Virginia woolf

(1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf is acclaimed as one of the great innovative novelists of the 20 th century. Many of her experimental techniques (such as the use of the stream of consciousness, or interior monologue) have been absorbed into the mainstream of fiction; Her novels have been particularly regarded from the 1970 onwards. She was also a literary critic and journalist of distinction. She was regarded as one of the principal exponents of Modernism and her subsequent major novels “Mrs. Dalloway” (1925), “To the Light house” (1927) and “The Waves” (1931), established her reputation securely.

“Mrs. Dalloway”

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning-fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”— was that it?-“I prefer men to cauliflowers”-was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace – Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished – how strange it was! – a few sayings like this about cabbages.

She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall’s van to pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-very white since he, Laics. There she perched, never seeing hurl, waiting to cross, very upright.

For having lived in Westminster – how many years now? over twenty – one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular bush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical: then the hour, irrevocab­le; The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.

For it was the middle of June. The War was over, except for some one like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy last night eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, with the telegram in her hand, John, her favourite, killed; but it was over; thank Heaven-over. It was June. The King and Queen were at the Palace. And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it; wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would unwind them, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies, whose forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung, the whirling young men, and laughing girls in their transparent muslins who, even now, after dancing all night, were taking their absurd woolly dogs for a run; and even now, at this hour, discreet old dowagers were shooting out in their motor cars on errands of mystery; and the shopkeepers were fidgeting in their Windows with their paste and diamonds, their lovely old sea-green brooches in eightenth-century settings to tempt Americans (but one must economise, not buy things rashly for Elizabeth), and she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it, since her people were courtiers once in the time of the Georges, she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illumi­nate; to give her party. But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling; and who should be coming along with his back against the Government buildings, most appropria­tely, carrying a despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh—the admirable Hugh!

“Good-morning to you, Clarissa!” said Hugh, rather extrava­gantly, for they had known each other as children. “Where are you off to?”

“I love walking in London,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Really, it's better than walking in the country.”

They had just come up-unfortunately-to see doctors. Other people came to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads came "to see doctors." Times without number Clarissa had; visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home. Was Evelyn ill again? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wife had some internal ailment, nothing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dallo­way would quite understand without requiring him to specify. Ah yes, she did of course; what a nuisance; and felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat. Not the right hat for the early morning, was that it? For Hugh always made her feel, as he bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly and assuring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of course he was coming to her party to-night, Evelyn absolutely insisted, only a little late he might be after the party at the Palace to which he had to take one of Jim's boys –she always felt a little skimpy beside Hugh; schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from having known him always, but she did think him a good sort in his own way, though Richard was nearly driven mad by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he had never to this day forgiven her for liking him.

She could remember scene after scene at Bourton-Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber's block. When his old mother wanted him to give up shooting or to take her to Bath he did it, without a word; he was really unselfish, and as for saying, as Peter did, that he had no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman, that was only her dear Peter at his worst; and he could be in­tolerable; he could be impossible; but adorable to walk with on a morning like this.

(June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she. had adored all that.)

For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say?-some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning – indeed they did. But Peter-however beautiful the day might be, and the trees and the grass, and the little girl in pink-Peter never saw a thing of all that. He would put on his spectacles, if she told him to; he would look. It was the state of the world that interested him; Wagner, Pope's poetry, people's characters eternally, and the defects of her own soul. How he scolded her! How they argued! She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said.

So she would still find herself arguing in St. James's Park, still making out that she had been right – and she had too – not to marry him. For in marriage a little licence, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him. (Where was he tills morning, for instance? Some committee, she never asked what.) But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and then the horror of the moment when someone told her at a concert that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India! Never should she forget ail that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her. Never could she understand how he cared. But those Indian v/omen did presumably – silly, pretty, flimsy nincompoops. And she wasted her pity. For he was quite happy, he assured her-perfectly happy, though he had never done a thing that they talked of; his whole life had been a failure. It made her angry still.

She had reached the Park gates. She stood for a moment, looking at the omnibuses in Piccadilly.

Лекция 40

DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE

(1885-1930)

D. H. Lawrence was born in the family of a miner. With the help of a scholarship he attended Nottingham High School for three years but at 15 he was forced to give up his education and became a teacher. His first major novel “Sons and Lovers” is a faithful autobiographical account of those early years.

Lawrence was one of the very first among English writers to be absolutely outspoken on questions of love and sex; he looked upon sex as the chief factor shaping human existence. Lawrence believed that the evils of an unjust and corrupt society could be mitigated if men and women found warmth and happiness in love. The main subjects of his novels are the sufferings brought upon lovers by the clash of then conflicting wills, by the hatred and revolt that sometimes go hand in hand with love.

“Sons and Lovers”.

One evening in the summer Miriam and he went over thy fields by Herod's Farm on their way from the library home. So it was only three miles to Willey Farm. There was a yellow glow over the mowing-grass, and the sorrel-heads burned crimson. Gradual­ly, as they walked along the high land, the gold in the west sank down to red the red to crimson, and then the chill blue crept up against the glow.

They came out upon the high road to Alfreton, which ran white between the darkening fields. There Paul hesitated. It was two miles home for him, one mile forward for Miriam. They both looked up the road that ran in shadow right under the glow of the north-west sky. On the crest of the hill, Selby, with its stark houses and the up-pricked headstocks of the pit, stood in black silhouette small against the sky.

He looked at his watch.

“Nine o’clock!” he said.

The pair stood, loth to part, hugging their books.

“The wood is so lovely now,” she said. “I wanted you to see it.” He followed her slowly across the road to the white gate.

“They grumble so if I’m late,” he said.

“But you’re not doing anything wrong,” she answered impa­tiently.

He followed her across the nibbled pasture in the dusk. There was a coolness in the wood, a scent of leaves, of honeysuckle, and a twilight. The two walked in silence. Night came wonderfully there, among the throng of dark tree-trunks. He looked round, ex­pectant.

She wanted to show him a certain wild-rose bush she had discovered. She knew it was wonderful. And yet, till he had seen it, she felt it had not come into her soul. Only he could make it her own, immortal. She was dissatisfied.

Dew was already on the paths. In the old oak-wood a mist was rising, and he hesitated, wondering whether one whiteness were a strand of fog or only campion-flowers pallid in a cloud.

By the time they came to the pine-trees Miriam was getting very eager and very tense. Her bush might be gone. She might not he able to find it; and she wanted it so much. Almost passionately she wanted to be with him when he stood before the flowers. They were going to have a communion together – something that thrited her, something holy. He was walking beside her in silence. They were very near to each other. She trembled, and ho listened, vaguely anxious.

Coming to the edge of the wood, they saw the sky in front, like mother-of-pearl, and the earth growing dark. Somewhere on the outermost branches of the pine-wood the honeysuckle was streaming scent.

“Where?” he asked.

“Down the middle path,” she murmured, quivering.

When they turned the corner of the path she stood still. In the wide walk between the pines, gazing rather frightened, she could distinguish nothing for some moments; the greying light robbed things of their colour. Then she saw her bush.

“Ah!” she cried, hastening forward.

It was very still. The tree was tall and straggling. It had thrown its briers over a hawthorn-bush, and its long streamers trailed thick, right down to the grass, splashing the darkness everywhere with great spilt stars, pure white. In bosses of ivory and in lance splashed stars the roses gleamed on the darkness of foliage, and stems and grass. Paul and Miriam stood close together, silent, and watched. Point after point the steady roses shone out to then, seeming to kindle something in their souls. The dusk came like smoke around, and still did not put out the roses.

Paul looked into Miriam’s eyes. She was pale and expectant with wonder, her lips wore parted, and her dark eyes lay open to him. His look seemed to travel down into her. Her soul quivered. It was the communion she wanted. He turned aside, as if pained. He turned to the bush.

“They seem as if they walk like butterflies, and shako themselves,” he said.

She looked at her roses. They were white, some incurved and holy, others expanded in an ecstasy. The tree was dark as a shadow. She lifted her hand impulsively to the flowers; she went forward and touched them in worship.

“Let us go,” he said.

There was a cool scent of ivory roses – a white, virgin scent Something made him feel anxious and imprisoned. The two walked in silence.

“Till Sunday,” he said quietly, and left her; and she walked home slowly, feeling her soul satisfied with the holiness of the hight. He stumbled down the path. And as soon as he was out of the wood, in the free open meadow, where he could breathe, ho started to run as fast as he could. It was like a delicious delirium in his veins.

Лекция 41

ALDOUS LEONARD HUXLEY

A. L. Huxley was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the famous professor of Natural History and philosopher, a friend of Darwin. Aldous Huxley studie at Eton; he read English at Oxford. He wrote verses, stories and novels. “Crome Yellow” (1921), a country-house satire earned him a reputation for precocious brilliance and cynicism. “Point after Point” (1928) is a novel where Huxley appears as a keen observer whose stinging criticism lashes out against the rotten-ness of post-war England. Even then his criticism was entirely negative; he never ventured the narrow world of aristocracy, both titled and intellectual. Huxley used the sharp pen of a satirist, seeing through the falseness and hypocrisy of the upper classes and their intelligentsia.

“Crome Yellow”.

“Strange,” said Mrs. Betterton, “strange that a great artist should be such a cynic.” In Burlap’s company she preferred to believe that John Bidlake had meant what he said. Burlap on cynicism was uplifting and Mrs. Betterton liked to be uplifted. Uplifting too on an greatness, not to mention art. “For you must admit,” she added, “he is a great artist.”

Burlap nodded slowly. He did not look directly at Mrs. Betterton, but kept his eyes averted and downcast as though he were address­ing some little personage invisible to everyone but himself, standing to one side of her – his private demon, perhaps; an emanation from himself, a little Doppelganger. He was a man of middle height with a stoop and a rather slouching gait. His hair was dark, thick and curly, with a natural tonsure as big as a medal showing pink on the crown of his head. His grey eyes were very deeply set, his nose and chin pronounced but well shaped, his mouth full-lipped and rather wide. A mixture, according to old Bidlake, who was a caricaturist in words as well as with the pencil, of a movie villain and St. Anthony of Padua by a painter of the baroque, of a cardsharping Lothario and a rapturous devotee.

