In the first place, it is my honest conviction that the Moribundian authorities countenance the existence of these people largely on account of their entertainment value—the fact that they are so excruciatingly funny and keep the working classes amused. As I have already pointed out, there is no quality which Moribundia fosters more carefully or lovingly than the good humour of its working classes, and nothing stimulates this good humour, this spirit of shrewd, robust wit, so well as the spectacle of one of these dotty creatures standing on his soap box and venomously drawing forth from his riotous invention facts and figures concerning a purely imaginary conflict between two purely imaginary classes—the ‘proletariat’ and the ‘bourgeoisie.’ Such a one never fails to attract a large audience of working men, and the unanimous enjoyment of all present is a pleasure to see. As a Moribundian once told me, they find it ‘better than the pantomime.’
But the thing goes deeper than this, and these people serve another, more serious and educative purpose in demonstrating to the working man the danger of political talk. They can see for themselves either that it leads to madness, or that only mad people indulge in it, and they draw the conclusion that it is best for themselves to keep out of politics altogether.
Are the Moribundian authorities justified in using such measures to isolate the working man from political thinking? From our standards it might seem that they are not, that there is some measure of class propaganda at work here. From Moribundian standards, however, the thing is seen in a different light. In Moribundia there can be no question of duping the working man by discouraging his political thought; there everyone knows there is nothing that the working man detests so much as political thought, that all he desires when he has finished his day’s work is, as the Moribundians put it, ‘a pint of beer,’ ‘a bit of a chat,’ ‘a pipe,’ or, perhaps, to ‘take his Mrs. to the pictures.’
To try and interest him in social matters, then, would be as cruel, tyrannical and meaningless as to make him go and break stones. The Moribundian authorities are, in the truest democratic spirit, merely reflecting his Moribundian will.
But this is not the only reason why, from a Moribundian (as opposed to a worldly) standpoint, social discussion of any sort is looked upon with the deepest disfavour. Social discussion necessarily involves tentative suggestions concerning social change, and towards Change itself, Moribundia, by its very nature, adopts an attitude altogether different from our own. This I must now try to explain.
I have said that Moribundia is the land in which ideals and ideas are made concrete; that is to say, ideas are not brought into being by things; on the contrary, things are brought into being by ideas.18 Now in our world, where ideas are seen clearly enough to be the reflection of things, so many attempts to understand the nature of things, this opposite state of affairs is not easy to understand. Nevertheless, until we have done so, we cannot understand the true nature of Moribundia. Morals and legislation, for instance, in Moribundia, are not the result of economic and social facts; economic and social facts are the result of morals and legislation. Mind precedes matter; the idea comes first and the reality is made to obey it.
Now, whereas the distinguishing characteristic of things is that they change, and so in our world our ideas, reflecting things, change constantly; the distinguishing characteristic of an idea, isolated from things, is that it does not change—it exists in a vacuum, a reflection of nothing, and there is nothing to cause it to change. Consequently, in a world in which things are the blind servitors of ideas, there can be no question of things ever changing. Therefore, to talk of change in Moribundia is to deny everything that makes it what it is, to doubt, and in doubting to threaten, the roots of its entire being, to blaspheme or rave.
Anyone who does this, then, is in Moribundia regarded either as a lunatic or as a person possessed by the spirit of pure, gloating, gratuitous evil—possibly both at the same time. There are, however, such people. In addition to the absurd tsinummoc we heard in the park there is a closely-allied type, the Tsixram, generally conceived as a more ‘intellectual’ type, and who may even have been through the motions of having a proper education. According to the Tsixram who, as Moribundians say, wish ‘to turn the whole of Moribundia upside down,’ instead of things being the reflection of ideas, ideas are the reflection of things. In fact, according to him, it is quite impossible to deny the fact of change, for, so he says, without change there can be no motion, and without motion there can be no life, no existence. In other words, he has reached the final absurdity of stating that Moribundia does not exist! One may, therefore, regard him as a perfect non-Moribundian, or anti-Moribundian, playing an ideally Satanic role in the scheme of things.
The allusion to Satan is an apt one, for in thinking of that mythical figure we think at once of his rebellion against ideal conditions and of the hell into which he was cast, and over which he became the ruler. There is, it seems, a place in Moribundia—a ‘hell on Moribundia,’ as they say, where the Tsixram reigns supreme amidst all the horror and confusion of his wickedness. Concerning this place, which bears the strangely sinister name Ehtteivosnoinu,19 I could not get very much accurate information, as Moribundians, quite naturally, preferred not to talk about it, but that it was a place of punishment of the Tsixram’s evil, that is to say, a pandemonium wherein his notions and practices reached their logical and terrible conclusion, there can be no doubt. Chaos, starvation, greed, famine, tyranny and a horrible uniformity in the lives of the masses were, as far as I could gather, the prevailing conditions. In addition to this, I understood, everybody was compelled to wear the same clothes and nobody was allowed to laugh.
