“There’s something in that boy of yours, Mrs. Winterbourne. He’s got a mind. He’ll do something in the world.”
“Oh, do you think so, Mr. Slush?” – Isabel, half-flattered, half-bristling with horror and rage at the thought that George might “have a mind” – “he’s just a healthy, happy schoolboy, and only thinks of pleasing his Mummie.”
“Umph,” said Mr. Slush. “Well, I’d like to do something for him. There’s more in him than you think. I believe there’s an artist in him.”
“If I thought that,” exclaimed Isabel viciously, “I’d flog him till all such nonsense was flogged out of him.”
Mr. Slush saw he was doing George more harm than good by this well-meant effort, and was discreetly silent. However, he gave George one or two books, and tried to talk to him on the side. But George was still too suspicious of all grown-ups, particularly those who came and drank whisky in the evening with George Augustus and Isabel. Besides, poor, flabby, drink-sodden, kindly Mr. Slush rather repelled his hard, intolerant youthfulness; and they got nowhere in particular. Still, Mr. Slush was important to the extent that he prepared George to give some confidence to others. He broke down the first outer wall built by George against the world. The way in which Isabel got rid of Mr. Slush, whose possible influence on George she instinctively suspected, was rather amusing. George Augustus and Mr. Slush went to a Freemasons’ dinner together. Now that Freemasonry had served its purpose, Isabel was intensely jealous of its mysteries – poor mysteries! – which George Augustus honourably refused to reveal to her, and she hated those periodical dinners with a bitter hatred. That night there arose one of the most terrific thunderstorms which had ever been known in that part of the country. For six hours forked and sheet lightning leaped and stabbed at earth and sea from three sides of the horizon; crash after crash of thunder broke over Martin’s Point and rumbled terrifically against the cliffs, while desperate drenching sheets of rain beat madly on roofs and windows and gushed wetly down the steep roads. It was impossible for the men to get home. They remained – drinking a good deal – at the hotel until nearly four, and then drove home sleepily and merrily. Isabel put on her tragedy-queen air, sat up all night, and greeted George Augustus with horrid invective.
“Think of poor Mrs. Slush out there in that lonely farm, and me and the children crouching here in terror, while you men were guzzling, and besotting yourselves with whisky”… etcetera, etcetera.
Poor George Augustus attempted a feeble defence – it was swept away. Mr. Slush innocently walked over next day to see how things were after the storm, was insulted, and driven from the house in amazed indignation. He “put” Isabel a little vindictively “in his next novel”, but, as she said and said truly, he never “darkened their doors” again.
In one way George loved the grey sea and barrenness, in another way he hated them. To get away to the lush inland country was a release, an ecstasy, the more precious in that it happened so rarely. When he was a small child, a maid-servant took him “down home” to the hop-picking. Confused and fantastic memories of it remained with him. He never forgot the penetrating sunlight, the long dusty ride in the horse-bus, the sensation of hot-sharp-scented shadow under the tall vines, the joy of the great rustling heaps falling downward as the foreman cut the strings, the tenderness of the rough women hop-pickers, the taste of the smoky picnic tea and heavy soggy cake (so delicious!) they gave him. Later – in the fourteen-sixteen years – it was a joy to visit the Hambies. They were retired professional people, who lived in a remote country-house among lush meadows and rich woods. Mr. Hamble was a large, freckly man who collected insects, and was a skilled botanist; and thus charmed that side of George. But the real delight was the lush countryside – and Priscilla. Priscilla was the Hambies’ daughter, almost exactly George’s age, and between those two was a curious, intense, childish passion. She was very golden and pretty – much too pretty, for it made her self-conscious and flirtatious. But the passion between those two children was a genuine thing. A pity that this sort of Daphnis and Chloe passion is not allowed free physical expression under our puling obscene conventions. There was always something a little frustrated in both George and Priscilla because the timidity and false modesty imposed on them prevented the natural physical expression. For quite three years George was under the influence of his passion for Priscilla, never really forgot her, always in a dim, dumb, subconscious way felt the frustration. Like all passions it was something fugitive, the product of a phase, but it ought not to have been frustrated. It was a pity they were so often separated, because that meant infinite letter-writing