_THE
PHOENIX LIBRARY_
ANTIC HAY
_THE PHOENIX LIBRARY_
QUEEN VICTORIA _by_ Lytton Strachey
EMINENT VICTORIANS Lytton Strachey
ANTIC HAY Aldous Huxley
ALONG THE ROAD Aldous Huxley
TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS Arnold Bennett
THE MERCY OF ALLAH Hilaire Belloc
LADY INTO FOX and A MAN IN THE ZOO (1 vol.) David Garnett
BOOKS & CHARACTERS Lytton Strachey
FIERY PARTICLES C. E. Montague
FIRST PLAYS A. A. Milne
CROME YELLOW Aldous Huxley
ART Clive Bell
DISENCHANTMENT C. E. Montague
THOSE BARREN LEAVES Aldous Huxley
VISION AND DESIGN Roger Fry
ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST Julian Huxley
PLAYS Richard Hughes
LIMBO Aldous Huxley
SECOND PLAYS A. A. Milne
THE RIGHT PLACE C. E. Montague
THE SAILOR’S RETURN David Garnett
MORTAL COILS Aldous Huxley
MR. WESTON’S GOOD WINE T. F. Powys
LOLLY WILLOWES Sylvia Townsend Warner
ON THE MARGIN Aldous Huxley
THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS Arnold Bennett
TARR Wyndham Lewis
LITTLE MEXICAN Aldous Huxley
97 & 99 St. Martin’s Lane
London, W. C. 2
ANTIC HAY
_By_
ALDOUS HUXLEY
[Illustration]
CHATTO AND WINDUS
LONDON
First published November 1923
Printed in Great Britain; all rights reserved
MY MEN LIKE SATYRS GRAZING ON THE LAWNS
SHALL WITH THEIR GOAT-FEET DANCE THE ANTIC HAY.
_Marlowe_
ANTIC HAY
CHAPTER I
Gumbril, Theodore Gumbril Junior, B.A. Oxon., sat in his oaken stall on
the north side of the School Chapel and wondered, as he listened through
the uneasy silence of half a thousand schoolboys to the First Lesson,
pondered, as he looked up at the vast window opposite, all blue and
jaundiced and bloody with nineteenth-century glass, speculated in his
rapid and rambling way about the existence and the nature of God.
Standing in front of the spread brass eagle and fortified in his
convictions by the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy (for this first Sunday
of term was the Fifth after Easter), the Reverend Pelvey could speak of
these things with an enviable certainty. “Hear, O Israel,” he was
booming out over the top of the portentous Book: “the Lord our God is
one Lord.”
One Lord; Mr. Pelvey knew; he had studied theology. But if theology and
theosophy, then why not theography and theometry, why not theognomy,
theotrophy, theotomy, theogamy? Why not theophysics and theo-chemistry?
Why not that ingenious toy, the theotrope or wheel of gods? Why not a
monumental theodrome?
In the great window opposite, young David stood like a cock, crowing on
the dunghill of a tumbled giant. From the middle of Goliath’s forehead
there issued, like a narwhal’s budding horn, a curious excrescence. Was
it the embedded pebble? Or perhaps the giant’s married life?
“... with all thine heart,” declaimed the Reverend Pelvey, “and with all
thy soul, and with all thy might.”
No, but seriously, Gumbril reminded himself, the problem was very
troublesome indeed. God as a sense of warmth about the heart, God as
exultation, God as tears in the eyes, God as a rush of power or
thought—that was all right. But God as truth, God as 2 + 2 = 4—that
wasn’t so clearly all right. Was there any chance of their being the
same? Were there bridges to join the two worlds? And could it be that
the Reverend Pelvey, M.A., fog-horning away from behind the imperial
bird, could it be that he had an answer and a clue? That was hardly
believable. Particularly if one knew Mr. Pelvey personally. And Gumbril
did.
“And these words which I command thee this day,” retorted Mr. Pelvey,
“shall be in thine heart.”
Or in the heart, or in the head? Reply, Mr. Pelvey, reply. Gumbril
jumped between the horns of the dilemma and voted for other organs.
“And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of
them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way,
and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.”
Diligently to thy children.... Gumbril remembered his own childhood;
they had not been very diligently taught to him. ‘Beetles, black
beetles’—his father had a really passionate feeling about the clergy.
Mumbojumbery was another of his favourite words. An atheist and an
anti-clerical of the strict old school he was. Not that, in any case, he
gave himself much time to think about these things; he was too busy
being an unsuccessful architect. As for Gumbril’s mother, her diligence
had not been dogmatic. She had just been diligently good, that was all.