Again, in this Satan-hell analogy, I observed that just as the Prince of Darkness is reputed to send forth his emissaries into the world to tempt and lure people down into his own region, so disguised devils from Ehtteivosnoinu stalk abroad in Moribundia. These ‘dark forces,’ as they are called, are, of course, quite incapable of doing any harm save to the mad, or congenitally wicked, because, as I have said, everybody and every class is ideally happy in Moribundia.
I shall have occasion to allude again to Ehtteivosnoinu, but for the present, having explained the bed-rock Moribundian attitude towards Change in general, an attitude which, of course, colours its entire approach to Philosophy, Art, Science and Literature (with which I shall also be dealing later), I think I have cleared the decks for the time being, and can get on with my story.
Notes
17. This satirical account of Moribundian economic theory is, of course, a simple inversion of the fundamental principles of Marxism.
18. The passage which follows relates to the novel’s first epigram (see Note 27 below) and to the later discussion in Chapter 10 of Moribundian Science and Religion. The essentially conservative and idealist world-view outlined here is the polar opposite of Marxist dialectical materialism (see Note 26 below).
19. Ehtteivosnoinu: The Soviet Union (under Stalin) was the bogeyman of the English establishment for much of the 1930s; and the threat of the spread of Communism — as signalled by the conversion of young intellectuals like Hamilton himself — a worse fear than that posed by the European fascist dictatorships.
CHAPTER IX
I found my hotel bill in my bedroom in due course at the end of the week, and large as the sum was, it was, of course, well within my means.
I went downstairs to pay it to the clerk—the one, you will remember, who was complaining of exhaustion and in danger of losing his job—but he was not in his usual place at the bureau.
I waited about for a few moments, and then, looking through a door at the back of the bureau, I observed that he was engaged in conversation with a very tall, elderly, clean-shaven gentleman in a frock coat and striped trousers, who looked like a serious statesman of the old school, but who was, I knew, actually no more important a personage than the hotel doctor. He was leaning gracefully against a desk, dangling an eye-glass, while the clerk was sitting on a chair, with a dejected, yet
inquiring and dimly hopeful look on his face.
Both were employing the familiar means of expression.
In the background there was a large chart representing the inside and outside of the human body, which the doctor had evidently recently unfolded in order to illustrate his arguments.
The clerk’s contribution to the discussion was brief enough, and as I knew something of his condition already, it told me nothing fresh.
In reply to which the doctor belched forth the following enormous piece of air-printing, one of the largest I ever saw:20
When the clerk came out to me I saw that the lines on his face were already less deep, and as he somewhat absent-mindedly gave me my receipt, he head-ballooned:
At this moment I was joined by Anne, who was paying her own and her father’s bill.
My relations with this lovely girl had been a little strained in the last few days, for it had been becoming more clear to me every day that we could not much longer continue to know each other on a basis of mere friendship. I was too much in love with her. On the other hand, I had lacked the courage either to state or even suggest the nature of my feelings, as I did not belong to her world, did not know what she thought of me, and feared that the barrier between us was somehow insuperable. As a consequence of this, in the conflict of my emotions, I had taken to behaving self-consciously in her presence, and even, at times, avoiding her. This morning, for instance, although I could easily have done so, I made no suggestion that she should join me in a walk, and went off by myself in what to her must have seemed a cold or mysterious manner.
I took a long walk trying to make up my mind on this matter, wondering if I dared to approach the subject of my feelings to her, and if so, how it was to be done. I had still come to no conclusions by the time I had got home again. Just before reaching the hotel, however, I happened to pass a draper’s shop, in the window of which I saw a box of ‘Siljoy’ stockings. On the spur of the moment I went in and bought a box.
I saw Anne again at tea-time and presented her with this box. She was delighted with the gift and looked at me in the most tender and, as it seemed to me, significant way, as though I had paid her a rich and meaning compliment of some sort. Shortly afterwards we both went upstairs to dress for dinner, and when I came down again to the drawing-room I saw her seated at a writing-table.
She was in a beautiful satin evening dress, cut very low at the back, and she was writing a letter—looking a vision of beauty in that softly-lit and luxurious setting.
Happily she was using that Brobdingnagian21 kind of note-paper which I had seen before; and, one of the sheets happening to fall upon the floor, I was able to read what she had written on it from where I was sitting. This is what I saw:
It will be easy to understand my feelings as I read this, and it dawned upon me that she was referring to me! All my fears and doubts were dispelled at once, and I made up my mind to lay my heart at her feet at the first possible moment.
By a lucky chance her father was dining out that night, and I asked her if she would sit at my table. She readily accepted, and we had the most delightful dinner. I ordered champagne, and in that gay, sparkling atmosphere, with the laughter and the conversation, and the brilliant head and mouth balloons popping off at the tables all around us, I was half delirious with pleasure.
