
upon  draughtsmanship  than  to  represent  these  exquisite  landscapes  in 
the  background  while  keeping  the  proportion  of  microscopic  attention 
to  detail  in  the  bird  of  the  foreground. 


:40  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

MAY  FIRST 


Spring  in  any  land  has  its  special  sweetnesses.  Tulips  and  hyacinths, 
crocuses  and  narcissus  that  are  wild  flowers  of  the  Mediterranean 
spring,  are  more  familiar  to  the  city  dweller  in  the  New  World  than 
the  shy,  frail  spring  flowers  of  his  own  country  side.  An  English  spring 
with  the  innocent  faces  of  primroses  looking  up  from  their  pale  leaves, 
with  celandine  braving  the  winds  of  March,  and  bluebells  in  the 
woods  when  cuckoos  call  and  nightingales  return,  is  ours  by  right  of 
poesy. 

In  this  our  western  world,  Thoreau  has  made  New  England  springs 
immortal,  and  a  host  of  lesser  writers  have  followed  him;  indeed,  most 
of  the  popular  wildflower  books  emanate  from  the  northeastern  states 
where  a  rather  bleak  flora  has  been  better  loved,  sung,  and  made  de- 
cipherable than  that  of  the  richer  lands  to  the  south. 

South  of  the  Potomac  spring  comes  on  with  balm  and  sweetness, 
with  a  peculiarly  Appalachian  fragrance,  commingled  of  forests  and 
mountains.  It  comes  without  treachery,  without  taking  one  step  back, 
like  the  Sabine  women,  for  every  two  steps  forward.  It  sweeps  up  from 
Florida,  past  the  sea  islands  of  Georgia,  through  Hall  and  Habersham, 
through  Charleston  where  the  tea  olive  sheds  its  intense  sweetness  on 
the  air,  over  the  Carolinas,  wakening  the  wild  jasmine  in  the  woods, 
filling  the  Blue  Ridge  with  azalea  and  many  kinds  of  trillium  and  the 
strange,  earth-loving  wild  ginger,  till  it  opens  the  bird-foot  violet,  and 
the  redbud  and  dogwood  of  the  two  Virginias. 

MAY  TENTH 


Was  it  worth  while  for  a  mayfly  to  have  been  born,  to  have  been  a 
worm  for  weeks  and  a  bride  or  a  bridegroom  for  one  day,  only  to 
perish?  Such  is  not  a  question  to  which  Nature  will  give  the  human 
mind  an  answer.  She  thrusts  us  all  into  life,  and  with  her  hand  pro- 
pels us  like  children  through  the  role  she  has  allotted  us.  You  may 
weep  about  it  or  you  may  smile;  that  matters  only  to  yourself.  The 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  841 

trees  that  live  five  hundred  years,  or  five  thousand,  see  us  human  may- 
flies grow  and  mate  and  die  while  they  are  adding  a  foot  to  their  girth. 
Well  might  they  ask  themselves  if  it  be  not  a  slavish  and  ephemeral 
soft  thing  to  be  born  a  man. 

MAY  TWELFTH 


On  this  day  I  am  pleased  to  mark  down  the  most  unexpected  name 
upon  the  green  calendar  of  naturalists.  For  it  is  the  anniversary  of  the 
birth  in  1812  of  Edward  Lear,  whose  nonsense  and  limericks  are 
household  words.  No  more  puckish  spirit  ever  lived,  but  few  are  the 
nature  lovers  today  who  remember  that  at  twenty  he  had  made  him- 
self celebrated  by  his  painting  of  the  Psittacidae,  the  parrots.  Artistic 
skill  combined  with  extreme  fidelity  to  nature  in  these  paintings  drew 
from  Swainson  the  remark  that  Audubon  could  not  have  done  better. 
The  parrots  drew  the  attention  of  the  thirteenth  Earl  of  Derby,  who 
became  practically  his  patron,  and  it  was  for  the  child  Edward  Stanley, 
later  fifteenth  earl,  that  the  Boo\  of  Nonsense  was  composed.  His  non- 
sense botany,  with  its  inimitable  drawings,  is  one  of  the  unappreciated 
items  on  the  rare  book  list.  Only  a  botanist  with  a  sense  of  humor 
would  understand  how  funny  it  is.  And  these  are  even  rarer  than  the 
copies  of  that  slim  volume. 

MAY  FOURTEENTH 


I  love  a  brook  far  better  than  a  river.  If  ever  I  buy  a  country  tract  it 
is  going  to  have  a  brook  on  it.  Indeed,  I'm  not  sure  that  it  will  not  be 
mostly  brook — two  long  strips  of  land  on  each  side  of  the  watercourse. 
After  all,  Egypt  was  just  such  a  shape.  Or  I  shall  buy  two  brooks 
where  they  run  together — a  Mesopotamia — and  between  them  pitch 
the  invisible  Babylon  of  my  heart.  No  house;  no  garden;  not  even  a 
path.  It  shall  be  nothing  but  my  domain,  where  I  can,  alone,  explore 
the  little  wild  strands,  and  mine  my  country  for  its  smooth  quartz 
stone  and  its  fool's  gold  in  the  sands,  and  learn  to  know  my  subjects. 


842  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  red  triton,  the  wood  frog,  the  water  wren,  and  the  caddis  flies, 
water  striders  and  Dytiscus  beetles. 

MAY  EIGHTEENTH 


The  number,  variety  and  intricacy  of  the  adaptation  of  bees  to  orchids 
is  simply  dazzling.  There  are  bees  with  tongues  which,  when  unrolled, 
are  twice  as  long  as  the  length  of  the  whole  animal;  tropical  bees  exist 
that  could  tap  a  nectary  if  it  were  buried  nearly  a  foot  deep  in  the 
most  complicated  orchid.  There  are  bees  with  special  pouches  for  car- 
rying pollen  in  their  legs,  and  others  with  pollen-brushes  on  their  feet, 
on  their  heads,  on  their  abdomens,  depending  whether  they  seem  in- 
tended by  Nature  for  deep  flowers,  irregular  two-lipped  flowers,  one- 
lipped  flowers,  composite  flowers,  or  simple  open  flowers.  The  bees 
have  invented  more  types  of  brushes  with  special  uses  than  the  emi- 
nent Mr.  Fuller. 

There  are  orchids  that  can  only  be  fertilized  by  one  particular  type 
of  bee,  like  the  fit  of  a  Yale  lock  to  its  particular  key,  and  possibly 
there  are  bees  that  could  satisfy  their  ethereal  lust  for  nectar  at  only  one 
orchid,  I  cannot  say.  But  nothing  would  surprise  me  after  reading 
Darwin  and  Muller  and  Kerner.  Tropical  bats  also  enter  into  nicely 
adjusted  symbioses  with  white,  night-blooming  orchids  that  reserve 
their  perfume  until  twilight  falls. 

The  specializations  in  what  must  be  regarded  as  the  age  of  orchids 
are  possibly  reaching  a  stage  so  extreme  that  they  will  defeat  their  own 
ends.  A  very  slight  change  in  the  climate  or  insect  fauna — no  more 
difference  than  would  easily  exterminate  over-specialized  man — might 
suffice  to  dethrone  the  orchid  family,  with  its  ten  thousand  species, 
from  its  leadership,  just  as  the  dinosaurs  grew  too  great  for  the  world 
and  evolved  to  self-destruction. 

MAY  TWENTIETH 


The  first  night  life  of  the  year  has  begun  for  my  brother  animals.  A 
few  fireflies  are  to  be  seen,  and  the  night  moth,  Amphion  nessus,  is 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  843 

abroad.  And,  as  I  strolled  in  this  day's  twilight,  a  night  hawk  swooped 
around  my  head  as  silently,  and  with  as  much  boldness,  as  one  of  the 
bats  which  are  now  on  the  wing.  His  cousin  the  whippoorwill  has 
already  lifted  his  voice,  just  a  few  mysterious  cries  out  of  the  depth 
of  the  wood. 

In  early  spring,  the  dark  hours  are  barren  of  life;  each  night  is  a 
little  death,  a  return  to  winter.  Now  that  the  warm  weather  is  assured, 
the  woods  and  fields  and  even  my  garden  are  quite  alive  with  noc- 
turnal venturers.  Small  animal  shapes  move  freely  in  the  safety  of  the 
shadows.  Sometimes  I  hear  their  faint  footfalls  on  the  leaves,  some- 
times I  hear  nothing,  only  know  instinctively  that  some  creature  has 
passed  by  me,  intent  upon  his  private  business  in  the  kindly  envelop- 
ing dark.  Now  against  the  screens  the  big  May  beetles  bang,  setting 
up  an  angry  roaring  with  their  harsh  wings,  and  through  the  opened 
window  breathes  the  perfume  of  night-flowering  honeysuckle,  the  first 
of  the  year. 

MAY  TWENTY-THIRD 


On  this  day  in  1707,  in  southern  Sweden,  was  born  the  man  we  know 
as  Linnaeus,  Carolus  Linnaeus  or  Karl  von  Linne.  His  father  had  lit- 
erally enjoyed  no  surname;  he  was  Nils,  the  son  of  Bengt,  for  in  old 
Sweden  there  were  only  patronymics.  But  he  took  a  name  unto  him- 
self from  Lin,  the  linden.  For  two  hundred  years,  in  a  corner  of  Jons- 
boda  Parish,  there  had  stood  a  mighty  linden,  sacred  in  family  tradi- 
tion, and  from  this  totem  Nils  made  himself  a  learned-sounding  Latin 
name. 

At  Upsala,  Linnaeus  passed  the  first  year  in  dire  want,  putting  paper 
in  the  soles  of  his  worn  shoes.  The  old  botanical  gardens,  started  by 
Rudbeck,  had  been  allowed  to  fall  into  ruins,  and  the  science  of  botany 
itself  was  then  like  a  sleeping,  dusty,  dead-seeming  garden  in  March, 
half  full  of  lifeless  brushwood — but  for  the  rest  secretly  quick  and 
budded  and  only  awaiting  a  warming  breath. 

The  only  friend  of  Linnaeus  at  this  time  was  Artedi,  who  would 
have  become  the  Linnaeus  of  zoology  but  for  falling  into  a  canal  and 


844  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

drowning.  This  lad  was  so  poor  that  Linnaeus  and  he  loaned  each 
other  money,  as  only  the  destitute  could  do.  These  boys  exchanged  the 
usual  wild  ideas  of  young  students — in  this  case  nothing  less  than  the 
principles  of  classification  that  ultimately  brought  order  into  the  hope- 
lessly muddled  work  of  the  herbalists  struggling  to  find  the  plants  of 
northern  Europe  in  their  Pliny  and  Theophrastus. 

So  like  two  winter  birds,  living  on  weed  seeds,  and  sleeping  in  the 
lee  of  a  tree  trunk,  the  ragged  hungry  lads  lived  on  till  spring,  when 
Dean  Celsius,  himself  a  naturalist,  came  to  their  aid  with  money,  food, 
shelter,  appointments,  and  gave  them  grace  to  think,  without  danger 
of  turning  into  fasting  visionaries. 

MAY  TWENTY-FOURTH 


In  May,  1732  there  rode  out  of  the  gates  of  gray  old  Upsala  a  thin 
young  man  in  a  light  coat  of  West  Gothland  linsey  without  folds, 
lined  with  red  shalloon,  having  small  cuffs  and  a  collar  of  shag;  he 
wore  leather  breeches,  and  a  round  wig  topped  by  a  green  leather  cap, 
his  feet  in  a  pair  of  half-boots.  On  his  saddle  he  carried  a  small  leather 
bag  containing  two  pairs  of  false  sleeves,  two  half-shirts  and  one  whole 
one,  an  inkstand,  pencase,  microscope,  a  gauze  cap  to  protect  him  from 
gnats,  a  comb,  drying  papers  for  plants,  and  a  few  books.  A  fowling- 
piece  hung  at  his  side,  and  a  graduated  stick  for  measuring.  In  his 
pocket  was  a  passport  for  Lapland  from  the  governor  of  Upsala. 

Linnaeus  was  going  into  the  field.  In  a  sense  that  journey  was  the 
first  of  its  kind  ever  made.  It  was  the  morning,  the  springtide  of  sci- 
ence, after  the  dark  winter  of  the  book-ridden  Middle  Ages,  when 
men  wrangled  over  Aristotle  and  quoted  Pliny's  authority.  Linnaeus 
was  the  first  naturalist  to  whom  it  occurred  to  take  a  great  trip  to 
Nature  itself.  No  wonder  that  as  he  rode  north,  the  very  larks  burst 
into  song. 

"Ecce  suum  tirile,  tirile,  suum  tirile  tractatl"  they  sang,  or  so  he 
records  it  with  his  quaint  blend  of  Latin  and  fantasy.  "The  sky  was 
clear  and  warm,  while  the  west  wind  refreshed  one  with  delicious 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  845 

breath,"  he  wrote.  "The  winter  rye  stood  six  inches  high,  and  the  bar- 
ley was  newly  come  into  leaf.  The  birch  was  beginning  to  shoot  and 
all  the  trees  leafing  except  the  elm  and  aspen.  Though  only  a  few 
spring  flowers  were  in  bloom  it  was  obvious  that  the  whole  land  was 
smiling  with  the  coming  of  spring." 

MAY  TWENTY-FIFTH 


When  Linnaeus  published  his  great  Lapland  report,  it  was  swiftly 
translated  into  the  languages  of  Europe.  A  door  had  been  burst  open, 
and  all  men  beheld  that,  outside,  the  fields  were  burning  with  flowers, 
the  sky  ringing  with  bird  song.  Very  disturbing,  all  that,  to  the 
medieval-minded  schoolmen,  the  obscurantists  who  would  have  kept 
their  science  to  themselves,  like  alchemists. 

Dillenius  of  Oxford,  looking  out  of  his  window  at  the  young  Swede 
walking  about  in  the  botanical  garden,  cried:  "There  goes  a  man  who 
is  bringing  all  botany  into  confusion!"  He  locked  up  the  herbarium, 
would  not  give  Linnaeus  the  books  he  wanted.  But  in  the  end,  Lin- 
naeus, patient  and  tactful,  persuaded  him  to  look  at  his  great  system 
of  classification.  Converted,  the  delighted  Dillenius  begged  him  to  stay 
forever  and  share  his  salary  with  him.  Philip  Miller,  last  of  the  herb- 
alists, went  over  enthusiastically  to  him.  The  rich  Clifford  became  his 
patron.  Gronovius  published  him  at  his  own  expense. 

To  understand  Linnaeus's  "Sexual  System"  as  he  called  it,  we  have 
to  cast  an  eye  at  the  medieval  confusion  of  the  past,  when  a  plant  not 
found  in  Theophrastus's  two-thousand-year-old  description  of  the 
Greek  flora  might  be  thrown  away  as  heretical.  Classification  was  so 
superficial  that  all  prickly  plants,  for  instance,  were  lumped  together — 
cacti  and  roses  and  thistles  and  even  some  poppies.  What  Linnaeus  did 
was  to  classify  by  the  number  of  stamens  and  pistils,  every  plant  as  a 
species  and  assign  it  to  a  genus  or  clan  of  related  species,  and  give  it 
two  descriptive  names  in  the  universal  language  of  Latin.  Today  all 
this  is  a  commonplace,  the  sure  footing  on  which  we  rest — thanks  to 
the  boy  who  would  not  become  a  tailor's  apprentice. 


846  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

MAY  TWENTY-SIXTH 


When  once  the  new  system  of  Linnaeus  had  swept  aside  resistance, 
all  Europe  was  ready  to  acknowledge  him.  The  King  of  Spain  offered 
him  a  princely  salary  and  complete  liberty.  Clifford  wanted  never  to 
part  with  him,  and  Boerhaave,  the  rich  Dutch  scholar,  offered  him 
travel  in  Africa  and  America. 

But  Linnaeus  was  a  young  man,  and  a  human  one,  and  at  heart  a 
bit  of  a  peasant.  Sara  Moroea  was  waiting  for  him,  and  like  a  bird  that 
does  its  mating  in  the  north,  he  flew  back  to  his  Sara  and  made  her 
his  wife.  For  a  man  of  the  world  it  was  a  great  mistake,  for  the  thrifty, 
cleanly,  strapping  Sara  was  no  great  lady.  She  thrashed  her  daughters, 
spoiled  her  son,  urged  her  husband  toward  a  lucrative  practice  as  a 
physician  at  the  cost  of  science,  and  told  magnificent  Gustavus  Third 
to  treat  his  servants  better. 

And  there  are  other  errors  of  Linnaeus's  judgment.  To  his  weak  boy 
he  willed  his  collections  and  high  position  at  Upsala,  so  that  the  vain 
young  man  attained  to  honors  he  had  not  earned  and  responsibilities 
he  was  not  fitted  for. 

It  must  be  admitted,  too,  that  Linnaeus's  work  was  hasty;  he  was 
never  quite  a  success  as  a  zoologist,  and,  owing  partly  to  the  state  of 
knowledge  at  that  time,  he  did  not  quite  know  what  he  .was  doing 
amongst  the  lower  plants,  the  fungi,  algae,  and  ferns.  His  attempt  to 
classify  genera  and  species  of  metals  is  entirely  untenable,  and  he  was 
not  the  equal  of  Jussieu  in  grouping  genera  into  natural  families.  But 
v/ithout  his  haste,  without  his  lusty  courage  to  undertake  an  outline 
of  everything — hang  the  details! — science  would  have  been  delayed  for 
decades.  Even  the  faults  of  his  character  were  human,  natural  and 
lovable. 

MAY  TWENTY-SEVENTH 


At  this  season  it  used  to  be  the  custom,  and  I  hope  it  still  may  be,  for 
botanists  everywhere  to  do  honor  to  Linnaeus  by  meeting  together  for 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  847 

a  light-hearted  trip  afield  in  search  of  plants,  in  the  good  old  style. 
Formidable  has  grown  that  once  gentle  science  of  botany — a  thing  of 
laboratories  and  test  tubes,  of  the  complex  mathematics  of  the  geneti- 
cist. For  such  is  the  way  of  a  science.  It  begins  in  medieval  wonder 
and  magic;  then  a  door  opens  to  the  fields,  it  goes  forth  to  its  Lapland, 
to  delight  and  describe  and  classify.  Next  come  the  lens,  the  labora- 
tory, the  investigation  of  structure,  the  experiment  with  function,  and 
at  last  the  mechanical  control  of  the  life  processes  themselves.  Some- 
times the  youngsters  of  today  look  back  upon  the  descriptive  era  as 
dry,  dilettante,  unworthy  of  the  name  of  science. 

But  more  seasoned  men,  conscious  of  the  history  of  their  science, 
still  hold  the  name  of  Linnaeus  in  reverence.  They  remember  that  he 
did  not  foist  Latin  binomials  on  plants  and  animals,  but  pared  the 
latinity  down  from  some  twenty  words  to  two!  To  them  the  time  of 
Linnaeus  is  an  age  of  innocence  and  the  true  beginnings  of  modernism. 
Who  would  not,  if  he  could,  go  back  today  and  join  Linnaeus  and  his 
pupils — so  many  of  whom  were  to  die  for  him  at  the  ends  of  the  earth 
— and  march  afield  today  to  push  the  moss  apart  and  find  the  little 
twin-flowers  that  he  loved  above  all  others,  Linncea  borealis?  Who 
would  not  be  glad  to  come  back  with  them,  to  the  fluttering  of  ban- 
ners and  the  piping  of  hautboys,  and  unslinging  his  heavy  case  of 
plants,  stand  with  Thunberg  and  Peter  Kalm  and  Fabricius  and  give 
the  rousing  "Vivat  Sciential  Vivat  Unnceusl" 

JUNE  FIRST 


Now  this  is  the  best  of  life,  that  a  man  should  have  children  who 
promise  fair,  and  a  loving  wife,  and  that  he  should  know  what  his 
work  is,  and  own  a  sense  of  Nature.  This  sense  is  nothing  less  than 
a  feeling  for  reality.  I  do  not  mean  the  reality  intended  by  cantan- 
kerous and  disagreeable  people,  who  are  so  fond  of  calling  upon  others 
to  face  the  unpleasant.  They  enjoy  referring  to  the  sores  and  cuts  of 
life,  to  the  power  of  evil,  to  their  own  disappointments  and  failures 
and  the  abysmal  depths  to  which  human  nature  can  sink. 
But  all  these  things — war  and  money  and  cruelty — are  passing  illu- 


848  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

sions.  These  are  the  unquenchable  realities — the  power  of  the  expand- 
ing seed  to  break  a  stone,  the  strength  that  sustains  men  to  die  for 
others,  the  shortness  of  life  that  makes  it  so  precious,  all  futurity  hun- 
gering in  us,  that  makes  woman  taste  so  sweet. 


