Noble in Reason (23 page)

“But then you don't think much of anyone in Hudley, do you, Chris?” said John quickly.

I took this as his comment on
Modern Instances,
and that I was right was shown by his next remark.

“Edie's trying to read it now,” said John in a grim tone.

My first novel was financially a devastating failure, the second even worse. I was able to buy a typewriter from the proceeds of
Modern Instances,
and with a small supplement from my Hilbert salary, a gas fire—I had now moved into a larger bedroom—from
Not in Entire Forgetfulness,
but that was all. I considered this failure to appreciate me on the part of the general public an honourable tribute to the original and penetrating quality of my work, but my family took other views.

“I don't see much good in going on with it, really,” said my father with a considering air, handing the royalty statement of
Not in Entire Forgetfulness
to John.

With an involuntary exclamation of pain I snatched the statement away and turned aside.

“If you take things so hard, you're going to let yourself in
for a lot of disappointment, Chris,” said my father severely.

“Don't be silly, Chris,” said John.

Looking back on my first two novels now, I give them a humorously affectionate but also somewhat painful smile. Promising had they been written by a lad of twenty, for a man of thirty they now appear deplorably immature.

Instead of the ruthless, relentless, powerful attacks on modern industrial society which I believed myself to be writing, I find now a couple of mild little stories—perhaps
feeble
would be a better word—certainly very earnest, but more than a little neurotic and exceedingly jejune. A mixture of my grievances and my undigested reading, they are stilted in style, unsophisticated in outlook, self-pitying in tone. Indeed I remember feeling a resentful discomfort when I read, in Aldous Huxley's
Chrome Yellow
—the Bible of the early 1920's—the scene between the young hero Denis and Mr. Scogan, when poor Denis confesses that he has written a novel.

“My poor Denis!” exclaimed Mr. Scogan. “What about?”

Denis felt rather uncomfortable. “Oh, about the usual things, you know.”

“Of course,” Mr. Scogan groaned. “I'll describe the plot for you. Little Percy, the hero, was never good at games, but he was always clever. . . . He is bowed down with melancholy thought; he carries the whole weight of the universe upon his shoulders. He writes a novel of dazzling brilliance; he dabbles delicately in Amour and disappears, at the end of the book, into the luminous future.”

Poor Denis blushed scarlet at this uncomfortably penetrating diagnosis, and so, I'm afraid, did I, for Mr. Scogan's idea of “the usual things” for a young man's novel of the
1920's was an only too exact description of Denis's work and mine.

Still, it is something to be in tune with the spirit of one's age; and to achieve this harmony at such a distance from the literary centre in place and mental climate as the West Riding then was from literary London, showed a certain sensitivity. My characterization was always rather good, and though my reading was undigested, at least it was wide. My mind had, indeed, been to some extent disciplined by the debunking exercises of the post-war period and by the practice of writing. But how self-deluded I still was at that date!

What I thought of as my lofty self-sacrificing subordination at Hilbert Mills was really a shirking of responsibility, and if there was some genuine humility, and some not altogether ignoble pride, in my refusal to ask the opinions of others on my work, this refusal also sprang partly from a fear and dislike of hearing those opinions. It was a malady of the age, to decry first, for fear others should outstrip you and leave you apparently praising what they decried. I did not exactly decry my work, in which I believed with all my heart, but I shrank with morbid sensitiveness from subjecting it to criticism, lest I should have occasion to do so.

Accordingly I am not at all surprised now by my family's uneasiness and lack of faith about my work. My mother intuitively perceived in advance, my father recognized as it approached, the danger to my future happiness which my writing—of which they saw the present feebleness and not the future promise—constituted. No, when I dip into my early works I am not at all surprised now by my family's alarm and dismay, though at the time I resented it with all the passion at my command.

I must say, however, that I quite admire the persistence of young Chris in the face of so much failure and discouragement. Should I be so dogged in such circumstances now? I wonder.

