“We shall have rain to-morrow,” said George, instinctively looking up at the cloudy sky invisible beyond the glare of street lamps. “It is Spring at last. The crocuses will be nearly over. I must go and look at the flowers at Hampton Court. Will you come?”
“I’d love to, but isn’t Hampton Court full of trippers?”
“Not if you go at the right time. I have walked there in the early morning as solitary as ever King Charles when the Privy Garden was really private. I should rather like to Jive in King William’s summer-house.”
“I like wilder and more primitive country, the Downs and those great round empty Exmoor hills. And I like the clear rough waves dashing against the rocks in Cornwall.”
“I don’t know Cornwall, but I love the Downs above Storrington and I’ve walked over Exmoor twice. But now I’m rather in revolt against mere country—‘Nature,’ as they used to call it. Nature-worship is a sort of Narcissus-worship, holding up Nature’s mirror to ourselves. And how abominably selfish these Nature-worshippers are I Why! they want a whole landscape to themselves and they complain bitterly when farm-labourers want modern grocery stores and W. C.’s. Whole communities apparently are to live in static ignorance and picturesque decay in order to gratify their false ideas of what is beautiful.”
“Of course, I hate the Simple-Lifers too. There was a set of them near the place in the seaside where we went for the holidays as children....”
“Oh! Have you got brothers and sisters?”
“A sister and two brothers. Why, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I believe so, but I never think about it. Relatives are awful—they contribute absolutely nothing to your interest in life, and think that gives them a perpetual right to interfere in your affairs. And they have the monstrous impudence to pretend that you ought to love them. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ they say sententiously. So it may be, but I don’t want to dabble in thick blood. I hate proverbs, don’t you? I’ve always noticed that anything absurd or tyrannical or fatuous can always be supported by a proverb—the collective stupidity of the ages. But, I say, I’m so sorry I interrupted you. I go on talking and talking, and don’t give you a chance to say a word.”
“Oh, I like it. I think your ideas are amusing.”
“Not amusing, merely common-sense. But you mustn’t let me talk all the time. You see, I find most people rather oppress my spirits, and keep me from saying what I really think. So as a rule I’m silent, but when I find a sympathetic victim, well, you’ve already had a bitter experience of how I chatter nineteen to the dozen. There, I’m off again! Now tell me what you were going to say about the Simple-Lifers.”
“The Simple-Lifers? Oh, yes, I remember. Well, there was a set of people down there who had fled from the horrors of the mechanical age—you know, the usual art-y sort, Ruskin-cum-William Morris....”
“Hand-looms, vegetable diet, long embroidered frocks and home-spun tweed trousers from the Hebrides? I know them. ‘News from Nowhere’ people. What a gospel to lead nowhither!”
“Yes. Well, they were to lead the simple life, work with their hands part of the time, and do arts and crafts and write the rest of the time. They were also to show the world an example of perfect community life. They used to make the farm girls dance round a Maypole—the boys wouldn’t come, they stood in the lane and jeered.”
“And what happened?”
“Well, those who hadn’t private incomes got very hard up, and were always borrowing money off the two or three members who had money. The arts and crafts didn’t sell, and the toiling on the land had very meagre results. Then they got themselves somehow into two or three cliques, always running down the people in the other cliques, talking scandal about them, and saying they were ruining everything by their selfish behaviour. Then the wife of one of the rich members ran away with one of the men, and the other rich members were so scandalized that they went away too, and the whole community broke up. The village was very glad when they went. The farmers and gentry were furious because they talked Socialism and the ideal state to the labourers. And all the labourers’ wives were furious because the Simple-Life women tried to brighten up their lives and make them furnish their cottages ‘artistically....’”
They had missed two buses outside the tube station in their excited chatter. A third came along. George grabbed Elizabeth’s arm:
“Come on, here’s our bus. Let’s go on top.”
The bus-top was empty except for a couple spooning on a back-seat. George and Elizabeth a little haughtily went to the very front.
“Other peoples’ love-affairs are very tedious,” said George sententiously.
“Oh, very.”
“Rather primitive and humiliating.”
“Why humiliating?”
“Oh, because...”
“Fares, please!”
The conductor lurched skilfully against the front of the bus as it made a cow-like leap forward. George raked in his pocket for the pennies.
“Let me pay my share.”
Elizabeth produced a sixpence.
“Oh, no, please. Look, let me take you back to Hampstead, and you can pay from Tottenham Court Road.”
“All right.”
The conductor and the fare-paying had interrupted the rhythm of their communication. They were silent. The bus ran noisily along the wave-furrowed shiny tarred street, with the dark mystery of Kensington Gardens to the right and the equally mysterious boarding-houses of Bayswater to the left. Near the street-lamps the grass behind the railing was a vivid artificial green, as if some one had splashed down a bucket-ful of bright paint. Like savages in some primitive dance, the ancient trees swayed slowly, irregularly and mysteriously in the strong wind. A red apocalyptic glow from the lights of Oxford Street stained luridly and uneasily the low rolling clouds before them. The grey monster Ennui of Sunday-in-London had vanished. George took his hat off and let the wind rumple his hair. Their young cheeks were fresh with driving moist wind.
“Don’t you really like the Pre-Raphaelites?” asked Elizabeth, as the bus slowed down near Lancaster Gate.
“I used to. About three years ago I was quite cracked about Rossetti and Burne-Jones and Morris. Now I simply hate them. I can still read Browning and Swinburne—Browning for his sense of life, Swinburne for his intoxicating rhetoric. But after spending three months in Paris I got frightfully excited about modern painting. Do you know Apollinaire?”
“No, who’s he?”
“Oh, he’s a Polish Jew who has written some quite good poems and does amusing word-pictures he calls Calligrammes. He lives by writing and editing obscene books, and he’s the great defender of the new painters like Picasso and Braque and Léger and Picabia.”
“The Cubists?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve only heard of them. I never saw any of their work. I thought they were just ‘wild men’ and fumistes?”
“You wait ten years, and see then if you dare to say that Picasso is a fumiste! But haven’t you been to Paris?”
“Yes, I was there last year, in September.”
“We must have been there together. How curious, I wish I’d seen you.”
“Oh, it was very dull. I was with father and mother, and everybody we met kept talking about the coming war with Germany. A friend of father’s in the Admiralty told him in confidence that it was absolutely certain to happen.”
“What nonsense!” said George explosively, “what absolute nonsense! Haven’t you read Norman Angell’s ‘Great Illusion’? He shows quite conclusively that war does nearly as much damage to the victor as the conquered. And he also says that the structure of modern international commerce and finance is so delicate and widespread that a war couldn’t possibly last more than a few weeks without coming to an end automatically, because all the nations would be ruined. I’ll lend you the book if you like.”
“I don’t know anything about such things, but father’s friend said the Government was very worried about the position.”
“I can’t believe it. What! A war between European nations in the twentieth century? It’s quite unthinkable. We’re far too civilized. It’s over forty years since the Franco-Prussian War....”
“But there’s been a Russo-Japanese War and the Balkan Wars....”
“Well, yes, but they’re different. I can’t believe any of the big European nations would start a war with another. Of course, there are Chauvins and Junkers and Jingoes, but who cares a hang about them? The people don’t want war.”
“Of course, I don’t know, but I heard Admiral Partington telling father that the navy is bigger, newer and more efficient than it’s ever been. And he said the German army is huge and most efficient, and the French are so frightened they’ve made the period of conscription three years. And he said, look out when the Kiel canal is opened.”
“Good Lord, you surely don’t believe what stodgy old Admirals say, do you? It’s their job to frighten people with war scares so that they can go on getting money out of the country and building their ridiculous Dreadnoughts. I met a coast-guard officer last summer, who got drunk and said he’d sealed orders as to what to do in case of war. I told him I thought that seal would not be broken until the angels in the Apocalypse arrived.”
“And what did he say to that?”
“He just shook his head, and ordered another whiskey.”
“Well, it doesn’t concern us. It’s not our business.”
“No, thank God, it doesn’t and can’t concern us.”
They were in Oxford Street, rolling past the shuttered shop-fronts. A good many people were on the pavements, but the street was comparatively empty of vehicles, empty and sonorous. As they ran down past Selfridge’s, the curved line of lights in the centre of the street looked like an uncoiled necklace of luminous, glittering beads. At Oxford Circus they gazed down old Regent Street with its long lines of café-au-lait Regency houses, broken only at the Quadrant by the new Piccadilly Hotel.
“Isn’t that like us?” said George. “We have an attempt at town-planning, and dull as Nash is, at any rate his design is simple and dignified, and then we go and ruin the Quadrant with a horrid would-be-modern hotel.”
“But I thought you believed in modernity in art.”
“So I do, but I don’t believe in mucking up the art of the past if it can be avoided. Besides, I don’t call these pastiches of Renaissance palaces modern architecture. The only people who have got a live modern architecture are the Americans, and they don’t know it.”
“Those awful sky-scrapers!”
“They’re awful in one way, but they’re original. I saw some photographs of New York from the harbour recently, and I thought it the most beautiful city in the world, a sort of gigantic and stupendous Venice. I’d like to go there, wouldn’t you?”
“No, I’d like to go to Paris and live in the real student’s quarter, and to Italy and Spain.”
The bus stopped at the end of Tottenham Court Road. They got down, and crossed the street to wait for the Hampstead bus.
“Look here,” said Elizabeth, “why do you bother to come all the way out to Hampstead? I’m perfectly used to going about alone. I shall be all right.”
“Of course, you would be. But I’d like to come most awfully. I hope I shall see a good deal of you, and we haven’t arranged where and when to meet again.”
“But there won’t be a bus back.”
“Oh, I shall walk. I like walking. And it’ll be an antidote to the fug and idiotic talk at Shobbe’s. Here’s the bus. Come on.”
They clambered on to the top of the bus, and again got the front seat. Elizabeth took off her right-hand glove to pay the fare, and after the conductor had gone George gently and rather timidly put his hand on hers. She did not withdraw it. Having established this delicious and dangerous contact, they sat silent for a while. The firm cool male hand gently espoused her slim glove-warmed fingers. In them both was the exaltation of the Cyprian, potential desire recognized only as a heightening of vitality. The first step along the primrose path—how delightful! But whither does it lead? To what everlasting bonfires of servitude or ashy wastes of indifference? Neither of them thought of the future. Why should they? The young at least have the sense to live only in the present moment.
Preceded by the silver dove-drawn chariot of the Paphian, the heavy bus lumbered northward. Sweet is the smile of Cypris, but ironic and a little terrifying, enigmatic as the fixed smile of the Veian Apollo.
Like all imaginative and sensitive men George was not what is called an enterprising lover. He had too much male modesty, the inherent pudor which is so much stronger and more genuine than the induced modesty of women, that coquettish flight of the nymph who casts a rosy apple at her pursuer to encourage him to continue. Odd, but perhaps in the nature of things, that those men who have most contempt for women are generally most successful with them. There must be a vast amount of latent masochism in women, ranging from the primitive delight in being knocked down to the subtle enjoyment of complex jealousies. How ghastly—if you think about it—their passion for soldiers! To breed babes by him who has slain men—puh! there’s too much spilt blood in the world, one sickens at it. Give me some civet....
Once more they fell into talk, eager, excited, more intimate talk. They were calling each other “George” and “Elizabeth” before they reached the stately homes of Camden Town. By the time they passed Mornington Crescent they had admitted that they liked each other “frightfully” and would see a good deal of each other. In their excitement they talked rather incoherently, jumping from one topic to another in their eagerness to say something of all that seemed to clamour for expression, recklessly wasting their emotional energy. Their laughter had the ring of pure happiness. George slipped his arm through Elizabeth’s and held her fingers more amorously. Their natures expanded in a sudden delicious efflorescence; great coloured plumes of flowers seemed to sway and nod above their heads. They were enclosed in a nimbler air, the clear oxygen of desire, so light, so compact, so resistant to the grey monster Ennui of Sunday-in-London.
“Isn’t it strange!” George exclaimed, with that fatuity peculiar to lovers, “I only met you this evening and yet I feel as if I had known you all my life!”
“So do I!”
He gratefully squeezed her fingers in silence, caught in a sudden panic of bashfulness, unable to pursue further.
“Do let’s meet often. We can go to the galleries and Queen’s Hall and Hampton and Oxshott. I can get you tickets for the new picture shows. Do you know the Allied Artists?”
“Yes, I belong.”
“Do you? Why ever didn’t you tell me you are a painter, too?”
“Oh, I’m such a bad painter, besides you didn’t ask me.”
“Touché! How self-absorbed one is. I apologize.”
“You must come and have tea at my studio and look at my—what I call my pictures. But you mustn’t be too critical. When can you come?”
“Any time. To-morrow if you like.”
Elizabeth laughed.
“Oh! Oh! You are impatient. Can you come on Friday?”
“So long? It seems ages away!”
“Well, Thursday then.”
“All right, what time?”
“About four.”
Elizabeth was probably not acquainted with Stendhal’s ingenious theory of crystallization, but she acted instinctively in accordance with it. Three days and four nights made exactly the right period. To-morrow was too soon, the crystals would be in process of formation. A week would be rather too long, they would be tending to disintegrate.... Infinite subtlety of females! One must admit they need it.
George accompanied Elizabeth to the boarding-house where she lived and took the address of her studio. She held out her hand, after putting the latch-key in the yale lock.
“Till Thursday then, good-night.”
“Good-night.”
He held her hand a moment, and then awkwardly and timidly kissed it. In her turn she felt a sudden panic, opened the door swiftly, and disappeared inside, with a last hasty: “Good-night, good-night!”
George stood for several moments irresolutely on the step. He was desolated, thinking he had offended her.