“Yes, a great artist,” he agreed, “but not of the greatest.” He spoke slowly, ruminatively, as though he were talking to himself. All his conversation was a dialogue with himself or that little Doppelgänger which stood invisibly to one side of the people he was supposed to be talking to; Burlap was unceasingly and exclusively self-conscious. “Not one of the greatest,” he repeated slowly. As it happened, he had just been writing an article about the subject-matter of art for next week’s number of the Literary World. “Pre­cisely because of that cynicism.” Should he quote himself? he wondered.

“How true that is!” Mrs. Betterton’s applause exploded perhaps a little prematurely; her enthusiasm was always on the boil. She clasped her hands together. “How true!” She looked at, Burlap’s averted face and thought it so spiritual, so beautiful in its way.

“How can a cynic be a great artist?” Burlap went on, having, decided that he’d spout his own article at her and take the risk of her recognizing it in print next Thursday. And even if she did re­cognize it, that wouldn’t efface the personal impression he’d made by spouting it. “Though why you want to make an impression,” a mocking devil had put in, “unless it’s because she’s rich and useful, goodness knows!” The devil was pitchforked back to where he came from. “One has responsibilities,” an angel hastily explained. “The lamp mustn’t be hidden under a bushel. One must let it shine, especially on people of good-will.” Mrs. Betterton was on the side of the angels; her loyalty should be confirmed. “A great artist, he went on aloud, “is a man who synthesizes all experience. The cynic sets out by denying half the facts – the fact of the soul, the fact of ideals, the fact of God. And yet we’re aware of spiritual facts just as directly and indubitably as we’re aware of physical facts.”

“Of course, of course!” exclaimed Mrs. Betterton.

“It’s absurd to deny either class of facts.” “Absurd to deny me, said the demon, poking out his head into Burlap’s conscious­ness.

“Absurd!”

“The cynic confines himself to only half the-world of possible experience. Less than half. For there are more spiritual than bodily experiences.”

“Infinitely more!”

“He may handle his limited subject-matter very well, Bidlake, I grant you, does. Extraordinarily well. He has all the sheer ability of the most consummate artists. Or had, at any rate.”

“Had,” Mrs. Betterton sighed. – “When I first knew him.” The implication was that it was her influence that had made him paint so well.

“But he’s always applied his powers to something small. What he synthesizes in his art was limited, comparatively unimportant.”

“That’s what I always told him,” said Mrs. Betterton, reinterpreting those youthful arguments about Pre-Raphaelitism in a new and for her own reputation, favourable light. “Consider Burne-Jones, I used to say.” The memory of John Bidlake’s huge and Rabelaisian laughter reverberated in her cars. “Not that Burne-Jones was a particularly good painter,” she hastened to add. (“He painted,” John Bidlake had said – and how shocked she had boon, how deeply offended! – “as though he had never seen a pair of buttocks in the whole of his life.”) “But his subjects were noble. If you had his dreams, I used to tell John Bidlake, if you had his ideals, you’d be a really great artist.”

Burlap nodded, smiling his agreement. Yes, she’s on the side of the angels, he was thinking; she needs encouraging. The demon winked. There was something in his smile, Mrs. Betterton reflected, that reminded one of a Leonardo or a Sodoma – something mysterious, subtle, inward.

Лекция 42

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

(1856-1950)

G. B. Shaw was born in Dublin Ireland. In 1876 he moved to London and began his literary career by writing music, art, and book criticism for some magazines. In the nineties Shaw turned to the theatre, he was the creator of a new publicist drama. In 1892-1893 the first cycle of his plays named “Plays Unpleasant” Made its appearance. The next cycle, called “Plays Pleasant” appeared during the period of 1894-1897.

Shaw was an indefatigable worker writing over 50 plays. The plays continued to be performed regularly both during and after his lifetime, several were made into films. His unorthodox views, his humour, and his love of paradox have become an institution. B. Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925.

“Plays Pleasant”.

RAINA. (placing her hands on his shoulders as she looks up at him with admiration and worship). My hero! My king!

SERGIUS. My queen! (He kisses her on the forehead.)

RAINA. How I have envied you, Sergius! You have been out in the world, on the field of battle, able to prove yourself there worthy of any woman in the world; whilst I have had to sit at home inac­tive – dreaming – useless – doing nothing that could give me the right to call myself worthy of any man.

SERGIUS. Dearest: all my deeds have been yours. You inspired me. I have gone through the war like a knight in a tournament with his lady looking down at him!

RAINA. And you have never been absent from my thoughts for a moment. (Very solemnly.) Sergius: I think we two have found the higher love. When I think of you, I feel that I could never do a base deed, or think an ignoble thought.

SERGIUS. My lady, and my saint! (He clasps her reverently.)

RAINA. (returning his embrace). My lord and my –

SERGIUS. Sh – sh! Let me be the worshipper, dear. You little know how unworthy even the best man is of a girl's pure passion!

RAINA. I trust you. I love you. You will never disappoint me, Sergius. (Louka is heard singing within the house. They quickly nelease each other.) I cant pretend to talk indifferently before her: my heart is too full. (Louka comes from the house with her tray. She goes to the table, and begins to clear it, with her back turned to them.) I will get my hat; and; then we can go out until lunch time. Wouldnt you like that?

SERGIUS. Be quick. If you are away five minutes, it will seem five hours. (Raina runs to the top of the steps, and turns there to exchange looks with him and wave him a kiss with both hands. He looks after her with emotion for a moment; then turns slowly away, his face radiant with the loftiest exaltation. The movement shifts his field of vision, into the corner of which there now comes the tail of Louka's double apron. His attention is arrested at once. He takes a stealthy look at her, and begins to twirl his moustache mis­chievously, with his left hand akimbo on his hip. Finally, striking the ground with his; heels in something of a cavalry swagger, he strolls over to the other side of the table, opposite her, ana says) Louka: do you know what the higher love is?

LOUKA (astonished). No, sir.

SERGIUS. Very fatiguing thing to keep up for any length of time, Louka. One feels the need of some relief after it.

LOUKA. (innocently). Perhaps you would like some coffee sir (She stretches her hand across the table for the coffee pot.)

SERGIUS. (taking her hand). Thank you, Louka.

LOUKA. (pretending to pull). Oh, sir, you know I didnt meare that. I'm surprised at you!

SERGIUS. (coming clear of the table and drawing her with him). I am surprised at myself, Louka. What would Sergius, the hero of Slivnitza, say if he saw me now? What would Sergius, the apostle of the higher love, say if he saw me now? What would the half dozen Sergiuses who keep popping in and out of this handsome figure of mine say if they caught us here? (Letting go her hand and Slipping his arm dexterously round her waist.) Do you consider my figure handsome, Louka?

LOUKA. Let me go, sir. I shall be disgraced. (She struggles: he holds her inexorably.) Oh, will you let go?

SERGIUS. (looking straight into her eyes). No.

LOUKA. Then stand back where we cant be seen. Have you no common sense?

SERGIUS. Ah! thats reasonable. (He takes her into the stable-yard gateway, where they are hidden from the house.)

LOUKA. (plaintively). I may have been seen from the windows; Miss Raina is sure to be spying about after you.

SERGIUS. (stung – letting her go). Take care, Louka. I may be worthless enough to betray the higher love; but do not you insult it.

LOUKA. (demurely). Not for the world, sir, I'm sure. May I go on with my work, please, now?

SERGIUS. (again putting his arm round her). You are a pro­voking little witch, Lonka. If you were in love with me, would you spy out of windows on me?

LOUKA. Well, you see, sir, since you say you are half a dozen different gentlemen, all at once, I should have a great deal to look after.

SERGIUS. (charmed). Witty as well as pretty. (He tries to kiss: her.)

LOUKA. (avoiding him). No: I dont want your kisses. Gentle­folk are all alike: you making love to me behind Miss Raina's back; and she doing the same behind yours.

SERGIUS. (recoiling a step). Louka!

LOUKA. It shews how little you really care.

SERGIUS. (dropping his familiarity, and speaking with freezing politeness). If our conversation is to continue, Louka, you will please remember that a gentleman does not discuss the conduct of the lady he is engaged to with her maid.

LOUKA. It's so hard to know what a gentleman considers right. I thought from your trying to kiss me that you had given up being, so particular.

“Mrs. Warren’s Profession”.

MRS. WARREN. My own opinions and my own way of life! Listen to her talking! Do you think I was brought up like you – able to pick and choose my own way of life? Do you thank I did what I did because I liked it, or thought it right, or wouldnt rather have gone to college and been a lady if I'd had the chance?

VIVIE. Everybody has some choice, mother. The poorest girl alive (may not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal of Newnham; but she lean choose between ragpicking and flowerselling, according to her taste. People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I dont believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they cant find them, make them.

MRS. WARREN. Oh, it's easy to talk, very easy, isnt it? Here! – would you like to know what my circumstances were?

VIVIE. Yes: you had better tell me. Wont you sit down?

MRS. WARREN. Oh, I'll sit down: dont you be afraid. [She plants her chair farther forward with brazen, energy, and sits down. Vivie is impressed in spite of herself] D'you know what your gran'mother was?

VIVIE. No.

MRS. WARREN. No, you dont. I do. She called herself a widow and had a fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both good-looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well-fed man: mother pre­tended he was a gentleman; but I dont know. The other two were only half sisters – undersized, ugly, starved looking, hard working, honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if mother hadnt half-murdered' u s to keep our hands off them. They were the respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I'll tell you. One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day for nine shil­lings a week until she died of lead poisoning. Slhe only expect­ed to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week – until he took to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasn't it?