JUNE  SECOND 


A  man  need  not  know  how  to  name  all  the  oaks  or  the  moths,  or  be 
able  to  recognize  a  synclinal  fault,  or  tell  time  by  the  stars,  in  order  to 
possess  Nature.  He  may  have  his  mind  solely  on  growing  larkspurs,  or 
he  may  love  a  boat  and  a  sail  and  a  blue-eyed  day  at  sea.  He  may  have 
a  bent  for  making  paths  or  banding  birds,  or  he  may  be  only  an  invet- 
erate and  curious  walker. 

But  I  contend  that  such  a  fellow  has  the  best  out  of  life — he  and  the 
naturalists.  You  are  ignorant  of  life  if  you  do  not  love  it  or  some  por- 
tion of  it,  just  as  it  is,  a  shaft  of  light  from  a  nearby  star,  a  flash  of  the 
blue  salt  water  that  curls  around  the  five  upthrust  rocks  of  the  conti- 
nents, a  net  of  green  leaves  spread  to  catch  the  light  and  use  it,  and 
you,  walking  under  the  trees.  You,  a  handful  of  supple  earth  and  long 
white  stones,  with  seawater  running  in  your  veins. 

JUNE  SIXTH 


They  came  very  secretly,  in  the  night,  perhaps;  or  it  may  have  been 
that  for  several  days  they  had  been  assembling,  emerging  like  bad, 
buried  deeds,  out  of  the  earth.  I  realize  now  that  for  several  days  I 
had  been  seeing  strange,  transparent  shards  of  insects  upon  the  pave- 
ment, and  on  the  steps  down  through  the  grass.  But  only  today  when 
the  children  came  in,  bright-eyed  with  excitement,  and  interrupting 
each  other  with  a  tale  of  enormous  bugs  everywhere,  did  I  suspect  of 
what  they  spoke. 

I  found  that  the  cicadas  were  thick  even  upon  the  steps  of  the  porch, 
huge,  greenish  and  ruddy-brown  heavy-bodied  things  with  beautiful 
great  wings,  two  very  long  forewings  and  a  shorter  hind  pair,  through 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  849 

which  I  could  see  the  grass  beneath  as  plainly  as  through  a  thin  sheet 
of  mica.  I  only  needed  to  reach  down  and  pick  one  up  to  capture  him; 
he  was  so  sluggish  that  he  seemed  like  some  sleeper  awakened,  dazed, 
after  having  been  lost  to  the  world  for  many  years. 

Even  then,  so  sluggish  was  I  myself,  I  did  not  instantly  understand 
what  an  exciting  discovery  I  had  hit  upon.  The  creature  looked  fa- 
miliar, and  yet  I  knew  I  had  never  seen  him  before.  I  thought  of  the 
common  dog-day  locust  with  his  loud  crackling  sizzling  song,  but  it 
was  weeks  before  he  would  be  due.  No  sound  came  from  the  creature 
in  my  hand,  and  I  went  to  explore  the  grounds  for  more. 

I  bagged  a  dozen,  and  went  into  the  city  with  them.  Delightful  old 
Dr.  Howard  was  at  his  desk  when  I  burst  in.  He  opened  the  box  and 
one  of  my  captives  crawled  out  upon  his  hand.  "Why,  man,"  he  cried, 
"it's  the  seventeen-year  cicada!"  He  seemed  surprisingly  pleased.  "An 
old  entomologist  can  never  tell,"  he  explained,  "whether  he  will  live 
to  hear  them  again." 

JUNE  SEVENTEENTH 


The  moon  rose  tonight  at  the  full,  and  from  its  half  of  all  the  skies  it 
scatters  away  the  stars;  only  the  stabbing  shafts  of  blue  Vega  pierce 
through  the  fields  of  lunar  radiance.  The  fainter  stars  are  all  put  out 
and  heaven  for  once  looks  like  the  pictures  in  the  star  maps,  with  the 
constellations  bared  to  the  bone.  It  would  be  a  moment  for  learning 
them  as  they  are  supposed  to  (and  do  not)  look.  But  one  peek  at  the 
moon,  even  through  the  cheapest  of  lenses,  is  worth  twenty  Lions  and 
Virgins  and  Scorpions.  That  tombstone  world!  Those  snowless  alps 
and  frozen  lava  seas!  The  sense  of  its  actual  bulk,  its  spherical  pon- 
derability, when  I  first  saw  them  through  a  telescope,  were  revolu- 
tionary to  my  feeling  for  all  objects  in  heaven,  and  though  I  could  not 
see  it  move,  I  felt  the  swing  of  it  in  my  bones,  as  of  a  great  cold  ball 
hurled  round  upon  an  invisible  leash  by  the  earth's  giant  arm. 

Not  long  ago  the  light  from  the  moon  was  focused  in  a  lens  of  a 
special  telescope  at  Staradale  University  in  Czechoslovakia  and  trans- 
ferred to  a  photo-electric  cell.  Translated  into  sound,  these  waves  were 


850  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

broadcast  to  London,  and  by  report  the  noise  was  as  the  tolling  of 
great  bells  deprived  of  resonance!  Perfect  symbol  for  a  world  that  is 
dead.  When  Vega  was  heard,  it  was  as  the  high  pitched  shouting  of 
an  angry  crowd,  but  very  far  away;  Vega,  one  hundred  times  the  size 
of  our  sun,  Vega,  that  incandescent  blue  giant,  only  twenty-six  light 
years  away,  spoke  to  us  with  the  voice  of  mass  menace. 

So  after  all  there  is  music  in  the  spheres,  and  though  it  is  true  that 
only  light  translated  into  sound  may  be  heard,  the  sounds  given  out 
by  an  explosion  or  a  nightingale  are  also  but  energy  converted  into 
waves  that  reach  us  through  the  ear. 

JUNE  TWENTY-FIRST 


On  this  day,  on  which  I  have  such  good  reason  to  be  grateful  to  my 
mother,  I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  put  down  the  profession  of  one 
naturalist's  faith.  Whatever  rudiments  of  religion  are  innate  in  me  are 
what  ordinarily  pass  as  pantheism,  though  I  am  not  really  prepared 
to  worship  everything.  I  could  take  oaks  as  seriously  as  a  druid,  but  I 
draw  the  line  at  any  Hindu  idolatry  of  animals,  so  that  I  am  not  ex- 
actly an  animist.  On  this,  the  summer  solstice,  I  would  enjoy  lighting 
bonfires  to  the  sun;  I  have  ever  loved  the  morning  best.  I  could  easily 
find  it  in  me  to  worship  some  madonna  or  any  symbol  of  woman  and 
child,  but  I  do  not  like  symbols  as  well  as  I  like  the  thing  itself. 

A  man's  real  religion  is  that  about  which  he  becomes  excited,  the 
object  or  the  cause  he  will  defend,  the  point  at  which,  spontaneously, 
he  cries  out  in  joy  over  a  victory,  or  groans  aloud  from  an  injury.  In 
France  I  once  startled  my  wife  by  bursting  into  the  house  with  a  loud 
cry  of  joy.  She  hastened  downstairs  to  learn  what  good  fortune  had 
befallen  us  in  our  old  farmhouse  above  the  Lake  of  Annecy.  It  was 
only  that  fresh  snow  had  fallen  on  the  Alps  and  sheeted  their  heads  in 
pure  glittering  hoods.  They  looked  to  me  like  gods,  standing  just  be- 
hind our  house.  If  they  were  not  gods  to  her,  that  is  because  her  reli- 
gion is  several  degrees  less  icy  and  remote.  That  morning  happened 
to  be  memorable  in  the  history  of  science  because  it  was  the  day  on 
which  the  discovery  of  a  new  planet  was  announced.  This  too  wrung 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  851 

a  cheer  from  me,  and  to  the  joy  of  my  little  son  and  with  the  tender 
indulgence  of  my  wife,  I  declared  a  holiday,  with  a  trip  by  steamer 
around  the  turquoise  lake. 

JUNE  TWENTY-SIXTH 


As  long  as  one  knows  little  of  Nature  save  that  which  impinges  upon 
one  sensually,  one  is  subject  to  the  moods  it  throws,  like  a  shadow, 
across  the  spirit.  But  as  soon  as  one  begins  to  search  for  knowledge  in 
the  thing  that  dims  the  light,  the  power  of  mood  fades.  A  biologist 
confined  to  the  prison  isle  of  Ste.  Marguerite  would  soon  set  up  some 
equipment  or  technique  for  studying  the  swallows — the  pulsation  of 
their  crowding  population,  the  control  of  their  behavior,  their  effect 
upon  the  rest  of  the  animal  life  of  the  island,  or  something  else  from 
which  significant  conclusions  could  be  drawn. 

I  accept  the  challenge  of  the  artists  that  cool  investigation  may  often 
be  the  death  of  poetry.  As  knowledge  lessens  the  terror  of  plague,  so 
it  may  take  some  of  the  soulfulness  out  of  Nature.  There  is  a  sort  of 
Wordsworthian  sermonizing  that  shrinks  before  the  biological  frame 
of  mind,  just  as  the  childish  abhorrence  of  insects  vanishes  with  famili- 
arity. But  not  all  poetry  is  really  good  poetry  (however  good  it  may 
sound).  Good  poetry  is  swift-winged,  essential  and  truthful  descrip- 
tion— and  so  is  good  science. 

JULY  FIRST 


The  bobolink  is  the  only  bird  who  never  seems  to  know  how  to  put  a 
period  to  his  musical  sentence.  All  other  Aves  have  a  note,  three  notes, 
even  a  phrase  that  they  utter;  no  matter  how  many  times  they  may 
reiterate  it,  that  is  all  they  have  to  say.  But  I  hear  the  bobolinks  now 
in  the  orchard  grass,  spilling  out  a  torrent  of  song.  When  we  listen 
expecting  soon  to  hear  silence,  he  still  has  more  to  tell,  and  with  an 
irrepressible  invention  he  continues  as  if  joy  had  no  end  in  the  telling, 
until  perforce  a  smile  spreads  over  our  furrows  and  frowns,  and  we 


852  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

say,  "Well,  well,  well,  little  fellow,  is  the  world  really  as  fine  as  all 
that?" 


JULY  SECOND 


On  this  day  in  Geneva  was  born  Francois  Huber,  in  1750,  whose 
father  distinguished  himself  not  only  as  a  soldier  and  a  member  of 
the  great  coterie  at  Ferney,  but  as  an  authority  on  the  flight  of  birds. 
Francois  was  only  fifteen  years  old  when  he  began  to  lose  his  sight, 
the  most  crushing  blow  which  could  befall  one  who  had  decided  to 
devote  himself  to  the  study  of  ants.  Total  blindness  finally  fell  upon 
him,  but  desperate  handicaps  are  often  the  spur  to  triumph.  With  the 
aid  of  his  wife,  Marie  Aimee  Lullin,  and  his  faithful  servant  Francois 
Burnens,  who  were  his  eyes  for  him,  he  continued  his  investigations, 
and  laid  down  the  very  foundation  stone  of  our  scientific  knowledge 
both  of  ants  and  honey  bees.  True,  Reaumur  had  preceded  him,  but  as 
it  happened,  Reaumur's  work  on  ants  was0  not  published  until  modern 
times;  it  lay  in  a  drawer,  forgotten,  so  that  it  is  from  Huber  that  the* 
great  line  of  ant  students  stems — his  son  Pierre  Huber,  Auguste  Forel, 
C.  Emery,  Sir  John  Lubbock,  and  William  Morton  Wheeler. 

None  of  us  could  say  that  he  would  have  liked  to  share  the  fate  of 
Francois  Huber,  but  there  are  few  of  us  who  would  not  have  been 
proud  to  ride  into  immortality  as  did  his  servant  or  his  faithful  mate, 
to  be  remembered  among  those  who,  like  the  Cyrenian  on  the  first 
Good  Friday,  served  a  great  man  in  his  hour  of  darkness. 

JULY  THIRD 


It  was  Huber,  on  a  memorable  summer  day  in  1804,  who  first  dis- 
covered that  some  species  of  ants  make  slaves  of  others.  But  he  made 
only  a  beginning  in  this  study,  and  oddly  enough  it  was  another  Swiss 
who  was  destined  to  carry  the  subject  on.  Auguste  Forel  was  only 
seven  years  old  when  he  observed  one  day  that  an  army  of  big  red 
ants  with  black  bellies  was  fighting  with  a  colony  of  black  ants  with 


DONALD   CULROSS  PEATTIE  853 

which  the  child  had  long  felt  on  terms  of  special  friendliness.  The 
boy  tried  to  come  to  the  aid  of  his  friends,  but  the  enemy  were  too 
many  for  him.  The  invaders  were  carrying  off  the  little  white  eggs  of 
the  ants  he  liked.  His  mother  took  him  off  for  a  walk,  so  that  when 
he  returned  he  found,  to  his  grief,  all  his  black  friends  were  dead. 

The  following  year  he  was  able  to  observe  something  still  more 
astonishing.  In  the  nest  of  the  red-and-black  ants  he  discovered  many 
of  his  old  black  friends,  living  in  a  state  of  peaceful  industry.  He 
began  to  understand  that  the  black  ants  were  slaves,  born  in  captivity. 

When  he  was  ten  years  old  he  was  given  a  copy  of  Huber,  and  was 
enchanted  to  find  his  theory  confirmed.  But  discovering  that  he  already 
knew  several  things  that  were  not  found  in  Huber,  he  determined 
from  that  moment  to  become  the  historian  of  the  ants,  and,  as  I  pen 
these  words,  he  is  still  alive,  Nestor  of  formicologists. 

JULY  SIXTH 


On  this  day,  in  1766,  at  Paisley,  in  Scotland,  was  born  Alexander 
Wilson,  the  first  great  ornithologist  of  America,  the  rival  of  Audubon, 
scientist  where  Audubon  was  artist,  luckless  in  love  where  Audubon 
was  happy,  retiring  as  an  owl  where  Audubon  was  gay  as  a  mocking- 
bird, short-lived  where  Audubon  lived  long  and  reaped  honors. 

Wilson  was  bound  out  as  a  child  to  weavers,  because  as  a  herdboy 
he  was  too  intent  upon  watching  the  birds.  In  the  long  years  of  slavery, 
humped  like  a  crane  over  his  loom,  the  iron  entered  into  his  soul. 
Wilson  was  ever  a  bitter  man,  where  the  world  was  concerned,  but 
tender  to  the  very  few  who  were  ever  tender  with  him.  Fleeing  the 
loom  room,  he  became  a  peddler,  who  sold  stuffs  and  ribbons  and 
laces  for  ladies,  with  ballads  of  his  own  composing.  In  Scottish  ver- 
nacular, his  ballads  are  often  sincere,  honest,  fresh  and  genuine.  But 
when  he  was  forced  to  return  to  weaving,  his  libellous  lampoons 
against  the  master  weavers  brought  him  a  short  prison  term,  and  the 
humiliation  of  having  to  burn  his  shafts  in  public. 

This  was  the  turn  of  events  which  brought  him  to  America,  and 
tramping  from  Newcastle  to  Philadelphia  he  shot  and  examined  his 


854  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

first  American  bird,  a  red-headed  woodpecker,  the  most  beautiful  bird, 
as  he  said,  that  he  had  ever  seen.  Weaver,  journeyman  printer,  and 
schoolmaster,  he  eked  out  his  first  American  years  amongst  Pennsyl- 
vania Germans,  rutabagas,  hymn-howling  Presbyterians,  as  he  called 
them,  and  general  penury. 

His  first  encouragement  came  from  William  Bartram,  with  whose 
sister  he  fell  vainly  in  love;  Dr.  Benjamin  Barton,  Bachman,  Bona- 
parte, and  George  Ord,  who  made  up  the  Athens  of  science  for  which 
Philadelphia  then  passed,  aided  him,  and  bit  by  bit,  from  this  narrow, 
bitter  breast  where  a  poet  had  stifled,  a  great  scientist  was  born. 

JULY  SEVENTH 


It  was  to  an  America  still  partly  wilderness,  fresh  with  adventure, 
that  the  weary  and  driven  little  Scotsman  came.  You  could  expect  in 
our  woods  then  an  ivory-billed  woodpecker,  the  largest  of  all  its  tribe, 
a  creature  known  to  me  only  as  a  perfectly  incredible  specimen  in 
museums.  It  has  a  glossy  black  body  almost  two  feet  long,  a  head 
crested  with  scarlet,  and  a  great  bill,  ivory  white.  Once  widespread  in 
America,  it  is  now  all  but  extinct. 

Not  so  in  Wilson's  time.  He  easily  captured  a  specimen  in  the 
cypress  swamps  near  Wilmington,  North  Carolina,  and  was  convey- 
ing it,  imprisoned  under  a  blanket,  in  a  large  basket,  to  an  inn,  when 
it  suddenly  burst  into  the  most  ear-splitting  and  dismal  sounds,  like 
the  voice  of  a  baby  in  agony.  Several  women  on  the  porch  of  the  inn 
cast  dark  looks  on  the  poor  little  man,  as  though  he  had  been  a  kid- 
naper or  an  ogre.  Marching  proudly  by  them,  Wilson  conveyed  the 
bird  to  his  room  to  paint  it.  But  it  abruptly  left  off  sitting  for  its 
portrait,  and  violently  attacked  Wilson  about  the  face  with  the  bill 
that  is  made  to  split  oak.  Fleeing  the  room,  Wilson  after  an  hour 
returned  to  hear  the  sound  as  of  twenty  wood  choppers  at  work.  He 
threw  open  the  door,  and  discovered  that  his  tropical  carpenter  had 
battered  his  way  through  the  inner  wall,  and  at  that  moment  was 
engaged  in  enlarging  an  opening  in  the  clapboards  outside  wide 
enough  to  admit  his  scarlet-crested  head.  Restrained  in  this,  the  proud 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  855 

spirited  fowl  moped  and  died,  leaving  Wilson  his  ivory  bill  and  the 
innkeeper's  bill  for  repairs. 


JULY  EIGHTH 

Wilson  proposed  to  become  the  biographer  of  all  the  birds  of  Amer- 
ica. Governor  Tompkins  of  New  York  told  him  that  so  far  from 
paying  $120  for  a  book  about  birds  he  would  not  give  a  hundred  for 
all  the  birds  in  the  country,  if  he  had  'em  alive!  In  Charleston  Wilson 
wandered  the  streets  looking  for  houses  that  would  suggest  that  their 
owners  might  be  persons  of  enough  wealth  and  cultivation  to  subscribe 
to  his  book. 

Up  to  his  time  nothing  appreciable  on  American  birds  existed  in 
writing,  except  some  lists  drawn  up  by  Jefferson,  Barton  and  Bartram, 
and  some  descriptions  by  Mark  Catesby.  When  Wilson's  volume  con- 
taining the  biographies  of  the  hummingbird,  catbird,  mockingbird  and 
kingbird  appeared,  he  was — startling  as  it  now  seems — telling  the  world 
of  science  the  first  it  had  heard  of  them.  If  Wilson  was  no  artist,  if  he 
lacked  Audubon's  power  of  dramatizing  and  englamoring  each  en- 
counter with  a  new  species,  the  little  schoolmaster  ("who  didn't  whip 
enough,"  as  the  parents  complained)  was  at  least  a  peerless  observer, 
cautious,  exact,  conscientious,  methodical — virtues,  every  one  of  them, 
which  Audubon  exhibited  only  exceptionally.  Nature  had  not  endowed 
him  with  the  brush  of  an  Audubon,  yet  he  made  a  draughtsman  of 
himself  by  dint  of  perseverance. 

Whenever  I  hear  the  sweet,  swinging  vree-hu,  vree-heee  of  the  veery, 
called  Wilson's  thrush,  I  think  of  the  lonely  little  weaver,  the  first  bird 
lover  to  penetrate  the  desolate  swamps,  with  only  a  little  parrot  on  his 
shoulder  for  company. 

JULY  TWENTY-SECOND 


The  summer  world  is  the  insect  world.  Like  it  or  not,  that  is  how  it 
is.  There  are  few  insects  that  ever  find  the  day  too  hot.  The  more 


856  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

relentlessly  the  sun  beats  down  around  my  house,  the  faster  whir  the 
wings  of  the  hovering  wasp.  Dragon  flies  are  roused  to  a  frenzy  by 
the  heat,  dashing  over  the  hot  brown  surface  of  the  ponds  with  a 
metallic  clicking  of  their  wings  that  makes  them  seem  like  machines. 
The  wasps  grow  ever  more  irritable  with  the  heat,  their  bodies  palpi- 
tating with  alert  life. 

Just  as  many  chemicals  are  inert  at  low  temperatures,  but  rush 
together  with  explosive  violence  in  a  furnace,  so  the  insects  on  a 
November  day  are  easily  captured,  and  seem  bereft  of  their  wits.  In 
bleak  weather  I  would  pick  up  a  wasp  with  only  a  slight  wincing  of 
my  nerves.  Now,  when  they  come  near  me,  limp  with  heat  though  I 
feel,  I  am  galvanized  with  that  tingling  sensation  of  prickly  fear  such 
as  stinging  things  inspire. 

