Poor Caroline

by Winifred Holtby

  While drawing his salary of £600 a year, Hugh had been living at the rate of 355. a week. He now regretted his extravagance, but he had at least a pleasant sense of solvency. He tramped round London and found one day the half-ruined buildings of some derelict Chemical Works at An-nerley. The main block had been bombed during the war, and never rebuilt, but the laboratories were in tolerable condition, having been used for some years by the manufacturers of a patent medicine. The lease of the two acres of ground on which the works were built was due to fall in at the end of three years, but until that time the owners were only too charmed to find in Hugh a tenant for such undesirable property. It was just what he needed. It was adequate, it was isolated; it was cheap. He spent almost the entire sum of his savings on its equipment, then settled down to complete the Tona Perfecta Film.

  When this was done he went to the Patents Office, secured the registration of his invention, and returned to National Cinema Products Limited with his offer. They might have his film, completed without their help, at his own price. Had the directors been moved only by those motives of enlightened self-interest discerned in economic man by textbook writers, they would have accepted his proposal and his terms. But they were human and they had been insulted. They never wanted to hear of or from Hugh Macafee again. They wrote, politely but triumphantly, advising him to go elsewhere. A week after their bold refusal they learned of the Glasgow Galloway Film, and almost wept with joy. For the Glasgow Galloway process was in several details better than the Tona Perfecta. But they did not inform Hugh Macafee of his rival.

  Hugh received their refusal with proud and angry triumph. 'Poor worms,' he thought, 'how little they know their own best interests.' He shut himself up in his grim laboratory, while late in the night his light streamed out on to the broken bottles and rusting tins, the oily pools and tufts of dock and nettles that decorated the waste land surrounding it. He was, however, in a difficult situation. His concentration upon technical details had entirely blinded him to the importance of legal and commercial knowledge. He did not realize that designing an invention is merely an amusing prelude to the serious business of selling it. In his innocence he thought that men had only to do good work in order to be paid for it. But the truth was that he simply did not know what to do next about his film.

  Had he made friends, he could have sought advice from them about it. But he prided himself that he neither sought nor took advice. He declared that he valued no man's opinion, but he was terrified of the least suggestion of criticism. Ridicule flayed him. Patronage caused him anguish. In the world of business competition he was about as capable of looking after his own interests as an unshelled tortoise below a herd of charging elephants.

  He had taken a small unfurnished back bedroom above a monumental mason's shop in Penge. He paid six shillings a week for it, and thought the rent extortionate. Between his rooms, his laboratory, and the Public Library, he walked with dour regularity, sometimes for days speaking to no one but Campbell, a discredited and unemployed chemist whom he employed as his assistant. He regarded with contempt the people whom he saw in the London streets. He hated the fat women who fell into trances in front of Stupendous Sale Reductions. He loathed the fatigued but insatiable mothers who pushed laden perambulators like battering-rams through the spell-bound crowd, pausing in front of Genuine Winter Bargains - Lady's fur-trimmed Coats, only 49s. 6d. - Celanese Silk Underwear - and 'Beauty Cases -everything for the Toilet.' He loathed them because they were ugly and stupid and futile, because they blocked his way when he was hurrying on serious business; he loathed them because they were leisured and happy and convivial, while he was lean, hungry, and distracted, consumed by unattainable desires, mastered by dreams, lonely and fierce and arrogant. He loathed them because there was not one individual in those gaping crowds who would tell him how to sell his Tona Perfecta design, nor who would care the farthing's change from a is. nf
  §2

  One evening in the early autumn of 1928 Hugh was kept waiting at the Public Library. He wanted Fowell's Experiments with Light, and he wanted it badly. He was irritated almost to the verge of insanity, fatigued, despondent and hungry, and he wanted his book so that he could return at once to the soothing solitude of his back bedroom. He was at work on a new preparation of cellulose which he believed would increase by 100 per cent, the subtlety of colour reproduction, but at the moment the composition baffled him. All this exasperation with his own failures kindled his wrath against society, and at last he turned on the assistant librarian and told her what he thought of public library methods.

