Abyssinia and the humming bird in
Aethiopeia and the King in Buckingham Palace
go their ways:
Shall John be florist or butcher?
Coming down the asphalt path,
with her velvet beret on her head, saucily
askew,
Comes Louie, betweenmaid to Mrs Mump at the
Rectory, infant still innocent still; but
avid for love; sixteen years old; glancing
saucily; past the pond where the dogs bark; and the
ducks quack;
Lovely are the willows
and lilies sliding and twitching; and
behold the old gentleman trying to disentangle the
child’s boat with his stick from the willows; and John says to Louie,
In summer I swim here; Sure? Yes I swim here.
making believe he is among the great athletes;
like Byron he could swim the Hellespont; John
Cutbush of Pentonville. And the dusk falls;
dusk gilt with lights from the upper windows;
one reads Herodotus in the original at his upper
window; and another cuts waistcoats in the basement;
and another makes coins; and another turns pieces
of wood that shall be chairlegs; lights fall
on the dusk; on the pond; lights are
zigzagged in the water. Cheek and shoulder together
cuddling kissing; pressing; there they
stand while the gentleman disentangles the boat
with his stick; and the church tolls.
From the harsh steeple fall the iron notes;
warning Louie Louie of time and tea;
how Cook will say, If you’re out larking with the
boys again I’ll tell Her meaning Mumps, Adela,
wife of Cuthbert the clergyman.
Up she starts from her couch on Primrose Hill;
from her couch on the sweet cold bed of earth;
earth laid over buds and bulbs; over pipes and
wires; taking to its cold sweet breast now the
water pipe; now the wire; which flashes messages
to China where the mandarins go, mute, cruel; delicate;
past the gold pagodas; and the houses have paper
walls; and the people smile wise inscrutable smiles.
Up she gets and he follows her, down the Avenue
as far as the corner, by the paper shop; Man
murdered in Pimlico is on the placard; where they
kiss by the paper shop; and so part, and dark
night enfolds them; and she hurries down the area
to the lit kitchen with the saucepans steaming
for master’s dinner.
And he hires a barrow and goes to Smithfield
at dawn; at chill dawn sees the cold meat,
shrouded in white nets borne on men’s shoulders;
meat from the Argentines; from haired and red pelted
hogs and bullocks.
All in white like surgeons go the butchers of
Smithfield, handling the shrouded cadavers;
the stark and frozen corpses that shall lie like
mummies in the ice house till the Sunday fire revives
them and they drip juice into the big plate to
revive church goers.
But I swam the Hellespont - he dreams; he had read
Byron in the Charing Cross Road he had sipped and
tasted Don Juan where it stood dust parched wind
blown exposed to the lights of the pavement.
Shall I serve for ever Massey and Hodge meat
merchants of Smithfield? He stands cap in hand
but upright in front of his master, having served
his apprenticeship. A young chap must fend for
himself.
And he sees the violets and the asphodel and the
naked swimmers on the bank in robes like
those worn by the Leighton pictures at Leighton
house. Louie of the Avenue kitchenmaid to the
clergyman, watches and waves her bare arm as he
dives.
So he sets up shop on his own.
To the passer by it is another of those shops
that stay open till one on Saturdays. Although the
west end is curtained and shuttered, here, in the
purlieus of London, the residue of London,
the night is the time
of gala. The flares are lit over barrows. The
feathers and blouses blow like flowers. The
meat blazes. The sides of oxen are patterned with
flower leaves in the pink flesh. Knives slice.
The lumps are tossed and wrapped. Bags bulge on
women’s arms. They stand first on this foot then on
that. The children gaze up at the flares and the
coarse light and the red and white faces burn them
selves for ever on the pure eyeballs. The barrel organ
plays and the dogs snuffle in the dust for scraps
of meat. And all over Pentonville and Islington
floats a coarse balloon of yellow colour and far
away in the city there is a white faced church and
steeple.
John Cutbush butcher of Pentonville stands at the
door of his shop.
He stands at the door of his shop.
Still he stands at the door of his shop.
But time has run its wheels over him. So many million miles
have the trams passed; so many million hogs and
bullocks have been sliced and tossed; so many bags
bulged. His face is red; his eyes bleared;
staring at the flares so many nights. And sometimes
he stares past the faces, past the new shop opposite
where the young man inveigles; into the gloomy
hollow. And he wakes and says And for you, Maam?
and for you?
But some note the new butcher opposite; and shuffle
past Cutbush to try Ainslies.
And Louie in the room behind the shop is broad
thighed, sullen eyed; and the little boy died;
and the girl is a worry, always after the boys;
and there framed on the wall is Mrs Mump in the dress
she wore to be presented; and meat smells everywhere
and the day’s takings diminish.
These are semblances of human faces seen in passing
translated from a foreign language.
And the language always makes up new words.
