study

Endgame

Clov goes and stands under window left. Stiff, staggering walk. He looks up at window left. He turns and looks at window right. He goes and stands under window right. He looks up at window right. He turns and looks at window left. He goes out, comes back immediately with a small step-ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes six steps (for example) towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, draws back curtain. He gets down, takes three steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down, takes one step towards window right, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window right, gets up on it, looks out of window. Brief laugh. He gets down, goes with ladder towards ashbins, halts, turns, carries back ladder and sets it down under window right, goes to ashbins, removes sheet covering them, folds it over his arm. He raises one lid, stoops and looks into bin. Brief laugh. He closes lid. Same with other bin. He goes to Hamm, removes sheet covering him, folds it over his arm. In a dressing-gown, a stiff toque on his head, a large blood-stained handkerchief over his face, a whistle hanging from his neck, a rug over his knees, thick socks on his feet, Hamm seems to be asleep. Clov looks him over. Brief laugh. He goes to door, halts, turns towards auditorium. CLOV (fixed gaze, tonelessly): Finished, it's finished, nearly finished, it must be nearly finished. (Pause.) Grain upon grain, one by one, and one day, suddenly, there's a heap, a little heap, the impossible heap. (Pause.) I can't be punished any more. (Pause.) I'll go now to my kitchen, ten feet by ten feet by ten feet, and wait for him to whistle me. (Pause.) Nice dimensions, nice proportions, I'll lean on the table, and look at the wall, and wait for him to whistle me. (He remains a moment motionless, then goes out. He comes back immediately, goes to window right, takes up the ladder and carries it out. Pause. Hamm stirs. He yawns under the handkerchief. He removes the handkerchief from his face. Very red face. Glasses with black lenses.) HAMM: Me— (he yawns) —to play. (He takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes, his face, the glasses, puts them on again, folds the handkerchief and puts it back neatly in the breast pocket of his dressing gown. He clears his throat, joins the tips of his fingers.) Can there be misery— (he yawns) —loftier than mine? No doubt. Formerly. But now? (Pause.) My father? (Pause.) My mother? (Pause.) My... dog? (Pause.) Oh I am willing to believe they suffer as much as such creatures can suffer. But does that mean their sufferings equal mine? No doubt. (Pause.) No, all is a— (he yawns) —bsolute, (proudly) the bigger a man is the fuller he is. (Pause. Gloomily.) And the emptier. (He sniffs.) Clov! (Pause.) No, alone. (Pause.) What dreams! Those forests! (Pause.) Enough, it's time it ended, in the shelter, too. (Pause.) And yet I hesitate, I hesitate to... to end. Yes, there it is, it's time it ended and yet I hesitate to— (He yawns.) —to end. (Yawns.) God, I'm tired, I'd be better off in bed. (He whistles. Enter Clov immediately. He halts beside the chair.) You pollute the air! (Pause.) Get me ready, I'm going to bed. CLOV: I've just got you up. HAMM: And what of it? CLOV: I can't be getting you up and putting you to bed every five minutes, I have things to do. (Pause.) HAMM: Did you ever see my eyes? CLOV: No. HAMM: Did you never have the curiosity, while I was sleeping, to take off my glasses and look at my eyes? CLOV: Pulling back the lids? (Pause.) No. HAMM: One of these days I'll show them to you. (Pause.) It seems they've gone all white. (Pause.) What time is it? CLOV: The same as usual. HAMM (gesture towards window right): Have you looked? CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Well? CLOV: Zero. HAMM: It'd need to rain. CLOV: It won't rain. (Pause.) HAMM: Apart from that, how do you feel? CLOV: I don't complain. HAMM: You feel normal? CLOV (irritably): I tell you I don't complain. HAMM: I feel a little strange. (Pause.) Clov! CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Have you not had enough? CLOV: Yes! (Pause.) Of what? HAMM: Of this... this... thing. CLOV: I always had. (Pause.) Not you? HAMM (gloomily): Then there's no reason for it to change. CLOV: It may end. (Pause.) All life long the same questions, the same answers. HAMM: Get me ready. (Clov does not move.) Go and get the sheet. (Clov does not move.) Clov! CLOV: Yes. HAMM: I'll give you nothing more to eat. CLOV: Then we'll die. HAMM: I'll give you just enough to keep you from dying. You'll be hungry all the time. CLOV: Then we won't die. (Pause.) I'll go and get the sheet. (He goes towards the door.) HAMM: No! (Clov halts.) I'll give you one biscuit per day. (Pause.) One and a half. (Pause.) Why do you stay with me? CLOV: Why do you keep me? HAMM: There's no one else. CLOV: There's nowhere else. (Pause.) HAMM: You're leaving me all the same. CLOV: I'm trying. HAMM: You don't love me. CLOV: No. HAMM: You loved me once. CLOV: Once! HAMM: I've made you suffer too much. (Pause.) Haven't I? CLOV: It's not that. HAMM: I haven't made you suffer too much? CLOV: Yes! HAMM (relieved): Ah, you gave me a fright! (Pause. Coldly) Forgive me. (Pause. Louder.) I said, Forgive me. CLOV: I heard you. (Pause.) Have you bled? HAMM: Less. (Pause.) Is it not time for my pain-killer? CLOV: No. (Pause.) HAMM: How are your eyes? CLOV: Bad. HAMM: How are your legs? CLOV: Bad. HAMM: But you can move. CLOV: Yes. HAMM (violently): Then move! (Clov goes to back wall, leans against it with his forehead and hands.) Where are you? CLOV: Here. HAMM: Come back! (Clov returns to his place beside the chair.) Where are you? CLOV: Here. HAMM: Why don't you kill me? CLOV: I don't know the combination of the cupboard. (Pause.) HAMM: Go and get two bicycle-wheels. CLOV: There are no more bicycle-wheels. HAMM: What have you done with your bicycle? CLOV: I never had a bicycle. HAMM: The thing is impossible. CLOV: When there were still bicycles I wept to have one. I crawled at your feet. You told me to go to hell. Now there are none. HAMM: And your rounds? When you inspected my paupers. Always on foot? CLOV: Sometimes on horse. (The lid of one of the bins lifts and the hands of Nagg appear, gripping the rim. Then his head emerges. Nightcap. Very white face. Nagg yawns, then listens.) I'll leave you, I have things to do. HAMM: In your kitchen? CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Outside of here it's death. (Pause.) All right, be off. (Exit Clov. Pause.) We're getting on. NAGG: Me pap! HAMM: Accursed progenitor! NAGG: Me pap! HAMM: The old folks at home! No decency left! Guzzle, guzzle, that's all they think of. (He whistles. Enter Clov. He halts beside the chair.) Well! I thought you were leaving me. CLOV: Oh not just yet, not just yet. NAGG: Me pap! HAMM: Give him his pap. CLOV: There's no more pap. HAMM (to Nagg): Do you hear that? There's no more pap. You'll never get any more pap. NAGG: I want me pap! HAMM: Give him a biscuit. (Exit Clov.) Accursed fornicator! How are your stumps? NAGG: Never mind me stumps. (Enter Clov with biscuit.) CLOV: I'm back again, with the biscuit. (He gives biscuit to Nagg who fingers it, sniffs it.) NAGG (plaintively): What is it? CLOV: Spratt's medium. NAGG (as before): It's hard! I can't! HAMM: Bottle him! (Clov pushes Nagg back into the bin, closes the lid.) CLOV (returning to his place beside the chair): If age but knew! HAMM: Sit on him! CLOV: I can't sit. HAMM: True. And I can't stand. CLOV: So it is. HAMM: Every man his specialty. (Pause.) No phone calls? (Pause.) Don't we laugh? CLOV (after reflection): I don't feel like it. HAMM (after reflection): Nor I. (Pause.) Clov! CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Nature has forgotten us. CLOV: There's no more nature. HAMM: No more nature! You exaggerate. CLOV: In the vicinity. HAMM: But we breathe, we change! We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom! Our ideals! CLOV: Then she hasn't forgotten us. HAMM: But you say there is none. CLOV (sadly): No one that ever lived ever thought so crooked as we. HAMM: We do what we can. CLOV: We shouldn't. (Pause.) HAMM: You're a bit of all right, aren't you? CLOV: A smithereen. (Pause.) HAMM: This is slow work. (Pause.) Is it not time for my pain-killer? CLOV: No. (Pause.) I'll leave you, I have things to do. HAMM: In your kitchen? CLOV: Yes. HAMM: What, I'd like to know. CLOV: I look at the wall. HAMM: The wall! And what do you see on your wall? Mene, mene? Naked bodies? CLOV: I see my light dying. HAMM: Your light dying! Listen to that! Well, it can die just as well here, your light. Take a look at me and then come back and tell me what you think of your light. (Pause.) CLOV: You shouldn't speak to me like that. (Pause.) HAMM (coldly): Forgive me. (Pause. Louder.) I said, Forgive me. CLOV: I heard you. (The lid of Nagg's bin lifts. His hands appear, gripping the rim. Then his head emerges. In his mouth the biscuit. He listens.) HAMM: Did your seeds come up? CLOV: No. HAMM: Did you scratch round them to see if they had sprouted? CLOV: They haven't sprouted. HAMM: Perhaps it's still too early. CLOV: If they were going to sprout they would have sprouted. (Violently.) They'll never sprout! (Pause. Nagg takes biscuit in his hand.) HAMM: This is not much fun. (Pause.) But that's always the way at the end of the day, isn't it, Clov? CLOV: Always. HAMM: It's the end of the day like any other day, isn't it, Clov? CLOV: Looks like it. (Pause.) HAMM (anguished): What's happening, what's happening? CLOV: Something is taking its course. (Pause.) HAMM: All right, be off. (He leans back in his chair, remains motionless. Clov does not move, heaves a great groaning sigh. Hamm sits up.) I thought I told you to be off. CLOV: I'm trying. (He goes to the door, halts.) Ever since I was whelped. (Exit Clov.) HAMM: We're getting on. (He leans back in his chair, remains motionless. Nagg knocks on the lid of the other bin. Pause. He knocks harder. The lid lifts and the hands of Nell appear, gripping the rim. Then her head emerges. Lace cap. Very white face.) NELL: What is it, my pet? (Pause.) Time for love? NAGG: Were you asleep? NELL: Oh no! NAGG: Kiss me. NELL: We can't. NAGG: Try. (Their heads strain towards each other, fail to meet, fall apart again.) NELL: Why this farce, day after day? (Pause.) NAGG: I've lost me tooth. NELL: When? NAGG: I had it yesterday. NELL (elegiac): Ah yesterday. (They turn painfully towards each other.) NAGG: Can you see me? NELL: Hardly. And you? NAGG: What? NELL: Can you see me? NAGG: Hardly. NELL: So much the better, so much the better. NAGG: Don't say that. (Pause.) Our sight has failed. NELL: Yes. (Pause. They turn away from each other.) NAGG: Can you hear me? NELL: Yes. And you? NAGG: Yes. (Pause.) Our hearing hasn't failed. NELL: Our what? NAGG: Our hearing. NELL: No. (Pause.) Have you anything else to say to me? NAGG: Do you remember— NELL: No. NAGG: When we crashed on our tandem and lost our shanks. (They laugh heartily.) NELL: It was in the Ardennes. (They laugh less heartily.) NAGG: On the road to Sedan. (They laugh still less heartily.) Are you cold? NELL: Yes, perished, and you? NAGG: (Pause.) I'm freezing. (Pause.) Do you want to go in? NELL: Yes. NAGG: Then go in. (Nell does not move.) Why don't you go in? NELL: I don't know. (Pause.) NAGG: Has he changed your sawdust? NELL: It isn't sawdust. (Pause. Warily.) Can you not be a little accurate, Nagg? NAGG: Your sand then. It's not important. NELL: It is important. (Pause.) NAGG: It was sawdust once. NELL: Once! NAGG: And now it's sand. (Pause.) From the shore. (Pause. Impatiently.) Now it's sand he fetches from the shore. NELL: Now it's sand. NAGG: Has he changed yours? NELL: No. NAGG: Nor mine. (Pause.) I won't have it! (Pause. Holding up the biscuit.) Do you want a bit? NELL: No. (Pause.) Of what? NAGG: Biscuit. I've kept you half. (He looks at the biscuit. Proudly.) Three quarters. For you. Here. (He proffers the biscuit.) No? (Pause.) Do you not feel well? HAMM (wearily): Quiet, quiet, you're keeping me awake. (Pause.) Talk softer. (Pause.) If I could sleep I might make love. I'd go into the woods. My eyes would see... the sky, the earth. I'd run, run, they wouldn't catch me. (Pause.) Nature! (Pause.) There's something dripping in my head. (Pause.) A heart, a heart in my head. (Pause.) NAGG: Do you hear him? A heart in his head! (He chuckles cautiously.) NELL: One mustn't laugh at those things, Nagg. Why must you always laugh at them? NAGG: Not so loud! NELL (without lowering her voice): Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. But— NAGG (shocked): Oh! NELL: Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more. (Pause.) Have you anything else to say to me? NAGG: No. NELL: Are you quite sure? (Pause.) Then I'll leave you. NAGG: Do you not want your biscuit? (Pause.) I'll keep it for you. (Pause.) I thought you were going to leave me. NELL: I am going to leave you. NAGG: Could you give me a scratch before you go? NELL: No. (Pause.) Where? NAGG: In the back. NELL: No. (Pause.) Rub yourself against the rim. NAGG: It's lower down. In the hollow. NELL: What hollow? NAGG: The hollow! (Pause.) Could you not? (Pause.) Yesterday you scratched me there. NELL (elegiac): Ah yesterday. NAGG: Could you not? (Pause.) Would you like me to scratch you? (Pause.) Are you crying again? NELL: I was trying. (Pause.) HAMM: Perhaps it's a little vein. (Pause.) NAGG: What was that he said? NELL: Perhaps it's a little vein. NAGG: What does that mean? (Pause.) That means nothing. (Pause.) Shall I tell you the story of the tailor? NELL: No. (Pause.) What for? NAGG: To cheer you up. NELL: It's not funny. NAGG: It always made you laugh. (Pause.) The first time I thought you'd die. NELL: It was on Lake Como. (Pause.) One April afternoon. (Pause.) Can you believe it? NAGG: What? NELL: That we once went out rowing on Lake Como. (Pause.) One April afternoon. NAGG: We had got engaged the day before. NELL: Engaged! NAGG: You were in such fits that we capsized. By rights we should have been drowned. NELL: It was because I felt happy. NAGG (indignant): It was not, it was not, it was my STORY and nothing else. Happy! Don't you laugh at it still? Every time I tell it. Happy! NELL: It was deep, deep. And you could see down to the bottom. So white. So clean. NAGG: Let me tell it again. (Raconteur's voice.) An Englishman, needing a pair of striped trousers in a hurry for the New Year festivities, goes to his tailor who takes his measurements. (Tailor's voice.) "That's the lot, come back in four days, I'll have it ready." Good. Four days later. (Tailor's voice.) "So sorry, come back in a week, I've made a mess of the seat." Good, that's all right, a neat seat can be very ticklish. A week later. (Tailor's voice.) "Frightfully sorry, come back in ten days, I've made a hash of the crotch." Good, can't be helped, a snug crotch is always a teaser. Ten days later. (Tailor's voice.) "Dreadfully sorry, come back in a fortnight, I've made a balls of the fly." Good, at a pinch, a smart fly is a stiff proposition. (Pause. Normal voice.) I never told it worse. (Pause. Gloomy.) I tell this story worse and worse. (Pause. Raconteur's voice.) Well, to make it short, the bluebells are blowing and he ballockses the buttonholes. (Customer's voice.) "*** **** you to hell, Sir, no, it's indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD! And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!" (Tailor's voice, scandalized.) "But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look— (disdainful gesture, disgustedly) —at the world— (Pause.) and look— (loving gesture, proudly) —at my TROUSERS!" (Pause. He looks at Nell who has remained impassive, her eyes unseeing. He breaks into a high forced laugh, cuts it short, pokes his head towards Nell, launches his laugh again.) HAMM: Silence! (Nagg starts, cuts short his laugh.) NELL: You could see down to the bottom. HAMM (exasperated): Have you not finished? Will you never finish? (With sudden fury.) Will this never finish? (Nagg disappears into his bin, closes the lid behind him. Nell does not move. Frenziedly.) My kingdom for a nightman! (He whistles. Enter Clov.) Clear away this muck! Chuck it in the sea! (Clov goes to bins, halts.) NELL: So white. HAMM: What? What's she blathering about? (Clov stoops, takes Nell's hand, feels her pulse.) NELL (to Clov): Desert! (Clov lets go her hand, pushes her back in the bin, closes the lid.) CLOV (returning to his place beside the chair): She has no pulse. HAMM: What was she drivelling about? CLOV: She told me to go away, into the desert. HAMM: Damn busybody! Is that all? CLOV: No. HAMM: What else? CLOV: I didn't understand. HAMM: Have you bottled her? CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Are they both bottled? CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Screw down the lids. (Clov goes towards door.) Time enough. (Clov halts.) My anger subsides, I'd like to pee. CLOV (with alacrity): I'll go get the catheter. (He goes towards door.) HAMM: Time enough. (Clov halts.) Give me my pain killer. CLOV: It's too soon. (Pause.) It's too soon on top of your tonic, it wouldn't act. HAMM: In the morning they brace you up and in the evening they calm you down. Unless it's the other way round. (Pause.) That old doctor, he's dead naturally? CLOV: He wasn't old. HAMM: But he's dead? CLOV: Naturally. (Pause.) You ask me that? (Pause.) HAMM: Take me for a little turn. (Clov goes behind the chair and pushes it forward.) Not too fast! (Clov pushes chair.) Right round the world! (Clov pushes chair.) Hug the walls, then back to the center again. (Clov pushes chair.) I was right in the center, wasn't I? CLOV (pushing): Yes. HAMM: We'd need a proper wheel-chair. With big wheels. Bicycle wheels! (Pause.) Are you hugging? CLOV (pushing): Yes. HAMM (groping for wall): It's a lie! Why do you lie to me? CLOV (bearing closer to wall): There! There! HAMM: Stop! (Clov stops chair close to back wall. Hamm lays his hand against wall.) Old wall! (Pause.) Beyond is the... other hell. (Pause. Violently.) Closer! Closer! Up against! CLOV: Take away your hand. (Hamm withdraws his hand. Clov rams chair against wall.) There! (Hamm leans towards wall, applies his ear to it.) HAMM: Do you hear? (He strikes the wall with his knuckles.) Do you hear? Hollow bricks! (He strikes again.) All that's hollow! (Pause. He straightens up. Violently.) That's enough. Back! CLOV: We haven't done the round. HAMM: Back to my place! (Clov pushes chair back to center.) Is that my place? CLOV: Yes, that's your place. HAMM: Am I right in the center? CLOV: I'll measure it. HAMM: More or less! More or less! CLOV (moving chair slightly): There! HAMM: I'm more or less in the center? CLOV: I'd say so. HAMM: You'd say so! Put me right in the center! CLOV: I'll go and get the tape. HAMM: Roughly! Roughly! (Clov moves chair slightly.) Bang in the center! CLOV: There! (Pause.) HAMM: I feel a little too far to the left. (Clov moves chair slightly.) Now I feel a little too far to the right. (Clov moves chair slightly.) I feel a little too far forward. (Clov moves chair slightly.) Now I feel a little too far back. (Clov moves chair slightly.) Don't stay there. (i.e. behind the chair) you give me the shivers. (Clov returns to his place beside the chair.) CLOV: If I could kill him I'd die happy. (Pause.) HAMM: What's the weather like? CLOV: As usual. HAMM: Look at the earth. CLOV: I've looked. HAMM: With the glass? CLOV: No need of the glass. HAMM: Look at it with the glass. CLOV: I'll go and get the glass. (Exit Clov.) HAMM: No need of the glass! (Enter Clov with telescope.) CLOV: I'm back again, with the glass. (He goes to window right, looks up at it.) I need the steps. HAMM: Why? Have you shrunk? (Exit Clov with telescope.) I don't like that, I don't like that. (Enter Clov with ladder, but without telescope.) CLOV: I'm back again, with the steps. (He sets down ladder under window right, gets up on it, realizes he has not the telescope, gets down.) I need the glass. (He goes towards door.) HAMM (violently): But you have the glass! CLOV (halting, violently): No, I haven't the glass! (Exit Clov.) HAMM: This is deadly. (Enter Clov with the telescope. He goes towards ladder.) CLOV: Things are livening up. (He gets up on ladder, raises the telescope, lets it fall.) I did it on purpose. (He gets down, picks up the telescope, turns it on auditorium.) I see... a multitude... in transports... of joy. (Pause. He lowers telescope, looks at it.) That's what I call a magnifier. (He turns toward Hamm.) Well? Don't we laugh? HAMM (after reflection): I don't. CLOV (after reflection): Nor I. (He gets up on ladder, turns the telescope on the without.) Let's see. (He looks, moving the telescope.) Zero... (he looks) ...zero... (he looks) ...and zero. HAMM: Nothing stirs. All is— CLOV: Zer— HAMM (violently): Wait till you're spoken to! (Normal voice.) All is... all is... all is what? (Violently.) All is what? CLOV: What all is? In a word? Is that what you want to know? Just a moment. (He turns the telescope on the without, looks, lowers the telescope, turns towards Hamm.) Corpsed. (Pause.) Well? Content? HAMM: Look at the sea. CLOV: It's the same. HAMM: Look at the ocean! (Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.) CLOV: Never seen anything like that! HAMM (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke? CLOV (looking): The light is sunk. HAMM (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. CLOV (looking): There was a bit left. HAMM: The base. CLOV (looking): Yes. HAMM: And now? CLOV (looking): All gone. HAMM: No gulls? CLOV (looking): Gulls! HAMM: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? CLOV (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) HAMM: The waves, how are the waves? CLOV: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. HAMM: And the sun? CLOV (looking): Zero. HAMM: But it should be sinking. Look again. CLOV (looking): Damn the sun. HAMM: Is is night already then? CLOV (looking): No. HAMM: Then what is it? CLOV (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) HAMM (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? CLOV: Light black. From pole to pole. HAMM: You exaggerate. (Pause.) Don't stay there, you give me the shivers. (Clov returns to his place beside the chair.) CLOV: Why this farce, day after day? HAMM: Routine. One never knows. (Pause.) Last night I saw inside my breast. There was a big sore. CLOV: Pah! You saw your heart. HAMM: No, it was living. (Pause. Anguished.) Clov! CLOV: Yes. HAMM: What's happening? CLOV: Something is taking its course. (Pause.) HAMM: Clov! CLOV (impatiently): What is it? HAMM: We're not beginning to... to... mean something? CLOV: Mean something! You and I, mean something! (Brief laugh.) Ah that's a good one! HAMM: I wonder. (Pause.) Imagine if a rational being came back to earth, wouldn't he be liable to get ideas into his head if he observed us long enough. (Voice of rational being.) Ah, good, now I see what it is, yes, now I understand what they're at! (Clov starts, drops the telescope and begins to scratch his belly with both hands. Normal voice.) And without going so far as that, we ourselves... (with emotion) ...we ourselves... at certain moments... (Vehemently.) To think perhaps it won't all have been for nothing! CLOV (anguished, scratching himself): I have a flea! HAMM: A flea! Are there still fleas? CLOV: On me there's one. (Scratching.) Unless it's a crab louse. HAMM (very perturbed): But humanity might start from there all over again! Catch him, for the love of God! CLOV: I'll go and get the powder. (Exit Clov.) HAMM: A flea! This is awful! What a day! (Enter Clov with a sprinkling-tin.) CLOV: I'm back again, with the insecticide. HAMM: Let him have it! (Clov loosens the top of his trousers, pulls it forward and shakes powder into the aperture. He stoops, looks, waits, starts, frenziedly shakes more powder, stoops, looks, waits.) CLOV: The bastard! HAMM: Did you get him? CLOV: Looks like it. (He drops the tin and adjusts his trousers.) Unless he's laying doggo. HAMM: Laying! Lying, you mean. Unless he's lying doggo. CLOV: Ah? One says lying? One doesn't say laying? HAMM: Use your head, can't you. If he was laying we'd be bitched. CLOV: Ah. (Pause.) What about that pee? HAMM: I'm having it. CLOV: Ah that's the spirit, that's the spirit! (Pause.) HAMM (with ardour): Let's go from here, the two of us! South! You can make a raft and the currents will carry us away, far away, to other... mammals! CLOV: God forbid! HAMM: Alone, I'll embark alone! Get working on that raft immediately. Tomorrow I'll be gone forever. CLOV (hastening towards door): I'll start straight away. HAMM: Wait! (Clov halts.) Will there be sharks, do you think? CLOV: Sharks? I don't know. If there are there will be. (He goes towards door.) HAMM: Wait! (Clov halts.) Is it not yet time for my pain-killer? CLOV (violently): No! (He goes towards door.) HAMM: Wait! (Clov halts.) How are your eyes? CLOV: Bad. HAMM: But you can see. CLOV: All I want. HAMM: How are your legs? CLOV: Bad. HAMM: But you can walk. CLOV: I come... and go. HAMM: In my house. (Pause. With prophetic relish.) One day you'll be blind like me. You'll be sitting here, a speck in the void, in the dark, forever, like me. (Pause.) One day you'll say to yourself, I'm tired, I'll sit down, and you'll go and sit down. Then you'll say, I'm hungry, I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up. You'll say, I shouldn't have sat down, but since I have I'll sit on a little longer, then I'll get up and get something to eat. But you won't get up and you won't get anything to eat. (Pause.) You'll look at the wall a while, then you'll say, I'll close my eyes, perhaps have a little sleep, after that I'll feel better, and you'll close them. And when you open them again there'll be no wall any more. (Pause.) Infinite emptiness will be all around you, all the resurrected dead of all the ages wouldn't fill it, and there you'll be like a little bit of grit in the middle of the steppe. (Pause.) Yes, one day you'll know what it is, you'll be like me, except that you won't have anyone with you, because you won't have had pity on anyone and because there won't be anyone left to have pity on you. (Pause.) CLOV: It's not certain. (Pause.) And there's one thing you forgot. HAMM: Ah? CLOV: I can't sit down. HAMM (impatiently): Well you'll lie down then, what the hell! Or you'll come to a standstill, simply stop and stand still, the way you are now. One day you'll say, I'm tired, I'll stop. What does the attitude matter? (Pause.) CLOV: So you all want me to leave you. HAMM: Naturally. CLOV: Then I'll leave you. HAMM: You can't leave us. CLOV: Then I won't leave you. (Pause.) HAMM: Why don't you finish us? (Pause.) I'll tell you the combination of the cupboard if you promise to finish me. CLOV: I couldn't finish you. HAMM: Then you won't finish me. (Pause.) CLOV: I'll leave you, I have things to do. HAMM: Do you remember when you came here? CLOV: No. Too small, you told me. HAMM: Do you remember your father? CLOV (wearily): Same answer. (Pause.) You've asked me these questions millions of times. HAMM: I love the old questions. (With fervour.) Ah the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them! (Pause.) It was I was a father to you. CLOV: Yes. (He looks at Hamm fixedly.) You were that to me. HAMM: My house a home for you. CLOV: Yes. (He looks about him.) This was that for me. HAMM (proudly): But for me, (gesture towards himself) no father. But for Hamm, (gesture towards surroundings) no home. (Pause.) CLOV: I'll leave you. HAMM: Did you ever think of one thing? CLOV: Never. HAMM: That here we're down in a hole. (Pause.) But beyond the hills? Eh? Perhaps it's still green. Eh? (Pause.) Flora! Pomona! (Ecstatically.) Ceres! (Pause.) Perhaps you won't need to go very far. CLOV: I can't go very far. (Pause.) I'll leave you. HAMM: Is my dog ready? CLOV: He lacks a leg. HAMM: Is he silky? CLOV: He's kind of a Pomeranian. HAMM: Go and get him. CLOV: He lacks a leg. HAMM: Go and get him! (Exit Clov.) We're getting on. (Enter Clov holding by one of its three legs a black toy dog.) CLOV: Your dogs are here. (He hands the dog to Hamm who feels it, fondles it.) HAMM: He's white, isn't he? CLOV: Nearly. HAMM: What do you mean, nearly? Is he white or isn't he? CLOV: He isn't. (Pause.) HAMM: You've forgotten the sex. CLOV (vexed): But he isn't finished. The sex goes on at the end. (Pause.) HAMM: You haven't put on his ribbon. CLOV (angrily): But he isn't finished, I tell you! First you finish your dog and then you put on his ribbon! (Pause.) HAMM: Can he stand? CLOV: I don't know. HAMM: Try. (He hands the dog to Clov who places it on the ground.) Well? CLOV: Wait! (He squats down and tries to get the dog to stand on its three legs, fails, lets it go. The dog falls on its side.) HAMM (impatiently): Well? CLOV: He's standing. HAMM (groping for the dog): Where? Where is he? (Clov holds up the dog in a standing position.) CLOV: There. (He takes Hamm's hand and guides it towards the dog's head.) HAMM (his hand on the dog's head): Is he gazing at me? CLOV: Yes. HAMM (proudly): As if he were asking me to take him for a walk? CLOV: If you like. HAMM (as before): Or as if he were begging me for a bone. (He withdraws his hand.) Leave him like that, standing there imploring me. (Clov straightens up. The dog falls on its side.) CLOV: I'll leave you. HAMM: Have you had your visions? CLOV: Less. HAMM: Is Mother Pegg's light on? CLOV: Light! How could anyone's light be on? HAMM: Extinguished! CLOV: Naturally it's extinguished. If it's not on it's extinguished. HAMM: No, I mean Mother Pegg. CLOV: But naturally she's extinguished! (Pause.) What's the matter with you today? HAMM: I'm taking my course. (Pause.) Is she buried? CLOV: Buried! Who would have buried her? HAMM: You. CLOV: Me! Haven't I enough to do without burying people? HAMM: But you'll bury me. CLOV: No I won't bury you. (Pause.) HAMM: She was bonny once, like a flower of the field. (With reminiscent leer.) And a great one for the men! CLOV: We too were bonny—once. It's a rare thing not to have been bonny—once. (Pause.) HAMM: Go and get the gaff. (Clov goes to the door, halts.) CLOV: Do this, do that, and I do it. I never refuse. Why? HAMM: You're not able to. CLOV: Soon I won't do it any more. HAMM: You won't be able to any more. (Exit Clov.) Ah the creatures, the creatures, everything has to be explained to them. (Enter Clov with gaff.) CLOV: Here's your gaff. Stick it up. (He gives the gaff to Hamm who, wielding it like a puntpole, tries to move his chair.) HAMM: Did I move? CLOV: No. (Hamm throws down the gaff.) HAMM: Go and get the oilcan. CLOV: What for? HAMM: To oil the castors. CLOV: I oiled them yesterday. HAMM: Yesterday! What does that mean? Yesterday! CLOV (violently): That means that bloody awful day, long ago, before this bloody awful day. I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent. (Pause.) HAMM: I once knew a madman who thought the end of the world had come. He was a painter—and engraver. I had a great fondness for him. I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I'd take him by the hand and drag him to the window. Look! There! All that rising corn! And there! Look! The sails of the herring fleet! All that loveliness! (Pause.) He'd snatch away his hand and go back into his corner. Appalled. All he had seen was ashes. (Pause.) He alone had been spared. (Pause.) Forgotten. (Pause.) It appears the case is... was not so... so unusual. CLOV: A madman? When was that? HAMM: Oh way back, way back, you weren't in the land of the living. CLOV: God be with those days. (Pause. Hamm raises his toque.) HAMM: I had a great fondness for him. (Pause. He puts on his toque again.) He was a painter—and engraver. CLOV: There are so many terrible things. HAMM: No, no, there are not so many now. (Pause.) Clov! CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Do you not think this has gone on long enough? CLOV: Yes! (Pause.) What? HAMM: This... this... thing. CLOV: I've always thought so. (Pause.) You not? HAMM (gloomily): Then it's a day like any other day. CLOV: As long as it lasts. (Pause.) All life long the same inanities. HAMM: I can't leave you. CLOV: I know. And you can't follow me. (Pause.) HAMM: If you leave me how shall I know? CLOV (briskly): Well you simply whistle me and if I don't come running it means I've left you. (Pause.) HAMM: You won't come and kiss me goodbye? CLOV: Oh I shouldn't think so. (Pause.) HAMM: But you might be merely dead in your kitchen. CLOV: The result would be the same. HAMM: Yes, but how would I know, if you were merely dead in your kitchen? CLOV: Well... sooner or later I'd start to stink. HAMM: You stink already. The whole place stinks of corpses. CLOV: The whole universe. HAMM (angrily): To hell with the universe. (Pause.) Think of something. CLOV: What? HAMM: An idea, have an idea. (Angrily.) A bright idea! CLOV: Ah good. (He starts pacing to and fro, his eyes fixed on the ground, his hands behind his back. He halts.) The pains in my legs! It's unbelievable! Soon I won't be able to think any more. HAMM: You won't be able to leave me. (Clov resumes his pacing.) What are you doing? CLOV: Having an idea. (He paces.) Ah! (He halts.) HAMM: What a brain! (Pause.) Well? CLOV: Wait! (He meditates. Not very convinced.) Yes... (He raises his head.) I have it! I set the alarm. (Pause.) HAMM: This is perhaps not one of my bright days, but frankly— CLOV: You whistle me. I don't come. The alarm rings. I'm gone. It doesn't ring. I'm dead. (Pause.) HAMM: Is it working? (Pause. Impatiently.) The alarm, is it working? CLOV: Why wouldn't it be working? HAMM: Because it's worked too much. CLOV: But it's hardly worked at all. HAMM (angrily): Then because it's worked too little! CLOV: I'll go and see. (Exit Clov. Brief ring of alarm offstage. Enter Clov with alarm-clock. He holds it against Hamm's ear and releases alarm. They listen to it ringing to the end. Pause.) Fit to wake the dead! Did you hear it? HAMM: Vaguely. CLOV: The end is terrific! HAMM: I prefer the middle. (Pause.) Is is not time for my pain-killer? CLOV: No! (He goes to door, turns.) I'll leave you. HAMM: It's time for my story. Do you want to listen to my story? CLOV: No. HAMM: Ask my father if he wants to listen to my story. (Clov goes to bins, raises the lid of Nagg's, stoops, looks into it. Pause. He straightens up.) CLOV: He's asleep. HAMM: Wake him. (Clov stoops, wakes Nagg with the alarm. Unintelligible words. Clov straightens up.) CLOV: He doesn't want to listen to your story. HAMM: I'll give him a bon-bon. (Clov stoops. As before.) CLOV: He wants a sugar-plum. HAMM: He'll get a sugar-plum. (Clov stoops. As before.) CLOV: It's a deal. (He goes towards door. Nagg's hands appear, gripping the rim. Then the head emerges. Clov reaches door, turns.) Do you believe in the life to come? HAMM: Mine was always that. (Exit Clov.) Got him that time! NAGG: I'm listening. HAMM: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me? NAGG: I didn't know. HAMM: What? What didn't you know? NAGG: That it'd be you. (Pause.) You'll give me a sugar-plum? HAMM: After the audition. NAGG: You swear? HAMM: Yes. NAGG: On what? HAMM: My honor. (Pause. They laugh heartily.) NAGG: Two. HAMM: One. NAGG: One for me and one for— HAMM: One! Silence! (Pause.) Where was I? (Pause. Gloomily.) It's finished, we're finished. (Pause.) Nearly finished. (Pause.) There'll be no more speech. (Pause.) Something dripping in my head, ever since the fontanelles. (Stifled hilarity of Nagg.) Splash, splash, always on the same spot. (Pause.) Perhaps it's a little vein. (Pause.) A little artery. (Pause. More animated.) Enough of that, it's story time, where was I? (Pause. Narrative tone.) The man came crawling towards me, on his belly. Pale, wonderfully pale and thin, he seemed on the point of— (Pause. Normal tone.) No, I've done that bit. (Pause. Narrative tone.) I calmly filled my pipe—the meerschaum, lit it with... let us say a vesta, drew a few puffs. Aah! (Pause.) Well, what is it you want? (Pause.) It was an extra-ordinarily bitter day, I remember, zero by the thermometer. But considering it was Christmas Eve there was nothing... extra-ordinary about that. Seasonable weather, for once in a way. (Pause.) Well, what ill wind blows you my way? He raised his face to me, black with mingled dirt and tears. (Pause. Normal tone.) That should do it. (Narrative tone.) No no, don't look at me, don't look at me. He dropped his eyes and mumbled something, apologies I presume. (Pause.) I'm a busy man, you know, the final touches, before the festivities, you know what it is. (Pause. Forcibly.) Come on now, what is the object of this invasion? (Pause.) It was a glorious bright day, I remember, fifty by the heliometer, but already the sun was sinking down into the... down among the dead. (Normal voice.) Nicely put, that. (Narrative tone.) Come on now, come on, present your petition and let me resume my labors. (Pause. Normal tone.) There's English for you. Ah well... (Narrative tone.) It was then he took the plunge. It's my little one, he said. Tsstss, a little one, that's bad. My little boy, he said, as if the sex mattered. Where did he come from? He named the hole. A good half-day, on horse. What are you insinuating? That the place is still inhabited? No no, not a soul, except himself and the child—assuming he existed. Good. I enquired about the situation at Kov, beyond the gulf. Not a sinner. Good. And you expect me to believe you have left your little one back there, all alone, and alive into the bargain? Come now! (Pause.) It was a howling day, I remember, a hundred by the anenometer. The wind was tearing up the dead pines and sweeping them... away. (Pause. Normal tone.) A feeble bit, that. (Narrative tone.) Come on, man, speak up, what is it you want from me, I have to put up my holly. (Pause.) Well to make it short it finally transpired that what he wanted from me was... bread for his brat? Bread? But I have no bread, it doesn't agree with me. Good. Then perhaps a little corn? (Pause. Normal tone.) That should do it. (Narrative tone.) Corn, yes, I have corn, it's true, in my granaries. But use your head. I give you some corn, a pound, a pound and a half, you bring it back to your child and you make him—if he's still alive—a nice pot of porridge. (Nagg reacts.) a nice pot and a half of porridge, full of nourishment. Good. The colors come back into his little cheeks—perhaps. And then? (Pause.) I lost patience. (Violently.) Use your head, can't you, use your head. You're on earth, there's no cure for that! (Pause.) It was an exceedingly dry day, I remember, zero by the hygrometer. Ideal weather, for my lumbago. (Pause. Violently.) But what in God's name do you imagine? That the earth will awake in the spring? That the rivers and seas will run with fish again? That there's manna in