speaking of “the mothers of my children” I was seized with a nausea
which I could not shake off, until, two days after my arrival, an
epidemic of suicide among the candidates horrified me into a wholesome
reaction against my surroundings. I found it hard to account for
the epidemic until I noticed the coincidence of the disappearance
of the most comely of the young men with the periodic visits of the
high officials. This pointed, though at first I refused to believe
it, to the vilest abuse of the system set up by the women in their
pathetic attempt to solve the problem of population scientifically.
Far, far better were it had they been content with their refusal to
bear children and to impose chastity upon all without exception, and
to let the race perish. Must the stronger sex always seek to degrade
the weaker? My experience in that house filled me with an ungovernable
hatred of women. The sight of them with the absurdities of their
bodies accentuated by the trousered costumes they had elected to adopt
filled me with scorn and bitter merriment. The smell of them, to which
in my hatred I became morbidly sensitive, made me sick. The sound of
their voices set my teeth on edge.
Such was my condition when, after three weeks’ training, I was called
before the examination committee.
XIV: THE EXAMINATION
Nothing in all my strange experiences astonished me so much as the lack
of ceremony in this matter of fatherhood. It was approached with a
brutal disinterestedness, a cynical disregard of feeling equalled only
by men of pleasure in other countries. I was filled with rage when I
was introduced to the committee of middle-aged and elderly women and
exposed to their cold scrutiny. First of all I was told to stand at the
end of the hall and repeat the poem of William Christmas. I had been
made to get it by heart, but in my distress I substituted the word Ram
for the word Stallion. The chairwoman rapped angrily on the table.
“Why do you say Ram for Stallion?”
I replied: “Because it more aptly describes my condition. There is
nobility in the stallion, but the ram is a foolish beast.”
There was a consultation, after which the chairwoman bade me approach
and said:
“Your medical report is excellent but we are afraid you lack mental
simplicity. You are an educated man.”
“I am an American citizen,” I replied proudly, “and I protest against
the treatment to which I have been subjected.”
“We know nothing of that,” retorted the chairwoman. “You are before
us as L.D. 8150, recommended for paternal duties and, if passed, to
be entered in the stud-book. Your record since you have been in the
country is a bad one, but points to the possession of a spirit which
for our purposes may be valuable.”
I said: “You may call me what you like; you may register me in any book
you please, send me where you choose, but I am a married man and will
not oblige you.”
Then a fury seized me and I shouted:
“Can you not see that you are driving your people into madness or
disaster, that you will soon be plunged again into barbarism, that your
science is destroying the very spirit of civilisation? I tell you that
even now, as you work and plan and arrange, there is growing a revolt
against you, a revolt so strong that it will ignore you, as life in the
end ignores those who would measure it with a silver rod.”
The chairwoman smiled as she rejoined:
“Those are almost identically the words I addressed to the late Prime
Minister of Fatland when, after thirty years of prevarication, he was
persuaded to receive a deputation. I am afraid we must reject you as
a candidate for the duties for which you have been trained. In the
ordinary course you would be put upon your trial and committed to a
severe cross-examination, an art which has been raised by us to the
pitch of perfection. As it is, we are satisfied that you are labouring
under the disadvantage of contamination from a man-governed society and
are probably not guilty of the usual offences which render candidates
unfit. We therefore condemn you as a man of genius, and order you to be
interned in the suburb set apart for that class.”
I bowed to cover my amazement, a bell was rung, and I was conducted
forth. Outside, meeting another candidate, green with nervousness,
I told him I had been rejected, whereupon he plucked up courage and
asked me how I had managed it. I told him to say Billy-Goat instead of
Stallion.
XV: MEN OF GENIUS
I had not then met Hohlenheim and did not know what a man of genius
was, and for genius I still had a superstitious reverence. Before I
left the committee hall I was given a coloured ribbon to wear across my
breast and a brass button to pin into my hat. On the button was printed
M.G. 1231. What! said I to myself, Over a thousand men of genius in the
country! never dreaming that some of them might be of the same kind as
myself, so obstinate are superstitions and so completely do they hide
the obvious.
