I have now lived for about two months in the country, and have gathered
the last rich autumnal fruit of a rural life, which is a strong desire
to see London. Artists living in my neighbourhood talk rapturously of
the rolling liberty of the landscape, the living peace of woods. But
I say to them (with a slight Buckinghamshire accent), “Ah, that is how
Cockneys feel. For us real old country people the country is reality; it
is the town that is romance. Nature is as plain as one of her pigs,
as commonplace, as comic, and as healthy. But civilization is full of
poetry, even if it be sometimes an evil poetry. The streets of London
are paved with gold; that is, with the very poetry of avarice.” With
these typically bucolic words I touch my hat and go ambling away on a
stick, with a stiffness of gait proper to the Oldest Inhabitant; while
in my more animated moments I am taken for the Village Idiot. Exchanging
heavy but courteous salutations with other gaffers, I reach the station,
where I ask for a ticket for London where the king lives. Such a
journey, mingled of provincial fascination and fear, did I successfully
perform only a few days ago; and alone and helpless in the capital,
found myself in the tangle of roads around the Marble Arch.
A faint prejudice may possess the mind that I have slightly exaggerated
my rusticity and remoteness. And yet it is true as I came to that corner
of the Park that, for some unreasonable reason of mood, I saw all London
as a strange city and the civilization itself as one enormous whim. The
Marble Arch itself, in its new insular position, with traffic turning
dizzily all about it, struck me as a placid monstrosity. What could be
wilder than to have a huge arched gateway, with people going everywhere
except under it? If I took down my front door and stood it up all by
itself in the middle of my back garden, my village neighbours (in their
simplicity) would probably stare. Yet the Marble Arch is now precisely
that; an elaborate entrance and the only place by which no one can
enter. By the new arrangement its last weak pretence to be a gate has
been taken away. The cabman still cannot drive through it, but he can
have the delights of riding round it, and even (on foggy nights) the
rapture of running into it. It has been raised from the rank of a
fiction to the dignity of an obstacle.
As I began to walk across a corner of the Park, this sense of what is
strange in cities began to mingle with some sense of what is stern as
well as strange. It was one of those queer-coloured winter days when a
watery sky changes to pink and grey and green, like an enormous opal.
The trees stood up grey and angular, as if in attitudes of agony; and
here and there on benches under the trees sat men as grey and angular
as they. It was cold even for me, who had eaten a large breakfast and
purposed to eat a perfectly Gargantuan lunch; it was colder for the men
under the trees. And to eastward through the opalescent haze, the warmer
whites and yellows of the houses in Park-lane shone as unsubstantially
as if the clouds themselves had taken on the shape of mansions to mock
the men who sat there in the cold. But the mansions were real--like the
mockery.
No one worth calling a man allows his moods to change his convictions;
but it is by moods that we understand other men's convictions. The bigot
is not he who knows he is right; every sane man knows he is right. The
bigot is he whose emotions and imagination are too cold and weak to feel
how it is that other men go wrong. At that moment I felt vividly how men
might go wrong, even unto dynamite. If one of those huddled men under
the trees had stood up and asked for rivers of blood, it would have been
erroneous--but not irrelevant. It would have been appropriate and in the
picture; that lurid grey picture of insolence on one side and impotence
on the other. It may be true (on the whole it is) that this social
machine we have made is better than anarchy. Still, it is a machine; and
we have made it. It does hold those poor men helpless: and it does lift
those rich men high... and such men--good Lord! By the time I flung
myself on a bench beside another man I was half inclined to try anarchy
for a change.
The other was of more prosperous appearance than most of the men on such
seats; still, he was not what one calls a gentleman, and had probably
worked at some time like a human being. He was a small, sharp-faced man,
with grave, staring eyes, and a beard somewhat foreign. His clothes
were black; respectable and yet casual; those of a man who dressed
conventionally because it was a bore to dress unconventionally--as it
is. Attracted by this and other things, and wanting an outburst for my
bitter social feelings, I tempted him into speech, first about the
cold, and then about the General Election. To this the respectable man
replied:
“Well, I don't belong to any party myself. I'm an Anarchist.”
I looked up and almost expected fire from heaven. This coincidence was
like the end of the world. I had sat down feeling that somehow or other
Park-lane must be pulled down; and I had sat down beside the man who
wanted to pull it down. I bowed in silence for an instant under the
approaching apocalypse; and in that instant the man turned sharply and
started talking like a torrent.
“Understand me,” he said. “Ordinary people think an Anarchist means a
man with a bomb in his pocket. Herbert Spencer was an Anarchist. But
for that fatal admission of his on page 793, he would be a complete
Anarchist. Otherwise, he agrees wholly with Pidge.”
This was uttered with such blinding rapidity of syllabification as to
be a better test of teetotalism than the Scotch one of saying “Biblical
criticism” six times. I attempted to speak, but he began again with the
same rippling rapidity.
“You will say that Pidge also admits government in that tenth chapter
so easily misunderstood. Bolger has attacked Pidge on those lines. But
Bolger has no scientific training. Bolger is a psychometrist, but no
sociologist. To any one who has combined a study of Pidge with the
earlier and better discoveries of Kruxy, the fallacy is quite clear.
Bolger confounds social coercion with coercional social action.”
His rapid rattling mouth shut quite tight suddenly, and he looked
steadily and triumphantly at me, with his head on one side. I opened my
mouth, and the mere motion seemed to sting him to fresh verbal leaps.
“Yes,” he said, “that's all very well. The Finland Group has accepted
Bolger. But,” he said, suddenly lifting a long finger as if to stop me,
“but--Pidge has replied. His pamphlet is published. He has proved that
Potential Social Rebuke is not a weapon of the true Anarchist. He has
shown that just as religious authority and political authority have
gone, so must emotional authority and psychological authority. He has
shown--”
I stood up in a sort of daze. “I think you remarked,” I said
feebly, “that the mere common populace do not quite understand
Anarchism”--“Quite so,” he said with burning swiftness; “as I said, they
think any Anarchist is a man with a bomb, whereas--”
“But great heavens, man!” I said; “it's the man with the bomb that
I understand! I wish you had half his sense. What do I care how many
German dons tie themselves in knots about how this society began? My
only interest is about how soon it will end. Do you see those fat white
houses over in Park-lane, where your masters live?”
He assented and muttered something about concentrations of capital.
“Well,” I said, “if the time ever comes when we all storm those
houses, will you tell me one thing? Tell me how we shall do it
without authority? Tell me how you will have an army of revolt without
discipline?”
For the first instant he was doubtful; and I had bidden him farewell,
and crossed the street again, when I saw him open his mouth and begin to
run after me. He had remembered something out of Pidge.
I escaped, however, and as I leapt on an omnibus I saw again the
enormous emblem of the Marble Arch. I saw that massive symbol of the
modern mind: a door with no house to it; the gigantic gate of Nowhere.