Of  all  the  rivals  of  mankind  for  dominance  on  this  earth  no  other 
creatures  large  enough  to  be  seen  with  the  naked  eye  have  held  out 
successfully  save  the  insects.  When  we  clear  the  forest,  we  rid  our- 
selves of  the  forest  insects,  only  to  make  way  for  the  field  insects.  Man 
sows  his  crops — and  what  comes  up?  A  host  of  long-faced,  armor- 
plated  locusts  who  eat  him  out  of  house  and  home.  We  strike  at  them, 
but  it  is  like  striking  at  the  sea.  Whatever  way  we  turn  we  find  the 
insects  there  before  us,  in  water,  in  air,  on  the  earth  and  under  it. 

AUGUST  THIRD 


Those  there  are  who  are  annoyed  or  repelled  (or  they  affect  to  be),  by 
what  they  call  lush  or  extravagant  beauty.  They  will  enjoy  nothing 
but  the  bleakest  of  New  England  scenery — a  few  hard-bitten  pastures, 
a  rocky  wall,  a  moth-eaten  hill  that  is  neither  a  bold  mountain  nor  a 
stirring  plain,  and  a  stern  and  paintless  old  house. 

Of  this  company  I  do  not  make  one.  If  it  is  shallow  not  to  be  able 
to  see  beauty  in  the  austere,  it  is  monkish,  parsimonious  and  timid  to 
despise  the  lavish  and  complex  beauty  of  life  reaching  its  full  expres- 
sion. I  liked  what  little  I  ever  saw  of  the  tropics,  and  the  fact  that  I 
was  born  in  a  region  where  Nature  was  economical  of  her  colors  and 
form  begets  in  me  no  sentimental  feelings  about  such  scenes. 


DONALD   CULROSS  PEATTIE  857 

I  love  the  southern  landscape,  and  I  love  it  in  summer  only  a  little 
less  than  in  spring.  The  South,  in  winter,  is  mild  enough,  but  it  is 
little  more;  it  is  simply  not  itself.  You  probably  do  not  know  Labrador 
until  you  have  lived  a  winter  in  it,  and  to  taste  the  undiluted  wine 
of  a  hot  country,  you  should  see  it  through  a  summer.  I  live  in  that 
intemperate  zone  that  is  icy  in  winter  and  flaming  in  summer;  it 
blends  the  tastes  of  north  and  south. 

And  in  summer  the  tropical  element  in  it  comes  out.  Now  the  heat 
shimmers  above  the  marshes;  it  dances  over  the  hills  in  a  haze,  engulfs 
the  cool  old  houses  as  if  they  were  islands  on  the  landscape.  Every- 
where the  deep  blue  green  of  heavy  foliage  is  in  full  summer  splendor; 
on  all  the  pools  the  jade  green  sargassos  of  the  duckweed  stretch  away 
across  the  stagnant  water;  in  the  breathless  nights  the  whippoorwill 
complains,  it  has  been  said,  that  "It  is  so  still,  so  still,  so  still!" 

AUGUST  FOURTH 


Upon  this  day  in  1849  was  born  William  Henry  Hudson.  We  loved 
him  for  something,  either  in  his  style  or  his  viewpoint,  that  can  only 
emerge  from  the  soul  of  a  loafer.  Hudson  was  a  loafer,  it  would  seem, 
only  partly  from  choice.  Ill  health  and  poverty  in  London  are  desperate 
shackles  for  a  naturalist,  and  his  marriage  was  unhappy.  His  wife 
long  kept  a  boarding  house  in  that  city,  and  she  need  have  been  no 
termagant  to  find  that  a  husband  to  whom  sparrows  and  starlings  were 
important,  a  husband  who  disappeared,  to  tramp  the  roads  like  a  hobo, 
living  on  blackberries,  was  an  exasperating  mate. 

The  English  readers  love  Hudson  because  he  saw  the  poetry  in  the 
subtle  charm  of  the  English  countryside,  because  he  made  even  more 
intimate  for  them  the  already  intimately  known  beauty  of  the  downs 
and  lanes.  In  London  itself,  in  Richmond  Park,  on  the  housetops  and 
in  the  gray  streets,  he  looked  where  seven  millions  looked,  and  saw  for 
them  what  they  did  not  see. 

But  it  is  Hudson  remembering  his  lost  Argentine  that  I  love  to  read. 
There  is  nothing  like  nostalgia  for  producing  memorable  writing;  the 
poet  must  go  unsatisfied.  And  Hudson,  smoking  in  the  back  parlor 


858  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  the  London  boarding  house,  and  writing  of  the  birds  of  La  Plata,  or 
the  great  thistle  years  upon  the  pampas,  and  all  that  he  remembered 
of  the  purple  lands  and  green  mansions,  becomes  for  me  the  Homer 
of  nature  lovers. 


AUGUST  ELEVENTH 


Tonight  the  Perseids  will  be  visible  in  all  their  glory — that  swarm  of 
meteors  whose  orbit  we  encounter  tonight  and  through  which  we 
continue  to  move  tomorrow  night.  Sixty-nine  falling  stars  an  hour  is 
the  average  number  that  one  can  see,  by  keeping  a  sharp  lookout  at 
their  central  radiating  point,  the  constellation  of  Perseus.  This  con- 
stellation does  not  rise  until  eleven,  and  is  really  not  well  placed  for 
observation  for  another  hour,  but  as  nothing  in  Nature  seems  on  this 
breathless  night  to  have  any  intention  of  going  to  sleep  before  the 
witching  hour,  I  shall  stay  up  to  watch. 

A  meteor  is  a  meteor  when  it  burns  itself  up  in  the  sky;  when  it 
falls  to  earth,  unconsumed  by  the  heat  of  friction  with  our  atmosphere, 
it  is  a  meteorite.  Of  all  the  astronomical  events,  the  fall  of  a  meteorite 
is  the  most  unnerving  and  yet  the  most  reassuring.  Reassuring  because 
it  proves  to  us  that  the  depths  of  space  are  inhabited  by  bodies  made 
of  the  same  elements  we  have  here  on  earth,  that,  at  rock  bottom,  a 
man  and  a  star  are  built  of  the  same  stufT.  Alarming,  in  the  thought 
that,  were  a  meteor  as  large  as  some  that  have  fallen  in  Arizona  and 
Siberia,  to  crash  upon  New  York  or  London,  a  million  humans  would 
instantly  meet  death. 

AUGUST  TWELFTH 


The  best  of  summer  star-gazing  is  that  it  is  warm  enough  to  fling 
yourself  upon  your  back  and  gaze  up  at  the  stars  without  craning  the 
neck.  In  a  short  time  the  sense  of  intimacy  with  the  stars  is  established, 
as  it  never  can  be  when  a  man  stands  erect.  You  may  even  lose  the 
sense  of  gazing  up,  and  enjoy  the  exciting  sensation  of  gazing  down 


DONALD   CULROS'S  PEATTIE  859 

into  deep  wells  of  space.  Indeed,  this  is  quite  as  correct  as  to  say  that 
we  gaze  upward  at  the  stars.  In  reality  there  is  no  up  and  down  in 
the  universe.  You  are,  in  point  of  fact,  a  creature  perpetually  hung 
over  the  yawning  abyss  of  Everywhere,  suspended  over  it  by  our  tiny 
terrestrial  gravity  which  clamps  you  to  the  side  of  mother  earth  while 
you  gaze  down  on  Vega  and  Deneb  and  Arcturus  and  Altair  whirling 
below  you. 

One  can  never  look  long  in  the  August  sky  without  beholding  a 
shooting  star,  for  the  trail  of  the  Perseids  is  spun  fine  at  each  end; 
only  last  night  and  tonight  we  pass  through  the  thick  node  of  them. 
If  we  ask  ourselves  what  is  a  meteor — fragment  of  the  lost  planet 
between  Mars  and  Jupiter,  messenger  from  the  farthest  stars,  or  bit  of 
a  vanished  comet — there  seems  no  certain  answer.  The  Perseids  are 
thought  to  be  traveling  in  the  same  orbit  as  that  of  Tuttle's  comet  of 
1862,  and  to  be  a  part  of  it.  But  what,  after  all,  is  a  comet?  Nothing 
more  ghostly  exists  in  time  or  space;  it  rushes  at  us  out  of  a  black 
hole  of  space,  trails  a  fire  that  does  not  burn,  a  light  that  is  no  light, 
and  looping  close  to  the  sun,  vanishes  again  into  space — to  return  at 
the  appointed  time  when  the  sea  of  darkness  again  gives  up  its  dead; 
or,  more  terrible  still,  never  to  return  from  its  Avernus. 

AUGUST  NINETEENTH 


There  was  once  a  poor  young  man  in  whose  breast  a  scientist  was 
stifling.  He  lived  in  the  heart  of  a  great  city,  far  from  tree  and  bird, 
unless  it  were  a  few  desolate  planes  and  some  quarrelsome  roof 
sparrows.  This  young  man  had  not  even  a  window  to  look  upon  the 
street,  but,  in  his  garret  room,  only  a  skylight.  Without  an  overcoat, 
he  was  often  in  bad  weather  kept  in  his  room  for  days  together,  with 
nothing  to  do  but  lie  on  his  back  and  look  out  at  the  sky.  As  he 
gazed,  the  clouds  in  ever  changing  form  drifted  by;  at  first  they 
seemed  shapeless  and  fluid  beyond  all  hope  of  grouping  them  into  any 
types,  but  little  by  little  he  came  to  recognize  the  sorts  you  read  about 
in  books — the  black  threatening  sheets  of  the  nimbus  clouds  that  bring 
snow,  the  cumulus,  dream-castle  clouds  of  a  fine  summer's  afternoon, 


860  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

the  high,  immovable  cirrus  clouds,  like  feathers  afloat  in  topmost 
heaven  that  promise  fair  weather. 

As  we  can  well  believe,  having  nothing  else  to  look  at  he  soon  had 
observed  all  the  kinds  of  clouds  you  and  I  have  ever  noticed.  And  then, 
one  day,  he  discovered  a  new  kind,  the  mammato-cirrus,  a  formation 
so  rare  that  it  had  never  been  observed  before  that  time.  Cut  off  from 
every  other  line  of  scientific  investigation,  this  genius  still  found  some- 
thing new  that  a  million  other  people  in  Paris  could  have  seen  that 
day  if  they  had  had  the  eyes  of  Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine  de  Monet 
de  Lamarck. 

AUGUST  TWENTY-FIRST 


Not  blood  nor  flesh  nor  hair  nor  feathers,  not  the  chlorophyll  or  cellu- 
lose of  the  plants,  is  stranger  than  the  stuff  called  chitin.  Chitin  is  not 
only  the  hard  shell  of  the  dapper  little  beetles  in  their  tail-coats;  it  is 
the  glistening  wing  of  the  dragon  fly,  and  his  thousand  faceted  eye, 
the  exquisite  feathered  antennae  of  the  moth  by  which  it  perceives  the 
odor  of  its  mate  across  miles  of  summer  darkness,  the  feet  of  the  labor- 
ing ant,  the  heavy  armor  of  the  lobster,  the  gossamer  of  the  spider, 
the  thread  of  the  silkworm.  There  is  very  little  about  an  insect,  or  for 
that  matter  any  of  its  allies  in  the  sea  or  upon  the  land,  which  is  not 
chitinous.  One  moment  the  stuff  is  finer  than  the  tresses  of  woman, 
and  the  next  ponderous  and  stiff  as  the  armor  of  a  knight,  and  all 
without  change  in  its  chemical  composition.  As  a  bloom  upon  the 
wing  of  a  luna  moth  fluttering  across  the  moon,  it  is  evanescent  as 
snowflakes;  encased  in  drops  of  amber  where  a  Mesozoic  beetle  died, 
it  has  seen  the  ages  pass  without  a  change. 

AUGUST  TWENTY-SECOND 


Something  there  is  about  a  heron  of  wildwood  nobility.  That  humped 
and  stilted  grace-and-awkwardness,  that  grand  and  pensive  sorrowful- 
ness that  goes  with  marshes,  that  touches  all  marsh  creatures,  frogs 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  861 

and  dragon  flies  and  wild  ducks,  with  the  finger  of  tragedy  laid  on 
the  tameless,  the  short  of  life.  That  leisurely  taking  off;  that  rushing 
sound  in  the  pinions,  that  haughty,  harsh,  and  yet  haunting  cry! 
Nobility  that  tempts  the  fowler's  gun,  not  because  the  heron  is  fit  to 
eat,  but  because  he  presents  an  easy  mark  against  the  sunset  extinguish- 
ing its  fire  in  the  wild  marsh  water. 

But  come  nearer  to  the  herons,  if  only  by  the  binoculars,  and  even  a 
snowy  egret  reveals  the  unsavory  ways  of  the  stork  family.  That  end- 
less gormandizing  after  mud  worms,  that  retching  and  regurgitating 
and  liming;  these  things  are  disillusion  itself,  and  when  you  actually 
attain  their  nests,  in  one  of  those  heronries  where  there  may  be  hun- 
dreds of  families,  all  that  can  be  inhuman  and  repugnant  in  a  bird 
assails  you.  I  would  not  tell  myself  the  truth  if  I  did  not  admit  that 
birds  can  suddenly  weary  and  repel  me,  just  as  ants  and  reptiles  or 
mammals  may.  The  animal  lover  (self-avowed)  will  reproach  me  in 
this.  He  never,  he  says,  does  anything  but  love  birds  at  all  times.  I  say 
he  is  a  hypocrite;  I  say,  too,  that  there  are  attitudes,  emotions  even, 
toward  Nature,  more  real  and  vital  and  valuable  than  love. 

There  is  a  great  deal  more  stingo,  more  savor  and  bite  in  Nature 
if  you  do  not  try  to  love  everything  you  touch,  smell,  hear,  see  or  step 
on.  The  disgust  which  a  near  encounter  with  a  heronry  awakens  in  me 
is  part  of  heronness,  an  ingredient  in  the  whole  that,  with  trailing 
leg  and  probing  bill,  makes  up  the  virtue  and  staying  power  of  the 
idea  of  Heron  in  my  mneme. 

AUGUST  THIRTY-FIRST 


August,  the  aureate  month,  draws  to  its  blazing  close — a  month  of 
sun,  if  ever  there  was  one.  Gold  in  the  grain  on  the  round-backed  hill 
fields.  Gold  in  the  wood  sunflowers,  and  in  the  summer  goldenrod 
waving  plumes  all  through  the  woodlot,  trooping  down  the  meadow 
to  the  brookside,  marching  in  the  dust  of  the  roadways.  Gold  in  the 
wing  of  the  wild  canaries,  dipping  and  twittering  as  they  flit  from 
weed  to  bush,  as  if  invisible  waves  of  air  tossed  them  up  and  down. 
The  orange  and  yellow  clover  butterflies  seek  out  the  thistle,  and  the 


862  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

giant  sulphur  swallowtails  are  in  their  final  brood.  The  amber,  chaff- 
filled  dust  gilds  all  the  splendid  sunsets  in  cloudless,  burning  skies. 
Long,  long  after  the  sun  has  set,  the  sun-drenched  earth  gives  back  its 
heat,  radiates  it  to  the  dim  stars;  the  moon  gets  up  in  gold;  before  it 
lifts  behind  the  black  fields  to  the  east  I  take  it  for  a  rick  fire,  till  it 
rises  like  an  old  gold  coin,  that  thieves  have  clipped  on  one  worn  edge. 

SEPTEMBER  FIFTEENTH 


Autumn  at  first  is  no  more  than  a  freshening  of  morning  and  evening, 
a  certain  sweet  and  winy  odor  in  the  air  that  blows  upon  the  cheek 
as  one  steps  out  of  doors  in  the  morning,  or  opens  the  window  at 
night  to  lean  out  a  moment  and  look  at  the  stars,  before  turning  at 
last  to  sleep. 

Autumn  is  the  blooming  of  the  goldenrod  all  through  the  oak  woods 
and  across  the  fields.  Autumn  is  the  cricket's  cry,  the  swarming  of  the 
monarch  and  the  storms  of  the  Lisa  butterfly.  It  is  the  odor  of  leaf 
fires,  the  smell  of  crushed  marigold  leaves,  of  tansy  leaves  and  the  sharp 
terebinthine  scent  of  walnut  husks  that  look  so  apple  green  and  leave 
so  brown  a  stain. 

Autumn  is  the  end  of  vacation,  the  beginning  of  school,  the  gather- 
ing of  grackles,  the  dropping  of  ripe  plums,  the  swarming  of  yellow 
hornets  in  the  pear  orchards.  It  is  the  ripening  of  the  wild  rice,  the 
meeting  together  of  bobolink  hordes,  the  first  hint  of  scarlet  in  the 
sumac  leaf  and  the  dewberry  cane.  It  is  the  end  of  one  more  year's 
experiment.  Now  Nature  dismantles  her  instruments  and  lays  them 
away. 

SEPTEMBER  TWENTY-FOURTH 


I  try  each  year  to  disbelieve  what  my  senses  tell  me,  and  to  look  at 
the  harvest  moon  in  a  cold  and  astronomical  light.  I  know  that  it  is 
a  small  cold  sphere  of  rock,  airless,  jagged  and  without  activity.  But 
the  harvest  moon  is  not  an  astronomical  fact.  It  is  a  knowing  thing, 
lifting  its  ruddy  face  above  the  rim  of  the  world.  Even  to  the  thor- 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  863 

oughly  civilized  mind,  where  caution  for  the  future  is  supposed  to 
rule  all  impulse,  the  orange  moon  of  autumn  invites  the  senses  to  some 
saturnalia,  yet  no  festival  of  merriment.  The  harvest  moon  has  no 
innocence,  like  the  slim  quarter  moon  of  a  spring  twilight,  nor  has  it 
the  silver  penny  brilliance  of  the  moon  that  looks  down  upon  the 
resorts  of  summertime.  Wise,  ripe,  and  portly,  like  an  old  Bacchus,  it 
waxes  night  after  night. 

SEPTEMBER  TWENTY-FIFTH 


Now  is  that  opulent  moment  in  the  year,  the  harvest,  a  time  of  cream 
in  old  crocks  in  cool,  newt-haunted  spring-houses,  of  pears  at  the  hour 
of  perfection  on  old  trees  bent  like  women  that,  as  the  Bible  says,  bow 
down  with  child.  In  this  field  the  grain  stands,  a  harsh  forest  of  golden 
straw  nodding  under  the  weight  of  the  bearded  spikes,  and  in  that,  it 
has  been  swept  and  all  its  fruitfulness  carried  off  to  fill  the  barns. 

One  will  not  see  here,  save  in  the  steep  tilted  Blue  Ridge  farms,  the 
man  reaping  by  sickle  in  his  solitary  field,  while  his  daughters  bind 
the  sheaves,  nor  the  bouquet  of  wheat  and  pine  boughs  hung  above 
the  grange  gable  that  is  crammed  to  the  doors.  But  we  have  our  own 
sights  and  sounds  at  harvest  time.  There  is  the  roar  and  the  amber 
dust  of  the  threshing  machines,  the  laughter  of  the  children  riding 
home  on  the  hayricks,  the  warfare  of  the  crows  and  grackles  in  the 
painted  woods,  and  the  seething  of  juice  in  the  apple  presses.  Then 
night  falls  and  the  workers  sleep.  The  fields  are  stripped,  and  only  the 
crickets  chant  in  the  midnight  chill  of  the  naked  meadow. 

SEPTEMBER  TWENTY-SEVENTH 


Now  in  the  south  the  star  Fomalhaut  rises  into  view.  The  star  maps, 
cast  most  of  them  for  the  latitude  of  London  or  New  York,  do  not 
show  this  luminary  as  it  shines  for  the  better  part  of  the  world.  They 
picture  it  as  skimming  low  near  the  horizon,  something  that  would 
be  half  lost  in  the  glare  of  ground  lights,  or  in  evening  damps  and 


864  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

mists.  In  more  fortunate  latitudes  it  can  be  seen  all  through  the 
autumn,  rising  at  its  highest  full  one  third  the  way  to  the  horizon. 
It  shines,  a  zenith  star,  upon  lands  that  I  shall  never  see;  it  bears  the 
name  given  it  by  the  Arab  shepherd  astronomers  of  old,  thousands  of 
years  ago  when,  by  the  shifting  of  the  earth's  axis,  it  was  more  readily 
visible  in  the  northern  hemisphere  than  now.  To  Romulus  it  rode  for 
perhaps  six  months  high  in  the  heavens;  for  us  it  grazes  the  horizon 
for  but  three.  It  is  a  lost  friend  of  our  race,  whose  ghost  returns  to  us. 
It  is  a  glimpse  into  the  past,  a  peek  over  the  edge  of  things. 