Inside Elizabeth was murmuring silently to herself: “He kissed my hand, he kissed my hand! I’ve a lover, a lover.”
The sudden panic and flight were a masterpiece of erotic strategy—they left that feeling of uncertainty, of mingled hope and fear, so valuable to the production of a powerful crystallization.
George walked back to Greek Street, enclosing in himself a small chaos of emotions and thoughts. He went by way of Fitzjohn’s Avenue and St. John’s Wood. The infinite debate in a lover’s mind—did she or didn’t she, would she or wouldn’t she?—moved in those curious arabesques where a mind continually wanders away from a main stem of thought, and perpetually comes back to it. Upjohn’s ridiculous conceit, Shobbe’s party, never go to that sort of thing again, Bobbe’s acrid offensiveness, how delicate that line from her ear to her throat, I should like to paint her, now, in that article to-morrow I must try to show clearly and definitely what the new painters are attempting, I wonder if she was really offended when I kissed her hand, but I must think about that article, let me see, begin with an explanation of non-representational, yes, that’s it, I must get a new tie for Thursday, this one’s worn out.... And thus, with merciless iteration.
Under a gas-lamp near Marlborough Road Station he stopped and tried to write his first poem, and was surprised to find how difficult it was and what nonsense he wrote. A policeman came out of a side-street, and looked a little suspiciously at him. George moved on. A little later he began to sing “Bid me to live,” interrupted himself halfway through to make a note for a study in analysis of form. He walked rapidly and absorbedly, unconscious of his physical fatigue. Just before he crossed Oxford Street, he stopped and clapped his hands together. My God, I was a fool to kiss her hand the first time I met her, she’ll think I do that to every girl and won’t want to speak to me again. Oh, well, it’s done. I wish I could kiss her mouth. I must remember to tell her on Thursday about that show at the Leicester Gallery....
He lay awake long that night, unable to sleep for very love of living. So much to see, so much to experience, so much to achieve, so much to be and do! How wonderful to do things with Elizabeth! It would be fun to go to New York, of course, but perhaps one ought to see the old world first? She said something about Paris and Spain. We might go together. Cursed money difficulty. Never mind, if one wants to do a thing hard enough, one always manages to do it. I suppose I’m in love with her? It would be divine to kiss her and touch her breasts and... Of course, one mustn’t have a baby, that would be too ghastly. I must find out. I wish we could go to Paris, the trees will be leafing in the Luxembourg....
In the night-silence water dripped with insistent melody in some hidden tank. From outside came the shrill distant notes of train whistles, rather silvery and exquisite, bringing the yearning for travel, “the horns of elf-land faintly blowing.” Where had he read that? Oh, of course, Stevenson. Funny how the Coningtons thought Stevenson a good author....
“Good-night, Elizabeth, good-night, sweet, sweet Elizabeth, good-night, good-night.”
[ IV ]
Before our eyes we have the regrettable examples of George Augustus and Isabel, Ma and Pa Tartly, dear Mamma and dear Papa—eponyms of sexual infelicity.
Are we more intelligent than our ancestors? What a question for the British Press or for those three musketeers of publicity cheap and silly, of tattered debates on torn topics—Shaw, Chesterton and Belloc. Shaw, yes, the puritan Beaumarchais—un coup de chapeau—but the others! To the goddess Ennui sung by Pope, the groans of the Britons. Who will deliver us from the R. C. bores?
The problem may be stated thus:
Let X equal the ménage of dear Mamma-dear Papa, or a typical couple of the seventies and eighties;
And let Y equal the ménage George Augustus and Isabel, or a typical couple of the nineties and noughts;
And further, let Z equal Elizabeth and George, or a typical bright young pair of the Georgian or European War epoch;
Then, it remains to be proved whether Z is equal to, or greater than or less than X and / or Y.
A pretty theorem, not to be solved mathematically—too many unknown quantities involved.
I am naturally prejudiced in favour of Z, because I belong to their generation, but what do les jeunes, the sole competent authority, think? For, after all,—let us be perfectly frank—dear Papa expired peacefully in his bed; George Augustus was unhappily but accidentally slain in the performance of his religious duties; whereas George, if you accept my interpretation of the facts, virtually committed suicide at the age of twenty-six.
But then dear Papa and George Augustus did not have to fight the European War....
The problem, you see, is almost insoluble, no doubt because it is wrongly stated. Let us examine it in different terms.
Without going back to Horace’s egg, may we not assume that he and she have lived well who have lived with felicity?
This not only involves the problem of the summum bonum or sovereign good, so much debated by the ancient philosophers, but the awful difficulty of knowing who is to decide whether another person has lived with felicity. Is there such a thing as a happy life? And, if there is would it be the most desirable life? Would you like to be Claudian’s old man of Verona? Or Mr. John D. Rockefeller? Or Mr. Michael Arlan? Or any other type of unabridged felicity?
There are, of course, lots of things and people who will eagerly or dogmatically tell you exactly what you have to do to be happy. There is, for instance, the collective wisdom of the ages, as embodied in our religions, philosophies, laws, and social customs. What a mess! What a junk-shop of dusty relics! And in any case, “the collective wisdom of the ages” is merely one of the innumerable devices of government by which the Anglo-Saxon peoples are humbugged into thinking themselves free, enlightened and happy.
But let us abandon these abstruse and arid speculations.... The point is, did George and Elizabeth (consider them for the moment, please, rather as types than individuals) come better prepared to the erotic life than their predecessors, were they more intelligent about it, did they make a bigger mess of things? Does the free play of the passions and intelligence make for more erotic happiness than the taboo system? Liberty versus Restraint. Wise Promiscuity versus Monogamy. (This is becoming a Norman Haire tract.)
Here, of course, I shall come into collision (if this has not happened long ago) with the virtuous British journalist. This gentleman will inform us that there are far too many books about the erotic life, that to dwell upon sex is morbid and disgusting, that monogamous marriage as established by religion and law must remain sacred, et cetera, et cetera, and that it provides a perfect solution, et cetera, et cetera. Moreover, in the few cases where it goes wrong, the situation must be met by frequent applications of cold water to the genitals, by propelling balls of different sizes in different manners with various instruments in mimic combat, by slaying small animals and birds, by playing bridge for modest sums, avoiding French wines and dancing, scattering saltpetre on one’s bread and butter, regularly attending church, and subscribing to the virtuous organ of the virtuous journalist....
To which may be said; for example,
That without sexual intercourse, frequent and pleasant, adult life is maimed and tedious;
That social hypocrisy prescribes that we shall avoid open discussion and practice of the sexual life, and that we all (virtuous journalists included) think a great deal about it;
That the sporting-ascetic practices recommended are only effective in those predisposed to abnormal frigidity, and
That they, taken in conjunction with the segregation of the sexes, economic difficulties and insane prejudices, form one of the chief predisposing causes of the pictures of Dorian Grey and wells of loneliness which cause the virtuous journalist so much horror and indignation.
We therefore unanimously dismiss the virtuous British journalist with a firm but vigorous kick in the seat of his intelligence, and return to our speculations.
Mother of the race of Æneas, voluptuous delight of gods and men, sacred Aphrodite, who from the recesses of thy divine abode lookest in pity upon the sorrowing generations of men and women, and sheddest upon us rose-petals of subtle and recurrent pleasure and the delicious gift of Sleep, do Thou, Goddess, be ever with us, and neglect not the felicity of Thy worshippers. Do Thou, alone beautiful, daughter of the Gods, drench us with loveliness.
From which to the lives of Pa and Ma Hartley et al., is indeed a staggeringly long step....
I hold a brief for the war generation. J’aurais pu mourir; rien ne m’eût été plus facile. J’ai encore à écrire ce que nous avons fait.... (Bonaparte à Fontainebleau—admirez l’érudition de l’auteur.)
Yet why should we mourn, O Zeus, and why should we laugh? Why weep, why mock? What is a generation of men that we should mourn for it? As leaves, as leaves, says the poet, spring, burgeon and fall the generations of Man—No! but as rats in the rolling ship of the Earth as she plunges through the roar of the stars to the inevitable doom. And like rats we pullulate, and like rats we scramble for greasy prey, and like rats we fight and murder our kin.... And—O gigantic mirth!—the voice of the Thomiste is heard!
Peace be to you, O lovers, peace unto Juliet’s grave!
At the time of which I am writing—the three or four years preceding 1914—young men and women were just as much interested in sexual matters as they are now, or were at any other time. They were in revolt against the family or domestic den ethic, that “ordained for the procreation of children” attitude whereby the State turns its adult members into a true proletariat, mere producers of proles. And they were almost as much in revolt against Tennysonian and Pre-Raphaelite “idealism,” which made love a sort of hand-holding in the Hesperides. But, let it be remembered, Freudianism (as distinct from Freud, that great man whom every one talks about and nobody reads) had scarcely begun to penetrate. All things were not interpreted in terms of sexual symbolism; and if one had the misfortune to slip on a banana peel in the street, he was not immediately told that this implied repressed desire to undergo the initiatory mutilating rite of the Mohammedans. They thought they were rediscovering the importance of the physical in love; they hoped they were not neglecting the essential tenderness, and the mythopœic faculty of lovers which is the source of much beauty.
Late in April, George and Elizabeth went to Hampton Court. They met at Waterloo about nine, went by train to Teddington, and walked through Bushey Park. Each had brought a frugal lunch, half because of poverty, half from some Pythagorean delusion about austerity in diet.
They walked on the grass through the long elm naves.
“How blue the sky is,” said Elizabeth, throwing back her head, and breathing the soft air.
“Yes, and look how the elms make long Gothic arches!”
“Yes, and do look at the young leaves, so shrill, so virginal a green.”
“Yes, and yet you can still see the beautiful tree skeleton—youth and age.”
“Yes, and the chestnut blossom will be out soon.”
“Yes, and the young grass is— Oh Elizabeth, look, look! The deer! There’s two young ones.”
“Where? Where are they? I can’t see them. I want to see them!”
“There they are! Look, look, running across to the right.”
“Oh, yes! How funny the little ones are I But how graceful. How old are they?”
“Only a few days I should think. Why are they so beautiful and young babies so hideous?”
“I don’t know. They’re always supposed to look like their fathers, aren’t they?”
“Touché—but I should think that would make the mothers hate them, and they love the little beasts.”
“Not always. A friend of mine had a baby last year, and she didn’t want it when it was coming, but kept thinking she would love it when it came. And when she saw it, she simply loathed it, and they had to take it away. But she made herself look after it. She says it’s ruined her life and she doesn’t find it a bit interesting, but now she’s fond of it and couldn’t bear it to die.”
“Perhaps she didn’t love her husband.”
“Oh, yes, she does. She simply dotes on him.”
“Well, maybe it wasn’t his child.”
“Oh! Oh!” Elizabeth slightly shocked. “It was his child. But one reason why she didn’t like it was because it separated them.”
“How long had they been married when the child was born?”
“Oh, I don’t know—less than a year.”
“Idiotic,” said George, banging the end of his walking stick on the ground, “Ab-so-lute-ly idiotic! Why the devil did they go and have a child bang off like that? Of course, she’s unhappy and they’re ‘separated.’ Serves ’em right.”
“But could they help it? I mean—well, you know—it just happens, doesn’t it?”
“Good Lord, Elizabeth, what a prehistoric notion! Of course it doesn’t ‘just happen.’ There are several ways...”
“It seems a bit revolting?”
“Not a bit! You may feel so because you’ve had mushy ideas about maidenly modesty and such twaddle instilled into you. That’s all part of the taboo. Now I think the really civilized thing is not to let such things happen to us like animals, but to control them. It’s all most frightfully important, perhaps the most important problem for our generation to solve.”
“But you surely don’t think everybody should give up having children?”
“Why, of course not! I do say so sometimes when I feel discouraged and disgusted with the poor scarecrows of humanity we are now. Fewer and better babies. Isn’t it insane that we exercise over animals the control they haven’t got themselves, and yet resolutely refuse even to discuss it about human beings? How can you have a fine race if you breed insensately like white mice?”
“Well, but, George dear, you can’t interfere with other peoples’ lives like that!”
“I didn’t say one should. But I believe that if people have the necessary knowledge and we get rid of the taboo they will for their own sakes come to breed more eugenically. Of course, it’s an intimate and private matter—no need for Sir Thomas Moore’s insane regulations and naked exhibitions before modest matrons and discreet old gentlemen. It’s not for the old to interfere with the lusts of youth! Damn the old. But here’s another point. Like most intelligent women and a few men you’re indignant at the way women have been treated in the past and at the wicked mediæval laws of this country. You want women to be free to live more interesting lives. So do I. Any man who isn’t an abject moron would rather see women becoming more intelligent and magnanimous instead of having them kept ignorant and timid and repressed and meekly acquiescent, and therefore sly and catty and wanting to get their own back. But you won’t achieve that with Suffrage. Of course, let women have votes if they want them. But who the devil wants a vote? I’d gladly give you mine if I had one. But the point is this—when women, all women, know how to control their bodies, they’ll have an enormous power. They’ll be able to choose when and how they’ll have a child and what man they want as its father. Overpopulation causes wars as much as commercial greed and diplomatic deceit and imbecile patriotism. Talk about the miners’ strike! What I want to see is a universal strike of women. They could bring all the governments of the world to their knees in a year. Like the Lysistrata, you know, but not a failure this time.”
“Oh, George, you are amusing with your fancies I You make me laugh!”
“Laugh away! But I’m serious. Of course, it isn’t possible to have such a concerted action all over the world. For one thing it wouldn’t be politic to announce it, because the unscrupulous governments will always go to any extent of force and fraud to sustain their infamous régimes....”