VIVIE. [now thoughtfully attentive] Did you and your sister think so?

MRS. WARREN. Liz didnt, I can tell you: she had more spirit. We both went to a church school – that was part of the 1adylike airs we gave ourselves to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere – and we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back. I know the schoolmistress thought I'd soon follow her example; for (the clergy­man was always warning me that Lizzie'd end by jumping off Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knew about it! But I was more afraid of the whitelead factory than I was of the river; and so would you have, been in my place. That clergyman got me a situation as scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for anything you liked. Then I was waitress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloo station - four­teen hours a day serving drinks and washing glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That was considered a great promotion for me. Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereigns in her purse.

VIVIE [grimly] My aunt Lizzie!

MRS. WARREN. Yes; and a very good aunt to have, too. She's living down at Winchester now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable ladies there, chaperones girls at the county ball, if you please. No river for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a first-rate business woman – saved money from the beginning – never let herself look too like what she was – never lost her head or throw away a chance. When she saw I'd grown up good looking she said to me across the bar "What are you doing there, you little fool? wearing out your health and your appearance for other people's profit!" Liz was saving money then to take a house for herself in Brussels; and she thought we two could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into business with her as her partner. Why shouldnit I have done it? The house in Brussels was real high class – a much better place for a woman to 'be in than the factory where Arine Jane got poisoned. None of our girls were ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place, or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?

VIVIE. [intensely interested by this time] No; but why did you choose that business? Saving money and good management will succeed in any business.

MRS. WARREN. Yes, saving money. But where can a woman get the money to save in any other business? Could you save out of four shillings a week and keep yourself dressed as well? Not you. Of course, if youre a plain woman and cant earn anything more; or if you have a turn. for music, or the stage, or newspaper-writing: thats different. But neither Liz nor I had any turn for such things: all we had was our appearance and our turn for pleasine men. Do you think we were such fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us as shopgirls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? Not likely.

VIVIE [more and more deeply moved] Mother: suppose we were both as poor as you were in those wretched old days, are you quite sure that you woulidnt advise me to try the Waterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even go into the factory?

MRS. WARREN [indignantly] Of course not. What sort of mother do you take me for! How could you keep your self-respect in such starvation and slavery? And what’s a woman worth without self-respect! Why am I independent and able to give my daughter a first-rate education, when other women that had just as good opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect myself and control myself. Why is, Liz looked up to in a cathedral town? The same reason. Where would we be now if wed minded the clergyman's foolishness? Scrubbing floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. Dont you be led astray by people who dont know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her. If she's in his own station of life, let her make him marry her; but if she's far beneath him she cant expect it – why should she? It wouldnt be for her own happiness. Ask any lady in London society that has daughters; and she'll tell you the same, except that I tell you straight and she'll tell you crooked.That's all the difference.

VIVIE. [fascinated, gazing at her] My dear mother: you are a wonderful woman – you are stronger than all England. And are you really and truly not one wee bit doubtfu1 – or – or – ashamed?

MRS. WARREN. Well, of course, dearie, it's only good manners to be ashamed of it: it's expected from a woman. Women have to pretend to feel a great deal that they don’t feel. Liz used to be angry with me for plumping out the truth about it. She used to say that when every woman could learn enough from what was going on in the world before her eyes, there was no need to talk about it to her. But then Liz was such a perfect lady!

Лекция 43

HERBERT GEORGE WELLS

(1866-1946)

H. G. Wells was born in Bromley, Kent. He was apprenticed to a draper in early life, then became assistant teacher, studying by night and winning a scholarship in 1884 to the Normal School of Science.

His literary output was vast and extremely varied. As a novelist he is best remembered for his scientific romances, among the earliest products of the new genre of science fiction. His novels combine, in varying degrees, political satire, warnings about the dangerous new powers of science, and a desire to foresee a possible future of science.

The novels clothe the writer’s scientific and sociological speculations in the form of entertaining fiction.

The Invisible Man

***

Mr. Hall marched up the steps, marched straight to the door of the parlour and foundit open. "Constable," he said,; "do your duty.".

Jaffers marched 'in, Hall next, Wadgers last. They saw in the dim light, the headless figure facing them, with a gnawed crust of bread in one gloved hand and a chunk of cheese in the other.

"That's him," said Hall.

"What the devil's.. this?" came in a tone of angry ex­postulation from above the collar of the figure.

"You're a darmed rum customer, mister," ''said Mr. Jaffers. "But 'ed or. ho 'ed, the warrant says 'body, and, duty's duty ——".

"Keep off!" said the figure, starting back..

Abruptly he whipped down the bread and 'cheese, and Mr. Hall just grasped the knife on the table in time to save it. Off came the stranger's left glove, and was slapped in Jaffers face. In another moment Jaffers, cutting short some statement concerning a warrant, had gripped him by the handless wrist, "and caught his invisible throat. He got a sounding kick on the shin that made him shout, but he kept his grip. Hall sent the knife sliding along the table to Wadgers, who acted as goal­keeper for the offensive, so to speak, and then stepped forward as Jaffers and the stranger swayed and stagger. Towards him, clutching and hitting in. A chair stood in the way, and went aside with a crash as they came down together.

"Get the feet," said Jaffers between his teeth.

Mr. Hall, endeavouring to act on instructions, re­ceived a sounding kick in the ribs that disposed of him for a moment; and Mr. Wadgers, seeing the decapitated stranger had rolled over and got the upper side of Jaf-fers, retreated towards the door, knife in hand, and so collided with Mr. Huxter and the Sidderbridge carter coming to the rescue of law and order. At the same moment down came three or four bottles from the chiffonier and shot a web of pungency²⁰ into the air of the room.

"I'll surrender," cried the stranger, though he had Jaffers down, and in another moment he. stood up panting, a strange figure, headless and handless—for he had pulled off his right glove now as well as his left. "I no good," he said, as if sobbing for breath.

It was the strangest thing in the world to hear that voice coming as if out of empty space, but the Sussex peasants are perhaps the most matter-of-fact people under the sun. Jaffers got up also, and produced a pair of hand­cuffs. Then he stared. ^:

“I say!" said Jaffers, brought up short²¹ by a dim realisation of the incongruity of the whole business. "Darm it! Can't use 'em as I can see.”

The stranger ran his arm down his waistcoat, and, as if by a miracle, the buttons to which his empty sleeve. pointed became undone. Then he said something about his shin, and stooped down. He seemed to be fumbling with his shoes and socks.

"Why!" said Huxter suddenly, "that's not a man at all. It's just empty clothes. Look! You can see down his collar and the linings of his clothes. I could put my arm——“

He extended his hand; it seemed to meet something 'in mid-air, and he drew it back with a sharp exclamation. "I wish you'd keep your fingers out of my eye," said the serial voice²² in a tone of savage expostulation. "The fact is, 'I'm ail here—head, hands, legs and all the rest of it, all but it happens I'm invisible. It's a confounded nuisance, but 1 am. That's no reason why I should be poked to pieces by every stupid bumpkin in Iping, is it?"

The suit of clothes, now all unbuttoned and hanging loosely upon its unseen supports, stood up, arms akimbo.

Several other of the men-folk had now entered the room, so that it was closely crowded. "Invisible, eh?" said Huxter, ignoring the stranger's abuse. "Who ever heard the likes of that?" .

"It's strange, perhaps, but it's not a crime. Why am I assaulted by a policeman in this fashion——" .

"Ah! that's a different matter," said Jaffers. "No doubt you are a bit difficult to see in this light, but I got a war­rant and it's all correct. What I'm after ain't no invisi­bility, it's burglary. There's a house been broke into, and money took.."

"Well?"

"And circumstances certainly point——"

"Stuff and nonsense!" said the Invisible Man.

"I hope so, sir. But I've got my instructions——"

"Well," said the stranger, "I'll come. I'll come. But no handcuffs."

"It's the regular thing," said Jaffers.

"No handcuffs," stipulated the stranger.

"Pardon me," said Jaffers.

Abruptly the figure sat down, and before any one could realise what was being done, the slippers, socks, and trousers had been kicked off under the table. Then he sprang up again and flung off his coat.

"Here, stop that," said Jaffers, suddenly realising what was happening. He gripped the waistcoat, it struggled, and the shirt slipped out of it and left it limp and empty in his hand. "Hold him!" said Jaffers loudly. "Once he gets the things off——"

"Hold him!" cried every one, and there was a rush at the fluttering white shirt, which was now all that was visible of the stranger.

The shirt sleeve planted a shrewd blow in Hall's face that stopped his open-armed advance and sent him back­ward into old Toothsome, the sexton, and in another moment the garment was lifted up, and became convulsed and vacantly flapping about the arms, even as a shirt that is being thrust off over a man's head. Jaffers clutched at it, and only helped to pull it off. He was struck in. the mouth out of the air, and incontinently drew his trun­cheon and smote Teddy Henfrey savagely upon the crown of his head.

"Look out!" said everybody, fencing at random and hitting at nothing. "Hold him! Shut the door! Don't let him loose. I got something! Here he is!" A perfect Ba­bel of noises they made. Everybody, it seemed, was being .hit all at once, and Sandy Wadgers, knowing as ever, and his wits sharpened by a frightful blow on the nose, reopened the door and led the rout. The others, follow­ing incontinently, were jammed for a moment in !he cor­ner by the doorway. The hitting continued. Phipps, the Unitarian, had a front tooth broken, and Henfrey was injured in the cartilage of his ear. Jaffers was struck un­der the jaw, and, turning, caught at something that in­tervened between him and Huxter in the melee and prevented their coming together. He felt a muscular chest, and in mother moment the whole mass of struggling, ex­cited men shot out into the crowded hall.

"I got him!" shouted Jailers, clicking and reeling through them all, and wrestling with purple face and swelling veins against his unseen enemy.

