TOLD BY AN IDIOTBY THE SAME AUTHOR
POTTERISM
DANGEROUS AGES
MYSTERY AT GENEVA
Published by
BONI and LIVERIGHT
NEW YORKTOLD BY AN IDIOT
BY
ROSE MACAULAY
BONI AND LIVERIGHT
Publishers ::	::	New	YorktK
(* e x C
An>
T
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Copyright, 1923, by
Boni and Liveright, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICALife's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon ihe stage
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. .. .
Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.
Uhistoire, comme une idiote, mécaniquement se répète.
Paul Morand: "Fermé la nuit ”PART I. VICTORIAN
PART II. FIN-DE-SIECLE.
PART III. EDWARDIAN.
PART IV. GEORGIAN. First Period: Circus.
Second Period: Smash.
Third Period: Debris.Generationi Patrum.PART I
VICTORIANTOLD BY AN IDIOT
A FAMILY AT HOME
NE evening, shortly before Christmas, in the days
when our forefathers, being young, possessed the
earth—in brief, in the year 1879—Mrs. Garden came
briskly into the drawing-room from Mr. Garden's
study and said in her crisp, even voice to her six chil-
dren, 4‘Well, my dears, I have to tell you something.
Poor papa has lost his faith again.”
Poor papa had very often lost his faith during the
fifty years of his life. Sometimes he became, from
being an Anglican clergyman, a Unitarian minister,
sometimes a Roman Catholic layman (he was, by
nature, habit and heredity, a priest or minister of re-
ligion, but the Roman Catholic church makes trouble
about wives and children), sometimes some strange
kind of dissenter, sometimes a plain agnostic, who
believed that there lived more faith in honest doubt
than in half the creeds (and as to this he should know,
for on quite half the creeds he was by now an expert).
On his last return to Anglicanism, he had accepted a
country living.
Victoria, the eldest of the six children, named less
for the then regnant queen than for papa’s temporary
1314
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
victory over unbelief in the year of her birth, 1856,
spoke sharply. She was twenty-three, and very pretty,
and saw no reason why papa should be allowed so
many more faiths and losses of faith in his career than
the papas of others.
“Really, mamma ... it is too bad of papa. I knew
it was coming; I said so, didn't I, Maurice? His ser-
mons have been so funny lately, and he's been reading
Comte all day in his study instead of going out visiting,
and getting all kinds of horrid pamphlets from the
Rationalist Press Association, and poring over an
article in the Examiner about ‘A Clergyman's Doubts.'
And I suppose St. Thomas' day has brought it to a
head.” (Victoria was High Church, so knew all about
saints’ days.) “And now we shall have to leave the
vicarage, just when we've made friends with all sorts
of nice people, with tennis courts and ballrooms. Papa
should be more careful, and it is too bad.”
Maurice, the second child (named for Frederick
Denison), who was at Cambridge, and a firm rational-
ist, having fought and lost the battle of belief while a
freshman, enquired, cynically but not unduti fully, and
with more patience than his sister, “What is he going
to be this time?”
“An Ethicist,” said Mrs. Garden, in her clear, non-
committal voice. “We are joining the Ethical Society.”
“Whatever's that?” Vicky crossly asked.
“It has no creeds but only conduct” . . . (“And
I,” Vicky interpolated, “have no conduct but only
creeds”) . . . “and a chapel in South Place, Finsbury
Pavement, and a magazine which sometimes has a poem
by Robert Browning. It published that one about a
man who strangled a girl he was fond of with her own
hair on a wet evening. I don't know why he thoughtVICTORIAN
IS
it specially suitable for the Ethical Society magazine.
. . . They meet for worship on Sundays.”
“Worship of what, mamma ?”
“Nobility of character, dear. They sing ethical
hymns about it.”
Vicky gave a little scream.
Mrs. Garden looked at Stanley, her third daughter
(named less for the explorer than for the Dean, whom
Mr. Garden had always greatly admired), and found,
as she had expected, Stanley’s solemn blue eyes burning
on hers. Stanley was, in fancy, in the South Place
Ethical Chapel already, singing the ethical hymns . . .
Fall, fall, ye ancient litanies and creeds!
Not prayers nor curses deep
The power can longer keep
That once ye kept by filling human needs.
Fall, fall, ye mighty temples to the ground!
Not in their sculptured rise
Is the real exercise
Of human nature’s brightest power found.
’Tis in the lofty hope, the daily toil,
’Tis in the gifted line,
In each far thought divine,
That brings down heaven to light our common soil.
’Tis in the great, the lovely and the true,
’Tis in the generous thought
Of all that man has wrought
Of all that yet remains for man to do. . . .
Stanley had read this and other hymns in a little
book her papa had.i6
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“Then I suppose,” said Rome, the second daughter,
who knew of old that papa must always live near a
place of worship dedicated to his creed of the moment,
“then I suppose we are moving to Finsbury Pavement.”
Rome had been named less for the city than for the
church, of which papa had been a member at the time
of her birth, twenty years ago; and, after all, if Flor-
ence, why not Rome? Rome looked clever. She had
a white, thin face, and vivid blue-green eyes like the
sea beneath rocks; and she thought it very original of
papa to believe so much and so often. Her own mind
was sceptical.
Vicky’s brow smoothed. Moving to London. There
was something in that. Though of course it mustn’t
be Finsbury Pavement; she would see to that.
Irving, the youngest but one (named less for the
actor than to commemorate the brief period when papa
had been an Irvingite, and had believed in twelve living
apostles who must all die and then would come the
Last Day), said, “Golly, what a lark!” Irving was
sixteen, and was all for a move, all for change of resi-
dence if not of creed. He was an opportunist and a
realist, and made the best of the vagaries of circum^
stance. He was destined to do well in life. He was
not, like Maurice, sicklied o’er with the pale cast of
thought, nor, like Vicky, caught in the mesh of each
passing fashion, nor, like Stanley, an ardent hunter of
the Idea, nor, like Rome, a critic. He was more like
his younger sister (only he had more enterprise and
initiative), Una, a very calm and jolly schoolgirl, named
less for her who braved the dragon than for the One
Person in whom papa had believed at the time of her
birth (One Person not in the Trinitarian, but in the
Unitarian sense).VICTORIAN
n
‘Three hundred a year less,” remarked Rome, from
the couch whereon she lay (for her back was often
tired), and looked ironically at Vicky, to see how she
liked the thought of that.
Vicky’s smooth cheek flushed. She had forgotten
about money.
“Oh, really. . . . Oh, I do think papa is too bad.
Papa had entered the room, and stood looking on
mean? Can’t he wait till next?”
Mamma’s faint (was it also ironic, or merely pa-
tient?) movement of the eyebrows meant that it was
too late; papa’s faith was already lost.
“By next winter he may have found it again,” Rome
suggested.
“Well, even if so,” said Vicky, “who’s going to go
on giving him livings every time? . . . Oh, yes,
mamma, I know all the bishops love him, but there is a
limit to the patience of bishops. . . . Does the Ethical
Society have clergymen or anything?”
“I believe they have elders. Papa may become an
elder.”
“That’s no use. Elders aren’t paid. Don’t you re-
member when he was a Quaker elder, when we were all
little? I’m sure it’s not a paid job. We shall be
loathsomely poor again, and have to live without any
fun or pretty things. And I daresay it’s low class, too,
like dissent, as it’s got a chapel. Papa never bothers
about that, of course. He’d follow General Booth into
the Army, if he thought he had a call.”
“I trust that I should, Vicky.”
Papa had entered the room, and stood looking on
them all, with his beautiful, distinguished, melancholy
face (framed in small side whiskers), and his deep blue
eyes like Stanley’s. Vicky’s ill-humour melted away,.i8
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
because papa was so. gentle and so beautiful and so
kind. And, after all, London was London, even with
only six hundred a year.
“Mamma has told you our news, I see,” said papa, in
his sweet, mellow voice. He looked and spoke like a
papa out of Charlotte M. Yonge, though his conduct
with regard to the Anglican church was so different.
“Yes, Aubrey, I've told them,” said mamma.
“I hope you won't mind, papa,” said Vicky, saucily,
“if I go to church at St. Alban’s, Holborn. Ym a
ritualist, not an Ethicist.”
“Indeed, Vicky, I should be very sorry if you did not
all follow your own lights, wherever they lead you.”
Papa's broad-mindedness amounted to a disease,
Vicky sometimes thought. A queer kind of clergyman
he was. What would Father Stanton and Father
Mackonochie of St. Alban’s think of him? Father
Mackonochie, who was habitually flung into gaol be-
cause he would face east when told to face north—as
important as all that, he felt it.
“Well, my darlings,” papa went on in his nice voice,
“I must apologise to you all for this—this disturbance
of your lives and mine. I would have spared it you if
I could. But I have been over and over the ground,
and I see no other way compatible with intellectual
honesty. Honesty must come first . . . Your mother
and I are agreed.”
Of course; they always were. From Anglicanism to
Roman Catholicism, from Catholicism to Quakerism,
from Quakerism to Unitarianism, Positivism, Baptist-
ism (yes, they had once sunk, to Vicky’s shame, as low
as that in the social scale, owing chiefly to the influence
of Charles Spurgeon) and back to Anglicanism again
—through everything mamma, silent, resigned and pos-VICTORIAN
19
sibly ironic, had followed papa. And little Stanley had
seen the idea behind all papa's religions and tumbled
headlong after him, and Maurice had, grimly, decided
that it was safer to abjure all creeds, and Rome had
critically looked on, with her faint, amused smile and
her single eyeglass, and Irving and Una had been led,
heedless and incurious, to each of papa's places of wor-
ship in turn, but had understood none of them. They
had not the religious temperament. Nor had Vicky,
who attended her ritualistic churches from aesthetic
fancy and a flair for being in the fashion, for seeing and
hearing some new thing. She didn’t care which way
priests faced, though she did enjoy incense. Vicky was
a gay soul, and preferred dances and lawn tennis and
young men to religion. Stanley too was gay—as merry
as a grig, papa called her—but she had a burning ardour
of mind and temper that made the world for her a place
of exciting experiments. She now thought it worthy
and honourable to be poor, for she had been reading
William Morris and Ruskin and socialist literature, as
intelligent young women did in those days, and was all
for handicrafts and the one-man job. She was eighteen,
and had had her first term at Somerville College, Ox-
ford, which had just been founded and had twelve
members.
Irving, always practical, said, “When are we going
to move ? And where to ?”
“In February,” said mamma. “Probably we shall
live in Bloomsbury. We have heard of a house there.”
“Bloomsbury/7 said Vicky. “That's not so bad.”
Sitting down at the piano, she began softly to play
and sing. Papa sat by the fire, his thin hand on
mamma's, his thoughtful face pale and uplifted, as if
he had made the Great Sacrifice once more, as indeed20
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
he had. Stanley sat on a cushion at his feet, and leant
her dark head against his knee. She was a small, sturdy
girl, and she wore a frock of blue, hand-embroidered
cloth, plain and tight over the shoulders and breast,
high-necked, with white ruching at the throat, and
below the waist straighter than was the fashion, be-
cause Mr. Morris said that ripples and flounces wasted
material and ruined line. Vicky, sinuous and green,
rippled to the knees like running water. Irving sat on
a Morris-chintz chair, reading “The Moonstone/’ Mau-
rice on a Liberty cretonne sofa, reading a leader in yes-
terday’s Observer.
“It is, unfortunately, impossible to conceal from
ourselves that the condition of Ireland, never percep-
tibly improved by the announcement of the projected
remedy for her distress and discontents, has for some
weeks gone steadily from bad to worse. The state of
things which exists there is, for all practical purposes,
indistinguishable from civil war. The insurrectionary
forces arrayed against law and order are not, indeed,
drilled and disciplined bodies; but what they lack in
this respect they make up for in numbers and in reck-
lessness.”
Such was the sad state of Ireland in December, 1879,
as sometimes before, as sometimes since. Or, anyhow,
such was its state according to the Observer, a paper
with which Maurice seldom, and Stanley never, agreed.
Stanley put her faith in Mr. Gladstone, and Maurice in
no politicians, though he appreciated Dizzy as a per-
sonality. Papa had always voted Liberal and Glad-
stone, but thought that the latter lacked religious tol-
erance.
Maurice turned to another leader, which began “In
these troubled times . . And certainly they wereVICTORIAN
21
troubled, as times very nearly always, perhaps quite
always, are. The Observer told news of the Basuto
war, the Russian danger in Afghanistan, Land League
troubles, danger of war with Spain, trouble in Egypt,
trouble in Bulgaria, trouble in Midlothian (where Mr.
Gladstone was speaking against the government),
trouble of all sorts, everywhere. What a world! Stan-
ley, an assiduous student of it, sometimes almost gave
it up in despair; but never quite, for she always thought
of something one ought to do, or join, or help, which
might avert shipwreck. Just now it was handicrafts,
and the restoration of beauty to rich and poor.
2
MAMMA AND HER CHILDREN
Mamma, sitting with papa’s hand in hers, watched
them all, with her quiet grey eyes looking through
pince-nez, and her slight smile. Pretty Vicky, singing
“My Queen,” with the lamplight shining on her mass
of chestnut hair parted Rossetti-wise in the middle, her
pink cheeks, her long white neck, her graceful, slim,
flowing form, her aesthetic green dress (for Vicky was
bitten with the aesthetic craze). Pretty Vicky. She
loved gaiety and parties and comfort so much, it was
a shame to cut down her dress allowance, as would be
necessary. Perhaps Vicky would get engaged very
soon, though, to one of her aesthetic or worldly young*
men. Vicky was not one of those sexless, intellectual
girls, like Rome, with her indifference, or Stanley, with
her funny talk of platonic friendships. To Vicky a
young man was a young man, and no platonics about it.
Sometimes mamma was afraid that Vicky, for all her22
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
aestheticism, was a little fast; she would go out for long
day expeditions alone with the young man of the mo-
ment, and laugh when her mother said, doubtfully,
“Vicky, when I was young
“When you were young, mamma, dear,” Vicky
would say, caressing and mocking, “you were an early
Victorian. Or even a Williamite. Papa, prunes,
prisms! I’m a late Victorian, and we do what we like.”
“A mid-Victorian, I hope, dear,” mamma would
loyally interpolate, but Vicky would fling back, “Oh,
mamma, H.M. has reigned forty-two years now!
You don’t think she’s going to reign for eighty-four!
Late Victorian, that’s what we are. Fin-de-siecle.
Probably the world will end very soon, it’s gone on so
long, so let’s have a good time while we can. We’re
only young once. I feel, mamma, at the very end of
the road, and as if nothing mattered but to live and
dance and play while we can, because the time’s so
short. Clergymen say it’s a sign of the world coming
to an end, all these wars and disturbances everywhere,
and unbelief, and women and trains being so fast in
their habits and young men so effeminate.”
Thus Vicky, mocking and gay and absurd. Her
mother’s keen, near-sighted grey eyes strayed from
her, round the pretty, lamplit room, which was partly
Liberty and Morris, with its chintzes and wall-papers
and cretonnes, and blue china plates over the door (that
was the children), and partly mid-Victorian, with its
chiffoniers and papier-mache and red plush chairs, and
Dicksee’s “Harmony” hanging over the piano. On the
table lay the magazines—the Nineteenth Century, the
Cornhill, the Saturday Review, the Spectator, and the
Examiner with the article by Samuel Butler on “A
Clergyman’s Doubts.” They had made the vicarageVICTORIAN
23
so pretty; it would be hard to leave it for a dingy Lon-
don house. It was a pity (though hardly surprising)
that the Anglican church could find no place for Aubrey
during the intervals when he could not say the creed.
Aubrey was so modern. Mrs. Garden’s own father,
also a clergyman, believed in the Established Church
and the Bible, and agreed with the writer of the Book
of Genesis and Bishop Ussher, its commentator, that
the world had been created in six days in the year
4004 B.C., and that Adam and Eve had been created
shortly afterwards, full of virtue, and had fallen;
and so on, through all the Bible books. . . . After
all, the scriptures were written (and even mar-
ginally annotated) for our learning. . . . But Mrs.
Garden's papa had begun being a clergyman when re-
ligion had been more settled, before Darwin and
Huxley and Herbert Spencer had revolutionised science.
You didn't expect an able modern Oxford man like
Aubrey to be an Early Victorian clergyman.
Maurice on the Liberty sofa snorted suddenly over
what he was reading, and mamma smiled at him. The
dear, perverse, violent boy! He was always disagreeing
with everyone. Mamma's eyes rested gently on her
son's small, alert head, with its ruffled top locks of light,
straight hair, like a cock canary's crest, its sharp, long
chin and straight thin lips. Maurice was as mamma's
brothers had been, in the fifties, only they had worn
peg-top trousers and long fair whiskers that stood out
like fans. Maurice wore glasses, and looked pale, as
if he had read too much; not like young Irving, sprawl-
ing in an easy chair with “The Moonstone," beautiful
and dark and pleased. Nor like Stanley, who, though
she read and thought and often talked cleverly like a
book, had high spirits and was full of fun. Little24
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Stanley, with her round, childish face above the white
ruching, her big forehead and blunt little nose, and
deep, ardent, grave blue eyes. What a child she was
for enthusiasms and ideas and headlong plans! And
her talk about platonic friendships and women’s rights
and social revolution and bringing beauty into common
life. The New Girl. If Vicky was one kind of New
Girl (which may be doubted), Stanley was another,
even newer. . . . There shot into mamma’s mind, not
for the first time, a question—had girls always been
new? She remembered in her own youth the older
people talking about the New Girl, the New Woman.
Were girls and women really always newer than boys
and men, or was it only that people noticed it more,
and said more about it ? Elderly people wrote to the
papers about it. “The Girl of the Period,” in the
Saturday Review—fast, painted, scanty of dress (where
are our fair, demure English girls gone?) with veils
less concealing than provocative . . . what, Mrs. Gar-
den wondered, was a provocative veil? The New
Young Woman. Bold, fast, blue-stockinged, self-indul-
gent, unchaperoned, advanced, undomesticated, reading
and talking about things of which their mothers had
never, before marriage, heard—in brief, NEW. (To
know all that the mid-Victorians said about modern
girls, and, indeed, about modern youths of both sexes,
you have only to read certain novelists of the nineteen-
twenties, who are saying the same things to-day about
what they call the Young Generation.) Had Adam
and Eve, Mrs. Garden wondered, commented thus on
their daughters—or, more likely, on their daughters-
in-law? (According to Mrs. Garden’s papa, these had
been the same young women, but in the late seventies
one wasn’t, fortunately, obliged to believe the worstVICTORIAN
25
immoralities of the Old Testament.) “Youth,” it was
said at this period, as at other periods before and since,
“youth, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century,
has broken with tradition. It is no longer willing to
accept forms and formulae only on account of their
age.” (At what stage in history youth ever did this,
has never been explained.) “It has set out on a voyage
of enquiry, and, finding some things which are doubtful
and others which are insufficient, is searching for forms
of experience more in harmony with the realities of
life and knowledge.” Those are the actual words of a
writer of the nineteen-twenties, but they were used, in
effect, also in the eighteen-seventies, and many other
decades.
And had the young, both young men and young
women, always believed that they alone could save the
world, that the last generation, the elderly people, were
no good, were, in fact, responsible for the unfortunate
state in which the world had always up to now been,
and that it was for the young to usher in the New Day?
Well, no doubt they were right. The only hitch seemed
to be that the young people always seemed to get elderly
before they had had time to bring in the New Day, and
then they were no good any more, and the next genera-
tion had to take on the job, and still the New Day
coyly refused to be ushered in. Except that, of course,
in a sense, each day was a new one. But not, alas,
much of an improvement on the day before.
“These troubled times. . . .” Had there ever been,
would there ever be, a day when the newspapers said
“In these quiet and happy times”? Stanley, inspired
by Mr. William Morris, was sure of it. The millennium
was just round the corner, struggling in the womb of
time, only it needed workers, workers, and again work-26
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
ers, to deliver it safely. Some lecturer under whom
Stanley had sat had put it like that, and she had re-
peated it to her mother. Well, of course in these days
. . . the New Girl, being so new and so free, could use
such metaphors. In the fifties you couldn’t; unmarried
girls couldn’t, anyhow. Stanley had, indeed, coloured
a little when she had said it. Stanley was not only
unmarried, but declared that she never would be mar-
ried, there was too much to be done (which was a way
some young women were talking just then). She was
going, after Oxford, to work in a settlement, and teach
people weaving, dyeing and beauty, after learning them
herself at the Morris workshops. It was all very nice,
but mamma would rather Stanley had a husband and
babies. (Mammas, it may be observed in passing,
differ from other women in being very seldom new.)
Then mamma’s eyes rested on her chubby, beautiful
baby, Una, lolling on the hearthrug, one light brown
pigtail over each shoulder, reading, with calm and lovely
blue eyes, some dreadful rubbish in the Boy's Ozvn
Paper, her cheek bulged out with a lump of toffee. A
nice, good, placid child of fifteen, who never thought,
never read anything but tosh, talked in slang, and took
life as it came, cheerful, unquestioning and serene. Una
was the least clever and the best balanced of the Gar-
dens. She was going, when she was older, to look
rather like the Sistine Madonna.
How unlike her happy, handsome solidity was to
Rome! Rome lay back on her couch, her face like a
clear white cameo against deep blue cushions, the lamp-
light shining on her fair, silky curls, cut short in one
of the manners of the day. Rome’s thin lips twisted
easily into pain and laughter; her jade-green eyes
mocked and watched. “I’m afraid of your sister. SheVICTORIAN
27
looks as if she was going to put us all into a book,”
people would sometimes say of her to the others. But
Rome never wrote about anything or anyone; it was
not worth while.
3
SISTERS IN THE GARDEN
Maurice threw down the second serial part of
“Theophrastus Such,” which had just come out.
“The woman’s going all to pieces,” he said, in his
crisp, quick, disgusted voice. “Sermonising and tosh.
. . . The fact is,” said Maurice, “the fact is, the novel,
anyhow in this country, has had its day. Except for
the unpretending thrillers. We should give it a rest.
The poets still have things to say and are saying them
(though not so well as they used to; their palmy days
are over, too), but not the novelists” ....
Vicky, to drown his discourse, began to sing loud
and clear-----
“When I was a young maid, a young maid, a young
maid . .
“Of course she’s old,” went on Maurice, referring
to Mary Ann Evans. “And she’s been spoilt. She’s
not a teacher, she’s a novelist. Or she was. Now she’s
dropped being a novelist and become merely a preacher.
That’s the end of her. I wish to God people would
know their job and stick to it. She was a jolly good
novelist. . . . Sorry, pater”—Mr. Garden had frowned
at the expletive—“but I didn’t think you’d mind—now.
I suppose you and I are both agreed, aren’t we, as to
the non-existence of a Deity.”
“All the same, my dear boy . . .’’
All the same (this was Rome’s thought), papa had28
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
so recently believed in a Deity, and would, no doubt, so
soon again believe in a Deity, that it seemed bad taste
to fill the brief interim with vain oaths. Maurice had
no reverence at all, and no taste. You would think, as
Vicky turned from the piano to say, that, whatever he
did or didn't believe himself, he might remember that
some people were not only Christians but Church, and
High Church at that. But Maurice only grinned at
her. She tweaked his fair crest in passing and ar-
ranged her own glossy chestnut coiffure at the painted
looking-glass over the chimney-piece. This Rossetti
shape suited her, she thought, better than the high coils
of last year.
The parlourmaid announced the curate, a good-look-
ing, intelligent, cheerful young man whom they all
liked. He had hardly shaken hands when Mr. Garden
said to him, “I want a talk with you, Carter,” and took
him off to the study, to break it to him about the
Ethical Society.
“Papa might just as well have told him here,” Vicky
petulantly said. “It would only have needed a sentence,
and then we could have had a jolly evening.”
“Of course papa feels he must go into it thoroughly
with Mr. Carter,” said mamma. “Poor Mr. Carter
will be dreadfully hurt by it, I’m afraid. He has
always been so fond of papa, and he has never himself
seen any reason for doubt.”
“There is no reason for doubt,” muttered Vicky, be-
neath her breath. Then, louder, impatience conquering
respect, “What does papa think the Church is for, ex-
cept to tell us what we can’t know for ourselves about
what to believe?”
Mamma replied, taking up her embroidery, “Papa
doesn’t know what the Church is for. That is his greatVICTORIAN
29
difficulty. And, Vicky, it is not for us, who have
studied so much less, to protest . . . ”
“Well,” said Vicky, “I shall go into the garden. It’s
a night for men and angels. Come on, Stan.”
Stanley came, and the sisters paced together, wrapped
in shawls, down the gravel path beneath a deep blue sky
full of frosty, twinkling stars and the pale glow which
precedes winter moonrise. It was one of those frosty
Christmases which our parents (they say) used to have
in their youths. Hot summers and frosty winters—
that is what they say they used to have: one is not
obliged to believe them, but it is a picturesque thought.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Stannie. I shall
get married.”
“Who to, Vicky?”
“Ah!” Vicky’s long eyes were mysterious in the
starlight. “Perhaps I’ve not made up my mind yet;
perhaps I have. All I do know is that I’m not going
to live round about South Place, Finsbury Pave-
ment, on £400 a year juse because papa must needs go
to an ethical chapel. I—shall—get—married. And
well married, too. Why not? I can, you know, if
I want to.”
“Captain Penrose,” said Stanley.
“He’s not the only one, my child. There are others.
No, I shan’t tell you a word more now. You wait and
see. And when I’m married you shall come and stay
with me and meet lots and lots of men.”
Lots and lots of men. The kind of men who’d be
friends with Vicky and Captain Penrose (or whoever
else Mr. Vicky might prove to be).
“I shall be busy, you know,” said Stanley, doubtful
and conceited. “I shall have very little spare time if
I take up weaving and dyeing.”30
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“Don’t take up weaving and dyeing. It’s shockingly
cranky anyway, all this Morris craze of yours.”
“All the best things are thought cranky at first.”
“Don’t you believe it. The new princess dress
isn’t. . . . Now mind, I’m saying this for your good,
my dear; men won’t look at you if you go about with
dyed hands and talk about manual labour and the one-
man job and the return of beauty to the home.”
“Vicky, you’re vulgar. And as I don’t mean to marry
what does it matter if they look at me or not?”
“Oh, tell that to the marines. . . . I’m getting
frozen. Come along in and we’ll turn the curate’s head,
unless papa’s still breaking his heart. . . . You’re a
little prig, Stan, that’s your trouble, my child.”
It was quite true. Stanley was a little prig. She not
only read Ruskin and Morris and Karl Marx but
quoted them. There came a day, later on, when she saw
through Ruskin, but it is no use pretending that that
day was yet. She was a prig and believed that it was up
to such as she to reform the world. She saw herself
(at the moment, for her vision of herself varied) as
the modern woman, clever, emancipated, high-minded,
too intellectually fastidious to take the vulgar view.
She took herself seriously, in spite of the childish giggle
at the comedy of life which broke like gurgling water
through her earnestness.
“The first Nowell the angels did sing,” sang Vicky,
in her clear, fluting voice, and danced in at the drawing-
room window.
4
MAMMA AND ROME
Mamma sat by Rome’s side and embroidered, while
papa interviewed his curate in the study. You couldVICTORIAN
3i
see, now these two sat together, that they were alike,
not so much in feature or colour as in some under-
lying, elusive essence of personality. But Rome's
mocking, amused, critical self looked ironically out of
her blue-green eyes and mamma's dwelt very still and
deep within her.
“Well, mamma." Rome put down her book, which
was by Anatole France.
“Well, Rome."
“You don't much mind this." Rome was comment-
ing, not enquiring.
“Oh, no." Mamma was placid. “Not," she added,
“that I want to live in London particularly. Dirty
place. No gardens."
Rome said, definitely, “I prefer London," and
mamma nodded. Rome was urbane. Negligent, fop-
pish and cool, she liked to watch life at its games, be
flicked by the edges of its flying skirts. And the game
,of life was more varied and entertaining in London
than in the country and equally absurd. So Rome
preferred London. It was like having a better seat at
the play. Lack of bodily energy threw her back largely
in the country on to the entertainment of her own
rather cynical mind. She was often bored, sometimes
ill-humoured, sharp and morose. The years might bring
her a greater patience, but at twenty she was not patient.
The very sharp clarity of her mind, that chafed against
muddled thinking, stupidity, humbug and sentimen-
tality, made intercourse difficult for her in the country,
where Heaven has ordained that even fewer persons
shall reside who are free from these things than is the
case in large towns.
“How long," enquired Rome, negligently, slipping32
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
round an old silver ring on her thin white finger, “do
you give the Ethical Church, mamma?”
Mamma was feather-stitching, rapidly and correctly.
The movement of her head indicated that she declined
to prophesy.
“No point in looking ahead,” she said practically.
“One always sees a change a little while before it comes,
in time to be prepared; and that’s all we need. Papa is
never sudden.”
The whimsical smile that twitched at one corner of
Rome’s thin mouth was unreturned by mamma, whose
face was gravely bent over her work. Mamma was a
good wife and never joked with her children about
papa’s vagaries. No one had ever got behind mamma’s
guard in the matter of papa—if it was a guard. Who
could see into mamma’s mind, idly speculated Rome.
Mamma had, by forty-five years of age, achieved a kind
of delicate impenetrability. Papa, at fifty, was as limpid
as the clear water of a running stream, where you may
watch the fishes swimming to and fro, round and round.
Papa came back, alone and looking hurt. At the
same moment Vicky came in at the long window, pink-
cheeked, smelling of frost.
“Where’s Mr. Carter, papa?”
“Gone away, Vicky. He—he couldn’t stop.”
“I suppose he was shocked to death. Oh, well. . .
But, of them all, only mamma knew how shocked the
orthodox people of the seventies were about matters of
unbelief. The children had been brought up in the
wrong atmosphere really to know it. Mamma knew
that to Mr. Carter papa’s action would seem dreadful,
blasphemous, very nearly wicked.
“After all,” said Vicky, impatiently, “we’re living in
the year 1879. We’re moderns after all.”VICTORIAN
33
Dashingly modem Vicky looked in her sinuous art-
green dress, with her massed Rossetti hair and jade
earrings. Daringly, brilliantly modern, and all agog
for life. A dashing girl, as they called them in 1879—
if a girl bitten with aestheticism can still dash, and it
may be taken for granted that dashing girls will always
dash, whatever bites them. Catching up slim young
Irving from his chair, Vicky twirled him round the
room in a waltz.
S
BLOOMSBURY AND SOUTH PLACE
In February the Gardens moved to Bloomsbury.
Different people and more people came to the house;
it was rather like the old days when papa had been a
Unitarian. Mr. Stopford Brooke began coming to see
papa again, and Dr. Martineau, and all his old and new
friends who lived in London, even Father Stanton of
St. Alban’s, Holborn, and Mr. Charles Spurgeon. The
circle of papa’s friends had swollen and swollen with
the years, from his undergraduate days onwards. Not
only was papa lovable and popular, but he touched so
many circles, fished in so many waters, and his fellow«
fishermen of each particular water usually remained
faithful to him even when he moved on to another pool.
Good-humoured, witty Mr. Spurgeon, for instance, did
not break with papa when he deserted the City Temple
for a second go of Anglicanism, though he was sadly
disappointed in him. Nor were papa’s interests bound
by religion; he had friends, distinguished and indis-
tinguished, among politicians, journalists, poets, pro-
fessors and social reformers, besides his relatives and
mamma’s. And now, of course, there was a quite fresh34
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
influx from the South Place Ethical Chapel. So, one
way and another, what with papa’s friends and
mamma’s and the children’s, a good deal of life flowed
into the Bloomsbury Square house. Papa was, in his
quiet way, happy now that the wrench was over. He
was writing, and had for years been writing, a very
long book on comparative religions, and for this he
worked at the British Museum, which was so conven-
iently near. And on Sundays he went to South Place
and worshipped ethically.
“Do not crouch to-day and worship,”
he would sing in his sweet tenor voice,
“The old past, whose life is fled;
Hush your voice to tender reverence,
Crowned he lies, but cold and dead.
For the present reigns our monarch,
With an added weight of hours;
Honour her, for she is mighty!
Honour her, for she is ours!”
(The author, Miss Adelaide Procter, had very
rightly, it will be noted, dethroned a male and en-
throned a female.)
So sang papa and mamma on- a Sunday morning in
April. Then someone rose and said a few ethical words
about the desirability of not being fettered by religious
dogma, and the congregation, who all thought this de-
sirable too, listened attentively.
Papa gazed wistfully in front of him at the varnished
seats and painted woodwork and the ethical texts
inscribed round the walls. “Live for Others.” “Live
Nobly.” “Duty First.” He had made the great sacri-VICTORIAN
35
fice, and once more dethroned the past for honesty’s
sake, and if it entailed a jarring of literary and artistic
fastidiousness, who was he to rebel? God knew, he
had been aesthetically happier joining in the Roman
mass (tawdry and vulgar-looking as the churches where
this service is held so often are) or chanting the An-
glican liturgy in the little fourteenth-century church in
Hampshire—though, as to that, some of the Hymns
A. & M. were quite as bad as anything in the ethical
hymn-book—but never had he been so utterly honest,
so stripped to the bare bone of all complacency, humbug
and self-deception as now. Or so, anyhow, he believed,
but who shall read the human heart ?
Again they sang :
“Hush the loud cannon’s roar,
The frantic warrior’s call!
Why should the earth be drenched in gore ?
Are we not brothers all ?”
For, sad to say, the earth was, in the spring of 1880,
drenched (as usual) in gore. The gore of Afghans
and British in Afghanistan, of Basutos in Basutoland,
Chilians and Bolivians in South America, Liberals
and Conservatives in Great Britain, where the elections
were being fiercely contested, besides such permanently
flowing gore as that of Jews in Russia and Christians
in Turkey. The Ethical Society hoped pathetically that
all these so unlikely persons would enjoy peace and
brotherhood one day.
They trooped out into South Place. Grave, intelli-
gent, ethical men and women clustered and hummed
together like bees. They talked about the elections,
which were going well, for nearly all the Ethical mem-36
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
bers were Liberals and the Liberals were sweeping the
country.
“Why are Ethical members Liberals?” Rome en-
quired in the note book to which she committed as much
of her private commentary on life as ever found its
way to paper. “Partly, no doubt, because of the liberal
attitude towards religion, but it must be more than that.
T.C.” “T.C.” meant “trace connection” and was a very
frequent entry. Rome looked forward to a time when,
by means of prolonged investigation, all the connections
she had noted should be traced; that, she held, would
add to her understanding of this strange, amusing life.
What, for instance, was the connection between High
Church dogma and ornate ritual, between belief in class
distinctions and in the British Empire, between dissent
and Little Englandism, art and unconventional morals,
the bourgeoisie and respectability, socialism and queer
clothes ? All these pairs and many others were marked
T.C. and had a little space under them, in which the
connection, when traced, was explained in concise and
lucid language. In another part of the book there were
pages assigned to “Curious uses of words.” Rome felt
a great, perhaps a morbid, interest in investigating life
and language. She wrote “Why are Ethical members
Liberals?” when papa and mamma coming in from
chapel told her how delighted South Place was with the
elections. Papa, of course, had always been a Liberal
through all his religious vicissitudes.
Vicky came in like a graceful whirlwind from
Walworth, S.E., where she had attended church at St.
Austin's, the monastery of Brother a Beckett, and flung
herself into a chair in ecstasy.
“A service straight from heaven!” she cried. “Too
utterly utter! Such incense—perfumes of Araby! AndVICTORIAN
37
Brother a Beckett preached about the authority of the
State over the Church. It simply doesn't exist. The
State is nowhere and not to be taken the slightest notice
of. . . . And who do you think was there, just in
front of us—Mr. Pater, and the adorable Oscar in a
velveteen coat, looking like the prince of men and talk-
ing like the king of wits (yes, mamma, talking, but in
quite an undertone). But too utter! I was devastated.
I was with Charles. I’d made him come with me to
try if grace would abound—but no, not yet; Charles
remains without, with the dogs and the . . .”
“Vicky,” mamma interpolated.
. . and the sorcerers, mamma dear,” Vicky fin-
ished, innocently. “What did you think I was going
to say?”
“You must allow Charles his conscience, Vicky,”
said papa.
Charles was Vicky’s half-affianced suitor, but unfor-
tunately an agnostic, or rather a Gallio, and Vicky de-
clared that they should not become regularly engaged
until such time as Charles should embrace the Anglican,
or some other equally to be respected, church. Unbe-
lief might be fashionable, but Vicky didn’t hold with it.
Also, and worse, Charles was not yet in the aesthetic
push; he was, instead, in the Foreign Office, and took
no interest in the New Beauty. Velveteen coats he dis-
liked, and art fabrics, and lilies, except in gardens, and
languor except in offices, and vice except in the places
appointed for it. And all these distastes would, as
Vicky complained, make the parties they would give
such a difficulty. Vicky told Charles that, unless he
conquered them, she might feel compelled to become
affianced instead to Mr. Ernest Waller, a young essay-
ist who understood Beauty, though not, indeed, An-38
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
glicanism, as he had been a pupil of Mr. Pater’s in the
days when Mr. Pater had been something of a pagan.
But better burn incense before heathen gods, said Vicky,
than burn none at all.
So, when papa said, “You must allow Charles his
conscience," Vicky returned, firmly, “Dear papa, no.
Conscience should be our servant, not our master.
That's what Brother a Beckett said in his sermon this
morning. Or, anyhow, something like it. Conscience
is given us to be educated and trained up the way it
should go. An unruly conscience is an endless nuisance.
He that bridleth not his own conscience . . ."
Papa, sensible of his own so inconveniently un-
bridled conscience, said, mildly, “I think Brother a
Beckett was perhaps referring to the tongue," and
Vicky lightly admitted that her memory might have got
confused.
“But never mind sermons and the conscience, here’s
grandpapa," she said, and sure enough, there was
grandpapa, who was staying with them on a visit.
Grandpapa was the father of mamma and a Dean, and
was a very handsome man of seventy-five, and he was
one of the last ditchers in the matter of orthodoxy and
had yielded no inch to science or the higher criticism,
and believed in the verbal inspiration of the Bible and
the divine credentials of the Anglican Establishment,
and disliked popery, ritual, dissent and free thought
with equal coldness. Papa he had never approved of;
a weak, vacillating fellow, whose reputation was little
affected by one disgraceful change more or less. It did
not particularly signify that papa had joined the Ethical
Church; nothing about papa particularly signified; a
weak, wrong-headed, silly fellow, who would certainly,
for all his scholarship, never be a Dean. It was farVICTORIAN
39
more distressing that Anne (mamma), who ought to
have made a firm stand and saved her husband from
his folly, should thus abet him and follow him about
from church to church. And the children had been
deplorably brought up. Grandpapa, who thought it
blasphemous not to believe in Noah and his ark, and
even in the date assigned to these by Bishop Ussher,
and had written to the Times protesting against the
use in schools of the arithmetic book of Bishop Colenso
on account of the modernist instruction imparted by
this Bishop to the heathen in this matter of the date of
the ark—grandpapa heard these unhappy children of
his daughter’s discussing the very bases of revealed
truth; grandpapa, who held that our first parents lost
paradise through disobedience, pride, inquisitiveness
and false modesty, heard Maurice’s perverse defiance
of law and authority, Rome’s calm contempt and con-
ceited criticism of accepted standards, Stanley’s inces-
sant, eager, “Why, what for, and why not?” and
Vicky’s horror at the breadth and crudeness of the
Prayer Book marriage service.
Grandpapa, being a Conservative and a Disraelian,
was just now not well pleased. He did not think that
the Gladstone Government would be able to deal ade-
quately or rightly with the inheritance of foreign re-
sponsibilities left them by their predecessors. South
Africa, Egypt, Afghanistan—what would the Liberals,
many of them Little Englanders in fact though not yet
in name, do with all this white man’s burden, as the
responsibilities of Empire were so soon, so horribly
soon, to be called? Had grandpapa thought of it, he
would certainly have called them that. His grandson,
Maurice, called them, on the other hand, “all those40
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
damned little Tory wars,” a difference in nomenclature
which indicated a real difference in political attitude.
Grandpapa entered with the Observer, which re-
gretted as he did the way the elections had gone, and
with the Guardian, which did not. He sat down and
patted Vicky on the shoulder, and said that Canon Lid-
don had preached at St. Paul’s, where he had attended
morning service.
“A capital defence of the faith,” said grandpapa.
“Bones to it, and substance. None of your sentimental
slop. You’ve all been running after ethics, or ritual,
or this, that and the other, but I’ve had the pure Word.
Liddon’s too high, but he’s sound. I remember in
9SS
One of grandpapa’s familiar stories, told as old
people told their stories, with loving rounding of detail.
Vicky’s mind reached vainly back towards ’55 and
could not get there. Crinolines and sweeping whiskers,
the pre-Raphaelites and the Crimea, Bible orthodoxy
and the Tractarians, all the great Victorians. A dim,
entrancing period, when papa and mamma were getting
married and people were too old-fashioned to see life
straight as it was. And to grandpapa ’55 was quite
lately, just the other day, and ’80 was like an engine got
loose from its train and dashing madly in advance,
heading precipitately for a crash.
“I remember,” said grandpapa, “I remember . .
Papa said, “That was the year King’s College asked
Maurice to retire because of Theological Essays.’ ”
What dull things elderly people remembered!
“Next Sunday,” said Vicky, “I shall take Charles to
South Place, papa. I hear Mr. Pater is preaching there.
Too sweet and quaint; he preaches everywhere. And
often the divine Oscar sits under him.”VICTORIAN
4i
6
STANLEY AND ROME
Maurice and Stanley were back from Cambridge and
Oxford for the Easter vacation, talking, talking, talk-
ing. Stanley, in a crimson stockinette jersey, tight like
an eel’s skin, and a tight little brown skirt caught in at
the knees, her chubby face pink with excitement and
health, talked of Oxford, of the river, of lectures, of
Mr. Pater and of friendship. Friendship was like
dancing flames to Stanley in this her first Oxford year;
a radiant, painful apocalypse of joy.
“Are they so splendid?” Rome speculated of these
glorious girls. “Is anyone so splendid, ever?”
She sat idly, her hands clasped behind her short silky
curls, Mallock’s “New Republic” open at her side. Stan-
ley sat on the edge of a table and swung her legs. How
romantic Stanley was! What were girls, what, indeed,
were boys either, that such a halo should encircle their
foolish heads?
There was proceeding at this time a now long-forgot-
ten campaign called the Woman’s Movement, and on
to the gay, youthful fringe of this Stanley and her
friends were catching. Women, long suppressed, were
emerging; women were to be doctors, lawyers, human
beings, everything; women were to have their share of
the earth, their share of adventure, to flourish in all the
arts, ride perched in hansom cabs, even on monstrous
bicycles, find the North Pole. ...
“Too energetic for me,” Rome commented.
“Oh, but you'll be a great writer, perhaps.”
“No. Why? There’s nothing I want to write.42
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
What’s the use of writing? Too much of that already.
. . . Oh, well, go on about Oxford, Stan. You don’t
convince me that it’s anything but a very ordinary place
full of quite ordinary people, but I rather like to hear
you being absurd.”
Rome’s faint, delicately thin voice expressed ac-
quiescent but not scornful irony. Stanley was a bore
sometimes, but an intelligent bore. She went on about
Oxford and Mr. Pater and some lectures on art by
William Morris that she had been to. Stanley was
drunk with beauty; she was plunging deep into the
aesthetic movement on whose surface Vicky played.
“You know, Rome,” she puckered her forehead over
it, “more and more I feel that the merely aesthetic peo-
ple are on the wrong tack. Beauty for ourselves can’t
be enough; it’s got to be made possible for everyone.
. . . That’s where Vicky and her friends are off it.
A lily in a blue vase all to yourself isn’t enough. All
this”—she looked round at the Liberty room, the pea-
cock patterns, the willow pattern china, the oak settle—
“all this—it’s not fair we should be able to have it
when everyone can’t. It’s greedy . .
“Everyone’s greedy.”
“No,” said Stanley, and her eyes glowed, for she
was thinking of her splendid friends. “No. Greedi-
ness is in everyone, but it can be conquered. Socialism
is the way. ... I wish you could meet Evelyn Peters.
She’s joined the Social Democratic Federation. . . .
I want to ask her here to stay in June. She’s not just
an ordinary person, you know. She’s splendid. She’s
six years older than me, and enormously cleverer, and
she’s read everything and met everyone. ... I can’t
tell you how I feel about her.”
Obvious, thought Rome, how Stanley felt with herVICTORIAN
43
shining eyes and flushed cheeks, and shy, changing
voice. In love; that was what Stanley was. Stanley
was for ever in and out of love; she had been the same
all through her school days. So had Vicky, but with
Vicky it was men, and less romantic and earnest. Stan-
ley was always flinging her whole being prostrate in
adoring enthusiasm before someone or something,
funny child. She was looking at Rome now in shy,
gleaming hesitation, wondering if Rome were despising
her, laughing at her, but not able to keep Evelyn Peters
to herself. To say “Evelyn Peters is my friend” was
an exquisite aesthetic joy and made their friendship a
more real, achieved thing.
Rome felt a little uncomfortable behind her bland
nonchalance; Stanley's emotions were so strong.
7
GRANDPAPA
When Maurice was there Stanley did not talk about
her friends; such talk was not suitable for Maurice,
whose own friendships were so different. Often in
these days they talked politics. Maurice was a radical.
“Chamberlain's the man,” he said, “Chamberlain and
Dilke. Whiggery's played out; dead as mutton. Mild
liberalism has had its day. Yes, pater, your day is
over. The seventies have been the heyday of liberal-
ism. I grant you it's done well—Education Act, Irish
disestablishment, abolition of tests, and so on. Such
obvious reforms, you see, that every sane person has
had to be a Liberal. That's watered liberalism down.
Now we've got to go further, and only the extremists44
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
will stick on; the old gang will desert. Radicalism’s
the only thing for England now.”
Maurice, pacing the room with his quick little steps,
his h?mds in his pockets, his chin in the air, would talk
thus in his crisp, rapid, asseverating voice, even to
grandpapa, who had, when he had done the same thing
as a schoolboy, ordered him out of the room for im-
pertinence. Grandpapa and Maurice did not, in fact,
each really like the other—obstinate age and opinionated
youth. Because grandpapa was in the room, Maurice
said, “They’ve returned old Bradlaugh for Northamp-
ton all right. Now we shall see some fun,” and grand-
papa said, “Don’t mention that abominable blasphemer
in my presence.”
Papa said, gently, with his cultured tolerance, “A
good deal, I fancy, has been attributed to Bradlaugh
of which he has not been guilty.”
“Are you denying,” enquired grandpapa, “that the
fellow is a miserable blaspheming atheist and a Mal-
thusian?”
“An atheist,” papa admitted, discreetly passing over
the last charge, “no doubt he is. And very undesirably
coarse and violent in his methods of controversy and
propaganda. But I am not sure that the charge of
blasphemy is a fair one, on the evidence we have.”
“Any man,” said grandpapa, sharply, “who denies
his Maker blasphemes.”
“In that case,” said Maurice, moodily, “I blaspheme,”
and left the room.
Papa apologised for him.
“You must forgive the boy; he is still crude.”
Grandpapa shut his firm mouth tightly, and Rome
thought, “He is still cruder.”
Vicky asked lightly, “What is a Malthusian, grand-VICTORIAN
45
papa?” and grandpapa, who came of a coarse and out-
spoken generation, snapped, “A follower of Malthus.”
“And who was Malthus, grandpapa?"
Grandpapa, catching his daughter's eye, and recol-
lecting that it was the year 1880, not the coarse period
of his own youth, hummed and cleared his throat and
said, “A very ungentlemanly fellow, my dear."
And that was all about Malthus that young misses of
1880 needed to know. Or so their elders believed. But
in 1880, as now, young misses often knew more than
their parents and grandparents supposed. Rome and
Stanley, better read in history than Vicky, could have
enlightened both her and grandpapa on the theme of
Malthus.
8
DISCUSSING RELIGION
It was a good thing that grandpapa's visit ended next
day. Without him Maurice was better-mannered, less
truculent. They could then discuss Radicalism, Brad-
laugh, blasphemy, beauty, Malthus and the elections,
en famille, without prejudice. They were, as a family,
immense talkers, inordinate arguers. The only two who
did not discuss life at large were Irving and Una; their
conversation was and always would be of the lives
they personally led, and those led by such animals as
they kept. The lives led by others worried them not
at all. They recked not of the Woman's Movement,
but Irving amiably held Maurice's high bicycle while
Stanley, divested of her tight skirt and clad in a pair of
his knickerbockers, mounted it and pedalled round and
round the quiet square. It was Irving who knew that46
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
a lower kind of bicycle was on its way, had even been
seen in embryo.
“But girls’ll never ride it,” he opined. “That's jolly
certain.”
“Girls will probably be wearing knickerbockers in a
year or two,” Stanley, always hopeful, asserted. “For
exercise and games and things. Or else a new kind of
skirt will come in, short and wide. Our clothes are
absurd.”
“Women's clothes always are,” said Irving, content
that this should be so.
Stanley would rush in, happy and bruised, assume
again her absurd, caught-in-at-the-knees skirt, and argue
desperately with Maurice about Christian socialism.
Stanley was a Christian, ardent and practical; that was
the effect Oxford was having on her. She privately
wondered how papa, having known and loved Oxford,
could bear the Ethical Church. But probably the Ox-
ford Anglicanism of papa's day had not been so inspir-
ing.
Vicky told Stanley that socialism, Christian or un-
Christian, was very crude; religion was an affair of art
and beauty, not of economics.
“Religion—oh, I don't know.” Stanley wondered,
frowning. “What is religion, Rome?”
Rome, looking up from Samuel Butler, merely said,
“How should I know? You'd better ask papa. He
should know; he's writing a book about it.”
“No; I didn't mean comparative religions. I mean
religion. ...”
“A primitive insurance against disaster,” Maurice
defined it. He always looked up and took notice when
, religion was mentioned; to this family the word was
like “rats” to a dog, owing, perhaps, to their manyVICTORIAN
47
clerical ancestors, perhaps to the fact that they were
latish Victorians.
“But it courts disaster. . . Stanley was sure of
that. “Look where it leads people. Into all sorts of
hardships and dangers and sacrifices. Look at Chris-
tianity—in the Gospels, I mean.”
“That’s a perversion. Originally religion was merely
a function of the self-preservative instinct. Offer sac-
rifices to the gods and save your crops. And even
Christianity, after all, insures heavily against the flaws
in this life by belief in another.”
“What about the Ethical Church? They don’t be-
lieve in another.”
“A perversion too. A mere sop thrown to the re-
ligious instinct by people who don’t like to starve it alto-
gether. A morbid absurdity. A house without founda-
tions. If they simply mean, as they appear to, that
they think they ought to be good, why meet in South
Place and sing about it?”
“Why,” enquired Rome, who never did so, “meet
anywhere and sing about anything?”
“Why,” said Maurice, “indeed? A morbid instinct
inherent in human nature. Mine, I am glad to say, is
untainted by it; so is yours, Rome. Vicky has it badly,
and Stanley, who gets everything in turns, has it on
and off, but she is young and may get over it. . . .
The queer thing about Stanley is that she’s trying to
run two quite incompatible things at the same time.
^Esthetics and Christian Socialism—you might as well
be a cricketer and a rowing man, or hang Dickens and
Whistler together on your walls. The aesthetes may
go slumming, in the absurd way Vicky does, but they’ve
no use for socialism.”
“I’m not an aesthete,” Stanley cried, finding it out48
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
suddenly. “I’m through with that. I’m going in with
the socialists all the way. I shall join the Socialist
Democratic Federation at once.”
That was Stanley’s headlong manner of entering into
movements. She was a great and impetuous joiner.
But Rome, playing with her monocle on its dangling
ribbon, looked at all movements with fastidious rejec-
tion. Cui, her faintly mocking regard would seem to
enquire, bono?
9
DISCUSSING UFli
1880 pursued its way. Mr. Gladstone formed his
cabinet of sober peers and startling commoners, the
new parliament met, the Radicals at once began to shock
the Whigs with their unheard-of proposals for so-
called reform, Lord Randolph Churchill and his Fourth
Party mounted guard, brisk and pert, in the offing,
Parnell and his thirty-five Irishmen scowled from an-
other offing, demanding the three F’s, and, for a special
comic turn side-show, Mr. Bradlaugh, the unbeliever,
was hustled in and out of the House, claiming to affirm,
being ejected with violence, returning at a rush, ejected
yet again, and so on and so forth, until gentlemanly
unbelievers said, “A disgraceful business. Why can’t
the man behave like other agnostics, without all this
fuss?” and gentlemanly Christians said, “Why can’t
the House let him alone?” and the dignified press said,
“It is repugnant to public opinion that one who openly
denies his God should be allowed in a House represen-
tative of a great Christian nation,” for, believe it or
not as you choose, that was the way the press still talked
in the year 1880.VICTORIAN
49
Maurice Garden and his friends at Cambridge greeted
Mr. Bradlaugh’s determined onslaughts with encourag-
ing cheers. Maurice Garden enjoyed battle, and he
rightly thought the cause of liberty of thought served
by this tempestuous affair.
Freedom: that was at this time the obsession of
Maurice Garden and his compeers. Freedom of
thought, freedom of speech (though not, of course, of
action), freedom of small nations (such as Armenia,
Ireland, Poland and the Transvaal Boers), for that was
a catchword among our forefathers of the nineteenth
century; freedom even of large ones, such as India;
freedom of women, that strange, thin cry raised so far
only by sparse, sporadic groups, freedom of labour
(whatever that may have meant, and Maurice Garden,
a clear-thinking young man, could have told you pre-
cisely and at length what he meant by it), freedom
even of Russians, that last word in improbabilities.
“Freedom?” queried Rome. “A word that wants
defining,” and that was all she had to say of it. While
Maurice and Stanley went, hot heads down, for the
kernel, she was for ever meticulously, aloofly, fingering
the shell, reducing it to absurdity. That seemed, at
times, to be all that Rome cared about, all she had the
humanity, the vital energy, to seek. Stanley, rushing
buoyantly through Oxford, seizing upon this new idea
and that, eagerly mapping out her future, ardently
burning her present candle at both ends, intellectually,
socially and athletically (so far as young women were
allowed to be athletic in those days, when hockey and
bicycling had not come in and lawn tennis consisted in
lobbing a ball gently over a net with a racket weighing
seventeen pounds and shaped like a crooked spoon)—
Stanley seemed to Rome, whom God had saved fromTOLD BY AN IDIOT
too much love of living, amusingly violent and crude.
They were oddly different, these four sisters; Vicky
so spritely, Rome so cool, Stanley so eager, Una so
placid.
“Your languid indifference is tip-top form, my dear,”
Vicky would say to Rome. “You’re fin-de-siecle—
that's utterly the last word to-day. But I can’t emulate
you.”
“Don’t you want to do anything, Rome?” Stanley,
home for the long vacation, asked, and Rome's eye-
brows went up.
“Do anything? Jamais de ma vie. What should I
do?”
“Well, anything. Any of the things women do.
Teaching. Settlement work. Doctoring. Writing.
Painting. Anything.''
“What a list! What frightful labours! I do not.”
“But aren't you bored?”
“In moderation. I survive. I even amuse myself.”
“I think, you know, that women ought to do things,
just as much as men.”
“And just as little. What's worth doing, after all?”
“Things need doing. The world is so shocking. . . .
All this time women have been suppressed and kept
under and not allowed to help in putting things right,
and now they’re just getting free . . .”
“There's one thing about freedom” (a word upon
which Rome had of late been speculating) ; “each gen-
eration of people begins by thinking they've got it for
the first time in history, and ends by being sure the
generation younger than themselves have too much of
it. It can't really always have been increasing at the
rate people suppose, or there would be more of it by
now.”VICTORIAN
51
“It’s only lately begun, for women. What was there
for mamma to do, when she was young? Nothing.
Only to marry papa. But now . . .”
“What is there for Vicky to do, now she’s young?