As I passed through the streets of the capital I found that I was the
object of amused contemptuous glances from the women, who walked busily
and purposefully along. There were no shops in the streets, which
were bordered with trees and gardens and seemed to be very well and
skilfully laid out. I was free to go where I liked, or I thought I was,
and I determined not to go to the suburb, but to find a lodging where I
could for a while keep out of trouble and at my leisure discover some
means of getting out of the abominable country. Coming on what looked
like an eating-house, I entered the folding doors, but was immediately
ejected by a diminutive portress. When I explained that I was hungry
she told me to go home.
I was equally unfortunate at other places, and at last put their unkind
receptions down to my badges. Is this, I thought, how they treat their
men of genius? My applications for lodgings were no more prosperous,
and I was preparing to sleep in the streets when I met an enormously
fat man wearing a ribbon and button like my own. He hailed me as a
comrade, flung his arm round my shoulder and said: “The cold winds of
misfortune may blow through an æolian harp, but they make music. Ah!
Divine music, in paint, in stone, in words, and many other different
materials.” “I beg your pardon,” said I, “but the wind of misfortune is
blowing an infernal hunger through my ribs, and I should be obliged if
you will lead me to a place where I can be fed.” “Gladly, gladly. We
immortals, living and dead, are brothers.” So saying he led me through
a couple of gardens until we came to a village of little red houses
set round a green, in the center of which was a statue. “Christmas!” I
cried. “Christmas it is,” said my guide, “the only statue left in the
country, save in our little community, where the rule is, Every man his
own statue.”
Community within community! This society in which I was floundering was
like an Indian puzzle-box which you open and open until you come to a
little piece of cane like a slice of a dried pea.
However, I was too hungry to pursue reflection any further and without
more words followed my companion into one of the little red houses,
where for the first time for many months I was face to face with a
right good meal. Here at any rate were sensible people who had not
forgotten that a man’s first obligation is to his stomach. I ate
feverishly and paid no heed to my companions at table, two little
gentlemen whom at home I would have taken for elderly store-clerks.
When at last I spoke, one of the little gentlemen was very excited to
discover that I was an American. “Can you tell me,” he said, “can you
tell me who are now the best sellers?”
“What,” I asked, “are they?”
They looked at each other in dismay.
“_We_ were best sellers,” they cried in chorus.
After the meal they brought out volumes of cuttings from the American
newspapers, and I recognised the names of men who had in their works
brought tears to my eyes and a smile to my lips.
“Do I behold,” I said, “the authors of those delightful books which
have made life sweeter for thousands?”
They hung their heads modestly, each apparently expecting the other to
speak. At last my fat friend said:
“Brothers, we will have a bottle of port on this.”
The port was already decanted and ready to his hand. Over it they
poured out their woes. Publication had stopped in Fatland. There was
no public, and the public of America had been made inaccessible. How
can a man write a book without a public? It would be sheer waste of his
genius. When a man has been paid two hundred dollars for a story he
could not be expected to work for less, could he? I supposed not, and
the little man with the long hair and pointed Elizabethean beard cried
hysterically:
“But these women, these harpies, expect us to work for their bits of
paper, their drafts on their miserable stores. When they drew up their
confounded statutes they admitted genius: they acknowledged that we
should be useless on farms or in factories. They allowed us this, the
once-famous garden suburb, for our residence and retreat, but they made
us work--work--us, the dreamers of dreams! But what work? The sweet
fruits of our inspiration? No. We have been set to edit the works of
William Christmas, to write the biography of William Christmas, to
prepare the sayings of William Christmas for the young. No Christmas,
no dinner, and there you are. Is such a life tolerable?”
“No!” cried the fat man.
“What is more,” continued the indignant one, “we are asked to dwell
among nincompoops who have never had and never could have any
reputation, young men who used to insult us in the newspapers, cranks
and faddists who have never reached the heart of the great public and
are jealous of those who have. And these men are set to work with us in
our drudgery, and they are paid exactly at the same rate. Fortunately
many of them waste their time in writing poetry and drama while we do
their work and make them pay in contributions to our table. Pass the
port, brother.”
