by Francis King
"Why do you never bathe?” I ask.
"Because I don’t like to."
"Can’t you swim?"
"To be frank—no."
"It’s time you learnt."
He shrugs his shoulders.
"Don’t you feel you’re missing something by always sitting here reading. When you’re young, and have the chance, it seems a pity to neglect the other side."
"Mens sana in corpore sano?"
Is he laughing at me? But this sort of antagonism gives me a surreptitious pleasure. I have an impulse to pull off all those ridiculous clothes and drive him into the sea. Passion and Society!
At dinner Judith is thoughtful. Is she in love with the naval cadet?
A night of insomnia. The old dreams.
From General Sir HUGH WEIGH to S. N. GEORGE, Oxford
Nov. 15th, 1936
MY DEAR S. N. G.,—Thank you for your new book of poems. But first I must congratulate you on your honorary degree. I get a certain cynical satisfaction out of your receiving this mark of esteem after that long-forgotten disgrace in Mods. Why couldn’t they have realised then that you were one of
the masters of the English language? Still, yesterday’s compliments from the Public Orator must have made some sort of amends. And I know how much you must have enjoyed the dinner given to you by the Milton Club. You are at your ripest, and wisest, and most artful among undergraduates.
As for the poems: I do not have to say how fine they are. I think of the Beethoven Quartets: they will stand in the same relation to your work. You say you’re a little troubled by adverse criticism from some of your contemporaries. But why? These poet-reviewers remind me of that old story of the Jesuits and Pizarro’s men. The Jesuits told the ignorant conquistadores that the only emeralds which were genuine were those which could not be destroyed by fire. This was, of course, untrue; but the men believed them—and threw away the stones that they had amassed. Later, the Jesuits picked them up. This is what the reviewers do to your poems. They say that they are not the genuine thing—and then appropriate from them.
I have been asked to go to Germany in December as a guest of the government. What would you say to accompanying me? I know that you, the Liberal Humanist, will find much to disagree with. But perhaps I shall convert you.
Let me know.—Affectionately,
H. W.
From S. N. GEORGE, Oxford, to Sir HUGH WEIGH, Dartmouth
Nov. 18th, 1936
MY DEAR H. W.,—Thank you for the nice things that you say about the book. It is the last that I shall ever write—which makes your appreciation all the more valuable. I feel now that I have nothing more to say—the rest is silence. It is not an unpleasant feeling: rather akin to that lethargy, that sluggishness which affects one after an exam or a strenuous love-affair. I have thought this before—that there is nothing left in me—after every book that I have written: but this time there is something final—my positively last appearance. Of course, I shall continue to write essays and give those talks for the B.B.C. which you so much despise. But "the infirm glory of the positive hour"—that is over.
The meeting of the Milton Club was a great success. By the end everyone was a little drunk—except myself. As you know, I am always sober. They sang "He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and carried me up to my rooms at the end: which was charming of them.
I have now returned to the country, and have staying with me a Rhodes Scholar (American) and Rice, that soldier who wrote to me about The Effigy. They are both full of enthusiasm—a change from Oxford. At Oxford it is simply not done to become excited over anything. But for these two Tristram Shandy is a discovery: they’d never even heard of it before. It is delightful to introduce them to a library—to read:
Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean. The world has grown grey at thy breath. . .
and find that the words have a physical effect on them. But imagine my reading Swinburne to the Milton Club!
In the evenings I translate Homer to them: and such is their enthusiasm—such is their fanaticism for the Iliad—that when I came to that famous parting between Hector and Andromache I found the tears streaming down my cheeks, (You will laugh at this: it is unmanly.) But I didn’t feel ashamed, as I might have done if I had been with any other young men. I knew that they were equally moved.
All right, H. W., all right: I am a sentimentalist!
I think you would like them, though. The American is large and seems lazy (but isn’t): he wears an enormous ring on his middle finger and is reading law. Rice is just a little Cockney with no idea of hygiene. But—well—I feel less old with them about. That enthusiasm is infectious.
I have just realised that I have said nothing about your invitation. As I now feel that there is nothing left for me to do—there are the three volumes of poetry, complete, before me—I should be delighted to accompany you. I have not been to Germany since 1926: and no doubt it will be much changed. You, I imagine, were last there at the end of the Great War.
I wish you would pay me a visit. The chrysanthemums are superb.—With love,
S. N. G.
From the Diary of Sir HUGH WEIGH
January 2nd, 1937
It is only now—on the journey home, as I am rocked about in this deck-chair—that I have the time to record some of my impressions of our German visit. I am the only person left on the deck: a few souls are drinking and telling smutty stories in the bar, the rest have retired. This gives me a feeling of superiority. I can’t say how pleased I felt when the only survivor apart from myself—a woman, who was pacing the deck in tweeds and a Henry Heath hat—suddenly made an inarticulate noise and scurried away. And I wasn’t even feeling queasy!
