The New Machiavelli

When I saw her again, I could count myself a grown man. I think, indeed, I counted myself more completely grown than I was. At any rate, by all ordinary

uite frequently. The glitter and interest of good London dinner parties became a common experience. I liked the sort of conversation one got at them extremely, the little glow of duologues burning up into more general discussions, the closing-in of the men after the going of the women, the sage, substantial masculine gossiping, the later resumption of effective talk with some pleasant woman, graciously at her best. I had a wide range of houses; Cambridge had linked me to one or two correlated sets of artistic and literary people, and my books and Mr. Evesham and opened to me the big vague world of "society." I wasn't aggressive nor particularly snobbish nor troubl

myself and others, filled out with concrete fact forms I had at first apprehended sketchily and conversationally, measured my powers against my ideals and the forces in the world about me. It was evident that many men no better than myself and with no greater advantages than mine had raised themselves to influential and even decisive positions in the worlds of politics and thought. I was gathering the confidence and knowledge necessary to atta

rfectly definite and limited sensuality. It ended my youth, and for a time it prevented my manhood. I had never yet even peeped at the sweetest, profoundest thing in the world, the heart and meaning of a girl, or dreamt with any quality of reality of a wife or any such thing as a friend among womanhood. My vague anticipation of such things in life had vanished altogether. I turned away from their possibility. It seemed to me I knew what had to be known about womankind. I wanted to work hard, to get on to a position in which I could develop and forward my co

ses. So it was I appraised life and prepared to take it,

otic activities in every human affair, and particularly to catch that escaped, world-making, world-ruining, dangerous thing, industrial and financial enterprise, and bring it back to the service of the general good. I had then the precise image that still serves me as a symbol for all I wish to bring about, the image of an engineer building a lock in a swelling torrent-with water pressure as his only source of power. My thoughts and acts were habitually turned to that enterprise; it gave sha

the public service. It was natural I should gravitate to them, for they seemed to stand for the maturer, more disciplined, better informed expression of all I was then urgent to attempt to do. The bulk of their friends were politicians or public off

ceiving before the fireplace in her drawing-room. She was a tall commanding figure, splendid but a little untidy in black silk and red beads, with dark eyes that had no depths, with a clear hard voice that had an almost visible prominence, aquiline features and straight black hair that was apt to get astray, that was now astray like the head feathers of an eagle in a gale. She stood with her hands behind her back, and talked in a high tenor of a projected Town Planning Bill with Blupp, who was p

dley of people, men predominating. Several were in evening dress, but most had the morning garb of the politician; the women were either severely rational or radiantly magnificent. Willersley pointed out to me the wife of the Secretary of State for War, and I recognised the Duchess of Clynes, who at that time cultivated intellectuality. I looked round, identifying

mments upon the company with Esmeer. Esmeer was still a don; but he was nibbling, he said, at certain negotiations with

d, "makes London necessary.

them like poison-jealousy-and little irritations-Al

are bein

rts of the British machinery-that doesn

planned to be a power-in an origina

t sturdy figure with a rounded protruding abdomen and a curious broad, flattened, clean-shaven face that seemed nearly all forehead. He was of Anglo-Hungarian extraction, and I have always fancied something Mongolian in his type. He peered up wi

her Division of the Civil Service, I think in the War Office, and had speedily made a place for himself as a political journalist. He was a particularly neat controversialist, and very full of political and sociological ideas. He had a quite astounding memory for facts and a mastery of detailed analysis, and the time afforded scope for these gifts. The later eighties were full of politico-social discussion, and he became a prominent name upon

and she could be bored by regular work like a man. She was entirely unfitted for her sex's sphere. She was neither uncertain, coy nor hard to please, and altogether too stimulating and aggressive for any gentleman's hours of ease. Her cookery would have been about as sketchy as her handwriting, which was generally quite illegible, and she would have made, I feel sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't imagine she was an inelegant or unbeautiful

nces as an amateur flower girl with clear and original views about the problem-which is and always had been unusual. She had not married, I suppose because her standards were high, and men are cowards and with an instinctive appetite for muliebrity. She had kept house for her father by speaking occasionally to the housekeeper, butler and cook her mother had left her, and gathering the most interesting dinner parties she could, and had married off four orphan nieces in a harsh and successful manner. After her father's smash and death she came out as a writer upon social questions and a scathing critic of the Ch

onfidential and SOTTO VOCE, artlessly rude and egoistic in an undignified way. She had considerable social experience, good social connections, and considerable social ambition, while he had none of these things. She saw in a flash her opportunity to redeem his defects, use his powers, and do large, novel, rather startling things. She ran him. Her marriage, which shocked her friends and relations beyond measure-for a time they would only speak of Bailey as "that gnome"-was a stroke of genius, and forthwith they proceeded to make themselves the most formidable and distinguished couple conceivable. P. B. P., she boasted, was engraved inside their wedding rings, Pro Bono Publico, and she meant it to be no idle threat. She had discovered very early that the last thing influential people will do is

