My formal education began in a small preparatory school in Bromstead. I went there as a day boy. The charge for my instruction was mainly set off by the periodic visits of my father with a large bag of battered1 fossils to lecture to us upon geology. I was one of those fortunate youngsters who take readily to school work, I had a good memory, versatile2 interests and a considerable appetite for commendation, and when I was barely twelve I got a scholarship at the City Merchants School and was entrusted3 with a scholar's railway season ticket to Victoria. After my father's death a large and very animated4 and solidly built uncle in tweeds from Staffordshire, Uncle Minter, my mother's sister's husband, with a remarkable6 accent and remarkable vowel7 sounds, who had plunged9 into the Bromstead home once or twice for the night but who was otherwise unknown to me, came on the scene, sold off the three gaunt houses with the utmost gusto, invested the proceeds and my father's life insurance money, and got us into a small villa10 at Penge within sight of that immense facade11 of glass and iron, the Crystal Palace. Then he retired12 in a mood of good-natured contempt to his native habitat again. We stayed at Penge until my mother's death.
School became a large part of the world to me, absorbing my time and interest, and I never acquired that detailed13 and intimate knowledge of Penge and the hilly villadom round about, that I have of the town and outskirts14 of Bromstead.
It was a district of very much the same character, but it was more completely urbanised and nearer to the centre of things; there were the same unfinished roads, the same occasional disconcerted hedges and trees, the same butcher's horse grazing under a builder's notice-board, the same incidental lapses15 into slum. The Crystal Palace grounds cut off a large part of my walking radius16 to the west with impassable fences and forbiddingly expensive turnstiles, but it added to the ordinary spectacle of meteorology a great variety of gratuitous17 fireworks which banged and flared18 away of a night after supper and drew me abroad to see them better. Such walks as I took, to Croydon, Wembledon, West Wickham and Greenwich, impressed upon me the interminable extent of London's residential19 suburbs; mile after mile one went, between houses, villas20, rows of cottages, streets of shops, under railway arches, over railway bridges. I have forgotten the detailed local characteristics--if there were any--of much of that region altogether. I was only there two years, and half my perambulations occurred at dusk or after dark. But with Penge I associate my first realisations of the wonder and beauty of twilight22 and night, the effect of dark walls reflecting lamplight, and the mystery of blue haze-veiled hillsides of houses, the glare of shops by night, the glowing steam and streaming sparks of railway trains and railway signals lit up in the darkness. My first rambles23 in the evening occurred at Penge--I was becoming a big and independent-spirited boy--and I began my experience of smoking during these twilight prowls with the threepenny packets of American cigarettes then just appearing in the world.
My life centred upon the City Merchants School. Usually I caught the eight-eighteen for Victoria, I had a midday meal and tea; four nights a week I stayed for preparation, and often I was not back home again until within an hour of my bedtime. I spent my half holidays at school in order to play cricket and football. This, and a pretty voracious24 appetite for miscellaneous reading which was fostered by the Penge Middleton Library, did not leave me much leisure for local topography. On Sundays also I sang in the choir25 at St. Martin's Church, and my mother did not like me to walk out alone on the Sabbath afternoon, she herself slumbered26, so that I wrote or read at home. I must confess I was at home as little as I could contrive27.
Home, after my father's death, had become a very quiet and uneventful place indeed. My mother had either an unimaginative temperament28 or her mind was greatly occupied with private religious solicitudes29, and I remember her talking to me but little, and that usually upon topics I was anxious to evade31. I had developed my own view about low-Church theology long before my father's death, and my meditation32 upon that event had finished my secret estrangement33 from my mother's faith. My reason would not permit even a remote chance of his being in hell, he was so manifestly not evil, and this religion would not permit him a remote chance of being out yet. When I was a little boy my mother had taught me to read and write and pray and had done many things for me, indeed she persisted in washing me and even in making my clothes until I rebelled against these things as indignities35. But our minds parted very soon. She never began to understand the mental processes of my play, she never interested herself in my school life and work, she could not understand things I said; and she came, I think, quite insensibly to regard me with something of the same hopeless perplexity she had felt towards my father.
Him she must have wedded36 under considerable delusions37. I do not think he deceived her, indeed, nor do I suspect him of mercenariness in their union; but no doubt he played up to her requirements in the half ingenuous38 way that was and still is the quality of most wooing, and presented himself as a very brisk and orthodox young man. I wonder why nearly all love-making has to be fraudulent. Afterwards he must have disappointed her cruelly by letting one aspect after another of his careless, sceptical, experimental temperament appear. Her mind was fixed40 and definite, she embodied41 all that confidence in church and decorum and the assurances of the pulpit which was characteristic of the large mass of the English people--for after all, the rather low-Church section WAS the largest single mass--in early Victorian times. She had dreams, I suspect, of going to church with him side by side; she in a little poke42 bonnet43 and a large flounced crinoline, all mauve and magenta44 and starched45 under a little lace-trimmed parasol, and he in a tall silk hat and peg-top trousers and a roll-collar coat, and looking rather like the Prince Consort,--white angels almost visibly raining benedictions46 on their amiable47 progress. Perhaps she dreamt gently of much-belaced babies and an interestingly pious48 (but not too dissenting49 or fanatical) little girl or boy or so, also angel-haunted. And I think, too, she must have seen herself ruling a seemly "home of taste," with a vivarium in the conservatory50 that opened out of the drawing-room, or again, making preserves in the kitchen. My father's science-teaching, his diagrams of disembowelled humanity, his pictures of prehistoric51 beasts that contradicted the Flood, his disposition52 towards soft shirts and loose tweed suits, his inability to use a clothes brush, his spasmodic reading fits and his bulldog pipes, must have jarred cruelly with her rather unintelligent anticipations53. His wild moments of violent temper when he would swear and smash things, absurd almost lovable storms that passed like summer thunder, must have been starkly54 dreadful to her. She was constitutionally inadaptable, and certainly made no attempt to understand or tolerate these outbreaks. She tried them by her standards, and by her standards they were wrong. Her standards hid him from her. The blazing things he said rankled56 in her mind unforgettably.
As I remember them together they chafed57 constantly. Her attitude to nearly all his moods and all his enterprises was a sceptical disapproval58. She treated him as something that belonged to me and not to her. "YOUR father," she used to call him, as though I had got him for her.
She had married late and she had, I think, become mentally self-subsisting before her marriage. Even in those Herne Hill days I used to wonder what was going on in her mind, and I find that old speculative59 curiosity return as I write this. She took a considerable interest in the housework that our generally servantless condition put upon her--she used to have a charwoman in two or three times a week--but she did not do it with any great skill. She covered most of our furniture with flouncey ill-fitting covers, and she cooked plainly and without very much judgment60. The Penge house, as it contained nearly all our Bromstead things, was crowded with furniture, and is chiefly associated in my mind with the smell of turpentine, a condiment61 she used very freely upon the veneered mahogany pieces. My mother had an equal dread55 of "blacks" by day and the "night air," so that our brightly clean windows were rarely open.
She took a morning paper, and she would open it and glance at the headlines, but she did not read it until the afternoon and then, I think, she was interested only in the more violent crimes, and in railway and mine disasters and in the minutest domesticities of the Royal Family. Most of the books at home were my father's, and I do not think she opened any of them. She had one or two volumes that dated from her own youth, and she tried in vain to interest me in them; there was Miss Strickland's QUEENS OF ENGLAND, a book I remember with particular animosity, and QUEECHY and the WIDE WIDE WORLD. She made these books of hers into a class apart by sewing outer covers upon them of calico and figured muslin. To me in these habiliments they seemed not so much books as confederated old ladies.
My mother was also very punctual with her religious duties, and rejoiced to watch me in the choir.
On winter evenings she occupied an armchair on the other side of the table at which I sat, head on hand reading, and she would be darning stockings or socks or the like. We achieved an effect of rather stuffy62 comfortableness that was soporific, and in a passive way I think she found these among her happy times. On such occasions she was wont63 to put her work down on her knees and fall into a sort of thoughtless musing64 that would last for long intervals65 and rouse my curiosity. For like most young people I could not imagine mental states without definite forms.
She carried on a correspondence with a number of cousins and friends, writing letters in a slanting66 Italian hand and dealing67 mainly with births, marriages and deaths, business starts (in the vaguest terms) and the distresses69 of bankruptcy70.
And yet, you know, she did have a curious intimate life of her own that I suspected nothing of at the time, that only now becomes credible71 to me. She kept a diary that is still in my possession, a diary of fragmentary entries in a miscellaneous collection of pocket books. She put down the texts of the sermons she heard, and queer stiff little comments on casual visitors,--"Miss G. and much noisy shrieking72 talk about games and such frivolities and CROQUAY. A. delighted and VERY ATTENTIVE73." Such little human entries abound74. She had an odd way of never writing a name, only an initial; my father is always "A.," and I am always "D." It is manifest she followed the domestic events in the life of the Princess of Wales, who is now Queen Mother, with peculiar75 interest and sympathy. "Pray G. all may be well," she writes in one such crisis.
But there are things about myself that I still find too poignant76 to tell easily, certain painful and clumsy circumstances of my birth in very great detail, the distresses of my infantile ailments77. Then later I find such things as this: "Heard D. s----." The "s" is evidently "swear "--"G. bless and keep my boy from evil." And again, with the thin handwriting shaken by distress68: "D. would not go to church, and hardened his heart and said wicked infidel things, much disrespect of the clergy78. The anthem79 is tiresome80!!! That men should set up to be wiser than their maker81!!!" Then trebly underlined: "I FEAR HIS FATHER'S TEACHING." Dreadful little tangle82 of misapprehensions and false judgments83! More comforting for me to read, "D. very kind and good. He grows more thoughtful every day." I suspect myself of forgotten hypocrisies84.
