IN A FIX
To go, or not to go? Did I want or not want to bicycle over to tea with the Hanbury-Belchers at Pokemore? Wouldn't it be pleasanter to stay at home?
I liked the Hanbury-Belchers—
Or did I really like them?
Still, it might be pleasant?
But how beforehand can one ever tell? Experience? I was still, I felt, as ignorant of life as a new-born infant; experience has taught me nothing; what I needed was some definite, a priori principle, some deep conception of the meaning of existence, in the light of which problems of this kind would solve themselves at once.
I leant my bicycle against the gate, and sat down to think the matter out. Calling to mind the moral debates of the old philosophers, I meditated on that Summum Bonum, or Sovereign Felicity of which they argued; but from their disputes and cogitations what came back most vividly—what seemed to fall upon one almost in a hush of terror—was that paralysis or dread balance of desire they imagined; the predicament in fact of that philosophic quadruped, who, because he found in each of them precisely the same attraction, stood, unable to move, between two bundles of hay, until he perished of hunger.
VERTIGO
No! I don't like it; I can't approve of it; I have always thought it most regrettable that serious and ethical Thinkers like ourselves should go scuttling through space in this undignified manner. Is it seemly that I, at my age, should be hurled, with my books of reference, and bed-clothes, and hot-water bottle, across the sky at the unthinkable rate of nineteen miles a second? As I say, I don't at all like it. This universe of astronomical whirligigs makes me a little giddy.
That God should spend His eternity—which might be so much better employed—in spinning countless Solar Systems, and skylarking, like a great child, with tops and teetotums—is not this a serious scandal? I wonder what all our circumgyrating Monotheists really do think of it?
THE EVIL EYE
Drawn by the unfelt wind in my little sail over the shallow estuary, I lay in my boat, lost in a dream of mere existence. The cool water glided through my trailing fingers; and leaning over, I watched the sands that slid beneath me, the weeds that languidly swayed with the boat's motion. I was the cool water, I was the gliding sand and the swaying weeds, I was the sea and sky and sun, I was the whole vast Universe.
Then between my eyes and the sandy bottom a mirrored face looked up at me, floating on the smooth film of water over which I glided. At one look from that too familiar, and yet how sinister and goblin a face, my immeasurable soul collapsed like a wrecked balloon; I shrank sadly back into my named personality, and sat there, shabby, hot, and very much bored with myself in my little boat.
THE EPITHET
'Occult, night-wandering, enormous, honey-pale—'
The morning paper lay there unopened; I knew I ought to look at the news, but I was too busy just then trying to find an adjective for the Moon—the magical, unheard of, moony epithet, which, could I only find or invent it, what then would matter the sublunary quakes and conflicts of this negligible earth?
THE GARDEN PARTY
'Yes, I suppose it is rather a dull Garden Party,' I agreed, though my local pride was a little hurt by the disdain of that visiting young woman for our rural society. 'Still we have some interesting neighbours, when you get to know them. Now that fat lady over there in purple—do you see her? Mrs. Turnbull—she believes in Hell, believes in Eternal Torment. And that old gentleman with whiskers and white spats is convinced that England is tottering on the very brink of the abyss. The pie-faced lady he is talking to was, she asserts, Mary Queen of Scots in a previous existence. And our Curate—we're proud of our Curate—he's a great cricketer, and a kind of saint as well. They say he goes out in Winter at three o'clock in the morning, and stands up to his neck in a pond, praying for sinners.'
WELTSCHMERZ
'How depressed you look! What on earth's the matter?'
'Central Europe,' I said, 'and the chaos in China is something awful. There's a threatened shortage, too, of beer in Copenhagen.'
'But why should that worry you?'
'It doesn't. It's what I said to Mrs. Rumbal—I do say such idiotic things! She asked me to come to see them. "I shall be delighted," I said, "as delighted—"
'But it's your fault for lending me that book of Siamese translations!—"as delighted," I said, "Mrs. Rumbal, as a royal flamingo, when he alights upon a cluster of lotuses."'
BOGEYS
I remember how charmed I was with these new acquaintances, to whose house I had been taken that afternoon to call. I remember the gardens through which we sauntered, with peaches ripening on the sunny walls; I remember the mellow light on the old portraits in the drawing-room, the friendly atmosphere and tranquil voices; and how, as the quiet stream of talk flowed on, one subject after another was pleasantly mirrored on its surface—till, at a chance remark, there was a sudden change and darkening, an angry swirl, as if a monster were raising its head above the waters.
