Death of a Hero (23 page)

He lay awake long that night, unable to sleep for very love of living. So much to see, so much to experience, so much to achieve so much to be and do! How wonderful to do things with Elizabeth! It would be fun to go to New York, of course, but perhaps one ought to see the Old World first? She said something about Paris and Spain. We might go together. Cursed money difficulty. Never mind, if one wants to do a thing hard enough, one always manages to do it. I suppose I'm in love with her? It would be divine to kiss her and touch her breasts and… Of course, one mustn't have a baby, that would be too ghastly. I must find out. I wish we could go to Paris, the trees will be leafing in the Luxembourg…

In the night-silence; water dripped with insistent melody in some hidden tank. From outside came the shrill distant notes of train whistles, rather silvery and exquisite, bringing the yearning for travel, “the horns of elf-land faintly blowing.” Where had he read that? Oh, of course, Stevenson. Funny how the Coningtons thought Stevenson a good author…

Good-night, Elizabeth, good-night, sweet, sweet Elizabeth, good-night, good-night.

4

B
EFORE our eyes we have the regrettable examples of George Augustus and Isabel, Ma and Pa Hartly, dear Mamma and dear Papa – eponyms of sexual infelicity.

Are we more intelligent than our ancestors? What a question for the British Press or for those three musketeers of publicity cheap and silly, of tattered debates on torn topics – Shaw, Chesterton, and Belloc! Shaw, yes, the puritan Beaumarchais –
un coup de chapeau
but the others! To the goddess Ennui sung by Pope, the groans of the Britons. Who will deliver us from the R.C. bores?

The problem may be stated thus:

Let X equal the ménage dear Mamma-dear Papa, or a typical couple of the ‘seventies and ‘eighties;

And let Y equal the ménage George Augustus and Isabel, or a typical couple of the ‘nineties and ‘noughts;

And further, let Z equal Elizabeth and George, or a typical bright young pair of the Georgian or European War epoch;

Then, it remains to be proved whether Z is equal to, or greater than, or less than X and/or Y.

A pretty theorem, not to be solved mathematically – too many unknown quantities involved.

I am naturally prejudiced in favour of Z, because I belong to their generation, but what do
les jeunes
, the sole competent authority, think? For, after all – let us be perfectly frank – dear Papa expired peacefully in his bed; George Augustus was unhappily but accidentally slain in the performance of his religious duties; whereas George, if you accept my interpretation of the facts, virtually committed suicide at the age of twenty-six.

But then dear Papa and George Augustus did not have to fight the European War…

The problem, you see, is almost insoluble, no doubt because it is wrongly stated. Let us examine it in different terms.

Without going back to Horace's egg, may we not assume that he and she have lived well who have lived with felicity?

This not only involves the problem of the
summum bonum
or sovereign good, so much debated by the ancient philosophers, but the awful difficulty of knowing who is to decide whether another person has lived with felicity. Is there such a thing as a happy life? And, if there is, would it be the most desirable life? Would you like to be Claudian's old man of Verona? Or Mr. John D. Rockefeller? Or Mr. Michael Arlen? Or any other type of unabridged felicity?

There are, of course, lots of things and people who will eagerly or dogmatically tell you exactly what you have to do to be happy. There is, for instance, the collective wisdom of the ages, as embodied in our religions, philosophies, laws, and social customs. What a mess! What a junk-shop of dusty relics! And in any case, “the collective wisdom of the ages” is merely one of the innumerable devices of government by which the Anglo-Saxon peoples are humbugged into thinking themselves free, enlightened, and happy.

But let us abandon these abstruse and arid speculations.… The point is, did George and Elizabeth (consider them for the moment, please, rather as types than individuals) come better prepared to the erotic life than their predecessors, were they more intelligent about it, did they make a bigger mess of things? Does the free play of the passions and intelligence make for more erotic happiness than the taboo system? Liberty versus Restraint. Wise Promiscuity versus Monogamy. (This is becoming a Norman Haire tract.)

