G.K. Chesterton to Frances Blogg (189?)
…I am looking over the sea and endeavouring to reckon up the estate I have to offer you. As far as I can make out my equipment for starting on a journey to fairyland consists of the following items.
1st. A Straw Hat. The oldest part of this admirable relic shows traces of pure Norman work. The vandalism of Cromwell’s soldiers has left us little of the original hat-band.
2nd. A Walking Stick, very knobby and heavy: admirably fitted to break the head of any denizen of Suffolk who denies that you are the noblest of ladies, but of no other manifest use.
3rd. A copy of Walt Whitman’s poems, once nearly given to Salter, but quite forgotten. It has his name in it still with an affectionate inscription from his sincere friend Gilbert Chesterton. I wonder if he will ever have it.
4th. A number of letters from a young lady, containing everything good and generous and loyal and holy and wise that isn’t in Walt Whitman’s poems.
5th. An unwieldy sort of a pocket knife, the blades mostly having an edge of a more varied and picturesque outline than is provided by the prosaic cutler. The chief element however is a thing ‘to take stones out of a horse’s hoof.’ What a beautiful sensation of security it gives one to reflect that if one should ever have money enough to buy a horse and should happen to buy one and the horse should happen to have stone in his hoof—that one is ready; one stands prepared, with a defiant smile!
6th. Passing from the last miracle of practical foresight, we come to a box of matches. Every now and then I strike one of these, because fire is beautiful and burns your fingers. Some people think this waste of matches: the same people who object to the building of Cathedrals.
7th. About three pounds in gold and silver, the remains of one of Mr. Unwin’s bursts of affection: those explosions of spontaneous love for myself, which, such is the perfect order and harmony of his mind, occur at startingly exact intervals of time.
8th. A book of Children’s Rhymes, in manuscript, called the ‘Weather Book’ about 3/4 finished, and destined for Mr. Nutt. I have been working at it fairly steadily, which I think jolly creditable under the circumstances. One can’t put anything interesting in it. They’ll understand those things when they grow up.
9th. A tennis racket—nay, start not. It is a part of the new regime, and the only new and neat-looking thing in the Museum. We’ll soon mellow it---like the straw hat. My brother and I are teaching each other lawn tennis.
10th. A soul, hitherto idle and omnivorous but now happy enough to be ashamed of itself.
11th. A body, equally idle and quite equally omnivorous, absorbing tea, coffee, claret, sea-water, and swimming. I think, the sea being a convenient size.
12th. A Heart—mislaid somewhere. And that is about all the property of which an inventory can be made at present. After all, my tastes are stoically simple. A straw hat, a stick, a box of matches and some of his own poetry. What more does man require?…
…The City of Felixstowe, as seen by the local prophet from the neighbouring mountain-peak, does not strike the eye as having anything uncanny about it. At least I imagine that it requires rather careful scrutiny before the eerie curl of a chimney pot, or the elfin wink of a lonely lamp-post brins home to the startled soul that it is really the City of a Fearful Folk. That the inhabitants are not human in the ordinary sense is quite clear, yet it has only just begun to dawn on me after staying a week in the Town of Unreason with its monstrous landscape and grave, unmeaning customs. Do I seem to be raving? Let me give my experiences.
I am bound to admit that I do not think I am good at shopping. I generally succeed in getting rid of money, but other observances, such as bringing away the goods that I’ve paid for, and knowing what I’ve bought, often pass over as secondary. But to shop in a town of ordinary tradesmen is one thing: to shop in a town of raving lunatics is another. I set out one morning, happy and hopeful with the intention of buying (a) a tennis racket (b) some tennis balls (c) some tennis shoes (d) a ticket for a tennis ground. I went to the shop pointed out by some villager (probably mad) and went in and said I believed they kept tennis rackets. The young man smiled and assented. I suggested that he might show me some. The young man looked positively alarmed. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘We haven’t got any—not got any here.’ I asked ‘Where?’ ‘Oh, they’re out you know. All round,’ he explained wildly, with a graphic gesture in the direction of the sea and the sky. ‘All out round. We’ve left them all round at places.’ To this day I don’t know what he meant, but I merely asked when they would quit these weird retreats. He said in an hour: in an hour I called again. Were they in now? ‘Well not in— not in, just yet,’ he said with a sort of feverish confidentialness, as if he wasn’t quite well. ‘Are they still—all out at places?’ I asked with a a restrained humor. ‘Oh, no!’ he said with a burst of reassuring pride. ‘They are only out there—out behind, you know.’ I hope my face expressed my beaming comprehension of the spot alluded to. Eventually, at a third visit, the rackets were produced. None of them, I was told by my brother, were of any first-class maker, so that was outside the question. The choice was between some good, neat first-hand instruments which suited me, and some seedy-looking second-hand objects with plain deal handles, which would have done at a pinch. I thought that perhaps it would be better to get a good-class racket in London and content myself for the present with economising on one of these second-hand monuments of depression. So I asked the price. ‘10/6’ was the price of the second-hand article. I thought this large for the tool, and wondered if the first-hand rackets were much dearer. What price the first-hand? ‘7/6’ said the Creature, cheery as a bird. I did not faint. I am strong.
I rejected the article which was dearer because it had been hallowed by human possession, and accepted the cheap, new crude racket. Except the newness there was no difference between them whatever. I then asked the smiling Maniac for balls. He brought me a selection of large red globes nearly as big as Dutch cheeses. I said, ‘Are these tennis-balls?’ He said, ‘Oh, did you want tennis-balls?’ I said Yes—they often came in handy at tennis. The goblin was quite impervious to satire, and I left him endeavouring to draw my attention to his wares in general, particularly to some zinc baths which he seemed to think should form part of the equipment of a tennis player.
Never before or since have I met a being of that order and degree of creepiness. He was a nightmare of unmeaning idiocy. But some mention ought to be made of the old man at the entrance to the tennis ground who opened his mouth in parables on the subject of the fee for playing there. He seemed to have been wound up to make only one remark, ‘It’s sixpence.’ Under these circumstances the attempt to discover whether the sixpence covered a day’s tennis or a week or fifty years was rather baffling. At last I put down the sixpence. This seemes to galvanise him into life. He looked at the clock, which was indicating five past eleven and said, ‘It’s sixpence an hour—so you’ll be all right till two.’ I fled screaming.
Since then I have examined the town more carefully and feel the presence of something nameless. There is a claw-curl in the sea-bent trees, an eye-gleam in the dark flints in the wall that is not of this world.
When we set up a house, darling (honeysuckle porch, yew clipt hedge, bees, poetry and eight shillings a week), I think you will have to do the shopping. Particularly at Felixstowe. There was a great and glorious man who said, ‘Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.’ That I think would be a splendid motto to write (in letters of brown gold) over the porch of our hypothetical home. There will be a sofa for you, for example, but no chairs, for I prefer the floor. There will be a select store of chocolate-creams (to make you do the Carp with) and the rest will be bread and water. We will each retain a suit of evening dress for great occasions, and at other times clothe ourselves in the skins of wild beasts (how pretty you would look) which would fit your taste in furs and be economical.
