Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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At five he rose, left his books at the desk and, from Holborn, took the tube to Gloucester Road. A few minutes later he was at Mary Amberley’s front door. The maid opened; he smiled at her familiarly and, assuming the privilege of an intimate of the house, ran upstairs to the drawing-room, unannounced.
‘I have a story for you,’ he proclaimed, as he crossed the room.
‘A coarse story, I hope,’ said Mary Amberley from the sofa.
Anthony kissed the hand in that affected style he had recently adopted, and sat down. ‘To the coarse,’ he said, ‘all things are coarse.’
‘Yes, how lucky that is!’ And with that crooked little smile of hers, that dark glitter between narrowed lids, ‘A filthy mind,’ she added, ’is a perpetual feast.’ The joke was old and not her own; but Anthony’s laughter pleased her none the less for that. It was whole-hearted laughter, loud and prolonged — louder and longer than the joke itself warranted. But then it wasn’t at the joke that he was really laughing. The joke was hardly more than an excuse; that laughter was his response, not to a single stimulus, but to the whole extraordinary and exciting situation. To be able to talk freely about anything (anything, mind you) with a woman, a lady, a genuine ‘loaf-kneader’, as Mr Beavis, in his moments of etymological waggery, had been known to say, a true-blue English loaf-kneader who was also one’s mistress, had also read Mallarmé, was also a friend of Guillaume Apollinaire; and to listen to the loaf-kneader preaching what she practised and casually mentioning beds, water-closets, the physiology of what (for the Saxon words still remained unpronounceable) they were constrained to call l’amour — for Anthony, the experience was still, after two years and in spite of Mary’s occasional infidelities, an intoxicating mixture of liberation and forbidden fruit, of relief and titillation. In his father’s universe, in the world of Pauline and the Aunts, such things were simply not there — but not there with a painfully, glaringly conspicuous absence. Like the hypnotized patient who has been commanded to see the five of clubs as a piece of virgin pasteboard, they deliberately failed to perceive the undesirable things, they were conspiratorially silent about all they had been blind to. The natural functions even of the lower animals had to be ignored; there were silences even about quadrupeds. That goat incident, for example — it was the theme, now, of one of Anthony’s choicest anecdotes. Exquisitely comic — but how much more comic now than at the time, nearly two years before he first met Mary, when it had actually happened! Picnicking on that horrible Scheideck Pass, with the Weisshorn hanging over them like an obsession, and a clump of gentians, carefully sought out by Mr Beavis, in the grass at their feet, the family had been visited by a half-grown kid, greedy for the salt of their hard-boiled eggs. Shrinking and a little disgusted under their delight, his two small half-sisters had held out their hands to be licked, while Pauline took a snapshot, and Mr Beavis, whose interest in goats was mainly philological, quoted Theocritus. Pastoral scene! But suddenly the little creature had straddled its legs and, still expressionlessly gazing at the Beavis family through the oblong pupils of its large yellow eyes, had proceeded to make water on the gentians.
‘They’re not very generous with their butter,’ and ‘How jolly the dear old Weisshorn is looking today,’ Pauline and Mr Beavis brought out almost simultaneously — the one, as she peered into her sandwich, in a tone of complaint, the other, gazing away far-focused, with a note in his voice of a rapture none the less genuinely Wordsworthian for being expressed in terms of a gentlemanly and thoroughly English facetiousness.
In haste and guiltily, the two children swallowed their incipient shriek of startled mirth and averted frozen faces from one another and the outrageous goat. Momentarily compromised the world of Mr Beavis and Pauline and the Aunts had settled down again to respectability.
‘And what about your story?’ Mrs Amberley inquired, as his laughter subsided.
‘You shall hear,’ said Anthony, and was silent for a little, lighting a cigarette, while he thought of what he was about to say and the way he meant to say it. He was ambitious about his story, wanted to make it a good one, at once amusing and psychologically profound; a smoking-room story that should also be a library story, a laboratory story. Mary must be made to pay a double tribute of laughter and admiration.
‘You know Brian Foxe?’ he began.
‘Of course.’
‘Poor old Brian!’ By his tone, by the use of the patronizing adjective, Anthony established his position of superiority, asserted his right, the right of the enlightened and scientific vivisector, to anatomize and examine. Yes, poor old Brian! That maniacal preoccupation of his with chastity! Chastity — the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions, he added parenthetically, out of Rémy de Gourmont. Mary’s appreciative smile acted on him like a spur to fresh efforts. Fresh efforts, of course, at Brian’s expense. But at the moment, that didn’t occur to him.
‘But what can you expect,’ Mrs Amberley put in, ‘with a mother like that? One of those spiritual vampires. A regular St Monica.’
