by C. S. Lewis
‘Still,’ said John, ‘you can’t really be certain that there is no such place as my Island. Reason left it an open question.’
‘Reason!’ exclaimed Mr. Sensible. ‘Do you mean the mad woman who goes riding about the country dressed up in armour? I trust that when I spoke of the reasonable life you did not think that I meant anything under her auspices? There is a strange confusion in our language here, for the reasonableness which I commend has no more dangerous enemy than Reason. Perhaps I should drop the use of the name altogether, and say that my deity is not reason but le bon sens.’
‘What is the difference?’ said Vertue.
‘Sense is easy, Reason is hard. Sense knows where to stop with gracious inconsistency, while Reason slavishly follows an abstract logic whither she knows not. The one seeks comfort and finds it, the other seeks truth and is still seeking. Le bon sens is the father of a flourishing family: Reason is barren and a virgin. If I had my way I should clap this Reason of yours in the bridewell to pursue her meditations in the straw. The baggage has a pretty face, I allow: but she leads us from our true aim—joy, pleasure, ease, content, whate’er the name! She is a fanatic who has never learned from my master to pursue the golden mean, and, being a mortal, to think mortal thoughts. Auream quisquis—’
‘It is very odd that you should say that,’ interrupted Vertue, ‘for I also was brought up on Aristotle. But I think my text must have differed from yours. In mine, the doctrine of the Means does not bear the sense you have given it at all. He specially says that there is no excess of goodness. You cannot go too far in the right direction. The line that we should follow may start from a middle point in the base of a triangle: but the further off the apex is, the better. In that dimension—’
‘Do manus!’ broke out Mr. Sensible. ‘Spare us the rest, young man. We are not at a lecture, and I readily admit that your scholarship is more recent than mine. Philosophy should be our mistress, not our master: and the pursuit of a pedantic accuracy amidst the freedom of our social pleasures is as unwelcome as—’
‘And the bit about thinking mortal thoughts,’ continued Vertue, whose social experience, as I dreamed, was not extensive, ‘the bit about mortal thoughts was quoted by Aristotle to say that he disagreed with it. He held that the end of mortal life was to put on immortality as much as might be. And he also said that the most useless of studies was the noblest.’
‘I see you are letter-perfect, young man,’ said Mr. Sensible, with a rather chilly smile, ‘and I am sure these pieces of information, if repeated to your teachers, would win the applause they deserve. Here, if you will forgive me, they are a little out of place. A gentleman’s knowledge of the ancient authors is not that of a pedant: and I think you have misunderstood the place which philosophy ought to hold in the reasonable life. We do not memorize systems. What system can stand? What system does not leave us with the old refrain—que sais-je? It is in her power to remind us of the strangeness of things—in the brown charm of her secluded meditations—above all, in her decorative function—that philosophy becomes instrumental to the good life. We go to the Porch and the Academy to be spectators, not partisans. Drudge! !’
‘Dinner is served, sir,’ said Drudge, appearing at the door.
Then I dreamed that they went into the dining-room and so to table.
V
Table Talk
THE COWSLIP WINE CAME with the oysters. It was a little rough, as the old gentleman had prophesied, and the glasses were so very small that Vertue drained his at once. John was afraid that there might be no more to come and therefore dallied over his, partly because he feared that he might put his host out of countenance and partly because he disliked the taste. But his precautions were needless, for with the soup came sherry.
‘Dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis!’ said Mr. Sensible. ‘I hope that this wild garden vintage is not unpleasing to an unspoiled palate.’
‘You don’t mean to say that you have vines?’ exclaimed John.
‘I was referring to the cowslip wine,’ said Mr. Sensible. ‘I hope to have some good vines soon, but at present I still rely a little on my neighbours. Is this our own sherry, Drudge?’
‘No, sir,’ said Drudge. ‘This is that lot that Mr. Broad sent.’
‘Halibut!’ said John. ‘You surely don’t—’
‘No,’ said Mr. Sensible. ‘Sea fish, I confess, I must get from my friends on the coast.’
