Death of a Hero (9 page)

But Isabel enjoyed the whole ghastly ceremony, little beast. She wrote a long description of it to one of her “fellows”, whom she really loved but had jilted for George Augustus's “riches.”

“… It was a cloudy day, but as we knelt at the altar a long ray of sunshine came through the church window and rested lovingly on our bowed heads…”

How could they rise to such bilge? But they did, they did, they did. And they believed in it. If only they'd had their tongues in their cheeks there might have been some hope. But they hadn't. They believed in the sickish, sweetish, canting bilge, they believed in it. Believed in it with all the superhuman force of ignorance.

Can one tabulate the ignorances, the relevant ignorances, of George Augustus and Isabel when they pledged themselves until death do us part?

George Augustus did not know how to make a living; he did not know in the very least how to treat a woman; he did not know how to live with a woman; he did not know how to make love to a woman – in fact, he was all minus there, for his experience with whores had been sordid, dismal, and repulsive; he did not know the anatomy of his own body, let alone the anatomy of a woman's body; he had not the faintest idea of how to postpone conception or that it might be well not to impregnate a virgin bride, indeed neither he nor Isabel had ever heard of such things; he did not know what is implied by “a normal sexual life”; be did not know that women can and should have orgasms; he did not know that to brake a hymen violently and clumsily gives pain and so serious a shock that a woman may be for ever frigid with and even repelled by the man who does it; he did not know that women have periods; he did not know that pregnancy is a nine months' illness; he had not the least idea that childbirth costs money if the woman is not to suffer vilely; he did not know that a married man dependent on his and his wife's parents is an abject, helpless, and contemptible figure; he did not know that it is hard to earn a decent living even when you have “a Profession”; he knew damn little about even his profession; he knew very little indeed about the conditions of life and nothing about human psychology; he knew nothing about business and about money, except
how to spend it; he knew nothing about indoor sanitation, food values, carpentry, house-furnishing, shopping, fire-lighting, chimney-sweeping, higher mathematics, Greek, domestic invective, making the worse appear the better cause, how to feed a baby, music, dancing, Swedish drill, opening sardine-tins, boiling eggs, which side of the bed to sleep with a woman, charades, gas stoves, and an infinity of other things all indispensable to a married man.

He must have been rather a dull dog.

As for Isabel – what she didn't know includes almost the whole range of human knowledge. The puzzle is to find out what she
did
know. She didn't even know how to buy her own clothes – Ma Hartly had always done that for her. Among the things she did not know were: How babies are made and come; how to make love; how to pretend she was enjoying it even when she wasn't; how to sew, wash, cook, scrub, run a house, purchase provisions, keep household accounts, domineer over a housemaid, order a dinner, dismiss a cook, know when a room was clean, manage George Augustus when he was in a bad temper, give George Augustus a pill when he was liverish, feed and wash a baby and pin on its napkins, pay and receive calls, knit, crochet, make pastry, how to tell a fresh herring is stale, the difference between pork and veal, never to use margarine, how to make a bed comfortably, look after her health especially in pregnancy, produce the soft answer which turneth away wrath, keep the home fires burning, and an infinity of other things indispensable to a married woman.

(I really wonder how poor old George managed to get born at all.)

On the other hand, both George Augustus and Isabel knew how to read and write, pray, eat, drink, wash themselves, and dress up on Sundays. They were both pretty well acquainted with the Bible and Hymns A. and M.

And then they had luv. They “luved” each other. Luv was enough, luv covered a multitude of ignorances, luv would provide, luv would strew their path with roses and primroses. Luv and God. Failing Luv there was God, and failing God there was Luv. I suppose, orthodoxly, God ought to come first, but in an 1890 marriage there was such a lot of Luv and God that there was no room for common sense, or common sex knowledge, or any of the knowledge we vile modern decadents think necessary in men and women. Sweet Isabel, dear George Augustus! They were
so
young,
so
innocent,
so
pure. And what hell do you think is befitting the narrow-minded, slush-gutted, bug-
whiskered or jet-bonneted he-and she-hypocrites who sent them to their doom? O Timon, Timon, had I thy rhetoric! Who dares, who dares in purity of manhood stand upright, and say…? Let me not rave, sweet gods, let me not rave.

