Chapter 2 Purity by Terror

ALONG the claims made for that ideal life lived in the imaginations of the good folk of the Edwardian age was its Purity. Most people were supposed to be more or less pure, and in the case of the autobiographical type this was stressed very aggressively. I remember being told, on our second day’s acquaintance on a liner, by a proud and happy mother, apropos¹ of a rather lumpish son of seventeen or eighteen who may or may not have been just out of earshot, “That boy is still as pure as the driven snow.” (I don’t think I saw his face.) But they kept up the make-believe so widely that mostly they did believe that the majority of the people about them who seemed to be leading pure lives were in fact leading pure lives. You have witnessed Mrs Tewler’s struggle to keep our hero pure. And here I recall my never to be sufficiently² lamented³ Mrs Humbelay and how she was saying something about forgetting one’s dreams and imaginations, when she so unhappily went under the threshold of audibility and was lost to us.

Those people who still seek and profess⁴ purity in our harder world must murder and banish⁵ memories to a wonderful extent. True that almost all animals forget sexual experiences very readily. That is understandable of animals, who have their transitory annual rutting, because otherwise the creatures would always be in a state of unseasonable excitement. But man is an unseasonable creature and he does not naturally forget so completely. Consider all our pastors⁶ and teachers, and particularly consider the case of Mr Myame, His passion for Purity, for the complete suppression of any thought of an approach to a sexual act, in himself and others, assumed an undeniable frightfulness⁷.

The English-speaking world has altered so rapidly that it is already difficult to believe that before the World War of 1914–18, The Times would rather have died of shame than have admitted such words as syphilis or venereal disease to the massive chastity of its columns, and that when that unforgettable heroine, Ettie Rout⁹, came from New Zealand to distribute precautionary packets to the Anzac soldiers, telling them to control themselves if they could but use the packet if they couldn’t, the blushing military authorities, men no doubt leading exceptionally holy lives, who imagined that these unpleasant contagions¹⁰, now rapidly fading out of existence in our franker world, were God’s vindictive¹¹ device to punish impurity¹² in his creatures, did their best to back up their God and suppress her. And Mr Myame, forgetting to his utmost ability, forgetting it may be altogether, or remembering only dimly as one is haunted by a horrible dream, fought as stoutly¹³ as the Blimpest of Colonel Blimps in the same losing fight against reality.

So, in accordance with the wishes of the late Mrs Tewler and after a noiseless vigil in the Joseph Hart dormitory, followed by a close inspection¹⁴ of Edward Albert’s bed clothes, he called the young man into his study and handed him a serious-looking volume. It was only a few days before Edward Albert became an adder¹⁵. Mr Myame gave him the book and he charged his account for it. Whether he would have done so after the great shock is an idle speculation¹⁶. “I want you to read this very very carefully indeed, Tewler,” he said.

“There are things in this. . . . It is high time you knew them.”

Mr Myame paused. “It’s a book for your very private reading. I should be careful not to leave it about or let it fall into the hands of your younger schoolfellows.”

The book was entitled Dr Scaber’s What a Young Man Should Know. It had been, it said in a brief preface, a guide and help to many generations of struggling souls, so that it was at latest Victorian. It had revealed the facts of life frankly¹⁷ and helpfully to them and saved them from terrible dangers. There was no indication of what sort of Doctorate¹⁸ Dr Scaber held, nor indeed any biographical material whatever. Edward Albert read, at first with curiosity and then with a deepening dismay. “Gaw!” he whispered to himself. “You can’t be too careful. If only I’d known.”

The little book told of the stupendous dangers and horrors of the vicious life in either its social or solitary¹⁹ aspect. The latter it pursued with even greater vehemence²⁰ than the former. On the heels of those who departed in the least from the path of perfect purity stalked the most frightful⁸ forms of suffering and decay, rotting bodies, racking pains, ebbing²¹ strength, attenuation²², a peculiar²³ expression of face, impotence, imbecility, idiocy²⁴, madness. A cold perspiration²⁵ bedewed the reader’s brow.

He had completely forgotten when the thing began with him. It had crept upon him between sleeping and waking.

Now, with a gathering²⁶ urgency, Nature was at work in Edward Albert, in her own clumsy way inciting²⁷ him to acts conducive²⁸ to reproduction. The life cycle of Homo, we have already remarked, is far more primitive²⁹ than that of most other land animals; among other remote ancestral aspects still traceable in his life, the spawning³⁰ impulse, like the urgencies of creatures who live in warm tropical seas, recurs³² mensually and not annually³³. In that briefer rhythm these creatures are stirred up to seek relief for their accumulating milt or spawn³¹. Nature is a sloven³⁴, she never cleans up completely after her advances, and so we abound³⁵ in vestigial structures, and our beings are haunted by the ghosts of rhythms that served her in the past. In the Hominida the ghost of the lunar cycle has materialised again. The solar rut guides us to St Valentine’s Day and the merry merry springtime, but the lunar rut also has revived and is still effective with us. It causes a recurrent uneasiness, we are distraught and nervous, it breaks down control by night and we dream. In some manner relief comes to us and must come. Since man is no longer a tropical amphibian³⁶, this necessity for “relief” rarely coincides with the phases of his more elaborate social life. “You might,” deliberated Mrs Humbelay, “call it a side issue. And yet it’s hardly that, is it? But what there is to make all this fuss about. . . . ”

“If I pray,” stipulated³⁷ Edward Albert in his distress³⁸. But he was beginning to lose whatever confidence he had ever had in the efficacy of prayer. There is often such a whimsicality in His answers, that you cannot be too careful how you invoke³⁹ Him. All through his teens Edward Albert’s mind had black storms of anxiety. Dr Scaber’s shadow lay across his mind. He had, it seems, committed that Sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness. Dr Scaber said as much.

Since most of the people in the world about him were maintaining the same silences and concealments as himself, he felt his case was a dark, exceptional one. His dreams, his almost involuntary derelictions were his own peculiar guilty secret. It was not until he was past the age of eighteen that the accumulating effect of chance jests and rude remarks from various acquaintances, led to a dawning realisation that his peculiar uncleanness was neither so rare nor perhaps so heinous⁴⁰ as he had supposed. But he was ashamed of it with a slowly fading shame to the very end of his career.

It took still longer for him to realise that there could be any sort of impurity about the female of the species Homo Tewler. He%would have gratified that mother on the liner by his fantastic ignorance about women. He was as pure as her own dear boy. He never imagined that girls and women too had desires or fantasies — until the crisis of “his first married life of which you will be told in due course. The poor dears in those dim religious days, a third of a century ago, were being kept more blankly ignorant about themselves — until terrific things happened to them — than their brothers. They too peeped and wondered and had their justifiable⁴¹ terrors.

Yet all the time, urged on by implacable Nature, and stimulated⁴² rather than repelled⁴³ by the enormity imposed upon the whole business by the good Dr Scaber, Edward Albert was meanly and furtively⁴⁴ trying to know, doing his utmost to know, about It. And also not to let anyone know that he was trying to know. He had extremely little curiosity about women except as the media of It. It was It he was after.

1 apropos   

adv.恰好地；adj.恰当的；关于

参考例句：

• I thought he spoke very apropos.我认为他说得很中肯。
• He arrived very apropos.他来得很及时。

2 sufficiently   

adv.足够地，充分地

参考例句：

• It turned out he had not insured the house sufficiently.原来他没有给房屋投足保险。
• The new policy was sufficiently elastic to accommodate both views.新政策充分灵活地适用两种观点。

3 lamented   

adj.被哀悼的，令人遗憾的v.（为…）哀悼，痛哭，悲伤( lament的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• her late lamented husband 她那令人怀念的已故的丈夫
• We lamented over our bad luck. 我们为自己的不幸而悲伤。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 profess   

v.声称，冒称，以...为业，正式接受入教，表明信仰

参考例句：

• I profess that I was surprised at the news.我承认这消息使我惊讶。
• What religion does he profess?他信仰哪种宗教？

5 banish   

vt.放逐，驱逐；消除，排除

参考例句：

• The doctor advised her to banish fear and anxiety.医生劝她消除恐惧和忧虑。
• He tried to banish gloom from his thought.他试图驱除心中的忧愁。

6 pastors   

n.（基督教的）牧师( pastor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Do we show respect to our pastors, missionaries, Sunday school teachers? 我们有没有尊敬牧师、宣教士，以及主日学的老师？ 来自互联网
• Should pastors or elders be paid, or serve as a volunteer? 牧师或长老需要付给酬劳，还是志愿的事奉呢？ 来自互联网