For next door are urns and slabs of marble in an
undertaker’s window; next door are musical instruments
next a home for cats and dogs; and then the Convent
and there on that eminence stands
sublime the tower of the Prison; and there is the
waterworks; and here is a whole dark private street
like those lines of burrows where nocturnal animals
dwell in deserts; but here not marmots and sand
martins; but borough inspectors; rate collectors;
officials of the gas company, the
waterworks; with their wives and children;
also some clerks fresh from Somerset and Suffolk;
also a maiden lady who does her own house work.
And so home along the High Street past the churchyard
where the cats celebrate their rites and butchers
promise eternal faith to kitchenmaids;
The flower of life ever shakes free from the bud;
the flower of life flaunts on placards
in our faces; and we give thanks to the armies
and navies and flying men and actresses
who provide our nightly entertainment and as we
hold the Evening Standard under the lamp how little
we think of the wealth we can gather between
the
palms of two hands; how little we can grasp;
how little we can interpret and read aright
the name John Cutbush but only as we pass his
shop on Saturday night, cry out Hail Cutbush,
of Pentonville, I salute thee; passing.
PORTRAITS
WAITING FOR DEJEUNER
When the humming birds quivered in the flower’s trumpet; when the vast slab-footed elephants squelched through the mud; when the animal-eyed savage pushed off from the reeds in his canoe; when the Persian woman picked a louse from the hair of the child; when the zebras galloped across the horizon in wild arabesques of mating; when the blue-black hollow of the sky resounded with the tap tap tap of the vulture’s beak on skeleton that had a little flesh and only a half tail: - Monsieur and Madame Louvois neither saw nor heard.
When the waiter in his creased shirt, shiny coat, apron tied in the middle and sleeked back hair spat on his hands then wiped the plate to save the trouble of rinsing it; when the sparrows in the road collected over a spot of dung; when the iron gates of the level crossing swung to; and the traffic coagulated; one lorry with iron rails; one with crates of oranges; several cars; a barrow drawn by a donkey; when the old man impaled a paper bag in the public gardens; when the lights flickered over the Cinema announcing the new Jungle Film; when the grey-blue clouds of the northern hemisphere let a grey-blue patch shine for a moment on the waters of the Seine: - Monsieur and Madame Louvois stared at the mustard pot and the cruet; at the yellow crack on the marble topped table.
The humming bird quivered; the gates opened; the lorries jerked on; and the eyes on Monsieur and Madame Louvois lit with lustre; for down on the marble topped table in front of them the sleek haired waiter slapped a plate of tripe.
THE FRENCHWOMAN IN THE TRAIN
Most garrulous, pendulous, snuffing like a tapir the succulent lower leaves of the cabbages; rootling among the herbage; even in the third class railway carriage avid for some titbit of gossip... Madame Alphonse said to her cook... the earrings swinging as in the large lobed ears of some pachydermatous monster. A hiss with a little saliva comes from the front teeth which have been yellowed and blunted, biting at cabbage stalks. And all the time behind her pendulous nid-nodding head and the drip of saliva the grey olives of Provence ray out, come to a point; make a wrinkled background with wry angular branches and peasants stooping.
In London in a third class carriage against black walls pasted with shiny advertisements she would be running through Clapham on her way to Highgate to renew the circle of china flowers on the grave of her husband. There at the Junction she sits in her corner[,] on her knee a black bag; in the bag a copy of the Mail-, a picture of the Princesses - in her bag redolent of cold beef, of pickles, of tented curtains, of church bells on Sunday and the Vicar calling.
Here she bears on her immense and undulating shoulder the tradition; even when her mouth dribbles, when her wild pig eyes glitter one hears the croak of the frog in the wild tulip field; the hush of the Mediterranean lipping the sand; and the language of Molière. Here the bull neck bears baskets of grapes; through the train rattle comes the din of the market; a butting ram, men astride it; ducks in wicker cages; ice cream in cornets; rushes laid over cheese; over butter; men playing boules by a plane tree; a fountain; the acrid smell at the corner where peasants openly obey the dictates of nature.
PORTRAIT 3
And it seemed to me sitting in the courtyard of the French Inn, that the secret of existence was nothing but a bat’s skeleton in a cupboard; and the riddle nothing but a criss-cross of spider’s web; so very solid she looked. She was sitting in the sun. She had no hat. The light fixed her. There was no shadow. Her face was yellow and red; round too; a fruit on a body; another apple, only not on a plate. Breasts had formed apple-hard under the blouse on her body.
I watched her. She flicked her skin as if a fly had walked over it. Some one passed; I saw the narrow leaves of the apple trees that her eyes were flicker. And her coarseness, her cruelty, was like bark rough with lichen and she was everlasting and entirely solved the problem of life.
PORTRAIT 4
She had taken him to Harrods and to the National Gallery since he had to buy shirts before he went back to Rugby and acquired culture. He did not brush his teeth. And now she must really think, as they sat in the restaurant which Uncle Hal had recommended if they wanted some-
thing not cheap, not dear either, what she ought to say to him before he went back to Rugby.... They were a long time bringing the hors d’oeuvres....She could remember dining here with a sandy haired boy before the War. He had admired her, without actually asking her to marry him.... Yet how could she put it, about being more like his father; she was a widow; the one she did marry had been killed; and brushing his teeth? She would have Minestrone? Yes. And after that? Wiener Schnitzel? Poulet Marengo? That’s with mushrooms? Are they fresh?... But I must say something he can keep by him, to help him, in moments you know, of temptation. ‘My mother... ‘ What a time they take! That’s the hors d’oeuvres at the next table, but all the sardines are gone already....