The honeymoon did not take place in Paris or on the Plains of Waterloo, but in a South Coast watering-place, a sweetly pretty spot Isabel had always wanted to visit. They had a ten-mile drive from the village to the railway, and a two hours' journey in a train which stopped at every station. They arrived tired, shy, and disappointed at the small but respectable hotel where a double room had been booked.

The marriage night was a failure. One might
almost
have foreseen it. George Augustus tried to be passionate and ecstatic, and merely succeeded in being clumsy and brutal. Isabel tried to be modestly yielding and complying, and was only
gauche.
She suffered a good deal from George Augustus's bungling defloweration. And, as many a sweet Victorian bride of dear old England in the golden days of Good Queen Vicky, she lay awake hour after hour, while George Augustus slept stertorously, thinking, thinking, while the tears ran out of her eyes, as she lay on her back, and trickled slowly down her temples on to the bridal pillow…

It's too painful, it's really too painful – all this damn silly “purity” and cant and Luv and ignorance. And silly, ignorant girls handed over in their ignorance and sweetly-prettiness to ignorant and clumsy young men for them to brutalise and wound in their ignorance. It's too painful to think of. Poor Isabel! What an initiation!

But, of course, that ghastly night had its consequences. In the first place, it meant that the marriage was legally consummated, and could not be broken without an appeal to the Divorce Courts – and I don't even know if you could get divorced in the golden days of grand old Mr. Gladstone, bless his heart, may hell be hot for him. And then it meant that Isabel shrank from sexual intercourse with George Augustus for the rest of her days; and, since she was a woman of considerable temperament,
that
implied the twenty-two lovers already stirring in the womb of futurity. And finally, since Isabel was as healthy as a young woman could be who had to wear madly tight corsets and long insanitary hair and long insanitary skirts, and who had rudimentary ideas of sex hygiene – finally, that
nuit de rove
gave Isabel her first baby.

2

T
HE baby was christened Edward Frederick George – Edward after the Prince of Wales (later H. M. King Edward VII.), Frederick after his grandfather, George after his father.

Isabel wanted to call him George Hartly, but dear Mamma saw to it that there was as little Hartly as possible about
her
grandson.

The early years of the Isabel-George Augustus
menage
are really very dismal to contemplate. Largely because it was forced upon them by their elders and social convention, they began on a basis of humbug; unfortunately, they continued on a basis of humbug. Not only were they shattered by the awful experience of the wedding-night, but they were a good deal bored by the honeymoon generally. There wasn't much to do at Isabel's sweetly-pretty watering-place. George Augustus wouldn't admit even to himself that he was about as competent to be a husband as to teach white mice to perform military-evolutions. Isabel knew in herself that they had begun with a ghastly failure, knew it with her instincts rather than her mind, but she had her pride. She knew perfectly well that the failure would be attributed to her, and that she could expect no sympathy from any one, least of all her own family. Wasn't she “happily” married to a man who “luved” her – a “luv” match – and to a “rich” man? So Isabel consoled herself with the thought that George Augustus was “rich”, and they both wrote ecstatic humbugging honeymoon letters to families and friends. And once they had started on the opposite road to honesty and facing facts, they were dished for life – condemned, they too, to the dreary landscape of humbug and “luv”. O that God and Luv business! Isn't it mysterious that Isabel didn't take warning from the wretched cat-and-dog life of Ma and Pa, and that George Augustus hadn't noticed the hatred which surged between dear Mamma and dear Papa under the viscid surface of domestic peace and religion; and that they didn't try to break away to something a little better? But no, they accepted the standards, they had
luv
and they had
God
, so of course all would be for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

George Augustus continued to play at being “rich” on his honeymoon. A week before his wedding he was allowed a banking account for the first time in his life. Dear Papa paid in £200, and, by arrangement with George Augustus, dear Mamma was made to believe it was £20. To this dear Mamma added a generous £5 from her own jointure, “a little nest-egg for a rainy day” – though what on earth you want with a “nest-egg” on “a rainy day”, God and Luv only know. So the happy young couple started out with £205, and not the slightest chance of earning a penny until George Augustus gave up being “rich” and “pretty comfortable” and settled down to face facts and do a little work.