As the meal went on, John’s good manners forbade him to make further inquiries, and when a salad came with one or two very small radishes in it he was positively relieved that his host should be able to claim them as his own produce (‘His humble sauce a radish or an egg,’ said Mr. Sensible). But in my dream I was privileged to know the sources of the whole meal. The cowslip wine and the radishes were home-grown; the joint had been a present from Mr. Mammon: the entrées and savouries came from Eschropolis: the champagne and ices from old Mr. Halfways. Some of the food was part of the stores which Mr. Sensible had taken over when he came to live there, from his predecessors who had occupied this house before him: for on that tableland, and especially to the North of the main road, the air is so light and cold that things keep for a long time. The bread, the salt, and the apples had been left by Epicurus who was the builder of the house and its first inhabitant. Some very fine hock had belonged to Horace. The claret and also (as I remember) most of the silver, were Montaigne’s. But the port, which was one in a thousand and the best thing on that table, had once belonged to Rabelais, who in his turn had it as a present from old Mother Kirk when they were friends. Then I dreamed that after dinner old Mr. Sensible stood up and made a little speech in Latin thanking the Landlord for all they had received.
‘What?’ said John. ‘Do you believe in the Landlord?’
‘No part of our nature is to be suppressed,’ said Mr. Sensible. ‘Least of all a part that has enshrined itself in beautiful traditions. The Landlord has his function like everything else as one element in the good life.’
Then presently Mr. Sensible, who was turning very red, fixed his eyes intently on John and repeated.
‘As one element. As one element.’
‘I see,’ said John, and there was a long silence.
‘As well,’ began Mr. Sensible with great energy some ten minute later, ‘it is part of good manners.’ A διáϰειται—Tíμα. My dear Mr. Vertue, my dear young friend, your glass is quite empty. I mean absolutely empty. Cras ingens iterabimus.’
There was another and longer pause. John began to wonder whether Mr. Sensible were not asleep, when suddenly Mr. Sensible said with great conviction:
‘Pellite cras ingens tum-tum .’
Then he smiled at them and finally went to sleep. And presently Drudge came in looking old and thin and dirty in the pale morning light—for I thought that the dawn was just then beginning to show through the chinks of the shutters—to carry his master to bed. Then I saw him come back and lead the guests to their beds. And then the third time I saw him come back into the dining-room and pour out the remains of the claret into a glass and drink it off. Then he stood for a moment or so blinking his red eyes and rubbing his bony, stubbly chin. At last he yawned and set about tidying the room for breakfast.
VI
Drudge
I DREAMED THAT JOHN awoke feeling cold. The chamber in which he lay was luxuriously furnished and all the house was silent, so that John thought it would be useless to rise, and he piled all his clothes on him and tried to sleep again. But he only grew colder. Then he said to himself, ‘Even if there is no chance of breakfast, I may save myself from freezing by walking about’: so he rose and huddled on all his clothes and went down into the house, but the fires were not yet lit. Finding the back door open he went out. It was full morning of a grey sunless day. There were dark clouds, fairly low, and as John came out one snowflake fell at his feet, but no more. He found that he was in Mr. Sensible’s garden, but it was more of a yard than a garden. A high wall ran all about it and all within the wall wa
s dry, brown earth, with a few stony paths. Dibbling the earth with his foot, John found that the soil was only half an inch deep: under it was solid rock. A little way from the house he found Drudge down on his hands and knees scraping together what seemed to be a little pile of dust, but it was in fact the soil of the garden. The little pile had been got together at the cost of leaving the rock uncovered for a big circle—like a bald patch—all round Drudge.
‘Good morning, Drudge,’ said John. ‘What are you making?’
‘Radish beds, sir.’
‘Your master is a great gardener.’
‘Talks about it, sir.’
‘Does he not work in the garden himself?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It is a poor soil here. Does he manage to feed himself on his own produce in a good year?’
‘Feeds me on it, sir.’