S. N. G. left me long ago, looking unhappy and rather apologetic. He is a wretched sailor: even a glimpse of the sea from out carriage window made him swallow hard. I have just visited him, where he lies supine, his charm evaporating with each new paroxysm. He looks old, old-maidish, querulous. But the heavily pomaded steward who whistles "The Lambeth Walk” drearily, as a sort of marche funèbre, still gives him most of his attention. I notice that people always do give S. N. G. most of their attention. I think they know instinctively that he is someone to protect. It is as if they could see all the years of mother-love that have been expended on him.
For me Germany has been a success—a definite success: to ask me out was an inspired piece of propaganda. Believing all the un-English things I do, I suddenly found other people who thought as I did. This doesn’t mean that I have become a traitor: if there is a war I shall, of course, muddle along with old England, simply because I am English. But for no other reason, Germany is right.
I knew it when we saw those peaceful, cow-like women, and the virile youth goose-stepping through the streets of Berlin. Those were fine faces—pitiless, strong, terrible. I felt I was going to choke—with admiration, love perhaps. I had thought this spirit had gone out of the world—had evaporated in the stale exhalations of culture and higher education. A virile barbarism, pagan, not effete, strong, ruthlessly strong, ascetic—I had found what I had imagined no longer existed.
But at the same time, as I watched those youths marching, arrogantly, superbly, as I caught my breath, longing to command them, to lead them, I saw the certainty of war. It was inevitable. It was the destiny for which these supermen had been begotten. Yet the realisation did not trouble me: rather it filled me with a curious exaltation. I think I was glad.
I had felt that exaltation before. In the trenches: seeing our dead or their dead (it did not matter)—the young bodies littered in excruciating attitudes, with the smells of tainted flesh and smoke and wet clothes—it had seemed to me that here was a brotherhood to be proud of—the brotherhood of Slayer and Slain. Those soldiers were hearer than lovers, their hate was more noble than any love. I saw then the need for suffering and death.
Yes; as those G
erman youths passed us, S. N. G.’s eyes closing in distaste, I think I was wishing for a war so that that communion could be achieved. I was wishing for it.
Of course I have told S. N. G. nothing of all this. He would think me mad, it would shock him profoundly. But even he was impressed by some of the things that impressed me. When we visited the camp in the Tyrol and saw the school children—healthy and happy at winter sports, young savages, many of them stripped to the waist, sunburned to the colour of biscuit, muscular—I think, then, that the Platonist in him was stirred to admiration. One cannot be a lover of Ancient Greece without seeing that such things are right and natural and worthy of the dignity of man.
But with S. N. G. it was a perpetual struggle. He was always divided. Of course this healthy virility was admirable—but what of the concentration camps? Instinctively, he accepted those cow-like women—but had he not been an ardent feminist? There was beauty in the athletics that we witnessed—but what of the exhibition of degenerate art? Was that not beautiful also? The human body; the human mind; instinct; reason; virility; culture; these things tore him apart. He wore a perpetually puzzled air. Of course the dilemma had always existed for him, he had always been aware of it: but now it was real, insuperable.
For me there was no such dilemma. I accepted it. If suffering was the price of that regeneration—so be it! I accepted suffering.
I think it is possible to be too civilised.
January 5th, 1937
Spending two days in town at the Club. I have just been to dinner with Croft. He has a flat overlooking Hampstead Heath—everything neat and a little fussy. An original Derain on one wall and a pietà reproduction on the other. An E.M.G. gramophone and several albums of chamber music. A silk doll lolls on the mantelpiece with some shells and china ornaments. Croft explains: "Cynthia—my fiancée—saw about the furniture. She chose the flat, really." An absence of books. Art and music seem to be his interests.
I feel more at my ease in the study, not because of the untidiness but because there is a smell of tobacco instead of scent, and the chairs are worn and covered in leather. Some rooms have a definite female smell. I think all rooms have sexes.
Croft is charming, but quick tempered. I praise Germany, which makes him blush and contradict me. I begin arguing in a friendly fashion, when I suddenly realise that he is in deadly earnest. He begins pacing the room, hands deep in his pockets, head bent forward, lecturing me about the evils of Nazism. This seriousness is delightful: I find myself egging him on,
making interruptions, countering his arguments, just as one barracks an orator in the hope that he will be witty. And—yes—there is a pleasure in the antagonism.
He tells me that he wants to go back to the Amazon. He is full of projects—pulls out maps, shows me his notebooks, produces photographs. I exclaim about one of the photographs: "Oh, those hideous protuberances! . . .” It is of a native woman, stripped to the waist, with great swelling breasts. Croft stares at it, blushing, then snaps the album together and pushes it back into the cupboard. I have shocked him.
After this incident conversation becomes rather strained. Strange that someone who has travelled so widely should, after all, turn out to be as prudish as your stay-at-home bank clerk. Does travel really broaden the mind? Yet at dinner he had talked without any self-consciousness of circumcision rites among the Mazequals; we had even discussed polyandry, and the orgiastic marriage ceremonies of the Koryaks. Why should my remark have displeased him? From that moment his manner changed; I could see that he wanted me to leave.