Nothing. Only to marry Charles—or another.”
“Oh, well, Vicky slums. And she could do any of
the other things if she liked. . . . Anyhow, Rome,
you’re not supporting marriage as the only woman’s
job worth doing!”
“No. Not even marriage. Perhaps, in fact, mar-
riage less than most things. I only said it is, so far
as one can infer, Vicky’s job. . . . The only job worth
doing in this curious fantasia of a world, as I see it, is
to amuse oneself as well as may be and to get through
it with no more trouble than need be. What else is
there?”
With all the desperate needs of the certainly curious
but as certainly necessitous world crying in her ears,
with vistas of adventure and achievement stretching
inimitably before her eyes, Stanley found this too im-
mense a question. She could only answer it with an-
other. “Why do you think we were born, then?” and
Rome’s matter of fact “Obviously because papa and
mamma got married” sent her sulkily away to play
cricket on the lawn with Irving and Una. Apathy,
languor, selfishness, did very greatly anger her. She
was the more troubled in that she knew Rome to be
clever—cleverer than herself. Rome could have done
anything, and elected to do nothing. Rome would
probably not even marry; her caustic tongue and cool
indifference kept those who admired her at arm’s
length; she made them feel that any expression of
regard was an error in taste; she shrivelled it up by an52
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
amused, enquiring look through the deadly monocle she
placed in one blue-green eye for the purpose.
10
VICKY GETS MARRIED
Vicky, on the contrary, became, during this summer,
definitely affianced to Charles, whom she decided to
marry next spring. She had not, as yet, made of
Charles either an aesthete or a ritualist, but these
things, she hoped, would come after marriage, and
anyhow Charles was intelligent, his career promised
well, he had sufficient income, and, in fine, she loved
him.
“The main thing, after all, Vicky,” papa inevitably
said.
“No, papa; the main thing is that the American mer-
chant princesses are descending on the land like locusts,
and that if I don’t secure Charles they will, even though
he hasn’t a title—yet.	He’s so obviously a distin-
guished person in embryo. American merchant prin-
cesses have brains.”
Vicky, having surrendered, put on a new tenderness,
even an occasional gravity. It was as if you could
catch glimpses here and there of the gay wife and
mother that was to supersede the flighty girl. Beneath
her chaff and bickerings with her Charles, her love
swelled into that stream so necessary to carry her
through the long and arduous business. She did her
shopping for her new life with gusto and taste, tem-
pering Morris picturesqueness with Chippendale ele-
gance, chasing Queen Anne with unflagging energy
from auction to auction and from one Israelitish shonVICTORIAN
53
to another, tinkling the while with snakish bangles,
swinging golden swine from her ears, as was the bar-
barous and yet graceful custom of our ancestresses in
that year.
ii
MAURICE STARTS LIFE
Maurice left Cambridge, armed with a distinguished
first in his classical tripos.
“And now what?” enquired papa, indulgently.
“Wilbur has offered me a job on the New View.
That will do me, for a bit.”
The Nezv View was a weekly paper of the early
eighties, started to defeat Whiggery by the spread of
Radicalism. Its gods were Sir Charles Dilke and Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain, its objects to introduce a more
democratic taxation, to reform the suffrage, to free
Ireland, to curtail Empire, and so forth. As its will
was strong, it suffered but it did not suffer long, and is,
in fact, now forgotten but by the seekers among the
pathetic chronicles of wasted years. All the same, it
was, in its brief day, not unfruitful of good; it was
deeply, if not widely, respected, and many of our more
intelligent forbears wrote for it for a space, particu-
larly that generation which left the Universities round
about the year 1880. It was hoped by some of them
(including Maurice Garden), that it would make a
good jumping off ground for a political career. As it
turned out, the first thing into which Maurice jumped
off from it was love. At dinner at the Wilburs’ he met
Amy Wilbur, the young daughter of his editor. She
was small and ivory-coloured, with long dark eyes
under slanting brows, a large, round, shallow dimple54
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
in each smooth cheek, a small tilting red mouth (red
even in those days, when lip salve was not used except
in the half world), a smooth, childlike voice and a laugh
like silver bells. Maurice thought her like a geisha
out of the new opera, “The Mikado,” and was enchanted
with her lovely gaiety. Such is love and its blindness
that Maurice, who detested both silliness and petty
malice in male or female, did not see that his Amy was
silly and malicious. He saw nothing but her enchant-
ing exterior and on that and his small salary he got
married in haste. None of the Gardens except himself
and papa much cared about Amy and papa liked nearly
everyone, and certainly nearly all pretty girls. As
to mamma’s feelings towards her daughter-in-law, who
could divine them ?
Vicky said to Rome: “They are both making a hor-
rific mistake. Maurice is a prickly person, who won’t
suffer fools. In a year he’ll be wanting to beat her.
She hasn’t the wits or the personality to be the least
help to him in his career, either. When he’s a rising
politician and she ought to be holding salons, she won’t
be able to. Her salons will be mere At Homes.”
“When,” Rome speculated, “does an -At Home be-
come a salon? I’ve often wondered.”
They decided that it was a salon when several dis-
tinguished people came to it, rather from habit than
from accident. Also the conversation must be reason-
ably intelligent (or, anyhow, the conversers must be-
lieve that it was so, for that is all that can be hoped
of any conversation). And people must come, or
pretend that they came, mainly for the talk and not
so much for any food there might be, or to show their
new clothes.VICTORIAN
55
“Asses they must be,” said Una, who was listening.
“I shan't go to salons ever.”
“No one will ask you, my child. Anything you’ll
find yourself at will be a common party, with food
and drink and foolish chit-chat.”
“Like your parties,” Una agreed, amiably content.
No teasing worried Una; she was as placid as a young
cow.
12
EIGHTIES
So, with Vicky and Maurice happily wedded (set-
tled, as they wittily called it in those days, though in-
deed they knew as well as we do that marriage is likely
to be as inconclusive and unsettling an affair as any
other and somewhat more than most), and papa and
mamma happily, if impermanently, ethicised, and the
three younger children still pursuing, or being pursued
by, education and Rome perfunctorily, amusedly and
inactively surveying the foolish world, the Garden
family entered on that eager, clever, civilised, earnest
decade, the eighteen eighties. Earnest indeed it was,
for people still took politics seriously, and creeds, and
literature, and life. Over the period still brooded the
mighty ones, those who are usually called the Giants
(literary and scientific) of the Victorian era, for the
nineteenth century was an age of giant-makers, of hero-
worshippers.
The eighties were also a great time for women.
What was called emancipation then occurred to them.
Young ladies were getting education and it went to
their heads. No creature was ever more solemn, more
earnest, more full of good intentions for the world.56
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
than the university-educated young female of the
eighties. We shall not look upon her like again; she
has gone, to make place for her lighter-minded
daughters, surely a lesser generation, without enthusi-
asm, ardour or aspiration.
It was these ardent good intentions, this burning
social conscience, as well as the desire to do the eman-
cipated thing, that drove Stanley, leaving Oxford in
1882, to take up settlement work in Poplar. So Pop-
larised, so orientalised, did she become, that she took
to speaking of her parental home in Bloomsbury as
being in the West End. To her everything west of
St. Paul’s became the West End. The West End,
its locality and its limits, is indeed a debatable land.
Where you think it is seems to depend on where you
live or work. To those who work in Fleet Street, as
do so many journalists, it seems that anything west
of the Strand is the West End. “West End cocaine
orgy,” you see on newspaper placards and find that
the orgy occurred in Piccadilly or Soho. Mayfair
and its environments are also spoken of by these scrib-
blers of the East as the West End. But to those who
live in Mayfair, the West End begins at about Edg-
ware Road and Mayfair seems about the middle, and
to the denizens of Edgware Road the West End is
Bayswater, Kensington or Shepherds Bush. The
dwellers in these outlying lands of the sunset do really
acknowledge that they are the West End; and to them
Mayfair and Piccadilly are not even the middle, but
the east. A strange, irrational phrase, which bears so
fluctuating and dubious a meaning. But then nearly
all phrases are strange and irrational, like most of
those who use them.
Anyhow, and be that as it may, Stanley went andVICTORIAN
57
worked in Poplar to ameliorate the lot of the extremely
poor, who lived there then as now. She took up with
Fabians, and admired greatly Mr. Bernard Shaw, while
cleaving still to William Morris. She was concerned
about Sweated Women, and served on Women’s La-
bour Committees. Her good working intelligence
caused people to give her charges and responsibilities
beyond her years. She was now a sturdy, capable,
square-set, brown-faced young woman, attractive, with
her thrust-out under-lip and chin, and her beautiful
blue eyes under heavy black brows. She spoke well on
platforms in a deep, girlish voice, was as strong as a
pony and could work from morning till night without
flagging. There was something candid and lovable
about Stanley. A doctor and a clergyman asked her
in wedlock, but she did not much care about them and
was too busy and interested to think about marriage.
She had, among other strong and ardent beliefs, be-
lief in God. She had religion, inherited perhaps from
her papa, but taking in her a more concentrated and
less diffused form. To her the Christian church was
a militant church, the sword of God come to do battle
for the poor and oppressed. To her a church was an
enchanted house, glorious as a child’s dream, the mass
as amazing as a fairy story and as true as sunrise.
She did not much mind at which churches she attended
this miracle, but on the whole preferred those of the
Anglican establishment to the Roman variety, finding
these latter rather more lacking in beauty than churches
need be. Stanley was an optimist. She looked on the
shocking, wicked and ill-constructed universe, and felt
that there must certainly be something behind this
odd business. There must, she reasoned, be divine
spirit and fire somewhere, to account for such flashes58
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
of good as were so frequently evident in it. Some-
thing gallant, unquenchable, imperishably ardent and
brave, must burn at its shoddy heart.
Vicky complained that Stanley thought of God (“in
whom, of course,” said Vicky, “we all believe”), as a
socialist agitator, and Stanley perhaps did. Certainly
God, she believed, was fighting sweated industries.
“With signally small success,” Maurice said, for the
commission on these industries had just concluded.
“God very seldom succeeds,” Stanley agreed. “He
has very nearly everything against Him, of course.”
She seldom mentioned God, being, for the most
part, as shyly inarticulate as a schoolgirl on this theme
so vital to her. But of unemployment, labour troubles,
and sweated industries, she and Maurice would talk by
the hour. She wrote articles for his paper on the con-
ditions of working women in Poplar. She attended
street labour meetings in the east, while Maurice did
the same in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park.
In 1882, the year that Stanley left Oxford, Una
left school. It was no use sending her to college, for
she had not learning, nor the inclination to acquire it.
She had done with lessons.
“You don’t want just to slack about for ever, I sup-
pose ?” Stanley put it to her, sternly.
“For ever . . .” Una looked at her with wide, sleepy
blue eyes, trying and failing to think of eternity. Una
lived in to-day, not in yesterday or to-morrow. She
was rather like a puppy.
“I don’t much care,” she said at length. “I mean,
I’ve never thought about it. I’m never bored, any-
how. There’s theatres, and badminton and dancing,
and all the shops, and taking the dogs in the parks. . . .
Of course I’d like better to live in the country again.VICTORIAN
59
But London’s all right. I’m all right. I’m not booky
like you, you see.”
Stanley said it had nothing to do with being booky;
there were things that wanted doing. Doubtless there
were. But she failed to rouse Una to any thought of
doing them. Una stayed at home, and went to parties,
and theatres, and played games, and occasionally rode,
and walked the dogs in the parks, and stayed with
friends in the country, and enjoyed life.
“I suppose she’ll just marry,” Stanley disappointedly
said, for in the eighteen eighties marriage was not well
thought of, though freely practised, by young feminine
highbrows.
As to Irving, another cheery hedonist, he was enjoy-
ing himself very much at Cambridge and reading for
a pass.
13
PARENTS
The eighteen eighties were freely strewn with, among
other things, Vicky’s children. The halcyon period
for children had not yet set in; did not, in fact, set in
until well on in the twentieth century. In the eighteen
eighties and nineties children were still thwarted, still
disciplined, still suppressed, though with an abate-
ment of mid-Victorian savagery. The idea had not yet
started that they were interesting little creatures who
should be permitted, even encouraged, to lift their
voices in public and interrupt the conversation of their
elders. On the whole, the bringing up of children
(at best a poor business) was perhaps less badly done
during the last fifteen years of the nineteenth century
than before or since. It may safely be said that it is6o
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
always pretty badly done, since most parents and all
children are very stupid and uncivilised, and anyhow
to “bring up” (queer phrase!) the unfortunate raw
material that human nature is, to bring it up to any
semblance of virtue or intelligence (the parents, prob-
ably, having but small acquaintance with either), is a
gargantuan task, almost beyond human powers. Some
children do, indeed, grow up as well as can, in the
circumstances, be expected, but this is, as a rule, in
spite of, rather than on account of, the misguided ef-
forts of their parents. And most children do not grow
up well at all, but quite otherwise, which is why the
world is as we see it.
Vicky was, as parents go, not a bad one. She loved
her children, but did not unduly spoil them or turn
their heads with injudicious attentions. Year by year
her nursery filled with nice, pretty little Du Maurier
boys, fine, promising little Du Maurier girls, in sailor
suits, jerseys, tam-o’-shanters, and little frocks sashed
about the knees, and year by year Vicky was to be found
again in what newspaper reporters, in their mystic
jargon, call, for reasons understood by none but them-
selves, “a certain condition.” “The woman,” they will
write, “said she was in a certain condition.” As if
everyone, all the time, was not in a certain condition.
Whether these journalists think the statement “she
was going to have a baby” indecent, or coarse, will
probably never transpire, for they are a strange, in-
stinct-driven, non-analytical race, who can seldom give
reasons for their terminology. Who shall see into their
hearts? Perhaps they really do think that the human
race should not be mentioned until it is visible to the
human eye.
Anyhow Vicky, of a franker breed than these, saidVICTORIAN
61
year by year, with resignation, "Again, my dears, I
replenish the earth,” and added sometimes, in petulant
enquiry, “How long, O Lord, how long?”
But Amy, the wife of Maurice, had, like newspaper
men, her pruderies. Of her coming infants she pre-
ferred to speak gently, in fretful undertones. When
she told Maurice about the first, she did not, like Vicky,
sing out, on his return from the office, “What do you
think? There's a baby on the way!” but, drawing her
inspiration from fiction, she hid her face against his
coat and murmured, “Oh, Maurice! Guess.”
Maurice said, “Guess what? How do you mean,
guess, darling?” to which she replied, “Well, I do
think you're slow to-night. . . . Oh, Maurice . . .”
And then Maurice, instead of saying, like the young
husbands in the fiction she was used to, “Darling, you
can't mean . . . What angels women are!” said in-
stead, “Oh, I say, do you mean we've got a baby com-
ing? Good business.”
A baby. What a coarse, downright word for the
little creature. Later, of course, one got used to it,
but just at first, at the very, very outset, the dimmest
dawn of its tiny being, it was scarcely a baby. And
what about her being an angel? Obviously Maurice
did not know the rules of this game.
When the baby, and the subsequent baby (there were
only two altogether), arrived, Amy spoiled them. She
was a depraved mother. Also she was unjust. She
was, of course, the type of mother whose strong sex
instinct leads her to prefer boys to girls, and she took
no pains to hide this. Maurice said, stubbornly, “The
girl shall have as good a chance as the boy, and as
good an education. We'll make no difference,” but
Amy said, “Chance! Fiddlesticks! What chances62
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
does a girl want, except to marry well ? What does
a girl want with education? I'm not going to have
her turned into a blue-stocking. Girls can’t have real
brains, anyhow. They can't do anything—only sit
about and look superior."
This referred to Rome, and these were the remarks
that fell like nagging drops of water on Maurice's sen-
sitive, irritable nerves and mind, slowly teasing love
out of existence, and beating into him (less slowly)
that he had married a fool.
Maurice found outlet from domestic irritation in
political excitement. There was, for instance, the
Home Rule Bill. It seemed to Maurice, as to many
others, immeasurably important that this bill should
go through. Its failure to do so, his own failure to be
elected in the elections of 1886, and the victory of the
Unionists, plunged him into a sharper and more mili-
tant radicalism. At the age of twenty-nine he was an
ardent, scornful, clear-brained idealist and cynic, suc-
cessful on platforms and brilliant with pens. He was
becoming a stand-by of the Radical press, a thorn in the
Tory flesh. His wife, by this time, after four years of
marriage, definitely disliked him, because he had bad,
sharp manners, was often disagreeable to her, often
drank a little too much, and obviously despised the
things she said. She consoled herself with going to
parties, spoiling her babies, and flirting with other
people. He consoled himself with politics, writing,
talking and drinking. An ill-assorted couple. Maurice
hoped that his children would be more what he desired.
So far, of course, they were fonder of Amy. Even
the boy was fonder of Amy, though sons often have
a natural leaning towards their fathers, and frequentlyVICTORIAN
63
grow up with no more than a careless affection for
their mothers for, contrary to a common belief, the
great affection felt by (Edipus for his mother is most
unusual, and, indeed, (Edipus would probably have
felt nothing of the sort had he known of the relation-
ship. It is noticeable that sons usually select as a bride
a woman as unlike their mothers and sisters as pos-
sible. It makes a change.
So Maurice had reason to hope that his son, any-
how, would prefer him as time went on, and therefore
be inclined to share his point of view about life. As
to the girl, she might grow up a fool or she might not;
impossible to tell, at three years old. Most girls did.
In 1887 the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria oc-
curred. Maurice wrote a deplorably unsuitable ar-
ticle for the occasion, called “Gaudeamus,” and taking
for its theme the subject races of Ireland and India
and the less fortunate and less moneyed classes in Great
Britain, which brought him into a good deal of dis-
repute, and made Amy more than ever disgusted with
him.
“Hardly the moment,” papa commented. “One
sympathises with his impatience, but the dear old lady’s
jubilee is hardly the moment to rub in the flaws of her
empire.”
14
PAPA AND THE FAITH
Papa was now a Roman Catholic again. After
three or four years of Ethicism, the absence of a God
had begun to tell on him. It had slowly sapped what
had always been the very foundation of his life—his
belief in absolute standards of righteousness. For,
if there were no God, on what indeed did these stand-64
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
ards rest? It was all very well to sing in South Place
of “the great, the lovely and the true,” but what things
were great, lovely and true, and how could one be sure
of them, if they derived their sanction from nothing
but man’s own self-interested and fluctuating judg-
ments ? Deeply troubled by these thoughts, which were,
of course, by no means new to him, papa was driven
at last out of his beautiful and noble half-way house
to the bleak cross roads.
Either he must become a moral nihilist, or he must
believe again in a God. Since to become a moral ni-
hilist was to papa unthinkable, so alien was it from
all his habits, his traditions and his thought, so alien,
indeed, from all the thought of his period, the only
alternative was to believe in a God. And papa, swung
by reaction, determined that this time (was it by way
of atonement, or safeguard?) he would do the thing
thoroughly. He would enter once more into that
great ark of refuge from perplexing thoughts, the
Roman branch of the Catholic Church. There (so
long as he should remain there) he would be safe.
He would rest therein like a folded sheep, and wander
no more. So, humbly, in the year 1886, he did alle-
giance again to this great and consoling Church (which,
as he said, he had never left, for you cannot leave it,
though you may be unfaithful), and worshipped in-
conspicuously and devoutly in a small and austere Do-
minican chapel.
His only grief was that mamma at this point struck.
She made the great refusal. She loved papa no less
faithfully than ever, but his continuous faiths had
worn her out. She said, quietly, “I am not going to be
a Roman Catholic again, Aubrey.”
He bowed his head to her decision. It was perhaps,VICTORIAN
65
he admitted, too much to expect that she should. “But
not Roman Catholic, dearest . . .” was his only pro-
test. “Surely not Roman, now.”
“I beg your pardon, Aubrey. Catholic. Anyhow,
I am too old to join new churches, or even the old ones
again.”
“You will stay an Ethicist, then,” he said, tentatively.
“No. I have never cared very much for that. I
don’t think I shall attend any place of worship in
future.”
He looked at her, startled, and placed his hand on
hers, impeding the rapidity of her embroidery needle.
“Anne—my dear love. You haven’t lost faith in
everything, as I have been in danger of doing during
the last year? The South Place chapel hasn’t done
that to you, dear one?”
Mamma let her work lie still on her lap, while papa’s
hand rested on hers. She seemed to consider, looking
inwards and backwards, down and down the years.
“No, Aubrey,” she said presently. “The South
Place chapel hasn’t done that to me. It wasn’t im-
portant enough. . . .”
Her faint smile at him was enigmatic.
“I don’t,” she added, “quite know what I do believe.
But I have long ago come to the conclusion that it mat-
ters very little. You, you see, have seemed equally
happy for a time, equally unhappy after a time, in all
the creeds or no-creeds. And equally good, my dear.
I suppose I may say that I believe in none of them, or
believe in all. In any case, it matters very little. I
have come with you always into the churches and out
of them, but now I think you will find peace in the
Rom—in the Catholic Church, without me, and I fear
that so much ritual, after so much lack of it, would66
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
only fuss me. I shall stay at home. There is a good
deal to do there always, and I am afraid I am better
at doing practical things than at thinking difficult
things out. You won’t mind, Aubrey?”
“My darling, no. You must follow your own con-
science. Mine has been a sad will-o’-the-wisp to us
both—but, God helping me, it has lighted me now
into my last home. . . . Yet who knows, who
knows? . .
Mamma gently patted his hand and went on with
her embroidery, bending over it her patient, near-
sighted, spectacled eyes. She was mildly, unenthusias-
tically relieved to be done with the Ethical Church.
She had never really liked those hymns. . . . Dear
Aubrey, he would be happier again now. He could
take to himself confidently once more those eternal
moral values which had threatened him during the past
six months with their utter wreckage and collapse.
Once more he would be able to give reasons for his
faith in virtue, for his belief that lying, theft, selfish-
ness and adultery were wrong. Once more the world’s
foundations stood, and papa would not lie wakeful in
the night and sigh to watch them shake.
But the solitary, unworthy little thought nagged at
mamma’s mind, “Amy will sneer. Amy will make
foolish, common fun of him. . .
Dismissing Amy as a silly and vulgar little creature,
mamma folded her embroidery and went to speak to
the cook.
15
KEEPING HOUSE
Speaking to the cook. What a delightful kind of
conversation this must be. For, if you are a properVICTORIAN
67
housewife, you do not just say to the cook, “Kindly
provide meals, as usual, for the household to-day.
That is, in fact, what you are paid to do. So do it,
and let me hear no more about it.” Instead, you go to
the larder and see what is in it. You find a piece of
meat, and try to guess what it is. You say, “We will
have that neck of mutton, or loin of beef” (or what-
ever you think it is) “roasted, boiled, or fricasseed, for
lunch. Then, of what is left of it, you will make some
nice cutlets for dinner. Now how about sweets?”
Then you and the cook will settle down happily for a
long gossip about sweets—a delightful topic. The
cook says, “I had thought of a nice jam roll.” You
say that you, for your part, had thought of something
else, and so it goes on, like a drawing-room game, until
you or the cook win, by sheer strength of will. Cooks
usually have most of this, so they nearly always win.
They can think of more reasons than you can why
the thing suggested is impossible. They know there
is not enough jam, or cream, or mushrooms, or bread-
crumbs—not enough to make it nice, as it should be
made. Rather would they suggest a nice apple char-
lotte. . . .
“Very well, cook; have it your own way. You have
won, as usual. But it has been a good game and I
have Kept House.” That is what the good housewife
(presumably) reflects, as she leaves the kitchen.
Perhaps there is more to it than this; perhaps bills
are also discussed, and butchers and groceries, and the
price of comestibles. No one who has not done it
knows precisely what is done, or how. It is the cook’s
hour and the housewife’s, and no fifth ear overhears.
Mrs. Garden in the year 1886 had done it every day
for thirty-one years. Whether as an Anglican, a Uni-68
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
tarian, a Roman Catholic, an Agnostic, a Quaker, an Ir-
vingite, a Seventh-day Adventist, a Baptist, or an
Ethicist, still she had daily Kept House. Magic phrase !
What happens to houses unkept, Rome had idly asked.
Mamma had shaken a dubious head. No house that
she had ever heard of had been unkept.
16
UNA
Una, staying in Essex with friends, contracted an
engagement with a neighbouring young yeoman farm-
er, whom she used to meet out riding. The friends
protested, dismayed at such a mésalliance having been
arranged for under, so to speak, their aùspices. But
Una, now twenty-three, grandly beautiful, alternately
lazy and amazingly energetic, looking like DJana or a
splendid young Ceres, with no desires, it seemed, but
for the healthy pleasures of the moment, held firmly
to her decision. She loved her Ted, and loved, too, the
life he led. She would wed him without delay. She
went home and told her family so.
Papa said, “If yoaare sure of your love and his, that
is all that matters, little Una—” (with the faint note
of deprecation, even of remorse, with which he was
wont to say her name, in these days when he believed
once again in the Athanasian creed; for, though he
might have bestowed this name in the most Trinitarian
orthodoxy, the fact was that he had not; it had been
a badge of incomplete belief).
Mamma said, “Well, child, you were bound to marry
someone in the country. I always knew that. And
you won’t mind that he and his people eat and talkVICTORIAN
69
a little differently from you, so I think you'll be happy.
Bless you.”
To Rome mamma said, “There's one thing about
Una; she always knows what she wants and goes
straight for it. I wish she could have married a gentle-
man, but this young fellow is a good mate for her, I
believe. She won't care about the differences. There's
no humbug about Una. She's the modern girl all
through. Splendid, direct, capable children they are.”
That was in the year 1887, and mamma did not
know that in the nineteen twenties there would still
be girls like Una, and people would still be calling them
the modern girl, and saying how direct, admirable and
wonderful, or how independent, reckless and head-
strong, they were, and, in either case, how unlike the
girls of thirty and forty years ago. For, in popular
estimation, girls must be changing all the time—new
every morning; there must be a new fashion in girls,
as in hats, every year. But those who have lived on
this earth as much as sixty years know (though they
never say, for they like, amiably, to keep in with the
young by joining in popular cries, and are too elderly
to go to the trouble of speaking the truth), that girls,
like other persons, have always been much the same,
and always will be. Not the same as one another, for
the greyhound is not more different from the spaniel
than is one girl from the next; but the same types of
girls and of boys, of women and of men, have for ever
existed, and will never cease to exist, and there is noth-
ing new under the sun. Yet in the eighteen eighties
and nineties our ancestors were talking blandly of the
New Woman, just as to-day people babble of the Mod-
ern Girl.
Rome said, “Yes, Una'll be all right. She knows70
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
the way to live” . . . and was caught by her own
phrase into the question, what is the way to live, then ?
Mine, Una’s, Vicky’s, Stanley’s, Maurice’s, papa’s?
Perhaps there is no way to live. Perhaps the thing is
just to live, without a way. And that is, actually, what
Una will do.
Una’s Ted came to stay in Bloomsbury with the
Gardens. He was large and silent and beautiful, and
ate hugely, and looked awful, said Vicky, in his Sun-
day clothes, which were the ones he wore all the time
in London. Also, his boots creaked. But you could
see, through it all, how he would be striding about his
native fields in gaiters and breeches and old tweeds,
sucking a pipe and looking like a young earth-god.
You could see, therefore, why Una loved him; you
could see it even while he breathed hard at meals in
his tight collar, and sucked his knife. He was physi-
cally glorious; a young Antaeus strayed by mistake to
town. He and Una were a splendid pair.
Una cared not at all what impression he made on
her family. She was not sensitive. The touch of his
hands made her quiver luxuriously, and when he took
her in his arms and turned her face up to his and
bruised her mouth with kisses, the world’s walls shiv-
ered and dissolved round her and she was poured out
like water. He was beautiful and splendid and her
man, and knew all about the things she cared for, and
she loved him with a full, happy passion that responded
frankly and generously to his. They chaffed and bick-
ered and played and caressed, and talked about horses
and dogs and love, and went to the Zoo.
Amy giggled behind the young man’s back, and
said, “Did you see him stuffing his mouth with bun and
trying to wash it down with tea out of his saucer?”VICTORIAN
7i
“Why not?” said Rome. “And he did wash it
down; he didn’t only try.”
“Well!” Amy let out a breath and nodded twice.
“Rather Una than me; that's all.”
17
STANLEY
These years, ’87, ’88, ’89, were stirring years for
Maurice and Stanley. In them were founded the In-
dependent Labour Party and the Christian Social Union
and the Star newspaper. And there was the great dock
strike and “bloody Sunday,” on which Maurice dis-
graced Amy and himself by joining in an unseemly
fracas with the police, in which he incurred a sprained
wrist and a night in prison. In point of fact, as Amy
said, he was rather drunk at the time.
Stanley enjoyed the labour movement. She was not,
like Maurice, merely up against things; she eagerly
swam with the tide and the tide which carried her
during this particular phase of her life was revolu-
tionary labour. She was joyously in the van of the
movement. The dock strike stirred her more than
the Pigott forgeries, more than the poisoning of Mr.
Maybrick by Mrs. Maybrick, more than the death of
Robert Browning.
Stirring times indeed. But in ’89 something hap-
pened which stirred Stanley more profoundly than the
times. She fell in love and married. It was bound
to occur to such an ardent claimer of life. The man
was a writer of light essays and short stories and
clever unproduced plays. He was thirty, and he had
an odd, short white face and narrow laughing eyes72
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
beneath a clever forehead, and little money, but a
sense of irony and of form and of the stage. He was
in the most modern literary set in London and his
name was Denman Croft. At first Stanley thought
him very affected and she was right, for the most
modern literary set was affected just then; but in a
month or so she loved him with an acute, painful ec-
stasy that made her dizzy and blinded her to all the
world besides. Her work lost interest; she was alive
only in those hours when they were together; her love
absorbed her body and soul. Why, he protested, did
she not live in the more reasonable parts of London
and meet people worth meeting? All sorts of exciting,
amusing things were happening in the world of letters
and art just now and she ought to be in it. Stanley
began to feel that perhaps she ought. After all, one
could be progressive and fight for labour reform and
trade unions as well in the west as in the east. Then,
while she was thus reflecting, it became apparent to
her that Denman Croft was going immediately to pro-
pose marriage to her. She had for some weeks known
that he loved her, but was scarcely ready for this crisis
when it came. Passionate ecstasy possessed them both;
they sank into it blind and breathless and let its waves
break over them.
Life, life, life. Stanley, who had always lived to
the uttermost, felt that she had never lived before.
Spirit, brain and body interacted and co-operated in
the riot of their passion.
They married almost at once and took a house in
Margaretta Street, Chelsea.
Stanley always reflected her time and it was, people
said, a time of transition. For that matter, times al-
ways are, and one year is always rather different fromVICTORIAN
73
the last. In this year, the threshold of the nineties,
all things were, it was said, being made new. New
forms of art and literature were being experimented
with, new ideas aired. New verse was being written,
new drama, essays, fiction and journalism. Stanley
was so much interested in it all (being, as she now was,
in close touch with the latest phase in these matters)
that her social and political earnestness flagged, for
you cannot have all kinds of earnestness at once. In-
stead of going in the evenings to committee meetings
and mass labour meetings, she now went to plays and
literary parties. Instead of writing articles on women’s
work, she began to write poetry and short sketches.
All this, together with the social life she now led and
the excitement of love, of Denman, and of her new
home, was so stimulating and absorbing that she had
little attention to spare for anything else. Stanley was
like that—enthusiastic, headlong, a deep plunger, a
whole-hogger.
“They do have the most fantastic beings to dinner,"
Vicky said to her Charles. “Velvet coats and im-
mense ties. ... It reminds me of ten years ago, when
I was being aesthetic. But these people are much
smarter talkers. Denman says they are really doing
something good, too. He’s an attractive creature,
though I think his new play is absurd and he’s desper-
ately affected. The way that child adores him! Stanley
does go so head over ears into everything. None of
the rest of us could love like that. It frightens one
for her. . . . But anyhow I’m glad she’s off that
stupid trade union and sweated labour fuss. Maurice
does more than enough of that for the family and I
was afraid Stan was going to turn into a female fa-
natic, like some of those short-haired friends of hers.74
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
That’s not what we women ought to be, is it, my Imo-
gen?”
Vicky caught up her Imogen, an infant of one sum-
mer, in her arms, and kissed her. But Imogen, neither
then nor at any later time, had any clear idea about
what women ought or ought not to be. Anything
they liked, she probably thought. If, indeed, there
were, specifically, any such creatures as women. . . .
For Imogen was born to have a doubting mind on
this as on other subjects. She might almost have been
called mentally defective in some directions, of so little
was she ever to be sure.
“Stanley,” pronounced Vicky, “has more Zeitgeist”
(for that unpleasant word had of late come in) “than
anyone I ever met.”PART II
FIN-DE-SIÈCLEI
ROME
THE threshold of the nineties. Decades have a
delusive edge to them. They are not, of course,
really periods at all, except as any other ten years
may be. But we, looking at them, are caught by the
different name each bears, and give them different
attributes, and tie labels on them, as if they were flow-
ers in a border. The nineties, we say, were gay, tired,
fin-de-siecle, witty, dilettante, decadent, yellow, and
Max Beerbohm was their prophet; or they were noisy,
imperial, patriotic, militant, crude, and Kipling was
their prophet. And, indeed, you may find attributes
to differentiate any period from any other. What
people said and wrote of the nineties at the time was
that they were modern, which of course at the time
they were; that they were hustling . . . (“In these
days of hurry and rapid motion, when there is so little
time to rest and reflect,” as people say in sermons and
elsewhere, as if the greater rapidity of motion did not
give one more time to rest and reflect, since one the
sooner arrives at one’s destination) ; that they were
noisy; that literary output was enormous; that (alter-
natively) the new writers were very good, or that the
good writers had gone from among us. One knows
the kind of thing; all discourses on contemporary
periods have been full of it, from the earliest times even
unto these last.
Rome was thirty-one. She was of middle height,
777«
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
a slight, pale, delicate young woman, with ironic blue-
green eyes and mocking lips a little compressed at the
corners, and a pointed kind of face, and fair, silky
hair which she wore no longer short but swept grace-
fully up and back from her small head, defining its
shape and showing the fine line from nape to crown.
She was a woman of the world, a known diner-out,
a good talker, something of a wit, so that her presence
was sought by hostesses as that of an amusing bache-
lor is sought. She had elegance, distinction, brain, a
light and cool touch on the topics of her world, a calm,
mocking, sceptical detachment, a fastidious taste in
letters and in persons. She knew her way about, as
the phrase goes, and could be relied on to be socially
adequate, in spite of a dangerous distaste for fools,
and in spite of the “dancing and destructive eye” (to
use a phrase long afterwards applied to one whose men-
tality perhaps a little resembled hers) which she turned
on all aspects of the life around her. People called
her intensely modern—whatever that might mean. In
1890 it presumably meant that you would have been
surprised to find her type in 1880. But as a matter
of fact, you would not, had you been endowed with a
little perspicacity, have been in the least surprised; you
would have found it, had you looked, all down the ages
(though always as a rare growth). In 1790, 1690,
1590, and back through every decade of every cen-
tury, there have been Rome Gardens, fastidious, mon-
dcrine, urbane, lettered, critical, amused, sceptical, and
what was called in 1890 fin-de-si$cle. It is not a type
which, so to speak, makes the world go round; it does
not assist movements nor join in crusades; it coolly
distrusts enthusiasm and eschews the heat and ardour
of the day. It is to be found among both sexes equally,FIN-DE-SIECLE
79
and is the stuff of which the urbane bachelor and
spinster, rather than the spouse and parent, are made.
For mating and producing (as a career, not as an oc-
casional encounter) are apt to destroy the type, by
forcing it to too continuous and ardent intercourse
with life; that graceful and dilettante aloofness can
scarcely survive such prolonged heat. To be cool,
sceptical and passionate at one and the same time—it
has been done, but it remains difficult. To love ar-
dently such absurdities as infants, and yet to retain
unmarred the sense of the absurdity of all life—this
too has been done, but the best parents do not do it.
Something has to go, as a sacrifice to the juggernaut
life, which rebels against being regarded as merely
absurd (and rightly, for, in truth, it is not merely
absurd, and this is one of the things which should
always be remembered about it).
The literary persons of the early nineties wanted
Rome to join them in their pursuits.
Why so, Rome questioned. Money? Very cer-
tainly I have not enough, but I should not have ap-
preciably more if I wrote and published essays or even
books. Notoriety? It might well be of the wrong
kind; and anyhow does it add to one's pleasure? Miss
Rome Garden, the author of those clever critical es-
says. ... Or perhaps of those dull critical essays. . . .
Either way, what did one gain? Why write? Why
this craze for transmitting ideas by means of marks
on paper? Why not, if one must transmit ideas, use
the tongue, that unruly member given us for the pur-
pose? Better still, why not retain the ideas for one's
own private edification, untransmitted? Writing.
There was this about writing—or rather about pub-
lishing—it showed that someone had thought it worth8o
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
while to pay for having one’s ideas printed. For
printers were paid, and binders, even if not oneself.
So it conferred a kind of cachet. Most literary per-
sons sorely needed such a cachet, for you would never
guess from meeting them that anyone would pay them
for their ideas. On the other hand, publishing one's
folly gave it away; one was then known for a fool,
whereas previously people might have only suspected
it. . . . In brief and in fine, writing was not worth
while. Wise men and women would derive such
pleasure as they could from the writings of others,
without putting themselves to the trouble of providing
reading matter in their turn. Reading matter was not
like dinners, concerning which there must be give
and take.
Thus the do-nothing Miss Rome Garden to the eager
literary young men and women about her, who all
thought that literature was having a new birth and
that they were its brilliant midwives, as, indeed, it is
not unusual to think. And possibly it was the case.
Literature has so many new births; it is a hardy annual.
The younger literary people of 1890 had a titillating
feeling of standing a-tiptoe to welcome a new day.
“A great creative period is at hand,” they said. The
old and famous still brooded over the land like giant
trees. Such a brooding, indeed, has scarcely since been
known, for in these later days we allow no trees to
become giants. But in their shadow the rebellious
young shoots sprang up, sharp and green and alive.
The mid-Victorians were passing; the Edwardians
were in the schoolroom or the nursery, the Georgians
in the cradle or not yet anywhere; here was a clear
decade in which the late Victorian stars might dance.
It was a period of experiment; new forms were beingFIN-DE-SIECLE
81
tried, new ideas would have been aired were any ideas
ever new; new franknesses, so called, were permitted,
or anyhow practised—the mild beginnings of the re-
turning tide which was to break against the reticence
of fifty years.
“I don’t,” said Mrs. Garden to Rome, “care about
all these sex novels people have taken to writing now.”
But Rome rejected the phrase.
“Sex novels, mamma? What are they? Novels
have always been about sex, or rather sexes. There’s
nothing new in that; it’s the oldest story in the world.
People must have a sex in this life; it’s inevitable.
Novels must be about people; that’s inevitable too. So
novels must be partly about sex, and they’re nearly
always about two sexes, and usually largely about the
relations of the two sexes to one another. They always
have been. . . .”
All the same, mamma did not care about these sex
novels that people had taken to writing now. Problem
novels, she called them, for reasons of her own. Rome
thought sex no problem; the least problematic affair,
perhaps, in this world. Of course there were problems
connected with it, as with everything else, but in itself
sex was no problem. Rather the contrary. “The
Moonstone,” now—that was a problem novel.
“I don’t like indecency,” said mamma, in her deli-
cate, clipped voice. “These modern writers will say
anything. It’s ill-bred.”
Mamma could not be expected to know that these
literary libertines of 1890 would be regarded as quaint
Victorian prudes in 1920.
“As to that book Mr. Jayne gave you, I call it merely
silly,” mamma murmured, with raised brows, and so
settled “Dorian Gray.”82
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“Silly it is,” Rome agreed. “But here and there,
though too seldom, it has a wit.”
But mamma was not listening. Her mamma-like
mind was straying after Mr. Jayne. . . .
2
MR. JAYNE
Mr. Jayne and Rome. Both brilliant, both elegant,
both urbane, both so gracefully of the world worldly,
yet both scholars too. Mr. Jayne wrote memoirs and
enchanting historical and political essays. An amus-
ing, yet erudite Oxford man, who had formerly been
at the British Embassy at St. Petersburg. Hostesses
desired him for their more sophisticated parties, be-
cause he had a wit, and knew Russia, which was at once
more unusual and more fashionable then than now.
It was at one of Vicky’s dinner parties that he and
Rome had first met. If Vicky thought, how suitable,
it was only what anyone in the world must think about
these two. Afterwards they met continually and be-
came friends. Rome thought him conceited, clever,
entertaining, attractive and disarming and the most
companionable man of her wide acquaintance. By
June, 1890, they were in love; a state of mind unusual
in both. They did not mention it, but in July he men-
tioned to her, what he mentioned to few people, that
he had a Russian wife living with her parents, a revo-
lutionary professor and his wife, in the country outside
Moscow.
They were spending Sunday on the Thames, row-
ing up from Bourne End to Marlow. They spoke of
this matter of Mr. Jayne’s wife after their lunch,FIN-DE-SIECLE
83
which they ate on the bank, in the shade of willows.
“How delightful,” said Rome, taking a Gentleman’s
Relish sandwich.
Delightful to have a wife in Russia; to have a rea-
son, and such a reason, for visiting that interesting land.
Delightful for Mr. Jayne to have waiting for him,
among steppes and woods, a handsome Russian female
and two fair Slav infants ... or perhaps they were
English, these little Jaynes, with beautiful mouths and
long, thrust-out chins. . . . Delightful, anyhow. The
Russian country in the summer, all corn and oil and
moujiks. Moscow in the autumn, all churches and
revolutionaries and plots and secret police. And in the
winter . . . but one cannot think about Russia in the
winter at all; it does not bear contemplation, and one
does not visit it. . . . What a romance! Mr. Jayne
was indeed fortunate.
So Miss Garden conveyed.
“I am not there very much,” said Mr. Jayne. “Only
on and off. Olga prefers to live there, with her par-
ents and our two children. She has many friends there,
all very busy plotting. They are of the intelligentsia.
Life is very interesting to her.”
“I can imagine that it must be.”
So cool and well-bred were Miss Garden and Mr.
Jayne, that you never would have divined that the lat-
ter, eating sandwiches, was crying within his soul,
“My dearest Rome. I dislike my wife. We make each
other sick with ennui when we meet. We married in
a moment’s mania. It is you I want. Don’t you know
it? Won’t you let me tell you?” or that the former,
sipping cider, was saying silently, “You have told me
this at last because you know that we have fallen in
love. Why not months ago? And what now?”84
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Nothing of this they showed, but lounged in the
green shade, and drank and ate, Miss Garden clear-
cut and cool, in a striped cotton boating-dress, with a
conically-shaped straw hat tipped over her eyes, Mr.
Jayne in flannels, long and slim, his palish face shaved
smooth in the new fashion, so that you saw the lines
of his clever mouth and long, thrust-out chin. Mr.
Jayne’s eyes were deep-set and grey, and he wore
pince-nez, and he was at this time thirty-six years old.
At what age, Rome wondered, had he married Mrs.
Jayne of the Russian intelligentsia?
However, they did not enter into this, but began to
discuss the plays of Mr. Bernard Shaw, a well-known
socialist writer, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling, a young
man in India who was making some stir.
“We can still be friends,” thought Rome, on their
way home. “Nothing need be changed between us.
This Olga of his is his wife; I am his friend. It would
be very bourgeois to be less his friend because he has
a wife. That is a view of life I dislike; we are civilised
people, Mr. Jayne and I.”
3
CIVILISED PEOPLE
And civilised they were, for the rest of the summer
of 1890. In November Rome asked Mr. Jayne, who
was having tea with her alone, whether he was visiting
Russia shortly. He replied in the negative, for he was,
he said, too busy working on his new book to get
abroad.
“And further,” he added, in the same composed
tone, “I prefer to remain in the same country with
you. I can’t, you see, do without you at hand. YouFIN-DE-SIECLE
85
know how often I consult you, and talk things over
with you. . . . And further still,” continued Mr.
Jayne, quietly, “I love you.”
So saying, he rose and stood over her, bending down
with his hands on her shoulders and his pale face close
to hers.
“My dearest,” he said. “Let us stop pretending.
Shall we stop pretending? Does our pretence do us
or anyone else any good? I love you more than any
words I’ve got can say. You know it, you know it
. . . dear heart. . . .”
He drew her up from her chair and looked into her
face, and that was the defeat of their civilisation, for
at their mutual touch it broke in disorder and fled.
He kissed her mouth and face and hands, and passion
rose about them like a sea in which they drowned.
Five minutes later they talked it out, sitting with
a space between them, for “While you hold me I can't
think,” Rome said. She passed her hand over her face,
which felt hot and stung from the hard pressing of his
mouth, and tried to assemble her thoughts, shaken by
the first passion of her thirty-one agreeable and in-
telligent years.
‘Tm not,” she said, “going to take you away from
your wife. Not in any way. What we have must
make no difference to what she has. . . .”
It will be seen, therefore, that their conversation was
as old as the world, and scarcely worth recording. It
pursued the normal lines. That is to say, Mr. Jayne
replied, “She has nothing of me that matters,” rather
inaccurately classing under the head of what did not
matter, his children, his name, and the right to his bed
and board. As is the habit in these situations, Mr.
Jayne meant that what mattered, and what Mrs. Jayne86
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
had not got, was his love, his passion, his spirit and
his soul. These, he indicated, were Rome’s alone, as
Rome’s were his.
What to do about it was the question. One must,
said Rome, holding herself in, continue to be civilised.
And what, enquired Mr. Jayne, is civilisation—this ar-
bitrary civilisation of society’s making, that binds the
spirit’s freedom in chains ? It was all founded on so-
cial expediency, on primitive laws to protect inheri-
tance, to safeguard property. . . . Had Rome read
Professor Westermarck’s great work on the history of
human marriage? Rome had. What of it? The
point was, there was Mrs. Jayne in Russia, and Mr.
and Mrs. Jayne’s two children. These were Mr.
Jayne’s obligations, and nothing he and she did must
come between him and them. That laid firmly down,
she and Mr. Jayne could do what they liked; that was
how Rome saw it. One must keep one’s contracts,
and behave as persons of honour and breeding should
behave.
“As I see it,” said Rome, “the fact that we love each
other needn’t prevent our being friends. We are not
babies. . .
“Friends,” said Mr. Jayne, in agreement, doubt,
scepticism, contempt, hope, or bitter derision, as the
case might be.
And more they said, until they were interrupted by
the entrance of Mrs. Garden’s papa, the Dean, who had
called in his brougham to see mamma, but, mamma
being out at Vicky’s, he sat down between these two
white, disturbed, hot-eyed and shaken persons and
began to talk of Mr. Parnell and his disgrace.
Grandpapa opined that Mr. Parnell had no more
place in public life.FIN-DE-SIECLE
87
Mr. Jayne replied that anyhow it appeared that he
would be hounded out of it.
“Cant,” he said. “Truckling to nonconformist cant
and humbug and Catholic bigotry. A man’s private
affairs have nothing to do with his public life. It’s
contemptible, the way the Nationalists have caved in
to that old humbug, Gladstone.”
Grandpapa had always thought Gladstone à humbug
(though not so old if it came to that; he himself was
eighty-five and going strong), but with the rest of
Mr. Jayne’s thesis he was in disagreement. Our po-
litical leaders must not be men of notoriously loose
lives. The sanctity of the home must, at all costs, be
upheld.
“O’Shea’s home,” said Mr. Jayne, “never had much
of that. Neither O'Shea nor Mrs. O'Shea was great
on it.”
“For that matter,” Rome joined in, crisp and bland,
as if civilisation had not met its débâcle in the drawing-
room but a half hour since, “for that matter, what
homes have sanctity? Why do people think that sanc-
tity is particularly to be found in homes, of all places?
And can a bachelor’s or spinster's home have it, or do
the people in the home need to be married? What is
it, this curious sanctity, that bishops write to the papers
about, and that is, they say, being attacked all the time,
and is so easily destroyed? In what homes is it to
be found? I have often wondered.”
“Whom God hath joined together,” replied grand-
papa, readily. “That is the answer to your question,
my dear child, is it not?”
“O God,” muttered Mr. Jayne, but probably rather
as an ejaculation than as a sceptical comment on the
authority behind matrimony.88
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Whichever it was, grandpapa did not care about the
phrase, and looked at him sharply. He believed Mr.
Jayne to be an unbeliever, and did not greatly care
for the tone of his writings. However, they con-
versed intelligently for a while about the future of the
Irish party before Mr. Jayne rose to go.
“Come into the hall,” his eyes said. But Rome did
not go into the hall.
He was gone. Rome sat still in the shadow of the
window. His steps echoed down the square.
“Do you see much of that young fellow, my dear?”
grandpapa asked, in his old rumbling voice.
“Oh, yes,” said Rome, feeling exalted and light in
the head, and as if she had drunk alcohol. “Oh, yes,
grandpapa. We are great friends.”
“Do your parents like him, my child?” ,
“Oh, yes, grandpapa. Very much. Oh, I think
everyone likes him. He is a great success, you know.”
She was talking foolishly and at random, straying
about the room, taking up books, wishing grandpapa
would go.
Grandpapa grunted. Rather queer goings on, he
thought, for Rome to be entertaining young men by
herself when her papa and mamma were out. What
were unmarried young women coming to? If mamma
had gone on like that thirty years ago . . . But this,
of course, was 1890—desperately modern. Grand-
papa, though he not infrequently wrote to the Times,
the Spectator and the Guardian, to say how modern the
current year was (for, of course, current years always
were and are), did not always remember it. The un-
trammelled (it seemed to him untrammelled) freedom
of intercourse enjoyed by modern young men and
women (especially young women) continually shockedFIN-DE-SIECLE
89
him. Grandpapa had enjoyed much free and un-
trammelled intercourse in his own distant youth, dur-
ing the Regency, but fifty years of Victorianism had
since intervened, and he believed that intercourse should
not now be free. He could not understand his grand-
daughter, Stanley, who was continually abusing what
she called the conventional prudery of the age; what
further liberties, in heaven’s name, did young women
want? To do her justice, Rome did not join in this
cry for further emancipation; Rome accepted the con-
ventions, with an acquiescent, ironic smile. There they
were: why make oneself hot with kicking over the
traces ? One accepted the social follies and codes. . . .
(“On the contrary,” Maurice would say, “I refuse
them.”
“It will make no difference to them either way,” said
Rome.)
Rome, a good raconteuse and mimic, proceeded to
entertain grandpapa with an account of a dinner party
at which she had been taken in by that curious and
noisy member of Parliament, Mr. Augustus Conybeare,
whom grandpapa disliked exceedingly.
Then mamma and papa came home, and Rome went
upstairs to dress for another dinner party. Thus do
social life and the storm-tossed journey of the human
soul run on concurrently, and neither makes way for
the other.
4
ON THE PINCIO
Through that winter civilisation fought its losing
battle with more primitive forces over the souls and
bodies of Miss Garden and Mr. Jayne.90
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“There is only one way in which we can meet and
be together," said Rome, “and that is as friends.
There is no other relation possible in the circumstances.
I will be party to no scandal, my best. If we can't
meet one another with self-control, then we mustn't
meet at all. What is the use of tilting at the laws of
society? There they are, and thus it is. . .
“You make a fetish of society," said Mr. Jayne, with
gloom. “For a woman of your brains, it is queer/’
“Perhaps," said Rome.
Then, it becoming apparent that she and Mr. Jayne
were not at present going to meet one another with
self-control, Rome went for the winter to the city of
that name, with her papa, whose spiritual home it, of
course, now was. Mrs. Garden did not go, because
she desired to be in at the birth of Stanley's baby.
But civilisation had not reckoned sufficiently with
the forces of emotion. These led Mr. Jayne, but a
few weeks after Miss Garden had departed, to follow
Her to Italy, and, in fact, to Rome.
So, one bright February morning, he called at the
Gardens' hotel pension in the Via Babuino, and found
Rome and her papa about to set forth for a walk on
the Pincio. Miss Garden, looking pale, fair and ele-
gant in a long, fur-edged, high-shouldered cape coat
and a tall, pointed, blue velvet hat beneath which her
hair gleamed gold, received him as urbanely, as coolly,
as detachedly as ever; she seemed to have got her emo-
tions well under control in the month since they had
parted. Mr. Jayne responded to her tone, and all the
morning, as they strolled about with Mr. Garden, they
were bland and cool and amusing; well-bred English
visitors, turning interested and satirical eyes on theFIN-DE-SIECLE
91
fashionable crowds about them, stopping now and then
to exchange amenities with fellow-strollers, for Mr.
Jayne knew Roman society well, and Mr. Garden had
come armed with introductions from his co-religion-
ists, though, indeed, he was little disposed for much
society, wishing to spend such time as he did not de-
vote to seeing Rome in studious research at the Vat-
ican library. His daughter was a little afraid that
the Eternal City might seriously disturb his faith, and
that papa might fall under the undeniably fascinating
influence of paganism, which makes so far finer and
nobler a show in Rome than mediaeval Christianity.
And, indeed, with St. Peter’s papa was not pleased;
he scarcely liked to say so, even to himself, but it did
seem to him to be of a garish hugeness that smacked
almost of vulgarity, and pained his fastidious taste.
On the other hand, there were many old churches of a
more pleasing style, and in these his soul found rest
when disturbed by the massive splendours of classical
Rome. No; papa would not become a pagan; he knew
too much of pagan corruptions and cruelties for that.
Corruptions and cruelties he admitted, of course, in the
history of Christianity also; corruption and cruelty are,
indeed, properties of the unfortunate and paradoxical
human race; but papa was persuaded that only defec-
tive Christians (after all, Christians always are and
have been defective) were corrupt and cruel, whereas
the most completely pagan of pagans had been so, and
paganism is, indeed, rather an incentive than a dis-
couragement to vice. In fact, papa was, by this time,
thoroughly biassed in this matter, and so was probably
safe. Or, anyhow, so his daughter hoped. For it
would, there was no denying it, be exceedingly awk-92
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
ward were papa to become a pagan, quite apart from
the preliminary anguish with which his soul would be
torn were he to be shaken from his present faith.
Were there pagan places of worship in London? Prob-
ably papa would have to build a private chapel, and in
it erect images of his new gods. ... For pagans had
never been happy without much worship; they had been
the most religious of believers. Except, of course, the
lax and broad-church pagans, and probably papa, if
he got paganism at all, would get it strong.
So Rome was quite pleased that papa should be
walking on the Pincio with her, getting a good view
of the dome of St. Peter’s, which is the finest and
most impressive part of that cathedral, rather than
wandering about the Forum and peering into the new
excavations, murmuring scraps of Latin as he peered.
In the warm, sunlit air, with the band playing Verdi
and the gay crowds promenading, and the enchanted
city spread all a-glitter beneath them, Rome was caught
into a deep and intoxicated joy. The bitter, restless
struggling of the last months gave way to peace; the
happy peace that looks not ahead, but rejoices in the
moment. The tall and gay companion strolling at her
side, so fluent in several languages, so apt to catch a
half-worded meaning, to smile at an unuttered jest,
so informed, so polished, so of the world worldly . . .
take Mr. Jayne as merely that, and she had her friend
and companion back again, which was deeply restful
and vastly stimulating. And beneath that was her
lover, whom she loved; beneath his urbane exterior
his passion throbbed and leaped, and his deep need of
her cried, and in her the answering need cried back.FIN-DE-SIECLE
93
5
IN THE CAMPAGNA
Together they walked in the Campagna, in the bright
soft wash of the February sun. Mr. Jayne had been
in Rome a week, and they had gone out to Tivoli to-
gether, without papa, who was reading in the Vatican
library. They lunched at the restaurant by the water-
falls, then explored Hadrian's Villa with the plan in
Murray, and quarrelled about which were the differ-
ent rooms. Failing to agree on this problem, they sat
down in the Triclinium and looked at the view and dis-
cussed the more urgent problem of their lives.