heaven still for imbeciles like you? (Pause.) Gradually I cooled down, sufficiently at least to ask him how long he had taken on the way. Three whole days. Good. In what condition he had left the child. Deep in sleep. (Forcibly.) But deep in what sleep, deep in what sleep already? (Pause.) Well to make it short I finally offered to take him into my service. He had touched a chord. And then I imagined already that I wasn't much longer for this world. (He laughs. Pause.) Well? (Pause.) Well? Here if you were careful you might die a nice natural death, in peace and comfort. (Pause.) Well? (Pause.) In the end he asked me would I consent to take in the child as well—if he were still alive. (Pause.) It was the moment I was waiting for. (Pause.) Would I consent to take in the child... (Pause.) I can see him still, down on his knees, his hands flat on the ground, glaring at me with his mad eyes, in defiance of my wishes. (Pause. Normal tone.) I'll soon have finished with this story. (Pause.) Unless I bring in other characters. (Pause.) But where would I find them? (Pause.) Where would I look for them? (Pause. He whistles. Enter Clov.) Let us pray to God. NAGG: Me sugar-plum! CLOV: There's a rat in the kitchen! HAMM: A rat! Are there still rats? CLOV: In the kitchen there's one. HAMM: And you haven't exterminated him? CLOV: Half. You disturbed us. HAMM: He can't get away? CLOV: No. HAMM: You'll finish him later. Let us pray to God. CLOV: Again! NAGG: Me sugar-plum! HAMM: God first! (Pause.) Are you right? CLOV (resigned): Off we go. HAMM (to Nagg): And you? NAGG (clasping his hands, closing his eyes, in a gabble): Our Father which art— HAMM: Silence! In silence! Where are your manners? (Pause.) Off we go. (Attitudes of prayer. Silence. Abandoning his attitude, discouraged.) Well? CLOV (abandoning his attitude): What a hope! And you? HAMM: Sweet damn all! (To Nagg.) And you? NAGG: Wait! (Pause. Abandoning his attitude.) Nothing doing! HAMM: The bastard!! He doesn't exist. CLOV: Not yet. NAGG: Me sugar-plum! HAMM: There are no more sugar plums! (Pause.) NAGG: It's natural. After all I'm your father. It's true if it hadn't been me it would have been someone else. But that's no excuse. (Pause.) Turkish Delight, for example, which no longer exists, we all know that, there is nothing in the world I love more. And one day I'll ask you for some, in return for a kindness, and you'll promise it to me. One must live with the times. (Pause.) Whom did you call when you were a tiny boy, and were frightened, in the dark? Your mother? No. Me. We let you cry. Then we moved you out of earshot, so that we might sleep in peace. (Pause.) I was asleep, as happy as a king, and you woke me up to have me listen to you. It wasn't indispensable, you didn't really need to have me listen to you. (Pause.) I hope the day will come when you'll really need to have me listen to you, and need to hear my voice, any voice. (Pause.) Yes, I hope I'll live till then, to hear you calling me like when you were a tiny boy, and were frightened, in the dark, and I was your only hope. (Pause. Nagg knocks on lid of Nell's bin. Pause.) Nell! (Pause. He knocks louder. Pause. Louder.) Nell! (Pause. Nagg sinks back into his bin, closes the lid behind him. Pause.) HAMM: Our revels now are ended. (He gropes for the dog.) The dog's gone. CLOV: He's not a real dog, he can't go. HAMM (groping): He's not there. CLOV: He's lain down. HAMM: Give him up to me. (Clov picks up the dog and gives it to Hamm. Hamm holds it in his arms. Pause. Hamm throws away the dog.) Dirty brute! (Clov begins to pick up the objects lying on the ground.) What are you doing? CLOV: Putting things in order. (He straightens up. Fervently.) I'm going to clear everything away! (He starts picking up again.) HAMM: Order! CLOV (straightening up): I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust. (He starts picking up again.) HAMM (exasperated): What in God's name do you think you're doing? CLOV (straightening up): I'm doing my best to create a little order. HAMM: Drop it! (Clov drops the objects he has picked up.) CLOV: After all, there or elsewhere. (He goes towards door.) HAMM (irritably): What's wrong with your feet? CLOV: My feet? HAMM: Tramp! Tramp! CLOV: I must have put on my boots. HAMM: Your slippers were hurting you? (Pause.) CLOV: I'll leave you. HAMM: No! CLOV: What is there to keep me here? HAMM: The dialogue. (Pause.) I've got on with my story. (Pause.) I've got on with it well. (Pause. Irritably.) Ask me where I've got to. CLOV: Oh, by the way, your story? HAMM (surprised): What story? CLOV: The one you've been telling yourself all your days. HAMM: Ah you mean my chronicle? CLOV: That's the one. (Pause.) HAMM (angrily): Keep going, can't you, keep going! CLOV: You've got on with it, I hope. HAMM (modestly): Oh not very far, not very far. (He sighs.) There are days like that, one isn't inspired. (Pause.) Nothing you can do about it, just wait for it to come. (Pause.) No forcing, no forcing, it's fatal. (Pause.) I've got on with it a little all the same. (Pause.) Technique, you know. (Pause. Irritably.) I say I've got on with it a little all the same. CLOV (admiringly): Well I never! In spite of everything you were able to get on with it! HAMM (modestly): Oh not very far, you know, not very far, but nevertheless, better than nothing. CLOV: Better than nothing! Is it possible? HAMM: I'll tell you how it goes. He comes crawling on his belly— CLOV: Who? HAMM: What? CLOV: Who do you mean, he? HAMM: Who do I mean! Yet another. CLOV: Ah him. I wasn't sure. HAMM: Crawling on his belly, whining for bread for his brat. He's offered a job as gardener. Before— (Clov bursts out laughing.) What is there so funny about that? CLOV: A job as gardener! HAMM: Is that what tickles you? CLOV: It must be that. HAMM: It wouldn't be the bread? CLOV: Or the brat. (Pause.) HAMM: The whole thing is comical, I grant you that. What about having a good guffaw, the two of us together? CLOV (after reflection): I couldn't guffaw again today. HAMM (after reflection): Nor I. (Pause.) I continue then. Before accepting with gratitude he asks if he may have his little boy with him. CLOV: What age? HAMM: Oh tiny. CLOV: He would have climbed the trees. HAMM: All the little odd jobs. CLOV: And then he would have grown up. HAMM: Very likely. (Pause.) CLOV: Keep going, can't you, keep going? HAMM: That's all. I stopped there. (Pause.) CLOV: Do you see how it goes on? HAMM: More or less. CLOV: Will it not soon be the end? HAMM: I'm afraid it will. CLOV: Pah! You'll make up another. HAMM: I don't know. (Pause.) I feel rather drained. (Pause.) The prolonged creative effort. (Pause.) If I could drag myself down to the sea! I'd make a pillow of sand for my head and the tide would come. CLOV: There's no more tide. (Pause.) HAMM: Go and see is she dead. (Clov goes to bins, raises the lid of Nell's, stoops, looks into it. Pause.) CLOV: Looks like it. (He closes the lid, straightens up. Hamm raises his toque. Pause. He puts it on again.) HAMM (with his hand to his toque): And Nagg? (Clov raises lid of Nagg's bin, stoops, looks into it. Pause.) CLOV: Doesn't look like it. (He closes the lid, straightens up.) HAMM (letting go his toque): What's he doing? (Clov raises lid of Nagg's bin, stoops, looks into it. Pause.) CLOV: He's crying. (He closes lid, straightens up.) HAMM: Then he's living. (Pause.) Did you ever have an instant of happiness? CLOV: Not to my knowledge. (Pause.) HAMM: Bring me under the window. (Clov goes towards chair.) I want to feel the light on my face. (Clov pushes chair.) Do you remember, in the beginning, when you took me for a turn? You used to hold the chair too high. At every step you nearly tipped me out. (With senile quaver.) Ah great fun, we had, the two of us, great fun. (Gloomily.) And then we got into the way of it. (Clov stops the chair under window right.) There already? (Pause. He tilts back his head.) Is it light? CLOV: It isn't dark. HAMM (angrily): I'm asking you is it light? CLOV: Yes. (Pause.) HAMM: The curtain isn't closed? CLOV: No. HAMM: What window is it? CLOV: The earth. HAMM: I knew it! (Angrily.) But there's no light there! The other! (Clov pushes chair towards window left.) The earth! (Clov stops the chair under window left. Hamm tilts back his head.) That's what I call light! (Pause.) Feels like a ray of sunshine. (Pause.) No? CLOV: No. HAMM: It isn't a ray of sunshine I feel on my face? CLOV: No. (Pause.) HAMM: Am I very white? (Pause. Angrily.) I'm asking you am I very white? CLOV: Not more so than usual. (Pause.) HAMM: Open the window. CLOV: What for? HAMM: I want to hear the sea. CLOV: You wouldn't hear it. HAMM: Even if you opened the window? CLOV: No. HAMM: Than it's not worth while opening it? CLOV: No. HAMM (violently): Than open it! (Clov gets up on the ladder, opens the window. Pause.) Have you opened it? CLOV: Yes. (Pause.) HAMM: You swear you've opened it? CLOV: Yes. (Pause.) HAMM: Well...! (Pause.) It must be very calm. (Pause. Violently.) I'm asking you is it very calm! CLOV: Yes. HAMM: It's because there are no more navigators. (Pause.) You haven't much conversation all of a sudden. Do you not feel well? CLOV: I'm cold. HAMM: What month are we? (Pause.) Close the window, we're going back. (Clov closes the window, gets down, pushes the chair back to its place, remains standing behind it, head bowed.) Don't stand there, you give me the shivers! (Clov returns to his place beside the chair.) Father! (Pause. Louder.) Father! (Pause.) Go and see did he hear me. (Clov goes to Nagg's bin, raises the lid, stoops. Unintelligible words. Clov straightens up.) CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Both times? (Clov stoops. As before.) CLOV: Once only. HAMM: The first time or the second? (Clov stoops. As before.) CLOV: He doesn't know. HAMM: It must have been the second. CLOV: We'll never know. (He closes lid.) HAMM: Is he still crying? CLOV: No. HAMM: The dead go fast. (Pause.) What's he doing? CLOV: Sucking his biscuit. HAMM: Life goes on. (Clov returns to his place beside the chair.) Give me the rug, I'm freezing. CLOV: There are no more rugs. (Pause.) HAMM: Kiss me. (Pause.) Will you not kiss me? CLOV: No. HAMM: On the forehead. CLOV: I won't kiss you anywhere. (Pause.) HAMM (holding out his hand): Give me your hand at least. (Pause.) Will you not give me your hand? CLOV: I won't touch you. (Pause.) HAMM: Give me the dog. (Clov looks round for the dog.) No! CLOV: Do you not want your dog? HAMM: No. CLOV: Then I'll leave you. HAMM (head bowed, absently): That's right. (Clov goes to door, turns.) CLOV: If I don't kill that rat he'll die. HAMM (as before): That's right. (Exit Clov. Pause.) Me to play. (He takes out his handkerchief, unfolds it, holds it spread out before him.) We're getting on. (Pause.) You weep, and weep, for nothing, so as not to laugh, and little by little... you begin to grieve. (He folds the handkerchief, puts it back in his pocket, raises his head.) All those I might have helped. (Pause.) Helped! (Pause.) Saved. (Pause.) Saved! (Pause.) The place was crawling with them (Pause. Violently.) Use your head, can't you, use your head, you're on earth, there's no cure for that! (Pause.) Get out of here and love one another! Lick your neighbor as yourself! (Pause. Calmer.) When it wasn't bread they wanted it was crumpets. (Pause. Violently.) Out of my sight and back to your petting parties! (Pause.) All that, all that! (Pause.) Not even a real dog! (Calmer.) The end is in the beginning and yet you go on. (Pause.) Perhaps I could go on with my story, end it and begin another. (Pause.) Perhaps I could throw myself out on the floor. (He pushes himself painfully off his seat, falls back again.) Dig my nails into the cracks and drag myself forward with my fingers. (Pause.) It will be the end and there I'll be, wondering what can have brought it on and wondering what can have... (he hesitates) ...why it was so long coming. (Pause.) There I'll be, in the old shelter, alone against the silence and... (he hesitates) ...the stillness. If I can hold my peace, and sit quiet, it will be all over with sound, and motion, all over and done with. (Pause.) I'll have called my father and I'll have called my... (he hesitates) ...my son. And even twice, or three times, in case they shouldn't have heard me, the first time, or the second. (Pause.) I'll say to myself, He'll come back. (Pause.) And then? (Pause.) And then? (Pause.) He couldn't, He has gone too far. (Pause.) And then? (Pause. Very agitated.) All kinds of fantasies! That I'm being watched! A rat! Steps! Breath held and then... (He breathes out.) Then babble, babble, words, like the solitary child who turns himself into children, two, three, so as to be together, and whisper together, in the dark. (Pause.) Moment upon moment, pattering down, like the millet grains of... (he hesitates) ...that old Greek, and all life long you wait for that to mount up to a life. (Pause. He opens his mouth to continue, renounces.) Ah let's get it over! (He whistles. Enter Clov with alarm-clock. He halts beside the chair.) What? Neither gone nor dead? CLOV: In spirit only. HAMM: Which? CLOV: Both. HAMM: Gone from me you'd be dead. CLOV: And vice versa. HAMM: Outside of here it's death! (Pause.) And the rat? CLOV: He's got away. HAMM: He can't go far. (Pause. Anxious.) Eh? CLOV: He doesn't need to go far. (Pause.) HAMM: Is it not time for my pain-killer? CLOV: Yes. HAMM: Ah! At last! Give it to me! Quick! (Pause.) CLOV: There's no more pain-killer. (Pause.) HAMM (appalled): Good...! (Pause.) No more pain-killer! CLOV: No more pain-killer. You'll never get any more pain-killer. (Pause.) HAMM: But the little round box. It was full! CLOV: Yes. But now it's empty. (Pause. Clov starts to move about the room. He is looking for a place to put down the alarm-clock.) HAMM (soft): What'll I do? (Pause. In a scream.) What'll I do? (Clov sees the picture, takes it down, stands it on the floor with its face to the wall, hangs up the alarm-clock in its place.) What are you doing? CLOV: Winding up. HAMM: Look at the earth. CLOV: Again! HAMM: Since it's calling to you. CLOV: Is your throat sore? (Pause.) Would you like a lozenge? (Pause.) No. (Pause.) Pity. (Clov goes, humming, towards window right, halts before it, looks up at it.) HAMM: Don't sing. CLOV (turning towards Hamm): One hasn't the right to sing any more? HAMM: No. CLOV: Then how can it end? HAMM: You want it to end? CLOV: I want to sing. HAMM: I can't prevent you. (Pause. Clov turns towards window right.) CLOV: What did I do with that steps? (He looks around for ladder.) You didn't see that steps? (He sees it.) Ah, about time. (He goes towards window left.) Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes over and I'm as lucid as before. (He gets up on ladder, looks out of window.) Christ, she's under water! (He looks.) How can that be? (He pokes forward his head, his hand above his eyes.) It hasn't rained. (He wipes the pane, looks. Pause.) Ah what a fool I am! I'm on the wrong side! (He gets down, takes a few steps towards window right.) Under water! (He goes back for ladder.) What a fool I am! (He carries ladder towards window right.) Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right senses. Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever. (He sets down ladder under window right, gets up on it, looks out of window. He turns towards Hamm.) Any particular sector you fancy? Or merely the whole thing? HAMM: Whole thing. CLOV: The general effect? Just a moment. (He looks out of window. Pause.) HAMM: Clov. CLOV (absorbed): Mmm. HAMM: Do you know what it is? CLOV (as before): Mmm. HAMM: I was never there. (Pause.) Clov! CLOV (turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What is it? HAMM: I was never there. CLOV: Lucky for you. (He looks out of window.) HAMM: Absent, always. It all happened without me. I don't know what's happened. (Pause.) Do you know what's happened? (Pause.) Clov! CLOV (turning towards Hamm, exasperated): Do you want me to look at this muckheap, yes or no? HAMM: Answer me first. CLOV: What? HAMM: Do you know what's happened? CLOV: When? Where? HAMM (violently): When! What's happened? Use your head, can't you! What has happened? CLOV: What for Christ's sake does it matter? (He looks out of window.) HAMM: I don't know. (Pause. Clov turns towards Hamm.) CLOV (harshly): When old Mother Pegg asked you for oil for her lamp and you told her to get out to hell, you knew what was happening then, no? (Pause.) You know what she died of, Mother Pegg? Of darkness. HAMM (feebly): I hadn't any. CLOV (as before): Yes, you had. (Pause.) HAMM: Have you the glass? CLOV: No, it's clear enough as it is. HAMM: Go and get it. (Pause. Clov casts up his eyes, brandishes his fists. He loses balance, clutches on to the ladder. He starts to get down, halts.) CLOV: There's one thing I'll never understand. (He gets down.) Why I always obey you. Can you explain that to me? HAMM: No... Perhaps it's compassion. (Pause.) A kind of great compassion. (Pause.) Oh you won't find it easy, you won't find it easy. (Pause. Clov begins to move about the room in search of the telescope.) CLOV: I'm tired of our goings on, very tired. (He searches.) You're not sitting on it? (He moves the chair, looks at the place where it stood, resumes his search.) HAMM (anguished): Don't leave me there! (Angrily Clov restores the chair to its place.) Am I right in the center? CLOV: You'd need a microscope to find this— (He sees the telescope.) Ah, about time. (He picks up the telescope, gets up on the ladder, turns the telescope on the without.) HAMM: Give me the dog. CLOV (looking): Quiet! HAMM (angrily): Give me the dog! (Clov drops the telescope, clasps his hands to his head. Pause. He gets down precipitately, looks for the dog, sees it, picks it up, hastens towards Hamm and strikes him violently on the head with the dog.) CLOV: There's your dog for you. (The dog falls to the ground. Pause.) HAMM: He hit me! CLOV: You drive me mad, I'm mad! HAMM: If you must hit me, hit me with the axe. (Pause.) Or with the gaff, hit me with the gaff. Not with the dog. With the gaff. Or with the axe. (Clov picks up the dog and gives it to Hamm who takes it in his arms.) CLOV (impatiently): Let's stop playing! HAMM: Never! (Pause.) Put me in my coffin. CLOV: There are no more coffins. HAMM: Then let it end! (Clov goes towards ladder.) With a bang! (Clov gets up on ladder, gets down again, looks for telescope, sees it, picks it up, gets up on ladder, raises telescope.) Of darkness! And me? Did anyone ever have pity on me? CLOV (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm): What? (Pause.) Is it me you're referring to? HAMM (angrily): An aside, ape! Did you never hear an aside before? (Pause.) I'm warming up for my last soliloquy. CLOV: I warn you. I'm going to look at this filth since it's an order. But it's the last time. (He turns the telescope on the without.) Let's see. (He moves the telescope.) Nothing... nothing... good... good... nothing... goo— (He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without. Pause.) Bad luck to it! HAMM: More complications! (Clov gets down.) Not an underplot, I trust. (Clov moves ladder nearer window, gets up on it, turns telescope on the without.) CLOV (dismayed): Looks like a small boy! HAMM (sarcastic): A small... boy! CLOV: I'll go and see. (He gets down, drops the telescope, goes towards door, turns.) I'll take the gaff. (He looks for the gaff, sees it, picks it up, hastens towards door.) HAMM: No! (Clov halts.) CLOV: No? A potential procreator? HAMM: If he exists he'll die there or he'll come here. And if he doesn't... (Pause.) CLOV: You don't believe me? You think I'm inventing? (Pause.) HAMM: It's the end, Clov, we've come to the end. I don't need you any more. (Pause.) CLOV: Lucky for you. (He goes towards door.) HAMM: Leave me the gaff. (Clov gives him the gaff, goes towards door, halts, looks at alarm-clock, takes it down, looks round for a better place to put it, goes to bins, puts it on lid of Nagg's bin. Pause.) CLOV: I'll leave you. (He goes towards door.) HAMM: Before you go... (Clov halts near door.) ...say something. CLOV: There is nothing to say. HAMM: A few words... to ponder... in my heart. CLOV: Your heart! HAMM: Yes. (Pause. Forcibly.) Yes! (Pause.) With the rest, in the end, the shadows, the murmurs, all the trouble, to end up with. (Pause.) Clov... He never spoke to me. Then, in the end, before he went, without my having asked him, he spoke to me. He said... CLOV (despairingly): Ah...! HAMM: Something... from your heart. CLOV: My heart! HAMM: A few words... from your heart. (Pause.) CLOV (fixed gaze, tonelessly, towards auditorium): They said to me, That's love, yes, yes, not a doubt, now you see how— HAMM: Articulate! CLOV (as before): How easy it is. They said to me, That's friendship, yes, yes, no question, you've found it. They said to me, Here's the place, stop, raise your head and look at all that beauty. That order! They said to me, Come now, you're not a brute beast, think upon these things and you'll see how all becomes clear. And simple! They said to me, What skilled attention they get, all these dying of their wounds. HAMM: Enough! CLOV (as before): I say to myself— sometimes, Clov, you must learn to suffer better than that if you want them to weary of punishing you— one day. I say to myself—sometimes, Clov, you must be better than that if you want them to let you go—one day. But I feel too old, and too far, to form new habits. Good, it'll never end, I'll never go. (Pause.) Then one day, suddenly, it ends, it changes, I don't understand, it dies, or it's me, I don't understand that either. I ask the words that remain— sleeping, waking, morning, evening. They have nothing to say. (Pause.) I open the door of the cell and go. I am so bowed I only see my feet, if I open my eyes, and between my legs a little trail of black dust. I say to myself that the earth is extinguished, though I never saw it lit. (Pause.) It's easy going. (Pause.) When I fall I'll weep for happiness. (Pause. He goes towards door.) HAMM: Clov! (Clov halts, without turning.) Nothing. (Clov moves on.) Clov! (Clov halts, without turning.) CLOV: This is what we call making an exit. HAMM: I'm obliged to you, Clov. For your services. CLOV (turning sharply): Ah pardon, it's I am obliged to you. HAMM: It's we are obliged to each other. (Pause. Clov goes towards door.) One thing more. (Clov halts.) A last favor. (Exit Clov.) Cover me with the sheet. (Long pause.) No? Good. (Pause.) Me to play. (Pause. Wearily.) Old endgame lost of old, play and lose and have done with losing. (Pause. More animated.) Let me see. (Pause.) Ah yes! (He tries to move the chair, using the gaff as before. Enter Clov, dressed for the road. Panama hat, tweed coat, raincoat over his arm, umbrella, bag. He halts by the door and stands there, impassive and motionless, his eyes fixed on Hamm, till the end.) Hamm gives up: Good. (Pause.) Discard. (He throws

Modern Fiction

In making any survey, even the freest and loosest, of modern fiction, it is difficult not to take it for granted that the modern practice of the art is somehow an improvement upon the old. With their simple tools and primitive materials, it might be said, Fielding did well and Jane Austen even better, but compare their opportunities with ours! Their masterpieces certainly have a strange air of simplicity. And yet the analogy between literature and the process, to choose an example, of making motor cars scarcely holds good beyond the first glance. It is doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt much about making machines, we have learnt anything about making literature. We do not come to write better; all that we can be said to do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle. It need scarcely be said that we make no claim to stand, even momentarily, upon that vantage ground. On the flat, in the crowd, half blind with dust, we look back with envy to those happier warriors, whose battle is won and whose achievements wear so serene an air of accomplishment that we can scarcely refrain from whispering that the fight was not so fierce for them as for us. It is for the historian of literature to decide; for him to say if we are now beginning or ending or standing in the middle of a great period of prose fiction, for down in the plain little is visible. We only know that certain gratitudes and hostilities inspire us; that certain paths seem to lead to fertile land, others to the dust and the desert; and of this perhaps it may be worth while to attempt some account. Our quarrel, then, is not with the classics, and if we speak of quarrelling with Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy, it is partly that by the mere fact of their existence in the flesh their work has a living, breathing, everyday imperfection which bids us take what liberties with it we choose. But it is also true that, while we thank them for a thousand gifts, we reserve our unconditional gratitude for Mr. Hardy, for Mr. Conrad, and in a much lesser degree for the Mr. Hudson of The Purple Land, Green Mansions, and Far Away and Long Ago. Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy have excited so many hopes and disappointed them so persistently that our gratitude largely takes the form of thanking them for having shown us what they might have done but have not done; what we certainly could not do, but as certainly, perhaps, do not wish to do. No single phrase will sum up the charge or grievance which we have to bring against a mass of work so large in its volume and embodying so many qualities, both admirable and the reverse. If we tried to formulate our meaning in one word we should say that these three writers are materialists. It is because they are concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have disappointed us, and left us with the feeling that the sooner English fiction turns its back upon them, as politely as may be, and marches, if only into the desert, the better for its soul. Naturally, no single word reaches the centre of three separate targets. In the case of Mr. Wells it falls notably wide of the mark. And yet even with him it indicates to our thinking the fatal alloy in his genius, the great clod of clay that has got itself mixed up with the purity of his inspiration. But Mr. Bennett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, inasmuch as he is by far the best workman. He can make a book so well constructed and solid in its craftsmanship that it is difficult for the most exacting of critics to see through what chink or crevice decay can creep in. There is not so much as a draught between the frames of the windows, or a crack in the boards. And yet — if life should refuse to live there? That is a risk which the creator of The Old Wives' Tale, George Cannon, Edwin Clayhanger, and hosts of other figures, may well claim to have surmounted. His characters live abundantly, even unexpectedly, but it remains to ask how do they live, and what do they live for? More and more they seem to us, deserting even the well-built villa in the Five Towns, to spend their time in some softly padded first-class railway carriage, pressing bells and buttons innumerable; and the destiny to which they travel so luxuriously becomes more and more unquestionably an eternity of bliss spent in the very best hotel in Brighton. It can scarcely be said of Mr. Wells that he is a materialist in the sense that he takes too much delight in the solidity of his fabric. His mind is too generous in its sympathies to allow him to spend much time in making things shipshape and substantial. He is a materialist from sheer goodness of heart, taking upon his shoulders the work that ought to have been discharged by Government officials, and in the plethora of his ideas and facts scarcely having leisure to realise, or forgetting to think important, the crudity and coarseness of his human beings. Yet what more damaging criticism can there be both of his earth and of his Heaven than that they are to be inhabited here and hereafter by his Joans and his Peters? Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish whatever institutions and ideals may be provided for them by the generosity of their creator? Nor, profoundly though we respect the integrity and humanity of Mr. Galsworthy, shall we find what we seek in his pages. If we fasten, then, one label on all these books, on which is one word materialists, we mean by it that they write of unimportant things; that they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the transitory appear the true and the enduring. We have to admit that we are exacting, and, further, that we find it difficult to justify our discontent by explaining what it is that we exact. We frame our question differently at different times. But it reappears most persistently as we drop the finished novel on the crest of a sigh — Is it worth while? What is the point of it all? Can it be that, owing to one of those little deviations which the human spirit seems to make from time to time, Mr. Bennett has come down with his magnificent apparatus for catching life just an inch or two on the wrong side? Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth while. It is a confession of vagueness to have to make use of such a figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by speaking, as critics are prone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which afflicts all criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide. Nevertheless, we go on perseveringly, conscientiously, constructing our two and thirty chapters after a design which more and more ceases to resemble the vision in our minds. So much of the enormous labour of proving the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely labour thrown away but labour misplaced to the extent of obscuring and blotting out the light of the conception. The writer seems constrained, not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant who has him in thrall, to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, love interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this? Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being "like this". Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it. It is, at any rate, in some such fashion as this that we seek to define the quality which distinguishes the work of several young writers, among whom Mr. James Joyce is the most notable, from that of their predecessors. They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve more sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them, even if to do so they must discard most of the conventions which are commonly observed by the novelist. Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. Any one who has read The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man or, what promises to be a far more interesting work, Ulysses,9 now appearing in the Little Review, will have hazarded some theory of this nature as to Mr. Joyce's intention. On our part, with such a fragment before us, it is hazarded rather than affirmed; but whatever the intention of the whole, there can be no question but that it is of the utmost sincerity and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may judge it, is undeniably important. In contrast with those whom we have called materialists, Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be probability, or coherence, or any other of these signposts which for generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see. The scene in the cemetery, for instance, with its brilliancy, its sordidity, its incoherence, its sudden lightning flashes of significance, does undoubtedly come so close to the quick of the mind that, on a first reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece. If we want life itself, here surely we have it. Indeed, we find ourselves fumbling rather awkwardly if we try to say what else we wish, and for what reason a work of such originality yet fails to compare, for we must take high examples, with Youth or The Mayor of Casterbridge. It fails because of the comparative poverty of the writer's mind, we might say simply and have done with it. But it is possible to press a little further and wonder whether we may not refer our sense of being in a bright yet narrow room, confined and shut in, rather than enlarged and set free, to some limitation imposed by the method as well as by the mind. Is it the method that inhibits the creative power? Is it due to the method that we feel neither jovial nor magnanimous, but centred in a self which, in spite of its tremor of susceptibility, never embraces or creates what is outside itself and beyond? Does the emphasis laid, perhaps didactically, upon indecency, contribute to the effect of something angular and isolated? Or is it merely that in any effort of such originality it is much easier, for contemporaries especially, to feel what it lacks than to name what it gives? In any case it is a mistake to stand outside examining "methods". Any method is right, every method is right, that expresses what we wish to express, if we are writers; that brings us closer to the novelist's intention if we are readers. This method has the merit of bringing us closer to what we were prepared to call life itself; did not the reading of Ulysses suggest how much of life is excluded or ignored, and did it not come with a shock to open Tristram Shandy or even Pendennis and be by them convinced that there are not only other aspects of life, but more important ones into the bargain. 9 Written April 1919. However this may be, the problem before the novelist at present, as we suppose it to have been in the past, is to contrive means of being free to set down what he chooses. He has to have the courage to say that what interests him is no longer "this" but "that": out of "that" alone must he construct his work. For the moderns "that", the point of interest, lies very likely in the dark places of psychology. At once, therefore, the accent falls a little differently; the emphasis is upon something hitherto ignored; at once a different outline of form becomes necessary, difficult for us to grasp, incomprehensible to our predecessors. No one but a modern, no one perhaps but a Russian, would have felt the interest of the situation which Tchekov has made into the short story which he calls "Gusev". Some Russian soldiers lie ill on board a ship which is taking them back to Russia. We are given a few scraps of their talk and some of their thoughts; then one of them dies and is carried away; the talk goes on among the others for a time, until Gusev himself dies, and looking "like a carrot or a radish" is thrown overboard. The emphasis is laid upon such unexpected places that at first it seems as if there were no emphasis at all; and then, as the eyes accustom themselves to twilight and discern the shapes of things in a room we see how complete the story is, how profound, and how truly in obedience to his vision Tchekov has chosen this, that, and the other, and placed them together to compose something new. But it is impossible to say "this is comic", or "that is tragic", nor are we certain, since short stories, we have been taught, should be brief and conclusive, whether this, which is vague and inconclusive, should be called a short story at all. The most elementary remarks upon modern English fiction can hardly avoid some mention of the Russian influence, and if the Russians are mentioned one runs the risk of feeling that to write of any fiction save theirs is waste of time. If we want understanding of the soul and heart where else shall we find it of comparable profundity? If we are sick of our own materialism the least considerable of their novelists has by right of birth a natural reverence for the human spirit. "Learn to make yourself akin to people. . . . But let this sympathy be not with the mind — for it is easy with the mind — but with the heart, with love towards them." In every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, if sympathy for the sufferings of others, love towards them, endeavour to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit constitute saintliness. It is the saint in them which confounds us with a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our famous novels to tinsel and trickery. The conclusions of the Russian mind, thus comprehensive and compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we might speak of the inconclusiveness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over in hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and finally it may be with a resentful, despair. They are right perhaps; unquestionably they see further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision. But perhaps we see something that escapes them, or why should this voice of protest mix itself with our gloom? The voice of protest is the voice of another and an ancient civilisation which seems to have bred in us the instinct to enjoy and fight rather than to suffer and understand. English fiction from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural delight in humour and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities of the intellect, and in the splendour of the body. But any deductions that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far apart are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the infinite possibilities of the art and remind us that there is no limit to the horizon, and that nothing — no "method", no experiment, even of the wildest — is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. "The proper stuff of fiction" does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

