him in relation to his wife, checking always, sometimes bullying,
sometimes being ostentatiously "kind"; I would see him glance
furtively at his domestic servants upon his staircase, or stiffen
his upper lip against the reluctant, protesting business employee.
We imaginative people are base enough, heaven knows, but it is only
in rare moods of bitter penetration that we pierce down to the baser
lusts, the viler shames, the everlasting lying and muddle-headed
self-justification of the dull.
I would turn my eyes down the crowded room and see others of him and
others. What did he think he was up to? Did he for a moment
realise that his presence under that ceramic glory of a ceiling with
me meant, if it had any rational meaning at all, that we were
jointly doing something with the nation and the empire and
mankind?… How on earth could any one get hold of him, make
any noble use of him? He didn't read beyond his newspaper. He
never thought, but only followed imaginings in his heart. He never
discussed. At the first hint of discussion his temper gave way.
He was, I knew, a deep, thinly-covered tank of resentments and
quite irrational moral rages. Yet withal I would have to resist
an impulse to go over to him and nudge him and say to him, "Look
here! What indeed do you think we are doing with the nation and
the empire and mankind? You know-MANKIND!"
I wonder what reply I should have got.
So far as any average could be struck and so far as any backbone
could be located, it seemed to me that this silent, shy, replete,
sub-angry, middle-class sentimentalist was in his endless species
and varieties and dialects the backbone of our party. So far as I
could be considered as representing anything in the House, I
pretended to sit for the elements of HIM…
7
For a time I turned towards the Socialists. They at least had an
air of coherent intentions. At that time Socialism had come into
politics again after a period of depression and obscurity, with a
tremendous ECLAT. There was visibly a following of Socialist
members to Chris Robinson; mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in
soft felt hats and short coats and square-toed boots who replied to
casual advances a little surprisingly in rich North Country
dialects. Members became aware of a "seagreen incorruptible," as
Colonel Marlow put it to me, speaking on the Address, a slender
twisted figure supporting itself on a stick and speaking with a fire
that was altogether revolutionary. This was Philip Snowden, the
member for Blackburn. They had come in nearly forty strong
altogether, and with an air of presently meaning to come in much
stronger. They were only one aspect of what seemed at that time a
big national movement. Socialist societies, we gathered, were
springing up all over the country, and every one was inquiring about
Socialism and discussing Socialism. It had taken the Universities
with particular force, and any youngster with the slightest
intellectual pretension was either actively for or brilliantly
against. For a time our Young Liberal group was ostentatiously
sympathetic…
When I think of the Socialists there comes a vivid memory of certain
evening gatherings at our house…
These gatherings had been organised by Margaret as the outcome of a
discussion at the Baileys'. Altiora had been very emphatic and
uncharitable upon the futility of the Socialist movement. It seemed
that even the leaders fought shy of dinner-parties.
"They never meet each other," said Altiora, "much less people on the
other side. How can they begin to understand politics until they do
that?"
"Most of them have totally unpresentable wives," said Altiora,
"totally!" and quoted instances, "and they WILL bring them. Or they
won't come! Some of the poor creatures have scarcely learnt their
table manners. They just make holes in the talk…"
I thought there was a great deal of truth beneath Altiora's
outburst. The presentation of the Socialist case seemed very
greatly crippled by the want of a common intimacy in its leaders;
the want of intimacy didn't at first appear to be more than an
accident, and our talk led to Margaret's attempt to get acquaintance
and easy intercourse afoot among them and between them and the Young
Liberals of our group. She gave a series of weekly dinners,
planned, I think, a little too accurately upon Altiora's model, and
after each we had as catholic a reception as we could contrive.
Our receptions were indeed, I should think, about as catholic as
receptions could be. Margaret found herself with a weekly houseful
of insoluble problems in intercourse. One did one's best, but one
got a nightmare feeling as the evening wore on.
It was one of the few unanimities of these parties that every one
should be a little odd in appearance, funny about the hair or the
tie or the shoes or more generally, and that bursts of violent
aggression should alternate with an attitude entirely defensive. A
number of our guests had an air of waiting for a clue that never
came, and stood and sat about silently, mildly amused but not a bit
surprised that we did not discover their distinctive Open-Sesames.
There was a sprinkling of manifest seers and prophetesses in
shapeless garments, far too many, I thought, for really easy social
intercourse, and any conversation at any moment was liable to become
oracular. One was in a state of tension from first to last; the
most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding resentment, and
replies came out at the most unexpected angles. We Young Liberals
went about puzzled but polite to the gathering we had evoked. The
Young Liberals' tradition is on the whole wonderfully discreet,
superfluous steam is let out far away from home in the Balkans or
Africa, and the neat, stiff figures of the Cramptons, Bunting
Harblow, and Lewis, either in extremely well-cut morning coats
indicative of the House, or in what is sometimes written of as
"faultless evening dress," stood about on those evenings, they and
their very quietly and simply and expensively dressed little wives,
like a datum line amidst lakes and mountains.
I didn't at first see the connection between systematic social
reorganisation and arbitrary novelties in dietary and costume, just
as I didn't realise why the most comprehensive constructive projects
should appear to be supported solely by odd and exceptional
personalities. On one of these evenings a little group of rather
jolly-looking pretty young people seated themselves for no
particular reason in a large circle on the floor of my study, and
engaged, so far as I could judge, in the game of Hunt the Meaning,
the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the Slipper. It must have been
that same evening I came upon an unbleached young gentleman before
the oval mirror on the landing engaged in removing the remains of an
anchovy sandwich from his protruded tongue-visible ends of cress
having misle
d him into the belief that he was dealing with
doctrinally permissible food. It was not unusual to be given hand-
bills and printed matter by our guests, but there I had the
advantage over Lewis, who was too tactful to refuse the stuff, too
neatly dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon
which he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver.
So that his hands got fuller and fuller. A relentless, compact
little woman in what Margaret declared to be an extremely expensive
black dress has also printed herself on my memory; she had set her
heart upon my contributing to a weekly periodical in the lentil
interest with which she was associated, and I spent much time and
care in evading her.
Mingling with the more hygienic types were a number of Anti-Puritan
Socialists, bulging with bias against temperance, and breaking out
against austere methods of living all over their faces. Their
manner was packed with heartiness. They were apt to choke the
approaches to the little buffet Margaret had set up downstairs, and
there engage in discussions of Determinism-it always seemed to be
Determinism-which became heartier and noisier, but never
acrimonious even in the small hours. It seemed impossible to settle
about this Determinism of theirs-ever. And there were worldly
Socialists also. I particularly recall a large, active, buoyant,
lady-killing individual with an eyeglass borne upon a broad black
ribbon, who swam about us one evening. He might have been a
slightly frayed actor, in his large frock-coat, his white waistcoat,
and the sort of black and white check trousers that twinkle. He had
a high-pitched voice with aristocratic intonations, and he seemed to
be in a perpetual state of interrogation. "What are we all he-a
for?" he would ask only too audibly. "What are we doing he-a?
What's the connection?"
What WAS the connection?
We made a special effort with our last assembly in June, 1907. We
tried to get something like a representative collection of the
parliamentary leaders of Socialism, the various exponents of
Socialist thought and a number of Young Liberal thinkers into one
room. Dorvil came, and Horatio Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared
for ten minutes and talked charmingly to Margaret and then vanished
again; there was Wilkins the novelist and Toomer and Dr. Tumpany.
Chris Robinson stood about for a time in a new comforter, and
Magdeberg and Will Pipes and five or six Labour members. And on our
side we had our particular little group, Bunting Harblow, Crampton,
Lewis, all looking as broad-minded and open to conviction as they
possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes
almost boldly. But the gathering as a whole refused either to
mingle or dispute, and as an experiment in intercourse the evening
was a failure. Unexpected dissociations appeared between Socialists
one had supposed friendly. I could not have imagined it was
possible for half so many people to turn their backs on everybody
else in such small rooms as ours. But the unsaid things those backs
expressed broke out, I remarked, with refreshed virulence in the
various organs of the various sections of the party next week.
I talked, I rememher, with Dr. Tumpany, a large young man in a still
larger professional frock-coat, and with a great shock of very fair
hair, who was candidate for some North Country constituency. We
discussed the political outlook, and, like so many Socialists at
that time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Liberal
party. I was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed
less vividly in many others of these Socialist leaders, and which
gave me at last a clue to the whole business. He behaved exactly
like a man in possession of valuable patent rights, who wants to be
dealt with. He had an air of having a corner in ideas. Then it
flashed into my head that the whole Socialist movement was an
attempted corner in ideas…
8
Late that night I found myselfalone with Margaret amid the debris
of the gathering.
