The New Machiavelli

t now set out at length. I want to tell in this second hook how I came to marry, and to do that I must give something of the atmosphere in which I first met my wife and some intimations of the forces that went to her

threw her up in relief that I formed a very vivid memory of her. She was in the sharpest contrast with the industrial world about her; she impressed

ffordshire cousins and the worl

deep mourning for my mother. My uncle wanted to talk things over with me, he said,

seemed to have endless supplies of money, unlimited good clothes, numerous servants; whose daily life was made up of things that I had hitherto considered to be treats or exceptional extravagances. My cousins of eighteen and nineteen too

ncle manufactured, bright and sanitary and stamped with his name, and the house was furnished throughout with chairs and tables in bright shining wood, soft and prevalently red Turkish carpets, cosy corners, curtained archways, gold-framed landscapes, overmantels, a dining-room sideboard like a palace with a large Tantalus, and electric light fittings of a gay and expen

ome rather than pretty. Gertrude, the eldest and tallest, had eyes that were almost black; Sibyl was of a stouter build, and her eyes, of which she was shamelessly proud, were dark blue. Sibyl's hair waved, and Gertrude's was severely straight. They treated me on my first visit with all the contempt of the adolescent girl for a boy a little younger and infinitely less exp

le book in the place, but apart from miscellaneous popular novels, some veterinary works, a number of comic books, old bound volumes of THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS and a large, popular illustrated History of England, there was very little to be found. My aunt talked to me in a casual feeble way, chiefly about my mother's last illness. The two had seen very little of each other for many y

nd jar of men's activities. And in such a country as that valley social and economic relations were simple and manifest. Instead of the limitless confusion of London's population, in which no man can trace any but the most slender correlation between rich and poor, in which everyone seems disconnected and adrift from ever

level crossings, and surveyed across dark intervening spaces, the flaming uproar, the gnome-like activities of iron foundries. I heard talk of strikes and rumours of strikes, and learnt from the columns of some obscure labour paper I bought one day, of the horrors of the lead poisoning that was in those days one of the normal risks of certain sorts of pottery workers. Then back I came, by the ugly groaning and clanging steam train of that period, to my uncle's house and

eye was just expressionless white--and he ground at an organ bearing a card which told in weak and bitterly satirical phrasing that he had been scalded by the hot water fr

could be made out for Lord Pandram. Still there in the muddy gutter, painfully and dreadfully, was the man, and he was smashed and scalded and wretched, and he ground his dismal hurdygurdy with a weary arm, calling upon Heaven and the passer-by for help, for help and some so

of war that existed between himself and his workers, a

. He was rich and he had left school and gone into his father's business at fifteen, and that seemed to him the proper age at which everyone's

d to puzzle and confuse my mind. I didn't see him for some years until my father's death, and then he seemed rather smaller, though still a fair size, yellow instead of red and much less radiantly aggressive. This altered

attitude that he should give them money freely. Not to do so would seem like admitting a difficulty in making it. So that after he had stopped their allowances for the fourth time Sybil and Gertrude were prepared to face beggary without a qualm. It had been his pride to give them the largest allowance of any girls at the school, not even excepting the granddaughter of Fladden the Borax King, and his soul recoiled from this discipline as it had never recoiled from the rud

as my uncle pointed out, a lord's requirements in his line of faience were little greater than a common man's. If college introduced him to hotel proprietors there might be something in it. Perhaps it helped a man into Parliament, Parliament still being a confused retrogressive corner in the world where lawyers and suchlike sheltered themselves from the onslaughts of common-sense behind a fog of Latin and Greek

penetrate his meaning. Whatever City Merchants had or had not done for me, Flack, Topham and old Gates had certainly barred my mistaking the profitable production and sale of lavatory basins and bathroom fittings for the high

ain of plain solid gold, and soft felt hat thrust back from his head. He tackled me first in the garden after lunch, and then tried to raise me to enthusiasm by taking me to his potbank and showing me its organisation, from the dusty grinding mills in which whitened men worked and coughed, through the highly ventilated glazin

