Personal Pleasures

by Rose Macaulay

  Meet all people. Yes; my humble dwelling-room becomes a salon, where I receive, without even troubling to rise or bow, an extraordinary miscellaneous crowd or rabble of persons, chattering in all tongues on all topics, in verse, in stately prose, in strolling, colloquial late-Stuart slang, in round and booming Johnsonian, in demure and ladylike Austenian, in sly and delicate Proustian, in gay modern English and French. Many are pompous, foolish, absurd, many have wit, many have ideas, many have neither. Some are wicked above the ordinary, some of a virtue only found among the angels and among earthly citizens of bygone centuries; of these my flat is not worthy, they shine oddly in it. Among them move people “so beastly that they put themself to no manner of labour, but study only how to take their neighbours for to eat them.” Theological controversialists too I entertain; I hear the schoolmen thunder against one another on subtle points of doctrine, Jesuits and Jansenists furiously raging together, Puritan and Anglican at it hammer and tongs, non-Jurors smitten by the See of Bangor, the higher mathematics by that of Cloyne. Yet I do not greatly encourage these religious thunderings; I welcome more often blander and gayer guests, finding them apter for a salon. I prefer the urbane smile, the elegant jest, the fit phrase, the lovely line, the strange adventure, the subtle thought, or the sounding period of the historian.

  At times, too, I like my salon to become a zoo, a bestiary, a setting for the infinitely strange habits of animals, of unicorns, elephants, dragons, manticoras, remoras, sea-serpents, dolphins, turtles, sparrow-camels, panthers, cockatrices, chameleons, and others of their curious kind.

  Another and still more indolent salon I hold in my bed at night, in the hour before sleep. The guests here are of a different kind, less disturbing and exciting, for it does not do to be disturbed and excited before sleep. Poetry will not do at this hour, nor prose of a past and more splendid age. It is an hour reserved for the narrative fiction or biography of the present moment. As I drift in this agreeable ship towards sleep, I marvel drowsily at its good craftsmanship. How charmingly A writes, I think; how ingenious is B, how C’s quick wit makes me smile, how D holds the attention nailed fast, so that if one slips a word one loses a sense. How sharp an irony sparkles from E’s pages, how amiable a jester is F, how sound a workman G. How well they, for the most part, write. (Those who do not, do not detain me for more than a few pages.) Surely, I sleepily reflect, the standard of writing has climbed up and up through the past two decades. When I was young, we did not, I am sure, write as well as we nearly all write now. The standard has risen. There are, I believe, floods of tosh; fortunately, unless one is a publisher or a reviewer, one need not see it. But there is enough that interests, pleases or entertains to fill the ante-somnial hour night by night with company good enough for the occasion, which is all that one should demand of current literature.

  So much for the home salon. One attends, also, the salons of others. There are within my reach two great places of entertainment. One is in a pleasant square; here one roams at will about gridded galleries, reading what one chooses, removing books by armfuls and leaving them scattered on tables to find their own ways back, or taking them away, either after being entered in ledgers if one is a person of probity, or concealed in despatch-cases if one is a thief; for this library is a notable hunting-ground for thieves; frail human nature has signally failed under the strain of seeing so many books at once, and the biblioklept, one of the lowest of God’s creatures, may be prowling next you along those quiet corridors, his stealthy hand plucking the desired fruit from the bough and stowing it furtively away.

  This is less possible in the other great London resort of readers, where they know better than to trust us. Here we are fed liberally, afforded every kindness, but we are marked men and women, we cannot easily steal away with pockets full of volumes. Unless, indeed, we chanced to be newcomers, gave false names, and were careful not to return. Something in this sort might, I suppose, be managed. But for most of us the strait and narrow way of rectitude is indicated.

  We can, however, lick our fingers to turn the pages. I have been told that some readers even lick the pages direct with the tongue, but this habit is, I believe, confined to those who have been allowed special access to books not generally accessible, and denotes some peculiar pleasure.

  For my part, I find it enough to sit drowsily in a great circular room, my wants supplied (in God’s good time) by attendant elves, a great bank climbing volume by volume about me, shutting me off from the inky little student writing a research thesis on my right, and from the patriarch from the far deserts of Arabia on my left, leaving me dreamily alone, transcribing from crabbed texts in a crabbed hand, languishing agreeably in that hot-house clime, all the books in the world (or as near as makes no matter to me) within the call of a written order.

  What is the extraordinary pleasure that we derive from this pastime? Why do we forget everything for it, feel by it transported, enlarged, enslaved, freed, impassioned, enlivened, soothed, drugged, delighted, distressed, entertained, sharpened in wits, ennobled in soul, winged in imagination, gratified in humour, stirred to pity, rage, love, rapture, enthusiasm, creation, zeal for learning, infinite zest and curiosity for life? I do not know, nor anyone.