I have sometimes thought it would be very fine to take an ordinary house, a very poor, commonplace house in West Kensington, say, and make it symbolic. Not artistic - Heaven - O Heaven forbid. My blood boils when I think of the affronts put by knock-kneed pictorial epicures on the strong, honest, ugly, patient shapes of necessary things: the brave old bones of life. There are aesthetic pattering prigs who can look on a saucepan without one tear of joy or sadness: mongrel decadents that can see no dignity in the honourable scars of a kettle. So they concentrate all their house decoration on coloured windows that nobody looks out of, and vases of lilies that everybody wishes out of the way. No: my idea (which is much cheaper) is to make a house really (allegoric) really explain its own essential meaning. Mystical or ancient sayings should be inscribed on every object, the more prosaic the object the better; and the more coarsely and rudely the inscription was traced the ! better. ‘Hast thou sent the Rain upon the Earth?’ should be inscribed on the Umbrella-Stand: perhaps on the Umbrella. ‘Even the Hairs of your Head are all numbered’ would give a tremendous significance to one’s hairbrushes: the words about ‘living water’ would reveal the music and sanctity of the sink: while ‘Our God is a consuming Fire’ might be written over the kitchen-grate, to assist the mystic musings of the cook
- Shall we ever try that experiment, dearest. Perhaps not, for no words would be golden enough for the tools you had to touch: you would be beauty enough for one house…”
… By all means let us have bad things in our dwelling and make them good things. I shall offer no objection to your having an occasional dragon to dinner, or a penitent Griffin to sleep in the spare bed. The image of you taking a sunday school of little Devils is pleasing. They will look up, first in savage wonder, then in vague respect; they will see the most glorious and noble lady that ever lived since their prince tempted Eve, with a halo of hair and great heavenly eyes that seem to make the good at the heart of things almost too terribly simple and naked for the sons of flesh: and as they gaze, their tails will drop off, and their wings will sprout: and they will become Angels in six lessons…
I cannot profess to offer any elaborate explanation of your mother’s disquiet but I admit it does not wholly surprise me. You see I happen to know one factor in the case, and one only, of which you are wholly ignorant. I know you … I know one thing which has made me feel strange before your mother - I know the value of what I take away. I feel (in a weird moment) like the Angel of Death.
You say you want to talk to me about death: my views about death are bright, brisk and entertaining. When Azrael takes a soul it may be to other and brighter worlds: like those whither you and I go together. The transformation called Death may be something as beautiful and dazzling as the transformation called Love. It may make the dead man ‘happy,’ just as your mother knows that you are happy. But none the less it is a transformation, and sad sometimes for those left behind. A mother whose child is dying can hardly believe that in the inscrutable Unknown there is anyone who can look to it as well as she. And if a mother cannot trust her child easily to God Almighty, shall I be so mean as to be angry because she cannot trust it easily to me? I tell you I have stood before your mother and felt like a thief. I know you are not going to part: neither physically, mentally, morally nor spiritually. But she sees a new element in your life, wholly from outside - is it not na! tural, given her temperament, that you should find her perturbed? Oh, dearest, dearest Frances, let us always be very gentle to older people. Indeed, darling, it is not they who are the tyrants, but we. They may interrupt our building in the scaffolding stages: we turn their house upside down when it is their final home and rest. Your mother would certainly have worried if you had been engaged to the Archangel Michael (who, indeed, is bearing his disappointment very well): how much more when you are engaged to an aimless, tactless, reckless, unbrushed, strange-hatted, opinionated scarecrow who has suddenly walked into the vacant place. I could have prophesied her unrest: wait and she will calm down all right, dear. God comfort her: I dare not…
… Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born of comfortable but honest parents on the top of Campden Hill, Kensington. He was christened at St. George’s Church which stands just under that more imposing building, the Waterworks Tower. This place was chosen, apparently, in order that the whole available water supply might be used in the intrepid attempt to make him a member of Christ, a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Of the early years of this remarkable man few traces remain. One of his earliest recorded observations was the simple exclamation, full of heart-felt delight, ‘Look at Baby. Funny Baby.’ Here we see the first hint of that ineffable conversational modesty, that shy social self-effacement, which has ever hidden his light under a bushel. His mother also recounts with apparent amusement an incident connected with his imperious demand for his father’s top-hat. ‘Give me that hat, please.’ ‘No, dear, you mustn’t have that.’ ‘Give me that hat.’ ‘No, dear - ’ ‘If you don’t give it me, I’ll say ‘At.’ An exquisite selection in the matter of hats has indeed always been one of the great man’s hobbies.
When he had drawn pictures on all the blinds and tablecloths and towels and walls and windowpanes it was felt that he required a larger sphere. Consequently he was sent to Mr. Bewsher who gave him desks and copy-books and Latin grammars and atlases to draw pictures on. He was far too innately conscientious not to use these materials to draw on. To other uses, asserted by some to belong to these objects, he paid little heed. The only really curious thing about his school life was that he had a weird and quite involuntary habit of getting French prizes. They were the only ones he ever got and he never tried to get them. But though the thing was quite mysterious to him, and though he made every effort to avoid it, it went on, being evidently a part of some occult natural law.
For the first half of his time at school he was very solitary and futile. He never regretted the time, for it gave him two things, complete mental self-sufficiency and a comprehension of the psychology of outcasts.
But one day, as he was roaming about a great naked building land which he haunted in play hours, rather like an outlaw in the woods, he met a curious agile youth with hair brushed up off his head. Seeing each other, they promptly hit each other simultaneously and had a fight. Next day they met again and fought again. These Homeric conflicts went on for many days, till one morning in the crisis of some insane grapple, the subject of this biography quoted, like a war-chant, something out of Macaulay’s Lays. The other started and relaxed his hold. They gazed at each other. Then the foe quoted the following line. In this land of savages they knew each other. For the next two hours they talked books. They have talked books ever since. The boy was Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The incident just narrated is the true and real account of the first and deepest of our hero’s male connections. But another was to ensue, probably equally profound and far more pregnant with awful an! d dazzling consequences. Bentley always had a habit of trying to do things well: twelve years of the other’s friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a particular desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. ‘That night,’ as Shakespeare says, ‘there was a star.’
These three persons soon became known through the length and breadth of St. Paul’s School as the founders of a singular brotherhood. It was called the J.D.C. No one, we believe, could ever have had better friends than did the hero of this narrative. We wish that we could bring before the reader the personality of all the Knights of that eccentric round table. Most of them are known already to the reader. Even the subject himself is possibly known to the reader. Bertram, who seemed somehow to have been painted by Vandyck, a sombre and stately young man, a blend of Cavalier and Puritan, with the physique of a military father and the views of an ethical mother and a soul of his own which for sheer simplicity is something staggering. Vernede with an Oriental and inscrutable placidity varied every now and then with dazzling agility and Meredithian humour. Waldo d’Avigdor who masks with complete fashionable triviality a Hebraic immutability of passion tried in a more ironi! cal and bitter service than his Father Jacob. Lawrence and Maurice Solomon, who show another side of the same people, the love of home, the love of children, the meek and malicious humour, the tranquil service of a law. Salter who shows ho beautiful and ridiculous a combination can be made of the most elaborate mental cultivation and artistic sensibility and omniscience with a receptiveness and a humility extraordinary in any man. These were his friends. May he be forgi ven for speaking of them at length and with pride? Some day we hope the reader may know them all. He knew these people; he knew their friends. He heard Mildred Wain say ‘Blogg’ and he thought it was a funny name. Had he been told that he would ever pronounce it with the accents of tears and passion he would have said, in his pride, that the name was not suitable for that purpose. But there are [Greek letters]…
He went for a time to an Art School. There he met a great many curious people. Many of the men were horrible blackguards: he was not exactly that: so they naturally found each other interesting. He went through some rather appalling discoveries about human life and the final discovery was that there is no Devil - no, not even such a thing as a bad man.
