Chapter IV: Part 4

This unavoidable slip, of which I was a living and growing reminder, never prejudiced Mr. Pink my mother’s husband against me, but on the contrary seemed to stimulate his curiosity in me. He was a thin man, but I think of a passionate imagination, and I wanted nothing. Nor was he quite certain that it was his uncle the Chicago photographer, but in the wistful hope that it might have been Prince Moredje, the famous Balkan adventurer whom he used to decorate official banquets of which he was responsible for the seating plan, he provided me with a riding master though we lived in an unimproved flat in the rear and bought me when I was quite young a green plumed hat from an auctioneer friend of his who specialized in theatrical costumes. Himself he dressed shabbily, as his profession required. I never knew him otherwise than in his black and white checked suit and red tie, and it was one of the sorrows of his life that he could not wear black, for he was a quiet man, since his greatest attraction to his clients was that he was not genteel, by which he seemed more efficient, mysterious, quaint and criminal. My mother required very little beyond bed shawls, of which she kept two, one for company and one for private, the company one being pure white, that she might be thought of by visitors as a pale object martyred to her bed and so not excite experiences; I have this very shawl to thank for myself, which she was wearing when her sense was suddenly transported in time and she found herself with me in her womb and could make no denial or protest, and her white shawl on her shoulders though in private, that is, alone with her husband Mr. Pink who had just let himself in at the door from the Argentine, whence he had come in all haste to embrace her, having been made anxious by certain reports which his friends and relatives maliciously wrote him of my mother. Her private shawl, a red cashmere, she consoled herself in; she only wore it when she felt safe. In this shawl too she consented to rise for her needs and melancholies. How often have I come upon her standing in her shirt at the window, only half of her decently covered, the rest of her naked and unhappy--a pair of pretty buttocks that she could scarcely trust as far as the door and ready to betray her at the least winking of her eye and plant her where she must acknowledge her position by that she sat in it with them. It was to our further mortification that our sad affliction only came over my mother and me when we were sitting, an attitude that by its ease soothes suspicion, and that we have never come to ourselves except in this attitude, which may try dignity painfully, as I have reason to know. ‘To find one’s feet’--how well, alas, do _I_ know the tragic significance of that phrase....

WILLIAM AND DAISY: FRAGMENT OF A FINISHED NOVEL

William and Daisy lived in Cemetery Street. They had no connection with each other except that they were not attracted by life or death; so they lived in Cemetery Street. William was pessimistic because he disliked life a little more than death, Daisy was optimistic because she disliked death a little more than life. William had two memories: one, that he had been familiar with harlots; two, that he had been familiar with famous writers. These two memories mixed and he could make nothing of them. Daisy had two memories: one, that she had once been a harlot; two, that she had in her time known several famous writers. These two memories mixed and she could make nothing of them. They could make nothing of their memories except that they both felt dignified and did not wish to end their days in a workhouse. So they lived in Cemetery Street.

Every night Daisy went for a walk down Cemetery Street and said ‘What a lovely night,’ and passed William on her walk and said ‘What a coincidence’; and every night William, too, said ‘What a lovely night’ and ‘What a coincidence.’ They began to know each other’s thoughts and were more bored with each other than ever.

They had their shoes mended by the same shoemaker. Each knew the shoemaker had taken a girl to live with him behind the shop and then thrown her into the street when his wife had learned about it. Yet each continued to think him a nice man because they could not be bothered to think him a mean man. They became more and more absolute in their thoughts and habits until ...

I do not know what happened to them, nor do they.

AN ANONYMOUS BOOK

§1

An anonymous book for children only was published by an anonymous publisher and anonymously praised in an anonymous journal. Moreover, it imitated variously the style of each of the known writers of the time, and this made the responsibility for its authorship all the more impossible to place. For none of the known writers could in the circumstances look guilty. But every one else did, so this made the responsibility for its authorship all the more difficult to place. The police had instructions to arrest all suspicious-looking persons. But as every one except the known writers was under suspicion the department of censorship gave orders that the known authors should be put in prison to separate them from the rest of the population and that every one else should be regarded as legally committed to freedom. ‘Did you write it?’ every one was questioned at every street corner. And as the answer was always ‘No’, the questioned person was always remanded as a suspect.

