Personal Pleasures (16 page)

And now the bath; and now hot water gushing lavishly from a chromium tap into a white porcelain bed, spreading thin and clear, then verdurously bubbling round green and piney bath salts, assuming the tinge of a glasshouse full of ferns, or of tropical forests. Soaked in green light, with two small red ducks bobbing
about me, I lie at ease, frayed nerves relaxed, numbed blood running round again on its appointed, circular mortal race, frozen brain melting, thawing, expanding into a strange exotic efflorescence in this warm pine forest. Bare winter suddenly is changed to spring,

And on old Hiems' thin and icy crown

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds

Is, as in mockery, set.…

Like those Japanese paper flowers which gently unfold and bloom in bowls of water, thoughts and dreams burgeon, the mind puts out boughs and sprigs of blossom and ripe fruits, inebriating and enticing the charmed soul. Music seems to sound: is it that music of the spheres which only (so we are told) the chaste ear hears, or is it some strayed mermaid? Or does the dandled brain itself dream harmony, drowned in warm sweetness like a tropicked ship? The waters lap gently about the almost submerged island; sirens sing, the lotus flower opens, naiads move in rhythm, genius flows like wine, poems, tales and pictures create themselves, swim in heavenly brightness, and dissolve. I am in the Golden Age; in Paradise; in the Fortunate Isles; in the gardens of the Hesperides and of Alcinous; in the floating gardens of Montezuma. I lie in Eden's bower, among odorous gums and balsams, or in a lake that to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned her crystal mirror holds, while universal Pan, knit with the
Graces and the hours in dance, leads on the eternal spring. So, lulled in these flowers with dances and delight, I drowse entranced.

The Emperor Commodus is reported to have had a hot bath seven times a day; and who can blame him? Rich women have bathed themselves in milk, sometimes in the milk of five hundred she-asses at once. But water is better, for milk, if hot, would form a skin. The slimy touch of that white, crinkly skin on one's own … but perhaps the rich women's slaves kept the milk bath in continual motion, so that no skin could form. Fear of skin must have been the shadow that hung over those rich women's baths. The shadow that hangs over mine is the fear of cooler water, dread lest the hot delight running from the taps should grow temperate, tepid, neither hot nor cold, to be spewed out of the mouth. That will be the end: it is already the end: the warm bower cools, its flowers fade, its songs die; the water, which I ruffle and splash to warm it, chills moment by moment.

Still I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing. For I sent the bath towel to the wash this morning, and omitted to put out another. I have no towel.

No, I do not know the names of anyone in this street, these flats, this square. No, I do not know who Mrs. Miller is, or where she lives. This flat is my flat, and quite self-contained; I do not know my neighbours. Pride and self-containment swell me; I keep myself to myself, and wish you to know it. Who and what is this Mrs. Miller, that you should suppose I know of her? Has Mrs. Miller the run of my home, or I of Mrs. Miller's? The savage pride of the cave-dweller surges in me. No, I know nothing about any of the other caves, thank you. Their inhabitants are probably despicably uncivilised, and, for all I know, keep parrots. You will have to find out their names for yourself.

What? Something has happened at Mrs. Miller's? There has been a burglary, a murder, a fire? The police are here, and do not know which door to break down? Alas, it is too late for me to be concerned with that now; you should have told me at once. How can I now conduct you to Mrs. Miller's door and share in the fun? You must ask someone else, and next time you ask me anything, kindly state your reason first.

No, I am afraid I have not read that either. It is good, you say? I am sure you are right. But I have no time for all these novels and things. I cannot imagine how you make time for them. You find they are worth it? They do not
look
good. Not that I see them; but they do not sound good, from the advertisements and reviews. Not that I read advertisements and reviews. I like to keep myself clear from all this second rate stuff. Am I not afraid of missing something good? Well, I feel that the danger of reading something bad outweighs that risk. Yes, as you point out, I contribute to current literature myself. But then I scarcely
read
my own stuff, after all. And the point is, I get money for writing it. If anyone gave me money for reading, that would be another matter.

