We are not concerned with the very poor. They are
unthinkable, and only to be approached by the statistician
or the poet. This story deals with gentlefolk, or with
those who are obliged to pretend that they are gentlefolk.
The boy, Leonard Bast, stood at the extreme verge of
gentility. He was not in the abyss, but he could see it,
and at times people whom he knew had dropped in, and counted
no more. He knew that he was poor, and would admit it: he
would have died sooner than confess any inferiority to the
rich. This may be splendid of him. But he was inferior to
most rich people, there is not the least doubt of it. He
was not as courteous as the average rich man, nor as
intelligent, nor as healthy, nor as lovable. His mind and
his body had been alike underfed, because he was poor, and
because he was modern they were always craving better food.
Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured
civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite
status, his rank and his income would have corresponded.
But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen,
enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and
proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say,
who possess umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert
gentility, lest he slipped into the abyss where nothing
counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.
As he walked away from Wickham Place, his first care was
to prove that he was as good as the Miss Schlegels.
Obscurely wounded in his pride, he tried to wound them in
return. They were probably not ladies. Would real ladies
have asked him to tea? They were certainly ill-natured and
cold. At each step his feeling of superiority increased.
Would a real lady have talked about stealing an umbrella?
Perhaps they were thieves after all, and if he had gone into
the house they could have clapped a chloroformed
handkerchief over his face. He walked on complacently as
far as the Houses of Parliament. There an empty stomach
asserted itself, and told him he was a fool.
"Evening, Mr. Bast."
"Evening, Mr. Dealtry."
"Nice evening."
"Evening."
Mr. Dealtry, a fellow clerk, passed on, and Leonard
stood wondering whether he would take the tram as far as a
penny would take him, or whether he would walk. He decided
to walk--it is no good giving in, and he had spent money
enough at Queen's Hall--and he walked over Westminster
Bridge, in front of St. Thomas's Hospital, and through the
immense tunnel that passes under the South-Western main line
at Vauxhall. In the tunnel he paused and listened to the
roar of the trains. A sharp pain darted through his head,
and he was conscious of the exact form of his eye sockets.
He pushed on for another mile, and did not slacken speed
until he stood at the entrance of a road called Camelia
Road, which was at present his home.
Here he stopped again, and glanced suspiciously to right
and left, like a rabbit that is going to bolt into its
hole. A block of flats, constructed with extreme cheapness,
towered on either hand. Farther down the road two more
blocks were being built, and beyond these an old house was
being demolished to accommodate another pair. It was the
kind of scene that may be observed all over London, whatever
the locality--bricks and mortar rising and falling with the
restlessness of the water in a fountain, as the city
receives more and more men upon her soil. Camelia Road
would soon stand out like a fortress, and command, for a
little, an extensive view. Only for a little. Plans were
out for the erection of flats in Magnolia Road also. And
again a few years, and all the flats in either road might be
pulled down, and new buildings, of a vastness at present
unimaginable, might arise where they had fallen.
"Evening, Mr. Bast."
"Evening, Mr. Cunningham."
"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in Manchester."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Very serious thing this decline of the birth-rate in
Manchester," repeated Mr. Cunningham, tapping the Sunday
paper, in which the calamity in question had just been
announced to him.
"Ah, yes," said Leonard, who was not going to let on
that he had not bought a Sunday paper.
"If this kind of thing goes on the population of England
will be stationary in 1960."
"You don't say so."
"I call it a very serious thing, eh?"
"Good-evening, Mr. Cunningham."
"Good-evening, Mr. Bast."
Then Leonard entered Block B of the flats, and turned,
not upstairs, but down, into what is known to house agents
as a semi-basement, and to other men as a cellar. He opened
the door, and cried "Hullo!" with the pseudo-geniality of
the Cockney. There was no reply. "Hullo!" he repeated.
The sitting-room was empty, though the electric light had
been left burning. A look of relief came over his face, and
he flung himself into the armchair.
The sitting-room contained, besides the armchair, two
other chairs, a piano, a three-legged table, and a cosy
corner. Of the walls, one was occupied by the window, the
other by a draped mantelshelf bristling with Cupids.