At just one point my mother's papers seem to dip deeper. I think the death of my father must have stirred her for the first time for many years to think for herself. Even she could not go on living in any peace at all, believing that he had indeed been flung headlong into hell. Of this gnawing85 solicitude30 she never spoke86 to me, never, and for her diary also she could find no phrases. But on a loose half-sheet of notepaper between its pages I find this passage that follows, written very carefully. I do not know whose lines they are nor how she came upon them. They run:--
"And if there be no meeting past the grave;
If all is darkness, silence, yet 'tis rest.
Be not afraid ye waiting hearts that weep,
For God still giveth His beloved sleep,
And if an endless sleep He wills, so best."
That scrap87 of verse amazed me when I read it. I could even wonder if my mother really grasped the import of what she had copied out. It affected88 me as if a stone-deaf person had suddenly turned and joined in a whispered conversation. It set me thinking how far a mind in its general effect quite hopelessly limited, might range. After that I went through all her diaries, trying to find something more than a conventional term of tenderness for my father. But I found nothing. And yet somehow there grew upon me the realisation that there had been love.... Her love for me, on the other hand, was abundantly expressed.
I knew nothing of that secret life of feeling at the time; such expression as it found was all beyond my schoolboy range. I did not know when I pleased her and I did not know when I distressed89 her. Chiefly I was aware of my mother as rather dull company, as a mind thorny90 with irrational91 conclusions and incapable92 of explication, as one believing quite wilfully93 and irritatingly in impossible things. So I suppose it had to be; life was coming to me in new forms and with new requirements. It was essential to our situation that we should fail to understand. After this space of years I have come to realisations and attitudes that dissolve my estrangement from her, I can pierce these barriers, I can see her and feel her as a loving and feeling and desiring and muddle-headed person. There are times when I would have her alive again, if only that I might be kind to her for a little while and give her some return for the narrow intense affection, the tender desires, she evidently lavished94 so abundantly on me. But then again I ask how I could make that return? And I realise the futility95 of such dreaming. Her demand was rigid96, and to meet it I should need to act and lie.
So she whose blood fed me, whose body made me, lies in my memory as I saw her last, fixed, still, infinitely97 intimate, infinitely remote....
My own case with my mother, however, does not awaken98 the same regret I feel when I think of how she misjudged and irked my father, and turned his weaknesses into thorns for her own tormenting99. I wish I could look back without that little twinge to two people who were both in their different quality so good. But goodness that is narrow is a pedestrian and ineffectual goodness. Her attitude to my father seems to me one of the essentially100 tragic101 things that have come to me personally, one of those things that nothing can transfigure, that REMAIN sorrowful, that I cannot soothe102 with any explanation, for as I remember him he was indeed the most lovable of weak spasmodic men. But my mother had been trained in a hard and narrow system that made evil out of many things not in the least evil, and inculcated neither kindliness103 nor charity. All their estrangement followed from that.
These cramping104 cults106 do indeed take an enormous toll107 of human love and happiness, and not only that but what we Machiavellians must needs consider, they make frightful108 breaches109 in human solidarity110. I suppose I am a deeply religious man, as men of my quality go, but I hate more and more, as I grow older, the shadow of intolerance cast by religious organisations. All my life has been darkened by irrational intolerance, by arbitrary irrational prohibitions112 and exclusions113. Mahometanism with its fierce proselytism, has, I suppose, the blackest record of uncharitableness, but most of the Christian114 sects115 are tainted116, tainted to a degree beyond any of the anterior117 paganisms, with this same hateful quality. It is their exclusive claim that sends them wrong, the vain ambition that inspires them all to teach a uniform one-sided God and be the one and only gateway118 to salvation119. Deprecation of all outside the household of faith, an organised undervaluation of heretical goodness and lovableness, follows, necessarily. Every petty difference is exaggerated to the quality of a saving grace or a damning defect. Elaborate precautions are taken to shield the believer's mind against broad or amiable suggestions; the faithful are deterred120 by dark allusions121, by sinister122 warnings, from books, from theatres, from worldly conversation, from all the kindly123 instruments that mingle124 human sympathy. For only by isolating125 its flock can the organisation111 survive.
Every month there came to my mother a little magazine called, if I remember rightly, the HOME CHURCHMAN, with the combined authority of print and clerical commendation. It was the most evil thing that ever came into the house, a very devil, a thin little pamphlet with one woodcut illustration on the front page of each number; now the uninviting visage of some exponent126 of the real and only doctrine127 and attitudes, now some coral strand128 in act of welcoming the missionaries129 of God's mysterious preferences, now a new church in the Victorian Gothic. The vile130 rag it was! A score of vices132 that shun133 the policeman have nothing of its subtle wickedness. It was an outrage134 upon the natural kindliness of men. The contents were all admirably adjusted to keep a spirit in prison. Their force of sustained suggestion was tremendous. There would be dreadful intimations of the swift retribution that fell upon individuals for Sabbath-breaking, and upon nations for weakening towards Ritualism, or treating Roman Catholics as tolerable human beings; there would be great rejoicings over the conversion135 of alleged136 Jews, and terrible descriptions of the death-beds of prominent infidels with boldly invented last words,--the most unscrupulous lying; there would be the appallingly137 edifying139 careers of "early piety140" lusciously141 described, or stories of condemned142 criminals who traced their final ruin unerringly to early laxities of the kind that leads people to give up subscribing143 to the HOME CHURCHMAN.
Every month that evil spirit brought about a slump144 in our mutual145 love. My mother used to read the thing and become depressed146 and anxious for my spiritual welfare, used to be stirred to unintelligent pestering147....
2
A few years ago I met the editor of this same HOME CHURCHMAN. It was at one of the weekly dinners of that Fleet Street dining club, the Blackfriars.
I heard the paper's name with a queer little shock and surveyed the man with interest. No doubt he was only a successor of the purveyor148 of discords149 who darkened my boyhood. It was amazing to find an influence so terrible embodied in a creature so palpably petty. He was seated some way down a table at right angles to the one at which I sat, a man of mean appearance with a greyish complexion150, thin, with a square nose, a heavy wiry moustache and a big Adam's apple sticking out between the wings of his collar. He ate with considerable appetite and unconcealed relish152, and as his jaw153 was underhung, he chummed and made the moustache wave like reeds in the swell154 of a steamer. It gave him a conscientious155 look. After dinner he a little forced himself upon me. At that time, though the shadow of my scandal was already upon me, I still seemed to be shaping for great successes, and he was glad to be in conversation with me and anxious to intimate political sympathy and support. I tried to make him talk of the HOME CHURCHMAN and the kindred publications he ran, but he was manifestly ashamed of his job so far as I was concerned.
"One wants," he said, pitching himself as he supposed in my key, "to put constructive156 ideas into our readers, but they are narrow, you know, very narrow. Very." He made his moustache and lips express judicious157 regret. "One has to consider them carefully, one has to respect their attitudes. One dare not go too far with them. One has to feel one's way."
He chummed and the moustache bristled158.
A hireling, beyond question, catering159 for a demand. I gathered there was a home in Tufnell Park, and three boys to be fed and clothed and educated....
I had the curiosity to buy a copy of his magazine afterwards, and it seemed much the same sort of thing that had worried my mother in my boyhood. There was the usual Christian hero, this time with mutton-chop whiskers and a long bare upper lip. The Jesuits, it seemed, were still hard at it, and Heaven frightfully upset about the Sunday opening of museums and the falling birth-rate, and as touchy160 and vindictive161 as ever. There were two vigorous paragraphs upon the utter damnableness of the Rev162. R. J. Campbell, a contagious163 damnableness I gathered, one wasn't safe within a mile of Holborn Viaduct, and a foul-mouthed attack on poor little Wilkins the novelist--who was being baited by the moralists at that time for making one of his big women characters, not being in holy wedlock164, desire a baby and say so....
The broadening of human thought is a slow and complex process. We do go on, we do get on. But when one thinks that people are living and dying now, quarrelling and sulking, misled and misunderstanding, vaguely165 fearful, condemning166 and thwarting167 one another in the close darknesses of these narrow cults--Oh, God! one wants a gale168 out of Heaven, one wants a great wind from the sea!
3
While I lived at Penge two little things happened to me, trivial in themselves and yet in their quality profoundly significant. They had this in common, that they pierced the texture169 of the life I was quietly taking for granted and let me see through it into realities--realities I had indeed known about before but never realised. Each of these experiences left me with a sense of shock, with all the values in my life perplexingly altered, attempting readjustment. One of these disturbing and illuminating170 events was that I was robbed of a new pocket-knife and the other that I fell in love. It was altogether surprising to me to be robbed. You see, as an only child I had always been fairly well looked after and protected, and the result was an amazing confidence in the practical goodness of the people one met in the world. I knew there were robbers in the world, just as I knew there were tigers; that I was ever likely to meet robber or tiger face to face seemed equally impossible.
The knife as I remember it was a particularly jolly one with all sorts of instruments in it, tweezers171 and a thing for getting a stone out of the hoof172 of a horse, and a corkscrew; it had cost me a carefully accumulated half-crown, and amounted indeed to a new experience in knives. I had had it for two or three days, and then one afternoon I dropped it through a hole in my pocket on a footpath173 crossing a field between Penge and Anerley. I heard it fall in the way one does without at the time appreciating what had happened, then, later, before I got home, when my hand wandered into my pocket to embrace the still dear new possession I found it gone, and instantly that memory of something hitting the ground sprang up into consciousness. I went back and commenced a search. Almost immediately I was accosted175 by the leader of a little gang of four or five extremely dirty and ragged176 boys of assorted177 sizes and slouching carriage who were coming from the Anerley direction.
"Lost anythink, Matey?" said he.
I explained.
"'E's dropped 'is knife," said my interlocutor, and joined in the search.
