To the Dark Tower (2 page)

August 8th
, 1936

Up at six, cold bath, two hours with the dumb-bells. Horror of getting old.

At breakfast I make a cynical generalisation about women: "Men love women for what they may receive in the future; women love men for what they have received in the past. Man is for the possible, women for accomplished fact." A stupid remark—but true... Croft, however, regards it as a personal insult to his fiancée. He sulks all through the morning. What it is to be young!

Pouting suits that snub nose and freckled face.

He is a Socialist. At dinner he tells me that he went to Eton and the House. But he is a Socialist. He is a little shocked at my heresies: "Man has a craving for hierarchies, pageantries, inequalities. Man must suffer, or make others suffer." He regards me as a reactionary: and of course he is right. I react against his flat-heeled farmer’s daughter who went to Girton on a county scholarship, against the Left Book Club twaddle that I find by his bedside, against his breathless enthusiasm over the People.

If this were all that there is to him I should refuse to see him again. But he has found two new genera of cactus. He has starved, and been bitten by a snake, and almost died of amoebic dysentery. This makes him a man.

August 29th
, 1936

A sultry, suffocating day. I have a migraine which neither an early morning bathe nor a game of tennis can dispel.

Croft leaves. A queer feeling of bereavement, personal loss. Restlessness. The naval cadet is not in the cove. I lie on my bed trying to read Borkenau’s
The Spanish Cockpit
, and sweating.

If I were not so old I should go to Spain. But emotionally I should be drawn to the Republicans. And my intellect says "No."

Thunder to-night. Sheets of notepaper in Croft’s waste-paper basket covered with unfinished love-letters. What nonsense one writes about that particular expenditure of energy!

My nose bleeds in the night.

Sept. 2nd
, 1936

Judith is home after a week with the aunts. "How did you enjoy yourself?" I ask. She wrinkles up her nose and then throws an arm round me. "It’s much nicer being with you." Later she sits on my knee and tells me that I shall soon be bald. I have spoiled her horribly. But she is one of the few people for whom I can feel any tenderness.

We do not mention the funny little Miss Forsdike. But the letter and that appalling photograph are still in my bureau. My first impulse was to write to the headmistress, but I decided against that. Pity? I hardly think so. Rather this vanity of mine. Of course I know that it is ridiculous for the creature to worship me in this way. The woman is obviously unbalanced. But—the letter gives me an odd shock of pleasure whenever I read it.

I feel as I did when that boy in South America threw himself in front of me and was shot by the snipers. It was an incredible action. But moving.

Sept. 3rd
, 1936

Judith takes an unconscious delight in touch. On the beach she begins to bury me under sand. Then she scrabbles it away and begins to wrestle with me. There is certainly pleasure in this lazy contest under a hot sun. She is strong and lithe, and makes me feel that my muscles are softening. Later she curls up beside me and goes to sleep, her head pillowed on my chest. Her close-cropped hair smells salt.

The cadet from Dartmouth watches her incessantly. When she looks his way he grins. A healthy animal. But she doesn’t like it, turns away pouting.

Sept. 5th
, 1936

The cadet has a friend with him. The friend does not bathe—remains in flannels and an alpaca coat. He is about twenty-five, with a severe, analytical face and glasses. He glances up at me continually.

Sept. 6th
, 1936

I am beginning to resent this scrutiny from the young man on the beach. How I hate his intellectual vanity. I should like to duck him and then give him a hard game of tennis. All head and no body.

Sept. 7th
, 1936

The young man lies on the beach reading a book called
Passion and Society
. He has a physique if he would only cease to swaddle it in all those clothes. Judith and the naval cadet (Eric) splash each other and then race across the estuary.

Can there be any doubt where one’s choice should lie?
Passion and Society
, or that delightful splashing?

Sept. 8th
, 1936

The naval cadet joins us, bringing his friend with him. The friend stares for a while, then turns away from us and continues reading his book.

He is too self-consciously aloof. Judith begins wrestling with me and we roll into him. He moves away with a disdainful smile.

Sept. 10th
, 1936

The young man makes me talk. I keep on feeling that I want to impress him. He is very intelligent. But that analytical gaze frightens me.

Sept. 11th
, 1936

Again I talk to the young man. He shows interest, of a frigid kind. But I would rather have enthusiasm. Vanity, vanity! Why should I wish to impress him! Why, why?