  And, in the end, it wears down our eyes, never intended for this strange and crabbed use, so that we have to read through discs of magnifying glass. As to our health–“the man whom about midnight, when others take their rest, thou seest come out of his study meagre-looking … squalid, and spauling, dost thou think that plodding on his books he doth seek how he shall become an honester man.…? There is no such matter.”

  Shopping Abroad

  How strange it is, this passion that assaults the breast when the foot treads foreign earth; this lust to acquire, to carry away, to convey home in suitcases wretched pelting trifles which in our native land we should be the first (or so we hope) to disdain! With how fond pleasure have I purchased bronze models (green with antichità) of the Temple of Vesta in the shape of an inkpot, and of the extant fragments of the various structures that were reared, regardless of expense, to honour the triumphing monarchs and gods of Imperial Rome. With what delight have I bought in Taormina tiny painted mule-carts; in Palermo sections of a similar but larger cart, that would be of use, so one hoped, for a bed-head, for a wardrobe door, for a screen; in Naples coral charms against the evil eye and mother-of-pearl spoons; in Pisa the leaning tower in marble; in Athens the Erictheum in alabaster; (the seventh Lord Elgin, stirred by this passion on a grander scale, bore away, as we know, the Parthenon frieze); in Mexico painted pots, and walnut shells containing, preserved behind glass, tiny Mexicans; in New Mexico rugs and silver brooches made by Hopes; in Monterey huge abalone shells; in Florida twigs of worthless branch coral; in Spain fans illustrated with bull-fights; in Canada moccasins with fringes, and little canoes with Indians; in Quimper crockery; and I have known those who did worse than this in Brittany, and returned laden with giant oak dressers, cupboards and beds.

  What is this foolish, this unconsidered mercery, this itch for having, this covetous desire for alien trifles, that mads the brain in foreign climes, emptying purse and bursting suitcases? What is it but that xenophilous lust that sent our great pirate traders a-merchandising to far coasts, plundering them for goods at which they would not have looked had they lain at their doors? Once across the seas, the bartering instinct wakes; we march into shops and markets, inquiring the prices of objects whose sole claim on our desire is their transmarinity; being informed, we exclaim “Troppo, troppo,” “Trop cher,” “Demasiado,” or “Zu viel”; we make as if to walk out, but we are detained, met half way, the seller climbs down, we up, the bargain is clinched; we emerge happy, clasping in covetous hands this new and charming fragment of Abroad, which is to beautify, cheer and decorate our island life.

  So Raleigh doubtless felt, a-homing from Guiana and Virginia with gold dust, tobacco, and potatoes in his hands; so Captain Smith, returning from Turkey with coffee beans; so Drake, sail
ing away from San Domingo, his fleet cargoes with the loot of that sacked city; so Warren Hastings retiring from Oude laden with the pearls of its Begums; so all British travellers preparing to re-cross to their island with pockets full of the bric-à-brac of foreign parts.

  They will lie about our homes, bright and brittle intimations of past joy. This little coconut: when I caress its withered head, all the palm-fringed silver sands of the Florida Keys shimmer again before me. This gay and tiny cart, collecting dust on the chimney piece, carries me along the hot white road from Palermo to Monreale. These walnut-dwelling Mexicans, with their bundles and their tall straw hats, take me to a lemon-grown plaza, warm and wan in pale dust beneath an orange moon, where mandolins eternally play and tiny burros trot patiently, bearing Mexican gentlemen larger than themselves. In this abalone shell sings the Pacific surf, beating on Fishermen’s Pier and against the piles of Pop Ernest’s Restaurant, where Spanish sailors lounge. To caress this bronze gondola is to see green water lapping against the rust-red brick walls of Renaissance palaces, to hear staccato cries, “Sta-i,” “Premé!” while to touch this Vestal ink-pot is to stir all the dust of Imperial Rome.

  The snag? Yes, you have guessed it, you who have also shopped abroad. Suitcases filled already to repletion, how should they distend themselves to absorb these alien objects? They will not; it cannot be done. More suitcases must be purchased; cheap, exotic suitcases; more, and more, and more. …

