The New Machiavelli

ainted and papered under Margaret's instructions, white paint and clean open purples and green predominating, and now we set to work at once upon the interesting business of arranging and-with our Venetian glas

ters and obeyed her summons to a consultation only to endorse her judgment very readily. Until everything was settled I went every day to my old rooms in Vincent Square

; she had the precisest ideas of what she wanted, and the devices of the salesman did not sway her. It was very pleasant to find her taking things out of my hands with a

y about us," she said. "You don't t

nt th

has thi

g ugly and uncomfortable things. But I don't see

res very well indeed; there was a little Sussex landscape, full of wind and sunshine, by Nicholson, fo

now and then," she said, "

rything was fresh and bright, and softly and harmoniously toned. Downstairs we had a green dining-room with gleaming silver, dark oak, and English colour-prints; above was a large drawing-room that could be made still larger by throwing open folding doors, and it was all carefully done in greys and blues, for the most part with real Sheraton supplemented by Sheraton so skilfully imitated by an expert Margaret had discovered as to be indistinguishable except to a minute scrutiny. And for me, above this and next to my bedroom, there was a roomy study, with specially thick stair-carpet outside and thick carpets in the bedroom overhead and a big old desk for me to sit at and work b

effect of surprise that after all even a place in the Cabinet, though infinitely remote

t for sectarial purposes should the necessity for them arise, with a severe-looking desk equipped with patent files. And Margaret would come flitting in

ld say, "I'm sor

come to th

turb you," she

ot bus

Then we must make out a time-tab

nown to Altiora called and were shown over the house, and discussed its arrang

Altiora, with the fainte

hed, I had had a wide and miscellaneous social range, but now I found myself falling into place in a set. For a time I acquiesced in this. I went very little to my clubs, the Climax and the National Liberal, and participated in no bachelor dinners at all. For a time, too, I dropped out

s of experience and incalculable traditions. Close to us were the Cramptons, Willie Crampton, who has since been Postmaster-General, rich and very important in Rockshire, and his younger brother Edward, who has specialised in history and become one of those unimaginative men of letters who are the glory of latter-day England. Then there was Lewis, further towards Kensington, where his cousins the Solomons and the Hartsteins lived, a brilliant representative of his race, able, industrious and invariably uninspired, with a wife a little in revolt against the racial tradition of feminine servitude and inclined to the suffragette point of view, and Bunting Harblow, an old blue, and with an erratic disposition well under the control of the able little cousi

customary. Sherry we banished, and Marsala and liqueurs, and there was always good home-made lemonade available. No men waited, but very expert parlourmaids. Our meat was usually Welsh mutton-I don't know why, unless that mountains have ever been the last refuge

gestion of written matter, and generally managed to provoke a disruptive debate. We were all very earnest to make the most of ourselves and to be and do, and I won

e beginnings of my married life. I try to recall something near to their proper order the developing phases of relationship. I

d be loved untroubling, as a bird flies through the air. But it is a rare and intricate chance that brings two people within sight of that essential union, and for the majority marriage must adjust itself on other terms. Most coupled people never really look at one another. They look a little away to preconceived ideas. And each from the first days of love-making HIDES from the other, is afraid of disappointing, afraid of offending, afraid of discoveries in either sense. They build not solidly upon the rock of truth, but upon arches and pillars and queer provision

injustice our marriage did us both. There was no kindred between us and no understanding. We were drawn to one another by the un

riage was a purely domestic relationship, leaving thought and the vivid things of life almost entirely to the unencumbered man, mental and temperamental incompatibilities mattered comparatively little. But now the wife, and particularly the loving childless wife, unpremeditatedly makes a relentless demand for a complete assoc

e facts of the case and to mention everything; I like naked bodies and the jolly smells of things. She abounded in reservations, in circumlocutions and evasions, in keenly appreciated secondary points. Perhaps the reader knows that Tintoretto in the National Gallery, the Origin of the Milky Way. It is an admirable test of temperamental quality. In spite of my early training I have come to regard that picture as altogether delightful; to Margaret it has always been "needlessly offensive." In that you have our f

