historical, to transcribe in detail all or even many of the stories
of which the book was composed, or to analyse, criticize, praise or
condemn the few that shall be reproduced (in whatever way seems most
economical) here. It is rather intended to give an honest, accurate,
elementary notion of the book from which the reader may form a
scholarly opinion of its character that shall be in restrained harmony
with his own. Several of the stories (those cited above, for example)
will be elaborately summarized, according to the degree of eccentricity
they possess in comparison with other stories which fall more naturally
into a group-significance or classification. Some will appear only in
a table of constructional correspondences; others as interesting or
corroborative or contradictory points of reference: still others as
problems of too fine difficulty for the moment, here put aside and
marked out for the future specialist.
§2
_The Flying Attic_ is the first of the miscellaneously significant or
dangerous stories. The central character is a cook who had never in
her life been guest to anyone and who had never in her life ascended
above the kitchen floor of any house. No description of the character’s
appearance, age or parentage is given, so that the atmosphere of
the story, intentionally or unintentionally, is one of allegory, or
morality, or symbolism--as you like. This creature, the story tells
us, conceived the fantastic ambition of living permanently in a guest
attic, descending only at the new moon, and then to find herself each
time in a different house, each time guest to a different host or
hostess.
The realization of this ambition is made technically possible by the
dismissal of the cook for serving a custard made from a manufactured
pink powder, instead of from original ingredients. No complaint seems
to have been made against the excellence of taste or quality of the
custard. Its very excellence in fact is what arouses suspicion. And so
after coffee the cook is dismissed. The family chats, finally goes to
bed. Then the cook steals out of the kitchen and up to the attic, at
the moment unoccupied but in a state of preparation for a guest who
is expected to arrive the following day. The cook draws the curtains,
lights a candle, gets into bed. The beams are made of old ship’s
timber; the sharp-ribbed roof suggests an inverted ship’s bottom. The
candlelight, the drawn curtains, the architectural irregularities of
the attic, the distorted, ship-like sense of motion faintly conveyed
by the crazy contour of the attic in candlelight to the mind of the
cook now floating in the unreality of the fulfilment of an impossible
ambition--all these factors contribute to what must count--in the story
at any rate--for a genuine disturbance of forces: the attic moves, the
cook’s mind swoons with pleasure, day and night the curtains remain
drawn (otherwise the problem of _locale_ would seriously interfere with
the narrative device), she passes her time in a passive delirium of
satisfaction, and at the morning of new moon punctually descends. The
first and last descents will be given in detail, the intervening ones
only listed.
First descent: as the breakfast bogy, in the costume of a German
peasant--green jacket, flat, ribboned hat; into the house of a country
lady, mother of three young children, recently widowed. Cook unlatches
the attic door and walks slowly downstairs--a heavy male step. Cultured
and terrified children’s voices are heard as the steps pass the night
nursery: ‘Oh mother, the breakfast bogy--we are afraid to get up.’
‘Nonsense, children,’ the mother calls back, ‘come down immediately.’
The steps continue, Cook enters the dining-room, sits down at the table
in the chief chair as master of the house. The mother enters from the
kitchen with large porridge basin, sees Cook, screams. Children come
running down. ‘The breakfast bogy, the breakfast bogy!’ they cry.
‘We told you so, Mother.’ Cook says: ‘I am master here now. We will
all have breakfast together and you will pay me every respect. After
breakfast I shall go away and not return till luncheon. The same for
tea and dinner. You must guess what I like to eat and after each meal
thank me for the food. And you must kiss me good night. That is all.’
It is to be noted that whenever the central character of any of these
tales gives an order, it is always obeyed without question, however
wicked, unreasonable or fantastic it may be. Thus in _The Dishonest
Scales_ the grocer-woman not only cheats her customers in the weight of
what they buy (though the scales whenever tested seem to record quite
honestly), but after taking their money she says firmly ‘Now that is
all,’ and sends them away unprotesting without their purchases.
After breakfast Cook retires to the attic and appears again at
luncheon. All this happens in the most orderly manner imaginable.
The widow even smiles prettily to Cook after luncheon and ‘hopes the
gentleman finds all satisfactory.’ Cook here nods stiffly. There is no
clue given as to what either Cook or the family do during the intervals
between meals. Only one rather shocking mischance occurs: the oldest
of the children, a boy, spies upon the cook between tea and dinner and
is snatched angrily into the attic. At dinner only two children appear,
and Cook announces quietly: ‘Your oldest child attempted to spy upon
me, so I turned him into an eiderdown to keep me warm.’ To which the
widow replies ‘It serves him right,’ and goes on eating. After dinner
Cook is kissed good night affectionately by the widow and her two
remaining children, goes up to the attic, fastens the door, gets into
bed and tucks herself round with her new eiderdown.