One pleasant Saturday afternoon [his friend] Lucian said to him, ‘I am going to take you to see the Bloggs.’ ‘The what?’ said the unhappy man. ‘The Bloggs,’ said the other, darkly. Naturally assuming that it was the name of a public-house he reluctantly followed his friend. He came to a small front-garden; if it was a public-house it was not a businesslike one. They raised the latch - they rang the bell (if the bell was not in the close time just then). No flower in the pots winked. No brick grinned. No sign in Heaven or earth warned him. The birds sang on in the trees. He went in.
The first time he spent an evening at the Bloggs there was no one there. That is to say there was a worn but fiery little lady in a grey dress who didn’t approve of ‘catastrophic solutions of social problems.’ That, he understood, was Mrs. Blogg. There was a long, blonde, smiling young person who seemed to think him quite off his head and who was addressed as Ethel. There were two people whose meaning and status he couldn’t imagine, one of whom had a big nose and the other hadn’t… Lastly, there was a Juno-like creature in a tremendous hat who eyed him all the time half wildly, like a shying horse, because he said he was quite happy…
But the second time he went there he was plumped down on a sofa beside a being of whom he had a vague impression that brown hair grew at intervals all down her like a caterpillar. Once in the course of conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as plainly as if he had read it in a book: ‘If I had anything to do with this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me: if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget me. I may never see her again. Goodbye.’ It was all said in a flash: but it was all said…
Two years, as they say in the playbills, is supposed to elapse. And here is the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he is called upon to be. Let him now declare it and hereafter for ever hold his peace.
But there are four lamps of thanksgiving always before him. The first is for his creation out of the same earth with such a woman as you. The second is that he has not, with all his faults, ‘gone after strange women.’ You cannot think how a man’s self restraint is rewarded in this. The third is that he has tried to love everything alive: a dim preparation for loving you. And the fourth is—but no words can express that. Here ends my previous existence. Take it: it led me to you.
G.K. Chesterton to Frances Blogg (189?)
…I am looking over the sea and endeavouring to reckon up the estate I have to offer you. As far as I can make out my equipment for starting on a journey to fairyland consists of the following items.
1st. A Straw Hat. The oldest part of this admirable relic shows traces of pure Norman work. The vandalism of Cromwell’s soldiers has left us little of the original hat-band.
2nd. A Walking Stick, very knobby and heavy: admirably fitted to break the head of any denizen of Suffolk who denies that you are the noblest of ladies, but of no other manifest use.
3rd. A copy of Walt Whitman’s poems, once nearly given to Salter, but quite forgotten. It has his name in it still with an affectionate inscription from his sincere friend Gilbert Chesterton. I wonder if he will ever have it.
4th. A number of letters from a young lady, containing everything good and generous and loyal and holy and wise that isn’t in Walt Whitman’s poems.
5th. An unwieldy sort of a pocket knife, the blades mostly having an edge of a more varied and picturesque outline than is provided by the prosaic cutler. The chief element however is a thing ‘to take stones out of a horse’s hoof.’ What a beautiful sensation of security it gives one to reflect that if one should ever have money enough to buy a horse and should happen to buy one and the horse should happen to have stone in his hoof—that one is ready; one stands prepared, with a defiant smile!
6th. Passing from the last miracle of practical foresight, we come to a box of matches. Every now and then I strike one of these, because fire is beautiful and burns your fingers. Some people think this waste of matches: the same people who object to the building of Cathedrals.
7th. About three pounds in gold and silver, the remains of one of Mr. Unwin’s bursts of affection: those explosions of spontaneous love for myself, which, such is the perfect order and harmony of his mind, occur at startingly exact intervals of time.
8th. A book of Children’s Rhymes, in manuscript, called the ‘Weather Book’ about 3/4 finished, and destined for Mr. Nutt. I have been working at it fairly steadily, which I think jolly creditable under the circumstances. One can’t put anything interesting in it. They’ll understand those things when they grow up.
9th. A tennis racket—nay, start not. It is a part of the new regime, and the only new and neat-looking thing in the Museum. We’ll soon mellow it---like the straw hat. My brother and I are teaching each other lawn tennis.
10th. A soul, hitherto idle and omnivorous but now happy enough to be ashamed of itself.
11th. A body, equally idle and quite equally omnivorous, absorbing tea, coffee, claret, sea-water, and swimming. I think, the sea being a convenient size.
12th. A Heart—mislaid somewhere. And that is about all the property of which an inventory can be made at present. After all, my tastes are stoically simple. A straw hat, a stick, a box of matches and some of his own poetry. What more does man require?…
…The City of Felixstowe, as seen by the local prophet from the neighbouring mountain-peak, does not strike the eye as having anything uncanny about it. At least I imagine that it requires rather careful scrutiny before the eerie curl of a chimney pot, or the elfin wink of a lonely lamp-post brins home to the startled soul that it is really the City of a Fearful Folk. That the inhabitants are not human in the ordinary sense is quite clear, yet it has only just begun to dawn on me after staying a week in the Town of Unreason with its monstrous landscape and grave, unmeaning customs. Do I seem to be raving? Let me give my experiences.
I am bound to admit that I do not think I am good at shopping. I generally succeed in getting rid of money, but other observances, such as bringing away the goods that I’ve paid for, and knowing what I’ve bought, often pass over as secondary. But to shop in a town of ordinary tradesmen is one thing: to shop in a town of raving lunatics is another. I set out one morning, happy and hopeful with the intention of buying (a) a tennis racket (b) some tennis balls (c) some tennis shoes (d) a ticket for a tennis ground. I went to the shop pointed out by some villager (probably mad) and went in and said I believed they kept tennis rackets. The young man smiled and assented. I suggested that he might show me some. The young man looked positively alarmed. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘We haven’t got any—not got any here.’ I asked ‘Where?’ ‘Oh, they’re out you know. All round,’ he explained wildly, with a graphic gesture in the direction of the sea and the sky. ‘All out round. We’ve left them all round at places.’ To this day I don’t know what he meant, but I merely asked when they would quit these weird retreats. He said in an hour: in an hour I called again. Were they in now? ‘Well not in— not in, just yet,’ he said with a sort of feverish confidentialness, as if he wasn’t quite well. ‘Are they still—all out at places?’ I asked with a a restrained humor. ‘Oh, no!’ he said with a burst of reassuring pride. ‘They are only out there—out behind, you know.’ I hope my face expressed my beaming comprehension of the spot alluded to. Eventually, at a third visit, the rackets were produced. None of them, I was told by my brother, were of any first-class maker, so that was outside the question. The choice was between some good, neat first-hand instruments which suited me, and some seedy-looking second-hand objects with plain deal handles, which would have done at a pinch. I thought that perhaps it would be better to get a good-class racket in London and content myself for the present with economising on one of these second-hand monuments of depression. So I asked the price. ‘10/6’ was the price of the second-hand article. I thought this large for the tool, and wondered if the first-hand rackets were much dearer. What price the first-hand? ‘7/6’ said the Creature, cheery as a bird. I did not faint. I am strong.
G.K. Chesterton a Frances Blogg (189?)
…Sto guardando il mare e cercando di fare il conto del patrimonio che ho da offrirti. Per quanto riesca a capire, il mio equipaggiamento per intraprendere un viaggio verso il paese delle fate consiste nei seguenti articoli.