and so made him always tend to too much idealizing and intellectualizing in love affairs. But when they were together it was pure happiness. Priscilla was a very demure and charming little mistress. They played all sorts of games with other children, and went fishing in the brook, picked flowers in the rich water-meadows, hunted bird-nests along the hedges. All these things, great fun in themselves, were so much more fun because Priscilla was there, because they held hands and kissed, and felt very serious, like real lovers. Sometimes he dared to touch her childish breasts. And the feeling of friendliness from the clasp of Priscilla’s hands, the pleasure of her short childish kisses and sweet breath, the delicate texture of her warm childish-swelling breasts, never quite left him; and to remember Priscilla was like remembering a fragrant English garden. Like an English garden, she was a little old-fashioned and self-consciously comely, but she was so spring-like and golden. She was immensely important to George. She was something he could love unreservedly, even if it was only with the mawkish love of adolescence. But far more than that temporary service, she gave him the capacity to love women, saved him from the latent homosexuality which lurks in so many Englishmen and makes them for ever dissatisfied with their women. She revealed to him – all unconsciously – the subtle inexhaustible joys of the tender companionate woman’s body. Even then he felt the delicious contrast between his male nervous-muscled hands and her tender budding breasts, opening flowers to be held so delicately and affectionately. And from her too he learned that the most satisfactory loves are those which do not last too long, those which are never made thorny with hate, and drift gently into the past, leaving behind only a fragrance – not a sting – of regret. His memories of Priscilla were few, but all roses…
You see, they cannot really kill the spark if it is there, not with all their bullyings and codes and prejudices and thorough manliness. For, of course, they are not manly at all, they are merely puppets, the products of the system – if it may be dignified by that word. The truly manly ones are those who have the spark, and refuse to let it be extinguished; those who know that the true values are the vital values, not the £ s. d. and falling-into-a-good-post and the kicked-backside-of-the-Empire values. George had already found a sort of ally in poor Mr. Slush, and an exquisite child-passion in Priscilla. But he needed men too, and was lucky enough to find them. How can one estimate what he owed to Dudley Pollak and to Donald and Tom Conington?
Dudley Pollak was a mysterious bird. He was a married man in the late fifties, who had been to Cambridge, made the Grand Tour, lived in Paris, Berlin, and Italy, known numbers of fairly eminent people, owned a large country-house, appeared to have means, possessed very beautiful furniture and all sorts of objets d’art, and was a cultivated man – in most of which respects he differed exceedingly from the inhabitants of Martin’s Point. Now what do you suppose was the reason why Pollak and Mrs. Pollak let their large house furnished, and spent several years in a small cottage in a rather dreary village street a couple of miles from Martin’s Point? George never knew, and nobody else ever knew. The fantastic and scandalous theories evolved by Martin’s Point to explain this mystery were amusing evidence of the vulgar stupidity of those who formed them, and have no other interest. The Pollaks themselves said that they had grown tired of their large house and that Mrs. Pollak was weary of managing servants. So simple is the truth that this very likely was the r
eal explanation. At any rate, there they lived together in their cottage, crowded with furniture and books; cooking their own meals very often – they were both excellent cooks – and waited on by a couple of servants who “lived out”. Now, although Pollak was forty years older than George, he was in a sense the boy’s first real friend. The Pollaks had no children of their own, which may go to explain this odd but deep friendship.
Pollak was a much wilier bird than poor old Slush. He sized Isabel up very quickly and accurately, and just politely refused to let her quarrel with him, and just as politely refused to receive her. But he was so obviously a gentleman, so obviously a man of means, that no reasonable objection could be made when he proposed to George Augustus that “Georgie” should come to tea once a week and learn chess. Martin’s Point was a very chessy place; it was somehow a mark of respectability there. Before this, George had gone to play chess with a very elderly gentleman, who put so much of the few brains he had into that game that he had none left for the preposterous poems he composed, or indeed anything else. So every Wednesday George went to tea with the Pollaks.