  She was a foolish-looking young person with large romantic hazel eyes and a soft drooping mouth. Her high Cockney voice was pitched to refinement, and a tiresome affectation of squirming her shoulders beneath her blue crocheted jumper set Hugh's teeth on edge. The more he railed at her, the more she squirmed.

  'But Mr. Macafee,' she protested, directly she made her voice heard above his flow of ferocious Scots, 'I have mentioned the matter to the chief librarian. I have really.'

  'I put it down in the suggestion-book six weeks ago.'

  'I know. And I did go to Mr. Bruce about it. I said you'd told me it was very important.'

  'I hope you did.'

  'And he said that it was not the kind of book that there would be much demand for. He said that these technical books aren't really what we're supposed to supply.'

  'Oh, he did, did he?'

  'Well, we must consult the needs of our rate-payers.'

  'I see. And I'm not a rate-payer, I suppose?'

  'Mr. Bruce said that if you wanted the book in all that hurry, you'd better go to the British Museum Reading Room for it.'

  'And do you think, woman, that I'm going to waste good shoe leather tramping to the British Museum because some gauntless, pop-eyed, yammering half-wit doesn't know the value of a great book when he hears of it?'

  'Oh, come, come, not a great book now. Even in its own line, not a great book.'

  At the rough jovial voice, Hugh spun round, and found himself confronted by a very singular person. He was a large, heavily built, picturesque, slovenly and almost handsome man, of whose low-collared, ill-laundered blue shirt, broad-brimmed hat carried in stubby blackened fingers, and thick grizzled hair Hugh immediately disapproved. Everything about him seemed over-decorative and under-washed, while the slight cast in his handsome bold dark eyes confirmed the air of Bloomsbury-Wild-Western villainy suggested by his swaggering manner and Spanish whiskers.

  'You did say that Powell's Experiments with Light was a great book, I believe, sir?' asked this individual.

  'Ow, Mr. Johnson!' giggled the assistant librarian appreciatively. 'What a start you gave me: I never thought you'd be coming here to-night!'

  'No? And again, Yes! My dear Miss Brackenbury, the spirit like the wind bloweth where it listeth. And I am indeed most interested to hear Mr. - Mr. -'

  'Macafee,' suggested the girl.

  'Mr. Macafee called my friend Powell's little treatise a great book.'

  'What the Hell do you know about Powell's Book?'

  'Ah, what indeed, my friend? Well, in the first place Powell and I ran up against each other in Los Angeles way back in '23; an' in the se
cond place he shot his book across to me when he'd written it; and in the third place, I've read it, and I can tell you, sir, that it's just ten years out of date. It was outa date, 's' matter a fact, before it was written. 'Smy belief that the Russians an' Germans have been putting across that kind o' thing since '25, but poor old Powell never would look beyond his own nose. Never would have a look-see at what was going on on the other side the duck pond. And what happens? What happens? I tell you, sir, there's no man on earth so wall-eyed as an expert with a kink.'

  'And may I ask why Powell gave you his book? Have you anything to do with kinematography or theatre engineering?'

  The new-comer thrust a dirty hand into his waistcoat, then into his trouser, then into his coat pockets, and at last produced a rather soiled and crumpled card, on which Hugh read:

  'Clifton Roderick Johnson of Toronto and Hollywood. Director of the Anglo-American School of Scenario Writing, 18 Essex Street, Strand, London, (Eng.), and 247 East Twelfth Street, New York.'

  'Indeed,' said Hugh. 'And what is a school of scenario writing, if I may ask?'

  'My dear sir, my dear sir. You are interested enough in the cinema to wanna wade through Powell's wretched outa date punk on lighting. Can't you see the need for a movement to raise the standard of the scenario? Why, 'smy belief that the scenario supplies the fundamental brain work behind the cinema. Getta good scenario, and with luck you gotta good film. There's Art in the scenario; there's intellect. There's Psychol'gy. My job is to put across Art an' Psychol'gy to the multitude. Catch 'em young and give 'em high ideals. That's our motto.'

  'Indeed,' said Hugh, frigid with dislike.