Men staggered right and left as the extraordinary conflict swayed swiftly towards the house door and went spin­ning down the half dozen steps of the inn. Jaffers cried in a strangled voice, holding tight nevertheless, and making play with his knee, spun round and fell heavily undermost with his head on the gravel. Only then did his fingers relax.

There were excited cries of "Hold him!" "Invisible!" and so forth, and a young fellow, a stranger .in the place, whose name did not come to light, rushed in at once, caught something, missed his hold, and fell over the con­stable's prostrate body. Half-way across the road a wom­an screamed as something pushed by her, a dog, kicked apparently, yelped and ran howling into Huxter's yard, and with that the transit of the Invisible Man was accom­plished. For a space people stood amazed and gesticulat­ing, and then came panic, and scattered them abroad²³ through the village as a gust scatters dead leaves. But Jaffers lay quite still, face and knees upward bent, at the foot of the steps of the inn.

Лекция 44

JOHN GALSWORTHY

(1867-1933)

John Galsworthy was born in a well-to-do bourgeois family. He studied law at Oxford but gave up his practice a year after his graduation and took to literary work. In his works he exhibited a profound Knowledge of the spirit and the details of his country’s life. Galsworthy’s views on the development of society were conservative. But being a great artist he gave a comprehensive and vivid picture of contemporary England in his books Galsworthy’s works reveal the authors great knowledge of the man’s inner world. The variety of human passions is drawn by him with intensity and psychological depth.

“The Man of Property” was a landmark in the development of Galsworthy’s art.

***

The happy pair .me seated, not opposite each other, but rectan-gularly, at the handsome rosewood table; they dined without a cloth — a distinguishing elegance — and so far had not spoken a word.

Soames liked to talk during dinner about business, or what he had been buying, and so long as he talked Irene's silence did not distress) him. This evening he had found it impossible to talk. .The decision to build had been weighing on his mind all the week, and he bad made up his mind to tell her.

His nervousness about this disclosure irritated him profoundly; she had no business to make him feel like that — a wife and a hus-hand:» being one person. She had not looked at him once since they sat down; and he wondered what on earth she had been thinking-about a11 the time. It v/as hard, when a man worked as he did, mak­ing money for her — yes, and with an ache in his heart — that she should sit there, looking—looking as if she saw the walls of the room closing in. It was enough to make a man get up and leave the table.

The light from the rose-shaded lamp fell on her neck and arms — Soames liked her to dine in a low dress, it gave him an inexpressible feeling of superiority to the majority of his acquaintance, whose wives were contented with their best high frocks or with tea-gowns, when they dined at borne. Under that rosy light her amber-coloured hair and fair skin made strange contrast with her dark brown eyes.

Could a man own anything prettier than this dining-table with its deep tints, the starry, soft-petalled roses, the ruby- coloured glass 5 and quaint silver furnishing; could a man own anything prettier than the woman who satat it? Gratitude was no virtue among.

Forsytes, who, competitive, and full of common-sense, had occasion for it; and Soames only experienced a sense of exasperation amounting to pain, that he did not own her as it was his right o own her, that he could not, as by stretching out his hand to that rose, pluck her and sniff the very secrets of her heart.

Out of his property, out of all the things he had collected, his silver, his pictures, his houses, his investments, he got a secret and intimate fooling; out of her he got none.

In this house of his there v»as writing on every wall.² His business-like temperament protested against a mysterious warning that she was not made for him. He had married this woman, conquered her, made her his own, and it seemed to him contrary to the most ." fundamental of all laws, the law of possession, that he could do no ' more than own her body — if indeed he could do that, which he was beginning to doubt. If anyone had asked him if he wanted to own " her soul, the question would have seemed to him both ridiculous '' and sentimental. But he did so want, and the writing said he never- would.

She was ever silent, passive, gracefully averse; as though terri- fied lest by word, motion, or sign she might lead him to believe lhai, she was fond of him; and he asked himself: Must I always go on like this?

Like most novel readers of his generation - (and Soames was great novel reader), literature coloured his view of life; and had imbibed the belief that it was only a question of time. In. the en5 the husband always gained the affection of his wife. Even in those cases — a class of book he was not very fond of —which ended in tragedy, the wife always died with poignant regrets on her lips, or if in were the husband who died—unpleasant thought-threw herself on his body in an agony of remorse.

He often took Irene to the theatre, instinctively lively choosing the modern Society plays with the modern Society conjugal problem, so fortunately different, from any conjugal problem in real life. He found that they too always ended in the same way, oven when there was a lover in the case. While lie was watching the play Soames often sympathized with the lover; but before lie reached home again driving with Irene in a hansom, he saw that, 'his would not do, and he was glad the play had ended as it had. There was obo class of husband that had just then come into fashion, the strong, rather cough but extremely sound man, who was peculiarly successful at the end of the play; with this person Soames was really not in sym­pathy, and had it not been for his own position, would have expressed his disgust with the fellow. But he was so conscious of, (how vital to himself was the necessity for being a successful, even a “strong”, husband, that he never spoke of a distaste born perhaps by the perverse processes of Nature out of a secret fund of brutality in himself.

But Irene’s silence .this evening was exceptional. He had never .before seen such an expression on her face. And since it is always the unusual which alarms, Soames was alarmed. He ate his sa­voury, and hurried the- maid as she swept off the crumbs with the Silver sweeper. When she had left the room, he filled his glass with me and said:

"Anybody been here this afternoon?"

"June."

“What did she want?” It was an axiom with the; Forsytes that people did not go anywhere unless they wanted something. "Came to talk about her lover, I suppose?"

Irene made no reply.

"It looks to me," continued Soames, "as if she were sweeter, on if than he is on her. She's always following him about."

Irene's eyes made him feel uncomfortable.

"You've no business to say such a thing!" she exclaimed.

"Why not? Anybody can see it."

"'They cannot. And if they could, it's disgraceful to say so."

Soames composure gave way.

''Yo’re a pretty wife!" he said. But secretly he wondered at the heat of her reply; it was unlike her. "You're cracked ² about June! I can tell you one thing: now that she has the Buccaneer ³ in tow, ⁴ she doesn't care two pence about you and you'll find it out. But you won't see so much of her in future; we're going to live in the country."

Лекция 45

WILLIAM SOMERSET MAUGHAM

(1874-1965)

W. S. Maugham was educated at King’s School, Canterbury, and St. Thomas Hospital, London, where he qualified as a doctor. He did not practice, however, but became a written and proved very successful as a playwright, a novelist, and a short story writer. His travels in the Far East and in the South Seas provided him with much of the material for his stories. His best – known novel is a thinly – disguised autobiography “Of Human Bondage” (1915) which describes Philip Carey’s lonely boyhood and his subsequent adventures.

***

Philip took up his hat and went to see the patient. It was hard upon eight o'clock when he came back. Doctor South was standing in the dining-room with his back to the fireplace.

"You've been a long time," he said.

"I'm sorry. Why didn't you start dinner?"

"Because I chose to wait. Have you been all this while at Mrs. Fletcher's?"

"No, I'm afraid I haven't. I stopped to look at the sunset on my way back, and I didn't think of the time."

Doctor South did not reply, and the servant brought in some grilled sprats. Philip ate them with an excellent appetite. Suddenly Doctor South shot a question at him. "Why did you look at the sunset?"

Philip answered with his mouth full:

"Because I was happy."

Doctor South gave him an odd look, and the shadow of a smile flickered across his old, tired face. They ate the rest of the dinner in silence; but when the maid had given them the port and left the room, the old man leaned back and fixed his sharp eyes on Philip.

"It stung you' up a bit when I spoke of your game - leg, young fellow?" he said.

"People always do, directly or indirectly, when they get angry with me."

"I suppose they know it's your weak point."

Philip faced him and looked at him steadily.

"Are you very glad to have discovered it?"

The doctor did not answer, but he gave a chuckle of bitter mirth. They sat for a while staring at one another. The Doctor South surprised Philip extremely. “ Why don’t you stay here and I’ll get rid of that

"It 's very of kind you, but I hope to get an appointment at the hospital It'll help me so much in getting other work later. .

"I'm offering a partnership," said Doctor South grumpily.

“Why?” asked Philip with surprise.” They think that was a fact which n your approval," Philip said drily.

"D'y; i suppose that after forty yecii twopenny damn whether people prefer my assistant . me" Io, my .friend. There's no sentiment between n y patients and me. I Jon't expect gratitude from them, I expect them to pay my fees. Well, what d’you say to it? Philip made no reply, not because he wёas thinking the &ut because he was astonished. It was evide; every musual for someone to offer a part rship to a nev'iy qualified man; and he realised with wonder that, although Othin would induce him t'say so, Doctor South h-id taken a xanu to hun. He ihought how amusad the secretary at St. .T-.uka's would be when he told him. "The practice brings in about seven hundrfca a -ear. can reckon out, how much your share would c-")', ana you pay me off by degrees. And when I die n succaec me. I think that's better than .noc¹ about Hospi­tals for two or three years, and then taking sis Unt Ehip;. until y can afford to set irp ipr your.-elf.".

Ph;i. J-Jiev. it was a.chanca that mos;. pr his profcju;Ti'p' dl; the prcfesaiar' -w, be men he. kueiv woulid be thar 'dsat d comfcci.enf\ - .

I'-i; .rvfully so^ry, bu!: T ca'i: F'iic*. Hi. irii-dup evervthing I've aimed at r 93 Tp oae wd» anothsr I've had a rcughish time. but J. iay? had that h.Jpe before ni.?, to gci qualifie-J $& tha⁴ ). migh'¹ Ui, -now, when T wake in the morRing, rry bones ^I;vnp'^!y a'';h.get u don't rnind wher' "a; Ueularly, but never been goal sfa;ed vc n He WiJulc" ? appointment at St. Lukes b, ih midaje ing year, and then he would go to Spain; he could afford to-spend several months there, rambling up and down the land which stood to him for romance; after that he would get a ship and go to the East. Life was before him and time of no account. ⁸⁴ He could wander, for years if he chose, in unfrequented places, amid strange peoples, where life was led in strange ways. He did not know what he sought or what his journeys would bring him; but he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain some clue to the mystery that he had solved only. to find more mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed at his heart. But Doctor South was showing him a great kindness, and it seemed-ungrateful to refuse his offer for no adequate reason; so in his shy way, trying to appear as matter of fact as possible, he made some attempt to explain why it was so important to him to carry out the plans he had cherished so passionately.