ner. They did the work as no one had ever hitherto dreamt of doing it. They planned the research on a thoroughly satisfying scale, and arranged their lives almost entirely for it. They took that house in Chambers Street and furnished it with severe economy, they discovered that Scotch domestic who is destined to be the guardian and tyrant of their de

ley attended meetings of the London School Board, on which he served, he said, for the purposes of study-he also became a railway direct

onversation brilliant, on a soup, a plain fish, and mutton or boiled fowl and milk pudding, with nothing to drink but whisky and soda, and hot and cold water, and milk and lemonade. Everybody was soon very glad indeed to come to that. She boasted how little her housekeeping cost her, and sought constantly for fresh economies that would enable her, she said, to sustain an additional private secretary. Secretaries w

d me. "I wish I could refuse people dinner napkins. Imagine what it means in wa

on upon one end. The concentration itself is neither good nor evil, but a power that can be used in either way. And the Baileys gathered and reinvested usuriously not money, but knowledge of the utmost value in human affairs. They produced an effect of having found thems

e was from the outs

ested them very much. It fell in indeed so closely with their own way of thinking that I doubt if they ever understood how independently I had arrived at my conclusions. It was th

d a great army of such constructive-minded people

in," said Oscar, "and presently hearing the

forehand," I said, "it might b

igh note, "and that's why we all

things. A woman Factory Inspector and the Educational Minister for New Banksland and his wife were also there, but I don't re

began-as though it had been a j

rotested,

a seconda

right over me, "that I had allowed sufficiently for the inevitable

importance,"

T avail themselves more and more of the services of expert officials. We have that very much in mind. The more complicated and technical affairs become, the less confidence will the elected official have in himself. We want to suggest that these expert officials must necess

ed and disciplined state that Willersley and I had worked out in the Alps. They wanted things more organised, more correlated with government and a collective purpose,

hat was to last some years, and break at last very painfully. Altiora manifestly liked me, I was soon discussing with her the perplexity I found in placing myself efficiently in the world, the problem of how to take hold of things that occupied

tagonism of spirit that also held between us. There was a difference in texture, a difference in quality. How can I express it? The shapes of our thoughts were the same, but the substance quite different. It was as if they had made in china or ca

y didn't see it. They seemed at times to prefer things harsh and ugly. That puzzled me extremely. The esthetic quality of many of their proposals, the "manners" of their work, so to speak, were at times as dreadful as-well, War Office barrack architecture. A caricature b

ning us," he said hastily, and would hear of no concerted action

o explain, "Bailey's wa

sentials

ff. He'd do all we wanted no doubt in the way of money and powers-and he'd do it wrong and mess the place for ever. Han

to my

clusively, and it seemed to me at the tim

up stamped tin green shades and sunlight accumulators. Altiora thought trees hopelessly irregular and sea cliffs a great mistake.... I got things clearer as time went on. Though it was an Hegelian mess of which I had partaken at Codger's table by way of a philosophical training, my sympathies have always been Pragmatist. I belong almost by nature to that school of Pragmatism that, following the medieval Nominalists, bases itself upon a denial of the reality of classes, and of the validity of general laws. The Baileys classified everything. They were, in the scholastic sense-which so oddly contradicts the modern use of the word "Realists." They believed c

men who were to frame or amend bills in grave and intimate exchange with Bailey's omniscience, you heard Altiora canvassing approaching resignations and possible appointments that might make or mar a revolution in administrative methods, and doing it with a vigorous directness that man

at least equally alive, you saw the chaotic clamour of hoardings, the jumble of traffic, the coming and going of mysterious myriads, you heard the rumble of traffic like the noise of a torrent; a vague incessant murmur of cries and voices, wanton crimes and accidents bawled at you fro

or create, you saw men leaning drunken against lamp-posts whom you knew for the "type" that will charge with fixed bayonets into the face of death, and you found yourself unable to imagine little Bailey achieving either drunkenness or the careless def

Margaret's reappearance by a

ith Altiora in front of her drawing-room fire. One got her alone, and that early arrival was a

UR towards the end, I fancy-in the Black Country. There was a little brother died, and she's lost her mother quite recently. Quite on her own, so to speak. She's never been out into society very much, and doesn't seem really very anxious to go..