7 frightfulness   

可怕； 丑恶； 讨厌； 恐怖政策

参考例句：

8 frightful   

adj.可怕的；讨厌的

参考例句：

• How frightful to have a husband who snores!有一个发鼾声的丈夫多讨厌啊！
• We're having frightful weather these days.这几天天气坏极了。

9 rout   

n.溃退，溃败；v.击溃，打垮

参考例句：

• The enemy was put to rout all along the line.敌人已全线崩溃。
• The people's army put all to rout wherever they went.人民军队所向披靡。

10 contagions   

传染( contagion的名词复数 )； 接触传染； 道德败坏； 歪风

参考例句：

• They got caught in social contagions and reinforced each other's risk assessments. 他们都被这场蔓延的危机围困，重新加强互相的风险评估。
• And you'll be filled with a heartfelt joy that is highly contagions! 然后你会洋溢着真心的喜悦，并且感染他人！

11 vindictive   

adj.有报仇心的，怀恨的，惩罚的

参考例句：

• I have no vindictive feelings about it.我对此没有恶意。
• The vindictive little girl tore up her sister's papers.那个充满报复心的小女孩撕破了她姐姐的作业。

12 impurity   

n.不洁，不纯，杂质

参考例句：

• The oxygen reacts vigorously with the impurity in the iron.氧气与铁中的杂质发生剧烈的化学反应。
• The more general impurity acid corrosion faster.一般来说杂质越多酸蚀速度越快。

13 stoutly   

adv.牢固地，粗壮的

参考例句：

• He stoutly denied his guilt.他断然否认自己有罪。
• Burgess was taxed with this and stoutly denied it.伯杰斯为此受到了责难，但是他自己坚决否认有这回事。

14 inspection   

n.检查，审查，检阅

参考例句：

• On random inspection the meat was found to be bad.经抽查，发现肉变质了。
• The soldiers lined up for their daily inspection by their officers.士兵们列队接受军官的日常检阅。

15 adder   

n.蝰蛇；小毒蛇

参考例句：

• The adder is Britain's only venomous snake.蝰蛇是英国唯一的一种毒蛇。
• An adder attacked my father.一条小毒蛇攻击了我父亲。

16 speculation   

n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机

参考例句：

• Her mind is occupied with speculation.她的头脑忙于思考。
• There is widespread speculation that he is going to resign.人们普遍推测他要辞职。

17 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

18 doctorate   

n.(大学授予的)博士学位

参考例句：

• He hasn't enough credits to get his doctorate.他的学分不够取得博士学位。
• Where did she do her doctorate?她在哪里攻读博士？

19 solitary   

adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士

参考例句：

• I am rather fond of a solitary stroll in the country.我颇喜欢在乡间独自徜徉。
• The castle rises in solitary splendour on the fringe of the desert.这座城堡巍然耸立在沙漠的边际，显得十分壮美。

20 vehemence   

n.热切；激烈；愤怒

参考例句：

• The attack increased in vehemence.进攻越来越猛烈。
• She was astonished at his vehemence.她对他的激昂感到惊讶。

21 ebbing   

（指潮水）退( ebb的现在分词 )； 落； 减少； 衰落

参考例句：

• The pain was ebbing. 疼痛逐渐减轻了。
• There are indications that his esoteric popularity may be ebbing. 有迹象表明，他神秘的声望可能正在下降。

22 attenuation   

n.变薄；弄细；稀薄化；减少

参考例句：

• The attenuation distance and transmittance are connected together, they influence each other. 衰减距离attenuation)和能见度(transmittance)是联系在一起的，并相互影响。 来自互联网
• Attenuation of light is in the form of absorption. 光是以吸收的形式衰减。 来自辞典例句

23 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

24 idiocy   

n.愚蠢

参考例句：

• Stealing a car and then driving it drunk was the ultimate idiocy.偷了车然后醉酒开车真是愚蠢到极点。
• In this war there is an idiocy without bounds.这次战争疯癫得没底。

25 perspiration   

n.汗水；出汗

参考例句：

• It is so hot that my clothes are wet with perspiration.天太热了，我的衣服被汗水湿透了。
• The perspiration was running down my back.汗从我背上淌下来。

26 gathering   

n.集会，聚会，聚集

参考例句：

• He called on Mr. White to speak at the gathering.他请怀特先生在集会上讲话。
• He is on the wing gathering material for his novels.他正忙于为他的小说收集资料。