Doctor South listened quietly, and a gentle look came into his shrewd old eyes. It seemed to Philip an added kindness that he did not press him to accept his offer. Benevolence is often very peremptory. He appeared to look upon Philip's reasons as sound. Dropping the subject, he began to talk of his own youth; he had been in the Royal Navy, and it was his long connection with the sea that, when he retired, had made him settle at Farnley. He told Philip of old days in the Pacific and of wild adventures in China. He had taken part in an expedition against the head-hunters of Borneo and had known Samoa when it was still an independent state. He had touched at coral islands. Philip listened to him entranced. Little by little he told Philip about himself. Doctor South was a widower, his wife had died thirty years before, and his daughter had married a farmer in Rhodesia; he had quarrelled with him, and she had not come to England for ten years. It was just as if he had never had wife or child. He was very lonely. His gruffness was little more than a protection which he wore to hide a complete disillusion­ment; and to Philip it seemed tragic to see him just wait­ing for death, not impatiently, but rather with loathing for it, hating old age and unable to resign himself to its limi­tations, and yet with the feeling that death was the only solution of the bitterness of his life. Philip crossed his path, .and the natural affection which long separation from his daughter had killed — she had taken her husband's part in the quarrel and her children he had never seen — settled itself upon Philip. At first it made him angry, he told himself it was a sign of dotage; but there was something in Philip ; that attracted him, and he found himself smiling at him he knew not why. Philip did not bore him. Once or twice he put his hand on his shoulder: it was as near a caress as he had got since his daughter left England so many years before. When the time came for Philip to go Doctor South accompanied him to the station: he found himself unac­countably depressed.

"I've had a ripping time here," said Philip. "You've been awfully kind to me."

"I suppose you're very glad to go?"

"I've enjoyed myself here."

"But you want to get out into the world? Ah, you have youth." He hesitated a moment. "I want you to remember that if you change your mind my offer still stands."

"That's awfully kind of you."

Philip shook hands with him out of the carriage window, and the train steamed out of the station. Philip thought of the fortnight he was going to spend in the hop-field: he was happy at the idea of seeing his friends again, and he rejoiced because the day was fine. But Doctor South walked slowly back to his empty house. He felt very old and very lonely.

Лекция 46

RICHARD ALDINGLON

(1892-1962)

R. Aldington was educated at University College London. He began his literary career as a poet; in later years he devoted himself more to prose and produced several successful novels. His first novel “Death of a Hero” (1920) was based on his own war experiences. It relates the life and death of George Winterbourne, killed in action in 1918. The book is dedicated to so called lost generation and contains a passionate protest both against war and against the rotten order of things in his own country. It displays a vast canvas of English intellectual and social life before and during World War I. the form and method of the book are extremely variegated: naturalistic scenes alternate with pages of expressive word painting.

Death of a Hero

They had crossed the road outside Bushey Park ' and entered the palace gates. Between the wall which backs the Long Border, the Tudor side of the palace, and another long high wall, is the Wil­derness, or old English garden, composed on the grandiose scale advocated by Bacon. It is both a garden and a "wilderness", in the sense that il is planted with innumerable bulbs (which are thinned and renewed from time to time), but otherwise allowed to run wild. George and Elizabeth stopped with that sudden ecstasy of delight felt by the sensitive young — a few of them — at the sight of lovelines. Great secular trees, better protected than those in the outer Park, held up vast fans of glittering green-and-gold foliage which trembled in the light wind and formed moving patterns on the tender blue sky. The lilacs had just unfolded their pale hearts, showing the slim stalk of closed buds which would break open later in a foam of white and blue blossoms. Underfoot was the stouter green of wild plants, spread out like an evening sky of verdure for the thick-clustered constellations of flowers. There shone the soft, slim yellow trumpet of the wild daffodil; the daffodil which has a pointed ruff of white petals to display its gold head; and the more opulent double daffodil which, compared with the other two, is like an ostentatious merchant between Florizel and Perdita. There were the many-headed jonquils, creamy and thick-scented; the starry narcissus, so alert on its long, slender, stiff stem, so sharp-eyed, so unlike a languid youth gazing into a pool; the hyacinth-blue frail squilla almost lost in the lush herbs; and the hyacinth, blue and white and red, with its firm, thick-set stem and innumerable bell curling back their open points. Among them stood tulips— the red, like thin blown bubbles of dark wine; the yellow, more cup-like, more sensually open to the soft furry entry of the eager bees; the large parti-coloured gold and red, noble and; sombre like the royal banner of Spain.

English spring flowers! What an answer to our ridiculous "cosmic woe", how salutary, what a soft reproach to bitterness and ava­rice and despair, what balm to hurt minds! The lovely bulb-flowers, loveliest of the year, so unpretentious, so cordial, so unconscious, so free from the striving after originality of the garden’s tamed pets! The spring flowers of the English woods, so surprising under those bleak skies, and the flowers the English love so much and. tend so skilfully in the cleanly wantonness of their gardens, as sur­prisingly beautiful as the poets of that bleak race! When the inevi­table "fuit Ilium" resounds mournfully over London among the appalling crash of huge bombs and the foul reek of deadly gases while the planes roar overhead, will the conqueror think regretfully and tenderly of the flowers and the poets?

Three more nights passed rather more tranquilly. There was comparatively little gas, but the German heavies were persistent. They, too, quieted down on the third night and Winterbourne got to bed fairly early and fell into a deep sleep.

Suddenly he was wide awake and sitting up. What on earth or hell was happening? From outside came a terrific rumble and roaring, as if three volcanoes and ten thunderstorms were in action simultaneously. The whole earth was shaking as if beaten by a multitude of flying hoofs, and the cellar walls vibrated. He seized his helmet, dashed past the other runners, who were starting up and exclaiming, rushed through the gas-curtain; and recoiled. It was still night, but the whole sky was brilliant with hundreds of flashing lights. Two thousand British guns were in action, and heaven and earth were filled with the roar and flame. From about half a mile to the north, southwards as far as he could see, the whole front was a dazzling flicker of gun-flashes. It was as if giant hands covered with huge rings set with searchlights were being shaken in the darkness, as if innumerable brilliant diamonds were flashing great rays of light. There was not a fraction of a second without its flash roar. Only the great boom of a twelve- or fourteen-inch naval gun just behind them .punctured the general pandemonium at regu­lar intervals.

Winterbourne ran stumbling forwards to get a view clear of the ruins. He crouched by a piece of broken house and looked towards the German lines. They were a long, irregular wall of smoke, torn everywhere with the dull red flashes of bursting shells. Behind their lines their artillery was flickering brighter and brighter as battery after battery came into action, making a crescendo of noise and flame when the limits of both seemed to have been reached. Winterbourne saw .but could not hear the first of their shells as it exploded short of the village. The great clouds of smoke over the. German trenches were darkly visible in the first very pallid light-of dawn. It was the preliminary bombardment of the long-expected battle. Winterbourne felt his heart shake with the shaking earth and vibrating air.

The whole thing was indescribable — a terrific spectacle, a stupendous symphony of sound. The devil-artist who had staged it was a master, in comparison with whom all other artists of the sublime and terrible were babies. The roar of the guns was beyond clamour — it was an immense rhythmic harmony, a super-jazz of tremendous drums, a ride of the Walkyrie played by three thou­sand cannon. The intense rattle of the machine guns played a minor motif of terror. It was too dark to see the attacking troops, but Winterbourne thought with agony how every one of those dreadful vibrations of sound meant death or mutilation. He thought of the ragged lines of British troops stumbling forward in smoke and flame and chaos of sound, crumbling away before the German protective barrage and the Reserve line machine-guns. He thought of the Ger­man front lines, already obliterated under that ruthless tempest of explosions and flying metal. Nothing could live within the area of that storm except by a miraculous hazard. Already in this first half- hour of bombardment hundreds upon hundreds of men would have been violently slain, smashed, torn, gouged, crushed, mutilated. The colossal harmony seemed to roar louder as the drum-fire lifted from the Front line to the Reserve. The battle was begun. They would be mopping-up soon — throwing bombs and explosives down the dug-out entrances on the men cowering inside.

The German heavies were pounding M — — with their shells, hurling masses of metal at their own ruined village. Winterbourne saw the half-ruined factory chimney totter and crash to the ground. Two shells pitched on either side of him, and flung earth, stones, and broken bricks all round him. He turned and ran back to his cellar, stumbling over shell-holes. He saw an isolated house disap­pear in the united explosion of two huge shells.

He clutched his hands together as he ran, with tears in his eyes.

Лекция 47

JOHN BOYNTON PRIESTLEY

(1894-1984)

John Priestley was born in Bradford, the son of a schoolmaster, and worked as junior clerk in a wool office before serving in the infantry in the First World War. He then took a degree in Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and in 1922 settled in London, where he quickly made a name as journalist and critic. He was one of the most versatile writers. He was well-known as novelist and essayist, as playwright and critic. His greatest popularity was won in the sphere of drama. His plays are both ingenious in composition and stage devices and valuable as contributions to the social history of our times. His best plays are inspired by his sympathy with “every man”, with common people. Among these plays “An Inspector Calls” undoubtedly holds a place of its own. A mysterious stranger, calling himself Inspector Goole asks the model family a number of severe questions which reveal the fact that they all are to blame for a death of a working-class girl called Eva Smith.

An Inspector Calls

GERALD… How do we know she was really Eva Smith or Daisy Renton?

