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Making of a Bigot

<h2>CHAPTER IX. THE CLUB.</h2> SOON after Eddy’s return to London, Eileen Le Moine wrote and asked him to meet her at lunch at a restaurant in Old Compton Street. It was a rather more select restaurant than they and their friends usually frequented in Soho, so Eddy divined that she wanted to speak to him alone and uninterrupted. She arrived late, as always, and pale, and a little abstracted, as if she were tired in mind or body, but her smile flashed out at him, radiant and kind. Direct and to the point, as usual, she began at once, as they began to eat risotto, “I wonder would you do something for Hugh?” Eddy said, “I expect so,” and added, “I hope he’s much better?” “He is not,” she told him. “The doctor says he must go away—out of England—for quite a month, and have no bother or work at all. It’s partly nerves, you see, and over-work. Someone will have to go with him, to look after him, but they’ve not settled who yet. He’ll probably go to Greece, and walk about.... Anyhow he’s to be away somewhere.... And he’s been destroying himself with worry because he must leave his work—the settlement and everything—and he’s afraid it will go to pieces. You know he has the Club House open every evening for the boys and young men, and goes down there himself several nights a week. What we thought was that perhaps you wouldn’t mind taking charge, being generally responsible, in fact. There are several helpers, of course, but Hugh wants someone to see after it and get people to give lectures and keep the thing going. We thought you’d perhaps have the time, and we knew you had the experience and could do it. It’s very important to have someone at the top that they like; it just makes all the difference. And Hugh thinks it so hopeful that they turned you out of St. Gregory’s; he doesn’t entirely approve of St. Gregory’s, as you know. Now will you?” Eddy, after due consideration, said he would do the best he could. “I shall be very inept, you know. Will it matter much? I suppose the men down there—Pollard and the rest—will see me through. And you’ll be coming down sometimes, perhaps.” She said “I may,” then looked at him for a moment speculatively, and added, “But I may not. I might be away, with Hugh.” “Oh,” said Eddy. “If no one else satisfactory can go with him,” she said. “He must have the right person. Someone who, besides looking after him, will make him like living and travelling and seeing things. That’s very important, the doctor says. He is such a terribly depressed person, poor Hugh. I can brighten him up. So I rather expect I will go, and walk about Greece with him. We would both like it, of course.” “Of course,” said Eddy, his chin on his hand, looking out of the window at the orange trees that grew in tubs by the door. “And, lest we should have people shocked,” added Eileen, “Bridget’s coming too. Not that we mind people with that sort of horrible mind being shocked—but it wouldn’t do to spoil Hugh’s work by it, and it might. Hugh, of course, doesn’t want things said about me, either. People are so stupid. I wonder will the time ever come when two friends can go about together the way no harm will be said. Bridget thinks never. But after all, if no one’s prepared to set an example of common-sense, how are we to move on ever out of all this horrid, improper tangle and muddle? Jane, of course, says, what does it matter, no one who counts would mind; but then for Jane so few people count. Jane would do it herself to-morrow, and never even suspect that anyone was shocked. But one can’t have people saying things about Hugh, and he running clubs and settlements and things; it would destroy him and them; he’s one of the people who’ve got to be careful; which is a bore, but can’t be helped.” “No, it can’t be helped,” Eddy agreed. “One doesn’t want people to be hurt or shocked, even apart from clubs and things; and so many even of the nicest people would be.” There she differed from him. “Not the nicest. The less nice. The foolish, the coarse-minded, the shut-in, the—the tiresome.” Eddy smiled disagreement, and she remembered that they would be shocked at the Deanery, doubtless. “Ah well,” she said, “have it your own way. The nicest, then, as well as the least nice, because none of them know any better, poor dears. For that matter, Bridget said she’d be shocked herself if we went alone. Bridget has moods, you know, when she prides herself on being proper—the British female guarding the conventions. She’s in one of them now.... Well, go and see Hugh to-morrow, will you, and talk about the Settlement. He’ll have a lot to say, but don’t have him excited. It’s wonderful what a trust he has in you, Eddy, since you left St. Gregory’s.” “An inadequate reason,” said Eddy, “but leading to a very proper conclusion. Yes, I’ll go and see him, then.” He did so, next day. He found Datcherd at the writing-table in his library. It was a large and