1°. Un Cappello di Paglia. La parte più antica di questa mirabile reliquia mostra tracce di puro lavoro normanno. Il vandalismo dei soldati di Cromwell ci ha lasciato ben poco del nastro originale.
2°. Un Bastone da Passeggio, assai nodoso e pesante: mirabilmente adatto a rompere la testa a qualsiasi abitante del Suffolk che neghi che tu sia la più nobile delle dame, ma di nessun altro uso manifesto.
3°. Una copia dei Poemi di Walt Whitman, un tempo quasi donata a Salter, ma del tutto dimenticata. Vi è ancora il suo nome, con un’affettuosa dedica del suo sincero amico Gilbert Chesterton. Mi chiedo se mai l’avrà.
4°. Una serie di lettere di una giovane dama, contenenti tutto ciò che di buono e generoso e leale e santo e saggio non si trova nei Poemi di Walt Whitman.
5°. Una specie di ingombrante coltello da tasca, le cui lame hanno per lo più un profilo più vario e pittoresco di quanto provveda il prosaico coltellinaio. L’elemento principale, tuttavia, è un aggeggio ‘per togliere le pietre dallo zoccolo di un cavallo.’ Che bella sensazione di sicurezza dà il riflettere che, se mai si dovesse avere denaro abbastanza per comprare un cavallo e si dovesse per caso comprarne uno e il cavallo dovesse per caso avere una pietra nello zoccolo — si è pronti; si sta preparati, con un sorriso di sfida!
6°. Passando dall’ultimo miracolo di pratica preveggenza, giungiamo a una scatola di fiammiferi. Di tanto in tanto ne accendo uno, perché il fuoco è bello e ti brucia le dita. Alcuni pensano che sia uno spreco di fiammiferi: le stesse persone che si oppongono alla costruzione delle Cattedrali.
7°. Circa tre sterline in oro e argento, i resti di uno degli slanci d’affetto del signor Unwin: quelle esplosioni di spontaneo amore per la mia persona che, tale è il perfetto ordine e l’armonia della sua mente, ricorrono a intervalli sorprendentemente esatti di tempo.
8°. Un libro di Filastrocche per Bambini, manoscritto, intitolato il ‘Libro del Tempo Atmosferico’, finito per circa 3/4, e destinato al signor Nutt. Vi ho lavorato con discreta costanza, il che credo sia assai lodevole date le circostanze. Non ci si può mettere nulla di interessante. Capiranno quelle cose quando saranno grandi.
9°. Una racchetta da tennis — no, non trasalire. È parte del nuovo regime, e l’unica cosa nuova e linda del Museo. La stagioneremo presto — come il cappello di paglia. Mio fratello e io ci stiamo insegnando a vicenda il lawn tennis.
10°. Un’Anima, finora oziosa e onnivora, ma ora abbastanza felice da vergognarsi di sé.
11°. Un Corpo, egualmente ozioso e proprio egualmente onnivoro, che assorbe tè, caffè, chiaretto, acqua di mare, e il nuoto. Il mare, credo, essendo di dimensione conveniente.
12°. Un Cuore — smarrito da qualche parte. E questo è più o meno tutto il patrimonio di cui al presente si possa fare inventario. Dopotutto, i miei gusti sono stoicamente semplici. Un cappello di paglia, un bastone, una scatola di fiammiferi e un po’ della sua stessa poesia. Che cosa di più richiede l’uomo?…
…La Città di Felixstowe, vista dal profeta locale dalla vetta del monte vicino, non colpisce l’occhio come avente in sé alcunché di perturbante. Almeno immagino che richieda uno scrutinio piuttosto attento prima che il ricciolo inquietante di un comignolo, o l’ammiccare fatato di un solitario lampione, portino a casa alla anima trasecolata che si tratta davvero della Città di un Popolo Spaventoso. Che gli abitanti non siano umani nel senso ordinario è del tutto chiaro, eppure ho cominciato solo ora a rendermene conto dopo una settimana di soggiorno nella Città della Sragione, coi suoi mostruosi paesaggi e i suoi gravi, insensati costumi. Sembro forse delirare? Lasciate che vi racconti le mie esperienze.
Sono costretto ad ammettere che non credo di essere bravo a far compere. Generalmente riesco a disfarmi del denaro, ma le altre osservanze, come portar via la merce che ho pagato, e sapere che cosa ho comprato, spesso passano in secondo piano. Ma far compere in una città di bottegai ordinari è una cosa: far compere in una città di lunatici deliranti è un’altra. Una mattina mi misi in cammino, felice e speranzoso, con l’intenzione di comprare (a) una racchetta da tennis (b) alcune palle da tennis (c) alcune scarpe da tennis (d) un biglietto per un campo da tennis. Andai al negozio indicatomi da un qualche villico (probabilmente pazzo), entrai e dissi che credevo tenessero racchette da tennis. Il giovane sorrise e annuì. Suggerii che potesse mostrarmene qualcuna. Il giovane parve addirittura allarmato. ‘Oh’, disse, ‘non ne abbiamo — non ne abbiamo qui.’ Chiesi ‘Dove?’ ‘Oh, sono fuori, sa. Tutt’intorno,’ spiegò freneticamente, con un gesto grafico in direzione del mare e del cielo. ‘Tutte fuori, in giro. Le abbiamo lasciate tutte in giro, qua e là.’ Fino a oggi non so che cosa intendesse, ma mi limitai a chiedere quando avrebbero lasciato quegli strani rifugi. Disse tra un’ora: dopo un’ora tornai a chiamare. Erano rientrate? ‘Beh, non rientrate — non rientrate, non ancora,’ disse con una sorta di febbrile confidenzialità, come se non stesse del tutto bene. ‘Sono ancora — tutte fuori, qua e là?’ chiesi con un umorismo trattenuto. ‘Oh, no!’ disse con uno slancio di rassicurante orgoglio. ‘Sono solo là fuori — là dietro, sa.’ Spero che il mio volto abbia espresso la mia raggiante comprensione del luogo cui alludeva. Alla fine, a una terza visita, le racchette furono prodotte. Nessuna di esse, mi disse mio fratello, era di un fabbricante di prim’ordine, sicché la cosa era fuori questione. La scelta era tra alcuni buoni, lindi strumenti nuovi di zecca che mi andavano bene, e alcuni oggetti di seconda mano dall’aria malandata, con semplici impugnature di abete, che alla peggio avrebbero potuto servire. Pensai che forse sarebbe stato meglio procurarmi una racchetta di buona qualità a Londra e accontentarmi per il momento di risparmiare su uno di questi monumenti di depressione di seconda mano. Così chiesi il prezzo. ‘10/6’ era il prezzo dell’articolo di seconda mano. Lo trovai alto per l’arnese, e mi chiesi se le racchette nuove di zecca fossero molto più care. Quanto le nuove di zecca? ‘7/6’ disse la Creatura, allegra come un uccellino. Non svenni. Sono forte.
I rejected the article which was dearer because it had been hallowed by human possession, and accepted the cheap, new crude racket. Except the newness there was no difference between them whatever. I then asked the smiling Maniac for balls. He brought me a selection of large red globes nearly as big as Dutch cheeses. I said, ‘Are these tennis-balls?’ He said, ‘Oh, did you want tennis-balls?’ I said Yes—they often came in handy at tennis. The goblin was quite impervious to satire, and I left him endeavouring to draw my attention to his wares in general, particularly to some zinc baths which he seemed to think should form part of the equipment of a tennis player.