“You must,” said Mr. Jayne, “come to me. It is
the only right and reasonable way out. We'll live in
no half-way house, with secrecy and concealment. We
should both hate that. But Olga will not divorce me;
it's no use thinking of that. In her view, and that of
all her countrywomen, husbands are never faithful.
The infidelity of a husband is no reason to a Russian
woman for divorce. Unless she herself wants to marry
another man, and that is likely enough, in Olga's case,
to happen. We are nothing to each other, she and I.
Such love as we had—and it was never love—is dead
long ago. We don’t even like each other.”
“Curious,” mused Rome, “not to foresee these de-
velopments at the outset, before taking the serious step
of marriage. Marriage is an action too freely prac-
tised and too seldom adequately considered.”
“That is so,” Mr. Jayne agreed. “But, and how-
ever that may be, what is done is done. What we now
have to consider, however inadequately, is the future.
It is very plain that you and I must be together. Yes,94
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
yes, yes. Nothing else is plain, but that is. The one
light in chaos. . . . My dearest love, you can’t be deny-
ing that. It is the only conceivable thing—the only
thinkable way out.”
“Way out,” said Rome. “I think, rather, a way
in. . . . Which way do we take—out or in?” Mus-
ingly she looked over the Campagna to blue hills, and
Mr. Jayne, his eyes on her white profile, on the gleam
of gold hair beneath her dark fur cap, and on her
slender hands that clasped her knees, leant closer to her
and replied, with neither hesitation nor doubt, “In.”
“Indeed,” said Miss Garden, “these questions can’t
be decided in this rough and ready, impetuous man-
ner. The mind must have its share in deciding these
important matters, not merely the emotions and desires.
Or else what is the good of education, or of having
learnt to think clearly at all?”
“Very little,” said Mr. Jayne. “However, in this
case the more clearly one thinks the more plain the way
to take becomes. It is confused and muddled thinking
that would lead us to conform to convention and give
one another up, merely because of a social code.”
“The social code,” said Miss Garden, “though as a
rule I prefer to observe it, is in this case neither here
nor there. I have ruled that out; cleared the field, so
to speak, for the essentials. Now, what are the essen-
tials? Your wife, whom you have undertaken to live
with . . .”
“By mutual agreement, we have given that up long
since,” said Mr. Jayne, not for the first time.
. . and your children, whom you have brought
into the world and are responsible for.”
“They are their mother’s. She lets me see nothingFIN-DE-SIECLE
95
of them. She is determined to bring them up as Rus-
sian patriots.”
“Still, they are half yours, and it is a question
whether you should not claim your share. In fact,
I think it is certain that you should. If you broke
off completely from your wife and lived with me, your
right in them would be gone. . . . Then, of course,
there is the ethical point as to your contract, the vows
you made to your wife on marriage, which positively
exclude similar relations with anyone else while she
remains your wife.”
“I ought never to have made them. I was a fool.
The wrong is in the vows, not in their breach.”
“Granted that they were wrong, that does not settle
the further point of whether, having been made, with
every circumstance of deliberation, they should not be
kept.”
“O God,” said Mr. Jayne. “You talk, my dearest,
like a pedant, a prig, or a book of logic. Don’t you
care, Rome?”
“You know,” said Miss Garden, “that I do. . . .
No, don’t touch me. I must think it out. I am a ped-
ant and a prig, if you like, and I must think it out, not
only feel. But now I will think of the other side. Oh,
yes, I know there is another side. We love one an-
other, and we can neither of us be happy, or fully
ourselves, without being together. Without one an-
other we shall be incomplete, unhappy and perhaps
(not certainly) morally and mentally stunted and
warped. Indeed, I see that as clearly as you can.
Further, our being together may, as you say, not hurt
your wife; she may not care in the least. As to that,
I simply don’t know. How could I? She may even
let you still have a share in your children. Russian96
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
points of *view are so different from ours. But one
should be certain of that before taking any steps.
Then there are still points on the other side, that we
have to think of. Any children we might have would
be illegitimate. That would be hard on them.”
“In point of fact,” said Mr. Jayne, “it is largely
illusory, that hardship. And in this case they (if they
should ever exist) needn't even know. You would
take my name. Who is to go on remembering that I
have a Russian wife? Very few people in England
even know it. We should soon live down any talk
there might be.”
“And then,” went on Rome, ticking off another
point on her fingers, “there are my papa and mamma,
whom we should hurt very badly. In their eyes what
we are discussing isn’t a thing to be discussed at all;
it is a deadly sin, and there’s an end of it. They are
very fond of me, and they would be terribly unhappy.
That too is a point to be considered.”
“Perhaps. But not to be given much weight to.
It’s damnable to have to hurt the people we love—but,
after all, we can’t let our parents rule our lives. We’re
living in the eighteen nineties; we’re not mid-Victo-
rians. And we have to make up our own minds what
to do with our lives. We can’t be tied up by anyone
else’s views, either those of our relations or of society
in general. We have to make our own judgments and
choices, all along. And parents shouldn’t be hurt by
their children’s choices, even if they do think them
wrong; they should live and let live. All this judging
for other people, and being hurt, is poisonous. It’s a
relic of the patriarchal system—or the matriarchal.”
Miss Garden smiled.
“Possibly. I should say, rather, that it was inci-FIN-DE-SIECLE
97
dental to parental affection, and always will be. Any-
how, there it is. . . . They don’t, of course, even be-
lieve that divorce is right, let alone adultery.” Her
cool, thoughtful enunciation of the last word gave it
its uttermost value. Miss Garden never slurred or
shirked either words or facts.
“But that,” she added, “doesn’t, of course, dispose
of our lives. That’s only one point out of many. The
question is, what is, now and ultimately, the right and
best thing for me and you to do. You’ve decided.
Well, I haven’t—yet. Give me a week, Francis. I
promise I won’t take more.”
“You are so beautiful,” said Mr. Jayne, changing
the subject and speaking inaccurately, and lifted her
hands to his face. “You are so beautiful. There is no
one like you. You are like the golden sickle moon rid-
ing over the world. You hold my life in your two
hands. Be kind to it, Rome. I love you, I love you,
I love you. If we deny our love we shall be blasphem-
ing. Love like ours transcends all barriers, and well
you know it. Take your week, if you must, only de-
cide rightly at the end of it, my heart’s glory. The
fine thing we shall make of life together, you and I,
the fine, precious, lovely thing. It’s been so poor and
common—full of bickerings and jars and common-
ness and discontents. . . .
O	Rome! . .
6
RUSSIAN TRAGEDY
The Russian woman, with her two beautiful children
and her stout, dazed, unhappy mamma, waited in the
hall of the flat of Mr. Jayne. They were weary, having98
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
travelled across Russia and from Russia to London,
to find Mr. Jayne, and then, having learnt that he was
in Rome, straight from London thither, spending two
nights in the train and arriving this morning, more
alive than dead ( for who, this side of the grave, is not ?)
but very tired. The two children were so tired that
they whimpered disagreeably, and their mother often
wiped their noses with her travel-grimed handkerchief,
but not so often as they required it.
Olga Petrushka was a beautiful woman, square-
headed, with a fair northern skin and large deep blue
eyes, black-lashed, and massive plaits of flaxen hair.
Her eyes looked wild and haunted, for Russians have
such dreadful experiences, and her cheeks were hol-
lowed; she looked like a woman who has seen death
and worse too close, as indeed she had. She was shab-
bily dressed in an old fur dolman over a scarlet dress
and a fur cap. The two children were bundled up in
bearskin coats, like little animals. Her little dancing
bears, she would call them in lighter moments. Ever
and anon she would fling them sweet cakes out of her
reticule, and they would gobble them greedily.
But Nina Naryshkin, their grandmother, sat and
rocked to and fro, to and fro, and said nothing but,
“Aie, aie, aie.”
The hall porter turned on the little family a beaming
and kindly eye. They were, in all probability, thieves,
and not, as the Russian lady asserted, the family of
Signor Jayne, so he would not admit them into Signor
Jayne’s rooms, but he liked to see their gambols.
Every now and then the younger lady would say, in
Russian, “Cheer up, then, little children. Your father
will soon be here and he will give you more sweet cakes.
Aha, how your dirty little mouths water to hear it!FIN-DE-SIECLE
99
Boris, you rascal, don’t pull your sister’s pig-tail.
What children! They drive me to despair.”
And then Mr. Jayne arrived. He came in at the
open hall door, with a tall, fair English lady, and he
was saying to her, “If you don’t mind coming in for
a moment, I will get you the book.”
The hall porter stepped forward with a bow, and
indicated in the background Mrs. Jayne, her mamma,
and the little Jaynes.
What a moment for Mr. Jayne! What a moment
for Mrs. Jayne, her mamma and the little Jaynes!
What a moment for Miss Garden! What a moment
for the hall porter, who loved both domestic reunions
and quarrels, and was as yet uncertain which this would
be (it might even be both), but above all loved mo-
ments, and that it would certainly be.
And so it proved. Where Russians are, there, one
may say, moments are, for these live in moments.
Olga Petrushka stepped forward with a loud cry and
outstretched arms, and exclaimed in Russian, “Ah,
Franya Stefanovitch!” (one of the names she had for
him, for Russians give one another hundreds of names
each, and this accounts in part for the curious, con-
fused state in which this nation is often to be found)
:—“I have found you at last.”
Mr. Jayne, always composed, retained his calm. He
shook hands with his wife and mother-in-law and ad-
dressed them in French.
“How are you, my dear Olga? Why did you not
tell me you wanted to see me? I would have come to
Moscow. It is a long way to have come, with your
mother and the children too. How are you, my little
villains ?”
“Ah, my God,” said Mrs. Jayne, also now in French,IOO
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
which she spoke with rapidity and violence. “How
could I stay another day in Russia? The misery I
have been through? Poor little papa—Nicolai Nicolai-
vitch—they have arrested him for revolutionary propa-
ganda and sent him to Siberia, with my brother Feodor.
They had evidence also against mamma and myself and
would have arrested us, and only barely we escaped in
time, with the little bears. The poor cherubs—kiss
them, Franya. They have been crying for their little
father and the love and good food and warm house he
will give them. For now they and we have no one but
you. ‘Go to England, Olga/ papa said as they took
him. 'It is the one safe country. The English are
good to Russian exiles, and your husband will take
care of you and mamma and the little ones. . . / But
you are with a lady, Franya. Introduce us.”
“I beg your pardon. Miss Garden, my wife, and
Madame Naryshkin, her mother. Miss Garden and
her father are great friends of mine. ... If you will
go into my rooms and wait for me a moment, Olga, I
will see Miss Garden to her pension and return.”
“No,” said Miss Garden, in her fluent and exquisite
French. “No, I beg of you. I will go home alone;
indeed, it is no way. Good-evening, Madame Jayne
and Madame Naryshkin.”
Mr. Jayne went out into the street with her. His
unhappy eyes met hers.
“To-morrow morning,” he muttered, “I shall call.
. . . This alters nothing. ... I will come to-morrow
morning and we will talk.”
“Yes,” said Miss Garden. “We must talk.”
Mr. Jayne went back into the hall and escorted his
family upstairs to his rooms.
“Aie, aie, aie,” shuddered Olga Petrushka, flingingFIN-DE-SIECLE
101
©iff her fur coat and cap and leaping round the room in
her red dress, like a Russian in a novel. “Let’s get
warm. Come, little bears’—she spoke German now—
“to your papa’s arms. Kiss him, Katya; hug him,
Boris. Tell him we have come across Europe to be
with him, now that all else is gone. Forgive and forget,
eh, Franya Maryavitch? You and I must keep one an-
other warm. . . . Aie, aie, aie, my poor papa,” she
wailed in Russian. “I keep seeing his face as they took
him, and my poor Feodor’s. As to mamma, she is
dazed; she will never get over it. We must keep her
always with us, poor little mamma. ... Tea at once,
Franya. I am going to be sick,” she added in Magyar,
and was.
Mr. Jayne laid his wife on his bed and took off her
shoes and bathed her forehead, while she moaned in
Polish. Then he made tea for her and the children and
his mother-in-law, who sat heavily in a chair and drank
five cups, and looked at him with drowsy, inimical eyes,
saying never a word. He felt like a dead man, in a
world full of ghosts. Who were these, who had this
claim upon him? Their clinging hands were pulling
him down, out of life into a tomb. The February
evening shadows lay coldly on his heart. These poor
distraught women, these little children—he must take
infinite care of them, and let them lack for nothing,
but he must not let them come close into his life; they
would throttle it. His life, his true life, was with
Rome. Rome, the gallant, fastidious dandy, with her
delicate poise, her pride, her cool wit and grace. Not
with this violent, unhappy, inconsequent Slav, chat-
tering in several tongues upon his bed.
To-morrow he would go and talk to Rome . . . ex-
plain to Rome. . . .t02
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
7
ENGLISH TRAGEDY
Miss Garden received Mr. Jayne. Neither had slept
much, for Mr. Jayne had given his bed to his family
and lain himself on a horsehair couch, and Miss Gar-
den had been troubled by her thoughts. Their faces
were pale and shadowed and heavy-eyed.
Miss Garden said, “This is the end, of course. I
shan’t need a week now. Fate has intervened very op-
portunely.”
“No,” said Mr. Jayne, with passion. “No. Nothing
is changed. For God’s sake, don’t think that our situa-
tion is changed. It is not. She wants protection and
security and a home, and I will provide all those for her
and her mother and the children. Me she does not want.
They shall have everything they want. But I shall not
live with them.”
“You still think that you and I can live together?”
Miss Garden was sceptical of his optimism. “I don’t
think your wife would tolerate that. No, Frank, it’s
no use. They belong to you. They need you. I can’t
come between you. It would be heartless and selfish.
Imagine the situation for a moment ... it is impos-
sible.”
They both imagined it. Mr. Jayne shuddered, like
a man very cold.
“You don’t want to be involved in such a—such a
melodrama,” he said, bitterly.
“Put it at that if you like. I take it we are neither
of us fond of melodrama. But, apart from that, I said
all along, and meant it, that if your wife wants you I
can’t take you. She has first claim,”FIN-DE-SIECLE
103
“I shall not live with Olga Petrushka and her
mother.”
“That’s your own affair, of course. You are very
likely right, since you don’t get on well together. But
you must see that you and I can’t . . .”
Miss Garden stopped, for her voice began to shake.
How she loved him! She pressed her hands together
in her lap till the rings bruised her fingers.
Mr. Jayne gazed at her gloomily, observing her lightly
poised body, slim and elegant in a dark blue taffeta
dress which stood out behind below the waist in a kind
of shelf, and made her shape rather like that of a swan.
He saw her slight, anguished hands that hurt each
other, and the pale tremor of her face.
“She’s been through hell, and she wants you,” said
Miss Garden, trying to keep control.
“I tell you I can’t live with her, nor she with me.
Do you want to turn my life into a tragi-comic opera?”
“Most life is a tragi-comic opera,” said Rome, trying
to smile. “Perhaps all.”
“But you’re resolved anyhow to keep yours clear of
my tragi-comedies,” he flung at her.
Then he apologised.
“I don’t mean that; I don’t know what I’m saying.
. . . Oh, I won’t press you now to decide. We’ll wait,
Rome. You’ll see, in a month or so, how things have
arranged themselves—how easy it will all be. Olga will
have recovered her balance by then; she changes from
hour to hour, like all Russians. In a few weeks she
will be tired of me and want to be in Paris, or back in
Russia. She doesn’t really want me; it’s only that she
is unstrung by trouble. Upset; that’s what she is. All
I ask you to do is to wait.”
“No, Frank. It can never be, unless she goes some-104
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
time to live with someone else—some other man.
Otherwise she would be likely, even if she left you for
a time, to want you again at intervals. I can’t make
a third. ... You see, whatever happens now, your
family must always be a real fact to me, not an ab-
straction. I’ve seen them . . . Katya is just like you
—your chin and eyes. . . . The children love you very
much; I saw that. . . . And she loves you, too. . . .”
“She does not. That’s not love—not as I know
love.”
“As to that, we all know love in different ways, I
suppose. . . . Truly, Francis, I have quite decided. I
can’t live with you. . . . No, no, don’t. . .
He was holding her in his arms and kissing her face,
her lips, her eyes, muttering entreaties.
“If you loved me you’d do it.”
“I do love you, and I shan’t do it.”
“I’m asking nothing dishonourable of you. You
don’t think it wrong on general principles; yesterday
you were willing to consider it. You’re just refusing
life for a quixotic whim . . . refusing, denying life.
. . . Rome, you can’t do it. Don’t you know, now
you’re in my arms, that you can’t, that it would be to
deny the best in us?”
“What’s the best, what’s the worst? I don’t know,
nor do you. I’m not an ethicist. All I know is
that your wife, while she wants you, or thinks she wants
you, has first claim. It’s a question of fairness and
decent feeling. ... Or bring it down, if you like, to
a question of taste. Perhaps that is the only basis there
really is for decisions of this sort for people like us.”
“Taste. That’s a fine cry to mess up two lives by.
I’d almost rather you were religious and talked of the
will of God. One could respect that, at least.”FIN-DE-SIECLE
105
“I can’t do that, as I happen not to be sure whether
God exists. And it would make nothing simpler
really, since one would then have to discover what one
believed the will of God to be. Don’t do religious
people the injustice of believing that anything is simpler
or easier for them; it’s more difficult, since life is more
exacting. . . . But it comes to the same thing; all these
processes of thought lead to the same result if applied
by the same mind. It depends on the individual out-
look. And this is mine. . . . Oh, don’t make it so
damnably difficult for us both, my dearest. . . ”
Miss Garden, who never swore and never wept, here
collapsed into tears, all her urbane breeding broken at
last. He consoled her so tenderly, so pitifully, so
mournfully, that she wept the more for love of him.
“Go now,” she said at last. “We mustn’t meet again
till we can both do it quietly, without such pain. Papa
and I are going back to London next week. Write to
me sometime and let me know how you do and where
you are. My dearest Frank. . .
8
FOUNDERED
Rome was alone. She sat in a hard Italian chair,
quite still, and felt cold and numb, and as if she had
died. Drowned she felt, under deep cold seas of pas-
sion and of pain. Wrecked and foundered and
drowned, at the bottom of grey seas. Something cried,
small and weak and hurt within her, and it was the voice
of love, or (as Mr. Jayne would have it) of life; life
which she had denied and slain. Never had she greatly
loved before; never would she greatly love again; andio6
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
the great love she now had she was slaying. That was
what the hurt voice cried in her as she sat alone in the
great, bare, chilly room, the sad little scaldino on the
floor at her feet.
She was dry-eyed now that she was alone, and had
no more to face Mr. Jayne’s love and pain. Her own
she could bear. Harder and harder and cooler and
more cynical she would grow, as she walked the world
alone, leaving love behind. Was that the choice ? Did
one either do the decent, difficult thing, and wither to
bitterness in doing it, or take the easy road, the road
of joy and fulfilment, and be thereby enriched and ful-
filled ? And what was fulfilment, and what enrichment ?
What, ah, what, was this strange tale that life is; what
its meaning, what its purpose, what its end ?
Rome did not know. She knew one thing only.
Frustration, renunciation, death—whether you called
your criterion the will of God, or social ethics, or a
quixotic whim, or your own private standards of de-
cency and taste, it led you to these; led you to the same
sad place, where you lay drowned, dead beneath bitter
seas.
Mid-day chimed over the city. Miss Garden rose,
and put on her outdoor things, and went forth to meet
her papa for lunch. Life moves on, through whatever
deserts, and one must compose oneself to meet it, never
betraying one’s soul.
9
VICKY ON THE WORLD
“It’s good to have you back again, my Rome,” Vicky
said. “I miss you at my parties. There are lots of
new people I want you to meet. An adorable Oxford
youth, whom you’ll find after your own heart. AlreadyFIN-DE-SIECLE
107
he writes essays like a polished gentleman of the world,
and he a round-faced cherub barely out of school. A
coming man, my dear, mark my words. Such bril-
liance, such style, such absurd urbanity! Denman in-
troduced him. I prefer him enormously to Denman’s
other cronies—that affected Mr. Le Gallienne for in-
stance, and that conceited young Beardsley. Not but
that young Beardsley, too, has a wit. Til say that for
Denman—he keeps a witty table. . . . Well, have you
brought papa back still a good Roman? Father Stan-
ton says, by the way, we're to call the Pope's church in
this country the Italian Mission. It's quite time papa
had a change of creed, anyhow; I begin to fear for his
health since he read ‘Robert Elsmere' and wasn't driven
by it to honest doubt."
“Neither," said Rome, “was he driven by the Forum
to the pagan gods. One begins to think that papa is
settling down."
“Oh, I trust not. Dear papa, he's not old yet. . . .
What a country you have come back to, though, my
dear. Strikes everywhere—dockers, railwaymen, min-
ers, even tailors. . . . Maurice is perfectly happy, en-
couraging them all. But, darling Maurice, I'm seri-
ously afraid he may cut Amy's throat one day. Serve
her right, the little cat. If I were Maurice I'd beat
her. Perhaps he will one day, when he's not quite
sober. I wish she'd run off with one of the vulgar men
she flirts with, and leave him in peace. He'll never
run off, because he won't leave the children to her.
Poor old boy, he's so desperately up against things the
whole time. Mamma's miserable about him. I
know, though she never says a word. However,
she's consoled by all her nice grandchildren.
Even grandpapa, you know, admits that the de-io8
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
plorable modern generation is doing its duty as re-
gards multiplication. Why do old Bible clergymen
like grandpapa think it so important to produce more
life? One would think, one really would think, that
there was plenty of that already. But no. Be fruit-
ful, they say: multiply: replenish the earth. It says so
in Genesis, and clergymen of grandpapa’s generation
can’t get away from Genesis. Poor grandpapa. He’s
writing to the Guardian, as usual, about the Modern
Woman. She’s dreadfully on his mind. Latchkeys.
He doesn’t think women ought to have them. Why
not? He doesn’t explain. Men may open their front
doors with keys, but women must, he thinks, always
ring up the unfortunate maids. He can think of no
reasons why; he is past reasons, but not past convic-
tions. What, he asked in Stanley’s drawing-room the
other day, is to take the place, for women, of the old
sanctities and safeties? “The new safeties, I imag-
ine, sir,” Denman replied. Grandpa grunted and
frowned; he thinks women on bicycles really indecent,
poor old dear. As a matter of fact, Denman does, too
—at least ungraceful, which to him is the same thing.
But Rome, my dear, you simply must get one. We’re
all doing it now. It’s glorious; the nearest approach
to wings permitted to men and women here below. In-
toxicating! Stanley lives on hers, now her son has
safely arrived. And it’s transforming clothes. Short
jackets and cloth caps are coming in. Bustles are no
more. And, my dear—bloomers are seen in the land!
Yes, actually. Stanley cycles in them; she looks de-
lightful, whatever Denman says. No, I don’t. Charles
doesn’t approve. Conspicuous, he thinks. And, of
course, so it is. Well, men will be men. They’ll never
be civilised where women are concerned, most of them.FIN-DE-SIECLE
109
But the poor silly old world really does march a little.
We’re all getting most thrillingly fin-de-si$cle. I won-
der if all times have been as deliriously modern, while
they lasted, as our times.”
“Probably/’ said Rome. “It’s one of the more cer-
tain, though more ephemeral, qualities that times have.
I wonder at what age grandpapa began deploring it.
Not during the Regency or under William the Fourth,
I	imagine. I suppose his grandpapa was deploring it
then.”
“Oh, and there’s another shocking female modernism
become quite common this winter, my dear. Ciga-
rettesI I haven’t perpetrated that myself yet, as Charles
thinks that unfeminine too, and I’m sure the children
would steal them and be sick. Besides, I don’t think
it really becoming to an elegant female. But Stanley
does. That literary set of hers is a funny mixture of
forwardness and reaction. Forward women and reac-
tionary men, I think. Grandpapa hasn’t tumbled to
Stanley’s cigarettes yet. My hat, when he does! Well,
it’s a funny world. I suppose my daughters will grow
up smoking like their brothers, without thinking twice
about it. . . . The darlings, they’re all so troublesome
just now. That kindergarten can’t or won’t teach Imo-
gen to speak properly. If she gabbles like this at three,
what will she do at thirty? And Hughie drawls and
contradicts. . . .”
Their talk then ran along family lines.
10
STANLEY AND DENMAN
Stanley pedalled swiftly, a sturdy, attractive figure
ki serge knickerbockers (“bloomers” they were calledno
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
while that graceful and sensible fashion of our ances-
tresses endured), along a smooth, sandy road between
pine woods. The April sunlight flickered on the pale
brown needle-strewn road; the light wind sang in the
pines and blew dark curls of hair from under Stanley's
sailor-hat brim. Her bicycle basket was full of prim-
roses. Her round, brown cheeks glowed pink; her lips
were parted in a low, tuneless song (tuneless because
Stanley could never get a tune right). It expressed her
happiness, relieved the pressure of her joy at being
alive. Such a day! Such a bicycle! Such sweet and
merry air!
She stopped, got off her bicycle, leant it against a
gate, and lay down flat on her back in the wood, staring
up into the green gloom. London, Denman, her baby,
were far off. She was alone with beauty. She was
passionately realising the moment, its fleeting exquisite-
ness, its still, fragile beauty. So exquisite it was, so
frail and so transitory, that she could have wept, even
as she clasped it close. To savour the loveliness of
moments, to bathe in them as in a wine-gold, sun-
warmed sea, and then to pass on to the next—that was
life.
Then, presently, the moment lost its keenness, and
she was no longer alone with beauty. Her husband
and her baby broke the charmed circle, looking in. How
she loved them! But they took from her something;
her loneliness, that queer, eerie separateness, that only
bachelors and spinsters know. They need not, to know
it, be unattached, virgin bachelors and spinsters; love
does not spoil separateness, but households do.
Stanley rose to her feet, brushed the pine-needles
from her neat clothes and untidy hair, put on her sailor-FIN-DE-SIECLE
hi
hat and got on her bicycle again. Before her there was
a long slope down. To take it, brakeless, feet up on
the rest, was like flying. Stanley was no longer a mys-
tic, a wife or a mother; she was a hoydenish little girl
out for a holiday.
She reached Weybridge station and entrained for
London in one of the halting, smoke-palled, crawling
trains of the period. In it she read Ibsen's “Doll’s
House,” for she and Denman were going to see it next
week at the Independent Theatre. What a play! What
moralising! What purpose! What deplorable solem-
nity! There seemed, to the set of light-hearted and
cynical aesthetes among whom Stanley moved, nothing
to do about “A Doll’s House” but to laugh at it. These
strange, solemn Scandinavians! Yet numbers of cul-
tured readers in England took it seriously, as cultured
English readers love to take foreign plays. They found
it impressive and fine, almost a gospel. Further, the
bourgeois, the Philistines, the people who are inac-
curately said to spend more time than the elect in the
street (why is this believed of them?), mocked at it, so
that there must be something in it, for, as has been
well said (or if it has not, it should have been), majori-
ties are always wrong.
“The fact is,” said Stanley to herself, “the fact is,
cultivated people like tracts. Especially cultivated
women like tracts about their own emancipation. And,
of course, in a way, they’re right. . . . But plays with
purposes . . .”
It will be observed that Stanley, whom nature had
made to welcome purposes wherever found, had well
assimilated the spirit of her literary group, which pre-
ferred art to be for the sake of art only. She had, as112
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Vicky said of her, so much Zeitgeist. What seemed
to her and her friends the good drama of the moment
was light social comedy, full of gay, sparkling nonsense
and epigrams for the sake of epigrams. Or the more
profound and mordant wit of Mr. George Bernard
Shaw, who had lately begun to write plays. Mr. Shaw
had, indeed, purpose, but his wit carried it off.
Waterloo. Even the trains of 1891 got there at
last. Stanley went to look for her bicycle. Finding it
and wheeling it off, she felt herself to be one of the
happiest persons in the station. She had everything.
A bicycle, a husband, a baby, a house, freedom, love,
literary and social opportunity, charming friends. Life
was indeed felicitous to such as she.
“Progress of Royal Labour Commission,” the news-
paper placards shouted. “More L.C.C. scandals. Free
brass bands for the poor!”
Stanley frowned. It was a damnable world, after
all. A vulgar, grudging, grabbing world. The voice
of the press was as the shrill voice of Amy, the wife of
Maurice. “Free brass bands for the poor!” That was
how Amy would say it, with her silly, gibing laugh.
Even, a little, how Irving would say it. But Irving,
though he despised the democratic ways of the London
County Council, and free brass bands for the poor, was
not silly or spiteful. He was merely a delightful,
philistine young gentleman on the Stock Exchange.
Stanley bicycled (amid perils less great, less numer-
ous in the year 1891 than now) to Margaretta Street,
Chelsea. There was the house, small, dingy, white,
with a green door and a tiny square of front garden.
Stanley found her latchkey, flung open the green door
with a kind of impetuous, happy eagerness, and came
face to face with her husband in the little hall.FIN-DE-SIECLE
113
“Hullo,” he said, and quizzically surveyed her, up
and down, from her blown hair and flushed cheeks to
her neat, roomy knickerbockers and stout brogues.
“Hullo.”
“Hullo, Den. I’ve had the rippingest ride. How’s
baby ? And yoursel f ?”
“Both flourish, I believe. . . . You know weVe peo-
ple to dinner to-night ? You’ve not left yourself a great
deal of time, have you? ... You don’t look your best,
my dear girl, if I may say so.”
“No, I expect not; I’m blown to bits. What’s it
matter? Come on, Den, we must both hurry.”
She ran upstairs, turned hot water into the bath, tip-
toed into the nursery where her son slept, and back to
her room. Denman was in his dressing-room, beyond
the open door.
“I’ve had a lovely ride, Den. Weybridge way.”
“Glad you enjoyed it. But lovely’s the wrong word.
Anything less lovely than a woman in those unspeakable
garments I never saw. I detest them. Women ought
to wear graceful, trailing things always. ... I can’t
think why you do it. Your sense of beauty must be
sadly defective.”
“Beauty—oh, well, it’s convenience that matters most,
surely. For that matter, very few modern clothes, male
or female, are beautiful. But I don’t think these are
ugly. One can’t trail all the time; it’s a dirty trick on
foot and dangerous on a bicycle.”
“It’s better to be elegant, dirty and dangerous than
frumpish, clean and safe. That’s an epigram. The fact
is, women ought never to indulge in activities, either of
body or mind; it’s not their role. They can’t do it
gracefully.”H4
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“What do you want them to do then, poor things?
Just sit about?”
“Precisely that. You've expressed it accurately, if
not very beautifully. An elegant inertia is what is re-
quired of women . . . what on earth has that girl done
with my black socks? . . . Any activity necessary to
the human race can be performed by such men as are
prepared to sacrifice themselves. All this feminine
pedalling about and playing ridiculous games and speak-
ing on platforms and writing books and serving on com-
mittees—Lord save us.”
“They’d get awfully fat, your sitting-about females;
they wouldn't be graceful long. Hurry up, Den, or
you'll be late, not I.”
“We shall both be late. It matters very little. If
any of our guests have the bad taste to be punctual it
will serve them right. Crackanthorpe won't be punc-
tual, anyhow, he never is. . . . Make yourself lovely
to-night, Stan; I want to forget those awful bloomers.
They make you look like a horrible joke in Punch about
the New Woman.”
“Well, I'd rather look like the New Woman than
like the ‘Woman (not new)' in the same pictures—
sanctimonious idiots. . . . Really, Den, you're silly
about women. . . .”
“Oh, for God's sake,” said Denman, smothered in his
shirt.
Stanley went to the bathroom with a touch of ill-
humour, which she sang away, like a kettle, in clouds of
steam.
Denman, hearing the tuneless song, winced in amused
distaste. As a matter of fact, he would have liked a
bath himself.FIN-DE-SIECLE
115
11
A YOUNG MASHER
How agreeable, how elegant and how fastidious were
the young mashers of the early nineties! We shall not
look upon their like again. Du Maurier has immor-
talised them, beautiful creatures with slim waists and
swallow-tailed evening coats and clear-cut patrician
features, chatting to magnificent women with curled
mouths, straight brows and noble, sweeping figures.
The women of those days, if we are to* believe Du
Maurier, were nobly built as goddesses, classical-fea-
tured, generous of stature and of bosom, but roped in
straitly between ribs and hips, so as to produce waists
that nature never planned. Because of this compres-
sion, they would often suffer greatly, and sometimes
fall ill with anaemia, or cancer, or both, and die in great
anguish. But, while they yet lived and breathed, they
were noble and elegant objects, and their gentlemen
friends matched them for grace.
Irving Arthur Penrhyn Garden, aged twenty-eight,
earning a comfortable and honest livelihood on the
Stock Exchange, was a masher. He lived in bachelor
chambers in Bruton Street, and was a popular diner-out
and dance-goer, for, though he had not brilliance or
fame, he had dark and slim good looks, cheerfulness,
savoir faire, and was that creature so sought of host-
esses, an agreeable young bachelor. His tastes were
healthy, his wits sound, his political and religious views
gentlemanly, and his prospects satisfactory. Present
correctness and future prosperity were stamped on
Irving Garden; so unlike that queer fish, his brother
Maurice, the Radical journalist, who was stamped withii6
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
present incorrectness and future failure. Irving would,
no doubt, make a good marriage sometime. Meanwhile
he was enjoying life. He had no part with the high-
brows, the cranks, the fops, the aesthetes or any other
extreme persons; he took no interest in foreign litera-
ture, Home Rule for Ireland, the Woman’s Movement,
the Independent Theatre, labour agitations, the new
art, George Meredith, or Russian exiles, finding them
(respectively) uninteresting, impracticable, unattrac-
tive, depressing, paid-by-anarchist-gold, queer, unin-
telligible and a damned nuisance. He considered his
brother Maurice to be playing the wrong game; Stan-
ley’s friends he thought an affected, conceited crew,
both the men and the women being unsexed, and for
ever writing things one didn’t want to read. Rome
fell too easily into superfluous irony, so that people
never knew when she was pulling their legs, and if she
didn’t marry soon, now that she was over thirty, people
would begin thinking her an old maid. Una was all
right, but shouldn’t have married down. And, though
Irving was an affectionate youth and loved his parents,
he did think it a little comic of the pater to change his
religion quite so often; it made people smile. There
should be limits to the number of religions allowed to
each man in his life. Anyhow, what was wrong with
the C. of E. ? On the whole, Vicky was the member of
his family of whom Irving most approved. Vicky
seemed to him what a woman should be. She looked
pretty, dressed and danced well, was amusing, lived in
the right part of London, and gave very decent, lively
little dinners, at which people weren’t always trying to
be clever. Or anyhow he wasn’t asked to the ones at
which they tried to be clever.
And with all this, Irving was no fool. He was doingFIN-DE-SIECLE
ii 7
very well at his job, had a good sound head, quite well
stocked with ideas, and knew his way about.
Such was Irving Arthur Penrhyn Garden, walking
cheerfully, gracefully and competently through the year
of grace 1891,
12
RUSSIAN INTERLUDE
That summer Russian refugees were greatly the
mode. They would flee to Great Britain in shoals from
the fearful atrocities of their government. Those who
came were mostly of the intellectual classes (the less
intellectual being too stupid to move), who had been
plotting, or writing, or speaking, or otherwise ex-
pressing their distaste for their country’s constitution,
and thus incurring the displeasure of the authorities.
Some of them had been sent to Siberia and had es-
caped ; others had served their time there and returned ;
others again had not yet visited that land, but feared
that they might. Once in London, they found kind
English intellectuals eager to take an interest in them,
and plenty of their own countrymen with whom to
meet and continue to plot. It was quite the fashion,
in the nineties, to have a few exiled Russians at your
parties. They introduced a new way of taking tea,
very nasty, with lemon and no milk. Vicky’s youngest
daughter, Imogen, as an infant, was once given a sip of
this tea from the cup of a hairy Russian professor, and
was sent up to the nursery for spewing it out. Imogen
developed thus an early and unjust distaste for Russians
which did not leave her through life.
In the May of 1891, some new Russian refugees
suddenly broke on London—the unexpected andn8
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
hitherto little mentioned wife, mother-in-law and chil-
dren of Mr. Jayne, the brilliant writer of essays and
memoirs. It had been vaguely rumoured before, that
Mr. Jayne had some kind of Russian wife, but no one
had expected her to make an appearance; it had been
supposed that Mr. Jayne, being a man of some savoir
faire, would have seen to that. However, here she was,
a large and handsome Russian woman with two large
and handsome children, a stout, tragic, yet conversa-
tional mamma, an inconsequent manner of speech, like
that of Russians in novels, and a wide acquaintance
with other Russian refugees, with whom she plotted on
Sunday afternoons and all through Thursday nights.
She settled, with her mother and children, in Mr.
Jayne’s flat. Mr. Jayne left the flat to them and took
rooms of his own some way off; he probably thought he
would be in the way if he lived in the flat, where Mrs.
Jayne entertained her fellow countrymen a good deal.
Mrs. Jayne accused him bitterly of neglecting her in
her loneliness and grief. He replied that experience
had proved that they were not happy together, and that,
therefore, he would provide for the support of her, her
mother and his two children, but would not share a
dwelling with them, which would be both foolish and
immoral. He added that, as she knew, he wished she
and her mother would sometime see their way to living
abroad, where they would be much happier. Mrs.
Jayne replied that they intended to live in London until
the Day of Deliverance, by which she meant the day
when they could with safety return to Russia. She
then went into hysterics and said that doubtless he
wished her dead.
Mr. Jayne said, “These scenes make life impossible.
You drive me to leave London. I shall live in Italy forFIN-DE-SIECLE
119
the present. My bank will pay you an allowance, and
I will visit you from time to time.”
“Why do you hate me so, Franya Stefanovitch ?” she
cried.
“I don't hate you. But you know as well as I do
what a poor business we make of living together. It
is one of the worst and most unintelligent forms of im-
morality for two people who irritate each other to
expose themselves to misery and anger by living to-
gether. Therefore, with no malice, we will live apart.”
“There’s another woman. You wish to live with a
mistress. I know it.”
“If you think so, get a divorce.”
“Never. I will never divorce you. You are my hus-
band, and the father of my poor little bears. Who
ever heard of a faithful husband? We say in Russia
that they are like the golden bear—a fabulous crea-
ture. No, I must put up with your infidelities. But
if you leave me for too long I shall come and find you,
and stick a knife into you and your mistress. I am not
patient, Franya.”
“I never supposed that you were, Olga. And I may
tell you, though I do not expect you to believe me, that
I have no mistress, and never have had.”
She laughed at him.
“Ha! ha! Are you the golden bear, then, found at
last ? Go away with you, you and your lies. You make
me sick. ... I wish that you were dead.”
The last part of this conversation took place at the
hall door, and, as Mr. Jayne went out, a young Russian
came in. He was Sergius Dmitri, a cousin of Mrs.
Jayne’s, a student, who had also fled from Russia dur-
ing the recent troubles. He was a passionate admirer of
his cousin, and wished very much that she would get120
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
rid of this cold, unloving English husband of hers, and
come to live with him. He heard her last words to
Mr. Jayne.
“Sergius,” she said, seeing him, “I want you to do
me a service. Follow my husband this afternoon and
see where he goes and whom he sees. I suspect him of
having a mistress, and I wish to be certain. If he has,
he will go straight to her now. . . . I'll be revenged on
him, the villain. After him, Sergius.”
The young Russian saw Mr. Jayne disappearing
round the corner and hurried after him.
Mr. Jayne went to call on the Gardens. He took
Rome out with him, and they sat on a bench in the gar-
den in Bloomsbury Square.
“You must come away with me,” he said. “We will
live in Italy. She hates me. So does her mother. I
can’t live in the same town with them, let alone the same
house. I have told her so. I am going to live in Italy,
and work there at my books. Am I to go alone, or
will you come ?”
Rome saw across the square the windows of the
house of her papa and mamma. She considered them ;
she considered also life, in many of its aspects. She
considered international marriages, and unhappy family
life. Love she considered, and hate, the enduringness
and the moral and spiritual consequences of each. She
thought of her own happiness, of Mr. Jayne’s, of Mrs.
Jayne’s, of that of their two children. Of social ethics
she thought, and of personal joy, and of human laws,
which of them stand merely on expediency, which on
some ultimate virtue. She thought also of vows, of
contracts, and of honour. Having considered these
things, and considering also her very great love for Mr.FIN-DE-SIECLE
121
Jayne and his for her, she turned to him and opened
her lips to reply.
But the words, whatever they were which she would
have uttered—and neither Mr. Jayne nor anyone else
was ever to know—were checked before her tongue
formed them. For someone jumped out of the trees
behind the bench on which they sat, and jabbed a long
knife into Mr. Jayne’s back, between the shoulders, and
rushed away.
Other people near ran up. Mr. Jayne had fallen
choking forward. They did not dare to remove the
knife, but carried him out into the square and into
the Gardens’ house, where he lay on his side on a couch,
unconscious, choking and bleeding at the lungs. The
doctor was in attendance in ten minutes, but could do
little, and in twenty Mr. Jayne was dead.
The assassin had, meanwhile, been captured. He
proved to be a Russian, one Sergius Dmitri, described
as a student, living in London. The only account of
his action he gave was that he had known Mr. Jayne in
Russia and disliked him, and that Mr. Jayne had not
done his duty by his wife, who was Sergius Dmitri’s
cousin. So Sergius Dmitri had, in a moment of im-
pulse, knifed Mr. Jayne. No, he could not say that
he regretted his action.
His record showed him to be of the anarchist per-
suasion, and a thrower of several bombs in his native
land, some of which had reached their mark. Human
life was not, it was apparent, sacred to him. Mrs.
Jayne, prostrated with grief, cursed him for murder-
ing her husband, the father of her children, who had
devotedly loved her and whom she had devotedly loved.
He had never neglected her; that was a fancy of her
cousin’s, who had been a prey to jealousy.122
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Sergius Dmitri was hanged. Mrs. Jayne continued
for a time to live in her husband's flat, supported by
his money, but, soon tiring of widowhood, married a
fellow-countryman and went, with her mother and chil-
dren, to live in Paris.
Miss Garden, who had been so close a witness of the
horrid event, and who was known besides as an inti-
mate friend of Mr. Jayne's, never afterwards referred
to the affair, even to her relatives. Miss Garden was
no giver of confidences; no one ever learnt how she had
felt about the business or about Mr. Jayne. There
were not wanting, of course, those who said that these
two had loved too well, had, in fact, been involved in an
affair. But, in view of Miss Garden's reputation for
cool inviolability, and of her calm manner after the
tragedy, such rumours obtained little credence. Miss
Garden did, indeed, leave London shortly after the in-
quest, and spent the rest of the summer in the country,
but she returned in the autumn as apparently bland,
cool and composed as always.
13
NINETY-TWO
Eighteen ninety-two. Mr. Garden was troubled by
the death, in January, of Cardinal Manning, and by
the disputes conducted in the press between Professor
Huxley, Mr. Gladstone and the Duke of Argyll con-
cerning the Book of Genesis and the existence of God,
which had, in the eyes of all these eminent persons,
some strange connection one with another. Mrs. Gar-
den’s father, the Dean, was, on the contrary, troubled
by neither of these events, since he did not care for theFIN-DE-SIECLE
123
Cardinal, knew that the Professor had not, theo-
logically, a leg to stand on, and the Duke, at most, one.
Grandpapa was more stirred, in the early part of 1892,
by the untimely death of the Duke of Clarence, by the
alarming increase of female bicyclists, and by the
prevalent nuisance of that popular song, “Ta-ra-ra-ra-
boomdeay.,,
Vicky was stirred by Paderewski, by the influenza
epidemic, which all her children got, and by the new
high-shouldered sleeve; Maurice by the doings of the
L.C.C. Progressives, the imminence of the parliamen-
tary elections, the just claims but ignorant utterances
of the Labour Party, woman’s suffrage, the birth of
the Morning Leader, and Mr. Charles Booth’s “Life
and Labour in London”; Stanley by woman’s suffrage,
“Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” the comedies of Mr. Oscar
Wilde and Mr. J. M. Barrie, “The Light That Failed,”
and Mr. H. G. Wells; Irving by golf, Mr. Arthur
Roberts, Miss Marie Lloyd and “Sherlock Holmes”; and
Una by the arrival of a new baby and the purchase of
a new hunter.
Rome was not very greatly stirred by any of these
things. Into her old detached amusement at the queer
pageant of life had come a faint weariness, as if nothing
were very much worth while. If she thought anything
worth serious comment, she did not reveal it. Life
was to her at this time more than ever a tale told by
an idiot, signifying nothing. She went on her way as
usual, reading, seeing pictures, hearing music, meeting
people, talking, smoking, bicycling, leading the life led
by intelligent dilettanti in the small, cultivated nucleus
of a great city. There was nothing to show that she
endured the world with difficulty; that in the early
mornings she would wake and lie helpless, without124
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
armour, waiting the onslaught of the new day, and in
the evenings would slip from her armour with a shiver-
ing sigh, to drown engulfed by darkness and the hope-
less passion of the night. “Some day,” she would say
to herself, “I shall not mind so much. The edge will
get blunt. Some day . . . some day. . . .”
But the black night mocked her, and she could not
see that day on the furthermost dip of the horizon; she
could only see Mr. Jayne’s dear, pale face turned to her
with wistful hoping in his grey eyes behind their glasses,
and he was saying, “Am I to go alone, or will you
come?” and then, even as, having considered life, she
opened her lips to reply, there was Mr. Jayne lurching
forward, choked with blood, his question answered, for
he was to go alone.
“My dear,” whispered Rome, in tears, to the unan-
swering, endless night. “My dear. Come back to me,
and I will give you anything and everything. . . . But
you will never come back, and I can give you nothing
any more.”
And thus she could not see, however far off, that day
when she should not mind so much, that day when the
edge should get blunt.
Maurice, in 1892, was against very nearly everything.
He was against the Conservative party, for the usual
reasons. He was against the Liberal party, because
Mr. Gladstone opposed woman's suffrage and the
Labour party and the Eight Hour Day. He was
against the Woman’s Suffrage Bill because it was a
class Bill. He was against Mr. Keir Hardie and the
new Labour party because they talked what he consid-
ered sentimental tosh, damaging their own cause, and
because Amy, his wife, echoed it parrot-like. He was
against the Social Democratic Federation for the sameFIN-DE-SIECLE
125
reasons, and because it did not prevent its members
from making bombs. He was against the socialist
meetings in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square which he
had been used to approve, because they too talked tosh.
More and more, as Maurice advanced from the heat
of youth into the clear-sighted unsentimentality of
middle life (he was now thirty-five), he disliked tosh,
and more and more most of the world seemed to him
to be for ever talking it. The people, the parliamen-
tarians, the press, the government classes, the imperial-
ists, the democrats, the middle classes, rivalled one
another in the flow of cant and nonsense they emitted*
O	God, for clear heads and hard facts, unmuddled by
humbug and romanticism! Almost, Maurice was im-
pelled to vote for Lord Salisbury, whose cool, cynical
hardness was a relief; but, after all, deeper than his
hatred of sentimentalism, lay his hatred of injustice and
economic cruelty and class privilege. He was a demo-
crat impatient with democracy, a journalist despising
journalism, the product of an expensive education at
war with educational inequality, a politician loathing
politics, a husband chafing at his wife, a child of his
age in rebellion against it, an agnostic irritated by the
thoughtful, loquacious agnosticism of his day.
“There seems,” as his mother said of him, “to be no
hole into which Maurice fits. Whereas Stanley fits into
them all. They are both too extreme, dear children.
It is neither necessary, surely, to be fighting everything
all one’s time, nor to chase after every wind that blows
... I sometimes think that the best balanced and the
most solid of you all is Una.”
“Oh, yes, dear mamma,” Vicky replied. “Una is fast-
rooted in the soil. Country people are always the best
balanced. The only new things Una takes up are126
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
bicycles and golf; the only old things she drops are her
g’s. Una is eternal and sublime; there’s nothing of the
new woman about her, and nothing of the reactionary,
either. There never was anyone less self-conscious, or
less conscious of her period. All the rest of us think
we’re moderns, but Una knows not times; she merely
swings along, her dogs at her heels, her children at her
skirts, her golf-clubs over her shoulder, and always an-
other baby on the way. And the beauty of the child!
She’d make a sensation in London—though she’s not the
type of the moment, not elegant or artificial, too much
the unsophisticated child of nature. Oh, yes, Una is
on the grand scale.”
“Well, your grandfather thinks even Una is too mod-
ern. It’s the golf and bicycling and the g’s, I suppose.
I suppose the fact is that it’s difficult, in these days, to
avoid being new. You children and your friends all
are. In fact, the whole world seems to be.”
“The world is always new, mamma darling, and
always old. It’s no newer than it was in 1880, or 1870
—in fact, not so new, by some years. The only year
in which it was really new was, according to grandpapa
and the annotators of flie Book of Genesis, B.C. 4004.”
“Yes, I daresay it was sadly new then, and no doubt
grandpapa would have found it so. But somehow one
hears the word a good deal just now, used by young
people as well as old. What with new women, and new
art, and new literature, and new humour, and the new
hedonism that Denman and Stanley talk about, and that
seems to mean making your drawing-room like an old
curiosity shop and burning incense in it and lighting it
with darkened crimson lamps and lying on divans with
black and gold cushions and smoking scented cigarettes
and reading improper plays aloud. . . . Only RomeFIN-DE-SIÈCLE
127
says that isn’t new in the least, but thousands of years
old.”
“Oh, Rome! Rome thinks nothing new. She was
born blasé. She hasn’t got grandpapa’s or Stanley’s
fresh mind. She always expects the unexpected.
Oscar Wilde says that to do that shows a thoroughly
modern mind. If Rome had been Eve, she’d have
looked at the new world through a monocle (she’d have
worn that, even if nothing else) and seen that it was
stale, and said with a yawn, “All this is very vieux
jeu”
“And very possibly,” said mamma, “it was.”
*4
FIN-DE-SIECLE
Ninety-three passed. In it grandpapa died, others
said of influenza following on old age, but he himself
would have it that it was of a shock he received one
day when driving, convalescent, in Hyde Park ; for his
horses, very respectable and old-fashioned animals,
shied at a lady bicyclist, and grandpapa’s heart jolted,
and when he got home he took to his bed and never rose
again. So much, he whispered, hoarsely and somewhat
sardonically, to his daughter, for the New Woman and
her pranks. But what did it signify, he added. If he
was not to get well of this attack, he was ready to go.
He trusted (though a worm) in his Maker, and was
not unprepared. So grandpapa, dignified to the last,
departed from this life, one of the last of the Regency
bucks and the Tory clerics, perhaps the last of all to
condemn on theological grounds the arithmetic book of
Bishop Colenso.128
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Fantastic observers might have imagined that, with
the departure of this firm old Victorian, who had so
disapproved of novelty, life span still more giddily on
its rapid way. Certainly the years 1893 and 1894 do,
for some reason, appear to have struck both those who
gloried in novelty, and those whom it shocked, as more
than usually new. The audacious experimentalism
which is always with us was even more self-conscious
then than is customary. Such are time's revenges that
the so daring social, literary and intellectual cleavages
made by our forefathers in those years are now re-
garded as quaintly old-fashioned compromises with
freedom, even as our own audacities will doubtless be
regarded thirty years hence. But the people of the
nineties, even as the people of the eighties, seventies,
sixties, and so back, and even as the people of the twen-
tieth century, thought they were emancipating them-
selves from tradition, saw themselves as bold buccaneers
sailing uncharted seas, and found it great fun. The
illusion of advance is sustaining, to all right-minded
persons, and should by all means be cultivated. It gives
self-confidence and poise. It even seems to please
elderly persons to mark or fancy changes of habit,
which they have no wish to emulate, among their
juniors, and it certainly pleases their juniors to be thus
remarked upon, for they, too, believe that they are some-
thing new—the new young, as they have always de-
lighted to call themselves—so all are pleased and no
harm is done. The eighteen nineties were no different
in this respect, from the nineteen twenties.
But 1894 does actually seem to have been a more
amusing year than most that we have now. What with
the New Humour, and the New Earnestness, and the
New Writers, and the New Remorse, and the NewFIN-DE-SIÈCLE
129
Woman, and the New Drama, and the New Journalism,
and the New Child, and the New Parent, and the New
Conversation, and the telephone, and the gramophone,
and the new enormous sleeves, there was a great deal
of novelty about.
It is a curious time to look back upon to-day. Curi-
ous to read the newspapers, reviews and comic papers
of the time; to find, for instance, in the Observer a
leading article on the last novel of Mrs. Humphry
Ward, as if it were a European event, and one the next
Sunday on “What is the modern girl coming to, for
she opens her front door with a key?” To come, too,
on reviews of Mr. Hall Caine's “Manxman,” such as
that by Mr. Edmund Gosse in the St. James' Gazette—
“A contribution to literature, and the most fastidious
critic would give in exchange for it a wilderness of
that deciduous trash which our publishers call fiction.
It is not possible to part from it without a warm tribute
of approval.” But how possible it has now become!
Indeed, in our times it has been known that a certain
author, having in an unguarded hour committed to
print an appreciation of this famous writer, and then
having learnt his mistake, has changed his name and
started life again, unable otherwise to support his dis-
grace. Autres temps, autres mœurs. Certainly the
nineties were a long time ago. Strange, too, to read
some of the contemporary press comments on that in-
nocent, well-produced, extremely well-illustrated, and
on the whole capable periodical, the Yellow Book—“the
outcry,” as Mr. Arthur Symons put it later, when the
publication of the Savoy was greeted with much the
same noise, “the outcry for no reason in the world but
the human necessity for making a noise.” You would
think that the worst that could be said of the Yellow130
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Book was that it was not eclectic, that it opened its hos-
pitable doors to the worse writers as well as to the
better, and that its intellectually lowest contributions
were too widely sundered from its highest; and the best
that could be said for it (and how much this is!) is
that Aubrey Beardsley drew for it, Henry James and
Max Beerbohm wrote prose for it, and W. B. Yeats
poetry, and that it had, on the whole, some of the more
capable writers of the day as contributors. But, in
point of fact, the best that was said of it was that it
was brilliant, daring, courageous, new and intensely
modern, and the worst that it was bizarre, revolting,
affected, new and decadent. It appears to a later gen-
eration to have been none of these things; that is, it was
brilliant in patches only, and commonplace in patches;
it was not daring except in that it is greatly daring to
publish any periodical ever; it was not more intensely
modern than everything always is, and most of its con-
tributors were middle-aged; its weak and trite contri-
butions (though indeed it did at times sink pretty low)
were too few to allow of the word revolting being prop-
erly applied to the whole magazine, even by him whom
Mr. Gosse called, in another context, the most fastidi-
ous critic; and as for decadent, this it may, indeed, have
been, as no one has ever discovered what, if anything,
this word, as generally used at this time, meant. Ex-
hibiting those qualities which mark the decline of a
great period, it should mean: whereas many of those
who survive from the nineties maintain that, on the
other hand, they marked the beginning of a good period.
Or it may mean merely less good than its predecessors,
and this the Yellow Book was assuredly not, but quite
the contrary. It was, in fact, not unlike various capable,
well-produced periodicals of our own day. Many ofFIN-DE-SIECLE
its surviving contributors contribute now to these newer
journals. But how seldom does one now hear them or
their writings or the periodicals to which they con-
tribute called ultra-modern, daring, shocking, decadent
or bizarre? Rather, in fact, the contrary. Thus, it
will be observed, do the moderns of one day become the
safe establishments of the next. In ten years the public
will be saying of our present moderns, “They are safe.
They are vieux jeu. They resemble cathedrals.”
What a death's head at the feast of life is this fearful
fate which is suspended before even the newest of us,
and which, if we survive long enough, we shall by no
means avoid. Happy, possibly, were those moderns of
the nineties who died with their modernity still envel-
oping them, so that no one shall ever call them cathe-
drals. Gloriously decadent, though no longer new, they
shall for ever remain, and no man shall call Aubrey
Beardsley respectable, established or dull, for he be-
longed to the Beardsley period, and, though he may be
outmoded, he shall never be outrun.