Good; good? It was a word people only used nowadays with a kind of
deprecating humorousness. Good. Beyond good and evil? We are all that
nowadays. Or merely below them, like earwigs? I glory in the name of
earwig. Gumbril made a mental gesture and inwardly declaimed. But good
in any case, there was no getting out of that, good she had been. Not
nice, not merely _molto simpatica_—how charmingly and effectively these
foreign tags assist one in the great task of calling a spade by some
other name!—but good. You felt the active radiance of her goodness when
you were near her.... And that feeling, was that less real and valid
than two plus two?
The Reverend Pelvey had nothing to reply. He was reading with a holy
gusto of “houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and
wells digged, which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which
thou plantedst not.”
She had been good and she had died when he was still a boy; died—but he
hadn’t been told that till much later—of creeping and devouring pain.
Malignant disease—oh, _caro nome_!
“Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God,” said Mr. Pelvey.
Even when the ulcers are benign; thou shalt fear. He had travelled up
from school to see her, just before she died. He hadn’t known that she
was going to die, but when he entered her room, when he saw her lying so
weakly in the bed, he had suddenly begun to cry, uncontrollably. All the
fortitude, the laughter even, had been hers. And she had spoken to him.
A few words only; but they had contained all the wisdom he needed to
live by. She had told him what he was, and what he should try to be, and
how to be it. And crying, still crying, he had promised that he would
try.
“And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes,” said Mr. Pelvey,
“for our good always, that he might preserve us alive, as it is at this
day.”
And had he kept his promise, Gumbril wondered, had he preserved himself
alive?
“Here endeth the First Lesson.” Mr. Pelvey retreated from the eagle, and
the organ presaged the coming _Te Deum_.
Gumbril hoisted himself to his feet; the folds of his B.A. gown billowed
nobly about him as he rose. He sighed and shook his head with the
gesture of one who tries to shake off a fly or an importunate thought.
When the time came for singing, he sang. On the opposite side of the
chapel two boys were grinning and whispering to one another behind their
lifted Prayer Books. Gumbril frowned at them ferociously. The two boys
caught his eye and their faces at once took on an expression of sickly
piety; they began to sing with unction. They were two ugly,
stupid-looking louts, who ought to have been apprenticed years ago to
some useful trade. Instead of which they were wasting their own and
their teacher’s and their more intelligent comrades’ time in trying,
quite vainly, to acquire an elegant literary education. The minds of
dogs, Gumbril reflected, do not benefit by being treated as though they
were the minds of men.
“O Lord, have mercy upon us: have mercy upon us.”
Gumbril shrugged his shoulders and looked round the chapel at the faces
of the boys. Lord, indeed, have mercy upon us! He was disturbed to find
the sentiment echoed on a somewhat different note in the Second Lesson,
which was drawn from the twenty-third chapter of St. Luke. “Father,
forgive them,” said Mr. Pelvey in his unvaryingly juicy voice; “for they
know not what they do.” Ah, but suppose one did know what one was doing?
suppose one knew only too well? And of course one always did know. One
was not a fool.
But this was all nonsense, all nonsense. One must think of something
better than this. What a comfort it would be, for example, if one could
bring air cushions into chapel! These polished oaken stalls were
devilishly hard; they were meant for stout and lusty pedagogues, not for
bony starvelings like himself. An air cushion, a delicious pneu.
“Here endeth,” boomed Mr. Pelvey, closing his book on the back of the
German eagle.
As if by magic, Dr. Jolly was ready at the organ with the _Benedictus_.
It was positively a relief to stand again; this oak was adamantine. But
air cushions, alas, would be too bad an example for the boys. Hardy
young Spartans! it was an essential part of their education that they
should listen to the word of revelation without pneumatic easement. No,
air cushions wouldn’t do. The real remedy, it suddenly flashed across
his mind, would be trousers with pneumatic seats. For all occasions; not
merely for churchgoing.
The organ blew a thin Puritan-preacher’s note through one of its hundred
nostrils. “I believe....” With a noise like the breaking of a wave, five
hundred turned towards the East. The view of David and Goliath was
exchanged for a Crucifixion in the grand manner of eighteen hundred and
sixty. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” No, no,
Gumbril preferred to look at the grooved stonework rushing smoothly up
on either side of the great east window towards the vaulted roof;
preferred to reflect, like the dutiful son of an architect he was, that
Perpendicular at its best—and its best is its largest—is the finest sort
of English Gothic. At its worst and smallest, as in most of the colleges
of Oxford, it is mean, petty, and, but for a certain picturesqueness,
almost wholly disgusting. He felt like a lecturer: next slide, please.