LET us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats 5 Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question.... 10 Oh, do not ask, "What is it?" Let us go and make our visit. In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo. The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15 The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20 And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. And indeed there will be time For the yellow smoke that slides along the street, Rubbing its back upon the window panes; 25 There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30 Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea. In the room the women come and go 35 Talking of Michelangelo. And indeed there will be time To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?" Time to turn back and descend the stair, With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40 (They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!") My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin, My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin— (They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!") Do I dare 45 Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. For I have known them all already, known them all: Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50 I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room. So how should I presume? And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55 The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase, And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin, When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall, Then how should I begin To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60 And how should I presume? And I have known the arms already, known them all— Arms that are braceleted and white and bare (But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!) Is it perfume from a dress 65 That makes me so digress? Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl. And should I then presume? And how should I begin? . . . . . . . . Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70 And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?... I should have been a pair of ragged claws Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . . . . . And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75 Smoothed by long fingers, Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers, Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me. Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80 But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed, Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter, I am no prophet—and here's no great matter; I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85 And in short, I was afraid. And would it have been worth it, after all, After the cups, the marmalade, the tea, Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me, Would it have been worth while, 90 To have bitten off the matter with a smile, To have squeezed the universe into a ball To roll it toward some overwhelming question, To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"— 95 If one, settling a pillow by her head, Should say: "That is not what I meant at all; That is not it, at all." And would it have been worth it, after all, Would it have been worth while, 100 After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor— And this, and so much more?— It is impossible to say just what I mean! But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105 Would it have been worth while If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl, And turning toward the window, should say: "That is not it at all, That is not what I meant, at all." . . . . . . . . 110 No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, 115 Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool. I grow old ... I grow old ... 120 I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach? I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. 125 I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130 Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The Dead

LILY, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies' dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come. It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in splendid style, as long as anyone could remember; ever since Kate and Julia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in Stoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them in the dark, gaunt house on Usher's Island, the upper part of which they had rented from Mr. Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground floor. That was a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the Academy and gave a pupils' concert every year in the upper room of the Antient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the better-class families on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they were, her aunts also did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the leading soprano in Adam and Eve's, and Kate, being too feeble to go about much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in the back room. Lily, the caretaker's daughter, did housemaid's work for them. Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well; the best of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the best bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders, so that she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that was all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers. Of course, they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it was long after ten o'clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his wife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn up screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane's pupils should see him under the influence; and when he was like that it was sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came late, but they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what brought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel or Freddy come. "O, Mr. Conroy," said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him, "Miss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good-night, Mrs. Conroy." "I'll engage they did," said Gabriel, "but they forget that my wife here takes three mortal hours to dress herself." He stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily led his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out: "Miss Kate, here's Mrs. Conroy." Kate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them kissed Gabriel's wife, said she must be perished alive, and asked was Gabriel with her. "Here I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I'll follow," called out Gabriel from the dark. He continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went upstairs, laughing, to the ladies' dressing-room. A light fringe of snow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps on the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat slipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a cold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds. "Is it snowing again, Mr. Conroy?" asked Lily. She had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat. Gabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and glanced at her. She was a slim; growing girl, pale in complexion and with hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still paler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on the lowest step nursing a rag doll. "Yes, Lily," he answered, "and I think we're in for a night of it." He looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping and shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the piano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat carefully at the end of a shelf. "Tell me. Lily," he said in a friendly tone, "do you still go to school?" "O no, sir," she answered. "I'm done schooling this year and more." "O, then," said Gabriel gaily, "I suppose we'll be going to your wedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh? " The girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great bitterness: "The men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of you." Gabriel coloured, as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without looking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his muffler at his patent-leather shoes. He was a stout, tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed upwards even to his forehead, where it scattered itself in a few formless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there scintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of the glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy black hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind his ears where it curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat. When he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his waistcoat down more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin rapidly from his pocket. "O Lily," he said, thrusting it into her hands, "it's Christmastime, isn't it? Just... here's a little...." He walked rapidly towards the door. "O no, sir!" cried the girl, following him. "Really, sir, I wouldn't take it." "Christmas-time! Christmas-time!" said Gabriel, almost trotting to the stairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation. The girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him: "Well, thank you, sir." He waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish, listening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of feet. He was still discomposed by the girl's bitter and sudden retort. It had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his cuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a little paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He was undecided about the lines from Robert Browning, for he feared they would be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would recognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The indelicate clacking of the men's heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl in the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a mistake from first to last, an utter failure. Just then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies' dressing-room. His aunts were two small, plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an inch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears, was grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid face. Though she was stout in build and stood erect, her slow eyes and parted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where she was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face, healthier than her sister's, was all puckers and creases, like a shrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned way, had not lost its ripe nut colour. They both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew the son of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T. J. Conroy of the Port and Docks. "Gretta tells me you're not going to take a cab back to Monkstown tonight, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate. "No," said Gabriel, turning to his wife, "we had quite enough of that last year, hadn't we? Don't you remember, Aunt Kate, what a cold Gretta got out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the east wind blowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta caught a dreadful cold." Aunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word. "Quite right, Gabriel, quite right," she said. "You can't be too careful." "But as for Gretta there," said Gabriel, "she'd walk home in the snow if she were let." Mrs. Conroy laughed. "Don't mind him, Aunt Kate," she said. "He's really an awful bother, what with green shades for Tom's eyes at night and making him do the dumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And she simply hates the sight of it!... O, but you'll never guess what he makes me wear now!" She broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose admiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face and hair. The two aunts laughed heartily, too, for Gabriel's solicitude was a standing joke with them. "Goloshes!" said Mrs. Conroy. "That's the latest. Whenever it's wet underfoot I must put on my galoshes. Tonight even, he wanted me to put them on, but I wouldn't. The next thing he'll buy me will be a diving suit." Gabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly, while Aunt Kate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The smile soon faded from Aunt Julia's face and her mirthless eyes were directed towards her nephew's face. After a pause she asked: "And what are goloshes, Gabriel?" "Goloshes, Julia!" exclaimed her sister "Goodness me, don't you know what goloshes are? You wear them over your... over your boots, Gretta, isn't it?" "Yes," said Mrs. Conroy. "Guttapercha things. We both have a pair now. Gabriel says everyone wears them on the Continent." "O, on the Continent," murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly. Gabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered: "It's nothing very wonderful, but Gretta thinks it very funny because she says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels." "But tell me, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. "Of course, you've seen about the room. Gretta was saying..." "0, the room is all right," replied Gabriel. "I've taken one in the Gresham." "To be sure," said Aunt Kate, "by far the best thing to do. And the children, Gretta, you're not anxious about them?" "0, for one night," said Mrs. Conroy. "Besides, Bessie will look after them." "To be sure," said Aunt Kate again. "What a comfort it is to have a girl like that, one you can depend on! There's that Lily, I'm sure I don't know what has come over her lately. She's not the girl she was at all." Gabriel was about to ask his aunt some questions on this point, but she broke off suddenly to gaze after her sister, who had wandered down the stairs and was craning her neck over the banisters. "Now, I ask you," she said almost testily, "where is Julia going? Julia! Julia! Where are you going?" Julia, who had gone half way down one flight, came back and announced blandly: "Here's Freddy." At the same moment a clapping of hands and a final flourish of the pianist told that the waltz had ended. The drawing-room door was opened from within and some couples came out. Aunt Kate drew Gabriel aside hurriedly and whispered into his ear: "Slip down, Gabriel, like a good fellow and see if he's all right, and don't let him up if he's screwed. I'm sure he's screwed. I'm sure he is." Gabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could hear two persons talking in the pantry. Then he recognised Freddy Malins' laugh. He went down the stairs noisily. "It's such a relief," said Aunt Kate to Mrs. Conroy, "that Gabriel is here. I always feel easier in my mind when he's here.... Julia, there's Miss Daly and Miss Power will take some refreshment. Thanks for your beautiful waltz, Miss Daly. It made lovely time." A tall wizen-faced man, with a stiff grizzled moustache and swarthy skin, who was passing out with his partner, said: "And may we have some refreshment, too, Miss Morkan?" "Julia," said Aunt Kate summarily, "and here's Mr. Browne and Miss Furlong. Take them in, Julia, with Miss Daly and Miss Power." "I'm the man for the ladies," said Mr. Browne, pursing his lips until his moustache bristled and smiling in all his wrinkles. "You know, Miss Morkan, the reason they are so fond of me is----" He did not finish his sentence, but, seeing that Aunt Kate was out of earshot, at once led the three young ladies into the back room. The middle of the room was occupied by two square tables placed end to end, and on these Aunt Julia and the caretaker were straightening and smoothing a large cloth. On the sideboard were arrayed dishes and plates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top of the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and sweets. At a smaller sideboard in one corner two young men were standing, drinking hop-bitters. Mr. Browne led his charges thither and invited them all, in jest, to some ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. As they said they never took anything strong, he opened three bottles of lemonade for them. Then he asked one of the young men to move aside, and, taking hold of the decanter, filled out for himself a goodly measure of whisky. The young men eyed him respectfully while he took a trial sip. "God help me," he said, smiling, "it's the doctor's orders." His wizened face broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies laughed in musical echo to his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and fro, with nervous jerks of their shoulders. The boldest said: "O, now, Mr. Browne, I'm sure the doctor never ordered anything of the kind." Mr. Browne took another sip of his whisky and said, with sidling mimicry: "Well, you see, I'm like the famous Mrs. Cassidy, who is reported to have said: 'Now, Mary Grimes, if I don't take it, make me take it, for I feel I want it.'" His hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he had assumed a very low Dublin accent so that the young ladies, with one instinct, received his speech in silence. Miss Furlong, who was one of Mary Jane's pupils, asked Miss Daly what was the name of the pretty waltz she had played; and Mr. Browne, seeing that he was ignored, turned promptly to the two young men who were more appreciative. A red-faced young woman, dressed in pansy, came into the room, excitedly clapping her hands and crying: "Quadrilles! Quadrilles!" Close on her heels came Aunt Kate, crying: "Two gentlemen and three ladies, Mary Jane!" "O, here's Mr. Bergin and Mr. Kerrigan," said Mary Jane. "Mr. Kerrigan, will you take Miss Power? Miss Furlong, may I get you a partner, Mr. Bergin. O, that'll just do now." "Three ladies, Mary Jane," said Aunt Kate. The two young gentlemen asked the ladies if they might have the pleasure, and Mary Jane turned to Miss Daly. "O, Miss Daly, you're really awfully good, after playing for the last two dances, but really we're so short of ladies tonight." "I don't mind in the least, Miss Morkan." "But I've a nice partner for you, Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, the tenor. I'll get him to sing later on. All Dublin is raving about him." "Lovely voice, lovely voice!" said Aunt Kate. As the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane led her recruits quickly from the room. They had hardly gone when Aunt Julia wandered slowly into the room, looking behind her at something. "What is the matter, Julia?" asked Aunt Kate anxiously. "Who is it?" Julia, who was carrying in a column of table-napkins, turned to her sister and said, simply, as if the question had surprised her: "It's only Freddy, Kate, and Gabriel with him." In fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins across the landing. The latter, a young man of about forty, was of Gabriel's size and build, with very round shoulders. His face was fleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes of his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse features, a blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips. His heavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look sleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had been telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye. "Good-evening, Freddy," said Aunt Julia. Freddy Malins bade the Misses Morkan good-evening in what seemed an offhand fashion by reason of the habitual catch in his voice and then, seeing that Mr. Browne was grinning at him from the sideboard, crossed the room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone the story he had just told to Gabriel. "He's not so bad, is he?" said Aunt Kate to Gabriel. Gabriel's brows were dark but he raised them quickly and answered: "O, no, hardly noticeable." "Now, isn't he a terrible fellow!" she said. "And his poor mother made him take the pledge on New Year's Eve. But come on, Gabriel, into the drawing-room." Before leaving the room with Gabriel she signalled to Mr. Browne by frowning and shaking her forefinger in warning to and fro. Mr. Browne nodded in answer and, when she had gone, said to Freddy Malins: "Now, then, Teddy, I'm going to fill you out a good glass of lemonade just to buck you up." Freddy Malins, who was nearing the climax of his story, waved the offer aside impatiently but Mr. Browne, having first called Freddy Malins' attention to a disarray in his dress, filled out and handed him a full glass of lemonade. Freddy Malins' left hand accepted the glass mechanically, his right hand being engaged in the mechanical readjustment of his dress. Mr. Browne, whose face was once more wrinkling with mirth, poured out for himself a glass of whisky while Freddy Malins exploded, before he had well reached the climax of his story, in a kink of high-pitched bronchitic laughter and, setting down his untasted and overflowing glass, began to rub the knuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye, repeating words of his last phrase as well as his fit of laughter would allow him. Gabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece, full of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing-room. He liked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he doubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they had begged Mary Jane to play something. Four young men, who had come from the refreshment-room to stand in the doorway at the sound of the piano, had gone away quietly in couples after a few minutes. The only persons who seemed to follow the music were Mary Jane herself, her hands racing along the key-board or lifted from it at the pauses like those of a priestess in momentary imprecation, and Aunt Kate standing at her elbow to turn the page. Gabriel's eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax under the heavy chandelier, wandered to the wall above the piano. A picture of the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet hung there and beside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which Aunt Julia had worked in red, blue and brown wools when she was a girl. Probably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had been taught for one year. His mother had worked for him as a birthday present a waistcoat of purple tabinet, with little foxes' heads upon it, lined with brown satin and having round mulberry buttons. It was strange that his mother had had no musical talent though Aunt Kate used to call her the brains carrier of the Morkan family. Both she and Julia had always seemed a little proud of their serious and matronly sister. Her photograph stood before the pierglass. She held an open book on her knees and was pointing out something in it to Constantine who, dressed in a man-o-war suit, lay at her feet. It was she who had chosen the name of her sons for she was very sensible of the dignity of family life. Thanks to her, Constantine was now senior curate in Balbrigan and, thanks to her, Gabriel himself had taken his degree in the Royal University. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen opposition to his marriage. Some slighting phrases she had used still rankled in his memory; she had once spoken of Gretta as being country cute and that was not true of Gretta at all. It was Gretta who had nursed her during all her last long illness in their house at Monkstown. He knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece for she was playing again the opening melody with runs of scales after every bar and while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his heart. The piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep octave in the bass. Great applause greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and rolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room. The most vigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had gone away to the refreshment-room at the beginning of the piece but had come back when the piano had stopped. Lancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors. She was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and prominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low-cut bodice and the large brooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish device and motto. When they had taken their places she said abruptly: "I have a crow to pluck with you." "With me?" said Gabriel. She nodded her head gravely. "What is it?" asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner. "Who is G. C.?" answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him. Gabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not understand, when she said bluntly: "O, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for The Daily Express. Now, aren't you ashamed of yourself?" "Why should I be ashamed of myself?" asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes and trying to smile. "Well, I'm ashamed of you," said Miss Ivors frankly. "To say you'd write for a paper like that. I didn't think you were a West Briton." A look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel's face. It was true that he wrote a literary column every Wednesday in The Daily Express, for which he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West Briton surely. The books he received for review were almost more welcome than the paltry cheque. He loved to feel the covers and turn over the pages of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his teaching in the college was ended he used to wander down the quays to the second-hand booksellers, to Hickey's on Bachelor's Walk, to Web's or Massey's on Aston's Quay, or to O'Clohissey's in the bystreet. He did not know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature was above politics. But they were friends of many years' standing and their careers had been parallel, first at the University and then as teachers: he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He continued blinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw nothing political in writing reviews of books. When their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and inattentive. Miss Ivors promptly took his hand in a warm grasp and said in a soft friendly tone: "Of course, I was only joking. Come, we cross now." When they were together again she spoke of the University question and Gabriel felt more at ease. A friend of hers had shown her his review of Browning's poems. That was how she had found out the secret: but she liked the review immensely. Then she said suddenly: "O, Mr. Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this summer? We're going to stay there a whole month. It will be splendid out in the Atlantic. You ought to come. Mr. Clancy is coming, and Mr. Kilkelly and Kathleen Kearney. It would be splendid for Gretta too if she'd come. She's from Connacht, isn't she?" "Her people are," said Gabriel shortly. "But you will come, won't you?" said Miss Ivors, laying her arm hand eagerly on his arm. "The fact is," said Gabriel, "I have just arranged to go----" "Go where?" asked Miss Ivors. "Well, you know, every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows and so----" "But where?" asked Miss Ivors. "Well, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany," said Gabriel awkwardly. "And why do you go to France and Belgium," said Miss Ivors, "instead of visiting your own land?" "Well," said Gabriel, "it's partly to keep in touch with the languages and partly for a change." "And haven't you your own language to keep in touch with -- Irish?" asked Miss Ivors. "Well," said Gabriel, "if it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my language." Their neighbours had turned to listen to the cross- examination. Gabriel glanced right and left nervously and tried to keep his good humour under the ordeal which was making a blush invade his forehead. "And haven't you your own land to visit," continued Miss Ivors, "that you know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?" "0, to tell you the truth," retorted Gabriel suddenly, "I'm sick of my own country, sick of it!" "Why?" asked Miss Ivors. Gabriel did not answer for his retort had heated him. "Why?" repeated Miss Ivors. They had to go visiting together and, as he had not answered her, Miss Ivors said warmly: "Of course, you've no answer." Gabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with great energy. He avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on her face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel his hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a moment quizzically until he smiled. Then, just as the chain was about to start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear: "West Briton!" When the lancers were over Gabriel went away to a remote corner of the room where Freddy Malins' mother was sitting. She was a stout feeble old woman with white hair. Her voice had a catch in it like her son's and she stuttered slightly. She had been told that Freddy had come and that he was nearly all right. Gabriel asked her whether she had had a good crossing. She lived with her married daughter in Glasgow and came to Dublin on a visit once a year. She answered placidly that she had had a beautiful crossing and that the captain had been most attentive to her. She spoke also of the beautiful house her daughter kept in Glasgow, and of all the friends they had there. While her tongue rambled on Gabriel tried to banish from his mind all memory of the unpleasant incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl or woman, or whatever she was, was an enthusiast but there was a time for all things. Perhaps he ought not to have answered her like that. But she had no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She had tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and staring at him with her rabbit's eyes. He saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing couples. When she reached him she said into his ear: "Gabriel. Aunt Kate wants to know won't you carve the goose as usual. Miss Daly will carve the ham and I'll do the pudding." "All right," said Gabriel. "She's sending in the younger ones first as soon as this waltz is over so that we'll have the table to ourselves." "Were you dancing?" asked Gabriel. "Of course I was. Didn't you see me? What row had you with Molly Ivors?" "No row. Why? Did she say so?" "Something like that. I'm trying to get that Mr. D'Arcy to sing. He's full of conceit, I think." "There was no row," said Gabriel moodily, "only she wanted me to go for a trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn't." His wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump. "O, do go, Gabriel," she cried. "I'd love to see Galway again." "You can go if you like," said Gabriel coldly. She looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs. Malins and said: "There's a nice husband for you, Mrs. Malins." While she was threading her way back across the room Mrs. Malins, without adverting to the interruption, went on to tell Gabriel what beautiful places there were in Scotland and beautiful scenery. Her son-in-law brought them every year to the lakes and they used to go fishing. Her son-in-law was a splendid fisher. One day he caught a beautiful big fish and the man in the hotel cooked it for their dinner. Gabriel hardly heard what she said. Now that supper was coming near he began to think again about his speech and about the quotation. When he saw Freddy Malins coming across the room to visit his mother Gabriel left the chair free for him and retired into the embrasure of the window. The room had already cleared and from the back room came the clatter of plates and knives. Those who still remained in the drawing room seemed tired of dancing and were conversing quietly in little groups. Gabriel's warm trembling fingers tapped the cold pane of the window. How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would be to walk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The snow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright cap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more pleasant it would be there than at the supper-table! He ran over the headings of his speech: Irish hospitality, sad memories, the Three Graces, Paris, the quotation from Browning. He repeated to himself a phrase he had written in his review: "One feels that one is listening to a thought- tormented music." Miss Ivors had praised the review. Was she sincere? Had she really any life of her own behind all her propagandism? There had never been any ill-feeling between them until that night. It unnerved him to think that she would be at the supper-table, looking up at him while he spoke with her critical quizzing eyes. Perhaps she would not be sorry to see him fail in his speech. An idea came into his mind and gave him courage. He would say, alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its faults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality, of humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and hypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to lack." Very good: that was one for Miss Ivors. What did he care that his aunts were only two ignorant old women? A murmur in the room attracted his attention. Mr. Browne was advancing from the door, gallantly escorting Aunt Julia, who leaned upon his arm, smiling and hanging her head. An irregular musketry of applause escorted her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated herself on the stool, and Aunt Julia, no longer smiling, half turned so as to pitch her voice fairly into the room, gradually ceased. Gabriel recognised the prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt Julia's -- Arrayed for the Bridal. Her voice, strong and clear in tone, attacked with great spirit the runs which embellish the air and though she sang very rapidly she did not miss even the smallest of the grace notes. To follow the voice, without looking at the singer's face, was to feel and share the excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel applauded loudly with all the others at the close of the song and loud applause was borne in from the invisible supper-table. It sounded so genuine that a little colour struggled into Aunt Julia's face as she bent to replace in the music-stand the old leather-bound songbook that had her initials on the cover. Freddy Malins, who had listened with his head perched sideways to hear her better, was still applauding when everyone else had ceased and talking animatedly to his mother who nodded her head gravely and slowly in acquiescence. At last, when he could clap no more, he stood up suddenly and hurried across the room to Aunt Julia whose hand he seized and held in both his hands, shaking it when words failed him or the catch in his voice proved too much for him. "I was just telling my mother," he said, "I never heard you sing so well, never. No, I never heard your voice so good as it is tonight. Now! Would you believe that now? That's the truth. Upon my word and honour that's the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and so... so clear and fresh, never." Aunt Julia smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as she released her hand from his grasp. Mr. Browne extended his open hand towards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a showman introducing a prodigy to an audience: "Miss Julia Morkan, my latest discovery!" He was laughing very heartily at this himself when Freddy Malins turned to him and said: "Well, Browne, if you're serious you might make a worse discovery. All I can say is I never heard her sing half so well as long as I am coming here. And that's the honest truth." "Neither did I," said Mr. Browne. "I think her voice has greatly improved." Aunt Julia shrugged her shoulders and said with meek pride: "Thirty years ago I hadn't a bad voice as voices go." "I often told Julia," said Aunt Kate emphatically, "that she was simply thrown away in that choir. But she never would be said by me." She turned as if to appeal to the good sense of the others against a refractory child while Aunt Julia gazed in front of her, a vague smile of reminiscence playing on her face. "No," continued Aunt Kate, "she wouldn't be said or led by anyone, slaving there in that choir night and day, night and day. Six o'clock on Christmas morning! And all for what?" "Well, isn't it for the honour of God, Aunt Kate?" asked Mary Jane, twisting round on the piano-stool and smiling. Aunt Kate turned fiercely on her niece and said: "I know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it's not at all honourable for the pope to turn out the women out of the choirs that have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers of boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if the pope does it. But it's not just, Mary Jane, and it's not right." She had worked herself into a passion and would have continued in defence of her sister for it was a sore subject with her but Mary Jane, seeing that all the dancers had come back, intervened pacifically: "Now, Aunt Kate, you're giving scandal to Mr. Browne who is of the other persuasion." Aunt Kate turned to Mr. Browne, who was grinning at this allusion to his religion, and said hastily: "O, I don't question the pope's being right. I'm only a stupid old woman and I wouldn't presume to do such a thing. But there's such a thing as common everyday politeness and gratitude. And if I were in Julia's place I'd tell that Father Healey straight up to his face..." "And besides, Aunt Kate," said Mary Jane, "we really are all hungry and when we are hungry we are all very quarrelsome." "And when we are thirsty we are also quarrelsome," added Mr. Browne. "So that we had better go to supper," said Mary Jane, "and finish the discussion afterwards." On the landing outside the drawing-room Gabriel found his wife and Mary Jane trying to persuade Miss Ivors to stay for supper. But Miss Ivors, who had put on her hat and was buttoning her cloak, would not stay. She did not feel in the least hungry and she had already overstayed her time. "But only for ten minutes, Molly," said Mrs. Conroy. "That won't delay you." "To take a pick itself," said Mary Jane, "after all your dancing." "I really couldn't," said Miss Ivors. "I am afraid you didn't enjoy yourself at all," said Mary Jane hopelessly. "Ever so much, I assure you," said Miss Ivors, "but you really must let me run off now." "But how can you get home?" asked Mrs. Conroy. "O, it's only two steps up the quay." Gabriel hesitated a moment and said: "If you will allow me, Miss Ivors, I'll see you home if you are really obliged to go." But Miss Ivors broke away from them. "I won't hear of it," she cried. "For goodness' sake go in to your suppers and don't mind me. I'm quite well able to take care of myself." "Well, you're the comical girl, Molly," said Mrs. Conroy frankly. "Beannacht libh," cried Miss Ivors, with a laugh, as she ran down the staircase. Mary Jane gazed after her, a moody puzzled expression on her face, while Mrs. Conroy leaned over the banisters to listen for the hall-door. Gabriel asked himself was he the cause of her abrupt departure. But she did not seem to be in ill humour: she had gone away laughing. He stared blankly down the staircase. At the moment Aunt Kate came toddling out of the supper-room, almost wringing her hands in despair. "Where is Gabriel?" she cried. "Where on earth is Gabriel? There's everyone waiting in there, stage to let, and nobody to carve the goose!" "Here I am, Aunt Kate!" cried Gabriel, with sudden animation, "ready to carve a flock of geese, if necessary." A fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on a bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham, stripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat paper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef. Between