15
AT THE CROFTS’
The Denman Crofts thought it was delightfully new
of them to have to one of their Sunday evenings a good-
looking young pickpocket and a handsome woman
whose profession it was to ply for hire on the streets.
The pickpocket had been captured with his hand in Stan-
ley's pocket, and brought home to supper as an alter-
native to being delivered to the constabulary, for three
reasons: first, he was good-looking, and masculine
beauty was in fashion that year; secondly, he was a132
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
sinner, and sins were talked of with approbation just
then by the most modern literary set, particularly
strange sins of divers colours, and as no one knew
which sins were strange or coloured and which were
plain, it might be that picking pockets was as strange
and as coloured as any. Thirdly, to have a pickpocket
at a Sunday evening party was New, and the other
guests would be pleased and envious. The lady was
there for reasons very similar, and both were a great
success. Everyone treated them with friendliness and
tact, so that they soon ceased to be shy, though remain-
ing to the end a trifle puzzled and suspicious, and not
very fluent in conversation. Possibly, their host sug-
gested to Rome, they were suffering from an embar-
rassing attack of the New Remorse.
“Strange sinners certainly seem a little difficile”
agreed Rome, who had been making exhausting efforts
with the pickpocket, “and loose livers sometimes ap-
pear to be rather tight talkers. Your protégés cannot
be said precisely to birrell.”
“Anyhow, dear Denman,” added a graceful young
gentleman at her side, “picking pockets is a banal vice.
I should scarcely call it a vice at all; it is nearly as
innocent as picking cowslips on a May morning. I
wish I could have procured you a lady who knelt in
front of me in church yesterday afternoon while I was
waiting to make my confession. She was improving
the time by extracting the contents of the reticule left
in the seat next her by the penitent who had gone up
to her duties before her. A piquant idea, for she would
get absolution almost in the moment of sinning.”
“Well,” said Denman, “we did the best we could at
short notice. I would have preferred to have obtained
a bomb-flend. The latest vice, you know, is secretingFIN-DE-SIECLE
133
bombs in Hyde Park. We shall all be doing it soon.
It is reported to be even more stimulating than secret-
ing opium. There is no need, unless desired, ever to
find the bombs again, still less to use them; that is an
extension of the vice, only practised by those who wish
to qualify as extremists, or bomb-fiends. The ordinary
victims of the bomb habit merely secrete; they make
a cache, and store away bombs as squirrels’ nuts. A
pretty habit, but ceasing by now even to be strange. It
is deplorable how the best vices become vulgarised.
Rome, will you join me in a bomb-secreting orgy to-
morrow at dusk?”
“By all means, Denman. It would restore my spirits.
I have been sadly depressed lately by reading in one
week Sarah Grand, ‘A Yellow Aster/ ‘Marcella/
‘The Manxman/ and Mr. Zangwill and Mrs. Lynn
Linton in the New Review on ‘What Women Should
Know/ There is no more spirit in me. Though I was
a little revived by the ‘Green Carnation/ An entrancing
work, about all of us. But really entertaining.”
“Why such a desperate orgy of literature ? I thought
you were of a more fastidious habit—not like Stanley,
who insists on reading everything, even ‘Discords’ and
the Dreyfus case. I can seldom read any novels. I
find their reviews enough, if not too much. I read of
‘The Manxman’ that it would be read and re-read by
many thousands with human tears and human laughter,
and that settled ‘The Manxman/ Where do reviewers
get their inimitably delicious phrases from? And if
one asked them with the tears and laughter of what
animal other than the human animal could human
beings read, or even re-read, a book, how would they
reply ? Perhaps in the same way that old Meredith did
the other day when Dick Le Gallienne asked him to give134
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
the public a few words to explain his peculiar style.
‘Posterity will still be explaining me, long after I am
dead. Why, then, should I forestal their labours?’ ”
“I wonder,” Rome mused, “if posterity will really
be so diligent and so intelligent as their ancestors seem
to think. People always say they write for posterity
when they are not appreciated at the moment. They
seem to imagine posterity as a smug and spectacled
best scholar, spending its time delving among the chron-
icles of wasted years in the reading-room of the British
Museum, and hailing with rapture the literary efforts
of their ancestors.”
“Whereas I,” said Denman, “see posterity as a leap-
ing savage, enjoying nameless orgies among the ruins
of our civilisation, but not enjoying literature. Pos-
sibly, even, there will be no posterity. The débâcle of
our civilisation—and it’s obviously too good to last—
may mean the débâcle o£ the world itself. I hope so.
A bas le posterity, I say. Who wants it? I scorn to
write for it, or to plant horrible little baby trees for it,
or to suck up to it in any way whatsoever. Crude and
uncultured savage. Vive Vaujourd'hui!”
“And I,” said Rome, “see posterity as a being pre-
cisely like ourselves. It will read every morning in its
newspapers, just as we do, that our relations with
France are strained, that so many people have been
murdered, born, divorced, married, that such and such
a war is in progress, that such and such a law has been
passed, or speech made, or book published, and it will
know, just as we do, that none of it matters in the least.
... I’ve no grudge against posterity. Let it have its
little day.”
“It will,” said the graceful young man, with gloom.
“I can’t share Denmam’s faith in the approaching anni-FIN-DE-SIECLE
135
hilation of humanity. Humanity in general is much
too bourgeois and uninteresting to do anything but
increase greatly and keep the earth replenished. It is
impossible to imagine that the gods love it. We shall
perish; we, the fine exotic flower of an effete civilisa-
tion—(by the way, how exquisitely lovely and inno-
cently wicked Lady Pember looks to-night; she, not the
cow-like young woman talking to Mrs. Croft ought
to be the strange scarlet—or is it mauve—sinner)—
but we are a small minority. The majority, which
hasn’t even the art of gracefully fading out, will heavily
continue. It is thus that I picture posterity—a pon-
derous suburban bourgeois in mutton-chop whiskers or
tight stays, sniffing at our poetry, our wit and our
Yellow Book, and saying, ‘How decadent they were in
the nineties !’ By the way, what does decadent mean ? I
always understood that man fell once and for all, long
ago, and could not therefore be falling still. I prefer
deciduous. How deliciously it slides round the tongue,
like an over-ripe peach. I wonder it is not more used
in verse. To me it suggests a creamy green absinthe,
or a long, close kiss on moist, coral-pink lips. Disgust-
ing. I detest moist lips, and absinthe makes me feel
sick, though I try and pretend it doesn’t.”
Stanley, charming and smiling, with her pleasant
round, brown face, lively deep blue eye, and enormous
box sleeve, darted across the room to them.
“Den, we must remove our strange sinners now. I’m
worn out with them. They’ll neither of them say more
than yes, no, and eh, and they’ve both drunk too much
already, and keeping one eye on Mr. Sykes lest he get
too near people’s pockets and the other on the lady lest
she get hold of more whiskey, is too heavy a respon-136
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
sibility. You must take them away. And then Lady
Pember wants to talk to you, darling.”
Denman gave her a queer, quick look out of his nar-
row, smiling eyes, as he turned away.
“And Rome, love, I want to bring Aubrey Beardsley
to you. He is being assaulted by Miss Carruthers, who
has been reading 'Marcella/ 'Our Manifold Nature/ by
Sarah Grand, and the newspapers, and wants to know
what he thinks of the Emancipation of Women, the
Double Standard of Morality, and the approaching
death of Mr. Froude. Poor Aubrey has never thought
of any of them; he takes no interest in emancipations,
and his taste in women is most reactionary—anyone
could tell that, from the ladies he draws; he thinks any
other kind most unwholesome; he never reads protestant
historians; and he has never thought about even a single
standard of morality. Double standard, indeed! As
if there weren’t as many standards as there are people.”
“Not nearly, Mrs. Croft, fortunately. I’m sure
Aubrey himself can’t contribute one; nor can I. But
it is stupid of Aubrey not to read poor Mr. Froude.
He is such a noble and happy liar. He really does
practise lying for lying’s sake—not like Macaulay, mere
utilitarian lying, for principle’s sake, though he does
some of that too. Froude is an artist. He will be
missed, even though he is a protestant. He hates ac-
curacy with as much passion as the good popes hated
thought, as Oscar Wilde says somewhere a propos of
something else. (Oscar’s grammar is so often loose.)
How right both Mr. Froude and the good popes are!
Look at Denman being firm with the sinners; how
delightfully he does it; he would make a good prison
warder.”
“The sinners,” said Miss Garden, regarding themFIN-DE-SIÉCLE
137
through her monocle, “certainly are rather strange. I
am afraid they have both drunk to excess. There, now
he has piloted them safely to the door; that is a relief.
Yes, Stanley, do fetch me Mr. Beardsley. Will he
shock me to-night? I was told that the other evening
he shocked his table at the Café Royal to death by his
talk. John Lane had to remove him. It is possible to
go too far even for the Café Royal, and he did it.
I suppose that is why he is looking so elated to-night,
like Alexander seeking fresh worlds to conquer. ‘He
shocked the Café Royal/ What an epitaph! On the
other hand, I hear that he was shocked himself the
other day. Mr. Henley did it, in bluff mood, at a party
at the Pennells\ How do you do, Mr. Beardsley ?”
16
DIVORCE AT THE CROFTS*
It did not last, the Crofts' marriage. In the spring
of ’95, Stanley wearied of her husband's infidelities,
and could not bear them any more. As to Denman, he
felt often, though he loved her, that he had married a
young woman who had her tiresome aspects; she was
a feminist, a prig, she tried to write, and badly at that,
she was still over-much concerned with public affairs,
with committees, with the emancipation (save the
mark!) of women. And she was for ever fussing over
the children, who should be treated as amusing toys.
He loved her, but she tried him often. She was
strident, obstinate, stupidly in earnest about things that
seemed to him to demand a light indifference; then,
cumbrously, she would try to adopt his tone, and fail.
Marriage. Well, it presented great difficulties. HeTOLD BY AN IDIOT
sighed sometimes for the freedom of his bachelor days.
Meanwhile, life had its moments, exquisite, fleeting,
frail. And at these Stanley, who was not really stupid,
guessed quite accurately, and was stabbed by each
afresh until her very life-blood seemed to drain away,
leaving her, so she felt, a helpless ghost of a woman,
without assurance, heart or power to go on, but only
her stabbed love and a proud, burning rage. And, in
the spring of '95, she broached this matter of divorce.
He asked her forgiveness.
“I can’t help it, Stanley. I suppose it’s the way I’m
made. . . . The queer thing is, I’ve loved you all the
time. You can’t understand that. Women are so—so
monogamous.”
“That old cliché, Den! It isn’t clever enough for
you. Some men are monogamous. Some men couldn’t
love several women at the same time. And some women
can. . . . I’m dead sick of it, anyhow. All this beastly
philandering. It’s merely trivial. It means nothing.
It’s turning life and love into a parlour game. Do you
take nothing seriously, Denman—not your relations
with people, or with love, or with life—not even your
fatherhood?”
“Oh, don’t preach at me. I’m a waster, if you like,
and let’s leave it at that. . . . I’m damnably sorry for
everything, of course. . . . But you’re not altogether
and always easy to live with, you know. All this stuff
about women, for instance . . . you know how I
hate it ...”
“You know how I hate your stuff about women, if
we are to drag in that now. . . . Oh, Den, don’t let’s
be childish. What does all that matter now? We’re
up against a much bigger thing than a difference of
opinion about the suffrage.”FIN-DE-SIECLE
139
“You can’t forgive me, of course. And I suppose
you’re justified.”
“Oh, I suppose I could forgive you. I could forgive
you anything, perhaps. I have before, after all. But
I think I had better not, for all our sakes. You’d rather
be free, wouldn’t you? Oh, you needn’t answer. I
know you’d rather be free. I don’t suspect you of
wanting to live permanently with Alice Pember, or
with anyone else; you just want to be free and irrespon-
sible, and make love to whom you like. Well, you shall.
I shan’t keep you. You’re not meant for a husband
and father, and you’ve tired yourself long enough try-
ing to be one. You can drop it now.”
“I suppose you’re right, from your point of view.
You’d better divorce me. . . . I’m terribly sorry, Stan.
We were so tremendously happy once.”
“Don’t.” Stanley caught her breath and sharply bit
her lip. “You’ve no right to talk of that. That’s all
past. We’ve not been happy for a long time now. . . .
And you know you despise me and think me a fool.
. . . Oh, what’s the use of talking? . . .”
Three days later Stanley, with her son and daughter,
aged four and two, left her husband’s house and took
up her temporary abode with her parents, while her
divorce suit slowly prepared itself.
“Divorce is damnable,” Stanley said to Rome. “Why
should people be penalised by having to go through this
ghastly business, with all its loathsome publicity, merely
-because they wish to annul a private contract which
only concerns themselves ? Why shouldn’t they be able
to go to a lawyer together and say, ‘Annul this con-
tract,’ as with any other contract? Instead of which,
if it’s even suspected that they both want it annulled,
they’re not allowed to do it at all; and if it’s the wife140
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
who wants it, they have to fake up this ridiculous
cruelty-or-desertion business. And, above all, why
should we be gibbetted in the newspapers for doing a
purely private piece of legal business? Why, in the
name of decency and common-sense, should a thing
become public news merely because it occurs in a law-
court? And is our whole English constitution and
system so rotten because we are rotten, or aren’t our
laws a long way behind public opinion? . . , Some-
times I think I can’t go through with it, it’s all so
beastly, but that we’ll just live apart without a divorce.
But I know that wouldn’t do. There’s got to be some-
thing desperately final between Denman and me, or we
might be coming together again, when he’s tired of
Alice Pember. I love him so much, beneath everything,
that if he wanted to I probably should. And I know
it would be no use. We should make nothing of it now.
It would be bad for both of us, and worse for Billy
and Molly. And it would all happen again. No, it’s
got to be a clean cut, even if the imbecile state only
allows us to have it on these disgusting terms. . . .
Sometimes, Rome, I think the whole world and its laws
and systems and conventions is just a lunatic asylum.”
“I’ve always known that, my dear. What else should
it be?”
“Rome, how does one bear it?”
Stanley, whose way it was to express her joys and
griefs—she was not self-contained, like Rome—was
pacing up and down the room, her hands clenched be-
hind her, her cheeks flushed with feverish, waking
nights, her eyes heavy under sullen brows.
“I hardly know,” Rome answered her, gently. “I
hardly know. But, somehow, one goes on, and one
learns to be amused again. ... I am hoping that whenFIN-DE-SIECLE
Mi
one is elderly one will mind less. You will mind less,
Stanley, in a few years. Life’s so strong, it carries
one on all the time to new things. Particularly, I think,
you, because you are so alive. You’ll come through even
this desperate business.”
Stanley said, “Life’s broken to bits. I was so happy
once. . . . Broken to jagged bits,” and left the room
to cry. For, contrary to a common belief, those who
feel most usually cry most too. Stanley was afraid
that she was contracting a tearful habit such as she
might never outgrow, but she did not much care. She
did not much care for anything in these days.
She missed Denman. Missing him was like the con-
tinual sharp ache of a gathered tooth. She missed his
charm, his brilliance, his love, his careless, casual ways,
his intense life, his soft, husky voice, the smile on his
queer white face and narrow eyes. She missed his gay,
youthful talk, the parties and plays they had been used
to go to together, his constant presence in the house.
She would wake in the nights, thinking he lay beside
her, and that his arm would be thrown, in a half waking
caress, across her; but he was not there. She would
wake in the mornings, thinking to see his rumpled
brown head sunk in the pillow beside hers; but there
was no head and no pillow but her own. When her
son and daughter entered her room in the morning and
climbed upon her bed, after the irritating manner of
infants, and woke her by pulling at her two dark plaits,
she would open drowsy eyes that looked for her hus-
band’s short, delightful face smiling above her; but
there were only the two young children, with their rest-
less antics and imbecile prattlings. Fatuous beings! One
day she would enjoy them again, antics, fatuity and all,
even as she had enjoyed them before, but in these days142
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
her love for them lay frozen and almost lifeless, with
all other love but that one love that tore at her heart
with fierce, clawing fingers. It seemed that this love
and this anguish consumed her wholly, leaving nothing
over. She had never been first a mother; she had been
first an individual, a human creature sensitively react-
ing to all the contacts of the engrossing world, and
secondly she had been a wife, a woman who loved a
man. A mother, perhaps, third. And now the second-
ary function, in its death agony, had taken entire pos-
session, and she was no longer either an individual
creature or a mother, but only a lover who had lost all.
To tear him out of her heart—that was her constant
object. And if the heart (since we are, by foolish
custom, so impelled to call the seat of the affections)
had been alone involved, she might have done so. But
who should tear the beloved from the roots he had in
her whole daily life for five years, from his place in
her mind, her brain, her body, her whole being ? She
knew him for a philanderer, a trivial taster in love and
life; selfish, spoilt, vain, with idiotic opinions about
one half of the human race. It was, indeed, her knowl-
edge of all this in him that informed her brain that
their separation must be final and complete. But, with
it all, she could not tear him from her heart, her soul,
her body, her entire and constant life. He was herself,
and she herself was being torn in two.
Life was a continual anguish. She saw that she must
leave her parents’ home and live alone. She was bring-
ing misery into Bloomsbury Square. And daily, night
and morning, her parents kissed her, and their kisses
were to her, who craved so bitterly those kisses that she
might no longer have, a continual reminder and tor-
ment. She was trying to shut off that side of life, butFIN-DEr-SIECLE
143
they did not understand, and kissed her. Rome, who
understood too well, did not kiss her. She knew that
she must be alone with her children, that she was no
fit housemate for a loving family or friends. So,
presently, she went into rooms, and this was a more
bearable loneliness.
But it left more time on her hands; more time in
which to brood on life, on love, on illusion, on women
and on men. How had she failed in this job of mar-
riage, of constructing an enduring life with a man she
had loved, who had loved her? How had they both
failed? How frequent was this failure! It seemed
that love was not enough. Such deep misunderstand-
ings prevail, between any two human beings. Sex
bridges many of them, but not all. Stanley began, at
this time, to generalise dangerously and inaccurately
(since all such generalisations are inaccurate) about
women and about men. She saw women as eager, rest-
less, nervous children, chattering, discussing, joking,
turning the world upside down together while they
smoked or brushed their hair, and all to so little purpose.
Meanwhile there were men; the sex; sphinx-like, placid,
inscrutable, practical, doing the next thing, gently smil-
ing at the fuss women made about ideas. Men knew
that they did not matter, these excitements and fusses
of women, any more than the toys children play with
matter. They dismissed them with that serene smile of
theirs, and busied themselves with the elemental, en-
during things: sex, fatherhood, work. They knew
what mattered; they went for the essentials. They
didn’t waste their time frothing about with words and
ideas. Men were somehow admirable, in their strong
stability. Their nervous systems were so magnificent.
They could kill animals without feeling sick, break the144
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
necks of fishes, put worms on hooks, shoot rabbits and
birds, jab bayonets into bodies. Women would never
amount to much in this world, because they nearly all
have a nervous disease; they are strung on wires; they
are like children frightened of the dark and excited by
the day. It seems fundamental, this difference between
the nerves of most women and most men. You see it
among little girls and boys; most little boys, but how
few little girls, can squash insects and kill rabbits with-
out a qualm. It is this difference which gives even a
stupid man often a greater mastery over life than a
clever woman. He is not frightened by life. Women,
for the most part, are. Life may be a joke to them,
but it is often also a nightmare. To the average man
it is neither. Men are marvellously restful. Eternal
symbols of parenthood and the stability of life, to which
women come back, as to strong towers of refuge, after
their excursions and alarms.
This was the kind of nonsense which Stanley wove
to herself during these unbalanced days of her life.
Nonsense, because all generalities about human beings
are nonsense. But many people, including Stanley, find
interest in making them up, and it is a harmless game.
PANTA REI
It seemed to Stanley, through this spring and sum-
mer of 1895, that a phase was over, not only in her
own life, which was apt so faithfully to mirror the
fleeting times, but in the world at large. That literary,
artistic and social movement so vaguely described as
“decadent” by those who could scarcely define that orFIN-DE-SIÈCLE
145
any other word, nor would greatly care to if they could,
seemed to be on the wane. The trial and conviction
of Mr. Oscar Wilde did it no good, and the many who
had been unjust towards the movement before became
unjuster still, adopting an “I told you so” air, which
mattered as little as any other air adopted by those of
like mentality, but which had, nevertheless, its effect on
strengthening the forces of so-called healthy philistines
in the land. As a contemporary poet sang :
“If these be artists, then may Philistines
Arise, plain sturdy Britons as of yore,
And sweep them off, and purge away the signs
That England e’er such noxious offspring bore.”
Even the anti-Philistines, the so-called decadents
themselves, were disconcerted and shaken by this public
débâcle of one of the most prominent of their number.
“Those who write, draw and talk in this clever new
manner that we have never liked,” said the Philistines,
firmly assured, “are obviously as unpleasant as, even
more unpleasant than, we have believed.” “They might
as well say,” said the practisers of the elegant, clever
new manner, “that because Ladas, owned by a Liberal
leader, won the Derby last year, all Liberals are as
intelligent about horses, even more intelligent about
horses than they have believed. They might as well
say . . .” But it is of no use to tell people of this
mentality what they might as well say. They will as
likely as not proceed to say it, and it is very certain
that they will not therefrom see the absurdity of that
which they have already said. There is, in fact, no way
of dealing with these persons; they are the world’s
masters, laying the ponderous weight of their foolish
and heavy minds upon all subtleties, delicacies and dis-146
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
criminations to flatten them, talking very loudly, firmly
and fatuously the while through their hats, and through
their mouthpiece, the press. There is no dealing with
them; it is they who make England, and indeed the
world, what it is. “This nation believes . . .” “The
people of this country have always held . . .” says
the press, grandly, as if indeed that made it any more
likely to be true, instead of far less. “This asylum has
always believed that the best form of government is a
party system,” the newspapers published in asylums no
doubt continually remark. “The inhabitants of this
asylum have always said . . .”
And so much for public opinion.
Anyhow, from whatever cause, there began at this
time, to put it briefly, a slump in decadence. Max
Nordau wrote this year, with his customary exaggera-
tion, his essay on “Fin-de-siecle”
“An epoch of history is unmistakably in its decline,
and another is approaching its birth. There is a sound
of rending in every tradition, and it is as though the
morrow could not link itself with to-day. Things as
they are totter and plunge, and they are suffered to reel
and fall because man is weary, and there is no faith
that it is worth an effort to uphold them. Views that
have hitherto governed minds are dead or driven hence
like disenthroned kings. Meanwhile interregnum, in
all its terror, prevails. . . . Such is the spectacle pre-
sented by the doings of men in the reddened light of the
Dusk of the Nations.”
Max Nordau was a man of imagination, and had an
excessive way of putting things, and seems to have
been hypnotised by the arbitrary divisions into which
man has chopped time; but, whatever he may have
meant, it is quite true that no period is precisely likeFIN-DE-SIECLE
147
another, and that life is, as has been well said, a flux.
In brief, panta rei, and no less in the middle nineties
than at other times.
18
RELIGION
Of the many impulsions that drive human beings to
one form or another of religion, the strongest, perhaps,
is pain. The other impulsions—conscience, the mystic
sense, personal influence, conviction, experimentalism,
loneliness, boredom, remorse, and so forth—all work
powerfully on their respective subjects. But pain, men-
tal anguish so great that human nature is driven by it
from cover to cover, seeking refuge and finding none,
is the most powerful and the most frequent agent for
the churches. “There is no help for me in this world,”
tortured human creatures cry, and are often driven by
that cry to questioning whether there may not, perhaps,
be help in some other. Anyhow, they think, it is worth
the experiment, and the experiment proves an anodyne
and a gate of escape from what could scarcely, other-
wise, be borne.
Such was Stanley Croft’s method of approach to a
closer contact with religion than any she had had
before, though, before her marriage, she had had a
mystical belief in God, which had, during the last five
years, all but died out in an atmosphere not well suited
to it. Now it returned to her again, touched with just
enough remorse for past neglect as might serve for a
temperate shadow of that hectic and enjoyable repent-
ance which drove, then and later, so many of her literary
contemporaries into the fold of the Catholic Church.
In reality, perhaps, though it seemed that pain was her148
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
immediate impeller, it was ultimately, as usual, the
spirit of her age which seized her and drove her to
prayer.
She would turn into dark and silent churches, seek-
ing desperately the relief from herself that life denied
her, and fall on her knees and there stay, numb and
helpless, her forehead dropped on her arms, till the
sweet, often incense-laden atmosphere (for that was
the kind of church she preferred) enveloped her like a
warm and healing garment, and she whispered into the
dim silence, “God! God! If you are there, speak to
me and help me! God! God! God!”
From that cry, for long the only prayer she could
utter, other prayers at last grew. The silence melted
round her and became a living thing; the red sanctuary
lamp was as the light of God flaming in a dim world,
a light shining in darkness, and the darkness encom-
passed it not The undefeated life of God, burning
like a brave star in a stormy night, by which broken,
all but foundered ships might steer. It was so that
Stanley saw it, and slowly it did actually guide her to
a kind of painful peace.
“I wish the poor child would join the true Church,”
Mr. Garden said to Mrs. Garden, for he was still,
though now a little dubiously, a member of that church.
“I think it would help her.”
Mamma looked sceptical.
“I think not, Aubrey. She doesn’t want to be both-
ered with joining churches just now, and she certainly
has no energy to give to it. Besides, she likes English
Catholicism. It has, you must admit, rather more
liberty of thought than your branch.” (Mamma knew,
having tried both more than once.) “Besides,” she
added, quickly, to change the subject from liberty ofFIN-DEr-SIECLE
149
thought, which always in these days made papa look
sad—in fact, she had mentioned it in a moment of care-
lessness which she immediately regretted—“besides,
there is the divorce.”
Papa sighed and looked sadder than ever.
“Yes. This horrid, this distressing business. I wish
she may give it up before it is too late. Even High
Anglicanism does not allow divorce.”
“On that point,” said mamma, “and, I fancy, on a
good many others, Stanley does not agree with High
Anglicanism. Fortunately that does not prevent her
from finding comfort in its forms of worship. I am
only thankful that she can. It is hard for those in
trouble who have no faith in another world.” Possibly
her mind had turned to Rome, whose faith in worlds,
either this we live in or any other, was negligible.
But papa's mind was turned inward, upon his own
torn soul. Mamma watched him with experienced
anxiety. She knew the signs, and feared that the
Mother of the Churches would not for long hold papa
in her firm arms. Dear Aubrey; he was so restless.
And he had lately been reading a lot of odd, mystic
books. . . .
19
CELTIC TWILIGHT
It was very certain that Stanley would not join the
Roman Church. She had too mystic an imagination to
enter any body so definite and sharp of doctrine. She
was more at one at this time with the Celtic poets, with
their opening of strange gates onto dim magic lands.
The loveliness, like the wavering, lovely rhythms of the
sea, of W. B. Yeats, took her, as it took her wholeTOLD BY AN IDIOT
generation, by storm; the tired twilight sadness of
Fiona Macleod was balm to her.
“0- years with tears, and tears through weary years,
How weary I, who in your arms have lain;
Now I am tired: the sound of slipping spears
Moves soft, and tears fall in a bloody rain,
And the chill footless years go over me, who am slain.
I hear, as in a wood dim with old light, the rain
Slow falling; old, old weary human tears,
And in the deepening dusk my comfort is my pain,
Sole comfort left of all my hopes and fears,
Pain that alone survives, gaunt hound of the shadowy
years”
And
“Between the grey pastures and the dark wood
A valley of white poppies is lit by the low moon,
It is the grave of dreams, a holy rood.
It is quiet there: no wind doth ever fall.
Long, long ago a wind sang once a heart-sweet rune.
Now the white poppies grow, silent and tall.
A white bird floats there like a drifting leaf:
It feeds upon faint sweet hopes and perishing dreams,
And the still breath of unremembering grief.
And as a silent leaf the white bird passes,
Winnowing the dusk by dim, forgetful streams.
I am alone now among the silent grasses.”
In such soft and melancholy enchantment as this Stan-
ley’s desolation found, for a time, comfort.
(Vicky’s Imogen, aged seven, found this book at her
grandparents’ house one day, opened it, read, breathing
noisily for excitement, and tucked it furtively away in
the pouch of her sailor frock, where she often keptFIN-DE-SIECLE
rabbits, or eggs for hatching. She bore it home undis-
covered, and spent the evening lying on her stomach
and elbows beneath the nursery table reading it, with
moving lips and fingers in her ears, deaf to the clamour
and summons of her brethren, until at last she was haled
to bed, hot-cheeked and wet-eyed, silent upon a peak
in Darien. She had found a new enchantment; it was
better than Mowgli, even. But, since she was not really
a dishonest little girl, when next she went to Blooms-
bury Square she slipped the book unobtrusively back
into the shelf from which she had stolen it, and took
“The Manxman” instead, thinking, with the fatuity of
her years, to find that it concerned a tailless cat; but
with regard to this book she was disappointed, and
unable to agree with Mr. Gosse.)
20
THE STAR IN THE EAST
Strange books and pamphlets littered papa's study
table. He met and dined with Mr. George Russell
(the Irish poet, not the English Churchman). He
admired and liked Mr. Russell so much that for his
sake he attended the lectures of Madame Blavatsky,
and perused the works of Colonel Olcott, W. Q. Judge
and Mrs. Besant. A feeling of expansion took him,
as if the bands of rigid orthodoxy, which had restrained
him for the last nine years, were being forced asunder.
... It was, with papa, the eternally recurrent spring-
time of his soul's re-birth; he was in travail with a new
set of ideas, and their pressure rent him cruelly. Then
one day, “I have seen his star in the east,” cried papa,
and became a Theosophist.iS2
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
He wanted to lead Stanley also to Buddha (mamma
said firmly that she herself was too old), but Stanley
would have none of it. To change your religion you
need a certain vitality, an energy of mind and will, an
alertness towards fresh ideas, and Stanley at this time
had little of these things. She clung to a desperate and
passionate faith, as a drowning man to a raft; grad-
ually she even came to take pleasure in services, and
would find at the early mass at St. Alban’s, Holborn,
an exalted, mystic, half sensuous joy. But she was in
no mood to choose and investigate a new creed. Be-
sides, Theosophy. ...
However, papa enjoyed it. Papa was now sixty-five
years of age, but his feeling for religions had not
waned. Mamma, who had been a little afraid that
papa might next be a Jew (for he had been writing a
monograph on the Hebrew prophets, whom he greatly
admired, and also seeing a good deal of Mr. Zangwill),
was on the whole relieved. For a long time papa had
not been happy in the Roman Catholic Church, finding
many of the papal bulls difficult of digestion, and the
doctrines of hell-fire and transubstantiation (as inter-
preted by most of the priesthood) painfully material-
istic; neither was he happy about the attitude of the
Church towards M. Loisy and other modernists.
So, when he saw the star in the east, he set out for
it with a sigh of relief.
21
IRVING
While papa followed the star, and Stanley doggedly
and bitterly sued her husband for restitution of con-
jugal rights, and Rome urbanely surveyed the worldFIN-DE-SIECLE
153
through a monocle and drove elegantly in hansoms,
often with an enormous wolfhound or a couple of poms,
and Maurice fired squibs of angry eloquence at every-
thing that came into his line of vision, their brother
Irving made a fortune by speculating in South African
gold mine shares. Irving, as has been said earlier, was
a lucky young man, whom God had fashioned for pros-
perity. Having made his fortune, he married a hand-
some, agreeable and healthy young woman, one Lady
Marjorie Banister, the daughter of an obscure north-
country earl, and settled down to make more.
It was an epoch of fortune-making. Mr. Cecil
Rhodes loomed in the south, an encouraging and stim-
ulating figure to those who had enterprise and a little
capital. The new rich were filling Mayfair, making it
hum with prosperity. Irving too hummed with pros-
perity, and took a house in Cumberland Place. He
found life an excellent affair, though he had his griev-
ances, one of which was that motor cars were not
allowed on English roads without a man walking with
a flag before them. “We are a backward nation,”
Irving grumbled, after visits to Paris, as so many have
grumbled before and since. But, on the whole, Irving
approved of modern life. He thought Maurice, who
did not, a bear with a sore head.
Maurice was now the editor of an intelligent but acid
weekly paper, which carried on a running fight with
the government, the opposition, all foreign govern-
ments, the British public, most current literature, nearly
all current ideas, and the bulk of the press, particularly
Henley’s New Review, which boomed against him
monthly. Having a combatant spirit, he found life not
unenjoyable, now that he had become so used and so
indifferent to his wife as to have acquired armour154
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
against the bitter chafing she had caused him of yore,
and to find some domestic pleasure in annoying her.
He considered it a low and imbecile world, but to that
too one gets used, and a weekly paper is, as many have
found, a gratifying vent for scorn. Saturday after
Saturday, through 1895, the Gadfly railed at the unsat-
isfactory attitude of our Colonial Secretary towards
South Africa, the existence of Mr. Cecil Rhodes and
the British South Africa Company, the tepid and
laissez-faire temperament of Lord Rosebery, the
shocking weather, the absurd inhibitions against motor
cars, the vulgarity of the cheaper press, the futility of
the controversies on education, the slowness of progress
in developing Röntgen Rays and flying machines, the
immense wealth made by the undeserving in cycle com-
panies and gold mines, the smugness of Liberals, the
inanity of Tories, the ignorance of the Labour Party,
the blatancy of current forms of patriotism, the arro-
gance of the victory-swollen Japanese, the bad manners
of France, the aggressiveness of Germany, the feeble-
ness of current literature, and so on and so forth.
“That's right, old smiler, keep it up. That's the
stuff to give them,” Irving amiably encouraged him, as
he and his wife ate at the dinner table of his brother.
“They don't mind, and it makes you happy. But what's
bitten you to set you against company promoters? I
didn't care for your column about them last week.
They've done you no harm, have they? The fact is,
I was going to ask you if you'd care to come in to a
small affair I'm helping to float. Bicycle bolts are a
back number, and that's a fact. In November next
year the red flag comes off, and motor cars begin in
earnest all over the roads. Amberley and I are spe-
cialising in tyres. We've got Lord Mortlake in too.FIN-DE-SIECLE
155
It’s a sure thing. We shall be coining thousands in a
couple of years. You’d better come in early. Am I
right?”
Amy’s mirth chimed like sweet bells.
“Motor cars! Oh, I do like that! Why not flying
machines at once?”
Irving regarded her with tolerant scorn.
“Why not, indeed? You may well ask. But for the
moment motor cars will do us. I daresay it will be
fliers in ten years or so. And moving photographs too.
I’m not, you see, a pessimist, like poor dear Maurice.
I believe in Progress. And in Capital. And in the
Future of the Race.	And in getting rich quick.
Maurice, am I right?”
“Probably,” said Maurice. “You’re certainly not
bad at getting rich quick; I’ll say that for you. But
I am. So, on the whole . . .”
“Motor car tyres!” Amy still jeered, being of those
who obtain one idea at a time and grapple it to their
souls with hoops of steel. “Motor car tyres! They
won’t wear out many tyres trundling away behind those
old chaps with the flags.”
Maurice finished his sentence otherwise than he had
intended.
“On the whole I’m inclined to take shares in this
company of yours. Send me along the details as soon
as you can.”
Amy’s utterances often had this subversive effect on
his own. He threw her a malevolent glance, and poured
himself out some more claret.
Amy put up her pretty, dark eyebrows. She pursed
her mouth. She nodded.
“That’s right. Throw our money away. Don’t
bother a bit about me or the children.”156	TOLD	BY AN IDIOT
“Now, Amy, don't nag him. I'm answerable for this
little show, and I can tell you I'm right. Remember I
told him to put his shirt on Persimmon. Well, he
didn't. You know the results. I don't want to brag,
but—well, there it is. Maurice, I think better of your
wits than I have for the last ten years."
Maurice, sipping his claret, still kept his sardonic
gaze on his wife, who rose and took Irving's wife to
another room. Often Amy wished that she had chanced
to marry Irving instead of Maurice, though he was too
young for her. Oftener Maurice wished that he had
married no one, for marriage was oppressive.
22
RULE BRITANNIA
'95 swept on, and speeded up to a riotous finish, with
the British South African troops, under the imprudent
Dr. Jameson, galloping over the Transvaal Border to
protect the British of the Rand. Loud applause from
the British Isles. In the legal language of the Bow
Street trial that followed, “certain persons, in the month
of December, 1895, in South Africa, within Her Maj-
esty's dominions, and without licence of Her Majesty,
did unlawfully prepare a military expedition to proceed
against the dominions of a certain friendly State, to
wit the South African Republic, contrary to the pro-
visions of the Foreign Enlistment Act." In the more
poetic language of the Laureate,—
“Wrong, is it wrong? Well, maybe,
But I'm going, boys, all the same:
Do they think me a burgher’s baby,
To be scared by a prating name?"FIN-DE-SIÉCLE
157
In the episcopal language of the Bishop of Mashona-
land, “Whether the English people liked the exploits
of Dr. Jameson or not, the Empire had been built up
by such men. They had a Colonial Secretary with his
eyes open, who could see further than most people
thought. Africa must take a foremost place in the
Empire, and the Church should go hand in hand with
its development.”
And, in the journalistic language of the Daily Mail
(born early in ’96, and, like other new-born infants,
both noisy and pink), “It is well known in official cir-
cles that England and the Transvaal must eventually
come into collision.”
Vicky’s children, in a fever of martial jingoism, tem-
porarily abandoned the Sherlock Holmes crime-tracking
exploits which were engaging their attention those
Christmas holidays, for the Jameson Raid, riding
bestridden chairs furiously round the schoolroom,
chanting,
“Then over the Transvaal border,
And a gallop for life or death—”
until two chairs broke into pieces and Imogen, thrown,
cut her head on the fender, and the game was forbidden
by authority.
The adventure of the raid tickled up British imperial-
ism, which, like the imperialism in Vicky’s schoolroom,
began to ride merrily for a fall. ’96 dawned on a
country growing drunk with pride of race and posses-
sions; working up, in fact, for the Diamond Jubilee.
Dr. Jameson and his confederates were received with
the cheers of the populace and the adoration of the
Daily Mail, and sentenced to short terms of imprison-
ment.158
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Soon after the birth of the Daily Mail came the
Savoy, the last stand of eclectic sestheticism. Stanley
Croft had, for a while, an odd feeling of standing
hesitant between two forces, one of which was loosen-
ing its grasp on her, the other taking hold. The newer
force conquered, and she was carried, step by step, from
sestheticism to imperialism, from belief in art and intel-
lect to belief in the dominance of the British race over
the world. She read Henley and Kipling. She found
pride in,
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul. . .
Her religion ceased to be a mystic twilight passion.
A renascence of sturdy courage took her back into the
common ways, where, her divorce now accomplished,
she pursued her old aims. She took up life, and
became alert to the world again, responsive, like a
ship in full sail, to every wind that blew. And the wind
that blew on her was a wind of reaction from her recent
past, and it drove .her out on the seas of ambitious
imperialism, so that love of country became in her, as
in so many, a kind of swaggering tribal pride. The
romance of Greater Britain took her by storm. Not
the infant Imogen, stirred to tears by the swinging by
of red-coated troops to a band, seethed with a more
exalted jingoism. Glory, adventure, pride of race, and
the clash of arms—what stimulating dreams were these,
and how primeval their claim upon the soul! While
Stanley’s friends shrugged cynical shoulders over Dr.
Jim’s exploit and the attitude towards it of the great
British public, while her papa gravely misdoubted suchFIN-DE-SIÈCLE
159
militant aggression, while Maurice sneered and tilted
at it in a weekly column, while Rome contemplated the
spectacle with the detached, intelligent amusement of the
blasé but interested theatre-goer, while Irving, cyn-
ically approving, said, “That’s good,” thinking of the
Rand gold, and Mr. Cecil Rhodes observed that his
friend the doctor had upset the apple-cart—while all
these made the comments natural to their tastes, tem-
peraments and points of view, Stanley, like a martial
little girl, flew high the flag of “Britain for ever ! Up
the Rand!” and her spirit marched as to a military
band.
Vicky also, in her more careless and casual way, was
a supporter of Empire. “Whatever Charles and Mau-
rice and all those informed people may say, my dear,
this Dr. Jim is a gallant creature, dashing off to the
rescue of his fellow countrymen and countrywomen like
that. For, even if they weren’t in actual danger, they
were inconvenienced, those poor tiresome Uitlanders.
And how dreadful to be governed by Boers! What
people! Canting, Old Testament humbugs! One dis-
likes them so excessively, even from here, that one can
imagine the feelings of those who live among them.
Even Maurice isn’t so perverse as to maintain that
Boers are tolerable. Oh, I’m all for Dr. Jim. I insist
on taking in that cheery pink new daily that pets him
as if he were a Newfoundland dog that has saved a
boat-load of drowning people. Such a bright, pleased
tone it has. ‘The British Public know a good man
when they see one,’ it says. So much more amiable
and pleasant an attitude towards us than Maurice’s ‘The
public be damned. All it knows about anything that
matters would go into a walnut shell and then rattle.’
Maurice gets so terribly contemptuous and conceited.i6o
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
I tremble to think what he will be like at sixty, should
nature keep him alive, if he finds the world so silly
when he is but thirty-eight. Perhaps, however, he will
have mellowed.”
23
MAURICE, ROME, STANLEY AND THE QUEEN
*96 ran out. Irving’s tyre company began to
make money, and Maurice grew richer. He sent
Amy to the Riviera for the winter, and Rome kept his
house for him. He was sweeter-tempered than usual.
Rome was, in his eyes, a flâneuse and a dilettante of
life, but her clear, cynical mind was agreeable to him.
Her intelligent mockery was, after Amy’s primitive
jeering, as caviare after rotten eggs. God! If only
Amy need never come back. But she would inevitably
come back. And the children loved her. Children are
like that ; no discrimination. They loved Maurice too,
but more mildly. And, very temperately, they liked
their Aunt Rome, whom they often suspected of mak-
ing fun of them, and, even oftener, of being completely
bored. In point of fact, Rome was apt to be bored by
persons under sixteen or so. She allowed childhood
to be a necessary stage in the growth of human beings,
but she found it a tiresome one, and saw no reason
why children should consort with adults. Stanley, on
the other hand, being by now partially restored to her
general goodwill towards humanity, threw herself
ardently into the society and interests of her own chil-
dren and those of others. She taught them imperialism,
and about the English flag, and told them adventure
stories, and played with them the games suitable to
their years. She told them about the Diamond Jubilee,FIN-DE-SIECLE	161
the great event of ’97, and how our good, wise and
aged queen would, by next June, have reigned for sixty
years. Victoria was in fashion just then. She was
well thought of, both morally and intellectually. “To
the ripe sagacity of the politician,” said the loyal press,
“she adds the wide knowledge acquired by sixty years
of statesmanship. Many a strained international situa-
tion has been saved by her personal tact.” That was
the way the late nineteenth century press spoke of
Victoria, the English being a loyal people, with a strong
sense of royalty. So the Diamond Jubilee would be a
great day for the Queen. Since the last Jubilee, in ’87,
the Empire, or anyhow the sense of Empire, had grown
and developed. Imperialism was now a very heady
wine, to those who liked that tipple. To others, such
as Maurice Garden, it was more of an emetic.
24
NANSEN IN THE ALBERT HALL
Dr. Nansen came to London early in ’97. Whatever
else you thought of anything or anyone, you had to
admire Dr. Nansen. He addressed thousands of people
in the Albert Hall. Vicky took her children to hear
him. Already they had read “Farthest North.” Imo-
gen, at eight years old, had read it, absorbed, breath-
less, intent, tongue clenched between teeth. The man
who had sailed through ice, and all but got to the Pole.
He was better than soldiers. As good, almost, as
sailors. What a man! And there he stood, a giant
dwarfed to smallness on the platform of the vast hall,
a Scandinavian god, blonde and grave and calm, wait-
ing to begin his lecture, but unable to because the crowdTOLD BY AN IDIOT
roared and clapped and stamped their feet and would
not stop.
At that huge explosion of welcome, Imogen’s skin
pringled and pricked all over, as if soldiers were swing-
ing by to music, or a fire engine to the sound of bells,
or as if the sun was setting in a glory of gold and
green, or as if she was reading “The Revenge,” or
“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” or “I will arise
and go now and go to Innisfree.” Imogen wept. She
did not know that she wept, until the applause was at
last over and Nansen began to speak. Then her
brother Hugh poked her in the back and said, “What’s
up? Wipe your nose and don’t snivel,” and she was
ashamed, and though she retorted, “Wipe your own.
Snivel yourself,” it was no satisfaction, because Hughie
was not snivelling. Boys didn’t, she had learnt, except
when there was something to snivel about. They did
not understand the female weakness which wept at fire
engines, poetry and clapping, and was sick at squashed
insects. Imogen wanted (even still half hoped) to be a
boy, so she tried to hide her weaknesses.
Nansen began to speak.
“They’re all quiet now. A pin might drop,” said
Imogen to herself, having lately learnt that phrase, but
not getting it quite right.
But disappointment took her. Strain as she would,
she could not hear what the god said. She could not
make it into words, except now and then. It boomed
along, sonorous, fluent English, above her plane of
listening. A sentence here and there she got, entrancing
and teasing, then away the voice soared, booming in
another dimension. . . . Imogen had never learnt to
listen; now for the first time she knew remorse for
sermon-times spent in day-dreams, lessons at schoolFIN-DE-SIECLE
during which her mind had drifted away on seas of
fancy like a rudderless boat, to be sharply recalled by
“Imogen Carrington, what have I just said?” Seldom,
indeed, did Imogen Carrington know. She would blush
and stammer and get an inattention mark. No one in
the second form had so many inattention marks as she
had. Perhaps if she had fewer she could have under-
stood Nansen now.
“Hughie, can you hear?”
“Most of the time. Don’t interrupt.”
Yes, Hughie could hear. Hughie was two years
older; Hughie was ten, and into his square, solid, in-
telligent head the sounds emitted by Nansen were pene-
trating as words. Hughie could listen, when he had
a mind to. Hughie was more clever than Imogen.
Phyllis and Nancy could hear too, of course; they were
older. Not Tony; but then Tony, who was only seven,
wouldn’t be trying. He didn’t really care.
“Mother, I can't hear ”
“Don’t talk, darling. I’ll tell you afterwards. . . .”
But what was the good of that?
Imogen’s strained attention flagged. If she couldn’t
hear, she couldn’t. She sighed and gave up. She
stared, fascinated, at the splendid figure on the plat-
form, and imagined him on the Frarn, sailing along
through chunks of floating ice, and on each chunk a
great white bear. Floes, they were, not chunks. . . .
She and the boys meant, when they should be grown
up, to fit out a Fram for themselves and find the Pole.
Hughie had some idea of the South Pole. The sort
of unusual, intelligent idea Hughie did get. But to
Imogen the North was the Pole that called. Away they
sailed, away and away. . . . Tony was attacked, as he
fished from a floe, by a huge mother bear, with threeTOLD BY AN IDIOT
cubs. Imogen got there just in time; she slew the bear
with her long knife, at imminent personal risk; it
toppled backwards into the ice-cold water and died.
The green sea reddened hijjously. But the three little
cubs Imogen kept. She took them back to the Fram,
and there was one for each of them, and they were
called Mowgli, Marcus and Mercia, and Marcus was
hers (the children had been taken to “The Sign of the
Cross” last summer. There was a play indeed!), and
the cubs slept in their bunks with them, and ate from
their plates at meals. . . .
Another storm of clapping. It was over.
“Did you like it, Jennie? How much did you
follow?”
“I liked it very much. I followed it a lot. . . .
Mother, do you think, when I’m big, I shall ever speak
to him? I mean, when Hughie and Tony and I have
got our ship and have been to the Pole?”
“Oh, yes, darling. I should think when that hap-
pens, certainly. Only Dr. Nansen may be dead by that
time, I’m afraid.”
“Is he old, mother? Is he very old? Will he die
before we grow up? Will he, mother?”
“Children, be careful crossing the road. . . . What’s
the matter, Imogen?”
“Will he die, mother, before we’re grown up?”
“Who? Dr. Nansen? Oh, no, I hope not, why
should he? Tony, don’t dawdle. We’ll go home by
the Park. Keep together, children, there’s such a
crowd. . . . Imogen, don't play with strange dogs—I
keep telling you.”
“Mother, he’s such a weeny one ... all white, with
a black nose and a red tongue. . . . Mother, when can
I	have a puppy?”FIN-DE-SIECLE
25
JUBILEE
Jubilee Day. Sweltering heat, after a grey begin-
ning; baked streets. Irving, out of his wealth and
generosity, had bought a block of seats in the Mall for
the procession, and there the family sat. Papa, mamma,
Vicky and Charles and their daughter Imogen (their
other children were away at school), Rome, Stanley,
Irving and his wife, and Una and Ted up from the
country, with two stout and handsome children. The
ladies wore beflowered, rakish, fly-away hats, and
dresses with high collars and hunched sleeves and small
waists. They look absurd now, in old pictures of the
period, but they did not look absurd to one another at
the time; they looked natural, and comme-il-faut, and
smart. The boys wore their Eton suits and the girls
light frocks. Imogen had a blue smock, gathered across
the yoke, so that when she ran her fingers across the
smocking it made a little soft, crisp noise. She sat
next her little cousins from the country. But she was
shy of them and turned her face away, and would say
nothing to them after she had asked, “How is Rover ?
How is Lassie? Are the puppies born yet?” Fits of
shyness seized upon Imogen like toothache, even now
that she had been ever so long at school, and she would
hang her head, and mutter monosyllabic answers, and
wish she were Prince Prigio, with his cap of darkness,
and when, in church, it came to the psalm about “De-
liver me from the hands of strange children,” she would
pray it ardently, feeling how right David (if that psalm
were one of his) had been. She was not shy of her
cousins when she stayed at the farm with them, fori66
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
the farm was like paradise, full of calves, puppies, pigs
and joy, and Katie, Dick, Martin and Dolly were its
hierophants, and, though they weren’t much good at
being pirates or Red Indians, it was, no doubt, because
they were always employed to better purpose. But in
the Mall, seated in a tidy row waiting for the proces-
sion, it was different. Imogen wished that two of her
brothers and sisters could have been there, instead of
Katie and Dick. She held a fold of her mother’s soft
foulard dress tightly between her hot fingers. She
whispered,
“Mother. Suppose someone felt sick and couldn’t
get out?”
“Jean—you don’t feel sick, do you, child?” Vicky
was alarmed, knowing the weakness of her daughter’s
stomach.
“Oh, no, I don’t feel sick. But if someone did?
What would they do, mother? Suppose the lady just
above you felt sick, mother? Suppose she was sick?
What would you do, mother?”
“Don’t be silly, Imogen. If you talk like that you’ll
feel sick yourself. Talk to Katie. Don’t you see you’re
interrupting grandmamma and me?”
But Imogen’s grandmamma smiled across at her
small pink, freckled face.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Jennie?”
“Yes, grandmamma ... is the Queen older than
you, grandmamma?”
“Yes. The Queen is seventy-eight. I am sixty-
three. When I was only three years old, the Queen
was crowned.”
“Did you see her crowned?”
“No. I was too young.”
“Is it a very big crown? Will she have it on? . . .FIN-DEr-SIECLE
Mother”—Imogen had a terrible thought and whis-
pered it—“suppose the Queen was sick in her carriage,
just opposite here? What would happen, mother?
Would the procession wait or go on?”
“Now, Jennie, that will do. You’re being tiresome
and silly. Talk to Katie and Dick. I’m talking to
grandmamma; I told you before.”
(For that was the way in which children were kept
under in the last century. Things have changed.)
Gold and purple and crimson. Silver and scarlet and
gold. Fluttering pennons on tall Venetian masts. The
Mall was a street in fairyland, or the New Jerusalem.
And thronged with those who would never see either
more nearly, being neither fantastic nor good. Never
would most of those enter through the strait gate and
see the gates of pearl and the city of golden streets.
But was not this as good ? Silver and violet and crim-
son and gold; gay streamers flying on the wind. Beau-
tiful as an army with banners, the Mall was. . . .
“Let’s count the flags,” said Imogen to Katie and
Dick.
“I remember the coronation,” said Mr. Garden, half
to Irving, half to anyone sitting about who might be
interested, after the way of elderly persons. “I was a
very small boy, but my father took me to see the pro-
cession. I remember he put me up on his shoulder
while it passed. . . . There wasn’t quite such a crowd
then as to-day, I think.”
“People have increased,” said Rome. “Particularly
in London. There are now too many, that is certain.”
“The crowd,” said Mr. Garden, his memory straying
over that day sixty years ago, “was prettier then. I am
nearly sure it was prettier. Costumes were better.”
“They could hardly,” said Rome, “have been worse.”i68
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“I remember my mother, in a violet pelisse, that I
think she had got new for the occasion, and a crinoline.
. . . Crinolines hadn't grown large in '37—they were
very graceful, I think. . . . And a pretty poke bonnet.
And my father in a cravat, with close whiskers (whis-
kers hadn't grown large, either), and a tall grey hat.
. . . And myself done up tight in blue nankeen with
brass buttons, and your aunt Selina with white frilled
garments showing below her frock. Little girls weren't
so pretty," he added, looking across at Imogen's straight
blue smock. “Well, well, sixty years ago. A great
deal has happened since then. A great reign and a
great time."
“They're pretty nearly due now," said Irving, con-
sulting his watch. “Sure to be late, though."
“Who'll come first, mother?" Imogen asked.
“Captain Ames, on a horse. And behind him Life
Guards and dragoons and that kind of person. . . .
So I said to her, mamma, that really unless she could
undertake to . . . Oh, listen, they really are coming
now. Listen to the cheering, Jennie."
The noise of loyalty beat and broke like a sea from
west to east. The sound shivered down Imogen's spine
like music, and, as usual in such moments, her eyes
pringled with hot tears, which she squeezed away.
Then came the blaring of the trumpets and the rolling
of the drums, and, singing high above them like a kettle
on the boil, the faint, thin skirling of the pipes.
Imogen's hot hand clutched Vicky's dress.
“Now, Jean, don't get too excited, darling. Try and
be quiet and sensible, like Katie and Dick."
“Mother, I am too excited, already. Look, mother
—is that Captain Ames on a horse?"
Captain Ames on a horse (and what a horse!) it was.FIN-DE-SIECLE
169
And behind him Life Guards, dragoons, lancers, and
that kind of person, in noble profusion. Very gallant
and proud and lovely, prancing, curvetting, gay as
bright flowers in a wind. . . . O God, what military
men!
A little white-moustached general rode by, and great
cheers crashed. “That’s Lord Roberts, Imogen.” Imo-
gen, who knew her Kipling, had a lump in her throat
for Bobs of Kandahar.
“And that's Lord Charles Beresford—with the
cocked hat, do you see?”
Then came the great guns, running on their carriages.
And then the cheering broke to a mighty storm, as
it always does when sailors go by.
The sailors too had guns. Blue-jackets and smart,
neat officers, Britannia's pets, Britannia's pride. . . .
Imogen, who had always meant to be a sailor, and
who even now blindly hoped that somehow, before she
reached the age for Osborne, a way would be made for
her (either she would become a boy, or dress up as a
boy, or the rule excluding girls from the senior service
would be relaxed), gasped and screwed her hands
tightly together against her palpitating breast. Here
were sailors. Straight from the tossing blue sea;
straight from pacing the quarter-deck, spyglass in hand,
spying for enemy craft, climbing the rigging, setting
her hard-a-port, manning the guns, raking the enemy
amidships, holding up slavers, receiving surrendered
swords. . . . Here, in brief, were sailors; and the
junior service faded from the stage. Rule, Britannia,
Britannia rules the waves. The moment was almost
too excessive for a budding sailor, with wet eyes and
lips pressed tight together to keep the face steady.
Fortunately it passed, and was succeeded by the First170
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Prussian Dragoon Guards, great men with golden
helmets, who could be admired without passion, and
by strange brown men with turbans and big beards.
“Indians,” Vicky said, and Indians too one knew
from Kipling. And, “Sir Partab Singh,” added the
informing voice.
“Is he the chief of the Indians, mother?”