begin with, I found myself reserving myself from her, then slowly apprehending a jarring betw

er my being ver

he first six years of our life together. It goes even deeper than that, for in my effort to realise the ideal of my marriage I ceased even to attempt to be sincere with myself. I would not admit my own perceptions and int

almost forced upon me, did I hide any concrete fact that seemed to affect her, but from the outset I was guilty of immense spiri

almost insensibly into the interest and excitement of my Parliamentary candidature for the Kinghamstead Division, that shapeless chunk of agricultural midland between the Great Western and the North Western railways. I was going to "take hold" at last, the Kinghamstead Division was my appointed han

ic traction patents, Sir Roderick Newton, a Jew who had bought Calersham Castle, and old Sir Graham Rivers, that sturdy old soldier, were among my chief supporters. We had headquarters in each town and village, mostly there were empty shops we leased temporarily, and there at least a sort of fuss and a coming and going were maintained. The rest of the population stared in a state of suspended judgment as we went about the business. The country was supposed to be in a state of intellectual conflict and deliberate decision, in history it will no doubt figure as a momentous confl

xious we should avoid "personalities" and fight the constituency in a gentlemanly spirit. He was always writing me notes,

e and order that lay before the world, of all that a resolute and constructive effort might do at the present time. "We are building a state," I said, "secure and splendid, we are in the dawn of the great age of mankind." Sometimes that would get a solitary "'Ear! 'ear!" Then having created, as I imagined, a fine atmosphere, I turn

eparing a fresh stage in the history of humanity, had no appeal for them. They were mostly everyday, toiling people, full of small personal solicitudes, and they came to my meetings, I think, very largely as a relaxation. This stuff was not relaxing. They did not think politics was a great constructive process, they thought it was a kind of dog-fight. The

the respect I bore him, and began to fall in with the popular caricature of him as an artful rabbit-witted person intent only on keeping his leadership, in spite of the vigorous attempts of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain to oust him therefrom. I ceased to qualify my statement that Protection would make food dearer for the agricultural labourer. I began to speak of Mr. Alfred Lyttelton as an influence at once insane and diabolica

phase to phase

low the road that leads there," but I found the road nevertheless rather une

rot down to personalities and personal appeals in this way? Life is, I suppose, to begin with and end with a matter of personalities, from personalities all our broader interests arise and to personalities they return. All our social and political eff

lace at which one could take hold of more than this or that element of the population. Now we met in a meeting-house, now in a Masonic Hall or Drill Hall; I also did a certain amount of open-air speaking in the dinner hour outside gas-works and groups of factories. Some special sort of people was, as it were, secreted in response to each special appeal. One said things carefully adjusted to the distinctive limitations of each gathering. Jokes of an incredible silliness and shallowness drifted about us. Our advisers made us declare that if we were elected we would live in the district, and

ry of my first contest, is the memory of her clear bright face, very resolute and grave, helping me consciously, steadfastly, with all her strength. Her quiet confidence, while I was so diss

ur-trimmed coat and this she would make me remove as I went on to the platform, and hold over her arm until I was ready to resume it. It was fearfully heavy for her and she liked it to be heavy for her. That act of servitude was in essence a towering self-assertion. I would glance sideways while some chairman floundered through his

heir proposals for meals and substituted a severely nourishing dietary of her own, and even in private houses she astonished me by her tranquil insi

at of Mrs. Gladstone's husband. I suspect her of a deliberate intention of achieving parallel results by parallel methods. I was to be Gladstonised. Gladstone it appeared used to lubricate his speeches with a mi

d that. It's a matter of conscience. I shouldn't feel-democratic. I'll t

wouldn't," she

d not afford to succumb to her. I wanted to follow my own leading, to see things clearly, and this reassuring pose of a high destiny, of an almost terribly ef

brown skin, who said and did amusing and surprising things. When first I saw her she was riding a very old bicycle downhill with her feet on the fork of the frame-it seemed to me to the public danger, but afterwards I came to understand the quality of her