Yes, I am going off on Monday for a month in the country. You were going to give me some of your review copies, did you say? But now you will sell them instead.… Oh, well …

They have quarrelled? No, I had not heard. I never hear about people's quarrels. And Daphnis and Chloe are to divorce? I had not heard that either. You hear all these news; I do not. No one tells me; I am too busy to inquire. It is better not to know; it avoids embarrassing moments. When I meet people, there is no subject I need to avoid; I can say anything. It is better
so. It would be so tiresome not being able to mention Phyllis to Chloe, or Corydon to Daphnis, just because there are entanglements. After all, is not all life one long entanglement, and is it worth while to inform oneself about every knot? It is so much simpler not to know. And such things are not really interesting. Human beings being what they are, affections, animosities, meetings, partings, intimacies, estrangements, libel actions, occur all the time; to keep
au fait
with them would tax the most alert mind and take all one's time. As for me, I am happiest among my books.

You are going? But I thought you had something to tell me.…

Can you understand wanting to act like that? I must say that I cannot. What I mean is, I am no saint, heaven knows, and I have my faults as much as anyone, but when it comes to things like that, one simply cannot enter into them. For instance, I can lose my temper, and say hasty things, but when it comes to real delight in cruelty, such as Nero's, or Caligula's, or the Nazis', or our ancestors', I simply cannot begin to understand it. Nor wanting to make marks in other people's books. Nor taking books and not returning them. Nor stealing stockings. And all this pornography one hears of. It never comes my way. One hears of books, of films, of postcards, of pictures, but I never see any. No doubt I am very ignorant. Bishops seem
always to contrive to see improper films. They must have an excellent information service; of course, bishops cannot afford to be ignorant. What a time they must have!

But I see you think me a prig. That is the worst of ignorance; people either think you stupid or a prig. Probably both.

This, I presume, is my pass-book, returned by the bank after being made up. I shall not open it; I shall put it away in a drawer as it is. It is one of those many books which are better unread. Am I Pandora, to open an odious box and set cares flying loose to sting me? Why should I depress myself by looking at all those figures, and the ridiculous sum they write in pencil at the end? I suppose they will tell me when they do not care to cash my cheques any more, and until then I shall go on drawing them, and shall not brood. The Bible tells us not to worry, but to take no thought for the morrow. If I were to begin poring over my pass-book (I cannot imagine why my bank should always give it a capital P and B, as if it were so desperately important) I should be paralysed, I could not live at all. Every mouthful would choke me; I could not so much as buy the means of subsistence, such as National Benzole or Shell, without hesitation and pain. While as for a wash and polish for my car, or a shampoo and set for my hair, I should cut them
out altogether. And go nowhere, and see no one. I have anguish enough already at quarter days, what with rent and gas and electricity and telephone and bills, and that insolent income tax twice a year. If I were to read and remember my pass-book, it would be worse still.…

So I do not read it. I walk in trust, hoping that I am still well on the hither side of indigence, and that my estate will prosperously endure. I spend, I consume, I commune with the angels, I live, I turn to rude facts a genteel and well-bred back.

The day will come. My landlord, the Gas Light & Coke Company, the Borough Council Electricity Department, the Controller of the London Telephone Service, the Income Tax Inspector, the very milkman, will all one day receive back from their banks cheques marked R.D. I shall be run down, run out of my estate, finished. However then I may strive after Ignorance, that tranquil maid, I shall not be permitted to dwell with her again. Perhaps, if I were to open and read this sealed book now …

Yet ah! why should I know my fate
,

Since sorrow never comes too late
,

And happiness too swiftly flies?

Thought would deny my paradise

No more! Where ignorance is bliss …

Enough. Return the thing to its drawer.