What was it about, the dreadful disputation into which we were plunged, in spite of desperate efforts to clutch at other subjects? Was it Tariff Reform or Table-rapping,—Bacon and Shakespeare, Disestablishment, perhaps—or Anti-Vivisection? What did any of us know or really care about it? What force, what fury drove us into saying the stupid, intolerant, denunciatory things we said; that made us feel we would rather die than not say them? How could a group of humane, polite and intelligent people be so suddenly transformed into barking animals?
Why do we let these Abstractions and implacable Dogmatisms take possession of us, glare at each other through our eyes, and fight their frenzied conflicts in our persons? Life without the rancours and ever-recurring battles of these Bogeys might be so simple, friendly, affectionate and pleasant!
LIFE-ENHANCEMENT
I was simply telling them at tea the details of my journey—how late the train had been in starting, how crowded the railway carriage, how I had mislaid my umbrella, and nearly lost my Gladstone bag.
But how I enjoyed making them listen, what a sense of enhanced existence I found it gave me (and to think that I have pitied bores!) to force my doings, my interests, my universe, with my bag and umbrella, down their throats!
ECLIPSE
A mild radiance and the scent of flowers filled the drawing-room, whose windows stood open to the summer night. I thought our talk delightful; the topic was one of my favourite topics; I had much that was illuminating to say about it, and I was a little put out when we were called to the window to look at the planet Jupiter, which was shining in the sky just then, we were told, with great brilliance.
In turns through a telescope we gazed at that planet: I thought the spectacle over-rated, but said nothing. Not for the world, not for any number of worlds would I have wished them to guess why I was displeased with that glittering star.
THE PYRAMID
'To read Gibbon,' I said as we paced that terrace in the sunshine, 'to peruse his metallic, melancholy pages, and then forget them; to re-read and re-forget the Decline and Fall; to fill the mind with that great, sad, meaningless panorama of History, and then to watch it fade from the memory as it has faded from the glass of time—'
As she turned to me with a glance full of enthusiasm, 'What is so enchanting,' I asked myself, 'as the dawn of an acquaintance with a lovely woman with whom one can share one's thoughts?'
But those dawns are too often false dawns.
It was her remark about History, how she believed the builders of the Great Pyramid had foreseen and foretold many events of Modern History, which made a gigantic shadow, a darkness, as of Egypt, loom between us on that terrace.
THE FULL MOON
Suddenly one night, low above the trees, we saw the great, amorous, unabashed face of the full Moon. It was an exhibition that made me blush, feel that I had no right to be there. 'After all these millions of years, she ought to be ashamed of herself!' I cried.
LUTON
In a field of that distant, half-neglected farm, I found an avenue of great elms leading to nothing. But I could see where the wheat-bearing earth had been levelled into a terrace; and in one corner there were broken, overgrown, garden gateposts, almost hid among great straggling trees of yew.
This, then, was the place I had come to see. Here had stood the great palladian house or palace, with its terraces, and gardens, and artificial waters; this field had once been the favourite resort of Eighteenth-Century Fashion; the Duchesses and Beauties had driven hither in their gilt coaches, and the Beaux and Wits of that golden age of English Society. And although the house had long since vanished, and the plough had gone over its pleasant places, yet for a moment I seemed to see this fine company under the green and gold of that great avenue; seemed to hear their gossiping voices as they passed on into the shadows.
THE DANGER OF GOING TO CHURCH
As I came away from the Evening Service, walking home from that Sabbath adventure, some neighbours of mine passed me in their motor, laughing. Were they laughing at me? I wondered uneasily; and as I sauntered across the fields I vaguely cursed those misbelievers. Yes, yes, their eyes should be darkened, and their lying lips put to silence. They should be smitten with the botch of Egypt, and a sore botch in the legs that cannot be healed. All the teeth should be broken in the mouths of those bloody men and daughters of back-sliding; their faces should become as flames, and their heads be made utterly bald. Their little ones should be dashed to pieces before their eyes, and brimstone scattered upon their habitations. They should be led away with their buttocks uncovered; they should stagger to and fro as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit.