They spent the evening reading aloud from their volumes of press
cuttings, living in the glorious past, while they appealed to me every
now and then for news of the publishing world in America. I invented
the names of best sellers and made my hosts’ mouths water over the
prices I alleged to be then current. They were so pleased with me that
they pressed me to stay with them and to work on the new Concordance of
Christmas.
XVI: REVOLUTION
Work on the Index, I soon found, meant preparing the whole mighty
undertaking, while my three men of genius smoked, ate, drank, slept,
talked, and went a-strolling in the capital. There was this advantage
about being a man of genius that I was free to come and go as and
when I liked, though I was everywhere scoffed at and treated with
good-humoured scorn. I was always liable to insult at the hands of
the high-spirited young women of the capital who held places in the
Government offices and had acquired the insolent manners of a ruling
class. However, I soon learned to recognise the type and to avoid an
encounter, though my poor old friends often came home black and blue.
There was a great deal more sense in Christmas than I had at first
supposed, and, as I progressed with my work, I saw that what he meant
was very near what Edmund and his father had been at, namely, that
men and women, if only they set about it the right way, can find in
each other the interest, amusement, and imaginative zest to dispel the
boredom which is alone responsible for social calamities. His appeal
had been to men, but he had only reached the ears of women, and they
had hopelessly misunderstood him. They had expected him to have a new
message and had taken his old wisdom for novelty by identifying it with
his personality. He had not taken the precaution to placate the men
of genius of his time. Without a marketable reputation they could not
recognise him. They refused to acknowledge him and drove him into the
strange courses which made him seem to the nerve-ridden women of the
country new, fresh, and Heaven-sent. Certainly he had genius, as my
professional men of genius had it not, and it came into too direct a
contact with the public mind. The smouldering indignation of ages burst
into flame. More and more as I worked I was filled with respect for
this idealist and with pity for the human beings who had followed him
to their undoing. His insight was remarkable, and I made a collection
of his works to take back with me to America, if I should ever go there.
I stayed in the Suburb of Genius for a couple of years, very pleased
to be away from the women, and among people many of whom were amusing.
There were painters and sculptors, who spent their time making
Christmas portraits and effigies, cursing like sailors as they worked.
Very good company some of these men, and most ingenious in their shifts
and devices to dodge the rules and regulations with which they were
hemmed in. Some of them had smuggled women into their houses and lived
in a very charming domesticity. I envied them and was filled with
longing for my home.
One day as I was at my work I came on an unpublished manuscript of
Christmas. It contained a poem which I liked and a saying which fired
me. This was the poem:
“The woman’s spirit kindles man’s desire,
And both are burned up by a quenchless fire.
Let but the woman set her spirit free,
Then it is man’s unto eternity.
It is a world within his hands, and there
They two may dwell encircled in a square.”
I could never quite make sense of it, but it seized my imagination as
nonsense sometimes will, and prepared it for the convulsion which was
to happen.
This was the saying:
“There will come one after me who shall build where I have destroyed,
and he shall capture the flame wherewith I have burned away the dying
thoughts of men.”
The words haunted me. They were in none of the Christmas books, nor in
the biography. I inserted it in the Concordance and in a new edition
of the Speeches, on my own responsibility and without saying a word to
my employers. There might or might not be trouble, but I knew that the
Chairwoman of the Governing Committee was a vain old creature and would
take the words to mean herself. To my mind they pointed straight to
Edmund. I knew that his cause was gaining ground and that, if I could
gain sufficient publicity for the saying, his following would be vastly
increased.
I was on good terms with the chief of the publishing department and was
able to persuade her to announce that the new edition of the Speeches
was the only one authorised by the Governing Committee; all others to
be called in. The success of my trick exceeded all my dreams. There was
something like an exodus from the capital.
I met my dear Audrey one day. She had come to spy out the land. Her
news was glorious. For miles round the once ruined city the farms were
occupied with happy men and women working together to supply food for
the towns, which in return furnished their wants from its workshops,
which the toilers filled with song as they worked. The fame of it was
everywhere growing. Other ruined cities had been occupied. Two of the
great nunneries were deserted. Edmund with a great company of young men
had taken possession of a town by the sea and opened the harbour and
released the ships.
“Ships!” I said. “There are ships sailing on the sea!”