Never before or since have I met a being of that order and degree of creepiness. He was a nightmare of unmeaning idiocy. But some mention ought to be made of the old man at the entrance to the tennis ground who opened his mouth in parables on the subject of the fee for playing there. He seemed to have been wound up to make only one remark, ‘It’s sixpence.’ Under these circumstances the attempt to discover whether the sixpence covered a day’s tennis or a week or fifty years was rather baffling. At last I put down the sixpence. This seemes to galvanise him into life. He looked at the clock, which was indicating five past eleven and said, ‘It’s sixpence an hour—so you’ll be all right till two.’ I fled screaming.
Since then I have examined the town more carefully and feel the presence of something nameless. There is a claw-curl in the sea-bent trees, an eye-gleam in the dark flints in the wall that is not of this world.
When we set up a house, darling (honeysuckle porch, yew clipt hedge, bees, poetry and eight shillings a week), I think you will have to do the shopping. Particularly at Felixstowe. There was a great and glorious man who said, ‘Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.’ That I think would be a splendid motto to write (in letters of brown gold) over the porch of our hypothetical home. There will be a sofa for you, for example, but no chairs, for I prefer the floor. There will be a select store of chocolate-creams (to make you do the Carp with) and the rest will be bread and water. We will each retain a suit of evening dress for great occasions, and at other times clothe ourselves in the skins of wild beasts (how pretty you would look) which would fit your taste in furs and be economical.
I have sometimes thought it would be very fine to take an ordinary house, a very poor, commonplace house in West Kensington, say, and make it symbolic. Not artistic - Heaven - O Heaven forbid. My blood boils when I think of the affronts put by knock-kneed pictorial epicures on the strong, honest, ugly, patient shapes of necessary things: the brave old bones of life. There are aesthetic pattering prigs who can look on a saucepan without one tear of joy or sadness: mongrel decadents that can see no dignity in the honourable scars of a kettle. So they concentrate all their house decoration on coloured windows that nobody looks out of, and vases of lilies that everybody wishes out of the way. No: my idea (which is much cheaper) is to make a house really (allegoric) really explain its own essential meaning. Mystical or ancient sayings should be inscribed on every object, the more prosaic the object the better; and the more coarsely and rudely the inscription was traced the ! better. ‘Hast thou sent the Rain upon the Earth?’ should be inscribed on the Umbrella-Stand: perhaps on the Umbrella. ‘Even the Hairs of your Head are all numbered’ would give a tremendous significance to one’s hairbrushes: the words about ‘living water’ would reveal the music and sanctity of the sink: while ‘Our God is a consuming Fire’ might be written over the kitchen-grate, to assist the mystic musings of the cook
- Shall we ever try that experiment, dearest. Perhaps not, for no words would be golden enough for the tools you had to touch: you would be beauty enough for one house…”
… By all means let us have bad things in our dwelling and make them good things. I shall offer no objection to your having an occasional dragon to dinner, or a penitent Griffin to sleep in the spare bed. The image of you taking a sunday school of little Devils is pleasing. They will look up, first in savage wonder, then in vague respect; they will see the most glorious and noble lady that ever lived since their prince tempted Eve, with a halo of hair and great heavenly eyes that seem to make the good at the heart of things almost too terribly simple and naked for the sons of flesh: and as they gaze, their tails will drop off, and their wings will sprout: and they will become Angels in six lessons…
I cannot profess to offer any elaborate explanation of your mother’s disquiet but I admit it does not wholly surprise me. You see I happen to know one factor in the case, and one only, of which you are wholly ignorant. I know you … I know one thing which has made me feel strange before your mother - I know the value of what I take away. I feel (in a weird moment) like the Angel of Death.
You say you want to talk to me about death: my views about death are bright, brisk and entertaining. When Azrael takes a soul it may be to other and brighter worlds: like those whither you and I go together. The transformation called Death may be something as beautiful and dazzling as the transformation called Love. It may make the dead man ‘happy,’ just as your mother knows that you are happy. But none the less it is a transformation, and sad sometimes for those left behind. A mother whose child is dying can hardly believe that in the inscrutable Unknown there is anyone who can look to it as well as she. And if a mother cannot trust her child easily to God Almighty, shall I be so mean as to be angry because she cannot trust it easily to me? I tell you I have stood before your mother and felt like a thief. I know you are not going to part: neither physically, mentally, morally nor spiritually. But she sees a new element in your life, wholly from outside - is it not na! tural, given her temperament, that you should find her perturbed? Oh, dearest, dearest Frances, let us always be very gentle to older people. Indeed, darling, it is not they who are the tyrants, but we. They may interrupt our building in the scaffolding stages: we turn their house upside down when it is their final home and rest. Your mother would certainly have worried if you had been engaged to the Archangel Michael (who, indeed, is bearing his disappointment very well): how much more when you are engaged to an aimless, tactless, reckless, unbrushed, strange-hatted, opinionated scarecrow who has suddenly walked into the vacant place. I could have prophesied her unrest: wait and she will calm down all right, dear. God comfort her: I dare not…
Rifiutai la racchetta più cara, perché era stata santificata dal possesso umano, e accettai quella nuova, a buon mercato, rozza. A parte la novità, non vi era tra loro differenza alcuna. Chiesi poi al sorridente Maniaco delle palle. Mi portò un assortimento di grosse sfere rosse quasi grandi come formaggi olandesi. Dissi: «Sono palle da tennis?». Rispose: «Oh, voleva palle da tennis?». Dissi di sì: tornano spesso comode a tennis. Il folletto era del tutto impermeabile alla satira, e lo lasciai mentre si sforzava di attirare la mia attenzione sulla sua mercanzia in generale, e in particolare su certe vasche di zinco che pareva ritenesse dovessero far parte dell’attrezzatura di un giocatore di tennis.
Mai prima d’allora né dopo ho incontrato un essere di quell’ordine e grado d’inquietudine. Era un incubo d’insensata idiozia. Ma occorre far menzione del vecchio all’ingresso del campo da tennis, che apriva bocca in parabole sul tema della tariffa per giocarvi. Pareva fosse stato caricato a molla per pronunciare una sola frase: «Sono sei pence». Date queste circostanze, il tentativo di scoprire se i sei pence coprissero una giornata di tennis, o una settimana, o cinquant’anni, risultava alquanto sconcertante. Alla fine posai i sei pence. Ciò parve galvanizzarlo, ridandogli vita. Guardò l’orologio, che segnava le undici e cinque, e disse: «Sono sei pence l’ora, così sarà a posto fino alle due». Fuggii urlando.
Da allora ho esaminato la cittadina con maggiore attenzione e avverto la presenza di qualcosa d’innominabile. Vi è un ricciolo d’artiglio negli alberi piegati dal mare, un balenìo d’occhio nelle scure selci del muro che non è di questo mondo.
Quando metteremo su casa, tesoro (un portico di caprifoglio, una siepe di tasso potata, api, poesia e otto scellini a settimana), credo che dovrai essere tu a fare la spesa. Specialmente a Felixstowe. Vi fu un uomo grande e glorioso che disse: «Dateci i lussi della vita e faremo a meno del necessario». Questo, credo, sarebbe uno splendido motto da scrivere (in lettere d’oro bruno) sopra il portico della nostra ipotetica dimora. Vi sarà un divano per te, per esempio, ma nessuna sedia, poiché io preferisco il pavimento. Vi sarà una scelta riserva di cioccolatini alla crema (per farti fare la Carpa) e il resto sarà pane e acqua. Ciascuno di noi conserverà un abito da sera per le grandi occasioni, e nel resto del tempo ci vestiremo di pelli di bestie selvagge (come staresti graziosa) che si addirebbero al tuo gusto in fatto di pellicce e sarebbero economiche.