  'Now, take your own case. You're a young man who thinks you're int'rested in lighting. You go to a film you think you like an' say, "Jehosaphat, that's great stuff! Yet sure-ly a fine girl like that would never let a third-rate crumpet-muncher like that simp get away with her mother's secret like that?" Don't you? An' that's the beginning of criticism. An' criticism's the first step toward construction. You go to a film. An' you starta getta hunch you could go one better. An' before you know where you are, you have gone one better. Every man, woman or child has at least one first-rate scenario in him. But until you've learned the technique, your ideas are bottled up inside you - not a word saleable - not a syllable. Now, I'll put it to you another way. When you go to a cinema . . .'

  'I never go to a cinema,' said Hugh.

  'You never go to a cinema? You? I beg your pardon. You mean that literally? You never go?'

  'I am an expert chemist and electrical technician. I invented the Tona Perfecta film, and the Macafee projector, and directed the National Cinema Products experimental department until three months ago. I am interested in problems of lighting and acoustics. I have no use for the osculatory performances of half-clothed young females.'

  Mr. Johnson was not daunted. He stared at Hugh, his big head held sideways. 'Now that is verra interesting. Verra interesting. As a problem in psychol'gy. I call that verra interesting. You concentrate on the means. You spend long days an' spend laborious nights - at least so I imagine - on constructing the means. Science at the service of Democracy. The technician in excelsis. An' yet you despise the ends. You despise the ends. You don't care what comes of your work. 'Svery interesting.'

  'I'm glad I interest you. But I'm a busy man. Good evening.'

  'Oh, not so fast! Not so fast!' shouted Johnson. 'D'you still persist in wanting to read Powell's book?'

  'I am not in the habit of changing my mind at the discouragement of a casual stranger.'

  'Then better come round to my HP place an borrow it. You'll see for yourself then it's old stuff. 'Smy belief Powell's goin' gaga, poor chap. But if you won't believe me, see for yourself. The only true means of education is independent investigation.'

  'Where is your place?' Hugh was prepared to calculate possible wear and tear of shoe leather, his distaste for the-personality of Mr. Johnson adding quite four miles to any distance from his home. He wanted to read that book.

  'Battersea. Facing the Park. Not as artistic as Chelsea, but quite as pleasant. And I've got the automobile here, and I've got the books I wanted and if you're through, we can get off right away.'

  'Very well,' said Hugh ungraciously, and followed Johnson out of the Public Library.

  It was a mild October evening. The brown and sherry-gold of the London afternoon had faded into clear violets and blues lit by the primrose lamps, that made a spring fantasy of the autumn night.

  'Glorious evening. Marvellous colouring. Colour. My God, Colour. I could eat it. Eat it,' cried Johnson, folding his vast bulk into the driver's seat of his small car. 'Why don't you chemists getta work on a really good colour medium? These so-called colour films are crude stuff -crude. 'Smy belief that what this age is suffering from is a lack of colour. Black an' white. Straight lines. Halftones. Damn this bus! She's always a bad starter. I'll have ta crank her. Hell!' Hugh saw no reason for putting his mechanical skill at Johnson's service. He sat in his seat while Johnson lumbered in and out of the car. The engine snorted and trembled. 'This mechanical age robs us of warmth an' beauty. We gotta get back to Nature. Passion.' The car leapt forward, almost bouncing Hugh from his seat. 'Steady, girl, steady! 'S I was saying,' shouted Johnson, gripping the wheel as though it were the rein of a refractory bronco. 'Hell, these cars are! When I was out West I could ride anything with four legs an' a spine. But these Machines.' . . . He threw into the word 'Machine' the concentrated hatred of a lifetime. The car narrowly avoided a bus, mounted with one wheel the left-hand pavement, then bounded forward on its erratic way. "S I was saying, look at all these straight lines. Houses. Sky-scrapers. Machines. So on. Watch 'em. Look at their design. Straight lines. Stripes. Carrying the eye forward to a logical conclusion. Rational. Logic. No compromise. Where's it leading to? Must lead somewhere. Revolution. Revolt of men against machines, perhaps. Or of machines against men. What happened during the French Revolution? Stripes fashionable again. Straight lines. Logic. No compromise. Revolution. Mobs. Terror. Guillotine. Then look at our Victorian era. Sprigs. Sprays, patterns. Break up the lines. Break up thought. Albert. Tennyson. The Great Exhibition. The great middle-classes. The great humbug. Who wants to think thought on to the end when its design is smothered in wax flowers?'