Second descent: Cook comes down into a prison tower as a captive queen,
murders her warder, takes upstairs with her her warder’s poodle, the
pillow she stabbed him on, and his wife’s lace cap, saying: ‘All this
will contribute to the comfort of my old age.’
Third descent: Cook comes down into a full-rigged ship about to sink
in a storm off the Gold Coast, rescues the captain, a villainous
but hearty old man, and carries him off to her attic with great
satisfaction.
Fourth descent: Cook comes down into a great kitchen as a cook and
carries the whole kitchen up with her in one armful.
Fifth descent: Cook comes down into a library as a respectable young
working man inquiring from the lady librarian for a book on how to mend
leaking roofs. The lady librarian strongly resembling Cook in her
youth, the young working man is smitten with a great fancy for her,
marries her, takes her up to the attic, where she becomes cook to Cook.
Sixth descent: Cook opens her attic door to walk out as herself for
a breath of fresh air, steps upon nothing and begins to fall. While
falling she looks up, sees her attic far above her, flying off at great
speed toward the east, where it is growing dark. ‘However will I get
back to it?’ she thinks mournfully to herself. At this point there
is a long passage describing intimately all of her anxieties in her
fall, such as what will happen to her poodle, who will smooth out her
eiderdown, what will her captain have for dinner all by himself, down
to the last, which is, what shall she give them for a pudding to-night?
She decides, since it is so late already (it is now quite dark in the
east and her attic has completely disappeared) to give them a custard
made from a manufactured pink powder, which will take only a moment
to stir up and only fifteen minutes on the window-sill to cool. It
would be impossible without exact quotation from the original (which
is outside the modest scope of the present volume) to reproduce the
delicate transition that takes place just here from one level of the
episode to the next (from the higher to the lower, or the fantastic
to the factual, I might say). Suffice it for our purposes that there
occurs at this point a shock, the contact on the one hand of Cook’s
feet with the ground, on the other of Cook’s right ear with church
clock just striking seven. ‘And there will be a guest to-night,’ she
exclaims to herself, tasting and stirring, chopping and sprinkling. At
last dinner is served, eaten, over. ‘Dear kind Cook,’ Mistress says
to her before retiring, ‘aren’t you going upstairs to-night?’ ‘My
goodness, is it so late?’ replies Cook. ‘I was just cooling myself a
bit’--for Cook was standing on the kitchen doorstep gazing east. So she
goes upstairs to her attic and fastens the door behind her. Upon which
unsatisfactory note this story concludes, leaving the reader uneasy and
somewhat cheated of that general resolution of himself in the story
which it is his right to expect from every upright invention--an effect
all the more disquieting in that it seemed everywhere in this work
arrived at rather by art than by accident or inferiority of execution.
§3
It would be well at this point to uncover a little of the philosophical
skeleton of this book for the benefit of the reader likely to become
too absorbed in the narrative surface, so to speak. It would also be
well to emphasize, on the other hand, the fact that the anonymous
author was if anything over-precious in the technical brilliance of
his stories: he seemed to wish, by ringing from them a pure, glassy
artificiality, that their perfection as stories should make them as
trivial and false-true as stories, so that they held the moral more
obediently. There is therefore little or no hint of moral in any of
the stories, the sincerity of the narration in every particular being
the best guarantee (according to the principles of his writing) of the
presence of the skeletal sense beneath it. We might, for the purpose
of analysis, call this obsession with fictitious fact an obsession
statistical. And we might likewise call (for the same purpose) the
style of the book the style of curiosity. The effect of this style on
the reader is indeed an effect of curiosity--curiosity in the general
usage of the word. That is, it makes the reader first inquisitive of
the course and conclusion of the narrative, then suspicious of the
philosophical import of the narrative, and finally resolved to track
down angerly (as our Elizabethan might have said) the chief mystery
of each narrative, namely the anonymity of the author: as indeed the
police of his time were angered into doing (without success). The style
of curiosity, itself, however, was of a different order of curiosity
from this. If you will look out this word in any full contemporary
dictionary you will find that while the current meaning is this precise
_effect_ of curiosity, the two first (and previous) meanings have a
more particular application:
(1) Scientific attentiveness; technical nicety; moral exactness;
religious fastidiousness. Obsolete.
(2) Honest or artistic workmanship; generous elaboration; charitable
detail. Obsolete or archaic.
And such, in fact, was the style of curiosity: so that the effect of
curiosity on the reader had in it a touch of quaintness; which is
the reason why, in fact, the anonymous author seemed to his critics,
censors and readers to be imitating the style of all the well-known
writers of the time and yet to be clearly not among them.