beautiful library in a large and beautiful house. The Datcherds were rich (or would have been had not Datcherd spent much too much money on building houses for the poor, and Lady Dorothy Datcherd rather too much on cards and clothes and other luxuries), and there was about their belongings that air of caste, of inherited culture, of transmitted intelligence and recognition of social and political responsibilities, that is perhaps only to be found in families with a political tradition of several generations. Datcherd wasn’t a clever literary free-lance; he was a hereditary Whig; that was why he couldn’t be detached, why, about his breaking with custom and convention, there would always be a wrench and strain, a bitterness of hostility, instead of the light ease of Eileen Le Moine’s set, that could gently mock at the heavy-handed world because it had never been under its dominance, never conceived anything but freedom. That, and because of their finer sense of responsibility, is why it is aristocrats who will always make the best social revolutionaries. They know that life is real, life is earnest; they are bound up with the established status by innumerable ties, which either to keep or to break means purpose. They are, in fact, heavily involved, all round; they cannot escape their liabilities; they are the grown-up people in a light-hearted world of children. Surely, then, they should have more of the reins in their hands, less jerking of them from below.... Such, at least, were Eddy’s reflections in Datcherd’s library, while he waited for Datcherd to finish a letter and thought how ill he looked. Their ensuing conversation need not be detailed. Datcherd told Eddy about arranging lectures at the Club House whenever he could, about the reading-room, the gymnasium, the billiard-room, the woodwork, and the other diversions and educational enterprises which flourish in such institutions. Eddy was familiar with them already, having sometimes been down to the Club House. It was in its main purpose educational. To it came youths between the ages of fifteen and five and twenty, and gave their evenings to acquiring instruction in political economy, sociology, history, art, physical exercises, science, and other branches of learning. They had regular instructors; and besides these, irregular lecturers came down once or twice a week, friends of Datcherd’s, politicians, social workers, writers, anyone who would come and was considered by Datcherd suitable. The Fabian Society, it seemed, throve still among the Club members, and was given occasional indulgences such as Mr. Shaw or Mr. Sidney Webb, and lesser treats frequently. They had debates, and other habits such as will be readily imagined. Having indicated these, Datcherd proceeded to tell Eddy something about his assistant workers, in what ways each needed firm or tender handling. While they were talking, Billy Raymond came in, to tell Datcherd about a new poet he had found, who wrote verse that seemed suitable for Further. Billy Raymond, a generous and appreciative person, was given to finding new poets, usually in cellars, attics, or workmen’s flats. It was commonly said that he less found them than made them, by some transmuting magic of his own touch. Anyhow they quite often produced poetry, for longer or shorter periods. This latest one was a Socialist in conviction and expression; hence his suitability for Further. Eddy wasn’t sure that they ought to talk of Further; it obviously had Hugh excited. He and Billy Raymond came away together, which rather pleased Eddy, as he liked Billy better than most people of his acquaintance, which was saying much. There was a breadth about Billy, a large and gentle tolerance, a courtesy towards all sorts and conditions of men and views, that made him restful, as compared, for instance, with the intolerant Arnold Denison. Perhaps the difference was partly that Billy was a poet, with the artist’s vision, which takes in, and Arnold only a critic, whose function it is to select and exclude. Billy, in short, was a producer, and Arnold a publisher; and publishers have to be for ever saying that things won’t do, aren’t good enough. If they can’t say that, they are poor publishers indeed. Billy, in Eddy’s view, approached more nearly than most people to that synthesis which, Eddy believed, unites all factions and all sections of truth. Billy said, “Poor dear Hugh. I am extraordinarily sorry for him. I am glad you are going to help in the Settlement. He hates leaving it so much. I’m sure I couldn’t worry about my work or anything else if I was going to walk about Greece for a month; but he’s so—so ascetic. I think I respect Datcherd more than almost anyone; he’s so absolutely single-minded. He won’t enjoy Greece a bit, I believe, because of all the people in slums who can’t be there, and wouldn’t if they could. It will seem to him wicked waste of money. Waste, you know! My word!” “Perhaps,” said Eddy, “he’ll learn how to enjoy