Here of course I shall come into collision (if this has not happened long ago) with the virtuous British journalist. This gentleman will inform us that there are far too many books about the erotic life, that to dwell upon sex is morbid and disgusting, that monogamous marriage as established by religion and law must remain sacred, etcetera, etcetera, and that it provides a perfect solution, etcetera, etcetera.

Moreover, in the few cases where it goes wrong, the situation must be met by frequent applications of cold water to the genitals, by propelling balls of different sizes in different manners with various instruments in mimic combat, by slaying small animals and birds, by playing bridge for modest sums, avoiding French wines and dancing, scattering saltpetre on one's bread and butter, regularly attending church, and subscribing to the virtuous organ of the virtuous journalist…

To which may be said; for example,

That without sexual intercourse, frequent and pleasant, adult life is maimed and tedious.

That social hypocrisy prescribes that we shall avoid open discussion and practice of the sexual life, and that we all (virtuous journalists included) think a great deal about it;

That the sporting-ascetic practices recommended are only effective in those predisposed to abnormal frigidity, and that they, taken in conjunction with the segregation of the sexes, economic difficulties and insane prejudices, form one of the chief predisposing causes of the pictures of Dorian Gray and wells of loneliness which cause the virtuous journalist so much horror and indignation.

We therefore unanimously dismiss the virtuous British journalist with a firm but vigorous kick in the seat of his intelligence, and return to our speculations.

Mother of the race of Aeneas, voluptuous delight of gods and men, sacred Aphrodite, who from the recesses of Thy divine abode lookest in pity upon the sorrowing generations of men and women, and sheddest upon us rose-petals of subtle and recurrent pleasure and the delicious gift of Sleep, do Thou, Goddess, be ever with us, and neglect not the felicity of Thy worshippers! Do Thou, alone beautiful, daughter of the Gods, drench us with loveliness!

From which to the lives of Pa and Ma Hartly
et al.
is indeed a staggeringly long step…

I hold a brief for the war generation. J'aurais pu mourir; rien ne m'eût été plus facile. J'ai encore à écrire ce que nous avons fait… (Bonaparte à Fontainebleau – admirez l'érudition de l'auteur.)

Yet why should we mourn, O Zeus, and why should we laugh? Why weep, why mock? What is a generation of men that we should mourn for it? As leaves, as leaves, says the poet, spring, bourgeon, and fall the generations of Man – No! but as rats in the rolling ship of the Earth as she plunges through the roar of the stars to the inevitable doom. And like rats we pullulate, and like rats we scramble for greasy prey, and like rats we fight and murder our kin… And – O gigantic mirth! – the voice of the Thomiste is heard!

Peace be to you, O lovers, peace unto Juliet's gave!

At the time of which I am writing – the three or four years preceding 1914 – young men and women were just as much interested in sexual matters as they are now, or were at any other time. They were in revolt against the family or domestic-den ethic, that “ordained for the procreation of children” attitude whereby the State turns its adult members into a true proletariat, mere producers of
proles
. And they were almost as much in revolt against Tennysonian and Pre-Raphaelite “idealism”, which made love a sort of hand-holding in the Hesperides. But, let it be remembered, Freudianism (as distinct from Freud, that great man whom every one talks about and nobody reads) had scarcely begun to penetrate. All things were not interpreted in terms of sexual symbolism: and if one had the misfortune to slip on a banana-peel in the street, he was not immediately told that this implied repressed desire to undergo the initiatory mutilating rite of the Mohammedans. They thought they were rediscovering the importance of the physical in love; they hoped they were not neglecting the essential tenderness, and the mythopoeic faculty of lovers which is the source of much beauty.

Late in April, George and Elizabeth went to Hampton Court. They met at Waterloo about nine, went by train to Teddington, and walked through Bushey Park. Each had brought a frugal lunch, half because of poverty, half from some Pythagorean delusion about austerity in diet.

They walked on the grass through the long elm naves. “How blue the sky is!” said Elizabeth, throwing back her head and breathing the soft air.

“Yes, and look how the elms make long Gothic arches!”

“Yes, and do look at the young leaves, so shrill, so virginal a green!”