“Some kind of chief, yes.”
Other brown men followed the Indians—little cop-
pery, fuzzy Maoris; and with them rode splendid white
men from New Zealand, and slouch-hatted Rhodesian
Horse.
“From‘South Africa. . . . You remember Dr. Jim
and his raid and Cecil Rhodes ... the Christmas
holidays before last . . .”
“When the chair broke and I cut my head.” Yes,
Imogen remembered, though she had been only seven
then. Over the Transvaal border, then a gallop for
life or death. . . . The chair was still broken. . . .
Everyone seemed to remember Dr. Jim and his raid
and Cecil Rhodes, for the slouch-hatted riders were
cheered and cheered. Hurrah for South Africa!
“Political trouble, much less war, cannot now be appre-
hended,” the Times had said that morning, in a paean
of Jubilee satisfaction with sixty years of progress
abroad and at home.
The best was over, for now began carriages—
landaus and pairs. Foreign envoys. The Papal Nuncio
sharing a landau with a gentleman from China, who
cooled himself with a painted fan. Landau after landau
bearing royal gentlemen, royal ladies. What a pity for
them to be borne tamely in landaus instead of a-horse-
back!
A colonial escort; an Indian escort; Lord Wolseley.FIN-DE-SIECLE
171
And then the procession’s meaning and climax.
“The Queen, Jennie.”
Eight cream horses soberly drawing an open car-
riage, surrounded by postillions and red-coated running
footmen; and in the carriage the little stout old lady,
black-dressed, with black and white bonnet, and with
her the beautiful Princess in heliotrope, dressed in the
•then current fashion, which royal ladies have adhered
to ever since, never allowing themselves to be unsettled
by the modes of the new century.
The Queen, God save her. The noise was monstrous,
louder than any real noise could be.
“Dear old soul,” cried Vicky’s clear voice as she
lustily clapped white kid hands.
Papa’s blue eyes looked kindly down on the old lady
whose coronation he remembered.
“A record to be proud of,” said papa.
“Oh, yes, she’s seen some life this sixty years, the
old lady,” admitted Irving.
“I expect she is feeling the heat a bit,” said Una.
“Well, I hope she’s happy.”
Behind them people were saying loyal Victorian
things to one another about the dear old Queen.
“She’s got the hearts of the Empire all right,” they
were saying, “whether they’re under white skins or
brown,” and, “God bless our dear Queen,” and, “How
well she looks to-day,” and, “She’s an Empress, but
she’s a woman first. That’s why we all love her so,”
and so on and so forth.
And, “There goes the Prince,” they said, applauding
now the burly middle-aged gentleman riding his horse
by his mother’s carriage.
“He must be gettin’ pretty impatient, poor man,”
said Amy. “Nearly sixty himself, and mamma still172
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
going strong. I expect he thinks this ought to be his
silver Jubilee, not mamma’s diamond one.”
Mr. Garden looked pained. He often looked and
was pained at the wife of Maurice.
Imogen’s heart swelled for the Empress-Queen and
the crash of loyalty, but not to bursting-point; for here
was only a little old lady in a carriage (though drawn
by eight cream horses like a fairy godmother’s), and
it is the swagger of gallantry that stirs. Sailors, sol-
diers, explorers, martyrs, firemen, circus-riders, Blondin
on his rope, Christ on his cross, Joan of Arc on her
white steed or her red pile—these are they that shake
the soul to tears. Not old ladies, however mighty, who
have sat on a throne for sixty years.
“The Prince, Jennie. The Prince of Wales.”
“Oh, mother, where?”
The Prince of Wales. Gallant figure of legend.
Young, noble, princely, with caracolling charger and a
triple white plume in a silver helm. The bravest and
the most chivalrous of the knights. Where was the
Prince of Wales—“Oh, mother, where?”
“There—don’t you see him? The big man in uni-
form with a grey beard, riding by the Queen’s car-
riage.”
The big man. . . . Oh, no, that must be a mistake.
“That's not the Prince of Wales, mother. Not that
one. . . .”
“Of course. Why shouldn’t it be?”
A thousand reasons why it shouldn’t be. A hundred
thousand reasons. . . . But in vain their legions beat
against the hard little fact it was. Imogen’s soar-
ing heart sank like a stone in water. Fearful doubts
whispered. Had all the Princes of Wales been likeFIN-DE-SIECLE
173
that—fat elderly men with grey beards? The Black
Prince. . . . Oh, no, not the Black Prince . . .
“The Black Prince wasn’t like that, mother, was he?”
“It must be nearly the end now. Here’s the music.
. . . What, Jean? What’s bothering you now?”
“The Black Prince ...”
“Forget him, my precious. Don’t let any prince
weigh on your little mind. Here comes the music. Do
you hear the pipes, children?”
So the great procession passed eastward, to rejoice
Trafalgar Square, the Strand, Fleet Street and the lands
across the river.
“It’ll be a job getting out of this. Hold on to me,
Imogen. Did you enjoy it, darling?”
4‘Yes.” Imogen nodded, with the sun in her screwed-
up eyes. “I wish we could run very fast down the
streets to where they haven’t passed yet, and see them
all again. Do you think we could, mother?”
“I’m sure we couldn’t. . . . You’re not over-tired,
mamma dear?”
“Oh, no. I feel very well. . . . But that child has
turned green.”
Vicky looked down, startled, at her daughter.
“Imogen. Aren’t you well ?”
“Mother, I think I may be going to be sick.”
“Well, sit down till it’s over. . . . Bless the child.
It’s the heat and the excitement. She gets taken like
that sometimes, by way of reaction after her treats—
—most tiresome.”
“Poor little mite.”
“How are you feeling now, Jennie?”
Imogen said nothing. Yellow as cream cheese, she
sat in her seat and asked God not to disgrace her by174
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
letting her be sick in public, in the grand stand, on
Jubilee Day, with all London looking on.
But, “I’m not sure, mother, that I do very much
believe in prayers,” she said to Vicky that evening.
26
RECESSIONAL
Triumphant patriotism is all very well; Proud im-
perialism is all very well. But these things should be
carried on with a swagger, like a panache, with a hint of
the gay and the absurd, marching, as it were, to the
wild, conceited noise of skirling pipes. People of all
nations, but more particularly the English, are apt to
forget this, and bear their patriotism heavily, unctu-
ously, speak solemnly of the white man’s burden, and
introduce religion into the gay and worldly affair.
Rudyard Kipling did this, on July 17th of Jubilee
year, when he published in the Times “Recessional,”
beginning,—
“God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,
Beneath Whose awful Hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget.”
Stanley read it at breakfast, and shuddered. It was
such a poem as the Jews might have made, in the days
of Israel’s glory—terribly godly and solemn. It was
addressed to Jehovah, the Jewish Lord of Hosts. Those
Jews! How their influence lasts! Beneath Whose
awful Hand we hold. . . . Awful is a bad word, andFIN-DE-SIECLE
175
hand should never, whosesoever hand it is, have a capi-
tal “h” (but that might have been the printer's fault, as
anyone who knows printers must, in fairness, admit),
and dominion over palm and pine is much too delightful
and romantic a thing to be spoilt by being thus held.
And, further down, it was worse.
“If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,
Such boasting as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law . . .”
Are we then Jews, and not Gentiles? And what
Law? And lesser breeds—that was worst of all.
The whole poem seemed to Stanley so heavily ruin-
ous of a jolly thing, so terribly expressive of the solemn
pomposity into which national pride is ever ready to
stumble, that it tarnished for her something young and
buoyant and absurd into which she had flung herself
of late. As Miss Edith Cavell remarked twenty years
later, patriotism is not enough. It needs to be as the
cherishing love a man has for the soil of his home;
or as the bitter, desperate striving unto death of the
oppressed race, the damned desperation of the rebel;
or as the gay and gallant flying of gaudy banners.
Successful, smug, solemn, conquering patriotism is not
nearly enough—or perhaps it is a good deal too much.
Anyhow, it is all wrong.
“What a man!” Stanley muttered, meaning Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, who did, if anyone, know all about
the adventure of empire-building, its swagger, glitter
and romance, and must needs turn himself into a
preacher.
Stanley's niece, Imogen, happened to have “Reces-
sional” read aloud to her form at school, by one whom176
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
she greatly loved (for it must be owned that this
unbalanced child only too readily adored those who
taught her), and shyly she wriggled her mind away
from the sense of the sounding lines. She liked,
“Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire;
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre . .
and,
“The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart . . ”
and,
“All valiant dust that builds on dust . . .”
but disliked the rest. If Miss Treherne liked it, it must,
she knew, be somehow good; further, it was by Kip-
ling, who had made Mowgli, and,
“It’s north you may run to the rime-ringed sun,
Or south to the blind Horn’s hate;
Or east all the way into Mississippi Bay,
Or west to the Golden Gate. . .
But all the same, Imogen had no use for it. In the
foolish jargon of school, it was “pi.”
But newspapers said at the time, and history books
have said since, that this poem sounded a fine and
needed note; and, in fact, it was a good deal liked.
Mr. Garden liked it. Mr. Garden was afraid that
Britain was getting a little above itself with Empire.
As, indeed, it doubtless was, said Stanley, and why
not? Empires, like life, only endure for a brief pe-
riod, and we may as well enjoy them while we may.FIN-DE-SIECLE
177
They are wasted on those who do not enjoy them.
Time bears us off, as lightly as the wind lifts up the
smoke and carries it away. . . . The grave’s a fine
and private place, but in it there are no empires, only
the valiant dust that builds on dust, and has come to
dust at the last. So let us by all means be above our-
selves while we may and if we can, in the brief space
that is ours before we must be below ourselves for
ever.
Mr. Garden replied that there may be many brief
spaces to come, for all of us, and we should be train-
ing ourselves for these. ... For papa was still a
Theosophist, and believed in infinitely numerous rein-
carnations. He did not desire them, for he had had
troubles enough, for one; but he knew that they would
occur. He looked with apprehension down a vista of
lives. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, to
the last syllable of recorded time—or anyhow, until
papa should be made perfect—and that, papa humbly
felt, was a very long time ahead.
27
BOND STREET
London glittered sweetly, washed by the May sun.
The streets were bland and gay, like a lady of fashion
taking the air. Miss Garden walked abroad, bland
and gay too, slim and erect in neat coat and skirt (skirt
touching the pavement as she walked—disgusting, but
skirts did), lace jabot at the high stock collar, and
large beribboned hat, tipped a little forward so that
the sunshine caught the fair hair sweeping upward
from the nape. She led a huge Borzoi on a leash, andi;8
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
as she walked she surveyed London, its people, its
streets, its shops. In a gold net purse bag she carried
notes and clinking sovereigns. She had gambled to
good purpose last night at bridge, the new card game.
She was a great gambler. Bridge, whist, baccarat,
poker, roulette and Monte Carlo—at all these she won
and lost, with the same equable sangfroid. Her par-
ents did not like it, though Rome’s income, left her by
her grandfather, was her own. They did not, in many
ways, approve of their clever Rome, so unlike them-
selves. But on such disapprovals, so Rome assured
them, family life is based. Mutual disapproval, mu-
tual toleration; that is family, as, indeed, so much
other, life.
Anyhow, Rome gambled. The older she grew the
more greatly and intelligently she gambled. She had
her systems, ingeniously worked out, for Monte Carlo.
She had been there this Easter, together with her friend
and ally, Guy Donkin, a cheerful barrister three years
her junior, who had been used to ask her to marry
him, but had now settled down to a sporting friend-
ship and confided to her his fleeting affairs of the heart.
Here again Mr. and Mrs. Garden disapproved. Going
to Monte Carlo to meet a man ; staying at the same hotel
with him ; seen everywhere with him ; even in the late,
the very late thirties, was this right or wise? It set
people talking. . . .
“As to that,” Rome carelessly dismissed it, “be sure
people will always talk. You may be sure, too, mamma,
that Guy and I do nothing not comme-il-faut. We are
both too worldly-wise for that. We may épater the
bourgeois possibly, but we shan’t épater our own world.
We know its foolish rules, and we both find it more
comfortable to keep them.”FIN-DE-SIECLE
179
Entirely of the world Miss Garden looked, this May
morning, strolling down Bond Street, a little cynical,
a little blasé, very well-dressed, intensely cii ilised, ex-
quisitely poised, delicately, cleanly fair. She would
soon be thirty-nine, and looked just that, neither more
nor less.
A window full of jade caught her roving eye. She
went in; she bought a clear jade elephant, and a dull
jade lump that swung on a fine platinum chain. She
also got a tortoise-shell cigarette case.
She stopped next at a window full of little dogs.
Big-headed Sealeyham puppies ; Poltalloch terriers.
These she looked at critically. She meant to have a
Poltalloch, but to order one from their home in the
West Highlands when next she stayed there Ador-
able puppies. The Borzoi sniffed at them through plate
glass, and grunted.
Irish lace. Jabots of pointe de Venise, and deep col-
lars of Honiton and pointe de Flandres, and handker-
chiefs edged with Chantilly. Miss Garden entered the
shop; came out with a jabot for herself, handkerchiefs
for Vicky's birthday. Then ivory opera glasses, and
an amber cigarette holder caught her fancy. Soon
her free hand was slung with neat paper packages.
That was a bore; she wished she had had them all
sent.
She strolled on, turned into Stewart's, ordered a
box of chocolates for Stanley's children, and met Mr.
Guy Donkin for lunch. They were going to a picture
show together.
“I am not," said Miss Garden, “fit for a respectable
picture gallery, as you see." She indicated the pack-
ages and the Borzoi. “But nevertheless we will go.
Jeremy shall wait in the street while we criticise thei8o
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
art of our friends. I was overtaken this morning by
the lust of possession. I often get it on fine mornings
after fortunate nights. I find that the gambler’s life
works out, on the whole, pretty evenly—what one
makes at the dice one loses in the shops. And what
one loses at play one saves off the shops. One walk
abroad, looking at everything and buying nothing, will
save one some hundreds of pounds. It is the easiest
way of gaining, though not the most amusing. ... I
see you have a lunch edition. How go the wars?”
The most noticeable wars at the moment were those
between America and Spain, and between Great Brit-
ain and the Soudanese.
“Dewey’s occupied Manila. The Fuzzies have lost
three more zarebas. It must be warm for fighting
out there to-day. . . . Here’s an article by some Dean
on the vulgarity of modern extravagances. Meant for
you, Rome, with all your packages. . . . Are we spe-
cially extravagant just now? I suppose there’s a lot of
money going about, one way and another. Business
is so good. And all these gold mines and companies.
. . . The Dean is worrying about the growing habit
of entertaining in restaurants instead of in the home.
Why not? And about women taking to cosmetics
again, after a century of abstinence. Again, why not?
I agree with Max about that. The clergy do worry
so, poor dears; if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Oh,
and on Tuesday we’re all to wear a white rose, for the
Old Man’s funeral day.”
“How touching! It will please papa. He’s really
distressed about the Old Man; he thinks politics on
the grand scale are over, and that the giants are dead.
Politics and politicians are certainly intensely dull in
these days; but then, except for an occasional gleam,FIN-DE-SIECLE
181
they probably always were. Partly because people
insist on taking them so solemnly, instead of as a
farce. . . . There’s my ex-brother-in-law, lunching
with a quite new and lovely young woman. He al-
ways smiles at me, blandly and without shame. I
can't forgive him for spoiling Stanley's life, but I can't
help rather liking him still. He always sends us tick-
ets for his first nights, and they're very amusing. A
shameless reactionary, but so witty. Maurice and
Irving cut him, which I think crude. Men are so in-
tolerant. I cut no one, except when I'm afraid of
being bored by them. Thank you, yes: Turkish."
They strolled off through the pleasant city to look
at pictures, which they could both criticise with as
much intelligence as was necessary, and Miss Garden
with rather more. Then Mr. Donkin returned to the
Bar, and Miss Garden drove home in a hansom with
the Borzoi and the gleanings from Bond Street. At
five she was going to an At Home somewhere; later
she was dining out and going to the opera. Life was
full; life was amusing; life hung a brilliant curtain
over the abyss. From the abyss Miss Garden turned
her eyes; in it lay love and death, locked bitterly to-
gether for evermore.
28
LAST LAP
1898 swaggered by under a hot summer sun. The
century swaggered deathwards, gay with gold and fat-
ness, unsteady, dark and confused. “The Belle of New
York" at the theatres, the Simple Life on the land, free-
wheel bicycles on the road, motor cars, coming first
in single spies, then in battalions, the victory of Omdur-TOLD BY AN IDIOT
man, Kitchener occupying Khartoum and the French
Fashoda, unpleasant international incidents (for inter-
national incidents are always unpleasant), millionaires
rising like stars, fortunes made and spent, business
booming, companies floated and burst, names of drinks,
provender and medicines flaming from the skies, Swin-
burne publishing “Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards/’
Mr. Yeats “The Wind Among the Reeds/’ Mr. Kipling
“Stalky & Co/’ and “The Day’s Work,” Mr. Conrad
“Tales of Unrest,” Mr. Stephen Phillips “Paolo and
Francesca,” Mr. Thomas Hardy “Wessex Poems,” Mr.
H.	G. Wells “The War of the Worlds,” Miss Mary
Cholmondeley “Red Pottage,” Mrs. Humphry Ward
“Helbeck of Bannisdale,” Mr. Maurice Hewlett “The
Forest Lovers,” Mr. Kenneth Grahame “Dream Days,”
Mr. Hall Caine “The Christian,” George Meredith
greeted by literary England on his seventieth birthday,
bad novels pouring into the libraries with terrifying
increase of speed, wireless telegraphy used at sea, flying
machines experimented with, Liberals sickening with
Imperialism or Little Englandism, Conservatives with
jingoism run mad, the Speaker changing hands, the
Encyclopaedia Britannica sold by the Times, anti-ritual-
ist agitations, armament limitation conferences con-
vened by Russia and attended by the Powers, all of
whom were busy as bees at home increasing their
armies and navies and hatching military plots.
And then the South African Uitlanders sent com-
plaints and petitions from the Rand, and despatches
began to pass between Her Majesty’s government and
President Kruger’s. Despatches are most unfortunate
and unwise means of communication; they always
make trouble.
There was bound to be war, people began saying.FIN-DE-SIECLE
183
Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Rhodes intended it, and
would not be happy till they got it. Probably President
Kruger and his Burghers also intended it. Certainly
the Uitlanders hoped for it. The British public were
not averse. They hated the Boers, and wanted excite-
ment and more Empire. It was a hopeless business.
War was bound to come, and came, in October, 1899.
Mr. Garden said, “A bad business. Gladstone would
never have let it come to this. One doesn’t trust Cham-
berlain. A bad, dishonest business.”
Mrs. Garden said, “Those poor lads going out just
before the winter. . . .”
Vicky said, “Charles says it won’t be long. We
shall have them asking for terms in a month.”
Maurice said, “That damned jingo, Chamberlain,”
and filled his fountain pen with more vitriol.
Amy said, “Those canting/snuffling old farmers.
They won’t keep us long.”
Rome said, “Unfortunate. But it’s a way in which
centuries often end.”
Stanley said, “Right or wrong, we’ve got to win
now.”
Irving said, “I shall take the opportunity to run out
and see to my mining interests. Up the Rand,” and
he enlisted in the C. I. V. and went.
Una said, “War! How silly. If it isn’t one thing
it’s another. Why not leave the poor farmers alone?”
For she sympathised with farmers, and was all for
leaving people alone.
The children of all of them shouted for the soldiers
and the flag, and sang “Soldiers of the Queen.”
“And when we say we’ve always won,
And when they ask us how it’s done . .184
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
A very bright song. That was the right, amusing
spirit of patriotism, not the “Recessional,” and not
prayers sent forth for the people's use by Bishops.
Vicky's children got up early one morning in the
Christmas holidays without leave, and saw a detach-
ment of the C. I. V. go off from Victoria. There was
a raw, yellow fog, and the khaki figures loomed oddly
through it. The press of the swaying, shouting crowd
was terrifying, exhilarating. Imogen, linked up be-
tween Phyllis and Hugh, was crushed, swung, caught
off her feet. Persons of eleven had no business in
that crowd. Phyllis and Nancy had not wanted her
and Tony to come, but they had firmly done so. Imo-
gen could scarcely see the soldiers, only the broad
backs her face was pressed against. Herd enthusiasm
caught and held them all, and they shouted and sang
with the rest, hoarsely, choking in the fog.
“They'll all be killed," sobbed a woman close to
them. “We’ll never see their brave faces agaip. . .
At that Imogen's eyes brimmed over, but she could
not put up her hands to wipe them, for her arms were
tight wedged. She could only snuffle and blink. Splen-
did heroes! They would be killed by the Boers, sure
enough, every one of them. . . . Horrible Boers with
great Bibles and sjamboks and guns. Hateful, hateful
Boers. If only one were allowed to go and fight them,
as Uncle Irving was going. Thank Heaven, it was
rather age than sex that kept one from doing that;
the boys couldn’t go any more than Imogen could.
If the boys had been old enough and had gone, Imo-
gen would somehow, she felt sure, have gone too. To
be left out was too awful.
But these were grown men. Splendid men. Lucky
men, for they would soon be roving the veldt withFIN-DE-SIECLE
185
guns and bayonets under the African sun; they would
lurk in ambush behind kopjes and arise and slay their
brother Boer, the canting, bearded foe, with great
slaughter. Even if they did never come back, how
could man die better?
The crowd swayed and shoved, lifting the children
from their feet. Imogen’s chest was crushed against
the back in front of her; she fought for breath. There
was an acrid, musty smell; the raw air was close with
breathing.
A crowd is queer. A number of individuals gather
together for one purpose, and you get not a num-
ber of individuals, but a crowd. It is like a new,
strange animal, sub-human. It may do anything.
Go crazy with panic, or rage, or excitement, or de-
light. Now it was enthusiasm that gripped and
swayed it, and caused it to shout and sing. Songs
rippled over it, starting somewhere, caught from mouth
to mouth.
“Cook’s son, duke’s son, son of a belted earl . . .
Fifty thousand horse and foot going to Table
Bay. . . .”
And then again the constant chorus—“God bless you,
Tommy Atkins, here’s your country's love to you!”
It was over at last. The heroes had gone. The
crowd broke and pushed out from the station gates,
flooding the choked yellow streets.
“There’s our bus,” said Phyllis, a good organiser.
“Come on. Stick together.”
They besieged and rushed the bus as troops rush
a fort. Being vigorous and athletic children, they
stormed it successfully.i86
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“We shall catch it from mother,” said Phyllis,
now they had leisure to look ahead. “But it’s been
worth it.”
29
OF CENTURIES
That sad, disappointing, disillusioning, silly war
crawled through that bitter winter of defeat, until by
sheer force of numbers, the undefeatable Boers were a
little checked in the spring of 1900.
Life is disappointing. Imogen, along with many
others, thought and hoped that 1900 would be a new
century. It was not a new century. There was quite
a case for its being so. When you turned twelve, you
began your thirteenth year. When you had counted
up to 100 you had completed that hundred and were
good for the next. It all depended on whether you
numbered the completion of a year from the first day
when you began saying 1900, or not till its last day,
when you stopped saying it. The Astronomer Royal
adjudicated that it was on its last day, and that they
had, in fact, said 1900 prematurely, saying it before
the last second of December the 31st. He may have
been right. He probably was right. But the disap-
pointment of the young, to whom a year is very long,
its end hidden in mists, like mountain tops which you
perhaps shall never reach—the disappointment of the
young at the opening of the year 1900 was very great.
“At all events,” said Imogen, “we can write 1900.
We can say, ‘It’s 1900/ ” But what one could not say
was, “I remember, last century, going to the sea-side
for the holidays. . . “Last century bicycles andFIN-DE-SIECLE
187
steam engines came in. . . .” or, “We, of the twentieth
century. . . .” That would have to wait.
The funny thing was that you could not, however
hard you thought, lay your finger on the moment when
the new century would be born. Imogen used to try,
lying in bed before she went to sleep. One second you
said, “We of the nineteenth century”; the next second
you said, “We of the twentieth century.” But there
must be a moment in between, when it was neither;
surely there must. A queer little isolated point in
time, with no magnitude, but only position. . . . The
same point must be between one day and the next, one
hour and the next ... all points in time were such
points . . . but you could never find them ... al-
ways you either looked forward or looked back . . .
you said, “now—now—now,” trying to catch now, but
you never could . . . and such vain communings with
time lead one drowsily into sleep.
30
PRO-BOER
In Stanley the Boer War slew the jingo spirit, turned
back on itself the cresting wave of imperialism. Not
because it was an ill-fought, stupidly managed, for
long unsuccessful war, but because it was war, and
war was, when seen functioning, senseless and horrible.
It was nearly as bad when Great Britain at last began
to defeat the too clever farmers. It was almost worst
in the summer of 1900, when the news of the relief
of Mafeking caused so much more tempestuous a hys-
teria than the other reliefs had caused, and when Lord
Roberts occupied Johannesburg and proclaimed the188
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
annexation of the Orange Free State, and when Pre-
toria was taken, and yet the war went on and on and
on.
“Is this the way,” asked Liberals, “to secure in the
end any kind of working reconciliation between our-
selves and the conquered enemy? If Great Britain
wishes to be burdened for ever with a sullen, hostile,
exasperated people, embittered with the memory of
burnt farms, useless slaughter and destruction, she
is taking the right course.” And so forth. Liberals
always talk like that. Those who disagreed merely
retorted, “Pro-Boer,” which took less time. The Latin
word “pro” has been found always very useful and
insulting.
Stanley became a pro-Boer. She disliked all she
knew of Boers very much, but that had nothing to do
with it. A pro-Boer, like a pro-German much later,
was one who was in favour of making terms with the
enemy on the victories already gained. The Concilia-
tion Committee were pro-Boer. The Liberal news-
papers were pro-Boer, except the Chronicle, which
threw Mr. Massingham overboard to be pro-Boer by
himself. Maurice Garden was, of course, pro-Boer.
He loathed Boers, the heavy-witted, brutal Bible-men,
with their unctuous Cromwellian cant. But fiercely
and contemptuously he was pro-Boer. Rome, too,
was pro-Boer; had been from the first.
“A most unpleasant people,” she had said. “What
a mistake not to leave them to themselves! If the Uit-
landers disliked them as much as I should, they wouldn’t
go on living there and sending complaints to us; they
would come away. All this imperialism is so very
unbalanced.”
“Worse than unbalanced, Rome,” her papa sadlyFIN-DE-SIECLE
189
said. “One hesitates to speak harshly, but it must be
called un-Christian. The Churches have gone terribly
astray over it. The unhappy Churches. . . ”
Unhappy because terribly astray on so many topics,
papa meant. Even now he was mourning the death of
his friend Dr. Mivart, who had been deprived of the sac-
raments of his church because he had, in the Nineteenth
Century and the Fortnightly Review, written articles,
however reverent, on “The Continuity of Catholicism,”
and in them seemed to give to the infallible authority
of the Church a lower place than to human reason.
Alas for the Catholic Church, which so treated its best
sons! Never, papa knew, could he join that great
Church again. Religion too had suffered a heavy blow
in the death, in January, of Dr. Martineau. And
Ruskin also went that month. . . . Like leaves the
great Victorians were falling. Papa, brooding over a
great epoch so soon to close, could not but be a pro-
Boer and hope that this horrid war, which jarred and
confused its last years, would soon end.
As for Maurice, his newspaper office was raided and
smashed on Mafeking night, and he himself carried
out and ducked in Trafalgar Square basin. No one
hurt him. No one wanted, on this happy, good-hu-
moured night, to hurt this small, frail, scornful, slightly
intoxicated, obviously courageous editor, who brightly
insulted them to their faces as they tied him up.
Vicky’s children were not pro-Boer. No one could
have called them that. They were all for a good whack-
ing victory. Imogen, it must be owned, did once, in
a moment of seeing the point of view of the foe (Imo-
gen usually saw all the points of view there were to
see; her eye was not single, which made life a very
dizzy business for her), write a poem beginning:190
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“Across the great Vaal River we northward trekked and
came,
Set up our own dominion, and men acknowledged the
same;
And close behind us followed the Alien whom we scorn,
With his eager clutching fingers and his lust for gold
new-born.
“ ‘There is wealth/ he cried;
T will dig/ he cried;
Between him and us may the Lord decide 1
Through the Lord’s good might,	51-2
By the sword’s good right,
Let us up and smite our enemies and put our foes to
flight!”
Imogen was not ill-pleased with that poem, which
had ten verses, and which she wrote for a school com-
position. It seemed to her a fine expression of sturdy
Boer patriotism, however misguided.
“I can see their point of view,” she said to herself,
righteously, and pleased with the phrase. “Most
people” (which meant, it need scarcely be said, most
of the other girls at school), “can’t see it, but I can.
They’re beastly, and I’m glad they’re beaten, but I
see their point of view.” She said so to some other
little girls in the Third Remove. But the other little
girls, who didn’t see the Boers’ point of view, said,
“Oh! Are you a pro-Boer? I say, Imogen Carring-
ton’s a pro-Boer.” “Your uncle was ducked in Traf-
algar Square, wasn’t he?” said someone else, curiously
but not unkindly, and in the diffident voice suitable to
family scandals, “for being a pro-Boer. Do you think
the same as him?”
Imogen, blushing, disclaimed this.FIN-DE-SIECLE
191
“Daddy and mother think Uncle Maurice awfully
wrong, and so do I. He’s a real pro-Boer.”
“Well, what are you? Are you only shamming
pro-Boer?”
“I’m not a pro-Boer at all. I’m pro-us. I only said
I	could see their point of view. . .
“Oh, you do talk tosh. Point of view. No one but
grown-up people uses words like that. Imogen’s get-
ting awfully cocky now Miss Cradock always says her
compositions are good. Come and play tig.”
And, since little girls at school are very seldom un-
kind, they included Imogen in the game and bore no
malice.
Irving was no pro-Boer. He wrote home, in the
autumn of 1900, “We’re getting on, but we’re not near
finished with brother Boer yet. Maurice is talking
through his hat, as usual. Any fool out here knows
that if we’re to suck any advantage out of this war
(and there’s no small advantage to be sucked, I can tell
you), we’ve got to win it. Those radical gas-bags at
home don’t know the first thing about it.”
It is an eternal and familiar dispute, and which side
one takes in it really seems to depend more on tempera-
ment than on the amount one knows about it.
3i
END OF VICTORIANISM
The nineteenth century did actually end at last.
Probably everyone over twelve and under seventy sat
up to see it out, to see the twentieth in, to catch that
elusive, dramatic moment and savour it.
The twentieth century. Imogen, when she woke on192
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
New Year’s Day, could scarcely believe it. It was
perhaps, she thought, a drunken dream. For fthe
Carringtons, like all right-thinking persons, always
kept Hogmanny in punch. But the twentieth century
it was, and a clear frosty morning. Imogen shouted
to Nancy, lying in intoxicated slumbers in the other
bed, “Happy new century,” lest Nancy should say it
first, then looked at the new century out of the window.
What a jolly century it looked; what a jolly century
it was going to be! A hundred happy years. At the
end of it she would be 112. A snowy-haired but still
active old lady, living in a white house on a South
Sea Island, bathing every morning (but not too early)
and then getting back into bed and eating her break-
fast of mangoes, bread-fruit, delicious home-grown
coffee and honey. Then a little roller skating on the
shining parquet floor of the hall; a lovely hall, hung
with the trophies of her bow—reindeer, sand-bok, polar
bear, grizzly, lion, tiger, cheetah, wombat and wolf.
No birds. Shooting birds was no fun. Imogen knew,
for she had shot her first and only sparrow last week,
with her new catapult. The boys had been delighted,
but she had nearly cried. It had been beastly. * Here-
after she meant only to use the catapult on cows, broth-
ers and sisters, and still life. That old lady of the
year 2,000 should have only one bird to her score.
The question was, what to do till getting-up time.
Wake Nancy—but this was next to impossible. Nancy
was a remarkably fast sleeper. One might go and try
to wake the boys, and get them to come out catapulting
in the garden, or roller skating in the square. Or one
might snuggle down in bed again and read “Treasure
Island.” Or not read, but lie and think about the
new century; perhaps make a poem about it. ImogenFIN-DE-SIECLE
193
extracted from the pocket of her frock, that hung on a
chair, a stubby pencil, a note-book and a stick of barley-
sugar. With these she curled up among the bed-
clothes. Happily she sucked and pondered. Holidays;
breakfast time not for ages; Christmas presents with
the gloss still on (among them a pair of roller skates
and Brassey’s Naval Annual and a new bow and ar-
rows), and a brand new century to explore. Sing
joy, sing joy.
“Roland lay in his bunk,” murmured Imogen, “and
heard the prow of the ship grinding through ice-floes
as she pursued her way. Eight bells sounded. With
a hijous shock he remembered the events of last night.
He put his hand to his head; it was caked with dried
blood where the pirates had struck him with the crow-
bar. A faint moan of anguish was wrung from his
white lips. . . .”
Roland was Imogen, and his adventures had mean-
dered on in serial form in her mind for several months.
She had always, ever since she remembered, imperson-
ated some boy or youth as she went about. “Lithe
as a panther,” she would murmur within herself, as
she climbed a tree, “Wilfrid swarmed up the bare
trunk. He scanned the horizon. In the distance he
saw a puff of smoke, and heard, far away, faint shrieks.
"Indians/ he said, ‘at their howwid work. The ques-
tion for me is, can I warn the settlers in time? If the
Redskins catch me, I shall wish I had never been born.
No; I will escape now and save myself/ ”
It was characteristic of Wilfrid, or Roland, or Den-
nis, or whatever he was at the moment called, that he
usually did a cowardly thing at first, then repented and
acted like a hero, suffering thereby both the condem-
nation of his friends for his cowardice and the tortures194
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
of his foes for his courage. He was a rather morbid
youth, who enjoyed repentance and heroic amendment,
no simple, stalwart soul. Usually he was in the navy.
Thus, in idle, barley-sugared dreamings, this rep-
resentative of the young generation began the new cen-
tury.
“What,” mused her grandfather, watching from his
bed the winter morning grow, “will the new age be?”
“Much like the old ages, I shouldn't wonder,” Mrs.
Garden murmured, drowsily. “People and things stay
much the same . . . much the same. . . .”
“The eternal wheel,” papa speculated, still adhering
to his latest faith, but with a note of question. “The
eternal, turning wheel. I wonder. . . .”
But what mamma wondered, catching the familiar
note of doubt in his voice, was where the eternal turn-
ing wheel would next land papa.
“What a world we'll make it, won’t we, my son and
daughter,” Stanley hopefully exclaimed to her children
as they rioted about her room. “What a century we’ll
have! It belongs to the people of your age, you know.
You've got to see it’s a good one. . . . Now take
yourselves off and let me get up. Run and turn on
the cold tap for me, and put the warm at a trickle.”
Stanley whistled as she dressed.
“Yet another century,” her sister Rome commented,
with languid amusement, as her early tea was brought
to her. “How many we have, to be sure! I wonder
if, perhaps, it is not even too many?”
“Maurice,” shrilly called Maurice’s wife, entering
his room at nine o'clock. “Well, I declare!”
Maurice lay heavily sleeping, and whiskey exhaled
from his breath. He had come home at three o'clock
this morning.FIN-DE-SIECLE
195
“A nice way to begin the new year,” said Amy; she
did not say “new century,” because she was of those
who could not see but that the century had been new
in 1900. She shook her husband’s shoulder, looking
down with distaste at his thin, sharp-featured sleep-
ing face, its usual pallor heavily flushed.
“A nice example to the children. And you always
writing rubbish about social reform. . . . You make
me sick.”
“Go away,” said Maurice, half opening hot eyes.
“Le’me alone. My head’s bad. . . .”
“So I should imagine,” said Amy. “I’m sick and
tired of you, Maurice.”
“Go away then. Right away. We’d both be hap-
pier. Why don’t you?”
“Oh, I daresay I’m old-fashioned,” said Amy. “I
was brought up to think a wife’s place was with her
husband. Of course, I’m probably wrong. I’m al-
ways surprised you don’t, leave me, feeling as you do.”
Maurice, waking a little more, surveyed her with
morose, heavy, aching eyes, and moistened his dry lips.
“You’re not surprised. You know it’s because of
the children. It’s my job to see they grow up decently,
with decent ideas and a chance.”
At that Amy’s mirth overcame her.
“Decent ideas! You’re a nice educator of children,
aren’t you! Look at yourself lying there. . . .”
She pointed to the looking-glass opposite his bed.
“Get out, please,” said Maurice, coldly. “I’ve got
to write my leader.”
Meanwhile the most august representative of the
Victorian age wavered wearily between her own cen-
tury and this strange new one, peering blindly down
the coming road as into a grave. It did not belong to196
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
her, the new century. She had had her day. A few
days of the new young era, and she would slip into
the night, giving place to the rough young forces
knocking at the door.
The great Victorian century was dead.PART III
EDWARDIANI
DISCURSIVE
THE Edwardians were, as we now think, a brief
generation to themselves, set between Victorian-
ism and neo-Georgianism (it is a pity that we should
have no better name for the present reign, for “Geor-
gian” belongs by right to a period quite other; royalty
having ever been sadly unimaginative in its choice of
Christian names). Set between the nineteenth century
and the full swing of the twentieth, those brief ten
years we call Edwardian seem now like a short spring
day. They were a gay and yet an earnest time. A
time of social reform on the one hand and social bril-
liance on the other. The heyday at once of intellec-
tual Fabianism and of extravagant dissipation. The
hour of the repertory theatres, the Irish Players, Ber-
nard Shaw and Granville Barker at the Court, Miss
Horniman in the provinces, absurd musical comedies
that bloomed like gay flowers of a day and died. The
onrush of motor cars and the decline of bicycles and
the horse; extravagant country-house parties at which
royalty consented to be entertained, with royal bon-
homie and royal exactions of etiquette. . . . “Mr.
Blank, have we not seen that suit rather often before?”
“Lady Dash, surely we remember this wall-paper. . . .”
“Lord Somebody, this is a very abominable din-
ner. . . .” What standards to live up to! There was
nothing dowdy about our King Edward. He set the
199200
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
stakes high, and all who could afford it played. Pag-
eants and processions passed in regal splendour.
Money nobly flowed.
Ideals changed. The sanctity and domesticity of the
Heim was no more a royal fetish. “Respectability,”
that good old word, degraded and ill-used for so long,
sank into discredit, sank lower in the social scale.
No more were unfortunate ladies who had had marital
troubles coldly banned from court, for a larger char-
ity (except as to suits, dinners and wall-papers) ob-
tained. Victorian sternness, Victorian prudery and
intolerance, still prevailed among some of the older
aristocracy, among most of the smaller squirearchy,
the professional classes and the petty bourgeoisie; but
among most of the wealthy, most of the titled, most
of the gay and extravagant classes, a wider liberty
grew.
In the intervals of social pleasures, Edward the
Peacemaker was busy about the Balance of Power in
Europe. He did not care about his cousin Wilhelm.
He made an Entente with France, and came to an un-
derstanding with Russia, so that when the Trouble
should come—and experienced royalty knows that
from time to time, the Trouble is bound to come—
we should not meet it singly. The weak point about
ententes is that when the Trouble comes to one's fel-
low-members, they do not meet it singly either. Con-
sidering this, and considering also the annoyance and
alarm they inspire in those not in them, and taking
them all round, ententes seem on the whole a pity.
But at the time English people were pleased with this
one, and Edward was hopefully called the Peacemaker,
just as Victoria had been called Good, and Elizabeth
Virgin, and Mary Bloody. We love to name our roy-EDWARDIAN
201
alties, and we much prefer to name them kindly. Mary
must have been, and doubtless was, very bloody indeed
before her people bestowed on her that opprobrious
title. Other sovereigns—most other sovereigns—have
been pretty bloody too, but none of them bloody enough
to be so called.
A queer time! Perhaps a transition time; for that
matter, this is one of the things times always are.
The world of fashion led by an elderly royal gentle-
man bred at the Victorian court of his mother, and
retaining queer Victorian traditions that younger gen-
tlemen and ladies did not observe. King Edward, for
instance, observed Sunday with some strictness. He
thought it right; he felt it should be done. The British
Sunday was an institution, and King Edward was all
for institutions. A generation was growing up, had
already grown up, who did not understand about Sun-
day in that sense. But you may observe about elderly
Victorian persons that, however loosely they may sit
to Sunday, they usually have a sense of it. They play
or work on it consciously, with a feeling that they
are breaking a foolish rule, possibly offending an im-
aginary public opinion. They seldom quite realise
that the rule and the opinion they are thinking of are
nearly obsolete. They seldom regard Sunday (with
reference to the occupations practised on it), precisely
as if it were a weekday. Institutions die hard. They
linger long after their informing spirit has died.
Anyhow, King Edward VII was a Victorian gentle-
man long before he was an Edwardian. So he ob-
served Sunday and the lesser proprieties, without self-
consciousness. He was like his mother, with a differ-
ence. Both had a sense of royal dignity and of the
Proper Thing. His subjects, too, had a sense of the202
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Proper Thing: people always have. But the Proper
Thing, revered as ever, gradually changed its face,
or rather turned a somersault and alighted on its head.
Well, the Edwardians, like the Elizabethans, the
Jacobeans, the Carolines, the Georgians, the Victo-
rians, and the neo-Georgians, were a mixed lot. This
attempt to class them, to stigmatise them with adjec-
tives, is unscientific, sentimental, and wildly incorrect.
But, because it is rather more interesting than to admit
frankly that they were merely a set of individuals, it
will always be done.
2
VIVE LE ROI
La reine est morte. Vive le roi: King Edward was
proclaimed by heralds, by trumpeters, and with the
rolling of drums; and God save the King. Then they
buried the late queen with royal pomp, and kings,
emperors, archdukes and crown princes rode with her
to the tomb.
King Edward opened Parliament in state. A great
king he was for pageantry and for state. He read
the Accession Declaration. It was a tactlessly worded
declaration in some ways, for it was drawn up in days
when Roman Catholicism was not well thought of
by the Head of the Church and Defender of the Faith.
King Edward did not like it. “His Majesty,” wrote
the outraged Catholic peers, “would willingly have
been relieved from the necessity of branding with con-
tumelious epithets the religious tenets of any of his
subjects.” There were protests not only from Roman
Catholics, but from Protestants and agnostics, who
all, in the main, thought it rude. But some there wereEDWARDIAN
203
who, though they knew it was rude, knew also that it
was right to be rude to Roman Catholics. “They are
the king’s subjects as much as others, and belong to a
distinguished old church/’ the protesters declared,
“The thing is an antediluvian piece of ill-breeding.”
“Bloody Mary. The Inquisition. No Popery,”
was the crude reply. “And are not Roman Catholics
always rude to our religion? Why, then, should we
not be rude to theirs?”
“Roman Catholics,” replied the more polite and so-
phisticated, “cannot help being a little rude—if you
call it so—to other faiths. They are not to blame.
It is an article of their faith that theirs is the only
true and good church. There is no such article in
other faiths. We are not obliged by our religion to
believe them wrong, as they are, unfortunately, obliged
to believe us wrong. Obviously, then, we should prac-
tise the courtesy forbidden to them. It is more gen-
erous and dignified. Also, they are as good as we
are. All religions are doubtless in the main inaccurate,
and one does not differ appreciably from another. And
His Majesty ought to preserve a strict impartiality
concerning the many and various faiths of his people.
The Declaration is ignorant, unstatesmanlike and ob-
scurantist, and smacks of vulgar seventeenth century
protestantism. It is a worse scandal than the Thirty-
nine Articles.”
But “No Popery” was still the cry of the noisy few,
and the scandal remained. Reluctantly protesting his
firm intention to give no countenance to the religion
of some millions of his subjects, and solemnly in the
presence of God professing, testifying and declaring
that he did make this declaration in the plaine and or-
dinary sense of the words as they were commonly204
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
understood by English Protestants, without any eva-
sion, equivocation or mentall reservation whatsoever,
without any dispensation from the Pope, either already
granted or to be sought later, the king opened his
khaki-elected Parliament, which proved as ineffective
as parliaments always do. It is of no importance which
side is in office in Parliament; any study of the subject
must convince the earnest student that all parties are
about equally stupid. By some fluke, useful Acts may
from time to time get passed by any government that
happens to be in power. More often, foolish and in-
jurious Acts get passed. Personality and intelligence
in ministers do certainly make some difference; but
party, it seems, makes none. The stupid, the inert,
the dishonest and the ill-intentioned flourish like bay-
trees impartially on both sides of the avenue. Only
the very naif can believe that party matters, in the long
run. This first Parliament of the twentieth century
proved, perhaps, even more than usujally inept, as
parliaments elected during war excitements are apt to
be. It could deal neither with education, defences, la-
bour, finance nor poisoned beer.
3
papa's new faith
The war scrambled on; a tedious, ineffective guerilla
business. The Concentration Camp trouble began, and
over its rights and wrongs England was split.
Mr. Garden hated the thought of these camps, where
Boer women and children, driven from their homes,
dwelt in discomfort (so said Miss Emily Hobhouse
and others), and fell ill and died. They might be, asEDWARDIAN
205
their defenders maintained, kindly meant, but it was
all very disagreeable. In fact, the whole war preyed
on papa’s mind and nerves. More and more it seemed
to him a hideous defiance of any possible Christian
order of society, a thing wholly outside the sphere of
God’s scheme for the world. But, then, of course,
nearly everything was that, and always had been. So
utterly outside that sphere were most of the world’s
happenings that it sometimes seemed to papa as if
they could scarcely be happenings, as if they must be
evil illusions of our own, outside the great Reality.
The more papa brooded over this Reality, the more
he became persuaded that it must be absolute and all
pervasive, that nothing else really existed. “We make
evil by our thought,” said papa. “God knows no
evil. . . . God does not know about the war. Nor
about the Concentration Camps. . . .”
It will be seen that papa was ripe for the acceptance
of a new creed which had recently come across the At-
lantic and was becoming fashionable in this country.
Christian Science fastened on papa like a mosquito, and
bit him hard. It comforted him very much to think
that God did not know about the war. He told his
grandchildren about this ignorance on the part of the
Deity.
Imogen pondered it. She had a metaphysical and
enquiring mind, and was always interested in God.
“What does God think all those soldiers are doing
out in Africa, grandpapa?” she asked, after a consider-
ing pause. “Or doesn’t he know .they’re soldiers?”
“He knows they are unhappy people following an
evil illusion, my child,” her grandpapa told her. “You
see, there is no war really—not on God’s plane. There
couldn’t be.”206
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Imogen pondered it again, corrugating her fore-
head. She dearly liked to understand things.
“Will God know about the peace, when it comes ?”
“He will know his children have stopped imagining
the evil of war. And he will be very glad.”
“Doesn’t he know about the soldiers who are killed?
What does he think they’ve died of?”
“He knows they are slain by their evil imaginings
and those of their enemies. You see, God knows his
children believe themselves to be at war, and that as
long as they go on believing it they will hurt each
other and themselves.”
• It seemed to Imogen that, in that case, God knew
all that was really necessary about the war.
“Are you the only person, besides God, who doesn’t
believe in the war, grandpapa?” she presently enquired.
“No, my child. There are others. . . . Perhaps one
day, when you are older, you will understand more
about it, and try and think all evil and all pain out of
existence.”
“P’raps.” Imogen was dubious. She did not quite
get the idea. “Of course I’d like it, grandpapa, be-
cause then I shouldn’t get hurt any more.” She rubbed
the back of her head, onto which she had fallen that
afternoon while roller skating round the square. Her
grandfather had told her that God didn’t know she
had fallen and hurt herself, and, in fact, that she was
not really hurt at all. God didn’t know a great deal
about roller skates, Imogen concluded, if he didn’t
know that people who used them very frequently did
fall. But perhaps he didn’t know there were any roller
skates; perhaps roller skates were another evil illusion
of ours, like the war. Not a bad illusion; one we had
better keep, bruises and all. But perhaps, thoughtEDWARDIAN
207
Imogen, who liked to think things out thoroughly, it
was really that God didn’t know that the contact of the
human head with another hard substance caused pain.
After all, people who have never tried don't know that.
Babies don’t. ...
Imogen began to be afraid she was blaspheming.
She put the problem later to her mother, but Vicky
was less interested than her youngest daughter in meta-
physical problems, and merely said, “Oh, Jennie dar-
ling, you needn’t puzzle your head about what grand-
papa tells you. Things that suit learned old gentle-
men like him don’t always do for little girls like you.
Anyhow, don’t ever you get thinking that it won’t
hurt you when you tumble on your head, because it
always will. You'll never get rid of that illusion, you
may be sure. What you've got to learn is not to be
so careless, and not to spend all your time climbing
and racketing about. So long as you’ll do that you’ll
get tumbles, and they’ll hurt, and don’t you forget it.”
Imogen sighed a little. Her mother was so prac-
tical. You asked her for doctrine and she gave you
advice. Being married, and particularly being a
mother, often makes women like that. They know
that doctrine is no use, and cherish the illusion that
advice is.
“Papa is very happy in this new no-evil religion he
has,” mamma said to Rome. “It suits him very well.
Better than theosophy did, I think.”
Papa’s new religion might, from her placid, casual,
considering tone, have been a new suit of clothes.
Papa’s daughter-in-law, Amy, screamed with mirth
over it. Christian Science seemed to her an excellent
joke.
“Oh, you’re not really hurt,” she would say if herTOLD BY AN IDIOT
daughter Iris came in from hockey with a black eye.
“It’s all an illusion! What do you want embrocation
for? I’ll tell your grandpapa of you. ...”
“Christian Science,” Maurice said to her at last,
gloomily contemptuous, “is not much more absurd than
other religions. Suppose you were to take another
for your hourly jokes to-day, just for the sake of a
change. It makes no difference which; you don’t begin
to understand any of them, and you can, no doubt, get
a good laugh out of them all, if you try.”
Amy said, “There you go, as usual! I suppose
you’ll be saying you're a Christian Science crank next.
Anyway, I don’t know what you want to speak to me
in that way for, just because I like a little fun.”
“I don’t want to speak to you in any way,” replied
Maurice.
4
ON EDUCATION
Stanley, turning forty this year, was sturdier than
of old, softer and broader of face, blunt-nosed, chubby,
maternal, her deep blue eyes more ardent and intent.
Now that her children, who were ten and eight, both
went to day schools, she had taken up her old jobs,
and was working for Women’s Trade Unions, going
every day to an office, sitting on committees, speaking
on platforms. Phases come and phases go, and par-
ticularly with Stanley, who inherited much from her
papa. Stanley was in these days ’a stop-the-war, paci-
ficist Little Englander, anti-militarist, anti-Chamber-
lain, anti-Concentration Camp. She would shortly be
a Fabian, but had not quite got there yet. She was,
of course, a suffragist, but suffragists in 1901 wereEDWARDIAN
209
still a very forlorn outpost; they were considered
crankish and unpractical dreamers. She also spoke
and wrote on Prison Reform, Democratic Education,
Divorce Reform, Clean Milk and Health Food. She
was an admirer of Mr. Eustace Miles’ views on food,
Mr. G. B. Shaw’s drama and social ethics, Mr. G. K.
Chesterton’s romantic Christianity, and no one’s polit-
ical opinions. She believed in the future of the world,
which was to be splendidly managed by the children
now growing up, who were to be splendidly educated
for that purpose.
“But how improbable,” Rome mildly expostulated,
“that they should manage it any better or any worse
than everyone else has. Your maternal pride carries
you away, my dear. Parents can never be clear-
sighted; often have I observed it. Blessed, as the
Bible says somewhere, are the barren and they that
have not brought forth, for they are the only people
with any chance of looking at the world with clear
and detached eyes. And even they haven’t much. . . .
But why do you think the present young will do so
unusually well with the future?”
“Of course,” Stanley replied, “they won’t do it of
themselves. Only so far as they are educated up to it.”
“Well, I can’t see that educational methods are im-
proving noticeably. Obviously democratic education is
not at present to be encouraged by our governing
classes. Look at the Cockerton case. . . .”
“It will come,” said Stanley. “This new Bill won’t
go far, but it will do something. Meanwhile, those
parents who have thought it out at all are doing rather
better by their children than parents used to do. At
least we can tell them the truth.”210
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“So far as you see it yourselves. Is that, in most
cases, saying much?”
“No, very little. But—to take a trivial thing—we
can at least, for instance, tell them the truth about such
things as the birth of life. That's something. Billy
and Molly already know as much as they need about
that.”
“Well, they don’t actually need very much yet, do
they? I’m sure it won’t hurt them to know anything
of that sort, but I don’t see exactly how it’s going to
help them to manage the world any better. Because,
when the time comes for doing that, they’d know
about the birth of life in any case. Boys always seem
to pick it up at school, whatever else they don’t learn.
However, I admit that I think you bring up Billy
and Molly very well.”
“It’s facing facts,” said Stanley, “that I want to
teach them. The art of not being afraid of life.
They’ve got to do their share in cleaning up the world,
and before they can do that they’ve got to face it
squarely. One wants to do away with muffling things
up, whatever they are. That’s why I tell them every-
thing they ask, so far as I know it, and a lot they
don’t. The knowledge doesn’t matter either way, but
the atmosphere of daylight does. I want them to feel
there are no facts that can’t be talked about.”
“But, my dear, what a social training! Because,
you know, there are. Anyhow in drawing-rooms, and
places where they chat.”
“They'll learn all that soon enough,” Stanley placidly
said. “The world is as vulgar as it is mainly because
of its prudery. I’m giving my children weapons against
that.”
She had given them also a weapon against theirEDWARDIAN
211
cousins, the children of Vicky, who had not been told
Facts. Anyhow Imogen hadn't. Her sisters were
older, and boys, as Rome had said, do seem to pick
things up at school. But Imogen at thirteen was still
in the ignorance thought by Vicky suitable to her
years. So, when she exasperated her cousin Billy
by her superior proficiency in climbing, running, gym-
nastics, and all active games—a proficiency natural to
her three years' seniority but growing tiresome during
a whole afternoon spent in trials of skill—Billy could
at least retort, “I know something you don’t. I know
how babies come.”
“Don’t care how they come,” Imogen returned,
astride on a higher bough of the aspen tree than her
cousin could attain to. “They're no use anyhow, the
little fools. Who wants babies?”
Billy, having meditated on this unanswerable ques-
tion, amended his vaunt. “Well, I know how puppies
come, too. So there.”
Imogen was stumped. You can’t say that puppies
are no use. She could think of no retort but the an-
cient one of sex insult.
“Boys are always bothering about stupid things like
how babies come. As if it mattered. IJd rather know
the displacement and horse-power and knots of all the
battleships and first-class cruisers.”
“You don’t.”
“I do.”
“Bet you a bull’s-eye you don’t.”
“Done. A pink one. Ask any you like.”
“Well, what’s the Terrible ?”
“14,200 tons; 25,000 horse-power; 22.4 knots.
That’s an easy one.”
“The Powerful.”212
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“Same, of course. No, she only makes 22.1 knots.
Stupid to ask twins.”
Billy considered. He did not like to own it, but
he could not remember at the moment any other ships
of His Majesty's fleet.
“Well, what’s the biggest, anyhow?”
“The Dominion and the King Edward VII.
16,350 tons; 18,000 horse-power; 18.5 knots.”
“I don’t know that any of that’s true.”
“You can look in ‘Brassey’ and find out, then.”
“I don’t care. Anyone can mug up ‘Brassey.’ Any-
how girls can’t go into the navy.”
Imogen jogged up and down on the light swinging
branch, whistling through her teeth, pretending not to
hear.
“And anyhow,” added the taunter below, “you’d be
no use on a ship, ’cause you’d be sick.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You would.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You would.”
“You’re sick yourself if you smoke a woodbine.”
“So are you. You're sick if you squash a fly. Girls
are. They can’t dissect a rabbit. I can.”
The sex war was in full swing.
“Boys crib at their lessons. Boys don’t wash their
necks.”
“Nor do girls. You’re dirty now. Girls don’t play
footer at school.”
“Hockey’s as good. Boys are greedy pigs; they
spend their pennies on tuck.”
