Anthony Powell - The Acceptance World

Members drew a deep breath that was almost a sigh. There was a pause.

‘But I thought you said he was so squeamish about people?’

‘Not when he has once decided they are going to be successful.’

‘That’s what he thinks about Quiggin?’

Members nodded.

‘Then I noticed St. J. was beginning to describe everything as “bourgeois”,’ he said. ‘Wearing a hat was “bourgeois”, eating pudding with a fork was “bourgeois”, the Ritz was “bourgeois”, Lady Huntercombe was “bourgeois”—he meant “bourgeoise”, of course, but French is not one of St. J.’s long suits. Then one morning at breakfast he said Cezanne was “bourgeois”.

At first I thought he meant that only middle-class people put too much emphasis on such things — that a true aristocrat could afford to ignore them. It was a favourite theme of St. J.’s that “natural aristocrats” were the only true ones. He regarded himself as a “natural aristocrat”. At the same time he felt that a “natural aristocrat” had a right to mix with the ordinary kind, and latterly he had spent more and more of his time in rather grand circles — and in fact had come almost to hate people who were not rather smart, or at least very rich. For example, I remember him describing — well, I won’t say whom, but he is a novelist who sells very well and you can probably guess the name — as “the kind of man who knows about as much about placement as to send the wife of a younger son of a marquess in to dinner before the daughter of an earl married to a commoner”. He thought a lot about such things. That was why I had been at first afraid of introducing him to Quiggin. And then — when we began discussing Cézanne — it turned out that he had been using the word “bourgeois” all the time in the Marxist sense. I didn’t know he had even heard of Marx, much less was at all familiar with his theories.’

‘I seem to remember an article he wrote describing himself as a “Gladstonian Liberal”—in fact a Liberal of the most old-fashioned kind.’

‘You do, you do,’ said Members, almost passionately. ‘I wrote it for him, as a matter of fact. You couldn’t have expressed it better. A Liberal of the most old-fashioned kind. Local Option — Proportional Representation — Welsh Disestablishment — the whole bag of tricks. That was just about as far as he got. But now everything is “bourgeois”—Liberalism, I have no doubt, most of all. As a matter of fact, his politics were the only liberal thing about him.’

‘And it began as soon as he met Quiggin?’

‘I first noticed the change when he persuaded me to join in what he called “collective action on the part of writers and artists”—going to meetings to protest against Manchuria and so on. I agreed, first of all, simply to humour him. It was just as well I did, as a matter of fact, because it led indirectly to another job when he turned his back on me. You know, what St. J. really wants is a son. He wants to be a father without having a wife.’

‘I thought everyone always tried to avoid that.’

‘In the Freudian sense,’ said Members, impatiently, ‘his nature requires a father-son relationship. Unfortunately, the situation becomes a little too life-like, and one is faced with a kind of artificially constructed Œdipus situation.’

‘Can’t you re-convert him from Marxism to psychoanalysis?’

Members looked at me fixedly.

‘St. J. has always pooh-poohed the subconscious,’ he said.

We were about to move off in our respective directions when my attention was caught by a disturbance coming from the road running within the railings of the park. It was a sound, harsh and grating, though at the same time shrill and suggesting complaint. These were human voices raised in protest. Turning, I saw through the mist that increasingly enveloped the park a column of persons entering beneath the arch. They trudged behind a mounted policeman, who led their procession about twenty yards ahead. Evidently a political ‘demonstration’ of some sort was on its way to the north side where such meetings were held. From time to time these persons raised a throaty cheer, or an individual voice from amongst them bawled out some form of exhortation. A strident shout, similar to that which had at first drawn my attention, now sounded again. We moved towards the road to obtain a better view.

The front rank consisted of two men in cloth caps, one with a beard, the other wearing dark glasses, who carried between them a banner upon which was inscribed the purpose and location of the gathering. Behind these came some half a dozen personages, marching almost doggedly out of step, as if to deprecate even such a minor element of militarism. At the same time there was a vaguely official air about them. Among these, I thought I recognised the face and figure of a female Member of Parliament whose photograph occasionally appeared in the papers. Next to this woman tramped Sillery. He had exchanged his black soft hat of earlier afternoon for a cloth cap similar to that worn by the bearers of the banner: his walrus moustache and thick strands of white hair blew furiously in the wind. From time to time he clawed at the arm of a gloomy-look ing man next to him who walked with a limp. He was grinning all the while to himself, and seemed to be hugely enjoying his role in the procession.

In the throng that straggled several yards behind these more important figures I identified two young men who used to frequent Mr. Deacon’s antique shop; one of whom, indeed, was believed to have accompanied Mr. Deacon himself on one of his holidays in Cornwall. I thought, immediately, that Mr. Deacon’s other associate, Gypsy Jones, might also be of the party, but could see no sign of her. Probably, as Quiggin had suggested, she belonged by then to a more distinguished grade of her own hierarchy than that represented by this heterogeneous collection, nearly all apparently ‘intellectuals’ of one kind or another.

However, although interested to see Sillery in such circumstances, there was another far more striking aspect of the procession which a second later riveted my eyes. Members must have taken in this particular spectacle at the same instant as myself, because I heard him beside me give a gasp of irritation.

Three persons immediately followed the group of notables with whom Sillery marched. At first, moving closely together through the mist, this trio seemed like a single grotesque three-headed animal, forming the figurehead of an ornamental car on the roundabout of a fair. As they jolted along, however, their separate entities became revealed, manifesting themselves as a figure in a wheeled chair, jointly pushed by a man and a woman. At first I could not believe my eyes, perhaps even wished to disbelieve them, because I allowed my attention to be distracted for a moment by Sillery’s voice shouting in high, almost jocular tones: ‘Abolish the Means Test!’ He had uttered this cry just as he came level with the place where Members and I stood; but he was too occupied with his own concerns to notice us there, although the park was almost empty.

Then I looked again at the three other people, thinking I might find myself mistaken in what I had at first supposed. On the contrary, the earlier impression was correct. The figure in the wheeled chair was St. John Clarke. He was being propelled along the road, in unison, by Quiggin and Mona Templer.

‘My God!’ said Members, quite quietly.

‘Did you see Sillery?’

I asked this because I could think of no suitable comment regarding the more interesting group. Members took no notice of the question.

‘I never thought they would go through with it,’ he said.

Neither St. John Clarke, nor Quiggin, wore hats. The novelist’s white hair, unenclosed in a cap such as Sillery wore, was lifted high, like an elderly Struwwelpeter’s, in the stiff breeze that was beginning to blow through the branches. Quiggin was dressed in the black leather overcoat he had worn in the Ritz, a red woollen muffler riding up round his neck, his skull cropped like a convicts. No doubt intentionally, he had managed to make himself look like a character from one of the novels of Dostoievski. Mona, too, was hatless, with dishevelled curls: her face very white above a high-necked polo jumper covered by a tweed overcoat of smart cut. She was looking remarkably pretty, and, like Sillery, seemed to be enjoying herself. On the other hand, the features of the two men with her expressed only inexorable sternness. Every few minutes, when the time came for a general shout to be raised, St. John Clarke would brandish in his hand a rolled-up copy of one of the ‘weeklies’, as he yelled the appropriate slogan in a high, excited voice.