OCTOBER  FIRST 


Now  the  autumn  colors  march  upon  their  triumphs.  So  still  the  woods 
stand,  against  the  faultless  blue  of  the  sky,  they  seem  like  windows 
dyed  with  pigments  meant  to  represent  all  the  riches  and  display  of 
history — pointed  windows  blazing  with  trumpeting  angels,  blazons  and 
heraldic  glitter,  intricate,  leaf-twined  illumination,  depths  of  holy  gold 
within  temporal  scarlet,  soft  gleaming  chalices  encrusted  with  ruby 
and  topaz,  cloths  of  bronze  and  ells  of  green,  embroideries  of  crimson, 
twist  from  the  vats  of  saffron  and  Tyrian  and  fustian. 

The  north  woods  have  somehow  stolen  the  fame  of  autumnal  glory 
from  other  quarters  of  the  land.  But  what  have  they — maples  and 
beeches  and  aspens  and  rowanberry — that  we  have  not  ?  Or  their  fiery 
viburnums  or  huckleberries  or  brambles?  We  have  all  their  colors  and 
more,  and  indeed  it  is  the  tropical  element  in  our  flora  that  imparts 
the  most  dazzling  brilliance.  The  tupelo  tree  before  my  door  and  the 
persimmons  across  the  valley  glow  with  a  somber  anger,  like  leaves 
that  would  be  evergreen  if  they  might  and  turn  to  the  color  of  smolder- 
ing charcoal  only  under  compulsion.  The  sassafras  and  the  sour  gum 
shout  with  orange  and  scarlet,  and  the  curious  sweet  gum,  with  its 
star-shaped  leaves,  exults  in  crimson  and  vermilions.  Like  the  gold 
tulip  tree  leaf  it  has  a  look  about  it  as  of  some  vegetation  that  does  not 
really  belong  in  the  flora  of  the  world  today. 

And  in  truth  they  both,  like  so  many  of  our  trees,  are  sole  survivors 
of  once  great  families  of  ages  past.  In  what  autumns  must  the  Tertiary 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  865 

have  rejoiced,  when  leaves  that  are  fossils  now  flamed  with  colors  we 
can  only  imagine — flamed  upon  a  world  without  men  in  it,  to  call  it 
beautiful. 


OCTOBER  FOURTEENTH 


It  lay  upon  a  rotting  log — a  delicate  mass,  intricate  and  yet  without 
definite  shape,  like  a  bit  of  patternless  lace  dyed  yellow.  I  picked  it  up 
in  careful  fingers,  and  the  whole  mass  came  lightly  away  from  the  log 
and  lay  firm  as  a  fragment  of  fabric  in  my  hand.  Triumphantly  I  laid 
it  in  my  vasculum  which  had  only  a  few  lichens  and  mosses  in  it,  and 
proceeded  on  my  way  rejoicing.  There  is  satisfaction  for  the  student 
in  finding  a  curiosity  he  has  studied  only  in  theory. 

The  Mycetoza — unpleasantly  known  as  slime-molds  or,  sometimes,  as 
flowers-of-tan — would  seem  upon  first  view  to  belong  quite  obviously 
to  the  fungi.  They  are  flat,  branched,  irregular  in  form,  without  definite 
growth  limit,  and  when  they  come  to  reproduce  they  form  themselves 
into  balls,  into  tiny  chalices,  feathery  shoots,  intricate  ramified  crani- 
form  masses  like  a  morelle  mushroom,  or  delicate  knobbed  forests  like 
a  bread  mold,  which  release  spores  as  any  fungus  will. 

But,  once  liberated  in  a  convenient  film  of  moisture,  these  spores 
proceed  to  hatch  out  a  blob  of  microscopic  jelly  like  an  amoeba,  which 
rolls  and  flows  along,  engulfing  food  in  its  streamers  of  protoplasm,  or 
dancing  along  by  its  whip-like  tail,  for  all  the  world  like  a  flagellate 
or  a  male  mammal's  spermatozoon.  When  it  meets  another  such  crea- 
ture it  blends;  a  third  is  engulfed  with  total  loss  of  identity  into  the 
shapeless  mass,  and  the  whole  colony  moves  ofT,  over  logs  or  through 
them,  inchin'  along,  avoiding  light  and  useless  obstructions,  tracking 
down  prey  in  the  form  of  fungi  and  perhaps  bacteria. 

OCTOBER  FIFTEENTH 


When  I  turn  my  lens  on  the  slime-molds  the  whole  intricate  mass 
leaps  to   my  eye   as  something  more  formless,   less   comprehensible, 


866  READIN-G  I'VE  LIKED 

than  it  seemed  to  be  when  I  saw  it  on  the  log.  I  would  have  supposed, 
from  the  brilliant  ocher  color,  the  appearance  of  threads  and  granula- 
tions, that  some  underlying  plan  or  symmetry  must  be  discovered  upon 
closer  examination.  But  in  fact  it  seems  now  no  more  than  a  sheet  of 
protoplasmic  material,  without  muscles,  nerves,  or  any  organs  of  diges- 
tion, as  formless  as  an  amoeba.  More  formless!  For  though  I  can  make 
out  an  outer  layer  and  an  inner  nuclear  layer  I  cannot  anywhere  dis- 
tinguish either  the  semblance  of  cells  nor  of  individuals  living  colo- 
nially. 

I  might  say  it  is  an  overgrown  uni-cellular  organism,  but  it  would  be 
as  reasonable  to  say  that  it  is  a  non-cellular  organism.  The  unwalled 
protoplasm,  with  thousands  of  nuclei  in  it,  is  in  a  state  of  surge,  a 
rhythmic  flowing  back  and  forth,  that,  I  suppose,  sets  more  strongly  in 
one  direction  than  the  other  when  the  creature  is  in  motion.  It  is  so 
far  from  being  a  single  organism  that,  if  made  to  pass  through  cotton 
wool,  it  will  completely  disperse  into  innumerable  streams,  as  it  must 
do  when  penetrating  the  log.  Yet  it  is  so  little  a  random  collection  of 
individuals  that  on  emerging  on  the  other  side  of  such  a  filter  it  will 
reassemble  every  particle  of  protoplasm  and  flow  forward  again — 
leaving  behind  its  spores,  as  no  doubt  it  will  do  in  the  log,  thus  sowing 
a  fresh  crop  of  itself. 

The  problem  is  not  whether  this  raw  plasmodium  is  a  plant  or  an 
animal;  it  is  whether  we  shall  not  have  to  admit  that  there  are  at  least 
three  kingdoms  of  living  things — the  plant,  the  animal,  and  the  Myceto- 
zoa.  Are  there  perhaps  other  kingdoms  that  we  wot  not  of? 

OCTOBER  NINETEENTH 


Every  sunny  afternoon  I  hear  the  cricket  still,  sweetly  chirruping,  and 
as  the  nights  grow  frosty  he  often  comes  into  my  house.  From  the  win- 
dow he  hops  by  preference  into  the  waste-basket,  there  to  tune  his 
roundelay.  He  is  fond  of  the  bathtub,  too,  and  he  hides  behind  the 
wood  where  I  stack  it  by  the  fireplace.  But  his  favorite  room  in  my 
house  is  the  cellar. 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  867 

Now  a  cricket  out  of  doors  is  a  pleasing  sound.  Some  people  fall 
asleep  as  soon  as  the  rain  begins  to  fall  on  the  roof;  some  like  the  lap 
of  a  lake  upon  stones,  or  the  boom  of  the  ocean  on  an  old  sea-wall.  I 
love  to  hear  the  crickets  chanting  when  I  drop  toward  sleep.  But  a 
cricket  under  the  bed  is  quite  another  affair,  and  there  is  nothing  to  do 
but  to  get  up,  on  chill  feet,  and  hunt  the  serenader  out,  and  tell  him 
frankly,  by  throwing  him  out  of  the  window,  that  he  has  entirely  too 
much  to  say  and  says  it  too  loudly. 

Out  in  the  night,  his  small  skirl  goes  sweetly  among  his  fellows'. 
They  sing,  I  think,  of  orange  moons  and  meadow  mice,  of  the  first 
hoar  frost  lying  pure  and  cool  as  samite  on  the  stubble  fields,  and  of 
the  falling  of  the  dull  gold  globes  from  the  persimmon  tree,  the  ripen- 
ing of  the  heavy  pawpaws  in  the  steep  woods  by  the  river.  By  the 
hearth  they  speak  to  my  ears  of  firelight  and  books,  of  the  cracking 
of  nuts  and  tucking  children  into  bed.  To  my  cat,  his  eyes  rolling  with 
the  fever  of  the  chase,  his  hair  rising  with  enjoyable  terror,  they  are 
ghosts  behind  the  book-cases. 

OCTOBER  TWENTY-SEVENTH 


A  tree  in  its  old  age  is  like  a  bent  but  mellowed  and  wise  old  man;  it 
inspires  our  respect  and  tender  admiration;  it  is  too  noble  to  need  our 
pity.  We  take  the  fading  of  flowers  very  lightly;  it  is  regrettable  to 
see  them  go,  but  we  know  they  are  not  sentient  beings;  they  cannot 
regret  their  fresh  tints,  nor  know  when  the  firm,  fine  form  begins  to 
droop. 

But  the  old  age  of  a  butterfly,  the  fading  of  its  colors,  the  dog-earing 
of  its  brave  frail  wings,  is  a  pitiful  thing,  for  if  the  butterfly  does  not 
know  that  it  is  beautiful,  it  certainly  knows  when  it  is  buffeted  by  the 
winds,  and  weighted  and  abraded  by  the  autumn  rains.  It  is,  after  all, 
an  animal,  and  akin  to  us;  not  even  the  most  hard-shelled  mechanists 
have  ventured  to  deny  that  insects  have  nerves  and  emotions,  though 
they  may  not  have  intelligence  or  will  as  we  understand  those  words. 
And  I  for  one  am  convinced,  if  birds  feel  the  change  of  season,  and 


868  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

little  mammals  creeping  into  their  winter  quarters,  that  butterflies  in 
some  lesser  but  not  inconsiderable  degree,  are  aware  that  for  most  of 
them  the  term  of  life  is  nearly  done.  Animals  often  show  a  sharper 
sense  of  the  feeling  and  imminence  of  death  than  we. 

NOVEMBER  SIXTH 


On  this  day  in  1848,  in  a  fine  old  farmhouse  near  Swindon,  was  born 
Richard  JefTeries,  that  naturalist  and  poet  of  nature  whose  works  in 
influence  and  literary  quality  stand  in  English  letters  with  those  of 
Gilbert  White  and  Hudson.  Of  the  three  he  is  the  least  known  in 
America.  Hudson  was  a  cosmopolite,  and  Gilbert  White  almost  uni- 
versal— universally  parochial.  JefTeries  stands  deepest  rooted  in  the  soil; 
he  melts  into  his  scene  and  becomes  its  voice,  speaking  for  it,  as  a 
dryad  speaks  for  the  oak  she  inhabits.  He  has  the  intense  awareness 
of  the  genius  of  a  spot  that  the  classic  nature  lovers  had,  and  in  Round 
About  a  Great  Estate,  Life  of  the  Fields,  and  The  Gamekeeper  at 
Home,  he  stems  straight  from  Theocritus,  the  Sabine  Farm  and  the 
Bucolics.  He  can  make  an  acre  of  ground  ring  with  lark  song  and 
glitter  with  dew.  More  than  all  other  peoples,  the  English  appreciate 
their  nature;  JefTeries  is  this  love  in  its  pure  fonthead. 

A  failure  as  a  novelist,  JefTeries  in  his  nature  writing  benefited  by  a 
novelist's  powers  of  self-expression.  He  has  that  choice  of  the  fresh 
word,  that  eye  for  the  quietly  dramatic,  with  which  White  was  entirely 
unacquainted.  Yet  he  wrote  out  of  a  conscientious  naturalist's  first-hand 
information,  with  religious  fidelity  to  truth.  If,  through  all  his  work, 
and  most  of  all  in  his  autobiography,  The  Story  of  My  Heart,  there  is 
a  strain  of  the  melancholy,  a  way  of  narrating  things  as  though  he 
were  remembering  happy  days,  it  is  because  much  of  his  life  he  was 
writing  of  Nature  from  hospital  beds,  from  poor  city  windows.  Con- 
sumption, the  malady  of  poets,  slowly  and  very  painfully  destroyed  this 
poet  of  the  wild  breeze  on  Beachy  Head,  of  the  hearty  health  of  farm 
and  soft-breathing  beast,  of  granges  packed  to  the  door  with  sweeten- 
ing hay. 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  869 


NOVEMBER  SEVENTH 


The  saddest  feelings  evoked  by  musing  over  Richard  Jefreries'  tomb- 
stone are  not  that  disease  so  crippled  and  embittered  a  life  intended 
for  manly  health  and  great  fertility,  but  that  his  works  have  since  been 
buried  with  him.  Yet  the  influence  of  Jefferies,  not  only  as  a  nature 
writer  but  as  a  novelist  with  a  deep  and  exciting  sense  of  the  elemental, 
is  felt  in  modern  literature.  He  had  a  way  of  peopling  his  Nature  with 
human  figures  that  throws  the  scene  into  a  most  comprehensible  relief 
— the  men,  the  children,  the  girls,  just  such  as  we  would  expect  to 
meet  on  a  wild  down  in  a  copse  roaring  with  the  autumn  wind,  in  a 
poacher's  cottage.  Some  of  the  ache  of  A  Shropshire  Lad,  some  of  the 
grand  leisure  of  Lavengro  and  the  imagination  of  Wolf  Solent  are  in 
Jefferies.  The  primal  idea  of  After  London — an  England  after  the 
cracking  of  western  civilization,  with  London  in  ruins,  and  men  fight- 
ing amidst  the  brambles  and  the  forests  returned — indicates  a  fine  sense 
of  true  time  as  Nature  ticks  it  off.  And  Bevis,  that  small  boy  Crusoe, 
that  hobbledehoy  Julius  Ca?sar  of  the  Great  Pond  and  the  Down,  just 
too  old  to  allow  himself  to  be  beaten  and  just  too  young  to  make  im- 
pudent compliments  to  lasses,  stands  out  for  me  as  a  classic  of  a  boy  in 
Nature  and  Nature  in  a  boy. 

NOVEMBER  EIGHTH 


Now  to  their  long  winter  sleep  retire  the  batrachians.  A  warm-blooded 
animal,  even  one  who  purposes  eventually  to  hibernate,  may  still  keep 
the  field  for  a  few  weeks  more.  But  the  cool  spring  newts,  the  earthy 
toad  and  the  frog  who  looks  like  the  lily  pad  he  sits  upon,  make  off 
to  their  winter  quarters. 

The  wood  frog  hides  beneath  old  logs,  and  the  others  plunge  under 
the  chill  waters,  there  to  burrow  deep  in  the  mud.  But  the  toad  begins 
to  delve  under  shrubbery  or  an  old  board  or  flagstone,  and  when  I 
catch  him  at  the  business  he  is  usually  working  behind  his  back.  For 


870  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

his  very  tough  hind  feet,  provided  with  conspicuous  spurs,  are  his 
spades,  and  with  these  he  digs  his  own  burrow,  almost  his  grave,  and 
so,  inch  by  inch,  he  backs  into  his  house.  When  he  has  gone  deep 
enough  to  escape  the  bitter  surface  frosts,  he  pulls  his  hole  in  after  him, 
by  drawing  the  earth  down  over  his  head. 

Now  with  his  toes  curled  up  under  him  and  his  head  bent  down,  he 
prepares  to  sleep.  A  great  darkness  comes  over  his  jewel-like  eyes,  a 
numbness  through  his  limbs.  Like  one  dead,  he  lies  with  heart  almost 
stopped,  breath  practically  suspended,  an  earthy  thing  gone  back  to 
earth,  a  cold  thing  blended  with  the  cold  clod.  Life  flickers  very  low 
at  this  moment;  it  sinks  into  an  icy  torpor  not  readily  distinguishable 
from  decease;  even  a  sort  of  rigor  mortis  sets  in;  the  sleeping  toad  may 
be  cut  up  in  sections  without  arousing  him  to  consciousness.  So  to  pre- 
serve itself  from  death,  life  will  feint  with  it,  even  lie  down  in  its 
black  arms,  in  order  to  rise  in  the  morning  the  triumphant  creatrix! 


NOVEMBER  FIFTEENTH 


We  grow  a  double  larkspur  in  the  garden,  and  exaggerated  double 
dahlias  so  heavy  that  they  cannot  hold  up  their  own  heads.  But  these 
are  like  idle,  childless  women  demanding  to  be  young  perpetually.  In 
the  marsh,  on  the  steppe,  in  the  crevices  of  cliffs,  the  purpose  of  life  is 
fruition.  I  could  never  see  why  a  man  should  rebel  against  this  law,  or 
imagine  that  the  best  of  his  dreams  would  be  more  precious  than  the 
children  for  whom  he  must  compromise  them. 

Do  you  object  that  this  is  a  weary  round — soberly  to  beget,  in  debt 
and  fear  to  house  and  raise,  in  order  that  my  sober  children,  early 
yoked,  shall  continue  dully  to  repeat  my  life,  and  work  out  for  the 
benefit  of  some  monarchical  or  socialistic  society  a  gray  and  featureless 
Utopia?  But  I  ask  you,  what  is  dull  about  the  fulfillment  of  biological 
destiny?  At  every  moment  in  that  destiny  the  beauty  and  terror  of 
life  confront  a  man — still  more  a  woman — and  round  the  circle  of  the 
days  the  eyes  of  Death  move  watchfully,  pondering  on  children  run- 
ning in  the  light,  on  woman  in  the  night,  on  man  at  labor. 


DONALD   CULROSS  PEATTIE  871 

NOVEMBER  TWENTY-FIRST 


In  a  guest-thronged  old  Southern  house,  of  a  stormy  November  night, 
I  was  put  as  a  child  to  sleep  on  a  couch  downstairs  under  the  short 
blankets  and  old  coats  that  make  up  an  extra  boy's  bed  on  such  occa- 
sions. At  first  it  was  very  novel  and  pleasant  to  lie  on  the  brocaded 
cushions  in  the  fire-lit  room.  But  I  wakened,  in  a  windy  midnight,  to  a 
fire  gone  out.  And  somewhere  there  was  a  curious  ticking  sound  as  of 
a  clock,  but  intermittent.  I  knew  there  was  no  clock  about,  and  I  tried 
hard  not  to  recognize  the  sound. 

But  all  the  time  I  knew  it  well,  for  a  young  servant  who  liked  to 
make  children's  eyes  grow  large  had  once  told  me  what  it  meant.  Tic\, 
tac\,  tac\,  it  came — that  sound  that  the  death-watch  beetle  makes  in 
old  woodwork,  as  he  counts  out  the  minutes  that  are  left  to  some  one 
who  has  not  much  longer  to  live.  By  day  I  knew  that  beetles  do  not 
occupy  themselves  with  the  span  of  human  lives.  But  in  the  night  I  saw 
how  logical  it  was  that  some  one  at  this  hour  was  living  out  his  last 
minutes.  With  the  first  signs  of  dawn  I  gathered  up  my  chill  clothes 
and  fled  to  the  comfort  of  the  old  black  cook  just  lighting  a  kitchen 
fire  of  fat  pine.  Does  any  one  else,  like  me,  feel  again  the  eeriness  of 
the  beetle's  pendulum  when  he  listens  to  the  stroke  of  the  bedside 
watch  in  Strauss's  Death  and  Transfiguration? 

Sometimes  I  find  the  beetles  still,  up  in  my  attic.  The  warmth  that 
steals  up  to  them  from  the  heated  house  keeps  them  unseasonably 
alive,  these  hammer-headed  Anobia.  I  know  their  presence  by  the  tell- 
tale pile  of  sawdust  on  the  floor  though  I  never  catch  them  in  the  open. 
But  the  uncanny  associations  with  a  creature  which  slowly  devours 
my  roof  tree,  while  ever  remaining  invisible,  have  not  faded;  they 
tremble  like  an  eidolon  across  my  scientific  knowledge. 

NOVEMBER  TWENTY-SIXTH 


For  days  now  the  skies  have  let  down  torrents  of  rain  upon  the  land. 
The  fire  logs  have  sung  upon  my  hearth,  and  I  have  been  house 


872  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

bound,  deeply  happy  in  the  instincts  that  flower  beneath  a  roof,  content 
with  a  philosopher's  existence.  The  sky  is  still  heavy  with  unshed 
drops,  but  the  human  frame  would  stand  no  more  confinement.  I 
walked  in  the  woods,  with  boot  and  stick,  hunting  that  fresh  surface 
of  experience,  that  actual  touch  and  smell  of  reality  without  which  a 
philosophy  soon  becomes  metaphysics. 