Sept. 12th
, 1936

The young man works in a bank in Cardiff. But he wants to write. He has a way of nodding his head at everything I say. It is as if he were accepting each fact and then pigeon-holing it for further reference.

He is one of those people who give the impression that they know more about one than one does oneself.

Sept. 14th
, 1936

The naval cadet and his friend leave to-day.

"I am sorry Eric is going. I like him."

"Yes." This from the friend.

There is something in the inflection of that "Yes” that disquietens me.

"Why do you never bathe?” I ask.

"Because I don’t like to."

"Can’t you swim?"

"To be frank—no."

"It’s time you learnt."

He shrugs his shoulders.

"Don’t you feel you’re missing something by always sitting here reading. When you’re young, and have the chance, it seems a pity to neglect the other side."

"
Mens sana in corpore sano
?"

Is he laughing at me? But this sort of antagonism gives me a surreptitious pleasure. I have an impulse to pull off all those ridiculous clothes and drive him into the sea.
Passion and Society
!

At dinner Judith is thoughtful. Is she in love with the naval cadet?

A night of insomnia. The old dreams.

From
General Sir HUGH WEIGH
to
S. N. GEORGE, Oxford

Nov. 15th
, 1936

MY DEAR S. N. G.,—Thank you for your new book of poems. But first I must congratulate you on your honorary degree. I get a certain cynical satisfaction out of your receiving this mark of esteem after that long-forgotten disgrace in Mods. Why couldn’t they have realised then that you were one of

the masters of the English language? Still, yesterday’s compliments from the Public Orator must have made some sort of amends. And I know how much you must have enjoyed the dinner given to you by the Milton Club. You are at your ripest, and wisest, and most artful among undergraduates.

As for the poems: I do not have to say how fine they are. I think of the Beethoven Quartets: they will stand in the same relation to your work. You say you’re a little troubled by adverse criticism from some of your contemporaries. But why? These poet-reviewers remind me of that old story of the Jesuits and Pizarro’s men. The Jesuits told the ignorant
conquistadores
that the only emeralds which were genuine were those which could not be destroyed by fire. This was, of course, untrue; but the men believed them—and threw away the stones that they had amassed. Later, the Jesuits picked them up. This is what the reviewers do to your poems. They say that they are not the genuine thing—and then appropriate from them.

I have been asked to go to Germany in December as a guest of the government. What would you say to accompanying me? I know that you, the Liberal Humanist, will find much to disagree with. But perhaps I shall convert you.

Let me know.—Affectionately,

H. W.

From
S. N. GEORGE, Oxford,
to
Sir HUGH WEIGH, Dartmouth

Nov. 18th
, 1936

MY DEAR H. W.,—Thank you for the nice things that you say about the book. It is the last that I shall ever write—which makes your appreciation all the more valuable. I feel now that I have nothing more to say—the rest is silence. It is not an unpleasant feeling: rather akin to that lethargy, that sluggishness which affects one after an exam or a strenuous love-affair. I have thought this before—that there is nothing left in me—after every book that I have written: but this time there is something final—my positively last appearance. Of course, I shall continue to write essays and give those talks for the B.B.C. which you so much despise. But "the infirm glory of the positive hour"—that is over.

The meeting of the Milton Club was a great success. By the end everyone was a little drunk—except myself. As you know, I am always sober. They sang "He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” and carried me up to my rooms at the end: which was charming of them.

I have now returned to the country, and have staying with me a Rhodes Scholar (American) and Rice, that soldier who wrote to me about
The Effigy
. They are both full of enthusiasm—a change from Oxford. At Oxford it is simply not done to become excited over anything. But for these two
Tristram Shandy
is a discovery: they’d never even heard of it before. It is delightful to introduce them to a library—to read:

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean. The world has grown grey at thy breath. . .

and find that the words have a
physical
effect on them. But imagine my reading Swinburne to the Milton Club!

In the evenings I translate Homer to them: and such is their enthusiasm—such is their fanaticism for the
Iliad
—that when I came to that famous parting between Hector and Andromache I found the tears streaming down my cheeks, (You will laugh at this: it is unmanly.) But I didn’t feel ashamed, as I might have done if I had been with any other young men. I knew that they were equally moved.

All right, H. W., all right: I am a sentimentalist!