these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little minsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of blancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a stalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled almonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna figs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of chocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass vase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table there stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of oranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut glass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed square piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind it were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up according to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with brown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with transverse green sashes. Gabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having looked to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the goose. He felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked nothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table. "Miss Furlong, what shall I send you?" he asked. "A wing or a slice of the breast?" "Just a small slice of the breast." "Miss Higgins, what for you?" "O, anything at all, Mr. Conroy." While Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham and spiced beef Lily went from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury potatoes wrapped in a white napkin. This was Mary Jane's idea and she had also suggested apple sauce for the goose but Aunt Kate had said that plain roast goose without any apple sauce had always been good enough for her and she hoped she might never eat worse. Mary Jane waited on her pupils and saw that they got the best slices and Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia opened and carried across from the piano bottles of stout and ale for the gentlemen and bottles of minerals for the ladies. There was a great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise of orders and counter-orders, of knives and forks, of corks and glass-stoppers. Gabriel began to carve second helpings as soon as he had finished the first round without serving himself. Everyone protested loudly so that he compromised by taking a long draught of stout for he had found the carving hot work. Mary Jane settled down quietly to her supper but Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling round the table, walking on each other's heels, getting in each other's way and giving each other unheeded orders. Mr. Browne begged of them to sit down and eat their suppers and so did Gabriel but they said there was time enough, so that, at last, Freddy Malins stood up and, capturing Aunt Kate, plumped her down on her chair amid general laughter. When everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling: "Now, if anyone wants a little more of what vulgar people call stuffing let him or her speak." A chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper and Lily came forward with three potatoes which she had reserved for him. "Very well," said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory draught, "kindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few minutes." He set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which the table covered Lily's removal of the plates. The subject of talk was the opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, the tenor, a dark- complexioned young man with a smart moustache, praised very highly the leading contralto of the company but Miss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production. Freddy Malins said there was a Negro chieftain singing in the second part of the Gaiety pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he had ever heard. "Have you heard him?" he asked Mr. Bartell D'Arcy across the table. "No," answered Mr. Bartell D'Arcy carelessly. "Because," Freddy Malins explained, "now I'd be curious to hear your opinion of him. I think he has a grand voice." "It takes Teddy to find out the really good things," said Mr. Browne familiarly to the table. "And why couldn't he have a voice too?" asked Freddy Malins sharply. "Is it because he's only a black?" Nobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the legitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for Mignon. Of course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor Georgina Burns. Mr. Browne could go back farther still, to the old Italian companies that used to come to Dublin -- Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka, Campanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were the days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in Dublin. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to be packed night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung five encores to Let me like a Soldier fall, introducing a high C every time, and of how the gallery boys would sometimes in their enthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great prima donna and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why did they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, Dinorah, Lucrezia Borgia? Because they could not get the voices to sing them: that was why. "Oh, well," said Mr. Bartell D'Arcy, "I presume there are as good singers today as there were then." "Where are they?" asked Mr. Browne defiantly. "In London, Paris, Milan," said Mr. Bartell D'Arcy warmly. "I suppose Caruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of the men you have mentioned." "Maybe so," said Mr. Browne. "But I may tell you I doubt it strongly." "O, I'd give anything to hear Caruso sing," said Mary Jane. "For me," said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, "there was only one tenor. To please me, I mean. But I suppose none of you ever heard of him." "Who was he, Miss Morkan?" asked Mr. Bartell D'Arcy politely. "His name," said Aunt Kate, "was Parkinson. I heard him when he was in his prime and I think he had then the purest tenor voice that was ever put into a man's throat." "Strange," said Mr. Bartell D'Arcy. "I never even heard of him." "Yes, yes, Miss Morkan is right," said Mr. Browne. "I remember hearing of old Parkinson but he's too far back for me." "A beautiful, pure, sweet, mellow English tenor," said Aunt Kate with enthusiasm. Gabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table. The clatter of forks and spoons began again. Gabriel's wife served out spoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table. Midway down they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with raspberry or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. The pudding was of Aunt Julia's making and she received praises for it from all quarters She herself said that it was not quite brown enough. "Well, I hope, Miss Morkan," said Mr. Browne, "that I'm brown enough for you because, you know, I'm all brown." All the gentlemen, except Gabriel, ate some of the pudding out of compliment to Aunt Julia. As Gabriel never ate sweets the celery had been left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it with his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for the blood and he was just then under doctor's care. Mrs. Malins, who had been silent all through the supper, said that her son was going down to Mount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount Melleray, how bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks were and how they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests. "And do you mean to say," asked Mr. Browne incredulously, "that a chap can go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live on the fat of the land and then come away without paying anything?" "O, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave." said Mary Jane. "I wish we had an institution like that in our Church," said Mr. Browne candidly. He was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in the morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for. "That's the rule of the order," said Aunt Kate firmly. "Yes, but why?" asked Mr. Browne. Aunt Kate repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr. Browne still seemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he could, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by all the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very clear for Mr. Browne grinned and said: "I like that idea very much but wouldn't a comfortable spring bed do them as well as a coffin?" "The coffin," said Mary Jane, "is to remind them of their last end." As the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the table during which Mrs. Malins could be heard saying to her neighbour in an indistinct undertone: "They are very good men, the monks, very pious men." The raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates and sweets were now passed about the table and Aunt Julia invited all the guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr. Bartell D'Arcy refused to take either but one of his neighbours nudged him and whispered something to him upon which he allowed his glass to be filled. Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the conversation ceased. A pause followed, broken only by the noise of the wine and by unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three, looked down at the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few gentlemen patted the table gently as a signal for silence. The silence came and Gabriel pushed back his chair The patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased altogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth and smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he raised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune and he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door. People, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing up at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was pure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted with snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that flashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres. He began: "Ladies and Gentlemen, "It has fallen to my lot this evening, as in years past, to perform a very pleasing task but a task for which I am afraid my poor powers as a speaker are all too inadequate." "No, no!" said Mr. Browne. "But, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will for the deed and to lend me your attention for a few moments while I endeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this occasion. "Ladies and Gentlemen, it is not the first time that we have gathered together under this hospitable roof, around this hospitable board. It is not the first time that we have been the recipients -- or perhaps, I had better say, the victims -- of the hospitality of certain good ladies." He made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Everyone laughed or smiled at Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned crimson with pleasure. Gabriel went on more boldly: "I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid -- and I wish from my heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come -- the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us." A hearty murmur of assent ran round the table. It shot through Gabriel's mind that Miss Ivors was not there and that she had gone away discourteously: and he said with confidence in himself: "Ladies and Gentlemen, "A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die." "Hear, hear!" said Mr. Browne loudly. "But yet," continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer inflection, "there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours. "Therefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy moralising intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathered together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine. We are met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as colleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true spirit of camaraderie, and as the guests of -- what shall I call them? -- the Three Graces of the Dublin musical world." The table burst into applause and laughter at this allusion. Aunt Julia vainly asked each of her neighbours in turn to tell her what Gabriel had said. "He says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia," said Mary Jane. Aunt Julia did not understand but she looked up, smiling, at Gabriel, who continued in the same vein: "Ladies and Gentlemen, "I will not attempt to play tonight the part that Paris played on another occasion. I will not attempt to choose between them. The task would be an invidious one and one beyond my poor powers. For when I view them in turn, whether it be our chief hostess herself, whose good heart, whose too good heart, has become a byword with all who know her, or her sister, who seems to be gifted with perennial youth and whose singing must have been a surprise and a revelation to us all tonight, or, last but not least, when I consider our youngest hostess, talented, cheerful, hard-working and the best of nieces, I confess, Ladies and Gentlemen, that I do not know to which of them I should award the prize." Gabriel glanced down at his aunts and, seeing the large smile on Aunt Julia's face and the tears which had risen to Aunt Kate's eyes, hastened to his close. He raised his glass of port gallantly, while every member of the company fingered a glass expectantly, and said loudly: "Let us toast them all three together. Let us drink to their health, wealth, long life, happiness and prosperity and may they long continue to hold the proud and self-won position which they hold in their profession and the position of honour and affection which they hold in our hearts." All the guests stood up, glass in hand, and turning towards the three seated ladies, sang in unison, with Mr. Browne as leader: For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, Which nobody can deny. Aunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia seemed moved. Freddy Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the singers turned towards one another, as if in melodious conference, while they sang with emphasis: Unless he tells a lie, Unless he tells a lie, Then, turning once more towards their hostesses, they sang: For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, For they are jolly gay fellows, Which nobody can deny. The acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the supper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time, Freddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high. The piercing morning air came into the hall where they were standing so that Aunt Kate said: "Close the door, somebody. Mrs. Malins will get her death of cold." "Browne is out there, Aunt Kate," said Mary Jane. "Browne is everywhere," said Aunt Kate, lowering her voice. Mary Jane laughed at her tone. "Really," she said archly, "he is very attentive." "He has been laid on here like the gas," said Aunt Kate in the same tone, "all during the Christmas." She laughed herself this time good-humouredly and then added quickly: "But tell him to come in, Mary Jane, and close the door. I hope to goodness he didn't hear me." At that moment the hall-door was opened and Mr. Browne came in from the doorstep, laughing as if his heart would break. He was dressed in a long green overcoat with mock astrakhan cuffs and collar and wore on his head an oval fur cap. He pointed down the snow-covered quay from where the sound of shrill prolonged whistling was borne in. "Teddy will have all the cabs in Dublin out," he said. Gabriel advanced from the little pantry behind the office, struggling into his overcoat and, looking round the hall, said: "Gretta not down yet?" "She's getting on her things, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate. "Who's playing up there?" asked Gabriel. "Nobody. They're all gone." "O no, Aunt Kate," said Mary Jane. "Bartell D'Arcy and Miss O'Callaghan aren't gone yet." "Someone is fooling at the piano anyhow," said Gabriel. Mary Jane glanced at Gabriel and Mr. Browne and said with a shiver: "It makes me feel cold to look at you two gentlemen muffled up like that. I wouldn't like to face your journey home at this hour." "I'd like nothing better this minute," said Mr. Browne stoutly, "than a rattling fine walk in the country or a fast drive with a good spanking goer between the shafts." "We used to have a very good horse and trap at home," said Aunt Julia sadly. "The never-to-be-forgotten Johnny," said Mary Jane, laughing. Aunt Kate and Gabriel laughed too. "Why, what was wonderful about Johnny?" asked Mr. Browne. "The late lamented Patrick Morkan, our grandfather, that is," explained Gabriel, "commonly known in his later years as the old gentleman, was a glue-boiler." "O, now, Gabriel," said Aunt Kate, laughing, "he had a starch mill." "Well, glue or starch," said Gabriel, "the old gentleman had a horse by the name of Johnny. And Johnny used to work in the old gentleman's mill, walking round and round in order to drive the mill. That was all very well; but now comes the tragic part about Johnny. One fine day the old gentleman thought he'd like to drive out with the quality to a military review in the park." "The Lord have mercy on his soul," said Aunt Kate compassionately. "Amen," said Gabriel. "So the old gentleman, as I said, harnessed Johnny and put on his very best tall hat and his very best stock collar and drove out in grand style from his ancestral mansion somewhere near Back Lane, I think." Everyone laughed, even Mrs. Malins, at Gabriel's manner and Aunt Kate said: "O, now, Gabriel, he didn't live in Back Lane, really. Only the mill was there." "Out from the mansion of his forefathers," continued Gabriel, "he drove with Johnny. And everything went on beautifully until Johnny came in sight of King Billy's statue: and whether he fell in love with the horse King Billy sits on or whether he thought he was back again in the mill, anyhow he began to walk round the statue." Gabriel paced in a circle round the hall in his goloshes amid the laughter of the others. "Round and round he went," said Gabriel, "and the old gentleman, who was a very pompous old gentleman, was highly indignant. 'Go on, sir! What do you mean, sir? Johnny! Johnny! Most extraordinary conduct! Can't understand the horse!" The peal of laughter which followed Gabriel's imitation of the incident was interrupted by a resounding knock at the hall door. Mary Jane ran to open it and let in Freddy Malins. Freddy Malins, with his hat well back on his head and his shoulders humped with cold, was puffing and steaming after his exertions. "I could only get one cab," he said. "O, we'll find another along the quay," said Gabriel. "Yes," said Aunt Kate. "Better not keep Mrs. Malins standing in the draught." Mrs. Malins was helped down the front steps by her son and Mr. Browne and, after many manoeuvres, hoisted into the cab. Freddy Malins clambered in after her and spent a long time settling her on the seat, Mr. Browne helping him with advice. At last she was settled comfortably and Freddy Malins invited Mr. Browne into the cab. There was a good deal of confused talk, and then Mr. Browne got into the cab. The cabman settled his rug over his knees, and bent down for the address. The confusion grew greater and the cabman was directed differently by Freddy Malins and Mr. Browne, each of whom had his head out through a window of the cab. The difficulty was to know where to drop Mr. Browne along the route, and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane helped the discussion from the doorstep with cross-directions and contradictions and abundance of laughter. As for Freddy Malins he was speechless with laughter. He popped his head in and out of the window every moment to the great danger of his hat, and told his mother how the discussion was progressing, till at last Mr. Browne shouted to the bewildered cabman above the din of everybody's laughter: "Do you know Trinity College?" "Yes, sir," said the cabman. "Well, drive bang up against Trinity College gates," said Mr. Browne, "and then we'll tell you where to go. You understand now?" "Yes, sir," said the cabman. "Make like a bird for Trinity College." "Right, sir," said the cabman. The horse was whipped up and the cab rattled off along the quay amid a chorus of laughter and adieus. Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part of the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top of the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but he could see the terra-cotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was leaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised at her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear little save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few chords struck on the piano and a few notes of a man's voice singing. He stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that the voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and mystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked himself what is a woman standin