Of  birds  there  are  very  few  about — not  nearly  so  many  as  I  see  on  a 
fine  day  in  snowbound  midwinter.  Without  snow,  the  tracks  of  little 
mammal  neighbors  are  invisible,  though  my  dog  follows  their  eery 
trails  upon  the  air,  yelping  and  crashing  through  the  thickets  after 
every  rabbit,  warning  the  entire  wood  that  I  am  coming  and  spread- 
ing silence  and  absence  around  me  as  a  stone  spreads  ripples.  If  I  shut 
the  dog  in,  the  crows  from  their  signal  lookouts  forewarn  the  world 
of  me  as  if  I  were  a  dangerous  public  enemy. 

Everywhere  now  in  the  woods,  the  signs  of  sleep  and  death  and 
decay  abound.  I  break  off  the  bark  of  an  old  stump  and  discover  shiny 
beetle  larvae  scurrying  in  embarrassment  down  the  labyrinths  they  have 
made,  small  spiders  tucking  themselves  into  silk  coverlets,  a  soft  flores- 
cence of  mold  at  work  upon  the  wood.  The  wood  itself  is  but  a  damp 
and  rusty  sawdust,  reduced  to  that  condition  by  innumerable  insect 
carpenters,  by  the  bills  of  woodpeckers,  the  teeth  of  little  rodents,  the 
dissolving  power  of  the  fungi  and  the  final  break-up  wrought  by  those 
indefatigable  little  junkmen,  the  bacteria. 

NOVEMBER  TWENTY-SEVENTH 


No  picture  of  life  today  is  even  worth  a  glance  that  does  not  show  the 
bacteria  as  the  foundation  of  life  itself,  the  broad  base  of  the  pyramid 
on  which  all  the  rest  is  erected.  We  know  them  well  enough  as  our 
most  terrible  enemies.  But  man's  power  over  the  pathogenic  forms 
advances  with  a  certainty  of  purpose,  a  display  of  courage  and  intelli- 
gence that  heartens  us  back  to  a  belief  in  ourselves.  And  in  truth  the 
deathy  seeds  that  slay  us  still  are  the  least  significant  of  the  whole  lot; 
they  are  expensive  hothouse  parasites,  so  finicking  in  their  require- 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  873 

ments,  so  overspecialized  in  their  adaptations,  that  they  have  written 
their  own  doom  in  time. 

The  bacteria  which  fire  my  imagination  are  those  that  I  smell  as  I 
walk  these  days  through  the  dripping  woods,  where  the  sodden  leaves 
no  longer  rustle.  I  call  it  the  smell  o£  loam,  but  of  a  truth  loam  is  no 
more  than  ordinary  earth  rich  in  soil  bacteria.  It  is  their  gases  which 
I  scent,  as  it  is  the  emanations  from  other  sorts  that  generate  the  fetid 
odor  of  a  bog,  the  stench  of  a  carcass  in  the  woods,  the  delectable  reek 
of  ferment  in  the  hay-crammed  barn. 

It  is  among  these  harmless  sorts  that  there  flourish  species  which 
assist  to  break  down  the  naked  rock  that  once  was  the  five  continents 
thrust  out  of  the  seven  seas;  they  have  made  them  habitable  for  the  rest 
of  life.  Green  plants — the  source  directly  or  indirectly  of  all  the  food, 
fuel  and  apparel  that  we  use — would  find  life  unendurable  but  for  the 
bacteria.  And  but  for  the  kinds  that  inhabit  symbiotically  the  digestive 
tracts  of  animals,  the  tough  cellulose  of  plant  food  could  never  be 
dissolved  and  assimilated.  Men,  as  well  as  insects  and  legumes,  live 
out  their  days  in  an  unconscious  dependence  upon  organisms  so  mi- 
nute that,  like  the  angels  of  metaphysical  monks,  ten  thousand  may 
(and  frequently  do)  stand  on  the  point  of  a  needle,  and  so  numerous 
that  they  surpass  all  the  stars  in  heaven. 

NOVEMBER  TWENTY-EIGHTH 


We  have  the  geologist's  word  for  it  that  the  oldest  rocks  that  bear  a 
fossil  testimony  to  the  existence  of  life  show  impresses  of  bacterial  scars. 
The  biologist  is  not  soaring  on  reckless  wax  wings  of  fancy  when  he 
imagines  that  the  bacteria  may  have  rained  upon  earth  from  distant 
space.  Germs,  we  call  them  when  they  invade  our  bodies;  germs  of 
life,  too,  primordial  seeds,  they  may  well  have  been.  For  harsh  as  the 
astronomer's  outer  realms  may  be,  hostile  to  all  delicate  life  forms  like 
ourselves,  the  bacteria  (some  of  which  are  anything  but  delicate)  may 
well  have  been  fitted  to  pass  between  the  Scylla  and  Charybdis  of  the 
astronomer's  ice  and  fire.  These  specks  of  dust,  these  particles  fine  as 
smoke,  boast  members  which  can  endure  prolonged  subjection  to  the 


874  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

temperature  of  liquid  hydrogen,  that  is,  260  °  below  zero  Centigrade. 
Most  of  them  prefer  to  live  in  the  total  darkness  that  is  the  natural  state 
of  nothingness,  in  which  the  stars  struggle  like  wavering  candles,  des- 
tined at  length  to  burn  up  their  tallow  of  allotted  energy.  Many  are 
the  bacteria  which  lead  their  darkling  existence  totally  without  air, 
and  right  here  on  earth  there  are  still  others  that  live  in  hot  springs, 
or  can,  by  walling  themselves  up  in  tough,  dormant  spore  cells,  resist 
repeated  boilings.  The  only  way  in  which  the  laboratory  can  rid  itself 
of  such  stout  foes  it  to  incubate  the  spores  until  they  are  tricked  into 
emerging  as  the  vegetative,  active  and  more  delicate  phase.  As  yet  little 
is  known  of  the  longevity  of  such  spores.  Seeds  of  lotus,  found  in 
lakes  dry  two  thousand  years,  have  been  made  to  sprout.  But  any  seed 
is  frail  flesh  indeed,  compared  to  these  pallid  germs  so  fine  that  some 
will  drain  through  a  porcelain  filter  as  wheat  through  a  sieve,  roll 
round  the  world  as  an  invisible  breath,  spawn  by  the  million  in  a  few 
hours,  or  rest  in  dormancy  no  man  knows  how  long. 

NOVEMBER  TWENTY-NINTH 


Before  a  man  has  done  with  such  a  wild  horde  of  rock-eating  savages 
as  the  bacteria,  all  easy  notions  of  what  life  is  may  break  down  as  com- 
pletely as  the  Newtonian  physics  before  the  onslaughts  of  the  Ein- 
steinian. 

If  I  try  to  fix  a  vital  temperature  range  between  the  freezing  and 
the  boiling  points  of  water,  the  bacteria  confound  me.  If  I  maintain 
that  the  very  focus  of  vital  forces  is  in  the  cell  nucleus,  there  are  cer- 
tain bacteria  that  leap  to  my  sight  in  the  microscope,  devoid  of  nuclei. 

It  is  even  a  mystery  in  what  kingdom  to  place  them.  The  zoologist 
will  generally  not  admit  them,  the  botanist  is  embarrassed  to  know 
what  to  do  with  them.  He  tucks  them  in  somewhere  near  the  fungi, 
because  they  are  without  green  coloring,  produce  spores,  and  because 
so  many  are  saprophytes  or  parasites.  But  the  bacteria  are  without  the 
double  cell  wall  of  plants,  and  whatever  their  cell  wall  may  be  com- 
posed of,  it  seems  not  to  be  cellulose,  the  very  brick  and  mortar  of 
plant  life. 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  875 

It  is  perhaps  simplest  to  say  that  there  are  four  kingdoms  of  living 
things,  plant,  animal,  slime-mold  and  bacterial.  How  many  more  king- 
doms may  there  be  in  this  or  other  worlds?  One  of  the  startling  dis- 
coveries of  the  modern  age  was  that  of  the  bacteriophages,  organisms 
so  small  that  they  have  never  yet  been  seen,  which  disembowel  bac- 
teria and  eat  their  vitals.  They  may  be  bacteria  also,  but  just  as  possibly 
they  are  not,  they  may  be  something  even  stranger. 

NOVEMBER  THIRTIETH 


The  end  of  the  bacterial  paradoxes  is  not  yet.  They  have  members  of 
the  guild  which  ply  their  trade  without  air,  and  others  that  take  free 
nitrogen  out  of  the  atmosphere  and  utilize  it.  We  think  of  the  element 
carbon  as  the  very  stuff  of  organic  tissue,  blood  of  our  blood  and  bone 
of  our  bone.  But  the  bacteria  might  subsist  in  a  world  where  the  mar- 
velously  versatile  element  of  carbon  was  extremely  scarce.  For  some 
will  ingest  a  diet  of  iron,  or  in  default  of  it  will  substitute  the  element 
manganese. 

There  are  not  only  sulphur  bacteria,  but  certain  ones  of  this  persua- 
sion have  developed  a  pigmentation  screen,  absorbing  and  utilizing  the 
sun's  energy  through  it  in  the  red  and  orange  end  of  the  spectrum,  as 
green  plants  are  able  to  do  in  their  own  color  range.  In  this  wise  have 
these  Lilliputian  workers  anticipated  and  rivaled  chlorophyll,  the  green 
blood  of  the  world. 

No  other  organisms  show  so  great  a  range  of  adaptability,  from  sun- 
utilizing  species  to  others  that  live  in  total  darkness,  from  aerobes  or 
air-breathers  to  anaerobes.  True,  no  one  bacterium  combines  all  these 
modes  of  living.  But  it  is  not  necessary  that  any  one  species  would  be 
so  versatile  in  order  to  imagine  in  them  something  very  close  to  uni- 
versal seeds  of  life. 

The  bacteria  are  only  the  most  primitive,  and  adaptable-to-the-primi- 
tive  beings  that  are  at  present  known.  They  may  have  had — may  still 
have — antecedents  even  more  hardy  and  fitted  to  digest  the  raw  stuff 
of  the  universe,  perhaps  even  the  interstellar  calcium  that  is  one  of  the 
recent  discoveries  of  the  watchers  of  the  skies. 


876  READING  I'VE  LIKED 


DECEMBER  TWELFTH 


I  keep  always  on  my  desk  a  bit  of  an  old  olive  root  that  I  pulled  out 
of  the  flames,  one  cold  December  evening  on  the  Riviera.  Intricate 
as  a  finger  print,  that  root,  in  its  fantastic  whorls  and  devious  involu- 
tions. Intricate  as  the  history  of  Europe,  which  it  very  possibly  wit- 
nessed, for  the  grove  from  which  it  came  was  planted  by  the  Romans. 

Between  what  the  physicists  call  an  organism,  such  as  a  fluorine 
atom,  and  what  the  biologists  admit  as  an  organism,  there  is  this 
mighty  difference,  that  a  fluorine  atom  must  ever  remain  the  same 
and  identically  the  same,  lest  it  be  fluorine  no  longer,  while  the  root 
of  an  olive,  and  the  finger  tip  of  a  man,  are  never  twice  the  same.  I  do 
not  say  it  is  impossible  to  conceive  in  life  the  accidental  occurrence  of 
two  perfect  identities,  but  everything  in  our  experience  points  in  the 
other  direction.  Mendel  showed  once  and  for  all  that  nothing  is  so 
unlike  as  two  peas  in  a  pod,  and  observation  tends  toward  the  belief 
that  even  one-celled  animals  have  individualization. 

In  the  bit  of  root  nubble  is  written  the  history  of  the  tree,  the  ob- 
stacles it  met,  the  tropisms  it  followed,  the  lean  years  and  the  fat.  So 
easy  to  touch  a  match  to  it;  so  forever  out  of  reach  to  recreate  a  bit 
of  wood  like  it! 

As  the  fire  glances  from  the  burning  log  around  the  room  it  falls 
upon  the  faces  of  the  people  seated  round  the  hearth  with  you.  What 
do  you  really  know  of  them,  your  own  children,  and  the  wife  who 
bore  them  to  you?  All  are  locked  mysteriously  away  in  their  individu- 
ality. So  I  guard  the  old  olive  root  upon  my  desk,  to  keep  myself 
humble  as  a  scientist  and,  as  a  man,  full  of  wonder. 

DECEMBER  THIRTEENTH 


I  stand  in  the  quiet  woods,  conscious  that  under  my  feet,  in  the  soil, 
are  millions  of  dead,  millions  of  living  things.  That  all  around  me  are 
trees,  half  dead  and  half  alive,  and  looking  alike.  I  myself  am  per- 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  877 

petually  dying.  I  do  not  mean  that  I  am  simply  drifting  ever  nearer 
toward  that  right  hand  bracket  that  will  ultimately  close  up  the  dates 
in  my  biography,  but  literally  dying,  cell  by  cell,  artery  by  artery. 

Scratch  a  live  twig,  and  a  bit  o£  the  green  cambium  layer  will  shine 
forth;  scratch  a  live  finger  and  blood  will  flow.  These  are  cheery,  color- 
ful pennants  of  living  things.  But  so  much  that  is  alive  flies  no  flag, 
and  wears  the  expressionless  mask  of  the  lifeless. 

As  I  see  it,  the  great  and  distinguishing  feature  of  living  things, 
however,  is  that  they  have  needs — continual,  and,  incidentally,  com- 
plex needs.  I  cannot  conceive  how  even  so  organized  a  dead  system  as 
a  crystal  can  be  said  to  need  anything.  But  a  living  creature,  even  when 
it  sinks  into  that  half-death  of  hibernation,  even  the  seed  in  the  bottom 
of  the  dried  Mongolian  marsh,  awaiting  rain  through  two  thousand 
years,  still  has  needs  while  there  is  life  in  it.  The  bacteria  have  needs, 
and  it  cannot  be  said  too  often  that  merely  because  a  living  creature  is 
microscopic  there  is  no  justification  for  thinking  that  it  brings  us  any 
nearer  to  the  inanimate.  The  gulf  between  a  bacterium  and  a  carbon 
atom,  even  with  all  the  latter's  complexity,  is  greater  than  that  between 
bacteria  and  men. 

If  you  object  that  this  criterion  of  life  is  chiefly  a  philosophical  one, 
I  reply  that  in  the  end  the  most  absolute  answers  concerning  every 
problem  of  matter,  energy,  time  and  life,  will  be  found  to  be  philo- 
sophical. 

DECEMBER  SEVENTEENTH 


When  I  try  to  look  at  the  sun  my  weak  eyes  flinch  away  before  the 
light  from  our  bright  particular  star,  like  an  animal  that  cannot  meet 
its  master's  gaze.  But  a  man  may  look  at  Orion,  and  stare  its  brilliance 
down  the  sky,  because,  in  truth,  he  need  not  see  it  as  it  is.  One  can  re- 
cite the  musical  and  ancient  names  of  the  gems  that  compose  it — the 
three  stars  of  the  belt,  Alnitak,  Alnilam  and  Mintaka;  Betelgeux  is  for 
the  head,  Rigel  at  the  forward  knee,  and  Saiph  at  the  hinder  foot,  and 
in  the  outflung  arm  the  glorious  Bellatrix. 
No  constellation  in  all  the  sky  is  so  vast,  so  dazzling,  so  heroic  and 


878  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

exciting  as  this  mighty  hunter.  The  heart  lifts  up  at  the  spectacle  of 
those  three  perfectly  matched  jewels  of  the  belt,  at  Rigel  the  color  of 
glacial  ice,  and  Betelgeux  like  some  topaz  flashing  its  splendor  across 
the  depths  of  space. 

One  of  those  strange  variables  that  now  is  dim  and  then  again  is 
bright  is  Betelgeux,  that  in  1852  blazed  out  in  such  splendor  it  sur- 
passed Capella,  Vega  and  Arcturus,  and  was  second  only  to  that  stab- 
bing shaft  of  violet  radiance,  the  dog  star,  Sirius,  at  the  hunter's  heels. 
The  hue  of  Betelgeux  appears  to  vary  with  its  brightness,  deepening 
to  the  color  of  embers  as  the  star  grows  fainter,  leaping  to  a  blazing 
yellow  as  if  it  found  fresh  fuel — a  sun  that  is  flickering  out,  yet  one 
still  a  thousand  times  as  brilliant  as  our  own. 

But  Rigel,  in  its  youth,  is  ten  thousand  times  as  brilliant.  And  these 
intensities  are  not  mere  appearance,  like  that  of  Sirius,  which  is  so 
bright  largely  because  so  near  to  us;  they  are  the  true  measure  of  the 
size  and  heat  of  two  great  hells  seething  and  pitching  on  through  icy 
blackness. 

DECEMBER  EIGHTEENTH 


The  mind  of  simple  man,  beholding  Orion,  conceived  almost  every- 
thing about  that  great  configuration  save  the  awful  truth.  The  three 
belt  stars  are  three  steps  cut  in  ice  by  the  Great  Eskimo,  for  little 
Eskimos  to  climb  into  heaven.  To  the  Arab,  Orion  was  a  giant,  to  the 
Jews  he  was  Nimrod,  to  the  Egyptians  Osiris.  In  Greece  he  was  that 
hunter  who  dared  boast  that  he  could  slay  all  the  beasts,  whereat  a 
scorpion  stung  him  in  the  heel. 

But  no  sooner  did  the  telescopes  swing  upon  this  giant,  god,  or  brute, 
than  thousands  of  thousands  of  stars  sprang  forth  to  the  view  of  man — 
stars,  and  the  Great  Nebula,  and  the  Horse's  Head,  that  dark  impene- 
trable mass  behind  which,  as  behind  a  hill,  a  blaze  of  brightness  peeps. 
And  between  the  stars  were  seen  the  looped  festoons  of  light,  like  cir- 
rus clouds  upon  a  fair-weather  sky,  like  spindrift  brilliance  washed  up 
on  the  black  shingle  of  nothingness. 


DONALD   CULROSS  PEATTIE  879 

Now  indeed  are  we  gazing  at  our  own  spiral  nebula,  the  Milky 
Way,  in  one  of  its  most  terrifying  and  chaotic  perspectives — black  dust 
reefs  of  dead  matter  on  which  a  sun  might  speed  to  ruin,  streamers 
of  incandescent  gas,  wandering  fires  of  the  air,  and  suns  so  vast  that 
our  own  might  drop  into  them  and  be  lost  as  a  stone  is  lost  in  a 
crater's  pit.  This  is  the  inner  circle  of  inferno  in  which  our  poor  mortal 
planet  spins  about,  bearing  its  freight,  to  us  so  precious,  of  life  and 
hope. 

DECEMBER  NINETEENTH 


Man,  that  most  inquisitive  of  mammals,  has  not  stopped  his  searches 
within  the  Milky  Way.  He  knows  now  that  our  sun  is  traveling  in  it, 
in  a  saraband,  circling,  maybe — but  there  has  not  yet  been  time  to 
know  it  surely — round  and  round  some  core  or  nucleus  whose  awful 
heat  and  brilliance  are  mercifully  hidden  from  us  by  a  great  cloud  bank 
of  inert  matter  somewhere  in  the  constellation  of  Sagittarius. 

But  the  telescope  has  revealed  other  nebulae  than  ours,  and  there  is 
one  that  even  with  the  naked  eye  I  just  discern.  To  me  it  looks  like 
a  faint  luminosity  between  the  great  W  of  Cassiopeia  in  the  zenith 
and  Andromeda  at  Cassiopeia's  feet.  Before  me  as  I  write  I  have  a 
photograph  of  this  other  island  universe  in  space,  that  shows  me  what 
astronomers  see — a  wild  swirl  of  smoky  light  in  which  no  individual 
stars  appear  but  all  seems  like  an  act  of  creation  coming  out  of  chaos 
contorted  with  birth  pangs.  Only  if  the  picture  were  enlarged  to  the 
size  of  this  continent  would  a  sun  like  ours  be  visible  upon  it,  as  a 
small  speck. 

Such  is  M  31,  the  great  nebula  of  Andromeda.  It  is  none  other  than 
a  Milky  Way,  our  nearest  neighbor  star  city — so  near  that  light,  travel- 
ing from  it  at  186,000  miles  a  second,  has  only  taken  900,000  years  to 
reach  us!  Has  it  some  destiny  of  its  own?  Are  we,  our  Milky  Way  and, 
M  31,  two  ships  that  pass  in  the  night,  who  see  each  other,  sides  glitter- 
ing with  porthole  lights,  as  they  plow  their  way  through  space,  turning 
a  luminous  furrow  in  the  ultimate  dark? 


READING  I'VE  LIKED 


DECEMBER  TWENTY-FIRST 


On  this  day  in  1823  was  born  Henri  Fabre,  the  sage  of  Serignan,  who 
entered  the  world  o£  the  insects  like  a  transmogrified  elf  to  spy  upon 
them.  The  monstrous  matings,  the  cannibalisms,  the  unnatural  appe- 
tites, the  hunts,  the  deaths,  the  smells,  the  fabulous  eyes,  the  snatchings, 
gluttonies  and  rapes — he  describes  them,  mildly  scandalized  but  like 
a  Christian,  loving  all.  The  drowsy  corner  of  Provence  where  he  had 
his  roof  and  taught  physics  in  a  boy's  school  for  him  was  a  teeming 
jungle,  a  land  of  Lilliputian  marvel  and  adventure,  in  which  event  was 
the  trembling  of  a  moth's  feathered  antenna,  the  knotting  of  a  thread 
in  a  spider's  web. 

With  all  this  wealth  of  observation,  amassed  over  Fabre's  very  long 
life  and  flung  before  us  in  the  most  captivating,  witty,  readable  style 
ever  given  to  a  reporter,  the  reader  is  surely  carping  to  find  a  fault. 
Yet  there  were  faults  in  Fabre's  work.  As  an  experimenter  in  animal 
psychology,  behavior  and  mechanics,  he  was  naive  and  crude.  His  con- 
clusions were  too  frequently  non  sequiturs:  obstinate  village  piety  made 
him  forswear  evolution  and  the  door  of  interpretation  that  it  would 
have  opened  for  him. 

But  behind  his  words  works  the  kindly  spirit  of  Fabre  himself,  a 
valiant  old  man  who  for  much  of  his  life  never  owned  a  microscope 
and  yet  saw  more  than  twenty  microscopists,  a  man  who  lived,  not  the 
unnatural  ascetic  like  Spinoza  or  the  irresponsible  wanderer  like  Audu- 
bon, but  the  whole  man,  taking  a  wife,  keeping  a  rooftree,  begetting 
children,  and  struggling  to  make  their  shirts  meet  their  little  breeches. 

DECEMBER  TWENTY-SECOND 


Now  is  the  darkest  hour  of  all  the  year,  the  winter  solstice.  We  are 
arrived  at  the  antipodes  of  brave  mid-summer,  when  it  was  once  the 
custom  for  men  to  while  away  the  few  hours  of  the  short  night  with 
bonfires  and  a  blowing  of  conches  and  a  making  of  wild  young  mar- 


DONALD   CULROSS  PEATTIE  8Sl 

riages,  that  men  might  hold  the  earth  for  the  sun  god  during  his 
brief  descent  beneath  the  horizon.  But  at  this  season  of  the  year,  when 
the  sun  was  a  pallid  blur  behind  a  junco-colored  sky,  a  darkness  fell 
upon  the  spirits  of  all  men,  and  a  splinter  of  ice  was  in  their  hearts. 
To  some  of  us  the  winter  solstice  is  an  unimportant  phase  of  terrestrial 
astronomy;  of  old  it  must  have  produced  an  emotional  reaction  which 
a  Christian  can  only  experience  on  Good  Friday,  and  the  breath-held 
Saturday. that  follows. 

It  is  not  the  cold  of  far  northern  lands  that  drives  the  human  animal 
to  despair;  cold  is  tingling,  exciting,  healthful,  and  it  can,  in  a  limited 
way,  be  overcome.  It  is  the  darkness  that  conquers  the  spirit,  when 
the  northern  sun  does  not  rise  until  late,  only  to  skim  low  upon  the 
horizon  for  an  hour  or  two,  and  set.  Now  indeed  is  Balder  slain  of  the 
mistletoe.  Now  life  is  at  its  lowest  ebb,  and  the  mind  conceives  a  little 
what  it  will  be  like  when  the  sun  has  burned  to  a  red  ember,  its  im- 
mense volume  dissipated  by  constant  radiation,  and  the  earth  drifted 
far  out  into  space,  the  shrinking  sun  no  longer  able  to  hold  her  child 
upon  a  leash  so  close. 

DECEMBER  TWENTY-FIFTH 


It  was  Francis  of  Assisi,  I  believe,  the  man  who  called  the  wind  his 
brother  and  the  birds  his  sisters,  who  gave  the  world  the  custom  of 
exhibiting  the  creche  in  church,  where  barn  and  hay,  soft-breathing 
beasts,  flowing  breast  and  hungry  babe,  shepherd  and  star  are  elevated 
for  delight.  One  who  has  spent  a  Christmas  in  some  southern  country, 
where  an  early  Christianity  still  reigns,  will  understand  how  all  else 
that  to  us  means  the  holy  festival  is  quite  lacking  there.  It  was  origi- 
nally, and  still  sometimes  is,  no  more  than  a  special  Mass,  scarcely  as 
significant  as  Assumption,  much  less  so  than  Easter.  Out  of  the  North 
the  barbarian  mind,  forest  born,  brought  tree  worship,  whether  of  fir 
or  holly  or  yule  log.  It  took  mistletoe  from  the  druids,  stripped  present- 
giving  from  New  Year  (where  in  Latin  lands  it  still  so  largely  stays) 
and  made  of  Christmas  a  children's  festival,  set  to  the  tune  of  the  be- 
loved joyful  carols.  It  glorified  woman  and  child  and  the  brotherhood 


882  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

of  men  in  a  way  that  the  Church  in,  let  us  say,  the  second  century 
dreamed  not  on. 

You  will  search  the  four  Gospels  in  vain  for  a  hint  of  the  day  or 
the  month  when  Christ  was  born.  December  twenty-fifth  was  already 
being  celebrated  in  the  ancient  world  as  the  birthdate  of  the  sun  god 
Mithras,  who  came  out  of  a  rock  three  days  after  the  darkest  of  the 
year.  His  birth  was  foretold  of  a  star  that  shepherds  and  magi  beheld. 
The  ancient  Angles  had  long  been  wont  to  hold  this  day  sacred  as 
Modranecht  or  Mother  Night.  Thus  still  do  we  flout  old  winter  with 
green  tree,  and  old  mortality  with  child  worship. 

DECEMBER  THIRTY-FIRST 


Each  little  year  that  passes  is  one  more  grain  of  sand  slipped  through 
the  narrows  of  the  hour  glass  of  our  universe.  Physicists  suppose  that 
matter  and  energy  in  the  universe  are  finite;  I  cannot  imagine  time  in 
a  cosmos  that  reached  ultimate  inertia  and  dissipation;  the  supply  of 
time,  too,  then,  may  well  be  finite — particularly  terrestrial  time. 

What  did  mankind  do  with  the  sand  grain  that  is  even  now  falling? 
He  discovered  new  stars,  and  one  more  chemical  element,  the  last  with 
a  chair  reserved  for  it  at  the  Round  Table  of  the  elements.  He  averted 
another  great  war — at  least  momentarily.  He  discovered  several  new 
methods  of  destroying  his  brothers  with  the  utmost  cruelty.  He  reestab- 
lished in  some  countries  tyranny,  torture  and  religious  intolerance;  in 
others  he  toiled  on,  unencouraged  but  not  discouraged,  with  the  age- 
old  problems  like  poverty,  disease,  prostitution  and  crime. 

The  best  that  we  can  say  is  that  some  of  humanity  shouldered  the 
old  loads;  some  hindered,  hung  back,  even  attacked  the  burden  bearers. 
Most  of  us  did  nothing,  neglected  to  raise  a  cheer  for  the  struggling, 
passively  permitted  the  wolves  to  go  on  devouring  their  hideous  ban- 
quet of  men  and  women,  wolves  of  war  and  greed,  vice  and  drugs. 

Biologically  considered,  man  is  the  sole  being  who  has  its  destiny 
in  its  hands.  And  few  of  his  species  feel  any  sense  of  racial  responsi- 
bility higher  than  the  primitive  one  of  begetting  children.  Yet  now 
and  then,  as  the  years  pass,  comes  a  Noguchi,  Pasteur,  Beethoven, 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  883 

Lincoln,  Asoka,  Marcus  Aurelius  or  Plato.  They  are  humanity  as  it 
might  be. 

JANUARY  FOURTH 


Now  we  are  in  the  very  lists  o£  winter  and  what  a  winter,  with  the 
Atlantic  coast  lashed  with  storm  on  storm,  with  ships  crying  at  sea 
through  the  lost  staccato  of  their  wireless.  Cold  blowing  out  of  the 
Arctic,  out  of  Keewatin,  on  the  wings  of  cyclones  that  engulf  a  conti- 
nent in  a  single  maelstrom,  vanish  in  the  east  to  be  followed  by  an- 
other. Frost  reaching  a  finger  to  the  tender  tip  of  tropic  Florida.  And 
here,  fresh  ice  thickening  upon  the  unmelted  old;  ice  on  the  loops  of 
the  country  telegraph  wires,  every  tree  locked  in  a  silver  armor,  a  sort 
of  a  white  Iron  Maiden  that  breaks  their  bones  and  listens  with  glee 
to  the  cracking  sound.  Something  there  is  in  our  North  American 
winters  peculiarly  sadistic — with  a  pitiless  love  of  inflicting  suffering 
for  its  own  sake  wherever  the  poor  are  huddled  in  the  smoky  cities, 
wherever  men,  and  women  too,  battle  against  the  cold  in  lonely  prairie 
houses.  We  have  no  Alps  from  west  to  east  to  block  the  way  of  roaring 
boreas,  no  southland  protected  against  our  north.  Our  mountains 
march  with  the  north  wind,  and  in  the  drafty  gulfs  between  them,  and 
along  their  outer  flanks,  raids  the  pack  of  the  howling  white-fanged 
days. 

JANUARY  SEVENTH 


Fear  rises  out  of  all  darkness,  fear  for  us  who  are  diurnal,  not  noctur- 
nal animals.  But  I  do  not  experience  this  sensation  out  of  doors,  as 
many  people  do.  Night  terrors  are  bred  in  closets,  beds,  cellars,  attics, 
and  all  those  traps  and  pits  and  sinks  in  which  civilized  man  houses 
himself,  blunts  his  senses  and  breeds  his  own  ills.  Out  in  the  open  night 
it  may  be  cold,  or  windy,  or  rainy,  but  it  is  never  anything  in  which 
a  bogy  could  endure. 

Indeed,  if  you  think  of  night  in  the  true,  philosophical  proportion, 
you  must  realize  that  it  is  the  prevailing,  the  absolute  thing.  Light,  day, 
burning  suns  and  stars— all  are  the  exception.  They  are  but  gleaming 


884  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

jewels  spattered  on  the  black  cloth  of  darkness.  Throughout  the  uni- 
verse and  eternity  it  is  night  that  prevails.  It  is  the  mother  of  cosmos, 
capacious  womb  of  light. 

JANUARY  TWELFTH 


Out  of  the  southwest,  a  sluggish  "low"  has  crept  across  the  map  of 
the  land;  the  whistling  "highs,"  with  their  peeled  blue  sky  and  icy 
breath,  have  shifted  up,  and  in  their  place  are  gray  skies  again,  heavy 
with  snow.  How  kind  is  gray!  Beautiful,  delicate,  elegant.  And  now, 
quite  quietly  it  has  begun  to  snow  again.  A  new  mask  falling  over  the 
old  one,  a  sense  of  deepening  of  mysterious  winter,  of  an  adventure 
in  experience  through  which  we  shall  not  too  swiftly  see,  as  we  see 
through  the  autumn's  intentions  from  the  first. 

There  is  only  one  way  to  study  snow  crystals,  and  that  is  to  take 
your  microscope — or  take  a  hand  lens  if  nothing  better  offers — out  of 
doors,  or  into  some  long-chilled  room,  as  I  did  today,  an  attic  where 
I  opened  a  window  to  the  damp  drift,  and  caught  the  flakes  upon  a 
glass  slide. 

There  is  no  telling  of  the  beauty  of  snow  crystals;  one  look  is  worth 
all  words,  and  no  comparisons  are  adequate — not  even  the  tracery  of 
a  rose  window,  or  altar  lace  on  which  old  women  have  worn  away 
needle-numbed  fingers  and  a  life-time  of  fading  sight.  But  there  is 
one  charm  which  the  snowflake  possesses  that  is  denied  to  most  crystals, 
and  above  all  to  that  emperor  of  them  all,  the  carbon  crystal  or  dia- 
mond, and  that  is  that  it  is  evanescent.  Nothing  in  this  world  is  really 
precious  until  we  know  that  it  will  soon  be  gone.  The  lily,  the  starry 
daffodil,  the  regal  iris  (and  these,  too,  are  built  upon  a  symmetry  of 
six) — are  the  lovelier  for  their  imminent  vanishing.  The  snow  crystal 
has  but  touched  earth  ere  it  begins  to  die. 

JANUARY  THIRTEENTH 


That  about  snow  crystals  which  confounds  all  understanding  is  how 
so  manv  variations — millions  perhaps — can  be  schemed  upon  the  un- 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  885 

varying  fundamental  plan  of  six.  Be  it  etched  out  to  elaborations  as  fine 
feathered  as  a  whole  pane  covered  with  frost  designs,  still  there  are 
always  six  rays  to  each  delicate  star,  and  one  can  still  make  out  in  the 
finest,  the  ultimate  details  of  attenuated  ornamentation,  the  same  fun- 
damental symmetry.  There  can  be  no  chance  about  this;  some  cause 
underlies  it,  and  I  am  no  crystallographer  to  explain  the  details  of  a 
snowflake's  fine-wrought  surfaces,  its  internal  tensions  and  stresses,  its 
perfect  equilibria  and  balanced  strains  that  distend  each  fairy  tracery 
and  give  to  these  flowers  of  the  winter  air  their  gossamer  strength. 

But  one  may  hazard  the  guess  that  the  six-sidedness  of  the  snow 
crystal  is  in  reality  a  doubling  of  three,  just  as  the  symmetry  of  the 
lily  and  the  amaryllis  is.  Of  all  the  magic  numbers  in  old  necromancy 
and  modern  science,  three  is  the  first.  Three  dimensions  has  matter; 
three  is  the  least  number  of  straight  sides  that  will  just  inclose  a  space. 
Three  legs  is  the  smallest  number  that  will  just  support  the  equilibrium 
and  stresses  of  a  stool.  Two  would  not  do;  four  are  superfluous;  and 
twice  three  points  are  required,  and  just  required,  to  keep  intact  the 
frailest  of  all  solids — a  flake  of  snow. 

JANUARY  FOURTEENTH 


Crystal — the  very  word  has  a  chime  of  delicate  bells  about  it,  a  clash 
of  shattering  thin  ice;  it  has  a  perishable  sound,  which  enchants  the 
poet,  as  its  meaning  does  the  mathematician.  For  the  crystal  is  matter 
in  its  most  organized  form,  wherein  all  the  molecules  are  so  disposed 
or  polarized  or  deployed  like  a  perfect  regiment,  that  they  stand  equi- 
distant from  each  other  along  planes  of  symmetry  that  may  be  simple 
or  exquisitely  complex.  And  the  result  is  that,  unlike  the  rest  of  inani- 
mate matter,  a  crystal  turns  a  definite  face  to  the  outside;  it  is  discrete, 
organized,  has  a  specific  form.  When  you  crack  a  crystal  it  does  not 
break  up  in  a  jagged  fracture  like  ordinary  poured  glass;  it  breaks 
along  lines  of  its  own  symmetry;  in  effect,  it  merely  becomes  two  or 
more  crystals  of  smaller  size;  it  can  almost  be  said  to  reproduce,  as  the 
simplest  organisms  do,  by  fission.  For  given  tne  wherewithal,  each 
fragment  crystal  will  increase  and  grow,  as  the  living  cell  will  do. 


886  READING  I'VE   LIKED 

Now  frost  is  on  the  morning  window  panes,  upstarting  in  intricate 
primal  forests  of  moss  form  and  fern  form  and  tree  and  fungus.  The 
growth  of  a  forest  of  window  frost  is  oddly  like  the  growth  of  some 
fungus  that  springs  up  over  night.  If  the  temperature  keep  falling 
outside,  and  the  relative  amount  of  moisture  increase  on  the  inside,  the 
frost  flowers  will  continue  to  grow,  and  may  be  detected  in  their 
spread  across  the  glass.  Like  living  things,  they  branch  like  a  tree,  grow 
usually  from  the  bottom  upwards.  If  they  cover  the  pane  entirely  they 
add  thickness,  as  a  tree  does.  But  there  is  this  vital  difference,  that  the 
tree  grows  from  the  inside  out,  transforming  its  raw  materials  into 
something  else,  while  the  frost  crystal  can  only  add  to  its  outside  the 
chemically  unaltered  water  vapor  of  the  atmosphere. 

JANUARY  FIFTEENTH 


With  its  internal  stresses  and  specific  properties  of  elasticity  and 
cohesion,  properties  magnetic  and  electrical  and  optical,  the  crystal 
has  elaborate  organization.  It  seems  but  a  slight  step,  then,  to  call  it  an 
organism,  for  indeed  it  is  easy  to  see  in  what  way  the  most  compli- 
cated crystal  is  organized.  But  difficult,  cantankerously  difficult  to 
analyze  the  organization  of  unicellular  animals  or  plants.  The  crystal, 
with  its  elegant  mathematics  and  its  orderly  molecules,  is  the  mechan- 
ist's dream  and  ideal  of  organization.  If  only,  if  only  living  matter 
were  so  transparent!  The  mechanist  cannot  help  feeling  that  somehow 
opaque,  unpredictable  protoplasm  will  yet  give  him  a  chance  to  see 
through  it. 

Haeckel,  the  great  tower  of  mechanistic  strength,  did  not  hesitate  to 
proclaim  that  the  distinctive  nature  of  life  is  due  simply  to  its  molec- 
ular and  atomic  structure,  and  needless  to  say  all  crystals  threw  him 
into  an  ecstasy.  He  firmly  believed  that  the  crystal  and  the  living  cell 
were  in  all  ways  comparable,  both  as  to  their  chemical  and  physical 
makeup,  their  growth  and  their  individuality.  He  practically  classified 
crystals  into  genera  and  species,  and  then  went  on,  with  a  mania  like 
a  numerologist's,  to  show  a  crystalline  form  in  pollen  grains,  corals, 
infusorians  and  the  arrangements  of  leaves  and  flowers  around  their 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIE  887 

axes  of  growth.  The  poor  fellow — a  man  of  the  most  romantic  moral- 
ity in  private  life — was  faced,  of  course,  with  the  old  Aristotelian 
dilemma  as  to  where  spirit  (or  soul  or  God  or  vital  force)  dwells, 
when  there  is  no  difference  save  of  degree  (as  he  asserts)  between 
living  and  non-living  structure.  He  was  in  consequence  driven  further 
than  was  Aristotle  who  bestowed  soul  on  a  jellyfish;  Haeckel  had  to 
assume  that  there  is  spirit  and  vital  force  in  the  inanimate  rock,  and 
he  crowned  his  life  work  with  a  book  entitled  The  Souls  of  Crystals. 

JANUARY  TWENTY-FOURTH 


In  the  gray  of  the  year,  to  our  green-hungry  eyes,  the  pines  come 
into  their  greatness.  The  deciduous  woods  in  winter  have  a  steely  and 
shelterless  appearance,  but  even  in  a  blinding  snow  storm  pine  woods 
have  a  look  of  warmth  about  them.  Alone  among  trees,  evergreens 
keep  up  their  sap  in  the  winter;  the  fires  of  life  still  burn  in  them. 

I  like  our  loblolly  pines  for  their  long  glittering  foliage,  full  of 
warmth  and  light  at  all  seasons,  bringing  back  to  me  the  very  smell 
of  the  South,  the  feeling  of  those  grand  sad  lowlands  of  Georgia  and 
the  Carolinas.  I  like  the  yellow  pine  for  its  generous  armored  trunks 
built  up  of  laminated  plates  like  the  leather  shields  of  Homeric  foot 
soldiers.  But  it  is  in  the  pitch  pine  that  you  have  all  that  was  ever 
embodied  in  the  name  of  pine — the  fondness  for  growing  on  craggy 
ledges,  the  wind-molded,  storm-blasted  shape,  the  dark  and  pungent 
foliage,  the  tears  of  silvery  rosin  bleeding  from  the  rough  male  trunk, 
and  the  clusters  of  cones  black  against  the  sky.  When  it  dies,  it  dies 
standing.  And  even  as  a  skeleton,  it  has  grandeur. 

Its  perfect  complement  is  the  white  pine,  a  feminine  tree  with  silky, 
silvery  and  perpetually  talkative  needles.  Adorned  by  long  shapely 
cones  with  delicate  flexible  pink  scales,  clad  in  a  smooth  and  lustrous 
bark,  it  rises  in  a  delicate  pagoda-like  shape.  Instead  of  the  bold  ledge, 
the  white  pine  loves  the  glen,  and  there  it  consorts,  in  the  damp, 
shadowed  air  and  the  earth  mold  of  the  color  of  tanbark,  with  hem- 
locks in  groves  where  the  pine  siskins  unite  in  little  flocks,  conferring 
together  in  voices  fine  as  the  whisper  of  a  small  watch. 


READING  I'VE  LIKED 


FEBRUARY  FIRST 


Science  is  a  ship  afloat  upon  a  wide  waste  of  waters.  Less  than  Colum- 
bus does  it  know  where  the  world  is  bound.  It  does  not  even  know 
from  what  port  we  have  set  out. 

