Self Condemned

by Lewis, Wyndham

  They entered the restaurant, en grand tenu. Hester’s eyes were surely the cynosure of all other eyes. René saw a young woman nudging her mother. “Listen, ma poule,” he hissed, “if you don’t damp down those ‘bedroom eyes’ they will turn us out.” As Hester supposed this was merely a comic and roundabout way of referring to her ravishing attractiveness, she squeezed his arm, and turned her exhibitionist eyes upon him, in a flood of such intimacy that he actually blushed.

  They approached the table at which two Americans were sitting, a man and wife apparently, who smiled and bowed slightly as they sat down. René had in his buttonhole the ribbon of the Legion of Honour — about which it is always said that not to have it is more honourable than to have it. But the Americans did not feel that way about it. The man glanced at the name card at the place next to his, and at once muttered something to his wife. Hester believed that what he said referred to the beautiful young woman approaching (herself, in other words) in that exquisite black crepe and brooch of rubies.

  The American spoke first. “It is a great honour to be sitting at the same table with you, sir. Professor René Harding, I believe.”

  René bowed a little stiffly. Hester slewed her head around and socially lit up her eyes for a moment. The American spoke again. “I may as well say, sir, that my name is Dr. Lincoln Abbott.

  I am the president of the University of Rome, Arkansas. Ours is not a great college like Chicago or Cornell. But it has beaten both at football!” He laughed, but René knew what this meant.

  “What does that cost you?” he asked him with a smile.

  “Far more than I should like to say,” Dr. Abbott replied. “We are committed to that.”

  “A majority of young men are probably better employed at football than at having knowledge squeezed into their skulls,” René politely observed, though he exhibited no signs of a desire for much talk. The president however was of a different mind, and after a decent interval of a few silent spoonfuls of “Bisque d’Homard” he started again. “We, all over America, read your terrifying book The Secret History of World War II with the greatest interest. It is not often, if I may say so, that such a book comes out of England.”

  René smiled with polite appreciation, looking at his plate. But he said nothing.

  “I do not have to ask you, Professor, what you think of World War Two, which may be with us in a few days!”

  “No,” — René shook his head — “you do not have to ask me that, Doctor.”

  He knew that these academic titles were very dear to Americans, and that he would be addressed as “Professor” for the rest of the voyage, though he had described himself as Mr. René Harding for the Passengers’ Register. By this time Hester and the president’s wife were discussing standard female topics. What the Professor thought of the Doctor may be summarized as follows. First, the Englishman’s outlook was conditioned by an extraordinary social artifice. All Englishmen of René’s age, educated at a public school and at Oxford or Cambridge, became automatically that mysterious thing a gentleman. This is an aristocratic invention (though not of course invented by aristocrats). In its way it is a patent of nobility conferred upon all men with a professional status. It is a quite illogical honorary rank, but life in England until the end of the thirties was profoundly affected by the spell cast by the two words lady and gentleman. It created a mystical and impenetrable frontier (to be on the wrong side of this was an irretrievable disaster).

  The above may appear superfluous: but the social structure it seemed necessary to describe is already an archaism.

  To turn, now, to Dr. Lincoln Abbott. The essential thing about him was (as registered by René’s automatic self) that he not only belonged to another nation, but to another class. Since the Doctor’s intellectual limitations were unmistakable, this table companion was not greatly to René’s taste. The latter was anything but an intellectual snob, so one can pin squarely on him a class-bar. Hester was guilty of such sensations, too: for “ladies” had (and have) at least as strong a class-bar as had “gentlemen” — though neither may have had (to keep it in the past tense) any more blue blood than a fountain-pen — less, for the latter might at least protest that its ink was blue. There were Americans and Americans; René had met quite a few who had surprised him by not sending into action the class-bar, though he did not of course put it in this way.

  Well there it was, they must consume their food in the company of this man whose mediocrity was not mystically gilded as would, at that date, have been the case in England. On the other hand, a compensatory emotion gradually made itself felt; one which, twelve months before, René could not have experienced. He felt a kind of horrible attraction for this man, a strange toleration: the shameful cause of this was Dr. Abbott’s immediate recognition of him as a famous author — yes, and because the middle-west college president visibly enjoyed sitting at table with a Legion of Honour. This was terrifying evidence of the extent to which René’s morale had declined. With inevitable publicity he had turned his back upon the world and so, ipso facto, forgone its esteem and its honours — and of these he certainly would receive no more.Yet here he was, at the outset of his retreat into the wilderness, wearing one of the most desirable Orders the world has to give, in the restaurant of a transatlantic liner (why?), and experiencing almost cordiality for somebody visibly susceptible to that emblem of success. Thus it was that when Hester remarked after they had left the restaurant, “Ought we not to get them to change our table?” René shrugged his shoulders and answered that they might go farther and fare worse.

  Dr. Abbott was not slow in communicating to another academic notable (a luminary appreciably superior to himself) the name and quality of the bearded gentleman with whom he had been paired off in the restaurant. Dr. Milton Bleistift, the academic notable in question, was a one generation American: but his immigrant parents had named their sons Milton and Homer, and both were as American as Coca-Cola. Dr. Milton said he hoped they would be able to persuade René to lecture at his university — for he was a president too. This was said with a flattersome German deference, which gave a little added depth to the pleasurable sensations resulting from Dr. Abbott’s reactions at finding himself sharing his table with a Star. Even Hester noticed what a good humour her husband was in — she failed completely to identify the cause of his cheerfulness. Nor did she do so when he remarked, in an offhand way, that it was, after all, a happy thought of Mary’s to pay the difference between the First and the Tourist Class. The next afternoon he came into their stateroom exclaiming, “This bloody ship is full of ‘Doctors.’ I have just met another. That makes five.”

  Hester made a grimace significant of her feelings about any more doctors. “Yes I know,” he agreed. “But I have no wish to talk to the English. You understand, of course, why.”

  “Well, while you have been collecting American ‘doctors,’ I have collected an Irish countess, Lady Malone. She is of course an alcoholic, and I am not at all sure that she is not a lesbian.

  I am going to tea with her this afternoon — she has a most spectacular suite.”

  “Goodbye.” René scratched her head, which he only did when in an uncommonly good temper. “Does Sappho know about me?”

  “I am afraid so. She is an intellectual. She claims to have read both your books.”

  “She must be a phoney countess. Watch out she does not pick your pocket, while making a lesbian assault.” René looked at his watch. “I must go, Ess. My fifth doctor is awaiting me in the tourist class.”

  This youngest of the doctors was an instructor at Yale. His name was Oscar Gilman. They sat in the Tourist café (as it really was) and their preliminary talk lasted about one hour. The Englishman’s class-bar had no application in the case of Oscar, who, in the first place, had no American accent. He simply had not an English accent, which was a de-parochialization, both ways. His subject was English literature; known to René only as an adjunct to history. He felt provisional respect for this colourless de-
parochialized instrument for studying the tongue they both spoke. The fact that one was maturely bearded and in his late forties, the other scarcely more than thirty, was no obstacle to communion, or to such communion as they might have. As they talked, their thinking proceeded much as follows. — Oscar liked this bloke with the tawny beard (when thinking of an Englishman he substituted “bloke” for “guy” — showing his learning in foreign slangs). Elizabethan Englishmen (Chapman) must have looked like that. — René liked Oscar as one likes a pine bath salt. How many vaguely Scandinavian-looking young men there are in the United States, with the clean and puritanic appearance the Norse blood takes with it, and rather colourless, or coldly coloured clothes. This neutral breed is classless, though they give a sense of being of a well-brushed milieu. — Why, Oscar asked himself, was this bloke talking to him? Could it be love? Oh dear, that prickly moose-tache — Oscar of course knew everything, like all young Americans. No doubt he possessed a thousand devices for the concealment of ignorance. Those cold, level, well-guarded young eyes; he would bluff his way out of any difficulty. An empty clean look like a well-washed lavatory, socially very useful, probably recommended him to his superiors. — Oscar approved the jutting and ironic mouth. His eyes, he saw, were idly investigatory. Okay, if he likes to pick around in this trash bin. — Whether this bright, clean mind was not too neutral. — I am being high-hatted, but that always happens with a limey. — What did this tight-lipped young man think about war? Probably he was one of those fatalistic, uninterested-but-dutiful, young Norse-looking Yankees, rather fond of doing nothing-in-particular until a bullet bangs them down, that sort of “excellent military material,” too brightly uninterested to stop a war coming its way. No use talking to him about that. — “He don’t seem,” thought Oscar, “to know why he’s sitting here, I think he’s making up his mind.”

