Impromptu in Moribundia
Page 17
Notes
38. Draydur Gnilpik: Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), prolific and immensely popular English writer of, amongst many other works, Barrack Room Ballads (1892), the Jungle Books (1894–5), Stalky and Co (1899), Kim (1901), the Just So Stories (1902) and Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906). [For Ris Yrneh Tlobwen and Nhoj Nahcub, see Notes 4, 6 and 24.] All three writers, albeit of an older, conservatively ‘English’ — not to say imperialist — persuasion, are, Hamilton suggests, still speaking for ‘middle England’ in the 1930s.
39. Lenoloc Ecalevol: Colonel [Richard] Lovelace (1618–57), English cavalier poet, whose collection of poems, Lucasta, was published in 1649. The lines quoted here, in ‘Moribundian’, are the final two of ‘To Lucasta, Going to the Warres’: ‘I could not love thee (Deare) so much, /Lov’d I not Honour more’. Hence, Hamilton’s ‘rough’ translation is a further small joke.
40. i.e. Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Lord Tennyson, George Meredith, W.M. Thackeray, Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Browning.
41. Henry Newbolt’s lines are from his poem, ‘Clifton Chapel’ (see Notes 4 and 7), and are indeed ‘literally’ translated on this occasion (except that Hamilton misquotes by putting ‘as’ rather than ‘while’ in the first line).
42. ‘Henry Cotton-like’: Henry Cotton (1907–87), English golfer who, in the 1930s and 1940s in particular, staved off the American challenge by winning the British Open Championship in 1934, 1937 and 1948.
43. The list of ‘smaller writers’ in a similar mould to the ‘big three’ above is: Ian Hay (1876–1952), playwright and novelist; P.C. Wren (1885–1941), writer of the ‘Beau Geste’ popular romances; Gilbert Frankau (1884–1953), best-selling popular novelist; Dorothy Sayers (1893–1957), detective-story writer and playwright; and ‘Sapper’ [Herman Cyril McNeile, 1888–1937], author of the ‘Bulldog Drummond’ thrillers.
44. Dranreb Wahs: [George] Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), prolific Irish playwright and polemicist. [For Trebreh Egroeg Sllew, see Note 24]. Hamilton’s scorn for the ‘muddle and intellectual inadequacy in face of modern events’ of these two ‘Fabian’ writers, and for the way they are petted and tolerated as (ultimately innocuous) enfants terribles by the establishment, stems, it seems clear, from his own commitment to Marxism in the period.
45. Dnarteb Llessur. Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), Welsh philosopher, mathematician, controversialist, and author of many works on a wide range of subjects. His early visit to Soviet Russia led to his at once positive and negative book on Communism, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920) — presumably the reason for Hamilton’s ambivalent inclusion of him here.
46. Toile S. T.: T.S. Eliot. The subsequent roll-call of ‘border-line’ (other Modernist) writers comprises: James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence and [Edith, Osbert or Sacheverell] Sitwell. Some discussion of Hamilton’s attitude to these appears in the Introduction. His inclusion in the list of two poets made famous by their war poetry, Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon, is probably explained by a sense, in the mid-1930s, that these by then much admired writers had lost the radical edge shown during the First World War and the immediate post-war period.
47. ‘subversive intellect of, say, the Yelxuh type’ etc: Aldous Huxley’s savage ‘Modernist’ satires on the post-First World War world (for example, Those Barren Leaves [1925] and Point Counter Point [1928]) climaxed with the deeply pessimistic dystopia, Brave New World (1932). Thereafter, as becomes apparent in such novels as Eyeless in Gaza (1936) and After Many a Summer (1939), Huxley increasingly turned towards forms of mysticism to assuage his despair.
* Roughly ‘I could not be so purely fond of you, my darling, if I were not a man’s man and fonder still of fighting.’
CHAPTER XVII
One morning Mrs. Juggins came into my room, and told me that a friend of hers had a husband who had been chained to his bed, exactly like myself, for a period of many years, but had recently had a wonderful recovery by taking a dose or two of certain salts, whose name she mentioned.