"What sort of 'andle was it, Matey?" said a small white-faced sniffing178 boy in a big bowler179 hat.
I supplied the information. His sharp little face scrutinised the ground about us.
"GOT it," he said, and pounced180.
"Give it 'ere," said the big boy hoarsely181, and secured it.
I walked towards him serenely182 confident that he would hand it over to me, and that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
"No bloomin' fear!" he said, regarding me obliquely184. "Oo said it was your knife?"
Remarkable doubts assailed185 me. "Of course it's my knife," I said. The other boys gathered round me.
"This ain't your knife," said the big boy, and spat186 casually187.
"I dropped it just now."
"Findin's keepin's, I believe," said the big boy.
"Nonsense," I said. "Give me my knife."
"'Ow many blades it got?"
"Three."
"And what sort of 'andle?"
"Bone."
"Got a corkscrew like?"
"Yes."
"Ah! This ain't your knife no'ow. See?"
He made no offer to show it to me. My breath went.
"Look here!" I said. "I saw that kid pick it up. It IS my knife."
"Rot!" said the big boy, and slowly, deliberately188 put my knife into his trouser pocket.
I braced189 my soul for battle. All civilisation190 was behind me, but I doubt if it kept the colour in my face. I buttoned my jacket and clenched191 my fists and advanced on my antagonist192--he had, I suppose, the advantage of two years of age and three inches of height. "Hand over that knife," I said.
Then one of the smallest of the band assailed me with extraordinary vigour193 and swiftness from behind, had an arm round my neck and a knee in my back before I had the slightest intimation of attack, and so got me down. "I got 'im, Bill," squeaked194 this amazing little ruffian. My nose was flattened195 by a dirty hand, and as I struck out and hit something like sacking, some one kicked my elbow. Two or three seemed to be at me at the same time. Then I rolled over and sat up to discover them all making off, a ragged flight, footballing my cap, my City Merchants' cap, amongst them. I leapt to my feet in a passion of indignation and pursued them.
But I did not overtake them. We are beings of mixed composition, and I doubt if mine was a single-minded pursuit. I knew that honour required me to pursue, and I had a vivid impression of having just been down in the dust with a very wiry and active and dirty little antagonist of disagreeable odour and incredible and incalculable unscrupulousness, kneeling on me and gripping my arm and neck. I wanted of course to be even with him, but also I doubted if catching196 him would necessarily involve that. They kicked my cap into the ditch at the end of the field, and made off compactly along a cinder197 lane while I turned aside to recover my dishonoured198 headdress. As I knocked the dust out of that and out of my jacket, and brushed my knees and readjusted my very crumpled199 collar, I tried to focus this startling occurrence in my mind.
I had vague ideas of going to a policeman or of complaining at a police station, but some boyish instinct against informing prevented that. No doubt I entertained ideas of vindictive pursuit and murderous reprisals200. And I was acutely enraged201 whenever I thought of my knife. The thing indeed rankled in my mind for weeks and weeks, and altered all the flavour of my world for me. It was the first time I glimpsed the simple brute202 violence that lurks203 and peeps beneath our civilisation. A certain kindly complacency of attitude towards the palpably lower classes was qualified204 for ever.
4
But the other experience was still more cardinal205. It was the first clear intimation of a new motif206 in life, the sex motif, that was to rise and increase and accumulate power and enrichment and interweave with and at last dominate all my life.
It was when I was nearly fifteen this happened. It is inseparably connected in my mind with the dusk of warm September evenings. I never met the girl I loved by daylight, and I have forgotten her name. It was some insignificant207 name.
Yet the peculiar quality of the adventure keeps it shining darkly like some deep coloured gem34 in the common setting of my memories. It came as something new and strange, something that did not join on to anything else in my life or connect with any of my thoughts or beliefs or habits; it was a wonder, a mystery, a discovery about myself, a discovery about the whole world. Only in after years did sexual feeling lose that isolation208 and spread itself out to illuminate209 and pervade210 and at last possess the whole broad vision of life.
It was in that phase of an urban youth's development, the phase of the cheap cigarette, that this thing happened. One evening I came by chance on a number of young people promenading211 by the light of a row of shops towards Beckington, and, with all the glory of a glowing cigarette between my lips, I joined their strolling number. These twilight parades of young people, youngsters chiefly of the lower middle-class, are one of the odd social developments of the great suburban212 growths--unkindly critics, blind to the inner meanings of things, call them, I believe, Monkeys' Parades--the shop apprentices213, the young work girls, the boy clerks and so forth214, stirred by mysterious intimations, spend their first-earned money upon collars and ties, chiffon hats, smart lace collars, walking-sticks, sunshades or cigarettes, and come valiantly215 into the vague transfiguring mingling216 of gaslight and evening, to walk up and down, to eye meaningly, even to accost174 and make friends. It is a queer instinctive217 revolt from the narrow limited friendless homes in which so many find themselves, a going out towards something, romance if you will, beauty, that has suddenly become a need--a need that hitherto has lain dormant218 and unsuspected. They promenade219.
Vulgar!--it is as vulgar as the spirit that calls the moth5 abroad in the evening and lights the body of the glow-worm in the night. I made my way through the throng220, a little contemptuously as became a public schoolboy, my hands in my pockets--none of your cheap canes221 for me!--and very careful of the lie of my cigarette upon my lips. And two girls passed me, one a little taller than the other, with dim warm-tinted faces under clouds of dark hair and with dark eyes like pools reflecting stars.
I half turned, and the shorter one glanced back at me over her shoulder--I could draw you now the pose of her cheek and neck and shoulder--and instantly I was as passionately222 in love with the girl as I have ever been before or since, as any man ever was with any woman. I turned about and followed them, I flung away my cigarette ostentatiously and lifted my school cap and spoke to them.
The girl answered shyly with her dark eyes on my face. What I said and what she said I cannot remember, but I have little doubt it was something absolutely vapid224. It really did not matter; the thing was we had met. I felt as I think a new-hatched moth must feel when suddenly its urgent headlong searching brings it in tremulous amazement225 upon its mate.
We met, covered from each other, with all the nets of civilisation keeping us apart. We walked side by side.
It led to scarcely more than that. I think we met four or five times altogether, and always with her nearly silent elder sister on the other side of her. We walked on the last two occasions arm in arm, furtively226 caressing227 each other's hands, we went away from the glare of the shops into the quiet roads of villadom, and there we whispered instead of talking and looked closely into one another's warm and shaded face. "Dear," I whispered very daringly, and she answered, "Dear!" We had a vague sense that we wanted more of that quality of intimacy228 and more. We wanted each other as one wants beautiful music again or to breathe again the scent229 of flowers.
And that is all there was between us. The events are nothing, the thing that matters is the way in which this experience stabbed through the common stuff of life and left it pierced, with a light, with a huge new interest shining through the rent.
When I think of it I can recall even now the warm mystery of her face, her lips a little apart, lips that I never kissed, her soft shadowed throat, and I feel again the sensuous230 stir of her proximity231....
Those two girls never told me their surname nor let me approach their house. They made me leave them at the corner of a road of small houses near Penge Station. And quite abruptly232, without any intimation, they vanished and came to the meeting place no more, they vanished as a moth goes out of a window into the night, and left me possessed233 of an intolerable want....
The affair pervaded234 my existence for many weeks. I could not do my work and I could not rest at home. Night after night I promenaded235 up and down that Monkeys' Parade full of an unappeasable desire, with a thwarted236 sense of something just begun that ought to have gone on. I went backwards237 and forwards on the way to the vanishing place, and at last explored the forbidden road that had swallowed them up. But I never saw her again, except that later she came to me, my symbol of womanhood, in dreams. How my blood was stirred! I lay awake of nights whispering in the darkness for her. I prayed for her.
Indeed that girl, who probably forgot the last vestiges238 of me when her first real kiss came to her, ruled and haunted me, gave a Queen to my imagination and a texture to all my desires until I became a man.
I generalised her at last. I suddenly discovered that poetry was about her and that she was the key to all that had hitherto seemed nonsense about love. I took to reading novels, and if the heroine could not possibly be like her, dusky and warm and starlike, I put the book aside....
I hesitate and add here one other confession239. I want to tell this thing because it seems to me we are altogether too restrained and secretive about such matters. The cardinal thing in life sneaks240 in to us darkly and shamefully241 like a thief in the night.
One day during my Cambridge days--it must have been in my first year before I knew Hatherleigh--I saw in a print-shop window near the Strand an engraving242 of a girl that reminded me sharply of Penge and its dusky encounter. It was just a half length of a bare-shouldered, bare-breasted Oriental with arms akimbo, smiling faintly. I looked at it, went my way, then turned back and bought it. I felt I must have it. The odd thing is that I was more than a little shamefaced about it. I did not have it framed and hung in my room open to the criticism of my friends, but I kept it in the drawer of my writing-table. And I kept that drawer locked for a year. It speedily merged243 with and became identified with the dark girl of Penge. That engraving became in a way my mistress. Often when I had sported my oak and was supposed to be reading, I was sitting with it before me.
Obeying some instinct I kept the thing very secret indeed. For a time nobody suspected what was locked in my drawer nor what was locked in me. I seemed as sexless as my world required.
5
These things stabbed through my life, intimations of things above and below and before me. They had an air of being no more than incidents, interruptions.
The broad substance of my existence at this time was the City Merchants School. Home was a place where I slept and read, and the mooning explorations of the south-eastern postal244 district which occupied the restless evenings and spare days of my vacations mere245 interstices, giving glimpses of enigmatical lights and distant spaces between the woven threads of a school-boy's career. School life began for me every morning at Herne Hill, for there I was joined by three or four other boys and the rest of the way we went together. Most of the streets and roads we traversed in our morning's walk from Victoria are still intact, the storms of rebuilding that have submerged so much of my boyhood's London have passed and left them, and I have revived the impression of them again and again in recent years as I have clattered246 dinnerward in a hansom or hummed along in a motor cab to some engagement. The main gate still looks out with the same expression of ancient well-proportioned kindliness upon St. Margaret's Close. There are imposing247 new science laboratories in Chambers248 Street indeed, but the old playing fields are unaltered except for the big electric trams that go droning and spitting blue flashes along the western boundary. I know Ratten, the new Head, very well, but I have not been inside the school to see if it has changed at all since I went up to Cambridge.