little office, and he showed off before me for a w

ll this. It's Real every bit of

amphlet in my mind, and without any satirical inten

zes more than he hated anything, except the benevolent people who had organised the agitation

a particularly confidential undertone, many of the people liked to get lead poisoning, especially the women, because it caused abortion. I might not believe it, but he knew it for a fact. Fifthly, the work-people simply would not learn the gravity of the danger, and would eat with unwashed hands, and incur all sorts of risks, so that as my uncle put it: "the fools deserve what they get." Sixthly, he and several associated firms had organised a simple and generous i

been sitting. "Seems to me there'll come a time when a master will get fined if he don'

are rug, and urged me not to be misled by the stories of pr

d then we'll see a bit," he said. "They'll drive Capital

two workpeople, and so we came out of the factory gates into the ugly narrow streets, paved with a peculiarly hard diapered brick of an unpleasing inky-blue col

d peered at us dimly with painful eyes. She stood back, as partly blinded pe

ed back

ism," said my

?" sa

en fired, a cracked piece of biscuit it was, up on the shelf over her head, just all over glaze, killing gla

repeated in loud and bitter tone

minster want you to put in fans here and fans there--the Longton foo

ut against evening dinner--Sibyl and Gertrude made w

seemed shaken by the fact that some Burslem rival was launching out with the new

a room with a writing-desk and full of pieces of earthenware

ht things over,

e," I said firmly. "I want to go

chagrined. "You're

e no

ur money, and be a poor half-starved clergyman, mucking about with the women all the day and afraid to have one of your own ever, or you'll be a schoolmaster or so

n," he said, after a pause, "and l

ome a second nature, a keen love both of efficiency and display in his own affairs. He seemed to me to have no sense of the state, no sense and much less any love of beauty, no charity and no sort of religious feeling whatever. He had strong bodily appetites, he ate and drank freely, smoked a great deal, and occasionally was carried off by his passions for a "bit of a spree" to Birmingham or Liverpool or Manchester. The indulgences of these occasions were usually followed by a period of reaction, when he was urgent for the su

not to expect from them through him, and to comprehend resentments and dangerous sudden antagonisms I should ha

hing tweed-clad form, a little round-shouldered and very obstinate looking, he strolls through all my speculations sucking

rdshire, he hated all foreigners because he was English, and all foreign ways because they were not his ways. Also he hated particularly, and in this order, Londoner's, Yorkshiremen, Scotch, Welch and Irish, because they were not "reet Staffordshire," and he hated all other Staffordshire men as insufficiently "reet." He wanted to have all his own women inviolate, and to fancy he had a call upon every other woman in the world. He wanted to have the best cigars and the best brandy in the world to consume or give away

cultured, poorish people in a hard industrious selfish struggle. To drive others they have had first to drive themselves. They have never yet had occasion nor leisure to think of the state or social life as a whole, and as for dreams or beauty, it was a condition of survival that they should ignore such cravings. All the di

here I was, a young gentleman learning all sorts of unremunerative things in the grandest manner, "Latin and mook," while the sons of his neighhours, not nephews merely, but sons, stayed unpolished in their native town. Every time I went down I found extensive changes and altered relations, and before I had settled down to them off I went again. I don't think I wa

sly by a man in shiny black costume and a flat cap. The high tea had been shifted to seven and rechristened dinner, but my uncle would not dress n

tly impossible,

y--"actresses, and showin' their fat arms for every fool to stare at!" Nor would he have any people invited to dinner. He didn't, he had explai

nces they had formed at school, and through two much less prosperous families of relations who lived at Longton and Hanley. A number of gossiping friendships with old school mates were "kept up," and my cousins would "spend the afternoon" or even spend the day with these; such occasions led to other encounters and interlaced with the furtive correspondences and snatched meetings that formed the emotional thread of their lives. When the billiard table had been new, my uncle had taken to asking in a few approved friends for an occasional game, but mostly the billiard-room was for glory and the g

out necessarily opening any other world in exchange. My uncle was too much occupied with the works and his business affairs and his private vices to philosophise about his girls; he wanted them just to keep girls, preferably about sixteen, and to be a sort of animated flowers and make home bright and be given things. He was irritated that they would not remain at this, and s