The reasons why this book aroused the department of censorship were these. One--it imitated (or seemed to imitate) the style of all the known authors of the time and was therefore understood by the authorities to be a political (or moral) satire. Two--it had no title and was therefore feared by the authorities to be dealing under the cover of obscurity with dangerous subjects. Three--its publisher could not be traced and it was therefore believed by the authorities to have been printed uncommercially. Four--it had no author and was therefore suspected by the authorities of having been written by a dangerous person. Five (and last)--it advertised itself as a book for children, and was therefore concluded by the authorities to have been written with the concealed design of corrupting adults. As the mystery grew, the vigilance of the police grew, and the circulation of the book grew: for the only way that its authorship could be discovered was by increasing the number of people suspected, and this could only be done by increasing the number of readers. The authorities secretly hoped to arrive at the author by separating those who had read the book from those who had not read it, and singling out from among the latter him or her who pretended to know least about it.

All the stories in the book were about people who did not like the world and who would have been glad to be somewhere else. Some were irreligious, some were ungrateful, some were scornful, some were openly rebellious, some were secretly rebellious, some were merely ironical, some were merely bored. Many were too good, many were too bad. All were disobedient, and all wanted to go away. Wanting to go away to somewhere else did not mean wanting to go away to somewhere else with the rest of the entire population of the world. It meant in all the stories wanting to go away alone. All the stories in the book were about people who wanted to go away to somewhere where they would be, no matter how many other people they found there, the only one. All the people in the book thought the world fit only for light, heat, moisture, electricity, plants, the lower animals, and perhaps for occasional parties, excursions, commemoration days, Sunday afternoons, exhibitions, spectacles, concerts, sight-seeing and conversation. But none of them thought it fit for higher creatures to live in permanently, because all who were in it, they said, were the only one, and were thus objects of hate, ridicule or mock-adoration for one another, being each by his mind freakish and uncommon but by his brain natural and common.

Such was the philosophical import of this book. But its philosophical import was got only if the reader had a taste for, a passion for, a suspicion of, an obsession with, or instructions to look for philosophical imports. Or if he shrank from stories. What was plain and comprehensible before all philosophical imports was just stories. The four upon which most suspicion was fixed were _The Flying Attic_, _The Man Who Told Lies To His Mother_, _The Woman Who Loved an Engine_, and _The Woman Who Was Bewitched By a Parallel_.

It was impossible to say particularly which story was written in the style of which author. The effect of imitation that the book gave was rather a mixed one; that is, it was generally and throughout a witty, energetic, beautiful, simple, earnest, intricate, entertaining, ironic, stern, fantastic, eloquent, modest, outspoken, matter-of-fact and so-forth book, so that generally speaking it could not be read but as a conglomerate imitation of the noted literary manners of the time, of the well-known author who wrote so wittily, of the well-known author who wrote so energetically, of the well-known author who wrote so beautifully, of the well-known author who wrote so simply, of the well-known author who wrote so earnestly, of the well-known author who wrote so intricately, of the well-known author who wrote so entertainingly, of the well-known author who wrote so ironically, of the well-known author who wrote so sternly, of the well-known author who wrote so fantastically, of the well-known author who wrote so eloquently, of the well-known author who wrote so modestly, of the well-known author who wrote so outspokenly, of the well-known author who wrote so matter-of-factly, and of the well-known author who wrote and-so-forthly.

It is not the object of this account, whose purpose is chiefly 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_.

(_c_) That He one day woke to find himself Professor in Time at the University of Colour: he was addressing a class of old, old men on the principle of greenishness. ‘For example,’ he said, ‘there are many modern artists who will not use green at all in their pictures: it is a foreign colour, an outside colour, an extra colour--the colour of conclusion. Therefore the colour of haughty youth, which is final, and of weird old age, which is beyond finality. The modern painter who banishes green does so from ambition: he means to show that he can give his pictures an effect of conclusion without making use of the wittiness of green. Primitive people make use of green with religious brutality to clinch any argument in colour. Flowers, on the other hand, never use green, nor the sky; unless unwholesome--an eccentric avoidance of a banal they-know-not-what. Earth-green is the symbol of time overcoming time. Green is a colour of sophisticated crudeness and of crude sophistication. A brute thing is in its heart of hearts green, and a casuistical mind is in its heart of hearts green. The grave mathematical most is green, and the silly poetical least is green. The new-born baby is green and the newly-dead person is green. And the extreme of tragedy is green, and the extreme of comedy is green.’