er if

g by itself and sketching faces on the blotting pad-one impish wizened visage is oddly like little Bailey-and I have been thinking cheek on fist amidst a limitless wealth of memories. She sits below me on the low wall under the olive trees with our little child in her arms. She is now the central fact in my life. It sti

y colours fluttered from handle-bar and shoulder-knot-and her waving hand and the

ty girl!" sa

ment I got those magic letters, that knighthood of the underlings, "J. P." was in th

p-sister was there, Miss Gamer, to whom the house was to descend, a well-dressed lady of thirty, amiably disavowing responsibility for Isabel in every phrase and gesture. And there was a very pleasant doctor, an Oxford man, who seemed on excellent terms with every one. It was manifest that he was in the habit of sparring with the girl, but on this occasion she wasn't sparring and refused to be teased into a display in spite of the taunts of either him or her father. She was, they discovered

he soldier radical, and we began that day a friendship that was only ended by his death in the hunting-field three years later. He interested Margaret into a disregard of my plate and the fact that I had secured the illegal indulgence of Moselle. After lunch we went for coffee into another low room, this time brown panelled and looking through French windows on a red-walled garden, graceful ev

ometimes," said Sir

amending and repealing the Acts of

et's blue eyes regarded the speaker with quiet disapproval for a moment, and then came to me in the not too confident

things," s

he fisherman who strikes his fish at l

we're a mixed l

like me!" interj

a programme,"

has published a pro

ocked half a

e're not going to elect the whole Liberal party i

," said the doctor

of Mr. R

at last," said the doctor

Electioneering shatters convi

anyhow I take it Mr. Remington stands for con

al of the eye to the beautiful long room and the

slum within a mile of us already. The dus

" agreed

or construction, order,

" said th

od Reming

e!" said t

to libel me, Mr. Remington. A political worker can't always be in

id something

xcellent things! But I've a sort of memory-in my yo

e and legal restrictions are not the only enemies of liberty. An uneducated, underbred, and underfed propertyless man is a man who has lost the possibility of liberty. There's no li

Margaret followed with knitted brows and occasional interjections. "People won't SEE that," for example, and "It all seems so plain to me." The doctor showed himself clever but unsubstantial and inconsistent. Isabel sat back with her black mop of hair buried deep in the chair looking

r as far as the Lurky Committee Room, and that she should offer me quite sou

om the high seriousness of politics, and I perceived she felt that I might regard it as such and attach too much importance to it. I had some difficulty in rea

committee rooms, now she appeared on doorsteps in animated conversation with dubious voters; I took every chance I could to talk to her-I had never met anythi

if she had been an intelligent bright-eyed bird. Isabel came into my life as a new sort of thing; she didn't join on at all to my previous experiences of womanhood. They were not, as I have laboured to explain, either very wide or very penetrating experiences, on the whole, "strangled dinginess" expresses them, but I do not believe they were narrower or shallower than those of many other men of my class. I thought of women as pretty things and beautiful things, pretty rather than beautiful, attractive and at times disconcertingly attractive, often bright and witty, but, because of the vast reservations that hid them from me, wanting, subtly and inevitably wanting, in understanding. My i

ved quickly with the free directness of some graceful young animal. She took many of the easy freedoms a man or a sister might have done with me. She would touch my arm, lay a hand on my shoulder as I sat, adjust the lapel of a breast-pocket as she talked to me. She says now she loved me always fr

makes one forget one is tired out. The waiting for the end of the count has left a long blank mark

icipating this result for hours, as though any other figures but nine hundred and seventy-six would have meant

short man with a paper. "It means a big turn

outside, and a lot of fres

t time of night! was running her hand down my sleeve almost caressingly, with the in

, "I must go and

and be construc

to live here

said. "We'll hav

ad all your

hesi

said it as though it was not exact

said Margaret, with some

my arm through hers, and felt someone urging me

-" she said,

THER!"

le man with no great belief in my oratoric

ou've won. Say all the nice thin

tempered by a little booing. Down in one corner of the square a fight was going on for a flag, a fight that even the prospect of a speech could not instantly check. "Speech!" cried voices, "Speech!" and

f the Kinghamstead

midst laughter-the first time I reme

rs for Mrs.