They always began, most honourably and scrupulously, with a game of chess; and then they had tea; and then they talked. Although George never suspected it until years afterwards, Pollak was subtly educating him, at the same time that he tried to give him the kind of sympathy he needed. Pollak had many volumes of Anderson’s photographs, which he let George turn over while he talked negligently but shrewdly about Italian architecture, styles of painters, della Robbia work; and Mrs. Pollak occasionally threw in some little anecdote about travel. By the example of his own rather fastidious manners he corrected schoolboy uncouthnesses. He somehow got George riding lessons, for in Pollak’s days horse-riding was an indispensable accomplishment. Pollak always worked on the boy by suggestion and example, never by exhortation or patronage. He always assumed that George knew what he negligently but accurately told him. The manner in which he made George learn French was characteristic of his methods. One afternoon Pollak told a number of amusing stories about his young days in Paris, while George was looking through a volume of autograph letters of Napoleon, Talleyrand, and other Frenchmen – which, of course, he could not read. Next week, when George arrived he found Pollak reading.
“Hullo, Georgie, how are you? Just listen to this lovely thing I’ve been reading, and tell me what you think of it.”
And Pollak read, in the rather chanting voice he adopted in reading poetry, André Chénier’s “L’épi naissant mûrit, de la faux respecté.” George had to confess shamefacedly that he hadn’t understood.
Pollak handed him the book, one of those charming large-type Didot volumes; but Andre Chenier was too much for George’s public-school French.
“Oh, I do wish I could read it properly,” said George. “How did you learn French?”
“I suppose I learned it in Paris. ‘ ’Tis pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue by female eyes and lips,’ you know. But you could learn very soon if you really tried.”
“But how? I’ve done French at school for ages, and I simply can’t read it, though I’ve often tried.”
“What you learn at school is only to handle the tools – you’ve got to learn to use them for yourself. You take Les Trois Mousquetaires, read straight through a few pages, marking the words you don’t know, look them up, make lists of them, and try to remember them. Don’t linger over them too much, but try and get interested in the story.”
“But I’ve read The Three Musketeers in English.”
“Well, try Vingt Ans Après. You can have my copy and mark it.”
“No, there’s a paper-backed one at home. I’ll use that.”
In a fortnight George had skipped through the first volume of Vingt Ans Après. In a month he could read simple French prose easily. Three months later he was able to read La Jeune Captive aloud to Pollak, who afterwards turned the talk on to Ronsard, and opened up yet another vista.
The Coningtons were much younger men, the elder a young barrister. They also talked to George about books and pictures, in which their taste was more modern if less sure than Pollak’s urbane Second Empire culture. But with them George learned companionship, the fun of infinite, everlasting arguments about “life” and ideas, the fun of making mots and laughing freely. The Coningtons were both great walkers. George of course had the middle-class idea that five miles was the limit of human capacity for walking. Like Pollak, the Coningtons treated him as if he were a man, assumed also that he could do what they were showing him how to do. So when Donald Conington came down for a week-end, he assumed that George would want to walk. That day’s walk had such an effect upon George that he could even remember the date, 2nd of June. It was one of those soft, cloudless days that do sometimes happen in England, even in June. They set out from Hamborough soon after breakfast and struck inland, going at a steady, even pace, talking and laughing. Donald was in excellent form, cheery and amusing, happy to be out of harness for a few hours. Four miles brought them beyond the limits of George’s own wanderings, and after a couple of hours’ tramp they suddenly came out on the crest of the last chalk ridge and looked over a wide, fertile plain of woodland and tilth and hop-fields, all shimmering in the warm sunlight. The curious hooked noses of oast-houses sniffed over the tops of soft round elm-clumps. They could see three church spires and a dozen hamlets. The only sound came from the larks high overhead.
“God!” exclaimed Donald in his slightly theatrical way, “what a fair prospect!”