Opposite the window was the door, and beside the door a
bookcase, while over the piano there extended one of the
masterpieces of Maud Goodman. It was an amorous and not
unpleasant little hole when the curtains were drawn, and the
lights turned on, and the gas-stove unlit. But it struck
that shallow makeshift note that is so often heard in the
modem dwelling-place. It had been too easily gained, and
could be relinquished too easily.
As Leonard was kicking off his boots he jarred the
three-legged table, and a photograph frame, honourably
poised upon it, slid sideways, fell off into the fireplace,
and smashed. He swore in a colourless sort of way, and
picked the photograph up. It represented a young lady
called Jacky, and had been taken at the time when young
ladies called Jacky were often photographed with their
mouths open. Teeth of dazzling whiteness extended along
either of Jacky's jaws, and positively weighted her head
sideways, so large were they and so numerous. Take my word
for it, that smile was simply stunning, and it is only you
and I who will be fastidious, and complain that true joy
begins in the eyes, and that the eyes of Jacky did not
accord with her smile, but were anxious and hungry.
Leonard tried to pull out the fragments of glass, and
cut his fingers and swore again. A drop of blood fell on
the frame, another followed, spilling over on to the exposed
photograph. He swore more vigorously, and dashed to the
kitchen, where he bathed his hands. The kitchen was the
same size as the sitting room; through it was a bedroom.
This completed his home. He was renting the flat furnished:
of all the objects that encumbered it none were his own
except the photograph frame, the Cupids, and the books.
"Damn, damn, damnation!" he murmured, together with such
other words as he had learnt from older men. Then he raised
his hand to his forehead and said, "Oh, damn it all--" which
meant something different. He pulled himself together. He
drank a little tea, black and silent, that still survived
upon an upper shelf. He swallowed some dusty crumbs of
cake. Then he went back to the sitting-room, settled
himself anew, and began to read a volume of Ruskin.
"Seven miles to the north of Venice--"
How perfectly the famous chapter opens! How supreme its
command of admonition and of poetry! The rich man is
speaking to us from his gondola.
"Seven miles to the north of Venice the banks of sand
which nearer the city rise little above low-water mark
attain by degrees a higher level, and knit themselves at
last into fields of salt morass, raised here and there into
shapeless mounds, and intercepted by narrow creeks of sea."
Leonard was trying to form his style on Ruskin: he
understood him to be the greatest master of English Prose.
He read forward steadily, occasionally making a few notes.
"Let us consider a little each of these characters in
succession, and first (for of the shafts enough has been
said already), what is very peculiar to this church--its luminousness."
Was there anything to be learnt from this fine
sentence? Could he adapt it to the needs of daily life?
Could he introduce it, with modifications, when he next
wrote a letter to his brother, the lay-reader? For example--
"Let us consider a little each of these characters in
succession, and first (for of the absence of ventilation
enough has been said already), what is very peculiar to this
flat--its obscurity. "
Something told him that the modifications would not do;
and that something, had he known it, was the spirit of
English Prose. "My flat is dark as well as stuffy." Those
were the words for him.
And the voice in the gondola rolled on, piping
melodiously of Effort and Self-Sacrifice, full of high
purpose, full of beauty, full even of sympathy and the love
of men, yet somehow eluding all that was actual and
insistent in Leonard's life. For it was the voice of one
who had never been dirty or hungry, and had not guessed
successfully what dirt and hunger are.
Leonard listened to it with reverence. He felt that he
was being done good to, and that if he kept on with Ruskin,
and the Queen's Hall Concerts, and some pictures by Watts,
he would one day push his head out of the grey waters and
see the universe. He believed in sudden conversion, a
belief which may be right, but which is peculiarly
attractive to a half-baked mind. It is the bias of much
popular religion: in the domain of business it dominates the
Stock Exchange, and becomes that "bit of luck" by which all
successes and failures are explained. "If only I had a bit
of luck, the whole thing would come straight. . . . He's
got a most magnificent place down at Streatham and a 20
h.-p. Fiat, but then, mind you, he's had luck. . . . I'm
sorry the wife's so late, but she never has any luck over
catching trains." Leonard was superior to these people; he
did believe in effort and in a steady preparation for the
change that he desired. But of a heritage that may expand
gradually, he had no conception: he hoped to come to Culture
suddenly, much as the Revivalist hopes to come to Jesus.
