Laura Riding
PROGRESS OF STORIES
With new material, including other early stories and a new preface by
Laura (Riding) Jackson
Originally published in hardcover in 1982 by The Dial Press. First published in paperback in 1994 by Persea Books.
SOURCES
ANARCHISM IS NOT ENOUGH first published 1928 by Jonathan Cape, London EXPERTS ARE PUZZLED first published 1930 by Jonathan Cape, London PROGRESS OF STORIES first published 1935 by The Seizin Press, Deya Majorca and Constable & Co. Ltd, London The story, "Christmastime," first appeared in the Winter 1982 issue of Grandstreet.
To My Friends Barbara and James Mathias
Who know how to read this book Right—
Forwards from its early time, Backwards from Now
CONTENTS
Contents
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1935)
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1982)
THE STORIES OF THE FIRST EDITION
I: Stories of Lives
SOCIALIST PLEASURES
THE FRIENDLY ONE
SCHOOLGIRLS
THE SECRET
THE INCURABLE VIRTUE
DAISY AND VENISON
THREE TIMES ROUND
II: Stories of Ideas
REALITY AS PORT HUNTLADY
MISS BANQUETT, OR THE POPULATING OF COSMANIA
III: Nearly True Stories
THE STORY-PIG
THE PLAYGROUND
A FAIRY TALE FOR OLDER PEOPLE
A LAST LESSON IN GEOGRAPHY
IV: A Crown for Hans Andersen
V: More Stories
IN THE BEGINNING
EVE'S SIDE OF IT
PRIVATENESS
IN THE END
OTHER EARLY STORIES
INTRODUCTION
FROM Anarchism Is Not Enough, 1928
Three Stories About Unexpressed Feelings, Including Mine, About People, About Me
HOW CAME IT ABOUT?
HUNGRY TO HEAR
IN A CAFÉ
A Story About the Realness of Story Unrealness and the Unrealness of Story Realness
AN ANONYMOUS BOOK
FROM Experts Are Puzzled, 1930
Stories That Make a Point of Going No Further Than They Go, This Being Their Point
MADEMOISELLE COMET
THE FORTUNATE LIAR
MOLLY BARLEYWATER
BUTTERCUP
THE FABLE OF THE DICE
PERHAPS AN INDISCRETION
ARISTA MANUSCRIPT
THAT WORKSHOP
FINALE
A Later Story: CHRISTMASTIME (1966)
SOME STORIES IN REVIEW
SEQUEL OF 1964 TO 'A LAST LESSON IN GEOGRAPHY'
SEQUEL OF 1974 TO 'A LAST LESSON IN GEOGRAPHY' (HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED)
ON 'IN THE BEGINNING'
ON 'EVE'S SIDE OF IT'
ON 'PRIVATENESS'
ON 'IN THE END'
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (1935)
IN stories are set down probable truths which are not demonstrably true: stories are guesswork. They are guesswork either because their material is entirely unimportant, so that it bears no more thorough treatment than guesswork; or because their material, although somewhat important, is burdened with unimportant elements which make it unripe, at least for the present, for thorough treatment; or because their material is, as it were, so precociously important that one can do no more than nurse high hopes for it—hopes sobered with caution.
The first group of stories in this book deals with unequivocally unimportant material. They are about lives as such; and all lives, as such, are unimportant. All lives have happened long ago; or, at any rate, they are not happening now, however immediate they may seem to the people who are living them. And whatever is not happening now is unimportant; it is merely curious. It is very difficult to let the unimportant remain unimportant; almost impossible for most people who write stories, because it would sadden them to feel that their work on the material did not make it more important. People who write stories are so generous. I too am generous; but I am also economical—I do not believe in wasting generosity. One can get all the sensations of generosity, where it is improvident to be generous, in being fair. With the material of the first group of stories I have been very fair. I have done a certain amount of work on it, but no more than was enough to establish it decently in its unimportance.
Why did I bother at all? Not because the material forced itself on me: material does not force itself on a writer. A storyteller must, like a truth-teller, make discoveries. The only difference between them is that the story-teller must let his discoveries remain obscure, while the truth-teller must make his discoveries plain. I have written these seven stories, then, for the discipline which story-telling lays upon one's truth-telling instincts. My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth- telling: to make things plain. But some of the things that I have already made plain have seemed obscure to people because I have sometimes made too much plain—more than most people are capable of understanding. Which has not only been a waste of my energy but a cause of irritation to the people who have not understood; so that, in revenge, they have called my writing obscure. I do not like to waste my energy or to irritate people or to be called obscure. And so I have really written these stories of lives for the good of everyone. I have set myself the task of discovering very obscure, or irrelevant, material, and done a minimum amount of work on it. I do not mean these seven stories to seem witty or pathetic or ingenious or naïve or dull. My only ambition for them was that they should produce a certain relaxation of energy in myself and a certain relaxation of hostility in those who read them with some previous prejudice against my truth-telling technique. I have, so to speak, changed the subject in telling them. Yet not really: there is only one subject, and it is impossible to change it.