e. The church was far too modest to offer them any advice. It was obtruded upon my mind upon my first visit that they were both carrying on correspondences and having little furtive passings and seeings and meetings with the mysterious owners of certain initials, S. and L. K., and, if I remember rightly, "the R. N." brothers and cou

seen off by a company of friends, noisily arch and eager about the "steamer letters" they would get at Liverpool; they were the very soul-sisters of my cousins. The chief elements of a good time, as my cousins judged it, as these countless thousands of rich young women judge it, are a petty eventfulness, laughter, and to feel that you are looking well and attracting attention. Shopping is one of its leading joys. You buy things, clothes and trinkets for yourself and presents for your friends. Presents always seem

imental. So far as marriage went, the married state seemed at once very attractive and dreadfully serious to them, composed in equal measure of becomin

poverty, and they knew of Trade Unions simply as disagreeable external things that upset my uncle's temper. They knew of nothing wrong in social life at all except that there were "Agitators." It surprised

a stage of my emotional education. Their method in that as in everyth

rofile, but now she became almost completely full face, manifestly regarded me with those violet eyes of her

It seemed to me that I had always admired Sybil's eyes very greatly, and that there was someth

ut Cambridge. She asked quite a lot of questions about my work a

uld run. I conceded her various starts and we raced up and down the middle garden path. Then, a little

and prettily disarranged, and asked me to help her with the adjustment of a hairpin. I had never in my life bee

me now to

ground of impulse

cousin, and moved a

and forgot the little electric stress between us in a

s she resumed

a difficult, but not impossible, achievement. I do not recall any shadow of a doubt whether on the whole it was worth doing. The

during my visit. I was working up there, or rather trying to work in spite of the outrageous capering of some

what our conversation was about, but I know she led me to believe I

she said; "I di

rsuasion that I was madly in love with her, and her game, so far as she was concerned, was played and won. It wasn't until I had fretted for two days that I realised that I was being used for the commonest form of excitement possible to a commonplace gi

id, "I WILL be

s it's as well, for I fancy that sort of revenge cuts

ng, wriggling back with down-bent head to release he

h a flash of clear vision

O

lushed and excited and interested, and ready for th

r. "I don't know whether I'm so keen on kissing you,

her, and my voice stu

hatred in hers leap

s," I said, after

ed shortly, "I'm

y we

ed the affai

let her fingers rest in contact with it for a moment,--she had pleasant soft hands;--she began to drift into summer houses with me, to let her arm rest trustfully against mine, to ask question

out one evening in some talk--

trude a little impat

ny subsequent levity from this the

ble that we had passed each other in the streets of Cambridge, no doubt with that affectation of mutual disregard which was once customary between undergraduat

pt immaculate note-books, and did as much as is humanly possible of that insensate pile of written work that the Girls' Public School movement has inflicted upon school-girls. She really learnt French and German admirably and thor

ork, she gave herself no leisure to see it as a whole, she felt herself not making headway and she cut her games and exercise in order to increase her hours of toil, and worked into the night. She carried a knack of laborious thoroughness into the blind alleys and inessentials of her subject. It didn't need the badness of the food for which Bennett Hall is cele

m nervous dyspepsia. They went to Florence, equipped with various introductions and much sound advice from sympathetic Cambridge friends, and having acquired an ease in Italy there, went on to Siena, Orvieto, and at

rly good that year--and Mrs. Seddon celebrated her return by giving an afternoon reception at sh

yellow trumpets had been left amidst the not too precisely mown grass, which was as it were grass path with an occasional lapse into lawn or glade. And Margaret, hatless, with the fair hair above her thin, delicately pink face very simply done, came to meet our rather to

nd groups walking about, and a white gate between orchard and garden and a large lawn with an oak tree and a red Georgian house with a ver

oose rich shot silk tie of red and purple, a long frock coat, grey trousers and brown shoes, and presently he removed his hat and carried it in one hand. There were two tennis-playing youths besides myself. There was also one father with three daughters in anxious control, a father of the old school scarcely half broken in, reluctant, rebellious and consciously and conscientiously "reet Staffordshire." The daughters were al