An odd thing happened when at last I decided to go. He saw me to the door of his flat, and offered to accompany me down to the street; but I said that I could manage. As I descended, in the semi-darkness, I saw a figure mounting beneath me, one hand resting on the banisters; but before we met it had slipped down a short corridor leading to another flat. I heard no sound of a key; it was too dark to see if the person were hiding in the shadows.
Puzzled by this I continued my descent to the bottom of the stairs, pretended to open and shut the front door, and then waited. Footsteps running. The click of the door of Croft’s flat. A whispered: "Darling! You’re earlier than I thought." "I passed someone on my way up. I don’t think he saw me."
The door clicked shut again, obliterating their intimate voices.
Was this his fiancée? Or another woman? And were they living together?
For some reason the question filled me with curiosity. I almost went back. And all the way across the Heath I pondered. Why, why? Why this curiosity? Why a sort of baffled anger?
When I got home I could not resist a cigarette. My first for four months.
January 8th, 1937
Meet Croft for lunch at Simpson’s. Gather that he doesn’t like the place. Almost his first remark is: "I hate to see them trundle these carcases about."
I try to get him talking about botany. But he is full of a question that some M.P. has asked in Parliament. Is he a bore? Is he a bore? I am beginning to think it.
As we walk in Green Park he tells me about his plans for a new expedition—back to the Amazon, perhaps, or to the Congo. This is his real self—the self I admire.
I think I should like to accompany him. Should I offer myself? Why not?
Feb. 2nd, 1937
Return to Dartmouth. This morning I go down to the cove to bathe—for the first time this year. I feel proud in the certainty that I shall be the only person in. But when I get there three youths and a girl are splashing about, rather unhappily! It’s as if the enemy had ambushed me.
How ugly people look in the cold—running noses, bodies amorphous in overcoats, chilblains, a blue pallor of the skin. Horrible!
Feb. 5th, 1937
Judith writes: "Miss Forsdike has left here. She has given me a locket which belonged to her grandmother—as a leaving present. Was it all right for me to accept it?"
Feb. 6th, 1937
I tell Judith to return the locket. Succeed in staying in the water five minutes longer than the three youths and the girl. Beginnings of a chill—in spite of a tumbler of whisky and lemon.
I grow old, I grow old!
Feb. 9th, 1937
Miss Forsdike has become a waitress Judith tells me. Apparently she talked of the narrowness of school life, the need for experience, etc., etc., when Judith said good-bye to her.
The woman is mad.
It is always schoolmistresses who talk of the narrowness of their life. It must be the most disappointed of professions.
Feb. 14th, 1937
Something of the old manner survives! This morning Clark wakes me ten minutes late. I reprimand him.
"I’m sorry, sir."
He makes for the bathroom to get my bath.
"Well—what’s the meaning of it?"
He limps back. "Everything’s rather muddled this morning, sir. My wife’s had to go to hospital, sir."
"Oh, I’m sorry. Let me know what I can do."
That’s all. He limps out. He expects this severity from me—would be surprised at anything else. But, of course, he knows that I shall give him an afternoon off—and send something from the hot-house. We understand each other.
March 1st, 1937
A sudden interest in chess. Will now study every book on the subject for the next six months, become an expert, and then drop it. Bridge, polo, music, botany—they have all gone the same way.
I notice a nun buying sock-suspenders in Woolworth’s. What delicious and tantalising images are conjured up by the sight.
March 16th, 1937
Clark’s wife has died. She was a fierce old slattern who caught him by having a baby (which I do not believe was his): I remember when he came back from leave and told me about it—half proudly, half apologetically. For some reason I flew into a rage—told him he was a fool (which, considering what followed, was prescient of me). And
now she is dead...
Clark asks for a week’s leave. But when I look flabbergasted he modifies this to a day. Funeral arrangements, etc. A week would have meant having his daughter, Ethel; and women servants are intolerable. They always like to put themselves in the position of (a) your wife, or (b) your mother. Subconsciously, of course. But I hate it.
April 2nd , 1937
Judith home. The child is growing up, rather disturbingly. I feel inadequate—for the first time. Finicky over food; sudden tears; keeps a diary which I am not allowed to look at. Sad that she should have left that neutral state which makes all young people companionable.
April 4th, 1937
Last night Judith had a nightmare and woke me by screaming. I went in to find her sitting bolt upright in bed clutching the blankets. Her pupils were oddly dilated, like a cat’s.
"Anything the matter?"
"Only a dream." Her teeth began chattering.
"What happened?"
"Nothing."
"Don’t you want to tell me?"
She turned away, her eyes slowly filling with tears. The electric light made deep shadows under them.
"Will you be all right?
"I think so."
"Not sure?” I took her hands, with their stumpy fingers, like a boy’s. "Would you like to come to my room?" "May I?" "Please."
At first she lay down on the divan in my room; but soon after I had turned out the light she crept into my bed beside me, cold, still shivering, her body curled against mine. Soon she was asleep, her shoulders rising and falling beneath my hand.
I brushed my fingers against her cheeks. They were still wet with tears.