  What René showed an interest in discussing was Yale, what Oscar preferred to talk about was Renaissance in England, the influence of Machiavelli and Hobbes, and such things. When they got up, the clinically clean young neutral moved back with him into the First Class, where he had business, and they parted with polite warmth.

  René’s temperature had fallen considerably. This first conversation in limbo, where the same language had been spoken, where (at one point) the same interests had been invoked, but no contact had been made, was ominous. America had reached a very different level of consciousness, but it was completely cut off from life, and a kind of cold smartness presided at the new elevation. He felt that Oscar was a phantom: and that he himself was becoming one too. He was approaching a land of sterilized thinking, and reflections of another life. The reality must all be on the cigar-store and pool room level, or the world the Negroes live in. He thought he would read something relaxing. In his hand-luggage he had brought nothing classifiable as work. Among the few books he had packed was George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which he had been told by Rotter was a good book. He had read few of the English classics, and thought he would turn to them now, for a little. With the first volume under his arm, he selected a corner of the ship where he felt he would probably be undisturbed. Disagreeable sensations ensued almost from the first page. He began reading about the two young ladies, of about twenty years old. Now one was an “ordinary” girl; one so alarmingly unordinary as to cause her sister to be frightened of her. Both the young ladies are beautiful, but the high-minded one slightly more so. A grey-headed, hollow-eyed clergyman makes his appearance (he comes to dinner with the uncle of the two girls). A good-looking young squire arrives at the same time. The painfully priggish young lady is quite rude to the young squire, for being so normal, but finds the unattractive cadaverous clergyman of fifty very much to her taste, and he is engaged upon a work of great learning: how appropriate; she will assist him in this lofty labour. In a few months they are married. Lest the reader should be depressed at the thought of what was in store for this poor young lady in the arms of this elderly clergyman, something is provided by the considerate author. When the reader is first taken to the rectory, a young man is discovered seated in the garden, sketching it in watercolours. He is a very different kettle of fish from his cadaverous uncle or cousin, the Rector. The reader knows, something tells him, that in the end the leading lady will enjoy the embraces of this personable young man. He heaves a sigh of relief. Just to show that the young fellow is a sport, when he sits down again to resume his sketching, he throws his head back (his curls tumbling about as he does so) and emits a short laugh. It is obvious that this young man has the same feelings about the Rector’s marriage as the reader has. But after that the reader is taken down to a lower social level. He is introduced to a stock figure, described as a “gentleman farmer,” who is inferior, but full of a disagreeable senile vitality. Prospective heirs are there, and one of them he gleefully unmasks.

  At this point René would go no further. This sodden satire, this lifeless realism, provoked him into saying, “Why am I reading this dull nonsense? It is just like Rotter to have recommended a book of this sort.” He continued to ruminate. “The historic illusion, the scenes depicted, and the hand depicting them, could be preserved in some suitable archive; but should not be handed down as a living document. It is a part of history” — with this he dismissed it.

  He went out on to the deck and swinging his arm back hurled the heavy book out to sea. After that he returned to their stateroom, lay down, and instantly fell asleep.

  At dinner Dr. Lincoln Abbott remarked slyly, “What book was it, Professor, that I saw you throwing into the sea?”

  “That,” René told him, “was a novel called Middlemarch.”

  “You express your disapproval very forcibly, Professor,” Dr.

  Abbott laughed. “You should try one of our American novelists, Professor. Have you ever read any books by Steinbeck? No? Well I wonder if the Grapes of Wrath is in the ship’s library. Would you say it was, Mildie?”

  He pronounced “wrath” in so strange a manner that René was at a loss to guess what he meant. Misinterpreting the abstracted look upon the other’s face, Dr. Abbott ground out savagely, “Grapes of Wrarth!”

  René, however, yawned.“No more novels this voyage, Doctor!”

  All of which convulsed Dr. Lincoln Abbott with amusement.

  René gave him a sidelong look, half-amusement, half-alarm. This side-long look of René’s was interpreted by Dr. Abbott as a facetious rejoinder, the silent equivalent of a side-splitting wisecrack. It convulsed Dr. Abbott, who was always appreciative of mirthful sallies, with much physical exertion. But at this point, unfortunately, René was seized with a fit of coughing. This Dr. Abbott interpreted as bottled-up mirth leading to a coughing fit; and if he had been boisterous before, his contortions now, his gasps and splutters, were positively indecent. The noise they were making as a table was spectacular. This was a matter of great satisfaction to Dr. Lincoln Abbott. But René rose, and, with a muffled remark to his wife, moved out of the room, still coughing slightly. Hester accompanied him; as soon as they were outside René gasped indignantly. “It is preposterous. The fellow is becoming matey. Something must be done about it. I must see the purser immediately and get him to find us room somewhere else.”

  “I should not do that,” Hester said. “We must be careful to avoid jokes, I think. I had better say that I have received a cable to say that poor Rosa is dying.”

  The next day the radio announced the Declaration of War. At tea time they were having tea in the lounge and the King’s speech was broadcast. René took all this as a matter of course; and, indeed, the passengers in general appeared to be very little affected. This was natural enough, since most of them were on the ship so as not to be in Europe when this event occurred. With a frown Hester stared a little more than usual: whether this was authentic distress, or a desire to attract attention, it is difficult to say.

  If this event had been taken as a matter of course there was another happening, not very much later, which was received very differently.The n
ext morning people were seen standing in groups, speaking in whispers. A large liner had been sunk only a hundred miles away. The radio had been shut off upon the Declaration of War.And there had been no official communication. It remained, therefore, a rumour: but it passed from mouth to mouth, and it seemed for some reason to possess authority.

  It was not long after this that the captain and two subordinate officers passed through the first class. He was severely uncommunicative: but hardly had this occurred, when the ship’s loud speaker enjoined all passengers to repair to their boat stations immediately, bringing their lifebelts with them.

  Within a quarter of an hour passengers were lined up before their respective lifeboat stations. They were dismal little companies. Even the tennis courts were crowded with hammocks to provide sleeping accommodation, and the ship was so full to overflowing that it was quite certain all passengers could not get into the boats. Passengers eyed one another nervously, speculating as to whether they could fight their way successfully to safety, or at all events to a place in a boat. René noticed a small, bilious-looking individual glancing at him angrily, if a little furtively. Obviously he was regarding this tall, bearded neighbour as an obstacle, if it came to scrambling into a boat. But most of the waiting passengers just looked depressed and impatient as they shuffled about in the drizzle. Their instructor, René thought, looked scared as he ordered them how to conduct themselves in case of an emergency, and explained the proper way to wear their lifebelts. Some passengers, at this stage, affected a disagreeable jauntiness. There was one, the hysterical note in whose laughter caused the rest to turn a displeased eye on him. As to Hester, she was in the dumps again. She had her lifebelt over her coat and looked grotesquely dismal. René wore his lifebelt like a gentleman, that is to say as if he had been born in it. Looking down at his despondent wife, he reflected that he would have to administer some tonic again.