I took all they put before us very readily as a boy, for I had a mind of vigorous appetite, but since I have grown mentally to man's estate and developed a more and more comprehensive view of our national process and our national needs, I am more and more struck by the oddity of the educational methods pursued, their aimless disconnectedness from the constructive forces in the community. I suppose if we are to view the public school as anything more than an institution that has just chanced to happen, we must treat it as having a definite function towards the general scheme of the nation, as being in a sense designed to take the crude young male of the more or less responsible class, to correct his harsh egotisms, broaden his outlook, give him a grasp of the contemporary developments he will presently be called upon to influence and control, and send him on to the university to be made a leading and ruling social man. It is easy enough to carp at schoolmasters and set up for an Educational Reformer, I know, but still it is impossible not to feel how infinitely more effectually--given certain impossibilities perhaps--the job might be done.
My memory of school has indeed no hint whatever of that quality of elucidation250 it seems reasonable to demand from it. Here all about me was London, a vast inexplicable251 being, a vortex of gigantic forces, that filled and overwhelmed me with impressions, that stirred my imagination to a perpetual vague enquiry; and my school not only offered no key to it, but had practically no comment to make upon it at all. We were within three miles of Westminster and Charing252 Cross, the government offices of a fifth of mankind were all within an hour's stroll, great economic changes were going on under our eyes, now the hoardings flamed with election placards, now the Salvation Army and now the unemployed253 came trailing in procession through the winter-grey streets, now the newspaper placards outside news-shops told of battles in strange places, now of amazing discoveries, now of sinister crimes, abject254 squalor and poverty, imperial splendour and luxury, Buckingham Palace, Rotten Row, Mayfair, the slums of Pimlico, garbage-littered streets of bawling255 costermongers, the inky silver of the barge-laden Thames--such was the background of our days. We went across St. Margaret's Close and through the school gate into a quiet puerile256 world apart from all these things. We joined in the earnest acquirement of all that was necessary for Greek epigrams and Latin verse, and for the rest played games. We dipped down into something clear and elegantly proportioned and time-worn and for all its high resolve of stalwart virility257 a little feeble, like our blackened and decayed portals by Inigo Jones.
Within, we were taught as the chief subjects of instruction, Latin and Greek. We were taught very badly because the men who taught us did not habitually258 use either of these languages, nobody uses them any more now except perhaps for the Latin of a few Levantine monasteries259. At the utmost our men read them. We were taught these languages because long ago Latin had been the language of civilisation; the one way of escape from the narrow and localised life had lain in those days through Latin, and afterwards Greek had come in as the vehicle of a flood of new and amazing ideas. Once these two languages had been the sole means of initiation260 to the detached criticism and partial comprehension of the world. I can imagine the fierce zeal261 of our first Heads, Gardener and Roper, teaching Greek like passionate223 missionaries, as a progressive Chinaman might teach English to the boys of Pekin, clumsily, impatiently, with rod and harsh urgency, but sincerely, patriotically262, because they felt that behind it lay revelations, the irresistible263 stimulus264 to a new phase of history. That was long ago. A new great world, a vaster Imperialism265 had arisen about the school, had assimilated all these amazing and incredible ideas, had gone on to new and yet more amazing developments of its own. But the City Merchants School still made the substance of its teaching Latin and Greek, still, with no thought of rotating crops, sowed in a dream amidst the harvesting.
There is no fierceness left in the teaching now. Just after I went up to Trinity, Gates, our Head, wrote a review article in defence of our curriculum. In this, among other indiscretions, he asserted that it was impossible to write good English without an illuminating knowledge of the classic tongues, and he split an infinitive266 and failed to button up a sentence in saying so. His main argument conceded every objection a reasonable person could make to the City Merchants' curriculum. He admitted that translation had now placed all the wisdom of the past at a common man's disposal, that scarcely a field of endeavour remained in which modern work had not long since passed beyond the ancient achievement. He disclaimed267 any utility. But there was, he said, a peculiar magic in these grammatical exercises no other subjects of instruction possessed. Nothing else provided the same strengthening and orderly discipline for the mind.
He said that, knowing the Senior Classics he did, himself a Senior Classic!
Yet in a dim confused way I think he was making out a case. In schools as we knew them, and with the sort of assistant available, the sort of assistant who has been trained entirely268 on the old lines, he could see no other teaching so effectual in developing attention, restraint, sustained constructive effort and various yet systematic269 adjustment. And that was as far as his imagination could go.
It is infinitely easier to begin organised human affairs than end them; the curriculum and the social organisation of the English public school are the crowning instances of that. They go on because they have begun. Schools are not only immortal270 institutions but reproductive ones. Our founder271, Jabez Arvon, knew nothing, I am sure, of Gates' pedagogic values and would, I feel certain, have dealt with them disrespectfully. But public schools and university colleges sprang into existence correlated, the scholars went on to the universities and came back to teach the schools, to teach as they themselves had been taught, before they had ever made any real use of the teaching; the crowd of boys herded272 together, a crowd perpetually renewed and unbrokenly the same, adjusted itself by means of spontaneously developed institutions. In a century, by its very success, this revolutionary innovation of Renascence public schools had become an immense tradition woven closely into the fabric273 of the national life. Intelligent and powerful people ceased to talk Latin or read Greek, they had got what was wanted, but that only left the schoolmaster the freer to elaborate his point. Since most men of any importance or influence in the country had been through the mill, it was naturally a little difficult to persuade them that it was not quite the best and most ennobling mill the wit of man could devise. And, moreover, they did not want their children made strange to them. There was all the machinery274 and all the men needed to teach the old subjects, and none to teach whatever new the critic might propose. Such science instruction as my father gave seemed indeed the uninviting alternative to the classical grind. It was certainly an altogether inferior instrument at that time.
So it was I occupied my mind with the exact study of dead languages for seven long years. It was the strangest of detachments. We would sit under the desk of such a master as Topham like creatures who had fallen into an enchanted275 pit, and he would do his considerable best to work us up to enthusiasm for, let us say, a Greek play. If we flagged he would lash249 himself to revive us. He would walk about the class-room mouthing great lines in a rich roar, and asking us with a flushed face and shining eyes if it was not "GLORIOUS." The very sight of Greek letters brings back to me the dingy276, faded, ink-splashed quality of our class-room, the banging of books, Topham's disordered hair, the sheen of his alpaca gown, his deep unmusical intonations277 and the wide striding of his creaking boots. Glorious! And being plastic human beings we would consent that it was glorious, and some of us even achieved an answering reverberation278 and a sympathetic flush. I at times responded freely. We all accepted from him unquestioningly that these melodies, these strange sounds, exceeded any possibility of beauty that lay in the Gothic intricacy, the splash and glitter, the jar and recovery, the stabbing lights, the heights and broad distances of our English tongue. That indeed was the chief sin of him. It was not that he was for Greek and Latin, but that he was fiercely against every beauty that was neither classic nor deferred279 to classical canons.
And what exactly did we make of it, we seniors who understood it best? We visualised dimly through that dust and the grammatical difficulties, the spectacle of the chorus chanting grotesquely280, helping281 out protagonist282 and antagonist, masked and buskined, with the telling of incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incest, of gods faded beyond symbolism, of that Relentless283 Law we did not believe in for a moment, that no modern western European can believe in. We thought of the characters in the unconvincing wigs284 and costumes of our school performance. No Gilbert Murray had come as yet to touch these things to life again. It was like the ghost of an antiquarian's toy theatre, a ghost that crumbled285 and condensed into a gritty dust of construing286 as one looked at it.
Marks, shindies, prayers and punishments, all flavoured with the leathery stuffiness287 of time-worn Big Hall....
And then out one would come through our grey old gate into the evening light and the spectacle of London hurrying like a cataract288, London in black and brown and blue and gleaming silver, roaring like the very loom183 of Time. We came out into the new world no teacher has yet had the power and courage to grasp and expound289. Life and death sang all about one, joys and fears on such a scale, in such an intricacy as never Greek nor Roman knew. The interminable procession of horse omnibuses went lumbering290 past, bearing countless291 people we knew not whence, we knew not whither. Hansoms clattered, foot passengers jostled one, a thousand appeals of shop and boarding caught the eye. The multi-coloured lights of window and street mingled292 with the warm glow of the declining day under the softly flushing London skies; the ever-changing placards, the shouting news-vendors, told of a kaleidoscopic293 drama all about the globe. One did not realise what had happened to us, but the voice of Topham was suddenly drowned and lost, he and his minute, remote gesticulations....
That submerged and isolated294 curriculum did not even join on to living interests where it might have done so. We were left absolutely to the hints of the newspapers, to casual political speeches, to the cartoons of the comic papers or a chance reading of some Socialist295 pamphlet for any general ideas whatever about the huge swirling296 world process in which we found ourselves. I always look back with particular exasperation297 to the cessation of our modern history at the year 1815. There it pulled up abruptly, as though it had come upon something indelicate....
But, after all, what would Topham or Flack have made of the huge adjustments of the nineteenth century? Flack was the chief cricketer on the staff; he belonged to that great cult105 which pretends that the place of this or that county in the struggle for the championship is a matter of supreme298 importance to boys. He obliged us to affect a passionate interest in the progress of county matches, to work up unnatural299 enthusiasms. What a fuss there would be when some well-trained boy, panting as if from Marathon, appeared with an evening paper! "I say, you chaps, Middlesex all out for a hundred and five!"