They had crossed the road outside Bushey Park and entered the palace gates. Between the wall which backs the Long Border, the Tudor side of the palace and another long high wall, is the Wilderness, or old English garden, composed on the grandiose scale advocated by Bacon. It is both a garden and a “wilderness,” in the sense that it is planted with innumerable bulbs (which are thinned and removed from time to time), but otherwise allowed to run wild. George and Elizabeth stopped with that sudden ecstasy of delight felt by the sensitive young—a few of them—at the sight of loveliness. Great secular trees, better protected than those in the outer Park, held up vast fans of glittering green and gold foliage which trembled in the light wind and formed moving patterns on the tender blue sky. The lilacs had just unfolded their pale hearts showing the slim stalk of closed buds which would break open later in a foam of white and blue blossoms. Underfoot was the stouter green of wild plants, spread out like an evening sky of verdure for the thick clustered constellations of flowers. There shone the soft slim yellow trumpet of the wild daffodil; the daffodil which has a pointed ruff of white petals to display its gold head; and the more opulent double daffodil which, compared with the other two, is like an ostentatious merchant between Florizel and Perdita. There were the many-headed jonquils, creamy and thick-scented; the starry narcissus, so alert on its long slender stiff stem, so sharp-eyed, so unlike a languid youth gazing into a pool; the hyacinth-blue frail squilla almost lost in the lush herbs; and the hyacinth, blue and white and red, with its firm thick-set stem and innumerable bells curling back their open points. Among them stood tulips—the red, like thin blown bubbles of dark wine; the yellow more cup-like, more sensually open to the soft furry entry of the eager bees; the large parti-coloured gold and red, noble and sombre like the royal banner of Spain.
English spring flowers! What an answer to our ridiculous “cosmic woe,” how salutary, what a soft reproach to bitterness and avarice and despair, what balm to hurt minds! The lovely bulb-flowers, loveliest of the year, so unpretentious, so cordial, so unconscious, so free from the striving after originality of the gardener’s tamed pets! The spring flowers of the English woods, so surprising under those bleak skies, and the flowers the English love so much and tend so skilfully in the cleanly wantonness of their gardens, as surprisingly beautiful as the poets of that bleak race! When the inevitable “fuit Ilium” resounds mournfully over London among the appalling crash of huge bombs and the foul reek of deadly gases while the planes roar overhead, will the conqueror think regretfully and tenderly of the flowers and the poets...?
When George, on one of our walks, told me the gist of this conversation with Elizabeth, I was at once more amused and more interested than I allowed him to see. There are certain aspects of peoples’ bodies, certain things they say and do, which not only determine one’s attitude towards them but seem to explain them. And more, in some cases they seem to reveal an epoch. Every one has experience of attraction or repulsion caused by another’s body. For instance, there was once a poet, whose work I admired; but the first time I met him he tried to hold a girl’s hand. I didn’t mind that, au contraire. What I minded was the awful spectacle of his large ugly raw-red hand, with knotty fingers and gnawed mourning nails, trying to enclose the washed and chubby hand of my little friend.... I could never read his poems again without thinking of that Mr. Hyde-like hand, the Barrymore film hand of Mr. Hyde....
Now I had a reason for dwelling at some length on these preliminary conversations of George and Elizabeth with George much in the foreground. They seem to explain a great deal, at least to me. They reveal him and at the same time “throw more light” (as the learned say) on the state of mind of a generation of young men who mostly perished in their twenties. As a rule, George was very silent. Like most people who think at all he had very little of the small change of conversation and disliked aimless babbling. But when he was with somebody he liked, he talked. My God, how much he talked! He was passionately interested in ideas, passionately interested in his own reactions to the appearances of things, comparatively little interested in the lives of other people except in a general and abstract way. He noticed in a flash the girl at a party who looked like a Botticelli (people still admired Botticelli in those days and girls lived up to it) but he would never see, for example, the look on the face of the rather plain woman whom one guessed to be in love with the handsome host uxoriously devoted to his new wife. Consequently his talk was all ideas and impressions. He had an almost indecent love of ideas. If you threw George a new idea he caught it with a skilled and grateful snap, like a seal at the Zoo catching a fish jerked at it by the keeper.
Of course, it is very natural that young men and women should be interested in ideas, which are new to them though probably stale enough to those a bit older. But the young War Generation seem to me to have been abnormally swayed by ideas of grandiose “Social reform.” England swarmed with Social Reformers. I don’t pretend to know why. Perhaps it was due to the political idealism of Ruskin and Morris, aided by the infinitely more sensible work of the Fabians. Everybody was the architect of a New Jerusalem, and a rummy assortment of plans they provided. This passion has now reached the disinterested and noble-minded trade unionist and to some extent even the agricultural labourer. Consequently, you may now hear, at Hyde Park Corner or in pubs or third-class carriages, beautifully garbled versions of the highbrow talk of about twenty years ago. You thus have the encouraging and delightful spectacle of a proletariat eagerly expecting a millennium, impossible at any time, but particularly impossible after a catastrophe which has plunged the intellectuals into Spenglerian pessimism and hurled the weaker or more cynical into the ironic bosom of Mother Church....
George was pretty much affected by this social reform bunk. He was always looking at things from “the point of view of the Country” and far more frequently from “the point of view of humanity.” This may have been a result of his Public School, kicked-backside-of-the-Empire training. I know he resisted it with commendable contempt and fury, but where so much pitch was flying about he could scarcely avoid some of it. Perhaps the young are always like that, although one does not seem to notice it. As I pointed out to George years afterwards, he was quite right to discuss the matter frankly and openly with Elizabeth before they proceeded further, but all this bunk about eugenics and women’s rights and preventing wars by birth control would have discouraged any girl who had not fully made up her mind already that she wanted him. It was appallingly bad strategy as seduction—though, en passant let it be noted that “seduction” is one of those primitive notions which could only inhabit the degenerate minds of lawyers and social uplifters, since in nine cases out of ten the “seducer,” if any, is the woman. I thought that George ought to have imparted a little elementary information, and have pointed out that in the present state of human affairs it is not quite right for people to have a child without being legally married because it’s so hard on the child, although in some cases it should be done deliberately as a protest against a foolish prejudice. He ought then to have explained how it may spoil a sexual relationship to have a child too soon and unthinkingly. And he should then have demonstrated by example and precept that love is an art, and a very difficult art, and one most dismally and disastrously neglected especially by “well-bred” Englishmen. It sounds incredible but it is true that there are thousands of such men, perfectly decent, humane persons, who despise a woman if they think or know that she experiences any sexual pleasure. And then they wonder vaguely why women are shrewish and discontented....