Perhaps those who have no familiarity with, or no especial hostility or friendliness toward, my truth-telling activities will call them foolish stories, or idle stories, or ill-written stories. All, certainly, will agree with me that the material is obscure. Yet no one will call me obscure—least of all those who are the first to call me obscure when my material is important, and because their attention is not equal to the requirements. There is nothing that pleases me so much as to have people agree with me, and nothing that wearies me so much as to be made a scapegoat for the incapacity of people to understand what they only pretend to want to know. This frank account of the motivation of the first group of stories will, I hope, disarm any reader who is tempted to look for some metaphysical catch in them because, as stories written by me, they seem suspiciously simple ones. The other stories in the book must be accounted for somewhat differently.
The two stories which compose the second group deal with material of diluted importance; they are dilutions, and because they are dilutions they are stories. They are stories of ideas. Suppose yourself a guest in a house where your hostess is an energetic woman of wide interests. In such a house, in such a universe, there are really no degrees of importance. At table no topic is supposed to be discussed which is not in some way important. Yet, undeniably, everything is discussed; and only a small part of all that is said is true—that is, absolutely important. Your hostess is affectionate as well as energetic. She appreciates your good intentions—she has made friends of you because of your good intentions—and does not require that every word you say at her table shall be gospel truth. Indeed, to show her confidence in you, she absents herself a good deal from table, and leaves you most of the time to yourselves, to talk as you please, feeling that you will not go very far wrong in what you say, not wrong enough to make her ask herself why you should be friends of hers at
all.
Thus most of the conversation which goes on is a mixture. It consists mostly of stories of ideas which you tell one another. What you say has a general air of importance, but any particular detail, if we stopped to examine it, would seem insignificant and beside the point. Yet your minds move in the right direction; we must not expect too much of them, exactly because they are still moving. While they are still moving they may at any moment move backward rather than forward. Your wisdom is on the whole pretty diluted. Your hostess herself, when she talks with you, tries not to be a purist. She too says many things which are merely stories of ideas. And for the moment this kind of conversation will do. For the moment the story of Miss Banquett will do, and the story of Lady Port-Huntlady. Why should they not, since we are such a mixed company? Perhaps there are too many of us, perhaps a little later on there will be fewer of us. At any rate our minds are still moving, and backward as well as forward; the nearest we get to truth at any given moment is, perhaps, only an idea—a dash of truth somewhat flavouring the indeterminate substance of our minds.
You will notice that I speak of 'our' minds, not saying which one of these is mine. For at this stage we are merely a mixed company; I have no right to affirm that my mind is necessarily purer than yours, or that I am necessarily the hostess. We are at the moment all together a mixed company, and that is all there is to it. And our conversation at its most serious consists of stories of ideas, stories like the ones I have told you about Miss Banquett and Lady Port-Huntlady: these are the kind of stories which you, at your most serious, tell me. And it cannot be otherwise with all of us together so.
We all know that in a little while, when there are not quite so many of us, when we are not such a mixed company, we shall be able to talk to one another in a more immediate way. There is much in our conversation that is important, and Miss Banquett and Lady Port-Huntlady do justice to this; but there is much also that is merely curious, and Miss Banquett and Lady Port-Huntlady cannot gainsay this. Miss Banquett and Lady Port-Huntlady belong to a mixed company. Miss Banquett may seem a more poetic, and therefore a more flattering personification of ourselves than Lady Port-Huntlady; but this is only because we shaped her when the conversation was in full swing, and we are still disappointed that it was not going any better. Lady Port-Huntlady suffers from the disadvantage of rising from among us (faded spirit) when the conversation, as an ambitious intimacy between more of us than could possibly last through to the end, has practically worn itself out. We are no longer disappointed; we are indifferent to the obvious failure of the conversation; we know that as we are we can never really say anything absolutely important.
Even so, it has been very difficult to say as much as we have said. In the very beginning, you will remember, I was opposed to half-measures. There were altogether too many of you, and yet I said, 'There must be perfect intimacy between us all, we must tell the exact truth to one another.' And nothing happened, except that there were more and more of you. And I kept waiting for someone to begin. I did not want to begin myself because I wanted everyone to have his say before I began: I was polite as well as optimistic. But as no one began, and nothing happened, except that there were more and more of you, I grew very pessimistic. But as, also, I could not sacrifice the situation to my fanatical scruples of courtesy, I eventually began the conversation myself. And two things were bound to happen: the first, that it would be a rather vague conversation, as it passed from one to the other; the second, that the conversation would gradually wear itself out. Then, in a little while, there would be just a few of us telling one another the exact truth. So that I should not have to deal in half- measures, after all—although to get to this point I might have to seem, for a time, to be dealing in half-measures.