I sat before the fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white
and weary, came and leant upon the mantel.
"Oh, Lord!" said Margaret.
I agreed. Then I resumed my meditation.
"Ideas," I said, "count for more than I thought in the world."
Margaret regarded me with that neutral expression behind which she
was accustomed to wait for clues.
"When you think of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of
the Socialist ideas, and see the men who are running them," I
explained… "A big system of ideas like Socialism grows up out
of the obvious common sense of our present conditions. It's as
impersonal as science. All these men-They've given nothing to it.
They're just people who have pegged out claims upon a big
intellectual No-Man's-Land-and don't feel quite sure of the law.
There's a sort of quarrelsome uneasiness… If we professed
Socialism do you think they'd welcome us? Not a man of them!
They'd feel it was burglary…"
"Yes," said Margaret, looking into the fire. "That is just what I
felt about them all the evening… Particularly Dr. Tumpany."
"We mustn't confuse Socialism with the Socialists, I said; "that's
the moral of it. I suppose if God were to find He had made a
mistake in dates or something, and went back and annihilated
leader or teacher, Socialism would be exactly where it is and what
it is to-day-a growing realisation of constructive needs in every
man's mind, and a little corner in party politics. So, I suppose,
it will always be… But they WERE a damned lot, Margaret!"
I looked up at the little noise she made. "TWICE!" she said,
smiling indulgently, "to-day!" (Even the smile was Altiora's.)
I returned to my thoughts. They WERE a damned human lot. It was an
excellent word in that connection…
But the ideas marched on, the ideas marched on, just as though men's
brains were no more than stepping-stones, just as though some great
brain in which we are all little cells and corpuscles was thinking
them!…
"I don't think there is a man among them who makes me feel he is
trustworthy," said Margaret; "unless it is Featherstonehaugh."
I sat taking in this proposition.
"They'll never help us, I feel," said Margaret.
"Us?"
"The Liberals."
"Oh, damn the Liberals!" I said. "They'll never even help
themselves."
"I don't think I could possibly get on with any of those people,"
said Margaret, after a pause.
She remained for a time looking down at me and, I could feel,
perplexed by me, but I wanted to go on with my thinking, and so I
did not look up, and presently she stooped to my forehead and kissed
me and went rustling softly to her room.
I remained in my study for a long time with my thoughts
crystallising out…
It was then, I
think, that I first apprehended clearly how that
opposition to which I have already alluded of the immediate life and
the mental hinterland of a man, can be applied to public and social
affairs. The ideas go on-and no person or party succeeds in
embodying them. The reality of human progress never comes to the
surface, it is a power in the deeps, an undertow. It goes on in
silence while men think, in studies where they write self-
forgetfully, in laboratories under the urgency of an impersonal
curiosity, in the rare illumination of honest talk, in moments of
emotional insight, in thoughtful reading, but not in everyday
affairs. Everyday affairs and whatever is made an everyday affair,
are transactions of the ostensible self, the being of habits,
interests, usage. Temper, vanity, hasty reaction to imitation,
personal feeling, are their substance. No man can abolish his
immediate self and specialise in the depths; if he attempt that, he
simply turns himself into something a little less than the common
man. He may have an immense hinterland, but that does not absolve
him from a frontage. That is the essential error of the specialist
philosopher, the specialist teacher, the specialist publicist. They
repudiate frontage; claim to be pure hinterland. That is what
bothered me about Codger, about those various schoolmasters who had
prepared me for life, about the Baileys and their dream of an
official ruling class. A human being who is a philosopher in the
first place, a teacher in the first place, or a statesman in the
first place, is thereby and inevitably, though he bring God-like
gifts to the pretence-a quack. These are attempts to live deep-
side shallow, inside out. They produce merely a new pettiness. To
understand Socialism, again, is to gain a new breadth of outlook; to
join a Socialist organisation is to join a narrow cult which is not
even tolerably serviceable in presenting or spreading the ideas for
which it stands…
I perceived I had got something quite fundamental here. It had
taken me some years to realise the truerelation of the great
constructive ideas that swayed me not only to political parties, but
to myself. I had been disposed to identify the formulae of some one
party with social construction, and to regard the other as