I didn't at first see the connection between systematic social reorganisation and arbitrary novelties in dietary and costume, just as I didn't realise why the most comprehensive constructive projects should appear to be supported solely by odd and exceptional personalities.On one of these evenings a little group of rather jolly-looking pretty young people seated themselves for no particular reason in a large circle on the floor of my study, and engaged, so far as I could judge, in the game of Hunt the Meaning, the intellectual equivalent of Hunt the Slipper.It must have been that same evening I came upon an unbleached young gentleman before the oval mirror on the landing engaged in removing the remains of an anchovy sandwich from his protruded tongue--visible ends of cress having misled him into the belief that he was dealing with doctrinally permissible food.It was not unusual to be given hand-bills and printed matter by our guests, but there I had the advantage over Lewis, who was too tactful to refuse the stuff, too neatly dressed to pocket it, and had no writing-desk available upon which he could relieve himself in a manner flattering to the giver.
So that his hands got fuller and fuller.A relentless, compact little woman in what Margaret declared to be an extremely expensive black dress has also printed herself on my memory; she had set her heart upon my contributing to a weekly periodical in the lentil interest with which she was associated, and I spent much time and care in evading her.
Mingling with the more hygienic types were a number of Anti-Puritan Socialists, bulging with bias against temperance, and breaking out against austere methods of living all over their faces.Their manner was packed with heartiness.They were apt to choke the approaches to the little buffet Margaret had set up downstairs, and there engage in discussions of Determinism--it always seemed to be Determinism--which became heartier and noisier, but never acrimonious even in the small hours.It seemed impossible to settle about this Determinism of theirs--ever.And there were worldly Socialists also.I particularly recall a large, active, buoyant, lady-killing individual with an eyeglass borne upon a broad black ribbon, who swam about us one evening.He might have been a slightly frayed actor, in his large frock-coat, his white waistcoat, and the sort of black and white check trousers that twinkle.He had a high-pitched voice with aristocratic intonations, and he seemed to be in a perpetual state of interrogation."What are we all he-a for?" he would ask only too audibly."What are we doing he-a?
What's the connection?"
What WAS the connection?
We made a special effort with our last assembly in June, 1907.We tried to get something like a representative collection of the parliamentary leaders of Socialism, the various exponents of Socialist thought and a number of Young Liberal thinkers into one room.Dorvil came, and Horatio Bulch; Featherstonehaugh appeared for ten minutes and talked charmingly to Margaret and then vanished again; there was Wilkins the novelist and Toomer and Dr.Tumpany.
Chris Robinson stood about for a time in a new comforter, and Magdeberg and Will Pipes and five or six Labour members.And on our side we had our particular little group, Bunting Harblow, Crampton, Lewis, all looking as broad-minded and open to conviction as they possibly could, and even occasionally talking out from their bushes almost boldly.But the gathering as a whole refused either to mingle or dispute, and as an experiment in intercourse the evening was a failure.Unexpected dissociations appeared between Socialists one had supposed friendly.I could not have imagined it was possible for half so many people to turn their backs on everybody else in such small rooms as ours.But the unsaid things those backs expressed broke out, I remarked, with refreshed virulence in the various organs of the various sections of the party next week.
I talked, I rememher, with Dr.Tumpany, a large young man in a still larger professional frock-coat, and with a great shock of very fair hair, who was candidate for some North Country constituency.We discussed the political outlook, and, like so many Socialists at that time, he was full of vague threatenings against the Liberal party.I was struck by a thing in him that I had already observed less vividly in many others of these Socialist leaders, and which gave me at last a clue to the whole business.He behaved exactly like a man in possession of valuable patent rights, who wants to be dealt with.He had an air of having a corner in ideas.Then it flashed into my head that the whole Socialist movement was an attempted corner in ideas....
8
Late that night I found myself alone with Margaret amid the debris of the gathering.
I sat before the fire, hands in pockets, and Margaret, looking white and weary, came and leant upon the mantel.
"Oh, Lord!" said Margaret.
I agreed.Then I resumed my meditation.
"Ideas," I said, "count for more than I thought in the world."Margaret regarded me with that neutral expression behind which she was accustomed to wait for clues.
"When you think of the height and depth and importance and wisdom of the Socialist ideas, and see the men who are running them," Iexplained...."A big system of ideas like Socialism grows up out of the obvious common sense of our present conditions.It's as impersonal as science.All these men--They've given nothing to it.
They're just people who have pegged out claims upon a big intellectual No-Man's-Land--and don't feel quite sure of the law.
There's a sort of quarrelsome uneasiness....If we professed Socialism do you think they'd welcome us? Not a man of them!
They'd feel it was burglary...."