But as for the Godly Man who kept his Sabbaths, his should be the blessings of those who walk in the right way. 'These blessings'—the words came back to me from the Evening Lesson—'these blessings shall come upon thee, and overtake thee.' And suddenly, in the mild summer air, it seemed as if, like a swarm of bees inadvertently wakened, the blessings of the Bible were actually rushing after me. From the hot, remote, passionate past of Hebrew history, out of the Oriental climate and unctuous lives of that infuriate people, gross good things were coming to overwhelm me with benedictions for which I had not bargained. Great oxen and camels and concubines were panting close behind me, he-goats and she-goats and rams of the breed of Bashan. My barns should burst their doors with plenty, and all my paths drop fatness. My face should be smeared with the oil of rejoicing; all my household and the beasts of my household should beget and bear increase; and as for the fruit of my own loins, it should be for multitude as the sands of the sea and as the stars of heaven. My little ones should be as olive plants around my table; sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters to the third and fourth generation, should rise up and call me blessed. My feet should be dipped in butter, and my eyes stand out with fatness; I should flourish as the Cedar of Lebanon that bringeth forth fruit in old age.
THE SONNET
It came back to me this rainy afternoon for no reason, the memory of another afternoon long ago in the country, when, at the end of an autumn day, I had stood at the rain-dashed window and gazed out at the dim landscape; and as I watched the yellowing leaves blown about the garden, I had seen a flock of birds rise above the half-denuded poplars and wheel in the darkening sky. I had felt there was a mysterious meaning in that moment, and in that flight of dim-seen birds an augury of ill-omen for my life. It was a mood of Autumnal, minor-poet melancholy, a mood with which, it had occurred to me, I might fill out the rhymes of a lugubrious sonnet.
But my Sonnet about those birds—those Starlings, or whatever they were—will, I fear, never be written now. For how can I now recapture the sadness, the self-pity of youth?
Alas! What do the compensations of age after all amount to? What joy can the years bring half so sweet as the unhappiness they take away?
WELTANSCHAUUNG
When, now and then, on a calm night I look up at the Stars, I reflect on the wonders of Creation, the unimportance of this Planet, and the possible existence of other worlds like ours. Sometimes it is the self-poised and passionless shining of those serene orbs which I think of; sometimes Kant's phrase comes into my mind about the majesty of the Starry Heavens and the Moral Law; or I remember Xenophanes gazing at the broad firmament, and crying, 'All is One!' and thus, in that sublime exclamation, enunciating for the first time the great doctrine of the Unity of Being.
But these Thoughts are not my thoughts; they eddy through my mind like scraps of old paper, or withered leaves in the wind. What I really feel is the survival of a much more primitive mood—a view of the world which dates indeed from before the invention of language. It has never been put into literature; no poet has sung of it, no historian of human thought has so much as alluded to it; astronomers in their glazed observatories, with their eyes glued to the ends of telescopes, seem to have had no notion of it.
But sometimes, far off at night, I have heard a dog howling it at the Moon.
THE ALIEN
The older I grow, the more of an alien I find myself in the world; I cannot get used to it, cannot believe that it is real. I think I must have been made to live on some other Star. Or perhaps I am subject to hallucinations and hear voices; perhaps what I seem to see is delusion and doesn't happen; perhaps people don't really say the things I think I hear them saying.
Ah, some one ought to have told me when I was young, I should certainly have been told of the horrible songs that are sung in drawing-rooms; they ought to have warned me about the great fat women who suddenly get up and bellow out incredible recitations.
HYPOTHESES
I got up with Stoic fortitude of mind in the cold this morning; but afterwards, in my hot bath, I joined the school of Epicurus. I was a Materialist at breakfast; after it an Idealist, as I smoked my first cigarette and turned the world to transcendental vapour. But when I began to read the Times I had no doubt of the existence of an external world.
So all the morning and all the afternoon opinions kept flowing into and out of the receptacle of my mind; till, by the time the enormous day was over, it had been filled by most of the widely-known Theories of Existence, and then emptied of them.
THE ARGUMENT
This long speculation of life, this thinking and syllogising that always goes on inside me, this running over and over of hypothesis and surmise and supposition—one day this infinite Argument will have ended, the debate will be forever over, I shall have come to an indisputable conclusion, and my brain will be at rest.