I was in such misery and despair that I hardly listened to what she said, and when, the next day, she brought me in a tin of these salts —‘Banishill’ Salts they were called—and gave me a dose, it was only to humour her that I was prevailed upon to take it.
What followed surpassed even Moribundian belief. With the first dose I began to hear a great cracking and splitting noise going on inside me, and this, Mrs. Juggins informed me, was caused by the ‘agonizing acid crystals’ breaking up in all my joints—after the next dose my chains fell away from me and I sprang from the bed. With the third dose I was feeling better than I have ever felt in my life. My colour and appetite returned, and I had an extraordinary feeling of regeneration in all my limbs.
In fact, in the first glory of my relief from my illness, I am afraid I must have made something of a fool of myself, for I went about hitting people on the back, jumping or vaulting over everything that I could see, grinning from ear to ear (my very mouth seemed to have expanded and my eyes and teeth to have grown unnaturally large) and generally behaving in a way not at all suited to my age.
In my new happiness I was not so ungrateful as to forget its cause, and I even, I remember, wrote a letter to the makers of this wonderful remedy, putting my name and address at the top, explaining the facts exactly as they were—that is, that it had been a case which had seemed to defy all remedies, that all the doctors had given me up, that I had looked forward to suffering years of agony, etc., and adding that I would have no objection, if they wished, to the use of my name as a testimonial. In all the circumstances I felt that this was the least thing I could do.
They say that misfortunes never come singly, and I suppose the saying is true of good fortune. Certainly this was evidenced in my case at this time, for within three days of my recovery I had another stroke of wonderful luck, which immediately changed my whole outlook and circumstances.
I happened to see a small crowd waiting outside a church one morning, and, suspecting that a wedding was taking place inside, I waited in the hope of seeing the bride and bridegroom. In due course, they came out, the bridegroom looking wonderfully pleased with himself, and the bride, in her wedding dress, radiantly beautiful and happy.
It was after they had got into the taxi which was waiting for them, and while they were being driven away, that I happened, by the merest chance, to catch, through the window, certain balloons issuing from this handsome couple.
The first of these, from the man, was only what one might have expected:
To which she returned:
while from her head there came the ‘thought-balloon’:
The taxi went round the corner and out of sight, and it was quite a minute before I realized that this last balloon might contain certain implications applicable to myself. Then suddenly I stopped in the street. ‘Shunned and avoided?’ Was not this what, inexplicably, Anne and everybody had been doing to me? ‘personal freshness?’ Had I been neglecting ‘personal freshness’?48
In a flash my whole misfortune was illuminated—Anne’s coldness, her mysterious reticence, my unpopularity at the hotel, everything. Appalled as I was to think that I had been guilty of neglect of that kind, I realized, as soon as I thought about it, that it was in Moribundia a venal and very prevalent failing, and my joy knew no bounds to think that I had at last found the root of my trouble. Now I might return from my exile and see my dear Anne again!
I could hardly wait to act. I dived into the first chemist’s shop I could find, and bought a cake of Save-Life Soap. The problem now was—where was I to have a bath? As all the bathrooms in this part of the world were used for storing coal, this was no easy matter. I quickly made up my mind that I would leave the district at once. I would, in fact, return to the ‘Moribundian’, itself, and have my bath there. During my illness I had saved up enough money to stay there for at least two weeks, and I felt I could not let a day pass before I saw Anne.
I went back home and hastily packed. I paid Mrs. Juggins and t
hanked her for all her kindness to me while I was in chains. I asked her to say good-bye for me to the others, all of whom were out, and I left. I had not been treated badly there, but I was not sorry to see the last of that strange, despondent, destructive, indolent family, with its totally unnatural modes of thought and behaviour.
I was back at the ‘Moribundian’ by four o’clock in the afternoon, and was given my old room. Without waiting to unpack I tore off my clothes, seized the cake of soap, jumped into the bath, and stayed in it for something like an hour, emerging at last with a feeling of personal freshness exhilarating in the extreme. I then ’phoned to Anne.
She was, of course, most surprised to hear my voice, and I think I must have conveyed something of the freshness of my person even over the telephone, for she put up no obstacle, as heretofore, to our meeting. In fact, she agreed to come to dinner with me that night.
While I was waiting for her I found that the people in the hotel no longer shunned me. On the contrary, I seemed to magnetize them in a peculiar way, and was quite the centre of attraction. Indeed, more than once I found myself standing in the middle of a whole group of people, all of whom looked at me in a most admiring way as they listened to my conversation.
When Anne came round I, of course, presented her with a box of her favourite stockings, and over dinner we were as deliriously happy as on our first night together—tacitly agreeing to say nothing either about the long time we had been parted, or the cause of the break.
After my long illness and dreary isolation amongst the working people, it was an intoxication in itself to be amongst the bright lights and balloons again, and I felt that night that I could never tire again of this brilliant Moribundian scene. I have no doubt now, of course, that this was an illusion on my part, brought about by my sudden change of circumstances, and that in three days’ time I should have been more heartily sick of it than ever. But no such knowledge marred my pleasure in that evening with Anne. Nor was I disturbed by any inkling or foreknowledge of something which would certainly have put an end to our gaiety, the fact that this was the last evening we should ever spend together, my last evening in Moribundia itself—that on the morrow it was fated that I should abruptly return to this world with all its different anxieties and cares.
Notes
48. See Note 30.
CHAPTER XVIII
I have spoken of Crowmarsh’s ‘fiddling’ with the Asteradio, and of its effects upon me. Apparently it was similarly possible for me, under certain circumstances, to make the Asteradio itself aware, however faintly and obscurely, of my presence and activities, to cause it to react in certain ways which might inform the studious and vigilant scientist in Chandos Street that all was not well with me. Had this not been so I should not be here now: nor should I have still been in Moribundia: I would be dead. Crowmarsh, reading the Asteradial omens in his own way (I know no more about their precise nature than he knew precisely what was happening to me), saw that ‘something was up,’ as he afterwards described it, and brought me back without delay.
There certainly was something up. But before I relate the adventures, or rather mis-adventures, of this next day, which very nearly destroyed me and brought me back from Moribundia eleven days before the arranged time, I have to tell the reader certain things which I have not had the occasion to mention before.
The first thing concerns Moribundia’s ubiquitous Little Men, about whom—I fear inexcusably—I have not yet said anything.
Had I given any complete description of the Moribundian streets, restaurants, shops, or public places generally, I should not have failed to describe this remarkable race of dwarfs, who were to be seen everywhere, and were as much a part of the general scene as the balloons and other oddities.
They are not at all easy to depict to the reader. In trying to give a picture of the Moribundian Yenkcoc, it will be remembered, I mentioned the artist Treb Samoht. In very much the same way, in thinking of the Moribundian ‘Little Man’ there comes to my mind another great Moribundian artist, perhaps the greatest of all—Eburts49—who has depicted this type so often, so skilfully, and with such loving care that, just as Dickens has been said to have invented Christmas, so he may almost be said to have invented the Little Man. If only I could have brought back some of his drawings I might have reproduced them here, and given the reader a more accurate picture than words can possibly do. But, unfortunately, Crowmarsh’s service does not yet provide for the transportation of luggage between Moribundia and our earth!
The main features by which a Little Man can be recognized are his remarkable shortness and squatness, his moustache, his pince-nez, his bowler hat, and his umbrella. In fact, there is very little else about him, apart from his shortness, his moustache, his pince-nez, his bowler hat and his umbrella. It is certainly not a type which we on earth would admire. Indeed, resembling, as he does, the small sedentary business man, the petty trader or employer in his meanest, timidest, puniest, most conservative and insignificant aspects, the Little Man could only move a normal healthy human being to dislike or derision. I took it for granted, in my innocence, that the average Moribundian would feel the same. How mistaken I was, and the final result of my error, we shall see soon enough.