BIRLING. Gerald's dead right. He could have used a different photograph each time and we'd be none the wiser. We may all have been recognizing different girls.

GERALD. Exactly. Did he ask you to identify a photograph, Eric?

ERIC. No. He didn't need a photograph by the time he d got round to me. But obviously it must have been the girl I knew who went round to see mother.

GERALD. Why must it?

ERIC. She said she had to have help because she wouldn't more stolen money. And the girl I knew had told me that already.

GERALD. Even then, that may have been all nonsense.

ERIC. I don't see much nonsense about it when a girl goes and kills herself. You lot may be letting yourselves out nicely, but I can't. Nor can mother. We did her in all right.

BIRLING (eagerly). Wait a minute, wait a minute. Don't be in such a hurry to put your self into court. That interview with your mother could have been just as much a put up job, like all This police inspector business. The whole damned thing can have been a piece of bluff.

ERIC (angrily). How can it? The girl's dead, isn't she?

GERALD. What girl? There were probably four or five different girls.

ERIC. That doesn't matter to me. The one I know is dead.

BIRLING. Is she? How do we know she is?

GERALD. That's right. You've, got it. How, do we know any girl killed herself to-day?

BIRLING (looking at them all, triumphantly). Now answer that one. Let's look at it from this fellow's point of view. We're having a little celebration here and feeling rather pleased with our­selves. Now he has to work a trick on us. Well, the first thing he has to do is to give us such a shock that after that he can bluff us all the time. So he starts right off. A girl has just died in the Infir­mary. She drank some strong disinfectant. Died in agony —

ERIC. All right, don't pile it on.

BIRLING (triumphantly}. There you are, you see. Just repeating it shakes you a bit. And that's what he had to do. Shake us at once—and then start questioning us—until we didn't know where we were. Oh—let's admit that. He had the laugh of us all right.

ERIC. He could laugh his head off — if I knew it really was all a hoax. BIRLINC I'm convinced it is. No police enquiry. No one girl that all this happened to. No scandal — —

SHEILA. And no suicide?

GERALD (decisively). We can settle that at once.

SHEILA. How?

GERALD. By ringing ']up; the Infirmary. Either there's a dead girl there or there isn't.

BIRLING (uneasily). It will look a bit queer, won't it—ringing up at this time of night—

GERALD. I don't mind doing it.

MRS. BIRLING (emphatically). And if there isn't— —

GERALD. Anyway we'll see. (He goes to telephone and looks - up number. The others watch tensely.) Brumley eight nine eight -six... Is that the -Infirmary? This is Mr. Gerald Croft—of Crofts -Limited... Yes… We're rather worried about one of our employees. Have you' had a girl brought in this afternoon who committed suicide drinking disinfectant—or any like suicide? Yes, I'll wait.

As he waits, the others show their nervous tension. Birling wipes his brow Sheila shivers, Eric clasps and unclasps his hands, etc.

Yes?... You're certain of that.... I see. Well, thank you very much... Good night. (He puts down telephone and looks at them.) No girl has died in there to-day. Nobody's been brought in after drinking disinfectant. They haven't had a suicide for months.

BIRLING (triumphantly). There you are! Proof positive. The whole story's just a lot of moonshine. Nothing but an elaborate sell! (He produces a huge sigh of relief.) Nobody likes to be sold as badly as that — but — for all that — — (He smiles at them all.) Gerald, have a drink.

GERALD (smiling}. Thanks, I think I could just do with one now.

BTRLING (going to sideboard). So could I.

MRS. BIRLING (smiling). And I must say. Gerald, .you've argued this very cleverly, and I'm most grateful.

GERALD (going for his drink). Well, you see, while I was out of the house I'd time to cool off and think things out a little.

BIRLING (giving him a drink). Yes, he didn't keep you on the run as he did the rest of us. I'll admit now he gave me a bit of a scare at the time. But I'd a special reason for not wanting any public scandal just now. (Has his drink now, and raises his glass). Well, here's to us. Come on, Sheila, don't look like that. All over now.

SHEILA. The worst part is. But you're forgetting one thing I still can't forget. Everything we said had happened really had happened. If it didn't end tragically, then that's lucky for us. But it might have done.

BIRLING (jovially). But the whole thing's different now. Come, come, you can see that, can't you? (Imitating Inspector in his final speech.) You all helped to kill her. (Pointing at Sheila and Eric, and laughing.) And I wish you could have seen the look on your faces when he said that.

Sheila moves towards door.

Going to bed, young woman?

SHEILA (tensely). I want to get out of this. It frightens me the way you talk.

BIRLING (heartily). Nonsense! You'll have a good laugh over it yet. Look, you'd better ask Gerald for that ring? you gave hack to him, hadn't you? Then you'll feel better.

SHEILA (passionately). You're pretending everything's just as it was before.

ERIC. I'm not!

SHEILA. No, but these others are.

BIRLING. Well, isn't it? We've been had, that's all.

SHEILA. So nothing really happened. So there's nothing to be sorry for, nothing to learn. We can all go on behaving just as we did.

MRS. BIRLTNG. Well, why shouldn't we?

SHEILA. I tell you — whoever that Inspector was, it was any­thing but a joke. You knew it then. You began to learn something. And now you've stopped. You're ready to go on in the same old way.

BIRLING (amused). And you're not, eh?

SHEILA. No, because I remember what he said, how he looked, and what he made me feel. Fire and blood and anguish. And it frightens me the way you talk, and I can't listen to any more of it.

ERIC. And I agree with Sheila. It frightens me too.

BIRLING. Well, go to bed then, and don't stand there being hysterical.

MRS. BIRLING. They're over-tired. In the morning they'll be as amused as we are.

GERALD. Everything's all right now, Sheila. (Holds up the ring.} What about this ring?

SHEILA. No, not yet. It's too soon. I must think.

BIRLING {pointing to Eric and Sheila}. Now look at the pair of them—the famous younger generation who know it all. And they can't even take a joke

The telephone rings sharply. There is a moment's com­plete silence. Birling goes to answer it.

Yes?... Mr. Birling speaking.... What? — Here — —

But obviously the other person has rung off. He puts the telephone down slowly and looks in a panic-stricken fashion at the others.

BIRLING. That was the police. A girl has just died — on her way to the Infirmary — after swallowing some disinfectant. And a police inspector is on his way here — to ask some — questions — —

As they stare guiltily and dumbfounded, the Curtain falls.

Лекция 48

GRAHAM GREEN

(1904-1991)

Graham Green was educated at Oxford. He joined the Roman Catholic Church in 1926. From 1926 to 1930 he was on the staff of . “The Times”, which he left in order to make a living as a writer. In his earlier novels he was rather hopeless of humanity. His obsessive theme was crime, treason and unfaithfulness under one form or another “The Quiet American” marks a new stage in Green’s development. The novel is set in Viet Nam and may be claimed to be an extraordinary effective revelation of the horrors of colonialism.

Green’s range as a writer is wide, both geographically and in variations of tone, but his preoccupations with moral dilemma (personal, religious or political), his attempts to distinguish “good-or-evil” from “right-or-wrong” give his work a highly distinctive and recognizable quality, while his skilful variations of popular forms (the thriller, the detective story) have brought him a rare combination of critical and popular admiration.

The quiet American

The mortar shells tore over us and burst out of sight. We had picked up more men behind the church and were now about thirty strong. The lieutenant explained to me in a low voice, stabbing a finger at his map, Three hundred have been reported in this village here. Perhaps massing for tonight. We don't know. No one has found them yet. How far? "Three hundred yards."

Words came over the wireless and we went on in silence, to the right the straight canal, to the left low scrub and fields and scrub: again. "All clear," the lieutenant whispered with a reassuring wave as we started. Forty yards on, another canal, with what was left of a bridge, a single plank without rails, ran across our front. The lieutenant motioned to us to deploy and we squatted down facing the unknown territory ahead, thirty feet off, across the plank. The men looked at the water and then, as though by a word of command, all together, they looked away. For a moment I didn't see what they had seen, but when I saw, my mind went back, I don't know why, to the Chalet and the female impersonators and the young soldiers whistling and Pyle saying, "This isn't a bit suitable."

The canal was full of bodies: I am reminded now of an Irish stew containing too much meat. The bodies overlapped: one head, seal- grey, and anonymous as a convict with a shaven scalp, stuck up out of the water like a buoy. There was no blood: I suppose it had flowed away a long time ago. I have no idea how many there were: they must have been caught in a cross-fire, trying to get back, and I suppose every man of us along the bank was thinking. Two can play at that game.¹¹ I too took my eyes away; we didn't want to be reminded of how little we counted, how quickly, simply and anonymously death came. Even though my reason wanted the state of death, I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself. For what? I didn't know, nor how, except by taking a look around at the little. I would be leaving.

The lieutenant sat beside the man with the walkie-talkie and stared at the ground between his feet. The instrument began to crackle instructions and with a sigh as though he had been roused from sleep he got up. There was an odd comradeliness about all their movements, as though they were equals engaged on a task they had performed together times out of mind. Nobody waited to be told what to do. Two men made for the plank and tried to cross it, but they were unbalanced by the weight of their arms and had to sit astride and work their way across a few inches at a time. Another man had found a punt hidden in some bushes down the canal and he worked it to where the lieu­tenant stood. Six of us got in and he began to pole it towards the other bank, but we ran on a shoal of bodies and stuck. He pushed away with his pole, sinking it into this human clay, and one body was released and floated up all its length beside the boat like a bather lying in the sun. Then we were free again, and once on the other side we scrambled out, with no backward look. No shots had been fired: we were alive: death had with drawn perhaps as far as the next canal. I heard somebody just behind me say with great seriousness, “Got sei dank,"* Except for the lieutenant they were most of them Germans.