Under Flack's pressure I became, I confess, a cricket humbug300 of the first class. I applied301 myself industriously302 year by year to mastering scores and averages; I pretended that Lords or the Oval were the places nearest Paradise for me. (I never went to either.) Through a slight mistake about the county boundary I adopted Surrey for my loyalty303, though as a matter of fact we were by some five hundred yards or so in Kent. It did quite as well for my purposes. I bowled rather straight and fast, and spent endless hours acquiring the skill to bowl Flack out. He was a bat in the Corinthian style, rich and voluminous, and succumbed304 very easily to a low shooter or an unexpected Yorker, but usually he was caught early by long leg. The difficulty was to bowl him before he got caught. He loved to lift a ball to leg. After one had clean bowled him at the practice nets one deliberately gave him a ball to leg just to make him feel nice again.
Flack went about a world of marvels305 dreaming of leg hits. He has been observed, going across the Park on his way to his highly respectable club in Piccadilly, to break from profound musings into a strange brief dance that ended with an imaginary swipe with his umbrella, a roofer, over the trees towards Buckingham Palace. The hit accomplished306, Flack resumed his way.
Inadequately307 instructed foreigners would pass him in terror, needlessly alert.
6
These schoolmasters move through my memory as always a little distant and more than a little incomprehensible. Except when they wore flannels308, I saw them almost always in old college caps and gowns, a uniform which greatly increased their detachment from the world of actual men. Gates, the head, was a lean loose-limbed man, rather stupid I discovered when I reached the Sixth and came into contact with him, but honest, simple and very eager to be liberal-minded. He was bald, with an almost conical baldness, with a grizzled pointed39 beard, small featured and, under the stresses of a Zeitgeist that demanded liberality, with an expression of puzzled but resolute309 resistance to his own unalterable opinions. He made a tall dignified310 figure in his gown. In my junior days he spoke to me only three or four times, and then he annoyed me by giving me a wrong surname; it was a sore point because I was an outsider and not one of the old school families, the Shoesmiths, the Naylors, the Marklows, the Tophams, the Pevises and suchlike, who came generation after generation. I recall him most vividly311 against the background of faded brown book-backs in the old library in which we less destructive seniors were trusted to work, with the light from the stained-glass window falling in coloured patches on his face. It gave him the appearance of having no colour of his own. He had a habit of scratching the beard on his cheek as he talked, and he used to come and consult us about things and invariably do as we said. That, in his phraseology, was "maintaining the traditions of the school."
He had indeed an effect not of a man directing a school, but of a man captured and directed by a school. Dead and gone Elizabethans had begotten312 a monster that could carry him about in its mouth.
Yet being a man, as I say, with his hair a little stirred by a Zeitgeist that made for change, Gates did at times display a disposition towards developments. City Merchants had no modern side, and utilitarian314 spirits were carping in the PALL138 MALL GAZETTE and elsewhere at the omissions315 from our curriculum, and particularly at our want of German. Moreover, four classes still worked together with much clashing and uproar316 in the old Big Hall that had once held in a common tumult317 the entire school. Gates used to come and talk to us older fellows about these things.
"I don't wish to innovate318 unduly," he used to say. "But we ought to get in some German, you know,--for those who like it. The army men will be wanting it some of these days."
He referred to the organisation of regular evening preparation for the lower boys in Big Hall as a "revolutionary change," but he achieved it, and he declared he began the replacement319 of the hacked320 wooden tables, at which the boys had worked since Tudor days, by sloping desks with safety inkpots and scientifically adjustable321 seats, "with grave misgivings322." And though he never birched a boy in his life, and was, I am convinced, morally incapable of such a scuffle, he retained the block and birch in the school through all his term of office, and spoke at the Headmasters' Conference in temperate323 approval of corporal chastisement324, comparing it, dear soul! to the power of the sword....
I wish I could, in some measure and without tediousness, convey the effect of his discourses325 to General Assembly in Big Hall. But that is like trying to draw the obverse and reverse of a sixpence worn to complete illegibility326. His tall fine figure stood high on the days, his thoughtful tenor327 filled the air as he steered328 his hazardous329 way through sentences that dragged inconclusive tails and dropped redundant330 prepositions. And he pleaded ever so urgently, ever so finely, that what we all knew for Sin was sinful, and on the whole best avoided altogether, and so went on with deepening notes and even with short arresting gestures of the right arm and hand, to stir and exhort331 us towards goodness, towards that modern, unsectarian goodness, goodness in general and nothing in particular, which the Zeitgeist seemed to indicate in those transitional years.
7
The school never quite got hold of me. Partly I think that was because I was a day-boy and so freer than most of the boys, partly because of a temperamental disposition to see things in my own way and have my private dreams, partly because I was a little antagonised by the family traditions that ran through the school. I was made to feel at first that I was a rank outsider, and I never quite forgot it. I suffered very little bullying332, and I never had a fight--in all my time there were only three fights--but I followed my own curiosities. I was already a very keen theologian and politician before I was fifteen. I was also intensely interested in modern warfare333. I read the morning papers in the Reading Room during the midday recess334, never missed the illustrated335 weeklies, and often when I could afford it I bought a PALL MALL GAZETTE on my way home.
I do not think that I was very exceptional in that; most intelligent boys, I believe, want naturally to be men, and are keenly interested in men's affairs. There is not the universal passion for a magnified puerility336 among them it is customary to assume. I was indeed a voracious reader of everything but boys' books--which I detested--and fiction. I read histories, travel, popular science and controversy337 with particular zest338, and I loved maps. School work and school games were quite subordinate affairs for me. I worked well and made a passable figure at games, and I do not think I was abnormally insensitive to the fine quality of our school, to the charm of its mediaeval nucleus339, its Gothic cloisters340, its scraps341 of Palladian and its dignified Georgian extensions; the contrast of the old quiet, that in spite of our presence pervaded it everywhere, with the rushing and impending342 London all about it, was indeed a continual pleasure to me. But these things were certainly not the living and central interests of my life.
I had to conceal151 my wider outlook to a certain extent--from the masters even more than from the boys. Indeed I only let myself go freely with one boy, Britten, my especial chum, the son of the Agent-General for East Australia. We two discovered in a chance conversation A PROPOS of a map in the library that we were both of us curious why there were Malays in Madagascar, and how the Mecca pilgrims came from the East Indies before steamships343 were available. Neither of us had suspected that there was any one at all in the school who knew or cared a rap about the Indian Ocean, except as water on the way to India. But Britten had come up through the Suez Canal, and his ship had spoken a pilgrim ship on the way. It gave him a startling quality of living knowledge. From these pilgrims we got to a comparative treatment of religions, and from that, by a sudden plunge8, to entirely sceptical and disrespectful confessions344 concerning Gates' last outbreak of simple piety in School Assembly. We became congenial intimates from that hour.
The discovery of Britten happened to me when we were both in the Lower Fifth. Previously345 there had been a watertight compartment346 between the books I read and the thoughts they begot313 on the one hand and human intercourse347 on the other. Now I really began my higher education, and aired and examined and developed in conversation the doubts, the ideas, the interpretations348 that had been forming in my mind. As we were both day-boys with a good deal of control over our time we organised walks and expeditions together, and my habit of solitary349 and rather vague prowling gave way to much more definite joint350 enterprises. I went several times to his house, he was the youngest of several brothers, one of whom was a medical student and let us assist at the dissection351 of a cat, and once or twice in vacation time he came to Penge, and we went with parcels of provisions to do a thorough day in the grounds and galleries of the Crystal Palace, ending with the fireworks at close quarters. We went in a river steamboat down to Greenwich, and fired by that made an excursion to Margate and back; we explored London docks and Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane and all sorts of out-of-the-way places together.
We confessed shyly to one another a common secret vice131, "Phantom352 warfare." When we walked alone, especially in the country, we had both developed the same practice of fighting an imaginary battle about us as we walked. As we went along we were generals, and our attacks pushed along on either side, crouching353 and gathering354 behind hedges, cresting355 ridges21, occupying copses, rushing open spaces, fighting from house to house. The hillsides about Penge were honeycombed in my imagination with the pits and trenches356 I had created to check a victorious357 invader358 coming out of Surrey. For him West Kensington was chiefly important as the scene of a desperate and successful last stand of insurrectionary troops (who had seized the Navy, the Bank and other advantages) against a royalist army--reinforced by Germans--advancing for reasons best known to themselves by way of Harrow and Ealing. It is a secret and solitary game, as we found when we tried to play it together. We made a success of that only once. All the way down to Margate we schemed defences and assailed and fought them as we came back against the sunset. Afterwards we recapitulated359 all that conflict by means of a large scale map of the Thames and little paper ironclads in plan cut out of paper.
A subsequent revival360 of these imaginings was brought about by Britten's luck in getting, through a friend of his father's, admission for us both to the spectacle of volunteer officers fighting the war game in Caxton Hall. We developed a war game of our own at Britten's home with nearly a couple of hundred lead soldiers, some excellent spring cannons361 that shot hard and true at six yards, hills of books and a constantly elaborated set of rules. For some months that occupied an immense proportion of our leisure. Some of our battles lasted several days. We kept the game a profound secret from the other fellows. They would not have understood.
And we also began, it was certainly before we were sixteen, to write, for the sake of writing. We liked writing. We had discovered Lamb and the best of the middle articles in such weeklies as the SATURDAY GAZETTE, and we imitated them. Our minds were full of dim uncertain things we wanted to drag out into the light of expression. Britten had got hold of IN MEMORIAM, and I had disinterred Pope's ESSAY ON MAN and RABBI BEN EZRA, and these things had set our theological and cosmic solicitudes talking. I was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, I know, when he and I walked along the Thames Embankment confessing shamefully to one another that we had never read Lucretius. We thought every one who mattered had read Lucretius.
