He was, I knew, a deep, thinly-covered tank of resentments and quite irrational moral rages.Yet withal I would have to resist an impulse to go over to him and nudge him and say to him, "Look here! What indeed do you think we are doing with the nation and the empire and mankind? You know--MANKIND!"I wonder what reply I should have got.
So far as any average could be struck and so far as any backbone could be located, it seemed to me that this silent, shy, replete, sub-angry, middle-class sentimentalist was in his endless species and varieties and dialects the backbone of our party.So far as Icould be considered as representing anything in the House, Ipretended to sit for the elements of HIM....
7
For a time I turned towards the Socialists.They at least had an air of coherent intentions.At that time Socialism had come into politics again after a period of depression and obscurity, with a tremendous ECLAT.There was visibly a following of Socialist members to Chris Robinson; mysteriously uncommunicative gentlemen in soft felt hats and short coats and square-toed boots who replied to casual advances a little surprisingly in rich North Country dialects.Members became aware of a "seagreen incorruptible," as Colonel Marlow put it to me, speaking on the Address, a slender twisted figure supporting itself on a stick and speaking with a fire that was altogether revolutionary.This was Philip Snowden, the member for Blackburn.They had come in nearly forty strong altogether, and with an air of presently meaning to come in much stronger.They were only one aspect of what seemed at that time a big national movement.Socialist societies, we gathered, were springing up all over the country, and every one was inquiring about Socialism and discussing Socialism.It had taken the Universities with particular force, and any youngster with the slightest intellectual pretension was either actively for or brilliantly against.For a time our Young Liberal group was ostentatiously sympathetic....
When I think of the Socialists there comes a vivid memory of certain evening gatherings at our house....
These gatherings had been organised by Margaret as the outcome of a discussion at the Baileys'.Altiora had been very emphatic and uncharitable upon the futility of the Socialist movement.It seemed that even the leaders fought shy of dinner-parties.
"They never meet each other," said Altiora, "much less people on the other side.How can they begin to understand politics until they do that?""Most of them have totally unpresentable wives," said Altiora, "totally!" and quoted instances, "and they WILL bring them.Or they won't come! Some of the poor creatures have scarcely learnt their table manners.They just make holes in the talk...."I thought there was a great deal of truth beneath Altiora's outburst.The presentation of the Socialist case seemed very greatly crippled by the want of a common intimacy in its leaders;the want of intimacy didn't at first appear to be more than an accident, and our talk led to Margaret's attempt to get acquaintance and easy intercourse afoot among them and between them and the Young Liberals of our group.She gave a series of weekly dinners, planned, I think, a little too accurately upon Altiora's model, and after each we had as catholic a reception as we could contrive.
Our receptions were indeed, I should think, about as catholic as receptions could be.Margaret found herself with a weekly houseful of insoluble problems in intercourse.One did one's best, but one got a nightmare feeling as the evening wore on.
It was one of the few unanimities of these parties that every one should be a little odd in appearance, funny about the hair or the tie or the shoes or more generally, and that bursts of violent aggression should alternate with an attitude entirely defensive.Anumber of our guests had an air of waiting for a clue that never came, and stood and sat about silently, mildly amused but not a bit surprised that we did not discover their distinctive Open-Sesames.
There was a sprinkling of manifest seers and prophetesses in shapeless garments, far too many, I thought, for really easy social intercourse, and any conversation at any moment was liable to become oracular.One was in a state of tension from first to last; the most innocent remark seemed capable of exploding resentment, and replies came out at the most unexpected angles.We Young Liberals went about puzzled but polite to the gathering we had evoked.The Young Liberals' tradition is on the whole wonderfully discreet, superfluous steam is let out far away from home in the Balkans or Africa, and the neat, stiff figures of the Cramptons, Bunting Harblow, and Lewis, either in extremely well-cut morning coats indicative of the House, or in what is sometimes written of as "faultless evening dress," stood about on those evenings, they and their very quietly and simply and expensively dressed little wives, like a datum line amidst lakes and mountains.