Beyond was a group of farm-buildings: the lieutenant went in first, hugging the wall, and we followed at six-fort intervals in single file. Then the men, again without an order, scattered through the farm. Life had deserted it—not so much as a hen had been left behind, though hanging on the walls of what had been the living- room were two hideous oleographs of the Sacred Heart and the Mother and Child which gave the whole ramshackle group of buildings a European air. One knew what these people believed even if one didn't share their belief; they were human beings, not just grey drained cadavers.

So much of war is sitting around and doing nothing, waiting for somebody else. With no guarantee of the amount of time you have left it doesn't seem worth starting even a train of thought. Doing what they had done so often before, the sentries moved out. Anything that stirred ahead of us now was enemy. The lieutenant marked his map and reported our position over the radio. A noonday hush fell: even the mortars were quiet and the air was empty of planes. One man doodled* with a twig in the dirt of the farmyard. After a while it was as if we had been forgotten by war. I hoped that Phuong had sent my suits to the cleaners. A cold wind ruffled the straw of the yard, and' a man went; modestly behind a barn to relieve himself. I tried to remember whether I had paid the British Consul in Hanoi for the bottle of whisky he had allowed me.

Two shots were fired to our front, and I thought, ' This it it. Now it comes.' It was all the warning I wanted. I awaited, with a sense of exhilaration, the permanent thing.

But nothing happened. Once again I had "over-prepared the event." Only long minutes afterwards one of the sentries entered and reported something to the lieutenant. I caught the phrase, "Deux civils."*

The lieutenant said to me, "We will go and see," and following the sentry we picked our way along a muddy over­grown path between two fields. Twenty yards beyond the farm buildings, in a narrow ditch, we came on what we sought: a woman and a small boy. They were very clearly dead: a small neat clot of blood on the woman's forehead, and the child might have been sleeping. He was about six years old and he lay like an embryo in the womb with his little bony knees drawn up. " Malchance "* the lieutenant said. He bent down and turned the child over. He was wearing a holy medal* round his neck, and I said to myself, ' The juju doesn't work.' There was a gnawed piece of loaf under his body. I thought, 'I hate war.'

Лекция 49

JOHN JAMES OSBORNE

(1929)

John James Osborn was born in London in the family of an artist. He worked as a journalist, as an actor in provincial repertory during which he began to write plays. He made his name with “Look Back in Anger” (1956) which was followed by many other plays. They belong to the so called “Kitchen Sink Drama”, this term is applied to the plays which showed working-class or lower-middle class life, with an emphasis on domestic realism. Osborne’s works at their most positive praise the qualities of loyalty, tolerance and friendship. He belongs to the group of “Angry Young Men” (a journalistic catch-phrase), whose political views were radical or anarchic and who described various forms of social alienation.

Look Back in Anger

A pause. The iron mingles with the music. Cliff shifts restlessly in his chair, Jimmy watches A 1 i s o n, his foot beginning to twitch dangerously. Presently, he gets up quickly, crossing below A 1i s o n to the radio, and turns it off.)

What did you do that for?

Jimmy. I wanted to listen to the concert, that's all,

A1ison. Well, what's stopping you?

Jimmy. Everyone's making such a din—that's what's stopping me.

A1ison. Well, I'm very sorry, but I can't just stop everything because you want to listen to music.

Jimmy. Why not?

A1ison. Really, Jimmy, you're like a child.

Jimmy. Don't try and patronise me. (Turning to Cliff.) She's so clumsy. I watch for her to do the same things every night. The way she jumps on the bed, as if she were stamping on someone's face, and draws the curtains back with a great clatter, in that casually destructive way of hers. It's like someone launching a battleship. Have you ever noticed how noisy women are? (Crosses below chairs to L.C.) Have you? The way they kick the floor about, simply walking over it? Or have you watched them sitting at their dressing tables, drop­ping their weapons and banging down their bits of boxes and brushes and lipsticks? (He faces her dressing table.)

I've watched her doing it night after night. When you see a woman in front of her bedroom mirror, you realize what .a reu.ud son of a’.r you ever. ;some din b«:3tK.dng Ins tiligrr-i into some mp-of lamb fat and rustle? Well, she's just like that. Thank God they don't have i women surgeons! Those primitive hands would have. your guls out in no time. Flip! Out it comes, like ihe powder out of its box. Flop! Back it goes, like the powder puff on the table. Cliff (grimacing cheerfully). Ugh! Stop it!

Jimmy, (moving upstage}. She'd drop your guts like hair clips and flufT all over the door. You've got to be fundamentally insensitive to be as noisy and as clumsy as that. (He moves C., and leans against the table.)

I had a flat underneath a couple of girls once. You heard every damned thing those bastards did, all day and night. The most simple, everyday actions were a sort of assault course on your sensibilities. I used to plead with them. I even got to screaming the most ingenious obsceni­ties I could think of, up the stairs at them. But nothing, nothing, would move them. With those two, even a simple visit to the lavatory sounded like a medieval siege. Oh, they beat me in the end—I had to go. I expect they're still at it. Or they're probably married by now, and driving some other poor devils out of their minds. Slamming their doors, stamping their high heels, banging their irons and saucepans—the eternal flaming racket of the female. (Church bells start ringing outside.)

Jimmy. Oh, hell! Now the bloody bells have started! (He rushes to the window.) Wrap you? Stop ringing those-bells! There's somebody going crazy in here! I don't' want to hear them:

Alison. Stop shouting! (Recovering immediately). You'll lie Miss Drury up here.

Jimmy. I don't give a damn about Miss Drury—that mild old gentlewoman docs fool me, even if she lakes in you two. She's an old robber. She gets more than enough out of us for this place every week. Anyway, she's probably in church, (points to the window) swinging on those bloody bells! (C1iff goes to the window, and closes it.)

C1iff. Come on now, be a good boy. I'll take us all out, and we'll have a drink.

Jimmy. They're not open yet. It's Sunday. Remember? Anyway, it's raining.

C1iff. Well, shall we dance? (He pushes Jimmy round the floor, who is past the mood for this kind of fooling.)

Do you come here often?

Jimmy.Only in the mating season. All right, all right, very funny. (He tries to escape, but C liff holds him like a vice.)

Let me go.

C 1 i ff. Not until you've apologised for being nasty to everyone. Do you think bosoms will be in or out, this year?

Jimmy. Your teeth will be out in a minute, if you don't let go! (He makes a great effort to wrench himself free, but Cliff hangs on. They collapse to the floor C., below the table, struggling. Alison carries on with her ironing. This is routine, but she is getting close to breaking point, all the same. Cliff manages to break away, and finds himself in front of the ironing board. Jimmy springs up. They grapple.)

A1ison. Look out, for heaven's sake! Oh, it's more like a zoo every day!

(Jimmy makes a frantic, deliberate effort, and manages to push C1iff on to the ironing board, and into Alison. The board collapses. C1iff falls against her, and they end up in a heap on the floor. A1ison cries out in pain. Jimmy looks down at them, dazed and breathless.)

Cliff (picking himself up). She's hurt. Are you all right?

A1ison. Well, does it look like it!

C1iff. She's burnt her arm on the iron.

Jimmy. Darling, I'm sorry.

Alison. Get out!

Jimmy. I'm sorry, believe me. You think, I did it on pur——

Alison (her head shaking helplessly}. Clear out of my sight.

Лекция 50

KINGSLEY AMIS

Kingsley Amis was educated at Oxford and after graduation taught English at the University at Swansea. Amis was considered one of the leading representatives of the young English writers of the 1950-s, colloquially called the “Angry Young Men”. These writers had much in common as far as the attitudes and characteristic features of their heroes were concerned. Their books expressed the disgust of the young generation with an outworn and morally bankrupt social order. The characteristic feature of their outlook was individualism. Their protest was “ineffectual, incoherent and unfocused rebelliousness” (J. B. Priestly) “Lucky Jim”, characteristic of the early Amis, is essentially an English University novel. Concern with educational problems in general and the crisis of outlook and vocational prospects is typical of this group of writers.

The Zucky Jim

Hurrying through the side streets, deserted at this hour before works and offices closed, Dixon thought of Welch. Would Welch have asked him to set up a special subject if he wasn't going to keep him as a lecturer? Substitute any human name for Welch's and the answer must be no. But retain the original reading and no certainty was possible. As recently as last week month after the special subject had been mentioned, he'd heard Welch talking to the professor of education about "the sort of new man" he was after. Dixon had felt very ill for five minutes; then Welch had come up to him and begun discussing, in tones of complete honesty, what he wanted Dixon to do with the Pass people next year.

At the memory, Dixon rolled his eyes together like marbles and sucked in his cheeks to give a consumptive or wasted appearance to his face, moaning loudly as he crossed the sunlit street to his front door.

On the florid black hall stand there were a couple of periodi­cals and some letters that had come by the second post. There was something in a typed envelope for Alfred Beesley, who was a mem­ber of the College's English Department; a buff envelope con­taining football-pool⁵ coupons and addressed to W. Atkinson, an insurance salesman, some years older than Dixon, and another typed envelope addressed to J. Dickinson with a London postmark. Ho hesitated, then opened it. Inside was a sheet hastily torn from a pad bearing a few ill-written lines in green ink. Without formal­ity the writer announced that he'd liked the shipbuilding article and proposed to publish it "in due course". He'd be writing, again "before very long" and signed himself, "L. S. Caton".