  'Really?' gasped Hugh, whose whole attention was fixed upon the progress of the car. He felt as though he were being winnowed, flesh from bone, but he clung nimbly to the bouncing vehicle.

  'Psychol'gy. That's what we gotta study. 'Smy belief the cinema's the greatest force in breaking up revolution in the world. Cuts across the straight line. Gives 'em beauty, passion, Art. Why — Beauty — Hell, you son of a bitch! Where the devil d'you think you're going to?' By a miracle he avoided the slaughter of an errand boy, and returned to his flowing monologue. 'We've gotta democritize colour. Give Art an' music to the Masses. Counteract the Machine by the machine. Satan to cast out Satan. Yes - sir!'

  Frail as a cockleshell among great whales, the little car burrowed its way between buses, dived under drays, and span around huge lorries. Hugh's heart had turned into a heavy lump lying below his waistcoat, but he scorned to show fear to the man beside him.

  'Ah, you scientists,'chanted Johnson above the tumult of the traffic. 'Ah, you scientists who pursue the means an' despise the ends, take care. Take care. The day will come when you may be thankful to go to school with babes and sucklings to learn the elements of psychol'gy. Here we are. Nip out, an' I'll just park her round at the back.'

  Hugh climbed out with surprised relief, finding real pleasure in release from fear. Five minutes later he was seated in a warm and unusually comfortable room, half buried in the brown plush cushions of a large leather chair, his feet turned to the blaze of a bright fire. Johnson at a small table was mixing whiskys and sodas.

  'Great little place. Rented it furnished for three months. I'm a rolling stone. Mayfair one minute, Alberta backwoods the next. Gotta have action. Well, here's how!'

/>   Hugh bowed stiffly over his whisky.

  He had not altered his opinion of his host, but he told himself that with scoundrels, at least, you knew where you were. Johnson was obviously an adventurer. Dirty, garrulous, probably dishonest, sensual and ignorant. But his fire was warm, and his whisky was like soft flame, and it was clear that the man knew something, however inaccurately, about the cinema. He had Powell's book and he might possibly understand the marketing of patents. It was the kind of commercial, second-rate knowledge which one might expect such a man to have. Hugh determined to keep to the forefront of his mind his two immediate necessities. He wanted to read Fowell on Lighting, and he wanted to sell his Tona Perfecta Film. If Johnson could help him to do either, he would endure the peculiarities of villains.

  He found himself listening drowsily to Johnson's scheme for raising the moral and aesthetic standards of the British film.

  'Friend o' mine - Basil St. Denis - nephew or something of Lord Herringdale - I'm a democrat. I sold papers in the streets of Toronto when I was knee-high to a grass-hopper. But I know what I'm talking about when I say that in a matter of taste Eton or Oxford put it across the Hoi Polloi nine times outa ten. Mark my words, Macafee, in matters of taste give me heredity and devil take environment. We're forming a Company - I don't cotton much to the title, but Caroline - she's Miss Denton-Smyth, our secretary - says that we've gotta get the churches in. Christian Cinema Company. Don't you forget it. Rake in the parsons, and the pence'll look after themselves. Of course we gotta get the Jews - Isenbaum's the right stuff though. Money without millions. None o' this Jew Suss run-a-cabinet nonsense about him.' In Hugh's mind, drowsed by warmth and whisky, the staccato sentences danced upon the flames. They pirouetted round him while he lay in a pleasant stupor, only half conscious that his host from time to time refilled both glasses and carolled jubilantly, 'Here's how.' Enormous, through blue smoke clouds, rolled Johnson's figure; enormous, boomed his voice; enormous, rose and fell the rhythm of his monologue.