Personal Pleasures (20 page)

What is this foolish, this unconsidered mercery, this itch for having, this covetous desire for alien trifles, that mads the brain in foreign climes, emptying purse and bursting suitcases? What is it but that xenophilous lust that sent our great pirate traders a-merchandising to far coasts, plundering them for goods at which they would not have looked had they lain at their doors? Once across the seas, the bartering instinct wakes; we march into shops and markets, inquiring the prices of objects whose sole claim on our desire is their transmarinity; being informed, we exclaim “Troppo, troppo,” “Trop cher,” “Demasiado,” or “Zu viel”; we make as if to walk out, but we are detained, met half way, the seller climbs down, we up, the bargain is clinched; we emerge happy, clasping in covetous hands this new and charming fragment of Abroad, which is to beautify, cheer and decorate our island life.

So Raleigh doubtless felt, a-homing from Guiana and Virginia with gold dust, tobacco, and potatoes in his hands; so Captain Smith, returning from Turkey with coffee beans; so Drake, sailing away from San Domingo, his fleet cargoes with the loot of that sacked city; so Warren Hastings retiring from Oude laden with the pearls of its Begums; so all British travellers preparing to re-cross to their island with pockets full of the bric-à-brac of foreign parts.

They will lie about our homes, bright and brittle intimations of past joy. This little coconut: when I caress its withered head, all the palm-fringed silver sands of the Florida Keys shimmer again before me. This gay and tiny cart, collecting dust on the chimney piece, carries me along the hot white road from Palermo to Monreale. These walnut-dwelling Mexicans, with their bundles and their tall straw hats, take me to a lemon-grown plaza, warm and wan in pale dust beneath an orange moon, where mandolins eternally play and tiny
burros
trot patiently, bearing Mexican gentlemen larger than themselves. In this abalone shell sings the Pacific surf, beating on Fishermen's Pier and against the piles of Pop Ernest's Restaurant, where Spanish sailors lounge. To caress this bronze gondola is to see green water lapping against the rust-red brick walls of Renaissance palaces, to hear staccato cries, “Sta-i,” “Premé!” while to touch this Vestal ink-pot is to stir all the dust of Imperial Rome.

The snag? Yes, you have guessed it, you who have also shopped abroad. Suitcases filled already to repletion, how should they distend themselves to absorb these alien objects? They will not; it cannot be done. More suitcases must be purchased; cheap, exotic suitcases; more, and more, and more. …

What is that you say you have done? Walked across Jamaica on your hands? That is nothing at all. Besides, it is probably not true. I once rode a dolphin across the Messina straits. And swam from Corsica to Sardinia. I ate seventy plums at one go, stones and all. I lived six days in a tree. I won a prize on the ocean for chalking a pig's head. I won a prize at school for the quarter mile. And for the high jump. I wrote out “The Ride from Ghent to Aix” backwards. What did you say? You have a certificate of
what?
Signed by the Pope. …
And
three children. … Well, that was just a mistake, wasn't it; you should have told him. … You gave ringworm to two archbishops? I really do not see that that is much to boast of. You converted Cherokee Indians when you were six? That is better. And had a tract written about you, called “How little––came to Jesus.” That is better still. But I have had my conversion prayed for by a Lama. No, not in Thibet; we met in Syracuse. Yes, I know Sicily well. I understand Sicilian more or less. And modern Greek. Yes, I know Greece. I didn't go there with one of those mass cruises; I went separately: I always think one sees it better that way. I know Greek literature pretty thoroughly. And Greek history, of course. I have done some verse translations of the Anthology that they tell
me are not so bad. So bad as what? As most people's, of course. However that may be, I felt thoroughly at home in Greece. How long was I there? Well, I don't quite remember; certainly over a week. I had to get on to Constantinople after that. And then to Russia. I saw something of Stalin in Moscow; he wanted me to write something about my impressions, but the fact was I hadn't any, because I knew no Russian to speak of. You need to know a language really colloquially before you can begin to understand the people, I always say. The way I know Catalan, Mallorquin, and even Basque. Oh, yes, I know quite a lot of Basque words.