All this will sound very elementary to some people and very reprehensible to others. I am simply trying to explain these people. Of course, there is always the superior person who veils puritanism by saying: “I’m so bored with all this talk about sex. Why can’t people go to bed with the person they want to, and stop talking about it?” Well, why shouldn’t we talk about what interests us, and what, after all, is extremely important to adult life and happiness? Maybe we can learn something from the adulteries of others. It seems to me that the error of the Elizabeth and George generation was that they were far too absolute, too general, too dogmatic in their “ideas” about sex. They would let the Social Reform bunk distort their view. They had seen in their own homes the dreadful unhappiness and suffering caused by Victorian, and indeed Edwardian, ignorance and domestic dennery and swarming infants, and they reacted violently against it. So far, good. But they failed to see that in the way they went about it, they were merely setting up another tyranny—the tyranny of free love. Why shouldn’t people be monogamous if they want to be? Maybe it suits them. Don’t be dragooned into it, of course, but don’t be frightened out of it if you’re made that way. There are certain elementary precepts which always hold good—for instance, Balzac’s “Never begin marriage with a rape”—but this is a wholly personal and very complex and delicate relation which people must work out for themselves. All one asks is that they shall not be interfered with by law and busybodies. It is an interesting comment on the sadism latent in communities that the cruelty and misery of the Victorian home are legally protected and held up as shining examples of behaviour, whereas any attempt to make people a little more natural and happy and tolerant is supposed to be wicked. How men destroy their own happiness! How they hate happiness and pleasure! Think of the insane delusion of female chastity which holds that any woman who has “had” more than one man is “impure,” whereas in fact many women soon come to dislike profoundly their first lover, and most are only really happy and satisfied with a fourth or sixth or tenth.
Alas! “with human nature what it is,” the love-lives of most people will always alternate between brief periods of happiness and long periods of suffering. The “sexual problem” will only be solved with the millennium which produces a perfect humanity. Until then we can only look on and sigh at the ruined lives; and reflect that men and women might be to each other the great consolation, while in fact they do little but torment each other....
I do not pity Elizabeth and George. They were very happy that day—and on other days—and to be quite happy even for one day is sufficient sanction for the misfortune of existence.
They went from the Wilderness into the large garden and walked slowly beside the Long Border where the gardeners were busily potting out spring flowers. The crocuses were almost over, and the large motor lawn-mower was smoothly humming over the delicate green turf of the great lawns. They looked at the trimmed yews and wondered if they had been planted by Cardinal Wolsey. They criticized, somewhat adversely, the lead statue of the three Graces and, walking under the trees by the canals, noticed the cold green lily-leaves just beginning to unfold under water. They stood at the end of the Long Border and for a long time in silence watched the swirl and eddy of the Thames, the house-boats being freshly painted for the season, the exquisite swaying fronds of the young willows. In the Privy Garden, on the raised walk and under the lime-tree avenue where the great clumps of crocuses lay sprawled and dying and overgrown at the foot of each tree, they talked of King Charles, and fought over the age-old contest of King and Parliament. Elizabeth was romantically for the handsome melancholy King; George Whiggish and all for political freedom, though gravely disapproving of Puritan vandalism. They went through the Fountain Court and the beautiful Tudor Courts, and walked along the river, and sat under a tree to eat their lunch. They talked and argued and laughed and made plans and reformed the world and felt important (God knows why!) and held hands and kissed when they thought no one was looking.... And yes, they were very happy.
Dear Lovers! If it were not for you, how dreary the world would be! Never shall a pair of you pass me without a kindly discreet glance and a murmured wish, “Be happy.” How my heart warmed to an old French poet as we walked slowly on the Boulevard, and the lovers in the soft evening air passed us by, hand so close in hand, bodies so amorously near, eyes so sparkling and alive. Now and then, in the intoxicating air of the spring and the tolerant kindliness of the Parisians, a pair would feel so exuberant and so enthusiastic and so moved with each other’s perfections, that they would have to stop and exchange a long kiss, perfunctorily hidden by a quite inadequate tree-trunk. Nobody interrupted them, nobody scowled, no policeman arrested them for indecency. And the old poet paused, and laid his hand on my arm, and said: “Mon ami, I grow old! I am nearly sixty. And sometimes as I pass along these streets and see these warm young people I find myself thinking: ‘How impudique! Why is this permitted? Why do they intrude their passions on me?’ And then I remember that I too was young, and I too passed eagerly and happily with one or other of my young mistresses whom I thought so beautiful, each of whom I loved with so immortal a love! And I look at the lovers passing and I say to myself: ‘Allez-y, mes enfants, allez-y, soyez heureux!’”
Dear Lovers! Let us never forget that you are the sweetness of the bitter world.
And Elizabeth and George lingered through the sunny hours; and before the afternoon became too chill—for April is cold in England—they went back slowly through the long glades of the Park, they too hand in hand like the lovers on the Boulevard, they too with bodies amorously near, they too with eyes sparkling and alive, they too pausing to join their lips when the loveliness of life and the ecstasy of loving drew them together in a kiss.
They were so happy they did not know they were tired.
[ V ]
It is fascinating to observe how people organize and disorganize their lives, fascinating to see how an impulse of vitality sends them off on a certain line, how they wobble, err, suffer, recover themselves. What is the most banal street, the most tedious place you know? Think how fascinating if only you knew the real lives of those tedious people!
There are two centres or poles of activity in every adult life—the economic and the sexual. Hunger and Death, the enemies. Your whole adult life depends on how you deal with the two primitive foes, Hunger and Death. Never mind how much the conditions of collective human life seem to have altered them, they are there; you can never really get away from Hunger and Death, from the need to eat and the will to live again.
Thus, two problems are created—the economic and the sexual. There is no cut-and-dried solution of either. Existence is tolerable—I will not say “happy,” though I believe in happiness—to the extent that as an individual you are successful in solving these two problems. Certain traditional solutions are presented to us all in youth, and the swiftness with which we see their foolishness is an almost unerring test of intelligence. When we have seen through them, a new and delicate problem presents itself—we have to create our own happiness underneath or in despite of the Laws (or rules for collective life) and at the same time preserve intact the sense of Justice, or that which is due to each.
The primitive, the proletarian, the common man and woman solution is merely one of quantity. Get all the grub and copulation you want and more than you want and ipso facto you will be happy. Put money in thy purse. Excellent Iago, what a fool you are! Noble Caliban, what a silly beast! Savages, the heroes of Homer and working men gorge on the flesh of beeves. To sack a town and rape all the women was the sexual ideal of centuries of civilized savages. To do the same thing with money sneakingly, instead of with the sword openly, is the actual ideal of Dr. Frank Crane’s world-famous business men. The judgment of the wiser world is upon them all. Let them join the megatherium and the wild ass.
Then you have the Rudyard Kipling or British Public School solution. Not so far removed from the other as you might think, for it is a harnessing of the same primitive instincts to the service of a group—the nation—instead of to the service of the individual. Whatever is done for the Empire is right. Not Truth and Justice, but British Truth and British Justice. Odious profanation! You are the servant of the Empire, never mind whether you are rich or poor, do what the Empire tells you, and so long as the Empire is rich and powerful you ought to be happy. Woman? A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair. Get rid of the sexual problem by teaching men to despise women, either by open scorn or by putting them on the pedestal of chastity. Of course, they’re valuable as possessions. Oh, quite! There can be no world peace because the man who has the most money gets the best woman, as the German Kaiser said at the gathering of the nations. As if the nations were a set of Kiplingesque characters bidding against each other for an expensive tart! How despicable, how odious!
