Told by an Idiot

by Rose Macaulay

  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 nothing to the world beyond an attractive presence, good dinner table talk, a graceful zest for gambling, an intelligent, cynical, running commentary on life, and a tolerant, observing smile. Life was a good show to her; it arranged itself well, and she was clever at picking 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 Orangeman, or any other star performer do his special turn, and she would select that afternoon and have her reward. 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 serious, which was doubtful).

  So the cheerful spectacle of a world of fools brightened Rome’s afternoon years. Before long, the folly was to become too desperate, too disastrous, too wrecking 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 Georgian years were, to Rome, twinkling with bland absurdity. 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 novelist and poet than any other kind of a fool, and one kind or another we all are. After all, he might be instead a swindling company promoter. . . .

  “No,” said Maurice. “He hasn’t the wits. And, you know, I don’t share your philosophy. I still believe, 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 disbelieve 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 anything 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 number 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 destined for a political career. Stanley’s cousin, Sir Giles Humphries, 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 ignorance from his mother as well as might be, and very nicely refrained from making mock of militant suffragists 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 obviously 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 heart-breaking 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 incomparable impudence, when Stanley was talking, and say, “Mumsie, darlin g, 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 learning something. If it doesn’t make her affected and stupid, like actresses, I don’t mind. And surely nothing can make Molly less than entrancing. But, whatever comes of it, Molly has a right to choose her own life; it’s no business of mine what the children decide to do. In her conscious reaction from the onetime parental tyranny over daughters, Stanley forgot that there might also be parental 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 factory girls, continuation schools, penal reform, clean milk, and the decrease of prostitution. It may be imagined that all these things together kept her pretty busy; unlike Rome, she 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 delusion that the constitution and social condition of her country were, on the whole, faintly on the upward plane. That was because she was unfairly biased 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 approved of the People’s Budget very much.

  7

  Irving

  Irving was nearly always cheerful, except when he was cross. Irving was like that. He had been a cheerful 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, a great deal of money (though the super-tax robbed him of 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 mind 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 cor
n 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, unconscious 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, writing, 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 any one. 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 formulæ when he should have been jotting down legal notes. Hugh was really a mechanician, and his heart was not 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 orgie of joy. And pleasure, 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 fastidiousness 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; she had been, like nearly all very young writers, superfluous 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-three twenty-four, twenty-five—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 sentimental and easy idealists behind their masks of cheerful, slangy hardness. Undergraduates, male and female, 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 predecessors, 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 vision by the circle of her life. Perhaps she was too comfortable, too happy. . . . Or perhaps, like most people, too emotionally alive, strung too sharply to every vibration, 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 every one 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 insensitive, life not being an affair it is possible to be insensitive 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 every one believed it of themselves, 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 unconscious, 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 some one 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, 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 cocoa-nuts and pineapples dropping with nutty noises on to emerald-green grass; a little boat moored at the edge of lapping, creamy waves; witty monkeys 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 pricking skyward like faun’s ears. Or deep orchards adrift with blossom, rosy-white; jolly colts in paddocks, dragging with soft lips and hard gums at their mother’s 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 munching noises in the fields, and the cold, mocking stars looking down. And painted carts of gipsies, and roadside fires, and wood-smoke and ripe apples. And hills silver 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 cafés, and lemon trees in tubs, beautiful men noble with the feathers of cocks, beautiful women in coloured headkerchiefs, incense drifting out of churches into piazzas, coffee roasting in deep streets. To swim, to sail, to run naked on hot 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 out 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 crinoline 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 adventure, what loveliness, what dreams! Beauty without end, amen.