27 inciting   

刺激的，煽动的

参考例句：

• What are you up to inciting mutiny and insubordination? 你们干吗在这里煽动骚动的叛乱呀。
• He was charged with inciting people to rebel. 他被控煽动民众起来叛乱。

28 conducive   

adj.有益的，有助的

参考例句：

• This is a more conducive atmosphere for studying.这样的氛围更有利于学习。
• Exercise is conducive to good health.体育锻炼有助于增强体质。

29 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

30 spawning   

产卵

参考例句：

• Encounter sites have a small chance of spawning a "Commander" NPC. 遭遇战地区有很小的几率遇到NPC指挥官。
• Instantly revives your Champion at your Spawning Pool, 9 minute cooldown. 立即在出生地复活你的英雄，冷却时间9分钟。

31 spawn   

n.卵，产物，后代，结果；vt.产卵，种菌丝于，产生，造成；vi.产卵，大量生产

参考例句：

• The fish were madly pushing their way upstream to spawn.鱼群为产卵而疯狂地向上游挤进。
• These fish will lay spawn in about one month from now.这些鱼大约一个月内会产卵。

32 recurs   

再发生，复发( recur的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• This theme recurs several times throughout the book. 这一主题在整部书里出现了好几次。
• Leap year recurs every four years. 每四年闰年一次。

33 annually   

adv.一年一次，每年

参考例句：

• Many migratory birds visit this lake annually.许多候鸟每年到这个湖上作短期逗留。
• They celebrate their wedding anniversary annually.他们每年庆祝一番结婚纪念日。

34 sloven   

adj.不修边幅的

参考例句：

• Such sloven work habits will never produce good products.这样马马虎虎的工作习惯决不能生产出优质产品来。
• I really cannot bear the sight of that sloven woman.我连看也不想看那个邋遢的女人。

35 abound   

vi.大量存在；(in，with)充满，富于

参考例句：

• Oranges abound here all the year round.这里一年到头都有很多橙子。
• But problems abound in the management of State-owned companies.但是在国有企业的管理中仍然存在不少问题。

36 amphibian   

n.两栖动物；水陆两用飞机和车辆

参考例句：

• The frog is an amphibian,which means it can live on land and in water.青蛙属于两栖动物，也就是说它既能生活在陆地上也能生活在水里。
• Amphibian is an important specie in ecosystem and has profound meaning in the ecotoxicology evaluation.两栖类是生态系统中的重要物种，并且对环境毒理评价有着深远意义。

37 stipulated   

vt.& vi.规定；约定adj.[法]合同规定的

参考例句：

• A delivery date is stipulated in the contract. 合同中规定了交货日期。
• Yes, I think that's what we stipulated. 对呀，我想那是我们所订定的。 来自辞典例句

38 distress   

n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛

参考例句：

• Nothing could alleviate his distress.什么都不能减轻他的痛苦。
• Please don't distress yourself.请你不要忧愁了。

39 invoke   

v.求助于(神、法律)；恳求，乞求

参考例句：

• Let us invoke the blessings of peace.让我们祈求和平之福。
• I hope I'll never have to invoke this clause and lodge a claim with you.我希望我永远不会使用这个条款向你们索赔。

40 heinous   

adj.可憎的，十恶不赦的

参考例句：

• They admitted to the most heinous crimes.他们承认了极其恶劣的罪行。
• I do not want to meet that heinous person.我不想见那个十恶不赦的人。

41 justifiable   

adj.有理由的，无可非议的

参考例句：

• What he has done is hardly justifiable.他的所作所为说不过去。
• Justifiable defense is the act being exempted from crimes.正当防卫不属于犯罪行为。

42 stimulated   

a.刺激的

参考例句：

• The exhibition has stimulated interest in her work. 展览增进了人们对她作品的兴趣。
• The award has stimulated her into working still harder. 奖金促使她更加努力地工作。

43 repelled   

v.击退( repel的过去式和过去分词 )；使厌恶；排斥；推开

参考例句：

• They repelled the enemy. 他们击退了敌军。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. 而丁梅斯代尔牧师却哆里哆嗦地断然推开了那老人的胳臂。 来自英汉文学 - 红字

44 furtively   

adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地

参考例句：

• At this some of the others furtively exchanged significant glances. 听他这样说，有几个人心照不宣地彼此对望了一眼。
• Remembering my presence, he furtively dropped it under his chair. 后来想起我在，他便偷偷地把书丢在椅子下。