Perhaps I can best illustrate this obsession statistical and this
style of curiosity (both in origination and effect) by a direct
transcription. It is to be found (by those fortunate enough to lay
hands upon the book itself) in the story (untitled) about the man who
could not help stealing his friends’ matches though his father was a
prosperous match-manufacturer, though he had a generous allowance from
him and though he had no interest in the match business:
‘He paid his fare exactly, having the scale of fares off by
heart (more thoroughly than the conductor) and having always
in his pocket such a variety of small coins as should make it
unnecessary for him to be given change in his fares, purchases
and contributions to charity. He sat on top, on the left, in the
fourth row from the front, by the rail, a habit so strong and
methodical in him that he never thought (and was never obliged)
to sit elsewhere. He made a minute comment to himself upon the
flower stalls or stands along the route, concluding with the
generalization that the predominating colour among the flowers
sold by the lame or the ugly was mauve. He then went to sleep,
timing himself to awake a minute before the arrival of the bus at
the railway station. He rehearsed his itinerary, which was to miss
his train at the first change and so at the second change and so
to have to wait an hour there and two hours there and to examine
more particularly during this time the generalization regarding
lame or ugly flower-vendors. While asleep he followed his usual
practice of descending from the state of personality to the state
of thingality, and in this dreamy condition of passive matter he
enjoyed the same security that an apple has up to the moment of
its fall. And so upon waking he fell from the top of the bus--as
if blown down by a strong wind--and broke his nose, one leg, two
fingers, cut his left cheek beneath the eye and sustained an injury
to his back that left him upon his recovery with a permanent
thoughtful posture.’
From this short extract it will perhaps be clear how he teased his
reader with sincerity and how his statistical straightforwardness
carved out patiently a mysterious block of significance which was not
brought upon the platform of the story but which the reader found
obstructing his exit, as it were, when the curtain had come down and
he attempted to leave the theatre. It was this seemingly innocent
obstructionism of course that aroused the authorities to such a violent
pitch of antagonism to the book; and which remains to this day a
challenge almost impudent (so it sometimes seems) to the endurance of
all scholars, philosophers and simple lovers of knowledge. For often,
at our greatest moments of ingenuity and science, indeed, we find
ourselves suddenly uncertain of our premises and forced to begin once
more at the beginning, yielding our own philosophical curiosity to
the statistical curiosity of the author. It might therefore be wise,
before we entangle ourselves further in scholarly ramifications of
our own, to return to the document itself. In this sober intention
I mean to present, in as unmeddlesome and economical a fashion as I
am capable of, the conspicuous features of one of the most baffling
(though to outward appearance one of the most unaffected) stories in
the collection, _The Man Who Told Lies To His Mother_.
§4
He was an author. He wrote books one after the other. It was
impossible, we are told, to understand, say, the tenth book without
reading all the preceding nine. And it was impossible to understand
the tenth without the book that followed it. And whatever number the
book was, there was always one following it, so that the author was
continuously being understood by his readers. The chief character in
each of the books was always the same. Half of him was the author
himself, the other half of him was the only son of the author’s
mother. He called the first half I, the second half He. I thought,
wrote books, knew all about everything, did nothing. He knew nothing
about anything but could do everything. I was wise, He was happy. I
was careful to keep himself to himself so as not to have his wisdom
spoiled by He or He’s fun spoiled by his wisdom. I kept himself in his
study, He in the world. I did not permit He to share his study with
him because this would have been like denying that there was a world
outside of his study and, since he knew there was such a world, making
a ghost of himself. I did not want to be a ghost and yet he wanted to
remain in his study, so he supported He in the world on the books he
wrote in his study. This kept up the world, it kept up He, it made I
complete without his having to be complete, that is, to be both I and
He. Moreover, though I supported He in the world, he made no attempt
to track him, curb him or even share occasionally in his activities.
I was continually disciplining himself against such temptations: in
order not to corrupt his wisdom by making it a criticism of He and in
order not to corrupt the fullness of He’s pleasure by making it have
anything to do with sense. The important thing for I, inasmuch as He
existed and the world existed, was to keep them employed in each other,
so that he could be truly, wisely, actually, employed in himself. I
said: I am I, therefore I am true, I am not He, therefore he is false;
but He is He, therefore He is false-true so long as I encourage him in
falsehood. He could not, however, be false by himself--this would have
eventually made him true. To be false he needed something to be false
with, he needed the world, he needed other He’s. For a long time He
and the world conducted each other toward themselves with the closest
and strictest falsehood; so close and strict in fact that the world,
this conglomeration of other He’s, became a single close, strict, false
She. He and She went on loyally enjoying themselves in each other as He
and the world had done, until this falsificatory attachment became so
utter that it reproduced I in his study. It reproduced I, it reproduced
He and She. It did all this without giving to her only son’s mother a
grandchild.
