A day or two after Miriam had first invited me into her garden the
invitation was made public in the fashionable intelligence of the Culbut
newspapers, and she and I were the recipients of many congratulations
from the numerous friends and relations of the Perrys.
We were entertained by not a few of them. We went to Sunday mid-day
dinner with the Earl and Countess of Rumborough, in the parlour behind
their shop, over which an aroma of jaded cauliflower lay more in
evidence than is customary in the mansions of the great. We drank tea
again with the Earl and Countess of Blueberry, and this time the head of
the house was present, and treated me with a stately courtesy that
impressed me a good deal with the dignity of the family with which I was
about to connect myself. I also dined with the Viscount Sandpits, at the
mess of his gang, sitting on a plank in the middle of one of the busiest
streets in Culbut, and drinking beer out of a tin can.[31] A married
sister of Mr. Perry's, not bitten with philanthropic ideas, gave a
theatre party for us, and we sat in the front row of the pit, after an
agreeable wait of an hour outside the door, and ate oranges between the
acts. And we conferred a much-appreciated honour on a rich relation of
Mr. Perry's by accepting an invitation to a dinner-party at her house.
Her husband had been unfortunate in the coal business, and had sunk from
a clerkship in a colliery company to owning the whole concern. Most of
our fellow guests were melancholy and rather subservient people who had
made a similar mess of their lives, and were pathetically envious of the
bright prospects that were opening out before Miriam and me.
And finally, Mrs. Claudie Chanticleer, who had turned up one morning at
Magnolia Hall, in a bedraggled and hectic state, to take away a few
scraps from the dustbin, invited us to a picnic in the country, to meet
all that was smartest and dirtiest in the exclusive set of which she was
an ornament.
We were a little doubtful about accepting this invitation, gratifying as
it was. It was Mr. Perry who pressed us to do so. He said that he hated
the dirty set and all their ways. It was not through such as they that
the regeneration of Upsidonian society would come. At the same time,
they included amongst them some of the most aristocratic families in the
country, and it would give us a _cachet_ to have our names in the papers
as having taken part in one of their entertainments. When we still
demurred, he pointed out that my social investigations could not be
considered complete unless I mixed with all classes of the community. So
at last we accepted the invitation.
Mr. Perry refused it for himself, as he said he had a touch of
rheumatism and was afraid of the damp grass; but Edward accepted, saying
that he had been working very hard lately and wanted recreation; and
Mrs. Perry went to chaperon Miriam. Mrs. Eppstein, who had seen the
announcement of the coming function in the papers, came round to hear
all about it, and said that she had not for a moment expected that
Tricky Chanticleer would have asked _her_, although they had been at
school together, and in those days nobody thought anything of Tricky,
who had always had a red nose.
Most of us walked to the place appointed for the picnic, which was on a
stretch of grass beside a high-road; and we were the dirtiest and most
disreputable-looking company I have ever been in. But Mrs. Perry, and
some of the older ladies, went in the Duchess of Somersault's caravan,
which was hung round with baskets and brooms and wicker chairs; and
there were a few donkey carts as well, and an organ barrow for the
younger children who could not be left behind. Mrs. Claudie brought what
was necessary for the picnic in an old perambulator, which she wheeled
herself.
We were accompanied all the way by a crowd of rich sightseers, and a
favourite amusement of the younger and sprightlier members of our party
was to get a ride behind the carriages, and for the others to cry "Whip
behind!" and to shriek with laughter at them.
The food consisted of scraps wrapped up in pieces of newspaper, but tea
was made in an old tin pot over a fire of sticks, and everyone had
brought what they wanted in the way of mugs and utensils for themselves.
I must confess that if one didn't eat, or only ate the eggs and fruit
which some of the young bloods had raided from the farmhouses that we
passed on the way, the entertainment was amusing enough. It was rather
annoying to be surrounded by a crowd of gaping sightseers, but the
company seemed to be used to it, and, indeed, to prefer it to seclusion,
or they would not have fixed upon so public a spot. Newspaper reporters
were a good deal in evidence, and cameras were directed on us from all
sides, as we sat on the grass and enjoyed ourselves.
There were many quite intelligent people there. The company, ragged and
filthy as it was, was superior to that which I had met in Mr. Perry's
club, or to the people I had come across in the large houses in which I
had gone slumming with Mrs. Perry.
I happened to sit on the grass next to a travelling tinker, who told me
that he had been Master of a college at Coxford, but had given it up
because he wanted to see more of life.