Dixon took a felt hat of Atkinson's from the hall stand, put it on his head and did a little dance in the narrow hall. Welch would find it harder to sack him now. It was good news apart from that; it was generally encouraging; perhaps the article had some merit after all. No, that was going too far; but it did mean it was the right sort of stuff, and a man who'd written one lot of the right sort of stuff could presumably write more. He replaced the hat, glancing idly at the periodicals which were destined for Evan Johns, office worker at the college and amateur oboist. The front page of one of them bore a large and well-produced photograph of a contem­porary composer Johns might reasonably be supposed to admire. An idea came into Dixon's mind, which was the more ready to receive it in this mood of exultation. He stood still and listened for a moment, then crept into the dining room, where the tab was laid for high tea. Working quickly but carefully, he began altering the composer's face with a soft black pencil; The lower lip he turned into a set of discoloured snaggle teeth, adding another lower lip, thicker and looser than the original, underneath. Duelling scars appeared on the cheeks, hairs as thick as tooth picks sprang from the widened nostrils, the eyes, enlarged and converging, spilled out on to the nose. After crenellating the jawline and hiding the forehead in a luxuriant fringe, he added a Chinese moustache and pirate's earrings, and had just replaced the paper on the hall stand when somebody began to come in by the front door. He sprang into the dining room and listened again. After a few seconds he smiled as a voice called out, "Miss Cutler," in an accent northern like his own, but eastern where his own was western. Ho came out and said: "Hallo, Alfred."

"Uh, hallo, Jim." Beesley was tearing his letter open with some haste. The kitchen door was opened behind Dixon and the head of Miss Cutler, their landlady, emerged to see who and how many they were. Satisfied on these points, she smiled and withdrew. Dixon turned back to Beesley who was now reading his letter scowling as he did so.

"Coming in to tea?"

Beesley nodded and handed Dixon the typewritten sheet. "Spot of good news to take home with me for the week-end."

Dixon read that Beesley was thanked for his application but that Mr. P. Oldham been appointed to the pos!. "Oh, bad luck, Alfred. Still, there'll be others to go for, won't there?"

"Doubt it, for October. Time's running pretty short now."

They took their seats at the tea table. "Were you very set on it?" Dixon asked.

"Only in go far as it, would have been a way for getting away from Fred Karno." This was how Beesley was accustomed to refer to his professor.

"I suppose you were quite set on it, then."'

"That's right. Anything new from Neddy about your chances?"

"No, nothing direct, but I've just had a bit of good news. That chap Caton's taken my article, the thing about shipbuilding." ""That's a comfort, eh? When's it coming out?"

"He didn't¹¹ say.”

Oh? Got the letter there?" Dixon passed it to him. "Mm, not too fussy about stationery and so on, is he? I see... Well, you'll be wanting more definite information than that, won't you?"

Dixon's nose twitched his glasses up into position, a habit of his. "Will I?"

"Well, Christ, Jim, of course, you will, old man. A vague accept­ance of this kind isn't any use to anyone. Might be a couple of years before it comes out, if then. No, you pin him down to a date, when you'll have got some real evidence to give Neddy. Take my advice."

Uncertain whether the advice was sound, or whether it arose out of Beesley's disappointment, Dixon was about to temporize when Miss Cutler came into the room with a tray of tea and food.

Dixon and Beesley said something to her, receiving, as usual, no reply beyond a nod until the tray was unloaded; then a conversation followed, only to be abruptly broken off at the entry of insurance salesman and ex-Army major, Bill Atkinson.

The meal continued and Atkinson soon partook in it, though remaining aloof from the conversation, which ran for a few minutes on the subject of Dixon's article and its possible date of pub­lication. "Is it a good article?" Beesley asked finally.

Dixon looked up in surprise. "Good? How do you mean, good?, Good?"

"Well, is it any more than accurate and the sort of thing that gets turned out? Anything beyond the sort of thing that will help you to keep your job?"

"Good God, no. You don't think I take that sort of stuff se­riously, do you?" Dixon noticed that Atkinsdn's thickly lashed eyes were fixed on him.

"I just wondered," Beesley said, bringing out the curved nickel banded pipe round which he was trying to train his personality, like a creeper up a trellis. "I thought I was probably right."

"But look here, Alfred, you don't moan I ought to take it se­riously, do you? What are you getting at?"

"I don't mean anything. I've just been wondering what bat led you to take up this racket in the first place."

Dixon hesitated. "But I explained all this to you months ago, about feeling I'd be no use in a school and so on."

"No, I mean why you are a medievalist." Beesloy struck a match, his small vole-like face set in a frown. "Don't mind, Bill, do you?" Receiving no reply, he went on between sucks at his pipe: "You don't seem to have any special interest in it, do you?"

Dixon tried to laugh. "No, I don't, do I? No, the reason why I am a medievalist, as you call it, is that the medieval papers were a soft option' in the Leicester course, so I specialized in them. Then, when I applied for the job here, I naturally made a big point of that, because it looked better to seem interested in something specific. It's why I got the job instead of this clover boy from Ox­ford who mucked himself up² at the interview by chewing the fat³ about modern theories of interpretation. But I never guessed I'd. be landed with all the medieval stuff and nothing but medieval stuff." Ho repressed a desire to smoke, having finished his five-o'clock cigarette at a quarter past three. . "I see," Beesley said, sniffing. "I did not know that be­fore."

"Haven't you noticed how we all specialize in what we hate most?" Dixon asked, but Beesley, puffing away at his pipe, had already got up. Dixon's views on the Middle Ages themselves would have to wait until another time.

"Oh, well, I'm off now," Beesley said. "Have a good time with the artists, Jim. Don't get drunk and start telling Neddy what you've just been telling me, will you? Cheero, Bill," he added unan­swered to Atkinson, and went out, leaving the door open.

Лекция 51

WILLIAM GOLDING

(1911-1994)

W. Golding was educated in Oxford. He worked as a writer, actor and producer with small theatre companies and then as a small theatre companies and then as a teacher; during the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy and was lieutenant in command of a rocket ship. After the war he returned to writing and teaching. “Lord of the Flies” appeared in 1954 and was an immediate success, Golding often presents isolated individuals or small groups in extreme situations dealing with man in his basic condition strirred of trappings, creating a quality of a fable. His novels are remarkable for their strikingly varied settings, several of them historical.

***

The fire was dead. They saw that straight away; saw what they had really known down on the beach when the smoke of home had beckoned. The fire was right out, smokeless and dead; the watchers were gone. A pile of unused fuel lay ready.

Ralph turned to the sea. The horizon stretched, impersonal once more, barren of all but the faintest trace of smoke. Ralph ran stumbling along the rocks, saved himself on the edge of the pink cliff, and screamed at the ship.

"Come back! Come back!"

He ran backwards and forwards along the cliff, his face always to the sea, and his voice rose in­sanely.

"Come back! Come back!"

Simon and Maurice arrived. Ralph looked at them with unwinking eyes. Simon turned away, smearing the water from Ins cheeks. Ralph reached inside himself for the worst word he knew.

"They let the bloody fire out."

He looked down the unfriendly side of the mountain. Piggy arrived, out of breath and whim­pering like a littlun. Ralph clenched his fist and went very red. The inrentness of his gaze, the bitterness of his voice pointed for him.

"There they are”.

A procession appeared, far down among the pink screes that lay near the water's edge. Some of the boys wore black caps but otherwise they were almost naked. They lifted sticks in the air together, whenever they came to an easy patch. They were chanting, something to do with the bundle that the errant twins carried so carefully. Ralph picked out Jack easily, even at that distance, tall, red-haired, and inevitably leading the procession.

Simon looked now, from Ralph to Jack, as he had looked from Ralph to the horizon, and what he saw seemed to make him afraid. Ralph said nothing more, but waited while the procession*came nearer. The chant was audible but at that distance still wordless. Behind jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes.

"Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”

Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away. Piggy snivelled and Simon shushed him quickly as though he had spoken too loudly in church.

Jack, his face smeared with clays, reached the top first and hailed Ralph excitedly, with lifted spear.

"Look! We've killed a pig—we stole up on them—we got in a circle—"

Voices broke in from the hunters.

"We got in a circle—"

"We crept up—"

"The pig squealed—"

The twins stood with the pig swinging between them, dropping black gouts on the rock. They seemed to share one wide, ecstatic grin. Jack had too many things to tell Ralph at once. Instead, he danced a step or two, then remembered his dignity and stood still, grinning. He noticed blood on his hands and grimaced distastefully, looked for some­thing on which to clean them, then wiped them on his shorts and laughed.

Ralph spoke.

"You let the fire out."

Jack checked, vaguely irritated by this irrelevance but too happy to let it worry him.

"We can light the fire again. You should have been with us, Ralph. We had a smashing time. The twins got knocked over—"

"We hit the pig—"

"—I fell on top—"

"I cut the pig's throat," said Jack, proudly, and

yet twitched as he said it. "Can I borrow yours, Ralph, to make a nick in the hilt?"

The boys chattered and danced. The twins con­tinued to grin.

"There was lashings of blood," said Jack, laughing and shuddering, "you should have seen it!"

"We'll go hunting every day—"

Ralph spoke again, hoarsely. He had not moved.

"You let the fire out."

This repetition made Jack uneasy. He looked at the twins and then back at Ralph.

"We had to have them in the hunt," he said, "or there wouldn't have been enough for a ring."

He flushed, conscious of a fault.

"The fire's only been out an hour or two. We can , light up again—"

He noticed Ralph's scarred nakedness, and the sombre silence of all four of them. He sought, charitable in his happiness, to include them in the thing that had happened. His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.

He spread his arms wide.

"You should have seen the blood!"

The hunters were more silent now, but at this they buzzed again. Ralph flung back his hair. One arm pointed at the empty horizon. His voice was loud and savage, and struck them into silence.

"There was a ship."

Jack, faced at once with too many awful implica­tions, ducked away from them. He laid a hand on the pig and drew his knife. Ralph brought his arm down, fist clenched, and his voice shook.

"There was a ship. Out there. You said you'd keep the fire going and you let it out!" He took a step towards Jack who turned and faced him.

"They might have seen us. We might have gone home—"

This was too bitter for Piggy, who forgot his timidity in the agony of his loss. He began to cry out, shrilly:

"You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might have gone home—"

Ralph pushed Piggy on one side.

"I was chief; and you were going to do what I said. You talk. But you can't even build huts—then you go off hunting and let out the fire—"

He turned away, silent for a moment. Then his voice came again on a peak of feeling.

"There was a ship—"

Лекция 52