And so, the story goes on, the books went on. And so we the readers
of the story (story-readers of the books described in the story)
witness how I told lies to his mother without committing a single
falsehood. For he sent his books to his mother in her province in place
of letters, saying: This is a true account of the doings of your only
son. And she read them lovingly as a true account of the doings of her
only son, whom she always thought of as He, taking I to be merely the I
authorial, which it was. And so I told lies to his mother and they were
not lies but a true account of the doings of He.
Now when the author of the story has trained his reader to understand
the author in the story who was one-half of the chief character of his
own stories, he begins without further explanation a long chronicle of
the experiences of the other half of the chief character of his stories
under the title of _Lies To His Mother_. We do not know whether these
stories are supposed to have appeared in the author-in-the-story’s
books as they appear here in the story: probably not, since there is
in them no mention of I, and I, we must remember, was one-half of the
chief character of these books. Or perhaps so, since it is not unlikely
that everything relating to I in his books was meant to be supposed to
have been described separately, as for example in the form of authorial
interludes between the passages relating to He. At any rate, for our
convenience it may be best to retitle the stories (a few of which are
here summarized) which the author introduces to us under the title of
_Lies To His Mother_, as _What His Mother Believed Of He_. It might
also be helpful for me to announce here that since further analysis
seems hopeless I shall add nothing to these summarizations; except
to say, perhaps, that they all confirm us in what we have already
observed of the temper of the anonymous author of the book that we are
studying: his statisticality, his curiosity and, we might now add, his
falsificality.
(_a_) That He one day drank water in such a way as to be drunk of it,
and in this condition found himself the hero of an Arabian Nights
Entertainment, bathing, with the privilege of a jokester, in the
women’s pool. And they would not let him come out for a whole day.
They kept him in the water a whole day, a whole long day, during which
they did many things to him, all of which are faithfully recorded in
the original, of which two may with propriety be given here: that they
would at intervals very slowly drain all the water from the pool and
then as slowly let it fill up again; and that they fed him on nothing
but fish, and would not give him drink, forcing him to water himself
from the pool. He was allowed to leave the pool at sunset, on the
promise that he would amuse them with tales for three days, which he
promised. For three days then He amused them with tales, two of which
may with propriety be outlined here: the first, of a man bewitched
in such a manner that he would do on every occasion the opposite of
what it was his will to do; the second, of a far-off city in which
the people were silent and their clothes spoke, and of how a quarrel
arose between two identical black lace frocks, as to which was which,
and of how in anger they tore themselves off their wearers, and became
confused in the broil that followed, so that their owners were also
confused and uncertain, when the frocks were put on once more, whether
their speech matched their silence.
(_b_) That He another day woke to find himself speaking a strange
language, in which everything was known and clear--as if all
difficulties of the intelligence were difficulties of language alone:
in this language He had but to speak to discover, as, for instance,
the word for _horse_ here not only stood for horse but also made plain
the quality of horseliness, what it was. He woke to find himself
speaking this language, he was a boy, he was in a classroom, he had
blue eyes (they were actually grey), his teacher was a remarkable
woman in a pompadour and a large hat who was fond of him, fixing
her gaze on his blue eyes when she entered the room and keeping it
there until she left; who knew everything and recited it without
pause, without sympathy, without antagonism, so that whatever she
said meant all and nothing--history, the uses of waste paper, the
traditions of pawnbrokers, anything, everything. Then He woke up
again to find himself no longer speaking the strange language but as
dumb, in his ordinary language, with dumb memory of it. So when He
spoke his ordinary language he found it all twisted of sense, which
made him abandon it: he uttered only expressive sounds, which others
disregarded as nonsensical, composed as they were of soft and shrill
shrieks, whistlings, bellowings and blowings. So He went mad and in his
madness began speaking his ordinary language again, all nonsensical,
but conceived sane by others because it was the ordinary language.
And so He was discharged from the madhouse raving and only by slow
stages came to regard himself, since others did so, as sane. The theme
of a language of complete intelligence, it is to be remarked, occurs
in two other stories in the book--in one there is even an attempt,
impossible to reproduce here, to give specimens of the language. To
all appearances indeed it is the ordinary language in which he (the
anonymous author) wrote, with perhaps an outlandish twist due merely
to an increase of his usual severity--the authorities explained it by
reading it as an imitation of the style of the most wilfully ingenuous
author of the time. But it might very well have meant something to the
author it could not mean to the reader, which is not at all improbable,
since to myself, after long study and, I may say, an application
it would be difficult to surpass, it meant only what it said--and
this only with the greatest imaginative stretch possible to me in my
liveliest moments of inquiry. The story, for the benefit of those few
who may have access to the book, is, of course, _The Whisper_.