At this moment the oldest of the old, old men got up and shrieked, smilingly through his three teeth, saying: ‘I spent my whole fortune in one night in music and food on a girl whose mother was a singer and whose father was a chef. “Trrup,” she said, snapping her fingers, “you are an old man, and I love a boy who blacks my boots.”’ ‘Trrup,’ he shrieked, smiling through his three teeth, ‘I am green, I am green, and this is my life’s story.’ And ‘Trrup,’ shrieked all the old men, ‘we are green, we are green.’ Until He could not bear the noise and stopped his ears with his fingers, and closed his eyes.

When He removed his fingers from his ears and opened his eyes, he was sitting by his own fireside, and his cat was on the hearth-rug and She was near him, knitting him a green jacket. ‘Trrup,’ said the cat’s eyes, ‘what a fool you are to dream such sense,’ and ‘Trrup,’ said She, ‘what a dear silly you shall be napping in my green jacket.’

‘I,’ said He to himself, ‘must tell this story to my mother, it will amuse her.’

And it was told, and it did, and she believed it of He, and everything else that was told of him, and put another lump of sugar in her tea, near the bottom of the cup, saying to herself: ‘Is it not so? Sometimes I like Mrs. History, and sometimes I do not. Sometimes I pity her, and sometimes I wish her worse trouble. And what does it matter, since she is all this, and I am all that, and each of us always, no matter what happens, a bit of herself? When I am angriest I am nearest to kindness, and when I am clearest in my head I am nearest to confusion. Is it not so? I am sure I never know what I am going to do next. For instance, there are those wicked loves who follow a certain red flag: I am sure I should forget myself and join them if it were a green one.’ For she, taking after her own son, was also a liar.

§5

The most curiously integrated of the groups of stories which may be classified as a single dramatic (or philosophical) unit of the book is the queen-group. Indeed it is possible to discuss this group as if it were but one story, the episodic variations seeming no more than caprices of style--the same story told in different degrees of earnestness and so in different personalities, as it were. The one fixed personality of the group is the Queen herself; the others are all stylistic personalities. The Queen began as a photograph used by a newspaper at discreet intervals to represent the female bandit of the moment or the murder-victim or the fire-heroine or the missionary’s bride. By experience and variety she became a personality, and a fixed personality. It is quite remarkable in fact how under our very eyes this anonymous author should be able to transform a fiction into a fact: for the Queen is as true for always as the photograph is each time false. Indeed, the whole transformation is merely a matter of style. To illustrate: ‘As Maxine, the world’s sleeplessness champion, the photograph had great momentary importance but did not know it because it was part of a newspaper dynamic in which everything happened with equal fatalistic effect, everything was accident, in the moment succeeding accident it was always clear that nothing had happened. As photograph therefore the photograph saw all this; it was permanently unimportant but it knew this. And as it had a knowledge of its unimportance, it also had a knowledge of the importance of accident; and as the first knowledge made it insignificant so the second knowledge made it Queen. The Queen, the photograph without identity, this anonymous particularity, did in fact dwell in a world in which she was the only one and in which the world of many was only what she called “the chaotic conversation of events.” So she resolved to put her queendom in order, not by interrupting the conversation, which would only have increased the chaos, but by having minutely recorded whatever “happened,” whatever “was.” Nothing then in her queendom contradicted anything else, neither the argument nor its answer, neither the burglar-proof lock nor the burglar against whom it was not proof: everything was so, everything was statistical, everything was falsification, everything was conversation, and she was an anonymous particularity conversing with herself about her own nothingness, so she was outside the chaotic conversation of events, she was Queen.’

Her three chief statisticians (we learn) were publishers. They were all pleasant fellows, each with a touch of the universal in him, and came and went without suspicion everywhere in the queendom because of their peoplishness: they too, like all the rest, were statistical, so statistical indeed that they were statisticians. They went about preaching the gospel of the communal ownership of events. They said: ‘Primitive man believed in things as events. As civilized man it is your duty to believe in events as things.’ And the people did. And they permitted the statisticians (or publishers) to know what happened to them and what they did with what happened to them as faithfully as they reported their possessions each year in the great Common Book. In this queendom there was no loss and no mystery and no suffering, because everything was reported as conversation and nothing therefore thought about. All was automatic spontaneity, even their love for their Queen. As for the Queen, she would walk (we are told) through the dark rooms of her palace at night, having each room lit only upon her leaving it, until she reached her own small chamber, which remained unlit all night while the others shone; until morning, when in her own small chamber the curtains were drawn, the lamps lit, while in all the other rooms of the palace there was daylight. The meaning of this is plain: that in the anonymousness of the Queen lay her non-statistical, her non-falsificatory individuality. She is the author, the queendom is her book. She is darkness and mystery, the plain, banal though chaotic daylight is her unravelling. By making the unravelling more methodic and so more plainly banal she separates in people the statistical from the non-statistical part, the known from the anonymous. She shows herself to be a dualist of the most dangerous kind.