“Yes, and yet you can still see the beautiful tree skeleton – youth and age!”

“Yes, and the chestnut blossom will be out soon.”

“Yes, and the young grass is – Oh, Elizabeth, look, look! The deer! There's two young ones.”

“Where? Where are they? I can't see them. I
want
to see them!”

“There they are! Look, look, running across to the right.”

“Oh, yes! How funny the little ones are! But how graceful! How old are they?”

“Only a few days, I should think. Why are they so beautiful and young babies so hideous?”

“I don't know. They're always supposed to look like their fathers, aren't they?”

“Touché –
but I should think that would make the mothers hate them, and they love the little beasts.”

“Not always. A friend of mine had a baby last year, and she didn't want it when it was coming, but kept thinking she would love it when it came. And when she saw it, she simply loathed it, and they had to take it away. But she simply
made
herself look after it. She says it's ruined her life and she doesn't find it a bit interesting, but now she's fond of it and couldn't bear it to die.”

“Perhaps she didn't love her husband.”

“Oh yes, she does. She simply dotes on him.”

“Well, maybe it wasn't his child.”

“Oh! Oh!” Elizabeth slightly shocked. “It
was
his child. But one reason why she didn't like it was because it separated them.”

“How long had they been married when the child was born?”

“Oh, I don't know – less than a year.”

“Idiotic!” said George, banging the end of his walking-stick on the ground; “ab-so-lute-ly idiotic! Why the devil did they go and have a child bang off like that? Of course, she's unhappy and they're ‘separated'. Serves ‘em right.”

“But could they help it? I mean – well, you know – it just happens, doesn't it?”

“Good Lord, Elizabeth, what a prehistoric notion! Of course it doesn't ‘just happen'. There are several ways…”

“It seems a bit revolting?”

“Not a bit! You may feel so because you've had mushy ideas about maidenly modesty and such twaddle instilled into you. That's all part of the taboo. Now, I think the really civilized thing is
not
to let such things happen to us like animals, but to control them. It's all most frightfully important, and perhaps the one really important problem for our generation to solve.”

“But you surely don't think everybody should give up having children?”

“Why, of course not! I do say so sometimes when I feel discouraged and disgusted with the poor scarecrows of humanity we are now. Fewer and better babies. Isn't it insane that we exercise over animals the control they haven't got themselves, and yet resolutely refuse even to discuss it about human beings? How can you have a fine race if you breed insensately like white mice?”

“Well, but, George dear, you can't interfere with other people's lives like that!”

“I didn't say one should. But I believe that if people have the necessary knowledge and we get rid of the taboo, they will for their own sakes come to breed more eugenically. Of course, it's an intimate and private matter – no need for Sir Thomas More's insane regulations and naked exhibitions before modest matrons and discreet old gentlemen. It's not for the old to interfere with the lusts of youth! Damn the old! But here's another point. Like most intelligent women and a few men, you're indignant at the way women have been treated in the past and at the wicked mediaeval laws of this country. You want women to be free to live more interesting lives. So do I. Any man who isn't an abject moron would rather see women becoming more intelligent and magnanimous instead of having them kept ignorant and timid and repressed and meekly acquiescent, and therefore sly and catty and wanting to get their own back. But you won't achieve that with Suffrage. Of course, let women have votes if they want them. But who the devil wants a vote? I'd gladly give you mine if I had one. But the point is this? when women, all women, know how to control their bodies, they'll have an enormous power. They'll be able to choose when and how they'll have a child and what man they want as its father. Overpopulation causes wars as much as commercial greed and diplomatic deceit and imbecile patriotism. Talk about the miners' strike! What I want to see is a universal strike of women. They could bring all the governments of the world to their knees in a year. Like the Lysistrata, you know, but not a failure this time.”

“Oh, George, you are amusing with your fancies! You make me laugh!”

“Laugh away! But I'm serious. Of course, it isn't possible to have such a concerted action all over the world. For one thing, it wouldn't be politic to announce it, because the unscrupulous governments will always go to any extent of force and fraud to sustain their infamous régimes…”