HOWARDS END
Chapter 9
Mrs. Wilcox cannot be accused of giving Margaret much information about
life. And Margaret, on the other hand, has made a fair show of modesty,
and has pretended to an inexperience that she certainly did not feel. She
had kept house for over ten years; she had entertained, almost with distinction;
she had brought up a charming sister, and was bringing up a brother.
Surely, if experience is attainable, she had attained
it.
Yet the little luncheon-party that she gave in
Mrs. Wilcox's honour was not a success. The new friend did not blend with
the "one or two delightful people" who had been asked to meet her, and the
atmosphere was one of polite bewilderment. Her tastes were simple, her
knowledge of culture slight, and she was not interested in the New English Art
Club, nor in the dividing-line between Journalism and Literature, which was
started as a conversational hare. The delightful people darted after it
with cries of joy, Margaret leading them, and not till the meal was half over
did they realize that the principal guest had taken no part in the chase.
There was no common topic. Mrs. Wilcox, whose life had been spent in the
service of husband and sons, had little to say to strangers who had never shared
it, and whose age was half her own. Clever talk alarmed her, and withered
her delicate imaginings; it was the social; counterpart of a motorcar, all
jerks, and she was a wisp of hay, a flower. Twice she deplored the
weather, twice criticized the train service on the Great Northern Railway.
They vigorously assented, and rushed on, and when she inquired whether there was
any news of Helen, her hostess was too much occupied in placing Rothenstein to
answer. The question was repeated: "I hope that your sister is safe in
Germany by now." Margaret checked herself and said, "Yes, thank you; I heard on
Tuesday." But the demon of vociferation was in her, and the next moment she was
off again.
"Only on Tuesday, for they live right away
at Stettin. Did you ever know any one living at
Stettin?"
"Never," said Mrs. Wilcox gravely, while
her neighbour, a young man low down in the Education Office, began to discuss
what people who lived at Stettin ought to look like. Was there such a
thing as Stettininity? Margaret swept
on.
"People at Stettin drop things into boats out of
overhanging warehouses. At least, our cousins do, but aren't particularly
rich. The town isn't interesting, except for a clock that rolls its eyes,
and the view of the Oder, which truly is something special. Oh, Mrs.
Wilcox, you would love the Oder! The river, or rather rivers--there seem
to be dozens of them--are intense blue, and the plain they run through an
intensest green."
"Indeed! That sounds like a
most beautiful view, Miss Schlegel."
"So I say, but
Helen, who will muddle things, says no, it's like music. The course of the
Oder is to be like music. It's obliged to remind her of a symphonic
poem. The part by the landing-stage is in B minor, if I remember rightly,
but lower down things get extremely mixed. There is a slodgy theme in
several keys at once, meaning mud-banks, and another for the navigable canal,
and the exit into the Baltic is in C sharp major,
pianissimo."
"What do the overhanging warehouses make
of that?" asked the man, laughing.
"They make a great
deal of it," replied Margaret, unexpectedly rushing off on a new track. "I
think it's affectation to compare the Oder to music, and so do you, but the
overhanging warehouses of Stettin take beauty seriously, which we don't, and the
average Englishman doesn't, and despises all who do. Now don't say
'Germans have no taste,' or I shall scream. They haven't.
But--but--such a tremendous but! --they take poetry seriously. They
do take poetry seriously.
"Is anything gained by
that?"
"Yes, yes. The German is always on the
lookout for beauty. He may miss it through stupidity, or misinterpret it,
but he is always asking beauty to enter his life, and I believe that in the end
it will come. At Heidelberg I met a fat veterinary surgeon whose voice
broke with sobs as he repeated some mawkish poetry. So easy for me to
laugh--I, who never repeat poetry, good or bad, and cannot remember one fragment
of verse to thrill myself with. My blood boils--well, I'm half German, so
put it down to patriotism--when I listen to the tasteful contempt of the average
islander for things Teutonic, whether they're Böcklin or my veterinary
surgeon. 'Oh, Böcklin,' they say; 'he strains after beauty, he peoples
Nature with gods too consciously.' Of course Böcklin strains, because he wants
something--beauty and all the other intangible gifts that are floating about the
world. So his landscapes don't come off, and Leader's
do."
"I am not sure that I agree. Do you?" said
he, turning to Mrs. Wilcox.
She replied: "I think
Miss Schlegel puts everything splendidly"; and a chill fell on the
conversation.
"Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, say something nicer
than that. It's such a snub to be told you put things
splendidly. "
"I do not mean it as a snub.
Your last speech interested me so much. Generally people do not seem quite
to like Germany. I have long wanted to hear what is said on the other
side."
"The other side? Then you do
disagree. Oh, good! Give us your
side."
"I have no side. But my husband"--her
voice softened, the chill increased--"has very little faith in the Continent,
and our children have all taken after him."
"On what
grounds? Do they feel that the Continent is in bad
form?"
Mrs. Wilcox had no idea; she paid little
attention to grounds. She was not intellectual, nor even alert, and it was
odd that, all the same, she should give the idea of greatness. Margaret,
zigzagging with her friends over Thought and Art, was conscious of a personality
that transcended their own and dwarfed their activities. There was no
bitterness in Mrs. Wilcox; there was not even criticism; she was lovable, and no
ungracious or uncharitable word had passed her lips. Yet she and daily
life were out of focus: one or the other must show blurred. And at lunch
she seemed more out of focus than usual, and nearer the line that divides life
from a life that may be of greater importance.
"You
will admit, though, that the Continent--it seems silly to speak of 'the
Continent,' but really it is all more like itself than any part of it is like
England. England is unique. Do have another jelly first. I was
going to say that the Continent, for good or for evil, is interested in
ideas. Its Literature and Art have what one might call the kink of the
unseen about them, and this persists even through decadence and
affectation. There is more liberty of action in England, but for liberty
of thought go to bureaucratic Prussia. People will there discuss with
humility vital questions that we here think ourselves too good to touch with
tongs."
"I do not want to go to Prussian" said Mrs.
Wilcox--"not even to see that interesting view that you were describing.
And for discussing with humility I am too old. We never discuss anything
at Howards End."
"Then you ought to!" said
Margaret. "Discussion keeps a house alive. It cannot stand by bricks
and mortar alone."
"It cannot stand without them,"
said Mrs. Wilcox, unexpectedly catching on to the thought, and rousing, for the
first and last time, a faint hope in the breasts of the delightful people.
"It cannot stand without them, and I sometimes think--But I cannot expect your
generation to agree, for even my daughter disagrees with me
here."
"Never mind us or her. Do
say!"
"I sometimes think that it is wiser to leave
action and discussion to men."
There was a little
silence.
"One admits that the arguments against the
suffrage are extraordinarily strong," said a girl opposite, leaning forward and
crumbling her bread.
"Are they? I never follow
any arguments. I am only too thankful not to have a vote
myself."
"We didn't mean the vote, though, did we?"
supplied Margaret. "Aren't we differing on something much wider, Mrs.
Wilcox? Whether women are to remain what they have been since the dawn of
history; or whether, since men have moved forward so far, they too may move
forward a little now. I say they may. I would even admit a
biological change."
"I don't know, I don't
know."
"I must be getting back to my overhanging
warehouse," said the man. "They've turned disgracefully
strict.
Mrs. Wilcox also
rose.
"Oh, but come upstairs for a little. Miss
Quested plays. Do you like MacDowell? Do you mind him only having
two noises? If you must really go, I'll see you out. Won't you even
have coffee?"
They left the dining-room, closing the
door behind them, and as Mrs. Wilcox buttoned up her jacket, she said: "What an
interesting life you all lead in London!"
"No, we
don't," said Margaret, with a sudden revulsion. "We lead the lives of
gibbering monkeys. Mrs. Wilcox--really--We have something quiet and stable
at the bottom. We really have. All my friends have. Don't
pretend you enjoyed lunch, for you loathed it, but forgive me by coming again,
alone, or by asking me to you."
"I am used to young
people," said Mrs. Wilcox, and with each word she spoke the outlines of known
things grew dim. "I hear a great deal of chatter at home, for we, like
you, entertain a great deal. With us it is more sport and politics, but--I
enjoyed my lunch very much, Miss Schlegel, dear, and am not pretending, and only
wish I could have joined in more. For one thing, I'm not particularly well
just today. For another, you younger people move so quickly that it dazes
me. Charles is the same, Dolly the same. But we are all in the same
boat, old and young. I never forget that."
They
were silent for a moment. Then, with a newborn emotion, they shook
hands. The conversation ceased suddenly when Margaret re-entered the
dining-room: her friends had been talking over her new friend, and had dismissed
her as uninteresting.