For a long time the authorities from the internal evidence of the queen-stories suspected the anonymous author of being a woman. They said that it was not improbable that the book was the Bible of an underground sect devoted to educating female children to be statistical queens. But this view had to be abandoned as unscholarly, even ungentlemanly, because in nothing that the Queen said or did was there any accent of disorder or ambition: she merely, with miraculous patience and tact, saw to it that records were kept of everything. The authorities eventually concluded that she was a Character of Fiction, and so stainless, and could not help them. For some time their suspicion was fixed on a character in one of the stories with whom the Queen fell in love. But as he was Minister of Pastimes to the Queen it was thought that it might prove generally disrespectful to State officials to pursue the matter further (as when, in the story _Understanding_, suspicion was fixed on the character who bribed the magistrates to convict him, the inquiry was stopped by the authorities--the detectives even put on the wrong scent--as too metaphysical and cynical).

It must now be clear that the strain of my task is beginning to tell on me. I have become very nervous. In the beginning my emotions were all scholarly, my task was a pleasure, I had the manner of calmness with an antiquity. Toward the end fear has crept upon me. I must speak, and after that go on till I can go on no longer: till I am prevented. I say _prevented_. For I am haunted by the obsession that the authorities are still watching. They do not suspect the Queen. She was or is a fixed personality, so anonymous as to be irreproachably a Character of Fiction. The others vary in earnestness; in anonymity; they are, as I have suggested, personalities of style; they point to the probability that the author was not or is not a Character of Fiction. I dare go no further. I have become very nervous. I shall nevertheless attempt to continue my task until--I am prevented.

One of the three publishers was a Jew. He was tall, his ears outstanding, his grin long, his voice loose in his mouth. He had been financial adviser to a charitable organization and had had much general statistical though humane experience. He was gross but kind and therefore in charge of all sentimental records: his grossness assured accuracy, his kindness, delicacy. He had the historical genius, and several specimens of his work are given--though with a touch of dryness in the author himself which makes it impossible to enjoy them as we might have were the book without an author. Indeed, they were not meant to be read at all, but merely written to satisfy the political instincts of the Queen, who never read them herself. I find it difficult to pass over them myself, for aside from their part in the book they are very interesting. There are several small extracts that might be used here with complete propriety and even in a scholarly way. And after all, the author wrote them down himself, did he not? But he was writing and not reading. But am I not writing and not reading? My position becomes more and more uncertain. I shall hurry on.

I shall give one of the Queen’s monologues, to tide us over this difficult period. The monologue does not appear in the book itself: it would have been a piece of naturalism contrary to the theory on which the book was built. Therefore I give it here, as reading. No questions must be asked of me, for as a scholar I should feel obliged to answer them; and the passage would then become writing; and I should have produced a piece of naturalism. Here then is, shall I say, a variety: which is not the anonymous author’s writing but we might almost say his reading, and after that my writing but of his reading, which remains reading for all my writing. My conscience is in your hands: the burden of curiosity and falsification falls upon you. With you rest also the rights of anonymity, the reputation of style, the fortunes of publication, the future of philosophy and scholarship and the little children, for whom these contrive sense. Sense, I say, not satire.