No, each of us has to work out the problems for himself and, I repeat, on the correct solution of both depends happiness in life. I do not pretend to be able to teach what is your solution. I think I know what is mine; but that is not necessarily yours. But I am quite sure that the quantitative and the British Public School solutions are wrong....
The struggle with Hunger, or the economic problem, leads to situations of astonishing “human interest,” as Balzac recognized. But we are not much concerned with it here. It was highly important in the case of Isabel; very little in the case of Elizabeth and George. They were content with very little, which they obtained quite easily—Elizabeth from her parents, George by various odd jobs which occupied only a comparatively small part of his time. Each wanted to avoid the slavery of working eight hours a day at a stated wage, for some one else, though both were willing to work sixteen hours a day on their own, at what they wanted to do. Neither had the slightest ambition to dominate others through wealth. Of course, you may say they solved the economic problem by dodging it. However, as far as they are concerned as individuals, that was a solution.
But this “dodging solution” (if you like to call it such) involved the sexual problem, too. It was quite obvious that George was incapable of supporting a woman and children on his perfunctorily performed jobs, while his painting was rather a liability than an asset. On the other hand, it was equally obvious that Elizabeth was not rich enough to afford the luxury of an artist husband and a family. It therefore followed that they could not afford children, and since they didn’t want them, this was a misfortune they contemplated with calm. But, since they didn’t want children, it followed that there was no need to get married. Why get married, except for the sake of the unfortunate little bastard?
All of which they talked out very fully before they ever lay together. You may say, of course, that this is very wicked and “unnatural,” that if every one acted in this way the human race would soon come to a full stop. I shall not make the obvious retort of “a good job too,” but merely say that I observe no danger of under-population in Europe. Since the population of England is about three times the amount which the land of England can feed, I am inclined to think that George and Elizabeth should be regarded as a national hero and heroine in this respect....
If you are as quick-witted as you ought to be you will already have noticed one big difference between the George-Elizabeth ménage (I don’t mean the legal irregularity, which is of no importance) and the ménages of George Augustus-Isabel, Dear Mamma-Dear Papa, Ma-and-Pa Hartly. “They talked it out very fully before they ever lay together.” You get the point? They used their intelligence, they actually used their intelligence before embarking on a joint sexual experience. That’s the great break in the generations. Trying to use some intelligence in life, instead of blindly following instincts and the collective imbecility of the ages as embodied in social and legal codes. Isabel “married for money” and got what she deserved, viz., bankruptcy. But she had been obliquely taught that it was a girl’s duty to use men’s sexual passions as a means of acquiring property. Whoring within the law. The Trade Union of married women. George Augustus was greatly attracted by Isabel and wanted to lie with her. Why not? My God, why not? But he had never thought about the problems. He didn’t want children; Isabel didn’t want children. Not really. But they had been taught that if a man and woman wanted to lie together it was horribly wicked to do so unless they were “married.” The parson, the public ceremonies and the signatures made “sacred” what was otherwise inexpressibly wrong and sinful. But in the code on which George Augustus and Isabel were reared “marriage” meant “a dear little baby” nine months after the wedding bells. All right for those who go into it with open eyes. Perfect. Charming. I’ll be godfather every ten months. J’adore les enfants. But all wrong, all so rottenly wrong, if you go into it like a couple of ninnies, mess up your sexual life, disappoint the man, disgust the woman, and produce an infant you can’t look after properly....
Which is precisely what George Augustus and Isabel did, and what their parents did before them....
Now the marriage of Molière’s time was jolly sensible so far as it went. You, Eraste, love Lisette? Good. You, Lisette, love Eraste? Admirable. You wish to crown your flame? Most natural and delightful. But you know that means infants? Perfect. How much money have you got, Eraste? Nothing? Ah!... But your father approves? Will give ten thousand crowns if Lisette’s father will give another five thousand? Delicious. Quite a different situation. Your father approves, Lisette? Yes? Quick, a notary. Bless you, my children.
That was blunt, bluff common-sense. I’m sorry for Lisette, but not for Lisette’s children.
The only trouble was that Lisette and Eraste were not very happy sexually—hence the amants of Lisette and the amies of Eraste. So you dropped into promiscuity, and Eraste didn’t know if Lisette’s later brats were his; and Lisette didn’t know how many dear little bastards Eraste was scattering about the world. All of which made for nastiness, cantankerousness and hypocrisy.
The simple process of dissociating sex life from the philoprogenitive instinct was performed by the War Generation—at least on the grand scale, for isolated practitioners had long existed. The march of Science (how delightful clichés are!) had brought certain engines within the reach of all; and sensible people profited by them. The old alternative of burning or marrying disappeared. And the following, far better proposition arose. It was perfectly possible for man or woman to live a satisfactory sex life without having children. Hence, by the scientific process of trial and error, it became possible for each to seek the really satisfactory lover; while those who were philoprogenitively inclined might marry (en attendant mieux) for the sake of the children. Thus there was a return to the wise promiscuity of the Ancients (if the Ancients ever did anything so sensible, which I greatly doubt) which was a great advance on humbug, domestic tyranny, furtive promiscuity and whoring. One definite result, which we see to-day, is an undeniable decline in the number of whores—the first time this has occurred since the Edict of Milan.
Unfortunately the pre-war “engines” were rather crude and not wholly reliable....
George and Elizabeth, then, were either extremely sensible or disgustingly immoral—I don’t mind what your judgment is, I am recording facts. I don’t, however, attempt to disguise my own prejudice, which is that intelligence makes for a far better life than “Luv” and “God,” those euphuisms for stupidity and ignorance. In a manner of speaking they were pioneers. At any rate, they thought they were, which is all that matters here. They really thought they had worked out a more sensible, more intelligent, more humane relationship between the sexes. But there were certain rather important little snags they overlooked. Like most bright young things, they were very cock-sure of themselves, a good bit too cock-sure. And then, while one doesn’t at all deny that they were pretty bright, and on the right track, their knowledge was unhappily theoretical, chiefly derived from George’s reading and meditations. It’s a confoundedly dangerous thing for two virgins to take on the job of initiating each other into a complicated art they only know theoretically. Dangerous, in that high hopes may be dashed, rather lovely emotions sadly frustrated and a beautiful relationship spoiled. There are dangers in meeting the undeniably right person too soon in life. Two handsome young married people, obviously deeply in love—what a charming spectacle, how delightful.... Wait! You wait! Not very long either....
You haven’t forgotten Fanny and the young man from Cambridge....