ou," I said, amidst further uproar

me with a start

egan. I sought for some compelling phrase and could not find one. "To do

weak gust of cheering, and

been the end and the beginning

, and across the square swept a

ch. I glanced sideways and saw the Mayor of Kinghamstead speaking

they want

E

do the

flattered but a little surprised by my appeal. I pulled myself hastily in

ur!" cried th

hat notice to q

lection of 1906 has ever been able to determine. Certainly one of the most effective posters on our side displayed a hideous yellow face, just that and nothing m

been Saturday-triumphant but very tired, to our house in Radnor Square. In the train we

ism that had hitherto submerged the country. And there were also orange labels, if I remember rightly, to represent the new Labour party, and green for the Irish. I engaged myself to speak at one or two London meetings, and lunched at the Reform, which was fairly tepid, and dined and spent one or two tumultuous evenings at the National Liberal Club, which was in active eruption. The National Liberal became feverishly congested towards midnight as the results o

onfused sound that beat upon one's ears, and every now and then hoarse voices would shout for someone to speak. Our little set was much in evidence

I did not know from Adam held up glasses and nodded to me in sole

Unionists would lose more o

l do with it all," I heard

p. I would lie and speculate about what it was we WERE going to do. One hadn't anticipated quite

a crowd altogether. I had all my work still before me, I had achieved nothing as yet but opportunity, and a very crowded opportunity it was at that. Everyone about me was chatting Parliament and appointments; one breathed distracting and irritating speculations as to what would be done and who would be asked to do it. I was chiefly impressed by what was unlikely to be done and by the absence of any general plan of legisl

he House hates a lecturer. Ther

cigar to eke

spent three years living down a pair of spatterdashers. On the other hand-a thing

f why the House had come to like an orig

ing magisterial coats. It is one of my vivid memories from this period, the sudden outbreak of silk hats in the smoking-room of the National Liberal Club. At first I thought there must have been a funeral. Familiar faces that one had grown to know under soft felt hats, under bowlers, und

ats. The current use of cards to secure seats came later. There were yards and yards of empty green benches with hats and hats and hats distributed along them, resolute-looking top hats, lax top hats with a kind of shadowy grin under them

lbowing crowd to the right of the Speaker's chair; while the attenuated Opposition, nearly leaderles

hing, and I craned to see over the shoulder

t about?"

ber in possession of the house and the Speaker. I caught a glimpse of him blushingly whispering about his misadventure to a colleague. He was just that same little figure I had once assist

ed in the House, and that I should get all I need

esently walking rather aimle

pack of cards under the many lights, the square shoulders, the silk hat, already worn with a parliamentary tilt backward; I found I was surveying

in hot reaction, "w

sn't so much that I had got hold of something as that something had got hold of me. I distinctly recall the rebound of my mind. Whatever happened in

he moment I could not

followed it, watching the glittering black rush of the river and the dark, dimly lit barges round which the water swirled. Across the river was the hunched sky-line of Doulton's potteries, and a kiln flared redly. Dimly luminous trams were gliding amidst a

sal crane was perpetually hauling up coal into mysterious blacknesses above, and dropping the empty clutch back to the barges. Just one or two minute black featureless figures of men toiled amidst these monster shapes. T

teps are luminous under the lamps and one treads unwarned into thick soft Thames mud. They seem to be p

t snort and toil there-mix up inextricably with my memories of my first days as a legislator. Black figures drift by me, heavy vans clatter, a newspap

on me, "as once those vast unmeaning Saurians whose bones encumbe

-was that the tr

nt of the colonnades of St Thomas's Hospital. I leant on the

. It was then I was moved to prayer. I prayed that night that life might not be in vain, that in particular I might not live in vain. I prayed for strength and faith, that the monstrous blundering forces in life might not overwhelm me, might not beat me back to futilit

e as you will, but save me from self-complacency and little interests an

RD: THE HEAR