It was shortly after the publication of my second book that my mother's health began seriously to fail. It is difficult for the layman to discover what lies behind a doctor's carefully guarded-words in these cases, but my father and I gathered that the cause of her illness was not now her customary trouble, but an overstraining of the heart which was its consequence. At all events, for some eighteen months my father and I suffered a protracted ordeal as she slowly but not peacefully declined, for as she really required very little actual nursing, we were not able for some months to secure the services of a trained nurse, for these were scarce and in great demand.

By day she was mild and calm, lying quietly in bed and accepting the ministrations offered her with gentle dignity. John's twins, Muriel and Joyce, proved an unexpected source of strength here. Now in their late teens, addicted to young men and very tired of the local day-school, these girls were florid, hearty, bouncing, not given to shades of feeling and (I thought) thoroughly selfish young women, but they took a good deal of care off our shoulders and those of the cook-generals who passed in rather quick succession through our kitchen at this period. It did not seem to me that the twins felt any personal affection for my mother, but they enjoyed the acts of nursing; with their strong young arms they turned and lifted her easily in bed, and with their strong young legs they ran up and down the Ashroyd stairs all the many times the serving of her meals, medicine, hot-water bottles
and so on demanded. As twins, they naturally did everything as a pair, and it was their great desire to nurse her together through the night; but this my father and I forbade, for my mother's nights were too terrible a spectacle for eyes so young.

At night my mother's mind wandered; she no longer knew who or where she was and would sometimes spring from her bed and, her long dark hair streaming, rush barefooted from her room in anguished uncertainty, seeking for her home. When I, hearing the disturbance, ran to meet her and with an arm about her tried to coax her back to bed, she fixed her eyes, large, luminous, strangely brilliant, upon me in a wildly pathetic gaze, and appeared to listen to my reassurances with wistful incredulity, as if she longed to believe me but could not allow herself to do so.

“I must go home,” she often said in an angry tone. “You mustn't keep me here. The children need me.”

This echo of her past “cures” wrung my heart.

“But you
are
at home, mother,” I assured her. “See! Here's your dressing-table. Here's your new eiderdown. Here's Netta's photograph with her boy.”

“That's what you say. But I don't know who you are at all. You know nothing about it,” replied my mother, glaring at me. “All these strange people about—send them away.” With a vehement gesture she swept her cherished collection of photographs to the floor.

My father with his practical and realistic approach to life seemed unable to understand that my mother was not, as the phrase goes, herself during these wretched nocturnal incidents; he regarded her as fully conscious of her actions, and accordingly scolded her heartily.

“What are you about? Don't talk such nonsense, Ada! Of course you're at home—where else would you be at this time of night? Get back into bed at once!” were sentences
frequently on his lips, uttered testily and with a frowning countenance.

Sometimes indeed these remarks had the right effect. My mother returned to herself and murmuring: “Oh, are you there now, Edward? I didn't see you,” dismissed me to my room with a cheerful admonishment not to stay up so late working. But more often my poor mother recognized the voice of authority she had always obeyed, without recognizing the husband who spoke it; then she climbed back into bed with the air of a chidden child, frightened and dismayed, with hanging head. She lay down in silence, drew up the coverings and meekly closed her eyes. Her timid and apologetic air on these occasions stabbed me to the heart, and I could have struck my father for his heartless and insensitive behaviour, his lack of understanding.

Towards the end of this period my resentment once broke out of control. It was evening; my father had been upstairs to see that my mother was comfortably settled for the night. He returned to the sitting-room looking gloomy.

“She's off again already—we're going to have a bad night, I'm afraid,” said he.

The callous phrasing of this remark, and my father's obvious regret at my mother's condition on his own behalf, revolted me, and I exclaimed in a flare of anger:

“Of course she's upset if you've been scolding her!”

My father stared at me in astonishment. He stood there for a moment as if considering, his head on one side, his pince-nez (askew) and his still-golden beard jutting at opposing angles. Then without a word he turned and left the room. I heard him climb the stairs. In a moment came the murmur of voices, and presently he returned to the sitting-room, looking well-pleased.

This was the first occasion in my life on which I had openly criticized my father. A feeling of triumphant power surged
through my veins as I realized that my words had influenced his actions.