Well, where was I? Yes, after Moscow I visited Germany. I saw Goering and Goebbels; the Führer would not see me; he had heard I was coming, and ordered Goering and Goebbels to send for me for an interview; they tried to trap me in conversation into saying something they could have arrested me for, but I wouldn't. Though I let them see my views all right. How they loathed me! They knew I was a writer of more influence in England than … well, than most writers, I suppose I might say … anyhow, they were scared to death. However, there was nothing they could get me on. I got safely over into France, and had a gay week in Paris; I know so many people there, I'm never at a loss. I had another proposal, too. Then I visited the place in Normandy my ancestors came from in 1066; they tell me one of the angels in the roof has my face, and that it must have been done from one of our family, in the thirteenth century. I must say, I always
feel
Norman, a kind of arrogant feeling, as if the English were under my heel. Not that ancestors matter: one makes one's own way. What do you say? Your ancestors were Saxon thegns? Well, some of mine were British druids. I always feel at home at Stonehenge. And I learnt to talk Welsh and Breton as easily as possible. And, of course, I could learn Erse and Gaelic too, if I cared to. But they don't seem very much use today, do they?

Well, I must go; I am going on to Buckingham Palace. No, quite a small party, I believe; no, the Garden Party is quite another thing; everyone is asked there. This one is for Ruth Draper; she is going to give a command performance, to a few special people. I don't know why
I
should be asked … oh, you are going, too? How strange. …

Well, now they know what I am; now they, left behind in the house, are talking of me, saying it is not often one meets anyone at once so intelligent, cultured, travelled, handsome, modest, witty and gay. I strut down the street, I get into my car, start the engine, trundle along Piccadilly. How well I drive! Traffic to right of me, traffic to left of me, volleys and thunders; I wriggle unscathed through the middle of it. I am thinking still of the lunch party I have left. I am trying to make sense of something someone seemed to be murmuring to someone else as the door shut behind me.

What was she saying? It sounded like “Ho, ho! I am the Toad. …” But that does not seem to make sense, so it must have been something else. …

What is this sensuous pleasure, this tide of starry peace, that flows around me like a Milky Way, making a heavenly music in mine ears? What is this space, this liberty, this balmy ease, that floods about me like a blue and buoyant sea, at once sustaining, stimulating and soothing? How rich, how sharply hued, how pregnant with meaning, does the universe appear, where but an hour since it was a wild and wandering globe lost in chaos and the chattering of voices. I am alone. I can look, listen, feel, apprehend, without muffling presences to bound imagination's flight, to maintain those human contacts which remind us always that we are gregarious creatures, running together in flocks. Good company is delightful bondage; to be alone is to be free. I may do what I choose, within the limits of capacity and means. So long as I keep myself unspotted from the world, there is none to stay or molest me or prevent me in my doings. I can, if I will, stand on my head, and none to comment, question, smile, or stare. The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty, trips hand in hand with me to the court of the reeling goddess with the zoneless waist and wandering eyes, there to tread that lordly pleasure house that none can share. Drony solitude; Dr. Johnson's ill-meant adjective hums lovely
in my ears, bringing to them the idle boom of bees among honeyed blooms, the sweetness of that happy garden state while Man there walked without a mate.

But 'twas beyond a Mortal's share

To wander solitary there …

and has, alas, been increasedly beyond a mortal's share ever since, what with teeming humanity and minishing gardens. Nevertheless, the two Paradises in one are still at times accessible. Aloneness can still be attained, by those who have the will to it. A perpetual and enforced state, it might cloy and irk; an occasional adventure, it might be wasted, unpractised, difficult; a frequent yet not immoderate indulgence, its drony beauty binds and snares, enspells and yet sets free; we come to it as prisoners for a space enlarged, as thirsty men to a tavern.

If thou canst get but thither
,

There grows the flower of Peace
,

The Rose that cannot wither
,

Thy fortress, and thy ease
.

Attired with stars we sit, or we can fly, or we can run, and joy shall overtake us as a flood.

But Dr. Johnson said one day, “Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue. Remember” (continued he) “that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.”

