Charles Snow - The Conscience of the Rich

Some years before, I had had a friend, George Passant, who put the blame for the diffidence and violence of his character on to his humble origin. His vision of himself was more self-indulgent than Charles’. Yet Charles’ insight did not prevent him from seizing at a similar excuse. He had felt passionately, as we have all felt, that everything would have been possible for him, life would have been utterly harmonious, he would have been successful and good ‘if only it had not been for this accident’. Charles had felt often enough ‘I should have been free, I should have had my fate in my hands — if only I had not been born a Jew.’

It was not true. It was an excuse. Even to himself it was an excuse which could not endure. For his vulnerability (unlike George Passant’s) was of the kind that is mended by time; for years the winces of shame had become less sharp. It seemed to him that by telling his father and Philip he was marrying a Jewess he had conquered his obsession. I should have said that it was conquered by the passing of time itself and the flow of life. In any case, he could no longer believe in the excuse. That night for him signalized the moment of release, which really had been creeping on imperceptibly for years.

He was light with his sense of release. He felt that night that now he was truly free.

That was why I was stirred by a rush of affection for him. For he would be more unprotected in the future than he had been when the excuse still dominated him. In cold blood, when the light and warmth of release had died down, he would be left face to face with his own nature. Tonight he could feel fresh, simple, and at one; tomorrow he would begin to see again the contradictions within.

Up till the day of the wedding, rumours still ran through the family, but I heard from Charles that Philip had sent an expensive present. I also heard on the wedding morning that Mr March was in low spirits but ‘curiously relieved’ to be getting ready to go to the register office.

When I arrived at Bryanston Square after the wedding, to which not even his brothers were invited, I thought Mr March was beginning to enjoy himself. Nearly all the family had come to the reception and, soon after being ‘disgorged from obscurity’ (his way of referring to the marriage in a register office) he seemed able to forget that this was different from any ordinary wedding.

In the drawing-room Mr March stood surrounded by his relatives. There were at least a hundred people there: the furniture had been removed and trestle-tables installed round two of the walls and under the windows, in order to carry the presents. The presents were packed tightly and arranged according to an order of precedence that had cost Katherine, in the middle of her suspense, considerable anxiety; for, having breathed in that atmosphere all her life, she could not help but know the heart-burnings that Aunt Caroline would feel if her Venetian glasses (‘she hasn’t done you very handsomely,’ said Mr March, who made no pretence about what he considered an unsatisfactory present) were not placed near the magnificent Flemish tapestry from the Herbert Marches, or Philip’s gift of a Ming vase.

The tables glittered with silver and glass; it was an assembly of goods as elaborate, costly, ingenious, and beautiful as London could show. At any rate, Mr March considered that the presents ‘came up to expectations’. Hannah, so someone reported, had decided that they ‘weren’t up to much’; but, as that had been her verdict in all the March weddings that Mr March could remember, it merely reassured him that his daughter’s was not continuously regarded as unique.

There were few of those absences of presents which had embarrassed the cousin whose daughter married a Gentile twenty years before. ‘That appears to be ancient history,’ said Mr March to Katherine, when presents had arrived from all his close relations and some of his fears proved groundless. The two or three lacunae among his cousins he received robustly: ‘George is using his religious scruples to save his pocket. Not that he’s saving much — judging from the knick-knack that he sent to Philip’s daughter.’ At the reception itself, he repeated the retort to Philip himself, and they both chuckled.

Philip had already gone out of his way to be affable. He had greeted Ann with special friendliness, and had even given a stiff smile towards Herbert Getliffe. He seemed set, in the midst of the family, on suppressing the rumours of the last fortnight.

Mr March responded at once to the signs of friendship. He began to refer with cheerfulness and affection to ‘my son-in-law at Cambridge’, meaning Francis, who was standing with Katherine a few feet away. A large knot of Mr March’s brothers and sisters and their children had gathered round him, and he was drawn into higher spirits as the audience grew.

‘I refuse to disclose my contribution,’ he said, after Philip had been chaffing him about the absence of any present of his own. Everyone knew that Mr March had given them a house, but he had decided not to admit it. Philip was taking advantage of the old family legend that Leonard was particularly close with money.

‘You might have produced half a dozen fish forks,’ said Philip.

‘I refuse to accept responsibility for their diet,’ said Mr March. ‘I gave Hetty some decanters for her wedding and she always blamed me for the regrettable events afterwards.’

‘You could have bought them something for their house,’ said Herbert.

‘You could have passed on a piece of your surplus furniture,’ said Philip. ‘So long as Katherine’s forgotten that you ever owned it.’

‘There must have been something you could have bought for the house,’ said Herbert’s wife.

Mr March chuckled, and went off at a tangent. ‘They insist on living in some residence in the provinces, owing to the nature of my son-in-law’s occupation—’

Katherine interrupted ‘I wish you wouldn’t make it sound like coal-mining, Mr L.’ But he was sailing on:

‘A month ago I went to inspect some of their possible places of abode. My son Charles told me the eleven-fifty went from King’s Cross, and it goes from Liverpool Street, of course. However, I never had the slightest faith in his competence; naturally I had consulted the time-table before I asked him, and so arrived at the station in comfortable time. Incidentally, in twenty-five minutes my daughter and son-in-law will be compelled to leave to catch the boat train. On my honeymoon I had already left for the train at the corresponding time, allowing for the additional slowness of the cab as a means of conveyance. People always say Mentone is a particularly quiet resort, but I’ve never found it so. The first time I visited it was on my honeymoon with its general air of unrest. The second time my wife had some jewellery stolen and I was compelled to undergo some interviews with a detective. I never had any confidence in him, but the jewellery was returned several months later. The third time passed without incident. Having arrived despite Charles’ attempt to make my journey impossible—’

‘Where? When?’ shouted several of his audience.

‘At my daughter’s future domicile in the provinces. On the occasion under discussion,’ replied Mr March without losing way, ‘I proceeded to inspect the three residences which were considered possibilities by the couple principally concerned—’ Philip and the others threw in remarks, they gave Mr March the centre of the stage, and he was letting himself go.

Then, just after he had triumphantly ended that story and begun another, he looked across the room. Outside the large noisy crowd over which his own voice was prevailing, there were two or three knots of people, not so full of gusto — and Ann by the window, talking to Margaret March.