life more now his wife has left him. She must have been a weight on his mind.” “Oh, well,” said Billy, “I don’t know. Perhaps so.... One never really felt that she quite existed, and I daresay he didn’t either, so I don’t suppose her being gone will make so very much difference. She was a sort of unreal thing—a shadow. I always got on with her pretty well; in fact, I rather liked her in a way; but I never felt she was actually there.” “She’d be there to Datcherd, though,” Eddy said, feeling that Billy’s wisdom hardly embraced the peculiar circumstances of married life, and Billy, never much interested in personal relations, said, “Perhaps.” They were in Kensington, and Billy went to call on his grandmother, who lived in Gordon Place, and to whom he went frequently to play backgammon and relate the news. Billy was a very affectionate and dutiful young man, and also nearly as fond of backgammon as his grandmother was. With his grandmother lived an aunt, who didn’t care for his poetry much, and Billy was very fond of her too. He sometimes went with his grandmother to St. Mary Abbot’s Church, to help her to see weddings (which she preferred even to backgammon), or attend services. She was proud of Billy, but, for poets to read, preferred Scott, Keble, or Doctor Watts. She admitted herself behind modern times, but loved to see and hear what young people were doing, though it usually seemed rather silly. To her Billy went this afternoon, and Eddy meanwhile called on Mrs. Le Moine and Miss Hogan in Campden Hill Road. He found Miss Hogan in, just returned from a picture-show, and she gave him tea and conversation. “Of course you’ve heard all about our intentions. Actually we’re off on Thursday.... Last time Eileen went abroad, the people she was with took a maniac by mistake; so very uncomfortable. I quite thought after that she had decided that travel was not for her. However, it seems not. You know—I’m sure she told you—she was for going just he and she, tout simple. Most improper, of course, not to say unwholesome. They meant no harm, dear children, but who would believe that, and even so, what are the convenances for but to be observed? I put it before Eileen in my most banal and borné manner, but, needless to say, how fruitless! So at last I had to offer to go too. Of course from kindness she had to accept that, though it won’t be at all the same, particularly not to Hugh. Anyhow there we are, and we’re off on Thursday. Hugh will be very much upset by the Channel; I believe he always is; no constitution whatever, poor creature. Also I believe he is of those with whom it lasts on between Calais and Paris—a most unhappy class, but to be avoided as travelling companions. I know too well, because of an aunt of mine.... Well, anyhow we’re going to take the train to Trieste, and then a ship to Kalamata, and then take to our feet and walk across Greece. Hitherto I have only done Greece on the Dunnottar Castle, in the care of Sir Henry Lunn, which, if less thrilling, is safer, owing to the wild dogs that tear the pedestrian on the Greek hills, one is given to understand. I only hope we may be preserved.... And meanwhile you’re going to run those wonderful clubs of Hugh’s. I wonder if you’ll do it at all as he would wish! It is beautiful to see how he trusts you—why, I can’t imagine. In his place I wouldn’t; I would rather hand over my clubs to some unlettered subordinate after my own heart and bred in my own faith. As for you, you have so many faiths that Hugh’s will be swamped in the crowd. But you feel confident that you will do it well? That is good, and the main qualification for success.” Thus Miss Hogan babbled on, partly because she always did, partly because the young man looked rather strained, and she was afraid if she paused that he might say how sad he was at Eileen’s going, and she believed these things better unexpressed. He wasn’t the only young man who was fond of Eileen, and Miss Hogan had her own ideas as to how to deal with such emotions. She didn’t believe it went deep with Eddy, or that he would admit to himself any emotion at all beyond friendship, owing to his own views as to what was right, not to speak of what was sensible; and no doubt if left to himself for a month or so, he would manage to recover entirely. It would be so obviously silly, as well as wrong, to fall in love with Eileen Le Moine, and Bridget did not believe Eddy, in spite of some confusion in his mental outlook, to be really silly. She directed the conversation on to the picture-show she had just been to, and that reminded her of Sally Peters. “Did you hear what the stupid child’s done? Joined the Wild Women, and jabbed her umbrella into a lot of Post Impressionists in the Grafton Galleries. Of course they caught her at it—the clumsiest child!