Told by an Idiot

by Rose Macaulay

  “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 ruinous 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 any one, know all about the adventure of empire-building, its swagger, glitter and romance, and must needs turn himself into a preacher.

  To Stanley’s niece, Imogen, it happened to have “Recessional” read aloud to her form at school, by one whom 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;

  O’er 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 Kipling, 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 period, and we may as well enjoy them while we may. 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 ourselves 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 were many brief spaces to come, for all of us, and we should be training ourselves for these. . . . For papa was still a Theosophist, and believed in infinitely numerous reincarnations. 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. Tomorrow 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 coatee and skirt (skirt touching the pavement as she walked—disgusting, but skirts did), lace jabot at the high stock collar, and large, beribbonned 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, and 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 at Monte Carlo—at all these she won and lost, with the same equable sangfroid. Her parents 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 themselves. But on such disapprovals, so Rome assured them, family life is based. Mutual disapproval, mutual 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 friendship 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.”

  Entirely of the world Miss Garden looked, this May morning, strolling down Bond Street, a little cynical, a little blasée, very well-dressed, intensely civilised, exquisitely 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 Sealyham pups; 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. Adorable puppies. The Borzoi sniffed at them through plate glass, and grunted.

  Irish lace. Jabots of pointe de Venise, and deep collars of Honiton and point de Flandres, and hand-herchiefs 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 packages and the Borzoi. “But, nevertheless, we will go. Jeremy shall wait in the street while we criticise the art of our friends. I was overtaken this morning by the lust of possession. I often get in 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 Britain and the Soudanese.

  “Dewey’s occupied Manila. The Fuzzies have lost another zareba. It must be warm for fighting out there to-day. . . . Here’s an article by some Dean on the vulgarity of modern extravagance. Meant for you, Rome,
with all your packages. . . . Are we specially 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, 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 always 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 tickets 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 intolerant. 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 together for evermore.

  28

  Last Lap

  1898 swaggered by under a hot summer sun. The century swaggered death-wards, gay with gold and fatness, 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 batallions, the, victory of Omdurman, Kitchener occupying Khartoum and the French Fashoda, unpleasant international incidents (for international 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, Swinburne 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 started, the Encyclopædia Britannica sold by the Times, anti-ritualist agitations, armament limitation conference convened by Russia and attended by the Powers, all of whom were as busy as bees at home increasing their armies and navies and hatching military plots.

  And then the South African Uitlanders sent complaints 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. 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 excitement 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 Chamberlain. 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 . . .”

  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 detachment 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 between 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. Imogen 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 be killed,” sobbed a woman close to them. “We’ll never see their brave faces again. . . .”

  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. Splendid 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, Imogen 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 with 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 number 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 delight. 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. T
he 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.

  “We shall catch it from mother,” said Phyllis, now that they had leisure to look ahead. “But it’s been worth it.”

  29

  Of Centuries

  The 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 was 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 disappointment 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.