Those Miss Schlegels had come to it; they had done the
trick; their hands were upon the ropes, once and for all.
And meanwhile, his flat was dark, as well as stuffy.
Presently there was a noise on the staircase. He shut
up Margaret's card in the pages of Ruskin, and opened the
door. A woman entered, of whom it is simplest to say that
she was not respectable. Her appearance was awesome. She
seemed all strings and bell-pulls--ribbons, chains, bead
necklaces that clinked and caught--and a boa of azure
feathers hung round her neck, with the ends uneven. Her
throat was bare, wound with a double row of pearls, her arms
were bare to the elbows, and might again be detected at the
shoulder, through cheap lace. Her hat, which was flowery,
resembled those punnets, covered with flannel, which we
sowed with mustard and cress in our childhood, and which
germinated here yes, and there no. She wore it on the back
of her head. As for her hair, or rather hairs, they are too
complicated to describe, but one system went down her back,
lying in a thick pad there, while another, created for a
lighter destiny, rippled around her forehead. The face--the
face does not signify. It was the face of the photograph,
but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the
photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white.
Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that prime may have
been. She was descending quicker than most women into the
colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it.
"What ho!" said Leonard, greeting that apparition with
much spirit, and helping it off with its boa.
Jacky, in husky tones, replied, "What ho!"
"Been out?" he asked. The question sounds superfluous,
but it cannot have been really, for the lady answered, "No,"
adding, "Oh, I am so tired."
"You tired?"
"Eh?"
"I'm tired," said he, hanging the boa up.
"Oh, Len, I am so tired."
"I've been to that classical concert I told you about,"
said Leonard.
"What's that?"
"I came back as soon as it was over."
"Any one been round to our place?" asked Jacky.
"Not that I've seen. I met Mr. Cunningham outside, and
we passed a few remarks."
"What, not Mr. Cunnginham?"
"Yes."
"Oh, you mean Mr. Cunningham."
"Yes. Mr. Cunningham."
"I've been out to tea at a lady friend's."
Her secret being at last given to the world, and the
name of the lady-friend being even adumbrated, Jacky made no
further experiments in the difficult and tiring art of
conversation. She never had been a great talker. Even in
her photographic days she had relied upon her smile and her
figure to attract, and now that she was--
"On the shelf,
On the shelf,
Boys, boys, I'm on the shelf,"
she was not likely to find her tongue. Occasional
bursts of song (of which the above is an example) still
issued from her lips, but the spoken word was rare.
She sat down on Leonard's knee, and began to fondle
him. She was now a massive woman of thirty-three, and her
weight hurt him, but he could not very well say anything.
Then she said, "Is that a book you're reading?" and he said,
"That's a book," and drew it from her unreluctant grasp.
Margaret's card fell out of it. It fell face downwards, and
he murmured, "Bookmarker."
"Len--"
"What is it?" he asked, a little wearily, for she only
had one topic of conversation when she sat upon his knee.
"You do love me?"
"Jacky, you know that I do. How can you ask such questions!"
"But you do love me, Len, don't you?"
"Of course I do."
A pause. The other remark was still due.
"Len--"
"Well? What is it?"
"Len, you will make it all right?"
"I can't have you ask me that again," said the boy,
flaring up into a sudden passion. "I've promised to marry
you when I'm of age, and that's enough. My word's my word.
I've promised to marry you as soon as ever I'm twenty-one,
and I can't keep on being worried. I've worries enough. It
isn't likely I'd throw you over, let alone my word, when
I've spent all this money. Besides, I'm an Englishman, and
I never go back on my word. Jacky, do be reasonable. Of
course I'll marry you. Only do stop badgering me."
"When's your birthday, Len?"
"I've told you again and again, the eleventh of November
next. Now get off my knee a bit; someone must get supper, I
suppose."
Jacky went through to the bedroom, and began to see to
her hat. This meant blowing at it with short sharp puffs.
Leonard tidied up the sitting-room, and began to prepare
their evening meal. He put a penny into the slot of the
gas-meter, and soon the flat was reeking with metallic
fumes. Somehow he could not recover his temper, and all the
time he was cooking he continued to complain bitterly.
"It really is too bad when a fellow isn't trusted. It
makes one feel so wild, when I've pretended to the people
here that you're my wife--all right, you shall be my
wife--and I've bought you the ring to wear, and I've taken
this flat furnished, and it's far more than I can afford,
and yet you aren't content, and I've also not told the truth
when I've written home." He lowered his voice. "He'd stop
it." In a tone of horror, that was a little luxurious, he
repeated: "My brother'd stop it. I'm going against the
whole world, Jacky.
"That's what I am, Jacky. I don't take any heed of what
anyone says. I just go straight forward, I do. That's
always been my way. I'm not one of your weak knock-kneed
chaps. If a woman's in trouble, I don't leave her in the
lurch. That's not my street. No, thank you.
"I'll tell you another thing too. I care a good deal
about improving myself by means of Literature and Art, and
so getting a wider outlook. For instance, when you came in
I was reading Ruskin's STONES OF VENICE. I don't say this to
boast, but just to show you the kind of man I am. I can
tell you, I enjoyed that classical concert this afternoon."
To all his moods Jacky remained equally indifferent.
When supper was ready--and not before--she emerged from the
bedroom, saying: "But you do love me, don't you?"
They began with a soup square, which Leonard had just
dissolved in some hot water. It was followed by the
tongue--a freckled cylinder of meat, with a little jelly at
the top, and a great deal of yellow fat at the
bottom--ending with another square dissolved in water
(jelly: pineapple), which Leonard had prepared earlier in
the day. Jacky ate contentedly enough, occasionally looking
at her man with those anxious eyes, to which nothing else in
her appearance corresponded, and which yet seemed to mirror
her soul. And Leonard managed to convince his stomach that
it was having a nourishing meal.
After supper they smoked cigarettes and exchanged a few
statements. She observed that her "likeness" had been
broken. He found occasion to remark, for the second time,
that he had come straight back home after the concert at
Queen's Hall. Presently she sat upon his knee. The
inhabitants of Camelia Road tramped to and fro outside the
window, just on a level with their heads, and the family in
the flat on the ground-floor began to sing, "Hark, my soul,
it is the Lord."
"That tune fairly gives me the hump," said Leonard.
Jacky followed this, and said that, for her part, she
thought it a lovely tune.
"No; I'll play you something lovely. Get up, dear, for
a minute."
He went to the piano and jingled out a little Grieg. He
played badly and vulgarly, but the performance was not
without its effect, for Jacky said she thought she'd be
going to bed. As she receded, a new set of interests
possessed the boy, and he began to think of what had been
said about music by that odd Miss Schlegel--the one that
twisted her face about so when she spoke. Then the thoughts
grew sad and envious. There was the girl named Helen, who
had pinched his umbrella, and the German girl who had smiled
at him pleasantly, and Herr someone, and Aunt someone, and
the brother--all, all with their hands on the ropes. They
had all passed up that narrow, rich staircase at Wickham
Place, to some ample room, whither he could never follow
them, not if he read for ten hours a day. Oh, it was not
good, this continual aspiration. Some are born cultured;
the rest had better go in for whatever comes easy. To see
life steadily and to see it whole was not for the likes of him.
From the darkness beyond the kitchen a voice called, "Len?"
"You in bed?" he asked, his forehead twitching.
"M'm."
"All right."
Presently she called him again.
"I must clean my boots ready for the morning," he answered.
Presently she called him again.
"I rather want to get this chapter done."
"What?"
He closed his ears against her.
"What's that?"
"All right, Jacky, nothing; I'm reading a book."
"What?"
"What?" he answered, catching her degraded deafness.
Presently she called him again.
Ruskin had visited Torcello by this time, and was
ordering his gondoliers to take him to Murano. It occurred
to him, as he glided over the whispering lagoons, that the
power of Nature could not be shortened by the folly, nor her
beauty altogether saddened by the misery, of such as
Leonard.