—and took her up on the spot, and she’s coming up for trial to-morrow with three other lunatics, old enough to know better than to lead an ignorant baby like that into mischief. I expect she’ll get a month, and serve her right. I suppose she’ll go on hunger-strike; but she’s so plump that it will probably affect her health not unfavourably. I don’t know who got hold of her; doubtless some mad and bad creatures who saw she had no more sense than a little owl, and set her blundering into shop-windows and picture-glasses like a young blue-bottle.... By the way, though you are, I know, so many things, I feel sure you draw the line at the militants.” Eddy said he thought he saw their point of view. “Point of view! They’ve not one,” Miss Hogan cried. “I suppose, like other decent people, you want women to have votes! Well, you must grant they’ve spoilt any chance of that, anyhow—smashed up the whole suffrage campaign with their horrible jabbing umbrellas and absurd little bombs.” Eddy granted that. “They’ve smashed the suffrage, for the present, yes. Poor things.” He reflected for a moment on these unfortunate persons, and added, “But I do see what they mean, all the same. They smash and spoil and hurt things and people and causes, because they are stupid with anger; but they’ve got things to be angry about, after all. Oh, I admit they’re very, very stupid and inartistic, and hopelessly unaesthetic and British and unimaginative and cruel and without any humour at all—but I do see what they mean, in a way.” “Well, don’t explain it to me, then, because I’ve heard it at first-hand far too often lately.” Eddy went round to the rooms in Old Compton Street which he shared with Arnold Denison. Arnold had chosen Soho for residence partly because he liked it, partly to improve his knowledge of languages, and partly to study the taste of the neighbourhood in literature, as it was there that he intended, when he had more leisure, to start a bookshop. Eddy, too, liked it. (This is a superfluous observation, because anybody would.) In fact, he liked his life in general just now. He liked reviewing for the Daily Post and writing for himself (himself via the editors of various magazines who met with his productions on their circular route and pushed them on again). He liked getting review copies of books to keep; his taste was catholic and omnivorous, and boggled at nothing. With joy he perused everything, even novels which had won prizes in novel competitions, popular discursive works called “About the Place,” and books of verse (to do them justice, not even popular) called “Pipings,” and such. He wrote appreciative reviews of all of them, because he appreciated them all. It may fairly be said that he saw each as its producer saw it, which may or may not be what a reviewer should try to do, but is anyhow grateful and comforting to the reviewed. Arnold, who did not do this, in vain protested that he would lose his job soon. “No literary editor will stand such indiscriminate fulsomeness for long.... It’s a dispensation of providence that you didn’t come and read for us, as I once mistakenly wished. You would, so far as your advice carried any weight, have dragged us down into the gutter. Have you no sense of values or of decency? Can you really like these florid effusions of base minds?” He was reading through Eddy’s last review, which was of a book of verse by a lady gifted with emotional tendencies and an admiration for landscape. Arnold shook his head and laughed as he put the review down. “The queer thing about it is that it’s not a bad review, in spite of everything you say in appreciation of the lunatic who wrote the book. That’s what I can’t understand; how you can be so intelligent and yet so idiotic. You’ve given the book exactly, in a few phrases—no one could possibly mistake its nature—and then you make several quite true, not to say brilliant remarks about it—and then you go on and say how good it is.... Well, I shall be interested to see how long they keep you on.” “They like me,” Eddy assured him, complacently. “They think I write well. The authors like me, too. Many a heartfelt letter of thanks do I get from those whom there are few to praise and fewer still to love. As you may have noticed, they strew the breakfast table. Is it comme il faut for me to answer? I do—I mean, I did, both times—because it seemed politer, but it was perhaps a mistake, because the correspondence between me and one of them has not ceased yet, and possibly never will, since neither of us likes to end it. How involving life is!” Meanwhile he went to the Club House by the Lea most evenings. That, too, he liked. He had a gift which Datcherd had detected in him, the gift of getting on well with all sorts of people, irrespective of their incomes, breeding, social status, intelligence, or respectability. He did not, like Arnold, rule out the unintelligent, the respectable, the commonplace; nor, like Datcherd, the orthodoxly religious; nor, as Jane did, without knowing it, the vulgar; nor, like many delightful and companionable and well-bred people, the uneducated, those whom we, comprehensively and rightly, call