“Well?” It was time for someone to begin.
Denis declined the invitation; he passed it on to Mr Scogan. “Well?” he said.
Mr. Scogan did not respond; he only repeated the question, “Well?”
It was left for Henry Wimbush to make a pronouncement. “A very agreeable adjunct to the week-end,” he said. His tone was obituary3.
They had descended4, without paying much attention where they were going, the steep yew-walk that went down, under the flank of the terrace, to the pool. The house towered above them, immensely tall, with the whole height of the built-up terrace added to its own seventy feet of brick fa?ade. The perpendicular5 lines of the three towers soared up, uninterrupted, enhancing the impression of height until it became overwhelming. They paused at the edge of the pool to look back.
“The man who built this house knew his business,” said Denis. “He was an architect.”
“Was he?” said Henry Wimbush reflectively. “I doubt it. The builder of this house was Sir Ferdinando Lapith, who flourished during the reign6 of Elizabeth. He inherited the estate from his father, to whom it had been granted at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries7; for Crome was originally a cloister8 of monks9 and this swimming-pool their fish-pond. Sir Ferdinando was not content merely to adapt the old monastic buildings to his own purposes; but using them as a stone quarry10 for his barns and byres and outhouses, he built for himself a grand new house of brick—the house you see now.”
He waved his hand in the direction of the house and was silent, severe, imposing11, almost menacing, Crome loomed12 down on them.
“The great thing about Crome,” said Mr. Scogan, seizing the opportunity to speak, “is the fact that it’s so unmistakably and aggressively a work of art. It makes no compromise with nature, but affronts13 it and rebels against it. It has no likeness14 to Shelley’s tower, in the ‘Epipsychidion,’ which, if I remember rightly—”
“‘Seems not now a work of human art,
Of earth having assumed its form and grown
Out of the mountain, from the living stone,
“No, no, there isn’t any nonsense of that sort about Crome. That the hovels of the peasantry should look as though they had grown out of the earth, to which their inmates17 are attached, is right, no doubt, and suitable. But the house of an intelligent, civilised, and sophisticated man should never seem to have sprouted18 from the clods. It should rather be an expression of his grand unnatural19 remoteness from the cloddish life. Since the days of William Morris that’s a fact which we in England have been unable to comprehend. Civilised and sophisticated men have solemnly played at being peasants. Hence quaintness21, arts and crafts, cottage architecture, and all the rest of it. In the suburbs of our cities you may see, reduplicated in endless rows, studiedly quaint20 imitations and adaptations of the village hovel. Poverty, ignorance, and a limited range of materials produced the hovel, which possesses undoubtedly22, in suitable surroundings, its own ‘as it were titanic’ charm. We now employ our wealth, our technical knowledge, our rich variety of materials for the purpose of building millions of imitation hovels in totally unsuitable surroundings. Could imbecility go further?”