They spent a good deal – for them – on the honeymoon. George Augustus had a purse containing a lot of sovereigns and two £5 notes, with which he swanked intolerably. Isabel had never seen so much money at once and thought George Augustus was richer than ever. So she immedi-ately began sending “useful presents” to the innumerable members of the impoverished Hartly family; and George Augustus, though annoyed – for he was fundamentally mean – let her. Altogether they spent £30 in a fortnight, and the first-class fares back to Sheffield left mighty little change out of another £5 note.

The first great shock of Isabel's life was her wedding-night. The second was when she saw the dingy little, smoke-blacked house of the “rich” Winterbournes, one of a row of highly desirable yellow-brick ten-roomed villas. The third was when she found that George Augustus earned nothing by his Profession, that he had no money but the balance of his £205, and that the Winterbournes were nearly as poor as the Hartlys.

Ghastly days that poor girl spent in that dreary little house during her first pregnancy, while George Augustus twiddled his thumbs in “the Office” (instead of in his cosy study” as in his bachelor days) under pretence of working”; while dear Papa prayed, and dear Mamma acid-sweetly nagged and humiliated her. Ghastly days when her morning sickness was treated as “a bilious attack”.

“Too much rich food,” said dear Mamma; “of course, darling Isabel,
you
were not used to such a plentiful table at home,” – and then playful-coyly-cattish – “we must really ask your dear husband to use his
authority
to restrain your appetite.”

In fact, the Hartlys, in a scratchy, vulgarish way, enjoyed much more ample and varied food than that provided by dear Mamma's cheeseparing, genteelly meagre table.

Then, of course, there were rows. Isabel revolted, and displayed signs of that indomitable personality and talent for violent invective she afterwards developed to such Everest peaks of unpleasantness. Even dear Mamma found her match, but not before she had made Isabel miserably wretched for nearly two years and had permanently warped her character. Blessings upon you, dear Mamma, you “prayed for guidance”, you “did all for the best” – and you made Isabel into a first-class bitch.

George Augustus was pained, deeply pained and surprised, by these rows. He was still pretty comfortable, and couldn't see why Isabel wasn't.

“Let us continue to be a loving, united family,” he would say, “let us bear with one another. We all have our burdens” –
(e.g.
thumb-twiddling and reading novels) – “and all we need is a little more Luv, a little more Forbearance. We must pray for Strength and Guidance.”

At first Isabel took these homilies pretty meekly. She believed she had to “respect” her husband, and she was still a little intimidated by George Augustus's superior Bulwer Lytton airs. But one day she lost her not very well-controlled temper and let the Winterbournes have it. George Augustus was a sneak and a cad and a liar! He wasn't “rich”! He was “pore as a church mouse”! Him and his airs, pretending to her father he was a rich gentleman with a Profession, when he didn't earn a penny and got married on the £200 his father gave him! She wouldn't have married him, she wouldn't, if he hadn't come smarming round with his presents and his drives and pretending she would be a lady! And she wished she was dead, she did! And she wished she'd never set eyes on them!

Then the fat was in the fire! Dear Mamma took up the tale. Reserving
in petto
a denunciation of the guilt-stricken and consternated father and son in the matter of their deception over the £200, she directed a skilful enfilade fire on the disarmed Isabel. Isabel was vulgar and irreligious, she was ill-bred and uneducated, she was mercenary on her own showing, and had ruined the hopeful life of George Augustus by seducing him into a disastrous marriage…

At that moment Isabel fainted, and most unfortunately for our George the threatened miscarriage was averted – thanks more to
Isabel's health and vitality than to the ministrations of her inept husband and in-laws. Only dear Papa was genuinely distressed, and used what shred of influence he had to protect Isabel. As for George Augustus, he simply collapsed, and did nothing but ejaculate: