Leaves in the Wind

by A. G. Gardiner

"The Dean is dead (pray what is trumps?)"
Then "Lord have mercy on his soul!
(Ladies, I'll venture for the vole.)
Six deans, they say, must bear the pall,
(I wish I knew what king to call).
Madam, your husband will attend
The funeral of so good a friend?"
"No, madam, 'tis a shocking sight;
And he's engaged to-morrow night;
My Lady Club will take it ill
If he should fail her at quadrille.
He loved the Dean (I lead a heart);
But dearest friends, they say, must part.

That is the way of it. Your friend is dead: you heave a sigh and lead a heart.

Listen to that thrush outside. How he is going it! He, too, on this bright March morning sings of the world's indifference—the indifference of the joyous, living world to those who have crept to their holes. I hear in his voice the news of the coming of spring, and know that down at "the cottage" the crocuses are out in the garden and the dark beech woods are turning to brown, and the lark is springing up into the blue like a flame of song. How I have loved this pageantry of nature, these days of revelation and promise. I used to think that I was a part of them, but now I know that the pageant goes forward in sublime unconsciousness that I am no longer in the audience.

And so I lie and look at the ceiling and feel humble and disillusioned. I have discovered that the world goes on very well without me, and I am not sure that it is not worth spending a week or two in bed to learn that salutary lesson. When I return to the world I fancy I shall have lost some of my ancient swagger. I shall feel like a modest intruder upon a society that has shown it has no need for me. I may recover my feeling of importance in time, but in my secret heart I shall know that I am not the hub but only a fly on the mighty wheel of things. I can skip off and no one is any the wiser.

ON CLOTHES

There is one respect in which the war has brought us a certain measure of relief. It is no longer necessary to lie awake o' nights thinking about your clothes. There are some people, of course, who like thinking about their clothes. They seem to regard themselves as perambulating shop window models on which to hang things, and if you take away that subject from their conversation they are bankrupt. When I was coming down on the bus the other afternoon I could not help overhearing snatches of a conversation which was going on between two women in the seat behind me. It was conducted with great volubility and seriousness, and it came to me in scraps like this: "No, I don't like that shade.... I saw a beautiful hat at So-and-So's at Kensington; only 25s.; it was ... Yes, she has nice taste and always looks ... No, brocaded..." And so on without a pause for the space of half an hour.

I don't offer that conversation as representative. I imagine that in the lump women are thinking less about dress to-day from the merely ornamental point of view than they ever did. If you spend twelve hours a day on a bus or a tram in a blue uniform and leggings, or driving a Carter Paterson van in a mackintosh and a sou'wester, or filling shells in a yellow overall, dress cannot occupy quite its old dominion over your thoughts. You will think more about comfort and less about finery. And that, according to Herbert Spencer, is an evidence of a higher intelligence. The more barbaric you are the more you regard dress from the point of view of ornament and the less from the point of view of utility. It is a hard saying for the West End of life. Spencer, to illustrate his point, mentions that the African attendants of Captain Speke strutted about in their goatskin mantles when the weather was fine, but when it was wet took them off, folded them up, and went about naked and shivering in the rain.

A talk like that of the two women on the bus would not be possible among men; but that does not mean that they have souls above finery. It is not good form among them to talk about dress—that is all. But that many of them think about it as seriously as women do, if less continuously, is certain. Pepys' Diary is strewn with such self-revelations as "This morning came home my fine Camlett cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to pay for it." He ought to have thought of that earlier. No one is entitled to order fine clothes and then throw the responsibility for paying for them on the Almighty. At least he might have prayed to God on the subject before approaching the tailor. The case of Goldsmith was not less conspicuous. He was as vain as a peacock, and refused to go into the Church because he loved to wear bright clothes. And his spirit is not dead among men. Who can look upon the large white spats of —— —— as he comes down the floor of the House without feeling that he is as dress-conscious as a milliner.

I am not speaking with disrespect of the well-dressed man (I do not mean the over-dressed man: he is an offence). I would be well-dressed myself if I knew how, but I have no gift that way. Like Squire Shallow, I am always in the rearward of the fashion. I find that with rare exceptions I dislike new fashions. They disturb my tranquillity. They give me a nasty jolt. I suspect that the explanation is that beneath my intellectual radicalism there lurks a temperamental conservatism, a love of sleepy hollows and quiet havens and the old grass-grown turnpikes of habit. It is no uncommon paradox. Spurgeon had it like many others. He was once rebuked by a friend for his political activity on the Liberal side. Why did he yield to this weakness? "You ought to mortify the Old Man," said his friend. "I do mortify him," said Spurgeon. "You see my Old Man is a Tory and I make him vote Liberal. That mortifies him." I am conscious of the same conflict, and in the matter of clothes the Old Man of Toryism is an easy winner.