Politics and the English Language

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes. Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written. These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary: 1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate. Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression) 2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder . Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa) 3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity? Essay on psychology in Politics (New York) 4. All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis. Communist pamphlet 5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English." When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens! Letter in Tribune Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged: Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning without those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase. Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth. Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.* The jargon peculiar to *An interesting illustration of this is the way in which English flower names were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, Snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning away from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific. Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness. Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.† Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in † Example: Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness . . .Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull's-eyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bittersweet of resignation." (Poetry Quarterly) the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference of opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality. Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes: I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. Here it is in modern English: Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account. This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like "objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes. As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip -- alien for akin -- making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning -- they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -- but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear. In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity. In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this: "While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement." The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain. I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence*, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases *One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field. and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply. To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases: (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. (iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active. (v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. (vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article. I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.

The Mark on the Wall

PERHAPS it was the middle of January in the present that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it must have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea, for I remember that I was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the mark on the wall for the first time. I looked up through the smoke of my cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning coals, and that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy, an automatic fancy, made as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece. 1 How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.... If that mark was made by a nail, it can't have been for a picture, it must have been for a miniature—the miniature of a lady with white powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have chosen pictures in that way—an old picture for an old room. That is the sort of people they were—very interesting people, and I think of them so often, in such queer places, because one will never see them again, never know what happened next. They wanted to leave this house because they wanted to change their style of furniture, so he said, and he was in process of saying that in his opinion art should have ideas behind it when we were torn asunder, as one is torn from the old lady about to pour out tea and the young man about to hit the tennis ball in the back garden of the suburban villa as one rushes past in the train. 2 But as for that mark, I'm not sure about it; I don't believe it was made by a nail after all; it's too big, too round, for that. I might get up, but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn't be able to say for certain; because once a thing's done, no one ever knows how it happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life; The inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilization—let me just count over a few of the things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of losses—what cat would gnaw, what rat would nibble—three pale blue canisters of book-binding tools? Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ—all gone, and jewels, too. Opals and emeralds, they lie about the roots of turnips. What a scraping paring affair it is to be sure! The wonder is that I've any clothes on my back, that I sit surrounded by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour—landing at the other end without a single hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard.... 3 But after life. The slow pulling down of thick green stalks so that the cup of the flower, as it turns over, deluges one with purple and red light. Why, after all, should one not be born there as one is born here, helpless, speechless, unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the roots of the grass, at the toes of the Giants? As for saying which are trees, and which are men and women, or whether there are such things, that one won't be in a condition to do for fifty years or so. There will be nothing but spaces of light and dark, intersected by thick stalks, and rather higher up perhaps, rose-shaped blots of an indistinct colour—dim pinks and blues—which will, as time goes on, become more definite, become—I don't know what.... 4 And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at all. It may even be caused by some round black substance, such as a small rose leaf, left over from the summer, and I, not being a very vigilant housekeeper—look at the dust on the mantelpiece, for example, the dust which, so they say, buried Troy three times over, only fragments of pots utterly refusing annihilation, as one can believe. 5 The tree outside the window taps very gently on the pane.... I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts. To steady myself, let me catch hold of the first idea that passes.... Shakespeare.... Well, he will do as well as another. A man who sat himself solidly in an arm-chair, and looked into the fire, so— A shower of ideas fell perpetually from some very high Heaven down through his mind. He leant his forehead on his hand, and people, looking in through the open door,—for this scene is supposed to take place on a summer's evening—But how dull this is, this historical fiction! It doesn't interest me at all. I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises. They are not thoughts directly praising oneself; that is the beauty of them; they are thoughts like this: 6 "And then I came into the room. They were discussing botany. I said how I'd seen a flower growing on a dust heap on the site of an old house in Kingsway. The seed, I said, must have been sown in the reign of Charles the First. What flowers grew in the reign of Charles the First?" I asked—(but, I don't remember the answer). Tall flowers with purple tassels to them perhaps. And so it goes on. All the time I'm dressing up the figure of myself in my own mind, lovingly, stealthily, not openly adoring it, for if I did that, I should catch myself out, and stretch my hand at once for a book in self-protection. Indeed, it is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed in any longer. Or is it not so very curious after all? It is a matter of great importance. Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people—what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes. And the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the description of reality more and more out of their stories, taking a knowledge of it for granted, as the Greeks did and Shakespeare perhaps—but these generalizations are very worthless. The military sound of the word is enough. It recalls leading articles, cabinet ministers—a whole class of things indeed which as a child one thought the thing itself, the standard thing, the real thing, from which one could not depart save at the risk of nameless damnation. Generalizations bring back somehow Sunday in London, Sunday afternoon walks, Sunday luncheons, and also ways of speaking of the dead, clothes, and habits—like the habit of sitting all together in one room until a certain hour, although nobody liked it. There was a rule for everything. The rule for tablecloths at that particular period was that they should be made of tapestry with little yellow compartments marked upon them, such as you may see in photographs of the carpets in the corridors of the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths. How shocking, and yet how wonderful it was to discover that these real things, Sunday luncheons, Sunday walks, country houses, and tablecloths were not entirely real, were indeed half phantoms, and the damnation which visited the disbeliever in them was only a sense of illegitimate freedom. What now takes the place of those things I wonder, those real standard things? Men perhaps, should you be a woman; the masculine point of view which governs our lives, which sets the standard, which establishes Whitaker's Table of Precedency, which has become, I suppose, since the war half a phantom to many men and women, which soon—one may hope, will be laughed into the dustbin where the phantoms go, the mahogany sideboards and the Landseer prints, Gods and Devils, Hell and so forth, leaving us all with an intoxicating sense of illegitimate freedom—if freedom exists.... 7 In certain lights that mark on the wall seems actually to project from the wall. Nor is it entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it seems to cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if I ran my finger down that strip of the wall it would, at a certain point, mount and descend a small tumulus, a smooth tumulus like those barrows on the South Downs which are, they say, either tombs or camps. Of the two I should prefer them to be tombs, desiring melancholy like most English people, and finding it natural at the end of a walk to think of the bones stretched beneath the turf.... There must be some book about it. Some antiquary must have dug up those bones and given them a name.... What sort of a man is an antiquary, I wonder? Retired Colonels for the most part, I daresay, leading parties of aged labourers to the top here, examining clods of earth and stone, and getting into correspondence with the neighbouring clergy, which, being opened at breakfast time, gives them a feeling of importance, and the comparison of arrow-heads necessitates cross-country journeys to the county towns, an agreeable necessity both to them and to their elderly wives, who wish to make plum jam or to clean out the study, and have every reason for keeping that great question of the camp or the tomb in perpetual suspension, while the Colonel himself feels agreeably philosophic in accumulating evidence on both sides of the question. It is true that he does finally incline to believe in the camp; and, being opposed, indites a pamphlet which he is about to read at the quarterly meeting of the local society when a stroke lays him low, and his last conscious thoughts are not of wife or child, but of the camp and that arrowhead there, which is now in the case at the local museum, together with the foot of a Chinese murderess, a handful of Elizabethan nails, a great many Tudor clay pipes, a piece of Roman pottery, and the wine-glass that Nelson drank out of—proving I really don't know what. 8 No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. And if I were to get up at this very moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is really—what shall we say?—-the head of a gigantic old nail, driven in two hundred years ago, which has now, owing to the patient attrition of many generations of housemaids, revealed its head above the coat of paint, and is taking its first view of modern life in the sight of a white-walled fire-lit room, what should I gain?— Knowledge? Matter for further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up. And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs, interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases.... Yes, one could imagine a very pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and blue in the open fields. A world without professors or specialists or house-keepers with the profiles of policemen, a world which one could slice with one's thought as a fish slices the water with his fin, grazing the stems of the water-lilies, hanging suspended over nests of white sea eggs.... How peaceful it is drown here, rooted in the centre of the world and gazing up through the grey waters, with their sudden gleams of light, and their reflections—if it were not for Whitaker's Almanack—if it were not for the Table of Precedency! 9 I must jump up and see for myself what that mark on the wall really is—a nail, a rose-leaf, a crack in the wood? 10 Here is nature once more at her old game of self-preservation. This train of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere waste of energy, even some collision with reality, for who will ever be able to lift a finger against Whitaker's Table of Precedency? The Archbishop of Canterbury is followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord High Chancellor is followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody follows somebody, such is the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great thing is to know who follows whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature counsels, comfort you, instead of enraging you; and if you can't be comforted, if you must shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark on the wall. 11 I understand Nature's game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don't think. Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one's disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall. 12 Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel that I have grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real. Thus, waking from a midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is a proof of some existence other than ours. That is what one wants to be sure of.... Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It comes from a tree; and trees grow, and we don't know how they grow. For years and years they grow, without paying any attention to us, in meadows, in forests, and by the side of rivers—all things one likes to think about. The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot afternoons; they paint rivers so green that when a moorhen dives one expects to see its feathers all green when it comes up again. I like to think of the fish balanced against the stream like flags blown out; and of water-beetles slowly raiding domes of mud upon the bed of the river. I like to think of the tree itself:—first the close dry sensation of being wood; then the grinding of the storm; then the slow, delicious ooze of sap. I like to think of it, too, on winter's nights standing in the empty field with all leaves close-furled, nothing tender exposed to the iron bullets of the moon, a naked mast upon an earth that goes tumbling, tumbling, all night long. The song of birds must sound very loud and strange in June; and how cold the feet of insects must feel upon it, as they make laborious progresses up the creases of the bark, or sun themselves upon the thin green awning of the leaves, and look straight in front of them with diamond-cut red eyes.... One by one the fibres snap beneath the immense cold pressure of the earth, then the last storm comes and, falling, the highest branches drive deep into the ground again. Even so, life isn't done with; there are a million patient, watchful lives still for a tree, all over the world, in bedrooms, in ships, on the pavement, lining rooms, where men and women sit after tea, smoking cigarettes. It is full of peaceful thoughts, happy thoughts, this tree. I should like to take each one separately—but something is getting in the way.... Where was I? What has it all been about? A tree? A river? The Downs? Whitaker's Almanack? The fields of asphodel? I can't remember a thing. Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing.... There is a vast upheaval of matter. Someone is standing over me and saying— 13 "I'm going out to buy a newspaper." 14 "Yes?" 15 "Though it's no good buying newspapers.... Nothing ever happens. Curse this war; *** **** this war!... All the same, I don't see why we should have a snail on our wall." 16 Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail. 17