“And the life everlasting. Amen.” Like an oboe, Mr. Pelvey intoned: “The
Lord be with you.”
For prayer, Gumbril reflected, there would be Dunlop knees. Still, in
the days when he had made a habit of praying, they hadn’t been
necessary. “Our Father....” The words were the same as they were in the
old days; but Mr. Pelvey’s method of reciting them made them sound
rather different. Her dresses, when he had leaned his forehead against
her knee to say those words—those words, good Lord! that Mr. Pelvey was
oboeing out of existence—were always black in the evenings, and of silk,
and smelt of orris root. And when she was dying, she had said to him:
“Remember the Parable of the Sower, and the seeds that fell in shallow
ground.” No, no. Amen, decidedly. “O Lord, show thy mercy upon us,”
chanted oboe Pelvey, and Gumbril trombone responded, profoundly and
grotesquely: “And grant us thy salvation.” No, the knees were obviously
less important, except for people like revivalists and housemaids, than
the seat. Sedentary are commoner than genuflectory professions. One
would introduce little flat rubber bladders between two layers of cloth.
At the upper end, hidden when one wore a coat, would be a tube with a
valve: like a hollow tail. Blow it up—and there would be perfect comfort
even for the boniest, even on rock. How did the Greeks stand marble
benches in their theatres?
The moment had now come for the Hymn. This being the first Sunday of the
Summer term, they sang that special hymn, written by the Headmaster,
with music by Dr. Jolly, on purpose to be sung on the first Sundays of
terms. The organ quietly sketched out the tune. Simple it was, uplifting
and manly.
One, two, three, four; one, two THREE—4.
One, two-and three-and four-and; One, two THREE—4.
ONE—2, THREE—4; ONE—2—3—4,
and-ONE—2, THREE—4; ONE—2—3—4.
One, two-and three, four; One, two THREE—4.
Five hundred flawed adolescent voices took it up. For good example’s
sake, Gumbril opened and closed his mouth; noiselessly, however. It was
only at the third verse that he gave rein to his uncertain baritone. He
particularly liked the third verse; it marked, in his opinion, the
Headmaster’s highest poetical achievement.
(_f_) For slack hands and (_dim._) idle minds
(_mf_) Mischief still the Tempter finds.
(_ff_) Keep him captive in his lair.
At this point Dr. Jolly enriched his tune with a thick accompaniment in
the lower registers, artfully designed to symbolize the depth, the gloom
and general repulsiveness of the Tempter’s home.
(_ff_) Keep him captive in his lair.
(_f_) Work will bind him. (_dim._) Work is (_pp_) prayer.
Work, thought Gumbril, work. Lord, how passionately he disliked work!
Let Austin have his swink to him reserved! Ah, if only one had work of
one’s own, proper work, decent work—not forced upon one by the griping
of one’s belly! Amen! Dr. Jolly blew the two sumptuous jets of reverence
into the air; Gumbril accompanied them with all his heart. Amen, indeed.
Gumbril sat down again. It might be convenient, he thought, to have the
tail so long that one could blow up one’s trousers while one actually
had them on. In which case, it would have to be coiled round the waist
like a belt; or looped up, perhaps, and fastened to a clip on one’s
braces.
“The nineteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, part of the
thirty-fourth verse.” The Headmaster’s loud, harsh voice broke violently
out from the pulpit. “All with one voice for the space of about two
hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Ephesians.”
Gumbril composed himself as comfortably as he could on his oaken seat.
It was going to be one of the Headmaster’s real swingeing sermons. Great
is Diana. And Venus? Ah, these seats, these seats!
Gumbril did not attend evening chapel. He stayed at home in his lodgings
to correct the sixty-three Holiday Task Papers which had fallen to his
share. They lay, thick piles of them, on the floor beside his chair:
sixty-three answers to ten questions about the Italian Risorgimento. The
Risorgimento, of all subjects! It had been one of the Headmaster’s
caprices. He had called a special master’s meeting at the end of last
term to tell them all about the Risorgimento. It was his latest
discovery.
“The Risorgimento, gentlemen, is the most important event in modern
European history.” And he had banged the table; he had looked defiantly
round the room in search of contradictors.
But nobody had contradicted him. Nobody ever did; they all knew better.