And George sat silent; looking with the eyes of a carp which after a winter’s immersion comes flush with the surface, and sees over the rim of the Soho carafe flies dancing, girls’ legs.
PORTRAIT 5
‘I am one of those people,’ she said looking down with secret satisfaction at the still substantial crescent of white sugared pastry in which she had as yet made one bite only, ‘who feel everything dreadfully.’
And here with her three-pronged fork half way to her mouth she yet contrived to brush her hand over her fur as if to indicate the motherly sisterly wifely tenderness with which, even if there were only a cat in the room to stroke, she stroked it. Then she let fall one more drop from the scent bottle which she carried in a gland in her cheek with which to sweeten the sometimes malodorous emanations of her own not sufficiently appreciated character, and added:
‘At the Hospital the men used to call me Little Mother,’ and looked at her friend opposite as if waiting for her to confirm or deny the portrait she had drawn, but since there was silence she pronged the last inch of sugared pastry and swallowed it, as if only from inanimate things did she get that tribute which the selfishness of humanity denied her.
PORTRAIT 6
It’s very hard on me — I who should have been born in the eighties find myself something of an outcast here. Can’t even wear a rose suitably in my button hole. Should have carried a cane, like my father; must wear a felt hat with a dent in it, even walking up Bond Street, not a topper. I still love though, if the word’s proper now, society, graded like one of those ices wrapped in frilled paper - it’s true they said the Italians kept them under their beds in Bethnal Green. And Oscar being witty; and the lady with the red lips standing on a tiger skin on a slippery floor - the tiger’s mouth wide open. ‘But she paints!’ (so my mother said) which meant of course the women in Piccadilly. That was my world. Now every one paints. Everything’s sugar white, even the houses, in Bond Street, made of concrete, with bits of steel filing.
Whereas I like cool things; pictures of Venice; girls on a bridge; a man fishing; Sunday calm; perhaps a punt. I’m off now in the next motor omnibus to tea with Aunt Mabel in the Addison Road. Her house now keeps something of what I mean; the goat, I mean, lying in the sun on the pavement; the distinguished aristocratic old goat; and the bus drivers wearing the Rothschild pheasants slung on their whips; and a young man like myself sitting on the box by the driver.
But here they come brandishing ash plants even in Piccadilly; some hatless; all rouged. And virtuous; serious; so desperate the young are nowadays, driving in their racing cars to revolution. I can assure you the Traveller’s Joy in Surrey smells of petrol. And look there at the corner; rose red brick giving up its soul in a puff of powder. Nobody but myself minds a scrap — and Uncle Edwin and Aunt Mabel. They hold up against these horrors their little candle; as we can’t do it
, who lapse and crash and bring the old chandelier down on top of us. I always say anyone can smash a plate; but what I admire is old china, riveted.
PORTRAIT 7
Yes, I knew Vernon Lee. That is to say we had a villa. I used to get up before breakfast. I used to go to the Galleries before they were crowded. I’m devoted to beauty.... No, I don’t paint myself; but then one appreciates art all the better perhaps. They’re so narrow, artists; nowadays too they live so wildly. Fra Angelico, you remember, painted on his knees. But I was saying, I knew Vernon Lee. She had a villa. We had a villa. One of those villas hung with wistaria - something like our lilac, but better — and Judas trees. Oh why does one live in Kensington? Why not in Italy? But I always feel, still, I do live in Florence — in the spirit. And don’t you think we do live in the spirit — our real life? But then I’m one of those people who want beauty, if it’s only a stone, or a pot - I can’t explain. Anyhow in Florence one meets people who love beauty. We met a Russian Prince there; also at a party a very well known man whose name I forget. And one day as I was standing in the road, outside my villa, a little old woman came along leading a dog on a chain. It might have been Ouida. Or Vernon Lee? I never spoke to her. But in a sense, the true sense, I who love beauty always feel, I knew Vernon Lee.
PORTRAIT 8
‘I’m one of those simple folk, who may be old fashioned, but I do believe in the lasting things - love, honour, patriotism. I really believe, and I don’t mind confessing it, in loving one’s wife.’
Yes, the tag Nihil humanum often falls from your lips. But you take care not to talk Latin too often. For you have to make money - first to live on; then to sit on: Queen Anne furniture; mostly fakes.
‘I’m not one of the clever ones. But I will say this for myself - I’ve blood in my veins. I’m at home with the parson; with the publican. I go to the pub, and play darts with the men.’
Yes you’re the middle man; the go between; a dress suit for London; tweeds for the country. Shakespeare and Wordsworth you can equally ‘Bill’.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 282