When I was nearly sixteen my mother was taken ill very suddenly, and died of some perplexing complaint that involved a post-mortem examination; it was, I think, the trouble that has since those days been recognised as appendicitis362. This led to a considerable change in my circumstances; the house at Penge was given up, and my Staffordshire uncle arranged for me to lodge363 during school terms with a needy364 solicitor365 and his wife in Vicars Street, S. W., about a mile and a half from the school. So it was I came right into London; I had almost two years of London before I went to Cambridge.
Those were our great days together. Afterwards we were torn apart; Britten went to Oxford366, and our circumstances never afterwards threw us continuously together until the days of the BLUE WEEKLY.
As boys, we walked together, read and discussed the same books, pursued the same enquiries. We got a reputation as inseparables and the nickname of the Rose and the Lily, for Britten was short and thick-set with dark close curling hair and a ruddy Irish type of face; I was lean and fair-haired and some inches taller than he. Our talk ranged widely and yet had certain very definite limitations. We were amazingly free with politics and religion, we went to that little meeting-house of William Morris's at Hammersmith and worked out the principles of Socialism pretty thoroughly367, and we got up the Darwinian theory with the help of Britten's medical-student brother and the galleries of the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road. Those wonderful cases on the ground floor illustrating368 mimicry369, dimorphism and so forth, were new in our times, and we went through them with earnest industry and tried over our Darwinism in the light of that. Such topics we did exhaustively. But on the other hand I do not remember any discussion whatever of human sex or sexual relationships. There, in spite of intense secret curiosities, our lips were sealed by a peculiar shyness. And I do not believe we ever had occasion either of us to use the word "love." It was not only that we were instinctively370 shy of the subject, but that we were mightily371 ashamed of the extent of our ignorance and uncertainty372 in these matters. We evaded373 them elaborately with an assumption of exhaustive knowledge.
We certainly had no shyness about theology. We marked the emancipation374 of our spirits from the frightful teachings that had oppressed our boyhood, by much indulgence in blasphemous375 wit. We had a secret literature of irreverent rhymes, and a secret art of theological caricature. Britten's father had delighted his family by reading aloud from Dr. Richard Garnett's TWILIGHT OF THE GODS, and Britten conveyed the precious volume to me. That and the BAB BALLADS376 were the inspiration of some of our earliest lucubrations.
For an imaginative boy the first experience of writing is like a tiger's first taste of blood, and our literary flowerings led very directly to the revival of the school magazine, which had been comatose377 for some years. But there we came upon a disappointment.
8
In that revival we associated certain other of the Sixth Form boys, and notably378 one for whom our enterprise was to lay the foundations of a career that has ended in the House of Lords, Arthur Cossington, now Lord Paddockhurst. Cossington was at that time a rather heavy, rather good-looking boy who was chiefly eminent379 in cricket, an outsider even as we were and preoccupied380 no doubt, had we been sufficiently381 detached to observe him, with private imaginings very much of the same quality and spirit as our own. He was, we were inclined to think, rather a sentimentalist, rather a poseur382, he affected a concise383 emphatic384 style, played chess very well, betrayed a belief in will-power, and earned Britten's secret hostility385, Britten being a sloven386, by the invariable neatness of his collars and ties. He came into our magazine with a vigour that we found extremely surprising and unwelcome.
Britten and I had wanted to write. We had indeed figured our project modestly as a manuscript magazine of satirical, liberal and brilliant literature by which in some rather inexplicable way the vague tumult of ideas that teemed387 within us was to find form and expression; Cossington, it was manifest from the outset, wanted neither to write nor writing, but a magazine. I remember the inaugural388 meeting in Shoesmith major's study--we had had great trouble in getting it together--and how effectually Cossington bolted with the proposal.
"I think we fellows ought to run a magazine," said Cossington. "The school used to have one. A school like this ought to have a magazine."
"The last one died in '84," said Shoesmith from the hearthrug. "Called the OBSERVER. Rot rather."
"Bad title," said Cossington.
"There was a TATLER before that," said Britten, sitting on the writing table at the window that was closed to deaden the cries of the Lower School at play, and clashing his boots together.
"We want something suggestive of City Merchants."
"CITY MERCHANDIZE," said Britten.
"Too fanciful. What of ARVONIAN? Richard Arvon was our founder, and it seems almost a duty--"
"They call them all -usians or -onians," said Britten.
"I like CITY MERCHANDIZE," I said. "We could probably find a quotation389 to suggest--oh! mixed good things."
Cossington regarded me abstractedly.
"Don't want to put the accent on the City, do we?" said Shoesmith, who had a feeling for county families, and Naylor supported him by a murmur390 of approval.
"We ought to call it the ARVONIAN," decided391 Cossington, "and we might very well have underneath392, 'With which is incorporated the OBSERVER.' That picks up the old traditions, makes an appeal to old boys and all that, and it gives us something to print under the title."
I still held out for CITY MERCHANDIZE, which had taken my fancy. "Some of the chaps' people won't like it," said Naylor, "certain not to. And it sounds Rum."
"Sounds Weird," said a boy who had not hitherto spoken.
"We aren't going to do anything Queer," said Shoesmith, pointedly393 not looking at Britten.
The question of the title had manifestly gone against us. "Oh! HAVE it ARVONIAN," I said.
"And next, what size shall we have?" said Cossington.
"Something like MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE--or LONGMANS'; LONGMANS' is better because it has a whole page, not columns. It makes no end of difference to one's effects."
"What effects?" asked Shoesmith abruptly.
"Oh! a pause or a white line or anything. You've got to write closer for a double column. It's nuggetty. You can't get a swing on your prose." I had discussed this thoroughly with Britten.
"If the fellows are going to write--" began Britten.
"We ought to keep off fine writing," said Shoesmith. "It's cheek. I vote we don't have any."
"We sha'n't get any," said Cossington, and then as an olive branch to me, "unless Remington does a bit. Or Britten. But it's no good making too much space for it."
"We ought to be very careful about the writing," said Shoesmith. "We don't want to give ourselves away."
"I vote we ask old Topham to see us through," said Naylor.
Britten groaned394 aloud and every one regarded him. "Greek epigrams on the fellows' names," he said. "Small beer in ancient bottles. Let's get a stuffed broody hen to SIT on the magazine."
"We might do worse than a Greek epigram," said Cossington. "One in each number. It--it impresses parents and keeps up our classical tradition. And the masters CAN help. We don't want to antagonise them. Of course--we've got to departmentalise. Writing is only one section of the thing. The ARVONIAN has to stand for the school. There's questions of space and questions of expense. We can't turn out a great chunk395 of printed prose like--like wet cold toast and call it a magazine."
Britten writhed396, appreciating the image.
"There's to be a section of sports. YOU must do that."
"I'm not going to do any fine writing," said Shoesmith.
"What you've got to do is just to list all the chaps and put a note to their play:--'Naylor minor397 must pass more. Football isn't the place for extreme individualism.' 'Ammersham shapes well as half-back.' Things like that."
"I could do that all right," said Shoesmith, brightening and manifestly becoming pregnant with judgments.
"One great thing about a magazine of this sort," said Cossington, "is to mention just as many names as you can in each number. It keeps the interest alive. Chaps will turn it over looking for their own little bit. Then it all lights up for them."
"Do you want any reports of matches?" Shoesmith broke from his meditation.
"Rather. With comments."
"Naylor surpassed himself and negotiated the lemon safely home," said Shoesmith.
"Shut it," said Naylor modestly.
"Exactly," said Cossington. "That gives us three features," touching398 them off on his fingers, "Epigram, Literary Section, Sports. Then we want a section to shove anything into, a joke, a notice of anything that's going on. So on. Our Note Book."
"Oh, Hell!" said Britten, and clashed his boots, to the silent disapproval of every one.
"Then we want an editorial."
"A WHAT?" cried Britten, with a note of real terror in his voice.
"Well, don't we? Unless we have our Note Book to begin on the front page. It gives a scrappy effect to do that. We want something manly399 and straightforward400 and a bit thoughtful, about Patriotism401, say, or ESPRIT DE CORPS402, or After-Life."
I looked at Britten. Hitherto we had not considered Cossington mattered very much in the world.
He went over us as a motor-car goes over a dog. There was a sort of energy about him, a new sort of energy to us; we had never realised that anything of the sort existed in the world. We were hopelessly at a disadvantage. Almost instantly we had developed a clear and detailed vision of a magazine made up of everything that was most acceptable in the magazines that flourished in the adult world about us, and had determined403 to make it a success. He had by a kind of instinct, as it were, synthetically404 plagiarised every successful magazine and breathed into this dusty mixture the breath of life. He was elected at his own suggestion managing director, with the earnest support of Shoesmith and Naylor, and conducted the magazine so successfully and brilliantly that he even got a whole back page of advertisements from the big sports shop in Holborn, and made the printers pay at the same rate for a notice of certain books of their own which they said they had inserted by inadvertency to fill up space. The only literary contribution in the first number was a column by Topham in faultless stereotyped405 English in depreciation406 of some fancied evil called Utilitarian Studies and ending with that noble old quotation:--
"To the glory that was Greece and the grandeur407 that was Rome."
And Flack crowded us out of number two with a bright little paper on the "Humours of Cricket," and the Head himself was profusely408 thoughtful all over the editorial under the heading of "The School Chapel409; and How it Seems to an Old Boy."
Britten and I found it difficult to express to each other with any grace or precision what we felt about that magazine.