For the Headmaster was as fierce as he was capricious. He was for ever
discovering something new. Two terms ago it had been singeing; after the
hair-cut and before the shampoo, there must be singeing.
“The hair, gentlemen, is a tube. If you cut it and leave the end
unsealed, the water will get in and rot the tube. Hence the importance
of singeing, gentlemen. Singeing seals the tube. I shall address the
boys about it after chapel to-morrow morning; and I trust that all
house-masters”—and he had glared around him from under his savage
eyebrows—“will see that their boys get themselves regularly singed after
cutting.”
For weeks afterwards every boy trailed behind him a faint and nauseating
whiff of burning, as though he were fresh from hell. And now it was the
Risorgimento. One of these days, Gumbril reflected, it would be birth
control, or the decimal system, or rational dress.
He picked up the nearest batch of papers. The printed questions were
pinned to the topmost of them.
“Give a brief account of the character and career of Pope Pius IX, _with
dates wherever possible_.”
Gumbril leaned back in his chair and thought of his own character, with
dates. 1896: the first serious and conscious and deliberate lie. Did you
break that vase, Theodore? No, mother. It lay on his conscience for
nearly a month, eating deeper and deeper. Then he had confessed the
truth. Or rather he had not confessed; that was too difficult. He led
the conversation, very subtly, as he thought, round through the
non-malleability of glass, through breakages in general, to this
particular broken vase; he practically forced his mother to repeat her
question. And then, with a burst of tears, he had answered, yes. It had
always been difficult for him to say things directly, point-blank. His
mother had told him, when she was dying.... No, no; not that.
In 1898 or 1899—oh, these dates!—he had made a pact with his little
cousin, Molly, that she should let him see her with no clothes on, if he
would do the same by her. She had fulfilled her part of the bargain; but
he, overwhelmed at the last moment by a passion of modesty, had broken
his promise.
Then, when he was about twelve and still at his preparatory school, in
1902 or 1903 he had done badly in his exams., on purpose; he had been
frightened of Sadler, who was in the same form, and wanted to get the
prize. Sadler was stronger than he was, and had a genius for
persecution. He had done so badly that his mother was unhappy; and it
was impossible for him to explain.
In 1906 he had fallen in love for the first time—ah, much more violently
than ever since—with a boy of his own age. Platonic it had been and
profound. He had done badly that term, too; not on purpose, but because
he had spent so much time helping young Vickers with his work. Vickers
was really very stupid. The next term he had ‘come out’—_Staphylococcus
pyogenes_ is a lover of growing adolescence—with spots and boils all
over his face and neck. Gumbril’s affection ceased as suddenly as it had
begun. He finished that term, he remembered, with a second prize.
But it was time to be thinking seriously of Pio Nono. With a sigh of
disgusted weariness, Gumbril looked at his papers. What had Falarope
Major to say of the Pontiff? “Pius IX was called Ferretti. He was a
liberal before he was a Pope. A kindly man of less than average
intelligence, he thought that all difficulties could be settled by a
little goodwill, a few reforms and a political amnesty. He wrote several
encyclicals and a syllabus.” Gumbril admired the phrase about less than
average intelligence; Falarope Major should have at least one mark for
having learnt it so well by heart. He turned to the next paper. Higgs
was of opinion that “Pius the Ninth was a good but stupid man, who
thought he could settle the Risorgimento with a few reforms and a
political armistice.” Beddoes was severer. “Pius IX was a bad man, who
said that he was infallible, which showed he had a less than average
intelligence.” Sopwith Minor shared the general opinion about Pio’s
intelligence, and displayed a great familiarity with the wrong dates.
Clegg-Weller was voluminous and informative. “Pius IX was not so clever
as his prime minister, Cardinal Antonelli. When he came to the tiara he
was a liberal, and Metternich said he had never reckoned on a liberal
pope. He then became a conservative. He was kindly, but not intelligent,
and he thought Garibaldi and Cavour would be content with a few reforms
and an amnesty.” At the top of Garstang’s paper was written: “I have had
measles all the holidays, so have been unable to read more than the
first thirty pages of the book. Pope Pius IX does not come into these
pages, of the contents of which I will proceed to give the following
précis.” And the précis duly followed. Gumbril would have liked to give
him full marks. But the business-like answer of Appleyard called him
back to a better sense of his duty. “Pius IX became Pope in 1846 and
died in 1878. He was a kindly man, but his intelligence was below
the....”