My mother grew worse; day and night nurses were now established; Netta was sent for. Unfortunately Netta could not come, for her son Stephen had chosen this moment to develop a bad bout of bronchitis—he was a delicate child, and often ailed. My mother was not perhaps sufficiently in possession of her senses by the time this news reached us to suffer from it as she would have done earlier, but for my part I was made aware of the tragic difference between those whom we love and those who love us. Stephen's bronchitis meant infinitely more to Netta than her mother's deathbed.

Early one morning my mother died, her husband and two surviving sons being present. The occasion was not without some of those macabre details which I as a young novelist was so determined to put in place of the sentimental conventions previously accepted as proper to the hour. My mother was in a coma; suddenly her loud breathing sank.

“She's nearing the end now, Mr. Jarmayne,” murmured the nurse in my father's ear.

But my father could not accept this stroke of fate. Bending over my mother and taking her hand in his he exclaimed imperiously:

“Ada! Ada!”

Thus recalled from the verge of death my mother opened her eyes and surveyed my father with a smile infinitely ironic. Then snatching her hand from his she threw both arms above her head and in a hardly distinguishable murmur groaned:

“Let me go! Let me go!”

My father, for once abashed, sat back and looked at his dying wife in sad surprise.

“There now!” said the nurse, vexed, as the loud breathing recommenced: “She'll have it all to do again, now.”

It was, indeed, nearly an hour before my mother's breathing again sank and she passed quietly out of life.

I had dreaded the funeral, with its ceremonies which appeared to me so foolish and so trivial, but once the actual moment of committal was over, I found myself almost gay. A weight seemed to have rolled from my shoulders. No longer should I have to watch my mother's ordeal, her unsuccessful attempts to live up to my father's demands from her; no longer should I have to witness her uncomprehending suffering under my father's rebukes, no longer perceive the tragic sadness of her life.

The funeral was over; my father and I returned to Ashroyd; John and his family left us. Netta had not made the journey to Yorkshire, and no relative on my mother's side had appeared.

“Well, here we are alone together, Chris,” said my father, looking at me dubiously across the table. “I don't know how we shall make out together, I'm sure.”

I gave a vague murmur to the effect that I supposed we should manage somehow. The relief from the long wretchedness and sick suspense of the past few months lent a cordiality which surprised me, to my tone.

I did not then understand, as I do now, that my mother's death had removed the object of the original quarrel between my father and myself. No fresh exacerbations of jealousy over my mother could now arise between us, though the original Oedipean jealousy, with its accretions through past years, of course still remained.

Nor did I understand that, though my love and my compassion for my mother were genuine, there was yet a certain selfishness, a certain egoism, in my relief at her death. Not
only was I truly glad that my mother suffered no more; I was also glad that I no longer had the pain of witnessing her sufferings. I no longer had to suffer with her under her own inadequacy and my father's strictures; the spectacle of her sad life no longer existed to cause me grief.

Surely this is always the case with relief at anyone's death, even when the relief is justified by the victim's sufferings; the “happy release” phrase expresses the speaker's (conscious or unconscious) fulfilled wish. The two motives, of sympathy and self-protection, exist side by side.

For me, these two motives united to produce at my mother's, death a very real lightening of the spirit, a loosening of the bonds.

In 1927 a total eclipse of the sun occurred in the early hours of a June morning. This was to be especially clearly visible, the newspapers informed us, from certain regions in the Pennine Chain, and accordingly a very considerable number of the inhabitants of the West Riding planned excursions to suitable points in the relevant hills. I did not at that time drive a car, my financial resources, and in the opinion of my family my nerve, being insufficient. Accordingly I asked John if he planned to go; if so I should be glad to be included in the party. He was as astonished by my suggestion as I was by his refusal; to spend the night out on a hill in order to see a natural phenomenon seemed to him quite idiotic. However, he returned to the subject on the following day with the news that Edie and Anne wanted to see the eclipse and Robert of course was always ready for an outing, while the twins like their father preferred the comfort of their bed. The Hilbert Mills chauffeur had expressed a willingness to drive for the excursion; accordingly if I wished to go, a party of five could be arranged.