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1
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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versatile
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| adj.通用的，万用的；多才多艺的，多方面的 | |
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entrusted
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| v.委托，托付( entrust的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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vowel
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| n.元音；元音字母 | |
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8
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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10
villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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facade
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| n.(建筑物的)正面，临街正面；外表 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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13
detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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lapses
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| n.失误，过失( lapse的名词复数 )；小毛病；行为失检；偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 )；陷入；倒退；丧失 | |
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16
radius
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| n.半径，半径范围；有效航程，范围，界限 | |
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17
gratuitous
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| adj.无偿的，免费的；无缘无故的，不必要的 | |
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18
Flared
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| adj. 端部张开的, 爆发的, 加宽的, 漏斗式的 动词flare的过去式和过去分词 | |
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19
residential
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| adj.提供住宿的；居住的；住宅的 | |
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20
villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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21
ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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22
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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23
rambles
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的第三人称单数 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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24
voracious
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| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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25
choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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26
slumbered
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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contrive
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| vt.谋划，策划；设法做到；设计，想出 | |
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28
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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29
solicitudes
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| n.关心，挂念，渴望( solicitude的名词复数 ) | |
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30
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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31
evade
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| vt.逃避，回避；避开，躲避 | |
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32
meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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33
estrangement
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| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
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34
gem
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| n.宝石，珠宝；受爱戴的人 [同]jewel | |
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35
indignities
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| n.侮辱，轻蔑( indignity的名词复数 ) | |
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36
wedded
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| adj.正式结婚的；渴望…的，执著于…的v.嫁，娶，（与…）结婚( wed的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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37
delusions
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| n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 )；谬见；错觉；妄想 | |
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38
ingenuous
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| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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39
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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40
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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41
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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42
poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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43
bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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44
magenta
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| n..紫红色（的染料）；adj.紫红色的 | |
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45
starched
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| adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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46
benedictions
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| n.祝福( benediction的名词复数 )；（礼拜结束时的）赐福祈祷；恩赐；（大写）（罗马天主教）祈求上帝赐福的仪式 | |
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47
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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48
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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49
dissenting
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| adj.不同意的 | |
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50
conservatory
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| n.温室，音乐学院；adj.保存性的，有保存力的 | |
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51
prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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52
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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53
anticipations
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| 预期( anticipation的名词复数 )； 预测； （信托财产收益的）预支； 预期的事物 | |
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54
starkly
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| adj. 变硬了的,完全的 adv. 完全,实在,简直 | |
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55
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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56
rankled
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| v.（使）痛苦不已，（使）怨恨不已( rankle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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57
chafed
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| v.擦热（尤指皮肤）( chafe的过去式 )；擦痛；发怒；惹怒 | |
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58
disapproval
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| n.反对，不赞成 | |
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59
speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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60
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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61
condiment
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| n.调味品 | |
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62
stuffy
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| adj.不透气的，闷热的 | |
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63
wont
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| adj.习惯于；v.习惯；n.习惯 | |
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64
musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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65
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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66
slanting
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| 倾斜的，歪斜的 | |
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67
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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68
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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69
distresses
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| n.悲痛( distress的名词复数 )；痛苦；贫困；危险 | |
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70
bankruptcy
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| n.破产；无偿付能力 | |
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71
credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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72
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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73
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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74
abound
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| vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于 | |
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75
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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76
poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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77
ailments
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| 疾病（尤指慢性病），不适( ailment的名词复数 ) | |
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78
clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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79
anthem
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| n.圣歌，赞美诗，颂歌 | |
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80
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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81
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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82
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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83
judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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84
hypocrisies
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| n.伪善，虚伪( hypocrisy的名词复数 ) | |
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85
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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86
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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87
scrap
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| n.碎片；废料；v.废弃，报废 | |
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88
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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89
distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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90
thorny
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| adj.多刺的，棘手的 | |
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91
irrational
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| adj.无理性的，失去理性的 | |
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92
incapable
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| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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93
wilfully
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| adv.任性固执地；蓄意地 | |
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94
lavished
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| v.过分给予，滥施( lavish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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95
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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96
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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97
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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98
awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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99
tormenting
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| 使痛苦的，使苦恼的 | |
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100
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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101
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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102
soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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103
kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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104
cramping
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| 图像压缩 | |
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105
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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106
cults
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| n.迷信( cult的名词复数 )；狂热的崇拜；（有极端宗教信仰的）异教团体 | |
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107
toll
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| n.过路(桥)费；损失，伤亡人数；v.敲(钟) | |
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108
frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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109
breaches
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| 破坏( breach的名词复数 )； 破裂； 缺口； 违背 | |
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110
solidarity
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| n.团结；休戚相关 | |
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111
organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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112
prohibitions
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| 禁令，禁律( prohibition的名词复数 )； 禁酒； 禁例 | |
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113
exclusions
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| n.不包括的项目：如接受服务项目是由投保以前已患有的疾病或伤害引致的，保险公司有权拒绝支付。；拒绝( exclusion的名词复数 )；排除；被排斥在外的人（或事物）；排外主义 | |
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114
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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115
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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116
tainted
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| adj.腐坏的；污染的；沾污的；感染的v.使变质( taint的过去式和过去分词 )；使污染；败坏；被污染，腐坏，败坏 | |
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117
anterior
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| adj.较早的；在前的 | |
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118
gateway
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| n.大门口，出入口，途径，方法 | |
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119
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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120
deterred
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| v.阻止，制止( deter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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121
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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122
sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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123
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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124
mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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125
isolating
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| adj.孤立的，绝缘的v.使隔离( isolate的现在分词 )；将…剔出（以便看清和单独处理）；使（某物质、细胞等）分离；使离析 | |
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126
exponent
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| n.倡导者，拥护者；代表人物；指数，幂 | |
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127
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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128
strand
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| vt.使（船）搁浅，使（某人）困于（某地） | |
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129
missionaries
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| n.传教士( missionary的名词复数 ) | |
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130
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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131
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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132
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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133
shun
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| vt.避开，回避，避免 | |
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134
outrage
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| n.暴行，侮辱，愤怒；vt.凌辱，激怒 | |
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135
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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136
alleged
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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137
appallingly
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| 毛骨悚然地 | |
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138
pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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139
edifying
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| adj.有教训意味的，教训性的，有益的v.开导，启发( edify的现在分词 ) | |
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140
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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141
lusciously
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142
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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143
subscribing
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| v.捐助( subscribe的现在分词 )；签署，题词；订阅；同意 | |
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144
slump
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| n.暴跌，意气消沉，（土地）下沉；vi.猛然掉落，坍塌，大幅度下跌 | |
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145
mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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146
depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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147
pestering
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| 使烦恼，纠缠( pester的现在分词 ) | |
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148
purveyor
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| n.承办商，伙食承办商 | |
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149
discords
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| 不和（discord的复数形式） | |
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150
complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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151
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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152
relish
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| n.滋味，享受，爱好，调味品；vt.加调味料，享受，品味；vi.有滋味 | |
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153
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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154
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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155
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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156
constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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157
judicious
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| adj.明智的，明断的，能作出明智决定的 | |
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158
bristled
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| adj. 直立的，多刺毛的 动词bristle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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159
catering
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| n. 给养 | |
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160
touchy
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| adj.易怒的；棘手的 | |
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161
vindictive
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| adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的 | |
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162
rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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163
contagious
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| adj.传染性的，有感染力的 | |
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164
wedlock
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| n.婚姻，已婚状态 | |
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165
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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166
condemning
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的现在分词 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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167
thwarting
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| 阻挠( thwart的现在分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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168
gale
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| n.大风，强风，一阵闹声（尤指笑声等） | |
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169
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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170
illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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171
tweezers
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| n.镊子 | |
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172
hoof
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| n.(马，牛等的)蹄 | |
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173
footpath
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| n.小路，人行道 | |
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174
accost
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| v.向人搭话，打招呼 | |
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175
accosted
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| v.走过去跟…讲话( accost的过去式和过去分词 )；跟…搭讪；（乞丐等）上前向…乞讨；（妓女等）勾搭 | |
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176
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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177
assorted
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| adj.各种各样的，各色俱备的 | |
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178
sniffing
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| n.探查法v.以鼻吸气，嗅，闻( sniff的现在分词 )；抽鼻子（尤指哭泣、患感冒等时出声地用鼻子吸气）；抱怨，不以为然地说 | |
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179
bowler
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| n.打保龄球的人，（板球的）投（球）手 | |
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180
pounced
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| v.突然袭击( pounce的过去式和过去分词 )；猛扑；一眼看出；抓住机会（进行抨击） | |
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181
hoarsely
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| adv.嘶哑地 | |
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182
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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183
loom
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| n.织布机，织机；v.隐现，(危险、忧虑等)迫近 | |
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184
obliquely
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| adv.斜； 倾斜； 间接； 不光明正大 | |
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185
assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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186
spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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187
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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188
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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189
braced
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| adj.拉牢的v.支住( brace的过去式和过去分词 )；撑牢；使自己站稳；振作起来 | |
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190
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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191
clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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192
antagonist
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| n.敌人，对抗者，对手 | |
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193
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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194
squeaked
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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195
flattened
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| [医]（水）平扁的，弄平的 | |
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196
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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197
cinder
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| n.余烬，矿渣 | |
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198
dishonoured
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| a.不光彩的，不名誉的 | |
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199
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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200
reprisals
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| n.报复（行为）( reprisal的名词复数 ) | |
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201
enraged
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| 使暴怒( enrage的过去式和过去分词 )； 歜； 激愤 | |
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202
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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203
lurks
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| n.潜在，潜伏；（lurk的复数形式）vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的第三人称单数形式） | |
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204
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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205
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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206
motif
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| n.(图案的)基本花纹，(衣服的)花边；主题 | |
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207
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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208
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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209
illuminate
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| vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释 | |
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210
pervade
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| v.弥漫，遍及，充满，渗透，漫延 | |
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211
promenading
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| v.兜风( promenade的现在分词 ) | |
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212
suburban
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| adj.城郊的，在郊区的 | |
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213
apprentices
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| 学徒，徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 ) | |