That settled it. No more men of genius for me. That night I spent
in chalking up the saying of William Christmas on the walls of the
capital. The next morning I was with Audrey wandering about the
streets, hearing Edmund’s name on all lips, and then, satisfied that
all would be well, I made for the sea-board.
It was good to see America again, but I suffered there as acutely as
I had done in Fatland. I had been among women who, if misguided, were
free. My dear wife and I could never understand one another and she
died within a very few years after my return of a broken heart. I
thought I could not survive her, and should not have done but for my
fortunate encounter with Hohlenheim, who could understand my loathing
of woman in Fatland, of man in America, draw it up into his own
matchless imagination and distil the passion of it into beauty.
Out of Work
I: MR. BLY’S HEART BREAKS
In a little house, one of many such houses, in a town, one of many such
towns in Fatland, sat Nicholas Bly, a small stationer and newsagent,
by the bedside of his wife. She said: “Ain’t I thin, Nick?” and again
she said: “My hair is only half what it was.” And he said: “It’s very
pretty hair.” She smiled and took his hand in hers and she died. When
Nicholas Bly was quite sure that she was dead, when he could believe
that she was dead, he did not weep, for there were no tears in his
eyes. He said nothing, for there were no words in his mind. He felt
nothing, for his heart was breaking, and so little was he alive that
he did not know it. His wife was dead, his two children were dead, his
shop was closed, and he had two shillings in the world, and they were
borrowed.
He went out into the street and when he saw a well-fed man he hated
him: and when he saw a thin hungry man he despised him; on returning
to his house he found there a Doctor and a Parson. The Doctor said his
wife had died of something with two long Latin names.
“She starved,” said Nicholas Bly.
The Parson said something about the will and the love of God.
“The devil’s took her,” said Nicholas Bly.
The Parson cast up his eyes and exhorted the blasphemer to seek comfort
in duty and distraction in hard work.
“I’m out of work,” said Nicholas Bly; “the devil’s took my work and my
wife and my two children. Hell’s full up and overflowed into this ’ere
town and this ’ere street. We must fight the devil with fire and bloody
murders.”
The Parson and the Doctor agreed that the poor fellow was mad.
II: MR. BLY IS IMPRISONED
Nicholas Bly’s stomach was full of emptiness, the heat of his blood
parched his brains, and his sleep was crowded with huddling bad dreams.
He ate crusts and cabbage stalks picked up out of the gutter, and when
he was near mad with thirst he snatched beer jugs from children as they
turned into the entries leading to their houses. His days he spent
looking for the devil. Three nights he spent moving from one square
with seats round it to another, and on the fourth night he heard of a
brick-field where there was some warmth. He slept there that night and
was arrested. The magistrate said:
“I am satisfied that you are a thoroughly worthless character, an
incurable vagabond, and if not yet a danger, a nuisance to society....”
(The magistrate said a great deal more. He was newly appointed and
needed to persuade himself of his dignity by talk.)
Nicholas Bly was sent to prison.
III: THE DARK GENTLEMAN
When he left the prison Nicholas Bly realised that he had legs to walk
with but nowhere to go, hands to work with but nothing to do, a brain
to think with but never a thought. He was almost startled to find
himself utterly alone, and his loneliness drove him into a hot rage. In
prison he had thought vaguely of the world as a warm place outside, to
which in the course of days he would return. Now that he had returned
the world had nothing to do with him and he had nothing to do with it.
He prowled through the streets, but a sort of pride forbade him to
eat the cabbage stalks and crusts of the gutters, and to rob children
of their parents’ beer he was ashamed. He looked for work, but was
everywhere refused, and he said to himself:
“Prison is the best the world can do for men like me.”
But he was determined to give the world a better reason for putting him
in prison than sleeping in a brick-field because it was warm. The world
was cold. He would make it warm. The devil was in the world: he would
burn him out, use his own element against him.
He chose the largest timber-yard he could find, and that night he stole
a can of petrol, and when he had placed it in a heap of shavings went
out into the street to find some matches. He met a seedy individual in
a coat with a fur collar and a broad-brimmed hat, who looked like an
actor, and he asked him if he could oblige him with a match.
“Lucifers,” said the seedy individual and gave him three.
Nicholas Bly returned to the timber-yard with the matches. He struck
one. It went off like a rocket. The second exploded like a Chinese
cracker, and he was just lighting the third when he heard a melancholy
chuckle. He turned his head and found the seedy individual gazing at
him with an expression of wistfulness.
“Like old times,” said the seedy individual.
Nicholas Bly lit the third match and it flooded the whole yard with
Bengal light, and still he had not set fire to his petrol.
“Gimme another match,” said Nicholas Bly; “watch me set fire to the
yard and go and tell.”
“I have no more,” replied the stranger. “Those were my last. I no
longer make fire or instruments of fire. No one wants my tricks. I have
lost everything and am doomed.”
“I have lost my wife, my children and my work.”
“I have lost my kingdom, my power and my glory.”
“The devil took them,” answered Nicholas Bly.
“I wish I had,” replied the stranger.
IV: THE DARK GENTLEMAN’S STORY
Nicholas Bly fetched a screech loud enough to wake a whole parish. The
dark gentleman pounced on him firmly and gagged him with his hand, and
his fingers burnt into the newsagent’s cheek.
“Be silent,” said the dark gentleman, “you’ll have them coming and
taking you away from me. Will you be silent?”
Nicholas Bly nodded to say he would be silent. Then he said:
“If you didn’t take them, who did?”
“Jah!” said the devil, for the dark gentleman was no other. “Jah took
them. Jah does everything now, at least I am forced to the conclusion
that he does, since I find everything going on much the same. I knew
how it would be. I knew he would find it dull only dealing with
virtuous people. It was very sudden. I was deposed without any notice
just in the middle of the busiest time I’d had for centuries. I have
had a horrible time. No one believed in me. For years now I have only
been used to frighten children, and have occasionally been allowed to
slip into their dreams. You must agree that it is galling for one who
has lived on the fat of human faith--for in the good old days I had far
more souls than Jah. I haven’t been in a grown man’s mind for years
until I found yours open to me.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Nicholas Bly. “I want my wife. I want
my two children. I want my work.”
“Anything may be possible if you will believe in me.”
“I’ll believe in anything, I’d go to Hell if I could get them back.”
“There is no Hell,” said the devil.
V: COGITATION
This was a little difficult for Nicholas Bly. For a long time they sat
brooding in the darkness of the timber-yard. Then said Nicholas Bly:
“Seeing’s believing. I see you. I believe in you. You’re the first
critter that’s spoke to me honest and kindly this many a long day. You
seem to be worse off than I am. We’re mates.”
“Thank you,” said the devil. “In the old days I used to offer those who
believed in me women, wine, song and riches. But now we shall have to
see what we can do.”
“I want to spite that there Jah.”
“We will do our best,” said the devil.
With that they rose to their feet, and as they left the timber-yard the
devil shook a spark out of his tail on to the petrol, so that they had
not gone above a mile when the wood was ablaze and they could see the
red glow of the fire against the sky.
VI: CONFLAGRATION
Gleefully the devil took Mr. Bly back to watch the blaze, and they were
huddled and squeezed and pressed in the crowd. A fat woman took a
fancy to the devil and put her arm round his waist.
“Where are you living, old dear?” she said.
“You leave my pal alone,” said Nicholas Bly.
But the devil gave her a smacking kiss, and she slapped his face and
giggled, saying:
“Geeh! That was a warm one that was.”
And she persisted until the devil had confessed his name to be Mr.
Nicodemus. Then she said she had a snug little room in her house which
he could have--his pal too if they were not to be separated.
Mr. Bly demurred, but Mr. Nicodemus said:
“You can only get at Jah through the women.”
So they pursued the adventure and went home with the fat woman, but
when she reached her parlour she plumped down on her knees and said
her prayers, and the devil vanished, and she was so enraged that she
swept Nicholas Bly out with her broom. He hammered on her door and
told her why his friend had vanished, and that if she would say her
prayers backward he would return. She said her prayers backwards and
Mr. Nicodemus returned.
VII: TIB STREET
The fat woman’s name was Mrs. Martin, and when she found that her
beloved had a tail she was not at all put out, but to avoid scandal,
cut it off.