It so happened that I had bought some etchings recently to decorate my walls, and, being anxious to know her opinion of them, I asked her after dinner to come up to my room to glance over them.22 Well, it will be easily understood that as soon as we got up there, the delight and excitement at finding ourselves alone with each other for the first time was too much for us, and the etchings were not remembered.
It would be quite pointless for me to make any attempt to narrate the conversation which now passed between us—I have no doubt it was as foolish as any other lover’s talk. I lit a fire and, drawing up the settee in front of it, we lay back and talked in its friendly light for three hours at least.
It was only towards the end, however, that in a sudden access of emotion I decided that I could deceive this trusting girl no longer and, preparing her as well as I could, and making her swear beforehand that she would keep it utterly secret, I blurted out the facts about myself, my whole story, the whole truth.
I knew as soon as I had done it that I had not made a mistake. My chief difficulty, of course, was to get her fully to believe me, but when I had achieved that, and she was getting used to the idea, she showed, not only that it made no difference in her feelings towards me, but also that she would keep it secret and help me in every way she could. Poor Anne—I think so often of her now—her charm, her directness, her simplicity. Without her collaboration my whole stay in Moribundia, and with it whatever value to science it may ultimately have, would have been a very different thing—undirected, unorganized, difficult, even dangerous. With her by my side, with her to explain each phenomenon as it came along, everything was made almost childishly easy.
She even made a general plan for me that night. She herself was leaving the hotel in a few days, to go into a house in town with her father. The question was where would it be best for me to stay, and we discussed the matter at length.
Finally, at nearly midnight, we parted. I saw her up to her room, which was on the top floor, and in the darkness of the passage, kissed her good night.
As I was about to descend the stairs again, I noticed a light coming from a small room on my right. As I passed the door I looked inside and saw, sitting on the bed, in his dressing-gown, the hotel clerk whom I had seen that morning talking to the doctor. He had a look of satisfaction on his face which I had certainly not seen before, and he had in his hand, and was sipping at, a glass containing a hot mixture which I guessed was the ‘Nourishine’ the doctor had ordered. As he sipped at this, there appeared—over his head—a little to the left, the following curious rectangular ‘balloon,’ containing two words only and coming from neither the mouth nor the head, thus:
Notes
20. The ‘balloon’ here is a good example of the use of pseudo-scientific ‘facts’ to bamboozle the layperson. The inter-war period saw a huge advance in the popularisation of science, and thus in ordinary people’s exposure to and awe of it. See also Note 27 below.
21. ‘Brobdingnagian’: of giant-size — from Part II of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: ‘A Voyage to Brobdingnag’, the land of the giants.
22. An invitation to ‘come up to my room and see my etchings’ has long been the (self-parodying) cliché of the would-be seducer.
CHAPTER X
In my discussion with Anne that night it had been decided that if I was to make a proper study of Moribundian conditions in the time allotted to me, it would be pointless for me to go on staying at this hotel, where I was only seeing one very limited side of life. It was highly desirable, we decided, that I should get into touch with the intellectual life of the day, to meet the people of moment—the people who ‘did’ and wrote things, who theoretically understood and were responsible for existing conditions.
For this purpose, she thought, I could do no better than become a member of some good Moribundian club, and thus mix with such people on easy terms. Her father belonged to such a club and she said that if he was approached in the right way, by herself, he could no doubt be prevailed upon to put me up and generally sponsor me.
The next day she got to work on her father, who was introduced to me afresh. Anne made up a wonderful story about myself and my origin, and the simple-minded old soldier accepted everything so readily that I felt somewhat ashamed of myself. In the next few days, under Anne’s instruction, I cultivated the old gentleman’s goodwill by listening patiently and for long periods to his incessant stories, which mostly concerned his somewhat trivial adventures in a place called Anoop,23 some forty or fifty years ago, and before long, I believe I can say, I had won his heart completely.
He suggested, of his own accord, that I should join his Club; he took me along ther
e for meals, and, in a fortnight’s time things so fell out that I was able to become a member. I at once decided to take up residence there for the time being, and moved in from the hotel.
Anyone familiar with a London club of the better kind will have no difficulty in visualizing the exterior and interior of the same thing in Nwotsemaht—which is another way of saying that a London club is itself a decidedly Moridundian institution. The Moribundian club is, of course, as an ideal institution, slightly the better of the two. The space is greater, the hangings and furniture are richer, the silence is profounder, the servants are politer (and more elongated), etc., but otherwise the stranger might notice very little difference externally.
The kind of people that go there, however, and the kind of social atmosphere that reigns there, both differ enormously and yet in a way hard to describe.
The best descriptions of the Moribundian club are to be found in the works of two well-known Moribundian writers, Nhoj Nahcub, and Trebreh Egroeg Sllew.24
In the pages of these writers we hardly ever, if ever, come across the ordinary club member as we know him—that is to say, the listless nondescript individual of unknown occupation, who sits in an armchair reading a newspaper and absent-mindedly scratching himself. On the contrary, almost everyone bears the most distinguished appearance, and is of the first social magnitude.
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