I think you would like them, though. The American is large and seems lazy (but isn’t): he wears an enormous ring on his middle finger and is reading law. Rice is just a little Cockney with no idea of hygiene. But—well—I feel less
old
with them about. That enthusiasm is infectious.

I have just realised that I have said nothing about your invitation. As I now feel that there is nothing left for me to do—there are the three volumes of poetry, complete, before me—I should be delighted to accompany you. I have not been to Germany since 1926: and no doubt it will be much changed. You, I imagine, were last there at the end of the Great War.

I wish you would pay me a visit. The chrysanthemums are superb.—With love,

S. N. G.

From the Diary of
Sir HUGH WEIGH

January 2nd
, 1937

It is only now—on the journey home, as I am rocked about in this deck-chair—that I have the time to record some of my impressions of our German visit. I am the only person left on the deck: a few souls are drinking and telling smutty stories in the bar, the rest have retired. This gives me a feeling of superiority. I can’t say how pleased I felt when the only survivor apart from myself—a woman, who was pacing the deck in tweeds and a Henry Heath hat—suddenly made an inarticulate noise and scurried away. And I wasn’t even feeling queasy!

S. N. G. left me long ago, looking unhappy and rather apologetic. He is a wretched sailor: even a glimpse of the sea from out carriage window made him swallow hard. I have just visited him, where he lies supine, his charm evaporating with each new paroxysm. He looks old, old-maidish, querulous. But the heavily pomaded steward who whistles "The Lambeth Walk” drearily, as a sort of
marche funèbre
, still gives him most of his attention. I notice that people always
do
give S. N. G. most of their attention. I think they know instinctively that he is someone to protect. It is as if they could see all the years of mother-love that have been expended on him.

For me Germany has been a success—a definite success: to ask me out was an inspired piece of propaganda. Believing all the un-English things I do, I suddenly found other people who thought as I did. This doesn’t mean that I have become a traitor: if there is a war I shall, of course, muddle along with old England, simply because I am English. But for no other reason,
Germany is right
.

I knew it when we saw those peaceful, cow-like women, and the virile youth goose-stepping through the streets of Berlin. Those were fine faces—pitiless, strong, terrible. I felt I was going to choke—with admiration, love perhaps. I had thought this spirit had gone out of the world—had evaporated in the stale exhalations of culture and higher education. A virile barbarism, pagan, not effete, strong, ruthlessly strong, ascetic—I had found what I had imagined no longer existed.

But at the same time, as I watched those youths marching, arrogantly, superbly, as I caught my breath, longing to command them, to lead them, I saw the certainty of war. It was inevitable. It was the destiny for which these supermen had been begotten. Yet the realisation did not trouble me: rather it filled me with a curious exaltation. I think I was glad.

I had felt that exaltation before. In the trenches: seeing our dead or their dead (it did not matter)—the young bodies littered in excruciating attitudes, with the smells of tainted flesh and smoke and wet clothes—it had seemed to me that here was a brotherhood to be proud of—the brotherhood of Slayer and Slain. Those soldiers were hearer than lovers, their hate was more noble than any love. I saw then the need for suffering and death.

Yes; as those German youths passed us, S. N. G.’s eyes closing in distaste, I think I was wishing for a war so that that communion could be achieved. I
was
wishing for it.

Of course I have told S. N. G. nothing of all this. He would think me mad, it would shock him profoundly. But even he was impressed by some of the things that impressed me. When we visited the camp in the Tyrol and saw the school children—healthy and happy at winter sports, young savages, many of them stripped to the waist, sunburned to the colour of biscuit, muscular—I think, then, that the Platonist in him was stirred to admiration. One cannot be a lover of Ancient Greece without seeing that such things are right and natural and worthy of the dignity of man.

But with S. N. G. it was a perpetual struggle. He was always divided. Of course this healthy virility was admirable—but what of the concentration camps? Instinctively, he accepted those cow-like women—but had he not been an ardent feminist? There was beauty in the athletics that we witnessed—but what of the exhibition of degenerate art? Was that not beautiful also? The human body; the human mind; instinct; reason; virility; culture; these things tore him apart. He wore a perpetually puzzled air. Of course the dilemma had always existed for him, he had always been aware of it: but now it was real, insuperable.

For me there was no such dilemma. I accepted it. If suffering was the price of that regeneration—so be it! I accepted suffering.

I think it is possible to be too civilised.