Rome mused, running leisurely across Hyde Park, of herself, her parents, and sisters and brothers, of how variously they had all taken life. Her papa had made of it a great spiritual adventure. Her mamma—what had mamma made of life? She had, anyhow, accepted papa and his spiritual adventure, and accepted all her children and their lives. And yet, always and always, mamma had remained delicately apart, detached, too gentle to be called cynical, too practical to be called a philosopher, too shrewd to be deceived by life. Dear mamma. Rome very often missed her still. As to Vicky, she had skimmed gracefully over life’s surface like a swallow, dipping her pretty wings in the shallows and splashing them about, or like a bee, sipping and tasting each flower. She had plunged frequently, ardently, and yet lightly, into life. Maurice had not plunged into life; he had fought it, opposed it, treated it as an enemy in a battle; he had made no terms with it. Stanley had, on the other hand, embraced it like a lover, or like a succession of lovers, to each of which she gave the best of her heart and soul and mind before she passed on to the next. Stanley believed in life, that it was or could be splendid and divine. Irving and Una both accepted it calmly, cheerfully, without speculation, as a good enough thing, Irving with more of enterprise and more of progressive desire, Una placidly, statically, eating the meal set before her and wishing nothing more, nothing less. Both these accepted.
And Rome herself had rejected. Without opposition and without heat, she had refused to be made an active participant in the business, but had watched it from her seat in the stalls as a curious and entertaining show. That was, and must always, in any circumstances, have been her way. Had she married, or had she gone away, long ago, with Mr. Jayne, would she then have been forced into some closer, some more intimate spiritual relationship with the show? Possibly. Or possibly not. Life is infinitely compelling, but the spirit remains infinitely itself.
Anyhow, it mattered not at all. Life, whatever it had, whatever it might have, meant to her, was in its last brief lap.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. . . .”
Her little drift of dust was so soon to return and subside whence it came, dust to dust.
She thought that she would miss the queer, absurd show, which would go on with its antics without her, down who knew what æons. Perhaps not very many after all; perhaps all life was before long dustily to subside, leaving the ball, like a great revolving tomb, to spin its way through space. Or perhaps the ball itself would dash suddenly from its routine spinning, would fly, would rush like a moth for a lamp, to some great, bright sun and there burst into flame, till its last drift of ashes should be consumed and no more seen.
A drift of dust, a drift of storming dust. It settles, and the little stir it has made is over and forgotten. The winds will storm on among the bright and barren stars.
Rome smiled, as she neatly swung out at the Grosvenor Gate.
EMILIE ROSE MACAULAY
(1881–1958) was born in Rugby, Warwickshire; her father was an assistant master at Rugby School. Due to her mother’s ill health the family moved, in 1887, to a small Italian town, Varazze, where they lived for seven years. She was then educated at Oxford High School for Girls, and Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Modern History.
While living with her family in Wales, Rose Macaulay wrote her first novel, Abbots Verney (1906), published after they had moved to Great Shelford, near Cambridge. It was here that Rose became an ardent Anglo-Catholic. Here, too, her childhood friendship with Rupert Brooke matured and through him she was introduced to London literary society: Walter de la Mare, Hugh Walpole, John Middleton Murry and Naomi Royde-Smith in particular. She moved to London and in 1914 published her first book of poetry, The Two Blind Countries.
During the First World War she worked at the War Office where, in 1918, she met the novelist and former Catholic priest Gerald O’Donovan, the married man with whom she was to have an affair lasting until his death from cancer in 1942. Throughout these years Rose was to become a voluntary exile from the church, her reconciliation only, being effected in her seventieth year. Before and between the Wars Rose Macaulay wrote at least one novel every two years, as well as essays, poetry and criticism. This flow, however, was dramatically interrupted by the advent of the Second World War, seeing the destruction of her flat and loss of her entire library.
A traveller all her life, Rose Macaulay went to Trebizond in 1954. This inspired her last and most famous novel, The Towers of Trebizond (1956), awarded a James Tait Black Memorial prize and a bestseller in America. She was created a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the 1958 New Year’s Honours, but seven months later, having started a new novel, Rose Macaulay suffered a heart attack and died at her home.
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain by William Collins Ltd 1923
Copyright © The Estate of Rose Macaulay 1923
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ISBN: 9781448200009
eISBN: 9781448201327
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Told by an Idiot Page 28