‘St Monica by Ary Scheffer,’ he found himself over-bidding. Not that there was a trace in Mrs Foxe of that sickly insincerity of Scheffer’s saint. But the end of his story-telling, which was to provoke Mary’s laughter and admiration, was sufficient justification for any means whatever. Scheffer was an excellent joke, too good a joke to be neglected, even if he were beside the point. And when Mary brought out what was at the moment her favourite phrase and talked of Mrs Foxe’s ‘uterine reactions’, he eagerly seized upon the words and began applying them, not merely to Mrs Foxe, but also to Joan and even (making another joke out of the physical absurdity of the thing) to Brian. Brian’s uterine reactions towards chastity in conflict with his own and Joan’s uterine reactions towards the common desires — it was a drama. A drama, he explained, whose existence hitherto he had only suspected and inferred. Now there was no more need to guess; he knew. Straight from the horse’s mouth. Or rather, straight from the mare’s. Poor Joan! The vivisector laid another specimen on the operating table.
‘Like early Christians,’ was Mrs Amberley’s comment, when he had finished.
The virulent contempt in her voice made him suddenly remember, for the first time since he had begun his story, that Brian was his friend, that Joan had been genuinely unhappy. Too late, he wanted to explain that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, there was nobody he liked and admired and respected more than Brian. ‘You mustn’t misunderstand me,’ he said to Mary retrospectively and in imagination. ‘I’m absolutely devoted to him.’ Inside his head, he became eloquent on the subject. But no amount of this interior eloquence could alter the fact that he had betrayed confidences and been malicious without apology or qualifying explanation. At the time, of course, this malice had seemed to him the manifestation of his own psychological acuteness; these betrayed confidences, the indispensable facts without which the acuteness could not have been exercised. But now . . .
He found himself all at once confused and tongue-tied with self-reproach.
‘I felt awfully sorry for Joan,’ he stammered, trying to make amends. ‘Promised I’d do all I could to help the poor girl. But what? That’s the question. What?’ He exaggerated the note of perplexity. Perplexed, he was justified in betraying Joan’s confidences; he had told the story (he now began to assure himself) solely for the sake of asking Mary’s advice — the advice of an experienced woman of the world.
But the experienced woman of the world was looking at him in the most disquieting way. Mrs Amberley’s eyelids had narrowed over a mocking brilliance; the left-hand corner of her mouth was drawn up ironically. ‘The nicest thing about you,’ she said judicially, ’is your innocence.’
Her words were so wounding that he forgot in an instant Joan, Brian, his own discreditable behaviour, and could think only of his punctured vanity.
‘Thank you,’ he said, trying to give her a smile of frank amusement. Innocent — she thought him innocent? After their time in Paris. After those jok
es about uterine reactions?
‘So deliciously youthful, so touching.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’ The smile had gone all awry; he felt the blood mounting to his cheeks.
‘A girl comes to you,’ Mrs Amberley went on, ‘and complains because she hasn’t been kissed enough. And here you are, solemnly asking what you ought to do to help her! And now you’re blushing like a beetroot. Darling, I absolutely adore you!’ Laying her hand on his arm, ‘Kneel down on the floor here,’ she commanded. Rather sheepishly, he obeyed. Mary Amberley looked at him for a little in silence, with the same bright mocking expression in her eyes. Then, softly, ‘Shall I show you what you can do to help her?’ she asked. ‘Shall I show you?’
He nodded without speaking; but still, at arm’s length, she smiled inquiringly into his face.
‘Or am I a fool to show you?’ she asked. ‘Won’t you learn the lesson too well? Perhaps I shall be jealous?’ She shook her head and smiled — a gay and ‘civilized’ smile. ‘No, I don’t believe in being jealous.’ She took his face between her two hands and, whispering, ‘This is how you can help her,’ drew him towards her.
Anthony had felt humiliated by her almost contemptuous assumption of the dominant role; but no shame, no resentment could annul his body’s consciousness of the familiar creepings of pleasure and desire. He abandoned himself to her kisses.
A clock struck, and immediately, from an upper floor, came the approaching sound of shrill childish voices. Mrs Amberley drew back and, laying a hand over his mouth, pushed him away from her. ‘You’ve got to be domestic,’ she said, laughing. ‘It’s six. I do the fond mother at six.’
Anthony scrambled to his feet and, with the idea of fabricating a little favourable evidence, walked over to the fire and stood there with his elbows on the mantelpiece, looking at a Conder water-colour.
The door burst open, and with a yell like the whistle of an express train a small round child of about five came rushing into the room and fairly hurled herself upon her mother. Another little girl, three or four years older than the first, came hurrying after.