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214
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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215
valiantly
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| adv.勇敢地，英勇地；雄赳赳 | |
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216
mingling
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| adj.混合的 | |
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217
instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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218
dormant
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| adj.暂停活动的；休眠的；潜伏的 | |
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219
promenade
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| n./v.散步 | |
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220
throng
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| n.人群，群众；v.拥挤，群集 | |
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221
canes
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| n.（某些植物，如竹或甘蔗的）茎( cane的名词复数 )；（用于制作家具等的）竹竿；竹杖 | |
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222
passionately
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| ad.热烈地，激烈地 | |
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223
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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224
vapid
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| adj.无味的；无生气的 | |
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225
amazement
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| n.惊奇，惊讶 | |
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226
furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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227
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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228
intimacy
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| n.熟悉，亲密，密切关系，亲昵的言行 | |
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229
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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230
sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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231
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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232
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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233
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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234
pervaded
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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235
promenaded
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| v.兜风( promenade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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236
thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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237
backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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238
vestiges
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| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
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239
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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240
sneaks
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| abbr.sneakers (tennis shoes) 胶底运动鞋（网球鞋）v.潜行( sneak的第三人称单数 )；偷偷溜走；（儿童向成人）打小报告；告状 | |
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241
shamefully
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| 可耻地； 丢脸地； 不体面地； 羞耻地 | |
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242
engraving
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| n.版画；雕刻（作品）；雕刻艺术；镌版术v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的现在分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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243
merged
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| （使）混合( merge的过去式和过去分词 )； 相融； 融入； 渐渐消失在某物中 | |
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244
postal
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| adj.邮政的，邮局的 | |
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245
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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246
clattered
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| 发出咔哒声（clatter的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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247
imposing
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| adj.使人难忘的，壮丽的，堂皇的，雄伟的 | |
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248
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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249
lash
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| v.系牢；鞭打；猛烈抨击；n.鞭打；眼睫毛 | |
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250
elucidation
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| n.说明，阐明 | |
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251
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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252
charing
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| n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣 | |
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253
unemployed
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| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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254
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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255
bawling
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| v.大叫，大喊( bawl的现在分词 )；放声大哭；大声叫出；叫卖（货物） | |
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256
puerile
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| adj.幼稚的，儿童的 | |
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257
virility
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| n.雄劲，丈夫气 | |
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258
habitually
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| ad.习惯地，通常地 | |
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259
monasteries
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| 修道院( monastery的名词复数 ) | |
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260
initiation
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| n.开始 | |
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261
zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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262
patriotically
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| 爱国地；忧国地 | |
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263
irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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264
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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265
imperialism
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| n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策 | |
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266
infinitive
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| n.不定词；adj.不定词的 | |
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267
disclaimed
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| v.否认( disclaim的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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268
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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269
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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270
immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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271
Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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272
herded
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| 群集，纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 )； 放牧； （使）向…移动 | |
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273
fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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274
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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275
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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276
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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277
intonations
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| n.语调，说话的抑扬顿挫( intonation的名词复数 )；（演奏或唱歌中的）音准 | |
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278
reverberation
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| 反响； 回响； 反射； 反射物 | |
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279
deferred
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|
| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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280
grotesquely
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|
| adv. 奇异地,荒诞地 | |
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281
helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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282
protagonist
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| n.(思想观念的)倡导者；主角，主人公 | |
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283
relentless
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|
| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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284
wigs
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| n.假发，法官帽( wig的名词复数 ) | |
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285
crumbled
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| （把…）弄碎， （使）碎成细屑( crumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 衰落； 坍塌； 损坏 | |
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286
construing
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|
| v.解释（陈述、行为等）( construe的现在分词 )；翻译，作句法分析 | |
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287
stuffiness
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| n.不通风，闷热；不通气 | |
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288
cataract
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| n.大瀑布，奔流，洪水，白内障 | |
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289
expound
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| v.详述；解释；阐述 | |
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290
lumbering
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| n.采伐林木 | |
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291
countless
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|
| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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292
mingled
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|
| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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293
kaleidoscopic
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|
| adj.千变万化的 | |
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294
isolated
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|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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295
socialist
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| n.社会主义者；adj.社会主义的 | |
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296
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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297
exasperation
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| n.愤慨 | |
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298
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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299
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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300
humbug
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|
| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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301
applied
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|
| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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302
industriously
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303
loyalty
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|
| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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304
succumbed
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|
| 不再抵抗（诱惑、疾病、攻击等）( succumb的过去式和过去分词 )； 屈从； 被压垮； 死 | |
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305
marvels
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|
| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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306
accomplished
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|
| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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307
inadequately
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|
| ad.不够地；不够好地 | |
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308
flannels
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| 法兰绒男裤； 法兰绒( flannel的名词复数 ) | |
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309
resolute
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|
| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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310
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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311
vividly
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|
| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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312
begotten
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|
| v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 )；产生，引起 | |
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313
begot
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|
| v.为…之生父( beget的过去式 )；产生，引起 | |
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314
utilitarian
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|
| adj.实用的，功利的 | |
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315
omissions
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| n.省略( omission的名词复数 )；删节；遗漏；略去或漏掉的事（或人） | |
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316
uproar
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|
| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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317
tumult
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|
| n.喧哗；激动，混乱；吵闹 | |
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318
innovate
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| v.革新，变革，创始 | |
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319
replacement
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|
| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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320
hacked
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| 生气 | |
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321
adjustable
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|
| adj.可调整的，可校准的 | |
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322
misgivings
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|
| n.疑虑，担忧，害怕；疑虑，担心，恐惧( misgiving的名词复数 )；疑惧 | |
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323
temperate
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|
| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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324
chastisement
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|
| n.惩罚 | |
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325
discourses
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| 论文( discourse的名词复数 )； 演说； 讲道； 话语 | |
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326
illegibility
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|
| n.不清不楚，不可辨认，模糊 | |
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327
tenor
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| n.男高音（歌手），次中音（乐器），要旨，大意 | |
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328
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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329
hazardous
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|
| adj.(有)危险的，冒险的；碰运气的 | |
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330
redundant
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|
| adj.多余的，过剩的；(食物)丰富的；被解雇的 | |
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331
exhort
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|
| v.规劝，告诫 | |
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332
bullying
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| v.恐吓，威逼( bully的现在分词 )；豪；跋扈 | |
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333
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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334
recess
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| n.短期休息，壁凹（墙上装架子，柜子等凹处） | |
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335
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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336
puerility
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| n.幼稚，愚蠢；幼稚、愚蠢的行为、想法等 | |
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337
controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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338
zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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339
nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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340
cloisters
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| n.（学院、修道院、教堂等建筑的）走廊( cloister的名词复数 )；回廊；修道院的生活；隐居v.隐退，使与世隔绝( cloister的第三人称单数 ) | |
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341
scraps
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| 油渣 | |
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342
impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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343
steamships
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| n.汽船，大轮船( steamship的名词复数 ) | |
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344
confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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345
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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346
compartment
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|
| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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347
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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348
interpretations
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| n.解释( interpretation的名词复数 )；表演；演绎；理解 | |
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349
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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350
joint
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|
| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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351
dissection
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|
| n.分析；解剖 | |
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352
phantom
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|
| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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353
crouching
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|
| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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354
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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355
cresting
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|
| n.顶饰v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的现在分词 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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356
trenches
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|
| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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357
victorious
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|
| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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358
invader
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|
| n.侵略者，侵犯者，入侵者 | |
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359
recapitulated
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|
| v.总结，扼要重述( recapitulate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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360
revival
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|
| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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361
cannons
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| n.加农炮，大炮，火炮( cannon的名词复数 ) | |
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362
appendicitis
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| n.阑尾炎，盲肠炎 | |
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363
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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364
needy
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|
| adj.贫穷的，贫困的，生活艰苦的 | |
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365
solicitor
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| n.初级律师，事务律师 | |
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366
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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367
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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368
illustrating
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| 给…加插图( illustrate的现在分词 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明 | |
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369
mimicry
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| n.（生物）拟态，模仿 | |
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370
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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371
mightily
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| ad.强烈地；非常地 | |
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372
uncertainty
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| n.易变，靠不住，不确知，不确定的事物 | |
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373
evaded
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| 逃避( evade的过去式和过去分词 )； 避开； 回避； 想不出 | |
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374
emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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375
blasphemous
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| adj.亵渎神明的，不敬神的 | |
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376
ballads
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| 民歌，民谣，特别指叙述故事的歌( ballad的名词复数 )； 讴 | |
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377
comatose
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| adj.昏睡的，昏迷不醒的 | |
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378
notably
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| adv.值得注意地，显著地，尤其地，特别地 | |
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379
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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380
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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381
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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382
poseur
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| n.装模作样的人 | |
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383
concise
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| adj.简洁的，简明的 | |
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384
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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385
hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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386
sloven
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| adj.不修边幅的 | |
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387
teemed
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| v.充满( teem的过去式和过去分词 )；到处都是；（指水、雨等）暴降；倾注 | |
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388
inaugural
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| adj.就职的；n.就职典礼 | |
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389
quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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390
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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391
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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392
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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393
pointedly
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| adv.尖地，明显地 | |
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394
groaned
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| v.呻吟( groan的过去式和过去分词 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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395
chunk
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| n.厚片，大块，相当大的部分（数量） | |
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396
writhed
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| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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397
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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398
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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399
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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400
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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401
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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402
corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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403
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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404
synthetically
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| adv. 综合地，合成地 | |
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405
stereotyped
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| adj.(指形象、思想、人物等)模式化的 | |
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406
depreciation
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| n.价值低落，贬值，蔑视，贬低 | |
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407
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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408
profusely
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| ad.abundantly | |
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409
chapel
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| n.小教堂，殡仪馆 | |
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