“Who bought eight bull’s-eyes this afternoon and
sucked six?”
“Oh, well.” Imogen collapsed into sudden goodEDWARDIAN
213
temper. “Don’t let’s rot. Why did the gooseberry
fool?”
To change the subject further, she swung herself
backwards and hung from the branch by her knees,
her short mop of curls swinging upside down, the blood
singing in her head. Billy, a nice but not very clever
little boy, said, “Because the raspberry syrup,” and
truce was signed. Who, as Imogen had asked, cared
how babies came ?
5
PING-PONG
Everywhere people ping-ponged. One would have
thought there was no war on. Instead of doing their
bits, as we did in a more recent and more serious war,
they all ping-ponged, and, when not ping-ponging,
asked, “Why did the razor-bill raise her bill? Why
did the coal scuttle? What did Anthony Hope?” and
answered, “Because the woodpecker would peck her.
Because the table had cedar legs. To see the salad
dressing,” and anything else of that kind they could
think of. Some people, mostly elderly people, could
only answer vaguely to everything, “Because the razor-
bill razor-bill,” and change the subject, thinking how
stupid riddles in these days were. Some people excelled
at riddles, others at ping-pong, others again at pit,
which meant shouting “oats, oats, oats,” or something
similar, until they were hoarse. No one would have
thought there was a war on.
Indeed, there scarcely was a war on, now. Not a
war to matter. Only rounding up, and blockhouses,
and cordons, and guerilla fighting. Irving Garden
had had enteric, and was invalided home. He meantTOLD BY AN IDIOT
to return to South Africa directly peace should be
signed, to investigate a good thing he had heard of
in the Rand. His nephews and nieces, with whom
he was always popular, worshipped at his shrine. He
had wonderfully funny stories of the war to tell them.
But he preferred to ask them such questions as, “What
made Charing Cross ?” and to supply them with such
answers as, “Teaching London Bridge. Am I right?”
Such questions, such answers, they found so funny
as to be almost painful. Imogen and Tony would
giggle until tears came into their eyes. Certainly
Uncle Irving was amusing. And clever. He drove
himself and other people about in a grey car that
travelled like the wind and was cursed like the devil
by pedestrians and horse-drivers on the roads. His
brother Maurice cursed him, but good-temperedly, for
he liked Irving, and, further, he despised the unenter-
prising Public for fools. That was why no section
of the community gave Maurice and his paper their
entire confidence. He attacked what he and those who
agreed with him held for evils, but would round, with
a contemptuous gesture, on those whose grievances
he voiced. He ridiculed the present inefficiency, and
ridiculed also the ideals of those who cried for im-
provement. He threw himself into the struggle for
educational reform, and sneered at all reforms pro-
posed as inadequate, pedestrian or absurd. He con-
demned employers as greedy, and Trade Unions as
retrograde. He jeered at the inefficiency of the con-
duct of what remained of the war, at the stupid bru-
tality of concentration camps, at the sentimentality of
the Pro-Boer party (as they were still called), at the
militarism of the Tory militants, the imperialism of
the Liberals, and the sentimental radical humanita-EDWARDIAN
215
rianism of Mr. Lloyd George and his party. He ad-
dressed Stop-the-War meetings until they were broken
up with violence by earnest representatives of the Con-
tinue-the-War party, and suffered much physical dam-
age in the ensuing conflicts; yet the Stop-the-War party
did not really trust him. They suspected him of de-
siring, though without hope, to stop not only the war but
all human activities, and indeed the very universe itself;
and this is to go further than is generally approved.
The Continue-the-War party has risen and fallen with
every war; but the Continue-the-World party has a kind
of solid permanency, and something of the universal
in its ideals. Not to be of it is to be out of sympathy
with the great majority of one's fellows. At any time
and in any country, but perhaps particularly in England
in the early years of the twentieth century, when there
was a good deal of enthusiasm for continuance and
progress. The early Edwardians were not, as we are
to-day, dispirited and discouraged with the course of
the world, though they were vexed about the Boer War
and the consequent economic depression of the country.
They did not, for the most part, feel that life was a
bad business and the future outlook too dark and
menacing to be worth encouraging. On the contrary,
they believed in Life with a capital L. The young
were bitten by the dry reforming zeal of Mr. and
Mrs. Sidney Webb, or the gay faith in life of Mr.
G. K. Chesterton, or the bounding scientific hopeful-
ness of Mr. H. G. Wells, or the sharp social and
ethical criticism of Mr. George Bernard Shaw.
Stanley Croft, young for ever in mind, was bitten
by all these and much more. Imperialism left slain
behind, she embraced with ardour the fantastic ideal
of the cleaning up of England. After the war;216
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
then indeed they would proceed furiously with the
building of Jerusalem in England’s green and pleas-
ant land.
And meanwhile the war went on, and times were
bad, and everywhere people ping-ponged. A lack of
seriousness was complained of. It always is complained
of in this country, which is not, indeed, a very serious
one, but always contains some serious persons to com-
plain of the others. “The ping-pong spirit/’ the
graver press called the national lightness; and clergy-
men took up the phrase and preached about it.
The public, they said, were like street gamins, loafing
about on the watch for any new distraction.
6
GAMIN
Imogen and Tony slipped out into the street. It
was the first Sunday of the summer holidays, and the
first day of August. The sun beat hotly on the asphalt,
making it soft, so that one could dent it with one’s
heels. The children sauntered down Sloane Street,
loitering at the closed shop windows, clinking their
shillings in their pockets. They enjoyed the streets
with the zest of street Arabs. They were a happy and
untidy pair; the girl in a short butcher blue cotton
frock, grubby with a week’s wear, and a hole in the
knee of one black-stockinged leg, a soiled white linen
cricket hat slouched over her short mop of brown
curls, her small pink face freckled and tanned; the
boy, a year younger, grimy, dark-eyed and beautiful,,
like his Uncle Irving in face, clad in a grey flannel
knickerbocker suit. Neither had dressed for the streetEDWARDIAN
217
in the way that they should have; they had slipped out,
unseen, in their garden clothes and garden grime, to
make the most of the last day before they went away
for the holidays.
They knew what they meant to do. They were going
to have their money’s worth, and far more than their
money’s worth, of underground travelling. Round
and round and round; and all for a penny fare. . . .
This was a favourite occupation of theirs, a secret,
morbid vice. They indulged in it at least twice every
holidays. The whole family had been used to do it,
but all but these two had now outgrown it. Phyllis,
now at Girton, had outgrown it long ago. “The two-
penny tube for me,” she said. “It’s cleaner.” “But
it doesn’t go round” said Imogen. “Who wants to
go round, you little donkey? It	takes	you	where	you
want to go to; that’s the object	of a	train.” It	was
obvious that Phyllis had grown	up.	She	would	not
even track people in the street	now.	It	must hap-
pen, soon or late, to all of us. Even Hughie, fifteen
and at Rugby, found this underground game rather
weak.
But Imogen and Tony still sneaked out, a little
shamefaced and secretive, to practise their vice.
Sloane Square. Two penny fares. Down the stairs,
into the delicious, romantic, cool valley. The train
thundered in, Inner Circle its style. A half empty
compartment; there was small run on the underground
this lovely August Sunday. Into it dashed the chil-
dren ; they had a corner seat each, next the open door.
They bumped up and down on the seats, opposite each
other. The train speeded off, rushing like a mighty
wind. South Kensington Station. More people com-
ing in, getting out. Off again. Gloucester Road,218
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
High Street, Notting Hill Gate, Queen’s Road . . .
the penny fare was well over. Still they travelled, and
jogged up and down on the straw seats, and chanted
softly, monotonously, so that they could scarcely be
heard above the roaring of the train.
“Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep,
Where the winds are all asleep;
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam,
Where the salt weed sways in the stream,
Where the sea-beasts, ranged all round,
Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground;
Where the sea-snakes coil and twine,
Dry their mail and bask in the brine;
Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye,
Round the world for ever and aye. . .
Then again, “Sand-strewn caverns cool and
deep. . . .”
At Paddington they saw the conductor eyeing them,
and changed their compartment. This should be done
from time to time.
And so on, past King’s Cross and Farringdon Street,
towards the wild romantic stations of the east: Liver-
pool Street, Aldgate, and so round the bend, sweeping
west like the sun. Blackfriars, Temple, Charing Cross,
Westminster, St. James’ Park, Victoria, Sloane
Square. Oh, joy! Sing for the circle completed, the
new circle begun.
“Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and aye,
Round the world for ever and aye. . ,EDWARDIAN
219
Imogen changed her chant, and dreamily crooned:
“The world is round, so travellers tell,
And straight though reach the track;
Trudge on, trudge on, ’twill all be well,
The way will guide one back.
But ere the circle homeward hies,
Far, far must it remove;
White in the moon the long road lies
That leads me from my love.”
Round the merry world again. Put a girdle round
the earth in forty minutes. Round and round and
round. What a pennyworth! You can’t buy much
on an English Sunday, but, if you can buy eternal
travel, Sunday is justified.
But two Inner Circles and a bit are really enough.
If you had three whole ones you might begin to feel
bored, or even sick. Sloane Square again; the second
circle completed. South Kensington. The two globe-
trotters emerged from their circling, handed in their
penny tickets, reached the upper air, hot and elated.
Now what? For a moment they loitered at the
station exit, debating in expert minds the next move.
Money was short: no luxurious joys could be con-
sidered.
Imogen suddenly gripped Tony by the arm.
“Hist, Watson. You see that man in front?”
Watson, well-trained, nodded.
“We’re going to track him. I have a very shrewd
suspicion that he is connected with the Sloane Square
murder mystery. Now mind, we must keep ten paces
behind him wherever he goes; not less, or he’ll notice.
Like the woman in Church Street did. He’s off; come220
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
on. . . . Do you observe anything peculiar about him,
Watson?”
“He's a jolly lean old bird. I expect he's hungry.”
“My good Watson, look at his clothes. They’re a
jolly sight better than ours. He's a millionaire, as it
happens. If you want to know a few facts about him,
I'll tell you. He moved his washstand this morning
from the left side of his bed to the right; he forgot
to wind up his watch last night; he went to church
before breakfast; he had kidneys when he came in;
and he's now on his way to meet a confederate at
lunch.”
“Piffle. You can't prove any of it.”
“I certainly can, my good Watson. . . .”
“Golly, he's calling a hansom. Shall we hang on
behind?”
Watson's beautiful brown eyes beamed with hope;
Holmes' small green-grey ones held for a moment an
answering gleam. But only for a moment. Holmes
knew by now, having learnt from much sad experi-
ence, what adventures could be profitably undertaken
and what couldn't.
“No use. We'd be pulled off at once. . . .”
Morosely they watched their victim escape.
Then, “Look, Watson. The fat lady in purple.
She must have been to church. . . . Oh, quite simple,
Watson, I assure you . . . she has a prayerbook. . . .
Come on. It won't matter how late we get back, be-
cause they're having a lunch party and we're feeding
in the schoolroom. We'll sleuth her to hell.”
In this manner Sunday morning passed very pleas-
antly and profitably for Vicky's two youngest children.EDWARDIAN
221
7
AUTUMN, I9OI
1901	drew to its close. An odd, restless, gay, un-
happy year, sad with war and poverty, bitter with
quarrels about inefficiency, concentration camps, Ah-
mednagar (the home of the Boers in India, and a
name much thrown about by the pro-Boers in their
“ignorant and perverse outcry”), education, religion,
finance, politics, prisons, motor cars, and stopping the
war; gay with new drama (Mr. Bernard Shaw was
being produced, and many musical comedies), new
art (at the New English Art Club), new jokes, new
books (Mr. Conrad had published “Lord Jim,” Mr.
Henry James “The Sacred Fount,” Mr. Hardy “Poems
New and Old,” Mr. Wells “Love and Mr. Lewisham,”
Mr. Yeats “The Shadowy Waters,” Mrs. Chesterton
“The Wild Knight,” Mr. Kipling “Kim,” Mr. Belloc
“The Path to Rome,” Lady Russell “The Benefactress,”
Mr. Laurence Housman “A Modern Antaeus,” Mr.
Anthony Hope “Tristram of Blent,” Mrs. Humphry
Ward “Eleanor,” Mr. Arnold Bennett “The Grand
Babylon Hotel,” Mr. Charles Marriott “The Column,”
Mr. George Moore “Sister Teresa,” Mr. Max Beer-
bohm “And Yet Again”), new clothes and new games.
Popular we were not. That prevalent disease, An-
glophobia, raged impartially in every country except,
possibly, Japan. Even as far as the remote Bermudas,
continental slanders against us roared. We are a
maligned race; there is no doubt of it. All races are,
in their degree, maligned, but none so greatly as we—
unless it should be the Children of Israel. It is sad
to think it, but there must be something about us that222
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
is not attractive to foreigners. They have always
grieved at our triumphs and rejoiced at our sorrows.
By the end of 1901 our friendlessness was such (in
November Lord Salisbury said at the Guildhall, “It
is a matter for congratulation that we have found such
a friendly feeling and such a correct attitude on the part
of all the great powers”), that we thought we had
better enter into an alliance with the Japanese, who
were still pleased with us for admiring them about
their war with China.
In the autumn of this year, Stanley published her
small book, “Conditions of Women’s Work,” and Mr.
Garden, after years of labour, his mighty work, “Com-
parative Religions.”
Mrs. Garden had influenza and pneumonia in De-
cember, and Mr. Garden, in an anguish of anxiety,
called in three doctors and admitted that his faith had
failed. God’s disapproving ignorance of mamma’s
pneumonia made intolerable a burden of anxiety which
would have been heavy even with Divine sympathy;
and if, by some awful chance, mamma were to pass
on, papa’s grief, guilty and unrecognised, would have
been too bitter to be borne. Christian Science had
had but a brief day, but it was over. In a fit of reac-
tion, papa became an Evangelical, and took to profound
meditation on the suffering, human and divine, which
he had for so long ignored. He now found the love
of God in suffering, not in its absence.
Always honourable, he recanted the instructions on
the limitations of divine knowledge which he had given
to his grandchildren.
“You perhaps remember, Jennie my child, what I
said to you last year about God’s not knowing of the
;war. Well, I have come to the conclusion that I wasEDWARDIAN
223
mistaken. I believe now that God knows all about his
children’s griefs and pains. He knows more about
them than we do. Possibly—who knows—suffering
is a necessary part of the scheme of redemption. . . .”
Imogen looked and felt intelligent. When anyone
spoke of theology to her, it was as if the blood of all
her clerical ancestors mounted to the call. She was
nearly fourteen now, and had recently become an
agnostic, owing to having perused Renan and John
Stuart Mill. She was at the stage in life when she
read, with impartial ardour, such writers as these, as
well as E. Nesbit’s “Wouldbegoods,” Max Pember-
ton’s “Iron Pirate,” and other juvenile works (par-
ticularly school stories), Rudyard Kipling, Marryat,
the Brontes, and any poetry she could lay hands on, but
especially that of W. B. Yeats, Robert Browning, Al-
gernon Swinburne, William Morris, Lewis Carroll and
Walter Ramal.
She said to her grandfather, casually, but a little
wistfully too, “I’m not sure, grandpapa, that I believe
in God at all. The arguments against him seem very
strong, don’t they?”
Mr. Garden looked a little startled. Possibly he
thought that Imogen was beginning too young.
“Ah, Jennie, my child—Tf my doubt’s strong, my
faith’s still stronger. . . That’s what Browning
said about it, you know.”
Imogen nodded.
“I know. I’ve read that. I s’pose his faith was.
Mine isn’t. My doubt's stronger, grandpapa.”
“Well, my child . . .” Mr. Garden, gathering to-
gether his resources, gave this strayed lamb (that was
how, in his new terminology he thought of her) a little
evangelical homily on the love of God. Unfortunately224
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Imogen had, then and through life, an intemperate
distaste for evangelical language; it made her feel
shy and hot; and, though she loved her grandfather,
she was further alienated from faith. She wrote a
poem that evening about the dark, terrifying and God-
less world, which she found very good. She would
have liked to show it to the others, that they too might
find it good, but the tradition of her family and her
school was that this wasn’t done. One wrote anything
one liked, if one suffered from that itch, but to show
it about was swank. “Making a donkey of yourself.”
The Carringtons, shy, vain and reserved, did not care
to do that.
“Some day,” thought Imogen, “I’ll write books.
Then people can read them without my showing them.
I’ll write a book full of poems.” The new poet. Even
—might one dare to imagine it—the new great poet,
Imogen Carrington. Or should one be anonymous?
Anon. That was a good old poet’s name.
“Few people knew,” said Imogen, within herself,
“that this slender book of verse, 'Questionings,’ bound
in green, with gold edges, which had made such a stir
in lit’ry London, was by a wiry, brown-faced, blue-
eyed young lieutenant-commander, composed while he
navigated his first-class gunboat, the Thrush (805 tons,
1,200 h.p., 13 knots, 6 four-inch guns, 2 quick-firers,
2	machine), among the Pacific Islands, taking sound-
ings. The whole service knew Denis Carton as a bril-
liant young officer, but only two or three—or perhaps
a dozen—knew he was a poet too and had written that
green book with gold edges that lay on every drawing-
room table and was stacked by hundreds in every good
bookshop.” (I cannot account for the confused work-
ings of this poor child’s mind; I can only record theEDWARDIAN
225
fact that she still, and for many years to come, thought
of herself, with hope growing faint and ever fainter,
as a brown-skinned, blue-eyed young naval man.)
As to her religious difficulties, they were, after the
first flush of unbelief, driven into the background of
her mind by school, hockey, the Christmas holidays,
and missing word competitions, and did not obtrude
themselves aggressively again until the time came when
her mother decided that she should be confirmed. She
then said to her brother Hugh, now in the Fifth at
Rugby, what did one do about confirmation if one
believed Nothing? Hugh did not think it mattered
particularly what one believed. One was confirmed;
it did no harm; it was done; it saved argument. Him-
self, he believed very little of All That, but he had suf-
fered confirmation, saying nothing. No good making
fusses, and worrying mother. Jennie had much better
go through with it, like other people.
“Well ... of course, I don’t care ... if it’s not
cheating. . . .”
“Course it isn’t. Cheating who? They don’t care
what we believe, they’re not such sops. They only
want us to do the ordinary things, like other people,
and save bother. And, of course”—Hugh was a very
fair-minded boy and no bigot—“there may be some-
thing in it, after all. Lots of people, quite brainy,
sensible chaps, think there is. Anyhow, it can’t hurt.”
So Imogen was confirmed.
“Perhaps I shall be full of the Holy Ghost,” she
thought. “Perhaps there really is a Holy Ghost. Per-
haps my life will be made all new, with tongues of
fire upon my head and me telling in strange languages
the wonderful works of God. ... Perhaps. . . A But
more prob’ly not. . . .”22 6
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
8
1902
1902	was a great year, for in it the British Empire
ceased its tedious fighting with the Boer Republics,
and made a meal of them. So the Empire was the
richer by so many miles of Africa, with the gold mines,
black persons, and sulky Dutchmen appertaining
thereto, and the poorer by so many thousand soldiers’
lives, so many million pounds, and a good deal of
self-confidence and prestige. Anyhow, however you
worked out the gain and loss, here was peace, and
people shouted and danced for joy and made bonfires
in college courts. Thank God, that was over.
A wave of genial friendliness flowed from the warm
silly hearts of Britons towards the conquered foe.
Four surly enemy generals were brought to London;
asked if they would like to see the Naval Review; de-
clined with grave thanks; were escorted through Lon-
don amid a cheering populace—“Our friends the en-
emy,” cried the silly crowd, and “Brave soldiers all!”
and surrounded them with hearty British demonstration
and appeals for “a message for England.” There was
no message for England; no smiles; no words. The
warm, silly Britons were a little hurt. The psychology
of conquered nations was a riddle to them, it seemed.
. . . “God, what an exhibition!” said Maurice Gar-
den in his paper the next day.
Meanwhile King Edward VII had, after some un-
avoidable procrastination, been crowned, Mr. Horatio
Bottomley had won a thousand pounds from the editor
of the Critic, in that this editor had impugned his
financial probity, and the Man with the BefloweredEDWARDIAN
227
Buttonhole (as they called him in the French press)
whose Besotted Pride had caused to flow for three years
so much Gold and Tears and Blood had received the
Freedom of London for his services to his country.
This year, also, Mr. Rudyard Kipling delighted ath-
letes by his allusions to flannelled fools and muddied
oafs, that ineffectual body the National Service League
was formed, Germany and Great Britain began to
eye each other's land and sea forces with an increase
of hostile emulation which was bound to end in sor-
row, and there was much trouble over bad trade and
wages, unemployment, taxation and the Education
Bill. Passive Resisters rose violently to the foray
over this last, their Puritan blood hot within them, and
would not pay rates for schools managed by the Church
of England in which their nonconformist children were
given Church teaching. It made a pretty squabble, and
a good cry for Liberals, and why it was not settled by
representatives of every sect which so desired being
allowed access to the schools alternately is not now
clear. The parliamentary mind moves in a mysterious
way; it seldom adopts the simple solutions of problems
which commend themselves to the more ingenuous
laity. Anything to make contention and trouble, it
seems to feel.
In such disputations 1902 wore itself away. And
starving ex-soldiers played accordions or sold matches
by the pavements, their breasts decorated with larger
nosegays of war-medals than any one man-at-arms
could conceivably have won by his own prowess in the
field, for then, as after a more recent war, you could
buy these medals cheap in second-hand shops. “Fought
for my country” ran their sad, proud legends about
themselves, “and am now starving. Have a wife and228
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
sixteen small children. . . The families of ex-
soldiers were terrific, then as now. A wretched busi-
ness altogether.
9
EXIT MAMMA
Edwardianism was in full swing. People began to
recover from the war. They became rich again, and
very gay, and the arts flourished. Irving Garden, his
fortune made in Rand mines, could really afford almost
anything he liked. He bought and drove two motor
cars, a grey one and a navy blue, and presented to
Rome, on her forty-fourth birthday, a very graceful
little scarlet three seater, in which she drove everywhere.
Sometimes she drove her parents out, but the traffic
made her papa nervous. Mamma was of calmer stuff,
and sat placid and unmoved while her daughter ran skil-
fully like a flame between the monsters of the highway.
She did not think that Rome had accidents; she be-
lieved in Rome.
Unfortunately mamma developed cancer in the
spring of 1903, and died, after the usual sufferings
and operations, in the autumn.
“It doesn't much matter," she said to Rome, hearing
that her death was certain and soon. “A little more or
a little less. . . . After all, I am sixty-nine. My only
real worry about it is papa. We both hoped that I
might be the survivor. I could have managed better."
Mamma's faint sigh flickered. Dear papa. Poor
papa. Indeed, thought Rome, he will not manage at
all. . . .
No charge was laid on Rome to look after poor papa.
Mamma did not do such things; dying, she left theEDWARDIAN
22 9
living free. That ultimate belief in the inalienable free-
dom of the human being looked unconquered out of her
tired, still eyes. Mamma had never believed in coercion,
even the coercion of love. Modern writers say that
Victorian parents did believe in parental tyranny.
There is seldom any need to believe modern, or any
other, writers. What they seem sometimes to forget
is that Victorian parents were like any other parents
in being individuals first, and the sovereign who hap-
pened to reign over them did not reduce all Victorians
to a norm, some good, some bad, as the Poet Laureate
of the day had put it, but all stamped with the image of
the Queen. You would think, to hear some persons
talk, that Victoria had called into existence little images
of herself all over England, instead of being merely
one very singular and characteristic old lady, who might
just as well have occurred to-day. In short, the Vic-
torians were not like Queen Victoria, any more than
the Edwardians were like King Edward, or the Geor-
gians are like King George, for all creatures are merely
themselves.
Mamma, being merely herself, left her family free
of all behests, and drew to her end with an admirable
stoic gentleness. Dying was to her no great matter or
disturbance.
Time bears us off, as lightly as the wind
Lifts up the smoke and carries it away,
And all we know is that a longer life
Gives but more time to think of our decay.
We live till Beauty fails and Passion dies,
And sleep's our one desire in every breath,
And in that strong desire, our old love, Life,
Gives place to that new love whose name is Death.230
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Mamma would sometimes murmur these lines by Mr.
W. H. Davies, a poet (formerly Victorian, now Ed-
wardian, later to become Georgian), of whom she was
very fond, because he noticed all the charming things
in the countryside that she always observed herself,
such as wet grass, and rainbows, and cuckoos, and
birds’ eggs, and coughing sheep (who had always
stirred her to pity).
“My beloved/’ papa would say, quietly, restraining
his anguish that he might not distress her, “my best
beloved, I shall join you before long, where there is no
more parting. . . *” (Thank God, thank God, he was
at this time a believer in that reunion, and could say it
from his heart. Supposing he had still been a Theoso-
phist, believing that mamma would merely go on
to.another spoke of the Eternal Wheel, and that he
would never, try as he might, catch her up. ... Or
even a Roman Catholic, believing that mamma and he
would both have to suffer a long expiation, presuma-
bly not together, in purgatory. Thank God, evangeli-
cals believed in an immediate heaven for the redeemed,
and surely papa and mamma would be found numbered
among the redeemed. . . .)
Mamma’s hand would gently stroke his.
“Yes, dear. Of course you will join me soon.”
Who should see, who had ever seen, into mamma’s
mind that lay so deep and still beneath veils ?
“Yes, Aubrey. Of course, of course. Quite soon,
dear.”
They spoke often of that further life; but of papa’s
life between now and then they did not dare to speak
much.
Mamma loved papa, her lover and friend of half a
century, and she loved all her children, and all herEDWARDIAN
231
grandchildren too, the dear, happy boys and girls. But
at the last—or rather just before the last, for the end
was dark silence—it was only her eldest son, Maurice,
on whose name she cried in anguish.
“Maurice—Maurice—my boy, my boy! O God,
have pity on my boy!”
Maurice was there, sitting at her side, holding her
wet, shaking hand in his.
“Mother, mother. It’s all right, dear mother. I’m
here, close to you.”
But still she moaned, “Have pity—have pity on my
boy. . . . Maurice, my darling. . . . Have pity . . .”
as if her own pain, cutting her in two, were his, not
hers.
They had not known—not one of them had wholly
known—of those storms that had beaten her through
the long years because of Maurice, her eldest boy.
His tears burned in his hot eyes; the easy tears of
the constant drinker.
They put her under an anaesthetic; the pain was too
great; and she died at dawn.
10
SPIRITUALISM
Papa could not bear it. It was all very well to talk
of joining mamma before long, but papa was not
more than seventy-three years of age, and how should
he live without mamma for perhaps ten, fifteen, even
twenty years? That unfailing comfort, sympathy and
love that had been hers; that patient, silent understand-
ing, that strength and pity for his weakness, that wifely
regard for his scholar’s mind, that dear companionship232
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
that had never failed—having had these for close on
fifty years, how should he live without them? He
could not live without them. Somehow, he must find
them again—reach across the grave to where mamma's
love awaited him in the land of the redeemed. . . .
The redeemed. Already this evangelistic phraseology
did not wholly suit his needs. He wanted mamma
nearer than that. . . .
In 1904 there was, as usual, much talk of spiritual-
ism, of establishing connection with the dead. The
Psychical Research Society had been flourishing for
many years, but papa had never, until now, taken
much interest in it. There had been periods in his
career when he had believed, with his Church, that
God did not smile on such researches, or wish the
Veil drawn from the unseen world, and that the re-
searchers, if they too inquisitively drew it, got into
shocking company, got, in fact, into touch with those
evil spirits who were always waiting ready to pose as
the deceased relatives and friends of enquirers. Other
periods there had been when papa had believed that the
thing was all pathetic buncombe (that was how papa
spelt it), since there was unfortunately, nothing to get
into touch with. But now he was sure that he had,
in both these beliefs, erred. God could not frown on
his bereaved children's efforts to communicate with
the beloved who had made life for them. And beyond
the Veil waited not the great nothingness, but God and
the dear dead. God and mamma. He must and would
get into touch with mamma.
Papa attended seances, with what are called Results.
Mamma came and talked with him, through the voice
of a table or of a medium; she said all kinds of things
that only she could have said; she even told him whereEDWARDIAN
^33
a lost thimble of hers was, and sure enough, there it
was, dropped behind the sofa cushions. And once ma-
terialisation occurred, and mamma, like a luminous
wraith, floated about the room. It made papa very
happy. He asked her how she did, and what it was
like where she now was, and she told him that she
did, on the whole, very well, but, as to what it was
like, that he would never understand, did she tell him
for a year.
“They can’t tell us. It’s too difficult, too different,”
the lady who managed the séances explained to papa
afterwards. Papa did not greatly care for this lady,
and he always winced a little at the thought that mamma
had become “They.” But he only said, “Yes, I sup-
pose it is.”
The séances exhausted him a good deal, but it was
worth while.
“So long as it makes him happier,” said Rome.
“Poor darling ”
11
THE HAPPY LIBERALS
1905 was a year of great happiness, intelligence and
virtue for the Liberal party in the state. It was to be
their last happy, intelligent or virtuous year for many
a long day; indeed, they have not as yet known another,
for such a gracious state is only possible to oppositions,
and the next time that the Liberals were the Opposition
it was too late, for by then oppositions were, like other
persons, too tired, war-spoilt, disillusioned and dispir-
ited to practise anything but an unidealistic and unhope-
ful nagging. But in 1905, with the Tories executing,
to the satisfaction of their opponents, the ungracious234
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
task of performance, which is, one may roughly say,
never a success, the Liberals were very jolly, united,
optimistic, and full of energy and plans. What would
they not do when they should come, in their turn, into
power? What Tory iniquities were there not, for them
now to oppose, for them in the rosy future to reverse?
What Aunt. Sallies did not the governing party erect
for them to shy at? Chinese labour, that yellow
slavery which was degrading (were that possible)
South Africa; the Licensing Act, the Education Act,
the Little Loaf, which could be made so pitiable a mor-
sel on posters—against all these they tilted. As to
what they would do, once in power, it included the set-
ting of trade again upon its legs, the enriching of the
country, the reform of the suffrage, the relief of un-
employment, the issue of an Education Bill which
should distress no one. Ardent progressives hoped
much from this party; they even hoped, without
grounds, for the removal of sex disabilities in the laws
relating to the suffrage, which unlikely matter was part
of the programme drawn up in 1905 by the National
Liberal Federation. Life was very glorious to any
party, in those Edwardian days, before it got in. Lib-
erals in opposition were democratic idealists, in office
makeshift opportunists, backing out and climbing down.
Stanley Croft, in 1905, was ardent in Liberal hope.
She hoped for everything, even for a vote. This sex
disability in the matter of votes oppressed her very seri-
ously. She saw no sense or reason in it, and resented
the way the question, whenever it was raised in Parlia-
ment, was treated as a joke, like mothers-in-law, or
drunkenness, or twins. Were women really a funny
topic? Or rather, were they funnier than men? And
J so, why? In vain her female sense of humour soughtEDWARDIAN
235
to probe this subject, but no female sense of humour,
however acute, has ever done so. Women may and
often do regard all humanity as a joke, good or bad,
but they can seldom see that they themselves are more
of a joke than men, or that the fact of their wanting
rights as citizens is more amusing than men wanting
similar rights. They can no more see it than they can
see that they are touching, or that it is more shocking
that women should be killed than that men should,
which men see so plainly. Women, in fact, cannot
see why they should not be treated like other persons.
Stanley could not see it. To her the denial of repre-
sentation in the governing body of her country on
grounds of sex was not so much an injustice as a piece
of inexplicable lunacy, as if all persons measuring, say,
below five foot eight, had been denied votes. She saw
no more to it than that, in spite of all the anti-suffrage
speakers whom she heard say very much more. She
became embittered on this subject, with a touch of the
feminist bitterness that marked many of the early
strugglers for votes. She admitted that men were, tak-
ing them in the main, considerably the wiser, the more
capable and the more intelligent sex; that is to say that,
though most people were ignorant fools, there were
even more numerous and more ignorant fools among
women than among men; but there it was, and there
was no reason why the female fools should have less
say than the male fools as to which of the other fools
represented their interests in Parliament, and what
measures were passed affecting their foolish lives. No ;
on the face of it, it was lunatic and irrational, and no
excuse was possible, and that was that.
It certainly was, Rome agreed, but then, in a lunatic
and irrational world, was any one extra piece of lunacy236
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
worth a fuss? Was, in fact, anything worth a fuss?
In the answer to these questions, the sisters fundamen-
tally differed, for Stanley believed very many things
to be worth a fuss, and made it accordingly. She was
busy now making fusses from most mornings to most
evenings, sitting on committees for the improvement
of the world, even of the Congo, and so forth. She
was what is called a useful and public-spirited woman.
Rome, on the other hand, grew with the years more and
more the dilettante idler. At forty-six she found very
few things worth bothering about. She strolled, drove
or motored round the town, erect, slim and debonair,
increasingly distinguished as grey streaked her fair
hair and time chiselled delicate lines in her fine, clear
skin. Rome cared neither for the happy Liberals nor
for the unhappy Tories; she regarded both parties as
equally undistinguished.
Fabianism became increasingly the fashion for young
intellectuals. Girl and boy undergraduates flung them-
selves with ardour into this movement, sitting at the
feet of Mr. Bernard Shaw and the Sidney Webbs.
Stanley was a keen Fabian, and even attended summer
schools. They were not attractive, but yet she hoped
that somehow good would be the final goal of ill. She
was sorry that none of her nephews and nieces joined
her in this movement, though several had attained the
natural age for it.
12
THE HAPPY YOUNG
Maurice’s Roger, who had not intellect and meant to
be a novelist, was a gay youth now at Cambridge. His
sister Iris had even less intellect and meant to be a wife.EDWARDIAN
237
Nature had not fitted her for learning, and when she
left school she merely came out (as the phrase goes).
Parties: these were what Iris liked. Society, not socie-
ties. Stanley, aunt-like, thought it a great pity that
Maurice’s offspring were thus, and blamed Maurice for
leaving them too much to Amy. As to Vicky’s chil-
dren, Phyllis, who had done quite adequately at Girton,
now lived at home and helped her mother with enter-
taining and drawing-room meetings, and was in poli-
tics on the whole a Tory; Nancy, at twenty-one, was
at the Slade, learning, so everyone but her teachers
believed, to draw and paint; Hugh was at Cambridge,
a lad of good intelligence which he devoted to the study
of engineering; Tony was still at school; and Imogen
was to leave it this summer. Imogen was not for col-
lege ; she would, it was generally believed by her teach-
ers and relatives, not make much of that. Imogen was
quite content; she was, as always, busy writing stories
and sunk deep in her own imaginings, which were still
of a very puerile sort. Imogen read a great deal, but
was not really intelligent; it was as if she had not yet
grown up. She knew and cared little about politics or
progress. Bernard Shaw was to her merely the most
enchanting of playwrights. She was happy, drugged
with poetry (her own and that of others), and adven-
turous dreams. She was a lanky slip of an undevel-
oped girl, light-footed, active as a cat, but more awk-
ward with her hands than any creature before her; at
once a romantic dreamer and a tomboyish child, loving
school, her friends, active games, bathing, climbing,
reading and writing, animals, W. B. Yeats, Conrad,
Kipling, Henry Seton Merriman, Shelley, William
Morris, Stevenson, “A Shropshire Lad,” meringues,
battleships, marzipan, Irene Vanbrugh, Granville238
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Barker and practically all drama; hating strangers, so-
ciety, drawing-room meetings, needlework, love stories,
people who talked about clothes, sentimentalists, and
her Aunt Amy. She was at this time as sexless as any
girl or boy may be. She was still, in all her imagin-
ings, her continuous, unwritten stories about herself, a
young man.
As to Stanley’s children, Irving’s and Una’s, they
were still at school. Stanley watched her son
and daughter with hope and joy; they were such de-
lightful, exciting creatures, and one day they would
take their place in the world and help to upset it and
build it up again. They, at least, should certainly join
the Fabians when they were old enough. Billy and
Molly should not be slack, uninterested or Tory.
They should join in the game of life as eagerly as now
they joined in treasure hunts, that curious rage of this
year which caused young and old to fall to digging up
the earth, seeking for discs.
13
THE YEAR
The year and the government petered towards their
end. In the east the Japanese were beating the Rus-
sians, hands down. In the Dogger Bank, the Russians
fired on a fishing-fleet from Hull, and there was trouble.
In European politics, the Anglo-French entente throve,
and Anglo-German rivalry swelled the navies. In Scot-
land, the Wee Frees split from the U.P.’s, and fought
successfully for the lion’s share of the loot. In Wales,
Evan Roberts’ odd religious revival swept the country,
throwing strong men and women into hysteria and badEDWARDIAN
239
men and women into virtue, reforming the sinners and
seriously annoying thé publicans. In the Congo, rubber
was grown and collected amid scenes of distressing
cruelty, and reports of the horrid business were pub-
lished in this country by Mr. Roger Casement and Mr.
E. D. Morel. In India, Lord Curzon quarrelled with
Lord Kitchener. In Thibet, the British expedition got
to Lhassa. In Tangier, the Kaiser Wilhelm of Ger-
many made a speech. In Ireland, Mr. Wyndham
resigned. In London, the government apathetically
stayed in office, the Tariff Reform campaign raged,
treasure discs were dug for, bridge was much played,
the Vedrenne-Barker company acted at the Court
Theatre, many books were published and pictures
painted, and money brightly changed hands. And in
the provinces, by-election after by-election was lost
to the government, until at last, in November, Mr.
Balfour resigned.
H
ROCKETS
They stood in the new open space at Aldwych,
watching the election results proclaimed by magic lan-
terns on great screens and flung to the sky in coloured
rockets. They had made up a family election party—
Maurice, Vicky, Charles, Rome, Stanley and Irving,
and many of their young. Stanley had brought Billy
and Molly, that they might rejoice in the great Liberal
victory and always remember it. She had bought them
each, at their request, a little clacker, with which to
signal the triumph of right to the world. For to-night
was to be a triumph indeed; liberalism was to sweep
the country. Though even Stanley did not guess to240
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
what extent, or how far the inevitable pendulum had
swung.
Imogen was entranced by the dark, clear night, the
coloured lights, the crowd, the excitement, and little
thrills ran up and down her as names and figures and
rockets were greeted with cheers and hoots. She
cared nothing for the results; to her the thing was
a sporting event on which she had no money. Aunt
Stanley, she knew, had her shirt on the Liberals. So
had Uncle Maurice. But Aunt Rome had nothing either
way. Imogen's own parents were Conservatives. So,
on the whole, was Phyllis, and Phyllis’s young man.
So was Uncle Irving, who was for Tariff Reform.
Probably, on the whole, Liberals were the more right,
thought Imogen. But probably no party was particu-
larly right. How excited they all got, anyhow, right
or wrong!
The Liberals were forging ahead. There was an-
other Manchester division going up on the screen.
Three Manchester seats had already been lost to the
Tories. “Bet you an even twopence it’s a Lib.” Tony
was saying.
“Right you are. Oh, it’s Balfour’s. . .
“Well, he’s lost it. Hand over.”
The crowd roared with laughter, distress and joy.
Balfour out. . . . What next?
“Very badly managed,” Irving was complaining all
the time, to no one in particular. “Shockingly mis-
managed. The most comic election I ever saw.
There’ll be no Front Bench left.”
“And a jolly good thing.” That was Stanley, get-
ting more and more triumphant. “There goes Brod-
rick. . . .”
Imogen felt dazed and happy, and as if she were inEDWARDIAN
241
a fairy palace, all blue and red lights. Her upstrained
face was stiff and cold, her mouth open with joy, so
that the cold air flowed in. She wasn't betting any
more, for neither she nor Tony would bet on the
Tories now. The Tories were a dead horse. One
was sorry for them, but one couldn't bet on them. Did
the poor men who lost their seats mind much? Per-
haps some of them were pleased. After all, they had
none of them sought or desired office. . . . States-
men always said that of themselves; they only wanted
to get in because they thought they were the ones who
would do most good; always they said that. Divine
guidance, they said, had laid this heavy burden on
them, though it was a most frightful bore, and though
the thing they wanted to do was to live in the country
and keep pigs.
“If I was in office," thought Imogen, “I wouldn't
say that. I'd say, ‘I sought and wanted office, and
I'm jolly glad I've got it, though I expect I'll be rotten
at it. I simply love being in power, and thank you
awfully for putting me in, and I hope I'll stop in for
> >>
ages.
How shocked everyone would be. That wasn't the
way public men ever talked. Would women, if ever
they got into Parliament, like Aunt Stanley wanted
them to? Perhaps they would at first, not being used
to proper public manners, but they would soon learn
that it wasn't nice to talk like that and would begin
on the I-never-wanted-it stunt.
More rockets; more blue flares. Lovely. Like a
great garden of coloured flowers. Night is a garden
gay with flowers. . . . Hours. Showers. Dowers.
Bowers. Cowers. . . .
Their flaring blinds the sleepy hours. . . . No. The242
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
small dim hours are lit, are starred. Better. The
rhymes alternately in the middle and end of the lines,
all through. That made it chime, like bells beneath
the sea. . . .
“Lord, what a bungle!” Irving grunted. “It's all
up now. Nothing can save it now. We may as well
go home and get warm. What?”
His fine, dark, clear-cut face was beautiful in the
coloured flares, as he stared up, a cigar in the corner
of his mouth. How interesting people were, thought
Imogen, the way they all wanted different things, and
in different ways. There was Uncle Maurice now, smil-
ing over his briar, as pleased as anything. . . . And
Billy and Molly, silly little goats, twirling away with
their clackers and shouting with Liberal joy because
Aunt Stanley told them to. . . . Anyhow it couldn't
really matter who got in. Not matter, like the night,
and the lights, and poetry, and the lovely thrill of
it all. Results didn't matter, only the thing itself.
“Brrr!” said Vicky, hunching herself together and
hugging her muff. “It's too cold to watch the wrong
side winning any more. Charles, I'm going home to
bed. Come along, all of you, or you'll catch your
deaths.”
“Oh, mother, mayn't I stay as long as father does?”
“If you like. Very silly of you, Jennie, you’re blue
and shivering already. Stanley, aren't you going to
take those noisy and misguided children of yours home?
It's nearly midnight.”
“I suppose I must. But what a night for them to
remember always.”
What a night, thought Imogen, huddling up in her
coat with a happy shiver, to remember always. Indeed
yes. Ecstasy and gaudy blossoms of the night. TheEDWARDIAN	243
gaudy blossoms of the night. . . . Sharp swords of
light. . . . Bloss, moss, doss, toss. . . toss ought to
do. . . .
“There goes Lyttelton. So much for those beastly
Chinamen,” cried Maurice.
15
ON PARTIES
So much for the beastly Chinamen, a$d so much for
the beastly little loaf and the tax on the People's Food,
so much for class legislation and sectarian education
bills. So much, in fact, for Toryism, for the happy
Liberals were in, and would be in, growing ever less
and less happy, for close on ten years.
“Now we'll show the world,” said Stanley.
Maurice cynically grinned at her.
* “If you mean you think you're going to get a vote,
my dear, you're off it. This cabinet hasn't the faintest
intention of accommodating you. Not the very faint-
est. And if ever they did put up a bill, they’d never
get it through the Lords. You may send all the depu-
tations you like, but you won't move them. Woman's
suffrage is merely the House joke.”
“We’ll see,” said Stanley, who was of a hopeful
colour.
“All you can say of Liberals,” said Maurice, who
was not, “is that they’re possibly (not certainly) one
better than Conservatives. However, I’m not crabbing
them. They’ve got their chance, and let’s hope they
take it. First they’ve got to undo all the follies the
last government perpetrated. Every government ought244
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
to begin with that, always. Then they’ve got to con-
centrate on Home Rule. As you say, we shall see.”
“Anyhow,” said Stanley, “we’ve got our chance.
. . . And there’s the Tribune.	Penny liberalism at
last.”
“I give it a year,” said Maurice. “If it takes longer
dying, Thomasson is an even more stubborn lunatic
than I think him. They’ve started all right; quite a
good first number, only how any Liberal paper can
publish a polite message from that damned Tsar beats
one. I believe my paper is really the only one that
insults the Russian government as it ought to be in-
sulted. All the others either make up to the Tsar
for his armies or butter him up because of the Hague
Conference and his silly prattle about a world peace.
It makes one sick. Liberals are as bad as the rest.”
It was edifying, during the election days, to learn
from various authorities the reasons for the Liberal
victory. The Times said it was the effect, long delayed,
of the suffrage reform bills; the working classes, at
last articulate, had determined to dictate their own
policy; no triumph for liberalism, no humiliation for
conservatism, but an experiment on the part of Labour.
The Morning Post said the victory was due to the
misrepresentation of Chinese labour by Liberals, false
promises, and the inevitable swing of the pendulum.
The Daily Mail $aid it was the swing of the pendulum,
Chinese labour, the over continuance in office of the
last government, the Education Act, taxation, unfair
food-tax cries, and a liking for antiquated methods of
commerce. The Daily News said it was a rebellion
against reaction, protection and the Little Loaf. The
Tribune said it was a rebellion also against poverty, the
direction of companies by Ministers, and the undoingEDWARDIAN
245
of the great Victorian reforms; it was, in fact, the
protest of Right against Force, of the common good
against class interest, of the ideal element in political
life against merely mechanical efficiency. (“Mechani-
cal efficiency!” Maurice jeered. “Much there was of
that in the last government. As to the ideal element,
the Liberal ideal is a large loaf and low taxes. Quite
a sound one, but nothing to be smug about.”) How-
ever, the whole press was smug, as always, and so were
nearly all statesmen in public speeches; their cynicism
they kept for private life. Mr. Asquith, for instance,
said that this uprising of the people was due to moral
reprobation of the double dealing of the late govern-
ment ; plain dealing was what they wanted. And Mr.
Lloyd George, in his best vein, spoke of a fearful
reckoning. A tornado, he called it, of righteous indig-
nation with the trifling that had been going on in high
places for years with all that was sacred to the national
heart. The oppression of Nonconformists at home,
the staining of the British flag abroad with slavery, the
rivetting of the chains of the drink traffic on the peo-
ple of this country—against all these had the people
risen in wrath. It was a warning to ministers not
to trifle with conscience, or to menace liberty in a free
land. The people meant to save themselves ; the dykes
had been opened, and reaction in all its forms would
be swept away by the deluge.
Mr. Balfour, less excited and more philosophic, ob-
served, at his own defeat at Manchester, that, after
all, the Tories had been in office ten years, and would
doubtless before long be in office again, and that these
oscillations of fortune would and did always occur.
He was probably nearer the truth about the elections
than most of those who pronounced upon them. It is246
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
a safe assertion that no government is popular for long;
get rid of it and let’s try another, for anyhow another
can’t be sillier, is the voter’s very natural and proper
feeling. The sophisticated voter knows that it will
almost certainly be as silly, but, after all, it seems only
fair to let each side have its innings.
Anyhow, and whatever the reasons that brought
liberalism into power, there it was. It was expressed
by a House which was at present, and before its en-
thusiasms were whittled away in action, composed
largely of political and social theorists, men new to
politics and brimming with plans. Mr. H. W. Mas-
singham said it was the ablest Parliament he had ever
known, but not the most distinguished.
16
DREADNOUGHT
Imogen saved up her pocket money for the cheap
excursion fare to Portsmouth, and slipped off there
alone, on a raw February morning, by the special early
train, to see the King launch the Dreadnought. The
Dreadnought was a tremendous naval event. She dis-
placed 19,900 tons, beating the Dominion and the
King Edward VII by 1,200 tons, and she would make
21 knots to their 16.5, and had turbine engines, and
carried ten 12-inch guns, and her outline was smooth
and lovely and unbroken by casemates, for she was
built for speed. Imogen had to go. She slipped off
without a word at home, for she had a cough and
objections would have been raised. She stood wedged
for hours in a crowd on the docks in cold rain thatEDWARDIAN
247
pitted the heaving green harbour seas, and coughed.
She did not command a view of the actual launching,
but would see the splendid creature as she left the slip
and took the water. Before that there was a service;
the service appointed to be used at the launching of
the ships of His Majesty’s Navy. “They that go down
to the sea in ships: and occupy their business in great
waters; These men see the works of the Lord: and
his wonders in the deep. For at his word the stormy
wind ariseth: which lifteth up the waves thereof. They
are carried up to the heaven, and down again to the
deep: their soul melteth away because of the trouble.
They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man:
and are at their wit’s end. . .
After this, Hymn 592 (A & M) was irritating and
silly, but hymns cannot be helped, bishops will have
them.
Then the King smashed the bottle of wine on her and,
christened, she took the water. She left the slip and
came into the view of the crowd, and a great shout
went up. “She’s moving!”
Imogen, thrilled, gazed at the lovely, the amazing
creature, the giant of the navy. What a battleship!
With professional interest Imogen examined her points
through her father’s field glasses. No openings in the
bulkheads—it was that which gave her her smooth,
fleet look. She was made for a running fight. She was
glorious.
Imogen travelled home wet through, shivering, her
cough tearing at her chest, and went to bed for a month
with bronchitis. So much for the navy, said Vicky
crossly. But the amazing grey ship was a comfort
to Imogen through her fevered waking dreams.248
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
17
AT THE FARM
Imogen, bow and arrows in hand, crawled through
the wood, beneath overhanging boughs of oaks and
elders and beeches and the deep green arms of pines,
that shut the little copse from the August sun into a
fragrant gloom. Every now and then she stopped,
listened, and laid her ear to the mossy ground.
“Three miles off and making a bee line south,” she
observed, frowning. “My God.
“Michael crawled on,” she continued, “crawling,
keeping his head low, so as not to afford a target for
any stray arrows. Who knew what sinister shadows
lurked in the forest, to right and to left? . . . Hist!
What was that sound? Something cracked in thé tan-
gle of scrub near him. ... A Cherokee on a lone trail,
possibly. ... A Cherokee: the most deadly of the
Red Tribes. . . . Cold sweat stood out on Michael's
brow. Could he reach the camp in time? Again he
laid his ear to the ground and listened. They were only
two miles now, and still that swift, terrible, travel-
ling . . . The sun beat upon his head and neck ; he felt
dizzy and sick. Suppose he fainted before he reached
his goal. . . . That damned cracking in the bushes
again. . . . Good God! . . . out of the thicket sprang
a huge Redskin, uttering the horrid war-whoop of the
Cherokee, which, once heard, is never forgotten.
Michael leaped to his feet, pulled his bow-string to his
ear, let fly. . . .”
Imogen too let fly.
“Missed him,” she muttered, and swarmed nimbly
up the gnarled trunk of an oak until she reached theEDWARDIAN
249
lower boughs, from whence she looked down into a
fierce red face, eagle-nosed, feather-crowned.
“Oh, Big Buffalo,” she softly called. “Will you
parley?”
Big Buffalo grunted, and they parleyed. If Michael
would betray the whereabouts of his friends, Big
Buffalo would grant him his life. If not, no such
easy death as the arrow awaited him, “for we Chero-
kees well understand the art of killing. . .” Michael,
sick with fear, betrayed his friends, and Big Buffalo
left him, primed with information. (In common with
other heroes of fiction, Michael never thought of giving
incorrect or misleading information.)
“Michael lay in the forest, his head upon his arms.
What had he done? There was no undoing it now.
Why didn’t I choose the stake? Oh, damn, why
didn’t I . . .”
It was too warm, sweet and drowsy for prolonged
remorse. Michael forgot his shame. The breeze in the
pine trees sang like low harps. . . . The shadowy
copse was soaked in piney sweetness, golden and dim.
Michael, with his bow, his Redskins, and his broken
honour, faded out in the loveliness of the hour.
Ecstasy descended on the wood; enchantment held
it, saturating it with golden magic. Ants and little
wood-beetles scuttled over Imogen’s outstretched hands
and bare, rough head. Rabbits bobbed and darted
close to her. She was part of the woods, caught breath-
less into that fairy circle like a stolen, enchanted child.
“I am full of the Holy Ghost,” said Imogen. “This
is the Holy Ghost. . . .” And loveliness shook her, as
a wind shakes a leaf. These strange, dizzy moments
lurked hidden in the world like fairies in a wood, and at
any hour they sprang forth and seized her, and the250
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
emotion, however often repeated, was each time as
keen. They would spring forth and grip her, turning
the dsedal earth to magic, at any lovely hour, in wood
or lane or street, or among the wavering candles and
the bread and wine. She was stabbed through and
through with beauty sweet as honey and sharp as
a sword, and it was as if her heart must break in
her at its turning. After this brief intensity of joy or
pain, whichever it was, it was as if something in her
actually did break, scattering loose a drift of pent-up
words. That was how poems came. After the an-
guished joy, the breaking loose of the words, then the
careful stringing of them together on a chain, the
fastidious, conscious arranging. Then the setting
them down, and reading them over, and the happy, dizzy
(however erroneous) belief that they were good. . . .
That was how poems came, and that was life at its
sharpest, its highest intensity. Afterwards, one sent
them to papers, and it was pleasant and gratifying if
other people saw them and liked them too. But all
that was a side-issue. Vanity is pleasant, gratified
ambition is pleasant, earning money is very pleasant,
but these are not life at its highest power. You might
at once burn every poem you wrote, but you would
still have known life.
The song the pines hummed became words, half
formed, drifting, sweet. . . . Imogen listened, agape,
like an imbecile. It was a lovely, jolly, woody thing
that was being sung to her . . . she murmured it
over. . . .
A bell rang, far away. Sharply time’s voice shivered
eternity to fragments. Imogen yawned, got up,
brushed pine needles out of her hair and clothes, tookEDWARDIAN
251
up her bow, and strolled out of fairyland. It was tea-
time at the farm.
As she sauntered through the little wood, she shot
arrows at the trees and stopped to retrieve them. Then
she found a long, sharp stick, pointed, like a spear,
and became a knight in a Norman forest. She en-
countered another knight, a hated foe. There was a
fight a outrance. They fenced, parried, lunged. . . .
“Swerve to the right, son Roger, he said,
When you catch his eye through the helmet’s slit;
Swerve to the right, then out at his head,
And the Lord God give you joy of it. . . ”
A swinging thrust. . . .
“Got him, pardie!”
“Hullo.”
Imogen faced about, and there, on the cart track
between the wood and the home farm, stood her Uncle
Ted, large and red in breeches and gaiters, his pipe
between his teeth.
“Oh, hullo, Uncle Ted.”
Imogen had turned red. She had been seen making
an ass of herself alone in the wood. Behaving like
a maniac. Damn.
“Anything the matter ? Got the staggers, have you ?”
asked Uncle Ted, as if she were a cow.
“No, I’m all right. Looking for arrows and things,
that’s all.”
“Oh, I see. . . . Cornin’ up to tea?”
They walked across the home field together. Imogen
was sulky and ashamed. She was emptied of enchant-
ment aixd the Holy Ghost, and was nothing but an
abrupt, slangy, laconic girl, going sullenly in to tea,252
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
feeling an ass. Uncle Ted was thinking farmer’s
thoughts, of crops and the like, not of Imogen.
But afterwards he said to Una, “Not quite all there,
eh, that girl of Vicky’s? Flings herself about in the
wood when she’s alone, like someone not right, and
talks to herself, too. Nineteen, is she? It’d be right
enough if she was twelve. But at eighteen or nine-
teen . .
“Oh, Imogen’s all right. She’s childish for her age,
that’s all.”
Una took everyone for granted.
“Childish, yes. That’s what I say. They ought to
have her seen to. Gabbles, too. I can’t make out half
she’s saying. . . . Katie may do her good, I daresay.
Katie’s got sense. ... It’s against a girl, going on
like that. No sensible young fellow would like it.
They ought to have her seen to. What ?”
“Oh, she’s all right,” said Una again. “There she
is in the field playing rounders with the others quite
sensibly, you see.”
“I daresay. She may be all right at games, but she
oughtn’t to be let loose alone in woods. She’ll get
herself talked about. . . .”