A fair prospect indeed, and an unforgettable moment when one comes for the first time to the crest of a hill and looks over an unknown country shimmering in the sun, with the white coiling English lanes inviting exploration. Donald set off down the hill, singing lustily: “0 mistress mine, where are you roaming?” George followed a little hesitatingly. His legs were already rather tired, it was long past eleven – how would they get back in time for lunch, and what would be said if they were late? He mentioned his fears timidly to Donald.
“What! Tired? Why, good God, man, we’ve only just started! We’ll push on another four miles to Crockton, and have lunch in a pub. I told them we shouldn’t be in until after tea.”
The rest of the day passed for George in a kind of golden glory of fatigue and exultation. His legs ached bitterly – although they only walked about fifteen miles all told – but he was ashamed to confess his tiredness to Donald, who seemed as fresh at the end of the day as when he started. George came home with confused and happy memories – the long talk and the friendly silences, the sun’s heat, a deer-park and Georgian red-brick mansion they stopped to look at, the thatched pub at Crock-ton where he ate bread and cheese and pickles and drank his first beer, the elaborately carved Norman church at Crockton. They sat for half an hour after lunch in the churchyard, while Donald smoked a pipe. A Red Admiral settled on a grey flat tombstone, speckled with crinidy orange and flat grey-green lichens. They talked with would-be profundity about how Plato had likened the Soul – Psyche – to a butterfly, and about death, and how one couldn’t possibly accept theology or the idea of personal immortality. But they were cheerful about it – the only sensible time to discuss these agonizing problems is after a pleasant meal accompanied with strong drink; and they felt so well and cheery and animal-insouciant in the warm sunlight, they didn’t really believe they would ever die. In that they showed considerable wisdom; for you will remember that the wise Montaigne spent the first half of his life preparing for death, and the latter part in arguing that it is much wiser never to think about dying at all – time enough to think of that when it comes along.
For Donald that was just a pleasant day, which very soon took its place among the vague mists of half-memory. For George it was all extraordinarily important. For the first time he felt and understood companionship between men – the frank, unsuspicious exchange of goodwill and talk, the spontaneous collaboration of two natures. That was really the most important gain. But he also discovered the re
al meaning of travel. It sounds absurd to speak of a fifteen-mile walk as “travel”. But you may go thousands of miles by train and boat between one international hotel and another, and not have the sensation of travelling at all. Travel means the consciousness of adventure and exploration, the sense of covering the miles, the ability to seize indefatigably upon every new or familiar source of delight. Hence the horror of tourism, which is a conventionalizing, a codification, of adventure and exploration – which is absurd. Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else – above all, a travel bureau – arrange everything beforehand? It isn’t seeing new and beautiful things which matters, it’s seeing them for yourself. And if you want the sensation of covering the miles, go on foot. Three hundred miles on foot in three weeks will give you infinitely more sense of travel, show you infinitely more surprising and beautiful experiences, than thirty thousand miles of mechanical transport.
George did not rest until he went on a real exploration walk. He did this with Tom Conington, Donald’s younger brother – and that walk also was unforgettable, though they were rained upon daily and subsisted almost entirely upon eggs and bacon, which seems to be the only food heard of in English country pubs. They took the train to Corfe Castle, and spent a day in walking over to Swanage through the halfmoor, half-marsh country, with its heather and gorse and nodding white cotton-grasses. Then they went along the coast to Kirnmeridge and Preston and Lulworth and Lyme Regis, sleeping in cottages and small pubs. From Lyme Regis they turned inland, and went by way of Honiton, Cullompton, Tiverton, to Dulverton and Porlock, along the north Devon coast to Bideford, and back to South Molton, where they had to take the train, since they had spent their money and had only enough to pay their fares home. The whole walk lasted less than a fortnight, but it seemed like two months. They had such a good time, jawing away as they walked, singing out of tune, finding their way on maps, getting wet through and drying themselves by taproom fires, talking to everyone, farmer or labourer, who would talk to them, reading and smoking over a pint of beer after supper. And always that sense of adventure, of exploration, which urged them on every morning, even through mist and rain, and made fatigue and bad inns and muddy roads all rather fun and an experience.
Death of a Hero Page 11