Gumbril laid the paper down and shut his eyes. No, this was really
impossible. Definitely, it couldn’t go on, it could not go on. There
were thirteen weeks in the summer term, there would be thirteen in the
autumn and eleven or twelve in the spring; and then another summer of
thirteen, and so it would go on for ever. For ever. It wouldn’t do. He
would go away and live uncomfortably on his three hundred. Or, no, he
would go away and he would make money—that was more like it—money on a
large scale, easily; he would be free and he would live. For the first
time, he would live. Behind his closed eyes, he saw himself living.
Over the plushy floors of some vast and ignoble Ritz slowly he walked,
at ease, with confidence: over the plushy floors and there, at the end
of a long vista, there was Myra Viveash, waiting, this time, for him;
coming forward impatiently to meet him, his abject lover now, not the
cool, free, laughing mistress who had lent herself contemptuously once
to his pathetic and silent importunity and then, after a day, withdrawn
the gift again. Over the plushy floors to dine. Not that he was in love
with Myra any longer: but revenge is sweet.
He sat in his own house. The Chinese statues looked out from the niches;
the Maillols passionately meditated, slept, and were more than alive.
The Goyas hung on the walls, there was a Boucher in the bathroom; and
when he entered with his guests, what a Piazzetta exploded above the
dining-room mantelpiece! Over the ancient wine they talked together, and
he knew everything they knew and more; he gave, he inspired, it was the
others who assimilated and were enriched. After dinner there were Mozart
quartets; he opened his portfolios and showed his Daumiers, his
Tiepolos, his Canaletto sketches, his drawings by Picasso and Lewis, and
the purity of his naked Ingres. And later, talking of Odalisques, there
were orgies without fatigue or disgust, and the women were pictures and
lust in action, art.
Over the empty plains forty horses impelled him towards Mantua:
rubadub—adubadub, with the silencer out. Towards the most romantic city
in all the world.
When he spoke to women—how easily and insolently he spoke now!—they
listened and laughed and looked at him sideways and dropped their
eyelids over the admission, the invitation, of their glance. With
Phyllis once he had sat, for how long? in a warm and moonless darkness,
saying nothing, risking no gesture. And in the end they had parted,
reluctantly and still in silence. Phyllis now was with him once again in
the summer night; but this time he spoke, now softly, now in the angry
breathless whisper of desire, he reached out and took her, and she was
naked in his arms. All chance encounters, all plotted opportunities
recurred; he knew, now, how to live, how to take advantage of them.
Over the empty plains towards Mantua, towards Mantua, he slid along at
ease, free and alone. He explored the horrors of Roman society; visited
Athens and Seville. To Unamuno and Papini he conversed familiarly in
their own tongues. He understood perfectly and without effort the
quantum theory. To his friend Shearwater he gave half a million for
physiological research. He visited Schoenberg and persuaded him to write
still better music. He exhibited to the politicians the full extent of
their stupidity and their wickedness; he set them working for the
salvation, not the destruction, of humanity. Once in the past when he
had been called upon to make a public speech, he had felt so nervous
that he was sick; the thousands who listened to him now bent like wheat
under the wind of his eloquence. But it was only by the way and
occasionally that he troubled himself to move them. He found it easy now
to come to terms with every one he met, to understand all points of
view, to identify himself with even the most unfamiliar spirit. And he
knew how everybody lived, and what it was like to be a mill girl, a
dustman, an engine-driver, a Jew, an Anglican bishop, a
confidence-trickster. Accustomed as he was to being swindled and imposed
upon without protest, he now knew the art of being brutal. He was just
dressing down that insolent porter at the Continental, who had
complained that ten francs wasn’t enough (and had got, as a matter of
historic fact, another five in addition), when his landlady gave a
knock, opened the door and said: “Dinner’s ready, Mr. Gumbril.”
Feeling a little ashamed at having been interrupted in what was, after
all, one of the ignobler and more trivial occupations of his new life,
Gumbril went down to his fatty chop and green peas. It was the first
meal to be eaten under the new dispensation; he ate it, for all that it
was unhappily indistinguishable from the meals of the past, with elation
and a certain solemnity, as though he were partaking of a sacrament. He
felt buoyant with the thought that at last, at last, he was doing
something about life.
When the chop was eaten, he went upstairs and, after filling two
suit-cases and a Gladstone bag with the most valued of his possessions,
addressed himself to the task of writing to the Headmaster. He might
have gone away, of course, without writing. But it would be nobler, more
in keeping, he felt, with his new life, to leave a justification
behind—or rather not a justification, a denouncement. He picked up his
pen and denounced.