Katie too thought Imogen mad. But quite nicely
mad. Harmless. Like a kid. Katie was a few months
younger, but she felt that Imogen was a kid. She
said and did such mad things. And she lacked the
most elementary knowledge; she didn’t know the first
thing, for instance, about clothes, what they were made
of, and how they should be made. She was like an
imbecile about them; didn’t care, either. She would
stare, pleased and admiring, at Katie, who had beauty,
as if Katie were a lovely picture, but she never saidEDWARDIAN
253
the right things about her clothes. You’d think, almost,
she didn’t know one material from another.
When they had done playing rounders, and when
Imogen and Tony, who was staying at the farm too,
had done damming the brook at the bottom of the
field, and when Tony had gone off rook shooting
with his cousin Dick, Imogen sat by the brook, her
bare muddy legs in a pool scaring minnows, and
brooded over life. Rotten it was, being grown up.
Simply rotten. Because you weren’t really grown up.
You hadn’t changed at all. You knew some more, and
you cared for a lot of fresh books, but you liked
doing all the things you had liked doing before you
grew up. Climbing, and playing Red Indians, and
playing with soldiers, and walking on stilts. But when
you put your hair up, you had to hide all sorts of
things away, like a guilty secret. You could play real
games, like tennis and cricket and hockey and rounders,
and even football, and you could perhaps do the other
things with someone else, but not alone. If people
found you alone up a tree, or climbing a roof, or listen-
ing with your ear to the ground, or astride on a wall,
or pretending with a sword, they put up their eyebrows
and thought you an ass. Your mother told people you
were a tomboy. A tomboy. Imbecile word. As if
girls didn’t like doing nice things as much as boys.
Who started the idea they didn’t, or shouldn’t? . . .
Oh, it was rotten, being grown up. Grown-up people
had a hideous time. They became so queer, talking so
much, wanting to go to parties, and even meetings,
and all kinds of rotten shows. Mother held meetings
in the drawing-room, for good objects. So did Aunt
Stanley. Different objects, but equally good, no doubt.
People came to the meetings and jabbered away, and254
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
sometimes you were made to be there, “to learn to
take an interest.” Votes, cruelty to animals or chil-
dren, sweated labour, bazaars, white slaves, the Con-
servative party, the Liberal party. . . . What did any
of them matter ? Phyllis was good at them. But now
Phyllis was going to be married. And Nancy was at
the Slade, and wouldn’t attend the meetings; she was
too busy drawing and going to dances and parties.
The modern girl, mother said; independent, selfish,
dashing about with young men and no chaperons. The
Edwardian young woman, so different from the Vic-
torian young woman. . , . Only Aunt Rome said she
was not different, but just the same. . . . Anyhow,
Nancy wouldn’t take her turn at the meetings. So
Imogen, younger and more docile, was being trained
up. But she would never be any good. She hated them.
Why shouldn’t the boys take their turn? No one
made them. It wasn’t fair.
Imogen kicked viciously at the minnows. Rot-
ten, being a girl. . . . Perhaps she would run away
to sea . . . round the world . . . the South Sea
Islands. . . .
It was getting chilly. Imogen drew her legs out of
the brook and dried them on her handkerchief. Filthy
they were, with mud. She put on her stockings and
old tennis shoes, and wondered what next. Tony was
still rooking. One might go and catch the colt in the
meadow and ride him. . . .
Katie appeared over the hunched shoulder of the
field.
“Imogen, do you want to come and milk ? It’s time.
. . . Oh, I say, you are in a mess. You ass, what’ve
you been up to?”EDWARDIAN
255
“Only damming the brook, and wading. Yes, I
want to milk, rather.”
“Hurry up then.”
Katie was as beautiful as a June morning. As
beautiful as Una. Pale as milk, with eyes like violets
and dark, clustering curls. And clever. She could do
nearly everything. Imogen, six months older, was as
nought beside her. But Katie liked her, and was very
kind to her. Katie had just left Roedean; she had been
captain of the school hockey team, and was going now
to play for Essex. A splendid girl. Imogen believed
that Katie had none of the dark and cold forebodings,
the hot excitements, the black nightmares, the sharp,
sweet ecstasies, the mean and base feelings, that as-
sailed herself, any more than Katie would be found
making an ass of herself playing in a wood. Katie,
like her mother, was balanced. This tendency to be-
lieve that others are balanced, and are not rent by
the sad and glad storms which one's own soul knows,
is common to many. One supposes it to be because
human beings put such a calm face on things, so the
heart alone knows its own turbulence.
Imogen grinned at Katie, and went with her to the
milking.
I8
HIGHER THOUGHT
Papa had aged very much in the last two years
since mamma had died. He had had wonderful ex-
periences; he had constantly spoken with, even seen,
mamma; it had made him very happy. But he was
aware that the seances greatly strained and fatigued
him. He slept badly; his nerves seemed continually256
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
on edge. Further, he could not by any means over-
come the distaste he felt for the medium who mHe it
her special business to open the door between him and
mamma. A common little person, he could not help,
even in his charity, thinking her. And Flossie, the
spirit on the Other Side, who spoke for mamma (ex-
cept on those rare occasions when mamma spoke for
herself) was, to judge from her manner, voice and
choice of language, even commoner. And silly. Papa
scarcely liked to admit to himself how silly Flossie
seemed to him to be. Mamma must dislike Flossie a
good deal, he sometimes thought, but then recollected
that, where mamma had gone to dwell, dislike was
no more felt, only compassion. He would have liked
to ask mamma, on the rare occasions when she spoke
for herself, what she thought of Flossie, and of Miss
Smythe, the medium on this side. But he did not
like to, for Flossie would certainly, and Miss Smythe
possibly, through her trance, hear his question and
mamma’s reply. How he longed for a little private
talk, of the kind that mamma and he used to have of
old! But he was not ungrateful. He was in touch
with mamma; he knew her to be extant as a person-
ality, and accessible to him, and that was surely enough.
As to the fatigue, that was a small price to pay.
Then, one tragic day, in the autumn of 1906, came
one of those great exposures which dog the steps of
psychical men and women. Some of the sharp, in-
quisitive persons who make it their business to nose
out frauds and write to Truth about them, turned
their attention to Miss Smythe and her seances. In
a few weeks—these things are very easy, and do not
take long—Miss Smythe was pilloried in the press as
a complete and accomplished fraud. She had, it wasEDWARDIAN
257
made clear except to the most obstinate believers, never
been in a trance, never called spirits, from the vasty
deep, never opened any spiritual doors. The mechanism
of the materialisation was once more discovered and
exposed . . . (“What a stale old story,” said Rome.
“As if we didn't know all about it long ago. These
heavy-footed creatures, trampling over children's
fairylands. Why can't they let things be?”) . . .
and even Flossie, that bright, silly, chatty spirit, was
discredited. Flossie was a quack, and had known
about the thimble behind the sofa and the other things
in some cheap, sly way, or else just guessed.
Alas for papa! The gates of paradise clanged in
his face; he might believe by faith that paradise was
there, and mamma in it, but the door between him and
it was shut. Great and bitter sorrow shook him, and
shame, for that he had so made cheap his love and
mamma's for the benefit of common frauds. He sank
into inert grief, from which he was roused, in March
1907, by the call of Higher Thought. The name, in
the first instance, appealed to him. Thought should
be higher; it was usually lower, and very certainly
much too low.
“Higher than what, papa dear?” Rome enquired.
“These comparatives, in the air, are so unfinished.
Higher education, higher criticism, the larger hope,
the younger generation. . . . Higher, I mean than
what other thought?”
Than the thought customary on similar subjects,
papa supposed.
“These geometrical metaphors,” Rome murmured.
“Well, papa, I am sure it must be very interesting.”
It was very interesting. Papa was introduced to a
little temple near High Street, Kensington, which, when.258
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
you stepped on the entrance mat, broke into “God is
Love” in electric light over the altar. Here he wor-
shipped and thought highly, in company with a small
but ardent band of other high thinkers, who were led
in prayer by a Guru of immense power—the power of
thought which was not merely higher but highest—
over mind and matter. So great was the power of this
Guru that he not only could cure diseased bodies and
souls, but could correct physical malformations, merely
by absent treatment. A lame young man was brought
to him, one of whose legs was shorter than its fellow.
Certainly, said the Guru, this defect would yield to
absent treatment. Further, the treatment would in this
case be doubly effective, as he happened to be about
to make a journey to Thibet, to visit the Lama, the
very centre of fervent prayer, absent treatment, and
higher thought. The nearer the Guru got to Thibet,
the more powerful would become, he said, the action
of his treatment on the leg of the young man. And,
sure enough, so it proved. The shorter leg began, as
the Guru receded towards Asia, to grow. It grew, and
it grew, and it grew. There came a joyful day when
the two legs were of identical length. The power .of
absent treatment was triumphantly justified. But it
proved to be a power even greater than the young man
and his family had desired or deserved. For the short
leg did not stop when it had caught up its companion;
on the contrary, it seemed to be growing with greater
velocity than before. And indeed, it was; for the
Guru, now far beyond reach of communication by
letter or telegram, was journeying ever deeper and
deeper into the great heart of prayer, Holy Thibet,
and as he penetrated it his prayer intensified and mul-
tiplied in power, like the impetus of a ball rolling downEDWARDIAN
259
hill. The short leg surpassed its brother, shot on, and
on, and on. . . .
It was still shooting on when papa was told of the
curious phenomenon.
“Strange,” said papa. “Strange, indeed.”
But it was not these portents, however strange, that
papa valued in his new faith. It was the freedom, the
prayerfulness, the rarefied spiritual atmosphere;1 in
brief, the height. After Miss Smythe, after the dark-
ened room and the rapping table and the lower thinking
of poor Flossie, it was like a mountain top, where the
soul was purged of commonness.
Mamma, papa sometimes thought, would have ap-
proved of Higher Thought; might even, had she been
spared, have become a Higher Thinker herself. (It
should be remembered, in this connection, that papa,
since the exposure of poor Flossie, was no longer in
touch with mamma.)
19
LIBERALS IN ACTION
It is a pity to crab all governments and everything
they do. For occasionally it occurs that some govern-
ment or other (its political colour is an even chance)
passes some measure or other which is not so bad as
the majority of measures. The Liberal government
elected in 1906 composed tolerable bills more than once.
It even succeeded, though more rarely, in getting them,
in some slightly warped form, tolerated by the Upper
House. The Trades Disputes Bill, for instance, got
through. Either the Lords were caught napping, or
they felt they had to let something through, just to
show that things could get through, as at hoop-la the26o
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
owner of the booth has, here and there, among hun-
dreds of objects too large to be ringed by the hoop,
one of trifling value which can fairly be ringed and
won, just to show that the thing can be done. Any-
how, the Trades Disputes Bill did get through, before
the game began of chucking all bills mechanically back,
or amending them out of all meaning so that the Com-
mons disowned them and threw them away.
Mr. Birrell had no luck with his Education Bill.
It was a good, rational bill, as education bills (a sad
theme) go, and no party liked it much, and the Upper
House saw that it would not do at all, and sent it back
plastered all over with amendments that gave it a
new and silly face, like a lady over-much made up. So
the Commons would have none of it, and that was
the end, for the moment, of attempts to improve the
management of our elementary schools.
The Lords were now getting into their form, and
threw out the Plural Voting Bill with no nonsense
about amendments, and no trouble at all. After all,
what were they there for, if not to throw out? What,
indeed, asked the Lower House, many members of
whom had for long wondered. As to any kind of
Woman’s Suffrage Bill, the Commons, as firmly as the
Lords, would have none of it. It was when this was
made clear that the Women’s Social and Political
Union, that new, vigorous and vulgar body, began to
bestir itself, and to send bodies of women to waylay
members on their way to the House; in fact, the mili-
tant suffragist nuisance began. There were proces-
sions, demonstrations, riots, arrests and imprisonments.
Stanley threw herself into these things at first with
dogged fervour; she did not like them, but held them
advantageous to the Cause. Her niece, Vicky’s Nancy,EDWARDIAN
261
a very wild young woman, who enjoyed fighting and
making a disturbance on any pretext, threw herself
also into the Cause, fought policemen with vigour, and
was dragged off to prison with joy. Imogen wouldn’t
participate in these public-spirited orgies; she was too
shy. And she couldn’t see that it was any use, either.
She had a hampering and rather pedantic sense of logic,
that prevented her from flinging herself into move-
ments with sentimental ardour; she preferred to know
exactly how the methods adopted were supposed to
work, and to see clearly cause and effect, and no one
ever made it precisely clear to her how making rows
in the streets was going to get a suffrage bill passed.
It seemed, in fact, to be working the other way, and
alienating some of the few hitherto sympathetic. Her
Aunt Stanley told her, “It’s to show the public and the
government how much we care. They’re crude weap-
ons, but the only ones we have. Constitutional methods
have failed, so far.”
“But, Aunt Stanley, how do you know these are
weapons at all?” Imogen argued.
“We can but try them,” Stanley answered, herself a
little doubtful on the point.
“Anyhow,” she added, “anyhow, no woman who
cares about citizenship can be happy sitting still and
doing nothing while we’re denied it. You do care
about the suffrage, don’t you, Imogen?”
“Oh, rather, Aunt Stanley, of course I do. I think
it’s awful cheek not giving it us. There’s no sense in
it, is there; no meaning. Anti-suffragists do talk a
lot of rot. . . . Only don’t you think suffragists do
too, sometimes? I mean, Aunt Stanley, people do so,
when they talk, get off the point, don’t they. It would
be a lot easier to be keen if people didn’t talk so much.262
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
They talk round, not along. Really, there’s hardly any-
thing to say about anything; I mean, you could say
it all, all that mattered, in a few sentences. But peo-
ple go on talking about things for hours, saying the
same things twice, and a lot of other things that don't
really apply, and everything in hundreds of words
when quite a few would do. I noticed it in the House
the other day when we were there. Two-thirds of
what they all said was just flapping about. And they
say, T have said before, Mr. Speaker, and I say
again . . .' But why do they say it again? It isn't
awfully good even the first time. I do wonder why
people are like that, don't you?"
“Soft heads and long tongues, my dear, that's why.
Can't be helped. One's got to bear it and go ahead.
. . . I wish Molly was five years older; she'll be so
tremendously keen. . . ."
Imogen said nothing to that. She knew Molly, her
small elfish cousin of fourteen, pretty well. Molly,
with her short white face and merry, narrow eyes, and
quick wits and easy selfishness and charm, was, though
Imogen couldn’t know that, her father over again,
without his abilities. Imogen was afraid that Molly,
when she left school and grew up, was not going to
take that place among the world’s workers that Aunt
Stanley hoped.
As to Billy, a cheerful, stocky Rugby boy of sixteen,
he had no views on the suffrage. He didn't care.
Politics bored him.
Poor Aunt Stanley. Aunt Stanley was a great dear;
treated one always as a friend, not as a niece; explained
things, and discussed, and said what she meant. She
was easy to talk to. Easier than Vicky, whom one
loved, but couldn't discuss things with; one couldn’tEDWARDIAN
263
formulate and express one’s ideas and project them
into that spate of charming, inconsequent talk, that
swept on gaily over anything one said. Imogen tried
to please Aunt Stanley by seeming really keen about
suffrage, but it was difficult, because the things she
actually was keen on were so many and absorbing that
they didn’t leave much time over. Imogen felt that she
was no good at these large, unselfish causes that
Aunt Stanley had at heart; she hadn’t soul enough, or
brain enough, or imagination enough, or something.
And she did hate meetings. If one had to sit indoors in
the afternoon, were there not the galleries and theatres,
her point of view was. Perhaps, she thought, Nancy,
who enjoyed it, could do the votes-for-women business
for the family.
Meanwhile, Mr. W. H. Dickinson’s Suffrage Bill
failed to come to anything, and it became obvious that
the Liberal government, in this matter, was to be no
use at all.
It was quite a question whether it was going to be
much use in any other matter. Poor Law Reform it
had postponed; likewise Old Age Pensions. Licensing
Reform was dropped; so was Mr. McKenna’s new
Education Bill, the Land Valuation Bill, and Irish
Home Rule. It looked as if the Liberal programme
was running away like wax in the heat and trouble of
the day. How few party programmes, for that mat-
ter, ever do become* accomplished achievements! They
are frail plants, and cannot easily come to fruit in the
rough air of office. What with one thing, what with
another, they wilt away in flower and die.
To make up for the stagnation of home politics,
there was, in 1906 and 1907, plenty of international
activity. The nations of Europe were ostensibly draw-264
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
ing together, a happy family. British journalists were
entertained in Berlin, German journalists in London,
amid some mutual execration and dislike. A rap-
prochement took place between ourselves and Russia,
for it was quite the fashion in Europe to fraternise
with Russia, her armies were so huge, even if not, ap-
parently, very good at what armies should be good at.
There were those in this country who held that it was
not quite nice to fraternise with Russia, disapproving
of her governmental system, and of the Tsar’s, very
natural suppression of the Duma that had for a few
days and by an oversight so strangely existed and
actually dared to demand constitutional reform. There
were those in Great Britain who said that we should not
be at all friendly with a government so little liberal in
mentality. But, after all, you must take nations as you
find them, and their domestic affairs are quite their
own concern, and one should not be provincial in one’s
judgments, but should make friends even with the
mammon of unrighteousness for the sake of the peace
of Europe, which was a good deal talked of just then
by the Powers, though it is doubtful whether any of
them really believed in it. It is certain that the nations
by no means neglected the steady increase and building
up of armaments by land and sea. They hurried away
from the Hague Conference to lay down new battle-
ships at a reckless pace; even Mr. W. T. Stead said,
“Let us strengthen our navy, for on its fighting power
the peace of Europe depends.” Strengthen our navy
we did; but as to the peace of Europe, that lovely,
insubstantial wraith, she was perhaps frightened by
all those armoured ships, all those noisy guns, all those
fluent statesmen talking, for she never put on much
flesh and bones.EDWARDIAN
265
20
1907
Outside politics, 1907 was a gay year enough. There
was a severe outbreak of pageantitis, which many peo-
ple enjoyed very much, and others found vastly dis-
agreeable. Drama was noticeably good; the Vedrenne-
Barker company moved from the Court to the Savoy,
and the intelligent play-goer moved after it. Miss
Horniman’s Repertory Theatre toured the provinces;
and the Abbey Theatre players took English audiences
by storm. Acting was good, literature and the arts
were much encouraged, dancing and social entertain-
ments were more than ever the fashion. Society, it
was said, was getting rowdier. For that matter, society
has always been getting rowdier, since the dawn of
time. How rowdy it will end, in what nameless orgies
it will be found at the Last Day, is a solemn thought in-
deed.
As to the young they were thought of and written
of much as ever, much as now. The New Young were
discovered afresh, and the Edwardian variety was much
like the Victorian and the Georgian. They were wild,
people said; they went their own way; they were hard,
reckless, independent, enquiring, impatient of control,
and yet rather noble.
“Youth in the new century has broken with tradi-
tion ,” people said. “It is no longer willing to accept
forms and formulae only on account of their age. It
has set out on a voyage of enquiry, and, finding some
things which are doubtful, others which are in-
sufficient, is searching for forms of experience266
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
more in harmony with the realities of life and of
knowledge. . . .”
Youth was, in fact, at it again.
“Girls are so wild in these days,” Vicky cheerfully
complained. “Nancy and Imogen both go on in a way
we'd never have dared to do. Nancy dances all night
(of course chaperons are a back number now), and
comes home alone, or with some wild, arty young men
and women, or, worse still, with one wild, arty young
man, at five o’clock in the morning, and lets herself
in with a bang and a rush, and often lets the arty young
people in too. No, Nancy, I say to her, you don't
let your friends into my house before breakfast, and
that's that. Not several of them at once, nor one by
herself or himself. If they don't want to go home to
their own beds, they must just go and carouse in any
hotel that will receive them, for in my house they shall
not carouse. Nor sit on the dining-room sofa and
smoke, and carry on conversations in tones that I sup-
pose you all think are hushed. It shall not be done, I
said, so that is settled. But is it settled? Not a bit
of it. Nancy merely changes the subject, and Charles
and I are woken by the hushed voices again next morn-
ing. Edwardian manners, people tell me; well, I'm
Victorian, and I don't care if it is 1907.”
“You were doing much the same in 1880, my dear,”
Rome interpolated.
“Oh, well, I've forgotten . . . were we? . . . Well,
anyhow, you can’t say I was behaving like Imogen.
She doesn't care for dancing much, and she's such a
baby still that cocktails make her tipsy and cigarettes
sick; she prefers raspberry syrup and chocolate cigars,
which is really more indecent at her age. At her age I
was thinking of proper young-ladyish things, like youngEDWARDIAN
267
men, and getting engaged; but Imogen seems never
to have heard of either—I mean, not of young men
in their proper uses. She plays childish games, and
dashes about on her bicycle, and makes ridiculous lists
of all the ships in the navy and how much they weigh
and how many horses they’re equal to, and slips off
to Portsmouth all by herself to see them launched, with-
out a word to anyone, and of course makes herself ill.
I said to her one day, I suppose you’ll go and marry
into the navy some day, Jennie ; nothing else will satisfy
you. But she opened her eyes and said, Marry the
navy? Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I should be too
jealous of him. You see, I want to be in the navy
myself, and I know I should hate his being in it when
I couldn’t. It would only rub it in. I want to do
nice things myself, not to marry people who do them.
I believe, mother, I’m perhaps too selfish to marry; it’s
my life I want to enjoy, not anyone else’s. Besides,
there might be babies, and they would get so in the
way, little sillies. They wouldn’t get in your way, I
told her (only of course it isn’t true, because they
always do, the wretches), if only you’d behave like
other grown girls, and not be forever climbing about
and playing silly games. You’re such a baby yourself,
that’s what’s the matter. What on earth the child’s
book will be like that she’s so busy with I can’t imagine.
She knows nothing abo^it life, bless her. There’s
Phyllis married, and running her home so capably, and
Nancy at least carrying on like a girl, not like a child
in the nursery—but Imogen! I lose my patience with
her sometimes.”
And even as her mother spoke, Imogen was in Ham-
ley’s in Regent Street, looking at toy pistols and blush-
ing. She was blushing because she had just been£68
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
deceitful, and was afraid that the lady attending on
her guessed. “For what aged child is it?” this helpful
lady had asked. “Would caps or blank cartridges be
what he’d want? I mean, if he’s very young. . .
“Oh, no,” Imogen mumbled, “he’s not awfully
young. Blank cartridges, he likes. . .
She bent her abashed face over the weapons, finger-
ing them. A sordid fib; was she seen through ? She
chose her pistol quickly, paid for it, and hurried out of
the shop. When she got well away, she extracted
the weapon from its cardboard box and tucked it, with
a guilty look round, into the side pocket of her skirt.
She strode along with a new reckless gallantry.
“Patrick slipped among the crowd; that queer, cos-
mopolitan, rather sinister crowd that is to be found
around the Marseilles docks. Was he followed? His
hand strayed to his hip pocket. His keen, veiled eyes
took in the passers-by without seeming to look. If he
could get through the next hour without mishap, he
would be aboard and a-sail. But could he? Prob’ly
not. . . .”
While Imogen thus walked in foreign ports or track-
less forests, a happy, dreaming spinster, a reckless
adventurer armed to the teeth, many of her contempo-
raries and elders walked in suffragist processions, ad-
venturers too, and no less absorbed than she. Stanley,
disgusted now by the increasingly reasonless methods
of the militants, had definitely turned her back on them
and joined the constitutionals. These arranged orderly
and lady-like processions, headed at times by Lady
Carlisle.
“There can be no doubt,” wrote the more dignified
press, after one such procession, “that many of these
lady suffragettes are absolutely in earnest, and honestlyEDWARDIAN
269
believe that the cause for which they are contending is
a just and sane one. But the fact remains that they are
in the minority; that the sex, qua sex, is still content,
and proud to be content, to accept the symbol of petti-
coat . . ." (“How indecent," cried Vicky, “to gossip
about our underwear in a leader by a man!") . . . “the
symbol of petticoat as the badge of disenfranchise-
ment." Women, the article continued, are of low men-
tal calibre, and will never understand politics, and if
they did it would interfere with their only duty, the
propagation of the race.
“I love journalists," said Rome, reading this to her
papa at their Sunday breakfast. “They always write
as if women did that job single-handed. They are
so modest about man's share in it, which is really
quite as important as ours. They even kindly call
us the fount of life. Dear, generous, self-effacing
creatures. . . ."
But papa was shaking his head, gravely.
“You make a joke of it, my dear. But this low
mental equipment on the part of the writers on our
leading papers is really a tragedy. The guiders of
public opinion. . . . The blind leading the blind . . .
how can we avoid the ditch ?"
“Indeed, we don't avoid the ditch. We are all in
it, up to the neck. But if one is to be sad on account
of the low mental equipment of writers or others, there
will be very little joy left. For my part, I find a con-
siderable part of my joy in it; it assists in providing the
cheering spectacle of human absurdity."
“Pass me the paper, my dear. I want to read about
. . . I want to see it."
Rome smiled behind the screen of paper which papa
put up between him and her. Well she knew what papa270
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
wanted to read in it. He was looking for news of
Mr. R. J. Campbell and his New Theology, searching
for tidings of Pantheism and the Divine Immanence.
And, sure enough, he found them. There was a
Saying of the Week. Among the eminent persons who
had said other things, such as Dr. Clifford, who had
remarked, a little meiosistically, “It is not necessary to
burn a man who is seeking the truth," and the Lord
Chief Justice, who had observed, more topically, “One
of the greatest errors that motorists can make is to
believe that upon their blowing their horns everybody
should clear out of the way," and Prince Fushimi from
Japan, who had said, “I do not wish to object to ‘The
Mikado/ as I am sure its writers did not intend to hurt
the feelings of a great nation, but I shall, of course, be
glad if it is not performed," and two doctors, one of
whom had said, “Kissing consists in depositing some
saliva on the lips or cheeks of another person," and
the other, “Those who do not like milk will get can-
cer"—among all these utterers of truth came Mr. R. J.
Campbell, remarking brightly, not for the first time
nor for the last, “The New Theology is the gospel of
the humanity of God and of the divinity of man."
“True," said papa, within himself. “Very true.
Very proper and intelligent indeed."
He sighed gently behind the newspaper. He had
had, of late, his doubts as to Higher Thought; as to
whether it was very intelligent, very proper, or very
true. It was strange in so many ways; high, doubtless,
but perhaps for earth too high. And there were strange
tales going about concerning the Gurus who led in
prayer and in thought. And the leg of that unfortu-
nate young man . . . how could people believe such
nonsense? The element of folly in all human creedsEDWARDIAN
271
was becoming, in the case of the Higher Thought, pain-
fully evident to papa.
This New Theology now—this young man Campbell
—he seemed, somehow, nearer to solid earth than did
the Higher Thinkers. He might talk of the Divinity of
Man, but he did not, as papa, having read his book on
the subject, knew, mean anything silly by it, only what
all the mystics have meant—the divine spark in the
human heart. As to the humanity of God—well, he
probably meant no harm by that either. He was but
an anthropomorphist, like the rest of us.
The theologians had been hard upon that book of
his. It was not, of course, the book of a scholar; all
it said had been said much better by Loisy and other
Catholic modernists, whom Mr. Campbell palely re-
flected. But it gave a good peptonised version, suitable
for the unscholarly mind. And its reviewers had been
unkind. They had nearly all attacked it. Dr. Robert-
son Nicoll in the British Weekly had snubbed it at
considerable length. The Church Times had said, “The
book is one long offence against good taste,” and the
Methodist Recorder, “Frankly, we do not think this
book worth reading, and to price it at six shillings is
enough to make us join in the Book War.” Theologi-
cal reviewers were not always fair, as papa, since he
had published his own mighty and erudite work on
Comparative Religions, had known. For himself, he
had liked Mr. Campbell's book, even though it was
rather bright than scholarly, more an appeal to the
man in the City Temple than to the student or the
theologian. Papa, besides being a student and a
theologian, had of late been also on Sundays a man in
the City Temple. He had said nothing of it yet to
anyone; he was trying it. He liked it; there was2J2
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
nothing in it to bewilder or offend. The Divine Im-
manence ; call it Pantheism who chose, it was a beautiful
idea. It was in no degree incompatible with the Divine
Transcendence; why should it be, since there was also
the Divine Ubiquity?
Brooding on these matters, papa finished breakfast
somewhat silently, and lit his pipe.
“A beautiful day,” said Rome, smoking her ciga-
rette at the open window. “I shall be out for lunch and
tea, papa. I am joining a party of pleasure; we are
going to explore, in our cars, to Newlands Corner,
where we shall have trials of skill and of speed. You
won’t come with me, I suppose?”
“No, thank you, dear, I think not. I’m too old for
trials of skill and speed; too old, even, for exploring.”
Precisely, thought Rome, glancing at him with her
indulgent smile, what papa was not and never would
be. He would very surely go exploring this morning,
searching the riches of the spiritual kingdoms. Much
more exciting than Newlands Corner. . . . To papa at
seventy-seven, as to Mr. R. J. Campbell at whatever
age he might be, theology could still seem new. Rome
wondered whether it was an advantage or a misfortune
that to her, at forty-eight, all theologies, as most other
of the world’s businesses, seemed so very old. The
only things that seemed new to her in 1907 were
taximeter cabs.
“Well, good-bye, dear, and good luck,” Rome wished
her papa.
Of 1907 there is not very much more to record. Two
or three items of news may perhaps be mentioned.
Maurice’s son Roger, aged twenty-four, now attached,
at his own urgent desire, to the literary side of his
father’s paper—(“He can’t do much harm there, I sup-EDWARDIAN
273
pose,” Maurice said, “though he’ll not do any good
either; he hasn’t the brains.”)—published a novel. It
was a long novel, and it was about a youth not unlike
what Roger conceived himself to be, only his home
was different, for his father was a church-warden and
bare the bag in church, and bullied and beat and prayed
over his children; fathers in fiction must be like this,
not heretical and intelligent journalists. The book con-
ducted the youth from the nursery through his private
and public schools (house matches, school politics, vice,
expulsions, and so on), through Cambridge (the Union,
the river, tobacconists’ assistants, tripos), to journal-
istic, social and literary London, where it left him, at
twenty-four, having just published his first novel, which
was a great success.
“God, what tripe,” Maurice commented, but to him-
self, as he turned the pages. “Exactly what the boy
would write, I fear. No better, no worse. Well, poor
lad, he’s pleased with it enough. And it will probably
be handsomely reviewed. It’s the stuff to give the
public all right.” His thoughts strayed to a familiar,
rather bitter point. If he had been given (by Amy:
how fantastic a thought!) a son with brains; a son
with a hard, clear head or an original imagination; a
son who, if he wrote at all, wouldn’t produce the stuff
to give the public, a son who, like himself, would see
the public damned first ...
Roger was, as his father had predicted, handsomely
reviewed, for the Edwardians rather liked the biog-
raphy-of-a-young-man type of novel, and loved details
of school life. Roger had his feet well on the ladder
of successful fiction-writing. Roger would be all right.
Meanwhile, his head swelled even larger than before.
His father perceived that the innocent youth really be-274
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
lieved his reviewers, and conceived himself to be a
writer and a clever young man.
The other items I record of the year 1907 I quote
from the diary of Imogen for the 16th of March.
“Indomitable launched, Glasgow. Largest and
quickest cruiser in the world. 17,250 tons. 41,000
h.p. 25 knots. Invincible and Inflexible, same type,
building. Finished book, began to type it. Got guinea
prize from Saturday Westminster for poem.”
21
WHITHER?
And so to the last years of Edwardianism. In them
that gay, eager, cultivated period listed gently to the
political left. The Socialist Budget, as it was called
by its opponents, “the end of all things” as Lord Rose-
bery a little optimistically called it, agitated the coun-
try. Old Age Pensions were at last established, to the
disgust of Tories, who had, however, when members
of Parliament, to be careful how they expressed their
disgust, for fear of their needy constituents. “Whither
are we drifting?” enquired the Conservative press, in
anger and fear. “Here is Socialism unabashed: the
thin end of the wedge which shall at last undermine
the integrity and liberty of our Constitution.” Here
were sixty millions a year, not insurance but a free
dole, squandered on supporting old persons who might
just as well be supported in workhouses. What would
that come to in Dreadnoughts ? Anyhow, we had got
to lay down six or seven Dreadnoughts a year for the
present, if we were to be to Germany in the ratio of
two keels to one, which was assuredly essential. “TheyEDWARDIAN
275
are ringing their bells ; they will soon be wringing their
hands,” said the Tory leaders. The Radical element
in the government strengthened; Sir Henry Campbell
Bannerman died, and in Mr. Asquith’s ministry Mr.
Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer. But
it remained, on the whole, a Liberal-Imperialist govern-
ment, and left most of the radicalism to Labour, whose
parliamentary strength was increasing and unifying.
Wherever we. were drifting, it was not towards ex-
treme radicalism.
As to Ireland, a bill was passed to reduce her docks,
thistles and noxious weeds : no other bill.
Parliamentary affairs and party politics were no more
exciting and no more tedious (for that is impossible)
than usual. Of more interest were the first flying
machines that really flew, the drawings of Mr. Augus-
tus John exhibited at the New English Art Club and
condemned by all critics (except the few who liked the
kind of thing), as essays in a savage and childish archa-
ism, and deliberate insults to our intelligence; (whither
indeed was art drifting, when such drawings could be
praised?) ; and the establishment of the White City
at Shepherds Bush, with the Franco-British Exhibi-
tion (sadly dull) and flip-flaps, switchbacks, wiggle-
woggles and scenic railways (most exciting, and an in-
sidious snare for pocket money; you could get rid
there in one evening of the careful hoardings of weeks ;
also, if you were as weak in the stomach as Imogen,
you felt repentant after a few goes). Thither Presi-
dent Fallières, on a visit to King Edward, was taken,
to enjoy the Franco-British Exhibition and cement the
entente cordiale, which, however, needed it less then than
now, for the Edwardians were on the whole most
enthusiastic about this international understanding.276
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“There is no longer a Channel," they said, publicly and
politely; but in their hearts, for they were no more
foolish than we, they still gave thanks for this useful,
if unpleasing, strip of sea.
To forge faster the other link in the Triple Entente,
that only possible guarantee for a world peace, King
Edward visited the Tsar of all the Russias, at Reval.
So there we were, grasping these two great military
powers by the hand, ready to face any emergency. We
had got ahead of Germany in this matter of Russia.
For all the European Powers, discreetly averting their
eyes from the chronic blood stains on the bear's sav-
age claws, were courting her for her legions. To have
the bear at their beck and call—that was what every-
one wanted, against the emergencies which might arise.
And never was a time when emergencies seemed more
imminent, more dangerous, more frequent; such a state
of simmering unrest was Europe's in the days of Ed-
ward the Peacemaker. Of the Kaiser Wilhelm and his
Uncle Bertie it has been said that their relations “lapsed
into comparative calm only when they were apart from
one another." Their subjects hated and feared each
other ; the press in each country stirred up terror of
invasion by the other; “the German invasion," “the
English invasion"—these phrases were bandied about
in two jealous, frightened empires. The German spy
scare, the British spy scare, these fevers were worked
up in the jingo press of two countries. “You English
are mad, mad, mad," said Wilhelm. “I strive without
ceasing to improve relations and you retort that I am
your arch-enemy. You make it very hard for me."
For that matter, nations always make it hard for
one another; it is their function. We did make it hardEDWARDIAN
277
for Germany, and Germany made it hard for us, and
France made it hard for everyone.
Anyhow, here was the Triple Entente, full-armed,
to meet the Triple Alliance, and some one or other
would see to it that they did meet before long.
The chief European emergency which arose at the
moment was an attack of megalomania on the part of
Servia, in 1909. The Serbs had the madness to dream
of a greater Servia, which should unite the scattered
peoples of their race—“a dream,” said the English
press, “as hopeless as that of Poland rediviva. Greater
Servia either will be realised under the sceptre of the
Hapsburgs, or will not be realised at all.” The awk-
wardness of the situation, so far as we were concerned,
was that Russia was, as usual, backing her mad little
militant friend, and had to be dissuaded with great
tact from upsetting the apple cart. However, a joint
note to Servia from the Powers quieted her for the
time being, and the lid was shut down temporarily on
the seething European kettle of fish.
Other intriguing matters of this year were the build-
ing, in British dockyards, of three huge battleships for
Brazil, which disgusted others than young Imogen Car-
rington; the Olympic Games in July; the publication
of various not unamusing books; and the deaths of two
old men, Algernon Swinburne and George Meredith.
Our two greatest Grand Old Men had departed from
us, and no more would pilgrims alight at the Pines,
Putney, or go exploring to Box Hill. The office of
our literary G. O. M. was filled now only by Mr.
Thomas Hardy, for Mr. Henry James was still an
American. Sometimes one speculates, aghast, what
would happen should we ever be left with no candidates
for that honourable post—that is to say, with no cele-278
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
brated literary man or woman (for there might, though
improbably, be a G. O. W. some day) over seventy
years, no Master for the younger writers to greet on
the festival of his birth. It would be an undignified
state of affairs indeed; and one need not anticipate
it at present, for behind Mr. Hardy there looms more
than one candidate of respectable claims.
The closing years of this reign were brightened
further by Commander Peary and Dr. Cook, who both
maintained that they had discovered the North Pole.
It was ultimately decided that only the Commander had
done so, as the doctor had had the misfortune to mis-
lay his papers in Greenland; but his was a sporting
venture,, and deserving of all applause, and he had a
good run for his money.
And so an end to Edwardianism. The new Georg-
ianism dawned on a nervous, gay, absorbed nation,
experimenting in new but cautious legislation, alive, on
the whole, to new literature and new art, alive wholly
to whatever enjoyment it could find, and thoroughly
tied up in continental politics, so that when that mine
was fired we should go up with it sky-high.PART IV
GEORGIAN
FIRST period: circusI
THE HAPPY GEORGIANS
THE first Georgian years, the years between 1910
and 1914, are now commonly thought of as gay,
as very happy, hectic, whirling, butterfly years, punc-
tuated indeed by the too exciting doings of dock and
transport strikers, Ulstermen, suffragists, the Titanic,
and Mr. Lloyd George, but, all the same, gay years.
Like other generalisations about periods, this is a de-
lusion. Those years only seem especially gay to us
because, since Tuly, 1914, the years have not been gay
at all. Really they were quite ordinary years. In fact,
it is folly to speak of these insensate seasonal periods
as happy or the reverse. It is only animate creatures
which can be that, and it is unlikely that all, or the ma-
jority, of animate creatures should be visited by cir-
cumstances making for pleasurable emotion or the re-
verse at the same time as one another, except in the
case of some great public event. Some early Georgians
were gay, some sad, some bored, some tepid and in-
different, as at any other time.
Nevertheless, it so happened that the persons in this
so-called narrative were all quite sufficiently happy
during this period. They were all having, in their
several ways, a fairly good time.
281282
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
2
PAPA
Mr. Garden’s way was, it need scarcely be said, a
spiritual way. He was now over eighty, and his was
the garnered fruit of a long life of spiritual adventure.
He had believed so much, he had believed so often, he
had fought with doubt so ardently and with such re-
peated success, he had explored every avenue of faith
with such adventurous zeal, that he had at last reached
a table-land from whence he could survey all creeds
with loving, impartial pleasure. Even Mr., Campbell’s
New Theology had not. enmeshed him for long; he
passed through it and out of it, and it took its place
among the ranks of Creeds I Have Believed.
And now, in some strange, transcendent manner, he
believed them all. Nothing is true but thinking makes
it so; papa thought all these faiths, and for him they
were all true. What, after all, is truth? An unan-
swerable riddle, to which papa replied, “The truth for
each soul is that faith by which it holds.” So truth,
for papa, was many-splendoured, many-faced. God
must exist, he knew, or he could not have believed in
Him so often and so much. The sunset of life was to
papa very lovely, as he journeyed westward into it,
murmuring, “I believe. ... I believe. . . .” Catholi-
cism (Roman and Anglo), Evangelicism, Ethicism,
Unitarianism, Latitudinarian Anglicism, Seventh-Day
Adventism, Christian Science, Irvingitism, even poor
Flossie and her chat, he did very happily and earnestly
believe. He believed in a mighty sacramental Church
that was the voice of God and the store-house of
grace; he believed that he was saved through privateGEORGIAN
283
intercourse and contract with his Lord; he believed in
the Church established in this country, and that it
should be infinitely adaptable to the new knowledge
and demands of men; he believed that the world was
(very likely) to be ended in a short time by the second
coming of Christ; he believed that God was love, and
evil a monstrous illusion; he believed that God per-
mitted the veil between this world and the next to be
rent by the meanest and most trivial of His creatures,
if they had the knack. Indeed, papa might be said
to have learnt the art of believing anything.
Irving said it was pleasant to find that papa was once
again an Irvingite. Indeed, the creeds after which he
had named his children now all flourished in papa’s
soul. No longer did he shake his head when he remem-
bered in what spiritual moods he had named Una, and
Rome, or sigh after that lost exultation of the soul
commemorated in Vicky. Had another child been
given to him now he would have named it Verity, in
acknowledgment of the fact that nearly everything was
true.
What wonder, then, that papa was a happy Georgian?
3
VICKY
Vicky, dashing full-sail through her fifties, was a
happy Georgian too. She was handsome in her ma-
turity, and merry. People she loved, and parties, and
gossip, and bridge, and her husband and children, and
the infants of her daughter Phyllis, and food and drink
and clothes, and Ascot, and going abroad, and new
novels from Mudie’s, and theatres and concerts and284
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
meetings and causes, and talk, talk, talk. Life, she
held, is good as you get on in it; a broad, sunny, amus-
ing stream, having its tiresome worries, no doubt, but,
in the main, certainly a comedy. Vicky as an early
Georgian was a generously fashioned matron, broader
and fuller than of old, with her fair skin little damaged
by time, and not much grey in her chestnut hair, which
she wore piled in a mass of waves and curls, in the
manner of the early Georgian matrons. A delightful
woman, with an unfailing zest for life. You couldn’t
exactly discuss things with her, but she could and did
discuss them with you. She would tell you what she
thought about the world and its ways in a flow of racy
comment, skimming from one topic to another with an
agile irrelevance that grew with the years. A merry,
skimming matron; certainly a happy Georgian.
4
MAURICE
Maurice had not, since he marncd Amy, been a happy
Victorian or Edwardian, and he did not become an
exactly happy Georgian, but he was happier than be-
fore. In his fifties he was no nearer accepting the
world as he found it than he had ever been. It still
appeared to him to be a hell of a place. He was, in
his fifties, a lean, small, bitter man, his light hair grey-
ing on the temples and receding from the forehead, his
sensitive mouth and long jaw sardonically, cynically
set. He was popular in London, for all his bitter
tongue and pen; he and his paper were by now an in-
stitution, known for their brilliance, clarity, hard, un-
sentimental intolerance, and honesty. You might dis-GEORGIAN
285
agree with Maurice Garden; you might even think that
he had an evil temper and a habit of mild intoxication;
but you had to respect two things about him, his in-
telligence and his sincerity. Tosh and slush he would
not stand, whether it might be about the Empire, about
the poor suffragists in prison who would not eat, about
White Slaves (whom his paper called, briefly and pre-
cisely, prostitutes, holding that the colour of their skins
was an irrelevant point to raise when considering the
amelioration of their lot), about the poor tax-robbed
upper classes, or the poor labour-ground lower. He
would print no correspondence couched in sentimental
terms; if people desired to write about the sufferings,
say, of birds deprived of their feathers for hats, they
had to put it in a few concise words, and to say pre-
cisely what steps they wished to see taken about it. No
superfluous wailings or tears were permitted, on any
topic, to the writers in the Gadfly. The editor had a
good deal of trouble with the literary side of his paper,
which inclined, in his opinion, to roll logs, to be slav-
ishly in the fashion in the matter of admiring the right
people, to accept weak articles and rubbishy poems
from people with budding or full-blown reputations,
and, generally, to be like most literary papers. His
son Roger he did not for long permit to adorn the
literary staff; to do so would have been, in view of the
calibre of Roger’s intelligence, gross nepotism. Roger
had to get another literary job on a less fastidious
paper; meanwhile, to his father’s disgust, he continued
to produce novels, and even began on verse, so that
he appeared in current anthologies of contemporary
poetry. Also, he got married. So did his sister Iris.
That settled, and his children well off his hands, Mau-
rice felt that his only and dubious link with family life286
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
was snapped, and that he was free to go his own way.
He left his wife, offering to provide her with any ma-
terial she preferred for a divorce, from a mistress to
a black eye. Amy accepted the offer, and these two
victims of a singularly unfortunate entanglement found
rest from one another at last. It was, Amy complained,
too late for her to marry again; of course Maurice,
selfish pig, had waited till it was too late for her but
not for him. But Maurice had no inclination to re-
marry; he had had more than enough of that business.
The only woman he had ever seriously loved had mar-
ried ten years ago, ending deliberately an unhappy,
passionate and fruitless relationship. Maurice’s
thoughts were not now woman-ward; he lived for his
job, and for interest in the bitter comedy of affairs that
the world played before him. His silly, common, nag-
ging wife, his silly, ordinary, disappointing children,
no more oppressed him; they could, for him, now go
their own silly ways. He was free.
5
ROME
Rome was a happy Georgian. For her the comedy
of the world was too amusing to be bitter. She, in
her splendid, idle fifties, was known in London as a
lady of wits, of charm, of humour; a gentlewoman of
parts, the worldly, idle, do-nothing, care-nothing sister
of the busy and useful Mrs. Croft, contributing noth**
ing to the world beyond an attractive presence, good
dinner-table talk, a graceful zest for gambling, an in-
telligent, cynical running commentary on life, and a
tolerant, observing smile. Life was a good show toGEORGIAN
287
her; it arranged itself well, and she was clever at pick-
ing out the best scenes. When, for instance, she had
an inclination to visit the House of Commons, she
would discover first on which afternoon the Labour
members, or the Irish, were going to have a good row,
or Mr. Lloyd George was going to talk like an excited
street preacher, or Sir Edward Carson like an Orange-
man, or any other star performer do his special turn,
and she would select that afternoon and have her re-
ward. Our legislators were to her just that—circus
turns, some good, some poor, but none of them with
any serious relation to life as lived (if, indeed, any
relation with that absurd business could be called se-
rious, which was doubtful),
So the cheerful spectacle of a world of fools bright-
ened Rome’s afternoon years. Before long, the folly
was to become too desperate, too disastrous, too wreck-
ing a business to be a comic show even to the most
amused eyes; the circus was, all too soon, to go smash,
and the folly of the clowns who had helped to smash
it became a bitterness, and the idiot’s tale held too much
of sound and fury to be borne. But these first Geor-
gian years were, to Rome, twinkling with bland ab-
surdity. She cheered up Maurice in the matter of that
prose and verse by means of which his son made of
himself a foolish show, reminding him that we all
make of ourselves foolish shows in one way or another,
and the printed word was one of the less harmful
ways of doing this. It was no worse, she maintained,
to be a Georgian novelist and poet than any other kind
of Georgian fool, and one kind or another we all are.
After all, he might be instead a swindling company-
promoter. . . .288
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
“No,” said Maurice. “He hasn’t the wits. And,
you know, I don’t share your philosophy. I still be-
lieve, in the teeth of enormous odds, that it is possible
to make something of this life—that one kind of
achievement is more admirable—or less idiotic, if you
like—than another. I still think bad, shallow, shoddy
work like Roger’s damnable, however unimportant it
may be. It’s a mark on the wrong side, the side of
stupidity. You don’t believe in sides, but I do. And
I’m glad I do, so don’t try to infect me with your
poisonous indifference. I am a man of faith, I tell you;
I have a soul. You are merely a cynic, the basest of
God’s creatures. You disbelieve in everything. I dis-
believe in nearly everything, but not quite. So I shall
be saved and you will not. Have a cocktail, Gallio.”
6
STANLEY
Stanley’s son was at Oxford, reading for a pass, for
it was no manner of use, they said, his reading for any-
thing more. He was a nice boy, but not yet clever.
“Not yet,” Stanley had said of him all through his
schooldays, meaning that Billy was late in developing.
“Not yet,” she still said, meaning that he was so late
that he would not have developed properly until his
last year at Oxford, or possibly after that. Not that
Billy was stupid; he was quite intelligent about a num-
ber of things, but not, on the whole, about the things
in books, which made it awkward about examinations.
Nor was he intelligent about politics; in fact, politics
bored him a good deal. However, he was destinedGEORGIAN
289
for a political career. Stanley’s cousin, Sir Giles Hum-
phries, a Liberal member of Parliament, had promised
Stanley to take Billy as a junior secretary when he left
Oxford, if he should show any capacity for learning
the job. Billy’s Liberal political career would thus be
well begun. Meanwhile, Billy was an affectionate,
companionable boy, who hid his boredom and his ig-
norance from his mother as well as might be, and very
nicely refrained from making mock of militant suf-
fragists in her presence, for, though Stanley had ceased
to be a militant, many of her friends were, in these
years, in and out of prison.
Molly wouldn’t go to college. No one, indeed, but
her mother suggested that she should. She was ob-
viously not suited, by either inclination or capacities,
for the extension of her education. Stanley would
have been glad to have Molly at home with her when
she left school, for Molly had the heartbreaking charm
of her father, even down to his narrow, laughing eyes
and odd, short face. Stanley adored Molly. Molly
was tepid and casual about votes, and had no head for
books, and not the most rudimentary grasp on public
affairs, and she was worse at meetings and causes than
any girl in the world. She didn’t even pretend, like
Billy. She would laugh in Stanley’s face, with her in-
comparable impudence, , when Stanley was talking, and
say, “Mumsie darling, stop committing. Oh, mumsie,
not before your chee-ild,” and flutter a butterfly kiss
on Stanley’s cheek to change the subject. And she
wanted to go on the stage. She wanted to go, and
went, to a dramatic school, to learn to act. Well, better
that than nothing, Stanley sighed. If she does learn
to act, it will be all right. If she doesn’t, she’s learn-2 90
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
ing something. If it doesn't make her affected and
stupid, like actresses, I don't mind. And surely noth-
ing can make Molly less than entrancing. But, what-
ever comes of it, Molly has a right to cnoose her own
life; it's no business of mine what the children decide
to do. In her conscious reaction from the one-time
parental tyranny over daughters. Stanley forgot that
there might also be tyranny over sons, and that Billy
too had a right to choose his own life. It is creditable
to Billy that she could forget it* Billy was the best of
sons.
Meanwhile Stanley was fighting (constitutionally)
for votes, women's trade unions, the welfare of fac-
tory girls, continuation schools, penal reform, clean
milk, and the decrease of prostitution. It may be imag-
ined that all these things together kept her pretty busy ;
unlike Rome, sfie had no time to visit Parliament on
its best days; she only went there when one of the
topics in which she was interested was going to be
raised. She got thus, Rome told her, all the dry bread
and none of the jam. However, Stanley preferred
the dry bread days, though they were invariably stupid
and disappointing.
Though only a very little of all she had at heart got
done, Stanley was happy. She laboured under the de-
lusion that the constitution and social condition of her
country were, on the whole, faintly on the upward
plane. That was because she was unfairly biassed
towards the Liberal party in the state, and too apt to
approve of the measures they passed. She approved
of Old Age Pensions; she even approved, on the whole,
of Mr. Lloyd George's Insurance Act; and she ap-
proved of the People's Budget very much.GEORGIAN
291
7
IRVING
Irving was nearly always cheerful, except when he
was cross. Irving was like that. He had been a cheer-
ful Victorian and a cheerful Edwardian, and was now,
in his late forties, a cheerful Georgian. He had a
beautiful and charming wife, creditable children, a
house in Devonshire and a house in London, and a
great deal of money (though the super-tax robbed him
mi much of it), two motor cars, good fishing, shooting
and stag-hunting, and an excellent digestion. He had
his troubles. The People’s Budget troubled him a good
deal, and the Land Taxes, and all the unfair socialist
legislation to which he was subject. He sometimes
threatened to go and live abroad, to escape it. But he
did not go and live abroad. He was, for all his
troubles, a happy Englishman.
8
UNA
Una, too, was cheerful. She was unaffected by
reigns and periods. She was a very unconscious
Georgian. Not like Stanley, who said, “We are now
Georgians. Georgian England must be much better
than any England before it,” nor like Roger, who would
murmur, “We Georgians face facts” . . . nor like
Vicky, who cried, “I will not be called a Georgian; not
while that little Welsh horror rules over us.” Una
hardly knew she was a Georgian, and, indeed, she was
not, in any but a strictly technical sense. Her mind292
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
was unstirred by what used, long ago, to be called the
Zeitgeist. She was happy; she enjoyed good health;
her daughters were like polished corners and her sons
like young plants; her husband's acres flourished and
his corn and wine and oil increased (as a matter of
fact his wine, always a trifle too much, had of late
years decreased; Ted was a soberer man than of old) ;
Katie, their handsome eldest, had married well; and
Una found in the countryside the profound, uncon-
scious content that animals find. Riding, walking,
gardening, driving about the level Essex lands, she,
attuned to the soil on which she lived, was happy and
serene.
9
IMOGEN
The younger generation of Georgians were happy
enough. They were married, engaged, painting, writ-
ing, dancing, at the bar, at the universities, at school.
They were behaving in the several manners suitable
to their temperaments and years. Their lives were
full of interests, artistic, literary, athletic and social.
Vicky's Nancy was learning to paint futuristically; she
had now a little studio in Chelsea, where she could be
as Bohemian as she liked, and have her friends all
night without disturbing anyone. Night-clubs, too,
had of late come in, and were a great convenience.
Phyllis was bringing up her children. Hugh, eating
dinners in the Temple, read of torts and morts, but
dreamed of machinery, and drew diagrams in court of
pistons and valves, and jotted down algebraic formulae
when he should have been jotting down legal notes.
Hugh was really a mechanician, and his heart was notGEORGIAN
293
in law, though he liked it well enough. His brother
Tony had gone from Cambridge to the Foreign Office
and, when not writing drafts, was a merry youth about
town.
Imogen was happy. She felt her life to be pleasure-
soaked; a lovely, an elegant orgy of joy. And pleas-
ure, orgies of dissipation even, did not absorb her,
but were ministrants to the clear, springing life of the
imagination. Imagination brimmed the cup of her
spirit like golden wine. She felt happy and good, like
a child in an orchard, ripe apples and pears tumbling
in soft grass about her, the silver boat of the moon
riding in a green sky. For her birds sang, sweet bells
chimed and clashed, the stars made a queer, thin,
tinkling song on still and moonless nights. The people
hurrying about the city streets and squares were kind
and merry and good, like brownies; the city itself was
a great gay booth, decked and lit. Dawn came on a
golden tide of peace; noon drove a flaming chariot
behind the horses of the sun; evening spread soft wings,
tender and blue and green; night was sweet as a dream
of apple-blossoms by running water. When she wrote,
whether by day or by night, her brain felt clear and
lit, as by a still, bright taper burning steadily. Her
thoughts, her words, rose up in her swiftly, like silver
fishes in a springing rock pool; round and round they
swam, and she caught them and landed them before
they got away. While she wrote, nothing mattered
but to seize and land what she saw thus springing up,
to reach down her net and catch it while she might.
Verse she wrote, and prose, with growing fastidious-
ness as to form and words. When she had first begun
publishing what she wrote, she had been too young;
she had fumbled after style like a blind puppy; she294
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
had been, like nearly all very young writers, superflu-
ous of phrase, redundant. She read with fastidious
disgust in her first book of stories such meaningless
phrases as, “He lifted the child bodily over the rail
and dropped it into the sea.” Bodily; as if the victim
might, on the other hand, have been only caught up in
the spirit, like St. Paul. What did I mean, she asked,
across the years, of that bungling child, knowing that
she had indeed meant nothing. But now style, the
stark, bare structure of language, was to her a fetish.
It was good to be getting on in life—twenty-four,
twenty-five, twenty-six—so that one’s head was
clearer, if not yet very clear. The very young, thought
Imogen, are muddled; they love cant and shun truth;
they adopt and use imitative phrases; they are senti-
mental and easy idealists behind their masks of cheer-
ful, slangy hardness. Undergraduates, male and fe-
male, and their non-collegiate contemporaries, are the
most obscurantist of reactionaries; facts annoy them
and they pretend they do not see them, preferring to
walk muffled through life, until life forcibly, year by
year, tears the bandages from their eyes. The later
Georgian, the post-war very young, were to be even
more sentimental, muffled and imitative than their pred-
ecessors, because of the demoralising war, which was
to give them false standards in the schoolroom. But
the pre-war adolescents were sentimental enough.
The sharp, clear and bitter truth—that was the thing
to aim at, thought Imogen, in her twenty-fifth year,
knowing she was still far, but not knowing how far,
from that. That courageous realism which should see
things as they were, she desired, knowing herself to
be still a false seer, blinded and dazzled by her personal
circumstances, warped and circumscribed in her visionGEORGIAN
295
by the circle of her life. Perhaps she was too comfort-
able, too happy. ... Or perhaps, like most people, too
emotionally alive, strung too sharply to every vibra-
tion, for the clear, detached intellectuality she craved.
I feel things too much, she thought, smiling, to be
thinking what so many people thought, what too many
even said, of themselves.
I don't feel things much. I am not easily moved
by life. . . . Why did people so seldom say that, and
so much more seldom think it? No doubt because
everyone feels things terrifically, is quite horribly moved
by this most moving business, life. No one believes
him or herself to be insensitive, for no one is insensi-
tive, life not being an affair it is possible to be insen-
sitive to.
In a deeper layer of consciousness, where herself
watched herself, Imogen thought that, though she
might believe herself to be sensitive to life, she at any
rate knew why she believed it, knew why everyone be-
lieved it of himself, and that redeemed her from the
commonplace boast, and gave her over the people who
say, “I feel too much, that’s where it is,” the advantage
that the conscious must always have over the uncon-
scious, the advantage, if it be one, that is perhaps the
main difference between sophisticated and primitive
forms of life.
Meanwhile Imogen, like her cousin Roger, wrote and
published verse and prose. After all, it didn’t matter
what one wrote. People wrote and wrote, and nearly
every kind of thing got written by someone or other,
well or ill, usually ill, and never so well as to touch
more than the very outside edge of the beauty and
adventure which was life. Written words opened the
door, that was all. Beyond the door lay the adventure,296
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
bright and still and eerily clear, like a dream. Strange
seas, purple with racing currents in the open, but under
the eaves of coral islands green and clear like jade;
white beaches of those same islands, hot in the sunshine
under the spreading leaves of bread-fruit trees; yams
and cocoanuts and pineapples dropping with nutty
noises on to emerald-green grass; a little boat moored
at the edge of the lapping, creamy waves; witty mon-
keys and brilliant parrots chattering in the jungle; a
little fire at night outside the tent, and a gun ready to
one’s hand. Great fishes and small fishes swimming
deeply in the jade rock pools, sailing and sailing with
unshut eye; the little boat sailing too, pushing off into
the wide seas dotted with islands, white wings prick-
ing sky-ward like fawns’ ears. Or deep orchards adrift
with blossom, rosy-white; jolly colts in paddocks, drag-
ging with soft lips and hard gums at their mothers’
milk; the winds of April hurtling the cloud shadows
across the grass. Long lanes running between deep
hedges in the evening, and the rustle of the sea not
far, and the velvet dusk waiting for the moonrise, and
queer, startled noises in the hedges, and quiet munch-
ing noises in the fields, and the cold mocking stars look-
ing down. And painted carts of gypsies, and roadside
fires, and wood-smoke and ripe apples. And hills sil-
ver and black with olives and cypresses, and steep roads
spiralling up them to little walled towns, and hoarse,
chanted songs lilting among vineyards, and the jingling
of the bells of oxen. And the streets and squares of
rainbow-coloured towns, noisy cafes and lemon trees
in tubs, beautiful men noble with the feathers of cocks,
beautiful women in coloured head-kerchiefs, incense
drifting out of churches into piazzas, coffee roasting
in deep streets. To swim, to sail, to run naked on hotGEORGIAN
297
sands, to lie eating and eating in deep scented woods,
and then to sleep; to wake and slip into clear brown
pools in sunshine, to spin words as a spider his silvery
web; to wear a scarlet silk jacket like a monkey's and
little white trousers, and, for best, a little scarlet crino-
line over them, sticking out, very wide and short and
jaunty, and a scarlet sunshade lined with white, and on
one's shoulder a tiny flame-red cockatoo, and at one’s
heels two little black slaves, shining* and black as
ebony, with ivory teeth a-glisten and banjos tucked
beneath their arms. To clap one’s hands, twice, thrice,
and presto! an elegant meal—mushrooms, cider and
pêche melba, and mangoes and pineapple to end it,
and then, when it was ended, a three-coloured ice.
What joy! Dear God, what a world! What adven-
ture, what loveliness, what dreams! Beauty without
end, amen.
Then why write of what should, instead, be lived?
Wasn’t the marvellous heritage, the brilliant joke, the
ghostly dream, of life enough? Nevertheless, one did
write, and was, inexplicably, praised for it. Black
marks on paper, scribbled and niggled and scrawled—
and here and there the splendour and the joke and the
dream broke through them, like sunshine flashing
through prison bars, like music breaking through the
written notes.
While she gave to the fashioning of the written word
all the fastidious, meticulous austerity of devotion that
she knew, Imogen in her personal life was not austere
or fastidious or devoted at all. She idled ; she lounged
about ; she was slovenly ; she bought and sucked toffee ;
she read omnivorously, including much trash ; she was
a prey to shoddy, facile emotions and moods, none of
which had power to impel her to any action, because298
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
a deep, innate scepticism underlay them all; she was a
sentimental cynic. She loved too lightly and too
slightly; she was idle, greedy, foolish, childish, impa-
tient and vain, sliding out of difficulties like a tramp
who fears a job of work. She did not care for great
causes; public affairs were to her only an intriguing
and entertaining show. She was a selfish girl, a shal-
low girl, a shoddy girl, enmeshed in egotism, happy
in her own circus, caring little whether or no others
had bread. Happy in her circus, and yet often wretched
too, for life is like that—exquisite and agonising. She
wanted to go to the Pacific Islands and bathe from
coral reefs; wanted money and fame; wanted to be
delivered for ever from meetings and tea-parties, fool-
ish talkers and bores; wanted to save a life, watched
by cheering crowds; wanted a motor bicycle; wanted
to be a Christian; wanted to be a young man. But not
now a naval man; she had seen through the monotony
and routine of that life. She wanted in these days to
be a journalist, a newspaper correspondent, sent abroad
on exciting jobs, to report wars, and eruptions of Vesu-
vius, and earthquakes, and Cretan excavations, and
revolutions in South America, and international con-
ferences.
10
ON PUBLISHING BOOKS
From time to time Imogen, in common with many
others, brought out books, large and small. They
would arrive in a parcel of six, and lie on the breakfast
table, looking silly, in clownish wrappers with irrele-
vant pictures on them. Imogen would examine them
with mild distaste. How common they looked, to beGEORGIAN
299
sure, now that they were bound! As common as most
books, as the books by others. Dull, too. What if all
the reviews said so? One couldn’t help caring what
reviews said, however hard one tried not to. It was
petty and trivial to be cast up and cast down by the
opinions of one’s fellows, no wiser than oneself, ex-
pressed in print, but so it was. Why? Chiefly be-
cause they were expressed in print, to be read by all.
One’s disgrace, if it were a disgrace, was so public.
People who didn’t know that reviewers were just ordi-
nary people, with no more authority or judgment than
they had themselves, believed them. If people read in
a review, “It cannot be said that Miss Carrington has
been successful in her new book of stories,” they
thought that it really could not, not knowing that al-
most anything can, as a matter of fact, be said, and
often is. And if a reviewer said (as was more usual,
for reviewers are, taking them all in all, a kindly race),
“This is a good book,” people who didn’t know any
better really thought that it was so. Then the author
was pleased. Particularly as the book wasn’t really
good in the least.
“I can’t say I am much concerned about my reviews,
one way or another,” Roger had once said to Imogen.
But he was concerned, all the same. Did he, did all
the people who said they didn’t mind things, know that
they really did? Or were they indeed deluded? People
were surely often deluded; they said such odd things.
“It’s not that I mind a bit for myself, it’s the principle
of the thing,” they would say. Or, “I don’t care a
damn what anyone says of me,” or, “It isn’t that I’d
mind taking the risk, but one has to think of other
people.” And the people who said, “I know you won’t
mind my saying . . .” when they knew you would,300
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
or, “I don’t want to spread gossip, but . . when
that was just what they did want, or, “You mustn’t
think I’m vexed with you, dear,” when they left you
nothing else to think.
Did these lie? Or were they deceived? Imogen,
pondering these apparently so confused minds in her
own, which was more approximately accurate (for she
would deceive others, but could not easily deceive her-
self) , could not decide.
ii
ON SUNDAY WALKS
On Sundays the early Georgians used to go from
London in trains, getting out somewhere in Surrey,
Sussex, Bucks or Herts, to walk in muddy lanes or
over blown downs, or through dim green-grey beech-
woods or fragrant forests of pine. It is pleasanter to
walk alone, or with one companion, or even two, but
sometimes unfortunately one walks (and so did the
early Georgians) in large groups, or parties of pleasure.
Imogen found that she occasionally did this, for it was
among the minor bad habits of her set. It did not
greatly matter, and these strange processions could not
really spoil the country, even though they did very
greatly talk. How they talked! Books, politics, per-
sonal gossip, good jokes and bad, acrostics, stories,
discussions—with these the paths and fields they trav-
ersed echoed. But Imogen, like a lower animal, felt
stupid and happy and alone, and rooted about the
ditches for violets and the hedges for nests, and smelt
at the moss in the woods, and broke off branches to
carry home. To herself she would hum a little tune,GEORGIAN
301
some phrase of music over and over again, and some-
times words would be born in her and sing together
like stars of the morning. But for the most part she
only rooted about like a cheerful puppy, alive with
sensuous joy. Her companions she loved and admired,
but could not emulate, for they were wise about things
she knew not of. Even about the fauna and flora of
the countryside they really knew more than she, who
could only take in them an ignorant and animal pleas-
ure. She had long since guessed herself to be an im-
becile, and, with the imbecile’s cunning, tried to hide
it from others. What if suddenly everyone were to
find out, discover that she was an imbecile, with a
quite vacant, unhinged mind? If these informed, edu-
cated, sophisticated people should discover that, they
would dismiss her from their ken; she would no more
be their friend. She would be cast out, left to root
about alone in the ditches, like a shameless, naked,
heathen savage.
As she thought about this, someone would come and
walk by her side and talk, and she would pull herself
together and pretend to be passably intelligent, albeit
she was really drunk with the soft spring wind and
the earthy smell of the wood.
12
ON MARRIAGE
Imogen loved lightly and slightly, her heart not being
much in that business. Life was full of stimulating
contacts. She admired readily, and liked, was inter-
ested, charmed and entertained. Men and women
passed to and fro on her stage, delightful, witty, grace-302
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
ful, brilliant, even good, and found favour in her eyes.
Poets, politicians and priests, journalists and jesters,
artists and writers, scholars and social reformers,
lovely matrons, witty maids, and cheerful military men,
toilers, spinners, and lilies of the field—a pleasant,
various crowd, they walked and worked and talked.
So many people were alluring, so many tedious, so
many tiresome. One could, unless one was careless,
evade the tedious and the tiresome. But supposing
that one had been very careless, and had married one
of them? What a shocking entanglement life might
then become! How monstrously jarring and fatiguing
would be the home!
“Whether one marries or remains celibate,” Imogen
reflected, in her pedantic, deliberating way, “that is im-
material. Both have advantages. But to marry one
of the right people, if at all, is of the greatest conse-
quence for a happy life. People do not always think
intelligently enough on this important subject. Too
often, they appear to act on impulse, or from some in-
adequate motive. And the results are as we see.” For
she was seeing at the moment several ill-mated couples
of her acquaintance, some of whom made the best of
it, others the worst. Many sought and found affini-
ties elsewhere, for affinities they must (or so they
believed) have. Others, renouncing affinity as a base-
less dream, wisely accepted less of life than that, and
lived in disillusioned amenity with their spouses.
An amazing number of marriages came, on the other
hand, off, and these were a pleasant sight to see. To
come home every evening to the companion you pre-
ferred and who preferred you—that would be all right.
(Only there might be babies, and that would be all
wrong, because they would want bathing or somethingGEORGIAN
303
just when you were busy with something else.) Or
to come home to no one; or (better still) not to come
home at all. So many habits of life were enjoyable,
but not that of perpetual unsuitable companionship.
Thus Imogen reflected and philosophised on this
great topic of marriage and of love, which did not,
however, really interest her so much as most other
topics, for she regarded it as a little primitive, a little
elementary, lacking in the more entertaining complexi-
ties of thought. Metaphysics, poetry, psychology and
geography made to her a stronger intellectual appeal;
the non-emotional functionings of the dwellers on this
planet she found more amusing, and the face of the
planet itself more beautiful.
Nevertheless, to be a little in love is fun, and makes
enchantment of the days. A little in love, a little taste
of that hot, blinding cup—but only enough to stimulate,
not to blind. One is so often a little in love. . . .
13
BILLY
Billy left Oxford with his pass. His Liberal cousin
accepted him, having it on the authority of Stanley,
whom he greatly regarded, that Billy had the makings
of a good secretary. Billy denied this, and said he
would prefer to be a veterinary surgeon, or else to
farm in a colony. But his mother had decided that
he was to be political. Political. He thought he saw
himself . . . And anyhow, where was the sense of
politics? A jolly old mess the politicians made of
things, and always had. . . . Somehow politics didn’t304
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
seem a real thing, like vetting or farming. There was
so much poppycock mixed up with it. . . .
But there it was. His mother must have her way.
He supposed it would be a shame to disappoint her.
Molly wouldn't look at politics, and one of them must.
So in October he was to begin looking at them. One
thing was, Giles Humphries wouldn't keep him long;
he'd soon see through him. . . .
“Doesn't make much odds, anyhow," he reflected
gloomily. “One damn silly job or another. Mother'll
never let me do what I want. 'Tisn't good enough for
her. I wish people wouldn't want things for one;
wish they'd let one alone. Being let alone . . . that's
the thing."
Rome said to Stanley, “You'll never make a politi-
cian of that boy. Why try?"
“He's too young to say that about yet, Rome. I
should like to see him doing some work for his
country. . .
“They don't do that, my dear. You've been misin-
formed. I thought you went to the House sometimes.
. . . Really, Stan, I can't imagine why you should try
and turn Billy, who'd be some use in the world as an
animals' doctor, or a tiller of the soil, or, I daresay, as
a number of other things, into anything so futile and
so useless and so singularly unsuited both to his talents
and to his honest nature as a politician. I suppose
you'll make him stand for Parliament eventually. Well,
he'll quite likely get in. People will elect anyone. But
he'd only be bored and stupid and wretched there. He's
got no gift of the gab, for one thing. You let the
child do what he wants."
“I'm not forcing him. He knows he is free."
“He knows nothing of the sort. He knows you'veGEORGIAN
305
set your heart on this, and he doesn’t want to vex you.
Really, you mothers . .
So Billy, in the autumn of 1913, became the ineffi-
cient secretary of his kind, inefficient Liberal cousin,
who was, however, no more inefficient than his fellow
members of Parliament.
14
EXIT PAPA
Those were inefficient years; silly years, full of sound
and fury, signifying nothing. They were not much
sillier than usual, but there was rather more sound and
fury than had been customary of late. It was made by
militant suffragists, who smashed public property and
burned private houses with an ever more ardent aban-
don ; by Welsh churchmen who marched through Lon-
don declaring that on no account would they have their
church either disestablished or disendowed; by dock
and transport strikers, who had a great outbreak of
indomitability and determination in 191.1, and another
in 1912; by Mr. Lloyd George’s Insurance Act, which
caused much gnashing of teeth, foaming of mouths and
flashing of eyes; by Liberals and Conservatives, who,
for some reason, suddenly for a time abandoned that
sporting good humour which has always made English
political life what it is, a thing some like and others
scorn, and took on to dislike each other, even leaving
dinner parties to which members of the opposition
party had been carelessly invited; and by the men of
Ulster, who, being convinced in their consciences that
Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-
being of Ulster, covenanted to defeat the present con-3°6
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
spiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland,
and, to this end, got a quite good conspiracy going
themselves. There was also, it need hardly be said,
plenty of sound and fury on the continent, particularly
in the Balkans.
They make, these years, a noisy, silly, rowdy, but on
the whole cheery chapter of the idiot's tale. Howbeit,
they were less noisy and less silly, and far more cheery,
than the chapter which was to follow.
Just before this chapter began, papa died. After-
wards they said, it is a mercy papa is dead; that he
died before the smash that would so have shattered
him. Papa, gentle and sensitive and eighty-four, could
scarcely have endured the great war. Down what fresh
avenues of faith it would have sent his still adventurous
soul exploring, seeking strength and refuge from the
nightmare, would never be known. He died in May,
1914. He died as he had lived, a great and wide be-
liever, still murmuring, “I believe ... I believe . . .
i believe . .	—a credulous, faithful, comprehensive,
happy Georgian. He had moments when agnosticism
or scepticism was the dominant creed in his soul, but
they were only moments; soon the tide of his many
faiths would surge over him again, and in all these he
died.
“Dear papa,” said Vicky, weeping. “To think that
he is with mamma at last! And to think that now he
knows what is true. . . . Oh, dear, how will he ever
get on without all those speculations and new beliefs?
One knows, of course, that he is happy, darling papa
. . . but will he find it at all the same?”
Rome said, “Why? Taking your hypothesis, that
there is another life, why should it be supposed to be
a revelation of the truth about the universe, or aboutGEORGIAN
307
God ? Why should not papa go on speculating and
guessing at truth, trying new faiths? You people who
believe in what you call heaven seem to have no justi-
fication for making it out such an informed place.”
“Oh, my dear; aren’t we told that all shadows shall
flee away, and that we shall know? I’m sure we are,
somewhere, only you won’t read the Bible ever.”
“On the contrary, I read the Bible a good deaj. I
find it enormously interesting. But the one thing we
can be quite sure about all those who wrote it is that
they had no information at all as to what would occur
to them after their deaths. That is among the very
large quantity of information that no one alive has
ever yet had. So, if you think of papa in heaven, why
not think of him in the state in which he would cer-
tainly be happiest and most himself—still exploring
for truth? Why should death bring a sudden knowl-
edge of all the secrets of the universe? You believers
make so many and such large and such unwarrantable
assumptions.”
“My dear, we must make assumptions, or how get
through life at all?”
“Very true. How indeed? One must make a mil-
lion unwarrantable assumptions, such as that the sun
will rise to-morrow, and that the attraction of the earth
for our feet will for a time persist, and that if we do
certain things to our bodies they will cease to function,
and that if we get into a train it will probably carry
us along, and so forth. One must assume these things
just enough to take action on them, or, as you say, we
couldn’t get through life at all. But those are hypo-
thetical, pragmatical assumptions, for the purposes of
action; there is no call actually to believe them, intel-
lectually. And still less call to increase their number,3°8
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
and carry assumptions into spheres where it doesn’t
help us to action at all. For my part, I assume prac-
tically a great deal, intellectually nothing.”
Vicky was going through her engagement book,
seeing what she would have to cancel because of papa’s
death, and all she answered was, absently, “Dear papa!”SECOND PERIOD: SMASHI
SOUND AND FURY
THE so bitter, so recent, so familiar, so agonising
tale of the four years and a quarter between
August, 1914, and November, 1918, has been told and
re-told too often, and will not be told in detail here. It
is enough, if not too much, to say that there was a
great and dreadful war in Europe, and that nightmare
and chaos and the abomination of desolation held sway
for four horrid years. All there was of civilisation—
whatever we mean by that unsatisfactory, undefined,
relative word—suffered irretrievable damage. All
there was of greed, of cruelty, of barbarism, of folly,
incompetence, meanness, valour, heroism, selfishness,
littleness, self-sacrifice and hate, rose to the call in
each belligerent country and showed itself for what it
was. Men and women acted blindly, according to their
kind; they used the torments of others as stepping
stones to prosperity or fame; they endured torments
themselves, with complaining, with courage, or with
both; they did work they held to be useful, and got out
of it what credit and profit they could; or work they
knew was folly, and still got out of it what they could.
They went to the war, they stayed at home, they
scrambled for jobs among the chaos, they got rich,
they got poor, they died, were maimed, medalled, frost-
bitten, tortured, bored, imprisoned, embittered, enthu-
siastic, cheerful, hopeless, patient, or matter-of-fact, ac-
cording to circumstances and temperament. Many
3”312
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
people said a great deal, others very little. Some par-
ents boasted, “I have given my all/’ others said, “Well,
I suppose they've got to go into the damned thing,”
some men said, “I must go into it; it's right,” some,
“I shall go into it: it's an adventure,” some “I must
go into it like other people, though it's all wrong,”
some, “It may be all right for others, but I shan't go
into it,” some, “I shan't go until I'm forced,” some,
“I shan’t go even then.” There were, in fact, all man-
ner of different attitudes and ways of procedure with
regard to the war. To some it was a necessary or
unnecessary hell, to some a painful and tedious affair
enough, but with interests and alleviations and a good
goal in sight; to some an adventure; to some (at home)
a satisfactory sphere for work they enjoyed, to some
a holy war, to others a devil's dance in which they
would take no part, or which they wearily did what
they could to alleviate, or in which they joined with
cynical and conscious resolve not to be left out of
whatever profits might accrue.
But to the majority in each country it was merely
a catastrophe, like an earthquake, to be gone through
blindly, until better might be.
2
THE FAMILY AT WAR
Of the Garden family, Vicky was horrified but en-
thusiastically pro-war. Her two sons got commissions
early, and she helped the war by organising bazaars
and by doing whatever it was that one did (in the
early stages, for in the later more of violence had to
be done) to Belgian refugees. Maurice and his paperGEORGIAN
3i3
were violently pacificist, and became a by-word. Rome
saw the war and what had led up to it as the very
crown and sum of human folly, and helped, very ca-
pably and neatly, to pack up and send off food and
clothes to British prisoners. Stanley was caught in
the tide of war fervour. She worked in a canteen, and
served on committees for all kinds of good objects, and
behaved with great competence and energy, her heart
wrung day and night with fear for Billy. In 1917
she caught peace fever, joined the peace party and the
Women's International League, signed petitions and
manifestos in support of Lord Lansdowne, and spoke
on platforms about it, which Billy thought tiresome
of her.
Irving lent a car to an ambulance, and his services
to the Ministry of Munitions, and became a special
constable. Una sent cakes to her sons and farm-hands
at the front, and employed landgirls on the farm. She
took the war as all in the day's work; there had been
wars before in history, and there would be wars again.
It was awfully sad, all the poor boys being taken like
that; but it sent up the price of corn and milk, and
that pleased Ted, for all his anxiety for his sons.
The younger generation acted and reacted much as
might be expected of them. Vicky's Hugh, who joined
the gunners, was interested in the business and came
tolerably well through it, only sustaining a lame leg.
Tony, the younger, was killed in 1916. Maurice's
Roger, whose class was B2, served in France for a
year, and wrote a good deal of trench poetry. He was
then invalided out, and entered the Ministry of Infor-
mation, where he continued, in the intervals of com-
piling propaganda intended to interest the natives of
Iceland in the cause of the Allies, to publish trench314
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
poetry, full of smells, shells, corpses, mud and blood.
“I simply can't read the poetry you write in these
days, Roger," his mother, Amy, complained. “It's
become too terribly beastly and nasty and corpsey. I
can't think what you want to write it for, I'm sure."
“Unfortunately, mother," Roger explained, kindly,
“war is rather beastly and nasty, you know. And a bit
corpsey, too."
“My dear boy, I know that; I'm not an idiot. Don’t,
for goodness’ sake, talk to me in that superior way, it
reminds me of your father. All I say is, why write
about the corpses? There’ve always been plenty of
them, people who've died in their beds of diseases. You
never used to write about them ”
“I suppose one’s object is to destroy the false glam-
our of war. There’s no glamour about disease."
“Glamour, indeed! There you go again with that
terrible nonsense. I don't meet any of these people
you talk about who think there's glamour in war. I'm
sure I never saw any glamour in it, with all you boys
in the trenches and all of us at home slaving ourselves
to death and starving on a slice of bread and margarine
a day. Glamour, indeed! I’ll tell you what it is, a set
of you young men have invented that glamour theory,
just so as to have an excuse for what you call destroy-
ing it, with your nasty talk. Like you’ve invented
those awful Old Men you go on about, who like the
war. I’m sick of your Old Men and your corpses."
“I’m sick of them myself," said Roger, gloomily,
and changed the subject, for you could not argue with
Amy. But he went on writing war poetry, and gained
a good deal of reputation as one of our soldier poets.
On the whole he was more successful as a poet thanGEORGIAN
315
as a propagandist to Iceland, which cool island re-
mained a little detached about the war.
Stanley's Billy hailed the outbreak of hostilities with
some pleasure, and was among the first civilians to
enlist. Here, he felt, was a job more in his line than
being secretary to his Liberal cousin, which he had
found more and more tedious as time passed. He
fought in France, in Flanders, in Gallipoli, and in
Mesopotamia, was wounded three times, and recovered
each time to fight again. He was a cheerful, ordinary,
unemotional young soldier, a good deal bored, after a
bit, with the war. On one of his leaves, in 1916, he
married a young lady from the Vaudeville Theatre,
whom Stanley could not care about.
“I know mother wanted me to marry a highbrow
girl,” he confided to Molly. “Some girl who's been to
college or something. But I haven't much to say to
that sort ever, nor they to me. Now Dot . .
But even Molly had her misgivings about Dot. She
was not sure that Dot would prove quite monogamous
enough. And, as it turned out, Dot did not prove
monogamous at all, but rather the contrary.
Molly herself had become an ambulance driver in
France. She frankly enjoyed the war. She became
engaged to officers, successively and simultaneously.
She acted at canteen entertainments and gained a
charming reputation as a comedienne. At the end of
the war she received the O. B. E. for her distinguished
services.
Her mother knew about some of the engagements,
and thought them too many, but did not know that
Molly had for a time been more than engaged. She
never would know that, for Molly kept her own
counsel. Molly knew that to Stanley, with her ideal-3x6
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
istic view of life and her profound belief in the endur-
ing seriousness of personal relations, it would have
seemed incredibly trivial, light and loose to be a lover
and pass on, to commit oneself so deeply and yet not
count it deep at all, but emerge free and untrammelled
for the next adventure. It had seemed incredible to
Stanley in her husband; it would seem more incredible
in her daughter.
“Mother's so different,” thought Molly. “She'd
never understand. . . . Aunt Rome's different too, but
she'd understand about me; she always understands
things, even if she despises them. She would despise
this, but she wouldn't be surprised. . . . Mother would
be hurt to death. She must never, never guess."
As to Vicky's daughters, Phyllis was useful in some
competent, part-time, married way that may be imag-
ined. Nancy turned violently anti-war and became en-
gaged to a Hungarian artist, who was subsequently
removed from his studio in Chelsea and interned.
Imogen was everything by turns and nothing long.
The war very greatly discomposed her. It seemed to
her a very shocking outrage both that there should be
a war, and that, since there was a war, she should be
found, owing to a mere fluke of sex, among the non-
combatants. The affair was a horrid nightmare, which
she had to stand and watch. People of her age simply
weren't non-combatants; that was how she felt about
it. Strong, active people in the twenties; it seemed a
disgrace to her, who had never before so completely
realised that she was not, in point of fact, a young
man. War was ghastly and beastly; but if it was there,
people like her ought to be in it. However, since this
was obviously impossible, she sulkily and simultane-
ously joined a pacifist league and became a V. A. D.,GEORGIAN
3i7
in the hope of getting sent out to France. She was
an infinitely incapable V. A. D., did everything with re-
markable incompetence, and fainted or was sick when
her senses and nerves were more displeased than usual
by what they encountered, which was often. She was
soon told that she had no gifts for nursing and had
better stick to cleaning the wards. This she did, with
relief, for some time, until her friends said, why not
get a job in a government office, which was much more
lucrative and amusing. Sick of hospitals, she did so.
She was under no delusions as to the usefulness of any
work she was likely to do in an office; but still, one had
to do something. She could not write; her jarred,
unhappy nerves sought and found a certain degree of
oblivion in the routine, the camaraderie, the demoralis-
ing absurdity, of office work, which was like being at
school again. Also, it was paid, and, as she could not
write, she must earn money somehow.
So, indolent, greedy, unbalanced, trivial and demor-
alised, Imogen, like many others, drifted through the
great war. Two deaths occurred to her—the death of
her brother and companion Tony, which blackened life
and made the war seem to her more than ever a hell of
futile devilry; and the death of Neville, a young naval
officer, to whom she had become engaged in 1915, and
who was killed in 1916. It was a queer affair, born
of the emotionalism and sensation-seeking that beset
many people at that time. She had not known him
long; she did not know him well. She was aware
that it was ignominious of her to encourage him, merely
on the general love she bore to the navy, a little flat-
tered excitement, and a desire, new-born, to experience
the sensation of engagement. They had few thoughts
in common, but they could joke together, and talk of3i8
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
ships, and of how they loved one another, and about
him was the glamour of the navy, and she felt, when
he kissed her, that stimulation of the emotions and
senses that passes for love. When they talked about
things in general, and not about their love, she heard
within her that cold voice that never lied, saying, “You
cannot live with this nice young naval man. You will
tire each other.” Worse, they sometimes shocked
one another. Could it be—disastrous thought—that
she had outgrown the navy?
“You’re a rum kid, darling,” he said to her. “You
and I disagree about nearly everything, it seems to me.
We shall have a lively married life. . . . But I don’t
care. ...”
But he did care a little, all the same. Imogen some-
times suspected that, like herself, he had begun to think
they had made a mistake. But then he would take her
in his arms, and when they embraced neither of them
felt that they had made a mistake.
However, one is not embracing all the time, and
Imogen slowly came to the point, between one leave
and another, of deciding to end the affair. The navy
and she had grown away from each other; there was
no doubt about that.
But before they could discuss this point, Neville
was killed at Jutland.
Imogen wept for him, and believed for a time that
she loved him profoundly and missed him horribly.
But the small cold voice within her that never lied
whispered, “You are only sorry that he is dead for
his sake, because he loved being alive and ought to be
alive. You sometimes miss his kisses and his love,
but you are glad that you are free.”
She spent an unhappy week-end with his parents inGEORGIAN
3i9
the country. They did not very greatly care for her—
cared only for Neville’s sake. Neville’s father was a
rector, very simple and village, his mother a rector’s
wife, very parochial and busy. With them Imogen felt
leggy and abrupt, and the wrong kind of a girl. She
couldn’t be articulate with them, or show them how
bitterly she felt Neville’s death before he had properly
lived. They were unhappy but not bitter; they said, “It
was God’s will,” and she could not tell them that, in her
view, they spoke inaccurately and blasphemed. Yet
their hearts were (to use the foolish phrase) broken,
and hers by no means. She caught Neville’s mother
looking at her speculatively from behind her glasses,
and wondered if she were wondering how much this
gauche young woman had loved her boy. She wanted
to beg her pardon and dash for the next train. They
could not want her with them; to have her was a duty
they thought they owed to Neville. “I’ve no right
here,” she cried to herself. “They loved him. I was
only in love with his love for me. Their lives are
spoilt, mine isn’t.”
She did not visit them again. That was over. Ne-
ville took his place in her memory not as a personal
loss but as a gay, heartbreaking figure, a tragic symbol
of murdered, outraged youth.
But when Tony was killed, the world’s foundations
shook. He was her darling brother, her beloved com-
panion in adventure, scrapes and enterprises from their
childhood up. She could by no means recover from
the cruel death of Tony, which shattered the life of
his home.
But daily work in an office, so cheerful, so fruitless,
so absurd, was an anodyne. Offices were full of people
who did not mind the war, who, some of them, rather320
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
enjoyed the war. There are no places more cynical
than the offices of governments. Not parliaments in
session, not statesmen in council, not cardinals in con-
clave, not even journalists emitting their folly in the
dead of the night. Encased in an armour of this easy
cynicism against the savage darts of the most horrid
war, Imogen and many others drifted through its last
years to the war’s qynical culmination, the horrid but
welcome peace.THIRD PERIOD: DÉBRISI
PEACE
A HORRID peace it was and is. It is the fashion to
say so, and, unlike most fashionable sayings, it is
true. But at first the fact that it was peace, that people
were not killing each other (in such large numbers and
for such small reasons) any more, was enough and made
everyone happy. A poor peace enough; but the fact
remains that the worst peace is heaven compared with
the best war. It was like the first return of chocolate
eclairs. “They’re rather funny ones,” people said, “not
quite like the old kind; but still, they are eclairs.” So
peace. It was indeed a rather funny one, not quite
like the old kind; but still, it was peace. And what, if
you come to that, was the old kind, that any other
should be compared unfavourably with it ? The trouble
is, perhaps, rather that this new variety is like it.
The Peace Treaty has been called all kinds of names
—patchwork, violent, militarist, manufactured, make-
shift, frail, silly, uneconomic, unstatesmanlike; and all
the names except the last may be true. (Unstatesman-
like the treaty was certainly not; very few treaties
drawn up by statesmen unfortunately are that; and, in
passing, this word unstatesmanlike seems often to be
curiously and thoughtlessly used, in a sense directly
contrary to that which it should bear.) Well, even if
nearly all these opprobrious names were true, it seems
a pity to be always discontented. Wiser were those
who encouraged the infant, patted it on the back, and
323324
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
greeted the unseen with a cheer. Like beer, like shoe-
leather, it seemed costly and poor. But who are we,
that we can afford to be particular? We should make
the best of whatever peace is given us, even if it is
not the brand we should have preferred. “We’ve got,”
said the resigned citizen, “to put up with these poor,
nasty-looking things, that last no time at all. Beer
it’s not, and shoeleather it’s not, and peace it won’t be,
properly speaking. A kind of substitute they all are,
like margarine. But what I say is, we’re lucky to get
them.” So we were.
Idealists, such as Stanley Croft, though they did not
admire the Treaty of Versailles, saw it as the material
out of which the living temple of peace might yet be
built, on that great cornerstone, the League of Nations.
The League of Nations was to the peace-wishers as his
creed is to the Christian; it bound them to believe in
a number of difficult, happy, unlikely and highly in-
compatible things, such as lasting peace, the freedom
of small nations, arbitration between large ones, and so
forth. They joined the League of Nations Union,
full of hope and faith. Stanley did so, at its inception,
and became, in fact, a speaker on platforms in the
cause.
2
THE LAST HOPE
Stanley, in her late fifties, looked and spoke well on
platforms; she looked both nice and important. Her
blue eyes, under their thick, level brows, were as starry
as ever, her voice as deep and full and good, her mind
young and alert. A clever, high-minded, balanced,
vigorous, educated matron of close on sixty; that wasGEORGIAN
325
what Stanley was. She was the kind of matron to
whom younger women gave their confidence. Her
son and daughter did not give her their whole confi-
dence, but that was not her fault.
Billy was demobilised. A seamed scar cut across
his cheek, and his eyes were queer and sulky and brood-
ing. He disliked by now his wife, Dot. She recipro-
cated the feeling, and very soon left him for another,
so he divorced her. Stanley could not help being glad,
Dot had been such a mistake. She was not the kind of
wife to help her husband in his parliamentary career.
She was the more the kind who succeeds him in it, but
even that Stanley could not know in 1919, and she
regarded Dot as, from every point of view, a wash-out.
“Look here, mother,” Billy said to her, with nervous,
sulky decision. “I can’t go back to that secretary job.
Nor any other job of that kind. Sitting jobs and writ-
ing jobs bore me stiff. I’ve done too much sitting, in
those beastly trenches. And politics anyhow seem to
me plain rot. I want to train for a vet. I’m awfully
sorry if you’re sick about it, but there it is. Why don’t
you make Molly take on a secretary-to-a-Liberal job?
She couldn’t be worse than I was, anyhow.”
“A vet, Billy! Darling boy, why a vet? Why not
a human doctor, if you must be something of that
sort?”
“Want to be a vet,” said Billy, and was.
As to Molly, she became secretary to no Liberal, for
she married, in 1919, a flight commander, and his
politics, if any, were Coalition-Unionist.
So much for Stanley’s hopes for political careers
for her children. She sighed, and accepted the in-
evitable, and put her hope more than ever in the League326
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
of Nations. If that could not save the world, nothing
could. . . .
Certainly nothing could, said Rome. Nothing ever
had yet. At least, what did people mean, precisely, by
save? Words, words, words. They signified, as com-
monly and lightly used, so very little.
3
THE CHARABANC
The post-war period swung and jolted along, like
a crazy, broken-down charabanc full of persons of
varying degrees of mental weakness, all out on an asy-
lum treat. Every now and then the charabanc stopped
for a picnic, or conference, at some nice continental
or English watering-place, and these were very cosy,
chatty, happy, expensive little times, enjoyed by all,
and really not doing very much more harm to Europe
than any other form of treat would have done, since
they had, as a rule (the amusing reconstruction of the
map of Europe once effected), practically no effects of
any kind, beyond, of course, strengthening the already
perfect harmony prevalent among the victorious allied
nations.
Reparations was the great topic at these chats; but
it was and is such a very difficult topic that no one
there (no one there being very clever), made much of
it, and it has not really been decided about even now.
International politics were, in fact, in the years fol-
lowing the great war, even more greatly confused than
is usual. Only one great international principle re-
mained, as ever, admirably lucid—that principle soGEORGIAN
327
simply explained by M. Anatole France’s Penguin
peasant to the Porpoise philosopher.
“Vous n’aimez pas les Marsouins?”
“Nous les haïssons.”
“Pour quelle raison les haïssez-vous ?”
“Vous le demandez? Les Marsouins ne sont-ils pas
les voisins des Pingouins?”
“Sans doute.”
“Eh bien, c’est pour cela que les Pingouins haïssent
les Marsouins.”
“Est-ce une raison?”
“Certainement. Qui dit voisins dit ennemis. . . .
Vous ne savez donc pas ce que c’est que le patriotisme?”
There was no confusion here.
Home politics, in each country, seemed to lack even
this dominant motif, and confusion reigned unrelieved.
In Great Britain a Coalition government was in power.
The usual view about this government is that it was
worse and more incompetent than other governments ;
but it seems bold to go as far as this. “The nation
wants a return to a frank party government,” non-
coalition Liberals and Conservatives began saying, and
said without intermission until they got it, in 1922.
They sometimes explained why they preferred a frank
party government, but none of their reasons seemed
very good reasons ; the real reason was that they, very
properly and naturally, wished their own party to be
in power. The Die-Hards and the Wee Frees came
to be regarded as valiant, incorruptible little bands,
daring to stand alone; Co-Liberals and Co-Unionists
were understood, somehow, to have compromised with
Satan for reward. There is a good deal of unkindness
in political life.328
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
4
SETTLING DOWN
Meanwhile, the people settled down, were demobi-
lised from the army, and from the various valuable
services which they had been rendering to their country,
and began to fall back into the old grooves, began to
recover, at least partially, from the war. But the war
had left its heritage of poverty, of wealth, of disease,
of misery, of discontent, of feverish unrest.
“Now to write again,” said Imogen, and did so, but
found it difficult, for the nervous strain of the years
past, and the silliness of the avocations she had pur-
sued through them, had paralysed initiative, and given
her, in common with many others, an inclination to
sally forth after breakfast and catch a train or a bus,
seeking such employment as might be created for her,
instead of creating her own. The helpless industry
of the slave had become hers, and to regain that of the
independent and self-propelled worker was a slow busi-
ness.
Further, she was absorbed, shaken and disturbed by
a confusing and mystifying love into which she had
fallen, blind and unaware, even before peace had de-
scended. She very greatly loved someone whom she
could not, what with one thing, what with another,
hope to marry. All values were to her subverted; she
fumbled blindly at a world grown strange, a world as
to whose meaning and whose laws she groped in the
dark, and emotion drowned her like a flood.
There revived in force about this time the curious
old legend about the young. The post-war young, they
were now called, and once more people began to be-
lieve and to say that one young person closely resemblesGEORGIAN
329
other young persons, and many more things about
them.
“The war,” they said, “has caused a hiatus, and
thought has broken with tradition. Thus youth is no
longer willing to accept forms and formulae only on
account of their age. It has set out on a voyage of
enquiry, and, finding some things which are doubtful
and others which are insufficient, is searching for
forms of expression more in harmony with the realities
of life and knowledge.”
Many novels were written about the New Young,
half in reprobation, half in applause; famous literary
men praised them in speeches; they were much spoken
of in newspapers. All the things were said of them
that have been said of the young at all times, only
now their newness, their special quality, was attributed
to the European war, in which they were too young to
have actively participated, but which had, it was be-
lieved, exercised upon them some mystic and transmut-
ing influence. Once more the legend flourished that
the number of years lived constitutes some kind of
temperamental bond, so that people of the same age
are many minds with but a single thought, bearing one
to another a close resemblance. The young were com-
mented on as if they were some new and just dis-
covered species of animal life, with special qualities
and habits which repaid investigation. “Will these
qualities wear off?” precise-minded and puzzled en-
quirers asked. “When the present young are thirty
and middle-aged, will they still possess them ? Do the
qualities depend upon their age, or upon the period
of the world’s history in which they happen to be
that age?” But no precise or satisfactory reply was
ever given. It never is. Enquirers into the exact330
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
meaning of popular theories and phrases are of all
persons the least and the worst answered. You may,
for instance, enquire of a popular preacher, or anyone
else, who denounces his countrymen as “pagan” (as
speakers, and even Bishops, at religious gatherings have
been known to do), what exactly he means by this
word, and you will find that he means irreligious, and
is apparently oblivious of the fact that pagans were
and are, in their village simplicity, the most religious
persons who have ever flourished, having more gods to
the square mile than the Christian or any other Church
has ever possessed or desired, and paying these gods
more devout and more earnest devotion than you will
meet even aitiong Anglo-Catholics in congress. To be
pagan may not be very intelligent; it is rustic and
superstitious, but it is at least religious. Yet you will
hear the word “pagan" flung loosely about for “ir-
religious,” or sometimes as meaning joyous, material
and comfort-loving, whereas the simple pagans walked
the earth full of what is called holy awe and that
mystic faith in unseen powers which is the antithesis
of materialism, and gloomy with apprehension of the
visitations of their horrid and vindictive gods; and,
though no doubt, like all men, they loved comfort, they
only obtained, just as we do, as much of that as they
could afford. And, whatever Bishops mean by pagan,
as applied to modern Englishmen, it is almost certain
that they do not mean all this.
Never, perhaps, was thinking, writing and talking
looser, vaguer and more sentimental than in the years
following the European war. It was as if that dis-
aster had torn great holes in the human intelligence,
which it could ill afford. There was much writing both
of verse and of prose, much public and private speakingGEORGIAN
33i
much looking for employment and not finding it, much
chat about the building of new houses, much foolish
legislation, much murder and suicide, much amaze-
ment on the part of the press. Newspapers are always
easily amazed, but since the war weakened even their
intelligence there could not be so much as a little extra
departure from railway stations on a Bank Holiday
(surely most natural, if one thinks it out) without the
ingenuous press placarding London with “Amazing
scenes.” The press was even amazed if a married
couple sought divorce, or if it thundered, or was at
all warm. “Scenes” they woyld say, “Scenes”; and
the eager reader, searching their columns for these,
could find none worthy of the name. One pictures
newspaper reporters going about, struck dumb with
amazement at every smallest incident in this amazing
life we lead, hurrying back to their offices and com-
municating their emotion to editors, news editors and
leader writers, so that the whole staff gapes, round-
eyed, at the astonishing world on which they have to
comment. An ingenuous race; but they make the mis-
take of forgetting that many of their readers are so very
experienced that they are seldom surprised at anything.
During these years, the sex disability as regards the
suffrage being now removed, women stood freely for
Parliament, but the electorate, being mostly of the
male sex, showed that the only women they desired to
have in Parliament were the wives of former mem-
bers who had ceased to function as such, through death,
peerage, or personal habits. Many women, including
Stanley Croft, who of course stood herself, found this
very disheartening. It seemed that the only chance
for a woman who desired a political career was to marry
a member and then put him out of action. Such332
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
women as were political in their own persons, who
were educated and informed on one or more public
topics, had small chance. “We don’t want to be ruled
by the ladies,” the electorate firmly maintained. “It’s
not their job. Their place is ...” etc.
The world had not changed much since the reign of
Queen Victoria.
And so, with the French firmly and happily settled
in the Ruhr, their hearts full of furious fancies, de-
claring that it would not be French to stamp on a
beaten foe, but that their just debts they would have,
with Germany rapidly breaking to pieces, drifting
towards the rocks of anarchy or monarchy, and work-
ing day and night at the industry of printing million-
mark notes, with Russia damned, as usual, beyond
any conceivable recovery, with Italy suffering from a
violent attack of Fascismo, with Austria counted
quite out, with a set of horrid, noisy and self-conscious
little war-born states in the heart of Europe, all
neighbours and all feeling and acting as such, with
Turkey making of herself as much of an all-round
nuisance as usual, with Great Britain anxiously, per-
spiringly endeavouring both to arrest the progressive
wreckage of Europe and to keep on terms with her
late allies, and with Ireland enjoying at last the peace
and blessings of Home Rule, Europe entered on her
fifth year since the armistice.
5
A NOTE ON MAURICE
In this year Maurice’s paper perished, having long
ceased to pay its way, and, in fact, like so many paper»,GEORGIAN
333
suffering loss on each copy that was bought. This is
as natural a state of affairs for papers as living on
over-drafts is for private persons, but neither state,
unfortunately, can last for ever. The money behind
the Gadfly at last gave out, and the Gadfly ceased to
be. Maurice, at the age of sixty-five, was deprived
of his job and his salary, and became a free-lance, but
no less fiery and stubborn, journalist. There were
more things to oppose, in his view, than ever before,
and he opposed them at large, in the hospitable pages
of many a friendly periodical. His opposition had no
effect on the affairs of the world, but, in combination
with an adequate supply of alcoholic nourishment and
his blessed emancipation from married life, it caused
him to remain self-respecting and fit, kept senility at
bay, and assisted him to bear up against the repeated
shocks of Roger’s published works.
6
A NOTE ON IMOGEN
The P. & O. liner hooted its way down Southampton
Water. The land, the Solent, the open sea, were veiled
in February mist. Imogen, leaning on the rail and
straining her eyes shore-ward, could only see it dimly,
darkly, looming like a ghost through fog. That was
England, and life in England; a mist-bound world
wherein one blindly groped. A mist-bound and yet
radiant world, holding all one valued, all that gave
life meaning, all that one was leaving behind.
For Imogen was going, for a year, to the Pacific
Islands. Hugh too was going there, to make maps and
plans for the government. Imogen was going with334
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
him, exploring, wandering about at leisure from island
to island. The perfect life, she had once believed this
to be. And still the thought of coral islands, of palm
and yam and bread-fruit trees, with the fruits thereof
dropping ripely on emerald grass, with monkeys and
gay parakeets screaming in the branches, and great
turtles flopping in blue seas, with beachcombers drink-
ing palm-toddy on white beaches, the crystal-clear
lagoon in which to swim, and, beyond, the blue island-
dotted open sea—even now these things tugged at
Imogen’s heart-strings and made her feel again at
moments the adventurous little girl she had once been,
dreaming vagabond dreams.
But more often this bright, still world beyond the
mists seemed like the paradise of a hymn, a far, un-
natural, brilliant, alien place, which would make one
sick for home.
Yet she had chosen to go, and no remonstrances,
repentances and waverings had quite undone that
choice. In that far, bright, clear, alien place, beyond
the drifting mists, perhaps thought too was lucid and
unconfused, not the desperate, mist-bound, storm-
driven, helpless business it was in London. In London
all values and all meanings were fluid, were as windy
clouds, drifting and dissolving into strange shapes.
Life bore too intense, too passionate an emotional sig-
nificance ; personal relationships were too tangled; clear
thought was drowned in desire. One could not see
life whole, only a flame, a burning star, at its heart.
Through years and years this could not go on ; the
entanglement of circumstance, the enmeshing of soul
and will, was too close for any unravelling; it could
only be cut. Under the knife that cut it—and yet was it
cut at all, or only hacked all in vain?—Imogen’s soulGEORGIAN
335
seemed to bleed to death, to bleed and swoon quite
away.
What had she done, and why? All reasons seemed
to reel from sight as they churned for open sea between
those mist-blind shores. Parakeets? Bread-fruit?
Lagoons and coral reefs? O God, she cared for none
of them. She had been mad, mad, mad.
“To leave me for so long . . . you can’t mean to do
it. . . ”
Above the turning, churning screws the hurt voice
spoke, how truly, and stabbed her through once more.
Can't mean to do it . . . can’t do it . . . can’t. . . .
Oh, how very true indeed. And yet she must do it
and would. It was no use; it would solve nothing,
settle nothing; merely for a year she would be sick
for home among the alien yams.
But, at the thought of the yams, and the bread-fruit,
and the grass and parakeets more green than any
imagining, and of the very blue lagoons, a little com-
fort stole into her heavy heart. A merry beachcomber
on a white beach—that was the thing to be, even if
nothing could be a really happy arrangement but to be
two merry beachcombers together. At the thought of
the two merry beachcombers who might have been so
very happy, the tears brimmed and blinded Imogen’s
eyes.
What a mess, what a mess, what a bitter, bemusing
muddle, life was! One renounced its best gifts, those
things in it which seemed finest, most ennobling, most
enriching, holding most of beauty and of good; these
things one renounced, and filled the dreadful gap with
turtles, with a little palm-toddy, with a few foolish
parakeets.336
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
What an irony!
Through the blinding mist, above the rushing sound
of foaming waters, the voice cried to her . . . Imogen,
Imogen . . . come back.
Imogen wept.
Alas for the happy vagabond, fallen into such sad
state.
7
FINAL
Rome saw Stanley off to Geneva. Stanley had
obtained employment in the Labour department of the
League of Nations. She was pleased, and keen, and
full of hope. The League would save the world
yet. ...
“It’s going to be the most interesting work of my
life, so far,” said Stanley, leaning out of the train.
“To find one’s best job at sixty-two—that’s rather
nice, I think. Life’s so full of hope, Rome. Oh, I
do feel happy about it.”
“Good,” said Rome, and, “Good-bye, my dear,” for
the train began to move.
“Good-bye, Romie. . . . Take care of yourself;
you’re looking tired lately.”
“I’m very old, you see,” Rome said, after the re-
treating train, and a passer-by, turning to glance at the
slight, erect, grey-haired lady, thought that she did not
look very old at all.
But she was very old, for she would soon be sixty-
four, and, further, she was very tired, for she had
cancer coming on, inherited from mamma. She had
not mentioned it to anyone yet, beyond the doctor, who
had told her that, unless she had operations, she wouldGEORGIAN
337
die within a year. Operations nothing, Rome had
said; such a bore, and only to prolong the agony; if
she had to die, she would die as quickly as might be.
She further decided that, before the pain should become
acute or the illness overwhelming, she would save
trouble to herself and others by an apparently careless
overdose of veronal. Meanwhile, she had a few months
to live.
The thought that it would only, probably, be a few
months, set her considering, as she drove herself home
in her car, her practised hands steady on the wheel,
life, its scope, its meaning, and its end. Life was well
enough, she thought; well enough, and a gay enough
business for those who had the means to make it so
and the temperament to find it so. Life was no great
matter, nor, certainly, was death; but it was well
enough. We come and we go; we are born, we live,
and we die; this poor ball, thought Rome, serves us
for all that; and, on the whole, we make too much com-
plaint of it, expect, one way and another, too much of
it. It is, after all, but a turning ball, which has burst,
for some reason unknown to science, into a curious, in-
teresting and rather unwholesome form of animal and
vegetable life. Indeed, thought Rome, I think it is a
rather remarkable ball. But of course it can be but
of the slightest importance, from the point of view
of the philosopher who considers the very great extent
and variety of the universe and the extremely long
stretching of the ages. Its inhabitants tend to over-
rate its importance in the scheme of things. Human
beings surely tend to over-rate their own importance.
Funny, hustling, strutting, vain, eager little creatures
that we are, so clever and so excited about the business
of living, so absorbed and intent about it all, so proud338
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
of our achievements, so tragically deploring our dis-
asters, so prone to talk about the wreckage of civilisa-
tion, as if it mattered much, as if civilisations had not
been wrecked and wrecked all down human history, and
it all came to the same thing in the end. Nevertheless,
thought Rome, we are really rather wonderful little
spurts of life. The brief pageant, the tiny, squalid
story of human life upon this earth, has been lit, among
the squalour and the greed, by amazing flashes of in-
telligence, of valour, of beauty, of sacrifice, of love.
A silly story if you will, but a somewhat remarkable
one. Told by an idiot, and not a very nice idiot at
that, but an idiot with gleams of genius and of fine-
ness. The valiant dust that builds on dust—how
valiant, after all, it is. No achievement can matter,
and all things done are vanity, and the fight for suc-
cess and the world's applause is contemptible and
absurd, like a game children play, building their sand
castles which shall so soon one and all collapse; but
the queer, enduring spirit of enterprise which animates
the dust we are is not contemptible nor absurd.
Rome mused, running leisurely across Hyde Park,
of herself, her parents, and her sisters and brothers,
of how variously they had all taken life. Her papa had
made of it a great spiritual adventure. Her mamma—
what had mamma made of life? She had, anyhow,
accepted papa and his spiritual adventure, and accepted
all her children and their lives. And yet, always and
always, mamma had remained delicately apart, de-
tached, too gentle to be called cynical, too practical to
be called a philosopher, too shrewd to be deceived by
life. Dear mamma. Rome very often missed her
still. As to Vicky, she had skimmed gracefully over
life’s surface like a swallow, dipping her pretty wingsGEORGIAN
339
in the shallows and splashing them about, or like a
bee, sipping and tasting each flower. She had plunged
frequently, ardently and yet lightly into life. Maurice
had not plunged into life; he had fought it, opposed
it, treated it as an enemy in a battle; he had made no
terms with it. Stanley had, on the other hand, em-
braced it like a lover, or like a succession of lovers, to
each of which she gave the best of her heart and soul
and mind before she passed on to the next. Stanley
believed in life, that it was or could be splendid and
divine. Irving and Una both accepted it calmly, cheer-
fully, without speculation, as a good enough thing,
Irving with more of enterprise and more of progres-
sive desire, Una placidly, statically, eating the meal set
before her and wishing nothing more, nothing less.
Both these accepted.
And Rome herself had rejected. Without opposi-
tion and without heat, she had refused to be made an
active participant in the business, but had watched it
from her seat in the stalls as a curious and entertain-
ing show. That was, and must always, in any circum-
stances, have been her way. Had she married, or had
she gone away, long ago, with Mr. Jayne, would she
then have been forced into some closer, some more
intimate spiritual relationship with the show? Pos-
sibly. Or possibly not. Life is infinitely compelling,
but the spirit remains infinitely itself.
Anyhow, it mattered not at all. Life, whatever it
had, whatever it might have meant to her, was in its
last brief lap.
“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. . .340
TOLD BY AN IDIOT
Her little drift of dust was so soon to return and
subside whence it came, dust to dust.
She thought that she would miss the queer, absurd
show, which would go on with its antics without her,
down who knew what aeons? Perhaps not very many
after all; perhaps all life was before long dustily to
subside, leaving the ball, like a great revolving tomb,
to spin its way through space. Or perhaps the ball
itself would dash suddenly from its routine spinning,
would fly, would rush like a moth for a lamp, to some
great bright sun and there burst into flame, till its last
drift of ashes should be consumed and no more seen.
A drift of dust, a drift of storming dust. It settles,
and the little stir it has made is over and forgotten.
The winds will storm on among the bright and barren
stars.
Rome smiled, as she neatly swung out at the Gros-
venor Gate.
THE ENDPR6025.A16 T62