‘What does the garden grow—besides radishes?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
John passed on to the end of the garden and looked over the wall, which was lower here. He drew back with a little start for he found that he was looking down an abyss: the garden was perched on the edge of the Grand Canyon. Below John’s feet, at the bottom of the gorge, lay the forest, and on the opposite side he saw a mixture of wood and cliff. The cliffs were all shaggy with trailing and hanging greenery, and streams, rendered immovable to sight by their distance, came down from the land beyond. Even on that cold morning the farther side looked richer and warmer than his own.
‘We must get out of this,’ said John. At that moment Drudge called to him.
‘I shouldn’t lean on that wall, sir,’ he said. ‘There’s frequent landslides.’
‘Landslides?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve rebuilt that wall a dozen times. The house used to be right out there—half-way across the gorge.’
‘The canyon is getting wider, then?’
‘At this point, sir. In Mr. Epicurus’ time—’
‘You have been employed here under other masters, then?’
‘Yes, sir. I’ve seen a good many of them. Whoever has lived here has always needed me. Choregia they used to call me in the old days, but now they just call me Drudge.’
‘Tell me about your old masters,’ said John.
‘Mr. Epicurus was the first. Mental case he was, poor gentleman: he had a chronic fear of the black hole. Something dreadful. I never had a better employer, though. Nice, kind, quiet-spoken sort of a man. I was very sorry when he went down the cliff—’
‘Goodness me!’ exclaimed John. ‘Do you mean that some of your masters have lost their lives in these landslides?’
‘Most of them, sir.’
At that moment a leonine roar came from one of the upper windows of the house.
‘Drudge! Son of a bitch! Hot water.’
‘Coming, sir,’ said Drudge, rising very deliberately from his knees and giving a finishing pat to his heap of dust. ‘I shall be leaving here soon,’ he continued to John. ‘I am thinking of going further North.’
‘Further North?’
‘Yes, sir. There are openings with Mr. Savage up in the mountains. I was wondering if you and Mr. Vertue were going that way—’
‘Drudge! !’ bellowed Mr. Sensible’s voice from the house.
‘Coming, sir,’ said Drudge, beginning to untie two pieces of string with which he had confined his trousers beneath his knees. ‘So you see, Mr. John, I should be greatly obliged if you would allow me to travel with you.’
‘Drudge! Am I to call you again?’ shouted Mr. Sensible.
‘Coming, sir. If you was to agree I would give Mr. Sensible notice this morning.’
‘We are certainly going North for a bit,’ said John. ‘And I should have no objection, provided Mr. Vertue agrees.’
‘Very kind of you, I am sure, sir,’ said Drudge. Then he turned and walked slowly into the house.
VII
The Gaucherie of Vertue
MR. SENSIBLE WAS NOT in good humour when they met at breakfast. ‘That ungrateful blockhead of a servant of mine is leaving me in the lurch,’ he said, ‘and for the next few days we must shift for ourselves. I fear I am a wretched cook. Perhaps, Vertue, you would indulge me so far as to take the cooking on yourself until I get a new man? I dare say you could enable the three of us to live a very tolerable sort of picnic life for three days?’
The two young men informed him that they were continuing their journey after breakfast.
‘This,’ said Mr. Sensible, ‘is getting really serious. Do you mean to say that you are going to desert me? I am to be reduced to absolute solitude—deprived of the common decencies of life—compelled to spend my day in menial offices? Very well, sir. I am unacquainted with modern manners: no doubt this is the way in which young men return hospitality.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ said Vertue. ‘I had not seen it in that light. I will certainly act as your servant for a day or so if you wish it. I had not understood that it would be such a burden to you to cook for yourself. I don’t remember that you said anything about servants when you were outlining the good life last night.’
‘Why, sir,’ said Mr. Sensible. ‘When I outline the principles of the steam engine I do not explicitly state that I expect fire to burn or the laws of gravity to operate. There are certain things that one always takes for granted. When I speak of the art of life I presuppose the ordinary conditions of life which that art utilizes.’
‘Such as wealth,’ said Vertue.
‘A competence, a competence,’ said Mr. Sensible.
‘And health, too?’ said Vertue.
‘Moderate health,’ said Mr. Sensible.
‘Your art, then,’ said Vertue, ‘seems to teach men that the best way of being happy is to enjoy unbroken good fortune in every respect. They would not all find the advice helpful. And now, if Drudge will show me his scullery, I will wash up the breakfast things.’
‘You may save yourself the trouble, sir,’ said Mr. Sensible drily. ‘I cannot pretend to your intensity, and I do not choose to be lectured at the breakfast table. When you have mixed more with the world you will learn not to turn the social board into a schoolroom. In the meantime, forgive me if I feel that I should find your continued society a little fatiguing. Conversation should be like the bee which darts to the next flower before the last has ceased swaying from its airy visit: you make it more like a wood beetle eating its way through a table.’
‘As you wish,’ said Vertue, ‘but how will you do?’
‘I shall shut up the house,’ said Mr. Sensible, ‘and practise in a hotel until I have fitted this place up with such mechanical devices as will henceforth render me wholly independent. I see that I have let myself get behind the times. I should have listened more to certain good friends of mine in the city of Claptrap who have kept abreast of modern invention. They assure me that machinery will soon put the good life beyond the reach of chance: and if mechanism alone will not do it I know a eugenist who promises to breed us a race of peons who will be psychologically incapable of playing me a trick like this of Drudge’s.’
So it fell out that all four left the house together. Mr. Sensible was astonished to find that Drudge (who parted from his employer very civilly) was accompanying the young men. He only shrugged his shoulders, however, and said, ‘Vive la bagatelle! You have stayed in my house which is called Thelema, and its motto is Do what you will. So many men, so many minds. I hope I can tolerate anything except intolerance.’ Then he went his way and they saw him no more.
BOOK SIX
NORTHWARD ALONG THE CANYON
For being unlike the magnanimous man, they yet ape him; and that in such particulars as they can.
ARISTOTLE
Much of the soul they talk, but all awry,
And in themselves seek virtue.
MILTON
I do not admire the excess of some one virtue unless I am shewn at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue. A man does not prove his greatness by standing at an e
xtremity, but by touching both extremities at once and filling all that lies between them.
PASCAL
Contempt is a well-recognized defensive reaction.
I. A. RICHARDS
I
First Steps to the North
‘IT IS OF NO USE keeping to the road,’ said Vertue. ‘We must explore the cliff-edge as we go along and make trial descents from point to point.’
‘Begging your pardon, sir,’ said Drudge, ‘I know these parts very well and there is no way down, at least within thirty miles. You’ll miss nothing by keeping to the road for to-day at any rate.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Vertue. ‘Have you ever tried?’
‘Oh, bless you, yes,’ said Drudge. ‘I’ve often tried to get across the canyon when I was a youngster.’
‘Clearly we had better follow the road,’ said John.
‘I do not feel quite satisfied,’ said Vertue. ‘But we can always take the cliffs on the way back. I have an idea that if there is a way down it will be at the extreme north where this gorge opens on the sea: or failing everything, we might manipulate the mouth of the gorge by boat. In the meantime I dare say we might do worse than press on by road.’
‘I quite agree,’ said John.
Then I saw the three set forward on a more desolate march than I had yet beheld. On every side of them the tableland seemed perfectly flat, but their muscles and lungs soon told them that there was a slight but continuous rise. There was little vegetation—here a shrub, and there some grass: but the most of it was brown earth and moss and rock, and the road beneath them was stone. The grey sky was never broken and I do not remember that they saw a single bird: and it was so bleak that if they stopped at any time to rest, the sweat grew cold on them instantly.
Vertue never abated his pace and Drudge kept even with him though always a respectful yard behind: but I saw that John grew footsore and began to lag. For some hours he was always inventing pretexts to stop and finally he said, ‘Friends, it is no use, I can go no further.’