"I have often been accused of being a snob," he said, "especially by
those who are envious of the fine company I keep. It is true that my
birth would not entitle me to a place in this brilliant society, but I
consider that my learning ought to gain me an entrance into any society,
and it has as a matter of fact gained me an entrance into this. I
consider that this is the best society that can be had, not because it
is aristocratic and exclusive, but because it opens up larger vistas of
life. Purely learned society does not do that, and after spending over
thirty years of my life in Coxford, I grew tired of it, and set out to
play my part in the great world."
Finding himself possessed of a sympathetic listener, he expatiated
further on the advantages of his present life. He had not seen his way
to denuding himself of all property. He had acquired his tinker's outfit
because his previous life had unfitted him for the purest form of
idleness. "One has to be born and brought up to that," he said, "and, as
I told you, I do not pretend to have had the advantages of some of our
friends about us here."
"But isn't work a good thing?" I asked; for here he seemed to be denying
one of the basic principles of Upsidonian philosophy.
"It is not one of the best things in itself," he said, "although for the
great mass of mankind it is necessary. Freedom and knowledge are the
best things; and freedom is even better than knowledge."
"I shouldn't have thought that all the people about us here were
remarkable for their love of knowledge," I said.
"Not perhaps of knowledge to be learnt from books," he said, "though a
good many of them are not lacking in that. But in knowledge that comes
from going about in the world, and seeing human nature denuded of all
its trappings, there is hardly any one of those you see around you who
is not superior to the most learned scholars of the universities. They
know the simple facts of life, as none who do not enjoy the freedom of
extreme poverty can possibly know them; and the simple facts of life are
the great facts of life."
"Do you consider poverty to be an end in itself?" I asked, mindful of
the criticisms I had heard directed against the dirty set.
"It is so near to being an end," he said, "that there is no harm in
considering it so. It is only by denuding yourself of everything that
you can possess everything--beginning with yourself, which is the only
possession really worth anything, and the only one which those foolish
people who cannot make up their minds to do without _some_ form of
property never can attain to. Why should I want more than the whole
earth? It is mine, if I do not shut myself up in one little corner of it
and put a fence round me. The moment I do that I lose all the rest. I
have exchanged the world for a building plot. With every possession I
permit myself, I gouge out a weak place in my armour; I am vulnerable at
that point. Possessing nothing, I am impervious to attack."
"You can't possess absolutely no thing," I said. "You must have clothes,
for instance."
"You must, as society is at present constituted; and you are vulnerable,
as I said, at that point. If anybody takes away my clothes, I lose my
freedom. I cannot go about till I have found some more. And if anybody
takes away my tinker's barrow, I lose the work that my training has
unfitted me to be without. It is not, strictly speaking, the barrow that
I am vulnerable over, because if I could do without it I should have
practically my only burden removed; it is the habits I have acquired
that are the unfortunate possession there. And that is why book-learning
would be considered an evil in a purer state of society. Books
themselves are, of course, the most odious form of bondage, and even in
my tied-down days I never would acquire them for myself, but borrowed
those I could not do without, and committed what was necessary to
memory."
"Why should book-learning be considered an evil?" I asked.
"Because it is an acquisition. You are vulnerable in your memory, in
which you have stored it. The only knowledge that is worth having is
that which impresses itself on the collective mind of mankind. Nobody
can take that away from you, because you share it with all the rest. It
is all about you."
"Excuse my touching upon a possibly delicate subject," I said, "but do
you object to the name that is commonly fastened on to you?"
"The dirty set? Not at all. Why should I? Cleanliness is only a habit,
and a very binding and inconvenient one. If you can break yourself of
that one habit alone, you are well on the way to realise what freedom
means. You have broken the chain that keeps you circling round in the
narrow orbit of the soap-dish and the water-jug, and can wander where
the spirit leads you. I have not taken a bath since I left Coxford, and
all desire to do so has now left me."
The fact had obtruded itself upon me to such an extent that the desire
on my part to leave _him_ now became insistent, and as there came a
general movement at the moment towards the cocoanut shies, put up by Sir
Sigismund Rosenbaum, I withdrew myself from his society. But he was an
interesting man, and had given me something to think over.
FOOTNOTES:
[31] Sandpit's Gang was a very smart one. Its members could shift more
stuff in an hour than ordinary gangs in two. It was one of the sights of
the town to see them running to and fro with heavily loaded barrows,
over a plank so narrow that it seemed as if they _must_ fall off and
hurt themselves.