Well, Elizabeth and George worked out their scheme, and for a considerable time it all worked admirably. But for the war and the upset of every one’s mind and life and character, it might have weathered the small storms of Fanny and the young man—and perhaps other Fannies and other young men—and still have gone on working. Elizabeth abandoned her Hampstead boarding house, and found a large room, which did as a studio, in Bloomsbury. She wrote her parents in Manchester that she did this for the sake of economy and to be nearer her “work”—whatever that might mean. The economy consisted in the fact that when she spent the night with George at his “studio” she was obviously not wearing out her own bed clothes. Elizabeth’s mother paid her a surprise visit. Most luckily George had gone away for the week-end, and Elizabeth was “discovered” calmly painting by herself. She behaved with the admirable dissimulation which comes so naturally to women, swiftly whipped away one or two objects (such as a tobacco pipe and pouch, the Psychology of Sex, inscribed “To darling Elizabeth from George”) which might have betrayed a certain intimacy with a male, and sent George a long warning telegram. Mrs. Paston stayed three days. Of course, she suspected “something.” Elizabeth looked about ten times prettier, was much more smartly dressed, talked differently, used all sorts of new phrases, and was obviously very happy, so happy that even three days of her mother failed to depress her completely. Elizabeth treated her char-lady with reasonable humanity, so when Mrs. Paston severely cross-examined her in secret about Elizabeth, the char-lady just went beautifully stupid and stood by Elizabeth nobly. “Oh, no, Ma’am, I never seen nothin’ wrong.” “Oh, yes, Ma’am, Miss Elizabeth’s such a nice young lady.” “I’m only here of mornings, Ma’am.” So Mrs. Paston, baffled but somewhat suspicious—what right had Elizabeth to look so well and happy and pretty away from her dear parents?—had to return home and present a blank report.
So that alarm died down.
Elizabeth became inordinately proud of being no longer a virgin. You might have thought she was the only devirginated young woman in London. But, like King Midas, she burned to share her secret, to make somebody else envious. So one week when George had run over to Paris about some pictures, she invited Fanny to tea, and after a tremendous amount of preparation, confessed the lovely secret. Partly to Elizabeth’s disappointment and partly to her relief, Fanny took the news as something very ordinary.
“I’m really surprised you waited so long, my dear.”
“But you’re nearly as old as I am!”
“Oh, but, darling, didn’t you know? I’ve had two or three affairs. Only I didn’t say anything to you. I thought you’d be shocked.”
“Shocked?” Elizabeth laughed scornfully, though she was a bit surprised. “Why on earth should I be shocked? I think people should be free to have all the love affairs they want.”
“Do tell me who he is!”
Elizabeth blushed slightly and hesitated.
“No, I won’t tell you now, but you’ll meet him soon.”
“But, Elizabeth, I hope you’re careful? You won’t go and have a baby?”
Elizabeth laughed scornfully again.
“Have a baby? Of course not! Why ever do you think I’m so silly? George and I talked it—”
“Oh! His name’s ‘George’ is it?”
“Yes. Did I let that out? Yes, George Winterbourne. Well, we talked it all out, and we’ve got a perfectly good arrangement. George says we’re too young to have children, so why get married; and anyway we’re too poor. If we want children later on, we can always get married. I said I wouldn’t tie myself down with any man—I don’t want anybody else’s name. I told George that if I wanted other lovers I should have them, and if he wanted any one else he was to have her. But, of course, when there’s a relationship as firmly established as ours, one doesn’t want any one else.”
Fanny smiled.
As a matter of fact, Elizabeth had not said anything of the sort, when George drew up his Triumphal Scheme of the Perfect Sex Relationship. She had been rather timid and uncertain at first. But George’s discourses and the books on physiology and psychology and sex which he made her read and her own exultation at being no longer a virgin had sent her spinning in the other direction. She had, in a few months, far outdistanced George in “freedom.” Her argument was rational and quite defensible; indeed it was a corollary to George’s own views, though he hadn’t seen it. Because you were very fond of one person, she argued, that was no reason why you shouldn’t be attracted by others. Monogamy was established to tyrannize women and to make sure offspring were legitimate and to provide for them and the mother. But where women are free and there is no offspring, what on earth is the good of an artificial and forced fidelity? Directly one has to promise fidelity, directly an effort of will is made to “remain faithful,” a false position is set up. The effort of keeping such a promise is the surest assurance that it will be broken sooner or later. On the other hand, while you are in love with some one, well, you’re in love, and you either don’t want any one else, or if you do, you’re probably only too happy to get back speedily to the person you do really care for.
There was logic and a good deal of sense in this, George had to admit. But he also had to admit to himself that he didn’t altogether like the idea of Elizabeth “going with” somebody else. Nor, for that matter, would Elizabeth have liked George “going with” another girl. But she deceived herself unknowingly. At that time she was very much under the influence of a Swedish book she had read, a book devoted to the Future of the Race. This was the work of an earnest-minded virgin of fifty who laid it down as an indisputable axiom that there must be complete frankness between the sexes. “The old notion of sexual fidelity must go,” declared this enthusiastic writer, “and only from the golden sun-bath of divinely nude freedom can rise the glorious new race et cetera, et cetera.” Elizabeth didn’t know the authoress was an old maid, and she was annoyed with George for making fun of the “golden sun-bath of divinely nude freedom.”
“But, Elizabeth,” George had said, when she propounded this argument, “of course, I believe that people should be free, and it’s disgusting for them to stay together when they don’t any longer love each other. But suppose I happened to want some one else, just a sort of whim, and went on loving you, wouldn’t it be better if I said nothing about it? And the same with you?”
“And tell each other lies? Why, George, you yourself have said time and again that there can be no genuine relationship which involves deceit. The very essence and beauty and joy of our relation depend upon its being honest and frank and accepting facts.”
“Why, yes, but...”
“Look at the lives of our parents, look at all the sneaking adulteries going on at this very moment in every suburb of London. Don’t you see, why, you must see, that what’s wrong about adultery is not the sexual part of it at all, but the plotting and sneaking and dissimulation and lies and pretence....”
“That’s true,” said George slowly and reflectively, “that’s true. But—suppose I told you that when I was last in Paris I spent the nights with Georgina Harris?”
“Did you?”
“No, of course not. But, you see...”
“What would it have mattered if you had? My Swedish woman you make fun of is very sound about that. She says that two people should spend a few days or more away from each other every few weeks, and that it may be a very good thing for them to have other sexual experience. It prevents any feeling of sameness and satiety, and often brings two people together more closely than ever, if only they’re frank about it.”
“I wonder,” said George, “I wonder. Is there any one you’re interested in, Elizabeth?”
“Of course not. You’re really rather unintelligent about this, George. You know perfectly well I love you and shall never love any one else so much. But there mustn’t be any lying and dissimulation, and no artificial fidelity. If you want to go off for a night or a week-end or a week with some charming girl or woman, you must go. And if I want to do the same with a man, I must. Don’t you see that by thwarting a mere béguin you may turn it into something more serious, whereas by enjoying it you get rid of it? Probably, as my Swedish woman says, one is so much disappointed that a single night is more than enough, and one returns to one’s love eagerly, cured of wandering fancies for the next six months.”