  Showing Off

  What is that you say you have done? Walked across Jamaica on your hands? That is nothing at all. Besides, it is probably not true. I once rode a dolphin across the Messina straits. And swam from Corsica to Sardinia. I ate seventy plums at one go, stones and all. I lived six days in a tree. I won a prize on the ocean for chalking a pig’s head. I won a prize at school for the quarter mile. And for the high jump. I wrote out “The Ride from Ghent to Aix” backwards. What did you say? You have a certificate of what? Signed by the Pope. … And three children. … Well, that was just a mistake, wasn’t it; you should have told him. … You gave ringworm to two archbishops? I really do not see that that is much to boast of. You converted Cherokee Indians when you were six? That is better. And had a tract written about you, called “How little––came to Jesus.” That is better still. But I have had my conversion prayed for by a Lama. No, not in Thibet; we met in Syracuse. Yes, I know Sicily well. I understand Sicilian more or less. And modern Greek. Yes, I know Greece. I didn’t go there with one of those mass cruises; I went separately: I always think one sees it better that way. I know Greek literature pretty thoroughly. And Greek history, of course. I have done some verse translations of the Anthology that they tell me are not so bad. So bad as what? As most people’s, of course. However that may be, I felt thoroughly at home in Greece. How long was I there? Well, I don’t quite remember; certainly over a week. I had to get on to Constantinople after that. And then to Russia. I saw something of Stalin in Moscow; he wanted me to write something about my impressions, but the fact was I hadn’t any, because I knew no Russian to speak of. You need to know a language really colloquially before you can begin to understand the people, I always say. The way I know Catalan, Mallorquin, and even Basque. Oh, yes, I know quite a lot of Basque words.

  Well, where was I? Yes, after Moscow I visited Germany. I saw Goering and Goebbels; the Führer would not see me; he had heard I was coming, and ordered Goering and Goebbels to send for me for an interview; they tried to trap me in conversation into saying something they could have arrested me for, but I wouldn’t. Though I let them see my views all right. How they loathed me! They knew I was a writer of more influence in England than … well, than most writers, I suppose I might say … anyhow, they were scared to death. However, there was nothing they could get me on. I got safely over into France, and had a gay week in Paris; I know so many people there, I’m never at a loss. I had another proposal, too. Then I visited the place in Normandy my ancestors came from in 1066; they tell me one of the angels in the roof has my face, and that it must have been done from one of our family, in the thirteenth century. I must say, I always feel Norman, a kind of arrogant feeling, as if the English were under my heel. Not that ancestors matter: one makes one’s own way. What do you say? Your ancestors were Saxon thegns? Well, some of mine were British druids. I always feel at home at Stonehenge. And I learnt to talk Welsh and Breton as easily as possible. And, of course, I could learn Erse and Gaelic too, if I cared to. But they don’t seem very much use today, do they?

  Well, I must go; I am going on to Buckingham Palace. No, quite a small party, I believe; no, the Garden Party is quite another thing; everyone is asked there. This one is for Ruth Draper; she is going to give a command performance, to a few special people. I don’t know why I should be asked … oh, you are going, too? How strange. …

  Well, now they know what I am; now they, left behind in the house, are talking of me, saying it is not often one meets anyone at once so intelligent, cultured, travelled, handsome, modest, witty and gay. I strut down the street, I get into my car, start the engine, trundle along Piccadilly. How well I drive! Traffic to right of me, traffic to left of me, volleys and thunders; I wriggle unscathed through the middle of it. I am thinking still of the lunch party I have left. I am trying to make sense of something someone seemed to be murmuring to someone else as the door shut behind me.

  What was she saying? It sounded like “Ho, ho! I am the Toad. …” But that does not seem to make sense, so it must have been something else. …

  Solitude

  What is this sensuous pleasure, this tide of starry peace, that flows around me like a Milky Way, making a heavenly music in mine ears? What is this space, this liberty, this balmy ease, that floods about me like a blue and buoyant sea, at once sustaining, stimulating and soothing? How rich, how sharply hued, how pregnant with meaning, does the universe appear, where but an hour since it was a wild and wandering globe lost in chaos and the chattering of voices. I am alone. I can look, listen, feel, apprehend, without muffling presences to bound imagination’s flight, to maintain those human contacts which remind us always that we are gregarious creatures, running together in flocks. Good company is delightful bondage; to be alone is to be free. I may do what I choose, within the limits of capacity and means. So long as I keep myself unspotted from the world, there is none to stay or molest me or prevent me in my doings. I can, if I will, stand on my head, and none to comment, question, smile, or stare. The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty, trips hand in hand with me to the court of the reeling goddess with the zoneless waist and wandering eyes, there to tread that lordly pleasure house that none can share. Drony solitude; Dr. Johnson’s ill-meant adjective hums lovely in my ears, bringing to them the idle boom of bees among honeyed blooms, the sweetness of that happy garden state while Man there walked without a mate.

  But ’twas beyond a Mortal’s share

  To wander solitary there …

  and has, alas, been increasedly beyond a mortal’s share ever since, what with teeming humanity and minishing gardens. Nevertheless, the two Paradises in one are still at times accessible. Aloneness can still be attained, by those who have the will to it. A perpetual and enforced state, it might cloy and irk; an occasional adventure, it might be wasted, unpractised, difficult; a frequent yet not immoderate indulgence, its drony beauty binds and snares, enspells and yet sets free; we come to it as prisoners for a space enlarged, as thirsty men to a tavern.