the poor—rightly, because, though poverty may seem the merest superficial and insignificant attribute of the completed product, it is also the original, fundamental cause of all the severing differences. Molly Bellairs thought Eddy would have made a splendid clergyman, a better one than his father, who was unlimitedly kind, but ill at ease, and talked above poor people’s heads. Eddy, with less grip of theological problems, had a surer hold of points of view, and apprehended the least witty of jokes, the least pathetic of quarrels, the least picturesque of emotions. Hence he was popular. He found that the sort of lectures Datcherd’s clubs were used to expect were largely on subjects like the Minimum Wage, Capitalism versus Industrialism, Organised Labour, the Eight Hours Day, Poor Law Reform, the Endowment of Mothers, Co-partnership, and such; all very interesting and profitable if well treated. So Eddy wrote to Bob Traherne, the second curate at St. Gregory’s, to ask him to give one. Traherne replied that he would, if Eddy liked, give a course of six. He proceeded to do so, and as he was a good, concise, and pungent speaker, drew large audiences and was immensely popular. At the end of his lecture he sold penny tracts by Church Socialists; really sold them, in large numbers. After his third lecture, which was on the Minimum Wage, he said he would be glad to receive the names of any persons who would like to join the Church Socialist League, the most effective society he knew of for furthering these objects. He received seven forthwith, and six more after the next. Protests reached Eddy from a disturbed secretary, a pale, red-haired young man, loyal to Datcherd’s spirit. “It’s not what Mr. Datcherd would like, Mr. Oliver.” Eddy said, “Why on earth shouldn’t he? He likes the men to be Socialists, doesn’t he?” “Not that sort, he doesn’t. At least, he wouldn’t. He likes them to think for themselves, not to be tied up with the Church.” “Well, they are thinking for themselves. He wouldn’t like them to be tied up to his beliefs either, surely. I feel sure it’s all right, Pollard. Anyhow, I can’t stop them joining the League if they want to, can I?” “We ought to stop the Reverend Traherne that’s where it is. He’d talk the head off an elephant. He gets a hold of them, and abuses it. It isn’t right, and it isn’t fair, nor what Mr. Datcherd would like in the Club.” “Nonsense,” said Eddy. “Mr. Datcherd would be delighted. Mr. Traherne’s a first-rate lecturer, you know; they learn more from him than they do from all the Socialist literature they get out of the library.” Worse than this, several young men who despised church-going, quite suddenly took to it, bicycling over to the Borough to hear the Reverend Traherne preach. Datcherd had no objection to anyone going to church if from conviction, but this sort of unbalanced, unreasoning yielding to a personal influence he would certainly consider degrading and unworthy of a thinking citizen. Be a man’s convictions what they might, Datcherd held, let them be convictions, based on reason and principle, not incoherent impulses and chance emotions. It was almost certain that he would not have approved of Traherne’s influence over his clubs. Still less, Pollard thought, would he have approved of Captain Greville’s. Captain Greville was a retired captain, who needs no description here. His mission in life was to talk about the National Service League. Eddy, who, it may be remembered, belonged among other leagues to this, met him somewhere, and requested him to come and address the club on the subject one evening. He did so. He made a very good speech, for thirty-five minutes, which is exactly the right length for this topic. (Some people err, and speak too long, on this as on many other subjects, and miss their goal in consequence.) Captain Greville said, How delightful to strengthen the national fibre and the sense of civic duty by bringing all men into relation with national ideas through personal training during youth; to strengthen the national health by sound physical development and discipline, etcetera; to bring to bear upon the most important business with which a nation can have to deal, namely, National Defence, the knowledge, the interest, and the criticism of the national mind; to safeguard the nation against war by showing that we are prepared for it, and ensure that, should war break out, peace may be speedily re-established; in short, to Organize our Man Power; further, not to be shot in time of invasion for carrying a gun unlawfully, which is a frequent incident (sensation). He said a good deal more, which need not be specified, as it is doubtless familiar to many, and would be unwelcome to others. At the end he said, “Are you Democrats? Then join the League, which advocates the only democratic system of defence. Are you Socialists?” (this was generous, because he disliked Socialists very much) “Then join the League, which aims at a reform strictly in accordance with the principles of co-operative socialism; in fact, many people base their opposition to it on the grounds that it is too socialistic. Finally (he observed), what we want is not a standing army, and not a war—God forbid—but men capable of fighting like men in defence of their wives, their children, and their homes.” The Club apparently realised suddenly that this was what they did want, and crowded up to sign cards and receive buttons inscribed with the inspiring motto: “The Path of Duty is the Path of Safety.” In short, quite a third of the young men became adherents of the League, encouraged thereto by Eddy, and congratulated by the enthusiastic captain. They were invited to ask questions, so they did. They asked, What about employers chucking a man for good because he had to be away for his four months camp? Answer: This would not happen; force would be exerted over the employer. (Some scepticism, but a general sentiment of approval for this, as for something which would indeed be grand if it could be worked, and which might in itself be worth joining the League for, merely to score off the employer.) Further answer: The late Sir Joseph Whitworth said, “The labour of a man who has gone through a course of military drill is worth eighteen-pence a week more than that of one untrained, as through the training received in military drill men learn ready obedience, attention, and combination, all of which are so necessary in work.” Question: Would they get it? Answer: Get what? Question: The eighteen-pence. Answer: In justice they certainly should. Question: Would employers be forced to give it them? Answer: All these details are left to be worked out later in the Bill. Conclusion: The Bill would not be popular among employers. Further conclusion: Let us join it. Which they did. Before he departed, Captain Greville said that he was very pleased with the encouraging results of the evening, and he hoped that as many as would be interested would come and see a cinematograph display he was giving in Hackney next week, called “In Time of Invasion.” From that he would venture to say they would learn something of the horrors of unprepared attack. The Club went to that. It was a splendid show, well worth threepence. It abounded in men being found unlawfully with guns and being shot like rabbits; in untrained and incompetent soldiers fleeing from the foe; abandoned mothers defending their cottage homes to the last against a brutal soldiery; corpses of children tossed on pikes to make a Prussian holiday; Boy Scouts and Girl Guides, the one saving element in the terrible display of national incompetence, performing marvellous feats of skill and heroism, and dying like flies in discharge of their duties. Afterwards there was a very different series to illustrate the Invasion as it would be had the National Service Act been passed. “The Invaders realise their Mistake,” was inscribed on the preliminary curtain. Well-trained, efficient, and courageous young men then sallied into the field, proud in the possession of fire-arms they had a right to, calm in their perfect training, temerity, and discipline, presenting an unflinching and impregnable front to the cowering foe, who retreated in broken disorder, realising their mistake (cheers). Then on the Finis curtain blazed out the grand moral of it all: “The Path of Duty is the Path of Safety. Keep your homes inviolate by learning to Defend them.” (Renewed cheers, and “God Save the King”). A very fine show, to which, it may be added, Mr. Sidney Pollard, the Club Secretary, did not go. It was soon after this that Captain Greville, having been much pleased—very pleased, as he said—by the Lea-side Club, presented its library with a complete set of Kipling. Kipling, since the Kipling period was some years past, was not well known by the Club; appearing among them suddenly, on the top of the Cinema, he made something of a furore. If Mr. Datcherd would get him to write poetry for Further, now, instead of Mr. Henderson and Mr. Raymond, and all the people he did get, that would be something like. Finding Kipling so popular, and yielding to a request, Eddy, who read rather well, gave some Kipling readings, which were much enjoyed by a crowded audience. “Might as well take them to a music hall at once,” complained Mr. Pollard. “Would they like it? I will,” returned Eddy, and did so, paying for a dozen boys at the Empire. It must not be supposed that Eddy neglected, in the cult of a manly patriotism, the other aspects of life. On the contrary, he induced Billy Raymond, a good-natured person, to give a lecture on the Drama, and after it, took a party to the Savoy Theatre, to see Granville Barker’s Shakespeare, which bored them a good deal. Then he got Jane to give an address on drawings, and, to illustrate it, took some rather apathetic youths to see Jane’s own exhibition. Also he conducted a party to where Mr. Roger Fry was speaking on Post-Impressionism, and then, when they had thoroughly grasped it, to the gallery where it was just then being exemplified. First he told them that they could laugh at the pictures if they choose, of course, but that was an exceedingly stupid way of looking at them; so they actually did not, such was his influence over them at this time. Instead, when he pointed out to them the beauties of Matisse, they pretended to agree with him, and listened tolerant, if bored, while he had an intelligent discussion with an artist friend whom he met. All this is to say that Eddy had his young men well in hand—better in hand than Datcherd, who was less cordial and hail-fellow-well-met with them, had ever had them. It was great fun. Influencing people in a mass always is; it feels rather like driving a large and powerful car, which is sent swerving to right or left by a small turn of the wrist. Probably actors feel like this when acting, only more so; perhaps speakers feel like this when speaking. Doing what you like with people, the most interesting and absorbing of the plastic materials ready to the hand—that is better than working with clay, paints, or words. Not that Eddy was consciously aware of what he was doing in that way; only about each fresh thing as it turned up he was desirous to make these lads that he liked feel keen and appreciative, as he felt himself; and he was delighted that they did so, showing themselves thereby so sane, sensible, and intelligent. He had found them keen enough on some important things—industrial questions, certain aspects of Socialism, the Radical Party in politics; it was for him to make them equally keen on other things, hitherto apparently rather overlooked by them. One of these things was the Church; here his success was only partial, but distinctly encouraging. Another was the good in Toryism, which they were a little blind to. To open their eyes, he had a really intelligent Conservative friend of his to address them on four successive Tuesdays on politics. He did not want in the least to change their politics—what can be better than to be a Radical?—(this was as well, because it would have been a task outside even his sphere of influence)—but certainly they should see both sides. So both sides were set before them; and the result was certainly that they looked much less intolerantly than before upon the wrong side, because Mr. Oliver, who was a first-rater, gave it his countenance, as he had to Matisse and that tedious thing at the Savoy. Matisse, Shakespeare, Tariff Reform, they all seemed silly, but there, they pleased a good chap and a pleasant friend, who could also appreciate Harry Lauder, old Victor Grayson, Kipling, and the Minimum Wage. Such were the interests of a varied and crowded life on club nights by the Lea. Distraught by them, Mr. Sidney Pollard wrote to his master in Greece—(address, Poste-Restante, Athens, where eventually his wanderings would lead him and he would call for letters)—to say that all was going to sixes and sevens, and here was a Tariff Reformer let loose on the Club on Tuesday evenings, and a parson to rot about his fancy Socialism on Wednesdays, and another parson holding a mission service in the street last Sunday afternoon, not even about Socialism—(this was Father Dempsey)—and half the club hanging about him and asking him posers, which is always the beginning of the end, because any parson, having been bred to it, can answer posers so much more posingly than anyone can ask them; and some captain or other talking that blanked nonsense about National Service, and giving round his silly buttons as if they were chocolate drops at a school-feast, and leading them on to go to an idiot Moving Picture Show, calculated to turn them all into Jingoes of the deepest dye; and some Blue Water maniac gassing about Dreadnoughts, so that “We want eight and we won’t wait” was sung by the school-children in the streets instead of “Every nice girl loves a sailor,” which may mean, emotionally, much the same, but is politically offensive. Further, Mr. Oliver had been giving Kipling readings, and half the lads were Kipling-mad, and fought to get Barrack-room Ballads out of the library. Finally, “Mr. Oliver may mean no harm, but he is doing a lot,” said Mr. Pollard. “If he goes on here, the tone of the Club will be spoilt, he is personally popular, owing to being a friend to all in his manner and having pleasant ways, and that is the worst sort. If you are not coming home yourself soon, perhaps you will make some change by writing, and tell Mr. Oliver if you approve of above things or not. I have thought it right to let you know all, and you will act according as you think. I very much trust your health is on the mend, you are badly missed here.” Datcherd got that letter at last, but not just yet, for he was then walking inland across the Plain of Thessaly between Volo and Tempe. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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