And now for the Queen’s monologue, which the anonymous author did not write and which for this very reason requires, as the reader’s part, sense, I say, not satire, even more immediately than what he did write. Furthermore, you will have to discover for yourself where it begins and where it ends: were I to mark it off it would become writing and so a piece of naturalism and so bely sense and give encouragement to satire. I mean: restraint, statistics, falsification, is more accurate than courage, reality, truth, and so truer. For the Queen’s monologue, since the anonymous author did not write it down, is true; had he not statistically, falsificatorily, restrained himself from writing it down it would have become a piece of naturalism and so a subject of satire. To tide us over a difficult period I set myself the difficult task of writing down the Queen’s monologue without turning it into writing, and so defying satire (if I succeed, which depends on you). The important thing is to defy satire. Satire is lying: falsity as opposed to truth and falsity as opposed to falsification. It is betwixt and between; against sense, which, whatever it is, is one thing or the other--generally the other, it being for practical purposes impossible for it to be perpetually one thing. By practical purposes I mean of course the question of boredom, as truth finding truth monotonous. Therefore things happen. Sense, I say, not satire. Imagine a woman has her heart broken and imagine a man breaking it, then her heart heals and he ceases to be a villain, and then they meet again and her heart is whole and he is not a villain. Does she weep because her heart was once broken and does he blush because he once broke it? This would be satire. No, they both smile, and she gives him her heart to break again, and he breaks it. This is sense. Or they both smile and turn away from each other, and this, too, is sense, but sense too academic to survive the strain of academically enforcing itself. The One Thing must be saved from itself, it must not be allowed to overwork itself or go stale. That is why sense is one thing or the other and generally the other: falsification to relieve truth, broken hearts to protect whole hearts, weakness to spare strength. Fact is fancy and fancy is desire and desire is puff! puff! everything that satisfies it and which must be carefully recorded in spite of contradictions and lengthiness. Desire is the other things, in great number. And what is satisfaction? Not the other things, that satisfy, but the one thing, that cannot satisfy or be satisfied, and so, though but one thing, equal to desire, and so to all the other things. Fact is _it_ not _me_; fact is fancy and fancy is desire and desire is the other things. Satisfaction is _me_, which _it_ calls Queen. _It_ is a lot of him’s, _it_ is a queendom, _it_ is desire speaking the language of satisfaction, _it_ is a great looseness and restlessness of fact and confusion of eyesight and costume, into which the Queen brings sense through order. And what is order? Order is observation. Her first publisher (or statistician) is a gross, kind Jew. Her second is a subtle, cruel Turk, who brutally forced events: he has the political genius. But the people do not mind, since the events happen anyhow: they shrug their shoulders good-naturedly and say ‘Old Hassan Bey smiling with Turkish teeth,’ and call on the first publisher to take notice how smilingly they wince back. Her third is a Christian, and he does nothing: he has the philosophical genius. His idleness and talkativeness exasperate the other two into efficiency. His favourite harangue is: ‘Let the people create their own order.’

‘But how, their own order?’

‘Let them think.’

‘But if they think, they will all think differently, and not only differently--some will think more powerfully than others.’

‘Exactly: those who think more powerfully than others will create order.’

‘But this would not be real order, rather the disorder of a false order created by the most powerfully thinking individual or individuals of the moment. This would be anarchism, and anarchism is not enough.’

‘I have heard that said before, but how is the order created by the Queen not anarchism?’

‘The Queen does not create order, she observes methodically, she creates _her_ order. That is why _it_ is _her_ queendom.’

‘But is this not merely a refined form of anarchism?’

‘No, it is more than anarchism. The Queen is not the chief individual of her queendom; she is the _me_ of the _it_; she is the one thing, her queendom is the other things; she is satisfaction, her queendom is desire, a lot of _him’s_. The more _me_ she is, the more _it_ it is, and the more anonymous she is, and the more she and her queendom are diplomatically indistinguishable. The domestic situation is of course another affair. But to carry the distinction beyond the boundaries of the book is to fall betwixt and between, into satire.’

§6

Therefore the time has come to close. I am discovered, or rather I have discovered myself, for the authorities lost interest in me when they saw that I would discover myself before I could be officially discovered, that I would in fact break through the pages and destroy the strongest evidence that might be held against me, that is, that ‘An anonymous book----’ etc. I understand now that what they desired to prevent was just what has happened. You must forgive me and believe that I was not trying to deceive, but that I became confused. I over-distinguished and so fell into satire and so discovered myself and so could not go on, to maintain a satiric distinction between authorship and scholarship.

And what of the woman who loved an engine? I cannot say. And the woman who was bewitched by a parallel? I cannot say. They come after the place where I left off.

THE DAMNED THING

§1

‘Sex’ is crude sex, resembling other crude appetites which similarly lose significance as soon as satisfied; and it is translated sex--sex surviving the satisfaction of the appetite. As the first it applies to the mechanics, as the second to the sentiment of sex.