Ho talvolta pensato che sarebbe assai bello prendere una casa comune, una casa molto povera e dozzinale, poniamo a West Kensington, e renderla simbolica. Non artistica – il Cielo – oh, il Cielo non voglia. Mi ribolle il sangue quando penso agli affronti recati da tremebondi epicurei del pittoresco alle forme forti, oneste, brutte e pazienti delle cose necessarie: le brave, vecchie ossa della vita. Vi sono zerbinotti estetizzanti che sanno guardare una casseruola senza una lacrima di gioia o di tristezza: bastardi decadenti che non scorgono alcuna dignità nelle onorevoli cicatrici di un bollitore. Così concentrano tutta la decorazione della casa su vetrate colorate da cui nessuno guarda fuori, e vasi di gigli che tutti vorrebbero tolti di mezzo. No: la mia idea (assai più economica) è far sì che una casa spieghi davvero (allegoricamente) il proprio significato essenziale. Detti mistici o antichi andrebbero incisi su ogni oggetto, e quanto più prosaico l’oggetto, tanto meglio; e quanto più grossolanamente e rozzamente fosse tracciata l’iscrizione, tanto meglio! «Hai tu mandato la Pioggia sulla Terra?» dovrebbe essere inciso sul Portaombrelli: forse sull’Ombrello. «Perfino i Capelli del vostro Capo sono tutti contati» darebbe un enorme significato alle proprie spazzole: le parole sull’«acqua viva» rivelerebbero la musica e la santità dell’acquaio: mentre «Il nostro Dio è un Fuoco divorante» potrebbe essere scritto sopra il focolare della cucina, per assecondare le mistiche fantasticherie della cuoca. Faremo mai quell’esperimento, carissima? Forse no, poiché nessuna parola sarebbe abbastanza dorata per gli arnesi che dovresti toccare: tu saresti bellezza sufficiente per una casa…»
… Con ogni mezzo abbiamo pure cose cattive nella nostra dimora e rendiamole cose buone. Non solleverò obiezione alcuna se avrai di tanto in tanto un drago a cena, o un Grifone penitente a dormire nel letto degli ospiti. L’immagine di te che tieni una scuola domenicale di piccoli Diavoli è piacevole. Alzeranno lo sguardo, dapprima in selvaggia meraviglia, poi in vago rispetto; vedranno la più gloriosa e nobile dama vissuta da quando il loro principe tentò Eva, con un’aureola di capelli e grandi occhi celesti che paiono rendere il bene nel cuore delle cose quasi troppo terribilmente semplice e nudo per i figli della carne: e mentre la contempleranno, le loro code cadranno, e spunteranno loro le ali: e diverranno Angeli in sei lezioni…
Non posso pretendere di offrire alcuna elaborata spiegazione dell’inquietudine di tua madre, ma ammetto che essa non mi sorprende del tutto. Vedi, mi accade di conoscere un fattore della faccenda, e uno soltanto, di cui tu sei del tutto ignara. Ti conosco… Conosco una cosa che mi ha fatto sentire strano dinanzi a tua madre: conosco il valore di ciò che porto via. Mi sento (in un istante bizzarro) come l’Angelo della Morte.
Dici di voler parlare con me della morte: le mie opinioni sulla morte sono luminose, vivaci e divertenti. Quando Azrael prende un’anima, può essere per condurla ad altri e più luminosi mondi: come quelli verso cui tu e io andiamo insieme. La trasformazione chiamata Morte può essere qualcosa di bello e abbagliante come la trasformazione chiamata Amore. Può rendere il morto «felice», proprio come tua madre sa che tu sei felice. Ma nondimeno è una trasformazione, e talvolta triste per chi resta. Una madre il cui figlio sta morendo può a stento credere che nell’imperscrutabile Ignoto vi sia qualcuno capace di prendersene cura bene quanto lei. E se una madre non può affidare con serenità il proprio figlio a Dio Onnipotente, sarò io tanto meschino da adirarmi perché non riesce ad affidarlo con serenità a me? Ti dico che sono rimasto dinanzi a tua madre e mi sono sentito come un ladro. So che non vi separerete: né fisicamente, né mentalmente, né moralmente, né spiritualmente. Ma ella vede un elemento nuovo nella tua vita, del tutto proveniente dall’esterno: non è naturale, dato il suo temperamento, che tu la trovi turbata? Oh, carissima, carissima Frances, siamo sempre molto gentili con le persone anziane. Davvero, tesoro, non sono loro i tiranni, ma noi. Essi possono interrompere la nostra costruzione mentre è ancora allo stadio delle impalcature: noi mettiamo sottosopra la loro casa quando essa è la loro dimora ultima e il loro riposo. Tua madre di certo si sarebbe preoccupata se ti fossi fidanzata con l’Arcangelo Michele (il quale, in verità, sopporta assai bene la sua delusione): quanto più ora che sei fidanzata con uno spaventapasseri sbadato, privo di tatto, avventato, spettinato, dallo strano cappello e testardo, che d’improvviso è entrato nel posto vacante. Avrei potuto profetizzare la sua inquietudine: aspetta e si calmerà, cara. Dio la consoli: io non oso…
… Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born of comfortable but honest parents on the top of Campden Hill, Kensington. He was christened at St. George’s Church which stands just under that more imposing building, the Waterworks Tower. This place was chosen, apparently, in order that the whole available water supply might be used in the intrepid attempt to make him a member of Christ, a child of God and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Of the early years of this remarkable man few traces remain. One of his earliest recorded observations was the simple exclamation, full of heart-felt delight, ‘Look at Baby. Funny Baby.’ Here we see the first hint of that ineffable conversational modesty, that shy social self-effacement, which has ever hidden his light under a bushel. His mother also recounts with apparent amusement an incident connected with his imperious demand for his father’s top-hat. ‘Give me that hat, please.’ ‘No, dear, you mustn’t have that.’ ‘Give me that hat.’ ‘No, dear - ’ ‘If you don’t give it me, I’ll say ‘At.’ An exquisite selection in the matter of hats has indeed always been one of the great man’s hobbies.
When he had drawn pictures on all the blinds and tablecloths and towels and walls and windowpanes it was felt that he required a larger sphere. Consequently he was sent to Mr. Bewsher who gave him desks and copy-books and Latin grammars and atlases to draw pictures on. He was far too innately conscientious not to use these materials to draw on. To other uses, asserted by some to belong to these objects, he paid little heed. The only really curious thing about his school life was that he had a weird and quite involuntary habit of getting French prizes. They were the only ones he ever got and he never tried to get them. But though the thing was quite mysterious to him, and though he made every effort to avoid it, it went on, being evidently a part of some occult natural law.
For the first half of his time at school he was very solitary and futile. He never regretted the time, for it gave him two things, complete mental self-sufficiency and a comprehension of the psychology of outcasts.
But one day, as he was roaming about a great naked building land which he haunted in play hours, rather like an outlaw in the woods, he met a curious agile youth with hair brushed up off his head. Seeing each other, they promptly hit each other simultaneously and had a fight. Next day they met again and fought again. These Homeric conflicts went on for many days, till one morning in the crisis of some insane grapple, the subject of this biography quoted, like a war-chant, something out of Macaulay’s Lays. The other started and relaxed his hold. They gazed at each other. Then the foe quoted the following line. In this land of savages they knew each other. For the next two hours they talked books. They have talked books ever since. The boy was Edmund Clerihew Bentley. The incident just narrated is the true and real account of the first and deepest of our hero’s male connections. But another was to ensue, probably equally profound and far more pregnant with awful an! d dazzling consequences. Bentley always had a habit of trying to do things well: twelve years of the other’s friendship has not cured him of this. Being seized with a particular desire to learn conjuring, he had made the acquaintance of an eerie and supernatural young man, who instructed him in the Black Art: a gaunt Mephistophelian sort of individual, who our subject half thought was a changeling. Our subject has not quite got over the idea yet, though for practical social purposes he calls him Lucian Oldershaw. Our subject met Lucian Oldershaw. ‘That night,’ as Shakespeare says, ‘there was a star.’
These three persons soon became known through the length and breadth of St. Paul’s School as the founders of a singular brotherhood. It was called the J.D.C. No one, we believe, could ever have had better friends than did the hero of this narrative. We wish that we could bring before the reader the personality of all the Knights of that eccentric round table. Most of them are known already to the reader. Even the subject himself is possibly known to the reader. Bertram, who seemed somehow to have been painted by Vandyck, a sombre and stately young man, a blend of Cavalier and Puritan, with the physique of a military father and the views of an ethical mother and a soul of his own which for sheer simplicity is something staggering. Vernede with an Oriental and inscrutable placidity varied every now and then with dazzling agility and Meredithian humour. Waldo d’Avigdor who masks with complete fashionable triviality a Hebraic immutability of passion tried in a more ironi! cal and bitter service than his Father Jacob. Lawrence and Maurice Solomon, who show another side of the same people, the love of home, the love of children, the meek and malicious humour, the tranquil service of a law. Salter who shows ho beautiful and ridiculous a combination can be made of the most elaborate mental cultivation and artistic sensibility and omniscience with a receptiveness and a humility extraordinary in any man. These were his friends. May he be forgi ven for speaking of them at length and with pride? Some day we hope the reader may know them all. He knew these people; he knew their friends. He heard Mildred Wain say ‘Blogg’ and he thought it was a funny name. Had he been told that he would ever pronounce it with the accents of tears and passion he would have said, in his pride, that the name was not suitable for that purpose. But there are [Greek letters]…
He went for a time to an Art School. There he met a great many curious people. Many of the men were horrible blackguards: he was not exactly that: so they naturally found each other interesting. He went through some rather appalling discoveries about human life and the final discovery was that there is no Devil - no, not even such a thing as a bad man.
… Gilbert Keith Chesterton nacque da genitori agiati ma onesti in cima a Campden Hill, a Kensington. Fu battezzato nella chiesa di St. George, che sorge proprio sotto quell’edificio assai più imponente, la Torre dell’Acquedotto. Il luogo fu scelto, a quanto pare, affinché l’intera riserva d’acqua disponibile potesse essere impiegata nell’intrepido tentativo di farne un membro di Cristo, un figlio di Dio ed erede del Regno dei Cieli.
Dei primi anni di quest’uomo notevole poche tracce rimangono. Una delle sue più antiche osservazioni registrate fu la semplice esclamazione, colma di sentito diletto: ‘Guarda il Bimbo. Buffo Bimbo.’ Qui scorgiamo il primo indizio di quell’ineffabile modestia nel conversare, di quella timida abnegazione sociale, che ha sempre nascosto la sua luce sotto il moggio. Anche sua madre racconta con apparente divertimento un episodio legato alla sua imperiosa pretesa del cilindro paterno. ‘Dammi quel cappello, per favore.’ ‘No, caro, non puoi averlo.’ ‘Dammi quel cappello.’ ‘No, caro—’ ‘Se non me lo dai, dirò ‘Appello.’ Una squisita scelta in materia di cappelli è in effetti sempre stata uno dei passatempi prediletti del grand’uomo.
Quando ebbe disegnato sopra tutte le tende e le tovaglie e gli asciugamani e i muri e i vetri delle finestre, si ritenne che gli occorresse una sfera più ampia. Di conseguenza fu affidato al signor Bewsher, che gli diede banchi e quaderni di bella copia e grammatiche latine e atlanti su cui disegnare. Era troppo innatamente coscienzioso per non servirsi di quei materiali per disegnarvi sopra. Agli altri usi, che alcuni pretendono spettino a tali oggetti, prestò poca attenzione. L’unica cosa davvero curiosa della sua vita scolastica fu che aveva la strana e del tutto involontaria abitudine di vincere premi di francese. Erano gli unici che mai ottenne e non tentò mai di ottenerli. Ma per quanto la cosa gli fosse del tutto misteriosa, e per quanto facesse ogni sforzo per evitarla, essa continuava, essendo evidentemente parte di qualche occulta legge naturale.
Per la prima metà del suo tempo a scuola fu assai solitario e sterile. Non rimpianse mai quel tempo, perché gli diede due cose: completa autosufficienza mentale e la comprensione della psicologia degli emarginati.
Ma un giorno, mentre girovagava per un vasto e spoglio terreno da costruzione che frequentava nelle ore di gioco, un po’ come un fuorilegge nei boschi, incontrò un curioso giovane agile, coi capelli spazzolati all’insù sulla testa. Vedendosi, si colpirono prontamente a vicenda nello stesso istante e fecero a botte. Il giorno dopo si incontrarono di nuovo e di nuovo si azzuffarono. Questi conflitti omerici andarono avanti per molti giorni, finché una mattina, nel culmine di una folle presa, il soggetto di questa biografia citò, come un canto di guerra, qualcosa dai Lays di Macaulay. L’altro sussultò e allentò la stretta. Si fissarono l’un l’altro. Poi il nemico citò il verso seguente. In quella terra di selvaggi si riconobbero. Per le due ore successive parlarono di libri. Da allora hanno sempre parlato di libri. Il ragazzo era Edmund Clerihew Bentley. L’episodio appena narrato è il vero e reale resoconto del primo e più profondo dei legami maschili del nostro eroe. Ma un altro doveva seguirne, probabilmente altrettanto profondo e assai più gravido di terribili e abbaglianti conseguenze. Bentley ha sempre avuto l’abitudine di cercare di fare le cose bene: dodici anni dell’amicizia dell’altro non l’hanno guarito da questo. Preso da un particolare desiderio di imparare i giochi di prestigio, aveva fatto la conoscenza di un giovane inquietante e soprannaturale, che lo istruì nell’Arte Nera: un individuo scarno e mefistofelico, che il nostro soggetto per metà credeva un figlio scambiato dalle fate. Il nostro soggetto non si è ancora del tutto liberato di quest’idea, benché per pratici scopi sociali lo chiami Lucian Oldershaw. Il nostro soggetto incontrò Lucian Oldershaw. ‘Quella notte,’ come dice Shakespeare, ‘ci fu una stella.’