ort do?" I asked. "Is she

k her head. She always did shake her

s a chuckle at her daring way of putting things, "is to marry a member of Parliament and see he does his work.... Perhaps she will. It's a very ex

ncated by the entry of

ing, and with a high note

ace of mourning for her mother, and confessed the gracious droop of her tall and slender body. She did not suggest Staffordshire at all, and I was puzzled for a moment to think where I had met her. Her sweetly shaped mouth with the slight obliquity of the lip and the little kink in her brow were extraordinarily familiar to me. But she had either been prepared by Altiora or she remembered m

to them. Bailey came down late with an air of hurry, and was introduced to Margaret and said absolutely nothing to her-there being no information either to receive or

of Burslem generally, matter for quite an agreeable conversation until at last Altiora, following her invariable custom, called me by name imperatively out of our duologue. "Mr. Remington," she said, "we want your opinion-" in her entirely characteristic effort to get all the threads of conversat

her, with Altiora's manifest connivance, and in th

you more opportunity for doing thin

ly only been in London for a few months. It's so different. In Burslem, life seems all business and getting-without any reason. One went

lingly at the end as if for consideration for her ina

t her. "We have all," I ag

, as if she felt she had completely om

you doing

d study social conditions as Mrs. Bailey did, go perhaps as a work-girl or see t

ou stu

regular course at the Westminster School of Politics and Sociology

, "but one does not want to get entangled in things one can't do. One-one has so

stop

driven into

ley," she replied with a glance of

oubts, anyhow

th the pride of one who has

e?" said Altiora,

laine

her inte

t Altiora meant to m

Baileyism. She put it down with the other excellent and advantageous things that should occupy her summer holiday. It was her pride and glory to put things down and plan them out in detail beforehand, and I'm not quite sure that s

aded type, resentful under research, described them with a dreadful aptness as Donna Quixote and Sancho Panza-and himself as a harmless windmill, hurting no one and signifying nothing. She did rather tilt at things. This particular summer they were at a pleasant farmhouse in level country near Pangbourne, belonging to the Hon. Wilfrid Winchester, and they asked me to come down to rooms in the neighbourhood-Altiora too

t things and incited us to croquet, not understanding that detestable game is the worst stimulant for lovers in the world. And Margaret and I were always getting left abou

by Margaret, while Altiora, after a phase of rigid discretion, as nearly as possible drowned herself-and me no doubt into the bargain-with a sudden lateral gesture of the arm to emphasise the high note with which she dismissed the efficiency of the Charity Organisation Society. We shipped about an inch of water and sat in it for the rest of the time, an inconvenience she disregarded heroically. We had difficulties in landing Oscar fro

garet that summer, and what urged me forward at last to marry her. It is so much easier to

rmth and leisure. It happened with the kindly and approving smiles of the more experienced elders who had organised these proximities. The young people married, settled down, children ensued, and father and

d, so much do the accidents of circumstances and one's physical phases affect one's interpretations. There is nothing in the whole range of sexual fact that may not seem supremely beautiful or humanly jolly or magnificently wicked or disgusting or trivial or utterly insignificant, according to the eye that sees or the mood that colours. Here i

the thoughts of the great majority of people with whom they come in contact. They loved in their way-an intellectual way it was and a fond way-but it had no relation to beauty and physical sensation-except that there seemed a decree of exile against these things. They got their glow in high moments of altruistic ambition-and in moments of vivid worldly success. They sat at opposite ends of their dinner table with so and so "captured," and so and so, flushed with a mutual approval. They saw people in love forgetful and distraught about them, and just put it dow

t did not settle things at Pangbourne. I seemed to her, I

ings with Altio

nt we were quite in agreement. But what seemed solid ground to Altiora and the ultimate footing of her emasculated world

d, but none the less a dominating interest in life. I have told how flittingly and uninvited it came like a moth from the outer twilight into my life, how it grew in me with my manhood, how it found its way to speech and grew daring, and led me at last to

ing. But never-even at my coarsest-was I moved by physical desire alone. Was I seeking help and fellowship? Was I seeking some intimacy with beauty? It was a thing too formless to state, that I seemed always desiring to attain and never attaining. Waves of gross sensuousness arose out of this preoccupation, carri

t proportions of the forces I am balancing. I was no abnormal man, and that world of order we desire to make must be built of such stuff as I was

lust, is the La

st, is the Call

ho H

n civilisation permits him to do so, is the most impossible thing in the world. We deal here with facts that are kept secret and obscure, but I doubt for my own part if more than one man out of five in our class satisfies that ideal demand. The rest are

complicating one. I can count a meagre tale of five illicit loves in the days of my youth, to include that first experience, and of them all only two were sustained relationships. Besides these five "affairs," on one or two occasions I dipped so low as the inky disma

on! Yet at the time there was surely something not altogether ugly

someone else. And yet it is the sort of thing that has happened, once or twice at least, to half the men in London who have

ted with scraps and patches, with curtains of cretonne closing the window, and a tawdry ornament of paper in the grate. I sit on a bed beside a weary-eyed, fa

from near Libau in Courland, and she was telling me-just as one tells something too strange for co

re was I, you know, the promising young don from Cambridge, who wrote quite brilliantly about politics and might presentl

moment before she turned her face to me, as to something forgotte

?" she asked like one

crave her pardo

, laying a detaining hand upon me, and evidently not

r but with all the subsequent developments of relationship, the enormous evolutions of interpretation and comprehension between husband and wife. Dipping into my memories is like dipping into a ragbag, one brings out this memory or that, with no intimation of how they came in time or what led to them and

and we slip unconsciously from level to level and produce all sorts of inconsistent acts. In a sense I had no illusions about Margaret; in a sense my conception of Margaret was entirely poetic illusion. I don't think I was ever blind to certain defects of hers, and quite as certainly they d

r I seemed always trying for animation in her and never finding

o answering revelations. I talked politics, and she remarked with

e. It flowed beautifully over her pretty small ears, and she would tie its fair coilings with fillets of black or blue velvet that carried pr

of my falling at last very deeply in love with her. H

s-and for things from which it s

t I was seeing her as a beautiful, fragile, rather ineffective girl, I was also seeing her just as consciously as a shining slender figure, a radiant reconciliation, coming into my darkling disorders of lust and imp

would see myself again and again sitting amidst those sluttish surroundings, collar and tie in hand, while her heavy German words grouped themselves to a slowly apprehended meaning. I would feel again with a fresh stab of remor

s had begun! I who want order and justice before everything! There's no way

m the first shy unveiling of a hidden wonder to the last extremity as a ma

r meetings; she was careless of our secret, and vulgarised our relationship by intolerable interpretations; except for some glowing moments of gratification, except for the recurrent and essentially vicious desire that drew us back to each other again, we both fretted at a vexatious and unexpectedly binding intimacy. The interim was full of the quality of work delayed, of time and energy wasted, of insecure precautions against scandal and exposure. Disappointment is almost inherent in i

s muddled and confused, full of false counsel and erratic shames and twisted temptations. I learnt to see it so by failures that were perhaps destroying any chance of profit in my lessons. Moods of clear keen industry alternated with moods of relapse and indulgence and moods of dubiety and remorse. I was not going on as the Baileys thought I was going on. There were times when the blindness of the Baileys irritated me intensely. Beneath the ostensible success of those years, between twenty-three and twenty-eight, this rottenness, known to scarcely any one

ant angel in a world of mire and disorder, in a world

no claim. If only a few of us WERE angels and freed from the tangle of effort, how easy life might be! I wanted her so badly, so very badly, to be what I needed. I wanted a woman to save me. I forced myself to see her as I wished to

d indeed, as the old phrase goes, worship the ground she trod on. I was equally honest and unconscious of inconsistency at each extreme. But in neither phase could I find it easy to make love to Margaret. For in the first I did not want to, though I talked abundantly to her of ma

ng in my mind, I discovered myself to be quite passionately in love with Margaret. Last shreds of doubt vanished. It has always been a feature of our relationship that Margaret absent means more to me than Margaret pr

ose intimacy; and I went down to her on an impulse, unheralded. I was kept waiting for some minutes, I remember, in a little room upon which a conservatory opened, a conservatory full of pots of large mauve-edged, white cyclamens

disappointment leading to positive illness was something more than a vindictive comment. She closed the door

ver and over in my mind on the

k to you," I a

ds neither of

ou things about m

ith a scarcely

urne," I plunged. "I didn't. I didn't bec

She had lifted her eyes to my face an

I want to tell you things, things you don't

fishing from little islands that each had a pagoda and a tree, and there were also men in boats or something, I couldn't determine what, and some obscure sub-office in my mind concerned itself with that quite intently. Yet I seem to have been striving with all my being to get words for the truth of things. "You see," I emerged, "you make everyt

e with an expression of blissful disregar

I said, "I'

note of valian

What has held me back," I said, "is the thought that you could not possibly understand certain things in my life. Men are not pure as

hat I meant to tell you. I want you to know clearly that there is another side

thought, was the most idioti

tolerable sense of

n do," I said after a litt

at me with her

began, "that I though

w can y

w. I d

" I b

"Of course I know," and nothing could have conv

d. "A woman does not unde

measure at her way of

a little over a transparent diff

er and past,

s a litt

d. "None of that seems to matte

verything, and put out her arms, and it seemed to me that I could hear the Lettish girl in the background-doomed safe

r. Her eyes were wet with tears. She clu

resently, "Oh! ever since we met in