We can distinguish then three stages in the history of stories, looking back from where there is an end of all the loose talk between us—an end, sadly, of stories. In the first stage (we now see) we were not even a mixed company, we were not a company at all; there was no 'we.' There was nothing but stories of lives. These went round from mouth to mouth—nobody's mouth in particular. And it all happened long ago—at any rate, long before we began coming together. It was all history, and none of it was important: that is, none of it lasted. So I have told here a few stories of lives, by way of reminding ourselves, myself, what the state of language was like before we began talking together: how obscure. And this first stage went on until quite recently. In fact, if you go out from our company at any moment into that world of hearsay which went on until quite recently, you will still catch fragments of this obscure language as it passed from mouth to mouth: for always that which has been going on until quite recently goes on just a little longer, and a little longer, so that it seems to have been going on just now. Stories of lives belong to this 'just now'— when we had not really begun to say anything to one another, when a 'we' could not really be said to exist.
There is a quaint cult of story-writing which practises what is called 'the short story'; pompous little fragments in whose very triviality, obscurity and shabbiness some significant principle of being is meant to be read. But this is only the lazy jargon of those other ones who fancy themselves another 'we' to us in their lazy pride of not submitting themselves to the rigours of our tedious purification of language. With what a fatuous air of triumph they round off these stories, just where, practically, they have begun. Well, we are differently constituted. We had, first of all, to become this 'we' of theirs. But then we had to go on. We had to leave the hearsay behind, without pomp, in all its triviality, obscurity and shabbiness, and as tenderly as we could; knowing that some of it would for a time cling to our tongues, until we should no longer be a mixed company, until there would not be so many of us.
For a time, that is, we should be telling one another stories of ideas: not altogether unimportant stories, since we were none of us lazy, yet not altogether important, altogether true stories, since we were doing our best but not the best. And we should be gradually feeling that our company was thinning. We should begin to say, 'In a little while now.' Some of us would have been saying this privately to ourselves all the time —Hans Andersen among the first. You will see that at the end I have tried to reward his patience, on behalf of us all, with a golden crown, a crown of real gold. For the best time is made out of gold; and all the time that he kept saying to himself 'In a little while now' was time of the very best quality. I will not say that it was 'pure'—as I would agree with the alchemists that gold was not an 'element'; no time can be pure. But this was certainly a fast compound, as jealous as gold of its integrity; of sulphurous patience and mercurial hope and salty fear—let whatever else he made it of be his secret, as each of us has endured by a private magic.
In the third group of stories we are everywhere saying to one another, 'In a little while now.' There are, of course, not so many of us; we almost know exactly who we all are. And what we say to one another is almost the truth. It is indeed the truth except for what is missing. We have grown so careful that we prefer to leave a great deal unsaid to saying a great deal only some of which is true. Ever so carefully and ever so faintly we begin to tell one another the truth—nothing but the truth. This seems to take us back to fairy stories rather than forward to the truth; it seems saying so very little, giving ourselves such poor measure. But fairy stories in all their scantiness promised: 'Some time will come a time when in a little while all will be plain.' Fairy stories in all their scantiness indeed gave poor measure, but for fear of giving false measure. Indeed, we are now afraid of giving ourselves false measure. Indeed, until we are quite sure that we are not telling one another lies—not being exactly sure who we are—we prefer to tell one another stories which are only nearly true.
This is how things must go when there are so many of us: for although we are not so many as we were, we are still quite a lot. And where there are quite a lot one has to be careful of accidents. Of course, there is another side to this business of telling the truth, in wh
ich accidents cannot happen because there is practically nothing besides truth itself involved—truth tells itself the truth, and there are no accidents. This other side begins to come into action when we begin trying to tell the truth to one another. Truth is trying to talk, and each of us overhears something of what it is trying to say, and we tell what we hear to the others. And what we hear is not hearsay, because we hear it in ourselves, not in others. But even with hearing something in oneself one has to be careful of accidents. We are not so many as we were, but we are still quite a lot: how sure are we which is which? And a further difficulty is that at the end what we tell one another must be exactly the same as what truth tells itself—or it is not an end. We must speak practically as one person—or it is no good. You know how you feel when a great many people are holding a great many separate conversations all at the same time. You try to think, 'What a nice party'; but you cannot help feeling dissatisfied. You know it is really no good. And all the others feel in their hearts, 'No, it is no good.' No, it is no good unless it is all the same conversation. In a little while it will be all the same conversation. And all we can do about it, having got so far, is to be careful of accidents.
And if you do not understand me, if we do not understand one another, then is it not all as I have said? For will you not then be as much as saying to yourselves, 'No, it is no good unless it is all the same conversation? No, it is not that I am difficult to understand, but that I do so want us all to speak the same conversation; I insist on our all speaking the same conversation. And will those who are incapable of this please, please go away now, if you have not already gone away. Some of you who should have gone away long ago will say like a flash, 'Oh, of course, by the "same" conversation she means her conversation.' Which is certainly very childish. Here is a whole book that took a long time to write and to make into a book, and all done so carefully and so nicely, and yet is there a single paragraph at which you can sneer 'Oh, she is talking about herself'? And in everything that I have ever written have I ever brought myself in, except in the most discreet way? And I suppose you (who should have gone away long ago) will say to that, 'Yes, she is always so secretive, always ready to talk about everybody but herself.' Which is certainly very, very childish.
Progress of Stories Page 1