I remember how, on the very first walk I had with Anne, I began to notice these odd little persons, and how I asked her about them.
“Tell me,” I said, “who are these silly little persons with bowler hats and umbrellas I see walking about everywhere.”
I remember she looked at me in a puzzled, incredulous way.
“Why,” she said, “you don’t mean our beloved Little Men, do you?”
And there was something scandalized in her look and tone which warned me that I was treacling on dangerous ground, that in speaking thus disparagingly of them I had committed an appalling breach of Moribundian good taste. I hastily contrived to change the subject.
This made such an impression on me that I was inspired thereafter to make other inquiries, though, of course, in a much more delicate manner, from other sources. To my utmost surprise, I found that so far from being objects of derision, the Little Men were regarded by all true Moribundians with a deep and loving homage amounting almost to religious devotion (a respect and devotion far surpassing even that which was accorded to the Yenkcoc), and that to breathe a word in their disparagement was to strike at the very core of the whole Moribundian ethical code.
Indeed, it became apparent that the Little Man, with all his little business-man’s virtues—his submissiveness, his patience, his industry, his respectability, his wistful humour under difficulties, his intense and somewhat idiotic patriotism and loyalty to the throne, etc., was regarded as a pure and shining ideal—a symbol of all that every Moribundian, at his best, was or aspired to be.
I have said that after inquiries I found out about this attitude towards the Little Man: but I do not want to give the impression that I yet had any knowledge how deeply, irremovably imbedded, how jealously guarded, this instinct was in the heart of every Moribundian. Had I known that, I should never have made the mistake I did, and would not have been compelled to leave Moribundia in the odious and perilous way I did.
I will now leave the Little Men for a moment, and go on to tell of the other factor which contributed to my downfall from grace, my exposure as a complete alien, which came so suddenly and shockingly upon me that dreadful morning.
Shortly after my return from Seabrightstone with Anne (and before my loss of personal freshness had turned her away from me) I found her one day in a state of considerable anxiety about her brother, who had returned on leave from abroad (a place called Aynek) while we were away, and who had, owing to her foolishly having left some letters about, found out about her association with me, including the fact that we had been away together as man and wife.
I should here explain that Anne’s brother had been to a Moribundian public-school and was an Akkup Bihas. Now it unfortunately happens to be the fact that one of the main emotions (
if indeed it is not the main emotion) of the Akkup Bihas is his over-developed, you might say neurotic, anxiety and sensitiveness with regard to anything touching the private affairs or sex life of his sister. Indeed, the thought that she may have been treated in anything remotely resembling a dubious manner is enough to throw one of these highly-strung and slightly morbid fellows into paroxysms of pain and rage.
Well, it appears that Anne’s brother had got it into his head that his sister had been wronged by myself (how far he was from the truth the reader knows well enough), and he had closed up into himself and was going about in a hardly balanced frame of mind. In fact, I could not help feeling sorry for the man, knowing what Moribundian nature is, and realizing that his particular nature could not allow him to feel otherwise. His condition was aggravated, too, I heard from Anne, by the fact that at this period he was suffering from personal trouble, having recently, in her words, ‘walked out of a good woman’s life’—a walk which an Akkup Bihas takes more than once in the course of his existence. With the two things combined, his general nervous condition must have been awful, and I offered to do anything I could to appease him. But Anne seemed to think this was out of the question.
The point was that the man was contemplating a physical assault upon myself: in fact, he evidently regarded such an assault as a moral duty. Since I could not meet him and talk to him reasonably, the only thing for me to do was to keep out of his way. This I successfully did, and was aided in my efforts, of course, by my loss of personal freshness, which exiled me for so many weeks, in a remote part of the town where he would never have dreamed of looking for me. But since my return I was naturally in the danger zone again.