Henry Wimbush took up the thread of his interrupted discourse23. “All that you say, my dear Scogan,” he began, “is certainly very just, very true. But whether Sir Ferdinando shared your views about architecture or if, indeed, he had any views about architecture at all, I very much doubt. In building this house, Sir Ferdinando was, as a matter of fact, preoccupied24 by only one thought—the proper placing of his privies25. Sanitation26 was the one great interest of his life. In 1573 he even published, on this subject, a little book—now extremely scarce—called, ‘Certaine Priuy Counsels’ by ‘One of Her Maiestie’s Most Honourable27 Priuy Counsels, F.L. Knight’, in which the whole matter is treated with great learning and elegance28. His guiding principle in arranging the sanitation of a house was to secure that the greatest possible distance should separate the privy29 from the sewage arrangements. Hence it followed inevitably30 that the privies were to be placed at the top of the house, being connected by vertical31 shafts32 with pits or channels in the ground. It must not be thought that Sir Ferdinando was moved only by material and merely sanitary34 considerations; for the placing of his privies in an exalted35 position he had also certain excellent spiritual reasons. For, he argues in the third chapter of his ‘Priuy Counsels’, the necessities of nature are so base and brutish that in obeying them we are apt to forget that we are the noblest creatures of the universe. To counteract36 these degrading effects he advised that the privy should be in every house the room nearest to heaven, that it should be well provided with windows commanding an extensive and noble prospect37, and that the walls of the chamber38 should be lined with bookshelves containing all the ripest products of human wisdom, such as the Proverbs of Solomon, Boethius’s ‘Consolations of Philosophy’, the apophthegms of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, the ‘Enchiridion’ of Erasmus, and all other works, ancient or modern, which testify to the nobility of the human soul. In Crome he was able to put his theories into practice. At the top of each of the three projecting towers he placed a privy. From these a shaft33 went down the whole height of the house, that is to say, more than seventy feet, through the cellars, and into a series of conduits provided with flowing water tunnelled in the ground on a level with the base of the raised terrace. These conduits emptied themselves into the stream several hundred yards below the fish-pond. The total depth of the shafts from the top of the towers to their subterranean39 conduits was a hundred and two feet. The eighteenth century, with its passion for modernisation, swept away these monuments of sanitary ingenuity40. Were it not for tradition and the explicit41 account of them left by Sir Ferdinando, we should be unaware42 that these noble privies had ever existed. We should even suppose that Sir Ferdinando built his house after this strange and splendid model for merely aesthetic43 reasons.”
The contemplation of the glories of the past always evoked44 in Henry Wimbush a certain enthusiasm. Under the grey bowler45 his face worked and glowed as he spoke46. The thought of these vanished privies moved him profoundly. He ceased to speak; the light gradually died out of his face, and it became once more the replica47 of the grave, polite hat which shaded it. There was a long silence; the same gently melancholy48 thoughts seemed to possess the mind of each of them. Permanence, transience—Sir Ferdinando and his privies were gone, Crome still stood. How brightly the sun shone and how inevitable49 was death! The ways of God were strange; the ways of man were stranger still...
“It does one’s heart good,” exclaimed Mr. Scogan at last, “to hear of these fantastic English aristocrats50. To have a theory about privies and to build an immense and splendid house in order to put it into practise—it’s magnificent, beautiful! I like to think of them all: the eccentric milords rolling across Europe in ponderous51 carriages, bound on extraordinary errands. One is going to Venice to buy La Bianchi’s larynx; he won’t get it till she’s dead, of course, but no matter; he’s prepared to wait; he has a collection, pickled in glass bottles, of the throats of famous opera singers. And the instruments of renowned52 virtuosi—he goes in for them too; he will try to bribe53 Paganini to part with his little Guarnerio, but he has small hope of success. Paganini won’t sell his fiddle54; but perhaps he might sacrifice one of his guitars. Others are bound on crusades—one to die miserably55 among the savage56 Greeks, another, in his white top hat, to lead Italians against their oppressors. Others have no business at all; they are just giving their oddity a continental57 airing. At home they cultivate themselves at leisure and with greater elaboration. Beckford builds towers, Portland digs holes in the ground, Cavendish, the millionaire, lives in a stable, eats nothing but mutton, and amuses himself—oh, solely58 for his private delectation—by anticipating the electrical discoveries of half a century. Glorious eccentrics! Every age is enlivened by their presence. Some day, my dear Denis,” said Mr Scogan, turning a beady bright regard in his direction—“some day you must become their biographer—‘The Lives of Queer Men.’ What a subject! I should like to undertake it myself.”
Mr. Scogan paused, looked up once more at the towering house, then murmured the word “Eccentricity59,” two or three times.