Queste tre persone divennero presto note per tutta la lunghezza e larghezza della St. Paul’s School come i fondatori di una singolare confraternita. Si chiamava la J.D.C. Nessuno, crediamo, avrebbe mai potuto avere amici migliori di quelli dell’eroe di questo racconto. Vorremmo poter presentare al lettore la personalità di tutti i Cavalieri di quella eccentrica tavola rotonda. La maggior parte di essi è già nota al lettore. Persino il soggetto stesso è forse noto al lettore. Bertram, che pareva in qualche modo dipinto da Vandyck, un giovane cupo e maestoso, una mescolanza di Cavaliere e Puritano, con la corporatura di un padre militare e le idee di una madre moralista e un’anima tutta sua che per pura semplicità ha qualcosa di sconcertante. Vernede, con una placidità orientale e imperscrutabile, variata di tanto in tanto da un’abbagliante agilità e da un umorismo meredithiano. Waldo d’Avigdor, che maschera con completa e mondana frivolezza un’immutabilità ebraica di passione provata in un servizio più ironico e amaro di quello del suo padre Giacobbe. Lawrence e Maurice Solomon, che mostrano un altro lato dello stesso popolo, l’amore per la casa, l’amore per i bambini, l’umorismo mite e malizioso, il tranquillo servizio di una legge. Salter, che mostra quale bella e ridicola combinazione si possa fare della più elaborata cultura mentale e sensibilità artistica e onniscienza con una ricettività e un’umiltà straordinarie in qualunque uomo. Questi erano i suoi amici. Gli sia perdonato di aver parlato di loro a lungo e con orgoglio? Un giorno speriamo che il lettore possa conoscerli tutti. Egli conobbe queste persone; conobbe i loro amici. Sentì Mildred Wain dire ‘Blogg’ e pensò che fosse un nome buffo. Se gli avessero detto che un giorno lo avrebbe pronunciato con l’accento delle lacrime e della passione, avrebbe detto, nel suo orgoglio, che il nome non era adatto a tale scopo. Ma ci sono [Greek letters]…
Frequentò per un tempo una Scuola d’Arte. Là incontrò moltissime persone curiose. Molti degli uomini erano orribili mascalzoni: lui non lo era esattamente: così, naturalmente, si trovarono interessanti a vicenda. Attraversò alcune scoperte piuttosto spaventose sulla vita umana, e la scoperta finale fu che non esiste alcun Diavolo — no, e nemmeno una cosa simile a un uomo malvagio.
One pleasant Saturday afternoon [his friend] Lucian said to him, ‘I am going to take you to see the Bloggs.’ ‘The what?’ said the unhappy man. ‘The Bloggs,’ said the other, darkly. Naturally assuming that it was the name of a public-house he reluctantly followed his friend. He came to a small front-garden; if it was a public-house it was not a businesslike one. They raised the latch - they rang the bell (if the bell was not in the close time just then). No flower in the pots winked. No brick grinned. No sign in Heaven or earth warned him. The birds sang on in the trees. He went in.
The first time he spent an evening at the Bloggs there was no one there. That is to say there was a worn but fiery little lady in a grey dress who didn’t approve of ‘catastrophic solutions of social problems.’ That, he understood, was Mrs. Blogg. There was a long, blonde, smiling young person who seemed to think him quite off his head and who was addressed as Ethel. There were two people whose meaning and status he couldn’t imagine, one of whom had a big nose and the other hadn’t… Lastly, there was a Juno-like creature in a tremendous hat who eyed him all the time half wildly, like a shying horse, because he said he was quite happy…
But the second time he went there he was plumped down on a sofa beside a being of whom he had a vague impression that brown hair grew at intervals all down her like a caterpillar. Once in the course of conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as plainly as if he had read it in a book: ‘If I had anything to do with this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me: if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget me. I may never see her again. Goodbye.’ It was all said in a flash: but it was all said…
Two years, as they say in the playbills, is supposed to elapse. And here is the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he is called upon to be. Let him now declare it and hereafter for ever hold his peace.
But there are four lamps of thanksgiving always before him. The first is for his creation out of the same earth with such a woman as you. The second is that he has not, with all his faults, ‘gone after strange women.’ You cannot think how a man’s self restraint is rewarded in this. The third is that he has tried to love everything alive: a dim preparation for loving you. And the fourth is—but no words can express that. Here ends my previous existence. Take it: it led me to you.
Un piacevole pomeriggio di sabato [il suo amico] Lucian gli disse: «Ti porto a conoscere i Bloggs.» «I cosa?» disse l’uomo infelice. «I Bloggs,» disse l’altro, in tono tenebroso. Supponendo con naturalezza che fosse il nome di un’osteria pubblica, seguì l’amico a malincuore. Giunse a un piccolo giardino sul davanti; se era un’osteria pubblica, non era certo di quelle efficienti. Sollevarono il chiavistello — suonarono il campanello (se il campanello non era, proprio in quel momento, in stagione di silenzio). Nessun fiore nei vasi ammiccò. Nessun mattone sogghignò. Nessun segno in Cielo o in terra lo avvertì. Gli uccelli continuavano a cantare tra gli alberi. Entrò.
La prima volta che passò una serata dai Bloggs non c’era nessuno. Vale a dire c’era una piccola signora consunta ma focosa, in un abito grigio, che non approvava le «soluzioni catastrofiche dei problemi sociali». Quella, capì, era la signora Blogg. C’era una giovane donna alta, bionda e sorridente che pareva ritenerlo del tutto svitato e a cui ci si rivolgeva chiamandola Ethel. C’erano due persone il cui significato e rango non riusciva a immaginare, una delle quali aveva un gran naso e l’altra no… Infine, c’era una creatura giunonica con un cappello smisurato che per tutto il tempo lo scrutava con aria mezza selvaggia, come un cavallo che si adombra, perché lui aveva detto di essere del tutto felice…
Ma la seconda volta che vi andò, fu piazzato di peso su un divano accanto a un essere di cui aveva la vaga impressione che le crescessero capelli castani a intervalli lungo tutto il corpo, come a un bruco. A un certo punto della conversazione lei lo guardò dritto in faccia e lui disse a se stesso, con la stessa chiarezza con cui l’avesse letto in un libro: «Se avessi a che fare con questa ragazza mi metterei in ginocchio davanti a lei: se le parlassi non mi ingannerebbe mai: se dipendessi da lei non mi negherebbe mai nulla: se l’amassi non si prenderebbe mai gioco di me: se mi fidassi di lei non mi tradirebbe mai: se la ricordassi non mi dimenticherebbe mai. Forse non la rivedrò mai più. Addio.» Fu detto tutto in un lampo: ma fu detto tutto…
Due anni, come si dice nei programmi di teatro, si suppone trascorrano. Ed ecco il soggetto di questa memoria seduto su un balcone sopra il mare. Il momento, la sera. Sta pensando all’intero sconcertante resoconto di cui quanto precede è un breve abbozzo: vede quanto si sia sviato, e quanto ozioso, sprecone e malvagio sia stato spesso: quanto miseramente inadatto sia a ciò che è chiamato a essere. Che ora lo dichiari e d’ora in poi taccia per sempre.
Ma ci sono quattro lampade di rendimento di grazie sempre davanti a lui. La prima è per la sua creazione dalla stessa terra insieme a una donna come te. La seconda è che non ha, con tutti i suoi difetti, «seguito donne straniere». Non puoi immaginare come sia ricompensato in questo il dominio di sé di un uomo. La terza è che ha cercato di amare tutto ciò che vive: una fioca preparazione ad amare te. E la quarta è — ma nessuna parola può esprimerla. Qui finisce la mia esistenza precedente. Prendila: mi ha condotto a te.