ily between the house and the clumps of people seated or standing before it; and tennis and croquet were inter

and was partnering him at tennis in a state of gentle revival--while their mother exercised a divided chaperonage from a seat near Mrs. Seddon. The little c

od these differences. She had the eagerness of an exile to hear the old familiar names of places and personalities. We capped familiar anecdotes and were enthusiastic about Kings' Chapel and the Backs, and the curate, addr

ly shy but determined. She had rather open blue eyes, and she spoke in an even musical voice with the gentlest of stresses and the ghost of a lisp. And it was true, she gathered, that Cambridge st

e Brera,--the Brera is wonderful--wonderful places,--but it isn't like real st

bales a little

h so much manifest regret for learning denied, she seemed a different kind of being altogether from my smart, hard, high-coloured, black-hair

her, and set myself to interest an

of Newnham, and then Chris Robinson's visit--he had give

ted me, too,"

th a kind of urged attention, and her brow a little more knitted, very earnestly. The little curate desisted from

e eighties," he said. "I'm glad Imperiali

in a state of refreshed relationship, came with her, and a cheerful lady in pink and more particularly distinguished by a pink

rd. "It's well Pa isn't here. He has Fi

ghed in a gener

for broad-mindness, and he stirred himself (and incidentally his tea) to still more liberality of expression. He said the state of the poor was appalling, simpl

is always the more evid

he said explosively, and turned stirring and with his he

lush and an effect of daring, that

aid Gertrude, "And drinking o

follow that because one's a socialist o

dding me slightly with the wrist of the hand that held his teacup,

ere was much to be said on both sides, that if every one did his or her duty to every one about them there would be no difficulty with social problems at all, that over and above all enactments we needed moral changes in people themselves. My cousin Gertrude was a difficult controversialist to manage, being unconscious of inconsistency in statement and absolutely impervious to reply. Her standpoint was essentially materialistic; she didn't see why she shouldn't have a good time because other people didn't; they would have a good time, she was sur

ions, to a croquet foursome in which Margaret involved the curate without involving herself, and th

uddenly in a confidential undertone, w

of imaginat

sins, but to the whole world of industry and property about us. "But what is one to do?" she asked. "I do wish I had not had to come down. It's all so pointless here. There seem

u do--loc

ind something. Do you think--if one we

I began a lit

t would come to nothing. And yet I feel there is so much to be done for the w

er blue eyes looking before her, her mouth almost petulant. "One feels

was, I say, like a protesting blue flower upon a cinder heap. It is curious, too, how she connects and mingles with the furious quarrel I had with my uncle that very evening. That came absurdly. Indirectly Margar

sterous shin

e most indisputable and non-contentious propositions conceivable--until, t

s sei

," I said, "just in the beginn

rted face, and nodded, lea

emotest thought

e got," I said, "jumbled streets,

ou had to do with it," said m

here it meant to be going would do a sight better, anyhow.

siness down there--by chance--next," said

hough I was ba

in the making of all gr

and grew while those fools Ackroyd and Sons always took second place? He showed a disposition to tell the glorious history of how

ns. YOU never invented pottery, nor any process in pottery that matters a rap in your works; it wasn't YOUR foresight that joined all England up with railways and made it possible to organise production on an altogether differe

me a damned young puppy, and became invo

little, and spitting out the end of his cigar which he had bitten off in his last attempt at self-control, and withal fully prepared

mer and tongs! It became clear that he supposed me to be a Socialist, a zealous, embittered hater of all ownership--and also an educated man of the

resolve to go up to Cambridge, and now we had out all that had a

ticuffs. It ended with my saying, after a pungent reminder of benefits conferred and remembered, that I didn't want to stay another hour in his h

ted my uncle, seeing

for primarily is to battle with that, to annoy it, disarrange it, reconstruct it. We question everything, disturb anything that cannot give a clear justification to our questioning, because we believe inherently that our sense of disorder implies the possibility of a better order. Of course we are detestable. My uncle was of that other vaster mas

not see Margaret Seddo