‘Helen!’ she kept calling, and her face, with its expression of anxious disapproval, was the absurd parody of a governess’s face. ‘Helen! You mustn’t. Tell her she mustn’t shout like that, Mummy,’ she appealed to Mrs Amberley.
But Mrs Amberley only laughed and ran her fingers through the little one’s thick yellow hair. ‘Joyce believes in the Ten Commandments,’ she said, turning to Anthony. ‘Was born believing in them. Weren’t you, darling?’ She put an arm round Joyce’s shoulder and kissed her. ‘Whereas Helen and I . . .’ She shook her head, ‘Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears.’
‘Nanny says it’s the draught that gives her a stiff neck,’ Joyce volunteered, and was indignant when her mother and Anthony, and even, by uncomprehending contagion, little Helen, burst out laughing. ‘But it’s true!’ she cried; and tears of outraged virtue were in her eyes. ‘Nanny said so.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT. June 25th 1934
THE FACILITY WITH which one could become a Stiggins in modern dress! A much subtler, and therefore more detestable, more dangerous Stiggins. For of course Stiggins himself was too stupid to be either intrinsically very bad or capable of doing much harm to other people. Whereas if I set my mind to it, heaven knows what I mightn’t achieve in the way of lies in the soul. Even with not setting my mind to it, I could go far — as I perceived, to my horror, today, when I found myself talking to Purchas and three or four of his young people. Talking about Miller’s ‘anthropological approach’; talking about peace as a way of life as well as an international policy — the way of life being the condition of any policy that had the least hope of being permanently successful. Talking so clearly, so profoundly, so convincingly. (The poor devils were listening with their tongues hanging out.) Much more convincingly than Purchas himself could have done; that muscular-jocular-Christian style starts by being effective, but soon makes hearers feel that they’re being talked down to. What they like is that the speaker should be thoroughly serious, but comprehensible. Which is a trick I happen to possess. There I was, discoursing in a really masterly way about the spiritual life, and taking intense pleasure in that mastery, secretly congratulating myself on being not only so clever, but also so good — when all at once I realized who I was: Stiggins. Talking about the theory of courage, self-sacrifice, patience, without any knowledge of the practice. Talking, moreover, in the presence of people who had practised what I was preaching — preaching so effectively that the proper rules were reversed: they were listening to me, not I to them. The discovery of what I was doing came suddenly. I was overcome with shame. And yet — more shameful — went on talking. Not for long, however. A minute or two, and I simply had to stop, apologize, insist that it wasn’t my business to talk.
This shows how easy it is to be Stiggins by mistake and unconsciously. But also that unconsciousness is no excuse, and that one’s responsible for the mistake, which arises, of course, from the pleasure one takes in being more talented than other people and in dominating them by means of those talents. Why is one unconscious? Because one hasn’t ever taken the trouble to examine one’s motives; and one doesn’t examine one’s motives, because one’s motives are mostly discreditable. Alternatively, of course, one examines one’s motives, but tells oneself lies about them until one comes to believing that they’re good. Which is the conviction of the self-conscious Stiggins. I’ve always condemned showing off and the desire to dominate as vulgar, and imagined myself pretty free of these vulgarities. But in so far as free at all, free, I now perceive, only thanks to the indifference which has kept me away from other people, thanks to the external-economic and internal-intellectual circumstances which made me a sociologist rather than a banker, administrator, engineer, working in direct contact with my fellows. Not to make contacts, I have realized, is wrong; but the moment I make them, I catch myself showing off and trying to dominate. Showing off, to make it worse, as Stiggins would have done, trying to dominate by a purely verbal display of virtues which I don’t put into practice. Humiliating to find that one’s supposed good qualities are mainly due to circumstances and the bad habit of indifference, which made me shirk occasions for behaving badly — or well, for that matter, seeing that it’s very difficult to behave either well or badly except towards other people. More humiliating still to find that when, with an effort of goodwill, one creates the necessary opportunities, one immediately responds to them by behaving badly. Note: meditate on the virtues that are the contraries of vanity, lust for power, hypocrisy.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE. May 24th 1931
THE BLINDS WERE up; the sunlight lay bright across the dressing-table. Helen, as usual, was still in bed. The days were so long. Lying in the soft, stupefying warmth of her own body under the quilt, she shortened them with sleep, with vague inconsequent thoughts, with drowsy reading. The book, this morning, was Shelley’s poems. ‘Warm fragrance,’ she read, articulating the words in an audible whisper, ‘seemed to fall from her light dress . . .’ (She saw a long-legged figure in white muslin, with sloping shoulders and breasts high set.)
. . . from her light dress
And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined. . . .
(The figure was running now, in square-toed pumps cross-gartered with black ribbon over the white cotton stockings.)
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;
And in the soul a wild odour is felt
Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt