Олдос Хаксли: Brief Candles. Four Stories

‘ The Times had its word about that,’ said I; and picking up the paper once more, I read: ‘“Under a disconcertingly brusque and even harsh manner Mr Chawdron concealed the kindliest of natures. A stranger meeting him for the first time was often repelled by a certain superficial roughness. It was only to his intimates that he revealed”—guess what!—“the heart of gold beneath.”’

‘Heart of gold!’ Tilney took his pipe out of his mouth to laugh.

‘And he also, I see, had “a deep religious sense”.’ I laid the paper down.

‘Deep? It was bottomless.’

‘Extraordinary,’ I reflected aloud, ‘the way they all have hearts of gold and religious senses. Every single one, from the rough old man of science to the tough old businessman and the gruff old statesman.’

‘Hearts of gold!’ Tilney repeated. ‘But gold’s much too hard. Hearts of putty, hearts of vaseline, hearts of hog–wash. That’s more like it. Hearts of hog–wash. The tougher and bluffer and gruffer they are outside, the softer they are within. It’s a law of nature. I’ve never come across an exception. Chawdron was the rule incarnate. Which is precisely what I want to show in this other, potential book of mine—the ruthless Napoleon of finance paying for his ruthlessness and his Napoleonism by dissolving internally into hog–wash. For that’s what happened to him: he dissolved into hog–wash. Like the Strange Case of Mr Valdemar in Edgar Allan Poe. I saw it with my own eyes. It’s a terrifying spectacle. And the more terrifying when you realize that, but for the grace of God, there goes yourself—and still more so when you begin to doubt of the grace of God, when you see that there in fact you do go. Yes, you and I, my boy. For it isn’t only the tough old businessmen who have the hearts of hog–wash. It’s also, as you yourself remarked just now, the gruff old scientists, the rough old scholars, the bluff old admirals and bishops, and all the other pillars of Christian society. It’s everybody, in a word, who has made himself too hard in the head or the carapace; everybody who aspires to be non–human—whether angel or machine it doesn’t matter. Super–humanity is as bad as sub–humanity, is the same thing finally. Which shows how careful one should be if one’s an intellectual. Even the mildest sort of intellectual. Like me, for example. I’m not one of your genuine ascetic scholars. God forbid! But I’m decidedly high–brow, and I’m literary; I’m even what the newspapers call a “thinker”. I suffer from a passion for ideas. Always have, from boyhood onwards. With what results? That I’ve never been attracted by any woman who wasn’t a bitch.’

I laughed. But Tilney held up his hand in a gesture of protest. ‘It’s a serious matter,’ he said. ‘It’s disastrous, even. Nothing but bitches. Imagine!’

‘I’m imagining,’ I said. ‘But where do the books and the ideas come in? Post isn’t necessarily propter .’

‘It’s propter in this case all right. Thanks to the books and the ideas, I never learnt how to deal with real situations, with solid people and things. Personal relationships—I’ve never been able to manage them effectively. Only ideas. With ideas I’m at home. With the idea of personal relationships, for example. People think I’m an excellent psychologist. And I suppose I am. Spectatorially. But I’m a bad experiencer. I’ve lived most of my life posthumously, if you see what I mean; in reflections and conversations after the fact. As though my existence were a novel or a textbook of psychology or a biography, like any of the others on the library shelves. An awful situation. That was why I’ve always liked the bitches so much, always been so grateful to them—because they were the only women I ever contrived to have a non–posthumous, contemporary, concrete relation with. The only ones.’ He smoked for a moment in silence.

‘But why the only ones?’ I asked.

‘Why?’ repeated Tilney. ‘But isn’t it rather obvious? For the shy man, that is to say the man who doesn’t know how to deal with real situations and people, bitches are the only possible lovers, because they’re the only women who are prepared to come to meet him, the only ones who’ll make the advances he doesn’t know how to make.’

I nodded. ‘Shy men have cause to be drawn to bitches: I see that. But why should the bitches be drawn to the shy men? What’s their inducement to make those convenient advances? That’s what I don’t see.’

‘Oh, of course they don’t make them unless the shy man’s attractive,’ Tilney answered. ‘But in my case the bitches always were attracted. Always. And, quite frankly, they were right. I was tolerably picturesque, I had that professional Irish charm, I could talk, I was several hundred times more intelligent than any of the young men they were likely to know. And then, I fancy, my very shyness was an asset. You see, it didn’t really look like shyness. It exteriorized itself as a kind of god–like impersonality and remoteness—most exciting for such women. I had the charm in their eyes of Mount Everest or the North Pole—something difficult and unconquered that aroused the record–breaking instincts in them. And at the same time my shy remoteness made me seem somehow superior; and, as you know, few pleasures can be compared with the sport of dragging down superiority and proving that it’s no better than oneself. My air of disinterested remoteness has always had a succès fou with the bitches. They all adore me because I’m so “different”. “But you’re different, Edmund, you’re different,”’ he fluted in falsetto. ‘The bitches! Under their sentimentalities, their one desire, of course, was to reduce me as quickly as possible to the most ignoble un–difference….’

‘And were they successful?’ I asked.

‘Oh, always. Naturally. It’s not because a man’s shy and bookish that he isn’t a porco di prim’ ordine . Indeed, the more shyly bookish, the more likely he is to be secretly porkish. Or if not a porco , at least an asino , an oca , a vitello . It’s the rule, as I said just now; the law of nature. There’s no escaping.’

I laughed. ‘I wonder which of the animals I am?’

Tilney shook his head. ‘I’m not a zoologist. At least,’ he added, ‘not when I’m talking to the specimen under discussion. Ask your own conscience.’

‘And Chawdron?’ I wanted to hear more about Chawdron. ‘Did Chawdron grunt, or bray, or moo?’

‘A little of each. And if earwigs made a noise … No, not earwigs. Worse than that. Chawdron was an extreme case; and the extreme cases are right outside the animal kingdom.’

‘What are they, then? Vegetables?’

‘No, no. Worse than vegetables. They’re spiritual. Angels, that’s what they are: putrefied angels. It’s only in the earlier stages of the degeneration that they bleat and bray. After that they twang the harp and flap their wings. Pigs’ wings, of course. They’re Angels in pigs’ clothing. Hearts of hog–wash. Did I ever tell you about Chawdron and Charlotte Salmon?’

‘The ’cellist?’

He nodded. ‘What a woman!’

‘And her playing! So clotted, so sagging, so greasy … ’ I fumbled for the apt description.

‘So terribly Jewish, in a word,’ said Tilney. ‘That retching emotionalism, that, sea–sickish spirituality—purely Hebraic. If only there were a few more Aryans in the world of music! The tears come into my eyes whenever I see a blonde beast at the piano. But that’s by the way. I was going to tell you about Charlotte. You know her, of course?’

‘Do I not!’

‘Well, it was Charlotte who first revealed to me poor Chawdron’s heart of hog–wash. Mine too, indirectly. It was one evening at old Cryle’s. Chawdron was there, and Charlotte, and myself, and I forget who else. People from all the worlds, anyhow. Cryle, as you know, has a foot in each. He thinks it’s his mission to bring them together. He’s the match–maker between God and Mammon. In this case he must have imagined that he’d really brought off the marriage. Chawdron was Mammon all right; and though you and I would be chary of labelling Charlotte as God, old Cryle, I’m sure, had no doubts. After all, she plays the ’cello; she’s an Artist. What more can you want?’