These  thoughts  inspire  the  landlubber  with  terror.  He  begs  to  be 
allowed  to  dream  that  he  knows  what  lies  ahead.  But  for  those  whom 
William  James  called  the  "tough-minded,"  by  which  he  really  meant 
the  stout-hearted,  the  search  itself  is  the  thing,  the  shore  is  perhaps 
but  an  illusion. 

The  beauty,  the  Tightness,  the  excitement  of  the  search  are  facts 
which  even  the  humblest  naturalist  understands,  though  he  has  never 
done  anything  more  than  pursue  an  unknown  bird  in  the  woods  for 
half  a  day,  or  climb  an  alp  to  find  a  saxifrage. 

FEBRUARY  NINETEENTH 


Now  is  that  strange  hushed  time  of  year  when  Nature  seems  to  pause. 
The  winds  of  winter  are  wearied.  The  weeds,  once  ranked  high  in  the 
fields,  are  low  and  subject.  The  weathered  leaves  begin  to  fall  from 
the  oaks  that  have  clutched  them  fiercely,  as  the  old  clutch  at  little 
comforts. 

The  moment  is  like  a  pause  in  a  symphony,  when  the  great  com- 
poser brings  the  fury  of  his  music  to  a  stop,  a  rest  so  fateful  and  sig- 
nificant that  in  the  silence  the  listener  counts  his  own  loud  heartbeats 
as  though  they  were  his  last — hoping  for  and  almost  dreading  the 
beginning  of  the  new  theme  in  the  next  measures. 

And  what  will  it  be,  that  melody,  but  the  beginning  of  spring? 
The  talk  of  thaw  in  many  runnels,  the  sounds  of  birds  finding  again 
their  voices,  of  tree  toads  trilling  in  chill  twilights,  of  a  spade  that 
strikes  a  stone. 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  889 


FEBRUARY  TWENTIETH 


Pisces  follows  Aquarius  and  between  them  they  constitute  what  the 
astrologers  call  the  watery  signs.  And  now  indeed  the  world  brims 
over  with  "old  February  fill-dyke."  The  ancients  knew  it  as  "the  time 
of  rain  and  want."  The  snows  have  melted  and  the  Tigris  rises;  the 
Nile  and  the  Potomac  fill  as  of  old  they  did.  Footing  is  treacherous; 
the  winds  are  cold,  and  dampness  hangs  in  all  the  airs;  there  is  a 
feeling  of  wetness  wiped  upon  the  cheek  and  hands,  and  of  small  icy 
fingers  laid  upon  the  throat. 

Before  there  can  be  spring  there  must  be  water,  and  water  and  more 
water;  flowers  appear  when  the  rains  are  over  and  the  floods  gone 
down.  But  before  flowering  there  must  be  growth,  uprising  of  sap. 
Without  water  there  can  be  no  life;  water  is  its  very  matrix;  it  is  the 
medium  in  which  the  vital  molecule  exists,  the  fluid  in  which  the 
colloid  of  protoplasm  is  suspended. 

FEBRUARY  TWENTY-FIRST 


Water  is  the  one  imaginable  medium  in  which  the  ship  of  life  could 
have  been  launched  and  expected  to  float. 

All  of  the  most  vital  processes  take  place  in  this  great  solvent.  The 
absorption  of  nourishment  is  impossible  either  by  a  root  in  the  soil, 
or  in  the  body  of  man,  save  as  the  nutrient  elements  come  dissolved 
in  water.  Only  through  a  watery  surface  may  the  animal  excrete  its 
poisons — through  the  wall  of  the  lungs,  the  kidneys  and  the  sweat 
glands.  So  water  is  the  seat  of  all  our  metabolism,  constructive  and 
destructive.  The  fires  of  life  burn  only  in  water. 

Running,  flowing,  falling  though  we  see  it,  it  is  in  essence  greatly 
conservative.  You  cannot  easily  cool  it  below  the  freezing  point;  so 
used  is  woman  to  the  teakettle  she  does  not  think  how,  chemically,  it 
is  a  hard  task  to  boil  water.  This  is  because  of  its  latent  heat,  and  but 
for  that  a  man's  metabolism,  the  mere  business  of  bodily  living,  would 


890  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

soon  bring  on  a  temperature  that  would  set  fire  to  the  carbon  in  his 
bones. 

Water  everywhere,  in  the  soil,  in  the  air,  in  the  seas  and  ponds,  acts 
as  the  world's  great  thermostat,  preventing  excessive  upward  march 
of  temperatures  or  great  cold.  Between  the  arctic  ice  fields  and  the 
tropic  seas  a  vast  equalizing  convection  perpetually  turns. 


FEBRUARY  TWENTY-SECOND 


Tolerant,  capacious,  water  conveys  and  distributes  the  working  mate- 
rial of  the  world.  It  is  the  incomparable  solvent.  It  will  hold  intact  the 
salts  dissolved  in  it,  and  at  the  same  time  constantly  breaking  them 
down  into  their  elements,  constantly  recombine  those  elements  with 
others.  So  for  hungry  protoplasm  it  performs  a  miracle;  out  of  three 
salts  it  can  make  nine.  Undisturbed,  it  handles  a  great  coming  and 
going  of  molecular  traffic. 

Water  is  abundant,  willing,  and  quiet.  It  is  not  easily  parted  into 
its  two  component  elements,  nor  changed  in  temperature.  There  is 
always  the  same  unfailing  amount  of  it  in  the  world.  It  dissolves 
without  altering  or  being  itself  altered.  Infinitely  versatile,  it  is  tran- 
quilly stable.  It  does  not,  like  helium,  desert  us  for  outer  spaces,  nor, 
like  oxygen,  rush  to  combine  with  metal  and  so  be  lost  to  use. 


FEBRUARY  TWENTY-THIRD 


It  is  the  wetness  of  water  with  which  a  man  has  to  deal  these  days; 
wet  feet,  wet  garden  soil  so  heavy  that  the  spade  can  scarcely  turn  it, 
damp  seeping  into  the  depleted  wood  pile.  When  we  say  that  water 
is  wet  we  mean  that  it  climbs  up  things,  against  gravity,  invades, 
softens,  dissolves  or  alters  wherever  it  creeps.  That  creep  the  scientist 
calls  capillarity,  and  but  for  the  capillarity  of  water  how  difficult  it 
were  to  do  our  business!  We  could  not  blot  a  page  or  wipe  a  surface 
dry  or  wash  dirt  out  of  clothes.  Water  falling  upon  the  earth  would 


DONALD   CULROSS   PEATTIR  891 

never  rise  again;  the  garden  would  be  thirsty  a  few  moments  after 
you  had  given  it  to  drink. 

But  owing  to  capillarity  it  climbs,  from  grain  of  soil  to  grain,  till 
it  reaches  the  needy  root,  or  flows  out  in  springs.  No  other  liquid  will 
rise  even  half  as  high  as  water.  And  not  only  will  it  rise  directly,  but  it 
spreads  in  every  direction;  without  this,  no  irrigation  would  be  pos- 
sible. 

The  physics  and  mathematics  of  capillarity  are  complex  beyond  the 
understanding  of  such  intellects  as  mine,  but  fundamentally  it  all  rests 
upon  a  property  of  water  more  unique  than  all  the  rest,  more  vital  to 
life,  its  strange  surface  tension. 

FEBRUARY  TWENTY-FOURTH 


Down  by  the  brook,  in  one  of  its  quiet  bays,  the  water  striders  are 
already  out,  skating  over  the  calm  pool  as  if  it  were  ice,  because  the 
surface  tension  of  the  water  just  suffices  to  hold  them  up.  If  I  push 
one  of  them  through  the  surface,  lo,  they  are  not  aquatic  insects  at 
all.  They  drown,  like  people  who  cannot  swim  and  have  fallen 
through  the  ice.  Other  insects  there  are  in  earliest  spring  that  cling 
just  under  the  surface,  like  balloons  bumping  the  ceiling. 

But  this  is  merely  the  way  in  which  a  few  living  creatures  may  be 
said  to  have  fun  with  the  surface  tension  of  water.  This  strangest  of 
water's  properties  penetrates  to  the  very  structure  of  life  itself.  It  goes 
straight  to  the  colloidal  nature  of  protoplasm,  for  nothing  conceivable 
will  present  as  much  surface  as  a  colloid  or  permanent  suspension  of 
particles  in  a  liquid  medium,  and  to  that  surface  will  adhere  by  surface 
tension  the  chemicals  brought  to  the  cell.  Thus  is  explained  the  capacity 
of  living  matter  to  take  up  dyes;  the  chemistry  of  pigmentation  hangs 
upon  surface  tension. 

So  water  not  only  dissolves  the  rocks  and  by  sheer  plowing  carries 
the  soil  down  to  make  the  valleys  fertile;  it  is  the  basis  of  the  beauty 
of  the  butterfly's  wings,  the  colors  in  the  crocus  petal. 


892  READING  I'VE  LIKED 


MARCH  SECOND 


Here  at  the  bottom  of  our  sea  of  air  a  few  creatures  of  frail  flight  are 
just  emerged  upon  the  spring.  Like  somber  thoughts  left  over  from 
the  night,  like  lingering  bits  of  winged  sleep,  the  dark  mourning 
cloaks  flutter  languidly  in  the  sunlight,  or  cling  on  the  twigs  of  the 
pussy  willow,  resembling  last  year's  leaves.  The  midges  swirl  upon  the 
air,  not  in  the  wild  autumnal  dance  of  their  kind,  but  dreamily  and 
without  apparent  purpose  over  the  wood-brown  pools  of  rain  among 
the  old  leaves;  they  climb  invisible  spiral  ladders  tentatively  toward 
the  sun. 

In  the  sky  is  a  lightening,  a  heightening,  after  the  close  gray  cap  of 
winter.  I  notice  the  vulture  there  again,  now  that  the  winter  hawks 
have  gone;  it  reminds  us  of  summer  indolence  and  makes  the  day 
seem  warmer  than  it  is.  Several  airplanes  too  are  out,  and  I  take  this 
for  a  sign  of  spring  as  valid  as  the  first  flight  of  the  kildeer  over  the 
soppy,  fire-browned  river  meadows.  A  youngster  is  stunting,  perilously 
low,  and  another  in  his  ebullience  writes  his  name  in  smoke  upon  the 
heavens,  and  I  shall  be  astonished  if  this  is  not  part  of  a  vernal  male 
strut  before  a  watching  woman.  I  hear  the  drone  of  the  planes  released 
or  suddenly  cut  off,  and  from  the  great  hive  across  the  river  one  after 
another  takes  the  air  in  a  proud  conscious  beauty. 

MARCH  ELEVENTH 


I  have  said  that  much  of  life  and  perhaps  the  best  of  it  is  not  quite 
"nice."  The  business  of  early  spring  is  not;  it  takes  place  in  nakedness 
and  candor,  under  high  empty  skies.  Almost  all  the  first  buds  to  break 
their  bonds  send  forth  not  leaves  but  frank  catkins,  or  in  the  maple 
sheer  pistil  and  stamen,  devoid  of  the  frilled  trimmings  of  petals.  The 
cedar  sows  the  wind  with  its  pollen  now,  because  it  is  a  relict  of  an 
age  before  bees,  and  it  blooms  in  a  month  essentially  barren  of  winged 
pollinators.  The  wood  frogs,  warmed  like  the  spring  flowers  by  the 


DONALD   CULROSS  PEATTIE  893 

swift-heating  earth,  return  to  the  primordial  element  of  water  for  their 
spawning,  and  up  from  the  oozy  bottoms  rise  the  pond  frogs,  to  make 
of  the  half-world  of  the  marges  one  breeding  ground. 

It  is  a  fact  that  the  philosopher  afoot  must  not  forget,  that  the  aston- 
ishing embrace  of  the  frog-kind,  all  in  the  eery  green  chill  of  earliest 
March,  may  be  the  attitude  into  which  the  tender  passion  throws  these 
batrachians,  but  it  is  a  world  away  from  warm-blooded  mating.  It  is  a 
phlegmatic  and  persisting  clasping,  nothing  more.  It  appears  to  be 
merely  a  reminder  to  the  female  that  death  brings  up  the  rear  of  life's 
procession.  When  after  patient  hours  he  quits  her,  the  female  goes  to 
the  water  to  pour  out  her  still  unfertilized  eggs.  Only  then  are  they 
baptized  with  the  fecundating  complement  of  the  mate. 

It  is  a  startling  bit  of  intelligence  for  the  moralists,  but  the  fact  seems 
to  be  that  sex  is  a  force  not  necessarily  concerned  with  reproduction; 
back  in  the  primitive  one-celled  animals  there  are  individuals  that  fuse 
without  reproducing  in  consequence;  the  reproduction  in  those  lowly 
states  is  but  a  simple  fission  of  the  cell,  a  self-division.  It  seems  then 
that  reproduction  has,  as  it  were,  fastened  itself  on  quite  another  force 
in  the  world;  it  has  stolen  a  ride  upon  sex,  which  is  a  principle  in  its 
own  right. 

MARCH  EIGHTEENTH 


Now  all  life  renews,  in  its  hopes  and  in  its  threats,  in  its  strict  needs 
and  in  all  that  superabundance  that  we  call  by  the  name  of  beauty. 
In  the  same  place  where  last  I  found  them,  the  pale  watery  shoots  of 
Equisetum  rise;  buds  of  flowers  open,  all  crumpled  like  babies'  hands; 
the  phcebes  have  returned  to  the  nests  at  the  mouth  of  the  cave,  where 
before  they  bred  and  where  poignant  accidents  befell  them.  With  a 
touching  hopefulness  all  things  renew  themselves,  not  undismayed, 
perhaps,  by  the  terror  and  chanciness  of  fate,  but  because,  God  help 
them,  they  can  do  no  other. 

For  life  is  a  green  cataract;  it  is  an  inundation,  a  march  against  the 
slings  of  death  that  counts  no  costs.  Still  it  advances,  waving  its  inquisi- 
tive antennae,  flaunting  green  banners.  Life  is  adventure  in  experience, 


894  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and  when  you  are  no  longer  greedy  for  the  last  drop  of  it,  it  means 
no  more  than  that  you  have  set  your  face,  whether  you  know  it  or  not, 
to  the  day  when  you  shall  depart  without  a  backward  look.  Those  who 
look  backward  longingly  to  the  end  die  young,  at  whatever  age. 

MARCH  NINETEENTH 


I  go  to  the  cellar  for  the  last  logs  in  my  woodpile,  and  disclose  a  family 
of  mice  who  have  trustingly  taken  up  residence  there.  Their  tiny 
young,  all  ears  and  belly,  mere  little  sacks  of  milk  in  a  furless  skin, 
lie  there  blind  and  helpless,  five  little  tangible,  irrepressible  evidences 
of  some  moment,  not  so  many  nights  ago,  when  in  between  the  walls 
of  my  house  there  took  place  an  act  to  which  I  am  not  so  egotistic  as 
to  deny  the  name  of  love. 

But  it  is  not  this  which  moves  me,  but  the  look  in  the  mother's  eyes 
as  she  stares  up  at  me,  her  tail  to  the  wall,  all  power  of  decision  fled 
from  her.  There  I  read,  in  her  agonized  glance,  how  precious  is  life 
even  to  her.  She  entreats  me  not  to  take  it  from  her.  She  does  not 
know  of  pity  in  the  world,  so  has  no  hope  of  it.  But  life — no  matter 
how  one  suffers  in  it,  hungers,  flees,  and  fights — life  is  her  religion. 

How  can  we  ever  hope,  then,  to  commensurate  this  thing  which  we 
too  share,  when  it  is  its  own  cause,  its  own  reason  for  being,  when, 
as  soon  as  we  are  challenged  to  stand  and  deliver  it,  we  tremble  and 
beg,  like  the  trapped  mouse? 

MARCH  TWENTIETH 


To  the  terror  that  faces  mice  and  men,  a  man  at  least  can  find  an 
answer.  This  will  be  his  religion. 

Now  how  may  a  man  base  all  his  faith  on  Nature  when  in  Nature 
there  is  no  certain  end  awaiting  the  ambition  of  his  race?  When  all  is 
flux  and  fleet,  the  great  flood  tides  of  spring  that  are  like  to  drown 
him,  and  the  final  neap  tide  of  decease?  How  take  comfort  from  the 
brave  new  greening  of  the  grass,  when  grass  must  wither,  or  in  the 


DONALD  CULROSS  PEATTIE  395 

first  eery  whistle  o£  the  meadow  larks,  saying  that  life  is  "sweet-to 
you,  so  sweet  to  you"?  For  life  is  not  sweet  to  all  men.  It  brings  some 
blind  into  this  world  and  of  others  requires  blood  and  tears.  The  sun 
toward  which  man  turns  his  face  is  a  brief  candle  in  the  universe. 
His  woman  and  his  children  are  mortal  as  the  flowers. 

But  it  is  not  life's  generosity,  so  capricious,  that  makes  one  man 
happy.  It  is  rather  the  extent  of  his  gratitude  to  life. 

I  say  that  it  touches  a  man  that  his  tears  are  only  salt,  and  that  the 
tides  of  youth  rise,  and,  having  fallen,  rise  again.  Now  he  has  lived  to 
see  another  spring  and  to  walk  again  beneath  the  faintly  greening 
trees.  So,  having  an  ear  for  the  uprising  of  sap,  for  the  running  of 
blood,  having  an  eye  for  all  things  done  most  hiddenly,  and  a  hand 
in  the  making  of  those  small  dear  lives  that  are  not  built  with  hands,, 
he  lives  at  peace  with  great  events. 


THOMAS   MANN 


COMMENTARY 


Early  in  1937,  Thomas  Mann,  exiled  from  Germany  and  temporarily 
domiciled  in  Zurich,  received  a  brief  communication,  as  follows: 

To  Herr  Thomas  Mann,  writer:  By  the  request  of  the  Rector 
of  the  University  of  Bonn,  I  must  inform  you  that  as  a  conse- 
quence of  your  loss  of  citizenship  the  Philosophical  Faculty  finds 
itself  obliged  to  strike  your  name  off  its  roll  of  honorary  doctors. 
Your  right  to  use  this  title  is  canceled  in  accordance  with  Article 
VIII  of  the  regulations  concerning  the  conferring  of  degrees. 

(signature  illegible) 

-DEAN 

This  letter  was  a  tactical  error  on  the  part  oi  the  Nazis,  for  it  drew 
horn  Thomas  Mann  a  letter  in  reply.  Somehow  or  other  the  reply 
found  its  way  into  the  hands  of  many  Germans  (theoretically  Nazis), 
particularly  the  young.  It  seems  to  have  meant  something  to  them. 
Some  went  so  far  as  to  memorize  it,  though  it  is  very  long.  But  per- 
haps their  minds  had  plenty  of  room  for  it;  their  masters  do  not 
oversupply  them  with  mental  nourishment. 

There  is  no  need  to  comment  on  this  letter.  It  is  the  expression  of 
a  great  European  and  a  great  man.  It  will  rank  with  Zola's  J'accuse 
(it  deals,  of  course,  with  a  much  greater  subject  than  did  Zola)  as  one 
of  the  classic  responses  of  humanity  to  inhumanity. 


896 


A  Letter  to  the  Dean  of  the  Philosophical  Faculty 
of  the  University  of  Bonn 


BY 

THOMAS  MANN 


To  the  Dean  or  tne  Philosophical  Faculty  or  tne  University  of  Bonn: 

I  have  received  the  melancholy  communication  which  you  addressed 
to  me  on  the  nineteenth  of  December.  Permit  me  to  reply  to  it  as 
follows : 

The  German  universities  share  a  heavy  responsibility  for  all  the 
present  distresses  which  they  called  down  upon  their  heads  when  they 
tragically  misunderstood  their  historic  hour  and  allowed  their  soil  to 
nourish  the  ruthless  forces  which  have  devastated  Germany  morally, 
politically,  and  economically. 

This  responsibility  of  theirs  long  ago  destroyed  my  pleasure  in  my 
academic  honour  and  prevented  me  from  making  any  use  of  it  what- 
ever. Moreover,  I  hold  today  an  honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Letters 
conferred  upon  me  more  recently  by  Harvard  University.  I  cannot 
refrain  from  explaining  to  you  the  grounds  upon  which  it  was  con- 
ferred. My  diploma  contains  a  sentence  which,  translated  from  the 
Latin,  runs  as  follows:  ".  .  .  we  the  President  and  Fellows  with  the 
approval  of  the  honourable  Board  of  Overseers  of  the  University  in 
solemn  session  have  designated  and  appointed  as  honorary  Doctor  of 
Letters  Thomas  Mann,  famous  author,  who  has  interpreted  life  to 
many  of  our  fellow-citizens  and  together  with  a  very  few  contem- 
poraries sustains  the  high  dignity  of  German  culture;  and  we  have 
granted  to  him  all  the  rights  and  privileges  appertaining  to  this 
degree." 