Well, there is no state without its drawbacks.

All Sundays are not blue and hot and gay. In these latitudes few Sundays are blue and hot, though there is about Sunday a leisured gaiety that sets it, even when it is grey and cold, to what Milton called a dominical jig. Sunday strolls, sings, peals bells, dances, eats, drinks, sleeps, talks, in a care-free, slippered ease; it is different from Monday and the rest; it smiles like a holiday, it simpers like the spring; it is, as George Herbert observed, a day of mirth. Dr. Johnson held that there should be relaxation, but no levity, that one may walk, but not throw stones at birds. In fact, there is both relaxation and levity; there is also love, for the parks, lanes, street corners, cinemas and country places are thick enturbed with turtling couples who make the Cupid. Religion, too, much obtains; in churches there is singing, chanting, preaching, praying, and celebration of mysteries, in all the tongues in the world alive and dead, besides great ringing of bells. There is a hum of life, of pleasure, of leisure, of piety, of tranquillity.

For my part, when I say “Sunday,” I see a span of hours both blue and hot, a vault of sky without clouds, a floor of sea without waves and of white sand without shade. All Sundays, even in that place, were not
blue and hot, but that is how I see them. No lessons; a day of pleasure, of bathing, wading, canoeing, reading, writing, taking out the goat, racing the rabbits, climbing trees and rocks, hearing the chanting of processions winding by. Gay stalls in the town, bells clanging, nets coming in, rounders on the shore in the evening, sitting in the ivy on the top of the
orto
wall. Time for everything; no lessons: that was, and always is, the point, the thing that sets Sunday apart. Even a grey Sunday, a wet Sunday, a cold English winter Sunday, when we can but stay indoors and read and eat and talk, is still a day of pleasure, since from our journal labours we do rest.

And yet, what assaults, what besiegements of misplaced pious intention, has the day of the sun, probably at all periods, endured! It would seem that there cannot be a day of pleasure and repose set up by man but some other men must seek to entrammel it in tedious bonds. We say, on one day in seven it is good to rest and make holiday and make our congee to the gods, laying aside diurnal toils. We say, put the spade and axe away, for we will do no work to-day. Then arise law-givers, priests, prophets, leaders, police, who enforce this gay intention, hedge it about with rigorous rule. Rightly, no doubt, since the heart of man is covetous and cruel, and there will beyond doubt enter into it the project of causing slaves and menials to perform those profitable labours for him from which himself he rests. Thus does his own native wickedness create tedious rules and fetters for sinful man. Then,
since the lust to make rules, to embond and enshackle others, grows apace in the hearts of law-givers, they took this cheerful day, this septimanal jewel in the week's belt of toil, and set it about with prickles and with bars, minded to keep not only toil but mirth at bay. To this unavailing task Christendom early applied itself. Constantine forbade pleasurable spectacles in the circus, and all public celebrations and sports, except only that of the torture and execution of criminals. Charlemagne, that tremendous Sabbatarian, followed by emperors, kings, popes, and priests, sternly continued the losing battle against Sunday pleasures. The history of Sunday in all lands is the history of Pleasure, that indomitable goddess, assaulted, bound and fettered, even down to this day, but valorously slipping now a shackle, now an imprisoning bar, negligently ignoring bondage, and dancing and playing on the green, denounced by church and state, thundered at by minions of the law, kept at bay by parents (who shut up little Samuel Johnson and made him read the
Whole Duty of Man
of a Sunday), menaced by papal decretals, by Genevan gowns, by Town Councils, by every tyrant in office, and yet breaking free, and yet enlarged, and yet on dominical pleasure bent, so that Sunday has ever been a glad day despite them all.

For by th'Almighty this great Holy-day

Was
not
ordain'd to dance, to mask and play
,

To slug in sloth, and languish in delights. …

Thus preceptors of all creeds and all lands have spoken down the ages. And Humanity has answered, not with defiance, but with that serene, intractable negligence that in the end defeats all law. Saying little about it, the majority have slugged in sloth and languished in delights each Sunday, thus recompensing themselves for the hard tedium of the week's travail.