On a blank page at the beginning of the Supplementary Volume of my Dictionary, I record emendations, corrections, additions, earlier uses of words, as I come on them in reading. Ah, I say, congratulating myself, here Messrs. Murray, Bradley, Craigie and Onions are nearly a century out; here were sailors, travellers and philosophers chattering of sea turtles from the fifteen sixties on, and the Dictionary will not have them before the sixteen-fifties. And how late they are with estancias, iguanas, anthropophagi, maize, cochineal, canoes, troglodytes, cannibals and hammocks. As to aniles, or old wives' tales, they will not let us have this excellent noun at all.

Thus I say to myself, as I enter my words and dates. To amend so great a work gives me pleasure; I feel myself one of its architects; I am Sir James Murray, Dr. Bradley, Sir William Craigie, Dr. Onions, I belong to the Philological Society; I have delusions of grandeur. Had I but world enough and time, I would find earlier uses of all the half million words, I would publish another supplement of my own, I would achieve at last my early ambition to be a lexicographer.

If there is a drawback to this pure pleasure of doing good to a dictionary, I have not yet found it. Except that, naturally, it takes time.

Who would have thought it? I press a switch, and my room is full of the clamour of voices from strange worlds, a thousand fantasies of calling shapes and airy tongues, on sands and shores and desert wildernesses, that may startle well but not astound the virtuous mind.… The coconut harvest is gathered in Malaya; tobacco is planted in Nyasaland, tea in Ceylon, timber hauled in Oregon, ship-loads of daffodils languish on Scilly quays while high seas rage, herds of reindeer trek across Canadian snows, and hearty voices from America strive to greet us above the rushing noises of the severing Atlantic. Or small, flat, twanging voices sound, telling us about Art, about Architecture, about Currency, crossing the “t” in often, dotting the “i” in opposite, speaking of
de
fects, figyures, ideels, currencee, dwelling fondly on those shy syllables in English words which are meant to be seen and not heard, and are only put in to make spelling more difficult. Or Youth prophesies in sad tones that the future will be quite different from the past, Eskimos sit naked in their igloos and spear whales in Hudson's Strait, and the sky parades before us its marching regiments of planets and of stars. Had I time, I should listen to all of it, and know, very soon, everything, even the prices of fat cattle.

Then the music. How delicious to sit at ease and hear, without visible orchestra, this harmony that rains upon the ear. It might be, it very possibly is, that heavenly symphony, that music of the spheres to which Pythagoras used to say that the celestial universe revolved in tune, unheard by practically every man but him, for none but he was pure enough. Plato added sirens to the orchestra, seating one of these on each celestial orb and causing her to sing, so that at the honey-sweet chorus gods and men marvelled. It must certainly be so, said Milton, endorsing this delightful celestial concert, for the spheres would have long since wearied of their rotatory labours, had they not had music to sustain and encourage them. Other poets support this.

The turning vault of heaven formèd was
,

Whose starry wheeles he hath so made to passe
,

As that their movings do a musicke frame
,

And they themselves still daunce unto the same
.

The lark can hear this music, the nightingale too, and so should we, but for our grossness. It is

  
the heavenly tune, which none can hear

Of
human mould with grosse unpurged ear
.

Milton blames Prometheus, who robbed us of our innocence; others have put it down more to the error of our first parents, who are said to have been, until they fell, so tele-visionary and tele-audient that they
could both see and hear the farthest, faintest star. Anyhow, and for whatever cause, we are now too sunk in brutishness to hear these heavenly harmonies. If our souls were pure, chaste, and snow-white, as was formerly that of Pythagoras, then should we hear that lovely rumour of the circling stars; or so they all say.

But what? Do I not hear the very sound? Does it not steal in ravishment upon my ear? What other than the rotating spheres and their melodious sirens can make these unseen harmonies? Have I indeed won the reward of a blameless life and become, like Pythagoras before me (and a few birds), celestially audient, cœlo-tuned? So, indeed, it seems.

So dear to Heav'n is Saintly chastity

That when a soul is found sincerely so
,