“Eccentricity...It’s the justification60 of all aristocracies. It justifies61 leisured classes and inherited wealth and privilege and endowments and all the other injustices62 of that sort. If you’re to do anything reasonable in this world, you must have a class of people who are secure, safe from public opinion, safe from poverty, leisured, not compelled to waste their time in the imbecile routines that go by the name of Honest Work. You must have a class of which the members can think and, within the obvious limits, do what they please. You must have a class in which people who have eccentricities63 can indulge them and in which eccentricity in general will be tolerated and understood. That’s the important thing about an aristocracy. Not only is it eccentric itself—often grandiosely64 so; it also tolerates and even encourages eccentricity in others. The eccentricities of the artist and the new-fangled thinker don’t inspire it with that fear, loathing65, and disgust which the burgesses instinctively66 feel towards them. It is a sort of Red Indian Reservation planted in the midst of a vast horde67 of Poor Whites—colonials at that. Within its boundaries wild men disport68 themselves—often, it must be admitted, a little grossly, a little too flamboyantly69; and when kindred spirits are born outside the pale it offers them some sort of refuge from the hatred70 which the Poor Whites, en bons bourgeois71, lavish72 on anything that is wild or out of the ordinary. After the social revolution there will be no Reservations; the Redskins will be drowned in the great sea of Poor Whites. What then? Will they suffer you to go on writing villanelles, my good Denis? Will you, unhappy Henry, be allowed to live in this house of the splendid privies, to continue your quiet delving73 in the mines of futile74 knowledge? Will Anne...”
“And you,” said Anne, interrupting him, “will you be allowed to go on talking?”
“You may rest assured,” Mr. Scogan replied, “that I shall not. I shall have some Honest Work to do.”
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1
commemorated
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| v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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obituary
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| n.讣告，死亡公告；adj.死亡的 | |
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descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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perpendicular
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| adj.垂直的，直立的；n.垂直线，垂直的位置 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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monasteries
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| 修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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cloister
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| n.修道院；v.隐退，使与世隔绝 | |
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monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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affronts
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| n.（当众）侮辱，（故意）冒犯( affront的名词复数 )v.勇敢地面对( affront的第三人称单数 )；相遇 | |
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likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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titanic
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| adj.巨人的，庞大的，强大的 | |
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caverns
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| 大山洞，大洞穴( cavern的名词复数 ) | |
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inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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sprouted
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| v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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quaintness
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| n.离奇有趣，古怪的事物 | |
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undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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preoccupied
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| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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privies
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| n.有利害关系的人( privy的名词复数 )；厕所 | |
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sanitation
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| n.公共卫生，环境卫生，卫生设备 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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privy
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| adj.私用的；隐密的 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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sanitary
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| adj.卫生方面的，卫生的，清洁的，卫生的 | |
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exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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counteract
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| vt.对…起反作用，对抗，抵消 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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subterranean
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| adj.地下的，地表下的 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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explicit
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| adj.详述的，明确的；坦率的；显然的 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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bowler
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| n.打保龄球的人，（板球的）投（球）手 | |
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46
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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47
replica
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| n.复制品 | |
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48
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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49
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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50
aristocrats
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| n.贵族( aristocrat的名词复数 ) | |
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51
ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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52
renowned
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| adj.著名的，有名望的，声誉鹊起的 | |
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53
bribe
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| n.贿赂；v.向…行贿，买通 | |
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54
fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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55
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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56
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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58
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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59
eccentricity
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| n.古怪，反常，怪癖 | |
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60
justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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61
justifies
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| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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62
injustices
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| 不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉 | |
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63
eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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64
grandiosely
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65
loathing
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| n.厌恶，憎恨v.憎恨，厌恶( loathe的现在分词)；极不喜欢 | |
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66
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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horde
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| n.群众，一大群 | |
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68
disport
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| v.嬉戏，玩 | |
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flamboyantly
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| adv.艳丽地、奢华地、绚丽地。 | |
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70
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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71
bourgeois
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| adj./n.追求物质享受的(人)；中产阶级分子 | |
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72
lavish
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| adj.无节制的；浪费的；vt.慷慨地给予，挥霍 | |
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73
delving
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| v.深入探究，钻研( delve的现在分词 ) | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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