In  such  terms,  so  curiously  contradictory  to  the  current  German 
view,  do  free  and  enlightened  men  across  the  ocean  think  of  me — 

897 


898  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

and,  I  may  add,  not  only  there.  It  would  never  have  occurred  to  me 
to  boast  of  the  words  I  have  quoted;  but  here  and  today  I  may,  nay, 
I  must  repeat  them. 

If  you,  Herr  Dean  (I  am  ignorant  of  the  procedure  involved),  have 
posted  a  copy  of  your  communication  to  me  on  the  bulletin  board  of 
your  university,  it  would  gratify  me  to  have  this  reply  of  mine  receive 
the  same  honour.  Perhaps  some  member  of  the  university,  some  stu- 
dent or  professor,  may  be  visited  by  a  sudden  fear,  a  swiftly  suppressed 
and  dismaying  presentiment,  on  reading  a  document  which  gives  him 
in  his  disgracefully  enforced  isolation  and  ignorance  a  brief  revealing 
glimpse  of  the  free  world  of  the  intellect  that  still  exists  outside. 

Here  I  might  close.  And  yet  at  this  moment  certain  further  explana- 
tions seem  to  me  desirable  or  at  least  permissible.  I  made  no  statement 
when  my  loss  of  civil  rights  was  announced,  though  I  was  more  than 
once  asked  to  do  so.  But  I  regard  the  academic  divestment  as  a  suitable 
occasion  for  a  brief  personal  declaration.  I  would  beg  you,  Herr  Dean 
(I  have  not  even  the  honour  of  knowing  your  name),  to  regard  your- 
self as  merely  the  chance  recipient  of  a  communication  not  designed 
for  you  in  a  personal  sense. 

I  have  spent  four  years  in  an  exile  which  it  would  be  euphemistic 
to  call  voluntary  since  if  I  had  remained  in  Germany  or  gone  back 
there  I  should  probably  not  be  alive  today.  In  these  four  years  the  odd 
blunder  committed  by  fortune  when  she  put  me  in  this  situation  has 
never  once  ceased  to  trouble  me.  I  could  never  have  dreamed,  it  could 
never  have  been  prophesied  of  me  at  my  cradle,  that  I  should  spend 
my  later  years  as  an  emigre,  expropriated,  outlawed,  and  committed 
to  inevitable  political  protest. 

From  the  beginning  of  my  intellectual  life  I  had  felt  myself  in  hap- 
piest accord  with  the  temper  of  my  nation  and  at  home  in  its  intellec- 
tual traditions.  I  am  better  suited  to  represent  those  traditions  than  to 
become  a  martyr  for  them;  far  more  fitted  to  add  a  little  to  the  gaiety 
of  the  world  than  to  foster  conflict  and  hatred  in  it.  Something  very 
wrong  must  have  happened  to  make  my  life  take  so  false  and  unnat- 
ural a  turn.  I  tried  to  check  it,  this  very  wrong  thing,  so  far  as  my 
weak  powers  were  able — and  in  so  doing  I  called  down  on  myself  the 


THOMAS   MANN  899 

fate  which  I  must  now  learn  to  reconcile  with  a  nature  essentially 
foreign  to  it. 

Certainly  I  challenged  the  wrath  of  these  despots  by  remaining  away 
and  giving  evidence  of  my  irrepressible  disgust.  But  it  is  not  merely 
in  the  last  four  years  that  I  have  done  so.  I  felt  thus  long  before,  and 
was  driven  to  it  because  I  saw — earlier  than  my  now  desperate  fellow- 
countrymen — who  and  what  would  emerge  from  all  this.  But  when 
Germany  had  actually  fallen  into  those  hands  I  thought  to  keep  silent. 
I  believed  that  by  the  sacrifice  I  had  made  I  had  earned  the  right  to 
silence;  that  it  would  enable  me  to  preserve  something  dear  to  my 
heart — the  contact  with  my  public  within  Germany.  My  books,  I  said 
to  myself,  are  written  for  Germans,  for  them  above  all;  the  outside 
world  and  its  sympathy  have  always  been  for  me  only  a  happy  acci- 
dent. They  are— these  books  of  mine — the  product  of  a  mutually  nour- 
ishing bond  between  nation  and  author,  and  depend  on  conditions 
which  I  myself  have  helped  to  create  in  Germany.  Such  bonds  as  these 
are  delicate  and  of  high  importance;  they  ought  not  to  be  rudely 
sundered  by  politics.  Though  there  might  be  impatient  ones  at  home 
who,  muzzled  themselves,  would  take  ill  the  silence  of  a  free  man,  I 
was  still  able  to  hope  that  the  great  majority  of  Germans  would  under- 
stand my  reserve,  perhaps  even  thank  me  for  it. 

These  were  my  assumptions.  They  could  not  be  carried  out.  I  could 
not  have  lived  or  worked,  I  should  have  suffocated,  had  I  not  been 
able  now  and  again  to  cleanse  my  heart,  so  to  speak,  to  give  from 
time  to  time  free  vent  to  my  abysmal  disgust  at  what  was  happening 
at  home — the  contemptible  words  and  still  more  contemptible  deeds. 
Justly  or  not,  my  name  had  once  and  for  all  become  connected  for  the 
world  with  the  conception  of  a  Germany  which  it  loved  and  honoured. 
The  disquieting  challenge  rang  in  my  ears:  that  I  and  no  other  must 
in  clear  terms  contradict  the  ugly  falsification  which  this  conception 
of  Germany  was  now  suffering.  That  challenge  disturbed  all  the  free- 
flowing  creative  fancies  to  which  I  would  so  gladly  have  yielded.  It 
was  a  challenge  hard  to  resist  for  one  to  whom  it  had  always  been 
given  to  express  himself,  to  release  himself  through  language,  to  whom 
experience  had  always  been  one  with  the  purifying  and  preserving 
Word. 


900  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

The  mystery  of  the  Word  is  great;  the  responsibility  for  it  and  its 
purity  is  of  a  symbolic  and  spiritual  kind;  it  has  not  only  an  artistic 
but  also  a  general  ethical  significance;  it  is  responsibility  itself,  human 
responsibility  quite  simply,  also  the  responsibility  for  one's  own  people, 
the  duty  of  keeping  pure  its  image  in  the  sight  of  humanity.  In  the 
Word  is  involved  the  unity  of  humanity,  the  wholeness  of  the  human 
problem,  which  permits  nobody,  today  less  than  ever,  to  separate  the 
intellectual  and  artistic  from  the  political  and  social,  and  to  isolate 
himself  within  the  ivory  tower  of  the  "cultural"  proper.  This  true 
totality  is  equated  with  humanity  itself,  and  anyone — whoever  he  be — 
is  making  a  criminal  attack  upon  humanity  when  he  undertakes  to 
"totalize"  a  segment  of  human  life — by  which  I  mean  politics,  I  mean 
the  State. 

A  German  author  accustomed  to  this  responsibility  of  the  Word — 
a  German  whose  patriotism,  perhaps  naively,  expresses  itself  in  a  belief 
in  the  infinite  moral  significance  of  whatever  happens  in  Germany — 
should  he  be  silent,  wholly  silent,  in  the  face  of  the  inexpiable  evil 
that  is  done  daily  in  my  country  to  bodies,  souls,  and  minds,  to  right 
and  truth,  to  men  and  mankind  ?  And  should  he  be  silent  in  the  face 
of  the  frightful  danger  to  the  whole  continent  presented  by  this  soul- 
destroying  regime,  which  exists  in  abysmal  ignorance  of  the  hour  that 
has  struck  today  in  the  world  ?  It  was  not  possible  for  me  to  be  silent. 
And  so,  contrary  to  my  intentions,  came  the  utterances,  the  unavoid- 
ably compromising  gestures  which  have  now  resulted  in  the  absurd 
and  deplorable  business  of  my  national  excommunication.  The  mere 
knowledge  of  who  these  men  are  who  happen  to  possess  the  pitiful 
outward  power  to  deprive  me  of  my  German  birthright  is  enough  to 
make  the  act  appear  in  all  its  absurdity.  I,  forsooth,  am  supposed  to 
have  dishonoured  the  Reich,  Germany,  in  acknowledging  that  I  am 
against  them\  They  have  the  incredible  effrontery  to  confuse  them- 
selves with  Germany!  When,  after  all,  perhaps  the  moment  is  not  far 
off  when  it  will  be  of  supreme  importance  to  the  German  people  not 
to  be  confused  with  them. 

To  what  a  pass,  in  less  than  four  years,  have  they  brought  Germany! 
Ruined,  sucked  dry  body  and  soul  by  armaments  with  which  they 
threaten  the  whole  world,  holding  up  the  whole  world  and  hindering 


THOMAS  MANN  901 

it  in  its  real  task  of  peace,  loved  by  nobody,  regarded  with  fear  and 
cold  aversion  by  all,  it  stands  on  the  brink  of  economic  disaster,  while 
its  "enemies"  stretch  out  their  hands  in  alarm  to  snatch  back  from 
the  abyss  so  important  a  member  of  the  future  family  of  nations,  to 
help  it,  if  only  it  will  come  to  its  senses  and  try  to  understand  the  real 
needs  of  the  world  at  this  hour,  instead  of  dreaming  dreams  about 
mythical  "sacred  necessities." 

Yes,  after  all,  it  must  be  helped  by  those  whom  it  hinders  and  men- 
aces, in  order  that  it  may  not  drag  down  the  rest  of  the  continent  with 
it  and  unleash  the  war  upon  which  as  the  ultima  ratio  it  keeps  its  eyes 
ever  fixed.  The  mature  and  cultural  states — by  which  I  mean  those 
which  understand  the  fundamental  fact  that  war  is  no  longer  per- 
missible— treat  this  endangered  and  endangering  country,  or  rather  the 
impossible  leaders  into  whose  hands  it  has  fallen,  as  doctors  treat  a 
sick  man — with  the  utmost  tact  and  caution,  with  inexhaustible  if  not 
very  flattering  patience.  But  it  thinks  it  must  play  politics — the  politics 
of  power  and  hegemony — with  the  doctors.  That  is  an  unequal  game. 
If  one  side  plays  politics  when  the  other  no  longer  thinks  of  politics 
but  of  peace,  then  for  a  time  the  first  side  reaps  certain  advantages. 
Anachronistic  ignorance  of  the  fact  that  war  is  no  longer  permissible 
results  for  a  while  of  course  in  "successes"  against  those  who  are  aware 
of  the  truth.  But  woe  to  the  people  which,  not  knowing  what  way  to 
turn,  at  last  actually  seeks  it  way  out  through  the  abomination  of  war, 
hated  of  God  and  man!  Such  a  people  will  be  lost.  It  will  be  so  van- 
quished that  it  will  never  rise  again. 

The  meaning  and  purpose  of  the  National  Socialist  state  is  this 
alone  and  can  be  only  this:  to  put  the  German  people  in  readiness  for 
the  "coming  war"  by  ruthless  repression,  elimination,  extirpation  of 
every  stirring  of  opposition;  to  make  of  them  an  instrument  of  war, 
infinitely  compliant,  without  a  single  critical  thought,  driven  by  a 
blind  and  fanatical  ignorance.  Any  other  meaning  and  purpose,  any 
other  excuse  this  system  cannot  have;  all  the  sacrifices  of  freedom, 
justice,  human  happiness,  including  the  secret  and  open  crimes  for 
which  it  has  blithely  been  responsible,  can  be  justified  only  by  the  end — 
absolute  fitness  for  war.  If  the  idea  of  war  as  an  aim  in  itself  dis- 


902  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

appeared,  the  system  would  mean  nothing  but  the  exploitation  of  the 
people;  it  would  be  utterly  senseless  and  superfluous. 

Truth  to  tell,  it  is  both  of  these,  senseless  and  superfluous,  not  only 
because  war  will  not  be  permitted  it  but  also  because  its  leading  idea, 
the  absolute  readiness  for  war,  will  result  precisely  in  the  opposite  of 
what  it  is  striving  for.  No  other  people  on  earth  is  today  so  utterly 
incapable  of  war,  so  little  in  condition  to  endure  one.  That  Germany 
would  have  no  allies,  not  a  single  one  in  the  world,  is  the  first  con- 
sideration but  the  smallest.  Germany  would  be  forsaken — terrible  of 
course  even  in  her  isolation — but  the  really  frightful  thing  would  be 
the  fact  that  she  had  forsaken  herself.  Intellectually  reduced  and  hum- 
bled, morally  gutted,  inwardly  torn  apart  by  her  deep  mistrust  of  her 
leaders  and  the  mischief  they  have  done  her  in  these  years,  profoundly 
uneasy  herself,  ignorant  of  the  future,  of  course,  but  full  of  fore- 
bodings of  evil,  she  would  go  into  war  not  in  the  condition  of  19 14 
but,  even  physically,  of  1917  or  1918.  The  ten  per  cent  of  direct  bene- 
ficiaries of  the  system — half  even  of  them  fallen  away — would  not  be 
enough  to  win  a  war  in  which  the  majority  of  the  rest  would  only 
see  the  opportunity  of  shaking  oft  the  shameful  oppression  that  has 
weighed  upon  them  so  long — a  war,  that  is,  which  after  the  firsL 
inevitable  defeat  would  turn  into  a  civil  war. 

No,  this  war  is  impossible;  Germany  cannot  wage  it;  and  if  its  dic- 
tators are  in  their  senses,  then  their  assurances  of  readiness  for  peace 
are  not  tactical  lies  repeated  with  a  wink  at  their  partisans;  they  spring 
from  a  faint-hearted  perception  of  just  this  impossibility. 

But  if  war  cannot  and  shall  not  be — then  why  these  robbers  and 
murderers?  Why  isolation,  world  hostility,  lawlessness,  intellectual 
interdict,  cultural  darkness,  and  every  other  evil?  Why  not  rather 
Germany's  voluntary  return  to  the  European  system,  her  reconciliation 
with  Europe,  with  all  the  inward  accompaniments  of  freedom,  justice, 
well-being,  and  human  decency,  and  a  jubilant  welcome  from  the  rest 
of  the  world?  Why  not?  Only  because  a  regime  which,  in  word  and 
deed,  denies  the  rights  of  man,  which  wants  above  all  else  to  remain 
in  power,  would  stultify  itself  and  be  abolished  if,  since  it  cannot  make 
war,  it  actually  made  peace!  But  is  that  a  reason? 

I  had  forgotten,  Herr  Dean,  that  I  was  still  addressing  you.  Certainly 


THOMAS  MANN  903 

I  may  console  myself  with  the  reflection  that  you  long  since  ceased  to 
read  this  letter,  aghast  at  language  which  in  Germany  has  long  been 
unspoken,  terrified  because  somebody  dares  use  the  German  tongue 
with  the  ancient  freedom.  I  have  not  spoken  out  of  arrogant  presump- 
tion, but  out  of  a  concern  and  a  distress  from  which  your  usurpers 
did  not  release  me  when  they  decreed  that  I  was  no  longer  a  German — 
a  mental  and  spiritual  distress  from  which  for  four  years  not  an  hour 
of  my  life  has  been  free,  and  struggling  with  which  I  have  had  to 
accomplish  my  creative  work  day  by  day.  The  pressure  was  great. 
And  as  a  man  who  out  of  diffidence  in  religious  matters  will  seldom 
or  never  either  by  tongue  or  pen  let  the  name  of  the  Deity  escape 
him,  yet  in  moments  of  deep  emotion  cannot  refrain,  let  me — since 
after  all  one  cannot  say  everything — close  this  letter  with  the  brief  and 
fervent  prayer:  God  help  our  darkened  and  desecrated  country  and 
teach  it  to  ma\e  its  peace  with  the  world  and  with  itself! 

Thomas  Mann 
Kiisnacht,  Zurich,  New  Year's  Day,  1937 


JUSTICE  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 


COMMENTARY 


And  so  we  end  with  two  paragraphs  excerpted  from  a  speech  by  one 
of  the  greatest  of  Americans,  Justice  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  I  have 
included  these  paragraphs  first  because  they  are  so  magnificently 
phrased  and  second  because  their  prescience  is  almost  terrifying. 
These  words  were  delivered  in  1913,  some  months  before  the  First 
World  War  broke  out.  But  they  seem  to  tell,  Nostradamus-like ,  of 
events  just  now  coming  to  pass.  What  could  Holmes  have  meant 
when  he  spoke  of  "competition  from  new  races"?  "Whether  we  can 
hang  together  and  can  fight"  is  at  this  moment  the  supreme  question 
we  Americans  are  asking  ourselves.  "Battling  races  and  an  impover- 
ished earth"— it  was  a  vision  in  1913,  a  reality  today.  Even  that  fateful 
reference  to  Wagner  is  a  precognition  of  the  Nazi  dream  of  world 
destruction,  and  "the  new  masters  of  the  sky"  might  well  be  Stuka 
bombers.  And,  let  us  say  it  together,  the  stars  that  Holmes  saw, 
though  still  to  rise,  will  rise,  and  his  prophecy  be  complete. 


904 


Excerpt  from  a  Speech  at  a  Dinner  of  the  Harvard 

Law  School  Association  of  New  York  on 

February  15,  1913 

BY 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 


If  1  am  right  it  will  be  a  slow  business  for  our  people  to  reach  rational 
views,  assuming  that  we  are  allowed  to  work  peaceably  to  that  end. 
But  as  I  grow  older  I  grow  calm.  If  I  feel  what  are  perhaps  an  old 
man's  apprehensions,  that  competition  from  new  races  will  cut  deeper 
than  working  men's  disputes  and  will  test  whether  we  can  hang  to- 
gether and  can  fight;  if  I  fear  that  we  are  running  through  the  world's 
resources  at  a  pace  that  we  cannot  keep;  I  do  not  lose  my  hopes.  I  do 
not  pin  my  dreams  for  the  future  to  my  country  or  even  to  my  race. 
I  think  it  probable  that  civilization  somehow  will  last  as  long  as  I  care 
to  look  ahead — perhaps  with  smaller  numbers,  but  perhaps  also  bred 
to  greatness  and  splendor  by  science.  I  think  it  not  improbable  that 
man,  like  the  grub  that  prepares  a  chamber  for  the  winged  thing  it 
never  has  seen  but  is  to  be — that  man  may  have  cosmic  destinies  that 
he  does  not  understand.  And  so  beyond  the  vision  of  battling  races 
and  an  impoverished  earth  I  catch  a  dreaming  glimpse  of  peace. 

The  other  day  my  dream  was  pictured  to  my  mind.  It  was  evening. 
I  was  walking  homeward  on  Pennsylvania  Avenue  near  the  Treasury, 
and  as  I  looked  beyond  Sherman's  Statue  to  the  west  the  sky  was 
aflame  with  scarlet  and  crimson  from  the  setting  sun.  But,  like  the 
note  of  downfall  in  Wagner's  opera,  below  the  sky  line  there  came 
from  little  globes  the  pallid  discord  of  the  electric  lights.  And  I 
thought  to  myself  the  Gotterdammerung  will  end,  and  from  those 
globes  clustered  like  evil  eggs  will  come  the  new  masters  of  the  sky. 

905 


906  READING  I'VE  LIKED 

It  is  like  the  time  in  which  we  live.  But  then  I  rememberd  the  faith 
that  I  partly  have  expressed,  faith  in  a  universe  not  measured  by  our 
fears,  a  universe  that  has  thought  and  more  than  thought  inside  of  it, 
and  as  I  gazed,  after  the  sunset  and  above  the  electric  lights,  there 
shone  the  stars. 


ABOUT  CLIFTON  FADIMAN 


Clifton  Fadiman  was  born  in  New  Yor\  City  in  1904  and  did  not 
appear  on  the  literary  horizon  until  a  full  nineteen  years  later,  at  which 
time  he  wrote  his  first  boo\  review  for  The  Nation. 

He  was  graduated  from  Columbia  University  in  1925  and  for  two 
years  taught  English  at  Ethical  Culture  High  School.  He  was  head 
editor  of  Simo?i  and  Schuster  for  six  years  and  since  1933  has  worked 
as  boo\  critic  for  The  New  Yorker. 

The  United  States  at  large  knows  him  as  master  of  ceremonies  for 
the  radio  program  "Information,  Please!" 

Mr.  Fadiman  has  been  responsible  for  encouraging  the  wor\  of 
many  younger  writers  in  his  editorial  and  reviewing  wor\.  He  has 
lectured  extensively  and  is  the  editor  of  I  Believe,  a  boo\  containing 
the  personal  philosophies  of  certain  men  and  women  of  our  times, 
which  was  published  in  1939.  He  is  one  of  the  four  members  of  the 
Selecting  Committee  of  The  Readers  Club. 


908 


Reading  I've  liked;  main 
808.8F145rC2 


3  lEbE  D317D  7EEb