Chapter VI: The Inner Brotherhood

We assembled in the large room of the first cottage I had seen—a sort of bare, bald dining-hall, big enough to feed some twenty or thirty souls, and ugly enough to take away their appetite for ever. Its architect’s name, I would conjecture, was Jeremiah.

“A new comrade,” Rothenburg said, waving his hand towards me not ungracefully. “Let us dine first, and consider her afterward.”

This was an awkward introduction. I sat down to eat and drink, painfully conscious that the eyes of anarchic Europe were upon me. My long unbroken ride had given me a keen edge for food; still, apart from their scrutiny, I confess I eat with an undercurrent of disgust. The meat and bread were wholesome; but I suspected their cleanliness. The napery, too, was coarse and cried for the laundress. However, if one chooses to herd with anarchists, one must not be too particular on matters of diet. I eat a hearty dinner, in spite of my doubts, and even drank some sour red wine; for they were not English enough yet to relish our beer, of which I was not sorry.

Replenished by dinner, they drew apart, discussing me in low tones and in cosmopolitan languages. I fancy I detected the ring both of Czech and Yiddish—tongues of which I do not profess an intimate knowledge, though my East-End experiences had given me a distant nodding acquaintance with either. Most of them were Austrians (assorted) or else subjects of the Tsar, living here for their health, because they preferred England as a place of residence to that part of the Russian territory which is called Siberia. From time to time they appealed to me on some point of my history—where was I born, of what nationality, why did I wish to join them? I answered as best I might, though the ordeal was severe. It was bad enough to stand as Esther before Ahasuerus, but I realised now that I was set to perform the part of Vashti before a whole court of critical anarchists.

At last Rothenburg, still fumbling with his moustache, had the happy thought to ask me my name. When I said “Juliet Appleton” I saw that it moved them. The fact that I was a Juliet gave food to their fancy. Each man drew himself up and stroked his chin with the very air of a Romeo. Even the women smiled—for there were women among them, some four or five, with pretty curly-haired children. Then they began to instruct me in the doctrines of their sect. I was sworn to eternal friendship with all and sundry. The intricate Eleusinian mysteries of anarchy were explained to me, as catechumen, in Alsatian French and Bohemian German. I answered in such dialects of either tongue as I had at command. My profession of faith appeared to give satisfaction, especially when, prompted by Rothenburg, I renounced Karl Marx and all his ways, and embraced with fervour the true faith of Bakunin. Who or what Bakunin was I had not an idea: but I made up in zeal what I lacked in understanding.

It began to dawn on me that sectarianism is of the nature of man, and that all things tend to fall into my doxy and your doxy.

At last Rothenburg arrived at what he evidently considered a crucial point in his catechism. “You understand, of course, that you must not form an idolatrous attachment to any one of the comrades, to the exclusion of the others?”

I glanced around me at the dozen sorry specimens of the male of my species there ranged before me, and felt convinced at sight I could safely engage not to idolise excessively any one among them. And I said so.

This assurance appeared to give the community boundless satisfaction. They turned next to my bicycle, which was a nice little machine—the nicest in England, indeed, like everyone else’s. One or two of them were kind enough to accept my full membership at once by trying to ride it. I am tolerably tall for a woman, while the comrades, as I learned to call them, were for the most part undersized town-bred working men, of the skimpy order. Thus my machine just fitted them; they did not even require to shift the pedals. I showed them how to stick on, correcting the excessive line of grace in their initial curves: this obviously pleased them, and I think they formed a high idea of the new comrade herself and more especially of the property she brought into the Community. They had not an equal opinion of Mr. Commissioner.

So I settled down at once as a full-fledged anarchist.

Figure to yourself a group of naked cottages, with bald slate roofs untempered by the years—no moss, no house-leeks—dropped down at random in a sticky clay cabbage-field—and you see our colony.

My first business was to behold where I was to abide. The rotund old lady whom I had found at the door of the first messuage or tenement took me round to my cubicle; for they had a nomenclature of their own, suited to the ways of anarchists. ’Twas in a brand-new building of pale pink brick—a sort of anæmic brick, which bore the same relation to healthy red brickiness that Rothenburg’s complexion bore to normal humanity. It was vastly modern, like the views of its builders; it also betrayed the same painful lack of æsthetic tendencies. It cried for creepers. In front of it stretched a patch of utilitarian potato-ground. I would have preferred hollyhocks. There was no hall or passage: the door opened abruptly into a small parlour; behind lay three bedrooms of the minutest dimensions. Mine was tiny. However, I have always inculcated kindness to animals, and am not conscious of the faintest desire to swing a cat; so it sufficed very well for me. The bath entailed difficulties, no other anarchist being a slave to the habit: but a wooden water-tub and economy of space speedily overcame them. I unpacked my knapsack, put my room to rights, dusted the window-panes, and sallied forth to see what work the Community demanded of me.

The Community was ranged outside my cottage door as one man. It seemed that, unable to resist the combined attractions of the bicycle and a new comrade, they had decreed a half-holiday by universal suffrage, and were waiting without to let me teach them the use of the machine. But the Commissioner, who was an unregenerate monopolist as to private property, effectually prevented its premature appropriation by a mute white protest.

I trembled as I saw how many awkward youths desired to ride my precious cycle. But if you go in for Communism you must expect it to cut both ways. I had eaten their dinner, they must share my bicycle. For so it is written in the lawless law of anarchy.

Most of these young men were good fellows in their way—very simple-hearted anarchists. I do not credit it that they could have blown up a Tsar, or even dropped a bomb into a suburban letter-box. They confined themselves to cabbages and passionate denunciation of the oppressors. But the ringleader in the attempt to borrow my bicycle from an absent comrade was an exception to the rule. He was a villainous-looking creature—the Caliban of our island. His name was Léon. I think he must have been built after designs by Mr. Aubrey Beardsley. He had rufous hair, a nose without a bridge, and thick protruding lips. Those lips were a nightmare. I set him down as a judicious cross between a Swiss _crétin_ and an albino negro. To make matters worse, like many other repulsive people, he had the habit when he spoke to you of coming up very close and breathing in your face, so that his protruding lips almost seemed to touch you. I had an irresistible impulse to say to him, “Take, oh take those lips away!” only, I knew if I did he would not understand; or if he understood he would misunderstand me.

I felt from the outset that I might have trouble with Léon.

That first night, for some time, I was kept awake by a continuous concert, which sorely puzzled me. It could not be nightingales—the note was not varied enough; nor was it the Six Great Powers of Europe—the chorus was far too concordant. It reminded me most of the serenade made by the small green southern tree-frogs; but here, in Sussex! I lay awake and racked my brain. Next day solved the mystery. The hollow beyond our plot of intensive culture was marshy and weedy, it teemed with natterjacks. I will own that till I came to Pinfold I wist not even that the natterjack existed. I had rolled him into one with his cousin the toad. But our only British brother, a leather-dresser from Bermondsey, and a born naturalist, soon showed me the difference. Ever since I have met the natterjack in society everywhere. He is the gentleman and the artist in his own family. Frogs croak, toads purr, but the natterjack sings. You will admire his clear high note, trilled with a delicate tremolo.

At last I fell asleep, a very wearied anarchist.